Standing on top of one of the more gargoyle-strewn roofs of a Gotham City skyscraper, almost merging with the background in his costume, Bruce Wayne listened to the background sounds of a million people going about their business. The wind whistled through the baroque crenelations surrounding him while five hundred feet below cars rumbled through the streets, honking horns and distant yells showing that even at nearly midnight there were still many people about and active. Quite a few of them committing crimes, as the occasional gunshot proved, as well as the sirens that came and went.

Despite this soundtrack, the actual crime level was far lower these days than it had been when he'd first donned the cowl and cape. There were few big names working in Gotham now, all his opponents of those first few years having long since either left the city in a hurry, or simply vanished without leaving a forwarding address. One or two of the more dangerous ones had been handed over to the authorities under mysterious circumstances, the Joker being the most obvious of these. The insane clown was still safely ensconced in Arkham Asylum, mumbling things that made anyone who listened for too long feel very nervous and want to forget what they'd heard.

It was a certainty, according to the doctors, that the man was never going to leave the facility. No one particularly worried about that, considering who he was and what he'd done during his reign of terror. And in his slightly more lucid moments the Joker made it abundantly clear he didn't want to leave. Because they were out there.

Bruce himself was quite happy that the nutcase was permanently off the street, but he was very, very not happy about how that had happened. Mainly due to who had performed the relevant public service. The weird reptile people that Lucius called 'The Family' were clearly extremely dangerous. In fact, based on the limited amount of data he'd been able to locate, dangerous was so far off being the right word it was almost funny.

Oddly enough, it didn't make him laugh.

Even Constantine had flatly told him to stop investigating the lizards, and the man had definitely not been joking, or finding anything humorous about the subject at all. Which was one of the more disturbing things that Bruce had come across since that specific individual regularly dealt with situations and entities that he himself wouldn't want to go anywhere near given a choice, and was rather wishing he didn't know about. Magic was terrifying at the best of times, and the sort of magic someone like John Constantine got mixed up in was far, far worse than that.

Yet the Family scared the willies out of him. The concept was… very worrying.

Bruce hadn't directly seen any of them aside from that one contact that he'd remember to his dying day. The sheer size of the creature that had basically told him with one gesture that he was being watched was unbelievable, and if he hadn't seen the fucking enormous footprint left in the lawn the next morning in the sober light of day he'd have put it down to his imagination. But he'd had to pay a considerable amount of money to have a very discreet firm of contractors fill it in and reseed it, and even they, used to dealing with the aftermath of super-powered oddities, were taken aback.

He was certain it had been left deliberately as a warning since there were no other traces anywhere that he'd been able to locate. It was impossible that an eighty foot tall Godzilla clone could simply appear in his garden, gesture at him, and disappear again without doing more than leave one solitary footprint, yet it had happened.

Although that was the only time he'd set eyes on one of them, he'd certainly come across numerous traces at other times that showed they'd spent a considerable period wandering around. Footprints of something vastly smaller yet still obviously reptilian had had an unnerving tendency to appear in places he'd visited, turning up in mysterious ways that suggested something with scales had been standing mere feet away and he hadn't noticed. Occasional sounds, like something gently scraping on the brickwork, yet when he checked, there was nothing there. And, a couple of times, a sort of dark snicker behind him in a place that there was no possible way for anything to actually be…

Those were the worst. Especially the one in his cave when he was absolutely certain he was alone and had the computer logs to prove it.

The damn lizards were definitely trolling him, he was completely certain of that, but he had no actual evidence at all. Even the cast he'd taken of one of those footprints had somehow disappeared from the locked strongbox he'd transported it back with, the thing being completely empty when he'd opened it an hour later not having let it out of his sight once.

It annoyed the fuck out of him but it seemed impossible to stop or do anything about. Lucius, when he'd finally admitted to why he was so jumpy, had spent about ten minutes laughing his ass off, shaken his head admiringly, and told him that he should ignore it and sooner or later they'd get bored. Even Alfred had in his own very straight-faced manner seemed highly amused although the man would undoubtedly deny it to his grave.

Wayne Enterprises was still subcontracting work to the alien lizards too, which he was aware of but couldn't think of any way to prevent. Directly ordering Lucius might work, but it might also mean he needed to find a new head of Special Projects, which wasn't something he had any intention of ending up needing. And the man had told him that the Family were one of the main reasons his company was so profitable in the first place, since they performed a very valuable service in selling the company technological breakthroughs, designing and making prototypes of tech Wayne Enterprises came up with, and sanity checking various projects that might have otherwise gone badly wrong.

