Clark and Lois - Hope Realized - Matchmaker Chronicle Volume 5 03/25
By Ken Janney
Rating PG-13
Disclaimers: The characters in this story are property of DC, December 3rd productions and Warner Bros. No Copyright infringement is intended. I have just borrowed the characters for a short time.
* * denotes emphasis
< > denotes thoughts
(#) footnotes
/ denotes telepathic communication/
[ playback of a recording or TV Commentary]For reference purposes the following will hold true throughout.
Universal Locator Designation
Alpha 023 x Gamma 004 x Tau -120 - Canon Lois and Clark universe also called – Prime
Alpha 023 x Gamma 025 x Tau 036 – Canon Alt Clark universe also called – Alt 1
Alpha -120 x Gamma 255 x Tau -190 New universe called Alt 2
As always comments are welcome. (ken.janney@kjanney.com)
Clark and Lois – Hope Realized - The Matchmaker Chronicles Volume 5
Previously:
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
October 2, 1993
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The day of the White Orchid Ball was upon them.
First thing in the morning Clark took Lois to Mazik’s Jewelers and started the process for having the ring made the appropriate size.
Also that morning Lex had called Nigel in. “Nigel, this evening we’ll have several members of the space sub-committees in the Senate and House at the ball. Have a meeting room prepared so that I can get them together and try to convince them to throw their support behind my offer to assist with the space program. Have the appropriate libations available. Send in Mrs. Cox on your way out.”
A couple of minutes later Mrs. Cox entered. “Mrs. Cox, please contact Mitzie and have her send a few of the girls over to act as hostesses for the meeting I’m planning with the members of the Senate and House sub-committees. It would be nice if she would have the special room, you know, her Presidential Suite, ready if any of the esteemed members of government would like to accompany one of the girls back to her establishment. Tell her to make sure that the girls are dressed appropriately.”
“I’ll take care of it Lex.”
“I know, I can always count on you.”
She sashayed out of his office with a sexy swaying of her hips while he looked on appreciatively.
A few seconds later Lex’s intercom buzzed. “Yes?”
“Lex, Miranda is here to see you.”
Lex let out a virulent expletive and then calmed himself and depressed a key. “Send her in.”
The door opened and in stepped Miranda Michaels. She didn’t beat around the bush but came straight to the point. “Lex, What did you think of my little demonstration?”
“What demonstration would that be?”
“The Daily Planet, I used my pheromone spray on the staff. They were incapacitated by love for two whole days and that was a diluted sample.”
“Well, yes, it was effective, but what possible use could it be put to?”
“Lex, just imagine the police so distracted by love that they failed to interfere with a bank robbery.”
“There is a problem with application, how long the effects would last, would they actually be distracted enough. There are just too many variables to make it feasible.”
“All it will take is some more funding and I can perfect it.”
“No, I don’t think I’m going to continue to support this.”
“What about the money you owe me for the work I’ve already done?”
“No, I don’t think so. You were doing this on your own.” Lex stood up and stepped around his desk. Once in front of it he leaned back against it.
Moving in closer to him she continued, “Don’t give me that! I did this research because you said you’d fund it. You should give me what you owe me.” Her tone changed and took on a slightly sultry note as she continued, “If you can’t, maybe we could compromise.” She reached out and started toying with his tie. “Why don’t we do this, the Ball is tonight. I’d be willing to forgive what you owe me if you’d invite me to come as your date. It could be like old times. After the Ball we could spend some time together.” This last was said as she glanced in the direction of his private apartment.
Shaking his head Lex replied, “Miranda, Miranda, you know that there is no ‘we’, not anymore. That’s ancient history.”
Dropping her hands to her sides she retorted in an angry tone, “In other words there’s no us *and* no money.”
With something of a sneer in his tone and on his face he replied, “That’s right.” Lex turned around to pick up a cigar from his humidor. When he turned back around Miranda sprayed him in the face with a liquid from a small atomizer she had carried in her pocket. “Ugh, what was that? It smells like old athletic socks,” he said as he waved his hand in front of his face in an attempt to dissipate whatever it had been.
With a tone of superiority and mystery in her voice she replied, “Just one of my concoctions. I call it ‘Revenge’.” She gave her brew a few seconds to act before continuing, “Are you sure that there isn’t anything that you want to say to me?”
With a tone of finality in his voice Lex replied, “Just good day. You can see yourself out.”
With a more than disappointed air she turned to leave. “You haven’t heard the last of me Lex.” She turned to give him one last look as she exited only to see him blow a smoke ring and exhibit his obvious pleasure with the cigar.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
After she returned to her shop Miranda checked the contents of the atomizer. She sprayed a male lab rat and then placed it in the cage of a female. The male rat went through the courting ritual normal for rats which consisted of checking to make sure that his companion was a female and then he mounted her, repeatedly.
