A/N: I'm trying to make this one of my best stories, so all reviews are very much welcome. Not sure how often I'll be able to update, but if i notice there's interest in it, I'll try and get it done faster. All in all, hope you enjoy it!
"How come you're coming to this battle, J'onn?" Flash asks as he follows his flying friend over various obstacles.
"Superman took over my shift. He told me I need to get some workout" the Martian replies calmly.
"So who are we taking on this time?"
"I don't know. We only found out about this location when they asked for help. It is likely a secret military research facility."
"Not even Batman knew about it?"
"I wouldn't know, Flash."
"Well, I see someone who might. Come to join the fight, Wonder Woman?" Flash greets the approaching Amazon enthusiastically as always.
"Wouldn't miss it, Flash. Who are we going to be fighting?" Diana replies.
"We don't know. We were kind of hoping you could fill us in on the details or at the very least where we are headed."
"Why would you think I would know more than you?"
"Because of that ring on your finger" Flash answers with a smile.
Diana looks at her wedding ring with a blissful smile before answering. "Batman doesn't know much about the military installation we're headed towards. He only managed to find the blueprints of the layout of the base, but couldn't find anything about the underground research facilities."
"Are you sure that's all he knows?" the Flash asks skeptically.
"Of course. I make him tell me everything. He's coming to aid us precisely because of that lack of information" Diana exclaims almost proudly and receives a significant look from her comrades.
"So, when we want to find out what he won't tell us, we turn to you, Wondy?" Flash asks, grinning satisfactory.
"Unfortunately, no. He made me promise to keep things a secret and not tell anyone" Diana explains with a slight annoyed expression. Her two teammates throw her a questioning look.
"The sneaky bastard has ways of getting what he wants" Diana replies to their unspoken question.
"We're almost there. We should see the base very soon" the Martian Man hunter warns. However, the warning didn't prepare them for the sight that awaited them as soon as they arrived.
The base is torn apart. There are destroyed vehicles and the corpses and body parts of the soldiers are lying around everywhere in pools of blood. The sight hits the Flash a lot harsher than it does Wonder Woman or the Martian Man hunter.
"Oh my God. Who or what did this?" Flash exclaims in recovering from the initial shock.
"That's what we're here to find out, Wally" Diana tries to snap him out of it and give him courage.
They wanted to look for any possible survivors, but they were very aware that there were none so they decide to go look for the culprit. The busted down several ton heavy doors that lead into what seems like an underground bunker seem like a good lead. They enter and follow a trail of destruction several levels underground.
When the blood trails ended, they found themselves in a poorly lighted room, looking at an unfamiliar figure clad in a black metallic suit with non-reflective steel gauntlets, shoulder pads, chest piece and boots standing at the doors of a vault. He is also unexpectedly youthful.
"And what do you call yourself?" Flash asks him sternly.
"Hmm?" the man reacts to their presence with unhidden surprise. "Oh, it's you. Don't you have something better to do than stand around here? You know, catch thieves or whatever you guys do with your time?" The young man's indifference to the horror surrounding him is surprising and disturbing.
"Who are you? Did you kill all these men?" Wonder Woman steps forth, demanding an explanation.
The young man looks around nonchalantly and then returned to the screen he was busy with before. "No. I killed a few dozen, but most of them fell to my servants."
"What servants?" J'onn asks, slightly confused as he senses no other life forms around them.
Suddenly from out of the darkness emerge 34 three meter high, huge and extremely armed robots and point their wrist mounted machineguns at the 3 Leaguers, with only 2 of the robots also pointing rocket propelled grenades mounted on their shoulder. Wonder Woman, Flash and J'onn assume their combat stances.
"So you have a few toys. You still haven't told us who you are or what you want" Wonder Woman states.
"Nor am I going to. I hope you enjoyed this little chat as much as I did. Dreadnoughts, kill them" the young villain orders, with a complete lack of care in his tone.
The robots open fire at the heroes who immediately split up to handle the situation. Diana starts deflecting the bullets with her vambraces, but finds it hard to get an opening to attack any robot alone and positioning herself so that one robot finds itself in the crossfire of the others meant nothing as they were bulletproof.
J'onn tries to faze through one of the robots but is repelled via an electrical shock. He decides to go for a simpler solution and attack the robot, but doesn't get a chance for a follow up hit before having to faze again to not get killed by the other robots fire.
Flash speeds around and manages to give his friends a better tactical position by dropping several robots on their backs. Wonder Woman and Martian Man hunter now had opportunities to take on the robots one at a time without getting caught in the crossfire.
As his friends start taking down the robots one by one, Flash speeds behind the villain.
"We're almost done with your toys. Time for you to give up and go to jail" Flash exclaims as he grabs the villains shoulder.
