Formation begins! If you read the authors notes as I was posting Crucible, you might have an idea of just how quickly this story pooped itself into my lap (4 months). I don't think the quality suffered too much for the blistering pace I wrote it at. It still feels disjointed to me because I only just got into the habit of writing broad outlines and planning things out well ahead of time. Still some growing pains here. But like Crucible, Formation does everything it needs to do and hopefully it will be entertaining at the same time.

I think the update schedule can stay to a Once A Week thing, but that could change in the long run. I like to keep a gap in between where I'm posting and where I'm writing, but I haven't exactly been working on Whiplash lately. Not that I'm exactly eager to pull myself away from the Busman's Holiday, though. That one's been rattling around in my head a bit longer.

Today marks the 5th birthday of Shatterpoint. This little tangent universe of mine has come quite a ways since 2013 and I'm very pleased that I've reached a point where I can share it. Buckle up, kids, and enjoy the ride.

Shatterpoint: Formation

Chapter One:

Summer had come to Metropolis, hot and brilliant with a fairly blistering average of eighty degrees. June had been mild and pleasant, July muggy and stormy, and August was the very personification of the dog days of summer. Humidity threatened rain every other day and sometimes there was a sprinkle or two, but the typical August drought never truly broke until late in the month.

If there was one thing that Clark had come to love about the summer, it was hitting the endless blue skies at one hundred miles per hour.

A cloudless morning had unfolded over Metropolis while the warm tropical winds and the cooler Canadian breezes fought for supremacy, all in all presenting a pleasant contrast to the rising heat of the sun that crept up along the skyscrapers and spilled into the avenues and cross-streets of New Troy.

Clark sat at the umbrella'd tables outside the brand new Comet Cafe, sipping on a small cup of lemonade that he hadn't been able to resist. They had touted it as freshly juiced and he had been able to smell the lemon rinds in the waste bin. The lemonade was the perfect combination of sweet and tart, and a good complement to the hearty blueberry muffin that had caught his eye.

The Comet Cafe had a coveted spot right next to the main entrance of Planet Square, the spotless floor to ceiling windows a better advertisment than any brightly colored flyer. Since its opening two months ago, it had become known for its good coffee, savory sandwiches, and its award-winning Comet Cake Pops, but their summer menu was really quite something. The highlights were the chilled fruit, yohgurt smoothies, and fresh lemonade.

The whole of Planet Square was in spectacular form. The cobblestones had been hosed down early this morning, the alternating strips of black and white gleaming in the summer sun. Japanese red maple trees grew in a ring along the outside of the square, their crowns spreading wide. Though green now, the leaves would turn a fiery shade of red come autumn. The centerpiece, a large bowl fountain featuring a bronze cast of the solar system, had been scrubbed and polished and currently burbled along merrily.

When the sun went down, that was when the square would truly look its best. Long strings of outdoor fairy lights had been hung between the trees; they would be turned on after dark in a display of colors. The fountain would glow silver and blue, and the front of Rocket's (a fifties nostalgia diner chain) would reflect it all back like a disco ball, so the square would appear to be lit up with stars of its own.

At barely eight-thirty in the morning, the pentagonal square bustled with people. It was a common pedestrian thoroughfare and located, more or less, in the heart of Downtown. Though most of the ground-level shops were not open for business yet, the Daily Planet building took up one whole side by itself and all of the shops were topped off by office buildings that pushed upwards into skyscrapers. The tourists were streaming in and out of the Challenger Bike Rentals and parents stopped their very small children from trying to get into the fountain.

Clark didn't pay much attention to the pedestrians and bikers who hurried to and fro, and the tourists who meandered past at a slower pace. He had delicious lemonade to enjoy, news to read, and the chance to revel in the slightly smug satisfaction that Lois was late.

At least fifteen minutes late.

