In Any Reality

In Any Reality

by Ann Douglas

(ann_douglas@hotmail.com)

The following is a work of erotic fiction and includes scenes of sexual activity. It includes characters that are copyrighted by DC Comics. This story is intended for the non-commercial enjoyment of fans and should be considered a parody . No copyright infringement is intended and no profit will be made from the distribution of this story.

The young dark haired scientist stood alone on the terrace, admiring the beauty of the setting sun. Having spent his life in pursuit of academic and technological accomplishment, it was a tapestry that he'd too often ignored.

"If only there had been more time," he thought to himself once more as the crimson sun began to fade beneath the horizon. "If only I had been able to make them listen."

But they'd chosen not to listen, the learned men and women of the ruling Science Council, preferring instead to attribute the recent increase in both groundquakes and atmospheric storms to minor adjustments in the planet's orbital mechanics. He was being an alarmist, they insisted. Once he had the benefit of years, they intoned; he would learn the value of patience.

That had been a month ago, the day he had finally, reluctantly, turned his attention from saving his world to preserving that part of it which was most precious to him. And even in that task the clock had conspired against him, until even he, who had been often described by others as the greatest mind of his generation, had to admit defeat.

"Jor-El?" the equally dark haired woman said in surprise as she stepped out onto the veranda and found her husband of two years standing there. "I thought you were still down in the laboratory."

His silence said what words could not and a shudder passed though her slender form.

"How long?" she asked, trying to control the trebling in her voice.

"Days, possibly less," he replied, his own voice reflecting a sense of failure that she had never heard before.

"Then at least we will be together until the end," Lara said as she placed her hand on his arm, glancing down at the carefully wrapped bundle in her arms.

"I am sorry," Jor-El said, looking down at the red and blue blankets that held their only child.

"There is no need for you to be sorry, my love," Lara said as she brought her hand up to the side of his face. "I fear nothing as long as you are by my side."

"Lara...I..." he started to say, only to be interrupted as the ground beneath the city suddenly began to shake with frightening intensity.

The walls of their home trembled, despite their reinforced construction, knocking holographs and keepsakes to the floor. At first, it seemed just another of the groundquakes that now occurred with increasing regularity. But, as the minutes passed, it became obvious that this time it was much more. Quickly they moved down the stairs into the research lab, the most secure part of the house, yet even there the tables had been overturned and the contents atop them smashed.

"Jor, is it...?" Lara asked, no longer trying to hide the fear in her voice.

"I'm afraid it is," he replied after a momentary glance at the instrumentation that monitored the sensors he had scattered across the globe. "The quake is world-wide, increasing in size and scope with each passing minute. The stress readings are already off the scale; it's only a matter of time before the planetary core reaches critical mass. An hour, maybe less."

The sound of the baby's cries pierced the chaos around them, causing Lara to wrap the blankets more tightly, whispering lies that all would be well. A sudden panic filled her as she looked up and saw that she and the child were alone in the room.

"Jor-El!" she screamed when she saw he was no longer by the monitors.

"I'm over here," came his voice from an adjacent chamber on the far side of the lab. "Hurry!"

Lara followed his voice, racing to the outer room to find her husband frantically making entries on the computer system of his prototype starcraft. The one he had hoped to build a full sized version of that would carry them all to safety.

"What are you doing?" she asked, wondering for the first time if the realization of having been proved so horribly right had finally caused him to crack under the strain.

"There's still a chance," he said as his hands continued to enter information into the databanks. "The prototype is fully capable of making the trip to that world I told you about, the one much like Krypton was centuries ago."

"We couldn't all fit in there," she stated the obvious as she looked at the small passenger compartment that had previously housed test animals.

"You and our child," Jor-El replied as he finally finished his hurried task. "It will tax the life support systems, but it's still more of a chance than either of you have now."

"No," Lara said without hesitation, certain that he was now grasping at straws.

"Lara, my love, it's your only chance," Jor insisted. "Please, there isn't any more time. If you've ever believed in me, believe in me now. I beg of you."

"If there is any chance at all, then it belongs to our child," Lara replied, looking down at the embodiment of their love. "With only one of us aboard, the ship will have a better chance."

With only a glance into her eyes, Jor knew she was right, making one last adjustment as Lara strapped the baby into the travel pod. A final touch from each of them and together they sealed the hatch.

"Our child, may Rao watch over you on your journey," Jor-El said as he activated the launch sequence and the stardrive came alive.

They held each other as the small craft lifted into the sky, tears in their eyes as it quickly vanished from sight. Tears not for themselves but for the hope of a new life that waited out there in the distant stars.

A heartbeat later, Krypton was no more.

-=-=-=-

"Jonathan, do you hear something?" Martha Kent asked her husband as they drove down the dirt road that ran between the cornfields of their farm to the larger county road that connected to the town of Smallville.

The farmer was already looking out the truck's window. The noise his wife had referred to had also caught his attention. Slightly familiar, it brought back memories of his Army days when he used to hang out by the flight line and watch fighter jets land. The only thing was, there weren't any military bases in this part of Kansas and the closest civilian airport was fifty miles to the south.

A sudden explosion filled the air, one that he knew was unmistakably a sonic boom, followed seconds later by a blinding streak of flame that cut across the road in front of them. A louder, ground shaking explosion followed as whatever it was impacted in the middle of the cornfield.

"Jumping Jehosophat!" the middle-aged man cried out as he hit the brakes and brought the truck to a screeching stop.

They quickly made their way to the impact site, avoiding the numerous small fires that dotted the field. At first, Jonathan thought it might've been a meteorite, having seen one that was pretty large in the natural history museum in the state capitol when he was young. Then, as they got close enough to get a look at it through the smoke, he realized that it was something man-made, possibly a satellite.

"Be careful, Jonathan," Martha warned as he tried to get closer to the object, knowing full well how easily her husband's curious nature could overwhelm his sense of caution.

"Listen," he said as he moved to within a few yards, "I think there's something in there."

They both knew they had to be hearing it wrong, the noise sounding for all the world like a baby crying. Ignoring the danger, the farmer tossed enough dirt on the satellite to put out the worst of the flames and, using his work gloves to protect his hands, tried to open what looked like to be a hatch.

As soon as he touched the metal, which was inexplicably cool despite the fire around it, a beam of light unexpectedly shot out from the ship, causing his entire body to tingle. Having read about it enough times in the sci-fi books he had enjoyed as a child, Jonathan had the impression that he'd just been scanned.

A scan that must've found him acceptable, it seemed, as the hatch abruptly opened of its own accord. With a quick glance back to his wife, Jonathan cautiously moved closer to get a better look inside.

"Dear God in heaven!" he cried out when he saw the contents of the strange ship.

Ignoring any other possible dangers, he rushed forward and pulled the baby out of the ship, cradling it in his arms. Turning around to protect the child with his body, he carried the colorfully wrapped bundle to his wife a few yards behind him.

Equally shocked, Martha took the baby and carefully looked to see if it had been burned. To her relief, not even the blankets had been scorched.

Quickly putting as much distance between them and the still smoldering craft as they could, they discussed what was happening but were unable to come up with an explanation, at least one that was halfway believable. When Jonathan actually suggested that the child might've been from another world, Martha brushed away any such suggestion by saying this wasn't one of those science fiction magazines that he used to be so fond of.

"This baby is as human as you or I," she insisted as she looked down at the beautiful face now smiling up at her, "and I don't care what anyone says, whoever sent up that rocket is not getting it back."

Glancing back in the direction of the spacecraft, for that was what he now knew it to be, Jonathan Kent allowed his gaze to lift upward into the mid-morning sky. From what he'd seen of the ship, it was decades if not centuries ahead of anything NASA or the Russians could have build. He was as certain that this child had come from another world as he was of the fact that his wife intended to keep it as her own. They'd tried to have a child for years, with no success and after two decades of praying, it was obvious that Martha saw this all as a gift from God.

"Maybe it is a gift," Jonathan thought as he looked down from the empty sky. Probably the greatest gift they ever could've gotten. They'd always wanted a daughter, and now it seemed like they had one.

-=-=-=-

"Look, up in the sky!" a well dressed, middle aged woman standing at the Swan Street bus stop cried out as she caught a flash of red and blue passing overhead.

"It's a bird," a second woman, half her age, exclaimed as she tossed her head back to get a better view.

"No, it's a plane," an elderly man standing next to the two of them insisted, joining in on what had become a familiar refrain all over Metropolis these last two weeks.

"It's Supergirl!" four children, also standing at the bus stop with their mother, chorused as they pointed at the now fading figure that had been just above them only moments before.

Even though she was already more than a half mile away by the time the children had cheerfully called out her name, the last daughter of Krypton still managed a smile. Technically, she thought, it really should be Superwoman now; after all she was closing fast on her twentieth birthday, at least by the Terran calendar. Still, the name she had been known by since going public soon after her sixteenth birthday did roll off the tongue a lot easier than the more adult polysyllable.

Such trivial concerns, however, were quickly brushed aside as she left the city behind her and she focused her full attention on her destination, still some miles in the distance. No longer concerned with speed limits and the window shattering sonic booms that exceeding them might cause, the Girl of Steel doubled her velocity, gliding into a parabolic arc that would cut her travel time in half. As she descended down through the heavy cloud cover, she reviewed the threat briefing she had been given by the FBI only ten minutes before.

Two days ago, a letter had been delivered to the office of the President of National Rail, containing a threat to destroy the Gotham- Metropolis Express unless a million dollars in bearer bonds were delivered to a location on an enclosed map. Lacking in details, the letter hadn't been taken that seriously but turned over to the FBI just in case.

Then, a little over an hour ago, another package had been delivered to the offices of National Rail, this one containing a repeat of the original threat and demand, along with a highly detailed schematic of an explosive device that the FBI now took seriously. More so since the package was scheduled to have been delivered the previous day, but had been delayed due to some error on the part of the shipping company.

According to the train's schedule, the Express should be in the middle of its passage through the Shuster Mountain tunnels on the final leg of its journey, but all attempts to communicate with it by radio or cell phone had so far been unsuccessful.

Coming down just over the eastern terminus of the tunnels, Supergirl allowed herself a small sigh of relief as she saw the first car of the ten train Express emerge from out of the darkness. It had been the FBI expert's concern that the best place to detonate an explosive that would totally destroy the train would be inside the tunnels, burying it under the tons of rock that would've been dislodged.

With no more information than when she had left the railroad offices, except that the train was still intact, the Maid of Might set in motion the plan of action she had formulated during her high-speed transit. Circling behind and then coming in low over the last car of the train, Supergirl began to subject every square inch of it to a quick but intensive x-ray scan. For one brief moment, each section of the train became transparent to her eyes, her mind processing and identifying each image faster than any computer on Earth. It took less than a dozen heartbeats to cover the length of the train, and she found nothing out of the ordinary other than the young couple in the bathroom of the third car, doing their best to join whatever the railroad equivalent of the Mile High Club was.

A smile on her lips, Supergirl increased her speed to leave the train behind and subjected the rails below to the same scrutiny. Recalling the route map she had glanced out while in the National Rail office, the dark haired heroine visualized the Simon's Gorge Crossing, some three miles ahead. A two thousand foot span that joined the two states that Metropolis and Gotham City called home, it seemed to her a much more likely target that the tunnels behind her.

