End: It Doesn't Matter...Because The Marvel Family Intervenes

With the dull numbness of utter helplessness, Lois Lane could only watch as she was unboxed and laid on a table in Sivana's lab. Although she no longer needed to breathe, Lois realized she still could smell and taste. The fresh-car smell of her own body was overwhelming at first, but now in Sivana's lab, errant air-currents brought the taste and odor of electrical equipment, and of his own geriatric flesh.

Lois could not turn her head, could not look away from the bright lights that burned above. Lights, and stranger devices. With ruthless efficiency, Sivana took a pair of sheers and cut the reporter out of her clothes, to toss the scraps on the floor. She had never felt more naked than before his eyes, the coke-bottle lenses of his goggles ogled every inch of her.

"Fascinating. Skin texture remains porous. Hair is still real...nanites didn't replace that...I should be able to extract some DNA from that," he said as he snipped a sample. "hmm. I wonder what else remains of you."

A bright green light played over the reporter's body. Unable to look away, Lois could not see as every inch of her was scanned. The unobtrusive tests first; a three-dimensional model built up in Sivana's machines. The reporter listened to him mutter and wondered what the madman had in mind. Would he replicate her, and sell copies of the Lois Lane Realdoll to perverts? Or clone her and turn her into some sort of weapon against Superman? Anything seemed possible

"Hmm, the heart has been replaced with a piezoelectric organ. I'll want a closer look at that..."

If Lois Lane still had the ability, she would have broken into a cold sweat at Sivana ascended a small stepladder, so the short gremlin could loom over her. There was a scalpel in his hand, and he reached down and grabbed the reporter's left breast to stead himself as the wickedly sharp instrument descended toward her defenseless silicone skin.

Then the lights died.

"Blackout? Back-up generator should have come online. Not good, not good..."

Lois heard the tap-tap-tap of Sivana descending the ladder, his vivisection momentarily forgotten. Then there was a crunch and squeal of steel, a wind blew the scent of a thunderstorm toward her, and a blue-white light like the arc of a lightning bolt filled the room...and she caught the image of two figures in red and blue. The burst of green light from a ray gun caught Captain Marvel, Jr. in the chest. For a moment the world's mightest mortal was limned with a green glow and frozen in place...

...but he had not come alone.

Mary Marvel, the Lady Shazam, smacked Sivana like a red-headed stepchild. The blow sent him sprawling into the banks of his electrical equipment with a sickening crunch. Captain Marvel, Jr.—Lois forgot what his new name was supposed to be—picked up the mad scientist and quickly bound and gagged him.

The lights flickered back on.

"What was he up to?" Mary Marvel said as she stared down at the naked reporter. Hesitantly, the young woman—Lois realized that neither of the Marvels were teenagers any longer—hesitantly touched the realdoll's wrist, and then shrank back with a shiver. "At first, I thought he'd kidnapped Lois Lane, but this is...some kind of doll?"

"An anatomically accurate doll," Captain Marvel, Jr. said, and shook his head. "Which is strange. Although I guess he might have been...lonely."

"What do we do with this?" Mary asked, and Lois Lane saw, out of the corner of her eye, the blush that crept onto Mary's cheeks as she stared at the reporter's naked breasts. "We can't take it back to the Rock of Eternity with us, or Billy might see it."

Captain Marvel, Jr. shrugged his broad shoulders with calculated unconcern. "We'll leave it here and alert the police. They can come bag up the evidence."

Mary's lips were a thin line as she nodded her agreement...and Lois Lane, left all alone as they hauled Sivana off, wondered which of them would be back to claim her as their own. Or whether she would end up in some dusty Metropolis PD evidence locker for months and months, as her life fell to pieces. Surely someone would notice when she didn't show up for work—when the rent didn't come in for her apartment—credit card bills weren't paid. But would anyone find her? Or was she doomed to an existence in some dingy cabinet, untouched and alone?

Alone in the dark, Lois Lane cast her mind back to the events of her night out. All the decisions she'd made and not made, the paths taken and not taken. What if someone else had waited for her in the club tonight? What if she hadn't allowed herself to be diapered? All alone, with nothing but time on her hands, the reporter had nothing to do but endlessly think on the what-might-have-beens.

If she could, Lois Lane would have shed a tear. Yet even that was denied to her.