Here it is, a couple of days earlier than last time. Whoo!

Mega thank you to htbthomas for betaing!

Diverse

Part Two: Initiation

There was something unusual about the new kid that nobody could figure out.

Besides the nervous-bordering-on-panicky look that he shot around the halls and anyone who passed too close to him, the way he seemed to hunch in on himself to make his six foot frame less noticeable and the fact that he went out of his way to avoid human contact, there was something in his… air… that screamed outsider, recluse, alien.

Despite his good looks, he would never completely fit in no matter how hard he tried. And at that particular moment, he didn't seem to be doing a very good job of trying to fit in at all. In fact, quite the opposite.

"Hey Lana, who's the new kid?" Whitney Fordman leaned down to whisper to his girlfriend, not wanting the 'kid' to hear.

Lana followed his gaze and frowned before shaking her head. "I don't know. I don't think I've seen him around Smallville before…" She trailed off and tilted her head from side to side, squinting a little. She watched intently as Clark made his way down the corridor, avoiding anyone's touch like the plague.

Whitney glanced at her. "What?" He said bluntly, a small bubble of jealousy forming in his stomach at the intense expression on his girlfriend's face.

"I don't know." Lana said, trying to dismiss the matter, but something in her tone told Whitney she wanted to say more. She glanced up at him and took the hint. "I just get the feeling I've seen him before." She shrugged and turned back to her locker.

Whitney looked back at the boy. "Yeah… perhaps he's one of those guys who seem to have a familiar face, you know?"

"Right." Lana said, and smiled brightly for her boyfriend, pretending she'd forgotten about the guy already.

"Ok." Whitney smiled back, reassured, and pecked her on the cheek, already starting to walk away, tossing a football from hand to hand casually. "Wish me luck on the game!" He called suddenly, slowing his pace to hear her reply.

Lana looked up from her locker and grinned. Whitney didn't need luck, he could win the game all by himself. Or so she thought sometimes. "Good luck. Got my necklace?"

"Right here." Whitney grinned, patting the pocket of his letterman's jacket. "I've got to get to Chemistry, see you after the game?" He added, walking backward nonchalantly as the crowd parted like water for the star of the football team.

"Sure. Have fun with ionic equations!" She added on impulse, a cheeky grin forming, and Whitney groaned before disappearing into the crowd.

Lana's smile faded as soon as he turned away, and her stare was immediately drawn back to the new guy, who was now searching for his locker with a lost sort of expression. She watched curiously as someone bumped into him and he shied away so fast Lana almost thought he was blurred around the edges. Frowning slightly, she glanced back to make sure there was no sign of Whitney before heading in a beeline towards him.

Before she could even get remotely close to him a number of broad, letterman jacket-covered backs got in the way. The gang zeroed in on Clark as if he was the fox and they were the hounds, Josh Blake, the ringleader, stepping up to the front. The new kid was leaning against the lockers, almost squeezing himself into the corner. She couldn't hear the exchange, but she saw it with crystal clear clarity. Josh stood directly in front of the new kid, his stance purposefully intimidating with his three cronies fanning out behind like bodyguards. Figures, she thought, dogs always run in packs.

However, when Josh knocked his books to the floor and the boy began to visibly shake, she started to stride over to them, determined to do something.

"Aww, whatsa matter? Did 'ickle baby lose 'is bottle?" One of the bodyguards taunted in an exaggerated baby voice. Lana felt her blood boil and was just about ready to slap Josh across his smarmy face when the boy stood up from his hunched position in the corner, revealing his true height. He towered over all four of the jocks, and despite himself Josh took an automatic step back as the boy's eyes seemed to glow with anger.

Lana's step faltered and she watched in disbelief as Josh hastily made his exit, his bodyguards trailing behind. Lana shot Josh a glare as he shoved past her, minus his usual cocky leer. She made sure he was gone before turning back to the new guy, watching as he blinked and sighed, looking down as if concentrating on the a spot on the floor. When he looked back up he'd stopped shaking and his eyes had returned to the normal grey-blue she'd seen before.

Forcing a smile, she stepped forward and picked up a couple of his books that scattered the floor around his feet.

"Hey." Lana said as a greeting, a friendly smile to welcome him. His head snapped round and his eyes locked onto hers, his irises widening in surprise.

"You dropped a few of these." She added, instead of 'Josh Blake knocked them out of your hands.' She figured reminding him about his encounter with the bully wouldn't be a good way to introduce herself.

Lana held the books out to him, and he stared at them as if they were the plague. He glanced back up at her face before cautiously taking the books from her hands into his trembling ones. Without a word he immediately ducked down and gathered up the rest, then from his kneeling position, looked up at her in curiosity.

