Emmeline excitedly bounded into the Talon where Clark and Chloe were sitting at one of the tables and held up a piece of paper. "Guess who is officially a graduate of Central Kansas University?"

"Hey, that's awesome!" Chloe exclaimed. "But why didn't you tell us about your graduation ceremony? We would've loved to come support you."

"I just decided to skip that part. I'm sure you can understand why I don't have the fondest memories of graduations."

Considering her last graduation ended in a meteor shower and her mom dying from cancer, they understood.

"Well, congratulations," Clark smiled. "I'm glad one of us stuck with college. So what's your next step?"

"Now I have to go get my Master's degree. I'm planning on taking some summer classes so I can get ahead. If I put in the work and if I'm lucky, I'll be able to finish in a year."

"No rest for the weary."

"Well, after all the things I've seen and heard in the last couple years, I'm more eager to actually start doing something than ever."

"What happens with your internship then?" Chloe asked.

"I'm continuing working there to earn credits towards my Master's, but since I've been there for a year and a half already, that's already knocked out some of them."

"Do you have a shift today? I'm about to head to the Planet, I can drop you off."

"Yeah, that'd be great."

"Cool, let me just grab my stuff from upstairs." She looked at Clark. "Same time next week?"

Clark smiled. "Sounds good. I should get back to the farm anyway. With Mom off in D.C., I have more work to do than usual."

Emmeline smirked. "So you'll be doing chores for five minutes now instead of two?"

"Pretty much. Congratulations again, Em."

"Thank you."

Chloe and Emmeline went up the stairs to the apartment above the Talon and walked in to discover the table and floor covered in scraps of paper with numbers scribbled over them while Lois fervently worked on her laptop.

"Hey," Chloe greeted. "Is that the look of a reporter on the trail of a hot story or is someone trying to pick good lottery numbers?"

"Right before Wes haywired, he kept repeating these numbers over and over again," Lois explained. "They have to mean something."

"Well, Wes was a soldier. I mean, maybe it was his serial number."

"Not in any branch of the armed forces I've ever heard of. And I've run the numbers through every search engine on the web. I got diddly-squat."

"Good. Let's keep it that way. Look, Lois, take it from someone who's gone up against the Lex-Luthor-army more than once. Not only will victory remain elusive, but you're almost certain to step on a land mine in the process."

"I'm the general's daughter, remember? I live for battle."

Emmeline thought to herself how Lois's 'living for battle' had nearly gotten her killed multiple times in the last two years and wondered how she hadn't yet learned from her mistakes.

"Not the kind of battles you can't win, Lois. You remember what he did to my mother. I don't want him to hurt someone else that I care about. Now, please, back off."

"…You know what? You're right. Why would I knowingly walk straight into enemy fire?" Lois took the index card with the numbers on it and ripped it in half. "He'll get his. It's only a matter of time."

"Good. You can thank me later. Now, I got to rocket to the Planet, and Em's got to get to the clinic. I'll see you later."

Once they were outside of the apartment, Emmeline looked at Chloe. "Please don't tell me you bought that."

"What do you mean?"

"When has Lois ever conceded that easily?"

Chloe bit her bottom lip. "Yeah, you've got a point. I'll keep an eye on her. But don't worry about that right now, this is a big day for you. We'll all go out tonight and celebrate, okay?"

Emmeline smiled. "Okay, thanks."


"Hey, Hannah, check it out!" Emmeline smiled when Hannah opened the door to her hotel room. "I got my Bachelor's degree! I'm officially a Psychology graduate."

"That's amazing, Emmeline!" Hannah smiled. "I'm so proud of you!"

"Thank you."

"So you said you're trying to get your counseling license next, right?"

"Sort of. I'm trying to get my license at the same time that I study for my Master's."

"Why are you trying to get everything done so quickly? You'll overwork yourself if you're not careful."

"I know. It's just…I'm the only one of my friends who is still taking college courses. Everyone else either didn't need to continue or just didn't want to. I figured that I'd have more time to really spend with them if I could finish this all quickly and get started actually helping people. But it's okay, over the last couple years, I've gotten really good at managing my time."