Lois was rarely late. Very rarely indeed. Arriving early was something she considered a matter of duty - raised on the doctrine of "To be early is to be on time. To be on time is to be late". Punctuality was as close to godliness as cleanliness. Between her military base upbringing and her career as a news reporter, she had never grown out of that. A late arrival was simply unacceptable in her book, even with a good excuse.

After all, only the early bird got the scoop.

Fortunately for Clark, he had never developed the habit of being late, even with his "extracurricular" activities. One of the advantages about being able to run five blocks in the blink of an eye, he supposed.

He was going to rub this in her face a little. Just a little bit.

All the same, Clark was in no hurry to go anywhere. Their appointment wasn't for another hour.

He scrolled through his newsfeed. It had been a fairly tame week in the news. The space shuttle Endeavour had launched on its twentieth flight. Tiger Woods had won another PGA Championship. There had been a massive earthquake in Peru. And the world had noted the recent passing of eighty-six year old Al Pratt, retired nuclear physicist and a former member of the Justice Society of America, Atom.

Locally, Metropolis native Jefferson Pierce had announced his intention to make a bid for a spot on Team America for the Beijing Olympics next year. The re-construction of the West River island was off to a smooth start. Guardian had been reported making rounds through the Suicide Slums. The Special Crimes Unit had broken up what had resembled a burgeoning metahuman gang. Superman was trending. Luthor was bald and morally questionable.

Frankly, a normal week for Metropolis.

Lois would argue that just means we're due to get bombarded real soon. Clark knew. And she would be right. The world just didn't want to stay quiet for very long anymore. Not when everyone whispered that superheroes were coming back.

"Hey Smallville!"

Aaand speak of the devil.

Clark looked up from his phone and waved. Lois was approaching across the plaza from the Daily Planet building, a hand still raised in hello. Summer having long since hit the city, she had whipped out all of her hot weather best (which really was only slightly different from her cold weather best, but semantics).

Today she wore a black pencil skirt and a cord belt that was more fashion than function. The dark colors contrasted sharply with the bright red blouse (short-sleeved, lace-patterned, turtleneck collar). Mirrored sunglasses, bare arms and barely visible socks and a short cable-chain necklace that flashed and sparkled in the sunlight. Her black hair was tied up in a sleek bun to keep it off the back of her neck. The bold green messenger bag rested on her hip. An expensive designer brand, it had been a "Yay me I got the story of the year" gift to herself after losing her old purse in a helicopter crash.

"You're late, Lois." Clark informed her, grinning, as she strolled up to his table. "Very late. Why..." He made a a show of checking a watch he didn't have. "Look at the time, it's past eight-thirty. I thought we agreed to meet at eight-fifteen."

"Yeah, yeah, rub it in, farm boy. I don't get up with the sun." Lois rolled her eyes. "They're resurfacing the Hob's Bay Highway. Getting off the Queensland Bridge was a nightmare. I had every motorist from the intersection up to the exit ramp honking at me. Are you drinking that?"

She pointed at his lemonade and Clark made a 'have at it' gesture. Lois snatched up the cup and eyeballed its contents for a moment like she wasn't entirely convinced it was just lemonade, then drained a long gulp out of it.

Whereas Clark rode the J-train with a transfer to the C-train every morning and sat in the relative comfort of the air conditioned interiors, Lois braved the heat and the traffic and the road hazards to bike commute into the city during the warm months. Metropolis was having its usual summer heat wave. August was never a pleasant time of year to be navigating rush-hour traffic. Of course she was thirsty. Any water she'd brought along must have been lukewarm by now.

"What time's the meeting?" Lois asked.

Clark knew that she already knew the answer, but replied anyways. "Nine-thirty sharp, but we do have to meet with Detective Jones by nine. Just getting out to Stryker's and through security is going to be a process." he said.

"Good thing I'm wearing my lucky shoes today." Lois commented.

She turned her ankles so Clark could get a better glimpse of the black pumps that had an iridescent glimmer to them. Lois always wore them when she felt like the day was going to be a good day or when she felt like it needed to be a good day. Friday was a day that always felt like a good day, but every bit of good luck helped.

