Aaaand we're back on regularly scheduled updates.

I know I picked up some new regulars recently, so be informed that I usually update this story every other week (either thursday or friday, depending on my time management skills). Barring, of course, any illness, holidays, or emergency editing. If you're wondering why such a long gap when I've stated repeatedly that the story's already been completed... Well, that's the thing. The story might be complete, but it's been a while since I've read over some of these chapters. Spacing out the updates means I have the time to read over the pending chapter and make sure that it still makes sense.

And remember: Alien biology is alien.

Chapter Sixteen: Tornadoes in Texas

It was snowing buckets again; a meteorological event that was hardly unusual for Metropolis. But the fact that the city had five more months of this to look forward to? It was only November and already Lois couldn't wait for spring.

"I have no tolerance for winter. I hate it when it snows and I hate the way it gets everywhere. I hate the cold weather. I have no idea why I just don't move out of Metropolis and go south to like Texas." she grumbled, tightening her scarf against the blowing snow.

"Tornados." Clark told her.

"Right. Maybe I should try for the lower half of the east coast instead. Definitely south of Gotham."

"Then you get hurricanes. And on the west coast, you get earthquakes and poisonous snakes. And scorpions. And Mormons."

Lois did a double-take and grinned. "Clark Kent, did I just hear you insult Mormons?"

"Of course not. I don't insult other people's religious beliefs. That's incredibly rude." Clark stated, or rather, denied because he smiled as he said it. He really bore them no ill unless they came knocking around the farm and persistently asking if they had ever given God the time of day until Johnathan had explained to them in great detail what kind of damage a shotgun blast could leave.

"Whatever you say." Lois drawled. "So, what did Dr. Sullivan want to talk to you about? Did he give you any more juicy details about Dr. Essex?"

"He lied in his email. It was nothing about Dr. Essex, for one." Clark lied. There was no way he was going to tell Lois the whole truth. That was somewhere between asking for trouble and actively looking for it. On that note, he had not actually gotten around to asking Dr. Sullivan about Dr. Essex. "It was honestly a little more personal."

"Too personal to share?" Lois inquired. Honestly, Clark had turned up an hour ago looking more unsettled than she'd ever seen him and said something about having a lot on his mind when she'd first asked.

Clark shrugged. Were he talking to any other person, he didn't think he would have shared the details, but Lois had developed a way of worming past anyone's defenses and she'd poke and prod anyways because that was what she did. She would hardly treat Clark any differently just because they had reached a stage that could definitively called friendship.

So he went ahead and said: "Dr. Sullivan told me that I'm the spitting image of his son-in-law."

Lois's eyes widened. "Did he now... That's interesting." she said, nodding. "So... is he, I dunno, related to you or something? Like, as your grandfather? He almost looks too young to have a twenty-three year old grandson, though."

"He wants to find out." Clark hesitated for a moment to work out how to phrase the next bit. "He told me that he had a grandson, but his daughter and son-in-law died abruptly in an accident, and he never found out what happened to their son. So, it seems there's a possibility. And there is a distinct resemblance."

A very exact resemblance, actually. Clark was nearly a clone of his father. It was the result of genetic manipulation -- very common in Kryptonian society to prune out undesireable traits and propogate certain strains, like those designer babies everybody hissed over. It had had the side-effect of isolating certain traits and narrowing the gene pool something fierce, though. Clark's own genes for appearance hadn't been manipulated at all. He had come out looking so much like his father because there had been practically nothing else to choose from.

"Clark, that's amazing!" Lois slapped his arm in a vaguely celebratory manner. "See, told you this job would get you connections! Good on you for taking the initiative! I'll buy you a cheeseburger when we get there!"

"About that, where are we going?" Clark asked, because he was pretty sure he hadn't caught the name of their destination.

"To talk to Agent Stoolie Canary. That 'young dumbshit named Trevor' who blabbed Trask's secrets to the Met P.D. and got fired for his troubles." Lois answered. "He's at some sports pub a few more blocks down. Lombarde gets his testosterone on down there every day after work. He texted me just a bit ago. He says Agent Stoolie Canary is there."

