Justice League Unlimited: Wonders Within
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
SPOILER WARNING: The story contains a number of pretextual references to subplots within several episodes of Season 1 of the TV cartoon serieses "Justice League" and "Justice League Unlimited" and "Batman the Animated Series". If you have not seen the serieses, and do not want to have any of the TV plots revealed, do not read the story until you have seen the series.
I have also precid material from the DC Comics Secret Origins (1980s series) #8 (Dollman's origin) and Legionnaires#52 (Leviathan's later origin). Again, if you don't want to know these details before reading the comics, then hold off on reading this tale.
The overall plot of this story is entirely my own. I also created the character Avontha.
CIVIC SIEGE
Batman had played the hard nosed vigilante for so long, that he didn't know what to do about his feelings for Wonder Woman. He had enlisted the help of Zatanna to save her from Circe's magic. Somehow Wonder Woman had known of Batman's involvement in her rescue.
He had seen the troubles in the relationship between John Stewart the Green Lantern and Shayera the Hawkgirl.
Diana had super powers which put her almost on even ground with Superman. Batman had fought criminals for years, mainly Gotham City's criminals with no super powers either. There had been Ras Al Gul, who could rejuvenate his body well after a normal human being's lifespan. There had been Clayface and Mr Freeze and Killer Croc and one or two others, but most of his rogues gallery were non-super powered human beings like himself.
Until he joined the Justice League. Since then he had thrown fewer punches, and counted on his gadgetry and scientific expertise more and more in order to hold his own against a variety of super villains. His keen mind had enabled him to be the key instrument in saving the rest of the League on a number of occasions. Now he had just recently saved Wonder Woman too, rather than the other way around. Yet she had lived for much longer than him, and looked no older.
So Bruce walked away. He left Wonder Woman in the corridor of the Justice League satellite, known as the Watchtower. He took the teleporter back to Earth, and called upon Alfred, to see what was happening in Gotham City.
Nothing significant happened in Gotham for a while. Before long, Batman found himself involved with the Justice League again, on a number of cases, the most startling of which was the matter of the Dark Heart: an alien opponent with the ability to reproduce itself. The Atom had been the key to defeating it, having gone inside to shut it down, while the rest of the team fought it outside.
Then Batman again returned to Gotham. It had been like that, ever since the League started. He would alternate his time not just between Batman's Gotham Patrols and Bruce Wayne's corporate life; but now also fit the League into his schedule. He had set himself up as a part-time Leaguer in the first place, having donated the Watchtower as part of his contribution to the founding of the team. Of late the original seven members had welcomed countless new recruits onto the team.
He went to bed in Wayne Manor and caught up on some much needed sleep. When he finally awoke and enjoyed a good meal, he was ready for action.
He didn't have long to wait. He turned on the television to watch an old movie, and was soon met with an interruption: a news break.
"This is Summer Gleason with a special news update. Bane has recruited several of Gotham's most notorious outlaws and laid siege to police headquarters…"
Bruce was out of the room, before she started the next sentence. He had little chance of surprising them in the Batmobile. He took the Batwing and headed for the police building. When he drew near, he engaged the autopilot, and ejected with his hang-glider, and landed on top of the police building.
He was just removing his hang-glider, when a hulking man stepped out from behind the Batsignal: Bane.
"I knew you'd attempt to land on this roof, if I stayed out of sight. Don't expect any help from Gotham's finest. They're all otherwise occupied with gas bombs and every other weapon used against them by my underlings," said Bane, "So now it's just between us."
Bane lunged at him.
Batman jumped to the side, and landed on one foot, spun and launched a side kick with his other foot. Bane hardly even felt it.
"You seem distracted," said Bane, after several blows had been exchanged.
Bruce winced behind his mask. He knew that his opponent was right. His timing and concentration had been all off in this fight. He was thinking about Wonder Woman; Diana. She had been going around and around in his head.
THE ATOM AND THE AMAZON
Ray Palmer had also been thinking a lot of Diana. The day the Justice League had welcomed in dozens of new members, the Atom had sat on Wonder Woman's shoulder. Superman had been saying something about Martian Manhunter coordinating all of their efforts from now on. Ray wished he could have been alone with Wonder Woman, with nobody else watching. He had admired her incredible beauty.
That had been months ago. More recently the Dark Heart had attacked in the dessert, and Ray had been called upon to stop it. To his delight, Wonder Woman had carried him towards the Dark Heart. When she drew closer, the Dark Heart's defences began to attack her.
