What remained of the Justice League headquarters was ruins. Piles of rubble were scattered about, an occasional flame still burning and sending a faint cloud of smoke up into the air. Aside from the crackling of the fires, everything was silent, the air still.
The sound of stone and gravel crunching beneath a pair of boots broke the silence. Moving around one of the piles of concrete debris, Batman made his way through the carnage. He never let his guard drop, his eyes constantly on the lookout for any surviving traps that may have been left behind. The longer he transversed the uneven ground though, the more the dark-clad man was coming to the conclusion that even if a trap had been left in wait, it had been destroyed in the explosion. Still, he was a cautious man and he would be damned if he let hubris let him walk right into something avoidable.
It took awhile, but eventually the vigilante found where the Monitor Room approximately was. Scanning around, he searched the area, seeing the same sight as the rest of the ruins. There was a piece of a steel door lying on the side of one of the piles of rubble, along with an occasional piece of metal, but otherwise it was the exact same thing.
That was disappointing.
The sound of a rock clattering against stone caught his attention then. Jerking his head to a side, he caught sight of Diana approaching him. When the site had been deemed safe, the Amazon had taken off towards the med bay's location in an attempt to confirm the status of Superman and Green Lantern. Her red eyes and the lack of any remains told the vigilante she had been unsuccessful in her endeavor.
"There wasn't any sign of them," she spoke weakly, her arms wrapping around herself in an attempt at comfort. She slowed to a stop next to Batman, her tear-stained face staring right at him. "No bodies, not even a piece of their uniform."
Which meant they were likely incinerated in the explosion. Batman withheld the scowl he could feel working itself onto his face. Right now he needed to be strong for his comrade, who had taken a severe emotional blow. She hadn't been happy when he had paralyzed her earlier and he doubt she was going to let that go without repercussion. Fortunately she realized there was a time and place for such matters and now wasn't the time.
"Think you can shift some of this debris?" he asked her then, raising his hand to indicate the rubble with the steel door lying on it.
Diana nodded her affirmation before she strode past him, arms dropping to her sides. Once she was by the debris, she picked up the steel door and pulled it up, setting it aside without so much as breaking a sweat. All the while, Batman watched as she began moving the bigger pieces out of her way.
Fortunately it didn't take her long to find something. "I see something," she announced, causing the Dark Knight to quickly move to her side. What was best described as a black cube was lying amidst the rubble, something Batman was happy to see. Stepping towards it, he knelt down and did his best to remove it, successfully pulling it out.
"What is that?" Diana asked curiously.
"A black box," Batman answered her, turning it about in his hands as he searched for any damage to it, happy to find none. "Standard security feature, we can find out what exactly happened that lead up to the JL headquarters blowing up."
"I see." There was a moment's pause. Then, "I...need to thank you—for what you did earlier."
The vigilante's head perked up. He had been expecting some sort of reprimand, if not a flat out demand for reparation. This was...different.
When he didn't reply, the Amazon Princess continued undeterred, "I wasn't thinking earlier when the explosion occurred. If you hadn't done what you had, I would have been injured as well. For that I thank you."
"Your welcome," Batman found himself saying.
A small, grim smile appeared on Diana's face, but neither one of them said anything else. There really wasn't much to add on that subject to be frank. In fact, they probably would've continued that awkward silence had their comm links not gone off.
"Hey, this is Hawkgirl. Mind tell us what's going on over there?"
Damn, he had almost forgotten about the other Leaguers. As much as they deserved to hear what had happened, Batman was not going to respond until he had a course of action for them to take. With the League's headquarters gone, they had to go somewhere else to regroup, somewhere the Joker wouldn't be able to find. Unfortunately, with the remaining Leaguers, that limited where they could go.
As far as he knew, none of the others had a base of operations outside of the League. Superman allegedly had a fortress, but the dark-clad man highly doubted they could obtain entry to it without the Kryptonian. J'onn might have a place considering his multitude of identities, but with the Martian otherwise indisposed of at the moment, that crossed those options off. The others surely had residences, but that put people at risk if they weren't already, not to mention any issues with secret identities.
And that left Batman with only one option he could think of and it was one he thoroughly did not like. There wasn't much choice in the matter though.
Apparently Diana had been watching him closely during his inner musings. "You have a plan, don't you?" she prodded him, a twinkle appearing in her eye. For some reason he didn't mind that she was able to read him so easily like that.
"It's not a good one, but it's the only one we can use," he told her before he raised a hand up to his cowl. "Batman to Hawkgirl."
"About damn time you answered," the Thanagarian responded, her irritation evident in her voice. "What's the deal?"