From her experience, madmen like their mystery bomber wanted attention as much as they want the ransom they demand. Bringing down the Shuster tunnels would indeed have caused a disastrous loss of life, in addition to the financial cost to reopen them, but it wouldn't have been spectacular – at least not visually. As she glanced right and left across the tree topped hills around her, she was sure that if she'd had the time to search them, there would be at least one camera out there focused on the Simon's Gorge Crossing. The images it might record would undoubtedly be sent to every major news outlet in the country, where they would be endlessly repeated, much to the bomber's delight.

Flying across the center of the concrete and steel span, Supergirl found the object of her search. Hidden on opposite sides of the single track, covered by metal boxes that had been camouflaged to appear as part of the structure itself, rested two full sized versions of the device that had appeared on the diagram sent with the ransom demand. They were for all purposes indistinguishable from a dozen other similar boxes that lined the route, except of course to someone with x-ray vision.

A few seconds' analysis of the triggering mechanism told her that while it was possible to deactivate both devices, it might take more time than she had. To simply try and physically remove them without first doing so would initiate the detonation she was trying to prevent. The only remaining solution, then, was to stop the train.

In the days following her public debut, as new stories about the Supergirl from Smallville began to appear on the national news, one well know commentator had coined a description of her abilities that included the phrase "more powerful than a locomotive." Subsequent events had proven that comparison woefully inadequate, but it came to mind as she reversed direction and considered just how difficult it actually was to stop a speeding train on not much more than a dime. At least not without tearing it to shreds in the process.

While still several hundred feet in front of the train, Supergirl focused a carefully aimed blast of heat vision at the exact spot on the locomotive's undercarriage that would trip the braking system. Unfortunately, when you took into consideration the multi-thousand ton weight of the assemblage racing at her, coupled with the fact that it had been traveling at top speed to make its way up an incline, it was obvious the behemoth wasn't going to come to a stop in time on its own.

Landing on the front edge of the diesel engine, the Girl of Steel placed her hands against the heavy superstructure, taking a grip so tight that her slender fingers actually pressed into the metal. Then, lifting the rest of her body back into the air, she began to apply an ever increasing reverse thrust, much in the way an airline pilot would throw his engines in reverse once on the ground. The combination of braking and reverse thrust rapidly reduced the train's forward motion, until it reached a point where Supergirl felt it safe to apply one hard push and bring it all to an abrupt but still controlled stop. The sudden halt would still be hard enough to cause a few bumps and bruises, but they were much more preferable than the inevitable fatalities that waited just a hundred yards down the line.

Letting out another sigh of relief as she released her hold on the engine, Supergirl realized that it had been less than five minutes since she'd let out her first. The entire incident had taken place in that short a time.

Within another minute, the Chief Engineer and some of his associates were climbing down out of the engine's cabin, eager to learn what was going on. Softly gliding over to them, Supergirl set down on a small clearing and waited for them. As she explained what had, or rather what had not just happened, the Maid of Might recognized the expression on some of their faces. It was one that she'd become accustomed to over the years, usually after she'd performed some unbelievable demonstration of strength.

Standing five foot nine and only a bit over a hundred and thirty pounds, the black haired, athletically built young woman hardly looked like someone who could've done what she just had. Yet, if she really had wanted to, Supergirl could just as easily have lifted the entire ten-car train up and over the threatened span. That course of action, however, would've brought with it a whole different set of problems, such as how to prevent one or more of the cars from decoupling under the stress and falling back to Earth with disastrous consequences.

As the Girl of Tomorrow finished explaining the situation to the train crew, she noticed that a large number of passengers had likewise disembarked and were gathering around her. It wasn't that they didn't recognize her; actually it was quite the contrary. The long sleeved blue blouse with the stylized red and yellow pentagon, along with the bright red skirt, boots and cape that made up the rest of her uniform had become quite familiar over the last few years, having been exhibited on every imaginable form of mass media there was. Yet people were still taken aback when they actually saw her in person. It was as if they wanted to assure themselves that despite all the evidence to the contrary, she was indeed real and not just some urban legend. Much like the rumored Bat-Man that was said to prowl the nighttime streets of Gotham City.

Still, even with the evidence of their own eyes, there would always be those who refused to believe at least some of the story that had been repeated so often as to have become part of the popular lore. Foremost among those was the claim that she was the last survivor of a lost alien world.

Visitors from other worlds, the general public had been conditioned to believe by almost a half century of science fiction novels and films, were supposed to be equally alien in appearance. Depending on which author or screenwriter you favored, they could range from totally monstrous to almost cute and cuddly. But only in the most unimaginative of those forums would they have been depicted as looking like the all-American girl next door.

When she considered the continued disbelief in her abilities and her origins, Supergirl sometimes wondered if they still would've been the same had she been born a man, or at least had some distinguishable difference like pointed ears. Think what they might, however, the young woman in question had no doubt as to who she was and where she had come from. Thanks to the foresight of her natural father, she knew a great deal more about the world of her birth than might have been imagined, especially given the circumstances under which she had left it.

The telepathic scan that had judged Jonathan Kent as a suitable guardian for the last child of Krypton had, at the same time, implanted an incredible storehouse of knowledge in his mind. At first, he was hardly aware of it, but in the days and weeks that followed he began to realize that he possessed memories not his own. One of the first that became clear to him was that the babe in his wife's arms was the daughter of Jor-El and Lara, who had perished along with their world light years away. It was that first realization that had led them to christen the child Laura Kent.

Also as those transplanted memories came into focus came the awareness that eventually they would fade over time, given certain differences between Kryptonian and human minds. To preserve them as best he could, Jonathan resurrected a long abandoned hobby of science fiction writing, putting down on paper what eventually amounted to a rather concise history. By the time Laura could herself read and understand the stories he'd filled several notebooks with for herself, they formed what could've been a manuscript for a national bestseller, had it not been intended for a readership of one.

Finally excusing herself from the crowd, Supergirl returned to the center of the rail bridge and, now that she had the luxury of time, easily deactivated the deadly devices. It was just a matter of her using her super-breath to freeze the sensitive triggers long enough to physically disable them. While doing so, she also spotted a number of quite readable fingerprints on both units that would be of great interest to the FBI. Evidently, their creators hadn't been as intelligent as they fancied themselves, or they simply assumed there would be little left of the explosives to prove incriminating.

A glance sunward told her the time far more accurately than any timepiece she might have worn. The appointment she had come to Metropolis for some two weeks before was now only a half hour away. Plenty of time for her to stop along the way and deliver the now harmless explosives at the local FBI office.

-=-=-=-

With a good fifteen minutes to spare before her appointment, Supergirl silently landed in the alley behind the Daily Planet building that led to the loading dock. A few hours from now, when the first evening edition hit the streets, this area would be a beehive of activity, but at the moment it was deserted as a ghost town. Still, it didn't hurt for her to do a quick three hundred and sixty degree x-ray scan just to be sure.

Satisfied that she was indeed alone, Supergirl opened a small bundle she had retrieved from where she had left it atop one of the taller buildings in the area. In a blur of motion, the familiar blue and red costume vanished, to be replaced by a simple, nondescript tan and white business suit. Laura often wondered what other costumed adventurers did with their civilian clothes when they changed but had been too shy to ask the few that she'd actually met. If she were a man, she also sometimes thought, she could probably get away with wearing practically the same suit every day, copies of which she could leave in different places. Unfortunately, women's style, even in the business world, called for more variety. Since coming to Metropolis, she had taken to carefully folding up her outfits into a special protective bag and leaving it in places only she could easily retrieve it. What else could she do, hide them in some secret pocket in her cape?

In addition to the change of clothing, her short, pixie hairstyle was now covered by a longer haired wig of similar hue. The change was completed with the donning of a pair of rectangular, gold framed glasses which, along with the wig, changed the shape of her face. Eyeglasses seemed out of place on someone who could read newsprint from a quarter mile away, but it was all necessary to achieve the desired effect.

From the time she'd first appeared in public, at least since she'd first appeared in costume, the Girl of Steel had never given any indication that she was anyone other than Supergirl. Since she made no attempt to hide her face, people seemed more willing to go along with that small piece of fiction.

The truth was, long before that first costumed appearance, a great deal of thought had gone into the decision of what to do about preserving her privacy. Adding a mask or even an all-covering cowl had been considered and then rejected. It had been Martha Kent's suggestion that the best place to hide would be in plain sight. People see what they want to see, she'd said, and they definitely would see what they weren't looking for in the first place.

So with a few simple changes, a longer hair style, a pair of glasses, and a small change in her voice so that when she spoke as Laura her mid- western accent was always noticeable, the illusion was complete. If anyone did happen to notice any resemblance, it was superficial enough to be easily dismissed. Especially since, as Laura, she always let her natural exuberance shine through, hardly the act of someone trying not to attract attention to herself, and it was in the Supergirl guise that she presented a much quieter persona. After all, Laura was who she was; Supergirl was just the name of the person wearing the costume.

An elevator ride to the twenty-second floor brought her to the editorial offices of the Daily Planet and her appointment with the managing editor, Perry White. A year before, Mr. White had delivered a lecture at Metropolis University where Laura had been taking journalism classes. Afterwards, he had been gracious enough to read some samples of a few of the top students' writing, which included the girl who was always careful to make sure she placed in the top percentile of her class, but not too close to the top. White had given her some encouraging words and suggested that she give him a call when she graduated.

Laura was smart enough to realize that he probably said that to a number of students in a year, but confident enough in her writing talents to try and hold him to it. So, two weeks ago, after having completed the requirement for her degree a year early, she gave him a call. The Editor had truthfully told her that he didn't remember the invitation but had no doubt in his mind that he had made it, confirming Laura's initial conclusion that he made those offers as a matter of form. Unwilling to go back on a promise, even if he didn't remember it, he had his secretary set up an appointment with her.

The bulk of the twenty-second floor was a large open bullpen, filled with desks occupied by various reporters, columnists and associate editors. At the forefront of it all sat a receptionist's desk which Laura approached, to state the nature of her business. She fully expected to be waiting out here in the reception area for some time, until Mr. White was free, which based on the level of activity she could observe wasn't going to be any time soon.

"Oh yes, Mr. White is expecting you," the middle aged receptionist said as she consulted a clipboarded notepad on her desk. "If you just follow Jimmy here," she added, indicating the redheaded teenage boy sitting in one of the chairs against the wall, "he'll show you the way to his office."

Thanking the woman, Laura followed the young man, who she concluded was a high school intern, based on his age. Thinking about it as she passed the long rows of computer topped desks; she decided that it made more sense for the managing editor to get her interview out of the way as quickly as possible so he could get on with the business of getting the first edition out. At best, she thought, she had about ten or fifteen minutes to make an impression on him.

True to his reputation, Perry White wasted no time in getting to the point once the interview started, and the substance of his words was pretty much what Laura had expected. While not discouraging her ambitions or what he assumed was obvious talent, since he must've seen something in her work to have made the offer in the first place, good reporters, he said, needed more than talent; they needed real life experience, and that just wasn't something a person just coming out of college had a great deal of.

Oh, there were sometimes exceptions, he added, there was an excellent young woman he'd hired right out of college two years before. But Lois Lane was an exception rather than the rule. Like Olsen, the young man who had guided her to his office, Lois had been both a high school and college intern at the paper.

Laura nodded her head in understanding. Lois Lane had been a byline she'd seen in the paper many times, and she had been greatly impressed by both the writing style and personal fire that the woman brought to her stories.

White began to conclude his speech, which by Laura's reckoning had run exactly fourteen minutes, with the suggestion that she might be better off trying her luck at one of the smaller papers, which might be more able to give her the time to develop the kind of instincts and contacts a good reporter needed.