Saving the world in between homework, shifts at the clinic, and her newest training sessions taught one a lot about time management.

"That's good to hear. Congratulations, Emmeline."

"Um, Clark, Chloe, and I are going to try to get together tonight to celebrate. You…could come with us…if you'd like."

Hannah smiled graciously. "Thank you, I would love to."


The door to the clinic opened, and Emmeline looked up from her seat at the front desk to see who had come inside.

"Lana!" she smiled. She got up and walked over to her. "I'm really glad to see you."

"Hey, Em. Um…can we talk?"

Emmeline's smile faded a little. "I'm not licensed yet, if that's what you mean."

"No. I just need to talk to you as a friend."

The young woman was admittedly disappointed that Lana wasn't here to make an appointment after she'd tried so hard to convince her that it would be helpful to talk out everything she'd been through in the last several months, but if Lana needed her as a friend then she would still be there as a friend.

She turned back to the front desk. "Katie, I'm stepping out for a couple minutes."

"Okay, thanks for letting me know!" Katie called back.

Emmeline and Lana went out the door and sat down at one of the covered tables near the entrance.

"This has been a weird year for us, and I'm sorry," Lana started.

"Well, we're not in high school anymore. I guess it's something that happens when we become adults. We just…took different paths and there's nothing wrong with that."

Lana's eyes began to water. "Emmeline, there's something I need to tell you. But please…promise me you won't tell anyone else. I…I'm still trying to process it."

"Lana…I'm sorry, but I can't promise that until you tell me."

Lana took a shaky breath. "There was never any baby."

"What? What do you mean?"

"I was never pregnant."

"…What? But…you took a pregnancy test. You had it confirmed by the doctor. You saw an ultrasound."

"I know. When I was in the hospital after I was attacked by someone with meteor-abilites, the doctor looking after me ran some tests and told me I'd been given hormones that simulate pregnancy."

"Holy crap. Lana, did Lex do that to you?"

Lana wiped a tear away from her cheek. "I should've listened to you and Chloe when you tried to warn me about him. I was so convinced that he was a good man and people only saw the bad in him. I thought that I knew he was truly was. But I was wrong. Everything he told me was just what he wanted me to believe."

Emmeline ran her hand over her face in disbelief. She'd previously told Chloe that something felt off about Lana's pregnancy, but she never could've guessed that it was anything like this. Even if she'd known Lex was capable of some pretty shady stuff, tricking Lana into thinking she was pregnant so that she would marry him was sinking to a level of low that she thought he'd already reached. It was no wonder she had been ready to let him die in the tunnels a couple weeks ago.

She gently took Lana's hand. "Lana, please, come inside with me. We have people here who can help you. We can point you to some resources and get you away from him and give you a place where you'll be safe from him."

"Emmeline, I love what you're doing here, and maybe…if I was dealing with someone normal, you could help. But Lex isn't normal. He's powerful. You can't save me from him. Only I can end this."

"Please, just trust me and let me help you. You don't know what will happen to you if you go back to that mansion."

"I'm not going back."

"Well, then what are you going to do? You don't have to do this on your own. Please. Come with me and talk to someone."

Lana stood up from the table. "I don't know what's going to happen in the next few days. But I needed at least one person to know what Lex did to me."

"Lana…"

"Good-bye, Emmeline."


In a time of crisis (and it seemed like there always was one), it was all hands on deck. Sitting at Chloe's desk, Chloe, Clark, and Emmeline all frantically searched on their individual computers and laptops for anything they could find that might point them to the last phantom's location. According to Lionel who was still embodied with Kryptonian knowledge, this phantom was not an ordinary Phantom Zone escapee. It was the product of a lab experiment gone wrong and was now killing people left and right searching for the only body it could possibly survive in: Clark's. The latest victim was an elderly man in a remote cabin in Quebec whose poor daughter was able to witness him being practically torn completely apart when the phantom left his body.

"So, you said the symptoms were black eyes and a high fever, right?" Chloe asked.

"That and a bad temper. Your hack worked. I'm into the QPP database. I'll start searching police records."

