Adult-FanFiction.org : Comics

The Birthday Present	By : Kip Category: DC Verse Comics > Batman Views: 8478 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Batman series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 23
- 24
- 25
With Bruce down in the Batcave, doggedly updating files, Kal was lounging around on the patio, minding the two 'kids'. Right at that moment, Wally was snoring for gold, and Sandy was running him a close second. The Kryptonian smiled tolerantly and enjoyed a rare moment of inactivity.
Wonder if Alfred would mind if I had another cup of coffee? He was dry. Not desperately dry; but ' kind-of-fancy-something' dry. Kal licked his lips and thought it over. If he went at superspeed he could be down in the kitchen and back before anyone even knew that he had moved.
Or before anyone else can move either…
Pouring out a cup of coffee, Kal blurred back upstairs and settled back in the chair. Satisfied that all was as he had left it, he relaxed back into the upholstery and soaked up a few more rays.
"Better not let you get burned, Wally…" He muttered, getting back to his feet and carefully shifting Wally and the sun bed into the shade. Despite a light complexion, Sandy seemed unaffected by the sun; unlike Wally. Five minutes too long and the redhead started to crisp, while Sandy could apparently soak up sunshine for practically the whole day and only turn a rather pleasant golden brown.
Despite his extreme fondness for Sandy, Wally seemed to feel that this genetic quirk was a personal slight; that and the blond's total lack of tan-lines.
Bruce doesn’t have any either though, and I didn’t hear Wally saying anything about that to HIM… Kal smiled at the conversation they had recently had concerning Bruce's admission to nurturing an all-over tan. It occurred to him that Wally was probably right, the way the man generally acted it wasn’t surprising that many people had the Batman pegged as a vampire, finding him tanned was quite the shocker.
Thinking of darkness... What IS Bruce doing down there? He said he wouldn’t stay down in the Batcave for more than an hour, and that was nearly three hours ago…

Automatically, Kal switched on his 'extra-vision' as Wally liked to call it, and peered down through the intervening earth and stone. From where he was sitting now, the Kryptonian could get an uninterrupted view of the full length of the underground caverns assuming he cared to put himself to the bother. Scanning Bruce’s lair, Kal spotted movement.
Ah! There he is! Except when he looked closer, it wasn’t… The figure standing by the staircase wasn’t bulky enough to be Bruce. It looked more like…
Gosh! Surprised, Kal refocused quickly on the seat next to him. Sandy was sleeping peacefully; his body relaxed in the way that spoke of deep dreamless sleep.
But I was sure… Glancing back down into the ground, Kal quickly relocated the mysterious figure.
What's he doing? And who is he? It was definitely a male, the shape and posture left that in no doubt; but when Kal looked closer, the man's features were no more than an indistinct blur.
Why can't I see his face? I can see the floor and the walls around him clearly enough. The longer he looked, the uneasier Kal became. People with indistinct features so often turned out to have sinister motives! However, regardless of this person's agenda, there was definitely an intruder in the cave, the alarms weren’t sounding and, even worse, Bruce hadn't noticed!
"Monitor Station." Kal activated the comm. link that he was never without these days. "Patch me through to the Batcave! Scrambled."
"Superman?" Green Lantern was on monitor duty. "Is something wrong?"
"I'm not sure." Kal told him. "But I'm going to find out."
"Keep us updated." John requested, clearing the channel and making the necessary connection.
"Batman…" Kal was careful not to startle his comrade. If whatever it was down there was an enemy, Kal certainly did not want it learning more about them than it might have already.
But it's already gotten into the Batcave! What does it want with Bruce?
"Kal?" Bruce sounded bemused. "What's up?"
"Look round. In the shadows, beside the stairs?"
Doing as he was told without quibble, Bruce span slowly round; the soft hiss of his breathing filtering clearly through the comm. "Sandy?" He asked.
"Bruce … that isn't Sandy. He's right here!" Kal wasn’t about to let his friend make that mistake.
"Kal, it's okay…" Bruce put the headset aside.
Down below the figure took one step forward.
Bruce doesn’t understand! Damn! Leaping to his feet, Kal shook Wally awake. "Wally! Trouble!"
"Troub…?" Wally blinked, reflexes bringing him awake, “Where?"
"Down below! Stay with Sandy!" Kal ordered, knowing that by the time Kal arrived down in the cave Wally would have achieved full alertness.

