There's going to be a crossover between CBS Supergirl and CW Flash what a time to be alive.
Chapter Ten: Never Enough
It was a common misconception that the town of Smallville had been so named for its exceedingly small population footprint and an apparent reputation for being a podunk one-horse town that didn't even have a four-way stop.
No, the town had been named for its founder, the eccentric Ezra Small. Historical accounts painted him as fifty percent mad ninety percent of the time. It was said that he founded Smallville on a whim and it hadn't even been his decision to make. A cobbler and aspiring historian on a wagon train to the west, riding a bad-tempered donkey and hauling a rickety, wobble-wheeled cart behind him and just a few pieces of coinage to call his own. The wagon train had made camp on the banks of Elbow River and Ezra had looked around, then told the leaders they were stopping here and that was the end of it.
The wagon train had been pushing for the promised land of California and the leaders had not wanted to stop in the middle of the Great Plains. But traveling such a vast distance was hard on the would-be settlers. They had lost time and traveling companions due to inclement weather, fatigue and sickness, a lack of palatable food and water. The Great Plains were almost painfully arid. Not to mention the sheer nastiness of the storms that kicked up.
When Ezra Small had declared the banks of the Elbow River a suitable place to lay down some roots, most of his traveling companions had agreed with him, throwing down their packs and calling it quits. The leaders and a small group of supporters had pushed westward as planned. Whether they had made it to California or had turned back was not a matter of historical importance. What was important was that, on the spot, Ezra had announced they would call their new home "Smallville" and no one had been in much of a mood to argue.
Despite its apparent location in the middle of nowhere, Smallville had unexpectedly flourished thanks to its proximity to the Santa Fe Trail. The then-tiny settlement had earned itself a hospitable reputation for not robbing the wagon merchants who came to pitch their tents for the night, then providing them with a hot meal and a chance to do some business. Thus, Smallville grew in fits and starts, but it grew.
Ezra Small had had something of a hand in that too. Not just for his reputation for being hospitable to the merchants (which encouraged them to come back), but he had contributed to the numbers. He had fathered eighteen children through three wives and five mistresses. At least, he had claimed the parentage of eighteen children. If the rumors were to be believed, he had also fathered a further twelve children before his death in the 1860s. One percent of Smallville's present-day population could trace their lineage back to the town founder or to one of the women he had supposedly bedded. That was just in Smallville alone, however. Ezra had a noted tendency to flirt with the merchants' wives or daughters, if they were of suitable age. He had been a handsome man, strong and healthy and virile. Certainly more than one woman had gone off into the darkness with him and returned a few hours later looking like they had gotten up to something naughty.
It was probably Ezra's canoodling habits that had gotten him killed. In the weeks leading up to his death, he had been very ill, displaying symptoms consistent with syphilis. He had died overnight, late in the summer with lightning flashing in the clouds. The fire marshal had found him in the morning long after he had breathed his last, huddled up to the base of the town well with his Last Will and Testament balled in his fist.
Over the years, Smallville had gone through its ups and downs. On the whole, it had never been a place of historical importance. No battles had been fought near the area. Even the Native Americans hadn't found the little town to be any sort of a problem (as long as Ezra didn't try to romance their women-folk). They had traded peacefully with the residents for years. A town called "Smallville" just didn't sound very threatening.
Indeed, the only real threats to the town had come in the form of Mother Nature.
On April 4th, 1984, Smallville had been slammed with the grand-daddy of all tornados. A super-massive cyclone that meteorologists tentatively took to calling an F-6, as its wind-speed had measured at nearly three hundred and fifty miles an hour. Packed in with hailstones the size of softballs and a lightning storm that had broken the record books, the storm had flattened Smallville to little more than splintered timber and crumbled stone.
The good people of the town had never learned that even in the midst of the disaster, something truly special had happened. Save for just two people, who would never speak of it.
These days, Smallville was completely rebuilt thanks to the competing efforts of LuthorCorp and Wayne Enterprises, the latter engaging in its usual charitable acts and the LuthorCorp contributing because it was Wayne Enterprises they were up against. Smallville had only benefited from the companies' efforts and the town had been sufficiently rebuilt before the first frost had set in.
Smallville continued to carry quite a small town reputation even in spite of its population; approximately twenty-five thousand at last census. It wasn't small enough anymore to properly carry the small town nomenclature, but that didn't seem to have stopped it. Though its residential area had grown, its town center had remained quite small and strangely cozy with many locally owned businesses lining the main streets. Being a "small town" seemed to be a state of mind, rather than a state of being. Perhaps because the industry of the town was ultimately built around agriculture and supported the family-owned farms that dotted the surrounding fields.
