[color=2E2C2C]LET'S SEE A FEW OTHER PERSPECTIVES. TOUR THE WHOLE BUFFET BEFORE LOADING UP MY PLATE....[/color] [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/M3SfSt4.png[/img][/center] [color=LightCoral]"--panic in the streets of Midtown Metropolis, as dozens of--"[/color] [right][color=SeaGreen]"--several severe injuries, but so far no actual loss of life has been--"[/color][/right] [color=Tan]"--appear to be drones of some sort, though their exact nature--"[/color] [right][color=Aqua]"--troops from the nearby Fort Hamilton are being mobilized to try and contain--"[/color][/right] [color=Yellow]"--reasons for attacking Superman are still unclear, but some are speculating this is--"[/color] [color=2E2C2C]"--DOOFUS THINKS USING THE MEDIA AS A GREEK CHORUS IS CLEVER AND TOTALLY NOT A CONTRIVED--"[/color] [color=Violet]"And you saw where they went?"[/color] asked Lois Lane, grunting as she bore the weight of an injured police officer, whose name she'd gotten as Scott Laughlin. The young man in dark blue leaned on her for support as he hobbled on one good leg away from the smoking wreckage of his overturned squad car. Clouds of dust still hung in the air, the ground littered with chunks of upturned asphalt and granules of shattered glass. Car alarms blared, echoing off the steel and concrete canyons of the Midtown district, various sirens trailing off in the distance. Over the noise, there was a dull [i]boom[/i] every few seconds, like someone shooting off fireworks, or artillery. [color=MediumTurquoise]"Yeah, they-- [i]*nh!*[/i]"[/color] Officer Laughlin winced as he put too much weight on his crushed right foot, [color=MediumTurquoise]"three of four of them jumped him, then started dragging him down 23rd. Looked like they were trying to smash him into the side of Ellsworth General."[/color] [color=Violet]"The hospital?"[/color] Lois asked, taken aback. When Superman first arrived on the scene, and the first crop of 'super-villains' had started popping up to draw him out into a fight, many believed that the city would be ruined beyond repair, that people would flee in droves when faced with the threat of metahuman violence. But people are surprisingly good at adapting to new situations, and the citizens of Metropolis had quickly become accustomed to what to do in order to stay safe. It reminded Lois a lot of people out in the Midwest whose homes were in the heart of Tornado Alley-- get to the basement or the lower floors, stay away from any doors and windows, take cover near a structural support, and wait for the whole thing to blow over. Livewire, the Bulleteers, the Parasite, they were all frightening, but once Superman was on the scene, all you had to do was keep your head down and wait for the all-clear. Still, not even a monster like the Atomic Skull was inhuman enough to attack a hospital. [color=Violet]"Was anyone hurt?"[/color] She asked. [color=MediumTurquoise]"Don't think so,"[/color] Laughlin answered as they started descending the staircase to the relative safety of a subway entrance. [color=MediumTurquoise]"Superman pulled himself up just enough so they just clipped the roof. Kicked up a big cloud of dust, and I lost them after that."[/color] As Lois sat the officer down on a bench, she glanced back up to the sky, pursing her lips with concern. She was worried about all the people in harm's way, of course-- the further across town the fight went, the more people were potentially in danger. She was also worried about Clark-- he was unbelievably strong, sure, and so far he'd been able to take everything that had been thrown at him, but he'd never taken on this many opponents at once, and even if no single one of them had enough firepower to hurt him, over time they might be able to wear him down and overwhelm him. In the immediate moment, though, she was concerned about what shape her moped was in. It was a cheesy-looking little thing, an aluminum frame covered in flimsy purple plastic that looked like it would fall apart if you looked at it the wrong way, but it had great battery-life and was surprisingly zippy for an electric motor. More importantly, when an impending disaster put traffic into a gridlock and froze up the subway system, it could still get her wherever the action was. [color=Violet]"Are you going to be all right?"[/color] she asked the Officer Laughlin, antsy to give chase to the story. [color=MediumTurquoise]"Yeah,"[/color] he answered with a grunt as he favored his foot. [color=MediumTurquoise]"I'll radio to dispatch, get them to send someone to pick me up."[/color] [color=Violet]"Mind giving me a quote, then?"[/color] she followed, pulling an old hand-held voice recorder from the pocket of her jacket. Now that no one in the immediate area was in danger, she could get to work. [color=MediumTurquoise]"Yeah,"[/color] he sneered. [color=MediumTurquoise]"Tell Superman he owes me a new squad car. And if he catches the guy who built those robots, then he owes me a beer and we'll call it even."