From part 5:
A tickling sensation on her thigh caused her to look down. To her dismay, she saw that she had ripped the right side seam of her skirt clear up to the top of her thigh.
"Great!" she exclaimed, her pretty features molding into a frown as she flicked her hand at the dangling threads. She turned to her would-be assailant, still out cold. "Thanks a lot! You made me ruin a perfectly good skirt, too!"
She shook her head. This just wasn't her day. With one last growl of aggravation, she stomped back to the sidewalk. Wasted opportunities. She hated those more than anything.
***********
Now on to part 6...
**********
By the end of the day, that wasted opportunity proved to be more monumental than she could have imagined. She had struck out in all her attempts to track down information on the whereabouts of the city's hero. She had talked to many of the city beat's reporters, and not a single one of them had known anything. They were as clueless as she was. Or maybe they just saw her as competition and weren't about to help her beat them to the scoop. She supposed if she were in their shoes, she would keep any information she had to herself, too.
Lois leaned back in the chair at her temporary desk and pouted at the useless notes in her hand. There had to be something--some piece of information she was overlooking. Surely there were clues to this man's whereabouts. If there were, though, she certainly hadn't found them.
She shook her head in frustration. She'd come all the way across the country to get the story, and what did she have to show for it after an entire day? Nothing. She was used to being the best, at having other reporters follow her lead. Here she felt like one of the pack, a faceless person in the crowd.
And she hated it.
She shifted her gaze from her notes to the afternoon edition of the Daily Planet on her desk. A picture of the hero rescuing the people from the burning apartment building loomed larger than life on the front page. She leaned forward and picked up the paper. The headline reported "Man Saves People From Fire".
Lois read the article half-heartedly, noting that at the bottom of the column, there was a brief report of the hero's other feats of the day--the bomb scare at the bank, and the multi-car pile up.
Suddenly the wheels in her head started to turn. Nobody had been able to find the hero, but he was clearly adept at finding people--people in trouble, that is. She grumbled at herself once again for wasting the perfect opportunity earlier for getting him to rescue her. It was exactly the kind of thing he would respond to--a damsel in distress.
That made her smile. He wasn't exactly a knight in shining armor, but he clearly was to some. He was to those women she'd overheard at the fire.
Lois's thoughts screeched to a halt. Those women at the fire. The one had said she would gladly throw herself off a building to get his attention.
Lois let that thought roll over in her mind. Would something like that work? Hadn't she just a short time ago thought about waking up her would-be assailant to ask him to try to mug her again? The idea was ridiculous, but the fact remained--this hero responded to cries for help. What if she were to set herself up? To put herself in peril and then call for help?
She rolled her eyes at herself. She was as desperate as the women at the fire.
She forced herself to try to think of more conventional methods to track the guy down, methods that people expected a respected journalist like her to use. But after several more minutes of looking over her notes, she realized there weren't any. Gathering information on unconventional story subjects called for using unconventional means.
Lois stood up from her desk, her mind made up. It was worth a try. At this point, anything was worth a try. She started to walk away, but then stopped. Where was she going? She hadn't given any thought to what kind of peril she wanted to put herself in. Tie herself to train tracks? Dangle herself over a cliff? Those seemed a little dramatic.
Lois laughed out loud, causing several people nearby to eye her strangely. She quickly bit her lip to stifle her laughter. 'Dramatic?' she thought with a shake of her head. 'Putting yourself in peril to get *anybody's* attention is dramatic, no matter what it is you do.'
Accepting that, she decided to go for a simpler, less involved means of peril. The roof. It was close, convenient, and equally as dangerous. It was several stories off the ground. You would be just as dead when you hit the ground as you would be if a train ran over you.
Her mind made up, Lois located the back stairs. She glanced around as she reached for the doorknob, not wanting anyone to stop her. Nobody was looking, so she quietly slipped into the stairwell and began to climb the stairs to the roof.