His friend had more or less told him to live with it, stop obsessing over them, and move on. Bruce wished he could, but his mind didn't work that way.

On the other hand, they were definitely keeping crime in his city far below the level he ever managed himself, and mostly doing it by hardly ever being seen or heard. The rumor had got around very fast indeed that something sometimes lurked in the shadows which was far worse than a man in a costume with a penchant for dropping on you from a rooftop. He wasn't sure whether he should be thankful or insulted, and settled in the end for a bit of both. Mixed with a lot of confusion, which appeared to be par for the course in their case.

He looked up from his thoughts and tensed as a series of shots rang out, accompanied by a siren. Moments later he relaxed, seeing several police cars surround a shop in the distance down the street he was looking directly along. Half a dozen cops piled out and rushed into the building, very faint shouting coming to him through the microphones in his mask, followed shortly afterward by them reappearing dragging two men. It looked like they had things in hand, which left him to brood some more.

Think, he corrected himself. He thought, he didn't brood. It was important to make the distinction, or Alfred would start making very British little deadpan jokes without showing any real traces of humor, which was very irritating.

Going back to thinking about the lizards, he pondered how they'd managed to announce themselves to the world rather spectacularly a little over a year ago during the entire fiasco surrounding the aborted alien invasion. Superman, someone he was still trying to determine the threat level of, had ended up in the middle of the whole thing, which ultimately appeared to be the result of a faction of his own people coming looking for him. Things had become very dicey for a while, with close to a square mile of Metropolis being destroyed, and a final death toll of fifteen hundred and twenty seven people. Having been in the city at the time, he was genuinely shocked it was so low.

Right at the point that things looked worst, the alien beam had stopped, his information being that the ship on the antipodal position vanished without trace and to the great annoyance of the aliens. The end result was that Superman and the leader of the aliens spent ten minutes beating the crap out of each other through the city, causing yet more damage and sixteen of the deaths, until one of the Family stopped them.

For some reason, there was no video or pictures of what happened next, and he suspected that the lizards were to blame for that. There were lots of eye-witnesses, though, who mentioned a ship at least four times the size of the Kryptonian vessel that appeared out of nowhere and just sat there in the air with no visible means of support, completely silently. It apparently shut down the other ship without any fuss, while the leader of the lizards did much the same to the leader of the alien invasion.

When everything died down, the damage was being repaired, the aliens and their ship were gone, everyone with any injuries at all had somehow magically been healed in seconds, and the whole thing ended peacefully.

That made him very suspicious.

Who were these reptiles? Where did they actually come from? How had they stopped the Kryptonians as if they were mildly naughty children? Where did the Kryptonians go? Why was there no video or still imagery of them, with the exception of one photo posted to the internet from a source he couldn't trace showing the apparent leader of the lizards, apparently this 'Saurial' he'd been told about by Alfred, shaking hands with the man identified as the leader of the invaders, who didn't look particularly happy about it.

And what sort of threat were they to humanity? For that matter, what sort of threat was Superman? He was undoubtedly one of if not the most dangerous person on the planet, if you ignored the reptiles, which Bruce wished heartily he could do.

There were an awful lot of questions and very few answers, which made him uncomfortable.

Turning his head, he looked south into the distance at the sky glow from the direction of Metropolis. That was the man in blue and red's home city, and the location of events he was worried about. The public was now very aware that they weren't alone in the universe, and that some of their neighbors were not the sort you wanted to invite to a barbecue. It might only be a matter of time before someone started making a fuss about that, people being people. He was honestly surprised at how low-key the entire thing had been, but life had taught him that shit could hit the fan without warning, so he wanted to be ready to deal with whatever happened next.

Even if that meant he had to deal with Superman.

And the lizards. Although he admitted to himself that while he had a few ideas about the Kryptonian, he hadn't got the first idea what to do about them. Except hope that perhaps they would get bored and leave him the hell alone…

Sighing, he shook his head and turned back to observing the city, alert for anything that required his intervention.

After a moment, he sniffed, frowned, then slowly looked down. Sitting on the parapet in front of him was a steaming cup of coffee and a ring doughnut on a paper plate. The cup was pinning down a note that flapped in the breeze.

A few seconds passed while he suspiciously examined the scene, then one gloved hand reached out and twitched the note from under the cup, unfolding it and holding it up so that the sky glow from behind him could illuminate it enough to read.

You brood too much, my friend. Try not to worry so hard about life and you'll have more fun. We're not your enemies.

