Superman could be a Mild-Mannered God

Scene 1: The Bank

[Opening prose scene of Clark’s silent, surreal bank heist]

Scene 1: “The Bank”

The bell above the door gives a cheery ding.

Clark Kent steps into the bank wearing a navy blue hoodie, loose jeans, and muddy work boots. He keeps his head low, glasses smudged, eyes unreadable. There’s a hum to him — not audible, but sensed. The kind of presence that makes children quiet without knowing why.

The branch is small. Local. A sleepy, midwestern town where the teller knows most customers by name. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead. Muzak plays faintly in the background — something upbeat and bland.

He gets in line.

He could have walked past the counters. Through the walls. Through people. But he waits. Because people don’t notice quiet men who follow the rules.

His turn comes.

“How can I help you today?” asks the teller, a woman in her fifties, cheerfully robotic.

Clark doesn’t smile. He leans forward slightly.

“I need to access the vault.”

Her eyebrows bunch together. “I’m sorry?”

Clark lifts his gaze. His voice is flat but carries pressure. Not menace. Not aggression. Just… inevitability.

“The vault. Now.”

Something in his tone makes her chest tighten. Before she can hit the silent alarm, the lights flicker — then die.

A low click echoes from the heavy doors behind her. She glances over her shoulder. The vault is open.

“What…?”

Before she can scream, the cameras above pop like lightbulbs — one, two, three. Smoke curls from their sockets.

Clark reaches across the counter slowly. His fingers land gently on a single tray of $100 bills — one bundle. He tucks it into his coat.

“Nothing personal,” he says.

The teller stares, speechless. Her lips move, but nothing comes out. Her knees wobble.

Clark tilts his head.

“You should sit down.”

She does.

He walks back to the door. Another ding as he steps out. No rush. No panic. No witnesses dare speak. Just a man no one remembers clearly.

The security guard, still outside on smoke break, scratches his head as the glass doors whoosh open. Clark gives him a polite nod.

“Nice day,” he says.

And it is.

Scene 2: The Lesson

[Flashback to childhood, Jonathan Kent teaches Clark not to be a hero, just survive]

Scene 2: “The Lesson”

The cornfields hum in the summer heat. A lawnmower drones in the distance. Flies buzz around a cracked screen door that hangs crooked on rusted hinges.

Inside, young Clark Kent — ten years old, barefoot, covered in dust — stands beside the shattered remains of a tractor engine. His clothes are torn. His eyes burn faintly red.

Across from him, Jonathan Kent doesn’t shout.

He doesn’t panic.

He just wipes his forehead with a grease-stained rag and mutters, “Well. That’s the third one this month.”

Clark looks down. His fists are clenched. Steam curls off the grass where he lost control.

“I didn’t mean to,” he says quietly.

Jonathan sighs and sits on the porch step.

“I know, son. You never mean to.”

Martha hovers at the door, arms folded tight around her chest like she’s holding herself together. Her gaze flickers between love and fear.

Jonathan pats the step next to him.

“Come here.”

Clark walks over and sits down, smaller than the man beside him but already heavy with unspoken weight.

Jonathan stares out at the corn.

“You’re not like them,” he says. “Not like us. And no matter how much you want to be, you won’t ever be.”

Clark’s voice is a whisper. “I don’t want to hurt people.”

“I know.”

Jonathan turns to face him fully. His face is tired, weathered by more than sun and age. It’s the weight of raising a god.

“That’s why you don’t try to be a hero.”

Clark looks up, confused.

His father continues. “Heroes get seen. They get cheered. Or feared. Either way, people will come for you — want you, hate you, worship you, or lock you away. You don’t owe them anything, Clark. You just keep your head down. Do what you need to survive. Take what you need and move on.”

Clark frowns. “But what if someone’s in trouble?”

Jonathan sighs again. “Then you do what you have to — and you don’t wait for applause. You don’t give them your name. You don’t let them write your story.”

He rests a heavy hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“You save who you can. And you leave the rest.”

Clark nods, not fully understanding, but imprinting every word. Like heat into steel.

[Scene ends]

The flashback fades back to present-day Clark, now adult, back in his apartment — opening the stack of bills from the bank and carefully placing them in a shoebox under the floorboards, beside others just like it.

