For such a purported "tricky" tooth extraction, the dentist just pried that fucker right out.
So you know what's coming back to bite me? The fact I wrote this story in four months and had no broad outline, so some of plot-threads got dumped on the wayside before I remembered to pick them up again. I really dropped the ball on the whole "shady police business" sub-plot. Sure it's not going to get a full resolution until the final part of the trilogy because that's the whole impetus behind "Jim Gordon does something dumb and gets his ass sent to Gotham", but I can do other shit with it in the mean time. And I need to re-write the ending so it's less of- what it is.
This won't delay updates, as it's well down the line and I've already started in on the new additions. You lucky readers you, you're just going to get a longer story.
Chapter Five: Dead Ringer
Even in a city of straight lines, there was still that one patch that gnarled and curved at sharp angles. In Metropolis, the lines got twisted over LexCorp, as though they had gotten caught in the light reflecting off the bald pate of Lex Luthor's head.
LexCorp, in various incarnations, had been a prominent force in Metropolis's economy since Wallace Luthor had capitalized on the then-small city's newly-discovered copper mine. The company's history had not been peaceful. The Luthor family, on the whole, was an ambitious bunch with little scruples for who got in their way. Wallace's death by car accident hadn't felt like an accident, the fire in Lachlan's apartment had certainly been suspicious, and when Lionel Luthor had swan-dived off the fortieth-floor balcony, the speculation of whether or not that had actually been a suicide had run rampant.
Lex Luthor had no children.
He planned to keep it that way.
Up in his office on the tower's highest floor, Luthor reviewed his notes for the upcoming presentation. This weekend was his exposition, to showcase the young talent in the city and to unveil his newest project. LexCorp was planning to debut a brand-new piece of equipment that had the potential to revolutionize law enforcement. Essentially a suit of power armor, initially developed for search and rescue operations. The exo-suit would increase the driver's strength, allowing them to lift cars and slabs of concrete with ease and wade through dangerous situations with no harm to the driver. The face-plate's Heads Up Display offered thermal imagining, bomb detection, and even danger assessment. The addition of armor plating and munitions would make it suitable for police officers as well.
It was a magnificent piece of technology and he had no doubts that it would serve the city well in the years to come.
"Mr. Luthor!"
The double doors banged open and in stomped John Henry Irons, the project's director and the creator of the exo-suits. He only made it a step over the threshold before he was caught in Mercy's vice-like grip. Irons glared at her, as if challenging her to try and hang on. Mercy's eyes narrowed and her fingers tightened around the man's arm.
"Let him go, Mercy. It's fine." Luthor instructed calmly. His bodyguard could break bones and he valued Irons just enough.
She released Irons reluctantly and gave him a glare that distinctly warned him 'I'm watching you.' Irons rubbed his arm and frowned angrily, though there was something rather spooked about his expression.
"You'll have to forgive Mercy for being very good at her job." Luthor said, beckoning the man to come forward. "Now, Mr. Irons. What can I help you with today?"
"You didn't tell me you were showcasing the suits at the expo." Irons said evenly. His shoulders straightened automatically. He was the one standing, but he felt three inches tall.
"Didn't I? I could have sworn one of my assistants put the memo on your desk weeks ago." Luthor replied.
If Irons had kept a messy desk, it might have been plausible to accept that the memo had simply gotten lost amid the clutter. But his desk was neat and straight and he always knew where everything was. He would have seen a memo, if there had actually been one.
"It doesn't matter, Mr. Luthor." Irons said, knowing it would be useless to try and argue that one. "What matters is this showcase. It's too soon! I'm still running diagnostics on the suits; there are still bugs to work out. There's going to be problems. This could endanger someone's life!"
Luthor shuffled his notes back into neat order and stood up from the chair. It was a slow, oily kind of movement redolent with power. A man who was aware of every inch of his body and knew just how to make himself loom without actually doing so. He was a tall man at six-foot-three and cut a powerful figure in his tailored-suits, with a deep baritone voice to match.
Lex Luthor never moved in a way that wasn't deliberate.
"Mr. Irons, we're not going to use the exo-suits at full power." he assured the project director. "It's just a little demonstration to get the investors and the buyers interested. I would never endanger lives like that."
