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Mr. Beeto
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Long Live the Movieverse

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Family Reunion - Chapter 15/?
Sep 4th, 2008 at 10:18pm
 
Title: Family Reunion
Author: Mr. Beeto
Rating: PG-13
Beta: htbthomas and Shado Librarian
Summary: AU Twist on Donner/Singer Movieverse: Tie the three films together into a cohesive whole, and provide a more credible and interesting reason for Superman to have returned to Krypton.

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Author’s Notes:
As usual, my heartfelt thanks to the beta team, htbthomas and Shado Librarian.

Chapter 15 – Interrupted Plans

Wednesday, September 27, 2006 1:30PM EDT
Lois Lane stormed into the Daily Planet bullpen looking for a fight, but the target of her wrath was nowhere to be found.  She shouldn’t have been surprised, considering his talent for pulling a Houdini on her before he left on his trip six years earlier.   The forced delay in the confrontation only served to stoke her anger at his interference – he’d already spoken to every last one of the Metropolis sources she’d tried to corner over the phone the previous evening, and to add insult to injury, he even managed a front page story from it, below the fold.  Lois needed to vent her rage and scanned the bullpen for an outlet, spotting Jimmy at his desk, fiddling with his camera.

“Jimmy!”  Lois hollered as she marched over to his desk.  “Where the hell is Clark?”

“Oh, hi, Miss Lane,” Jimmy greeted.  “Are you okay?  How was Florida?”

“Fine, fine.  Where’s Clark?” Lois pressed.

“He was here a minute ago,” Jimmy informed her.  “He said something earlier about needing to talk to a lawyer about his daughter.  Maybe that’s where he went.”

“Daughter?” Lois echoed incredulously.   “I must not have heard you right.”

“Didn’t he tell you?” Jimmy asked.  Lois shook her head and Jimmy continued, “Oh, um, her mom never told Clark.  He didn’t find out about her until a few weeks ago, after her mother died in that tsunami.  Actually that entire side of the family got wiped out.  She’s seven, and Clark just met her for the first time a few weeks ago.  The kid’s had a tough adjustment - nightmares and lots of tears.”

“Jesus,” Lois whispered.

“Yeah,” Jimmy agreed.  “Should I warn Clark that you’re looking for him?”

  “I need to talk to him about his story this morning.”

“Wasn’t that a great story?” Jimmy asked cheerfully.  “It’s his second front page in two days.  Sam will have to pull him off obits now!”

“Obits?” Lois asked.  “What’s he doing in obits?”

“Oh, didn’t he tell you about that?” Jimmy asked innocently.

“I haven’t spoken to the man in six years!” Lois shouted.  “What’s he doing in obits?”

“Sam assigned him there the moment he finished processing in,” Jimmy explained.  “He even told Clark that he wouldn’t have hired him back, if it had been up to him.  He still made him do obits yesterday, after that great front page story he turned in.  Clark’s been desperate to prove he still has what it takes.  You’d think that two front page stories in two days would be proof enough.”

“He’s still stuck in obits?” Lois asked incredulously.

“Yes.  No.  I’m not really sure,” Jimmy stammered.  “I think he would have said something if he’d been pulled off… Sam should really cut him some slack.  Between telling him he doesn’t belong here, his daughter’s problems, and his mom getting remarried, Clark’s more stressed out than I’ve ever seen him, though he’s putting on a brave front.”

Lois was silent for a moment as she considered the information.   I’d be a first class bitch if I chewed him a new one now, she thought.   But we’re still going to have to have a little talk about this.  Aloud, she said, “I’ll talk to Perry about that.  But when you see Clark, let me know.  I really need to talk to him about that story.”

“Does that mean you two are going to be partners again?” Jimmy asked hopefully.  “It’d be great, if you were.  Just like old times!”

Lois frowned and her brow wrinkled in contemplation as she considered the possibility.  “You know, I really hadn’t thought about it,” she finally admitted.  “I haven’t had a partner in ages…  I guess we’ll just have to play that by ear.”

