End: Take Things Slow

Lois Lane sighed and closed her eyes.

"I suppose we have to be adults about this," she said, unable to hold the petulance out of her voice...and then her pout turned into a little smirk, and opened her eyes to stare her black lover in the face. "Although if the Martian Manhunter changes us back and we don't feel the same, you're going to regret not making love to my pussy one last time."

John Henry Irons took off the helmet so he could stare Lois in her face. He reached down with one armored hand and drew a sheet over the reporter's naked form.

"I'm sure I will," he said. "But I'd also regret taking advantage of you. Let's do this right. For the babies, and our own sake."

The reporter gave a sad smile. "Well...let's get it over with."

The Martian, J'onn J'onzz returned to the room, Dr. Midnite and Superman behind him. There was something offputting about the Martian, beyond the green skin coloring. His body was so human but...not. Almost unfinished. It hit the Uncanny Valley for Lois, the sense that little bits and pieces of him changed when she wasn't looking at him directly, so that every time felt new, different, creepy.

He did John Henry Irons first. The Black man stood there as green fingers stretched to touch his temples, the tips splitting into three little branches with suction cups that adhered to the dark brown skin. They stood motionless for a few minutes. The Martian was a statue, almost unreadable, but John began to sweat...and, Lois noticed, parts of the armor twitched. There was some little flap down by his crotch which kept opening and closing...and Lois wondered if that was for when he had to pee in the suit, and whether that meant anything.

Then it was done. The suction cups came up with a wet pop. The Martian turned, his red, deep-set eyes demonic to the reporter's eyes.

"Please relax," he said, his voice soft. Lois **** herself to sit still as the soft suckers touched her face, even though a shiver of repulsion ran down her spine...

...and then she was floating in a swirling pink void. The Martian was standing before her.

"This is a mental projection of your mindscape," he said as he looked around. "A place for your conscious mind to react as I disassemble the mental programming. This will take a few minutes."

Lois stared around. She could see floating fuzzy rectangles...like television screens. On them she could see the clips of porn and other images that she had seen. In her ears, she could hear the dim echo of the soundtrack that had run through her brain, the words she had said.

"Will I remember?" Lois asked aloud. "What it was like with John?"

"Yes," the Martian said. He seemed to be walking around, hands stretching out to touch things...and as he touched them, they disappeared. Lois didn't feel any different, but she wondered if that was because he was actually erasing things from her brain. "Your emotional response to those memories, however, may be different. Have you ever experienced a desperation during sex or masturbation, where you made decisions which were driven by arousal, but after you climaxed you looked on as mistakes?"

"Can't you tell me, mind-reader?" Lois said, a tinge of unease in her voice. "Am I going to think it is a mistake?"

"I am limiting my intrusion in your mindscape to removing the alterations that are here. I am not accessing your general memories. I can feel your emotions, like the tide of the ocean draws at one's ankles, but I am staying at the outskirts of your self. So no, I cannot tell you," he circled around Lois, green hands plucking screens out of the air. Already, the soundtrack seemed distant, the swirling pink void around her seemed different...lighter, with more depth to it.

"As for how you will feel...I cannot tell you. Every experience changes you. You are not going to be as you were before your impregnation. You will still be Lois Lane, but not the Lois Lane who did not have sex with John Henry Irons. Relationships are...complicated. The mental programming excited your arousal, lowered your inhibitions, prompted you to take certain behaviors. Yet it was still you that actually did those things. Think of it, in a sense, like the heightened arousal of puberty, combined with the lower inhibitions of ****, with a perverted friend egging you on."

"So John and I were drunk horny teenagers trying to breed?" Lois said, unable to keep a smile off her lips. She stood up and felt pink sand beneath her feet. The pink void was receding, but it was still there. It just felt like there was a sense of space around them now. The chorus of Lois Lane's old words in response to the program was slowly fading.

"You jest, but the comparison is similar. Like other unexpected parents, how your relationship evolves from here is up to you. Perhaps you will find each other compatible, perhaps not." J'onn said.

The pink swirling void seemed to lift, until it hung above them like a cloud layer. Lois could now see that they were on a beach, the long lonely shore of an ocean. She could hear nothing except the tide slapping against the sands.

"You've been in his mind, though," Lois said. "Do you know how he feels about...me? Us?"

The Martian raised his hands. The pink sky shifted...purple...then blue. They stood along the shore, and Lois felt...oddly at ease. Calm and composed. The green man turned to face Lois...and for the first time she saw a shadow of a smile on his thin green lips, and one great red eye blinked.

Then Lois blinked and she was sitting down as the Martian drew back.

"Luthor's mental influence is removed," he said. "I must see to the other victims we recovered from the facility."

With a twirl of his cape, the Martian Manhunter left.

Superman and Steel both escorted Lois back to her apartment. The two men were friends...but she wondered if they could ever really be friends again, after what happened. Lois wasn't sure how she felt about either of them right now.

"Get some sleep," John Henry Irons said. "I'll call sometime tomorrow. We still have a lot to talk about."

She sat on her bed and nodded her thanks. Superman paused for a moment before he left, and looked like he wanted to say something...and then only smiled and nodded. Lois nodded back.

The door closed. Lois collapsed backwards onto the bed, her long night out finally over...and now she could feel all the aches in pains, including the strange mass of the implant in her abdomen, the cramps that must have been from the **** ovulation, the soreness in her pussy from the rough sex...

"Eight babies," she said aloud. "That's a lot of names. Lionel, Luke, Lamar, Lawrence...Lorelei, Linda, Lashawna, Lois Jr..."

Her eyes closed.

Her brain, unable to stop, thought back to all that had happened to her tonight. Every choice she made. What she might have done differently. Her mind went down the different paths...and she knew she would never know, what might have been...