Every Day Work [Luthor]

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It was six A.M and Otis entered in Lex's office, turning on the lights and preparing the office for his boss. He was eating a ciambella taken at the little Italian bar down the street, Metropolis was full of good bars and restaurants and Otis knew them well because he liked eating, unfortunately he was clumsy about it "No...!" Otis sighed when a piece of the ciambella fell on his white shirt. Now, the shirt had a big spot and he couldn't do anything about it before waking up Lex because he had to wake him up now, even though his boss was probably already awake, but he had to go to him anyways.

The office had more than one room and Otis walked in the next room where Lex was supposed to be, he didn't even need to knock "Mr. Luthor" he greeted his boss "Good morning" Otis looked up at the wall, there was a kind of poster about Gotham City "Your first appointment will start in thirty minutes" he announced even though his boss already knew, but it was his job reminding those things after all. However, being Lex Luthor's P.A. wasn't like other P.A.s jobs, others personal assistans didn't have to do the things that Otis had to do, although Lex Luthor wasn't like every other employer.

Otis took a handkerchief from a dispenser on a near table and tried to clean his shirt, but it made the spot even bigger, Otis sighed again finishing the ciambella then he cleaned his lips with the handkerchief, doing so his eyes fell upon Lex's open laptop where there was some kind of information about Superman "Why are you after him, Mr. Luthor? He helps us, he is not against us..." Otis said with his naive nature, throwing away the hanky in a bin.

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Lex Luthor wasn't dressed, not yet. Some point in the night the tie had come off and the top buttons were unbuttoned and his shirt had become ruffled as the scattered data in the office converged on points and points, rotating around him. Luthor's office was white, that was the first thing that visitors might notice about it, or at least Otis would. Certainly it was impressively large, with wide open expanses of open floor, and a centerpiece of a large surrounding window that reached from floor to ceiling along many walls overlooking Metropolis before. LexCorp tower was the tallest building in Metropolis, and Lex Luthor's personal office was not merely the corner suite, it was multiple corners, taking up half of an entire floor, with the other half dedicated to administrative work from Otis and the other assistants and developers and those who assisted Mr. Luthor. His office had anterooms where people prepared to meet with him, but the interior of the office itself was large, and almost entirely empty for the most part, although Otis had seen it change, multiple times. The panels in the floor or the ceiling would move and elements would rise and fall. Lex Luthor's desk appeared to be made out of the same material as the floor with a pure glass surface, although he rarely had a workstation on it. On occasion he had laptops on it, tablets, other computers. At times a workbench appeared in the middle of the office, at times a conference table. Once Otis saw a comfortable set of chairs and sofa around a firepit and plants.  

The interior had many different looks created with a combination of reusable machinery hidden behind the panels, the advanced 3D printing technology that allowed Luthor to fabricate almost anything necessary to fill the interior of the room, and the holographic emitters that could project anything into the room. Combined with the haptic feedback on the panels themselves and the fact that the surfaces of the panels themselves could work as screens, it allowed Luthor a great deal of flexibility when remaking and utilizing his office, although Otis had started to learn over their time together that Luthor's default tended to be spartan, empty. He was a man who didn't like clutter, and often only let things get cluttered when his mind was at work and he was creating. That was the mood he appeared to be in now, scattered trash, remnants of food, open machinery on tables and the laptop. 

Right now pillars were lined along the window and Metropolis' skyline was dim in the face of the dimmed windows, but the interior of the office was bright, holographic emitters came from various areas, they were embedded in many of the surfaces and as soon as Lex Luthor had perfected the things he tended to utilize them in unique ways, either as part of development or reading. The fishtank was gone, beneath the floor, they'd be fed and cleaned automatically, frankly Lex Luthor didn't like to waste Otis's time with that sort of busywork, when there was other things to be done. The antiques were hidden away too, Lex brought those out only when he had people he needed to impress, and frankly, that wasn't often anymore. Often Luthor would tell Otis to set up the office in a certain way, or arrange for something to be in there, although he rarely explained his motivations. Then again, he would on the rare occasions Otis would ask, that calm baritone trying to explain his thoughts, although often explanations didn't help. 

The Laptop had the report sent in personally to Lex, and Lex had plugged the dongle into the side and was finishing as he waved his hand in the air bringing up another image to his left. In front of him the image of Superman flying hung in the middle of the office, information began to come out of it, sine waves, air temperature readings, radiation, density studies. The Alien was not fond of being studied, and often could detect even the most subtle of methods, but with patience and persistence, Luthor was begining to put together a picture of the thing, how it worked, what it did. 

