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Clana Episode 8.18: "Deathless"

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  • Clana Episode 8.18: "Deathless"

    Deathless

    By Carolus



    Summary: Rewrite for episode 8.18, “Eternal.” As Clark digs into a rash of disappearances that may be the work of a serial killer, Tess Mercer uncovers the true origins of Davis Bloome, and Chloe’s life will never be the same.
    Rating: PG-13 for violence and some sexuality.
    Spoilers: Everything up to and including “Power,” major spoilers for “Eternal”
    Author’s Note: This story is set in my Clana-friendly universe which ignores the events of “Requiem” and follows my previous “episodes,” “Righteous,” “Public,” “Warp,” and “Transmutation.”
    Disclaimer: Not my characters, unfortunately. I’m just playing with them.

    * * * * *

    February 2009
    Smallville, Kansas

    It was late at night in Smallville, and Tess Mercer sat in a comfortable chair in the main study of the Luthor mansion. She was absorbed in a thick, leather-bound book which bore an elaborate emblem on its cover in gold leaf -- a “V” with a cluster of five stars to its left, all inside a stylized sun. It was the insignia of the Veritas Society, of which the late Lionel Luthor had been a member.

    Indeed, this volume had been penned by Lionel himself. It was a chronicle of his involvement in Veritas and of the group’s efforts to locate and identify the Traveler, a mysterious, powerful being from another world whose arrival on Earth was foretold. The section that Tess was interested in, however, pertained specifically to Lionel’s visit to Smallville more than nineteen years ago, which had ostensibly been for the purpose of buying the Ross Creamed Corn plant. Reading it, she could almost see the events that had transpired that long-ago day of October 7, 1989...
    Hidden among a cluster of meteoroids that had followed it through hyperspace following the destruction of Krypton, a small, egg-shaped ship set within a diamond-shaped pentagonal frame entered Earth’s atmosphere, bearing directly for a small, relatively unremarkable town in rural Kansas.

    While the ship altered its trajectory, homing in on a specific human DNA pattern that had been programmed into it by its builder, Jor-El, the meteors that had accompanied it followed their own paths, landing all over Smallville and the surrounding countryside, crashing into buildings and fields and destroying vehicles, in one case killing a young couple in their early thirties named Lewis and Laura Lang, orphaning their three-year-old daughter.

    A larger pentagonal red ship had also entered Earth’s atmosphere on the heels of the first one, but with no specific trajectory programmed into it other than Earth, it crashed into the watery depths of the Reeves Dam reservoir, where it and its sole occupant would rest undiscovered for nearly eighteen years.

    Over on Route 5, a red Ford pickup was driving along when the meteors began falling behind it, obliterating the large sign that read, “Welcome to Smallville, Kansas, Pop. 25,001: Creamed Corn Capital of the World.”

    As she looked behind them in terror at the destruction, twenty-eight-year-old Martha Kent asked her husband, “What’s happening, Jonathan?”

    Having taken his eyes off the road to gaze in the same direction as his wife, the farmer didn’t see an object coming in low, cutting a trench across the highway as it landed. Turning back, he frantically stomped on the brake as the truck sped into the cloud of smoke raised by the object’s impact -- to no avail. The truck crashed, tumbling onto its roof into the wide furrow.

    Meanwhile, forty-five-year-old Lionel Luthor was tearing through the cornfields outside the creamed corn plant in search of his nine-year-old son, Lex, who had apparently wandered off.

    “Lex? Where are you?” he called. The boy was a pathetic, cowardly weakling, but he was still Lionel’s only heir.

    As he gazed across an expanse of cornstalks that had been flattened by a meteor impact, the businessman espied an unusually large lump in the field. Running forward to crouch beside the lump, he quickly cleared the stalks away from his son’s body. He was unprepared for what he discovered.

    Lex Luthor lay quivering on his side, nearly catatonic, only a few wisps of red hair clinging to his now-hairless scalp. The only noise he made was a low, constant, unintelligible whimper, and Lionel rose to his feet, his expression one of mingled horror and disgust.

    Over near Miller’s Field, the Kents were slowly gathering their wits as they hung there in their overturned truck, suspended by their seatbelts. Jonathan was rubbing his head when he heard something moving on the ground outside, and he looked out his driver’s side window. He was shocked to see a dark-haired little boy squatting just outside the truck, no more than two or three years old, and completely naked. He gazed back at Jonathan with an expression of innocent curiosity.

    “Martha?” Jonathan called out to his wife, wondering why the hell a little boy would be way out here, and the redhead turned her head to follow his gaze.

    For his part, the boy -- born with the name Kal-El just over three years ago to Jor-El and Lara on the far-distant world of Krypton -- simply scratched his head as he smiled at the two adults.

    Kal-El’s small ship lay half-buried in the soil at the far end of the trench carved into the earth by its landing. Near it lay a large, black, fibrous, almost cocoon-like object, one which had secretly been attached to the ship by the Brain InterActive Construct shortly before its launch. At that time it had been a hard nodule roughly the size of a man’s palm, almost unnoticeable.

    But once the ship had dropped out of hyperspace inside the Terran solar system, the “egg” had thrived in the radiation of the yellow sun, quickly growing to roughly the size of the child Kal-El himself. Now the surface of the “egg” rippled, and its skin cracked open, discharging a flow of green, viscous amniotic fluid as a small form crawled out.

    It was a young, dark-haired boy, apparently a few years older than Kal-El, with a more slender build. He collapsed near the remnants of the “egg” that had birthed him, laying on his side in a fetal position.
    “Lionel was too blind to see the truth,” Tess realized, reading the journal. She remembered an encounter with an entity that had briefly possessed Lois Lane back in early November that had said she was searching for her son, the child of General Zod. That name Tess knew from records that Lex had left; it was the name of an alien that had possessed Lex on Dark Thursday. The entity had also said that her and Zod’s son had arrived attached to Kal-El’s spacecraft.

    “There was another.”

    * * * * *

    “Wow,” Lana Lang breathed early the next morning in the Kent house as Clark spooned up behind her, a sheet wrapped around both of them. “That… was interesting.”

    “Yeah,” Clark replied.

    They were referring to the fact that they were currently reclining on the ceiling, having spent the last hour or so enacting their own version of a certain rather steamy scene from Dracula 2000 -- minus the drinking of blood, of course.

    “It’s not quite as comfortable as the bed, though,” Lana commented, feeling the hard plaster against her side.

    “Okay,” Clark said, and they slowly drifted downward to lie on the soft mattress, rotating before touchdown so that he was on the bottom.

    Turning herself over to face Clark, Lana lowered her head to give him a long, slow kiss. Clark cupped the back of her head as their tongues gently dueled, exploring the inside of each other’s mouths.

    After a few moments Lana gently broke away, raising herself up on her arms to give him a good view of her breasts as she let the sheet slip down to her waist. “Think you have time for another go ‘round before work?” she asked softly, a seductive smile on her face as she gazed into his eyes.

    That was a definite upside to having superpowers, the young woman mused, grinding her hips into his. She and Clark could go at it as long and as hard as they wanted to now and still be ready for more. The only limitation was making sure that they didn’t panic the neighborhood by creating tremors.

    Clark swallowed heavily, enthralled by the picture she presented. “I’d like to,” he admitted, “but there’s a story I’ve been looking into lately that I’d like to do more research on -- a rash of disappearances. It could be important.”

    Lana looked a little disappointed, but she understood. To Clark, being a journalist wasn’t about getting the big headlines; it was about keeping the public informed. “I guess this means we can forget about conserving water by sharing a shower,” she remarked, climbing off of him.

    “Oh, I don’t know about that…” Clark replied, suddenly bursting into motion. Lana shrieked in a mixture of surprise and amusement as he snatched her up at superspeed and carried her into the bathroom.


    * * * * *

    That afternoon in Metropolis, Tess Mercer was in her office at the Daily Planet, talking on the phone with someone she’d hired to do some research for her. “You’ve done a very thorough job,” she assured her contact, looking at the documents she’d been sent.

    There was a knock on her office door, and she looked up to see Clark Kent waiting to see her, one of her security personnel flanking him.

    “I just think I’ll take it from her,” she informed the person on the other end of the line as the security man left her alone with Clark. “Goodbye.”

    Once she hung up the phone, Clark strode forward to hand her a sheaf of papers. “I think I’ve got another front page headline for you.”

    “An article,” Tess said, taking the papers from him.

    “I found a stack of missing-persons cases that no one is talking about,” Clark told her, an intense look on his face. “There’re similarities between them all. This city is being attacked and no one seems to care.”

    “Kind of makes you wish the Red-Blue Blur wasn’t sitting down on the job,” Tess commented pointedly.

    Clark knew that remark was aimed at him, but he and Lana couldn’t be everywhere. Besides, whoever was responsible for these disappearances was very good at covering their tracks. The only reason Clark had even noticed the rise in missing persons was because so many of them had last been seen within the same area of Metropolis.

    “I think that these people were attacked by the same criminal,” Clark revealed, placing his hands on her desk and leaning close to Tess as he spoke.

    “Now, we can be the first to break this story,” the Kryptonian proposed as Tess got up out of her chair, still scanning the article that he’d written. “We can warn the people of Metropolis.”

    “I can’t print this,” Tess said, facing away from him as she looked through the pages.

    “You need to print it,” Clark argued, his brow furrowed.

    “No, there’re called facts, Clark, and you don’t have any,” Tess said, her head snapping around to look at him.

