Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
The word echoed in Clark's brain as he hastily packed his few belongings in a well-worn suitcase. He had to leave this place, and fast.
Oh great. He got *another* girl knocked up and has to skip town before her father can track him down?
He looked around the small but comfortable cabin, nestled in the Canadian wilderness.
What did he do? Save Santa?
It had been close enough to the paper he'd been working for, though he had only been a free-lancer.
WHITE: So, Kent, is it? Huh. Tales of the Yukon beaver and his hard work of building dams. I’m sorry, son, but this is the Daily Planet, not the Dawson Gazette. We report real news, not some story on $crooge McDuck’s days at the Klondike.
*telephone rings*
WHITE: Yes. I see. I understand. But Mr. McD— No. Certainly, sir. Thank you. A good day to y— Huh. He hung up. Well. Looks like you got yourself the job, Mr. Kent.
But he'd steadily been working toward trying to convince his boss to take him on full time.
He’s never going to land a job at the Planet, is he?
Two men had burst into the bank, hooded and masked.
They actually have bank robbers in an out-of-the-way collection of houses in the middle of Nowhere, Nunavut? Actually, they have a *bank* in the middle of Nowhere?
They had demanded cash and threatened to shoot the hostages if their demands were not met.
Shouldn’t he be threatening to shoot the teller instead?
He typed out a fast letter of resignation, and sent it to his editor.
EDITOR: Good thing I didn’t give that Kent boy a permanent staff position. Those Southerners just can’t be trusted. Don’t have the stomach for the Wolfswood.
Clark frowned at that. It frustrated him sometimes, that modern technology still wasn't able to keep up with his speed.
/wonders how Clark would fare with one of the new touch devices
But, as soon as I'm finished, I can all but feel Trask on my trail."
/imagines Trask sitting all day in front of a search engine, collecting data, waiting for S to return into his sphere of influence/
"That may be, but we can't even be sure he's still alive," Jonathan pointed out. "Look at Pauly Overton. Forty years old and healthy as a horse. Bam. Dies of a stroke."
Yes, but Cam’s got a son. And a son who got his arm ripped off by S, for that matter.
Every time I make a rescue or help out in some small way, I wind up unable to sleep well for weeks.
Maybe he should start and see a shrink in Metropolis. I hear Dr. Friskin is quite good.
be it at a Papal Mass in Rome
/imagines Clark standing up and pointing at the Pope/ “Trask! There, in the middle, don’t you see him? He’s the *Pope*!”
or in the Louvre while admiring the paintings
Well, Cam did always have that enigmatic smile.
or on the streets of Tokyo.
The mascot of a donut shop?
Every minute, I'm expecting to see him jump out before me with a chuck of Kryptonite."
Bugga! Bugga! Bugga!
Not until I figure out a way to either deal with my desire to help people without the fear of exposing myself for what I am,
How about wearing a skintight costume?
or find a way to squash down the instinct to help at all."
Martha raised a skeptical eyebrow. "You really think that's a possibility for you?"
Get engaged to Lana?
And none of them had yet felt like home.
Duh! They don’t have a Lois.
He'd even landed a full time position at one of the German papers.
He’s come a long way for a previously illiterate teenaged runaway.
Clark sighed as he wandered the halls of the Cairo museum. It was getting late. He checked his watch. Three fifty-two in the morning. His shift was nearly over.
/waits for him to be the only foreign guard during a museum heist in the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities/
Then he would go back to the tiny apartment he was renting, attempt to get an hour or two of sleep, then hit the streets looking for a story to write up, all the while hoping that the paper would agree to buy it from him.
“Museum heist at the Egyptian Museum”
Clark shuddered in the dark, moving away from the nameless body in the glass case.
Hey, maybe he gets lucky and his body will lose its invulnerability in death.
Oooooh!
When Tempus had left this universe, he had done so secure in the knowledge that he had won the battle.
Never leave important work to a minion you haven’t trained and vetted yourself?
They had the audacity to shoot him matching dirty looks.
To the happy-police with them!
The place where Clark Kent and Lois Lane had become engaged to be married. Now immortalized as a shrine to the Man of Steel and the woman he'd bound his life to.
Ooooh! /snaps picture/
, and their half-breed mongrel children.
?
Somehow, he'd still managed to find Lois in this universe. And whenever that happened, Utopia was an inevitability.
He needed a new plan. He had to find some way of preventing those two from linking up.
Maybe if he shot Lois in the head and upper chest area several times from close range using a big caliber gun before dumping her body into a vat filled with steaming hydrochloric acid?
He thought carefully over his college Lane History classes.
Smiling to himself, he put his back to the statue and swiftly left the area. He had preparations to make.
Oh dear. And just when we…
…only got three more months to go! Wait, that’s when Lois gets kind of lost in the Congo, isn’t it? Luckily, Clark might still be in Africa!
"Perry!" Lois Lane cried, rushing through the bullpen of the Daily Planet.
So, we get to see her taking off to the Congo?
"Here's the stories on the bank robbery, the rash of car thefts, and yes, even the opening of the Lexor.
Wait… She investigating Clark?
Can we talk in your office?"
No, it’s the Congo after all.
"Perry, this is bigger than your trip to Graceland," Lois said, smiling as though she knew a secret that he didn't.
"Easy for you to say," Perry huffed.
Well…it’s not *her* anniversary of meeting Pres. Presley.
/ticks off checkbox/
"Bobby Bigmouth. He got it from someone in the government. Weird name. What was it? Tampos? Timpas? Anyway, it doesn't matter."
"I want to go over there, Perry. I want to be the one to crack this story open."
Translation: Please! I so want to die a horrible death in a foreign country.
Especially for someone like you. Young, attractive, American, and female."
And if you think I'm about to share it with anyone, you can forget it right now."
So, how about a couple of bodyguards instead?