Cold shower...

Lounging on a tanning bed near a pool, Lex Luthor sighed and opened one of his eyes to looked over the rest of the pool to find a small band playing and hula dancers. He had decided to vacate to Hawaii after his tower had been ruined. Smiling, he leaned back and enjoyed the sun bake over him, until a shadow loomed over him, forcing him to look up again. Mercy stood over him wearing the same business dress she wore in Metropolis despite the tropical heat, holding a tray with a single drink she offered the man after leaning down to do so.

“Your drink Mr. Luthor.”

“Thank you, Mercy… Now get out of my light!”

Stepping aside and keeping near while Luthor took a sip from his drink and continued to sunbath, the made exhaled and placed his drink back on the tray Mercy offered while kneeling next to him.

“You have been here for some time Mr. Luthor, the repairs to the tower are complete, what are we waiting for?”

“Two things; first is there are any sightings of Lois Lane after I sent her off on that wild goose chase, the other is any sightings of Superman, or more specifically NO sightings of him.”

“Why would that be important?”

Folding her arms under his head as a pillow, the man smirked and tilted his sunglasses to look back at his assistant. “Because if he’s stopped showing up, its because she devoured the last piece of ‘kryptonite’ on Earth. I can prepare for either circumstance, but if she happens to kill her own husband out of maddened hunger, then THAT Mercy puts a smile on my face.”

*

Looking down at her husband clutching at his shoulder wound and coughing as he dragged himself back with his feet to away from her, Lois was beside herself with panic and guilt. Her clawed hands shaking, she no longer had the strength of will to stand on her two feet and fell to her knees with a heavy thud of her mass, crunching the snow and ice beneath her. Frozen tears streaked down her eyes seeing him wounded like that, and realising SHE was the one who caused it.

“No! No, no, no, NO, no, no…”

Crawling towards him and panicking at the sight of the wound she inflicted on him, she pressed her clawed hand against his shoulder to stem the bleeding and kissed him repeatedly over his forehead and face, careful not to harm him with her horns as she frantically tried to undo everything she did to him. The look of shock and pain in his eyes was like a knife to her heart as she tried to keep him with her.

“Lois…”

“Shhh…. It’s okay, its okay, I’ll… I’ll get us help. You’ll see… I can fix this…”

Gently lifting him up in her arms to be cradled under her own strength, Lois stood up and bundled him close with his cape wrapped around him like a blanket. Standing to her full height and looking around the barren frozen wasteland around her, she realised she had no idea where she was.

“Where… Where are we?”

“Lois… The Fortress…”

Pointing out with a finger over the horizon, Lois followed his trembling finger and spotted the pyramid structure of the Fortress of Solitude just miles from where they were before passing out from his injury. Calming down but still scared for his well being, Lois crouched and propelled herself into the air with a leap, landing in the ice with the heft and inertia of a ton of bricks before jumping again, keeping Clark close and keeping him as safe as she could in her arms. Landing in front of the brass-coloured doors of the fortress, she gently laid Clark on the ice, still trembling as she searched for the key to get inside. Superman had created this simple means of keeping the fortress locked by creating an impenetrable door that could only be opened by a key molded from the material of a dwarf star, weighing millions of tons, only he or other Kryptonians like him would be able to lift it. Finding the dainty little key sitting on the rock bed outside the doors, Lois picked it up with her clawed fingers and effortlessly lifted it off the cold ground.

Frantically turning the lock, Lois dropped the key back to where she found it, cracking the landscape with a small tremor doing so and shoving the doors wide open to the Fortress of Solitude to enter. Oblivious to the realisation that she was now just as strong as her husband.

Hoisting him up into her arms again, Lois continued to shush and press his face against her chest while running through the great hall to the center of the Fortress. All around them, the crystal-clear fortress was as much a museum as it was a sanctuary for the Man of Steel, housing artifacts and equipment and history from his dead world and dozens of other worlds Superman had visited or rescued. The whole structure was carefully maintained by drones and automatons who cleaned and repaired what was needed at anytime. Pausing in their work, they all looked to the giantess of a woman storm the fortress with Superman in her arms. Coming to a stop, Lois cried out.

“HELP US! PLEASE! ANYBODY!!!”

Hovering towards the two, a trio of drones in the shape of what could be best described as chess pieces unfolded and extended limbs to extract Clark from Lois’s arms and carefully brought him towards the medical wing of the Fortress of Solitude. Keeping in step with the robots, the woman’s face remained panicked the entire time she watched her husband be taken down the hall and be lowered onto a bed and scanned. Squirming on the spot and wringing her clawed hands together anxiously, a pair of thick glass partitions separated her from the rest of the medical bay, closing shut and leaving the monstrous woman to fret and press her hands against the glass wall as she watched her husband be tended to. Watching the drones work, another drone hovered towards Lois, elevating itself to see her face to face and unfolding to appear something hominid with eyes and a face to give the monstrous woman someone to address, speaking in a calm sterile voice.

“Kal’el is currently going through surgery, based on initial scans, he should be able to recover and be cognizant in… 2 hours, 33 minutes.”

Folding her hands over her heart, Lois stepped back and pressed up against the wall, looked around the Fortress of Solitude now that she was able to see it in its entirety. She had been here before, when she was human, but at her current height, it all seemed so different now.

“I… I think I’ll wait; can you tell me when he’s awake?”

“Request documented, you will be notified of Kal’el’s full recovery.”

Clamping itself back together, the drone flew off to perform other duties in the Fortress, leaving Lois alone to her thoughts. Giving Clark one more look over her shoulder, Lois stepped away from the medical wing and began to roam the massive crystal halls and corridors around her. For over an hour she watched the drones tend to a pair of statues dedicated to Clark’s first parents in the great central hall, the two holding up a marble globe of Krypton in their hands. Then she ventured deeper, passing through the menagerie of rare native and alien fauna and flora, noticing some hissed or snarled at her in alarm or simply fled from her presence when she walked down the walkway of the proverbial zoo.

