CHAPTER ONE

In the world of knowledge the idea of the good appears last of all, and is seen only with effort.

-Socrates

"You call yourself a god. You do not know what a god truly is."

A gentle breeze washed over the fallen form of a strangely attired man. His apparel was nothing like what one would find in the world of man, its fabric and design made to mimic an entirely different culture and history. Unlike the majority of his brethren, the being called Metron had never been the sort to allow physical prowess to maintain his ideals. He looked up from where he had been forced to kneel at the man who had so easily vanquished him.

"To be a god is to literally be power itself," the man explained as he hovered over Metron. "You and your pathetic race of New Gods are a disgrace to the definition of godhood. How arrogant are you to play such a fanciful game?"

Metron held his tongue back from replying. He had trouble taking his eyes away from the item that his attacker had so triumphantly liberated from his grasp. The gentle breeze continued to casually drift against him, but the general atmosphere of the cosmos was not casting it. There in the void of space, beyond the realm of known reality, the pair sat in dark seclusion on top of a lone slab of solid matter that Metron's attacker had created. Raw and unbridled energy wafted from the parcel Metron stared at longingly, its radiance and countenance making it impossible to pull his eyes away from.

The object was somehow comprised of several moving pieces, each of them swirling and sliding within one another flawlessly. Its gray color was distorted by the invisible pulsing of energy as its new wielder tapped into its almost limitless power. His blonde hair glowed as his aura changed, a side effect of mixing his mystic power with the object's cosmic jurisdiction.

"This," the man said, gesturing to the object in his hand. "You wish to have this returned to you? Realize that you are now but a pawn in my scheme, a trivial piece to be moved about as I see fit. You call yourself a god…you will rue the day you ever dared utter the term and replace the self worth you possess with loyalty to me, a true god."

Then, in a brilliant flash of light, both Metron and his captor were gone to leave the void hollow once more.

DCI Proudly Presents

JUSTICE WAR

#1 Written by D. Golightly

Something was wrong.

Superman, the most respected hero on the planet, cringed at the site of the Earth below him. It looked like his adopted home, it even smelled like it. But something was definitely wrong. He had come to know every contour of its jagged mountains, every splash of its soothing waters, and every puff of its soft clouds.

His red cape fluttered behind him, the last few stray rays of sunlight catching between its folds. The light cast a darker hue onto his deep blue costume, accentuating the solid build he had known since his early youth. Men and women alike had looked up to the ideals he personified. Ironically, he was more humble than most of the people that idolized him.

Among the many heroes of the world, he was considered the greatest. They held him to a higher standard than the others, a burden that he often wished would fall on someone else. He was not a god, he was not even all that special. He considered himself a regular person with the ability to help others.

Somewhere in the stratosphere, Superman came to the conclusion that the Earth below him was not the same planet he had woken up on this morning. He noticed how exact the planet's orbit was and how detailed its features were, but the lack of life made it impossible to think that this Earth was his Earth. He realized that someone or something had either moved him or the entire population of the globe without leaving any trace of their presence.

Entire cities had been emptied out. He could hear several heartbeats, even from the great height at which he floated, but they were few and far between. The colder and thinner air of the upper atmosphere clung to him the way the tide would at a beach. Having already held his breath for several minutes, Superman finally decided it was time to find someone who would know what was going on. Picking out one lone heartbeat from among the scattered few, his cringe turned to a smile as he suddenly rocketed for the planet's surface.

There was one person who would have some answers. He always did.

A crusade born from a single night of bad luck, the vengeance that had been wrought down upon the cowardly criminal lot of the back allies thought themselves victims of some ugly vendetta. They were both right and wrong. Right because the man who sought justice through their defeat had indeed singled them out. Wrong because the crusade was so much more than one man, one victim, one criminal.

He moved between the shadows, a lone wolf in search of his next meal. The dark shades of his costume allowed him to blend into the darkness like a natural predator. Over the years he had come to know kindred spirits in his ongoing war, but he always moved best when he hunting alone. They understood him perfectly and rarely argued with his decision to work in solitude. The night was his true home, and having an ally by his side sometimes allowed a piece of daylight to slip through, keeping him from falling off of the chasm's edge. In his world he dealt with insanity on a daily basis.

For the night stalker known as Batman, the crusade would never be over.