    “You don’t care about these victims?” Clark challenged. When Tess looked away rather than meet his gaze, he said in realization, “You’re sweeping this under the rug.”

    Her eyes drawn back to Clark by the condemnation in his voice, Tess said, “Great. Another conspiracy theory, ‘cause I love those,” her voice absolutely deadpan.

    Clark’s statement was uncomfortably close to the truth; she was burying his story, but only so she could deal with the situation herself. “Look closely,” she advised. “You will not find a web of lies behind this façade. That would be your department.”

    Clark met her gaze evenly. If she wanted more facts before she’d print this story, he’d get them for her. Metropolis’ citizens had to be alerted to the fact that there was a new predator in their midst.

    * * * * *

    Hours later, Davis Bloome was standing in Chloe Sullivan’s apartment above the Talon, wiping at the tears that were running down his face.

    “A man who’s not afraid to cry,” Chloe remarked from where she sat nearby.

    “A man who’s not afraid to cut onions,” the off-duty paramedic contradicted, holding up the vegetable in question.

    Chloe laughed at that, closing her laptop.

    “You know, you still didn’t have to cook me dinner,” she said, getting up, “even though I did manage to override your settings, retrieve all of your addresses, and change your applications so that the next time you go fishing for your phone in your glove compartment, you won’t erase your world with the touch of one button.”

    “Well, well, well,” Davis said as he took his cellphone back from her. “Ain’t you the most overachieving, know-it-all, teacher’s pet in the room,” he drawled in an attempt at a Southern accent.

    “Oh, he’s got a sense of humor and he can cook,” Chloe commented lightly as she fetched some placemats for the table.

    “Well,” Davis said, pocketing his cellphone and getting back to cutting up vegetables, “the one thing that was on the menu at the foster homes I grew up in: mac and cheese.”

    Momentarily setting down the chopping knife, he decided to broach a question that had been on his mind. “So have you heard from Jimmy lately?”

    Looking over her shoulder as she laid out the silverware, Chloe said, “His last tirade of emails included every single unflattering word in the dictionary, including some that, uh, didn’t get past the censors.”

    The blonde grinned, but somehow it seemed a bit forced to Davis.

    “I thought he’d be dying to get back together with you,” he commented.

    “No,” Chloe said with a forced chuckle as she straightened up, turning to face him. “I believe that, um, the last phrase he used was, ‘Don’t call me, don’t come by, and if you email me, I won’t open it.’”

    “Ouch,” Davis replied in sympathy, which wasn’t entirely feigned. Even though he wanted Chloe for himself, he didn’t like to see her hurting, even in the short term.

    “I thought we were best friends,” Chloe continued, commenting on her relationship with Jimmy. “But obviously there was some… stuff brewing beneath the surface for a while.”

    The way Jimmy had blown up at her more than a month ago when he was being discharged from the hospital made that abundantly clear.
    “Look, I realize now you just don’t trust me,” Jimmy concluded, his blue eyes boring into her. “You never have.”

    He walked past Chloe toward the exit while the blonde stood there, momentarily stunned.

    “Of course I trust you, Jimmy,” she replied, turning to follow him. “I trust you with my whole heart. I’m your wife.”

    “And that’s what I don’t understand,” Jimmy declared, his voice rising as he whirled in place and strode back to face her. “Why the hell did you even marry me?”

    “Sir, settle down,” a guard cautioned, alarmed by the young man’s outburst.

    “I’m fine,” Jimmy said curtly.

    “We were just leaving,” Chloe assured the guard, turning to face her husband.

    “I’m not going anywhere with you,” Jimmy refuted.

    “Come on, Jimmy,” she pleaded. “We can work through this.”

    The photographer was unmoved. “I’m done trying to make this work.”

    Tears gathered in Chloe’s eyes as Jimmy put the final nail in the coffin of their relationship.

    “Marrying you… was the biggest mistake of my life,” he pronounced, then turned and walked away.
    “How can you be so close to someone and not really know who they are?” she wondered aloud.

    It was a question that struck a nerve with Davis, who had been hiding a major facet of himself from her for months -- namely, his monstrous Kryptonian persona, Doomsday. The pondering of that fact distracted him enough that when he resumed cutting up a tomato, he missed, slicing into his right index finger.

    “Davis,” Chloe said in concern as the paramedic snatched his hand back, hissing in pain.

    “No, it’s fine,” Davis protested as the blonde grabbed a towel, hurrying over to him. “Chloe, it’s fine. Really. Um…”

    Chloe wiped away the red fluid staining Davis’ finger to reveal completely unmarked skin. She looked at him in bewilderment; she could’ve sworn he’d cut himself badly.

    “Quick reflexes, huh?” he covered. That was one of the downsides of his genetically engineered physiology; he healed far too fast for a normal human being now.

    Just then the apartment door opened, a familiar voice calling out, “Chloe,” and they both looked to see Clark Kent enter. The reporter glanced over at the set table before his gaze panned over to see Chloe holding Davis’ hand.

    “Call much?” Chloe commented, dropping Davis’ hand.

    “Davis,” Clark greeted as he let the door close behind him, his tone neutral.

    “Clark,” the paramedic replied evenly.

    “Well, now that we have that all worked out,” Chloe joked in an attempt to cut the sudden atmosphere of tension in the room as she walked toward Clark, “what’s happening?”

    “I was working on a story I thought you might have some information on,” Clark replied after a moment, still a little discombobulated by Davis’ presence.

    “You know, I forgot something I was supposed to do,” Davis said, abruptly deciding that he needed to be elsewhere right now. “I should go.”

    “What about dinner?” Chloe asked, following Davis as he proceeded to the door.

    “Oh, you know, we’ll do it tomorrow, call it leftovers,” the paramedic offered, opening the door.

    “Okay,” Chloe replied.

    “Thank you,” Davis replied, holding up the phone that she’d reprogrammed for him with a chuckle, then left.

    Chloe closing the door behind Davis, then turned to look at Clark, who shifted uncomfortably under her intense gaze.

    As he reached the bottom of the stairs, Davis suddenly groaned, his knees buckling, and he grabbed a nearby pillar for support. Dammit. He could feel Doomsday’s influence starting to rage within him again, which meant one thing. He had to find a victim, fast.

    * * * * *

    Less than two hours later, Davis was dragging a spade behind him as he walked back to his blue SUV, which was parked in the middle of Miller’s Field. He’d ambushed a drunk who’d been thrown out of the Wild Coyote for starting a bar fight and broken the man’s neck, driving his body back here for burial. He couldn’t afford to just leave bodies lying around, after all.

    Opening the SUV’s hatchback, Davis tossed the spade on top of a blue tarp in the rear of the SUV, then slammed the lid closed. Walking around to the driver’s side and getting in, he took down the onyx cross and rosary hanging from his rearview mirror. He’d woken up clutching the rosary after one of his “blackouts” and decided to keep it.

    He touched the cross to his lips, then murmured, “Forgive me.” He didn’t particularly want to kill people, even the criminals and lowlifes that he’d been targeting, but it seemed to be the only way to keep Doomsday repressed -- at least until his relationship with Chloe was close enough that it wouldn’t look strange for them to spend a lot of time together.

    That time hadn’t arrived yet, though, judging by how oddly Clark acted when .she saw them together. Dropping the rosary next to him, Davis pulled the hood of his sweatshirt back with a sigh.

    His cellphone rang, and Davis pulled it out, glancing at the display. He didn’t recognize the number, so he flipped the phone open, saying “Hello?” just as he turned on his headlights, illuminating a redheaded woman in a silvery-white trenchcoat and black slacks standing about twenty feet in front of his vehicle with a cellphone raised to her ear.

    Freezing as he saw the woman, Davis barely heard the caller say in a female voice, “I forget -- what’s the prayer for dismembering a body?”

    Oh, crap, Davis thought. I’ve been caught.

    Raising her left hand, which held a small, cylindrical object, Tess Mercer pushed the button on the remote detonator. Its signal set off the plastic explosives she’d had planted under the gas tank of Davis’ SUV, instantly turning the vehicle into a fireball.

    Momentarily turning her face away to shield it from any microscopic debris hurled her way by the explosion, Tess watched the SUV burn with the slightest smile of satisfaction. Clark Kent’s mysterious serial killer was dead now, ergo, problem solved.

    * * * * *
    Last edited by carolus; 03-31-2011, 09:32 AM.

  • #2
    “I can’t believe this,” Chloe said, accessing the website for the Metropolis police department on her laptop. “There were over a dozen missing persons last month alone.”

    “You’d think it’d be newsworthy,” Clark commented dryly as he scanned a printout of one of the cases.

    Chloe uttered a wry chuckle at that. “Since when did ‘newsworthy’ have anything to do with what was on the front page?”

    Clark didn’t respond to the deadpan remark, instead looking thoughtfully at Chloe, who had her back to him.

    “You know, Clark, I really hope you have the safety cocked on your heat vision,” Chloe said, feeling uncomfortable when the silence stretched out too long.

    “What?” Clark asked, startled by the non sequitur.

    Chloe turned in her chair to look at him seriously. “You’ve been staring at the back of my head so hard, I’m afraid my hair’s gonna go up in flames.”

    “I just didn’t know you and Davis were spending so much time together,” Clark stated quietly.

    Chloe rolled her eyes slightly at that. Clark was pulling the big brother routine on her, even when it wasn’t wanted.

    “If you don’t wanna talk about it--” the Kryptonian began, suddenly searching for a graceful way out of the conversation.