Quickly, holding him right in front of her face, Diana had spoken to him, something about needing both hands free.
Then, as if there had been no special connotation to it, Diana had placed Ray somewhere that would allow her to fight off the Dark Heart's technological attack, without risking squeezing him to death in her powerful Amazonian fingers. Many of the female characters in the Justice League looked like midgets, as if they had been drawn by artists who had gone out of their way to exaggerate the differences between men's and women's bodies. However, Diana was an Amazon, tall as a man and incredibly attractive.
Ray had responded by reducing his size a little more, so that his new position completely protected him from any flying debris, as the Amazon had waded into battle.
All of this was fresh in his mind. He had been unable to truly savour it at the time, as he had been about to enter the Dark Heart and take on a revolting job. When he emerged from it, he could not even have expected a kiss of gratitude from Diana, as he was covered in the revolting fluid from the Dark Heart.
Now he could not get Wonder Woman out of his mind. He went to her room in the Watchtower, knocked on her door, and waited for the answer. Diana came to the door.
"Ray!" she said, "Come in."
She closed the door, and sat on her bed, offering him a spot beside her.
"Diana, I haven't really had a chance to talk with you, since the Dark Heart. I don't even know if I should be presuming to do so, but I've been … well caught up in thoughts of what happened as we were approaching the Dark Heart."
Diana blushed.
"It was the best place I could think of to put you at the time," she said.
"I know. I understood that. I just wondered if… Well, I mean, it was a very special experience for me, and one I couldn't really fully appreciate at the time, given the danger we all faced. I was wondering if you might like to … do it again, here, privately."
"Have you ever done it with anyone else?"
"No Diana. I never thought a woman would offer, the way you did in the midst of a crisis. Besides, I'm so glad it was you who did. I don't think I'd have liked it as much with anyone else," said Ray.
"You're sweet, and you saved us all that day. I'd like to do what you suggested," she said.
"Here goes," said Ray, and activated the size and weight controls on his belt. The unique white dwarf star energy reduced Ray Palmer to his usual six inch size
Ray climbed onto Diana's hand. She lifted him up and sat on her bed, leaning against the pillows and placed him on top of her left shoulder.
"You enjoyed sitting there too the day we met, didn't you?" she asked.
"And I thought only the Martian could read minds," said Ray, "Let's hope he doesn't look into either of our minds at the moment."
Diana turned her head and kissed him. It was magnificent. Both of them were on their own time. There were no immediate threats calling for Justice League attention. For hours, the tiny titan enjoyed romancing the Amazon Princess.
CUPID THE BUTLER
"Emergency. Wonder Woman to Gotham City," came the Martian Manhunter's voice over the speaker, "Monitors indicate Batman in need of assistance."
"I'm sorry Ray, I have to go," said Wonder Woman.
She ran to the teleporter and was sent directly to the top of the Gotham City police building. Batman had been knocked unconscious. Bane was about to foot stomp the Dark Knight into the ground.
Wonder Woman flew at him, not even bothering to attempt to remove his venom tubes. She did not know of this weakness. She fought the full strength Bane. Seeing Bruce lying wounded like that had enraged her, and Bruce had recently rescued her from Circe.
Wonder Woman was winning. Soon she had Bane on the ground, but he was struggling, and then she noticed a dark blue glove. The Batman had regained consciousness and crawled over. He pulled at some tubes attached to the back of Bane's costume, and they came loose.
As the Dark Knight passed out again, Wonder Woman was startled to see Bane's muscular frame literally receding into a smaller physique. So it had been chemically induced, and Bruce had known how to stop it. She pulled out the other ends of the tubes, and used them to tie Bane's wrists and ankles.
Then she went down and played bullets and bracelets with a number of costumed hoods, before snaring a few in her lasso. As soon as Commissioner Gordon and Harvery Bullock had regained control of the building and taken the villains (Bane included) into custody, Diana picked up Batman in her arms and flew him to Wayne Manor. She had been there once, when the League had been outlawed by the Thanagarians. She filled Alfred in on what had happened, and he went to the Batcave to recall the Batwing by remote control.
Bruce was completely out of it. Alfred put him to bed and offered Diana some tea.
"I'm sure the master will be very grateful. You saved his life, Princess."
"Why is he so closed to me, Alfred?" she said, and told him of the cold reactions she'd had from Bruce after their adventure with Etrigan, "He said something cryptic like 'I haven't been a kid since I was 8 years old'."
