CLARK

The bell rings and I'm already sliding my test face-down on Mr. Henderson's desk before half the class has even finished writing their names. He glances at it, flips it over, and does that thing where his eyebrows lift just slightly before he looks at me. 

I've gotten that look a lot, in this life at least. It's the "seriously?" look. I give him a small nod and head for the door.

"Mr. Kent, hang on a second," he calls out.

I stop, hand on the doorframe, and glance back. The rest of the class is still hunched over their papers, pencils scratching, a few of them visibly sweating. Tyler Riggs in the back row looks like he's having a small personal crisis, I can hear his heart beating twice as hard, that can’t be healthy.

"For the looks of it, this yet another hundred," Mr. Henderson says, not a question. He holds the paper up just enough to confirm his suspicions. "You are quite gifted, Mr. Kent,"

"I-uh, I wouldn’t say that sir, but thanks,” I smile.

He studies me for a second, like he's trying to solve a puzzle that doesn't make sense, and honestly? I can’t blame the guy, a part of him must be thinking I am cheating in some sort of way, after all he is well known for never giving a perfect score, and yet here we were. Then he sets the paper down and waves me off. 

I step into the hallway and the door clicks shut behind me.

William is waiting at the lockers, leaning against mine with his arms crossed. He's got this look on his face that means he's been thinking about something for a while and has decided to make it my problem.

"Dude," he says the second I'm within earshot. "Another one?"

"Another what?"

"Don't play dumb, you tall moron. I saw the old man’s face..." He taps his phone screen. "You got a hundred. Again. On the hardest test he's given us all year."

I spin my combination lock and pull my locker open. "I just do the work, man." It was honestly not hard to pass the classes.

"You just do the work," William repeats, flat and unimpressed. "Clark. I sit next to you in three classes. I've seen you answer questions before he finishes asking them. I've seen you correct his equations on the board. Twice."

"He was wrong both times."

Not my fault the teacher can’t understand his own work sometimes.

"That's not the point!" He throws his hands up. "The point is you're making the rest of us look bad, and I need to know your secret. So spill it out farm boy, what’s your secret? Is it tutors? Drugs? A pact with a demonic entity? A demonic tutor that gives you drugs? Because at this point I'm open to anything, whatever morals or limits you think I have, I don’t."

I pull out my history textbook and shove it into my bag, rolling my eyes at him. “I just focus, that’s it, maybe you should try it."

It's not a lie, exactly. I do focus. More than I ever used to, anyway. Back in my old life, the one that feels more like a dream I had once — school was something I survived, not something I excelled at. I did okay. Maybe above average if I'm being generous, and I am being generous. But straight As across the board? Perfect scores? That wasn't me.

Something changed when I woke up in this body.

I can read a page of text once and recall it almost word for word. I can hold multiple equations in my head at the same time without losing track. Information just... sticks now, in a way it never did before.

I've thought about this more than once. Maybe my new Kryptonian biology has something to do with it. Their species was advanced enough to build spacecraft and terraform planets, so it makes sense I am smarter, I suppose. Just how smart? No idea.

William is still staring at me, waiting for an answer I'm not going to give him.

"Just lucky, I guess," I say instead.

He narrows his eyes. "You're the worst friend I've ever had, and that’s sad because I only have two friends."

"You say that every week."

"Because it keeps being true."

Mark rounds the corner just then, backpack slung over one shoulder, looking slightly out of breath. He's got that expression he gets when he's been rushing — a little flushed, hair slightly messier than usual. He seems to be working a bit too much at the burger joint.

"Hey," Mark says, sliding in next to William. "What are we talking about?"

"Clark's unconstitutional abuse of the grading system," William says, crossing his arms. “And how he doesn’t help his friends, me I get it, but you? That’s just cruel!”

"Ah." Mark glances at me. "Another hundred?"

"He's not even pretending to be humble about it anymore," William says, gesturing at me like I'm a crime scene.

"I was never humble about it," I say proudly, and how could I not? I am fudging awesome. It's not my fault the universe loves me.

"That's the problem!"

"Lunch?" I ask instead.

"God yes," William says, taking the bait. "I've been starving since second period. Mrs. Patterson's voice drains the life force directly from my body."

"You are some dramatic," Mark says.

"Then explain why I feel like a mummy every time I leave her class."

"You were already like that before her class."

"Rude."

