Actually, it was just a little over a month without FDK for this one
And there’s a lot of FoLCs who picked up the slack
taxis honking, trucks backing up, kids playing,
So, a taxi honks, the truck driver gets startled and backs up and behind it, where kids have just been playing a moment before?
and the chimes of an ice cream truck.
Oh, they have been playing on the other side of the truck, but when the ice cream truck chimes, they run out behind the truck?
It was Metropolis on a hot summer’s day.
So,…it’s November?
Lois and Clark walked down the street, hand in hand.
They shouldn’t be holding hands during Man of Steel Bars
She had stumbled crossing the street and had felt a gentle hand rest on the small of her back for a moment before moving to take hold of her hand.
Oh, Clark just saved her from getting run over by the truck. That’s why.
It felt good to have just Clark’s hand back in hers and not his whole entire four-inch tall body.
Oh.
Also, poor Lois…
“I know that you want to do the whole traditional wedding route again, Lois, but I want you to know that I’d be okay with eloping to Vegas this time,”
Horny, much?
We could be married and on our honeymoon by this evening.
Yep. Horny much.
“But I haven’t experienced it, Clark,” Lois reminded him. “My clone signed the registry and walked down the aisle. She was your lawful wedded wife, not me.”
Aaaand the bride is jealous because the groom went a bit wild with her twin sister
He raised a finger, and said, “Not technically lawful, since the marriage was never consummated.”
Scared of the missus, huh?
“Humor me, will you? Please,” Lois said, batting her eyelashes and gracing him with her largest grin.
Maybe someone should tell her that Clark’s *other* wife is going to show up any minute now and…
LOIS:
Vegas. Now!
“It may take us a bit longer, but I’m sure looking back you’ll see that it was worth a bit of hassle and patience.”
She’s quite self-assured of her proficiency in the marital bed, isn’t she?
“My patience has been pushed the limit,” Clark grumbled under his breath
Clark! That’s not v….very patient of you
![[Linked Image]](http://cosgan.de/images/midi/boese/a045.gif)
They noticed a commotion at the park across the way.
Where the truck has backed over the ice cream crowd?
“A man who has left you will only return if he wants to,” the magician told the woman.
Aaaand they *pay* for such wisdom?
“Any other takers willing to test the loyalty of their spouses? Step right up!”
Oooh! Take Clark! Take Clark!
MAGICIAN: Runs off with old girl friend on the eve of their wedding.
Now do Lois! Now do Lois!
MAGICIAN: Leaves her new husband for a deformed criminal.
“Very good, madam,” the magician said, before having the reluctant husband step into his magic box. He waved his hand and the man froze, an expression of sheer terror on his face, before he disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Look at that! Tempus is back
“Where’s my husband?” the woman demanded.
“He left of his own free will,” replied the magician. “Using it for the first time in years is my guess.”
Maybe he’s just playing with the magician’s assistant a little bit.
“No,” Lois insisted. Their new wedding date was just a couple months away.
CLAKR: She wants me to be patient for another couple of *months*!
Me! Take me!
“I did. It’s lead lined, probably old lead based paint,” Clark murmured back.
Or new lead based paint.
“That in itself is a red flag, Clark. We’ll check into his background and…”
In Metropolis, it probably is. I do wonder, with a Dictator Kal-El, would the use of lead-based paint be considered a treasonous offense, punishable by smoking?
“We need to act now. Anyway, it’s not as if you have any doubts about my loyalty, do you?” he teased.
Again. Cat. Twin sister. Other *wife*!
“Clark, no!” Lois said. They had just gotten over a huge trial of her memory loss and brainwashing, and the shrinking of his ego;
Well… and who’s fault was it that Clark’s ego took such a hit?
LOIS:
![[Linked Image]](http://cosgan.de/images/midi/konfus/c085.gif)
All I said was that him being just four inches tall isn’t really all that big of a deal.
“Ah, it sounds like the little woman has doubts, sir,” the charlatan said, much to the audience’s delight.
“Little woman!” Lois roared.
I do wonder if Tempus recognizes when he’s just about to get sent to another dimension.
The magician shut the glass door, waved his magic wand, and Clark froze – maybe for a second or two longer than the previous fellow did – but then he, too, disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Fascinating.
“Pity?” Lois growled. “You kidnapped my fiancé. Bring him back!”
“I’m sorry, Miss. That’s not the way this works. You have to earn him back,” the magician replied.
Ah, this is like those new malware scams where your entire harddisk gets encrypted and you have to ransom your data back from the malcontent.
“Earn? How? Is this some kind of extortion ring? Because you’ve conned the wrong sucker. I don’t have any money,” Lois informed the man.
Lex Luthor’s widow is broke? Also, thought because she’s Lois Lane and thinks of herself as an investigative journalist.
The con man looked at her with doubt. “Miss Lane,
are you saying that even though you were engaged to the third richest man in the world, he didn’t name you in his will?” The man tsk-tsked.
