Conner, Laurel, and Karen were already seated at the table when John and Brandon entered the dining room, trying to act as casually as possible.
Conner raised an eyebrow but said nothing at first; his mind was occupied with turning over how to approach the delicate subject that they would soon be leaving for the Pacific.
However, before he could articulate a word, Karen intervened in her most maternal fashion.
“You’re late,” Karen commented, crossing her arms as she watched them sit down with a fixed gaze.
“I hope you have a good excuse.”
“We were just…
helping Clark on his farm, Mom,” Brandon replied with total ease, giving not the slightest sign that it was a complete lie as he poured himself some water with feigned tranquility.
“Well, it’s not that big a deal,” Laurel immediately intervened, glaring at Karen.
Laurel knew perfectly well what the boys had been doing.
Karen, catching the clear warning in Laurel’s gaze, decided to let the matter rest in peace.
Although a playful smile was about to escape her lips, she caught herself in time, adopting a neutral expression.
“Okay, I hope you’re not late next time,” Karen sentenced seriously, returning her focus to her plate.
Conner frowned, lost in his own thoughts.
‘Tsk, so now that they know about Clark’s powers…
what will happen next?’ he questioned.
Suddenly, an extremely interesting idea crossed his mind.
‘Although I intend to found the Justice League myself in the future to ensure greater global control and security, I planned to wait a few more years, until they were older, to invite the boys and Clark…
But thinking about it, in some comics Superman originally debuted as Superboy.
It would be fascinating if the same thing happened in this universe.
Better yet if these two joined together to create their own teenage superhero group.
Anyway, I won’t meddle in that for now; I’ll let everything flow and take its course.
My main focus right now must be the construction of our private base.’
While Karen continued eating without paying much attention to her surroundings and Conner remained deep in thought, Laurel, who had been meticulously observing the boys’ behavior, fixed her eyes on her eldest son.
“What’s wrong, John?
You look worried.
Is something happening?” Laurel asked in a soft but inquisitive tone.
Upon hearing the question, Conner, Karen, and Brandon looked up from their plates and stared at John with evident curiosity.
John, who had been keeping his brow furrowed, noticed the attention of the whole family on him.
He took a deep breath to gather his courage; he had tried to avoid or simply forget the question that was eating away at his head, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake it off.
He leaned forward at the table, looking intently at his father, and spoke: “Dad, I have…” He paused briefly, looked at Brandon, who was watching him in confusion, and continued: “We have to ask you a very serious question.
And we want you to be completely honest with us.”
Conner arched an eyebrow, cutting a piece of meat deliberately as he looked at John with evident amusement, trying to guess what kind of nonsense they would come up with this time.
“Well, tell me.
What is it about?”
“Well…” John cleared his throat, casting a side glance at Brandon before dropping the bombshell: “First I want to apologize for lying.
We weren’t helping Clark on his farm.
The truth is, we were talking to him in the barn.
We saw what he is capable of doing…
and then, well, he confessed something to us.
Dad, Clark is an alien.
He came to Earth inside a spaceship that he has hidden in his basement.”
A dense silence fell over the table.
Conner maintained an unshakeable calm.
He already knew perfectly well what had happened, as Karen had previously mentioned to him that the boys were arguing about their gifts, though it did cause him some surprise that Clark would reveal his alien origin to them so lightly.
What Conner still couldn’t figure out was where John was going with all of this.
Were they worried about their best friend being an alien, or did they feel insecure about their friendship?
Desirous to see how far his children’s imagination would go, Conner feigned a slight surprise.
Karen and Laurel exchanged a quick glance, barely containing their urge to laugh at the boy’s extreme seriousness.
“An alien, you say?” Conner repeated, leaning back comfortably in his chair.
“Wow.
It seems little Clark put a lot of trust in you.”
Brandon, who had remained silent until that moment, suddenly stood up, slapping the table softly with his fist.
Unable to contain himself any longer, he blurted out all the wild theories he had been spinning on the way back home.
