Chapter Six
Reciprocity
"Why South?" Mary asked Talia who happened to be behind the wheel of the nineties model SUV that she high-jacked from the valet at a nearby hotel.
"Mexico or Canada? I can't stand the sub freezing weather so I thought Mexico."
Mary shrugged in agreement. "I'm catching some Z's. Wake me if they send us to prison or whatever."
"No fair," came a severely disappointed voice from the back seat. "The whole point in calling shotgun is so you can have the best seat in the car if you aren't driving."
Mary looked over her shoulder at the very pale looking pre-teen that was thought lost to them only a brief hour earlier. "What, are you like twelve or something?"
Enigmatic frustration overcame the girl's face. "Shhhaaa."
Horrific eyes were returned. "Oh, hell no. I am not going to Mexico with some High School Musical reject." She turned to Talia. "Come on, you're with me on this one, right." And after a non-committal shrug in return Mary turned around to Maya. "Deaf girl, YO!" After a second thought she sighed. "You could give a rats butt. You don't have to listen."
She turned and crossed her arms sulking.
"How long is it to Mexico!?" Dead Girl asked in a way too cheerful voice.
Talia shrugged her shoulders. "Day and half maybe less if we don't stop to rest."
"Oh," Dead Girl responded somewhat subdued. "Um, hey, um … I gotta go pee."
Mary leaned to her left and whispered. "Can we just leave her at the next rest area?"
Talia gave her the evil eye. "No. But we could leave you there though."
"Oh," Dead Girl hopped against her seatbelt in excitement. "Can I have shotgun then?"
"No," Mary said curtly.
"How about for just a little while after we stop next?" she asked hopefully.
"No."
"Pleeeeeeaaasssseee."
"No," Mary snapped.
Dead Girl leaned back and sulked. "You suck."
0
Chloe spread out the small quilt over her legs as she adjusted herself at the chair and ottoman directly in front of Clark for the evening. He still hadn't responded to any stimuli from her or Mrs. Kent, but that hadn't stopped her from insisting on nurse duty in case he woke up in the middle of the night.
She clicked off the lamp next to the chair and leaned back in the crook of the arm and back of the chair trying her best to get comfortable. When she finally found the perfect place a few minutes later the full moon cast a stream of light right across her face though a slit in the plywood that covered the broken window.
Chloe grimaced. "Perfect."
She moved again to the opposite side of the chair and wiggled around until she was entirely frustrated. "Can this day get any worse?"
"I don't know," said a familiar voice from the direction of the couch. "I could have another blindingly horrible knife stuck in my head again."
Chloe jumped and fumbled for the light. "Clark?"
She found the switch and turned it on.
"Ouch," Clark winced. "Turn it off. My head is still killing me and that light isn't helping."
Chloe did as he asked and then kicked the ottoman out of the way before finding a path in the dark to the side of her fiancé.
"Hey," he said as he sat up.
"Hey yourself," Chloe said as she fell into his embrace.
They hugged for a few moments and she pulled back. "How are you feeling?"
Clark ran the heels of his hands around his temples. "Truthfully, not that good."
"Come'ere baby," Chloe said in a worried and loving voice.
She turned herself around and pulled a leg up along the back of the couch offering her lap. Clark sighed and lay down between her legs with his own legs hanging off the other end. Chloe let him get comfortable and began running her hands slowly through his hair.
"Mmmm," Clark sounded. "That feels good."
They sat like that for unknown minutes before Chloe began the interrogation. "What do you remember?"
She could barely see a smile on his face. "I remember you said yes."
Chloe tugged playfully on his hair. "You know what I mean."
"I remember Lex holding a knife to your neck. He was going to kill you."
"Huh?" she responded with a million questions in her head.
"The only thing I couldn't figure out was how he was as strong as I was again." He paused for only a second. "You think Zod is back?"
Chloe stopped the hand motions through his hair. "Clark, Lex is in jail. You attacked Diana and you almost attacked your mom."
Clark jerked up in the couch clearly disturbed. "What?"