    “No, please. I love trudging through stagnant water,” Chloe snarked.

    Okay, then, Clark decided. He was just going to give her his opinion on the matter. “It just seems you’re moving on kind of fast, and I don’t get what you see in the guy.”

    “First of all, it was dinner,” Chloe stated, a bit indignant. The way Clark was talking, you’d think he’d caught her in bed with Davis. “And secondly, he’s kind, supportive, and a strong shoulder for me to lean on, which, I don’t know if you’ve actually realized, but I could really use right now.”

    That said, she went back to sifting through the police website, looking for more information.

    “Look, it’s just, I have a bad feeling about the guy,” Clark admitting, circling around to face Chloe. And it was the truth; for some reason, Davis just felt wrong to him somehow. That feeling had only intensified around the time that he’d found the paramedic half-conscious and bloody at the scene of Doomsday’s attack on the Ace of Clubs. “I mean, come on, Chloe.”

    “Don’t ‘Chloe’ me, Clark,” the blonde interrupted. “What is it with this whole ‘meet-me-out-in-the-back-for-a-duel’ mentality?”

    “It might have something to do with the fact that this guy disappears and can’t explain where he went,” Clark stated, his expression hardening. “He’s full of secrets, Chloe. There’s not even a record of his childhood.”

    Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, Chloe thought. “Sounds familiar,” she pointedly said.

    Clark’s face darkened slightly at the implied likeness between him and Davis. Chloe knew the reasons for the disparities in his behavior and the gap in his early records. He put his hands on the table, leaning in close for emphasis like he’d done in Tess Mercer’s office earlier that day.

    “I don’t collect morbid crime scene photos in my locker, and I’m not the first EMT to show up at every gruesome murder,” he differentiated.

    Seeing Chloe’s expression shift to one of concern as she gazed at the screen of her laptop, the Kryptonian asked, “What is it?”

    “A vehicle was found on fire just outside of Smallville,” the blonde reported, her eyes rising to meet his. “It has Davis’ license plates.”

    Clark hadn’t expected that. What was going on?

    * * * * *


    Davis awoke just past dawn, his skin racked with a pain not unlike that caused by a bad sunburn. He could feel gauze next to his skin, dulling the pain somewhat, and he could only see out of his right eye; the other one was covered by the gauze.

    He blinked, trying to trying to get his bearings, and just then the bright morning sun shone in his eye as someone pulled a curtain, causing him to flinch away from the light.

    “Were you expecting a chorus of angels?” the woman who’d opened the curtains remarked dryly. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.” It was the same redhead that he’d seen just before the explosion that had “killed” him, only now she wore a purple short-sleeved V-neck and black slacks.

    “I wanted to be here when you woke up,” Tess Mercer said, carrying a small bowl of ice as she circled around to the other side of the opulent bed on which Davis lay.

    “I apologize… for the state that you’re in. I didn’t expect you to end up like this,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed as she met Davis’ cyclopean gaze. “I was trying to kill you,” she confessed.

    “But…” she continued, pulling the bloodstained bandages away from Davis’s face to reveal the oozing, peeling skin, “…that seems to be harder than I thought.”

    After she’d found Davis’ surprisingly still-living body in the remain of his SUV, she’d had him brought here, to the Luthor mansion.

    “Why am I here?” Davis asked weakly. “Who are you?”

    “Shh,” Tess told him, putting a finger to his lips. “You’re safe with me. Safer than out there. If the world knew you were a serial killer, you’d be running from torches for the rest of your life.”

    “You got the wrong idea about me, lady,” Davis disputed.

    “It’s not your fault that you were born with a killer instinct,” Tess allowed, the corner of her mouth quirking up briefly. “I even admire your altruistic selection of victims. It’s like keeping bats around to wipe out the parasites that prey on the city,” she philosophized.

    “I can’t control myself,” Davis admitted.

    “I know you’ve tried to absolve yourself, but… even suicide wouldn’t really work for a guy who can’t die, would it?” Tess pondered.

    “I am not who you think I am,” Davis told her.

    “No,” Tess said, shaking her head minutely. “You’re not who you think you are.”

    Scoffing slightly at Davis’ ignorance of his nature, she got up, taking Lionel’s Veritas journal from Davis’ bedside table. “And today, you proved my theory,” she said, clutching the tome to her chest.

    “After I discovered that you’d been a little unfriendly to a few Metropolis citizens, I started looking into your background,” Tess commented, moving around the bed to stand next to the window whose curtains she’d opened a few minutes ago. “The only problem is, you don’t have one.

    “I thought I hit a dead end until I inherited this,” she said, looking down at the journal. “Stole it, if I’m being honest,” she admitted with a bit of a smile.

    “I thought this might jog your rusty memory,” Tess said, sitting on the left side of Davis’ bed. “It was Lionel Luthor’s. It tells a fascinating story about a boy who fell to Earth the day a meteor shower destroyed a small Kansas town.

    “I’m beginning to believe the boy did not come here alone,” she revealed. Opening the book, she began to read, unearthing long-buried memories in Davis Bloome’s mind…
    Near Kal-El’s half-buried ship, the boy who would eventually be named Davis Bloome rose shakily to his feet from where he had been huddled in the trench. He gazed at the ship, then gazed off to his left at the “egg” that had birthed him. Then he heard footsteps, and a man’s voice.

    “Kids just don’t fall out of the sky, Martha.”

    As the boy moved to hide behind a small tree that had been uprooted by the ship’s landing, a woman asked, “Then where did he come from?”

    “I don’t know, but he must have parents,” the man said as he came into view, followed by a woman carrying another, smaller boy, wrapped in a blanket.

    “Well, if he does, they’re definitely not from Kansas,” the woman commented as they both caught sight of the ship.

    Seeing the woman gaze at the boy in her arms in adoration, the man said, “Sweetheart, we can’t keep him. What are we gonna tell people, we found him out in a field?”

    “We didn’t find him,” the woman contradicted. “He found us.”

    The first boy watched as the two adults walked away, carrying the other boy with them. They seemed nice; maybe they’d take him too. He moved out from behind his hiding place, intending to follow them.

    He’d gone perhaps a dozen steps when he heard a man shout, “Over here!” and looked to see two men coming over the top of the trench toward him.

    “I found him!” the leader shouted. Unbeknownst to the boy, they’d been sent by Lionel Luthor to secure a boy he referred to as the Traveler. Having found him at the landing site, they assumed he was their quarry.

    Alarmed, the boy bolted, heading into the nearby cornfield with the two men in hot pursuit. He wasn’t heading in any specific direction as he tore through the field, just away from the men behind him. Unfortunately, he had no way of knowing that the men had backup, and he abruptly found his escape path blocked by a small metal cage.

    “No!” the boy cried as the men grabbed him, opened the cage, and put him inside, locking it. Frightened, he clutched at the steel wire of the cage’s grated door, wondering what was going to happen to him now.
    Reading on, Tess told how the young Davis had then been taken to the Luthor mansion, where his path would soon intersect with that of another boy who would grow up to play an important part in the life of Clark Kent.
    “Feathers,” nine-year-old Alexander “Lex” Luthor called out to his errant bird as he walked the hallways of the Luthor mansion, dressed in an Excelsior Academy uniform and a stocking cap that his mother had insisted he wear to keep his head warm.

    Lex heard wings flapping, and tracking the source of the sound, he saw the bird fly through an open window above a door at the end of the hall.

    “Feathers,” he said reprovingly. He approached the door and was surprised to hear humming coming from behind it. He didn’t think there was anyone else in this part of the mansion.

    Lex bent over to peer through the keyhole -- and jumped back when his blue-eyed gaze was met by a brown eye on the other side. There was someone in there.

    “Who are you?” a young voice asked Lex.

    Lex’s curiosity got the better of him, and he unlatched the deadbolt, pushing the door open to reveal the boy that Lionel’s men had caught in Miller’s field a few days before, now dressed in a dark blue shirt and shorts.

    Lex entered the room, approaching the other boy, who appeared to be a couple years younger than him. He looked sad for some reason.

    “Are you cold?” the boy asked Lex, eyeing his stocking cap. When Lex shook his head, the boy reached out and pulled the cap off.

    Lex bowed his head, sure that he was going to be teased because of his bald head. He put the copy of Warrior Angel #107 that he carried in front of him like a shield.

    The other boy studied the cover of the comic book, with its image of the bald, silver-masked hero’s face.

    “Are you him?” the boy asked Lex. “Are you Warrior Angel?”

    “No, but I want to be,” Lex confessed.

    The other boy pondered that for a moment, then reaching into the pocket of his shorts. He pulled out a Warrior Angel action figure, one of the toys that had been left with him by the men who had brought him here.

    Smiling at the sight of the toy, Lex introduced himself. “I’m Alexander. What’s your name?”

    “I don’t know,” the other boy answered honestly.

    “What are you doing in here?” Lex asked, curious.

    “A man brought me here a few days ago,” the boy said, not knowing that the man in question was Lex’s father, Lionel. “He made them put needles in me,” he explained, showing Lex the bandages that covered the needle punctures on the inside of his left arm.

    “But… you don’t look sick,” Lex stated, looking at the other boy. “Do you wanna play?”

    When the boy looked doubtful, obviously afraid that he’d get in trouble, Lex added, “Nobody will know. My dad went to some farm. Come on.”

