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rose_etta kindly read a version of my latest SV story that just wasn't working. I've recast it in a somewhat unusual style to try to make it a bit livelier. Anyone up to beta a non-slash SV story that breaks from canon at 5x19? (I haven't watched the last three episodes of the season yet; I'm trying to get this story done before I do, because my take on Lex/Lana is a little different.)
Also, I'd like help picking which story I should concentrate on finishing this summer. (I owesvmadelyn a Clark in college story too, but I don't know how it goes just yet.) So here are teasers, then there's a poll.
Lex Luthor had long held the hypothesis, tested fairly rigorously and never disconfirmed, that proximity to Smallville was inversely correlated with the chance of success of any given venture of his. Even meteor rock – "Kryptonite" – behaved better the further it was removed from that town, that cancer in the shape of a Norman Rockwell vision.
To Lex, Smallville would always smell like hypocrisy and defeat.
In any event, distance from Smallville was a desideratum of the highest order. Metropolis was too close, really, but LuthorCorp had such strong roots there that Lex hadn't quite managed to dig them up. Corporate headquarters had to stay there for PR and tax reasons. Lex himself had an office in Chicago he quite liked, and LuthorCorp's center of gravity was shifting incrementally away. His Metropolis office was supposed to be for emergencies, and meetings with his father, which pretty much came to the same thing.
With Smallville firmly in his rear-view mirror, Lex had done much better in recent years. Financially, LuthorCorp was thriving; personally, he'd made People's Most Beautiful People list three years running and no one had tried to kill him in nearly eighteen months.
There was one thing lacking, however, and its absence had brought Lex back to Metropolis, back to danger and possible failure.
Lex sat in the office that had been his father's and waited for Superman to arrive.
The message had been exquisitely composed – he could afford himself the praise, since he'd been writing it for years, using the ashes of the friendship to scrawl out an invitation.
Superman would tell himself he was dealing with a threat, but he'd come.
As Lex was opening yet another biotech prospectus, instinct made him look up. Through the blue-tinted windows, he saw Superman floating above the balcony like some messenger from God, angel and rough beast all at once. His arms were folded disapprovingly across his chest. His costume was exactly as ridiculous as Lex remembered. Lex truly wondered why the right-wingers aghast at a half-glimpsed nipple put up with the barrage of images of a superhero who might as well be wearing only body paint. A picture of Superman could be used to label the muscles of the (in)human body.
Lex shook his head a fraction, then nodded to Superman as he hit a button on the desk, causing the center section of the glass wall to slide open. Up this high, the Metropolis air was chilly and smelled like exhaust and garbage, wafted up from dozens of stories below.
Superman floated forward as if on some invisible sliding dais, his pose unchanged.
"Thank you for coming," Lex said.
Superman frowned, like tectonic plates shifting.
"I have," Lex continued, "a proposal for you. As I'm sure you're aware, my first Senate run is going to begin in the next few months. I want Superman's noninterference and Clark Kent's endorsement." That was enough to get even Superman to gape, surprise making him look almost human. "I have something to offer in return," he said, finishing the introductory statements.
"You've got nothing that I want," Superman said, predictably.
Lex's blood thrummed with excitement. He hadn't left, and that meant he was negotiating, even if he didn't know it.
"Did you ever wonder why it never worked out for you and Lana? Or Chloe? Or Lori, or Lois, or any of the others?"
There – that expression wasn't Superman's at all. It was pure Clark Kent, fear and denial and moral outrage rolled into one self-righteous package, angry at Lex because Lex was making him lie.
Rather than see what possible nonsense Clark could produce, Lex kept talking. "Because I did wonder, and I investigated.
"Of course," he continued, leaning back in his chair, "it could just be your paranoia and justifiable sense of isolation from humanity that ruined things between you and every woman you thought you might love. But I really think you got beyond that, with Lori and Lois at least."
He had Clark now, had him by the throat, sick fascination on his face as he waited to hear more.