She nodded her head. "Clark you went all Full Metal Jacket on Diana. I've never seen you so angry."
"Oh my god. Is she…"
"She's fine, Clark. Your mom was able to stop you with kryptonite."
Clark looked down. "I swear I saw Lex."
"Jor-el said that you were attacked mentally."
He didn't wait and brought his own bracelet to bear. "Jor-el?"
"Kal-el, my son," replied the voice originating from the Fortress of Solitude.
"Tell me what happened. Chloe said it was an attack on my brain?"
"An outside force has penetrated your mind for an unknown purpose," replied Jor-el.
Clark was visibly upset. "I'll tell for what reason. It was to kill. If mom hadn't stopped me …"
"I am currently running a constant scan of your mind," Jor-el explained. "When it happens again I will be able to trace it back to its source."
"Again?" Clark said in distress. "You think…"
"If the first attempt was almost successful does it not stand to reason that will be further attempts, my son?"
Chloe intervened. "And with that nugget of unnecessary angst hanging in the air we bid you good night, Jor-el."
"Chloe," her fiancé started.
"Clark, shut up. There's nothing we can do right now and you need more rest until morning. Jor-el said the morning sun is supposed to help you recover."
"But …"
Chloe smiled in the dark. "Is there something in the words shut up and go to sleep that you didn't understand?"
He lay back down in her lap. Chloe resumed her gentle ministrations quietly humming an unknown song to sooth the worried mind of her lover.
0
Mary shifted the map she found in the glove compartment. "Where the hell are we? And why did you turn off the Interstate?"
Talia tried to catch a street sign name unsuccessfully. "There was a cop closing in and in case you've forgotten this is a stolen truck."
Dead Girl bounced in her seat. "Oh, look. There's a sign!"
Talia tracked her hand and saw a white rectangle on a post. She squinted and blew a frustrated puff of air. "Every sign that looks like it might have a useful bit of information looks like some bo-hick-country-bumpkin used it for target practice.
Maya, who hadn't said a word the entire trip chose that moment to utter the single most frightening word ever heard in the dead of night when you are traveling in excess of fifty miles an hour on a road with absolutely no streetlights in sight.
"COW!"
Talia hit the brakes with every ounce of strength her legs possessed and jerked the wheel to the right.
"CRAP!" screamed Mary as she braced herself for impact.
"CORN!" squealed Dead Girl in delight.
A tire exploded and dug into the Kansas dirt and the SUV slid about ten feet before the back end rose up from the ground and swapped places with the front, repeatedly.
0
Clark sat up abruptly and looked around. Chloe, shaken awake, responded. "Clark, what's the matter?"
"There's been a wreck out front. It's bad."
She didn't waste any time. "Clark, go."
0
"Is everyone okay," Talia said in obvious pain as she clutched her ribs.
Mary grunted and slammed her shoulder into the door as hard as she could. She was rewarded with it flying halfway across the field they were in.
"Maya's out cold ," Dead Girl said. "I'm ready to go again! Woo Hoo!"
0
Clark arrived on the scene in time to see a truck door sailing across the field and a girl a little younger than him stumbling out and sway side to side in the cornfield. He sped as far as he could and ran the rest of way normally.
"Hey, maybe you should sit down."
Mary turned when Clark came into her field of vision and shook her head like she was trying to clear the cobwebs. She was obviously dazed because she didn't give him any argument whatsoever and sat down where she was standing. After a moment she lay completely down and rubbed at her head.
Clark scanned her with his X-Ray vision and saw she was relatively whole barring a slight concussion. He swept his eyes to the truck and saw an unconscious girl in the back seat. The other two seemed alert and somewhat trapped by the crushed doors.
He ran around to the driver's side and ripped the two doors off the frame. "Take it easy. Looks like you've hurt your ribs."
Dead Girl popped out of the back seat. "Whoa, somebody's been taking a serious amount of steroids. You might want to watch it with those. They can make your grapes shrivel to raisins."
Clark looked confused beyond belief. "Huh?"
Talia reached her hand out for help. "Ignore her. She's at the top of the chart for ADHD. I think she broke the scale."
