Chapter Text
“ppfffffffffffff”
“pffffffffffffff”
“pfffffff… we are just receiving news of the explosion of a chemical factory in Gotham City, where Superman may have been involved. Eyewitnesses have descri… pfffffffff”
“pffffffffffffff”
“Hey, Martha! Martha! Are you hearing this?”
He had been half sleep, up until that moment. Dozing on his chair with the singing of the crickets and cicadas as background noise for an otherwise boring hot summer night. It seems like such a lazy night, without wind, soft lights, the heat making everything seem melty.
He gives the old radio a tap, but the signal doesn’t seem to be coming back. As he struggles with the antennas, he looks back at the house, looking for his wife through the kitchen window.
“Martha? I think we should give Clark a call,” he shouts, getting progressively more frustrated with the sound of the static. He gives it another tap.
And he is so focused on it that he doesn’t notice at first when the night slowly starts to submerge into a deep, eerie silence. The insects stop singing, and the dogs barking in the distance go quiet.
It is so odd, that he stops. The static seems to intensify, he can hear the buzzing of the porch’s light bulb as it starts to flicker.
“Oh, Jonathan! Oh, what is that?”
“Did you hear it? They said…”
Jonathan Kent looks up to find his wife has come out of the house, but she is not looking at him. She is in the doorway, a hand on her chest, worry veiling her eyes as she stares into the sky.
He looks back, and the little radio falls out of his hand.
They have just an instant to process this thing, getting close to them, falling out of the sky— A cannonball? A meteor? A spaceship? —when it hits the ground.
The impact raises an explosion of dirt and grass, but as the curtain of smoke clears, Martha raises her head, coughing, trying to see what it is that has fallen into their front yard. The sounds of the night return as quickly as the air clears, like nothing has happened.
Jonathan takes Martha’s hand. The radio is still on loud, ominous static.
As they come close, he has the feeling Martha already suspects what this is. This thing has made a deep hole, and Jonathan raises his flashlight to see what’s at the bottom.
Martha holds back a scream, tightening the grip on her husband’s hand.
A boy, torn red clothes, covered in the dirt of the impact, looks at them completely terrified. He stares at them like they have three heads, but slowly seems to realize there is no danger here, his face relaxes. His eyelids start to fall.
Before any of them has the chance to react—and wonder how on earth this kid is still alive—the boy loses consciousness.
Martha looks at her husband in shock.
“This feels strangely familiar,” Jonathan mutters.