The explosion killed 35 civilians and injured 127 others. Authorities have not determined the cause of the most recent tragedy to strike Metropolis, but some are suspicious that these events are linked to a single culprit—

"Hummel!" the gruff voice jarred Kurt from his intense concentration as his long, slender fingers flew over the keyboard of his laptop.

Kurt let out an annoyed sigh as he lifted his hands from the keyboard to swivel around in his chair and face his boss. "What is it now, Sue? We both know I have a five o'clock deadline and I still have another thousand words before I send this to the editors."

"Please, Hummel," the editor-in-chief rolled her eyes. "You can take five minutes to meet the new guy."

"New guy?"

"What, you got wax in your ears? Yeah, a new guy—Anderson!"

A man stumbled out of the Daily Planet's Editor-in-Chief's office, carrying a box of what Kurt assumed to be his belongings. Sweet Gaga, the kid was clumsy. He bumped into three people as he crossed the hundred foot space from the office to Kurt's desk, mumbling apologies as he did. Kurt was so preoccupied with his terrible coordination—he had just collided with the corner of Tina Cohen-Chang's desk and nearly went flying— that he didn't really notice the man's features until they were face-to-face. He was short, give or take an inch or an inch and a half shorter than Kurt. His hair consisted of a mane of unruly black curls that sat atop a face of olive skin. Kurt could make out a pair of hazel eyes that were hidden behind an absolutely hideous pair of black framed coke-bottle glasses and under a set of massive eyebrows. Who was this guy, Groucho Marx's grandson? Even his three-piece-suit looked rumpled and wrinkled. Probably purchased during a two-for-one deal at the Men's Warehouse, Kurt scoffed to himself.

"Hummel, this is our newest staff reporter, Blaine Anderson," Sue introduced the reporter. "All the way from Idaho."

"Actually, it's—"

"Not important, Lenscrafters," quipped Sue. "Not sure why I mentioned it in the first place. This here is Kurt Hummel, you'll be seeing a lot of him seeing as you two will be working on the city beat together."

"Wait, that's my beat!" Kurt exclaimed. "You're putting the new guy on my beat? Sue, this isn't fair!"

"No, what's not fair is you whining like this some high school muckraker and not The Daily Planet." Sue fired back. "Anderson is on the city beat with you, and if you have a problem with that, it'll become Anderson's exclusively." Sue threatened before storming back to her office, slamming the pile of papers Brett the fact-checker was holding to the ground in her wake.

Kurt and Blaine stared at the damage in shock for a moment before Blaine turned to Kurt.

"Well, it seems that we may have gotten off on the wrong foot," Blaine began, using one hand to push his glasses to rest further up on the bridge of his nose, and the other he extended to Kurt. "Blaine Anderson, I know you're not too pleased about all of this, but I'm looking forward to working with you."

"Yeah," Kurt replied with a considerably less amount of zeal, clasping Blaine's hand and pumping once before promptly letting go. He sat back down and pretended not to pay any attention to Blaine, who was currently unpacking his box of belongings onto the desk across from him.

"So, Kurt," Blaine chirped, clearly ignoring the fact that Kurt was trying to ignore him. "Where are you from?"

"Ohio," Kurt answered tersely, willing himself to refocus on his computer screen. You have a deadline, Kurt, he reminded himself, now is not the time chat with the loser competing for your job.

"Me too!" Blaine practically squealed.

"I thought Sue said you were from Idaho," Kurt countered.

"Nope. Westerville, Ohio," Blaine told him as he unpacked more office supplies and began arranging them on the desk's surface.

Oh, the Boondocks. "Let me guess, you're the corn-fed, All-American, kicker-for-the-high-school-football-team type?"

"Sort of," Blaine responded, taking his eyes off of his stapler. "I didn't play football though, I was in Show Choir."

If Kurt had been drinking some sort of liquid at the time Blaine let that bomb drop, he would have most certainly done a spit-take. Kurt, you've finally found the one kid in Ohio that was beaten up more than you were. He didn't say that out loud of course, but he couldn't stop himself from mumbling "There's two things we have in common" under his breath.

"What are those?" Blaine inquired. Kurt's eyes snapped up to look at Blaine who was now unpacking a few picture frames.

"What?"

"You said that we had two things in common," Blaine clarified.

Kurt took a flabbergasted dramatic pause before he answered Blaine. How did he hear me? I barely heard myself! He noticed a smirk tugging at the corner of Blaine's lips. "Oh, um, it's just I'm from Ohio and I did Glee Club in high school as well."

"Neat!" He did not just say 'neat', Kurt inwardly grimaced. Blaine pressed on, "Where in Ohio do you hail from?"

"Lima."

"Nice town," Blaine replied, unpacking his laptop.

Possibly the biggest lie of the century, he thought to himself, but the only sound he made was a noncommittal "Mhmm." Kurt was about to devote himself back to his work, but his curiosity got the best of him when Blaine's expression shifted from intolerably cheery to melancholy as he gazed at the frame he was holding.

He tried to sneak a peek of the image that had caused the shift in Blaine's expression, but he wasn't able to. Blaine noticed his efforts however and passed him the photo frame.

