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bruce wayne

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▶ WHO: Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent.
▶ DATE: July 12
▶ WARNINGS: None at this point. I will edit if necessary.
▶ SUMMARY: Superman is transportation. Batman needs a lift.

[continued from here.]
Clark left the note on the wall, Bruce responded and as far as he was concerned that was very much that. In regards to communication necessary to achieve his goals. The content of the note left by 'Superman' was an entirely different matter.

So was someone choosing to call themselves Superman.

If Bruce hadn't already met and reluctantly befriended (by his standards of friendship) a dead kid, it would have been even more remarkable. It would probably not have raised more questions.

Clark finding him within ten minutes was not a surprise - being found was the goal, and why he's outside the compound, easily visible. Clark's attitude on the other hand....

"In response to a note taped to a wall? Yes. That was it. Now, can we get on with it or did you want to continue basking in your own usefulness?"

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Alright then. The man hadn’t seemed so much of a jerk on their first conversation. Then again he hadn’t seemed much of anything: he had just soaked up the information Kal had given him and just flown away. Maybe he shouldn’t have judged him based on a simple thank you.

“I don’t know about you but not being kind of a jerk to the man you’re asking favors to usually works out in my favor. What do you need?”

He hadn't flown away, he'd jumped and then walked away. He also hadn't been this much of a dick, but he hadn't been met with accusations right off the bat, either.

Then again, he wasn't particularly upset, now, just being snarky. When he was really being a jerk, he noticed (not always - more like when he tried to be a jerk he noticed).

"That wasn't me being a jerk, that was me responding to your question." Said him, but he moved on. "You're the best option for a good ariel view." Space wa sa clue. "Of where we are, and the best way of determining if this is the same reality as the one I left. To whit, I have a location I'd like to visit. It's also a good opportunity for... accquiring supplies." And then: "I know I won't be the only one asking you. You can always drop me off and pick me up again, later."

Well, yes. If he had literally flown away Kal would have been interested in another flying person around. He also didn’t really look convinced about the jerk thing, but he knew better than to get into that kind of silly circular argument right away. Either the world really had ended or they had to figure out a way to get back home, and he’d need to be on people’s good side in both cases.

Especially smart people, and while Bruce was, to Kal’s definition, a jerk he also seemed to know what the next step should be. Clark might not be good with orders but he knew very well what kind of people he should keep around.

“Let me be the one to worry about other people. Where do you want to go, that can convince you for or against being in the same reality?”

"I'll worry about who and what I want to worry about, thank you." Not that he was all that considerate, the guy just... pushed buttons. Not bad, but Bruce didn't quite trust the power the guy had, especially since he didn't even begin to understand it. It made him... edgy, even more so when combined with all the other things happening here that he didn't understand.

He really, really, hated not being able to pin things down and make sense of them.

"I can give you directions or coordinates to the exact location. More broadly, Gotham City."

Earlier he had toyed with the idea that the man was a jerk. Now he at least had the confirmation. He even opened his mouth to retort, but he knew better than to get into some sort of childish fight just because the man seemed to push all his buttons on the worst possible way. He wasn’t even being all that rude, but Clark had always have little patience for people he didn’t like.

He closed his mouth firmly for a second- then, realizing what the man asked for he actually raised both eyebrows in surprise.

“I know Gotham. What’s so special about it? I mean, I’ll fly you there, right now if you want to. I’m just curious.”

"I'm from Gotham. If this is the reality I know there will be somewhere within it that has resources we can use." And if that place -if Batman and the cave weren't there, he'd have definitive proof that it wasn't the world he had come from. All it took was a ride.

If he noticed Superman didn't like him, he was hiding it well. (He'd noticed; he didn't care a whole lot right now.)

Clark frowns.

“I know Gotham.” He’s only been there in passing, sure, but you don’t need more than that to hear the rumors. The city is dark, dirty, and it can swallow you up whole if you don’t pay attention. And apparently rumors about the city’s savior said they were as dark as the city they protected.

