I hope you guys appreciate this next part because I had to totally redo it three times before I came up with this and, believe you me, this is a LONG part to have to redo three times. Rant over, have fun and enjoy.

Ch. 9

Clark felt like smashing the alarm into its component atoms when it woke him up a few hours later. Not that his brain was functioning enough to form such a complex thought. His actual thought was simply a vague image of smashing it until it disappeared. He was definitely not a morning person. However, even his less than fully functional brain could remember the two girls asleep on the bed just above him, curbing his caveman tendencies quite effectively. Opening his eyes to check on the girls, Clark had a strangely good view of Chloe and Lana. Both of them were wide awake and looking at him with a mix of shock and fear. Not fully understanding their reaction he reached over and turned off the alarm. It was then that he realized why they were so frightened. The alarm was set into the wall at a height that forced a person to stand up to turn it off, thereby insuring that that person was fully awake. However, Clark had simply reached over and turned it off without standing up. Looking down at the floor, Clark confirmed his hypothesis. He was floating a good three feet off of the ground. Apparently the hardness of the floor had sent his body in search of more comfortable surroundings. Closing his eyes, Clark willed his body back to the floor and then stood up to face the two wide eyed women.

"Umm, opps." was all that Clark could think to say. He hadn't planned on starting this conversation by revealing his powers first thing. Especially not that one. He still thought of it as the most inhuman of his powers, even though he had come to enjoy it immensely over the last day.

"You can fly!" was the first thing that came out of Chloe's mouth.

Clark watched as Lana backed away from him as far as she could and not fall off the bed. Clark was about to try and talk her into calming down when Chloe said something that drew his attention straight back to her.

"I didn't know you could fly!"

It wasn't so much what she had said as how she had said it that drew Clark's attention. She said it as if she had known something else, something about him.

"You say that as if you know something else about me Chloe. Exactly how much do you know about me?" Clark said while staring at her.

"Umm, opps?" now it was Chloe's turn to be tongue tied.

"So all of those times you said something strange to me you it wasn't just in my head. You really did know more than I thought you did. How much have you found out Chloe?"

Chloe realized that if she stayed on the defensive any longer she was going to be in some really hot water soon, so she decided to turn his question against him.

"I don't know Clark, why don't you tell me all of it and then I can tell you what I do and don't know."

Clark's gaze on her sharpened slightly, but soon he was forced to see the humor in the situation. It would seem that while he was keeping secrets from her, she was doing the same to him.

Chloe was puzzled by but also very relived by Clark's soft chuckle. For a second there she had felt as if she was being hunted, but that feeling had passed now that Clark was laughing.

And Clark WAS laughing. In fact if he laughed any harder he might end up rolling in the ground. For some strange reason this situation had struck his funny bone just right and now he couldn't stop laughing. Maybe, in a strange way, he was a little relived. If she had been able to accept him as a meteor freak with such a small reaction that he didn't even notice, maybe she could accept him for who he really was. Maybe she wouldn't freak out like he had dreamt about in his nightmares. At that thought, Clark sobered a bit and stopped laughing.

"All right, I'll make a deal with you. I'll tell you everything, nut first you have to answer me one question. How long have you known whatever it is that you know?"

"About a month. At least, that's how long I've KNOWN you were different. There are a few things about you that never added up before that, but I dismissed them for the most part. There were a few other things that I found out about you a bit more recently, but enough of that, start explaining. And if you think you can lie to me again, know right now that I WILL find a way to hurt you if you try."

That was enough to bring back his smile for a short time, but he quickly lost it again as he searched for the right way to tell her the truth. Suddenly, a new way of telling her occurred to him that hadn't before because he hadn't known much about his own heritage before the last couple of days. This explanation wasn't going to be short, but hopefully it would allow Chloe to understand him a little better without freaking out.

"There's a lot to tell you so I'll start at the beginning. This will take a while so you'll have to be patient with me and let me explain this my own way. You also have to understand that I didn't know any of this until about four years ago and most of it I learned much more recently. All I had known until four years ago was that I was adopted and that I was … special. Could you keep those things in mind while I tell you the whole story?

After receiving a nod from Chloe he continued.

"This story beings almost ten thousand years ago. There was a star called Rao, and orbiting this star was a planet called Krypton. Living on this planet was a people called Kryptonian, who were very advanced, far beyond what any other known race had ever achieved. They had explored all of the universe and had become the unofficial police force of the universe, trying to keep order and help those who couldn't help themselves. At this point, they had been doing this for nearly twenty thousand years. Unfortunately a sudden shift in thinking began to occur after several Kryptonians were killed by seemingly random terrorist attacks. This trend in thought continued to grow as the terrorist attacks continued for several years. Kryptonians everywhere suddenly became positive that the other races were flawed and should be left alone to fight with one another until they exterminated each other.

The Kryptonian people folded inwards, and within a few generations all Kryptonians were once again living only on Krypton. This inward focus continued until most of the Kryptonian knowledge of space flight rested in only a few old archives. The Kryptonians turned their back on the universe that they had once sought to help and the universe went into a dark age.