"Thank you very much for your time and advice, Mister White," Laura said as she got began to rise from the chair in front of his desk.

"You're very welcome," Perry said as he offered his hand. "You just spend some time developing those skills I mentioned and I'm sure you'll..."

"Would it be too imposing of me to ask you to read something for me?" Laura interrupted, taking a few pages of type out of her attaché case before he could say otherwise. "I wrote this up before coming over here to show how my work had improved since the last time you read any of it, and I'd really like your opinion."

It was obvious from the look on Perry's face and the glance at his watch that he had other things waiting for him, but good manners won out and he reached out for the papers planning to only give it a minute or two's attention.

"Great Caesar's Ghost!" he exclaimed after reading the opening paragraphs. "Where did you get this? It only came over the wire a couple of minutes before you got here, and then only the bare facts."

The pages contained the complete details of Supergirl's rescue of the Gotham – Metropolis Express, written up on a typewriter she had borrowed for a few minutes at the FBI office.

"A friend of mine happened to be on location," Laura smiled, sure that Perry would assume she was talking about a passenger. "She thought I might be interested in the details."

She waited a few moments to let him finish reading the story, then asked if he thought it was good enough for her to submit to one of those local papers he was talking about.

Perry looked up at her for a second, then opened the door to his office and called for a copy boy. Olsen, who had been waiting not far away to walk Laura back out of the office, jumped up at the summons.

"Olsen, take this right over to Johnson at the city desk," he said in a tone that conveyed an order, not a request. "Tell him I want it on page one of the early edition; I'll leave it up to him what story to push back to page two. Once it's in the system tell him to shoot it over to Ryan to update the Planet's online edition."

Jimmy stood there for a second, looking at the papers the Editor had thrust into his hand. In all the time he'd worked here, he couldn't remember anyone actually submitting a story on paper.

"I meant now, not five minutes from now," White said, his tone causing the teenager to practically jump.

"Does that mean that I don't have to worry about applying to one of those smaller papers you were talking about?" Laura asked, hoping she wasn't sounding too presumptuous.

"What that means is that you have two weeks to dazzle me," the older man said. "In this business you're only as good as your last byline."

Before Laura could make a comment, the door to White's office opened and an attractive long haired brunette in a white blouse and brown skirt walked in unannounced. She started talking almost as soon as the door opened, stopping only when she realized that the editor wasn't alone.

"Oh sorry, Perry, I didn't realize you..." she started to say.

"Lois Lane, meet Laura Kent," Perry said in way of introduction as he cut the brunette short. "She's starting at the Planet as of today."

The announcement caught Lois by surprise; usually she knew everything that happened in the office before it happened. She took in the younger girl before her, amazed by the deer in the headlights look on her face. Perry was always hiring college interns to give them a taste of the real world. From the look of this one, she didn't give her two weeks.

"Nice to meet you, Laura," Lois said as she extended her own hand. "If you need help with anything at all, don't hesitate to ask."

Laura seemed to hesitate, then took Lois's hand in her own, holding it tightly for a few seconds as she thanked Lois and said she was happy to meet her as well, having read many of her stories while she was in school, and that she hoped she did as well at the Planet as Lois had done.

Lois immediately picked up on the accent in the younger woman's voice and tagged her with the nickname "farm girl."

"You bring me a few more Supergirl exclusives like the one you just did and you'll do just fine," Perry remarked, his tone more supportive than before. He'd been the grizzly bear already, so now he could be the teddy, if only for the moment.

"Supergirl exclusive?" Lois asked, her own tone abruptly changing in the opposite direction as she realized that Laura was being hired as a reporter, and not part of the support staff as she had assumed. She took a longer, more intense look at the other woman, wondering how much competition she might turn out to be.

"Yeah, farm girl," Lois thought again as she decided that she wasn't going to be any competition at all. Especially not with that silly grin on her face.

-=-=-=-

In the weeks that followed, Laura Kent did indeed manage to dazzle Perry. So much so, that even Lois had to admit, if only to herself, that she had been wrong in her initial assessment of the farm girl from Kansas. And if there was one thing Lois hated above all else, it was to be proven wrong.

With an almost frustrating regularity, Laura managed to bring in more page one stories than anyone else on staff, with the exception of Lois. The difference between them both, however, was too slim for the senior reporter to be happy about it.

At first, it seemed like the neophyte newswoman intended to make a career out of reporting on the Girl of Steel. Her first three headliners had been all about the super-heroine, causing Lois to remark that people were beginning to wonder if perhaps Laura had Supergirl's private cell phone number on speed dial, or that perhaps she'd worked out some sort of personal arrangement with the Kryptonian to be some sort of press agent for her.

The regularity of Supergirl stories seemed to subside after that, with Laura branching out into other areas, some of which had previously been Lois's preserve. Such an encroachment once would've brought all of the veteran reporter's fury down on the poacher, but it had come at the same time as Lois Lane began to emerge as the one who might just have some sort of special connection with Metropolis's newest marvel.

More and more stories about the Maid of Steel began to appear under the Lane byline, including a personal interview that had won the Metropolis Journalism Award for that year. Now it seemed it was Lois who had that personal number, or at least it was the other way around. People would spot her headed up to the roof of the Planet building at odd hours, knowing that she'd come back down with another exclusive.

Her position again secure, Lois even began to get along better with Laura who eventually graduated from "farm girl" to simply "Kent"; in Lois's book this was a remarkable concession. She didn't even mind it too much when, after Laura had been with the Planet a few months, Perry suggested they team up on a few stories, just to see how it worked out.

"As long as she remembers it's Lane and Kent," turned out to be Lois's only comment on the collaboration, which tuned out to be all that Perry could've hoped for. Somehow, each of them brought out the best in the other. Over the following six months, there had been almost as many shared bylines as there had been singular.

In addition to her improved relations with Lois, Laura also made some good friendships among the other Planet staffers. One exception, however, had to be Steve Lombard, the former star quarterback of the Metropolis Meteors who wrote a weekly column for the paper. Or more accurately, had the column ghost written for him. Never had Laura met a more arrogant, self-centered neanderthal, one that made the football jocks back in Smallville seem like Rhodes Scholars. They hadn't been introduced two minutes when he'd started hitting on her.

"Laura, I don't think you've had the chance to meet Steve Lombard," Jerry Walsh, the senior sports editor said as he introduced the six foot two former athlete.

"No, I don't think I have," Laura said, "are you part of the sports writing staff?"

"You're kidding, right?" the broad shouldered, brown haired man said as he stepped past Jerry and towered over Laura. "You're actually going to tell me that you've never heard of Steve `the slinger' Lombard?"

"Should I have?" Laura asked, as she saw out of the corner of her eye that Jerry was actually enjoying this.

The "sports columnist" was stunned for a moment. The last time he'd met any girl that didn't automatically know who he was had been his freshman year of college. And that had only been in the few days before the start of football season.

"Oh, I remember now," Laura said with a smile, "you were some kind of ball player, right?"

"Yes, football," Steve said, reminding himself that losing his temper would ruin any chance at the objective he had in mind when he asked Jerry to introduce him to the cute reporter. "If you don't have any plans, I'd love to take you out to dinner and tell you all about my days with the Metropolis Meteors."

As tempting as that sounds, I think I'll have to pass," Laura replied, putting as much disinterest in her voice as possible.

"Are you sure," Steve said, a measure of disbelief in his own voice. He wasn't used to being turned down.

Laura nodded her head that she was, now finding the former athlete more of an annoyance than anything else.

"Babe, you don't know what you're passing up," Lombard insisted, his disappointment bringing forth his natural crudity. "You're giving up the chance to find out why all the ladies call me Big Steve."

"They do?" Laura said, curiosity getting the best of her for a second as she shifted her gaze from Steve's face to an area much lower. "I can't ever imagine why." She grinned just before she turned and walked away.

On the other end of the spectrum, Laura found herself becoming very good friends with Jimmy Olsen, the intern who she had met on her first day on the job. Unlike Lombard, the teenager had never even made so much as a pass at her, despite the closeness of their ages. Asking around, Laura discovered that none of the other women in the office had ever been asked out by him either, not even those who had expressed an interest in such a development. That, combined with his lack of mention of any woman in his life other than his mother, caused many of the women to conclude that young Mr. Olsen was gay. A shame to be sure, at least from their perspective.

That conclusion, Laura discovered while working late one night, turned out to be as far off the mark as could be. Heading for the storeroom where she often locked up her clothes before going on a late night patrol, Laura stopped just short of entering when she heard a muffled noise from within. One curious enough to prompt an x-ray scan of what was beyond the door.

"Oh my," Laura said silently as she discovered that not only was the room already occupied, but that young Mr. Olsen was most definitely not gay.

Nor was Jimmy alone, as she identified the source of that barely audible moan. If she had to pick that last woman on Earth, or at least the Planet, that the intern might've been involved with, Cat Grant would've been at the top, or quite near it, of the list. Yet, there was the forty-something year old gossip columnist doing the nasty with young Mr. Olsen. Grant, it appeared, had been out at one of those parties where she got most of her scoops from at least that was the assumption based on her dress. Or rather her state of undress as the expensive gown was crumpled on the storeroom floor, leaving her with only a garter belt and a pair of sheer stockings.

At the moment, she was quite energetically riding the teenager's cock, seemingly held in place only by the tight grip his hands had on her rounded breasts. Breasts which Laura had long ago noted had been surgically enhanced, but some people didn't seem to care about things like that. What attracted Cat to the intern rather than one of the more famous people she normally associated with was rather obvious. Unlike the boastful Mr. Lombard, Mr. Olsen would've been quite justified in calling himself "Big Jim" if he'd wanted to.

-=-=-=-

"Kent, do you have those notes on kickbacks and the City Council Speaker?" Lois asked from across the small aisle that separated their two desks.

Without looking up from the open folder she was reading from, Laura reached into a seemingly disorganized pile on the edge of her desk and produced a paper clipped stack containing the notes Lois had asked for. The brunette reporter could never understand how her junior partner could keep track of anything on that mess she called a desk, much less be able to seemingly pick anything she was searching for out of it without looking.

Another hour passed as the two of them worked on their respective stories, during which time the city room grew emptier as people ended their workday.

"What do you say we grab a bite to eat once we finish up here?" Laura asked across the aisle as she sent her story off to the appropriate editor's desk, after saving a back up copy to her hard drive.

"Eat?" Lois said, as if the word had no meaning.

"Yes, as in putting cooked things which taste good in your mouth and consuming them so as to have the energy to go on another day," Laura said with a grin. "I'm told there are places called restaurants where people can go and sit down and actually enjoy a meal without interruption."

On most nights, dinner to Lois usually meant whatever came in little white cartons or Styrofoam boxes. Cooking, even the most simple dishes, was not one of her many talents.

"I have a lot of work to finish up here," came her reply.

"On a story for which we won't have all the confirmations we need until sometime next week," Laura pointed out.

As expected, Lois had yet another excuse, one that Laura again had an answer for. Finally, after a little more cajoling, Lois finally gave in.

-=-=-=-

"Now, isn't this better than eating at our desks, trying not to spill marinara sauce on our notes?" Laura said as the waiter walked away from their table after delivering their entrees.

"Okay, I'll give you that," Lois said after sampling the chicken marsala she had ordered, "but don't think that this little culinary field trip isn't going to cost you."

"Oh I don't mind picking up the tab," Laura replied as she took a taste of her own linguini with clam sauce, "it was after all my invitation."

