Justice League: The Heir of Hecate

Safe?

By the time Superman had arrived at the Batcave, Luke had begun to profusely sweat, his muscles twitching and jerking. Bruce and Alfred met Superman at the entrance to the subterranean lair and directed him to the infirmary, where Cyborg had just finished prepping the monitoring equipment.

"This is the kid from the exhibition," Bruce said, never one to miss a detail. Dressed in black slacks, he wore a white button down with the sleeves rolled up his forearms. "The one who hugged you."

Clark nodded his head but ignored the last part of the statement.

"Do you happen to know what poisoned him?" Alfred asked. He used a pair of scissors to cut Luke's Justice League shirt open to get a better look at the wound. A horrible puncture surrounded by the beginning g of a nasty bruise greeted his eyes and he winced sympathetically.

Clark shook his head, still not believing what he'd seen. "It was some kind of lion."

Alfred and Bruce looked up at him with matching scowls; Cyborg merely lifted an eyebrow.

"A lion?" Alfred asked.

"With a man's face, dragon wings and a scorpion's tail," Clark added, his tone implying that he knew how ridiculous it sounded.

Bruce looked at him with a deadpan expression. "You're saying a manticore attacked him."

"Maybe?" Clark said in an uncertain tone.

"That's impossible," Bruce sighed.

"Stranger things have certainly happened before, Master Bruce," Alfred murmured. He was dabbing at the wound, attempting to stop the bleeding. "Such as that time you teamed up with an Amazon, Kryptonian, Atlantean, human-cyborg hybrid and a superhuman speedster to save the planet from an alien invasion?"

Bruce looked over at Alfred and shrugged. "Point taken. But I don't think the infirmary is equipped to treat...manticore poisoning."

Alfred reached for the adjacent table of medical tools. "If the appendage that struck the boy was, indeed, that of a scorpion then this anti-venom may work."

Clark watched Alfred as he started a flawless intravenous line in Luke's inner arm. Then, after flushing the line to insure proper placement, he grabbed a vial of clear fluid and drew some into syringe before promptly pushing it into the IV. Cyborg, meanwhile, had attached various monitoring devices to the boy- a pulse oximeter and electrocardiogram leads.

"Vital signs are a little touchy," Cyborg said, looking up at the screens. "His blood pressure is elevated and his oxygen saturation is low. He's feverish."

"Once the anti-venom circulates he should stabilize," Alfred hopefully predicted.

"If a manticore sting is even treatable," Bruce added in a doubtful voice.

The four of them watched Luke and the screen closely. The muscle twitches were starting to subside and his fever had broken. Slowly, the heart rate and blood pressure began to descend to normal values and he appeared to be resting peacefully.

"Well, it's nice to know that we're equipped to handle something as obscure as a manticore attack," Alfred sighed.

"But now we need to solve another mystery," Bruce said in a serious voice. "Why was a manticore attacking him in the first place?"

Clark stared at the boy. "He was flying through Metropolis just before the attack."

Bruce lifted an eyebrow. "Flying?

Clark nodded his head.

"Victor- gather any data you can on him," Bruce ordered.

Cyborg acquired instant access to databases that would give any computer wizard bad day and began to sort through every piece of data he could locate regarding Luke.