- Chapter 17 - Burning Down the House -

Flames roared into the night, crackling and licking at the aged timbers of Luthor manor. Chloe stood behind the police's barricade, the heat of the fire soaking into her skin, making her face feel tight and dry. Firefighters were trying to contain the blaze, to keep the conflagration from spreading into the nearby woods, or potentially worse, into Lex's neighbor's drying fall crops. Chloe folded her arms across her chest and shivered despite the heat.

Clark kissed her. He closed his blue eyes opened his mouth and melted her into a puddle of goo. Granted, they burned down the local billionaire's house in the process, but combustion was a sign of real passion, right? Clark hadn't seemed nearly as amused by the situation as she had. After personally seeing to her evacuation, Clark had fled the scene of his accidental arson, all serious and scared. Chloe wished she'd gotten a hand on him before he ran off. She wished she'd had the foresight to look him in the eye and tell him it was okay, that she wasn't freaked out and that he couldn't help what had happened. Clark had a predictable tendency to be overly critical of himself, to blame himself for everything, particularly when his alienness came into play. She would be on the road trying to catch up with him now, except it had seemed rude to leave before Lex made it home. She was so wrapped up with her own thoughts, she would have missed Lex's arrival if he hadn't burst onto the scene screaming.

"What the Hell happened?" Lex shouted. He pushed his way through the police barricade only to be stopped by a pair of firefighters. Letting the firefighters push him back to the safe zone, Lex couldn't tear his eyes away from the bright orange destruction that was obliterating his home, consuming his childhood memories, the art he surrounded himself with, the relics and the beauty, all burning. "Incompetents." There was only one fire truck on the scene, one measly volunteer fire truck ejaculating ineffectual tiny spurts of water.

"Everyone got out Mr. Luthor," one of the firefighters said. "There are more trucks on the way and we'll have things under control soon I'm sure."

Lex made no response, running his hands back over his forehead and lacing his fingers together over the crown of his head. His home was old, sure, but it was also well maintained. He had the entire building rewired and checked for listening devices when he moved in only two years earlier. It had to be an accident...or arson. His father wanted him to leave Smallville, but would he burn the mansion, the art, and risk killing the son he was trying to relocate?

"Lex, are you okay?" Chloe asked. She wanted to apologize, but there was no way to do that without admitting that she and Clark had started the fire. Explaining the accident to someone who didn't know Clark's unique situation would be nigh impossible. "Clark had to go, but I wanted to stick around until you made it home."

"I'm fine. Thank you for the consideration." Lex spared Chloe a glance, his mind still whirling with possibilities. The flames had cast her in shades of orange, and a new possibility occurred to Lex. He had left Chloe and Clark in his home, a possible mutant and his new crush. Could Clark have had something to do with his torched home? The possibility was a little out-there, but this was Smallville, and this was Clark Kent. He was a magnet for strange little miracles and disasters. If one of those miracles hadn't involved saving his life, Lex might be more inclined to be angry at the possibility that his friend might have somehow burned his home. "You and Clark weren't hurt were you? Do you know what happened?"

"We're fine, and I have no idea," Chloe said. Technically, she didn't have any idea about the physiology of starting a fire with one's eyes. Biology had never been her favorite subject anyway, and Clark took the mystery of anatomy and physiology to a new level. Considering alien anatomy sent Chloe's mind down a short side trip. She remembered the sensation of Clark's strong hands running down her arms and over her back. She remembered his rock-hard chest crushed against her during their first kiss. She only had to look over her shoulder to remember the fire that followed. "It's getting late and I should go. If there's anything I can do for you, call me, okay? We have a guest room."

"I think I can afford the local hotel," Lex said. His grim face softened a degree with a half-hearted smile. "But I appreciate the offer."

Chloe walked away, her mind so full of emotions, excitement and confusion that she never even asked Lex about the mutant she and Clark had been pursuing so diligently. Mrs. Flutey, the big bad brain-drainer, was so easily forgotten that one kiss and a tiny fire were enough to push her completely from Chloe's mind.


Roast beef, potatoes, gravy, and macaroni, a nice dinner, sat on the table cold and congealed. Martha glanced at the kitchen clock, 9:30, and she started clearing the table. It wasn't like this was the first time Clark had missed a meal, but thanks partly to their paranoia, it was the first meal he'd missed since coming home. She and Jonathan had had a chance to get worried, to panic, and to decide not to overreact when Clark came home. He should have called, but that wasn't a hanging offence. It was just barely a worth a weekend grounding.

