Wild Blue Yonder
"Clark! Come out of there," Martha cajoled at the closed bathroom door.
"No," came the flat, surly reply.
"Smallville, I'm sure you look fine," Lois called out from where she was lounging on the bed in the master bedroom.
"I look ridiculous!" Clark shot back, throwing open the door to reveal the latest costume she and Martha had talked him into trying on.
Giving Clark a swift once-over, Lois had to concede that her man had a point: he looked ridiculous in red and blue motorcycle leathers.
Her man. Lois almost rolled her eyes at how she caught herself referring to Clark, even in the privacy of her own mind. She felt a little foolish being so crazy in love with him that she was resorting to pet names, but then she'd never been this much in love, before.
"I can't even move in this get-up," Clark was complaining, snapping her out of her thoughts. "How am I supposed to fly around and save people when I can barely walk?"
"Maybe thinner leather?" Lois suggested. "Something like what Oll – the Green Arrow uses?"
"I already know about Oliver," Martha said, as Lois slanted a quick look at her to see if the older woman had noticed her slip-up.
"Maybe," Clark agreed. "I was thinking of something even thinner. Something more flexible."
"Like what?" Lois asked. "Spandex?"
"I don't know," Clark groaned, flopping down on the bed beside her. "This is impossible."
"Maybe not," Lois said, suddenly.
Bouncing off the bed, she crossed the room in a few, quick strides and snatched her cell phone from where it was sitting on the dresser.
"Ollie, it's Lois," she said, as soon as the man answered his phone. "Clark and I need your help."
She laid the situation out for him in detail, ending with, "What do you think?"
"I think you need to send me those pictures of the rejects I know you've been taking," Oliver said, and Lois could practically hear the grin in his voice.
Clark's head whipped around at the other man's words, and he stared at Lois in horror.
"You wouldn't," he said, his voice filled with dread.
"Oh, come on, Smallville," Lois said, dismissively. "It's just a few pictures."
"And I look like an idiot in them," Clark countered, stubbornly. "Nuh uh, no way."
"Deal," Lois told Oliver, and Clark glared at her. "Hey," she said in an undertone with her hand over the phone's mouthpiece, "it's only fair, considering those pictures you have of Oliver pretending to be you."
Clark relented with a wordless sigh, and Lois grinned at him.
"You'll get the pictures," she told Oliver. "Now, what about Clark's suit?"
"Give me a couple of hours," Oliver said, and Lois looked over at Clark, who looked just as surprised as she was.
"A couple of hours?" she repeated, skeptically. "What do you have up your sleeve?"
"Dr. Walters has been working on some alternate versions of the Prometheus suit ever since I hired him to work for Queen Industries," Oliver told her. "It's fire resistant and impact resistant. I figure that with Clark wearing it, it'll become practically indestructible."
"That would be useful," Clark admitted, reluctantly, and Lois agreed with him, thinking of the shopping trip they'd taken recently to stock up Clark's closet with red and blue clothes.
"Plus," Oliver added, "it's light enough and thin enough not to restrict movement, which is probably what you've been having such a hard time finding."
"Exactly," Lois replied.
"We've got several of the suits already completed, on a contract with the local fire departments," Oliver went on. "We just need to get a couple of them dyed in Clark's signature colors."
His voice took on a teasing tone as he added, "We can't have the big blue boy scout running around dressed all in black, now can we?"
Still laughing, he hung up, and Lois clicked her own phone shut. Then she turned back to Clark to see him glaring at her phone with a scowl on his face.
"No," Clark said, before she could speak." I don't care if I have to be known as the Red-Blue Blur for the rest of my life; I'm not going to be called Boy Scout."
"That's right, a name," Lois said, thoughtfully. "Any ideas?"
"What about Superman?" Martha spoke up, and they both looked at her in surprise.
"Superman," Lois repeated, nodding. "I like it. Where'd you get that name?"
Martha nodded toward the bookcase on the far wall, where a battered copy of "Beyond Good and Evil" sat on the edge.
"It just seemed to fit," she replied.
"I don't know," Clark said, doubtfully, and both women looked over at him. "What if it sounds like I'm bragging?"
"I love how that's what you're worried about with this whole crazy idea," Lois teased him.
"Clark, honey, it's not bragging if it's the truth," Martha told him.
"I guess," Clark conceded, reluctantly.
"That settles it, then," Lois said, grinning.
Then, the smile fell off her face and she swore when her eyes landed on the clock on the wall.
"We have to be at work in ten minutes," she told Clark, urgently.
"We'll make it," Clark said, confidently.
He dashed into the bathroom and was out a couple of seconds later, still tugging on his suit jacket.
"Show off," Lois grumbled good-naturedly as she shoved her feet back into the high-heeled shoes she'd kicked under the bed when she and Martha had first started dressing up Clark.
And speaking of Martha…
The older woman was watching their banter with a fond, affectionate smile on her face.
"You two have fun at work," she told them, and Clark flushed, guiltily.
"I'm sorry," she said, apologetically. "This can't be the vacation you were expecting when you came home."
"None of that," Martha said, sharply, and Clark looked at her in confusion. "I wasn't expecting anything but some peace and quiet for my vacation," she continued. "I certainly wouldn't expect you to put your lives on hold to entertain me while I'm here."
"I think that's your mom's subtle way of kicking us out of the house," Lois said with a laugh.
"All right, I get the hint," Clark said, and he hugged his mom before heading to the door. "We'll get out of your hair and see you later, tonight."
Outside, he scooped Lois into his arms and shot into the air, flying toward Metropolis. They flew in comfortable silence for several minutes, the peace of the morning only briefly broken by having to avoid a low-flying airplane.
Clark stopped in midair to scan the plane and make sure it wasn't in any trouble, only to realize that he'd overshot the Daily Planet and they were hovering over the airport.
"We'd better land before someone classifies you as a UFO," Lois teased.
"They'd have to catch me first," Clark told her, and they took off at a speed that had Lois clutching at his neck with a string of breathless curses.
They landed in a small alley behind the Daily Planet, taking a few minutes to straighten their clothes before going inside. The elevator going up was packed full of reporters loudly discussing the headlines of other newspapers, a debate that Lois quickly got sucked into.
"The Inquisitor isn't all tabloid trash," Lois protested, in defense of the paper that had printed her first headline.
"Yeah, but you work here, now!" someone called out, to a swell of laughter.
"I'm just saying," Lois said, as they spilled out of the elevator and into the bullpen, "the Inquisitor has run some reputable stories in the past – what the hell is that?"
She snatched the offending issue of the Inquisitor out of Steve Lombard's hand, glaring so hard at the headline that Clark was surprised that the paper didn't burst into flames.
"Superhero's rescue leaves man paralyzed," he read over Lois's shoulder, feeling sick as he scanned the rest of the article.
