Clark and Emmeline popped up to the apartment above the Talon where Chloe had since moved in after Met U had shut down for repairs due to the events of Dark Thursday.

"Hey," Chloe greeted as she let them in.

"Hey, how goes life living with Lois?" Clark asked.

"Closer to coffee, further from sanity, but, you know, until Metropolis University reopens, I guess. What is it they say about a gift horse?"

"'Stay away from the mouth' which it difficult because Lois uses hers so much."

Chloe laughed. "Right."

"So why the emergency call?" Emmeline asked. "What's up?"

"Okay, so, I found a body in the woods out at Lone Pine last night. Girl and guy decide to make like the birds and the bees, girl gets her wings cut, guy buzzes off."

"You think he killed her?" Clark questioned.

"I seriously doubt some freshly minted pimple popper is physically capable of doing that. I mean, the M.O. wasn't exactly…normal, if you know what I mean."

Clark looked at her blankly before lowering his voice to copy hers, "What do you mean?"

"Impaling people in trees in under five minutes isn't humanly possible."

"Unless the guy was infected with kryptonite."

"And that's our only lead, and he's still missing."

"That's disgusting," Emmeline remarked. "I'd never be able to get that image out of my head."

Clark thought about what she was saying and then furrowed his brow. "What were you doing at Make-Out Point?"

Just as Chloe was about to answer, the door opened. Clark smiled and turned to see who had entered. When he did, his smile fell flat onto the floor.

"What's up, C.K., Em?" Jimmy smiled innocently.

Emmeline pressed her lips together to stifle her laugh while Clark and Chloe shared a very awkward look.

As the three of them made their way to the park to see what they could find, Emmeline discreetly told Clark, "So, uh, I believe you owe me twenty bucks."

"Just because they were at…" He nervously cleared his throat. "…Make-Out Point does not mean I lost. They're not technically dating yet."

"You know you're just delaying the inevitable? In the end, I'm going to win and be twenty dollars richer."

"Yeah, yeah, we still have a month. I'm not sure Chloe would appreciate us gambling on her dating life."

"That's why she doesn't know about it."

When they arrived at the scene of the murder, there were already at least thirty people in orange vests combing the woods along with a couple police officers from the sheriff's station.

"Sorry," Chloe apologized. "They'd already organized a search party. And the police dogs from Granville will be here in another hour."

"Chloe, where exactly did you find the body?" Clark asked.

"It was just up the road about a quarter mile."

"Okay."

Without any warning, Clark super-sped way ahead of them up the path.

Chloe sighed. "Guess we'll meet you there."

"Cheater," Emmeline mumbled.

"Well, if it's any consolation, he'll probably find something faster that way."

"It's still not fair."

"No argument here."

They walked up the path as fast as they could to meet Clark where the body had been found last night.

"Clark, where are you?" Chloe called.

"Over here," he called in reply. "He's alive!"

Chloe and Emmeline raced over to him and found that the missing boy's body had been hidden at the base of a tree beneath thorned vines.

Clark frantically tried to break through the dangerous covering when he cried out in pain and jerked back.

"Clark," Chloe said in disbelief. "You're bleeding."

Emmeline looked at his hands and saw that the thorns had left several cuts and indents on them. Within a few seconds, the injuries had healed but these mysterious plants had still somehow managed to cut what was supposed to be impenetrable skin.

The three of them rushed to the hospital once the boy was admitted and Jimmy decided to meet them there.

"Okay, we don't have much time," Chloe said as they stepped into the boy's hospital room. "His mom's in the cafeteria." She pulled his clipboard off the bed and glanced at the paperwork. "Wow, this guy's pretty messed up."

"Not as bad as his girlfriend in the tree," Jimmy told her.

Clark pulled up the x-ray the doctors had taken of his chest. The scan showed some kinds of weird masses all throughout his lungs and ribs. "Hey, what are these things on his lungs?"

"Whoa."

Chloe walked over to the lit-up screen. "Beats me."

A camera flash filled the room.

"Jimmy!"

"What? Look, we have to get this in the paper. We have to warn people."

"We don't even know what it is yet."

"She's right," Clark added. "A picture of some weird x-ray isn't exactly page-one material."

"Yeah, well, maybe we'd have a better picture if I was with you guys when you found him," Jimmy said icily.

"Okay, that was my call," Chloe told him gently. "You're just so much more at home on the streets of Metropolis. I know the woods freak you out."

"No, no, you know what freaks me out is my girl traipsing through a forest when something like that can happen."

Chloe raised her eyebrows. "'Your girl'?"

"…I mean, aren't you?"

Emmeline turned to Clark and discreetly but very clearly mouthed, Twenty…bucks.

Clark rolled his eyes. "Guys, this really isn't the time."

"Yeah, you're right, C.K," Jimmy admitted. "I got to go take care of something. So, we'll talk later when we're alone?"

"Okay," Chloe nodded, smiling broadly.

