Chapter 8: Assault and Battery
The cloud buckled all around them. It was remarkable. It felt almost like an earthquake was rippling through it all, even if those sands beneath their feet didn't budge an inch because of it. Flash just about kept his balance through it all, even as he kept running. For a second he began to wonder what had caused it, especially as he noticed some of the Imperium wobbling under it too. But then Flash noticed a bad guy getting too close for comfort and he was caught up in the fight all over again, the wobbling cast aside and left as forgotten as it could be.
Yet another bunch of Imperium were exploded by one of Bats' batarangs. Once again it was remarkably close to where Flash ran, but this one wasn't near to actually catching him. The batarang struck its targets just as Flash was zooming by, meaning that by the time the fireball had grown, he was gone.
Flash had actually grabbed hold of one of these Imperium soldiers. He had pounded a few more into goo as he charged past, with fists flying so rapidly it was amazing he hadn't taken off, but this latest one he just ran clean into. He had spotted a bunch of ten or so Imperium soldiers charging off to one side, and he had decided that it was time to go bowling.
He was moving so fast that the guy he carried hadn't the chance to try and hit him. In fact, that Imperium didn't even have time to grab at him, to get a hold of him. Flash was doing all the supporting there. That was why he didn't have to bother throwing the guy to send him flying into his friends. He just had to stop rapidly, and the guy's momentum did all the rest.
Flash was already celebrating before it struck home. The Imperium slammed into its mates fully head on, sending both the hurled and the hit tumbling and splatting against the sands in a chain reaction. Flash's celebrations were slightly short-lived though. Two of them were left standing after all of that. Not for long, mind. Flash ran forward to finish those two off the old fashioned way. Still, he groaned in disappointment. He'd only managed a spare.
He didn't stop though. He was rapidly wheeling around to look for more bad guys to fell. There were plenty of them around. Plenty...
Or at least there had been. He had been too preoccupied to notice them all disappear.
Suddenly they were all gone.
Wonder Woman smashed away the latest Imperium to encroach too close to J'onn. There had been many over the last few minutes, despite the efforts of Wally and Bruce, but Wonder Woman hadn't failed to notice that a few less had made it this far since that rumbling shake had happened a few moments ago. She didn't know what it had been. She didn't have the time to stop and figure it out yet either. So long as it didn't happen again, so long as there weren't negative connotations coming with it, she had more important things to worry about right now.
There were still a heck of a lot of the Imperium soldiers around, even after the 'quake', still too many of them for the Justice League to get by to try and stop the cloud, especially with J'onn still prone in the sands. There was still a fight to be had.
But in that moment, Wonder Woman caught a slight break. There was a gap, a moment when there were none close enough for her to engage. It was a moment where she could check up on the others, to make sure that they were all doing all right too. She had complete faith in them, but she also knew how dangerous these guys could be. Getting conceited could prove their undoing. She couldn't risk it. She wouldn't. Especially with Bruce, even if he was the one she had the most faith in.
But he was alive. And she could see countless of the Imperium were falling under his waves of attacks, be it from his fists or his arsenal of weaponry. Of course they were. He was the Batman. He was the man who had once fought an entire war single-handedly, and won.
And he was the man who had failed to tell her yet whether he had come back to her or not.
That thought alone got Wonder Woman's madness pent up ready for the next bout, tensing up her muscles. She could see some more Imperium had broken though the lines of Batman and Flash. They were coming straight for her again, or for J'onn more accurately.
Or they had been doing. Just seconds before they were in range of Wonder Woman's powerful fists, they stopped suddenly, an odd ripple flowing through their bodies as they did so. That wasn't the end of it either. Only half a breath later, the Imperium all completely disappeared.
It almost looked like they were being drained away down a giant, invisible plug hole. Wonder Woman surged forward, wanting to catch at least one of them. She knew that getting rid of these guys was a good thing, it was what they needed. But she also recognised how advantageous it could have been to get one of them captured, to use them to find out exactly what was going on here. More accurately, she knew that capturing one of them could have helped them to figure out how to stop this cloud. The problem was, the Imperium all slipped straight through her fingers, fast becoming lost to the sands.