“I can fly you there.” If it exists, anyway. “Right now if you want, I’m ready.”

"And I am telling you that once we are in Gotham I will have to give you more exact directions. Alternatively you can drop me off in the middle of the city and I will make my way toward what I am looking for." If it existed, but trying to wrap his head around the possibility that it didn't was harder than zombies and flying men. Those were new and strange - and Kal would be getting a hell of a response in the absence of the other things, but him without Gotham was just... inconceivable (and he did know what the word meant).

"You can fly me there now. Fantastic. I still need an instruction manual. Where do you want me and where do you want held onto?"

‘First you get that stick out of your ass, how about we try that?’ But you know what, whatever. He wanted to try to help people and he couldn’t just stop doing that just because he didn’t like the person.

“I usually fly with people on my back. Just wrap your arms around my neck.”

He should probably be wearing the cowl for this, if only for the face and head protection it offered against things that wanted to bite him -- and against the possibility of being dropped on his head.

He's getting steadily less comfortable with this idea, but he doesn't have the luxury of interrogating this guy right now. So after a pretty clear hesitation and internal debate he does. Walk up behind Clark and wrap an arm around his neck. "I'm going to assume you don't need to breathe, either," he said, incredibly dryly.

Clark makes sure he’s holding himself tightly enough before lifting himself of the ground a few inches, to give him time to get used to it. Also to call it quicks quickly if he isn’t comfortable. He might have a stick up the ass the size of Gotham but that doesn’t mean he has to be rude on purpose.

“I do breathe, but I can hold it for a long long time. Okay like this?”

No. He is not okay like this. He is hanging on to a man who by all appearances is no bigger than him, who has abilities he does not understand and cannot trust (because he doesn't understand them), and is in the middle of a god damn zombie apocalypse.

He hates this and it freaks him out.

He adjusts his grip, and says firmly and definitively, "I'm fine. Let's go."

Yeah, no. Clark might not know this guy but he knows a freaked out heartbeat when he hears it. It’s actually surprising how leveled the guy’s voice is when he’s obviously so uncomfortable otherwise.

“I’m going to raise you a couple inches, a little more at the time, just to prove it’s safe.” And he does just that. In truth he knows it’s 100% safe, and he’s done it before. So he’s simply doing it for Bruce’s benefit. After a couple minutes...

"The air is probably going to bother you a little bit when I actually take off towards Gotham. Let's go?"

He knew what 'Superman' was doing with that temporary, gradual rise. He appreciated and resented it in equal measure. He'd said he was fine, dammit, he didn't need to be coddled. He used the time to get comfortable with the sheer strangeness of how firmly the man was hanging in the air, anyway.

More comfortable.

Less freaked out?

He made damn sure his grip was solid.

"Let's go." He didn't need to ask why the air would bother him - he'd heard what Clark said about speed and he understood physics, thanks. He also didn't intend to let it bother him, a little or otherwise.

And so he took off. Without adding another word because he got the feeling small chat wouldn’t be appreciated. Clark was still getting the hang out of this flying with people thing. He knew how to make it safe and how to not make them fall, but it was hard for him to get the speed right: as fast as he could, but without actually hurting his passenger. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

All in all, they still made it to wherever Gotham was supposed to be in record time.

“How are you doing? You need to give me more indications, remember?”

Bruce hadn't said a single word the entire flight. He hadn't made a sound, hadn't protested the speed or the discomfort of air whipping past him. He hadn't squeaked or screamed or held on tighter when he was traveling way faster than he should be, through open air and without any control.

Basically he held on and dealt with it.

He continued to be just absolutely non-dramatic and unemotional when they made it to the ground. He just turned away and threw up. It was the most business like case of violent vomiting the world had probably ever seen. Matter of fact puking? Yeah, pretty much.

He wiped his mouth as best he could and said, "I'm fine."

This wasn't Gotham. This wasn't even close to Gotham.