"Wow, you two are talking civil?"

"It won't last. He still asked if he could buy me a drink."

The End Zone was a very classic sort of sports bar with flatscreen televisions mounted everywhere, including the bathrooms. The dominating sports were football and basketball, and hockey was starting to rev into gear too (this close to Canada, the blood of sports fans was laced with enough maple syrup for them to lust after the brutality of hockey). The bar served every kind of fatty, greasy food imaginable and several kinds of local microbrews along with the brand-names. Its patrons all seemed to look very much alike; cut from the same mold of vaguely good-looking, wearing polo T-shirts or long sleeves rolled up to their elbows, clean-cut hair, and most likely desk jockeys who had just gotten off of work. The only women Clark spotted were the waitresses.

"Welcome to the Dick Zone. Free testosterone injections with every third beer." he muttered in Lois's ear.

The black-haired woman sniggered. "Good one, Smallville."

She looked around the pub just once before spotting her quarry and strolled on over. Clark had to admire the way Lois walked like she ruled the sports pub with an iron fist. Her shoulders were straight and she utilized every inch of her five-foot-seven frame (plus two-inch heels). Steady commanding strides and a powerful sense of purpose that dared anyone to stop her and ordered everyone to get out of her way without her actually having to say a word. Clark suddenly felt like a dumpy little tugboat trailing in the frothing wake of a majestic ocean-liner and wondered if Lois just walked like this everywhere for the effect of it.

Agent Stoolie Canary looked like a wholesome, all-American boy with dark blonde hair and blue eyes, and maybe just a year or two older than Clark and Lois. He was baby-faced and didn't look like he would have much of a temper. He sat at a booth filling out what looked a great deal like a job application with an empty basket of pizza fries and a glass of the best microbrew in Metropolis.

Lois slid gracefully into an empty seat beside him and Clark sat down beside her. Agent Stoolie Canary looked up abruptly and shot the pair of reporters wary looks, focusing particularly on Lois's smirky grin. Clark heard his heart-rate increase nervously.

"Is this part where you take me out back and shank me?" the former agent asked, as if he had fully expected retaliation from Trask.

Lois scowled. "Why the hell would I shank you before you give me the dirt? We want to talk to you." she assured him. "I'm Lois Lane and that hunk of harmless farm boy over here is Clark Kent. We're reporters. With all the dick-slapping going on back at the Planet, I don't think we got around to introductions. It's 'Trevor', right?"

"'Trevor' is my last name." Agent Stoolie Canary corrected, still eyeballing Lois warily. "It's Steve Trevor."

"Nice to meet you, Steve Trevor." Lois said, sounding like she was sincerely pleased to meet him. In a way, she was.

She extended a hand to him and Steve stared at it for a long moment, perhaps anticipating some kind of trick. But Lois tilted her hand to show that her palm was empty and that seemed to be good enough. Steve returned the handshake.

"Like I said, we want to talk to you." Lois said.

Steve narrowed his eyes and peered at her suspiciously.

"What's in it for me?" he asked.

"Another basket of pizza fries and the personal satisfaction that you get to help fuck over your former boss." Lois offered. She leaned closer. "I want the shit, Mr. Trevor. I want enough shit to fertilize the vegetable patch Clark over there is planning. I want to know all of the bad things that Trask had ever done because I'm going to put them all in the paper that goes all over Metropolis and half the nation. I'm going to expose his ass like it's never been exposed before. He's not going to have a leg to stand on by the time I'm through with him."

Steve snorted. "Good luck with that. Trask smothers information as well as he smothers people. I mean that literally. And to be honest, Miss Lane," The former agent looked her up and down with concern, his eyes lingering for a second on the bruise she had covered with concealer. "I'd rather not read your obituary in the paper and discover that your cause of death was unknown. Or possibly that you were raped and strangled. He likes to mix it up."

