I'm sort of semi kind of almost not really just barely participating in NaNoWriMo this year in a roundabout way. I'm not starting any new stories why would I, but trying to hit the word count is a good challenge. October is always a weird month writing-wise, but I always get my groove back in November.
I'm re-working the last few chapters of Story 3 (cuz damn they need it) and I should be able to get back into Story 4 after that. A really big chunk of Story 4 is already written (and has been since summer 2013), so it's just going to be a matter of updating the existing chapters. Once I knock out chapter 9, it's going to be a downhill ride.
Chapter Thirty-Two: Black Friday
Colletta always went shopping on Black Friday. She had been doing the yearly ritual for so long it practically unthinkable not to.
She had grown up in the Oxbay neighborhood of West River, which meant that her family had been poor as dirt (and the not the good kind of dirt you could grow a crop in; more like the dust you found on the side of the highway). Her dad had been a greasy spoon fry cook regularly bringing home the left-overs and most days, that was all they would eat for dinner, and her mother had been a cocktail waitress at a shitty cabaret lounge which had turned out to be a gambling speakeasy and then she had gotten employed at an even shittier cabaret lounge, both working for peanuts to feed and clothe and house three children. Colletta and her brothers had done their level best to contribute by raking leaves and mowing lawns and weeding flowerbeds, but in West River, everyone was as poor as dirt and the most that could be spared was a few dollars at a time. Some days, that was just enough to get them a school breakfast.
Around the holidays, the tips got a bit more generous and so her parents had gotten something of a bonus. Black Friday, of course, was when the best deals were to be had so her mom and dad had shouldered their way aggressively through the stores to claim the sixty percent discounts while their children stood guard and got weepy-eyed as necessary.
In a big city like Metropolis, the stores on Black Friday were mad-houses of seething humanity squabbling over the best deals like carrion birds squabbled over fresh roadkill. They were, for the most part, fairly civil but every year, there was at least one story about someone getting trampled in the initial rush. It made Colletta glad for her broader shoulders and hips, and her ten-plus years of kickboxing. All of that just made her harder to knock over.
And this year, she was accompanied by Lois, who was not above throwing elbows.
There was just a minor oddity with that addition to Colletta's Black Friday routine. Lois only hit the clothing stores and such when she needed to and never on days where the rush to get the best deals could actually kill someone.
Lois was either up to something unholy or the world was coming to an end on New Year's Eve or something apocalyptic was coming down on Metropolis because Black Friday was nine hundred percent not something she would ever subject herself to willingly.
And yet...
"Sooo..." Colletta started pointedly. "Did something happen yesterday that you don't want to talk about? Something between you and Clark, perhaps?"
Lois scowled. "Where did you get that from? What is with people lately drawing dumb conclusions out of nowhere?" she complained, albeit mostly to herself.
Aha! Something did happen! The police officer concluded. Deny, deny, deny. That's the Lois Lane way!
Really, any idiot could have seen that something had gone down. Lois has escaped from Thanksgiving for some air and Clark had gone to check on her about ten minutes later. He had come back alone with a slightly thunderstruck expression, declaring that Lois had gotten a call and had to leave and completely failed to provide any explanatory details.
Colletta knew that if she asked just the right question, she could get Lois to tell her everything without the reporter actually realizing it. One really had to listen and read between the lines when Lois spoke, as she was one of those people who could say an awful lot in just a handful of words.
Before she could start pondering over the best questions that would poke the answers out of Lois, her phone jingled out something vaguely classical-sounding. The caller I.D. told her it was Clark.
Yes! He'll tell me everything and I won't have to pretend that I'm not trying to get it out of him!
"Hiya Clark!" Colletta chirped loudly into the speaker, making sure Lois knew exactly who she was talking to. The reporter looked over her shoulder and gave the police officer a very sour look.
"Hi, Colletta. Um, how are you?" Clark inquired politely.
"Black Friday shopping. I'm in a zone. Got my eyes on a prize." Colletta replied, walking purposely towards a display advertising forty percent off bedding. She had been eyeing good fleece sheets because her room-mate was one of those crazy people who thought that by turning the heat down in the winter, they would save a little money on the utility bill. Never mind that the utility bill was a fixed sum not dependent on how often they ran the heat or the A/C, but her room-mate spent far more time at the apartment than Colletta did, so it was something of a losing battle.
