"So we're down another fighter then?" Barbara asked as Wally finished his shaky explanation of what had happened. He seemed slightly traumatized by it, but, by the sound of it, Dick was worse.
"They'll be coming after us as soon as they find out." Jason realized. "We have to be ready."
"We don't have enough tubes of the formula yet for even all of the heroes, much less all of the other individuals who were nanobotted." Samantha pointed out.
"I need more arrows." Roy mentioned. "For this fight at least."
"There should be a stash somewhere around Gotham. Batman's always prepared." Jason stated.
"That's probably in the Batcave." Wally said. "Which isn't safe anymore."
"There's one beneath Wayne Enterprises." Lucius joined them. "Like Jason said, Batman's always prepared."
The teens exchanged faces of surprise.
"Lead the way," Roy said for all of them.
"No!" Dick looked up from his hospital bed at Leslie's shout. The door to the room he was in slammed open.
Ultra Lord stepped inside, flanked by Demon and Powerlady, the latter of whom threw aside an unconscious Leslie indifferently.
Dick looked around wildly, located a syringe of his formula that had been given to Leslie earlier, and quickly jammed it into his leg. He hesitantly looked up as his kidnappers-to-be approached. He was still stuck on the fact he'd killed Bullet, his mind only having cleared enough to take the single action of injecting himself with the formula.
"Well, well, well… the little boy decided to make himself useless for the most part." Ultra Lord sneered.
Dick looked up at him in fear. His head was beginning to fog again.
"Lucky for you, we can still get some use out of you." Ultra Lord grabbed his hurt arm.
Dick didn't make a sound, not even a whimper, as Ultra Lord scooped him up, putting extra pressure on his injuries.
He was tossed (literally) to Powerlady, who caught him with ease.
"What about the clinic?"
"Blow it up. There's nothing else we need here."
Dick could hear explosions as Powerlady strutted out the door of the clinic with him in her arms. It sounded distant, even though Dick knew deep down it was close by.
He closed his eyes. It was his fault. He shouldn't have killed Bullet. He shouldn't have let them find him. He shouldn't have let himself be shoved into the wrong dimension in the first place. He shouldn't have… he shouldn't have...
"Kid Flash!" Lucius called down to where the teens and Catwoman were suiting up and gathering weapons. "Get to Leslie's clinic! Now!"
Kid Flash didn't waste another second. He didn't ask what was going on. He was at Leslie's clinic in, well, a flash.
It took about ten minutes to get everyone out of the fire. He found Leslie unconscious in the room where Dick had been positioned. The realization that whoever did this, which was probably the LDJ, had taken Dick before setting fire to the place, evoked a string of curses which escaped through Wally's mouth.
By that point, there was a crowd of criminals outside, all who came to Leslie's clinic for treatment occasionally since she didn't discriminate.
One grabbed Kid Flash by the back of his suit. "What happened here?"
"The LDJ happened."
"Who?"
"The Lords of Divine Justice, those jerks from the other dimension. They grabbed..." Better not to say a friend. "... a kid, and then set the place on fire."
Word of the explanation spread through the crowd like wildfire.
By the time the rest of the remaining heroes got there, the crowd was unintentionally rallied against the LDJ. Who knew Leslie Thompkins had such a large following?
With their newfound allies at hand, the group was ready to take on the LDJ and loads of nanobotted individuals, including the Justice League and the Team.
Dick awoke slowly. Recognizing the fact he was tied up, he mentally accounted for all his limbs and then tried to remember how he got separated from Wally.
"There's an angry mob headed our way, sir."
The words brought the recent events crashing down on him. Wally. Roy. Bullet. Leslie. Ultra Lord. Powerlady. How did an angry mob get involved?
"They're flashing us, sir."
Was the angry mob a distraction for his friends? That would make sense, but how would they have found that many people?
"Send all our extras down there. Not the Metas. No need to waste Meta power on a stupid mob."
Dick wiggled his toes and fingers. All accounted for. No stumps.
"The boy's awake."
"Is the inhibitor collar on him?"
"Yes…"
"Then I don't care."