-o-o-o-


Superman was powerless to prevent the smile that graced his features at the sound of Lois’ voice as he approached the Daily Planet building.  Not only was she back, she was taking Perry to task for burying her ‘partner’ in obituaries.  Even better, Perry had conceded that it was time to let him out of obits, though he wasn’t backing down either, arguing that he had both the right and obligation to make sure that Clark Kent took the job seriously.  Well, at least she doesn’t seem to be upset with her old partner, like she seems to be with Superman, he thought.  Though, my super-self is going to have to explain himself to her sooner or later.

A moment later, Clark Kent sat at his desk and logged back into his laptop, turning slightly to catch the tableau in Perry’s office as he continued eavesdropping.  Lois and Perry were soon joined by another man, who greeted Lois with a quick kiss on the lips.   Clark recognized him from the family photo on Lois’ desk.  I’m not sure that kiss was entirely appropriate for the office, he thoughtClark was surprised when the greeting quickly degenerated into bickering over Richard’s bringing Jason into the office and at his suggestion that they take the afternoon off.

Clark was interrupted from his eavesdropping by the small voice beside him.  “Hello,” Jason greeted him.  “Who are you?”

“Hi.  I’m Clark, an old friend of your mom’s from before you were born.”

“Really?  She never mentioned you.”

“Never?” Clark asked, disappointed.

“Jason,” Lois called sternly.  The little boy turned at his mother’s voice and ran into her arms.  “I missed you, too,” Lois told him, hugging him tightly and kissing the top of his head.  “Did you remember to take your medicine?” Lois asked, releasing her grip only slightly to look him in the eye as she went down the list of medicines.

She turned to Clark, and commented, “I see you’ve met the munchkin.  He’s a bit fragile, but he’ll grow up to be big and strong just like his dad, won’t you?”  Jason absently nodded as he squirmed to escape his mother’s hug.

“Yeah, we were just talking.  He seems like a great kid.”

“And I hear you have a munchkin at home now, too,” Lois commented pleasantly.

“Oh, um, right.  Kara.  It’s a long story,” Clark stammered.

“Jimmy gave me the short version, but you’ll have to tell me everything once we get a chance to catch up,” Lois insisted.

“There’s the little guy,” Richard called as he approached them.  He picked up the escaping child and lifted him to his hip.  He turned to Clark, and extended his hand.  “You must be Clark.  I’m Richard White.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Richard replied cheerfully.  “Nice job on those blackout stories.”

“Should have been my story,” Lois commented irritably.

“You weren’t here,” Richard reminded her sternly.

“I am now,” Lois replied icily.

“Oh, well I think my sources on it are drying up,” Clark muttered.  His brow wrinkled in concentration for a moment, he turned back to Lois and asked enigmatically, “Say, does your dad still work at the Pentagon?”  He noticed Lois bite her lower lip and tuck her chin, and he probed her pulse and breathing with his senses.  Ah, so you have talked to him about the EMP, Clark concluded.

Before Lois had a chance to respond, Richard chuckled and told Clark, “I know where you’re going with this, but you’re barking up the wrong tree, Clark.  Lois and her dad don’t talk.  We’ve practically got to send them to separate rooms at family gatherings just to keep the peace.”

Clark looked at Richard with a stunned expression, then back to Lois.  After another brief glance back to Richard, he turned to Lois and asked, “So what did your dad have to say about this?”

“As little as possible,” Lois answered stiffly.  “He did identify some officials who would talk about it, but most of what they gave me was off the record.  Suffice it to say, they’re freaking out.”

“They don’t have any idea what caused the EMP…” Clark concluded.

“…and they’ve got so much equipment along the coast looking for an explanation that you can’t spit without hitting one of them,” Lois finished for him.  “It’s producing more questions than answers, though, and there were some very disturbing and surprising measurements from some major U.S. cities.”

Clark’s eyes went wide as comprehension dawned on him.   “The background radiation…” he whispered.