"Is that your lucky tie?" she asked, pointing to the blue and crimson strip of fabric.

It was the only truly silk tie that Clark owned. His father had bought it for him because 'every man needs to own at least one good silk tie'. His limited budget forced him to stick to imitation silks that didn't cost half as much. It had felt appropriate to wear the good one today, seeing as they were going out visiting.

"I suppose so. I wore it to graduation." he said.

"Ah, the graduation tie. I guess that does make it lucky." Lois nodded. "C'mon, if we're going to make that nine o'clock, we should head out. It's feeding time for the out-of-towners and they'll be swarming. It's even worse than last year. Say, you've never seen Metropolis during tourist season, have you?"

"I haven't even lived here a full year yet." Clark reminded her, gathering his satchel and pocketing his phone.

"Yeah, that's right. Heh, keep forgetting that."

He would take that as a compliment, of a sort. Lois Lane, city-slicker extraordinaire, would never really let him forget that he was from the Kansas boonies, but if she had momentarily blanked on that fact, then he was probably doing a good job at adapting to city life.

She was also right about the tourist breakfast rush. People from out of town and from way out of town walked just a tad too slowly down the sidewalks, staring up at the skyscrapers with open-mouthed awe. There were drawling Texan accents and rapid-fire French-Canadian and flat Midwest tones and those were just the ones that spoke English. They were clad in flip-flops, khaki shorts, and blue T-shirts, and if they weren't staring up at the sky, they were consulting their guide books. Smartphones were brandished this way and that by.

Metropolis wasn't the premiere vacation spot, but Mount Arvon was just down the peninsula and the Pictured Rocks were a reasonable day trip away. The city itself sat on the shores of Lake Superior and the tourism board had taken care to maintain the beaches. At this time of year, the lake waters were a pleasant, if slightly chilly, sixty degrees.

Oh. And Superman.

If the tourists weren't here for the natural wonders and many waterfalls of the Upper Peninsula, they had come hoping for a glimpse of Superman.

A good day is when I don't have to put in an appearance. Clark thought.

He was very conscious of several facts. The first was that Superman was not, in any way, law enforcement. Clark restricted his activities to anything that would conceivably fall under the Good Samaritan law and tried not to step on the Met P.D.'s toes. He might have had fantastic abilities not seen around these parts in two decades, but he was also a Metropolis citizen who paid his taxes and put his pants on one leg at a time like everyone else (he didn't actually have to, but he did anyways). Being a hero -- or at least being loosely defined by the definition of 'hero' -- didn't mean he was permitted to break the law.

The second fact that he had his fair share of detractors and they were making their voices heard online. Loudly. They were the obsessive kind too; the kind that watched and analyzed his every move and sometimes wrote long paragraphs about what he was doing with his hands. The kind who lay in wait for the instant he did anything wrong.

Clark would rather not give them any reason to strike out at him or they would never stop.

And quite frankly, he didn't want people to lose sight of the fact that the Metropolis Police Department was highly effective and very skilled. They could more than adequately protect the city without his help.

"So why now, y'think?" Lois wondered, dispersing his thoughts. "Nine months in jail and now she wants to talk to a reporter? Why me, specifically?"

"You are the one who helped put her there." Clark pointed out. "And they're shipping her out to Gotham tomorrow first thing in the morning, so I suppose it is her last chance."

Lois let out a thoughtful hum, but with a grumbling undertone that meant she didn't like the shape of this situation. But it involved Sofia Gigante, which had made it a bit suspect from the start.

Though she had only been partially responsible for masterminding a plan that would have destroyed Metropolis (called the Near Apocalypse of '06), Sofia Gigante had taken full responsibility for it. Instead of going through the process of a trial by jury, she had gone right into a plea agreement; pleading guilty and spilling every ounce of information on her criminal network in Metropolis in exchange for a reduced sentence and a transfer to Blackgate Penitentiary in Gotham. Had that woman been anyone else, Lois was sure such terms would have been rejected as too lenient for what she had done.

