Karaoke at the Red K CorralBy: VirginiaR.
Description: Superman on red Kryptonite was bad enough. Now Ultra Woman has been exposed to the stuff… Mayhem ensues.
Rated: PG+ (It’s not quite PG-13, in my opinion, but I have a dark sense of humor and Lois does let her mouth get away from her at one point. Feel free to debate me on this point at any time).
Author’s Note: This story is complete-ish, as I'm debating with myself on whether to include a Part 4. I came up with the concept, then the wacky title, and it’s, well, different from my usual fair. So, apologies in advance. Then, again, looking back over the last couple of years stories, do I really have a usual style?
***
Karaoke at the Red K CorralUltra Woman peered into Dr. Klein’s laboratory. “Dr. Klein?” she called. “You phoned Lois Lane with a message for Superman. He was unavailable, so I’ve come instead.”
“Hi, Ultra Woman,” Bernard Klein said, waving her inside. “I think I’ve finally got that video camera laser fixed for Superman. I was just about to run a test. Want to watch?”
Ultra Woman shrugged.
Dr. Klein pointed the weapon that had turned Superman permanently into Clark Kent and Lois forever into this woman in tights, toward a gun range target in a safe room next door to his laboratory and pulled the trigger. It shot a beam of white light through the window and exploded the target.
“Oh, darn!” Dr. Klein grumbled. “I was sure I had it working.” The scientist removed the camera from its tripod and Lois not only heard his skin sizzle, but could smell the burnt flesh. He shook his hand in pain as she tried not to breath. “It just burned up again.”
“Can you explain to me how this laser works, Dr. Klein? Superman said it was powered by red Kryptonite,” Ultra Woman said in confusion.
“Sure,” he said, shaking his hand again as he set the camera down on a rack filled with equipment. “Well, it’s like any other laser, except that all of its power seems to refract through that chunk of red Kryptonite in the casing.” He opened the camera to show the Kryptonite to Ultra Woman.
Lois remembered seeing the red Kryptonite back in the spring when Bill Church, Jr. and Intergang kidnapped Perry. Just like the deadly variety of Kryptonite, it glowed from inside. Except, instead of being green, it was red. She stared at the red light emitting from the camera. It was pretty and seemed to numb her senses. She felt better than she had since receiving Clark’s powers the previous day.
“How’s Superman doing?” Dr. Klein asked, lowering his voice. “Between you and me, he appeared a bit… edgy when he was here earlier.”
“Edgy?” Ultra Woman snapped. “Of course, he’s edgy, Dr. Klein. In one blast of that thing, his whole life changed, and so did mine. You better get that fixed, because we can’t live like this forever.” She looked over her left shoulder, listening.
Down a floor, someone’s easy-listening radio program was interrupted by a news bulletin about a plane to Paris being hijacked.
“Call the Daily Planet and tell Clark Kent to find Superman,” Ultra Woman told Dr. Klein. “Inform him that I’m heading out over the Atlantic.” Without a glance back to see if he understood her message, she took off.
***
“Clark, I’m not going to make it to dinner,” Lois whispered. She hated talking on a phone so publicly in her Ultra Woman costume. She hated having the weight of the world on her shoulders. She didn’t want this. She didn’t ask for this. This was supposed to be Clark’s job, not hers! “I feel so… Oh, forget it. You wouldn’t understand.”
“No, believe me, I understand,” Clark said, reassuring her.
His voice helped calm her. It was almost as if she had him here with her, removing all her worries.
“The hijackers won’t listen to me or the authorities, Clark,” Lois went on, hoping since he had lost his super hearing that he couldn’t hear either her voice shaking or her indecision. She hated that without him there to guide her that she felt totally lost. She didn’t have complete control over her powers yet. What if something went wrong? “There are over two hundred people on the plane. I don’t know what to do. What would you do? Disarm them?”
“Absolutely,” he agreed with her. “If the hijackers won’t listen, you’re going to have to take ‘em out.”
Clark was so wonderful to build up her confidence and tell her she was on the right track. She knew she could always rely on him.
“How am I going to do this?” she asked. “If I bust open the doors, the air pressure…”
“No! No, let me tell you about one time when I was in that exact same situation,” Clark started.
“You haven’t been in this exact same situation, Clark. These are different people, a different airplane, a different airline, different hijackers, and a different part of the world. You were in complete control of your powers, and I’m not,” she shouted at him, interrupting. How could he compare his apples to her applesauce? “Do you think I have time to listen to your war stories?”
“No, you’re… No, go! Go! But… be careful,” he said, his voice getting softer and softer as he spoke.
