Watching List

Several of you have asked me for suggestions about the various superhero movies and TV shows that involve the characters in TJ.  These are the movies and TV episodes (off the top of my head) that have most directly inspired the story.  They're all available on Netflix, so watch away.

The Last Son of Krypton, Pt. 1-3

The first three episodes of Superman: The Animated Series. (about 66 minutes altogether)  By far, my favorite version of Superman's origin story.  It's really, really good, and lots of fun.  Also has the definitive version of Lois Lane.
You can find it as either a single-disk separate DVD "movie," or on the first disk of Superman: The Animated Series, Vol. 1 and/or The Complete Series Box Set.


The Batman/Superman Movie: World's Finest

It's also known as "World's Finest, Pt. 1-3."  Once again a compilation of episodes from Superman: The Animated Series (Vol. 2, disk 2). It absolutely perfectly NAILS the relationship between Clark and Bruce, as well as the Lois/Bruce romance.  This also has the specific version of Bruce that I imagine in my head when I write (but as an emotionally-disturbed teenager).


Wonder Woman

This one's a solo story, which is the only reason it's not higher on the list.  Should actually be tied for 2nd place, really.  It's pretty amazing.  Not for the younger kids, though.  Heavily violent, with somewhat suggestive dialogue at times.  So yeah, don't show this to your younger siblings.  But WATCH IT.  It's insanely good.


Batman Begins

It's Batman Begins.  You should watch it just for the heck of it.
Though, FYI, Christian Bale is NOT my mental Bruce Wayne.  So, in your head, mentally replace him with a live-action version of the animated guy from World's Finest.


Smallville, Season 1

Don't bother with the rest of Smallville.  It doesn't really get better.  But this first season's got a lot that ended up in TJ, in one form or another, such as the characters of Chloe and Lionel (both of whom were original creations for Smallville), a similar hostage-situation story, and general teenage character dynamics (albeit totally different).


Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

It goes very deep into the psychology of Bruce Wayne.  A must-see for anyone looking to understand the strange duality of Bruce Wayne and Batman.

Aftermath

"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!?"

It was the morning after the bank robbery, and the group had gathered together at the penthouse.  Lois and Clark had just come back from their trip with Chloe in tow.  Lois had heard about Bruce's "heroics," and was none too pleased.  At the present moment, she was attempting to verbally fry his brain.

Chloe and Bart sat quietly off to the side of the room, trying to stay out of the way.  Chloe was nervous. She'd come back to Metropolis with Clark and Lois on the way back to Smallville, but had no idea that she'd end up sitting in a fortieth-story penthouse with three super-powered teenagers, watching Lois yell at her future-billionaire boyfriend.
She quietly leaned over to Bart. "So... are they always like this?"
"I dunno," Bart replied.  "They've been kinda tense lately."

Lois's angry rant continued. "Why would you do that?!? You DON'T have powers, Bruce! You could have gotten yourself killed!  You nearly even got Bart killed!"
Diana stepped in to defend him.  "Without Bruce's actions, a lot more people could have died.  He did stop the criminal, and he saved my life."
Lois wasn't about to take advice from Diana on how to treat Bruce.  She scowled at Diana, then stormed off towards the elevator door.  "C'mon Chloe, we're leaving."

Chloe opened her mouth to speak, but didn't know quite what to say.  She looked back and forth between Lois and Clark.  Lois got the unspoken message: she wanted to stay with Clark.  "Fine, stay," Lois said as she left.

The remaining five teens looked back and forth between one another in silence for a moment.  Clark broke the silence by simply getting down to business.  "So, the guy in the bank was a decoy?"
"Yes," Bruce responded. "The police told us this morning that he was a former accomplice of Lawton's, but that's all they know."
Clark narrowed his eyes. "They?  Why, do you know something more?"
"There was a sniper on the roof of the WGBS building.  He had plenty of chances to fire at the police, me, or anyone else there, but he waited until Diana arrived, and fired on her."
Clark and Bruce both looked at Diana briefly, Clark just now putting the mental pieces together.
"So you think the decoy was there to draw her out for the sniper?"
"Makes sense to me.  Lawton had never been caught before Diana took him down, and he's known for his overblown ego.  Now he wants revenge."
Diana leaned in. "Isn't he in still in prison?"
"It doesn't matter," Bruce said. "The sniper could have been one of his accomplices, too."