"Go on." Lois prompted. The notebook and pen had come out in the mean time.

Steve blinked. "You're serious?" he asked incredulously. He looked at Clark. "She's serious?"

"Very serious." Lois nodded.

"She's serious." Clark confirmed, hoping that his long-suffering expression would convey the gist of 'It's not that she has a death wish, but it's more like bad judgment about when she's in over her head. Don't worry, I've got her back.'

It seemed to read with Steve and he nodded, if a tad reluctantly. Once they'd placed orders for food and drink, the former agent proceeded to spill his guts.

He had joined the Air Force right out of high school, like most new recruits. Not quite the storied military career or a meteoric rise through the ranks, but he had still made sergeant. He had been quite thoroughly average, drumming himself out at the end of his six-year contract to return to civilian life because putting his ass on the line was not really how he wanted to go through the rest of his life and there were too many battle-zones that America had gotten entirely too involved with.

He had been tapped to join Bureau 39 within the first two months. It had been a cushy job at first, giving him the pay grade and the spare time to start attending college on a part-time basis without having to take out student loans. Then he'd realized that he didn't actually know what his job was; he had been fed a line on terrorist threats from the inside, which had lead him to believe that he was working for a more discreet and obscure branch of Homeland Security. And many of the people around him were world-class fuck-nuts who shouldn't have been given positions of relative authority since it did funny things to their heads.

In fact, Steve didn't learn the secret of Bureau 39 until he had managed to climb high enough into the ranks to get a field position.

That was when he'd actually met Trask for the first time.

And that was when it had all gone weird.

"Trask is a fucking psychopath!" Steve hissed in a low voice. He was working on his second beer and his third basket of pizza fries, albeit sharing it with the two reporters. The rest of the food had come and gone; all that remained of Clark's promised cheeseburger were a few fragments of bun.

"I got that feeling the first time he batted his crazy eyes at me. Could you elaborate?" Lois requested. "Specifically on what Bureau 39 actually does. Trask didn't want to give a clear answer."

Her probing was remarkably gentle compared to the last time Clark had seen her grill someone. He wondered if it was because the moment Steve had started talking, the dam had broken and now he just couldn't stop. There was no need to fire-sear someone who was in a tell-all mood.

"Turns out, we are sort of an extension of Homeland Security and there was something I could refer to as 'terrorist watch'." Steve explained. "But truth is, Bureau 39 is all that's left of the Department of Extranormal Operations."

Lois's pen actually screeched.

"What." she said flatly.

"That's impossible." Clark stated. "They shut down everything after the riots in Central City, including the DEO. They only left the Department of Metahuman Affairs because it was still handling the legal fallout and they still tore that down in 1994."

When Presidential Order 57 had passed the desk and the Justice Society had disbanded, Task Force X had risen up in its place. Well-intentioned but ultimately a disaster and dissolved in 1959, it had been replaced by the Agency which had taken a less covert, less militaristic approach. Out of it had formed the Department of Extranormal Operations and its legal division, the Department of Metahuman Affairs. Both departments had concerned themselves with the legal protection and representation, and the semi-covert surveillance of metahumans. The DEO had been largely classed as a watchdog group, policing the actions of metahumans to ensure that they didn't violate another human's basic rights.

Coming up alongside it was E.A.G.L.E., which had handled the property damage, clean-up, and insurance claims left behind by any hero-villain battles. They had also established and staffed the prison of Belle Reve; the prison still operated with many metas still serving their sentences. And then T.H.U.N.D.E.R., forming just after Vietnam and concerning itself largely with the metas involved the Cold War, such as Red Trinity.

The Agency and its satellite organizations had come down seventeen years ago after the Central City riots and mass civilian protest had pushed Order 88 through Congress. Clark had remembered reading the newspaper articles with avid interest for a kid his age; an interest fuelled by his own growing powers. Back then, it had been nothing more than invulnerability and some greater-than-average strength. It had still been quite enough to give him the idea that he himself was a metahuman - back then, the only logical explanation for a boy who could fall on the grain thresher and have the thresher come off the worst.

