Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Challenge The Chronicles of the Lanekens

A massive plot bunny is up for adoption. Feel free to grab any plot fragment that sparks your interest and run with it. Comments and suggestions are also more than welcome.


Lois and Clark's daughter was conceived while Clark was under the influence of a heavy-dose Kryptonite exposure—the kind that knocks out his powers for days, not minutes, just like in GGGoH. It makes sense, doesn't it? A massive hunk of Kryptonite essentially turns Clark into an ordinary human, making him biologically compatible with Lois. And it also means birth control for L&C is ridiculously easy—no contraceptives needed. All they have to do is stay away from each other for a few days whenever Clark gets Kryptonite-poisoned. Of course, L&C had no idea about any of this, so they both freaked out pretty badly when they discovered the pregnancy.

The girl inherited Clark’s basic defensive and reconnaissance capabilities—super-healing, invulnerability, super-hearing, and X-ray vision. However, the Kryptonite radiation suppressed most of her offensive physical powers (super-strength, super-speed, heat vision, cold breath—none, nada), meaning she could never become a superhero like her father. But what she lacked in muscle, she more than made up for in mind—her mental powers were wildly enhanced by the Kryptonite radiation.

She possesses mind-reading power over all Earthlings. Clark is the only person on Earth immune to it, since it doesn't work on Kryptonians. The girl can share minds with her father only when he allows her to. Clark actually has weak telepathic powers himself—like all Kryptonians do. His instinct for sensing people in danger stems from that power, and his brief telepathic exchanges with Lois in BATP, HIWTHI, and BGDF are further proof. He just never learned to use it on purpose.

The girl also has the ability to control the minds of other Earthlings. Once she reached full maturity, her mind grew so powerful that she could make a group of strangers kill each other or take their own lives from miles away. She only resorted to that two or three times over her centuries-long existence, and only in extreme necessity. I recall reading somewhere that some older comics and movies gave Superman weak mind-control abilities—he uses them to hypnotize people into believing Clark Kent and Superman are two different people, and he even used it once on Lois to erase her memory. This power is also super-super-enhanced in his daughter, thanks again to Kryptonite radiation.

*I got the impression that prolonged Kryptonite exposure weakens Kryptonians physically but somehow sharpens them mentally from what happens in the series. The most obvious example occurs in HIWTHI, when, after being exposed to Kryptonite radiation for an entire night, Clark establishes a two-way telepathic connection with Lois for the first time since they met. A related incident takes place at the end of HOL, when Clark hears the Wedding March—and even the Bishop speaking in the penthouse—all the way from the basement. But how is that possible? He should have lost his superhearing after being "Krypto-baked" for a full day. My only explanation is that he unintentionally intruded into Lois’s mind, and was hearing the music and the Bishop from her point of view. This inadvertent mental connection likely played a major role in Lois's moment of revelation walking down the aisle.*

Although L&C’s daughter doesn't display any offensive physical powers herself, she can pass them on to her male descendants—meaning her sons and grandsons could step into the Superman role if they ever wanted to. The men in her bloodline also get some mental powers, though nowhere near the level of her female descendants.

The girl can fly, but not at super-speed—only about as fast as a commercial airplane.

The girl inherited her father’s compassion and her mother’s ambition. She also got her mother’s big brown eyes and her father’s jet-black hair. In my mind’s eye, she looks a bit like Anne Hathaway.



Yes, I recently became a huge fan of Anne Hathaway—largely because of that phenomenal movie The Odyssey. And I particularly like her breakout role as Mia in The Princess Diaries. But “Mia” feels a bit too cute and soft for a goddess’s name, so I’ve decided to temporarily name my heroine Maya Lane Kent. “Maya” has a similar ring to “Martha”—but unlike "Martha" or "Mia," it works equally well as an ordinary city girl’s name and as one that would become legendary over time. It also shares the same stylistic vibe as other Kryptonian princess names like Zara and Lara. More importantly, the name carries meanings like 'magic,' 'great,' 'mother,' 'beloved,' 'princess,' 'prolific,' and 'rebirth'—all of which are a perfect match for my heroine.

Maya inherited her father’s super-long lifespan and lived for five centuries.

She led a normal, happy human life—working as a Professor of Sociology at Metropolis University—until she reached her sixties, when her immortality started to attract unwanted attention. That's when she decided to go into hiding. For decades afterward, she lived like a hermit in one of the "Fortresses of Solitude" that Clark had built for her in remote corners of the world—places entirely out of reach and uninhabitable by any ordinary Earthling.

