Clana Episode 9.08: "Image"

[carolus]

Image

By Carolus

Summary: Rewrite of episode 9.08, “Idol.” While Lois tries to make sense of the recurring sensual dreams that she has been having involving Clark, two well-meaning admirers inadvertently ruin the Blur’s reputation with their efforts, and Jor-El learns more about his son and Lana.
Rating: PG-13 for violence and sexual references.
Spoilers: Everything up to and including “Power,” serious spoilers for “Idol.”
Author Notes: This story is set in my Clana-friendly season nine, which ignores the events of “Requiem” in season eight and follows “Reign,” which contains links to previous stories in the series, “Synthesis,” “Frenzy,” “Surprise,” “Roulette,” “Vicious,” and “Genesis.” The Kryptonian TrueType font will be required to read certain symbols.
Disclaimer: Smallville doesn’t belong to me, unfortunately, but to Tollin/Robbins Productions, Millar Gough Ink, DC Comics, and Warner Brothers Television. I’m just having some fun here.

* * * * *

Lois Lane woke up in bed at Oliver Queen’s penthouse in Queen Tower with a naked male body spooned up behind her and an arm slung around her midsection. The male body in question felt decidedly larger and more muscular than she remembered Oliver being, an impression that was confirmed when she looked over her shoulder to see Clark Kent behind her.

Sitting up, Lois pulled the top sheet off the bed and wrapped it around herself for modesty before turning to study Clark’s face. She frowned when he noticed that he didn’t look very peaceful for someone who had fallen asleep after a night of passion. In fact, even with his eyes closed in sleep, Clark’s features seemed intent, even calculating -- an expression totally out of place on the normally easygoing farm boy that she knew.

A bit disturbed, Lois got up from the bed, still clutching the sheet around her naked body as she winced slightly at all the new aches and pains in her body. God, she felt like she’d been ridden hard and put away wet.

Flushing slightly as she remembered how she’d gotten that way, Lois made her way to the bedroom door and walked out into the main area of Oliver’s penthouse, glancing at the various items of her and Clark’s clothing that were strewn along the way. Her gaze briefly landed on two items on the couch -- a long dark red coat and a black T-shirt decorated with a strange “Z”-like symbol composed of two rotated white L-shapes bordering a diagonal white slash with a knotlike figure in its center -- before she looked out the penthouse balcony’s glass doors to see a red sky with a crimson sun.

As she stood there, there was a whoosh of air behind her, and an instant later she heard Clark murmur, “You shouldn’t have wandered off,” as a hand landed on her shoulder and he roughly turned her to face him.

“I’m not done with you yet,” he said with a cold, confident smile that Lois didn’t normally associate with Clark Kent -- at least, not the Clark Kent she knew.

Glancing at the hand that Clark had on her shoulder, Lois caught a brief glimpse of a silver ring set with an odd, iridescent pinkish-white stone on his left ring finger as he said, “Now… shall we pick up where we left off last night?”

Suddenly all of Lois’ odd feelings and misgivings about the situation were replaced by an intense feeling of lust as she relinquished her grip on the sheet that she held wrapped around her.

“Yeah, why don’t we do that?” she said with a seductive smile as the sheet fell to the floor, leaving her naked as she stepped forward and embraced Clark.

Pulling Lois against him as she twined her arms around his neck, Clark took her mouth in a rough, bruising kiss, eliciting a moan from the brunette as his hands began to roam their way down her back…

Sitting at his desk in the basement bullpen of the Daily Planet, Clark Kent looked up from typing on his computer to see Lois staring off into the distance with a glazed, vacant look on her face. It wasn’t the sort of expression that he’d expected to see on her face on her first day back at work after returning from her impromptu “vacation.” In fact, he’d been bracing himself for a continuation of the argument that they’d had before she left regarding why he hadn’t shown for their scheduling taping sessions for Good Morning, Metropolis.

But Lois hadn’t said anything on that subject yet, and as Clark looked on, a pen fell from his colleague’s slack fingers to hit the floor. Mildly concerned by her atypical behavior, Clark reached over to get a pen and accidentally bumped his cup of coffee with his elbow, knocking it over and spilling coffee all over some copy that he’d been working.

Sighing, the Kryptonian set the now-empty cup aside and began blotting up the coffee with some blank paper. When he didn’t get a reaction from Lois to the mess that he’d just made, he looked up and saw that she was still blankly gazing into space.

“Earth to Lois,” he said, finally getting the brunette’s attention. “It’s like you’ve been on another planet for the last fifteen minutes.”

“Easy, Armstrong,” Lois scoffed as she regained her usual poise. “This space case is buried in research. I’ve got like two weeks’ worth of work to catch up on.”

“It was sort of a last-minute vacation, wasn’t it?” Clark commented as he balled up the coffee-stained papers on his desk and threw them in his wastebasket, momentarily getting up to retrieve the pen that Lois had dropped and handing it to her.

“Yeah, well, I’ve got a pretty tightly wound bolt reflex,” the brunette admitted as she took the pen from Clark.

“Is this about what happened?” the Kryptonian asked her curiously, thinking of their not-so-little blowup before she left.

Unfortunately, Lois confused his question with a reference to her vivid erotic daydream of a few moments ago, causing the brunette’s cheeks to flush at the memory.

Clark noticed, his expression turning more quizzical as he inquired, “Are you turning red?” He didn’t think Lois would be embarrassed at the thought of an argument like that, especially since he’d flat out said that she was more interested in fame than the truth.

Unsettled and a bit flustered, Lois bolted up from her chair to archly inform him, “Believe it or not, but my little ejector seat malfunction wasn’t totally about you.”

“We should talk about it,” Clark nodded. You couldn’t just brush insulting a co-worker’s integrity under the rug like that.

That statement only earned him a glare as Lois said, “When I wanna talk about it, I’ll send up a smoke signal.”

She turned and stormed away from her desk, nearly colliding with a young man clad in the green uniform and cap of a worker for Federated Couriers.

“Excuse me,” the kid said, offering Lois his clipboard. “Can you help me? I need a signature.”

Chucking his thumb in the general direction of the employee entrance, he said, “I’ve got a delivery out back and no one’s in yet.”

Grinning at the distraction, Lois took the clipboard from the courier and scribbled her signature on it.

A few minutes later she and Clark were standing in the loading bay of the Daily Planet, looking at a large wooden crate with a bright red bow and ribbon on the top.

“Ho, ho, ho, merry Christmas to me,” Lois chuckled before approaching the crate.

Refraining from pointing out to her that it was barely September, Clark instead said, “You want me to help you with this?”

“No,” Lois said in a tone of annoyance as she fetched a crowbar from a nearby table and started prying at the lid of the crate. “Did I ever tell you that before Christmas, I used to unwrap all my presents and then rewrap them while my parents were still sleeping?”

“You know, Lois, that doesn’t surprise me at all,” Clark dryly commented as Lois dropped the crowbar and started tugging at the loosened crate lid.

As he helped her toss the lid aside, both of them were flabbergasted by the contents of the crate: four men tied up in their underwear with their mouths duct taped shut and sitting in a pile of large clear plastic bags of white powder, some of which had ruptured, dusting the men with their contents.

“Just what I’ve always wanted,” Lois gibed, her eyes wide with shock.

Staring down at the men and what he could only assume was a large quantity of drugs, Clark said, “Is that--?”

“I don’t think it’s powdered sugar, Smallville,” was Lois’ dry reply.

“Lois Lane, Daily Planet,” she said, introducing herself as she leaned over to rip the tape off the mouth of one of the men. “Care to comment on what illegal activities you’ve been up to that got you trussed up like a turkey?”

“I’m a cop,” the man said as soon as his mouth was unobstructed. “We’re all undercover cops. Our sting went south.”

