The Last Daughter of Krypton - IC

Rose

Rose was not looking where she was going. She was looking back over her shoulder as if she were being snuck up on from behind and thus when she turned to keep going, to follow Bruce and Chloe around the bend they'd just taken...

...she crashed right into a startlingly solid human being.

Again, her papers were scattered to the four winds, and this time her father's quotebook went with them. And this time she plonked down onto her hind end and if she'd been slightly less resilient she might have cracked her tailbone.

She blinked, bewildered.

Okay. Something was coming. But I didn't think it was...

"Kyle?" her eyes darted off to one side, saw his sunglasses on the floor and she cringed on his behalf. Bright fluorescent lights in here, that would be killer to his... day... blindness...

Her eyes narrowed, and then widened again, as she met his gaze.

One eye was a perfectly normal human colour. Blue, not unlike her own eyes.

The other? Was a pale purple. And it was... it was glowing.

"Kyle," she whispered softly, her mind ricocheting off of the walls of her skull, "I don't know if you know this? But you're... you're exhibiting bioluminescence. Right... right here."

She pointed to the eye that matched his.

Was this... was this a Gen-Tech thing? Or was he a hopeful monster, too?

With a surprisingly quick movement, she fetched his sunglasses for him, held them out to him with trembling fingers.

"Please don't hurt me," she pleaded. "You don't need to, you really don't. I may not be... may not be the bravest person in the world. But I can keep a secret. Please don't... hurt me. 'Off the record.' 'Off the record.'"

Kyle

"Please don't hurt me,"She said in a small, frighten voice. "You don't need to, you really don't. I may not be... may not be the bravest person in the world. But I can keep a secret. Please don't... hurt me. 'Off the record.' 'Off the record.'"

I grabbed rose's hand, my glasses, and pulled us both into the music room next to us. Lucky for me nobody was here. I released her as soon as we were in, and she shrank away from me like I was a demon from Hell that was here to eat her soul.
"Rose, I'm not going to hurt you. Hell, I kinda like you, as much as I can having only known you for a few minutes."

I put my glasses back on and moved back to give her some space. She was definitely in "fight or flight" mode.

"Nobody really knows how my sister and I escaped from the assassin that killed the rest of my family. The original police report is vague, but they said that he was scared off somehow. That's what we told them. The truth is that I am the reason we are alive."
I paused a second, then continued. "I'm a mutant."
There I said it. I could feel the word fill the room.

"My powers manifested that night, and have been growing over the years as I got older. I'm trusting you with this, because I have to, because I have a gift, and I will use it for good. The good guys don't hurt people because they were clumsy or not thinking, they protect people."
I drew in a long breath.

"Don't be scared, but this is who I am when I let myself go, when I release the floodgates on the power that i contain."

I Closed my eyes and the power engulfed me. A low moan like the wind whispering over a cold graveyard filled the room, the temperature dropped until Rose's breath was frosting the air, and the shadows engulfed me In a frenzied dance. It only lasted a second, but when it was over before her I stood, a six foot tall creature in black organic armor, with glowing lavender eyes and a crown of short horns.

I am Wraith. I am a part of the night and I protect those who cannot protect themselves. There are four people on earth that know my secret, and you're the fourth one. I will not hurt you Rose. Will you give me the same courtesy?


ooc: Wraith has a VERY spooky voice. Yeah, i know, he's not the thread PR guy!!!!

More of the camera crews began swarming around Smallville High School, apparently buzzing over to the school for some fancy story. Standing in front of the main doors Lucy stared out and smiled at them. They couldn't see her even if they wanted to.

"I'll give them a story." she said to herself and laughed.

She looked over at her shoulder and saw one of the football jocks apparently talking to some girl. Lucy's smile disappeared as she walked over to him.

"Sorry, big guy." she said right before possessing his body. Lucy stepped into where he was standing, and with a gasp the male student shook for a second before resuming his normal mode of conversation. Lucy had to fight with his own spirit for rights to the body, and it took a few moments before she took control.

"Darla... I think you're a slut and we shouldn't date anymore." Lucy had her now pet say. Darla looked at her boyfriend with a look of confusion and anger. Everything had been going fine between them... where the hell was this coming from? Why the hell would he go and say that to her? Before she had a chance to get an explanation and/or an apology Thomas walked away, stripping his jacket off and dumping it to the ground.

"Hey! Look at me!" Lucy had Thomas scream out before making him take off his clothes, right down to the point where he was standing in just his underwear.

'Time to really embarrass this poor sap' Lucy thought to herself. She had Thomas streak down the hallway, bursting into classroom after classroom, drawing looks of disgust and bursts of laughter from all the students and teachers. Lucy brought Thomas back into the hallway, only to have him run into the girls restroom and hide there. Once she had had enough fun Lucy forced herself out of his body, her spirit once again able to look from the outside in, and she couldn't help but laugh to herself at how the poor bastard looked. The ruckus outside told her that the little disturbance had obviously gotten everyone riled up.

