She was gone! The elder Lois was gone… Just the blanket, Jonathan used to cover her, was left behind.
"Where is she?" everyone yelled shocked.
All eyes wandered over to Lara who was just as shocked as everyone else about the sudden
disappearance of the elder Lois.
"I was... not aware that she was able to grab your teleportation-crystal, Jonathan!"
"She got it?" Jonathan yelled and ran over to an opening to check the stuff he hid there before his
father arrived. "Her own, or did she somehow grab mine?"
"Teleportation?" Clark yelled shocked. "Jonathan..."
But his son ignored him. Instead, he focused on Lara and a big holographic globe appeared over the
table.
"Can you localize her?" Jonathan asked Lara. "Mine is here!"
"I can try, but my scan on her didn't safe her biological structure. She could be everywhere!" Lara
responded.
"Would anyone please tell us what are you two talking about?" Lois yelled upset.
Jonathan looked on his mother with sorrow. Still thinking about her getting sick again, just because
she didn't/ will not take care of herself in the future. A future he will not allow. She was upset and
tired, so Jonathan decided to not to dismiss her question.
"Lara told me about the ways for me to get here on my own before my flying kicks in. So, we made a teleportation device..." Jonathan said and already turned around.
"TELEPORTATION?" Clark yelled shocked.
"I knew you would freak out!" Jonathan moaned.
"Kal, your son is free to come to this place whenever he wants! And I strictly prohibit you to continue
the way you excluded Jonathan from his heritage only because his powers haven't kicked in yet!" Lara said angrily.
"But..." Clark tried to explain that he was only worried about the possible dangers, such a device could bring and calm down his already mad and disappointed mother before Jonathan interfered already.
"MOM... Call everyone in Smallville and warn them that a labile elder version of you is walking around. Maybe someone saw her? Dad... fly to wherever you fly to when you try to find someone with your hearing and try to localize her! Jordan, just take your medicine!" Jonathan ordered with a voice that sound shockingly like Sam's military-voice. Making it evident that, despite everything that happened between them, he was still related to him.
Lois didn't want to start another fight after their good heart-to-heart talk on the roof and took her phone to call Chrissy. Jordan, who could feel that his headache and his fever were getting worse, silently obeyed and threw in a pill. Just Clark didn't move. The ice-cold glare from his mother's A.I.
was simply too much for him...
Meanwhile in Smallville...
Harold Gaines did not think it could be a bad idea. He never thought it would be a bad idea to bully his students. It didn't matter that he was fired from two other schools because of bullying, or because his previous team bullied a student to death. Gaines does what he wants… he always did, and he will always do…
When he moved to Smallville 10 years ago, he finally found a place where nobody complained about him. Or at least where all complaints against him were brushed off more easily. This town is awful, dirty, rundown, backward, and antisocial. Gaines hated absolutely everything and everyone here! But at least nobody dared to complain against the coach, since football is/ was everything, this town still has. And that made football more important than the life or the health of a single student. Especially when he was not even from here, or the whole team does not respect him, too. Or in easy words: Smallville is just as evil as him and that allows him to do what he wants.
But Gaines' bubble was about to explode violently. The video that was circulating online had the purpose to humiliate Jonathan Kent. At least he thought so when he gave it to that man. Instead, it turned out to be a video that had the purpose to let Lois Lane look bad and that the man was most likely working for Lex Luthor, who was well known as the man who hates Lois Lane and Superman and who burned down the barn of the Kents. And he and the cranky woman didn't look better in that video. Millions of people had watched it and thousands of people commented it. Scolding 'him' for his 'verbal abuse' and his 'inappropriate behavior' or his 'lack of respect'.
Gaines biggest worry were the rumors that were spreading in town now about his 'coaching'. And that someone from his old school might recognize him and tell the world what he did before he came to Smallville. And Gaines has done a lot of things, that would not only end his career, but also could him cost his freedom. And so, he rushed through the empty school on this hot Saturday afternoon, searching the changing-rooms, his office, and every other place he could find for incriminating stuff about him to destroy it later. Knowing he still has his 'life-insurance' hidden in his desk, that nobody knew about and that he could use against those in the team who would dare to try to disobey him…
What Gaines didn't notice in all his focus, was a woman entering the school. Determined to get this 'life-insurance'. No matter what it takes…
In the fortress meanwhile, the Lane-Kents were still panicked while they tried to localize future-Lois. Lois and Clark yelled unreadable gibberish while Jonathan focused on the holographic screen with Lara to find her. The elder Lois was dangerous and
"When did you want to tell us that you two created a Kryptonian-teleporter?" Clark yelled shocked.
