First Clash

Once upon a time, in the city of Metropolis, Lex Luthor decided it was time for the whole world to see what he had built.

For an entire year, deep inside a locked workshop at the top of LexCorp Tower, Lex had been working on something enormous. Bolt by bolt, wire by careful wire, he built a ten-foot robot with gleaming steel arms and a calm, quiet voice. He called it the Sentinel, and he believed, with his whole clever heart, that it would prove something important to the city he loved.

"Machines don't get tired," Lex would whisper to himself as he worked late into the night. "Machines don't make mistakes."

When the Sentinel was finally finished, Lex planned a grand unveiling on the steps of LexCorp Tower. He invited the whole city. Reporters came from the Daily Planet — Lois Lane stood right at the front with her notepad ready, sharp-eyed as always, and behind her stood young Jimmy Olsen, camera raised, eager to capture the big moment.

A crowd gathered at the barricades. Cameras flashed. Lex stepped up to a small podium, straightened his jacket, and raised his chin high.

"This city built me," Lex announced, his voice ringing out over the crowd. "And I built the Sentinel. This is worth more than any gift that fell out of the stars."

He reached out and pressed the button.

For one shining moment, everything was perfect. The Sentinel's eyes glowed to life. Its steel joints hummed. The crowd murmured, impressed.

And then — something went wrong.

Deep inside the robot, a single wire had crossed where it shouldn't have. It was such a small mistake. But small mistakes, in very large robots, can become very large problems very quickly. The Sentinel lurched sideways without warning, and its enormous steel arm swung — not toward Lex, but toward the crowd of onlookers gathered at the barricade.

People screamed. They scrambled backward, clutching each other, trying to get away. And in the chaos, poor Jimmy Olsen tripped right over his own camera bag and landed hard on the pavement — directly, terribly, in the Sentinel's path.

Lex froze. For one horrible second, his clever mind had no plan at all.

But someone else did.

A blur of red and blue dropped out of the sky so fast that most of the crowd didn't even see him arrive — they only saw the result. Superman caught the Sentinel's swinging arm in one hand, held the entire ten-foot machine perfectly still as if it weighed nothing at all, and then, very gently, set it down on the pavement. As gently as you might fold up a chair and lean it against the wall.

Nobody was hurt. Not one single scratch. Jimmy Olsen scrambled to his feet, wide-eyed, and without even thinking, raised his camera and snapped a photograph of Superman standing calmly beside the broken robot.

The crowd erupted into cheers and applause.

But — and this is the part Lex Luthor would remember for the rest of his life — they weren't cheering for him. They weren't cheering for LexCorp, or for the Sentinel, or for the year of hard work Lex had poured into his workshop.

They were cheering for Superman.

Lex kept his smile fixed carefully in place, because the cameras were still rolling, and a smart man never lets the cameras see what he's really feeling. He walked forward and shook Superman's hand, firm and warm, exactly the way a gracious inventor should.

"Impressive reflexes," Lex said, smooth as silk.

Superman only nodded politely. "You should add a better safety switch before it flies again," he said — kindly, without a trace of gloating, the way you might offer a neighbor some friendly advice. And somehow, that kindness stung Lex far more than an insult ever could have.

That night, high atop LexCorp Tower, all alone in his office, Lex Luthor watched the news broadcast replay his humiliation again. And again. And again.

He did not shout. He did not throw anything, though some small, prideful part of him wanted to.

Instead, Lex Luthor opened a blank notebook, picked up a pen, and began to sketch — line by careful line — something far more dangerous than any rescue robot he had ever built before.

"This," he said quietly, to nobody but the empty room, "was only round one."

Outside his window, the city of Metropolis glittered on into the night, its lights twinkling like scattered stars, with absolutely no idea that its two greatest rivals had only just begun their long and complicated story.