Chapter Text
Practically every news organization in the world had tried to get someone on the ground in the empty lot half an hour’s drive outside Metropolis where Brainiac’s ship would be landing. Lois made a note to herself to look up how long Lex had owned this empty chunk of land. What had he planned on doing with it before Brainiac made contact? Or did he buy it just for this?
Anyway, the press area was crowded enough that it made the nearby military encampment look positively roomy. Jimmy was lucky he was with her; she was willing to elbow people out of the way to get the two of them to a good vantage point. Well, except for the people who were broadcasting live, since she didn’t really want to be on TV elbowing newscasters. She stepped on their feet instead.
At least Clark hadn’t insisted on coming along. She couldn’t have gotten him and Jimmy through the crowd, and since Jimmy was the one with the camera, she’d have left the farm boy out in the cold.
She and Jimmy managed to score a prime spot on top of a rock. It wasn’t big enough that a newscaster and a cameraman could have fit, but it was ideal for a photographer and had just enough room that Lois could see over everyone’s heads too. Score.
Now all they had to do was wait… for three hours. That was the scheduled landing time, anyway. Playing King of the Hill on their rock could’ve been fun, but no one around them actually seemed willing to try and physically remove an attractive woman (hey, Lois could recognize objective facts about herself) and a guy who still seemed to be trapped in the throes of puberty (Jimmy was 24, but a very unfortunate 24) from their spot, not with all the cameras around to catch it. All they got were some trying-to-be-intimidating glares, but Lois was immune to those at this point, and Jimmy was more scared of her than he was of some other journalist.
Now that they’d settled in for the wait, she sort of wished Clark was there. Between his crush on her and his tendency to occasionally show a surprising amount of backbone, he was much more fun to tease than Jimmy.
Speaking of people who were fun to tease, Lois spotted a familiar red-and-blue shape in the sky and smiled.
“Hi, Superman,” she said at a normal conversational volume. Jimmy looked at her, then looked up and waved.
Other (lesser) reporters noticed him by then, and started shouting questions at the sky. It was kind of hilarious.
“Have any thoughts on Brainiac you’d like to share?” she asked, still conversational. He was right there , there was no need to shout.
The blue-and-red speck disappeared for a moment. Lois felt a woosh of air as something was pressed into her hand, and then he was back in the sky.
She unfolded the piece of paper that she was suddenly holding.
Are you seriously asking me for an exclusive in front of 100 other journalists? This is why people think our relationship isn’t purely professional, Ms. Lane.
Something had been erased under “our relationship isn’t purely professional.” Lois held it up to the light to get a better look, and smirked. Apparently he’d written “This is why people think we’re sleeping together” and then changed his mind.
“Well, you can’t turn Lex’s event into a press conference for yourself; that would be rude,” Lois pointed out. “And you can’t take me somewhere else to give a statement there. Poor Jimmy would get eaten alive without me.”
“I really would,” Jimmy confirmed. “I think that group over there is from the Gotham Gazette . They fight almost as dirty as Lois.”
“Oh hey, you’re right,” Lois said, recognizing Vicki Vale and waving. “Yeah, Vicki would chase you off this rock and you’d end up thanking her for it. So anyway, Supes, you can either come down and give me an interview or leave me hanging, and I know you’d never do that.”
Superman disappeared from the sky again. Another paper appeared in Lois’ hand.
I don’t think Mr. Luthor is being careful enough. That’s all I have to say on the matter.
“Fine,” Lois sighed. He’d told her as much already, but she’d hoped she might get a little more out of him.
Vicki elbowed her way through the crowd, dragging her own photographer—a young woman Lois didn’t recognize—along behind her.
“Lois,” Vicki said. “Don’t suppose there’s room for one more on the high ground?”
“Sorry, Vicki, this rock is Daily Planet territory. Who’s your photographer?”
