"Gotham"
A 'Smallville' fan fiction
All characters are owned by DC Comics, Warner Brothers, and their respective partners.
'Superman' was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
'Batman' was created by Bob Kane
Timeframe: The summer between "Vortex" and "Heat" in season two
Disclaimer: I own plenty, but not these characters (not even Kaminski, not yet anyway…)
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: Instead of having Bruce Wayne come to Smallville, I wanted Clark Kent to come to Gotham. I wanted to re-imagine Batman's origin to a very short extent. You will see many, many of the same things about Batman's past you've always heard. But if you look at it, there is room to grow in the origin of Batman, and since Smallville is all about origins, why not introduce another of the World's Finest? I'm not going to pull a JJ Abrams and make Bruce homosexual, have Alfred be a robot, or the existence of Wayne Enterprises a mere myth. I loved these characters since I was very young, starting with Batman: The Animated Series and with this fiction I am just putting the characters in different places. What if Clark Kent witnessed the murder of Bruce's parents, and who exactly was behind it? I'm only bringing you a "what if?" story that hopefully will entertain and make you happy when it ends.
Eleven: Midnight
The sun was finally setting on the humid Wednesday of the torturous Gotham summer. The city was in mourning as the funeral services of the city's two biggest entrepreneurs was to be held in less than twenty-four hours.
But little did any citizen, not even anyone in Smallville, know the fight with Gerald Kaminski would have escalated to such levels.
The trio of Clark, Bruce, and Lex had been forced to listen to Kaminski's concert from hell for two hours with no room to make another move. If they were to burst through the door, they would be shot at. And that was the only way in.
Clark, however, had the largest cloud perched over his head. He could use his powers and take the psycho out, but he would feel horrible if he didn't allow Bruce to flip the switch on Kaminski. But he had to use his powers, there was no other way, but the consequences kept reminding him to cool it. After much thinking, he came to a conclusion; he would use his powers and face the consequences.
"Lex…" Clark looked up from his upside down garbage can seat, "…I have an idea, hand me that pipe?"
"Sure…" Lex mysteriously eyed Clark and handed him the pipe.
Clark looked at it, rolling it around in his hands, he looked at Lex. He really hoped that the impact of the pipe to his skull would erase this moment from his memory. There was no other way.
"What the hell?" Bruce jumped up from the corner and headed to stop Clark.
Lex tried to move but the pipe met his forehead much too quickly, and he fell to the floor face first, unconscious and frozen.
Bruce grabbed Clark's shoulders and tried to throw him against the wall, but didn't succeed. "What the hell are you thinking?"
Clark looked worriedly at Bruce, "I can explain."
"Well I'd hope so, for god's sake, he could be dead."
"He's not dead." Clark rolled his eyes.
"How would you know?"
Clark stopped and circled the room with his eyes, "Bruce…I'm not like other people."
"That's quite obvious…you're god damn insane!"
Clark ignored the accusation and shuffled in his seat, "You remember those meteor showers back in '89 in Smallville?"
"Yeah," Bruce stopped, "Did the meteors affect you somehow?"
"No…"
"I'm confused."
"…I came with the meteor showers." Clark paused and watched Bruce's expression drop.
"You mean you born during them?"
"Not exactly…the shower was a cover for my," he stopped himself and acknowledged how ridiculous he sounded, "ship."
"You…?"
"I…I…came from space…space, somewhere in space. And for some reason I have these powers. I know nothing about where I came from or who my real parents are."
"Oh…" Bruce gasped.
Clark choked up, "And I don't want anyone to know, except my parents of course, so Lex finding out now would not have been a good thing. Using my powers is the only way to get out of here alive." Clark looked around and began to sweat from his nervousness.
"That explains how you saved Lex's life…"
"I guess you would call it a curse and a blessing."
"What kind of powers do you…have?" Bruce anxiously asked.
Clark picked up the pipe and bent it in half, then set it on the floor and smashed it with his foot.
"I can also see through things."
Bruce turned around quickly out of excitement, "Holy Jesus!"
"Somehow I doubt that."
