Hopefully you all already read my A/n on the first page. Here we go!

Earth 6114: Superman

A DC Superheroes Fanfic

by YellowWomanontheBrink

Prologue: Four Years Ago

"Lois!"

Lois Lane, star reporter of the Daily Planet newspaper, would recognize that roar anywhere. She didn't even flinch, though the newer correspondents and copy-editors certainly did. With a hurried shuffle of paper and a spontaneous rush of typing— not even Perry White's lion roar would ever keep her from finishing a sentence— Lois Lane stood smoothly, stuck her favorite pen behind her ear, chugged the last of her coffee and expertly navigated her way through the bustle of Monday morning newsroom.

Whatever the people said about print media, the Daily Planet— the paper of the politicians, people with power, and the average joe alike, was alive and bustling. Liberals and conservatives alike could not deny the Planet their well-earned reputation.

The Daily Planet, and all its tenacious, fearless staff could rip apart a falsehood like nobody's business.

And of all its notorious staff members, Lois Joanne Lane was the worst.

Lois had her own office, not that she frequented it as often as she should. When she was by herself, she often lost herself in her thoughts and her own personal investigations. Stories weren't breaking every day, and a girl had to pay the bills. She wrote more fluff pieces than she liked to admit, but when Lois Lane broke a story, goddamn did that story shatter!

It was why her normal fast paced short stride was slightly underpowered; this shout was one she recognized particularly well. Oh yes, this shout was the dreaded assignment. Those stories that paid the bills, society pieces that weren't unimportant, but not all too life changing either. Who cared if a politician was sleeping with the help? She cared if that politician was sucking money from people, endorsing tax breaks while raising them and gorging on the profit for themselves.

But, slap the Daily Planet's name on a story, with a headline by the Lois Lane, and well, people would believe it. She was the Anderson Cooper of the written word. People took her opinion seriously. People believed what she wrote.

To think it'd only taken twenty years and a burning passion— and well, a pretty face, she'd started out on TV— to get her this far.

"What, Chief?" she said before she'd even finished closing the door to Perry's expansive, highly personalized office. "I'm working on something here! You know I've been looking into the Intergang— "

"Yeah, yeah, Intergang can wait. They're like a damn Hydra— cut off one head and twelve other ones grow," he mumbled, somehow still managing to be louder than her brusque, abrasive tone. "I've got something I want you to fact-check. And don't call me Chief."

"So call a fact-checker," she snorted. "I seriously think I'm onto something here."

Perry cocked his heavy salt and pepper brow, his wide mouth turned down in an unimpressed and disapproving frown. He was the kind of man who used to be an intimidating figure in his youth, pushing eighty but still built like a shit brickhouse. He'd been a sports reporter driven by a heavy sense of justice, the kind of man who'd reported on sports' place in society, and not the trivial gossip and scandals that drove the industry nowadays. His brown skin sagged under the weight of his wrinkles, his hands unafflicted by the diseases that so often struck the old. His dark eyes held a grumpy sort of displeasure, but also a bright flare of curiosity time had never been able to tamp out.

"That's nice," he said, "but this is the kind of job I need you on, Lane. You know I don't pull my best off the scent unless it's important."

He was also Lois' long-time mentor, and his network put the intrepid reporter's own to shame. He often dismissed her as an annoyance, but Lois Lane was fearless, and uncowed, and exactly the kind of person the Daily Planet needed to expose the evils everyone else feared to— and because of this, when a source was accredited to Lois Lane, people listened.

She strode into the room and flopped down on the overstuffed, faded red chairs, so out of place amongst the modern furniture and pale wooden bookshelves laden with mementos, awards, books, and cutouts of famous in particular caught her eye, or rather, the infamous logo of the article on his desk caught her eye.

"Oh no," she said. "Not this guy again!"

"Yes, this guy" Perry said mercilessly. "You used to work international didn't you?"

Her fingers itched for a cigarette— or some spiked coffee. Perry abhorred both habits, so instead she settled for crossing her legs and leveling an unimpressed stare at her boss.

"That was years ago, Perry," she said. "When I was a camera girl. I work the city beat now. The real terror is at home and all that jazz."

"But you don't really believe that, do you?" Perry shot back, tapping his fingers on the printed, marked up article. "See here, Lane, here, we've got something that can't go uninvestigated. And you're a damn bloodhound. If anyone can track this guy down, it's you."

"Why do you even care?" Lois snorted. "You said it yourself— with facebook, anyone can be a reporter, ethics be damned. You've never had me investigate any of this crap before."

"I didn't reach out to this boy. He reached out to me," Perry grimaced, "but this— remember Canada?"

Lois's face dropped, and her leg stopped twitching abruptly. She hadn't even realized she'd been fidgeting. "I thought we spiked Nova Scotia for good."