Lucy snickered at the prospect of having ruined one reputation.

"Let's go have some more fun." she said, walking through the bathroom door to the hallway outside.

As Bruce and Chloe walked down the hall, he didn't notice Rose falling behind. He checked his phone, seeing a text from Alfred, reminding him that he was going to be in Metropolis tonight, talking to an old friend. Bruce figured he was going to talk to Mr. Fox, from Gotham.

But Bruce thought he heard a noise coming from behind them, around the corner. Bruce stopped, and looked back. There was no Rose.

Um, what happened to Rose? Bruce asked Chloe.

Rose

His voice sounded like... like... "Look upon me and despair, for I am mighty," it sounded like... Kevin Conroy on his worst night ever...

She shuddered, and she cowered, and she pressed her back against a blackboard, smearing chalk on her shirt and on the braid trapped behind her, smearing what had probably been someone's attempt to reproduce Mozart's Jupiter Symphony.

Lord, it was cold. Not like the cold she made with her own energies, with the energies from Captain Snart's gun... those energies were at least something. Energies of cold in the absence of energies of heat, in defiance of all conventional scientific thinking.

But this? This was darkness that sucked the light out of the room. Light and warmth... just gone. Gone somewhere else for awhile.

He was black as pitch and his eyes burned in his head like candles in the presence of a ghost. (No, no, that was blue. Candles burned blue in the presence of a ghost. In Kyle Alec Greystone's head, his eyes burned violent violet, and Rose was very much afraid.)

She recoiled, and she scrunched her eyes shut, and she heard him talking with a voice made of slime and snails and Kerberos tails and she...

...she forced herself to listen.

She forced herself to hear. Every word. Every one.

She didn't let herself go away.

She stood, and she listened, and slowly, slowly, she opened her eyes.

Rose pushed herself away from the wall.

'What are you afraid of?' her mother had asked. 'What are you more afraid of?'

Rose squared her shoulders, and while her lip still trembled she no longer cowered. She no longer... fled from the sight of him.

He was dark and terrible. She was pink and red and blue.

But why was she scared of the dark and the terrible?

Why was she so afraid to stand, why was she so afraid of falling?

She was Fire and she was Ice and she could ride the Wind.

'What are you more afraid of?' her mother had asked.

I'm afraid of losing a friend, she decided.

"I hope you don't mind," she whispered. "But it's really cold in here. And I would like to be... warm."

She spread her arms to her sides, and she glowed. Just softly, just softly, no brighter than the glow of his eyes, and warmth exuded from her. Radiated.

Heat spilled out from her, and her breath was no longer frost.

It was steam.

"I don't know what I am," she declared, a little bit louder now, a little bit bolder now, with her crystal blue irises rimmed with thrumming red. "Mr. Wraith. I don't have a name, a special name that tells the world what I am, and I don't have a category. I'm not a Wraith and I'm not a mutant. I've been called an 'omnitherm,' whatever that means."

"I don't know what I am," she declared, a little bit louder now, a little bit bolder now. "But if you keep my secret, I'll keep yours. And if you don't hurt me? I won't hurt you."

Chloe

Chloe blinked, and lowered her hands from her forehead.

"She's probably just," she blinked again. "She's probably just, uh... Rose? You okay? You haven't gone all Flight 19 on us, have you?"

She peered around the corner, found the scattered papers. But no Rose. No Rose at all.

"Rose?" she called out, looking around, eyebrows having climbed her forehead. "Cerebra? Come in, Flight 19! Flight 19, do you read?"

Chloe crouched, and she picked up Rose's abandoned little black notebook.

"Moleskine," she murmured, and held it up for Bruce to see. "Good breed of notebook. Ernest Hemingway used these."

While she was down there, she found John Smith's handiwork and retrieved that, too. No sense getting footprints all over the thing. She folded it up tiny and tucked it into the Moleskine.

A flicker of blue caught her eye, and she darted her gaze over to it. There it was, sitting on the tile. She picked it up on the tip of her index finger.

This, too, she showed to Bruce, handed it off to him. "And this? Is interesting. Interesting and then some. This is... this is a coloured contact lens. The same sort of thing they put on Brent Spiner in 'Next Generation' to make his eyes look gold. I'm told Daniel Radcliffe is allergic to them, which is why in the movies Harry's eyes are blue instead of green, like in the books. Green like his mother Lily's."

She shook her head. "S'weird. Whoever lost this, it was probably expensive. They didn't stop and find it?"

She stood. Graceful motion, swift. She turned in a slow circle, her eyes locking on a door. On a nearby classroom door. The music room.

Her eyes narrowed. She dropped the Moleskine into the laptop bag.

