Chapter 9
"So that was useless." She came in from the kitchen holding her requisite coffee in hand, resting beside me on the couch. Chloe had woken a few minutes ago after practically falling unconscious earlier. I was worried but I knew she'd come back to us sooner rather than later. The girl certainly wasn't a quitter.

"No, it wasn't. We trigged your power." She leaned against my shoulder and took a sip of her drink. "That's the first step."

"We have so much farther to go." Though she was sitting close to me it was tangible how different it was between she and Clark. With us, the energy was always platonic and with them it was everything but.

"We have the time." Assuring her was an important undertaking. If she lost faith, she would spiral down and we wouldn't have a fighting chance of handling this.

"Pete?" Her eyes kept straight ahead.

"Yeah?"

"Do you really think this is such a good idea?" She pulled away to get a good look at my face. So she could read me. "If I control them I might be inclined to…abuse them."

"That's why we're not going to throw you out on the street once you figure them out." I placed a hand on her knee. "We'll set moral boundaries for you, together."

She stood half-excitedly half-anxiously, pacing the living room. "I can walk into The Daily Planet tomorrow and convince everyone I'm the new editor." She snapped her fingers. "And like that. I have everything I've ever wanted."

I nodded, accepting it as a possibility. "If you saw a huge story lying on some guy's desk, one that could make your career if you past it off as yours, would you do it? If you wouldn't be caught?"

Chloe cocked her head to the side, reminding me of a little dog. "No." She folded her arms over her chest. "It would be really tempting, but I don't think I would."

"That's why you won't abuse your power. You have too much integrity."

"When you have that sort of strength over normal humans, integrity sort of doesn't apply to you as much." The fact that she spoke detached of normal humans caught my attention, but I knew she was trying to act tough. She doesn't really think that way.

"Sure it does. Morality isn't variable. We just dilute ourselves into thinking it is." I thought of Clark, who was in many ways a god among men, alien and sent to 'rule us with strength'. Yet he forsaked all of that, placing all his energy into helping his friends and saving random strangers he came across.

"All of the meteor freaks of the past, most of then anyway, started out as good people. Their power sort of slammed into them like a freight train one day and being so ill-advised they left their sense of right and wrong in the past."

"We're just going to have to focus on reinforcing that as time goes on. As long as you can separate good and evil up here—" I gestured to my head. "And in here—" Then to my heart. "You'll be fine."

Appearing she was satisfied for the time being, she held out her hand to me. "C'mon. I'll go get Clark from the shower and we can continue with our work."

We still had no idea what we could do to push her abilities to appear on command, but it didn't matter.

We were taking it a little at a time, like Clark had said. I was cool with that because it gave us more time to hang out together. I told her we had enough time to deal with everything but really I had no idea. For all we know this could take months or it could all come crashing on us tomorrow.

That made us all try a little harder, in case out of no where we're slammed with reality.

But for now, we would work together on the biggest project of our lives.

Today, we would begin raising a hero.

TBC...