Well, so I have a new story. I'm posting it because... while it's technically finished (it has a beginning, middle, and end), it probably still needs more work. It's been beta-read, but my beta-reader thought that I needed to flesh out the A-plot and the bad guys. I agree, but it's been languishing on my hard drive for months because I haven't actually gotten around to doing the fleshing out. So, I'm putting it to you, dear readers. How can I make the bad guy plot more convincing? What should they be up to? You'll probably want to wait to comment on that until the final part, but keep it in mind if you would.
Emily Kent sat staring at her test, willing her vision to behave.
Her father had warned her about this, after all, during "the talk" they'd had over two years ago. And Jack had told her a little about how it had been for him. But nothing compared to actually experiencing the onset of her first powers.
Hearing had been easy. Well, relatively easy. Easier than this, anyway. Some days she'd hear only what a normal human would hear. Some days her hearing would fluctuate, and she'd suddenly be hearing everything going on for miles. It had given her a headache, and she'd stayed home from school for several days. But the hearing had pretty much straightened itself out last year, and now it simply seemed to be growing slowly in strength.
She took a quick glance around the room. Some of her fellow students were busily writing on their test papers. Others held thinking postures, nibbling on number two pencils or staring off into space.
One, in particular, caught her eye. Nathan was pretending to stare out the window, but he was really peering at Ellen's paper on the next desk, then scribbling in answers on his own paper. Figures.
Emily focused on him for a moment, forcing her vision to show him as he really was, not his skeletal structure or an odd blur of colors, the way people usually looked these days. Then she turned back to her paper.
What was it about paper that was so hard? One minute, she was seeing straight through her paper, sometimes even through the desk and the floor. The next minute, the paper was an imcomprehensible blur. She could stare at it, hard, and bring it into focus, but as soon as she relaxed enough to try to actually read the words on the paper, her focus was gone.
She sighed and looked up at the teacher, who, unfortunately, was looking right at her. "Get back to work," Mrs. Bailes mouthed, waving a skeletal hand at Emily's test.
Emily put her hand over her eyes, then deliberately x-rayed through her hand to see the paper. It worked for a moment, but then she lost control of the x-ray and found herself staring at her hand. Had Jack struggled like this when his vision first came in? She hadn't been let in on the "family secret" by then, at least not completely, so she didn't really remember.
Emily looked around the room again. A bunch of skeletons were writing on their test papers diligently. One of the skeletons threw something at the girl in front of him, and Emily rolled her eyes at Nathan's antics. Suddenly the skeletons were all hazy pink blobs, and Emily quickly looked away before she got a glimpse of any body parts she'd rather not see.
The worst part about this was that she really had studied for this test. Grandma had helped her, quizzing her on the names and dates for hours. And history really could be fascinating. There were always exciting, dramatic things going on. Grandma was always willing to go along with any reenactment game Emily invented, and sometimes they even made it interesting enough that Jack was willing to play, too.
"Time's up," Mrs. Bailes said finally, and all of Emily's classmates gave deep sighs of relief as they turned their tests over.
Emily grabbed blindly for hers and scribbled her name across the top, even though she had no clue of where the space for her name was. She turned it over. Not that it mattered, given that the rest of the test was blank. She didn't even know what it had asked. This was not turning out to be a good year.
She waited until most of the other students had left the room, as usual. Although people were easier to see than the words on a test paper, she'd still found that she often bumped into others because she was unable to focus on their outline, and a skeleton looked a lot skinnier than a real person with muscle and fat on them. Mrs. Bailes, she noticed, was watching her as she made her way to the door. She tried to wind through desks and chairs like a normal individual without out-of-control super-vision, avoiding catching her teacher's eye.
Emily was about to make her way to the buses at the front of the school when she noticed a congregation of students near the elm tree. She walked towards them, giving her super-hearing free range as she approached. Her vision was at the blurry stage, but at least she could see people as fully-clothed, colored forms.
"You want this?" a boy's voice was saying mockingly, and Emily's heart sank as she recognized Nathan. "Come and get it."
"Oh, please, give it back," a younger boy's voice said in whining tones. "I'll get in trouble. It's mine, just give it back."
"If you want it, you'll have to come and get it," Nathan said again.