Have a coffee and a doughnut, they're really nice, and give relaxing every now and then a chance.

Say hi to Alfred from us, will you?

S.

Bruce stared at the note in his hand, then looked around. No, nothing up here other than him, the coffee, and the pastry. No signs of anyone else at all, nothing had registered on his senses or his equipment, and all he could hear was the wind and the background noise.

After a long few seconds he carefully folded the note and put it into an evidence bag, which went into his utility belt. He stared at the coffee for some time, before pulling out a scanning device and carefully checking it for everything he could think of. Then he did the same to the doughnut. Neither registered as anything other than what they appeared as. Replacing the scanner on his belt he cautiously picked up the coffee cup and examined it closely, then sniffed it. The logo on it was unfamiliar but it certainly smelled like coffee. A very good blend for that matter.

He put it down again and regarded it with annoyance. "This is becoming tiresome," he said out loud, just in case someone with a tail was listening.

There was no response.

A couple of minutes passed as he thought and studied the city spread out around him, wondering what his next move was.

Eventually, he shook his head, looked again at the offering on the parapet with deep suspicion, then pulled out his line gun and fired it across the street, the end flipping around the base of a flagpole and locking in place. Stepping up onto the parapet he dived over it, swinging across the gap and up onto his new perch.

When he looked back, both the coffee cup and the doughnut were gone.

Grumbling to himself although he wouldn't admit that to anyone else, Batman went about his business, mulling over his next move in learning more about both some annoying scaly interlopers and a potentially catastrophic alien hero.

A little over a month passed, more or less quietly. Bruce spent a lot of time refining plans, talking to shadowy figures in dark places, and thinking hard. No more apparent Family-related things happened, although there were a number of incidents where out of state criminals turned up to try their hand and for some mysterious reason either ran away very fast only days later, or ended up in police custody shivering. Commissioner Gordon, not one to look a gift lizard in the mouth, even if he had no idea what on earth was really happening, was more than pleased with the results.

Bruce himself was less so, although he couldn't deny the efficiency of the situation. He suspected that more than one of these incidents didn't even involve the Family at all, as a fair few things didn't quite match. Pure psychological fear seemed to be nearly as effective in some cases. As he'd been told by a number of people, not knowing for sure if you were being stalked by a reptilian whatever the fuck it was turned out to be nearly as bad as knowing it for a fact.

It was almost beginning to make him wonder if he was achieving anything useful himself. The cops, now that they seldom met any serious super-powered crime, had managed to mostly get on top of the normal criminals, and the more violent members of that set tended to find their careers abruptly cut short with a snicker if they pushed too hard. The Bat seemed almost redundant…

Muttering under his breath, something that was beginning to become a habit, he finished his meal and thanked Alfred. The elderly manservant smiled at him. "Are you going out again tonight, Master Bruce?" he asked as he poured a last coffee for his employer and friend. "From what I see on the news I would think you could take a day off now and then. Times have changed, after all."

Bruce looked at him, then picked up the coffee and took a drink. It was, as usual, superb. "I am very aware of that, thank you, Alfred," he said with a small frown. "I'm not sure it's something I like."

"Why ever not?" the other man asked in surprise. "The city is far less dangerous these days, crime is at the lowest level in living memory, and most of the people that caused you so many problems are either securely locked away or simply gone. I would have expected you to be pleased. Isn't all that the entire reason you developed your… hobby?" He looked amused for a moment, smiling again.

"It's the things I don't know about the situation that worry me, not the ones I do know about it," Bruce pointed out, putting his cup down with a clink. "The former vastly outweigh the latter and that makes me..."

"Nervous?" Alfred suggest when he paused.

"Uncomfortable," Bruce corrected. "I prefer uncomfortable."

"I'm sure you do, sir."

He eyed the elderly retainer, feeling he might just possibly be being lightly mocked. Alfred met his gaze innocently.

"Yes. Well, in any case I'm always concerned when I don't know about something, and these damn reptiles are the largest unknown quantity I can think of," he went on, pretending not to notice.

"I do remember the footprint," Alfred nodded. "It was fairly substantial, I agree." He turned to busy himself clearing up while Bruce suppressed a tiny sigh. "But, that said, I think you can sure the Family have people's best interests at heart. My old mentor told me on a number of occasions that while somewhat unusual they were more than decent and very kind." He glanced at Bruce. "I'm sure that they aren't a risk."

"Even so, I'd be more comfortable if I knew more about them," Bruce insisted.

