<6 to 3 months ago>

After that night, Mandi’s status was “upgraded” to become Lex’ personal private escort. Always clothed in the finest and latest dresses Lex’ money can buy, she appeared alongside him in almost every social function from then onwards, her tall stature and beautiful curves creating stirs and inviting envious stares. Having Mandi around does have its perks – not only does Lex get to show her off, he received an invulnerable metahuman bodyguard in return.

Mandi did leverage Lex’ presence in these functions to keep track of all the important discussions and going-ons among the rich and powerful. The upcoming elections are hot topics, where key issues from wealth taxes to equal opportunity rights are discussed, and wealthy donors like Lex will cajole, negotiate or bully politicians to their preferred positions.

While it was never a requirement, it did lead to Mandi eventually spending more nights in Lex’ bed.

His style in bed is similar to how he treats Mandi when fully clothed - Respectful, obliging, always willing to please. Given he was still a frail, despite Lex’ enthusiastic start, Mandi still have to do her own work and push herself over the edge. He normally prefers to grab and hold onto Mandi’s thighs and buttocks as their muscles became so prominent and large, the air wafting with her sexual pheromones reminiscent of honey and wildflower that is her supremis trait. As she worked herself over to the edge, powerful fingers plunging into her hot box while another hand kneaded her firm breasts and she sped towards climax.

She didn’t mention to Lex that all the while, she fantasized that the person holding her with all his strength was a Superman called Kal-El.

Normally, the notoriously powerful always loath to be observed, which is surprising when Lex himself proposed giving Mandi unfettered access to the entire LexCorp building despite Mercy Graves’ protests. With this latest arrangement, it meant Mandi can turn up whenever she wanted, and could choose to go anywhere she desired - either to see Lex directly at the top floor of the building, or to visit any of the restrictive lab areas within the building.

Theoretically Mandi could have flown up the tower on her own power and entered on her own accord – no man-made structure is strong enough to stop a Velorian-Arion goddess after all. Perhaps Lex might have concluded that he rather Mandi come into the building just like any other ordinary being. It could be extremely expensive to have to redo all the special ambush that he has installed in all the critical areas should she entered in any way that she chose.

Having walked through the company on her own a few times, Mandi had found LexCorp’s culture to be very male-oriented. Arion too has its own power-dynamics – Primes tend to dominate over Betas, who dominate over Alphas and so on. However it is more of a power caste structure rather than by gender, as in the case of LexCorp. It did however remind her of her own personal experiences at the end of similar harassments by Primes, Women and Men alike.

Sexual harassment seems to be rampant, as often she would overhear scared conversations and fearful sobbing in stairwells, conference rooms and offices, mainly of women. While Lex has treated her like a queen so far, she is clear that this culture starts from the very top. Mandi has no doubt that her own treatment would be starkly different should she also be a normal frail.

A few male employees were even brazen enough to sneak their hands against her thigh and bottom, or to un-accidentally brush-up against her firm bosoms. Her superhearing had picked up gleeful chatter of a betting pool of who would get the most touches of the “fresh meat” of the company. She got tired of it all and ended it by simply taking matters on herself. When the latest male person tried to cop a feel on her breasts, she simply grabbed hold of his hand, stuffed it between the bottom of her dress and crushed it between her powerful thighs. It sent an immediate message to across the company. And now many female employees tried as much as possible to walk as close to Mandi as possible as she walked along the corridors of the offices.

So far, Lex has been quite obliging to meet her irrespective of hours to share updates. However the past few weeks’ progress has been slow. While there seemed to be more and more sightings of a flying girl in news reports and social media, few gave details that could pinpoint her base of locations better. Despite Mandi offering herself as a potential scout, Lex had declined, saying that “you don’t need to bring a cannon to shoot a little bird”.

Mandi had also noticed that things must have taken a slight downturn on some of his many side businesses. Despite his continued projection of confidence, Mandi could detect changes in his hearbeat and sense his growing agitation whenever he received calls or texts reporting failure. She had also overheard some odd reports that in some cases hypnosis was involved, or even vampiric activities. More commonly reported was the sighting of a bat-like creature, suggesting Lex’ activities are starting to run very close to Gotham City, home of the Batman. The Batman doesn’t give out mercy on criminals.

It was one spring afternoon when there was a sudden major development. It was close midday and Mandi was about to leave Lex’ penthouse office, when Mercy barged in without knocking.

“Mr. Luthor. I think you should see this immediately. It’s about Lena.” She tend grabbed hold of the remote to wall-sized TV, and switched it to the news. Fire and smoke could be seen coming out from a large sprawling white complex. The ticker tape running at the bottom highlighted “Major explosion rocks LunarCorp”

< …the first explosion occurred at the east-end of the complex, where the company’s Renewable Energy team was conducting trials on an experimental solar power storage system. The team, led by Dr. Hank Henshaw and his wife & Trini Henshaw were all caught in the initial blast. Owner and Chief Scientist LenaLuthor together with the facility’s fire fighting crew were seen going in to search for survivors when another two explosions occurred in quick succession. Many were injured but still managed to make it out on their own…>

<As you can see behind me> The reporter gestured <the fire is still raging as we speak, and still no…wait. Is that? Looks like Superman is now on the scene to try and contain the fire…and is that…him? No, it looks like a She! And she’s carrying people away from the burning place… > <Click>

“Let’s go. NOW. Mercy, prep the heli.”

Surprising even herself, Mandi offered “If it’s so important for you, how about I take you there instead? I can get there much faster.”

Lex and Mercy exchanged glances, and said “Both of us, if you can. I suspect they will be at Midvale Hospital.”

Mandi merely shrugged, and Lex opened his wall-height windows towards the balcony. Mandi wrapped her hands around Lex & Mercy’s waist, and in a blink of an eye they took off towards Midvale.

It was chaos at Midvale Hospital. A mid-sized regional hospital, the sudden influx of so many seriously wounded patients is threatening to collapse their entire medical support setup. Mandi deposited Lex and Mercy near a side lane near the hospital, and both of them quickly ran their way to, and through the entrance. She then floated silently upwards, but keeping track of both of them with her supervision and superhearing.

She was more than a little surprised when Lex and Mercy actually split up at the ICU ward – Mercy heading towards the one of the east, while Lex headed to the one on the west. There were four people lined up in the room at the moment – three men and one woman. And Lex went straight for the one nearest the window and attempted to talk to him. A quick glance saw his name tag at the end of the bed. "H. Henshaw".

Tuning her superhearing further, she caught parts of the dark-skinned man's reply as he struggled to talk to Lex“…too much… flare… exploded. Tried to…shut it down…contaminated…”

“Did you see anything else? Did Lena find out?”

“…not… sure… blur… rescued by… Super…Man? No… smaller, feminine… maybe…”

Contented seemingly, he looked up towards Mercy who was in the opposite room across the corridor, seemingly hugging a heavily bandaged woman, who tried but failed to push her away. She detected moans and groans as the woman asked “Mercy… stop hugging… pain…”, of which Mercy did eventually let go and just held Lena’s hand, continuing to talk to her.

It was about 10 minutes later before Lex walked towards the East room. He stood outside at the window and watched Mercy and Lena for a while, but not even bothering to go in.

He actually went to see the scientists FIRST before his sister. “Interesting.” Mandi thought to herself. “And what else are you hiding from the rest of the world, Lex? Even from your own sister?” She flew away, now with much to think about.

Lex continued standing at the window, watching and observing the two women for another 15 minutes before leaving the hospital.