"No, I can pay for my own dinner, thank you," Lois said as she took a long sip of the wine they had also ordered. "What I mean is that as long as I let you drag me here, you're going to have to make it worth my time."

"In what way?" Laura asked.

"What I'm thinking of is my favorite pastime, a nice little game of questions and answers," Lois said with a anticipatory grin. "I ask the questions, and you get to provide the answers."

Laura didn't immediately reply, instead taking a long drink from her own glass as she told herself that she should've realized that Lois had given in too easily.

"And don't give me that `questions about little old me' look," Lois said with an even wider grin. "You've turned out to be far from the innocent farm girl I first took you to be, and as I'm sure more than a few people have told you, I hate being proven wrong."

"Well, if that's the price I have to pay, fire away," Laura smiled, confident she could handle any question Lois might ask.

Laura had learned enough about Lois's interview techniques to know that she would begin with a number of softball questions. Sure enough, most of the first dozen were about things that she had already told Lois, or at least didn't keep secret from anyone. It was only when they were halfway through the meal and and half a bottle of wine was gone, that the questions began to become more personal.

"Anyone special in your life?" Lois asked, refilling Laura's now empty glass from the bottle.

"Well, my parents, of course," Laura replied, thanking Lois for the refill as she took another healthy mouthful, thinking that she could empty the wine cellar down in the basement and not be affected in the least, unlike Lois who was obviously beginning to feel the effects a little.

"You know that's not what I meant," Lois said, refilling and raising her own glass.

"Who has time for a relationship in this line of work?" Laura said, giving an answer she was sure Lois would relate to.

"True enough," she agreed, "but as someone once said, if something is important enough you make the time,"

"Then I guess I haven't found anyone important enough," Laura said. "How about you?"

"No one, or should I say nothing that doesn't run on batteries," Lois softly laughed. "There are times I feel like I should be sending thank you notes to Duracell."

If Lois was looking to provoke a reaction from Laura with that remark, she was disappointed, as the younger woman didn't even flinch.

"What about back home, what was that town called again, oh yeah, Smallville," Lois continued. "Any special guy back there?"

"I was somewhat of a tomboy growing up," Laura answered. "I think I scared away most guys because I was better at the games they played than they were. There was one guy, Pete Ross was his name, but we were more buddies than anything else."

"Any girlfriends?" Lois said without missing a beat, "and I don't mean the kind you listened to CD's with and did each other's hair."

Laura hesitated, waiting too long to lie and just say no. The wine hadn't affected Lois as much as she was pretending it did, she was still focused enough to have classically set her up. The Duracell comment had been to throw her off her guard and unprepared for the next question. Laura had watched enough tapes of Lois's interviews to recognize the tactic, but hadn't done so. With nowhere else to go with it, being honest seemed to be the safest course of action, or as close to honest as she dared to be.

"Her name was Lana," Laura finally said, then added with not a small amount of pride, "she was head cheerleader, class president and the best friend I ever had."

There was much more she wished she could say about the beautiful redhead that had captivated her heart. As alien as she had sometimes felt due to her extraterrestrial origin, there had been many times that aloneness paled against the realization that she was also different from other girls in a much more human way. It wasn't until that night in high school when, during a snowstorm, Lana's car had broken down halfway between Smallville and the Kent farm that Laura learned that even in a small town in the middle of the heartland, she wasn't as unique as she thought. At least in that aspect.

"I've done the girl thing," Lois said without hesitation. "No biggie," she added, her speech just a little slurred.

"Did you like it?" Laura asked, her question full of the hesitancy that Lois's had lacked.

"It was fun," Lois replied with equal ease. "In fact, I think I sometimes get along better with other women than I do men. Like you, I probably intimidate them too much."

There was a pause as Lois again sipped her wine, then she returned to the questions.

"What happened to Lana?" Lois asked.

"Life changes," Laura said. "We just wanted different things. She wanted to stay in Smallville and I wanted the world."

"But you settled for the Planet, right?" Lois said, laughing at her own small joke.

"Anyone since?" she continued.

"Well, I met a few girls in college," Laura said, "but nothing very serious. One of them even told me that nothing that happens in college counts."

"Gay until graduation, huh," Lois laughed. "Been there, done that, got the t-shirt."

"There's a t-shirt?" Laura asked, thinking that she might like to have had one as a souvenir.

"No, not really, but there should've been." Lois said, her mind obviously on a far off memory for a moment. The moment passed and then Lois asked, since there was no one else in her life, what it was that Laura did with her spare time.

"Oh fight crime, stop natural disasters, the usual sort of thing," Laura grinned.

"Funny," Lois said, thinking as Laura had expected that the wine had prompted that particular answer.

They were interrupted by the waiter who cleared the dishes and asked if they wanted anything else. They settled on after dinner coffee but would skip the suggested desserts.

"Ever wonder what she does for sex?" Lois asked once the waiter had delivered their coffee.

"Who?" Laura replied.

"Who else, the girl in red and blue," Lois expanded. "I mean, talk about a woman being intimidating to a man. To say nothing of the rather unique physical problems that must go along with it."

"Physical problems?" Lana asked curiously.

"Well, just imagine how hard a man would have to work to just get her off," Lois replied. "In fact, a normal guy might not even be able to do it at all."

"You were the one who finally got the in-depth interview with her," Laura pointed out, "maybe you should've asked her when you had the chance?"

"Because I promised Perry that I'd be on my best behavior when I did it," Lois explained. "He's never let me forget the time I asked the junior Senator from New York during her Presidential run if it was true she had slept with her husband's former attorney general."

"I never heard about that," Laura laughed.

"Neither did anyone else, " Lois grinned. "At the Senator's insistence, the question was later edited out." Lois grinned.

"Did she actually answer it?" Laura asked curiously as she visualized the two women in question.

"Sometimes lack of an answer is answer enough," Lois pointed out.

"Maybe Supergirl is a fan of Duracell too," Laura abruptly offered, returning to the previous subject.

"I think in her case, Black and Decker might be more appropriate," Lois laughed. "More power and the right tool for the job."

Laura laughed as expected, even though she knew the truth was quite the opposite. Just because bullets and the like bounced off her skin, there was no reason to assume that her sexual responses were anything other than those of a normal woman. In fact, in her experience she had found quite the opposite to be true. Kryptonian women, she'd discovered, were quite sensitive in that regard.

The conversation drifted on to a few more mundane topics and soon enough their coffee cups were empty. Declining a refill and the again offered dessert, they paid the bill, and exited the below ground restaurant out onto the street.

"You heading back to the office?" Lois asked as they stood outside the restaurant.

"No, I don't think so. I've got a few things I need to check out before I head home," Laura said, glancing off in the distance for a moment.

"Anything I might be interested in?" Lois asked, her reporter's instincts aroused.

"No, I don't think so," Laura smiled, "they're more of a personal than professional nature."

"Ah, so I didn't learn everything tonight," Lois smiled.

"Well a girl's entitled to some secrets," Laura laughed softly.

"Only if she can manage to hold on to them," Lois grinned.

"Then I guess I'd better get going while I still can," Laura said with a matching grin as she started to turn away.

She stopped in motion when she hard Lois call her name. It was only later on that she realized that Lois had called her by her first name rather than simply Kent, as had become her practice.

"I just wanted you to know that I really enjoyed this," Lois said. "It's been a long time since I've been able to just relax for an hour or so with a friend."

"Are we friends now?" Laura asked, hoping for an answer in the affirmative.

"I'd like us to be," Lois said, her tone full of the suggestion that she was looking for one as well.

"Me too," Laura agreed.

They stood silent for a few long seconds, each just looking into the eyes of the other. Then, before Laura could react, Lois leaned in and kissed her right on the mouth. The press of her lips against Laura's only lasted a moment, but it was enough to leave an aftertaste sweeter than any dessert they might have ordered. Not quite enough to have been categorized as intimate, it had also been more than could be counted as just a casual exchange between friends.

"Good night," Lois simply said as she stepped back, just before she turned and walked away from a still stunned Laura.

-=-=-=-

When she really needed to clear her head, there was only one place for Laura Kent, and that was high above the lights of the city, wrapped in the comfort of the star filled night. Five minutes after Lois had turned the corner and vanished from sight, Laura was once more clad in blue and red and soaring through the man-made canyons of Metropolis.

What she needed right now was action, something to take her mind off what Lois had done. It wasn't that she had minded it, quite the contrary in fact. It had been one of the most enjoyable moments she'd shared with anyone in a long time. It was just that she didn't want to read too much into it; after all, it could've just been a spur of the moment thing, brought on by the wine.

Frustratingly, the city seemed unusually quiet tonight, as she crossed the length of the oval shaped municipality a second time. She couldn't find so much as the proverbial cat stuck in the tree to draw her attention.

After an hour and a half of a much too quiet patrol, the Guardian of the City decided to make sure that one special citizen had gotten home all right. Changing her direction, Supergirl soon found herself back over the island of New Troy, specifically that section containing the condominium apartment belonging to one Lois Lane. Normally, she would never think of spying on one of her friends with her x-ray and telescopic vision, but, as she reminded herself, Lois did have a bit to drink at dinner. She would only take a quick peek, just be make sure she was okay.

Standing in the middle of a passing cloud, Supergirl quickly located the right building and, counting the floors down from the top of the high-rise, Lois' apartment as well. Narrowing her focus down to the bedroom in the rear of the condo, Supergirl found Lois where she expected her to be, but certainly not in that condition.

Rather than fast asleep, the dark haired beauty was quite awake and also quite naked, laying atop the comforter that covered her bed. One hand rested on her left breast, her fingers playing with the erect nipple in the middle of it. The other hand was buried deep between her legs, with those fingers a blur of motion as they slipped in and out of her pussy.

Supergirl knew she should have instantly turned away, leaving Lois to her privacy. Yet she felt herself unable to do so, the sight was just too compelling. Despite being physically a half mile distant, her enhanced vision produced an image as clear as if she was standing at the foot of the bed. She didn't need any further abilities to tell that Lois was on the verge of an orgasm.

Unable to tear herself away, Supergirl watched as Lois' body rocked with the force of that climax, her upper hand moving from breast to breast as the lower continuing to massage her clit. It was only after the last tremors had faded from the star reporter's body and she let the pleasing weariness lure her to sleep that the Girl of Steel finally turned away.

Despite the temptation to do so, Supergirl had always resisted using her x-ray vision to sneak a peek at Lois, even though she sometimes gave in when other women were concerned. In fact, she had even avoided doing so in the locker room or sauna on those few occasions they gone to the gym together. Now, she knew exactly what she had been missing.

As she began to move off in the other direction, the Maid of Might tried to push the image out of her mind, but was unable to do so. Lois had, at least in her opinion, the most perfect breasts she had ever seen. She found herself remembering a line from a sitcom she once watched, given by an actress in reference to her own not unimpressive bust – `Not only are they real, but they're spectacular.' In fact, recalling the actress in question, Supergirl realized that in other areas as well, she had borne a striking resemblance to Lois.

Thought of Lois, and what she might have felt for her were now impossible to dismiss from Supergirl's mind. Worse, those thoughts allowed certain other memories to come to the forefront of her mind as well. Memories that might have been relevant but no less uncomfortable. Images of a time years before and hundreds of miles distant came back, of a life centered around, and a future once imagined with the girl of her dreams.

Lana Lang had indeed been all of the things Laura had mentioned to Lois over dinner earlier in the evening, and, as she had kept to herself, she had been so much more. In Lana's arms, Laura had found love in ways that had previously been beyond her imagination. All she had to do was close her eyes, even now, and she could feel the softness of the redhead's lips, and the warmth of her smooth, naked flesh.