"Oh... Well, if I'm interrupting..." Clark gave every vocal cue that he was willing to end the call.
"Not at all! I'm a police officer. If I didn't learn how to do five things at once, I'd be dead already! What's up?
"I was hoping you could help me with something. I sort of... might have gotten into a small fight with Lois yesterday and I don't know how to apologize."
"Hmm, it depends on what you said to her." Colletta explained, turning over the packages of bed-sheets to see if they would fit her mattress. "There's really only so much I can do if you went super salty on her. Otherwise I might have to let her beat you up."
Clark muttered something that was inaudible through the phone and over to her left, Lois gave a small if slightly wicked smile at the display of solidarity. Colletta was one of the few people she was sure would have her back.
"She tried to suggest that if we were going to be friends, then I needed to open up a little more. And then I called her a hypocrite for barely talking about herself, among other things." Clark replied.
Colletta winced. "Okay, yeah, that's one of the horrors in Pandora's Box." she agreed. "Okay, Lane family 101: they suck at communication. I gotta admit, that's one of the things you learn about them through trial and error. Lois is just better because she's had a lot of practice at it. But that doesn't stop her from being a super-massive hypocrite on the not talking about herself thing."
Lois's smile changed into a scowl. So much for solidarity.
"I think she's self-aware of it."
"Only sometimes."
Lois rolled her eyes like she disagreed with that assessment and moved off to investigate the price tags on the nearby sleepwear.
Internally, Colletta felt a gleeful dance coming on. This explained everything and so much more. Lois wanted the mad rush of Black Friday to get her mind off of the small fight with Clark. She let things like verbal barbs and fights with colleagues roll right off her back. She didn't act like they didn't affect her; she was so hardened against them that they just couldn't affect her.
So for anything to stick in her craw meant that she actually cared a lot about the words spoken.
But it wasn't so much the words spoken (Lois had heard everything and then some, and her general reaction was to yawn and wonder what else was new). It was the person behind them.
It was Clark.
Whatever Clark had said, Lois had listened to him far more than she was comfortable with. She had really heard the words this time and they had struck all the right chords and now she couldn't get them out of her head.
She couldn't get them out of her head because she cared about what Clark thought of her.
But she refused to acknowledge the affect they'd had on her.
"Clark, are you familiar with the term 'tsundere'?" Colletta wondered.
"No, but it sounds Japanese."
"It is. It's a character archetype commonly used in anime, but it's really the only way I can think to describe Lois." the police officer admitted. "'Tsun' means harsh or bitter, while 'dere' means sweet. Lois's prevailing front is the tsun side. She's predominately harsh, abrasive, and a little dominating, and the dominate-tsun character acts emotionally detached either because they don't know how or don't want to open themselves up to other people."
"That-- That actually does sound a lot like Lois."
"Yep. She really does have a soft side, but she thinks it's more vulnerable. That's partly why our relationship was pretty low-key. Doesn't like being caught with her proverbial pants down, if you know what I mean."
"Yeah, I do."
A product of her upbringing, it was. When one was raised by a stern military general whose face was about as mobile and elastic as the wall of a house and who was used to dealing with buttoned-up soldiers, one tended to internalize the idea of not showing the softer side.
"So, about an apology?" Clark prompted, which was what he really wanted to get around to. It hadn't even been twelve hours and it felt like a weird distance had opened up between him and Lois and he didn't like it.
"Alright, apologizing to Lois is an exercise in patience. She usually needs about twenty-four hours to steam away the bad feelings." Colletta said. "And then brace yourself, she likes to leave you dangling. She might not be blindly mad at you after twenty-four hours, but she'll make you work for that apology. Like, you can apologize, but she will just give you this look like 'is that all you got, punk?'"
"I do not!" Lois hissed from across the aisle.
"So you're suggesting that she won't take an apology unless I show her how much I want it?" Clark questioned. It sounded a bit all or nothing, but it also sounded like Lois's way of weeding out those who weren't willing to put in the effort.
Maybe she wouldn't put in the effort until she knew he would reciprocate if the going got rough.
"Pretty much!" Colletta said chirpily. "If you want to smooth the way, you need to start by appealing to Lois's dere side. Which means you need to go up to the Hamstead borough, find a shop called 'Fudge Yourself', and get a box of caramel chocolates."