She was winded but determined when she reached her destination and stepped out onto the roof. The sounds of the city drifted up to her on the early evening breeze, and dusk blurred the colors of her surroundings into a more monochromatic color scheme. She took a deep breath and forced herself to stay focused on the matter at hand. Her staged peril.
With determined footsteps, she strode to the low brick wall signaling the edge of the roof. The sounds of the traffic below caught her attention and she glanced over the edge.
"Whoa." The word slipped from her mouth before she realized she was saying it. She suddenly felt faint of heart. The ground was a long way away.
'Of course it's a long way away,' the voice in the back of her head goaded her on. 'It's what you needed, isn't it? Where there's danger, there's the city's new hero. Did you think he would rush to save you if you were jumping of a park bench?'
Somewhere below her a siren wailed. She stared down at the rush-hour traffic several stories down, watching the stop and go motion as the traffic lights turned from red to green. Yes, if she were to put herself in danger, this was a good way to do it.
'Step up onto the wall and jump. It's as simple as that,' the voice instructed her boldly. 'Make sure to scream, though. You wouldn't want your efforts to go to waste, would you?'
Lois shuffled her feet forward until her toes were pressed against the base of the wall. She leaned forward out over the edge, spotting dozens of dark spots moving around on the sidewalks far below. With a gulp, she realized they were people.
Suddenly this didn't seem like such a good idea.
'Lois Lane isn't afraid of anything,' the voice piped up once again. 'Just do it. Jump and scream. That's all there is to it.'
Lois contemplated the ground for one more excruciating minute, then backed away.
'Chicken.'
"Yeah, well, I have an aversion to dying," she snapped aloud to the mocking voice in her head.
Feeling torn between being disappointed with herself for not having the nerve to throw herself off the roof, and relief that she didn't have to put the new hero's hearing to the test, she straightened her blouse and smoothed the front of her skirt before walking back to the roof's stairwell door. Taking risks in her profession was second nature, but even for her, this one was too risky. Besides, this was her first day in Metropolis. If she got really desperate by her last day there, she probably would be desperate enough to get up on that wall.
She emerged from the stairwell into the newsroom only a couple minutes later and took a deep breath. 'Now what?' she asked herself. 'You don't exactly have a lot of options.'
'Try no options.' The pesky voice in her head was back, reminding her of the dead end wall she was facing.
She frowned. She had to admit, she was stuck. The coffee machine caught her eye, and she made a beeline for it, deep in thought. She hadn't managed to catch the hero's attention at any of the rescues she'd made it to that day, she wasted her opportunity by knocking out her mugger, and she chickened out of jumping off the roof.
'Lois Lane, you are losing your edge,' she told herself silently as she poured herself a cup of coffee and added two sugars.
She blew a hair out of her eyes as she turned and leaned up against the bar, stirring her coffee and thinking. As impossible as this seemed at the moment, there had to be a way to track this man down. She didn't come all the way across the country to let the story slip away from her. She was the best. She was supposed to find ways to do the impossible.
The Planet's morning edition laying on the bar's counter caught her eye. She leaned forward, studying the article about the hero. Her eyes traveled to the by-line. 'Clark Kent,' she read for the second time that day.
"That's it!" she exclaimed, standing upright and causing some of her newly poured coffee to slosh over the edge onto the floor. "Why didn't I think of it before?"
With a burst of adrenaline, she scurried towards Perry White's office.
**********
"You want me to set you up with Clark Kent?" Perry cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at her. "I thought you didn't want a partner."
Lois bit back a retort. It had been a long day, and she wasn't in the mood for this. But before she could vent her frustration, she reminded herself that she was in somebody else's newsroom. She took a long, deep breath before responding. "I don't want to be partnered with him, I just want to talk to him about how he managed to get hold of this hero guy."
A look of amusement crossed Perry's features. "Crapped out, huh? I figured that somebody with your experience and resourcefulness wouldn't have any trouble tracking him down."
Lois stiffened. A cursory glance at the editor didn't help her decide if he was sympathizing with her, or poking a little fun at her. Either way, after the day she'd just had, she didn't need to be reminded that her investigation had come up lacking. "I'm not having trouble," she argued, trying to remain civil, "it's just...taking a little longer than I expected."
