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Invulnerable fingers slid over the granite surface, scoring deeply. The Man of Steel rose from the remnants of the long-inactive Batcave, and looked at the rising sun wearily, as he was determined to make this the last sunrise that he would ever see. Glorious, he thought, although, much like the legendary vampire, he had had to flee the sun for the last 50,000 years of his life. Unlike their effect on vampires, however, the sun's rays were not painful to the hero, just the opposite, in fact; For the last 150,000 years Krypton's last son found himself supercharged to the point that he could no longer control his powers unless he found a constant outlet for the incredible power his body now harnessed. For a while, he tried floating everywhere he went, but soon afterwards found that flying was simply not enough; this discovery was made when he accidentally glanced downward and vaporized a forest with his heat vision. From then on, he realized that he would have to eliminate his presence in the sun. For thousands of centuries, the man had fled the sun, although wherever he went, he still absorbed more power from ambient light and radiation than he could feasibly vent. It had occurred to him, long ago, to leave the Earth, but found that 250,000 years of the solar radiation had subtly mutated his genes, re-establishing the link that had been broken by his birth-father, Jor-El. Instead of being bound to Krypton, however, Kal-El found himself unable to leave his adopted beautiful blue marble. Having tried many times, the Last Son of two worlds always passed out a few kilometers away from the Earth's surface, and was returned by his own subconscious, instinctive power of flight, and always waking up trapped again by the mother which had nourished him for far too long. Many times he had attempted to fashion a spacecraft strong enough to hold himself, to carry the Man of too many Tomorrows away from his very miserable existence, but the results were the same every time. He had simply grown too powerful, and unconsciously breached the hull of each and every ship. Superman had truly become a trapped particle, doomed to grow more powerful as time progressed. Once, he had realized that he was strong enough to alter the orbit of the planet, and had considered using it as the ship and he, the engine, so that he might wander the galaxy, but his respect for life had not allowed him to consciously harm even the slightest of creatures, and to actually move the Earth would cause mass extermination of precious life. An honorable death in battle was not even possible anymore; millennia before, the strongest of all the warrior races. the G'ulln, had posted warning beacons all around the perimeter of the solar system, after their abrupt defeat by the Kryptonian. Superman had beaten an entire armada of the most formidable of star dreadnoughts, without even breaking a sweat. While he longed for company, and would have allowed the use of so many of his planet's abundant resources, the G'ulln had mistakenly declared their intent to lay waste to the entire globe, in their thirst and hunger. They had simply grossly overestimated Kal's sheer power. After that, the Sol system had become off-limits to other travelers; if the mighty G'ulln had been so easily defeated, what chances did other races stand against the most terrible warrior ever produced by the Milky Way galaxy? Starships which used to visit the third planet in search of sustenance had been forever denied by the G'ulln's beacons, which were also capable of vaporizing anything that violated their line-of-sight. For the last 25,000 years, the last Earthling had not even one solitary visitor, and was indeed, marooned. Stepping from the shadows, the Man of Forever glanced skyward, and stood in the presence of the feared golden orb for the first time in over 500 centuries. His eyes instinctively and unnecessarily turned to slits, as he lay down upon the boulder which he intended to be his final resting place. Drowsily, he closed his eyes completely, as the first sleep in 10,000 years descended upon him, his exhaustion artificially induced by the green, glowing ring which he had been wearing on his left hand for the last 500 years. After all this time, he barely even noticed the nagging tingle, as he yawned, then slept. As he slipped into unconsciousness he dreamed of the past, and how he had come to be so alone.
End of Part I
(If you like this, let me know, and I'll continue)
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