"Here we go. There was an 8-year-old boy admitted to a hospital 13 miles away from that cabin. Blackened corneas, high fever, explosive tendencies. And the doctors didn't know what was wrong with him."

"What hospital is he at?"

"St. Mary's, but that's not gonna get us anywhere because it says here the boy disappeared."

Clark did a quick search through the Quebec Provincial Police's database. "I have the police report. A maintenance worker said he saw the boy being loaded in an unmarked helicopter. This has got to be Lex."

Chloe got up from her computer and started towards the printer. "So, Lex is tracking a wraith from the Phantom Zone, and Lionel Luthor is your new father figure? This is a lot of excitement for one day."

"Yeah, there's more. Lana's leaving him."

Chloe's eyes widened and she smiled. "That's a happy headline. Why didn't you say anything?"

"Chloe, I…I told Lana my secret."

Emmeline already knew that Lana had figured out Clark's secret, but Clark actually telling her his secret was different.

"She knows everything. She knows that I'm…an alien."

"…Wow. So I guess we have a new charter member of the 'Clark-Kent-secret-keeping-club'. What did she say?"

"She kissed me."

Emmeline did her best to keep a straight face, but in reality, she was crushed. Over the course of the last year, she'd come to terms with her feelings for Clark just in time for Lana to get over Lex and decide that she actually wanted to be with Clark instead. She knew that she was supposed to be happy for them, but she just felt angry. And feeling angry just made her feel guilty for feeling angry, especially after what Lana had confessed to her the other day. Suffice it to say, she wasn't in a great place.

"That's fantastic," Chloe said, though her tone didn't really ring with the same enthusiasm as her words. "You've been wanting this forever. You just…you must be on Cloud 99."

"I will be…as soon as I deal with this phantom."

Emmeline put her hand on his arm. "Clark, this thing…it can kill you. And it's a lot worse and more powerful than the one that infected your mind. Just…stay focused, and…be extra careful."

"I will. I promise."

Clark left the Planet as the two young women watched him go with worried looks.

Chloe turned to Emmeline. "You okay?"

Emmeline sighed. "I'm fine. Now isn't the time for me to be moping about Clark not liking me back anyway. Clearly, we have more important things to deal with. Or…things to worry about until we hear otherwise."

"It's okay to feel disappointed, Em."

"I should go. I have someone expecting me."

"But Em—"

"I'll be fine, Chloe."

Emmeline left the Planet before Chloe could ask who she was leaving to meet.


"Oh, dear, something's got you upset," Oliver said as Emmeline walked into the training space.

"Yeah, it's been kind of a rough couple days."

"Things not going so well with Clark, then?"

"Do I really have to talk about it?"

"You're not gonna focus if you don't. And then you'll just waste both of our time."

Emmeline clenched her jaw and rolled her eyes. "Fine. Clark told Lana his secret. All of it. I guess…I liked knowing something about him that she didn't. It was the one thing that I knew separated me from her in regards to our relationships with him. Part of me thought that…if he didn't tell her, then…maybe he liked me more than her." She put her hands on her hips. "I hate telling you all this, I hope you know that. This is embarrassing."

"Consider it another test."

"This is a test?"

"Everything's a test. Keep going."

Emmeline bit her cheek. "It's just not fair. After everything she has put him through, after the number of times they have gotten together and then broken up and then gotten together and then broken up, why do they still keep going after each other? Why does he still like her?"

"I think you're really asking why doesn't he like you."

Emmeline lightly shrugged her shoulders. "Why doesn't he?"

"Pick up some arrows and keep talking while you shoot."

With a sigh, she moved to the three targets, picked up the bow, and began shooting arrows into them. "Sometimes I wish that I never got involved with the Torch back in high school. I can't help wondering how different things would be if I hadn't set foot in that office."

The arrow missed the target.

"When you miss, stop talking," Oliver said. "When you hit it, keep going."

"What, is this a reward-punishment thing?"

"What did I say about the questions?"

Emmeline rolled her eyes again and picked up another arrow. This one hit the center target.

"You were saying?"

"Chloe is one of my best friends, and I don't ever regret the friendship I have with her, but…there are times when it would just be so much easier if I had never become friends with Clark in the first place."