There was one such farm on the outskirts, about six miles northwest of the town borders, though located more west than north. It was the Kent Farm, owned and operated by the Kent family for more than five generations. Most of the family had lived and died on that farm.
On a full-time basis, the homestead housed Johnathan Kent and his wife Martha, along with three dogs who earned their keep herding the cattle and defending the farm from any wandering predators. Clark had moved out only a few days into the month, packing just a duffle bag of clothes and toiletries to get him through. He had taken a train north to Metropolis, wanting to arrive in a more conventional manner.
Metropolis had awed him, no doubt about that. Which was impressive for a man who had been halfway around the world and had seen some of the most gorgeous sights that nature sported and awe-inspiring cities that civilization had ever offered. From the towering skyscrapers of Hong Kong to the white-washed and red-roofed bungalows of the Mediterranean coast, Clark had seen quite a lot.
But if one was talking about great monuments of civilization and the forward charge of progress, then it was Metropolis that stood out above the rest. The Big Apricot was easily the great, grandest city in the contiguous United States. Yes, it even outstripped the likes of New York City. Its sweeping modern styles, shimmering steel, plate-glass windows, and sleek design all seemed to draw the eye in. It made no effort to hide its grandeur, instead flaunting it loud and proud. There was no other city in the world that yet matched Metropolis.
(Although some people presumed that if Gotham ever found a large enough pressure hose to blast away the grime, the east coast city could really give Metropolis a run for its money. They whispered this, as if they didn't want the Big Mucky to get any ideas.)
But for as glamorous and elegant that Metropolis was, Clark knew that his heart would still ultimately belong to the dusty, quiet life of Smallville where the pacing was slower and it wasn't surrounded by large bodies of water where crazy reporters could drown.
Two miles up and a mile out from the homestead, Clark heard a dog barking, deep and booming, and far more carrying than any typical dog who had been born on Planet Earth could hope to achieve. He smiled.
"Here, Krypto!" he shouted in the winter air. A not-too-distant blot, colored white and standing out even against the snow-patched landscape, changed its trajectory and raced towards him like a furry, four-legged missile.
Clark stopped his flight just to brace himself when Krypto tackled him bodily, already howling out a greeting. In the two years he had wandered the earth, Krypto the not-from-Earth canine had accompanied him across the country-side. Clark had been routinely complimented for having such a well-behaved and gorgeous canine traveling companion. Everyone had been interested in Krypto's breed and his breeding (the latter of which was so not happening). Clark had no idea what Krypto's breed might have been elsewhere, but a Samoyed/Siberian Husky mix was the closest Earthly equivalent.
The meteor shower of 1999 was the event that had brought Krypto to Earth. Among the falling chunks of space rock had been a ship. Smaller and less sleek, it had been recognizably a prototype of the same craft that had also brought Clark to Earth about fifteen years earlier. Krypto had been just a puppy of about six months old, all floppy ears and large paws and fumbling legs.
He hadn't stayed a puppy, that was for darn sure. In short order, Krypto had grown from small fluffy bundle able to curl up on Clark's lap to large fluffy beast who forgot he couldn't fit in Clark's lap anymore, but still tried anyways. Over the course of a year, he had demonstrated the same powers as Clark himself; enhanced strength and speed. His senses proportionately enhanced. Powerful vocal cords. He didn't seem to have the same heat vision (which was probably for the better) and though it was hard to know for sure, he did seem to have x-ray vision.
On top of all that, he was smart. Not just smart for a dog, no, Krypto displayed a marked intelligence that was unusual for any animal with a brain the size of his own. It was clear that he absolutely understood everything that was being said to him. He could make plans and think ahead and reason things out, as shown when Pete had decided to measure the canine's purported intelligence with a series of tests, ending in a game of checkers.
Pete had lost eight times out of ten.
Lana had laughed herself sick at him.
Krypto descended on him with his tail practically propelling him along, tongue swiping warm saliva all over Clark's face and generally climbing all over him like he was still a small, wiggly puppy. Sometimes, Krypto didn't seem entirely aware that he was, in fact, over thirty inches at the shoulder.
