Wow. Superman comic section has an even lower traffic volume than I thought.

Ah well, I'm also on tumblr if you prefer that platform. Thank you to everyone who read, reviewed, liked, and followed. I hope you are all having a good day.

Read on.

Chapter Two: Your Friendly Neighborhood Reporter

"Clark Kent." Lois punted the syllables across her tongue.

She kind of liked his name. It was short and punchy with hard, crisp sounds and the alliteration made it easy to remember. It was a friendly kind of name, one that would look good in a byline. A name that could easily become a household brand, if the right tone was invoked, if his articles spoke to the right audience.

"Clark Kent." She rolled the syllables this time, drawing them out. "The farm boy from Smallville, that was named after the town founder."

Lois had known the guy for all of fifteen minutes, yet just saying his name gave her an oddly trusting feeling. 'Clark Kent' was the name of a man who had nothing to hide. A name like 'Lex Luthor' invoked a sense of unease. It had a slithery kind of feel coming out of your mouth, like the very sound of it was trying to escape your tongue and wiggle back down your throat and you had to spit it out. Whereas 'Clark Kent' burst forth bright and loud like a ray of sunshine.

There was nothing shady about a farm boy from a town called Smallville. Much like his name, 'Smallville' just didn't invoke any bad feelings. It made Lois think of a town mired deep in the 1950s. An old-fashioned, down-home place to live where the men at the barbershop gossiped like old hens and believed in ideals like hard work making a real man out of you. A place where you could find apple pies cooling on the window sill, where the outdoors were still valued, and where a good day of hard work equated to happiness. Simple, straightforward, and as whitebread as they came and then some.

Your friendly neighborhood Clark Kent.

People would trust him.

Hell, Lois felt like she already did.

It was bizarre, because she wasn't the sort to trust so quickly or so easily. The offended told her that it made her unfriendly, but to Lois, it was just being cautious. She preferred to keep a person at arm's length while she felt them out. There was no use in handing out your trust so quickly when the other person turned out to be an asshole in disguise.

Lois raised her eyes and found the slightly hunched shoulders and still very broad back of Clark Kent standing in one of the lunch lines. From the back, it didn't look like a natural posture for him. Maybe it was just first-day jitters that was making him curl his shoulders in like that. Like leaving the farm behind and entering the big city had made him suddenly very aware of how broad-shouldered he was and he had adopted such an unflattering posture to appear less intimidating.

If he straightens up, though. Pulls those shoulders back, maybe muss up his hair a little and puts on some muscle... Lois fanned herself a little and tried very hard not to picture it. It wouldn't do to imagine her co-worker as a shirtless Adonis on his very first day. Didn't want to make him uncomfortable. She had to deal with him for at least a week.

The Daily Planet employed roughly one thousand people spread over several media outlets and technical support, the copy machines and the on-call repair men, the vast printers that did the job of spitting out the twice-daily papers, the janitors and an assemblage of various personnel who kept the place humming along in one piece. No mere break room would suffice for the mass of people who populated the building at all hours of the day and night and needed a place to unwind away from their desks. Floors thirty-one and thirty-two of the building had been made over to look almost exactly like a mall's food court, but with a huge lounge area and a few sit-down restaurants for visitors and those who had the lunch hour to spare. Some chain fast-food places had moved in, along with a Cinnabon and a pizza place. Anything that was fast, under ten dollars, and kept you full for a little while.

Lois preferred the Panera in the corner slot. Her policy was to eat at least one healthy meal every day and thereby feel less guilty for indulging in things like ice cream for breakfast. Anyways, she loved their thick stews that came in a hollowed-out loaf of sourdough bread and it was perfect for a winter day.

It was the second full week of October and Metropolis had been slammed by the first snow of the season. Six inches overnight and it was still business as usual around here. They were due for another six inches over the course of the day. But Metropolis was no stranger to lake-effect snow and lots of it. They were one of the snowiest cities this side of the Rockies. The plows were already out spreading salt on the roadways and clearing off the edges.

Wispy little flakes trickled down onto the windows that pushed fifteen feet from the ceiling and arched over like skylights. Lois shoveled a spoonful of hot stew into her mouth. It was beef and potato with a few assorted vegetables and spices, with a thick flaky biscuit on the side because even though the bowl was also bread, because apparently you could never have too many carbohydrates in one sitting.

Clark made it to the table in the corner that Lois favored -- one by the window that overlooked the city. He had gone through the pizza line, emerging with a calzone and a side-dish of pasta and breadsticks.

Looks like we're both stocking up on the carbs today. It is cold out there. Lois mused. Farm boy must be used to eating a lot at meals.

