trans_9 | (no subject)

Coffee. Coffee, coffee, coffee.

Lois couldn’t remember the last time she had REAL coffee and it was driving her up the walls. A few hours before arriving here? Was that it? She’d been so busy freaking out and running around the city and looking for her missing cousin that coffee had taken a backseat that day, and she wished she had.

Everything in this place would be a lot better if she had caffiene in her system, and that’s why she was sitting in the Sensoriums, in a nice little Metropolis coffee shop, with a copy of the Daily Planet on the table in front of her, enjoying fake-coffee at her leisure. When life gave you fake coffee, the only thing to do was take it and privately grumble about nothing in particular.

She uncapped a conveniently provided permanent marker, and blackened out the header (“CITY TO EXPAND BUS ROUTES PAST SHUSTER AVENUE”) and marked in her own words in big block letters.

STAR REPORTER LOIS LANE KIDNAPED BY ALIEN SPACESHIP.

(Okay, so it was a bit cramped.)

Lois sat back in her seat, taking another sip of coffee, and contemplated opening lines. Probably something to do with “taking it in stride, once again punching life in the face”, but that seemed a bit unprofessional.

So she wrote:

Witnesses battle over a football, finds a death pen, scottish boys and ~~medeival~~ m Medivel nights and Smallville’s meteor freak cousin and lives to tell the tale

She chewed on the end of the marker for a sec, and then slammed it down in frustration.

“Who am I kidding? They won’t run this. I’m going to be shoved in Belle Reve the second I open my mouth.”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Mine don't. I spent the other one I had –– which I am seriously questioning now, by the way –– involved deserts and portals and being attacked by crazy ghosts."

She pauses and takes a sip of her coffee. Mm, delicious coffee.

"If your tanks are like the ones in my world, this is your afterlife."

"...Actually, that sounds a lot like my life," says Grif. "Deserts... portals... ghosts... throw in giant explosions and weird aliens and you got it." He shrugs a little.

"I survived that. It was like... months ago. Sarge did some emergency surgery and replaced my organs and stuff. Come to think of it, I'm luckier I survived that."

He winces a little at the memory, then downs some of his own coffee.

"I don't think I've had aliens yet, which can only be a good thing."

She watches him.

"Lucky? More like you've got a horseshoe up your rear end."

"You probably will," says Grif helpfully. "We're in space. That's where they live."

As for the luck thing, he shrugs.

"Personally, I think he kept me alive just so he wouldn't have to find somebody new to yell at all the time. Sarge is crazy."

Well, obviously, she thinks.

"Well, he'd be pretty bad if he just let his soldiers roll over and die, huh?" she replies. "You look like you're pretty much back in the saddle, though. Good on you."

He nods and takes a drink from his cup. He seems to have hit about the end of his loquaciousness for now. It's nice for somebody to listen to him complain without telling him to stop whining and shut up.

"So, uh, your dad's a General?" he asks. Grif's never seen much of the higher command structure in his own native (and rather messed up) military, though is wary of them. Orders like "Do better than you are currently doing" don't inspire a ton of confidence.

"In the U.S. army, yeah," she says. "We don't get along too well these days, but I pretty much grew up on military bases. Tough love, up at the crack of dawn, hard work and all that."

And nobody really made exceptions for the General's daughter. Everyone pulled their weight, Lois included.