TOC Part Four Thanks again to Sara Kraft for BRing on short notice!
******
Production Meeting Five:
As usual, the meeting started with Seth's report.
"Well, internet chatter started off slow this time, but it did get up to nearly the same level as it's been." Seth shrugged. "Must have been a busy weekend."
"Fair enough," Paul said. "What did they have to say? Did they like the story?"
"Actually, most of it was about Timmy."
The writer looked up from underneath the brim of his new hat, a haunted look in his eyes. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
"It was very supportive," Seth hurriedly assured him.
Timmy looked tentatively hopeful.
Honesty forced Seth to qualify the remark. "Well, for the most part, anyway."
The brim went back down. Light reflected off the hat's message. "Do Not Disturb."
"Look, someone offered to let you hide out at her place. Said you could have your choice of couches."
"Oh. Well, that's nice," Timmy said into his pile of script pages.
"And someone else asked if you have a girlfriend..."
"Yeah? What do you know about her?"
"Well, she represents herself with a phoenix."
"As in 'baby bird rising from the ashes'?" he asked, sounding interested despite himself.
Seth glanced at the printout. "Yeah, pretty much."
Brian jumped in while Timmy was thinking this over. "Sounds like one hot chick!"
There was a pause, then everyone groaned.
"Look, Timmy," Seth said, "they think you're brilliant. They really like you. It's a good thing."
"What about that guy? He likes me, too..."
"Yeah," Seth agreed uncomfortably. "Here's the thing about him. He... uhm... made a little mistake."
"Oh?"
"He stopped to post his... activities. Security teams know just what to look for now."
"Uhm, good. I guess."
Paul spoke into the uncomfortable silence. "What did they say about the show itself?"
"Oh, they enjoyed it. They actually liked the beekeeper thing. Oh, and the sight gag with Dan standing in for Superman. Actually, one of them liked it so much she wants to see Superman in a hawaiian shirt."
That shook Timmy out of his funk. "What?"
"She thinks it'd be really fun to see Superman flying around in a hawaiian shirt."
Timmy raised an eyebrow. "Uh-huh."
"Hey, she's a fan, and one of the good ones. Well, except that she seems to think she's a Mary Sue."
"Er... why?"
Seth shook his head, confused. "Uhm, because we noticed her and included her in the show?"
"She does realize she wasn't part of the actual story, right? And that she's not the writer?"
"I guess..."
"Maybe she has unusually colored hair," Brian suggested.
Seth shrugged. "Maybe. I guess I should skip over the part where she thinks Timmy is her father..."
"What?! Do I look old enough to be someone's father?"
"Well, in this day and age, who knows?" Seth asked, trying to keep a straight face. "But of a fifty-year-old woman? Probably not."
"Right, okay. I guess that makes the request seem more reasonable by comparison. Well, I'll see if I can work something out. Maybe there's some confusion when he's unpacking in Gotham..." He started flipping through script pages.
"Anything else, Seth?" Paul asked. "We're kind of running late..."
"I think we've covered the highlights. They hate Dan, but we knew that."
Paul nodded. "True enough. Thanks, Seth. Steph, what do you have for us today?"
"Everything looks good," she said, smiling. "Well, except for one little thing..."
"Uh-oh. What is it this time?"
"Oh, no. Sorry! Nothing to worry about! It's just that Perry feels left out. He hasn't been getting many lines lately, and he hasn't shown up in this series at all..."
"I can work him in, I think," Timmy said.
"Thanks!" Steph replied happily.
"Whew. Well, what about you, Brian?"
"All set here. We've got everyone we need for this week and next! We had to push up the schedule for Gotham because of the special scripts the last couple of weeks, but everything is set now."
"Glad to hear it! Kate?"
"Lights are fixed, sets are ready, sound is in place... It all looks good. We've even got permission to use the car! Effects department is still tied up working on the Enforcer -- something about getting it to move right on the screen -- but that's fine. We're light on effects today, anyway."
"Perfect. So, then --"
Paul was cut off as Meg, the studio consultant, rushed in the door. She was in charge of communications with the higher-ups in the company. Having her burst in suddenly at the last moment was generally a bad sign. "I just got a call. We can't use Gotham."
Everyone at the conference table spoke at the same time. "What?" they asked, shocked.
"They're coming out with a new Batman series. They just decided. Apparently, we've been doing well enough with Superman that they're willing to give it the green light. We'll see if anything actually comes of it, but for now... They're pulling the rights."
"That's nuts!" Kate exclaimed. "Allowing us to use Batman would *increase* interest in a new show!"
"I know," Meg said regretfully, "but there's some kind of legal tangle. We can't have the rights while they're working on getting the new show together."