"Okay…" Bruce clapped his hands together and sighed, "Let's do it."
"Great."
"Just promise me one thing, leave Kaminski to me."
"Agreed," Clark sighed, thankful that Bruce understood, or at least accepted him. "Just promise not to send me to a lab somewhere?"
"Of course not," Bruce patted him on the shoulder. A new sense of friendship came about them. "Then let's get to it, I've had enough of this music."
One would have thought even a psychopath would hate singing along to the Spice Girls. In this case, one would have thought wrong.
Kaminski's concert continued with "Wannabe" as he danced around the clock tower. Sofas over turned, tables broke, dishes smashed, as he hopped all over. The guard and the pilot now stood next to each other near the door, contemplating on leaving. The bright lights from the circling helicopters seemed to get brighter as the sun swiftly fell behind the clouds. The lights were dancing with Kaminski, creating the effect of an oversized disco ball.
The clock struck midnight, greeting Thursday, and they were all still listening to his horrible voice.
But at 12:02 the music finally stopped.
Kaminski fell over screaming at the sound of silence, accented by the quiet hum of helicopters outside. "Must the fun only last for so long?" He moaned from the floor.
The guard hopped from the door way and whipped out his hand gun, "Stay down," he motioned to Kaminski, "Someone else has joined our party." The pilot just swooned over behind the kitchen counter, not wanting nor bothering to get involved.
"Little…pink…SHOVELS!" Kaminski cried out, jumping up and storming around, "how did you get in here!?" He yelled into the ceiling.
The guard knew this was a mistake on his part, but he continued to stare at Kaminski blankly. He quickly fell to the floor as the mashed metal pipe slammed into the back of his skull.
The gun from the guard's hands slid over to Kaminski's feet, and he picked it up, "Come to finally dance under the silver night moon?" he yelled again, looking around into the darkness and the whirling lights from outside.
Clark and Bruce both tried to avoid the constantly moving lights, with them always moving there was always a chance to be spotted.
"Stop!" the pilot lunged at Kaminski, but before she could even pull the trigger on the gun she had hidden in her bureau, a bullet from Kaminski's soared through the air and dug into her thigh. She screamed and fell over behind the kitchen counter as she tried to hold the blood. She prayed Kaminski would let off and get distracted by something else.
"Oh I never trusted you petite fille," Kaminski smiled, feeling the rush of murder brushing the back of his neck.
"You shouldn't play with guns Kaminski…"
Kaminski jumped and turned around behind him and met Bruce's dark eyes from across the room.
"…You could get hurt."
Kaminski screamed and let the bullets escape the cage of the barrel of his gun, but Clark's chest gladly accepted them as he jumped in front of Bruce, not a single one making it past Clark's barrier. Kaminski stood there dumbfounded at what he had just seen, the empty clip automatically falling from the gun.
"Confused?" Bruce smirked, "Or just finally coming to grips with whom the bad guy really is?"
Clark leapt back out of the darkness he had hidden in after catching the bullets and tugged Kaminski to the ground. Leaving Kaminski hugging the tile, he leapt over to the pilot to help her with the wound. Thus cementing their agreement, and leaving Kaminski to Bruce as promised.
Bruce walked over to the broken man slowly, the hard bottoms of his shoes making a dramatic boom with every step. He crouched down and pulled up Kaminski's face by tugging the back of his head with his hair, "I'm going to kill you, you know that, or so help me god if you walk out of this place in chains justice would not break them for they would melt on the heat your recent sins exert from your body."
Kaminski just chuckled and turned over, "You silly little shovel, I have already killed you. You are standing, breathing, above me now, but there is no light to reflect off the pigment of your pink shovel body!"
"And whose fault do you think that is?" Bruce still held onto the hunk of hair.
"His…" Kaminski pointed to Clark. Bruce looked over at him with confusion, and then laughed, looking back down at Kaminski.
"What the hell are you talking about? You are the psychopath who killed them…YOU."
Clark looked over with an alarming concern.
Kaminski broke into a laughing cry, rolling over in place and banging his head on the tile.
"Did he not inform you?" Kaminski chuckled, "I remember him now…he caught the bullets, just like he did now."
