Fandom: Batman
Pairing: Bruce Wayne & Male OC, Damian Wayne & Male OC [Platonic]
Rating: Teen
Content: Amnesia, Loss of identity, Blood and gore, Graphic violence, Injuries, Animal abuse, Semi-verbal character
Date originally written: 12th January 2022
Summary: Batman and Superman investigate a lifeless ship...

Omen tries to find food for the pups...

Author's notes: umm ouchies things are definitely still dark in here! again not sure how this happened but oh well.

When Clark’s voice had come in through the comms, asking Bruce if he and the dogs were doing alright, he’d almost wanted to throw up.

Bruce had barely managed to explain the entire situation to him, how the substance was Luthor’s doing, how the henchmen at the docks had raw kryptonite and kryptonite laced bullets...and how the men had been able to injure and subdue the dogs before taking them hostage.

Despite the fact that he’d told Clark the scene was likely still littered with kryptonite bullets, the Kryptonian had immediately showed up to the docks the moment Bruce finished explaining to him what had occurred in the last hour.

Clark was high above the docks, scanning the entire area with his heightened senses before landing in an area that was safely far away from any pieces of kryptonite he could see. Bruce went over to him, doing his best to keep his emotions in check. He knew that whatever Clark was about to say to him wasn’t going to be good.

“Where’s the ship.” Superman asked, his face hardened and voice sharp. It was a completely different side to him that Bruce rarely ever saw- a side that he only saw when innocents had been hurt or too many lives were at stake.

Clark was pissed.

“That way,” Bruce said, pointing into the darkness of the ocean. While he couldn’t actually see anything with the naked eye, Bruce knew exactly where all of the shipping lanes were, and which lane a ship like Luthor’s would be travelling at this time of night.

It took only a second for Clark to find it. 

“I see it. I’m going in there.”

“Not without me. If those men see you, they’ll shoot. Even without their kryptonite bullets, they still have a large raw chunk of kryptonite on them.”

Clark sighed, closing his eyes. “I know. But I can’t just let Titus or Krypto get into Luthor’s hands. God knows what he’d do to them...”

“I know...I’m sorry.” Bruce said, letting true guilt and shame enter his voice so Clark knew that his apology was serious. Clark didn’t say anything in reply.

Instead, Clark picked him up and started flying over Gotham’s waters, making his way to the ship as fast as he could.

When they got there, Clark hovered above the ship high enough so that no kryptonite could affect him, and used his x-ray vision to look through all the layers of the ship, attempting to find both of the dogs as well as the raw piece of kryptonite.

What he hadn’t expected to see, though, was the mass of dead bodies scattered across the layers of the ship.

“Jesus Christ...”

Clark’s quiet curse made all of the most horrible scenarios run through Bruce’s mind at the speed of lightning.

“What? Tell me what you’re seeing, Kal.”

“I can see the kryptonite, but I don’t see the dogs anywhere...”

Clark’s inability to get to the point was going to kill him.

“And?”

“The crew...they’re all dead...it’s gruesome, Bruce.”

Bruce felt all of his dread sink into his stomach.

“Drop me, now. I’ll get the kryptonite secured as soon as I can, and we can investigate what happened afterwards. What level is it on?”

“Third level. It’s in one of the crew member’s pockets.”

“Got it.”

Bruce was dropped immediately, and he opened up his cape to glide down safely until he hit the deck floor.

It was completely dark on the ship, forcing Bruce to get out the flashlight from his belt. He turned it on, and started heading for one of the doors that led to the lower depths of the ship. As he walked towards it, his boots splashed in the small puddles of seawater that had sprayed onto the deck. The deck didn’t smell right to Bruce, however, and he pointed his flashlight down at his feet to see what he was truly stepping in, and found himself surrounded by seawater that mingled with still-fresh blood.

There was a single, small red paw print a few feet away from the rest of blood, which hadn’t been swept away by seawater. It was facing port side, and Bruce wasn’t able to tell if it was Titus’ or Krypto’s paw print.

Either way, one of them had clearly been here, and Bruce filed that piece of information away in his mind as he turned back around to the door, and silently entered the ship.

He ran as quietly as he could towards the third level, following the trail of blood and paw prints along the way. There were many more red paw prints down here, which told Bruce that both dogs had definitely been down here, but looking at some of the tracks they’d made, one of them seemed to not be using one of their legs, evidenced by the lack of a fourth print at every stride.

There were also dead bodies, too. Many, many dead bodies, and while Bruce had said he was going to secure the kryptonite as quickly as possible and then do an examination of the evidence around him afterwards, he couldn’t help but note down every single piece of information he gathered along the way. Some of the bodies had bite marks, others had torn off limbs, and others looked to have had their chest caved in by something very heavy that had fallen onto them.