"Your buddy, the Blur, was in such a hurry that he injured some guy's spinal column when he pulled him out of a car wreck," Lombard continued, blithely, somehow oblivious to the waves of fury emanating from Lois.
"He didn't do this," Lois spit out, her eyes blazing.
"Lane, the guy stopped a runaway tanker truck in the middle of the freeway the other day," Lombard reminded her. "It's not like he's not strong enough."
"Superman did not do this," Lois growled, enunciating each word carefully, as much for Clark's benefit as Lombard's.
"Superman, huh? Is that what we're calling him, now?" Lombard asked.
Seeing Lois's almost murderous look at his lighthearted tone, Lombard quickly held his hands up in surrender.
"Hey, come on, Mad Dog. Don't shoot the messenger. You want blood, go after-" He snatched the paper out of Lois's hand and read the byline, "Linda Lake."
He walked away, leaving the paper face-up on Lois's desk, and she growled wordlessly and flipped it over so they couldn't see the offensive headline.
"This is not your fault," she told Clark, firmly, who surprised her by nodding in agreement.
"No, it's not," he replied, and Lois arched an eyebrow at him.
"Who are you and what have you done with Smallville?" she joked. "Because I thought for sure that I'd have to keep you from throwing on yourself on your sword out of guilt."
"When I pulled that guy out of his car, he was still moving," Clark told her. "I hung around until the ambulance showed up, and the worst injury he had was a busted shoulder. He even got up and was walking around when the EMTs were checking him over. He didn't have any spinal injuries when he went to the hospital."
"But, he had one when he came out," Lois said, frowning suspiciously. "Something doesn't add up."
"Talking about the headline?" a new voice piped up, and Lois and Clark startled in surprise to see Jimmy standing near their desks.
"Yeah," Lois said, quickly. "Clark was just saying that Superman told him about the car accident, and how that man didn't have any of those injuries."
"Superman," Jimmy repeated. "Is that his name?"
Clark nodded, hesitantly, and Jimmy got a goofy grin on his face.
"It is so cool that you guys know him," he said, admiringly.
"Yeah, well, just in the right place at the right time, I guess," Clark added, flashing Lois an uncomfortable look.
"Lucky," Jimmy said, without any hint of jealousy in his voice. "And, hey, I wouldn't worry about the article. I mean, it's the Inquisitor, right? No one really pays any attention to it."
"No," Lois said, slowly, her attention caught by a television screen on the far wall, "but I'll bet they'll pay attention to that."
She gestured to the television where the victim's wife was in the middle of a press conference. Her lips were moving but the sound of the television was too muffled against the din of the bullpen to hear anything that was being said. Crossing the room in a few, quick strides, Clark turned the volume up.
"-want that menace to answer for what he's done for my husband," the tearful woman was saying, angrily. "The doctors say he might never walk again, he lost his job because he can't work anymore, we might lose our house, and it's all because of that – that monster!"
She spit the last word at the microphones clustered around her face, and Clark visibly flinched as though he'd been slapped.
"She's lying," Lois said, shaking with fury, her voice low so that no one else could hear her.
"Someone lied to her," Clark corrected, just as quietly, misery clear in his tone. "She really thinks that I hurt her husband."
"Hell no," Lois said, so vehemently that Clark looked at her in shock. "We're going to investigate this," she continued, stubbornly. "We're going to find out who's really responsible for this, and then we're going to drag their sorry butts into public and make sure they pay."
"Look out world, here comes Lois Lane," Clark muttered, an involuntary smile twitching at his lips. "There's just one problem with your plan, though."
"And what is that?" Lois asked.
"All new story angles have to be vetted by Tess," Clark reminded her, referring to a memo the other woman had sent earlier in the week.
"It's a cover-up so big that they're framing Superman," Lois told him. "How could she possibly say no?"
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"What do you mean, no?" Lois burst out, angrily, shooting Clark a dark look when he held her arms back to keep her from slamming her hands down on Tess's desk in protest.
"No," Tess repeated, looking unperturbed by Lois's outburst.
"This story is huge!" Lois insisted.
"As far as I'm concerned, there is no story," Tess said, calmly, while both reporters gaped at her in astonishment. "Your so-called superhero screwed up, and now an innocent man had to pay the price."
"That's not what happened!" Clark protested, and Tess speared him with a sharp look.
"No story," she said, flatly. "End of discussion. Now, for the assignment you will be going on-"
"What assignment?" Lois interrupted, suspiciously.
"A hospital opening out in Los Angeles," Tess told them. Here are your tickets; you leave in one hour."
"What about Superman?" Lois demanded, stubbornly, as Clark reached out to take the plane tickets and press passes from Tess.
"If it means that much to you," Tess said, smiling tightly, her tone clearly patronizing, "I'll have Olsen look into it."
She turned her attention back to the paperwork she'd been working on when they came into her office in a clear dismissal, and Clark hustled Lois out of the office before she could say anything else.
"She'll have Jimmy look into it," Lois muttered, furiously, as she stormed back over to her desk. "How is she so blind that she can't see that there's a story there and we should be looking into it instead of going to some stupid press conference?"
"I think Jimmy will be okay," Clark protested.
"Be okay at what?" Jimmy asked, as he stopped beside Clark's desk.
"That Superman story in the Inquisitor this morning," Lois told him, "it's all a bunch of lies."
"Of course it is," Jimmy said, immediately, and Clark was touched by the complete faith the other man had in his alter ego.
"We want you to look into it," he spoke up. "Find out what they're hiding."
"Why can't you guys-" Jimmy started, but then trailed off when Lois brandished the plane tickets at him. "Oh," he said, comprehension dawning.
"Speaking of," Clark added, nodding at the tickets in Lois's hand, "we need to get going if we're going to catch our plane."
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After Lois and Clark had left for the airport, Jimmy grabbed the Inquisitor and read Lake's article about Superman from the first sentence to the last, poring over it to find someplace to start investigating. Over the next hour, he found that the victim, Daniel Halling, had actually been laid off from his job before his accident, rather than as a result of it like the article claimed. There were liens on his house and car. And he'd recently taken out an extensive life insurance policy on himself.
'Trying to make sure his family was well taken care of, in case he had an "accident"?' Jimmy thought, cynically. 'So, why'd he frame Superman after he saved the guy's life? And how'd he get hurt in the first place?'
"Guess I'm going to be paying Mr. Halling a visit," Jimmy mused, aloud, heading for the elevators.
Half an hour later, Jimmy groaned, dropping his head into his hands as he walked out of the main entrance of the Metropolis General Hospital and trudged back to his car.
"Lois and Clark make it look so easy," he groused.
"It's one of their more annoying qualities," a deep voice agreed with him.
Jimmy spun around in shock, staring at the Green Arrow stepped out of the shadows of a nearby building.
