History Lesson

by millenniumrobin

The team is thrown into mourning following Wally West "ceasing" and Dick Grayson walking out on them. Barbara Gordon turns to Bart Allen for assurances that they did the right thing. Despite his better judgement, he delves into the story of what happened before he came back 40 years into the past. But a better future is in the eye of the beholder. Some dialogue from YJ Season 2.

10. War

Metropolis
July 4, 2016 – Team Year 6 (Bart's Timeline) 14:34 EDT

There were many times that Lex Luthor had imagined the destruction of this world. Sometimes these thoughts came when his mind was distracted by some mundane task, allowing his superior intellect to come up with an infinite number of alternate scenarios. Other times these visions came to him as dreams, rich in color and detail. He would see people screaming, buildings burning. There were variations on those dreams, of course, but each revolved around a central theme; Superman dying and he, Lex Luthor, reigning supreme over a world he would remake in his own image.

Whatever visions occupied his dreams night after night paled in comparison to the real-life carnage that was currently ravaging his beloved city. Reach ships swooped and danced in between skyscrapers, yellow-orange death raining down. Acrid black smoke filled the sky from thousands of separate fires around the city. And somewhere out there, though he'd only caught the briefest of glimpses, Luthor knew Superman still lived, still fought to save the city he treasured as well.

In that way, both of them were innately similar. Both wanted what was best for Metropolis, both saw it as the rightful center of the world. It was just that both of them had completely different views on how to protect their city and their world.

Not today though. Not on this Independence Day. Luthor knew that for their city, for their world, to survive, he would have to work together with the Man of Steel. Superman couldn't protect this city alone, no matter how hard he tried or how powerful he was. He would need help. And Luthor had just the plan in mind to help him in a big way.

"Mr. Luthor, where are we going?" Pulling his mind back inside the skyscraper that was LexCorp headquarters, the sound of five pairs of running feet behind him suddenly seemed impossibly loud. Lex pressed a hand against a marble wall as he slowed to a stop, allowing the coolness of the rock to help center his thoughts.

"I need to get something that will save this city. The five of you," he gestured to those following him, "will gather whatever supplies you can carry and then you will get somewhere safe."

Turning his back to the group, Luthor slid his palms across the surface slowly. The subtlest change in the texture of the marble let him know he'd found the correct place. Splaying his fingers and pressing his hand flat, a dull green light emitted from behind the marble. A moment later, an imperceptible door opened in front of them. Luthor shooed them all inside the room, allowing the marble to close behind them.

As the lights flickered on, it took Luthor's eyes a moment to adjust. The room was put together with spartan efficiency. Aside from the crates and shelves piled against one another, its walls were bare. Harsh industrial lighting gave everything a piercing sheen. Luthor allowed a smile to cross his face for the first time since his own satellites had picked up the destruction of the Watchtower.

Those that knew him best called him a meticulous planner. Many others who did not know him as well called him obsessed with details, no matter how minute. Both were technically correct. While Luthor by no means lived poorly, his constant need to be prepared for every scenario, every eventuality, meant that he didn't have the lavish wealth to toss around on cars or parties like the billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. But Luthor liked to think that while Wayne was hiding in some bunker at WayneTech behind a legion of bodyguards that would be ineffectual against the Reach, he had prepared for this day and would come out on top.

"Woah." The exclamation caused Luthor to turn and look at his little group. They were all so young, so unprepared for all of this. He had no idea how Batman did it with his little group of sidekicks. He hoped the Dark Knight had prepared them more than this group; the fate of the world might depend on it.

Virgil Hawkins, Eduardo Dorado Jr., Tye Longshadow, and Asami Koizumi. "The Runaways," as they called themselves. Kidnapped by the Reach to be used for experimentation to unlock the metagene so it could be weaponized. Rescued by the Team through chance. Then experimented on by Star Labs to learn the "secrets" of the metagene. Ran away, appropriately enough, and fell into his grasp. Luthor had hoped to unlock the secrets of their metagenes for himself and groom them into his own personal fighting force, but the appearance of the Reach fleet had cut those plans short.

Behind them stood the final member of this little team: Mercy Graves. Trusted assistant, secretary, and bodyguard. Occasional assassin. Her loyalty to him was absolute, which was normally a trait Luthor couldn't stand. Those with unwavering loyalties tended to be sycophants, however there was something different about Mercy. She had allowed him to mold her in his own image, and for that Mercy now would draw his most treasured assignment.

"What is all this stuff?" Dorado moved toward one of the shelves. There were rows of guns, high explosives, other technical gadgets that could be used to defeat each member of the Justice League. Weapons to target the Reach specifically were still in development phases, but there was enough here to give these children a good start.

"What is in here may very well be the answer to what is out there." Luthor stepped over to a blank metal section of wall before turning to the group. There was little time to waste, and he had a sneaking suspicion that these children, with all their naiveté, would want to fight alongside him if they stayed. That would only get them killed, and by extension, probably cause his death as well as he tried to protect them.

"Take everything you can carry. As many weapons as you can find. Then you'll be following Mercy down to an underground tunnel. She'll take you the rest of the way." What he left unsaid was that the children and Mercy would be heading to a single-use zeta tube he'd had installed that would send them on a one-way trip to safe house he had set up in Dakota City.

Originally meant as a last stand of sorts for the inevitable day the Justice League felt threatened enough by his existence to end him, Luthor had tasked Mercy with running an insurgency out of there. Given that the most logical place for any League survivors to fall back was along the east coast near Metropolis or Gotham, having another force across the country would stretch the Reach's resources.

There was a slight hesitation, but the children began grabbing what they could. As he watched them, Luthor felt a twinge of something almost… parental. He couldn't really explain it, but brushed it away as stress in the moment messing with his normal emotions. "Mercy." The auburn-haired woman stopped stuffing machine pistols into a duffel bag and walked over to him. Despite her considerable training, he could see the look of worry in her face.

"What is it, sir?"

"I just wanted to thank you, Mercy. You have been of great use to me." Luthor pressed a hand to her cheek, his thumb brushing a stray strand of hair away from her eyes. It was the closest he came to a gesture of genuine affection. "Stay hidden, keep them safe, and give those alien scum hell."

Mercy opened her mouth to say something, but instead snapped her it shut as her jaw took a hard line. She didn't move beyond that, her eyes told him everything he needed to know. "Runaways." Her voice was sharp and short, likely to keep from showing any emotion if Luthor had to guess. "Let's go."

The children gathered a final few things into their bags and headed for the elevator secreted in the back of the room. All looked like they wanted to say something or ask a final question, but Luthor merely offered them a small, if slightly cold, smile and a nod.

But Asami approached with more speed that he would have given her credit for and threw her arms around his waist. The physical contact normally would have made the billionaire recoil, but instead he forced his body to relax and slowly wrapped an arm around her shoulder. A quick exchange in Japanese about her keeping the boys safe followed, and within seconds they were all loaded onto the express elevator. The last thing he saw before the doors closed were Mercy's eyes.

Once again, Lex Luthor was truly alone. It was not a new state for him, he had been alone most of his life. A superior intellect to nearly everyone on the planet saw to that. But there was something different about it this time; there was a finality that hadn't been there before. He tried to brush it off.

Tapping a code that not even Mercy knew into a keypad along the wall, Luthor stood back as a hiss of compressed gas blew past him. The blank section of wall opened outward, the lights in the room dimming, the only illumination coming from inside this new compartment.

In front of him stood his greatest creation. The only thing in this room that would have ever been able to stop Superman: an armored suit, powered by a kryptonite rock that cost as much as a couple Eastern European countries. The lights cast strange reflections off the armor's green and purple skin. What he had created to destroy Superman, he would now use to help him. The irony was not lost on Luthor.

Stepping onto the prescribed circle on the floor, Luthor saw the armor begin to encapsulate him. It was time to fulfill his destiny as the true protector of Metropolis.

XXXXX

Belle Reve
July 4, 2016 – Team Year 6 (Bart's Timeline) 13:50 CDT

Orchestrating a prison break was something that had always been on Roy Harper's bucket list. No, not the Justice League-betraying, crazy ninja-lady marrying, former drug addict, clone version of Roy Harper. The actual Roy Harper. The one who was twice the man the clone was. Well, minus half an arm.

No one had told Roy to come to Belle Reve Penitentiary. In fact, most of the people he knew would probably be very, very angry that he was here. But not the angry, yelling, ready to punch someone in the face angry. More like the "I'm very disappointed in you and your life choices" angry, which was about fifty times worse. It was something Black Canary had perfected in sending his way before his little ice nap. Only the fact that she was drop dead gorgeous had kept Roy from minding too much.

"Halt!" A voice yelled behind him, trying to sound authoritative but lacking the necessary depth to carry it. Kinda like Nightwing when he was giving orders. Which was always. Roy swung around, his mechanical arm raised and ready. The prison guard found himself staring right into the business end of his Luthor-present. In another situation, the man's look of absolute pants-shitting terror would have provided Roy with weeks of amusement. Now, it only showed him how outclassed these guards would really be in just a few minutes.

"I'll keep this simple, jump suit," Roy began, not even making an effort to keep the disdain from his voice as he lowered his arm cannon. "No, I'm not supposed to be here. No, the Justice League doesn't know I'm here. Yeah, I'm here about the alien invasion. No, I'm not going to tell you what I'm doing here." He paused for a moment, reading the man's face. Confusion was starting to break through the pants-shitting fear. That was a start.

