For Clark,
this was a continuation of the family values he had inherited.
For Ian,
he still could not quite process how unexpectedly all of this had turned out.
"Thank you, Dad!"
Of course, he was still deeply grateful for his father's understanding. His face lit up with surprise and joy, and he took a quick step forward to throw his arms around Clark in a solid hug.
He could feel his father's muscles tense for an instant.
Then relax again in helpless resignation.
There was something unmistakably warm and familial in the air.
And just then,
"The changes in your body have something to do with you pretending to be Batman, don't they?"
Clark suddenly asked the question, and Ian's body instantly stiffened again.
Of course. Even with the full-family-affection hug, there had still been no escaping this.
Ian understood. There was no way changes in his physical condition could stay hidden from Superman's eyes.
He let go of Clark
and took a few steps back.
"It's a long story, so I'll keep it short."
He nodded at Clark.
Clark waited a few seconds, only to realize his son had no intention of saying anything more.
"Why did you stop?"
Clark's face was full of confusion.
However,
"I did say it. Long story, short. That was the short version."
Ian nodded at Clark again, kindly reminding his father, whose super-brain perhaps did not get as much daily use as his own.
The air in the room froze once more.
A faint vein pulsed on Clark's forehead, but in the end he only let out a helpless sigh.
"Batman says he thinks highly of you. He wants to send you one of his suits."
He did not continue pressing for answers.
Instead, he walked over to Ian's desk.
Superman perhaps had not realized that Ian already knew Wayne was Batman, so he did not accidentally sell out his Justice League teammate in front of his youngest son.
"It's okay, Dad, I'm not going to be Batman anymore. Batman just gets beat up. I still want to be Superman like you. I remember you had a black suit, right?"
Ian felt like his emotional intelligence was really shining now. If a son did not admire his father, the father would definitely feel disappointed, so Ian made sure to express his love for Superman's suit.
And it was real love.
Once he learned a few more Savage Tyrant skills, who could say Ian Kent was not truly Superman's son?
Ian was very happy with that thought.
Clark, meanwhile, still had not realized the seriousness of the situation.
"Trying to flatter me now won't help."
He saw right through Ian's little scheme, though there was still a faint smile at the corner of his mouth.
That smile disappeared the moment he got close to Ian's desk.
It did not last long at all.
"This is..."
Clark set the demon head down on Ian's desk, and then his eyes were immediately drawn to the thermos.
What was inside made the veins at his temple jump twice more.
"Ian."
Clark's voice turned more serious than it had been at any point before.
"Did you kill someone?"
He pointed at Mr. White's translucent soul inside the thermos.
His gaze was extremely sharp.
Ian immediately shook his head with all his might.
"I didn't kill him! I actually saved Mr. White! If it weren't for me, he'd be washing up in Hell right now!"
He was telling the truth.
Clark could tell.
"And it wasn't me! I didn't kill this fallen one! The great Trigon took his life!"
The demon, seeing Clark's terrifying gaze turn its way, hurriedly denied it too. It wanted to shake its head, but being only a head, it could not. So instead it quickly gave up the real culprit behind the chemistry teacher's death.
Loyal, but not very loyal.
Judging by how readily it sold out even its own master, it was clearly a pureblood demon.
When it came to a master it had never even met, only heard the voice of, this demon once again displayed the floral language of its species.
"You won't get another chance to kill."
Clark said it to the bull-headed demon in a low, hard voice.
"If I told you I haven't killed anyone... that my first trip to the human world ended with me meeting this freak... you'd think it was just demonic wordplay."
The head-only demon sounded wronged, but Clark did not care in the slightest about a creature like that or its personal history.
Instead, the father turned back to his youngest son.
Now that he knew the truth, he was visibly more at ease than before, though he still spoke in that plain, Kansas farm-boy way as he warned Ian.
"Self-control matters, Ian. People like us can make terrible mistakes if we're careless. Whatever situation you're facing, I want you to stay as rational as possible."
That was advice Clark truly meant from the bottom of his heart.
Ian agreed deeply.
"Don't worry, Dad. Even when it comes to super bad guys, I don't kill them. I just lock all of them up in Hell."
Ian nodded rapidly as he answered in complete sincerity.
"Hell? You mean... prison, right?"
Clark blinked.
Those two words were very, very different.