Steve shrugged helplessly. "Look, I can't explain it. I wish I could." he said. "I was only a field agent for about a year. There was a lot they didn't tell me. I had to go find some of this out for myself."

"And what would that be?" Lois asked, scribbling rapidly. This was going to be a meaty article, she could tell. She would have some research to do, for sure.

"Trask's methods, for one. See, they don't tell you how butt-fucking insane he is when it comes to metahumans. I don't even know how to begin to tell you crazy he is." Steve admitted, running his hands through his hair. "He's perfectly normal for the first thirty seconds you meet him, but then he gets this gleam in his eye like he's trying to figure out how to best disembowel you and make it look like an accident."

"It's funny, I've had people say that about me, too." Lois commented lightly. "Now when you say he's butt-fucking insane about metahumans..."

Steve took a fortifying gulp of liquid courage before he started talking. "I only know about some of this stuff third-hand, from half-redacted files. Like... The Florida Keys, way back in the early spring of '99. Some business about-- fish people? I think some of it made the papers, but it mostly reads like a combination of shark attacks and red tide and contaminated fish. If it wasn't for all the police reports saying some madman attacked them and the man's description happens to match Trask's to a tee, I'd believe it."

"I would too." Lois said brightly.

"And then in 2002, this hoedown in Central City. Some wealthy businessman was murdered. It sounded like a poisoning, but I hear Trask was red-hot to find some kind of meta interference that he blew the whole thing way out of proportion and spent a week bullying high school students.

"Oh, and there was a meteor shower in Kansas--"

"I know that one." Clark interrupted. "I was there. Smallville's my hometown and he was determined to wreck it. I'm aware how overzealous he can get."

"Not sure you know the half of it." Steve muttered, but nodded anyways.

"So what I'm getting out of this is that Trask takes a largely innocuous event that can't be explained right away and doesn't just highlight the discrepencies, but blows them up to the size of billboards and starts harassing people about it?" Lois summarized, scowling. "God, there's no way he could look good in context. This guy's a certifiable asshole."

"Not... exactly." Steve said hesitantly, staring briefly at the tabletop. "Three-quarters of the time I didn't know if a third of the stuff Trask was saying was even true, but... I think some of the crap he's said is true."

Clark had a sudden sense of foreboding. He had known all along that Trask wasn't completely off the mark where the Smallville Meteor Shower had been confirmed, but to hear someone else say it...

"Go on." Lois prompted.

Steve leaned in closer so he didn't have to talk so loud. "UFOs."

"UFOs?" Lois repeated, sharing a bewildered and somewhat startled look with Clark.

"I think they're UFOs." Steve partially corrected. "They look like UFOs, at least. Trask's storing them down at the SCU. I think that's what pissed off their lieutenant so badly, but he's really good at pissing off women in general."

It clunked into place for both reporters, why Detective Turpin had suggested they swing by the SCU when they were off work. Lois wasn't going to believe for a second that there were actually UFOs down at the SCU, but it was starting to become clear that Trask had brought along something that proved he had a concrete reasoning behind his otherwise delusional belief.

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Trevor." Lois said, flipping her notebook closed in a hurry. "It was a pleasure talking to you, I'll make sure you're an anonymous source, and good luck with job hunting in the future."

"Yes, thank you for talking to us." Clark agreed, grabbing their coats.

"We've got somewhere else we need to be, like, right now." Lois said. "We'll pay the tab on our way out."

And they hurried out like their heels were on fire. Clark didn't have to guess what Trask had stashed away in the SCU and Lois just wanted to see it-- whatever it was.

Night had fallen for real by the time they were back on the sidewalk and making their way in the general direction of the SCU. The darkness was held back by the electric lights shedding an orange glow over the sidewalks. The wind had died, but the was snow was still coming out of the sky.

Lois turned up her collar and zipped her coat all the way up while Clark's phone chattered with an incoming text, just as he sent one out.