“Dad, Clark’s powers are almost identical to ours!
He has super strength, he’s incredibly fast, and just today he awakened X-ray vision and heat vision just by closely mimicking John.
So, adding the fact that you’re always watching him anonymously…
Dad, tell us the truth: Is Clark our brother?
Is he a bastard son you had with some alien before meeting Mom Laurel and Mom Karen?
Isn’t it true that his mother, completely heartbroken, sent him in a spaceship to you, but due to a calculation error it landed at the neighbors’ house?
And you didn’t find out he was your son until much later, but out of pity or shame you didn’t reclaim him and decided to leave him with the Kents to watch over him from the shadows!” Brandon spoke at such a dizzying speed that he had to gasp loudly upon finishing to catch his breath.
Pfffff!
Karen could no longer contain herself and spat out a sip of orange juice all at once, bursting into a clean, loud, and uncontrollable laughter that echoed throughout the dining room.
Laurel, for her part, brought a hand to her forehead, shaking her head with a mixture of utter helplessness and secondhand embarrassment at her son’s delusions.
“Hahaha, Brandon!” Karen exclaimed between laughs, wiping her lips with a napkin.
“That is the stupidest and yet most brilliant conclusion I have ever heard in my entire life!”
Conner stared at Brandon with narrowed eyes, debating internally between giving him a smack on the head for the audacity of his words or joining in on Karen’s mockery.
‘Damn, this kid really has an extremely dangerous imagination,’ he thought.
“No, Brandon.
Clark is not my son,” Conner replied with a firm, monotonous, and sharp voice, cutting off all the melodramatic drama at the root.
“To clarify, I do not have bastard children scattered across the universe, neither with aliens nor with humans.”
“Hey, it was a completely valid hypothesis!” Brandon defended himself.
However, noticing the unshakeable seriousness on his father’s face, the boy let out a sigh of relief, though he also felt a bit of disappointment for not having been right with his grand theory.
Immediately afterward, he turned to John and gave him a sharp nudge with his elbow under the table.
“I told you, idiot.
I told you it was impossible.”
John rubbed his affected arm and shot a murderous look at Brandon.
Then, he fixed his curious eyes back on Conner.
“But then, Dad…
if he’s not your son, what alien race is he?
You told us about the Martians, but Clark looks exactly like a normal human.
Is there a race out there that looks just like us and possesses our same powers?
Or could it be like the theory you mentioned before about the descendants of gods?
Maybe we are humans who inherited the lineage of ancient aliens who arrived on Earth in the past, and Clark happens to belong to that same race.”
Conner adopted a severe posture, crossing his hands on the table.
He decided that the time had come to reveal the truth about their origins and those of the family, but he immediately felt a headache thinking about the background of his words.
‘Damn, I should have told them they were adopted from the beginning,’ he chided himself internally.
‘And the thing is, I didn’t hide it from them because of some delicate or traumatic issue; it was simply because I completely forgot.
But now, how do I tell them?
I can’t just go and drop a: “Hey, listen guys, turns out legally you’re only my kids because of the fake papers Rob created.
And technically, one of you actually is an alien, though not from this universe, haha.”‘
Shaking his head quickly to dismiss such an absurd thought, Conner looked at both boys, let out a long sigh, and stood up.
“Well, girls, stay here for a moment.
I need to speak with them in private,” Conner indicated, before turning back to his sons.
“Come with me, I have something important to tell you.”
Conner walked firmly toward an adjacent room to speak with greater tranquility.
The two boys nodded, got up from their chairs, and followed him immediately.
However, all three of them overlooked a crucial detail: in this family, absolutely everyone possessed super hearing, so trying to move a few meters away was completely useless.
In the dining room, both women stared at each other.
Laurel whispered, “Should we tell him it’s not necessary for them to change rooms, since we can hear them anyway?”
“Nah, what for?” Karen replied with total nonchalance.
