"What happened?" Lois questioned her husband, concerned.
"I don't know." Clark replied weakly, shaking his head. "One minute, I was stopping a bank robbery, the next, my powers were gone and they were beating me up." Slowly, Clark got up and his body began to heal itself.
"Here, let me get you a wet washcloth." Lois offered, rushing into the bathroom and emerging a few moments later with the washcloth she had promised. When she reached Clark, she held it between her thumb and her index finger to her side as he heated it with his heat-vision. Suddenly, she dropped it, "Ouch!"
"Oh, sorry, honey!" Clark explained, getting up to make sure she was alright.
"No!" Lois ordered, putting her hand on his chest to press him back down onto the sofa. Delicately, she picked up the steaming piece of fabric and pressed it lightly to her husband's quickly healing lip, kissing him tenderly on the forehead. Lovingly, Lois stroked Clark's hair back as she thought loud, "Do you think you could be sick."
"I hope not," Clark groaned back, "One sneeze and I could wipe out a city block."
"Well, what else could it be?" She said quietly, deep in thought. "Kryptonite?"
"It didn't feel like Kryptonite," Clark recalled, "It just felt like I was… normal. Like I didn't have any powers or anything."
"Maybe we should go see Doctor Kline." Lois suggested.
"Lois…" He complained.
"Oh, Clark, it's not as if he's got any other patients." She tried to reason with him, "Besides, you haven't been to see him in months."
"Alright," Clark dragged his feet a few steps to give his wife a quick kiss goodbye, then zoomed off to see Dr. Kline.
"And who can tell me one thing about the Columbian Exchange from what you learned in the reading last night?" Amelia's teacher asked, looking around the room for volunteers.
Though the rest of the class was silent, Amelia's hand shot into the air. "Chocolate went to Europe."
"Very good, along with…" The older teacher scanned the room, searching for his next victim, but Amelia ignored him, knowing he wouldn't call on her unexpectedly for the rest of the period since she had volunteered.
Curiously, she opened the envelope Mrs. Hudson had handed her earlier that morning, which turned out to be an application for an internship at the Daily Planet. Rolling her eyes at another attempt of the attendance ladies to get her into writing, she discarded the application in her bag and began working on her math homework.
"Well, I don't know, Superman," Dr. Kline shrugged, looking over his lab results. "You seem to be just fine. Super strength, super speed, flight, super hearing, super…"
"I understand, doctor," Superman cut him off, "What do you think it was then, if I'm not sick?"
"I'm really not sure." Dr. Kline seemed puzzled, "You're positive there wasn't any kryptonite in the vicinity?"
"I would have felt it." He explained, "I felt perfectly fine, then all of a sudden, my powers weren't working."
"I suppose it could be old age, but according to my analysis of your molecular structure…" Superman cut him off with a stern look, so Dr. Kline tried to continue in a way he could understand. "As far as I can tell, you're aging extremely slowly, so even though you should be a forty five year old man, you're body is more like, say, a thirty-year-olds." Suddenly, Superman's ears perked up as he heard another bank alarm go off.
"What is it?" Dr. Kline questioned, seeing the look on his face.
"A bank alarm just went off on the other side of town." Superman said seriously, "Do you think I'll be able to take care of whoever's robbing all these banks this time?"
"As far as I can tell, just…" Dr. Kline began, but Superman flew off before he could finish, so he just mumbled to himself, "…watch out for kryptonite."
"You again!" Superman exclaimed, face to face with the robbers who had gotten the better of him not long before.
"Come back for more, Sup?" One of them asked mockingly.
"You may have gotten the better of me last time, but it's not going to happen again." Superman told them courageously.
"Oh, is that right?" The other replied snottily.
Smirking, Superman walked up securely and tried to rip the bags out of their hands, but he couldn't. The smaller, seemingly weaker of the two kicked him in the chin and elbowed him in the cheek, knocking Superman to the ground. For a minute, the two young men beat him until, finally, they heard sirens and fled the scene.
"Cameron!" Jimmy Olsen called from the doorway of his office, "I want you covering the Superman case."
"Why me?" Cameron looked puzzled.
"Superman case?" Lois asked at the same time, concerned.
"Because, Cameron," Jimmy explained, ignoring Lois, "I was you once."
"You were me, sir?"
"I was, and that's how I know you can handle it." Jimmy sighed and pulled him aside, looking pointedly at Lois, "Besides, she's got emotional attachments."
"Emotional attachments?" Lois and Cameron inquired at the same time.
"Emotional attachments." He nodded. "That's why when I tell you what happened to him, you're going to storm over to your desk, grab your coat, and run off to check on him." Lois glared at him expectantly until he finally said, "Superman was beaten up not too long ago at a bank robbery on Oneida Street."
Without stopping to think, Lois stormed over to her desk, but just as she was about to grab her coat, she stopped herself and left it, turning to look defiantly at Jimmy before she ran out into the crisp autumn air with just the thin sleeves of her work suit.
