***
One of the wonderful things about being a workaholic, Lex decided, was that when your personal life sucked you could just spend more time working. It was comfort and profit put together!
Actually, it wasn't all that comforting, but it was better than nothing.
LexCorp stock prices and profits were up over the course of the last two weeks. He'd been spending every waking hour in the office, except for that one extraordinary afternoon at Clark's house examining the spacecraft. There had been pie, too. It was starting to look like that afternoon was going to end up being the high point of Lex's remaining life; Buffy didn't call; Clark was almost always busy with farm-work or super-heroism or Dawn....
Right, business. Back to work. Lex made a couple of notes in the margin of an operations report from his alternative fuels facility in Oklahoma. He'd had an interesting idea about hydrogen liquefaction, and he was wondering about production feasibility.
It was only two o'clock in the afternoon, but Lex really wanted a drink.
Instead he got an extremely unwelcome visit from his father.
Lionel Luthor burst in through the door of Lex's office as if he owned the place, which he *didn*'*t*. "Lex," he declaimed. "We need to talk!"
Lex sighed heavily. He neatly folded his papers away into a file folder and carefully stowed it in his safe. He softly closed the safe door and spun the dial before finally giving his father his attention. "What can I do for you today, Dad?"
Lionel had used the time to help himself to a brandy from the bar and make himself comfortable on the office's leather sofa. "I've just come from California. Sunnydale, I believe the town was called. A real hell-hole."
Lex swallowed his annoyance. "I don't think you're likely to find anyone to argue that point," he said. Lex got up from his desk chair and walked deliberately over to the small bar refrigerator. He got himself a bottle of water instead of a brandy. Lex walked with measured steps back to his desk and leaned against it. He wanted Lionel to be the next to speak.
Lionel finished his brandy with evident enjoyment. Finally he spoke. "She's insane, Lex. You should know better."
"You didn't." Even as he spoke, Lex knew that was a side-issue, and he knew that Lionel knew. Damn. He was getting a headache.
Lionel smiled. Lex hated that smile. "Draw from others the lesson that may profit yourself. Publius Terentius Afer," Lionel quoted. "Circa 160 BC. A wise man learns from others' mistakes. A fool must learn from his own."
Lex took a drink of water. "Buffy's not insane."
"Her own parents had her involuntarily committed to a mental institution in 1995. Her school records are full of incidents of violence and arson. She believes in vampires." Lionel rose from the sofa, using his silver-headed cane for leverage. "Tell me you'll break it off with her, son."
Lex's jaw worked, and he covered it up by drinking again. "Did you bribe her to leave me alone?"
"I tried, but she didn't seem to understand what I was talking about." Lionel shrugged flamboyantly. "She's moderately pretty, Lex, but extremely unstable and not very bright. That doctor you met in Anger Management was a better choice, and she was, well, awful." Lionel looked at Lex searchingly.
Lex just looked back. He didn't trust himself to speak.
After a few moments Lionel sighed heavily. "Very well. You leave me no choice, Lex. In the long run, you'll see that it's all for the best." Lionel swept magnificently out of the office.
Lex sank into his desk chair and tried to think.
***
Dawn took a big bite of chocolate chip muffin and washed it down with coffee. "So that's the sitch," she finished up. "Lex's dad may very well get me thrown out of school, and being thrashed by hired goons is always a possibility."
Clark shook his head. Even after all these years, he couldn't ever quite believe the plain evil that Lionel Luthor seemed willing to stoop to in order to get his own way. "Well, you can't stay here by yourself," he said.
Dawn looked at him like he was nuts. "What are you talking about?"
"I won't have you getting hurt in one of the Luthors' little squabbles. You'll have to come home with me."
Dawn laughed out loud, spraying crumbs. It was disgusting. And embarrassing. Clark realized he probably could have found a better way to phrase that.
"Clark, I love you and all, but I'm not coming to live in your house because Lionel Luthor is ticked with my sister! Get a grip!" Dawn quit cackling and drank the rest of her coffee.
Clark sat there stunned by the offhand way she'd said she loved him. She couldn't mean that, could she? Just like that? She must mean as a friend, the way he loved Chloe or Pete or Lex....
Dawn had gotten packed up and paid for their breakfast and was all the way to the front door of the cafe by the time Clark's brain and his body caught up with each other. She was tapping her foot impatiently at the door, waiting for him to put his things back in his backpack and come with her, when suddenly she stiffened.
Clark was beside her instantly. "What's wrong?"
"May I please have seventy-five cents, Clark? I used up all my quarters." Dawn's voice was calm and sort of remote.