Clark suddenly seemed concerned.  "Bruce, how do you know so much about criminology all the sudden? And why did you go in there?  The guy was surrounded by two dozen police officers; it's not like he was going anywhere."
Bruce lowered his head a bit, and shut his eyes.  He was brooding again.  Clark and Diana looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
"It's a personal matter," Bruce said firmly.
Clark sighed.  Bruce obviously wasn't going to give him any real answers.

"Is this how you knew about my powers and stuff?" Bart asked from across the room.  He was holding a book from Bruce's library, entitled Extradimensional Power: The Science of Human Potential.
"Yes," Bruce answered.
"Uh-huh.  In-between the words 'personal' and 'matter,' I went over and looked at your library.  It's all filled with stuff about criminology, chemistry, martial arts, psychology, and physics.  It's like you're trying to be a one-man police force."
Bruce was getting aggravated. "Well, forgive me for not being a freak like you!"
Diana, Clark, and Bart exchanged glances.  This wasn't normal for Bruce, and they could all tell.  They figured it was best to leave him alone.
"We should be going now," Clark said as he stood up.  He looked over at Chloe, and she literally jumped up at the chance to get away from all the angst.  Diana and Bart followed them into the elevator, leaving Bruce alone with his anger.

Bruce felt Alfred walk up beside him.
"Master Bruce, if I may, I know this day holds painful memories, but it would be a mistake to turn that pain upon those who hold you most dear."
Five of Alfred's words rang clearer in Bruce's mind than the rest:
"...this day holds painful memories..."
He looked at the calendar, letting today's date echo in his mind:

October 31st

END

The Brave and the Bold

.
Three Days Ago

Diana was surprised at him.
Bruce had somehow suddenly gone from an amateur fighter—albeit a fast-learning one—to a formidable combatant in a mere two weeks.  It was as though he'd gained at least four years of training in only fourteen days.

These training sessions were gradually getting less like training and more like actual sparring.  Bruce was still nowhere near Diana's level, of course, but she actually had to pay attention to him during training.  Granted, it was about as much attention as one gives a persistent fruit fly, but it was something, at least.

Diana made a firm jab with the end of her staff.  Bruce stepped slightly to the right and parried her move, then twisted his staff around over his head as he spun to the left, crouching in mid-step and swinging the end of his staff at the back of her right knee.
She saw it coming, and twisted her leg so that the staff bounced off her kneecap.  For anyone else, that might have hurt, but Diana was made of tougher stuff.  Still, though, that move was incredibly advanced for someone with as little training as Bruce.  She'd never taught him anything like...
That's it, she suddenly realized.
She leaned back out of her battle stance and stood up straight, casually examining him.
"You've had training before, haven't you?" She asked.
Breathing heavily, Bruce replied. "Yes."
"When?"
"I started when I was ten.  Judo, Karate, and Aikido."
"...So you're not technically untrained, just out of practice?"
"I'm no master; I only trained for three and a half years."
"Why did you stop?"
"I... I let myself forget why I started training in the first place.  I won't let that happen again."
A black fire burned in Bruce's eyes.  Diana often saw that look on his face whenever he was exhausted from training, or when she would get the upper hand in combat—which was, truth be told, all the time.
She didn't know what drove that anger, or who it was truly directed at, but it almost frightened her.  One day, he would learn to harness that anger; to forge it into a dark weapon.  To forge himself into a weapon.  On that day, she would pity the poor soul who found himself in the way of Bruce's wrath.


Now

The tires screeched to a halt a block away from the bank.  Bruce stepped out of his car and surveyed the scene from a distance.
Police cars lined the street, barricading every way in or out of the building.