Irons shook his head. "It's still too soon for a demonstration." he said. "Do you know what this could do to Corben if there's a malfunction? His nervous system is going to be wired into the suit and the interface is still unstable! This goes way beyond bio-feedback. If something goes wrong before I'm sure we've handled all the bugs, the psychological ramifications could be enormous! Increased aggression, paranoia, delusions and that's if the feedback doesn't kill him! I'm telling you that you need to call this off!"
"Absolutely not." Luthor replied firmly, tucking his hands behind his back. "There will be hundreds of people there this weekend who will have come to see the exo-suits in action and I never like to disappoint an audience. If there are problems, we'll deal with them when they arise."
"That's not how I operate." Irons said.
"Oh yes it is. You work for me, and with just a few phones calls, I can ruin your chances of obtaining legitimate paying work inside this city or out of it." Luthor stated. He dropped his head down an inch to look Irons in the eye. "Is that clear?"
For a second, an obvious tremor shook Irons's spine, but he firmed it up almost immediately. He couldn't compromise his morals just so they fit Lex Luthor's grand vision.
"I can't go along with this, Mr. Luthor." he said.
Luthor nodded like he had expected this all along. "Be sure to turn your I.D. over to the front desk once you've finished cleaning out your office." he said. He understood. Sometimes, you just couldn't expect to hang on to the good employees.
"I'm glad we understand each other." Irons said simply, not batting an eye at being fired. It wasn't the worse that could have happened to him. Some people who went to complain to Luthor just didn't come out of his office. There were rumors about what happened to them and the one people entertained most of all was 'secret trap door'.
"I'm glad we do." Luthor agreed. "Thank you for voicing your concerns. I'll be sure to take them into account as we move further into the final phases."
Irons's lower jaw jutted out briefly like he was trying to keep his mouth shut so he wouldn't argue. Luthor had to admire the man's self-control in the face of someone he truly disliked. He made an 'after-you' gesture towards Irons. The former project director straightened his tie and with his chin up proudly, he walked out of the large office.
Luthor followed him out, nearly stepping on the other man's heels. Irons pretended he couldn't feel it, though he did pick up his pace a little until he was nearly jogging away. In the hallway, Mercy narrowed her eyes questioningly and tilted her head after Irons.
"Nothing to worry about, my dear. The problem took care of itself, like any good problem should." Luthor assured her. "I think we will have to keep an eye on John Henry Irons for a little while, though, to make sure he doesn't do anything stupid. Like talk to a reporter looking for a good story."
There were a few out there who would be more than happy to regurgitate whatever he said. They always needed watching.
Luthor checked his watch. It was almost time for his meeting with the Chinese investors and it was bound to be a fruitful one. The exo-suits were the next big thing LexCorp would put out. He was fully confident that they were going to change a city, and then a nation, and then a world, and put the company on the map in an even bigger way.
There was no way they couldn't.
The Thursday morning edition of the Daily Planet in hand, Lois strode across the news-room with the stalking grace of a hunting cat. Anyone who might have stopped to talk to her didn't; her expression was not inclined to be sociable. It was the opposite. People stepped back or pretended that they didn't notice her walking past their desks. The headline read: CEO MEREDITH FURIE ARRESTED FOR FUTURE WORLD ATTACK. The name in the byline was 'Clark Kent'.
She had a bone to pick with him.
Clark was never oblivious to her stalking approach, even if he acted like it. It was some subtle shift in the set of his shoulders, the way his typing fingers hesitated for a second. The way he didn't jump or flinch when Lois slapped the paper down on his desk.
"I'm confused, Smallville." Lois began, leaning on the edge. "See, I've lived in Metropolis most of my life and I can't figure out how some yokel from Kansas is suddenly getting every hot story in town."
Clark raised his eyebrows. "Oh?"
"Oh yeah. First the attack on Future World Industries and then the story about the police arresting Meredith Furie for it." Lois nodded. "For one thing, I can't figure out how you're getting around town so fast. I'd be angry at you if I wasn't so impressed."
"Well, you did mentor me." Clark reminded her.
"And you've learned very well." Lois agreed, then leaned so far into Clark's personal space that she might as well have been paying rent. Clark had to lean back, else they would have conked foreheads. "So what's your secret, Smallville? How did the pupil come to overshadow the master?"
"My secret? Well, Lois, the truth is..." Here, Clark lowered his voice to a whisper and beckoned for her to lean in a little more. "I'm actually Superman in disguise and I only pretend to be a journalist in order to hear about disasters as they happen and then squeeze you out of the byline."
