slayers_desire | studying Kryptonite artifacts with Clark

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studying Kryptonite artifacts with Clark

April had everything set up, and ready for Clark's arrival. She had all the Kryptonite artifacts laid out on the living room floor. Sorted as best as she could according to size.

And on a side table was the files April received from older Superman. Also ready for Clark.

Hidden in a back closet was the arctic gear, and it was almost easy to forget how cold the adventure was, especially now that she was safe and warm back in her Kansas apartment.

To ensure a safe PINpoint location, April had chosen a caretakers closet that was hardly ever used in the apartment building. From there it was only two floors up to her room. At least via PINpoint was the fastest way for Clark to get to the apartment, without his powers.

But hopefully, they would find a way to return his powers to him. Or at least provide him with more knowledge on his heritage while he was without them.

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Clark arrives promptly, taking great care to make sure nobody notices his arrival. He has to be extra careful now that his supersenses are gone. But he gets up to her floor without a fuss, and knocks on the door. "Hey, it's me."

He's a little nervous about being in a room with this much kryptonite, even though he knows it can't hurt him. But at the same time, it's pieces of his planet. The only physical surviving pieces of Krypton that he'll ever know. And he's curious to find out what he can about it, now that he doesn't need to worry about being hurt by it.

"Oh John you made it..." April joked as she opened the door. "Opps. Clark."

Of course the smile on her face tells Clark he is the only one. "Come on in, I have everything laid out and ready."

He grins at her, and gives her arm a light, playful bump with his knuckles. "You'd better behave, woman."

He stops and whistles when he sees how organized the artifacts are. "Wow. You weren't kidding."

"Me behave? Impossible." April chuckled. She gestured over to the files. "Older Superman also offered all his files on Krypton, and General Zod. And the Phantom Zone. He wasn't sure what would be the same."

He goes over to the files almost immediately. Some of the writing is in English and some is Kryptonian, and to his relief, he can read all of it. "Our written language is the same, anyway." He flips through it briefly, not able to read at superspeed, but just catching glimpses of the information. "This is... an amazing amount of stuff. I don't even know where to start."

"I will make a cup of tea. And you start at page one. Or the first artifact." April chuckled. It was nice to see Clark could still read his native tongue.

"Let's do the artifacts first," he says, putting the files aside for now. "I don't know how much of it's the same as here, but the artifacts we know for sure."

The first thing he looks at is the somewhat large, green-eyed mask that had been at the back of the vault. "This was in China, behind the wall where one of the stones had been kept." He looks at it, and turns it over. There's Chinese writing on the back, but unfortunately that's not one of the languages that Clark can read. "There's writing here."

Coming over with two cups of tea, April glanced over his shoulder. "Chinese writing? Not one of the languages I read. But I could try my gifts."

Setting down the tea, she touches the mask to use her visions, hoping that the writing would become clear to her.

The writing is a sort of poetry, a reminder to the faithful that the Traveler would one day come for the elements, and that they needed to keep it hidden and safe until his arrival. There's no real sense of time associated with it, either when it was written, or when this Traveler was expected to show up, just that it is old. Very old.

Clark watches her closely, cradling his cup of tea in his hands, and wondering what she sees when she does this. If it's visual, or if she hears voices, or if it's something completely beyond the ability of human language to describe.

"It is a poem. It says the faithful must keep the mask safe and hidden, until the Traveler comes for it. And it is old."

She returns the artifact to him. Catching his glance at her. "What?"

He reaches out and touches the green eyes, feeling that slick sensation of kryptonite under his fingers. "I wonder if that's why they put kryptonite in it. To keep other Kryptonians away until they knew the right one was coming. But it wasn't soon enough for them." He frowns a little. "I wonder how they got the kryptonite. And... if it's that old, how they knew I'd be coming."

He tries not to look too abashed by being caught thinking deep thoughts. "Just... thinking things. I'd never really thought a lot about what your powers must feel like, when you use them." He's learning a lot about things he's been taking for granted, both his powers and hers.

"Prophecies usually originate from strange sources. Look at how many the ancient Aztecs created."