“…which is much, much higher that it could possibly be naturally.  In places like Boston, and Pittsburgh…” Lois continued.

“…but not in Metropolis, where the EMP appears to have originated...”

“…and they haven’t been able to narrow down what part of the city it came from.”

“But if we can track down which grid went down first…”

“…we’d be able to narrow the search,” Lois concluded.  “You’ve done your homework on this, but it’s my story now.”

While Lois and Clark had been talking, Richard’s had looked from one to the other, like a spectator at a tennis match.  Finally sensing an opening, he interrupted.  “Whoa, hold on a minute.  You talked to your father about this?  You didn’t tell me that.”

“Well, maybe next time you’ll know enough not to answer when someone asks me a question!” Lois snapped.  “Take Jason home.  I have work to do.”

“Where are you going?” Richard asked, his annoyance clear in his voice.

“Power plant,” Lois answered.  “Maybe they can give us a clue where this mess started.”

“Um, Lois, that’s not really necessary,” Clark began.

“Forget it, Smallville,” Lois shouted over her shoulder.  “My story now, remember?”

“But, I’ve–”

“Stop arguing with me, farm boy,” Lois called out to him as the elevator doors began closing behind her.  “I’m already gone.”

“Well, there she goes,” Clark commented.  “Same old Lois.”

“Yeah,” Richard agreed.  “It doesn’t matter how close we get, that woman will always be a mystery to me.”  Clark briefly had an incredulous look on his face before masking his expression.  Richard turned to him and asked, “So, what was it you were trying to tell Lois as she ran out of here?”

“Oh, um, I… Well, um, I just… I just got back from the power plant,” Clark admitted, and his lips turned up into a smirk as he looked out into the elevator lobby where Lois had gone, following the car down with his X-ray vision.  “They’re not saying much, but I have enough for tomorrow’s story.”

Richard nodded neutrally as he followed Clark’s gaze into the elevator lobby.  “Well, she’ll probably stop trying to steal your story once she realizes that you’re that far ahead of her,” Richard suggested hopefully.  “I might even be able to talk her into taking some well-deserved time off once she gets back.”

Clark was barely able to mask his shocked expression at Richard’s grossly inaccurate prediction of the woman he knew and loved.  Are we talking about the same Lois Lane?  Clark wondered to himself.  Either I’ve fallen into a parallel universe, or you don’t really know the woman you’re engaged to.  That’s hardly what I’d call domestic bliss.

-o-o-o-


Richard had been sorely mistaken about Lois’ reaction to learning that Clark had already been to the power plant.  Rather than quietly abandoning her quest, she returned to the Planet in a rage.  “Hold it right there, Smallville,” she screamed across the bullpen the moment she spotted him, and attracting everyone’s attention in the process.  Perry and Sam stepped out of their offices to see what the commotion was about as Lois continued her tirade.  “You probably thought that was pretty funny, didn’t you?  Letting me waste the past two hours when you’d already tapped the source.”

“Lois, I tried to tell you,” Clark reminded her patiently.

“This shit stops now!” she shouted.  “I was willing to cut you some slack, because I know what you’ve been going through, but I’m not going to stand back and let you steal all of my sources.”

“Lois, what are you talking about?” Clark asked in genuine confusion.  “I’ve just been pounding the pavement–”

“Bullshit!” Lois hollered.  “All week, every single source I’ve managed to track down here in the city had already talked to you!”

Perry viewed the scene from his position near his office, and allowed a small smile to grace his features.  “Music to my ears,” he muttered quietly.

“You like having her pissed off like that?” Sam asked incredulously.

“It’s the professional rivalry between those two,” Perry explained in a low voice.  “They’ll keep trying to outdo each other and end up pushing each other to be the best of the best, and that puts the Midas touch on their stories.  It also means that we’ve got our old Lois back – about damn time.”

“Just like old times,” George agreed.

Perry nodded and noticed that the pair had the rapt attention of the entire bullpen.  We can’t have that.  “Hey!” Perry hollered.  “This is a newspaper, not a circus!  It isn’t like it’s the first time we’ve ever heard her yell, so everyone get back to work!”