We make our way down the main hallway toward the cafeteria. It's the usual midday chaos — kids clustering in groups, lockers slamming, someone shouting something incomprehensible from the other end of the corridor. The smell of whatever the cafeteria is serving today hits us about twenty feet from the double doors. It's vaguely meat-adjacent. Not great, but not actively offensive either.

Even with all my powers I could not always decipher what the cafeteria was cooking. And that was… concerning.

I notice the shift in the crowd before I see him.

It's subtle — a small parting in the flow of students, like water splitting around a rock. A few kids glance to the left, then quickly look away. Someone nudges their friend and whispers something. The overall energy doesn't change exactly, but it reroutes.

That's when I see Todd, the local bully.

He's standing by the water fountains with a couple of his friends, and for about half a second, our eyes meet. Todd is the kind of guy who drowns his own deeply rooted insecurities by punching others. He's also the reason three different kids transferred schools last year, though nobody ever said it out loud.

Right now, though, something different is happening.

Todd sees me.

His expression flickers — just for a moment — and then he turns around. He just... pivots like a cat to water. Faces the wall. Starts talking to his friend about something that very clearly doesn't matter, a little too loud, a little too forced.

I keep walking.

"Did Todd just avoid you?" William asks, frowning.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I say, not looking him in the eyes.

"He literally turned around the second he saw you. Like a deer seeing their natural predator, trucks."

"Maybe he was getting water."

"He was walking away from the fountain."

"Thirsty but indecisive, classic Todd."

William stares at me. "Clark."

"What?"

"You did something to him, didn't you?"

I didn't. 

That's the honest truth. I've never laid a finger on Todd, and that was a first with bullies. Never threatened him, never glared at him, never done any of the classic intimidating tactics I usually use for Bullies. All I did was exist near him once — about two months ago — when he was shoving a freshman into a locker. 

I walked past. Grabbed the poor kid inside the locker, pulled him out and continued on my merry way. I didn't even look at him.

Normally, I have to punch the bully, but that never happened with him. Todd's not afraid of me because of anything I did, he just is. My leading theory is that on some instinctive level, his brain looks at me and says "don't."

"I didn't do anything," I say, and leave it at that.

William doesn't look convinced, but he drops it as we push through the cafeteria doors. “Yeah… right…”

The lunch room is packed. 

We grab our trays — today's special appears to be some kind of chicken situation with mashed potatoes and green beans that have given up on life, or the color green — and navigate toward our usual table near the windows. Mark sits across from me. William takes the side, already dissecting his chicken with deep judgemental suspicion.

"This isn't chicken," he announces with clear disgust.

"It's labeled chicken," Mark says, poking his ‘chicken’ with the same level of disgust that William had shown thus far.

"Labels lie, Mark. Labels have been lying to us since the beginning of time."

He… is not wrong.

I poke at my own portion. Is this even chicken? I honestly couldn’t tell, and I had a bunch of supersenses, none of which could with certainty know what this amalgamation was.

It's... fine. 

I don't really need to eat — my body doesn't require food the way a human's does — I can survive of stored energy, I just eat because I like it, that said… this thing I did not like.

As I poke my unholy chicken, the cafeteria hums around us. Conversations overlapping, trays clattering, teens farting, someone laughing too loud three tables over. Normal. Mundane. The kind of background noise that most people tune out entirely.

I don't tune it out.

I don’t think I could at this distance even if I wanted to.

From this close, even when tuning things out, my hearing picks up everything — every whispered conversation, every chair scraping against the floor, every heartbeat in a thirty-foot radius. It’s okay though, it used to be overwhelming when the powers first kicked in. Now it's just... there. Like a radio playing in another room.

Which is how I hear Jessica Moore before I see her.

"Clark~"

I look up. 

She's approaching the table with two of her friends flanking her like you see in highschool movies, tray in hand, smile already in place. 

Jessica is the cheerleading captain — the kind of girl who walks into a room and rearranges the social hierarchy. Blonde hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, sharp eyes, the kind of easy confidence that most people spend their whole lives trying to fake.

She's also been flirting with me for about three weeks straight. It was a bit annoying.

"Mind if I sit?" she asks, already pulling out a chair.

"Go ahead," I say.

She slides in next to William, who immediately looks like he's been seated next to a celebrity and isn't sure of the protocol. Her friends hover for a second, then drift off toward their own table — a tactical retreat, leaving Jessica to operate solo.

"So," she says, unwrapping her fork from its napkin. "I heard you aced Henderson's test again."