Three people, two adults and one child, were sitting on a tractor. A farm boy, Kurt inwardly observed, can't say I'm surprised. In the photo there was a man with sandy blonde hair along with tanned skin that age had just began to etch itself into, sitting next to a woman, her hair a warm ginger color, her eyes a clear blue, and her striking face was illuminated with laughter as she held a young boy, no more than seven or eight, in her arms. The boy was undeniably Blaine, jeez, his eyebrows were even uncontrollably bushy back then, but he didn't seem to resemble either adult at all.

"I was adopted," Blaine explained, picking up on Kurt's confused glare.

"Oh. Cool." Kurt said, unsure of how to respond, and gave the frame back to Blaine.

Blaine didn't try to make conversation after the exchange. Both men turned their attention to their respective computers and worked in a slightly uncomfortable silence until five. Even though Kurt was less than thrilled about gaining an excruciatingly cheery co-worker, he welcomed the competition. A dopey farm boy was nothing compared to the sharks he had clawed past on his way to the top. I mean really, Kurt thought, some of the kids in Glee club back at McKinley were more intimidating than this dork.

By the end of the day, Kurt's displeasure over Blaine had all but vanished as he waited for the doors to close on the crowded elevator car. Yet before they could, a hand flew in between them forcing them to reopen. The passengers all heaved a collective sigh as none other than Blaine Anderson sandwiched himself into the mass of people.

Please don't notice me, please don't notice me, please don't—

"Oh, hey Kurt!"

Kurt did his best to twist his cringe into an unconvincing smile. "Hi, Blaine."

"Heading home?"

No, I'm off to my secret liar in the basement. "Yep."

Ten bucks he says—

"Neat," Blaine responded with his trademark reply, clearly oblivious to all the dirty looks he was getting. Didn't anyone ever educate him on the finer points of elevator etiquette?

As much as Kurt wanted to end the conversation there, some annoying insistent part of him took pity on the poor guy, so he asked Blaine, "How was your first day?"

"Just wonderful!" He beamed and babbled on about The Daily Planet with all the enthusiasm of a fat kid describing Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. The fifty-floor elevator ride never seemed so slow. And Blaine didn't even stop jabbering once they reached the lobby…or the building's doors…or the streetcorner.

"Well, Blaine, that all sounds—great, but this is my stop," Kurt interrupted the shorter man, motioning to the stairs leading down to the subway station. Truth be told, it was not his stop at all, the station for Kurt's subway line was another five blocks away, but he didn't think he could handle anymore of Blaine Anderson's incessant chattering without lashing out and making an extremely offensive comment about the size of his eyebrows.

"Oh, okay! See you tomorrow, Kurt!"

"Yeah, tomorrow. Bye, Blaine."

Blaine waved goodbye. And not just a quick, polite wave of acknowledgement. It was more along the lines of a full-on arm spasm that lasted until Kurt had descended the subway steps and was completely out of sight.

He is so going to be mugged as soon as the sun sets.

0-0-0

Blaine chuckled to himself once Kurt had disappeared from view and lapsed into a leisurely stroll back to his apartment. He may have laid it on a little thick with his co-worker, this whole alter-ego thing was uncharted territory for Blaine, but he couldn't help the strange, slightly sadistic satisfaction Blaine experienced when he managed to bother Kurt that much more. The reporter seemed so pristine and put -together and Blaine couldn't quite explain the feeling of accomplishment when he succeeded in chipping away at the icy, all-business exterior Kurt clearly worked so hard to maintain. Because if Blaine could break down some of Kurt's walls, then maybe, in the future—

Blaine prevented himself from finishing his previous thought. One day at The Daily Planet and he'd already burdened himself with a crush. Instantly, his birth-father's words came flooding into his conscious: your enemies will discover their onlyway to hurt you—by hurting the people you carefor. Kurt could never be anything more than a colleague to Blaine, no matter how soft his porcelain skin appeared, or how his eyes seemed to be the most peculiar blend of blue, green, and gray, or how—

"Give me your wallet."

The voice came from the dimly lit alley to the right of Blaine. He felt the cold metal of a gun's barrel being pressed into his temple before he had a chance to so much as catch a glimpse of his mugger.

"You don't want to do this," he warned the man in a voice a few octaves deeper and more menacing than the tone he'd been speaking in for the entire day prior to this moment.

"Or what?" the stranger sneered. "I ain't afraid of no midget."

"Insulting my height, bad idea."

"Wha—" before the mugger could finish his baffled response, Blaine had grabbed hold of the gun, using it as leverage to twist the man's arm back so it snapped with a sickening crack, and pried the gun from his short, stubby digits. The man watched in a terrified awe as Blaine compressed the gun into a ball of useless scrap metal, then proceeded to hurl the deformed weapon into the depths of the alley.

"I said," Blaine reiterated himself in an eerily calm manner, smoothing over his suit jacket as he did so, "that you shouldn't pick on guys half your size. Ever heard of a Napoleon Complex?"

The man was too trapped in his petrified stupor to reply to Blaine's remark.

"It seems to me that you've learned your lesson. You should be more careful in the future."

Then, as if someone had flipped a switch, Blaine adjusted his glasses and ambled away from the frozen man, his mild-mannered persona utterly intact.