Toss some confetti! This story cracked 20 reviews on the last chapter! Seriously, I know the Superman category is very low-traffic, so I'll call this a milestone. A slightly belated thank you to all the readers and reviewers. Hope to keep seeing you around!
Chapter Eleven: On Making the World a Better Place
Clark's apartment was a studio floor-plan that occupied a top floor space of a fifth floor walk-up and the sitting room doors opened out onto a south-facing terrace. It had a partition wall that separated the bedroom from the rest of the living areas, currently empty except for a second-hand dining set and an area rug where a couch and other chairs would eventually go. There were some cast-iron pans and stainless steel pots, bath towels and toiletries -- house-warming gifts from his parents.
The terrace was also large enough for some vegetable planters and that had been the real draw. Living in the big city shouldn't stop him from enjoying fresh herbs and vegetables he didn't have to pay for, his mom had told him. When the weather warmed up, he was going to plant himself a little garden. Heirloom tomatoes, bell peppers, snow peas, and perhaps spinach.
What he didn't have yet was a bed. He hadn't had the time to shop around for the frame and the mattress, but it was on his to-do list for the coming weekend. He needed quite a few other odds and ends before the apartment was a proper living space.
For now, though, the air mattress would serve well enough in the short term.
Clark woke abruptly on Tuesday morning to find clear sunny October skies outside his windows, an unexpected Krpyto sprawled across his legs in the patch of sunshine that was shining through the east-facing windows, and his phone twittering in its charging station from multiple texts.
He blinked muzzily at the sleeping dog because Krypto was supposed to stay behind in Smallville. He was a lot of beast for the size of Clark's new accomodations and though he loved the fluffy bastard with all his heart, Clark hadn't planned to take the dog with him to Metropolis.
Clearly, Krypto had had other ideas on the matter.
"There's no getting rid of you now, is there." he commented.
Krypto's tail thumped twice on the mattress and he seemed to smile.
Clark shook his head. He should have seen this coming from a mile away. They had been all but attached at the proverbial hip since Krytpo's arrival; the then-small puppy latching on to Clark like a limpet and following him whenever possible. He was exactly the sort of faithful dog who had followed Clark all the way to school and waited for him to come out. Then two years around the world as inseperable traveling companions. Krypto was smart enough to know what he wanted.
And that included coming to Metropolis with his favorite person.
"Well, I wasn't exactly looking forward to living alone." Clark admitted, sitting up to scratch the dog behind the ears. "But you have to stay out of the Daily Planet. You can't follow me to work."
Krypto opened one bright blue eye and looked at him like: 'We'll see about that.'
The texts were from Lois.
All twenty-something of them.
Clark had been pleasantly surprised come Monday when Lois had continued to interact with him in a manner precisely like friends. He'd passed her desk and she had called out: "Heya Smallville." and grinned when they made eye contact. He was sure that everyone in a ten-foot radius had performed a double-take, like they had never ever seen Lois greet someone before. At least not in a non-sarcastic way full of prickly dislike.
If their fellow reporters hadn't already been eyeballing Clark like he was magic, then sure as hell now thought he was the divine reincarnation of an ancient, beloved deity. For, in their eyes, no human could exist in such close proximity to Mad Dog Lane without being burned alive.
Clark wasn't human, so was the joke on them?
"Lois, seriously." Clark muttered as he scrolled up to the very top of the text chain.
They started off as "Do you want coffee? I'm getting coffee." and various other offers of what he might like for breakfast and if he was awake yet. Another text assured him that she had gotten coffee and another asked for his opinion of frosted donuts versus glazed, sprinkles versus jelly-filled, and if he didn't get back to her on that, he might not like what he got. Further down the chain was a picture of a fat fluffy rabbit in someone's side-yard ("Dude, check out this fat bunny!") and Clark realized with some small degree of horror that Lois had been texting him on her way through Little Bohemia.
Because he recognized the sunshine yellow house behind the bunny, with cheery blue window shutters and the classic white picket fence. It was six blocks away from his building, one block up from the J-train stop he used to get home. Not much more than a five minute walk and the text had been sent very nearly five minutes ago.
Lois was probably already in the building.
Presumably with coffee and donuts.
It was six-thirty in the morning; she had better be bringing coffee and donuts.
