After hearing the two sons recount what had happened, Jonathan learned that after Clark took the man away, David had followed out of concern. While climbing over the school fence, he had accidentally torn his clothes. Then he had seen that Clark had already rendered the man unable to fight...
"You did very well, Clark. You saved your brother and everyone else."
After considering it for a moment, Jonathan spoke seriously.
"Although we asked you to hide your abilities, that doesn't mean you should stand by and do nothing when someone is in danger.
"We believe God gave you these abilities for a reason."
"God?" Clark had already felt awkward because he thought his brother had not needed saving at all. Hearing that made him instinctively uncomfortable.
"What is it?" Jonathan noticed that something seemed off about Clark's expression.
"Nothing. It's just that the lunatic who wanted to kill everyone at the dance also kept saying God gave him his powers."
David smiled.
"By God, I mean Heaven. Not necessarily that particular one." Jonathan scratched his cheek. Neither he nor Martha was a devout believer.
"By the way, after you subdued that man, how was he?"
"He... he..."
Clark could not speak. How was he supposed to answer?
Earlier, when he had asked what was going on with his brother's body, David had not answered. He had said they would talk once they got home, but first Clark had to keep it secret and not tell their parents for now.
"Clark, you'll keep my secret, right?" His brother's earlier voice echoed in his ears.
"Of course." That had been his answer.
"Clark shoved him down, and he hit the ground so hard he ended up in a vegetative state," David said with a smile.
"What?"
Jonathan and Martha were so shocked they nearly rose from the sofa. They quickly looked at Clark, whom they had just praised.
"Dad, Mom, you know Clark has always been incredibly strong."
David continued with a cheerful smile. "I don't think you can blame him."
Clark felt that phrasing sounded awfully familiar. It reminded him of what he had said to Chloe and the others a few days ago when he was late for school: "You know David has never really cared much about me..."
"Clark, is that really what happened?"
"Yes... yes."
When his parents looked at him questioningly, what else could Clark say? He had promised to keep the secret, so he gritted his teeth and confirmed it.
"Clark, starting tomorrow, you need to secretly practice controlling your strength on the farm."
Jonathan abruptly stood up, his expression turning serious as he worriedly gripped his son's shoulder.
"What if next time you use a little too much strength and accidentally kill someone?"
"Okay... okay."
Faced with his father's worried yet forceful words, Clark had no way to explain himself. He could only nod.
Jonathan and Martha were kind, but they were not rigidly moralistic. Clark had merely made an accident.
More importantly, the man had been a murderer who wanted to massacre the students. He should have been sentenced to death anyway.
So they only sternly reminded Clark again and again to practice controlling his strength, planning to supervise him starting tomorrow.
"You're too shameless, David."
In the barn, after climbing up to the second-floor loft and finally escaping their parents' nagging, Clark, who had taken the blame, could not help feeling resentful.
And his little brother was quite vindictive too.
"Practicing your strength more won't hurt you."
Under a sky full of stars, David stood by the window with his arms folded, looking into the distance. He glanced at Clark.
"Look at how you dealt with that guy today. You looked like someone trying to help a hedgehog cross the road."
Touch him, and it was wrong. Do not touch him, and it was wrong. Clark had been completely at a loss.
"I've always been able to control my strength at an ordinary human level."
That was true. Otherwise, countless accidents would have happened around Clark over the years.
"But what if your opponent is stronger than an ordinary person, and you need to deal with him?"
"How could there be that many people with superpowers for me to deal with?"
Clark felt David was deliberately using this as an excuse to give him more work.
Their town was so small, and he had always avoided trouble. It was not as if he could be especially unlucky, with incidents finding him every so often, every single one involving people with superpowers.
"..."
David did not know what to say after hearing that.
The meteor shower Clark had brought had already created no fewer than seven or eight superpowered individuals who had become local urban legends.
As for the rest, who knew how many there were?
"David, can you tell me about your body now?"
Clark looked around and asked in a low voice.
"Do you mean before, or recently...?"
They had needed to hurry back to school and change clothes earlier so no one would notice anything suspicious. Now that they were home, David had no reason to refuse.
"I've been like this since birth."
David answered.
Now that he had revealed his abilities to Clark, he would no longer hide the truth about his physique.
"Since birth?"
Clark's eyes widened in disbelief. "Are you sure?"
"What? You can accept that you casually exposed your powers for more than ten years, while I hid mine perfectly?" David glanced at Clark and asked back.
"To be honest, a little..."
Clark's feelings were complicated.
Before he had grown up, he had also believed it was a gift from Heaven, that he was stronger than anyone else.
When he thought of how happy he had been about it as a child, while David, who had been born with the same gifts, watched coldly from the side...
He felt... deeply ashamed.
"Are you really sure? I mean... how do you know you were like this from birth?"
"Memory."
David tapped his temple with a finger.
In fact, few people knew that Thanos, the Mad Titan who struck fear throughout the Universe, had dreamed of becoming a scientist when he was young—and had achieved that dream when he grew up.
The Titan where he had lived since childhood was technologically advanced, yet it did not even have weapons. There were no murders either; everything was incredibly harmonious.
"Until Thanos, the Eternal Deviant, was born. To investigate what made him different, he embarked on the path of science.
"His method of investigation was dissection—from small animals, to classmates, to the biological mother who gave birth to him..."
Thanos could be said to possess a super brain as well. After leaving Titan, he had relied solely on the scientific knowledge he possessed to become the second-in-command aboard a space pirate ship, beginning his journey as a dark overlord.
David had not lied when he told Clark he learned fighting techniques from television.
He really could learn just by watching.
"You have to keep my secret, Clark."
"After using this to make me take the blame for turning someone into a vegetable?"
Clark asked resentfully.
"Clark, think about what I look like when I use my powers. Do you want our parents to worry?"
David said.
He planned to tell Jonathan and Martha after they had encountered more unusual people on Earth. By then, they would be much more capable of accepting it.
"And one Clark is already enough to keep them worrying all day."
Let them have one normal son they did not need to worry about, at least for now.
At the mention of their parents, Clark's attitude softened.
"By the way, where did you learn the method you used to turn that man... into a vegetative state?"
"Don't tell me it was from television too."
When the subject came up, his tone became extremely serious again, concern in his eyes.
There was no way television could teach someone the technique of precisely controlling their strength well enough to slap the back of someone's head and leave them in a vegetative state. Nor could it be mastered through empty practice. It required repeated experiments.
In other words, there might have been more than one person his brother had turned into a vegetative state...
"Gotham isn't far from Metropolis."
David turned and headed downstairs, tossing out a sentence.
"During long school breaks, I used to go there occasionally.
"You know what kind of place it is."
The people were simple and honest, and villains were everywhere. If they executed nine out of ten people, perhaps one would be wronged; if they executed half of them, they might let several escape.
It was not difficult to find villains who deserved to be executed a hundred times over and use them to practice this technique. He had learned it after only a few tries.
"I'd long been tired of those stories where superheroes lock people in prison, only for the supervillains to escape over and over again."
He had decided to do something for this world. For example, create a few vegetative patients, earn some Emotion Points, and make the world a little more peaceful in the future.
"Gotham?"
The name of that place seemed to possess a demonic quality that inspired fear and lured people into corruption. When Clark heard that his brother had been there, he froze for a moment before his expression drastically changed.
This update was a little late. I wrote five hundred extra words.
Before you continue