Disclaimer and Thanks: I don't own the concept of "What If?", which is the property of Marvel, nor do I own Clark Kent/Wayne - Superman/Shield and Bruce Wayne - Batman and all associated characters, and lines, belong to DC comics.

What If?
"What If Superman and Batman Were Brothers?"
by J.T. Magnus, 'Turbo'

Gotham City, where the police are outmatched, where the citizens fear the criminals...

Gotham City, where the criminals fear the night...

"...And in other news, another robbery was thwarted today; The Penguin is now behind bars after trying to steal the Omerus Diamond from the Gotham Museum. Once again, Batman and Shield defeated the bird-themed supervillian. In other news..."

Bruce Wayne muted the TV and turned to his brother, "Clark... we did good."

Clark Wayne smiled, "Bruce, don't we always?"

Gotham City, where the brothers Wayne were the night.

I am not a Watcher, but I do as they do... I watch, I observe, and I record the differences in realities.

In the world you know, the escape craft carrying the last son of Kypton, Kal-El was found by Jonathan and Martha Kent. They raised him as their own son Clark Kent in Smallville, Kansas, until he moved to the city of Metropolis in his adulthood and worked for the Daily Planet. The mark of the house -El he wore on his chest giving rise to a name of Superman.

However, in the timestream I am now viewing, another couple, Thomas and Martha Wayne, were driving across country at the time that the escape craft crashed, Martha was pregnant with a son and they were returning to Gotham City from visiting friends when their return trip was interrupted by an appearant meteor crashing down not a hundred yards from the road they were on.

"What was that!" Thomas shouted as he attempted to keep the sedan on the road dispite the shockwaves from the impact.

"Thomas!"

"I'm trying!"

When the chaos finally ended, Thomas Wayne stopped the car and looked out over the field at the smoking crater.

"Stay here, Martha... I'm going to see what that was."

"Thomas... be careful."

Several minutes passed before Thomas returned, surprising his wife by carrying a small bundle in his arms.

"Martha... You are not going to believe this..."

He adjusted the bundle to show his wife the contents; a young baby.

"What was your father's name again, dear?"

"Clark. ...Thomas, you're not thinking of..."

"Clark, Clark Wayne, a fine name for a young man..."

And it is here that drastic turns seperate this world from the one you are familar with. With the aid of Dr. Leslie Thompkins, it was made to appear that Martha Wayne gave birth to two sons. Two sons who would be orphaned at age eight when a mugging gone wrong took the lives of their parents.

Almost a decade and a half later, a night of crime across Gotham was the night that hope returned to a city that had forgotten how to do so...

The woman knew she was going to die as the gang member raised his knife... but the expected slash never came, instead, an arm reached THROUGH the concrete wall behind him, grabbing his wrist and pulling him through the wall...

It was just supposed to be a shortcut home, she thought, not this, as the lights went out. This was gang territory and she could hear them coming closer and closer. She knew that she was going to be another statistic in the Gotham crime rate as the spike-knuckled knife was raised...

Suddenly, four crescent shaped weapons impaled themselves in the arm and the knife was dropped. Flashes of lightning briefly illuminating a single figure laying waste to the criminals.

"Police phone lines are jammed with citizens discribing what seems to be a seige on Gotham's underworld... by a giant bat..."

A sheet of paper was handed to him and the newscaster read it, "Correction by a giant bat and a man in black..."

Not long after that night, later to be called the Night of Justice by some, the Signal was installed on the roof of police headquarters, a spotlight that projected the symbol of a bat and shield onto the clouds.

One other major difference in this world was that, because Thomas and Martha were killed, and Alfred Pennyworth was not there that night, Clark grew up with him and Bruce believing he was simply a meta-human, never knowing Clark's true origins.

Some villians never came to be; John Corben was never turned into the Kryptonite powered cyborg Metallo because there was no Superman in Metropolis, Harvey Dent never became Two-Face because Shield was there to save him before he fell into the acid vat.

But others not only existed, but were more powerful; Lex Luthor, without Superman to oppose him, became more powerful in Metropolis until business between LexCorp and Wayne Enterprises brought him to the attention of Gotham's dark heroes and eventually led to his downfall.

And in some cases, good came out of the differences; in one world, the events that led the World's Finest to work together revealed Batman's identity as Bruce Wayne to Lois Lane, who, ironically loved Superman but not Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne but not Batman. Before he left Metropolis, Bruce commented that if only they could trade secret identies. In this world, though, when Wayne Enterprises considered a partnership with LexCorp and Batman and Shield went against Lex Luthor, Lois Lane did enter into a relationship with Clark Wayne. The Dark Guardian was more serious and withdrawn than his Man of Steel counterpart, but the more relaxed part of him that was Clark was enough that the relationship grew.

Because Shield had Batman as a partner, Darkseid's attempt to take the Dark Guardian prisoner and use him as a weapon against Earth failed. It was at this time that Clark finally learned the truth of his Kryptonian heritage. When they returned to Earth, Clark vowed to honor his adopted parents, Bruce's birth parents, and his own birth parents by continuing the fight, a vow Bruce echoed for his own parents and his brother's.

Several years later, the Justice League formed...

"I've spent years striking fear into the hearts of criminals... at times I've forgotten that bringing hope to the victims is just as important, something that Shield has always been willing to remind me of..."

The Flash, a young man by the name of Wally West chuckled, "So you aren't really as bad a guy as they say, are you, Bats?"

"Don't call him 'Bats,' only I get to call him 'Bats.'" Shield commented, "Brother's rights."

Shield paused, then continued, looking first at his brother, then each of the other five heroes in turn, "In Gotham, Batman and I learned that working together achieves more than working seperately. I believe that if the seven of us stayed together as a team, we could be a force that could truly work for the ideals of peace and justice."

The Flash made another quip, "What, like a bunch of Superfriends?"

"More like a Justice League," Batman answered.

And now the Justice League...

So many differences, so many similarities. As one member of the League Unlimited once commented, "A is A, and no matter what reality he calls home, Luthor is Luthor."

Be he Clark Kent, 'Superman' or Clark Wayne, 'Shield', the son of Jor-El's destiny is to be a hero, a destiny that he fulfills...