"Um," Jimmy managed to get out, still in shock.
"Word on the grapevine is that you're looking into the people trying to ruin Big Blue's good name," the Green Arrow continued, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary about having a conversation while looking like he was dressed for Halloween.
"Uh, yeah," Jimmy said. "Lois and CK asked me to look into it while they're off on a story."
"Want some help?" the Green Arrow offered, and Jimmy's eyes bugged out in amazement.
"Um," Jimmy stammered, again, and he was pretty sure the Green Arrow was rolling his eyes behind his dark glasses.
"Come on, kid," he snapped, gesturing back down a side street. "I'll show you how the pros investigate."
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Lois and Clark were hurrying toward the boarding area for their flight when they heard Clark's name shouted out from behind them. Clark had barely turned around when Bart Allen popped up under his nose. Beside him, Lois jumped in surprise and then glared at the younger man.
"Hey, Lolo," he greeted, completely unruffled by the icy stare Lois was pinning him with. "CK."
"Speedy," Lois returned, a dangerous tone in her voice, and Clark took what he considered to be a huge risk and stepped between the pair.
"What's up, Bart?" Clark asked, hoping to keep things calm. "Is it League business, because I'm on assignment, here."
"I can cover for you," Lois told him. "Press conference of this size, it'll be easy to keep people from finding out that you're not there."
"No, it's nothing like that," Bart interrupted. "Oliver just wanted me to drop this off."
"Tell Oliver that you're not his errand boy," Clark said, as he took the duffel bag that Bart held out.
Unzipping it, he peeked inside and saw a flash of bright blue.
"Wait until you see the whole thing," Bart grinned. "Boy Scout."
He disappeared as quickly as he'd showed up, and Lois rolled her eyes at the younger man's theatrics.
"Do you think that I should be worried about what Oliver's got in here?" Clark asked, shooting the duffel bag a suspicious look.
"Not much you can do about it, now," Lois rationalized. "Come on," she added, as the call for final boarding for their flight was broadcast over the intercom. "We've got to get on the plane."
Clark sighed, following Lois as she handed their tickets over to the attendant.
"Maybe I should just forget the whole costume idea," he mused. "Just stick to being a name and a blur."
"Chicken," Lois teased.
"Have you seen how Oliver looks when he goes out in public?" Clark asked rhetorically, and Lois smirked.
They reached their seats, with Lois taking the seat closest to the window. Clark stowed the duffel bag away in one of the overhead compartments and then sat down beside Lois, drumming his fingers on his legs in anxiety.
"You can fly under your own power, but you're scared of going up in a plane?" Lois asked, in an undertone.
"I've never been in a plane, before," Clark confessed.
"It's a piece of cake," Lois assured him.
The roar of the plane's engines starting up drowned out whatever else she was saying and momentarily deafened Clark, who flinched as the sound pounded at his sensitive ear drums. At Clark's worried expression, Lois squeezed his hand in reassurance. Clark sighed and settled back against his seat, closing his eyes and interlacing his fingers with Lois's.
A few minutes later, he opened his eyes at Lois's quiet murmur of, "We're in the air, Smallville."
"This is still easier when I'm the one flying," Clark complained to her, quietly.
"Just relax and go with it," Lois told him. "If Tess wants to spend the Planet's travel budget to send us on a story, let her."
"I guess," Clark replied. "What's this story we're going to cover, anyway?"
"Luthorcorp is sponsoring the opening of a new hospital in downtown Los Angeles," Lois said, reading from the press pack she'd gotten from Tess. "It's some fancy cancer center with all the latest technology."
"You've got to give Tess her due," Clark remarked. "At least she's using Luthorcorp's billions for a good cause."
"I suppose," Lois grudgingly agreed. "It still doesn't mean that I have to like her."
They lapsed into silence for a while, Clark doing his best not to look out the window. His thoughts kept drifting back to the duffel bag holding his new costume and the grin on Bart's face that still worried him. Finally, he couldn't stand it any longer and he stood up and pulled the duffel bag out of the overhead compartment.
"Where are you going?" Lois asked, curiously, and Clark jerked his head back in the direction of the small bathroom.
"If I have to deal with Oliver's sense of fashion," he told her, "I'd at least like to have some warning before the rest of the world sees me in it."
The tiny bathroom on the plane wasn't even big enough for Clark to stand with his arms held out to his sides, and he almost felt claustrophobic just stepping inside. He managed to pull the suit out and spin into it without breaking anything, a minor miracle in the cramped space, and then he looked at his reflection in the mirror for several long seconds. Then, he spun back into his work clothes, leaving the costume underneath. Making sure that the bright blue cloth wasn't showing, he went back to his seat where Lois looked up, expectantly.
"Well?" she prompted.
"It could be worse," Clark told her, as he sat down.
"But?" Lois asked, knowing that tone in Clark's voice.
"It has a cape," Clark grumbled, and Lois laughed at him, quietly.
"This is payback," he went on, "for calling Oliver's cape ridiculous."
"I'm sure Oliver would never be petty like that," Lois said, and Clark just sighed.
"There is one interesting part to it, though," he continued. "My family's crest is right in the middle of the chest."
He gave Lois a suspicious look, but she just looked innocently back.
"I may have sent Oliver a picture of Kara's bracelets and told him that it was your family's symbol," she finally admitted.
"When did you do that?" Clark asked, confused.
"Right before we left," Lois told him. "When you were calling Martha to tell her we weren't going to be home."
"Well, thank you," Clark said. "It means a lot that you'd think of something like that."
"Now we just need to think of a way to keep people from seeing Clark Kent when they look at Superman," Lois replied.
"I've been thinking about that," Clark told her. "What do you think about a pair of glasses?"
"I think people aren't blind enough to fall for that," Lois told him.
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"You know," Lois groaned, from where she was huddled miserably over in her seat, an airsickness bag held between her hands expectantly. "You could at least have the decency to pretend to be sick."
"I've got a stomach of steel," Clark said, apologetically, resting a hand on the back of Lois's neck. "The turbulence just doesn't affect me."
The plane lurched at his words, buffeted by the gale force winds of the storm that the pilot had been unable to avoid flying into. Lois groaned again, closing her eyes and breathing deeply to keep from getting sick.
All around the plane, people were in the same condition as she was. Even the experienced flyers were having a hard time dealing with the rough ride. Outside the windows of the plane, the storm raged relentlessly, rain lashing at the hull while lightning streaked through the sky, coming dangerously close to the plane's wings.
"You aren't hiding some weather-controlling power up your sleeve, by chance?" Lois asked, her voice muffled by her doubled-over position.
"No, sorry," Clark said, apologetically.
Lois sighed, heavily. "It was worth a shot," she said.
Cautiously, she pushed herself upright and Clark wrapped an arm around her waist to steady her.