Clark extracted his legs out from under Krypto and rolled out of bed, picking up his glasses along the way. He had just enough time to straighten the blankets back into some semblance of order before he heard Lois in the hallway, her heels clacking on the tile like she was weighted down and trying to keep her balance. Some part of her body thumped into the door in the semblance of a knock and Clark's phone dinged again with another text. He slid his glasses on, darkening the bright blue to navy, and went to open the door. Lois was in the hallway with two cardboard mugs of coffee perched on top of a variety pack of donuts.
"Ms. Lane, good morning." Clark greeted.
"You got my texts!" Lois said happily, a broad grin stretching across her face. "I thought you were ignoring me."
"Being asleep doesn't count." Clark told her, standing back to let her in. "What are you doing here so early?"
"Work-related." Lois obligingly wiped her shoes on the welcome mat before she stepped on the laminate wood flooring. "For some reason, Perry is very lazy early in the morning and will only call one half of the partner group to inform them of a change of plans. So change of plans."
"What's going on?" Clark asked, taking the coffee cups from her. One had his name written on it.
"Press conference. You need the experience." Lois put the donut box down on the table and then looked around at the rest of the apartment with a frown. "How do you have a table and chairs, and absolutely nothing else?"
"Someone was getting rid of their dining set." Clark said. He gestured to his cabinets. "You should see my Tupperware collection. Apparently, the people of Smallville think that Tupperware is an appropriate house-warming gift."
"Or they think you're a lonely bachelor who's going to eat nothing but leftovers." Lois commented, rolling her eyes over the small town mentality. "Holy crap! You have a pony!"
With an expression of utter delight, she pointed past Clark towards the partition that separated sleeping from living, where Krypto was sitting directly in Lois's line of sight. Upon being noticed, he rose to his paws and bounded over to her, the very picture of an excitable puppy. And then -- never minding the fact he was thirty-five inches at the shoulder and weighed around one-twenty -- he leapt on Lois.
"Look out--!" Clark warned, a little too late, as both dog and woman hit the floor in a heap. For her part, Lois didn't squawk in pain but rather squeamish joy when Krypto decided that her face would be much more complete once he had covered it in drool.
"Shelby!" Clark reached forward to haul the dog off her, using the false name that didn't arouse as much attention as 'Krypto'. "Don't jump on people. I thought I trained that out of you. C'mon, sit."
He was proportionately stronger than the large canine and was able to pull Krypto back without much trouble. The dog fell back obediently, sitting his rump on the floor, his tail thumping and his tongue lolling happily.
"Sorry, Ms. Lane." Clark helped her up.
"Never apologize for your large dog. If I get taken down by one hundred pounds of floof, that's how I go." Lois declared, wiping her face clean of drool. She straightened the sling bag around her chest and gestured to Krypto. When the dog came forward, she started with a vigorous ear-scratching. "Shelby, you said? He's gorgeous. What's his breed? Is he albino? I've never seen eyes like this on a dog."
"He's a Samoyed-Husky mix, not albino." Clark answered. "I don't know anything beyond that. He was a stray that wandered on to the farm."
"Well, he is cute." Lois assured him. She flashed a grin up at him. "Just like his owner."
A hot blush blossomed in Clark's face and he had to cover his mouth and clear his throat of any uncomfortableness. Lois smirked like she had taken revenge and then straightened up, taking off the bag.
"I came by for more reasons than just donuts and schedule changes." she started, digging into the bag. Her eyes skirted over his neck, where the bruises were just yellow-green splotches on the verge of disappearing entirely, and her eyebrows rose questioningly. "Remember flying strong man with laser eyes?"
"How could I forget?" Clark reached for his coffee. It was generic black coffee with some cream and no sugar.
"Well, I called in a favor with Colletta -- contact of mine in the SCU. Special Crimes Unit." Lois waved a plain folder from which she took out two photos of the same large black man who had attacked them at the Hell's Gate dockyard. One photo had come from footage on Lois's phone. "Colletta ran his face for me. We got a hit and we got a name."
She presented him with the second photo.
"I give you, Norman Essex."
It was a professional photo, like a blown up version of an employment photo. The big man looked nearly the same, except his expression was borderline pleasant instead of snarling and he wore a pair of rectangular glasses that dulled that piss-yellow color of his eyes to something more brown-ish yellow. He wore a crisp white shirt and a black tie.