“Someone must’ve thought you were the real dealers,” Clark realized.

“Who could be responsible for such a super-screwup?” Lois asked as she looked away from the humiliated police officers to Clark.

Just then there was a commotion outside with screeching tires and a woman shouting, “Hey, there’s something on the building!”

“Who do you think did it?” someone else in the gathering crowd asked as Clark and Lois ventured outside, ducking under the loading dock as they went. They were completely unprepared for what they saw when they got outside.

“It was the Blur,” someone said as the two reporters found themselves looking at a huge symbol that had been spray painted in yellow on the side of a nearby brick building:

!

The execution was a bit sloppy, but it was still unmistakably the symbol of the House of El.

“Now that’s what I call a scoop,” Lois commented as she gazed at the Blur’s symbol.

In contrast, Clark was silent, his jaw clenching as he contemplated this blatant appropriation of his Kryptonian family’s crest. He knew he hadn’t done this, as he could tell even in the early morning light that the paint was still fresh, and he’d been at work for an hour when the symbol had presumably been done.

He didn’t think Lana would have done this, either, and even if Kara was back on Earth -- which he had no evidence of, anyway -- this stunt seemed too sloppy even for her.

So the question was, who was responsible?

* * * * *

[Nick of kandor]

Carolus, this was a great start to episode 9.8 "Image". I sincerely hope that based on the first couple of sentences that Clark DOES NOT GET INVOLVED WITH LOIS because that would make me very angry and depressed. Anyway, great start again and as always CLANA FOREVER!

[carolus]

“First the Blur doesn’t call for weeks, and now he’s overnighting our boys in blue?” Lois exclaimed to Clark as he followed her back from the loading dock.

“‘Course, he’s probably tailspinning into the stratosphere ‘cause he doesn’t have his go-to girl to keep him grounded,” she concluded as she rounded a corner.

Barely repressing the urge to tell Lois that she hardly qualified as his “go-to girl,” Clark replied, “There’s no way the botched save is the work of the Blur. It’s not his M.O.”

“It’ll admit sugarcoating isn’t exactly his style,” Lois conceded as they turned another corner and headed into the bullpen, “but the twenty-story calling card was unmistakable.

“I never thought I’d say this, but I’m beginning to lose faith in our resident hero,” she continued.

“You’re breaking my heart, Lane,” city editor Randall Brady deadpanned as he came into the bullpen, carrying a sheaf of papers in one hand as he pointed at Lois with the other. “I need a feature on the Blur’s questionable tactics by the end of the day.”

“You really don’t think this is big news, do you?” Clark deflected. He couldn’t how quickly people were willing to believe that his alter ego was behind this mess just because someone spraypainted his symbol nearby.

“Turns out Adrian Pope, the organized crime boss, is still out on the street because of the Blur’s blunder,” Brady explained. “D.A.’s out for blood.”

“When is the D.A. not out for blood?” protested Lois, who had a lot of information on said district attorney’s ties to the mob. “He’s just trying to cover up his dirty connections. Listen, I am not your Blur girl on this one.”

“Just run with it,” the city editor impatiently ordered as he practically threw the papers at Lois before exiting the bullpen.

“Listen, just see this as an opportunity to investigate both sides of the story,” Clark told Lois as she plopped the papers that Brady had given her onto her desk and took her coat from where it hung on her chair.

“Well, that would require a certain super someone to actually find five minutes to give me a call,” Lois replied with a certain amount of frustration as she pulled her coat and grabbed her purse from her desk.

Despite the fact that he knew Lois hadn’t been really aiming that comment at him but at his alter ego, Clark still felt stung by her scathing tone. His expression turned to one of confusion as he saw Lois pull a scarf from her coat pocket and begin tying it over her head.

“What’s with the disguise?” Clark asked with a furrowed brow as he followed the brunette out of the bullpen.

“All my flannel is at the dry cleaners,” Lois snarked as she headed to the elevator. “Go figure.”

“Lois--” Clark began, concerned that the brunette was going to do something that would get her in trouble.

“Pst! Leave it alone, Inspector Gadget,” Lois commanded as she wheeled about to face Clark, holding her hands out to hold off any more questions.

“I have a top-secret interview I’m doing for an exposé on the hush-hush,” the brunette explained as she stepped back into the elevator and hit a button on the interior control panel.

“So don’t follow me,” she sternly ordered as she slipped on a pair of large, dark sunglasses and the elevator doors closed.

* * * * *

A half hour later Lois sat in a comfortable chair in an office elsewhere in Metropolis, looking decidedly uncomfortable before she asked the other person in the room, “Could you lose the notebook? I’d prefer that all our meetings remain off the record.”

Her therapist, Dr. Anita Evans, smiled as she put her pen and the small hardbound book that she’d been taking notes in aside. “Whatever makes you feel more comfortable, Lois.”

Mollified, Lois sighed, clearing her throat and settling in before Dr. Evans asked, “Why don’t you start by describing these dreams you’ve been having?”

“Okay. Well, they’re as real as you and me right now,” Lois began.

“More real, actually,” she added as she recalled the extremely vivid nature of the dreams. “And despite some flashes of some serious NC-17 violence, really, the situation involves clothes… coming off.

“You know, naked skin. Skin on skin. Just--” She cleared her throat. “Lots of skin.”

Lois was momentarily lost in reverie, her mouth curling up in a smile at the remembrance of the more pleasant parts of her dreams.

Until Dr. Evans spoke, that is.

“So… it’s a sex dream,” the therapist ventured, “with the coworker you mentioned before? Clark Kent?”

“What is this, Nightline?” Lois huffed as she got up from her chair, her pleasant mood broken by the probing nature of Dr. Evans’ question.

“All right, yes, I’m doing the virtual Kama Sutra with Clark Kent,” she admitted as she worked over to a nearby shelf and began playing with the sand in Dr. Evan’s Zen rock garden. “My desk is soft-core central.”

“Listen, Lois. You came to me to explore the deeper meaning within these vivid dreams that you’ve been having,” Dr. Evans said as she turned to address the brunette.

“And all of this doesn’t have to be taken literally,” she cautioned. “A lack of clothing in a dream can signify the desire to uncover what’s actually hidden.”

That made sense to Lois -- at least, more sense than the idea that she’d suddenly developed a weird sexual fixation on Clark in the last couple months, especially considering the argument they’d had before she left on her little vacation.

“You know, sometimes I do feel that Clark is hiding something,” Lois acknowledged as she walked back to her chair, sighing as she sat down. “I know it sounds crazy, but the closer I try to get to him… the more I feel like he’s going to disappear.”

Clark had held himself a bit apart from other people since she’d met him, and that tendency had increased after his falling-out with Lex, his dad’s death, and his mom moving away. Other than Chloe, the only one who seemed to get closer to him was Lana, and given their history of breakups, Lois didn’t put any faith in that relationship lasting.

Dr. Evans considered her next words carefully before asking, “Could this have something to do with your three weeks of blocked memory?

“Maybe you’re trying to protect yourself, Lois,” she suggested. “Didn’t you say that the last time you opened up to someone -- your mysterious caller -- he vanished?”

As if on cue, Lois’ cellphone went off, playing “Holding Out For A Hero” by Bonnie Tyler -- the personalized ringtone that she’d programmed for whenever the Blur called her.

“Speak of the devil,” Lois commented, glancing over at where her cellphone sat on top of her purse on a nearby couch. “The Halley’s comet of phone dating himself.”

The brunette mirthlessly laughed to herself as she got up. Just like a man, to not call for months until he screwed something up. Walking over to the couch, she picked up her phone and punched the “ignore” button to reject the Blur’s call with a certain vicious satisfaction. “Sayonara, super stud.”

