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2010-05-19
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When the Bat's Away...

Summary:

Batman is put into a device designed to turn him into a terrifying feline killing machine.  There appears to be a slight malfunction, however...

Work Text:

"--and who better to test the new device on than the Batman himself?" Red Claw finished triumphantly. Batman was strapped into something that looked like a spikeless Iron Maiden, trying to work his way free of the bonds. "Soon, you shall become one of our new army of feline warriors, transformed from loyal Americans into killing machines at the beck and call of Red Claw!"

Superman burst belatedly into the room just in time to catch the tail end of the terrorist's speech and see the machine's door slam shut on the still-struggling vigilante. "Too late!" crowed the villain as she threw the switch, sending energy crackling through the machine. She wrenched the door open as Superman looked on in horror. "Now, my pet, attack--eh?" She looked at the apparently-empty container, then her gaze trailed downward. She spat a heartfelt curse in Russian.

Sitting on the floor of the machine was a hugely fluffy, flat-faced white Persian.

"That wasn't supposed to work that way," she muttered, bending over it.

It bared its claws and went for her face.

She fell backwards as claws raked her cheek, cursing and going for her gun. Superman leaped forward to knock the gun away and restrain her.

In the instant that took, the white cat was gone out the window and into the Gotham alley. Superman scanned the area, but Batman's heartbeat was no longer recognizable, and there was no sign of the white cat.

Superman sighed and continued to search. What had Bruce gotten himself into this time?

: : :

Bruce found himself on a rooftop somewhere eventually as the disorientation of the transformation finally started to wear off. His heart was pounding and his limbs trembling with exertion--apparently this feline body was not in very good shape, he noted with annoyance. It was surprisingly difficult to breathe through the flat snout of the Persian; he heard himself wheezing slightly. There was mud all through the cat's white fur; he licked at it instinctively, then wrinkled his nose in disgust and shook his paws in an effort to dry them a little. Damn, Gotham was dirty.

Telepathic calls for help had gone unheeded; he couldn't even seem to locate Superman, who he knew must be searching for him. Gotham looked entirely different now, looming and towering, smells assaulting him and overwhelming his ability to deal with visual input. He had instinctively gone for high ground, but...now what?

The question was answered for him when he found himself scooped up in strong arms. The world wheeled around him and he heard a woman's voice. Red Claw's? He had his own claws out and ready when he realized it was more familiar than that.

"Poor thing, who would let a beauty like you out on a night like this? Are you lost?" Selina Kyle's sultry tones, Catwoman's gloved hands. "Shall I take you home and clean you up a bit, then find your home?"

Bruce pulled his claws back in. The situation wasn't ideal, but at least he knew Selina wasn't exactly an enemy. And he knew where her penthouse was, which was better than being totally lost in his own city.

Catwoman tucked the bedraggled Persian under her arm and headed home.

In Selina's apartment, Bruce found himself being cautiously washed and combed. The comb caught on a tangle and Bruce hissed involuntarily. "There there, silly cat, I'm trying to help," chastised Selina, her hands deft and gentle. Bruce hunkered down and glowered. He could probably make his true identity known to the woman, but he didn't particularly want to. He'd never live it down.

Selina finished combing out the cat's white tail and patted him briskly on the head. "There you go! Glorious, if a bit ridiculous." She put down the comb and stretched. "Well, I didn't score any actual valuables tonight, except you. But that's not a bad night's work." She yawned hugely. "I'll go looking for your owners tomorrow, I promise." She stood up and headed toward the bathroom, casually stripping out of her skintight gray uniform as she went.

As water started running in the other room, Bruce jumped up onto a dresser to look in the mirror. At the sight of his reflection, he almost yowled in alarm. His white fur stood out all around him like an aureole, a halo of spun-sugar floss. Above the flattened pink nose, one bright blue and one golden eye looked back at him. All he needed was a wee little bow on his head and he'd be ready to be entered in the nearest cat show.

Bruce felt a bit sick. This was the killer feline instinct within him? He wasn't even a black Persian.

He really hoped Red Claw's machine had been malfunctioning.

He also knew he'd better find a way to get out of this apartment. What if the effects were only reversible within a certain time frame? He tried not to think the inevitable next question, What if the effects weren't reversible? These things were always reversible. Always.