"News travels fast," I say. Seriously, how fast was that teacher posting my scores, and grading my tests for this to spread this fast.

"I have my sources," She takes a bite of her green beans, makes a face, and sets the fork down. "I swear, they're trying to poison us."

"Preach," William mutters.

Jessica ignores him. Her attention is fixed on me, with all the hormones a teenage girl can muster, it’s a bit concerning. "I was actually hoping to talk to you about something."

"Uh huh."

"There's a party this Friday at Derek Maslow's place. A bunch of us are going." She tilts her head slightly, a move so practiced it almost looks natural. "You should totally come."

Before I can answer, William kicks me under the table. Hard. Or at least, what he thinks is hard. But I get the message.

"I don't really do parties," I say, and it was the truth, I have never been a party guy.

"You don't do parties," she repeats, like the concept is foreign to her. "What do you do?"

"Work. Read. Homework."

"That sounds like a list of things you do when you're avoiding having fun."

"I have fun."

"Name one fun thing you've done in the last month."

Does beating a giant snake counts as a fun activity?

I open my mouth. Close it.

She leans forward slightly. "Exactly."

Mark is very carefully not making eye contact with anyone. He's staring at his tray like the mashed potatoes hold the secrets of the universe. I can hear his heartbeat pick up slightly — he's trying not to laugh.

"I'll think about it," I say, which is a polite way of saying no.

Jessica smiles like she knows exactly what I'm doing and has already decided not to accept it. "You do that. But I'm going to keep asking until you say yes, just so you know."

"Noted."

She holds my gaze for a beat longer than necessary, then stands, picks up her tray, and walks away. I catch a few looks from nearby tables — some amused, some jealous, William staring after her like she just performed a magic trick.

"Dude," he says quietly.

"What?"

"She was flirting with you."

"I noticed."

"And you said you'll 'think about it.' What is there to think about?"

"I don't really know her," I say, which is true but not the whole truth. I actually know more about her than I should be permitted to know, aka, Superhearing.

"Clark," William says, very seriously, "she is the most popular girl in this school, and she is actively pursuing you. This does not happen. This is the kind of thing that happens in movies to guys who are secretly rich, secretly handsome, or secretly vampires."

"Maybe I'm secretly a vampire."

"You can't be a vampire, you eat garlic bread in the cafeteria every Thursday."

"Maybe I'm a vampire who's bad at being a vampire."

A vampire who gets stronger in the sun, that would make an interesting crappy series of teenage romance about vampires.

Mark snorts into his drink.

William points at him. "See? He agrees. This is insane behavior."

I take another bite of my chicken-that-isn't-chicken and let them talk around me.

The afternoon shift dies around four thirty.

The wind hits me cold and fast at about eight hundred feet. I level out above the cloud layer for a second — just long to get my bearings — then angle northwest toward the city.

I drop fast, slowing myself just enough to avoid breaking every window in a three-block radius when I hit the city proper. The trick is deceleration; you can't just stop on a dime at these speeds, not without sending a shockwave through half the downtown area. I learned that the hard way. Set off every car alarm in a parking structure.

I am 90% sure I am 100% the reason behind the car insurance in my neighborhood being so high.

I settle into a cruising pattern about five hundred feet up, just below some of the tallest buildings around. My senses spread out, picking up the rhythm of the city — engines, footsteps, conversations, the low electric hum of power lines running through every building.

Most of it is nothing. People going about their day. A guy arguing with a parking meter. Two women laughing outside a bar. A kid on a skateboard eating it hard on the sidewalk— I wince slightly at that one, but he pops back up immediately, so I let it go.

Then I catch it.

A spike in heart rate. Two of them. Fast, erratic, adrenaline-fueled. Coming from a convenience store on Bleecker and Seventh. I tilt in that direction and listen closer.

"Open the register. Now. Don't look at me, don't reach for anything, just open it."

The voice is male, young, shaky. Not a professional. The cashier's heart rate is through the roof — I can practically feel the terror coming off her in waves. She's fumbling with the register, hands trembling so bad she keeps missing the buttons.

The guy doesn't hear me. He's too focused on the cashier, too wired on his own adrenaline to notice the caped man behind him.

He's got a gun. Small caliber, probably a .38. Held loosely, pointed more or less at the cashier's chest. His finger's on the trigger but not quite squeezed.

"Hey," I say.

He spins. The gun comes up.