Nova Scotia had been one of the most interesting cases Lane had ever had the pleasure of investigating. And what's she'd found there— well, only public apathy kept it out of the news for so long. It was a story about regular men— and men who were more than that, people who had power beyond that of that of the normal man. It'd turned a mostly unimportant town into a tragic battlefield of extreme proportions. The military had finally managed to put it down, but Lois would never forget the sight of a man on fire burning down houses.

She'd been forbidden from publishing that story, ever. It would have spiked a mass panic of epic proportions.

"It's crawled back out of the ground to haunt our asses," Perry said shortly, and you're either going to put an end to this— or put it on the front page of the Planet."

Perry slid the article across the desk, and Lois's perfectly manicured hands picked it up easily and skimmed the article— no, it was a letter she realized, bright eyes widening in disbelief as she took in the politely worded correspondence.

Lois merely frowned, not terribly afraid, but not pleased either. "Perry— can you take this guy seriously? Everyone knows about Kent."

Perry White leaned his imposing girth comfortably in his huge overstuffed chair, and folded his hands comfortably over his slight belly. "Everyone knows about Kent. Doesn't mean he's a damn ghost— and if this proves anything, he's not nearly as good a reporter as you. He's digging up your dirty laundry for the first time, and if this letter says anything, preparing to paint a bright red ugly target on his head. I'd hate to lose an informer. He's a good one too, that blog of his besides."

Lois sighed. Printed with the infamous logo of the most popular anonymous investigative journalist the world had ever seen, the one page letter was signed— by hand, in dark red pen—

Clark Kent


The bus rattled and bounced, trudging slowly down the crowded narrow road. The bus driver impatiently pounded the horn of the huge vehicle, as if he could blow away the evening traffic through sheer force of noise and will, nevermind the military jeeps surrounding the normally innocuous vehicle. The heat was oppressive, even as the sun set slowly in the orange and blue sky.

The traffic had held the bus up for nearly three hours. Most of the passengers were school girls on their way home, clad in identical pink plaid uniforms and tight braids or clean shaved heads, clutching their bags and giggling with their friends. The littler ones were playing hand clapping games.

They ignored the military vehicles rolling besides the bus, careful not to look out the window and see the men armed with guns, looking warily at the road. Four men sat armed on the bus, two in the front, two in the back.

Their school had just closed down, after all.

The bus hit a particularly harsh bump and one little girl sitting mostly by her lonesome nearly tumbled out of the seat. She would have landed face first in the dirty worn ground of the bus if not for a firm, fever warm grasp on her elbow.

She blinked, shuffling around and readjusting the seat as she met a pair of bright gray eyes behind silvery metallic frames. He smiled warmly at her, and helped her pull her heavy school bag back into her lap. Her skinny arms wrapped carefully around it, as if the bag were filled with gold. For her, it might have well been. She was the only girl in her neighborhood still going to school, and she had an hour walk ahead of her beyond the bus ride, as she lived on the outskirts where the bus wasn't passing through.

She prayed they would get to Askira before the sun set. It was looking less and less likely as the escort pounded their way through the evening traffic.

Her seat mate didn't say anything to her, instead looking out the window, lost in thought. She couldn't resist sneaking looks at him. The bus crawled through traffic, and for all she knew, she'd be walking home in the dark, if the sun's position told her anything.

She shuffled and stared at her leather shoes, socks perfectly folded around her ankle, and prayed.

If the camera she could spot in his unzipped bag told her anything, he was one of the reporters that'd been lingering around the girl's college. It wasn't surprising. Girls were attacked often, especially on their way home from the boarding schools that had been closing, one after the other.

School was fun, and to be away from Askira had been terrifying and exciting all at once, but…

Everyone knew what had happened in Chibok.

She kicked her hovering feet, restlessly as it grew darker and darker and the procession managed to move north, dropping off girls in pink led aside by military men off the road into the towns along the road, where they dispersed, their pink uniforms vanishing into the slowly thinning groups of people.

Her heart pounded so hard it felt as if it were in her throat. Sweating, she wiggled and tried to discreetly free her sleeves from her armpit where they rode up. She hummed an old song under her breath, the one her mother would sing her before she died.

A loud snap shattered the familiar and slowly decreasing noise of traffic. A gunshot. She would recognize it anywhere. She wished her fear of the sound was numbed by the frequency she heard it, but her hope was to no avail.

"You'll be ok," a sudden voice broke her from her thoughts. Her humming had become more akin to whimpers, though she hadn't realized it. She met the eerie gray eyes of the man who sat besides her. "You're safe."

"No," she replied without thinking, "They say the soldiers are here to protect us, but…" she looked away. She thought she recognized the accent, though it sounded a little strange. An American?

He smiled kindly beneath his neatly trimmed beard. In the dim light, if she squinted, she thought she could almost see acid scars across his pale eyes.

Strange. It was only girls from the village who had scars like that.