    Taking the boy’s arm, Lex escorted him out, closing the door behind them. Inside the room they’d just vacated, Lex’s pet bird Feathers lay on a desk, dead.
    “The day the meteor shower struck Smallville, Lionel sent out a search party for you,” Tess revealed to Davis. Coincidentally enough, the room they were in was the same one where he’d been confined when Lex met him in 1989.

    “Lionel had you taken from that field because he thought you were a prophesied messiah called the Traveler,” Tess continued. “A visitor from another planet, sent to save humankind.

    “But what Lionel didn’t realize is that there were two boys who fell to Earth that day,” she concluded. “The Traveler… and you.”

    Davis just gazed at her as he absorbed this information.

    * * * * *


    A man was loading Davis’ burned-out blue SUV onto the back of a tow truck when Clark, Lana, and Chloe pulled up in Clark’s red Dodge Ram pickup. All three of them got out, Chloe approaching the driver of the tow truck.

    “Excuse me,” she said. “Have the police been here yet?”

    “Come and gone,” the man confirmed as he continued securing the SUV to the bed of his truck.

    “Did they find a victim?” Chloe asked, concerned as to Davis’ whereabouts.

    “The thing was abandoned,” the man replied, shaking his head slightly. “No sign of a driver.”

    “Thank you,” she said, then walked back to where Lana and Clark were standing.

    As they waited for Chloe, Lana couldn’t help but notice the faintly haunted look on Clark’s face as he gazed across Miller’s Field.

    “Clark? What’s wrong?” she asked, a look of concern on her face as she laid a hand on his shoulder.

    “It’s weird that Davis would’ve stopped here,” Clark said, still looking off into the distance.

    “Why?” Lana asked, her brow furrowed.

    Clark swallowed heavily before turning his face to meet her gaze. “Because this is where my ship landed, all those years ago.”

    “What? Are you sure?” she asked.

    “Yeah,” Clark confirmed.

    It made sense, Lana thought; she’d triangulated a very peculiar impact from the first meteor shower to this area. She even remembering telling him about her theory regarding it that first January after high school.
    “Okay, well, you know that spacecraft that I saw during this last shower?” she said, referring to Zod’s black ship. “Well, I was looking into the satellite imagery of the first meteor shower, the one that happened when we were kids. And there’s something that doesn’t crash the way the other meteors do.

    “It, um… Well, it kind of lands,” she said, walking past Clark to look out the loft window. “Clark, what if a ship came down in the first meteor shower as well… and whoever was in it has been here with us this entire time?”
    The irony, of course, was that Clark was the “whoever” she had been referring to, and she’d never even considered him as a candidate until he’d confessed his Kryptonian origins to her the day that she faked her own death to get away from Lex.

    “What’s going on?” Chloe asked as she joined them.

    “This is Clark landed during the first meteor shower,” Lana told her.

    Gaping in momentary surprise, Chloe said, “That’s a pretty big coincidence pill to swallow. This place must hold a lot of memories for you, huh?”

    “The ground in this area’s been disturbed in a lot of places -- and not by farming, either,” Clark commented, his eyes scanning the field. In fact, if he wasn’t mistaken, one area looked like it had been dug up within the last day or so.

    He switched to X-ray vision, inhaling sharply at what he saw.

    “What?” Lana asked.

    “X-ray it,” was Clark’s terse response, his jaw clenching.

    Doing so, Lana gasped in shock as she beheld the same thing Clark had -- the skeletons of people’s bodies, scattered across the entire field. There had to be at least two or three dozen.

    “Chloe, memories aren’t the only thing buried in that field,” Clark stated, his voice low and angry.

    Now they knew why Davis had been there. It was a dump site for his victims.

    * * * * *
    Last edited by carolus; 04-06-2011, 10:09 AM.

    Comment


    • #3
      Interesting development here.

      --------------------------------

      Though, I don't like how you are idolizing Lana just like Al and Miles did. She is not and never was an angel. She was not just a victim in her and Lex' relationship. She manipulated people and risked their lives too. She originally supported Lex' projects concerning meteor "freaks". She was ready to kill Lex on more than one occasion. She risked Chloe's safety to get Clark to demonstrate his powers. She kidnapped Lionel.

      She has some really big issues. She is not that nice girl from seasons 1-3.

      On the other hand, she is too passive in some key parts of the plot, where she could've made a big difference with the original way of events.

      Anyway, Lana may have been "training" to withhold pain, but it's not that makes you a hero. And she has a very long way to become Clark's equal - not in powers, but in morals. And even Clark himself is far away from the hero he should become.

      --------------------------------

      So, while I really like your idea for Lana to stay in the show after events of Power, but your Clana scenes just too sweet for them to be real. Lana is darker than she is portrayed here.

      Comment


      • #4
        True, but I think Lana was really trying to change after season 7. And I've always thought she was a better choice in the early seasons than Chloe. The latter may have been available, but her journalistic snooping had the potential to get a lot of people in trouble, particularly the Kents (witness the debacle with Rachel Dunleavy in "Lineage"). Perhaps I'm sensitive to this because my own father was adopted and showed no interest in knowing his birth mother, who apparently had kids with no thought as to how she was going to support them, but at least had the decency to put him up for adoption, but how Clark chose to proceed in finding out about his birth parents was his own damn business, and Chloe shouldn't have been trying to "help" him.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by carolus
          True, but I think Lana was really trying to change after season 7. And I've always thought she was a better choice in the early seasons than Chloe. The latter may have been available, but her journalistic snooping had the potential to get a lot of people in trouble, particularly the Kents (witness the debacle with Rachel Dunleavy in "Lineage"). Perhaps I'm sensitive to this because my own father was adopted and showed no interest in knowing his birth mother, who apparently had kids with no thought as to how she was going to support them, but at least had the decency to put him up for adoption, but how Clark chose to proceed in finding out about his birth parents was his own damn business, and Chloe shouldn't have been trying to "help" him.
          I don't know, why did you bring up Chloe, but as you did... Look, Chloe was insensitive in the early seasons, but Lana wasn't much better. I didn't like Chloe very much back then. Though all the time she was treated much worse than Lana. And since Season 4, Chloe was almost ideal choice for Clark, especially considering her reaction to his secret. They seriously damaged her character in the whole Davis arc. Thankfully, they hooked her up with Ollie, witch was a good thing. But still, I think that Chloe was too good for Clark, not the other way around.

          Lana and Clark can make a good couple. But they have a lot of unsolved problems between them. They would fight, they would argue. Both of them should show that they are trying to be better person. I'd like to see some of that in your fic. Because you are about the only one who are writing post-Power Clana fic. And I appreciate it.

          Comment


          • #6
            Well, there is gonna be a bit where Lana and Clark disagree a bit coming up.

            Comment


            • #7
              Night had fallen again when Davis awoke from sleep, having dozed off after his conversation with Tess. He was completely healed now, and the gauze bandages had been removed. The paramedic scrambled out of bed, knowing he had to get out of here now. There was no telling how long he had before Doomsday would emerge.

              Having found a set of clothes on a chest at the foot of the bed, Davis dressed quickly and was soon striding through the hallways of the Luthor mansion, intent on finding an exit. He paid little attention to the stained glass windows and tapestries that he passed on his way. Davis came to a halt, however, when he came face to face with a door that led into the mansion’s main study. The sight of it recalled another memory from his brief stay here after landing on Earth.

              Reaching out, he took hold of the door’s wrought-iron handle and opened it, letting the memory wash over him…
              Young Lex Luthor and the then-nameless boy who would become Davis Bloome mock-fought with wooden swords on the balcony overlooking the study. It was a game that Lex had suggested, inspired by all the stories of medieval knights that his dad had made him read.

              The younger boy retreated, deliberately giving up ground as Lex chased him down the staircase. The “battle” continued as they reached the carpeted area until the younger boy lowered his sword, momentarily fatigued by the effort of waving the wooden weapon.

              Lex was a little disappointed that the other boy had just stopped like that, but just watched as the younger boy looked around him, taking in the room’s furnishings.

              Suddenly the younger boy’s gaze came to rest on an ornate metal box on the wooden desk. He started to walk toward the desk, fascinated.

              “What is that?” he asked.

              “It’s made from the armor of Saint George,” Lex replied. He’d heard his father talk about it once. “He slayed dragons with his sword, called Ascalon.”

              Lex suddenly got an idea of how he could incorporate the legend into this game of theirs, and put the point of his wooden sword to the chest of the younger boy’s chest. “I am Saint George, and you are the dragon,” he pronounced.

              “You have been sent to destroy the world, but only I can protect it from a beast like you,” Lex declared. He backed off slightly, leveling his sword at the younger boy. “Fight or die.”

              Getting the idea, the younger boy resumed his “attack,” and they fought until Lex thrust his sword into the gap between the other boy’s chest and left arm, mimicking a thrust to the heart. Placing his foot against the other boy’s chest, Lex pulled his sword free, his opponent faking a dying gasp as he obediently fell onto his back.

              “I have slayed the beast,” Lex said, raising his sword triumphantly. “I am the victor, and I shall claim my treasure.”

              Walking over to the desk, Lex set his sword down, then picked up the metal box. He turned to face the other boy and opened the box to reveal a large green piece of rock, whose crystals immediately began to glow in the younger boy’s presence.

              The younger boy immediately began to scream in pain, nausea twisting his stomach into knots as his blood seemed to boil in his veins. He flopped over on his chest, writhing in agony.

              “What’s wrong?” Lex said, absently closing the box as he looked at the other boy in horror. He had no way of knowing that the rock inside the box was a sample of green kryptonite that his father had collected after the meteor shower, nor that its radiation was harmful to his new friend, who was Kryptonian.