"Norman Essex." Clark repeated, getting a feel for the name.
"Of all the things he could have been before he started cracking heads for Gigante, he was a geneticist at S.T.A.R. Labs." Lois went on. "Actually, he worked at some D.C. facility for ten years and then got hired up before S.T.A.R. Labs even opened. He was there for three years before he just up and quit. Nothing in the official records. But I already called the PR folks at the S.T.A.R. Labs yesterday. I got us an appointment to meet with one of Dr. Essex's co-workers on Thursday."
"That quickly, huh."
"I work fast."
"I thought you were focusing on Gigante, though." Clark pointed out. He could understand the interest, but he thought the focus had been Gigante and her position in the city.
"Clark, this man was flying!" Lois said emphatically, waving her hands. "He shot heat beams out of his eyes. He knocked down a wall like the fucking Terminator. He didn't even flinch when I hit him with that concrete. The only thing that made him twitch was the taser. It may just be me, but I think we should prioritize him over Gigante. I'll worry about her once we've dealt with her heaviest hitter."
"Fair enough." Clark sipped his coffee.
"Anyways," Lois slapped him lightly on the arm to redirect his attention. "Press conference at nine o'clock."
"What for?" he asked.
"Mayor Kovacs is holding it to inform the city of the impending plans for West River." Lois explained, making her way over to the clothes closet. "This is like the initial stuff they finalized."
"We're still working together?" Clark asked, surprised. He had been sure the partnership would end once the mentorship had.
"Perry has it in his head we're a good team." Lois said. She opened up the folding doors and looked into the closet. "There is so much flannel and plaid in here..." She shook her head and started digging around for the suits and nice shirts. "He's not wrong, exactly. When it comes to partners, I've had the worst of the worst. They all end up running away and I'm left with a pile of work because they can't handle a little excitement in their lives. You try to be boring, but you're not a total loss."
"Uh, thanks." Clark shrugged, assuming she meant to compliment him.
She turned up a blue-gray suit jacket and a matching pair of slacks that smelled a bit like mothballs, but otherwise in excellent shape. She pulled them off the hangars and tossed them at Clark.
"Here! Hang these up in the bathroom when you take a shower to steam them out. It'll get rid of the mothball smell." she said, walking back past him to pick up her bag from the tabletop. She swiped two glazed donuts and a large bear claw out of the box and picked up her coffee. "The press conference starts at nine down in city hall. Just make sure you have your press badge and be there by at least eight-thirty. Bring all your stuff."
"Ms. Lane, did you just come down here to give me coffee, donuts, then tell me about Norman Essex and pick out clothes for me?" Clark asked. That was either a vague invasion of privacy or the most domestic thing that had ever happened to him; he couldn't decide. He didn't bother to question how she'd known where he lived; she had helped him find the apartment.
But coming down here at six-thirty in the morning with breakfast things and an apparent need to raid his wardrobe... The former was a nice gesture and he wasn't sure what to make of the latter.
Lois smiled a bit secretively around the rim of her coffee cup. But all she said was:
"Bye Shelby. Keep your human out of trouble."
Krypto barked an affirmative and stood so stiffly at attention that he probably would have saluted too if his muscles and bones were better configured for that sort of movement.
Then she was out the door and gone like a gust of wind, leaving Clark standing a bit punch-drunk next to the dining table with coffee in one hand and clothes draped over the other. Lois had barged her way in and then barged her way back out in a matter of minutes and she might as well have clocked him over the head in the process for as dazed as she left him feeling.
Part of him wanted to think something along the lines of: How rude... But that made no sense. Another part of him wanted to think: What a gal! -- but that made even less sense.
Another part of him that was operating on a considerably more rational level of sense told him to make sure that he didn't encourage future similar behavior from Lois by insinuating that he was not offended by her early morning arrival.
Because he wasn't offended by it. He knew that he should be, on some level. Since he hadn't noticed the texts until about a minute prior to her arrival, she had essentially turned up without warning. And whether you were in the small town or the big city, advance warning was just a common courtesy.
"Honestly, I should be offended she showed up so suddenly." Clark said out loud.
Krypto tilted his head. 'You're not.'