"No, it was more than that. You wondered what all the fuss was about sex, didn't you? Oh, you could feel the attraction of a heaving bosom and a well-turned ankle, but the truth of the matter was, it all seemed fairly ridiculous once you got past the hand-holding and longing stares, didn't it?"
"Why are you doing this?" Clark gritted out.
"Because I want to be President," Lex said.
Clark shook like a man trying to wake from a dream. "Maybe that makes sense to you –"
Lex gave the smallest smile in his repertoire. "Bear with me. I've developed a very special pharmaceutical. Like Kryptonian Viagra – it allows you to respond to a human sexually as you would have responded to a Kryptonian naturally. You can think of it as being like a pheromone." He could think of it that way, but he'd be wrong; Lex didn't imagine that further explanation would be constructive.
He reached into his desk drawer, noting Clark's look of fear despite the fact that Clark must have scanned for Kryptonite, and pulled out the jar, its sapphire contents sloshing as he put it on his desk.
"You can have a regular life with Lois, if she'll still have you, or with someone else. I will give you a lifetime supply of this substance, which I call kryptonafil, in return for two things: Clark Kent's endorsement and your withdrawal from monitoring my non-scientific activities in either identity. I can tolerate your obsessive scrutiny of LuthorCorp labs, but I have auditors of my own and my stockholders much prefer that I use them instead of you.
"This is a risk-free offer. If the stuff doesn't work, you owe me nothing. If it works and you don't think the deal is worth the costs of having me represent the good people of Kansas, you stop using it and owe me nothing. If you like it and want to keep using it, you agree to my terms."
Clark stared at him, as blank as if he'd been lobotomized. Lex thought this was a small victory, to have stunned Clark with his audacity. Finally, a response that wasn't calcified by years of contempt. These days Clark rarely even seemed disappointed when Lex did something underhanded. Which was fine with Lex, because he *hated* Clark's condescension almost as much as he detested Clark's hypocrisy on the subject of truth.
He considered whether he ought to say more, as in "Don't you deserve a little happiness in your life? If you're going to be Clark Kent at all – if you do anything but run around saving people from themselves – then shouldn't that life be bearable? Or is Clark Kent just a mask you wear to punish yourself for being an alien? Because if he is – good job." No, there was such a thing as pushing too hard. Let the offer sell itself.
"You can think about it for a few days. I'll expect an answer at the end of the week."
He turned away from Clark, still holding the jar. The liquid inside was so fluorescently blue that it wouldn't have looked out of place on a *Miami Vice* set. Lex considered whether he ought to have put it in a nicer decanter. He liked the security of a metal screw-top, though. And the mad-scientist panache was undeniable.
Superman's cape rustled as Clark paced across the floor.
Lex had spent several months analyzing fragments of a earlier cape. The latest one hadn't been torn in some time, despite the encounter with Braniac's version of Godzilla, so maybe Clark had improved the fabric. Lex considered possible methods of obtaining a sample. The patents on the fiber he'd developed based on the first cape had paid for the last half of the research on kryptonafil. (Of course, the shareholders thought the patent was responsible for a good fraction of LuthorCorp's stellar profits, but what the market didn't know couldn't hurt the stock.)
"What are you up to?" Superman's voice boomed from a few feet behind him. Lex considered it lucky Clark didn't think himself entitled to yell right in his ear.
Lex looked at the jar in his hand. "Do you think if you ask the question enough times you'll get a different answer?"
Clark snorted. Lex half-turned, enough to confirm that Clark was indeed standing with his feet spread and his arms folded, just as if he'd been die-cast for the Superfriends line of figurines. Lex sneered reflexively and moved to sit behind his desk, placing the jar on the slick metal surface where it gleamed like a column of tropical ocean.
His computer screen informed him that twenty-two messages had survived Charity's culling and awaited his attention. Charity was a good executive assistant; she respected Lex's need for information without being paralyzed by fear she'd keep something important from him.
