Monranr, you are a gem.

Also, I'm seriously looking forward to Supergirl season 2. This Superman smiles.

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Checkmate

This time, it took less than a minute for people to start spreading the second appearance of the Superman across the internet. Literally, as far as Clark could tell. At 8:58, he had grabbed Lois out of midair (Trask too). By 8:59, the first pictures had hit Chirp and they had started trending within ten minutes.

Here Clark was about thirty minutes after depositing Lois safely on the ground (she had been woozy and staggering a little, but conscious enough to swear obscenely) and then he had dropped Trask in front of the police station, in front of several thunder-struck officers, informing them that the agent had violated the restraining order that was supposed to keep him out of the Daily Planet building.

About forty minutes in total had passed and the internet was doing its thing. The pictures were everywhere, the memes were starting, and (predictably) the Gem Cities were inviting Superman to come down and punch Zoom in the testicles.

On one hand, Clark supposed the turn-around time oughta not have been that surprising. Downtown was a busy place at any time of the day and Planet Square was a high traffic volume area no matter the weather. The phones had come out the very instant people had noticed Lois and Trask falling, so by the time Superman showed up, they had basically been ready for him.

On the other hand, it was kind of alarming how quickly the internet did its thing.

Clark glanced up from his phone to check on Lois, who was patiently waiting for the doctor to complete his examination. Perry hovered nearby in a slightly anxious manner, waiting for the verdict, even though the doctor's mumblings were fairly positive. Lois was quite bright-eyed, obviously alert, and still quietly bubbling with anger. The second she had gotten her wits back, Lois had been furious that Trask had broken the restraining order and Clark had heard her screaming: "Superman! Put Trask back here! I have to kick his ass! You can't just haul him off like that!"

Clark had raced back to the building and had gotten his suit and tie back on in time to arrive in the lobby just after Perry. Officially, as he had told the police officers who had come by to make sure everything was a-okay, Clark had seen Trask herd Lois by at gunpoint and it had taken him a moment to recognize the agent. Then he had rushed after them only to arrive a moment to late to prevent them from falling off the roof. Then Superman.

That was pretty much what had happened anyways. Clark had just left out the part where he had yanked off his clothes and dove after them.

The doctor stepped back.

"All right, Miss Lane. You're fine." he announced, easing the level of tension in the conference room. Perry visibly relaxed. "No concussion, no cracked teeth. Your cheeks match, but the swelling isn't severe. I'm prescribing an ice pack for your face; the painkillers you're already on should handle anything else. I think the only other souvenir you're getting out of this is sore muscles; that was a quite a fall. How does your wrist feel?"

Lois shrugged. "No worse than it normally does. Like a dull ache that I stop noticing after a minute."

"Good. Now obviously, if the pain worsens, go the emergency room immediately. If you start to feel dizzy or faint, emergency room. I probably don't need to go through this with you again." the doctor said, with a little chuckle. This was hardly the first time he had gotten called out to the Planet because Lois Lane had gotten herself in trouble. "But it looks like I can leave you with a clean bill of health. Just try and take it easy for the rest of the day."

"Oh, she doesn't do that. She likes to drive our insurance premiums up." Perry grumbled. But he turned to the doctor with a relieved expression. "Thanks again, Silvia-- Sylvester, sorry, I'll get that right the first time eventually. Thanks for this."

"It isn't a problem. Makes my day more interesting." the doctor said, shaking hands with the editor. "And for goodness sake, Miss Lane, don't go falling off any more buildings."

"I'll try not to." Lois said dryly and not very convincingly. Various kinds of near-death experiences were not unusual developments for her. Falling off buildings, yeah, that was new.

All the same, she couldn't make any promises.

It was just enough for good old Doctor Warren, though, perhaps because he never saw the reporter come off the worst for the danger she got up to. He stripped off the latex gloves, packed his bag, and bid them a good morning. When the conference room door shut, Perry crossed his arms and said:

"Goddammit, Lois."

"Hey, I'm not dead." Lois commented. She was still too frustrated at Trask being hauled off before she could get her hands on him to cringe under Perry's disappointed and annoyed tone.