"Caramel chocolates?"
"At least the medium box. It is absolutely one of her weaknesses."
"Colletta!" Lois groaned, somewhat in despair that her former room-mate was revealing such things about her.
"Hush!" Colletta instructed, covering the phone's speaker with her hand. "You should at least wheedle free chocolate out of him first. Besides, you love caramel chocolates!"
"But won't she know I've been talking to you if I do that?" Clark wondered. To him, it seemed that Lois would be the sort to be annoyed that he had gone around behind her back even with good intentions.
"Don't worry about that, she already knows that we're talking. She's across the aisle from me pretending she's really interested in that lacy lingerie that's really transparent and I don't think it would look very good on her." Colletta informed him, though glancing pointedly at Lois while she did (and no, that lingerie would not do her any favors). "Once I hang up, she'll come at me swearing for at least a good minute and then I can tell her that you are hoping to apologize for some of the things you said. Fudge Yourself, caramel chocolates, and prostrate yourself if you have to."
"And that's appealing to her dere side? It sounds a little more like surrendering."
"Honestly, it's kind of the same thing. I don't think Lois knows how to back down, so it's a lot more efficient to do it first."
Lois looked away from the lingerie display to give Colletta a look that spoke vaguely of betrayal. But she wasn't actively trying to wrestle the phone away from the police officer, which meant that she wasn't actually that annoyed with the direction of the conversation.
"Hey Clark, whatcha want for Christmas?" Colletta wondered. If she was going to be in this store for the next hour, she might as well buy him something and she would be damned if she didn't get a new friend a good Christmas present.
"What? Oh, I don't know, I haven't--"
*KRA-A-A-A-ACK!*
It was the sound of snapping concrete and the ceiling caved inwards over the not-so-sexy lingerie and right over Lois's head. Colletta threw her phone aside and lunged, grabbing the reporter around the waist. She didn't know how she moved fast enough to get them both out of the way of the chunk of ceiling that crashed into the floor, but the next thing Colletta was positive of, they were slamming into the tile amid a crumble of concrete pieces and plaster dust. Around them, most of the shoppers scattered into the depths of the store with frightened screams even while a few stuck around to see if anything interesting was going to happen next.
But the ceiling hadn't done that all on its own because someone had skimped on the construction costs. Hovering over the wreckage and the sparking wires was a man. A heavy-set man with the most disproportionate shoulders ever, so bulging and herniated that Lois sincerely hope that his poor mother had not been subjected to a vaginal delivery. That was a steroidal broadness matched by only the most dedicated and doped up of bodybuilders. It was amazing his body didn't snap right at the waist, which was quite slim in comparison. He had dark hair that looked like a fresh dye job, a square face, and beady little eyes that looked like the black eyes of a shark, as though he was already dead inside.
The problem was what he was wearing: a red and blue unitard with a scarlet cape with the now-familiar S-shield on the chest (it should have been familiar; Lois had been staring at it for the last two weeks).
"Is that fucking Superman?" Colletta asked, her voice rising to a squeak.
"Nah, no way that's Superman!" Lois replied, shaking her head. "I've literally been five inches from his face! That ain't him!"
The face was too square, the jaw was the wrong shape, his nose turned up too much, even his skin wasn't the right tone. The suit was clearly blue spandex painted red and gold in the appropriate places and his shoulders were way too big. Like, Superman's shoulders were broad, but proportionate to the rest of his body. This stranger was grossly top-heavy whereas Superman was rather well-muscled all over.
This was a total stranger playing dress-up.
As soon as Lois said that this man wasn't the new unitard-clad hero, Herniated-Shoulders turned to face her. His face was a mask of cold menace. Then he kicked out of the way the hunk of rubble in front of him and starting striding towards the ladies with Terminator-like purpose.
"Gogogo!" Colletta leapt to her feet, dragging Lois up with her.
They didn't make it far before Lois felt a looming presence right behind her. Her shoes squeaked on the tile as she dodged to the left and there was a whoosh of displaced air from a swiping hand. The tips of sausage-like fingers carded through the ends of her hair, but failed to grab anything.
She spun around mid-stride, fists raised defensively. The imposter's sheer steroidal muscles made her hesitate. Lois was fast and good with her fists and she knew how to take down guys twice her size, but this guy's over-muscled physique might be just a bit much.