“You still have strong feelings for this mystery man,” Dr. Evans deduced from Lois’ behavior. In her professional experience, nothing prompted a reaction like that except the feeling of being rejected by a love object.

“Please,” Lois scoffed as she put the phone back in her purse, then reclined on the couch.

“Remember eight tracks and rotary phones? That’s him. Ancient history,” she waved in the direction of the phone as if it were the Blur himself.

“And the fact that you haven’t gotten that newsflash means I’m probably wasting my time with all this head-shrink, mumbo-jumbo stuff,” the brunette concluded with disdain.

Her father the general had always said psychiatrists were for wimps, and she was starting to agree with him.

“Lois, you have projected so much onto this mystery caller,” Dr. Evans pointed out. “Maybe you should focus on dealing with your feelings with the man right in front of you -- however unavailable he may be at the moment.”

* * * * *

As Lois considered that advice, over at Watchtower Clark lowered the burner phone with the attached voice modulator that he’d been trying to call her with.

“She’s not picking up,” he reported to Chloe as they stood on the upper level of Watchtower.

“You freeze the girl out, she’s gonna give you the cold shoulder, hero or not,” Chloe commented as she headed for the spiral metal staircase that led down to the main level of Watchtower.

“After what happened with Corben, I stopped calling her as the Blur for her own protection,” Clark explained as he put the phone in his pocket.

“I’m sorry, this is a really bad time for your PR queen to go MIA,” Chloe replied in a conciliatory tone as she descended the staircase.

“Why should you care what this Lois Lane thinks?” Jor-El asked from where he sat on the couch near the large circular stained glass window in Watchtower. “From what you have told me, Kal-El, she seems committed more to her own celebrity than to disseminating the truth.”

“Because she’s the only one who can tell the world the truth,” Clark replied, glancing down at his father as he came down the stairs. “Lois has to know that the Blur’s not responsible for the failed drug bust or the crime boss getting away. We’ve got enough to worry about with Zod and his army loose in the world without the city being turned against me.”

“You know, Clark, you need to get to work on some serious spin doctor magic, because whoever is posing as the Blur is a genius at marketing and self-promotion,” Chloe as she walked over to her desk and swiped her fingertips down the touch screen built into its surface. “He’s co-opted your brand.”

“I’m not a brand,” Clark protested just before he turned to see a cluster of webpages that Chloe had brought up on Watchtower’s main monitor -- most of which were decorated with pictures of the House of El’s crest.

“The Blur has a blog?” he said in disbelief as he studied one of them.

“And apparently you Twitter and you’re on Facebook -- where you have 10,000 friends, by the way,” Chloe elaborated as Clark looked from the screen to her. She teasingly added, “You’ve come quite a long way since being scarecrowed in high school.”

“‘Scarecrowed’?” Jor-El inquired with a furrowed brow at the unfamiliar term.

“Long story involving kryptonite and a jealous boyfriend of Lana’s,” Clark tersely explained before turning his attention back to his imposter. “Why would someone go through so much trouble to discredit me?”

“Now here’s the hitch. I think he’s actually trying to help you,” Chloe stated with a hint of excitement. “I discovered five messy but successful saves obviously not done by you or Lana.”

Taking that in, Clark said, “Whether this person means well or not, they need to be stopped -- before someone gets hurt.”

* * * * *

That evening, after night had fallen in Metropolis, a wealthy criminal named Ivan Petrovich sat in the back seat of his limousine as it slowly cruised down a dark street.

“Pull over by the power station. Nice and easy,” Petrovich instructed his driver as he inspected a pile of large, perfectly cut diamonds that his men had just turned over to him after a successful heist, and which he planned to use to pay his main drug supplier for about eighty kilos of heroin. “These ladies and I have a date with destiny.”

Nodding, the driver steered the limo in the direction that Petrovich wanted. Suddenly there was a thump as something landed on the vehicle’s hood, and a moment later the driver found a growling cougar looking at him through the windshield.

His face going pale at the sight of the animal, Petrovich told the driver, “Gun it.”

Complying, the driver hit the accelerator, sending the limousine speeding down the alleyway.

Noticing that the cougar was keeping pace with them, Petrovich urgently said, “Go!”

The driver sped up even more, just as a slick coating of ice quickly spread across the pavement in front of them, causing the limousine to lose traction and skid out of control. The vehicle crashed through the chain link fence surrounding the power station and slammed into the base of an electrical transformer, knocking both Petrovich and his driver out on impact.

As the damaged transformer threw off sparks of electricity, the cougar that had spooked Petrovich and his driver crept over the vehicle before leaping to the ground. Upon landing, it began to transform, becoming a young woman in her late teens with bobbed red hair wearing a black and purple minidress, purple ribbons in her hair, low purple boots, and a collar-like studded leather choker with a heart-shaped locket. She sighed in satisfaction as she rose to her feet upon resuming her human form, her irises briefly flashing with blue-purple light as she opened her eyes with a grin.

As the girl strode away from the crashed limousine, the sheet of ice that had covered the pavement pulled in itself, rising into a quasi-humanoid shape before becoming a young man of the same age as the girl. He had dark reddish-blond hair and wore a plaid purple long-sleeved shirt over a gray crew-neck shirt and gray pants with purple high-tops. Like the girl, his irises momentarily flashed with blue-purple light after he assumed human form.

“We did it,” smirked the girl, Jayna. Like her companion, her features had a decidedly elfish look to them.

“Did you see that guy’s face?” was her twin brother Zan’s enthusiastic response.

“Pretty slick, Z,” Jayna complimented him as she turned around and the two of them walked back toward the limousine.

“Way to go aggro, J,” Zan replied.

“Once the police see this, they’ll be off our backs for your genius cops-in-a-box idea,” his sister stated.

“Hey, they were undercover,” was Zan’s defense.

“Think we should tie him up?” Jayna asked as Zan checked out the limousine.

“No, he’s out cold,” her brother replied after looking in the limo’s left rear window. “Let’s just get some shots to upload.”

“Okay,” Jayna acquiesced as she pulled out her cellphone, which was decorated with colored sequins in the shape of a laughing blue monkey’s face.

As she activated the phone’s camera function and aimed it at the limo, Zan clambered on top of the vehicle to stand on its roof.

“What are you doing? You’re in the shot,” Jayna protested. “This is our evidence.”

“Gotta give props to the man,” Zan explained as he produced a can of spray paint, shaking it up before crouching and spraying a quick, crude version of the House of El’s “S”-shield in white on the limo’s roof as Jayna took a picture with her phone.

“Come on, Zan,” she urged. “Let’s fly.”

Just then the damaged transformer blew up, and Zan leapt off the car to land next to his sister, the two of them flinching back as the transformer fell over onto the hood of the limousine.

“Whoa,” the two teenagers chorused as all of the lights around them went out due to the failure of the electrical grid caused by the transformer’s destruction, bringing activity all over Metropolis to a grinding halt.

* * * * *

[Kirk]

Ah, the Wonder Twins have arrived. I've never really cared for them although they're a little more tolerable here. The more interesting mystery here is Lois's flashback to her intimate times with Clark. His entire persona is different here. He has his powers under the red sun, he seems to be wearing a red kryptonite ring, and he's wearing a different crest. Since he's with Lois here and wearing that ring, I think it's quite likely that Lana is dead. She probably died trying to stop Zod in this hellish future. Another aspect of this'll episode is Lois discovering Clark's secret by accident. Personally, I think he should tell her. It would be for the best in the long run anyway.

[Nick of kandor]

Kirk, your post does make a lot of sense but I sincerely hope that Lana is not dead, although I would be very proud of her for at least attempting to stop Zod. Secondly, as I stated in my earlier post I also sincerely hope that Clark DOES NOT!! get involved with Lois because both Lana/Clana mean the world to me!!