"Thanks," she said, looking around the plane. "At least I'm not alone in my misery."
"It could be worse," Clark pointed out.
"How?" Lois asked, her voice cracking with the effort not to get sick as the plane lurched again and the pilot snapped out an order over the intercom for all passengers to buckle themselves into their seats. "How could the roller coaster ride from Hell possibly get any worse?"
Clark looked up from where he was crouched by a little girl, helping her get her seatbelt buckled and watched as a stray bolt of lightning grazed the wings, leaving a dark, charred streak on the metal.
"That's how," he said, grimly.
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Jimmy stopped in the doorway and stared slack-jawed at what, from the outside, looked like an innocuous penthouse apartment in the clock tower building. Inside, the posh apartment was filled with high-tech equipment, including several computer screens lining an entire wall.
"This is amazing," Jimmy breathed, practically drooling with envy over the computers.
"We have a good sponsor," the Green Arrow said with a chuckle.
"Is this-" Jimmy demanded, snatching a small silver object off a nearby table.
"Camera worth about half a million dollars," the Green Arrow said, plucking the camera from Jimmy's suddenly-nerveless fingers. Striding further into the penthouse, he called out, "We've got company, folks. Put your game faces on."
Jimmy heard shuffling sounds from another room and then about a minute later, a tall, leggy, fishnet-clad blonde stepped out into the War Room (Jimmy couldn't think of it as anything else). She was wearing a mask that was so tight against her skin that it looked like it was painted on.
After about a second, he realized that it was painted on. Then, he realized that he was openly staring and blushed, furiously, the woman smirking at his reaction.
"Olsen, this is the Black Canary," Green Arrow said, his tone amused even through the voice distorter. "Canary, meet James Olsen of the Daily Planet. He's been looking into that article from the Inquisitor."
"Pleasure to meet you," Canary said, through a distorter of her own. Cocking her head toward Arrow, she asked, "What's he got on these people that we can't get?"
"An interview with the victim for one," Arrow replied, before Jimmy could be offended by the woman's tone. "Give him a chance to tell us what else he knows. And where's Cyborg?"
"Right here," a gravelly voice spoke up. Jimmy looked up to see a figure in the same kind of hooded costume as Arrow. "Some of us," he added, with a pointed glare in Canary's direction, "can't get ready so fast."
"You just like pimping in front of the mirror," Canary smirked.
"Can we focus here, please?" Arrow asked, clearly exasperated. "Olsen, what did you learn when you talked to the victim."
"Not much," Jimmy replied. "He insists that his brakes failed. He said that he tried to stop at an intersection, only his brakes had gone out."
"That's easy enough to verify," Arrow said, and then he flipped open a cell phone and dialed, talking to someone he called 'Impulse' about checking out the garage where the victim's car had been towed.
"How'd he wind up trying to wrap his car around a telephone pole?" Cyborg asked.
"Apparently, he was trying to avoid a kid in the crosswalk," Jimmy answered.
"So, he wasn't trying to kill himself so that his family could collect on the insurance money?" Canary asked, validating Jimmy's suspicions that the Arrow's group already had done their own investigating.
"He swears that he took the insurance policy out on himself and his wife after he found out that they were expecting another baby," Jimmy said. "And when I suggested otherwise, I got pitched out of the room," he added, ruefully.
"There's a fine line between investigating and insulting," Arrow told him as he hung up the phone. "Impulse says that the car's brake line is completely intact. No signs of damage."
"There goes that theory," Jimmy grumbled.
"So, how'd the brakes fail?" Cyborg asked.
"Is there anything wrong with the brakes?" Arrow asked, and then listened for a moment.
"Slipped brake disc," he said, a moment later. "Impulse says that it was probably shoddy maintenance."
"Doesn't explain the guy's injuries, though," Canary spoke up.
"Impulse," Arrow said into the phone, "how do you feel about stealing some x-rays from the hospital?"
From over the phone came a man's voice. "I am not your errand boy, Arrow!"
Arrow chuckled and clicked his phone off.
"How is he going to steal x-rays from the hospital?" Jimmy asked, but Arrow shook his head.
"Better that you don't know," he said.
Anything else he would have said was cut off by a gust of wind that nearly knocked everyone off their feet.
"Sorry I'm late," the voice from over the phone said, and Jimmy turned to see a man in yet another hooded costume standing in the doorway. Holding up a large paper bag, he added, "I stopped off and grabbed some lunch for everyone."
"Where are Halling's x-rays?" Arrow asked, sounding like he was rapidly losing patience.
With a smirk, Impulse held out a large yellow envelope that Arrow snatched impatiently from his hand.
"How'd you get here when he just called you?" Jimmy asked, curiously, tipping his head toward Arrow.
"Like this," Impulse said, and before Jimmy even had time to blink, the hooded man was standing on the other side of the room.
"Stop showing off and get over here and help me decipher these images," Arrow snapped out. "Exactly what am I looking at, here?"
"These are the pre-op x-rays and those are the post-op," Cyborg said, joining Arrow. "See this area here?"
He pointed to a spot on the post-op x-rays where a jagged line ran through the victim's spinal column.
"It's completely the same on the pre-op x-ray," he continued. "That's not possible, not after a person's been through surgery."
"So, why didn't anything change?" Canary demanded.
"I think we need to talk to Halling's surgeon," Arrow stated.
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"Aren't planes supposed to have lightning rods?" Clark asked, eyeing the windows warily as he dropped back into his seat beside Lois.
"The wind must have sheared it off," Lois replied. "If that's the case, then we could be in some serious trouble."
"We're already in some serious trouble," Clark corrected her, grimly, as another blast of lightning streaked dangerously close to the windows of the plane, making several passengers scream in fear.
"Is there anything you can do?" Lois asked, worriedly.
"Like what?" Clark asked. "Maybe if I could draw the lightning off, somehow-"
"But you're not actually a lightning rod," Lois finished for him. "Guess our lives are in the pilot's hands, huh?"
The plane's intercom crackled to life and after a second, the pilot addressed the passengers.
"Folks, this is your captain speaking," the woman said. "I'm afraid we've run into some engine trouble and we're going to have to make an emergency landing. I'd like to remind everyone to please remain in their seats and please remain calm."
"Me and my big mouth," Lois grumbled.
Someone screamed again, as the plane lurched wildly, and Clark focused his vision through the hull of the plane to see the problem.
"Lightning struck the tail of the plane," Clark told Lois in an undertone. "It's on fire; I have to do something."
"Like what?" Lois hissed, repeating his earlier words.
"Don't know yet," Clark told her. "I'm making this up as I go."
He dropped a quick kiss on Lois's cheek and disappeared in the blink of an eye. He was so fast that even Lois, who was watching for it, couldn't see the emergency hatch open or close. Which, she supposed, was a good thing. The last thing they needed was some jumpy attendant raising the alarm over a passenger jumping to his death.
