"So where are you really from, Clark?" John asked me that after we were outside of city limits. Probably afraid of collateral damage if I went ballistic.
"Smallville." I smirked and looked over at the bastard, "What about you?"
"Ma'aleca'andra." He looked over at me and sighed, "Mars." His eyes glowed bright red as they got bigger, his bald head elongated and turned green, but overall, he kinda had the same general facial features.
His human form was eerily similar to his Martian form, though I'm not sure whether that matters at all. Martians are just too ridiculous when it comes to shapeshifting.
I couldn't even tell he wasn't human using my supersight, but once he turned into his Martian form, it was like a barrier was preventing me from seeing through his flesh or zooming in on his individual cells.
"Makes sense." I didn't bother acting surprised, "When I looked up supernatural events and phenomena online, I saw some pictures of you in your natural form. You're not very famous, yet. But it's only a matter of time. I'm sure the government is definitely hunting you down though."
"Humans can be very… Xenophobic." J'onn J'onzz smiled wryly as he returned to his human appearance, "Martians aren't much better though."
"How did you arrive on Earth?" I needed to know, because there are multiple different variations and some were more ridiculous than others.
"There was a war on Mars. Two ethnic groups who hated each other for various reasons. The White and the Green Martians… The Green Martians lost the war." He obviously left out like a million fucking crucial details, "I survived, likely the last of my kind. I came to Earth and have been living amongst humanity in relative secrecy for centuries."
"You're afraid the White Martians might come to Earth if they know you're still alive." I guessed, "Either that, or you're afraid of the other Gods, aliens and monsters that are everywhere on this insanely dangerous planet."
"I haven't met any Gods yet, but it is true that there are quite a few other refugees and powerful creatures." He seemed to be lost in thought for a moment, before adding, "One should also never underestimate humankind."
"I'm something of a human too." I snickered and leaned back in the comfy chair. I looked out towards the houses and trees passing by, all covered in snow. The roads were cleared already though.
"At least I can tell that you aren't a White Martian." John looked over at me again, "You don't feel like a Metahuman though."
"You can feel whether someone's an alien or not?" I raised an eyebrow, "Maybe you're just reading my passive thoughts subconsciously?"
"I don't need to read your thoughts to notice your sense of… Alienation." He chuckled at his own pun, then explained, "I've been on Earth for longer than I was on Mars, but that was where I was born. My homeworld. I'll never be able to let go of those precious memories and my identity as a Martian. I wouldn't want to, no matter how much it hurts."
"Okay fine, no point lying about it. But be careful not to leak this secret, because it's a dangerous one." I groaned and almost said it aloud, but instead, I just mouthed the name.
"I see. How long have you been here on Earth?" He nodded calmly and didn't seem too concerned.
"I'm nine. I got here when I was about one." I remembered it as about a year since my birth, but who the fuck knows when I was actually born and how long I actually spent on the way to Earth? The Pod had a stasis function for long trips. I basically just woke up on Earth shortly after being put in the shuttle.
"I see. Did your parents come with you?" He didn't seem to know what happened exactly, which meant he wasn't the Smallville version that knew Jor-El.
"I don't think I'm the only survivor of Krypton's destruction." I stated calmly, "But my biological parents should theoretically be dead."
"I haven't heard of any other Kryptonians on Earth, but I also haven't been searching for them." He reached out and patted my shoulder, "I'm sorry for your loss, Clark."
"It's okay. Even though I do remember them to a certain extent, I was basically a newborn baby at the time. I was lucky enough to get adopted by the Kents after arriving on Earth." I couldn't help thinking about Martha for a moment and got a little nervous. Definitely can't let a fucking telepathic detective anywhere near my pedophilic mother! He might not give a shit about me accidentally killing a dude, but he would definitely have a problem with my Mom abusing her 9 year old son…
"I spend a lot of time over my friend Lena Luthor's place lately though. Lex is kinda like a second, or maybe a third father figure to me." Better to turn his attention towards the bigger and more obvious target.
"Ah! I remember now!" He patted the steering wheel and chuckled, "Now I remember where I've seen your face before! Your picture with Lex Luthor was in the newspaper I bought earlier." He didn't reach back, but a newspaper floated over from the back seat and opened up in front of me.
"Uh, wait a second." I looked at the headline and frowned, "The truth about Lex Luthor and his stepmother?"
"It's just a tabloid, but it is quite compelling." John commented on the side as I read more.