"Something's come up. Detective Turpin won't be able to meet us." he announced.

"Damn, and I really want to see what Trask stashed in the SCU." Lois grumbled.

"He's asking us to meet Detective John Jones instead." Clark added, getting to the end of the message. "Detective Jones is already waiting for us at the SCU evidence warehouse."

"Wow, John Jones. There's a generic name if I've ever heard one." Lois commented as they made their way up the sidewalk, against the flow of the crowd. "You gotta wonder what his parents were thinking. Our last name is Jones and now we've got a kid! Let's name him John! Great idea, honey! His middle name better not be anything like Jacob or Joseph or I'm gonna start calling him John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt."

"They probably liked the name." Clark figured, shrugging. He put his phone back in his pocket.

"I don't care if they liked the name or not. Some people need to be more aware of what they're naming their kids or else you end up with Harry Baals or Jolly Mangina or Dick Assman or Chardonnay Hooker or Hitler Mussolini or, my favorite, Jesus Condom."

Clark frowned. "Are those real names?"

"Yes. Yes, they are."

"Would it be redundant for me to comment that I think you made them up?"

"As much as I wish that was the case, no Smallville. They are very real names that unfortunately exist."

"John Jones is hardly the worst name." Clark pointed out. "It's definitely better than... Jolly Mangina."

He ended up lowering his voice, like he didn't want anyone to hear him uttering that train-wreck of a name.

"I know. But it's so-- generic." Lois complained. "Not only the alliterative initials -- and yes, I am aware that my initials are L L -- but two of the most common names in the entire United States. John and Jones. Last I checked, 'John' was number two on the list while 'Jones' was number four for last names. Forget being teased in school; he must have been ignored entirely."

"You're not one for mediocrity, are you." Clark commented.

"Mediocrity's boring. And when you have to deal with it all the time, it drives you insane." Lois claimed, scowling.

"What gave you that impression?" Clark wondered. Most likely, her last brush with mediocrity had left a bad taste in her mouth and sent her running back to the arms of a more exciting life.

"High school boyfriend, senior year. I don't even know how I started dating him. He was boring. Stable, but there was no pizazz in that relationship. It was like dating a sex doll, except there wasn't even any sex in it. We dated for two months and he was convinced we were going to be together for the rest of our lives and do the married dog two point five kids picket fence thing. The wholesome, American apple pie shebang." Lois explained. "I thought he was joking. Then I found out from his little brother that he was seriously looking at rings and he was going to propose to me right after graduation and I knew that I had to break up with him because I was not going to be tied up as someone's good little baby-making housewife machine!"

With every word coming out of her mouth, Clark felt that he was understanding this woman a little more. Lois liked things that stood out. She liked the unexpected. She liked life to surprise her regularly. She wouldn't settle into a complacent routine with a fixed schedule.

And Metropolis was exciting enough to keep her interested. It moved fast enough to keep her engaged.

"I'd ask you to reciprocate on the stories except you don't have any old flames." Lois added.

"No, I really don't." Clark agreed. There had been Lana, in high school, but it had been rather one-sided and he had been observant enough to notice that nothing was going to come of it.

Besides, she had been gravitating towards Pete come the end of senior year. They had broken up after Lana had started college; it was hard to hold a relationship together from several thousand miles apart. The last Clark had seen of her, just before he had started college, Lana had been going steady with a nice-sounding guy from Paris.

There had also been Alicia, his stalker who had tried to run and ruin his entire life after he'd tried to break up with her on the account of her being a bat-shit psychopath. It was a segment of his life he really wasn't interested in bringing up with anyone, except maybe a therapist.

"How do you live the way you do, Smallville?" Lois wondered, sounding both aghast and pitying. "I don't understand what motivates you to get up every morning if your first instinct isn't to grab life by the balls and have some fun!"

"I don't--" Clark stopped, realizing he didn't know how to reply to that.