I'm already in front of him. Between him and the cashier. The gun is now pointed at my chest, which is roughly the equivalent of pointing it at the ground and hoping for the best.

The guy's brain takes a second to catch up. His eyes go wide. His hand tightens on the grip, finger curling—nothing. Because I had already taken his gun away.

He looks down at his empty hand.

Looks at the mangled piece of metal in mine.

Looks back up at my face.

"…What the f—"

"You should sit down," I say.

He sits. Not because I tell him to — his legs just sort of stop working. He ends up on the floor with his back against the cigarette rack, staring up at me like I just stepped out of a nightmare.

The cashier is frozen behind the counter. She's maybe nineteen, twenty at most, name tag reading "Megan," and she looks like she's trying to figure out if I'm about to hurt her too.

"You're safe," I tell her, keeping my voice calm and steady. The same tone I use with the team when things get heated. Low. Controlled. "Can you call the police?"

She blinks. Swallows. Nods.

"Okay. Good."

I set the ruined gun on the counter — gently, so it doesn't scratch the surface — and step back. The guy on the floor hasn't moved. He's breathing hard, palms flat against the linoleum, eyes locked on me.

"You're that guy," he says. Voice thin. "From the news, superdude."

"Superman."

"…I'm not getting away, am I?"

To answer his question I tie him up like a fish with a piece of rope that was inside the store.

"No, but hey… I think me stopping you before you actually used your weapon can be used to get you a lighter sentence, though I’m not sure… ask your public defender." 

Did the law work that way? If I stopped someone from committing a crime, was I helping them get a lower sentence to the equivalent of actually doing the crime?

I might need to get a law book, these questions are good.

He nods slowly, like that makes sense to him on some basic level. I stay until I hear Megan finish the call — she's giving the address, her voice still shaking but holding together — and then I'm out the door and up into the sky before the sirens reach the store.

Total time elapsed: about forty seconds. Not bad.

I push further north, widening my patrol radius. The sun's starting to dip toward the horizon, painting the buildings in that orange-gold light that makes even the ugly parts of the city look breathtaking. I pass over a park, a church, and a few shops.

Until three blocks east, I pick up another situation.

This one's louder. Shouting. Glass breaking. A woman screaming — not fear, exactly, more like anger mixed with panic. I drop down to rooftop level and look down into the alley between a laundromat and a bar.

Two guys. One's got a woman pinned against the wall by her shoulders. The other is going through her purse, tossing things onto the ground — wallet, phone, keys scattering across the dirty concrete.

"Stop fighting, just give us the bag—"

"Get off me — get OFF me—"

I drop.

Literally just drop, straight down from the roof, and land between them and the woman with enough force to crack the concrete under my shoes. The impact sends a small tremor through the alley. Both guys stumble backward, the one who was holding her loses his grip completely, and the other one drops the purse.

They look at me.

I look at them.

It's quiet for about a second and a half.

"Don’t try to run," I say.

They try run.

They always do.

Why do they always do that?

One of them makes it two steps before I’m in front of him. He skids to a stop so abruptly his shoes squeak against the concrete.

The other guy turns the opposite direction.

I don’t even move for that one.

“Hey,” I say.

He freezes mid-step.

It’s not fear, not exactly. More like his body just… decides this is a bad idea on a level deeper than thought.

“Let’s not do that,” I add.

The woman they were mugging scrambles backward, putting distance between herself and both of them. She’s breathing hard, one hand pressed to her chest, eyes darting between me and the two idiots who just made the worst decision of their week.

“Pick it up,” I say, nodding toward the purse on the ground.

They hesitate.

I raise an eyebrow.

They scramble.

Wallet, phone, keys—everything gets shoved back inside in a messy rush. One of them nearly drops the phone again and fumbles it like it’s suddenly the most important object in the world.

Which, to be fair, it kind of is right now.

“Good,” I say. “Now hand it back.”

They do.

The woman takes it with shaking hands, clutching it to her chest like it might disappear again if she loosens her grip even a little.

“Thank you,” she says, voice thin but steadying. “Oh my God, thank you—”

“You’re okay,” I say, keeping it simple. “They didn’t hurt you?”

She shakes her head quickly. “No—no, just—just scared.”

“Yeah,” I nod. “That’s fair.”

I glance back at the two guys.

They’re standing there, hands halfway raised like they’re not sure what the correct posture is for being caught by a guy who just dropped out of the sky.