"Hey-- Hey, I was only gone for two weeks. Not even that." Clark said, obligingly combing his fingers through the thick white fur. "You didn't miss me that much, did you?"
Krypto gave him a really unimpressed look, as if he was saying 'No, I came all the way up here to drench your face with my drool because I didn't even notice you were gone.' Then he shook himself all the way down to his tail and resumed his happy, doggy grin, tongue lolling in the breeze.
"Alright, I'm being stupid." Clark agreed, scratching the sweet spot right between the shoulders that always made the big white dog start kicking his hind legs. "You missed me that much. It's obvious." He grabbed the large dog in a hug. "You were good for Mom and Dad?"
Krypto nodded.
"So there are no large holes I have to fill in? You know they don't want you digging in the fields because you dig holes six feet across and ten feet deep. If I have to be discreet with what I do, so do you."
Krypto rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue in Clark's ear, in retaliation for the lack of faith in his ability to control his not dog-typical attributes.
"Agh!" Clark jerked his head away and wiped at his ear. He shook a finger sternly at the dog. "You're lucky that you're cute and I like you."
Krypto preened. 'Yes, I know I'm adorable.'
"Let's get out of the sky before we're sucked into a jet engine. It probably won't kill either of us, but let's not take a chance."
Krypto yipped an agreement and pointed his nose into the wind, back towards the farmstead. Clark buried one hand into the canine's ruff and kept pace.
It was a clear day, the Kansas landscape blotted with white snow as it unfurled beneath them. The likes of Lois Lane might complain about the flat Kansas plains and how there was nothing there, but the truth was, she hadn't seen them. She hadn't seen the blazing sunsets that shot streaks of red high to the sky or the spectacular cloud formations when the atmosphere kicked up a storm. She didn't know what they looked like in the summer dawns, when a fine layer of mist had settled across the fields and the sun had just started to peek over the horizon. She hadn't seen the darkest, clearest nights when the stars were the brightest things in the sky in the absence of the moon, when it seemed like you could see into infinity.
Maybe, one day, he would show her.
The farm was transitioning into winter mode. The cattle were closer to the barn with hay and grain and automated water troughs. The fields were mowed over, the poultry were shut up, and their five-year old Border Collie, Dusty, was lounging on a piece of plywood to stay off the cold muddy ground.
Johnathan Kent was almost done repairing the fence around the paddock where two retired race horses flicked their tails at the hardy bugs that hadn't been killed by the first frost and nibbled on the hay. He was fifty-two years old, but his dark brown hair was only showing some graying at the temples. He was weather-beaten with rough calloused hands and a farmer's tan that deepened a little every day. He was a kind, hard-working man and a fifth-generation farmer who had found his happiness out in the fields, working the earth. There was always dirt under his fingernails, sweat on his brow, and mud on his boots. He had a work ethic that seemed vanishingly rare these days.
Clark had always looked up to him.
How could he not? His father was easily one of the kindest men he knew. Honest, polite, yet firm and assertive, standing strong like an oak tree and never yielding to those who tried to bully him. Johnathan believed in never resorting to violence when a good talk could get the job done just as well. He believed that sometimes all people needed was a little understanding instead of being beaten down time and again.
Clark constantly strove to emulate those aspects. If he could be half the man his father was, then he would be happy.
The twenty-three year old touched down lightly in the mud of the drive.
"Hey Clark." Johnathan said casually. "Give me a hand with this."
"Not surprised to see me?" Clark asked, coming up beside his father to lift the board into place on the beam.
"Not with the way Krypto just took off like that." Johnathan replied, glancing to his son and flashing a brief smile. "He only does that with you. Besides, you said you were coming."
That was true. Clark had called ahead on Thursday, after getting the go-ahead on being allowed to move in. He still had a lot of stuff in his bedroom that needed to be shifted to his new apartment.
"What happened to the fence?" he asked, picking up the second hammer and a few nails.
"Coyotes. Spooked the horses, which spooked the cows." Johnathan explained, knocking the nail in. "They've been snooping a lot closer to the farm this year than any other year. I guess the hunting's bad."
'Parasites.' Krypto thought uncharitably.
"Is anyone else having the same issue?" Clark wondered.
Johnathan shook his head. "Not that I've heard. Last night was the first time they've been around here." he said. "I'm going to have to reinforce the chicken coop. Can't blame the little bastards if the hunting's worse this year, but I don't want them getting at the chickens and I don't Krypto tangling with a coyote."