April smiled. "They are hard to explain. It is like a whispering of voices that enter my mind. And tell me what I need to know."

"True." He flips the mask over again, looking at the writing on the back again, and running his fingers over the slots where the two kryptonite eyes are embedded into the artifact. "So we know that kryptonite must have existed long before Krypton was destroyed." That's something he didn't know before, in any case.

He listens to her with his full attention when she describes her powers. "Just voices, or do you get... impressions and emotions as well?"

"At first it is the voices. Then I get impressions of other things and start to get a flickering of sight. I then channel that to probe deeper into what I need to know. Sometimes it is clear... and sometimes not."

He nods a little as she speaks. "It sounds complicated, just trying to see one thing. Or everything. You do a great job balancing it all out."

"It takes control. And when I push myself to the extreme it can make me tired. But at times it is worth it."

"Like when I get to help others."

He smiles, and touches her hand. "I appreciate it." Just as he used his powers to help her, she uses hers to help him. It's something that he knows is special between them, and being human has given him a much greater appreciation of that fact.

"The one person I like helping the most is you." April caresses his cheek. She went back to the pile and offered him the next artifact.

"What about this one?"

He turns the artifact over in his hands. It's a thick wrist cuff, like the type that ancient archers might have used to protect their skin from a bowstring. It's predominantly leather, and covered in exquisite beadwork, but if one looks closer, the green beads are actually tiny shards of kryptonite.

"Looks Kawatche," he comments, running his fingers over the beads. There's no writing to examine, because of the nature of the Native American tribe that it belongs to, but the markings are still significant. "Looks like it's meant to lend Naman's skills to the archer so he gets a clean kill."

"Must be another old artifact. And another mystery to figure out." April never knew so many different cultures had artifacts that actually belonged to another world. To Clark's world.

((ooc bed time for me))

"A few hundred years," he agrees. "I can take this to Joseph Willowbrook at Central Kansas; he'd know more about it. He's helped me learn more about his people before." And tried to help protect him from Jeremiah, when the younger member of the tribe found the Starblade and believed he was the protector and that Clark was a false prophet, and tried to stab him to death. And nearly succeeded.

"It's too bad we don't still have the artifact that housed the first stone," he says, setting the wrist guard aside. "It was an Egyptian statue of some kind. I never paid much attention to it because I was brainwashed at the time."

"Chinese. Kawatche. Egyptian. Three of the oldest cultures had artifacts that celebrated the Traveler. That is pretty significant."

"I wonder if perhaps Kryptonians had visited Earth before. Got their impression that humans were savages because of the era they were here. And in some cultures were thought as Gods."

"And Mayan," he adds, nodding towards a carved figure (http://www.precolumbianjade.com/images/maya.h12.jpg) that could be jade if not for the glittering sheen of kryptonite. "That's where the stone of water was found, in Honduras." Four cultures, spread across the globe, and why not? A species that arrived from space wouldn't necessary visit the same location twice.

He looks up at her speculation, thinking. "That would make sense... I know that Jor-El visited Earth in the fifties, but I always got the impression that he wasn't the first. And if earlier visitors weren't so careful about hiding their powers, they might've been mistaken for deities or prophets. And there is... a bit of an ingrained cultural arrogance." He doesn't like speaking ill of his people, but it's true and unavoidable. The only reason he's turned out so well is that he was raised in a human environment, and taught to respect all life.

"It might be something to ask Jor-El, when you see him again." April suggested. She wondered why they would visit. Where they looking for something? Or somebody?

"Maybe. I'm not sure he knows that I know about him and Louise. I know that his father sent him here as a rite of passage... I wonder if that's something all Kryptonians used to do, to get firsthand experience with aliens, or the abilities we have here that we don't get under the red sun." He looks thoughtful, and slightly disturbed. "That's another thing. Knowing that on Earth, Kryptonians are like gods. Some of them might have started to believe it." From his experiences as Kal-El, he knows all too well how easy it is to look at creatures, small and fragile, and think of yourself as rightfully superior in body and mind.

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