Alfred straightened up, picking up the tray he'd placed the used dishes on. Meeting Bruce's eyes, he quietly asked, "Are you entirely sure of that, Master Bruce?"

There was silence for a moment.

Eventually he turned to go. "As I understand it, there are those who did manage to find out more, and from what I learned, they generally didn't feel more comfortable at all." With a glance back from the door and a small smile, he added, "Perhaps there are some things best left alone, sir." The man nodded politely, then left.

Looking after him, Bruce slowly finished his coffee while thinking over his old friend's words. Perhaps he was correct.

At the moment it didn't matter, though, since he had no source of new information and no one he knew was aware of the truth would tell him anything at all. For now, he might as well move on to Superman, who was in most ways easier to deal with. Assuming that became necessary, which he hoped wouldn't turn out to be the case.

But hoping for the best while preparing for the worst was only common sense, in his mind, so he might as well keep going with his plans for now.

A faint sound of rippling cloth behind him made Bruce freeze for a moment. He quickly realized it wasn't likely to be a lizard, recognizing the sound after a second or two as something familiar. The most likely possibility of a number of not enormously likely ones came to him almost instantly, and playing a hunch, he said in his Batman voice, "You normally stay around Metropolis. What brings you to my city?"

There was silence for a couple of seconds, then a voice said, "I need some information and I think you're most likely to be able to give it to me."

Turning on the spot he saw he'd been right. Superman was hanging in the air ten feet out from the edge of the building he was on the roof of, his arms folded across his chest and his cape rippling in the breeze. Eight hundred feet up and he looked like it was nothing. Bruce was, although he'd certainly never admit it, a little impressed. It was certainly a look that showed the alien was no one to dismiss lightly. Probably worked pretty well on the villains he went after as well, he thought.

They regarded each other for several moments more. Bruce took the opportunity to study the man in blue and red very closely, matching his suppositions to reality. Eventually, though, he asked, "What information? And why ask me?"

"You have a reputation for being able to find out things no one else can," the alien hero said with a tiny shrug. "Considering how long you've been in this business and how you're still alive, in Gotham of all places, you've obviously got something working for you. As far as I know you don't have any powers other than being smart and careful, as well as highly trained." He looked around as Bruce tried to work out if the compliment was genuine, or just a ploy. It could be both, of course. "Gotham has had far more than its share of super powered lunatics over the years too, but it's still here, and from what I've heard that's in large part due to you."

"It's my city," Bruce replied after a second or two. "Much like Metropolis is yours." He gave Superman a meaningful look.

"Understood," the other man nodded. "I'm not here to push into your territory. But I can't find any other source of information on the subject I need to learn about."

"Which is?" Bruce asked curiously, despite himself. "You still haven't said what you want."

The flying man looked at him for a little longer, looked around at the city once more, then sighed. "The Family."

Feeling a sensation of mixed amusement and sympathy despite also being cautious, Bruce nodded slowly, keeping his face impassive. "I see."

"From what I'm told, you've had dealings with them in the past over the last few years," Superman went on, as Bruce kept his face still. "My information is that they turn up every now and then and… things… happen. Which is another reason why you seem to have a lot less criminals these days."

Thinking for a while, Bruce nodded again. "They are known to pop up here and there around Gotham," he noted, inwardly feeling that was something of an understatement. "It does have an impact on crime." Which was a much larger understatement…

"Where do they come from?" the other man asked almost plaintively. "You obviously know about the incident in Metropolis over a year ago."

"Everyone on the planet knows about that," Bruce rasped, making his guest look mildly embarrassed.

"Yes, sorry, that came out wrong," the Kryptonian said, smiling slightly. "What I meant is that I'm sure that you've found out the things that the public doesn't know."

Bruce made a non-committal grunt, hoping his guest would expand on that and give him information he lacked. Superman looked around yet again, then floated over the edge of the roof and landed. He seemed, if Bruce had to sum it up in one word, nervous.

"I still can't figure out how so much of that incident hasn't made it into public knowledge," he went on after a short pause. "I would have expected there to be a huge amount of discussion of the whole thing, bearing in mind it was positive proof of not one but two different alien groups visiting Earth." He shook his head a little with a small smile. "Not to mention me, of course."

"Of course," Bruce agreed, wondering if the guy was going to ramble all night.

"But it's weird. Sure, there's a lot of talk on the internet, a few of the usual type of person with the wildest conspiracy stories you've ever heard, that sort of thing, but hardly anything on the news, or in the papers." His guest looked puzzled. "Just a couple of articles about the destruction, another two or three about how fast things were repaired, one editorial complaining about superheros not picking up their own messes… Where is all the shouting about alien invasions?"