"I see." Perry barely managed to contain the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth by leaning forward and glancing down at the papers on his desk, the same ones he'd been going over when she'd burst through his office door with barely a knock.
He cleared his throat, then continued. "Well, uh, Clark Kent was the one I was going to have you talk with this morning. I figured that not only does he know the city well, but he's already managed to track down our local hero once and just might be able to do it again." He looked up, this time not bothering to hide his smug, amused smile. "If you hadn't been in such a hurry to go off and do your own investigating, you could have saved yourself a lot of time."
Lois bristled at the I-told-you-so undertone to his voice. It reminded her of her father's, so many years ago. "Look," she said, quickly losing what little patience she had left. "Can I talk to him or not? Maybe I can drag something out of him that would be helpful."
"Sure, you could talk to him," Perry said with a shrug, restoring his business-like demeanor when he sensed he was pushing her too far. "He may not be very forthcoming with information, though. He won't say how he managed to get the interview, or even if he can reliably contact the man again."
"I think it's worth a shot. Talking to him can't hurt, can it?"
Perry studied the determined look on her face for a moment, then finally nodded. "Last time I saw him he was at his desk. Come on, I'll introduce you."
They walked out of the office together and Perry gestured to a dark-haired man sitting a few desks away. Lois was surprised to see that Clark Kent was a good-looking, well-built man about thirty years old, dressed in a nicely tailored gray suit. The crisp white shirt was a stark contrast underneath the jacket, and a bold burgundy and yellow tie gave his otherwise sharp outfit a touch of personality. If she had allowed herself a moment to think about something other than tracking down the city's elusive super hero, she might have stopped to consider the fact that he wasn't wearing a wedding ring. As it was, she filed the tidbit away in her mind for a later time.
Clark was focused on his computer screen as they approached, engrossed in whatever it was he was working on. He didn't pull his eyes from his monitor until Perry's booming voice sounded beside him.
"Kent, I'd like you to meet somebody."
Clark looked up amiably at the start of his boss's introduction, giving her a glimpse of beautiful, intelligent brown eyes behind stylish tortoise-shell frame glasses. When their eyes met, however, Clark's body stiffened and a guarded expression replaced his open, friendly one. She was both surprised and intrigued by his abrupt change of expression.
Perry continued on with his introduction. "Clark Kent, this is Lois Lane, from the San Francisco Chronicle. She's here to try to do a story on our new hero. Lois Lane, Clark Kent--the one who already nailed down an exclusive." Perry's last statement was said proudly, and he clapped the rather anxious-looking young man on the shoulder. "Ms. Lane has had a bit of trouble tracking down our local hero to get an interview with him, and she wondered if you might be able to help her with that."
Lois watched curiously as Clark's Adam's apple shifted as he swallowed. 'Is it just me, or does he seem nervous?' she couldn't help wondering. He got slowly to his feet, then extended a hand.
"Nice to meet you, Ms. Lane." His voice was deep and strong, but his hand barely grasped hers before he pulled it back.
Her eyes narrowed. Was this one of those situations Perry had warned her about, when his staff would not be very welcoming because she would be considered competition for the new hero's story? He'd already gotten the exclusive, though. He should be feeling superior, if anything, shouldn't he? Or maybe because of his exclusive, he felt he owned the hero.
Lois's jaw tightened. 'Well, he doesn't,' she thought irritably. 'Besides, he had his shot and blew it. Now it's my turn, and if he doesn't like it, he can just go to--'
"Ms. Lane, did you hear me?"
Lois pulled herself from her increasingly irritable thoughts and turned to Perry, who was looking at her expectantly. "I'm sorry?" she asked.
"I wanted you to know that if Jimmy can be of any assistance, you should just holler. Okay?"
She nodded, then quickly turned back to Clark, fixing him with a determined stare. He actually flinched.
