SUP Chapter 91: Rainy Night, But No Maybach

Tonight's rain was getting heavier and heavier.

Tonight's wind was also blowing more and more fiercely.

A luxurious extended sedan was parked outside an unremarkable apartment building. In this sparsely populated apartment complex, one brightly lit window was being watched intently by the person inside the car.

The busy figure inside the window obviously hadn't noticed this.

"Finally done!"

Scientist Leonard was drenched in sweat as if he had just battled a beauty for three hundred rounds, when in reality he had only tidied up his room and reorganized his previously scattered comic collection.

For most people, this might not be considered high-intensity exercise, but he was Leonard, a fragile scientist who had nearly spent half his life on this organizing session.

"Sheldon won't be able to find fault with me now." The reason Leonard had spent so much time organizing was naturally because he had an extremely obsessive-compulsive roommate.

Walking out of his room, he was about to show off to Sheldon when he saw a girl sitting cross-legged on the carpet eating potato chips, while Sheldon on the sofa was weighing takeout food with an electronic scale.

"Hi, Penny."

Leonard's proud rooster demeanor immediately diminished somewhat.

"Hi, Leonard."

The girl continued watching TV and eating chips without looking back, which gave Leonard the opportunity to dash to the bathroom, tidy up his appearance a bit, and then emerge again.

"The person who called you earlier was that genius comic artist, right? You even messed up your room because of it." Sheldon spoke with certainty while recording his food intake.

"I've already cleaned up my room."

Leonard immediately tried to salvage his image, speaking with slight pride.

However, the girl seemed uninterested in him and was instead surprised by Sheldon's hearing.

"You were clearly playing games in front of the TV just now, yet you could still eavesdrop on Leonard's phone call? You didn't install surveillance software on his phone, did you?" The girl named Penny was quite attractive and served as the neighbor to these two eccentric scientists, as well as Leonard's dream girl.

"Hm?"

Sheldon perked up his head like a prairie dog.

"Good idea! Penny, I didn't expect you to have moments of brilliance. Perhaps you won't have to remain a waitress your entire life after all." Sheldon's tone was full of emotion. He wasn't looking down on his nearby friend; he just enjoyed equally discriminating against everyone's intelligence. Theoretical physicists inevitably carried a bit of superiority complex.

Hearing this, Penny expressionlessly set down her potato chips.

"If you're really that smart, shouldn't you know better than to offend the girl who serves your food?" She turned to look at Sheldon, her voice heavy with threat.

"..."

Sheldon didn't dare argue back. He turned to stare at Leonard instead, beginning to change the subject. "What did the genius comic artist want with you? Let me guess, don't tell me yet... Hmm! He must have seen the 1000 pages of suggestions I hacked into his computer and planted there, so he specifically called you to have you thank me on his behalf!"

The thirty-something theoretical physicist's beautiful blue eyes held childlike expectation. However, Leonard's head shake shattered this man's beautiful fantasy.

"No, he didn't mention you, nor your thousand pages of comic suggestions. Actually, that kid just consulted me about superhero comics."

Leonard wore the proud attitude of someone who considered himself the ultimate comic expert.

But it still didn't attract the girl's attention.

Feeling somewhat dejected, he continued, "I think our genius comic artist is probably looking for inspiration... Also, maybe because I initially questioned his abilities, he finally told me he has an angel investor who is the closest person to Bruce Wayne."

"Who gave him a full ten million dollars in unconditional investment." Speaking of this, Leonard couldn't help but feel amazed. Such wealth was definitely an enormous sum he could never imagine in his lifetime.

"You actually believe that?"

Penny rolled her eyes.

She had always thought her neighbors had simply encountered a middle schooler who liked to boast.

"He said he doesn't like to lie... I think the credibility is quite high." Leonard clutched his phone, feeling somewhat guilty. He just wanted to emit masculine charm by appearing valued by others.

"Then you're definitely hopeless."

Penny gave her honest assessment.

"What do you think?"

She also looked toward Sheldon.

However, the eccentric homebody Sheldon wasn't concerned about this point.

"He actually didn't mention me! Not at all?" Sheldon's voice rose eight octaves. "Not even something like 'that annoying tall physicist'?"