Gotham was his city. Those that dared to perpetrate some indecency would be made well aware of his presence. Not the largest city in the country, Gotham still retained a population on par with that of Metropolis or Chicago. Every single citizen was automatically under his protection, lest they cross the line and take matters into their own hands. He respected the law but he respected justice more. Often times the line was blurred but he would never tolerate renegade activity in his city. The crusade was not to be taken up by innocents.

The few that had managed to come close to him and were allowed into his world understood this, too. They had tried to support him and lend him aid, but in the end it always boiled down to the same thing: they did what they did because he allowed them. He had given his former partners and acquaintances permission to operate in his city and carry on with a portion of his crusade. Resentment always soon followed whenever one of them came to that realization, but it didn't matter. Batman was usually right.

On this night, however, his crusade was pointless. There was no activity, no alarm, no emergency. There was nothing. The entire city had been completely emptied of every form of higher life.

The tip of his raised arm glistened slightly in the moonlight. With a soft sounding spring, the end of his grapple line shot out and plunged itself into the side of the next building. Batman quickly pulled the line taught and leapt out into the open air, yanking hard on the line to pull himself away from the roof's edge.

With practiced precision, bordering on perfection, Batman swung low onto another rooftop and flipped the switch to cut his line. He dropped onto the concrete roof of the Gotham City First National Bank and somersaulted forward, breaking into a run as soon as his feet were firmly planted. The maneuver would have made the most seasoned Olympic athlete green with envy. Upon reaching the edge of that roof, he paused, tilting his head slightly to listen.

"I was wondering how long it would take for you to show up," he said.

Superman slowly drifted down beside his longtime friend and confidant, allowing his powers to lower him gently to the rooftop a few yards away from Batman. He stared at the back of the vigilante's head, accustomed to the feeling of broken privacy that came with approaching the Dark Knight.

"I have super-hearing," Superman replied, "and there's no way I would have heard myself coming. You'll have to tell me how you do that sometime."

"Hh," was all Batman said in response. He respected Superman like most others, although he was always sure to not let the attitude slip. There were few people in existence that he allowed close to him, and the Man of Steel was one of them.

"Any idea what's going on?" Superman asked. They rarely exchanged pleasantries, especially when there was a crisis in effect. "As near as I can determine there are only a few dozen people on the entire planet. I see Gotham has been affected like every other city. Think we're caught up in some type of fallout from the destruction Superboy caused throughout the universe?"

"Either that or we've been teleported to an exact copy of Earth," Batman answered. "The fact that you and I were apparently chosen suggests that this situation wasn't random or happenstance."

"You mean we've been singled out."

"Unless there's some other type of connection between us and whoever else has been left behind, that's exactly what I mean."

Superman crossed his bugling arms over his broad chest. "My list of enemies isn't exactly a short one. I could name several off the top of my head that have the power to do this, and none of them bring a smile to my face."

"With the dysfunction of the League we're in desperate need of allies. We need to find out who else is here and why." Batman finally turned with a sweep of his cape to face Superman, his face still rigid and his eyes blank. The Man of Steel held a steady gaze with Batman, something that few people were capable of. "My own list of enemies may be able to pull something of this magnitude off if their resources were limitless. It's not bringing a smile to my face either."

"Nothing brings a smile to your face."

Batman ignored the comment, turning back around to face the vacant city beneath him. The situation presented a problem at a level he wasn't always prepared for. He had partaken in his fair share of cosmic abnormalities, especially as a member of the Justice League, but with the last crisis dissolving most of the relationships of his former teammates he couldn't rely on the past. The League as he had come to know it was gone, replaced by a mockery of honor that allowed elements just as bad as the villains they went after into its folds.

"There's one other thing we need to take into account," Batman said over his shoulder. "Do you retain any short-term memory beyond the last few hours?"

Superman blinked. Searching his mind he realized that the Dark Knight was correct in his implication. "No, I'm drawing a blank. The last thing I vividly remember is…I'm not even sure."

"I gave up the cape, Clark," Batman stated. "I shouldn't be here, not like this. I don't even know how I got to Gotham. I know that I've left the city in capable hands…but for the life of me I cannot remember how or why. I still feel the same conviction and passion that I've always held, yet for some reason I know that wearing this costume right now isn't what I had intended for myself. It's as if whoever did this has access to our personal lives, which means he or she isn't targeting Superman and Batman, they're targeting Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne."