Once the last traces of alien disappeared between her fingers, Wonder Woman was quickly looking up, observing the rest of the scene again. First she had to make sure that this wasn't all just a ruse, an attempted trick to get around her and J'onn. She even flew back to stand right over the Martian and defend him, just in case, but it turned out to be unnecessary. It wasn't a kind of Trojan Horse manoeuvre. The Imperium really had gone.
And it wasn't only the ones who had been closing in on her that were going either. They all were. Every last one of them. Even the ones that had already fallen were vanishing. As the last one drained away, a bright flash of light against the red 'skies' shone, almost signifying their journey.
The four heroes were on their own again. Wonder Woman looked across at her fellows. She saw the confusion spread around Flash's face first, but typically it was Batman that caught her eye. He was holding his ground, pretty much holding his pose from the second the Imperium had started to vanish. His eyes had narrowed, his brow furrowed. You didn't have to know him as well as Diana did to understand that he was working this out in his head. He was already planning and counter-planning, working out what was going on and how to handle it.
It was an act that they all had to do now, Wonder Woman knew. Before citizens of the Earth down below were lost to the cloud, they had to find a way to stop it from within. J'onn had made that perfectly clear to her. They couldn't go looking the gift horse in the mouth. For whatever reason they had left, the Imperium's disappearance had given them an opportunity to act. The end to the fighting had opened up that door to them. They couldn't refuse to walk through it now. The people down below didn't have time for them to, and they couldn't let the people down.
Of course, Wonder Woman hadn't far to go to get right back to J'onn's side, knowing that they would need the Martian's knowledge and guesswork to help them through this. However, Flash still managed to beat her there – just.
"Yeah, they'd better run!" Flash called out to no-one in particular, though clearly in reference to the departing Imperium. Wonder Woman couldn't help but feel that Flash was sounding a little too joyous, a little too optimistic. Things were never that easy.
"What happened?"
Wonder Woman directed the question to J'onn, who was still prone in the sands though looking like he was trying to sit up again. However, Flash leapt in first once more.
"Isn't it obvious? We're clearly a bunch of real life Ghostbusters!" he was booming out, sounding very pleased with himself. "We scared them off. They knew that we ain't afraid of no ghosts, or spooks, or...memories. Or whatever. They saw that bustin' makes us feel good!"
"What?" Wonder Woman voiced her confusion. Flash had managed to completely lose her. It definitely sounded like it wasn't just the Imperium he was referring to any more, though what else Wonder Woman couldn't tell. For a moment she was starting to worry that there was something else going on that she had missed, but it was a brief second.
"He's referencing the film 'Ghostbusters', and he's being an idiot."
Batman spoke up as he swept over the scene, with his cape billowing behind him. His words completely assuaged any additional worries that had been building in her, though there were still plenty of the old one's around. Batman was quickly past both Wonder Woman and Flash, leaning down at J'onn's side. The Martian was clearly wanting to get up, and Batman clearly needed him to be standing again too. Without either saying a word but with plenty of groans from J'onn, Batman threw J'onn's arm over his shoulders and used it to hoist the alien up with him.
"Hey!" Flash protested at being insulted. "I'm just trying to–"
"Quiet," Batman growled, silencing Flash. Flash looked like he was ready to protest again, but Batman gave him one of his most fearsome trademark glares to keep him silenced. "We don't have time for joking around. The cloud must be attacking again. We have to stop it."
"Indeed," J'onn was quickly concurring with Batman, repeating what he had earlier told Wonder Woman in the heat of the fighting. "I can sense it. The cloud is moving. It is advancing on the people of the world. Now that I am in here, even if they haven't taken me captive yet, the cloud has a new priority. The people of the Earth are its new target. It is intending to absorb them, a lot of them. With no guarantees that it is possible to leave this place, we cannot let that happen."
