"The advice column? Are you kidding me?" Lois asked Chloe in a disbelieving tone.

"I'm completely serious."

"Lois Lane giving advice," she said with a snort. "What kind of world would that be? I'm the last person who should give people advice. Find another "reporter"," she said, using air quotes around reporter. "I mean wouldn't Smallville be good at that kind of thing? He seems sappy and sagely enough for an advice column."

Chloe pleaded with her. "You're practically an icon ever since you wrote that article on plastic surgery. People would take the advice column more seriously if you did it. You would be more popular than Dear Abby."

"You're laying it on a little thick, don't you think?" Lois said with a disapproving look.

"Please, for your little cousin," Chloe said with big, sad eyes and clasped hands.

"You missed your calling as an actress. You should forget about the newspaper and join the drama club." Chloe didn't change her 19th century, begging-orphan look. Lois rolled her eyes and sighed. "Fine, I'll do it."

Chloe dropped her sad act and threw her arms around Lois. "Thank you, thank you, thank you. You won't regret this."

"I already do."

Chloe grabbed the shoebox with the requests for advice in them and dumped them onto the desk in front of Lois.

"You are just plain evil. Do you know that?"

"I know," Chloe said, not the least bit phased. "I have a quick errand. Would you man the forts for me until I get back?"

"Sure, because this place is busier than Grand Central Station, right?"

Chloe didn't bother to reply. She put the shoebox back onto the table, that was set up for the purpose and right outside the door, as she left.

Lois started sorting through the slips of paper, "Idiot, idiot, lovesick idiot, idiot, id—"

She was interrupted by Clark. "Where's Chloe?"

"Out to lunch," Lois replied sarcastically.

Clark responded with a puzzled look.

"Do I look like her secretary, Smallville? What do you want?"

"I just wanted to know if she had any assignments for me."

Lois started to give another of her retorts and then she thought better of it. She smiled sweetly. "As a matter of fact, she did want you to do this advice column thing. Being the kind person that I am, I was sorting them for you."

"Nice try, but you're not that kind and I know she gave you that assignment."

"How did you know? I just found out about it myself."

He smiled devilishly. "I'm the one that suggested it."

Her eyes narrowed. "You suggested this? Do you have an early death wish? What were you thinking?"

"I'm not sure. I should have suggested you cover all of the sports events, so your evenings stay occupied."

"You're too amusing. Why don't you go see if you can hunt down Chloe? You're disturbing my work here."

"Gladly. Enjoy." He received one more death glare before he left the room.

Clark smiled as he glanced through the door at Lois. She was muttering to herself as she separated the rest of the paper slips. He pulled out a piece of notebook paper and hurriedly wrote something down before she discovered what he was doing. Then he dropped the folded, white slip of paper into the box.

TBC