Emily reached the crowd and pushed two people aside so that she could see what was going on. She blinked twice and managed to clear her vision. Nathan was holding some sort of plaque in the air, high above a smaller boy's head. The smaller boy's face was tear-streaked, and his backpack was hanging open, dropping schoolbooks and supplies every time he made a move for the plaque.
"Nathan, give it back to him," Emily said forcefully, trying to ignore the hammering in her chest.
Nathan turned to her. "Yeah, sure, since *you* said so, I'll just give it right back." He made as if to hand the plaque to the boy, then snatched it back again just as the grateful boy reached for it.
"Nathan," she said warningly.
"What? Whatcha gonna do if I don't? Hit me?" he asked.
"If I have to. Haven't we gone through this before?"
"Oooh," the crowd said, sounding excited. There was nothing more exciting on a middle-school lawn than a fight, after all.
Nathan grinned. "Bring it."
Emily dropped her backpack and stood facing him for a moment, making up her decision. Grandma was going to kill her if she got into a fight *again*. But what other choice was there? She made a grab for the plaque.
Nathan hit her, his fist connecting with her face. Her head snapped back with the force of the blow, but she managed to stay upright. It hurt like anything, but ever since first met Nathan and seen his bullying tactics, she'd been getting used to the pain of being punched. Unfortunately, with the punch, her vision had gone haywire again, so that she was facing a larger skeleton with many other skeletons standing around.
She recognized one as the little boy Nathan had been bullying. He was watching, his shoulders shaking.
Fury rose in her chest. Without another word, she snatched the plaque out of Nathan's hand. He grabbed her shoulder and yanked her toward him, making her drop the plaque. She punched out, hitting something soft, and then she felt a pain on her head as one of his punches connected. Before she knew it, they were rolling on the ground, pummeling each other.
"Teacher!" one of the watching kids whispered loudly.
Immediately, Emily and Nathan broke apart. The smaller boy had already grabbed the plaque and disappeared, so Emily made a run for the buses before the teacher could figure out who had been fighting.
Unfortunately, Nathan rode the same bus as Emily, and got on only a moment after she did. As he passed her seat on his way to the back of the bus as usual, he whispered, "I'm gonna get you."
Emily held her chin high and pretended she didn't care. She stared blankly out the window, blinking quickly to keep the burning in her eyes from becoming tears.
When the bus stopped at the crossroads nearest to the farm, Emily jumped off quickly and ran towards the farmhouse, hoping Nathan wouldn't follow her. Out here where it was isolated, if he decided to get off at her stop to finish the fight, she wasn't sure she'd be able to escape.
Even though she didn't hear anyone behind her, Emily didn't stop running until she was wrenching open the front door. She slowed slightly then, gasping for breath, as she walked into the kitchen. Grandma hated for anybody to run in her house.
"Emily!" Grandma gasped, walking around the corner. "What happened?"
Jack, who was sitting at the counter with a glass of milk, burst out laughing and choked on his milk.
"Nothing," Emily muttered, dropping her bookbag by the door and heading towards the refrigerator.
"Put it in your room," Grandma said automatically, indicating the bookbag.
"I will in a minute," Emily responded. They went through this same routine every day, which usually ended up with Emily rollling her eyes and taking her backpack upstairs before getting her snack.
But this time, Grandma seemed more concerned about the black eye.
"Emily, sit down," she said firmly. "I want to know what happened."
"Isn't it obvious?" Jack asked. "She got in a fight again. Em, you've got to remember you're not invulnerable yet. No playing the hero until you're at least, oh, my age."
She shot him a look, and he put his hands in the air. "All right, all right, I surrender."
"Yeah, Gram, I got in a fight, okay? You should see the other guy."
Grandma wasn't amused. "A fight with whom, may I ask?"
Jack grinned. "Bet you ten bucks it was Nathan again."
Grandma poured Emily a glass of milk and put two oatmeal cookies on a plate for her. "Was it?"
Emily nodded silently.
Jack crowed. "I knew it! Want me to come over to school with you tomorrow and give him a good lickin'? At least *one* of us has had their invulnerability kick in."
"You're not completely invulnerable yet," Emily pointed out.