"Did you already use this thing?" Lois added.
"Is that how you got the deckchair on the roof to this place?" Clark demanded.
"I am not going to fight with you about this, right now!" Jonathan moaned and focused on the globe
again. Lara was unable to localize the elder Lois.
"Okay, fine... but... The deckchair?" Clark moaned, using his finger to indicate on the new ceiling with the roof-terrace above. "Where have you got that from?"
"Chisinau!" Jonathan said lackadaisical.
"Chisinau, Moldova?" Clark asked shocked.
"I visited a lot of places during the test! And I needed something for the new roof-terrace! I was walking through Chisinau and there were a lot of elder people, trying to sell their belongings. It was so sad… the pensions there are so low, that they have to sell everything they have just to have something to eat. You can't imagine how happy that old granny was when I gave her 10 Dollar for the deckchair! Did you know that pensioners in Moldova get only around 100 Dollar? Isn't it sad?"
"But…" Clark interfered but got this angry glare from his mother again. Knowing that it was not okay from him to exclude Jonathan from everything and that his son has the right to come to this place whenever he wants.
In the meantime, in Smallville…
Gaines opened his drawlers and looked through his files. If he destroys them all now, it would be suspicious. It led to his dismissal at his previous school. He just had to check that nothing incriminating was written in the files. Everything else would be burned in his chimney at home. And of course, there was his life-insurance in the desk. He should take it with him and hide it somewhere safe until everything calmed down.
His phone was beeping every second. Messages from his wife, his players, their parents, and other parents were plopping up, demanding answers, telling how afraid they are, their worries, and their demands... Gaines knew that he had a rope around his neck now and that every wrong word could be the final one…
Suddenly there was a loud squeaking from an opening door. Gaines froze in shock…
"HELLO?!" Gaines yelled. No respond.
Carefully Gaines put the folder back into the drawler and hid the box with the stuff he wanted to burn under his desk. He couldn't risk that anyone saw him with it.
"Anybody over here?" Gaines said again. The door to his office was slightly open and he saw a shadow passing the wall.
Gaines grabbed a baseball-bat and mentally prepared to defend himself. Nobody was supposed to be in the school at this time. He could hear steps. From high-heeled shoes. And they were getting closer…
In the fortress, Jonathan suddenly had an idea…
"Mom, where would you go?"
"What?" Lois was overwhelmed.
"She is you! Your future self! Where would you go?"
"Anywhere, just away from here!" Lois responded upset, looking back and forth between all present members of her family. Indeed the fortress felt so dismissive since Lara's scolding.
"Mom, look at me…" Jonathan ordered harshly and held his mother by her shoulders to force her to look only into his eyes. "…breath… okay… take a deep breath and think… you are upset! You are alone! You have lost everything! Your marriage is broken, your family fell apart, and you lost your children…"
Clark wanted to interfere. As well as Jordan. At the first sight, it sounds like Jonathan wants to convince his mother to divorce and to leave with him for good. Knowing that Jonathan was already done with his father and won't ask him for help as soon as his powers kick in. But suddenly Clark realized that this was an attempt to let his mother think like her future self. Instinctively he holds Jordan's mouth close, before he could interfere and listened closely to Jonathan's speech.
"…you are terminally ill and the only person who could help you is gone! That means you are doomed! You are angry!"
"I am alone!" Lois now continued. "I have nothing to lose anymore… I… I go after those I blame for everything bad that happened… for…"
Suddenly Lois face paled, and her eyes were wide open when she got the shocking revelation…
"I think I know where she is…"
Gaines meanwhile walked closer to the door of his office.