Well, there really wasn't any good way to say this, so Batman opted to say it bluntly. "HQ has been destroyed; I repeat, the JL headquarters has been destroyed."
There was a long silence after that before Hawkgirl replied, her tone slightly shaken. "Did I hear that wrong? HQ is gone?"
"That's right. The entire building is still smoldering. Wonder Woman and I are alright, relatively, but Superman and Green Lantern were caught up in the blast." He paused as he found it hard to swallow at that moment. Immediately, Diana rested a hand on his shoulder, a display of comfort. "We need to regroup," he continued, looking the Amazon in her eyes. "Meet us at the Cave outside of Gotham."
Pausing so that he could receive confirmation, his wait was short as Flash suddenly spoke up, "You want us to meet up at the Batcave? For reals?"
Batman rolled his eyes. Why was it everyone put the word bat in front of everything when it came to him? Batcave, Batmobile, Batarangs—the list went on. As annoying as that was, at least he knew the others knew where to go. "Yes," he confirmed. "Get there ASAP and make sure you aren't followed. If you discover a tail, lose them and find a safe place to hole up in. I'll make contact with you at the top of the hour, every hour. We can't afford to be careless anymore."
"Roger that," Hawkgirl replied. "See you there."
The moment Batman dropped his hand to his side, Diana was immediately talking to him. "This is most unexpected. Our situation must be grim for you to invite us to your base."
"I'm not seeing a whole lot of other options," Batman retorted. "If you have a better idea, let me know."
"Unfortunately, I don't." The Amazon closed the distance between them, wrapping an arm around his waist, the vigilante instinctively placing one of his on her shoulders. "I believe I will be our transportation."
Before he could reply, Diana had already launched them up into the air, leaving the remains of the League HQ behind them. They began to pick up speed as they rose higher and higher, Diana purposefully taking them up above the clouds, if only to reduce their visibility to any watchful eyes. Batman was going to have to rely on her senses to detect any tails they may have considering her eyesight and hearing were much better than his.
Gripping the black box tighter and pressing it against his torso, the dark-clad man settled in for a long flight.
As expected, the flight did take awhile. That was to be expected since Rhode Island was a long ways away from Gotham. Diana knew the way though, even to one of the entrances to the cave beneath Wayne Manor. Batman had to remind himself that she had this knowledge despite the fact it rankled ever fiber of his being.
Though he hated the idea that someone knew the exact location of his base, it had the benefit of not having to give exact directions to the Amazon nor the other Leaguers. There was no telling if there was an unwelcome listener on the line. No doubt Hawkgirl and Flash were on their way as well.
Following along the coast, they eventually found the cliff that was home to Wayne Manor. Below that was a cave entrance, which they entered. The cool air of the tunnel assaulted them even as Diana flew them through it until they reached the main cave. The lights were on, thankfully, so all Diana had to do was take them over to one of the platforms.
As it so happened, she landed them by the supercomputer. The moment they touched down, Batman released his hold on the dark-haired woman, even though she was slower to do so herself. This caused her arm to drag across his body as he moved towards the computer, something he found hard to ignore.
Reaching his chair, he moved passed it as he set the black box down on the console. Grabbing cables, he began connecting the black box to the computer mainframe, making sure all necessary cable heads were plugged into the ports. Once he was satisfied, he took a seat in his chair and tapped a few keys on the keyboard to activate a program to download the box's data. In response, a window appeared on screen, showing a rapidly crawl of numbers and letters as the data was read.
That was when Diana joined him by the supercomputer, standing next to his chair as she stared up at the screen. "What are you hoping to find?" she inquired.
"Hopefully there's a lead we can use to determine when and how HQ blew up," the vigilante responded as he took watched the monitor. "No way was this accidental."
She nodded her agreement. "How long will this take?'
"Awhile, unfortunately. I'm downloading everything the black box collected since it was activated, so we're talking about a few years of data."
"Any possible theories you may have?" she pressed.
Batman shook his head. There was still too much unknown for him to make an educated guess. Until he had a better idea of the HQ's lasts moments, he wasn't going to make any assumptions, even though considering what was going on it was more than likely some foul play was involved. He could practically sense the Joker had something to do with it, but until he was fully certain he wasn't going to reveal anything.
Unfortunately, it seemed the Amazon was more than willing to express her thoughts, no matter how similar they were to his. "The Joker was behind this, wasn't he? His history of bombings points right at him."
Him and any arsonists, bomber, and persons infatuated with gunpowder. Unfortunately that was a rather long list of potential suspects. However, Diana still had good reasoning to reach her conclusion, one he had already considered. "You're right in that he does. But that still leaves the question of how he did this if that is indeed the case."