She strode towards the door, (clud-swish, clud-swish, clud-swish) her hand reaching for the knob, fingertips resting on the knob, ready to grip, ready to turn, ready to reveal that which lay within...

"Hey! Look at me!"

One of the ubiquitous jock-straps sprinted past wearing nothing but his... wearing... boxers! ...kicking up the abandoned printer pages in a bit of a cacophonous paper storm...!

Chloe whirled, watching him go, her jaw dropping and her eyes as wide as could be. She closed one hand into a fist, and she pelted after the running Nearly Naked Lad as fast as her booted legs would carry her.

"Bruce!" she bellowed. "Runaway story!"

Fertiliser! she screamed inwardly. Why did I have to lock away the frelling camcorder?

She ran and ran and ran... (cludswishcludswishcludswish!)

She recognised him. Tom. Tommy? Thomas!

He nipped into a girls' bathroom ten, fifteen yards ahead of her, and she followed without hesitating, a booted foot pounding open the door just in time to find him shuddering and standing there...

Quite a mess. Didn't look like he even knew what his name was anymore.

Chloe held her side, panting, gazing at him in bewilderment. "Thomas. Thomas. Tell me good news. Tell me this is hazing. Tell me they're doing this now instead of Scarecrows. Because that would be... whooph... that would be some good news..."

Wraith/Kyle

She was light, and heat, and cold in one bright glowing package.

She was beautiful!

"I would never hurt you Rose. I somehow got these powers, and they sometimes scare me. OK, they scare me alot more than sometimes. But I have them, they don't have me. I'll use them as I choose to, and I choose to use them for good."

I started pacing a little, shadows in the room flowing around the light and warmth Rose was emitting.

Sometimes it's hard reigning it in. I can feel this is just the tip of the iceberg with what i can do. I know I am capable of doing terrible things, but last night I saved alot of cops from some bad men with assault rifles and a laser of some sort. If I hadn't shown up people might have died."

I walked over until I was within touching distance of her.

"I'll keep your secret, on one condition..."

I shifted back to my normal form, then removed the remaining contact. my glowing lavender eyes looked into her blue and red ones.

"Have dinner with me. I mean, while I don't have access to my inheritance, I do get an allowance, and I'd like to..." (I couldn't believe I was saying this..) *long pause*"takeyououtonadate"

(Damnit Damnit Damnit)

" I'd like to take you out to dinner and a movie, like we are just two normal people. If thats OK with you?"

Rose

Rose boggled.

She stared at Kyle like he had suddenly sprouted a second head, and that second head was a blue gnome from The Centre of The Universe with a white ponytail. She returned to her normal human temperature with a sizzle and a gasp, and as the light faded the blue flooded back into the edges of her eyes.

Rose blinked at him. Endearing imposing him. Scary as Hell a minute ago, cute as a button right now. With those eyes. Those violent violet eyes.

"You're," she stammered. "You're. Not serious?"

She'd never been asked out before. Never ever. (Well.)

There had been that one time. Greg Arkin had been over mowing the lawn. But... ewh.

Sadie Hawkins be damned, she decided.

"You are serious," she breathed. "But-but-but I can't have dinner with you. Because. I'm allergic to grouper."

She paused. She scrunched her eyes shut. She gathered herself.

"So," she tried again, very carefully, "when we go out to eat? We shouldn't go for seafood. There's a good Italian place next to Fordman's, on Main Street? We could catch a movie at The Talon. They're having a tribute to Clint Howard this week. Which, um, I'm not sure he needs a tribute, but there are worse actors."

She opened one eye, then both of them. "That was a 'yes,'" she squeaked. "'Yes,' I would like to go out with you."

Rose grinned sheepishly, putting her palms on her cheeks as if to check to see if she were blushing or maybe white as a sheet. She was blushing a little. She was blushing a lot.

"Maybe," she suggested, "you can tell me what it's like to save a life. Because I got these powers from a crazy accident, and I haven't figured out... I haven't figured out what to do with them yet. Saving people would be good."

And then the ruckus outside spread to the hall outside the door of the music room, and Rose jumped nearly a mile, steadying herself against the blackboard.

"Maybe," she suggested, biting the inside of her cheek, "we should find out what's going on?"

Imagine traveling a thousand years away from all that you know. This world, in its many colors, is replaced by one of sheer white. A white that is so white in places it is blue. Seas of water so clear they are a thousand feet deep yet they look as though they are only two. In daylight, the crystalline ice reflects the angry redness of a great sun. In night, moons hang above a perfect arctic wildnerness of jagged peaks, flat prairies, and crescent valleys.

Such a world was Krypton, so long ago.

Cities existed in this place, cities of vast technology a thousand years removed from what you know now. In places such as Kryptonopolis, Kandor, and Argo City, jutting peaks of crystal skyscrapers reached to the stars while citizens lived and worked within them. Forces beyond mortal imagination could simply be controlled by the will of scientists who had harnessed the energies of the planet inside crystals.