Lois could tell that he wanted to be here in the thick of things. He didn’t want to be at home, eating the delicious home-cooked meal his mom had made. The very meal Lois had been looking forward to all day. She could smell it cooking, stewing in the oven, as Martha had cut and sewed this costume for her all afternoon. Just thinking of those delicious smells made Lois’s stomach rumble. She didn’t want to be here, wherever here was, possibly killing all these people with one wrong move, and Clark didn’t want to be there, missing all the excitement. It wasn’t fair!
“I’m going to be late. Apologize to your parents, but I know I’m not going to be in any mood to be social after this, so I’m just going to head straight home,” she said, wishing her voice wasn’t grumbling.
“Okay,” Clark murmured, dejection seeping out of the word. “I love you.”
Lois hung up the phone and was halfway back to the plane when she realized that in her rush, she forgot to tell Clark that she loved him, or to thank him for his advice and support. Gosh, he was the greatest guy ever! She didn’t deserve him.
All she wanted to do was hang up her cape and never put it on again. What if Dr. Klein was never able to fix the camera? What if Ultra Woman had to cover for Superman for the rest of her life? Sure, there were some fun aspects, like x-raying Clark’s butt this afternoon.
Oh, man! Had she really done that? Of course she had and it was so worth it, catching him in that lie.
“
I wear briefs.”
Ha!
Clark wore the briefs attached to his uniform, he meant. He hadn’t come to work without wearing his blue Suit as she had thought. He didn’t have Superman’s powers, so why wear the Suit under his business suit? He must really miss his abilities.
Clark had such a terrific bottom, super powers or not.
Had she ever caught him x-raying her rear end, what would she have done? She would have freaked, and rightly so. Actually, Lois knew that she privately would have been thrilled if Superman had checked her out, and even now she was a bit disappointed that Clark had never been tempted to check her out. Was there something un-alluring about her? Was she not sexy enough for him?
Ultra Woman took hold of the hijacked airplane’s wing and started turning the plane back towards France. Or, at least, in the direction she thought France was.
Oh, God! Superman! If she remained Ultra Woman forever, did that mean that Clark could get hurt? She couldn’t handle it if Clark was ever hurt. He was supposed to be the invulnerable one. That was
who he was. What if someone hurt Clark, while she was busy dealing with annoying hijackers and an out-of-control oil refinery fire? Her life would just end if he died. How could she go on? One of the reasons that she had been able to see a future with Clark was because she knew she would never have to go through him dying ever again. Once had been more than enough.
Would Clark want to stick around for her, though, while she flew off taking care of the world’s problems, and he was stuck back in Metropolis? Would he find someone else to take care of him as his mom had taken care of his dad? Because she would never be that type of woman, super powers or not. Would she lose Clark because of Ultra Woman?
As Ultra Woman approached the runway lights, she heard feedback from one of the news vans at the Charles de Gaulle Airport about a mudslide in Brazil.
Oh, come on! Ultra Woman was in the middle of
this, right now. She didn’t need another emergency. Should she remain here and deal with the hijackers once the plane was on the ground, or leave this situation for the French authorities to handle so that she could rush to Brazil? Which incident took priority? Which would have more victims, if she weren’t there to help? Would Ultra Woman be blamed for losing the airplane’s passengers if she abandoned them to rush off to Brazil? And vice-versa?
It wasn’t her fault!
This was Superman’s job!
***
Lois slowed down over Texas to make sure that the fire from the oil refinery had remained safely out. She had abandoned the hijacked plane and had rushed to Brazil, and still had been too late. Hundreds of people had died, because she had been too slow to make a decision, and one woman and the pilot died in France, because she’d left the hijackers to the French authorities.
The fire was still smoldering, but it was out. Thank goodness.
She had been muddy, dirty, and streaked with ashes and blood, so she had taken a quick dip in the Gulf of Mexico to clean off. The force of the wind was drying her, but all she really wanted to do was go home and soak in a hot tub.
With Clark.
Lois missed Clark. She wanted him to hold her in his strong arms and tell her everything would be all right. Only now,
she was the super powered one. Would Clark no longer be able to hold her? Would she have to hold him from now on? She didn’t want to hold Clark when they flew; she wanted him to do the holding. That was what Superman did. He caught, he held, and he rescued Lois Lane. Not the other way around.
She hadn’t known how lonely this hero business could be, flitting off from one emergency to another, never knowing what was happening back home. How did Clark handle the responsibility? All that death resting on his shoulders? He was so self-sacrificing.
Lois had gotten a little tiny bit banged up due to Bob Fences, and Clark had broken up with her, blaming himself. No, he hadn’t broken up with her. He had
crushed her. With one flick of his cape, she had been done for. It wasn’t even his fault that she had been hurt. He had told her to ‘stay’. She had always hated to stay while others were allowed to go, so she never did.