"You could have been. Very easily." The editor heaved out a loud sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Right as rain, chief, matching blush notwithstanding." the reporter assured him. She rubbed her newly bruised cheek gingerly. "Gah, and the other one was just starting to fade around the edges. How does my face look, Smallville?"

"Like you've been punched twice in the span of a week." Clark said, seeing no point in lying in any form. The first bruise Trask had left was covered in a fair bit of concealer and the swelling had long since vanished, but the chipmunk-like appearance was starting to form on the other side and the blue-purple coloring was coming in.

"But am I still pretty?" Lois asked absently, prodding fingers around her jaw carefully. She leaned over the glossy surface of the conference table to see if she could make out any details of her reflection.

She didn't sound terribly worried about an answer, so Clark kept that one to himself. If she had expected one, he definitely would have said 'yes'. Yes, she was definitely still pretty despite the recent battering.

"You sure you can put in a full day today?" Perry asked, concerned. "I can send you home otherwise."

Even as he made the offer, he knew Lois would never jump on it. She had just come off from a seven-day break and she was hankering to get some work done. The offended look on her face said that much.

"Why, what do you need done?" she asked, with the sort of eager body-language that said 'pick me pick me!'

"I need someone to get the full scoop on Guardian's return and since you seem to be attracting superheroes..." Perry let that trail off with a shrug.

"Oh, I am so up for that!" Lois said eagerly, standing up and wincing as her usual grin pushed on the swelling. "Hang on, who are you putting on the whole Superman business? He just saved my ass. Again. Regardless of my ass, that's news. Twice is coming up on enemy action."

"Kent's already on it." Perry answered, gesturing over his shoulder.

"I am?" Clark asked.

"Aren't you?"

Clark glanced back down to his phone, still open to his newsfeed, and then back up to the editor. "That's a bad idea." he said quickly. He was supposed to be unbiased, impartial, and he couldn't really be either if he was directly involved in the story.

Not that anyone else here knew that.

"No, no, it's a good idea. You need practice performing interviews and Lois can give you good feedback." Perry explained, though it came out a bit more of an order. "So is that clear for both of you? Lois, Guardian. Clark, Superman. Those are your assignments for today. I want worthy front-pagers from the pair of you in tomorrow's paper. I'll create the superhero beat if I have to."

Lois nodded, half in agreement and half in determination while Clark experienced a faint sense of dread that this wasn't going to end the way Perry thought it would and he had no idea where that thought was coming from. Maybe five weeks of working with Lois had installed that feeling in him. Because didn't it seem like whenever Lois was at the heart of things, it all went bad?

On the other hand, he was quite possibly the only person Lois would actually talk to.

"Hey Smallville!" Lois snapped her fingers to get his attention. "You been inside the Suicide Slums yet?"

"Can't say I've had the pleasure." Clark commented, getting to his feet. He had seen it from the air, though. About twenty irregularly-shaped blocks on the western-most tip of New Troy, it had the highest population density in the city. It didn't look like a pleasant place to live.

Some of the people he'd talked to about it claimed that it reminded them of Gotham.

"Brace yourself, that's where we're heading." Lois informed him. She glanced sideways at Perry, who had busied himself in the meantime with messages on his phone. "I'll tell you everything on the way." she added, albeit furtively.

On that note, they left the Daily Planet building, but not before Lois fetched herself a coffee as originally planned and patted some make-up on the burgeoning bruise so it didn't look quite so obvious. Then they were out on the cold, snowy streets of Metropolis, hurrying to catch the west-bound C-Train.

"So, you were going to tell me something?" Clark prompted, once they were aboard the smooth-running light rail. Incredibly smooth. Really, these trains hummed like well-tuned and well-plucked guitar strings.

"Right, Trask." Lois took a sip of her coffee so she had a second to gather her thoughts. "This is strictly off the record, Smallville. Got that? Off. Record. No one needs to know exactly why Trask tried to kill me--"

"Ms. Lane--"

"Not open for negotiation! I'll tell you what happened as long as no one else finds out, okay?"

