ISSUE 14:
The Bat rapidly ran through the data he had just collected on Kal-El who had now taken a liking to the name 'Superman' after Ryan had suggested it.
Kal-El and Ryan sat on the nearby bench, with Krypto in the middle.
"So your real name is Ryan but you're also Nightwing," Kal-El confirmed.
"Yeah it's secret identity," Ryan explained. "It means I can be go out and fight crime but not get mugged while I'm down at the store. It also means that people know me as a hero and nothing else, makes me seem more intimidating in a way. Mr Grumpy here has one to, but you'll have to wait till he shows you."
"Mr Grumpy can also hear!" The Bat snapped back, still not having lost the voice or taken off his cowl; whereas Ryan had removed his domino mask and become a lot less menacing than his alter-ego.
"Well stop being so cold," Ryan retorted. "All you've done is run tests on Kal-El and Krypto and not spoken to them once."
"Will talking to them sort out any of the problem we have right now?"
"No."
"Then I'll go back to analysing the data."
"He's not always this agitated," Ryan said with a smile to the alien. "But anyway, you should get a secret identity."
"A secret identity," Kal-El mused. "Does that mean I'd be a hero, like you?"
"Yeah, with your powers; which the list of is still growing, you could nullify crime with ease," Ryan replied. "But that does mean you'd need a normal life to and Kal-El is really an earth name."
"So what name could I have?" Kal-El asked.
"Well let's go with something like what you," Ryan mused. "Connor?"
"How about Clark?" the Bat asked from the computer. He turned around to face them. "Superman, if that is your chosen name, is something new to Earth entirely. Clark is an old stereotypical American name which would make you highly unlikely to be the flying man with a red cape."
"Clark," Superman mused. "I can go with that but what about a surname, I assume humans have these too; mine is El."
The Bat turned around and began to type in a search on a pop-up window. "I'm opening a list of names that would match 'Clark'."
A list popped up on the screen and Superman zoomed in one them. Ryan looked round to see his pupils dilate and twitch in a strange way, twitching and moving.
"Are you okay?" Ryan asked.
"He's zooming in," the Bat explained. "His senses are highly increased from ours. His hearing is better than any dog or creature on this planet and his sight has multiple forms. Ranging from beams from his eyes to microscopic vision."
"That's crazy," Ryan smiled.
"Kent," Kal-El said. "I like the sound of Clark Kent."
"How many times did you process that?" the Bat asked.
"What?" Kal-El uttered.
"Your brain has been maximised beyond anything," the Bat told him. "You can calculate things faster than anything, along with your heightened senses, I believe you may have greatly increased speed."
"Does the list end?" Ryan asked, jokingly.
"Yes," the Bat told him, taking the statement literally. "But to the stupid you will appear to be a God on Earth."
"No, Superman will be a God on Earth," Kal-El told him. "Clark Kent will be a normal man."
"Good idea," Ryan smiled. "So we'll need to get you some new clothes. And I need some now so what about a shopping trip?"
"Okay but doesn't your planet have some form of currency?"
"Ah yeah," Ryan said, realising. "Hey Bats, got any spare money?"
"Ask Alfred for a spare credit card," the Bat told him. "And you can take one of the car but don't wreck it."
"I wouldn't dream of it," Ryan grinned. "Come on Clark; I'm sure Alfred can find you a spare shirt to borrow."
Lieutenant Jim Gordon poured himself another glass of malt whiskey. Tom sat in the chair the other side of the Lieutenant's desk. The office lights were off and the sun light was pouring through the blind slats and hitting the room with a harsh light.
"So Ryan's quit," he checked, still not quite sure.
"Yeah," Tom replied with a sigh. "We argued about Justice and the Bat and then all of sudden he came out with this profound speech and quit."
"I can't believe it," Jim sighed; polishing off the small glass of liquor. "I thought Ryan would be the last person to give up on us."
"Well he has," Tom produced the golden GCPD Badge that Ryan had thrown at him. He placed it on Jim's desk and slid it over to him. "Here's his badge to prove it."
Jim held the cold metal badge in his hand and felt the weight of the situation. Ryan Connolly was possibly one of the best and loyal Detectives on Major Crimes Unit and now he had up and left them. Sure they had the Bat to cover them but it was the Officers that made the Police better and they had just lost one of their most up and coming Detectives.
"What are we going to do?" Tom asked him, snapping Gordon out of his thought.
"We're going to keep on moving," Gordon told him with a sigh. "We're going to do what we did before, just this time we crack harder on the corruption and we fight harder for our criminals. We are going to rid our unit of corruption and then clean up this department and then this whole city."
"You sound just like him sir."
"Sound like who?"
"Ryan."
"Well you know what they say, great minds think alike."
Far away from Gotham, Lex Luthor sat inside Luthor Corp Tower with a glass of whiskey in one hand. An accident had made him bald but he was sure that he would have been soon after anyway; though his stress came more from disappointment and failure of others.
He slumped down in front of a large computer monitor on his extra reinforced desk in his penthouse office. On the screen were six other shadowy people, all looking at him.
"The Kryptonian Super Soldier Project is now shut down," he declared to the screen. "The Kryptonians were broken out by what the guards call 'a bat monster and a black shadow'."
"This is not good," said a deep voice from the screen. "What about a weapon against the alien?"
"We never actually developed one," Luthor sighed. "The only thing we had over him was that he hadn't absorbed any sun light yet, so he hadn't developed any powers. But now he has absorbed sunlight we can't contain him."
"So what are we going to do L-3?" asked a heavily accented woman.
"We currently have a back up plan," Lex replied with a slight smile. "But we will try and find a weakness for him from our notes. Yet if the back up plan is successful then we won't need to search for the alien's weakness."
"What is this project L-3?" asked a higher pitched, almost childlike, voice.
"I think I might just call it, Project Cadmus," Luthor smiled, downing the whiskey in one.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
So there you go guys, that's Issue 14 for you. Now the most in depth DC fans will know half of the hints to the major villains and upcoming events of the saga. The organisation has a name and the codenames used in the last part are the biggest clue yet; along with the fact that Luthor is also part of the organisation. And I do love these stories but it would be nice to know people's thoughts so a review would be appreciated and if you'd like to see something in this brand new DC Universe then how about you give me some tips. I would love to collab with some authors on this story. So yeah, drop me a review sometime and I hope you enjoyed Issue 14 of the Batman; Mantle of the Dark Knight.