The plane bucked and pitched with the pressure loss from when Clark had opened the door, though, and Lois prayed that the other passengers just thought it was more turbulence from the storm.
Turning her attention back to the seat beside her, Lois rolled her eyes at Clark's suit which he'd carelessly dumped on his seat as he left. Grabbing the now-empty duffel bag from the overhead compartment, she stuffed Clark's suit inside and settle back down to wait.
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Outside the plane, Clark flew back to the blazing tail, using his hands to smother the flames. He landed on top of the hull, trying to balance in spite of the winds that threatened to knock him off, and he started to walk toward the front, x-raying each of the engines to try and see which one had failed.
Unfortunately, he quickly saw that a failed plane engine looked nothing like the one in the tractor back home, and even if he could have identified it, there was no way he'd be able to fix it, least of all in midair.
Clark had almost reached the nose of the plane when a bolt of lightning struck him in the chest, sending him tumbling back toward the end of the plane. Clark rolled off the plane to avoid taking out the tail with his momentum and caught himself in midair to watch the plane continue its unsteady descent toward the ground.
Then, he watched horrified as a huge bolt of lightning tore a jagged path along the body of the plane and set the left wing on fire. One of the engines in the wing exploded, the deafening roar drowning out the terrified screams of the passengers as the plane lurched wildly and started falling toward the ground like a rock.
Clark swore and streaked after the plane, grabbing the blazing wing and ripping it away from the rest of the plane. He hurled it higher into the atmosphere away from the plane. The loss of the wing sent the plane spinning in a new direction and Clark flew to intercept it. He streaked forward, catching sight of Lois as he went past. She'd disregarded the pilot's orders and her own safety, and was out of her seat and crouched in front of the little girl he'd been helping earlier, wedged between the girl's seat and the one in front.
He reached the front of the plane and twisted around so that he was facing the cockpit, bracing himself against the nose with both hands. He wasn't sure how he was going to stop the plane without anything to brace himself against, but he had to try something.
Clark flew upwards as fast as he could go, straining against the pull that gravity was exerting on the plane. He focused solely on the task at hand, ignoring the burning sensation on his skin as his speed heated the air around him. He could hear sounds in the distance getting closer, first traffic and then people.
'I've got to stop this thing before we hit the city,' he thought, desperately.
He could feel the plane slowing down as they fell further and further through the sky, and by the time he was hovering less than a foot above the ground, he was holding the plane aloft in the air, his arms buried to the elbow in the nose of the plane.
Clark let out a deep sigh of relief and resettled his grip on the plane. He set it down as gently as possible on the stretch of freeway that had been cleared by emergency personnel when they thought that the plane was going to crash. Inside the plane, the pilot and copilot were staring at him in unblinking shock and Clark offered them a smile and a wave that the pair tentatively returned. Going around to the side of the plane, he wrenched the door open and stepped inside.
"Everyone all right?" he asked, looking around at the shell-shocked passengers. "Is anyone hurt?"
"I think we're all right, Superman," Lois called out, and Clark watched her move out into the aisle.
She smiled at him, reassuringly, and he gave her a barely-perceptible nod in return.
"I hope this hasn't put any of you off flying," he said, addressing the other passengers. "Statistically speaking, it's still the safest way to travel."
Hearing footsteps behind him, he took off into the air as the emergency slide unrolled behind him and the passengers slowly began to get off. Clark turned in midair faster than anyone could see him, zipping back into the plane and grabbing the duffel bag with his suit, which had managed to stay in the overhead compartment despite the tumultuous ride.
A quick turn at the back of the plane, and then Clark was beside Lois in a few heartbeats, making her jump when he popped up practically right underneath her nose. Lois let out a startled yelp that she hastily muffled by wrapping her arms around him in a tight hug, burying her face in his chest.
"You saved us," she murmured, and Clark could feel her shaking against him.
"What do you say we take the Superman Express the rest of the way to Los Angeles?" he murmured into her hair, and Lois chuckled.
"It's like you read my mind," she told him.
Someone cleared their throat behind them, and they looked up to see one of the flight attendants watching them.
"If you folks would like to disembark?" the man suggested, gesturing to the open door.
Clark hitched the duffel bag higher on his shoulder, wrapping an arm around Lois's wais and leaning into her answering embrace. They slid down the inflatable slide together and when they hit the ground, Lois stayed where she was for a few seconds, head tipped back in the rain.
"You're getting wet," Clark told her.
Lois didn't say anything for several long seconds; she just sat with her eyes closed, rain streaking down her face. Then, she accepted the hand Clark held out to her and let him pull her to her feet.
"I love you," she said, startling Clark when she buried her face against his shoulder, again. She was deliberately muffling her words, Clark realized, after a moment.
"I love you," she repeated, firmly. "And I didn't get a chance to tell you that before you left, and I thought I was never going to be able to-"
She broke off, her voice choking up, and Clark tightened his grip.
"I'm sorry," he told her, quietly. "I'm so sorry."
They stood like that for several more minutes before Lois pulled away, wiping wetness of her cheeks that Clark didn't think was rain.
"Let's go, Smallville," she said, briskly. "I want to dry off before we head to LA."
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"James Olsen, Daily Planet. I'm here to talk about Daniel Halling."
Jimmy flashed his press badge and his biggest smile at the doctor who glared past him at the receptionist manning the desk out in the hallway.
"What did you want to talk about?" Miles Whitcomb asked, tersely, obviously deciding that shooing Jimmy on his way with some nondescript information was better than raising a scene by calling security.
"I have just a few questions about Mr. Halling's surgery," Jimmy told him. "Just some follow-up to what was printed in the Inquisitor."
"I didn't know that the Daily Planet and the Inquisitor collaborated on stories," Whitcomb said, in an obvious attempt to change the subject.
When Jimmy just sat there, silently, the older man fidgeted with a pen for a couple of seconds and then sighed.
"Mr. Halling underwent surgery for a severed spinal column," he finally said, sounding like he was reading off of a cue card. "We tried and were ultimately unsuccessful in repairing the damage left by that so-called superhero, the Red-Blue Blur."
"Superman, actually," Jimmy corrected him. "His name is Superman."
"I don't care what his name is," Whitcomb said. "I only care about the people he hurts."
"So, as Mr. Halling's surgeon," Jimmy asked, "what explanation can you give for the discrepancies between his pre and post-op x-rays?"
"What discrepancies?" Whitcomb demanded, pinning Jimmy with a furious look. "Where did you see Halling's x-rays?"
"A reporter never reveals his sources," Jimmy said, and the doctor turned scarlet with rage.
"Out," he growled, stabbing a finger at his open office door. "Get out of this hospital before I call the police."