"So, do us both a favor and get me to see the warden. Right. Now. Or, save me a lot of time and effort and just shoot me. It doesn't matter. You're probably dead either way." The man's face contorted in a mixture of emotions that Roy interpreted as anger, fear, confusion, and a hint of contemplating shooting the buzz-haired brat in front of him.

After quite a few seconds, far too many with alien fighters inevitably coming towards the prison, the guard finally lowered his gun. He didn't say anything, but made a quick motion for Roy to follow him deeper into the prison.

The guard moved at a quick trot, which was faster than Roy would have given him credit for when he'd first seen him outside. In a matter of minutes, they were beside the door marked "Warden." The guard reached a closed fist out to rap his knuckles against it, but Roy brushed past him, blasting the handle off the door and then shouldered it open.

Behind the desk sat Dr. Hugo Strange. His glasses-covered eyes were not turned toward his office intruder, but instead focused on a computer screen. From the reflection on the lenses, Roy could tell he was watching scenes of destruction from around the world.

"Roy Harper." The words from the psychiatrist and warden of Belle Reve were not a question, but sounded like a statement of fact. "You know, this very action had been a possibility that I considered once the invasion started." He rose from his chair. "A low possibility, but a possible outcome nonetheless. It seems I have underestimated you."

"Easy mistake. You're not the first." Roy watched with satisfaction as the good doctor's eyebrows rose in surprise at his flippant reply. A small smile tugged at the corner of Strange's lips.

"Fascinating. I would love to have you in for a session sometime, Mr. Harper. I'm sure a journey into your mind is quite the intriguing expedition." Removing his glasses, Strange revealed weary eyes. "But I suspect that is not the reason you are here."

"Laying on a couch and listening to how my father never understood me will have to wait for another time, Doc." Advancing to the opposite side of the desk from Strange, Roy leaned forward on both his hands. "I know you're watching what is going on out there. It's coming here."

"As I suspected." There was no urgency to Strange's voice. "These aliens seem to be targeting areas where those with superpowers tend to congregate. It only makes sense their attention would turn here at some point. I've put my guards on high alert." Roy didn't even bother to hold back his laughter.

"If they're anything like what I saw out there," he said, jerking a thumb back towards the door, "then you're fucked, Warden." Another smile from Strange gave Roy a satisfying feeling.

"And you're here to offer your services to keep the prison and its prisoners safe? Your psychological profile never indicated you were particularly altruistic, Mr. Harper." Another bark of laughter escaped Roy's lips.

"I'm good, Warden, but I'm not that good." Roy leaned in even more across the desk. "I'm here to break those prisoners out. Let those who will fight the Reach see how many they can take out. Let those who won't die when they bring this prison down on their heads."

If Strange was surprised by his request, he didn't show it. In fact, the warden almost seemed pleased by Roy's insistence at releasing dozens of hardened criminals to fight an invasion of ruthless aliens. "Well, since this is at the insistence of a well-known sidekick of Green Arrow, and therefore I can surmise this request comes straight from the Justice League…" Another small smile flirted across the warden's face as a hand reached under his desk and pressed what Roy could only assume was a hidden button.

Alarms began blaring throughout the facility. Roy lifted his hand in a mini-salute to Strange before dashing out of the office. Already, guards seemed to be in a state of panic, barricading themselves inside offices and control centers. The redhead ignored them. They might be of some help against the Reach, especially if they used any heavy weaponry they had, but superpowers were what was really going to turn the tide of this battle.

Roy rounded a corner and nearly crashed into a man slightly taller and only slightly older than he was. The man's head was bald, but the look in his brown eyes told Roy that he had seen some serious shit. He wore an inhibitor collar on his neck, and the name "Tryon" was scrawled onto a nametag attached to the jumpsuit. The name didn't ring a bell, but slow realization dawned on Roy as he studied the man's face again.

"You're Neutron! You killed the Flash and Captain Atom!" Whatever pain had existed in the man's eyes only deepened.

"My name is Nathaniel Tryon." His voice was barely audible above the alarms. Roy's mind flashed back to what he had heard about that fateful day in February. The powers that Neutron had before he'd gone nova would be invaluable now.

"Can we take that thing off without you going nuclear on the entire prison?" Roy gestured to the inhibitor collar encircling Neutron's neck. The man's head drooped, his shoulders slumping in defeat.

"No," he said softly. "Without my containment suit, my powers are… unrestrained. Unpredictable. Far more destructive." Roy let a few choice curses fly.

"Then get out of here. This place is about to become a killing ground." There was a short nod and the man started running. Roy continued the way he had been going, nearly tripping headlong into a group of five prisoners as he turned down another hallway. Keeping his balance, Roy instantly recognized them.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't a merry band of ice villains." Mister Freeze, Captain Cold, Icicle Sr., Icicle Jr., and Killer Frost all looked back at him. Junior made a move towards the redhead, but his father held him back.

"What do you want, hero?" Freeze's words were laced with a cold venom, even from someone who wielded temperatures near absolute zero for a living.

"That depends. Are you all content with the lives you've led, or would you prefer to keep on living?" Roy watched nearly all of them tense up, Junior making another move into his father holding him back. Roy raised his mechanical arm to keep any ideas the younger ice villain had at bay.

"There's an alien invasion going on out there," he nodded his head toward a wall. "And it's coming here. I can keep you in those inhibitor collars and let this place get shot down around your heads, or you can help me try and save everyone here." He locked eyes with each of them in turn, lingering for a few moments longer on Killer Frost. Only because she intrigued him. She was pretty hot for an ice villain. "So make your decision and make it fast."

No one seemed to be grasping the whole "alien invasion coming to kill everyone and everything" situation for him. Seconds stretched on like hours, and every moment they all stood there was another moment the Reach invasion was drawing even closer.

"I'm in." A female voice shocked him out of his reprieve. Killer Frost stepped forward, her eyes staring deep into Roy's. "Better to die taking out a few of these alien bastards than just wait for them to come here and carve us up one by one." She turned and gestured to her other ice villains. "Or experiment on us."

"If the choice is fight and die or wait and die, I choose to fight." Mister Freeze stepped forward as well. The other three hesitated another moment and then nodded, Icicle Jr. seeming to hesitate the most of all but following along with his old man's decision.

Without a word, Roy moved quickly and cut off their inhibitor collars. "Armory is that way," he said, jerking a finger over his shoulder while looking at Freeze and Captain Cold. "That's where they're holding your cold guns. They shouldn't give you any trouble, but if they do…" Roy shrugged. "Ice them." Heavy groans came from the father-son tandem and Mister Freeze, though Cold chuckled at the ice pun and Frost tried to hide a smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

And then they were off. Shouldering their way past guards and other inmates, Roy, Frost, and the Icicles reached the top of the prison walls in minutes. Below, prisoners and those tasked with guarding them both made beelines for the bayou. But a distinctive howl in the air told Roy they'd never make it.

"They're here." Killer Frost's hands glowed an icy blue as she peered off to the north. In the distance, Roy could see tiny dots descending out of the afternoon sun. But those dots seemed fuzzy, almost out of focus. It wasn't until they were closer, and that damn howl was nearly overwhelming, that Roy understood why.

Every dot was not one Reach fighter, but a group of them. It wasn't until the fighters were almost right on top of them, practically in range, that they materialized themselves into the individual parts of the swarm that they were.

"Let's hope you can live up to your name, kid." Killer Frost moved to stand beside Roy as he raised his arm. Now, Roy had been cryogenically frozen for years. He knew cold, so he could also recognize when warmth was present in a frozen abyss. And there seemed to be the briefest spark of warmth in Frost's eyes, however short. It made him smile.

"Hopefully you continue to live up to yours," was the only retort he could manage before the fighters were upon them. Those familiar disintegrating lasers from the television images were now all too real, flashing around them in a deadly lightshow that both dazzled the eyes and froze the soul.

Ducking and rolling to the side, Roy came up on one knee and took aim. Locking on to a fighter, a laser burst from his arm, blood red clashing with the Reach's marigold flashes filling the air. The laser traced across the upper arm of the Reach fighter, smoke bursting from the joint as the alien craft began a tight spiral towards the ground.

Roy didn't even watch to see if it exploded in the thick bayou undergrowth as he threw himself backwards, a yellow-orange flash scorching a crater in the prison wall where he had been just a moment before. A Reach fighter went screaming over his head, clearly out of control, a thick layer of ice covering its front viewport.

There wasn't time for a word of thanks or even to figure out who had helped save his scrawny ass. All Roy could focus on was finding targets, firing, reloading, and repeating the process. But the sheer volume of fighters, and the fire coming from them, was starting to overwhelm the prison's defenders. First Icicle Jr. disappeared in a flash of light, then Captain Cold a few seconds later. Roy heard a shriek from behind him, head turning just in time to catch the last traces of Killer Frost fading away.

Then the scream of a Reach fighter rattled through his entire body. Roy had just enough time to look skyward before the explosion consumed him.

XXXXX

Blüdhaven
July 4, 2016 – Team Year 6 (Bart's Timeline) 15:30 EDT

This fight was not going well. And as someone who had been cloned, programmed into betraying the entire Justice League to Vandal Savage, addicted to heroin, and married to an assassin, Roy Harper had a pretty good handle on things not going well. But this… this was something entirely out his league.

Even with their communications out, which in retrospect would have already taken this situation from "oh shit" to "curling up in the fetal position," Roy knew that the heroes of Earth were decidedly outmatched. The Reach had gotten the drop on all them, including Earth's military, and now they were all fighting an increasingly obvious losing battle in some of the worst places.