"So, Clark Kent." she started. He definitely had a good name. "Did you do any reporter work in the cornfields of Kansas?"

"I did work for the Smallville Ledger when I was in college." Clark replied.

Lois nodded approvingly. Any prior experience was good experience. At least she wasn't working with a total newbie and hopefully, he was one who could learn. "Now the important question. How exactly did you get past the gatekeeper?"

"Gatekeeper?" Clark repeated, bewildered.

"Perry. How did you convince Perry that you're Planet material?" Lois asked. "I'm dying to know. You impressed him, Smallville, and that is rare."

"I did?" Clark looked confused, like he had never expected to impress anyone ever.

Lois nodded eagerly. "Oh, you did. He doesn't show it very often-- Well, never. But he was impressed with you. He's picky about the new-hires. You must have showed him something real special."

She waited to see his reaction. Perry really was very picky and actually impressing him was as common as a total solar eclipse over Metropolis. It could happen, but it was so rarely seen and those who were lucky enough had every right to brag.

The braggarts were the worst.

Telling the new hire that they had impressed Perry was her personal litmus test. If they puffed up with a big head and started bragging about how good they were, Lois knew to cut her losses and run. She wasn't going to be partnered with another braggart who'd try and claim all the credit for her hard work.

But Clark seemed to stick close to his modest farm boy roots.

"Oh, well-- I didn't really think I had-- impressed him. I'm not-- I'm not exactly a-- an impressive-- Not impressive at all, Ms. Lane." he stammered, turning so adorably pink that Lois wanted to pinch his cheeks. Then he shoved half a breadstick in his mouth to keep himself from babbling.

She canted an eyebrow. Not impressive? He really thinks he's not impressive? Wow, I think he's for real. She realized. She straightened up a little. "Why don't you let me be the judge of that?" she suggested.

Clark made a muffled sound that was probably supposed to be "what?" or something similar, but all the bread got in the way.

"You've met him. Tell me how." Lois ordered. She was incredibly curious. Perry really only talked about three things: his admiration for Elvis Presley, his stress levels (which were self-inflicted), and all things related to running a major newspaper.

The black-haired man stared at her with an expression that could have been easily mistaken for wide-eyed terror that was almost hysterical when combined with those chipmunk cheeks. Then he swallowed all the bread in his mouth with some difficulty -- Lois wasn't sure he had even chewed.

"Do you remember hearing about a meteorite shower in southwest Kansas? Back in 1999, near the beginning of May?" Clark asked. His voice sounded much steadier, now that they were talking about something from familiar territory.

Lois trawled through her memories for a moment. That far back, she hadn't been the most well-behaved of teenagers and mired deeply in the American education system which didn't consider life outside of school to be relevant. She had been dodging her father and trying to check in on her sister discretely and she hadn't had a lot of reason to pay attention to the news.

"I think so, yeah." she said. She could recall a headline or two saying something a meteorite shower in America's heartland. "Is that how you met him?"

Clark nodded. "He came into Smallville a week or so after it happened. I don't think he could find anyone to write the story, so he came to write it himself."

"Sounds like Perry." Lois agreed.

"The next day, the CDC were announced a quarantine until they could be sure there weren't any biological contaminents in the meteor rock." Clark went on. "It must have been about two weeks before they lifted it. Smallville's never had anything that could pass for a bed and breakfast, so my parents let him sleep in the spare bedroom, and we let him use the computers we had in the school's newspaper office to type up his notes."

"So Perry was stuck in Tiny Town Kansas for two weeks with the story of the decade working out of a high school newspaper office." Lois summarized, frowning at the illogical burst of jealousy. She was remembering a little more about the Kansas meteorite shower. It had been prolific for two very important reasons. One: it had appeared on the radar with just four hours of warning before hitting the atmosphere. Two: the meteorites had been up to twelve feet across and larger. It was like half a fucking planet had dropped on southwest Kansas.

"Okay, but that was years ago." Lois added. "You must have shown him something from recently that he got all googly-eyed over. I want to see it. If you've still got it with you."

"I-- uh, I backpacked across Asia, Russia, and Europe for about two years before college. I wrote a lot of letters home." Clark explained, He snapped opened his satchel and extracted a slightly battered envelope that he handed to Lois. "People always told me I had a knack for journalism and everyone really thought I'd be good at it. You can read it, if you want."

Normally, Lois would be quite eager to go digging into someone's personal stuff -- she did it all the time in the name of turning up legitimate dirt for a story. But she hesitated upon seeing the carefully written address to Johnathan and Martha Kent of Smallville, Kansas. She could practically see Clark bent over a desk in a hotel room or on a train or even just huddled up with a hardcover book and a flashlight while sitting under a tree or someone's gutters, scribbling out the letter home. Telling his parents that he was okay and having fun and nothing to worry about.