[Kirk]

Clark and Lana

I don't think we have anything to worry about. It seems that in this case, Clark only turned to Lois since Lana was probably dead. He's also wearing a ring which may contain red kryptonite. He probably turned to Lois only as a way to cope over losing Lana. I admire and respect Lois, but I agree that Lana always seemed to be a better companion for him. We'll see how this happens as the story unfolds.

[Nick of kandor]

Thanks Kirk, I really appreciate your optimism and I will also admit that I also admire/respect Lois due to her caring nature and her willingness to sacrifice herself to save billions of innocent lives. These are traits which I greatly see in both her and Lana. Finally, Clark being under the influence of red kryptonite makes sense in regards to why he would be with Lois in this dark future.

[carolus]

“Two hours to get here with the monorail down,” Lois complained when she and Clark arrived at the media circus that had grown around the damaged power station the next morning. “Chalk another one up to the blundering Blur. He may have stopped a diamond heist, but his blackout belly flop has crippled Metropolis.”

Through his expression was outwardly neutral, privately Clark was just as upset as Lois was, but for different reasons. He and Lana had been on patrol when the blackout occurred, and though Lana had been on the scene within seconds of the power going out, she had found no trace of whoever was responsible. The only living thing she’d seen in the area was a seagull flying away.

They’d spent the rest of the night dealing with accidents arising from the blackout, and as a result Clark had barely made it back to the farm to shower and change for work. The situation with this imitator was more serious now. Innocent people had gotten hurt because of their carelessness.

“And the scavengers have already started circling,” Lois commented as they walked past a tall, distinguished-looking man in his forties with dark brownish-blond hair who was talking to a bunch of TV reporters. “District Attorney Ray Sacks. My pet research project.”

“Since when is a veteran D.A. newsworthy?” Clark questioned as they walked past Sacks and the reporters gathered around him.

“Since his Christmas card roster reads like a Sopranos hit list,” Lois replied, turning around to walk backward to glare in Sacks’ direction.

“I call him ‘Saxophone’ cause he loves to blow his own horn,” she continued, deliberately raising her voice on the “blow his own horn” part as she aimed the comment at the D.A.

“Susan, I’m not here because I’m running for mayor,” Sacks refuted in a response to a question from the reporter from KJBT. “I’m here because I think it’s a travesty that this city has been brought to its knees by the Blur.”

“But you can’t deny the benefits that the Blur has brought to the citizens of Metropolis,” the reporter pointed out.

Turning his attention away from Sacks’ mini-conference, Clark followed Lois to where she stood gazing at the crudely spray painted symbol on the roof of the crashed limousine. “Lois, I can’t help but think that there’s more to this story than people are seeing.”

“I think it’s pretty obvious,” Lois replied, not taking her eyes off the symbol. “Either the Blur has hit a quarter-life crisis, or his ego has gotten really supersized.”

“And you’re sure he didn’t try to call you and explain himself?” Clark pressed.

“He called. I didn’t pick up,” Lois admitted with a touch of pride in her voice as she turned to face him. Then something occurred to her, and she smiled as she asked, “Since when did you become the Blur’s big defender?”

Clark inwardly cursed. Making comments like could inadvertently lead Lois to the truth behind the Blur’s identity. Instead he decided to go with logic. Waving in the direction of the symbol painted on the limo, he said, “I just think it’s lazy and unprofessional to blame the Blur for this when the only connection is a symbol that practically everyone in Metropolis has seen before. We’ve encountered a lot of meteor-infected people who could’ve pulled this off if they decided to play vigilante.”

He went on say, “Besides, whoever the Blur is, I don’t think he deserves the silent treatment just because he’s been out there saving people.”

True to form, Lois completely blew his insight off. “Of course you would say that, Clark. You’re a guy,” she said, disgusted. “And the Blur can’t expect me to be his beck-and-call girl after weeks of no contact.”

A dozen feet away a city utility worker said, “That’s a frequency check. Stand by. Line test,” as he and his crew worked to repair the damaged power station. Seeing him out of the corner of her eye, Lois smiled, saying, “I spy with my little eye a potential witness.”

As Lois set off to question the workers, Clark was about to call after her when his attention was caught by something -- the repeated sound of an electronic imitation of a monkey chattering. Homing in the source of the sound, he determined that it seemed to be coming from the downed transformer in front of Ivan Petrovich’s limousine.

Walking over to the transformer, Clark quickly glanced around to make no one was watching while he crouched and lifted the transformer off the concrete with one hand, then picked up the ringing silver sequined cellphone that had been under it. He briefly studied the cartoonish image detailed of a laughing blue monkey’s face on the back of the phone before turning over it to look at the keypad. Maybe if he checked the phone’s call log, he could find a lead on his imposter.

* * * * *

“I totally tanked this one,” Zan sighed as he stood gazing at a large white Blur symbol painted on a wall of the second-floor apartment that he shared with Jayna in Metropolis. All they’d wanted to do was make up for their earlier mistakes, but they’d fouled things up even more, and now the Blur was being vilified in the press for the blackout.

He should have come up with something better than the stunt with the ice slick, or at least waited until Petrovich’s limo was clear of the power station.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Jayna chided him, wringing her hands as she stepped through the beaded curtain that separated her bedroom from the rest of the apartment. “You’re not the one who lost her phone.”

“Are you sure you don’t have it?” Zan questioned as he turned and walked over to his sister.

“I must have dropped it back at the power plant,” she theorized.

“I know I sort of pulled you into this, but… maybe we’re just not hero material,” Zan admitted.

In fact, he knew he really couldn’t have done anything without Jayna in the first place, as they couldn’t take their alternate forms without making physical contact with each other. Plus he’d been inspired by the news that had cropped up a few weeks ago about the Blur having a partner.

Suddenly the two of them froze at the sound of Zan’s phone ringing with the sound of their customized monkey-chatter ringtone. Fishing his phone from his pocket, the young man took one look at the caller ID before telling his sister with a hint of consternation, “It’s you, J.”

“What?” Jayna replied, alarmed. Taking a look at the screen of Zan’s phone to confirm that the incoming call was indeed being made from her phone, she said, “This can’t be good.”

Hitting the “ignore” button on his phone and slipping it back into his pocket, Zan began to panic as he remembered the strange woman in green and white who had flown out of the night sky to land at the power plant mere seconds after the two of them had shapeshifted to make their escapes. At the time he could’ve sworn the woman was eyeballing him as he tried to unobtrusively flow away in the form of a large puddle of water.

“What if someone’s already on to us?” Zan questioned. If the woman from last night was Dynamo as he’d suspected, then it was probably the Blur that had found Jayna’s phone, and he couldn’t be happy about the bad press he’d been getting thanks to them. “What do we do?”

“Time to motor,” Jayna quickly decided as she raised her right hand in a fist.

Zan did likewise, the two of them saying, “Powers, activate,” as they brought their hands together in the fist bump that they traditionally used to initiate their transformations -- only they did it a few seconds too late. Clark had already homed in on the sound of Zan’s ringtone with his super-hearing.

When he realized whatever powers they had were apparently triggered by physical contact with each other, similar to the albino twins that had helped Lee take he, Lana, and his parents hostage during the incident the summer after high school graduation, he arrived at the apartment in his black Blur outfit at superspeed, interposing his flat hand between the twins’ fists.

The violet light that had begun to coruscate around the twins’ extended fists as they tried to make contact with each other suddenly exploded in a blinding burst of light as Clark intervened, and Zan and Jayna were thrown against opposite walls by the feedback created by his interference. An instant later the two of them fell to the floor, unconscious.

Clark had been a bit irked when he came looking for his imitators, but his expression softened a bit as he studied Zan and Jayna, then looked over at where his family crest was painted on their wall. They were just kids, really.

