Cats Eat Birds - Damian Wayne/OC

54 | TO PALACI OR NOT TO PALACI

METROPOLIS; KENT RESIDENCE | 9:25 AM | CRISTEN

A MOTORCYCLE ACCIDENT. Out of all the cover stories Bruce and Reese had considered, they chose a damn motorcycle accident. Sure, it worked: Cristen's broken arm, concussion, and long recovery time were now accounted for. But couldn't they have picked something cooler?

Looking for something to talk about that wasn't as horribly traumatizing as Cristen's last two weeks had been, she complained about it to Lois as they were packing.

"What more could you ask for?" Lois questioned. She haphazardly threw a pair of jeans into her suitcase.

"An explosion," said Cristen. "A couple of bikini models, maybe."

Lois just rolled her eyes and hip-bumped her closet open, checking her hair-rollers in a mirror.

Cristen hid her good hand under her arm and shut up, terrified of disturbing the homeliness bearing down on her. Superman lived in a normal little apartment with a normal little family—Cristen knew that. But even if she'd been aware of that life for several months, living it with them was the squeamish part. Too much of the American Dream that she'd always wanted.

Reese felt the same. He and Cristen would share wide-eyed looks behind the Kent's backs, not out of rude secrecy, but of starry-eyed embarrassment. Each quiet exchanged said the same: Holy shit, that's Superman and his super-kids, arguing over pancakes like they haven't saved the whole universe before.

They shared the same look as Lois turned away, since she was alarmingly collected in the face of Batman cover stories, Leagues of Assassins, and traumatized kids.

"Mom!" Called two voices from the hall. Jon's dropped away so his sister could speak, the two of them tromping through the doorway. Lara put her hands on her hips, "Have you seen my and Jon's headphone adapter-thingy?"

"Under the couch," Lois threw a set of slippers onto the mountainous take pile. "And it's Jon and I, sweetpea."

Both of them swivel their heads that way and bounced off. Reese glanced at Lois, "Why don't they just use their x-ray vision?"

Lois put her hands on her hips as she stood before her and Clark's closet, the same pose Lara had adopted, only more refined. "No powers in the house. It teaches them... boundaries, respect, good-parenting things, yadda-yadda. You can, of course, Cristen. Clark likes to cheat too."

Again, Cristen flushed. "I won't. To set an example for Lara."

At her house, there was no such rule. Reese and Lance felt that Cristen's timeframe for superpowers should be decided by Cristen. Not like her insight could exactly stop insight-ing in the first place. They had always been itchy with rules, like if Cristen felt too sheltered she'd hop the next train out. Cristen agreed; for a long time, "half-human" had not been the blissful relief it was for her now.

The appreciative grin Lois shot her helped a little. Again, brother and sister bounced into their room. "We checked," said Jon, reminding Cristen that he was still younger than her with that cute squeak in his voice. "It wasn't there."

"Cristen!" Cried Lara. Clearly, the boundaries Lois had been talking about were much different from Cristen's: the girl scooped up her hands and squeezed them. "Can you help us find them? We can't use powers in the house."

Jon scolded, "Lara."

Frozen, Cristen blinked. "Um..."

"Oh," said Lara. She sunk back, "I forgot. I'm sorry."

Alfred called the loss of her powers a version of withdrawal. Cristen's planet, though definitely still under Rao's influence, had a specially-developed planetary shield that changed the light from red to yellow. The energy's influence was only a theory on Krypton, which rejected Palaci after the shield's development to keep their people from going power-crazy in yellow sun galaxies. Cristen's people evolved to accept their abilities. That also factored into how Cristen had been born on Earth, in a yellow-sun galaxy, and exposure to a red sun would drag her down for several weeks. She'd be effectively powerless until the end of April; a week from today.