[/color] Lois thanked Laughlin, made a few notes into her recorder as the outline of her story began to form, then turned her attention upward as an annoying buzzing sound began to grow louder and closer. Swooping and strafing back and forth over the area, a small quad-copter, about the size of a dinner plate, flitted through the air like a hummingbird. Back up on the street, she knew that not too far away was Jimmy Olsen with his controller, flying his drone with all the enthusiastic abandon of a hyper-caffeinated twelve-year-old yet always finding just the right angle to aim the drone's small but powerful camera. [color=2E2C2C]AH, GOOD! MY FAVORITE APPETIZER IS HERE![/color] [color=Orange]"I've got all the useful shots I can get from here, Miss Lane!"[/color] Jimmy called down the stairs to Lois. [color=Orange]"Busted windows, a couple of flipped cars, some good-samaritan shots of folks getting each other to safety, the usual. Coming up on ten thousand hits on our newsfeed already, but we're gonna lose followers if we don't get some shots of the big guy himself!"[/color] He'd gushed about the camera-drone for days after spending most of his life savings on it, and most of the technical jargon sailed right past Lois, but its big selling point was the new LexOS-enabled onboard wireless modem that allowed it to upload shots to the [i]Planet's[/i] newsfeed instantly. Already hopelessly addicted to the stream of likes and follows from the general public, Jimmy made himself the [i]Planet's[/i] de facto social-media expert, making sure they stayed ahead of the competition in whatever ways he could. Sometimes that meant drawing attention to Ron Troupe's thought-provoking editorials, or to Cat Grant's trendy fashion articles. Usually, these days, it meant pictures of Superman, and nobody in the world could get better pictures of Superman in action than Jimmy Olsen. Lois suspected that Clark did it on purpose, but what Jimmy didn't know wouldn't hurt him. [color=Violet]"I'm good here,"[/color] Lois responded, hurrying back up the stairs to the street where Jimmy waited for her. [color=Violet]"We're gonna need to get moving if we want to catch up to the action. And that starts with figuring out where they went."[/color] [color=Orange]"Already on that,"[/color] Jimmy said with a smirk, glancing up to his camera drone. [color=Orange]"I flew little Lucy up above rooftop level for a bit to see if I could track them. Right now they're on the Upper East Side, headed towards Longshore."[/color] [color=Violet]"He's trying to get them out of the city,"[/color] Lois concluded, [color=Violet]"take them out into Hob's Bay where he can destroy them over the River. That's not too far from here. C'mon!"[/color] Grabbing the sleeve of Jimmy's shirt, Lois took off with the ginger-haired photographer in tow back towards the [i]Daily Planet[/i]--more specifically, to the parking deck, where she hoped her ride hadn't been wrecked or stolen yet. [hr] [color=2E2C2C]AND ON THE OPPOSING SIDE.......[/color] [color=PowderBlue]"You asked for me, Mister Luthor?"[/color] Eve Tessmacher carefully stepped out onto the helipad, one of a dozen different landing pads, observation decks, and catwalks that adorned the upper floors of the LexCorp Tower. A marvel of modern engineering, a fully automated cardre of construction robots were able to assemble in just under a month what would have taken a human crew years. Dwarfing even the Burj Khalifa, the Tower itself was more or less a showpiece built around an enormous antenna array; just as impressive was the labyrinth of laboratories and server farms extending several dozen floors underground. And standing at the edge of the helipad, his wide-shouldered white coat making him look smaller than he actually was, was the man who made it all possible. [color=GreenYellow]"Ah! Yes. Yes I did,"[/color] said Lex Luthor with the pleasant pseudo-surprise of a restaurant diner whose meal arrived sooner than expected. [color=GreenYellow]"I was, ah, hoping we could chat for a minute while taking in the view, Miss Tessmacher."[/color] Lex gestured for her to join him out on the edge, and reluctantly, Eve approached. She had worked as a personal assistant for prominent people in the past, and had watched Lex's press appearances in the past, so she knew more or less what to expect when she was offered the position-- a brilliant mind with no social skills who needed someone to do the 'front of the house' work for him. In the few months she'd worked for him, though, Eve noticed there was more than just the occasional awkward conversation or social faux pas. There was something truly, deeply....[i]wrong[/i] with him. Behind the jovial presentations, the pick-up basketball games with the interns and spontaneous inter-department bowling tournaments that made LexCorp the "funnest place to work in America" for the past two years, she saw mood swings, repressed rage, and a lack of empathy for those around him. Lex knew the names of every one of the eight thousand people who worked in his building, but it was all just trivia to him, no actual connection to any of them. The quirky, eccentric young man that [i]Us Weekly[/i] described as "adorkable" felt like a mask to Eve, and she wasn't sure she wanted to see what was behind it. That was one reason she was hesitant to join her employer out on the edge of a helipad over three thousand feet in the air. The second reason was far simpler: she was terrified of heights. [color=PowderBlue]"Oh, I don't know,"[/color] she stammered as she inched closer, [color=PowderBlue]"heights like this, I just--"[/color] Lex waved her words away as if she were speaking gibberish. [color=GreenYellow]"Come now, there's no difference between your ability to keep from falling over three inches from a high drop as there is from three miles from it,"[/color] he said with a chuckle. [color=GreenYellow]"C'mon, the view from up here is killer."