Jonathan followed her lead, gathering a dish in each hand and headed to the kitchen. He was being very reasonable after the day they'd had. First the letter from LuthorCorp and then finding out that the kinder gentler member of the Luthor family wasn't in charge of the fertilizer factory anymore, all things considered, his temper was firmly under control.

Leaving Jonathan scraping at the gravy bowl, Martha headed back to the table and started stacking their dinner plates. She heard the door open, and without looking up she began scolding Clark. "Have you heard of a telephone? What do we do when we're going to be late, mister?"

"Should I have called then?"

Martha's heart stopped beating for a long moment before stuttering into a gallop rhythm. The cool clipped feminine tone was unmistakable, a voice that haunted her nightmares. "Eradicator," Martha whispered. Looking up into the machine's eyes, she tried not to panic. Just because Clark was late on the same evening that the Eradicator strolled back into their lives didn't necessarily mean anything. But it could mean everything. "Where is my son?"

The Eradicator didn't much look like herself tonight. She was still dressed down in the softer mother-image she had designed for the children, and she watched Martha like a student studying a model. "We've covered this before. You aren't really his mother, and apparently, you can't even keep up with him. I need to speak with Clark. You're obviously expecting him sometime tonight. I'll just make myself comfortable."

Martha felt a pair of strong hands lock onto her shoulders and her terror subsided a small amount. They could handle this monster-machine together. "Get out of my house," Jonathan commanded. "Get off this planet. You aren't welcome here."

The Eradicator ignored Jonathan's warning, instead selecting a chair and taking a seat. She crossed her legs casually and curled her lips into a predatory grin. "Make me."

With those two words the Eradicator illustrated the true impotence of the Kents' situation. They could fight, scratch, shoot, but the insignificant humans couldn't touch her. She knew it, and so did they.


In the corn, pacing back and forth, trying to reach out with every tendril of his mind Clark was calling, begging, panicking. "Lola, I need you, right now. It's an emergency. Please help me." Why wouldn't she answer him? Why was she hiding when he was losing his mind, when his body was betraying him? He could have hurt Chloe. He burned Lex's beautiful house. Lola was the only person on the planet that could help him get his new ability under control. She understood his biology better than he understood himself.

The corn leaves clung to him, ticking at his face and arms, a petty distraction that was no distraction at all. He'd been begging Lola to help, screaming for her with his mind for hours now, and it was beginning to sink in that she wasn't going to answer. She wasn't going to help. "Please," Clark begged. "Please."


"Ah, I hear him," the Eradicator said. She rose in a fluid motion and waved to the Kents before speeding away toward the unmistakable sound of Clark's muttering. There was tension in his pacing, his heart rate was practically racing, and she didn't like the way he was breathing. It all smelled of fear. She sent him home to Earth so that he could be comfortable and happy. What had these humans been doing to her Kryptonian? "Clark, are you well?"

For a fraction of a second, Clark thought Lola had decided to answer his pleas, but spoken words couldn't really be confused with Lola's voice. Instead, Clark was faced with a familiar woman who might be able to help him since Lola wouldn't. "Eradicator." His parents weren't terribly happy with the Eradicator, but Clark had no memory of this machine's more destructive tendencies. As far as his memory went back, the Eradicator had helped him, saved him from an impromptu auction, and sent him home. "You're a sight for sore eyes." It didn't even occur to Clark to be nervous or to wonder if the Eradicator was going to abscond with him again. After all, she'd never been anything but biddable with him that he could remember.

"Whichever human is causing you distress, identify them, and I will gladly eliminate the caustic individual or individuals." The Eradicator offered her service, cold-blooded murder, with a crisp matter-of-fact tone more suited to a discussion of the weather.

Chill bumps popped up on Clark's arms, and he understood a degree of his parents fear. This machine was a loaded weapon looking for a target, anything to destroy. All she wanted from him was a name. With that directive she'd be happy. There was anticipation in her eyes, hope. Clark never really considered giving the Eradicator a name, but he couldn't help thinking of Mrs. Flutey, the mutant who had hurt him and scared him. As dangerous as he thought she was, she didn't deserve a death sentence from the Eradicator. To be honest he wasn't sure what Mrs. Flutey deserved. She was different, and she hurt people, but he was different too. He'd burned Lex's house tonight, and he could very easily have hurt Chloe badly. How was he any different than Allison Flutey? No, he was going to be different because he was going to find a way not to be dangerous anymore. "I don't want you eliminating people. Besides it isn't a human causing me distress. I'm causing my own problems tonight," Clark said. "I burned down someone's house."

The Eradicator grinned and pursed her lips seductively. "Who's the lucky girl? Heat vision almost always first activates following certain hormone surges. Whose dwelling did you burn?"

