Clark, Kara, and Emmeline walked down the street where multiple vendors and volunteers had set up tents with food and games to celebrate the 100th Annual Harvest Festival. Emmeline had always loved coming to the festival for all three days with her mother and father when she was growing up, even if she hadn't liked how many people there were in one place. She was excited to come this year with Clark and his cousin, at least for its first day.

It had been several days since Kara's first appearance, and while she was still rather haughty and had a pretty fiery temper, she'd mellowed out enough that Emmeline didn't worry that she was going to suddenly unleash the full extent of her Kryptonian powers on her anymore.

"After a week of captivity on the farm with nothing but 'Project Runway' and 'Beauty and the Geek' for company, you finally take me out…to the corn festival," Kara complained.

"Harvest Festival," Clark corrected as he grabbed a bin of corn out of the bed of his truck. "Smallville's big event. Just try to enjoy it."

"Clark, we're wasting our time, okay? My father sent me here with one mission. I have to find that crystal for my ship."

"We have to find that crystal. I've been working on it."

The three of them set down bins of corn under one of the tents selling popcorn and corn on the cob.

"Well, I seriously doubt it's buried under one of these bushels," Kara continued. "No offense, but I can cover twice the area that you can."

"Consider your wings clipped. You're not flying. Kara, the people who found your ship are gonna be looking for the person who came in it. If you use your abilities, it'll lead them straight to you. You just have to fit in."

Kara's face fell in embarrassment.

Emmeline crossed her arms. Easy for Clark to say when he had 21 years of practice fitting in.

Kara looked up and she smiled. "How do I fit in with him?"

Clark and Emmeline turned to see who she was looking at.

"I didn't realize he was back," Emmeline remarked.

"Jimmy?" Clark asked in disbelief.

Kara's eyes began to light up.

"Hey, cool down," Clark said gently but firmly.

The light from Kara's eyes faded and she looked at Clark in surprise.

"It's okay. Used to happen to me all the time."

Emmeline swallowed thickly as she recalled what had happened to the archery target when she'd been practicing with Oliver. But she'd already determined that it had been a freak accident. Besides, nothing like it had ever happened again in the times they'd trained together since.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" the mayor called from the center of the festival. "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us!"

"It's the Harvest Festival's centennial anniversary," Clark explained.

The mayor lifted up a red piece of fabric covering a large stone that represented the town's time capsule buried one hundred years ago.

"There's a town legend that a famous outlaw robbed a train and buried the loot somewhere in Smallville. The map to the gold is supposed to be hidden inside the time capsule."

Kara stared at the time capsule intently. "What I don't get is why everyone is so excited to open up a bunch of old junk."

"How did you—"

Kara smiled innocently at him and Clark just sighed.

The annoying sound of a car revving filled the air, and an expensive convertible pulled up against the curb right at the festival's entrance. Three incredibly attractive woman gracefully jumped out of the vehicle and sashayed their way through the middle of the crowd.

Emmeline frowned. There was no way walking like that everywhere was comfortable. And what was with the air that everyone needed to immediately fall to their knees in their presence and worship them?

"Move," the one in the middle ordered. "Out of our way. The new Miss Sweet Corn has arrived."

Jimmy took pictures of the three women as they signed up for the annual pageant that the festival hosted.

"They do realize that only one of them can win, right?" Emmeline asked. "And aren't people in the pageant supposed to live in Smallville? I've never seen those women in my life and I feel like I'd remember."

Clark didn't say anything, his gaze still glued to the three newcomers.

Emmeline rolled her eyes and chuckled to herself.

A festival volunteer handed Kara and Emmeline two flyers announcing the Miss Sweet Corn pageant. It was admittedly a bit of a lame name, but it fit with the feel of little old Smallville.

Kara smirked. "Maybe fitting in won't be so bad after all."

Emmeline looked at the flyer. "What do you think about me signing up for this?"

That got Clark's attention. "Hold on, did you just say what I think you said? You want to voluntarily sign up to go on a stage and be the center of attention?"