Clark and his damn naiveté.
And here I thought she looked forward to taking his naiveté.
“You’re right. How could I possibly have recognized the woman who has graced the front page of gossip magazines, tabloids, and even the society pages for a good six months solid a couple of years ago?” The man’s words dripped with sarcasm.
Plus, the Lane and Kent billboards ever since. And the recent story about her running off with her ex-fiancé.
Okay, Lois had to admit that going undercover after her engagement and failed wedding to Lex Luthor had been slightly more difficult.
Now she needs to wear a blonde wig, a low-cut halter-top and a belt as disguise?
“No, not really, but I won’t hold it against you if you want to give me some.”
“Didn’t think so. The only way you’ll be able to earn your fiancé back is to change your personality completely around. Become the opposite of who you are now,” the man said.
Loving. Caring. Warm. *Nice*?
LOIS: Keep him.
She grabbed his throat and pulled the short man to her. “Should I start with murder?”
That time of the month again, is it?
“You have one year!” she heard the man shout.
The…the…the…*title*!
She would start with a good photo of Suspect Number One.
Can’t they involve the police with kidnapping charges?
Lois turned around to snap his picture, but he, his stage, and the machine, which had stolen Clark, had all disappeared.
Apparently not.
Lois paced the section of the park where the man’s booth had been set up, checking for mirrors, trap doors, manholes covers to sewer lines, invisibility tarps, and anything else she could think of which might logically explain how everything, including the crowd of spectators it seemed, had vanished into thin air.
Ooooh! So, Mxysptlk set this whole thing up to target Lois?
Lois stomped into the newsroom. She wasn’t going to lose Clark again, not after Tempus, other dimensions, Lex and the clone, memory loss, Dr. Deter, and shrinking shampoo. Clark was hers!
LOIS: You! The new girl. What’s your name?
ZARA: Sarah, Ms. Lane.
LOIS: Fine. Sara. Get me all research on magic portals we have in the archives!
The new researcher Perry hired came up to her desk. “I have that data for Mr. Kent,” she said, glancing around. “Didn’t he return with you?”
“Change of plans,” Lois grumbled, shoving her purse into her desk. “He’s gone undercover, and he might not be back for a year.”
“But… But… but what about…” the woman stammered.
Their wedding And consummating the wedding?
“No,” the woman replied, leaning forward to whisper, “Superman?”
“Perhaps we should speak in private,” Sarah suggested.
Ooooh! The missus is going to tell the little homewrecker to go wreck another home
“I am Zara, leader of the people of New Krypton,” Sarah said. “Kal-El is my husband.”
Umm…that was a bit blunt, don’t you think?
ZARA:
Ah, so it is like a royal betrothal. They aren’t really married.
Yeah. Except, Zara already showed up once, during Clark’s prom, and… well… you know…kids and consummating…
“Well, your marriage to Kal-El will have to wait. Kal-El has… well, gone away.”
New Krypton, to be with his bride.
“Poof! He stepped into a box and vanished,” Lois explained.
Oooh! Like during the sentencing, huh?
“This must be Nor’s doing.”
No, not oafish enough.
“A what? Magic man? No, Nor is a general. He would never humble himself to use what you humans call ‘magic’.”
Well, that’s good to hear because most humans would consider the spontaneous poofing of persons or tanks to be magic.
NOR: What do you mean, ‘I can’t use heat vision on the slaves’?
“Kal-El was taken by a magician in the park, who told me that he would return in a year,” Lois said.
That sentence would be so much funnier with the magician being a woman
That, too
“I need Kal-El now to stop a civil war from developing on New Krypton. I cannot wait a year.”
Take a number, dear.
Zara closed her eyes, almost as if she were coming to grips with a great disappointment.
“Are you okay?” Lois asked.
Constipation. Either that or telepathy.
Should we find a way to defeat Nor without him, perhaps we shall revisit him under happier circumstances.” She made a strange gesture with her hand.
Otherwise, Nor will visit under less-than-happy circumstances.
NOR: I hear Hawaii is a great place for honeymoons. The hot pools on the mountain tops are supposed to be to die for.
“Sure thing,” Lois said with a good-bye wave of her fingers, trying not to call Sarah ‘whacker-doodle’.
Why is Lois so calm. Zara hasn’t proved anything. She could be a random fling of Superman’s, trying to encroach on Lane territory. Plus, she knows the secret.
Zara opened the conference room window and flew Superman-fast out of it.
Oh look. She’s real after all. Either that or Lois is hallucinating due to her being pregnant with Dr. Deter’s love child.
Had Lois just saved Clark from being forced to marry his birth wife and leave Earth to rule New Krypton?
Was Zara the reason Clark had failed that so-called loyalty test?
![[Linked Image]](http://cosgan.de/images/midi/konfus/a015.gif)
Did Lois still have to change her personality to earn Clark back, when he was the two-timing schmuck who had been previously married without informing her?