Blüdhaven was a shithole, there was no other way to say it. A seedy, crime-infested hive of scum and villainy. Arsenal would have liked it here. It was like the city had seen Gotham at its worst, and decided that billionaires getting gunned down in the streets was for pansies. Two people who Roy knew enjoyed the surroundings were his wife and Sportsmaster. Or, if we're going by family ties, his father-in-law.

In terms of actual skills, the Reach soldiers had nothing on Jade Nguyen and Lawrence Crock. But what they lacked in raw hand-to-hand combat abilities, they made up for in sheer numbers and those laser staff things they all carried.

Roy slid up against a half-demolished building, pressing his shoulder into it before popping out around the corner and letting an arrow fly into the chest of a charging Reach soldier. As the alien fell, he caught a glimpse across the river at Gotham City. The normal metallic glimmer of Blüdhaven's older and bigger sister was replaced with thousands of fires that gave the sky a sickening haze.

"You know, I almost miss Lian right now," Roy said, drawing another arrow as he watched Jade leap into the air, her legs wrapping around a Reach soldier's neck, snapping it to the side as she took him down to the ground.

"And why would you want our daughter out in the middle of this?" The venom in his wife's voice was nothing compared to the sai that she flung at his face. Roy sidestepped in time to see the pinwheel of metal death streak past him and was about to utter a protest when he heard a gasp behind him and saw another alien soldier sinking to the ground, the weapon protruding from its chest.

"Well, the last time we seemed to face truly insurmountable odds, we made it through with her there." Roy released another arrow, this one explosive-tipped. A ball of yellow fire erupted farther down the docks. "Plus, disturbing as it may be, I think she'd be enjoying herself."

"Well, she is her mother's daughter." Cheshire stabbed another Reach soldier in the chest before sliding herself up Roy's body. The move, while meant to evoke arousal, didn't stop him from noticing the blood trickling down the outside of her leg from under her kimono.

Taking a quick look around, Roy's hand rose up Jade's back, cupping the back of her neck and pulling her into him. The kiss was rough and familiar, but soon softened to one that Roy knew was only saved for their most intimate, or in this case dire, moments.

A loud thump behind them brought them back into the present, both raising their weapons in anticipation of an attack. Roy relaxed only slightly when he saw that it was Sportsmaster, not a Reach ambush. The elder Crock had lost his mask at some point and was bleeding heavily from his face. His left arm also hung at his side at an unnatural angle, swaying independently when the larger man moved.

"Can we get on with this?" The gruff tone attempted to mask the pain he was obviously feeling, but some still crept into his voice. "Or would you two prefer to get a room while I keep doing all the heavy lifting?"

"Doesn't look like you'll be lifting much of anything right now, Crusher." Jade's voice was an interesting mix of contempt and concern. "That arm doesn't look so good."

"Please, I've fought worse odds than this one handed before." The older man steadied himself on his javelin, still swaying slightly in the afternoon breeze coming off the river. "I saw from the roof. They're massing for another attack. Bigger this time. And coming from all three sides."

Roy suppressed a whistle and pulled the quiver off his back. A quick inventory showed he was low, very low, on arrows. About a half dozen, almost all of them the old-fashioned type, though he did have a net and a final explosive arrow among them.

"What do you say, lover boy?" Jade moved to the Reach soldier she'd killed with the thrown sai, pulling it from his chest and smiling at him. "Ready for one last round?"

"Ready or not, they're here." Roy peeked out around the corner and saw that Sportsmaster was right. In each direction, as far as he could see, were Reach soldiers. Safe to say this time they weren't fucking around.

He ducked back as the front line of the soldiers began firing their laser staffs. They were advancing more cautiously this time, ready to let their superior numbers and long-range weaponry do much of the work. The building they were hiding behind began to vibrate as more chunks began falling off under the continued onslaught from the Reach soldiers.

"I'm going to draw them away." The statement from Lawrence hit Roy like one of his own arrows. Draw them away? Lawrence Crock had never done a heroic thing in his life. Why was he about to start now?

"Don't be stupid. They'll kill you in seconds." Ah, there was the dispassionate voice of blunt honesty that his wife was known for. But then in perhaps the most surprising thing to occur that day, and remember that there is currently an alien invasion happening, Crusher turned and wrapped his eldest daughter in a tight hug.

"Lian needs her mother more than she needs her grandfather." He looked up from his daughter to glance at Roy, a begrudging sigh escaping from his lips. "And perhaps she needs her father more, too." Crock pulled back from the hug, holding Jade at an arm's length. "So when I go out there, you both run. You try to get to whatever safe house these heroes have set up. And you keep my granddaughter safe."

As the older man turned to leave, Jade wouldn't let go of his arm. "Dad…" Crusher turned back and offered up a sad smile to his daughter.

"You haven't called me that in years, little girl." He pulled his arm from hers and charged around the corner. Glancing out around it, Roy saw the Reach soldiers contract, startled by the assault. With his good arm, Lawrence threw his javelin through the chest of the nearest alien, leaping onto the soldier's body as it was still falling to the ground. Yanking the javelin out with a spray of fluorescent blood, Sportsmaster twirled the weapon over his head like the spinning blades of a helicopter before smashing the pointed end into another soldier's face.

That was when the first Reach trooper got close enough, or brave enough, to rake the older man's back with the scythe-end of its staff. Roy watched as crimson flowed from a thin line across his father-in-law's back. A barely audible grunt escaped from Sportsmaster's lips, his javelin shooting back, catching the soldier who had stabbed him in the stomach before emerging out its back. Swinging the ancient weapon again, Lawrence sent the soldier crashing into three of its compatriots.

But two other soldiers stepped in, one sweeping its staff across the back of Sportsmaster's legs, the second driving the razor-sharp point into the man's side before twisting violently. There was no shout, no sound at all from the old villain this time. His legs refused to carry his weight any longer, and he sank to his knees as the rest of the soldiers closed around him, staffs rising and plunging down in a frenzied dance.

"Chesh, come on." Roy shook the shoulder of his wife, frozen while watching her father being butchered by the alien troops. "Jade, we have to go." The assassin, the one able to move without sound, continued to stand as motionless as one of her victims not prepared for an attack.

"Jade!" Roy's shout caused some of the Reach to turn, starting to amble in their direction. "Jade, Lian needs you! Come on!"

Their daughter's name seemed to shake his wife from her stupor. Blinking up at Roy, she turned to look one last time at the mass of soldiers surrounding the spot where Crusher had fallen, and nodded.

In unison, both of them turned and ran further down the alley. They made it most of the block without seeing a Reach soldier before one popped its head around the mouth of the narrow passageway just before they got there. Quickly drawing his bow, Roy launched an arrow that struck the soldier right in the eye. The alien dropped.

Emerging from the alley, Roy assessed their situation. To the left, their path was clear for the moment, though they would be heading back into Blüdhaven. To the right was the river, and across it Gotham City. And about forty Reach soldiers standing in their way. But who knew how many were waiting back in the city? Without a word, Roy and Jade exchanged a glance. They both knew what they had to do.

Launching his final explosive arrow directly into the middle of the soldiers, Roy ran into the fray behind his wife. Ducking a swinging staff, he brought his bow up under the alien trooper's chin, sending it flying backward. Out the corner of his eye, he caught Jade expertly flipping over one soldier and slashing the back of its neck with a sai, smoothly sweeping the legs out from another soldier upon landing.

Three Reach charged at her from behind. Arms now just moving on instinct, Roy sent his net arrow flying, wrapping the soldiers up and pinning them to the ground. Jade calmly dispatched the three of them like she was stabbing a piece of lettuce in a salad. Then her eyes widened.

"Red, behind you!" Roy turned and saw the crimson streak of a Reach soldier flying towards him. Instinctively, the redhead raised his bow to protect himself. The alien's staff came crashing down onto it, shattering the bow in half. The scythe end sliced into his bicep, white-hot pain flashing down Roy's arm as he rolled away. Before he could even turn again, Jade was on the soldier, one leg over its shoulder, the other wrapped around its chest, sais stabbing in a flurry of frenzied motion. The soldier collapsed backward and did not move again.

There was no time for thank yous or even an acknowledgement as they both rose to their feet, Reach soldiers advancing once again. Roy pulled the final two arrows from his quiver, holding them in his hands as Jade made a beeline towards the nearest building. He followed, stabbing one soldier in the throat as he ran, ripping the staff from the alien's hands. His wife threw a sai into another soldier's chest, launching into a kick that plunged it deeper as Roy ducked another trooper, shoving the final arrow into a knee before slicing its head clean off with the staff.

Jade advanced past him again, kicking a door open and racing inside. Roy followed, slamming it shut behind them and using the staff to brace it. It would buy them no more than a minute or two, probably less, but might allow them to figure out where to go next.

But the look in his wife's eyes, illuminated by a thin thread of light through a crack in the wall, let Roy know that there would be no escape. Not this time. He closed his eyes and sunk into the wall next to Jade. The weight of death, always a present companion, now seemed insurmountable, as if someone had just turned the gravity up a few notches.

Ignoring the incessant pounding on the door that was getting louder by the second, Roy pulled a small pouch from his belt. As he opened it, that thin line of light caught a photograph of Lian and Jade. Smiling. Happy. That's how Roy wanted to remember his family.

Jade saw the photograph and ran a hand over his chest up to his chin, pulling him down for a fierce kiss. When their lips parted, her dark eyes were dancing with fire, and a small smile creased her lips.

"I want you to know Red, I love you." Roy let out a short bark of a laugh that covered up the banging on the door one last time.

"I know."

The two of them embraced again as the door exploded inward, bathing them in a momentary rush of afternoon light.

