FROM THE FIRST FATHER TO THE LAST SON

"Three," Jason held up 3 fingers and put on a mournful expression. "Can Uncle Clark come with me when I go back for the fillings?"

"Three!" Clark exclaimed. "Ouch! Uncle Clark would love to come with you. I'll talk… he'll talk with your mother tomorrow. But right now," He shooed Jason onto the bed. "You need to get in bed."

Clark silently watched as his seven-year-old son climbed into bed. So many emotions welled up inside of him: love, joy, pride, gratitude, bewilderment. He still couldn't believe this amazing kid was his. He couldn't believe he had a kid at all.

"Awe! Tell me a little bit more about the First Father," Jason pleaded. He wiggled under the covers and into a comfortable position. "You promised you would tell me about his spaceship."

Clark smiled and settled himself on the edge of Jason's bed. He could hear Lois and Richard conversing in the kitchen on the floor below. They still had a few minutes. "The First Father didn't have just a regular kind of spaceship. Remember I explained to you about the different types of spaceships?"

"Interplanetary, inter…" Jason paused for a moment. "…interstellar, and … intergalactic."

"Awesome, gimme five!" They shared a high five. "The First Father's spaceship was a ginormous, intergalactic, floating city called Argo City. It had everything other cities have like homes, stores, factories, parks, schools…"

Jason scrunched his nose.

"Yes, it even had schools. Come on, you like school." Clark chuckled as he tousled Jason's hair. "Argo City was the First Father's spaceship. He flew it all over the universe hunting down the Apokai and rescuing all the children they had kidnapped. After he defeated the Apokai he brought all of the Kryptonian children he rescued back to Krypton. He landed Argo City on Krypton and it became just like any other regular city. Most of our family came from there. We had a strong connection to the city for over a thousand generations. Although some, like my father, moved away."

Jason found tales of war, daring acts of bravery, and cunning intrigue far more captivating than discussions about ordinary cities and families. "What were the weapons like that he used to fight the Apokai? Were they like bombs and stuff like that?"

"It's interesting you should ask that. I mean, there are all sorts of weapons. Some of them explode like bombs people use on Earth. Some weapons would shoot projectiles like guns, and some shot lasers like you see in movies sometimes. But the Apokai were powerful immortals, and they fought with armies of serpent-like creatures that were almost invulnerable. Most normal kinds of weapons were ineffective against them. So there's a tradition that the First Father didn't use normal weapons."

"What do you mean, tradition?" Jason asked.

"It's just…" Clark searched for the right words. "…. things that were passed down from one generation to another. No one ever chronicled… uh… wrote down or recorded anything about that period in our history. There were no historians… no official historical records of any kind. So everything we know was just passed down mostly by word of mouth. We don't really know if any of it actually happened, but it was an important part of our culture and our lore – for all Kryptonians, but especially for our family."

"Our family cuz the First Father was your great great great great gre gre gre gre gr gr grrrrrreat grandfather."

"Right."

"And you're the Last Son."

"Yeah," Clark replied, a bit unenthusiastically.

"So what kind of weapons did he have? How did he defeat the Apokai?"

"There's a tradition that the First Father had a secret weapon, and that he passed the weapon down to his son, and his son passed it down and so on from one generation to the next."

"So do you have the secret weapon now!" Jason was so excited he almost jumped of bed. "Are you going to give it to me one day?"

Clark gently nudged Jason to lay back down. "No. It was just a ruse."

"What's that?"

"It was a deception... It was a lie we had to tell in order to keep Krypton safe. You see... there was a rumor that one of the Apokai generals, named Sidredak, escaped the war and fled and had been in hiding ever since, biding his time until he could take revenge on Krypton and especially the House of El. Supposedly, he was terrified of the First Father's secret weapon, and that's the only reason he never attacked us. But the truth is, the First Father never passed down any secret weapon. What he did pass down was that we had to forever pretend we still had the weapon." Clark laid his hand gently on Jason's head and smiled affectionately at him. "And now... I've passed our legacy down to the next generation... to you."

Jason was a little bit confused by Clark's explanation. His mouth agape and his eyes wide, he uttered in a mesmerized tone, "Oooh."

"So if anyone ever asks if you have the secret weapon," Clark winked at his son. "...just pretend I gave it to you."

"OK," Jason said in a serious tone.

Clark chuckled. "I'm just kidding, Jason. No one on Earth knows about any of this. I'll try to explain it better another time. Right now, your mom is on her way upstairs, so I gotta get out of here. I don't want to get in trouble for keeping you up late again." Clark tucked Jason in and kissed him on his forehead, and then he wooshed out the window.

Lois walked in a few moment later to find Jason "sleeping" peacefully. She walked over to the window and closed it, shaking her head in exasperation. She was going to have to give Superman another lecture about children and open second-story windows.