Some called him paranoid, others called him prepared. For all of his planning and preparation, Batman had never anticipated something of this magnitude. It made him feel small and insignificant as he stared into an empty city that seemed like a hollow version of his own soul.

"Then our first step is obvious," Superman said. "We need to rally the troops and see who we've got."

"You said there were a few dozen left," Batman pointed out. "Who do we start with?"

"The only other person I would look for if you weren't available. I'm sure she's just as anxious to get to the bottom of this as we are."

Warrior's blood ran through her veins, a ferocity that few could match on the battlefield. At the same time her attacks were graceful and coordinated, like a ballet. The magical strength of the gods flowed within her every movement, allowing each kick and punch to be strong enough to shatter a brick wall. Power such as hers had a tendency to corrupt, but when part of her life had been spent as the Goddess of Truth she quickly learned to respect the power and not let it overwhelm her.

Princess Diana, the famed Wonder Woman, ducked underneath the massive arms of her foe and countered the attack with a swift uppercut that sent her enemy flying head over heels. He landed a dozen feet away with a loud crunch as his head slammed into a pile of rocks lying haphazardly at the foot of the mountain they fought in front of.

The golden breastplate adorning her torso reflected the face of her attacker. Her strength was on par with Superman's but she seldom relied on brute force alone. Given her current state of confusion and the sudden attempt on her life, however, Wonder Woman had to resort to ending the conflict as quickly as possible in order to decipher the larger problem. That meant knocking him unconscious and going from there.

Of course, that would prove more difficult than it would seem.

"I'll grind your bones under my boots!" the General roared in defiance.

The oversized giant bellowed a wordless battle cry as he scooped up some of the rocks in his massive hand and flung them at Wonder Woman. The stones were all as large as her head and flying with deadly intent. Utilizing her great speed, another gift from her godly benefactors, Diana deflected most of the rocks with her unbreakable bracelets. Their momentum absorbed, the stones fell back to the ground.

Wonder Woman took to the air, pushing off of the dirt ground with a small jump. Reasoning that if she simply floated beyond the giant's reach for a time she could collect her thoughts and try to figure out exactly what she had been thrown into.

"Get your skinny little ass down here!" General Wade Eiling roared. "My orders are to crush the life out of you and that's damn well what I plan on doing."

She spun slowly in the air, ignoring the General's wanton cries of near hysteria. She couldn't remember how she had gotten way out into the middle of nowhere. In fact, she wasn't even sure where nowhere was. The sprawling landscape was vacant except for sand, a few bushes, and the overlooking mountain. There no landmarks, no populated areas she could see…she had no clue to help her make sense of things.

The last thing she could recall was being attacked by the General. His bulk and sheer strength had easily overthrown her at first, until she had gained some leverage to get the upper hand. He was one of the League's deadliest foes, having barreled through them with ease on at least two occasions that she was aware of. Why he was stuck in the middle of nowhere with him she had no idea. All she had were questions without answers.

He was under orders? Whose?

Stabbing pain racked her upper body as the General slammed into her in midair. She scolded herself for getting lost in thought and not flying high enough. The General had leapt from the ground after picking himself up, and now he had her in a choke hold as they fell back down to terra firma.

"First I'm going to rip your neck out," the General threatened over the noise of the rushing wind around them, "sort of like what you did to Max Lord. Then I'm going to—"

The elbow Wonder Woman had thrust into the General's throat was enough to close his mouth. He spit out a few specks of blood onto her shoulder and loosened his grip around her neck. Twisting away from him, Wonder Woman swapped places with the General as they fell, making sure he was directly under her.

"This is going to hurt," she told him. "A lot."

She poured on the speed, pushing the General down faster and faster toward the ground. They impacted in less than a second, traveling at roughly half the speed of sound. All of the pressure she had added to the fall made the resulting damage increase exponentially, all of thrust directly onto the General's spine.

Diana back flipped out of the crater, landing quaintly on the tips of her feet. She hadn't even broken a sweat yet…but neither had the General. In fact, she could hear his bones reforming and snapping back into place from where she stood. His almost limitless regenerative powers made him practically immortal, and his boundless strength and ferocity made him a veritable force of nature.

"Need a hand?" a voice called down from somewhere above her.

Wonder Woman raised a hand to block the sun out of her eyes. The last timeframe she could remember was at night, but she didn't know if she was now on the other side of the planet of if she had simply been knocked out for at least twelve hours. Regardless, the scorching sun threw its rays down on her, casting a bulky silhouette by way of the lowering figures.