The big boy was very unwilling to accept this.

"Yes, nothing."

Leonard helplessly provided the answer. He couldn't lie, because lying would give Sheldon something to grab onto, and no one knew better than him just how annoying this roommate could be.

"Fine, I understand. It seems he's not as genius as we thought!" Sheldon tortured the food in his takeout container with his fork, as if those innocent pieces of meat were the comic artist who had disappointed his expectations.

He viciously stuffed a piece of meat into his mouth.

Sheldon struggled to puff out his cheeks and chew hard.

"Listen to me, you have to believe me..." Penny was about to say something else when her words were interrupted, because Sheldon suddenly jumped up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.

"Cherry pit! Cherry pit!"

His face turned bright red, fingers clutching his throat.

"Damn it, you're only eating cherry meat! The Chinese restaurant didn't put real cherries in there!" Although Leonard was complaining, he still rushed forward immediately to rescue his roommate.

Penny also hurried to help.

After a period of incredibly practiced commotion, Sheldon was finally successfully rescued.

"I swear, the fact that this guy has survived until now is the best proof I need to believe there really is a God in this world." Penny patted Sheldon's back to help him catch his breath while expressing her amazement to Leonard.

"It's not my fault, it was all the cherry pit. I simply can't handle it. To me, it's like Superman facing kryptonite." The weakly recovering Sheldon protested.

But this only earned him two very synchronized eye rolls.

"You can relate this to superheroes? They wouldn't get choked by cherry pits!" Penny attempted to use harsh reality to wake up her friend who was immersed in false analogies.

"Penny's right, and besides, that wasn't a cherry pit, it was just a pea." Leonard, having washed his hands, caused Sheldon to avoid him due to the water droplets.

"I ordered cherry meat, there wouldn't be peas in it." Sheldon seriously corrected them. However, neither Penny nor Leonard was willing to believe his sophistry.

"But that was just a pea!"

Leonard emphasized again.

So Sheldon thought for a moment.

"No, that wasn't a pea. I ordered cherry meat." Sheldon continued to insist, and even when Leonard had taken out the pea he had spit up, he only glanced at it once.

"This just looks like a pea, but I refuse to admit it's a pea." Sheldon lowered his head again to fiddle with his takeout container, but hesitated to put any more food in his mouth.

"That's called self-deception!"

Leonard gritted his teeth.

"What kind of person collects food that their roommate spits out? You two are really too weird." Penny couldn't help but sigh while standing up and smoothing out the wrinkles in her clothes.

She moved her mouth a couple of times as if she had an ulcer. "You know what? I used to think it was crazy enough that you guys obsess over superheroes in comics but don't dare pursue real-life superheroes."

Penny's words weren't finished yet.

"And now?"

Sheldon reflexively responded.

"Now?" Penny grabbed her jacket and casually scooped something up from the table. "Either I'm crazy, or you're crazy, but it definitely can't be that the world is crazy."

"Honestly, not even talking about what just happened."

"Just believing that some fourteen or fifteen-year-old kid would have ten million dollars and knows that billionaire Bruce Wayne... If I were a scammer, I could con you out of everything including your underwear."

"Believing such stories, you might as well believe that I could go outside right now and run into Bruce Wayne trying to flirt with me."

Penny was genuinely trying to kindly advise her two friends not to believe in scams about billionaires seeking them out, but she discovered that both friends remained silent without responding.

"Sigh, sooner or later you'll end up homeless, but I'll definitely take you in... Who doesn't like keeping pets?" Penny said as she opened the apartment door, preparing to return to her own apartment.

"Snap~"

The door was shut.

The two homebodies looked at each other.

"Penny can actually recognize that she's the crazy one. That's incredible." Sheldon sincerely expressed his amazement, withdrawing his gaze from the door.

"Who would say otherwise? Actually, she doesn't need to con me, I'd take off my underwear and give it to her." Leonard withdrew his lovestruck gaze and looked down, preparing to enjoy tonight's late-night meal.

However, seeing the empty table, his expression instantly froze.

"Where's my takeout?"

Leonard thought of Penny's casual grab just now.