Lois made a face. "I didn't mean literally! God, do all men think with their ballsacks?" she grumbled. Then she came to a short stop and looked back at Clark in semi-horror. "Wait. Smallville. Did you just almost try tell me that you don't masturbate?"

"No." Clark said quickly, plastering an appalled expression on his face, as if the very idea was inconceivable. "No! Of course I masturbate-- Which-- you didn't need to know..."

"Didn't need to know it, but somehow reassuring." Lois patted his arm. "It's a healthy thing to do. Very common. Good for stress levels."

But he didn't masturbate. He was well-proportioned down there. Everything looked textbook. But nothing happened. He had never woken up with morning wood or experienced the awkward public boner. His endocrine system wasn't structured the same way a human's was. Clark didn't have the human libido. Sex and lots of it was not something he felt the urge to pursue.

(What Clark didn't know -- because it just hadn't come up and he hadn't thought to ask while talking to Dr. Sullivan -- was that it had been nearly two millennia since a Kryptonian had last reproduced through the means of sexual intercourse. For nearly two millennia, everything had been done through through artificial insemination and artificial wombs and no bumping uglies had been required because in-utero pregnancy had actually become quite dangerous. Generations later, libido was practically non-existent, the erectile tissue was rather non-responsive to stimulation, and the pleasure center of the brain couldn't make the connection no matter how vigorously stimulation was applied -- because Clark had fucking tried. That wasn't going to change just because he was on Earth.

Of course, Lois wasn't going to be finding out that either.)

This close to the SCU, catching a cab was pointless and the bus system operated on a skeleton crew after certain hours, so it wasn't going the same way they were. All in all, Lois preferred to walk if the distance wasn't that far. Clark almost tried to talk her into taking a cab, just so he could get home faster.

But Lois had her majestic ocean-liner stride on again and all he could do was bob in her frothing wake.

Outside the SCU's evidence warehouse, Detective John Jones was hard to miss. His bald pate glinted in the white mercury light shining over the garage entrance and his heavy-browed cast his face into shadow. Clark still saw the glint of his eyes.

"Detective Jones. Turpin sent us." Lois said, once they were within normal conversation range.

"Yes, he had to clock out. Lieutenant Sawyer ordered him to go home and then followed him to ensure he got there." Detective Jones explained, extending his hand as Lois came within arm's reach. "It's good to meet you properly, Ms. Lane. I've heard a lot about you."

"Probably all the bad things." Lois shrugged.

He had a rich baritone voice, not completely unlike Lombarde's absolutely unfair deep baritone. But that was where the similarities ended. Jones's voice was more nuanced and sonorous and Lois could almost feel it in her ribcage. She liked the cut of his jib already. He was tall, he was dark, and he was definitely handsome.

But it would be totally unprofessional to ask him on a date right now.

"Thank you for still seeing us, Detective Jones." Clark said, stepping forward to shake hands as well.

There was a second of hesitation from him, however. So infinitesimal that a normal person might not have noticed it. There was something very odd about Detective Jones. Something very odd that Clark couldn't put his finger on. It might have been the way that the detective didn't seem all that distinguishable. Even in a big city, a tall black man in the classic detective trench coat would have stood out a mile for how distinctive the sight was. Cops carried themselves with authority even when they were off-duty. But John Jones could have walked right into a crowd and vanished, Clark thought. He was as generic as his name and twice as forgettable. However, everything about him seemed to scream that he should have stood out far more than he actually did.

"It's not a problem." Jones nodded, clearly normal enough that he hadn't perceived the reporter's split-second of hesitation. "I understand this concerns you as well."

More than you could imagine. Clark thought. Out loud, he said: "We've heard twice tonight that Trask might have something concrete to his ramblings?..."

"Once from Turpin and again from Agent Stoolie Canary." Lois elaborated. "They both suggested that Trask isn't nearly as insane as he sounds; that he might have proof of this-- alien thing."

