Hi Evie!
Lois isn’t having a good day, but Superman had a great one. Whose mood will come out on top by the end of the night? A scene somewhere amidst Barbarians at the Planet.
Okay, you got me intrigued. How is Superman having a good day during Barbarians?
SUPERMAN: I had to rescue Lex from an accident at an olive oil plant. He was all slippery and while I carried him to the next hospital, he… slipped and now looks like one of those olives after they got all the oil out.
Lois speared her spoon brutally into the tub of rapidly melting ice cream.
Great imagery!
something perilously close to a puff piece on a traveling foreign dignitary
LOIS: I don’t do puff pieces.
Closing her eyes, she nearly groaned aloud at the thought of those tedious stories.
Not a single story about a reporter getting kidnapped or nearly killed. Not a single one. The parking structure looked promising, a chance to find Jimmy Hoffa, but no, not a mobster in sight. Just Lextruction getting the job.
She knew it couldn’t be much more exciting on the reading side than it had been on the writing side.
READER 1: Did you see the latest Lane woman article?
READER 2: Yeah. This pack of cigarettes says there’s gonna be a story about a reporter going postal by the end of the week.
READER 1: Nah. She got more self control. It will be a Bloody Monday.
READER 2: You’re on, Griffin!
…Of course, beating the slump was easier said that done.
She could always go and make a cash withdrawal at the bank next door.
…maybe she hadn’t paid him enough.
CUSTOMS AGENTS: Why should I dry up a lucrative job for the Boss when I can earn extra cash at no extra work?
Or maybe there was nothing going on except a couple of freighters refueling at a major international harbor!
Yes. Uh-huh. The thing is, those freighters take the southern route through the Triangle, pop out in the Alt-U, deliver the goods, take on gold, and head back.
And indecision made her cranky. And crankiness was usually resolved with chocolate.
Not since Clark had gotten a bee in his big, stupid Kansas-sized bonnet over Lex.
Cute!
His pet projects included the police widow’s fund, the fireman’s widows fund, a medical research program for endangered amphibians at the local zoo, and programs that gave job training to reformed felons and bicycles to children.
I probably should not list where the young, beautiful widows would find employment or how more mobile children can more easily be sent to the most profitable child labor facility, whether it be mining, munitions production, or weed extraction at the local country club.
These programs collected food for soup kitchens,
Tax write offs. And provides cheap workforce that doesn’t ask too many questions.
paid for counselors at battered women’s shelters
Blackmail material on the husbands.
and supported arts classes in schools that couldn’t otherwise afford it.
Money forgery business school classes.
The latest initiative provided experts to animal shelters to treat blindness in kittens.
Drug studies for eye conditions. Free animal test subjects!
It tugged at her heart. Lex was a poster child for philanthropy.
Why couldn’t Clark see that?
Because to Superman, Lex can be very transparent.
Her eyes continued to scan down the list. She couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the charitable contributions were directed a little differently than she might administer them.
Oh?
For instance, it looked like an awful lot of the programs aimed at young boys focused on training in computers and the sciences
Future hackers and ad scientists.
The funding list for girls was, well, a little more domestic.
Escort service training.
And come to think of it, there wasn’t a single literacy program on the list. It was an issue very close to her heart as a writer. She tried not to take it as a personal slight that it had been overlooked.
No need for extra literate goons.
If she didn’t know better – and she did, she reminded herself – but if she didn’t know better, she’d say it was almost designed to be manipulative.
No, ever since that Catwoman encounter, blind kittens are most dear to his heart, throat, and small intestine.
He obviously wanted to help his fellow man and leave a legacy of charity, good will and generosity.
Yes.
Didn’t she know a good thing when it walked up to her and offered her a lifetime of respect and comfort?
Nope.
She picked it up gently and moved to the freezer, popping the top on as she went. It wasn’t the ice cream’s fault she was in a bad mood tonight.
/imagines the ice cream talking to their therapist about the abuse/
She nearly grinned back. He’d had a good day and he was… coming to her?
New. Unexpected, too. But welcome.
Cute!
“You’d think that with kids, they’d have some savings put away,” she said uncharitably
/pokes dead horse/
“But still, couldn’t they try food stamps instead of turning to a life of crime?”
He could use his unwanted free time to work out and then get a job at an exotic dance club. Perhaps one that offers extra services for well paying customers.
…Or the money would have to have been rerouted somewhere along the line?
