While John and Kyla were still on their date, life on the Smallville fields went on with a much more earthly dynamic, though it was no less complicated.
“You know…
when you invited me to hang out, I didn’t have in mind that it would end up being this…” Brandon commented with a sideways smile, taking a generous bite out of a sandwich as he watched Clark and Jonathan Kent working under the sun.
“Well, sorry, son.
I didn’t want to get in the way of your youth, but this was really necessary,” Jonathan replied with a tired sigh, as he drove the last of the three test scarecrows firmly into the plowed dirt.
“Tsk…
Did you really almost burn your own house down with the laser beams, Clark?” Brandon asked between laughs, trying with all his might to hold back a clean laugh.
After calming down a bit, he took the last bite of his sandwich and stood up, brushing the crumbs off his pants.
Clark said nothing.
He simply averted his gaze, feeling his cheeks flush a bright red from the pure embarrassment of remembering the incident.
Jonathan glanced at Brandon.
The farmer hesitated for a brief moment, weighing his words, until he finally gathered the courage to ask with a serious tone:
“So, kid…
you’re like Clark, right?
With all that power stuff…”
Brandon didn’t answer right away.
He narrowed his eyes at Clark, dramatically pointing a finger at him.
“Well, well, well…
We share our biggest family secret with you and the first thing you do is run off to tell your parents.
Real strong resilience there, Kent.”
Clark, with an apologetic grimace and the clear expression of someone caught doing something wrong, was about to stammer an apology, but Jonathan quickly stepped in to protect his son.
“Listen, son, I really didn’t mean to pry,” Jonathan explained in a firm but respectful voice.
“But since this is a matter that directly concerns Clark’s safety, I had to find out.
Seriously, I apologize if we caused any trouble.”
Brandon simply shrugged, brushing the matter off entirely with his usual relaxed attitude.
“Don’t worry, Mr.
Kent, I was just joking.
Besides, my family doesn’t care at all.
Plus, we never forbade Clark from hiding it from you, so it’s all good.”
Hearing that, Clark let out a long, loud sigh of relief, though internally he still felt a bit bad for breaking confidentiality.
Brandon caught his expression and rolled his eyes.
To him, there was no point in wasting energy hiding things when the Kents were already the adoptive parents of a pure Kryptonian; sooner or later, the truths were bound to cross paths.
Jonathan, wanting to smooth over the atmosphere, decided to shift the topic to something more informative.
“Well…
then, according to what Clark explained to me, everyone in your house is Kryptonian?”
“Well, technically not everyone,” Brandon dropped, crossing his arms.
“Aside from my brother John and me, everyone in the family is a pure Kryptonian.
We’re adopted, in case Clark didn’t give you that detail.
But hey, according to my dad, maybe we have some diluted Kryptonian blood from a distant ancestor in our family tree, and that’s where our powers come from.”
Jonathan processed the shocking news in silence, nodding his head slowly.
“I see…
Clark also mentioned to me that your home planet was destroyed.”
“Yeah,” Brandon agreed, losing his smile a bit.
“I don’t know all the scientific details of the cataclysm, but it seems so.
There are very few Kryptonians left scattered across the universe.”
“And do all Kryptonians have that same kind of abilities?” Jonathan asked, trying to learn as much as possible to protect his son’s future.
“From what I know, under this sun, everyone has powers,” Brandon replied.
Suddenly, he furrowed his brow, trying to recall a specific conversation he had had with Conner on the porch.
“Ah!
Clark, now that I remember… This chapter is updated first at g.com.
My dad explicitly told me to warn you about some glowing green rocks.
They’re called kryptonite.
If you get near them, they completely weaken you…
and you become as vulnerable as any normal human.
You can die if you’re exposed too long.”
“Green rocks?” Clark murmured, locking the piece of information away in his mind with confusion.
Jonathan took it much more seriously, burning the warning in with gravity.
“Oh, but that’s not all,” Brandon added, and a look of genuine bewilderment crossed his face.
“My dad insisted that you be a whole lot more careful with the pink ones.
He said it’s a thousand times preferable for you to touch the green one over the pink one, and that you should never, ever, under any circumstances, get near one of them.
He said they are super dangerous.
He didn’t want to tell me exactly what they do, but judging by his tone of voice and the look of absolute horror and dread he had when mentioning them…
the old man was dead serious.”
Clark nodded his head, scratching the back of his neck, deeply intrigued by the mystery of the pink rock.
Jonathan, for his part, assumed it must be some lethal radioactive variant and decided he would keep his eyes open.
“Alright, it’s time,” Jonathan stated, deciding it was time to set those delicate topics aside to focus on practice.
“Let’s go, son.”
Clark nodded seriously, taking a step forward.
He focused his eyes on the first straw scarecrow.
He clenched his fists, concentrating hard, but after a few seconds of intense scanning, his eyes emitted absolutely nothing.