It was a touch more personal than she was used to.

But he had showed it to Perry too.

"How'd you backpack through Russia without attracting too much attention?" Lois wondered. "It's not the friendliest country. We've had this on-again, off-again frenemy sort of relationship ever since the Cold War. Any given day, I can never tell if Russia likes us or not. Can't imagine they'd take too kindly to having an American backpacking his way across the countryside."

Clark gave a half-shrug and looked away evasively. Lois frowned thoughtfully. There was the look of a man who wasn't sure if he had broken the law or not.

"You might be a very interesting person, Smallville." she told him.

"Ah... Thanks, I guess." Clark shrugged again.

If nothing else, he was proving to be a lot more than just a standard rube hayseed. It was one thing for a person to boast that they had backpacked through Europe, but to throw Russia and Asia into the mix as well? He'd been on his feet for two years.

"Tell me all about it some time." Lois all but ordered.

"Oh-- Okay."

She dug the folded papers out of the envelope. Handwritten and four pages, front and back! She skimmed over the introductory stuff -- the 'hey, I'm fine, this is where I am' -- and jumped straight to the heart of the letter. Clark had taken a tour of several old German castles. The descriptions were very well done. They didn't run so long that the reader would get bored or lost. They were short, snappy, invoked good imagery and got all the information across in as few words as possible. It was easy for Lois to picture the graying stones and the green lawns and the aged smell of mildew...

She flinched upright and it took her a second to realize that the mildew smell had been entirely imagined. The words had sucked her in that much. She quickly glanced over to her table-mate to see if he had noticed her reaction. Clark was staring out the window to the street below and munching mechanically on his remaining breadstick. He wasn't paying any attention to her.

Okay, if I'm imagining a smell, this is good. This is really good. Lois thought, fighting with her first reaction, which was to be very impressed. He's got some real gold here. No wonder Perry was impressed--

Her eyes landed on the date marked at the top of the letter. May 2002.

He wrote this over four years ago. If this is four years old, he must be damn good by now.

He might be better than me.

Lois folded the letter back up and slotted it back into the envelope. A little competition never hurt a body. And who knew? A little competition might have been just the very kick she needed to get back on top of her game.

"What did you think?" Clark asked hopefully.

"I can see why Perry liked it." Lois said, carefully avoiding her own opinion. A little praise could go a long way and she didn't want the new hire to get a big head. As he was now, he would be tolerable to work with.

Fortunately, Clark didn't press her for anything further. He flashed her a grateful smile and returned the enveloped to his satchel.

"Now chow down, Smallville, before I eat that for you." Lois ordered, gesturing to the untouched calzone. "I've got an appointment to make this afternoon and you're coming with me."

"Is that okay?" Clark wondered. "I mean, me coming with you?"

"Of course it is." Lois nodded. "Perry wants me to show you ropes and that's exactly what I'm going to do. The ropes, Lane style." She pointed to the calzone again. "Eat that. You'll need the calories, where we're going."

Now was the real test. It was time to see if he would stay or run.

Brewster and Ellicott and all those photographers she had worked with had been scared off from being her partner for really only one reason. Lois threw herself into dangerous situations like a professional stuntman. She was twenty-four years old and a grown-ass woman, thank you very much. She didn't know what she was getting herself in to, but in her mind, it didn't matter. She trusted her gut, her brains, and her not-inconsiderable skill in hand-to-hand to get her out safely each time with a story worthy of the front page.

But she couldn't trust that her 'partners' would actually have her back when things got tight, not when they spooked at the first sign of raised voices.

Maybe, just once, Perry had seen in Clark Kent more than just a promising reporter.

The Suicide Slums was one of Metropolis's "bad" neighborhoods. Low income, cheap housing and inconsistent police presence were all the factors needed to make it "ghetto" rather than "shady". There was one police officer determined to patrol the neighborhood like a tomcat prowling its territory, but he was still one man and back-up tended to show up fifteen minutes late even if shots had been fired. People kept their curtains drawn, bought another lock for their door and were certain to have, at minimum, two metal baseball bats handy.

The neighborhood's reputation didn't lend confidence either.