"Enough to win a fight with a twelve-year-old!"
"Jack, don't you have homework to do or something?" Grandma asked.
He took the hint and carried his milk to his room, giving Emily a thumbs-up on the way.
"I'm sorry, Grandma," Emily said once he was gone. She took a bite of cookie. "I didn't mean to get in a fight again. Really. But... I can't just stand there and watch!"
"I know, honey," Grandma said, rubbing Emily's back. "I probably would have done the same when I was your age. And if I didn't... I should have."
Her grandmother's warm, comforting kitchen was such a strange contrast to the sharpness of the grass and concrete of the schoolgrounds. Emily sighed. "When does invulnerability start, anyway?"
Grandma smiled. "Soon, I believe. You hardly ever get sick as it is."
"That doesn't count, though. That's probably at least partly because I'm not completely human, and so a lot of viruses are simply not able to invade a Kryptonian body." She led the way into the living room and flopped down on the couch.
"I suppose that's true," her grandmother said, following her and sitting on a chair nearby. "But your father... and Jack... started to become less and less vulnerable through their early teen years. You don't notice it right away, of course, especially when you're not expecting it. We didn't really notice it with your father until he was almost completely invulnerable. When something small should have caused him injury and didn't, we would all tend to write it off as luck, or a near-miss. It was only when he should have been in a position to be really hurt, and wasn't, that we noticed."
Emily smiled. "That must have been a shock. Do you remember what happened?"
"Of course!" She sat back in her chair, smiling. "Clark had already started to develop his super-strength by then. Well, our refrigerator broke, and we were getting a new one delivered. It came while Jonathan was out in the fields, and I'd told him we'd wait until his father returned to move the old one out and the new one in. But Clark wanted to impress me, I think, so he lifted the old refrigerator... over his head, I might add... and headed towards the door." She laughed.
"And?"
"And the door wasn't exactly big enough to fit a fourteen-year-old boy carrying a fridge over his head. He dropped it, mostly on himself. I thought for a moment... well, but as it turned out, he was fine. Not even a scratch. Now, my *floor* was another matter... the fridge was heavy enough, and had fallen far enough, to chip a huge chunk out of my floor. But Clark looked up at me and said in wonder, 'Mom, that didn't hurt.' And that was when we realized it."
Emily giggled. "Was he in trouble?"
"For refusing to wait for his father, and ending up destroying my floor? You'd better believe it. But I went pretty easy on him because I was so relieved he was okay." Grandma frowned at Emily's slouch and mimicked sitting up straight.
Emily, frowning, sat up straighter. "What about Jack?" She took another bite of cookie. Her grandmother's cookies were the best in the world, everybody said so. Well, okay. All of the Kents and Lanes said so.
"It was different with Jack, just as it will be with you. We figured that you and Jack would end up having super-powers, so we've been on the lookout since you were babies. Of course, Clark's powers didn't really start to appear until his pre-teen years, but we still found ourselves looking for hints, maybe the unnoticed beginnings of powers that we didn't notice until later with Clark. I think we started to notice that Jack was sidestepping a lot of potential injuries when he was just a bit older than you, maybe thirteen. He's not completely invulnerable yet, as you know, but it takes a lot to hurt him."
"Was Dad completely invulnerable by the time he was Jack's age? Do you think Jack is taking longer because we're only half-Kryptonian?"
Grandma thought for a moment. "Well, I'm really not sure. After all, incomplete invulnerability is hardly something you want to test. I do think that Jack would be fine if somebody, say, dropped a refrigerator on him, but I would kill anybody who suggested trying it. Jack's vulnerability seems to be mostly based around fire, as we've seen, but it's still improving. For all we know, your father could have been at exactly the same stage at sixteen."
Emily nodded. They all knew that Jack was still vulnerable to fire. There had been a major fire in Wichita last month, and Jack had gone to help. He and Emily weren't old enough to have superhero personas yet, but he'd tried his best to help without anybody catching him. His arms had been burned from wrist to elbow, and he'd lost his eyebrows and some of his front hair. However, along with a developing invulnerability, he also had a developing super-healing ability like their father, and already his hair had grown back. The burns had healed so much already that they looked like nothing worse than a bad sunburn.