Still, he was willing to assume Ian's language grades were simply not quite there yet.
"They're basically the same."
Ian nodded again.
...
Clark fell silent for a moment.
"There is no Hell. Only prison."
He corrected him again, clearly not fully reassured.
"Okay, then prison."
Ian sounded a little disappointed, but still agreed.
He believed his father was doing it for his own good. As a minor, becoming too decisive about killing really did not quite fit his age.
Still, it did not really matter.
Locking up everyone who annoyed him and then killing them later when he grew up was also a workable solution.
Ian glanced at the bull head on the desk and decided there was definitely enough space in its throat to convert it into a private prison.
That was the beauty of Ian's superior intelligence.
It always found him a perfect compromise.
If the demon could not spit the prisoners back out later, that was the demon's problem, not Ian's. Ian could even claim he was the victim too, a boy whose childhood dream had been to grow up and punish evildoers, only to have that dream shattered.
"Good."
Clark looked pleased.
"That means, even if you're a little too energetic, your thinking is still mature enough. I think that should reassure your mother and me quite a bit."
As he said that, he started walking toward the window.
"Hiss..."
The demon head had long since noticed Ian's distinctly malicious stare. Seeing Clark about to leave, it weighed its options and then finally screamed at Superman in desperation.
"Take me with you! Take me with you! Demons are legal citizens of this universe too! We deserve to be saved by Superman too... I mean, don't let me corrupt your child!"
"I'm a demon again now! I'm extremely good at corrupting children!"
It clearly had no desire to remain here. At this point, even being taken away and sealed by Superman sounded more pleasant than staying with Ian.
"Shut up!"
Ian hurried forward and clamped a hand over its mouth.
"I told Jordan I went out to buy milk, so I still have to go buy some milk."
Clark only glanced back once. He gave absolutely no sign that he was worried Ian might be corrupted.
If anything, it was another perfect example of a father knowing his son.
"I understand. Jordan needs to enjoy the life of an ordinary person."
Ian immediately found an appropriate excuse for his second brother.
Clark, hearing that, nodded with visible satisfaction.
Everything was understood without needing to be said aloud.
Once Clark vanished into the sky with a whoosh, only Ian and the demon head remained in the room again.
The atmosphere was still fine.
Mainly because Ian had already picked up his hammer.
"Don't come closer! Don't come closer! Please don't come closer!"
The demon looked at Ian slowly approaching, and its cloudy yellow eyes were full of fear and horror.
"We demons are just like that! Full of lies, always changing! I just can't control my nature!"
Its voice trembled so badly it was almost hard to listen to.
Of course,
honesty did nothing to stop Ian from punishing a snitch.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Another round of repairs.
The demon felt like its soul was about to be hammered apart.
"I want to die! Right now! Immediately! Why can't I die already?! You should have beaten me to death by now!"
It let out a hysterical wail.
The sound was full of genuine confusion.
"Has it occurred to you that maybe you insulted someone you really shouldn't have?"
Ian was only guessing.
He picked up the demon head from the desk and looked toward the peach-butt alarm clock Jordan had given him.
"It's almost time. You're going to help me with an experiment."
Ian spoke softly.
"W... what experiment?"
The demon stammered.
It had an extremely bad feeling about this.
Ian gave no answer.
He simply lay down on the bed, holding the demon head tightly in his arms.
The moment the clock hands met,
all things fell still.
When he opened his eyes again,
it was already another world.
Snow filled the sky.
The boy appeared soundlessly on a completely silent street.
"So it really was because of me?"
Ian stared at the demon head in his hand, shock filling his eyes.
He had brought a laser gun back from this world before.
And now he had brought a living being into it too.
The guess had been confirmed.
Ian was profoundly stunned.
"No! No! No!"
The demon head in his grasp was trembling even more violently than it had when facing Superman earlier.
"That... that's impossible!"
Its voice could no longer be described as trembling.
It was filled with pure horror and disbelief.
"What's impossible?"
Ian was still caught up in surprise over the fact that he could actually do something like this.
"Y... you..."
The bull-headed demon's throat seemed to clog shut. Its damaged vocal cords rasped like a broken bellows, and then it shrieked in a madness that tore through the eternal silence of this world.
"How are you a dimensional demon god?!"
(End of Chapter)
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