Chapter 1 – Rocks

Late one sunny afternoon, Jimmy Olsen was strolling through a forest in the small Kansas town of Smallville, photographing places where the meteors had hit for an article that Chloe was going to write about those events for the Daily Planet. She had always shown a severe interest in that subject, and Jimmy just suspected it was probably due to the fact that it had happened twice now, and both in her home town. So far he had found collections of red meteor rocks, and plenty of the abundant green ones; Chloe had told him there were others as well, including black, but he had yet to see any of them. Jimmy was finding this all very interesting; where did these rocks come from? Clearly space, but was it from another planet? They seemed to possess the powers to mutate human beings and give them strange powers, so what was the purpose behind them? Were they from an alien colony, who blasted them down to Earth to experiment with our kind? Were we being lab rats in an investigation which would eventually lead to an alien invasion? Jimmy was a bit of a self-proclaimed geek, along with photography, he also found everything sci-fi to be very exciting. So this little trip combined both of his obsessions nicely.

Jimmy was walking a bit faster now with his growing excitement, and he stumbled on a small tree root that was sticking out of the ground and fell through a bush. He was immediately glad that he had though, as through this bush was a large concealed crater from the meteor shower; and glowing in the bottom of it were some beautiful meteor rocks. They weren't green however; they were the red kind, slightly rarer. He walked down towards them, careful of every step; he didn't want to become infected. Well, it was not as though he wouldn't mind having a superpower, the whole idea was quite exciting; but he had been around Chloe and Clark long enough to realise that that was not all they infected you with. The meteor infected people they had come across were all steadily more and more insane, and becoming murderously insane was not on his bucket list.

He leaned in closer to the rocks and started taking photos of them at the bottom of the crater. Click. Click. Flash. However, the closer he got to them he realised that they weren't quite as red as he had thought. These rocks were a heavy pink colour, and gleamed in the evening sun. Jimmy frowned. He couldn't help himself; he reached out and picked one of them up, a nice pocket sized rock. He examined it closely; it was a light pink colour with darker pink veins running through it. He thought about the planet these must have come from; red, green, black and pink… it was turning out to be quite a multicoloured landscape in his mind. He pocketed the stone making a mental note to show Chloe later, and continued with his photography adventure.


Later that same warm evening, Clark Kent was sitting in the Talon drinking a coffee with his best friend, Chloe Sullivan. Chloe's cousin, Lois Lane, was working there at the time, serving coffees almost as fast as Clark could run, which was extremely fast. She was starting to look tired however, Clark realised as he was watching her.

"I'm going to write an article about the meteor rocks to try and warn people to stay away from them," started Chloe in Clark's direction.

"That's quite a good idea, but don't you think if you tell people to stay away from them then they'll just do the exact opposite?" Clark replied, "And the last thing I need is everyone in Metropolis with a piece of Kryptonite in their pockets or around their necks."

"Hmm, good point… well I'll try and word it in a way that makes people run a mile then," she said thoughtfully.

Just as Chloe started looking thoughtful, an excited Jimmy burst into the coffeehouse with his camera around his neck, making a beeline for him and Chloe.

"You'll never guess what I found!" Jimmy exhaled quickly. Chloe stood up and went over to him, beaming, giving him a kiss on his cheek, looking curious. "A different colour of meteor rock, one you haven't recorded yet!" he finished.

Chloe's smile faltered, "Where is it now?" she asked, giving Clark a side glance, "and what colour is it then?"

"Pink!" Jimmy grinned, "And right here!" He pulled the rock out of his pocket and chucked it over to Clark, whose very fast reactions betrayed him and caught the thing so it didn't fall to the floor. Clark felt strange for the smallest moment, and his eyes burned, but then he felt fine. He got up, giving Chloe a strange worried look, and handed the stone over to her.

"Are you alright?" she asked Clark, staring intently into his eyes.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Clark grinned back, trying to mask the potential situation. He turned to Jimmy, "where did you find that?"

"In a crater that I hadn't discovered yet, in one of the forests," Jimmy beamed at him, his eyes sparkling in a similar way to how Lana's used to. Clark frowned.

Chloe was still giving Clark a searching look, as they all sat back down again, and she started to examine the pink rock. It did seem to be glowing more in Clark's presence, like all the other Kryptonite did, which made him fairly sure it was indeed from his planet. But what could it do? He'd never come across pink K before, but he didn't feel the same as when he was infected with red, and he definitely didn't feel the same as when he was near green. In fact, he felt reasonably normal.

Clark looked up as Jimmy was brushing his hand through his hair excitedly, waiting for Chloe's reaction. Clark couldn't tear his eyes away from the boy; it was as if he was seeing him in a new light.

A very pink new light.