Emmeline shrugged. "I don't know, I think it'd be kind of an interesting way to challenge myself."

"Well, I guess if you really want to, then go ahead. If you've thought it through and you're absolutely sure…"

As Emmeline sat in front of one of the mirrors in the dressing room, she began to wonder if this was such a good idea. The whole thing was so different from anything she'd ever done before, and the reason she'd never done it before was because she'd always had tremendous stage fright. But she really wanted to prove to herself that she could do it and work past her fears.

She was seated next to Kara and noticed that the blonde was having trouble putting her makeup on. She was about to offer her assistance when something else caught both of their attention.

"Uh…I need to talk to you," the African-American model from earlier said lowly to the black-haired one.

"Where's Carly?" the black-haired one asked.

"See, that's what I need to talk to you about. Um…there's been a problem, but I took care of it."

Kara stood up and walked over to the two women and held out her eyeliner. "Hi. I was wondering…yours looks so good. Amazing, really. Would you help me?"

The black-haired model smirked cruelly at her. "I'm sorry, sweetie, but you need help with more than just your makeup. Why don't you go grow some corn or something?"

Considering this pageant was called 'Miss Sweet Corn', Emmeline thought they might want to be a little nicer about the vegetable.

Kara rushed out through the back door in humiliation, and Emmeline quickly got up to follow her.

"Kara!" she called. "Hey, don't let them get to you. Don't worry, I can help you out, okay? I admittedly don't really wear makeup that often, but I at least know the basics."

Kara turned to her, but then she looked behind her and her brow furrowed.

Emmeline turned around as well. "Whoa…"

The glass window behind them was entirely covered in a thick layer of cracking ice. Kara walked up to the window and used her hand to brush away some of the ice on the outside. Emmeline jumped back in horror when the cleared glass revealed the frozen face of the other blonde model who had arrived earlier that day.

"Five, six, seven, eight."

All of the pageant contestants model-walked to the front of the stage, dramatically looked left, stepped to the right, dramatically looked right, lifted their arms up, lifted their necks up, then relaxed.

"Okay, girls, take a five-minute break and we'll pick it up from the top," the pageant organizer smiled.

Jimmy stood in the middle of the Talon snapping photos of their rehearsal.

"This was a mistake," Emmeline said as she walked up to Kara. "I'm not cut out for this. I look like a dying chicken."

Kara laughed. "You're doing fine," she assured.

"You're just being nice because you know I'm absolutely no competition to you."

"No, I'm being nice because you're Clark's friend."

"So if I wasn't Clark's friend, you'd hate me?"

"I know I…wasn't exactly very friendly the first time we met…"

Emmeline smiled. "Relax, I'm kidding. I'm really glad you're doing this too."

"Nice to know someone is."

"Well, this is a lot easier to handle when I know someone else."

Jimmy snapped a photo of the two of them, and Kara smiled warmly at him.

"Uh, I hate to break this to you, but Jimmy is very much taken," Emmeline told her. "By Chloe. You know, Clark's other friend."

"Is he?" Kara asked, her eyes still on Jimmy.

"Yes. And they are very much in love, so…"

Kara sighed in annoyance. "I get it. I'll keep my hands to myself."

One of the Smallville sheriffs walked into the Talon.

"How can I help you, sheriff?" the pageant organizer asked.

"I need to speak with you about the girl we found in the alley," he answered.

"Um, all I know is she and two other girls entered at the last minute, and…I really don't have any more information about her. I can give you the form she filled out when she signed up."

The two other models discreetly slipped into one of the wings of the stage and had a hushed conversation. Jimmy came up onstage for more photos and then snapped a picture of the two of them talking before exiting the Talon.

Kara watched him go, looked over at the wings where the two models were now gone, and then started after him.

"Kara," Emmeline said as she lightly touched her arm. "Didn't you just agree to back off?"

"It's not that. I think something's wrong."

"What do you mean?"

"Just trust me."