This vast technology, this center of greatness, this shining star in the blackness of space is now no more. Now all that exists is the jagged remains of a once great planet. The burnt and disfigured rock pieces that float where once an entire world breathed. The great red sun is now nothing more than an ember. The great planet is nothing more now than a twisted fragment of firmanent that glows with eerie greeness.

This is Krypton.

A homeworld of heroes.

A graveyard of dreams that once were.

Chloe ran off, leaving Bruce with the contact. 'Hmm. What person would just leave an expensive contact lying around?' He didn't think people in Smallville really had money to just throw around. Well, exept for himself and Lex Luthor, the billionare playboys of Smallville...

Billionares!

Bruce and Lex weren't the only ones with money. Kyle was the heir to a lot of money. He was in the same boat as Bruce.

'But would he just leave his contact lying around?' Bruce thought. He looked around, and checked out the papers on the floor, because of Rose.

Rose!

A contact that belonged to a boy billionare, who, it had seemed, lied to everyone about his actual name, lying near papers from a small meke little girl, who was afraid of her own shadow it seemed.

This did not look good. Rose was right behind them, and now she was gone.

Bruce had a chill run down his spine. 'Kyle wouldn't hurt someone, especially Rose, would he?' Bruce thought. He wanted vengance for his family. He wasn't a murderer.

But he had lied, and Bruce's trust in him wasn't nearly the same as his trust in Chloe.

And events like that can mess people's minds up. Maybe Kyle wanted Rose, had feelings for her, and he took her. Forcefully.

What if it wasn't Kyle though? What if Bruce was wrong, and went after the wrong person?

Bruce kept the contact for later. He'd find out who it was, no problem. He went after Chloe, after picking up Rose's papers, and set them on the table in the hallway.

'This girl would run right into a volcanoe if there was a story in it.' Bruce thought.

Maybe that's what he liked about her.

Luthorcorp Plaza

Lionel Luthor was working late. Not that in itself was uncommon. No one paid attention to this fact, and after he sent his reception and admin assistant staff home, no one really cared. Which, of course, was perfect for Lionel Luthor.

See, he was the billionaire head of LuthorCorp. And as such, he made a prominent impact on the daily renderings of the Dow and NYSE. However, in the evening, at night mostly, was where the real runnings of a vast corporate empire was made.

As well as keeping tabs on his son, Lex.

And keeping tabs on other things, as well.

Lionel suddenly felt he needed some influence in Smallville. After all, that was where John Smith had obviously gotten some sort of inspiration from the Kawatche cave. Lionel wondered what secrets John Smith was holding. And Lionel wondered how he could learn those secrets.

Knowledge was power.

Lionel dialed his son's cell phone.

Thomas felt cold... as if he had taken a dive straight into a pool full of ice. What Lucy had done to him... he would not soon forget. But the problem was he had no idea what had happened. He remembered talking to his girlfriend, and then he woke up naked in the bathroom.

"So... cold..." he muttered.

Outside in the hallway students continued to laugh and talk about what happened. To most it was the funniest thing that could have happened, making an otherwise boring school day really entertaining.

And Lucy was loving it.

Mostly because those whom were laughing were next on her list. They thought it was hysterical. No one was really concerned about the kids well-being. She considered taking over Darla... but she noticed that the experience had already caused her some embarrassment. Lucy looked around for her next victim. It was like being in a candy store, now that she thought about it.

"Eenie... meanie..." she started mumbling, her fingers dancing across the top of students heads as she singled out her newest target.

"Moe."

Lucy giggled to herself as she walked over to another sports player, quickly forcing her way inside his body. This one proved to have less of a resilient spirit, and she had gained full control in a matter of seconds.

The question now was: what should she do with him? Cause extreme embarrassment? Bodily harm?

Lucy kind of liked the latter of the two choices. So she started off by having him simply punch a few lockers, banging his fist against the metal containers. She stopped after a couple jabs, realizing that she was starting to feel his pain. Deciding to end the event rather quickly, she had the student start off at one end of the hallway, and run down towards an opposite wall.

At full speed the jock bolted for the wall, and at the last second she withdrew herself from his body, and the kid simply smacked straight into it, falling down unconscious.

"Ouch." she commented, trying not to look at the blood covering his face.

Thud!

The kid fell down, hard, bleeding from his face, right in front of Bruce. He thought that Bruce was going to get ran over by the kid.

He was punching lockers, then he took off running, straight in Bruce's direction.

Now he was lying on the floor, bleeding.

Oh my God, this place is really not just an average town, is it? Bruce said as he stood over the boy.

Lucy was highly amused, proud of her achievements as a few classmates came over to see what had suddenly come over one of their peers.

"You're all next." she said, though her words carried almost no weight as none of them could hear her.