Criminals also need to eat?
“And it turns out that she works for a temp company! His wife is going in on Monday to see if they can find anything for her.”
Oh dear. If it’s part of the LexCorp family, it usually includes positions with bedroom service for younger, female employees.
whether he was swallowing a bomb, facing down an all-powerful clone or heading to space to stop a world-ending asteroid.
To be fair, he eats bombs for breakfast, always wanted a brother, and forgot all about said asteroid.
It moved her in a way that the endless charity list of Luthor’s didn’t.
LEX: It’s enough that the IRS accountants are moved to tears during tax season.
“But my last rescue tonight was one of the easiest I’ve ever had,” he said.
He had to save a tub of ice cream.
“Three men were trying to blow up a bridge in Paris.
And here we got the title!
He chuckled at her outright. Still at the window, he held out his hand. “Come see it with me.”
I did wonder if they would go to Paris given the title.
“Did you just ask me to go to Paris with you?” she asked.
It’s a great place to propose.
How would we get there?” she asked dumbly, trying tonight off a giddily dazed feeling.
Lois and Clark take the red eye to London and then the train to Dover, ferry to Calais, train to Paris. Superman will be meeting Lois there.
I thought we’d fly,” he said, holding out his hand again.
Her brain didn’t need to process an invitation to fly with him. It didn’t matter where.
BRAIN: Paris. Bedroom. Elvis chapel in Las Vegas. Either one’s fine.
So this was what a good day for a superhero looked like.
A pliant Lois in his arms?
Was Superman really giving her a guided tour of Paris?
Yep.
And now she was magically transported to the most magical city in the world.
![[Linked Image]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/The_hotel_Paris_Las_Vegas_as_seen_from_the_hotel_The_Bellagio.jpg/200px-The_hotel_Paris_Las_Vegas_as_seen_from_the_hotel_The_Bellagio.jpg)
“I can’t condone a public act of violence, but I think it’s meaningful that those men put so much care into not inflicting more death.”
You put a lot of thought into this!
“I’ll make sure to include that in the article,” she said.
He nodded in response.
Awwww
She leaned against the bridge railing beside him.
“It gives me hope.”
She glanced at him as he looked out over the Siene. “Hope?”
“That love can live forever,” he said, breaking off with a self-effacing grin.
LEX: I express love with padlocks, too. I will put my love in a golden room, and secure entry with a padlock, keeping the key close to my heart at all times.
Leaning against the railing next to him, her mind wandered back to her other romance this week. She’d nearly forgotten that Lex’s ring was sitting loudly on her dresser, waiting for her to return.
The weight of the decision dimmed the lights of Paris for her.
She really should propose marriage to Superman!
If he was missing, would she search for him the world over?
Probably. You could get a Meriwether without the arrest of Lex Luthor, perhaps even a Kerth, but a Pulitzer? No way.
She didn’t think so. But then again, the love lock story told was clearly just an old wives’ tale. People didn’t act like that today.
/turns around and sees Superman using heat vision on a fresh padlock/
who knows how long they’d persist.
Superman got a kind of longish lifespan. Though he might find Lori Lyons in about 20 years from the point where things turned unfortunate for Lois.
And anyway, that kind of wild abduction scenario wasn’t going to happen on a slow news week – unlike her potential offered engagement, which was coming up all too fast.
Then, again, if she ended up marrying Lex, maybe he’d bring her here one day.
Perhaps. Or she could take her private jet for lunch and afternoon shopping at the haute couture establishments.
How had her life become millionaires and superheroes? Was this what she’d been hoping her life would be?
After a fashion. She just thought there would be more ink between them.
. All of her favorite things in one mental snapshot: a job where she was in the top of her field and helping people, non-fattening legal addictive stimulants, and a partner she could rely on.
She blinked. Had she just been daydreaming about Clark Kent while standing a on moonlit Parisian bridge with Superman?
Just a bit
I’ll be back for you soon, she thought, saying au revoir to the city. Not goodbye forever, she promised herself, with a quick glance down at the love lock, just for now.
Didn’t Claude move back here after he bottomed out at the Planet after his first Kerth?
Then and there, she promised herself that she would never return to Paris without him.
That thought felt more right than anything else had in the last few minutes.
“I’m ready,” she said, and hopped into his arms.
She had a lot to think about this week.
Awwwwwww
That was a beautiful sightseeing trip!
Michael