He expected Lois to give him a look -- the one she always gave him when she thought he was talking shit -- but not for a sudden twitch to develop under her eye, or for the way her whole body tensed and her heart-rate picked up. Her intense expression became quite fixed and rigid and with that little twitch under her eye, it became somewhat of a mad expression as well. Her hands clenched into fists. For a wild second, Clark wondered if she was going to grab him around the neck, shake him, and scream 'are you?! are you Superman?!'
"That is not funny, Smallville." she said quietly, deadly, eyes narrowed.
She pushed up off his desk with a bit of a flounce and did a half-spin to drop into her own chair in front of his desk.
"Can't say I never told you." Clark mumbled, shrugging.
Not much of it was a lie, at least. He wasn't actually trying to squeeze Lois out of the byline; it was just a side-effect of getting to the stories first. And he wasn't pretending to be a journalist. Hearing about the disasters as they happened was another side-effect of the job.
"So!" Lois snatched the paper off his desk and flourished it out flat in front of her. "What is the story behind the arrest of the Atlas Industries CEO?"
"Why are you asking me? You could just read the article."
"I like the sound of your voice seranading me with stone-cold facts." Lois replied, grinning.
"Well, there wasn't much, to be honest." Clark admitted. "LexCorp released last April's security footage to the police, the one from the night the drones were stolen. Ms. Furie appeared on camera. They didn't even need facial recognition."
"She wouldn't be so sloppy." Lois muttered, referring to the suspected CEO.
"She was caught on tape." Clark said. Being caught on tape was usually pretty damning evidence all by itself.
"Yeah, but Furie is a respected business woman. She wouldn't risk her entire company just to swipe some hardware from Luthor. At least, she wouldn't be so blatant about it." Lois pointed out. "Furie is smart. She'd propose a partnership and get herself into the system before trying to conduct industrial espionage. And more importantly, she wouldn't do it. An underling would take the job instead and they wouldn't be connected to the company. And stop giving me looks like that, Smallville. The more I try to get into Luthor's bald head, the better chance I have at bringing him down."
She reached across his desk and snagged a tomato slice from the pile he had brought in for a snack before he could tell her off for stealing his food. She shoved the slice in her mouth with a smug expression and chewed twice before stopping.
"Oh my god... I can smell it just as much as I can taste it." she commented. It was the good earthy sort of smell that went all the way down to her toes. The taste of the tomato was a bit tart, but tangy and rich and just the tiniest bit sweet as well. "Where did you get this? I never find tomatos so fresh my scalp can taste it. This is black magic, Smallville."
"It's from my garden. I picked it just this morning." Clark reminded her. His apartment deck now hosted a modest array of vegetable plants, most of them coming in ripe and numerous. Smallville's other idea for housewarming gifts, aside from tupperware and coffee mugs, were pots and planter trays and seeds. Going away from Smallville did not mean having to give up fresh vegetables. And it was calming to put his hands into fresh potting soil and watch the plants grow like weeds in the wet. To watch his vegetables flower and fruit, all healthy and green. It took him away from the hustle and bustle of the city for a while. Made him slow down a few paces and just relax.
"Ah, farm boy strikes again." Lois nodded. She helped herself to another tomato slice. "How is the little garden doing?"
Although if the tomatoes were any indication, it was doing damn well.
"The snow peas are ripe, if you're interested. I need to snip back the spinach. And the cherry tomatoes are about to ripen en masse." Clark said thoughtfully. That damn cherry tomato plant... It had been so wilted and pathetic-looking before he'd been able to put it outside when the weather had warmed. Then it had perked right up a day later and there so many almost-ripe little fruits on the vine they were going to be coming off any second.
"Tell you what. Dinner." Lois decided.
"Dinner?"
"At your place. I can make a mean stir-fry. We can make rice to go with it and there's a place that does some really good naan--" Lois broke off and shook her head. "No, I can't. Not tonight, I have plans. I almost forgot."
"Some other night, then." Clark agreed. "What sort of plans?"
"Dinner with the general." Lois told him, rubbing the side of her head like she had a headache. "I agreed last week and since he's making an effort, I guess I should too."