Laurel was about to comment that, out of sheer courtesy and respect, they should deactivate their super senses to grant them privacy, but Karen cut off her words by reading her intentions: “Let’s listen to their conversation.
I feel like this is going to get very fun.”
Laurel opened her mouth ready to reply, but finally closed it and simply nodded with a resigned smile.
Meanwhile, in the other room, Conner observed both young men in silence.
He sighed internally while a voice in his head told him: ‘You know perfectly well you are not made for this kind of dramatic talk.’
“Well, although Brandon’s theories turned out to be quite novel…” Conner looked at his younger son with a spark of amusement in his eyes.
“He lacked a bit more imagination.
Had you gone further, you would have hit the mark.” Conner took a deep breath, fixed his gaze on them, and let the words out slowly: “I…
we are aliens.
Your mothers and I are not from this planet.”
The revelation caused both boys to open their eyes wide, completely flabbergasted.
Brandon contemplated his father with pure astonishment, while John began to mutter to himself, “I should have thought of it…
How did it not occur to me before?”
“Then the reason Clark has similar powers is because he belongs to our same race!” Brandon exclaimed, bursting with excitement.
“Genial!
So we aren’t metahumans, we’re Aliens!
Hehe, that sounds way more fun than being simple metahumans.”
Conner nodded slightly, but immediately shook his head, causing both young men to look at him in absolute confusion.
“No, you two are not aliens,” Conner clarified.
‘Except you, Brandon, although technically you don’t belong to this universe…
but better not comment on that,’ he added to himself.
“You two are adopted.”
The bomb fell with absolute heaviness in the room.
The boys looked at him with a mixture of incredulity and total confusion.
An awkward silence ensued, until Brandon tried to force a way out.
“Hehe, Dad…
you and your usual jokes.
This one really was a good one,” Brandon said, searching for a sign that it was all a joke.
“It’s the truth, you are not my biological children,” Conner repeated with a heavy sigh.
“I know it’s hard to process…
But…”
Before he could continue with his explanation, Brandon raised his voice, his eyes turning slightly red due to the mixture of anger and indignation.
“Why didn’t you tell us before?!
Why did you lie to us?!” The boy fixed his gaze on his father, visibly upset.
John didn’t utter a single word, but his body began to tremble subtly; the news had hit them with the force of a truck.
“Why do you decide to say it just now…?” Brandon continued muttering in frustration.
Conner sighed deeply to himself, assuming full responsibility for the situation.
He could have looked for a thousand excuses, complained that the original fault lay with Rob for granting them legal affiliation papers or for having summoned them when they were so young when he himself wasn’t prepared to assume the role of a father; but at the end of the day, he knew it was his duty.
He had decided to keep them and raise them.
Throughout all those years together, he had learned to genuinely love them as his own children.
“I know I don’t have any valid excuse.
I should have told you from the very first moment.
I could make up a thousand justifications for you right now, but I will tell you the truth.
The real reason I didn’t mention it to you before was because…” Conner made a dramatic pause.
Both boys looked at him with absolute attention, expecting a profound and transcendental revelation.
“Because I completely forgot.
I’m sorry.”
Both brothers contemplated him with absolute incredulity.
They had expected any kind of tragic or mystical answer, but never a resolution so absurdly mundane.
The awkward silence lingered for a few seconds, until Brandon was the first to break it, letting out a small, resigned laugh.
“You know…
the reason couldn’t be any sillier.
It had to be you, Dad.
Only you would come out with something like that,” Brandon said amidst laughter and a couple of contained tears.
John remained silent, looking off to the side, but if one paid attention to his face, you could see how the corner of his lips lifted into a subtle smile.
“Hehe, I really am sorry,” Conner commented, scratching the back of his neck, not knowing very well what to say next.
With some awkwardness, he added: “Well…
do you forgive me?
Are we good?”
“Mph!
It’s not going to be that easy,” Brandon complained immediately, provoking a solidary nod from John.
“It will take a whole lot more than that if you want to obtain our forgiveness.
