kent

bruce wayne

"Everybody knows that superheroes have superhero names. So what's yours?" Clark asks, pushing his glasses up his nose in excitement. He has found it surprisingly easy to accept that his new friend is partly not human. There is a part of his imagination that has not managed to die out just yet, and even if his preferred subject in school is science, that does not mean that he has lost his taste in fantasy just yet. And now that Carly has come into his life, with hands gloved in blue fire, that spark of faith in the unexplained grows ever stronger.

Carly purses her lips. "A superhero name? Can't say that I have one."

Clark's mouth hangs agape. "We're going to have to change that." His jaw sets hard, and he gives an affirmative nod to his newly created plan of action. The group project would just have to wait.

He pulls out a piece of paper from his backpack and selects a thick black marker, ready to create an impressive list. "Any ideas?" he asks, uncapping the marker with his thin fingers.

Carly shrugs, swinging her legs back and forth over the edge of her chair. "I don't know. Supergirl?"

Clark laughs, "You're joking, right? Please tell me you're joking."

Carly rests her chin on her hand and narrows her eyes, as if squinting will pull a word from the air. "I just want it to sound cool. I never really thought about having an alternate name before."

Clark scoffs, "Amateur." He stands up to pull a dictionary from the shelf behind him. The dictionary, of course, is only a collection of cool words. He sets it on the table where it releases a heavy thud. Clark cracks open the book and thumbs through the yellowing pages. "Tell me when to stop?" He suggests.

He begins rifling through the pages, letting the sheets of paper fan downwards.

"Stop." Clark opens the book, and jabs his finger onto a random word on the page. "Umm... you can be tuberculosis?" He offers, the word rising in pitch as it comes out of his mouth.

Carly smiles, rolling her eyes. "I think I'll pass."

Clark slumps over the open pages of the dictionary. "Maybe this wasn't such a great idea." Nevertheless, he continues to flick through the pages. "Ooh, what about Tantalus?"

She is about to pipe up that she does like the sound of that word, all rhythmic consonants and delicate vowels, but Clark beats her to the punch. He shakes his head. "Too evil. And sort of tragic. I think I like happy endings."

"What about panic? But like spelled in that super cool way," Carly tells him.

He stops thumbing through the dictionary and his glasses begin to slide down his face. He pushes them up in confusion. "You don't happen to mean p-a-n-a-c-h-e, would you?"

"Does that not mean 'panic?'" Carly asks.

Clark laughs, the noise like placing hands over a warm fire. "It's pronounced pan-ash."

Carly frowns. "Panic would be a much cooler pronunciation."

"But it also sounds slightly terrifying."

She snaps her fingers, before forming the gesture into the shape of a handgun. "Exactly. Maybe that's what I'm going for."

Across the table, Clark flips through more pages, while maintaining eye contact with Carly. "You're not like a supervillain or anything, are you?" he asks. His voice is calm. Though he has seen what she is capable of, he's fairly certain that evil people would just let him get eaten by the dogs turned reptilian. And since no part of him has gone through anybody else's digestive tracts, he feels pretty safe.