Lois's brow furrowed. What was up with this guy? He looked like a deer caught in the headlights. How had he managed such an important exclusive when he was clearly afraid of his own shadow? He was obviously a hack, who had fallen into the story with a great deal of luck. Not that she had anything against luck; luck was often a journalist's greatest friend. But this guy--it hardly seemed fair that he had been able to nail the first big exclusive on Metropolis's newest media sensation, when she, herself, had worked long and hard for a chance like this. It should have been hers.
'It will be,' she told herself. 'And it will be the expose of the century. All you have to do is find out how this hack of a reporter tracked down the hero, and don't you dare let him tell you no.'
Perry sensed the tension between the two, causing a flash of confusion. Was there more going on here than he understood? He watched as the two reporters stood, eyeing each other--Clark's expression wary, Lois's determined. Perry tried hard to hide the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. 'Apparently so,' he thought, answering his own question.
It was an interesting moment, watching the two size each other up. His eyes went from one to the other, comparing them to each other. Clark hadn't been at the Planet for very long--a few months was all. But in that amount of time, he'd come to like his new investigative reporter. He had a wonderful writing style that was honest and likeable. He was a hard worker, if somewhat mild-mannered by nature. He never did anything half way, if his few short months there had been any indication, and he was impressed by that. He had high hopes for him.
But when his gaze turned to Lois Lane, it was a jolt to realize what a night-and-day contrast there was between the two. Kent was easy going, determined yet polite, and thoughtful. He loved to run a good investigation, but he tried hard to never step on anyone's toes in the process. Lane, on the other hand, was independent, passionate, and demanding. He hadn't worked with her long, but from the moment she'd stepped into his office that morning, he sensed that she was a reporter who wouldn't take no for an answer--no matter what.
She'd been polite enough to him, but he could tell there was an underlying hunger that would push her to the brink. He'd had a little fun testing that breaking point in his office just a short time before, and was not surprised to see an underlying temper that could prove volatile under more familiar circumstances. With a smile, he wondered how many times his old friend Jim Langley had been on the receiving end of that temper.
He shook his head and chuckled to himself. He hated to be in the person's shoes that set her off, or wouldn't give her what she wanted.
He decided to slip away to his office, and did so unnoticed by either of them. But he couldn't resist on last glance over his shoulder, and he saw Lois take a confident--though almost irritated--step toward Clark, which caused him to take a step backwards. If he didn't know any better, he would have thought Clark was afraid of her.
'Why shouldn't he be?' he asked himself in amusement. 'She's a handful. If I were their age, I might be intimidated by her, too.'
Perry stepped into his office, shutting the door behind himself and allowing himself to grin openly. As he thought about Clark's genteel nature and Ms. Lane's fire and passion, one thing seemed certain.
Lois Lane was going to eat that boy alive.
**********
Clark swallowed the lump in his throat. Not only was Lois Lane even more beautiful up close, but she was definitely intimidating. She walked with an air of confidence that spoke volumes as to how she'd been able to get where she was in this man's world. She was good, and she knew it.
He tried not to waver beneath her intense, determined gaze. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally cleared his throat and sat back down in his chair. "So, Ms. Lane," he began, glancing at his computer screen, then back at her, hoping she would take the hint that he was busy. "What can I do for you?"
She crossed her arms over her chest. "Like Mr. White said, I'm here to do a story on this new hero, and obviously you managed to track him down. How did you do it? I want to contact him myself."
Clark shifted nervously in his chair. "He's already given an interview, Ms. Lane," he hedged. "Why would he want to give another one?"
"It isn't a matter of him 'wanting' to give another one," Lois insisted, her tone becoming condescending. "It's that you didn't get the whole story, and somebody needs to."
Clark didn't know whether to be offended by her tone, or worried that she was clearly digging for things he didn't want to have turned up. Trying to stall for time, he forced his voice to remain even. "What do you mean, I 'didn't get the whole story'?"