For starters, a couple of high-denomination green bills and many days off from attending school…
just to be able to heal my deep emotional wounds.”
Both Conner and John stared at him, completely speechless at the younger boy’s brazenness.
“Hehe, yeah, don’t even think about it,” Conner replied with a mocking smile.
Brandon made an exaggerated pout and muttered, “I had to try.”
John and Conner burst out laughing at the boy’s antics.
Suddenly, Conner reached forward and wrapped both of them in a strong, warm embrace, taking them completely by surprise.
“You know, I want to be completely honest with you.
I say this from the bottom of my heart.”
Both brothers felt deeply moved by their father’s words.
“Of course, to be fair, you were never planned,” Conner continued, ruining the emotional moment a bit with his habitual honesty.
“You could say I literally had no other choice at that time.
Though of course, I could well have left you lying around somewhere or handed you over for adoption to another family…” Conner stopped his words short upon noticing the notably dark and murderous glares both boys immediately fixed on him.
He coughed loudly to clear his throat and quickly rectified: “But…
I am extremely happy that you are my sons.”
Both young men smiled warmly and replied in unison, “We are also happy that you are our father.”
As they held each other in the embrace, they suddenly felt a couple of additional arms abruptly join the group.
It was Karen and Laurel, who had quickly entered the room to join the family moment.
“How did you intend to leave me out of a family hug?” Karen commented with a radiant smile.
The three males startled at the sudden intrusion of the women, but they immediately remembered the matter of super hearing and felt a deep secondhand embarrassment for having forgotten such a biological detail.
“Oh, so…
if we hadn’t eavesdropped on the conversation, would you have left us completely on the margins of such an important talk?” Karen inquired, feigning an expression of deep indignation and anger.
“Remember they are also our children.”
Laurel didn’t utter a word, but she increased the intensity of her embrace, fixing a penetrating gaze on Conner that spoke for itself.
“Well, since the original fault was mine, I decided to handle all the drama myself,” Conner admitted, visibly embarrassed.
Karen rolled her eyes at such a weak excuse, while Laurel murmured softly, “Mph!
It wasn’t necessary for you to do it alone!”
“You know, deep down I always knew that, apart from the super powers, our family wasn’t normal at all,” John suddenly intervened, breaking the tension.
“Oh, did you think at some point that we were extraterrestres?” Conner asked, relieved that they changed the direction of the conversation.
“No, not at all,” John replied with total seriousness.
“I simply thought it wasn’t normal to see a dynamic of three in the house.
To be honest, I always believed you were a tremendous playboy who had managed to trick two beautiful women, making them your wives and keeping them hidden from the rest of the town since they almost never go out.
So I always assumed that, apart from the powers, the biggest secret of this family was that you are a tremendous womanizer.”
“AHEM!
What do you mean I tricked them?!” Conner replied with a mixture of indignation and wounded pride.
Although the girls had originally been configured by Rob to feel devotion toward him, over the shared years the affection had become completely real and genuine.
“They are with me because they truly love me.
Besides, they don’t go out to interact with others simply because they don’t feel like it, not because I keep them locked up or hidden.”
Both women let out a clean laugh at Conner’s retort.
Brandon immediately intervened to support his brother’s theory: “But I always hear our mothers talking about the harem and about the idea of looking for more wives for you in the future.
So yes, technically you are a womanizer because you have never refused the idea.
What’s more, I bet anything you manipulated them into saying that on their own initiative.”
This time, it was Laurel and Karen’s turn to blush completely, as they immediately averted their eyes.
Laurel, determined to cut the subject at the root and change the course of the talk, cleared her throat firmly.
“Well, now that the mystery about the origin of your powers and Clark’s has been resolved, it is time to talk to you in detail about our true cosmic roots,” Laurel declared with poise.
Conner nodded and took back control seriously: “The universe is an extremely vast place, boys.
Our race is called Kryptonian.
Physically we are identical to human beings, but we possess a unique biological structure capable of absorbing and processing the radiation of young stars, like this yellow sun, which grants us capabilities that make us practically invincible.
