If you need to refresh your memory on what happen in Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark the TOC can be found Here
/goes back to re-reading/
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/time passes/
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/dragons fly over Westeros to land on the DP globe/
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JIMMY: So, CK, you going to date the blonde princess?
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Okay…
Lois eyed the hard wooden boards of the press bleachers at Fort Truman with disdain.
Where are we?
“A billion dollars on some new weapon and they couldn’t spend a little of that bringing their grandstand into the twentieth century?”
The blackout one? /scratches head/ did they have robots? Short Circuit?
“Actually, it was closer to a million and a half,”
That’s awfully cheap. I think a basic Humvee costs more.
“Teacher’s pet, weren’t you?” Lois griped, sitting down. She hated it when Clark was an insufferable know-it-all.
“Actually,” he started to say, but she interrupted him by raising her hand.
“Don’t tell me, Chuck. I don’t want to know.”
Worried that his teacher was blonde and there was some inappropriate stuff happening?
“My stomach doesn’t feel well. Go get me a soda, will you?”
Worried she’s preggers? How long’s it been since their ‘massage’ sessions in his apartment started?
Clark held out his hand towards General Ralph Marshall standing near the podium. “Can it wait? The demonstration is about to begin.”
No. Little superheroes can’t wait for soda.
“I’m sure,” Lois said. “No one’s faster than you.”
Clark stood up and kissed Lois’s cheek as he passed down the aisle.
“Superman is,” Jimbo corrected.
No, I’m sure Superman won’t be able to do things in less time than Clark when it comes to Lois.
“I guess CK’s not as fast as you thought.”
LOIS: Huh, looks like he can’t do everything in less than three minutes…
“Were you trying to lose him so you’d get the scoop on this story?” he asked.
Sounds reasonable.
CLARK: I’ve heard the mosquitos just had a mating cycle in the sewage treatment plant.
“You mean before you two were serious,” he teased back.
Lois rolled her eyes. That too.
“What you’re about to witness is a demonstration of the ‘ATAS’.
“Clark’s probably getting the human interest angle. Talking to servicemen and women who’ve been testing the ATAS,” she went on. “That sort of thing. It’s what he’s good at.”
Meanwhile…
“…really impressed by the accuracy with which the ATAS managed to clear protest rallies in the mock-up city square. I’m certain that by the time they go into mass production, there will be there will be overwhelming support for Senator Palpatine’s run for Supreme President.”
CLARK:
“Hey!” he yelled, rolling to knock her off. “I can’t see.”
Bullets passed over their heads.
“That’s okay. I don’t need to see,” Jimbo amended.
Lois ran forward down the seats towards the podium just as Superman bent the ATAS’s main gun out of commission. She knew the exact moment Superman saw her as he turned around, because his lips pressed into an even flatter line.
“ATAS went haywire. Where’s my soda?” she asked, nudging his arm when she got close enough.
Just another day at the office, huh?
“I want those shots on my desk by the time we get back!”
“Yes, Chief!”
Lois grinned. “I like the sound of that.”
“His sarcasm?” Clark replied.
“Oh, shut up!” she grumbled.
Aren’t they adorable?
“It’s unprofessional,” she continued. “And maybe you’re not newsworthy, buster, but I was just shot at!”
That doesn’t make her newsworthy. It’s Metropolis.
“Must be Tuesday,” Clark murmured under his breath.
“Very funny,” she said with an elbow to his ribs. “What if I said it’s distracting?”
“Being shot or kissed?”
Lois stopped and crossed her arms at the top of the ramp by the elevators. “What do you think?”
The kissing part. Being shot at is just a nuisance because every time she gets shot at, they send her on another mandatory safety-at-the-workplace seminar and have her psych-evaluated.
“I know. It focuses you into a laser pointer. If criminals knew that, I’m betting they would stop doing it,” Clark said, nudging her to continue walking.
“It’s not going to work.”
“I wasn’t planning on starting the rumor,” he said.
Worried that a General Tarkin would kidnap her and start using her for target practice?
“I mean using flattery to win,” she said, pointing at him.
Clark’s eyes widened with his smile. “I’m winning?”
“No! Did you miss all that ‘it’s not going to work’ part?”
You could just hug them all the time. So adorable.
CLARK: My feeling exactly.
She lowered the sheet, pointing at one photo, “Is that my chest?”
Clark glanced over her shoulder and spoke at the same time as Jimmy, “Yes.”
“You tackled me!” Jimbo exclaimed, and then gazed over at Clark. “It is?” He tried to pull the sheet from Lois’s hand, but she slapped him away.
Down, boy.
Jimbo saluted her and grabbed the shot sheet out of her hand. “Awww. You crossed it out!”
He still got the negatives!
“Maybe you should’ve let me see them,” Clark said softly enough that they couldn’t be overheard.
“Why?” she scoffed. “You weren’t even there.”
He likes looking at her chest?
“Anyway, you don’t need a photo to know what my chest looks like apparently,” Lois replied under her breath. “Thanks for letting Jimmy know that, too.”
