[Third Person POV]
"Over here," Lara-El announced with a graceful sweep of her hand, "we have Clark's own personal science laboratory, the very place where he conducts his private research and experiments away from prying eyes."
Her voice carried a subtle note of pride as she motioned toward the room. The room was a chamber of gleaming silver and white, a space that hummed faintly with quiet energy. It was reminiscent of a crime lab, though the scale and sophistication were far beyond it. Rows of sleek consoles lined the walls, each alive with softly glowing holographic screens, while intricate pieces of alien machinery blinked with tiny starlike lights.
Clark stepped forward, "This is where I designed and crafted the Superman robots," he explained with a small smile, clearly at ease among the otherworldly instruments. "Every prototype and upgrade begins right here."
As the group entered, their eyes darted across the room, taking in the sight of hovering schematics, crystal canisters filled with strange liquids, among other devices.
"Honestly," Momo said after a long, thoughtful pause, "I just… cannot picture you as a scientist." She exhaled dramatically, placing a hand on her hip. "The idea of you walking around in a lab coat with a pair of thick glasses is almost impossible to imagine. It feels… wrong. Completely out of place."
Lala, standing a step behind Clark, tilted her head. Her eyes lingered on him for a second too long as her imagination betrayed her. She pictured him exactly as Momo had described—white lab coat hanging perfectly over his broad shoulders, glasses perched over those ever-serious blue eyes, a clipboard in hand as he worked on some incomprehensible experiment. The mental image hit her harder than expected. Heat flared across her cheeks, and before she knew it, her hands shot up to cover her face. She shook her head rapidly, as though trying to erase the thought before it overwhelmed her completely.
Clark turned, frowning in confusion. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asked, fixing Momo with a puzzled glare.
"It means," Momo said with a mischievous smirk, "that you look too dumb to be a scientist."
Clark's eyebrows shot up. "You do realize I'm way smarter than you, right? I process information at speeds that aren't even humanly possible." He crossed his arms with a huff.
"I never said you were dumb," Momo countered, lifting a single finger for emphasis. "I said you look dumb. Big difference. Though, in your particular case, those two things might as well be the same."
Clark narrowed his eyes, leaning in with mock menace. "Look in a mirror, ugly, and then we'll talk about who's dumb-looking."
Their playful bickering filled the lab. While the two traded increasingly childish insults, Lala quietly wandered deeper into the room, her curiosity pulling her toward a glowing display at the far corner.
She stopped before a holographic projection suspended above a wide console. A complex lattice of symbols and shifting light hovered in midair, forming the shape of a spiraling cube. Her eyes widened in recognition. "This… this is the blueprint for the Empty Space Projection," she murmured. "A device capable of creating a separate dimension within the fabric of reality itself…"
Clark, holding Momo's mouth shut with one hand to silence her latest retort, followed Lala's gaze. "That's actually something I wanted your opinion on," he admitted. "During my battle with the Kaiju, I considered activating it, but it refused to engage. I assumed it was because the creature wasn't supernatural in nature."
Lala chuckled softly, her voice lilting with amusement. "It's not that the Kaiju wasn't exactly supernatural persay" she explained, "but rather that it didn't possess the sufficient spiritual energy required to be drawn into the Empty Space."
Both Clark and Momo stared at her blankly. Lala only giggled at their expressions. "Everything in this world carries at least a trace of spiritual energy," she continued patiently, "even inanimate objects. The Empty Space isolates anything that crosses a specific threshold of spiritual power, creating a separate dimension around it. But if a being doesn't meet that minimum level, the system ignores it entirely."
Momo wriggled free from Clark's grip and shot her hand into the air as if she were back in a classroom. "Question! How is a Kaiju not supernatural? That thing was a walking natural disaster the size of a skyscraper."
Lala tilted her head, tapping a finger against her cheek. "This part is a little tricky to explain…"
With a cheerful hum, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her ever-faithful pink flip phone. With a press of a button, a tiny toy sketchpad popped into existence in a sparkle of light. She caught it midair, stuck her tongue out in concentration, and began to scribble a crude bar graph with the stylus.
After a few moments of dramatic drawing, she spun the board around to face them. "Okay! Consider this the natural state of everything," she said, labeling the first bar with the word 'Everything' and beside the bar 'Natural' in bold letters. She tapped the top of the bar with her pen for emphasis.