"So why did the Imperium all flee?" Wonder Woman just had to ask. To properly fight this, she had to know more about exactly what it was that they were facing. She didn't need everything, but she needed more than she already had. "What's going on in here?"
"They fled for the same reason the other ones are directing the cloud towards the Earth's citizens," Batman was quick to stoically answer. "Now that J'onn is in here and can't escape them, their priorities will have changed. They now want to give the cloud more power, by having more focused minds directing their efforts. No doubt when the cloud began to move towards the atmosphere the rest of the Justice League would have moved in to face it. Clearly something that they were doing was starting to have an effect on it. Keeping some of their numbers here fighting us was too much of a distraction of effort. They were needed back with the others, to provide the cloud with the power to overcome what it is the League is throwing at it. The quake we felt a few moments ago proves it. That was the cloud stumbling against the League's efforts. It was the signal for the Imperium soldiers to be recalled."
"I agree," J'onn added before anyone else could speak, pressing onwards with what he had to say despite sounding pained to do so. "Everything I have been able to read from them suggests the same thing. What the Imperium desire most – now that the last Martian is trapped within the cloud – is more energy, more power. They require more minds to assert a greater control of the cloud. Ever since the Transcendence, there has been a battle of power over the cloud. The Imperium have greater numbers but with less developed telepathic powers their minds have less weight than a Martians. They have control of the cloud, but not an overriding one. They need more minds to achieve that, to be able to use the cloud to kill the Martians within it and to turn it into a weapon against the outside world too. The people of Earth happened to be the closest viable population to me, so the humans would have to be the power source the Imperium pursued."
"But why would they target us humans?" Flash couldn't keep quiet any longer. "It's not like us lot are gonna comply with them. Surely they realise that they'll just wind up adding more minds to the side of the good guys. That they'll wind up with less control?"
"They don't need compliance," Batman stepped in again. "They just need people. Even an unconscious mind can be active. It can give off thought patterns. If the Imperium can harvest that, then they won't need anyone to agree with them. They'll just need minds plugged in to the harvesters. The only pre-requisite required is that the mind remains alive. It's not like there's a lot of people down there who can oppose the Imperium in here. If the Imperium manage to absorb sufficient people, they could obtain unimaginable power. They could become unstoppable. We can't let that happen."
Wonder Woman didn't fully understand what she was hearing, but then she didn't have to. She had understood enough. Things were even worse than she had thought. This cloud was a menace like none the Justice League had ever faced before, even if it was controlled by the enemies they originated against. It was also just about the deadliest thing they had ever seen, or at least it could very soon become so. It had to be stopped.
But that wasn't the only thing worrying her. It was selfish, and it was the kind of thought that made her loathe herself for allowing to come into her head at a time like this. But it was there. She was feeling confused, and that was making her angry. Batman seemed to have realised an awful lot about what was going on awfully quickly, even more so than usual. It was almost like he had known or suspected a lot of it before he had even come here.
It was almost as if it was indeed this energy cloud that he had returned to the Justice League for, to fight it.
It was almost as if that was his sole reason for returning.
It was almost as if things had changed, almost as if he wasn't going to be coming back to her after all...
But no. She couldn't think like this. She couldn't afford to. The people of the Earth couldn't afford for her to. They would be counting on her, along with the other three. They would be needing her to have her head in the game, to be focussed on what she had to do. If she wasn't, then this could all end very badly.
But she couldn't entirely shift the thoughts from her mind. Batman had done too good a job of worming his way in. For a man to win the love of an Amazon, he had to have done that and more. There was no way she could entirely block out her worries about what his damn stubborn mind would allow for their future, not even now. She would just have to cope with it.
And to confront him for the truth about his time away and his return as soon as she had the reasonable chance to.
"So how do we go about doing that?" she asked now instead, beginning that process of overcoming her nagging mind, of getting back to the task at hand. "How do we take control of this cloud away from the Imperium so that they can't gain any more minds of any kind? How do we stop this energy cloud's threat?"
Once again, it was Batman who answered first. It didn't matter if his answer was simplistic and without the depth to give her a proper response. It seemed to say enough that he still knew what he was talking about. In turn, that meant that Wonder Woman had to immediately clamp down on her feelings again.