"Sandy?" Bruce climbed to his feet and stretched the kinks out of his muscles. He hadn't realised that he had been sitting there for so long! "Got bored waiting topside for me, did you?" He supposed.
The lack of response from the other man began to register.
"Sorry," It occurred to Bruce that an apology was probably in order, "You've got every right to be mad with me, I just got carried away with things… Did you want me for anything particular?"
When that didn’t get a reply, he began to wonder just what sort of mood Sandy was in? Normally the blond was incredibly placid; but his recent injuries had made him a little temperamental at times.
Nothing compared to Wally, though. Kal has his work cut out there with that one… The redhead could change moods at the drop of a hat. With Sandy it was more a case of the blond being frustrated at not being able to articulate his needs as easily as before.
Or in some cases not at all… although Wally seems to be able to read him remarkably well.
"Babe, what did you come down here for?" Bruce tried the direct approach. It was only as he closed the distance between them that he noticed the very slight blurring of the features...
So, not you; but the other one... It was getting very hard to tell the difference these days, which was something of a worry. Did it have any sinister connotations?
"Bruce! That's not Sandy!" Kal was suddenly there, in a rush of air and colour.
"Kal, you can see him?" So far, Bruce hadn’t been able to check whether anyone else, apart from him, could see the moonshadow version.

"I can see something…" Kal blinked, seen from up close the features were clearer but still blurred, it was then that he noticed that something else was missing. "Bruce, where's his shadow?"
"Good question…"
Bruce didn’t seem as bothered as Kal had expected.
Almost as if he's seen this before?
"What do you make of it, Kal?" Came the calm question.

For a few seconds the Kryptonian stood and stared at the strange intruder, unsure of what action to take. Abruptly the decision was out of his hands. Between one blink and another, the curious figure was simply gone!
"He just transports away!" Bruce sighed.
"No." Kal's senses told a different story. "Whoever that was isn't here any more, only he didn’t transport: there was no energy build-up…" He stalked over and examined the spot where the other had stood with meticulous patience. "He was here, and then he wasn’t."
"I suppose that makes perfect sense to you, Kal; however I'd prefer it if you could try and be just a little more precise."
"Okay." Kal thought it over. "There wasn’t a build-up of energy, if anything there was a gradual decrease."
"You're saying that whatever he is, became less-substantial and then faded away?"
"Yes."
Running a couple of instruments over the location, Bruce made a face. "Well, everything seems to agree with you…"
"Oh… thanks…" Kal infused as much raw sarcasm into the reply as he could manage.
"And the alarms didn’t trigger," Bruce ran his fingers over the computer console in a series of practised strokes. "Just like the previous times."
Previous times? Kal didn’t ask. Bruce would either tell him in his own good time, or he wouldn’t. Probably the latter…
"Which means that either the system recognised him…" Kal suggested.
"Or he was never really here at all…" Bruce finished for him. "At least as far as the machines can tell."