The three of us and Clark come from the planet Krypton, which suffered a massive catastrophe that ended up destroying it completely.
We managed to escape to Earth in time, so Clark, just like us, is a political refugee from space.”
John nodded slowly, processing every fragment of information, but his analytical mind quickly detected a loose end.
“But Dad…
if we are adopted, why are our powers exactly the same as yours?” Brandon also fixed his eyes on him, waiting for a coherent answer.
“Well…” Conner explained, maintaining an expression of total confidence.
“To answer that, your mothers and I share the same theory you mentioned a moment ago: you must be direct descendants of ancient Kryptonian explorers who settled on Earth thousands of years ago and whose lineage remained inactive in human genes until now.” That had been the ingenious excuse Conner had originally devised to explain it to the girls, and now it served perfectly for the boys.
‘Though thinking about it…’ Conner reflected with curiosity deep down, ‘did other Kryptonians really arrive on this planet before us in this universe?’ He shook off the thought and returned to the present.
“Understood,” John nodded, satisfied with the logic of the response.
“So…
does that mean John and I are real blood brothers?” Brandon asked with genuine doubt.
John startled slightly at the question; knowing they were adopted, the possibility of not sharing a real blood bond was very high.
“Well, yes,” Conner lied with monumental cheek.
Both boys had been summoned out of nowhere by Rob, so he didn’t have the slightest clue about their exact genetics, but he knew perfectly well that revealing the truth behind their mystical invocation would bring him an unnecessary headache.
It would be extremely suspicious and problematic to explain how two children from completely different origins inherited the exact same alien gifts.
“Good.
Now that we have finally cleared up all the soap opera delusions, there is another matter of utmost importance that we must put on the table,” Karen intervened, immediately recovering her imposing, regal, and mature posture.
She stared at the two fourteen-year-old teenagers with utmost seriousness.
“Your father and we have made a crucial decision regarding the future of this family.”
Both Brandon and John immediately straightened up in their seats, paying full attention.
“Starting in the next few weeks, Karen, Laurel, and I will begin making frequent trips to the Pacific Ocean,” Conner declared, assuming control of the directive.
“I have located a geographical sector completely isolated from the radar of the rest of the world; a virgin and dangerous island that we will formally claim as our official territory and our secret base of operations.”
“A secret family base?” Brandon repeated, his eyes lighting up with a wild excitement at the prospect.
“Genial!
So when do we move there?”
“In this first stage, only the three of us will go,” Karen interrupted sharply.
“You two will stay here.”
Before both brothers could begin to complain or protest, Conner raised a hand, stopping Brandon’s momentum with a single firm look.
“Don’t worry, we are not abandoning you or anything like that,” Conner clarified calmly.
“You two will stay here temporarily in Smallville to continue your studies and finish high school regularly.
It is of vital importance for your development that you continue to live closely with human society and maintain a normal life.”
“What?!
But Dad!” Brandon protested vehemently.
“We can be of great help out there!”
“It is not a situation subject to discussion, Brandon,” Conner sentenced with a military and unshakeable tone that brooked no reply.
“John, you will be left in charge of the situation while we are away.
Make sure your brother doesn’t commit any stupidity at school, and both of you continue to interact normally with Clark.
We will take turns constantly to come check on you; with our Kryptonian speed, going and coming from the Pacific takes barely a few minutes.
I have already taught you the basics of fighting and how to defend yourselves from humans discreetly without the need to reveal your gifts to the world.
Do your part here in Smallville, and once we have built the fortress out there, you will only have to go and enjoy the fruit of our labor.”
John looked firmly at Brandon, placing a steady hand on his shoulder to instill calm, and then nodded respectfully toward Conner.
“Understood, Dad.
I will take care of the farm and keep Brandon in line while you are gone.”
“I know perfectly well you will, John,” Conner concluded with a genuine smile full of fatherly pride.
I’ve been dealing with back pain.
As compensation, this chapter will be a long one.