The sounds of traffic woke me up every morning and the apartment was a lot smaller than I thought but I was surviving. Today was the day my interview with Mr. White, the editor in chief. Two things were crucially important for me to accomplish today. First, I needed to establish Clark Kent as clumsy and unsure of himself. I also had my glasses that I started to wear in high school to help me control my heat vision. I have learned as well that I could compress my spine making me shorter than I actually was.

As my superhero identity, I have got the opportunity to go out and save people, and I didn’t hide myself, but I also was too fast or too far way for anyone to get much of a picture. I knew one day though I wanted to do an interview that so revealed me to the world I just had to find the right person. All of this was crucial, so no one would recognized Clark and my new hero identity as the same
person.

The second crucial thing was to get the job. The Daily Planet was where I could do the most good outside of my super heroics. So, I needed to impress Mr. White, I put on a new suit that I had bought for the occasion and tied my lucky red tie. My shoes were polished last night and ready to go. I grabbed my messenger bag and headed to the Planet.

I walked out of my apartment and down the street towards the Planet. I had thought about bringing my pickup to Metropolis, but I knew traffic would be a nightmare. Besides if I need to get anywhere in a hurry, I could just fly or run there at super speed.

The sun was out, and it was a beautiful day. I was shocked that everyone had their heads down absorbed in what they were doing. I wanted to enjoy the day outside, so I kept my head up looking around. I was paying enough attention though and bumped into a lady. I quickly apologized and helped her gather her things.

“What are you trying to do, rob me?” she exclaimed pulling the things out of my hands.

“Watch where you’re going! Darn tourists!”

I tried to apologize again but she was already gone. I continued walking towards the Planet, this paying more attention to my surroundings. Thankfully, I was able to make it to the Daily Planet lobby and have the nice lady at the desk help direct me in the right direction.

As I rode up the elevator, I calmed my nerves. The elevator opened and I walked up to his office and tapped on the door. “Mr. White, uh um I don’t know if they told you”, sliding my glasses back up my nose, “but my name is Clark Kent. I have an interview with you, sir.”

“Kent! Kent. Why do you want to be a reporter here kid. Why the Planet?” Mr. White shouted at me, not looking up from the papers on his desk.

“Sir, I wanted to come to the Planet because you stand for the truth. Your paper is the pinnacle of the truth, everyone reads the Planet. Your stories aren’t afraid to stand up for themselves, no matter the opposition. The Star already offered me a job but respectfully, sir, they aren’t the kind of paper that I could work with in good conscience. They too often twist the facts to fit the story, not the other way around.”

“I like you, Kent”, finally looking up from his stack of papers, “and I can tell by your résumé and your articles I have got here. You are just what this paper needs.”

I was shocked, all of the papers on his desk were my articles. I walked forward to shake his hand and tripped on an extension cord. Even though I could have corrected my fall immediately at super speed I let it happen, on my way down I grabbed his desk to steady myself. I prevented a complete fall, but I knocked over a cups holding pens and pencils. I hurriedly tried to put the pens and pencils all back in the cup when Mr. White came up behind me.

“Leave it, Kent. We’ve got places to be, I’ll have Olsen clean it up for me. ” He left his office and started walking out into the bullpen. “I want you to start out working with Lane. She is our most experienced writer and she’ll have a lot to offer you even with your experience.”

“Lane, sir.” I puzzled.

“Who told you to wear a tie?”, a woman said behind me.

I turned to see who had spoke and saw the most beautiful woman I had ever met, “What?” I was actually struggling to get out words.

“Was it Lombard? I bet it was Lombard. Well, try to keep up. ” She said walking away from Mr. White. “Lois Lane, reporter for the Daily Planet and you are?”

I was confused should I keep following Mr. White or go with Lois, “Kent Clark. Clark. Clark Kent.”

“Okay then, the city of Metropolis needs you, so quit dilly dallying and follow me.” She got further from Mr. White, and I reluctantly followed after her. “Where you from? Saw your portfolio, some top-notch reporting in there. Especially, the exposé on the Zimbabwean government, you did good there.”

“Smallville is where I was raised. Also, thanks, I just tried to represent the injustice that was happening there in the right light.”

“Well, I was impressed, Smallville. That doesn’t happen often so I asked Perry if I could take you underneath my wing. I need some extra help with a story I am working on, no shared by-line though. You’re still a rookie hear in everyone else’s eyes.”

As we continued back to the desks, a man stopped in front of us, “Guess who got the front page again, Lane. My flying man is going to win me a Pulitzer. I know it.” He said to Lois.

