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Ah but my mind will be planning beautiful posts as my body transforms.
This is who you sound like.
The Daily Planet, Metropolis
The door to the Daily Planet meeting room clicked shut behind Clark Kent and John Jones. Once Clark had done a quick scan of the room, he instructed Detective Jones to a seat at the long table at the centre of the room and took a seat opposite him. Jones removed his hat and set it down on the table. The detective’s dark brown eyes flashed red for half a second. Beneath Detective John Jones, Metropolis Police Department’s finest, was the Martian superhero known the world over as Martian Manhunter – a being that Clark had worked with several times over the past three or four years. He had proven to be as trustworthy and reliable an ally in the fight against evil as Clark could have. He was the ice to Hawkeye’s fire – where Barton was all muscle memory, J’onn J’onzz was a cool, calculative mind.
“I apologise for the ruse, Clark. I did not want to arouse any unnecessary suspicion by coming up to the newsroom. I understand that your identity is something you take very seriously.”
Clark smiled.
“It’s okay, J’onn.”
Clark saw much of himself in J’onn. Or at least he saw much of a possible self in the Martian. Had Clark’s craft not been discovered by Martha and Jonathan Kent, had he spent his life locked up in a lab somewhere, there was every chance he would have had trouble adjusting to life on Earth. Watching J’onn attempt to integrate into human life had been enlightening. A lesser man, with a head less cool and a temperament less even, might have struggled but J’onn seemed to have taken to Earth far faster than Clark had ever expected. He wasn’t sure why he was surprised that J’onzz had chosen to take up a day job in law enforcement. It suited him.
“You never mentioned you worked for Metropolis PD.”
J’onzz nodded calmly.
“Even the Martian Manhunter must have a day job.”
A smirk crossed Clark’s lips.
“One befitting the name, it would seem.”
J’onzz met Clark’s smirk with one of his own. There was an unnatural quality to it but it was far more convincing than J’onn’s early attempts at smiling. He had explained to Clark once that communication on Mars was almost always telepathic and that he had found human facial expressions especially troubling to mimic. It wasn’t contorting his face that troubled him but knowing the right context in which to deploy the facial expressions. He would often smile at inappropriate times. A particularly unhelpful trait when one spends their days consoling the parents of missing children.
“Tell me about this case of yours, J’onn.”
J’onn reached into his trench coat for what Clark expected to be a case file. Instead he pulled out a small silver packet of Oreos and bit one in half with a single bite. He crunched his way through it greedily as he recalled the facts of the case.
“I was passing through the Arctic on some other business when I felt something, a presence if you will, calling out from the blackness. There was pain, Clark, a pain unlike any I had ever felt before. It came from the stars but with each passing second the voice, the presence, it grew louder and stronger still. It spoke one word: Terri.”
J’onn reached for the second of four Oreos and scoffed it down almost in a single mouthful. Clark stifled a smile as the Martian’s stoicism slipped for a second and his face seemed awash with pleasure. Once he was done crunching on the Oreo, J’onn’s probing red eyes stared deep into Clark’s.
“I believe the voice belonged to one Hank Henshaw, Clark. Do you remember Hank Henshaw?”
The name sounded vaguely familiar but Clark couldn’t remember where from.
“I can’t say that I do.”
“He was aboard an off-world flight that disappeared some three years before the shuttle that gifted Reed Richards and his crew their powers. Where they returned with incredible abilities and were met adulation, the world forgot about Hank Henshaw and those aboard his ship.”
Clark shook his head in disbelief as he imagined Henshaw drifting through space unaided.
“How could he have survived out there? That doesn’t make any sense.”
J’onn smiled.
“Less sense than a Kryptonian life raft crashing to Earth and it’s passenger becoming Earth’s protector? Or a Martian pulled to Earth by a teleportation beam designed by an elderly professor? I do not think so.”
He crunched his way through the last two Oreos as Clark nodded in acceptance.
“I take your point.”
J’onn twisted the silver Oreo wrapper between his fingers at great speed, making small tears and folds as he went, as he formed a model out of it. He held the model up to Clark. It was a perfect replication of Clark’s Fortress of Solitude. J’onzz twisted the silver paper Fortress between his fingers and it floated through the air across the table towards Clark.
“Henshaw is coming back, Clark, and from the course he is plotting I believe his destination is none other than your Fortress of Solitude. We must be there to meet him when he arrives.”
Clark lifted the paper Fortress up and twisted it between his fingers.
“How long do we have?”
The momentary pleasure that the Oreos had brought J’onn disappeared. The Martian stared down at the watch on his wrist and his expression shifted back into a blank stare that was as grave as it was unforgiving.
“Six hours.”
@Kingfisher I give it ten days before you move Hella (who I had to check was even a real character) to Central City and then change character again.
I'm actually surprised by how many people listen to music whilst writing. I find it so distracting that I almost always write in silence. I can understand listening to orchestral pieces or atmospheric music but I find it difficult to write with my brain trying to contend with lyrics.
If I had to listen to something it would probably be like this:
But preferably stony, sterile silence for me.
If I had to listen to something it would probably be like this:
But preferably stony, sterile silence for me.
The Daily Planet, Metropolis
It was morning in the Daily Planet newsroom. Clark and Lois chatted by their desks about the events of last night. Carl “Crusher” Creel, the Absorbing Man, was now in custody thanks to the intervention of Superman, Hawkeye, Captain America, and Zatanna. Word around the newsroom had it that Hawkeye had be seen leaving the city that night, bound for his usual stomping ground in New York, and that the team-up had been impromptu rather than planned. Still, it was all over the news and one picture in particular had been making the rounds on every news channel in America. Finally Jimmy Olsen had managed to get Perry White to put Superman on the front page of the Daily Planet. All it had taken was to photograph him with the previous century’s American icon – Captain America.
