Chapter 3 - 4:37AM (Arabs With Knives and West German Skies)




            The setting, ironically enough, was Clark's bedroom. The lights were on, but there were down pretty low. Soft music filled the room as his cd player played some old Led Zeppelin. Clark found himself standing in the doorway holding a tray with contents that he had smelt as he entered this imaginary world. Momentarily not knowing what he should do, he decided to get a grasp of the situation.
            Looking around, he saw various notebooks and worksheets scattered around on the floor and on his desk, but the most breath-taking thing was on his bed. Chloe was simply reading a newspaper partially under the covers. Her clothes were wrinkled and her hair was simply pushed out of her eyes. She obviously needed a haircut, but it looked cute just getting in her way.

            Without even giving him the satisfaction of a glance, Chloe spoke. "Well, it's about time Kent. What happened down there? Your mother try to push another supper down your throat?" Chloe liked Martha Kent all right, but the elder woman did have a tendency to make a bit too much food. Clark and Jonathon had never been afraid to eat their fill and then some, but no one in the Kent clan looked over weight. Good metabolisms must run in the family genetics Chloe mused.
            "Uh, sorry, I was just wondering were we should start." Clark had hoped that saying something so all encompassing would have given Chloe the message he didn't know what was going on, without raising to many suspicions.
            "Well, considering this is project is for current events class, I suggest we try the newspaper." Chloe looked at her nervous friend, and gave her head a little shake. He looked positively terrified. Following his eyes, she realized that he was gawking at her. It was then that she realized that she was half under the covers of his bed. "Oh, what's wrong Clark? No used to seeing a female in your bed, or is it because it's me and not Lana?"
            "Chloe, what I feel for Lana stops short of bed. Not all guys are the same, and shame on you for believing so," Clark snapped back, a tad to sharply even to his ears. "I'm sorry, it's just that I don't like being verbally crucified for liking Lana. It tends to wear a bit thin after a while, that's all."
            "Don't worry about it. I know what it's like…well, kind of. If you don't it, why don't you just say so?" Chloe didn't like this subject for reasons that even she wasn't entirely sure of. Lana was a nice girl who never had a cross word to say about anyone. She was the archetypal small town vixen incarnate, and Chloe didn't have a problem with that. The problem came when 'certain' male best friends zoned out at her approach. But if it meant getting Clark to open up to her, speaking the name Lana Lang was a small price to pay.
            "I do want to say 'stop' sometimes, but I fear it would only increase my handicap." Clark silently congratulated himself on saying that, now all he had to do was say it while awake. "I mean, I like Lana and all, but she isn't the end all in my life and sometimes you and Pete make it to be just like that. How would you feel if you were in my shoes?"

            Chloe blushed suddenly, without really knowing why. The subject of romantic interludes had been breached between the trio of companions. Why would now bring her to crimson, she wondered. Surely it couldn't be because it was just she and Clark talking about it, with her in his bed, and his bed covers draped over her half-hazzardly… oh boy!
            "Well Clark, it isn't me, and it isn't Pete. Not yet anyhow. For now it is just you, so forgive us if we would prefer to use you to fill in our own inter-personal blanks." Chloe knew that that sentence didn't make a great deal of sense, but she hoped Clark would buy it and move on. This conversation wasn't going in a very good direction as far as she was concerned.
            "Oh, I get it Chloe. You and Pete, by virtue of lambasting me on a daily basis, are actually using me to fulfill your own non-existent love lives. Sorry, no dice Sullivan. It would be easier to buy something like that if I actually had her as a girlfriend and then you asked me about all of the gritty details. Then I could buy some excuse like that. Ever since I met you, you have always had a… thing when it came to Lana, like you sort of envious of something." Clark knew that he was pushing his luck on that one in many different fronts. On the one side, he didn't know Chloe very long at this point, and on the other side, she would certainly blast him for daring to say that she coveted something of Lana's.
            "Me, jealous of Lana Lang? You must be smoking something in that barn of your Kent." Chloe knew that Clark had hit home on something's in that speech of his. Chloe didn't like this. Clark and her relationship had always been friendly, but she had also always noticed his handsome features. That was what had first drawn her to him. It would be quite ironic if that very draw was what destroyed their still newfound friendship. "Clark, let's just drop this right now before I get violent. I don't like being called (shudders) jealous of anybody, especially Ms. Lana Lang, thank you very much." Chloe only hoped that Clark hadn't noticed her blush that snuck out through in the middle of that barraging.
            Unfortunately for her, Clark had noticed. "Ok Chloe, I will drop conversation for now, but the next time you criticize me for my feelings about Lana, you will get yours all over again." Clark saw the immediate look of relief that flooded the females' features. "So what are we doing this report on?"
             "I'm glad you asked, because we have to start." Chloe always had a knack for writing and wanted to pursue it as a future carrier. It was familiar territory. "There is some hostage situation in Arabia, some journalist has been kidnapped and now being held for ransom. The US refuses to pay the necessary amount of cash to get the guy released."

            Clark mused about the Daniel Pearl thing that had gone on a few weeks ago in his time frame. "That sounds interesting. What do we have about the group that did this?"