But Sofia was the only daughter of Carmine "the Roman" Falcone, Gotham's premiere crime-lord.

Sofia would be out on the streets again in five years. Lois was certain of that.

The downtown precinct of Metropolis P.D. wasn't an unreasonable walking distance from the Daily Planet building. It was not a walk one might feel inclined to make when the weather was poor, but today was fantastic and looking up. The summer sunlight glinted off the steel skyscrapers, flashing off plate-glass windows.

They made good time to the station despite wading upstream against the tourists and Clark held the door open for Lois, and they entered the bustling lobby. Detective Jones was waiting for them just inside. He was a tall black man with a shiny bald head and a heavy brow. They had met him last year during the opening remarks of the almost disaster when Jason Trask (the former head of the department formerly known as Bureau 39) had come stomping around screaming about alien fugitives.

At the time, Clark had gotten the sense that the tall detective was more than what he appeared to be. Lois had later confided in him that Detective Jones was most assuredly a metahuman ("He whammy-hammered my brain, Smallville!"). But even nine months later, Clark still got the feeling that there was something rather odd about the man that went further than just telepathy and telekinesis.

"Detective Jones, it's good to see you again." Clark said politely, reaching to exchange a handshake. Just because the detective gave him a jumpy feeling was no reason to be impolite.

"Mr. Kent, same." Jones nodded in acknowledgement. "Ms. Lane."

"Detective Whammy-hammer." Lois squeezed his hand.

Jones smiled a bit ruefully. "You are never going to allow me to live that one down, are you?"

"I don't care how altruistic your intentions were, you whammy-hammered my brain." Lois said pointedly, pointing at her head. "No one gets to do that to my brain and then live it down."

"Then I shall make it up to you." Jones held out a moderately large file folder like a peace offering. "This is everything that can be released to the public now that legal entanglements are no longer an issue."

"Ooh, gimme!" The reporter snatched the folder away with eager hands. She had been reporting on this story for as long as it had been happening, though only because Perry knew that he'd never be able to stop her. She leafed through the first few pages and a grin cracked her face. It was a particularly smug sort of grin that most people around the Planet called the Grinch Smile. The smile that Lois gave whenever she got a wonderful, awful idea.

"Well Detective Jones, I would say this early birthday present has gone a ways into mending the bridge between us." she said, fanning herself with the folder.

Jones smiled, pleased. "Shall we head off?"

He gestured for them to follow and led them across the lobby to another, less public exit. It led back out into the hot morning and into the employee parking lot around the side of the building. There was an SUV waiting for them at the curb. Once settled in the back, Lois opened the folder on her knees and began reading the contents. After a minute or two of Clark reading over her shoulder, she moved the folder between them so he didn't have to lean so close.

It was incredibly distracting with his chest so close to her eyes.

Stryker's Island Penitentiary was located in the bend of Hob's Bay, where the shoreline curved north to meet with the Schuster and Carter Rivers. It was most easily visible from Little Bohemia to the south and the Suicide Slums to the north. There were no bridges connecting the island to the mainland. It was one of the oldest operating prisons in the nation; a maximum security facility that housed some of the worst criminals Metropolis had ever seen.

Stryker's had been built around the eighteen-fifties, when the overflow of predominately Irish immigrants had been shuttled westward out of cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Then named Fort Hunter, the small city had been a bustling lake-port of merchant trade and commerce. There had been plenty of jobs to be had, but not enough to support the ten thousand immigrants who shuttled inland from the coast. The young city not been immune to the growing bigotry and intolerance against the Irish, whom were accused of stealing jobs from the local citizens.

Naturally, tempers over this had flared on both sides, a lot of drinking had happened, and there had been a bit of a riot. Arresting all of the belligerants had pushed the capacity limits of Saint Dorfman Prison, resulting in the proposal to finally make good use out of that lonely hunk of island out in the bay.