"Of course Lilian is behind this shit…"
Basically, there was a leak from a secret conversation between Lilian and Lex. Essentially with Lilian acting like the concerned mother. Asking whether Lena was actually Lionel's daughter or her granddaughter. Also asking about whether Clark was actually Lois' son. I was adopted by the Kents after all, not their biological son.
"I remember working for Lex a few years back." The Martian Manhunter casually mentioned, "He wanted me to investigate Elizabeth Walsh's death. What I uncovered was a government conspiracy related to Lilian Luthor. You don't seem very surprised."
"From the moment I saved Lena, I've been entangled with the Luthor family drama. I don't have telepathy, but I'm not an outsider." I shrugged my shoulders and asked, "Have you dealt with a lot of cases involving magic over the years?"
"More than I'd prefer." John grimaced, "Humans can be quite barbaric and depraved when given power over one another."
"Everything is like that." I sighed again, "Humans, animals, aliens, Gods, Devils, we're all monsters on the inside."
"Are you sure you're only nine years old?" He squinted at me with his eyes glowing red for a moment, before turning brown again, "I've dealt with cases of possession before, Clark. Whether mystical, psychic or physical."
"What about reincarnation?" I didn't bother hiding it, because if he really looked into my mind, it would be much worse than revealing a few surface-level secrets.
"Reincarnation?" He seemed to think of something and then closed his eyes tightly, turning back towards the road as he opened them.
"I was a human before. Died in my thirties." I casually explained, "Not this Earth though. It involves alternate realities and shit. I'm sure you've probably dealt with Parallel Timelines if you've been on Earth for hundreds of years."
"Why would you assume that?" He snorted and started laughing, "No Clark, I have not dealt with parallel universes or timelines. The theories have been around for ages, but I wasn't aware they've been proven one way or the other."
"They exist. Or will exist. Or have existed." I wasn't actually sure how that shit worked to be honest, "Anyway, the moral of the story is that you're not gonna find my past self on this Earth. I've already looked and couldn't find some version of the past me. Probably for the best. Reincarnating as a-as an alien baby is complicated enough. Don't need other versions of myself out there."
Well, I'm sure there are other versions of Clark Kent. Probably countless. But I'm the only one in this Universe at the moment, hopefully.
"Is Reincarnation really possible?" He was probably thinking about his wife and kids. Uh, not sure how many kids he had in this timeline. Would be awkward to ask.
"If I can do it as just some random human dude, I'm sure your friends and family could theoretically do it too…" I wasn't sure how it worked with people already in the DC Universe, since there are so many fucking versions of the Afterlife here. Just like on my Earth. Except I know for a fact that there are tons of different Heavens and Hells out there.
In fact, John immediately mentioned, "Martians believe that the God of Death, H'ronmeer, ferries our souls to the afterlife. But because of the psychic imprint we can leave behind in each other's memories, I always liked to think that perhaps… My friends and family are still with me."
"I mean, I'm not exactly an expert on souls, but you could go find Lucifer and ask him about it." I didn't really worry about saying the Devil's name, because the slutty Archangel was probably getting gangbanged at the moment.
"Lucifer? The Devil of Christian Mythology?" He looked at me in confusion, "He's actually real?"
"Lucifer Morningstar, Google him. Not super hard to find." I waved my hand casually and then made another suggestion, "Or you could hire John Constantine. But he doesn't exactly have the best track record."
"Another John. Sounds promising." J'onn telekinetically folded up the newspaper and threw it in the backseat.
"Just be careful he doesn't sell your soul." I couldn't help laughing as I said, "Lucifer is actually a lot more reliable and safe compared to John Constantine."
"I'll keep that in mind then." He was quiet for a while after that. Just the sound of the heater filling the car with unnecessarily warm air. I closed my eyes and almost fell asleep.
"Hey John." I opened my eyes and looked towards him again, scanning his body down to the fucking DNA and honestly couldn't tell that he wasn't human. Kryptonians were basically in the same situation. But we're not shapeshifters. Our cells and genes are just eerily similar to humans. Even the chromosomes are the same. Otherwise we wouldn't be so compatible with humans.
"Is there some special way to tell if someone is a White Martian?"
"Who do you think is a White Martian?" He furrowed his brows and stared at me seriously.
"I'm just paranoid. I think anyone could be a White Martian." I shrugged and wasn't even lying. If they can hide on a genetic level and manipulate me telepathically, then even Lex and Lena, no, everyone could be White Martians.