Lois and Clark both looked over at Perry briefly before returning to their argument.  “I suppose you already have the story written, too.” Lois angrily accused him in a loud whisper.

“Lois, I didn’t know you were interested in it, or when you’d get back,” Clark reasoned.  “I couldn’t just sit and let the story get stale, or worse, let the competition scoop us.”

  “You should have let me know,” Lois insisted.  “We could have worked it together.”

“I would have liked that,” Clark confessed.  He softened his tone and said, “If it’s any consolation, they weren’t telling me much at the power plant, and the story is not that great at this point.  I’ll be lucky if Perry prints it at all…  Did you have any better luck with them?”

“No.  Clark, the EMP is my story now,” Lois insisted.  “You can do the FEMA coverage.”  She turned on her heel, and marched back to her desk, dropping her head in her hands the moment she sat down.  After a couple minutes, she finally raised her head and logged into her laptop.  There’s got to be another way to break this story open, and find sources that Clark hasn’t already explored.  She launched an online search, looking for anything on the EMP that might have been overlooked.

-o-o-o-


Wednesday, September 27, 2006 6:15PM EDT
Superman floated unseen above the clouds, silently observing the family tableau in the riverfront home two miles below him.  After Lois’ surprising comment to Clark Kent as they left the office, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her.  “Have you ever been in love?” she had asked.  “Ever feel that connection so strongly with a person that you just knew you were meant to be together?  And then, they suddenly disappear on you without a word?”  Maybe Jimmy was right, he thought.  She is still in love with me, at least this part of me.  Maybe that’s why she’s so furious with me.

His senses had been precisely tuned to her while he patrolled Metropolis, until he could resist the temptation no longer, and settled into his airborne hiding place to covertly observe them.  They had just finished cleaning up after dinner, Jason was practicing Heart and Soul on the piano, and Lois was leaning against the kitchen counter, sipping from a glass of wine.  “I did a little research while I was home with Jason this afternoon,” Richard began.  “I read your Superman article.”  Superman was surprised to detect a nervous edge in his voice.

“’Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman’.”

“No, not that one,” Richard corrected her.  “The first one.  ‘I Spent the Night With Superman’.”

Lois rolled her eyes.  “Richard,” she complained, “Your uncle chose that title to sell more papers.  It was a story.”

“I know,” Richard conceded.  “I told myself that I’d never ask this, but I need to know…  Were you in love with him?”

“He’s Superman!” Lois countered.  “Everyone was in love with him.”

“But were you?” Richard pressed.

Lois sighed irritably, and stared at the floor for a moment, as she pensively rubbed the bridge of her nose.  Finally, she lifted her head, looked Richard in the eyes and quietly answered, “No.”

Her answer produced starkly different responses from the two men who heard her.  Two miles above, a hero’s heart broke, and he quickly pulled himself away from the tableau, speeding across the continent to the family that was waiting for him.  The man before her, however, felt his spirits lift and his confidence grow as an unseen weight fell from his shoulders.  Richard smiled widely and told her, “Well, it’s still a good thing he came back when he did.”  His tone turned somber as he emotionally told her, “I came so close to losing you on that plane.”

“Well, I survived, so you can stop stressing out over it.”

“But if anything had happened…  I wouldn’t even have been able to bring you home,” Richard lamented.

“There wouldn’t have been anything left.  We’d all have been smashed to smithereens and incinerated in the fireball,” Lois elaborated.

“That’s not what I meant,” Richard explained.  “If there had been… remains.”  Richard paused and took a sip of his wine.  He sighed tiredly, and then continued, “Husbands can bring their wives home, but not fiancés.”

“Jesus, Richard,” Lois complained.  “You’re saying we need to make it official so you can claim my dead body?  How romantic.”

“You know what I’m trying to say, Lois.  I had a lot of time to think about things after the close call on that plane.  I assumed that you had, too.”