XXXXX

Star City
July 4, 2016 – Team Year 6 (Bart's Timeline) 12:50 PDT

The headquarters for Queen Industries were still familiar to Oliver Queen, even if he hadn't set foot inside them in years. But just because he no longer had any affiliation with the company his grandparents built didn't mean that he couldn't get in. Heck, he'd programmed most of the backdoors into the security system himself. As far as the computers were concerned, he was being welcomed back with open arms.

When Oliver sold his company, gave away his fortune, and disappeared from public life, most in the world had assumed that he had died. Of course, that might actually be true in another few minutes.

Queen Industries' headquarters was supposed to be one of the most secure places in the world. Top-notch cyber security, save for his personal backdoors, complimented with physical security features second only to the Pentagon. Well, maybe third. Oliver was pretty sure the Batcave had better security, both electronic and physical. Probably better than the Pentagon too.

Either way, all that vaunted physical security hadn't mattered one iota when the Reach came knocking.

If the rest of the world looked anything like his beloved Star City, then it was going to be a long time before anything was back to normal again. Fires blackened the sky, buildings crumbled, and death was everywhere. Not that Oliver had seen any of that in the last hour or so. He'd been fighting, along with the last vestiges of the military forces assigned to the city, to keep the Reach from the depths of Queen Industries, where tech that just might save them was being held. If they could get it to work.

Another explosion rocked the building and Oliver ducked, shielding himself from plaster and dust that dropped from the ceiling. Even three levels underground, the muffled sounds of fighting above and outside the building still managed to reach them down here. The thought crossed his mind, for longer than he'd like to admit, that maybe there was no escape from these alien invaders. Maybe this wasn't going to turn out like the movies where the heroes managed to save the day. Maybe, just maybe, this was the end of the human race.

And then an angel came to dash those thoughts from his mind. Black Canary stalked through the still unsettled dust, tiny particles dancing around her feet and in her wake, highlighted by the few flickering lights in the hallway. Oliver flashed a smile underneath his goatee.

"Why the hell haven't you answered me?" And that smile disappeared. It was obvious that his pretty bird wasn't happy with him, though Oliver couldn't figure out why. He ran back over the actions of the past few hours in his mind. Nothing sprang to the front of his memory that screamed that he'd obviously screwed up. Though, Oliver Queen knowing himself like he did, it would have been easy for him to miss something.

"Constant communication, Arrow," the blonde woman said as she stopped right in front of him, a finger stabbing into his chest. Oliver worked not to wince. "We're in a war zone, or did you forget that for a moment? When I call, you answer."

Oliver opened his mouth to raise a defense for himself, but thought better of it. Instead, he pressed a finger to his ear to activate his communicator. "Green Arrow to Red Tornado, come in." There was no answer from the android, not even any static, only silence.

"Green Arrow to Red Volcano, come in." The android had already been fighting the Reach in Star City when Oliver, Dinah, and Red Tornado had arrived. Tornado had joined his mechanical brethren to fight throughout the city itself, while the two humans had rushed inside to try and find something to turn the tide of the battle.

"Green Arrow to all Justice League, come in." Again, silence was his only answer. Oliver turned to Dinah and offered up a small smirk. "I'd gather all the comms are down, pretty bird. Unless everyone is ignoring us and wants you to yell at them." Dinah's face contorted for a moment, as if she were about to launch off a stinging rebuke, but her expression softened and her forehead fell into his chest.

"Ollie," she said at a whisper so that no one else around could hear. "It's just… when you didn't answer, I thought…"

Whatever apology she was about to deliver, and it definitely was an apology as much as she might try to deny it, was interrupted by a tremendous explosion. While Oliver reached out a hand to steady himself against the wall, Dinah merely widened her stance and ducked her shoulders against another round of dust and debris falling from the ceiling.

The sound of footsteps pounding down the hall caused the couple to turn, though Oliver had to take an extra second to grasp for an arrow from his quiver. He was running quite low. But another moment later, a Marine burst through the dust, covered and coughing. A thin trickle of blood started underneath his helmet and ran down his face.

"They've breached," the blonde man, his nametag read "Reid," struggled to catch his breath. "They're inside the building." Oliver immediately pressed his finger to his ear to call Red Tornado before remembering that no one would hear him.

"This way," Dinah grabbed his arm, pulling him farther down the hall. Reid followed, covering their backs as they retreated deeper into the building. She kicked open the door to a staircase, and the beleaguered group started heading down. Above, the sounds of battle grew even louder, echoing through the hallways. Screams, gunshots, and the sounds of alien lasers reached out to them.
They continued down the stairs until they could go no further. Oliver knew from experience that these bottom levels were where any weapons prototypes would be housed. If they could find them, if they could figure out how to use them, if they worked… if if if.

The trio worked their way down a hallway, Oliver mentally noting each sign along the way. Systems Management, Server Storage, Weapons Development… there we go. Oliver jiggled the door handle, but it wouldn't budge. Next to the door, a very expensive and sophisticated looking lock flashed red. It was at that moment the former billionaire sincerely wished he had a Bat-child with him.

Another explosion rocked them, this time almost directly above their heads. Through a flaming hole in the ceiling, three Reach soldiers dropped through. Reid spun on his knee, spraying gunfire at the alien intruders. An arrow from Oliver caught one of the Reach in the throat, dropping it to the ground with a gurgle. Reid's fire clipped another, sending it spinning backward into the third. Dinah finished them, her Canary Cry sending them both flying deeper down the hallway. They did not get up.

But more explosions, similar in sound to the one that had just happened, started roiling down the hall. Even farther down the corridor in the darkness, brief flashes of light could be seen, silhouetting alien figures dropping down onto the floor below.

"Get those weapons, Green Arrow! I'll hold them off." Reid loaded a fresh magazine into his rifle, wiping the blood away from his face.

"We're not leaving you," Dinah responded, saying what Oliver was thinking. Her hand was on the man's shoulder but he shook it off.

"A soldier like me's not going to make a difference in the grand scheme, ma'am," Reid offered a small smile as he shrugged her hand off. "Earth is going to need its heroes. Find something to kill these bastards. I'll buy you some time."

"What's your name, son?" He wanted to know more than just a last name. Oliver's question clearly caught both Dinah and the Marine off guard, but the grunt smiled and held out his hand.

"David, sir. David Reid." A brief nod from Oliver was followed by his green-gloved hand enveloping Reid's.

"Dinah Lance," Oliver said, gesturing to Canary. He tried to smile as warmly as he could under his goatee as he pointed to himself. "Oliver Queen. Thank you, son." There was a slightly shocked look that crossed the soldier's face, though in perspective with aliens trying to conquer the planet, a former billionaire playboy back from the dead was not the strangest thing to happen today.

A tossed salute later, and the man was running down the hall towards the darkness. For a brief moment, Oliver watched him go and then turned to the blonde woman next to him.

"Let's not keep our uninvited guests waiting any longer." He started typing in every password he could think of into the lock next to the door, but everything came back red. The sounds of Reach lasers were getting even closer, and Reid's gunfire was becoming more and more sporadic.

"Step back." Oliver pressed himself against the far wall, grabbing one of his last two arrows, one of the explosive types. He fired into the lock, blowing it away. Canary stepped up and landed a well-placed kick, forcing the door open. They both rushed inside, Oliver closing the door behind them and looking for something to brace it with.

"No." The word, breathed with a mix of terror and hopelessness, brought Oliver's head back around. He flipped a light switch next to the door just to make sure he was seeing the room correctly.

His eyes weren't lying to him. Table after table was empty, cleaned off. What had once obviously been a bustling weapons research and development lab was completely cleaned out. Spare knick knacks still dotted the tables and floors, but there was nothing here that would be useful against the Reach. They'd followed a dead end for nothing.

"No, no no no no!" Dinah's shout echoed in the now-empty room as she grabbed one table and flipped it end over end against the door behind them with a crash. That might hold the door for an extra few seconds, but it wouldn't hold the Reach off forever.

"Go, Ollie." Dinah's words brought him back to the present, and his eyes widened behind his domino mask as he looked at her. She was hunched over one of the tables, her fingers digging into the stainless steel. "Just go."

"What do you mean "go," Dinah?" Oliver stepped over and put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm not leaving you."

"Yes, you are." When she turned to him, there was a fire in her eyes. A desperation, a madness that Oliver hadn't seen before. "You're going to run and find a way out of this mess. I'll cover you and give you time to get far enough."

"And why am I not covering your escape, Dinah? You've got the superpowers, I don't." Dinah moved closer to him and Oliver inadvertently took a step back. To be fair, she almost looked like she was going to hit him. Instead, Dinah reached past his face and pulled out the final arrow from his quiver.

"Not sure this is going to hold off an entire Reach army, Arrow." But Dinah's face broke into a sad smile as she lowered her blonde head into his chest. "I want you to at least have a chance to be safe, Ollie."

Oliver cupped a finger under her chin, lifting her face to meet his. "My last memory of you isn't going to be of you screaming." His lips met hers with a fierce intensity. "If we're going down, it's going to be together." A sizzling noise caught his attention and he turned, seeing the center of the door start to glow a fiery red. The Reach were literally burning through the entrance.

"Besides," Oliver looked at Dinah as he drew his final arrow and pointed it at the door, "I don't really want to live on a world without you anyway, pretty bird." Dinah smiled and stepped behind him, pressing her body to his.

She leaned up and placed a kiss on his cheek just as the door melted away. Oliver let his final arrow fly.

