Chapter Text
Bruce was being dragged away from his training. Well, as much as researching fighting techniques and hiring personal trainers could count as training, but he’s still only seventeen years old.
Alfred decided it would be a good idea to tear him away from the city for a summer. Gotham will not fall apart if you leave, Master Bruce.
At the very least, Bruce convinced him to redirect to one town in particular. Smallville, Kansas. Home to a hefty amount of cows and an alleged very-powerful metahuman teenager. If Bruce is being forced away from home for a grueling ten weeks, he might as well do some investigating while he’s at it.
—
Kansas is plain. Utterly, terribly, completely plain. Not a single building over five stories tall, nothing near the shining skyscrapers Bruce is used to seeing in the city.
It’s also sunny. Hardly a cloud in the sky– simply sunshine streaming down as far as the eye can see. Bruce is getting a headache.
They drive through the main street of the small town; not busy, per se, but not nearly as quiet as the ghost town Bruce expected. There’s something of a market going on, typical American families chattering amongst themselves. Bruce’s eyes are searching the crowd, picking apart everything abnormal he sees (though, there really isn’t much to note).
By the time they get to the small house a mile out of town they’re staying in, Bruce is yearning for closed curtains and a dark room. He didn’t think it was possible that the entire color palette of his environment could change, and yet, the goldens and blues and reds shone around him, prying behind his eyeballs.
“May I take your bags inside, Master Bruce?” Alfred asks, watching Bruce as he balances a couple suitcases around him with what should be an inhuman elegance. “I would like to start on dinner.”
“Yes, Alfred, thank you,” Bruce nods, shouldering his backpack and already waiting for the Kansas weather to change as it so often does, hopefully providing more shadows on the golden day.
His room was small– vastly smaller than his room at the Tower, and there were no curtains on the window. Just his luck.
He set his bag down, pulling out his computer, as well as his file on the happenings of Smallville. Lots of goat contests, farmer’s markets, some sports awards from the high school, and various other small-town-like notable events.
One of his articles dates back to seventeen years prior, a back page, one paragraph rant about a UFO spotting out by the Kent’s farm. To the average reader, probably nothing more than conspiratorial talk, but Bruce finds that the most interesting people tend to have the most random backstories.
What had made him so closely examine anything regarding the Kents had been because of their one and only son– Clark. Well over six feet, genetically blessed, adopted by the Kents when he was a baby, and involved in exactly zero school sports.
There was a chance that sports just weren’t his thing, but Bruce gathers that Clark has the type of build to take him to the professional leagues, if he so wishes.
Clark is also known for his community service, his rowdy dog, and an academic award here and there. He doesn’t come up much in the newspapers, but when he does, it’s for something he did even more noble than the last. The one good-quality photo starring Clark that Bruce found was a picture taken of him after he saved a batch of newborn kittens birthed in a tree.
Yes, kittens. From a tree. He worked with the nearest pet shelter to make sure they all had safe and loving homes. Bruce was bamboozled.
It wasn’t a lot to work on, but if he was here, he might as well try and figure out the mystery of Clark Kent and the knot in his gut telling him there was something more at play.
For the next ten weeks, Clark Kent would be the star of the show.