Little Bat, the Justice League's New Member

"It was just a coincidence!"

Bruce lied through his teeth, his face never reddening and his breath never hitching.

After spending some time with Russell, Bruce had figured out his routine: smooth-talking, shameless, playing dumb, and full of crooked logic and heresies. Trying to reason with him was simply asking for trouble.

After all, you could never wake someone pretending to be asleep by peeing on him!

There was no point in hitting someone that shameless. His skin was too thick; hitting him would only make your own hand hurt.

That left only one solution: fight fire with fire and become even more shameless than him!

The results were fairly good. Russell suddenly realized Batman's persona was beginning to collapse. He fell silent, pondering what Bruce had gone through to become so mature.

A moment later, Russell reached a conclusion: it was because of children!

Men were boys who never grew up, but once they had children, they became adults overnight.

Take Bruce now. In Russell's eyes, the old man was far more reliable than he had been during their previous meetings.

"What, you still don't believe me?"

Russell had been silent with his head lowered for an unexpectedly long time. Not knowing why, Bruce continued his shameless tactics. He took a blank sheet of paper from the table, scribbled "Gotham Guardian" across it, and stuck it onto the new Battle Armor.

"Well? Satisfied now?"

"..." x2

They stared at each other for thirty seconds. In the end, Bruce's skin was not quite as thick as Russell's, and he conceded first. "I want you to help me upgrade my Battle Armor."

You wish!

Russell rolled his eyes. Bruce was making a "True Anti-Deathstroke Armor Mark III," yet he wanted the actual target of that armor to help. The audacity was