XXXXX

Gotham City
July 4, 2016 – Team Year 6 (Bart's Timeline) 16:40 EDT

Gotham was burning. Not just a building here and there, but the entire city seemed to be on fire. Even the sky, which had been such a brilliant azure matching the bird on his chest earlier in the day, had now taken on a darkened, reddish glare. It was like staring at the world through hell-colored glasses.

As it burned, Gotham City was being overrun. Despite the best efforts of the GCPD, the military, Wonder Woman and Donna Troy, the line was still fracturing, breaking, and falling steadily backward. Even the arrival of Dick Grayson to the fight hadn't been enough to sway the tide, as much as he'd like to think the Reach would turn tail and run at the very sight of him.

Donna and her mentor had bought the police forces he was with a little breathing room. As the line started to falter near Gotham Square Garden, the two Amazons had swung around behind some of the Reach forces while some of the few remaining military members in the city hit the alien flank.
That had given the police some time to set up barricades and refresh their defenses. Not a lot, but some. Everyone there knew that this was just a stalling tactic. Radio transmissions were still down, and if Earth's last defenders wanted any chance of survival at this point, they needed to be able to talk to one another.

All this was riding on the shoulders of one woman: Barbara Gordon. Dick had left the fiery redhead on the roof of the GCPD headquarters, head and arms buried in a mass of electronics. Bruce had said the best way to get communications up and running again was through the equipment on that rooftop, and Barbara was the best one to do it.

Dick had hated leaving her alone up there like that. If the Reach found her, if she was attacked, she wouldn't be able to call for help. But she had told him to go, practically ordered him to leave more like it, arguing, logically, that the Reach were far more likely to notice two heroes on the top of GCPD instead of one.

Barbara was right, of course. She always was. And that's why he'd left, making sure to lead a few Reach soldiers who had been attacking the front of the building on a merry chase before losing them in the steel canyons that made up his adopted home.

Normally, the streets of Gotham were always bustling with activity. Even in the dead of night, the streets were alive with energy and people. But most people had already tried packing the freeways, only to become cannon fodder for Reach soldiers, or were now bunkered in their homes, praying for Earth's defenders to save them. That left the side streets of the normally alive city dead and mostly deserted.

But the relative calm was shattered when a police car came speeding up behind their barricades. A young officer, he couldn't have been much older than Dick himself, stepped out almost before the car stopped moving.
"Commissioner! Commissioner Gordon!" Dick watched Barbara's father move toward the man. His hair still maintained most of its natural brown color, though some grey was starting to appear at his temples as he advanced through his fifties. But the outfit was ever the same: white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, tie slightly loosened around his neck, vest, and a black shoulder holster that kept his gun tucked under his left armpit.

"What is it, son?" The Commissioner's voice was calm and steady, probably steadier than just about anyone Dick had come across that day. It was no question where Barbara got her poise under fire.

"The Reach, sir. They've got a huge army swinging around our barricade." The young police officer took a couple deep breaths, steadying himself on the door of his cruiser. "They're heading for headquarters."

The color drained from the Commissioner's face as he turned to Harvey Bullock. "Barbara," he breathed. Dick's heart dropped through his stomach toward his feet, already reaching to his belt for his grappling hook. Maybe if he left now, he could make it there in time to warn her. But she still needed to crack the Reach encryption. Maybe he could hold them off long enough for her to get the job done. Dick didn't want to know what the odds were on that particular suicide mission. But if Barbara was going to have any chance at getting their comms back online, she would need backup.

"Back, we have to get back there!" Where other men might have hesitated in the moment, the Commissioner's decision making continued to be lightning-quick. Gordon took off running for a cruiser at the back of their formation. Dick was on his heels, sprinting as fast as he could.
"Gordon!" Harvey Bullock's voice cut through the air behind them. Gordon didn't stop. "Commissioner!" The older man slowed just short of the cars and turned to see the Lieutenant huffing to a stop behind them. "We can't just go…running in there…half-cocked, boss," the heavyset man said in between breaths.

"And what about Batgirl, Bullock?" The Commissioner's voice rose as he gestured back in the direction of the Gotham Police building. "We can't just leave her there to the Reach."

"And if we all pull back, we're going to lead the entire Reach army right to her doorstep."

"Better than showing up and not having enough people to hold them off." Gordon pulled the door to the cruiser open and looked over Bullock's shoulder. "We're falling back to HQ. That's an order!"

Dick jump-slid across the hood of the cruiser and hopped in the passenger seat as the Commissioner slammed his foot on the gas and peeled out from their position. In the rear-view mirror, lights from the other police cars chased them down the narrow city streets.

Gotham Police headquarters sat at an intersection of a couple of streets. It allowed the police easy access out to different directions of the city. But right now those multiple roadways just allowed more avenues for the Reach army to advance on the building. Dick's eyes widened as Gordon accelerated even more, the cruiser barreling toward a group of advancing Reach soldiers.

"Uh, Commissioner…" The only response from the older man came in his blue eyes narrowing, focusing harder on the aliens in front of him. One of those soldiers must have heard them coming because it turned, raising an alarm and pointing its laser staff at the car.

"Jim!" Dick braced himself as he prepared for a laser blast or scythe to smash through the windshield and into his body. But just before they were about to crash into the line of Reach soldiers head on, the Commissioner slammed on the brakes and swung the wheel. The back of the cruiser shot out, and suddenly Dick was coming face to face with soldier after soldier as they slammed into the side of the police vehicle. The car finally skidded to a stop, Dick scrambling out the driver's side after Gordon.

It didn't take him long to see what Barbara's father's strategy had been. No sooner was Dick out of the car that another pulled up right behind it, then another, and another. The arriving officers were using their cars to form a physical barricade, a semi-circle of metal and flashing lights around Gotham PD.
While those cars wouldn't keep the Reach away forever, it did provide the police with a precious few seconds to get their new defenses set up. And it gave Dick and the Commissioner the time they needed to dash inside the building, bounding up the stairs a few at a time.

"Come on!" Gordon was ahead of him, moving with the speed of a much younger man. "The roof is this way!" Dick followed him up, watching as the Commissioner threw his shoulder into the door at the very top of the stairs, forcing it open.

For the briefest moment, there was silence. The late afternoon summer sun washed over him, peeking through a pair of unscathed buildings. It was peaceful, quiet. And then the sound of gunfire reached Dick's ears. But it was the sound that responded to that gunfire that had haunted his nightmares since he had been thirteen years old. It was the sound of Reach lasers, those beams that were forever seared into his memory: those memories that had become real life horror stories in the past few hours.

In the middle of the roof, there was a vision that brought him a sense of peace. Though he could only see her black boots, grey pants, and the very tail end of her cape, Dick knew that Barbara Gordon was hard at work saving all their lives.

As the Commissioner worked to fortify the door as much as he could, Dick raced over to the redhead's side. Sliding to a stop, he placed a hand on her shoulder, brain trying to make sense of the mass of wires and electronic equipment in front of him.
"What happened to drawing the Reach away from GCPD, Dick?" Barbara's royal blue eyes didn't move off her work. Her hands simultaneously typed away on her holographic keyboard and rewired whole sections of the Gotham Police communications array.

"They were coming here, a whole army. We had to buy you more time." Dick leaned down, his pupils tracing over the lines of code she was typing at a flurrying rate of speed. "What can I do to help?"

"Make sure I don't have too many more distractions…" Right on cue, an explosion erupted near the front of the building, causing the roof to sway. Barbara gritted her teeth and continued coding. "Seamlessly incorporating Earth code into unknown alien code is not the easiest task in the world…"

Another tense few seconds of computer magic followed. Below, Dick could hear the gunfire from police officers getting more and more sporadic. And closer.
"Got it!" Barbara's eyes brightened as she beamed up at the code scrolling over her screen. "I think I got it!" Eyes tracing over the code again, Barbara tapped a quick combination into her gauntlet and then touched her communications earpiece.

"Batgirl to Batcave, come in." There was silence for a moment, but then a burst of static followed by Bruce's voice, loud and clear.

"Batman to Batgirl, I read you. Have you stopped the Reach jamming?" The corners of Barbara's lips travelled downward and Dick could imagine her brow furrowing underneath her cowl.

"Negative, Batman. Not enough time right now. But I slipped some code into their own comm signal…"

"So as long as they use their comms, we can use ours." It may have just been the radio distortion, but Dick was almost positive his mentor sounded proud of the female Bat.

"Exactly," Barbara said, her smile back. "Switch all WayneTech devices throughout the entire world to code Two Four One Ten. Use whatever backdoor you can to get that to LexCorp equipment as well."

"Will do, Batgirl." Dick could already hear Bruce typing in the background. "Good work. Batman out."

Barbara sat back on her haunches, clearly exhausted from the mental gymnastics she'd been performing. Dick pulled her into a tight hug, her red hair resting against his shoulder. Tilting her chin up, Dick pressed his lips against hers, hard.

Another explosion broke their embrace. Dick pushed himself to his feet, watching Commissioner Gordon fiddle with his walkie talkie. He turned back to help Barbara up, hands tightening on hers as a thought crossed his mind.

"Wait, if our comms are embedded in their code, can't they listen in and know our every move?" The redhead gave him a look that very clearly said "you should know better," her lips curling in a half smile.
"They'd have to find my code first, Boy Wonder," she said, her words whispered next to his ear and a mischievous fire gleaming in her eyes.

"Bullock, Bullock come in!" The shouted order for the Commissioner caused both of them to turn. The elder Gordon was slowly backing away from the door he had barricaded with a metal pipe, gun drawn. "Bullock, pick up your radio damnit!" That was when something else caught Dick's attention. Or rather, the lack of something.