The Metropolis P.D. had been very busy in the past nine months bringing down every corner of the crime network. They had crippled an enormous meth operation last year, but with Sofia's information, the rest of it was coming down like a landslide. Nearly of the Gigante family assets had been seized and a good number of arrests had been made. The list provided by the detective obviously wasn't complete (there were some lieutenants who had slipped through the gap), but it contained a fair number names that drew a triumphant noise from Lois; people she had called out on doing more than just dabbling, but not enough evidence against them for a proper conviction.

"If they're seized Gigante's bank accounts, what's the money going to be used for?" Lois wondered.

"That information was not imparted to me." Jones answered. "However, I imagine the money will be put towards the city. Reparations to the victims of her network. Additional funding to the West River project."

"I'm sure there are also some charities that would benefit from a generous donation." Clark added. "I think after all this time of harming the city, Gigante's last action should be to contribute positively to its well-being."

There was one Gigante bank account that hadn't been seized, but it had been frozen, audited, and then re-activated. It was a trust fund belonging to Gigante's teenaged step-sons. They were out of the country, attending a boarding school in Switzerland and spending the holidays with their uncle in Italy. A few phone calls had revealed that Vincenzo and Luigi hadn't even been back to America in several years, much less had they actually contacted their step-mother in that same time period. The trust fund had only ever been used for school tuition and related expenses.

"Hah! I knew it!" Lois crowed, stabbing a finger at the papers in the folder. "I knew it! I was right! I'm gonna rub this one in your face, wench!"

"Right about what?" Clark asked.

"About the Gigantes having something to do with the corruption in the mayor's office! Look at that!" Lois brandished the paper at her partner's face, so close that Clark's eyes crossed trying to read the small print.

"I can't read that, Lois."

Lois frowned. "I can't tell, are you near-sighted or far-sighted?"

"Well, I can't read anything that's half an inch from from my eyes." Clark pointed out, adjusting his glasses. They were thick-framed, thick-lensed, and tinted with just enough lead to turn his naturally bright blue eyes to a less obvious navy blue. They also stopped his heat and x-ray vision, and took the edge of his infared vision.

"A few years back, when I was a twenty-year old intern with a potato camera, a ranty blog, and no credibility, I wrote up a test article about the corruption in the city government. How good ol' Mayor Berkowitz was letting the Gigante family run wild because they were paying him for a blind eye. It got rejected. The content was true, it was everything else that was crap. I had no finesse."

"I can't imagine." Clark said. He really couldn't.

"So I published it on my blog instead and got a big ranty reaction from my self-proclaimed arch-enemy." Lois made a face. Lacy Warfield, daughter dearest to the Metropolis Star's editor-in-chief. "I don't remember a lot about what she said, but it boiled down to me being overly paranoid and that I was the only person who thought it was awfully funny that the Gazzo family was taking such massive hits while the Gigantes went untouched. Needless to say, it gave me the impression that A: the Star was owned by Berkowitz back then and B: wenchy-wench was and still is that stupid."

She finished with a scowl.

"So, this info is ready to be released to the public, right?" she asked Jones, just to be extra sure about that. Already, her fingers itched to get an article underway.

Jones nodded.

"Awesome." Lois grinned in a gleeful, manic way. There was something to be said about watching the last of Metropolis's organized crime crumble and knowing that she had set the wheels in motion. She had always hoped to make a significant change in the city's landscape, but she hadn't imagined it coming quite so early in her career, or being of this magnitude.

The trip to the ferry launch was only fifteen minutes with the traffic. They had to park the SUV, as no cars were permitted on the island. They were passed through security, Lois's bag was searched for contraband, and the two reporters were signed in and issued their visitor passes before they stepped onto the ferry. The escorting guard appeared and greeted the detective and gave the two reporters a run-down of the safety rules. The rules basically boiled down to 'don't interact with any of the prisoners except for the one you came here to visit and if you get taken hostage, you're sort of on your own'. It was the prison's way of covering its own ass if one of the visitors got too close to an inmate. The guards would protect the visitors but even they acknowledged that there was a line and if the visitor was stupid enough to step over that, then there was very little the guards could actually do.