Kara went out the back entrance of the Talon. Even if she was relieved she wasn't alone in competing, Emmeline wasn't in the position to fully trust Kara just yet, so she decided to follow her out. What she witnessed was Kara ripping the door off Jimmy's completely frozen-over car.

Emmeline frantically looked around to make sure no one saw the incredible feat.

Whoever did this was the person who'd killed the blonde model. She had a pretty good idea of who that might be, but if Kara did anything like this again without taking the proper precautions, they were all going to be in trouble.

Kara and Emmeline looked into Jimmy's hospital room window. He was unconscious and his entire body was reddened from being stuck inside the frozen car before Kara had gotten him out.

"Hey, thank you so much for calling us," Chloe said as she and Clark walked up to them.

"No problem," Kara told her.

"I saw the door you ripped off," Clark said angrily. "Was anyone there?"

"You mean, did I screw up like you keep expecting me to? I'm sorry if I was a little busy trying to save Jimmy's life. I thought you'd be proud of me."

"Kara, I—"

Kara stormed off in frustration.

"I was there, Clark, and I didn't see anyone," Emmeline assured him.

"Yeah, I'm gonna have to weigh in on her side on this one," Chloe added.

Clark faced the two of them. "The doctor said that Jimmy's suffering from hypothermia, but he'll be fine."

"I know. I just want to make sure the sun is shining when he is." Chloe handed Clark a folder. "Meet the weather girls. I did a little bit of digging, and it looks like they've been BFFs since before kindergarten. According to that, they were all caught in some freak storm during the last meteor shower."

"Is it possible that they all have powers? It would explain why they're so close. But I don't get it. If they're so inseparable, why turn on each other over a—"

"A tiara? Clark, I don't think they're competing for the crown. Our meteorological misfits have traversed the entire Midwest."

Clark sifted through some newspaper articles. "Mud wrestling championship. Ring girls at a casino prize fight?"

"And my personal favorite, Oktoberfest Mädchens. This is the girl that was put on ice. And every time, there's a major heist in the city."

"They're thieves?"

"It's twistedly brilliant. I mean, who would ever suspect vapid eye candy as cat burglars?"

"They're after the map."

"And the treasure, which is supposedly millions in gold bars. And given the rate of inflation, we're talking the mother lode of all buried booty."

"More than enough to kill your best friend over."

"And anyone else."

Emmeline felt like she was going to throw up. This was humiliating. She was the only contestant on stage right now wearing a one-piece bathing suit instead of a bikini. She may as well have tattooed 'I don't belong here' onto her forehead. She didn't even like going to the beach in a bathing suit much less standing on a stage where everyone was scrutinizing her every move.

Why had she thought she could do this?

She wished she hadn't invited her father. She'd initially wanted him in the audience for moral support, but now it was really embarrassing to know that he was watching.

But then she saw Clark walk in and stand behind the seated audience and she thought she might explode. He was probably coming to support her and his cousin, but she definitely didn't want him seeing her like this.

"Cindy Walker!" the pageant announcer called.

A beautiful blonde woman in a blue bikini walked to the center of the stage, posed, and then exited.

"Kara Kent!"

Kara smiled broadly as she went to the center of the stage and posed in her red bikini. As she exited, she threw an encouraging smile to Emmeline. At least she had one person onstage not rooting for her failure.

"Kelly Carson! Elizabeth Johnson! Toni Berry!"

Emmeline took a deep breath and tried to smile.

"Emmeline Brooks!"

The young woman walked to the center of the stage and posed in her flattering navy one-piece. It didn't escape her notice that the cheers died down a little when she walked up, no doubt due to her not being in a bikini. Her smile faded a little in self-consciousness.

But then she caught her father's eyes and he gave her two excited thumbs up, and she couldn't help quietly laughing which brought the smile back to her face.

She quickly exited the stage as the announcer continued, "Amy Paris! Tyler Crenshaw! Tempest Drake!"

