Orville glanced at his skinny younger brother, and calmly removed the stalk of grass from his own mouth. "We chew on it because we don’t have anything better to do, and of course it tastes like grass! It is grass!"

"Oh. Right," Clyde said and rubbed his discarded dirty blade of grass into the dirt with the toe of his dirty boot. "Why don’t we go to town and get a new teevee today? That way we can watch it instead of watching the goats eat grass," he suggested in a bright tone.

Orville shook his head and leaned on the fence as he chewed on his blade of grass. He shook his head. "You ask me that question every day, Clyde," he said with a sigh. "And every day, I give you an answer. You should know it by now."

"Uh," Clyde squinted his eyes as he always did when he tried to think about something. "I don’t know the answer, Orville."

The stocky older brother sighed and very calmly spat his blade of grass onto the ground and turned to look at his younger brother. "You’re an idiot, you know that?"

"Well, yeah. I know that, cause everyday you tell me I’m an idiot at least..." He blinked and lifted his hands to look at his fingers to try to count.

"You’re so stupid you think being called an idiot is a good thing," he said in a dull voice and stared off at the goats in the field.

Clyde ignored his brother and went on trying to count his fingers. By the time he got up to three, he’d forgotten what he’d been trying to count in the first place and stopped because it was hurting his head. He looked over to his brother, who’d found a fresh piece of Timothy grass to chew on. "Orville, why don’t we get a teevee? Everyone else has at least two, and we don’t even have one."

Orville lifted one eyebrow and shook his head, wishing his brother had more sense than the goats they took care of. "There’s no point for us to have a teevee. We’re too far away from town to get a cable line out here," he said in a very patient tone and looked at his brother’s bewildered expression. "That means if we had a teevee, it wouldn’t have any channels on it."

Clyde muttered to himself and then leaned over the wooden fence and stared at the goats for a very long time. Orville stood next to him, chewed on a blade of grass and stared at the goats too.

Three hours later, neither one of them had moved at all, but the goats had left a bald spot in the field and moved on to greener pastures. The two brothers were now staring at a spot in the field which had no grass in it, and no goats either.

"I got an idea," Clyde said in a tone that sounded very matter-of-fact.

"Yeah?" Orville asked without moving or blinking. He thought his brother would tell him his idea was to go and have lunch like he did everyday about this time.

"How about we get a Ridector Satellite Dish? We could get more than seven hundred channels with it. And if we buy it before the first of the month, we get a free television with it," Clyde said giving him a very hopeful look.

Orville looked at his brother and stared at him for a long moment. He had to make sure that the guy he was looking at was really Clyde. He didn’t believe it was him. It wasn’t like his brother at all to say something that sounded intelligent.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Clyde whined, fearing the look his brother was giving him. The last time someone had given him a look like that, it’d been his father. At the time, his father had been in the process of releasing a particularly powerful gas attack. The goats had been quite startled by the noise, and one very old one had keeled over and died.

"Clyde, that’s the most intelligent thing I ever heard you say," Orville said looking at him in amazement.

"It was?" Clyde wondered sounding pleased and awed at the same time.

"How’d you know about that satellite thing?" Orville asked.

"It says so right here," Clyde said and pulled a folded newspaper page out of his shirt pocket.

Orville snatched the paper, unfolded it and blinked. There was nothing on it but a blond woman wearing just her underwear. "Wha... eeehhhhraaa..." he moaned and drooled on the paper. "I...uh...not that I’m complaining, but I don’t see where it says anything about..."

Clyde snatched the paper and turned it over, then handed it back. Now Orville saw the advertisement for a satellite dish and it said they could get over seven hundred channels. If they ordered before the first of the month, they’d get a free television. "Free television and all those channels, but where do we get this thing from?"

"We can get it from the T-Mart in town, says so right here," Clyde said and pointed at the bottom corner of the paper.

Orville saw the part about T-Mart offering the satellite dish, and he also saw the price tag. "Six-hundred-ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents!" he gasped and shook his head. "We don’t have enough money."