Bruce
stopped smiling and looked down into Kaminski's eyes as he went on.
"He came up to me, caught the
bullets…Then like the little pink shovel he is! Scooped me up and tossed me
into the trash in the nether region of the alley! The vision which my head
holds, blurry at the time, saw the assassin I had hired…he killed your parents.
Perhaps our steel boy over here was too slow? Or perhaps he didn't care? He was
fast enough to catch my bullets, why was he not fast enough to scoop the
assassin's?"
Bruce looked over at Clark and released Kaminski; he slowly stood and backed away, constantly looking back and forth between them.
"So our shovel takes the truth in his mind and contemplates what the facts are…" Kaminski sighed, letting out a signature chuckle.
"Bruce…" Clark sighed, about to expose the truth.
"Were you there!?" Bruce burst into an angry sweat and was greeted by a silent stare from Clark.
"I…."
"You…what?"
The doors of the room burst open, the excitement of the room must have made them all not notice the police chopper landing outside. It was Michelle, her SWAT team standing like a pack of hungry wolves behind her, waiting for her command. She stopped and issued silence with her hand, and tried to observe what was going on.
Time stood still, Bruce's vision blurred as the energy that went into his thoughts seemed to take away from the rest of his body.
Kaminski hopped up, "Bruce, I remember him, he caught my bullets with his bare hand!" He held up his left palm and pointed to it, "They had to have been everywhere at the auditorium or as you human people would call it, crime scene."
Michelle remembered the crushed bullets they had found that morning as she looked around and saw them scattered all over the tiled floor.
"Bruce, I couldn't stop him…he was too fast! I was protecting you! It is not like I am a professional hero!" Clark broke down as tears welled in his eyes, seeing the newfound friendship crumble as Bruce's eyes sank.
"You were there." He looked down and kicked a crushed bullet, "But you were too slow."
"There was Kaminski and the assassin, I stopped Kaminski, but the assassin appeared out of nowhere, I thought he was already taken care of!" Clark cried.
Bruce sighed and looked around, "Kaminski didn't kill them? Some nameless assassin back at the jail did?"
Michelle backed out of her awe of the situation and suddenly realized that Clark was a witness.
"You were there?" She walked up to Clark, "You were there and you never told us!?"
"Believe me, I wanted to! I couldn't!" Clark stepped away from her with hands in the air out on front of him.
Kaminski observed the situation with a glare, and as usual, he burst into laughter, "Booboo Trap!" he screamed.
The floor under Michelle collapsed and she fell through screaming, the team attempting to go after her.
"Better hope those trash dumpsters aren't empty…" Kaminski sang as he danced around chuckling.
"No!" Bruce yelled, leaping forward and smashing his fist into Kaminski's forehead until it was hard to tell if Bruce's knuckles were bleeding or Kaminski's head was. It was probably a combination of both.
The helicopter light grew stronger as Clark set aside the emotions and picked up the pilot and heaved her out the big steel door and onto the roof, he dropped her there, hoping a helicopter would notice and pick her up for help.
"Whether Clark was there or not, you orchestrated the event and killed my parents…whether you pulled the trigger or not!" Bruce yelled as he threw Kaminski against a concrete pillar.
"Well scoop me up and call me insane!" Kaminski laughed, dancing over and hitting a button on the wall, "Boom Bam Bing Boom!"
A wall of the clock tower blew out into pieces of dust, the shockwave even blowing back Clark into the blanket of darkness. Bruce held onto another pillar of the room as the cold night wind from outside poured in and helicopters scattered to get a good view of the madness.
Kaminski knelt down and laughed at the explosion, "I always wanted a room with a view!"
"I'll give you a view." Bruce soared into Kaminski's back from a giant leap and caused him to go flying forward and sliding across the slick tile toward the burning hole in the wall.
"Damn you child!" Kaminski hopped up and smiled, "That wasn't a smart idea," he pointed to a news helicopter turned sideways as a camera sat with the door flung open, capturing a perfect view of the events as they occurred live on national television.
Bruce just waved. He wasn't the one about to get a close-up.