He furrowed his brow, frustrated.
“Easy, son.
You can do it, just concentrate,” Jonathan encouraged him, giving him a supportive pat on the back.
Brandon watched the scene from the side, completely dumbfounded, and couldn’t help but complain:
“Look, I don’t get it.
The other day you did it instantly and now…
you’re struggling this much?”
“It was a natural thing!” Clark explained, notably embarrassed and with his voice raised a bit.
“I don’t know…
at that moment I just felt the impulse and it happened.
But I don’t know why it happened.
Sometimes I can’t use it at will, or it just activates on its own when I don’t want it to.”
“Let’s see, tell me exactly what happened in the incident at the house, the one that almost caused a fire,” Brandon requested, adopting the posture of an improvised instructor to analyze the problem.
Jonathan shifted his gaze toward the horizon.
He knew perfectly well what the trigger had been that day, but he preferred to keep silent and wait for his own son to gather the courage to explain it.
Clark hesitated for several seconds, playing with his hands, his face completely flushed, until he finally blurted out in a thread of a voice:
“Well…
it’s just that I was thinking about Lana and…
and…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but his body language said it all.
A second of silence reigned over the field before Brandon exploded.
“Hahaha!!
I can’t believe it!” Brandon mocked, laughing out loud, having to hold his stomach with both hands from the pain of laughing.
“Are you telling me you were thinking about her, got aroused to astronomical levels, and…
BOOM, shot the lasers out of your eyes?
Hahaha!
That is golden!”
“Hey, it wasn’t like that!” Clark tried to justify himself, desperate to save some of his dignity. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
“Well…
it wasn’t exactly that way…”
“Sure, sure, whatever you say, champ,” Brandon added with a massive mocking tone, wiping a tear from his eye.
“Oh, Lana…
my love, you light up my gaze!
Literally!”
“I already said it wasn’t because of that!” Clark exclaimed, wishing the earth would swallow him up right then and there.
Jonathan Kent resolutely decided to look the other way, whistling softly to denote that he had absolutely nothing to do with this chaotic youth conversation about hormones.
After calming down a bit from the laughing fit, Brandon regained a more serious posture, though with a raised eyebrow.
“But seriously…
I don’t understand what’s up with you and Lana.
It’s an endless tangle.”
Jonathan, seeing the perfect opportunity to step in and guide his son with the wisdom of the years, decided to give his fatherly advice:
“Son, I say be brave once and for all.
Go to the girl and clearly express what you feel in your heart.
You already have the ‘no’.”
Brandon immediately jumped in with the counterattack:
“And I think the exact opposite: don’t do it, it’s not worth it!
It would be a thousand times better for you to dedicate all that time to training your powers, learning how to fly, and doing cool as hell things, instead of wasting valuable hours of your life chasing a girl.”
Jonathan’s lips twitched slightly upon hearing the advice of his son’s friend.
Clark was about to refute him to defend the value of romance when Brandon delivered the final blow, leaving Clark completely speechless in his tracks:
“Especially taking into account that she already has a boyfriend, right?
Whitney.”
An awkward silence settled over the training field.
Clark lowered his gaze, visibly deflated by the harsh reality of Lana Lang’s relationship.
“Well…
boys, why don’t we leave the romantic debate aside and keep training?” Jonathan interjected quickly, wanting to save his son from an emotional collapse.
“Brandon…
why don’t you give him a little demonstration of how it’s done so Clark can catch the trick?”
Brandon shrugged with total ease.
“Piece of cake.
Watch closely, Kent.
Don’t think about girls; think about a fixed point and let the energy accumulated in your body flow toward your pupils.
It’s like opening a floodgate.”
Without even changing his relaxed posture, Brandon’s eyes glowed with an instant crimson flash and a pair of thin, powerful beams of red light shot out of his eyes, impacting right in the center of the first scarecrow, making it explode into pieces of burnt straw.
Clark closely observed every detail of the movement, analyzing like a good student.
He closed his eyes for a few moments, took a deep breath, filling his lungs with fresh air, and upon opening them with total determination, fixed his sight on the second target.
Vush!
Two streams of pure thermal energy shot out of his eyes, cleanly impacting the straw doll, disintegrating it almost instantly.
Seeing the result, Clark flashed a huge, bright smile of pure happiness.
Jonathan Kent, standing beside his son, began to clap with pride and gave him a couple of affectionate pats on the back.
“That’s it, son!
You did it!” Jonathan congratulated him with enthusiasm.
“Come on, boy, there’s still one last scarecrow over there.
Do it again, I want to see if you’ve mastered the trick or if it was just a stroke of luck.”
Clark nodded his head, filled with a renewed confidence.
He focused his gaze on the third and final target, repeated the process fluidly, and hit the bullseye perfectly once more, smiling happier than ever as he felt that, finally, he was starting to take control.