Jimmy went without another word, and as he was leaving the office, he noticed Whitcomb grabbing his phone and punching angrily at the buttons, hissing into the mouthpiece, "You told me no one would find out!"
Canary, who'd been speaking into an earpiece hidden in his ear, congratulated him on a good job.
"I didn't get anything out of him, though," Jimmy protested, quietly, trying not to draw attention to the fact that it looked like he was talking to himself. "That little snippet of phone conversation at the end doesn't prove anything without context."
"You rattled him pretty good," Canary said. "Trust me, innocent people don't act like that. He's got something to hide."
"And how are we supposed to find out what that something is?" Jimmy asked.
"That's where the guys come in," Canary told him.
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Lois and Clark spent nearly an hour at the airport trying to dry off before they continued to LA. To keep themselves busy, Clark took one half of the airport and Lois took the other, and they wandered around, interviewing people who had been on the plane, people who'd been on the ground watching, anyone who could give them a reaction to the plane's near-crash. And when they met up at a small café to have lunch, Clark was surprised to see Lois with a bunch of cameras dangling from her wrists by their straps.
"Um, Lois?" he asked, nodding at the cameras.
Lois followed his gaze and grinned.
"Fifty bucks and a photo credit if we run a picture in the paper," she explained. "I think we'll find at least a few good ones."
"How are you-" Clark started, and Lois cut in when she realized what he was getting at.
"There's an ATM back that way," she told him, gesturing in the direction she'd come from. "And Tess agreed to have the budget office cover all expenses if we can turn in some good pictures of Superman saving the plane."
"Tess doesn't think you can do it," Clark realized, and Lois nodded.
"Of course she doesn't," Lois said. "Why do you think she agreed to the deal in the first place?"
"We're going to have to screen the pictures, first," Clark reminded her, and Lois sighed as though Clark was testing her patience.
"One," she told him, ticking points off on her fingers, "it's been raining so hard that I don't think anyone actually caught a good look at your face. You haven't had anyone calling you Superman, have you?"
Clark nodded, and was ready to concede the issue on that point alone, but Lois wasn't finished.
"Two," she continued, stubbornly, "with all of his contacts, I'm sure Ollie knows someone who can develop photos for us and be counted on to be discreet."
"My mom," Clark interrupted, suddenly. "She's always been interested in art, used to dabble in photography. She even used to have a darkroom in our basement, but she gave it up when I was five and I drank a bottle of developing fluid. I was sick for two days."
Lois had a good laugh at that.
"And three," she finished, still chuckling, "no one's going to look at Superman and connect him with glasses-wearing reporter, Clark Kent."
"Oh, so we're going with the glasses, now?" Clark asked, teasingly. "What happened to people not being that blind?"
"It's the only idea we've got," Lois told him. "Unless you have a better idea?"
Clark was silent for a minute, thinking, and then he shook his head.
"People will trust me more as Superman if I'm not hiding behind some mask," he said. "There's enough suspicion of me thanks to Linda Lake. I'm not going to add to it."
"Speaking of the mudslinger," Lois said, "do you think we should call home and see if Jimmy's made any progress in redeeming your good name?"
"I already did," Clark told her. "Bart answered Jimmy's phone, insisted they had everything under control, and then hung up."
"Jimmy's working with Oliver and company?" Lois asked, incredulously. "Should we be worried?"
"I think we should focus on getting to LA and covering the cancer center's grand opening," Clark told her. "I think we can trust Oliver to handle things."
Lois shook her head in mock sympathy.
"It's like you don't even know the man," she said, teasingly.
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"Are you sure you trust this Olsen guy?" Victor asked, for about the tenth time since the group had started their investigation.
"Little late to back out now," Oliver told him, as they walked down the hallway of the hospital that lead to the radiology department.
"Can we really trust this guy with our secrets, though?" Victor pressed.
"It's not like we're giving him our complete autobiographies," Bart said, rolling his eyes at Victor's dramatics. "He doesn't even know anything other than we've got some really cool computers."
"I'm just saying-" Victor protested.
"Over, and over, and over again," Bart said, mockingly, cutting him off.
"Fine," Victor snapped, glaring at the younger man. "Get your face splashed all over the front page of the Daily Planet for all I care."
"If anyone's interested," Dinah broke in, "I just thought you'd all like to know that you've been on an open comm line for about five minutes now."
There was silence from all three guys for a few seconds and then Dinah snickered.
"Olsen's on a different channel," she reminded them.
"That's not funny," Oliver told her.
"It was from my end," Dinah said. "Olsen's been talking to Whitcomb's receptionist, who's not the dumb blonde he likes to think she is."
"Anything we can use?" Victor asked.
"She says to forget radiology," Dinah said, after a minute of conferring with Jimmy. "She says what you want to do is go down to the basement and look for an old copy machine in the back corner. Apparently it was replaced six months ago after someone spilled coffee on the screen."
"Basement, got it," Oliver replied.
They started in that direction, stopping suddenly when they heard a sharp intake of breath from Dinah, followed by a strangled scream that was abruptly cut off.
"Find that copy machine," Oliver told Bart, who dashed off toward the basement, leaving Oliver and Victor to run down the hall to where Dinah and Jimmy were waiting.
They found Jimmy unconscious on the floor, completely soaked from head to toe. And Dinah was frozen in a column of water in the middle of the hallway, eyes wide with panic as she struggled to breathe.
"What the hell?" Victor demanded, taking in the scene.
Oliver lunged forward, grabbing Dinah by the arms to try and pull her out of the water, only to find himself being submersed as well. He managed to take one last breath before the water completely covered him, and then he focused on holding his breath as he struggled to escape. The water was relentless, though, and it was like trying to move through a solid wall just to move even an inch.
Oliver met Dinah's furious, panicked gaze, wondering if she was the last thing he was ever going to see, and then a jolt shot through his body, lighting every nerve ending on fire. He found himself struggling to breathe, again, but this time it was from the pain of having just been electrocuted.
When he finally was able to catch his breath, taking in deep, frantic gasps of air, he realized two things: one, that he and Dinah were no longer surrounded by the column of water. And two, that there was a blonde woman standing in the middle of the hallway, struggling against the iron-clad grip Victor had on her arms.
"Someone should check on Olsen," he said, but Dinah was already kneeling at the younger man's side, helping him to sit up as he moaned in pain.
"Feels like I got run over by a truck," Olsen commented, weakly.
"She's certainly wearing enough makeup to cover one," Bart quipped, zipping up to stand beside his teammates. Linda Lake glared at him.
"How did you-" Oliver asked, nodding at Lake.
"Electricity," Victor answered, and Oliver looked past him to an electrical outlet that had been ripped out of the wall. "Causes water molecules to go haywire."