A flickering TV in the background plays local news. Robbery footage. Static. No suspects. No leads. Nothing to see.

Clark shuts the box.

He doesn’t smile.

Scene 3: The Alley

[Clark stops a mugging with terrifying efficiency, then disappears]

Scene 3: “The Alley”, where Clark acts not because he struggles with morality, but because he chooses to act — cleanly, without drama, and without emotional residue.

Scene 3: “The Alley”

The city doesn’t sleep, but it does turn its head.

Rain hisses on concrete. Steam curls from subway grates. Somewhere above, neon flickers in a half-lit window, spelling out OPEN in sputtering red.

Clark hears it before he turns the corner: a muffled scream. The wet slap of a fist. A grunt. A purse ripped from fingers that clench too late.

He doesn’t stop walking.

Just changes direction.

In the alley, the mugger has the woman pressed against the bricks. He’s wild-eyed, twitching. Strung out. Wielding a cheap knife like it means something.

“Give me the rest—! I saw your wallet, bitch—don’t lie to me—”

He doesn’t see Clark.

Not at first.

Then he does.

Clark’s hand appears, fast and silent, gripping the mugger’s wrist. There’s no flourish. No warning.

There’s a crack — subtle, sharp, internal. The mugger screams, drops the knife.

Clark tilts his head. The woman scrambles away, watching from behind a dumpster, breath caught in her throat.

The mugger tries to run.

Clark steps once, impossibly fast. Grabs the back of the man’s neck like a disobedient dog and slams him against the wall. The concrete fractures.

The man crumples. Still breathing. Nothing fatal.

Just… enough.

Clark doesn’t speak.

He picks up the woman’s purse, dusts off a bit of wet grit, and places it carefully at her feet.

She’s trembling.

He looks at her. Not warmly. Not coldly. Just… there.

And then he’s gone.

One second present, the next just footprints in rain.

[Cut to next morning:]

The mugger is found in the alley, semi-conscious, muttering nonsense about a “man with no eyes” and “fingers like steel.”

Police chalk it up to drug psychosis.

No suspects.

No motive.

No patterns.

Just another urban myth.

But in a certain part of town, whispers begin. Of a silent force. A man in the rain. No cape. No name.

Scene 4: The Pattern

[Lois begins piecing together incidents that lead her to “Rain Man.”]

Scene 4: “The Pattern”

Lois Arden sits in a booth at an all-night diner, fingers tapping keys like they’re trying to outrun her own thoughts.

Her screen glows with four separate windows open:

A mugging in the Eastside Alley — no suspect, no motive

A hostage situation in 9th Ward resolved with zero shots fired — witnesses say “the door opened itself”

Three security camera malfunctions — all within a five-block radius

And now: a bank heist with no entry force, no prints, no visible perpetrator… and no money missing from any account

Just a single bundle gone. Untouched piles left behind.

That’s what gets her.

She zooms in on the vault cam — just static. The exact same kind of static as the alley footage. And the subway incident. And the hostage floor plan camera.

Coincidence? Maybe.

But she doesn’t believe in coincidence. Not anymore.

The waitress tops off her coffee.

“Still at it, Lo?”

“Yeah,” Lois mutters, eyes not leaving the screen. “Just chasin’ ghosts.”

“Well, hope they’re payin’ you double.”

“They’re not.”

Lois isn’t working for The Post anymore. Or the Tribune. She’s freelancing now — a polite way of saying no one wants her around.

She was too close once. Too many questions about people who disappear. About DARPA blacklists and impossible fire patterns. About “men” who left behind shoeprints with no matching sole design on Earth.

Now she sells stories to conspiracy rags and forums that read her stuff between ads for apocalypse bunkers and liver detox pills.

But this one… this one feels different.

It’s not flashy. There’s no calling card. No manifesto. No costume or pseudonym. Just an absence where chaos should be — and too much precision to be luck.

She leans back and mutters to herself, “Who the hell robs a bank for ten grand and leaves the rest?”

She scrolls down a Reddit post.

“My cousin swears someone caught the guy on their phone, but the file got corrupted the second they tried to upload it. Couldn’t even email it. Battery fried.”

She highlights it, bookmarks it.

Then she sees a comment.