She couldn't help but let a little nervous laugh escape her throat. "Are you ok?" Again she received no answer, so feeling a little slighted, she offered him a hand to help him up.

He stared at the hand and quickly got to his feet and backed up several steps, pressing his body against the locker and glancing around as if looking for an escape route. Her forehead wrinkled, but she decided to ignore his strange reaction at being spoken to and instead ploughed on, the smile fading only a little. "I don't think I've seen you around here before. I'm Lana Lang."

She waited for a response, watching as the seconds turned to minutes with none. Lana started to become concerned. "What's your name?" She tried again, but still received no response.

When Lana realised the conversation was dying a slow but steady death, she produced one last smile and said, "Well, welcome to Smallville High." She ducked her head. "I hope you like it here."

He smiled slightly as well, and Lana's smile widened in pure relief that she hadn't offended him or something. It was the first sign of friendliness Lana had seen, although it was only a fraction of the beam he could produce. Her smile fading, his did also, following her every movement with his eyes.

Lana gestured back in the vague direction of a classroom. "I'd better get to class…"

She waited a moment then took his silence for consent. Dodging through he crowd, she paused long enough to throw an intrigued smile back in his direction, before entering her next class just as the bell rang.

---

The place was surprisingly secure for a school shop. Wailing screeches of alarms sounded as soon as the bandana wrapped hand plunged through the window, scattering glass shards across the display and shiny floor.

He wasn't worried about the noise, though. After surviving a coma for twelve years he didn't spend too much time worrying about anything. He'd used up enough of his lifetime asleep with a few dozen wires running up and down his body being the only things keeping him from falling into a deeper sort of sleep, the sort he'd never wake up from.

Picking up the framed picture slowly, ignoring the blood soaking his bandana, he gazed at the so-called friends who'd used up those twelve years of his life in some stupid prank that had nearly cost him his life, let alone all those precious years.

They say high school is the best time of your life. They'd experienced the best time of their lives, he had not. Now, he figured, was the time to change that.

"It's payback time."

Jeremy Creek wasn't about to waste the time he had left, and first on his list of priorities: revenge.

---

Whispers followed Clark out of math class and into the teeming hallway. Whispers both good and bad in nature, from girls and boys alike. He'd certainly made an impression on his classmates and teacher, Ms. Wells, who'd exclaimed to herself afterward that she'd never seen anything like the speed at which he could work.

At first Ms. Wells had been somewhat wary of Clark, somewhat quick to put distance between herself and the alien. Thankfully for Clark, only the teachers knew about his true origins; the fuss about his extra-terrestrial background had died down a lot during the five years he'd been missing and presumed dead, and if many people had recognised him, they hid it surprisingly well. However, he was still on the receiving end of more than a few curious stares due to his frightened animal act, something which Lex had said would take a while for Clark to get over. Nobody blamed him, though, being locked up in a cage for a third of your lifetime was no easy task to get over.

Clark hoisted his bag back onto his shoulder and located his locker once more, shooting nervous glances about him to check no one was paying attention to him before tapping the hinge so that it popped open easily.

Chloe Sullivan frowned and nudged her friend in the side as she watched the new guy shove some books into his locker. "Hey Pete."

"What?" He grunted, rolling his eyes as he saw Chloe had come to a stop yet again on their way to English.

"Who's the hottie in plaid?" She nodded her head in the direction of Clark with an appreciative smile, taking in his long legs, broad shoulders and jet black hair. Pete turned to look in the direction she was pointing before shrugging his shoulders in an offhand manner with another roll of the eyes.

"I dunno." He said uninterestedly, looking from Chloe to Clark. "He's not exactly my type." Pete grinned at Chloe teasingly but she ignored him. He let his attention wander down the corridor with a tall, thin cheerleader as he waited for his friend.

"I wonder what his name is?" Chloe said, mostly to herself as Pete was staring after the tall girl, practically drooling. The fact that Chloe hadn't produced a sarcastic jibe on the way Pete was gazing at her with puppy dog eyes was jaw dropping-ly amazing.

"I don't have a clue but I was talking to him earlier." A voice cut in, and Chloe turned to see Lana at her side. Lana smiled apologetically for interrupting.

Chloe looked at her, a slight frown on her face. "Yet you didn't catch his name?" She said disbelievingly, raising an eyebrow.

"He didn't seem to want to speak much." Lana admitted sheepishly. "It was sort of a one-sided conversation."

"Wow. Lana Lang blown off by a guy. There's a first." Chloe snarked. At Lana's hurt look she fell contrite. "Sorry. Cheap shot."

"It's ok." Lana let her eyes drift back to the 'hottie in plaid' as Chloe had dubbed him. "I met him this morning. He's an…" She paused as they watched him jump when someone passed too close to him. "…interesting guy."