              “It hurt!” the younger boy cried. Though his DNA had been altered so that he couldn’t express the natural abilities of other Kryptonians yet, his cells still absorbed yellow sun radiation, and it was that function which made the kryptonite toxic to him.

              “Are you okay?” Lex asked, hurrying to his friend’s side, setting the closed box down as he went. Maybe the other boy was sick somehow.

              “It hurt!” the other boy repeated. He coughed as the pain began to fade, Lex looking on in concern…
              The memory fading, Davis recalled the sight of that glowing green rock that had hurt him. It matched up with pictures that he’d seen of Smallville’s infamous meteor rocks. He hadn’t encountered another one in person since that early experience here, having grown up in another part of Lowell County, away from Smallville.

              “There’s a way,” he murmured to himself, the memory having given him an idea. He’d felt like he was dying when Alexander showed him that meteor rock; maybe the meteor rocks held the key to killing him once and for all.

              He turned to leave, coming to face to face with Tess, who’d snuck up on him while he was lost in his reverie.

              “You think you can keep me here?” he challenged quietly.

              “I know. There’s nothing that can restrain you,” Tess acknowledged, walking past him.

              “Then what are you gonna do?” Davis asked.

              “I’ve been asking myself that question for the last few hours,” Tess confessed, her thoughts turning to the connection between Clark and Davis. “What do you do when you find Judas in your midst? Who would Christ have been if Judas had not betrayed him?”

              Turning to face Davis, she speculated, “Maybe we would remember Jesus as only a teacher roaming the desert.”

              “I don’t quite understand what you’re getting at,” Davis answered, mystified by the biblical references.

              “Without Judas, Jesus would’ve never risen from the dead to face his greatest challenge… saving humankind,” Tess clarified. “There is a savior among us. You are here to betray him.”

              “I haven’t betrayed anyone,” Davis disputed, though it was a lie. He’d betrayed his calling more than a month ago when he’d consciously started killing people.

              “I finally realized that until you fulfill your destiny, he won’t have his great challenge to overcome,” Tess went on, walking around Davis as she contemplated what she saw as Davis’ part in Clark’s life. “He cannot become the world’s savior without triumphing over the world’s destroyer.”

              Davis was getting tired of this woman’s double-talk. Whirling about, he strode over to Tess and grabbed her arm, roughly turning her to face him.

              “What savior?” he demanded, his voice low and angry. “What are you talking about?”

              “Clark,” Tess revealed. “There’s a reason you two don’t get along. You were destined to kill each other.”

              Clark. Now it all made sense, Davis realized. He’d never liked the reporter much, but he seemed like a good guy. He didn’t want to kill him.

              What Davis wanted didn’t matter, however, as the realization of his adversary’s true identity set off a reaction inside him. He could feel Doomsday awakening within him. Relinquishing his grip on Tess, the paramedic closed his eyes, fighting for control. When he opened them again, they had gone blood-red.

              Tess’ eyes widened in shock as she beheld Davis’ eyes, but before she could flee, Davis backhanded her across the face. The blow carried only a fraction of Doomsday’s true strength, but it was enough to send her flying across the room. She crashed into a low table and slumped to the floor, unconscious.

              Trying to muster some control, Davis turned and left the mansion. He had to find some meteor rock, and judging from the literature at the Isis Foundation, he knew exactly who could find some for him.

              * * * * *


              Back at the Daily Planet, Clark was really in a lather on the subject of Davis Bloome as he, Lana, and Chloe strode into the bullpen.

              “The guy blacks out regularly, and you chose not to mention it?” he asked his best friend in quiet incredulity.

              “I figured he had low blood sugar or something,” Chloe said as she headed to the coffee station.

              “He told he was hiding something dark inside, Chloe,” the Kryptonian continued, his voice growing angrier. “That didn’t set off any alarms for you?”

              “You know what, I thought ‘dark’ meant moody or bipolar at worst,” Chloe explained, pouring herself a cup of coffee. “I don’t exactly jump right to ‘serial killer.’”

              “The last time someone told me they had darkness inside them, it was Lex. And we all know how that ended,” Clark said, looking at both of them significantly before returning his attention to Chloe. “After all the times that you were angry at me for doubting Davis--”

              “I know, okay?” Chloe interrupted. “I was in denial. I-- You know, I--” she stammered, trying to explain herself. “I couldn’t believe that it was this bad.”

              “It’s not that bad, Chloe,” Clark disputed, remembering where the evidence of Davis’ activities had come from. “It’s worse.”

              Chloe shook her head slightly. “I just can’t believe he’s the serial killer that--”

              “That Jimmy warned us about,” Clark grimly finished with a nod.

              Lana chose that moment to intervene. “Clark, this isn’t helping,” she said, grabbing Clark’s arm to get his attention. “What we need to do now is find Davis and stop him.”

              “You’re right,” Clark acknowledged, calming down a bit. “I did some checking into these missing persons,” he said, retrieving a folder from his desk. He paged through its contents, recalling a pattern he’d noticed during his research. “They’re not exactly Metropolis’ finest. Assault charges, breaking and entering, abuse…”

              “So you think Davis is on some sort of vigilante mission?” Chloe conjectured. “Like a Dexter Morgan kind of thing?”

              “He was until last night,” Clark confirmed. “I mean, he’s not stupid enough to abandon his car next to a--”

              “A field full of evidence,” Lana finished, remembering what she and Clark had both seen with X-ray vision.

              “Chloe, I get the feeling someone took him,” Clark stated.

              That speculation reminded Chloe of something she’d discovered her own research. “When I was looking into Davis’ past, his county records had already been checked out by someone.”

              Clark looked askance at that revelation, but it was Lana who asked the question: “Who?”

              Based on what Clark had told her yesterday over the phone about his article being stonewalled, she could guess the answer.

              “Tess Mercer,” Chloe stated, confirming Lana’s suspicions. “I think it’s time you two paid a visit to the widow of LuthorCorp.”

              * * * * *

              Comment


              • #8
                Inside a private room at Smallville Medical Center, Tess angrily slammed down her glass of water, incensed by what her chief of security had just told her.

                “We tried to stop him,” the man said, still trying to come to grips with his experience. Davis Bloome had shrugged off their gunfire like it was nothing as he marched through them, killing two men in the process. “We opened fire, but he--”

                Find him,” Tess ordered, in no mood for excuses. “Or don’t come back.”

                Comprehending her meaning, the security man turned on his heel, striding out of the hospital room. He passed Clark as he left, and the guard at the door let Clark inside. Lana waited outside the room to give them the illusion of privacy.

                “Tess,” the Kryptonian greeted his boss. “I know you’ve been looking into Davis Bloome. He did this, didn’t he?”

                “I’m afraid there’s not a short version of that story,” Tess replied, smiling cryptically.

                “I think I missed something,” Clark said, his brow furrowed.

                “No, you’ve been at the center of it this whole time,” Tess revealed. “I came into possession of a journal of Lionel Luthor’s. The journal talks about a boy who fell from the stars on the day of a meteor shower.”

                Clark listened patiently as Tess continued: “Lionel’s obsession with this Traveler was the only reason that he was in Smallville that day. He wanted to possess the Traveler for himself.”

                “Why are you telling me all this?” Clark asked somewhat lightheartedly, though inwardly he was panicking a bit.

                He knew from what Patricia Swann had told him last spring about Veritas that her father, Lionel, the Queens, and the Teagues had known of his coming, but he thought Lionel’s business with the Rosses had been why he and Lex had been in Smallville.

                “Because Lionel, and then Lex, got the moral of the story wrong,” Tess revealed. “According to the Kawatche Indians, this boy is part of a two-headed creature. Good and evil. The Luthors were too busy feuding over which one of them was worthy enough to be your adversary that they couldn’t see the truth -- that there was another boy who came to Earth with you. Davis Bloome.”

                Clark outwardly chuckled at that. “So you think that Davis Bloome and I are from another planet?”

                “Lionel found Davis on the day of the meteor shower,” Tess told him. “He thought he was the Traveler, but then the boy’s tests seemed normal.”

                “Lionel was holding Davis?” Clark asked, despite himself.

                “Only for five days,” Tess clarified. “And then he threw the boy out onto the street because he got a phone call from Martha Kent.”

                Clark chuckled again. “Tess, you’re reaching.”

                “Am I?” the redhead challenged. “It’s Lionel’s own words, and I quote: ‘I have the wrong boy, but I believe that I have found the true Traveler.’

                “Why else would Lionel Luthor arrange an adoption for a boy who seemed to come out of nowhere?” Tess questioned. “Looks like you’re the reason that Davis was abandoned in the first place.”

                Clark stood there for a moment before excusing himself, saying, “Well, I should leave you to get some sleep.”

                Tess nodded, watching as the guard opened the door for Clark to leave.

                The Kryptonian’s mind whirled as he stepped out into the corridor. Lionel had come closer than he’d thought to finding him first. Why hadn’t the billionaire taken him after his parents called in that favor that Lionel said he owed them? He knew from what his dad told him that Lionel had threatened to call Children’s Services if his dad didn’t talk Pete’s dad into selling the creamed corn plant.

                Maybe Lionel thought it was too risky at the time. After all, Ethan Miller had met him on the day of the meteor shower; it was why they’d called Lionel in the first place, to back up their story about adopting him in Metropolis. His abrupt disappearance could’ve brought Lionel more trouble from the authorities than he was prepared to deal with.

