The twisted mess of trees and greenery towered over the skyscrapers. Its limbs swayed ad turned, like brown worms through the air. At its center, Superman and Vixen we held in a prison of roots. Both were unconscious.
Batman had truly never seen anything like it. He took a mental note to collect a sample for study after he destroyed the thing.
A woman in a white lab coat came running up to the Javelin.
"Oh, thank God," she gasped. "The Justice League."
When she saw who was emerging from the cockpit, though, she took two steps back.
"They didn't send anyone more powerful? Not that I'm not grateful, but..."
"The sooner you tell me how to stop this thing, the sooner I can take it down," He hated when people did that.
The woman handed over a white cylinder with two buttons on it. "That is a creature spliced from some of the Dark Heart nanotechnology and white pine DNA," she saw the look on his face and winced. "Really, all we were trying to do was help the species . Not create…that. Really, we thought we were only taking the self-preservation algorithms."
"You shouldn't have screwed with that mess."
"Well, it's too late for that," she snapped. "That device is a high yield explosive specially designed to disable the Heart material. You have to plant it right through that eye up there." She pointed to a dark area near the top. "Because of their meta powers, your friends will be fine. You have ninety-seven seconds after activation to get the hell out of their or you'll be caught in the blast."
Batman was gone.
"Damn," the woman said, "I hate when they do that."
Batman climbed up through the twigs and bark. He'd planted exploding batarangs all over the creature to distract it as he got higher and closer to the eye. There was only twenty more feet to go, but he didn't dare use a grappling hook, the plant would sense the synthetic material instantly. Bad enough he was wearing Kevlar.
The eye was right in front of him now. He hit the two button simultaneously, starting the countdown. Ninety-seven… ninety-eight…the explosive flew perfectly into the eye.
The tree roared a swiped off the annoying bug. Batman plummeted down, reaching for a line. The tree-thing swiped and hit him across the chest, cracking a rib. He pulled out his last three exploding batarangs, and an electric shock one and tossed them towards some new growth.
He had sixty-four seconds to get far enough away. He wasted seven more getting out a line and shooting it at a building. The tree saw it and severed it.
Fifty-two seconds.
A branch caught him and pulled him in, closer to the gnashing mouth. He hacked free, and again tried to get a grapple.
Forty-six seconds.
A vine lashed at Batman's ankle, narrowly missing. He reached a ledge on a building, but that was only fifty feet away, he had to get out, quick. Sharpness stabbed into his side where the broken rib was.
Thirty-five seconds.
Down below, something yellow caught his eye. A little girl, trapped in a car. Inside the blast zone. He dropped down. She was yanking on her seat belt, unable to click it open. He smashed the window.
Twenty-three seconds.
One swipe, he cut the nylon strap. The girl screamed at the black monster trying to grab her. Batman pulled her from the car. The tree thing smashed a limb into the car instants afterward. They tumbled into the sink hole.
Fifteen seconds.
Batman checked his belt. No lines left. It would take too long to climb out. All he had was an experimental short-distance transport device he and Robin had been working on. It wasn't even a beta version, more like a sloppy prototype.
Nine seconds.
The device could only transport things weighing under ninety pounds. No use to him. Batman looked down at the little girl and clipped it to her collar. He set the distance to one mile south, where the emergency vehicles were thickest. They'd be able to find her parents. With a click of a button, the girl, still struggling, vanished.
Boom.