She missed the target again, so she stopped speaking until one of the arrows hit the left target.

"But at the same time, I love being his friend. He's always there to comfort me when I need him, and he helps keep me grounded when it feels like my life is spiraling out of control. Maybe I just should've done a better job of keeping my distance."

"You can't help who you fall for."

"Something tells me that that little piece of wisdom isn't just for me."

"We're not here to talk about me."

"Oh, come on, I'm pouring my heart and soul out here. You could at least return the favor."

"If you get two bulls-eyes in the next thirty seconds, I'll talk."

"Sixty seconds."

"Done."

Emmeline quickly loaded the bow as many times as she could, and just as the sixty seconds were up, she hit the center target right in the middle for the second time. She smirked as she looked at him. "Talk."

Oliver shrugged. "A deal's a deal. I will admit, there are times I wish that I'd kept distance between me and Lois too. I was the one who made all the first moves and put in the effort to try to get closer to her, and then…"

"You had to leave."

"Yeah."

"But at the same time, you wouldn't give up what you had with her for anything."

"Yeah."

Emmeline put down the bow. "Can we switch over to combat training? I really want to punch something right now."

Oliver chuckled. "Come on, I'll show you some actual maneuvers today."

For the next couple hours, Oliver taught her some defensive moves in case someone was attacking her and some offensive techniques for when she was attacking someone else. It was difficult work, and like always, Oliver didn't go easy on her. The multiple bruises and the sore muscles spoke for themselves. She wasn't sure how she would so easily explain them away, but she'd figure that out when the time came.

At the end of their training time, both of them were breathing heavily and covered in a light sheen of sweat.

Emmeline really hoped Oliver didn't plan another training session for at least two weeks so she'd have time to recuperate from this especially tough one.

"You're a fast learner," Oliver told her.

"That's the first time you've ever complimented me."

"Don't get used to it. I'm gonna go see if the car's ready to take you back. Go grab some water."

"Thanks."

As Oliver left the room, he whipped off his tank top so he could change into a shirt that wasn't sweat-drenched.

Emmeline's eyebrows rose.

That was not a bad sight.

But just as he went out the door, she groaned as hot pain grew in her head and moved behind her eyes. She shut them tight and pressed her hands against them. Something was building up inside her, begging to be released.

When Emmeline opened her eyes, hot power left them in the forms of two wavy beams. It was so powerful she didn't know if it would ever stop.

Finally, the fiery hot power and pain left just as abruptly as it had come, and Emmeline's eyes widened in shock and horror when she saw that the center archery target was now on fire.


And on that note, that wraps up Season 6!

Phew, this one took a LOT of time and work, but I am very pleased with how it has turned out. It's amazing how much I've grown as a writer since I first began this story. I rarely go back to look at earlier chapters because I'm embarrassed at my writing style back then, but at the same time it's really cool to see how far I've come as a storyteller.

I've probably lost some readers by doing a little too slow of a slow-burn, but in my writer's opinion, it realistically has to be this slow or Clark would be OOC. But hey, the slower build-up, the sweeter the payoff, right?

I've also gotten a few complaints about Emmeline as a character and her not doing or growing enough. But remember, I have to stretch her entire character arc over the course of just over 200 episodes. If I had life-changing moments in every chapter, I would've run out in the first season. Particularly with this portion of the story, I do my very best to make sure that Emmeline either says or does something that will impact her as a character in every single chapter. It may just be one line or one moment, but there will always be something that either helps her grow or comes into play later. So just because it may SEEM like nothing is happening on Emmeline's end doesn't mean that there isn't. Yes, there will be a couple slow chapters, but I do my best to make every chapter entertaining in some way.

As before, I will be writing the entirety of Season 7 before I begin uploading, so it will be a hot minute before more chapters, but as I've said previously, I won't abandon this story. Besides...next season is a very big one for Emmeline...

Thank you so much to everyone who has favorited and followed my story, those who have left me wonderful and encouraging reviews, and those who have decided to join me on Emmeline's journey.

See you in Season 7! :)

~fanwriter1245