Frankly, it worried Clark that two people had implied as much. It could very well mean that Trask had found both of the shuttles. It also suggested that Trask had deliberately gone looking for them, because Sounder's Gorge was so far out of the way...

Detective Jones turned his eyes to the black-haired man and Clark experienced the unsettling feeling that he was not being looked at, but rather looked through. That he was being evaluated on everything from the size of his muscles to the sheen on his imitation silk tie. Detective Jones had dark colored eyes that didn't seem to be any one color in particular, but a mixture of generic browns and grays. But it wasn't the color that mattered. It was the way they seemed to bore right through the very back of Clark's skull in a long, unblinking stare.

This man was not blinking.

Then the detective presented a faint smile.

"It will be best for you to see this. I do not think I can explain it adequately." he said, gesturing for them to follow. He opened the door beside the vehicle entrance and let them inside.

"I don't know how much proof he has." Lois grumbled. "A man who rattles on about aliens and talks about executing my coworkers in front of a room-full of reporters has to got to have some serious... er..."

She trailed off when she saw Trask's overwhelming proof.

The two quartz-like shuttles had not been moved out of the warehouse and were likely not to be moved for the moment. Their gimbals remained stationary and they just hung approximately two and a half feet off the concrete floor with no visible means of support.

Lois and Clark wore looks of shock for two very different reasons.

"Um..." Lois managed, but that was it.

My ships! Clark thought, with a surge of anger that he clamped down on the moment he felt it. He couldn't keep it down completely. Those were his shuttles! And if Dr. Sullivan was on the nose about anything, the white shuttle contained the best link to his planet of origin! And Trask had walked off with them?

That bastard...

I'm taking them back. Tonight. I'll bury them even deeper this time!

"So... It is aliens?" Lois asked squeakily.

"I can neither confirm nor deny such a claim, Ms. Lane." Detective Jones said, shrugging. "But I can tell you that neither of these crafts appear to be of any earthly origins."

"Y-Yeah, no shit." Lois commented.

She approached the shuttles tentatively, as if she expected them to unfold into giant, unhappy robots. She moved with a kind of skittish, sideways motion until she had scuttled up to the side of the baby-bearing shuttle and reached out with a fingertip.

"It feels like polished quartz." she reported. She laid her hand flat on the surface. "Smallville, get your ass over here and check this out. This is crazy!... Where do you think they came from?"

"Quite a long ways from here, I would imagine." Detective Jones commented, his eyes skimming over the slightly singed edges where the friction of atmospheric entry had left its mark.

"I couldn't even begin to guess." Clark commented. That wasn't a lie. He didn't even know where Krypton was in the universe.

He started to move so he could stand beside Lois, already contemplating how he was going to make off with both of the shuttles and get them hidden before Trask found out they were missing. The anti-gravs appeared to be working still, so maybe it was simply a matter of getting them moving--

What is that?

It was the sound of knuckles striking flesh and shouting -- bellowing, really. But in no language he was familiar with, coming from a hundred feet up and falling? Yes, eighty feet now-- just fifty!-- twenty!-- It was Dr. Sullivan and Dr. Essex falling through the air right on top of them!--

"Move!" Detective Jones commanded and Clark saw the man thrust both of his hands out as if he was going to grab them, but he was several feet out of reach. Except the second his arms extended fully, both of the reporters were rudely shoved away by an invisible force.

And the flailing bodies of Dr. Sullivan and Dr. Essex crashed through the ceiling in a shower of shingles and beams, rebounding off the white shuttle before they even hit the floor. They didn't stop screaming at each other for even a second, in that odd language that Clark didn't recognize, swinging their fists and elbows at each other so quickly the motions blurred and both men appeared to be vibrating, distorting them.

Lois! She can't see this! Clark thought frantically, searching the warehouse for where Lois had landed. If she saw any of this, she would have questions. And they would all be questions he didn't even have answers to.

'I've got her.' rang an intrusive voice in Clark's head that sounded exactly like Detective Jones. 'If you can do something about that...'