If it is one of the other players, he would play dumb. Maybe someone else has something he wants to hide. In the worst case, it could be the parents of the boy, his previous team in his previous school accidentally killed during the bullying. Or was it the police? Someone from the schoolboard? Principal Balcomb? She probably had a lot of trouble, too now! But Gaines didn't care for it! Balcomb will be fired anyway as soon as the other things get uncovered…
"COACH GAINES?" A mad sounding familiar female voice yelled. But Gaines was relieved. There was no trouble to expect from her. Gaines opened the door and went to the changing room where he found the woman, the whole world knew now only as the cranky mother!
"What are you doing here? How did you get in here?"
"I am a member of the schoolboard; I have a key!" The woman said angrily and pulled out her phone to show Gaines the latest posts. "Do you have an explanation for this?"
"I have no clue who filmed that!" Gaines said dismissively.
"That doesn't matter! What matters is that I just got kicked out of the schoolboard! You told me the boy was the main reason for the X-K in the team. But my son confessed to me, that the half-team was on that stuff, and that that Pergrande-girl sold it. And that you probably knew it all the time and just used the Kent boy as a scapegoat! Was that true?"
"I already told everyone what I know! What is your problem? I had enough stress because of the trouble Kent brought over the team!" Gaines moaned.
"Was it really Kent? I honesly start to doubt that!" The woman moaned back and presented him more stuff on her phone…
Meanwhile, the elder Lois continued sneaking through the corridor that led directly to the changing-rooms of the football team. While walking through the school, she saw that all security cameras were turned off. Probably by Gaines himself. She heard voices! Two voices she learned to hate more than anything else ever since she learned how much she failed as mother on that certain day. Her hand reached into her pocket where she had her son's teleportation-crystal, she brought with her from the future. In the other pocket was another very special crystal, developed by her son and a device, she just recently stole from a police-officer in her time…
Lois got closer to the door and took a fire-extinguisher out of its holder. Listening to the sound of a video, the cranky mother played on her smartphone. One of countless of videos that were filmed in respond of the one showing her and Gaines attacking Jonathan on election-night and making it evident that she and Gaines were just part of a plan to ruin Lois Lane.
"Is it true what these people say, Gaines? Is it true… was it only to look Lois Lane bad? And this couple? Who are they?"
"I have never seen this couple ever before in my life!" Gaines lied. Of course, he recognized the parents of the boy who was killed by his previous team.
"They say you killed their son! They call me a bitch, that you manipulated to help you! And they say everything is just a plan of you to force that teen to commit suicide! Lex Luthor? If it is true, that you work together with Lex Luthor… you are so much in trouble! I was on your side, but now I really start to doubt if it was the right decision to trust you!"
With these words, the cranky mother put her phone back into her pocket, turned around and walked over the door.
"You have no idea how humiliated I was! I hope for you that I really was not only a tool for you that day!"
"Yes, you were!" Suddenly another familiar voice said.
The cranky mother, who just walked through the open door turned around in shock to look at the person behind her. "You…"
Suddenly a loud bang! A loud pained moan… everything Gaines was able to see was a fast slim red object being smashed against the cranky mother's head, knocking her out and forcing her on the ground that she hit with a loud thud and remained there unconscious…
Gaines turned around, grabbed the baseball-bat again and prepared to fight back. He knew that voice. He knew it was over… he ends this now before she destroys him… But as soon as he turned around again, he was shocked to see the person he heard to be much older and with scars.
"Monster!" Lois said, raised a stun gun and shot.
The two electrodes of the taser hit Gaines by his chest and his left leg, shooting the energy through his body and paralyzing him immediately. Gaines had no chance to defend himself or to act or say anything. Everything he remembered was the pain and the sudden loss of consciousness…
Just a second after Lois yelled out loudly her guess, where her future self could be, Clark sped out of the fortress to fly back to Smallville, speed into the school and find a fire-extinguisher laying on the ground in front of the open door to the changing-rooms.
"HELLO!" Superman yelled when he walked in and found an empty changing-room.
He looked around and saw nothing suspicious. Expect the fire-extinguisher, but it was possible that it just fell out of its holder. Clark was just about to spread his superhearing in the building when suddenly, in a brief flash of blue light, his son appeared right next to him.
"WOAH… What the…" Clark shrieked surprised when Jonathan was suddenly there.
