Plane Crash

Charles Reynolds instinctively sensed that something was very wrong.

For six whole years, Metropolis had seen almost no plane crashes. Yet today, the very flight he was on had suffered an accident. It was hard not to connect it to the matter he had resolved to investigate. Only minutes after the plane left the airport, before it had even reached cruising altitude, a muffled explosion sounded from one wing. The entire fuselage lurched violently downward. Passengers by the windows saw through the glass that the turbine beneath the left wing was trailing ominous flames and belching black smoke behind it, and they cried out in alarm.

The burning turbine left a long, thick trail of black smoke across the sky. The white plane descended from thousands of meters above the skyscrapers of Metropolis like a great bird with its wings spread, barely managing to circle on its unbalanced power as it steadily lost altitude. The control tower immediately plotted the nearest emergency landing site for the pilot—the outskirts of Metropolis—but based on its current descent and forward speed, that destination seemed difficult to reach.

When the plane dropped below a thousand meters, the tower sent a new message. "Attention! Another flying object is rapidly approaching your position. Its speed is extremely high."

"Another aircraft?" The pilot, drenched in sweat inside the cockpit, glanced at the altitude reading as it fell below seven hundred meters. Bustling Metropolis was already clearly visible through the windshield. "At this altitude? Are you sure the instruments aren't malfunctioning?"

A red-and-blue blur tore through the fire-streaked black smoke and caught up to the falling passenger plane like a bullet splitting the air. Jay flew to the ruined turbine on the left wing, took a deep breath, and gripped the wing tightly with both hands, trying to replace the destroyed turbine's thrust with the strength of his arms and stabilize the plane.

In truth, he had no idea what he was supposed to do. He had learned this move from Superman in the movies, since Superman seemed to do it all the time. Jay did not even know whether he could pull it off. He had never tested the limits of his arm strength. The heaviest thing he had ever lifted was Mr. Reynolds's five-year-old car, and that had felt no different from picking up a chair.

The howling wind and the plane's engines roared in his ears at once. At first, it was maddening, but he quickly learned to ignore them. The air currents lashed him head-on like countless vicious whips, though they caused him no discomfort whatsoever. He still had not figured out what use the goggles Batman had shoved at him were. Behind him, his cape billowed and snapped in the wind like a battle flag.

It worked!

With the external force Jay applied, the unbalanced plane gradually steadied itself. Its enormous white body slowly regained its balance and began descending steadily toward the designated location.

The pilot was stunned. "Control tower, do you read? It seems... it seems we've regained our balance?"

"What happened?"

"I don't know." The pilot shook his head blankly. "I didn't do anything. It looks like... like we received some kind of outside help?"

For an instant, he could not help thinking of Superman. Back then, people in Metropolis never had to worry about aviation accidents, because Superman would always arrive in time.

But that thought lasted only an instant before he cast it aside. It was absurd. Six whole years had passed. Superman was gone, and Metropolis had long accepted that fact.

Jay pulled hard on the wing, making sure the plane did not fall too quickly. After judging it by eye, he felt that at this rate, they should make it. The plane would probably skim low over the roof of the tallest building below, but it would ultimately avoid every obstacle and make an emergency landing in the uninhabited outskirts.

Jay relaxed slightly. This was his first time handling an accident like this, and he was not much calmer than the people sitting aboard the plane. As long as he maintained this state, nothing unexpected should happen.

Unfortunately, things did not go as he had hoped. He had apparently overlooked one small detail. The joint where he was holding the left wing had already been on the verge of collapse under the strain of his immense strength and the air pressure. Now, it finally gave way, spitting out tiny sparks. By the time Jay noticed, it was too late. The left wing let out a protesting shriek and snapped off from the joint with a bang. The plane dropped sharply again and suddenly accelerated downward, while Jay, clutching the broken wing, spun through the air and was hurled far behind.

The plane plunged once more, and the passengers' terror reached its peak. Like a bird with broken wings, it plummeted savagely, soon descending close enough to almost kiss the city below. Citizens had begun noticing the disaster falling from the sky and pointed upward in alarm, but by then, trying to run was meaningless—no one could escape the impact of such a massive object falling freely from the sky in time.

Jay had no time to think. He took a deep breath and surged forward, leaving a white shock ring behind him with a bang. He moved so fast he nearly vanished, chasing the plunging plane along its long trail of black smoke. The turbine on the right wing also exploded under the intense air pressure. With a thunderous boom, it tore free of the wing and happened to hurtle directly toward him. Jay neither dodged nor slowed. He accelerated again, his body shooting through the burning turbine wreckage like a cannonball, and caught up with the plane in an instant.

All right, this time I had to do it the harder way. He did not know whether his arm strength would be enough, but all he could do now was pray that it was. He flew to the nose, dropped beneath the plane, pressed his back tightly against its fuselage, then exerted all his strength in an attempt to lift the entire plane upward with his body.

To do that, he would not only have to bear the plane's entire weight, but also use his own strength to offset the kinetic energy it had accumulated during its fall. But when he clenched his teeth and tried to unleash his full strength, he faintly felt the plane's outer shell dent inward against his back. It suddenly occurred to him that if he applied too much force to the hull all at once, the pressure concentrated on such a limited surface area might punch straight through it. That would cause even more trouble he did not need right now.

Sure enough, catching a falling plane was not as easy as it looked in the movies. Movies were ultimately just works of art, concerned more with visual spectacle. Many overlooked details could lead to failure.

If they could have kept descending at this rate, there should not have been any problem. Unfortunately, things seemed destined not to go so smoothly. A towering skyscraper loomed directly ahead. If the plane continued on its current descent path, it would undoubtedly smash straight through the middle of the building.

"Damn it," Jay muttered, gritting his teeth. He drove force through both shoulders and forcibly twisted the smoking behemoth aside. Incredibly, the plane tilted over. Thick black smoke carved a long arc through the low sky as it passed almost flush against the side of the skyscraper. The heavy roar made every pane of glass in the building shriek sharply, as though they were about to shatter.

"We're slowing down!" the pilot shouted in disbelief. "We're about to land!"

Everyone aboard the plane braced for impact. The plane successfully skimmed low over the city's buildings and flew into the deserted outskirts. Countless trees were snapped in half as the fuselage crashed heavily onto the ground at over three hundred miles per hour. In that instant, everyone in the cabin felt as though their organs were about to be flung out of their bodies.

Jay landed beneath the nose of the plane, his feet planted on the ground. Soil surged high on both sides of his red boots like a tsunami, and the flying dust nearly swallowed him whole. He used his body as a brake to cushion and slow the plane. His back crushed the plane's shell into severe deformation, while the impact traveled in rippling waves from the tail all the way to the nose.

The plane skidded along the ground for roughly three or four hundred meters before finally coming to a reluctant stop. Dirt was dramatically churned up along both sides of the fuselage, as though someone had driven a plow back and forth over the ground countless times.

Jay crawled out from beneath the plane and let out a long breath.

He had succeeded.