Still, someone had to steer these two right, and with the damage to the city’s power grid he didn’t have time to work with them right now. But he knew someone who did.

* * * * *

“Interesting,” Jor-El said a few hours later as he pored over various documents in Lana’s office at the Isis Foundation while the young woman checked the computerized files on metahumans that she maintained independent of Watchtower.

Jor-El was particularly intrigued by the statements of the undercover police officers that Zan and Jayna had mistakenly abducted. According to their accounts, they had been waiting for Adrian Pope’s men when they were beset by a sudden, extremely localized blizzard and then assaulted by a kangaroo before being bound, crated, and shipped to the Daily Planet.

“I believe I may have a theory as to the origins of these youngsters’ abilities,” the Kryptonian continued. “Particularly in light of Kal-El’s testimony that they apparently require physical contact with each other to employ them.”

“You’ve seen something like this before?” Lana asked, turning in her chair to face Jor-El.

“It would be more accurate to say that I have read about it, as part of my studies in exobiology in my youth on Krypton,” the Kryptonian corrected. “There is a planet named Exxor which exists several galaxies away from Earth. In its antiquity it was inhabited by two sentient races, both humanoid.

“The first race possessed violet eyes and pointed ears, which made them rather similar in appearance to the popular human of elves. The second, while outwardly identical to their fellow Exxorians, were metamorphs with the ability to take on the forms of animals or elemental matter like water, earth, air, or fire,” Jor-El continued. “Eventually the two groups interbred to the degree point that the metamorphs appeared to vanish from Exxor, with only a few children in a million exhibiting their ancestors’ talent for shapeshifting. Due to the intricacies of Exxorian genetics, such talents were exhibited more often by twins than by single births.”

“Wait a minute,” Lana said, her eyes widening. “Are you saying that these kids are aliens?”

“Not precisely,” Jor-El replied. “From what I recall, Exxor was devastated more than a millennium ago by an extremely virulent pandemic which forced the survivors to flee to many other worlds, including Earth. These teenagers that have taken to imitating Kal-El’s exploits are likely the result of the chance mating of two humans with distant Exxorian ancestry whose combined genetic material granted their children the ability to change shape.”

“My God,” Lana murmured as she considered the implications of Jor-El’s theory. “To think, what those kids must’ve gone through after they got their powers… At least Clark had an explanation for his when Jonathan and Martha told him how they found him.”

That statement offered Jor-El the opportunity to obtain Lana’s perspective on how his son had coped with the emergence of his abilities. “When was it that you first saw evidence of Kal-El’s abilities?”

Lana thought about that for a few moments before answering, “There were always hints that there was more to Clark, going back to when we were kids. He’d enter or leave a room so fast that no one saw him come or go, he was always doing farmwork by himself that should’ve taken two grown men, that kind of thing.

“But the first time had to be to when we were about six,” she reminisced. “An older boy named Brad Wilson was bullying a lot of the younger kids, and he made the mistake of picking on Clark’s best friend, Pete Ross. I didn’t actually see what happened, but I saw what was left of a door after Clark apparently shoved Brad through it. When I asked him about it a few years ago, he told me he’d actually thrown Brad through the door.”

“Then he acquired the habit of using his abilities to help others at an early age,” Jor-El surmised with pride.

Lana nodded. “He was always subtle about it, but even before he became the Blur, he got a reputation for helping people. Chloe and I would both have died years ago if Clark hadn’t been around to stop those meteor-infected people who abused their abilities.”

“And what of your own abilities?” Jor-El asked. “Are they related to the meteor showers?”

“No,” Lana shook her head. “Clark and I used to know a man named Lex Luthor. They became friends after Clark saved Lex’s life about eight years ago, but I guess Lex saw a little too much at the time. It turned out that he was investigating Clark behind his back, trying to covertly discover the truth about him. Eventually Clark ended their friendship after Lex went too far and arranged the escape of a few meteor-infected criminals from Belle Reve as a test of Clark’s powers.”

Not that Clark had told her at the time that he thought Lex was behind it, other than his comment about saying goodbye to an old friend when he’d showed up with a bloody lip at her apartment above the Talon the night that they had first made love. If he had, she wouldn’t have gotten involved with Lex.

“Lex wasn’t just interested in Clark, though. He was interested in the meteor-infected as well, and after Zod’s disciples landed in the second meteor shower, he started experimenting on the meteor-infected to try and create his own army of super-soldiers in the hopes of averting what he believed was an imminent alien invasion,” she continued, skipping over her relationship with Lex. “Eventually he came to believe that Clark was the vanguard of that invasion, and when he found the Orb, he tried to use it against Clark, crippling himself in the process.

“After that he funneled his research into creating an implantable nanotech ‘suit’ called Prometheus that could grant the wearer superhuman abilities by grafting alien DNA under their skin. I managed to convince Dr. Edward Groll, the chief scientist on the project, to use me as a ‘test subject’ for the suit before we destroyed Lex’s research.” Lana smiled a bit before revealing, “It wasn’t that hard to do, really. Groll was already wary of Lex’s tendency to steer LuthorCorp’s scientific research toward military purposes.”

“But… where did you obtain alien genetic material for this suit?” Jor-El asked, puzzled.

“That’s a little more complicated,” Lana admitted. “When Zod escaped from the Phantom Zone a few years ago and possessed Lex, the first thing he did was exile Clark there. Fortunately, you’d apparently sent your lab assistant, a woman named Raya, into the Zone for her own survival before Krypton was destroyed. She found Clark and helped him escape the Zone. Unfortunately, a few prisoners escaped with her and Clark.”

“Raya,” Jor-El repeated, recognizing the name. “That would be Nor-Kan’s daughter. He was my astrophysics professor at the Science Academy. Does she still live?”

Lana shook her head. “She died saving Clark from an escapee named Baern not long after that. But Lex’s scientists found her body after Clark buried it in the Arctic and used her DNA for the Prometheus suit.”

“Thus granting you the abilities of a Kryptonian,” Jor-El concluded. “Have there been any negative side effects?”

“Not that I’ve noticed,” Lana replied. “But I get periodic checkups from Dr. Groll to make sure.”

Changing the subject, she said, “I hope Chloe can talk some sense into those kids.”

“One may hope so,” Jor-El agreed.

* * * * *

It was mid-afternoon when Zan and Jayna woke up on the floor of Watchtower, almost six hours after they’d been knocked out at their apartment.

“Whoa,” Zan said, grabbing his head with his left hand as he shook off the remainder of a headache induced by the psychic feedback from their interrupted attempt to use their powers. “What the--?”

“Where are we?” a bewildered Jayna asked, propping herself up on her elbows as she took in their unfamiliar surroundings.

“How did we even get here?” she went on to ask as the two of them jumped to their feet.

“It had to have been the Blur,” an excited Zan concluded.

“No,” Jayna refuted, rolling her eyes. “Come on, Z, there’s no way.”

“Think about it,” Zan urged as he circled around his sister. “Who else could have stopped us?”

Looking about them at the interior of Watchtower, he concluded, “This is the Blur’s lair.”

“He doesn’t have a lair,” Jayna argued in exasperation, wishing that her brother hadn’t read so many comic books when they were younger.

“I’m telling you, this tech is definitely off the grid,” Zan declared, gesturing at all of the computer equipment in Watchtower. Pulling his phone from his pocket, he said, “Wait until I tweet everybody about this.”

“That’s not gonna happen,” a female voice interjected, and the twins looked up from Zan’s phone to see the silhouette of an unfamiliar woman standing in front of the large circular stained glass window. “Welcome to Watchtower.”

Stepping forward so that Zan and Jayna could see her face, Chloe sternly warned them, “And if you chat one word about what you see in here, I will vaporize your Twitter accounts, Facebook pages -- every trace of your virtual existence will be obliterated.”

