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

Lois looked up, coffee cup midway to her mouth, and then bothered completing the motion before she spoke. Ah, the sweet buzz of artificial caffiene in her artificial coffee.

"The paper I work for won't run this as a story," she said.

"Mn." Jamie nodded idly. "Yeah, probably not. Unless you work for a tabloid or something." He took another sip of his coffee. It made him feel strangely melancholy, or moreso than usual, at any rate; reminded him of everything else he missed from his previous life. Like his friends. And his Zoid. And toilets that didn't horrify him.

He sighed through his nose and glanced back at the woman. "So you work for a paper, huh? Where're you from?"

"I'm Lois Lane, with the Daily Planet, in Metropolis. It's the biggest newspaper in the world."

She stirred up her coffee a bit, and picked through a basket of various baked pastries that had appeared on the table, as she thought of it. Mm, guilty pleasures.

"You?"

Phrases like 'biggest newspaper in the world' held considerably less meaning in places like this than they might somewhere else, Jamie reflected. While the Daily Planet was apparently pretty important in Lois Lane's world, Jamie'd never heard of it. He merely nodded again, judiciously. "Have to take your word for it, I guess.

"'m Jamie Hemeros. I'm from, uh. A planet called Zi. Specifically I lived on a base in the desert in south-central Europa. Up until about three years ago, anyway." He shrugged and drank again, regarding Lois almost blandly.

"What kind of base?"

She was a military brat. She'd stick with what she knew best, as far as discussion went, and see where it got her.

"My team's base. We use, uh...big animal mechs called Zoids in sporting competitions. Traveled around a lot, y'know, from battle site to battle site, but the base was home."

"Seriously? Like giant robots?" she replied. "Haven't heard that one before."

"Seriously. 's weirder for me to think there's places that don't have 'em. There's other places that have different kinds of giant robots, too. Which was...weird, but kinda cool." He lifted one shoulder in a shrug, took another contemplative sip of coffee, tried not to think too hard about certain members of the other-worlds-with-robots brigade that he missed more than others.

"And, y'know. Then there's all the places with magic powers and psychics and werewolves and stuff. Not that there's anything wrong with that," he added hurriedly, shooting Lois an apprehensive glance. With his luck she'd be a superpowered psychic werewolf or something. Who was also a reporter for a famous newspaper. "Just, uh. Took some getting used to."

"In my world, it's only in the Michael Bay movies, bud," she said. Not that any movie she'd seen by him was any good.

Being around all these special people with their big lives and special powers certainly had a way of making her feel like a little guppy thrown into the wrong ocean.

"I've never heard of werewolves yet, but psychics and magic powers aren't too far fetched in my world."