Jimmy quickly left the hospital room taking pretty much all of the awkwardness lingering in the air with him.

"Is he always that fired up?" Clark asked.

"You should see him when he's on his tenth cup of house drip."

They left the room as well so they could get out before the boy's mother came back and caught them all inside. That was a confrontation Emmeline could live without.

"How are your hands?"

"Healed."

"Which begs the obvious question, since not even Obi-Wan's lightsaber can Ginsu your 'superdermis', how did a little vine cut through it?"

"I don't know, but I didn't get weak, so it's not kryptonite."

"Well, I sent a cutting of the vine to my botany professor at Met U. If it's not meteor rock, what else could it be?"

"You know, Lone Pine Ridge goes right up against the Luthor estate. There's a greenhouse that runs right near the property line. That'd be a good place to start."

"Okay, call me the advocate of the devil, Clark, but don't you think that pointing the pitchfork at Lex is a little bit of a stretch?"

"He had his hands on the Kryptonian ship. He was possessed by Zod. He nearly destroyed this planet. If the horns fit—"

"Okay, fine. I'm just saying you might want to check your personals at the door."

When Clark left, Emmeline swiveled around to face Chloe. "So…you and Jimmy, huh?"

Chloe smiled awkwardly but brightly. "I'm, uh, not totally sure yet."

"Oh, so you two went to Make-Out Point and you just sat in the car the whole time?"

Her cheeks brightened. "Well…"

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

"I mean, I guess I was kind of nervous because I told you what happened between us when we were both in high school, but…the second I saw him…all these feelings I didn't even know I had just…appeared. And after I told him I wanted to take it slow this time, I…well, I kissed him."

Emmeline laughed. "Guess your heart knows better than your head."

"My heart is impulsive and needs to shut up."

"Well, he's nice and he's certainly protective of you. I approve."

"I guess it's worth seeing where this goes then."

"So, you were right," Chloe told Clark once they all returned to the hospital. "The pods inside his stomach are seeds. He's going into surgery in an hour."

"Anything from your professor friend?"

"He was unable to identify the species, but he could break down the DNA, and it's foreign…to the planet Earth which explains why it could cut you."

"It's alien? How did it get here?"

"I don't know, but while it can't gestate in our soil, the chemistry of the human body creates a perfect potting mix."

Someone screamed and two nurses ran out of the boy's room. "Find his mother! I'm issuing a code red."

The three of them raced over to the room and were horrified to find it covered in vines that had sprouted from the boy's stomach.

"This is a whole new level of disturbing," Emmeline breathed.

They quickly began making their way out of the hospital.

"We need to stop it," Clark said.

"Not 'it', Clark," Chloe told him. "'Her'. The plant's gynoecious. It has a sex. Female."

"It needed a male to reproduce which is why the girlfriend was killed so quickly."

"Coming through." A female paramedic ushered a gurney through the hallway with a body bag on it. "Park ranger up at Lone Pine. Hunter found her this morning."

"Excuse me," Clark said as he touched the woman's shoulder. "I think I can identify her."

The paramedic opened the body bag. Emmeline felt ill at the sight of the dead blonde woman's face covered in dirt and various cuts.

"I'm sorry, there's been a mistake. That's not the park ranger."

"Selina Adams, 28, went missing last week. Only female ranger in the county."

Clark turned to them with a grave expression. "Gloria."

"Who's Gloria?" Emmeline asked.

"A woman up there who claimed to be the park ranger."

He sped off, leaving Chloe and Emmeline alone once again without so much as a further explanation, but they supposed they could excuse it this time since he needed to stop whoever Gloria was from repeating what had just happened to the poor boy who had only wanted a night out with his girlfriend.

Chloe walked back over to the boy's hospital room. The outlet nearest to the door suddenly sparked. Furrowing her eyebrows, Chloe grabbed the vine that stuck out from the outlet. It crumbled to dirt in her palm.

"I have an idea, come on," she said urgently.

They quickly rushed back to the park to make sure that Gloria didn't off Clark with her magic vines that were capable of doing some real damage to him.

"Clark!" Chloe called.

"Clark!" Emmeline joined in. "Where are you?!"

"Clark, we can't find you on our own! You have to help us! Where are you?! Clark!"

"Chloe," a weak voice whispered. "Em…"

The two girls turned around and their eyes widened when they saw Clark ensnared in a wall made of the killer vines. But what was worse was that he had a huge thick vine sprouting out of the middle of his stomach. Emmeline put her hands to her mouth in horror.

Chloe looked at the taser in her hand. Then she ran up to the wall and pulsed it with 50,000 volts of electricity.

Emmeline looked around the base of the plants for some other way she could help. That was when she noticed another vine casing similar to the one the other boy had been trapped in. When she stepped closer, she could make out a face.

"Holy crap," she whispered, realizing it was Jimmy. She frantically tried to pull the vine casing off, ignoring all of the cuts she received from the thorns. She wasn't about to let this guy die, not when Chloe cared about him so much.

