Gotham was never quiet, but tonight it felt like it was holding its breath.

Tim moved like a shadow over broken gargoyles and rain-slick rooftops, cape snapping behind him as he vaulted the alley between two condemned buildings. Tim had insisted on going alone—stubborn, sharp-minded, too confident in his own contingency plans. Bruce was off-world with the League. Dick was tied up in Blüdhaven. He’d told himself it was just reconnaissance.

Then the laughing started.

High and shrill and echoing off concrete like a knife dragged across glass.

The Joker stepped from the darkness with theatrical delight, green hair glowing under a flickering streetlamp, white gloves spread wide as if presenting a magic trick. “Birdie! You came without your brooding babysitter.”

Tim didn’t rise to it. He never did. He calculated exits. Structural weaknesses. The weight-bearing columns in the half-abandoned high-rise behind them. He noticed the wires too late.

The explosion tore the night apart.

Heat and pressure swallowed everything. The upper floors pancaked in on themselves with a deafening roar, steel screaming as it bent, concrete turning to choking dust. Robin tried to dive clear, but the blast wave slammed him sideways. Something massive crashed down across his legs. His comm fizzed into static. The world went gray.

Silence, except for distant sirens.

Tim blinked against blood trickling into his eye. His chest burned every time he tried to breathe. The beam pinning him was too heavy. He knew the math without calculating it—he didn’t have the leverage. Didn’t have time.

His gloved fingers curled weakly against the rubble.

“…Kon.”

It wasn’t a shout. It wasn’t even a call. Just a broken whisper into the dust-filled dark.

Miles away in Metropolis, laughter of a different kind echoed through the Kent farmhouse kitchen. Kon was leaning back in his chair, boots propped dangerously close to the table, leather jacket creaking as he argued with Clark about the correct way to flip a pancake. Jon rolled his eyes, mid-retort.

Then Kon froze.

His head tilted slightly, blue eyes sharpening—not unfocused, but tuned. Past the hum of traffic. Past the rustle of Kansas wind through cornfields. Past the planet’s ordinary noise.

A whisper.

“…Kon.”

The chair hit the floor as he stood.

Clark blinked. “Kon?”

But the shift was already happening. The easy grin vanished. His jaw tightened. The air around him seemed to vibrate.

In one sharp motion, he tugged at the collar of his black tee and ripped it straight down the center, fabric tearing cleanly under Kryptonian strength. The red S beneath caught the kitchen light. The leather jacket fell back over his shoulders like armor settling into place.

Jon stared. “What—?”

Kon was already moving.

The back door exploded outward in a rush of displaced air as he launched skyward, sonic boom rattling the windows of Smallville. Clark followed a heartbeat later, but Kon was gone—an angry streak cutting across the night sky toward Gotham.

Smoke still poured from the wreckage when he arrived.

He hovered above the devastation, fists clenched, teeth bared. The building had folded inward like a crushed soda can. Fire flickered between broken floors. Emergency crews were only just arriving at the perimeter.

Kon’s eyes flared crimson—then shifted, focusing.

X-ray vision sliced through concrete, steel, layers of debris. He scanned past civilians. Past firefighters. Searching.

There.

A flash of yellow cape buried beneath a slab of fractured support beam. A heartbeat—weak but steady.

Relief hit first.

Then fury.

He dropped like a missile, landing hard enough to crater the asphalt. Rubble shifted from the impact. Carefully—so carefully—he slid his hands beneath the collapsed beam. Muscles tensed. Concrete groaned in protest.

“Hang on, babe,” he muttered under his breath.

The beam lifted.

Dust rained down as he tossed it aside, then peeled away chunks of debris with controlled precision. His hands, capable of shattering mountains, moved with surgeon steadiness.