Six Superheroes, a Man and A Little Lady Part 1
Six Superheroes, A Man and A Little Lady: A Penny Lidmaat ‘Verse Story
Written for the 2006 Get a Clue, Merry Sue Challenge and Private Tentacle who has travelled to a land far, far away and we miss her like eggs miss bacon or eggplant misses parmesan. My prompts were white, kitchen and candlestick.
PG (Violence)
Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, except Blandine and Private Tentacle and even they may have something to say about being ‘mine’ .
Part 1
Penny sipped her tea and watched both the kitchen television that flicked between the various security feeds and Lexie Luthor’s pudgy hands as they rolled the purple play-dough into a longer and longer rope.
“What are you making, honey?” she asked.
“A candlestick, for Daddy’s room,” Lexie answered now concentrating on coiling the dough into a candlestick shape, “For when we have to go into the room, in case it gets dark.”
Not the normal life of a six year old, Penny thought tossing curly dark hair over her shoulder as she reached for the camera controls, a shadow on camera 6 having caught her attention before the screen had flicked to the view from camera 7. In the seconds it took to get the feed back from camera 6, the shadow was gone, but she decided to send Javier out to look around anyway, it wasn’t that far off his normal security route.
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Clark crouched in the bushes under the library windows, his super hearing picking up the nearby crackle of a two way radio.
“Penny to Javier. Could you take a look under the library’s south facing windows, I thought I saw something on camera 6.”
“Right away,” Javier Cruise, Luthor Night Security Guard #3, answered. He turned left on the path, the beam of his flashlight doing little to illuminate the thick fog, but Clark wasn’t taking any chances. With a burst of super-speed he practically flew up to Javier hoping the blur he created on the video feed would seem like a random trick of the fog and with a gentle whack helped the burly guard reach unconsciousness.
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Penny kept her attention on the feed from camera 6, watching the fog roil around the outside of the building, shadows flickering and blurring, but when Javier didn’t appear she clicked on her radio, “Penny to Javier, Penny to Javier. How far are you from the library?”
Only white noise answered her question.
Taking a deep breath she checked the handgun holstered under her arm and moved to the table where her tiny charge was still working on the candlestick.
“Why don’t we go into Daddy’s room right now and see how the holder looks?” Penny asked, her tone calm.
With a look that clearly said, I know something is going on here, but I’ll play along, Lexie followed Penny saying only, “all right, but it’s not done yet.”
It was only steps to the special panic room Lex had had installed between his bedroom and Lexie’s, and Penny took out her cell phone and hit the first number in the speed dial as she hustled Lexie toward it. Just like all of the drills, she was taking Lexie there until she was sure there was nothing outside.
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Lex sighed and settled deeper into the limo’s seat, the tension of the last congressional meeting draining from his frame as his mind turned to his daughter. Since Lana’s death 4 years ago from the meteor-rock laced Hanta Virus probably contracted from deer mouse droppings in the stables, he’d devoted all of his extra time to Lexie, only leaving her when his duties in congress forced him to. And finding Penny had been a stroke of luck, how many ex-army nurses really wanted to be nannies, even Luthor nannies.
Lex flashed back to Penny’s interview.
“So, you have experience with children.”
“I’ve worked in several child care facilities, Mr. Luthor and I spent a year as an au pair before I decided to train as a pediatric nurse.”
“Why don’t you want to pursue a career as a nurse, you have an impressive list of credentials in that area.”
“Let me be frank, after my second tour in Iraq, I felt like I’d seen enough suffering. I wanted a change from the blood and tears. I love children and looking back, the most fulfilling period of my life was spent caring for the Venture brothers. I can field dress a wound, I can give injections and prep people for surgery, but I don’t love doing those things.”
“What was a pediatric nurse doing in Iraq?” Lex had known the answer, he knew that medical schools were sending their interns and nursing students to Iraq no matter what they wanted to specialize in because the government was giving massive grants to schools who could convince their students to take a tour in one of their war zones. It needed the bodies to help deal with the bodies.
“I was asked to go to Iraq as part of my training, and there are children in Iraq, too. Although the types of things I had to deal with, chemical burns, sanitation related diseases, shrapnel wounds, aren’t as common back here in Kansas, the care of a sick child is universal. They all need to know there’s someone there for them.”