He scouted Selina's apartment until he found a window whose latch he could nudge open. The cat's paws were very clumsy and he got out of breath so easily that it was quite difficult, but eventually he managed to push the window open far enough that he could slip out onto the fire escape. He leaped for a railing--and realized at the last second he had overshot it. An undignified scramble of claws and spitting followed as he tried to regain his balance, but it was hopeless: over the edge of the rail he tumbled.

Gotham spun around him as his instincts screamed out for a decel line.

He had time to think that landing on his feet from thirty floors up would hardly be helpful.

"Gotcha!" said Superman's voice, and Bruce was swept up into strong arms for the second time that night. Heart pounding and adrenaline pumping from his close call, Bruce found himself battering at Superman's face with a flurry of white paws.

"Whuph, wha, huh?" Superman sputtered through the furry barrage. "Hey, aren't you Bruce? Are you just some ordinary cat?" The odd-eyed glare Bruce turned on him was apparently telling enough, because Superman grinned. "Your cat-fu is useless against me, Bruce."

Bruce emitted a growling yowl that he meant to be menacing but had a rather forlorn edge to it, and the smile slid off Kal's face. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't joke." He shifted Bruce to a more comfortable position. "Let's get somewhere we can--uh, communicate."

A few moments later they were in one of Bruce's safe-rooms in Gotham. "Wait here, hold on," said Superman, returning in a moment with a Ouija board. "Quicker than Morse code," he explained, setting it down. "So what should we do from here?"

Bruce flashed white paws on the board. Tell a soul who I am and I will make you pay.

"What?" Superman had the gall to look surprised. "Why?"

Bruce was so annoyed he actually hopped up and down on all four paws for a second before composing himself. Look at me! he spelled out.

Superman blinked. "Oh," he said. "Um, yes, I can see how this could possibly interfere with your, uh, public image." The corner of his mouth twitched. "Would it help if I told you I find you extremely fearsome in any form?"

Fortunately, the cat's larynx was perfectly capable of annoyed huffs that didn't need translation. Did Red Claw leave the machine?

"Yes, it's still there."

Take it and me to the Watchtower and we'll figure something out. In secret.

Superman tucked the Persian under his arm again and picked up the Ouija board. Bruce heard him chuckle slightly. "Ffft?" he said in what he hoped was a comprehensibly interrogatory tone.

"I'm sorry, Bruce, I was just thinking that you've done me a favor. I hadn't made my daily quota for rescuing kittens yet today."

Bruce made a sound composed of a great deal of consonants and very little good humor.

: : :

Superman tapped the two wires against each other until they sparked, then carefully soldered them together with a bit of heat vision. He'd been using the Watchtower's resources to their fullest extent, but so far he'd had no luck figuring out how to reverse the machine's effects, even with Bruce's spelled-out help. The white cat was sitting on the table, glaring at schemata and making small grumbly noises in the back of his throat.

Shayera had raised an eyebrow at Superman when he had arrived at the Watchtower bearing a large machine on his shoulder and a very furry white cat under his arm. "Superman, why are you bringing a cat up here?"

"I was asked to take care of him by a friend," Superman said truthfully. "He's very valuable."

"Mew," said the cat. Hawkgirl had shrugged and let them be.

It was hours later and they were no closer to finding a solution. Bruce was pawing out terse directions on the Ouija board when there was a sound of footsteps down the hall; Clark hurriedly flipped over the board as Diana came into the room.

"Shayera said there was a--oh!" Her pale blue eyes lit up in delight and she made a beeline for Bruce. "Isn't he magnificent?" she cooed, scratching him on the chin. Bruce's mismatched eyes widened in alarm as she put her hands under his front paws and lifted him, dangling, into the air. "There were always so many cats on Themiscyria, they'd laze about in the temples in the sun all day. I miss them so," she said, looking sad as she lowered the discomfited Bruce to the ground. Her lower lip quivered very slightly; her exile from home was still a fresh and recent pain for her. Clark reached out and folded her strong, square hand in his, and she smiled at him through a shimmer of tears. "I'm sorry, Kal, I know that you understand better than I do what it is to have a home you can never return to. It's just--sometimes--" She bit her lip, struggling with tears, and Clark couldn't help but pull her into a hug. She sniffled quietly for a little bit and Clark stroked her long black hair, making soothing nonsense noises.