'Oh well' Lucy mused. She gently ran a hand through each of the students that had gathered around their fallen friend, and she started to walk away. She had caused enough mischief in this side of the school.

The question now was: where to next? The chemistry lab sounded like it could be fun. Or the library. She could cause some real havoc there.

Lucy grinned as she remembered one of the students commenting on the apparently wild atmosphere of the school.

"Average? This town is a hellmouth." she grumbled.

Bruce had never felt anything so weird. Almost as if wind had blown through his heart. Cold for a moment.

Then it was gone. Instinctivly, Bruce looked up. A couple of students were around, but nothing out of the normal. Ish.

He helped the boy up. He didn't seem to know what was going on. I stumbled down the hallway, back where he came from.

Bruce couldn't shake the breezy feeling inside.

Kyle

"Maybe,"she said quietly, "We should find out what's going on?"

"Good idea, but I have a clue."

I walked over to the window and motioned Rose over. Once she got there I pointed out the vans (and there were quite a few out there now) to Rose.

"See all those news vans? I don't know what the disturbance out in the hall is, but those people out there are here to get a picture of me, or to scoop the others with the first interview with me. It won't be long now until a photographer or two tries sneaking into school, because the freshest pic gets the money, and since I have been hiding for four years any picture of me is worth big money to the vultures outside."

I started pacing again, the nervous energy winding me up.

"So I need to let the principal know whats going on, because I can't just ditch school without a damn good explanation, then get out of here without being seen. I'll place a call to my sister and by morning all those clowns outside will have a one thousand foot restraining order slapped on them. Getting out of here is not the hard part. One of the things about being what I am is some of my powers are pretty cool. In can teleport through shadows. Principal Jaminson may be a bit rougher, but I doubt I'll have a problem once I explain that the circus outside will be gone."

I walked over to her again and reached out and took her hand in mine. She was warm, and soft, and her eyes were like crystal pools of azure that went on forever.

"Lets go out and see whats going on."

We walked over to the door and slowly opened it to bedlam. Students and teachers were everywhere. Bruce was leading a bleeding and groggy Scott Loggins down the hallway, and the others were acting like this was a snow day in May. Utter chaos!

"I'm gonna try and find the principal real quick, then get out of here and back to home." I reached down an picked up one of the numerous pieces of paper on the floor, then scribbled a number down on it. "This is my personal cell, well, it's kinda a cell, number. It's actually the number to my watch and sunglasses. Real technical, but it should be on the market by 2010 once Bekka's team gets the last of the glitches out, and keeps the company AI from listening in. He's a terrible gossopmonger from what she tells me. Anyway, give me a call later and I'll meet you at the Talon."

With one last look I darted off into the chaos, off to the far side of the school. Once I got the paperwork out of the way I was outta here and off to Seattle. Me and Bekka were about to go head to head with the paparazzi, and other contingency plans needed to be put in place. If someone came after me now, they would not find it so easy, but Gram and Gramps were another story.

Rose and Chloe

He charged off, and Rose stood there staring after him as he went for a moment, shaking her head as she stole a glance down at the phone number he'd written for her.

He had tried to impress her with his techno-savvy. And if he had tried that on anyone else in Lowell County save perhaps a Luthor or one of their ilk, it might even have worked.

But her dad had cracked the first three incarnations of The Thinker Virus, and when he wasn't messing around with confiscated energy weapons he was putting M.I.T.'s best A.I.'s through their paces with Turing tests. She had a picture on the mantle at home of her dad standing and grinning with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair outside of a bunker in Nevada. (The picture wasn't very clear, her dad claimed he'd had to arrange for it to be taken from orbit because they didn't allow cameras in that bunker, and even then he'd had to adjust the angles with computer imaging. Her mum claimed it was an April Fool's joke that her dad had gotten far too fond of, but Rose still believed. Rose still believed.)

In any case, "I'll see your fancy commlink goggles," Rose murmured, "and I'll raise you my uncle's bionic arm."

Still, though. It was sweet. It was adorable. It was the thought that counted, right? And the thought was... he wanted Rose McCrimmon to dig him.

And she... she kind of did. And maybe she was getting sucked into the trappings of the moment, the revelation of metahuman capabilities, the glamour and the clamour and the chills and the thrills. But the bottom line was that Kyle seemed like a decent guy.

The bottom line was that Rose was willing to take a chance on him. She really hoped he was okay, wherever he was going.

But then, as she stood there in the hallway, a lone island of daydream in a passageway flooded with derangement, she got cracked across the face by someone's shoulder-- a jock hurrying to aid one of his comrades, didn't even realise he'd hit her --and she staggered back, nearly slipping on the pages that still littered the floor.

Wincing, a tear coming to her eye, she rubbed her jaw... and thanked whatever Forces of The Universe spared her serious injury by making her a little sturdier than most.