He’d been very impressed by her. Her skills were unique among the early childhood educator set, not only did she have combat training, but she knew how to field dress wounds, something useful in the Luthor household where convenient head trauma was a frequent guest. But, it had been her reaction to Lexie that clinched it for him. He’d found that the other people he’d hired, and quickly fired, were more interested in the position of Luthor nanny than in the child they were meant to care for. But, right from the beginning Penny had focused completely on Lexie and had treated her like a normal 3 year old, or at least like an exceptionally intelligent normal 3 year old. She knew when to indulge Lexie, but she also enforced bedtimes and meal times, he almost wished he’d had a Penny when he was growing up.
Reflecting on Penny’s bedtime rules, Lex glanced at his watch trying to gauge if he’d get home in time to read to Lexie before she was asleep. He’d made it a habit to bring her home books every time he had to go out of town for a meeting and currently he had a copy of The Paper Bag Princess in his briefcase that he couldn’t wait to read to his daughter. She didn’t like regular princess stories, she thought they were boring and insipid and she’d told him as much, looking a bit perturbed when he chuckled at her use of the word insipid, she knew what it meant, why did he think it was funny?
Just as the limo turned into the long drive up to the house, Lex’s cell phone rang, “Lex Luthor,” he answered, identifying Penny’s number and smiling, usually Lexie called before bed to see if she could stay up a couple of minutes late to wait for him, if he was going to be home soon, but the tone of Penny’s voice told him that things were more serious than a delayed bedtime.
“We’re on our way to the room,” they didn’t like to call it a panic room in front of Lexie because six year olds, even exceptional Luthor six year olds, needed to be shielded from some aspects of the world. Penny told Lex about the shadow beneath the window and how Javier still hadn’t answered her second radio call before saying, “I’ll alert the rest of the staff and call the authorities. We’ll be in there until you give us the all clear.”
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“Stop the car here,” Lex told Karl, his driver, when the limo reached the halfway point of the drive, “I’ve just had a call from Penny. She saw something or someone on the security feed and she’s worried someone is trying to get into the house. I’m going to go take a look, wait here for the police to arrive.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Mr. Luthor,” Karl said meeting Lex’s eyes in the rear view mirror, “maybe we should both wait for the…” Karl’s warning died away as he watched Lex exit the limo. He shouldn’t have bothered, Lex never waited for the police and he’d had the head wounds to prove it.
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Clark scanned the house with his x-ray vision, absently rubbing his right forearm. She was in there somewhere, he knew it. His daughter, his and Lana’s daughter was in that house and he was going to free her. Who knew what kind of things Luthor had done to her, what kind of brainwashing she had undergone. After Lana had turned from him, after Luthor had turned her against him, who knew what he had done to that tiny innocent child. Clark couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t tried to free her sooner, why it had taken him this long to realize she was his daughter and not Luthor’s, but now that he knew the truth, she wouldn’t have to live under Luthor’s tyranny any longer. He started to scan rooms faster and faster, going over spaces he had looked in before, but he couldn’t seem to find her, there were only adult skeletons in the house, no children. As Clark continued his fevered scanning he realized there was a spot reading as blank, a space he couldn’t see through. He knew that’s where his daughter had to be, that blank space, with no windows was where Lex was keeping her.
“Superman?” Lex’s questioning tone snapped him back to normal vision as he whirled around to face his daughter’s captor, “what are you doing here Superman?” Lex’s voice had a menacing tone and Clark could see the outline of a pistol in his hand.
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“Superman? What are you doing here Superman?” Lex asked the disheveled super hero starring at the wall outside his home, “I found my security guard on the path, he’s been hurt, did you do that?”
“What am I doing here, what am I doing here?” Clark answered, “I’m here to free my daughter from you, Luthor. I’m here to make sure that she doesn’t suffer at your hand the way her mother did.”
“Free your daughter, what do you mean? You have a daughter? I don’t understand what you are asking Superman, the only child in my house is my own.”
In a burst of speed Clark practically flew toward Lex, “I’ll ask the questions, Luthor. Where are you keeping my daughter? Why have you kept her from me?”
“What do you mean, Superman? Lexie is my daughter, she was born over a year after Lana and I were first together and she looks just like me,” if Lex had been another man, or in another place a ghost of a smile of pride might have played across his lips.