A sudden-yet-brief gust of wind hit Bruce's back, and he turned around to see Bart standing in front of him.
"Man, could your car be any slower?"
Bruce responded with an unamused glare.  "We need to get in there and stop him."
"Bruce, uh, buddy, you don't have any powers.  You'll get killed."
Bruce glared at him. "No. I won't."
Bart was more weirded out than scared by Bruce's anger. "O...kay, then... uh... shouldn't we wait for Clark, or maybe Diana?"
"Clark is with Lois in Central City.  Diana's not picking up her cellphone; I left her a message.  Right now, we're the only ones who can do anything."
Bart sighed nervously.  "Okay, so what are you gonna do, exactly?  I mean, how are you gonna get inside the bank?"
"I need you to to run me in there."
Bart stepped back a little. "Woah, you want me to carry you inside?  At super-speed?"
"Yes."
"Uh... I've never done that before; I don't know if I—"
Bruce interrupted him, speaking very quickly. "Your speed works through an extradimensional power gateway; traditional Newtonian physics don't apply.  As long as your bioelectric field is active, the particles contained within should remain in a state of hyper-elevated activity."
"...I have no idea what you just said."
"As long as you're moving, I should be fine.  Go to super-speed, pick me up, then come to a complete stop once you get inside."
"...okay."

Bart took a second to focus.  It probably was only a nanosecond to the outside world, but everything seemed slower to him.  He took another second to look around.  The world outside was muffled to a near-whisper—the sound waves weren't fast enough for him to perceive them correctly when he focused like this—and everything moved at a snail's pace.  It was somewhat like being underwater.
Bart reached his arm under Bruce's armpit and lifted.  To his surprise, Bruce came up and off the ground like a rag doll, as if he barely weighed a thing.  Bart ran towards the bank, dodging the statuesque people on the streets.  Bruce's body floated through the air behind him like a towel on a clothesline.  Bart passed through the open door to the bank.  There were a couple dozen low-walled wooden cubicles around the large room.  Bart set Bruce down gently on his feet, being sure to un-focus back into normal-speed as he did so.
Bruce stumbled to his knees and nearly vomited as his brain wrapped itself around the fact that he'd just moved three hundred feet in less than a second.

It was very dark in the room; the only light came in through the windows from the street outside.
The boys both sat crouched behind a desk, staying very quiet. The sound of machine gun fire from a few desks over broke the silence.

*RATATATATATATAT!*
"Find him!" Bruce ordered Bart.  Bart nodded and focused back into super-speed, then stood up and walked around the desk's corner to find Deadshot.  As he stood up, however, he found that he had moved directly into the path of a bullet.

A speeding bullet was perhaps the one thing that Bart could actually see moving very quickly at super-speed.  By the time he even noticed it was there, it was within a few inches of his face.  He couldn't move out of the way; all he could do was let it hit him.

Bart hit the floor with a thud.  Bruce looked down at Bart's body.  He looked fine, and didn't seem to be bleeding.  A completely intact bullet lay on the floor next to him.  Bruce was confused for a moment, but quickly understood.  "Heh. Clever move," Bruce thought to himself with a smile.  Bart had just done the exact reverse of what he'd done with Bruce earlier: instead of using his powers to accelerate an object, he'd actually absorbed the bullet's speed into himself, thus preventing it from actually piercing him.  Unfortunately, it was still the equivalent of getting punched in the face, so it knocked him unconscious.

Bruce heard Floyd's surprised voice a short distance away.  "What the hell?"
Steel-toed footsteps got louder and louder as he moved closer to Bart's body.  When he got close enough, Bruce jumped from behind his cover.