She smiled at the sight of them. Superman lowered himself and Batman, clutching the Man of Steel's arm, softly to the ground in juxtaposition to Superman's amazing abilities. She paused a moment as the obvious humility that came with watching Superman descend washed over her.

"I wouldn't slap it away if you offered it," she replied. "Good to see you."

Batman merely nodded as Superman returned the smile. The three of them had been appointed endless tasks together in the defense of their planet, each time always seeming worse than the last. It was hard to be worried from a foe like the General when the three of them were together.

"Don't mind me," Batman stated as he slipped something out of his utility belt. "You'll have to excuse me if I don't take the time to greet you."

Batman's hand slapped the air in front of him and twin sparks of light suddenly burst forth. The smallest amount of effort had been exerted on his part, but all the same the two batarangs he had just thrown were heading for their exact mark.

The General managed to place one foot outside of the crater before the batarangs struck his upper torso, imbedding themselves deep into his flesh. The blinking lights on each instrument began to blink faster and faster as the General focused his attention on them, unsure of what to do. Before he could react, the weapons exploded, tearing out chunks of his synthetic skin and muscle tissue. Shaken, he toppled back from the explosions, falling over back into the crater.

"You never take the time to banter," Wonder Woman said almost casually.

"He never takes the time to enjoy anything," Superman responded as he took to the air.

The Man of Steel abruptly changed his trajectory and slammed down into the crater on top of General Eiling. Usually he held back during a fight for fear of killing his enemies, but the General was no normal enemy. Again and again Superman pounded the General, exerting enough force to render an entire mountain range into rubble. With each blow they fell deeper in the Earth as dirt and rock were pushed out from under them from Superman's raining fists.

The General, with his regenerative powers nearly at their limits, managed to angle one of his massive legs underneath Superman. With one giant kick he sent the Man of Steel up and back out of the crater, the wind expelled from his lungs.

"Ha!" the General scoffed as he jumped out of the hole. "Haven't you idiots figured it out yet? Win or lose, you're going to die. Better to get knocked down now then to waste your time swimming upstream."

"What's he blathering about?" Batman asked as he readied two more batarangs in one hand and a powerful taser in the other.

"He has some kind of insight into what's going on, I'm guessing," Diana replied. "Of course, like a typical bad guy, he's being cryptic about it."

Air washed over the pair of heroes as Superman rejoined the battle, flying high over them and driving his fists into the General's chest. Eiling tottered back once more but refused to go down. The General was the immovable object to Superman's unstoppable force. Faster than he looked, the General caught Superman off guard and landed a right haymaker across his face, knocking spittle out of his slighted mouth.

"You've had this coming for a long time, alien," the General said as he gripped Superman's skull within his gigantic fist.

The thin golden lasso easily slipped over the General's other hand. An unusual weapon, Wonder Woman had perfected its use through years of intense training rivaling that of Batman's extensive career. She pulled hard on the lasso, choking the General's wrist and cutting off his circulation.

"Oh, please," the villain said mockingly. "Like some little rope is supposed to stop me."

"No," Batman retorted, "but maybe this will."

The Dark Knight leapt over the front of the General, sweeping his cape over Eiling's face. Spinning in midair, Batman landed square on Eiling's back and pulled back on the ends of his own cape, effectively masking the General in total darkness. Holding the cape in place with one hand, Batman stabbed his two batarangs into the General's shoulders, a wire now protruding from the weapons up into the taser he held in his remaining hand.

Batman kicked off of the General's head and mashed on the little red button on the taser. Several thousand volts of electricity began coursing through the General's nervous system, threatening to fry his internal organs.

The General couldn't help but let go of Superman as the electricity forced his muscles to spasm out of control. Once Superman was free, Wonder Woman yanked back once more on the golden lasso and shot up into the air. The General, like a marionette puppet, began to rise with her as a result of being pulled by the lasso.

The taser's battery finally died out as smoke billowed from his body. His organs began to immediately repair themselves and he started to laugh a deep, resonant uttering of evil triumph. He knew that no matter what they did to him, he would be able to recover. It was only a matter of time before he defeated them.

"Laugh this off," Wonder Woman said.

