superbat in an animal-person AU
Polar Bear Clark x Black Panther Bruce.
1️⃣ This world is animal-person only, with no humans. Although they look quite similar, food and animal-people are different species, so there are no moral implications.This means the two can happily enjoy an all-you-can-eat fish buffet in the Arctic, then give Arthur a holographic call to hear his mission updates. There are no dark humor elements to this! It's totally feasible! None of the Sea King's subjects are being treated as their buffet!
2️⃣ Cross-species hybrids are allowed, so there's a chance for new species to appear (like Arthur—him again. He's a merlion, but he's not a Singaporean; I just think it fits perfectly, matching both the lion symbolism for King Arthur and having a fish tail).
3️⃣ Superman is an alien species—hard to say if he's really a polar bear, because he's larger than actual polar bears and significantly stockier than other polar bear-people. Let's just call him a white-furred Kryptonian giant hamster, since his ID says Rodentia family.The Kents are field mice—two tiny ones who can sit side by side on Clark's head. When they first found Clark, the cub was already nearly half the size of their house, but he was so adorable they claimed him as their biological child, just with surprisingly remarkable growth.After all, in a hybrid animal-person world, some genetic variation is normal, right? Maybe one of the Kents carried recessive giant bear genes? The simple small-town folks bought it.
But because of his size, he couldn't even join the football team in high school or college—there was no team in their small town that could accommodate someone his build. Poor Clark.
By the way, since Clark's ID says Rodentia, when Bruce first received an interview invitation from the Daily Planet and looked him up, seeing "Rodentia" plus that fluffy, chubby-cheeked ID photo (which didn't show his actual size), he genuinely expected a round little hamster reporter. He nearly got startled into puffing up his fur (not that he'd ever admit it).
4️⃣ The Wayne family is a fairly well-known big cat family—Thomas is a black panther, Alfred is a British Shorthair.Martha's family primarily consists of big cats, but they have some octopus genes mixed in (hybrids are allowed, after all), giving them a slightly eerie Cthulhu-esque quality that aligns with some interpretations of Martha having psychological issues. This is mainly to connect to Bruce's dark, tentacled bat cape.But for Bruce, it's actually quite useful—everyone knows Bruce is a black panther, but as Batman, many people are certain he has tentacles and must be some sea creature that crawled up from Gotham Bay!
And because Alfred is genuinely a small cat, Bruce, who was raised by Alfred as a kitten, sometimes unconsciously acts like one—like trying to climb onto Clark's keyboard to stretch (deliberately).