Diana let out an aggrieved sigh, squeezing her eyes shut in frustration. "I am growing sick of this man."
You and everyone else. Not bothering to vocalize that thought, Batman returned his attention to the computer—or at least that's what he intended on doing had he not noticed movement from the corner of his eye. Pausing slightly, he carefully tilted his head to a side, waiting for another sign of movement. Several moments passed before he came to the conclusion he wasn't going see any more indications, visually anyways. His senses were already telling him there was someone else in the cave, if the feeling of watching eyes were anything to go by. Diana missed all of this due to her closed eyes and overwhelming frustration—perhaps for the best.
Of course, that's when the other guests arrived.
A burst of wind blew over the two Leaguers as Flash skidded to a stop, kicking up a small cloud of dust. "Hey, Bats! Wondy!" the speedster greeted them. "I was wondering if you'd beat us here, or not."
Turning around in his chair, Batman gazed at Flash, Diana turning to face him as well. "Where's Hawkgirl?" he immediately demanded.
"Somewhere in the tunnel," the younger man answered. "We stayed with each other until we reached the entrance and I went on ahead there. You'll have to excuse her for being slow though, since she is lugging J'onn's leftovers."
"That's because a certain idiot isn't strong enough to move him," a voice shouted throughout the cave, causing it to bounce off the walls as an echo. That was followed by an increased chirping from the bats on the ceiling, disturbed by the voice.
That was when the Thanagarian appeared swooping down as a large bag hung from her hands beneath her. She placed the sack down first before she maneuvered to land right next to it. One of her hands went to her hip, her gaze sharpening onto the Dark Knight. "I think it's time we talked," she declared resolutely.
"That's right," Flash agreed, his tone serious as he took a step closer.
Then, he pointed a finger in a not-so-random direction and asked, "Where did you get that giant dinosaur?"
Despite himself, Batman found himself looking to the T-Rex before he scowled. Diana and Hawkgirl had done the same as he had, glancing towards the dinosaur, though neither of them scowled. The Thanagarian did slap Flash on the back of his head, causing him to flinch. "Now isn't the time for that," she snapped.
"Hey, you can't say you haven't wondered the same thing," he shot back in indignation.
"Considering we just lost our base, Superman and John with it, and J'onn is in a million pieces, I think we have about a hundred more important things to worry about."
"Fine, I'll ask later. And I will too."
And Batman found himself thinking how he wasn't going to answer that question—ever. He was just about to spin his chair back around to look at the computer screen to see what the progress was on the data download when he noticed Diana's posture stiffen. Her head jerked slightly to a side, indicating that she was searching for something.
"Someone else is here," she spoke quietly, immediately putting Flash and Hawkgirl on their guard.
"I thought you said this place was secure," Hawkgirl hissed, one of her hands gripping the handle of her mace. The vigilante couldn't help but noticed its crushed appearance; more specifically, it was as if someone had used their bare hand and squeezed as tightly as they could. It didn't take a genius to figure out just who's handiwork that was.
Batman largely ignored the winged woman, instead jabbing a finger onto a button on his gauntlet. From the top down, the color of his lens changed, activating his thermal scan. He was not in the mood to play around. Slowly scanning the cave, he was quick to note and discard the heat detected from the other Leaguers. It wasn't until he spotted a ledge towards the ceiling that he located their "intruder." Their body was thin and lithe, their crouching form indicating they were scouting them out.
The vigilante immediately recognized who it was.
Calmly, he called out, "You can come out now." This served to confuse the other heroes as they all turned their heads to look at him with expression of bewilderment and incredulousness.
Just as he deactivated the thermal vision, a small, black form descended to the ground, touching down on the floor gracefully even as they crouched down to brace their legs from the shock of landing. While he wasn't surprised by the entrance, the dark-clad man wasn't pleased by her presence either.
Fortunately there had been some thinking on her part considering the girl wore her costume. With Batgirl looking at the League through her black lens and mouth-concealed mask, Batman could tell the heroes were taken back by the sight of her.
"Holy Bat-girls, Batman!" Flash exclaimed. "Since when did you get a sidekick?"
This caused the two women to look to the vigilante, even as he grunted in response to Flash's corny joke. "Who is this?" Diana asked, still in astonishment. A moment later and a thought occurred to her, one that she voiced. "Could this be the apprentice you were telling me about?"
"Apprentice?" Hawkgirl pipped up with surprise. "Since when?