"Do you remember when he first came, Otis? Hanging in the sky like an angel? Defying gravity as he stood like something out of myth. A simple message from en high. . . I am here to save you." He stood up from the desk, if he'd noticed Otis's work he didn't say, he was looking as the advanced computers processed the information in the Laptop, the picture in front of him shifted as Superman hovered in air, more algorhythms, more calculations on the screen, more glowing colors underneath. Lex Luthor approached the hologram, walking slowly as he looked at it, hovering in midair. 

"It's one of those moments that really defines history. Where were you when the Alien came. . . Superman. Strange visitor from another world. Come to save us all." He smiled as he said "Some people saw him as God come down to Earth, to save us from our sins. An angel, a. . . savior." He exhaled as he looked at Superman, several floating round objects moving nearby.

"In the future, perhaps they might even use that moment to define history. Before the Alien, after the alien. A moment before he came, Humanity was at the height of its civilization. It had its problems, yes. . . but we'd eliminated so many diseases, we'd ended so many wars, we'd pushed our way into the stars. And the stars came down. And in that moment, it wasn't . . . human civilization anymore. It was his. We would forever be defined by . . . him. His will, his whim. He was but one being, yet. . . the entire weight of human civiliziation could not hope to stand against him." The Superman Hologram flies quickly towards an object and crushes it almost faster than the eye could see. The hologram was slowed down, the time signature displayed shows that he moved instantly at three times the speed of sound, over a space of ten feet, destroying several hovering objects nearby. Lex turned as he walked back to the table. "Yes, he appears altruistic. Yes, he has come down with an almost paternalistic resolve to guide humanity, to shape humanity into something 'better'" He goes back to his desk, and taps it in a few places, another hologram appears to hover over the desk as Lex Luthor waves his hand over it.

The desk projects what appears to be a glove which forms around Lex's arm. Lex stretches, reshapes, the cross section shows the hydraulics inside. He tapped it and then twisted his hand as the projected glove around his forearm appeared to dismantle into hundreds of thousands of individual parts, hovering in schematic form. Lex tapped one and it transformed, he tapped it a few times as it moved through the options of parts, and then Lex repeated the work with another part. He was designing some sort of robotic glove. 

"The Alien can fly faster than light, if it so desires. It has the ability with its bare hands, to destroy a city, and possibly if the calculations are correct, to crack straight through the crust of the Earth, and destroy it's core. It can defy gravity and move through it easier than an Olympic Swimmer can move through a pool. One bad thought, one bad idea, one irritated twitch, and the Alien has the potential to destroy all life on Earth, to destroy the entirety of the Planet." He looked up at Otis as he said "I'm a man who thinks of the future, Otis. I consider options, I consider possibilities, I dream the future, Otis. And while the Alien has been altruistic this far. . . what if it stops? What if it changes its mind? What if it decides that what's best for humanity isn't necessarily what humanity thinks is best for itself?" He twists his arm and the pieces come back together forming a glove as Luthor wiggles his fingers again, the hydrolics working, Lex waves the arm with a twitch and then returns to look at the desk again, tapping it a few times a new device comes up, something tubelike and small. Lex blows it up into schematic mode like he did the glove. 

"What hope does humanity have against a creature that can move faster than the speed of thought with the strength to crack open the Earth? Also, as you know from it's interview with Lois Lane . . . the creature is not unique. It is not special. No, there's multiple ones out there. The female one. It is no supersoldier, it is not a special or unique representative of its species. This one is altruistic, what about the others? Each one just as powerful? Each one this powerful just .  . . by their nature? No work, no investment, no development. Freshly born, capable of destroying all life on Earth." He closes the schematic and drags it to the glove that still hovers in midair. Lex expands the glove and starts to create the connectors for the new device, combining the two into one larger device. 

"And it's not alone, there's the Martian. There's others from the stars. Everytime we are visited by a new species, it is strong enough to destroy . . . everything. So that human beings cannot stand against them. And rather than stand up to this existential and clear threat to humanity. . . human beings rely on their savior. They rely on this angel come to save them from the stars, while they grow weaker, less capable of dealing with impossible situations. Even assuming that Superman IS altruistic. Even assuming that he has some sort of alien . . . superethics that make anger and rage and mistakes impossible, he is just one being, and he is mortal, he's aging, he's getting older. Eventually when we depend on him the most, he will fail. Then what? So I do go "after him" even if he's "always been there for us." It would have been better if he'd come as a conqueror, so we could stand against him, rather than what he's doing to the human spirit. He is the Nietzschian Final Man, Otis. The one who comes to weaken the human spirit, to overwhelm us with his presence and his ability, and to give us a stark message: Don't try. You will never be as powerful as I am naturally. If you are good, I'll protect you from the monsters. You cannot hope to survive without my mercy. Give up, and let me do it for you." He twitches as the glove forms around his hand. Lex Luthor pushes forward with the robotic glove as a blast comes from the palm of its hand hitting the Holographic Superman hovering int he middle of the floor. Numbers and colors and images come out of the glove, hovering around it. 

