Don't own anything recognizable
I sat on the crate and kicked my heels. I hated this open-air-countryside shite, but it really was the only viable meeting place for this sort of deal. I mean, considering who was coming I wouldn't want to hold this little meet-n-greet where reporters were known to prowl, so that left out every major and not a few minor cities. All the other one-horse towns were too nosy and remembered events too long. No, this meadow was the best of a bad lot, and I'd still spent an hour making sure it was truly deserted. I sighed and slurped at my smoothie, wishing this was all over already.
A sudden roaring noise had me off the crate in the wink of an eye. I looked up and watched as a highly futuristic air (and probably space) craft did a flyby before banking gently and landing smoothly not twenty yards away. The bay doors opened, a ramp extended, and he stepped out. The news reports and photos didn't do him justice, I thought breathlessly and with slight irony. There was something so vibrantly alive about him when you were in his presence – it made you feel at once as small as a bug and as fierce as a lion. He had a presence about him, all right, make no mistake.
"Superman," I acknowledged him with a nod, once I'd finally got myself under some degree of control. "What's this all about?" he demanded, brandishing the envelope I'd posted some days earlier. "Just what it says on the paper," I answered smartly, having no real idea what the paper said and hoping it aligned with my own sheet of mysterious instructions. "It says you can save Batman, no string attached – and consequences that may or may not happen. Is it true? Can you?" He looks desperately worried, and my heart goes out to him – for a man with a hide of steel, it's obvious that the Dark Knight managed to work his way into the soft spot. He hadn't even questioned me about the names on the envelope – a sure sign he was worried. This worried about just a friend? I thought skeptically, then dismissed it. It wasn't my place to judge.
"I'm reasonably sure I can," I stated, slightly more loudly than I needed to in an effort to get the niggling fantasies of two capes out of my head. "But I'd have to see him. Alone. Nobody could watch. And I'd need that," I said as I gestured to the crate. It was his turn to be skeptical. "What for? And how do I know this isn't a trick?" I raised an eyebrow and spread my hands. "Honestly? I was given instructions on a paper that looks rather like yours and told to follow them to the letter. And as far as it being a trick...If what I read can be believed, does it really matter one way or the other?"
He seemed to deflate at that and sighed. "No, I suppose not. Get in." I walked toward the 'craft even as he flew over and hefted the crate easily before hauling it inside. I settled onto a passenger seat even as he took to the controls. "Buckle up," he instructed as we blasted off towards the outer thermosphere. I settled back and let my mind drift as I sort-of semi-watched the Earth recede below us. I prayed the paper was right, or I might not make it back to Earth in one piece.
If at all.