"I mean, I should be really offended." Clark said again, more like he was trying to convince himself. "I never stood for Lana barging in and I knew her for years. Why should that be different for Lois?"
'I'd give you my opinion, Kal, but neither of us are telepathic.' Krypto thought.
Clark looked down at the dog as though he knew what Krypto had just thought and didn't think it was all that complimentary. Occasionally, there was a time when he wished that they actually had a better method communication that was faster than the keyboard and clearer than body language, of which Krypto's was markedly different.
Then it hit Clark -- why his parents had been so amused when he'd talked about Lois with those smug smiles and knowing looks, and his own opinion on the matter. The mere thought was so absurd and left-field that Clark doubled over in horror and came up laughing over the sheer weirdness of the idea. Krypto gave him a concerned expression.
"Mom and Dad think I like Lois. I think I like Lois." he told the canine, and laughed some more.
He didn't. He didn't like Lois. She was insane and abrasive and untrusting. She grubbed for stories the same way a gorilla grubbed for termites. She was persistent, stubborn, hard-headed, selectively deaf, and possibly somewhat suicidal. She went after everything with such a tenacity that she simply had to be trying to prove something. She had openly admitted that she didn't make friends easily. She was a good person somewhere deep down, but there was an awful lot to wade through before one found that good person.
He didn't want to try dating a coworker either. There were so many television shows about office romances and how sexy and mysterious and forbidding they were, but the whole idea was probably more awkward in reality and Lois would probably end up making the whole thing very embarrassing. Her shame-levels appeared to run quite low. Secondly, Clark didn't want to add fuel to the fandango rumor that had gotten started last week.
It wasn't something he would do either; casually date a woman he had met only a week earlier. For some men, simply knowing the woman existed was enough of a reason to ask her on a date, but Clark wasn't that sort of man. At best, Lois was an acquaintance. And she certainly didn't like him. She had just put up with him for the mentoring-partner business. It wasn't her fault Perry had decided to assign them to work together.
It was probably just a short-term thing anyways. Until he had gotten his sea legs.
"Y'know Krypto, there are moments that make me glad I'm not actually human." Clark commented out loud. "As a species, they just don't make sense sometimes."
'You upright primates don't make much sense to me either.' Krypto agreed.
Metropolis City Hall was a gorgeous old structure that had burned to the ground once. Its foundations were over three hundred years old, but the current building was little less than a century old. After catching fire and burning out of control, the city had latched on to Art Deco as the primary inspiration when it had come to rebuilding. Though there was a distinct art nouveau flair to break up the straight lines and right angles.
Additional buildings of a more modern style had been added to the surrounding city blocks, as Metropolis had grown larger and needed more space for the management of its local government. The room where small press conferences were typically held was located in the one of the newer buildings with a functional sound system and was designed to accommodate a hundred or so people. It wasn't a large room, over all.
That being said, Clark still couldn't find Lois.
There weren't that many people in the room. There were representatives from every significant news outlet in the city, from broadcast media to internet news to the traditional press reporters. The Daily News, the City Post, and the Metro Eagle were there; three of the more respectable papers with large circulation. The Metropolis Star, of course, since it fancied itself respectable. WMET and WBGS for the radio, and Channels 53, 9, 6, and 91 who all reported on the news. And none of the people even looked like Lois. That should have made her much easier to find.
It wasn't.
"WGBS being here is redundant." said Lois's voice near Clark's shoulder.
"What the-- Ms. Lane!" The twenty-three year old jumped in faint shock. She must have come up behind him. "Wh-What did you say?"
"I said WGBS is redundant. They actually don't need to be here because they're part of GBS." Lois said, under the impression that it was all she needed to say.
"That doesn't explain very much to me." Clark pointed out.
"GBS and the Daily Planet are both sister companies under Galaxy Communications. Along with some others, I don't remember who." Lois explained, waving a hand dismissively. "GBS handles the news broadcasts through the Daily Planet. The radio guys don't really need to be here."
"By your logic, we don't need to be here either."
Lois frowned. "Explain, Smallville."
"Well, a lot of people have said that traditional newspapers have been going out of style because the internet is becoming more and more of a useful tool, now that we're past the initial burst of selfies, shameless social media, and porn-sharing." Clark explained. In the earliest days of rapid-access internet, you hadn't been able to do a search without hitting ten porn sites on the first page alone. "But beyond that, if the Daily Planet is also part of GBS, then the only people who actually need to be here is the television crew."
