Clark was completely stunned.
At that moment, he didn’t know what shocked him more: the fact that, besides himself, there were many other special beings inhabiting this world, or that his two childhood best friends were also part of that incredible and hidden universe.
He stared at the photocopied page for several long seconds, slowly processing the overwhelming reality that more people with powers existed and trying to absorb the outrageous idea of the possible existence of mythological gods.
The silence in the barn grew heavy, interrupted only by the subtle creaking of old wood and the wind slipping through the cracks.
Finally, he let out a long sigh, placed the paper on a worn workbench, and looked at the Blake brothers with a new and firm determination in his eyes.
“If everything you’re saying is real…
then I guess maybe I’m one of those metahumans too,” Clark murmured, rubbing the back of his neck with obvious nervousness.
“Although I still don’t understand some things about my origin and my past, so I’m not sure where my powers come from.”
John shrugged, downplaying the matter, and smiled slightly.
“Well, that doesn’t matter.
Your past and where your powers come from don’t matter; you’re our friend, and that’s all that matters.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a lost scientific experiment or an alien…” he joked with a small laugh.
“Oh, by the way, besides the two possibilities Brandon mentioned, there’s also the option of having powers due to government scientific experiments or chemical and energy-related accidents.”
“Well, putting aside the mystery of where your powers come from, show us what you’re capable of!” Brandon interrupted, crossing his arms with an extremely excited smile and overflowing curiosity.
“This morning I didn’t have time to ask properly, so now is the perfect moment for you to tell us what you can do.”
Clark hesitated for a moment, glancing toward the main entrance as if he feared Jonathan or Martha Kent might suddenly walk through the barn door.
After making sure the entire outside perimeter was clear, he walked decisively toward the deepest corner of the barn.
There rested an old John Deere tractor, broken down, rusted, and gathering dust, which his father used exclusively for spare parts.
It was an enormous mass of metal that easily weighed more than two tons.
John and Brandon watched him with complete attention, maintaining an expectant silence.
Clark took a deep breath to calm the beating of his heart, bent down slightly, and firmly placed both hands beneath the heavy front axle of the farming vehicle.
His muscles tensed for a brief second, but there were no cries of pain, no bulging veins in his neck, nor any sign of extreme superhuman effort.
With astonishing ease that defied every known law of physics, Clark began to straighten up.
He lifted the front of the enormous tractor completely off the ground, leaving it suspended motionlessly in the air.
“Wow!” Brandon exclaimed, letting out a whistle of pure admiration while his eyes shone with excitement at the sight.
“Now that’s what I call brute strength.”
Clark kept the heavy tractor raised for a few more seconds before carefully lowering it back down, making sure not to crack the worn concrete floor or create too much noise that might alert his parents.
He dusted off his hands, a little embarrassed by the attention but immensely relieved to have shared his secret with someone for the first time in his life.
“That’s impressive strength, Clark.
Really,” John said sincerely, taking a step forward with a calm smile and a hint of youthful arrogance.
“But now…
it’s our turn.”
John looked at Brandon and gave him a subtle nod to coordinate.
To Clark’s absolute astonishment, John didn’t approach the tractor, but instead walked toward a huge, solid cast-iron anvil that the Kents used to repair heavy blacksmithing tools.
John extended a single hand beneath the anvil’s base and, with ridiculous ease, lifted it above his head, holding it perfectly balanced in the air with a calmness that was almost terrifying.
As Clark stared with his jaw completely dropped, Brandon let out a laugh, thoroughly enjoying his neighbor’s shock.
With a slight push of his legs, Brandon’s feet left the ground. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
He began floating upward motionlessly, ascending vertically until he was suspended about three meters high, level with the barn’s ceiling beams.
From up there, he looked at Clark with an incredibly arrogant grin, floated over to John, and with one hand also lifted the anvil with insulting ease.
“You can fly and you have super strength too?!” Clark stammered.
He had already suspected the flying ability from the morning demonstration when he saw them floating above the trail, but seeing them lift that block of iron while defying gravity was on a completely different level.
Taking a step backward, Clark watched Brandon with a touch of innocent envy as he returned the heavy anvil to its exact place without showing the slightest sign of physical fatigue.
“I only have super strength…” Clark muttered quietly, lowering his gaze a little.
“Come on, don’t be jealous.
Maybe you’ll be able to fly too in the future,” John said gently, approaching him and giving him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
“You’re amazing…” Clark murmured.
And although he was a little envious that they could float through the air, deep in his heart he felt much lighter and calmer.
Knowing he wasn’t alone in this world was the greatest gift of all.
“Well, we still have a lot of room for improvement.
We’re still refining long-distance flight.
