Confessions of a Superman
By Jeune Ecrivain
Rating: G, maybe PG
Genre: futurefic, drama, romance
Summary: When Superman comes up in conversation, 25-year-old Lana Lang gets the biggest clue of her life.
PART IV
"Okay," Chloe began. "The first thing that struck me was that Superman's only physical vulnerability just happened to be the very same meteor rocks that turned Smallville into a mutant farm."
"Mutant farm," Pete repeated. "How vivid."
Chloe continued. "And Superman said in that interview with my cousin Lois, who, by the way, I still can't believe became a journalist, that he came to Earth as a very small child and was raised by an Earth family. Naturally, he didn't say where, but because, like I said, the meteor rocks that make him sick were most abundant in Smallville, I had already surmised where."
"It kinda makes sense, in a twisted way," Lana observed. "Us Earthlings got weird powers from those meteors from Clark's home planet, but it has the opposite effect on someone from that planet."
"I prefer the term 'birth planet,'" said Clark. "Earth has always been and always will be my home. Home is where the heart is." He said the last part with a furtive glance at Lana.
"Anyway," Chloe resumed. "I knew Superman was a Smallvillian. That really piqued my interest. I mean, there was a chance that I could've gone to school with him or something and never known it. Which, as it turns out I did! But at first, I never would've imagined that I'd known him so well!"
"Neither would I," said Lana.
"I knew a lot longer than you girls did," Pete remarked, "and-"
"WHAT?!" Chloe cut him off.
"Oh, right," Pete digressed sheepishly. "You missed the part where I found Clark's spaceship and found out the truth back in high school."
"HIGH SCHOOL?!" Chloe repeated. "You knew all this time!"
Pete threw his hands up in meek self-defense. "I was sworn to secrecy! Mr. Kent was so worried that if anyone found out, even Clark's best friends, Clark would eventually be taken away to be studied and dissected!" he protested. "Don't look at me like that! I *wanted* to tell you! Heck, I wanted to tell the whole world at first!"
Chloe's I-can't-believe-you-didn't-tell-me look eased slightly, and she grudgingly shrugged it off and resumed her story. "Anyway, I did some real digging. I pulled out everything I had ever posted on the old Wall of Weird."
"You mean to tell me you still have all that stuff?!" It was Pete's turn to be incredulous. "Why don't you just go all the way and change your middle name to Paranormal or something?"
Chloe shot him a look, and Pete shut up. "I looked all through it," she continued, "for any mutants with powers that resembled Superman's. I didn't find anything worth looking into, so I decided to take another look at Superman himself. I pulled up the latest picture, and that's when I noticed...I don't think I would've seen it if I hadn't been subconsciously looking for it, but...I looked at it and Superman just suddenly reminded me of my favorite farmboy! There was more experience in his eyes, to be sure, and the hairstyle really changed his look, but it was still there!"
"I remember when I first saw reports of Superman," Pete supplemented. "I thought it was just some very well-staged hoax until I read about some of the things he could do and saw a close picture. Then I realized..."
"It's amazing how well he hides it," Lana remarked. "I doubt anyone who hasn't known Clark for so long and as well as we do could've figured it out, even with many of the same clues."
"That's good," Clark stated. "It means my secret's safe."
Chloe resumed, on a roll. "After I saw the resemblance, a lot of memories started coming back to me. I remembered that for the longest time you couldn't go near Lana without getting all clumsy and pale. I never knew until just then that it was her kryptonite necklace! Clark and Lana only really started getting to know each other after she stopped wearing it. Then I remembered when you saved me from being buried alive by Deputy Watts! I have no idea why it didn't occur to me then, but no human could've opened that steel box without the key, but I heard someone just rip it off, but when I opened my eyes, there you were! A lot of things like that suddenly made sense!"
"It was the mystery of Clark Kent finally solved!" Lana diagnosed.
"And then I returned to one of the first questions I ever had about our Man of Steel," Chloe said, beginning to draw her tale to a close. "He doesn't wear a mask, so how does he hide his identity. I considered my prime suspect, Clark, and remembered that, since high school, he had conveniently started to wear glasses. The pieces were really falling into place. I mean, why would anyone wear glasses when they could just as easily wear contacts. The answer hit me. Contacts can't distort the eyes and therefore aren't a good disguise."
"Bravo, Chloe!" Clark congratulated her. "You are the master of deductive reasoning!"
Pete chuckled in mock derision. "What'd you expect? Paranormal Sullivan here has had a lot of practice."
Chloe smirked at him, then turned to Clark. "But there's still one part of the tale that has yet to be told."
"What's that?"
She looked at Clark as if it were obvious. "Where did you ever get the idea of donning a blue and red costume and having a dual identity?"
