Staff Growth

   When Clark walked into the Daily Star office on Thursday morning, he found Lois staring blankly into her computer screen. If she noticed that Clark was there, she didn't make any effort to let him know.
   "Hey; something wrong?" Clark asked.
   Lois slowly looked up.
   "The Daily Planet is dead."
   Clark gave her a reassuring smile.
   "Hey, now why would you say something like that? The Planet's the biggest paper in Metropolis, and you're gonna be their star reporter someday."
   Lois gave him a half-smile. If there's one thing Clark is, it's sweet.
   "LuthorCorp is going to buy them out in less than a month," Lois said with resignation.
   Clark frowned slightly.
   "What do you mean?"
   Lois proceeded to explain to Clark what she had explained to Bruce the night before: that Lionel Luthor was secretly taking over the city.
   "It hadn't really hit me until this morning. At first, I just thought that it was cool that I'd found out all of this. Hell, I thought I was going to win some kind of journalistic prize for it."
   "Well, hey, you still might. Isn't what they're doing illegal? Being one company that owns the majority of a city?"
   "Yeah," Lois said, "But I did some more digging this morning, and... well... apparently everyone knows about this already. There's just nothing they can do. The only evidence is circumstantial, and there's really no way to concretely link Luthorcorp to all of the smaller companies that are covertly buying everything up. The Planet is the one major local media outlet that Luthorcorp doesn't have its hand in, but people have been saying lately that they're about to get bought out."
   Clark flipped into reporter mode.
   "Wait; how could they get this much money? I mean, Metropolis is one of the wealthiest cities in the country; there's no way they could get even a fraction of the capital they'd need to do what you're saying."
   Lois shrugged.
   "They fight dirty. They use blackmail, sabotage, or whatever else they need to do to get what they want. That's actually how I found out about all of this: in the past few years, about three dozen businesses in Metropolis have been bought out for practically nothing, always by either LuthorCorp or another company that's suspected of being connected to them."
   Clark paused for a moment, then quickly spoke up. "We can't just let them do this!"
   Lois almost chuckled at him. He'd said it as though he actually thought that it was up to him; as though the world rested on his shoulders.   I wish more people acted like him, she thought.


   Clark wasn't finished.
   "Isn't there anything we can do? Can't we find proof of this or something?  Publish it in the Star?"
   Lois sunk her face into her hands.
   "It's only you and me.  Between the two of us, we barely have enough time to keep up with school events, let alone do outside work."
   They heard a voice from the open doorway. "If you need more staff, I'd be happy to join up."
   Clark and Lois looked over to see Diana standing in the doorway.
   Lois's mind was filled with conflicted emotions.
   Oh, perfect. The Amazon has come to help.
   ...I don't have a choice, do I?
   Lois sighed to herself, then slowly stood up and walked over to Diana.
  "Welcome to the Daily Star."