“Joy, say hi to Lois,” Vicki said. Joy waved timidly. “Joy’s a little shy, but she’s very good at her job. In fact, she got some great shots of you and Superman passing notes just now. Not really Gazette material, but I’m sure the Metropolis Inquisitor would buy them off her—”
“All right, all right,” Lois groused good-naturedly. The Inquisitor was one of the loudest voices trying to make her sadly professional relationship with Superman into a scandal. “We’ll let the photographers take the rock while you and I catch up on the ground, how does that sound?”
She was pretty sure Vicki wouldn’t actually follow through on the threat—Lois had enough dirt on her to start her own gossip rag, if the two of them stooped to those kinds of tactics—but she couldn’t have just given her spot to a photographer from a rival newspaper for friendship’s sake.
Lois hopped down from the rock, and Jimmy chivalrously attempted to give Joy a hand up, which of course made the whole thing more difficult and awkward than if he’d just let Joy clamber up on her own. Lois and Vicki shared an amused glance.
“So how’ve you been?” Lois asked. “Still cozying up to Wayne as much as possible?”
“At least I’m getting laid,” Vicki retorted. “How’s your crush on the big blue boy scout going?”
“I still get laid , Vicki,” she said. “Have you seen me? I’m gorgeous.”
“So not well, then.”
“No comment.” Lois changed the subject. “How was your trip through the wastelands of New Jersey?”
If there was one thing Gothamites and Metropolitans could agree on, it was that the state separating their cities was terrible. The two of them cheerfully ragged on Jersey for a while before moving on to discussing mutual acquaintances, trading compliments disguised as insults disguised as compliments about articles they’d written recently, and complaining about inferior forms of journalism (so basically, anything other than print).
“I hope this Brainiac thing is punctual,” Lois groused eventually. “I have things I could be doing instead of waiting around.”
“Please, you don’t know waiting around until you’ve been stuck waiting to see if Wayne is even going to show up to an interview. Or a press conference. Or a date.”
“And yet you keep going back,” Lois observed.
“He’s rich, he’s handsome, he’s good in bed,” Vicki said with a shrug. “So sue me. You know how hard it is to find guys who aren’t shitheads.”
Lois grimaced. She did know, and she knew it had to be particularly difficult in Vicki’s case. She still remembered how things had been in college, when people were more aware of Vicki’s status and she had to deal with chasers and transphobes.
“Well, let me know if you ever need me to break his nose,” she said.
“Oh, please, you know I’d do it myself if it needed doing,” Vicki said.
“Right, but then we wait until it’s healed, and BAM! I get him again,” Lois explained. “He’ll never see it coming.”
“I’d say it was sweet of you to offer if I didn’t know you just liked having excuses to punch people,” Vicki teased.
Suddenly Jimmy was frantically taking pictures of the sky, the way people had when Superman first showed up, before the sight of him flying around was something only tourists gawked at. Joy quickly joined him. Lois looked up.
Superman wasn’t alone in the sky.
At first the ship was just a speck. Jimmy had sharp eyes, she had to give him that; Lois would have assumed it was just a bird or a plane or something. But it quickly became clear that the descending shape wasn’t like anything that had been in Earth’s sky before. It was oddly piecemeal, with bits sticking out apparently at random and different sections appearing to be made of different materials.
Well, maybe alien aesthetics were different. Superman’s clothing choices did seem to lend credence to that theory.
“I guess that’s Brainiac,” she said, unable to keep a bit of awe out of her voice. The ship just kept getting bigger, casting a shadow across the amassed journalists like a thundercloud.
“Or Brainiac’s ship,” Vicki said. “Luthor wasn’t really clear about that, was he?”
“No he was not.” So either that enormous thing was Brainiac, or Brainiac was… what, its sole inhabitant? Somehow that seemed even creepier, more inhuman, the idea of one being living in a vessel that vast.
Maybe Brainiac was just the spokesman, er, spokesbeing for a whole crew of people. But the closer the ship got, the less likely Lois thought it was that whatever intelligence piloted it was anything like human.
She looked around in the sky, hoping to see the gaudy primary colors that meant safety, but Superman was nowhere to be seen.