Lana hadn't been afraid of anything, least of all what people in their small town might say if it came out that she loved girls. Nor was she one of those girls who ran away to Los Angeles, Gotham or one of the other big cities searching for acceptance. No, Smallville was her home and people would accept her for who she was or they could go to hell.

To anyone who hadn't actually grown up in Smallville, that attitude might have seemed a recipe for disaster, but that hadn't proved the case. Most people in Smallville were only a few generations removed from the pioneers who settled the town, and they had been an eclectic lot to say the least. The town and its citizens had always had a strong tradition of leaving people to live their lives as they chose, much more so than their big city counterparts did. So if Lana, who was quite well liked, and that nice Kent girl, who was also well liked, if thought of as a little strange at times, wanted to be together, well that was no one's business but their own.

There would always be a few sour apples in a bushel, but those were usually few and far between. Moreover, to those who felt they had something to say about it, the often told story of the incident at Smallville High during the girls' junior year usually kept a tongue in check.

It had occurred one quiet afternoon just as cheerleading practice was breaking up. Lana, along with the rest of the squad, was just leaving the field when she found herself confronted by "Bash" Bradford, the quarterback of the football team. Bradford had been publicly dumped by his girlfriend, Sally Young, a few days before and had been since told by a few of his buddies that it had been on the advice of Sally's lab partner, Lana, that she had done so.

When Lana said that she had indeed told Sally that she could do a lot better than "Bash", the burly athlete totally lost it, accusing her of trying to steal his girl and than loudly calling both her and Laura a couple of "fucking desperate dykes". As he said it, the two hundred and thirty pound football player made what every onlooker interpreted as a threatening move toward Lana.

Of the two dozen or so spectators who had been there that day, there had always been some confusion about what happened next. No one disputed that just before the confrontation had started, Laura Kent had been sitting in her usual place up in the last row of the bleachers, reading a book. The next thing anyone knew, she was standing between Lana and "Bash", delivering a right cross that floored the twice her size athlete. What no one could remember was seeing her come down the bench or cross the field.

"We are not desperate," most of the onlookers remembered Laura having said as she stood over the unconscious jock.

Nothing it seemed would ever come between Lana and Laura, nothing, it turned out, but the girl in red and blue. Although it would be almost another year before either of them discovered that.

An Indian summer had extended late into October their senior year and the girls decided to take advantage of the still warm nights with a moonlight picnic. The spot they chose was not far from where they had been trapped that night of the snowstorm, just a tenth of a mile from the marker that signified the edge of the Kent farm. The night couldn't have been more perfect as they shared the late supper that Martha Kent had prepared for Laura and the girl she now viewed as a second daughter. The sky was clear and filled with stars, the light of which was only surpassed by that of the full moon.

With no one else around for miles, emotions took hold and the two young women spent the better part of an hour making love, enjoying the rapturous release that each had learned to give the other, time and again. It was only after the third, or had it been the fourth, they lost count somewhere along the way, that they settled naked into each other's arms, just laying on the oversized blanket and staring up into the comforting sky.

"Are you cold?" Laura asked of the girl whose head was resting against her soft breast.

"I probably should be," Lana replied as she nudged her head into the valley between Laura's mounds and softly kissed the flesh within, "but, I'm not. Your body is almost like an electric blanket," she added. "It keeps me warm."

Laura wrapped her arms tighter around Lana, sharing more of the warmth she was enjoying. They just lay silent for a while, until the dark haired girl again broke the silence.

"Lana, we need to talk," she softly said, gently stoking Lana's long red strands as she did.

"Do we really have to?" Lana asked, her eyes still closed. "Can't we just stay like this forever?"

"As much as I'd like to, no," Laura replied, a bit of regret evident in her voice.

"You know I can never say no to you, my love," Lana said as she lifted herself up just high enough so that she could bring her lips to Laura's. "Even though I know this is going to be about something I really don't want to talk about."

"What makes you think it's about that?" Laura asked.

Before Lana replied, she lifted herself all the way up into a sitting position and swung around to face Laura. Sitting there, with moonlight washing across her breasts, the beauty of the seventeen year old was almost enough for the slightly younger woman sitting across from her to abandon her plans. It was only when she reminded herself that this wasn't something that could be put off much longer that she found the strength to succeed.

"While we were in the kitchen and you and your mom were packing the basket," Lana began, "I saw the letter on the countertop, the one with the hard to miss return address."

"It is a great opportunity," Laura said.

"But why even go to college, especially one so far away?" Lana said, repeating a familiar refrain. "Especially when we have everything we could ever want right here in Smallville. How many times have I told you that I'd be perfectly content being a farmer's wife, as long as you were the farmer's daughter I shared that life with?"

"You'd really be happy, never leaving here?" Laura said, taking Lana's hands in her own.

"This little town is all the world I ever needed," Lana replied. "Just as it was for my mother and father, my grandparents, and even their grandparents. Not everyone has to go out and make their mark on the world, sometimes it's just enough to be happy."

"And what if I couldn't be happy here?" Laura asked.

"Why couldn't you be?" Lana asked in turn. "I would hope that my love for you would be enough to make you happy." Lana paused for a long moment, then asked a question she feared asking. "Is it that you don't love me anymore?"

"Lana," Laura said, her voice drawing as much emotion as she could put into it. "I've loved you since that night in the snowstorm, and I love you today, tomorrow, and until the day I take my last breath. It's just that there's something that I need to do..."

"What is it that you need to do that you can't do it here in Smallville with me?" Lana asked, cutting Laura off in mid-sentence. "You want to write, that's fine, no one said you could never be a writer, but why can't you take courses at the community college in Myers County? It's only an hours drive from here."

"Lana, it's not just the writing," Laura said, "I've wanted to tell you this for the past few months, but I could never find the right time or place."

"Whatever it is, it's not going to make a bit of difference," Lana said as she reached out to being their hands together once more. "I will love you forever as well. Of course if you're going to tell me you've been fucking "Bash" Bradford on the side, I might just have to change my mind about that," she added, hoping a little humor would make her friend feel better, "if only for exhibiting a total lack of good taste."

That humor faded from her thoughts as she took hold of Laura's hands and felt them trembling in hers. Whatever she was holding inside, it was more serious than she could ever have imagined.

"Laura, I love you," she said simply and directly, "please tell me."

Laura took a deep breath and then asked Lana if she had heard all the stories these last few months of some strange girl who appeared out of nowhere and stopped both several disasters as well as crimes around the state?

"I heard some of that on the radio, but who believes those things?" Lana replied. "More importantly, what does that have to do with you?"

"They really happened, and it was me," Laura said.

"What are you talking about?" Lana said, now confused.

"Lana, I'm not like anyone else," Laura said, still holding her hand tightly.

"Oh course not," Lana said. "That's one of the reasons I love you so."

"Oh this isn't going to work," Laura said as she released her hold on Lana and rose to her feet. "I'm just going to have to show you."

Still confused, Lana rose to her feet as well.

"Lana, do you trust me?" Laura asked.

"Of course," she replied.

"Then just humor me for a minute, will you?"

Lana nodded her head yes.

Laura looked around for a second, and then decided it would take too long for the two of them to get dressed again. Instead, she picked up the blanket they had been laying on and wrapped it around Lana.

"It's going to be a little colder where we're going so I think you're going to need this," Laura said.

"Where are we going?" Lana asked.

The answer was forthcoming as, with a surprising display of strength, Laura picked Lana up and into her arms. Lana was hardly a heavy girl, but the ease with which her friend lifted her left her almost speechless. What happened a heartbeat later would leave her most definitely so.

In an act that Lana knew had to be impossible, the two of them were rising up into the air, picking up speed with each second until they were high enough for her to see the lights of Smallville a few miles distant. Then, once Laura was sure that her passenger was secure in her grip, the two of them began to soar across the night sky.

"Holy Mother of God!" Lana cried out as her voice returned, the phrase being one she had NOT used since she was a child being taken to church by her parents.

Laura just smiled as they continued to sail across the heavens, holding Lana in a tight and reassuring embrace. After a short while, Lana no longer felt afraid and actually began to enjoy their flight as they went far enough away from Smallville to float among some clouds. Then, as they began to turn for home, Laura had to increase her speed to avoid a passenger jet she had veered into the flight path of. If one of those passengers had been stargazing instead of catching some sleep, they would've witnessed a sight to see indeed only fifty feet off their left wing – two young women, one wrapped in a blanket, the other totally nude, crossing the void like a pair of angels.

"I guess you have to believe me now," Laura said once they were safely back on the ground.

"How...how is this possible?" Lana asked, her sense of wonderment being replaced once more with a heavy sense of reality.

"I'm not human," Laura said, thinking that was the first time she had ever said that to anyone, even her parents. "I mean, I wasn't born here on Earth."

"Where, then?"

"I was born on a planet called Krypton, which died in an explosion the light of which won't even reach here for another century," Laura said, keeping her tone calm and reassuring. "My parents sent me away just before the end in an experimental rocket; in fact it landed just a half mile from here over in the cornfields."

"Then the Kents..."

"They found me when I landed, they raised me, loved me as their own," Laura continued, now failing to keep the emotion those words produced under control.

"Of course they did," Lana said. "They're good people."

"The best," Laura added.

"My head is still spinning," Lana said as she sat down on the large picnic basket they had brought. "This is all so much to take in."

"That's why I was so hesitant about telling you," Laura said. "I was afraid how you would take it, when you found out I wasn't really human."

"Now that's a load of horseshit, as my grandmother used to say," Lana said as she again rose to her feet. "You are more human than anyone else I've ever met, don't ever think different. But even if you weren't human, I would still love you."

"Even if I really had green scales and a forked tongue," Laura smiled, relieved at her friend's words.

"Well, it might take some getting used to the scales," Lana smiled back, "but a forked tongue might have some interesting possibilities if you think about it."

They stood there for a moment, each knowing that both nothing and everything had changed forever.

"I do want to stay here with you," Laura said.

"But you can't, I know that now," Lana replied, a sadness in her voice.

"You could come with me," Laura pointed out.

"No, no, I couldn't," Lana said, the sadness more evident. "We both know that this is where I belong, the only place that I'll be truly happy."

"We could try," Laura said.

"And destroy what we've had," Lana interjected. "Laura, my dear sweet Laura, I'm just a small town girl, and that's all I've ever wanted to be."

Laura opened her mouth to say something, then stopped as she realized that nothing else she said was going to change anything.

"But you... You're famous, or at least you're going to be," Lana went on. "No, that's not right. I don't think there's really a word for what you are going to be, or what you are going to mean to the world in the years to come."

"The world can go hang," Laura said in an emotional outburst as she realized what she was losing. "I can stay here with you."

"No, you can't," Lana replied, tears now sliding down her cheeks, "and I could never be that selfish to ask you to do that. I'm just glad we had tonight, so that I could be just a little selfish and have you to myself for one last time."

As she floated above Metropolis, Laura still remembered the last kiss they'd shared, before she'd flown up into the night sky and out of Lana's life forever. She had watched from thousands of feet in the air as Lana drove home, but turned away when she saw her drop crying into her bed. That was the night the Girl of Steel learned that her supposed invulnerability didn't extend to her heart.

Laura Kent left Smallville a week later, supposedly to help take care of a distant relative on the East Coast. Since she had long ago earned enough credits to graduate, the high school was more than willing to issue a diploma in her name for her to take with her. Already she had applied to and been accepted by Metropolis University for the next fall term.