"Hi guys! Everything okay now?" Wally squinted into the sun. "Panic over?"
"Fine." Back out of costume Kal was still puzzling over what he had seen, what THEY had seen, along with why Bruce's finely tuned machines hadn't detected anything, and why Bruce hadn't seemed more bothered.
"Kal?" Sandy was sipping tea.
"Oh, everything's fine, Sandy…" Kal smiled. "When did you wake up?"
Sandy shrugged, swallowing the last mouthful of tea.
"A few minutes after you left," Wally supplied helpfully. "What was wrong?"
"Not wrong exactly; but I saw someone in the cave." Kal told him. "Someone that looked a lot like Sandy, Bruce saw him too."
"Saw me." Sandy nodded, holding out the cup for a refill. "Thanks Alfred."
"You are welcome, as always." Alfred managed a small smile, despite being on duty. Now that he was more awake most of the time, the blond quickly became unsettled when people failed to respond positively to him.
"Of course it couldn’t have been Sandy, because Sandy was right here all the time." Kal continued, not wanting to argue with the invalid; but feeling that Wally needed to know what they’d observed down in the cave.
"Was there." Sandy said. "Bruce too long. Keys, 'puter, pictures. Stairs. Waited. Bruce. Talked. Not talked." As he still tended to when trying to verbalise complex concepts, the blond lapsed back into a stream-of-consciousness style of speaking. "Dark. Blue. Blue fast." He added firmly. "Talked Bruce. Said not Sandy. Wally."
"Well, I think I followed at least half of that." Wally smiled indulgently. "Let me see if I've got this right? You thought that Bruce was spending too much time down there with his computer?"
"Bruce, com-puter." Sandy agreed. "Too long."
Bruce gave an apologetic look; but didn’t interrupt.
"And so you went down there," Wally continued.
"He was right here," Kal started to say; but the look from Wally cut him short.
"Sorry about that, Sandy," The redhead winked, "Some people," He cast a sideways glance at Kal, "Don’t know when to butt out. Now, you say that you went down the stairs, and waited for Bruce?"
"Bruce." Sandy nodded. "Talked not talked. Back Bruce."
"Do you mean that you talked TO Bruce but he didn’t talk back?" Wally wondered.
"Yes! Talked TO Bruce! Bruce not talk!" Sandy was visibly excited now.
"I would never ignore you!" Bruce was upset that it should even be suggested.
"I think that what Bruce means is that he didn’t hear you talking to him." Wally was at his most diplomatic. "Of course he would have answered you, if he had heard. So let’s just assume that he couldn’t hear you talking to him, shall we?"

Kal couldn’t quite get over how patient Wally was with their terribly damaged friend. He stifled a surge of pride at the slender speedster.
"Not hear?" Sandy thought that over. "Oh. Not hear me. Okay." He still didn’t seem to be quite sure of how to deal with that notion, as a slight frown appeared on his handsome features.
"And where were you when you talked to Bruce?" Wally asked, tactfully diverting the blond away from any potential upset.
Both Kal and Bruce breathed silent sighs of relief.
"Stairs. In dark." Sandy recounted.
"At the top of the stairs? On the stairs? At the bottom of the stairs?" Wally ran through all the possibilities he could think of.
"In dark." Sandy insisted.
Kal realised that since Wally hadn't been down in that part of the cave for a while, he might have forgotten that there was one more option. "Were you in the shadows BY the stairs, Sandy?" He asked.
Delighted, Sandy nodded. "By the stairs. In the shadows." He smiled delightedly at Kal. "Clever Kal."
"Oh dear," Bruce smirked. "You've been usurped as Sandy's exclusive interpreter, Wally. You've lost your status as top dog."
"Wally clever." Sandy readily exchanged the empty cup for a fresh baked cookie. "Very clever. Very fast." He said solemnly. That seemed to trigger another thought. "Blue fast." He looked directly at Kal as he spoke.
"Blue fast?" Kal was stuck. Wally was as fast as something blue? Did ‘the speed of blue’ exist? Wally’s signature colour was red, wasn’t it? Kal certainly never equated his speedy friend with any other colour…

