Clark Burned by Tiny Sparks

Night fell. Stars hung high in the sky as dark clouds drifted silently over, quietly obscuring half the moon.

After handling company affairs all afternoon, Rickman returned home.

A fire burned in the fireplace. Under its flickering light, he sat in an armchair, his expression shifting unpredictably like a beast ready to devour someone.

Ever since gaining his abilities from that meteor shower over a decade ago, Rickman had enjoyed smooth sailing. He was no longer the small-time salesman anyone could order around, the one who had nearly been fired. Now, he had achieved fame and success.

"I haven't experienced the feeling of being threatened, the feeling of humiliation, in a long time, blue-clad man!"

Several small clumps of soil found on the living room floor, likely from shoe soles, had already been sent off for testing. The results would probably be ready tomorrow.

"Send the Soil from these farms to the geological survey bureau for comparison as well.

"It won't be hard to determine which farm you're connected to."

Rickman's gaze was vicious as he toyed with several sealed test tubes.

These were Soil samples he had secretly had people collect from those farms again that afternoon.

Soil testing was highly complicated. The organic and inorganic matter, as well as bacteria and viruses in Soil from different places, produced different data.

Farm Soil in particular varied greatly. Some farms raised cattle and sheep, mixing manure into the Soil. Some grew corn, some wheat, and some fruits and vegetables. Even the fertilizers and brands they used differed.

"With this, it won't be hard to drag you out, blue-clad man!"

From the moment he signed the land acquisition contracts to the moment the blue-clad man suddenly appeared in his home at noon to threaten him, only a few short hours had passed. And this was just a rural town.

He refused to believe that guy was some masked vigilante who had merely heard about the matter by chance and come to uphold justice!

"He definitely has something to do with those farmers."

A gust of wind blew in, lifting the curtains as moonlight like silver gauze spilled into the room.

At some point, an extra figure had appeared on the sofa.

"You're quite thorough."

A deep voice sounded.

"Who's there?"

Like a startled bird, Rickman sprang up from the chair beside the fireplace. He pulled out a silver pistol from beneath the seat and aimed it at the figure on the sofa.

After the blue-clad man had broken into his home and threatened him once, there could be a second time. That afternoon, he had hidden guns in many places around the house in case of emergencies.

"Every step leaves a trace."

The figure on the sofa seemed not to notice the pistol in Rickman's hand as he murmured.

"It seems someone was so pleased with getting one step ahead of me that he forgot about everything else."

When David heard that Rickman intended to send the Soil to the geological survey bureau for comparison, it was not difficult to guess what had happened.

Perhaps a certain Son of Krypton had gotten a little carried away. Or perhaps, doing something like this for the first time, he had been nervous and failed to realize he had left behind a few traces.

"They were practically about to catch your little tail!"

He slowly rose, revealing a cold face from the shadows.

"Who are you?"

Rickman's eyes widened at the purple skin. The gun in his hand gave him no sense of security whatsoever.

After merging with the second template, the vertical lines on David's chin had disappeared. However, whenever he used the Eternals' formidable physique, purple still inevitably surfaced on his skin.

He had entered at nearly the speed of sound just now, which was why his skin color had shown.

David moved, appearing before Rickman. Before Rickman could react, David grabbed him by the throat and left the villa.

Unable to breathe, Rickman saw the scenery blur. A few seconds later, the world spun around him, and he was thrown onto cold concrete.

A dark, deserted alley.

"Where is this?"

He rose in panic and barely recognized it as a street somewhere in Metropolis.

"Your burial ground."

"Who the hell are you?"

Looking at the figure radiating a terrifying aura, Rickman's heart seemed to skip a beat. His hairs stood on end as fear and fury surged through him.

Creak!

"You don't need to know who I am."

Purple beams shot from David's eyes. At some point, Rickman's gun had ended up in his hand.

After a teeth-grinding sound, he effortlessly crushed it into scrap metal, then melted it into a dazzling mass of Molten Iron that dripped between his fingers.

"You... you..."

Rickman, who had just managed to summon a trace of anger through his fear, seemed to have his throat clamped shut. He could not speak and could not believe what he was seeing.

"You only need to know that you made a couple who shouldn't have had to worry or fret argue for an entire morning.

"You only need to know that you set your sights on a house and land you never should have touched."

This matter absolutely should not end with him simply returning the land and house, with a casual, easy full stop.

David spoke coldly.

"You have to pay the price for doing wrong."

"I have a lot of money. I can give it all to you. Spare my life."

Looking at the figure whose glowing purple eyes made him tremble, Rickman's voice shook. He could not understand why using his powers to take the land of a few small-town farmers had brought such a huge disaster down on him.

Back when he had done whatever he pleased in Metropolis, nothing like this had ever happened.