The first message was from Tom Rollins. He wanted approval for –
The screen was obscured by sparks and smoke, which dissipated to reveal Clark's fist through the center. Lex blinked and looked up, folding his hands together. "You know, I appreciate it when you wait to destroy my property until I've done something to deserve it."
Clark withdrew his fist, shaking it slightly to dislodge the once-expensive electronics that had adhered to his skin. "I want you to answer my question." His face was dark with anger.
Lex had to admit, he'd been deliberately provocative. But it was so much fun. His life was chronically undersupplied with fun, and one of the reasons was standing right in the room. "Look, Superman," he said, keeping his eyes on the place the screen had been, "I told you what my motives are. I want power; you can help or hinder that quest for power; I have something that might convince you to go one way rather than the other. If you don't believe me, that's certainly your prerogative – not to mention your habit – but I think I've been both forthcoming and fair about my proposed terms."
When he looked up, Clark was gone. There weren't any additional holes in the walls, which Lex decided to count as a good sign.
OR
Looking back, Clark recalled the guy showing up at three rescues before Clark consciously noted him. Photographic memory was nice; it would have been nicer if he could tell what was important in the pictures. In any event, he noticed the man in the cap and long jacket while he was waiting for the police to pick up a handful of bank robbers from the hotel rooftop to which they'd inexplicably fled. The man was pale, the black of his outfit heightening his pallor, blue-eyed, and – yes, X-ray confirmed – bald beneath the cap.
He was watching Clark from the roof of the next building.
Clark was getting used to excited stares, horrified stares, terrified, awe-filled, worshipful, grateful, outraged – lots of types of stares were common reactions to Superman.
This was different. Intense yet distant, stillness combined with a sense that the man could disappear in an instant, if he wanted to. It was a little like the way Lois looked at Superman, without her desire to write headlines.
Clark didn't give him a chance to disappear. He zipped over to the man, glancing back to make sure the robbers' bonds were secure, then placing himself beside this recurring stranger.
"Excuse me," he said, oddly pleased by the surprise evident on the man's face as he turned. Clark heard his heart rate speed up, though it was still quite low for an ordinary person.
"Hello, Superman," the man said, eyes wide. He had a scar on his lip that drew the eye. "How can I help you?"
"You can tell me who you are and why you're following me around."
The man smiled. "I'm Lex Luthor. As for following you around, how do you supose I would do that, given your unparalleled speed and flight capacity?"
It was a valid point, except – "I've *seen* you. At the Bank of Metropolis heist, the attempted kidnapping at the Museum of Natural History, and now here."
"Yes," Luthor said equably.
"If you're not following me, how --?"
"Maybe I'm just lucky."
Like that, Clark knew. "You – you set all this up." A quick scan revealed that Luthor was carrying a wide variety of complex electronics, several in unusual places. Not to mention the two guns, three knives and some sort of sharp wire in the lining of his cap.
"Wait, Lex Luthor. Related to Lionel Luthor?" Clark was trying to remember what he knew about Lionel's personal life. It had never seemed important compared to what he tried to do to Smallville.
Luthor frowned. "Unfortunately. But try not to hate me on his account. I much prefer to be hated on my own merits. And I'm not working for my father."
"Then who are you working for?" Clark ought to have been frightened. He was going to be outraged that Luthor had been setting up tests for him. But right now, he felt himself getting into the rhythm of an interview.
Luthor looked at him directly for the first time. His eyes were the blue of the sea ice Clark saw near the Fortress. "I work for the government."
"Which government?" Clark snapped back. This caused Luthor to smile.
He leaned forward, too close to Clark, but Clark had no reason to back away. "Good question. You'll be a hero yet."
Before Clark's outrage could erupt, he continued, "I'm a real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the Fourth of July."
Clark drew in a deep breath, then decided he didn't much want to calm down. "Listen," he said, bringing a finger up to poke at Luthor's chest, "I don't know what you guys want from me, but I am not going to get drafted into secret military missions or whatever you have in mind. I'm doing good things for America right here and I have every intention of continuing to do so without any – Yankee Doodle dandies."