"Is Wally as fast as Kal though?" Bruce had solved the puzzle at once; but then he had had the advantage of watching Sandy's face during the conversation whereas Kal seemed to have been mostly staring distractedly at Wally. Presumably Kal's mind had drifted onto other things by that point… Evidently the Kryptonian wasn’t any better at multitasking than a standard human male, which made Bruce feel better - and superior…
"Don’t know." Sandy shrugged. "Who cares?"
"Very philosophical, Master Sandy." Alfred bestowed a broad paternal smile on the younger man. "And if I'm not mistaken, that was the first proper question I have heard you ask of late…"
"Yes, it was!" Bruce sat up. "Another breakthrough?" He mused over that. "In which case, how?" They were all aware that, so far, every improvement in the blond's condition had arisen directly from a manifestation of Sandy's strange ability…
"I do believe that you gentlemen are failing to see the proverbial wood for the trees…" Alfred told them. "Master Sandy has told you that he was there, down in the cave, in the shadows, watching Master Bruce working at the computer, and that Master Kal arrived at great speed and talked to Master Bruce. Master Sandy is understandably confused as to why you should both have said that he was not there when he knows very well that he was. Although he does agree that immediately after these events, he was back here with Master Wallace."
"Alfred?"
"The point I am making, Sir, is that if Master Sandy was not down in the cave, then how could he be aware of what transpired there? To my knowledge, neither of you gentlemen has yet recounted the order of events…"
"Great Krypton!" Kal sat back in the chair and nodded. "So he was there!"
"No." Bruce took the facts to their logical conclusion. "Sandy was here – in body. You both saw him. Physically he didn’t leave that chair."
"Then how," Kal started to ask.
"Sandy's right too,” Bruce stated grimly, “He was there. But only in… essence," He continued. "I believe now that this essence is what is unleashed whenever Sandy's abilities are activated, usually that only happens when he gets touched; but maybe there is also another trigger? Whatever that additional trigger may be, the results are less explosive and more controlled. Ever since Sandy and I first met, I’ve been seeing little hints of what he can do, and his sister told me that when Sandy had his gift under tight control he could obtain an impression of what was happening via the energy manifestations. I didn’t give it a lot of thought at the time." He sighed. "Since then I’ve had other things on my mind."
"And you think that's what we saw just now?" The Kryptonian blinked. "Some sort of sleepwalking?"
"I can't say, not without being able to study the thing further."
Always uniquely sensitive about the idea of anyone being studied like a laboratory animal, Kal started to frown.
"I don’t intend to stick pins in him, Kal…" Bruce scolded, noticing the reaction of his large friend. "Honestly, you and labs! Did anyone ever tell you that you're paranoid about,"
"I don’t think you have to anything to worry about that, Master Kal." Alfred's voice was curiously strained. "Even if Master Bruce were prepared to do anything Master Sandy found unpleasant, it appears that Master Sandy is likely to be quite capable of making any objections felt."
"Yeah, guys," Wally pointed. "Look…"

Sandy was sitting on the chair, quite relaxed, and apparently fascinated by the half-empty cup that was hovering just a few inches below his fingers.
"I'd better take that," Kal reached out and liberated the delicate porcelain.
"Not drop it." Sandy protested mildly.
"I know you wouldn’t." Kal smiled at him. "But we don’t want you to scald yourself."
"Scald?"
"I was worried about you." Kal explained. "Sandy, whatever you were doing to lift the cup like that, the tea in it has gotten really hot."
"Oh." The blue eyes fastened onto Kal. "Hot." He glanced at the cup held snugly in Kal's large hands, and the way in which the liquid was visibly simmering.
"Very hot," Kal smiled.
"Scald means hot?"
"It's what happens when someone gets hot liquid on their skin," Wally put in. "And it hurts."
"Kal?” Sandy looked worried, “didn’t scald you?"
"No." That earned him a self-deprecating smile from the Kryptonian. "But I'm special like that, Sandy. I don’t get burned or scalded, not like most people."
Sandy frowned. "In-von-rabble, Kal?" The blond asked innocently.
There was a collective intake of breath.
"Dude! Where did you hear that?" Wally was awestruck.
"Last week." Sandy answered spontaneously. "Bruce said, 'Get your invulnerable arse over here, Kal'!"

The impersonation was so utterly perfect that for a moment no one made a sound. While Sandy glanced at them in bewilderment, Wally started to snigger. Kal snuffled behind one hand. Alfred smiled. Even Bruce couldn’t help a small snort of amusement.
"It's just like having your own little parrot, isn't it?" Wally asked.
"You are going to have to be a lot more careful about what you say around here in future." Kal was moved to suggest, somewhat more diplomatically.
"Sandy's just entered the talking and toddling stage!" Wally chuckled.
“The terrible two’s!” Kal added.
Together the two heroes broke into a full-blown fit of the giggles.

Tactfully, Alfred cleared away the tea things and withdrew to the sanity of his kitchen sanctum.
Smiling to himself, Bruce held out his arms for Sandy, and gave his perplexed lover a celebratory hug while the other two were distracted.
"You did very well." He told him. "Look at those idiots… And they think that you're childlike?"
The sight of Kal rolling about on the floor and giggling, with an equally helpless Wally leaning all over him and crying tears of laughter, was more than Bruce could resist. Sliding his cell-phone discreetly out of his pocket, he ran off a quick video clip, and sent it to Diana, tagging it 'strictly confidential' and 'for your eyes only', with the caption "See what I have to put up with?" tacked at the end.
Of course, Diana would feel the need to share it with as many people as possible; but none of that could be blamed on Bruce…
Ah, you couldn’t beat a win-win situation…
- 23
- 24
- 25
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Birthday Present