As the last of the women left the stage, the festival organizer hopped up to the center. "Thank you, ladies. That was lovely, huh? And in just a few moments, we will move on to the talent portion of our competition!"

As Emmeline waited in the wing to be announced, she tried to take some deep breaths to steady her raging nerves. At least for the swimsuit portion, however humiliating that had been, she'd been onstage with all of the other women. Now she was going to be onstage completely by herself.

She rubbed her sweaty hands on her light purple floor-length dress and ran the words she planned to recite through her head again. She could do this. All she had to do was walk out, say a few words, and walk back out. It wasn't like the audience was huge. There were probably only 50 people, if that.

"Next we have Miss Emmeline Brooks reciting poetry!" the announcer said.

Emmeline tried to stop herself from hyperventilating as she carefully walked out onto the stage. Her legs felt like jelly and threatened to buckle out from underneath her at any moment.

"Emmeline will be reciting the poem, 'To My Mother', by Edgar Allen Poe. Good luck, Emmeline!"

The announcer left the stage, and Emmeline was completely alone.

In the audience, Clark tensed up. He was surprised Emmeline had made it this far, but this was her first time being up there without the other contestants. However he felt about this competition—and Kara's 'magic' act in particular—he wanted so much for her to succeed. But as he watched her freeze, he knew that this was going to end poorly.

Emmeline had hoped that the lights would block out the audience, but unfortunately, she could see everyone. So many pairs of eyes were trained directly on her, waiting for her to say something.

Her mouth felt like sandpaper, her heart was beating so erratically that she worried it was going to just stop at any moment, and her lungs seemed to forget how to draw in oxygen. She tried to say the first line of the poem, but nothing came out.

Then something awful happened. Her eyes and her head began to ache, and then she wasn't looking at the audience anymore. Instead, she saw fifty skeletons all around the room, their eyeless skulls trained onto her. Then the next moment, the skeletons were covered in muscles and tendons but no skin.

Emmeline's eyes widened in horror and she would've screamed if her lungs had the air for it. She began breathing so quickly that the skeletons with muscles faded away, and black spots danced across her view of the normal audience members.

Feeling faint and ill, Emmeline turned and quickly exited the stage and returned to the dressing room. Thankfully, it was empty since all the other girls were either waiting to perform or waiting on the other side for when everyone was finished. She collapsed in front of her mirror and tried to steady her breathing before she threw up or passed out or both. When she finally glanced up, she was stunned at how pale and sickly she appeared.

Tears filled her eyes and she let her head fall into her hands as she started to cry.

"Sir, you can't come back here," she heard someone at the dressing room door say. "This is for women in the pageant only."

Someone pushed past the man.

"Stop!"

"My daughter is in here."

Emmeline looked up and saw her father walk into the empty dressing room. He looked at her sympathetically before taking a seat in the chair at the station next to hers.

"I've grown so much in the last two years," Emmeline said tearfully, unable to bring herself to look at him. "I thought I could do it."

"Emmeline," her father said gently as he put his hand on hers. "Growing as a person doesn't mean that you automatically get over things you've been afraid of your entire life."

"Clearly."

"For what it's worth, I am so proud of you."

Emmeline scoffed as she finally looked over at him. "Proud of me for what? Everything I have ever feared about getting up and trying to do something like this was exactly what happened. I made a complete fool of myself. For the next year, everyone's going to take one look at me and see the girl who completely choked during the annual pageant."

"But even just six months ago, would you have ever even considered just signing up for this? You didn't just sign up, you got on that stage, and you participated. You've taken a huge step today in conquering your fear. You can't expect the first time you've ever tried to take it on to go completely perfectly. And if you ever try again, you'll do even better next time. This kind of thing is a process, right?"

"I guess."

Her father tightly hugged her. "You're already a winner to me."

Emmeline couldn't help softly chuckling. "That's a little cliché, Dad."

"Doesn't mean it isn't true."

She hugged him back. "Thanks."