“Holy hacking,” Jayna gasped as she and her brother glanced at each other in shock before looking back at Chloe. “You can do that?”

She proceeded to hurriedly promise Chloe, “Our tweets are totally sealed.”

“Code of silence, all the way,” Zan agreed with a hasty smile as he put his phone away.

“So… who are you?” Jayna tentatively asked Chloe.

“Oh, it’s the Blur’s sidekick,” was Zan’s conclusion.

“We don’t know that,” Jayna whispered to him harshly.

“Not exactly,” Chloe replied. “I’m doing pro bono for the Blur and keeping an eye on you two.”

“Wait, you’re not gonna hand us over to the cops, are you?” Jayna asked with a touch of worry.

“We just wanted to help -- you know, fuel the Blur’s legend,” Zan asserted.

“Okay, about the helping. Right idea, wrong execution,” Chloe commented as she walked forward to stand face to face with the two teens.

“Look, I’ve been where you guys are. I get it,” she empathized. “You’re just a couple of mega-fans who really wanna make a difference.”

The blonde’s voice and expression turned more stern as she informed them, “But you are single-handedly destroying what the Blur stands for.”

Taking Chloe’s admonition in, Jayna meekly admitted, “We know we’ve… made some mistakes.”

“How can we make up for what we’ve done?” Zan asked.

Chloe considered his question for a moment, remembering when her blunders had almost destroyed the friendship that she had with Clark. She answered simply, “You just wait for the right moment. You’ll know.”

“So, the Blur trusts you, right?” Jayna ventured. “I mean, how do you always know the right thing to do?”

“You don’t,” Chloe admitted. “And neither does he.”

She went on to say, “But you stick around a hero long enough and you get your share at saving him. Sometimes even from himself.”

The twins smiled at that, relieved to have been given a second chance.

* * * * *

Later, after dark had fallen, Lois was at her desk in the basement of the Daily Planet, doggedly pecking at the keys of an old-fashioned mechanical typewriter by candlelight.

“Oh, man,” she said in dismay as she hit another wrong key, then ripped the sheet of paper out of the typewriter and crumpled it up before tossing the wadded-up paper next into a pile of a dozen others.

“I don’t know how old-school reporters broke a story without breaking somebody’s neck,” she groused as she inserted another sheet of paper into the typewriter.

Suddenly, the lights in the building came back on, to the applause of many.

Sighing in relief, Lois reached out and touched the screen of her now-operational computer, saying, “I will never take you for granted again, I swear.”

Just then, her phone started playing “Holding Out For A Hero,” indicating that it was another call from the Blur.

Sighing as she picked up her phone and hit the “answer” button, Lois spoke into the phone, saying, “I suppose you were the one who gave us that little reboot.”

“In a way, the city going dark was my fault,” Clark reluctantly admitted, a bit irritated by Lois’ condescending tone of voice as he stood talking on his voice-modulated burner phone in his Blur outfit atop his favorite perch in Metropolis a few blocks from the Daily Planet. He and Lana should’ve picked up on the twins’ clumsy attempts at playing hero before it got this bad. “Least I could do was put things right.”

“You know, just because you threw a few switches doesn’t make up for all your bonehead moves lately,” Lois criticized.

“Lois… I wasn’t the one behind the saves,” she heard the Blur say.

“The Blur has an impostor nipping at his heels?” Lois replied in disbelief. “How did you let that happen?

“Especially when you have this ‘Dynamo’ chick backing you up,” she added, before theorizing, “Unless she fumbled things up and you’re just covering for her.”

“It’s not like that,” Clark replied on his end, stung by Lois’ inadvertent criticism of Lana. “They were just a couple of misguided fans. I’m not turning them over to the D.A.”

Shaking her head, Lois told her mysterious caller, “Without proof, nobody’s gonna buy the ‘misguided fans’ angle. You’re risking a lot to protect some feckless meteor freaks.”

“Maybe,” Clark said into his phone. Given his father’s theory on the twins’ possible extraterrestrial ancestry, he wasn’t about to risk their safety by exposing them. “But doesn’t everybody deserve a second chance?”

Angered by the Blur’s covert reference to how she’d been ignoring his calls since the previous morning, Lois bolted up from her chair.

“Oh, you wanna go there?” she spat, angrily pacing across the bullpen. “Let me tell you something about second chances, buddy. There’s a way you treat a woman. It’s called respect.”

* * * * *

“So how did you guys end up on the street?” Chloe asked Jayna over at Watchtower as she handed the younger girl a cup of coffee.

Repressing the painful memory of how their widowed father had thrown them out after their powers first manifested when they were ten, Jayna just said, “Oh, for a long time now we’ve only had each other, so…”

“Nobody really bought us as transfer students from Sweden,” Zan elaborated, chuckling a bit as he recalled how the two of them had called themselves Johann and Joanna Fleming back when they’d tried to enroll in middle school in Gotham before deciding to make their way to Metropolis.

And it was a good thing that they had, he thought, considering all the psychos that had starting cropping up in Gotham about that time. Right before they left, a nutcase named Julian Gregory Day -- nicknamed “the Calendar Killer” by the press for the horrendous crimes that he perpetrated on holidays -- had torched a hospital maternity ward in his twisted tribute to Labor Day.

As she turned at the sound of Zan’s voice and saw that he was fiddling with one of her computers, Chloe’s eyes widened as she hurried over to stop him.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. That taps into cell phone frequencies,” she warned him. “Just don’t touch anything, okay?”

“Sorry,” Zan replied, chastened as he moved away from the computer.

Unknown to him, that computer had specifically been to set up to monitor the burner phone that Clark used as the Blur -- and Zan had accidentally remotely deactivated its voice modulator.

* * * * *

“Listen, just because you’re some fancy hero--” Clark heard Lois rant.

“Lois, I tried,” the Kryptonian said, now tired of the brunette’s self-important tirade.

But Lois wasn’t finished. “There is no ‘try,’ Skywalker. You have superpowers. Why don’t you pick up a phone?”

Having nearly reached his limit, Clark said, “Lois…”

On her end, Lois heard the Blur’s voice become momentarily distorted as he said, “…you’re just gonna have to do something you’ve had trouble with lately.”

Then the Blur’s voice was crystal-clear as he finished, “You’re gonna have to trust me.”

His voice was a different but very familiar one that she never would’ve expected to hear.

After the Blur hung up, Lois’ expression was one of shock as she slowly lowered her phone from her ear, whispering, “Smallville?”

Clark was the Blur?

* * * * *

[Nick of kandor]

Well Carolus, another awesome update. It was great that both Clark and Chloe got to talk some sense into the Wonder Twins. I especially enjoyed the bit with Lana and Jor-El where they talk about Clark and how Jor-El asks Lana about how she first became aware of his powers. I'm a little surprised that Lana didn't mention that she first saw them on the day of her and Lex's wedding when she trapped Chloe down in the wine cellar at Luthor mansion. Finally, I wonder how Clark is going to explain/cover up about him being the Blur. We'll just have to wait and see and again awesome update!

[carolus]

Sorry that I haven't posted anything lately; the next section is proceeding a bit slowly between work and new ideas. But I should have something out by next Tuesday or Wednesday.

[Nick of kandor]

That's quite alright Carolus, I completely understand especially with a hectic schedule. I will check back again on Tuesday/Wednesday for this next section. Finally, I want you to know that I appreciate that you take time out of your schedule to write these episodes. They really do help to keep clana alive. God bless you!!

[carolus]

The next morning at the Kent farm, Clark and Lana were watching the morning newscast as they ate breakfast before going to Metropolis.