Batman's first instinct was to tell both women not to worry about the girl, but considering their situation, it seemed that wasn't an option, or at least a good one. "She's someone I've taken in," he acknowledged.
"Considering everything I've heard about you and working with partners, I'm finding this hard to believe," Hawkgirl responded, though thankfully her grip on her mace relaxed. "Who is she? Where did she come from? If we intend on staying here, we need to know that she isn't a security risk and taking your word for it isn't going to cut it."
That was a fair point, though that went unmentioned. "For her sake, I won't tell you her name," the Dark Knight replied evenly. "She was being trained to become a hand-chosen assassin for a group of wealthy Gothamites calling themselves the Court of Owls. She has nowhere to go and bringing her here was the only solution I had at the time."
"And she's wearing a Batsuit why?"
"Aside from protecting her identity? She wants to help. It's either I let her, or she goes off on her own and possibly kills someone. This way I can keep an eye on her and not let her get out of control."
"Keep an eye on her?" Flash echoed. "How? She has to be, what, fourteen? Fifteen, tops? Pretty sure there are child endangerment laws against that."
"If you want to convince her not to, by all means. Good luck."
Batman watched the others look to each other, uncertain as to how to interpret that. Seeing them speechless, he said, "As you've already said, there are more important things we need to discuss."
"He's right," Diana agreed, much to the dark-clad man's relief. Considering the moral high ground these people regularly stood on, there was a general sense that if the conversation didn't get back on track, they would be stuck discussing Cassandra's eligibility to being a vigilante. Now was not the time for such talk. "We need to find the current location of the Joker before he strikes again."
"That's all well and good," Flash spoke up before adding, "but what about J'onn? Are we just going to leave him like he is? Wait until spring comes so he can thaw out, assuming we can actually piece him back together?"
That was an issue as well, though Batman had an idea in regards to that. Turning his chair so that he could reach the keyboard, he tapped a few of the keys, activating a section of the cave he hadn't used in years. "There's something we can try," he said, earning the attention of the cave's inhabitants. "There's a hydrothermal generator system that should be able to melt the ice without harming J'onn."
"Umm, what is that? Some kind of jacuzzi?" Flash questioned with bewilderment in his tone. "Why would you even have something like that anyways?"
"I needed to melt ice off of people before hypothermia and frostbite set in," he answered "It's been awhile since I've had to use this equipment, so it's going to take a few minutes to turn on."
"That's one problem hopefully taken care of," Hawkgirl remarked, continuing to stand in place. Apparently she intended on moving when she was sure she had to. "Now about the Joker. Do we have any clue as to where his current whereabouts is?"
"Not in Metropolis if he has any good sense in his head," Flash answered. "Especially after the city was pretty much leveled. The same with Central City."
"And if he is purposefully targeting each of us, then that leaves Gateway City, Midway, and Gotham," Diana suggested. "Denver as well assuming the Joker doesn't know about Superman's actions towards J'onn."
"That's another thing," Flash piped up. "How did the Joker make Superman all smiley and giggly? I thought Big Blue was immune to gasses and stuff."
That was actually a good question. It was a shame they couldn't run a toxicology report on the Kryptonian to determine if and/or what was in his system. That was a mystery that would go unsolved short of an actual confession.
Batman frowned then. In regards to knowing what was inside Superman's body, yes it was too late to find that out, but he did have something on the outside. Reaching to his belt, he opened one of the pouches and reached in, retrieving the small purple rock he had recovered from the Man of Steel. Staring at it for a moment, he couldn't see anything externally remarkable about it.
Of course, these action earned him the attention or the other Leaguers. "Where did you get that?" Hawkgirl questioned.
"That's that rock you pulled off of Supes," Flash answered in his stead. "I thought it was weird for Supes to be wearing bling at the time."
"Assuming it is just a stone," Diana said quietly, moving herself closer to study the rock. "Can you not run some sort of test on it?"
"Just a moment." Standing up, Batman moved away from the supercomputer, making his way to his laboratory set up. Ignoring the various microscopes, beakers, and lab equipment, he headed for one end of the table, where a square platform sat. Once he reached it, he placed the stone on it before calling out, "Computer: run diagnostic on present sample."
The platform began to glow a second later, a green light enveloping the purple rock. On one end of the square, a thin green line lit up, moving towards the opposite side slowly. It took a few moments, but the line reached the other end before making a return trip. Watching it, Batman glanced to the computer to see if any preliminary results had been delivered, seeing none.
Undeterred, the vigilante looked at the rock once more before he turned away, heading back to the computer. By the time he reached the chair, a new window appeared, reading off a list of results. Standing, the Dark Knight began to read them, easily picking out and discarding what he felt was trivial information, such as size, weight, and color.
