Metropolis.

The LexCorp Tower.

"Do you ever regret it?"

"Regret what?" he asked.

"Spending all your time going after Superman. When you could be doing…better things."

"Better things?" Luthor turned away from the window and swirled the Brandy snifter in the cradle of his hand. His eyes were dark and narrow. "My dear boy. What in the world could possibly compare with saving my people from Superman?"

"Your…people?"
"This city is mine. These people are mine. He comes in and steals them from me. Well…I don't go down that easily. And I refuse to let him his victory without struggle. You understand my position, I'm sure."

"Sure. Jealousy."

"Not anymore," he said swiftly. "Vengeful."

One and the same, the boy thought, and said, "You seem so sure of things."

"I always am," Luthor said lightly. "Nothing surprises me anymore. Least of all the cringing misgivings of an alien with a god complex."

"But isn't he a god? I mean…he can bend steel in his bare hands. That's got to count for something."

"And humans have perfected machinery to do the same, my dear boy. Everything that exists on this world is the intellectual property of our collective conscience. We owe our lives to science, and science lends itself to us. Alien technology and mystic fairytales and religious fervor have no place in the laboratory of ideas."

"Sounds counterintuitive."

Luthor rolled his eyes. "You're not seeing the big picture."

Five minutes passed before the boy spoke again.

"Why do you still do it? You could cure cancer, or take us all to some parallel dimension. Superman's a cockroach. You kill him and he comes back. Why bother?"

"True," Luthor said and nodded. "But that's what separates us, isn't it? From the moment he and his kind arrived, men lost the will to succeed—the will to explore. They stopped seeking the stars when Superman brought the stars home."

"Complacency."

"Precisely," Luthor said. He smiled and felt calmly vindicated that the boy understood. He sipped the Brandy again. "So what brings you here? Another errand for an uncompromising and ungrateful master?"

The boy hesitated for a moment. A gloved hand stroked his chin. "Batman…understands."

Luthor sat on the edge of his desk. Gave a kindly and sympathetic smile. And remembered Welles' line again. Intelligences…greater than their own…

"Does he now? Do you?"

Behind the star-lite lenses of his domino mask, Robin's eyes locked on Luthor's convincing emeralds.

"Yes," the Boy Wonder said. "You don't respond well to threats. That's why he sent me. I'm willing to press your buttons, and you think just enough of me to listen."

Luthor scoffed. "What a lovely gopher he's got himself now. And yet you don't seem anything like him, aside from some grudge to piss off certain people—a trait I'd say you picked up in middle school. Tell me: you got picked on in your early teens and you dove into your studies as solace; the byproduct was that you gave a cheerful boyish veneer over to typical angst, only you never had an object on which to exact your hatred. A father, perhaps?"

Luthor listened.

"This is irrelevant, Lex," The Boy Wonder said irritably. "I've told you what he wants. Your guarantee you won't get in the way."

"So you've said," Luthor said darkly, downing the Brandy. "Does Batman think he can keep me out of the game simply by wishing it so? By sending his errand-boy to ask favors of me?"

"Enough," Robin's voice was mechanical distance. He'd been well-trained in the arts of seeking out and stifling snakes in the grass. Despite the hyperbole, Robin had enough of a suspicion to believe Luthor was an anaconda.

Luthor went to his desk and wrote what Robin perceived to be an address on a small note card, and handed it to the Boy Wonder.

"What's this?" Robin's eyes locked on Luthor.

"An answer."

"Why?"

Luthor smiled and finished off the Brandy. Leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers.

"Tell me," he said. "Does it comfort you at all knowing that you're wasting time with me while Batman's out there doing the grunt work?"

Robin clenched his jaw and made his hands into fists. God damn this Luthor.

"Until then," Luthor said, "that information is yours, to use on your own accord. Consider it my word."

Robin locked his gaze on Luthor's piercing emerald eyes and shook Luthor's hand loosely. A moment later he was out the window, diving toward the street.

Luthor watched him go and stared into the night for a while thereafter. His jaw tightened when he thought about someone like the Boy Wonder—a young mind, full of mush as the expression went, and yet capable of so much more—working with someone like the Alien.

He scowled and tightened his grip on the brandy snifter. The tendons in his hand stood out against whitened skin.

The brandy snifter shattered in his hand.

Later.

The Boy Wonder sat perched on a granite parapet on the roof of the Daily Planet building. The night air was clear and brisk and his cape fluttered noiselessly. Behind him, the oversized globe gave a dull hum as it rotated on antiquated gears. Every few seconds the metal base screeched a high soprano as it grated across an opposing steel plate.

He let the cold air wash across his face, and strangely felt a sweatdrop of nervousness course down his forehead.

Maybe he's right…

Lex had made a spot-on analysis in about five seconds, and Tim had only narrowly dodged a bullet meant to derail the conversation and utterly confound his thought process.

Luthor was schooled in Logic. He knew his way around people and around ideas. Knew how to make everything go his way. And reveled in the ability to make other people aware of his brilliance.

The Boy Wonder sighed and clenched his jaw.

I got had by a forty-year-old bald guy and I didn't even see it coming. Rank amateur, Tim. Idiot.

Sometimes I wonder what the hell I'm doing here…

Robin felt a tiny buzz in his head and tapped his ear, opening a channel on the earpiece communicator.

"How did it go?" the familiar voice of Batman asked

Robin sighed, and looked out past the cityscape. A half-mile away, the LexCorp tower off a single spot of light from the top floor. He's looking at you, Tim. And you at him. Quid pro quo. "I'd rather not talk about it."

"Fine," Batman dismissed. "We're checking out a lead at STAR Labs. A few nights ago, a prototype bomb went missing. Superman thinks it was the Prankster.