It seemed that having a plan blow up in his face had given General Lane the idea of reconsidering his perspective on a few things. Namely, reconnecting with his daughters. It was slow, tedious going. They weren't going to be the Sunday dinner family. Salutes and titles still got tossed around a bit mockingly and the visits were filled to the brim with awkward silences, but General Lane went at it with his usual tenacity and commitment. There were things that Lois still didn't think she could forgive her father for. And he was still pretty bad at communicating his intentions.
But the point was, he was trying -- actively trying to be a better paternal figure. Some days, that was the only thing Lois had ever asked for.
That, and she could finally talk to the old man without automatically snarking back, so it was progress.
"How's Lucy?" Clark asked. "She started, what seventh grade this year?"
"Eighth grade." Lois corrected. "And she's good. Even got her hands in the newspaper club. She'll be taking the high school by storm in no time. I'll tell her you asked after her."
She grabbed another tomato slice and munched it thoughtfully as she wondered just how to approach the next subject on her itinerary. There was no good opening for it, no matter came out of Clark's mouth. There was etiquette involved in a question like this and she couldn't just blurt it out.
But she had a theory.
Clark Kent was Superman.
It was a hard theory to prove, admittedly. Not just for lack of evidence, but because no one gave a shit as to whether or not Superman had a secret identity and no one was in much of a mind to find out. Not much of a shit, at any rate. He was an alien refugee named Kal-El who had built himself a home on an Antarctic island. That was all anyone knew and that was all they cared to know.
Lois had decided to leave out of the interview the part about him growing up solely on planet Earth. It felt like she had been told that in confidence and it hadn't seemed right putting it in the paper.
But Lois was sure of her theory.
For one thing, she had never seen Clark or Superman in the same place at the same time. Furthermore, neither had anyone else. If Superman was there, you could damn well bet that Clark Kent wasn't.
Which brought up another point. Clark had logged quite a few of the less explosive Superman stories in the past nine months despite eyewitnesses never putting him in the same area at the same time, so that wasn't just Lois's imagination. The most recent example was that Superman had agreed to allow S.T.A.R. Labs to study the shuttle that had brought him to Earth all those years ago and see what they got out of it. There had been an article on it.
The name in the byline?
Clark Kent.
Except that none of the scientists present at the time had been able to recall if a reporter had even been there.
If Lois didn't think about it too hard, it made sense. Clark was the sort of guy who managed to blend into the background despite his appearance and he didn't exactly announce himself to the world.
But S.T.A.R. Labs recorded all visitors as far back as six months before they wiped the records and a bit of creative fibbing had gotten Lois a look at the guest book. The day Clark had claimed to be there, his name hadn't been on the guest book.
So there was that too.
How had Clark gotten an on-the-ground account of the event when all evidence suggested that he hadn't been there?
For Lois, the answer was simple. He had been there, just not as Clark Kent.
Lastly (and this was very important to Lois), Clark was a dead ringer for Superman.
Because while that boy hunched like there was no tomorrow and wore shirts two sizes too big, there was no really good way of hiding his chiseled physique when you were standing too close. There was no proper way of disguising his broad shoulders or muscular arms. He had the right shade of hair and it was the right length. The eye color was all wrong, but color contacts. And the distracting glasses. Even his bone structure was right.
That, and Superman had a habit of showing up to the rescue whenever one of Lois's assignments went to pot and left her dangling over the side of a building or sinking to the bottom of Lake Superior again. She didn't believe for a second that it was a combination of good timing and good hearing. No way she was swallowing that load of bullshit. The frequency of Superman's arrivals implied that he didn't just know her daily schedule, he knew it intimately. He knew like he had talked it over with her before setting out for the day.
There were only two people whom Lois spent any significant amount of time talking to that didn't already bear the last name 'Lane'.
Perry White and Clark Kent.
And since Perry was a fifty-plus year old black man with graying hair, wrinkled skin, and elevated stress levels, that left only one other candidate.
But if Clark Kent was Superman was Clark Kent, then neither was about to let the world know, much less Lois Lane. It was all but tradition for super-heroes to maintain secret identities. A few had bucked it: like Jay Garrick the Flash and Alan Scott the Green Lantern. They had been almost immediately forthcoming with their own names. Wonder Woman had encouraged people to call her 'Diana' (it hadn't really caught on). Dr. Fate hadn't been much in the mind for a secret identity either. As Kent Nelson, he had performed magic shows around the world, always suiting in full get-up for his grand finale.
But all of the others had kept their secret identities under lock and key.
