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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

"I'm working on a name. He's just the Blur until I come up with something better... but unfortunately, I ended up here when I was on my way out to meet him."

She eyes him, suspiciously.

"What's that look for?"

"No reason."

Kon rubs his chin.

"Just makes all this a whole lot more difficult."

She sits up straighter. Nothing was ever as obvious as "no reason" from someone hiding something, especially when followed by vague comments about it being more difficult.

"So what aren't you telling me?"

"Pretty much everything, actually. That's the problem. I can't tell you squat."

That is annoying.

"And why is that?"

"'Cause it might mess up your timeline for you to know stuff too soon," Kon says. "Even if I'm not from your future, I'm still from a future just like yours. When it comes to time travel, spoilers are bad."

"It can't be that bad," she argues. "You can't just tell me there's some huge secret and then hold it above my head."

"It's not a big, horrible secret, but it is a secret, and the problem is, it's not my secret to tell, y'know? It wouldn't be a huge deal for me to tell you stuff--and it's probably stuff you'll find out about anyway--but it's not my right to tell you."

It's Kal's.

Someone else's secret, huh? She could make indignant statements about how he obviously doesn't know her and that she isn't going to hear that and mind her own business, but instead she jumps to the first logical conclusion she can.

Lois stands up, hands flat on the table, and stares down at him.

"You know who the Blur is."

Good going there, slick.

"I don't know any blurs. Well, actually, if you count the Flashes, I know a lot of people who are blurs, but I don't know the specific blur you're talking about. Could be anybody. There's a lot of blurry people in the world."

"When I brought up the Blur and didn't know more than that, you said it makes things more difficult, and launched into talk about how it's not your place to tell me," she says, firmly. "If it's not his secret you're trying to protect, whose secret is it?"

She leans closer.

"Your poker face is only marginally better than Clark's. Spill."

"Bad poker face or no, I'm no fink."

She takes a deep, frustrated breath.

"If that wasn't an admirable quality I'd..."

There isn't even a threat for it. She sits down and tries to think of how to pull it out of him, but for the time being, being positive that he at least knows is enough for her. For now, anyway.

She won't let that go cold, in the long run.

She picks up her coffee.

"Look: different subject, then. Clark's never mentioned you before and neither has Kara, and them being as... family oriented as they are, I've gotta ask: where do YOU come into the picture?"

"The name 'Cadmus' mean anything to you?"

"It's a subsidiary of Luthorcorp."

This makes him sit up at the table abruptly, mouth gaping. The Luthor-Cadmus connection had been a lot more subtle in his world.

"A subsidiary of--" He facepalms mightily. "Figures. Do you know what they do there?"

"Not really; when I was doing my exposé on Luthorcorp –– which I never got to publish, by the way –– I got a lot of dirt on a lot of different things, but Cadmus was something I couldn't crack. I know it was a lab, but whatever they're doing, it's lost now; Tess Mercer has pretty much dissolved Luthorcorp since it merged with Queen Industries."

She takes a sip of her coffee.

"What've you got on it?"

Kon sits there for a moment, hand on his face.

"In my world--and it might not be the same in your world, mind you--it was a government-backed genetic research project."

She nods. That's not new to her world's Luthorcorp, either.

"Sounds like something Lex would get involved in. What does that have to do with you?"

He winces visibly at Lex's name, before he can stop himself, and then pretends he didn't.

"I'm one of Cadmus' quality, lab-made products."

Lois stares for a moment, thankful she didn't have anything in her mouth. Given her last experience with Luthorcorp clones, she's instantly wary, but that's nothing a few questions can't solve.

"So let me get this right. You're a superpowered clone of... Clark Kent?"

She narrows her eyes at Conner, curiously.

"Not necessarily. Maybe."

He needs to think of the best way to say this.

"I have enough DNA from him to look kinda like him, and the Kents took me in, hence the name. I also have DNA from other places, possibly the Red-Blue Blur, which lets me do a lot of handy things, and also DNA from...someone I'd rather not have DNA from. I have DNA from a couple sources, though."

It isn't just a fifty-fifty split down the middle, after all. He does have some DNA from people as 'buffers' of a sort. Filler.

And that should confuse Lois enough to not make the connection between Clark and Mr. Blur there, or give him room to deny it, at least.

She absorbs it.

"Wow. Okay. Thank god I've dealt with weirder, otherwise, my brain might have just committed suicide when faced with processing that," she says, finally. "Firstly, assuming you carry over to my world, too, it means some people know far more about the Blur than they're letting on. Secondly, why anyone would choose Smallville for a DNA sample is beyond me, but he loves kids so I can see why he'd take you in."

Lois picks up her marker and smirks.

"You're lucky you got the Kent looks instead of the geek gene."

"It's...weird. Just... it's all very weird and obsessive and creepy, and weird. I exist for a lot of weird reasons. I had multiple people creating me for different reasons. If any one of them had gotten their way, I'd be a brain-washed machine-person serving the whims of whoever had hijacked my brain. A tool, not a person."

He pushes a hand through his hair, and mutters,

Shaking his head, he says, "I wandered around for a while on my own, and I did okay, but even though I was mentally and physically aged up to be a teenager, and had a lot of information downloaded into my head, I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, technically, I'm only five years old, right now. But I had a few people that looked out for me, and K-Clark always did. Eventually, he brought me to the Kents and they gave me a home."

He looks up at her, his expression warm. "Clark was pretty much the first one that took me aside and treated me like a person--he gave me a name. He's a lot older where I'm from--well, not old old, but married and everything, so the cousin act works. I get compared to him constantly, in, uh, a lot of ways, but it's not a big deal."

"Well, if it helps, so far you're not all that bad, and if you've got the Blur's heroics in there somewhere, I can tolerate you being around," Lois says. She's teasing.

"But, you know, for all the flack I give him, he really is a great guy," she says, her voice getting a bit softer. Even if she's definitely, totally and completely over his unreliable behind, Clark Kent really isn't all that bad. He's a good friend, a good shoulder to cry on, and he does what he's told. Usually, anyway.

She has to give a snort of laughter at the "married" comment.

"But married? Did Lana Lang finally come back to Smallville for good? I can just see her waddling around the farm, ready to pop out a few kids, Clark working the fields and bringing in the harvest, rounding up the cows."