            "Not much, only that they have been operating in some fashion or other since World War 2. Back then they did their dirty work for Hitler and the Nazi's." Chloe knew that Jonathon Kent, and Clark by default had an interest in that and other wars. Something about a close family member dying in combat had sparked the interest.
             "Really, so what are the demands? Why won't the government pay? What is the motivation behind this? I find it hard to believe that this faction has no loftier purpose than money." Clark wanted to hear about this. His great grandfather had died in WW2, and his father had always told about the importance to remember the past, lest you are doomed to repeat it. The mass genocide that occurred in the Europe of the 1930's was something that Clark couldn't imagine happening once in modern civilization, never mind twice.
             "I heard that there were asking for something like $500 million. Clinton won't pay because he doesn't want them to think that they can just grab an American citizen and automatically win the lottery." Chloe had been expecting this sort of reaction. She knew that Clark had something more than his looks going for him. "In all honesty, I can see where he is coming from. And no, I think money is the primary drive."

            Clark jumped to his feet. "I'll be right back, I have to get something." Chloe hadn't even the chance to say 'all right' before he was gone.
            When he returned a few minutes later, Clark carried an encyclopedia set dedicated to the Second World War. His father had seen it advertised from Time Life a few years earlier and 'simply had to get it' to use Martha's words. Clark set the books down and grabbed on of them off the top and flipped through it. Midway through, he stopped, went back three of four pages and showed Chloe his discovery.
            In black and white was a picture of an aerial battle in the 1940's. Chloe didn't get what she was supposed to see, until Clark's index finger tapped on the lone paragraph. In it, the words described a cult of people who both Germany and Italy had imported from the mid east to capture certain high-ranking people to do their bidding. That was how the axis powers had managed to capture some of the world's top scientists and come close to building a nuclear bomb before the US did it and dropped it on Japan.
            Chloe read with interest about how the group slipped through the cracks following the Nuremberg Trial's that saw a number of Hitler's top men hanged. It was conceivable that this was the remnants from that group. This was great stuff, and made for good reading.
            Clark in the meantime was simply engrossed in the mid-air battle pictures. He had always wanted to fly, but not like that. Not in some machine that could easily breakdown, he wanted to fly so it was just him and the birds. He had come close a few times after waking up, but he could never manage to stay in the air once he realized when he was. Many a bed slats met their doom to his subconscious disregard of gravity. Seeing Chloe's look of confusion, Clark decided to cover his tracks.
            "Chlo, can you imagine what they must have been feeling? Up there with the wind on their backs, not knowing if they would ever touch ground again alive. That must have been the ultimate rush."
            "Clark, you aren't going to jump off of a bridge are you? I mean it's not that I think you're actually nuts, but I also never pinned you an adrenaline junkie." Clark, it became more aware to Chloe, had more facets than she had initially thought.

            All he could do was smirk. Sure Clark could jump off of a bridge, hell he could do a swan dive off of the Statue of Liberty and all he would do is damage the pavement and hurt a whole bunch of innocent rocks. But, Chloe didn't know that and if he became comfortable telling her in his dreams, he might tell her in regular life. "No Chloe, I'm not planning on doing anything of the sort, I just think that it must have been exciting for them. Knowing that they may drop the bomb that could potentially end the war. Every hit must have been revenge for Pearl Harbor, every hit like a smack across the face of the man who killed millions of people."
             "Imagine that, Clark Kent passionate about something other than Lan… ahh, nothing. Other than nothing." Chloe berated herself something awful for that. That would have opened up that very bad topic from earlier.
            "Now, Chloe Sullivan, did you just say, or almost say the dreaded name that is also an alliteration? I mean than I could start me off on your…" Clark's tirade was cut short by the hand of his companion as it glided up and quickly and made it's home on Clark's mouth, effectively muffling him.
            "It was a mistake Kent, pure and simple. Your actually pretty luckily, I was tempted to slap you."
            Clark grinned from under her hand. She wouldn't have liked slapping him, if fact, she would have disliked it as much as one would not like hitting granite. Softly pealing her fingers away, and then licking his lips to regain the lost moisture, Clark simply said, "That's what I thought."
            Chloe for her part watched Clark's tongue dart out and around his lips with a sort of perverse pleasure. Warmth spread through her body, and she repositioned herself slightly, not knowing how far her body was willing to take this moment of lustfulness. "Well, obviously you think too often, and speak even more frequently."

Clark, while laughing that last hit off picked his book up again. Looking down at one of the rallies, he noticed something he hadn't seen before. It was a picture of some of the top ranking men in the Reich. One of them was the teacher from his first dream, and the coach from the second dream. Suddenly, the picture came to life and the person winked his eye and Clark saw everything around him fade, as he resurfaced in his bed.

***************

            Enough was enough Clark decided. This was the third time in one night that he was awoken by that guy. How long was that guy going to haunt him like this? There was only so much sanity and sleep he could sacrifice. Checking his digital alarm clock, Clark was disheartened to see that once again, his dream had only run a few minutes. Obviously these weren't going to be violent, just oddly normal. Like he was getting the chance to do thing with Chloe that he hadn't done in the past for whatever reason.
            Recalling something from the dream he had just awoken from, Clark swiftly rose and ran downstairs, searching for the book that he had shown Chloe. Maybe that guy was in that book, and he was using the image in his dreams as some sort of symbol.
            Upon reaching the Kent family bookcase, Clark searched the titles and found his prey. Scanning the pages, he located the picture of the air battle that had destroyed a good part of West Germany, but there was no text. Clark suddenly remembered that no group like that happened in Germany, and there was no hostage situation in Arabia in 1999 that he and Chloe had to do a report on. It wasn't real, and he didn't know it until he had woken up.
            Going back upstairs, Clark entered his bedroom and then his bed. Maybe he should let himself go a little bit. Who would he really be hurting? That Chloe and the one he would be seeing in a few hours aren't the same. He thought that as he lost consciousness once more.

To be continued.