"I hope nothing's happened to them," she fretted, putting another pan of muffins in. "That old truck is so temperamental..."
"Don't worry." Clark used the Superman voice when he was wearing the Superman suit, even when he was talking to his own mother. It was good practice. "I'll find them."
Mom was the one person who never treated him any different when he was wearing that persona. She smiled up at him, and looked a lot less worried. "Thank you, sweetie."
Clark was just about to spring into the air off the back porch, when he noticed somebody approaching the front door. He slipped inconspicuously into the kitchen instead, and Mom went to answer the knock. He x-rayed through the door. Who would be visiting at this hour?
It was a deliveryman.
When Mom came back into the kitchen, she was laughing a little. "Lex sent you and Buffy cell phones."
Okay, the head-duck, blush, and grin were pure Clark Kent, despite the suit. As long as he was breaking character already, he gave Mom a little hug and a peck on the forehead. "I'll give hers to her when I find them," he promised, and took to the skies.
"Call home, too!" Mom's instruction followed him.
Clark could just about fly and dial a cell phone at the same time. Good thing he didn't have any gum.
"Lex Luthor."
"Hey, Lex. Thanks for the cell phone."
"Clark! Good. We need to get you to talk to the Astronomy --"
Clark didn't let Lex finish. "Buffy and Cara didn't come back yet from deliveries. Mom thinks the truck probably broke down, and Dad's out looking for them. So am I, now. I'll call you back later."
Dawn's voice came from the background. "Let me talk to him... Clark? Good luck."
Clark smiled. "Thanks. See you guys." He might have heard Lex protesting as Dawn hung up the phone, but he was too busy searching for his baby sister to worry about that right now.
The caves were spectacular. In another time, another life, Mulder could have spent hours analyzing their pictographs.
The young woman, Buffy Summers (that name was almost familiar -- maybe she was mentioned somewhere in one of his long-lost X-Files?) had insisted that Mulder and Stonetree help her pull her truck out of the ditch and then follow them in the Caddy. "It's bad enough we're going with you at all. We're certainly not getting into your car!" she'd scolded, with particular emphasis for the kid, Carrie something, who was apparently not the little blonde's daughter.
Fox couldn't believe they were seeking help from a babysitter, but Joe seemed completely unfazed. He couldn't deny, in his heart, that this scheme to save the world had made a lot better progress since the old Canadian had been in charge of it, so he kept just drifting along in the big guy's wake.
Stonetree studied the symbols on the wall as if he had some idea of what they meant. He took his tiny, ridiculous hat off and scratched his head in thought.
Oddly enough, both of the girls they'd rescued seemed able to make some sense of the mystical writings as well. Carrie pulled the babysitter here and there, showing her various pictures and chattering explanations that her big brother had apparently told her about. Buffy didn't look nearly as enthusiastic about any of it. Stonetree was squinting and sticking his tongue out a little as he concentrated on deciphering the glyphs.
"There you are!" boomed a sudden voice.
"Superman!" Buffy exclaimed.
Sure enough, a tall guy in tights and a cape had entered the cave. It wasn't just a Daily Planet publicity thing after all, then.
Carrie had started running to the stranger already, but she halted and looked questioningly back at Buffy's shout. After just a moment's pause, she resumed running to the costumed vigilante. "Superman!" she giggled and jumped at his knees.
"Cara Kent," Superman chided. "Your mama has been very worried about you."
The little girl launched into a garbled narrative involving getting lost, mean bad bugs, and Buffy drove us into the ditch!
Mulder noticed Joe beaming, as he abandoned the cave-writings and approached Superman with his hat in his hand.
"Naman," Stonetree greeted reverently.
Clark was sometimes very glad that he wasn't just Clark Kent, Boy Alien, any more. Superman didn't have to blush or stammer or come up with a bunch of lame protests when the old Indian greeted him as Naman. (Who was this guy, anyway? Clark was pretty sure he knew all the Kawatches.) Superman could just stand there, cool as a cucumber, arms folded and feet planted heroically apart, while Clark decided whether or not he should deny being Naman, too.
"Call me Superman," Clark corrected him kindly.
"Of course, Naman," the man rumbled, smiling.