Another reason she withdrew from human society was that L&C died soon after Maya turned 60. Thanks to the "essence" Clark regularly passed on to Lois through intimacy, Lois acquired a partial super-healing ability from her husband and aged at roughly the same rate as Clark. (Sorry, I didn't mean to go all nfic—but I really wanted them to grow old together, and I couldn't come up with a better way to make that happen.) As a result, even at 90 years old, they still looked like a middle-aged couple.

This is how L&C looked when they were in their nineties (Yes, they indeed shared a wonderfully long life together.) :



But because of what happened in “Brutal Youth”, L&C's self-protective powers had declined considerably by that time—which is why they were both killed together in a terrorist attack. That was the moment Maya decided to devote her life to building a non-violent utopia for mankind. She spent decades in solitude studying the human mind and social dynamics, crafted a detailed plan, and eventually set it in motion.

Maya took seven human mates throughout her long life—a psychologist, a strategist, a scientist, a physician, an engineer, an artist, and a philosopher. They were all extraordinary men, because they all had to pass Maya's "mind-sweeping" test. With each mate, she bore seven children. The younger ones were mostly brought up by their older siblings. Maya could share minds with every one of them, and each child carried a genetically hardwired loyalty to her—like worker bees to their queen. In effect, she commanded an army of super-beings and could theoretically do whatever she pleased with the people of Earth. And yes, L&C eventually had some 50 grandchildren—though they never lived to see any of them. Maya didn't give birth to her first child until she was nearly 100, which, by human standards, was roughly the equivalent of being 20.

The existence of this goddess-like alien queen and her super-army was exposed to humanity when Maya was over 200 years old. The clan was betrayed by one of her sons’ wives, a woman who refused to let her husband remain Maya’s puppet, bound to her will for eternity. Unsurprisingly, humanity panicked and turned against them. They twisted Maya’s family name into something monstrous—The Lanekens—and with it, damned her entire race. (The name's just a placeholder—I'm going for a "Tom Riddle to Voldemort" rebrand, but I've got nothing good so far.) For generations, parents taught their children to fear and loathe that name. The Lanekens became scapegoats for every inexplicable human death. And in their fear-fueled frenzy, mobs tricked, captured, tortured, and killed one of Maya's mates and three of her youngest children. They subjected these demigods to unspeakable experiments before finally dissecting them like frogs.

*** Lesson learned, L&C—Never, ever swear on the lives of your future grandchildren! ***

This tragedy broke Maya’s heart nearly beyond repair. She possessed every justification to unleash her divine power—to enslave, or even annihilate the entire human race. But she didn’t. Because deep down, her soul was still sheltered by the boundless love that L&C had planted in her heart centuries ago—back when she was just an ordinary, carefree little girl running around a sunlit brownstone on Hyperion Avenue.

***“That one great love that changed us forever.”***

Maya continued her quest until a self-sustaining utopia was established—one that could function without her race's oversight. (The 22nd-century version that H.G. Wells mentioned was merely a flawed prototype, and it didn't last long at all.) In the generations that followed, the lifespans and combat prowess of her male descendants declined rapidly, until they were scarcely distinguishable from exceptionally strong human men. But the longevity and mental gifts of her daughters were much better preserved and passed down to granddaughters and great-granddaughters alike. The female Lanekens are not particularly prolific, however. For one thing, the "mind-sweeping" trials make suitable mates exceedingly difficult to find. For another, unlike the male Lanekens who are able to sustain their wives through sexual intimacy, the females consistently outlive their partners. Which means they're left to endure the agonizing pain of losing their true love over and over again. As a result, many female Lanekens chose to devote their entire lives to serving the clan, forgoing families of their own. Over time, Maya's female descendants formed a secret sisterhood—a shadow organization that would watch over humanity for eons to come. Eventually, though, they would have to elect a new queen bee once Maya passed.

No one knew for certain when or how Maya died. She simply faded from the world at around four hundred and fifty years old. In the post-utopia society that followed, she was remembered and revered as a Gaia-like goddess. L&C, on the other hand, occupied a far more modest place in Utopian memory—they're like Martha and Jonathan to us: beloved, but mortal—because they only lived about ninety years and barely made a dent in human history. To the Utopians, the one true hero—the founding mother of their world—is Maya Laneken.