Luthor's mouth formed a moue of reluctant admiration as Clark rolled on.
"You get no points from me for putting innocent people in danger."
"I knew you wouldn't let any harm come to an innocent," Luthor disagreed. "Nor would I." One of the guns appeared in his hand, almost as fast as a meteor mutant could have moved. "No one would have been hurt, even if you hadn't shown up. No innocent, that is. They aren't actors, they're legitimate bad guys who could have chosen not to do anything wrong."
"Yeah, and your plans always work out? Never any random variables?" Clark was angrier than usual – angrier than he ever got with Lionel Luthor's machinations, though Lionel was equally likely to claim that he was just acting for the greater good. Lionel had never learned Smallville's greatest lesson, which was that controlling circumstances was a pipe dream in a universe chaotic enough to include an exploding planet whose fragments somehow possessed the power to mutate humans in bizarre ways and threaten the life of the alien with whom they arrived.
Not that he could explain any of that, but he had to try. "Anything could have happened."
"To the contrary. The robbers could neither have flapped their wings and flown away, nor could they have been eaten by wolves. Random variables exist, Superman, but I haven't been much plagued by them since – since I broke my father's leash.
"Here," Luthor said, taking Clark's still-outstretched hand and folding it around a stiff rectangular card. "I believe you aren't about to let yourself be drafted. But it is my job to keep an eye on you, and I think you'll find it's easier to work from knowledge than ignorance. Call me when you want to set up a meeting. Your country expects great things from you, Superman." On his lips, the silly epithet sounded different. Like a promise of some sort.
With that, Lex Luthor was gone, slipping away down stairs Clark hadn't noticed, a heavy metal door clanging shut behind him. Not that Clark couldn't have followed – but it would have been kind of rough on the building's owners, and anyway Clark didn't have a reason to follow him.
[Poll #733369]
rose_etta kindly read a version of my latest SV story that just wasn't working. I've recast it in a somewhat unusual style to try to make it a bit livelier. Anyone up to beta a non-slash SV story that breaks from canon at 5x19? (I haven't watched the last three episodes of the season yet; I'm trying to get this story done before I do, because my take on Lex/Lana is a little different.)Also, I'd like help picking which story I should concentrate on finishing this summer. (I owe
svmadelyn a Clark in college story too, but I don't know how it goes just yet.) So here are teasers, then there's a poll.Lex Luthor had long held the hypothesis, tested fairly rigorously and never disconfirmed, that proximity to Smallville was inversely correlated with the chance of success of any given venture of his. Even meteor rock – "Kryptonite" – behaved better the further it was removed from that town, that cancer in the shape of a Norman Rockwell vision.
To Lex, Smallville would always smell like hypocrisy and defeat.
In any event, distance from Smallville was a desideratum of the highest order. Metropolis was too close, really, but LuthorCorp had such strong roots there that Lex hadn't quite managed to dig them up. Corporate headquarters had to stay there for PR and tax reasons. Lex himself had an office in Chicago he quite liked, and LuthorCorp's center of gravity was shifting incrementally away. His Metropolis office was supposed to be for emergencies, and meetings with his father, which pretty much came to the same thing.
With Smallville firmly in his rear-view mirror, Lex had done much better in recent years. Financially, LuthorCorp was thriving; personally, he'd made People's Most Beautiful People list three years running and no one had tried to kill him in nearly eighteen months.
There was one thing lacking, however, and its absence had brought Lex back to Metropolis, back to danger and possible failure.
Lex sat in the office that had been his father's and waited for Superman to arrive.
The message had been exquisitely composed – he could afford himself the praise, since he'd been writing it for years, using the ashes of the friendship to scrawl out an invitation.
Superman would tell himself he was dealing with a threat, but he'd come.