Clark refrained from sighing in exasperation. "I'm acquainted with most of the members of the Kawatche Tribe. You're not from around here, are you, Mr. --?"
"Of course. Where are my manners? I'm Joe Stonetree. This is Fox Mulder. We need your help."
"I'm listening," Superman said calmly. Clark ignored Cara giggling at him. Buffy had retrieved her charge, and kept one hand on the little girl's shoulder, even though most of her attention was fixed on Stonetree and Mulder, and the eeriness of the surrounding caves.
Mulder spoke for the first time. "Are you really an alien?"
Superman smiled and nodded.
"You're not like... Maybe you already know this, but let me begin at the beginning. Fifty years ago or so, an alien ship visited Earth. The aliens made a deal with a cabal of power brokers, whereby the human collaborators would betray the rest of the planet to the invaders in return for their own safety, and that of their families. We've, I've, found evidence of... horrors..." Mulder stopped and closed his eyes for a minute.
Stonetree patted him roughly on the shoulder and took up the tale. "This group of aliens, not your own people, have a timetable. Their main force is coming very soon, possibly within days." He snorted, sounding almost amused. "Human technology can't possibly stop them, couldn't even if the governments of the Earth weren't thoroughly infiltrated with their servants.
A phone rang.
Dang.
Clark reached under his cape and brought out a ringing cell phone. He looked meaningfully at Buffy.
"Miss Summers," he said, "Mrs. Kent asked me to bring you this. If you hadn't left without it, she wouldn't have had to be so worried about Cara."
"Oh. Yeah. Thanks. Sometimes I'm such an airhead," Buffy said fakely. She took the ringing cell phone that Lex had sent special-delivery to Clark's mom.
"Hello? Oh, hi, Lex." Clark noticed that Buffy kept a sharp watch on the two strangers the whole time she was talking.
The big old guy with the funny hat was poking the younger guy meaningfully, and mouthing the word 'Segeeth.' Clark didn't sigh resignedly again. Mulder did, though.
"Yeah, he did. Um. Well, I got lost, with Cara, heading back from deliveries, and we met these couple of guys -- No! They actually kinda saved us from some sort of weird -- yeah, they did glow green! Fine, smart guy. Anyhow, they say it's the end of the world, again, and they want help from Naman and Segeeth. You do? Huh." Buffy held out the phone to Superman. "He wants to talk to you."
"Superman here."
Lex snickered at him! Punk. "I see Buffy's cavalier attitude towards her secret identity hasn't rubbed off on you too much. There are actually people there in the caves, looking for Naman and Segeeth, to prevent an apocalypse?"
"Yes, that's correct."
"AND?"
"As I said, yes."
"What did you tell them?"
"Nothing, yet."
"Who are they, exactly?"
"I am endeavoring to ascertain."
"They don't know about Buffy?"
"I believe that to be the case."
"This probably has something to do with what Dawn's detector picked up. We were hoping you could talk the Astronomy Department into letting us use their big telescope, in an attempt to confirm whether our theory about invading space craft is correct."
"Alien invaders. Yes. I may know a more efficient mechanism. Your plan, however, would be an excellent backup. Would you like to speak with Ms. Summers again?"
"What's gotten into you?"
Superman handed the phone back to Buffy.
"Mr. Stonetree, I rely on you to get Miss Kent and Miss Summers back to the Kent Organic Farm. I'm heading up topside to take a look."
Superman took off.
Up topside to take a look? What, was he in Dawn Patrol now? Clark shook his head, bemused at the way the cheesy dialogue just rolled off of Superman's tongue.
He didn't know exactly what he was looking for, but he hoped a fleet of alien invaders would be sort of obvious, once he got up above the atmosphere. He'd been experimenting with the vacuum of space ever since he and Dawn had taken that trip to California, but he still wasn't too sure what his limits were.
Actually, he hoped there would obviously NOT BE a fleet of alien invaders.
Up past the air, everything was eerily quiet. There was plenty of sunlight, though, even though it had been night when he took off, and somehow the intense sunlight almost took the place of oxygen for him, when he was up here and the air was all way down there. He did a bunch of slow loops, his line-of-sight going around and around like the outermost strand on a ball of yarn. He let his freak-vision and his freak-memory have free reign, and all too soon he found them.
Crap.