Flash blinked a couple of times. The room around him was bright. Too bright. Like a surgical room filled with lights and white walls.
He rushed to his feet, ready to flee in less than a millisecond, when he recognized the figures around him. All three his teammates, more specifically Aquaman, Superman and Batman, each of them sitting on the barren floor resting their backs against the just as barren walls. None of them were however in uniform.
"Good, you're up" Batman, or rather Bruce Wayne stated. He was actually still partly suited, wearing the pants and boots of his bat-attire. The shirt, the cape, the cowl and the belt were missing. Almost same story with the other two: Aquaman was wearing only what seemed to be a sheet and Superman was wearing his glasses, boxers and a rope. When Wally had a chance to look down his own body, he noticed he was actually wearing just as little. Only a pair of briefs covered the few most embarrassing parts of his body. But he was wearing tennis socks too, which was something.
"What happened?" he finally asked.
"We were hoping you could tell us" Superman said calmly in a humorous tone he hoped would make his startled friend relax. No need to panic when they were already dumfounded.
"Where are we then? And why are we wearing…"
"Barely anything at all?" Batman offered. Flash wondered why he sat so calmly on the floor. He was not usually a man who would await his faith solemnly. None of them were.
"I came to a little under an hour ago, you three lying beside me in this small cell" Aquaman explained. "Batman awoken shortly after, Superman only a few minutes ago… and now you."
"I cannot scan through the walls and there is not another heartbeat to hear anywhere near" the rather disconcerted Clark Kent specified. "Are you okay?" he added worryingly, wrinkling his brow.
Flash felt his body over for a sec before answering. "I am actually good" he then answered. "I actually feel real good."
"Well" Batman corrected in a growl, Flash not surprised he had the energy to revise his grammar. "Now can we please continue?"
Superman turned towards Flash again, allowing him to catch up: "We were just beginning to retrace our steps, see what the last thing we remembered was and deduce whether there is a connection."
"I am pretty sure I was just at home", Flash offered, sitting down like the others in the small room. "I think I was just off to bed…"
"Me too" Aquaman added. "I had returned to the royal quarters with Mera some 20 minutes before, but after that I do not remember anything."
"That's funny" Clark speculated. "I remember waking up with Lois. But I couldn't have been awake for more then 10-15 minutes before I passed out. Do you think our private bedrooms were poisoned?"
The three men held their breath, calculating the exact meaning of that hypothesis. Linda, Mera, Lois… Were they compromised? Were they hurt?
"Negative" Batman specified. "I was on patrol. Or rather, I had just given up a stake out, sending Robin home when I…" he paused. His blue eyes racing back and forth, as if he was reading a book that suddenly revealed everything. Flash wondered whether he always looked like that under the white lenses of the cowl when he was cracking a case.
"Were you with your wife when this happened, Flash?"
"Yeah. As I said, I had just gone off to bed and I am quite sure Linda went with me."
"Quite sure or sure?" Batman demanded. Flash blushed a little, a crooked smile forming in the corner of his mouth.
"Sure. As in sure-sure, if you catch my drift…"
Aquaman looked blank, not catching any drift, and Superman looked away in embarrassment. Had GL been there, Barry caught himself thinking, he would have gotten a high five.
"So all four of us was with women when it happened" Batman deduced, his mind still racing, desperately looking for the next right question to ask in order to uncover the clues he needed. "Could they have been mind-controlled to do something? To inject us with toxins or…"
"Wait, you were with a woman? Didn't you say you had just finished patrol?" Superman pried.
"Not important", he waved off the Kryptonian with a saying gesture. But he regretted that immediately. Maybe the reason he did not want to explain was the very clue they were looking for.
"Barry, you had intercourse with your wife that night, correct?"
"It sure does sound romantic when you say it like that… but yeah. We did."
Saying that to Batman felt like having your football coach explain to you how women menstruate. It was just wrong and yucky.
"Arthur?"
"I do not see why that has anything to do with-" but Bruce wouldn't let the Atlantean dismiss his theory before it was properly tested.
"Arthur?" he tried again, this time in a more stern tone.
He cleared his throat before offering a stately: "Yes".
"Clark?"
"Wait a minute" Flash interrupted. "You said you weren't in your bedroom. But it seems like you're implying something here…" Okay, so his curiosity was stronger than his embarrassment – so what! He didn't want Batman to know about his private life, especially his private privates, but Batman's sex life was just too juicy a secret to miss.
"It can be done outside the perimeters of the family home" Batman declared. His sarcasm killed Flash's urge to ask his next question, giving the detective time to turn to Clark again.
"Clark?" he asked in a tone that implied he had already stated the question once before and did not want to repeat it.
Clark turned bubbling red, scratched his nose and avoided eye contact... Batman excused his stalling with a strict Midwestern upbringing.
"Not" he started before pausing again, almost sighing out the last part of his short sentence: "per se…"
Aquaman and Flash looked curious.
"Not 'per se'?" Batman demanded.
"What's your angle?" The farm boy tried to hide behind the strong Kryptonian's voice. If he had to give up that information, he at least wanted to know what Batman was getting at.
"I think Poison Ivy might be a part of this, but her pheromones must have been mixed in with some other kind of toxins. Her spores can be set to trigger a split reaction when specific chemicals erupt in your body. That could be when your skin touches another person's skin, or when pheromones are shed from a partner. Either way, that reaction, most likely as a result from sexual attraction or activity, would trigger the underlying toxin at that precise moment our capturer wanted: in our most private lives where we were certain not to be around other league members. As our wives and lovers went away to call for help, we were most likely brought here."
They had all seen Batman do this a million times before, so they knew better than to question his hunches.