"Princess, Master Bruce has probably never told you why he became the Batman. His parents were murdered by a street thug with a gun, when the three of them were coming out of the cinema. He was only 8 years old. He swore to wage war on all criminals, often without the support of the police."
"Hasn't he ever had a serious relationship though?"
"There was a Miss Andrea Beaumont. They met while he was still in training to become the Batman. He almost abandoned his Dark Knight plans, until she abandoned him, to go on the run from the mob. By the time he saw her again, she had become an excessively vindictive extension of the Batman, homicidal. Then there was Selina Kyle, the Catwoman, but she loved only the Batman, not Bruce Wayne; and in the end, she loved crime more. The Master told me how you danced with him as Bruce Wayne in Paris, before you guessed his dual identity. You may be just what he needs, if he could only admit it to himself."
Diana wondered. It had not escaped her notice, that Bruce had always been trying to prove himself in some contest of value with Superman. The friendship between the Dark Knight and the Man of Steel had been somewhat loosely defined. How would Batman take to having been saved by her, and the whole case wrapped up by her, while he was unconscious?
"Maybe I'd better go," she said.
"I'll tell him what happened," said Alfred.
Wonder Woman returned to the Watchtower.
WONDER WOMAN'S CHOICE
She found the tiny Ray Palmer still asleep on her bed. He looked so sweet, and he was so accommodating. Not only did he have none of Bruce's barriers of resistance to a relationship. He had shown the courage to approach her himself, about the most potentially embarrassing of experiences they had shared, and spell out his desires. He was cute, but could he be as much to her as Bruce? She lowered her lips to his face and kissed him.
Ray awoke.
"Diana… Everything OK in Gotham?"
She didn't want to tell him about Bruce. She was still making up her mind about both of them, while Bruce was thinking goodness knows what about her. Her only advantage was knowing that Ray's feelings were fairly certain.
"There was one super villain and a number of ordinairy criminals. Things were under control when I left," said Diana.
She lay down and kissed the tiny mite again. It was a turn-on to her, but she wondered what he'd be like at full size.
"Ray, do you feel like returning my kiss, at your full size?" she asked.
Ray restored his size, removed his mask and embraced and kissed Wonder Woman.
Diana had lived for many years longer than either Bruce or Ray. She had briefly had an affair with Steve Trevor back in the 1940s, at a time when she had crossed her own timeline, when the League had travelled back to World War II, to reverse the damage done to the timeline by Vandal Savage. Her younger self (younger in age, if not visually) had been unaware that her 2002 self had returned to the 1940s.
Now she was in the comforts of her bedroom in the Watchtower, with Ray Palmer pressed against her body. It felt nice. Had she never met Batman, she would no doubt have considered Ray the man for her, but the Atom did not know that he was second place in her thoughts, while Bruce seemed to prefer his grim role of retribution on the less morally upright examples of human society.
They returned to her bed and snuggled together, kissing passionately for a long time. Weeks went by, and Wonder Woman continued to see the Atom. Sometimes he was at tiny size. Other times he was at his full height. Using her invisible plane, and the Justice League teleporter, they were able to date in every town in the world.
Then one day Diana was surprised. Batman approached her after a mission and asked her if she would like to come over to Wayne Manor for dinner. Diana came up with an excuse for Ray, and attended in her best dress, making sure that the world at large didn't know she was visiting Bruce Wayne.
Bruce was looking decidedly dapper in one of his expensive suits. Alfred showed her to the table and then went to serve their meal. After they'd finished eating, Bruce asked her to dance.
"I wanted to thank you. Apart from a few occasions with you and Superman, I'm not used to being helped."
So this was it. Bruce was just paying his debt. Well if he wouldn't reciprocate her feelings, then maybe she did love Ray more. At least she had the option.
"Thank J'Onn J'Onzz too. He sent me."
"I did."
Bruce held her more closely and Diana kissed him. Then she knew. It wasn't this loving gentleman who had kept her at a distance. It was the boy who had been traumatized as a child and misled by two women as an adult. That boy had finally given the gentleman a chance to come out.
They spent the night together in Wayne Manor, and then Batman was called for Watchtower duty.
Wonder Woman knew she had to give Ray some closure.
She knew he was in his laboratory, working as Ray Palmer.
She called on him in civilian clothes.