Clark looked at the steering wheel and the angle it was digging into the girl's legs. "Hold on."
He reached in snapping the wheel off the column and tossed it through the non-existing windshield. Talia sighed in relief. "Thanks it was cutting off the circulation."
Talia accepted Clark's help out when the lights of Chloe's car closed in and illuminated the scene. "I'll survive. Can you check on Maya?"
He nodded. "Okay, don't move. I'll be right back."
Chloe put the car in park and jumped out. "Oh my god! Are you guys all right?"
Clark ran around to the other side tossing another look to Mary who was still lying on the ground. He noted that the glass on the rear door suffered a single spider-like crack and deduced that was where Maya hit her head.
Luckily it was the only remaining door and it looked as if it was the only part of the entire truck that was in one piece and undamaged. Clark opened the door and watched as it fell off the hinges after it was clear.
Maya was still strapped in by her seatbelt which he undid and gently lifted her out to lay her down on the ground.
Chloe flipped open Mrs. Kent's cell phone that she pilfered off the charger near the door on the way out and started dialing. Talia saw this and almost yelled.
"Don't. We don't need an ambulance."
Chloe looked on in confusion. "Are you nuts? You may have internal injuries and two of you are out for the count."
Talia put on her best pleading look. "Please don't. We're not supposed to be here."
Chloe slowly closed the phone suspecting something was out of the ordinary. She stepped forward and held out her hand. Talia took it and stepped down out of the wreck into the light of Chloe's car.
"Thanks."
"Clark," she called.
He came back around. "Yeah?" He stopped for a second until he saw what she was looking at. "Oh."
Talia looked between the both of them and noticed the stares. "What?"
Chloe shook her head and kind of smirked. "Um, you're blue."
0
"I sense the touch of Hermes on this one," Diana said of Talia and then she turned to Dead Girl. "This one as well."
Chloe stood next to her as she looked the two conscience girls over. "Hermes, the messenger?"
Diana nodded. "Mischief is under his domain." She shrugged. "While it is possible another has chosen to interfere in the lives of these young ones, I believe the odd color of this one and the lack of pigment of the other is his style."
"Kind of cruel don't you think?"
Diana nodded. "It is sometimes well and good to bestow upon those of us who have been granted abilities others do not possess something to keep us humble and respectful."
"They're super-powered?" asked Chloe.
Diana nodded. "Each has acquired something recently to set them apart. As I have told you Chloe, we are entering into a new era. You will be seeing people such as these on a daily basis."
Martha sat beside Clark as he tended to the wounds of those that were injured. She was holding an ice pack to the side of Maya's head while Clark scanned her in better detail.
"She'll be okay," he said. "She'll have a heck of a headache. Just keep holding that there for another few minutes and give her a break for fifteen then back again."
"T.J., you're next," Clark announced.
Talia grimaced. "Mary's passed out. Shouldn't she go next?"
Clark smirked. "I've already checked her out. Other than a lot of bruises she'll be fine. Come on."
Regretfully Talia took to her feet from the arm of the chair she was leaning on and sat before Clark and his mountain of first aid supplies. He focused his eyes and frowned slightly.
"The good news is your ribs aren't broken. But they have been severely bruised."
He took a roll of wide white tape and unwound a good foot of it before he turned back. "Lift up your shirt."
He saw the reluctance in her eyes. "I can tape up your ribs or you can go to the hospital and have it done. No matter how much my fiancé says I'm a perv you don't have anything to worry about with her standing right over there."
Talia looked over her shoulder and saw Chloe flash a very large diamond on her left hand. "No hankie-panky over there Dr. Frankenstein."
The blue-skinned girl relaxed her posture for a moment and then lifted up her tank top to a height enough for her to keep her modesty.
Clark began taping her ribs trying to be as careful as her could while keeping the tape as tight as it needed to be. "Can you tell me what happened to all of you?"
Talia didn't have the heart to bare the secrets of the other or more to the point that they were escaped mental patients. "We were being held against our will; being experimented on." She glanced at her arm and its strange new color. "I guess that's what caused my skin to go all neon blue."