There was a whisking sound, papers rustling. He looked up to see the white cat lashing its tail and glaring, and he extricated himself from Diana as gently as he could. She didn't seem to notice the alacrity with which he let her go, just smiling at him mistily. "Thank you, Kal. You're a good friend." She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, then patted Bruce on the head absent-mindedly and left the room.

Clark looked at Bruce, who began grooming his own shoulder with intense concentration. He cleared his throat. Bruce kept licking his fur. "I'm sorry, Bruce...I know you and she--uh--" He stopped; he wasn't actually sure what Diana and Bruce were, really. "She's, uh...she's great, but...I'm sure she doesn't like me. That way."

The cat sneezed irritably, shaking its head involuntarily, then started nibbling on its back claws furiously, little clicking noises filling the room.

"I'm not interested in her that way," Clark added for some reason.

Bruce gnawed on his back claw a moment longer. His mismatched eyes made it look like he was eyeing Clark surreptitiously, but that was probably an illusion. Then he stopped grooming and stalked back to the board.

Clark flipped it back over and the white cat pawed out, Back to work. He turned his back on Clark and walked imperiously to a side of the table, his white tail waving like a banner.

Clark got back to work.

: : :

They were in their fifteenth straight hour of work--Clark suspected that Bruce was catching catnaps under the guise of "contemplating the situation," but he couldn't catch him at it. Right now the white cat was sitting with his front paws curled regally underneath him, watching Clark narrowly.

There was a blur of motion and the Flash appeared. "Whatcha working on, Supes?" he asked cheerfully.

Painfully aware of the cat's eyes on him, Clark swallowed. "A project Batman asked for some help on. He asked me to see if I could figure out how this worked while he was...busy."

Flash lost interest in the machine quickly. "Hey, Puss," he said casually, picking up Bruce and plunking him in his red-clad lap. "Hawkgirl mentioned you'd brought a cat up here. He's a beauty--what's his name?"

"Uh..." Clark pretended to be very involved in the schemata; he was too tired to think of anything but the truth at the moment.

"Let me guess: Snowball? Fluffy? Angel-Pookie-Pie?" Flash tickled the cat under the chin and Bruce rolled his eyes. "I'd say Princess, but we've already got a Princess around here--"

"Lord," Clark said in desperation at the rising killing fury in the cat's eyes, grabbing the first regal title he could think of. "His name's Lord."

"Suits him," Flash said lightly. He watched Clark fiddle with the machine for a few more minutes, then said, "So...have you had that talk yet? With you-know-who?" His voice was conspiratorial.

Clark froze. "Uh, well, actually...now's really not the best time or, or place to discuss that, you know."

Flash snorted. "Oh, come on. You're worried now that he's bugging and monitoring all of our conversations? Trust me, he's not going to sit and watch my three-hour debate with John about the Steelers versus the Packers, and he's not going to be checking the tapes to see if you're discussing your love life with me. I mean, he's crazy, sure, but he's not insane enough to wade through that much pointless crap. I figure as long as we don't use his name, he'll never pick it out."

The cat on Flash's lap had stopped lashing its tail and gone very still, rather like a real cat might when it spotted prey. "Flash, I'm really awfully busy here, and I don't think I want to talk about it."

If Flash was offended by Clark's brusqueness, he didn't show it. "No problem, big guy." He stood up and deposited the cat back on the chair he had just vacated. "I'm just saying, you're going to have to tell him how you feel sometime. I mean, come on, if you're so desperately smitten with the guy that you spill your guts to me, you have got it bad." He patted Superman on the back reassuringly. "I'm sure he's not that scary underneath that cowl. If anyone can thaw out the big bad--" he broke off before he said the next word and grinned at Clark, wagging a finger. "Uh uh uh, I'm not going to say any key word that might alert him." He tapped his temple. "Always thinking, that's me." As he left the room he called over his shoulder, "Don't you worry, Superman, the Flash can totally keep a secret!"

A heavy silence filled the room in his wake, a silence that seemed to Superman to be approximately the consistency of some strange, transparent gelatin. The white cat was sitting with its back to Superman, apparently deep in contemplation of some blueprints. Superman wondered if he would be better off just fleeing the room entirely rather than having to deal with the look Bruce was surely about to turn around and give him. He heard Flash's words echoing in his mind and felt himself flushing as scarlet as the speedster's costume. He was dead, he was so very dead.