So perhaps Superman was just following tradition and it was probably the best way to keep Clark Kent's privacy intact. It wasn't like there was a law demanding that he go public with his name.
Still, it was the idea that Superman was Clark Kent and acted like he didn't trust Lois Lane with the information. She wouldn't spread something like that around! She had way more journalistic integrity than that!
It was like he hadn't learned anything in the last nine months.
Speaking of which, the past nine months had been among the most interesting of Lois's life and that was saying something.
There was still no truly official word as to who had been behind the averted bombing attack on the city last year. Sofia Gigante had claimed responsibility for it, but Lois wasn't the only one who didn't believe that. The terrorist video still made its rounds around the Metropolis circles of the internet and the police were still regularly urging for anyone with useful information to come forward.
It was on the back burner these days. The city was fine and the scars were no longer visible, so it hadn't stuck too deep in the public consciousness.
But the West River had never looked so shiny before.
The relocation effort had been the worst part of the renewal. There was a massive logistical snarl to relocating five hundred thousand people without creating a shanty-town in the process. But Mayor Kovac's grid plan was working. Grid A residents had been moved into the newer apartments that already existed in lower Cheswalk and the grid itself was being systematically bulldozed. Businesses were moving in, small and large alike, bringing work and a better class of living to the once destitute neighborhood.
It was no longer a blight on the city's image, but a beacon for a brighter tomorrow. It was Metropolis's way of announcing that they had room for improvement and they were taking full advantage of it.
There was still the small matter of Metrodale and the Suicide Slums, but one neighborhood at a time.
Superman had made a name for himself as well in the past nine months, both here at home and around the world. In Metropolis, he had met with the likes of Leo Quigley, who had been extorting the wealthy and then putting arrows in them. There had been the Laughing Gas Bandits, who incapacitated their victims with nitrous oxide and robbed them blind.
Jeremiah "Slug" Kelley had been conning school children out of their pocket money using a phony arcade as his front. Lucy had proved that snooping for the truth was an inherited Lane trait; she had brought the matter to her sister's attention. Albert Cadwell, head of the Department of Metropolis Transit had been sabotaging the rail lines in order to collect the insurance money.
Martin LeBeau and Goldie Gates, on separate instances, had tried to take advantage of West River's situation. LeBeau had been going around wringing protection money out of the construction foremen and indulging in sabotage when they didn't comply, while Miss Gates had masterminded an insurance scandal on the unsuspecting residents who had just moved into one of the new apartments.
Then, Superman's famous compassion had shown through brightly with Lizzie and Big Susan, two young, homeless teens who had been robbing stores for food and money and clothes. It had been a mystery as to how they had gotten away with it for so long, but when Superman had confronted them, he found out that both girls were metahumans.
The first of the new generation.
Big Susan had super-strength and Lizzie was telekinetic, thereby allowing them access to even the most tightly locked spaces. Anything that Big Susan couldn't punch out of the way, Lizzie could manipulate open.
But rather than give them hell over their actions, Superman had sat them down and asked why they were living on the streets and robbing stores.
It had taken two sandwiches each to get the story out of them. As it turned out, they had been desperate as opposed to malicious. They were both homeless for basically the same reason; their powers. Big Susan had run away out of fear of hurting her parents. Lizzie had run away because her parents were hurting her. They had found each other on the streets.
Superman had recruited Lois to take notes, put their story out there, and call further attention to the plight of Metropolis's homeless children. To make her words count for even more.
She remembered the hours vividly. It had been just after a usual early June rainstorm and the ground had been damp. Both of the girls had been thin and stringy, with a kind of feral rangy look one got after a while of living on the edge. Whatever food they stole was divvied up among a dozen other homeless children, most of them teenage runaways who had left home for many of the same reasons and some with meta-powers of their own. They had all lived under the Warsaw Bridge, where the foundations pushed back a little to create an alcove, mostly sheltered from the elements.
Within a day of putting out the article, the city had responded.
There was talk of a shelter for at-risk teens, particularly those who had meta-powers -- who had run from their parents and the foster system. Those teens whose parents wanted them to return were encouraged to do so. Those teens who had escaped dangerous situations had been accepted into shelters and better foster homes. The city couldn't do much more than talk about the shelter for now, since getting one running in such a short period of time was another logistical snarl, but the plans were being drawn up day by day. Donations of clothes and food, at least, were on the rise.