Dick decided to open his eyes since it seemed they didn't care he was awake. A few minutes passed as he took in his surroundings. He seemed to be in an advanced control room. Probably where they controlled the nanobots. All the LDJ except Waterwarp and Bullet were there along with some obvious underlings. Wait… Hadn't he killed Bullet? That must be why he wasn't there. He'd killed Bullet… oh god...
"Sir?" Dick used the speech to pull his mind out of the trauma-filled ditch.
"What is it now?"
"Some of the nanobots seem to be deactivating. I don't know how…"
"Bring up visual on that mob!"
"Yes, sir."
A video came up on screen. It was of a bunch of low-life criminals from Gotham fighting against the nanobotted people. They were injecting them with something?
"Dammit! They found a cure!" Ultra Lord cursed. He turned to his fellow LDJ. "Get the heroes and other Metas through the portal and pack up. Do what you want with the experiments. We have no use for them anymore."
"And him?" Powerlady kicked the cage Dick was sitting in lightly.
"Take him. He could prove useful yet."
The fight went well. Samantha and Lucius took care of bringing the group more bottles of formula syringes as they got more while Kid Flash zoomed throughout getting new syringes of formula to the front lines as they were used up and Batgirl, Robin, Catwoman, and Red Arrow fought on said front lines.
Still, something was fishy. They'd made it into the fortress and un-nanobotted almost everyone, but there was still no sign of the LDJ or the Justice League or the team. The only individuals on or related to the League they'd managed to find were Alfred and Commissioner Gordon, both of whom they un-nanobotted.
"Something's wrong. They never sent the Justice League after us." Batgirl brought up. "But they sent all those other people. Wouldn't they have sent the Justice League after they figured out we were winning?"
"Kid Flash, run through the fortress. See what you can find," Red Arrow commanded.
Kid Flash nodded and ran off. He returned a minute later, looking pale.
"What is it?" Robin asked.
"They fled," Kid Flash replied.
"Why would they flee if they still have our world's greatest… well, greatest weapons?" Batgirl asked.
"Kid Flash, where did they flee to?" Red Arrow demanded.
"The other dimension…" Kid Flash murmured.
"They're drawing us onto their home turf." Catwoman realized.
"We've got the mob. Let's follow them." Batgirl exclaimed impatiently
"They closed the portal they came here through." Kid Flash said. "I saw it closing. That's how I knew they were gone."
Samantha joined them. "What's going on? I don't see any nanobotted Metas anywhere."
"Samantha, how did you get here?" Red Arrow asked.
Samantha tilted her head. "I walked?"
"He meant to this dimension, Kitten." Catwoman replied.
"Oh. I snuck through the portal the LDJ made," Samantha answered. "Why?"
"Seemingly, they fled through that portal and closed it behind them." Red Arrow crossed his arms bitterly.
"And the League…?" Samantha's heart sank.
"Gone," Wally answered, "The LDJ took them with them."
"What now?" Samantha asked.
"We'll have to find the people who made that device…"
"They're dead." Samantha interrupted Red Arrow.
"Dammit." Red Arrow grumbled. "Then how are we supposed to get there?"
Samantha looked pointedly at Wally.
"Don't look at me! Dick had it last!" Wally threw his hands in the air in exasperation. "And it only goes one direction! It was reverse-engineered so that we could get back!"
"Mind cluing the rest of us in on what you're talking about?" Batgirl demanded.
"Dimension-jumping device. The one that got Wally and Dick to my dimension in the first place." Samantha tugged at one of her braids. "If we don't leave the portal open, we'll have to reverse engineer twice in order for you guys to get back here with the Justice League. I suggest we reverse engineer it to go the way it went originally and then leave a couple people to guard the portal. My people are going to be waking up from the nanobots soon. Some of them can guard it if necessary."
"We don't even know where the device is," Wally reminded her.
"We'll worry about that later. We need to comb the castle for anyone the LDJ were keeping prisoner, and deal with the disappointment of the people who wanted to take them on."
"Right. Let's get on that."
-End of Arc 3-