"Hey it worked!" Jonathan said when he looked around and hold his hand over a small device that was wrapped around his wrist like a wristwatch and was obviously the teleporter he got from Lara. "Mom had not so much luck…"
In the fortress, Lois insisted on going to the school, too. But Clark alone was faster. Jonathan took his teleportation-device, he made together with Lara and offered her to bring her to school. Lois hugged him when Jonathan focused on the football-team's changing room but only he teleported. Lois was left behind…
"WHAT THE…" Lois yelled and turned to Lara who had a plausible explanation.
"To keep sure that you don't continue to exclude Jonathan from his heritage even more, I arranged that the crystal can be only used by him. It is activated by his DNA only."
"So only he can use it?" Lois yelled shocked.
"Nice safety feature!" Jordan intervened.
In Smallville…
Clark was still upset about his son's teleportation-device…
"I hope you don't use this for anything stupid! And you alone in Chisinau was… wait… someone is here…" Clark said when he suddenly heard a weird noise.
It came from one of the closets. Using his X-Ray-vision, Clark saw immediately that someone was in this closet, tied up and gagged. Both Superman and Jonathan went to the closet and opened it to find the cranky mother, who used to attack Jonathan at election sitting on a chair, tied up with her hands behind her back and a piece of duct tape over her mouth in the closet.
"Oh, my gosh…" both father and son said in unison, making their relation undoubtable and Superman lift the woman with the chair out of the closet before Jonathan tore away the duct tape over her mouth, which caused the woman to scream in pain.
"Aghhh…"
"What happened?" Jonathan asked. "What are you doing here?"
"I came here to talk to Coach Gaines about the video that let it look like we both work for Lex Luthor to let Lois Lane look like a bad mother and suddenly that old lunatic bitch that looks like a 60 years old Lois Lane with scars knocked me out. And the next thing I know is that I am strapped to this chair." The woman explained before she realized that indeed Superman was with them. "Oh my gosh… are you here to bring this boy to the juvenile?"
Clark was shocked to hear these words. But he was Superman now and had to act as Superman. Of course, he recognized the woman. He saw the video that showed her and Coach Gaines attacking Jonathan verbally at election night and now that he knew the whole story of Jonathan's X-K abuse and everything Coach Gaines presumably did to him, he was shocked that Lois didn't interfere. Lois already confessed to him that the video was authentic and that nothing was changed. No surprise, people called her a bad mother.
"No…" Clark/ Superman finally said. "No… I am here because this young man did the right thing and tried to get help when he realized that Coach Gaines was in danger. No matter how mean that man was to him!"
"Whoa… you are on his side?" the woman asked shocked. "He dealt with X-K!"
"Okay… that's enough…" now Jonathan snapped and turned to the woman. "I never dealt with it and I never hurt anyone unlike the other ones. Coach Gaines is a unlikable, egoistic bastard, that tried to hound me out of the team since the first day I put a step into this school! And… half the team took that stuff before I even knew about it. And everyone knew the truth but was just too selfish to speak it out to save their own ass and to use me as a scapegoat instead. And if you have at least a pinch of self-esteem, you know that I am right! And your own son was taking it, too and he bought it from Candice! He knew the truth and he lied to you, too! So stop pretending that I am the only one who made a mistake. Unlike the others I apologized and tried to make amends for it!"
Suddenly the woman became pale. Before she blurted out. "But you are the one who got caught!"
"And it will haunt me for the rest of my life! So, believe me I am punished for good! But if there is one thing I learned about this town, it is that nobody forgives here a mistake! That every outsider who is not born and raised here, is treated like an unwanted alien! If you and your family would have moved here from somewhere else, you would receive the same hate I receive ever since I came here! And if your son would have caught with that stuff, would you also feed him to the town? Or would you try to figure out what really happened?"
Jonathan pulled out his own smartphone to play the video, the whole world was talking about again and to face the woman with her own mistakes.
"I tell you what, my mom… was a bad mother! Yeah, she and my father gave a crap about me for my entire life! Forcing me to give up everything I ever achieved in Metropolis to move to this place. To get bullied and abused by people who don't even know me and that just because they don't know what else to do in their pitiful lives! But my mom apologized to me! My dad at least tried to apologize to me! I apologized to everyone for letting my problems getting off hand and affecting others. What did your son do? What did the other players do? What did Coach Gaines do?"
The woman turned paler and paler with every sentence, realizing that she was unable to deny it. Jonathan Kent was right!
