Daniel was still on the ground, the Lasso of Truth wrapped around him, and the honest answer was he could leave whenever he wanted. One application of the Mark and he would simply stop being in this garage. Diana would be holding an empty lasso.
He stayed anyway.
"How did you find ?" he asked, genuinely confused. He had been careful. Reasonably careful. Mostly careful.
Diana looked at him with the expression of soone who didn't need to answer that question because the answer was obvious, then reached into her pocket and held her phone in front of his face.
A news anchor filled the screen, voice urgent, a still image frozen behind her shoulder.
Daniel standing in open air in front of a military helicopter.
"The unidentified alien spotted in Kansas airspace has now been identified by military sources," the anchor said. "If anyone sees this individual contact authorities imdiately."
Daniel looked at his own image on the screen for a mont.
"Hmm," he said.
Daniel slipped out of the Lasso and reappeared standing, holding the phone and staring at his own image on the screen.
"This is bullshit," he said. "I am not an alien. This is false advertising. I want to sue the Arican governnt. I know my rights. They cannot do this."
Lois watched him for a mont then looked at Diana. A woman who had just co through the roof. With a glowing rope.
"Who is she?" Lois asked.
"Diana," Daniel said, still looking at the phone. "We go way back."
"How far back?" Lois asked.
Bruce said nothing but he had already placed her. The World War One photograph on the Batcave screen. Diana standing beside Daniel in Germany, the sa face, not a single day different between that image and the woman standing in this garage right now.
"We don't have ti for this," Bruce said, cutting across the room before anyone could answer Lois.
"The aliens have been monitoring Earth communications since they got here. They've seen the news. Right now they think Daniel is one of them, not him. That's wrong information and wrong information is an advantage we will not have for long." He looked around the garage.
"If they decide to co down themselves instead of waiting out the deadline we need to be ready to hit back. We should use this window while we still have it."
The garage went quiet.
Clark looked at Bruce.
Diana looked at Daniel.
Daniel was still looking at the phone.
"I cannot believe they called an alien," he said.
Then he noticed all of them looking at him.
"What?" Daniel said.
"You're the only person who knows what's actually going on right now," Bruce said. "I wouldn't mind following your lead on this."
Daniel looked at him. This guy was sothing else. Completely transparent about trying to squeeze every piece of information he had on Kryptonians while framing it as cooperation. Respectable honestly.
"I have a plan," Daniel said. "First we leave this farm. Lois stays here because what cos next isn't suitable for normal people."
Lois opened her mouth.
"Second," Daniel continued, "we wait. Either the governnt or the Kryptonians will co to collect since they both currently think I'm the alien they're looking for. We let them pick up and take to the ship."
He looked at the ceiling briefly, running the rest of it through his head. The World Engine on that ship was the real problem. Leave it intact and Zod could terraform Earth from orbit the mont he had the codex. Clark carried the codex.
Which ant the mont Zod got his hands on Clark it was over regardless of what happened on the ground.
The ship had to go first.
He couldn't destroy it from Earth. Too much distance. He needed to be on it or close enough to it so that the margin didn't matter.
Which ant letting himself get taken up there.
"So that's the plan," Daniel said. "I go up . I destroy the ship. Simple."
"I can't agree with that," Clark said. "You're talking about destroying a ship from my planet without even knowing their intentions."
"Alright," Daniel said. "I'll make you a deal. If your people co down here and prove wrong I will personally apologize to every single one of them. "
"But if I'm right and they didn't co here for peace talks then you need to let go and accept that protecting the planet you grew up on matters more than the one you never knew."
Clark said nothing.
Daniel left it there.
***
In a town outside Kansas Daniel stood in the middle of an empty road with his hands raised, military vehicles surrounding him from every direction, soldiers out and weapons up, the whole formation treating him with the kind of caution reserved for things that had already proven they didn't have to cooperate.
He had walked out here on his own.
"I'm surrendering," Daniel said pleasantly. "I would very much like to be taken to my people. I really miss them."
Nobody moved for a long mont.
The soldiers looked at each other with the particular expression of people whose training had not covered this specific scenario.
This was the man who had stood in open air in front of a helicopter without equipnt and made an entire military formation turn around and leave Kansas. And now he was standing in the middle of a road with his hands up saying he missed his people.
Nobody wanted to be the first one to walk toward him.
The commanding officer on the ground looked at Daniel. Then at his n. Then back at Daniel.
"Secure him," he said finally, with the tone of a man who was fairly certain that was not going to go the way it usually did.
Four soldiers approached carefully, restraints ready, moving the way people move toward sothing that has already demonstrated it doesn't need to cooperate with them.
Daniel stood completely still and let them put the restraints on.
The soldier tightening them stopped halfway through and looked at his hands then at Daniel.
The restraints weren't doing anything. Not broken. Not removed. Just completely irrelevant, sitting on Daniel's wrists the way a bracelet sits on a wrist, decorative and nothing else.
Daniel smiled at him encouragingly.
"You're doing great," Daniel said.
The soldier stepped back and looked at his commanding officer with an expression that said he was reconsidering several career decisions.
*****
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