                “You heard?” he asked as he approached Lana, who had been listening via super-hearing while she waited out in the hall.

                “Yeah,” the raven-haired young woman confirmed with a nod, a worried look on her face. “My God, Clark, Lionel almost found you before your parents could.”

                “I know. But it’s more than that,” Clark stated as they turned and walked down the hall. “What she said about Davis -- it makes so much sense now. I wondered why Faora was at Met Gen when I caught up with her. She must’ve been there to find Davis.

                “He’s the ultimate destroyer that Jor-El warned me about, Lana,” he said, looking her in the eye. “He’s Doomsday.”

                “But what about Doomsday’s victims?” Lana asked. She knew the monster’s modus operandi from looking at the coroner’s reports that Clark had gotten access to. Every Doomsday victim was found bloodied and broken, their bones crushed and shattered. “There hasn’t been one in more than a month.”

                “Which is when Davis’ victims started disappearing,” Clark realized. Thinking back, he remembered that Linda Lake had mysteriously been murdered in the prison ward just before the disappearances started. “He must be keeping Doomsday suppressed somehow with these serial killings of his.”

                “But now the police are onto him, because of those bodies in Miller’s Field,” Lana said.

                “God knows where he’s going now,” Clark said.

                * * * * *


                Chloe was paging through screenshots of bloodied corpses on her laptop at the Isis Foundation when she heard the door open and close.

                “What did the LuthorCorp diva have to say?” she asked as she heard someone step into the inner office. She looked up, assuming that it was Clark and Lana, but found Davis standing there instead.

                Chloe jumped up out of her chair in alarm, circling the table in an effort to put some space between her and Davis. “I know what you’ve done. Jimmy was right.”

                God, she’d practically thrown her marriage away by defending this psychopath. Just seeing the photographic evidence of the carnage he’d wrought made her sick.

                “Uh… That guy that I killed…” Davis said, referring to the kill that had gotten Jimmy’s attention. “…he was a drunk driver. He was a three-time offender.”

                “And what about all the others?” Chloe challenged. “Are you gonna try and justify killing them too?”

                She bolted for the exit, overturning lamps and furniture to try and slow Davis down.

                “No, I didn’t know what else to do!” Davis cried as he pursued her. “I’m sorry!”

                He caught up with her at the door out of the outer office.

                “You lied to me!” Chloe shouted as Davis pulled her away from the door.

                “I had to,” Davis said. “I didn’t wanna drag you into all this.”

                “Then why are you here?!?” Chloe growled, pulling away from Davis.

                “I love you,” Davis told her, taking deep unsteady breaths as he fought to control Doomsday. Killing those men during his escape from the mansion had helped a little, but now that he knew who the other Kryptonian was, he feared it was only a matter of time before the monster emerged. “And I need to know if you care about me.”

                “How can you ask me that?” Chloe replied, backing up slightly. “I thought I did.”

                And look where it had gotten her, she reflected. Her marriage was over before it really had a chance to begin and her best friend was angry at her.

                Davis emitted a sigh, saying, “Then I need you to do something for me.”

                “I won’t do anything for you,” Chloe told him. What Davis said next shocked her.

                “I need you to help me die,” he said earnestly.

                * * * * *


                Clark and Lana came out of superspeed just outside Isis about an hour later. Having combed Smallville without finding a trace of Davis, they’d decided to meet up with Chloe here to see if the blonde could come up with any leads. Their hackles were immediately raised by the fallen lamp in the outer office.

                “Chloe?” Clark called out as he and Lana strode into the inner office. He was staring at the overturned chair when Lana’s voice got his attention.

                “Clark, look at this,” she said, gesturing to Chloe’s open laptop.

                Joining her, Clark said that the screen displayed some kind of computerized blueprint with areas marked “observation window,” “console,” and “containment unit.” Part of the containment unit, marked “liquid,” was enlarged and labeled “liquid meteor rock containment unit.” The entire schematic was marked LUTHORCORP PROMETHEUS LAB.

                “Dr. Groll’s lab,” he realized, looking at Lana. “Why would they be there?”

                “I don’t know,” Lana replied, shaking her head, “but it’s our best lead.”

                They superspeeded out of the office.

                * * * * *


                Inside the Prometheus lab, Davis paced inside the confines of a Plexiglas cell reinforced with a grid of steel bars. He glanced up at the cylindrical leaded glass tank above him, which was filled with a highly concentrated liquid solution of green meteor rock and linked to a network of spigots that ringed the top of the cell. Chloe stood perhaps a dozen feet away, in front of a console with a lever that controlled the release mechanism.

                Taking a deep breath as he prepared himself, Davis said, “It’s time.”

                “I can’t,” Chloe replied, tears drying on her cheeks. She’d been furious with him earlier, but now, after hearing that he was the monster who’d destroyed her wedding, the one fated to kill Clark, that he couldn’t control himself… she just felt sorry for him. “I’m sorry.”

                “I finally found a way out of this,” Davis said. “Don’t take that away from me. Please.”

                Gathering himself, he said, “Pull the lever, Chloe.”

                Chloe slowly reached out to grasp the lever, then broke down sobbing. “I can’t kill you, Davis.”

                Just then Clark and Lana superspeeded into the room. “What are you doing, Chloe?” Clark asked, pulling Chloe’s hand away from the console.

                “It’s my life, Clark,” Davis asserted. “I can end it if I choose.”

                “Davis, don’t be a martyr,” Clark said, releasing Chloe and walking closer to Davis’ cell.

                “That’s not what this is, Clark,” Chloe protested, moving forward to lay a hand on Clark’s arm.

                “I’m not doing this for you,” Davis stated. All he could see now was the carnage he’d caused as Doomsday, the faces of those he’d killed in his misguided attempt to satiate the killer within him. “I want this to end. I can’t… live with myself.”

                “But it’s not your fault,” Clark said. “Everything that’s happened to you is because of me, all right? We should have been brothers.”

                Listening to Clark speak, Lana wasn’t so sure that he was right. Everything they’d told her about Doomsday and Davis’ blackouts made her think that taking Davis in would’ve only put Clark and his parents in danger -- and maybe all of Smallville.

                “Davis, you didn’t have a home,” Clark continued. “If that would’ve happened to me-- I’ve always wondered what it would have been like if the Luthors had found me in that field. I could’ve turned out differently.”

                That question had preyed more heavily on his mind ever since Jor-El had shown him the timeline that would’ve resulted if Brainiac had succeeded in killing him on Krypton, where Kara had ended up Lex’s right-hand woman. She at least had almost twenty years of living on Krypton to fall back on, but he probably would’ve turned out as bad as the Phantom -- or worse.

                “But you didn’t. You were destined to have the better life,” Davis protested. He bore the other Kryptonian no ill will. This was just the way the cards had fallen. “And no matter how hard we try to fight it, we will always return to our true nature.”

                He turned away, saying, “Chloe, pull the lever. Let me end this.”

                “No!” Clark said, whirling to face Chloe. “Chloe, you have to give this another chance. This is not set in stone.” He refused to believe that Davis was doomed just because Zod and Faora had engineered him to be a killer.

                “Enough, Clark,” Davis said, bringing the other man’s attention back to him. “You know that you should let me die.”

                “Davis, there has to be something in your life,” Clark pleaded. “Something that is worth giving it one more try.”

                Davis looked past Clark, who followed his gaze to look at Chloe. “It isn’t always about where your heart is,” the paramedic said quietly. “It’s about what you’ve done… and what you’re going to do. I was sent here to destroy you, Clark.”

                And that, he could not allow. He’d caused Chloe enough misery already; he wouldn’t compound it by killing her best friend. He sighed, the sound choking in his throat as he was racked by a painful spasm, Doomsday fighting to get out.

                “Clark,” he said, grimacing before he fell to the floor of the cell.

                Alarmed, Clark started to pound on the Plexiglas, though not with enough force to break it. “Davis! Davis!”

                Grunting in pain as he rested on his hands and knees, Davis opened his eyes, which had gone red. “There aren’t enough prayers in this world to give me redemption!” he cried in an inhuman growl.

                Realizing there was only one way to provoke Chloe into pulling that lever. Davis turned and lunged towards Clark. The Kryptonian blanched at the other man’s red eyes and the twisted look of rage on his face.

                “Clark!” Chloe cried, moving toward the console.

                “No!” Clark responded, turning back toward Chloe as he realized her intent.

                He was an instant too late, and Chloe threw the lever with both hands, activating the valves connected to the tank of kryptonite solution. They sprayed the solution into Davis’ cell, stopping him in his tracks as his strength was sapped by the kryptonite. Clark changed his path as he heard the nozzles activate, moving toward the cell in the hopes of breaking it, but stumbled and fell as he came within the effective range of the radioactive solution.

                Chloe hastily moved to pull him away from the cell and the kryptonite that rained down inside it, while Lana just stood there, already out of range. She hadn’t moved to stop Chloe from pulling the lever; despite her better nature, she felt that Davis’ answer was the only way out.

                Tears streaming down her face, Chloe watched as Davis wavered on his feet, then fell to his knees. Liquid kryptonite streaming down his face, he looked up with crimson eyes, remembering when the beast had first truly emerged…

                Comment


                • #9
                  A dark sedan bearing a Kansas license plate labeled “LUTHRII” stopped on a dark Metropolis street. The left rear passenger door opened and the boy who would become Davis Bloome scrambled out, followed by a brown-haired man in an overcoat who handed him a dark knapsack.