She started muttering to herself “Why didn’t it work? This compound should have had him groveling at my feet begging me to love him and make love to him. I wonder if it has a delayed response in the human species. It sure worked on *this* rat. Why didn’t it work on *that* rat in LexTower?”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Flashback TBC
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
And now:
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Chapter 2 – Nell and Lucielle
Falshback continues
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Universal Locator Designation
Common name – ALT2
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
The limo stopped in front of LexTower. The doorman opened the rear door and Clark, in a tuxedo, stepped out. Turning around he presented his hand to assist Lois from the car. A hand appeared from inside the car followed by a shapely leg and then the rest of her. She was dressed in a floor length black gown with her hair swept up in an elegant do. They moved into the lobby and entered the elevator to the floor where the White Orchid Ball was being held. As they exited the elevator they presented their invitation to the coordinator who announced “Lois Lane and Clark Kent.”
Putting on her most sophisticated airs and with her arm hooked through Clark’s they made their entry. They made a handsome couple and all eyes were on them and Clark didn’t even need his superhearing to hear the “Ooos and Ahhhs of those in attendance as they proceeded down the stairs to the hall.
Lois looked around and said, “I don’t see Luthor. From what I’ve found out, he likes to make an entrance, if you know what I mean.”
They socialized with some of the other reporters that were here to cover the event.
A short time later Luthor descended the stairs with several members of congress with whom he had been meeting. He had been proposing to add his support to the space effort and EPRAD. His concern over the attempted sabotage of the Prometheus shuttle had caused him to come forth and offer his assistance.
As he reached the middle of the flight he was arrested by a female voice.
“Lex Luthor, Why haven’t you returned my calls?” Clark had faded into the background to give Lois her moment.
Luthor looked for the source of this question and spotted Lois. She was standing alone in the center of the floor looking very beautiful. Luthor excused himself from his party and made a beeline toward Lois. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her as he continued the descent on auto-pilot. He felt he had to meet her. He had to possess her. She meant everything to him. He couldn’t live without her. When he reached her he asked “And whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”
“Lois Lane, Daily Planet”
“If I had known that the calls were from such a lovely woman I would have returned your calls earlier.”
“I want to set up a time to do a one-on-one interview.”
“What are you doing next Friday evening, say, seven o’clock? I’ll send a car.”
Lois was stunned, this had been too easy, “Seven o’clock will be fine.”
Luthor continued in his most ingratiating and urbane manner, “I look forward to Friday evening.” Luthor turned slightly and signaled to the band. The band started playing a waltz. Luthor turned back to Lois and asked “May I have the pleasure of this dance?”
Lois was blown away and simply nodded her acquiescence.
They started moving around the floor. Seeing them several other couples began to dance.
As the number proceeded Lois was wondering <Where is Clark?> She was beginning to feel more than a little bit uncomfortable as little by little Luthor pulled her in closer and closer. Just as she was about to lose control and do something which would have really queered the interview Luthor stopped. He had been tapped on the shoulder and looking past him Lois saw Clark.
“May I cut in?”
“No, you may not! Who are you, anyhow? How dare you interrupt, I haven’t completed the dance! Go away and don’t bother me again! She’s with me!”
“My name is Clark Kent and this is my fiancée with whom you are dancing.”
Luthor froze. His hands fell lifelessly at his sides. He was crushed. He stammered “I, uh, I didn’t … I didn’t know. I didn’t see a ring.”
Lois explained, “Clark just asked me yesterday and the ring had to go back to the jeweler to be resized. Nonetheless, he is my fiancé so if you please, I would like to dance with him.”
“Of course.” Turning to Lois he bowed again and said “Thank you Ms. Lane for the dance. I hope you enjoy the rest of the evening.” Luthor turned and left joining another party in conversation off the dance floor.
Speaking to one of his lackeys he said, “Send my secretary to me.”
A few minutes later Mrs. Cox showed up.
He led her out onto the balcony, leaving the French doors open in the process. “I want you to find out everything you can on Clark Kent. He works at the Daily Planet, I’ve seen his byline. He must be taken care of, but make it look like an accident. In order for me to have her he must be removed because he’s in my way. See to it.”
“But Lex, why her?”
“I have to have her! She must be mine at any cost.”
“Alright Lex, if that’s what you want.”
“See to it.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The next Friday, before Lois had her ‘interview’ with Lex Luthor, Clark pulled her into the conference room.