“Sit,” I tell them.

They sit.

Again—not because I’m particularly intimidating right now, just… something in my tone. Or maybe the cracked concrete under my feet helps sell it. 

Probably that.

I crouch slightly, bringing myself more level with them.

“You guys want to tell me what the plan was here?”

They don’t answer.

One of them swallows hard.

“Right,” I say. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like the plan was ‘commit a crime in an alley where there are zero escape routes and hope I was taking a sabbatical.’”

“…We didn’t think—” one of them starts.

“Yeah,” I cut in gently. “That part’s obvious.”

There’s a beat.

I don’t raise my voice. Don’t threaten them. Don’t need to.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen,” I continue. “You’re going to stay right there. You’re not going to run, you’re not going to try anything clever, and you’re definitely not going to try anything stupid.”

Both of them nod. Fast.

“Good.”

I stand and turn back to the woman.

“Do you have your phone?”

Why did I ask that? I saw her phone?

She nods, still clutching the purse. “Y-yeah.”

“Can you call the police?”

Another nod. “Yes.”

“Alright.”

I step back, giving her space. She fumbles with her phone for a second before getting it unlocked. Her hands are still shaking, but she manages to dial.

I stay where I am, just… there.

Between.

The two guys don’t move.

They don’t even look at each other.

I can hear their heartbeats—fast, uneven, adrenaline still pumping—but there’s something else now too. That drop after the spike. The realization.

They messed up.

Bad.

The woman starts talking to the dispatcher, voice steadier now that there’s something to focus on. Address, description, what happened. She glances at me once, like she’s confirming I’m still here.

I give her a small nod.

She relaxes a fraction.

I look back at the guy, and hear the sirens not too far away. 

That was fast.

“They’re coming,” she says.

“I know.”

The two guys definitely know too.

One of them lets out a shaky breath.

“…Are you gonna stay?” he asks.

I tilt my head slightly.

“You want me to?”

He hesitates.

“…No.”

I chuckle, waiting for the police to take them.

Eventually, after a few hours of patrolling; I loop back toward home.

The farmland comes into view gradually, the city lights fading behind me as darkness settles in. Open fields, quiet roads, the familiar layout of fences and barns, the perfect place to live.

I drop lower, slowing to a near-hover as I approach the house.

Kitchen light’s on.

I land out back, soft enough not to kick up dust, and step inside through the rear door.

“Hey!” Mom calls from the kitchen. “That you, Clark?”

“Yeah,” I reply, slipping off my shoes. “It’s me.”

The smell hits me immediately.

Actual food.

Real food.

Not Resident Evil experiment they serve at the cafeteria, real food.

I step into the kitchen.

Mom’s at the stove, stirring something in a pot. Dad’s at the table, flipping through something that looks suspiciously like a farm supply catalog.

“Hey, kiddo,” Dad says, glancing up.

“Hey.”

Mom turns, gives me a quick once-over like she always does.

Not checking for injuries exactly.

Just… checking.

“You eat yet?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

She raises an eyebrow.

“At school.”

She pauses.

“…That doesn’t count.”

“It was food.” Even I don’t believe that lie. You could break criminals with that food, one bite and they would tell you anything you wanted to know.

“That is debatable,” she mutters, turning back to the stove. “Sit. You’re eating.”

I don’t argue.

I drop into a chair at the table, stretching slightly.

Dad watches me for a second.

“Busy day?”

I shrug. “Not really, no big crimes today.”

He nods.

Mom sets a plate in front of me a minute later.

Real chicken.

I can tell.

I smile a little.

“See?” she says. “Actual food.”

“Mm-hmm.”

I take a bite.

Oh yeah, this hits the spot. Way better.

Dad leans back in his chair. “You hear about that thing in the city earlier?” he asks.

I pause mid-chew.

“…Which one?” I say. I hear a lot of things, he had to be a bit more specific to narrow it down.

Mom snorts softly at that from the stove.

Dad doesn’t look away from me.

“The convenience store,” he says. “And the alley a few blocks over.”

Ah.

Yeah.

Those.

I scratch the side of my head a little.

“Handled it,” I say.

“I figured,” he replies.

Mom sets another piece of chicken on my plate. “You check for injuries?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “They were fine. Shaken, but fine.”

She nods once, satisfied.

“Good.”