Oh, sure, Clark had claimed it was only a momentary lapse of insanity, but what if it happened again now that he no longer had powers? What if she was stuck with these powers and didn’t have Clark to come home to? How could she cope with that rejection? How could she cope with all the death and with the responsibility that those people would still be alive if Clark had been there instead of her? She wasn’t even going to come home to Clark that night, because she’d told him she would head straight to her apartment. She knew she wouldn’t be able to face him if she had failed.
Lois pressed her lips together. She
had failed. She had failed those people on the plane. She had failed that town in Brazil; a flashflood and the subsequent mudslide had wiped it away, because
she wasn’t fast enough. Superman would have been fast enough. She recalled all those gifts he had brought her in a fraction of a minute from all over the world, and she couldn’t even get to Brazil in time to save one person, not one person, from that village.
She heard music and realized she couldn’t face Metropolis or Clark just yet. She couldn’t admit that, at this one thing, that Clark was better than she was and he always would be. In his eyes, she was this perfect person, who could do no wrong. Well, that was Lois Lane. Ultra Woman, it seemed, could do nothing right. Oh, sure, Clark would be understanding and sympathetic, but she didn’t want his pity right now. She wanted him to take these damn powers back, so she could return to being the best she could be. She wasn’t hero material. She had proven that, and a failure was something she never wanted to be. When Ultra Woman failed, the cost was too high. She didn’t want to be burdened with the responsibility that came with these abilities any longer.
But she knew she couldn’t do that. She was stuck with these powers just as he was stuck without them.
Lois landed outside what must looked like a hellhole, who knew where in East Texas – or was she in Oklahoma? She glanced at the license plates of the trucks surrounding this watering hole. Oklahoma it was. She looked at the flashing red neon lights of the bar’s name, reminding her of the red Kryptonite that Dr. Klein had shown her in that video camera that afternoon. Had that been only that afternoon? For all she knew, it could have been yesterday. She had been flitting this way and that so much, she had no idea what day it was.
The ‘K Corral’, the red round neon sign proclaimed. Was that right? That couldn’t be correct, but she didn’t care. For the first time in her life, she understood why her mother drank. Lois wanted to forget the blood, the bodies, the wailing mothers, and the still, grey faces.
She would never forget.
Like elephants, Superman never forgot. The same was probably true of Ultra Woman.
Lois pushed open the door of the bar and went inside. She hoped a part of her was human enough to let her get drunk. Her eyes instantly went to the stage where some overly large man was attempting to sing. He was awful, horrendously awful. Mostly, it was due to the fact that he was plastered drunk and could only slur the words coming out of his mouth. It was because he was singing ‘Like a Virgin’ by Madonna. Should she just turn the man to ashes with her heat vision and put the whole corral out of their misery?
She sidled up to the bar, because that was what people did in saloons, they sidled. “What’s with the noise?” she asked the bartender, her thumb pointing behind her towards the stage.
“Karaoke night,” the bartender said with a heavy Texan accent, wiping down the bar. Then he glanced up, and his jaw hit the bar. Literally. Okay, maybe not
literally, but close enough. He did almost drop his glass. “That’s some costume you have there,” he said, clearly attempting to sound casual.
Lois shrugged. “Superman’s mother made it for me,” she replied. A part of her knew that was the wrong thing to say, but who would ever believe some bartender in Oklahoma? Another part of her knew that a reporter such as her would.
The music stopped and the large man stumbled to the side of the stage and fell off. Lois turned back to the bartender, shaking her head. “I could sing better than that with my hands tied behind my back.”
He leaned towards her. “I wouldn’t say that in here, lady; some man might think you’re serious.”
“I’d like to see him try and hogtie me,” she retorted, earning a smile from the man.
“What’ll it be?” he said as the next person got on stage.
“Whiskey,” she replied. Wasn’t that what one ordered in a saloon?
The mic generated some feedback, which Lois felt down to her bones. Man, was noise always this bad for Clark? Had this been what it was like when he was dealing Stoke and his sound machine?
This new man started to sing ‘Blowing in the Wind’ and wasn’t half-bad. Lois turned back to the bar, leaning her elbows on it and probably messing up her nice new uniform more than the blood and mud had.
“What’ll it be?” it sounded as if the bartender asked again.
Lois should have been able to hear him, super hearing and all, but the feedback from the microphone screamed, blocking out all other noise. “Brandy,” she said, changing her drink order to something more her style. “Does he have to be so loud?”
“Yo, Steve!” the bartender called to the man on stage. “Take a step back from the mic, man.”
The singer took a step back, and Lois’s vision cleared up, now that her teeth weren’t rattling. A clear, bronze beverage on the rocks sat in front of her on the bar. She raised her glass to the bartender and took a sip. Smooth. It usually burned. It probably had something to do with her newfound invulnerability. Then she raised her glass to Superman. And one more to her mother, who had taught her how to drink. If her mom could only see her now, Ellen would be so proud, Lois thought wryly.
