It was a Thursday afternoon at the end of March, and Bruce Wayne met Clark Kent in the way enterprising billionaires tended to meet investigative reporters.
Through an interview.
Kent had posture like cooked spaghetti and wore his plaid like the strangest camouflage in history. His voice was soft and seemed to be permanently stuck in a state slight of sheepishness, like he was sorry for taking the time out of your day, and he stuttered slightly on about every seventh word. He was two inches taller than Bruce and the width of his shoulders was greater but, despite this, he had a talent for not taking up any space in any room he occupied.
It wasn't, in the strictest sense, the very first time they had encountered one another; as was the way with reporters and billionaires, they had crossed paths at some event or other at some point, though Bruce couldn't recall the precise details at this very moment. As far as introductions went, however, this was their first, complete with scheduled time and hi-how-are-yous. As they shook hands and traded the very first pleasantries, Bruce tried to recall anything else he knew about the reporter.
Largely, he realized as he gestured for Kent to take a seat, all that he knew was all that he had just observed; that he was a clumsy, somewhat absent-minded man, unremarkable in every way.
And so it was perhaps not so strange that Bruce soon felt keenly ostentatious, in his wide-legged sprawl and thousand-dollar-suit, in a way he hadn't really done in years. It was a feat in and of itself, actually.
The unassuming man then went on to ask all the questions the infallibly polite reporter ought to ask: How is your day going?, Do you mind if I record our conversations?, Any topic off limits?
Bruce hadn't been asked all three in one interview in decades. (He answered well, no, and yesterday night – winking, and referring to a non-existent sexual encounter, and not the skirmish with Killer Croc that had actually taken place. Kent blushed and dropped his pen.) Still, Kent would be the one to do it, in his two decades out-of-fashion dress shirt and very faintly southern accent.
There was, of course, a reason as to why Gotham's favorite playboy was being interviewed by such a decidedly Metropolis reporter: a new branch of Wayne Electronics was set to open in the city late next month. This first foray of any Wayne Enterprises subsidiary into the city would naturally be heralded by splendor and great fanfare: there would be party-going and fundraising galore until the whole city was buzzing with excitement.
So much so, hopefully, that it would drown out any rumors of shadows moving in the night.
Batman had watched Superman from afar since his sudden appearance a nearly a year ago. It was time for a closer look.
The interviews were an integral step in building anticipation. As such, they were held in the delicately ostentatious foyer of the company's skyscraper – only just completed – and the grand room was positively overrun. They were a rather eclectic group, too, with everything from photographers to caterers to soon-to-be R&D members.
And Kent, of course. Who was still taking his time setting up the interview. Bruce watched him, dithering with pencils and flipping through papers, and wondered how the hell that happened.
Kent was not the first reporter he had met with today (more like the seventh, actually), and the comparison to his predecessors was impossible not to make. Despite that Kent was the only one from a proper paper, instead of some pumped-up tabloid, he was the least impressive. By far.
Perhaps, Bruce mused, sipping from his heavy tumbler, this was what happened when reporters lost a bet?
Kent glanced up briefly – his eyes were very blue – and smiled softly. Bruce nodded magnanimously; a generous offer for him to take his time. Kent's smile grew a little wider, and he looked back down at his notes with an air of faint abashment.
It was another half-minute before he spoke.
"I was thinking we could start…" Kent said, flipping through his notebook, running a finger down the lines, "with the fact that 13% of your profits from Wayne Entertainment is donated to The Affordable Housing Coalition of Gotham each month."
There was a fraction of a moment where Bruce's lips parted ever so slightly and the muscles in his back tensed. His heart clenched in an extra beat.
Then he shut his mouth and relaxed, quicker than any ordinary eye would possibly have been able to catch the slip, and said: "I'm sure I have no idea what you mean."
As soon as the words were out he wanted them back in. It was, in all likelihood, his most idiotic slip in years. He should have stuck with the surprise, should have demanded to see the figures so he could take action against whoever was responsible. But the emotion had been so honest that he had instinctually fought to hide it.
He had been a half a second too slow.
He had to fight with himself not to change his laid-back and wide open posture.
"Oh, you can't fool me, Mr. Wayne," Kent said with a sycophantic smile that very much suggested otherwise. "I will admit it is very well hidden – with all the offshore accounts and shell companies and all, I'm sure there's no need to go into detail – but there is no doubt that the money is coming from you."
Suddenly uncomfortably aware of his own racing pulse, he laughed and leaned forward.
"Is that so? Well, I will certainly need to have a talk with my economists about this. And my PR-manager! What an opportunity gone to waste!"
Kent smiled his perfectly bland smile again. "Would you like me to quote you on that?"
Bruce forced a mildly flustered expression. "No no no, please don't, the PR-guy has only barely let me out after that thing with the vase last week - I'd never see the light of day again if he found out that I said that. Might I suggest you put something about me always being proud to help my city instead?"
"Unfortunately, that's not how it works, Mr. Wayne. You need to actually say something for me to be able to write that you did."
"Oh, one of those ethical ones, are you?" Bruce observed with a slight wrinkle of his nose. "Well, be a pal and do at least try to piece it into proper coherence, would you? I just might be the slightest bit inebriated." He lifted his glass with a wink and sipped the whiskey – a rather disgusting non-alcoholic variant unlikely to affect any part of his body except his bladder, but which could be passed off as the real thing if someone decided to steal a sip from his glass. "Would you like some?"