"I suppose you're right," He said, tapping a pen against his lip. His knees were pressed up in the cramped space, and she wondered idly if she should move. "I would be afraid too, if I was having to go to school in times like these. You must be incredibly smart."

She scowled and glanced away. She wasn't stupid. She knew what reporters did to girls. She knew what the world thought about Nigeria. They'd learned about in their Global World class. They'd watched the American and British news in their English class.

He called her smart only to say that she was stupid.

"Why do you say that?" she asked.

"Smart enough to still be willing to study in times like these. God above knows I was terrible in school. Ummi used to beat me all the time to make me study. And I didn't have to be brave to go to school."

She nodded, considering. "I'm not brave. But I want to go to school. The military is closing all the boarding schools in Borno because of the attacks and kidnappings."

"It used to be safer." he agreed. "I've heard about...an angel of sorts. At least, that's what they used to say in Johannesburg. That's what the girls who survived Erwa a few years back said. A woman with red eyes and green skin, who could not be touched and took away all their fear..."

She glanced at him curiously. Only hysterical girls admitted that to men. It had become something of a secret among the female population, almost a legend— Mutumfura, who by the grace of God saved those who could not fight back. No man ever believed his wife, though. That this strange man believed it…

"You're not an ordinary reporter, are you?"

He cocked a long, thick eyebrow and pursed thin lips. His tan, bearded face was half shadowed in the sinking red sunlight. "Ordinary? I suppose not. Technically, I'm not a reporter either. But I like to write stories. I like to hear the unheard side of a story."

"Aren't you afraid?" she asked. "Ansaru kills the Americans out here."

"I'm not too worried about that," He leaned back as far as he could— which wasn't much— and winked. "After all, I saw the escort— I was with the American military, a long time ago and so my friend Saint up there," he nodded towards the young looking soldier on the left, "was kind enough to allow me on your escort."

"You're crazy," she said. "No one wants to be on a military truck. There's always a lot of dust and the soldiers smell bad."

He smiled a half-smile. "That's not a very nice thing to say."

She snorted a quiet giggle; it burst from her unexpectedly. "I"m not a nice girl. That's why no one sat with me."

When she met his eyes again, they were bright behind the thick silvery frames of his glasses.

"I'll have to disagree with that. I sat next to you, and I think I like you company very much." he held out a long, slim hand. "I'm Clark Kent."

She blinked, surprised, and took his hand. He didn't look like a Clark at all, he looked more like those Egyptian photographers she'd seen crawling around her school before. "Farra."

"Pleasure to—"

The bus bounced violently, far more so than if they had simply hit a hole in the road. She went flying towards the ceiling of the bus, to a symphony of the cacophonous shriek of fifty girls. A grip like iron wrapped around her waist, and the grey-red world was lost in a spinning jumble for what felt like eternity.

She could hear gunfire, a sharp pitter patter that deafened her. When she opened eyes she hadn't even realized she'd closed, all she saw was a wash of pitch black and heat. Other girls on the bus cried loudly, and the soldiers shouted even over that. Her eyes were wide open, but she was afraid to look beyond what was right in front of her.

The figure over her— the strange man she'd sat beside— straightened and gently shifted her out of his way. Now she braced her arm on the chairs she'd been sitting on before; the bus had overturned. Dark patches of what she knew to be red blood, they were black in the light, ran sideways down what used to be the floor. Her head throbbed painfully.

A bullet pierced through the metal wall that used to be the side of the bus; it tore through her ear and embedded itself in the stuffing of the seat across from her. Men shouted. A pained groan sounded from beside her; she couldn't see the girl's face, but she knew her voice, twisted through it was with moans of agony.

She'd been shot, and now she was going to die.

Weeping loudly, she curled up closer to the stuffed seat, heedless of the growing pool of blood she sat in.

She was numbed to the noise by the endless barrage of bullet fire and shattering window, the groans and cries of children and the —

Suddenly—

A rush of air, the shocked cry of men, the moan and groan of stressed metal and then…

Quiet.

Her eyes were wide open, but she hardly processed anything she saw; blurs of black and gray flashed before her eyes but she wasn't sure if it was the dizziness from blood loss. The calm seemed to keep, and her eyes slid closed with exhaustion.

One minute, she leaned against a dirty sideways floor; the next, she was laid in cool brush besides twenty of the other girls that had still ridden with her. She could see the sunset from where she lay, and the green grass, and none of the carnage that she knew must have been somewhere. After all, people woke from dreams in the same place they fell asleep in.

A voice, dull and so far away— or was it just that she was missing her ear—

"You're okay," she thought she heard the voice say. "I told you you'll be okay."

Heyo! Please subscribe and review! Thanks for sticking around to the end! Don't forget to check out the other stories. Hopefully, chapter one will be up in two weeks. Thank you for reading!

Have a good night,

YellowWomanontheBrink

July 25, 2016

10:05 pm