"You actually want people getting worried?" Bruce asked cautiously.

"No, of course not," Superman sighed. "But the whole 'Oh, aliens, how about that,' sort of outcome is just bizarre. It's certainly not what I would have expected to happen. And the only reason I can come up with for it is that it's something they did. Somehow."

"You think the Family is making people just accept the entire situation and move on?" Bruce thought it over. He couldn't deny the man had a point, as he'd also thought the whole thing was far too low key considering the damage if nothing else.

"Do you have a better explanation?" Superman asked.

He shook his head slowly. "Not as such."

They looked at each other for a few seconds. "Who the hell are they and where do they come from?" Superman finally asked, his eyebrows up.

"As far as I can determine, from something that we'd probably think of as a parallel Earth," Bruce admitted, not seeing any harm in it.

The other man stared at him. "Parallel Earth," he echoed. "One where reptiles evolved into sapience rather than mammals?"

"I am… unsure of that," Bruce replied.

"Huh." There was another silence. "And why do they come here?"

"Trade, entertainment, general curiosity?" Bruce hazarded, not entirely sure either. He didn't add, 'To annoy me,' although he was fairly certain that was at least one reason. "I've heard a number of suggestions. I do know they trade technology with certain local companies. The crime fighting aspect appears to more or less be a side effect of that, from what I've learned. They appear to dislike certain types of behavior." And had a very direct way of showing their displeasure, as he vividly remembered.

"Saurial made that abundantly clear," Superman nodded, looking thoughtful. "She said she'd come because a friend called them. I wonder who that was?"

'Lucius.' "I'm not sure," Bruce said.

"Probably a good thing they did turn up, I suppose," the other man said after a glance at him. "She ended the situation much more abruptly and peacefully than I suspect would have otherwise been the case."

"I understand they had a spacecraft…?"

"Yes. A very large one. With completely perfect stealth capabilities," Superman replied, shaking his head. "Even I didn't have any idea at all it was there, or any of them for that matter." He gave Bruce a look. "You have no idea how strange that is. I can hear everything. The sounds of heartbeats from all the people around us, the blood moving through your arteries, insects crawling around in the dumpster down below..." He trailed off for a moment. "But I didn't hear anything at all to let me know she was there. Or all the rest of them. Or that ship. Didn't see anything, or smell anything, or feel anything… Zod was as surprised as I was. They were just… there."

Bruce could almost have sworn that the man shivered a tiny amount. "It was very disconcerting," he added rather lamely.

"So I would imagine," Bruce nodded, not saying that he completely understood, since the fucking lizards were doing the same damn thing to him all the time.

"I don't know how they know, but they also know a hell of a lot about Kryptonians," Superman added slowly, looking disturbed. "And appear to have weapons that can affect us."

'Interesting… I wonder if that is done in the same way I've been considering?' Bruce forced his heart rate to stay unchanged through sheer willpower and training.

"Out of interest, what actually happened to the invaders?" he asked in as casual a manner as he could manage.

"Saurial made them an offer they couldn't refuse," the other man said after apparently thinking it over. "Not that she gave them a choice. Or rather, a choice where the alternative was acceptable."

"Which means?"

"Accept the offer or I kill you all," Superman sighed. "And one thing I'm totally sure of is that she meant it, and was more than capable of doing so." He shrugged a little. "There were a lot of them, and they had some extremely potent weapons. Very high tech, far past anything I'm familiar with. Or, based on what I saw, anything General Zod knew about either." The man smiled very briefly. "If I wasn't so worried I'd have found it sort of funny, his expression was… Let's say he didn't know what to do any more than I did."

'So they were capable of using, and prepared to use, lethal force,' Bruce mused. 'Which considering the people in question means they have a truly impressive ability in that arena. Or possibly simply know the weaknesses… No, while that's probably true, it sounds like they didn't actually need it. Very high tech then, as well as physically powerful. With magic too from what Constantine said.' None of this was a vast surprise, but it made it abundantly clear that they were not people to take lightly.

As if he hadn't already known that…

They fell into a ruminative silence for a couple of minutes, each busy with their own thoughts. Eventually, the red and blue clad alien looked up again from where he'd been staring down at the city, studying the traffic. "Based on your knowledge, what would you recommend I do if they come back?"