There were no more gunshots. Well, no more that were steady anyway. One or two would sound off, followed by the whine of those alien lasers, and then more silence would follow.

With another surprising burst of quickness, the Commissioner was over to them, hands on their backs, pushing them away from the door. "It's time for you both to go." Barbara ducked out from underneath her father's hand, eyes wide and mouth open.

"Daddy, no!" Honestly, Dick was about to say something similar. They weren't about to just up and leave the Gotham Police Commissioner. But Jim Gordon's eyes held a determined resignation. There was no way they were going to change his mind.

"You keep her safe, Nightwing," Gordon said, placing a heavy hand on Dick's shoulder. "You need to keep my little girl safe." And then in a move that caught him completely off guard, the Commissioner pulled Dick in for a hug. Taught muscles slackened after a moment, a hand patting the older man on the back as Gordon whispered in his ear.

"I would have been proud to have you as a son, Dick." The original Boy Wonder's eyes widened behind his domino mask as the Commissioner broke the hug and then moved to his daughter.

"Daddy, no no no…" Barbara's cries were muffled as Jim pulled her in for an even tighter hug, burying his face in her flowing red hair. As he pulled back, his calloused hands lifted her cowl away from her face. With a look of loving pride that only a father could manage, the Commissioner leaned down and kissed her gently on the forehead before pulling her cowl back down.

"I am so proud of the woman you have become."

"Dad… you can come with us. You don't need to stay here. You don't have to die." Barbara's hands were like vices around her father's vest. She was trying everything she could to change his mind, but Dick could see the steely resolve in the Commissioner's face. It was the same look that made Jim Gordon the most feared man without a mask in Gotham.

"Someone needs to cover your exquisite handiwork, Barbara." He looked back at the communications array and smiled. "And someone also has to cover your escape, give you time to get away and plan your next attack." Leaning back down to his daughter, Gordon leaned his forehead against hers.

"The future of our world rests in your hands, not mine."

"Daddy…" Barbara started to once again try to convince her father to change his mind, but a strong shake of his head cut her off.

"I love you, Barbara. I couldn't have asked for a better daughter." Gordon pulled back, removing her hands from his vest. Another explosion shook the GCPD headquarters, this one very close, probably only a floor or two below them.

"Both of you go. Now!" Dick didn't want to run. He wanted to stay, wanted to fight, wanted to protest. But he knew it wouldn't be any good. Instead, he shook Gordon's hand.
"It's been an honor, Commissioner. Thank you for everything."

"The honor was all mine, Dick." Gordon paused, looking at Barbara as the younger man wrapped his arm around her waist. "You keep her safe."

"I will, sir. I promise." Dick raised his arm and fired his grappling hook, swinging off the roof of the Gotham Police building. Barbara said nothing, keeping her face buried in his chest, clutching him so tight that he almost feared she would never let him go. Her red hair streaked out behind them like a comet's trail.

Off one of those few unscathed buildings, a watery yellow light appeared. It manifested itself into the Bat symbol, and a bare smile almost crossed Dick's face. The Commissioner had activated the signal one last time, looking to bring hope to those who still remained in the city.

Then another explosion rocked the roof behind them, so large Dick could feel the heat on his back. There were gunshots, two, three, four. And then another explosion and a flash, so bright that on the building in front of them, Dick could see the Commissioner's silhouette. It faded as quickly as the Bat-signal high above.

XXXXX

Metropolis
July 4, 2016 – Team Year 6 (Bart's Timeline) 17:03 EDT

For the past two and a half hours, Lex Luthor was doing something that he was quite unaccustomed to: losing. Trying to save Metropolis, perhaps even the planet itself, was very rapidly becoming a losing battle, and only moreso every minute.

The custom suit that he had designed himself, engineered himself, built himself had stood up well to the strain. The dull green and purple sheen of the metal armor had faded now, marked with grime, ash, and a few scorch marks from too-close laser blasts from now-dead Reach soldiers. The suit had performed as he had envisioned when it came to killing the aliens, although it had originally been designed to help him end Superman. Between twin energy blasts from his closed fists and dropping the aliens from tall heights, his experiments had shown that the Reach could, in fact, scream. Now Luthor fought through the streets of a shattered Metropolis trying to find the Boy Scout.

An indicator light flashed on his wrist gauntlet. Power was draining, and he was now dipping into his reserves. A recharge shouldn't take more than a couple of hours, if the power grid held out that long. But how much of a city would there be to protect once the sun descended over the horizon?

"Robin to anyone who can hear me, come in." A young voice crackled through Luthor's built in earpiece. One of Batman's plethora of teenage warriors. "Wonder Girl and I are on top of the Daily Planet building and need assistance." So the Justice League got communications up again somehow. A quick scan from his suit showed Luthor that the message was coming across on his own frequency, which meant they'd gotten into his tech as well. An oversight he would be quick to correct. If he survived.

"Incoming, Robin." Ah, there was the Boy Scout. Still alive, as expected. "What do you need?"

"Be close enough to help but far enough to pull them off us? If that makes sense." Luthor understood what Batman's young ward was saying. Keep the Reach away from them while they did whatever they were trying to do, but be close enough to respond in an emergency. A delicate dance, one that Luthor was well-suited to. It was, after all, how he handled most of his "other" business dealings.

Turning on his jets, Luthor began racing through the air toward the Daily Planet building. As he streaked like a purple and green missile around burning skyscrapers, his genius intellect began to work on the next problem at hand: why was the third Boy Wonder at the top of the Daily Planet building?

The building wasn't particularly impressive from a fortification standpoint, and that gaudy globe at the top didn't have any sort of weapons system. He knew. He'd checked. But his sensors had detected zeta-beam radiation from the building before. While a weapons system was out of the question, the favored transportation system of the League might not be.

As the building came into range, he understood why Robin needed assistance. The teen had a panel open near the base of the globe statue, but that wasn't what he was focused on at the moment. Reach soldiers swarmed over the roof and fighters made diving strafing runs on his position. Superman and Wonder Girl were there, and doing an admirable job of trying to keep the alien grunts away from his work, but Batman's ward constantly had to break away from what he was doing to reach for his staff to defend himself.

Luthor had not announced his presence, and doubted that the angels even knew he was incoming before he arrived. Three Reach soldiers were charging Robin, about to get something of a jump on him, before Luthor swooped in arms extended. The force of the blow sent all three over the side of the building and sent them plummeting to the street below. Even over the roar of his jets, Luthor was positive he heard that faint alien scream he was becoming so fond of.

"Luthor!" There was that familiar shout from Superman. In a flash, the Kryptonian was in front of him, positioning himself between the flying billionaire and the two younger heroes on the roof. "What are you doing here?"

"What does it look like, Superman?" Luthor crossed his arms slowly over his chest, hovering just off the Daily Planet roof. They were in the middle of a brief reprieve, but he knew that wouldn't last long. "I've come to help."

"Your help doesn't come without ulterior motives, Lex." The alien's eyes narrowed suspiciously, but did not yet glow red. "What do you want?"

"Isn't wanting to make sure there's a planet tomorrow enough, Superman?" Luthor nodded to the tears in the Kryptonian's outfit. Blood hadn't started to flow yet, but even the alien's superior biology wouldn't keep him safe forever. "You know that destroying the world has never been on my agenda." That was technically true. Taking over the world and bending it to his whim? Absolutely. But how does one take over a world that has been turned to cosmic ash?

"I'm still not buying it…" The doubt had not faded from Superman's voice, but before Luthor could respond, someone else cut in.

"Look, either distract the Reach by duking it out or stick to Robin's plan. But we're running out of time!" Wonder Woman's ward, the unoriginally named Wonder Girl, stood with her hands on her hips, glaring up at them both. Well, mostly him. But Luthor liked her pluck, and raised an eyebrow as he turned to the Man of Steel. After a long moment, the Kryptonian relented.

"Fine. We work together." The words sounded as if they were nearly strangled out of the alien. "But no funny business."

"Whatever business you two are going to do, do it quick." Wonder Girl stopped, her face contorting first in confusion, then embarrassment. A red tinge appeared on her cheeks as she stuttered. "I mean, here they come again!"

The girl was correct. The rapidly familiar howl of alien engines was filling the air again, and columns of Reach soldiers were moving through the streets. It was time to go.

With a blast of his foot jets, Luthor streaked down near street level. Laser blasts coursed from his fists as he strafed the invading aliens. The yellow-orange energy that followed him away let him know that he had their attention.

Metropolis was a maze that Luthor knew well. It was, after all, his home. And he had a photographic memory and had memorized the layout of the city by the time he was five years old. Now those memories served him well as he led the Reach on a twisting path that covered nearly twenty blocks, but ended with them only five blocks away from the Daily Planet building.

Superman was above, ducking and weaving through the sky, using his heat vision to down fighter after Reach fighter, sending burning hulks crashing to the city streets below. Hovering, Luthor turned his energy blasts on the arriving ground troops.

Within minutes, Luthor got another warning from his wrist gauntlet, this time indicating a critical power level. At this rate, he would only be in the air for another minute or two. After that, it'd be hand to hand fighting against a numerically and technologically superior foe. Luthor didn't need his magnificent brain to figure out that his odds of survival were worse than minuscule.

"Superman." In the heat of battle, the Kryptonian didn't answer him, eyes glowing red toward a target in the sky. Luthor took a breath and closed his eyes. "Clark." Superman stopped and looked down at him, shock registering all over his face.

"Oh, I've known your secret identity for years, Clark. But I never told anyone. Because even though we had very different methods of doing things and very different overall goals, I've always respected you."