The Suicide Slums had gotten its name exactly the way people imagined. In a one month period, the neighborhood had seen more than two hundred suicides. There had been copper in them thar hills and Metropolis had built itself into a massive industrial center for mining, processing, and selling copper. In 1965, the city had fallen into an economic slump deep enough to make the Great Depression look like a fun little puddle, when the disaster had struck the mine, forcing it to close. Much of the city's economy had collapsed. The major companies of the time had simply packed up and moved away from the city with no explanation, taking all the job opportunities with them. Those who could have afforded to leave the city did. Those who couldn't often despaired so hard it led them to a building ledge thirty floors up. And those who didn't jump cleaned up after those who did.

For a full decade, Metropolis had maintained a reputation that crept up on Gotham City's record. It would have stabbed it in the back and taken over too, had it not been for the efforts of one Lionel Luthor, who had taken over the company from his curiously deceased father and had turned Metropolis back into the City of Tomorrow.

The Suicide Slums still looked like the Skid Row of Yesterday.

If yesterday was trash day.

But nonetheless, the Suicide Slums benefited from being on New Troy, which put it right next door to Downtown and Midtown, and the authorities put in more than just a token effort to show up if enough people called in. There was a reputation to uphold.

The other two neighborhoods weren't so well off in comparison.

The second of them was Metrodale, north of the Siegel River and technically a part of the Bakerline District if you went by what the official paperwork said. Unofficially, the district council representatives did their best to pretend the neighborhood didn't exist. Metrodale had once been an unincorporated town before what was left of the copper mine workers had opted to move there. With so many Metropolis residents living there, the city had annexed the town. After that had happened, Metropolis seemed to have lost interest. Metrodale had declined through urban decay and had suffered a break-down of moral integrity. It was Metropolis's red light district with its strip bars and seedy night clubs and other such dodgy businesses. It was controlled, by and large, by local street gangs and was easily the most poverty-encrusted area of the city.

And yet, it still fell short of the West River Area.

Unlike the Suicide Slums or Metrodale, the West River had not experienced a slow, greasy slide through urban decay. Nothing had ever sent it on that downhill spiral. It had always been unpleasant place to live and work. There was no discernable reason as to why this was. The West River was just a bad place. It had always been a bad place. People might have talked about how the Suicide Slums or Metrodale had once been really nice areas and could return to being nice areas, but the West River didn't have that same sense of hope. It was an event horizon of urban decay. The place where Metropolis's clean, straight lines contorted all different ways and wrought something that seemed only peripherally a part of the city.

The fact that it's home to all sorts of poor immigrants doesn't seem to be helping. Lois thought, briefly wrinkling her nose against the vaguely rotted smell of the neighborhood that she just could never shake.

She turned up her collar against the chill breeze and silently cursed Clark, who didn't look remotely bothered by the cold. Sure he was bundled up in gloves, a coat, a scarf, and a really swanky fifties-style fedora that he wore like a boss, but he strolled along like it was a warm spring day rather than the ass-crack of winter.

"Are you even cold?" she demanded. She was huddled in on herself. Either she needed a new coat or her cold tolerance was completely shitting on itself.

"Hmm, no I'm fine, Ms. Lane." Clark replied. He looked down at her, all the way down to her ankles. "Are you cold?"

"Yes." Lois said through gritted teeth. She probably needed to invest in a longer coat -- one that went down to her knees -- if she insisted on wearing snappy business blazers with skirts and hosiery. "Y'know, I've lived in Metropolis since I was thirteen. You'd think I'd know by now that we get cold winters around here."

"Have you thought about buying slacks?" Clark inquired.

Lois shrugged. "Either that or dressy thermal leggings." she grumbled.

"Do they make those?"

"I think so, but I've never found them. If they don't, they need to start."

Clark hummed absently. He didn't want to tell Lois that he thought she was very impractically dressed for winter. Some women took their fashion very seriously and would throw aside function in favor of form. But Metropolis was sandwiched on a peninsula jutting out into one of the Great Lakes with the Canadian border only about seventy miles away and it only made sense to be a touch more practical in the way one dressed for winter if they didn't want to freeze their privates solid.

The cold didn't bother him nearly as much as he knew it should have. It turned out that he was very resilient against the extremes of weather. Halfway through a Russian winter, he'd come to realize that the coat was more of a formality. He could go for hours without wearing it, as long as he wasn't trying to sleep. The same thing applied to extreme heat.

"So where are we going?" Clark asked, trying to take Lois's mind off the obnoxiously chilly weather. He really didn't like the look of this neighborhood. He had seen the Suicide Slums and he knew of its history, but even the Slums didn't have as many boarded up windows per block as this area did.

"We are going to see a Mr. Homer Colon."

"And who is he?"

"He's a slumlord." Lois replied. "The city wants to gentrify the West River area. They want to gentrify the entire area."

