Chapter Two
Clark Kent and Superman Don't Look Anything Alike
When Clark regained consciuosness, the first thing he noticed was that he was no longer in the cave. He was lying face down in a wheat field and it was night. Grogily, Clark stood up and brushed dirt and undergrowth off of his red jacket, flannel shirt, and blue jeans.
"Ugh," Clark said, rubbing his stiff neck, "Mom and Dad must be worried sick."
Clark looked around, trying to collect his bearings. Everything was familiar, but different; changed somehow. Then he saw the sign. It was a "Welcome to Smallville" roadsign, but it didn't say "Meteor Capital of the World" or anything like that. It also gave the population at just under four hundred. Clark began to worry.
But perhaps it was just an old sign that never got replaced. That thought put Clark at ease for a little bit, but then decided that he had to know. He ran at superspeed through the town and quickly was scared witless. No LutherCorp, no castle, no Talon. Something strange had happened.
There were two places he hadn't dared to go, his home and the cemetary. He thought that perhaps he had traveled forward or backwards in time. Clark went into the small graveyard, by this time very afriad of what he might find and almost screamed out of pure terror by the first thing he saw: it was a granite gravestone, well kept with lots of flowers, but partially hidden by ivy. The legend read: JONATHAN KENT.
Clark sank to his knees. "No, no, not that," he wept. Then he cleared away the ivy with a blast of heat vision and stopped crying only to be more puzzled. It read: JONATHAN KENT/ 1914-1978/ LOVING HUSBAND AND FATHER.
"What?" Clark said. It was all he could say.
There was still one more place to visit, the place he dreaded more than anywhere because of what he might find. Clark ran as fast he was able to where his home was supposed to stand. He was forced to quickly hide in a cornfield, because a pick-up came from the Kent farm. He had heard "Bye, Martha" with his superhearing, so that was good. He hoped.
Yes, the mailbox read "Kent," but it was not his mailbox. The farm was not his, neither was the house or barn. Now Clark screamed: "Aaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh!" and punched the barn wall, collapsing a wall. The roof fell and broke around him. A silver-haired old woman came out of the house.
"Who's there?" she called. She sounded kindly.
Clark yelled again and zapped the rest of the barn with his heat vision. As the flames and smoke rose into the air, she called again: "Clark, is that you?"
Clark could take no more. "What is this place?" he demanded, loudly.
The woman obviously did not like his tone of voice. "This place is your home. You may not like what you found, but we all have to face unpleasent truths sometime. And that is no reason to rampage around. Earth may not be Krypton, but it is your place; you've got to remember that. Your father─your real father, sent you here to protect you. You chose to use your abilities to help us."
The strangeness of the woman's words forced to Clark to settle down. He was stil angry, but realized he had to do something about the fire before suspicious firemen arrived. Using superspeed, he put it out. Now he faced the silver-haired woman.
"Who are you?" Clark said.
The woman stared at him, unable to speak. Then her eyes softened and she hugged Clark.
"Oh, Clark, what's happened to you? You look so different. What happened while you were away?"
Clark gently pushed the old lady away. "What's happened to me?" he said incredulously. "Nothing's happened to me. But something's happened all right: everything here is different, changed. Dad's alive─he wasn't born in nineteen fourteen, you─if you're Mom─have red hair. Where's the Castle, where's Lex and Lionel and Chloe and Lana? Where's the Talon?
"Some─" Clark stopped mid-rant. He had heard something. "What was that?"
In reply, the old woman pointed up in the sky. Clark turned around. There, speeding towards them, was a giant fireball. Somethings never change in Smallville. "Get back to the house."
The fireball got closer and Clark saw that it was a spaceship, built like an array of giant crystals around a central point. It had an occupant. And it was going to crash in the Kent farm. Clark was still Clark, though, for all his anger and was not about to let that happen. To the air he took, delighting in being aloft. He grabbed onto a crystalline spire and slowed its descent, stopping the craft and settling it down neatly in the field.
A hatch of some kind opened and out of it stumbled the most strangely dressed person Clark had ever seen─and he watched a lot of football─the man was fairly tall, with black hair and blue eyes. He was dressed in a blue body-stocking, had red underwear on the outside, red boots, a red cape, and a stylized yellow "S" on his chest.
"Clark!" the old woman yelled and ran to embrace the man.
Clark just stood there, dumbfounded and holding onto a spire. His anger was rising again, he wanted answers. He gripped the spire more tighly, deforming it.