                  “What are we doing here?” the boy questioned, frightened.

                  “I was told to drop you off here,” the man replied, not unkindly.

                  “But who’s gonna meet me?” the boy asked. He didn’t want to be left here all alone. It scared him.

                  The man didn’t reply. Instead he went back to the car and got in, shutting the car door. He felt a little sorry for the boy, but Mr. Luthor’s instructions had been clear, and it was more than his life was worth to disobey the LuthorCorp CEO.

                  As the car started up, the boy looked down, fear and anger warring within him. He started shaking, and when he looked up, his eyes had gone completely red.

                  Before the car could pull away, the man in the back seat heard a deep, animalistic growl outside the vehicle. He looked out the window in curiosity, then froze as he spotted something… inhuman outside. Before he could react, a muscular, leathery gray fist with bone-studded knuckles smashed through the window and into his face, killing him instantly.
                  Davis slid to the bottom of the cell, his back resting against one wall. Seeing Davis sag as the life faded from his body, Chloe left Clark to kneel before the cell, placing her spread hand against the Plexiglas.

                  Davis glimpsed her out of the corner of his eye and turned his head to look at her, his eyes brown again and his expression almost peaceful. He mustered enough strength to put his own hand against the transparent barrier for a few moments, matching hers, then his hand fell limply to his side as his eyes closed in death.

                  Clark and Lana could only watch as Chloe sobbed next to the cell.

                  * * * * *


                  The next morning, Clark entered Chloe’s apartment above the Talon. He was worried about Chloe; the blonde had barely spoken on the way home the night before.
                  He found Chloe sitting on the couch, wrapped in a blanket and nursing a cup of coffee as she looked at a photograph.

                  “How are you holding up?” Clark asked gently.

                  “I’ve had better days,” Chloe admitted, putting the photograph on the coffee table. “That’s saying a lot in Smallville.”

                  As Clark moved to sit down next to her, she asked, “And, uh, Davis’…”

                  “I spoke to Oliver,” Clark said as he sat down. The fact that Davis’ corpse was soaked in that kryptonite solution had made outside assistance necessary, as neither he nor Lana could get within five feet of the body within being debilitated by the radiation. “He’s taking care of the details.”

                  Looking at Chloe, he said, “We need to talk about what happened.”

                  “I wouldn’t change what I did,” Chloe said, shaking her head slightly. Clark still refused to believe that sometimes killing was necessary.

                  “But there’s always another way,” the Kryptonian refuted. Maybe if Jor-El’s consciousness still inhabited the Fortress…

                  “He could have killed you, Clark,” Chloe pointed out. Maybe if Clark had acted more decisively years ago, Lex wouldn’t have come so close to killing him. “I won’t risk the safety of the world because of your code of ethics -- because you refuse to stop the things that threaten you.”

                  Clark mulled that over as he looked at the photograph that Chloe had been contemplating. It was a picture of the Kawatche cave painting that depicted Naman and Sageeth.

                  “Jor-El said he was the ultimate destroyer,” Clark commented as he picked up the photo and gazed at it. “Didn’t turn out to be much of a fight.”

                  Getting up, he walked over to the apartment’s small fireplace, placing the photograph in the flames. Lex, Lionel, and Davis were all dead; there was no point in wondering who his adversary was anymore.

                  “When I was a kid, I used to have this nightmare,” he said as he watched the photo burn. “Couldn’t really make sense of it until my dad told me where I came from when I was fourteen. My ship landed in a field and no one ever found me.”

                  “That nightmare was Davis’ life,” Chloe said quietly.

                  “I always felt like it was a burden, knowing that I was destined to save people,” Clark confessed. He’d wanted to live a simple life on the farm with Lana. But compared to Davis, he’d had it easy. “I can’t imagine what it must have felt like, knowing that no matter how you lived your life, you were doomed.”

                  * * * * *


                  A few hours later Clark was back at the farm, checking a harness for wear. As he walked over to a post to hang it up, he saw Tess Mercer standing in the barn, wearing a riding outfit.

                  “The new, contemplative Clark Kent,” the redhead commented as she pulled off one of her gloves. “I like it.”

                  “I’m kind of busy,” Clark said curtly as he hung the harness up, then went to check some bags of feed that were piled in a trailer.

                  “With what? Farm chores?” Tess scoffed as she turned to face him. “I’d let you off if you were saving a busload of children, but cleaning the feeding bin?”

                  “I’m really sorry that you bought into this… strange obsession that the Luthors had for me, but--”

                  “I don’t think of it as ‘buying in,’” Tess interrupted. “I think of it as believing.”

                  “If you choose to spend your Saturday nights reading the journal of a madman, sounds to me like you have a few holes in your personal life,” Clark advised, hefting a bag of feed and carrying it across the barn.

                  “We all look to idols, religion, the rich and the famous, because we have holes in our lives,” Tess retorted as Clark set the bag on top of a pile. “It doesn’t mean that these things aren’t real.”

                  “What you’ve made me out to be is not real,” Clark said firmly as he turned to face her. “I’ll never be that man.”

                  He walked past her to the trailer.

                  “Not until Judas is your back,” Tess murmured. Speaking louder, she said, “I have this feeling that you’ll never fulfill your great destiny until you meet your greatest challenge.”

                  “You don’t know anything about my life,” Clark said firmly. He was sick of people like Lex, Lionel, Tess, or Jor-El forcing their way into his life and trying to “help” him fulfill his destiny.

                  “If this is the way that you lied to Lex, then I can see how it pushed him over the edge,” Tess said, her voice rising as her temper got the better of her. For someone who purported to be a hero, Clark Kent didn’t trust very easily.

                  Clark’s hardened. Her response reminded him of something that had happened back when Eric Summers had accidentally stolen his powers. The billionaire had come asking about the accident on Loeb Bridge, when they’d first met, demanding the truth.

                  “Lex was racing for that drop-off way before he met me,” Clark said, his tone low and angry. If Lex had been a true friend, he would’ve waited until I was comfortable telling him what he wanted to know, instead of investigating me behind my back.

                  “Yeah, but betrayal--” Tess began, then found a better way to explain her point. “You know, the more you love someone, the harder it is.”

                  “Are you threatening me?” Clark said, his expression growing stormy.

                  “I’m not that naïve,” Tess answered with the slightest of smiles.

                  “I’m not some problem to be solved,” Clark said firmly. He’d had quite enough of that from Lex and Lionel; he didn’t need it from Tess.

                  “I get it,” the redhead conceded. Lex’s investigations had made it too hard for Clark to trust those who didn’t prove themselves to him. “It’s too early. Just know that I’ll wait for you, Clark. I’ll wait for you to come to me.”

                  “It’s gonna be a long wait,” Clark promised, then turned and walked out of the barn.

                  “It’ll be shorter than you think, Kal-El,” Tess murmured once Clark was gone.

                  * * * * *


                  Tess walked through the Luthor mansion that evening, looking pensive as she entered the main study. Plopping her gloves down on the glass-and-steel desk, she went to a cabinet and unlocked it, pulling out a large metal case.

                  She set the case down on the desk, steeling herself before popping the catches and opening it. Inside lay an object that her search teams had recovered in the Arctic in addition to the odd blue pentagonal crystal that they had found while searching for Lex.

                  It was a metallic purple polyhedral sphere, slightly larger than a man’s fist. It had one larger, hexagonal section that was set with an irregular pentagonal black shield, and four white figures shaped like the diamonds from a set of playing card were set in a flower-like formation in the center of the shield.

                  Looking at the Orb -- the same one that Lex had used to try and kill Clark back in May -- Tess could almost hear it whispering to her. She smiled faintly.

                  * * * * *


                  Later that night, Clark sat hunched over on the edge of his bed in his boxer shorts, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his folded hands as he stared off into space, not looking at anything in particular. He was so caught up in his thoughts that he barely reacted when a slender arm snaked its way around his waist.

                  “Come on, Clark. Let’s go to sleep. It’s late,” Lana whispered into his left ear as she pressed herself against his back. She’d donned a shimmering white nightgown before bed, being fairly certain that her boyfriend wasn’t “in the mood” tonight.

                  Clark dropped his hands as he straightened up. He began to speak, his back still to Lana. “It’s just… When I think of what Davis went through, because Lionel found him instead of me…”

                  “Clark,” Lana sighed, grabbing his chin and turning his head to face her, “you can’t blame yourself for that. It’s Lionel’s fault, not yours. I’m just grateful that he didn’t find you back then.”

                  She didn’t even want to contemplate what a monster Clark could have become if he’d been raised under Lionel Luthor’s iron-fisted tutelage.

                  “I just feel so sorry for him,” the Kryptonian confessed, looking at her sadly. “After what Zod and Faora and Lionel did to him… he never had a chance. It didn’t have to end like that.”

                  He took a deep breath before asking a question that had been on his mind since the confrontation in the Prometheus lab. “Why didn’t you stop Chloe?”

                  Lana’s expression was sad when she replied. “He was going to kill you. And because sometimes the only real choice you get in life is how and when it ends. For better or worse, that was Davis’ choice -- not ours.”

                  Clark nodded. He didn’t like it, but he supposed it was a moot point now. He lay down on the bed, Lana burrowing up against his side under the covers. Clark let himself drift off to sleep, but not before saying one last prayer for the soul of Davis Bloome, hoping the man would find more peace in death than he had in life.