“Last night was a whirlwind of happy endings as Metropolis’ Blur worked overtime to bring the city out of the darkness and into the light,” the anchorwoman reported as Clark set his coffee down and went to get the morning edition of the Daily Planet.

When he opened the kitchen door, the Kryptonian found Lois standing on their porch. She was just straightening up with the folded newspaper in her hand, having bent over to pick it up.

“Lois. I didn’t realize you were filling in for the paperboy,” Clark commented dryly to hide his surprise at seeing her on his doorstep at seven in the morning.

Lois emitted a nervous chuckle, then cleared her throat.

“Ahem. You look pretty chipper,” she observed before asking, “Busy night?”

Noticing that Lana looked rather peeved at the risqué tone of Lois’ inquiry, Clark frowned as he replied, “I really don’t think that’s any of your business, Lois.”

Glancing at her coworker’s girlfriend, Lois regretted her covert reference to the Blur’s activities. If Clark really was the Blur, then Lana could be the Blur’s mysterious partner, Dynamo, and she didn’t need a repeat of when the younger woman had kicked her through Grant Gabriel’s office door two years ago.

Deciding to change the subject, she stated, “My story about the Blur made it above the fold,” as she handed Clark the newspaper, adding, “I think he’d be pretty happy that I included his side of the story,” as the Kryptonian scanned the article.

Keeping his tone of voice neutral, Clark replied, “So you finally heard from him,” as he looked up from the headline, which read: BLUR SAVES CITY FROM BLACKOUT.

“Yeah,” Lois admitted as she stepped past Clark into the house. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about my carbon footprint lately, and I figured, you know, we could start carpooling.”

Turning to face the Kryptonian, she nervously added, “I thought, you know, the ride would give us a chance to get past the whole ‘fight and run’ of it all and get to know each other better.”

“Better?” Clark replied skeptically. “Lois, you tell me the color of your underwear every day -- which is more than I need to know. Besides, Lana and I already carpool.”

Undeterred, Lois said, “Then I can join in. I mean, like the old saying goes, the more, the merrier, right?”

“Actually, in this case I think the appropriate saying would be ‘two is company, three is a crowd,’” Lana commented frostily as she came into the kitchen.

Realizing that she was treading on thin ice here, Lois faked a smile as she said, “I hope you didn’t misunderstand all the Blur-bashing that I did yesterday. Deep down, I never doubted him.”

“Well, I’m sure that the Blur would be happy to learn that your faith in him never wavered,” Clark replied, though his tone of voice and his expression clearly said that he wasn’t at all placated by her words.

Wincing slightly at the undercurrent of resentment in her colleague’s voice, Lois commented, “You know, he never did tell me why he didn’t call me back.”

“Maybe he was simply too busy actually helping people to shore up one self-absorbed reporter’s ego,” Lana interjected, leaving no room for doubt who she was referring to as she folded her arms across her chest and glared at Lois.

She had never supported Clark calling Lois as the Blur after the whole Stiletto fiasco, and it hadn’t helped that the black kryptonite-spawned Kal-El had continued the habit while they were buried after the battle with Doomsday.

“Okay, guys, I admit I rushed to judgment because the Blur went silent on me,” Lois conceded, spreading her hands. “But this morning I woke up and saw things clearly for the first time.”

Including the fact that Clark wasn’t the simple farm boy that she’d taken him to be when they met five years ago. But before she could say more, her attention was grabbed by the words of the reporter on the TV newcast: “In breaking news, Metropolis’ D.A. has called out the Blur.”

As the three of them turned to look at the TV, they could see Ray Sacks’ televised image as he said, “No one has the right to take the law into their own hands. Not you, not me, not even the Blur.”

Fine words from a guy who suffers a lot of really conveniently timed bad luck with his cases against certain crime figures, Lois contemptuously thought, but Sacks wasn’t done.

“Now, because of the damage he has caused this city, I am asking the Blur to come out of the shadows, to stop this… vigilante behavior, and agree to work hand-in-hand with our law enforcement.” The district attorney went on to say, “Now, I will be holding a press conference later this afternoon. At that time I will ask the Blur -- and anyone who may be helping him -- to show themselves, and take responsibility for their actions.”

Seeing the looks of concern on Clark and Lana’s faces as they turned away from the TV, Lois hurriedly said, “You know, I just remembered an appointment in Metropolis that I really have to get to. I’ll see you later, Clark.”

“Bye,” Clark replied as Lois hurried out the kitchen door.

* * * * *

Barging into her therapist’s office, Lois began, “Dr. Evans--” but stopped when she saw a nervous, mousy-looking young woman practically crouching in the large armchair situated across from Dr. Evans’ desk.

Deciding that she couldn’t wait until this girl’s time with the doctor was up, Lois strode up to her and said, “I’m going to save you a lot of time and money, okay?”

Leaning close to the girl, Lois confidently told her, “It’s all your parents’ fault.”

Clapping her hand over her mouth as she burst into tears, the girl bolted out of the chair and fled, leaving Lois alone in the room. A few moments later Dr. Evans entered the room, a bit perplexed to find Lois there instead of the patient that had been scheduled as her first appointment of the day.

“Where’s Marjorie?” she inquired.

“Oh, she had to run,” Lois commented from where she sat on the couch. “Family issues.”

Raising an eyebrow at Lois’ explanation, the therapist set her shoulder bag on her desk and waited for the reporter to speak her mind.

“You think you’re good at this head-shrinking stuff, but thanks to you, my head is about to explode, and I don’t know what to do,” Lois complained as she jumped to her feet.

Walking forward and planting her hands on Dr. Evans, she told the therapist, “I focused on the man in my dreams and now I found out that my mystery caller and Clark are the same person.”

“The same?” Dr. Evans repeated skeptically.

“It’s unbelievable,” Lois said, turning away from the desk. “Up until today, he couldn’t lie his way out of a speeding ticket…”

Pacing back over to the large armchair, the brunette rested her elbows on its back. Looking back at Dr. Evans, she was completely flustered as she disbelievingly finished, “…and now he can hold down an alter ego?”

“Lois, take a step back,” Dr. Evans advised. “What do you think is more likely? That your mysterious caller and Clark are the same man… or that you’re trying to make them one person in order to create your dream man?

“Perhaps even to justify trying to separate him from the girlfriend of his that you’ve mentioned before… Lana Lang?” she theorized.

“Clark’s a complete doormat when it comes to Lana,” Lois said, rankled by the therapist’s suggestion. “They break up for whatever reason, and she shacks up with his ex-best friend Lex Luthor, the richest scumbag in Metropolis. She gets knocked up, marries Lex, then after she loses the baby, comes to her senses and leaves Lex for Clark, she plays happy homemaker for a while before ending up in the psych ward for a few months.

“When she wakes up, she skips town without actually talking to Clark, and I have to watch him mope about her for the next six months. Then he just takes her back practically the second that she blows back into town, like nothing happened. I’m not even gonna get into how he never gave my cousin Chloe a chance, when she was crazy about him for years.”

Returning to the first part of Dr. Evans’ question, Lois said, “But the Blur and Clark aren’t that different, really. My mysterious caller is brave and selfless, and so is Clark… in his own way.”

Turning away from the therapist, she walked over to the window between the couch and the armchair and looked out at the city, saying, “I can’t believe how difficult it must have been for him to keep his secret all this time.”

“So what do you want to do?” Dr. Evans asked.

Sitting down on the couch, Lois replied, “I just wanna tell him that it doesn’t matter to me. That he’s still my friend.”

Thinking the situation over, the brunette went on to admit, “But… maybe coming clean isn’t the best idea either.”

She continued, saying, “Right now Clark has this really big decision to make. And more than anything, I just wanna help.”

Lois’ voice was almost a whisper as she said, “But I’m not sure how.”