"Grandma, can I call Mom?" Emily asked suddenly. "Please? You can take it out of my allowance."
Grandma smiled at her. "Of course you can call your mother, Emily! And I wouldn't dream of making you pay just to talk to her. You can use the phone here, if you like. I'm going to go upstairs and see if Jack needs any help with his homework." She headed for the stairs as Emily headed for the kitchen.
Emily dialed the phone number she knew so well by heart. Her mother picked up on the first ring. "Kent residence," she said sharply.
"Mom?" Emily said softly.
"Emily! Honey, what's wrong?"
"Nothing," Emily said quickly. "I mean, there's no emergency or anything. I just... wanted to talk."
Her mother's voice softened. "Of course."
"Mom... I want to come home." Emily knew she sounded like a small child, but she couldn't help it. "Please, can we?"
"Oh, sweetie." There was a pause. "You know we can't do that yet. Don't you like staying at your grandparents' farm?"
"The *farm* I like." She tried to keep the venom out of her voice. "But I hate school here. Maybe... could I be home-schooled?"
Her mother laughed. "Home-schooled? I don't think Martha is quite ready to take that on! And you know your father and I couldn't do that here, we have to work. Is something going on at school?"
"Well... I might flunk out."
The line went silent again. "Emily, what's going on?"
"I can't read!" Emily wailed. "I can't see the stupid paper because my vision's going crazy and I can't control it! And I keep getting in fights with this stupid bully."
She heard her mother whispering to someone, then there was a new click and her father's voice greeted her. "Hey, Em. What's this about your vision?"
"Super-vision! I hate it! I can't see what's on the paper! One minute it's too unfocused to read, the next minute I try to focus and I'm seeing right through the paper and into the ground below me. I see through people half the time, so I can't always read their expressions because I'm busy looking through them at their skeleton, or trying *not* to look at them because I'm seeing through their clothes. But at least that I can kind of ignore. But how am I supposed to do schoolwork when I can't see it?"
"How long has this been going on?" her father asked.
"About a week. Well, I mean, before that I'd notice that sometimes my vision would go blurry and sometimes I could see really, really well, but I could blink and make that go away."
"That might have been the beginnings of super-vision coming in, and this might be your x-ray vision," her father said. "I remember I did get super-vision first."
"What did you do? Did you have trouble seeing stuff on paper?"
"I did. But I didn't know that it was my special vision powers coming in. My parents drove me to a opthamologist in the nearest big town to get my vision checked. He couldn't figure out what was going on. He ended up giving me glasses and an eyepatch, to try to strengthen what he thought was my weaker eye."
"And?"
"Well, obviously that wasn't what was really going on. I tried the eyepatch for a few weeks, but it was only making things worse. The glasses worked, though. They gave me something to focus on whenever I was having trouble controlling the vision. I would concentrate on seeing the glasses, not seeing *through* them, and sometimes that would help. The whole thing only lasted a few weeks, though. And when I suddenly started setting things on fire with my eyes... well, we figured out pretty quickly that something more than great hearing and odd vision was going on. I ended up keeping my glasses, because they helped to prevent me from using my powers unexpectedly--although I changed them in for a pair of non-prescription ones."
"So... I need glasses?"
She could hear her parents whisper to each other again, which always drove her crazy. Especially as she still hadn't mastered her super-hearing over the phone line because of the static.
"Maybe we could think about that," her mother said eventually. "Jack has his already, and it's not a bad idea if you think you might want a secret identity someday. But right now, don't worry too much about it."
"Your vision will be fine in a few weeks," her father promised her. "I know it's tough right now, but you'll get through it."
"Dad?" Emily asked. "There's something else I want to know. Remember when you were a kid, and you had super-hearing and maybe super-vision, but no other powers? No super-strength, no super-speed, no invulnerability?"
"Yes?"
"Well, how did you handle it? The cries for help, I mean? I can be sitting at school, or sometimes even at home, and hear a cry for help. I hear them all the time. But I can't *do* anything. Not just because I can't leave school in the middle of class, but also because I don't have any special abilities! Jack may not have all your powers yet, and he doesn't have a superhero identity, but at least when he hears somebody cry out, he can help! He has enough strength and speed to do the kind of stuff you do."