“Lex’s daughter, my daughter, Lex’s daughter, my daughter,” Clark’s mumbling became a slurred chant that picked up speed as he started to vibrate.
Lex could see the confusion on Superman’s face and in his eyes, but was distracted by his forearm which was glowing through the blue spandex that encased it. He decided to take another tack, “Clark,” Lex said switching to the burly super hero’s given name, “Clark, maybe you should sit down and take a deep breath. You don’t know what you’re saying.
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“He took the love of your life from you Kal-El, and then he stole the child she was carrying, your child, you can’t let him get away with it,” a voice sounded in Clark’s head and into the silence of the ship remaining in a geosynchronous orbit just over Smallville. Had he the ability to feel emotion, Brainiac would have smirked with glee. Finally he would be able to take control of the Earth’s knowledge. His two most powerful enemies would take care of each other and he barely had to do anything. Finding the opalescent chunk of white kryptonite had clinched it, all he’d had to do was make sure that a significant sliver imbedded itself into Kal-El during one of his many rescues, it was almost too easy.
“You can’t let him stand in your way Kal-El, he’s had control over your daughter for too long, you have to stop him, he’s held her against her will, Kal-El, she’s a captive and he’s been performing experiments on her. The girl isn’t his daughter, Kal-El, she’s your daughter, you have to save her.”
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“When Stanley got used to being flat he enjoyed it,” Lexie’s clear high voice continued the story she was reading aloud, but Penny was distracted by the voices coming through her earpiece.
“What have you done to her Luthor? Where is she?”
“Clark, I told you I don’t know what you are talking about, my daughter is away right now, on an outing with her nanny, and I can assure you that no other little girls live here or have ever been here.”
“Lies, I know you’ve been experimenting on her, I know...”
“Penny, you’re not listening right,” Lexie broke off her story, “You’re supposed to say, ‘it’s a long way to California, maybe they should have packed Stanley two sandwiches’ when I read that part, you always say that.”
“Sorry Lexie,” Penny said turning her attention back to her charge and the story, “read it again.”
“The next day Mr. and Mrs. Lambchop slid Stanley into his envelop, along with the egg salad sandwich and the toothbrush case full of milk,” Lexie read again.
“It’s a long way to California,” Penny said, her fingers moving over the number pad on her cell phone, “maybe they should have packed Stanley two sandwiches.”
As Lexie returned to her story, satisfied that Penny was once again giving it her full attention, Penny typed in the second number on her speed dial list and hit send.
_______________________________________________________
“Superman is here and he’s not making any sense,” Blandine read off the screen of the Watchtower’s main computer. The message finished with, “We’re going to need some help down here.”
With her usual calm, her eyes flicked over the holographic globe that floated before her on the desk, looking for Justice League members who could be in Smallville in less than 10 minutes and quickly hit the buttons that connected her to Bruce, Wally and Diana, relaying Private Tentacle’s message. She sent a quick reply, letting Private Tentacle know help was on the way as she slipped into her own purple cowl.
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“Bedtime, Moppet. We’ll sleep in here tonight. It’ll be fun, we can pretend we’re hiding from a monster and we have to wait until your Dad comes home and tells us the coast is clear.”
Sometimes Penny treats me like a baby, Lexie thought as she slipped into her pajamas. I know something is going on, it’s Tuesday, and usually room drills are on Thursdays or Mondays and Daddy usually comes home before the drills or right after they start, and when it’s a drill we finish a Flat Stanley not just three chapters. She sighed and got under the covers of the cot, sometimes being a kid really sucked.
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Penny made sure Lexie was tucked into the cot before she flipped on the monitor in front of her. Where were Batman, Wonder Woman and the Flash? She checked her watch again, knowing that no one would thank her if she left Lexie alone and there wasn’t much a woman who could turn into a space octopus could do to the man of steel anyway. She flicked her eyes away from the monitor to the little girl curled in the bed against the wall and sighed, hoping for Lexie’s sake that Lex could keep Superman talking long enough for the cavalry to arrive.
In the next instant it was over. Superman had been lassoed by Wonder Woman and Batman extracted what looked like a long white needle of stone out of Superman’s right forearm right before Superman collapsed to the ground.