"They seem to be getting off to a pretty good start." Clark commented. The elevated light rail that they had ridden out of Downtown had taken them across the Vernon Bridge and past STAR Labs were urban renewal was clearly well under way. Brand new apartment buildings and office space and a market place had been constructed within the past year.

"But only those sections out by the Catfish and Ecton Pike bridges, in Cheswalk." Lois said. "See, Mr. Colon owns the largest chunk of land and he isn't selling. Not for any sum. The city already offered him a tidy nine hundred thousand for his land and the word is that he turned them down flat. Do you know what that makes me think?"

Clark shook his head. "No."

"It makes me think that Mr. Colon is hiding something." Lois replied thoughtfully. "Nine hundred thousand is a big sum of money. What reason would he have to turn down that much money point-blank?"

"Maybe he doesn't think it's enough?" Clark suggested, shrugging. "Even if the property values are low, the land he owns might cost more than nine hundred thousand. Maybe he feels they're trying to stiff him."

"Look around, Smallville, this is a bad neighborhood." Lois said, making an encompassing gesture to everything around them, from the crumbling brick to the sagging gutters. "Do you think anyone actually lives here because they want to? They're out here because they don't have a choice. The West River wasn't a good area to start with and it's only gotten worse. I think if anyone had the chance to move out, they'd take it and not look back. No one sticks around when they've got the chance to run for greener pastures."

Clark didn't necessarily think that was true, or else Smallville would have ceased to exist in the first twenty-four hours following the Tornado of '84. Or the meteorite shower of '99. Both times, the town had been reduced to a seemingly irrecoverable mess that no one in their right mind would stick around for. Anywhere else would have been sprinting for the greener pasture.

Yes, some people undoubtedly lived in the West River Area because they didn't have a choice in the matter; it was the best place they could afford and their paychecks weren't big enough for advancement. But others were long-time residents who held onto a shard of hope that the area would get better; that it could be recovered and turned into something golden again (or for the first time).

Then again, Lois was right. Nine hundred thousand dollars was more than enough money to pack up and head for better living conditions. The fact that the slumlord was not giving up his land even for that sum was suspicious, at best.

"And what do you think he's trying to hide, Ms. Lane?" Clark wondered.

Lois shrugged. "Could be anything that would put him in jail for the rest of his natural life." she replied. "Anyways, that's what I'm here to find out. Remember, you're just the tag-along, so don't even think about it." she added sternly.

"Think about what?" Clark asked, not following.

Lois poked him. "Don't even think about doing my job." she said.

"But being a reporter is my job now." Clark pointed out, frowning. This woman was a little competative, wasn't she. "It's one thing to say I'm supposed to shadow you and have you show me the ropes, but how am I supposed to learn how to swim if you don't let me get my feet wet?"

Lois raised one slim eyebrow and crossed her arms. She didn't let it show on her face, but dammit, he was right. He wasn't going to learn how to be a proper investigative reporter if she didn't let him take the lead once in a while.

"Alright, Smallville." she started graciously. "How would you approach this?"

Clark slid a folded sheaf of newsprint out of his coat pocket. "We're looking for an apartment." he said.

Lois frowned. "I'm not looking for an apartment." she said. "I have an apartment."

"I don't." Clark told her. Then he handed her the sheaf of newsprint with a small smile. It was the ads page, with several circled apartment listings for roughly four hundred a month. And several were right in the West River for even less.

"Wait, are you actually looking for an apartment here? Like a real apartment that you plan to live in?" Lois demanded, slightly appalled that anyone might consider one of the run-down tenements around here as viable places to actually occupy (unless you enjoyed tetanus and staph infections). She had looked into West River apartments once and knew right away that anyone with the means to do so needed to run in the opposite direction. Fast.

"I didn't think there was any other kind of apartment." Clark replied, his tone faintly teasing.

Lois slapped his chest with the newspaper. "Are you serious?! God Smallville, you could do better than this! Pelham! Mount Royal! Little Bohemia! Even the Slums is a better choice than this part of town!"

"I'd like to keep my options open." Clark replied, flashing a smile that should not have made Lois feel a little gooey inside. For a man with such a pretty smile and great hair that was obviously sheltering a working brain, he sure seemed to have poor judgment on appropriate living spaces and all Lois could hope was that he had not literally been raised in a barn. If it was all for the ruse, then she could go along with that, but Clark was practically saying that he was considering the housing around here to be good enough.

The good news is that he'll see just how bad it is and then he won't want it. I'll drag him to other openings myself, if I have to. Lois decided.

Clark pushed the newspaper back at her and poked the apartment ad listing. "So where are we starting?"

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