Clark nodded and tried not to stare. "Was that how Mary got her powers?"
"Powers?" Talia asked sounding genuinely clueless.
Clark nodded. "When I came up to the truck I saw her slam her arm into the door and watched as it sailed away like a Frisbee."
"Uh …"
He saw he apprehensiveness. "It's okay. We've all had experience with people having strange powers around here."
Talia looked around again and saw Chloe giving a look as if to say, 'oh yeah, you better believe it.'
"I've seen some weird people in Belle Reve before, but …"
That caught Clark's attention. "Hold on … Belle Reve?"
The blue girl nodded. "That's where they were holding us. Where they did those freaky injections and the shock treatments."
At that Dead Girl came running through the door very excited. "I rode a cow! I rode a cow!"
Mary jumped and started awake. "COW!" She stopped for a second and gripped at her head. "Oww. Dead Girl shut the hell up. Your voice is driving me nuts."
"Dead Girl?" Chloe inquired.
"That's me!" the pale girl responded.
Talia clarified. "When we broke out we thought she was dead until she popped up like that."
Clark focused his eyes from a top to bottom examination and dropped his tape the moment he reached her chest. "Uh, hey, how exactly do you feel at the moment?"
Dead Girl bounced on the balls of her feet. "Peachy, thanks for askin', Steroid Man."
His hand came up half-heartedly and he head tilted to the side. "I'm only asking because, well, your--your heart isn't beating."
Mary cracked an eye against the white light of the kitchen. "Hence the moniker, Dead Girl, Steroid Man."
Clark frowned. "My name is Clark."
Mary snickered and then immediately regretted the action as she swayed a bit. "I kinda like Steroid Man better. 'Course that would be promoting illegal substance abuse to the young kiddies, and I'm all about saying no to abusing drugs." She paused for a moment. "Anyone got a valium?"
Talia crooked an eye and shook her head. "She won't tell us her real name."
Dead Girl waggled her eyebrows at Clark as she passed by him on the way to the refrigerator. "You guys got any cold fruit?"
"Dee, don't you think you're being rude?" Talia said with a glare.
"I'm hungry, T.J. We haven't eaten for like … uh, last night I had a nugget and punch."
"Someone voluntarily gave you sugar?" gasped Mary.
"No," replied Dead Girl. "I took Bobbie Sue's. It's not like she drinks anything that's red anyway." She turned to the open mouth of Martha Kent. "She has this thing about red foods. She all like 'It's Red! It's Red!' and then you have to …"
"I think they get the idea, Dee."
"There are some grapes in the produce drawer," Martha offered.
Dead Girl's eyes flashed in appreciation. "Thanks!"
0
Once the excitement gave way into the exhaustion of night Clark and Chloe found their way to the porch swing where she snuggled under his arm.
"Think there's some 33.1 action going on?" asked Chloe.
Clark nodded. "Yeah."
"You'd think with Lex in jail that he'd take a break; maybe learn the error of his ways?"
They sat in silence for a few minutes afterward before Clark broke the silence. "We have to help them, Chloe."
She nodded in his chest. "Think we should call Oliver? He's got to have something set up to help the kryptonite infected people he finds."
"I'll call him in the morning."
0
Morning rose and Martha Kent made her way between the sleeping bodies that made up most of her living room. She opened the door to find her son and his fiancé sleep peacefully on the porch swing. The sounds of her footfalls woke Clark.
"Morning," he mumbled.
"Clark, were you two out here all night?" Martha said with concern.
"The clothes Jor-el gave us keep us warm even up at the Fortress, Mom."
Martha still gave them an uncertain look. "I'll be at the office in town if you need anything."
Chloe smiled sleepily. "Thanks, Mrs. Kent."
Martha tossed aside her concern and stepped forward and leaned in to kiss Chloe's cheek. "Take care of my baby boy."
A happy grin settled on Chloe's face. "I always do."
She pointed at Clark then and set her smile to the left side of her face. "And you take care of my future daughter-in law and the baby."