Clyde hung his head and looked very sad. "Does that mean we can’t get it?"

"Yes. That means we can’t get the satellite dish," Orville said and patted his brother’s shoulder. "I’m sorry, but hey, we can keep on saving our money until we got enough to get it."

"I might be slow, but I’m not stupid," Clyde said slowly and scratched his head. "When you say we’ll save up, you really mean we’re gonna forget about it by tomorrow and then we’ll never get it anyway."

"No. Really!" Orville said and gave his brother’s arm a nudge. "We’ll get it. We will!"

Clyde shrugged his bony shoulders and walked away into the barn. Orville was left behind leaning on the fence. He felt very sorry for his younger brother. The poor kid seemed to have been overlooked by everyone all his life. He was much too skinny and he had an overbite so bad that it made him look ugly. He worked very hard though to make up for the fact that he was stupid and ugly. Clyde was a good boy, and he deserved better than what he had.

Orville walked away to the house thinking he’d go make lunch. Maybe he’d bake some cookies and fix some Ninny weed tea. Maybe that would cheer up Clyde, he thought. While he was in the kitchen doing the cooking, he decided to look through the newspaper for a job. He thought that if he got a job he’d be able to get his brother a television and a satellite dish. While he was looking through the pages though, he happened to find an article about a young man by the name of Lex Luthor. It said that he was the richest man in the whole town. He went out to the back porch where he kept all the old newspapers to find out more about the young man.

He spent all afternoon reading about Lex Luthor. He looked at a lot of pictures of him, and noticed that there was an overgrown teenager hanging around him in some of those photos. He didn’t think much of the kid, but he thought a lot about Lex Luthor. As he read, he learned that the young man had a father who lived in Metropolis who was even richer.

~*~

He called out the back door for Clyde to come in for lunch. Then, he put a fresh homemade potpie on the table and began to cut it up into pieces. Just as he got the first piece on a plate, his brother came through the door and started to reach for the food.

"Stop!" Orville barked, and the younger man froze in mid-reach. "Go wash your hands!"

"Uh...oh yeah," Clyde said and backed up. He went to the sink to wash up, and then he sat down at the table to eat.

Orville sat down too and smiled because his pie had come out nicely. It was delicious. "I know how we can get that satellite dish."

"Really?" Clyde asked, looking up from his plate. Gravy dribbled down his chin and he wiped it on his shirtsleeve. "How?"

"Well, there’s this rich guy who lives in town by the name of Lex Luthor," Orville explained very carefully. He knew he’d have to go very slowly and give as many details about Lex Luthor as he could. Clyde wouldn’t understand anything unless he heard all the irrelevant details for himself. He had to know exactly who Lex was, where he lived, how old he was, and what color socks he liked to wear. Orville didn’t know anything about the rich man’s socks, but he knew Clyde would need to know. So, he told him that Luthor liked to wear black socks. He figured that was probably true, because in most pictures Lex Luthor had been wearing all black.

Clyde chewed at the last bite of his potpie, and wiped the gravy from his fingers onto his jeans. "Orville?"

Orville stopped explaining things about Lex Luthor. "What?"

"Why’re you telling me about this guy?" he wondered and glanced at a newspaper photo of Lex which was sitting on the table.

"Oh, cause we’re gonna kidnap him," Orville said matter-of-factly.

Clyde blinked, and then helped himself to a second piece of potpie. Very slowly, he ate about half of it and then looked at his brother. "Why are we gonna kidnap him?"

"So then his rich father will give us money to give him back," Orville explained and went on eating potpie.

Clyde stopped eating and stared at him. "How much money?"

"Just what we need to get the Satellite dish," Orville stated happily. "Six-hundred-ninety-nine-dollars and ninety-nine cents!"

Clyde squinted his eyes to think for a long time. Eleven minutes and forty-three seconds ticked by on the kitchen clock before he was through thinking. "Isn’t it against the law to kidnap someone?"

