Justice League/Teen Titans: Secret Legends Issue 4

"The Way of All Flesh" is the 5th issue and 4th chapter of Justice League/Teen Titans: Secret Legends.

Featured Characters

 * Lois Lane (flashback and main story)
 * Caitlin Fairchild (flashback and main story) (origins revealed)

Supporting Characters

 * Steve Trevor
 * Dan Turpin (first appearance)
 * Gen¹³
 * Bobby "Burnout" Lane (first appearance) (flashback only)
 * Eddie "Grunge" Chang (first appearance) (flashback only)
 * Freefall / Roxanne "Roxy" Spaulding (first appearance) (flashback and main story)
 * Jack Lynch (first appearance) (flashback only)
 * Jimmy Olsen
 * Lara Lane-Kent
 * Molly Fairchild (flashback and main story)
 * Bonnie Fairchild (flashback and main story)

Villains

 * Lex Luthor
 * Metallo / John Corbin
 * Ivana Baiul (flashback only)
 * Threshold / Matthew Callahan (first appearance) (flashback only)
 * Reach
 * Black Beetle (flashback only)
 * Unnamed Warriors (flashback only)

Other Characters

 * Blue Lantern Corps (mentioned only)
 * Superman / Clark Kent (flashback only)
 * Justice League (mentioned only)

Premise
While the Justice League were busy with random threats and Terra was banding together her team, Lois Lane was at the time given by Lex Luthor a membership in his business empire's community, which she refused. Arrogantly reluctant to take No for answer, Luthor once threatened hers and her daughter's lives by hiring Metallo to capture and hurt them, but Luthor and Metallo were the ones in trouble when they learn that Lois was given with her own bodyguard: not Superman or Supergirl, but someone else far stronger than Metallo... and also immune to Kryptonite. This issue also reveals more details about Caitlin Fairchild's loyalty to Lois as well as her faith and trust in Superman.

Plot
Lois Lane is having an interview with Colonel Steve Trevor about the U.S.A. army's new high tech arsenal (which was provided by the Justice League) while her daughter Lara is with her friends the Fairchild sisters (Molly and Bonnie) and babysit-ted along with them by the girls' aunt Roxanne "Roxy" Spaulding. After the interview, Lois is confronted by Lex Luthor (accompanied by John Corbin / Metallo), who offers her membership in Lexcorp's Empire Community. Lois, however, declines as she refuses to forgive Luthor for his latest actions against Superman and the Justice League. While Luthor voices his insistence as he refuses to take No for an answer, Luthor and Metallo are confronted by an shadowed woman behind Lois, who verbally accuses Luthor of an possible threat against Lois' family if she refuses. Just as Metallo confronts her, the woman reveals herself as the Fairchild sisters' mother Caitlin, who was assigned by Colonel Trevor to be Lois' bodyguard following Superman's absence.

Thanks to her own superior strength (and the fact that she is unaffected by Krytonite due to her not being a Kryptonian, which she taunts to have been the only kind Luthor prepared Corbin to face against), Caitlin takes little effort to defeat Metallo, whom she strips off and crushes his Kryptonite heart and rips off his arms and legs before Metallo is taken by police to Stryker's Island. Taking Lois' claims that Kryptonians are not her only protection against criminals and other threats to hers and her family's lives as a warning, Luthor forcibly leaves her alone as Trevor and Metropolis Police Commissioner Dan Turpin volunteer to keep an eye on Luthor in case he tries something less than legal against people who despise him.

In her homestead, Lois voices her gratitude to Caitlin for her will to keep her face, to which was Caitlin's pleasure as she owes this debt for her and Superman. As Lois and Caitlin address to their children, a flashback focused on Caitlin narrated by Lois soon plays; Caitlin was once an average ordinary college student until she was offered a scholarship by the National Security Committee to attend a secret military school set in a U.S. desert. Unbeknownst to Caitlin, the school's headmasters — Ivana Baiul and Matthew Callahan — were conducting genetic experiments on their pupils in a plot to turn them into super-powered beings ("go Gen Active") and launch an insurrection against the government. Shortly after she and her friends and her half-sister Roxy (who has gravity manipulating powers) manifested their powers and escaped the facility, Caitlin continued using her newly discovered powers for the greater good, while also balancing her new work with her normal life and feeling confident that one day, Baiul will be exposed for her crimes.

A few years later, Caitlin, now a U.S.A. super agent and single mother to her two children Molly and Bonnie, continued her activities alongside her friends and Roxy, who were once part of the Gen¹³ project until the government's SPB program was discontinued. Caitlin then had news of the Reach's rampage taking place near to the school her children were attending to and, by the time she went there, she found Black Beetle and his Reach spawns having been defeated by Superman at the presence of Caitlin's children. Since then, Caitlin vowed her life gratitude for the Man of Steel. Some time after Superman left Earth following Ronnie Raymond's death by Vandal Savage's hands, Caitlin was given by her military adviser Colonel Steve Trevor the role of personal bodyguard. To her proper pleasure, Caitlin's client was Lois, whom Caitlin became aware to be married to Superman. After some more time, Lois and Caitlin bonded over their respect for each other as dedicated mothers.

Scene shifts to Present day with Lois and Caitlin still in the Kent residence with their children while watching news about the Justice League's current battles for Earth. Just as reports claim that the League members have new allies with the Blue Lantern Corps, Caitlin states that she heard from other heroes rumors that Superman is the Blue Lanterns' Grandmaster, to Lois confirms to be true with a private footage recorded by Jimmy Olsen in the Watchtower Classified Database, as Caitlin is confident that Superman may come back soon.