Robin sneered. "All these weirdos have to have names?"

"Says the man who fights a guy called 'Killer Moth.'"

"Alright," Robin replies thickly. "What do you want me to do?"

"Keep on Luthor. If he so much as picks his nose, I want to know."

"Yeah. Okay."

He stood slowly and let the wind wrap the cape around his body.

He's looking at you.

And you're letting him get to you.

He dove off the building, flinging a grapple at the nearest ledge.

LexCorp.

Luthor left his office three minutes after Robin had gone. He left the lights on—he could afford the bills—and took a service elevator to the sub-basement. On the way down, with a Muzak version of Rachmaninoff playing behind bronze paneled speakers, Luthor positioned a 9mm Beretta in a leather shoulder holster and dressed himself down.

Took off the two-thousand dollar jacket and threw it carelessly to the floor. Loosened his tie and let it fall, equally heedless, on top of the jacket. Slid his cufflinks off and filed them in one pocket. He kept the three thousand dollar Citizen watch.

Rolled his sleeves up to just below his elbows, and cracked his knuckles.

The elevator slowed and dinged open after a pause.

Luthor took a cleansing breathe and stepped out. Ahead of him, a single shaft of fluorescence shone down on a wooden chair and the slack body chained to it.

The Joker.

His head hung, half-dead, and slowly rolled from side to side. Blood was smeared across his chin; successive lines went up either cheek from the corners of the lip to the bottom of the ear. When he saw Luthor, he started cackling and spit out a tooth.

The incisor bounced harmlessly off Luthor's alligator loafers. The Metropolis mogul looked at the tooth, at rest an inch from his foot, and back at Joker.

"How are you on your Roman History, clown? Julius Caesar? Gladiators?"

"That…Crowe movie?" Joker murmured. "He hit the emperor with a phone, didn't he?"

Luthor pulled a set of brass knuckles from one pocket and gave Joker an abrupt right cross.

More blood.

Joker gave a greedy cackle and swallowed blood and huffed air. His right eye was swollen shut, a prominent purple bruise misshaping half his face.

"Where is the weapon?" Luthor asked and clenched his jaw.

Joker cackled again, a guttural and wet effect. "What…what weapon?"

Luthor backhanded Joker with the knuckles. Waited for a reaction, and then kicked the chair back. Joker fell to the ground with a dull thud and threw up more blood. Luthor crouched over him, clutched Joker's genitals and pulled. The clown yelped.

"The Romans had something called a caestus: more or less a leather glove with studs and spikes around it. Hell of a weapon. Used expressly for the purpose of making sure the other guy got it worse. What should you get?"

"For…what?" Joker's eyes lit up.

"For that effrontery. You made me look like a fool. That was unforgivable."

Joker laughed: a string of quick huffs of air. He started pulling on his handcuffs, wondering how long it would take for the metal to snap.

"You owe me something," Luthor said. "A certain device I loaned on the good authority of Mister Loomis, and I want it back. You don't come with it—as a matter of fact, if I wasn't so sure Batman would focus on me in the event of your death, I'd kill you myself."

Joker blew him a kiss.

Luthor stood and kicked Joker across the face. Once. Twice. Spit in his face.

He kneeled again, only to pull the chair up and wrap his hands around Joker's neck and squeeze.

Luthor's eyes lit up. His jaw tightened and he smiled minimally. Delighting in the pain of others. Remarkable…

"Trusting you was a mistake," Luthor said quietly. "One I won't make again. You have a bomb with my name on it someplace in this city, and I want it back. If you hinder me, I will pump every bullet I can into that skull of yours until I'm one hundred percent sure you are dead. And no hand of God will bring you back from where I shall send you. Do you understand?"

Joker's unswollen eye rolled in its socket, looking sickly yellow and slightly anemic, and locked on Luthor.

"I'll rob you of having your great showdown with the Dark Knight. Either you tell me where this bomb is, or all that'll be left of the great and powerful Joker will be this…little…finger." Luthor kicked Joker onto his side and grabbed one of his index fingers. He pulled it back slowly and waited for the pop.

When it came the Joker didn't even say anything.

Luthor kicked him at the base of the spine. Pulled him up a moment later and spun the chair around to look him in the face. And started hitting.

Punch after punch. Joker's head rolled with each strike. Losing more teeth. Losing more blood. Losing what was left of his mind.

After twenty minutes of pugilism, Luthor's once-sterling white Oxford was stained utterly with the deep crimson of Joker's blood. When Luthor checked his watch for the time, he had to wipe away the blood to do so, and ended up only smearing it. The leather shoulder holster dripped blood at its lowest point, and leaked excess blood on Luthor's trousers. When he wiped the sweat from his brow, Joker's blood spread across Luthor's forehead and he felt somehow infected by it.

"You know your problem?" Joker said.

Luthor removed the brass knuckles and threw them across the room. "What?"

"You oughta calm down, Lexie. This paranoia's not doing it for you."

Luthor scowled and growled quietly. He pulled the Beretta from the holster and angled it at Joker's forehead. The gun didn't move.

Luthor monitored his own breathing for a moment and timed it to thirty-three inspirations per minute. He was, then, calm in his threats. Reserved. Honest.

Sociopathic.

"No fight to the finish with the Dark Knight. No grand finale for the world's greatest entertainer. Just a by-line in some tabloid that says the Joker's body was found chopped to bits in an alley. You don't want to go out that way."

Joker's swollen eye opened as much as it could. His vision cleared and he took a quick whiff of the barrel. "Mm," he said. "Corditey."

Luthor whipped him across the jaw with the barrel, breaking the clown's nose. He brought the gun back and pressed it against Joker's forehead.

"The weapon," Luthor requested. "Or your life."

Continued...