Clark handed her three quarters and watched her put them in a newspaper dispenser there by the door of the coffee shop. The front page story of the "Inquisitor" was apparently Headless Body Discovered in Park. Dawn read the whole story standing there. She even turned to the inside back page and finished it. Then she turned to the front again.
"What's wrong?" Clark repeated.
Dawn looked up at him as if she'd forgotten he was there. "Hmm? Oh. I'm not sure. Possibly a Kleptes-Virgo. Do you know anybody around here who can get us a report from the coroner's office?"
"What's a cap toss furgo?" Clark asked. Dawn was reminding him a little of Chloe now, with the complete concentration on a Wall-of-Weird worthy story.
Dawn looked up at him. "Kleptes-Virgo. It's like a giant preying mantis that can cloud men's minds so that they see it as a beautiful woman. It lures virgin teenage boys to its lair, mates with them, and bites their heads off."
Clark blushed so hard he thought his face might catch on fire. Fortunately Dawn had gone back to looking at her newspaper. "You kill it by chopping it to pieces with something big and sharp. Buffy used a machete; you could probably just, you know, tear it apart. Like the Gorevanor Demon. We might be able to tell if that's what it really is if we could read the medical examiner's report or see the body."
Clark raised his eyebrows at Dawn in disbelief. "See the body? Shouldn't we leave this to the police?"
Dawn snorted at him. "Call yourself a -- never mind. Do you know anybody, or do I just attempt a little Applied Hacking?"
Clark sighed in surrender. "I'll call Chloe."
Dawn grinned at him and tucked the paper into her backpack. "Great."
***
It was flattering yet annoying, Dawn thought, that Clark wouldn't let her out of his sight after she shared Buffy's warning with him. He called his friend, Chloe, from the pay-phone at the diner. Then he called his mom to say he wouldn't be home 'til later, and then he followed Dawn to the lab and sat against the wall with a book while she did her work. He walked her back to her dorm when she took a break. He dashed home to Smallville and back while she was changing out of her lab clothes, and seemed genuinely relieved to see she was still okay after his fifteen-minute absence. It was stalkery but sweet.
It turned out Clark's friend Chloe had a summer job at the "Daily Planet." She was a Journalism Major, too, but she seemed a lot more serious about it than Clark was. Dawn could understand that. Clark had not only school but also his family's farm and world-saveage to deal with. She hoped he didn't feel all inferior.
Dawn had called the house and left a message on the machine for Buffy. She thought she remembered how they'd defeated the Kleptes-Virgo (freaky, since she had really been in a Czechoslovakian monastery at the time), but it would be nice to get some strategy tips from the front-line fighter.
When Clark got back from Smallville, Dawn was changed out of her grubbies. "Ready to go?" she asked him.
"Yeah. Mom and Dad agreed that this is more important than chores for the moment, so I'll be staying in Metropolis until we've got it all cleared up."
Dawn was a little surprised. "And you'll be staying where?"
Clark didn't seem to notice her dubiousness. "With Pete," he said. "He's interning in the Mayor's office this summer, and he has a room. He already said I could sleep on his floor any time this summer, so I'll just take him up on it. In fact, I called him from home, and he's going to meet us for dinner with Chloe."
Dawn gave him a warm, genuine smile. "I like it when you plan stuff out," she said, cuddling up to his (enormous) arm.
Clark looked down at her, using his middle finger to keep his big ugly glasses from sliding down as he did so. "You do?" he asked. God, he was so cute when he was dorky. Then he smiled at her, and he was even cuter. "Let's go meet the team and come up with a plan to defeat the head-eating giant bug, then."
"Right!"
***
Lex paced and drank. It was after five o'clock, and he was still in his office. Dad, as usual, had shot his concentration straight to hell. He really needed to get over that.
He hadn't managed to get back on the Oklahoma project at all, but he'd researched Buffy a little. Her parents had actually had her put away. Lex knew vampires were real; he knew Buffy was the Chosen One, the Slayer -- she wasn't crazy. Unfortunately, he could imagine perfectly well how awful it would have been to be incarcerated by your own parents for a fate you couldn't control. He could empathize with the learning-to-lie; he knew all about causing trouble at school....
Damn it! He put the phone down. He'd already hung up on her machine twice; he was NOT going to call Buffy's house again tonight! Instead he picked the receiver back up and dialed another number he knew by heart.
"Hello?"
Lex cleared his throat. "Hello, Mrs. Kent. This is Lex Luthor. May I speak to Clark, please?"