"Riiight…" the villain replies mockingly and an electric current courses over his body, shocking the speedster of his legs. The villain turns around and laughs at the knocked out hero before stretching his arm out and firing a lightning bolt at the computer console he was studying moments ago.
The door to the vault opens and he enters with 2 of his robots, while the heroes struggle with the rest. As he instructs his robots to retrieve some crates, he feels a hand grabbing his shoulder again.
"You don't learn very fast do you?" he exclaims smugly as he courses his amour with the electric current once more. This time, however, the hand doesn't let go but rather turns him around. As he spins around, his nose is met with a black fist and his chest with the sole of a black boot.
"Oh. It's you" the young villain exclaims from the floor to the dark towering figure of Batman.
As the 2 robots raise their guns at Batman, he stops them. "No. He's mine. Take what we came here for and get out." The robots fly off past Batman, but before he can throw a batarang at either of them the villain kicks him into the wall. Batman dodges the lightning bolt that follows up the hit.
"No one has yet managed to hit me. No one, but you. That makes you a worthy challenge" the villain exclaims with an odd grin on his face. "I take it that suit of yours is insulated. I can fire off lightning strikes of a million volts. I doubt your suit is resistant enough to save you from that" his gauntlets and boots start coursing with a strong current.
The villain jumps into a leaping punch, but is grabbed by the arm and flung over Batman's shoulder into a wall, though the current hurt Batman somewhat. As he falls to the ground he turns his sight back to Batman charging at him and fires off a lightning blast. Batman dodges by rolling to the left and throws a batarang at the villain's forehead.
As the young man grunts, Batman manages to run up to him and places a right punch to his jaw, a knee strike to the abdomen followed by a elbow strike to the head and after he staggers off a little, Batman lands a side kick to the kidney.
After staggering another few steps, the villain regains his stance and hits Batman with a right round kick, misses him with a left punch and gets his left leg grabbed as a result of a failed left snap kick. He finds himself flung through the vault door back into the room where Wonder Woman and the Martian Man hunter were beating down the rest of the robots. He fires a bolt at Batman again, who dodges it by jumping forward and rolling out of the vault. They both regain their stances and start trading attacks, hits and blocks.
Wonder Woman and J'onn managed to take down all of their respective robots aside from one so far. As J'onn leaps at it, the robot surprises him by firing at him with a flamethrower hidden in his left hand and smacks the stunned Martian into the wall with a powerful punch and knocks him out. As it approaches him to finish him off, it is pulled back by Wonder Woman's lasso. As it turns around and stands back up it pulls on the lasso, pulling Wonder Woman towards itself, but as it throws a punch at her she flies up and back down on it whaling on the metal head, denting it more and more. Before she is to land her 7th punch, the robot manages to swat her into a nearby pillar. As Wonder Woman regains her footing, she barely manages to raise her arms to block being hammered by the massive metal fist of the robot and is dropped to her knees.
Again finding himself being flung over Batman's shoulder, the villain now annoyed fires a lightning bolt with both hands at the Dark Knight, who manages to dodge it once more.
"So you can dodge my lightning attacks, but will she be able to?" he grins menacingly at the Batman stretching his arm in the direction of the kneeling Amazon.
"No!" Batman exclaims with a concerned expression on his face as he charges at the villain. He arrives just in time to grab his arm and redirect the lightning bolt away from the woman he loves, but is hurt by the current himself and this time he drops to his knees.
"You 'heroes' are so predictable" he exclaims and proceeds to laugh delightedly as he shocks Batman at point blank.
The agonizing cry of her husband sends chills through her entire body and fills her with a rage she hasn't felt before. She rips the robots hands away and punches the head off before flying at the villain, ramming him and sending him flying to slam into a wall.
She ignores him, not caring to check whether he was knocked out or killed with that attack. She needs to see if her lover, her husband, her Bruce is alright. No pulse, no breath.
"Oh Gods, no. This can't be" her mouth utters desperately as she starts administering CPR.
Seeing the woman powerhouse that just nearly made a stain out of him on the wall preoccupied, the villain checks his power reserves. They are nearly depleted. He can't risk trying to hurt the Amazon. He'll use this chance to get away. He stands up, runs over to the robot she recently demolished, grabs on to the wires in the throat of the wreck of the robot and uses his electric powers to give commands to fly away from there.
"Come on, Bruce! Don't do this! You never give up, don't you dare let this be the first time for that! Breathe!" the Amazon Princess starts getting more desperate the longer she keeps trying to resuscitate her love.
Getting more and more desperate, she starts whacking his chest with both hands, screaming: "Bruce, don't you dare die on me now, or I'll come down to Tartarus after you and beat you up so much, Hades himself will be proud and taking notes!"
After several whacks, his body finally reacts, but instead of breathing in air, his mouth coughs out a thick mist of blood directly in Diana's face. Shocked by that, it takes her a few seconds, but finally she collapses in tears, sobbing on his chest: "Bruce!"