She spun in the air, quickly gaining momentum. The General helplessly whipped around her on the end of the lasso, his own bulk adding to his velocity. By the time she reached twenty revolutions she abruptly changed the General's trajectory and whipped him straight for an outcropping of rock bulging from the side of the mountain. He crashed into the rock formation, instantly decimating it into a fine powder of slagged chips.

Wonder Woman landed beside the other two heroes, concern still showing on her face. "Are you okay, Clark?" she asked her friend.

"Fine," Superman replied. "But that won't finish him off. We need to move quickly before—"

Perhaps I can be of assistance, a voice echoed around them.

Another silhouette fell over them as they heard the General scream in defiance of his own defeat. The cloaked figure floated down from the air toward their common enemy, his hands outstretched toward the General.

J'onn J'onzz, the Manhunter from Mars, furrowed his brow in concentration. His alien eyes, while seemingly distant and distracted, focused intently on the General…or, more accurately, the General's mind. His voice hadn't echoed within the great, wide open landscape of the desert, but rather within each of their collective minds. As the General stood up amongst the rubble of the mountainside, J'onn cautiously floated nearby.

You would stand down, J'onn thought at the monster, or I will put you down.

"What?" the General remarked. "Another alien threatening me? Get out of my head you little—"

J'onn's eyes glowed a brilliant yellow as he exerted his mental powers over the General. The eerie hue emitting from his eyes splashed against his green skin, turning it a strange shade of orange. Having been trained to use telepathy as a weapon, J'onn easily cut through any feeble mental barriers the General had in place and simply shut the villain down. Locating the exact area of Eiling's mind that allowed for motor function, the Martian Manhunter commanded certain synapses to stop firing with the General's brain. The General's eyes rolled into the back of his head as he slumped to his knees and fell face first into the soil, unconscious.

The light simmered and faded away from the Martian's eyes as he descended to join his former teammates. If there was ever a being that made their trio a quartet, it was J'onn J'onzz. Superman actually saw Batman's shoulders relax slightly at the sight of their approaching friend, an act that in and of itself deemed the situation under control.

"Thank you," Superman said as he extended his hand to J'onn. "It's been awhile. Glad to have you back with us."

"Our time for pleasantries must be cut short," J'onn replied, making sure to use his actual voice this time. He knew of Batman's particular distaste for invading someone's mind, even with something as simple as telepathy. "We must collect the General and leave immediately."

"J'onn, what's going on?" Wonder Woman asked eagerly.

"Later," the Martian replied. "I'll answer your questions as best I can, but for now we must retire and meet the others. Time is short."

"Time is no longer infinite," the impossibly perfect man stated. "My brother has disrupted the flow of the timestream to seek his own justification. We must act!"

"And what would you have us do?" a second figure stated, his beard reaching down to his knees. "The Quintessence, by all rights, no longer exists, yet here we stand. Do you see fit to alter the course of humanity now that we are part of this universe once more? Our very inception goes against that!"

The two titans stared at one another while their three companions looked on into the vast cosmos. The five figures, each of them unimaginably powerful in their own regard, had championed few causes over the centuries. With all their power they believed that they had no right to interfere lest they cause more damage then what has already been done.

The smallest of them, a blue-skinned creature adorned in a brilliant red rode, finally broke the silence. "Our agents will have to solve this on their own. We cannot disrupt the timestream any more than Ares already has. To do so could be disastrous."

"I hear you speak of possibilities," the first man, an ancient god of thunder and lightning, shot back. "My brother cares not for these mortals. Are you so conceited that you would stand by and do nothing? Where is your courage and rage?"

The fourth merely waved his hand in annoyance, content to let his obvious disdain for the situation speak for him. His robes were brightly colored and in his hand he held aloft a golden staff, with which he had sought to prevail mightily over a Fourth World. In time, the role of leadership had taken its toll and he was no longer as vengeful as his other compatriot.

"I expect as much from you, Highfather," the mighty Zeus replied, turning his attention to their fifth and last member. "But what of you? You, even in the presence of our company, still withhold vital information. I say thee nay!"

The last figure tipped his head forward, allowing the dark fedora upon his head to cover the majority of his face. From within the folds of his cloak his arms moved, parting the apparel just enough for the other four member of the Quintessence to see the unending power housed within his person.

"Ganthet is correct," he said. "It is not our place to become involved. However, regardless of the possible damage to the various realities that comprise this multiverse we exist in, there may be an opportunity to strike back. Until that moment, my brethren, we must now and forever more remain…strangers."

TO BE CONTINUED!