"Hello, Lex, it's nice to hear from you." That brought an involuntary smile to Lex's face. Doubtless it was another weakness, being made to feel warm by Martha Kent's friendly voice. Oh, well. Nobody could see him right here, right now; he'd had the office swept for bugs within half an hour of Lionel's leaving. Martha went on. "Clark's in Metropolis tonight, actually. Dawn had some sort of trouble and needed his help."
The Kents liked Dawn -- Dawn was almost Lana-like in her ability to attract goodwill from people, Lex thought. He forcibly reminded himself that Dawn had done nothing to deserve his bitterness. It took a second. Then he said, "Were they... Do you think he'd mind if I tried to get in touch with him here?"
"Of course not, Lex. They were going to have dinner tonight with Chloe and Pete, I think Clark said. There was a story in the paper about headless corpses, or something, and Dawn seemed to think there were monsters that they'd need to handle."
It still amazed Lex that he knew about Clark being Superman, and Clark's parents knew he knew, and that nobody had been after him with a shotgun. At all. There had been one obscure long-winded lecture from Jonathan about loyalty and family responsibility (Lex had years of practice at appearing to pay attention to lectures about loyalty and family responsibility), but after that the Kents' behavior toward him had been very nearly unchanged. They'd taken the notion of Dawn's sister being Chosen to Slay Vampires completely in stride as well. Lex couldn't decide whether they were blase about the weirdness because they'd had all these years to get used to their own alien son, or whether Clark had just fortunately stumbled onto the two most weirdness-accepting people in Kansas when he'd landed on this Earth. Maybe the ship had some sort of detector. Being this sidetracked was not a good sign.
Apparently he'd been silent for some time. Martha asked, "Lex, are you still there?"
"Yes," he answered. "Did he say where they'd be?"
"I don't remember. Chloe always has her cell phone, though. Do you have the number?"
Why was he so disjoint this afternoon? His dad couldn't have affected him that badly; surely he should be used to him by now.
"Lex?"
"Uh. Thank you, Mrs. Kent. I...."
She interrupted him. "Lex, sweetie, do you have a pencil and something to write on?"
He did. "Yes?"
She told him the number for Chloe's cell and made him repeat it back to her. "Call her as soon as I hang up, okay? I'm sure Clark will want to hear from you, and Dawn will want you to hear what's going on. Say, 'Yes, Martha.'"
Lex laughed. "Yes, Martha."
"Good. See you later, Lex." Martha hung up.
***
Chloe said they should meet her at a little vegetarian restaurant she liked near the "Daily Planet" building. It had internet access and the best falafel in the city. She'd found it the first summer she interned there, and she'd introduced Clark to it when he first started at Met. U. Over the course of his freshman year Clark had spent a lot of time there, and now it was one of his regular twice-weekly produce delivery stops. The cooks and most of the wait-staff called him by his first name. Sometimes Clark felt guilty that they all seemed to know him better than they did Chloe. If it bothered her, though, she didn't show it.
"Clark!" Chloe got up from the little square red-and-black booth to come greet Clark and Dawn at the door. Her blonde hair was cut very short this summer, and she was wearing cool thrift-store linen and a variety of bracelets. "I just got a call from Lex. I said he was welcome to come join us here. Pete's going to be late. Hi, Dawn."
"Hi, Chloe," Dawn said, but Chloe had already turned her attention back to the brightly colored laptop she'd left in the booth.
Her fingers danced over the keys as the others sat down. "This case looks like the real deal," she rapid-fired at them.
Clark raised one eyebrow. (He'd learned how to do that the summer after high school graduation, when Lex and Pete had finally tabled their hereditary differences and the three of them had spent half their Sunday afternoons watching Classic Star Trek in the mansion.) "Wall of the Weird?" he ventured.
"Better," Chloe rattled back without looking at him. "There have been three boys reported missing in that area in the past week. The headless body found in Carson Park this morning has been identified as one of them. Until the body was found, the police believed all three boys were runaways. Now they're looking into serial killers and registered sex offenders."
Just then, Lex came in. "Serial killers and sex offenders? What are you kids up to now?"
Dawn was hanging over Chloe's shoulder, looking avidly at the computer screen, so Lex squeezed in next to Clark. Clark noticed how much more relaxed Lex seemed to become when the three college kids greeted him and made him welcome.
Chloe continued keyboarding as she explained. "Clark and Dawn have an idea about the headless corpse found in Carson Park this morning. I'm bringing up the Medical Examiner's records...."
"You can do that?" Lex asked.