"Nice," Oliver commented. "Now, to call the cops on Ms. Lake, here."
"You can't prove anything," she snarled, furiously.
There was silence for a moment, then a soft click, and then Lake's voice filled the hallway.
"You wouldn't believe the way Whitcomb was bawling about his career being ruined. Well, maybe you would, but you'll never get the chance to tell anyone."
There was another click, and then Jimmy said, sounding satisfied, "Digital recorder. Shatterproof, scratchproof, and waterproof. Just the thing for recording those pesky confessions."
"Good going, Olsen," Victor said, sounding impressed despite himself.
"Bet the police will be really interested in this," Jimmy continued. "Especially that part where you threatened to murder me and Canary."
"This isn't over," Lake threatened, darkly.
"Oh, yes it is," Oliver told her. "You're going to have a nice long time sitting in a jail cell."
"Not if you don't want me telling the world who the Red-Blue Blur really is," Lake said, in a sing-song voice.
"What are you talking about?" Jimmy asked, while the League exchanged uneasy looks behind his back.
"You mean, you don't know who your friend Clark Kent really is?" Lake asked, her voice sickly-sweet.
Oliver held his breath, waiting for Jimmy's reaction, but to his surprise, the younger man only laughed.
"Clark Kent is Superman," he said, shaking his head in disbelief. "That's a good one."
"It's the truth," Lake spit out, furious that he wasn't playing along.
"Yeah," Jimmy said, dismissively. "Just like it was the truth the last time you tried to ruin Clark's reputation. He's a good man, and I'm not going to let any more of your lies hurt him."
Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, he dialed the police, ignoring the dark looks Lake was shooting his way.
"That was too close," Dinah muttered, watching as Lake struggled to free herself from Victor's relentless grip. "What if she tells someone else?"
"Then we'll figure something out," Oliver replied, just as quietly. "I don't think we're going to have any trouble convincing people she's just crazy, though."
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While Lois stayed at the airport café to work on their copy, Clark zipped back to Smallville with the cameras to have Martha develop the pictures. He was back in about an hour and a half with a stack of the suitable ones placed carefully in a long envelope along with copies downloaded onto a slim flash drive.
"These are all the good ones?" Lois asked, flipping through the photos Clark handed her.
"No face, no chance of identifying me on the front page," he confirmed. Holding up the flash drive, he added, "I've got this so that we can e-mail them to Tess before we leave."
"Here's the article," Lois said, turning her laptop around so that Clark could read the story.
"Brave, heroic actions?" Clark read, shooting Lois a look.
"Just calling things like I see them," Lois told him.
They spent another twenty minutes editing their article and weeding through the pictures for the best ones, and then they sent the finished piece to Tess and Lois shut her laptop down. They headed out of the airport and ducked behind the building, where Clark spun into his new suit and took off into the sky, Lois in his arms.
They landed in LA with thirty minutes to spare before the press conference. Arriving at the hospital, they went to the cafeteria where the press conference was being held. Lois grabbed an updated press pack from a table where a group of reporters was loitering, chatting amongst themselves.
"Clark Kent and Lois Lane, Daily Planet," Clark told the woman at the check-in table.
"Find a place to sit," the woman replied, handing them a pair of name badges. "The conference will start in a little while."
They wound their way through the crowd, managing to find a pair of seats near the front. Clark skimmed through the new press pack while Lois chatted up a couple of reporters from the Chicago Sun-Times. Almost ten minutes later, the director of the new hospital stepped up to the podium, tapping on the microphone to clear the static and sending a squeal of feedback through the crowd that had everyone cringing in pain.
"Sorry about that, folks," the director said, over the microphone. "Thank you all for coming, today. I know you're all eager to be out in the sunshine, so I'll try to keep this brief."
The man launched into his spiel about the new hospital, outlining the new technology that the center boasted. His presentation went on for almost two hours, and then opened for questions from the assembled reporters. Clark lobbed the man a couple of softballs directly from the press pack, curious to know if he'd actually read his own promotional material. The director handled his questions easily, along with Lois's tougher questions about doctors' benefits compared to compensation received by other medical staff employed by the hospital and the amount of money being reserved exclusively for patient care.
"Well, this group seems to know what they're doing," Lois commented, as they filed out of the cafeteria.
"You're still not going to give Tess her due, are you?" Clark asked, and Lois shook her head.
"Signing a check doesn't make you a good person," she replied, stubbornly. "It just makes you rich enough to fund a hospital."
Clark rolled his eyes good-naturedly at her as he held the lobby door open for her to precede him out to the sidewalk, and then they both froze for a moment at the sound of sirens. A pair of police cruisers shot down the street, sirens screaming in a high-speed chase, and then Lois felt a rush of wind as Clark vanished from beside her in pursuit.
The car fleeing from the police was weaving in and out of traffic, forcing other drivers off the side of the road to avoid being hit. The car was fairly flying down the street, the police cruisers and the crowd of reporters sprinting after it. Then, the car ran a red light at an intersection, bearing down on a pedestrian who couldn't move out of the way fast enough.
Around her, the other reporters were screaming at the woman at the top of their lungs, but Lois just held her breath, waiting anxiously. Then, seconds before the car would have struck the woman, it was lifted into the air, soaring over the woman's head to be placed back down on the street several hundred yards away.
Clark, who'd grabbed the roof the car to lift it into the air, zipped around to the front and placed his hands squarely on the hood, anchoring the car in place. The tires squealed futilely as the driver tried to escape, but Clark held firm, keeping the driver trapped until the police had pulled up and ran over.
"How did you do that?" Lois heard one of the cops demand as she ran up to the scene with the rest of the crowd. "Who are you?"
"I'm Superman," Clark replied, his voice lowered an octave from his normal tone.
"You were flying," another cop said, and Clark nodded.
"Yes, I was," he confirmed. "It's one of my powers."
"What are the rest of your powers?" one of the assembled reporters demanded, seizing the opening Clark's comment had given them. "Are you some sort of mutant?"
"I'm an alien," Clark said, and the crowd started mumbling wildly amongst themselves.
"When you say alien-" another reporter began, and Clark cut her off.
"I was born on another planet," he elaborated, and the buzzing from the crowd, which was growing by the second, grew louder.
"Are we being invaded by an alien race?" someone called out, and Lois stepped in before a riot could result.
"He just stopped a high-speed car chase and kept people from being hurt," she said, leaping to Clark's defense.
"I am not the beginning of an alien invasion," Clark said, raising his voice so that everyone gathered around could hear him. "I am one of the last of my people; I'm here on Earth to live among your people and help however I can."
"Are you this Red-Blue Blur we've been reading about in the Daily Planet?" someone asked.
"Yes I am," Clark answered.
"Why come forward now?" another reporter called out, holding a small digital recorder out towards Clark. "Why not keep hiding?"