Only a few months ago, Laura had learned from her parents that Lana had again found love. It was the best news from home she had ever gotten.

The sound of a distant alarm caught the Maid of Might's attention and she happily altered her flight in that direction. Lana was gone from her life but Lois was now in it. It was just a matter of finding out what that was going to mean.

-=-=-=-

"Supergirl saves five in waterfront fire," Lois read as she held up the front page of the early morning edition of the Daily Planet, "by Laura Kent. I guess you still lead a charmed life, always in the right place at the right time."

"I just happened to be out for a walk," Laura said as she looked over Lois's shoulder at the headline, taking note that Lois hadn't referred to her by either of her names. "It's not like I could've known that there would be a fire."

"Just out for a walk, down by the docks, at two o'clock in the morning," Lois added as she folded the paper and dropped in on her desk. "And then you rush back to the office, just in time to make sure it's the banner story in the first edition, scooping any other paper in town."

Lois had been surprised to discover Laura already at her desk when she herself showed up at the crack of dawn, eager to pick up where she'd left off on her latest investigative piece.

"I couldn't sleep and went out to think," Laura said. "Down by the water just happened to be where I wound up."

"Think about what?" Lois said as she sat on the edge of her desk, facing Laura across the aisle.

"Things."

"Things?" Lois repeated, making it a question. "What kind of things?"

"Well, if you have to know," Laura said, "I was thinking about what happened last night."

"What happened last night?" Lois asked, as if she hadn't been there.

"You well know what happened last night," Laura said, glancing slightly to her left and right to make sure no one else had come into the newsroom yet.

"Okay, yes, I know what happened last night," Lois said, relenting. "So I guess the real question should be, what do you want to do about it?"

"What do you want to do?" Laura countered.

"Alright, look," Lois said, slipping off the edge of the desk into the aisle. "We can toss this back and forth all day, but I think that would be a waste of time on both our parts. So I'm going to step off the ledge here and tell you how I see it."

Laura nodded her head in agreement.

"I'm attracted to you, I'm pretty sure you've figured that out by now," Lois began. "Don't ask me the why or how of it, because I don't know and have learned that sometimes it's better not to ask."

Laura again nodded her head.

"Moreover, unless I'm way off the mark, I think I can honestly say that you're attracted to me as well," Lois added, then paused to see if Laura wanted to agree to that as well. When she didn't, the brunette fell back on `silence is sometimes more of an answer than words" and went on. "But I also get the impression that's there's something out there that's preventing you from letting this go forward. Something that frightens you, and it has to do with that girl Lana you mentioned. Oh, those girls in college were okay, because, as you said, that wasn't real. But this, this would be quite real and that scares you."

Laura was speechless. She couldn't believe how much of a read Lois had on her. Part of her wanted to just grab her and kiss her, but another held her in check.. Thankfully, Lois then offered a solution.

"I think you are someone worth fighting for, and I'm willing to take it as slow as you want, or until you figure out if it's something that you don't want. Is that okay with you?"

"Oh yes," Laura smiled, filled with the urge to throw her arms around Lois and kiss her right here in the newsroom.

A kiss that didn't happen as a figure just entering the newsroom from the other direction shouted Lois's name from the top of his lungs, diverting her attention in a reflex action.

"Lois," Perry While cried out as he walked across the room, "Commissioner Henderson's office just called, and they want you down there to talk to the District Attorney about your testimony at the Inter-Gang trial next week."

"Now, Perry?" Lois asked, remembering that Laura was standing there beside her. "It's barely seven o'clock, don't they normally start their day around nine-ish?"

"Right now," Perry repeated. "They've been working almost around the clock on this case and when I mentioned that you were already in, they asked if you could come right over and I said it wouldn't be a problem. I wasn't wrong, was I?"

In a story that was already being talked about as Pulitzer material, Lois had cracked open the biggest criminal organization in the city in the last fifty years. Bruno Mannheim, the boss of bosses who ran Inter-Gang, was looking at multiple life sentences and the dismantling of his empire, all due to her investigative skills.

"Okay, I'll head right over there," Lois relented.

Not expecting any other answer, the editor was already headed back to his office.

"I guess we'll have to finish this later," Lois said to Laura.

"I could come with you," she offered instead, "just as company."

"I'd like that." Lois said as she reached down alongside her desk for her bag.

-=-=-=-

"Aren't you at least a little worried that some of Mannheim's hoods might try and keep you from testifying at his trial?" Laura asked as she and Lois exited the Planet building onto the near deserted street and started to walk down to the corner lot where Lois's car was parked.

"It goes with the territory," Lois, who was walking along the curb line to Laura's left, said. "Besides, my testimony is just the icing on the cake; they already had enough to send that bastard away for two lifetimes. The D.A. just wants to put a human face on it, that's all."

"He's not the one that Mannheim threatened at his arraignment," Laura said, taking note of the slight quiver in Lois's voice that normal hearing would never have detected. "From what I've read of him, he's not the type who makes idle threats."

"Well, if you want to play with the big boys..." Lois started to say, but paused when she saw a strange look on Laura's face, as if something else had abruptly drawn her attention.

"Oh no," Lois heard Laura say a half second before all hell broke lose.

In a display of speed and strength that would no doubt have astonished Lois if she'd had the time to appreciate it, Laura grabbed her fellow newswoman and, literally lifting her off the ground, pulled her away from the curbside. Everything blurred as Lois felt herself flying through the air, slamming against the side of the Daily Planet building, a half second before she felt Laura's body press tightly against her own.

She had no way of knowing that Laura had instinctively reacted to an almost imperceptible but familiar double click, one that had emanated from a car parked at the curb just behind them. A sound unique to the firing mechanism of an Uzi machine pistol in the seconds before it spewed a lethal stream of lead at six hundred rounds a minute. And in this case, there had been two double clicks.

Lois opened her mouth to say something, but her words were drowned out by the roaring rip of machine gun fire that shattered the early morning calm, causing the plate glass window of the office supply store just behind them to explode inward in a hundred tiny fragments. An army brat familiar with the sounds of the firing range, Lois identified the booming sound, along with the thought that both she and her friend were dead women.

The thunder of gunfire cleared as unexpectedly as it had appeared, replaced by the screech of tires as the ambush car sped away from the curb. In their haste, they failed to note that despite the carnage, they were leaving behind a still standing, stunned but very much alive, Lois Lane.

"Laura!" Lois screamed as her mind came back into focus and her first thought was that the woman pressed up against her had taken the brunt of the deadly assault.

She could see where the stream of bullets had first impacted on the younger woman's side, then worked their way across her back, ripping the light jacket she'd been wearing to shreds. Death had to have come almost instantaneously, Lois thought as her mind continued to race, Laura's body falling against her own, saving Lois' life at the cost of her own.

"Oh God, Laura," Lois sobbed, tears running down her face as she held on to the body of a friend who only minutes before she wondered if she might have been much more.

"Lois ..it's okay."

The sound of Laura's voice came as a bigger shock than the assault itself, and Lois instantly decided that if she had actually heard it, it had to have been a dying breath.

"It's not possible," Lois gasped as she felt the body in her arms shift, and then lift itself to stand on its own.

"It's not possible," Lois repeated, refusing to believe what she was seeing as the battered, but unbloodied girl before her began to quickly examined Lois' body.

"Oh no, you're hurt," Lois heard Laura say, this time loud and clear, the comment drawing her attention to her left shoulder where the material of her jacket had been ripped away and blood splattered across it.

"Thank God, it's just a flesh wound, probably from a ricochet," Laura went on, "there's no muscle or bone damage beneath the skin."

"How can you know that?" Lois asked, her inquisitive nature kicking in automatically. Then, as the first waves of shock began to dissipate – she knew.

"Oh my God!" she exclaimed, in a voice eerily reminiscent of one Laura had heard in a cornfield on a spring night years before. "How could I have not seen it? You've been right in front of me all along."

"Lois," Laura said, a measure of unaccustomed panic in her own voice. "I never meant for you to find out like this."

"Get out of here," Lois abruptly said, her voice now again strong and firm.

"No," Laura said, "Please no..."

"You have to get out of here," Lois repeated, "before someone recognizes you."

Laura finally realized that Lois wasn't lashing out at having been deceived, she was taking control of the situation. Already, people drawn by the sound of gunfire were converging on the two. Those closest had kept their distance as they ascertained their own safety, but the more adventurous were already putting that aside. An emergency medical unit was also pulling up into the space the gunmen's car had vacated, having been just around the corner when the sound of gunfire filled the air.

"Go!" Lois insisted as she pushed Laura away. "I'll be fine."

Laura stepped back as the first EMT approached, turning so that if he hadn't already seen the impact marks on her back, they would be hidden from his view.

"Her first," she said in an `I will be obeyed' tone.

Seeing the blood on Lois's shoulder, the medic followed her instructions.

Quickly assessing that Lois's injury was not life threatening, he then turned to check the woman who had been standing next to her. To his surprise, despite the fact that he had only turned his head for a few seconds, there was no one there. His partner, who had been grabbing their emergency gear from the ambulance, confirmed that there had indeed been two women standing there when they arrived. The second one had just vanished and he was likewise at a loss to explain how.

-=-=-=-

A thousand feet above the Daily Planet building, Laura rid herself of the last of her tattered outfit and incinerated it, along with the rest of her civilian disguise, with a burst of heat vision. There was no time to find a hiding place for what parts of it might be salvageable.

Focusing her telescopic vision on the street far below, she first confirmed that, yes Lois was indeed going to be all right. Then she altered her range of perception and picked up both the heat and emissions trail of the gunmen's car. There was no doubt who had sent them as, even over the roar of gunfire, she had heard one of the would be killers cry out that it was a gift from Boss Mannheim.

It took but a few more moments to track the car to a large, seemingly nondescript, but in reality heavily fortified warehouse a half mile distant. From having read Lois's notes on her story, she identified the warehouse as belonging to a front company for Inter-Gang and a favorite hiding place for Bruno Mannheim. The place was so heavily armored that they could probably hold off a dozen Swat teams if they had to, which was fine, because this time Supergirl was in no mood to be gentle.

Inside the warehouse, in the central first floor hall where the King of Crime in Metropolis liked to hold court, Bruno Mannheim was receiving the report of the men who had carried out his orders. It had already been a busy day for the gang lord, after having managed to successfully slip out of the downtown jail where he had been held since his arrest, leaving behind a double to convince the police that he was still in custody. Eventually the deception was sure to be discovered, but his doppelganger had been well paid to take the fall once it was.

Good sense should've dictated that Mannheim waste no time in getting out of the country. Had he wished, he could even now be on his way to a country with no extradition treaties. But ever since he had been a lowly button man working for the old bosses, Bruno Mannheim had never been one to leave unfinished business behind. There were at least thirty men, dead by his own hand, as proof. If he couldn't do the same for Lois, he would be damned if he would leave until he was sure his orders had been executed.

"There's no doubt that you hit her," Bruno asked his top shooters for the third time.

"Boss, we emptied almost a hundred rounds into her and some other broad she was with," the lead gunman answered yet again. "Those bodies have got so many holes in them that they're not even going to be able to embalm them."

"Good," the mob boss finally said as he sat back in his chair. "I owed that lousy bitch and Bruno Mannheim always pays his debts."

The gunman who had answered couldn't believe how much trouble the boss was giving him over one simple hit. If he'd known it was going to be like this, he'd have brought along a fourth guy to videotape it all. Then, on reflection, he figured he'd better keep that idea to himself, or the boss might think it was a good idea for the future. That's all they needed, films of their hits that could wind up in court.

