Annabeth and the Nine Step Career Plan

Step 3

Reinforcement

Annabeth is a New York city girl through and through, but she has to give credit to Metropolis for its sinfully pleasant summer weather. She doesn't often get the luxury of taking the time to simply enjoy her surroundings, so recently she's been making the effort to wake up just a little earlier. The Annabeth that gets to slow down and savor the morning breeze before the city heats up again thanks her for it.

Still a few blocks away from the office, she pauses at a local convenience stand, sliding the man behind the counter a few bills before plucking a copy of the Daily Planet out of a bin. Annabeth moves her glasses from her hair onto her nose bridge and the front-page headline reads clear.

SUPERMAN MOPS UP LUTHOR'S FAILED SCIENCE PROJECT

Annabeth hardly bothers to read the rest; the title alone sets the tone for the article. Instead, she skims down the columns and past an especially unfortunate picture of Luthor's face, scrunched in mid-panic, until she finds what she's looking for in tiny, bolded letters.

By Clark Kent

Annabeth smiles in amusement, rolls up the newspaper, tucks it into her backpack, and resumes her commute to work

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Twelve-thirty is the time of day that the break room traffic reaches its peak, Annabeth has come to notice. Taking advantage of the brief window of opportunity where everyone piles in to grab their lunches, Annabeth uses the crowd as cover from the camera to slip her copy of the Daily Planet behind the microwave. After making sure it peeks out just enough, she returns to her desk and pops open her tupperware.

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Annabeth had known from the early stages of development that her plan would involve Superman, that the alien hero would provide her both the cover and leeway to manipulate Luthor as she pleased without any lasting consequences. Getting Superman to participate unknowingly would have required careful maneuvering had Annabeth not made a major discovery that simplified everything.

She had begun her research with the Daily Planet, the first and most popular information source for all things Superman, combing through all the articles and videos she could find, starting from the very earliest issues. The first few pieces had proved unfruitful, written by different authors, and containing no interviews or first-person accounts, just regurgitated speculation on Superman's origins, powers, and earliest criminal takedowns.

In the next few issues, every article on the hero seemed to be written by a woman named Lois Lane and was much more personal than any of the previous ones. Lane's third article was the first to ever feature a direct quote from Superman himself. And, as Annabeth continued to read, Lane's tone slowly transformed into something a tad softer, fonder even. Annabeth could've dismissed it as the result of one too many one-on-one interviews or hero worship, but then, she found something interesting.

Lane began to shrug off the Superman liaison responsibility to a new reporter, Clark Kent, not long after he joined the Daily Planet. In fact, his first article on the hero thwarting a killer gorilla attack made the front page mere weeks after his first day at work. From then on, it seemed that Kent became the Daily Planet's go-to Superman writer, with Lane making only the occasional appearance on hero topics.

And if Annabeth had thought Lane's articles were personal, Kent's were on a whole new level. While he lacked the same tone, his descriptions of Superman's adventures were so heavily detailed that either Kent had made them up for the sake of the story, or he had a front-row seat to every single one of the hero's stunts. Annabeth had to admit that some reporters really were that story hungry, but even so, it had seemed implausible.