Chloe looked up at him for a moment and flashed him a bright smile. "I'm not untalented at the computer research."
"I told you she was the one to ask," Clark told Dawn.
"Mm Hmm," Dawn agreed, still studying the screen. She kept watching Chloe work the computer while a waitress brought plates and a big bowl of tomato-and-cucumber salad (featuring Kent Organic Vegetables) and a dish full of falafel balls. "There! Stop on that image, Chloe."
"This one? Ew. What are those... marks?" Chloe looked kind of disturbed for an intrepid reporter, Clark thought.
"They're from insect mandibles," Dawn declared triumphantly. "Madam, gentlemen, these are the tooth-marks of a giant bug!"
Chloe looked at Clark in exasperation. "What! I thought you wanted me for my crime reporting skills! You mean this really is Wall of the Weird stuff!?!"
"Chloe," Clark pointed out, as reasonably as he could. "A boy is dead, maybe more than one. You remember Greg. You know that giant bugs aren't as impossible as most people would like to think. You can't just totally turn your back on something because it's not 'Daily Planet' material."
Chloe made a little growling noise. "I thought that I left that crap behind me when I left Smallville," she complained.
Dawn and Lex traded glances. Clark realized that Chloe was the only one at the table who didn't know he was an alien.
The little bell over the restaurant door jingled, and Pete came in. "Hi guys, sorry I'm late. What crap are you leaving behind you in Smallville, Chlo?"
"This!" Chloe gestured at her computer screen, and Pete squeezed in next to Dawn, craning his head over her to see what Chloe was talking about.
"Nasty," he commented. "What happened to his head?"
"It was eaten by a giant bug," Dawn stated confidently.
Pete gave her a Look. "What? Girl, you been hanging around with Clark too much."
"No, really. My sister fought one of these things in Sunnydale, like, ten years ago. I know what I'm talking about."
Chloe looked at Dawn skeptically. "You're not some sort of green glowy freak, are you?"
"Not lately," Dawn answered in a small voice.
Clark thought he'd better intervene before "Gang up on Dawn" day was declared a formal Metropolis holiday.
"Guys!" he interjected. "You both remember Greg. Why is it so hard to believe there are other giant monster bugs out there?"
"Clark," Chloe argued, "Greg wasn't really a giant bug. He was a Smallville Meteor Mutant. That's a pretty specific type of thing, and this just isn't the same...."
"Baloney!" Dawn interrupted. "I don't know anything about Greg, whoever he is, but this type of creature, the Kleptes-Virgo, or virgin-thief, appears in many cultures: the Greek Sirens, the Celtic sea-maidens who...." Dawn broke off the mythology lesson when she was drowned out by Chloe and Pete's loud laughter. Even Lex was snickering quietly, and the three of them were all looking at Clark.
Clark had been afraid that morning that he'd blush so hard his face would catch fire. Now he kind of wished it would. He ducked his head. Lex was at least trying to control himself, but Pete and Chloe were definitely going on his list of People I'm Going to Make Pay When I Take Over the World.
"Hey," Dawn's gentle voice made him look up at her. "Clark. It's a good thing." Her smile was happy, and intimate, and just like that, it didn't matter that Pete and Chloe were there making fun of him. "Bait, big gun, back-up, remember? We've got us a plan."
Pete and Chloe's laughter had died away at the looks passing between Clark and Dawn. Lex seemed sort of still and quiet. Clark turned and looked at him and made out how upset he was -- probably thinking of Buffy -- before Lex smoothed the expression away.
Dawn took advantage of the moment to take control of Chloe's keyboard and brought up a site that Clark had never seen before. She riffled through the entries quickly and displayed a screen of information to the other four at the table, turning the screen so everyone could see. "See? I'm not making this stuff up."
"Those are the same sort of marks," Chloe agreed.
"These monsters live all over the world? Eating guys who can't get any?" Pete asked.
"Pretty much," Dawn agreed. "They must have a really low hatch rate, or else the juvenile form is easy prey for something, 'cause they're not common anywhere, but they totally exist."
"Probably they cannibalize each other," Chloe speculated, taking back control of her computer. "Real preying mantises do. Anyway, before we detoured into the Twilight Zone, I found out that all the missing boys were members of the Carson Park Swim Club."
"So, maybe we're looking for a swimming instructor or a pool maintenance worker or a cashier," Dawn said. "After we're done eating, we should probably just go down to Carson Park and look around."
"This thing is that obvious?" Lex asked.
"This thing is blatant," Dawn confirmed.