Confusion reigned throughout the Man of Steel's expression, but then Luthor saw his eyes dart down to his wrist. He wouldn't know exactly what the flashing red light meant, but the Boy Scout wasn't stupid. He knew it wasn't a good thing. Confusion softened to concern, then steely resolve.

"If only you'd been a source of good, Lex. You and I would have made an incredible team." Luthor offered the man who had been his nemesis for most of his adult life a knowing smile.

"Even sinners have been allowed to repent on their deathbeds, Superman." The jets at his feet sputtered and Luthor struggled to keep his balance in mid-air. "How does that saying go? Better late than never?" Clark began to answer when his suit's power finally expired. As emergency jets slowed his descent toward a raging mass of Reach soldiers, Luthor quickly keyed in a sequence on the gauntlet.

[MERCY]

It had been a sequence Lex had hoped to never type, but as he pressed the command key and a countdown timer appeared, he looked up one last time. There, silhouetted by the sun and smoke from burning skyscrapers, Superman still fought valiantly to save his… their… world. Hope filled Luthor's breast as the countdown timer reached zero.

XXXXX

Metropolis
July 4, 2016 – Team Year 6 (Bart's Timeline) 17:21 EDT

Timothy Drake's plan was working perfectly. He wished that, even in his own head, that line was delivered with just a little less incredulousness. But even he was honest enough with himself that his plans did not always work out as he intended. This one, however, was proving to be the exception. For the moment.

Superman and, he still couldn't believe his eyes, Lex Luthor had successfully pulled nearly the entire Reach attack force for the city of Metropolis to them. Cassie hadn't even needed to pick off a stray soldier or two, they had all left like flies to honey.

And that had given him time to work.

The first part of the plan was simple: take down the zeta tube network. The master override codes that the original members of the League carried made that an easy proposition. He'd been able to do it within seconds of Cassie dropping him off on the roof.

The next part was more difficult: find the source of the Reach infection and block it. Or if it couldn't be found, wipe the system and reboot it with only the most basic functions enabled, trying to block out anything extraneous by keeping everything as simple as possible. But to do any of that, Tim needed to be able to concentrate fully, something he hadn't been able to do once the Reach had discovered their presence on top of the building.

For the past five minutes, which was probably three minutes longer than he should have spent, Tim had been scanning for anything off in the code for the zeta tube system. He couldn't find it. Desperately wishing that Barbara and her photographic memory were here, Tim made the decision to go with the second option. They couldn't afford to waste any more time.

His fingers flew over the physical keyboard on the wall in front of him. Commands to reboot the system, parameters for the reboot, people allowed to perform overrides, and which zeta tubes to reactivate. All of this had to be entered without a single mistake, or Tim knew it wouldn't work properly. And that would mean they would miss their window to get the system back up at all.

An explosion shook the Daily Planet building. Poking his head from around the corner, Tim saw a new column of thick black smoke rising from near street level a few blocks away. Above, Superman still lived, though he seemed to be struggling with the volume of Reach fighters around him.

"Superman, are you okay?"

"I'm… managing." The founding member's voice was strained as he concentrated on the aliens around him. "That explosion was Luthor's suit. It was out of power. He took out a good number of them on the ground."

Tim was stunned into silence for a moment. Lex Luthor… sacrificed himself? Among all the things he had experienced in the last few hours, which included an alien invasion, he couldn't stress that enough, that ranked in the top five most shocking events.

"How are we doing, Tim? We're running out of time." Bruce's gruff voice brought Tim back to the monitor. His eyes darted over the code he'd written, but his finger hesitated over the command key.

"I think I'm ready to reboot, but you'll probably have to add the security protections from your end. This terminal doesn't…"

"Just get it done." If Tim was taken aback by his mentor's sharp reply, and he was, he didn't show it on the outside. Scanning the code one last time for any mistakes he might have made, and there were none, he entered the command to reboot the system. A progress bar popped up on the screen and began an inexorable creep forward.

"Oh, Hera!" Cassie's shout pulled him away from the screen again and around the corner. The blonde stood motionless, her hands up and covering her mouth. Following her gaze, Tim recognized the column of smoke from earlier but did not see Superman anywhere. Only Reach fighters swirled through the air he had previously occupied.

On his wrist gauntlet, one of the glowing portraits that had only recently reappeared when Barbara had gotten the communications working again faded to grey. Superman was no more.

"Clark. Clark!" Bruce's voice filled his ear again. Tim couldn't bring himself to speak.

"He's gone, Batman." Tim didn't know if Cassie had been aware of Superman's secret identity, but it didn't take a lot to figure out who Bruce had been trying to reach. "Three Reach fighters hit him at the same time. There's… there's nothing left."

She didn't need to explain further. They'd all witnessed the destructive power of the beams from the Reach fighters today. Bodies glowed, their skeletons exposed, and then disappeared without even ash remaining behind. And now these invaders had claimed one of the world's greatest champions, one of the planet's biggest weapons. His stomach sank.

"How's the upload, Tim?" There was a harder edge to Batman's voice now, a quietness that was somehow scarier than his yelling. Checking the panel's screen again, Tim saw the progress bar creeping forward, still too slowly for his liking, but it was making progress.

"We're getting there. Just need a little bit more time and we should be good to go on this end."

"Um, I don't think we're going to get that time." Cassie ran back but the howl of Reach fighters was already filling the air again. "Seems they remembered we're here."

"Hang on." Tim typed frantically again, his fingers spitting lines of code to transfer control of the reboot process to the Batcave so it could continue.

"Tim, we don't have time. Come on. We've got to go." Cassie's pleading made him type even faster. He could hear the fear in her voice. She didn't want to die, none of them did. But the number of grownups who were in charge was rapidly dwindling, and he had to get this done.

"In a second. I've almost got it…"

"Tim!" He still didn't answer, frantically punching in the last few lines of code. Tim felt Cassie's fingers wrap around one of his arms, yanking him away from the terminal. Just as she pulled him away, he stabbed a finger into a key, sending control to Bruce in the Batcave.

They weren't more than twenty feet away when a blast from a Reach fighter vaporized the spot he had just been standing. Tim could feel the heat on his face, but then he was out over open air, legs dangling beneath him. The only thing keeping him aloft was Cassie's steely grip around his wrist.

"Excellent work, Tim." Batman's voice emerged in his ear again. "We have control of the zeta tube network. System will be back online momentarily."

"Told you I only needed another second." He cracked a smile as he looked up at her, but fire met his gaze.

"You could have been killed back there, Timothy Jackson Drake. We both could have been." Cassie dove to the right to avoid a laser blast from a Reach ship, then climbed into a smoke plume from a building for cover. "We still might be."

"Come on Cassie, don't say that." Tim gestured with his free hand through the smoke. "A little bit of fancy flying and staying concealed to lose these alien losers, then we head back to the Batcave for our next mission. This is the easy part."

To punctuate the end of his sentence, the air around them glowed. A beam of energy, highlighted by the smoke particles in the air, punched toward them and struck Cassie. A brief shriek escaped her lips as her skin glowed before her skeletal form flashed before his eyes.

A searing heat burned through Tim's gloves, scalding the skin beneath, and he yelped as he inadvertently released his grip. Not that there was anything to hold onto anymore. Cassie was gone, and Tim realized he was falling rapidly toward the ground.

"Robin to all points." They'd been about two thousand feet up when Cassie had been vaporized. "I could use some air support." That meant he had approximately sixteen seconds before he hit the ground. "Since I can't fly. At all."

Superman and Luthor were dead. Even Wally and his super speed wouldn't make it in time. Trying to use his cape to slow his descent would be ineffective. It would be ripped from his hands. Grappling hook wouldn't latch onto anything as he fell at terminal velocity. And even if it did, it would rip his arm out of his socket with the sudden change of direction.

"Now would be good." Maybe by some miracle someone else was in the area. Maybe someone else…

No, there was no one else. No miraculous escape this time. All that was left for him was the only logical ending that came when you painted a target this big on your chest.

Tim could see the spot he would most likely hit the ground now. He shifted his body so his back would impact first. Not that it would matter, he was most likely going to die instantly. Still didn't mean he wanted to see it, you know?

He keyed his radio one final time. "Dick…" Tim swallowed as the wind whipped through his hair. He wondered if this freedom was how Cassie had felt all the time. "Dick, this isn't your fault. Don't blame yourself for me too."

If there was a response, Tim Drake never heard it.

XXXXX

The Batcave
July 4, 2016 – Team Year 6 (Bart's Timeline) 17:29 EDT

No matter how many villains he fought, how many schemes he foiled, how many planet-wide threats he had helped stop, Bruce Wayne had never seen a hell quite like this. But he couldn't feel the fires, couldn't smell the smoke, couldn't hear the screams of the helpless innocents now just waiting to be slaughtered. No, Bruce Wayne only saw these images through computer monitors, from closed circuit feeds and satellites that still worked. Like an omnipresent god, this sanitized tableau of destruction from around the world played out before his eyes.

But unlike a deity, Bruce Wayne could not affect any of the images in front of him. Here he was only a man with no special powers beyond his incredible wealth and intellect. So used to winning the day through sheer force of will, the images of hellfire and devastation mocked him and his ineptitude.

For the past several minutes, the Dark Knight had not moved. This was not unusual for him. Countless times he had waited in some corner, cloaked in obsidian shadows while waiting for his target to appear. During those times, the Batman was a tight mass of muscle and determination. Now he sat frozen by shock and grief.