"Oh, Em," her father said softly. "Jack was at the same stage you are once, you know. It was different for me. I had super-hearing, but I hadn't thought of my powers as tools to rescue people yet. It simply hadn't occurred to me. So I didn't mentally separate out cries for help from the rest. I generally just blocked out everything so that I could live a normal life. I would hear sounds that were particularly loud, sometimes, like explosions, but when I did hear them... well, it was like what a normal kid, or a normal adult, for that matter, might think if they heard about a terrible tragedy on TV. They might feel sad, worried, even wish they could help, but that's it. It wasn't until my other powers came in that I started to realize I could use them to help people, and started to tune in to cries for help."
"So what am I supposed to do?" Emily cried.
There was another whispered conversation, then her father said, "Honey, I'm going to come over for a few hours, okay? Mom needs to stay here in Metropolis, though."
"Okay, Dad," Emily said softly.
She said good-bye to her mother and hung up the phone, and just as she turned around there was a "whoosh!" and her father walked in the kitchen door.
He didn't say a word, just walked towards her and held out his arms. Emily stepped into them, taking comfort from the warm, large body of her father.
"I wish I could make everything right, baby," he whispered into her hair.
"I know," she said, fighting a sob. "I guess even a superhero can't always do that."
After a few moments, they walked out onto the porch and sat on the swing. Emily leaned against her father and he put his arm around her, and they sat together, not talking, just watching the stars.
"Do you miss Metropolis?" Dad asked her.
"All the time," Emily started to say, but then she stopped. "Actually, it's not really Metropolis I miss. I miss you and Mom, and my friends at school. But mostly I miss being *normal*. In Metropolis I was just Emily Kent. But now that I'm getting these strange powers... everything's so confusing."
"Your Mom mentioned something about a bully at school," her father brought up delicately.
Emily colored. "Oh. Yeah."
"Is that where you got the black eye?" he asked, touching it gently.
She winced and pulled away, making the swing rock. "Yeah."
"Wanna tell me about it?"
"What's to tell? He was stealing something that belonged to this little kid. He's not, like, a teenager or something. Just another kid in my class. And nobody *else* was doing anything," she added defensively. "Nobody else *ever* does anything."
"Hey, I'm not saying you did the wrong thing," Dad said. "In fact... it sounds like something your mother would do. She's always been the one to stand up to the bullies of the world, even though she doesn't have any super-powers."
Emily smiled. Was she really like her mother? The thought made her warm inside. Everybody was always saying how amazing her mother was. And her father, Superman, the person everybody in Metropolis looked up to... he thought Lois Lane was the most wonderful woman in the entire world.
"Thanks, Dad."
He smoothed her hair back from her face. "Just don't forget that you're not invulnerable, sweetie. I don't want to see you hurt."
The sun was setting, and Emily practiced her super-vision as she looked out over the cornfields. She could see the old Irig place, and if she squinted a bit she could see the family sitting down to dinner through the dining room window. She blinked, and she could suddenly see nothing further than the corn and wheatfields surrounding the farm buildings.
Emily blinked again and looked at her father. She focused on seeing him, forcing her vision to show him as he really was and not to waver in and out, sometimes x-raying through him and sometimes just being fuzzy. It worked! She was seeing his face, solid and real behind his glasses.
"I think I'm starting to get the hang of this vision thing," Emily said.
He smiled. "I'm so glad."
******
"Emily?" Mrs. Bailes said as the class stood up to leave the room. "Can I speak to you for just a minute?"
Emily swallowed hard and made her way to the front of the room, pushing past the other students who were on their way out.
"Yes, Mrs. Bailes?" she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
"Emily, are you having trouble adjusting to Smallville Middle School?" the teacher asked unexpectedly.
"What?"
"Well..." The teacher shuffled through some papers on her desk. "Your grades from Metropolis Union Middle were excellent, and you seemed to start out on the same track here. But ever since your first week, you've been slipping. You always look distracted in class, and your last test... you didn't answer a single question! You didn't even write your name in the right place."
Emily's face was burning. How could she possibly explain this? It sounded like... something like the stupidest kid in school would do. Or one of the kids who didn't care about school, spent their time distracting the other students and just waiting until they could drop out and be a gas station attendant.