One line caught his attention though. "Radiation detected," he murmured to himself as he leaned over the computer console. With both hands he began to type an order to determine the radiation level and signature. He waited a few seconds before a new window opened to reveal the results.
The moment he read the radiation signature, he felt his body go cold, his body tensing up as a lead weight appeared in his stomach. That couldn't be right, it just couldn't be. "Computer: run test again," he ordered, hoping it was just an error.
That hope was dashed the moment the second test returned the exact same results, making the vigilante feel all the more queasy. "What is it?" Diana asked then, looking at the window and back to him. "What's wrong?"
With a growing lump in his throat, he swallowed it down hard before he answered, "According to this, that rock is kryptonite."
There was a collective gasp from the group right before Flash exclaimed, "There's no way! Kryptonite is green, ain't it? Since when did it come in different colors?"
The moment I discovered how to alter its color spectrum, Batman groused inside his head. In all honesty, that had been a dumb question on Flash's part considering he had seen a red version of kryptonite. If this was indeed kryptonite, it had been altered into its present state, its effects unknown without its victim present.
Or perhaps they weren't.
The last time any of them had seen Superman it was without him wearing that purple kryptonite. When he began attacking Metropolis, he had suddenly been wearing it. Was it possible that this kryptonite had caused the Kryptonian's jokerization? A scowl appeared on the Dark Knight's face. If that was the case, then the Joker knew how to alter kryptonite seeing as he would be the only one to want to create a weapon that left its victims smiling and laughing.
The fact there was a second person that had figured out how to shift the color spectrum of the irradiated rock was another cause for concern to him.
When no one answered Flash's question, Diana began to prod him back into the discussion. "Is it true? Is this actual kryptonite?"
"Until proven otherwise, I have to say yes," he responded, slowly lowering himself into his chair. "Due to its color, its effects on Superman were different from the standard green, if I had to guess."
"So you're telling me the Joker specifically designed a piece of kryptonite all so he could turn Superman into that walking nightmare?" Hawkgirl pressed.
"Do you have any better ideas?"
The blank look Batman received in response told him that no, there were no other suggestions forthcoming. However, even though this discovery was terrible, it did give them a lead. "The Joker had to get his hands on some kryptonite, which is naturally hard to come by. Most likely he stole it from someone, or it was given to him. That said, he would need access to a laboratory in order to make the modifications he did."
"I think I have an idea of where to look," Hawkgirl said. "If there's anyone that has kryptonite, it's Lex Luthor."
"He'd also have the facilities that Joker would need as well," Diana pointed out.
Turning to face the computer, Batman began to access a program that brought up a map of Metropolis. Accessing data of kryptonite stashes he knew the Metropolis billionaire had—cash had a way of loosening lips after all—he added in a qualifier for facilities with technology that involved kryptonite. A few moments passed before several dots began blinking on the map.
Eyeing them, the vigilante mentally crossed off several mainly due to their location within the city and their proximity to Luthor. Though it was known Luthor detested Superman, even he wouldn't have agreed to assist the Joker in his plans. Luthor liked absolute control over his endeavors and the clown was anything but controllable. That left two possible conditions: the Joker forced Luthor's cooperation, or he did it without the businessman ever finding out. Considering the lengths the madman had gone to to remain off the grid, Batman was strongly considering it was the latter.
With that in mind, the vigilante found himself narrowing the possible sites to two. One in the northwest outskirts of Metropolis and the other to the south. Fingers dancing across the keyboard, he highlighted the exact locations he was eyeing.
"These are the two most likely places the Joker is either hiding out in, or was hiding out. Both have access to the kryptonite and facilities he would need," he said.
"That's pretty small considering the number of possibles you have on the map," Hawkgirl commented dryly. "Any reason why just those two and not four or five more?"
"Depends on Luthor's involvement in this scheme, though right now I'm going on the hunch that he isn't," he replied. "If we find anything to the contrary, we'll expand the search, but for now we'll investigate these two first."
That Thanagarian nodded. "Okay. Same teams then."
Glancing to a side, Batman noticed Diana had turned to look at him in turn. She nodded her agreement to the arrangement, a small smile on her lips. Looking back to the other two Leaguers, the dark-clad man voiced his acknowledgement. "Fine. There's just one thing we need to do before we leave."
Doing his best to be obvious, he turned his attention to the bag standing in the cave, which thankfully the others caught on as they turned to look as well. "We need to start thawing out J'onn."
That was when Flash responded, "How come I get the feeling that when you say 'we,' you mean us?"