"Oh." Orville sat up straighter in his chair. He’d been hoping that Clyde wouldn’t think to ask that question. "Yeah. Ummmm...we’ll just get some ski masks or something," he said with a grin. "That way no one will know who we are when we do it and then we won’t get arrested!"

"Oh," Clyde said dully and thought about that for another eleven minutes and forty-three seconds. "Okay! When’re we gonna kidnap him?"

"I don’t know. Paper says he likes to hang around at the Talon every morning before work and drink coffee with his friends," Orville explained and pointed at a newspaper article with a picture of a smiling Lex Luthor beneath it. "We’ll have to wait until he goes there and then we’ll go get him."

"How are we gonna get him to go with us?" Clyde wondered and took a sip of his goat’s milk.

"Oh, that’s easy. We’ll just get dad’s old shotgun out of the barn and wave it at his friends. We’ll just say we’ll shoot them if he doesn’t go with us," he said and looked a little frightened.

"Oh," Clyde said and looked back at him very blankly. He ate a bite of his pie, and thought about that for eleven minutes and forty-three seconds more. "Um..."

"What now?" Orville asked impatiently.

"Where do we find ski masks? No one goes skiing around here!" Clyde complained.

Orville blinked and then scowled at his brother, and got angry with him for asking such an obviously stupid question. "Oh go on and take care of the goats! Leave this up to me!"

"Oh, all right," Clyde said and left the kitchen. He was very happy to go back to his goats. Kidnapping someone sounded like a very complicated thing, and he had a very bad headache already. He didn’t want to think anymore. He trusted that Orville would find ski masks for them, and take care of all the rest of the details just like he always did.

~*~

Late the same night in the vicinity of a high security prison on the east side of Metropolis, lights searched the grounds and alarms were going off. Dogs and security guards and police were frantically searching the open area that surrounded the prison. Spotlights roamed around the fields while two helicopters buzzed furiously in the sky.

One security man jogged over the uneven gravel parking lot to a square-headed prison warden who looked very worried. "Sir," the young guard said frantically. "They’re not on the grounds, and they’re nowhere inside. All the other prisoners are accounted for."

The warden nodded, and his beady eyes darkened with anger. He held his hands together neatly behind his back and glared up at the searching helicopters. "Let’s start searching outside of our boundaries."

"They could have slipped out hours ago, sir," The security man said. "If they got lucky, they might have been able to hijack someone on the road," he added, motioning with his head toward the road that lead to Metropolis.

"Good thinking," the warden said. "Call the Metropolis police and have them set up road blocks."

"Yes sir!" The guard trotted away to carry out his orders.

Once the young guard was gone, the Warden sighed and stared upwards at a helicopter buzzing around in the distance. He hoped that the two men who’d escaped would be found before they hurt someone again.

~*~

The following morning the radio in Lex Luthor’s Lamborghini emitted a very serious male voice as he drove.

...and sometime last night between nine p.m. and midnight, two death row inmates escaped from the Kansas State Prison. The two men are highly dangerous individuals with such marks on their records as rape and multiple homicides. Emanuel Palej and Ross Lewis are the two men who escaped. Palej is six foot five, one hundred sixty pounds with dark hair and a very deep scar on the right side of his neck. Lewis is six foot tall, two hundred twenty pounds and has dirty blond hair. Citizens of Metropolis have been warned to keep their doors locked and not to pick up any hitchhikers. Roadblocks have been set up all over the city in an attempt...

The radio made a frustrated sound and Lex looked down at it. Clark was pressing the buttons as he searched for something better to listen to. Lex glanced over to his passenger, giving him a look that meant he had to agree. News did get boring after a while, he thought. Clark got a station to come in and Lex raised one brow. He heard metallic jamming, and pummeling percussion that blended in neatly with the voice of a man who sounded like he was in the process of vomiting. Just hearing it was making his throat hurt. He decided to keep his opinion of the music to himself. After all, his father listened to opera, and that was by far much worse than this brand of music. He grinned politely at Clark.

Clark raised his brows at him. "That’s the look I give Pete when he puts his kind of music on and I’m trying to be polite."