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The second the opalescent shard was extracted, Brainiac’s connection to Superman’s mind snapped and he broke orbit, computing the likelihood that members of the Justice League would converge on Luthor Manor before Superman had killed Lex Luthor. The probability was astronomical, unless there was someone in the house with direct access to the Watchtower. He simultaneously scrolled through his database of known Luthor employees with Justice League members searching for faces with corresponding measurements until he hit Penny Lidmaat and Private Tentacle. Based on nose to chin ration and ear shape they were one and the same. He flipped through her dossier noting that his files on her were incomplete. She was human, or had been human until an accident in a marine biology lab merged her with a giant octopus. She took on the persona of Private Tentacle after she learned she could take the form of a giant octopus and in her cephalopodic incarnation fly through space without the aid of a space suit. Her other special skills were the ability to squirt ink onto people and wrap them in her tentacles. Her uniform, in her human form, was a suit so dark green as to be almost black with a stylized octopus embossed in a sea green across the chest and she wore a mask of the same colour. As an octopus, she was the deep green of her suit, with lighter sea green spots. Other than a rumored involvement with Aquaman, his files ended there. He would have to take possible double agents into account in later plans.
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Clark sat in Lex’s office flanked by Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash and, oddly, the Amethyst Shadow. “But it seemed so real, the voice in my head kept telling me Luthor was holding my daughter and experimenting on her.” He glanced sheepishly at Lex.
Batman glowered at no one in particular as he turned the sliver of stone he had taken from Superman’s arm in his gloved palm. “Do you remember anything about the voice? Was it familiar? Was it your father?”
“It wasn’t my father, although it did call me Kal-El. It sounded like my own thoughts, if I called myself Kal-El in my own thoughts. It wasn’t like when Jor-El or J’onn speak to my thoughts, it was more like when I’m trying to make a decision on my own, my own inner voice and at the time it made sense. I was convinced Lexie was my daughter and Lex had stolen her from me in order to experiment on her. I don’t know Kryptonian fertility cycles, I don’t know if Lana could have been carrying my child before…”
“She looks just like me,” Lex broke in, “and not only that, she has shown no super human abilities, beyond a keen intelligence. She is my child.”
“There’s a simply way to test her genetic heritage.”
“Not even you have a DIY DNA kit on that belt of yours, Bats,” the Flash spoke, breaking the increasing tension.
“As a matter of fact,” Batman popped open a pouch on his belt, taking out three paper wrapped swabs, “I do have a Bat-DNA kit on my belt. After I can input the samples into the Batplane’s computer, preliminary results can be ready in mere minutes.”
“What are you doing,” Penny said entering the room to find Batman swabbing the inside of Lex’s cheek. “Have you all gone insane? Of course Lexie is Lex’s child.”
“There’s only one way to be sure, and to keep this from happening again. Definitive results will keep Superman’s mind from being corrupted again,” Batman said as he put the tip of the cotton swab into a light blue solution. “Now will you swab the child’s mouth, or should I?”
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“Lexie, honey,” Lex leaned over his daughter’s bed, light from the hall spilling onto his child’s face, “I need you to wake up for a second and open your mouth.”
“Daddy?” Lexie mumbled sleepily confused but opening her mouth as asked. “Why did you stick a q-tip in my mouth, Daddy?”
“I’ll tell you in the morning sweetheart. I love you.”
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“Before you give us the results,” Penny said as Batman re-entered the room, “I have something to say. What happens if Superman is Lexie’s father? Are your going to raise her if she turns out to be half-Kryptonian?” She turned to Superman, “What kind of life would that be for a child, you live in a hole in the wall apartment when you’re not on the Watchtower or out stopping tsunamis. She’s already lost her mother, would you take away the only father she’s ever known?” She looked at Lex who had collapsed into a chair opposite the bedraggled man of steel. “And you, are you going to let them take her? I want to know.”
“We don’t know anything yet,” Lex answered simply. “I love her and I’ll fight for her, but we should know if she’s going to develop super human strength or the ability to shoot lasers from her eyes.”
Batman looked down at the results, “I don’t know if this will clear anything up or not,” the words lacking his usual gruffness, “Lex, you are Lexie’s father.”
Lex’s relief was clear to every person in the room until Batman finished, “but so are you Superman. And,” Batman looked at the amassed superheroes, and Lex, “before you say something went wrong, know that I checked the results 5 times and there is nothing wrong with my Bat-DNA tester. Although I think we should get independent confirmation in the morning.”