As Lex was opening yet another biotech prospectus, instinct made him look up. Through the blue-tinted windows, he saw Superman floating above the balcony like some messenger from God, angel and rough beast all at once. His arms were folded disapprovingly across his chest. His costume was exactly as ridiculous as Lex remembered. Lex truly wondered why the right-wingers aghast at a half-glimpsed nipple put up with the barrage of images of a superhero who might as well be wearing only body paint. A picture of Superman could be used to label the muscles of the (in)human body.
Lex shook his head a fraction, then nodded to Superman as he hit a button on the desk, causing the center section of the glass wall to slide open. Up this high, the Metropolis air was chilly and smelled like exhaust and garbage, wafted up from dozens of stories below.
Superman floated forward as if on some invisible sliding dais, his pose unchanged.
"Thank you for coming," Lex said.
Superman frowned, like tectonic plates shifting.
"I have," Lex continued, "a proposal for you. As I'm sure you're aware, my first Senate run is going to begin in the next few months. I want Superman's noninterference and Clark Kent's endorsement." That was enough to get even Superman to gape, surprise making him look almost human. "I have something to offer in return," he said, finishing the introductory statements.
"You've got nothing that I want," Superman said, predictably.
Lex's blood thrummed with excitement. He hadn't left, and that meant he was negotiating, even if he didn't know it.
"Did you ever wonder why it never worked out for you and Lana? Or Chloe? Or Lori, or Lois, or any of the others?"
There – that expression wasn't Superman's at all. It was pure Clark Kent, fear and denial and moral outrage rolled into one self-righteous package, angry at Lex because Lex was making him lie.
Rather than see what possible nonsense Clark could produce, Lex kept talking. "Because I did wonder, and I investigated.
"Of course," he continued, leaning back in his chair, "it could just be your paranoia and justifiable sense of isolation from humanity that ruined things between you and every woman you thought you might love. But I really think you got beyond that, with Lori and Lois at least."
He had Clark now, had him by the throat, sick fascination on his face as he waited to hear more.
"No, it was more than that. You wondered what all the fuss was about sex, didn't you? Oh, you could feel the attraction of a heaving bosom and a well-turned ankle, but the truth of the matter was, it all seemed fairly ridiculous once you got past the hand-holding and longing stares, didn't it?"
"Why are you doing this?" Clark gritted out.
"Because I want to be President," Lex said.
Clark shook like a man trying to wake from a dream. "Maybe that makes sense to you –"
Lex gave the smallest smile in his repertoire. "Bear with me. I've developed a very special pharmaceutical. Like Kryptonian Viagra – it allows you to respond to a human sexually as you would have responded to a Kryptonian naturally. You can think of it as being like a pheromone." He could think of it that way, but he'd be wrong; Lex didn't imagine that further explanation would be constructive.
He reached into his desk drawer, noting Clark's look of fear despite the fact that Clark must have scanned for Kryptonite, and pulled out the jar, its sapphire contents sloshing as he put it on his desk.
"You can have a regular life with Lois, if she'll still have you, or with someone else. I will give you a lifetime supply of this substance, which I call kryptonafil, in return for two things: Clark Kent's endorsement and your withdrawal from monitoring my non-scientific activities in either identity. I can tolerate your obsessive scrutiny of LuthorCorp labs, but I have auditors of my own and my stockholders much prefer that I use them instead of you.
"This is a risk-free offer. If the stuff doesn't work, you owe me nothing. If it works and you don't think the deal is worth the costs of having me represent the good people of Kansas, you stop using it and owe me nothing. If you like it and want to keep using it, you agree to my terms."
Clark stared at him, as blank as if he'd been lobotomized. Lex thought this was a small victory, to have stunned Clark with his audacity. Finally, a response that wasn't calcified by years of contempt. These days Clark rarely even seemed disappointed when Lex did something underhanded. Which was fine with Lex, because he *hated* Clark's condescension almost as much as he detested Clark's hypocrisy on the subject of truth.