***
One of the wonderful things about being a workaholic, Lex decided, was that when your personal life sucked you could just spend more time working. It was comfort and profit put together!
Actually, it wasn't all that comforting, but it was better than nothing.
LexCorp stock prices and profits were up over the course of the last two weeks. He'd been spending every waking hour in the office, except for that one extraordinary afternoon at Clark's house examining the spacecraft. There had been pie, too. It was starting to look like that afternoon was going to end up being the high point of Lex's remaining life; Buffy didn't call; Clark was almost always busy with farm-work or super-heroism or Dawn....
Right, business. Back to work. Lex made a couple of notes in the margin of an operations report from his alternative fuels facility in Oklahoma. He'd had an interesting idea about hydrogen liquefaction, and he was wondering about production feasibility.
It was only two o'clock in the afternoon, but Lex really wanted a drink.
Instead he got an extremely unwelcome visit from his father.
Lionel Luthor burst in through the door of Lex's office as if he owned the place, which he *didn*'*t*. "Lex," he declaimed. "We need to talk!"
Lex sighed heavily. He neatly folded his papers away into a file folder and carefully stowed it in his safe. He softly closed the safe door and spun the dial before finally giving his father his attention. "What can I do for you today, Dad?"
Lionel had used the time to help himself to a brandy from the bar and make himself comfortable on the office's leather sofa. "I've just come from California. Sunnydale, I believe the town was called. A real hell-hole."
Lex swallowed his annoyance. "I don't think you're likely to find anyone to argue that point," he said. Lex got up from his desk chair and walked deliberately over to the small bar refrigerator. He got himself a bottle of water instead of a brandy. Lex walked with measured steps back to his desk and leaned against it. He wanted Lionel to be the next to speak.
Lionel finished his brandy with evident enjoyment. Finally he spoke. "She's insane, Lex. You should know better."
"You didn't." Even as he spoke, Lex knew that was a side-issue, and he knew that Lionel knew. Damn. He was getting a headache.
Lionel smiled. Lex hated that smile. "Draw from others the lesson that may profit yourself. Publius Terentius Afer," Lionel quoted. "Circa 160 BC. A wise man learns from others' mistakes. A fool must learn from his own."
Lex took a drink of water. "Buffy's not insane."
"Her own parents had her involuntarily committed to a mental institution in 1995. Her school records are full of incidents of violence and arson. She believes in vampires." Lionel rose from the sofa, using his silver-headed cane for leverage. "Tell me you'll break it off with her, son."
Lex's jaw worked, and he covered it up by drinking again. "Did you bribe her to leave me alone?"
"I tried, but she didn't seem to understand what I was talking about." Lionel shrugged flamboyantly. "She's moderately pretty, Lex, but extremely unstable and not very bright. That doctor you met in Anger Management was a better choice, and she was, well, awful." Lionel looked at Lex searchingly.
Lex just looked back. He didn't trust himself to speak.
After a few moments Lionel sighed heavily. "Very well. You leave me no choice, Lex. In the long run, you'll see that it's all for the best." Lionel swept magnificently out of the office.
Lex sank into his desk chair and tried to think.
***
Dawn took a big bite of chocolate chip muffin and washed it down with coffee. "So that's the sitch," she finished up. "Lex's dad may very well get me thrown out of school, and being thrashed by hired goons is always a possibility."
Clark shook his head. Even after all these years, he couldn't ever quite believe the plain evil that Lionel Luthor seemed willing to stoop to in order to get his own way. "Well, you can't stay here by yourself," he said.
Dawn looked at him like he was nuts. "What are you talking about?"
"I won't have you getting hurt in one of the Luthors' little squabbles. You'll have to come home with me."
Dawn laughed out loud, spraying crumbs. It was disgusting. And embarrassing. Clark realized he probably could have found a better way to phrase that.
"Clark, I love you and all, but I'm not coming to live in your house because Lionel Luthor is ticked with my sister! Get a grip!" Dawn quit cackling and drank the rest of her coffee.
Clark sat there stunned by the offhand way she'd said she loved him. She couldn't mean that, could she? Just like that? She must mean as a friend, the way he loved Chloe or Pete or Lex....
Dawn had gotten packed up and paid for their breakfast and was all the way to the front door of the cafe by the time Clark's brain and his body caught up with each other. She was tapping her foot impatiently at the door, waiting for him to put his things back in his backpack and come with her, when suddenly she stiffened.
Clark was beside her instantly. "What's wrong?"
"May I please have seventy-five cents, Clark? I used up all my quarters." Dawn's voice was calm and sort of remote.