Lois frowned even harder before she ran a hand through her hair and assumed a lofty posture of confidence. "Newspaper isn't dead yet, Smallville."
"Well then, we should sit down and give our profession its due respect." Clark suggested.
The older reporter tapped him on the chest in a companionable way and smirked. "I like the thing way you think, Clark Kent."
They found seats near the front of the assembly and were settled in with several questions ready to go by the time the mayor of Metropolis and her cabinet came onto the stage.
"Hey, look Smallville." Lois nudged him in the ribs. "They're all white men."
"You sound offended." Clark noted.
"I'm just noticing a distinct lack of diversity up there."
Mayor Joanne Kovacs was somewhere in her fifties with curled brown hair cut short but it was the sort of hair that poofed outwards and upwards instead of laying semi-flat. She had quite a lot of dark blue and black suit jackets in her wardrobe, and skirts that looked like hybrids of the A-line and the pencil. Her blouses were always crisp and white; so much that Clark was half-sure this woman still starched her collars.
"Thank you all for coming. I know this was a bit short notice." Mayor Kovacs started, folding her hands over one another. "I've arranged this press conference to outline to the people of Metropolis the proposed plan for the borough known as the West River. I'm going to open the floor immediately to questions."
There was a flurry of waving hands. The moderator peered around the room and pointed mostly at random.
"Sheri Shaw, City Post." started the selected reporter. "The plan includes bulldozing the West River. How are you going to handle the relocation effort?"
"We're going to restore the neighborhood a little bit at a time as to not completely displace the residents all at once." Mayor Kovacs said. "There are still empty apartments west of Flute Avenue and--"
"What have these people done to afford those apartments?" cut in a voice that made Lois shudder in her seat and Clark looked down at her in alarm when her heart-rate increased and he practically heard the rush of the blood in her veins.
Mayor Kovacs tilted her head. "I'm sorry, you are?"
"Lacy Warfield, Metropolis Star." the buttinsky said.
The revolted reaction was not limited Lois, Clark realized just half a second later. As soon as the young woman said her name, a hissing noise echoed around the press room, not unlike a leaking gas pipe. About fifty people recoiled with an expression that suggested they were either experiencing gastro-intestinal distress or wishing the woman ill will.
"The people in the West River are poor." Miss Warfield went on, either unperturbed by or oblivious to the quietly seething dislike that rolled around her. "What are they going to do to afford those apartments?"
"Those aren't luxury apartments, Miss Warfield, and they're government-subsidized. I'm sure we'll come up with a solution that will satisfy you." Mayor Kovacs said evenly. "The simple fact is that we don't want to create a shanty town while reconstruction is occurring. It is actually cheaper to house them in the empty apartments than to let them lean on welfare services which, if I may add, is still not adequate enough to manage the current number of homeless in the city. Yes, I am aware of the state of our welfare services. That's why I don't want to strain them any further. And yes, we're actively working to correct the problems."
Clark thought he saw three of the cabinet members stop smiling for an instant, their expressions flickering into disbelief before they forced those smiles back faker than before.
"We are going to divide the West River in grids." Mayor Kovacs went on. "All the residents of Grid A, for example, will be permitted to move into the still largely-unoccupied apartment complex in lower Cheswalk near the Catfish Bridge. Once Grid A is fully refurbished and ready for occupancy, the residents of Grid B will be permitted to move there. And so on. As for employment and affordability, that is still on the table, but we will be sure to get back to you on it before bulldozing begins next April."
Looking somewhat chastised, Miss Warfield sank back down into her seat.
"Any further questions?" Mayor Kovacs inquired.
Lois was the first to raise her hand and the moderator pointed at her.
"Lois Lane, Daily Planet. Tax hikes. Even with all the donations, there's no doubt this is a massive undertaking. How is this going to affect city taxes and more importantly, for how long?"
Mayor Kovacs nodded. "Thank you, Miss Lane. I was hoping to get to that." she said. "Without a doubt, there will be an increase in city tax. We need to be able to fund this operation and yes, a fair portion is going to come out of taxes. We can't give you any exact numbers until we're further along in the planning, but from this outlook, I don't see it being much more than perhaps... five percent?"
