Note:I was planning on making this part longer... You can blame one of the supporting characters for this -- he insisted on showing up earlier than I had planned, and I couldn't make this fit properly into this part. Feel free to kick him (though, be advised that he might kick back. lol!)
Huge thanks to Jessi, Carol and Sue who poked, encouraged, brainstormed and plotted, and laughed at all the appropriate places.
*hugs*
~.~.~.~
Part 2- "Lois!" Jimmy called out to her the minute she walked into the newsroom. "There was a call for you. Bruce Wayne's
personal assistant. I guess you finally hit the big time, huh? I left a note on your desk."
"Excellent! Thanks, Jimmy," she replied as she walked briskly towards her desk, anxious to see the note.
"Hey, what'd you do with your partner? Chew his head off and hide the body?"
"I don't have a par-- Oh, wait...I do, don't I?" Lois turned to look around, but Clark was nowhere in sight. Hadn't he been right behind her in the lobby of The Planet? She shrugged. "I have
no idea where he went. For all I know, he could have vanished into thin air."
Lois turned again and quickly made for her desk, sliding down in her chair as soon as she got there. Stuck under a corner of her keyboard was the phone message she was so eager to get her hands on. Immediately, she picked up the phone and dialed the number.
A few minutes later, Lois set the receiver back down into the cradle, a victorious smile spreading across her face. "I got it!" she exclaimed.
Just then, the elevator made a small ding and its doors opened to reveal a dust-covered Clark Kent. Sheepishly, he headed for the washrooms, head bowed down, hoping no one would pay too much attention to him.
He'd been following Lois back into the Planet when he'd heard a strange rumbling noise that seemed to be coming from underground. Then he'd heard an explosion and a scream. Without so much as a second thought, Clark had dashed out of the building. Seconds later, he had located the source of the commotion and, dropping down into the closest manhole, he had super-sped right to the location of a worker who had been trapped underground by an explosion.
Luckily, no one had seen Clark do anything out of the ordinary - except the worker he had rescued and lifted out of the manhole. Of course, when the man had pointed to Clark and claimed that he had saved him, everyone had just believed he was dazed and confused. There was no way anyone could have been down with the worker one second and out in the crowd the very next one.
At least, no one
ordinary.
Clark had just barely made it past Lois's desk when she noticed him. "Where have you been?" she asked, a touch of displeasure in her voice.
"Oh, I just remembered I had to stop by the b--"
"And what on earth happened to your suit?" She frowned at him, perplexed. What could he possibly have done in the last five minutes or so that would have gotten him covered in dirt?
"Oh, um, that's because there was an explosion," he explained, a little uneasily at first, but gaining assurance as he spoke. "Underground. There was a worker trapped. I got a few good quotes." He pulled out a notepad from his jacket pocket and waved it before using it to dust himself off. "I guess the wind probably blew debris all over everyone."
"Must have been one serious gust of wind..." Lois mumbled, doubtful. "From now on, do what I do: bring a change of clothes to work."
A peculiar expression flashed across Clark's face, as if he'd suddenly figured out the meaning of life, and he broke into a wide smile. "That's a great idea," he told her before walking off in the direction of the washrooms.
"Hey, you better not disappear again, Kent," Lois called out after him. "We have Platt's report to look at!"
"I'll be back before you can blink," he replied from halfway across the room, waving a hand in the air.
Lois rolled her eyes at the comment. As if!
~.~.~
"What kind of a report is this, anyway?" Lois complained, as she pulled scrap upon scrap of paper from the brown bag they'd collected from Platt and set them on the conference table. "How are we ever going to piece all of this together? No wonder Baines has no memory of seeing this, she probably thought it was garbage!"
"We'll figure it out somehow," Clark replied calmly. He'd been trying to sort the pieces of paper in an order that made sense, but this was a puzzle that none of his abilities were likely to help him solve.
"I hope you haven't made dinner plans," she said in a rather frustrated sigh. "We're going to be here all night."
"I am all yours." He flashed her a warm smile and he could have sworn that she'd blushed.
"Careful," Lois found herself saying, "I might hold you to that."
"I'm counting on it," he told her, holding her gaze until she looked away, visibly flustered.
Much to Lois's relief, Jimmy chose that exact moment to barge into the conference room. "Well, I've tried calling everyone on your list, Lois," he announced, plopping down in the nearest chair. "No one's talking." He shrugged. "Anything else you need me to do?"
"You still have contacts at STAR Labs?" Lois asked him. At his nod, she added, "Do you think you could have them verify a theory or two?"
"Oh yeah! Stuart still owes me for setting him up with Stacy last month," Jimmy replied, a smirk on his face. "Just let me know what you need!"
