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Lionel Luthor had faced many enemies over the years that had wanted to hurt or kill him, or do the same to those he cared about. From super strengthened teenagers to wronged employees and self-righteous aliens; being confronted by a deranged man who dressed up like a bat was the least intimidating of his encounters.
At least that is how it had started out.
He had been in his office ruminating over the problem that was Patricia Swann’s murder. He had just been confronted by Lois Lane and her barnacle partner, Jimmy Olsen, earlier in the day. He was left unsettled at how close he was in losing everything again and this time he really wasn’t the guilty party.
Thoughts of prison and his experience there sent a shiver up his spine and had him stand up from his desk to go get himself a drink to help settle his nerves. He had been pouring such a drink when the lights in his office had suddenly gone out.
Annoyed and concerned, he sat the bottle of cognac down and returned to his desk. He reached for his cellphone and turned on the camera flash for a light while he tried to dial for security on his desk phone. Something was caught in the light briefly that startled him into dropping the new iPhone and as he scrambled to pick it up again and shine it where he had seen something, there was nothing except furniture and artwork.
“Who’s there?” he demanded cautiously as he scanned his office with the light. When there was no response, he set the phone back down and continued to dial for security. He knocked back what little of the cognac he had poured as he waited for an answer.
He should have gone for his pistol under the desk instead.
“Lionel Luthor,” a gruff voice spoke from behind him, that if he had been his younger self, probably would have caused him to jump over his desk in fright. Instead, he carefully turned around while his hand fumbled for the panic button under the lip of the desk. “That won’t help you,” the black spectre warned just before he was grabbed by the collar of his shirt and slammed into his desk.
“W… who are you? What do you want?” Lionel demanded to know, one hand latching onto the wrist of the dark assailant. He could barely see the silhouette of the man against the backdrop of his office window and The Daily Planet building beyond it.
“I am Batman,” he answered and dark eyes narrowed dangerously. He could see now why he would be called that if the points he saw in the dark were the ears and the rustling of leather that he heard were the wings. “And you are a murderer.”
“If you’re here to get revenge on something I may or may not have done,” Lionel tried to loosen the man’s grip on him but it was like trying to pry Clark Kent off of him instead. “Get in line.”
He was lifted off his desk and slammed against the window of his office hard. He heard a series of cracks as the glass began to spiderweb against his back. “You murdered Thomas and Martha Wayne,” the costumed freak accused and Lionel’s eyes widened.
“Why do you care?” Apparently those were the wrong words to say as the Batman slammed him against the glass again and the window shattered this time. Wind rushed past them, a leather cape blanketing them both from either side. “You’re insane!” Lionel held onto the man’s arms as his toes scrambled for purchase on the edges of his office floor.
“They were good people!” Batman growled hatefully. Lionel could see a little more detail about the man in the golden light of the Daily Planet globe and saw that he was young, perhaps about Lex’s age even. The costume he wore wasn’t advanced, more like something his mother had made in her spare time. “They were trying to help Gotham City and were murdered in a back alley with their son as witness!”
With the way it was said and the amount of emotion that was behind the words, Lionel knew this was personal and had nothing to do with some random Gotham vigilante wanting to avenge a cold case. He stared at the man carefully, noting the color of his eyes behind the black kohl and the shape of his jawline. “Bruce?”
That seemed to have thrown the man off as his grip slackened slightly and Lionel felt himself starting to slip through. He scrambled to hold onto the young man, “Bruce… Listen to me! Why would I want to kill the Waynes? What would have I gained from it?”
“That is what you’re going to tell me,” Bruce Wayne demanded, his grip tightening again now that the shock of being found out wore off. He leaned Lionel further out the broken window in a show of intimidation.
“I didn’t murder them!” Lionel protested, his voice unusually calm for someone who was hanging out of his office window. “And even if there was something I wanted from Thomas, I wouldn’t have killed him for it!”
“Liar! The evidence I have gathered indicates you are the one who hired Joe Chill!”
“Then I have the right to trial if that is true!”
“No!” the costumed billionaire snarled. “Men like you always find a way to avoid prison. You managed it once already with the murders of your own parents!”
“I did not kill my parents!” Lionel snarled defiantly.
“I’m not here for them,” Batman pulled the billionaire closer to him so they were face to face. “I’m here for mine.” He then shoved the man out the window.
Lionel Luthor was not a man easily intimidated, but he realized he should have felt a little fear in face of what had happened. He should have tried harder to reason with the young man and perhaps he wouldn’t be falling out of his own office building. But at least he could refuse to grant Bruce a terrified scream no matter how terrified he was in these last seconds of his life.