If I punched him, I don't think he'd feel it.
She hesitated just an instant too long and a hand as wide as her forearm was long shot out at her head and it was all she could do to back-peddle-
"You shouldn't be doing that." spoke a lovely baritone voice that put a shiver down Lois's spine despite the situation.
In the blink of an eye, the imposter was jerked away by the hand that grasped his wrist and Superman (proper Superman with his lantern jaw and black hair and eerie bright blue eyes and chiseled abs; she had been staring at those abs for the past two weeks too; she would know them anywhere by now) put himself between Herniated-Shoulders and Lois.
"Didn't your parents teach you that it's rude to grab at women like that?" Superman inquired with a patient curiosity like he actually expected an answer, though Lois was sure there was more sass involved than she could actually hear.
The click-click of artificial camera shutters echoed around them when the onlookers got over their immediate nerves, peering out behind upright displays or holding their phones out to look through the view-finder instead.
Herniated-Shoulders started to grow furiously red in the face and, sensing a testosterone-induced punching match just around the corner, Lois hurried out of the way. Just in time too, as the heavy-set imposter ducked his head and hunched his hilariously large shoulders and crashed into Superman's chest, sending them both flying across the sale floor in a blur of blue and red amid a fresh outburst of startled screams. He didn't have a running start, but when you were stronger than an ox, you didn't always need a running start. There was a follow-up *THUD!* that shook the floor underneath them and caused bits of plaster to fall from the hole in the ceiling.
"Lois, you okay? Where's my phone? I have to call Lieutenant Sawyer! I have to do my job!" Without waiting for answers, Colletta scrambled off to retrieve her phone from wherever it had landed.
"And so do I." Lois said, setting up her phone to record video.
She ran down the aisles, skipping and clambering over the toppled displays. She wasn't the only one running for the scene of the proverbial crime with phone in hand, but at least she could claim professional capacity for running towards the danger. When she got to the combatants, Superman was pulling himself out of a man-shaped dent in the floor and lunging at Mr. Herniated-Shoulders.
"Your form's wrong!" Lois shouted, upon realizing how his legs were braced, his arms positioned. He was unbalanced. Any fighting instructor could have knocked him on his ass, no matter how strong he was. Right then, Lois was sure that she could have put him on the mats.
She saw Superman lift his head with an expression of confusion directed at her, only to take a punch across the jaw for his moment of inattentiveness.
He was big, he was strong, he was amazing, but one thing was rapidly becoming apparent as Lois watched the punches start to fly in earnest right there in the middle of the store. Superman didn't know how to fight.
As strong as he was, Superman had probably spent his life up until now dodging fights. No bar-room brawls for him; he must have been that guy who sat on the sidelines and tried not to draw attention to himself. Someone with his strength breaking faces on public property... Well, that would have been noticed very quickly.
And dodging was all he did. He bobbed and weaved out of the path of the eighty-mile an hour roundhouse swings and kept circling so the fight didn't spill out into the onlookers, but he didn't physically retaliate. He didn't even raise a hand to block the punches; he just let them swish harmlessly by. Herniated-Shoulders was strong and fast, but Superman was stronger and faster. Lois recognized that it would be very easy for Superman to overpower the imposter.
But he was trying not to hurt the man
"Headbutt him! Pin his left arm! Take out his knee! He's weak on the left side!" Lois shouted, brandishing a fist like she was about to dive in there herself. "You're gonna have to hurt him a little!"
And that was when a miracle happened. Superman listened. He clamped his hands down on the other man's shoulders, getting a solid grip despite their bulging proportions, and administered a headbutt to the imposter's forehead. Really, it was just a tap but it had the same effect as a normal person headbutting at full force. Herniated-Shoulders reeled, a concussed look crossing his face. Superman grabbed him by the left wrist and spun him around, twisting the arm behind his back. Then he kicked out the man's left knee, just as instructed. It slowed him down, but it didn't stop him completely. Even as Herniated-Shoulders's knee caved in, his arms shot out to inflict whatever damage he could.
He listened to me! Now there's a man! Lois thought happily, unable to wipe the grin off her face. Frankly, any man who didn't know what they were doing -- and who listened to a woman who did and realized that it didn't shrivel their ballsacks -- was worthy of praise.
