Smallville High School buzzed with restless energy as prom season approached.
Couples clustered around the gates, laughter echoing through the parking lot where borrowed cars gleamed under the afternoon sun. Hormones, pride, and insecurities all mixed in the air like the smell of cafeteria food clinging to the halls.
Clark Kent trudged out through the front doors, his backpack slung low. He should have been excited about the big game, about prom, about anything that mattered to normal teenagers. But all he carried was the weight of failure.
The football tryouts.
If he had used his real strength, he could have crushed the competition. But Jonathan Kent's warnings echoed endlessly in his ears: Be careful, Clark. Never show them too much. Never reveal who you are.
So he held back. And the result? Laughter. Mockery. He had lost, badly, and the team treated him like a joke.
His mood soured further when he spotted Lana Lang near the gate, smiling as she talked with friends. His heart tugged at the sight of her. For just a moment, the world narrowed to that single vision. Lana, sunlight catching her hair, laughing with ease.
Then she turned, waved at her boyfriend, and walked away.
Clark's shoulders slumped. His gaze dropped to the book in his hands—Nietzsche, his favorite collection of poems. One line on the cover stared back at him:
"Man can control his actions, but not his feelings, for feelings are fickle."
Clark exhaled, almost comforted. His powers, his fists, his choices—those he could restrain. But his heart? Not even a Kryptonian could control that.
"Hey, Clark! Bus is leaving! You coming or not?"
He blinked and looked up. One of his classmates leaned out the window of the departing bus.
"Sorry! Coming!"
Clark jogged forward, tripping slightly as he scrambled aboard under the driver's annoyed glare. His clumsy entrance triggered a round of laughter from the other students.
He muttered a quick, "Sorry, Mr. Hanks," before heading toward the back. His eyes landed on the familiar messy blond hair and sharp, unreadable face staring out the window.
Adrian Kent.
Clark slid into the seat beside him. "Rough day? Dad said you were working on that English report until one in the morning."
Adrian didn't bother turning. His chin rested against his palm, his eyes fixed on the scenery rushing by. "Not in the mood, Clark. Maybe you should run along and play with Pete and the other nerds."
The words were cold, stripped of warmth. Typical Adrian.
Clark shifted uneasily but said nothing more. He was used to it by now. His younger brother rarely gave him anything but sharp edges.
Sixteen years had passed since Jonathan and Martha Kent had found two babies in that smoking crater. Two children, lying beside an alien craft. Two miracles—or burdens, depending on how one looked at it.
The couple raised them both as sons. The child they found inside the craft became Adrian. The one left outside became Clark. Out of a misplaced assumption, they had always believed Adrian was the younger of the two—protected, chosen.
The truth, of course, was far more complicated.
Clark's powers had begun to stir recently—his strength, his speed, the strange sense of being something more than human. But Adrian… Adrian had eclipsed him from the beginning.
The Kents didn't know the full truth: that Adrian carried something darker, something alien yet not Kryptonian. His Homelander Template had grown with him, unlocking terrible gifts—strength, X-ray vision, heat vision, and speed that rivaled a bullet train. He couldn't fly, not yet.
Jonathan and Martha fretted over Clark's struggles, but deep down, their worry often shifted toward Adrian. A boy too clever, too cold, too powerful. He wasn't a farm boy in spirit. He was something else entirely.
Clark never said it aloud, but he knew: compared to Adrian, he was the weaker brother.
The thought gnawed at him every day.
"Hey, Clark," a sneering voice called from the front. A stocky student with freckles leaned back, soda in hand. "Do us all a favor and buy new clothes. That farm stench doesn't wash out."
Laughter rippled through the bus.
"Yeah, makes sense. He grew up on a farm. Probably rolled in cow dung before class!" another jeered.
The insults cut deeper as more joined in, each jab laced with cruelty.
Clark clenched his jaw, heat creeping into his cheeks. But his eyes flickered sideways—not at the bullies, but at his brother.
Because he knew. Adrian would not forgive this.
Adrian sat stone-still, expression blank. But in his eyes, faint red light flickered.
Oh no.
Before Clark could react, the soda can in the bully's hand trembled—then burst apart in a violent explosion of foam and metal shards. The bus erupted in chaos, students shouting as the sticky drink sprayed everywhere.
The driver jerked in panic, swerving the wheel. Tires screeched. The old bus slammed into the guardrail with a thunderous crash.
The metal barrier shattered like paper.
And then—
The bus plunged into the river below.
Water swallowed them whole.
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