"My theory as of now," Batman continued, irritated that he had to articulate his precise thoughts, "is that something happened to us during our sexual interactions that triggered this reaction."
"The release?" Aquaman offered.
"Negative" Batman stated. "What if we happened to masturbate at another time or in another location than the villains had planned for? Even without a partner there, we might rid our bodies of the toxins through that very action."
"Besides…" Clark finally felt ready to share: "I did not… participate as of such in the sexual act that I was still a part off… so to speak…" He hoped the others would understand without him having to explain it more thoroughly than that.
"Oral?"
The blue eyes of Bruce Wayne penetrated him with the force of the Bat's, but the tone was neutral as it most commonly was with him.
"Yes" Clark stated, closing the rope tighter around his body, suddenly feeling exposed.
"Do you think they would poison our wives?" Barry asked concerned. His thoughts kept flying back to Linda.
"That doesn't make sense either." Batman stood up in order to stroll back and forth between the heroes in the limited space they occupied. The others moved for him, knowing he needed space to think.
"How would they know which woman we would have sex with?"
The three married men protested loudly, saying things like "I would never" or "I love my wife" all at once, blurring the intended reassurances. Bruce lifted a hand to stop them.
"Alright" he began again: "How would they have known which woman I would have sex with? Even if they knew my identity. I have no steady partner…" he stopped to think. "Although she is the closest thing I have got to…" he wrinkled his brow, the others watching him in silence.
"Catwoman?" Aquaman suddenly asked and interrupted the quiet. Superman and Flash looked at him with astonishment. Not because of what he said, but because he said it.
"Yes" Bruce answered in the same neutral tone, scratching a rather fresh cut going from his neck to the middle of his back. Flash barely noticed it because of the many scars on the man, but now he saw it clearly: Four stretches of slim, red scratches. As if they were made by a claw.
"But then" he started again, "how could they know I would even have sex in the desired time slot?"
"Dry spell?" Flash asked, choking back a smile. Batman ignored him.
"Maybe that is why it is just us here…" he kept his trail of thought. "Maybe J'onn and Hal and Diana aren't here, because they didn't engage as planned."
"I know for a fact that Hal is getting some" Flash exclaimed. "He has only been dating this girl for three months and he won't stop talking about how she…" he decided to stop himself. That sort of talk was meant for the locker room.
"Alright" Batman tried again. "Then what do the four of us have in common?"
"A common villain?" Clark offered. "Perhaps Luthor or Grodd?"
"Then why us and not the entire Justice League? Besides – this person knows our secret ID's" Flash elaborated, eager to help solve the case. "Ra's? Cain? A lot of Bat's villains seem to know that sort of thing, come to think about it…"
"Deathstroke?" Aquaman offered, not knowing why any of the mentioned would want him here.
"Which impartial variables do we share?" Batman kept thinking out loud, knowing he would not be allowed to follow his trail of thoughts in any other way.
Aquaman and Flash looked confused until Clark politely offered an explanation: "Common traits like age, weight, location… That sort of data."
"Or heroic sacrifice…" Batman's eyes began studying the invisible book again. He was on to something: "A sacrifice a young man in love would not be able to give just yet…"
Flash nodded. "So the release is the key-"
"- but not ours" Superman finished. "How would that even work?"
"The important question is why anybody would cast such a spell. And why would they want us here?" Aquaman interrupted. He stood up to continue the conversation with Batman eye to eye. In order to do so, he had to tie the piece of fabric around his waist to not stand completely naked.
"Let's find out the 'who' later. Right now, I sense that the 'why' is the key to our escape and my guess is to install fear and humiliation in earth's mightiest heroes" Batman concluded, meeting the Atlantean's eye. "Somebody wanted to hit us in our most private lives, where we would never think our enemies would strike. Even when we get out of this, it will change the way we view our lives and loved ones forever."
At least he said when we get out of this, Flash thought to himself.
"Then why do this to us?" the speedster demanded, getting to his feet as well. "I mean, we cannot possibly be the easiest capes to trap in a box?"
"Exactly! Whoever did this want us to know that they can get to anyone, anywhere. They can get to a king with guards protecting him at the bottom of the ocean. They can capture the fastest man alive before he can outrun them. They can outsmart the league's key strategist and they can catch Superman himself without his pants on… No one is safe."
The four heroes let Batman's diabolical conclusion fill the room. Then Superman decided to stand up too and state a more proactive demand:
"So what does this tell us about our next action?"
He had noted the "when" in Batman's earlier speech as well and knew his friend had a plan for their escape.
"The benefit for whoever is doing this is nothing but anxiety and dishonor."
Batman swallowed hard, making Flash worry a little. He had never seen Batman do that before. But then again – how many times had he seen Batman think out a plan without two inches of Kevlar covering his throat?
"Meaning" Batman began again in a more awkward tone, "that they do not want us or anything from us. Meaning they want us to escape, but in a manner that will bring us great shame when we need to tell the tale in order to warn other heroes."
"Meaning…?" Aquaman demanded.
"That we have to finish what we started."
Batman covered his expression with a hand as he massaged his temples. He could see the posture of his colleagues change as they, one by one, understood what he meant. Flash was the last to join in:
"EEEEWWWWWW!"
Aquaman and Superman shared a professional look as Batman sat down with his back against the wall. He kept his face covered with his hand.
Superman would not accept that as their main tactic:
"Would you mind if I tried smashing the thing for a bit?"
"I should be able to protect you from eventual depris" Aquaman added, knowing his Atlantean skin would withstand more than his friends' lighter exteriors.
"By all means…" was all Batman had to offer, still desperately rubbing his temples. Never had he hoped to be wrong so bad.