Emmeline stood onstage in a maroon floor-length dress with the other contestants as they all waited to hear the winner of the pageant. She had not expected to win this when she'd signed up and after the disaster that had just happened during the talent portion, she knew that she was probably in last place. But she was still excited to hear who was going to win. And she was even more excited that all of this was almost over.

The announcer walked onstage with an envelope in hand. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for. Smallville's new Miss Sweet Corn…" He opened up the envelope. "Kara Kent!"

Emmeline looked over at Kara and grinned and applauded for her.

Kara walked to the center of the stage, and last year's Miss Sweet Corn put the 'Miss Sweet Corn' sash over her, placed the winning tiara onto her head, then handed her a large bouquet of flowers.

"Thank you so much," Kara smiled, addressing the audience. "You've made a newcomer feel so welcome."

Three sheriffs suddenly walked out onto the stage and surrounded Kara.

"Hold on, please, everybody stay seated," one of them said to the members in the audience. He turned to Kara with a cold look. "I'm gonna have to ask you to come with me, miss."

"What's happening?" Kara asked.

"Your friends tipped us off." He took a pair of handcuffs and slapped them onto her wrists. "Kara Kent, you're under arrest."

Clark, Chloe, and Emmeline got to the holding cell at the sheriff's station just as Kara started to pull apart the bars.

Clark quickly put his hands on hers and pushed the bars back into place. "Haven't you learned anything? Breaking into the time capsule, what were you thinking?"

"I was thinking I had to get to that map before anyone else did," Kara answered sharply.

"You shouldn't have stolen the map at all."

"Even if the treasure it leads to is Kryptonian?"

Clark looked at Chloe and Emmeline in surprise then back at Kara. "Then why wouldn't you tell me?"

"Hm. Where do you want me to start? Your patronizing watermelon tutorials, your reprimands, or your general disinterest in everything I've done since I showed up?"

"Where is it?"

"I'll show you."

She put her hands on the bars again.

"No, no, no!" Clark exclaimed. "You're gonna stay here until Chloe can get you out legally. Just give me the map."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"When the sheriff dragged me away, some freak gust of wind blew it away."

Clark turned away with a huff of frustration and exasperation.

"Okay, it's all right, it's all right," Chloe said quickly. "Sounds like one of the weather girls. Look, just tell us what you saw on the map."

"Um…there was an 'X' underneath squares marked 'Town Square' and 'City Hall', and to the right was marked 'Stables' and to the left was marked 'Saloon'."

Chloe looked at Clark. "City Hall, that's near the gas station."

Clark zipped off before anyone could offer any protests.

"Right. Well, guess I'll get started on pulling my many strings to get you out of here." Chloe rolled her eyes and muttered as she left, "Just take off and leave me to deal with everything else as usual."

Emmeline put her hand on Kara's. "Don't worry, we'll deal with this. For us, it's just a simple Tuesday."

"I thought today was Saturday."

"No, it's an expression. It means that this kind of thing is something we deal with almost every day so it's normal."

"That sounds exhausting for a human."

"You have no idea."

"Hey. At least one good thing came out of all of this."

"What?"

"The winner of the Miss Sweet Corn pageant getting arrested immediately after winning? No one is going to remember what happened to you, that's for sure."

Emmeline laughed lightly. "Yeah, I guess so. Just hang in there, okay?"

"Hey, Emmeline? Thanks for…you know, including me and not patronizing me like Clark does."

"Kara, Clark is a constant worrier, but almost everything he ever does comes from a place of love. All of his behavior is because he cares about you and he wants to make sure that you don't get in trouble or hurt yourself. Remember, he's lived here his entire life. He knows how this world works and how to use and control his powers without tipping off the entire country that he has them. We've seen what can happen when the wrong people find out about your abilities. He wants to keep that from happening to you."

"I guess we have a lot to learn about each other."

"You guys just need to learn to be patient."

As soon as Emmeline left the holding cell, Kara bent back the bars and went after Clark.