“I had quite the epiphany,” Lois said dramatically.  “By all means, let’s talk about that plane.  What the hell was I doing there, anyway?  Seems to me that just a few days ago, I had this really interesting story on the city sludge contracts.  But, lo and behold, the moment you find out about a potential Intergang link, I get mysteriously taken off that story, and have some Genesis shuttle puff piece forced on me.”

“That wasn’t a puff piece,” Richard argued.

“But it was supposed to be!” Lois shouted.  “It was a strictly managed NASA P.R. event, and if that wasn’t bad enough, it was a Science and Technology piece, which isn’t my forte, as you know damn well.  Did you watch that press conference Monday?  I was out of my element and it showed.  I looked like a damned fool!”

“You more than made up for it yesterday,” Richard offered.

“It was a different story yesterday, but that’s beside the point!” Lois hollered.  “The point is that every time I get into an interesting story, and there’s even a hint of danger, you pull strings to get me off the story and shove something nice and safe down my throat!  Guess you screwed up with the shuttle, huh?”

“Lois, it’s–”

“Don’t insult my intelligence by denying it!”

Richard’s shoulders sagged and he quietly said, “No story is worth getting killed over.”

“I’m not a God damned porcelain doll!” Lois protested.  “I don’t need to be kept up on a shelf, nice and safe!”

“If anything were to happen to you–”

“I can take care of myself!” Lois insisted.  “Richard, you don’t get anywhere in this business by being risk adverse.  But you’ve been imposing your risk aversion onto me, and hurting my career in the process.”

“What are you talking about?  You just won a Pulitzer!”

“For an editorial, and that was probably only chosen because of nostalgia for Superman, and the novelty of his most vocal former advocate ripping him to shreds.  It shouldn’t have won.  My award should have been for investigative reporting, but those stories have garnered absolutely no attention for me in recent years.”

“Not everybody can win, no matter how good they are,” Richard explained sympathetically.

“Then how do you explain my first five years at the Planet?” Lois told him angrily.  “I had over a dozen nominations for investigative reporting, and I won two Kerths and a Merriweather.  I wasn’t playing it safe back then, and my writing was noticed.  But in the last six years, nothing.”

“You didn’t have a family back then,” Richard pointed out.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Lois snapped.  “That I can’t do my job now, because I’m a mother?”

“Lois–”

“I’m through playing it safe, White, so you had damn well better get used to it!” she interrupted.  She then turned on her heel, and marched out the patio doors, grabbing her cigarettes and lighter from her purse on the way.

What the hell just happened here? Richard wondered.  This wasn’t at all how things were supposed to go.  Richard had planned a quiet afternoon at the park, reconnecting as a family, and afterwards leaving Jason with Perry and Alice, so that he and Lois could have a romantic evening out and finally nail down a wedding date.  However, his fiancée hadn’t cooperated.  She flat out refused to take the afternoon off, saying that she wasn’t going to get caught on the sidelines while the story of the year was going on.  She’d also vetoed the evening out, since she had hardly seen their son over the past few days and wasn’t about to abandon him with a sitter.  It was almost like he’d been dealing with a stranger, rather than the woman he’d lived and worked with the past five and half years.  Sometimes, I wonder if I know her at all, he lamented.

“Daddy?” a small voice interrupted uncertainly.  Richard turned and saw Jason standing at the edge of the room with a sad expression on his face.  “Why’s Mommy so mad?”

Richard walked over to him, and lifted the boy to his hip.  “Its okay, kiddo,” Richard consoled him.  “She just had a bad day.  Things will be better tomorrow…  How’s your piano practice coming?”

Lois heard their voices through the glass door, and turned to see Richard pick up their son and carry him into the other room.  Great, now I’ve upset Jason, too, she told herself.  I really hadn’t meant to be that harsh when I brought this up, but why did he have to go and use this as an excuse to nag me about wedding plans?  She again reflected on the state of her career, and was forced to concede that her professional malaise hadn’t entirely been his fault.  She could have dug in her heels, and insisted on sticking with the stories.  As she had reminded herself over the past couple of days, she’d been playing it safe, too.  Well, I can apologize to him later, she determined.  If he brings it up.  She exhaled the tobacco smoke, and turned her gaze skyward, searching the clouds for the hero’s movements.  Will you be there to pull my ass out of the fire if I get in over my head? she wondered.  Or will you keep your distance, like you did just before you left?

