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More Than a Man; Got bored, decided to transcribe a fanfic I wrote for this site.
Topic Started: Dec 10 2012, 11:48 PM (221 Views)
Kamidio
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The Game Master of the SSU:NC
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Basically, I wrote my own Superman origin story a few weeks ago, so I decided to post it here so you guys can read it as well as provide some tips. It's a popular story where I originally posted it, so I posted it here while the PM system on the site undergoes repairs.



Chapter One: Secrets Uncovered




Clark Kent's eyes fell lazily to a painting of flowers on the wall. The hospital room around him smelled fresh and sterile, homely even.

Across from him, there were the three little girls he'd rescued earlier that day, being checked out by a doctor. Fortunately, it looked like they were going to be fine: bumps, bruises, and no ill affects from the Quarry Eel's stomach acid. He breathed a sigh of relief.

His eyes traveled out the window, and fell upon the abandoned quarry, where this whole adventure started...




~One Hour Ago, in the Quarry~


Clark Kent stood by his sister's side as her friends approached. They'd asked him in his downtime to help them with their next plot for a future career.

"So ya'll're tryin' to get into rock climbin', and ya need me to keep the anchors safe? I'm not too sure. I don't want ya falling and smashin' yer head open like a watermelon. I'm yer brother, and while I want ya to find yer callin', I can't just sit by idly while you go off and do something stupid and dangerous to get it."

Abigale Kent jumped in front of Clark's path, standing confidently for a girl of only nine years. Her two friends joined her sides, posing just as over-dramatically. Clark could've sworn he saw a twinkle of sunlight reflect off of the corner of Abby's bow.

"Clark, I know that we can do it! That's why we brought ya along!" Abby gestured to the metal hooks dangling from her pack. "So that you can help us! All we need is fer ya to keep our anchors stuck in the rock so that we can wrap apple down."

"It's 'rappel', Abby."

"Right, 'rappel'. Thanks, Cindy." Abby looked back to Clark in order to continue her instructions. "So all we need is fer you to hold our anchors in the ground while we go down and climb back up. If we need yer help, we'll jus' tug the rope a couple times. Easy as apple pie!"

Clark let this sit on his mind. After a few minutes and a completely unfair use of a triple-decker puppy dog stare, he gave in.

"Alright. I'll help ya'll with this. Just don't hurt yerselves."

"Smallville Girls' Club Rockclimbers!!! Yay!!!"

The trio rushed to a patched area of rock and soil near the edge, and began setting up their equipment. Clark watched closely, making sure it was all in order. Once they had finished setting up their harnesses, they brought over a set of rock anchors and a hammer. Susie Lombard tossed the hammer up to Clark while Cindy set the anchors down and let Clark get to work driving them into the stone. Susie bounced in place with excitement.

Setting down his hammer, Clark looked up after pounding in the last anchor.

"Can we go now?"

"Eeeyup." Clark nodded lightly to Cindy and backed away so that the trio of girls could go down the ledge. Once they'd passed a distance he judged okay, he stepped forward again to keep a closer eye on them. He smiled at the thought of Abby expanding her horizons. He knew she likely wouldn't get a career out of this endeavor, but he hoped she would enjoy it enough that it would make up for the minor defeat.

As Clark thought to himself, Abby was thinking about different things.

"Hmmm. If I step on this rock right here, then I can go down to that rock right there, and we'll be able to walk the rest of the way down." Abby pushed herself away from the wall and rappeled down to the predetermined rock. However, as she put her weight down on to it, the rock crumbled away, and the rope connecting her to her anchor dragged along the canyon wall and over an area where the rock strata jut out like a row of shark teeth. The rope snapped, unable to handle the razor sharp stones. Dangling from where she was connected to Susie, Abby spun.

"Whoa! Cindy, get Clark to pull us up! I need to replace my anchor rope!"

Cindy did as told and tugged on her rope a couple times. "Clark! Pull us up! Abby's rope broke!"

Clark nodded and stooped down. Cindy's rope in his grasp, he began the slow process of lifting the girls up.

Unbeknownst to all, a pair of hungry yellow eyes lurked in the water of the abandoned quarry, just near where Abby dangled. With a low hiss, a Quarry Eel shot out of its burrow nestled between sharp rocks and snagged Abby, pulling her and the rest of the Girls' Club into its underwater tunnel. Before Clark could react, he was pulled down, and tumbled through the air.

Instead of shock or terror, Clark found himself feeling… disgust. He failed to keep his sister and her friends safe. He didn’t haul them up in time. He was falling to what would surely be his own death.

A loud crack split through the air as pain shot through Clark's spine.