First there had been the incredibly fast blue-clad man, and now there was a Purple-skinned man as powerful as some kind of monster.

"Thirty million—no, eighty million...!"

Before he could finish—

David's expression did not change. Two beams tore through the darkness from his eyes, incinerating the pleading Rickman into a pile of ash that drifted down into the filthy, cold, damp alley.

He turned and left, vanishing from the spot.

"David, you know what happened, don't you?"

The next day, outside the school gates after leaving home, Clark stopped David with worry written all over his face.

"This morning, my parents and several farmers went to the police station to report what happened, but they unexpectedly learned that Rickman had gone missing."

"Did you kill someone again?" He did not want to think in that direction, but a detective had disappeared after encountering David not long ago. It was hard not to make the connection.

That explained why David had been so calm yesterday. It had been completely unlike him.

By the end, Clark could not help letting some anger seep into his voice.

"Isn't it perfectly normal for him to flee Metropolis after you exposed his secret and he became afraid of being found out?"

David spread his hands without a care.

"With his abilities, he could live incredibly well anywhere he went."

"No..."

Clark still wanted to say something.

After entering the campus, David casually pulled a fist-sized, pitted meteorite from his pocket, forcing Clark to retreat helplessly.

"David, I only asked you two questions, and you're using a meteorite against me?"

Under the Meteorite Radiation, Clark staggered back, his chest tight and miserable as he stared at his brother in disbelief.

"Don't misunderstand. Did you forget Geography teacher Regan's extracurricular assignment?"

David tossed the meteorite in his hand.

"He told us to collect different kinds of rocks according to the methods he taught us. I was assigned to collect Meteorites and Rose Quartz."

For geography teachers elsewhere to assign students the task of collecting Meteorites would have been absurd, but in Smallville, the town that called itself the Global Meteorite Capital, Meteorites were everywhere.

Fearing the meteorite, Clark could only watch his brother leave and planned to ask again after school that afternoon.

By the time school ended and he walked out of the classroom, dark clouds had gathered low in the sky outside without anyone noticing. It looked as though a torrential downpour was on the way.

Clark looked up gloomily.

At dismissal, Chloe had pulled him aside to help proofread and revise School Newspaper articles, while David had disappeared long ago.

Having missed the school bus, he could only walk home.

Most of the time, Clark disliked his unusual powers. He decided to start walking home and see what happened, then deal with it if it really began to rain.

"Besides, I can think about how to ask David about that matter on the way."

More than ten minutes later, he walked onto a bridge.

Clark glanced up absentmindedly, and his expression changed drastically.

"Avery, what are you doing?"

A cold wind howled past. A defiant figure stood on the bridge railing with headphones over his ears, looking down at the dam beneath the bridge while irritably tossing pebbles from his bag over the side.

Clark recognized his classmate, Avery Regan, the son of their geography teacher.

But Regan had always forbidden Avery from calling him Dad at school and insisted that he call him Teacher. That very afternoon during geography class, in front of the entire class, Regan had mercilessly scolded his son for completing only half of his assignment.

"Get down! It's dangerous!"

Clark shouted.

But Avery, with loud rock music blasting through his headphones, wore a gloomy expression and rebelliousness between his brows. He did not hear him at all.

Crack!

Lightning streaked across the sky with a rumbling roar.

Seeing the dangerous figure standing in the wind, Clark hurried forward and wrapped his arms around Avery's waist, about to pull him down from the bridge to prevent him from falling or being struck by lightning.

Standing high up while wearing electronic devices made it easy to attract lightning.

Crack!

Just then, a bolt of lightning struck, hitting both of them.

The meteorite in Avery's backpack, intended for his geography assignment, suddenly blazed with light, turning the lightning connecting the two of them green.

Bzzzt! Bzzzt! Bzzzt!

"Aaaah!"

His body went rigid in a brief reaction like an electric shock. Clark cried out in pain and collapsed to the ground.

Avery fell as well. His clothes had been split apart by the lightning, with sparks still lingering on them.

"Are you okay, Avery?"

Apart from feeling slightly numb, Clark felt that there was nothing wrong with his body.

He moved to help Avery up from where he lay flat on his back, wanting to check whether he was injured.

Unexpectedly, the tiny sparks on the dizzy Avery's clothes burned him.

"Ah!"

Caught completely off guard, Clark cried out and jerked his hand back as if shocked. His eyes widened as he stared in astonishment at his painful, blistered hand.

"Why would just a tiny spark...?"

When he looked up again, sparks still burned on Avery's chest, yet Avery was completely fine. He only seemed a little dizzy as he groggily woke up.

"Clark?"

The update was a little late. I wrote an extra eight hundred words, so please keep reading. (〃'▽'〃)