Lois Lane Gets Away

Drunk. Betrayed. Manhandled. Half-naked. Tattooed. Threatened with bukkake. Lesser women would have burst into tears, despair, hyperventilation. For Lois Lane? It was another day on the job. Lois stared Angelica Blaze in the eye and grinned so fiendishly that the smile faltered on Blaze's face.

"Oh no!" Lois said. "What's that above you?"

The reporter looked up. Despite recognizing the distraction for what it was, for just a split second Blaze and Tyrell looked up at the ceiling too. In that split second, the reporter's heel came down on Tyrell's foot. The steel point, with all the weight of the reporter behind it, tore through leather, skin, muscle, and bone and didn't stop until it touched the cement floor.

The black man's howl caused Blaze's head to jerk down, just as the reporter lifted her leg in a maneuver that would have left a Rockette nodding in quiet admiration. The tip of Lois Lane's toe caught Blaze in her nostril. There was a brief crunch of broken cartilage, and the blood started.

Instinctively, the raven-haired tattooist bent almost double, hands went to her wounded face. The reporter grabbed Tyrell with her arms and brace herself as she brought her leg back down, the heel on the back of Blaze's head. It was like kicking cement—Lois felt the impact all up the length of her foot, and was sure she'd broken bones—but even a cement pillar will topple if off-balance. Blaze crashed, face first, into the floor.

Then Lois was on the move. Tyrell couldn't maintain his grip. Blaze was already picking herself up as the reporter leaped over her and grabbed the camera on its tripod as she rushed past the startled onlookers. The first Black man who reached for her—Lois thought it was JoJo—caught the camera across his face.

She swung the improvised weapon in a wide arc as she half-ran, half-limped through the curtains back the way she had come. The elevator door was open—a stroke of luck—and Lois leaped into it and kicked the buttons with her bad foot, which caused pain to shoot up all the way to her knee.

The reporter sorted through the slowly closing door as Blaze picked herself up, angry and no longer remotely human. Lois caught a flash of horns, blood red skin, and burning white eyes in deep, dark orbits.

Then door closed. The elevator rumbled into life.

Lois was up, up and away.