Floyd was caught completely off-guard.  It was like a savage animal had just pounced on him from the shadows, and he didn't know what to do.  A flurry of punches and kicks flew at his face and sides.  In the darkness, he could barely see his attacker.  But he could tell enough to know that this person—who he was pretty sure was just a kid—was an amateur.  Floyd managed to push the kid away, then moved to pistol-ship him in the face.  But Bruce was gone, ducked away behind one of the nearby desks.
Floyd looked around the room, but saw no sign of him.  He checked around the corner of the next desk over, but Bruce wasn't there.
Floyd had shot out the lights in the room beforehand, so as not to be so easily spotted by the police.  Now he almost regretted it, as he had a crazy person hiding in the shadows somewhere.  He walked throughout the room, slowly peeking around the corner of every single desk.  But his assailant was nowhere to be found.
If he had been a little more observant, he would have noticed that each desk had a lamp above it which hung from the ceiling by a thick chain.
Bruce hung silently upside-down on one of these chains, his feet touching the ceiling and his hands squeezed firmly toward the bottom of the chain.  It'd been a while since he'd learned how to do this; he just hoped he wasn't entirely out of practice.  When Floyd moved close enough, Bruce let his legs swing downward into a long vertical arc.
Floyd turned his head to see Bruce's heel slamming into his face.
Deadshot hit the floor with a slam, his metal armor clanking against the marble floors.  Bruce landed safely on his feet.  He began to move towards Bart, but stopped when he saw something peculiar.  Deadshot's mask had been partially removed by Bruce's kick, and his face was showing underneath.  It was not Floyd Lawton.
Before Bruce could ponder this, a red light on the mercenary's belt began flashing, accompanied by a telltale beeping noise.  Though Bruce admittedly didn't know much about weaponry, he guessed that it was a bomb.  He ran to Bart, still lying on the floor, and shook him furiously.
"BART! BART!"
Bart jumped awake, slightly dizzy. "Woah, what...?"
Bruce didn't give him any time to recover. "There's a bomb on that man's belt! This whole place could go up! Get the police officers on the street out of here!"
Bart nodded at super-speed and took off.  One by one, the men and women standing outside the building seemingly vanished into thin air, having been carried several blocks away.
When Bart was done, he ran back inside the bank.  Bruce was still kneeling over the mercenary's body.
"C'mon, Bruce, we need to get out of here!" Bart exclaimed.
"No! We don't know how big the explosion will be; more people might still be in danger.  We need to see if there's a way to disable the bomb."
"What?!? You're crazy! Let's get out of here, now!"
Bruce spun around, his face twisted with anger. "I'M NOT LEAVING!!!"
Bart looked back and forth between Bruce and the bomb for a moment.  He knew what to do.
Bruce saw Bart vanish into super-speed, and heard a metal snap from behind him.  He turned around to see Not-Deadshot's flashing belt buckle missing.

Bart ran through the city as fast as he dared go, the bomb sitting ticking away in his hand.  It was too late.  Bart looked down to see the metal casing of the bomb slowly cracking open, with rays of light peeking out from beneath.  It was exploding as he held it.  His hands nearly burning, Bart zoomed over the docks at the city's edge, toward the river.  He hit the water, but kept running.  At this speed, his feet bounced off the water like a rock that wouldn't stop skipping.
He threw the bomb down into the waves as hard as he could.  When he finally came to a stop on the other side of the river, he looked back to see the explosion, muffled safely underwater.
At this point, Bart was exhausted.  He nearly passed out on the docks.


Bruce was left alone in the bank, not entirely sure what to do.  It suddenly occurred to him, however, that he'd probably need to get out of the building before the police—or anyone else—showed up again.
He began walking down the stairs in front of the building, still trying to figure out who the man dressed as Deadshot could be, and why he was there.
A copycat criminal, perhaps?
No. A decoy.  He must have been a decoy.  But why?
Bruce started scanning the rooftops.
"Bruce!"
Bruce recognized Diana's voice coming from up above, and saw her land next to him in his peripheral vision.  He didn't stop to actually look at her.
"Bruce, I got your message.  I'm sorry I didn't get here sooner; I was flying above the city and my cell was out of range."
There.  Bruce spotted him.  A silhouette on the rooftop just slightly to the left, with a faintly visible red dot that could only be Deadshot's targeting eyepiece.
Bruce grabbed Diana's arm and spun her around in that direction. "DIANA! SNIPER ON THAT ROOF!"

*CLANK*
A giant, flattened bullet fell from Diana's bracelet.  Her eyes were squinted in a warrior-like expression, and she easily picked out the roof from which the shooter had fired.  She took off into the sky after him.