Clark didn't look pleased with the terms, judging from all the contortions his face was doing. But his curiosity out-weighed his indigination and he nodded, albeit a tad grudgingly.

"You know that editorial I've been working on for the past week? The one that's going to rip Trask's reputation to shreds? Well, he found out about it and he doesn't want me to publish it. Apparently, staging my suicide was option number one."

"Ms. Lane!" Clark cried, horrified. "Why didn't you tell the police when they came? He tried to murder you!"

"He's murdered dozens over the years, Smallville. Dozens. And for less than what I'm doing. He's still walking. I'd need solid proof that he can't talk his way out of. Something no one can talk him out of." Lois told him, her tone a bit harsh. Someone was yanking Trask out of hot legal water and she had a terrible feeling that the man behind the curtain just might have been her own father.

She was going to have a word with him sooner rather than later.

"If he's willing to kill you just to prevent you from publishing that editorial, then maybe you shouldn't publish it." Clark said.

"I know I shouldn't and that's exactly why it's going into Thursday's paper as planned."

"But he threw you off a roof just an hour ago!"

"And I'm not dead, so let's move forward." Lois said calmly. "There's something Mom used to tell me. If, during the course of a story, someone tries to kill you or convert you, you're on the right track. And guess what? Both things have happened, so I'm clearly on to something bigger than the entire city." She shook her head. "I don't even know how he found out about the editorial in the first place."

"Maybe they've got a bug in your computer." Clark suggested. A very likely one, considering that Gigante and several of her thugs had been hanging out in Lois's apartment for god knew how long. They might have had enough time to slip a bug in her laptop.

"Ms. Lane, as much as I admire your conviction, I really don't think you should go through with publishing the article. You got incredibly lucky today, but what if Superman hadn't been there to catch you? What if they were still scraping you off the pavement right now?"

And he felt his gorge rise a little as his imagination tried to provide him with images of what Lois might have looked like had he failed to catch her. His imagination wasn't vivid enough to conjure up anything really gruesome, but it didn't need to be for him to feel a little sick to his stomach.

The black-haired reporter sighed. "Chill Smallville, I'm not--"

"Lois."

She broke off as Clark reached over and placed both hands on her shoulders, coaxing her to turn and face him. The expression he wore wasn't one that Lois had seen on his face before and while she couldn't place exactly what it was, it was definitely guilt-inducing. If she had to put a name to it, it was like a mixture of concern and disappointment flavored by anxiety.

"You could have died." he said.

And his tone punched her in the gut, thick and heavy with worry.

For a second, it was absurd that anyone would could be so worried about her until Lois's mind back-tracked over itself and she remembered that this was how decent people acted. Decent people actually got anxious and concerned when someone had just dodged a near-death experience and how many had she been through since Clark had been assigned to shadow her?

Three where Clark had been there to help her out, the fourth he had witnessed. There was another three that she hadn't been bothered to tell him about. She had gotten herself out of them no problem. She could swim. She could dodge. She could climb. She could fight back and worm her hands out of ropes and cuffs, as long as she had a few minutes. But...

This most recent one. There was no way she could have saved herself from falling off the side of a building. She couldn't fly. She wasn't indestructible. She couldn't bounce. No parachute. No glider suit. No way to save herself. She wasn't a meta. She was a regular vanilla and extraordinarily fragile human being who might have been jelly on the pavement if it hadn't been for Superman.

Clark was right.

She could have died.

"Sorry."

The word slipping out of her mouth surprised her as much as it did Clark.

"For-- what?" he asked tentatively, not sure he had actually heard it.

"Apparently, for scaring the fuck out of you, Smallville." Lois said, regaining a measure of her usual cocky confidence and started grinning. She reached around with her right hand and punched him lightly on the arm. "So yeah, next time I see Superman, I'll thank him for snatching my ass out of the air like that."

"Ah--" Clark felt a pink blush in his cheeks and he rubbed the back of his neck. He wasn't sure there'd be a next time for Lois Lane and Superman, but maybe it would behoove him to put in one more appearance in the cape so Lois could say her bit. "Well, seeing someone I care about in danger like that is going to scare the fuck out of me, hands down."