There was a sense of someone tilting their head to brawling scientists and then Clark saw the detective bodily hauling Lois across the rest of the warehouse to the door on the other side amid her loud protests, her line of sight mostly blocked by his torso. Then they were through the door and gone and all of that had occurred in a matter of five to ten seconds.

Clark lunged across the floor and punched Dr. Essex in the ribs.

If he had been human, the blow most certainly inflicted fatal damage, perhaps to the point of rupturing the ribcage and everything in it. But Dr. Essex was not human and the impact only skewed the trajectory of his next punch. His knuckles cratered the floor beside Dr. Sullivan's head.

"That's it!" Dr. Sullivan shouted, finally gaining the upper hand. He jabbed the pressure point at the base of the throat and drove his knee into Dr. Essex's gut, which gave him enough leverage to throw the man off, and then scrambled to his feet to stand beside Clark, nodding to him as if to say Good of you to join us.

Dr. Essex went halfway across the warehouse before he stopped in midair and oriented himself upright. The air around him swirled for a moment as he found his balance.

"That was a weak punch, son of Jor-El." he growled. "I'll show you how it's done!"

And he catapulted forward.

"Oh c'mon." Clark moaned.

In the blink of an eye, Dr. Essex was ramming shoulders first into the younger man's chest. Clark instinctively dug his heels into the concrete, but the collision knocked him right off his feet. He hit the floor with a nasty-sounding crunch and the feeling of something giving way under him and he sincerely hoped that was just the concrete. The full weight of Dr. Essex's body fell on top of him and a large hand wrapped around his neck in an sort of sideways mirror of the first night they had met.

"Watch closely! This is how you throw a punch!" he said as he balled his fist and wound back his arm. Like a spring, it rocketed forward. Clark just caught it before it surely would have shattered his nose along with the surrounding bones.

"Ah! Keep him busy for a moment, would you?" Dr. Sullivan requested as he scrambled over to the nose of the shuttle pod and hoped that his daughter had had the foresight to include his family's coat-of-arms into the recognition matrix or they weren't getting anywhere.

"I'll try!" Clark grunted.

But the thing was, he wasn't a fighter. His father had taught him how to throw a punch. 'Throw a good punch once and you'll probably never have to do it again.' he'd said. But it had never gone beyond that, because he shouldn't have to find himself in a situation where fisticuffs was the only way out. Clark didn't have the instincts or the muscle memory that a good fighter developed over the years.

Also, a single good punch from him could crush a man's skull, so he had rather held off on the idea of punching people.

"Is that all you've got? Pathetic!" Dr. Essex spat laughingly. "It's all the same with your House! Shvaboliyiq, the lot of you! Too long tinkering with your toys! You're always hunched over desks! Bad posture runs in the family!"

"Is that all you've got?!" Clark shot back, more insulted by the sub-par quality of the insults. His bad posture was manufactured for the sake of the masquerade and he wasn't ashamed by his lack of fighting experience. Okay, it was inconvenient right now, but he wasn't ashamed of it. "If you hate me enough to kill me, at least put some imagination into it!"

Dr. Essex bared his teeth in something less of a smile and not quite a snarl and his eyes glowed blue-white. Then he laser-eyed Clark in the chest.

He had always imagined that it would hurt at least a little, given that his own heat-beams consistently set things on fire. He could still feel heat, just not pain. It wouldn't damage him, he always thought, but it might be a little uncomfortable.

Oh boy, he'd been wrong about that.

Clark didn't think there was a time when he remembered what it felt like to experience proper pain. No childhood of scraped knees and elbows, or skinned palms for him. Just a momentary sense of discomfort and then he was on his feet again. His clothing tore before his skin did.

This was not that.

This was hard to describe, because Clark had never actually been in pain before. It was furiously white-hot and made him think of all those volcano documentaries he had seen with the lava erupting from the crater because it felt like that was what his chest was doing.

He had no idea how long it went on because, out of sheer denial for what was happening, his brain just shut things down.

-0-

yes that's steve trevor