Edited 2015-07-28 19:35 (UTC)

Clark had had mixed reactions when it came to flying with people. Most were nervous at the beginning, some got over it fairly quick. Clark tried to give each of them the time they needed to recover because if flying on a plane was already unnerving to some people he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to fly on someone’s back.

He was still not expecting that. And the fact that he was so… business-like about it made Clark worry even more. He disappeared for a second only to come back with a glass of water and a frankly alarmed look on his face as he crouched next to the man.

“Here, take this. It was bottled so it should be okay.”

Yes. There was absolutely nothing disconcerting about a man who could fly disappearing and then reappearing a second later with a glass of water, like some kind of overly worried waiter - in the middle of a location that should have been home but absolutely was not.

And he knew, even without doing more looking that it wasn't. He could feel it, as well as the fact that Gotham had some unmistakable architecture.

He took the glass of water, rinsed his mouth out and spat rather than swallowed -sorry Clark, but he needed the taste out of his mouth, then just drank. He had the fleeting thought that it could be drugged but he couldn't make himself care.

"This isn't Gotham." Just in case Clark didn't know, though it was pretty damned obvious to anyone who knew it at all. "That's good for Gotham. It isn't good for us." It did mean he could throw concerns about a dual identity out the window and focus on just surviving but without Gotham he... had a hard time figuring out why the hell he was bothering.

After making sure Bruce was drinking the water and didn’t look like he was going to puke again, he took a look at the city. It did look slightly more colorful than what he remembered, even when most of the architecture was half destroyed or ruined. He wouldn’t have been able to judge if that was just because of the metaphorical end of the world or if it really wasn’t Gotham, but he got the feeling this man knew the city better than the back of his hand so for now he’d take his world for it.

Well, that, and…

“There’s no Metropolis either. At least not my Metropolis.”

Bruce knew Gotham inside and out. There was nowhere Clark could have set down that would have been this unfamiliar, nowhere he wouldn't have felt at home. Nowhere he couldn't have oriented toward home and the cave.

He gave Clark a bit of a look at mention of the city, realizing they were awfully close to neighbors, at least geographically, but then looked back around the city they were in. "The good news is that it increases the likelyhood that people in those cities, as we know them, are fine. That the worlds we left are fine."

He paused, briefly. "The bad news is, we can't access resources that would be useful now. Which is what I was hoping to find. In the grander scale, this is probably the better outcome."

“Yeah. I guess so.”

He said so absentmindedly, because he was already looking somewhere else. Towards another state. Towards Kansas… where he realized there was no Smallville, either. It was that that finally allowed him to realize and accept the world had really ended. If there was no Smallville there was no Ma, so he hadn’t lost the only living relative he had left.

But he would never share something so selfish out loud.

“What kind of resources were you looking for? There’s still some food, and water. We could look anyway.”

"Since we're here, we should see what we can find that will be useful and easily transportable. Food, more than water, and possibly see if we can locate the hospital or medical offices."

He was still trying to focus himself past the realization that Gotham just didn't exist. "What I was looking for was... " He snorted. "A very well stocked cave. Medical supplies, technology and equipment - defensive and offensive."

He was about to say ‘let me worry about transportation’, but last time he said something like that it didn’t end well. So he kept it to himself , thinking maybe he would be more useful providing far away supplies instead of being people’s personal taxi. But that, later.

“Like a panic room? Because this might not be Gotham but there’s still rich people houses. I’m sure we could find one.”

It was all right that Clark didn't mention it, since Bruce was considering him the transport. It was just a matter of limited space and number of hands and conceivably some weight limitations - or, well, he didn't know otherwise yet.

"Better than any panic room I've ever seen and more specialized, but finding rich people's basement's to raid is a good idea. Particularly ones locked up behind doors mere mortals wouldn't be able to manage."

He closed his eyes briefly and looked around. "Get up there and get a view so we know which way to head."

And getting up there he did. He didn’t particularly enjoy being ordered around like that by strangers- for some reason, especially regarding with his powers. But he also knew when to stop being petulant.