"You said there was some other broad with her," Mannheim asked. "Any idea who?"

"Just someone with worse luck than the late Lois Lane," the hit man laughed. "What's it matter, she ain't about to come knocking to complain."

Bruno Mannheim stared at him for a few seconds, then began to laugh. The gunman joined in, followed by all of the gang in earshot. If Bruno thought it funny, everyone had better think so.

The loud laughter abruptly stopped as a sudden roar of wind drowned out the sound, one that quickly built in intensity until it exploded into a sonic boom that shattered every window in the three-story structure. As if by magic, every man's hand filled with an automatic weapon, aimed in every direction including that of the eight by ten, five inch thick steel door that led to the street outside. A seemingly impenetrable barrier that, a heartbeat later, blew off its hinges, shattering as it did into a dozen pieces.

With a direction to aim in, if not a target, two dozen weapons came to life, filling the entranceway with billowing clouds of dust and debris, punctuated by a shower of death. Out of that conflagration walked the red caped woman in blue, moving forward with slow deliberate steps as she made no effort to avoid the fusillade.

After a minute or so, the sounds of destruction decreased in volume as most of the weapons began to click on empty chambers, while others ceased fire of their own accord. The sight of the growing pile of depleted slugs that had dropped harmlessly at her feet had been enough to cause even the most determined gunmen to have second thoughts about drawing her attention to them.

Still, there is always one made braver by the gun in his hand; or in this individual's case, a shoulder-launched rocket propelled grenade. It had been part of the loot from a raid on a military supply depot some months back. Taking quick aim at the Girl of Steel from a second floor balcony, he confidently pressed the trigger.

A column of smoke shot across the warehouse as those who recognized the weapon's signature quickly sought cover. To their confusion, the roar of the missiles passage had not been followed by the expected explosion of its high explosive warhead.

Looking up from behind the storage crates where they'd dropped for safety, they were met by the sight of Supergirl calmly standing in the same spot as before, the crushed rocket in her hand. That had been enough for even the most diehard of Mannheim's minions, as the sound that now filled the air was that of weapon after weapon being thrown to the floor.

"I don't care what kind of super-bitch you are," Mannheim bellowed as he stepped down from the elevated chair he had been using as a makeshift throne. "Bruno Mannheim doesn't roll over for any broad."

With that, he drew his personal firearm from his shoulder holster and aimed it directly at the Maid of Might. Supergirl slowly shook her head. After watching all the gunmen at his command fail to stop her, what did he really think he was going to do with that popgun?

Still, just to be sure, she gave the weapon a quick x-ray scan. After all, Inter-Gang had been known to possess some extraordinary technology at times and it was never good to be overconfident. The weapon turned out to be a common .357 magnum, no more dangerous to her than a bag of peanuts.

Supergirl took one step forward, and Mannheim fired at point blank range. Whatever he was expecting, it certainly hadn't been to have none of his shots find their target. By the time his last round had been expended, Supergirl was only a foot in front of him. She smiled, lifted her hand and one by one, dropped each of the pristine slugs to the floor. Too fast for the eye to see, she had caught each one in mid-air. That was enough for even the fearsome Bruno Mannheim.

"Don't worry," Supergirl grinned as her sensitive sense of smell drew her attention, first to the stain on Bruno's pants, then to the small puddle at his feet. "After they book you back at the jail, you'll get a brand new suit free of charge."

As she watched the MPD escort Mannheim and his men into the waiting police vans outside, Supergirl felt a sense of satisfaction at how things had turned out. When she'd first crashed through the door, she had been uncertain if, for the first time in her life, she was going to be able to keep her anger in check. They had tried to kill Lois, and the desire to grind their all too human bones to paste had been strong indeed. If Lois had been hurt worse, she might now be surrounded by the mangled bodies of those who had done it.

-=-=-=-

Like a tiger in a cage, Lois Lane paced back and forth in the small hospital room. Clad in just a hospital gown with her bandaged arm in a sling, she fumed at the ridiculous determination of both the doctors and her own editor to keep her here, at least until the last of her lab tests came back. She had been shot, big deal, it wasn't as if it had been the first time. She remembered how in her first year in Metropolis she had ignored the orders of the incident commander and found herself hit in the leg by a stray round, when a standoff between the Special Crimes Unit and Inter-Gang degenerated into a shoot out.

"I've got to get out of here," Lois thought as for the third time she looked into the empty closet in her room, "if only to find out what happened to Laura."

So far, she had stubbornly refused to answer any questions about what exactly had happened this morning, much to the consternation of both Perry and the Police Inspector who had interviewed her. No matter what, she had to keep Laura out of it. At least until she could come up with an explanation as to why she wasn't dead, without explaining that her junior partner moonlighted as a superhero.

"Nice view," a familiar voice said, coming from an unexpected direction, that of the open twenty-third floor window.

"Laura!" Lois cried out as she whirled around to face the figure now gliding through the window. "I mean Supergirl." she quickly corrected herself.

An unaccustomed blush filled her face as Lois realized that the view Supergirl had been referring to wasn't that outside the window, but rather the one presented by the hospital gown, which had refused to stay tied and had been hanging open in the back. Normally, she could've walked naked through the locker room of the Metropolis Monarchs and not given it the slightest pause.

"Are you okay?" Lois asked as her momentary embarrassment faded.

"I think that is supposed to be my line," Supergirl said with a smile as she glided across the room, closing the small distance between them.

"Oh, this is nothing," Lois said, grimacing slightly as she attempted to lift her bandaged arm to show it was fine.

The discomfort on Lois's face brought a twinge of sadness to Supergirl's.

"I feel responsible for that," the girl in blue said. "If I'd been paying more attention, if I hadn't been distracted, none of this would've happened."

"Don't be absurd," Lois said, gratitude evident in her tone. "You saved my life. Having to put up with this for a little while is a small price to pay," she added, indicating her arm but this time keeping it hanging in the sling.

"Well, that I can at least do something about," Supergirl said as she produced a small instrument, the likes of which Lois had never seen, from a belt pouch that had been hidden beneath her cape. "This might sting a little at first, but it will pass quickly."

Lois watched in fascination as the end of the device began to glow and, as Supergirl ran it back and forth against her wound, a soothing warmth began to spread outward from the injured area. By the time she was done, her shoulder felt as good as new.

"That was amazing," Lois said as she removed the now superfluous bandage, revealing unmarked skin beneath it. "What was that?"

"It's a dermal regenerator," Supergirl responded as she slipped it back into the hidden pocket. "Part of an emergency med kit that my father had the foresight to add to my rocket just before launch. I haven't had much use for it, but in this instance I'm glad I had it."

Lois took another few moments to stretch and test her arm, marveling in her recovery. Satisfied, her thoughts turned what had happened during her enforced stay in the hospital.

"Mannheim?" she simply said, remembering the Inspector mentioning that his escape had finally been discovered.

"Back in police custody, along with his men and a whole new assortment of charges," Supergirl replied.

"That's good," Lois said, not really expecting any other answer, especially after the way Supergirl had charged off in pursuit of the gunmen this morning. That brought forth another question, one that she waited a moment before asking.

"Did anyone see you this morning?" Lois asked, worried what the answer might be. "I mean, did anyone connect you and Laura...I'm sorry, but it's still hard to realize that the two of you are the same person."

"I know it probably does take some getting used to," Supergirl smiled, "but Supergirl is just something people call me when I have this costume on. In or out of it, I'm still just Laura. Just give it a little while, you'll be surprised at how quickly you become accustomed to it."

"Okay," Lois smiled.

"And to answer the question, as far as anyone is concerned, Supergirl, who had learned of a possible attempt on your life by Inter-Gang, decided to play bodyguard while in disguise. – Laura Kent was never there."

"And you think people will buy that?" Lois asked, her tone expressing her own disbelief.

"People will buy a great many things if presented correctly," the Metropolis Marvel grinned. `Sometimes all it takes is a wig and a pair of glasses."

"Touche," Lois thought, only partially suppressing her smile.

"And you think people will buy that?" Lois asked.

"Well, it's been up on the Metropolis Star website for the last two hours," the Girl of Steel replied, pausing for a second as she double checked that no one was within earshot outside the room "an exclusive by Toby Raines, and no one seems to have any reason to doubt it. I thought that in this instance the story should go with another paper, even though I'm sure Perry is furious about it."

"Toby Raines?" Lois asked, suddenly picturing the reporter for the Star who had been an occasional rival, in both professional and personal circumstances. "How do you know Toby Raines?"

"I met her a few times through Maggie Sawyer," Supergirl said, amused to discern a touch of jealousy in the tone of Lois's question.

The mention of the Police Inspector, who Lois also knew in a non- professional capacity, caused her to further recall a conversation with Cat Grant a few months back. Evidently, one of Cat's contributors had spotted the head of the Special Crimes Unit and the reporter for the Star in certain invitation-only nightspots, and the gossip columnist was considering making it an item in one of her reports. While Maggie Sawyer made no real attempt to hide her sexual preference, she did value her privacy when it came to non-job related matters. Lois had casually suggested to Cat that it was her decision, of course, but it probably wouldn't be a good idea to get on Maggie's bad side.

"I've actually been worried about you," Lois said, putting her previous thought aside. "I know that sounds pretty silly, given what I now know, but I actually have."

"It doesn't sound silly to me, Lois," Supergirl smiled. "I think it's quite natural to worry about someone you care about, regardless of how unnecessary that concern might be."

"I don't just care about you," Lois said. "I realized that in that single terrifying moment when I thought you were dead."

"I love you too, Lois," Supergirl said as she reached out and took Lois' hand in her own. "I think that I fell in love with you that first day in Perry's office. It's just taken me this long to be able to admit it."

"No ghosts of Lana?" Lois asked, remembering their conversation of earlier.

"I will always love Lana as part of my past," Supergirl said as she took hold of Lois' other hand, "but I love you as part of my present, and hopefully - our future."

The kiss they shared was long in coming but no less satisfying than if it had not been interrupted hours before. They held each other close, the press of their bodies against each other producing a warmth that equaled that of the regenerator.

"I think maybe we should take this somewhere a bit more private," the girl in blue suggested, as she heard a muted conversation out in the hall.

"They took my clothes," Lois pointed out. "I guess they figured that was the only way to keep me here."

"Oh I'm sure we can work around that," Supergirl replied as she kissed her again.

-=-=-=-

When the ward nurse, whose conversation out in the hall had heralded her impending arrival, opened the door to Lois' room and stepped inside, she was presented with a mystery. The room was quite empty, and the only evidence that it had ever been in use was the soiled bandage in the wastebasket and the crumpled hospital gown tossed on the bed. If she had happened to glance out the still open window, the fifty-six year old might have discovered the answers to her unspoken questions in the form of a pair of figures already fading in the distance.

Wrapped tightly in the red cape that protected her modesty, Lois watched the city race by below her with indifferent eyes. Normally, the tapestry would have impressed anyone, but it paled beside the warmth and strength she felt in the arms of the woman so effortlessly carrying her.

Much to Lois' surprise, the flight turned out to be much shorter than she expected, ending in quite familiar surroundings – the balcony of her own high-rise apartment. Still tightly holding the cape around her, she watched as Supergirl used a burst of her heat vision to expand the metal of the door lock, just enough to allow her to open it from the outside.

"You said you needed clothes," she said to Lois.