"There shouldn't be that many White Martians left after the war." He said something kinda surprising to me, "There was a psychic pathogen that infected almost everyone, White and Green Martians alike. There were uninfected, I'm sure, but the war was only a few centuries ago. I would be surprised if there were more than a few hundred White Martians left. We reproduce and grow slowly, so in a few hundred years, they might have doubled at most."
"In other words, you don't think there are other Martians on Earth?" I didn't think this was the Supergirl universe, at least not from the TV Show. At least that didn't sound similar to my memories.
"If you're really worried, you could try using fire. If they're not afraid of fire, even subconsciously, then they aren't Martians." He didn't elaborate too much, but it basically coincided with what I remembered.
Mom and Dad aren't Martians in that case. Lena and Lex have also been around fire often and aren't afraid. Martians are genetically programmed to have fire as a weakness. Even their ancestors, the Burning Martians, who could manipulate fire, were still weak to fire other than their own.
"That's good to know." I closed my eyes again and started to drift off. I saw flashes of distant memories, Supergirl, various antagonists and protagonists. The Worldkillers stood out, because they were Kryptonian super-soldiers who also happened to be hot girls and they were stupidly powerful. In the show, they arrived on Earth in 1979, but they were in stasis for 10 years and released from their pods in 1989. They were adopted by humans and raised to adulthood and beyond that really, because they were all in their 30's by the time that they actually awakened their Kryptonian Worldkiller powers.
Samantha Arias, she was the main one. I can't remember the others… At least not their adoptive names. I know they were called Rein, Purity and Pestilence though. A Hispanic girl, a black girl and an Asian girl.
Three perfectly fertile female Kryptonians…
The question is whether they actually exist though. I arrived more than ten years later than in Supergirl. They also could've arrived at the same time as me. In which case, they might still be babies in stasis, or they could've gotten here earlier than me. My Pod could've just gone a little slower.
Krypton is or was 27.1 Light Years from Earth. But that's only in a straight line. I don't know whether it had to go around something or whether it stopped and started, or if it was just a one-way FTL trip. Hell, for that matter, there could have been time-travel bullshit involved or I could've started in Universe A and ended up in Universe B.
What if some pandimensional Crisis event happened that wiped out my Universe and then I was reconstituted in the new one, and all my memories from my past life are just memories. I wasn't actually a soul from another world, but just one of the myriad of Superman knock-offs out there that got his brain scrambled as an infant?
"Are you okay?" John's voice snapped me out of my autistic spiral, "Do you want to talk about it?"
"Just contemplating the possibility that I wasn't really reincarnated, but simply a baby Kryptonian that was hit with a memetic phenomenon that occurred when the universe was possibly obliterated and reformed." I opened my eyes and looked at his smirking face, "It doesn't really make much of a difference to me. I am who or whatever I am. But if you wanted to resurrect your family, just using the imprint of their memories might not be enough. You would be creating someone that was similar but the original versions might be in some hell-dimension in the meantime."
"I've certainly considered that aspect… Countless times." He shook his head, "I've heard of the mystical Lazarus Pits, which are said to have the power to bring the dead back to life."
"Mostly controlled by the League of Assassins." It was obviously a secret, but not something too ridiculously secret. In fact, my AI found unencrypted messages between Rasalghul and Talia1851 about the Lazarus Pit. Specifically, the 150 year woman was bitching about how she couldn't use the pit due to being pregnant and she was starting to feel the side effects. They also chatted about Bruce Wayne a lot. It was kinda funny actually. They treated him like a rebellious teenager and thought they'd be able to wrangle him back into the fold in 30 or 40 years at the latest. Raz thinks Batman will be his heir and son-in-law sooner or later.
Early 2000's internet is wild.
"More importantly, Lazarus Pits have a bunch of negative side-effects and it involves Hell Dimensions… They do work, on humans at least, but I wouldn't recommend them over other options."
"I considered that as well." He was silent for a while before he continued, "My wife and daughter are buried in the mountains near Denver. I make a trip there once a year to honor them."
"Uh…" I looked out the window and suggested, "Maybe we should turn around and go check on them? I heard there was an avalanche earlier…"
"You heard?" John chuckled, "Don't worry. I phased them deep inside the stone and placed a psychic barrier. An avalanche wouldn't disturb their rest."
"That's good." I was much more worried about some mad scientist getting Green Martian DNA and cloning an army of them or something. That kinda stupid shit happens all the time.
Anyway, it was a long, normal drive home. And by home, I mean the castle. Obviously I wasn't gonna bring John Jones anywhere near my mother. And apparently he already met Lex before, so I figured it wouldn't be a big deal if they met again.