When Clark caught up with Tyler and Tempest, he found that they unearthed a small piece of Kryptonian technology. In order to stop him, Tempest conjured up a small tornado that unleashed buried kryptonite that weakened him. Fortunately, Kara showed up and incapacitated the two women before shattering the meteor rocks with her heat vision and saving Clark. They learned that the 'treasure' was over a hundred years old and was evidently a kind of SOS. And that if the SOS was still here, then the person who'd left it might be too.

Emmeline walked up to the back door of the Kent farm. "Hey, Clark, I was wondering if you—"

She abruptly stopped when she saw the last thing she expected to see. Clark stood in the middle of the kitchen across from…Lana.

A million thoughts crossed through her mind all at once and she attempted to quickly sort through the most important ones.

It had been weeks since Lana's supposed death. She'd gone to the closed-casket funeral. They'd identified Lana's remains. How was it possible she was standing right in front of her? Had she been kidnapped and escaped? Had she been forced to fake her death?

But Emmeline knew the answer.

Lana had faked her death to escape from Lex. She'd run off and made everyone think she was dead entirely of her own volition.

Emmeline turned around and stormed back out the door.

"Em!" Lana called, running after her. She put a hand on her shoulder to make her stop. "Em."

Emmeline stopped walking and turned to face her.

"I'm sorry I didn't come see you sooner, I just got back here a couple days ago and was keeping it on the down-low until everything got sorted. But…I'm here. I'm okay."

Hot, angry tears formed in Emmeline's eyes. "I mourned for you. All of us mourned for you. And now I see that all of that pain that we felt was a lie."

"I didn't plan on coming back."

"Why did you leave at all? Because of Lex? I told you that I had the means to help you, and you didn't let me. Once again, you tried to do everything on your own. And the rest of us had to the pay the price for it. We had to wake up the last several weeks and remember that one of our best friends was gone. We had to go to the funeral for you. We had to wonder when we would feel normal again after losing you. Meanwhile, you were alive and well living who-knows-where."

"You think it was easy for me to do that?"

"If you were only gone for a few months, what was the point? Why would you put all of us through that? Were you even thinking about that?"

"No, I wasn't. I'm so sorry, Em. You don't know what it's like to be in the kind of marriage I was."

"Maybe not, but I offered you other options that didn't involve lying to everyone. You can't expect to do something like that and think that you can just walk back into my life like nothing happened."

Emmeline threw a punch at Oliver then dodged his kick.

"Good, you're getting better at this."

Then he grabbed her arm and flung her over his shoulder.

"But you've still got a long way to go."

Emmeline sighed and stood back up. "Yeah, and not just with this."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I did something really crazy this week. I entered the annual Smallville beauty pageant."

Oliver almost spit out his water. "You did what?"

"Yeah, that was pretty much everyone else's reaction when I signed up."

"Well, how'd it go?"

"Fine, at first. And then came the talent portion where I was alone on the stage, and it pretty much became my worst nightmare come to life. I just stood there for a second, completely froze up, had a minor panic attack, and ran offstage."

"Ouch. What was your talent?"

"I was supposed to recite a poem. Which now that I say it out loud, it sounds kind of boring. But, you know, it was an important one to me. And it wasn't like I could shoot a bow and arrow onstage. No one knows about my secret training and I don't plan on sharing it anytime soon."

"Could I hear it?"

"You…want to hear the poem?"

"You said it's important to you. If the people at the pageant couldn't hear it, someone should." He sat down on the floor. "Go on."

Emmeline looked at him as he stared up at her earnestly waiting for her to speak.

When she'd first asked Oliver to train her, he'd been so serious about everything that she'd believed he wasn't going to talk to her at all outside of giving her instructions.

But he had done so much more than just train her. Oliver had a way of making her feel respected and not pushed to the side like so many others unintentionally did. Whenever she talked or vented or complained, he sometimes offered cheeky remarks, but he always really and truly listened. And she found that it was much easier to stand up and talk in front of one person who respected her than 50 strangers who only cared how pretty she was.

"To My Mother, by Edgar Allen Poe…"