Then just as suddenly as he was flung, he came to an abrupt and very pain halt. An agony of the likes he hadn’t felt since he had sprained his ankle many years ago going down the stairs of his manor, shot up his leg that did tear a scream from his lungs.
Something had wrapped around his ankle tightly, snapped at his leg and whiplashed him into another window of his office building as he slammed into it. His entire leg from his ankle to his hip was on fire. Even his back was smarting more from his leg being pulled out of its socket than from hitting the building.
Blood rushed to his head as a dizziness threatened to empty his stomach.
He numbly felt his body being pulled upward and when he stopped, Lionel dared to glance above him at the gothic figure hovering above from his broken office window. The man sat perched on the edge, his leather cape bellowing in the wind as he glared down at his prisoner.
“Why did you have them killed?” Bruce demanded to know.
It took Lionel a moment to gather enough of his senses and suppress the nausea long enough to answer, “I didn’t! It wasn’t me!”
“You were the last person my father spoke to before he took us to the movies!”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I did it, Bruce!” Lionel tried to reach up for the cable that was holding him by the ankle. He can’t feel his foot anymore and the effort only sent sharp pain through his hip and back. “I didn’t kill your parents! I had no reason to!”
“What did you want him for then?”
Lionel pursed his lips in silence. He could not tell him about Veritas or Clark. The boy wasn’t a member and his father had declined the invitation. But he could be vague in the details, “There was a group of families that came together to… to discuss things. I can’t give you details, but I had invited him to join us but he had declined.”
“So you had him killed?!?” raged the costumed boy.
He shook his head in reply, “No! Veritas isn’t that kind of group!”
“Veritas?”
Lionel cursed under his breath. He had said too much, “Please, Bruce! Let me up and I will explain what I can, but I swear I am not responsible for the deaths of your parents!”
He was met with silence while he swung back and forth in the breeze. There was a sudden flash of a camera from across the street and his sharp gaze turned toward the editor’s office in the Daily Planet. He could barely make out Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, the latter taking pictures of what was happening.
Great. He was being assaulted by the deranged child of Thomas Wayne and now it was going to be front page news tomorrow morning.
He suddenly felt himself being pulled up again, the motion tearing small yelps of pain from him before a gloved hand reached down and grabbed him by the shirt. Bruce hauled him back inside and shoved his battered body against the desk again.
“Talk or I throw you out again, this time without a lifeline,” Bruce threatened.
Lionel winced in pain, his leg completely unfeeling and useless now. “I came to Thomas in the hopes of recruiting him to Veritas.”
“What is Veritas?”
So he explained it as best he could without revealing that Clark was here or who he was. All the while he did so, Bruce seemed to find his answers disbelieving until he said something else that interested him, “Wait. Go back. Your conversation with him, you said he had mentioned someone else tried to recruit him?”
Lionel paused and thought about it, “Yes. I asked him who and he only remembered a lapel pin of an owl. I told him there was no one in Veritas who wore such a lapel.”
“Beware the Court of Owls, that watches all the time, ruling Gotham from a shadowy perch, behind granite and lime,” murmured the masked vigilante and Lionel frowned.
“I’ve heard of them,” he tells him. “They actually tried to recruit me once while visiting Gotham. It was years ago when LuthorCorp was still growing and about to become a Fortune 500.”
“You declined?”
“I had no interest in Gotham,” Lionel explained. “It seemed to satisfy them. Because later I learned of stories where people who refused them either end up dead or disappear.”
“They’re just a fable to scare children.”
“They’re real Bruce and if they tried to recruit your father, then they’re the ones who killed him.”
“You don’t understand,” the young man shook his head. “I investigated them a long time ago and found nothing except fairytales.”
“Or that’s what they allowed you to find. Take it from someone who is a part of that world, Bruce, we don’t let you learn anything without our knowing of it or permission.”
Lionel slumped to the floor when Bruce finally released him. He could hear outside of his office as the emergency door to the stairwell was pushed open and he knew security was on its way.
Lois and Jimmy must have called the building’s security when they saw him hanging out of the window earlier. He stole a glance in the direction of the frosted doors—the shadows of his men and what looked to be Lex were just behind them—and upon looking back, Bruce Wayne was gone. He stared out the broken window in search of the Batman but he found no one.
By the time Lex and security got inside, Lionel had finally passed out from the pain and the trauma of the ordeal. As the paramedics took him away, Lex helped himself to his father’s locket.