Lex looked back at the road, steering the car. "It doesn’t bother me."

"It does bother me though. Makes my throat hurt listening to someone sing like that," Clark said and changed the channel.

Lex held back a smile, but he couldn’t help a smirk. Then he heard the whining, screeching noise of a girl who was pretending she was making music by screeching at the top of her voice. He felt his spine shivering and his eardrums were about to stage a revolt! "Clark, change that! Ow! My ears!" He rubbed at one ear.

"That was Scary Carrie," Clark said and kept switching the channels.

Lex felt his ears trying to close themselves when he heard a jangling country ballad, and then he felt like leaping out of the car when he heard what sounded like a woman in labor attempting to sing, or perhaps she was yodeling. At last Clark settled on the local modern rock channel that was playing something that sounded like a blend between metal and rap, and had a touch of country to it. The singer didn’t sound like he was attempting to vomit, and the percussion in it didn’t feel like it was inside his skull. Lex relaxed in the driver’s seat.

Of course, now that they’d finally found a decent station to listen to, they’d gotten to their destination. The growl of the Lamborghini’s V12 engine subsided to a purr as he slowed to look for a parking spot that was both legal and close to the Talon. After a moment’s searching, he found one in front of a large crate of watermelons that was sitting on the sidewalk.

They climbed out of the car, shut the doors and as they walked away from it, Lex touched a control on his key chain that activated the car’s keyless entry system. Both of them walked down the street. Lex said something that made Clark laugh, and then the two disappeared around the corner.

When they were out of sight, two men walked out from behind the crate of watermelons and both of them looked in the direction Lex Luthor and the overgrown kid had gone. "You got the ski-masks, Clyde?" Orville asked his brother.

"Yeah, I got them!" Clyde said with a furious nod of his head.

"Let’s do this now. Just like we practiced it, okay?"

"Okay." Clyde walked along with his brother as they followed their intended prey around the corner.

~*~

Lana put an extra-large Styrofoam cup full of coffee down on the counter, and Chloe handed her a five-dollar bill. While one girl was getting change out of the register, the other was putting cream and sugar in her coffee.

"You’re kind of quiet this morning," Lana said with a curious expression.

Chloe looked up at her friend while she pressed a lid on her coffee cup. "Oh, I’m just a little preoccupied about the..." She trailed off when she saw Lex’s car pass by out the window and spotted Clark in the passenger seat. More than likely they were heading this way to have coffee.

She’d gone with Clark to the Homecoming Dance, then driven him home and kissed him on his front door step. She’d never been so happy before or since that night. Clark was hers, and she’d finally won his heart. A few days later though, a very strange accident had happened, and she’d discovered that her dream man who was finally hers was in fact a meteor freak. She’d discovered that little fact when she’d run him over with a Land rover quite accidentally.

It was so ironic that she had to wonder if some higher power was playing a cruel joke with her. In the past she’d crossed a few meteor freaks and she’d been very sorry for it. It seemed to her that she knew some of the kids who’d been mutated by the meteor rocks always ended up snapping eventually. She worried that if Clark was a meteor freak, he’d snap too. She was afraid of him, but she didn’t want to be. She was afraid to even mention to him that she knew he was in fact, ‘different.’ It seemed that he worked hard to conceal what he was. What if he got angry at her? Knowing now that he could outrun a car and then get run over by it too without getting so much as a scratch made her wary. She wished that she had never found out about any of it.

"Chloe?" Lana said in a complaining tone. "What is it?"

"Oh, nothing. Really, I’m fine!" she said with a bright smile. She picked up her coffee cup, and looked for an excuse to leave. She had been planning to stay and chat with Lana and maybe offer her a ride to school. Clark was on his way here though, and she didn’t really want to talk to him. "I, um, I have some things I have to get done at the Torch, I’ll see you in class." She rushed away.

