Pantheon
Chapter One
The Smallville High School Science and Agricultural Fair was, like Homecoming Week, the carnival, and other civic events, a highlight of the school year and for the small town. All four grades of students at the high school were invited (or some were punished) to submit projects and the ones that won the contest were the ones that new, fresh takes on old ideas in either area.
Usually blue ribbons and an article in the local paper, the Ledger, were awarded to those that were deemed the best project. Starting this school year, however, Luthorcorp, as a goodwill gesture to the community, and as a way to recruit new talent (and steal ideas) offered the winners of every class a personal chat with CEO and business overlord Lionel Luthor, his son Lex Luthor, and a chance to be at the grand opening and visit the new Cadmus-Kathryn NeoPharmaceuticals Research Laboratory that Lionel just opened near the Luthorcorp Processing Plant.
Students joined up or went solo on their projects. Many frantically began working, especially the seniors, because winning the prize would look good on their college application or maybe even better, a spot at one of Luthorcorp's prestigious science facilities.
For the freshmen class, it was no different. Alicia Baker, winner of the grade school science fair the year before was the odds on favorite to win, especially with her planned transportation concept, but their were many possible contenders. Pete Ross and Lana Lang paired up and were working on a better feed for horses based on cornmeal. Paul Chan was devising a better form of government. Jodi Melville was creating a fat-free lard. Sasha Woodman was trying to come up with a honey substitute.
Others, like Clark Kent and Chloe Sullivan still hadn't decided what to work on. No one in their class doubted that they were going to pair up, but everyone would be surprised that they weren't even working on the project. Their after school meetings had begun with good intentions, of working on homework or planning on the project.
Then their hormones would kick in. After months of being all but boyfriend/girlfriend in name only, they were officially a couple. They were dating and kissing was what they did on study breaks after school. Lately, it was more kissing and less studying. And they didn't mind.
Their first kiss was framed by tattered clothes, dried blood, destroyed structures, dead people and chimpanzee-caused chaos, but now, inside Chloe Sullivan's townhouse, it was toasty warm, and the heat emanating from the teens was smoldering. The weather outside was windy, the cold front blanketed Lowell County hard. In a safe and darkened den, Clark and Chloe kissed leisurely, languidly, and lovenly.
Chloe was half-draped on Clark, her arms wrapped around his neck, her eyes closed, her lips pressed against his'. Clark's hands were on her hips while he laid back against the cushions.
Ten minutes after Clark positioned her against the armrest, Chloe felt like she was on fire.
"Break, break, break," she murmured against his lips. She scooted up and rubbed the moisture from her neck and breathed while Clark moved back to his side of the love seat. "Let's not get too carried away...Dad will be home soon."
"Ok," Clark whispered. "We should at least open some books."
"Yeah," Chloe agreed and pulled out a text book from her huge knapsack. Clark did the same, yanking one from his red backpack.
"I say we do something with meteor rocks," Chloe said innocently enough. Clark froze, but knew if he stayed silent, she would take that as his normal agreeing with her.
"No...someone has done a project on them since 1990," Clark reasoned. "They are old news, fair-wise."
"But we could do something about mutation and rocks and...," Chloe's voice trailed off; she saw the look on Clark's face. 'What's up with you and the rocks?' she thought to ask, but didn't. With Clark, their was always something up with those rocks. 'Maybe not now, but I will do something with that meteor,' she spoke to herself, and turned to Clark. "Ok, maybe not THIS year. What are you going propose to me? I hope nothing about cows."
"No cows?" Clark pretended to be even more dejected and sat back. "I'm hurt."
"Really?" Chloe knew that Clark could be surprisingly sensitive; any talk about meteor rocks, meteor freaks and general weirdness that occurs in Smallville could dampen Clark's mood. Even poking fun about his Pokemon card collection could cause sparks.
"I have a sense of humor, Chloe." Clark smiled, that toothy grin that melted her. Or in this case, kept her melty. "But cows coulda been a contender."
"Jerk!" She laughed. but quickly her lips were kissing him.
They got carried away.
Worse, Clark was so into kissing Chloe (and where their hands were roaming around) that his acute superhearing did not register that Gabe Sullivan, Chloe's doting father arrived home from his job at the processing plant. Or that Gabe entered his house. Or that he was approximately five feet away from them, walking down the hallway. At T-Minus four feet, Clark heard a new heartbeat and realized that it belonged to Gabe.