"You can say that again." Pete mumbled, looking pointedly at Clark as he shrunk back from the crowd when he started to make his way down the corridor.

"He looks kinda familiar." Chloe commented, and Lana nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, I thought that too. Perhaps he was on TV a while ago or something…" Lana suggested, biting her lip in thought.

"Or modeling for Vogue." Chloe added without thinking.

Lana and Pete, who was back on planet earth now that the cheerleader was out of sight, exchanged glances behind her back. Pete looked at Chloe looking at Clark. "Ah-hah ha, someone has a crush!" He sing-songed, nudging Chloe in the ribs with a grin.

Chloe ignored his comment, instead smiling sweetly at him. "So I see 'Ross The Boss' is finally back in the room. Have a good honeymoon with Melanie?" She motioned with her eyes to where the cheerleader had just vanished into a classroom.

Pete's triumphant grin faded and he glowered at her. "Ha ha, Chloe. Very funny."

"Ooh, good comeback!" She retorted, eyes already straying back to Clark.

Lana shifted uncomfortably, no longer a part of the conversation. At that moment the bell went and Lana saw her exit. She didn't like confrontation, and the way Pete and Chloe were going they'd be at each other's throats by lunchtime. "I'll see you guys later."

Pete waved her off, following her with his eyes all the way into room thirteen. Then he looked back at his friend at the lack of the cutting remark. Chloe was still gazing at Clark.

Pete grinned. "Yo Chloe!" He waved a hand in front of her face and she jumped and glared at him.

"What?" She said distantly, her stare already wandering.

Pete laughed, taking her arm to lead her to the next class. "You've got it bad, girl."

"Not…" Chloe replied absently. She snapped back into reality as the second bell rang, warning the few remaining students in the corridor that they should be in class.

She reluctantly followed Pete into English, but her mind was anywhere but on rhyming couplets.

---

The water lapped at the bridge's stone base. A kingfisher sung melodiously from its hiding place along the river bank. A gum wrapper floated regally down the stream and under the bridge, trapped in the light current. Clark sighed and wondered why people felt they had to ruin what had once been a beautiful spot for wildlife.

It was human nature to interfere, to experiment and toy with their victims. Clark knew this only too well.

He leant his elbows on the railing, looking down at the swirling water. It seemed to form patterns, faces, distant dreams and memories being told in the current. He remembered how it felt on his skin, the cold smothering his airways as he fought to get to the surface with his cargo.

He watched the swirling faces in the water and recalled the look of terror on the man's face as the car hit Clark's legs at sixty miles an hour.

The day was cloudy, dull, boring. Eleven year old Clark had only wandered all the way out to the bridge in Smallville to get away from his father, who hadn't been able to sleep and as a result had drunk himself into a stupor by around midday.

Wearing only a pair of red shorts, a t-shirt, and a scowl, Clark was the picture of adolescent angst. Except that he hadn't quite reached adolescence yet. He leant his elbows on the railing moodily, looking out across the gold-streaked sky. The only good thing about that day had been the brilliant colour of the sky.

Clark would remember that exact shade of gold, that moment, for the rest of his life.

The car had come out of nowhere, the silver blue metal standing stark against the dark road and its huge engine piercing the silence with an angry growl. Clark was so shocked to see the car barreling his way he didn't have time to move out of the way.

He had been told that just before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. All that Clark saw before the grill hit his legs and he was forced through the rail and into the inky depths below was the look of terror on the driver's face.

Clark didn't feel any pain, not at first at any rate. Everything was strangely numb, the roar of the engine was muted to a watery purr, the brilliance in the sky dimmed to a murky ochre, the agony he should have been feeling throughout his body a dull ache.

For a while his brain was numb too, the shock of being hit by a car and still being alive blocking out any thoughts of rescuing the driver or swimming to safety. Then his survival instinct had kicked in, the adrenaline pumped through his veins and he tore open the roof of the car as easily as if it was a tin can, a laughing matter for Clark Boswell.

The man was unconscious, his bald pate gleaming eerily in the filtered light. His phone floated up above his head, escaping into the stream as the roof was removed. Grabbing the man under the arms, Clark pulled him up and out, unsnapping the seatbelt with a quick swipe of his hand.

Surprisingly lightweight in the water, Clark found it easy to swim to the surface and then to shore with the man, gasping air back into his lungs. He waded out onto the rocky sand, laying the man's head gently down on a particularly large stone.

Panic shot through his chest. The man wasn't breathing. His face was deathly pale, the crimson blood from the small cut on his cheek standing out in a horrible contrast to his white skin.