With the formalities out of the way, the ferry shoved off.

There were only two ways to access the island prison. Mostly commonly, visitors took the ferry across the half-mile wide strait. But anyone of particular affluence could obtain permission to use the helicopter pad.

The island itself was about fifty acres square, and fairly level land. In order to make it sufficient for a prison, they had spent years piling dirt and rock and gravel along the beaches in order to create some kind of cliff-face and a foundation for the walls that had eventually gone up. Only the light house and the guard towers were visible above the rim of the nearly thirty-foot perimeter wall.

"Alcatraz." Clark said out of nowhere. "I just was thinking. It reminds me of Alcatraz. A little." he amended. "It's actually nothing like Alcatraz, but it's giving me the same vibe."

"One of the stops you made on your walkabout?" Lois inquired.

Clark nodded. He had done a bit of a world tour a few years back, wandering across the Eurasian continent in the name of a soul search. Though he had come away no more enlightened about himself, he had certainly become more enlightened about the world and the people in it. San Francisco had been one of the stops he'd made before leaving America for Vladivistock.

The boat arrived at the pier with a bump and they waited while it was moored. Beside the pier was the helicopter pad where a private chopper had touched down. Further up the walk was a pair of tall, looming iron gates topped in concertina wire and a guard watched dutifully (hopefully) from the adjacent tower.

"I've only been here once before and it still gives me the chills." Lois commented, as the main gate ground open slowly to admit them.

She stared warily at the tall walls that lined either side of the front walk. They were set ten feet back from the pavement but they still seemed to loom. Guard towers and floodlights were mounted at equal intervals. If any prisoner somehow made it through the front door and tried to rush the gate, they would running a gauntlet trying to make it. Behind those walls, Clark knew, was the prison yard where the inmates were given four hours of free roam every day, two in the morning, and two in the afternoon.

Even though he knew that there was at least twenty feet of space and two walls five feet thick separating them from Metropolis's worst (and knowing that he was bullet-proof), Clark still felt strangely unsafe.

He wondered if the feeling was worse for Lois who would be vulnerable to any bullets or shivs that came her way.

There was really only a thin veneer of control in prisons. The truth was, it was the inmates who ultimately held all the power. They outnumbered the guards, would riot at the drop of a hat, and and anyone who could make palatable hooch out of mashed fruit, toothpaste, and ketchup was certainly capable of crafting a weapon out of whatever they could get their hands on.

Stryker's Island Penitentiary was a gray, unwelcoming place inside and out. The guards wore dark blue and the inmates wore Day-glo orange and there was a general sense that things were only just under control. Lois and Clark were not paraded past any cells, but instead were lead down a long hall colored an ugly green color that seemed to suck up the light and make the place gloomier than it was.

There were gray doors set into the wall and out of one of them where two guards stood by emerged an older man, followed by a team of lawyers in tidy suits. He was taller than Clark by a visible two inches. His brown hair was smoothed down with just starting to show touches of gray at his temples. Dark, alert eyes examined the pair and the instant they flashed in recognition, he put out a hand to impede their progression. Lois had to come to an abrupt halt, bumping into Clark behind her.

"Miss Lane, I thought it was you." he said in a tone that was just this side of cordial, his accent nominally Italian with shadings of something Jersey. He had the same thick brow, heavy jaw, and sharp nose as Gigante. This was Sofia's father, Carmine Falcone.

"Look who came up all the way from Gotham." Lois said coolly. "I guess you really don't worry about someone taking over while your back is turned."

Clark hoped she was not about to start provoking the mafia don because the last thing she needed was to further entrench herself against one of the more powerful men on the east coast. The three guards present shifted uneasily and one eased off the locking strap off his gun and Detective Jones rested a hand on the firearm at his belt. The five lawyers shared nervous looks.