"I tell you what they did: They saved their own selfish and egoistic asses! And that video, that lets my mom cry endlessly and makes her upset terribly just proves to everyone how xenophobic and mean this town actually is! Congratulations: Lex Luthor is now your best friend! I hope you have fun with him!"
Jonathan turned around, handed his phone to his father to let him see the scene and went to Coach Gaines' office to look for traces.
Clark watched the YouTube-clip countless of times, ever since it went online. He was shocked to see how much hate his son received since the X-K. It was one of his many failures as a father. He was so focused on Jordan and his powers, that he simply ignored the burden Jonathan felt with being the powerless child in the family. And Jonathan's problem was not his powerlessness per se! It was the constant feeling of being useless, weak, inferior, and ignored that they always gave him. He, Lois, Jordan, Sam… and probably everyone else who bullied him for his powerlessness.
Clark knew if Jordan would have been the one who gets so attacked, he and Lois would had made Coach Gaines' and this woman's life a hell with articles, reports, and everything else they could organize. But Jonathan? He was left on his own… No surprise Jonathan does not trust him anymore! No surprise Jonathan hates Krypton so much and denies his heritage. If they had treated the boys equally, nothing of it would have ever happened. And the fact that this town so blatantly accepts to use him as the one and only scapegoat, let Clark realize that Jonathan was right to tell Smallville his Kryptonite. It indeed was his Kryptonite!
Full of shame and fury, Clark looked over to the tied-up woman and shacked his head reproachful…
"I hope for you that it is true and that you don't team up with Lex Luthor, because in that case, you have sold your soul to the devil!" Superman said.
"This is all Kent's fault! I mean who is so stupid to move to this town voluntarily. Clark Kent is such a dorky loser; he does not even realize that nobody likes him!" the woman moaned before turning her head to Jonathan. "And this boy should just accept that he does not belong here at all! He is not even a true Kent!"
Clark shied a step back and paled. So, Jonathan was right, and it was true that nobody in Smallville had actual respect for him, too. Yeah, Clark was bullied back in school and was more an outsider. But he and his parents were still part of this community. His mother and his father had done so much for Smallville. And this is how Smallville thanks him. Taking everything, they get and then ungratefully dismiss him? Wasn't this woman one of the many people his mother once helped when she took that mortgage?
"Don't tell me! Tell that to Mr. Kent directly! I am sure he will be keen to know how you think about him!" Superman said, trying to not to show his offense openly and followed Jonathan into Gaines' office, leaving the stunned and crying woman behind…
"Superman!" Jonathan yelled from inside, being careful because of the present woman to not call him dad and left the office right before Clark could enter. "Someone searched the room. All drawlers are open and there is a mess. Look…"
Clark peeked inside and saw what his son meant…
"She was here!" Clark realized.
"And she got Gaines!" Jonathan added.
"What for?"
"Because Gaines is one of those who is responsible for the breakup of her family! And who knows what else he did/ or will do in future! I mean, he is the one I will/ would sue in future!"
"HEY… Does it mean that the rumors about Gaines are true?" the tied-up woman yelled from behind them. Shocked about the fact that the boy she blamed for the season to be cancelled, is working with Superman.
Jonathan and Superman looked over to her and just nodded.
"If you would know what I know, you would do everything to keep sure that Gaines never ever puts a step into any school anywhere in the world!" Jonathan moaned before turning to his father. "We must find them.
"Agree…" Superman said, took his son and left the room with him in a blur… once again leaving the cranky mother alone…
"HEY… What about me?" she yelled trying to free herself from the chair. "Don't leave me here! HELLO! HELP!"
Gaines opened his eyes and found himself laying on the cold ground, surrounded by tall trees. A death silence surrounding him. His hands were tied up behind his back and his legs were tied up, too.
"Wake up, wake up… 'Mister' Gaines!" a familiar female voice said.
"Aghh… What… Miss Lane?"
Gaines now opened his eyes fully and was shocked to see Lois Lane standing over him. Elder, grey haired, and with scars… Was that Lois Lane's mother, or what is going on here? More shocking was the fact that she was holding his 'life-insurance' in her hands. The folder was open, and she was reading it…
"I have to say… you are so much in trouble now… Mister!"