His tone was shocked.

"Leonard, Leonard, I told you before that you needed to buy three portions of takeout. You can choose not to believe in mathematics or me, but you really should believe that our neighbor will consistently perform as expected." Sheldon kept poking around in his takeout container with his fork, not taking a single bite for a long time, his tone pitying.

Leonard was extremely helpless.

But he was still somewhat stubborn. "This is all part of my plan. Penny will eventually develop a dependency on my takeout and won't be able to leave me, ultimately marrying me."

Such was the fantasy of a homebody.

Leonard became completely excited.

"Look, this is the opportunity she left me." He noticed Penny's phone left on the table, quickly grabbed it proudly, and rushed toward the apartment door.

Just reaching the hallway, Leonard saw Penny still standing by the door for some unknown reason.

Could she be waiting for me?

With this thought, Leonard hurried forward.

"Bu bu bu..."

Penny stood frozen in place as if being stared at by Medusa, her lips trembling, continuously repeating the same syllable.

"Bu what?"

Leonard walked up to Penny in confusion.

And then.

"Bu bu bu..."

He also became a repeater machine.

Both of them stammered in very synchronized tones.

"Leonard!"

Sheldon also rushed out in a panic.

"This is terrible! My computer is ruined! That comic artist's computer was full of viruses! He might really be a genius! He predicted my prediction in advance, causing my computer to be completely destroyed!"

Sheldon's tone was dejected.

He discovered both friends standing stiffly in the hallway.

Before Sheldon could ask questions.

"What comic artist are you talking about?" Bruce Wayne, dressed in a suit and tie with the bearing of a successful businessman and extremely noble temperament, moved from in front of the two people to beside them.

Sheldon's eyes immediately went straight.

"Bruce Wayne!"

He managed a complete exclamation.

However, this might have used up all his strength.

"Oh God"

The atheist Sheldon rolled his eyes back and fell straight backward. True to the saying about the ship of friendship, Leonard and Penny snapped back to their senses and frantically caught the theoretical physicist. Then all three of them capsized together, sitting on the hallway floor in a bizarre position.

"Sorry."

Leonard didn't know why he was apologizing to Bruce.

"Um, sorry."

Penny also didn't know why she was following along with the apology. Mainly because both their brains were still blank, unable to believe they would see a global-level billionaire in such a low-rent apartment.

"Won't you invite me in to sit?"

Bruce was speechless inside but still smiled on the surface. Upon hearing this, Leonard and Penny quickly nodded, frantically standing up and carrying Sheldon toward the apartment door like stretcher bearers.

"Please come in!"

Penny didn't forget to poke her head out and address Bruce.

In the living room, Bruce elegantly avoided the scattered Star Wars figurines on the floor, his gaze lingering on the wall full of comic posters while Leonard nervously trembled like a student facing the principal.

His hands shook as he served coffee.

"So, Ian Kent, my nephew, is he planning to hire you two?" Bruce politely accepted the coffee, placed it on the table, then got straight to the point.

His gaze moved from Leonard to the unconscious Sheldon on the sofa.

"Isn't there room for me in this?"

Penny couldn't help but interject. This was her first time seeing a living top-tier capitalist, so she appeared restless and wanted to find some humor to ease the tense atmosphere.

"No."

Bruce looked at the girl and responded seriously.

"Um..."

Penny felt pressured and stepped back several steps. "Really... Actually, I'm very good at cleaning. No matter how high-end the company, they should need excellent janitors, right?"

She smiled awkwardly.

"Not needed."

Bruce's response was brief and clear.

He didn't know why he thought of the sterile female janitor from Ian's other novel. He felt he might really be getting mentally unstable from that kind of thing lately.

"Alright."

Penny scratched her intensely itchy scalp and awkwardly retreated to a corner. She felt she was somewhat humiliating herself, her mood was complex, feeling like she was the odd one out in this room, like a clown.

Thinking this way, when she noticed Bruce looking at her a few more times, Penny didn't think it was her charm at work. She just felt this world was so crazy it seemed unreal.

Who could have imagined?

Her neighbor's encounter with a boastful little boy turned out to be true, and there really was billionaire Bruce Wayne seeking them out. This probability was comparable to walking down the street and getting hit by a meteorite.