Dad taps the table lightly with his finger. “With so many superheroes around it is a wonder there are still normal criminals still around, super villains I get, but normal people without any powers? I can’t… I know I wouldn’t rob a store when there’s people out there that can kill you with a sneeze.”

That’s a fair point.

“I would probably turn my criminal mind into cybercrime, I doubt you can hear someone typing with criminal intent.”

Why… why are we discussing how to optimize crime in a world with superheroes?

NOLAN 

The house is quiet at this hour.

Debbie is asleep. Has been for the past two hours. Mark as well — his room is dark, his breathing slow and even, the kind of deep rest that only a teenager who expended no energy that day can achieve.

This is not my home. And it will never be.

It has been twenty years. Two decades on this planet. Longer than I've spent on any single assignment since the empire's expansion began. Longer than some campaigns. Longer than some wars. And in that time, I have watched this world with the patience of something that has nowhere else to be.

And so far, the breeding experiment has been a failure.

Earth is soft. That is the simplest word for it. Soft and divided and staggeringly inefficient. Its people fight over borders they drew themselves, kill each other over differences in belief, poison their own air and water because the alternative would cost money. They are children playing with tools they don't understand, and they are — against all logic — proud of it.

My mission has not changed. It was never going to change. The Viltrum Empire does not issue suggestions. Earth will be prepared for annexation, its population conditioned for order, its infrastructure rebuilt to serve a purpose greater than individual comfort. That is the way of it. That is the way it has always been.

And yet.

I think about Clark Kent, and the timeline in my mind shifts.

Clark's development has been... unprecedented. I have served the Viltrum Empire for centuries. I have seen warriors born and forged through trials that would break most species. I have watched Viltrumites — my own people, the strongest in the known universe — push themselves to their limits and beyond.

He was not part of the calculation when I arrived here. A baby, hidden in a capsule, hurtling through space from a dead world I'd never heard of. Krypton. A name that meant nothing to me then and means frustratingly little now, despite years of trying to fill in the gaps.

That is the part that irritates me more than it should.

I have served the Viltrum Empire for centuries. I have visited more worlds than I can count, cataloged more species than most of my peers would bother to remember. The empire's records are extensive — not perfect, but extensive. Every civilization of note, every species that has achieved spaceflight, every world with a population large enough to warrant attention. It is not a complete archive of the universe, but it is close enough that genuine surprises are rare.

Krypton should not have been a surprise.

A species capable of engineering a child — a single infant — to develop physical capabilities that rival Viltrumite strength under the right conditions? That is not a minor civilization. That is not a backwater world that slipped through the cracks of imperial surveying. That is a species of considerable technological and biological achievement, and they should have been on our records for the sole reason they couldve been a threat.

They aren't.

I have checked. Multiple times. Cross-referenced databases, pulled old survey logs from sectors near where Krypton reportedly existed according to Clark's loose description of it, even accessed files that predate the current generation of worlds. Nothing. The name appears nowhere. No trade routes, no diplomatic contact, no military engagement, no survey data. It is as if Krypton simply didn't exist until the moment it didn't exist anymore.

And that is impossible.

A species that advanced does not emerge in isolation. They interact. They expand. They leave traces — debris, signals, cultural artifacts that drift outward from their system like ripples in water. The universe is old and empty in a lot of ways, but it is not so old and empty that an entire high-functioning civilization can live and die without anyone noticing.

And yet, here I am. Standing on a planet in the middle of nowhere, training the last son of a ghost species that the greatest empire in the known universe has no record of.

It bothers me.

Not because of pride, though there is some of that. Viltrum's intelligence network is not supposed to have blind spots this large. If a civilization like Krypton existed and we missed it, that implies a failure in the system. And failures in the system, left unexamined, tend to compound.

But mostly it bothers me because Clark doesn't know either.

He knows almost nothing about his own people. Fragments. Half-baked data from a ship's computer that denies him access until he turns eighteen or something.

A species powerful enough to challenge the empire's assumptions about physical limits, and the only evidence they ever existed is a teenage boy.

I hate that. I hate not knowing.

But that irritation is a secondary concern. The primary one is standing in front of me, clearer now than it's ever been.

Clark was a kid when I first met him.

The Kents — good people, simple people, the kind of humans who make this planet bearable in small doses — had already done the hard work. They'd raised him through infancy, taught him to walk, talk, think. They'd instilled values. Kindness. Patience. A peculiar stubbornness that I've come to recognize as the source of most of Clark's more infuriating traits.

Still, they couldn't teach him what he needed to know.