[/color] After a few more trepidacious moments, Miss Tessmacher stepped closer. Satisfied, Lex looked out over the Metropolis skyline, the whine of sirens and cannon-bursts of Superman's fists drifting up to meet them above the billowing clouds of dust and smoke. [color=GreenYellow]"It's really something, isn't it?"[/color] he said with a sweeping gesture of his hand. [color=GreenYellow]"The one place where Man can look down on God."[/color] Lex looked back at her, seemed to notice the discomfort on her face. [color=GreenYellow]"Oh! Sorry, I guess I'm being a bit....melodramatic,"[/color] he apologized. [color=GreenYellow]"Still, it's apropos. What else would you call an indestructible supreme being with a city full of dutiful worshippers?"[/color] Another loud rumble echoed from down below. [color=GreenYellow]"What do you think of him, Miss Tessmacher?"[/color] [color=PowderBlue]"....of Superman?"[/color] Lex nodded with a tight-lipped smile. The name seemed to irk him to no end, so Eve made a mental note to avoid using it. As Luthor gave her an appraising look, she chose her words very carefully. [color=PowderBlue]"I.....think his intentions are good,"[/color] she began, [color=PowderBlue]"....but I also think he doesn't know what he's doing. I think he's reckless and sloppy, and before it's all over, I think he's going to get a lot of people killed."[/color] There was a long pause as Luthor considered her answer. She had heard those opinions made a thousand times in the past six months, either in the form of off-handed remarks from Lex himself or in long-winded diatribes from the talking heads on LexCorp-owned news outlets like GNN. Some of it she even believed herself, and Eve quietly hoped this was the answer Luthor wanted to hear. [color=GreenYellow]"Ha!"[/color] Lex laughed suddenly, clapping his hands together. [color=GreenYellow]"I knew I liked you, Miss Tessmacher."[/color] Internally, Eve sighed with relief. She wasn't keen on finding out what would happen if she upset him. [color=GreenYellow]"Yes, yes, the common hypothesis is that the Superman is indeed a danger,"[/color] he continued, suddenly changing his tone as if giving a lecture, [color=GreenYellow]"an existential threat to mankind itself, disguised as a humble crimefighter who just so happened to be out in front of the wave of Bat-Men and Spider-Women who popped up in his wake. But a hypothesis is no good until we can produce measurable results. If the hypothesis is that the Superman is dangerous, we must determine what he can actually do. And that means? [i]Tests![/i]"[/color] Miss Tessmacher looked down at the chaos in the streets, and her blood ran cold. [color=PowderBlue]"So.....so are you saying....that this is all some sort of test for S--....for him?"[/color] Lex blinked a few times, as if processing her question, then his eyes widened. [color=GreenYellow]"Oh! Oh, nononononono, this--haha-- isn't my doing,"[/color] he said with a laugh. [color=GreenYellow]"Though I do recognize the hardware. Honestly, I'm surprised they're doing this out in the open. I mean, I thought an [i]Operation[/i] like this was usually conducted in the [i]North Woods.[/i]"[/color] Whatever the reference was that Lex was making, Eve didn't catch it. That was to be expected, though-- Mister Luthor liked to play little word games with himself, make allusions and references that he knew would go sailing over the heads of everyone else in the room. It was something he did to amuse himself, she thought, a subtle reminder that he was smarter than them. [color=PowderBlue]"Then what do you mean by conducting tests?"[/color] Lex put up a finger, again like a teacher who was just asked the question he'd been waiting to answer. [color=GreenYellow]"Ah, well, Miss Tessmacher, I've decided that since this incident has provided us with an opportunity, why let it go to waste?"[/color] he said. [color=GreenYellow]"The exact extent of the creature's abilities have still yet to be determined, but the more data we collect, the more clear a picture we can make of it. We saw his strength put to the test when he held up the Science Spire while fighting the Bulleteers. His speed was tested when we observed him trying to apprehend Livewire. His durability? The Atomic Skull certainly pushed his limits on that."[/color] [color=PowderBlue]"So.....what are we going to test now?"[/color] Lex smiled, and put his hand on the small of her back. [color=GreenYellow]"His ability to multi-task."[/color] Eve felt his hand suddenly shove hard against her back, and she began to tumble forward. It took a full three seconds before the surprise wore off enough for her to start screaming as the pavement below rushed up to meet her. [color=2E2C2C]HAH! HERE I AM, GOOD AND HUNGRY FOR A SNACK, AND NOW SOMEONE'S MAKING SALSA![/color]