Maybe a little bit? Her personality, that is.
Lois pushed a shopping cart up what was left of the bumpy sidewalk to the rumble heap ahead.
She now a homeless person?
Her friends at the fire pit had told her rumors of new items being found at the now ruined First Metropolis Bank building.
What the…
Then Clark wouldn’t have failed his loyalty test to Lois in the park, disappearing and making it seem as if Superman had deliberately left Earth vulnerable to invasion from Lord Nor’s forces.
Oh look. Lord Nor showed up. Who’d have thunk.
If Jor-El and his wife truly wanted their son to marry a New Kryptonian, why didn’t they program the hyper-drive of Kal-El’s ship to meet up with the New Kryptonian colonist ship instead of sending it to Earth? It didn’t make any sense.
JOR-EL: The Ras have always been a bit mentally unstable. It took me blowing up the entire planet to prevent that marriage from happening.
Even if Clark somehow reappeared, Metropolis was so full of Kryptonite dust from the final battle, it would make it inhospitable for him to live here.
Huh.
Upon their victory over the New Kryptonian forces, Bureau 39 made a coup d’état and took over first the United Nation’s building in New York, and then the White House in Washington DC.
What the…?
LEX’s GHOST: See? Should have let me make the next President, than that wouldn’t have happened.
That was why Lois was down at the bank. If she could find some gold or jewelry among the rubble, she might be able to trade it to her district’s warlord for more food, blankets, or medicine.
The district’s warlord is trading for goods with his nubile women of his district? Also, why is there no mention of nuclear fallout? Why did the entire society crumble like that but no one detonated nuclear weapons? Why didn’t Mexico invade North America. Why not Canada?
In the tent city currently covering all the green areas of Centennial Park, she saw a strange commotion.
MAGICIAN: Oops?
Handcuffing her shopping cart to a broken parking meter pole,
And what of the goods inside? And what of using lockpicks on the cuffs?
The muted colors became once more vibrant as a cool breeze filled her lungs with air. The city filled with noises: taxis honking, trucks backing up, kids playing, the flap of the flag above her head, and the chimes of an ice cream truck.
Oh look!
“I know that you want to do the whole traditional wedding route again, Lois, but I want you to know that I’d be okay with eloping to Vegas this time,” Clark said, before lowering his voice. “I’m just saying that I could fly us there this afternoon.”
![[Linked Image]](http://cosgan.de/images/midi/verschiedene/b075.gif)
If they went across the street and visited the magician, Clark might be taken away from her again, possibly this time for good.
His brow furrowed.
“Let’s elope!”
Clark grinned a smile larger than his usual 1000-watt smile. This one had to be ten-thousand watt. “Really? When?”
Also, since it was telepathic Clark who first noticed the commotion, I wonder if he might not have just done a mind-whammy on Lois and made her imagine this entire year so she’d agree to eloping.
CLARK:
![[Linked Image]](http://cosgan.de/images/midi/konfus/c075.gif)
Clark took hold of her shoulders and focused his eyes on her. She could feel a slight tremor to his hands. “Are you sure? My patience has been pushed the limit, so if you’re joking, tell me now.”
because Lois knew that once they were finally together as man and wife, nothing… and she meant nothing… would tear Clark from her side. She would make sure of that.
By using her womanly whiles on her husband and Kryptonite on the interlopers?
Wait two more months? Pshaw! Lois must have been out of her mind. He was so glad he was able to put her and Clark on the right course for them, for Metropolis, for the world, even.
![[Linked Image]](http://cosgan.de/images/smilie/konfus/g060.gif)
He got bored?
He would want to know about the magician, Lady Zara, Ching, Nor, and the upcoming New Kryptonian invasion of Earth.
Yeah, but maybe until after the consummation.
“For loving me. For accepting me. For marrying me,” he responded with a kiss between each phrase. His eyes darkened and his voice deepened. “For tonight.”
Lois licked her lips and took a step back. “Hold that thought.”
Panic darted across his face.
CLARK:
Ribbit?
She bit her bottom lip at his expression, and he rushed forward the foot she had stepped away to kiss her again.
Oh no! Ribbit! Also…Herb?
He took a step back, hands in the air. “Don’t let me stop…” His head snapped towards the room’s door a moment before someone knocked. “— you,”
![[Linked Image]](http://cosgan.de/images/midi/froehlich/a010.gif)
There you are
![[Linked Image]](http://cosgan.de/images/midi/froehlich/a065.gif)
She really didn’t have anything in the bag, except a perfume sample from the lingerie shop.
So…more less rather than little less, huh? Also, maybe she should not step out with more less when the visitor is here. It might be embarrassing to the nice Victorian Gent.
“Oh, no!” Lois groaned. “You’ve got be kidding me!”
Oh, right. They know him already.
This was grand entertainment!
Sorry if the FDK ran be bit long, though…
Michael