                  * * * * *


                  The moon shone over an isolated clearing in a thick forest located halfway between Smallville and Metropolis. Its center was marked by an array of small stones, laid out in a four-by-eight rectangle. The night was quiet except for the hooting of owls and the songs of whippoorwills and nightingales.

                  Suddenly the ground began to shake, the relative quiet broken by a muffled pounding and the sound of breaking wood beneath the cairn. The pounding grew louder, interspersed with a loud scratching. Rocks began to tumble away from the surface of the grave, exposing the packed earth beneath as a pair of dirt-streaked hands broke through the soil.

                  The hands grabbed the edges of the holes their owner had made, and with a hoarse grunt a masculine form pulled himself up out of what had been meant to be his final resting place, his clothes and face covered in dirt and mud, his hair matted and filthy. The formerly interred Davis Bloome pulled his legs free the grave, huffing out a breath that formed a white cloud of vapor in the chill February night air as he lurched to his feet.

                  It had taken him the better part of a day revive due to the massive cellular damage and systemic organ failure induced by the kryptonite radiation, but now he was completely restored. Nothing could hurt him now.

                  He was invulnerable, immortal… deathless.

                  As he looked down at himself, Davis noted that he now wore a plain gray set of coveralls, his kryptonite-sodden clothes having been disposed of by Oliver Queen’s prior to his burial.

                  Davis looked around him, his gaze taking in the wilderness that surrounded him. He didn’t recognize his surroundings, but that didn’t matter, he thought to himself as he started walking. Eventually he’d find his way back to civilization. Back to Smallville. And then he’d find Chloe.

                  Until then… heaven help anyone who stood between him and his goal.

                  THE END


                  Stay tuned for episode 8.19: “Rivals”
                  Last edited by carolus; 04-06-2011, 10:08 AM.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    You know, you could've changed this utterly stupid scenario with Davis' attempted suicide. More to that, Lana should have done something. She would have done something. To help Clark, but much more likely to help Chloe. She is bold and daring or at least writers tried to show her that way. And you haven't changed Clark a bit with all Lana influence. Why did you have to repeat this stupid dialog between him and Davis?

                    From TWoP:

                    Clark: Davis, we could have been brothers!
                    Davis: Um yeah. How do think that would have turned out since, you know, I'd still turn into Doomsday?
                    Clark: You didn't have a home.
                    Davis: What the f**k does that have to do with anything?
                    Clark: If that would have happened to me...
                    Davis: You'd still be Superman and I'd still be Doomsday, you idiot!
                    Clark: I've always wondered what it would have been like if the Luthors had found me in that field.
                    Davis: Good for you but I really don't see the reason for that particular academic exercise and how it's relevant to this current situation. Think about it when I'm dead.
                    Clark: I could have turned out differently.
                    Davis: Yeah maybe, but you still wouldn't have involuntarily turned into a mass murdering killing machine that can't be controlled or contained. These are really pointless ways to try and talk me out of justifiable suicide. You really are trying to make this all about you, aren't you Clark?

                    I know, my opinion shouldn't matter to you, it's your story after all. So, nothing personal, but I don't know if I continue reading it.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Post deleted; new response posted below.
                      Last edited by carolus; 04-07-2011, 09:45 AM. Reason: Reconsidered response

                      Comment


                      • #12

                        All right, Ardent. I took the day to think it over, and I decided you have several good points.

                        1. Clark’s “It’s all my fault” speech from the original episode, which I transcribed for my version, is too egocentric. I should’ve just left it out.

                        2. I clearly am too close to the idea of the Clana romance to deal with the two characters’ problems realistically. So I would appreciate a rough list of the characters’ problems as you see them in their relationship so I can figure out how to show and address them, please. If it helps any, just think of yourself as an unofficial beta reader.

                        3. When you said Lana should’ve either helped Clark or helped Chloe, did you mean she should’ve helped Clark try to stop Chloe from throwing the lever or taken the responsibility for throwing the lever away from Chloe?

                        Finally, I appreciate your posting your comments in this thread, since I haven’t gotten any responses to my stories on KryptonSite since March 1st, when I was still writing “Warp.” There were no comments at all on “Transmutation,” positive or negative. If it wasn’t for the column that documents the number of times a thread’s been viewed, I wouldn’t know that anyone was reading them.

                        I am willing to do a rewrite on the suicide scene in “Deathless” if I get a response that’ll help me write it better. I can't get started on "Rivals" (my rewrite of "Stiletto") until this has been resolved. And that'd be a shame; I have an idea of where Lana could come in handy during Clark's confrontation with Bruno Manheim.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Finally, I appreciate your posting your comments in this thread, since I haven’t gotten any responses to my stories on KryptonSite since March 1st, when I was still writing “Warp.” There were no comments at all on “Transmutation,” positive or negative. If it wasn’t for the column that documents the number of times a thread’s been viewed, I wouldn’t know that anyone was reading them.
                          Well, I just found your story and read all the "episodes". I started to comment in the last thread.

                          1. Clark’s “It’s all my fault” speech from the original episode, which I transcribed for my version, is too egocentric. I should’ve just left it out.
                          I think he should've said something along this lines, just not literally. In the show there was a lot of times then Clark was acting stupid. He is written that way. When he should concentrate on important things like stopping uncontrollable killing machine (or, if he feels like it, saving innocent misguided person) he self-reflects.

                          But. It's not the show. It's your story. Of course, Clark shouldn't suddenly start acting OOC just because of Lana's presence in his life (oh, who am I kidding, he always does, just not in a good way ).

                          2. I clearly am too close to the idea of the Clana romance to deal with the two characters’ problems realistically. So I would appreciate a rough list of the characters’ problems as you see them in their relationship so I can figure out how to show and address them, please.
                          I think, that you need is to show some development in Clark and Lana both. I agree, that we could forget about some worst aspects of Lana's character from the show, because writers did her even more harm that they did Chloe. She was hurt in the past a lot of times, by her parents death, by Emily's death, by Lana-stalkers, by Clark - repeatedly, by Lex. But all of it hardened her. And it's not like she just became tougher, while staying the same pleasant girl with her friends. She can be quite a b**ch, sorry for my French. Especially to Chloe (because Chloe now is the only person, who really cares about Lana, aside from Clark, so Chloe won't bite back).

                          Her attraction to Clark is very complex and - for the lack of better word - weird. Maybe, one of the biggest sources of this attraction is the fact, that all of her other boyfriends (aside from Whitney) turned out to be much worse than Clark. He hurt her, yes, but she knows why now, and she decided to forgive and forget. But I don't think she is quite ready for the life of superhero, or even superhero's girlfriend. She needs to find herself first.

                          Since the high-school, Lana is trying to be the person she is not. First, it was for Nell (who did sh**ty job raising her, by the way) and for everyone in school. Then, she wanted to show all of them that she can be her own person, and it was good, but she was confused, and she hadn't anyone to confide in. Chloe wasn't a very good friend for her either, mostly because of her feelings for Clark.

                          ---------------
                          I really am rambling, am I? I can go on and on about Lana, but the truth is - she doesn't have a complete personality. Writers toyed with her for all the series, and never decided what exactly did they want from her. Our goal, I think, is to try and find the real person between all of this. All her life-story, all the words she said, I think we can create Lana as she should be, an actual human being, not an idol, not a plot devise or I don't know why writers brought her back for this two episodes.

                          And Clark - he is damaged by writers too, though for the lesser extent. We need to find the reason for him to grow up. He doesn't know how to be a boyfriend, and he is doing a bad job (he is better in your story, but still - don't you think something is missing in their relationship).
                          ---------------

                          If it helps any, just think of yourself as an unofficial beta reader.
                          I don't think I'm fit to be a beta. I haven't a significant writing experience myself. And I don't really know how to write a long story, with character development and all that stuff. I just like to read those stories.

                          3. When you said Lana should’ve either helped Clark or helped Chloe, did you mean she should’ve helped Clark try to stop Chloe from throwing the lever or taken the responsibility for throwing the lever away from Chloe?
                          I meant yeah, stop Chloe or do the job herself. But I take my words back, she really would hesitate, because her main goal now, when she is dating Clark, is to keep him. She already knew his reaction to her mistakes. ("No one can live up to your self righteous standards" she said or something like that). On the other hand, Davis is danger for Clark, as well as for the rest of the world. So she didn't know what to do.

                          I am willing to do a rewrite on the suicide scene in “Deathless” if I get a response that’ll help me write it better. I can't get started on "Rivals" (my rewrite of "Stiletto") until this has been resolved.
                          I don't know if it's necessary. I don't even know how I would write that scene. I still don't like the whole Davis arc at all. Doomsday would work for me as a dangerous beast much better. So it's up to you, though aside from altering Clark's speech, I don't know how to make it better.

                          I would like to see the next episode. Just a little character development, and some more insight into Lana's head. I don't think, her wish in the previous episode would be flying, even if she tried to clear her head. And I don't think Clark still would wish to be a normal person.

                          Your action scenes are good. But, I don't know, may be they should go for a date or something.

                          Well, I'm spent. May be I'll write some more of my thoughts later. Anyway, you are doing better job, than writers did in the Seasons 7-8.

                          -----------------------------------------------------------

                          Oh, and sorry for my English. It's not my native language.
                          Last edited by Ardent; 04-07-2011, 02:11 PM.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Reason for that re writing for Lana is bad plots to set up Lex v Clark and then later Clois

                            reason Lana's character went from one 180 to 180 and Twop had no real knowledge of any character especially Clark and Lana. Most of that forum deluded themselves to a reality that Chloe = Lois lol

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