Clark laughed. He looked around, and saw that Lana and Pete were also wondering about this now. He smiled his wide Kent grin and commenced his own tale. "Well, I've always wanted to use my powers to help people. But I had to be very careful when I did for fear of being discovered."
All six eyes were on him, urging him to continue.
"Then came Psych 101. The first assignment the professor gave us was to do an experiment in which we came up with some kind of disguise and tried fooling people into thinking we were two different people. The idea was to test how changing a few things about one's appearance can affect people's perception. So I borrowed Grandpa Hiram's reading glasses and started wearing them on campus. Then, I would visit a popular café that a lot of other students went to without the glasses and with my hair brushed back." Clark shook his head in awe. "It worked like a charm! Nobody knew who I was. I even had my bespectacled self show up at the café one day at the usual hour, and one of the waitresses asked where my other self was, since I had made it my habit to show up without the glasses and with the different hairstyle at about the same time everyday."
"Wow!" Lana marveled. "It's amazing how well it works even now. I never would've guessed had I never spoken to Arthur, and yet now it seems so obvious."
"I know!" Clark marveled with her. "Anyway, this went on for a semester. Just before I was to turn in my paper on the results of this experiment, there was a situation where I had to use my powers to help someone. I don't remember exactly what it was, but the person turned out to be a student who had transferred here to Met-U for the spring semester. We'd talked a lot in the hall, but I had my glasses on then. He marveled at my strength, but he didn't recognize me. It was then that I realized that I could really use this dual identity trick!"
"If only that professor knew that he inspired Superman!" Chloe speculated in wonderment.
Clark continued. "I decided to keep the glasses. I told everyone I had some sort of eye disease. At the end of the spring semester, I found a piece of my spaceship I had never seen, and let's just say it taught me a lot about my Kryptonian family and heritage. It showed me my biological family's...coat-of-arms, if you will,...which I now wear on my chest."
"I always wondered where that symbol came from!" said Pete.
Clark grinned in amusement. "Anyway, I'd been using my glassless altar-ego to help people in accidents or stop crime for a while by then. I did whatever I could, whenever I could. I'd just duck into a private alley corner or something, take my glasses off, brush my hair back, and go into action. I was careful around people I had known since the start of college for two years so that they could forget what the me they saw on campus looked like without the glasses. But the system worked really well. As graduation approached, I even began to refine my disguise. I deepened my voice a little when I was without the glasses and took on a rather bookish, mild-mannered persona when I was wearing them."
"Get to the costume!" Chloe urged impatiently.
Clark chuckled. "My parents were a little leary of the whole secret identity system at first, but once they saw how well it worked, they were happy that I had found a way to do what I'd always wanted to do with my abilities without so much restraint and fear of being seen. I still had to be cautious, but I had more freedom than I did before."
"Go on!" Lana implored him, intrigued.
"I guess I have to go back to a bet I made with some frat buddies. I lost, and the loser had to do a gig as an elf for the local mall Santa Claus."
Lana giggled at the mental image of Clark in an elf costume. It was so cute!
"Not funny," Clark said, smiling despite himself. "Anyway, the main part of the costume was this deep blue body suit with this red codpiece and red boots and a yellow belt. Much to my embarrassment, Mom dug this thing up at the end of my senior year. I had already been talking vaguely about a costume, but nothing definite yet. But, I had shown Mom and Dad my Kryptonian family's symbol and everything," Clark intercepted his monologue with a chuckle, "and I think Mom had a little too much free time on her hands that day. She told me later that inspiration had struck her, and she had just taken to the sewing machine!"
Chloe giggled.
"Anyway, I come home with my degree after graduation, and Mom hands me this creation of hers! I was pleasantly surprised, to say the least. I thought it looked a little corny, but when she convinced me to try it on, I saw that it had a weird sort of dignity to it."
Pete chuckled and stood up. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of Superman!"
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I apologize to any anxious readers that I haven't updated in ages, but inspiration just didn't hit me in regards to this story for a long time. However, Smallville did inspire my second novel, which is progressing very well. It is posted on Fanfiction.net under Comics Superman. I think it has a little something for Smallville fans as well as general Superman fans, though it is not based on the Smallville timeline. I have gotten some very encouraging feedback in the mere two reviews I've received, but reviews are surprisingly slow in coming. So, those of you who enjoyed this sample of my writing, please take the time to read, hopefully enjoy, and review "The Kent Family Secret" by Jeune Ecrivain. I think I can promise with relative safety that it's worth your while. Part I is nearing completion. I hate to beg, but if it comes to that, I wouldn't put it past myself. Warning to Fanatic CLana Fans: As much as I would like Clark and Lana to be together forever, in a reluctant nod to Superman reality, "The Kent Family Secret" is a CLois. However, any fanfic I write specifically for Smallville will always be CLana. We can still dream.