Various members of the (all white male) cabinets experienced the flicker-of-disbelief thing again, as though the mayor had just said something they hadn't agreed on. Clark suspected that he saw because his perception was fast enough to catch it. Beside him, Lois was frowning.
Another reporter asked how long this reconstruction was expected to take, to which Mayor Kovacs gave an answer the various men also didn't seem to enjoy hearing.
"Barring any delays, we're hoping for a completion date in late 2009 or early 2010." she went on. "However, the project is larger than just the West River. Over the course of the next ten years, we plan to rebuild Metrodale and the Slums back to their former grandeur."
"Why is it going to take ten years?" demanded someone from the back of the room, sounding downright antagonistic. "Everyone knows it could be done in five!"
Lois and Clark turned in their seats along with everyone else to see the man who had spoken up and Lois gasped excitedly. He was late twenties with flat greasy hair that didn't seem to benefit from regular shampooing and the sort of nebbishly pale look one acquired when they spent too much time in a dark room at a computer screen. He looked like he had tried to affect some sort of Indiana Jones appearance, with a beaten leather jacket over a shirt that was probably not naturally that yellow-looking and that was definitely a fedora squashed under his arm.
A fuckboy out in the wild! Lois realized with a smothered giggle of glee. Oh, this is a delight! I almost never see one in broad daylight like this!
"Actually, we can't. The safety concerns with some of the oldest buildings--" Mayor Kovacs said, but the fuckboy steam-rolled like a pro.
"Safety concerns? Like what?" he sneered nastily. "There aren't any. That's just an excuse to delay construction indefinitely and when you finally get around to it, everything will be sold off to some rich investor who'll sell the land to his club-house buddies and all the people you're saying this project is going to benefit will be shut out! Once again, the poor get kicked into the river while the rich live the high life!"
A social justice warrior fuckboy! I didn't think they ever left their computers! Oh my god, this is the best day of the year! Lois smothered another round of giggles.
"That's not--" Mayor Kovacs started again.
"And then it'll be the same story with Metrodale!" the fuckboy bellowed.
"Security, please escort this man from the room!" Mayor Kovacs ordered.
"You can't silence me!" the fuckboy shouted as the black-suited security officials came forward to remove him. He struggled against them almost tokenly but otherwise allowed them to drag him out of the room. "The people have a right to know the truth! The truth that the rest of you so willingly hide! You're all sheep, you reporters! You're just mouthpieces for lies!"
Any more was silenced when the door shut on him.
Mayor Kovacs rubbed her forehead briefly, like she was sort of starting to regret doing this. "Let's take five minutes." she said, starting to get to her feet. "I forget to get a glass of water. And my headache medicine."
The press room immediately broke out chattering and the mayor vacated the seat behind the main table. As soon as she was gone, the men of the cabinet turned off their microphones and bent their heads together.
"Poor mayor." Clark said softly.
Lois shrugged. "She was the lesser of two evils."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, nothing against her. Mayor Kovacs has actually done a pretty good job since taking office. But that's mostly been attributed to her reversing a lot of Berkowitz's asinine policies. She doesn't have a lot of political experience, so winning the election was exactly like getting thrown off the deep end. She went from sewage official to mayoral candidate in under a year and she wasn't exactly prepared for it." the older reporter explained, albeit with some sympathy. "But our other candidate was Buck Sackett. And there was a good reason people liked to call him 'Buttcrack Ballsack'."
"Lovely."
"I know."
"So Sackett was extremely unpopular?" Clark prompted.
"Oh, more than you can imagine." Lois agreed. "He wanted to outlaw birth control and hormone therapy to everyone who needed it, which included not just trans-individuals but post-menopausal women and men suffering from testosterone imbalances. Oh, he also believed menstruation was a lie perpetuated by feminists and therefore wanted to ban hygenic products like pads and tampons on the basis that we didn't actually need them. That was a pretty much the tip of his dickery."
"That was just the tip?" Clark blinked, his jaw hanging shock and disbelief that someone could be so stupid and still think they actually had a chance winning an important election.
"And it doesn't even touch his connection to the KKK." Lois added. "So it's not hard to see why the majority vote went straight to Joanne Kovacs. The only shit she ever touched was in the sewer system."
She tapped her pen on the notepad several times.