When he realized he wasn't dead, Clark opened his eyes and looked himself over. There on the ground was his watch, smashed into pieces. Among the wreckage was a small blue chunk of rock. Upon touching the air, the blue rock began to sizzle and evaporate. As the rock faded, Clark felt a strength within himself he'd never experienced before.

Running to the side of the rocks closest to the eel's den, Clark was prepared for a long and grueling swim, but instead his run had turned into a high-arching jump. Landing inside the eel's burrow on a small piece of shoreline, he cracked his neck.

"I can't rightly say I appreciate you eatin' my kin."

The Quarry Eel didn't take kindly to the intrusion and rushed at Clark, fully intending to eat him as well. However, any plans it had for seconds were cut short by a roundhouse smashing into its lower jaw and sending it flying through the rocks above it, leaving a hole big enough for the farmhand to travel through.



~Meanwhile, in the skies above the Gorge~

Randi Lombard, local owner of a stunt plane and fertilizer of the Kent Farm's crops, flew with her loyal tortoise, Tank, at high speeds over the abandoned quarry. For weeks now, she had been working with Tank to improve her stunt performance. The Tortoise Tornado, a smaller part in a much bigger stunt, the Turtlicane.

Tank sat at the center of her lap while she formed colored clouds via an onboard mister. Spinning the clouds into a wicked chromatic tornado funnel, Randi grinned in excitement. She would succeed; she could FEEL it this time!

On her lap, Tank was pre-prepared to parachute out of the stunt plane and down through the spiral of color. Once he reached the bottom, Randi would loop down and catch him in the passenger's seat, a feat of prowess that would dazzle any crowd with the trust placed between owner and pet.

However, the training session was cut short when Randi caught a flying object in her line of sight. Easing out of the stunt and taking a steady course, she squinted through her goggles to get a better look.

"The heck is that? Is it a bird?"

Tank poked his head over the seat lip and shook it.

"Yeah, you're right. Too big to be any kind of bird from around here. Maybe a plane.

"You know Tank, I betcha it's-" The Quarry Eel passed by, blowing back her hair and nearly throwing the plane off-course. A large man trailed behind it, a look of pure anger on his face. Randi and her reptile companion turned to gawk at the sight of the flying farmhand. "CLARK KENT!?"




With a sound that shook the stone below, Clark Kent smashed into the Quarry Eel faster than the speed of sound. His stupendous feat of speed broke the serpent's bones with a sickening crack. It hit the ground with a thump, its drool pouring out onto the grass. Clark stomped on it's stomach, forcing the beast to hork up the Girls' Club.

One by one, the club members picked themselves up. Randi made an emergency landing nearby with Tank in tow.

"Clark! That. Was. AWESOME!" Randi sweat with a bit of nervousness as Clark looked back at her, realizing she'd broken her facade of cool and collected and had done an impression of Susie that convinced Clark that the two weren't just adoptive sisters.

"Ahem. Well, not as awesome as me, but still, pretty darn awesome by my standards."

The Girls' Club ran up to the farmhand and hugged his legs, shedding tears. Their blubbering was nearly incomprehensible, but he knew what it meant. They weren't dead, and that's what mattered. Turning back to Randi, Clark barked orders.

"Randi, I want you to bring Susie and Cindy to the hospital with me. I'll carry Abby so that the back seat doesn't get crowded. Once we're in town I want you to get Clara n' the others while I get these three a doctor."

"Alright, but one question." Randi scooped the two girls she as ordered to carry and placed them in her passenger seat, next to her tortoise. "Since when could farm boys fly?"

Clark looked down onto the rocks where he assumed the remains of his watch lay. Assuming the blue stone probably had something to do with it, he decided to answer with another bizarre happening.

"Since sapphires boiled like hot stew."

"Yeah, I guess that makes- Wait, what?" Clark ignored Randi, picking up Abby and strapping her onto his back with some vines. With the crisis over, and the injured girls in tow, he walked past the dying eel. It glared at him weakly. Clark casually walked by it, remembering to to give it one last good stomp to the face for good measure.

As he left, he thought he heard it whimper in fear.




Lifting his head from his hoof, he saw that everybody in the room had stopped what they were doing and had begun staring in the direction of the door. The clock's hands showed he'd spent some time thinking to himself.

Clark looked back to see a tall woman with angular features and porcelain white skin, her strawberry blonde hair tied back into a flowing ponytail, held in place by a clip shaped like the sun. She wore a formal formal blue business suit and skirt.

"Please, everyone, there is no need to stare every time I enter a room." The woman removed her hair clip and stuffed it into her pocket. "I'm simply here as Casey Sullivan the friend, nothing more. After all, I do have a large amount of vacation days built up, so I can surely spend them without being treated like the mayor." Casey looked around the room, her eyes falling on Clark.