“I know how you all feel… I’d run too…”

Nearby, she could see some of the drones feed the alien creatures or cleaned after their enclosures, making the woman sigh, wondering if she’d end up in the same place if she didn’t snap out of trying to eat her own husband. Hearing her stomach growl, Lois frowned down at her perfect abs, rubbing her stomach with her clawed hand, and making a face of disappointment. There was no more kryptonite, none left that she could find save for her own husband. What would happen if she starved? Would she try to attack him again in a bout of delirium like last time? Could she stop herself? Could he?

“I deserve to be in one of these cages.”

Moving past the menagerie and out to another exhibit, Lois looked over the art and artifacts around her, her mind still on Clark’s recovery. Stopping in front of a massive fresco on the wall of Krypton at the peak of its civilization, she also spotted a drone carving an irregular chunk of crystal out of the foundation pillars that stuck out like the burl of a tree, the moment it was carved free of the pillar, it fell to the polished floor and broke, tumbling towards her clawed feet to tap against her toes.

Picking it up in her hand, she looked back at the drone that smoothed over and polished the area the chunk was removed from, making the pillar presentable again.

“Hey, what is this?” Lois asked with the crystal in hand.

Turning its camera lenses over to the reptilian woman, the drone stopped in its duties and addressed the towering woman, her tail swishing behind her slowly as she waited on an answer.

“The crystalline nature of the fortress means that there are some growths unaccounted for when the Fortress was initially grown, these absence growths must be pruned regularly to maintain the initial structure of the Fortress.”

Accepting the explanation, Lois turned the crystal in her claw back and forth, observing its facets. It looked like a raw chunk of quartz crystal to the woman, along with something else that seemed familiar. Out of curiosity… Lois brought it to her lips and licked the surface of one of the crystal growths. The moment she did, her eyes went wide.

“Is this… Kryptonite?”

“Kryptonite is a misnomer, implying radioactive material of a singular element. The crystal is comprised of harmonium, irridentrite, and calcicrete. These minerals are native to Krypton but do not possess any of the radioactivity brought upon by exposure from cosmic energies.”

Blinking back at the explanation, Lois looked back down at the crystal and took a bite out of the mineral. It tasted… Bland, flavourless, but she did get a sense of nourishment from the material, it just didn’t have the same euphoric effect green kryptonite gave her. Like comparing wine to water, but at the very least, it was filling. Finishing off the crystal in her hand, her hunger was sated, for now. Looking up, she spotted a drone hover towards her and unfolded to appear as a face she could interact with.

“Kal’el has recovered from surgery and is requesting you perso…”

Not letting the drone finish, Lois galloped as fast as she could on all fours like a cat back to the medical wing of the fortress, alerting several drones and robots who quickly got out of her way when she finally reached the wing and got back up only to fall to her knees in front of Clark’s bed. Sedated but awake, the man turned to look over her worried features and smiles, not reacting in the slightest when she stroked his hair gently with her fingers.

“Hi Lois… Feeling better?” Not immediately answering her husband, Lois instead gently kissed at his lips and face, tears streaking down her cheeks as she whispered apologies repeatedly until Clark slowly raised a hand to gently cup her cheek and rub a thumb over a tear to dry it. “Hey, hey… It’s alright, I’m good, you didn’t kill me.”

“But I COULD have! I didn’t even recognise you; I was so out of it…” Sitting back and hugging herself, Lois looked away. “And all because I wanted to make your life safer.”

Slowly sitting up and looking over his patched-up shoulder, Superman made a face of thought over the matter before slowly getting to his feet and hobbling over to sit next to the towering woman on the floor, bringing a hand to stroke down her hair and gently pull her face to turn and look back at him.

“I’m a monster…”

“No… No, you’re not.” Slowly moving up to lean against her side and shoulder, Clark kissed her full on the lips and continued. “During the whole time you were chasing me down, you kept trying to tell me you were trying to keep ‘your’ Clark safe.”

Finding herself smiling again, Lois pulled the man up to kiss him fully on the lips, wrapping her arms around him and slowly falling over so that she would lay on top of him. Her tail curled at the tip as she made out with the man. Pulling up from the kiss, Lois found herself smiling into a laugh when she found the man nearly smothered by her chest. rolling onto her side to lounge and gently traced a clawed finger over the area where she tried to sink her teeth into him hours before, his hands quickly wrapped around hers to get her attention away from the injury.

“You’re still you Lois; you’re still the woman I love and married, even if you’ve gained… Uhm…”

“If you say I’ve gained some weight, I’ll bite you again.”

“I was going to say horns, they look nice on you though Lois, really demands attention to your face.”

Making a face at the man before slowly turning to a smile, the reptilian giantess playfully punched him in the shoulder and instantly regretted it when he winced, and both heard a ‘crack’ in his shoulder. Fawning over the man and peppering his arm and neck in kisses, it took nearly a minute to calm the woman down, resting her horned head on his chest feeling Clark stroke at her hair and down the spines of her back. The woman swooned, hearing his heartbeat against her ear, feeling calm again.

“So, any idea where Mr. Myxlplyx could be?”

Shrugging, Lois’s tail swung to the side to lay over her other leg. “Dunno… But he said his little hide away was going to be 90 days since I got my wish.”

“And that was 3 months ago. He’s probably going to find YOU to make sure the wish has gone its course.”

“That little imp…” Growling under her breath, Lois’s eyes glowed green. “If I ever see that little shit stain, I am going to…”