"Punch him back!" she suggested. Brute force was going to have to get the job done where finesse couldn't. Superman had none of that. "I think he can take it!"
Superman hesitated, but not long enough to lose the advantage. His fist was winding back before he knew it was doing that and he threw the punch with only an eighth of his strength. It slammed into Herniated-Shoulders's gut like a car, hitting him at least sixty miles an hour.
The grip Superman still had on the man's shoulder meant that he didn't go flying back from the force of the blow, but his entire body was bowed backwards, his feet lifting right up off the floor. A groaning wheeze escaped him and as soon as Superman let go, he slumped to the floor with an audible cracking of the tiles.
The silence that followed was borderline deafening, with everyone staring at everybody else like they were waiting for a cue. Should they run screaming for the exits? Should they just stand there and hope that they weren't next? Should they applaud?
When Lois really looked back on this day from several years down the line, she would realize that it was the very next moment that had defined everything that was still to come.
Then one of the store's security officers stumbled forward and something about him screamed that he was newly-minted (it might have been the excessive amount of polish on his name-plate) looked at the huge-shouldered strongman.
"Jeez, you got him." he said, pushing his cap up. He looked up at Superman with awe written across his face. For a second, Lois feared that the guy was going to start spouting things like 'Jeepers' and 'Gadzooks!', like this was a comic book from the nineteen-thirties or so. The look was there -- that wide-eyed expression that veered somewhere between pants-wetting terror and hero-worshipping awe.
"Th-Thanks for your help, S-Superman." the junior officer sputtered, averting his eyes in a gesture of overwhelmed embarrassment.
"It wasn't a problem." Superman replied cordially, a very friendly smile on his face. "Has someone contacted the authorities?"
"I have!" Colletta bellowed before anyone else could answer. She was sprinting forward, waving her phone above her head, and then skidded to a halt just beside the security officer, thrusting a hand forward professionally. "Officer Kanigher, Metropolis P.D. Special Crimes Unit. I've already contacted my lieutenant and she's rallying the troops. We can take it from here, if it's all the same to you."
"If it's all the same to you, I'll wait until they arrive." Superman said, but he reciprocated the handshake firmly and warmly.
"Good, because we have to question you-- I think we have to question you..." Colletta thought about that for a moment. There must have been procedures for something like this, but she was going to have to figure out where she had tossed her manual. "It's the SCU's job to handle the weird stuff and I'm pretty sure this qualifies, so you need to stick around for a moment. Please don't fly off. If you can fly."
"I'll try not to." Superman said, but it didn't sound like much of an assurance. "It's very nice to meet you, Officer Kanigher. Are you and your friend all right? You two were nearly right under the ceiling when it came down."
Here, he turned to look to the side and Lois found herself standing right in his line of vision. Whether he was standing five inches away or ten feet, it made no difference.
There is a god out there who did some mighty fine work on those pectorals look how smooth they are I could polish diamonds on those abs I could do pull-ups on those arms I could go bouldering on those thighs turn around and pull that cape out of the way and let me see the rest I hope it's just as tight and perky as the rest of you--
"Hey Lois!" Colletta shouted, making the little fantasy go poof.
"You have beautiful eyes!" Lois said very loudly, though her own eyes didn't even get above his collar bone.
"She's fine." Colletta said, nodding to Superman. Then she frowned. "Wait, was she talking to me or you?"
"Sorry, sorry!" Lois snapped out of whatever was left of the haze that was going to be haunting her naughtier dreams. "I'm still on some good painkillers because of my wrist, but I'm fine, thanks for asking."
Superman blinked. "Was that-- sarcasm?"
Lois shrugged. "Sort of." she said. Because two weeks after the first incident and not a week after the second and he only just now inquired after her well-being? Not much of a hero if he delayed that long. "So is this what you're going to do?"
"Excuse me?"
"This." The reporter gestured to the short trail of destruction through the store. "Just showing up to save the day? Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to wibble over the first two times and I don't think anyone's going to complain that you got here in time, but are you going to make a habit out of this?"
Superman made a thoughtful face like he really hadn't taken the time to consider it. As if what had happened two miles above Metropolis had been a one-off after all and saving Lois had likely been due to the fact he'd been right there, but when he'd been alerted to this, he'd chosen to step in.
