"I'm an alien?" Clark ran his hand through his hair. He stood with Jo Jones in the Theatre Imperial's basement, the other league members had left him and Martian Manhunter alone.

"Is that so remarkable?" Jo asked.

"Frankly yes." Clark chuckled. The very idea seemed absurd to him. "I mean look at me!"

Jo's face creased expressively. "Because I am green it makes it easier for you to accept I'm not from this world?"

"Yes. I guess, but I've also glimpsed your true form, and that's more alien still, but I'm very human."

Jo laughed. "You're clearly more than human in many many ways."

"Meta-human then." He turned away angrily, wanting to dismiss this strange woman's story, and yet a unremembered memory seemed to haunt his certainty.

"You are an adopted son of the Kents, Clark is an adopted name."

He rounded on the green Martian. "How do you know that?" He stopped realising that Diana must have access to that information. He sighed closing his eyes. "I am human." He said almost to himself.

Jo shook her head. "It is a mystery why there are diverse humanoid species across the galaxy, there must be a rational explanation for this, a common origin or originator, however I have no doubt your parents sent you to this world precisely because, perhaps more than any other humanoid species Earthling and Kryptonians are indistinguishable – except at the sub-cellular level, a difference which means you are millions of years more evolved."

Clark folded his arms, and looked grave. "Now hang on Joan or whatever you're called, how come you can say that, call me Kal-Whatever, say I'm some orphan from another world – I mean how do you know?"

"Because I can read your mind – because as an ancient people my race knew yours, the signature of your Kryptonian mind distinguishes your species, it is more distinctive than something as superficial as the colours of hair and skin."

"You can read my thoughts – am I an open book to you?"

"No, not like a book, it is not as simple or as clear as the printed page, but thoughts are more subtle - as in shades of colour, or say delicate like a fragrance. Forgive me, English and humans don't have the words and experience to express the sensations of telepathy, since this sense is rare among you.

"Truth be told Kal-El, I see a darkness in your mind, you have forgotten the horror of your loss – as often is the case with trauma, however that untouched part of your mind now yearns to be heard, for a telepath like myself your subconscious is shouting."

"Very well – let's say for the sake of argument I entertain this idea, what I don't understand – is why would my birth parents abandon me here?"

For a moment Joan Jones – Jo J'onzz appeared conflicted, then she answered plainly.

"You and I are alike Kal-El, we are the last surviving examples of our race."

"What?"

"Krypton was destroyed, torn asunder, you alone escaped, you are Krypton's last son."

-'S'-

Diana drove the black Suburban through the brightly lit streets of the Metropolis night. Clark sat next to her silent and subdued.

Finally he spoked to her. "I suspect my ears should be burning."

"The League know how I feel." She agreed. Diana had left him with Jo J'onzz to plead his case before the others – she wanted them to help her help him, to guide him and keep him safe. Diana continued. "Jo made her voice heard too - you should be part of what we're doing."

"Perhaps." Clark looked out of the window once more.

"Joan will come over to mine when they're done."
"Yes she said she wanted to talk to me more."

"I sense your not happy about that."

"I'm not."

"Clark for what it's worth I don't feel any different about you knowing that your from another world."

"I'm not sure what to believe Diana. I've always known I was adopted – but that I'm from another world. I'm not sure what to make of that."

"What did the Kent's tell you?"

"That I was found abandoned by the roadside during the chaos that followed the Meteor shower, despite appeals for my mother to come forward, for anyone that knew me – no one did. My parents were already trying to adopt, and they went through the normal rigmarole associated with that, and in due course raised me."

"So you have no idea where you are from."

"No – but it's a huge leap from being a foundling to being an abandoned alien."

"Just how far can you leap Clark? Tall buildings in a single bound? How fast can you move? Is it really so incredible? Look Jo knows about a number of alien races, many are humanoid, some would even pass for human, and a handful are human, in every way that matters."

"It's just not what I expected – any of this."

Diana shrugged, and pulled the car to a halt. "I'm sorry about that Clark, but you don't strike me as a person that would shirk their responsibilities."

Clark seemed lost in thought, or he had no answer for her.

"Are you coming?" She said. "Or am I going to turn my back and find you've done another midnight flit?"

"I guess. I don't think running back to Smallville will help my cause."

Diana couldn't agree more.

He laughed.

"What is so funny" Diana asked as she opened the main door to her complex.

"I kind of imagine that it's the guys who are usually begging you to let them in, rather than you asking them too."

"Do you think?" She said seriously.

"Perhaps you don't have the time?"

"Perhaps I don't." There was truth in her answer, but as often the case, what was left unsaid dominated her thoughts as she led him inside her home.

Bruce, Ollie among others had been here, but Clark was different, for all their remarkable qualities the human members of the League were just that, albeit the sum of human power and endeavour, by her own Amazon standards they were but weak and delicate babes, for the first time Diana realised she was in the presence of a being who was potentially her physical equal.

She felt her heart race, was this how her Mother had felt in the presence of the demigod Hercules? That had turned out badly, but the son of Zeus was already walking his own terrible and tragic road. Clark – Kal-El, the last son of Krypton had known tragedy too, she wondered how the loss of his first his wife and now as his powers grew, the loss of his once normal life would effect this cowboy from Kansas.

Intuitively Diana let the former farmer brood, he sat in silence, and she respected his need to withdraw into his primal mental cave, to contemplate his situation.

Seated at her desk she accessed the DOMA server from her PC and checked the status of the Kent file.