Bruce examined him. He seemed genuinely curious and concerned. "Be very polite," he finally said a little reluctantly. "And do nothing to provoke a response. As far as my information goes, they are generally peaceful and non-combative, but they're also more than ready to defend themselves, their friends, or people in general who need help. And based on what you've told me, I doubt it would be easy to defeat them."

"I see." Superman nodded thoughtfully. "I assume that's what you do?"

"Essentially." Bruce smiled grimly. 'Not like I have a choice since I never actually see them...'

"They also have a… unique… sense of humor," he put in a second later, since it seemed only fair to warn the poor bastard. If the reptiles took an interest in him too, he was in for some bizarre experiences. Although, if that happened, perhaps they'd lose interest in him…

"In what way?"

"They appear to enjoy psychological warfare, and aren't above small practical jokes," Bruce grumbled. "It can be… irritating."

Superman actually smiled a little. "That sounds like the voice of experience."

He got a flat look in return. "I don't want to talk about it," Bruce grated.

"Fair enough." The alien hero grinned. "Far be it from me to cause offense."

"Thank you."

Superman peered around again, as if he was feeling someone watching him. Bruce got that feeling almost all the time and had given up trying to work out where it was coming from.

He knew all too well, and also knew he was never going to catch them at it.

"I did hear a rumor..." The other man looked uncertain. "Only a rumor, but it said that there might be one of them who is… quite large."

Studying him, Bruce wondered who'd said what to who. Eventually he nodded once. "That is true."

"How large?"

Several seconds passed, then Bruce replied with a sensation of remembrance, "Very. I would estimate some eighty feet tall."

He was certain that he saw the other man pale.

"At least."

Definitely pale. He sympathized.

There was a muttered exclamation of shock, but he couldn't make out exactly what the alien actually said. "You're certain of that?"

"I saw it myself, so yes."

"Oh."

Their eyes met. "I wonder how fast strength would scale up with size for one of them?" Superman said in an uneasy voice.

"I have no idea, neither do I feel it would be wise to find out the hard way," Bruce admitted. They shared a look of complete understanding.

"No, that's probably best left alone for now," the other man nodded, looking like he was thinking things he didn't enjoy. "Thank you for the information."

"You're welcome," Bruce replied, more or less honestly. He'd also learned quite a bit and had a lot to think about. After a couple of seconds, he put his hand out. Superman looked at it, then clasped it.

"I'm sure you're worried about me, from what I know about you," the alien said quietly. "In your place I would feel the same. But I promise you, we're on the same side. This has been my home nearly my entire life, and I'll protect it with that life. From anyone."

They shook hands. "As will I."

"Good," Superman said as they released each other's hands. "And I guess that even some weird alien lizards from a parallel world are probably on the same side in their own way."

"Possibly," Bruce replied with a frown. He still wanted to know more about them, but that didn't seem likely to happen any time soon. He watched as the other man lifted into the air a few inches.

"At some point we should probably talk for longer," Superman commented. "Compare notes, possibly. But for now you've given me a lot to think about."

"You know where to find me," Bruce said evenly.

"Lurking on a roof somewhere?" the other man smiled, making him glare a little. The alien chuckled. "No offense, of course." He seemed to think of something, then laughed again for a moment. "I suppose the way to look at it is… we're probably unlikely to see anything larger than an eighty foot lizard. For which I am, I admit, quite grateful. There are enough threats around already without..."

He abruptly stopped talking, both of them staring up as a gust of wind blew past along with a sound like a huge sail flapping in the breeze.

Bruce gaped at the absolutely enormous flying lizard, which was outlined in a soft blue glow, and had a wingspan of what must have been well over a quarter of a mile, as it gently glided overhead like a scaled cloud. Beside him he could hear that Superman had stopped breathing. The fucking dragon flew by, its wings beating once with a burst of wind, while its head snaked around on the end of a neck a hundred feet long to fix them with a glowing yellow gaze.

One eye winked, then it was gone.

'I hate them,' he sighed internally. 'They're doing this on purpose...' And, of course, it was certain that only the pair of them had seen the damn thing, since there was no sound of screaming down below.

Out loud, he said in a voice that he was genuinely proud didn't waver, "As I said, their sense of humor is… unusual."

Superman turned to look at him, then peered upwards again, opened his mouth, thought, closed it, and flew rapidly away.

Almost amused under the irritation, Bruce waited until he was certain the man was far over the horizon, snickered, and went on his way. There were still a lot of questions about both the Family and the Kryptonian, but on the whole he was feeling slightly better in both cases.

Now, if only he could find a criminal to intimidate, he'd have a good night and could go home in the knowledge that he'd made a difference…