His pink cheeks were nothing compared to the color that Lois's turned. Underneath all the bruising and the make-up, they flushed a considerable red and her eyes widened to hysterical proportions. For a moment, Clark wondered it she was about to punch him for real. Then she looked away and grumbled something under her breath that sounded an awful lot like: "Fucking flirting farm boys..."

I wasn't flirting, but if that's the way she feels... Clark let himself have an amused smile. Hard and prickly around the edges Lois Lane was, but there was a soft center in there somewhere.

This might just work out over the long term. He thought optimistically.

He leaned towards the window, peering out at the city-scape ahead. The Slums lay before them. The train would skim the edge of it and make its stop at the Centennial Park station; the Metro Transit Authority had routed trains out of the area in order to prevent vandalism. It had been a well-intentioned gesture, but Clark felt that the absence of the trains had only hastened the neighborhood's decline.

The closer they got, the more Clark saw that the Suicide Slums would look every bit like what he had imagined. Dark and overcrowded. Tenement apartments and crumbling walls. Bad sidewalks, worse streets. Maybe not the West River sort of hopelessness, but a definite sense of apathy.

Like a tiny slice of Gotham had found its way into the shining City of Tomorrow.

"What's our first stop when we get in there?" Clark wondered.

"Huh? Oh, the police precinct." Lois answered. "First thing we've got to do is find Officer James Harper. He's pretty much the only officer on that side of the line willing to patrol the Slums on foot. Streets are pretty narrow; not good for vehicle traffic."

"I thought the downtown precinct handled most of the calls coming out of the Slums." Clark commented. When Lois had given him the run-down of which precinct did what where, he had gotten the implication that the Slums was mostly controlled by the downtown boys.

"Yeah, because the Slums precinct is hideously understaffed. They need at least a hundred people on staff, at minimum, to be effective, but I don't think they have more than sixty." Lois explained. "It's not really a nice area for cops either."

Clark nodded. Officer Harper must have been fairly well trusted in the neighborhood not to be a dick-ass cop. He probably didn't get through a day entirely unmolested, but at least he went home at the end of his shift.

However accidentally, the Slums appeared to have been cut off from the city. A line of track ran the perimeter of the neighborhood, but while the other tracks passed at about thirty feet above street level, the Slums perimeter track was half that. Fifteen feet; just enough clearance for what few tractor trailers made their way into the neighborhood.

The streets did a funny thing too; zig-zagging right and then left as though they had originally been constructed around existing buildings and no re-zoning had ever occurred to correct the short, sharp corners. It almost seemed a deliberate design so you couldn't see down into the Slums at a casual glance.

There was also a noticeable downhill slump. The neighborhood did sit at a slightly lower elevation that the rest of the city, making it the first area to flood.

"Charming." Clark commented, as he got his first real look at the place from street-level.

"In its own way, I'm told." Lois nodded, pulling her coat a little tighter. "I should mention this place really isn't good for reporters either, so don't act like one."

"Shouldn't I be telling you that?"

"Hush you."

The streets looked as though people had gone at them with their snow shovels rather than an actual plow. The snow had been cleared to the side, but the effort put in looked clumsy and inadequate. Very little road salt went down here, so there was a thin crust of white still covering the surface of the road.

Clark didn't think the neighborhood looked nearly as... as neglected as the West River. Here and there, there was evidence that people were making an effort. Coatings of paint less than a year old. Plastic sheeting over broken windows. The door locks all looked like they were in good repair, many of the security systems intact. Someone was trying, at least, which was more than he could have said for the West River. There were actually people around, going about their day, and even a handful of children who were definitely old enough that they should have been in school right now.

"Have they ever tried to gentrify the Slums?" Clark asked. He didn't see any sign of reconstruction attempts.

"With how many people committed suicide around here, I don't think there was much of a push for it. Too many bad memories, I guess." Lois commented, raising her eyes to the crisscrossing skybridges that connected what once must have been office buildings. "People don't like talking about it. Especially Perry. His dad jumped from one of these buildings."