When she arrived, he was gone.  A single bullet casing lay near the roof's edge, but the shooter was nowhere to be found.
She found the roof's only door and ripped it off its hinges.  Inside was a stairwell.  She leaned into the hallway, and listened intently.  If Deadshot had been anywhere in that stairwell, she would have heard something of him: a step, breath, a heartbeat.  But there was nothing.  As far as she could tell, he'd completely vanished.

The MJAs, Part 2

Clark and Chloe stood quietly on the balcony, leaning gently against the railing.
Behind them was the main hall where the ceremony was being held, but they felt like being alone for the moment.
"So... Clark," Chloe began. "I haven't seen you around Smallville lately.  Are you still living at home?"
"Yeah, but I... I've been spending all my time here.  I'm needed here, Chloe.  If I spend too much time in Smallville, I'm afraid that I'll be gone when... when something happens."
Chloe frowned a little.  "What are you afraid will happen?"
Clark took a deep breath and stared out over the horizon, toward the city lights.
"I have friends in Metropolis that are in danger.  Lionel Luthor's tried to kill them—and me—before."
Chloe's eyes went wide. "Lionel Luthor?! As in Luthorcorp?!?"
"Yeah, that's him."
"Wow... I'd heard rumors of him being involved in shady stuff, but... wow... okay, who's he trying to kill?"
"For the moment, he's sort of laying low, from what we can tell.  After he threatened us directly, the police nearly had enough evidence to charge him with attempted murder."
Chloe nodded a little with understanding. "But the Luthor lawyers have managed to keep him clean thus far."
"Exactly."
"So... who is 'us,' exactly?  Who's he trying to kill, and why was he after you?"
"Bruce Wayne, for one."
"The boy heir to the throne of Wayne Enterprises? No wonder; they're Luthorcorp's biggest rival."
"Hey, how do you know all this, anyway?"
Chloe rolled her eyes.  "Please, Clark.  We do have the internet in Smallville.  I'm a reporter, and as boring as the inner workings of multi-billion-dollar corporations are, they're front page news.  And I read every front page of every major paper."
Clark couldn't help but smile at her.  She was the same brilliant Chloe that she'd always been.
She pushed him for more details. "So, who else? Come on! Tell me!"
Clark paused for a moment, and looked back into the hall.  Chloe could tell that Clark was troubled by whatever he was about to say. "It's Lois.  Lionel's after her, too."
Chloe's put her hands over her mouth in shock.  "Lois? Why?"
"Because she's dating Bruce, and she's been investigating Lionel nonstop. She's actually gotten pretty close to finding evidence on him a couple of times."
"Lois is DATING BRUCE WAYNE?!?"
Clark gave her a quizzical look. "Do you ever talk to your cousin?"
"We're both really busy, I guess.  Wait, so you're protecting Lois and Bruce all by yourself?  Do they know about your abilities?"
"...Yeah, they do.  And no, I'm not protecting them by myself.  There's a couple of others that we've met... people with powers."
Chloe was surprised. "Powers? Powers like yours?"
"No.  One of them's an amazon princess, and the other's a guy who... well, he can run really fast."
Chloe nearly laughed. "An amazon princess? What's her name, Xena?"
"Diana, actually," Clark said with a slight smile.
Chloe tilted her head a little at that.  "I saw that smile.  So... you like this 'Diana'?"
Clark stepped back a little.  "No, it's not that. She's a good friend, but I don't know her all that well."
Chloe wasn't convinced.  "Still, though... there's something special about her, isn't there?  Other than just the fact that she's got powers."
"Well..." Clark began, "She... she's like me.  She's not from here; she's from an island off somewhere hidden from the rest of the world.  She's got some powers like mine, and... she really cares about doing the right thing."
Chloe did her best to force a smile across her face. "Sounds like you've found a kindred spirit."
Clark didn't notice her falseness, and a slight smile of his own crept across his face.  "Yeah, kinda.  But I'm not interested in her... romantically, I mean.  It's nice to have a friend like her, but I'm not looking for anything more than that right now."
"Oh." Chloe was pleasantly surprised, but she tried to keep her composure.  "So... is there anyone you're interested in?"
Clark was a little taken aback at the question. "Well, I—"
Lois jumped in.  "Hey Smallvilles, my award's coming up! Come back inside!"