Written for the 2006 Get a Clue, Merry Sue Challenge and Private Tentacle who has travelled to a land far, far away and we miss her like eggs miss bacon or eggplant misses parmesan. My prompts were white, kitchen and candlestick.
PG (Violence)
Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, except Blandine and Private Tentacle and even they may have something to say about being ‘mine’ .
Part 1
Penny sipped her tea and watched both the kitchen television that flicked between the various security feeds and Lexie Luthor’s pudgy hands as they rolled the purple play-dough into a longer and longer rope.
“What are you making, honey?” she asked.
“A candlestick, for Daddy’s room,” Lexie answered now concentrating on coiling the dough into a candlestick shape, “For when we have to go into the room, in case it gets dark.”
Not the normal life of a six year old, Penny thought tossing curly dark hair over her shoulder as she reached for the camera controls, a shadow on camera 6 having caught her attention before the screen had flicked to the view from camera 7. In the seconds it took to get the feed back from camera 6, the shadow was gone, but she decided to send Javier out to look around anyway, it wasn’t that far off his normal security route.
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Clark crouched in the bushes under the library windows, his super hearing picking up the nearby crackle of a two way radio.
“Penny to Javier. Could you take a look under the library’s south facing windows, I thought I saw something on camera 6.”
“Right away,” Javier Cruise, Luthor Night Security Guard #3, answered. He turned left on the path, the beam of his flashlight doing little to illuminate the thick fog, but Clark wasn’t taking any chances. With a burst of super-speed he practically flew up to Javier hoping the blur he created on the video feed would seem like a random trick of the fog and with a gentle whack helped the burly guard reach unconsciousness.
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Penny kept her attention on the feed from camera 6, watching the fog roil around the outside of the building, shadows flickering and blurring, but when Javier didn’t appear she clicked on her radio, “Penny to Javier, Penny to Javier. How far are you from the library?”
Only white noise answered her question.
Taking a deep breath she checked the handgun holstered under her arm and moved to the table where her tiny charge was still working on the candlestick.
“Why don’t we go into Daddy’s room right now and see how the holder looks?” Penny asked, her tone calm.
With a look that clearly said, I know something is going on here, but I’ll play along, Lexie followed Penny saying only, “all right, but it’s not done yet.”
It was only steps to the special panic room Lex had had installed between his bedroom and Lexie’s, and Penny took out her cell phone and hit the first number in the speed dial as she hustled Lexie toward it. Just like all of the drills, she was taking Lexie there until she was sure there was nothing outside.
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Lex sighed and settled deeper into the limo’s seat, the tension of the last congressional meeting draining from his frame as his mind turned to his daughter. Since Lana’s death 4 years ago from the meteor-rock laced Hanta Virus probably contracted from deer mouse droppings in the stables, he’d devoted all of his extra time to Lexie, only leaving her when his duties in congress forced him to. And finding Penny had been a stroke of luck, how many ex-army nurses really wanted to be nannies, even Luthor nannies.
Lex flashed back to Penny’s interview.
“So, you have experience with children.”
“I’ve worked in several child care facilities, Mr. Luthor and I spent a year as an au pair before I decided to train as a pediatric nurse.”
“Why don’t you want to pursue a career as a nurse, you have an impressive list of credentials in that area.”
“Let me be frank, after my second tour in Iraq, I felt like I’d seen enough suffering. I wanted a change from the blood and tears. I love children and looking back, the most fulfilling period of my life was spent caring for the Venture brothers. I can field dress a wound, I can give injections and prep people for surgery, but I don’t love doing those things.”
“What was a pediatric nurse doing in Iraq?” Lex had known the answer, he knew that medical schools were sending their interns and nursing students to Iraq no matter what they wanted to specialize in because the government was giving massive grants to schools who could convince their students to take a tour in one of their war zones. It needed the bodies to help deal with the bodies.
“I was asked to go to Iraq as part of my training, and there are children in Iraq, too. Although the types of things I had to deal with, chemical burns, sanitation related diseases, shrapnel wounds, aren’t as common back here in Kansas, the care of a sick child is universal. They all need to know there’s someone there for them.”