"Mom," Clark whined.
Martha stood with satisfaction. "I wish Jonathon were here to see this. It would have done his heart good to see the two of you together."
With that she turned and walked to the state issued Taurus and drove out of sight.
Chloe patted Clark's chest. "Up and at'tum, Superman. You have some healing to do."
The look on Clark's face was not pretty. "Superman?"
"Yep," she smiled in return.
"Uh huh."
"Much better than Boy Scout, don'tcha think?"
Clark got up warily. "Do I have to have a nickname?"
Her face changed to mock seriousness. "It's not a nickname. It's a codename."
At the objective look on Clark's face she continued. "A codename needs to inspire confidence, and tell everyone a little bit about what you represent and what kind of message you are conveying."
"Superman?"
Chloe sat up and a seriousness came over her face. "Clark, whether you believe it or not, you are going to become a role model for what is best about the human race. You are the one in a billion that actually believes in chivalry, truth, justice, and the American way. You show it in your actions every day. You believe that there is good in everyone and you try your best to bring it out in them through your actions."
Clark looked to side and she saw red tinge his cheeks.
"You are what every person on this earth needs to aspire to. You're a Superman."
She stood and closed the distance between them and stood on the balls of her feet to kiss his cheek. "Now go out there and soak up some sun. We're going to need you at your best today for the newbies."
He turned his cheek and grabbed her waist, lifting her up to give her a full kiss. When he set her back down he looked deeply into her. "You make me want to be the best I can be."
He turned and walked out into the morning sunlight as it crested over the barn. Raising his bracelet to his mouth he said, "Minimum attire."
His shirtsleeves retracted and the body of his shirt melted to the beltline to bare his upper torso. His shoes and pant legs followed suit until all that was left was something akin to bicycle shorts.
"Oh – my—god," whispered a voice from the direction of the screen door.
Clark looked back at Chloe. The muscles along his back rippled. His legs tightened and he brought an arm in flexing the biceps and triceps before he crouched and then shot up into the air.
The screen door opened and Talia ran out to the steps looking up into the sky. "He can fly?"
Chloe turned. "He can do lots of things."
Talia searched the sky. "The guys are gonna be ticked that they missed that."
"He'll be back in a couple of minutes. Go roust them."
The blue girl looked back and smiled before she dashed into the house while Chloe leaned against a post waiting for her fiancé to return."
0
Maya was the first to arrive. She looked at Chloe with curiosity.
The hostess held out her hand. "I'm Chloe."
Maya squinted at her mouth in concentration and then screwed up her face slightly. "I'm Maya. Do you have something to write with? I'm sorta deaf.
Chloe blinked. "Oh my god, I'm sorry," she said before she realized what she was doing. She held up a finger to wait and dashed into the house.
The girls were making themselves at home in the kitchen. Talia was pouring orange juice into four glasses while Mary was looking at the coffee machine and holding a coffee filter tentatively.
"You guys go outside. Talia will tell you what to look for. I'll get breakfast ready." She saw a square of post-it notes on the counter and grabbed it and a pen before she retreated to the porch.
The girls, sipped at their juice while their hostess jotted her name on the top post-it.
Maya looked at it and smiled. "Hi Chloe. Thanks for helping last night."
0
Clark soared high into the atmosphere above the clouds that were scattered and few. Jor-el had taught him not to fear the lack of breathable air if he had taken enough into his lungs. His Kryptonian lung capacity held enough air for at least thirty minuets.
He wouldn't be high enough to leave Earth's atmosphere but he escaped several layers to feel the almost undiluted effects of the heart of the solar system.
The ultraviolet rays of the sun pounded into his skin invigorating him to his highest limits. He felt new again as he stretched his arms wide clenching the multitude of muscles he possessed. A wide smile found its way to his face as he tried his best to remember what scared him about flying. It was almost second nature to him now and he reveled in the feeling of doing what no human would ever be able to do without the protection of a spacesuit.
"WWWWWWOOOOOOOOOO!" he screamed in elation before he took one last look at the sun, turned and jetted back to the center of the United States, back home.