The vines around Clark loosened and some of them began to crumble. He collapsed onto the ground unconscious. Chloe quickly knelt down and pulled him into her arms. "Come on, Clark. Come back. We can't lose you twice in one month."

Clark sat up and gripped his chest where the vine had impaled him.

"Are you okay?"

"I will be in a second," he answered. "How'd you kill it?"

"Biology 101. Electricity denatures enzymes."

"We have to help Jimmy."

"Jimmy?"

"Over here!" Emmeline called.

Clark and Chloe ran over to her. Emmeline's hands were now dripping blood from her frantic attempts to remove the vines, but she'd still managed to remove enough of them to nearly free Jimmy.

"Gloria's headed to the mansion," Clark said.

"The Dark Thursday party," Emmeline put together. "She's going to kill all those guys."

"Go," Chloe said firmly. "We'll get help for Jimmy. Go!"

Clark sped off.

Chloe called the paramedics who arrived shortly after and removed Jimmy from the rest of the vines.

As they wheeled him on a gurney back towards the ambulance, Chloe kept insisting, "There are seed pods inside him that can only be killed with electricity."

"You're insane," one of the paramedics answered shortly.

"No, please, listen to me. You have to defibrillate him or he will die."

"The guy is not in cardiac arrest. We will not defib. Now back off."

Chloe bit her lip as the paramedics put Jimmy in the back of the ambulance. She and Emmeline climbed in after him for the drive back.

The paramedics closed the doors and went up to the front of the vehicle.

Chloe looked beside her and saw a defibrillator. She glanced over at Emmeline. The girl just held her bleeding hands close to her chest and shrugged her shoulders helplessly.

Chloe turned on the machine and undid Jimmy's shirt to expose his chest. When she unhooked the paddles, the paramedic behind the wheel frantically turned around.

"Hey, what are you doing?" he exclaimed.

The other paramedic opened the door to the back.

"Back off!" Chloe yelled, holding the paddles out. "They're hot." She leaned over Jimmy and positioned the paddles over his chest. "Please don't let me kill him," she whispered.

After a second's hesitation, she pushed the paddles onto his chest. Jimmy convulsed and then after a painfully and excruciatingly long moment, he slowly opened his eyes.

"Did you just paddle me?" he asked weakly.

Chloe let out a relieved laugh as she put the paddles back. "Yeah."

After Clark succeeded in vaporizing Gloria before she stuck her thorny little vines into any more unsuspecting men, Emmeline found herself once again walking up the stairs to Clark's loft. She saw him leaning against the couch throwing a ball back and forth to the chest opposite him.

"It seems like everyone's paired off and we're the ones hung out to dry," she smirked as she sat down beside him. "Chloe's with Jimmy, Lana's with Lex for whatever reason, even Lois and billionaire playboy Oliver Queen seem to be doing a weird little dance."

"I hope he knows what he's getting himself into," Clark answered.

Emmeline smiled. "I don't think anyone knows what they're getting themselves into when it comes to Lois."

"Truer words have never been spoken."

"So Gloria's gone for good, right?"

"Yeah, a little electricity lesson. It's just…"

"What?"

"This whole thing…I found out that when I opened the portal in the Phantom Zone, she came with me. And if she came out…how many more came out too?"

Emmeline sighed. "Well…we'll find them. And we'll stop them. Like we always do."

Clark took one of her bandaged hands in his and rubbed his fingers over the white fabric. "How are your hands?"

She hoped that she wasn't blushing, and it took longer than she'd like to admit to realize he had asked her a question. "They hurt like heck, but I'll survive."

"Why didn't you just wait for the paramedics to get him out?"

"Just…seeing him like that trapped in those vines…he looked so vulnerable. And I knew how much Chloe really cares about him, and the thought of her losing him…"

"Your level of devotion to the people you care about always amazes me."

"Yeah, well, I think I come in second next to you."

Clark gave her that incredible warm smile that always filled her stomach with butterflies, even back when she wasn't interested in him. That smile made her feel like she was worth everything to him.

Do it, Emmeline thought. Just ask him out. To dinner. Or just coffee. Come on, you can do it. Chloe has Jimmy, and Lana's mostly out of the picture now. It's just the two of you. Come on.

"Um…I'll take that twenty dollars, by the way," she mustered out. "I clearly won this one."

Clark laughed lightly. "All right, all right, I can admit defeat."

"Don't worry, I won't hold it against you." She stood up and made her way to the stairs. "I'll see you."

"Yeah, good night, Em."

Emmeline walked towards the barn door and sighed. She glanced back up at the loft where she had once again missed her chance.

But she couldn't do it. She couldn't risk that he would tell her no. That their relationship would change drastically if she asked him. That Lana would always be the priority. That she would never truly hold that place in his heart.

Biting her lip, she headed out to her car, her feelings eating away at her heart, unable to be satisfied.

Little did she know that Clark had been thinking the same thing.