By Jeune Ecrivain
Rating: G, maybe PG
Genre: futurefic, drama, romance
Summary: When Superman comes up in conversation, 25-year-old Lana Lang gets the biggest clue of her life.
PART IV
"Okay," Chloe began. "The first thing that struck me was that Superman's only physical vulnerability just happened to be the very same meteor rocks that turned Smallville into a mutant farm."
"Mutant farm," Pete repeated. "How vivid."
Chloe continued. "And Superman said in that interview with my cousin Lois, who, by the way, I still can't believe became a journalist, that he came to Earth as a very small child and was raised by an Earth family. Naturally, he didn't say where, but because, like I said, the meteor rocks that make him sick were most abundant in Smallville, I had already surmised where."
"It kinda makes sense, in a twisted way," Lana observed. "Us Earthlings got weird powers from those meteors from Clark's home planet, but it has the opposite effect on someone from that planet."
"I prefer the term 'birth planet,'" said Clark. "Earth has always been and always will be my home. Home is where the heart is." He said the last part with a furtive glance at Lana.
"Anyway," Chloe resumed. "I knew Superman was a Smallvillian. That really piqued my interest. I mean, there was a chance that I could've gone to school with him or something and never known it. Which, as it turns out I did! But at first, I never would've imagined that I'd known him so well!"
"Neither would I," said Lana.
"I knew a lot longer than you girls did," Pete remarked, "and-"
"WHAT?!" Chloe cut him off.
"Oh, right," Pete digressed sheepishly. "You missed the part where I found Clark's spaceship and found out the truth back in high school."
"HIGH SCHOOL?!" Chloe repeated. "You knew all this time!"
Pete threw his hands up in meek self-defense. "I was sworn to secrecy! Mr. Kent was so worried that if anyone found out, even Clark's best friends, Clark would eventually be taken away to be studied and dissected!" he protested. "Don't look at me like that! I *wanted* to tell you! Heck, I wanted to tell the whole world at first!"
Chloe's I-can't-believe-you-didn't-tell-me look eased slightly, and she grudgingly shrugged it off and resumed her story. "Anyway, I did some real digging. I pulled out everything I had ever posted on the old Wall of Weird."
"You mean to tell me you still have all that stuff?!" It was Pete's turn to be incredulous. "Why don't you just go all the way and change your middle name to Paranormal or something?"
Chloe shot him a look, and Pete shut up. "I looked all through it," she continued, "for any mutants with powers that resembled Superman's. I didn't find anything worth looking into, so I decided to take another look at Superman himself. I pulled up the latest picture, and that's when I noticed...I don't think I would've seen it if I hadn't been subconsciously looking for it, but...I looked at it and Superman just suddenly reminded me of my favorite farmboy! There was more experience in his eyes, to be sure, and the hairstyle really changed his look, but it was still there!"
"I remember when I first saw reports of Superman," Pete supplemented. "I thought it was just some very well-staged hoax until I read about some of the things he could do and saw a close picture. Then I realized..."
"It's amazing how well he hides it," Lana remarked. "I doubt anyone who hasn't known Clark for so long and as well as we do could've figured it out, even with many of the same clues."
"That's good," Clark stated. "It means my secret's safe."
Chloe resumed, on a roll. "After I saw the resemblance, a lot of memories started coming back to me. I remembered that for the longest time you couldn't go near Lana without getting all clumsy and pale. I never knew until just then that it was her kryptonite necklace! Clark and Lana only really started getting to know each other after she stopped wearing it. Then I remembered when you saved me from being buried alive by Deputy Watts! I have no idea why it didn't occur to me then, but no human could've opened that steel box without the key, but I heard someone just rip it off, but when I opened my eyes, there you were! A lot of things like that suddenly made sense!"
"It was the mystery of Clark Kent finally solved!" Lana diagnosed.
"And then I returned to one of the first questions I ever had about our Man of Steel," Chloe said, beginning to draw her tale to a close. "He doesn't wear a mask, so how does he hide his identity. I considered my prime suspect, Clark, and remembered that, since high school, he had conveniently started to wear glasses. The pieces were really falling into place. I mean, why would anyone wear glasses when they could just as easily wear contacts. The answer hit me. Contacts can't distort the eyes and therefore aren't a good disguise."
"Bravo, Chloe!" Clark congratulated her. "You are the master of deductive reasoning!"
Pete chuckled in mock derision. "What'd you expect? Paranormal Sullivan here has had a lot of practice."
Chloe smirked at him, then turned to Clark. "But there's still one part of the tale that has yet to be told."
"What's that?"
She looked at Clark as if it were obvious. "Where did you ever get the idea of donning a blue and red costume and having a dual identity?"