She leaned against the row of lockers, got her head back on her shoulders, tried not to panic in the face of unalloyed chaos... and then someone was yelling her name...

===

"So... cold..." he muttered.

Chloe shook her head dubiously, straightening and catching her breath and rolling her eyes.

"See, no," she tsked. "That's totally the wrong way to play it. You don't get to enjoy folk hero status if you claim a chemical imbalance. Also? Temporary insanity is a hard enough sell with a jury of your peers. As your fellow student, I feel compelled to assure you that trying to pitch momentary insanity to the principal and faculty will not fly."

Thomas, in his delerium, made a grab for the sink, and missed, and slid down the wall to land on his butt on the floor.

Chloe cursed softly. "Oh, Hell," she muttered, and hurried over to him, sinking to her knees as she went. "Thomas, either you're a method actor of whom Stanislavsky would be proud, or you're seriously thermally deprived."

She touched his shoulder, and she recoiled a bit, staring at her fingers, staring at his face.

"Wow," she breathed. "You're practically hypothermic! No, no, no, don't sit there. Cold tiles'll make things worse."

She crouched beside him, wrapped one arm around his shoulders and draped one of his arms over hers, and then forced herself to her feet, dragging him along with her.

She almost purpled with the effort. He was nearly a dead weight, and Chloe wasn't the strongest person in the world, but she wasn't weak, either.

Chloe took a deep breath, and she took a step. And she took another step.

Thomas groaned beside her, but she gritted her teeth and kept on going. "Need to get you a blanket," she wheezed, "or something. You have a... nngh... change of clothes somewhere? I suppose we could find your... football uniform. Lockers out by the fields?"

She blew air through her lips. "Holy God, that's going to be a long walk."

She staggered with him out into the hall, steadying herself and him against a drinking fountain before keeping going.

No-one seemed to take any notice.

Someone yelled something about Bruce and Scotty Loggins, but that was just in passing... (good to know he was making himself useful, Bruce was a good soldier... still, she felt a pang of regret at abandoning him to the melee...)

...everyone seemed much too taken up in their own fretting and sprinting and spitting and panicking.

Chloe considered bellowing for help, but thought better of it. Best to keep pressing on. Save her breath.

"Could be worse, I suppose," she grimaced, sweat rolling down her forehead. "You could be conscious enough to make jokes about the best way to conserve body heat. I bet you tell that joke to Darla all the time; bet you even have a sleeping bag in your truck for the purpose."

She staggered 'round a now-familiar bend, and found a whole 'nother cluster of limbs and cursewords... but here at least was an ally!

Rose McCrimmon was making like a ring-tailed lemur in thick interstate traffic, bug-eyed and shaky, but she seemed unhurt.

Chloe positioned tongue and lips and teeth and she fired off her best Metropolis taxicab whistle, shrill and loud, and when that didn't seem to work, she opened her lungs and she shouted: "HEY! CEREBRA!"

Rose started sharply, like she'd been yanked through a wardrobe made from Narnian applewood without so much as a by-your-leave, but her enviable blue eyes found Chloe in microseconds.

"Give me a hand?" Chloe begged, feeling somewhat desperate. Thomas weighed a solid ton.

Rose nodded easily, and accepted Thomas from Chloe without even so much as a complaint or a hesitation. She didn't even stagger when she took the weight, which stymied Chloe more than a little. Maybe she was weaker than she thought.

She resolved to get more sleep, but she'd made such resolutions in the past to no avail, and she didn't think this one would actually stick either.

Gasping gratefully, she held her side again, adjusting her laptop bag for the umpteenth time, and got her breath back yet again.

"We need to get him warm," Chloe declared. "Can you hold onto him while I see if I can't get a thermal blanket from the nurse's office? While I'm at it, I'm going to try and see if I can't get a better hang of what's going on..."

"Dunno," Rose remarked, her face a mask of conflicted feelings, eying Thomas with a deep-seated scrutiny. "There's more than meets the eye, here. But I think that our off-the-record thingy with Kyle is about to be a moot point. Looks like WGBS and The Inquisitor and even the local Fox News affiliate are all outside jostling for a chance to scoop The Torch."

Chloe felt a weight in her stomach, a weight on her shoulders even heavier than that provided by Thomas.

"Oh," she sighed. "Fertiliser. I hope Pete's doing better than we are."

"Pete?" Rose considered, adjusting Thomas slightly. "Ross? I haven't seen him."

Chloe winced. "Yeah, I was afraid you'd say that. Watch Thomas, I'm making a run for the nurse's office."

And off she went, zigging and zagging through the crowd.

===

Thomas was chilly to the touch. Chilly like one of Kyle's shadows, chilly like the chill that had run down Rose's spine just before Rose had been knocked sprawling by the aforementioned Mr. Matthews. Greystone. Whatever.