"You know, I'm all for questioning authority. It'd be my motto if I was expected to have one." she said. "But you actually have to give authority a chance to respond before you tear into them."
"What's your point, Ms. Lane?" Clark inquired.
"The greasy fedora-wearing fuckboy back there." Lois elaborated, inclining her head towards the door. "I'll be the first to admit that I don't have a lot of faith in the government as a whole. It's one thing to shout at them when they're being deliberately vague and trying to hide elephants in the crab grass. But it's entirely another thing when they're actually being very reasonable. I mean, ten years is a plausible estimate of time for the scope of the project. Three run-down neighborhoods to restore, two of considerable size. That's going to take time. Ten years is probably the minimum estimate. But the Greasy Fuckboy is also right about one thing, much as I hate to agree with him."
"What's that?" Clark asked.
"The project could be mysteriously stonewalled out of existence and all that tax money disappears down a black hole. Or that once the project finishes, the working poor aren't even given a second glance and everything is out of their tax bracket." Lois said, crossing her arms and looking ill at ease with the idea of agreeing with someone who didn't appear to have changed his shirt in six months. "Then again, some people are only getting their balls in a twist because Mayor Kovacs has a vagina and they're convinced she's going to ram Metropolis into the ground."
"But you said she was the better option." Clark said.
"No, I said she was a lesser of two evils." Lois corrected. "I also said she hasn't done a bad job. She knows how to funnel resources into projects. She knows how to prioritize. She just didn't have a plan going in to office. She ran her campaign on reversing Berkowitz's stupidity. She lacks a fair bit of experience. Let's say in thirty years, you're a fantastic reporter and you're really good at the job. But how would you feel about suddenly being shoved under the authority of a week-old rookie who's only experience is with a puff piece on ducklings in a storm drain rescue and their job is now about telling you how to do your job?"
Clark turned that over in his mind for a moment and then he looked at the cabinet members who still huddled behind the table and talked quietly. Experienced politicians who had been under several different (male) mayors with long histories, now under the command of an inexperienced woman who didn't have the history they'd had.
"Now you're getting it." Lois said, satisfied and pleased. "There has been a strong effort lately to preserve a shitty status quo that only benefits rich white assholes. Rich white male assholes. Those men up there have tried to destroy everything Mayor Kovacs is doing. When it came to reversing the Berkowitz policies, they fought her every step of the way. If she doesn't succeed with this, her credibility is in the toilet."
"Grim assessment, Ms. Lane." Clark observed. It was probably true, given the backstabbing nature of politics, but still grim. Especially for a city like Metropolis.
Gotham, maybe.
But not Metropolis.
Lois scowled. "Smallville, you've been halfway around the world and back, and you're telling me that you haven't seen what's actually wrong with America?"
"To be honest," Clark took a deep breath. "I didn't pay much attention to the news on my way around the world. I spent most of the time exploring. And Smallville was never a hub for national news. I only suffer ignorance, Ms. Lane. Not apathy."
Lois regarded him for a moment, her eyes sweeping up and down his body language like she was looking for the lie. Not finding anything that hinted at lies, she nodded approvingly
"That's good to hear." She patted his shoulder comradely. "And don't worry about the ignorance thing. We can turn that around. As long as you stick with me, I'll turn you into a socially aware investigative reporter in no time at all."
Clark let out a thoughtful hum, letting the words sink in. He wanted to help Metropolis. That much had been clear to him from the start. Metropolis was a better city than most, but it still had its problems and it was becoming increasingly clear that said problems could easily lead to ruin if nothing was done. He wanted to do something to alleviate them.
He wasn't even sure what, but something.
Lois had the idea that putting pen to paper and fingers to keyboard was precisely the way to do it. Call out the problems; use the power of the press to bring attention to them and get the public involved. Once nine million people got wind of something that would impact their lives negatively, they usually rallied together and stood poised to lash out. At the end of the day, politicians were just a handful of people standing against a tidal wave of angry humanity who had the power to end their careers. It was people like Lois Lane who made sure there were no hiding spots for the politician garbage.
In a small way, Lois was bringing change to Metropolis.
It just wasn't happening particularly fast because certain groups of people didn't want it to.
Clark didn't know what he could do to help speed it up, but there was no sense in not trying.
-0-