He considered whether he ought to say more, as in "Don't you deserve a little happiness in your life? If you're going to be Clark Kent at all – if you do anything but run around saving people from themselves – then shouldn't that life be bearable? Or is Clark Kent just a mask you wear to punish yourself for being an alien? Because if he is – good job." No, there was such a thing as pushing too hard. Let the offer sell itself.
"You can think about it for a few days. I'll expect an answer at the end of the week."
He turned away from Clark, still holding the jar. The liquid inside was so fluorescently blue that it wouldn't have looked out of place on a *Miami Vice* set. Lex considered whether he ought to have put it in a nicer decanter. He liked the security of a metal screw-top, though. And the mad-scientist panache was undeniable.
Superman's cape rustled as Clark paced across the floor.
Lex had spent several months analyzing fragments of a earlier cape. The latest one hadn't been torn in some time, despite the encounter with Braniac's version of Godzilla, so maybe Clark had improved the fabric. Lex considered possible methods of obtaining a sample. The patents on the fiber he'd developed based on the first cape had paid for the last half of the research on kryptonafil. (Of course, the shareholders thought the patent was responsible for a good fraction of LuthorCorp's stellar profits, but what the market didn't know couldn't hurt the stock.)
"What are you up to?" Superman's voice boomed from a few feet behind him. Lex considered it lucky Clark didn't think himself entitled to yell right in his ear.
Lex looked at the jar in his hand. "Do you think if you ask the question enough times you'll get a different answer?"
Clark snorted. Lex half-turned, enough to confirm that Clark was indeed standing with his feet spread and his arms folded, just as if he'd been die-cast for the Superfriends line of figurines. Lex sneered reflexively and moved to sit behind his desk, placing the jar on the slick metal surface where it gleamed like a column of tropical ocean.
His computer screen informed him that twenty-two messages had survived Charity's culling and awaited his attention. Charity was a good executive assistant; she respected Lex's need for information without being paralyzed by fear she'd keep something important from him.
The first message was from Tom Rollins. He wanted approval for –
The screen was obscured by sparks and smoke, which dissipated to reveal Clark's fist through the center. Lex blinked and looked up, folding his hands together. "You know, I appreciate it when you wait to destroy my property until I've done something to deserve it."
Clark withdrew his fist, shaking it slightly to dislodge the once-expensive electronics that had adhered to his skin. "I want you to answer my question." His face was dark with anger.
Lex had to admit, he'd been deliberately provocative. But it was so much fun. His life was chronically undersupplied with fun, and one of the reasons was standing right in the room. "Look, Superman," he said, keeping his eyes on the place the screen had been, "I told you what my motives are. I want power; you can help or hinder that quest for power; I have something that might convince you to go one way rather than the other. If you don't believe me, that's certainly your prerogative – not to mention your habit – but I think I've been both forthcoming and fair about my proposed terms."
When he looked up, Clark was gone. There weren't any additional holes in the walls, which Lex decided to count as a good sign.
OR
Looking back, Clark recalled the guy showing up at three rescues before Clark consciously noted him. Photographic memory was nice; it would have been nicer if he could tell what was important in the pictures. In any event, he noticed the man in the cap and long jacket while he was waiting for the police to pick up a handful of bank robbers from the hotel rooftop to which they'd inexplicably fled. The man was pale, the black of his outfit heightening his pallor, blue-eyed, and – yes, X-ray confirmed – bald beneath the cap.
He was watching Clark from the roof of the next building.
Clark was getting used to excited stares, horrified stares, terrified, awe-filled, worshipful, grateful, outraged – lots of types of stares were common reactions to Superman.
This was different. Intense yet distant, stillness combined with a sense that the man could disappear in an instant, if he wanted to. It was a little like the way Lois looked at Superman, without her desire to write headlines.
Clark didn't give him a chance to disappear. He zipped over to the man, glancing back to make sure the robbers' bonds were secure, then placing himself beside this recurring stranger.