"This isn't funny," Clark said. The Eradicator was smiling like this was nothing, no big deal. "I could have hurt her. If I hadn't looked away, she would have been burned."

"That is a problem with dating a human. They are very combustible creatures. You'll just have to be careful until you have better control of your, bodily functions," The Eradicator said.

Clark knew his face was burning with embarrassment. "I thought you were a machine. I didn't think machines made jokes and mocked people. This isn't a joke. You have to help me control this."

"Mock you? I would never mock you, and I would love to help you, but I need a favor first." The Eradicator smiled, pleased with a chance to exchange favors with Clark. Her plan was going to require more than a little cooperation from the prime genetic stud in her breeding project. The situation was going to require finesse, something she had little experience with, but she was learning all sorts of new things. "Would you mind playing host to some displaced refugees? There is a war on out there in the Galaxy and technically they're related to you."

"What? I tell you I almost melted a girl's face off, ask for your help, and you want to talk house-guests?" Clark shook his head incredulously and stalked away from the Eradicator. "You're demented."

"Do you want my help?" the Eradicator asked. "I suppose you can muddle through this new development on your own. Maybe your human family will have some ideas about how not to melt human girls' faces off when you're in the heat of the moment."

"Fine," Clark shouted. "I'll play host to my cousins, whoever they are. Just help me."

The Eradicator was tempted to try out a human expression and wolf-whistle at Clark. He was bristling with his anger and frustration. Standing straight and taunt, he reminded her of his counterpart, her master, Kal-El. From the hint of red color in his cheeks to the curl of his fists, Clark was a tasty young man. "You have to practice, Clark. Get those trigger-hormones surging and practice. It's like learning to walk or read or whistle. You'll figure it out eventually. Now let's head home and figure out the sleeping arrangements."


Jonathan sat beside his wife on their porch, his every nerve feeling frayed and worn to the point of breaking. He was tired of living in fear, waiting for the next problem: amnesia, Eradicators, Luthors. God, he just wanted some lasting peace with his family whole and happy. "What now?" Jonathan asked. "We're right back where we started, at the mercy of that machine. Whatever she demands, we don't have any way to challenge her."

"I know where we are, but we are not letting that thing hurt Clark or take Clark." Martha shared a tense joyless smile with her husband. That smile commiserated with Jonathan's every frayed nerve and begged for the same peace he wished for. "We need the shotgun and the rifle."

Jonathan didn't argue with his wife about the potential effectiveness of projectile weapons. It was technically something they hadn't tried. "I'll get them."

Walking out of the corn with the Eradicator in tow, Clark froze in his back yard. He recognized the tools his parents were clutching as weapons, guns, and he had a fairly good idea why they were sitting outside mini-militia style. "Don't shoot," Clark said. Besides the fact that shooting wasn't going to affect the Eradicator, she wasn't here to cause serious trouble for a change. "We come in peace. Don't we?"

"Peace, love, and procreation," the Eradicator purred. "I'll go get my refugees. You can fill your parents in on our arrangement."

Clark grimaced at the Eradicator's back and groaned audibly. He'd agreed to play host to some unknown alien-relatives in exchange for help controlling his heat vision. The Eradicator thought help was telling him to practice not burning the county to a crisp. His parents were going to love this.

"What arrangement?" Martha stammered. She hadn't lowered her shotgun, and her finger was actually twitching on the trigger as she trained the weapon on the Eradicator's disinterested face. "You aren't going anywhere, Clark."

"She isn't trying to take me anywhere, Mom. She asked if we'd mind letting a refugee or two stay here for a while, and I told her it was okay." Clark squinted his eyes shut and waited for his parents to be angry and yell.

"What?" Jonathan asked. "Refugees?" The Eradicator didn't seem the type to be on a mission of mercy.

"I know I shouldn't have just said okay without asking first, but it's a long story. There was a mutant Chloe and I were investigating, and we wound up at Lex's place. One thing led to another, and I kissed Chloe which was fine, great even, but I started a fire with my heat vision." The stunned expression on his parents' face was enough to make Clark wish he'd been more open with them sooner. They didn't know about Mrs. Flutey or the short list of alien abilities he was expecting to develop. "I asked the Eradicator to help me control my new ability, and she agreed to help if I would play host to these aliens. I had to agree."

"She's not planning to take you anywhere, or do anything to you?" Martha asked. She exchanged a skeptical look with Jonathan. "I don't trust her or anything she offers. There has to be some loophole, some catch we don't know about yet."

Jonathan lowered his rifle and chuckled. "Why would she lie or put on a façade when she could just tie our guns into decorative bows and strong-arm us into doing whatever she wants?"