-o-o-o-


Wednesday, September 27, 2006 10:45PM EDT
I’m getting tired of these delays, Lex Luthor thought, as the Gertrude pulled into Boston Harbor.  Most of the previous two days were a total loss, spent on a heading south to Cuba, before discovering that the essential ingredient to leveling the playing field was in the New England city and turning the ship around.  It was a sample in a meteorite display at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, on loan from the Cairo Museum for an exhibit that ran through Sunday.  Lex reflected on his brilliance in identifying the substance, and lamented that the media never credited him with its discovery when discussing kryptonite.

After Superman had provided that revealing first interview, Lex had poured over it studiously, looking for weaknesses, when he recalled an article about a meteorite exhibiting unusual radiation.  Though he hadn’t realized it originated from the same planet as the alien, he had instinctively theorized that it would affect him.  The meteorite was one of twenty-eight samples that had rained down across Africa from Ethiopia to Cameroon in a 1978 meteor shower.  He had stolen the largest sample shortly after Superman’s original appearance, making the leap of faith that it would bring the alien to his knees.  He had been right, and his grandiose plan for wealth and power would have succeeded but for his late lover’s betrayal.  He wouldn’t repeat that mistake with his current lover, or with his men for that matter.  He wouldn’t share his true intentions with them until it was too late for them to ruin his plans.

The original meteorite had been lost, but it wasn’t difficult to track the remaining samples.  Most of them were in museums in Northern Africa, which would have been more difficult to acquire, given the unfamiliar criminal environment there.  It was a stroke of luck that there had been a sample on loan to an American museum, though Lex would have preferred the Metropolis Museum of Natural History.  He’d robbed it before and knew its security flaws.  With the Harvard Museum, he’d have to start from scratch on planning the robbery, and the maps he found on-line lacked the necessary detail.  He needed to know their security system, both in terms of equipment and people, which would likely require a couple days of reconnaissance.   That provided a very small window of opportunity before the exhibit moved on to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.

For his ultimate plan to succeed, he’d also need to track Superman’s movements, which meant recreating his ingenious alpha scanner.  He was the only one who’d ever been able to successfully track Superman.  Everyone else had tried using conventional mechanics to track him, which failed miserably, of course.  That discipline couldn’t even explain how the freak could fly, and thus, it should have come as no surprise that it couldn’t track a phenomenon it couldn’t explain.   Lex had hypothesized that Kryptonian’s physiology worked by influencing the fabric of space, warping it to pull himself forward, though without any visible effect in normal space.   

Lex reflected that his invention of a scanner capable of measuring those alpha distortions was a quantum leap forward in physics, detecting the imperceptible spacial distortions up to several hours after the alien flew by.  Lex proudly recalled that he had built his prototype from a shoebox and stolen prison equipment during his incarceration.  That invention should have earned him the Nobel Prize!  Let’s see any of those so-called physicists even come close to building something like that, Lex challenged.  With his current resources, he should be able to improve on the design, tying it into the yacht’s advanced sensors for increased range, and transmitting the data to a small handheld unit.  Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be able to devote his full attention to the updated design until after they acquired the kryptonite, given the short window of opportunity at the Harvard Museum.

All his plans would be for naught if the alien tracked him here, so the first order of business would be establish false identities and rechristen the ship.  Some of the required changes would necessitate hiring contractors with the unfortunate character flaw of being law-abiding citizens, but such people were easily disposed of once their tasks were complete.  He’d just have to make sure that the men were diligent in purging all records of their presence.  Lex pushed himself away from his desk, and marched up the spiral staircase to join the men on bridge and issue his instructions while they waited to dock the ship.

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