"I trust my capos to keep things in order in my absence." Falcone replied, his tone turning cold. He scanned Lois up and down, and gave a very tiny frown. "Sofia has told me stories about you, Miss Lane. I am almost gratified to see that they're not exaggerated."

Lois smirked. "I helped put a Falcone behind bars. That might as well make me a Gotham folk hero."

"I assure you that the city is not singing your praises." Falcone informed her. "All the same, well played, Miss Lane." he added, nodding his head in a respectful gesture. Even he could admire her guts and determination. It was a shame that she was just too moralistic.

He held out his hand for her to shake. Lois looked at it askance, and then returned with a crushing handshake. Falcone didn't offer his hand to Clark, but acknowledged him with another nod and then gestured for his lawyers to follow. When the crime-lord was out of earshot, Lois rubbed her arms.

"Errgh, you can smell the Gotham on him." she complained, shuddering all over like she was trying to shake off a bug.

"Sort of a dusty, pollution smell, isn't it." Clark commented.

"Rotten corruption smell, more like." Lois shook her hand again and started to wipe it on her blouse.

But Clark had been quite literally able to smell the soiled city on the Italian man. A little more than a dusty pollution smell; the actual, physical trace of the city clinging to the man's clothes that would never really come out. A mixture of industry, vehicle exhaust, algae bloom, and a vague, lingering stink of mold.

"He seemed... polite." Detective Jones commented, referring to Falcone.

"I'm sure it was just for show." Clark said. He had done a little research on the mafia don this past week. The bad and unsavory stuff had stayed off the internet, but a little bit of jumping between the online biography and various news archives from Gotham had given Clark a pretty good idea what sort of individual Carmine Falcone was. Gotham's news was fraught with missing persons, usually of some importance and they were usually reported missing just before Falcone dodged something like a lawsuit or a criminal charge.

A man like that would be polite to his allies, but not to his enemies.

"Very much for show." Lois agreed. "Alright! Let's talk to the prisoner."

The guard let the two reporters into the visiting room to speak with Gigante. Nine months in prison didn't appear to have been too hard on her. She looked awful in Day-glo orange and her brown hair had been tied back from her face, further exposing the thick lines of her jaw and cheekbones and making her look even more like a man than before, but that was about all the indignity she had suffered. Her hands were cuffed to the table and she regarded Lois's arrival with a mild smile.

"Miss Lane, you look well." she said.

"You're being awfully polite to someone you tried to kill a few times." Lois commented, sitting down.

"Momma raised us to mind our manners all the time." the big woman said.

"Oh, where was all that civility when you sicced your guard dog on us?" Lois wondered acidly. "Hell's Gate Dock. What's his name--"

"Nam-Ek. Dr. Essex." Clark filled in.

"Dr. Essex, right. Never got the full story on what he was doing in the pleasure of your company." Lois went on, setting up her phone to begin recording. She also brought out her notebook.

"I don't believe it matters now." Gigante said. "Nam-Ek has vanished and his experiments are no more. Tomorrow, I return to the city of my birth to serve my sentence. I would like to begin, Ms. Lane. They have only given you an hour of my time."

"Actually, Hell's Gate docks is a good place to start." Lois said. "Now Clark here can read lips and he speaks a little Italian."

Gigante gave the other reporter a curious look.

"My Italian's rusty," Clark shrugged. "But you were worried about the guns being found. You said 'December' a few times, but I didn't know if you meant December the month or December a person."

"She would be more tolerable as a month on the calendar." Gigant grumbled. "December is a person. December Mannheim."

"Now we're getting somewhere." Lois commented. "Any relation to Bruno Mannheim or is that just a coincidence?"

"Coincidence, I suspect, but I've never met her in person." the former mafia queen admitted. "She was very resistant to the idea of meeting face to face. It led me to believe that she would have been very recognizeable. 'December Mannheim' may be a false name or else she is using a false public name."

Lois scribbled the name down and nudged Clark. "You didn't tell me that."

"Didn't seem important at the time." Clark replied.