"So here is our local hero, Clark Kent. I hear from my niece, Tara, that you managed to save your sister and her friends from a Quarry Eel. I must say I am impressed that you could do so, considering how those eels are rumored for their speed."

Randi Lombard rushed up to face Casey. She put an arm around Clark's shoulder and held him up.

"Saved them in the nick of time? I saw what he did with my own eyes! He kicked that eel right out of its hole and flew after it! And he beat the eel up until it burped up Squirt and her pals!" Randi pulled her forearm off of Clark and mimed a few punches, which drew a raised eyebrow out of the mayor.

"But that's impossible! An human can't possibly fly without the assistance of machinery!" The mayor's niece protested. She had long black hair held back in a bun, with straight bangs covering her face. She wore a pair of reading glasses and carried some books with her. "Are you sure the sun wasn't in your eyes? It could have possibly created a mirage and made it look like he flew."

"Tara, my egghead, I know flying. And he may not have wings or a plane, but what Clark did was definitely flying. Heck, he was flying so fast he did a sonic boom! It was a little less cool than when the Thunderbirds do one, but it was definitely radical."

Tara puffed a bit. "Clark, were you actually flying, or is Randi just exaggerating this?"

"Eeeyup."

"'Yes' you were flying, or 'Yes' Randi is exaggerating things again?"

"The first'un."

Tara smirked. "See Randi, he wasn't flying at a- WHAT!? You mean you were actually flying? That doesn't make any sense!"

Clark shrugged, not really wanting to speak any further on the matter.

The creaking of Martha Kent's rocking chair halted. With a sigh, Martha looked to Casey. "I'd never thought the day would come. Mayor, could you do me a kindness and fill in the places where my memory gets a bit fuzzy?"

"I suppose now that he knows, we'll have to."

Clark looked over at the old women, confused. What could possibly be so secret that the only people that knew were Ma and the mayor?

Martha Kent started rocking again. "It happened the day before we was blessed with little Clara."

Paula Lang bounced up and down excitedly, her poofy red hair bobbling back and forth. "Ooh! Ooh! A flashback! This calls for popcorn and soda!" Paula pulled a tub of steaming popcorn and a bottle of cola from a briefcase at her side. Everybody in the room stared at her with a confused expression, before just shrugging it off as Paula being Paula. The room's attention back on the aged matriarch, Martha Kent continued on with her story.

"As I was sayin', it happened the day before Clara was conceived. I was out sorting the apples for cider season when all of a sudden, the clouds over the farm started a spinnin' and this green fog started a leakin' from 'em. So I went onto the hill to investigate, and what did I see?"

Paula bounced. "What did ya see, what did ya see!?"

Martha ignored Paula.

"I saw a metal pod fall out of the center of the clouds. It looked like a giant apple, the way it was built n' all, but that wasn't even the strangest thing about it. It popped open, and inside was this little baby boy sleepin' like he didn't just fall right out of the sky!

"Besides little Clark, there were some torn clothes and a whole bunch of doodads. But what stood out the most was this picture pinned to the wall. There were these mighty handsome young folks with a little boy in a basket, standin' in front of a giant statue of a planet. Now this weren't no picture of our Earth. I could tell because the shapes where the land should be were covered in water. So I knew I had to get a hold of the mayor, because right there in front of me wasn't just a baby! The little feller was from another world entirely!"


Casey nodded. "As soon as I had received a letter telling of some strange weather over the Kent Orchard, I rushed there as fast as possible. After all, it was approaching the ending period of Tornado Season, and it would've been terrible if they'd been hit before the harvest."

"And rush she did! The mayor managed to get here not but five hours after I sent in that letter. By the time she'd gotten here, she'd plum wore herself out! So I took her to the baby, but when we got there, the baby was gone! Of course, when I followed a bunch of tiny crawlmarks, we found little Clark playing with a barrel full of apples." Martha tapped her chin with her hand, musing on the memory.

"When we found Clark playing with the barrel, I have to say I was bemused. The aura around him was far different from that of a normal person. Normally, if you're socially adept, you can tell something about a person from how they carry themselves and how they interact with their surroundings, or their 'aura' for a simple,cover-all term. For example, my aura makes me seem fierce and imposing, while Tara seems a bit awkward and socially inept. It's often faint, but it is recognizable.

"Aunt Casey!" Tara blushed a bit from being singled out as an example.

"Sorry, but it was pretty easy for the other to see what I meant if I used someone a bit easier to read." The mayor used this to springboard to the rest of her explanation.

"But Clark's aura was different from most people, let alone babies. He carried himself like an older child despite being only a few months old at the least. His aura is just as it was on that day, meaning he must have broken his watch."