Bruce Wayne had just watched his son die. Even before Tim had called for help, the main monitor in the middle of his ocean of screens had been on Metropolis. He had seen Luthor and Clark team up and had just as quickly watched each of them perish. While the death of his friend and colleague had hurt him, Tim's demise threatened to send Bruce back to the depths of despair he had not felt since Jason was murdered.

His eyes still had not moved from the building Tim's body had disappeared behind as it plummeted toward the ground. Jason's death had wounded him severely, not only because one of his soldiers, his children, had been murdered, but because of who he had been murdered by. But if Bruce would ever be truly honest with himself, there was a part of him that always saw Jason as being more likely to die. Always so reckless, so cocksure of himself and his abilities.

But Tim… Tim was the one Bruce was always sure would make it out alive. So careful, so meticulous in his planning to the point of waiting too long to act. Even the way he had figured out the secret identities of Nightwing and himself had shown undeniable intellect and detective work. And not even among all the death and destruction that he had seen today had the thought of Tim falling for the cause even entered his mind.

But he had. And the small picture in the bottom corner of the console, the one that showed his team's, his soldiers', his children's statuses across the globe, was now faded to grey. It was an irresponsibly small memorial to the young man he had considered a son.

"Master Bruce." The voice of Alfred Pennyworth, longtime confidant and butler, struck him like a bolt of lightning and jolted him out of his stupor. As he turned, he felt the air of the cave tracing cool lines down his cheeks. Bruce Wayne hadn't even realized that he had been crying, but now his tear-stained face and bloodshot eyes were locked with Alfred's.

"My god…" Almost at a run, the man was by his side, staring at the monitors. "Was it Master Richard?" Bruce's thousand-yard stare shifted to the depths of the cave. "Mistress Barbara?"

"Tim." He wasn't even sure if Alfred would hear his barely audible reply, but the way his oldest friend recoiled told him he had. A weathered fist pounded into the desk and a short sob and sniffle escaped. As Alfred grieved, a tiny glimmer of red deeper in the grotto caught Bruce's eye and he rose from the chair.

In a few short strides, he was in front of it; a torn and bloodied Robin uniform. His private memorial to Jason Todd and a monument to all his sins. Bruce leaned forward, pressing his forehead against the glass display case. How many more would die in a losing battle? How many more would be sacrificed for a fight where the outcome had already been decided?

The answer came crashing down on him like a wave. There was no way to save everyone, but there was a way to make sure some survived.

In a flash, he was in front of a safe and punching in a code combination with short, purposeful stabs of a finger. Sacrificing himself to save the world was something that had always lingered in the back of Bruce's mind, particularly because he saw himself as more expendable because he lacked powers. But now he was the only one in a position to do anything about it.

The door to the safe swung open, a pale blue light spilling out and piercing the darkness of the cave. It did nothing to lift his spirits. Pulling on the Warworld's crystal key with both hands, Bruce could feel a dull warmth radiating through his gloves.

If anyone had brought this plan to him, he would have dismissed it out of hand. Suicide missions were not something he signed off on. But desperate times called for even more desperate measures, and Bruce couldn't think of a time that was more desperate than this.

Bruce turned from the safe, crystal key held safely between his gloves. Alfred had remained by the Batcomputer, but when he saw what the man he'd raised from childhood held in his hands, the butler's eyes widened.

"Master Bruce, we cannot simply give up. We will find another way." The older man gestured to the alien technology, and Bruce knew he understood what he planned to do. "You will find another way. You always do."

"Not this time, Alfred." Bruce tucked the key against his side like a football as he embraced his oldest friend. "There isn't going to be a technological miracle, no last-minute stroke of genius that will save us. We lost. The only thing I can do is to make sure we don't make this even easier for the Reach." His free hand squeezed Alfred's shoulder one last time, and Bruce turned towards the Batplane parked in the cave.

"Bruce…" The butler's voice, barely above a whisper, strained to reach Bruce's ears. The cave seemed to go quiet. Even the water dripping off the stalactites seemed to cease, as if the entire grotto was giving deference to the old man. Alfred normally didn't show much emotion. The mild-mannered caretaker was not one prone to crying or raising his voice. But in this moment of fear and confusion, the veneer cracked.

"Bruce… your parents. Master Jason. Master Timothy…" Alfred's voice failed and Bruce could almost picture him struggling to keep his composure. "I cannot lose you as well. My heart cannot take it."

Bruce's shoulders slumped as he let out a heavy sigh. His eyes closed and he felt suddenly very tired, as if all those years of late nights were finally catching up to him at once. "I wish there was another way." Now it was his voice's turn to fail, barely registering in the vastness of the cave.

"I wish there was, Al, but there isn't. This is something I have to do." Bruce half-turned to look over his shoulder at his friend, the closest thing he'd had to a father since that fateful night in Crime Alley two decades ago.

"Thank you for showing me the light in the darkness, Alfred. Thank you for being my hero. For saving me."

Lowering his head, Bruce quickly stalked his way to the Batplane. He didn't look back, didn't wait for any further instructions or goodbyes from his mentor and guardian. Any distraction now might cause him to stay here, and the world could not afford that. Possibly countless others across the galaxy could not afford it.

Placing the crystal key securely next to him, Bruce fired up the plane's engines. A hatch in the cave opened above him, the evening sky still a brilliant blue. The summer sun had not yet begun to set, and the scrap of azure that Bruce could see was deceptively peaceful. But in the corner of that view he could just make out Earth's second satellite. He set his jaw and pulled his cowl down.

The Warworld had to be destroyed.

Taking one last look around his cave, Bruce nodded and tossed Alfred a short salute before tilting the nose of the plane upward and shooting into the Gotham sky. Bruce kept his eyes focused on the alien planetoid above. He would not look back at his shattered city because if he did he might not make it to space.

As the Batplane shot into the atmosphere, a panicked voice suddenly filled his cockpit. "Hello? Is anyone from the Justice League there?" Bruce scanned his instruments as he tried to figure out where the transmission was coming from. "This is Chief Warren Albright, Fawcett City Police Department. Any Justice Leaguers, please respond!"

Even through the garbled radio transmission, Bruce could hear the desperation in the man's voice. The distinctive sounds of Reach blasters could be heard in the background, alongside screams and gunshots.

"Please! Anybody! Lieutenant Marvel and Sergeant Marvel are dead. Our positions are being overrun. If there's anyone out there, please –"

With a stab of his finger, Bruce muted the transmission. His mind flashed back to the Batcomputer. Fawcett City had already been burning with the same fury as every other major city across the planet. There was nothing that could be done to help them now.

Seconds later, Bruce's cockpit radio beeped, the indication for an incoming message. He almost ignored it. He should have ignored it. But something in his gut told him to answer that call.

"Batman here." The first sounds that came through the other end of the transmission were surprisingly peaceful. No gunshots, no Reach laser blasts, no explosions. Whoever was on the other end seemed to be enjoying at least a few moments of peace on this hellish day.

"Bruce, what are you doing?" The voice of Dick Grayson, his first Robin, filled the cockpit. His breathing was slightly labored, and Bruce could almost picture him huddled in some corner of an abandoned building, holding his side while he tried to keep a brave face on for those around him. It was something the younger man had picked up from him.

"I'm doing what has to be done, Dick." Bruce hadn't meant to be so short with his partner, but every word that came over the comm system decreased his chances of actually completing his mission.

"What you're doing is suicide." There was judgement in Dick's voice, even with the interference present, but his words were clipped by shortened breaths. "Alfred called and told me your plan. You don't need to do this." Another sharp intake of breath and then Dick's voice came back lower. "We just lost Timmy, Bruce. We can't lose you as well."

Bruce recognized the pain in Dick's voice. He had heard it in his own words. He knew the loss the younger man was feeling, the helplessness at hearing his younger brother call for help and not being able to do anything about it. Perhaps worse, in Dick's case, he would see his inability to save Tim as the same as his failure to save his parents at the circus all those years ago. Or it would dredge up the responsibility he felt, wrongly, over Jason's death.

Bruce knew he would never convince Dick to see this the way he did. As much as the young man had grown in his role leading the Team and as Nightwing, there were still times that he missed the bigger picture. There were times he needed to be more "Batman" in his thinking.

"Dick… in the Batcave, there's a suit for you. I had Alfred tailor it for your fighting style." Bruce half-smiled as he remembered the story of Dick's cape getting caught as he foiled a robbery attempt while he'd been away. The new design should make it easier for his adopted son to continue his trademark acrobatics.

"You can't give up, Bruce. We still need the Batman." Eyes resolutely staring toward space, Bruce pulled his cowl off his face. His back settled even deeper into the padded chair of his pilot's seat.

Up ahead, he could see the evening sky through a hazy filter. The brilliant summer blue was tinged at the corners with a violent orange. Gotham was burning, and even though he refused to look at his beloved city, smoke from the fires that devoured his entire life still chased him into the atmosphere. His hands tried to rebel, wrists twitching in an involuntary spasm that nearly turned him back toward the fiery hellscape. But in the battle between his brain and his impulses, Bruce's brain won out again. Bunches of coiled muscle in his arms kept the plane on its course straight for the Warworld.

"What comes next is in your hands, Dick. Keep our home safe." The haze was starting to dissipate now and the sky began darkening as he reached into the upper layers of the atmosphere. Ahead, the Warworld filled more and more of his cockpit.

"Thank you for everything, Dick. A father has never been prouder of his sons."

A gauntlet-clad finger stabbed into his radio, turning it off completely. Another call might force him to reverse course. Now his only companion would be a silence so deafening it would drown out the screams of a nine-year-old boy in Crime Alley from all those years ago.