And Rose was having no trouble holding him. She'd recovered pretty well from the shoulder to the face and she was strong, she was good and strong, and she held him not like a ragdoll perhaps but a scarecrow... the traditional, "Wizard of Oz" kind, filled with straw, rather than the warm-blooded kind strung up these days in random cornfields...

She took a good long look around.

Helter-skelter pell-mell. No-one looking in her direction.

Thomas groaned softly. "S'cold..."

Rose smiled faintly at him. "I know, I know."

And then her fingers glowed a soft orange, just the tips, just where they pressed against his skin, and gently gently gently warmth suffused his flesh anew, filtering into him slowly slowly slowly...

It would likely take a minute before it had any discernible effect on poor Thomas, but she didn't dare work any faster than this for fear of being more obvious. She'd already given away her secret-- or part of it --to one person today, she wasn't in any hurry to repeat this en masse.

Thomas smiled feebly. Faintly. But he was still so cold. Still so very cold.

"Who did this to you?" she wondered to Thomas.

But all Thomas could do was faintly smile. "S'warm."

Pete

Pete Ross spotted the brass-stoned sophomore fellow through the crowd, lugging Scott Loggins with the help of Dave Gerrold (second-string running back and the jock who had only moments ago inadvertently shouldered Rose McCrimmon in the face) and hustled his way over to them. Pete carried a First-Aid Kit, and he had a small medical light in his hand.

"Wayne," he frowned. "M'man. You okay? You look like you just got punked by Taye Diggs. To say nothin' of Scotty here. Hold him still a sec?"

He flashed the light first into one of Scott's eyes, then the other, and he frowned.

"Okay. So. Given that he's havin' trouble walking, dizziness... his eyes are all twitchy and the pupils are different sizes? He's totally concussed. We should get him to th' nurse's office, maybe even have an MD come look at him."

Pete grinned his infectious grin, held up the light. "Diagnosed him myself, right? My mom's friend got me this job-shadow gig with an EMT at Smallville Medical Centre over the vaycay, and it was sick! They didn't let me drive the ambulance, but they gave me some pointers on cornerin'."

He paused, though, his momentum faltering given the look on Bruce's face.

"Honestly, dude?" he flickered the light towards Bruce's eyes. "You startin' to worry me. Somebody must've seriously crapped in your cereal."

Lex's cell rang as he waited for Misty to show up. He looked to see it was Lionel, his father. "Hello... Dad." Lex answered with his inherent suspicion.

As Bruce helped the guy down the hallway with the assistance of another student, Pete Ross came up.

Bruce sat the kid down. He's complaining that he's cold. He isn't saying anything else, or even making sense. But he's extremly cold to the touch. Bruce said.

But it wasn't Bruce Wayne talking to Pete Ross. No, not the billionare playboy, Gotham's favorite son.

This was someone else. Someone who had taken control of Bruce in the moment of chaos. Someone who was stronger, calmer, and clear headed.

His insides still felt cold, and he couldn't explain it.

But it seemed that this guy was much colder. Pete, where can I find a blanket or something? We need to heat this guy up before he goes into hypothermic shock. Bruce said, his voice a little lower, much more serious then he had been before this had happened.

He walked with Pete down the hall, leaving the two guys on the side of the hallway. What kind of town is this anyhow?

"Lex," Lionel said into the phone, "how's Smallville?"

And he knew the answer to that question as well. But he let Lex answer it anyway.

"It wasn't long ago we talked about nature conservatories," he told his son. "Specifically, I believe it was you, Lex, that spoke of some caves near Smallville? Out in Lowell County?"

Lionel waited because he knew Lex was waiting.

Waiting on him to get to the point.

"I think it would look very good for LuthorCorp's Smallville Operations Director to invest in the local community. Don't you think so, Lex?"

Chloe and Pete

Pete eyed Bruce with surprise. It seemed as though Bruce was starting to wear his brass stones on the outside. And seriously? Pete was impressed.

He frowned, though, Pete did, like he was forgetting something.

Something one of the EMT's had told him about hypothermia, and it was bugging him. Sticking in the back of his teeth like a bad bit of creamed corn.

Bruce walked with Pete down the hall, leaving Dave with Scott on the side of the hallway. "What kind of town is this anyhow?"

...which Chloe overheard as she jogged up, looking a little flushed. Pete got the feeling she'd be flat-out running if she wasn't all runned out already.

She gave the two guys a grin with eyes half-lidded. "Oh, we're just your everyday Norman Rockwell-flavoured-Americana rural centre of population," she remarked. "It just so happens that there's something in the water. I'm not kidding, either. There is something serious in the water."

She took a long moment to look again at Bruce. He seemed... taller somehow. His eyes seemed deeper, darker.

Pete shook his head, a silent chuckle in his throat as he looked from Chloe to Bruce. Man, how many times had he seen that look before? Never directed at him, sure, but he'd made peace with that. Well, mostly.