Without the slightest hesitation, Clark started pumping his chest then mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He pounded on his chest relentlessly, tears threatening to fall with every second that he didn't get a response. But Clark was nothing if he wasn't determined. He was a fighter. He'd been fighting for the last four and a half years, the four and a half years since his mother had died and his father had taken to the bottle. He hadn't torn the roof off of that car and dragged this man to safety for nothing.

"Come on! Don't die on me!"

The man coughed, head jerking up as air rushed suddenly into his water-sodden lungs. Once he'd finished hacking up what looked like half the lake, he set his head back on the stone weakly, wincing slightly at the impact on the hard surface.

Clark gulped and sighed, staring down at the man who looked to be about seventeen. Water dripped from Clark's hair to the man's face, and he blinked and squinted up at Clark. His eyes travelled to the bridge behind him then back to Clark in wonder.

"I could have sworn I hit you."

"If you did… I'd be… I'd be dead." Clark stuttered, surprising even himself with the words. True, his legs felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer made purely from those glowing green rocks to them, his arm muscles were aching from the strain of tearing the roof apart and his head was ringing incessantly, but he was still alive.

The man coughed again then sat up, feeling the back of his head cautiously. Clark waited nervously as the man's gaze rested on him, his grey eyes piercing, evaluating… he felt like a bug under a microscope.

At length the man stood up, walking slowly over to the lake. His car was nowhere to be seen. He looked up at the bridge, studying the broken railing. Then he looked back at Clark who had followed at a distance. Eventually a predatory smile spread across his face and he offered his hand to shake.

"Lex Luthor."

"Clark Boswell."

It wasn't long before a car pulled up and the driver loaned Lex his cell phone to call the police. An ambulance turned up as well, standard procedure, even though there was no need for it.

"Thanks to you, Clark." As Lex had said whilst the paramedics swarmed around him like annoying mosquitoes.

They'd been there for nearly an hour when the crane finally arrived to retrieve Lex's car. Lex stood on the bank, at the very edge where the water could lap at the toes of his shoes. Clark stood a little way back, shielding his eyes against the sun that flashed off the trunk of the car, water sluicing down its bumper.

The rear tires emerged, followed by a mangled chassis and finally a twisted hood. Clark felt his heart jump into his throat at the sight. The roof looked like it had had an encounter with a can opener and come off worse. The windshield had a fist-sized hole in it. There were handprints in the metal.

Lex slowly turned around, his intrigued and determined gaze locking onto Clark's.

Clark blinked quickly and looked away.

---

Like the rest of the school the Torch office was stiflingly hot, yet unlike the rest of the school every window was shut, the curtains drawn and every computer working at packing out heat.

Chloe paused only to sip at her ice-cold-but-quickly-warming-up milkshake, then dived back into her work, rushing to the nearest computer as it loaded up her latest lead. Hours ago she'd locked herself into the humid little room, telling Pete to go jump off a cliff at his attempts to get inside. Nobody could interrupt her now. This was too important.

She'd wrestled with the morality issues on what she was doing long ago, all through English class and most of biology, actually, and came to the conclusion that what she was doing was perfectly legit. Or so she'd convinced herself in math class.

The other computer bleeped and she dashed back to it, hopping skillfully over a pile of boxes of various shapes, sizes and purposes.

"Score!" Chloe said softly to herself at the information displayed proudly on the screen. After almost three hours of being locked up in this sauna she'd finally gotten what she wanted. More or less.

She'd hacked into the Luthorcorp database to get this far, a dangerous if not extremely difficult task for anyone, let alone a sixteen year old girl. Her heart rising into her throat, she sunk into the chair, leaning forward as the results popped up. She clicked on the second one down, selected 'print' and waited eagerly for her stone age machine to get going.

Whilst she was waiting for the printer to splutter to life she clicked on the first link, quickly scanning the screen then reading it much more slowly to check she'd read correctly. By the time the printer had done its job, Chloe was still absorbed.

On the other computer, the page finished loading, the light dancing and faintly projecting the type on the screen onto the Wall of Weird. There was a bold headline, a lot of small text and a medium sized photo adorning the screen, the front page of a newspaper that had been scanned in.

The headline proclaimed in towering, triumphant type:

"EXTRA TERRESTRIAL LIFE DISCOVERED IN GRANDVILLE!"

End of Part Two

Guppy: Why thank you. I'm surprised you haven't come across a someone-else-finds-Clark AU before, but I'm trying to put an original twist on the plot, so hopefully that's disguising it. ;)

chloedouble101: Thanks and sure you can use it, though if you use my exact words then I'd like some credit please! ;)

Thanks to htbthomas, Hope Roy, supercellchaser and mcgairman!

By the way, I do apologise for the slight Clana that had to be in this chapter. Chlark is coming, I promise. Remember, reviews equal happiness!