Clark handed her three quarters and watched her put them in a newspaper dispenser there by the door of the coffee shop. The front page story of the "Inquisitor" was apparently Headless Body Discovered in Park. Dawn read the whole story standing there. She even turned to the inside back page and finished it. Then she turned to the front again.
"What's wrong?" Clark repeated.
Dawn looked up at him as if she'd forgotten he was there. "Hmm? Oh. I'm not sure. Possibly a Kleptes-Virgo. Do you know anybody around here who can get us a report from the coroner's office?"
"What's a cap toss furgo?" Clark asked. Dawn was reminding him a little of Chloe now, with the complete concentration on a Wall-of-Weird worthy story.
Dawn looked up at him. "Kleptes-Virgo. It's like a giant preying mantis that can cloud men's minds so that they see it as a beautiful woman. It lures virgin teenage boys to its lair, mates with them, and bites their heads off."
Clark blushed so hard he thought his face might catch on fire. Fortunately Dawn had gone back to looking at her newspaper. "You kill it by chopping it to pieces with something big and sharp. Buffy used a machete; you could probably just, you know, tear it apart. Like the Gorevanor Demon. We might be able to tell if that's what it really is if we could read the medical examiner's report or see the body."
Clark raised his eyebrows at Dawn in disbelief. "See the body? Shouldn't we leave this to the police?"
Dawn snorted at him. "Call yourself a -- never mind. Do you know anybody, or do I just attempt a little Applied Hacking?"
Clark sighed in surrender. "I'll call Chloe."
Dawn grinned at him and tucked the paper into her backpack. "Great."
***
It was flattering yet annoying, Dawn thought, that Clark wouldn't let her out of his sight after she shared Buffy's warning with him. He called his friend, Chloe, from the pay-phone at the diner. Then he called his mom to say he wouldn't be home 'til later, and then he followed Dawn to the lab and sat against the wall with a book while she did her work. He walked her back to her dorm when she took a break. He dashed home to Smallville and back while she was changing out of her lab clothes, and seemed genuinely relieved to see she was still okay after his fifteen-minute absence. It was stalkery but sweet.
It turned out Clark's friend Chloe had a summer job at the "Daily Planet." She was a Journalism Major, too, but she seemed a lot more serious about it than Clark was. Dawn could understand that. Clark had not only school but also his family's farm and world-saveage to deal with. She hoped he didn't feel all inferior.
Dawn had called the house and left a message on the machine for Buffy. She thought she remembered how they'd defeated the Kleptes-Virgo (freaky, since she had really been in a Czechoslovakian monastery at the time), but it would be nice to get some strategy tips from the front-line fighter.
When Clark got back from Smallville, Dawn was changed out of her grubbies. "Ready to go?" she asked him.
"Yeah. Mom and Dad agreed that this is more important than chores for the moment, so I'll be staying in Metropolis until we've got it all cleared up."
Dawn was a little surprised. "And you'll be staying where?"
Clark didn't seem to notice her dubiousness. "With Pete," he said. "He's interning in the Mayor's office this summer, and he has a room. He already said I could sleep on his floor any time this summer, so I'll just take him up on it. In fact, I called him from home, and he's going to meet us for dinner with Chloe."
Dawn gave him a warm, genuine smile. "I like it when you plan stuff out," she said, cuddling up to his (enormous) arm.
Clark looked down at her, using his middle finger to keep his big ugly glasses from sliding down as he did so. "You do?" he asked. God, he was so cute when he was dorky. Then he smiled at her, and he was even cuter. "Let's go meet the team and come up with a plan to defeat the head-eating giant bug, then."
"Right!"
***
Lex paced and drank. It was after five o'clock, and he was still in his office. Dad, as usual, had shot his concentration straight to hell. He really needed to get over that.
He hadn't managed to get back on the Oklahoma project at all, but he'd researched Buffy a little. Her parents had actually had her put away. Lex knew vampires were real; he knew Buffy was the Chosen One, the Slayer -- she wasn't crazy. Unfortunately, he could imagine perfectly well how awful it would have been to be incarcerated by your own parents for a fate you couldn't control. He could empathize with the learning-to-lie; he knew all about causing trouble at school....
Damn it! He put the phone down. He'd already hung up on her machine twice; he was NOT going to call Buffy's house again tonight! Instead he picked the receiver back up and dialed another number he knew by heart.
"Hello?"
Lex cleared his throat. "Hello, Mrs. Kent. This is Lex Luthor. May I speak to Clark, please?"