Lana got preoccupied by another customer and didn’t get a chance to call Chloe back to make her talk. She wasn’t about to forget her strange demeanor though. Ever since the Homecoming Dance her friend had been acting very tense, but she couldn’t think of a reason for it. Chloe finally had Clark, which was what she’d wanted since the beginning of high school. Now he was hers, and she should have been happy but she wasn’t.

~*~

Chloe pushed the door of the Talon opened and almost swore when she saw Clark and Lex coming toward her. She could make an excuse about not staying with them for coffee, but she couldn’t just run off without saying hello to the guy who was practically her boyfriend. She saw two men come around the corner. One of them looked straight at her and then gave his companion a shove into a store. She thought that was pretty odd, but didn’t give it much thought.

As Clark came closer, she felt her tension melting away. It seemed so odd sometimes that she felt safe when he was close to her. Yet when he wasn’t around, she would remember he was a meteor freak and she’d feel nervous about him all over again. She put on her perky attitude for him. "Hey, Clark. Hey Lex!" she greeted holding her enormous coffee in one hand.

"Morning," Lex said with a grin, and hands in his pants pockets.

Clark smiled at her and his eyes sparkled and he grinned. He almost seemed to be a little shy around her, and she thought that was charming. "Hey Chloe," he said softly and looked at her like she was the only woman in the world. Chloe felt herself melting and grinning back stupidly.

Lex smirked, gave Clark’s arm a nudge and then motioned at the Talon’s door, "I’ll be inside."

Chloe shook her head. "Don’t take off on my account, Lex. I have to go anyway. Things to do for the Torch."

"You can come sit with us, Chloe," Clark said, smiling at her, and looking like he was trying hard to not smile at her like that.

Chloe felt her lips parting. She had to shake her head to break the spell he was casting on her with those beautiful eyes. Was that a part of his freakishness, she wondered. "Sorry, Clark. I really have to go, but I’ll see you for lunch?"

"Yeah," he said sounding disappointed and his smile faded.

"Great!" Chloe smiled and walked by him feeling relieved. She knew that Clark was watching her go, but didn’t turn around.

Lex noticed that Clark was watching Chloe walk away. Instead of admiring the scenery though, he looked disappointed and hurt. Lex knew what was coming. He’d seen girls acting like that around other guys and he’d had them act that way around him. The sassy blonde girl was avoiding Clark. Whatever the reason was, it didn’t matter. There was nothing Clark or anyone else could do to fix it. She was eventually going to break up with him, he thought. "Come on," he said and opened the Talon’s door.

Clark walked in, head hanging a little. Lex went in afterwards. When the door was closed and Chloe’s car had gone around the corner, two men emerged from a store just down the street and walked toward the Talon. One of them was concealing a shotgun inside of his jacket.

~*~

Lex and Clark settled into a booth seat in the Talon, and a minute later Lana came along with a tray for them which she’d started to prepare as soon as she’d seen Lex’s car going past the shop. "Morning," she said, smiling as she set the tray down. She took the cups of coffee off it and placed them in front of Clark and Lex.

"Morning," Lex greeted in return.

"Morning," Clark said in a dull tone and hardly looked at her.

Lana’s lips parted and she hunted for something to say. What though? She had a pretty good idea of what Chloe had just said to him. It was probably best to change the subject, she thought. "Ready for that test, Clark?"

"What test?" he asked, startled by her words so badly he nearly knocked his coffee over.

"Social Studies," Lana reminded as she set down a plate full of hot bagels. "You know that one that’s half our grade for the semester?"

"Oh," Clark groaned and sank in his seat, blue eyes wide and sparkling with nerves. "I completely forgot about it."

Lana made a worried face. "I could lend you my notes for the next half hour."

Clark gave her a nervous look and nodded very quickly. "Yeah. Thanks, Lana,"

"I’ll be right back," she said pleasantly and took her empty tray off the table.

Lex began to spread cream cheese on a bagel, and said, "Hope you don’t fail that test, Clark. Last time you flunked something, you’re dad..."

"Don’t remind me," he groaned and looked worried.

Lana returned and handed a spiral bound notebook to Clark which had a pink cover on it. "Figured I’d bring this since he’s not gonna be much of a conversationalist," she said and handed Lex an obviously used newspaper.