Lois shrugged and turned back to Gigante. "Now if Clark here understood everything right, you were worried about the financial fall-out from the meth operation going bust. At the time I thought, 'isn't that funny she's worried about that'? The Gigante family didn't get powerful by being poor."

The mafia queen smirked. "Isn't it funny how deceiving appearances can be? It may not have seemed like it, but for the three years previous, we were actually in increasingly dire financial straits. Rocco's death had greater hiccups than I let anyone believe." she revealed. "Ms. Mannheim was referred to me by a third party and she approached me with an offer that had some very particular terms attached to it. Had I accepted right away, it would have destroyed my empire without you ever touching it. Initially, I turned her down.

"Evidently, Ms. Mannheim is not accustomed to being refused and assumed my refusal was tantamount to an attack on her person. Within a week of our meeting, she began to intercept my supply lines, sabotage my facilities, and put several of my best men in the ground. What she didn't destroy, she took control of. It was very clear that she planned to muscle me out.

"This went on for six months before I offered to re-negotiate. The new terms were more-- agreeable, but more insidious in the long run. Ms. Mannheim took a percentage of my profits and I became aware that her agents were collecting on the side. The meth operation you so gleefully crippled was an effort to recoup my losses."

Lois cringed a little. What she knew about the Falcone family extended to her Gotham contacts who liked to rant about whatever the hell was going on over there and what she had heard about Sofia Gigante after moving to Metropolis. The Falcones were not easy to muscle out. Gotham residents, for example, regarded attempts as a form of assisted suicide. Gigante may not have been as powerful nor as entrenched in Metropolis as her father was in Gotham, but the principle was the same. If you messed with any branch of the Falcone family, then you should expect the full brunt of the family tree to fall on top of you.

Anyone who succeeded in messing with the family had the right to consider themselves a force to be reckoned with.

"And this muscle..." Lois tapped her pen. "How big is her operation?"

"I'm inclined to believe it's smaller than she let on." Gigante said. "But she has firepower on her side, Miss Lane, and she knows how to use it. I encountered no more than six individuals who claimed to be working for her, but they were not normal."

"How so?" Clark prompted.

"Metahumans." Gigante answered, smiling darkly. "I've heard instances of professional bodybuilders bench-pressing upwards to eight hundred pounds. Ms. Mannheim's primary muscle was no bodybuilder but he still swung a thousand pound telephone pole at me. The same man was broadsided by a semi-truck in excess of seventy miles per hour. The semi-truck had to be scrapped; it had been bisected. The average healthy human can attain a footspeed of fifteen miles an hour. One of her girls ran after my car and caught up. While I was doing ninety on the highway."

Clark and Lois shared looks that would have been incredulous had it not been for the events of the last nine months.

"Have you ever told anyone about this before?" Clark asked.

"And who would I have told, Mr. Kent?" the mafia queen questioned. "This occurred three years prior to last November before the Man of Steel, as you call him, first appeared. What I saw was certainly the acts of a super-powered human, but I would not be responsible for rekindling the panic that once gripped this nation from coast to coast. I do have a limit and it stops well before plunging the entire nation into a blind panic about the reappearance of super-powered criminals."

Lois frowned. "Are you implying you let yourself get arrested?"

The cuffs binding Gigante wrists to the table clinked as she spread her hands as if to say 'guilty'.

"You actually let yourself get arrested?!" Lois yelped incredulously.

"I had to pull my fat out of the fire somehow." Gigante admitted, grinning. "Make no mistake, Miss Lane. I knew I couldn't win this one. I don't have the means to fight someone who can heave a thirteen-thousand pound sailboat like a softball. I thought it best to cut my losses while I still had some dignity and leave myself to the far more tender mercies of the justice system.

"I had no idea what I was dealing with, Miss Lane. And quite frankly, neither does anyone else."

-0-

Fun fact: a big chunk of this chapter was actually pulled from the original draft of Crucible. Don't always hit 'delete' kids.