Clara Kent looked a bit confused. "Ya mean his watch was keepin' him weak this whole time? Shucks, we could have gotten the harvest done fer every year since Clark started pickin' the trees!"

Casey nodded. "Indeed. That was a watch that came with him in the pod. It seemed to make him normal, as once we brought it out of the pod, he stopped walking and began crying."

Paula raised a hand into the air.

"Paula, you don't need to raise your hand. This isn't a school."

"Yeah! So if Clark is an alien, does this mean we can throw a 'Clark Just Found Out He's An Alien Slash Yay Abby Cindy and Susie Are Safe Party'!?"

"Paula, I don't wan't any par-"

Without waiting for any reply, Paula dashed out of the room, leaving a half-empty tub of popcorn and a bottle of soda where she'd previously sat.

Abby looked around the room, her eyes shimmering with barely-held tears. Her voice became a whisper that dared to break into a thin sob.

“If Clark is an alien… then… then does that mean he ain’t REALLY mah brother?”

"Abby! You shouldn't say things like that." Clara hugged Abigale reassuringly. "We were raised with him as our older brother, and alien or not, that will never stop being true! He's just as much a Kent as Winona and our friends!"

Abby looked down a bit, ashamed she even asked the question. "I'm sorry, Clark. Fergive me fer askin' such a dumb question?"

Clark nodded his head lightly, answering absent-mindedly with his signature drawl. "Eeeyup."

As soon as he stated he was unoffended by the question, albeit very indirectly, many of the people in the room mobbed him with questions of their own.

"What did it feel like to fly!?"
"Could you help me run some experiments on your anatomy? This could be a scientific breakthrough!"
"Hey, you wanna go flying with me? I can give you some lessons! On the house, of course."
"Oh please allow me to get your measurements! I simply must make you a new watch for your heroic act!"

Cornered by people and growing increasingly uncomfortable with all the thoughts on his mind, as well as the barrage of questions, Clark did what he rarely needed to. Shout.

"QUIET!"

Everybody in the room fell quiet. Even the birds outside of the hospital window quieted their chirping.

"I don't want tah be asked all these questions at once when I have questions of my very own! And aren't some easy little questions a school boy can ask his teacher and get a straight answer! Where do I come from!? Who are my parents!?"

Clark stormed up to the hospital room window.

"Well go ahead and ask yer questions! But ya'll aren't getting any answers until I get some myself!"

Abby looked at her big brother wide-eyed and stunned. "Clark..." She sniffed a bit. Her brother rarely showed his anger and frustrations, but when he did, it was absolutely explosive. And even though this most volatile of rants wasn't directed at her, she knew he was hurting inside, just like during the school newspaper incident.

Clark sighed and looked down at the tile flooring.

"I need to do some thinking. I'll be home after supper." Clark turned away from them and jumped out the window, taking flight off to a secluded corner of Kent Orchards

Everybody in the room stood awkwardly. Only the Kent family and the Girls' Club had experienced an angry Clark Kent before. Randi was the first to break the long silence.

"So does he always-"

"Do that when he gets mad? Eeeyup." Clara cut Randi off, familiar with being asked the same question by her cousins. “He has his own place he goes, to put himself in better humor. His Laughing Place. He’ll be fine.”




Clark landed with a thud beside the Kent Family Pavillion. The events of the day had been troubling for the farmhand, in more ways than one. Being thrust into the spotlight and learning he had a secret kept from birth put a lot of stress on him. But he was glad it had happened today. Because now he finally had something to say beyond 'Eeeyup', Nnnope', or 'Mmmaybe'.

"Sorry I'm late, Lana."
Edited by Kamidio, Dec 12 2012, 09:59 PM.
SSU:NC - Finding a new home.
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trex841
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Quarry Eel


Hm...why dose that ring a bell?

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Smallville Girls' Club Rockclimbers!!! Yay!!!


Ok now I know I've heard that before.

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Paula raised a hoof into the air.

"Paula, you don't need to raise your hand. This isn't a school."


... :evil:
F.I.N.D.R Field Incident Logs
A comprehensive list of all organisms, artifacts, and alternative worlds encountered by the foundation team.

At the present time, concepts within are inconsistent and ever shifting.

(And this is just the spec related stuff)
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Kamidio
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You saw nothing.
SSU:NC - Finding a new home.
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I see more then you realize. I'm too well trained to not see the references...And slip ups in transition.

My question is why you don't just post the original unedited version? The fic I posted remains unchanged.
F.I.N.D.R Field Incident Logs
A comprehensive list of all organisms, artifacts, and alternative worlds encountered by the foundation team.

At the present time, concepts within are inconsistent and ever shifting.

(And this is just the spec related stuff)
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