"Hello, Lex, it's nice to hear from you." That brought an involuntary smile to Lex's face. Doubtless it was another weakness, being made to feel warm by Martha Kent's friendly voice. Oh, well. Nobody could see him right here, right now; he'd had the office swept for bugs within half an hour of Lionel's leaving. Martha went on. "Clark's in Metropolis tonight, actually. Dawn had some sort of trouble and needed his help."
The Kents liked Dawn -- Dawn was almost Lana-like in her ability to attract goodwill from people, Lex thought. He forcibly reminded himself that Dawn had done nothing to deserve his bitterness. It took a second. Then he said, "Were they... Do you think he'd mind if I tried to get in touch with him here?"
"Of course not, Lex. They were going to have dinner tonight with Chloe and Pete, I think Clark said. There was a story in the paper about headless corpses, or something, and Dawn seemed to think there were monsters that they'd need to handle."
It still amazed Lex that he knew about Clark being Superman, and Clark's parents knew he knew, and that nobody had been after him with a shotgun. At all. There had been one obscure long-winded lecture from Jonathan about loyalty and family responsibility (Lex had years of practice at appearing to pay attention to lectures about loyalty and family responsibility), but after that the Kents' behavior toward him had been very nearly unchanged. They'd taken the notion of Dawn's sister being Chosen to Slay Vampires completely in stride as well. Lex couldn't decide whether they were blase about the weirdness because they'd had all these years to get used to their own alien son, or whether Clark had just fortunately stumbled onto the two most weirdness-accepting people in Kansas when he'd landed on this Earth. Maybe the ship had some sort of detector. Being this sidetracked was not a good sign.
Apparently he'd been silent for some time. Martha asked, "Lex, are you still there?"
"Yes," he answered. "Did he say where they'd be?"
"I don't remember. Chloe always has her cell phone, though. Do you have the number?"
Why was he so disjoint this afternoon? His dad couldn't have affected him that badly; surely he should be used to him by now.
"Lex?"
"Uh. Thank you, Mrs. Kent. I...."
She interrupted him. "Lex, sweetie, do you have a pencil and something to write on?"
He did. "Yes?"
She told him the number for Chloe's cell and made him repeat it back to her. "Call her as soon as I hang up, okay? I'm sure Clark will want to hear from you, and Dawn will want you to hear what's going on. Say, 'Yes, Martha.'"
Lex laughed. "Yes, Martha."
"Good. See you later, Lex." Martha hung up.
***
Chloe said they should meet her at a little vegetarian restaurant she liked near the "Daily Planet" building. It had internet access and the best falafel in the city. She'd found it the first summer she interned there, and she'd introduced Clark to it when he first started at Met. U. Over the course of his freshman year Clark had spent a lot of time there, and now it was one of his regular twice-weekly produce delivery stops. The cooks and most of the wait-staff called him by his first name. Sometimes Clark felt guilty that they all seemed to know him better than they did Chloe. If it bothered her, though, she didn't show it.
"Clark!" Chloe got up from the little square red-and-black booth to come greet Clark and Dawn at the door. Her blonde hair was cut very short this summer, and she was wearing cool thrift-store linen and a variety of bracelets. "I just got a call from Lex. I said he was welcome to come join us here. Pete's going to be late. Hi, Dawn."
"Hi, Chloe," Dawn said, but Chloe had already turned her attention back to the brightly colored laptop she'd left in the booth.
Her fingers danced over the keys as the others sat down. "This case looks like the real deal," she rapid-fired at them.
Clark raised one eyebrow. (He'd learned how to do that the summer after high school graduation, when Lex and Pete had finally tabled their hereditary differences and the three of them had spent half their Sunday afternoons watching Classic Star Trek in the mansion.) "Wall of the Weird?" he ventured.
"Better," Chloe rattled back without looking at him. "There have been three boys reported missing in that area in the past week. The headless body found in Carson Park this morning has been identified as one of them. Until the body was found, the police believed all three boys were runaways. Now they're looking into serial killers and registered sex offenders."
Just then, Lex came in. "Serial killers and sex offenders? What are you kids up to now?"
Dawn was hanging over Chloe's shoulder, looking avidly at the computer screen, so Lex squeezed in next to Clark. Clark noticed how much more relaxed Lex seemed to become when the three college kids greeted him and made him welcome.
Chloe continued keyboarding as she explained. "Clark and Dawn have an idea about the headless corpse found in Carson Park this morning. I'm bringing up the Medical Examiner's records...."
"You can do that?" Lex asked.
