"Stranger, who exactly are you?"
An icy, synthesized metallic voice rang out across the docks on the rainy night, brimming with undisguised suspicion.
Batman slowly emerged from the shadows of the shipping containers, his black cape snapping in the sea breeze. His white-glowing goggles remained fixed on the drifter before him.
Clark stopped. He set the still-trembling Jack on a relatively clean wooden crate, then turned to face Gotham's "freak."
"I told you, just a farm boy passing through." Clark dusted off his hands, his tone as calm as if he were discussing tomorrow's weather.
"Farm boys don't crush RPG rockets in their hands." Batman's right hand was already resting on a specially designed stun grenade on his utility belt.
His goggles were flashing frantic warnings.
The vital-sign scan showed that the man's heartbeat was frighteningly steady. Even after the explosion, his skin temperature hadn't risen at all, and the muscle-fiber density readings were nothing but an indecipherable string of gibberish.
"It was a dud," Clark lied without batting an eye. "It happened to hit my hand, then split open. I've always been lucky."
"Do you take me for a three-year-old?" Batman advanced a step, radiating menace.
"Gotham doesn't need an uncontrollable, high-risk variable like you. Whether you're an alien or a military experiment, leave this city immediately. Otherwise, I'll find your weakness and lock you up where you belong."
Clark frowned slightly.
His deep blue eyes saw straight through Batman's cowl to the sweat-covered face beneath, its muscles twitching slightly from sheer exhaustion.
He saw the knife wound on Bruce's back, deep enough to expose bone, and the blood on its rough stitches.
"You're hurt, badly." There was no mockery in Clark's voice, only a trace of the Kansas farm boy's simple goodwill.
"Your bones are slightly misaligned, and