"And then yesterday... I know that you and Nathan got in a fight. Maybe you weren't actually caught in the act, Emily, but that's about all that's keeping you from a suspension right now."
Emily's hand involuntarily went to her black eye. She nodded.
"Emily, if things don't improve, I'm going to have to have a talk with your parents... or, your grandparents, at least. We'll need to discuss your other options here."
She nodded mutely. "I understand."
"Good." Mrs. Bailes's gaze softened. "Please, Emily, try to do better. I believe that you can."
Emily shrugged and headed outside. She'd already missed her bus, and Jack was probably already on his way home. She'd wait a little while, 'til he was likely to be home, then call and ask him to pick her up.
She meandered her way over to the playground of the elementary school next-door. The elementary kids didn't get off school for another hour, so the playground was empty. She sat down on a swing and pushed off.
Emily's stomach felt as queasy as if she was about to perform in a school play. But this wasn't stagefright.
She'd always been the good kid. The student that teachers loved, because she always did her homework on time, paid attention in class, raised her hand, did well on the tests. She'd always been polite... all right, perhaps a bit of a suck-up, as Jack liked to say. But she liked pleasing people, making people like her.
It was probably good that she was getting her poor grades in a school that she would only be at for a few months. Surely her parents would finish their story eventually. The bad guys would be behind bars, the threat would be over, and she and Jack could come home. By then, maybe Emily would have her powers under control--at least, those powers that made it difficult to do well in school. She'd come back and be the same Emily she'd always been--at the top of her class, the teacher's pet, and everything else.
She could tell herself that, but it didn't help. It hurt, knowing that she was failing her classes at Smallville Middle, even if she'd only be here for a few months. It hurt, knowing that she was disappointing her teacher. It hurt... knowing that she didn't have any friends.
In Metropolis, she'd been popular. Okay, maybe not the ultra-popular cheerleader-type, the stereotype from teen fiction novels. But she'd had friends, she'd had a place to sit at lunch and something to do on Saturday afternoons.
A creaking sound alerted her to the figure sitting himself down on the next swing.
"Nathan!" Emily gasped, her body tensing. "What are you doing? This is my swingset."
"No, it's the elementary school's swingset," he retorted. "And it's a free country."
She clamped her mouth shut and tried to ignore his presence, but it was difficult. Not only was he swinging hard enough to make the chains creak each time he went out and back, but he was also heavy enough that she could feel the pull through the chains of her own swing.
She was just about to get off the swing and stalk off to try calling her brother when Nathan spoke. "Are you mad at me about yesterday?" He caught his feet on the sand and brought his swing to a halt.
"Well, yeah," she said. "I got in trouble for that." Maybe not trouble like no-TV-for-a-week, but she certainly had gotten plenty of ribbing from her brother. And it was just one more thing to deal with on what was already turning out to be a pretty crummy week.
"Yeah, so did I," he admitted. "Especially when my dad found out I'd hit a girl."
"You deserved it," she said curtly.
He was silent for a moment, then said, "Maybe I did."
That was such a startling admission that Emily stared at Nathan. He wasn't looking at her, but watching the sand where he scuffed it up with his feet. He looked, for a moment, like a little boy who didn't want to admit that he was sorry.
"Why are you always fighting people?" she asked suddenly.
His head snapped up. "Why are you always a goody-two-shoes?" His glare startled her. "Little Miss Perfect, always standing up for the little guy. You probably wish I'd kill you, so you could be a martyr and a saint."
Emily felt her face go hot. For a long moment, she couldn't even think of any response. Her hands clenched themselves into fists.
"Too scared to hit me now?" Nathan taunted.
Emily forced her fists to relax. "No. Just too saintly, I guess." She tried to give him an irritatingly sweet look, but she didn't think it worked.
He gave a short bark of laughter, then immediately seemed to regret it. "Whatever. You can have your swingset back." He stood up.
No way. He was not about to get the last word. "Off to pick on some innocent third-grader? They're about the right size."
Nathan took a step towards her swing and gave her a violent shove, sending her backwards into the sand. She scrambled to her feet, spitting mad, to see him disappearing around the side of the building.
******
tbc...