He’d been very impressed by her. Her skills were unique among the early childhood educator set, not only did she have combat training, but she knew how to field dress wounds, something useful in the Luthor household where convenient head trauma was a frequent guest. But, it had been her reaction to Lexie that clinched it for him. He’d found that the other people he’d hired, and quickly fired, were more interested in the position of Luthor nanny than in the child they were meant to care for. But, right from the beginning Penny had focused completely on Lexie and had treated her like a normal 3 year old, or at least like an exceptionally intelligent normal 3 year old. She knew when to indulge Lexie, but she also enforced bedtimes and meal times, he almost wished he’d had a Penny when he was growing up.
Reflecting on Penny’s bedtime rules, Lex glanced at his watch trying to gauge if he’d get home in time to read to Lexie before she was asleep. He’d made it a habit to bring her home books every time he had to go out of town for a meeting and currently he had a copy of The Paper Bag Princess in his briefcase that he couldn’t wait to read to his daughter. She didn’t like regular princess stories, she thought they were boring and insipid and she’d told him as much, looking a bit perturbed when he chuckled at her use of the word insipid, she knew what it meant, why did he think it was funny?
Just as the limo turned into the long drive up to the house, Lex’s cell phone rang, “Lex Luthor,” he answered, identifying Penny’s number and smiling, usually Lexie called before bed to see if she could stay up a couple of minutes late to wait for him, if he was going to be home soon, but the tone of Penny’s voice told him that things were more serious than a delayed bedtime.
“We’re on our way to the room,” they didn’t like to call it a panic room in front of Lexie because six year olds, even exceptional Luthor six year olds, needed to be shielded from some aspects of the world. Penny told Lex about the shadow beneath the window and how Javier still hadn’t answered her second radio call before saying, “I’ll alert the rest of the staff and call the authorities. We’ll be in there until you give us the all clear.”
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“Stop the car here,” Lex told Karl, his driver, when the limo reached the halfway point of the drive, “I’ve just had a call from Penny. She saw something or someone on the security feed and she’s worried someone is trying to get into the house. I’m going to go take a look, wait here for the police to arrive.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Mr. Luthor,” Karl said meeting Lex’s eyes in the rear view mirror, “maybe we should both wait for the…” Karl’s warning died away as he watched Lex exit the limo. He shouldn’t have bothered, Lex never waited for the police and he’d had the head wounds to prove it.
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Clark scanned the house with his x-ray vision, absently rubbing his right forearm. She was in there somewhere, he knew it. His daughter, his and Lana’s daughter was in that house and he was going to free her. Who knew what kind of things Luthor had done to her, what kind of brainwashing she had undergone. After Lana had turned from him, after Luthor had turned her against him, who knew what he had done to that tiny innocent child. Clark couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t tried to free her sooner, why it had taken him this long to realize she was his daughter and not Luthor’s, but now that he knew the truth, she wouldn’t have to live under Luthor’s tyranny any longer. He started to scan rooms faster and faster, going over spaces he had looked in before, but he couldn’t seem to find her, there were only adult skeletons in the house, no children. As Clark continued his fevered scanning he realized there was a spot reading as blank, a space he couldn’t see through. He knew that’s where his daughter had to be, that blank space, with no windows was where Lex was keeping her.
“Superman?” Lex’s questioning tone snapped him back to normal vision as he whirled around to face his daughter’s captor, “what are you doing here Superman?” Lex’s voice had a menacing tone and Clark could see the outline of a pistol in his hand.
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“Superman? What are you doing here Superman?” Lex asked the disheveled super hero starring at the wall outside his home, “I found my security guard on the path, he’s been hurt, did you do that?”
“What am I doing here, what am I doing here?” Clark answered, “I’m here to free my daughter from you, Luthor. I’m here to make sure that she doesn’t suffer at your hand the way her mother did.”
“Free your daughter, what do you mean? You have a daughter? I don’t understand what you are asking Superman, the only child in my house is my own.”
In a burst of speed Clark practically flew toward Lex, “I’ll ask the questions, Luthor. Where are you keeping my daughter? Why have you kept her from me?”
“What do you mean, Superman? Lexie is my daughter, she was born over a year after Lana and I were first together and she looks just like me,” if Lex had been another man, or in another place a ghost of a smile of pride might have played across his lips.