“You’re looking for the Rain Man. That’s what they call him in Glenfall. Shows up in storms. Doesn’t speak. Doesn’t bleed.”

She stops.

Rain Man.

It’s stupid.

But stupid things tend to mean something when no one else is looking.

Lois closes the laptop. She leaves a tip and stands up, stretching out a back hunched from too many hours chasing the invisible.

Before she leaves, she says quietly, “Everyone wants a hero. But maybe the hero doesn’t want them.”

She steps into the night.

[Meanwhile, across town…]

Clark stands on the rooftop of a building, watching the city lights blink like stars too close to the ground.

He hears her voice.

Not the words. Just the shape of her breath. The tension behind her ribcage. She’s out there, getting closer.

And he doesn’t mind.

Yet.

DARREN: Yes, but do you think this Clarke - who isn't Superman - would care about Lois? Or would he prefer the loner lifestyle?

That’s a superb question — and absolutely key to keeping this Clark consistent.

Here’s the developmental logic:

This Clark isn’t Superman.

He doesn’t crave connection, validation, or legacy. He isn’t performing hope. He acts when it suits his internal code, not out of empathy or ideology.

So would he care about Lois?

Not in a traditional sense — not romantically, emotionally, or protectively. He might find her interesting, in the same way a lion notices the only human who doesn’t flinch.

So let’s define it clearly:

So in your version:

He wouldn’t care about Lois personally.

But he might find her useful, or at least not a threat.

He doesn’t want a partner. He simply lets her live, knowing she’s smart enough to stop chasing something that doesn’t want to be found.

Scene 5: The Rooftop

[Lois meets Clark. No names. No story. Just truth exchanged in silence.]

Scene 5: “The Rooftop” — a quiet, tense encounter between two minds who both understand that truth isn’t owed, and some things are not meant to be brought into the light.

Scene 5: “The Rooftop”

The rooftop gravel crunches under Lois’s boots.

She shouldn’t be here. The door was locked. The fire escape rusted out ten years ago. But something pulled her up — a hunch, or maybe something less rational. Something animal.

She stands at the edge.

Below, the city murmurs — indifferent, alive, beautiful in the way only oblivion can be.

Then she feels it.

A shift in air pressure.

Not a sound. Not a footstep. Just… presence.

She turns.

He’s there.

The man from the shadows. The ghost. The walking impossibility.

He wears no cape, no symbol, no mask. Just a grey coat, damp at the edges from rain that hasn’t fallen yet. His eyes are unreadable behind slightly cracked glasses. Not glowing. Not threatening. Just there.

Lois doesn’t speak.

She knows — instinctively — that she shouldn’t.

Because this man, this thing, this force… isn’t here to explain himself. He isn’t anything she can write about. Not truth. Not myth. Something in between. A thing that chooses to let her see him.

She reaches slowly into her coat and pulls out a small voice recorder.

Her finger hovers over the button.

He tilts his head.

Not threatening.

Just watching.

She lowers the recorder and pockets it.

He nods.

Just once.

Not approval.

Permission.

Then he turns and walks to the other side of the roof. One step. Another.

She blinks.

He’s gone.

No cape flapping. No sonic boom. No wind.

Just… gone.

[Cut to next day:]

Lois sits at her desk, staring at a blank Word document titled:

“Rain Man: The Truth We Can’t Print”

She doesn’t type.

Instead, she closes the laptop.

Some truths aren’t for headlines.

Some gods don’t want temples.

And some men — some things — are better left unspoken.

Would Clark Care About Lois?

Trait	Superman	Your Clark
Empathy	Innate and driving force	Conditional, calculated
Desire for approval	Seeks to be a symbol of hope	Avoids recognition entirely
Connection to Lois	Love, grounding, identity anchor	Possibly tolerates her curiosity
Worldview	Optimistic, moral	Realist, survivalist, amoral but not cruel
Loneliness	Fears it	Accepts it as necessary

What’s Next?

This piece could be:

• A writing sample – Shows voice, restraint, atmosphere.
• Published fanfiction – On platforms like AO3 or Medium.
• Reworked into original IP – Swap names, rebrand origin, keep tone.
• Submitted to short fiction markets – If adapted away from Superman IP.