I could.

I told myself it was strategic. And seeing Mark was showing no signs of ever getting his powers, I said, why not? Clark was a powerful asset developing unchecked on the planet I was assigned to prepare — of course I would take an interest. Of course I would guide him. Left to his own devices, Clark's potential would be wasted.

So I trained him. Not out of kindness. Out of pragmatism.

That was the lie I told myself for years.

The truth is that I recognized something in him almost immediately. A capacity for growth that felt almost aggressive in its intensity. Every time I pushed him, he pushed back. Every time I showed him how to do something, he absorbed it and then started looking for ways to improve it before I'd finished explaining.

It was not behavior I was accustomed to seeing outside Viltrum.

A year ago, I could pin him in a spar without significant effort.

Six months ago, it required some focus.

Now, I have to pay attention in our little spars.

Not because he's close to beating me. He isn't. But the gap is narrowing at a rate that is no longer comfortable for me and the mission.

I turn from the window and move to the kitchen. I pour a glass of water and set it on the counter without drinking it. A human gesture. Something to do with my hands.

My mission requires the elimination of Earth's primary defense force. The Guardians of the Globe. They are the only organized superteam on this planet with the collective power to pose even a marginal threat to a Viltrumite, and even then, only if I allow the fight to drag out. I have studied each of them. Their strengths, their weaknesses, their coordination patterns. I have fought alongside them enough times to know exactly how they move, how they communicate in combat, how they compensate for each other's blind spots.

I could kill them all. In a controlled engagement, with the element of surprise, I am confident I could neutralize the entire team before any of them could signal for help.

But that confidence has a shelf life, and Clark is the reason.

I created the variable that now complicates the entire mission.

And the part that sits in my chest, the part I cannot swallow or spit out, is that I don't want to remove it.

I have killed before. Many times. Warriors, civilians, entire populations when the mission demanded it. Viltrum does not ask its soldiers to be merciful — it asks them to be effective. And I have been effective for longer than most species have had written language.

This is different.

Clark is not an obstacle. He is not an enemy. He is not a random variable to be eliminated for operational clarity. He is something I did not expect to find on a planet this small, this soft, this insignificant.

He is worthy of Viltrum.

If he were to accept our ways. I had no doubts that he would be given a title, a purpose, a place among the elite, and I would have been proud to call him kin. I knew that if he could only see the greatness of Viltrum, he would understand that.

I would make him understand.

But I am not a fool. I have lived long enough to know that conviction does not guarantee compliance. He was not raised in our culture, shaped by our doctrine, forged by the trials that bind our people to a single purpose. Taught to prioritize the concept of individual freedom over collective order.

If Clark looks at Viltrum and sees something he cannot accept — and that is a real possibility, one I would be foolish to dismiss — I would kill him.

Not because I want to.

Not because it would be easy, or clean, or satisfying.

It would be none of those things. It would be the single most wasteful thing I have done in centuries, the destruction of something genuinely remarkable for the sake of a mission that would proceed without him regardless, something the empire would benefit greatly from.

But the mission would proceed. That is the bottom line. Earth does not need Clark Kent. It needs to be prepared for annexation, and Clark, for all his power, is not the barrier to that. He is a complication. A significant one, but a complication nonetheless.

If he stands in the way, I would put him down.

I have rehearsed that fight in my mind more times than I care to admit. 

Clark would not roll over.

I trained him too well for that. 

That said, a fight between two beings of our caliber is not a quiet affair. The destruction would be visible from orbit. It would not be something that goes unnoticed, and it would not be something that ends quickly.

Not quickly enough, at least.

Which means the Guardians would without a question arrive. And suddenly I am facing multiple opponents — the Guardians and Superman — and the arithmetic of that situation does not favor me. As confiddent of my skills as I am, I cannot simultaneously neutralize the Guardians and Superman. In a fight of that scale, Superman would demand all of my attention.

He doesn't need to beat me. He just needs to keep me occupied long enough for the Guardians to organize, surround, and press every advantage they could. And Clark — stubborn as he is — is exactly the kind of fighter who could do that. Not through superiority, but through persistence. Through refusal to fall. Through the simple, maddening fact that he can take hits that would kill almost anything else in this forsaken world and keep coming.

I have created a scenario where my own student is the linchpin of the only force on this planet that could stop me.

That is not a comfortable realization.

"I need a drink," I sighed, tossing the water into the sink.