"Ray, I do love you, but I love someone else just a little bit more. For so long he seemed to be completely disinterested, but then he just asked me on a date, and I accepted. I enjoyed being with you, but I can't continue. I'm sorry I've hurt you with this news."
ENTER TALIA
Diana and Bruce were lying in bed one night in Wayne Manor, when Talia simply walked in on them. She was the daughter of Ras Al Gul, a global crime leader who had lived for 600 years.
"You and your father never really did learn to knock on the front door," said Bruce, recalling the first time Ras Al Gul and his huge servant Ubu had first broken into the Batcave after deducing Batman's secret identity shortly after Talia had first unmasked him.
"I have left my father, beloved, though it seems I am too late," said Talia.
"I'll get you some tea," said Bruce, thinking that this development was bad enough, without having Alfred around to witness it while pouring tea that Bruce could make himself.
Bruce climbed off the bed and threw his dressing gown over his pyjamas. Diana did the same, and followed Bruce to the kitchen, with Talia close behind her.
It was awkward as they sat on the lounge room couches, drinking their tea. Diana was wondering why Alfred's litany (of Batman's attempts at relationships) had never included any mention of Talia.
Their tea was interrupted by Alfred entering the lounge room like a harbinger of bad news.
"Sorry Sir, but Commissioner Gordon's calling for Batman. Apparently the Mad Hatter and the Riddler have formed an unlikely alliance and are holding Judge Vargas hostage."
Bruce was still keen to avoid any reliance on Wonder Woman. He had defeated Bane without help once. With his mind distracted by thoughts of Diana, the last time he'd fought Bane, it made sense that she came to his rescue with her super powers to match or exceed Bane's strength. However, Bruce didn't want his girlfriend to make a regular habit of treading on his territory. Then again, he thought, maybe she'd make the job much quicker and leave me more time to be with her.
In this case, he was facing two of his least powerful foes, and he thought that Talia and Diana would do well to have some time together to sort out their issues in what seemed to be a contest for his attention.
"I'll go alone," said Bruce, "Offer the ladies every convenience, Alfred."
Then, as he had done many times before, Bruce descended promptly into the Batcave to continue making a bizarre gothic fashion statement…
Horror of horrors.
Looks like a cat-fight is approaching, and without Catwoman.
Will Wonder Woman and Talia bond?
Does Judge Vargas even care?
For the answers to these and other satirical questions, stay tuned in the next paragraph.
Same Bat-story. Same Bat-Fan Fiction.
TALIA PLAYS THE GAME / DIANA STAKES HER CLAIM.
"You're not very subtle, are you?" asked Diana.
"Says the pot to the kettle," countered Talia, "I've kept in the Shadows (or Society thereof) for a long time. Anyone can identify a woman like yourself, who flies around in her swimsuit on Justice League business."
"Well I've only done that in recent years. I've been around for centuries," said Wonder Woman.
"Really? I'm surprised we never met. I'm 403 next month," said Talia.
"How can that be possible? You're not an Amazon," said Wonder Woman.
"Bruce has obviously never told you about my father's Lazarus pits," said Talia, trying to gain some pleasure from pointing out that she was privy to Batman secrets that had never been shared with Wonder Woman, "Although Father and I never even told Bruce that I was actually born relatively early in Father's 600 years of life. I've used the pits to rejuvenate my own youth several times."
"Well at least with me, he knows he's getting a much older woman," said Wonder Woman.
"He seems to have chosen you after years of resisting me," said Talia, "I'd better go."
So that was why Alfred hadn't mentioned her. Talia loved Bruce, but something (presumably Batman's war with her father) had prevented him from reciprocating. Diana smiled. She had faced the ultimate test. Talia had abandoned her father's cause for Bruce. Yet he still preferred Diana. He was all hers now.
She wondered if he'd have made the same choice, if Bruce had known about her involvement with the Atom. She returned to Bruce's bed, and lay down and wondered if she should tell him. He had taken a long time to respond to her advances. Wonder Woman had made all the first moves. Most men on earth, even most super heroes would have found that an incredible turn on. The Atom had made the first move with her, or had she done it herself, when she'd positioned him in that spot as they'd approached the Dark Heart.
Had she felt anything for the Atom, when she'd done that? Had she guessed how much he would have enjoyed it? It was only a spur of the moment decision in the heat of battle. She couldn't think what else she would have done with him. Oh well, he had enjoyed it and initiated their time together. Now he was out of the picture, and Batman was her true love.
Let sleeping Bats and Atoms lie, she decided.