She tossed the newspaper she had folded and tucked under her arm onto his desk and jammed her index finger at the article. "I mean, where's the story behind the story? Seriously. Who is this guy? All you gave was some touchy-feely story about how he was from another planet and was here to help. That's all fine and good, but everybody wants to know more about this guy. Does he even have a name? He calls himself 'a friend.'" She snorted. "That doesn't tell us anything! I mean, doesn't he even have a name? What's he planning to call himself, 'friend man'?"
In spite of his concerns over being discovered, Clark had to fight back a smile. When this woman babbled, she really babbled. He wondered how she managed to take a breath between her sentences. Or maybe she just had really strong lungs and didn't need to.
He watched as Lois looked down at the picture on the front page. "And just what the heck is that 'S' on his chest supposed to stand for?" she continued. "I mean, if he'd been smarter, he would have tied that in with a name for himself."
Clark's eyebrows rose. This was something he hadn't considered. "Like?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. Like...well..." She thought for a minute. "The stuff he can do is pretty super. Some people are even referring to him as a 'super hero.' Maybe he should have called himself 'Superman' or something."
Clark almost laughed out loud. Superman? That was something he never would have even considered. It sounded so vain. But then, if he were to call himself that, it could only help with his cover. After all, who would think of conservative, mild-mannered Clark Kent as 'super' anything? Maybe she was on to something. That might just work out to his advantage in the long run.
He opened his mouth to reply, but she knocked a pen from his desk and quickly bent down to grab it. When she did, he noticed her skirt was ripped clear up to the top of her thigh.
Clark froze. If her skirt hadn't been short enough to give him a good look at her long, shapely legs before when she'd been sitting in Perry's office, he was definitely getting a good look now. His cheeks flushed, and he found it harder to pull his eyes away from her bare expanse of leg, than it had been for him to lift the colonist's launch vehicle into orbit.
"Um," he stammered, his embarrassment growing even more as he caught the hitch in his own voice, "your--your skirt is ripped."
He gestured feebly at her split side seam, and Lois glanced down at her skirt. She grimaced. "Yeah, I know." She swiped a hand at it, brushing away a couple of loose threads hanging from the edge. "I got mugged in an alley on the way back here."
Clark's eyes widened in horror. "You got mugged?! Are you okay?" His concern over his own predicament was immediately overshadowed by his concern for her, a victim of a potentially serious crime. "Did you report it to the police?"
She waved her hand dismissively. "No, the thug didn't get anything, so I didn't bother."
"He didn't get your purse?" Clark's eyebrows knitted together in confusion. "I thought you said--"
Lois shook her head. "Okay, maybe I should have said the guy *attempted* to mug me. He told me to give him my purse, but I flattened him instead." She grinned, obviously very pleased with herself. "I don't think he'll be walking normally for a week. Maybe he'll think twice next time before he tries to rob a woman."
Clark stared at her in shock, unaware that his jaw was hanging open. "What exactly did you do to him?"
She cocked an eyebrow at him meaningfully. "You're a guy, Kent. I'm sure you're familiar with the best way to cripple a man."
Clark grimaced. Ouch. That mugger had obviously tried to mug the wrong person.
"Actually, that wasn't the only thing I did to him," Lois continued proudly, "but that's what had the biggest effect. If he had asked, I would have told him I'd just gotten my black belt in Tai Chi last month. Maybe if he had known that, he could have saved himself some pain and humiliation."
Clark was suddenly aware of his hanging jaw and snapped it shut. For a long moment, he continued to stare at this woman in a mixture of disbelief and newfound anxiety. A woman clearly well versed in using her feminine wiles, with the passion and fire to go after her stories like a mad woman, *and* a black belt to back it all up? He was in trouble. Big trouble.
"The point I was making before we got talking about my non-mugging," she said, re-capturing his attention and getting back to the topic at hand, "is that there's a lot more to know about this new hero than you got out of him. And those things are exactly the things I want to know."
Certain he didn't want to know the answer, he asked anyway. "For instance?"
"For instance, who is this guy, really? Where did he come from? And don't tell me he came from another planet," she hurried on when Clark opened his mouth to speak. "This guy already told us that much. What I want to know is, where did he come from *after* that?"
