It was a pretty big shock to find out that Jonathon Kent planned for to run for Senate. But if the alternative was Lex Luthor winning, well, then someone had to beat him.

After a rocky start with a questionable campaign manager, Jonathon hired Lois to run his campaign for him.

Allegedly, a girl running a campaign for Lex at CKU really got in Lois's face about hanging posters and seemed to be determined to help Lex win. Really determined.

That evening, Emmeline's bed was surrounded with papers and textbooks while her computer sat in front of her.

Taking a full load her first year in addition to an internship was really starting to come back to bite her, but she really wanted to graduate in two years in order to save her father money. He was already so overwhelmed with her mother's hospital bills and the funeral expenses.

Not to mention she would be lying if she said she wasn't a bit jealous that Chloe was already on the path to having her dream job. She wanted to get started as soon as she could.

A knock on the front door burst through her developing headache.

She got up and went downstairs to answer it.

"Hey!" she smiled when she saw that Clark was standing on the porch.

"Hey, uh, you're not busy, are you?"

"Are you kidding? This is a much-welcomed break from my mountain of homework. Come on in." She headed inside the kitchen. "Can I get you anything?"

"I'm fine, thanks."

Emmeline pulled a soda out of the fridge for herself and started sipping it. "What's up?"

Clark nervously looked everywhere but at her. "So…I can come to you with anything, right?"

"Yeah, you know that."

"And I mean…anything?"

"Yeah," Emmeline answered slowly, wondering where he was heading with all this.

"Okay, it's um…it's me and Lana."

"What happened now?"

"Well…everything was fine between Lana and I when I was human. I mean, it was great."

"Okay, so what's the problem?"

"But now that I have my abilities back, it's like our…sex…life…has been on hiatus."

Emmeline stopped sipping her soda. "Oh, boy," she said quietly as her face reddened. "Uh…right. If I wanna be a psychologist, I need to get used to talking about awkward subjects. Um…why do you think that is?"

"…'Cause it just takes some time for me to adjust my abilities to new…situations."

Emmeline put her hand to her forehead and took a deep breath. "Ooh…um…okay. So you're afraid that you'll hurt her in some way if things start getting…" She nervously cleared her throat. "…passionate."

Clark nodded, looking like he too wanted the earth to swallow him whole. He couldn't even believe he was having this conversation. Clearly, he needed more guy friends who knew his secret. At times like these, he really, really missed having Pete around.

"I could see the super-strength posing potential problems," she continued. "And didn't you say the heat vision was triggered by…?"

Clark's face equally reddened. "Well, see, that's the thing. I'm not sure what would happen. I mean, if I couldn't control myself—"

"Okay, nope," she quickly interrupted. She put both hands to her face, quietly muttering, "Oh, mental images, mental images, mental images…" She faced him again, her face flaming. "We can safely say there are officially no more boundaries on this friendship."

Clark smiled sheepishly.

She took a deep breath and tried to will the redness in her face way. "Look, I'm not exactly sure how…that all would work given your abilities and everything, but you can control those abilities really well. I mean, you've never hurt me or anyone else without meaning to, right? When you played football and you got lost in the moment and wanted to do anything to win, you still controlled yourself and played normally. It's the same with this kind of thing. No matter how lost in the moment you get, a part of you always subconsciously focuses on maintaining that control."

Clark once again looked down at the floor as he nodded a little.

Emmeline crossed her arms. "Something tells me that wasn't the only problem."

He sighed as he turned away from her. "I think I got used to lying to Lana when we were friends. Now it's different."

"Well, you must've expected that."

"I guess. I just…denied it."

Emmeline chuckled. "That's because you're more in love with that girl than anything. You would vehemently deny the moon existed if it meant you got to be with her."

"Yeah, you're probably right. But I can't just tell her. It's too risky."

"Clark, you're going to hate hearing this, but it might not be possible to be with someone who doesn't know the truth about you. It's not just about the fact that you have to lie but that they will always doubt you. Lana has always been the kind of person who has to know the truth no matter the cost. That's probably why she wanted to study astronomy in the first place. I think you have to consider the possibilities of not telling her and decide if it's worth it."


Later that night, Emmeline walked into the Daily Planet and went over to Chloe's desk as she got up to sort some files.

"Whoa, your face is super red," Chloe remarked.

"Still?" Emmeline moaned.

"What happened?"

"Let's just say I got some rather interesting practice for my future as a psychologist."

"Chloe!"

The two girls looked over and saw Clark rushing to where they were standing. He exchanged awkward eye contact with Emmeline. Chloe raised a curious brow at their wordless interaction.

"Uh, I need your help," Clark said to Chloe.

Emmeline could feel her face getting hot once again which was sure to worsen the already existent blush.