The more Penny thought about it, the more dreamlike it seemed.

Leonard felt the same way.

"Yes... sir, Mr. Kent did say he was willing to offer Sheldon and me new jobs, but..." The dazed Leonard hadn't finished speaking.

"Very good."

Bruce nodded and interrupted him.

"Accept my nephew's offer."

The old-money capitalist spoke with utmost seriousness.

"So this is official employment from Wayne Enterprises?" Leonard cautiously probed. Like Penny, he found the situation dreamlike and couldn't help secretly pinching his thigh.

"You can consider it my personal additional employment." Bruce corrected his statement. He needed someone who could keep an eye on whether the alien technology Ian might still be hiding was safe enough.

"Additional employment?"

Leonard's mind immediately played out the complete Mission: Impossible storyline. "Are we commercial spies? This would be quite different from our university work, wouldn't it?"

He was having second thoughts. No matter what, Leonard really didn't want to give up his university job. After all, scientific research wasn't just for career advancement but also for benefiting all humanity.

Just as Leonard was feeling proud of himself.

"The average annual salary for American university professors is two hundred thousand dollars, and I'll give you five hundred thousand dollars annually. This doesn't even count what Ian Kent will pay you."

Bruce unleashed his most unbeatable superpower on this planet: money.

Just a slight effort was enough to leave the poor Leonard stunned.

"Five hundred thousand!?"

The scientist with scientific aspirations was impacted by money. His and Sheldon's salaries weren't actually low, but the student loans they had to repay were definitely not small amounts either.

In America, the higher the degree, the more money one had to pay. This was the free American capitalist market, where most high-salary professionals had to use most of their income in the first twenty years to repay student loans.

"This... this..."

Leonard's heart began to waver.

And Penny, having heard such a salary promise, provided an assist.

"Oh my God! Leonard, you're really going to get rich! You'll become the wealthiest... nerds I know!" Penny's timely exclamation was like a shot of adrenaline.

"The wealthiest nerds?"

Leonard seemed to feel his masculine competitiveness awakening. What scientific ideals, what human future, it was all nonsense. Being able to reproduce was humanity's most essential mission!

"Don't worry, Mr. Wayne, Sheldon and I are best at being commercial spies!" Leonard directly took off his glasses and made a firm promise to Bruce.

Just then.

"Leonard! Leonard!" Sheldon suddenly bounced up from the sofa like a frog hit by electricity. "I had a dream! I dreamed I met Bruce Wayne!"

"Then I fainted from too much excitement!" He first looked at his roommate, then followed his roommate's gaze to see Bruce sitting in his peripheral blind spot.

"So it wasn't a dream, oh my Groundhog Day~" After saying this, Sheldon fainted again, his nonsensical performance making Leonard very embarrassed.

"Perhaps only I'm suitable..."

Leonard coughed guiltily twice, touching his somewhat embarrassed face. Bruce couldn't help but internally complain that the abnormal Ian was seeking out equally abnormal scientists.

"Not commercial spies."

Of course, on the surface Bruce maintained his elegance, pretending to ignore this farce. He chose his words carefully. "It's more like I'm looking for two caretakers for my nephew."

This was the truth.

After all, Batman couldn't constantly monitor a little boy in Metropolis. Therefore, Bruce needed these two scientists Ian had targeted to watch over Ian for him, to avoid situations that neither he nor Clark would want to see happen.

Bruce would also arrange to place other more reliable scientists with Ian.

But having two more people didn't matter.

"Caretakers?"

Leonard didn't quite understand.

"Also known as babysitters."

Penny explained quietly from the side. She felt this world was too absurd. Who would spend a million dollars annually just to hire playmate babysitters for a child?

"But Mr. Wayne, Sheldon and I are people with scientific aspirations..." Leonard, having come to his senses, began wavering. His last bit of stubbornness was making a dying struggle.

In response, Bruce calmly pulled out two checks from his inner suit pocket and lightly placed them on the tea table piled with comic books.

"This is settling-in money."

Bruce stood up and straightened his suit, the sound of fabric rustling carrying the texture of money. "And who says you can't continue conducting cutting-edge scientific research?"

