Clark didn't think. He just grabbed Whitney and got him out of the burning truck. When he heard the explosion start, he hunkered down and wrapped himself protectively around the blond senior. He was somewhat shocked that, as the fireball engulfed him, he only felt a little warm. There was, surprisingly, no pain. He could smell something burning, but when it was over and he opened his eyes, only his clothes were smoldering. He and Whitney were both fine. Well, Whitney might have been a little singed, but he wasn't nearly as crispy as he had every right to be.

Clark looked up at his parents with a wide eyed expression and they looked just as stunned back at him. His father hurried over to them, but jumped back with a curse when he burnt his hand on Clark's shoulder. "I'm okay," Clark said, passing Whitney over to his dad and using his hands to pat out the small embers that were still burning what remained of his flannel shirt. His mom had gotten a blanket out of the Kent's truck and she wrapped that around him before hugging him herself. "I was so scared, Clark," she whispered, holding him tightly.

He hugged her back; he was just as freaked out as she was. "I'm okay, Mom," he repeated again, for good measure. "It didn't even hurt."

This assertion didn't stop her from pulling back and examining ever cell of exposed skin on his face and hands, just to make sure. While he suffered this treatment, he looked over at his father. "How's Whitney?"

"A hell of a lot better than he would have been without you. I'm proud of you, son." Clark beamed at him, and then focused on Whitney. He seemed to be unconscious, which was probably for the best. "Martha," Jonathan continued, "I'll stay here with him and explain things to the cops and ambulance people. With this much smoke, they'll be here soon. You bring Clark home and get him cleaned up."

The truck keys were tossed to Martha, and they headed home. By the time Clark finished showering (this took much longer than normal since there was a great deal of ash to wash off and the soap had turned black very quickly) and he had changed into clean clothes, Jonathan had finished and gotten back home.

"Whitney's gonna be all right," Jonathan announced when Clark made it downstairs again, passing on the verdict from the EMTs. "He's got a couple of cuts and bruises and few minor burns, but nothing serious." Clark wasn't sure where his mom was, but figured she was cleaning up the black mess he'd left inside the truck.

Just to be sure, Clark asked, "Does he remember anything?"

"No, just that something smashed his truck and he woke up in the ambulance."

Clark nodded, having been pretty sure that Whitney hadn't seen anything. 'Something' having smashed his truck sounded ominous though. There was a slightly more urgent matter though. "You need to talk to Mom. I really freaked her out this time." Himself, too, but he wasn't going to tell his dad that.

"You also made her really proud, Clark," his father assured him and Clark smiled.

Figuring now was as good a time to bring it up as any other, Clark continued, "Dad, something else happened to me this morning. When I woke up, I was . . . kind of floating."

"Floating," Jonathan repeated. "Well, you did say you flew when Lex almost hit you."

Clark shook his head. He'd thought about blaming Lex for this but he was almost sure this was an alien thing, not a whatever-Lex-did thing. He didn't even know how to ask Lex to make sure, though. Somehow, he doubted 'hey, Lex, I woke up floating this morning, did you do that?' would go over well. "See, the thing is, Dad, Lex made me fly that day," Clark confided, wincing at how ridiculous that sounded out loud.

"Lex made you fly," Jonathan repeated Clark again, sounding dubious. Not that Clark blamed him.

"Look, I can't explain, and he's insisting I jumped, but I didn't. If he hadn't done whatever he did, he would have hit me. After today, I don't know if that would have hurt me or not, but he would have hit me."

"Maybe you did jump without realizing it?" Jonathan suggested practically.

Clark shook his head, certain about this. "No, dad, I was hanging in mid air over the river, just watching the car slam through the guardrail and splash into the water. I think I only came down again after Lex was unconscious. It wasn't me."

"But now you're floating in your sleep."

"Maybe something Lex did triggered a latent ability or something, I don't know. Or maybe he's still making me do it. But when I fell last week, it was a complete surprise, but when I fell this morning, it was because I realized I was floating in the first place. As soon as I woke up, I crashed. I mean, Dad, what's happening to me?"

Jonathan shook his head helplessly, "I honestly don't know. As soon as you start breaking the law of gravity, we're definitely in uncharted territory."

"I just wish it would stop."

"Look, Clark, I'm your father. I'm supposed to have all the answers. It kills me that I don't, but you gotta have faith that we'll figure this thing out together."

"I do," Clark promised, "but this is happening to me and I'm scared."

Lex watched the brown haired girl he'd seen Clark mooning over at the Farmer's Market that morning. He'd had to give up his horse back riding lessons when he went to Hogwarts, but from what he could tell, her form was pretty good. "Hello, Lana," he greeted her after she dismounted.

She startled slightly and turned toward him. "Sneaking up like that, you're lucky you didn't get kicked."

He'd approached from upwind, so he was sure the horse had smelled him and wasn't nearly as surprised by Lex's presence as its rider was. "Lex Luthor," he introduced himself. "I'm a friend of your aunt's." Which was a bit of a stretch for the definition of 'friend' but when he'd found out one of his father's consorts had the last name of Potter, he'd had to introduce himself, just for curiousity's sake. So far as he could tell, Nell Potter had no relation to the Boy Who Lived.

"Lex," she returned, politely enough, and started rubbing down her horse.

It did, however, lack in conversation openings, so he let his eye fall on the case of ribbons and awards nearby, where one of the pictures had caught his eye earlier. "Very impressive," he complimented.

She didn't seem inclined to agree. "It's tacky. But it makes my aunt happy."

Giving up on trying to ease her into the discussion, he pointed at the picture of interest to him. "That's a very unusual necklace."