"There are two possibilities. The Martian's help us assume control, or we take the cloud's control cluster by force."
"Control cluster?" Flash was quickly repeating. "You almost make it sound like this is some sort of rocket ship. Captain Kirk to the bridge..."
"That analogy, in this case, is not too far from the truth," J'onn was the first to react this time, doing so before Batman could glare at Flash for another film reference. J'onn was wincing slightly again as he spoke, his head clearly still under assault. His fellow Martians really mustn't understand the strength of their powers in their new...state. "There has to be something holding all the mental energies together that compose this cloud. That something is the solid core that you three battled earlier with the Watchtower repulsor beam. That core isn't just there for show. It is the remnants of the fallen and the Transcended. It is the brain of the cloud, if you will. It is through the core that the cloud is controlled, through sending directed thought waves to it. If we can take control of the core, if we can have a mastery of it, even for just a few seconds, we can at least buy the people of Earth some precious time."
"I'll take your word for it," Flash commented after that. It was clear that he hadn't entirely followed what J'onn was saying, but also that he had done so enough to recognise one thing. "All sounds a bit simple to me though."
"That is because a lot of this is hypothetical," J'onn answered swiftly. "As I said, this is the first time a Transcended being has even been known to exist. There is no past example to study and learn from. A lot of what I am basing this on is theory and myth. The telepathic barrage on my mind is too strong for me to probe the Imperium to find out how true the theories are. It could be that the cluster is as easy to control as simply thinking a command. It could be far more difficult, perhaps even more final. We just can't know until it has been tried or studied. Right now, there is no time for a field test. We just have to hope that it works."
"Well that's good news," Flash muttered the sarcastic comment, sounding slightly put off, but he also didn't look like even slightly wavering. "So which way is th–"
"You're not going," Batman cut in, interrupting Flash and causing both the Scarlet Speedster and Wonder Woman to quickly shoot him a look of confusion. Batman was not slow in explaining. There simply wasn't the time for him to be. "This has to be a two pronged operation. We have two chances of stopping the Imperium. We have to try for both. That means that you're needed elsewhere. You need to get J'onn to the Martians in here. Make them stop focussing their energies on him and to use their telepathic strength to get the cloud to move away from Earth. J'onn's our best chance to convince them. You need to make sure he gets to the Martians safely. If the Imperium realise what we're doing, they'll almost certainly be prepared to draw some energy from the cloud again to stop us. With the access we'll have we'll be a much greater threat to them than the Justice League outside."
"Fine, I'll get him there in no time," Flash retorted, sounding immediately ready to go, already forgetting about getting silenced. Before Wonder Woman had properly realised it and in a red blur, J'onn was taken out of Batman's hands and was draped over Flash instead. "Don't worry, after those last goo-guys, getting there'll be no problem."
"Don't get cocky," Batman quickly snapped. "The ones we faced just now won't have been the elites. They'll have sent the lesser soldiers against us first, keeping the strongest to fuel their quest for far more malleable and a more vast quantity of minds. Don't forget we're only here because they wanted J'onn out of the physical realm. If the Imperium come for us again, things won't be anywhere near as easy."
"I got it," Flash groaned, clearly hating getting lectured, regardless of how poignant a warning it was that he was being given. Wonder Woman saw Batman glare at him again. It was a good job that time was of the essence right now and the situation couldn't develop further. "Point the way, big guy. Where are the Mysterons?"
J'onn slowly raised a shaky hand, pointing out across the deserts. "I sense them in that direction, but I cannot break through properly to them against the telepathic bombardment they are still sending my way. I cannot tell them that we are coming, or pinpoint them precisely."
"But I'll find 'em," Flash replied, hoisting J'onn up more so the he was virtually giving the Martian a piggy-back. "Hold on tight."
And without further ado they were gone. Grains of sand were thrown up into the air as Flash ran fast, carrying J'onn away with him, hopefully to both his and the entire world's salvation.