Afraid he knew where she was going with this, he forced himself to remain calm. "I'm afraid you've lost me, Ms. Lane."
Lois rolled her eyes in exasperation. "I mean, where was this guy *before* he saved the transport vehicle and those colonists? Did he arrive on earth moments before that bomb was detected? I don't think so. He had to have been here on earth for a time before that. How long a time? And where was he during that time? No one saw a guy in blue and red spandex walking around the city before that. Surely someone would have spotted him. No, my guess is that he's been here on earth for a while. Maybe he's been learning the culture, the lay of the land, maybe even living like a human being. Maybe he's even had a job somewhere, and this blue and red spandex costume was his idea of a disguise so no one would really know who he is."
Clark sucked in his breath sharply, almost choking on the sudden intake of air. He coughed a couple of times, then played down his reaction by patting himself on the chest a couple of times and muttering, "Excuse me."
When he realized she was waiting for him to respond, he shook his head. "Ms. Lane, I think your assumptions are a little far fetched. How would some guy with super powers hide everything that he could do? When I interviewed him, this man gave no indication he'd been living here for any length of time before the shuttle incident. I don't see what he could have possibly had to hide. He was very forthcoming with information about himself."
"Forthcoming! You call this article forthcoming?" Lois slapped her hand on the newspaper in front of Clark, causing him to jump. "It gives more questions than answers! Like I said, I believe there's a lot more story to tell. That's why I'm here. I'm going to get the whole story, Kent, and you're going to help me."
Clark stared back into Lois Lane's determined brown eyes, trying not to waver beneath her gaze. He took a deep, shaky breath and released it slowly. "What do you want from me?"
"How did you manage to get hold of this man?" she demanded, losing what little patience she had left. She was running out of time, and she could see her story starting to slip away. And what was worse, she was wasting her time here being jerked around by the likes of this guy. Her irritation reaching a peak, she threw her hands up in frustration. "Come on, Kent! I suspect you have some kind of source or connection. That's the only explanation for a hack like you lucking out and getting the exclusive that you did."
Clark felt something inside of him snap. He stood up from his chair slowly, his anxiety of moments ago replaced by anger. His eyes narrowed. "Wait a minute, let me get this straight. You think I'm some hack that got lucky?"
She snorted a laugh. "You obviously didn't do a very thorough job of getting the answers everybody wants to know. How else do you explain it?"
Clark put his hands on the desk and leaned in toward her, his eyes blazing. When he spoke, it was through gritted teeth. "Ms. Lane, I don't appreciate you calling my reporting abilities into question. And yes, I have connections, but that doesn't make me lucky. It makes me a good reporter."
She opened her mouth to speak, but Clark rushed on. "Look, Ms. Lane, I'm sorry that you're angry I scooped you, but I'll have you know I'm not just some hack. I've paid my dues just like you have, and I would not have been hired here as an investigative journalist if I didn't have the skills *and* the credentials. If we're going to talk connections, there's also something else you've probably heard of--it's called professional courtesy. And right now I'm not feeling particularly courteous. If you're going to walk in here and call me a hack, you can just go and find your own sources."
Lois's eyes widened and her jaw dropped open. In the silence that followed, Clark was surprised to see that she was actually speechless. Judging from her babbling of only minutes before, he assumed that probably didn't happen often.
For a moment, he almost felt guilty for lashing out at her--something he could never remember doing in the history of his career. He had always been courteous and respectful to his colleagues. But something about this Lois Lane's attitude and accusations had really rubbed him the wrong way. He had worked hard to get to where he was, and he wasn't about to let this woman--no matter how beautiful she was--talk down to him and accuse him of being a hack.
With his outburst hanging heavily in the air, Clark cleared his throat. "Well. If you'll excuse me, I've got some work to do. Good luck with your story."
And with that, Clark stalked across the newsroom and into the elevator, leaving her staring silently after him.
**********
stay tuned for part 7 on Monday...