Our father is extremely strict with safety rules and doesn’t let us fly freely; he only allows it when he’s present supervising us,” Brandon replied, crossing his arms while floating for another moment before descending.
“But yeah, we can float, we’re ridiculously strong and fast, and ordinary things don’t even leave a scratch on us.”
“Wait…
your father is like us too?” Clark asked.
“Dad?
He’s on a completely different level, Clark,” John answered, crossing his arms with undeniable pride.
“Everything we can do, he does ten times better and without even trying.
He’s the one who taught us to hide our gifts and train in secret every morning so we wouldn’t accidentally destroy the farm.”
Brandon shrugged and explained naturally, “You know, according to the metahuman gene theory I just told you about, it’s perfectly normal for us to have the same powers as our father.
Technically, we inherited them from him through DNA.”
Clark stood in the middle of his own barn, completely overwhelmed by the flood of information, but he accepted it quickly with a somewhat clearer mind.
The most important thing of all was that he no longer felt alone or suffocated by the fear of being a freak.
He no longer had to hide neurotically from everyone.
His distant neighbors, the boys he had grown up playing with in the cornfields, were exactly like him.
Seeing how lost Clark was in his own thoughts, John gave him another friendly pat on the back and continued enthusiastically, “And you know, that’s not all we can do.
We can also see through solid structures.
You know…
X-ray vision.”
“What?!” Clark exclaimed, his eyes widening in complete surprise at that revelation.
“And we can also shoot laser beams directly from our eyes,” Brandon continued with a sly grin.
Then, in a tone full of arrogance, he added, “Oh, by the way, I have a couple of special powers that neither John nor my father have.
I have Telekinesis and Technopathy.”
John, seeing that his brother was about to return to his unbearable arrogant and egocentric attitude, quickly mocked him to bring him back down to earth. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
“Tsk, says the guy who was jealous of me for a long time and kept crying in his room because his body was different from mine.”
“Shut up!
I was never jealous,” Brandon immediately snapped, turning completely red with anger.
“Yeah, sure.
You always looked at me with pure envy and kept asking our parents why you didn’t have the same powers I did.” Then, as if remembering an extremely funny moment, John put on a highly mocking expression and continued, “I still remember perfectly when you finally awakened your abilities…
You got so damn arrogant that you kept saying you’d become king of the world and stuff like that!
You were hilarious.
As Dad used to say back then: ‘Brandon has entered his chuunibyou phase and developed delusions of grandeur.'”
“Shut up!
I was just a little young and immature back then.
It’s completely normal to have ideas like that when you discover you’re special.
Besides, you were just lucky because you awakened your gifts much earlier than I did,” Brandon replied with a murderous glare, trying to defend his wounded pride.
“Yeah, sure, whatever you say,” John said with a grin stretching from ear to ear, greatly enjoying annoying his brother.
Clark listened carefully to the entire discussion and suddenly asked with genuine curiosity, “You awakened your powers at different times?”
He asked because, in his own case, he had displayed great strength and unusual physical resilience since early childhood, and as he grew older, that strength had simply increased gradually.
“Yeah.
I technically manifested my powers when I was a baby,” John said, pointing his thumb at his younger brother before continuing.
“As for him, he awakened them when he was twelve years old.
Pretty late, honestly.”
Brandon shot John a murderous look, while John simply mocked him to his face.
However, while the two brothers stared at each other, ready to continue arguing, their instincts suddenly activated.
Both dodged to the sides with superhuman speed as a blast of scorching heat shot right between them.
Turning their heads toward the source of the attack, both brothers fell completely silent in astonishment.
In the corner of the barn, Clark stood blinking repeatedly while a faint reddish smoke emanated from his eyes.
Behind the brothers, two thin, perfectly melted lines had been carved into the wooden wall of the barn.
“Didn’t you say you only had super strength?!” John exclaimed, his eyes wide open, completely stunned by the Kent boy’s reflexes and attack.
“Uh…
I don’t know,” Clark said, rubbing his eyes nervously and looking utterly amazed by what he had just done; he hadn’t expected it himself, he had simply tried.
“When I remembered what you mentioned about your powers, I just concentrated really hard…
Suddenly I felt like I could see through the barn walls, just like the X-ray vision you described.
Then I thought about that laser-shooting ability Brandon mentioned and…
well, you can see what happened.”
Brandon stared at Clark, rapidly analyzing the situation in his mind.
Seeing the strangely similar nature of their abilities and adding the fact that his father, Conner, had obsessively watched Clark ever since they were little children, a completely crazy but logical idea crossed his mind.
Unconsciously, Brandon blurted out with bulging eyes, “Holy shit!
You’re not some bastard son our father dumped out here before getting together with our mothers, are you?!”