"Excuse me," he said, oddly pleased by the surprise evident on the man's face as he turned. Clark heard his heart rate speed up, though it was still quite low for an ordinary person.
"Hello, Superman," the man said, eyes wide. He had a scar on his lip that drew the eye. "How can I help you?"
"You can tell me who you are and why you're following me around."
The man smiled. "I'm Lex Luthor. As for following you around, how do you supose I would do that, given your unparalleled speed and flight capacity?"
It was a valid point, except – "I've *seen* you. At the Bank of Metropolis heist, the attempted kidnapping at the Museum of Natural History, and now here."
"Yes," Luthor said equably.
"If you're not following me, how --?"
"Maybe I'm just lucky."
Like that, Clark knew. "You – you set all this up." A quick scan revealed that Luthor was carrying a wide variety of complex electronics, several in unusual places. Not to mention the two guns, three knives and some sort of sharp wire in the lining of his cap.
"Wait, Lex Luthor. Related to Lionel Luthor?" Clark was trying to remember what he knew about Lionel's personal life. It had never seemed important compared to what he tried to do to Smallville.
Luthor frowned. "Unfortunately. But try not to hate me on his account. I much prefer to be hated on my own merits. And I'm not working for my father."
"Then who are you working for?" Clark ought to have been frightened. He was going to be outraged that Luthor had been setting up tests for him. But right now, he felt himself getting into the rhythm of an interview.
Luthor looked at him directly for the first time. His eyes were the blue of the sea ice Clark saw near the Fortress. "I work for the government."
"Which government?" Clark snapped back. This caused Luthor to smile.
He leaned forward, too close to Clark, but Clark had no reason to back away. "Good question. You'll be a hero yet."
Before Clark's outrage could erupt, he continued, "I'm a real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the Fourth of July."
Clark drew in a deep breath, then decided he didn't much want to calm down. "Listen," he said, bringing a finger up to poke at Luthor's chest, "I don't know what you guys want from me, but I am not going to get drafted into secret military missions or whatever you have in mind. I'm doing good things for America right here and I have every intention of continuing to do so without any – Yankee Doodle dandies."
Luthor's mouth formed a moue of reluctant admiration as Clark rolled on.
"You get no points from me for putting innocent people in danger."
"I knew you wouldn't let any harm come to an innocent," Luthor disagreed. "Nor would I." One of the guns appeared in his hand, almost as fast as a meteor mutant could have moved. "No one would have been hurt, even if you hadn't shown up. No innocent, that is. They aren't actors, they're legitimate bad guys who could have chosen not to do anything wrong."
"Yeah, and your plans always work out? Never any random variables?" Clark was angrier than usual – angrier than he ever got with Lionel Luthor's machinations, though Lionel was equally likely to claim that he was just acting for the greater good. Lionel had never learned Smallville's greatest lesson, which was that controlling circumstances was a pipe dream in a universe chaotic enough to include an exploding planet whose fragments somehow possessed the power to mutate humans in bizarre ways and threaten the life of the alien with whom they arrived.
Not that he could explain any of that, but he had to try. "Anything could have happened."
"To the contrary. The robbers could neither have flapped their wings and flown away, nor could they have been eaten by wolves. Random variables exist, Superman, but I haven't been much plagued by them since – since I broke my father's leash.
"Here," Luthor said, taking Clark's still-outstretched hand and folding it around a stiff rectangular card. "I believe you aren't about to let yourself be drafted. But it is my job to keep an eye on you, and I think you'll find it's easier to work from knowledge than ignorance. Call me when you want to set up a meeting. Your country expects great things from you, Superman." On his lips, the silly epithet sounded different. Like a promise of some sort.
With that, Lex Luthor was gone, slipping away down stairs Clark hadn't noticed, a heavy metal door clanging shut behind him. Not that Clark couldn't have followed – but it would have been kind of rough on the building's owners, and anyway Clark didn't have a reason to follow him.
[Poll #733369]