Clark looked down at the faithful canine and Krypto just wagged his tail proudly, then turned to exchange friendly sniffs with Dusty. Krypto was large for the breed Clark had to tell people he was. Furthermore, his paws were still rather big and he stumbled over them sometimes like he hadn't grown into them yet. And there was something quite lupine about the shape of his ears and muzzle.
"I think the coyote would come off worse in the fight." he said, nailing the board into place.
"That's my point. I don't want Fish and Wildlife to come knocking on the door."
Johnathan gave the final nail one more thwack to make sure it was secure and then clapped a hand on his son's shoulder, pointing him towards the house. "C'mon, let's go inside. Your mother's putting the boxes together. How's the new place looking?"
"Oh, it's good. I've got to scrub it down a little and pick up some furniture, but I like it already. The neighbors are quiet."
That was a serious plus for Clark. He had commented, off-hand, to Lois that he really didn't like a lot of noise and she had circled a few listings for him to investigate. She had good judgment, he would give her that. His new building was mostly full of college-aged students, artists, the elderly, and the otherwise eccentric (he felt like he fit right in) who would probably beat down his door for being too loud. Even the supervisor had told him that he tried to impose something of a noise restriction. He couldn't actively enforce it, so it was something of a common courtesy instead.
The farm house, rebuilt from the tornado that had chewed it away twenty-odd years earlier, was still warm and rustic, practically glittering with the nostalgia. Some of the holiday ornaments had gone up because of ambiance and there was blazing fire under the flue. Their eleven-year old tri-colored Bernese Mountain Dog, Hubble, was stretched out on the hearth rug warming his belly with the flames. Krypto and Dusty bounded over to him and exchanged mutual sniffs before settling down beside the elderly dog.
"Clark!" Martha instantly rose from the couch where she had been putting the boxes together and clasped him in a welcoming hug.
"Hey, Mom." Clark gladly reciprocated the hug. He hadn't been gone that long, but it still felt like ages since he had last seen his mother.
"Well, how's life in the big city treating you?" Martha asked, pulling back and looking him over for any abnormalities and was pleased to find nothing unusual. "Are you famous yet?"
He blinked. "For what?"
Johnathan grinned. "It made the news, son."
And that was all that was needed for Clark to remember that his little escapade through the fireball had indeed made the news. Explosions downtown were certainly going to make the news no matter what, but the feel-good story of a four-year old girl being saved from a particularly terrible death had added a more dramatic element to the news story.
People loved a hero.
Martha squished his cheeks lovingly. "That's my boy." she said.
"Mom..." Clark groaned, batting her hands away. "Don't make a big deal out of it. I saw it coming and I realized that I could do something, so I did."
"That's why I did this." Martha said and squished his cheeks again. "Because that's how I raised my son. And let me tell you, the pride I felt when I saw the story on the news? That's my boy."
Johnathan thumped his son's shoulder again. "You did good, Clark."
"I know." Clark agreed. Still wish I could have gotten the driver too, but I guess I can't save everyone.
"I hope that's not going to attract too much attention." Johnathan added, sharing a worried and thoughtful look with his wife.
"Nah, I checked the comments on the videos. The general consensus is that I got really lucky. No one seemed to think that it was anything-- super-human." Clark assured his parents. "Brave and stupid, but not really super-human."
"Just be careful." Martha reminded him, as she always did. "You know how people can get."
Clark knew very well how people could get. Between the doomsday cult and the aftermath of the meteor shower, he had gotten a very good look at just how crazy the human race could be when to came to the impossible being possible.
"How's work?" Johnathan asked.
"Ah, work's good." Clark replied diplomatically, shrugging. "I had an interesting first week, with my mentor. Who might be certifiably crazy."
"The good kind of crazy?" Johnathan wondered.
The twenty-three year old shrugged. "I don't know. Lois Lane is... something else altogether. Her style leaves something to be desired, that's for sure. I know I don't mind being thrown off the deep end, but her methods... It's like watching a train fly off the tracks in slow motion and then it lands upright and keeps going. I cannot emulate that. That's not something you can teach. That's luck. She has the best and worst luck I've ever seen in one person. I don't know how many times she's nearly gotten herself killed before I met her. It was twice in this week alone. I swear she's trying to prove something to the entire world, but I don't know what. If she wasn't so crazy, she'd be the most impressive woman I've ever met. I've never met anyone like her... What?"