Many of the people who had been attacking the Kryptonians hadn't realized just how much they depended on them for things like advanced medical treatments, advanced farming techniques, and faster than light space travel. They had also mediated many peace treaties between warring races, an art which many races lacked. Soon the entire universe was thrust into war and chaos from which it never fully recovered.

Only the esteemed and powerful house of El had anything at all to do with outsiders, but only very infrequently. To be given the task as a house was actually a great honor, but individually, it was treated more like a punishment. Only those who questioned the leadership of the head of the house and of the Council were sent off world. There they could see for themselves exactly how superior Kryptonians were to the rest o the races in the universe. This task however, ended up giving the house of El a unique point of view among the other houses. They ended up dominating the political landscape of Krypton for more than five thousand years.

Fast forward about ten thousand years from the beginning of the story and you arrive around eighteen years ago. The house of El had lost much of its old dominance among the houses, and had become very few in number, but it was still very much respected and almost revered in some of the lower classes. Jor-el was the head of the house of El at the time and was also a respected scientist. He discovered something horrible around this time.

Brainiac, an artificial intelligence that was tasked with maintaining both the planet Krypton and everything Kryptonian, had poisoned the well, so to speak. Not that Jor-el knew at the time who was doing it, just that it was being done. A catalyst of sorts had been introduced into the very core of Krypton, causing a chain reaction that would destroy Krypton if it wasn't stopped.

He took his findings before the other houses at the council, but after asking Brainiac to confirm Jor-el's findings, Brainiac denied the validity of Jor-el's findings. Immediately Jor-el's findings were thrown out and his theory dismissed as wild speculation. Jor-el double checked his findings and found out that he was right after all. He decided to find out why Brainiac had said otherwise and began to monitor Brainiac's activities. What he saw disturbed him enough to try and hack into Brainiac's subsystems and find out what he was up to. He succeeded, but was caught by Brainiac's security system. Fortunately, he was able to escape before the hack could be traced. Unfortunately, he hadn't had enough time to record any proof and when he tried again the next day he discovered that Brainiac had tripled his security systems, making it impossible for Jor-el to hack into his systems without Brainiac being able to trace it back to him.

Jor-el once again decided to try and convince the council that Krypton was about to be destroyed, but they would hear none of it and ordered him to remain silent less he cause a panic amongst the lower classes. They also forbid him or his wife from leaving Krypton.

Jor-el saw the small loop hole in their orders and immediately took advantage of it. As fast as he could without drawing unwanted and dangerous attention he gathered the necessary materials to create a small ship, just large enough to hold his infant son. If he couldn't save Krypton, at least he could preserve a small part of it. As Krypton's time drew to a close Jor-el grew worried. He wouldn't have enough materials to complete the ship if he continued at the current rate. So, on the final day he placed one large order, just in time to complete the ship before the planet exploded, but not soon enough to where the council would find out about it and arrest him.

However, his estimate of when Krypton was to breathe its last was slightly off. Just as he placed his son into the ship he felt the planet begin to destroy itself. Racing as fast as he could, he launched the ship, hoping that it would enter hyperspace before the planet exploded.

It did make it to hyperspace, but only just as the shockwave and debris fro the exploding planet caught up with it. In making the jump to hyperspace the ship had scooped up some of the debris from the space that surrounded it and carried this debris with it to its destination. This took almost three years.

When the ship came out of hyperspace, so did the debris. While the ship crash landed and deposited its contents safely, the debris that trailed it devastated the surrounding area. The occupant of the craft was fortunate enough to be found by a loving couple and was adopted. He was raised as a human, and was only told the circumstance of his arrival into his parents' lives when circumstances made it impossible to hide his origins anymore, when his abilities couldn't simply be explained away, and when he was old enough to understand the potential consequences of telling others about himself.

Clark finally took a break, trying to gather up the courage to complete the story.

Lana took this opportunity to speak to him for the first time since entering Clark's room the night before.

"What does this story have to so with you floating?"

"Everything. I am the child in that story. I am the son of Jor-el and I am the last son of Krypton, something my birth father is very fond of reminding me of. I am the last of my kind in the universe."

Clark said that last statement with a hitch in his voice that he dearly wished hadn't been there.

Lana, having just shown the first sign of recovering a little bit of her spirit, shrunk back into herself at this statement. Clark watched as she matched events in the story to events in what she considered to be real life. He could also see that she wished she ha never heard the truth about him, no matter how many times she had told him that no mater what she would always accept him.

Chloe however, while matching up the same events as Lana, had a very different reaction, one that puzzled Clark a little. She seemed to come alive, shaking off the effects of the past forty eight hours, her eyes moving back and forth as she analyzed the information. Her face suddenly seemed to light up with understanding as she finished analyzing Clark's story.

Chloe felt alive. Finally, after all of these years, she was beginning to understand Clark Kent for who he was and why he did some of the things he did. Even more importantly, he was finally telling her the truth. Over the last month or so Chloe had realized just how bad Clark was at lying, especially to those he cared about the most. Clark Kent had more tells than anyone she had ever met, and over the past month she had noticed most of them. She could tell without a doubt that he was finally being honest with her and this made her happier than she would ever admit. His telling the truth also made her want to ask questions, lots and lots of questions.

TBC