"If we ever manage to make sense of this...pile of..." She sighed and gestured at the papers scattered across the table. "Platt's report. If we can make heads or tails of it, then we'd need them to verify that a malfunction could have occurred because the particle isolators overheated."
"Sure thing, Lois." Jimmy took a quick look at his watch and got up from his chair. "I'd better go. I'd help you guys out; really, I would. But I've got a
hot date with a cute girl from research."
"It's fine, Jimmy," Lois told him with a wave of the hand. "We'll figure it out. Right, Clark?"
"Of course," Clark acquiesced. "Have a good time, Jimmy."
Jimmy left the room, and Lois bent down to grab a few pieces of paper off the conference table.
She sighed. "It's hopeless, isn't it?"
"Nothing is ever hopeless, Lois."
Clark gave her a warm smile and, for a moment, Lois found herself almost wishing they were anywhere but in the conference room at work.
~.~.~
They'd been at it for hours and Lois's blood was just about to start boiling in her veins. Nothing in this poor excuse for a report made any sort of sense at all. There wasn't anything useful, they couldn't draw any conclusions from it - they were just wasting their time!
All of a sudden, she remembered that Clark had begun elaborating a theory while they were leaving EPRAD earlier.
"I think I've waited long enough, now. Don't you?" she asked him, crossing her arms against her chest and giving him a challenging look.
Clark looked back, slightly confused. "Long enough for what?"
"To hear your theory." On his raised eyebrow, she added, "The theory you came up with this afternoon... something about Wayne Aerospace... how Antoinette Baines had worked there..."
"Oh, right! Well, we both agree she seems to be hiding something, right?"
"Yeah?"
"She could be trying to protect her ex-employer," he suggested.
"Are you suggesting that it was one of
their parts that was defective and caused the explosion?" she said, all the while trying to make every possible connection in her mind.
"Considering Wayne Tech is under investigation for failure to comply with occupational safety and health regulations, I wouldn't exactly dismiss the thought. If they're not concerned with the safety of their own employees, how likely do you think it would be that parts they deliver to their clients might be defective?"
"Could be," Lois agreed. "But why would Baines want to protect an ex-employer? What's in it for her?"
"First guess would be money."
"Well, yeah, but..." Lois shook her head. "We're talking about someone who was awarded a medal for working on the space program. Do you really think she'd compromise the whole thing for a few dollars?"
Clark gave a small shrug. "Okay, then, loads of money."
"Still... Her entire career, her reputation, everything down the drain, for a few fistfuls of dollars?" Lois was far from convinced. "I could see a man doing that, but it's not something you typically see with women."
"Perhaps they're shacking up together?" Clark suggested, an amused look in his eyes. "She's totally his type, after all."
"Is she?" Lois raised an eyebrow. "How do you know what type of women Bruce Wayne goes for?"
Clark let out a small chuckle. "Given his reputation, I bet he goes for anything in a skirt."
It was Lois's turn to laugh. "You do realize that 'anything in a skirt' is broad enough to include Scottish men, for instance?"
"Sure. Why not?" he said, with a lopsided smile.
"You're nuts, Kent!"
He shrugged, though his eyes still had a spark of amusement in them. "Hey, talking about nuts, how do you feel about Thai cashew chicken? I know a place... best Thai food you've ever had."
"You've been in Metropolis what, a week? And already you know all the best places?" Lois asked, dubious.
Clark tapped the side of his nose lightly. "Sources, Lois. Sources."
~.~.~
"Are you sure you won't tell me where you got this from?" Lois asked for what had to be the fifth time since Clark had gotten back with what she could only agree was the best Thai food she'd ever had.
"Nope." Clark shook his head, smiling both at her insistence and her insatiable curiosity. "But how about I promise to take you there sometime instead?"
"If you think you can con me into going out with you this easily, you've got another thing coming."
"See, I knew you liked me," Clark said in a chuckle. "Why else would you automatically assume that I was trying to ask you out?"
"No.... I think you like me," she replied, smirking. "And since asking girls out is what most guys do when they find one they like, I just put two and two together."
"Ah yes, but as I believe I've told you before, I'm not like most guys."
Lois gave him an appraising look. "You
are a strange one, Clark Kent," she said after a moment. "But I think I got you figured out."
"Really?" he asked, amused by her statement. "Didn't take you very long."
"Well, it's my business, looking beyond the external," she explained, a smug look on her face. Although, in this case, she would have been content to simply look at his very nice external features - broad shoulders, friendly smile, and chocolate-brown eyes that always seemed to have a spark of mischief to them.
For a moment, he seemed satisfied with sitting there and letting her look, saying nothing at all. Until finally Lois realized she was staring and she looked away, eyes wide.
She cleared her throat, hoping to hide her embarrassment, and got up from her seat abruptly. "Come on," she said, "let's go find Platt, maybe he can help us decipher this."
~.~.~
To be continued...