She nursed her drink throughout Steve blowin’ in the wind. The bartender refilled her drink at some point, so maybe it was longer than that. As the rocks rolled around in her empty glass, the bartender called to her. “Yo, lady, you’re up.”
“Up for what?” Lois asked, raising her gaze.
“The stage. Your song’s up next,” he told her.
Lois glanced up to the now empty stage. How long had she been there? Had she requested a karaoke song? That wasn’t like her. She shrugged. Why in the hell not? Maybe the alcohol was working. These rodeo yahoos needed to hear what a real singer sounded like.
She walked to the stage to catcalls and whistles. Lovely. She wondered what song she had chosen. Glancing at the monitor, she saw the name “
‘Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)’ by Looking Glass” on the screen.
Brandy?Lois now knew when she had ordered the song. The tune started playing, and she smiled. This certainly was
her song. She recalled hearing it after Clark had broken up with her and how well it fit them.
“There's a town… on an
eastern bay,” she started singing, altering the words slightly to fit her situation. “And it serves… a hundred
saves a day. Lonely
heroes… pass the time away, and talk about their homes.”
Images of the mudslides streaked across the inside of her eyelids as she blinked. “And there's a girl… in this harbor town. And she works… layin'
bodies down. They say ‘
Ultra, fetch another round’. She
hates to fly ‘cross that line.” She poured herself into the chorus. “The
heroes say, ‘
Ultra, you're a fine girl’.”
The karaoke box back-up singers echoed with “You're a fine girl.”
“What a good wife…
for Superman,” she sang, wondering if it were true. Would she be a good wife? What was a ‘good wife’, anyway?
“Such a fine girl,” the singers echoed.
“Yeah, your eyes could steal
the hero of the land,” Lois went on.
‘
Yeah, right’, she scoffed inside her head. Then she recalled Clark looking at the engagement ring he had bought for her and setting it back inside his top desk drawer.
“
Ultra… wears a braided
ring, made of finest
metal…
created for a king. An
engagement ring… that makes her sing, of the man that
Ultra loves,” Lois crooned, gazing down at the mesmerized crowd, some of whom had dazed expressions on their faces. Then again, they were mostly all drunk. “He came… on a summer's day. Comin’
from… oh so far away. But he made it clear… he couldn't stay. No
city… was his home.”
She broke back into the chorus, “The
heroes say ‘
Ultra, you're a fine girl’.”
“You're a fine girl,” echoed the backup singers.
“What a good wife…
for Superman.”
“Such a fine girl.”
“Yeah, your eyes could steal
the hero of the land,” Lois sang, wishing it was true. Could she steal Clark away from being Superman? She doubted it, nor would she, but she had stolen being Superman from Clark. “Yeah,
Ultra used to watch his eyes, when he told his
rescue stories. She could feel the
storms winds rise, she saw the
fire’s ragin' glory, but he had always told the truth.”
That was her man. Mr. Truth N. Justice.
“
Damn, he was an honest man,” Lois grumbled more than sang. “And
Ultra does her best to understand.” She did a little dance, shaking her hips. Only now was she starting to understand everything Clark went through on a daily basis being who he was. “At night… when the
rescues wind down,
Ultra walks through… a silent town, and loves a man… who's not around.”
Wasn’t that the truth?
“She still can hear him say,” she sang, breaking into the chorus. “She hears him say, ‘
Ultra, you're a fine girl’.”
“Such a fine girl,” sang the background karaoke vocals.
"
Be a good wife… for me, oh my.”
Clark really did love her and did want to marry her.
“Such a fine girl.”
“But my life, my love, my lady is the
sky,” she sang, tears soaking into her mask. It was so true. Clark had chosen Superman over her, back when she had gotten hurt. Well, buster, she couldn’t get hurt anymore. “She hears him say…”
From the dark reaches of her mind, she heard Clark groaning and calling to her. “I could really use some
HELP getting out of this.”
Before Lois knew what was happening, she was in Metropolis and floating down from the sky to where Clark was sitting on a bus bench, bloody and tied up.
He gazed up her with an amazed and relieved smile. “It worked.”
But all Lois could think was, ‘
What have I done?’
***End of Part 1***CommentsDisclaimer: Inspired by the characters Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster created as they were portrayed on the
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman television series, developed by Deborah Joy LeVine. The characters do not belong to me; they belong to themselves (although Warner Bros, DC Comics, and the heirs to Siegel and Shuster might disagree). This story is all my own, although I’ve set it during and borrowed some dialogue from S3’s episode “Ultra Woman” written by Gene O’Neill and Noreen Tobin.
“Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” written by Elliot Lurie and performed by the band Looking Glass (1972)
“Like a Virgin” written by Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, performed by Madonna (1984)
“Blowin’ in the Wind” written and performed by Bob Dylan. (1963)