After a while, a low rumbling started to fill the room. It took Clark a while to figure out the source of the rattling sound; when he did, he just stared.

Eventually he said, "Bruce? Are you...purring?"

The smugly husky tremolo broke off abruptly. The white cat sneezed a few times, made a deeply annoyed sound in its throat, and went back to grooming its shoulder with single-minded intensity.

"So..." Clark said cautiously, "Back to work?"

The cat scratched at the board. Back to work. Bruce looked up at Superman briefly and whacked at the board again. And stop smiling, you.

: : :

Green Lantern entered the Justice League meeting room to find almost everyone there. "Where's Batman and Martian Manhunter?" he asked.

Superman spoke up, looking more tired and stressed than usual. "Batman told me he couldn't make it to this meeting, and J'onn said he was going to be a little late, finishing gathering up information about that meteor we need to deal with."

"All right, next question: why is there a cat on the meeting table?"

"Isn't he gorgeous?" Diana said admiringly, looking at the Persian stretched out across the dark wood. "His name's Lord. Kal is taking care of him right now."

"Great, but should he really be at a JLA meeting?"

"You try telling him not to come," Superman said wearily. Everyone laughed but Superman.

John considered the cat's haughty expression. "He walks by his wild lone and all places are alike to him, huh?" At Shayera's puzzled expression, he explained, "Old story by Rudyard Kipling. The Cat Who Walked By Himself."

The cat stood up and paced deliberately down the table to jump into Superman's lap, turning around delicately a few times, then settling down and closing its eyes.

John laughed. "So much for its wild lone, huh Kal?"

Superman looked vastly surprised. "Uh," he said, looking down at the pile of white fur. He was still looking nonplussed when J'onn J'onnz arrived to begin the briefing. The cat continued to sit in his lap, waving its tail lazily.

"...So Green Lantern's ring, combined with an attack by Superman along the following fracture points--" The Martian pointed at three spots on the diagram of the approaching asteroid, "--should shatter it to manageable size."

The white cat said something that sounded like "Mrak."

J'onn frowned. "Batman's point is a good one; I shall check to ascertain if that might be true."

"Uh, if what might be true?" said Flash.

"Pay attention, Flash," admonished the Martian. "As Batman just pointed out, this asteroid's path might indicate it is Kryptonian in origin and therefore--"

"As Batman pointed out? Batman isn't even here!" Flash complained.

"Certainly he is. He's right there," J'onn explained, pointing at Superman. Or rather, at the cat he was still holding.

"J'onn," said Diana, "That's not Batman. That's a cat." Has he lost his mind? her tone indicated.

The Martian Manhunter looked narrowly at the white Persian. "Mrr," said the cat.

"Ah, I see the problem," J'onn said in relief. "Batman is a cat right now. I was preoccupied and did not notice the physical difference. Physical shape means so little to a Martian, after all." He nodded. "Although I must admit I did wonder why he was sitting in Superman's lap."

The cat jumped out of the red-faced Kryptonian's lap and stalked to the middle of the table, making dire muttering sounds.

"That's Batman?" said Green Lantern incredulously.

"That's Batman?" said Diana, looking appalled.

"That's Batman?" said Shayera, stifling giggles.

"Oh man," said Flash, burying his head in his hands.

: : :

Once the dreadful secret was out and Superman could enlist the help of the whole Justice League in reversing the machine, the alterations went fairly quickly. Within hours Batman was stepping out of the machine, shaking out his cape and turning an icy glare on his teammates before stalking stiff-legged out of the room without a word.

"You're welcome," said Hawkgirl sarcastically, rolling her eyes at Superman as he hurried after the vigilante.

"What's the matter, cat got your tongue?" Clark heard Green Lantern call down the hall before being desperately shushed by Flash, who was apparently suffering from a guilty conscience.

Superman followed Batman to the teleporters. "What?" snarled Bruce as he set the machine for Gotham.

Clark grinned through his blush. "I was wondering what it would take to make you purr again."

Batman stared at him. "First, I'm going to go take down Red Claw." An infinitesimal curve touched the corner of his mouth. "After that...swear that you will keep your mouth shut about all this, and I might let you try and find out."

At the expression on Clark's face, the curve deepened just enough to be called something like a smile.