"Thanks," Lex said taking the paper from her.

"Welcome," she eyed Clark. "You better pass that test or you’ll be grounded for a month this time. I don’t think Chloe’ll be too happy with you if that happens."

Clark gave her a frightened look and opened the notebook and began to study furiously. "I’ll never get all this in my head in the next twenty minutes," he complained softly.

Lex calmly unfolded the newspaper and opened it up in front of himself. He searched for articles he found interesting, but there wasn’t much in the Smallville Ledger. The most exciting thing was about who’d won the last pie-baking contest.

"I wish there’d be some minor disaster and school would close," Clark said and turned a page in the notebook. He looked upwards at Lex, but saw a newspaper instead.

"If you want, I could make a few phone calls and arrange to have it blown up before the first bell rings," Lex said without putting his paper down.

Clark gawked in Lex’s general direction. "Uh...well...," he thought it was a very tempting offer, but he was hesitant.

Lex lowered his paper enough so he could see his friend’s expression, and realized Clark thought he was serious. That either meant he was a bit stupid, or Clark thought he was quite possibly an evil person. He preferred to think the teen had simply missed the joke. He rolled his eyes and decided he’d better make sure Clark knew he’d been kidding. "I was kidding," he said gently, and if Clark didn’t take things so seriously, he might have called him an idiot too.

"Oh," Clark chuckled hollowly as though he’d thought he’d been serious and went back to reading Lana’s neatly written notebook. He never studied from his own notebooks, as he couldn’t read what was written in them. Taking notes in class was just a thing he did because he was supposed to. Focus, he thought, never mind Lana’s nice hand writing, or the ten-year-old at the next table who was talking about the cow dung sandwich she’d made for her brother.

When Pete walked by him and said hello, he grunted at him in greeting. Lex tried to get his attention, but he ignored him. Dishes and spoons were clattering around him, and people were making an awful lot of noise. He even heard some shrieking, but ignored it. People shrieked a lot in the morning, especially when it was the morning before a big test. Right about then, he thought it might be a good idea to shriek along with them. Someone was shouting very loudly, but he ignored it because he was much more worried about the screaming his father would do if he failed this test.

He felt something cold against his neck. That was probably Pete being a wiseass trying to get him to leap out of his seat and make some idiotic motions of shock. He wasn’t in the mood to play along though, and without looking up from the notebook, pushed the offending cold object off his neck. "Not now, Pete,"

"Hey, Clark-man, it ain’t me!" he heard Pete hiss from a few yards away, and looked up.

He saw Pete sitting in a booth seat not far away, and looking frightened. Then he saw Lex on the other side of the table, hands up, expression dark, but unreadable. Everyone else around him in the coffee shop was holding very still. No one was grinning, so he knew it was no joke. There was still something cold pressed against his neck, which made him look to the left. He saw a man standing over him, wearing a ski mask, and holding the gun.

He froze thinking it was best to just sit still. The last thing he wanted to do was to provoke the man into shooting him in front of about twenty witnesses. After all, Lex was still not certain if he had or had not hit him with his car last year just before he’d driven it off a bridge. If he got shot in the neck at point blank range, and his head didn’t come off his shoulders, then Lex really would be curious. Not to mention, if another one of his jackets got ruined, mom would be furious.

"Do what I tell you to do and no one gets hurt!" the man with the gun shouted.

Clark was still imagining the kind of screaming his father would do if he failed his test, and so the volume of the man’s voice made him twitch nervously. He looked around at the frightened faces in the room and wondered how long these two criminals had been here before he’d gotten his head back in the real world. His absentmindedness made him feel pretty stupid.

"Just take what you want and go. You won’t get any trouble from anyone," Lex said calmly without moving from his seat or lowering his hands. He gave everyone in the coffee shop a look suggesting that they had better not make any trouble.

"Oh, wow!" a second, skinnier man in a ski mask said. "This is a whole lot easier than I thought it’d be Or..."