"I just got back from the hospital," he continued. "Someone tied up my dad in the barn and warned him to back out of the Senate race. It's gotta be Lex."

"Lex Luthor going Godfather on your dad?" Chloe asked skeptically. "I don't know, Clark. Lex seems like the kind of guy who lives for the fight as much as the victory."

He handed her a sheet of paper and pointed to one of the numbers. "Here's a list of all the calls logged on our phone today. My dad pawned that one off as a wrong number. It's blocked, but…"

"Uh, I'll let my fingers do the walking. Just give me a second." She started running the number through her computer. "You know, it's not like your dad to keep something like this a secret."

"He's kind of turned into a different person lately, like he's got something to prove to everyone."

"Maybe just his son."

"What does running for senator have to do with me?"

"Think about it, Clark. It must be kind of hard being a role model for a guy who pulls people out of a burning building and stops nuclear missiles all between chores and dinner."

"No one's expecting him to do that."

"True, but it's not gonna stop him from trying." Her computer beeped signaling the search was done. "Oh, here we go. Let's see what we got." She waited for the program to show her the location of the number. "Great. The call was made from…whoa. The 'Students for Lex Luthor' office at CKU."

Emmeline looked up at Clark. "Lois mentioned something to me about one of the students being a little too gung ho about getting Lex to win."

"I'm gonna head there tomorrow and see what I can find," Clark said.

"I'll go with you."


Sure enough, the next day while Clark and Emmeline were on campus, they finished classes for the day and headed over to the room where the Lex fanatics had set up office.

Emmeline wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but when they stepped inside, the room was literally wallpapered with posters Lex had created for the campaign.

When they walked further into the room, a path of smeared red liquid ran across the floor.

The path ended where the bodies of two college boys lay dead with paper pictures of Lex on their faces and clumps of hair on their chests.

Emmeline took several shallow breaths upon discovering the bodies.

Clark quickly took her arm. "Em, Em, breathe."

Emmeline did as he said and willed herself to calm down. She refused to continue being the weak little girl Clark constantly had to rescue.

Clark knelt down and picked up some of the hair.

"Who do you think that belongs to?" Emmeline asked.

"I'm not sure, but I have a feeling that person who Lois mentioned was the one who did this and who came after my dad."

He noticed several pictures lying on a lit table and went over to examine them. Emmeline went next to him and looked at the picture he was holding of a girl standing next to Lex.

The hair matched what had been left on the bodies.

"Did she shave her head?" Emmeline asked in surprise. "Man, she's completely obsessed."

Clark set the picture down and picked up a political campaign poster for Jonathon.

His face had been completely scratched up.

"We better get to the rally," he stated.

Once they made it to the auditorium where Jonathon was giving a campaign speech, Clark headed towards the seats.

"You go ahead," Emmeline said. "I'll check in the back."

"Be careful."

Emmeline quietly inched her way around the lobby before heading up to the projection room, looking for anything suspicious. Upon reaching the small room, she heard voices.

"Nobody will ever believe I would shoot Jonathan Kent," she heard Lois say.

Emmeline's eyes widened. Shoot Jonathon Kent?!

"Really?" an unfamiliar voice stated mockingly.

Emmeline quietly peeked inside the room without letting herself be seen by the now-bald Lex Luthor fanatic.

"Beautiful girl comes to live under his roof. His wife gets a little too busy at that coffee shop. Suddenly, he fires a seasoned political consultant and takes the girl on the campaign trail. Until it all goes wrong, and the spurned lover gets her revenge."

Emmeline rolled her eyes. This girl really was nuts.

"Now just aim at Jonathan's head and shoot. Didn't General Lane teach you anything?"

"Actually, he did."

Lois rammed her elbow into the girl's gut and hit her across the head with the gun. The girl recovered quickly and grabbed the gun before smacking Lois across the face with it and sending her tumbling to the ground.

She angrily aimed the gun out the projection room window straight at Jonathon's head.

Emmeline silently removed her shoe from her foot, reminded of when she had done something similar to a vampire-Lana, and made her way into the projection room.

She snuck up behind the crazed girl and whacked her across the back of the head just as she fired a shot.

Her heart sank, but when she spared a glance out the window, Jonathon was still alive.

She smiled when she realized Clark must've caught the fired bullet.

Suddenly, her feet flew out from under as the girl knocked her down. She angrily aimed the gun at her with a sick smile, but before she could fire, Lois sprang up and restrained her from behind.

Clark ran into the room. "Lois," he said in surprise when he saw she had the situation under control.

"Don't sweat it, Smallville," she smirked. "Better late than never."

Emmeline let her head fall onto the floor in relief that no one had died. Well, today anyway.

Living in this town was bad for her heart.

But then…when she really thought about it, at the end of the day, she would never give it up for the world.