Kent's mellow smile suddenly made Bruce feel horribly transparent. "No, thank you, but it's kind of you to offer. Perhaps we could discuss the 18% from your Wayne Steel's 2007 profit that funded the new Children's Wing at Gotham General Hospital, instead, if my previous choice of topic was making you uncomfortable? Or the seventeen scholarships you independently fund. Or the three research grant programs. I have numbers on those too, of course, somewhere in this pile, but you should be familiar with them. Or we could talk-"
"I believe you have made your point, Mr. Kent," Bruce interrupted.
Perhaps a bit unnecessarily harshly.
He closed his eyes for a moment, and then put on a slightly self-depreciating smile (and didn't that particular expression come very easily to him right now?).
"So you have found out I'm not above a bit of bribery," he said with a dismissive gesture. "Surely that can't be surprising enough to make any sort of news, with my reputation?"
"Bribery?" Kent asked, sounding politely surprised. "You will forgive me, Mr. Wayne, I'm not all that well versed in the art of bribery, but I do believe that the point is that you should get something out of it too?"
"And who says I haven't?" Bruce asked, and forgot to smile.
"I'm glad you asked, Mr. Wayne. You see, I-"
Kent cut off suddenly, and for a heartbeat Bruce was still too agitated to even notice.
Then Kent asked, in a very different tone of voice: "Did you hear that?"
Bruce managed to get out "Hear wha-?" before the explosion blew out the windows.
After that, events proceeded like events tended to proceed when mayhem was unleashed: there was screaming and running, and a great deal of chaos. A considerable security force swept in and removed the civilians and tucked Bruce's away in the secret bunker in which he supposedly was to hide out in until trouble was over. There, he slipped into his suit (not for the first time, as he struggled with the Kevlar, he reflected that, for all its absurdity, the spandex suit favored by other vigilantes did have the advantage of being easy to hide underneath regular clothes. But, then, other vigilantes tended to have powers, and spandex was not known for stopping bullets) to join the action.
He swept down into the middle of the chaos with the help of his grappling hook.
His sudden appearance, as usual, did nothing to diffuse the tension. A woman yelled shrilly, and someone called desperately for Superman.
Metropolis, he thought uncharitably, and punched one of the attacking robots in the face.
It was not his usual sort of battle.
The most obvious difference, of course, was the setting: broad and shining daylight in Metropolis, instead of gloomy night in Gotham. The buildings around were glossy and polished and new, steel and glass instead of brick and stone. Fewer places to hide, less purchase for his hook.
Thus, he fought his enemies on the ground, despite the gathering of people.
There were three of them, all in all, and they looked rather like bastardizations of Luthor's battle suit. They were too short and squat for any human to fit inside and – he was fairly sure – in the wrong color scheme.
He attached one of his EMP-mines to one he had just punched, and then deployed his grappling hook to swing himself to the next one.
The AI didn't seem to be terribly advanced; though the remaining two were quickly ganging up on him, he found that he had little trouble anticipating and dodging their blows. He also quickly realized that, with the right technique, he was able to engage the both of them fully; an advantageous situation, since it left little opportunity for them to go after the civilians.
Over the shoulder of one of the battle droids he spotted his security details ushering people out of the building he had just vacated – Clark Kent among them, with a woman clinging to his arm. He barely had time to catalog the information that the building now was likely to be empty – perhaps he could take the battle inside to prevent damage to bystanders – before…
"Bomb!" a voice yelled hysterically.
Bruce kicked one robot into the other and spun.
The machine that should have been thoroughly disabled by his EMP-device was standing, arm raised and its hand inhumanly twisted flat up against its wrist, revealing it to be a barrel. A smoking barrel.
Bouncing on the ground, trailing smoke and giving off short beeps, was some smaller type of grenade.
If his Luthor-hypothesis held true, it likely had enough power to blow the whole block.
For a moment it was so quiet that he could hear the clink of metal bouncing against asphalt.
Then the screaming began.
He already had the garrote in his hands when he whipped back to face the robots. The sharpened wire took their heads clean off, and the LEDs on their bodies blacked out.
A spike of relief flashed through him – thank fuck for unimaginative villains and their predictable placement of essential circuitry – and then he spun to-
Find Kent cradling the bomb with his body.
Civilians.
Idiots.
"MOVE!" he bellowed, hoping beyond hope that the reporter would hear him over the din of shouting people.
Kent, impossibly, looked up. And scrambled away when Batman came hurling towards him through the air.
Bruce's kick landed perfectly and was so hard that he felt it through his steel-toed boots. The device sailed in a tall and beautiful arch through the air and-
Exploded.
Bruce threw up the cape to shield himself from the heat and took half a step back when the shockwave hit him. For a moment, an unnatural whine was all he could hear and the world was painted in white. Then the sound resumed and there was the wail of car alarms going off and the faint patter of falling glass from the blown-out windows several stories up.
Bruce straightened and regarded the masses critically. The glass would cause some damage, but most of what pattered down were small and square and blunt – safety glass. Fighting in a modern city had its advantages.
And at least it wasn't the limbs and blood of some reporter with a hero complex raining down over them.
He glanced down at Kent, sitting on his arse on the pavement with his glasses askew.
Bruce had no desire to stay out longer than absolutely necessary – not in a foreign city in broad daylight. Directing a last menacing grimace at Kent, he swept away into the shadows.
With Batman gone, Bruce emerged coughing from the rubble, muttering about the virtues of underground bomb shelters.