Big Susan had since moved back in with her parents; they had welcomed her back with open arms and unflinchingly welcomed Lizzie as well, knowing the girls had stuck together so long that they wouldn't take well to being separated. Lois knew that Superman still checked on the girls every week or so, helping Big Susan come to grips with her strength and just being a good pillar of moral support for Lizzie.
This had cemented Superman's reputation for just being a really good guy.
Most of Metropolis had raised its hands in applause for this. Superman had gone out of his way to help the two girls and ended up aiding pretty much the rest of the city's population of homeless children in the process. That was the act of a true Good Samaritan. He hadn't even used his powers for it. Just solid compassion, a little bit of patience, and a listening ear.
There were some cases where a person didn't need superpowers to be extraordinary.
Lois's butt had been planted on damp concrete for two and a half hours, listening to the two young teenagers spill their stories, but half her attention had been consumed by Superman's face. His stupid handsome face with its defined cheekbones and strong chin and at one point, the light had caught him just right and she'd almost gasped. Because in that second, Superman had looked too much like Clark to be a coincidence.
The idea had always been circling the back of her head, that Clark Kent was Superman -- coming to the forefront once in a while to spew out wild theories and point out odd coincidences that couldn't be passed off as harmless. She had never truly pursued any of her own suspicions -- she had promised Superman that she wouldn't go snooping into his own past, after all, and that was one promise she had intended to keep.
But then the Tweeds had happened and that was when Lois had really begun to entertain the possibility that Clark Kent was Superman.
A married couple running one of the city's last legitimate orphanages -- ahem, children's home, the Tweeds had always toed the line between 'good-hearted people' and 'kind of shady'. As with many things, there was no direct evidence that they were up to something underhanded, but it went without saying that Metrodale was a poor neighborhood in basically every conceivable aspect. Shady, underhanded occurrences were part and parcel to the whole borough.
There had been rumors -- fueled by the shabbiness of the children's clothes and the semi-crumbled state of the building, versus the Tweeds' fine outwear and new cars -- that the Tweeds had been appropriating the support money. The place had been on Lois's radar for months. When she had finally gone to check it out, the only person who knew of it was Clark.
Then she had gotten into trouble after uncovering the Tweeds' shady secrets (hoarding the money and forcing the children to subsist on substandard food, no medical attention, etcetera) and it was Superman who had swooped in to her rescue.
So unless Superman was eavesdropping on her conversations...
So far, Lois had not confronted Clark about this. No, it was way too early for that. She didn't have nearly enough proof to corner him in a trap of his own making. The only proof she had was that Clark and Superman were never in the same place at the same time. Clark's excuses for that were generally passable and even the holes she poked in them were small. He never squirmed or gave any indication that she had just caught him lying. To be honest, she wasn't sure what his tells were. Clark might tug at his shirt collar. Or he'd fiddle with his cuffs or turn his phone over in his hands. He never did the same thing twice in a row.
If Lois didn't come after him with proof, he could just laugh her off (again) and deny, deny, deny to his heart's content. She needed definite, inalienable proof that he was (or wasn't) Superman.
"Lane! Kent!" Perry White barked, already halfway to their desks. He had that spring in his step that indicated he had just found out about a particularly juicy story.
"What's up, chief?" Lois chirped, grinning.
"Don't call me that." Perry ordered absently. "You're on the clock now. Ms. Furie's lawyers sprung her from Stryker's an hour ago."
"Already?" Clark glanced at the clock. "It hasn't even been a full forty-eight hours since they arrested her. Did they even process her?"
"Money greases the squeaky wheel of justice, Smallville, and Ms. Furie's loaded." Lois pointed out. "Want us to get the scoop, Perry?"
"She's making a public statement. Just announced it. A press conference at the Gold, in an hour. Gird your loins, you're heading into battle." Perry told them seriously. "Make sure to take your badges. There'll be tight security. It's even worse than you think. They didn't just nail her on the Future World attack; they're saying she's behind last year's bombing as well."
"No way!" Lois gasped.
Perry was already nodding. "Oh yes, that's the word I'm getting from my contact. This one's hot. You two better get on it quick."
Lois reached over and smacked Clark lightly on the arm. "You heard the grumpy man, Smallville." she said. "Let's hit the town."
She wasn't about to let it go, her theory. Never in a million years was this one going to slip by her. But she would put it aside for the moment. There was a story to be had!
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