"Didn’t I tell you to keep yer mouth shut?" the one with the gun bellowed at the other. His loud voice made Clark twitch again.

"But I..." the second man objected.

"Quiet," the first man bellowed at the second.

The second man sighed and stood still.

"You come with us quietly, Luthor, and we won’t hurt any of these kids. If you don’t, I’ll start by shooting this one," the armed man shouted and shoved the gun against Clark’s neck a little harder.

Lex kept his hands up, and very slowly slid out of the booth seat. He acted calm, but Clark knew he was scared. He thought that people seemed to like to kidnap Lex, even though half the world’s population knew by now that his father would not give in to their demands. If someone didn’t rescue him, he’d probably end up dead. Clark knew that ‘someone’ was going to be him.

He looked up at the second criminal and thought there was something familiar about him, and focused his X-ray vision. The person who was under that mask was Clyde Jameson. He knew the guy wasn’t the type who’d hurt anyone, but didn’t wonder why he’d taken up a life of crime. He’d once heard Pete’s older brother say that Clyde was the kind of person who’d go along with anything that any moron talked him into, no matter how stupid it was. He peered up at the man with the gun, and looked through his mask too and saw Orville Jameson. He wondered what in the world these two goat farmers were doing, and why they were trying to kidnap Lex.

He looked at the gun, focused and saw that it wasn’t loaded after all. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about ruining his jacket, he thought. The whole thing was just a bluff, but Clyde and Orville would end up living out their lives in some dark prison. They were smart enough to come up with the idea of kidnapping someone, but hardly smart enough to pull it off and get away with it.

He imagined himself standing straight and tall with hands on his hips as he announced in a bold voice, ‘This looks like a job for a Lex Luthor impersonator!’ Clark looked up at Orville who was still holding the gun. "You got the wrong man!" he said firmly but calmly, hoping this would work and that Lex wouldn’t get too mad at him. "He’s not Lex Luthor, I am."

Masks covered the two kidnappers faces, but Clark could still see they were confused even without using his X-ray vision. If this worked right, they’d take him instead of Lex, and then he’d simply disappear on these two while they had their backs turned on him. Easy, he thought and grinned to himself. Lex stared at him, too shocked to speak. Clark thought it was actually quite satisfying to have rendered him speechless.

"Everyone knows who Lex Luthor is!" the armed man said angrily and shoved the gun into his neck a little harder. "He’s all over the newspaper! You’re just some farm boy!"

"Actually he’s just my bodyguard and he was arranged as a diversion to keep me out of the press and safe from kidnappers like you," Clark said evenly. "Let him go and you can have me. I’m the real Lex Luthor."

"Clark, don’t be stupid. These men are dangerous," Lex hissed.

Clark ignored Lex and went on, "My name’s Lex and I’m sick of pretending to be someone I’m not!"

The two kidnappers looked at Lex expectantly. "He’s lying!" Lex said, fumbling for words. "I am Lex Luthor! Just let the kid go!"

Clark looked first at Orville and then at Lex and spoke, "He’s just a man who’s paid and trained to do or say anything to keep me safe."

"I’m Lex Luthor. See, I’m the bald guy!" Lex said to the masked criminals and pointed at his head.

Clark shrugged. "All my bodyguards are bald. See one bald guy, you seen them all. My dad can hire anyone to stand in for me, so long as he shaves his head and wears dark clothes all the time."

Lex’s mouth dropped open and then he glared at Clark. "He’s an insignificant farm boy just like you said and he goes by the name of Clark Kent! I’m the one you want!" he said to the armed man who was standing in a daze of confusion. "I’ll even show you my driver’s license!"

"He is not Lex Luthor. I am." Clark said very calmly. "It’s like I said, he’s a diversion. He carries a driver’s license with my name on it. He also carries a cell phone and drives a fancy car and lives in my mansion so people will think he’s really me. My dad pays him to risk..."

"Quiet!" Orville said in a tone of annoyance and confusion. He shook his head at Clark.