Olsen had managed to catch the pair of them at exactly the right time, Superman’s cape fluttered behind him majestically and the light bounced off of Captain America’s famous shield. It was a great picture, there was no doubt about that, and Clark was thankful that Jimmy had captured the moment rather than some freelancer from the Daily Bugle. This morning the whole world over would see Jimmy Olsen’s photography.
There was a ding and the lift to the Daily Planet newsroom opened up. Through it stepped Olsen with a cup of coffee in hand and a shoulder bag slung over one of his shoulders. He tried to navigate his way through the newsroom as inconspicuously as possible but from within his office Perry White spotted him. He grabbed a copy of the morning’s Daily Planet, cupped a hand over his mouth, and his booming, commanding voice shook the entire newsroom.
“Ladies and gentleman of the Daily Planet, I wish to draw your attention to the arrival of soon to be Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer – James Olsen.”
Every head turned to face Olsen and his cheeks reddened with embarrassment. An impromptu round of applause broke out and Jimmy smiled politely through it and attempted to wave people quiet. It didn’t work. If there was anyone more beloved at the Daily Planet than Perry White, it was Jimmy Olsen. Everyone knew who Jimmy Olsen was. He was on first name terms with the people down in the mailroom, in the cafeteria, and even with the cleaners. To a man and a woman, the Daily Planet reporters passed their congratulations to him, either shaking his hand or patting him on the back, until finally only Clark, Lois, and Perry remained.
A still-red Jimmy let out an exasperated sigh as White smiled at him proudly.
“Very funny, Chief.”
White picked up on a hint of doubt in Jimmy’s tone and shook his head.
“What? You think I’m kidding? You might actually win a Pulitzer for this picture, Olsen. I mean, I’m not sure you’ll live to collect if you ever wake me up in the middle of the night like that again, but at least your obituary will be a little more colourful than it might have been this time last week.”
He patted Olsen on the back with a smile and disappeared into the Planet newsroom. Beside Olsen, Clark Kent eyed the photographer with a bemused look.
“You woke Perry up in the middle of the night?”
Jimmy lifted his hands into the air as if to claim innocence.
“What was I supposed to do? I had a picture of Captain America shaking hands with Superman, Clark.”
Clark smiled. Sometimes he let the fact that Perry White was fairly spry for his age trick him into thinking his editor was a much younger man. Perry was only half a decade younger than Jonathan Kent but had kept his brain and body active as he’d aged. His mind was sharper than it had ever been and his body, but for some aching in his knees and hips in the cold, had held up fairly well in his advanced years. Though sleep was still sacred.
“You’re a braver man than I am, Jimmy Olsen.”
Lois appeared beside Clark and smiled at the young photographer she had known since he was fifteen. Olsen had started at the Planet the same year that Lane had. She’d been not long out of college then and Jimmy had been volunteering down in the mailroom. They had both come a long way since then. Lois was now a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist that was renowned the world over for her incisive writing. If Perry was right and Jimmy did win a Pulitzer for his picture, Clark would be the only one out of the three of them that hadn’t won one.
A wry smile appeared on Lane’s lips as she dug an elbow into Jimmy’s side.
“What’s your secret? It’s almost like you know where Superman is going to be before he’s even there.”
Before he had a chance to answer she slapped her hands against her cheeks with faux-surprise and took a step backwards.
“Wait a minute, it’s so obvious. I can’t believe we never put two and two together before, Clark. Jimmy is Superman. You’ve been under our nose the whole time, haven’t you? That’s how you get the pictures.”
Jimmy rolled his eyes and began to unpack his things.
“Leave me alone, Lois.”
Clark let out a laugh as Lane reached for Jimmy’s hair and playfully grabbed a handful of it as if searching for black roots.
“I knew you weren’t a natural redhead.”
Another exasperated sigh was about to slip through Jimmy’s lips when Perry White’s face appeared again and spared him the effort. He frowned in Lane’s direction and she let Olsen’s hair slip through her fingers, then White looked in Clark’s direction and let out a husky bark as he tried to recall the message that had just been passed to him.
“Kent, there’s somebody waiting for you downstairs, some detective from Metropolis Police Department.”
Clark’s brow furrowed. The only detective Clark was on first name terms with was Crispus Allen and he would likely call ahead if he was going to visit him. Kent looked to Lane and she shrugged, equally unsure as to who it might be.
“Did you catch a name?”
A chortle left White’s lips as he passed Kent, Lane, and Olsen on his way towards his office.
“What do I look like, your secretary?”
Clark shrugged his shoulders, muttered to Lane and Olsen he would be back shortly, and took to the lift at the mouth of the Daily Planet newsroom. As he rode it down his mind raced through every encounter he’d had with the Metropolis Police Department, both as Clark Kent and Superman, as he tried to figure out who might be waiting. He all but drew a blank, disembarked the lift, and spotted the trench-coated figure waiting for him.
He was tall, six-foot-two and heavy built, and the well-worn fedora and trench coat looked like something out of a bygone era. Even from behind the detective resembled a private investigator out of an old noir film more than he did a Metropolis Police detective. As he turned to face Clark, the Man of Steel suddenly understood why.
“Clark Kent? My name is Detective John Jones, Metropolis PD Missing Persons. I’m here to talk to you about an open case I’m working on that I thought you might find of interest. Is there somewhere we could go that we could talk a little more... privately?”
It's cool, man.
Sometimes you just need to get the balling rolling.
Sometimes you just need to get the balling rolling.
@TimeMasterX I know you're a little bogged down with real life things at the minute, so I appreciate your taking the time to post so that things can move on with the Justice League/Brotherhood thing. That's real, unselfish play right there, people.
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