"Humanity has never been one to give up, though. It's not in our nature." The smoke clears around the holographic image of Superman, hovering there, eyes red, smoke rising from its chest, unharmed. "No matter how impossible the odds seem." Lex Luthor looks disappointed, he exhales and clenches his hands into a fist.. " Computer, calculate and report simulation. Compile with file then secure. Code Luthor Lambda Epsion Xenos" He sighed as the image dissolved leaving the empty room behind, with only the desk. The windows were opening as the sunlight streamed in. Luthor started to walk towards the corner of the room as frosted glass walls started to rise up, the panel in the roof moving to reveal holes as Luthor removed his shirt and handed it to Otis, walking into the newly forming bathroom. "What's on the agenda for this morning, Otis? And grab me a suit." Under one of the panels would be a closet of spare suits. Each one was custom made.  

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Otis stepped aside observing the office. He wasn't so surprised about the office's decorations because he had been working for Lex for so long by now that he couldn't be so surprised anymore by all the fancy and technologic stuff. Especially, he wasn't so surprised about his boss's obsession of Superman, because he was really obsessed even though Lex didn't see it, maybe he could see it but preferred to be blind to it, or maybe he just knew it and didn't care...Otis didn't exactly know what the true answer was, anyway he got used to these scenarios. He got used to look at Superman flying over Metropolis every morning because Lex wanted to see it as his morning routine, he got used to ask his boss how much he had been drinking lately, he got used to Lex's schemes...he got used to work for him, but it didn't mean that he didn't like this. He go used to it because he wanted to stay by his boss' side to help him.

So, as the good P.A. that he was, Otis listened to Lex's words about Superman, very patiently, pretending that he was actually understanding everything when instead he barely followed Lex's wave of thoughts. However, he would have liked punching something with that strange tech glove too. He was still looking at the office's changes when he noticed Lex handing over his shirt "So, you are studying him to learn how to protect us from the aliens if they decide to attack" Otis summarized, he was going to add that he could ask Superman help for that because the alien would be happy to let people study him for that reason, but didn't say anything because Lex asked him a question and to grab a suit...right the suit.

Otis looked around and walked towards the suits, putting the shirt away while grabbing a new suit. Otis left the suit in the bathroom and looked again at the agenda even though he already told Lex that he had a meeting, however he repeated it, his boss had been busy with all that talking and punching holograms after all "Meeting in thirty minutes" the agenda was almost free, but it usually got busy again after the first meeting in the morning. Otis managed to clean the stain on his shirt and walked towards the phone that started ringing "Mr. Luthor's office, how may..." the person on the other line didn't let him finish the sentence, but at some point Otis hung the phone. It was one of those protesters, one of those people who hated LexCorp for several reasons, especially environmental ones, they started threatening Lex, of course his boss wasn't worried about them, but Otis didn't like listening to those threats anyway "Mr. Luthor, one of those protesters managed to pass the security line" he informed his boss, Otis was concerned that one of them could actually find a way to harm Lex.

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Lex actually sounded happy as he finished the shower. It never took particularly long, it's not like he had to wash his hair or anything, although the extra chemical that came down that wasn't water tended to take longer to dry. The ceiling shifted as the interior of the shower turned a lovely red color with a strange sound of ventilation as Lex Luthor air dried, "Excellent Otis, you do understand. Clearly stated and well put together. That is precisely my motivation, at its core. That is precisely what it is that I will accomplish. Humanity prevails."

He stepped out of the shower, Lex Luthor was far beyond shame at this point, he was slimmer than most people suspected, honestly. That was because of the precautions he tended to take. "Loadout Luthor Three" he said to no one in particular as one of the panels in the wall opened up and a small table came out revealing a strange flesh colored pad with looped tools wihtin it. Luthor glanced over the tools, took one out and placed it on the now visible workbench. The panel from the wall revealed a number of other incomprehensibile tools and devices. Luthor picked one, placed it in the holster in the fleshpad, then wrapped the whole thing up. It was slim, the loadout, barely an inch and a half to two inches, the bellybutton in the front was very well set up, Luthor settled the entire thing underneith his chest, giving him a very slight paunch, but with his normal muscular physique it didn't look like he was too out of shape. More like someone who worked out with a thin layer of fat. Luthor grabbed the spray and sprayed the sides of the pad as they melded with his skin, until it almost looked entirely like his own flesh, the distinction impossible to find. The Pseudoderm samples had been in agreement with Dr. Twain, although supposedly his partner Rodor had tried to stop any of the samples from getting out. Rodor had been able to stop the sale to La Dama and Kaizen Gamorra,it was much harder to stop LexCorp from acquiring Arby Twain from where he'd been taken in and put in Belle Reve.