Only, weren’t we talking about the strategically places bulges of her blouse?
It’s on display all the time in the office, isn’t it?
“If I didn’t recognize your chest, he’d think something was up.”
Like Lois being his beard while he dates Superman?
“No, Sherlock. Linda stopped being my best friend when she slept with my boyfriend… and stole my article. Not necessarily in that order.
So, Lois first broke off her friendship with Linda to get better ahead in the news business and then Linda decided to pay her back in kind by handing in their joint article under her single byline and not rebuff the advances of Lois’s crush?
She hung up the phone. “That’s strange. Disconnected,” she murmured more to herself than to him.
As Clark backed towards his desk, he watched Lois do a database search on Molly Flynn.
Some best friends from college they were.
LOIS: What? It’s not like Clark would have known my new address or telephone number after Lex kidnapped me and he would still claim to be my best friend.
“Molly’s a computer engineer. What’s she doing running a flaky place like this?”
Burned out?
“You hang this in the corners of your room and they act like a spiritual air cleaner.”
“Does that mean they mess up security cameras and bugs?” Lois murmured under her breath to Clark. “Because if they do, I could’ve used some of those earlier this year.”
No, for those, you hang a superhero in your apartment. He usually removes those devices and prevents new ones from cropping up. Plus, he’s usually quite cheap on the upkeep. Mostly, you can pay him in kind.
“You look terrific.” Despite the complimentary words, Molly’s tone seemed more surprised that Lois looked good.
Considering Lois getting shot, her fiancée committing suicide and getting arrested, necessarily in this order, and other calamities?
“I gave up that Type-A personality because it wasn’t working for me.”
“Burned out?” Lois hypothesized with a nod. “I hear that happens to some people.”
Huh, so Lois and Clark haven’t yet consummated? Not that she’d burn out. But Superman often soft of cracks the Type-A personality a bit.
“No,” Molly returned sharply. “After Ryan died last year, I realized that I had given up all my human connections for computers. Computers can’t replace human interactions, so I gave them up.”
GENERATION Y:
Siri? Is that true?
“There was an accident on the Hawkeye project we were working on at Fort Truman and he was vaporized,” Molly said.
Vaporized? Convenient.
“You were going to marry a man who not only is the biggest criminal mastermind in Metropolis history, but who also shot you?
Sounds like Lois does have a type. Would also explain why she then married another man who physically hurt her on multiple occasions both before and after they were married, and on several occasions even almost killed her. And that’s before all the lying and sneaking around. I’m guessing that because of her bad upbringing. Maybe she should start seeing a therapist.
DETER:
And you have the nerve not to come here to apologize for calling Ryan a lousy boyfriend?”
So, two pees in a pot?
Clark gave Lois an ‘I have to agree with Molly’ shrug. The jerk.
Not going to be scoring with her that night, huh?
“Congratulations,” Molly said flatly to Clark as if Lois had won first prize in an ugly contest.
Lois pointed back at Molly. “At least, Clark doesn’t fake his death only to rise again…”
/clears throat/
Inside her head, Lois heard the crack of gunfire and saw Clark collapse dead to the ground in front of her.
Oops?
Ooooh! She thinks it’s for real
“Are you okay, Lois?” Molly asked. “Because you freaked out my customers.”
Just pregnancy spells.
Molly nodded. “Oh, please, Lois, reassure me that you aren’t still crash dieting. That’s so bad for you.”
Molly quickly shook her head and backed up until she hit the wall of her little behind-the-shop apartment. “Ryan’s dead.”
What about Star?
Molly’s face went pale. “Photographic…? He was vaporized at Fort Truman, Lois. You must’ve seen his ghost,” she said, her voice cracking.
“There weren’t any remains,” he finished.
She threw her pencil onto her desk and turned her full attention on her partner. “There are always remains, Clark, even when someone is cremated.”
No, actually, I’m pretty sure when you have a really hot, really powerful explosion which destroys the entire building around you and you’re standing right next to the source of the explosion, things like recovering bits of your body might be quite…difficult? But it does help when you’re not there to being with.
“But how would Clark Kent survive if a roomful of witnesses see you get shot in the chest?”
Huh. That. She a smart cookie?
“I know that!” she snapped. “But I don’t want a covert relationship with a dead guy.”
That’d be so 1990?
“I don’t actively ask guys to shoot me, you know,” he said.
Then why is he prancing around with a target on his chest?
“Lois, you’re being ridiculous. You don’t even know when or if this event will ever happen. We can’t live in fear of the unknown.”
She placed her hands on her hips. “Truer words have never been spoken.”
Oops?
“But I won’t die if I get shot,” he hissed for her ears only. “You still could.”
Not helping himself there…
“Fine, if you won’t wear a bulletproof vest to protect the man I love, then if someone aims a gun at you, I’ll dive between you so you won’t die.”
That…that…*backfired*!
“You’ll never let me win, will you?” he called down after her.
“Not when you’re always wrong!”
Did I already mention them being adorable?
Michael