“Lex’s daughter, my daughter, Lex’s daughter, my daughter,” Clark’s mumbling became a slurred chant that picked up speed as he started to vibrate.
Lex could see the confusion on Superman’s face and in his eyes, but was distracted by his forearm which was glowing through the blue spandex that encased it. He decided to take another tack, “Clark,” Lex said switching to the burly super hero’s given name, “Clark, maybe you should sit down and take a deep breath. You don’t know what you’re saying.
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“He took the love of your life from you Kal-El, and then he stole the child she was carrying, your child, you can’t let him get away with it,” a voice sounded in Clark’s head and into the silence of the ship remaining in a geosynchronous orbit just over Smallville. Had he the ability to feel emotion, Brainiac would have smirked with glee. Finally he would be able to take control of the Earth’s knowledge. His two most powerful enemies would take care of each other and he barely had to do anything. Finding the opalescent chunk of white kryptonite had clinched it, all he’d had to do was make sure that a significant sliver imbedded itself into Kal-El during one of his many rescues, it was almost too easy.
“You can’t let him stand in your way Kal-El, he’s had control over your daughter for too long, you have to stop him, he’s held her against her will, Kal-El, she’s a captive and he’s been performing experiments on her. The girl isn’t his daughter, Kal-El, she’s your daughter, you have to save her.”
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“When Stanley got used to being flat he enjoyed it,” Lexie’s clear high voice continued the story she was reading aloud, but Penny was distracted by the voices coming through her earpiece.
“What have you done to her Luthor? Where is she?”
“Clark, I told you I don’t know what you are talking about, my daughter is away right now, on an outing with her nanny, and I can assure you that no other little girls live here or have ever been here.”
“Lies, I know you’ve been experimenting on her, I know...”
“Penny, you’re not listening right,” Lexie broke off her story, “You’re supposed to say, ‘it’s a long way to California, maybe they should have packed Stanley two sandwiches’ when I read that part, you always say that.”
“Sorry Lexie,” Penny said turning her attention back to her charge and the story, “read it again.”
“The next day Mr. and Mrs. Lambchop slid Stanley into his envelop, along with the egg salad sandwich and the toothbrush case full of milk,” Lexie read again.
“It’s a long way to California,” Penny said, her fingers moving over the number pad on her cell phone, “maybe they should have packed Stanley two sandwiches.”
As Lexie returned to her story, satisfied that Penny was once again giving it her full attention, Penny typed in the second number on her speed dial list and hit send.
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“Superman is here and he’s not making any sense,” Blandine read off the screen of the Watchtower’s main computer. The message finished with, “We’re going to need some help down here.”
With her usual calm, her eyes flicked over the holographic globe that floated before her on the desk, looking for Justice League members who could be in Smallville in less than 10 minutes and quickly hit the buttons that connected her to Bruce, Wally and Diana, relaying Private Tentacle’s message. She sent a quick reply, letting Private Tentacle know help was on the way as she slipped into her own purple cowl.
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“Bedtime, Moppet. We’ll sleep in here tonight. It’ll be fun, we can pretend we’re hiding from a monster and we have to wait until your Dad comes home and tells us the coast is clear.”
Sometimes Penny treats me like a baby, Lexie thought as she slipped into her pajamas. I know something is going on, it’s Tuesday, and usually room drills are on Thursdays or Mondays and Daddy usually comes home before the drills or right after they start, and when it’s a drill we finish a Flat Stanley not just three chapters. She sighed and got under the covers of the cot, sometimes being a kid really sucked.
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Penny made sure Lexie was tucked into the cot before she flipped on the monitor in front of her. Where were Batman, Wonder Woman and the Flash? She checked her watch again, knowing that no one would thank her if she left Lexie alone and there wasn’t much a woman who could turn into a space octopus could do to the man of steel anyway. She flicked her eyes away from the monitor to the little girl curled in the bed against the wall and sighed, hoping for Lexie’s sake that Lex could keep Superman talking long enough for the cavalry to arrive.
In the next instant it was over. Superman had been lassoed by Wonder Woman and Batman extracted what looked like a long white needle of stone out of Superman’s right forearm right before Superman collapsed to the ground.