But with a sharp motion Chloe snapped her gaze across to Pete, sharp enough that Pete actually jumped a little.

"Pete," she declared, jerking a thumb back over her shoulder, "I got a hypothermic spill back in aisle twelve. You have one of those shiny space-age fold-up blankets in that First Aid Kit?"

Pete frowned, that bit of knowhow stuck at the back of his brain suddenly dislodging itself. "No, nawh, hang on a second. You don't put blankets on a hypothermia victim. Blood-flow issues. Best way to treat a hypothermic individual... body heat."

Chloe scowled. "Lord, Pete, if I wanted that kind of talk I'd've stuck with Thomas."

Pete tapped his jaw with the medical light. "Thomas? You're talking about another hypothermic guy? What, we got an epidemic?"

Chloe put a finger across her lips. "Something in the water. How else do you treat hypothermia?"

Pete flared his nostrils, grinned, and pointed at her sharply. "Warm, sweet drinks," he exulted. "There's a coffee vending machine in the teacher's lounge, we can get 'em cocoa!"

He glanced at Stormcloud Bruce again, and he glanced at Chloe, and he shook his head with an air of noble resignation before clapping Bruce on the shoulder.

"Tellya what," he suggested. "You guys go double-team the teacher's lounge, I'll go see if anyone else is comin' down with the epidemic."

It had been warm near the planet's core. And heat had been the catalyst that fueled the power crystals into focusing their energies to create energies. Their dimensional matrixes aligned with each other, and through their centuries of unique scientific engineering, they were a power source of energy so pure it was beyond what purity knew.

The power crystals were the perfect energy source. Glowing red, drawing on heat from Krypton's molten core, they provided light for homes, power for industry, fuel for flight. They were, in some belief, Krypton's greatest achievement.

They were also its deadliest.

General Zod knew this. His followers, having already attacked outlying planets, finally turned their sights on Krypton herself. Zod had a plan, and it was devious, diabolical plan, and it was a plan of perfection. He would turn Krypton's greatest achievement against it. He would hold the world, and ultimately the galaxy, for ransom. Yes, he would conquer all they knew. A new order would begin. And those that opposed him would kneel. Yes, they would kneel before Zod!

Through subterfuge and cunning, he gained control of the Brain InterActive Construct, the very artificial intelligence created by Zor-El that controlled the power crystals. And, by Zod's design, the AI became like a virus, and the planet was plunged into darkness.

Zod was captured.

And, as justice is sometimes the sweetest poetry, he knelt before them. Knelt before the Council of Krypton. Knelt before Zor-El. And Zod was tried, convicted, and sentenced.

His pennance: imprisonment in the Phantom Zone forever.

But the Brain InterActive Construct was not so easily healed. And it carried out its mission: plunging the power crystals into Krypton's core.

There had been those that had warned the Council of the dangers that could be faced should the crystals contact the core. The same council turned deaf ears to this discussion. When it happened, they further refused to listen.

But Zor-El knew. And he had prepared for this. And he gave his word to the Council, in their pride and arrogance that was all-too Kryptonian, that he nor his wife would leave Krypton.

But for his infant daughter, Kara, he gave them no such promise.

They didn't get very far away from the two when Chloe came up.

No blankets, Chloe had said. Body heat said Pete.

Was Bruce supposed to hug the hypo's till they warmed up. Bruce turned to the two guys sitting down.

Hug him. Bruce said. The guy looked at Bruce as if he had lost his mind. But Bruce was thinking clearly now. You heard them. Body heat. Keep him warm untill we get back with coffee or something. Bruce said.

He lead Chloe down the hallway. She was right, there were more people like that. And everyone was freaking out and panicking.

If someone was wanting to produce chaos in the school, they succeeded.

Chloe, how much coffee do we need to warm up at least two hypothermic victims? Bruce asked. He wasn't sure if there was enough coffee in the teachers lounge for that.

Then, as Bruce glanced around, he noticed something very unusual in the midst of the chaos. Actually, it's what he didn't notice.

There where no adults.

There were kids, messing around, people laughing, others injured from the stupidity of high school jocks when something goes out of order.

And there was no order. No adults in sight.

'What the Hell?' Bruce thought to himself. Do you see any adults around here Chloe? Because I haven't seen one. Bruce asked as he stopped dead in the hall.

"Smallville's fine, just great, thanks, now if you'll..." Lex began, only to be cut off in mid sentence.

Lionel mentioned the Kawatche Caves, then fell silent.

"And?" Lex finally prompted.

"Sure, it would look great, but whats the real reason... Dad?" Lex asked, already searching his memory for some ulterior motive that his father would want to 'invest' in such an 'inconsequential' little town. The truth was, they both knew there was alot to be gained here, in smallville, possibly the world.