A chill feeling washed over Clark. "Oh."

"Yeah 'oh'." Lois agreed in all sincerity. "I found out when I was trying to break out of being a cub reporter. Figured I'd write something up about the anniversary of the mine closure, make it good and shiny and irresistable to the wild editors, and someone told me that Perry knew a lot about it. I should have figured something was up when they giggled afterwards, but whatever. I haven't actually been scared of that man since. His bellowing over-stressed editor routine? Nothing compared to what I saw that day."

She shuddered at the memory of Perry's anger. That frothing, foaming at the mouth kind of anger. The shouty, piss your pants because it might scare away the predator kind. Very little of it had been directed at Lois, though, as Perry had known full well that someone must have pointed her in his direction and woe betide the individual after Lois had given a name.

Then, as if to spite everyone, Perry had sat her down and told her about Jumping Week, during which two hundred people had jumped from thirty-story windows in despair. On that same note, it was indeed that same article that had been her big break.

"C'mon, precinct's just up there." Lois said, gesturing up the block to a building with two old-fashioned light posts at the base of the entry stairs. "Let's see if Officer Harper's on shift today."

Agent Jason Trask of Bureau 39 was a stupid man in several regards. Rampaging misogyny aside, he had such a sense of entitlement that he did not believe that he could fuck up. He had been left to his own devices for too long, not answering to authority as often as he should have been forced to. No one had regulated him outside of pulling him free of legal entanglements. He had no developed sense of boundary. No idea where his jurisdiction was supposed to end.

He did not have the little voice in his head that told him when he had fucked up.

That was the sense that General Lane got from the agent standing at attention in front of his desk.

General Lane didn't drink very much, but in the wake of this morning's near-disaster and the fact he could have been minutes away from planning Lois's funeral, he felt that a shot of whiskey was the only thing that would go down smooth.

He ignored Trask as he stood up and made his way to the other side of the office where he kept a small liquor cabinet. Some of the officers he met with did enjoy a glass of good alcohol and it was good manners to keep some social lubricant around.

Look at that stupid little smile he's got. What does he think I'm about to do, shake his hand for throwing my daughter off a roof? The general wondered, his mental tone decidedly savage.

He poured a small amount of whiskey into a ball-glass tumbler and then went back across the office to stand in front of Trask. Staring the man straight in the eye, he threw the entire thing back in one gulp. Then he set the glass down on his desk, adjusted his sleeve, and walloped Trask across the mouth.

The crack of flesh on flesh was very satisfying.

"You fool!" the general roared, towering over Trask when the agent crumpled halfway to his knees from the impact. "You fucking fool! The absolute carelessness of your actions is going to cost us everything!"

He swung a hard backhand from the shoulder, relishing the feel of his knuckles slamming into Trask's nose. He especially enjoyed the feeling of cartilage giving way.

"Your rampage for the Prometheus was something I could ignore! Your over-zealous behavior was annoying, but I could ignore it! But bringing my daughter in like that?! Trying to kill her?!"

"She knows too much! She dug too deep!" Trask shouted through a hurting nose and aching teeth. Blood dripped onto the front of his shirt, dribbling over his upper lip.

"So you decided to throw her off a roof?!"

"Technically, she pushed me off--"

"I don't care if she knows too much! She's my daughter and therefore, my responsibility!" General Lane roared. "I warned you to be careful around her! I told you she's a reporter to the marrow of her bones! I warned you that she would destroy you if you gave her an opening!"

He grabbed Trask's blood-dotted collar and dragged him close until they were eye to eye.

"And now I'm going to let her." he hissed.

"You'd hang me out to dry? Just like that?!" Trask asked, frankly disturbed that his safety was being so carelessly tossed aside. "What, my decade-plus years of service doesn't mean a thing to you anymore?!"

General Lane let out a chilling growl that abruptly reminded the agent why they called him 'Bulldog Lane'.

"Listen to me, you small-minded whackadoodle. I bartered for your position because we needed someone ruthless in the leader's chair. Someone who didn't give a flying fuck about the so-called humanity of metahumans. You were perfect for the job, because in all my years, I hadn't seen a man give less of a fuck than you. The problems started when you went to Kansas looking for aliens."