"So what are we supposed to do?" Paul demanded. "We've been setting this thing up for *weeks*."
"There's nothing I can do," Meg responded heavily. "I tried, believe me."
"Change the signs on the lab and the construction bay," Timmy said, scribbling away on various papers. "We'll just have to relocate."
"And just as I got the car, too," Kate said. "Hmm. Maybe we can use it in another episode sometime down the road..."
There was more muttering around the room, but the meeting footage cut out. Apparently, the producers had chosen to keep the staff's comments about the studio private.
******
Part Five:
"Lois, Clark! My office! Now!" Perry White's voice boomed across the newsroom.
The two reporters, used to their editor's gruff ways, smiled at each other and made their way to his office at an only slightly hurried walk.
"Yeah, Perry?" Lois asked, while Clark closed the door behind them.
"It's about this Gotham thing..."
Lois and Clark exchanged a glance. By the sound of Perry's voice, this wasn't going to be good news.
"I've been speaking to the boys in travel, and they say they can't do it."
"What?!" Lois was outraged. "They can't --"
"Exactly," Perry cut her off. "They can't afford it. Our budget is strained now, Lois..."
"Strained? Perry, someone out there is building dangerous military-grade hardware, something so mysterious we can barely find anything to show it even exists, and the only clue we have points directly to Gotham City. We can't let something like this go just because the pencil pushers are pinching pennies! If we'd let them do that, we'd still have guns pouring onto the street from the Congo and --"
Perry knew better than to let her work herself into full-steam-ahead babble mode. "Lois, listen to me. The paper is on a tight budget now. The money is tied up with legal battles from this whole CostMart mess."
Lois did a double-take. "Costmart? But they..."
"Claim that, whatever their boss may have been doing, they are a legitimate business, and that, thanks to the stories we've been running -- your stories -- they're losing millions of dollars a day."
"But... but... that's..."
"Completely ridiculous. I know," Perry, said interrupting again. If there was one thing he hated, it was giving people bad news. At least, when those people were his best reporters rather than paid subscribers. The way he saw things, it was better to force the issue and get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible. "They were about as clean as a junkyard dog who'd been digging for scraps in the compost pile on a rainy day."
Lois frowned for a second, digesting this, before nodding. "So, what's --"
"The problem is that, until the lawyers can prove that in court, we've got to be *very* careful about where we put our money, where we send our people, and what we go poking into."
Lois took a breath.
"You bring me something solid, something to prove this thing poses a real threat to the public, that it's not just a run-of-the-mill classified project... maybe I can work something out. But as it is? No. That's my final word, Lois."
Clark, who had been standing behind Lois the whole time, quietly supportive, spoke up for the first time. "Gotcha. Thanks, Chief." Carefully, he steered his partner towards the door, his hand on her back silently assuring her that there was nothing more productive that could be done.
Moving with an agreement that didn't need to be spoken, the partners made their way to the conference room, where they could review the situation in private.
Lois paced rapidly, trying to work off her frustrations and get her mind working better at the same time. "So what do we do now?"
"Look into local connections, I guess. It's all we can do."
"Local connections, right. That means..."
***
"PROPERTY OF LEXCORP" the sign declared boldly, its clean face almost seeming to gleam in comparison with the dingy wall to which it was attached. Lois, dressed in dark, nondescript clothing, stood with her back pointedly turned towards the "No Trespassing" sign on the fence that ran around the perimeter of the property. It might as well have been a welcome mat to the fearless and intrepid reporter.
Clark, also in dark clothing, seemed somewhat less at ease, although the letters "LEX" alone could perhaps have accounted for that.
Lois crept towards the door, then began working on the lock. Clark watched her for a moment, then wordlessly scanned the area. By the time the telltale click announced his partner's success, he had used his breath to point a camera in a more favorable direction, his heat vision to disable three alarms, his x-ray vision to find the most likely path to their target area (a lab which was, of course, lead-lined), and his hearing to locate all the guards.
Between Lois's experience and Clark's surreptitious help, the break-in went very smoothly. Inside the lab, they found blueprints for Project: Enforcer. It was some kind of high-end military plane, but notes scrawled on the blackboards mounted on the room's walls made it clear that it had been designed with Superman's capabilities in mind. Unfortunately, there was no way to say to prove that the motives for doing so were any more sinister than just using the Man of Steel as a very performance benchmark.
They were rifling through files, looking for something more concrete, when Clark heard one of the guards approaching. He signaled to Lois, and the pair reluctantly hurried away.
(TBC in
Part Six , airing this Tuesday!)
Part Five
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