“Come on, Ron, at least my story will be impactful and help real people.” She turned to me, “That is Ron Troupe, he has been working on learning more about the mysterious red and blue flying man that has been spotted in Metropolis the past little while. Ron thinks Metropolis needs to know more about the flying man.”

“And you don’t agree with him?

“Well, this flying character may be helping save kittens out of trees and help put out burning buildings, but all that attention is pushing the real issues off of the front page. Like this,” she grabbed a newspaper off her desk and flipped to the inside. “my story on the vagrant population slowly disappearing has been pushed out of the front in the last three issues of the Planet, because everyone would rather read about a superhero than about people going missing.”

“Oh, I didn’t know about that.” I told her.

“No one does and no cares either. These are real people with lives and goals, they’ve just hit a rough patch. They don’t deserve to be abducted.” Lois explained.

“How can I help?” I asked her, as a smile started to show on Lois’ face.

Lois was an amazing reporter with a knack for finding the truth no matter what. I was honestly worried that she might suspect my double life, but that wasn’t her focus so I knew I could scrape by under the radar for now. Over the next few weeks, I helped Lois with several things dealing with the story.

One of the first thing Lois set me on was interviewing other transients that might know or be aware of the people that went missing. This turned out to be a dead end, but using my super hearing I was able to hear them talk to each other. They were worried that if they talked about what was happening, they would get snatched up too. I told Lois that even the transients were scared of what was happening and didn’t know anymore than we did. She looked shocked that I could hear their conversation, but I convinced her that the alleyway made sound travel a lot farther.

Multiple times, we would head back to the Planet to add what we had learned to our research board. Lois would always stand puzzled in front of the board, like she was trying to piece it all together in her head. Then, a hint of despair would cross her face as Ron Troupe would enter the bullpen with another front-page story. I knew Lois cared about the story, but it had to hurt being passed up over and over again. We have published a few articles with our findings but nothing groundbreaking or front-page worthy.

One night as we sat working on our research board, I got up to leave but before I left I turned to Lois and said, “I’m going to head out but you know you’re really good at this.”

“Thanks”, she said a smile on her face. “And Clark, I can’t thank you enough for all the help you have been on this story. If you want, I can talk to Perry tomorrow about you getting your own beat.”

“Um no, I would rather be here.”

“For the story or for the company?” she said looking straight through me.

“I feel like that’s a trick question, Lois.” I said sheepishly back to her. I was worried my heat vision would activate because my face felt warm, but it was actually just my cheeks blushing.

Lois didn’t press the matter, “Goodnight Clark.”

“Good night, Lois.”

The next day, Lois had wanted us to interview the cops that worked on the missing cases but a lot of them avoided our question. One of the cops, Dan Turpin, shared with us that the all of the disappearances he had worked on were in the same general area. This was the break in the case that we needed to crack it wide open.

The next step was to get records from the city and other reports that would tell us where activity was happening. We could rule out reputable businesses that had records of their activities. That left us with two locations that they could possibly be at. Lois took one of the locations and I took the other one.

As I approached the location, I could already tell that my location was the spot. I saw a bunch of thugs sitting in a warehouse talking about how they were close to a big pay day, and they didn’t even have to spend money on labor. I called Lois up on the phone and told her that I recognized the thugs at the warehouse as known associates of Bruno Manheim. She told me to stay there and keep watch over them, she had found the homeless people, and they were finishing up building some kind of giant robot. She was going to sneak in and get a closer look at the robot.

I had every intention of staying there to watch the scene when a green car pulled out of the warehouse at breakneck speed. As they sped past, I listened in on them and heard them talking about how word had come down from the boss it was time to tie up the loose ends. I didn’t hesitate to go after them knowing Lois would be in danger. Running after them, I pulled open my shirt revealing the S symbol of my suit underneath it.

At super speed, I stashed the rest of my civilian wear and took to the skies. Using my super vision I located the car; it had just joined onto the highway and was weaving its way through cars. I flew up next to the car and tapped on the window, “Hi, got somewhere to be?”

The driver jerked the wheel in shock causing the car to go flying off the edge of the interpass. I swooped down catching the car before it hit the ground. As I set the car down, I heard the snap of a camera. I looked to see a red headed kid with freckles standing there with his camera aimed right at me. I checked the occupants of the car vitals, they were all unconscious. Then, I blasted off and after a speedy quick change I walked up behind him as Clark.

“Is that the car,” I said, pretending to be winded “that was going out of control on the road. I tried to follow it but lost it when they got on the interstate. I decided to head to this location since I figured this is where they were headed.”

“Wow, that must have been quite a run.” The kid said.

“Who are you exactly, kid?”