In a second, Clark pushed Chloe away, leaving poor Chloe kissing air. She gave him a quizzical look and she opened her mouth to speak, but silenced her by whispering, "Your dad is here."
"Hey kids...what's up?" Gabe said, ambling into the den. He looked at Chloe. She looked mortified and disheveled, her hair a little messed up and she rubbed the sweat from her palms on her pants. Clark surprised both of them by curiously sitting on the far side of the other couch in the room, jaw set in stone, eyes bloodshot, textbook on his lap.
'NOTHING! NOTHING'S UP!" Chloe yelped, and smoothed out her hair.
"I hate green Jell-O," Clark said lamely. Chloe just look at him and mouthed, "Way to go."
"Riiiiiight. I hope you two don't mind if I sit in on the last half of your study session and watch the boob tube," Gabe said and plopped down on his Laz-E-Boy chair. "Chloe...do you know what we called study sessions when the parents weren't home?"
She started to give an answer but shook his head. "No."
"Make-out sessions," Gabe finished and found the news channel. The six o'clock news was going to start.
"DAD!" Chloe yelled.
"Don't worry, honey...I know you two are working hard. What's tonight's homework?"
"Math," Chloe answered just when Clark said "History." She glared at her boyfriend.
"I shoulda said 'hardly working," Gabe laughed. Maybe they were kissing but until they seemed seriously into the relationship, Gabe wasn't going to chastise either of them. Yet.
The news telecast begun and Chloe and Clark tried to work, but they watched the broadcast with her dad. In the news that day, the anchor stated that an aircraft carrying millionaire industrialist Oliver Queen went down and that his body was missing. Just when the other anchor started report on young billionaire Bruce Wayne's tribute to Queen, the first anchor interrupted her with breaking news from Fawcett City, courtesy WHIZ-TV.
"Once again, terror was thwarted by the metahuman Captain Marvel," the youthful newscaster reported. "Here is the caught on camera footage of the Captain triumphing over known terrorist Sivana..."
"Gosh!" Chloe yelled and crawled on all fours to the television. She stopped and read the graphic under the newscaster, 'Billy Batson, WHIZ-TV news'. She looked over her shoulder at guys in her life. "That kid has to be the same age as me!"
"Yeah," Clark agreed, trying hard to look straight at the screen.
"Batson was like a junior reporter for the Fawcett City paper, but he was so good, he got a TV job," Gabe said. "I think he's a showoff. But the Captain? He's a godsend."
"Captain Marvel? I know metahumans are coming out of nowhere...BUT WHY WASN'T I INFORMED OF BATSON?" Chloe screamed and to Clark's dismay, sat on her heels.; investigative reporting was in her blood and she was toiling away in a hick town while this...this KID was on television reporting a story that she was already thinking that she could have written much better. "I am so a better reporter than he is."
Metahumans was the blanket term for humans that were endowed with special abilities and powers that set them apart from normal humans. For Chloe, they were just like meteor freaks, but not as close to home.
"I never heard of the Captain...I thought he was the football team's mascot," Clark admitted.
"No...that's where the team got its name," Gabe informed. "Just watch."
Suddenly, the footage switched from the reporter to footage from a hand-held cam and Clark's focus switched too, from Chloe to what happened on screen. He saw the good Captain fight, and to his shock, fly.
"Cool," Clark said and both Chloe and Gabe agreed that the Captain's abilities were amazing. But Clark felt that he had a kin in the Captain, and that he was not alone in the world.
Chloe went back and sat by Clark. She looked at him and saw that he was looking at the repeat footage of the Captain with the same intenseness that he looked at her. She wanted that back. "Hey...Marvel is Fawcett City's hometown hero like your mine." Gabe cleared his throat. "Like Smallville's hero," Chloe corrected.
"Except you don't have any powers or a publicity department," she smiled at him when Clark looked at her. "I could write about you saving me again and turn that into the Ledger..."
"Thanks ba...Chloe." Clark almost said 'babe' and her eyes went eyed; 'Babe" was vocabulary non-grata for the time being. "But let's concentrate on the science fair."
The teens bounced ideas for the project back and forth and Gabe even offered ideas about fertilizer and sewage. But other than thinking about kissing each other, Chloe and Clark thought about the footage they had seen; Chloe was jealous of Billy Batson and Clark was inspired by Captain Marvel.