He gave Leonard a mysterious smile.

Technology that could blow up Earth wasn't cutting-edge enough, so what would be?

"There's really research?"

Leonard's eyes widened.

"Oh! Oh my God, Leonard, you can move into a mansion... That's the life I only have in dreams." The numbers on the checks made Penny gasp.

She was simply expressing her genuine shock.

But the romantically confused Leonard felt he had detected the essential elements.

"Done! Being a babysitter it is!"

He became determined again.

"Your assist was good."

Bruce pulled out several bills and stuffed them into Penny's hands as thanks. He turned back with a smile and glanced at Sheldon, still unconscious on the sofa.

"Someone will come to convince him."

Leaving these words, Bruce put down the coffee he hadn't touched and got up to leave.

"Are you leaving already?"

Leonard and Penny hurried to see him out very enthusiastically.

The Einstein on the living room wall quietly witnessed this scene.

Another scientist corrupted by capitalism.

Just like him.

...

Gotham's rain always carried the scent of rusty iron.

Metropolis's rain smelled like diluted lemon cleaner.

Alfred stood under the apartment building holding a black umbrella.

The tilted angle of the umbrella allowed rainwater to flow along the creases of Gotham's richest man's custom suit without wetting this particular rich man's immaculate hairstyle.

"Back to Gotham, Master?"

The old butler asked as he opened the car door, his voice carrying the calm of someone who had seen through everything.

Although he was already quite elderly, and Bruce was already middle-aged and had become a father himself, his way of addressing Bruce remained unchanged.

"Not tonight." Bruce loosened his tie and casually threw the remaining two pounds of the ten-pound surveillance equipment he had secretly brought into the apartment building to one side.

"Ian Kent is still a student. He can't fly, and has only just begun awakening his abilities, so his secret base must be somewhere in Metropolis."

Bruce made a reasonable analysis. Yes, he had earlier had his epiphany at Ian's house because he felt he had grasped an important clue.

What Omni-machine God, wasn't that just artificial intelligence?

That was completely similar to Superman's childhood experiences!

Previously, Bruce felt he had seen through everything precisely because he had made the connection to information about Clark.

It was incredibly similar.

This was also why he suddenly returned everything to Ian, because he had realized that Ian, like Clark, might have a lonely fortress that didn't belong to Earth!

"I can see you're very concerned about young Mr. Kent."

Alfred saw the gleam in his master's eyes through the rearview mirror, that excitement he knew all too well when discovering new puzzles.

"So will young Mr. Kent be going to Arkham?" The butler was actually curious about this too, having also read Batman's psychological evaluation report on Ian.

"Why do you think I would reward him? Arkham doesn't need to welcome its second king." Bruce didn't look up, his fingers sliding rapidly on the car's computer.

The neon lights outside the window cast flowing colors on Bruce's face.

"Might young Mr. Kent also be from Krypton?" Alfred drove steadily. He always chatted with Bruce and would start conversations when opportunities arose.

As someone close to Bruce, no one knew better than him that his master was Gotham's biggest mental patient.

"If it were only that situation, I'd be very happy to see it. But the situation might be even more incredible and complex." Bruce kept his head down, continuously scrolling on the tablet.

"What ability is he awakening... Soon, we might know the answer." Bruce's tablet displayed secretly photographed images of Sentry comics and even Homelander comics.

The Sentry's shattered golden battle suit, Homelander's twisted smile. Being enthusiastic about creating such works, Bruce felt Ian definitely wasn't just greedy for money or passionate about creation.

He believed he had grasped the key to the problem and was approaching the covered truth about Ian Kent.

"Is it really possible to draw power from fantasy..." Bruce felt he had grasped key information, but even he found this guess too absurd.

Of course, absurd didn't mean impossible.

That's why he needed to wait for time's verification.

"Start by searching for his secret base near his school."

The sedan rolled through puddles.

Bruce made his nighttime "combat" plan very carefully.

However, no one could say for certain whether he was just making excuses for himself to temporarily escape the nightmares he would continue experiencing after returning to Gotham.

[NEXT CHAPTER]