Switching to her private account she checked her League inbox. A coded message from the Watchtower confirmed that the DNA sample she had taken had been diverted surreptitiously. The FBI contracted the testing to a division of Wayne Bio-Tech, making the exchange easy for Bruce to arrange. Diana had no idea whose biometrics had been substituted for Clark's but the bottom line was DOMA would be informed Kent was a regular homosapien. For the record Watchtower noted that Kent's real sample was a dud, the swab had failed to abrase a single cheek cell, and Diana's own scientific curiosity was engaged, she wondered about the extent of Kent's invulnerability. In the brief time she had spent with Jo J'onzz after speaking on Clark's behalf to the other League members, the Martian Manhunter had told her what she could expect of the solar charged Kryptonian, and Diana had been dumbstruck, if only half of what the histories recorded about this race was true, she now understood why as a people they had elected to remain on their home world. Diana sighed.

"Pardon?" Clark asked.

Had she spoken out loud, she realised even moving her lips and letting out the most silent of breaths would be enough. "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." She repeated herself.

"It strikes me that your league has more than enough power."

"Which is balanced, first each one against the other, and against the industrio-political hegemony of Patriarchs World."

"That sounds very feminist."

"Is that a problem?"

"No – I'm just trying to see where two alpha males like Wayne and Queen fit into that – aren't they industrialists, haven't they a dozen or so lobbyists in their pockets on the hill?"

"Industry is not good or evil, just like a knife is essential on the one hand in the kitchen, but deadly in the other."

Clark did not disagree with her analogy, instead he changed tack. "What do you know about my people?" He asked. "The Kryptonians – what were they like?"

"I know very little, they were a secretive people, but Jo told me that your race chose to live on a world so hostile no other sentient life dare approach, that no one else but they could live in such an environment, where radiation and gravity nullified there great powers making them human once more."

"Why would they do that?"
"Because your ancestors wished to pursue peace and knowledge above all else, they wished to remove the temptation to become gods among lesser beings, instead to concentrate on science, to use technology to explore the universe remotely."

"A temptation to become gods? Is that what you expect me to become – a god on Earth?" Clark was incredulous, there was sadness and anger, yet through this turmoil was stubborn determination. "Isn't that what an avatar of the Greek gods would expect?" He looked at her expectantly.

Diana shook her head. "I am emissary – a representative – sent to bring peace, to use wise judgement and my own intelligence and intuition. Clark, you and I are not so different. My people are individually powerful, functionally immortal, and they too chose to retreat from the world."
"Why?"

"For much the same reasons as the Kryptonians – as best I can gather." Diana went on to explain to Clark the history of the Amazons, how they were an immortal race of women chosen by the goddesses of Olympus, how Ares had incited the demigod Hercules to wage war against them, how they had been defeated by treachery not might, only to rise up and defeat their captors and flee the jealous and violent world of men to a hidden paradise island of Themyscira. "You see Clark for Kryptonians and Amazons power, there was envy; envy seems universal among sentient life. This jealousy made our respective peoples targets of hate. It was this ever present threat of conflict as much as fear of abusing our power that led our respective peoples to choose isolation over engagement with others."

"But you have chose to engage, to come to – what you call, Patriarchs World?"

"Isn't that the point Clark, we have been given a choice, we can choose to use our powers not to judge and condemn as gods must, but to reach out and save, to serve our fellow human beings."

The voice of the Martian Manhunter interrupted. "Wise words. Princess Diana of the Amazons, you honour your patron Athena."

"Princess?" Clark mouthed – stunned.

Diana blushed. "Yes." She said unashamedly. "It was my Mother who Hercules beguiled. I am Hippolyta's daughter."

Clark shook his head absorbing the implications, the centuries of history and myth that lay between him and the Amazons.

Diana reached out to Clark, but he drew back crossing his legs, taking hold of the left cowboy boot as he brought his leg between them. She realised that he had first bonded to her as a person, just another pretty girl in bar in Metropolis. Then later he had seen her as an ally, someone real and tangible among a collective of extraordinary, and save for the policewoman the Martian Manhunter pretended to be, relatively famous people. Now she had revealed herself as royalty, and she feared her birth right had snatched from Clark any sense that there was common ground between them. Diana could not resent the truth, she was if anything it's avatar, but she knew the truth could be cold and hard like steel, and she hoped Clark was man enough to take it.

The farmer from Kansas, who was also an Alien from a dead world turned to Joan Jones as the Martian Manhunter now appeared, normal in every way save her method of arrival, passing through solid walls reaffirmed her alien powers even if her human face and street clothes did not.

"I assume you are here to tell me what the others have decided?"
Joan nodded. "You are for the time being under the League's protection."

"I not sure what that means."

"It means Diana has volunteered to steer you through the difficult business of adapting to your powers."

"While keeping an eye on me, making sure I don't go over to the dark side."

"I am confident that you will not." Joan replied without emotion. To Diana she said. "Princess I believe your people hold the key to Kal-El, so that Clark can remember what he has forgotten, so that he can finally become a complete person."

"Forgive me Jo J'onzz but I quite resent the implication that I am incomplete."

"Mr Kent." Joan replied formally. "You cannot pretend that as an adopted child you have never once thought about your birth parents, wondered about your heritage, questioned why a baby was found beside a road to all intents and purposes abandoned?"

Clark shook his head. "I won't lie to you – of course I have."

"Then let Diana help you remember."