Clark laughed. He looked around, and saw that Lana and Pete were also wondering about this now. He smiled his wide Kent grin and commenced his own tale. "Well, I've always wanted to use my powers to help people. But I had to be very careful when I did for fear of being discovered."
All six eyes were on him, urging him to continue.
"Then came Psych 101. The first assignment the professor gave us was to do an experiment in which we came up with some kind of disguise and tried fooling people into thinking we were two different people. The idea was to test how changing a few things about one's appearance can affect people's perception. So I borrowed Grandpa Hiram's reading glasses and started wearing them on campus. Then, I would visit a popular café that a lot of other students went to without the glasses and with my hair brushed back." Clark shook his head in awe. "It worked like a charm! Nobody knew who I was. I even had my bespectacled self show up at the café one day at the usual hour, and one of the waitresses asked where my other self was, since I had made it my habit to show up without the glasses and with the different hairstyle at about the same time everyday."
"Wow!" Lana marveled. "It's amazing how well it works even now. I never would've guessed had I never spoken to Arthur, and yet now it seems so obvious."
"I know!" Clark marveled with her. "Anyway, this went on for a semester. Just before I was to turn in my paper on the results of this experiment, there was a situation where I had to use my powers to help someone. I don't remember exactly what it was, but the person turned out to be a student who had transferred here to Met-U for the spring semester. We'd talked a lot in the hall, but I had my glasses on then. He marveled at my strength, but he didn't recognize me. It was then that I realized that I could really use this dual identity trick!"
"If only that professor knew that he inspired Superman!" Chloe speculated in wonderment.
Clark continued. "I decided to keep the glasses. I told everyone I had some sort of eye disease. At the end of the spring semester, I found a piece of my spaceship I had never seen, and let's just say it taught me a lot about my Kryptonian family and heritage. It showed me my biological family's...coat-of-arms, if you will,...which I now wear on my chest."
"I always wondered where that symbol came from!" said Pete.
Clark grinned in amusement. "Anyway, I'd been using my glassless altar-ego to help people in accidents or stop crime for a while by then. I did whatever I could, whenever I could. I'd just duck into a private alley corner or something, take my glasses off, brush my hair back, and go into action. I was careful around people I had known since the start of college for two years so that they could forget what the me they saw on campus looked like without the glasses. But the system worked really well. As graduation approached, I even began to refine my disguise. I deepened my voice a little when I was without the glasses and took on a rather bookish, mild-mannered persona when I was wearing them."
"Get to the costume!" Chloe urged impatiently.
Clark chuckled. "My parents were a little leary of the whole secret identity system at first, but once they saw how well it worked, they were happy that I had found a way to do what I'd always wanted to do with my abilities without so much restraint and fear of being seen. I still had to be cautious, but I had more freedom than I did before."
"Go on!" Lana implored him, intrigued.
"I guess I have to go back to a bet I made with some frat buddies. I lost, and the loser had to do a gig as an elf for the local mall Santa Claus."
Lana giggled at the mental image of Clark in an elf costume. It was so cute!
"Not funny," Clark said, smiling despite himself. "Anyway, the main part of the costume was this deep blue body suit with this red codpiece and red boots and a yellow belt. Much to my embarrassment, Mom dug this thing up at the end of my senior year. I had already been talking vaguely about a costume, but nothing definite yet. But, I had shown Mom and Dad my Kryptonian family's symbol and everything," Clark intercepted his monologue with a chuckle, "and I think Mom had a little too much free time on her hands that day. She told me later that inspiration had struck her, and she had just taken to the sewing machine!"
Chloe giggled.
"Anyway, I come home with my degree after graduation, and Mom hands me this creation of hers! I was pleasantly surprised, to say the least. I thought it looked a little corny, but when she convinced me to try it on, I saw that it had a weird sort of dignity to it."
Pete chuckled and stood up. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of Superman!"
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I apologize to any anxious readers that I haven't updated in ages, but inspiration just didn't hit me in regards to this story for a long time. However, Smallville did inspire my second novel, which is progressing very well. It is posted on Fanfiction.net under Comics Superman. I think it has a little something for Smallville fans as well as general Superman fans, though it is not based on the Smallville timeline. I have gotten some very encouraging feedback in the mere two reviews I've received, but reviews are surprisingly slow in coming. So, those of you who enjoyed this sample of my writing, please take the time to read, hopefully enjoy, and review "The Kent Family Secret" by Jeune Ecrivain. I think I can promise with relative safety that it's worth your while. Part I is nearing completion. I hate to beg, but if it comes to that, I wouldn't put it past myself. Warning to Fanatic CLana Fans: As much as I would like Clark and Lana to be together forever, in a reluctant nod to Superman reality, "The Kent Family Secret" is a CLois. However, any fanfic I write specifically for Smallville will always be CLana. We can still dream.