Chapter 3: First Encounter – Batman

Earth.

It seemed different now not as an outsider looking from the emptiness of space, but as a person who could see everything. The city lights, the moving people, the constant thrum of life. I had spent what felt like forever drifting among the stars, but now, my feet were on solid ground.

Gotham City.

Of all the locations on Earth, my instincts had led me here initially. A land of shadows, of predators waiting in every corner. The air reeked of smoke, crime, and something more fear. It clung to the city like a perpetual mist.

And in that darkness, he was waiting for me.

I knew him long before I could see him. His pulse steady, controlled, abnormally quiet. The pace of a predator. He'd been following me the instant I stepped in, his calculating brain breaking down each step I took.

Batman.

A lesser soul would have never seen him, but I was not lesser anymore.

"Walk into the light," I stated, my tone slicing through the deserted alleyway like a razor. "Hiding is useless."

Nothing. Then, from the shadows, a figure materialized. Encased in shadows, draped with a Kevlar-weave cape, his cowl veiling his face. The Dark Knight himself.

His steps were measured, calculated. Each one deliberate, as though moving too fast or too slow would say something he didn't want me to hear.

But I already knew.

"You're not human." His tone was gravel, unshaken. No fright, no pause just icy assessment.

I cocked my head to the side. "Neither are half the people you encounter on a nightly basis."

His jaw tightened. "You're different." 

I smirked. "You have no idea." 

There was a beat of silence. Then, without warning, he moved. A flick of his wrist, and three Batarangs shot toward me razor sharp, high velocity. 

Instinct took over.

The world was in slow motion. My mind processed every detail the path, the rotation, the weak electromagnetic signal in the metal. I didn't need to think. My body reacted quicker than thought.

My hand flashed up, and I snatched them from the air.

Batman did not blink, but I did see the tense tightening of his fingers, the slightest relaxation in his posture. A reaction he had been conditioned to bury, but one that I did detect nonetheless. 

I rolled over my hand, studying the Batarangs. "Enforced alloy. Heavier than needed for precision. Deadly, if used for the proper target zones." I clamped down my fist, and the metal collapsed like tissue paper.

I threw the remains at his feet.

"I don't want a fight."

Batman didn't ease up. His mind was racing, calculating, weighing. He was probing me. Not only my power, but my intent.

"You show up out of nowhere," he said, voice controlled. "No records. No history. And I can't find a single hint of who or what you are."

"Because you've never handled anything like me before."

His gaze tightened behind the cowl. "Then what are you?"

For an instant, I thought of telling him. That I wasn't merely an alien, or a metahuman, or a god incarnate in mortal flesh. That I had been reborn as something more.

Instead, I just said, "A visitor."

"Visitors don't trigger every alarm I have."

I smiled. "Then perhaps your alarms aren't designed to detect me."

Another silence. He wasn't accepting my response. But he knew that if I wanted to kill someone, I would have done so by now.

Nevertheless, he didn't trust me. Not yet.

"Stay out of Gotham," he said at last. A warning.

I looked at him, unwavering. "Or what?"

His cape billowed as he spun, moving into the darkness.

"This city has enough gods," he stated before he was gone.

I stood there for a moment, the only noise the far-off sirens in the darkness.

Batman did not fear me.

But he did perceive me as a threat.

And I knew this was only the beginning. 

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**End of Chapter 3**