The mystery of it all was swirling around in his head, hypotheses piling up on top of each other as he continued running forward, looking for the piece of kryptonite and the ammo that Luthor’s men had laced with the green rock.

He quickly made it to the third level, and his search for the raw kryptonite didn’t take long. The bright green glow coming from inside one of the dead crewmen’s pockets was a clear giveaway to where it was.

He carefully extracted it and put it inside the lead lined box he’d taken with him. Then, he started to look around for the ammo the men had been using, and grabbed one of the guns, unloaded it and checked the bullets inside of the magazine. He observed the bullets for a few minutes, and came to the conclusion that the bullets had not been laced with kryptonite. Perhaps only certain men were given the laced ammo, and others were only given regular ammo.

Either way, it wasn’t good. He’d have to find that laced ammo quickly.

“Superman, I’ve secured the raw kryptonite, and according to my findings, some of the bullets are not laced. But I haven’t checked all of them, so I’d proceed with extreme caution if you enter the ship.”

Only a few moments later, a strong gust of air rushed past him as Clark entered the room.

Clark stood next to him in silence, looking around at the dead bodies on the floor.

It truly was a gruesome sight. The entire floor was covered in puddles of blood, and chunks of flesh were scattered here and there. Some limbs were entirely ripped off of the dead men’s bodies, and it was difficult to tell which body parts belonged to whom.

Clark couldn’t look away, despite desperately wanting to.

“I saw the paw prints...you don’t think they-” Clark couldn’t finish the sentence, and he swallowed the rest of the words down around a constricted throat.

“They’re animals, Kal. Any animal, put in a situation grave enough, will lash out and attack if it means their survival. They don’t care about morals or ethics, they just care about being alive, regardless of what we attempt to train into them...but I’m also not sure that Krypto or Titus could cause this much damage on their own.”

“Then...what did? ”

“We’ll have to observe the bodies and the rest of the ship to figure that out. I’ve already seen tooth marks on some of the dead, but they don’t look to be the right size for either of our dogs. That might give us a clue as to who or what actually did this.”

Clark sighed, and started crouching down near some of the bodies, using his x-ray vision to look at all of the injuries that they had.

The injuries that he saw were all injuries that Bruce had already seen and was attempting to understand, but Clark did his best to also try and determine what may have caused this massacre.

He kept walking around the room, and started to wander to other parts of the ship, looking for other clues that Bruce hadn’t seen yet, when he came upon a single red paw print in one of the hallways.

It was far too big to belong to either of the dogs. In fact, it was too big to belong to any dog or wolf on the entire planet.

This was the clue they both needed.

“Batman! I’ve found something!”

Bruce quickly rushed over to Clark’s position, and halted right next to him, looking down at what Clark had found.

Suddenly, all of the pieces fell into place.

“Omen.”

Of course. The larger than usual teeth marks, the ripped off limbs, the concave chests and ribs. While Bruce had never seen the results of Omen killing someone before, he realistically knew that they were strong enough to do all of the things they had seen on the bodies they’d been examining.

He’d just hoped it would never actually happen. Omen wasn’t someone Bruce wanted to have to deal with as an enemy. Not when this was what they were capable of.

“Omen? You think that shadow wolf did this?”

“Who else do you know has paws that big, and could cause as much damage as this? I’ve seen for myself what Omen’s capable of. They almost killed Killer Croc when they fought.”

Clark put his hands up in a placating matter. “I believe you, Bruce. But...why would Omen have been here in the first place?”

Bruce thought about it for a moment.

“Omen is always travelling the streets of Gotham, and has a penchant for following people they find interesting, rogues and vigilantes alike. It’s not unreasonable to believe that they were following the two dogs, saw what happened to them, and raced in to...help...as fast as they could.”

Both of them fell silent, then. They stood there, surrounded by blood and death, not knowing what they should say, or if they should even say anything at all.

After a minute of silence, it was Clark that broke it.

“This was unnecessary. Omen didn’t need to do this- shouldn’t have done this.”

“I know. But I’m not sure Omen knows that. I’m not even sure that Omen knows that they have other options other than ripping things apart with their teeth.” Bruce then sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as a headache threatened to take over. This whole situation was a goddamn mess. 

He sighed again.

“I’m an idiot. I should have made a move sooner to ensure that Omen wouldn’t do something like this.”

Clark knew that he was talking about his plan to try and become friendly with Omen, but he wasn’t sure that any of that would have stopped this from happening.