Chloe looked up at him for a moment and flashed him a bright smile. "I'm not untalented at the computer research."
"I told you she was the one to ask," Clark told Dawn.
"Mm Hmm," Dawn agreed, still studying the screen. She kept watching Chloe work the computer while a waitress brought plates and a big bowl of tomato-and-cucumber salad (featuring Kent Organic Vegetables) and a dish full of falafel balls. "There! Stop on that image, Chloe."
"This one? Ew. What are those... marks?" Chloe looked kind of disturbed for an intrepid reporter, Clark thought.
"They're from insect mandibles," Dawn declared triumphantly. "Madam, gentlemen, these are the tooth-marks of a giant bug!"
Chloe looked at Clark in exasperation. "What! I thought you wanted me for my crime reporting skills! You mean this really is Wall of the Weird stuff!?!"
"Chloe," Clark pointed out, as reasonably as he could. "A boy is dead, maybe more than one. You remember Greg. You know that giant bugs aren't as impossible as most people would like to think. You can't just totally turn your back on something because it's not 'Daily Planet' material."
Chloe made a little growling noise. "I thought that I left that crap behind me when I left Smallville," she complained.
Dawn and Lex traded glances. Clark realized that Chloe was the only one at the table who didn't know he was an alien.
The little bell over the restaurant door jingled, and Pete came in. "Hi guys, sorry I'm late. What crap are you leaving behind you in Smallville, Chlo?"
"This!" Chloe gestured at her computer screen, and Pete squeezed in next to Dawn, craning his head over her to see what Chloe was talking about.
"Nasty," he commented. "What happened to his head?"
"It was eaten by a giant bug," Dawn stated confidently.
Pete gave her a Look. "What? Girl, you been hanging around with Clark too much."
"No, really. My sister fought one of these things in Sunnydale, like, ten years ago. I know what I'm talking about."
Chloe looked at Dawn skeptically. "You're not some sort of green glowy freak, are you?"
"Not lately," Dawn answered in a small voice.
Clark thought he'd better intervene before "Gang up on Dawn" day was declared a formal Metropolis holiday.
"Guys!" he interjected. "You both remember Greg. Why is it so hard to believe there are other giant monster bugs out there?"
"Clark," Chloe argued, "Greg wasn't really a giant bug. He was a Smallville Meteor Mutant. That's a pretty specific type of thing, and this just isn't the same...."
"Baloney!" Dawn interrupted. "I don't know anything about Greg, whoever he is, but this type of creature, the Kleptes-Virgo, or virgin-thief, appears in many cultures: the Greek Sirens, the Celtic sea-maidens who...." Dawn broke off the mythology lesson when she was drowned out by Chloe and Pete's loud laughter. Even Lex was snickering quietly, and the three of them were all looking at Clark.
Clark had been afraid that morning that he'd blush so hard his face would catch fire. Now he kind of wished it would. He ducked his head. Lex was at least trying to control himself, but Pete and Chloe were definitely going on his list of People I'm Going to Make Pay When I Take Over the World.
"Hey," Dawn's gentle voice made him look up at her. "Clark. It's a good thing." Her smile was happy, and intimate, and just like that, it didn't matter that Pete and Chloe were there making fun of him. "Bait, big gun, back-up, remember? We've got us a plan."
Pete and Chloe's laughter had died away at the looks passing between Clark and Dawn. Lex seemed sort of still and quiet. Clark turned and looked at him and made out how upset he was -- probably thinking of Buffy -- before Lex smoothed the expression away.
Dawn took advantage of the moment to take control of Chloe's keyboard and brought up a site that Clark had never seen before. She riffled through the entries quickly and displayed a screen of information to the other four at the table, turning the screen so everyone could see. "See? I'm not making this stuff up."
"Those are the same sort of marks," Chloe agreed.
"These monsters live all over the world? Eating guys who can't get any?" Pete asked.
"Pretty much," Dawn agreed. "They must have a really low hatch rate, or else the juvenile form is easy prey for something, 'cause they're not common anywhere, but they totally exist."
"Probably they cannibalize each other," Chloe speculated, taking back control of her computer. "Real preying mantises do. Anyway, before we detoured into the Twilight Zone, I found out that all the missing boys were members of the Carson Park Swim Club."
"So, maybe we're looking for a swimming instructor or a pool maintenance worker or a cashier," Dawn said. "After we're done eating, we should probably just go down to Carson Park and look around."
"This thing is that obvious?" Lex asked.
"This thing is blatant," Dawn confirmed.
***