And that had been the breaking point in what should have been a long and storied career in meta-human suppression. Five months Trask had spent trying to trash a small farming town in a crusade for the supposedly dangerous alien life-form that had touched down in the corn fields. He hadn't been wrong. There had been something there after all. But five months spent ignoring more than a dozen other assignments and reports in favor of a high schooler who may or may not have lifted the back of a car over his head. Trask claimed it was a bus, but General Lane was more inclined to think the vehicle in question was a lot smaller and that a freaky adrenaline surge was not outside the realm of possibility.

Trask didn't.

But they had still needed Bureau 39 even in the wake of that PR disaster and they hadn't found anyone adequate enough to replace Trask. His job was secure by dint of there being no one else.

Fortunately, the pickings were superior this time around.

"You have been obsessed with this ridiculous Prometheus creation of yours ever since! It had effected your job performance to such an extent that I can no longer trust you to complete a single assignment to satisfaction." General Lane growled. "Remember that you did not come to Metropolis under my orders, but instead were following one goddamn Kansas farm boy named Clark Kent and you still have offered me no proof that he is in any way this Superman! At this point, I am rather inclined to thank him and perhaps absolve him of his perceived crimes for rescuing my daughter not once but twice from situations you helped engineer!"

He released Trask's collar and backhanded him a second time. Already on his knees, Trask fell to the floor under the blow, blood dripping from his mouth. General Lane stepped back and resumed his previous calm composure.

"Agent Jason Trask, you are hereby terminated from Bureau 39, effectively immediately. You are stripped of all legal protection. Your access to your bank account is suspended. Your criminal record will be released in full pending formal termination. Please leave your badge and your service revolver on my desk. You will be remanded to the holding cells pending a trial--"

"You're firing me?!" Trask roared in indignant outrage.

General Lane gave him a mild expression. "Yes. That should have been obvious from the end of my first sentence."

"You can't do that!"

"I shall give you a copy of the employee manual, so you can assure yourself that I can. This system demands accountability. I provide it."

"You can't replace me! I'm invaluable!" Trask shouted. "You know how well I do my job! If you get rid of me, your precious system falls apart!"

"Fortunately for us, the system is one of your own making. I had nothing to do with it." General Lane said calmly. "Before I have you escorted away to the cells, I think you should meet your superior replacement. Come in." he called in the direction of the door.

The door opened and in walked what amounted to Trask's worst nightmare. A black woman strode into the room with every bit of poise and confidence she could eke out of her three-inch heels. She was thick-set and heavily built. "Fat" wasn't the word to describe her. "Fat" implied unhealthy and unnecessary bits of flab clinging to her bones like leeches. No, on this woman's body, every inch of thickness was solid muscle, from the broad shoulders to the wide hips and thick thighs that looked like they could be responsible for the death of men. She had a presence that was four times her physical size, strong and unyielding and otherwise standing firm even in the face of the proverbial battering ram.

She was the proverbial battering ram.

And she looked down at the now-deposed head of Bureau 39 with such a haughty expression like she didn't find him worthy to lick the soles of her shoes.

Her entire presence rang with warning bells. A nice suit, pinstripes and pencil skirts, her dark hair pulled back in neat bun. Not too dangerous at a glance. But it was in her eyes, her posture, her walk. There was something oddly calculated about the way she put her hands on her hips. Her fingernails were lacquered a dark bronze and Trask couldn't ignore how long and shaped they were. Those were the kind of nails belonging to the sort of woman who wouldn't have too many compunctions about driving them into your skin or your eyes.

On the floor, Trask felt appallingly vulnerable.

"Mr. Trask," General Lane started and the absence of 'agent' helped to drive home the point he was nothing but a civilian now. "Meet the new director of Bureau 39, Amanda Waller."

Waller held herself up in a lofty manner, as though she was looking down at Trask from a great height and still found him lacking and insignificant.

"Now," she started, her voice like black velvet. "Just what are we going to do with you?"

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