End: Take A Pregnancy Test

Before tonight, it had been months since Lois Lane's last sexual encounter. So she dressed and went out...out into the night. Like other major cities, Metropolis never really slept. There were cars on the streets, people on the sidewalk, lights shone from the cracks around curtains in windows, from street lamps and overpasses, blinked on skyscrapers...Lois went out into the night and tried to process what had happened to her. What might be happening to her.

The pharmacy was open. Lois wondered if she might be in shock. She could feel...something. A sort of unexpected fullness inside of her. As if she had eaten a meal that sat heavily in her stomach. The bored young woman behind the counter didn't even blink when Lois bought the box of pregnancy tests and the bottle of water, or when she carried them away from her.

Outside the store, she cracked open the bottle and took a slug. Rationally, the reporter knew if she was going to use the tests, she would have to pee. If she wanted to pee, she would need to drink. It was simple...yet she found herself alternately nervous and numb, as one clicked on the pavement at a time. Down familiar streets, filled with unfamiliar people. The worst stretches were the long, dark minutes when she had the sidewalk all to herself...and there was nothing to do but sip at the water and wonder if the tiny weight in her abdomen was her imagination.

Maybe Blaze slipped me some ****, the reporter wondered. Maybe I hallucinated it all.

There was only one way to find out.

Somehow, Lois Lane didn't feel so alone when she got back to her apartment. She shrugged out of the jacket, pulled off her shirt...and winced, her breasts more tender than she remembered. The tight red pants dug into her hips and waist in a way that Lois didn't remember from earlier tonight. Naked and chill, she slid into the bathroom.

Her hands shook as she ripped open the passage. Read the instructions, even though she knew how to use these things. Opened the first of the individually-wrapped tests, and then...then she sat there, as women had sat since pregnancy tests had been invented. With a slim plastic wand between her legs, trying to will herself to pee. Wondering what she would do if the result was two blue lines.

Lois Lane had not set out tonight with any idea of getting pregnant. Her mind ran back down over her choices tonight...and she frowned as she realized how out of character some of them had been. Ever since she had entered the club, it was as if some outside **** had guided her...manipulated her...or at least, so it seemed to her right then as she sat naked on the toilet. The reporter chewed over the thought, not sure if she just imagined things, or if she this was just a way to deflect blame for all the bad decisions she had made that had brought her here, with her bladder about to burst, and...

Her piss came out, black and heavy. The reporter stared in mute horror as a thin ebon stream, like crude oil, poured out from her body. It hit the paper strip at the end of the tester and within seconds, the strip was black, and the digital readout sparked and began to smoke.

She tossed the test into the sink as the plastic casing bubbled, browned, and warped...and stared between her legs at the inky blackness that pooled in the toilet bowl.

"Okay, Lane," Lois said to herself. "Maybe pregnancy isn't quite the worst or weirdest thing that you have to worry about from your night out..."

There were options, Lois Lane knew. People she could turn to for help, to figure out what was going on with her body...and somewhere in the back of her brain, she remembered Blaze's words...how she had wanted to "become one" with the reporter. Lois Lane didn't have any idea what that meant, at the time. Now...now she was almost afraid to find out.