Martha wasn't sure how to feel. If Clark had it right, the Eradicator wasn't on a rampage for now, but her son had had quite the busy day. "Even assuming the Eradicator just wants us to play host to some refugees, we have a lot to talk about: a new mutant, heat vision, kissing Chloe. Why didn't we know anything about any of this?" Martha asked. "Why didn't you come to us?"

Clark shrugged and looked away, not completely sure why he'd kept so many secrets even after he'd decided to trust his parents. "I guess I liked it that you were finally happy again, and I didn't want to mess it up."


The world smelled dirty and moldy and ripe. Luci twitched her nose and tried unsuccessfully to contain a rapid succession of sneezes. "This world is dusty and dirty and what is all that stuff everywhere?" She pointed to the piles of hay and farm equipment. Ford had crawled on top of a particularly bizarre green piece of equipment and was well on his way to covering himself entirely in a dull black substance. "Ford! That could be dangerous! Get down, now!"

Ford smelled his blackened hand and presented it to his sister as though it were an amazing discovery. "Hydrocarbon, it isn't going to hurt me."

"You're five. You don't know what can hurt you," Luci said. "Don't make me come up there and get you."

Reo didn't attempt to involve herself in the kid's squabbling, instead focusing on her new home. It was at least three billion times worse than she imagined when the Eradicator propositioned her. The world was under-developed to the point that they were still using iron and steel and apparently, hydrocarbons. If she was going to do any research on this rock she'd have to scavenge a good bit of raw materials from the Eradicator's ship and the rest would have to be built from scratch, not an impossible task, but annoying in the extreme. Reo felt the beginnings of a tension headache building behind her eyes, and she wished the stupid children would stop their bickering.

Luci had followed her little brother onto the human machine, and both children were filthy, streaked from head to foot with the tarry black substance.

"They are children, aren't they," the Eradicator said.

Reo turned to face her employer's passive perfect face, startled by her silent arrival. "Of course they're children. You knew they were when you saved them from that dying mining station."

"I'll have to be patient with them, but we need to start working with you immediately. I haven't discussed the project with Clark, the Kryptonian, yet. We need to ease him into this, yet we have very limited time with you." The Eradicator took a quick visual summary of Reo-Ra, and wished she could reshape a woman as easily as she could pulverize the core of a world. This frumpy old scholar bulged in exactly the wrong places and sagged like a half-stuffed cushion. "I want you to work on your appearance a little. Can you tighten any of this flesh or wear something that makes it look less misshapen?" She gestured at Reo's stomach and thighs generally.

"Sure, give me a few minutes. I'll drop a hundred pounds and lose the wrinkles. You really think it's that easy?" Reo crossed her arms over her chest and snorted. "I didn't come here to seduce anyone. You're responsible for making the love connection."

"It's really best that you not make this more difficult for me, Reo. You're valuable to this project, but I won't be undermined. You seem to forget regularly who I am and what I'm capable of. Must I constantly remind you?"

"So, the Eradicator wants us to call her Onlea because she thinks Eradicator would scare the children," Martha said. "What will she do if we slip and call her by her proper name?"

"I don't particularly want to know," Jonathan said. He looked over at Clark, his son, and he was satisfied on a fundamental level. Nothing was perfect, particularly in Smallville, most especially at the Kent farm, but something was very right in the Kent family. Clark was sliding back into his role, not acting and not fighting. "I think we can handle one or two alien refugees for a while."

Martha rubbed at her arms, a chill racing along her spine. "I wonder what they're refugees from?"


Death came to the Planet Azar in a single night. The sun wasn't shining, but the evening was alive with artificial orange light. The graceful buildings of the government planet had become matchsticks standing in a sea of flame.

The entire world was burning.

Kal-El watched the fires from his prison and cursed the incompetent rebels who thought scorching the world would be sufficient to eliminate the Over Council. The flames had already burned over and past the seat of government and their tombs had never been at risk. A billion aliens perished in the fires, a billion men, women, and children sacrificed, and still he didn't have his freedom.

Retreating to his inner sanctum, Kal-El gazed at his beautiful political map of the galaxy. It was perfect almost confluent red, red for destruction and death. Even Azar was a lovely crimson, but could he be released by death? It wasn't fair that death hid from him, ignored him, wasted itself on people who wanted to live.

"You've failed, young Kryptonian," Evy hissed. She slid forward, her slug form jiggling as she moved. "You've torched our galaxy, but left us trapped. Now we linger here in perpetuity alone. We won't be governing anything but neither are we free."

"Do you really think I'd go through all this and not have a backup plan," Kal-El answered. "The rebels were incompetent, but they aren't the only force of destruction in the galaxy."