P. M.

Prologue

"Watchtower to Superman, do you copy?"

The Man of Steel was flying across the skies of Metropolis on his usual patrol when he received the call one afternoon. Reaching for the communicator in his ear, Superman answered. "Superman here. Did something happen, Batman?"

"There's been a concerning energy signal in the Nevada desert," came the reply of the Dark Knight. "No League member is close by and the nature of the energy makes you the optimal choice between the ones that can reach it in time."

"What do you mean?"

"It's similar to Boom Tube energy."

That caused Superman to come to a sudden halt. His usually cheerful attitude completely replaced by a serious frown that would usually be seen on Batman instead. "Alright, I'll go check. Send me the coordinates," he said before turning around and dashing through the air.

His speed broke the sound barrier. Superman knew of one person that frequently used the Boom Tubes, especially to reach Earth. The last thing he wanted was to encounter the Evil God of Apokolips again.

Once caused enough destruction and casualties.

It had not been long before the Man of Steel reached the Nevada desert. There was only one old abandoned road in the entire area cutting through the desert. It was obviously not used for a really long time judging by the fact it was very old, broken up, and some parts covered in sands.

The sun shone brightly which was beneficial for Superman. If he WAS dealing with anything related to Apokolips, he will need all the solar energy he can get. Darkseid never did things in any light manner.

Superman caught sight of his target. A very old and small gas station. There was commotion going on but definitely not the kind that the Kryptonian was expecting.

Instead of some other worldly threat like Perademons or a strange phenomenon, what Superman was seeing was something not that off in the desert. A group of coyotes were attacking someone who had their back to the gas station's building.

With his enhanced sight, Superman can see that the person was holding an odd weapon that seemed to be made of pieces of an old engine, an exhaust pipe for a barrel, and a gas dispenser handle for… well, a handle.

Superman didn't believe the weapon to actually be more than a few pieces of junk strapped together to look like a weapon. He was about to go and quickly rescue the person to keep looking for whatever dropped from the Boom Tube when the person squeezed the handle of the weapon.

To the Man of Steel's surprise, the exhaust pipe that worked as a barrel shot an actual fire ball at one of the coyotes and sent it flying to its back where it started flailing to extinguish the fire.

The person pointed the weapon at another coyote that jumped at him and he shot it with a fire ball just like the first. He pointed at a third coyote, but a much smaller fire ball came out that, while didn't knock back the animal, it still caught him on fire and caused it to jump around in panic.

The person looked at the weapon and groaned. "As I suspected. The lack of sufficient fuel barely lasted three shots," the person said as he lowered the weapon and watched the coyotes walk closer.

That's when Superman decided enough was enough and dashed in. Landing between the coyotes and the person, Superman glared with his heat vision at the front of the coyotes, causing them to jump back before they all ran away, deeming the whole thing not worth it.

Turning around, whatever line Superman had died in his throat as he saw the state the person was in.

The person Superman just saved was a young man in his early twenties. He was wearing a torn and burned lab coat over a white roughed up shirt and somewhat torn pants. The young man had black hair and a makeshift eyepatch over his right eye made from what was obviously pieces of his lab coat.