But, as had been said, there were two plans being put in action here. It was time to put the other one into action too. It was time for Wonder Woman to do her part, right at Batman's side.
She didn't fail to notice how the four of them had paired off. She knew that it made tactical sense, that it was wise to send Flash with J'onn. J'onn needed to reach his fellow Martians quickly. That was far more important than sending him with someone with greater strength to escort him there. On top of that, if this control core was as important as Batman and J'onn had made out, then it would surely be well protected by the Imperium. That, therefore, was where the strength of Wonder Woman and the guile of Batman were most required.
But Wonder Woman, just as before, couldn't block out the selfish thoughts about the pairing. Despite her well honed warrior instincts having by no means gone away, she couldn't help but feel a slight giddiness at being alone with Batman again, even in a situation as dark as this one.
"Come on, Princess, we've got to move," Batman instructed just seconds after Flash and J'onn departed, turning to lead them the opposite direction. Once again, Wonder Woman got the strong impression that Batman knew too much here. All thoughts that he might have deliberately kept her with him for selfish reasons of his own were so rapidly overridden by those doubts, the doubts as to whether he was really coming back to her, at all.
Batman had turned, but he wasn't moving. Wonder Woman could pretty quickly read his reasons for why. They clearly had a fair distance to travel, and Batman had neither Flash's speed, any of his vehicles or any tall structures to grapple and glide between. They had to get to their target fast, faster than the powerless Batman could run to it. Instead, he was waiting for her to fly him there.
Wonder Woman wasn't slow to comply. She took off as soon as she realised what was going on, sweeping him up while already off the ground, hoisting him up by the shoulders. She flew up fairly high to stop his feet dragging in the sands, going as quick as she dared to go.
"I hope you're still in top shape, Princess," Batman commented from her arms, causing her to look down at him as she surged them on through the red skies. "I'm going to need you to keep the Imperium off my back when we arrive. I'll hopefully be too busy working on the control cluster as soon as we get an opening to it. I'll be counting on you to keep me safe."
"I'll do everything in my power to, Bruce, you know that," Wonder Woman quickly responded to him, surprised that she even had to.
She didn't like the way that he had spoken. It wasn't that he had acknowledged the danger. With what they did, they always faced danger. With this cloud, all its surprises and the unknown element of everything in here, especially this control cluster, that was perhaps even an understatement.
No, it was the way that once again he sounded so knowledgeable about the cloud when it was apparently something that had never been known to actually exist until now. Wonder Woman couldn't resist any more. It seemed they had a way to travel, and up here in the skies they were alone, with the chance to allow moments of distraction, even if they would only be short moments.
She had to know. She had to know if over his time away his paranoid mind had made him cast aside everything they had said to each other in the Batcave eight months ago. She had to know if he had come back to her.
"Bruce, I have to know. Was it... Was it this that you came back to the Justice League for? Did you return because of this energy cloud?"
"Yes."
Batman answered her quickly and firmly, no shred of doubts in his voice. Wonder Woman pretty much felt her heart breaking in that second. She knew very well that Bruce would be the only man she would ever love like this. For eight months she had waited for the day when they could finally be together. She wouldn't have done that for any other man, she wouldn't have missed another man this much. Now it seemed that the cloud had just claimed its first victim; all of Diana's hopes and dreams felt like they were being snatched from her by just that singular word.
"While at a charity do for the Wayne Foundation at the Gotham Observatory, one of the researchers there showed me this tiny speck of light they had picked up in the vicinity of Mars," Batman went on, beginning to explain in more depth.
He sounded completely oblivious to what he was putting Wonder Woman through, despite the fact that she was sure she wasn't hiding it well at all. In fact, she was hardly able to listen to the rest of what Batman was saying, though she forced herself to. She had to have hope, she couldn't give up. That was her way, in this and in the fight. She had to believe there was a reasonable explanation for all of this. The problem was her emotions weren't letting her find one, and ignoring her feelings had never been something she was very good at.