His eyes darted almost imperceptibly around at the crowd of onlookers, many of whom were still recording the scene with their phones with expressions like they were holding their breath. Lois saw the indecision flit across his face, but she also saw the decision follow it. After another second or two of thought, he squared his shoulders confidently. The action seemed to make him grow another inch (what was he, about six-four?).
He said: "If the city needs me, I'll be there. You can count on that."
Superman shifted like he was going to take off and leave, but the onlookers gasped and shifted back in terrified unison and over Superman's shoulder, Lois saw the steroidal mass of Herniated-Shoulders rocket up from the floor, rage written into the creases of his expression.
Then he fell on Superman like a brick.
The ensuing crash shook the floor and nearly knocked Lois off her feet.
Herniated-Shoulders's talents appeared to lay more in wrestling than fist-fighting, for he was quick to go about pinning Superman's arms and legs, making himself hard to throw off. He smashed Superman's head, face-first, into the floor over and over.
Colletta about tossed her phone aside again and plunged her hand underneath her coat, coming up with the new SIG Sauer P250 (literally new, the model had just become available and the SCU was trialing it), and started plugging rounds in, to no desired effect. The bullets flattened themselves against impenetrable skin and tinkled harmlessly to the floor. It did, however, make Herniated-Shoulders shove Superman's head into the floor and lift straight up horizontally with his black, dead little eyes locked on the police officer.
"Move!" Lois shouted, though she wasn't sure who the command was directed at. But they both moved; Colletta away with a gazelle-like leap, and Superman with a hand whipping out to seize the other man's ankle.
Superman practically threw the strongman into the floor, like bringing down a plank of wood. He pulled himself out of the floor as he did. Lois would have thought that his nose would be at least bleeding, but there wasn't a scratch on him. He didn't blink or hesitate, but his eyes and the skin around them turned a sudden hot bue-white and visible beams of heat jumped across the empty space to strike Herniated-Shoulders square in the back. Once and only once not even for a second. Just long enough for him to feel the heat and the burn and recognize it for the warning that it was.
"That's enough." Superman said firmly.
"And stay down!" Lois ordered.
"No." Herniated-Shoulders said, the first coherent word he had spoken the whole time. His voice was dull and grunting like he had torn up his throat screaming.
Raw hatred flashed across his face and he shot up off the floor like he had been catapulted, but went straight up through the ceiling with a concrete shattering crash that rained down still more chunks of plaster and rebar. Some of it would have hit Lois, but Superman pulled her under an arm and flung his cape up around her like a tent. And the enormous-shouldered man was gone as suddenly as he had come.
Lois batted the shielding arm aside and looked up at the new hole in the ceiling for a moment. Then she looked back down at Superman.
"So, this is the third time we've met." she said. "How do you know my name?"
Superman inhaled like he was going to respond but hesitating before saying: "I'm sorry, I don't think there was a chance to introduce myself."
The reporter thrust a hand out in her usual manner. "Lois Lane, Daily Planet reporter."
Even though he apparently already knew that, but if they were going to do thing properly...
"It's nice to meet you." Superman said, returning the handshake. "I don't-- I don't think I actually have a name--"
"Superman."
"Excuse me?"
"You. Superman. That's what people are starting to call you." Lois told him. "It's bold and catchy and it really does look great splashed across four columns. Another month and it'll be the household name that everyone knows you by. You're not going to fight the power of social media. Might as well bow to the inevitable."
Another silence followed that, as if the world was absorbing the weight of Lois's prediction and how far-reaching the effects of this moment would be, because she was speaking of more than just the name catching on. She could very well be predicting that this could very well be the day that people looked back on and declare that here was where it had all begun again.
Superman (Clark, really) thought it was unusually optimistic for her, not just to call it now but also in the long-term. He had pegged Lois as being too pessimistic to think that superheroes would even become a reality once more, but then again, he had made a few false assumptions about her already.
There was no way of telling if the world was ready for a superhero like him, but there was only one way to find out. It was time to put himself out there and he would deal with the consequences as they came.
He would be Superman, the first hero in nearly two decades, the start of something new, and the beginning of a legacy that wouldn't become obvious for another few years, but one that no one would ever forget.
-0-
Appearances aside, that was not meant to be Bizarro. No, Bizarro is slated for Story 6.