Somewhere over the course of his rant, Johnathan and Martha had adopted cat-like smiles of amusement and were sharing knowing looks that Clark couldn't decipher.
"What?" he asked again, wanting one of them to explain.
Martha smothered a giggle a tad unsuccessfully. "You'll figure it out." she told him. "So other than a slightly crazy mentor, you had a good first week?"
"It wasn't terrible, but last night could have been a lot better." Clark said, unwrapping his scarf. The movement drew his parents' attention to the dark mottled coloring that spotted his neck and the underside of his chin.
Martha gasped. "Clark, are those bruises?" She lurched forward and tilted his chin up for a better look.
"Good lord, those are bruises!" Johnathan realized, coming to his wife's side. "I didn't think you could bruise anymore! You haven't had a scrape since you were a baby!"
"Clark, what happened? This looks awful." Martha said, rubbing a thumb around one of the yellow-green edges. "Sit down, let me have a better look at those! Do you need any ice?"
"No. It's not bad. It's really improved overnight." Clark assured her, half in protest as his mother got him down onto the couch. There had been some swelling for all of an hour and the healing had started within minutes of stepping into the sun. He was already on the mend.
Martha snorted. "If this is 'improved', I don't want to know what it looked like before." she said. Her fingers skimmed over the worst patch directly above Clark's Adam's apple. "What happened? How did this happen?"
Clark found himself hesitating for a second over telling them, but then told himself that he was being stupid. It had been a long time since he had with-held the truth from his parents and this was no time to start that up again.
"I think I ran into someone from the same place as me." he said.
It took them a few seconds to realize exactly what he meant by that. Martha blinked a few times and then she withdrew slightly with a profound "oh" expression. Johnathan inhaled suddenly and looked like he wanted to say something, but the words weren't there. His mouth worked silently for a moment and then he asked:
"Are you sure?"
"Pretty sure." Clark said, nodding. "He had most of the same powers. He could fly. He did the heat vision. He was fast and durable; he went through six inches of concrete without flinching. And he was strong enough to leave bruises."
"Clark-- Son." Johnathan put a hand on the twenty-three year old's shoulder. "Just because he showed some of the same powers, it doesn't mean...
"I know Pa, but look at me!" Clark gestured to his neck, to the bruises. "I haven't scraped my elbows in twenty years! I damage the pavement! We know there's not a lot out there that can hurt me. I don't even burn."
"Your hair singed a little." Martha pointed out, ruffling the rough-edged locks.
"Clark, listen. It's been twenty years." Johnathan started, hoping to inject some logic and reality into this. "And two decades in a long time to go without-- getting any answers."
"I know." He was keenly aware of that. "But I think he knew my birth-father."
He instantly hated the look that passed between his parents; a strange mixture of unhappiness and understanding, with just a tinge of annoyance thrown in for seasoning.
Clark wanted to be nonchalant about the whole thing. He wanted to pretend that he wasn't thinking about it, like it wasn't something that went through his head at least once a day. It felt traitorous to be saying anything about his birth parents in front of the parents who had raised him, who were his family in the ways that counted the most. He didn't want to make it seem like he was pushing them aside in favor of two people he had never really met before.
"It's just... It's the fact that it's been twenty years-- eight since you told me -- and I still don't have any answers. I don't even know how to get them. All I know is that I'm an alien and Krypto's from the same planet and that's-- that's never been enough."
He let out a heavy sigh and threaded his fingers into his hair. Other than the prototype ship, Krypto's collar had also borne the same pentagonal shield featuring the stylized S -- smaller but identical to a badge that had been sent with Clark. It was the only thing that really assured him of where Krypto had come from.
"And now there's this guy." Clark went on, looking up at his parents. "He mistook me for-- for Jor-El. He looked right at me and recognized me somehow. Maybe there's a distinct family resemblance."
Johnathan and Martha were silent, understandably so. They had sunk down to sit on the coffee table right across from their son, both mulling over the words. This day had been more than twenty years in coming. Telling Clark about his extra-terrestrial origins had been inevitable and they had passed that day eight years ago. But equally inevitable has been the day when his latent curiosity would finally get the better of him. When he would finally get frustrated with his inability to find the answers. When the need for them would start to become desperate.
The day had come and it felt like he had slipped away from them a little.
"I think the ships are still buried." Johnathan said. It felt like letting him go. But if they let him go, better the odds that Clark would come back. "If your birth parents left you any message, it'll probably be there."
Clark looked up, frowning a little as if to say 'Are you sure?'