Remembering Ray Sacks’ televised challenge to the Blur -- to Clark -- the brunette chuckled as the answer hit her. “Wait. I know what I have to do.”

Jumping up from the couch, she impulsively hugged Dr. Evans, saying, “Thanks, doc. You’re a gem,” before heading toward the door with the parting comment, “There’s gotta be something to this therapy stuff.”

This had to be one of the shortest and most unusual therapy sessions in her experience, Dr. Evans thought, a bemused half-smile on her face as she turned to watch Lois go.

* * * * *

Elsewhere in Metropolis, Clark was lost in thought as he walked down the sidewalk at a normal human pace, taking just enough notice of his surroundings to avoid colliding with other pedestrians or walking into traffic. As such, he made it relatively easy for Chloe to triangulate his position using the GPS in his cell phone.

“Clark, hey,” she called out, and Clark stopped on the street corner just outside the Metro Coffee Stop.

Turning toward the sound of Chloe’s voice, the Kryptonian saw she and Jor-El hurrying up the sidewalk toward him.

“Don’t worry,” the blonde reassured him as the three of them fell into step, heading down the sidewalk with Chloe on Clark’s right and Jor-El on his left. “The Twittering twosome have sung their last song. As we speak, they’re at Watchtower, taking down the Blur’s blog.”

“Having read of similar trends on other worlds, I find the rapid proliferation of social media in this society fascinating,” Jor-El commented, adding the qualifier, “Even if they are rather prone to misuse.”

Clark nodded, remembering how Molly Griggs’ hypnotic emails had temporarily brainwashed he, Lana, and his parents into trying to kill Chloe about six years ago.

Changing the subject, he asked, “Have you seen today’s news?”

“Don’t tell me you’re taking that blowhard seriously, Clark,” was Chloe’s lighthearted response to the Kryptonian’s grim tone. “You know he’s just gunning for the mayor’s office.”

Seeing the look of grim resignation on her friend’s face, the blonde worriedly realized, “You are, aren’t you?”

She went on ask him, “Clark, why? The last time you had a coming-out party, it was a disaster. What changed?”

Before Clark could answer, Jor-El interjected, “Pardon me, but what do you mean, ‘coming-out party’?”

Sighing, Clark told his father, “There was a meteor-infected journalist named Linda Lake who discovered my secret a few years ago. Last January she threatened to publish it if I didn’t give her exclusive accounts of all of my saves.”

Pausing briefly, he continued, saying, “So I went to the press myself and revealed myself to the world. My powers, the fact that I’m from Krypton… everything. Linda retaliated by putting the worst spin on my activities on Earth, triggering the authorities to launch a manhunt against me.”

“But… your identity as the Blur seems to be quite secret now,” Jor-El observed, confused. “What happened between then and now?”

“Fortunately, I had a piece of technology that was given to me by some fans of mine from the 31^st century,” Clark answered. “I used it to go back in time and stop Linda Lake from becoming a threat to my identity.”

Stopping as he turned to face Chloe, the Kryptonian said, “And to answer your question, Chloe, I’ve changed. I’m wearing my family’s shield now.

“Our shield,” Clark continued, looking at Jor-El as he put his hand on his own chest, where the white insignia lay on the black T-shirt that he wore beneath his blue shirt and striped red tie. “And I’ve worked hard to give people a symbol of hope -- something that they can believe in, that will inspire them. I am the shield.”

“Your wish to honor our family is commendable, my son, but this is not the way,” Jor-El cautioned him.

“He’s right, Clark,” Chloe concurred. “If you sacrifice yourself, there is no shield.”

“I won’t just do nothing while the D.A. drags down our family crest and everything that it stands for,” Clark protested.

“That’s exactly what you have to do. I’m sorry,” Chloe apologized. “Look, this guy is gonna call you a menace and a coward and probably a threat to the city, and you have to let people believe his lies… at least for now.”

“She is right, Kal-El,” Jor-El agreed. “The House of El lives on through you and through Kara, not our shield. And you should consider something else.

“If you reveal yourself to the humans -- especially your origins -- it will not merely be the human authorities that you will have to contend with,” the older Kryptonian cautioned. “Zod and his soldiers would doubtlessly take any action as a pretext to target your human associates as well.”

While Clark considered the wisdom of his father’s advice, someone nearby was giving their own twist on the old wish, “Oh, to be a fly on the wall!”

Only in this case, they were disguised as a ladybug crawling over the top of a nearby parking meter. As Clark, Chloe, and Jor-El parted ways, the ladybug in question flew off, heading toward Watchtower.

* * * * *

Over in the sparsely furnished converted office of the abandoned warehouse that Major Zod had appropriated for use as his nominal base of operations in Metropolis, the major sat at his desk, scanning the digitized copies of the Smallville High yearbook for the face of a boy who could conceivably be Jor-El and Lara’s son. He was perusing the list of seniors in the 2004-2005 edition when he came across a very familiar face.

“There you are,” he murmured in triumph as he studied the photograph labeled “Clark Kent.” The young man pictured was a near-twin of Jor-El in his adolescence.

Running a quick search through the local newspapers for mentions of Clark Kent, Zod smiled with grim satisfaction as he found the 2002 article of the Smallville Ledger detailing how Clark had found a Native American cave with mysterious symbols in it -- symbols that he recognized from the newspaper sketch as Kryptonian in origin.

Looking up from his computer monitor, Zod called out to the female soldier stationed at the door. “Lieutenant.”

“Yes, Major?” Faora replied.

“Come see this,” the major beckoned. “I believe I have identified Jor-El’s son.”

Faora marched across the room to stand next to and slightly behind Zod, looking over his shoulder at the computer screen.

“Find out everything that you can about this ‘Clark Kent,’” Zod ordered, his lip curling slightly in disdain at the sound of the younger Kryptonian’s human-given name. “Where he lives, where he works, and who he associates with.”

“And once we have, major?” Faora queried. “Do we approach him?”

“Not yet,” Zod replied. Recalling the news broadcast that he had seen that morning, he added, “But we may need to deal with this human, Ray Sacks, if Jor-El’s son does not.”

“Yes, major,” Faora nodded.

* * * * *

[Kirk]

I see Lois is now trying to make it up to Clark. While she should be eating some humble pie, she made some interesting remarks about Clark and Lana's history. The initial reason that Lana turned to Lex was because Clark lied to her. When he broke up with her in season five, Lex took full advantage of that. Lana was in a vulnerable state and was understandably flattered by his attention. And at the end of season seven of course, Lana broke up with Clark under duress. Lois unfortunately hasn't been privy to the full story of their relationship. It would probably be a good idea now to consider bringing her fully into the loop. On another front, I see that Zod has now zeroed in on Clark. With their know how, it probably won't take them long to start piecing together Clark's life and friends. This is a real problem that they might not see coming. While their busy looking for Zod, he's already found Clark. I can hardly wait for the next chapter!

[Nick of kandor]

Kirk, I must say I totally agree with you in regards to Lois's comments about Clark and Lana's relationship. I would have to add one thing in regards to Lana's video-breakup at the end of season 7, in that you may also remember that Lana specifically said to Clark that: "As long as I am in your life I am holding you back." So, that breakup was as you stated a matter of her under duress from Lex's thugs and at the same time feeling like she was keeping him from achieving his destiny. I also truly agree that it would be good for Lois to see and know the whole picture behind these breakups in their relationship so that she doesn't judge them too harshly and end up doing something that may hurt them later on and is something she would truly regret as well. Finally, I also agree that due to Zod and his men's know how it won't be long before they find Clark. Really looking forward to the next update as well!! Have a great day, Nick!!

[Seaspray]

This fic continually keeps me on the edge of my seat. You have a way with cliffies. Really enjoying your intelligent re-writes.