“Bruce, this isn’t your fault.”

“It is my fault. This entire situation would never have occurred if I had taken the time to speak to Omen at least once since my plan to understand them. It never would have occurred had I taken better precautions for this investigation, and it never would have occurred if I had’ve just gone myself instead of letting our dogs do my dirty work.”

Clark grabbed Bruce on the should then, carefully but firmly, in an attempt to comfort his friend. He spoke to him softly.

“Bruce, please...don’t blame yourself for any of this. If there’s anyone truly at fault here, it’s Luthor and his henchmen, not you. You didn’t cause this to happen.”

Bruce wrenched Clark’s hand off of his caped shoulder, and didn’t even turn around to face him as he replied.

“We need to find them, now. We can’t waste anymore time here. I’ll inform the authorities of what’s happened here and what they need to confiscate, and then we’ll leave.”

Clark seemed to agree, but it was obvious to the both of them that they’d need to have a much bigger talk later, once the two dogs were safe and sound.

No matter how painful that conversation would be.

The night had slowly turned to day, and the pups, who had settled into Omen’s fur during the night, had ventured out into the morning sun to get warm.

Trying to keep the pups safe and sound was going to be a big challenge. They needed food, and while it would have been easy enough for Omen to hunt something in the middle of the night for them, his main goal at the time had been trying to keep them from dying of the cold.

Now that it was day, it was the perfect time to go out and get food...but Omen couldn’t be seen in broad daylight, and he refused to allow the pups to leave his sight. He knew how cruel people could be to others, evidenced by how the poor pups had been treated by the men on the ship. He couldn’t trust that the pups would be taken care of properly by anyone they came across, and he couldn’t be sure that any handouts that the pups were given would be safe for them to eat, either.

He would have to find a secluded area away from people, where the two dogs could scavenge around for food without being bothered by others.

When the pups had become warm enough, Omen got out from his hiding spot and walked into the sun himself. It was...strange...to feel such warmth on his body, fur and tendrils, but he discovered that it was a sensation he enjoyed. He was quite visible, though, and he wasn’t sure how much he enjoyed being so vulnerable and out in the open.

He cajoled the pups into standing up, and got them to follow him. He sniffed around for anything that smelled edible, and whenever he came across food he believed was good enough to eat, he snatched it up and gave it to the pups. Omen felt lucky that he didn’t need to eat to survive, because if things had been different...he wasn’t sure he could keep up with the pup’s hungry stomachs alongside his own.

It truly was slim pickings. They travelled from alleyway to alleyway, trying to keep away from people as they rummaged through trash for anything to fill the pup’s stomachs.

Omen could only hope that the small snacks they were able to find each other was enough to keep them going until nightfall. Because when the sun went down and the citizens of Gotham finally went inside their homes to rest, Omen would emerge from the shadows to start truly hunting.

When night finally fell upon the city, Omen and the pups went out for food again. The pups looked to be alright, but it was clear they were still quite hungry. Omen hoped to find something that would actually satiate their appetites, at least until morning.

They started sniffing around, and did so for a time, before Omen’s ears pricked up at the sound of scuttling above them.

Somewhere on the rooftops, a little creature lurked...and Omen bet that it would make a great meal for the pups.

He leaped into the air, landing on the roof of the building, and chased after the small creature that began to frantically run away from him.

It didn’t take long for Omen to quickly snap it up in his jaws, killing it instantly with a single chomp of his teeth. He looked down over the edge of the rooftop, seeing the pups below wagging their tails and barking at him. They were excited by the action and the smell of blood, of food, and Omen didn’t waste any time jumping back down to the ground.

The creature in his mouth was a round, furry little thing with a puffed up tail that had black and white stripes on it. It looked almost like a fox, a rat and a possum had created some strange love-child. It took a moment for him to remember what it was actually called...before the word “raccoon” appeared in his head suddenly.

Yes, a raccoon. He hoped it would be good food for the pups.

When he landed on the concrete ground, the pups came running up to him excitedly, their tails wagging rapidly as they sniffed and licked at the food he had brought them. He dropped it on the ground in front of them, and they started ripping into it hungrily, devouring it in record time until there was nothing but bones and scraps of fur and ligament left.

The poor things must have been starving. It worried Omen deeply.

After they had finished their meal, Omen trotted off to go find another creature for them to eat. A single raccoon might be enough to feed one pup, but it definitely wasn’t enough for two.

He walked off in the direction of more raccoon scents, both pups in tow.

Somehow, Omen now had a pack to take care of, albeit a rather small one.

Surprisingly, he didn’t mind it one bit.