Avery's Playground

Chapter 48: Avery's Playground

"Meteorite? What about meteorites?"

Jonathan was confused by his younger son's words.

"Clark's strength isn't invincible. Whenever he gets close to a meteorite, he becomes weak and sick, like he's having an acute allergic reaction."

He turned to his parents.

"Is that true? Clark, why have you and David never told your mother and me?"

Jonathan's eyes widened. The two brothers had kept such an important secret from the couple.

"You're busy enough taking care of the farms every day."

Clark forced a smile as he explained.

He was already unusual enough to worry his parents. Still, fortunately, his extraordinary abilities sometimes meant they did not have to worry about him.

"If you knew I was allergic to meteorites, I was afraid you'd worry about me even more."

"Clark..."

Martha sighed and hugged her eldest son tenderly.

"Maybe... being an ordinary person wouldn't be so bad."

Clark hesitated.

Back when he had powers, he often felt lonely because he was different from ordinary people. After his younger brother began displaying abilities too, he rarely felt that way anymore.

"It's just..."

Clark would not fall apart because he had lost his powers, but without them, wouldn't his brother be completely free of restraint from now on? He would no longer be able to stop him from doing anything.

When David saw Clark looking at him with concealed worry, he knew what he was thinking and rolled his eyes.

"Son, as long as you're healthy, that's all that matters."

The couple comforted Clark, telling him that becoming an ordinary person after losing his abilities was no big deal.

"Whether or not you can lift a pickup truck, you're still our son."

Jonathan thought for a moment. "At least from now on, you won't have to keep hiding it."

Clark also thought of several benefits to becoming ordinary. First, he would no longer have to avoid all kinds of sports at school, nor would he need to avoid Lana and embarrass himself because of her necklace.

"Lana..."

Thinking that he could join the football team and interact naturally with Lana, a faint light appeared in his eyes.

Maybe this really wasn't so bad.

"Yesterday, maybe you weren't the only one who lost your powers."

Seeing the Son of Krypton start daydreaming and forget everything else, David shook his head.

"What?"

Clark coughed, pushing those thoughts aside and putting on a serious expression as though listening intently.

"Lightning came down from the sky and struck you and Avery."

Facing his confused parents and Clark, he analyzed, "Putting you aside, why didn't Avery turn into charcoal?"

"—He most likely awakened powers."

Powerful lightning turned green by Kryptonite had passed through his body, yet he emerged completely unharmed. David did not believe Avery had undergone no mutation at all.

"This..."

Clark's expression changed.

"David, we need to go to Avery's house and take a look!"

"Avery, where did you go yesterday?"

At the dinner table, his mother was full of worry as she could not help asking.

"I went to your room to tidy up. Why was your backpack gone, and why were your clothes all tattered, like they'd been burned by fire?"

"I'm fine."

Facing his mother's concern, Avery ate the steak on his plate and answered grimly.

Something unbelievable had happened to him yesterday. After being struck by lightning, he had gained godlike strength.

But at the same time, he later discovered that something could still restrain him, who should have been invincible on this planet—meteorites.

"Whenever I get close to a meteorite, my whole body becomes weak, sick, even painful. I become weaker than an ordinary person and can't even stand."

Because his father was a geography teacher, their garage contained many specimens of different rocks, including meteorites.

After returning home, Avery had conducted many experiments and confirmed it.

"Why did I gain this kind of power, only to have such a fatal weakness?"

His eyes were fierce as he could not help clenching his fists. It made many of his wonderful plans impossible to achieve.

Avery simply could not tolerate having such a fatal weakness when he should have been able to do whatever he wanted on this planet!

"School had been out for ages. Why didn't you come home?"

Seeing his son looking gloomy and distracted, clearly not taking it seriously, Regan's face filled with anger as he harshly questioned him.

"Would you not have come out if you weren't eating? You're always this disobedient. Do you know how embarrassed you made me at school yesterday?"

The son of a geography teacher known for his strictness could not even finish his geography homework, making him the joke of the faculty office.

"Say less." At the dinner table, his wife Beth patted her furious husband's arm.

"Enough!"

But Avery, filled with resentment, suddenly exploded. He shot to his feet, crushing the knife and fork in his hands until they twisted, and glared at his father.

"I'm already eighteen. You don't get to control me anymore."

He remembered the humiliation of being publicly scolded in class yesterday.

"I don't get to control you? At this rate, you might not even get into college!"

Defied by his son, Regan ignored his wife's attempts to stop him and suddenly stood as well, glaring at his son in rage.

"Do you plan to live on welfare in the future?"

"Heh... college?"

Avery's face was filled with disdain and mockery.

"That's as far as your vision goes!"

"You have no idea what kind of power I possess now." He clenched his hand, feeling the terrifying strength that tanks and airplanes could never match, his eyes filling with fascination and greed.

"My future is beyond the imagination of some mere geography teacher at a small-town high school!"

He tossed the warped knife and fork in his hand onto the floor. Thinking of something, a somewhat feral smile appeared on his face as he wiped his hands.

"I'm leaving this place that has constrained me for eighteen years and now makes me intensely uncomfortable."

This small town was littered with meteorites. Everywhere he went, there were things that could restrain him.

But as long as he left this town, he could do whatever he wanted. The world would be Avery's playground!

After reassuring their parents that he would be fine, Clark left the house with his brother.

Walking down the muddy, waterlogged road, Clark was deeply worried.

"If Avery has powers, he probably won't use them to cause trouble..."

As he said this, he remembered Avery standing fearlessly on a bridge railing in a raging wind, listening to rock music, with that rebellious and unruly look. Even he had no confidence in his own words.

"Clark, sometimes you need to respect other people's fate."

Thinking of the cause of this whole chain of events, David could not help saying coldly.

"What do you mean?"

"Let go of your hero complex!"

Standing on a bridge railing during a thunderous windstorm, foolishly listening to music through headphones because he thought it looked cool—if he died, he could not blame anyone else.

"People should bear the consequences of their own actions."

Even if someone like that got into trouble, David could not muster the slightest sympathy.

With their parents in the house earlier, David had refrained from telling Clark to his face that he was meddling in other people's business.

"Do you like being everyone else's nanny that much?"

"He's just an adolescent teenager. Don't be so harsh on him, David."

Clark could not stand by and watch someone die. Sensing that his brother had no goodwill toward Avery at all, he wanted to persuade him to be more tolerant.

They might see Avery soon, and there absolutely could not be a conflict.

"Have you forgotten how old you are?"

David replied.

"..."

Because of his unusual circumstances, Clark had encountered many things and worries that other children had never experienced since he was young. He was generally more mature than his peers.

But he was only eighteen, after all.

Whoosh!

The two walked down the road.

Suddenly, David stopped and narrowed his eyes.

On the highway a hundred meters away, a figure sped past aggressively at dozens of times the speed of sound, vanishing into the distance like a flash of lightning. Even with his vision, he could only barely make out a blurry trail and could not see the figure clearly.

The sight felt so familiar, but...

Now an ordinary person, Clark was puzzled as to why David had stopped. He looked in that direction but saw nothing.

"What is it, David?"

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