"They couldn't explain it, they thought it was just a playful, harmless anomaly a long way away from us," Batman continued. "But with all the extra-terrestrial things we've seen in the Justice League I decided that as soon as I got back to the Batcave I was going to check it out. I used astrological readings picked up from the Observatory's databanks, comparing them against the cultural database from the Watchtower. I accessed it all remotely, without detection, searching through all the files compiled by J'onn, Shayera, GL and our other space oriented members. What I found was a report J'onn had put in there, clearly half-heartedly, discussing the ideas of Transcendence. With the energy and matter readings the Observatory had recorded, it was the only thing I could find that made sense, and so I began calculating the potential repercussions of what it could mean, especially when I got a trajectory on the cloud and knew it was heading here. However, I thought I had more time. I thought that it would take the cloud longer to arrive, that I had time to take care of Penguin's scheme first. But yes, it was the cloud that I came back for. I knew that it had to be stopped."
"And if it wasn't for the cloud...? Is it all that you came back for?" Diana almost felt like she was pleading, It wasn't like her at all, but it was another sign of just how much this one man could affect her. Damn him.
"Princess, please," Batman responded to her, looking up to her face at last. She wished she could get some sort of read on him, but his damn cowl was still keeping him well shrouded in mystery. "I told you before that I'll explain everything to you when the time is right. It wasn't the time then, it definitely isn't now. We have to focus on stopping the cloud. We can't afford the distractions."
"Hera, Bruce, why do you think I'm pressing this now? I'm already distra–!" Wonder Woman began to exclaim his way, but she never got the chance to finish her sentence. Given all that had happened in the last few moments, the environment around them wasn't something she had been paying particularly close attention to, particularly since they were up here in the air. But she had forgotten that they were in a world made up of thoughts. Of course it would be possible for the environment to be changed; this wasn't the real world.
Of course the Imperium would want to use that to help prevent her and Batman from reaching the control cluster as soon as they realised they were on their way.
Wonder Woman had to give up on the talking, no matter how important it was to her. She was suddenly too busy having to dive and roll out of the way as the giant trees suddenly grew right in their path, clearly trying to block her, to make her crash straight into them. Clearly they were getting close to the core.
Tugging Batman in close, Wonder Woman dove. The trees were getting too close, despite her efforts. She felt branches scraping against her as she did everything to avoid the things growing out of nowhere, knowing that the same would be hitting Bruce from within her arms. She had already had enough of this. If the Imperium wanted a fight they could have one, a proper one. The Imperium couldn't fly, so they were trying to take that advantage away from her. She was willing to allow that. The anger that Bruce had just put into her meant that she was more than ready for a fight anyway.
As she set Batman down and then landed right beside him, Wonder Woman could tell that the sands below them had turned into soil, but she didn't dwell on that. The trees were disappearing almost as quickly as they had arrived, but behind them plenty of Imperium soldiers were coming into view. However, these ones were armed; they did have those guns the physical Imperium had used before. Batman had been right; that alone made sure that they were deadlier than the ones they had already fought in the cloud.
But Wonder Woman was ready for them, and she could tell that Batman was too. He was already getting his batarangs drawn, while she was raising her fists and deflecting bracelets to a fighting stance. The Imperium may feel they had caught the invaders in a trap, but Wonder Woman knew that conversely they were exactly where they wanted to be.
For looking beyond the Imperium, she could see the giant tower of pure light, stretching into the skies further than the eye could see. There was no doubt in her mind. That was surely the control core. It had to be.
And it was virtually within reach. All they had to do was get these Imperium out of the way. All they had to do.
Wonder Woman did not wait for Batman to say anything before acting. She didn't want to wait to hear him talk again right now. She just wanted to unleash her fury.
And save the world in the process.
The fighting had begun again.
She just wished that the unforeseen fight for Bruce wasn't lost already.
A/N:
Evening all. Bit late but here you go. Please, feel free to review away, chums! 'Tis much appreciated!
Also, since this story was being written when Egon died, and its quite apt here given a few of the lines, screw it I'll be nice. Chapter dedicated to the memory of Harold Ramis.