“Over there.” He pointed towards the first one he could see through the walls. The city had seen better days but the creatures (not zombies, he still refused to call them that) had their limits. “Specialized in what, though?”

Bruce looked the direction Clark had pointed and started walking. He stopped exactly long enough to arm himself with some kind of club or another, from some piece of wreckage, rubble, or debris, but he didn't stop long to do it.

"Specialized in doing more than merely surviving the collapse of the economy or a natural disaster." He didn't even know how to begin. "Paramilitary." That might not be a bad start, actually. "We should consider actual military bases as targets for recovery, too." In the future.

Clark looked down at the man he was holding, confused. It seemed like the more answers he got the more confused he ended up being.

“Are you military?”

He didn't have any real need to lie about who he was - not here, not in a place without Gotham, not to a man who was flying and calling himself Superman, not with all the implications of alternate realities.

Conversely, he had no reason to believe Batman would mean anything to Clark, and besides it wasn't an answer to the question he was being asked.

"No. I'm a rich man with expensive toys."

Edited 2015-08-24 14:47 (UTC)

Clark doesn't snort, but it's a close thing.

"Should have figured you were reach." He grinned down at the man. "I mean no offense, by the way. You just have that kind of air around you- used to give orders? Or at least used to having people listen to you."

He wasn't puking on Clark as they headed for that safe room, at least? That had to count for something, though the slower speed might have something to do with that. He wasn't grinning, though, just still looking... well, mildly annoyed. That was pretty well his resting face at this point, though.

"You'd have to try a lot harder to offend me than that." Which was true. Sort of. Actually it would probably take some obscure thing that no one normal would notice at all to have his hackles up and him snarling, but that wasn't the point. "I am used to people listening to what I have to say. Money, of course, makes me visible and gives me a broad audience. I also happen to know what I'm talking about."

Clark nodded, then let out a hum of agreement when he realized Bruce wasn't probably at the best angle to get a good look at Clark.

“Well, money is probably going to be useless here unless we start up some sort of system.” He landed on top of the building, letting Bruce down gently. “But you do know what you're doing. Give me a minute to break in?”

Bruce considered the question for the split second it took him to put a hand in his pocket and verify that he had grappling line and hook, if not the gun to fire them.

"No. I'll meet you there."

That was all he said before he tossed the line, wrapped it around a bit of iron railing around the roof access, and swung down off the roof. It cut into his hands without the gloves, but his sleeves did a fair job of protecting his arms from the line when he wrapped it around for a better grip and control. He wasn't as protected in general in half a business suit, but it didn't matter much since wing tips did just as good a job of breaking glass when he swung into one of the windows feet first as his boots would have done.

It was even an upper floor window, which meant the zombies shouldn't be granted more entrance. Probably. At least not quickly.

And it got him inside, without the need of any help from 'Superman'.

Edited 2015-08-27 21:30 (UTC)

Clark had been using his powers long enough to recognize Bruce's kind of attitude. In truth it didn't bother him: it was a good thing, that there were people that didn't depend on him as soon as they realized what he could do. His father had wanted him to help humanity along, to guide them to their greatest potential- not to force them on their back for a piggy ride.

So he calmly waited inside the vault with his arms crossed, tilting his head when Bruce managed to get inside on his own.

“Hey there. You done?” And yet, he was getting more and more curious about the kind of training this man had had.

Bruce was still winding the last bit of cord around the grappling... bat, when he walked into the room. He dropped it into his pocket, and lifted his eyebrows at Superman.

"I don't think so, but I'm inside which means we can start." He didn't spend too long looking at Clark, or his posture, but immediately started scanning the area for things that might be useful. Someone else's computer system was probably not going to be useful, but he bent over one of the desktops down there and started it booting up, just in case. To see if all the computers were locked down as thoroughly as the ones at base.

While it was doing that, he started opening drawers and cabinets and cupboards and closets. Just throwing everything open to start with.

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