Clark tried to not grin at Lex because his poor friend looked like he was about to jump up and down and throw a fit. "My dad wouldn’t be too happy with you if you broke character. You know that," he said in a scheming tone.

Lex actually huffed angrily, but the remark left him speechless.

"Ugh..." the second kidnapper said.

"Quiet!" the first shouted and still kept the gun pressed against Clark’s neck.

The skinny masked man spoke up, "What’re we gonna do? You said the bald one is Lex Luthor, but what if he is just a bodyguard?"

"I am not a bodyguard, I’m Lex Luthor!" Lex growled and glared down at Clark.

"Shut up bald man, we’re not talking to you!" the armed man growled back at him.

Lex fumed with anger. He wanted to give the man a good swift kick, but he was afraid the gun aimed at Clark might go off. Rather than do nothing, he glared angrily at Clark and began to plot his revenge against him, the kidnappers and the world at large.

The two criminals talked to each other quietly. The rest of the people in the Talon were looking around at each other, wondering what to do. A few of them were starting to wonder if their long time neighbor was really Lex Luthor. Many of them who had known he’d been hiding secrets were debating that possibility, and wondering if the bald guy was just a bodyguard. To a few people it made a great deal of sense and a lot of them were whispering at each other about this new bit of information. Only Pete and Lana knew he wasn’t really Lex because they knew him so well. Both of them were too shocked to say anything though, and it was probably a good thing that they kept quiet.

"We’ll take them both with us. You get the bald one," the armed man finally said. He grabbed a handful of Clark’s jacket and hauled him up from the booth seat, then dragged him toward the Talon’s kitchen. The skinny kidnapper grabbed Lex and dragged him along behind. They went through the kitchen and out the rear door into the parking lot.

"Clark, this was a very bad idea!" Lex ranted at him when he was dragged close to him.

"The name’s Lex, bald man," Clark said calmly and he saw the expression of utter shock he’d expected.

"What’s his name if it ain’t Lex Luthor?" the skinny kidnapper asked.

"His real name is Harry Mitsu," Clark said and wondered what had made him pick that name of all names. The look Lex shot at him made him wonder if he was capable of heat vision too.

Orville pulled his ski mask off his head, and motioned at a beat-up, faded yellow pickup truck. He studied Lex’s features for an instant, and said, "Hmm, yeah that name Mitsu sounds kind of Oriental. Now that I think about it, you look a little Oriental." Lex gaped at his captor, eyes wide.

"Ya know, Orville, I think Mr. Mitsu just might really be a bodyguard," Clyde said as he pulled his ski mask off his head. His hair stood up all over his head in wild disarray, and he threw the mask into the back of the pickup truck.

"He’s really good at his job too," Clark said innocently. "Until now, no one found out that I’m really Lex."

"I am not his bodyguard. I am Lex Luthor," he scoffed and might have smacked Clark upside the head, but the skinny kidnapper stopped his arm. "You know you shouldn’t hit Mister Luthor now."

Lex’s mouth and eyes opened wide. "He is not Lex Luthor! I am!" he whined, struggling to get free. Clyde was thinner than Lex, but he was still a great deal stronger. He lifted Lex up by the back of his collar to keep him from lunging at Clark. Lex dangled from the collar of his suit, and sputtered angrily, "Let go of me!"

Clyde kept a tight hold on Lex. "Oh, no! I’m not gonna let you hurt Mister Luthor."

Lex flailed his arms and then gave the kidnappers very deadly looks. Clark wanted to give his friend a look of apology, but thought better of such a thing. Instead he did his best to look smug, while thinking up an apology for later. When Clyde motioned at him to get into the truck, he started to obey.

"You ride up front with me, Lex," Orville ordered.

"Okay," both Clark and Lex said at the same time. Clark almost shot an apologetic look at Lex, but remembered in time that he was supposed to be rich. He glared at Lex, who glared right back at him.

"I mean him," Orville said and gave Clark a shove toward the passenger side of the pickup. Poor Lex was left to ride in the back with Clyde.

~*~