They both followed her back to their table, and sat down in preparation.  This was the final award of the evening, and Lois's article had been nominated.
The presenter on stage had the letter in her hand.  "And the award for best single article goes to..." She began opening the envelope.
Clark could almost feel Lois shaking in her seat from three feet away.  He wondered how much caffeine she'd had today.
The presenter finally ripped the envelope open and read the card inside. "...'The Red Blur of Central City', by Iris Allen!"
The room roared with applause.
Chloe and Clark both were slightly shocked and a little worried.  They both slowly turned to Lois.
Lois was livid, and looked slightly crazed.  "WHAT?!?"
She quickly pulled out her phone and looked up the article online.  "What?! This... this is about some random red blur that appears at crime scenes! It's... it's all circumstantial evidence! NO!!"
Chloe leaned over to Clark. "Is that blur the super-fast guy you were talking about?"
"No, that's his grandpa," Clark responded matter-of-factly.
Chloe felt as though she were the only person in the room that had a grip on reality.  "Okay, you guys really need to sit down and explain this stuff."

Dinner Plans

The school called it a "formal dinner," but it was mostly a staring contest.

The Excelsior Academy, being the foremost center of education for the children of the wealthy, held a bi-annual formal dinner for the families who donated the most amount of money to the school.

At the ornately-designed ebony table sat representatives from four families: the Queens, the Waynes, the Luthors, and the Edges.
Oliver sat with his two parents at one side of the long table, his mother chattering with Sarah Edge. Vincent Edge, Sarah's husband, owned a massive media corporation in Metropolis--the only one that LuthorCorp didn't own. Vincent and Sarah's son, Morgan, attended Excelsior despite his relatively low grades.
Oliver, bored out of his mind, tried to make friendly eye contact with Morgan across the table, but Morgan seemed to be perfectly set on ignoring everyone else in the room, keeping his eyes on his plate of roast duck.
Lionel and Lex sat toward the table's head, across from Bruce.
Bruce had come alone. He could have asked Lucius or Alfred to come along, but he specifically asked them not to.  This was a dinner for students and their parents.  His parents were dead.  No one would replace them.

Terrence Reynolds, the school principal, sat at the table's head, completely fed up with the obvious unspoken resentment that the men at the table had towards one another.  He was African-American, average height, slightly heavy-set, and easily angered. He didn't care in the slightest about the egos of the "Excelsior Royal Families"; he only allowed this dinner to be held because he knew that the satiated egos of the families were the only reason the school was so well-funded.

He swallowed his pride and took a quiet, deep breath. He needed to say this.  "If I could have your attention for a moment, please?"
The attendees all stopped eating and talking for a moment, turning to face him.
"Though I've said it before, I want to apologize again for the incident three weeks ago.  We—"
Lionel interrupted.  "Oh, come now, Mr. Reynolds, how exactly were you supposed to defend the school against an attack by heavily-armed gunmen?  Would you fortify the building with armed guards at every doorway?  Called in the National Guard?  No, Mr. Reynolds, I think the school did an admirable job.  After all, no one was hurt."
"Yeah," Victor Edge interjected with his signature New York accent, "just how was that, exactly?  Morgan tells me that the thugs just dropped to the floor, like somethin' hit 'em."

Reynolds had been waiting for this moment all day.  He'd answered the question countless times, always with the same answer: "I couldn't tell you, Mr. Edge.  I was out-of-state during the incident..."
"Well 'aint that convenient," Vincent interjected.
Reynolds ignored the comment and continued. "...and reports have been inconclusive."

