For Better or For Worse

A Great Discovery

Conner came into the TV room around seven. Chris and Katie were watching reruns of Full House while they ate their TV dinners. Neither Chris nor Conner could make anything other than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and Katie couldn't even make that without burning something. Conner looked around and sighed. Mal and Karen were on a date, and so were M'gann and La'gaan, and Gar was sleeping over at Jaime's with Bart and Tim. Another night with nothing to do but stare at the television set. He thanked his lucky stars that Chris and Katie set aside their Sunday nights to spend time with him. Katie spent the rest of her evenings going to parties or on dates, and Chris himself went on an occasional date himself with his girlfriend, Mary, when he didn't have a night of studying planned.

He took his TV dinner tray and peeled off the wrapping as he watched the screen. Steve had pulled aside DJ, who had gotten upset when she saw Steve's ex-girlfriend Rachel kiss him. "It wasn't anything like kissing you,", he told her. "I didn't even know what love was until I met you." He smiled at her. "I love you." She smiled back. "I love you, too." At the same moment, they both dove in, and their lips met in a loving kiss. Conner plopped onto the couch as Katie swooned. "Awwww! This is my favorite part in the whole series! Its so romantic!" "Yeah," Conner muttered. "Too bad its not real."  "Well, of course its not real."' Chris said.  " They're actors."

"No, I don't mean that.", Conner told him. "I mean that." He pointed to the TV screen, where DJ and Steve were holding each other in their arms. "All that mushy-gushy lovey-dovey stuff they show. Its in all the movies and all the TV shows." Katie looked at him. "Are you saying love isn't real?", she exclaimed, obviously upset. Conner turned to her sharply. "No! No, no ,no, I'm not saying that! I'm saying that the way they portray love in the media isn't real!" Katie furried her eyebrows together. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, things like that don't happen in real life. Like in all those romantic comedies, when the hero realizes he loves the girl who's getting married to some other guy that same day. In the movie, he runs all the way to the church, arrives just before the girl can say 'I do', and proclaims his undying love for her. Then she realizes she feels the same way about him, and they run off into the sunset together. Have you ever seen that happen to an actual person before? Of course not. Because its all a lie. Stuff like that doesn't happen in real life. True love and love at first sight is just a gimmick that movie producers use to sell at the box office." Katie looked at Chris, worried looks on their faces. It broke their hearts that Conner actually felt that way. "KonKon..."

All of the sudden, an alarm sounded throughout the Cave. Conner, Katie and Chris ran into the main room, their dinner trays forgotten. A screen popped up with Batman's face on it. "Where is the rest of the Team?" "They left already!", Chris explained. "They all had plans!" Batman sighed. "Than I guess you three will have to do. We've received a distress signal from a distant planet in a faraway galaxy. Superman has agreed to check it out, and he's requested back-up. Come to the Watchtower at once to board with him. Batman out." The screen disappeared.
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"C'mon in kids! Move, move, move!" Superman was rushing the Super Kids to get in the ship. Chris wore a one-piece black suit with red stripes and pads, like he was Superboy from Tron. Katie wore the same outfit that their cousin Kara wore for crime-fighting, except that, instead of an electric blue color, Katie's costume was hot pink, her belt and top of her matching pink knee-high boots were shining silver. They quickly strapped themselves in as the countdown began. "Five...four...three...two...one..."
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They came to the planet where the distress signal had been heard. It was a large planet, larger than Earth but not by much. Most of it was a deep, rusty orange, no doubt the land part, and the rest was the ocean, which the most beautiful shade of deep sea green. Rather than a yellow sun, like Earth, this planet revolved around a red sun. They landed on the planet's surface and stared.

They found themselves face-to-face with a bunch of random men, who were hunched over some sort of device that had transmitted the signal to the Watchtower, wearing welder's masks and long white labcoats covered in grease and oil stains. Right behind them was a great steel gate, forming into swirls and curves to make a lovely design. In the middle was a sign. A sign in strange lettering. Superman stared at it. "'No machinery or technology allowed beyond this point'", he read. "How do you know that?" "The sign...its in Kryptonian!"

He turned to the men. "Okay - what is going on here?! Who are you?! Where are we?!" One of the men stood up. "I know who you are. You are Kal-El, son and only child of Jor-El and his wife, Lara-Zor-El. When you were only a few weeks old, Jor discovered that due to the radiation the people of Krypton had planted within their planet to power their machines, Krypton would soon erupt from within, and be destroyed. To save you from certain doom, your parents put you in a spaceship and set it's coordinates to the planet Earth, as far from their home planet as possible. You were rocketed away in your pod just days before the final blow."

Superman glared at this mysterious man. "How do you know all of that?!" The man took off his mask. His hair was as white as freshly fallen winter snow, neatly combed, with a small spit curl brushing his forehead, similar to Superman's. His beard was the exact same shade of snowy white, with it covering his chin and forming a mustache above his upper lip, with a band of silver circling his forehead. His eyes, in contrast, were as green as the first few springs of grass that grew in the springtime, and they seemed both stern and loving at the same time. But it was the features of his face that made Clark gasp. The nose, the cheeks, the chin - there was no mistaking it. He looked just like Clark. The man looked him right in the eye. "Because, my son...I am the one who put you in that pod."

NOTE: Happy birthday to me! And a special shout-out to Lizardgurl for making this wonderful new cover for my story! I do not own YJ or DC.