Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Fanfic Quiz - Opening Lines II

Lois Lane pulled a sweater over her thin blouse to guard
against the chill of the evening and raked a cursory comb
through her hair. She took her wallet out of her purse and
slipped it into her pocket before heading out the door. She
needed a good, long walk, with time to think things through.
She had no idea what Clark wanted to discuss in the morning,
but she had more than a few things to "discuss" with *him*!

Lois ran lightly down the steps of her apartment building and
turned right, setting off at a brisk pace. As the dusk deepened
into full night, Lois walked restlessly through the streets,
trying to get her whirling thoughts into some semblance of
order. She'd said her final good-byes to Dan, and proposed that
she and Clark take the "next step." Yet he still backed away
from her, still disappeared at the oddest moments and most
infuriating times. Now he'd invited her to breakfast in the
morning, but for what reason? When he called her on the phone,
he seemed too purposeful for this to be merely a casual
breakfast date. No, he had definitely had something in mind.
But what?

Maybe some chocolate would help... Her hand reached for her
wallet as she scanned her surroundings, trying to determine her
exact location. She smiled as she saw she was only half a block
away from Lincoln Street, which meant there was a 7-11 right
around the corner. She felt desperately in need of some
gratuitous calories right now.

"Lois."

Startled out of her thoughts, Lois turned her head and blinked
at the revolver pointed at her nose.

"In here. Now."

"I can't *believe* you dragged out me to this, Lucy," Lois complained as she entered the flea market. "I hate these things. All these people, all this junk, it's just a money pit for fools."

Lucy sighed in exasperation. "Lois, can't you quit being so negative for one afternoon and just do something silly?" She turned to face her sister. "It's just a fun way to kill an afternoon."

"I can think of better ways to kill time," Lois muttered as she picked up a farm implement pillow and examined it.

"Yeah, like cleaning the grout in your kitchen. Lighten up." Lucy shot back. She gave a shout of joy as she headed to a doll display. Lois threw the pillow back on the pile as if it had cooties and followed her sister.

Sunlight filtered in through the heavily tinted windows of
the office, rare streams of light that only appeared in
late morning as the sun cleared the building across the
street, before it continued overhead and masked the office
in shadow once again. Even though those rays appeared for
only a few hours a day, they were the one thing that had
made this particular office, above all others that had been
available in the vast concrete jungle that was Metropolis,
attractive. The sunlight was a symbol, a sign from above
that even the bleakest of lives could have some brightness
in them, and that was comforting somehow.

The brunette woman who called that office her own leaned
back in the large leather chair she sat in, letting the
rays send light across her face. Her life was the kind that
had seen far too little sunshine, mired more in shadows and
darkness than anything else. A distant, bleak pain, a pain
that had been present almost as long as she could remember,
penetrated her whole being, and not even the invigorating
rays of the sun could drive that away. That pain had
consumed her, driven her, led her. In and of itself it was
almost soothing, a reminder of what she had in her life at
one point, a memory of the happy times. But those happy
times had only made the aftermath that much more bleak.

A single light was burning in Clark Kent's apartment. In the muted glow, in the middle of the living room, Lois Lane was standing gazing at the object she'd just discovered, her jaw slowly dropping.

After a long moment she sat down abruptly on the couch and swallowed hard. "I just can't believe it!" she muttered.

I will not be defeated. I have survived teenage boys, John
Travolta in *Grease*, and Prom nights. I will not let one
tights-wearing, underpants-showing, flying man beat me!

The tall, blond man laughed heartily. Unbelievable. This was just unbelievable!

Life was funny. And fun. Very, very fun. To think this all started because his grades in high school had been rather uninspired. They would have been better, but there had always been so many other things - fun things - to do that took precedence over studying.

And it was because he'd had such a good time in high school that he'd ended up at UNW. UNW had been lots of fun, too, but let's face it--it wasn't known for the quality of its diplomas. But who cared? He'd kept his paterfamilias
happy, and with all that lovely inheritance at stake, that had been important. Too bad his father hadn't left as much as anticipated upon croaking. But he had plans to make up for that shortfall.

In the darkened newsroom, Jimmy Olsen shut down his computer for the day and
sighed. It wasn't a tired or a depressed sigh; more a heavily wry one. This
morning he had uncovered a major fraud which was being perpetrated by one of
Metropolis's most respected dot.com companies. It was a fraud which was creaming
off large amounts of money from the company's shareholders, as well as denying
the company's customers value for money. In effect, the company promised a
service which it did not deliver in full, charged more for that service through
a series of 'hidden' costs and additional extras which shouldn't have been
necessary, and then did not declare the full value of receipts from these
extras, so the shareholders lost out - as did the IRS.

Lois Lane stared out of the window of the 727 winging its way
across the United States: destination Metropolis. In the
distance, the cotton candy clouds appeared to hang in the sky by
strings, it wasn't evident that the plane was moving by their
standards; but by judging the speed against the feathery
confections that were brushing the plane wings, time was not
standing still in the sky. She took a deep breath and tried to
relax but her misgivings increased by the mile in anticipation
of the plane finally landing.

The decision to return to the large city had not been easy, the
prospect of starting over unsettled her, but Metropolis was in
her blood. Even more so than the action packed city, journalism
was in her soul; working briefly at a small paper on the West
Coast didn't compare to the way she felt while working at the
Metropolis Star. She tried to separate the two, but it took her
four long months to finally sort out that it wasn't journalism
unless she was working in Metropolis.

"That new kid they hired downstairs still has a lot to learn. Would you believe he doesn't know his alphabetical order backwards? *I* had to help him with the research for Harrington's background. He couldn't even find his way through Who's Who. Anyway, I've got pretty much all I need on him now, and it looks like Harrington's past is way too clean." A gulp of coffee was swallowed in great haste before another flood of words hit Clark. "Too clean for a politician anyway. Makes me suspicious right away, and from what I saw the other night I'm sure I'm right. Clean politicians don't take cash from guys with police records as long as Hobb's River. Jimmy!!"