His father nodded. "Go on. We can empty your closet without you."
"But--"
"Clark, we'd never try and stop you from finding out about your birth parents. And we'd never be angry about it either." Martha said assuringly, making shooing motions. "We know you have a ton of questions that we can't answer and any parent would have left their child something. Especially with the way you came to us, so go."
"I-- Okay." Clark stood up gratefully. "I'll- I'll tell you what I find." he offered. They deserved to know, at least. They were a part of this just as much as him.
He whistled to Krypto, who came scrambling so fast his paws left the ground. They left the house and set off to the southwest at a light run, nothing so fast it looked superhuman or super-canine.
Clark had buried both of the shuttles in Sounder's Gorge, about two miles outside the municipal boundary of Smallville. It was one of the few places where the meteor rock hadn't hit, so he was sure that the extra-governmental agency looking for aliens had had no reason to go poking around down there. He was the only person who knew the shuttles were there.
The trail sloped down into Sounder's Gorge and the pair came to a halt. Clark paused beside a rock formation at the mouth of the gorge and then took fifteen measured steps inside. The sloping walls rose up on either side and the air became very still. Once he had marked out the fifteen paces, he stopped.
"Should be right here."
He x-rayed the ground, sweeping it left and right for the shuttles. They were very distinctive, almost crystalline in formation, and identical in appearance, for the most part. The aft-end of Krypto's shuttle was a different shape, a little more bulkier than the baby shuttle, and colored more like smoky quartz than the opaque white that Clark had arrived in.
But wherever he looked, all he saw was dirt, dirt, and more dirt.
"They're gone?!"
He stepped back and widened his search. Maybe he had gone a few steps too far... but... Krypto turned a full circle, scanning the ground as well, but even his x-ray vision didn't pick up any sign of the shuttles and he knew what they looked like. He had watched his Alpha's dam build the prototype.
"I'm sure this is the right spot! They can't be gone!" Clark protested out loud.
'It is! I helped you dig!' Krypto snuffled around the dirt. 'They should be here. I helped you dig.'
He dug his nose in to the earth, inhaling deeply. Any dog's nose was more sensitive and powerful than a human's, but Krypto's sense of smell was proportionately enhanced. Whereas Clark could smell scents from half a mile away and up to three weeks later, Krypto could still smell the last place in the house that Lana Lang had touched three years ago and he could still get a whiff of where she had lived, even though the farmstead was four miles outside of Smallville.
But it was no good. It had been too long even for his powerful nose. Too many rainstorms had been through Sounder's Gorge and too much stray wildlife leaving their own scent-marks behind. The scents were long since washed away. He looked up at his Alpha and shook his head.
Clark scratched him behind the ears.
"I don't get it. You and me, we're the only two who knew where the shuttles were." he said. "We weren't followed. No one had any reason to come out this far. Who could have taken them?"
He looked around the gorge again. The only answer that came to him was the government agents who had followed the meteor shower. Bureau 39, they were called. An agency that didn't exist or at least the government didn't acknowledge that it existed.
They had come to Smallville looking for aliens.
Their commander had known about Krypto's shuttle. Unlike last time, when the super-massive super-cell, the tornado, and all accompanying factors had hidden all traces of radiation from Clark's shuttle and the rain had washed it away -- orbiting satellites had been advanced and sophisticated enough to pick up the unusual structure of the prototype shuttle and thus determine that it wasn't a piece of space rock.
It had been a clear sky day when the meteors had fallen on Smallville.
The agency hadn't know what to look for (not a dog; they had expected something more bipedal and man-shaped), but they had known where to look. They had gone door to door, flashing CDC badges and conducting sweeps of the properties on the excuse that they were searching for meteor rock; radioactive, too dangerous to be kept, all samples must be confiscated.
Lana had called the Kents before the agents had gotten there, warning them in enough time for Clark to hide and bury the shuttles, then come back along the country roads to pretend that he had just been out walking his new puppy.
The only reason why the shuttles wouldn't be here now was if someone had found them. Someone with access to the heavy equipment needed to uncover them, as they had been ten feet down in the earth.
"What are we supposed to do now?" Clark wondered. "I can't go find that guy again. He wants to kill me for something my bio-dad did. And what am I supposed to do when the craziest government agent I've ever met might have the only thing that'll tell me about where I came from? What happens if there is something and he figures out how to read it?"
Krypto had no answer for him.
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