The man looked tired. His hair and clothes were disheveled and he hadn't seen a razor in a long time. He sat in a small cave with a low fire burning. He was speaking into a recorder. "I am among the last surviving members of the human race. In our hubris, we thought ourselves as gods and warred with each other. In doing so, we destroyed our greatest defenders and unknowingly gave our greatest threat the tools to defeat us. Now, we are a dying species. There are nearly none of us left. We thought ourselves to be our own greatest enemy but we were wrong. I create this chronicle in the hopes that another race might learn from our mistakes and save themselves. If you find this message, heed my warning. The data contains the location for my home world. It isn't there for you to find it. It's there so you can avoid it all costs. The only thing that awaits you here is death. I used to be among the ones that protected this world. Now, I'm a remnant of our failure. My name is Bruce Wayne and this is how my people died."
"It started small with a humanoid called General Grodd. He was what we called a villain, our word for those who sought to destroy that which they could not control. He was a sentient member of a species that was an evolutionary cousin to my own and unique in his ability as a member of that species due to an incident giving him human intelligence. He was a member of a secret society and those within that society fought those who sought to maintain order and stability. Grodd could control his own species telepathically and sought to change ours to his own through the use of technological devices so he could exhibit that control over us. He attacked one of our great cities, a place we called Metropolis. Nothing remains of it now. The attack spilled over onto the territory of another of these villains, a man called Lex Luthor. Luthor already had a dislike for Grodd, an occasional rival of his in power struggles within their organization. The action was trivial and one that could have been easily overlooked or addressed by civil negotiation but neither of them wanted that. This gave Luthor the excuse he needed to remove him as a rival. The fight was vicious but swift. Grodd couldn't stand against his rival and ended up dead."
"This event became the flash point that started the war. Emboldened by his victory, Luthor seized upon this to start a movement of like-minded xenophobes. The so called "Humans First" movement started eliminating anyone who was different. Others within his order were the next to fall. Poison Ivy, Brother Blood and many others. Anyone who sought to destroy, change or kill the people Luthor wanted to rule were eliminated. Then the heroes, those opposed to the evil and tyrannous started to disappear. At first it was only those where were different. The first hero to disappear was J'onn J'onnz known as the Martian Manhunter. The Human First movement claimed responsibility calling him a filthy alien and declaring a purge of all non-humans. Then others who were non-human or different went missing or were found dead. The events escalated until a war was being waged. The fighting spread to more than just the super powered. Nations chose sides and unleashed powerful weapons. It gave an excuse for old rivals to renew their hatred, for the greedy to take more land, for the powerful to strike down the weak. Atomic, biological and chemical weapons were loosed upon the world. Those of us who considered ourselves heroes stopped what we could but we were limited in number and couldn't stop it all. The death toll was exorbitant. Demons and magical creatures ran rampant. Monstrosities walked up on the world. Super human clashed against super human. Nation clashed against nation. We were quickly making ourselves an endangered species."
"In the end, there were a few pockets of civilization left and the war of the gods was over. The man who started it, Lex Luthor, had won. He stood on the battlefield triumphant. He struck the killing blow against the greatest of his rivals and the greatest hero the Earth had every had and was the last to fall. He stood victorious, the blood of billions on his hands but he didn't care. He had won. His thirst for power was finally satiated. His victory was pyrrhic but absolute. Then our real enemy came. In our ignorance and arrogance, we failed to look outside ourselves for threats and focused only on the fight. We had fought extraterrestrial threats before and always won. We no longer feared dangers from beyond our own planet. A creature known as Braniac was watching us fight. He was waiting for us to destroy ourselves and eliminate those could stand against him. He had technology well beyond our own and as our heroes and villains died, he took their powers and turned them into his own. We had encountered him before but never like this. He turned our own powers against us and swept across the planet with almost no opposition. We were beaten by our own lack of defense."
"Some of us managed to survive and we will live, for a while. There are not enough of us left to rebuild and even if there were, we can't beat this threat. Not this time. Humanity is dead. There is a single hope for the past but not one that can be undertaken lightly. Lex Luthor, the one who started the war also remains and while he is evil, he is not a man without resources and intellect. Like me, he has survived, hidden in the ruins of our cities, watching, studying, looking for an opportunity and he found it. When we first met after the loss of Earth, we fought but then realized it was pointless. We were part of a dying race and our defeat of each other would do nothing, it would change nothing. Our species has a saying: the enemy of my enemy is my friend and Braniac is everyone's enemy. The powers taken by our enemy were converted to a storage device he calls an exobyte. Luthor has found the location of this store of powers. By itself, this does nothing but he also discovered another secret of great importance. Braniac has opened the Nexus and now Luthor has a plan."
"Our planet is special. At its heart is a Nexus that connects all realities and all timelines. That is why he came. He wasn't here for us or our powers, he was here for the Nexus and now he has it. Luthor believes he can use this to go back into our own past, before he started the war and use the exobytes to create an army of heroes and villains to prepare for Braniac. I don't like this plan but I reluctantly support it. It's a desperate plan for a desperate situation. This isn't without risk but its our only hope. We have a plan and while I'm not thrilled working with my enemy, I put myself aside and work for the good of humanity as I always have. If we fail, our species is dead, nothing but a footnote in the universal story and a few lines of code in Braniac's database."
"If you find this message, it means we failed or if we succeeded, we created a divergent timeline where this occurred anyway and either way Braniac has Earth and has the Nexus. I repeat myself. Do not seek this planet out. Use the coordinates to create a marker to avoid. The Nexus is powerful but Braniac controls it and he cannot be beaten in this timeline. Shore up your defenses, prepare yourself and hope he doesn't come for you." He saved the recording and checked his instruments. The solar flare was starting giving him the temporary window so he launched the probe. It traveled fast, clearing the atmosphere in a minute and then separating into dozens of smaller satellites that quickly left the solar system in different directions.
"Always the hero aren't you Batman. It's not xenophobic to put your own people first" said Lex. He looked up at Lex. "I'm tired of this argument Luthor. We've had it too many times over the years. Let's get this over with" he said. He looked at the Batsuit. It was battered and scarred and he put it on for what might be the last time and they headed towards the exobyte storage facility.