Luthor then applied a similar thin loadout to his legs and arms, making him look all the bulkier and stronger. It had taken time to mold the pseudoderm into looking like normal muscles, skin and adipose tissue. Still, it could be said that Lex Luthor was never truly unarmed. Luthor began to don his suit over the thing. 

"After the meeting, what's on the agenda? I don't assume the meeting will take the entire day, Otis. also, remind me who the meeting is with, it's not one that I really have been thinking a lot about." The tie was straightened. Otis knew that Luthor had designed the suits himself, they hung in a lovely manner. He'd explained the fact that they were a slim silk sewn over some sort of "Crystaline neutonian fluid" that turned solid when impacted or put under pressure. He said it could stop a bullet or a knife or even help him survive a punch from Superman with only a few broken ribs, although he'd never tested the last one. It would disperse the energy over the entire suit, supposedly, although the crystaline structure would shatter with prolonged contact. The tie, Luthor put over his face, checked the fit of the edge as it hung on his nose and mouth, with a small hiss from inside, before lowering it and straightening it. The air mask and the filters appeared to be in working order. Luthor's outfits tended to be expensive, custom made affairs that befitted a paranoid eccentric who liked to constantly be casually prepared to singlehandedly launch a military coup against any prominent third world nation. 

"Protestors? Well then, if they've gone to such trouble to come and see me, let's see if we can't postpone our meeting another 15 minutes. Young children, desperate individuals. . . they want their 15 minutes of fame, I suppose we can give it to them. Let's get the recording software and the security systems to record." He straightened his tie again and then looked as a mirror came up on the wall, although it was really just the wall display using the camera to act as a mirror. Luthor checked the lay of his suit and pseudoflesh and then decided he liked the look of it.  "We are after all, a company built on people." And of course if the protesters happened to look foolish or try some sort of shennanegans, it could always be made to look bad and shown to the news. 

"Let's go meet our adoring public, Otis."

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Otis gave Lex his privacy of course so he wasn't looking at the bathroom, but he was in the office looking down at the agenda, at some point he made a sarcastic expression at Lex's tone about understanding what he had said on Superman, as if understanding was a rare event for the P.A, Otis was going to reply, but frowned at his boss' question "You...don't know, Sir? I didn't say because I don't know either" Otis just assumed that his boss couldn't tell him so he was careful enough to not ask, but apparently he had assumed wrong...maybe it was better if he never assumed in the first place, assuming wasn't something for him. It was strange that Lex didn't know either, but maybe it was someone who wanted to be anonymous, it wouldn't be the first time.

"But...but..." the P.A mumbled, he was worried about what could happen if Lex actually stepped outside to meet those fanatics, not that Otis did not understand why they were here because LexCorp wasn't a slice of heaven, but they didn't know Lex as well as Otis did...his boss had his motivations for his actions...or maybe he just said so to himself a lot as excuses because he got fond of the evil LexCorp's CEO, Otis saw his boss like a friend and even because Otis cared about people "I'll call the security then..." he was going to the phone but stopped, he had to ask for permission first "...ehm...should I call the security guards, Sir?" obviously Otis wanted to do that to assure Lex's safety. Apparently, his boss wanted to meet them alone, it was true that the suit could protect him, but Otis wanted to be extra sure that everything was going to be fine. Fanatics were dangerous and found always strange ways to harm their target.

Otis did as Lex ordered and started the recording software and the security systems to record. He didn't comment about the built on people thing, he just warned the other staff that the meeting was postponed for at least fifteen minutes. So, they stepped outside to meet these fanatics freaks. Otis didn't like them at all, not because they were fanatics, but because they wanted to harm his boss. Otis was sure that hiss boss sometimes believed that he was invincible or something, like Superman, but he wasn't and that was where Otis' concern came from. The were a bunch of protesters, most of them seemed coming from a rural environment judging from their clothes, but one of them in an expensive suit spoke out, maybe their lawyer? Otis looked at Lex and then moved his gaze to the little crowd again, he wasn't liking this at all "These poor people want their lands back, you tricked them using paths and a legal language that they can't understand" the man had a file with him and...there were cameras too, the media maybe? Otis liked this even to a lesser extent "Also, it seems that LexCorp is not using those lands in a legal way" the lawyer was using a very basic language, but maybe because he was trying to impact as many people as possible. However, the lawyer seemed to have some proofs of what he was saying. Otis looked at Lex and then to the agenda hoping to find a way out from this situation, although Lex could answer back without problems, maybe his boss even liked arguing, or at least Otis believed so, just a little.