He started, “Lois, you are going to have to be very careful tonight. I don’t trust Luthor as far as I could throw him, and with my strength, that’s a considerable distance. He’s dangerous. Do you remember a month or so ago, there was a situation where we had simultaneous jumpers on opposite sides of town. That was Luthor. He was testing me. He did some other things as well, placing innocent people in danger, all just to test me. To see just what I could do. Do you want me to hang around outside while you have the interview?
“I guess it couldn’t hurt.”
“Well, I want to take care of one thing before this evening.” Reaching into his pocket he pulled out a little velvet box and as he opened it, he got down on one knee and said, “I know I asked you already, but, now I have the ring back. Lois Lane, will you marry me?”
Holding out her hand so that he could slip the ring on her finger she said, “Yes, I love you Clark. There’s no one else like you.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
That Friday evening a car picked up Lois at her door and drove her to LexTower. She took the elevator to the one hundredth floor. When the elevator doors opened a slightly portly gentleman with a goatee and an English accent met her and conducted her to Luthor’s private residence where she found a table set for two.
Luthor came in and said, “I hope you don’t mind eating here. André has prepared one of his specialties for us.”
Lois pulled out her mini-recorder, pad and pencil and said, “I guess we can do the interview here as well as anywhere.”
Luthor said, “Let’s have the meal and some pleasant conversation first.” He was thinking, <Ah, to be in her presence. I have to have her but if I move too soon I may scare her away. I have to get her back here, one way or another. She will be mine. I see that she is wearing an engagement ring now. No matter, Kent will be dealt with.>
Lois sat her equipment down and said, “Okay, meal first.”
There followed a meal the likes of which Lois had never experienced before and the conversation was light and interesting. Luthor succeeded in distracting her for quite some time. Finally he said that he was going to summon the car to take her home. She was more than a little angry, partly at herself for letting him distract her so much that she forgot the interview and more at him for distracting her. He said, “I’m sorry about the interview. Perhaps we can reschedule?”
Clark hovered outside and watched. He was fuming. This wasn’t an interview, it was a date. He would have to talk to Lois about this when he got her home.
Clark saw her being dropped off by the car and watched her go up to her apartment. He flew over and taped on her window.
She opened it to let him in and before he even had a chance to say anything she started pacing back and forth in front of him and began venting, “What a fool I’ve been! How could I let him do that to me? I lost my focus! I let him distract me from my purpose! Ooooo you just wait, Mr. Lex Luthor, just you wait! You don’t do that to Lois Lane and get away with it.” She rounded on Clark, “You saw what happened, I let him distract me, ME, Lois Lane. Kerth Award winning journalist! Hah! I’ll get no Kerth nomination for tonight’s fiasco. He made a fool out of me! Well, that’s it. This means WAR! You and I are going to bring him down if it’s the last thing I do! Get outta that Suit. We’ve got work to do.”
Clark smiled and spun into his work clothes.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A few weeks later
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
In a basement workshop the Newtrich sisters were working on a project. Actually, to be more correct Nell was working on a project. Nell was the technical brain of the operation and Lucille was the operational brain. They had both been laid off from their respective positions, Nell as a technician in the Enhanced Optical Weapons Systems Division of LexLabs and Lucille from her position as a reporter for LNN, another subsidiary of LuthorCorp. Neither had been able in the last six months to find alternate employment and their funds were starting to be depleted. They had been contacted a couple of months ago with an offer of employment, however it was something that neither of them would consider. They had an outstanding loan on their car and had been told that they had better maintain the payments or else. After being informed of this they had been contacted by a woman named Constance with an offer of employment. When it was explained that they would be hired as ‘Hostesses’ they had both flatly refused. They knew the source of the offer and were very angry. They had developed a determination to take out their frustrations on and have revenge against Lex Luthor as the head of LuthorCorp and the author of their difficulties. In order to do that they needed money. They had a plan to rob a delivery truck that would be carrying old money from ATM machines. In order to do this they needed to dispense with Superman, at least temporarily.
Nell had been working on a Laser which was housed in the case of a video cam, very effectively disguising it. Power would be provided by a belt battery pack just like that used by TV crews. The only problem had been the crystal, but, that was solved by their brother. Their brother, who was in prison, had told them about a chunk of red crystal that had seemed to cause Superman to become apathetic, though he had no idea as to exactly what it was. All he knew was that should affect Superman. He had told them where to find it, but when they went to get it, it wasn’t red it was red and green unlike a ruby which was all red but should focus the beam the way she wanted.
She wasn’t sure exactly how well it would work though. It seemed like in the dark it emitted a muddy brown glow of its own, obviously a mix of the red and green colors, and she didn’t know if that might not interfere with the laser beam as it was emitted. They would just have to try.
Lucille walked in while Nell was working. She was very obviously impatient with her sister. “That truck is on a schedule. If we’re going to make this score we have to have that ready by the day after tomorrow.