"Originally, I was unsure how I would be received by the public," Clark said, as the crowd leaned forward eagerly to hear his answer. "But, I realized that I could do much more good in the world if I was out in the open."
"You were the one who caught the plane out in Colorado," the first reporter said. "Can you tell us anything about that?"
"The plane experienced left engine failure," Clark answered. "The other engines were not powerful enough to compensate for the loss, and it started to rapidly lose altitude."
"The rest of the story can be read tomorrow in the Daily Planet," Lois interrupted, and a couple of the reporters who knew her glared at her in exasperation.
"Do you have to get every story?" someone muttered, irritated.
"I was on the plane, I took advantage of an opportunity," Lois replied. "You know how it works, Brooks. Right place, right time."
Clark cocked his head to the side, suddenly, catching Lois's attention.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I'd love to stay and answer more of your questions," he said, "but there's an emergency I need to attend to."
He took off into the air, cape whirling around him, and Lois watched him go, standing still as the other reporters ran after him, still shouting questions.
"Welcome to the world, Superman," she murmured, quietly.
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Jimmy sat on a hard, plastic chair in the waiting area of the fifth precinct, his leg jiggling nervously and his hands clutched convulsively on a bright yellow manila envelope. He'd been waiting for nearly twenty minutes to talk to Detective Jones, CK's friend who was still recovering from a recent gunshot wound.
"Mr. Olsen?"
Jimmy looked up at the sound of the man's voice and Detective Jones motioned for him to follow him back to his desk.
"You said you had some important information about Daniel Halling's accident?" Jones prompted.
"These," Jimmy said, sliding the x-rays out of the envelope and passing them over to Jones.
"What am I looking at?" Jones asked, and Jimmy leaned forward, explaining.
"And this stain on the pre-op x-ray matches the one on the blank film that was run through the broken copier," he finished. "It could have only gotten there one way."
"This is a very serious allegation you're making," Jones said, somberly.
"I know," Jimmy answered. "But it's true. Whitcomb paralyzed his patient and then lied to the patient and his family to cover it up."
"I'm going to ask that you sit on this story until after I've arrested Dr. Whitcomb," Jones continued, and Jimmy nodded in understanding.
"We don't send the copy to print until about ten o'clock, tonight," he replied. "And even then, Tess Mercer is probably going to assign the story to someone else."
"I don't know," Jones remarked. "It sounds to me like you've got your first story, Olsen."
Jimmy left the precinct after about another half an hour of answering Jones's questions, and went into the alley behind the building to where Arrow was waiting.
"Good job," Arrow told him. "Now we just leave the rest to Jones."
"What about Halling and his family?" Jimmy asked, concerned. "The guy lost his job, and now he can't go back to it."
"Halling and his family will be well taken care of," Arrow assured him. "I don't think an engineer with his talents is going to be unemployed for too long."
"Speaking of," Jimmy said, as he headed back to the street, "I need to get back to work before I find myself unemployed."
"Hold on a minute," Arrow called, and Jimmy turned to look at the hooded man. "What would you say to a job offer?"
"Job offer?" Jimmy repeated. "What kind of job?"
"You may have noticed that my group has a hard time with going undercover," Arrow said. "I need someone on my team who can act as a go-between for the League and the rest of the world. A liaison of sorts. Plus, you showed that you're pretty good with computers, which is a plus. We need someone around who can keep up with Cyborg's technobabble."
"I have a job," Jimmy told him.
"I pay well," Arrow said. "Very well. Plus, you could still freelance for the Planet if that's what you want."
"My photography isn't a hobby," Jimmy said, wondering if he was offending the other man by turning down his offer. "I'm good at it, and truthfully, I can't imagine doing anything else."
"Fair enough," Arrow conceded. "Can't blame me for trying, though."
"I hope you find someone you can work with," Jimmy told him.
"I've got some irons in the fire," Arrow replied. "It was good working with you, Olsen. Superman's lucky to have a pal like you."
"Thanks," Jimmy said, fighting the urge to blush at the unexpected compliment.
"See you around," Arrow told him, and then he shot a grappling hook up to the nearest rooftop and let it pull him into the sky.
"This has got to be one of the weirdest days ever," Jimmy decided, as he headed for his car.
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"This is a good story," Lois said, as she read Jimmy's page one expose of Dr. Whitcomb.
"It's okay," Jimmy said, blushing.
"No, this is really good work," Clark told him. "I'll bet Superman's glad to have you in his corner."
Jimmy just shook his head.
"Like he's got time to read my work when he's off catching planes," he said, depreciatingly.
"Hey, don't sell yourself short," Lois scolded.
"Yeah," Clark said. "Superman's probably a big fan of the Daily Planet."
He winced when Lois elbowed him in the ribs and glared at him.
"You know," she hissed under her breath. "I think you're having too much fun with this dual identity thing."
Clark just smirked, turning back to Jimmy to keep talking about the younger man's article. Retreating back to her desk, Lois picked up the phone and dialed Oliver's number.
"What's this I hear about you trying to steal Jimmy away from the Daily Planet?" she asked, accusingly, when Oliver picked up the phone.
"Hey, I need someone around who's good with computers and good with the team," Oliver defended his actions. "Olson fits the bill on both."
"If I give you a name, will you leave Jimmy alone?" Lois wanted to know.
"Sure," Oliver said, easily. "Is it Chloe?"
"Barbara Gordon," Lois told him. "We were in high school together for six months when the General was stationed at Fort Lewis in Gotham City. We kept in touch over the years, and she's a genius when it comes to computers."
"Will you drop a good word for me?" Oliver asked.
"If you promise to not poach Jimmy away from us," Lois said.
"Fine, fine," Oliver agreed, easily. "So, is this Barbara pretty?"
"Very," Lois answered. "She's also fully capable of kicking your butt, so watch those wandering eyes of yours."
"My eyes never wander," Oliver protested, and Lois scoffed in disbelief.
"Yeah, right," she said, and Clark looked over at her tone. 'Oliver,' she mouthed, pointing at her phone.
"Hey, what's that?" she heard Jimmy ask, suddenly, and she looked over to see Clark's police-band scanner blinking on his computer screen.
"That's Clark's reminder to go buy me that frozen yogurt he promised me this morning," Lois lied, smoothly, while Clark was floundering for an answer. "Better get going, Smallville."
"Right," Clark said, quickly catching on. "One frozen yogurt coming right up."
He darted out of the newsroom, and Jimmy stared after him in disbelief.
"Wow," he remarked. "I've never seen CK move that fast. You must really want that frozen yogurt."
"What I really want is a good story," Lois told him. "Let's get going."
"Going where?" Jimmy asked, even as he grabbed his camera.
"Superman's out there, somewhere," Lois said, memorizing the address on Clark's computer screen. "We're going to go find him."