“Oh sorry,” he said extending his hand out to my mine, “the name is Jimmy Olsen. I’m an intern at the Planet but I mostly shoot photos for Miss Lane. You must be Clark; Lois says a lot of great things about you even though word around the Planet paints who as mild-mannered and accident prone. By the way, did you see the Flying Man?”

“Nice to meet you Jimmy, but no I didn’t get a chance to see him. I must have missed him.” I clenched my fists to my sides as if I was greatly disappointed.

“No worries, man. I got a picture.” Jimmy said, pulling out his camera and showing me the picture on it.

I was stunned, he had captured a fantastic shot. I was folding the green car above my head with the front of the car pointing downwards. The front end of the car was smashed from where it had gone of the interpass and the passers-by in the background of the looked scared. I could see from a certain point of view; it looked like I was the one smashing the car.

“Wow, Jimmy. You really are quite talented.” I complimented him.

“Well good or not, we need to get to Miss Lane before she causes some trouble. Not that I mind but its usually makes great photos.” Jimmy said before hurrying off towards the warehouse. I followed him and we snuck over to the window. Jimmy stealthily took some photos. There was a rustle of noise, so we ducked down only to see Lois come around the corner.

“Oh, Smallville. I see you’ve met Jimmy finally.” Lois said standing and grinning.

“Lois,” I motioned for her to get down, “they’ll see you.”

“Ha there’s no guards here anymore, Smallville”, she said. “I took them out already.” She brandished a taser that she held in her hand still charged up.

“So, are the people safe? Where did they go?”

“Yeah, after I subdued the guards, the people were all locked up still. So, I took a fire extinguisher to break the lock and I let them go, after getting a statement of course.” She took my hand next and pulled me forward into the warehouse. “You have to see this, Smallville.”

We walked further into the warehouse until I saw it. It was a giant toy robot, it looked exactly like the kind of robot you would wind up and let walk around. It had a square silver face with an antenna on the top of its head. The head also had flat round disks on the sides that seemed to be the robot ears. The body was square with skinny tube-like arms and legs. In the center of the chest, there was a clear window where you could see into the robot. It had a seat in it, obviously someone had used the homeless people to build it but once they were done, they wanted no witnesses. That’s why the thugs were on their way to kill these people.

“Cool robot”, Jimmy said snapping pictures.

“What do you suppose, they were going to do with it?” I asked Lois.

“Well, Smallville. My guess is if we ask those thugs the police are hauling away out there, they will be able to tell us.” She said hurrying back outside to go question the thugs. She turned back to me who was still standing there looking at the robot. “Come on Smallville, let’s move. We got to move.”

We walked over to where the green car was at, to see the police handling the scene, our friend Dan Turpin was there working at the scene. “Hey, Dan. Mind if I ask these guys some questions?”

“Go right ahead.” He said, opening the door to his squad car.

I walked up to the first and asked if he knew was running this operation. He looked at me and spit at my feet, “I ain’t telling you nothing.”

“I understand the sense of loyalty you have. I respect it. ”

“You ain’t getting nothing from me. So, you might as well back off” , he said to me again. I heard his buddies whispering to each other in the car over, “Don’t worry as long as we keep our mouths shut, they won’t know about Max. He planned it all out, only thing they got us on is reckless driving.” They must be talking about Max Danner, one of the low-level leaders in Intergang.

“Max Danner hired you”, I said to the thug, “and he will get rid of you just as quick. I’m sure he gave you some protection deal but what’s going to happen is he will issue a statement while you’re on your way to lockup that places all of this on you.”

“How you know about, Max?” The thug looked stunned.

“I didn’t know for certain and until you just confirmed it. Now tell me what’s going on, or there will be worse things happening for you.”

After that he told me everything, he said that Max had come to them telling them he had a plan to get rid of the flying man. He told them that he had contracted with a guy to give them the blueprints for the giant robot that was inside the warehouse. The only problem they had was finding the labor to build the thing and do it secretly. Max suggested they pull people from the homeless community as he believed no one would miss them. After they finished the robot, Max sent them the signal to take out everyone who worked on the robot. Then they crashed their car when the flying man stopped them.

I thanked the thug for his time and told him I would let Officer Turpin know how cooperative he had been. Lois had also finished her interview and we swapped stories. Knowing what we did now and with the assistance of Officer Turpin, we located Max Danner and got him taken away. We returned to the Planet to write up the article and turn it in to Perry.

As we sat at our desks talking about the case and what came next, I turned to Lois and said, “You know, Lois I was uh going to heat up a frozen pizza tonight, but I feel finishing this story deserves a better meal. Would you be against grabbing a bite to eat in celebration?”

“Smallville, I would love to. Let me grab Jimmy, he had a part in this too and then we can go eat”, she said.