AnchoredBy: Blueowl
Summary: Someone or something magical is targeting people, scaring them to death, and it looks as if the next target is Superman and her best friend. Can Lois save them and get to the bottom of it all? AU. Loosely based on ‘Never on Sunday’. Season 2, pre-TOGOM.
A/N: A special thanks to bakasi and Toomi who acted as soundboards ^_^.
A/N 2: This takes place in early season 2, soon after 'Madame Ex'
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[Chapter 1: Panic]Lois couldn’t believe the long line. Normally things were quieter, but then they rarely had the 'buy one coffee get a free donut' deal.
Coming here had become a new routine for her all those months ago right after the Planet had been rebuilt. After. . . . She shook herself, refusing to think about the weeks prior to that happy return to work. Instead, she looked to the front of the line.
She was regretting her decision to get coffee that morning. The line hadn't looked this long from outside! But she was committed now. She had already wasted fifteen minutes, leaving now with nothing would only enrage her further.
Seriously! How long does it take to make someone a latte and hand over change?
She kept her huff to herself, as she knew she wasn't the only one annoyed – if the grumbling around her was any indication – and really, knowing she wasn't alone in her exasperation helped. But then someone bumped into her.
She whipped around, about to lay into the clumsy soul, but the moment she turned, she knew something was very wrong.
The massive man who had just bumped her stumbled back, his eyes wide in terror.
"Ah! Get them off! Help!" he cried, swatting wildly at nothing on his arms and chest. The people around immediately gave him a wide berth.
Lois had never seen anything like it. The man was well-dressed, clearly worked out regularly, and he was freaking out in the middle of a crowded coffee shop. He ripped off his vest and flung it to the ground as he began yelling and screaming, stomping on it wildly as he continued to swipe his hands up and down his arms and face, as if trying to rid them of something.
"Sir, what's wrong?! There's nothing on you!" Lois told him, even as the panicked man frantically removed his undershirt.
"Sir?! I'm a paramedic, tell me what’s happening so I can help!" a man beside Lois shouted.
The panicking man didn't seem to hear the off-duty paramedic as he sharply inhaled.
And then he clutched at his chest and collapsed with a pained cry.
Lois gasped and tried to prevent him from falling, but he was way too heavy. The paramedic managed to slow his fall, and Lois found herself kneeling beside the now limp man.
“Everyone, get back!” the paramedic ordered.
“Someone, call 911!” Lois shouted.
Lois stared as the paramedic checked for a pulse. He unfortunately didn't find one and moved to start CPR as Lois began to pull back to join the other customers so he’d have more room, but then something even crazier happened.
A snake, a raised image of a serpent, appeared on the unconscious man's bare chest, as if it had been branded onto his skin!
"What the-?!" Lois exclaimed.
The paramedic shot his eyes to her, as if asking if she was seeing it too, before looking back down at the foreign mark. A second later, the snake disappeared and he forced himself to start CPR, but Lois had a bad feeling that it wouldn't make any difference.
The man was dead. Dead, after what seemed like a bizarre panic induced heart attack.
O o O o O
Lois glanced up at Clark as he approached her desk. It had been about two hours since the incident at the coffee shop. It had taken time to talk with the police, give her statement, and then write the story.
After her failed wedding with Lex, things had been a little strained between her and Clark (unsurprisingly), but since the whole mess with Arianna Carlin had ended, things were slowly settling into a new, somewhat comfortable, normal.
"Back from your interview with the teachers' union?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said, slowly taking the nearby chair. "I heard what happened."
She wasn't quite sure what to make of their new relationship, but it was tentatively becoming . . . warmer?
Though perhaps that was because she had been bashed off her high horse and utterly humbled.
"Are you okay?” he asked.
And yet he didn’t hold it over her.
After the dust had settled, he had never said 'I told you so.' He had never even brought it up, for which she was grateful for and, oddly, saddened by.
“Yeah, I’m fine. It was disturbing, of course, but right now I want to understand what could have done that,” she said.
She had already submitted the article, of course, and now she was hoping to get started on a follow up. She felt almost back to her normal self and she was desperate to determine whether or not she had retained her edge. She was quite certain there was more to this – snakemark notwithstanding.
“They’re calling it a panic attack, but the off-duty paramedic who gave the man CPR told me he's never seen a panic attack like that one before. And there’s something else,” Lois said with a quick glance around, not wanting to be overheard. Clark got closer. “Only the paramedic and I saw it, but a strange snake thing appeared on his chest after he had collapsed.”
“A snake?” Clark asked, confused.
“Yeah. It was raised, like a welt, and then it disappeared. If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Lois said, before turning her eyes away.
“And only you and the paramedic saw?” Clark asked, bewildered.
“Yeah. We were right over the man when it happened, and it only appeared for a few seconds,” she said.
“Did you tell Perry?” Clark asked.
Lois looked at him, now a little annoyed. “Do you think I’m crazy? No, of course not! Telling Perry before I have more information wouldn’t help. We’ve got to figure out who this guy was, what that thing was, and how it killed him!” she said in a vehement whisper.
Clark lifted his hands in surrender. “Alright, what do we know so far?”
She smiled, glad he was onboard. “Well, Jimmy is digging for more information on him, but what I’ve found out so far is that this guy’s name was Rod Clemens and he was a city bus driver.”
“Okay. Anything else?” Clark asked.
“The paramedic told me he suspects the guy had a massive heart attack during the panic attack. He said that Clemens unfortunately was likely essentially dead before he had even begun to collapse.”
“That’s horrible!” Clark said.
“Yeah, which is why I want to figure out what that snake was and how it got there. I know it has something to do with what had happened, because how could it not?”
Clark nodded, always willing to help any way he could. And that was why Lois had told him. As unbelievable as her words had sounded, she knew Clark would help her even if he thought she was nuts.
"So what's the plan?" Clark asked, the reporter in him now excited.
"You look into skin conditions and anything that could medically explain a shape suddenly appearing and disappearing on the skin. I doubt one exists, but we should rule out anything like that to cover our bases. Who knows, maybe there's sudden snake flush syndrome or something," she said.
Clark chuckled before giving a nod. "Okay. What will you be doing?"
"I'll look into snake symbols. See if the one I saw has a meaning. Snakes are featured in several religions, maybe the answer is there," she said.
"Really?" Clark asked, surprised. “So . . . supernatural origin?”
"After what I saw, I'm willing to consider anything," Lois said. "I mean, come on, two years ago, no one would have believed there was a man who could fly. Now the whole world knows and is fine with also knowing he's an alien. A magical mark has nothing on that."
"Fair point," Clark said with a smile before they got to work.
O o O o O
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