"I guess I did," Lois replied as she stepped past the girl in red and blue into her apartment. "But I somehow thought we might've been going to your place."

"I think you might've found that a little disappointing," Supergirl responded as she looked around the apartment, which she had of course seen from a distance but had never been in. "I live in a small studio apartment over in Queensland Park, just across the river. You can even see it from your balcony, well, I can at least."

"You're kidding," Lois said in surprise.

"Where did you think I lived," her guest laughed, "in some kind of fortress carved out of a jungle or maybe the Arctic? Although now that I think of it, having a place like that to get away from it all might not be a bad idea."

"I just thought that Supergirl..." Lois said.

"Supergirl might be able to turn coal into diamonds," she laughed, "but Laura Kent has to at least look like she's living on what a reporter makes, at least one without a bookcase full of awards to her credit."

"I guess so," Lois said as she stopped in the middle of her living room. "You know, I was going to change, but as I think about it, it does seem a waste of time, doesn't it? After all, it's not where you are that matters as much as who you're with."

With that, she dropped the cape to the floor.

-=-=-=-

With slow, deliberate steps, Lois walked over to Laura and, bringing her hands to the side of her face, kissed her once more. This time there was no rush, no sense of urgency, just the desire to share with her love the passion that she felt filling her.

Laura returned the kiss with equal fervor, her tongue rolling over Lois' as it explored the deepness of her mouth. She brought her hand up to cup Lois' breasts, even as she felt first her belt, then the zipper of her skirt being undone.

"I'm glad to see that you designed this to be easily removed," Lois grinned as the bright red skirt came loose and fell to the floor, her hands already moving to the clamp down between Laura's legs that held the one piece top tight against her body. Once that was undone as well, it was easy to take hold of the upper garment and slide it up and over her head.

"No underwear," Lois laughed, "wouldn't the more upstanding citizens of Metropolis be shocked."

`Fuck the citizens of Metropolis," Laura laughed back.

"I'd much rather you just concentrate on this citizen," Lois smiled as she kissed Laura once more.

Without breaking the kiss, Laura again lifted Lois in her arms and turned in the direction of the rear bedroom. Lois started to point out which of the two rear rooms was the bedroom and was surprised when Laura said she knew. The how of that was quickly tossed aside in anticipation of much more important things.

Laying Lois out across the bed, Laura quickly joined her, their bodies pressing tightly, one against the other. She started to ease Lois onto her back, but Lois instead took hold of both her shoulders and held her back.

"No," she said, "you just lay back and relax."

Laura nodded and let herself be overpowered, sinking back into the softness of the mattress beneath her.

Her mouth again seeking out Laura's, Lois let her hands run up and down the woman beneath her, enjoying both the softness of her skin and the warmth it produced. Bright pink nipples atop firm rounded breasts cried for attention as her fingers, then her lips, glided across them. A soft sigh spilled from Laura's lips as Lois' mouth closed around her left nipple, her tongue caressing the tip to a new hardness before her lips wrapped around them as well.

She couldn't believe how soft Laura's breasts actually were, especially in view of the fact that she had seen bullets bounce off them numerous times. At the very least, she had thought they would've felt at least as hard as some fake mounds did. But that was another thought that only lasted as long as it took to think it, as even more enticing delights awaited her.

Laura arched her back and let out an even louder moan as Lois' tongue continued to flicker across both her breasts, followed by her hands as she squeezed the soft flesh from beneath. Lifting herself up just a bit, Laura brought her own mouth to within reach of Lois' larger mounds, pressing her face between them before giving equal attention to both left and right.

Both were now kneeing on the bed, sharing kisses and the softness of each other's breasts, hands running up and down their backs, tracing a line down across the roundness of their asses. They held each other tight, breast against breast, nipple against nipple, rubbing their bodies and savoring the sensations each movement produced.

Lois reached down and cupped the lightly haired mound between Laura's legs, her thumb quickly finding its way to the younger woman's clit and pressing softly against it, her remaining fingers parting the folds and slipping inside.

"Oh yes," Laura moaned softly as Lois began to rub back and forth.

This went on for nearly a minute, then Lois withdrew her hand and, raising it to her face, slipped her fingers inside her mouth. A murmur of satisfaction brought a smile to both.

Lois then eased Laura back once more onto the bed, kissing her way down her body. She started at the nape of her neck and then downward, skipping over the treasure between her legs to continue down the length of her long legs before reversing direction. Once more, she bypassed the temptations between Laura's legs, preferring to once more focus her attention on the fullness of her breasts.

As she did, one hand again came to rest against her mouth, repeating the earlier ministrations while the other slipped beneath to grasp the equal fullness of her ass. Each new motion added to the cumulative delights racing across Laura's body.

Lois again brought her mouth downward, duplicating her path on Laura's other leg, lavishing soft kisses across it before again moving upward. She pulled Laura's body lower on the bed, even as her own rose up to meet it. Another series of long, soft kisses followed, Laura's hand running across Lois' back as the longer haired woman again suckled at her breasts.

Following an imaginary line down the valley between Laura's breasts, across her stomach and over her waistline, Lois finally reached the source of her womanhood. She slipped her arms up under Laura's legs, reaching upward until her hands met Laura's and their fingers interlocked. Bringing her head down between Laura's legs, Lois extended her tongue and ran it across the entire length of Laura's sex, repeating the action several time, much to Laura's delight, until finally guiding her probing appendage deep within.

Laura gazed down with joy, her eyes meeting Lois's as her head continued to rise and then disappear between her legs. Each time sending a wave of indescribable pleasure across her quivering form, waves that were building upon themselves and growing stronger with each repetition.

Laura was now stretched back on the bed, her eyes closed as she let herself be carried away on the waves of ecstasy. Low and not so low moans of encouragement filled the air, urging Lois to drive her tongue and mouth both harder and faster.

"Oh fuck yes!" Laura called out, a particularly fierce surge of gratification causing her body to convulse.

Lois responded by reaching up with a free hand and closing it around one of Laura's sweat covered breasts, her fingers quickly closing around its nipple and adding to the rising passions. Laura followed suit by closing her own hand around Lois's and the other against her still bare mound. Together their bodies rocked back and forth, the intensity of their joining building to a crescendo.

Slipping her hand from beneath Laura's, Lois brought it down between her legs and slipped as many fingers as she could inside her, joining their motions to that of her tongue. That proved to be the final push as, only moments later, Laura's body exploded in orgasmic fury.

"Oooooh yesss!!!!!" she cried out as she grabbed the sheets beneath her and balled them up in her fists.

Holding onto her just as tightly, Lois continued to propel her fingers and tongue deep inside Laura, driving the force of her orgasm until it finally began to subside.

No sooner had it begun to fade than Laura moved to return those delights that she had just been given. She told Lois to turn around, and in moments, Laura found herself just inches from Lois' damp mound. Lois continued to gently caress Laura's mound with her fingers, even as the girl underneath reached up with her own hand to probe Lois's.

Laura slipped two, then three fingers inside Lois, sliding them across the sugar walls within with much the same effect that Lois' actions had produced inside of her. Then, with a burst of speed and strength, she lifted Lois and whirled her onto her back, allowing the shorthaired girl to take a more dominant position.

Her hand quickly returned to its task, sliding in and out with ever- increasing speed, each repetition producing the expected results. Laura's head dropped down to Lois' breasts, her mouth and tongue working their way across their bounty. Never one to lay passive, Lois reached down with one hand and added to Laura's ministrations with her own.

"I'm going to come!" Lois said, much to her own surprise, only minutes later.

"Not yet," Laura cried out, not wanting her to climax until she tried something she had long thought about. She kissed Lois hard, then flipped her over once more so that now she was bent over on all fours.

Extending two fingers, Laura once more slipped them inside Lois, pressing them in and out a few times, just enough to keep up the excitement while tempering the onrushing results. Lois felt the difference, but was still enjoying herself too much to complain. Laura seemed to have something in mind, and she couldn't wait until she found out what it was.

The answer came but a heartbeat later, much to Lois' delight and surprise. Laura's fingers, buried deep inside of her, had actually begun to vibrate. It was a little trick she used when pleasing herself but, seeing she had never been intimate with someone who knew the truth about her, had never had the opportunity to try on someone else. She was greatly pleased to see that Lois enjoyed it as much as she did.

The tiny oscillations around her fingers continued to build as Laura increased the frequency of her vibrations. She and Lois had again shifted positions so that Lois was now kneeling upright with Laura tight behind her, one hand massaging her breasts, the other still buried inside her.

"Oh God, fuck me!" Lois cried out as her body gyrated back and forth. "Fuck me harder, it feels so good!"

Laura abruptly released Lois, letting her fall forward onto the bed, then she pressed her down against the pillows with one hand while the other again picked up where it had left off. Lois continued to rock back and forth, slamming her body back to meet Laura's forward thrusts. Once more Laura brought Lois to the edge, driving her wild with anticipation, only to pull her back from the precipice at the last moment.

In a final position shift, Laura effortlessly lifted Lois' lower body and buried her face between her thights. Nimble fingers parted the way as a tongue that could only be seen as a blur buried itself far inside of Lois' pussy. With the vibration trick having worked so well with her fingers, Laura saw no reason not to try to duplicate the results with her tongue.

The effect, she discovered, was both immediate and quite explosive. Lois' body quivered and quaked in a manner she had never experienced before. Sweat ran down her face and across her breasts as wave after wave of orgasmic euphoria washed across her body. At one point she feared she might very well black out, at another, that her heart might burst under the strain. If so, it would be worth it, she concluded what tiny bit of conscious thought remained.

But her heart didn't stop, nor did she black out. Her only after effect turning out to be a fear that her ride through the fields of Elysium might never be repeated.

"Are you okay?" Lois finally heard Laura ask though a slowly diminishing fog.

"I'm okay," Lois said, still just a little out of breath.

"I was afraid for a moment that I went a little too far," Laura said, a touch of concern in her voice. "I've never actually used my powers during sex before, at least not with someone else."

"Then that was definitely their loss," Lois said, finally regaining full control of her breathing.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it," Laura said, "because I know I did."

"I can't imagine that what I did for you came anywhere close to what you did for me," Lois said, wiping a damp strand of hair from her eyes.

"Don't sell yourself short," Laura grinned, "and you didn't even need power tools to do it." she added.

"Oh God, I did say that, didn't I?" Lois said, remembering the dinner conversation that now seemed so long ago.

"That's okay, I forgave you almost as soon as you said it," Laura smiled. "In fact, when I thought about it afterwards, I actually thought it was kind of funny. Just think of the money I could make from product endorsements."

"Good enough to get Supergirl off!" Lois said, matching her smile as she suggested copy for an imagined advertisement.

"Of course they might want their money back if they discovered that all that was needed to do that was the touch of the woman she loved," Laura said, her voice becoming once more serious.

"I do love you," Lois said, taking one of Laura's hands in hers.

"And I you," Laura replied, taking hold of the other.

They met once more in a kiss, as a love that was meant to be, in any reality, once more became true.

END

While this story is indeed my own, I want to acknowledge it was partially inspired by "The Never Ending Fight" by Les Bonner, which I had the good fortune to read over a dozen years ago. I long ago lost his email address, but if you ever come across this Les, thank you once again for sharing your marvelous work.

Comments are the life blood of any amateur writer, the currency in which they are paid. It only takes a few minutes to send off a few lines, which is little to ask for in exchange for hours spent creating a story. So be sure to take those few minutes, it can only result in more and better stories in the future.

Ann Douglas Web Page

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Copyright Ann Douglas 2010