"When someone's spiritual energy rises beyond this natural state," she continued, adding to the bar, "it crosses the threshold into something that is beyond natural. In other words, they become supernatural." she said adding the word 'Super' next to 'Natura' thus becoming 'Supernatural'
She added a second bar beside the other one and wrote Kaiju beneath it. Unlike the supernatural bar, this one stretched upward in a single, uninterrupted column labeled Natural along its side.
"The Kaiju," Lala said, pointing to the chart with a flourish, "most likely evolved in perfect sync with the energy inside it. Its natural state kept rising along with its growth, but it never broke the ceiling into the supernatural range. It's powerful, yes, but it never breached that upper limit—so the Empty Space ignored it entirely."
Clark leaned in to study the chart, his brow furrowed in thought. Momo crossed her arms, clearly intrigued.
"While it evolved," Lala finished with a small, satisfied nod, "its natural state evolved with it. And that… is why it remained extraordinary, yet fundamentally natural."
A round of sudden applause broke. Clark, Momo, and Seiko all started clapping at once. The unexpected praise made Lala flinch and stiffen, her eyes widening in surprise. Her cheeks immediately flushed a bright pink as the attention settled squarely on her. She fidgeted with the stylus in her hand, ducking her head slightly while a shy smile tugged at her lips.
"I—uh—" she stammered, lowering the sketchpad as if it were a shield.
"I see," Clark said with a warm grin, stepping closer to the board. "It's starting to make sense now." He reached for the stylus, his fingers brushing briefly against Lala's as he gently took it from her. With quick, confident strokes, he added a new label beside the previous bars and wrote Yokai in bold letters. "Yokai are a little different," he explained, his tone slipping into the crisp cadence of a teacher. "They're considered beings of pure spiritual energy. They don't have a natural baseline the way humans or even Kaiju do, so they're automatically classified as supernatural from the moment they're born." As he spoke, he drew a tall bar equal in height to the Kaiju's, but shaded it completely and scrawled Supernatural along its side.
"Exactly!" Lala said, snapping her fingers with a delighted click. "Now you're getting it." Her earlier embarrassment melted into a bright, approving smile.
Clark's expression grew thoughtful again as he tapped the stylus against his chin. "But that brings me to the real problem," he continued, pacing a few steps in front of the glowing chart. "If I want the Empty Space to target a Kaiju, I'd have to modify the system so it reacts to natural energy instead of supernatural. But doing that would cause it to lock onto everyone in range. That would completely defeat the purpose." His brow furrowed, blue eyes narrowing in concentration. "I'd need a way to make it isolate a single individual, no matter how their energy registers."
"Oh, that part is easy," Lala said with a breezy laugh, her confidence cutting through the tension. "You just have to augment the frequency scanner. Instead of focusing on spiritual energy, shift the calibration to bio-energy—more specifically, their life-force signature. Every living being gives off a distinct frequency. Target that, and you can bypass the spiritual threshold altogether."
Clark's head snapped toward her, his eyes lighting up with sudden realization. "That's… that's brilliant!" he exclaimed, the excitement in his voice making the room feel brighter. "If I integrate the Empty Space with Sol's systems, he could lock onto a unique life-force signature and guide the projection precisely. I'd just need to test the suit's sensors and range for accuracy, but—" He broke off mid-sentence, a wide, boyish grin overtaking his face.
Before Lala could react, Clark stepped forward, wrapped an arm around her waist, and effortlessly lifted her off the ground as if she weighed nothing. The move caught her completely off guard, and a startled squeak escaped her lips.
"Lala," Clark said with a laugh that rang with pure exhilaration, "you're a goddamn genius! I could kiss you right now!"
Lala's giggle came out soft and musical. Her face flushed a shade deeper than her bubblegum-pink hair. "Hehe… I wouldn't stop you if you did," she teased, her voice a mix of playfulness and nervous delight.
From the far side of the room, Momo slowly turned toward Seiko, her expression flat and unamused. "Why," she asked dryly, "do I get the distinct feeling they've completely forgotten we even exist?"
Seiko leaned casually against a glowing console, arms crossed and a knowing smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "Honestly? I'm glad they did. Have you seen Clark smile like that before?"
Momo followed her gaze. Clark and Lala were now leaning over the sketchpad together, their heads almost touching as they scribbled quick calculations and argued excitedly about dimensional stability and spiritual resonance—words and theories that flew so far over Momo's head they might as well have been in another language.
"Rarely," Momo admitted with a quiet scoff, though the faint upward curve of her lips betrayed her own amusement.
Seiko nodded in agreement, her eyes softening as she watched the unlikely pair. "It suits him," she said simply.
The two of them stood in companionable silence, content to watch Clark and Lala's animated brainstorming