“I know, I know. I’m working on it. I just need a little more time. Polishing the ends of this crystal took longer than I had imagined that it would. The ends had to be perfectly parallel in order to prevent scatter or attenuation due to deflection.” She fumbled and dropped the crystal as she was trying to get it placed in its holder within the laser. Fortunately it only fell to the desktop. If it had fallen to the floor it might have shattered. Nell quickly grabbed for it but it skittered out of reach. Lucille reached out calmly and corralled the wayward crystal. Nell was somewhat appalled when she did this because she was not wearing gloves and was getting her fingerprints and body oils all over the crystal as a result. She then handed it to Nell who opened both gloved hands to receive it.
“Nell, be careful! Don’t break that, you know we can’t afford a replacement. I thought you said I could count on you.”
“You can! It just slipped, that’s all.” She continued, muttering to herself, “Now I’ve got to clean it again.”
“Nell, things are always slipping with you. You are the most *clumsy*, butterfingered person I know. That’s one of the things that got you fired from LexLabs. You dropped that weapon you were working on. What was it called the Quinton debilitator or some such idiotic name?”
As Nell was busy re-cleaning the crystal she was shocked at the name her sister had given the weapon she had been working on. She replied with some exasperation, “It was called a Quantum Disruptor!”
“Whatever! When you dropped it, it fried the scientist that invented it before he had a chance to complete the drawings just before destroying itself!. Now it’s an incomplete project. They don’t even have the prototype to look at!”
“But it wasn’t my fault! There was a grease spot on the floor and I slipped on it! It was an accident.”
“Nell, you’re an accident just looking for a place to happen. Now tell me about this laser again. How is it going to work?”
“Well, this is my own design. I needed to take some shortcuts because we didn’t have the money to buy what I really wanted. I was able to scavenge some of the parts from old TV sets. I built the circuit board from scratch. Here, you see these? These are the capacitors. The power comes from the battery pack and passes through this inverter which changes the current from DC to AC and then this module steps up the voltage and feeds it to this bank of capacitors. They store the energy and supply it in a burst to the exciter which initiates the source … “
“Whoa, you lost me back at AC and DC. Can’t you put all of that into simple terms?”
Nell, with an exasperated look at her sister pointed at the power leads and said, “The power comes in on this wire.” Pointing at the inverter “It goes through here and gets changed from one type of energy to another.” Pointing at the capacitors she said, “The energy gets stored here until the trigger is pushed. Then it lights the lamp and this directs the beam to the crystal.” She pointed at the red crystal. “and then it comes out here.” She pointed at the lens.
“That’s more like it. Don’t most lasers use a ruby?”
Nell, starting to lose patience with her sister and her complete ignorance of technical matters almost shouted, “Do you really think we could afford a ruby? Where was I supposed to get the money for that?”
”Okay, okay, no ruby. So we’re using this red and green crystal from the stash.”
“Yes, but I don’t know how well it will work. The thing that concerns me is the fact that it glows in the dark. I don’t know if that will interfere with the beam or not. That’s one of the things that I need to test.”
“There we go back to tests again. When are you going to start testing this thing?”
Nell, her frustration becoming even more evident raised her voice even higher “I’d be able to test it sooner if you didn’t ask me so many questions!”
“Shouldn’t you be working on putting it together so that you can start the tests?”
Nell said “I know!” as she picked up the crystal and finally succeeded in placing it in the clips, pinching her finger in the process. She let out an “Ouch” and yanking off her glove stuck the injured finger in her mouth to suck on it.
“How much more needs to be done on this? It looks like you’re finished. It’s not like this has to burn anything. We just need to expose Superman to the radiation to make it so that he doesn’t care about what we are doing.”
With her head close to the mechanism Nell answered in a somewhat distracted manner as she had her hands working inside the mechanism. “No, it’s not finished. I have to check and then confirm the alignment then I have to check the exciter and the power supply. Then I need to check the collimator. Then I have to recheck the alignment and then we have to run a low power test … “
“Just tell me that this is going to work!”
“It’s going to work!”
“Tell me why.”
“Because we have to get back at Lex Luthor for firing us and we don’t care how we do it. But we need money if we are going to do that.”
“Can’t we skip some of those steps? It sounds like it’s going to take you more time than we have!”
Nell looked away from her work and at Lucille, her hands still buried in the mechanism and said “No, we can’t skip any step, not if you want to be sure it’s going to work the way it’s supposed to.”
“When are you going to start the testing?”
“I should be ready to start the testing tomorrow."
“All right then, keep working. Just work faster I don’t want to miss the truck.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Flashback TBC
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
comments go here To be continued in Chapter 03 – The Making of a Superwoman