"So you have... no idea what actually happened?"
When the attendees heard Laura Queen's question, they all looked down towards the end of the table in surprise.  She'd not joined into the main conversation all night.  Her face revealed a deep concern: she was worried about what had happened to her son, despite his claims that he was alright.
When Lex saw Laura's worried face, he slowly leaned back in his chair.  She reminded him a little of his own mother, and he didn't want everyone else to see his eyes welling up a little.  His own mother had died from a rare and unexplained illness, leaving him alone with his unaffectionate, demanding father.
"Mom, nothing happened," Oliver said.  "They just fell over, all at once.  Right, Lex?"
Lex momentarily looked back at Oliver and nodded.  They'd been held in the same room, and both saw the same unexplained event.  In fact, everyone in the school had given the exact same report: every gunman in the entire building fell unconscious at the same time, with no apparent cause.  Some reported a simultaneous gust of wind; others didn't.

Now that this subject had been brought up, Reynolds knew it would be the focus of the rest of the evening.  He was not looking forward to it.  As if in answer to his thoughts, Reynolds' secretary quietly walked in the room, moving over to whisper in his ear.  His eyes widened with her news, and he took a brief second to compose himself before speaking to his guests.
"I've just been informed that a man matching Floyd Lawton's description is attempting to rob a bank two blocks from here."
The room erupted with panicked questions.
"What!?"
"I thought he was in jail!"
"Are we in danger?!"
"Which bank?"
"Where are the police?"

"Stay calm, everyone," Reynolds replied in a very firm and slightly intimidating voice. "The police have patrol cars waiting downstairs; they will escort you safely to your homes."

The two mothers continued panicking while Vincent Edge and Robert Queen angrily asked Reynolds for information that he didn't have.  Bruce and Oliver kept completely calm.  They looked at one another across the table, exchanging looks of calm determination.  They'd been through this before, and they knew what to expect.  Neither of them were the type to be taken advantage of because of their relative youth: if they could help it, they would make sure they and their loved ones—or, in this case, Oliver's loved ones—got home safe.  As the dinner guests all got up from their seats and gathered together into a small, slightly hysterical crowd, Oliver whispered to Bruce: "I think we're the sanest people here."
Bruce nearly smirked at that, but stopped when he noticed Lionel Luthor's face:
Completely calm, merely observing the situation.  Bruce knew a thing or two about how to read human facial expressions—he'd taken a couple of college-level courses in criminal psychology—and Lionel portrayed no hint of surprise or concern.  The average observer might conclude that Lionel was simply a very composed man, but Bruce knew better: Lionel knew it was coming.

As the group walked down the stairway towards the school's entrance, Oliver and Bruce stayed at the front, with Lex trailing just behind them.  Bruce didn't mind Lex's presence.  From what he could tell, Lex had changed quite a bit in the past month or two since the attack on Bruce's tower.  His random and infantile mocking of Bruce had completely ceased, and he was much more reserved.  Bruce speculated that Lex and Lionel weren't exactly on the same page, probably because Lex actually had a conscience.   That didn't make Lex a friend by any means, but it also meant that he wasn't exactly a threat either.
"Are we even safe in our homes?" Oliver asked.  "I mean, the guy escaped from here last time, even after he was surrounded by cops.  My place isn't exactly bulletproof."
"Mine is." Bruce replied.  "Take your family there; I'll call Alfred to let him know you're coming."
Oliver breathed a sigh of relief. "Thanks, Bruce.  Hey, wait, where are you going?"
"I've got somewhere else to be," he cryptically replied as they walked through the front doors.  Instead of moving forward and entering one of the police cruisers parked on the street in front of them, Bruce turned right and walked towards his own car, sitting in the school parking lot.
Other teens at Excelsior drove flashier vehicles; ones that were meant for looks and not much else.  Bruce's car was every bit as expensive—if not more—but it wasn't meant merely for looks; it was meant for speed.  On the outside, it looked like a brand-new, jet-black Mustang, but as soon as the engine roared to life, it was obvious that it was something else entirely.
Bruce pulled out his phone and hit the fifth number on his speed-dial.  He would call Alfred in a moment, but he needed to call someone else first.  He heard the other side of the line pick up, and he started talking before they could respond.  "Bart, Deadshot's robbing a bank two blocks from Excelsior.  Meet me there. Now."