This did make her smile. "Thanks. It's very special to me."

His eyes glanced toward her neckline, but he'd already noted that it wasn't there today, which was why he had bothered to speak with her. "How come you're not wearing it?"

"I lent it to my boyfriend," she answered, unknowingly clearing her name and implicating the blond he'd seen her with at the Market.

"Lucky guy. What's his name?"

"Whitney Fordman."

Lex's brows rose up in surprise. "The kid that Kent saved today?" he asked, baffled that someone would risk their own life to help someone who'd hung him on a cross and left him there.

"I just came back from seeing him. He's lucky Clark was there," Lana confirmed.

"I know the feeling," Lex redirected, and tried to put in a good word for his friend. "Kind of makes you wonder if you're with the right guy. One chucks footballs, the other helps save lives."

She wasn't picking up on it. "For someone who just moved into town, you've got a lot of opinions." Lex didn't really think the assessment was entirely fair. True, possibly, but he doubted he'd earned having it pointed out already.

For that, he was going to offer more opinions. "You just seem more interesting than that. While you're nursing your boyfriend back to health, ask him what he was doing before the big game."

"He was with me," she told him, but Lex wasn't buying the alibi.

"Are you sure?" he asked, turning to go. "Tell your aunt I stopped by."

"The boy is in the Greek Room, sir," Robert intoned as Lex lowered the heat to let the potion drop to a low simmer instead of a fast boil. After the first couple of times he'd made similar announcements, the ghost had learned to pitch his voice so that it did not startle Lex no matter how engrossed in his potion making he had been. Consequently, Lex did not jump and spill the cauldron this time.

"Clark?" Lex guessed, since he hadn't made the acquaintance of any other people young enough to be called boys.

"The one you spoke to after your sword practice last week."

In the last several days, Lex had come to appreciate that Robert really did seem to know everything going on in the castle. "Clark, yes," Lex confirmed the identity, confident that Robert would refer to him by name from now on. He gave the potion an uncertain look, but it was virtually finished. "Could you have Edward come douse the flame in twenty minutes?"

"Sir," Robert confirmed.

"Thank you, Robert," Lex dismissed him. He took another moment to protect the room from fire should something unexpected happen, then locked the laboratory behind him before heading up to find Clark. He assumed Robert meant the room with the mock-up of the Trojan war. His father would have called it a War Room, but Lex had seen a real war room in the Room of Requirement and no longer thought the child's toy qualified as a strategy tool unless he actually intended to invade Ancient Troy. He still thought it looked cool, though.

Clark was looking it over as he entered, and Lex smirked a bit as he spotted a couple of soldiers had been moved. "Save any lives on the way over? You keep it up and you could make a career out of it."

Clark jumped slightly, then smiled back at him. "I was just dropping off your produce. Sorry my parents gave you a hard time."

Lex shrugged. He had thought it had gone fairly well, given Jonathan's first impression of him. Haggling for a price for the deliveries had almost been fun. "Ah, if push came to shove, I would have dueled them for it."

Clark rolled his eyes and Lex assumed he was thinking of a fencing duel when that slip failed to produce a serious reaction. Instead, Clark's gaze drifted back to the model of Troy. "Planning an invasion?"

Lex shook his head and explained its reason for being. "My father gave this to me when I was nine."

"Cool gift."

It would have been, if that had been how Lex's father had intended it. "It wasn't meant as a gift. It was supposed to be a strategy tool. My father equates business with war. Me, I don't think he understands what war is really all about. He's a good businessman. He'd make a lousy general. Take this," he swept his hand over the ancient city. "There's no profit in it. Troy burned because two guys wanted the same woman. Armies marched and fought because these two men fancied themselves in love. Dad sells this as seeking something of value, but if he was in charge here, the cost-benefit analysis would have sent him into a whorehouse, not a war."

He picked up one of the soldiers and raised an eyebrow at Clark. "But the premise has been fought throughout history. You're involved in a skirmish yourself, aren't you?" Lex lifted the small soldier demonstratively, "That's why the quarterback hung you up in that field, isn't it?"

"If we're at war, Whitney's pretty much won her."

Lex shrugged. "He's Troy. He has possession now. It's up to you to decide whether to close battle. Of course, over a matter of such a personal nature, there's little need to pitch armies against each other and cause widespread death and ruin. A simple challenge is a far more reasonable approach. It was much more common for knights to seek the favor of a lady during a tournament than a war. I think you'll find Lana is not as infatuated with the quarterback as you think."

"The guy's captain of the football team. The whole town treats him like a god. Tournament over."

"You're not issuing the right challenge. Try this one." Lex moved to the fireplace where St. George's box sat and took it down. Opening the lid, he pulled out the necklace he'd found in the field. He looked up in time to see Clark back away, looking a little green. "Clark, you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Clark said, but he wasn't. Lex closed the box and stepped closer, but Clark's pain seemed to have stopped as quickly as it had come. "That's a cool box. What's it made of?" Clark asked.

"Lead," Lex answered. "My mother bought it in a Kasban in Morocco. A little guy told her it was made from the armor of St. George, the patron saint of boy scouts. She gave it to me before she died. I think she was trying to send me a message." He held it out toward Clark. He smirked a little. "I'm still trying to decide if it was 'be good' or 'be prepared'."

"I can't take that."

"What is it about Kents and gifts?" Lex asked, starting to get frustrated by his attempts to be friendly getting rebuffed. "It's yours. Hand it to Lana. Tell her what happened. Trust me, once she opens it, you'll win her heart. That necklace gives you the advantage. All you've got to do is use it." This time, thankfully, Clark took it.