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The second the opalescent shard was extracted, Brainiac’s connection to Superman’s mind snapped and he broke orbit, computing the likelihood that members of the Justice League would converge on Luthor Manor before Superman had killed Lex Luthor. The probability was astronomical, unless there was someone in the house with direct access to the Watchtower. He simultaneously scrolled through his database of known Luthor employees with Justice League members searching for faces with corresponding measurements until he hit Penny Lidmaat and Private Tentacle. Based on nose to chin ration and ear shape they were one and the same. He flipped through her dossier noting that his files on her were incomplete. She was human, or had been human until an accident in a marine biology lab merged her with a giant octopus. She took on the persona of Private Tentacle after she learned she could take the form of a giant octopus and in her cephalopodic incarnation fly through space without the aid of a space suit. Her other special skills were the ability to squirt ink onto people and wrap them in her tentacles. Her uniform, in her human form, was a suit so dark green as to be almost black with a stylized octopus embossed in a sea green across the chest and she wore a mask of the same colour. As an octopus, she was the deep green of her suit, with lighter sea green spots. Other than a rumored involvement with Aquaman, his files ended there. He would have to take possible double agents into account in later plans.
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Clark sat in Lex’s office flanked by Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash and, oddly, the Amethyst Shadow. “But it seemed so real, the voice in my head kept telling me Luthor was holding my daughter and experimenting on her.” He glanced sheepishly at Lex.
Batman glowered at no one in particular as he turned the sliver of stone he had taken from Superman’s arm in his gloved palm. “Do you remember anything about the voice? Was it familiar? Was it your father?”
“It wasn’t my father, although it did call me Kal-El. It sounded like my own thoughts, if I called myself Kal-El in my own thoughts. It wasn’t like when Jor-El or J’onn speak to my thoughts, it was more like when I’m trying to make a decision on my own, my own inner voice and at the time it made sense. I was convinced Lexie was my daughter and Lex had stolen her from me in order to experiment on her. I don’t know Kryptonian fertility cycles, I don’t know if Lana could have been carrying my child before…”
“She looks just like me,” Lex broke in, “and not only that, she has shown no super human abilities, beyond a keen intelligence. She is my child.”
“There’s a simply way to test her genetic heritage.”
“Not even you have a DIY DNA kit on that belt of yours, Bats,” the Flash spoke, breaking the increasing tension.
“As a matter of fact,” Batman popped open a pouch on his belt, taking out three paper wrapped swabs, “I do have a Bat-DNA kit on my belt. After I can input the samples into the Batplane’s computer, preliminary results can be ready in mere minutes.”
“What are you doing,” Penny said entering the room to find Batman swabbing the inside of Lex’s cheek. “Have you all gone insane? Of course Lexie is Lex’s child.”
“There’s only one way to be sure, and to keep this from happening again. Definitive results will keep Superman’s mind from being corrupted again,” Batman said as he put the tip of the cotton swab into a light blue solution. “Now will you swab the child’s mouth, or should I?”
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“Lexie, honey,” Lex leaned over his daughter’s bed, light from the hall spilling onto his child’s face, “I need you to wake up for a second and open your mouth.”
“Daddy?” Lexie mumbled sleepily confused but opening her mouth as asked. “Why did you stick a q-tip in my mouth, Daddy?”
“I’ll tell you in the morning sweetheart. I love you.”
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“Before you give us the results,” Penny said as Batman re-entered the room, “I have something to say. What happens if Superman is Lexie’s father? Are your going to raise her if she turns out to be half-Kryptonian?” She turned to Superman, “What kind of life would that be for a child, you live in a hole in the wall apartment when you’re not on the Watchtower or out stopping tsunamis. She’s already lost her mother, would you take away the only father she’s ever known?” She looked at Lex who had collapsed into a chair opposite the bedraggled man of steel. “And you, are you going to let them take her? I want to know.”
“We don’t know anything yet,” Lex answered simply. “I love her and I’ll fight for her, but we should know if she’s going to develop super human strength or the ability to shoot lasers from her eyes.”
Batman looked down at the results, “I don’t know if this will clear anything up or not,” the words lacking his usual gruffness, “Lex, you are Lexie’s father.”
Lex’s relief was clear to every person in the room until Batman finished, “but so are you Superman. And,” Batman looked at the amassed superheroes, and Lex, “before you say something went wrong, know that I checked the results 5 times and there is nothing wrong with my Bat-DNA tester. Although I think we should get independent confirmation in the morning.”