Hawkgirl found her wings extended, spanning the length of the table. The Creeper had pastrami dangling from his mouth.
"Shit."
Hawkgirl reached for her mace and Green Lantern lit his ring. She was about to swing it but she was stopped dead in her tracks by the green light. The Creeper tried to leap away but he too was caught swiftly. He pulled Hawkgirl to him and gritted through his teeth.
"What the hell are you thinking?"
"Trust me."
He overheard a familiar voice in his com piece.
"GL?"
"I got them."
Bruce Wayne opened his eyes to see that he was sitting at a breakfast table. Across the way from him sat his father, eating breakfast like nothing has happened.
"Good morning, Bruce."
"...I've lived this lie before. You don't have to do this to me J'onn."
"Of course I do, Bruce. How else will I be able to get you to talk?"
A drop blood fell into his father's cereal. His father looked at his pajamas to see that it was bleeding from the chest. Soon his pajamas became a tuxedo. His dead eyes were now staring at Bruce as it fell flat on a pavement. A disembodied voice filled the room.
"Amazing things the unconscious can do. Just ask our mutual friend."
His father disappeared in a cloud of dust. Behind him was the Question strapped to a chair.
"I got him to think he was, and always has been, a chicken."
The Question squawked and fidgeted in his chair. His head pecked back and forth.
"Cheap hypnosis tricks, J'onn. I can do that."
"You very well know I'm not a cheap hypnotist. I rearranged his brain so that every thought, every action, and every memory stem from him being a piece of poultry. It's amazing what one can do without any limits."
"Ever since you came back from your excursion, you've changed a lot. In fact, you changed a lot of the Justice League too."
"True...but it wasn't my mind control that changed them. Of course, I needed to give them a little push before they would all go along with it. They all came to realize that what I proposed was just common sense."
"Is that why you found Ra's principles so appealing?"
"Just because this is between you and me, I'll let you in on my dirty little secret."
The room suddenly became black again and Bruce spiraled to the middle of the desert with the hot wind whipping his face and sand falling in his eyes. J'onn was wandering alone in the desert, malnourished and thirsty. He looked more like the alien that Bruce once saw when he found him on Mars.
"You know loneliness, Bruce. Up here on this satellite I was the loneliness creature in the universe. I lived here, isolated from my adopted world. Of course there were people up here too but none of them knew my suffering. They all came in to do a job and go home. It came to the point that every time I saw humanity from the telescope up here, I came to loathe it. Then I started having every thought from every crew member running through my head with all their wickedness stretched out before me. It's no wonder that I didn't leave sooner. I thought, going back, I would be able to reconcile and see humanity as a beacon of hope in the universe. I would finally find a place that I could call home."
Bruce looked ahead and saw J'onn walking up to a man in the desert begging for food. The man stood back in horror. He took out a whip and thrashed J'onn repeatedly.
"I was wrong. I was truly alone in this world. There was no place left for the last Martian. I eventually came to a point where all hope was lost. That was when I tried to kill myself."
J'onn stood on top of a volcano looking down below. He closed his eyes and, before he could jump, a hand reached out and grabbed his shoulder.
"Then I found him."
Ra's smiled and, suddenly, all of J'onn's memories flashed around Bruce. Each one traveling past him as fast as freight trains.
"I found salvation through his eyes. He gave me food, a family, and a place to call home. It was a life I never thought I would ever obtain again. After so many months of letting me in, he showed me something wonderful. Something that would create a utopia on Earth. Then he asked me to go back to the Justice League. I asked 'Why? Why go back when I have all I want here.' And he calmly replied 'Because I can only trust you to reform the Justice League.' So I came back. The thoughts still raced through my head but it didn't matter anymore. I finally had a place to call home."
Everything went back to black.
"He also said one other thing."
J'onn stood in front of Bruce.
"He said that a detective or two may come around and spoil this perfect world for everybody. I knew he was talking about you, Bruce. The Question...that one was a surprise. So...I'm thinking this is the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. However...he also said that others would come to blow up this Watchtower...and he was perfectly fine with that."
In his room, Jon freed the Creeper and Hawkgirl. Hawkgirl struggled to breath.
"Could you at least give me some more oxygen the next time you do that?"
"I've been getting rusty up here."
The Creeper leaped to the ceiling.
"Dr. Fate is dead huh? That means we're dead! Oh crap! I didn't even turn off the oven in my apartment!"
Jon tossed him down to the floor.
"Shut up! We need to think this through."
Hawkgirl stepped up to him.
"It's a good thing you didn't turn us over."
"Like hell I would have. It's good I caught you."
"So, you're in then?"
"...As much as I hate to say it, yes."
"Have you told Vixen?"
"I don't know if I can trust her anymore. Ever since she has been so wild for J'onn's ideas."
"Then we have to blow-up the Watchtower tonight."
"No. Not tonight. We agreed we would do this when there was a minimal amount of personnel on the Watchtower. There are still way too many people today. People with families. People with lives. We can't have any casualties. These are our friends. We've fought side by side with them for years!"
"We need to. We can't let the Justice League win! You saw with your own eyes what they have been doing. You're telling me that you would rather save the lives of murderers than protect the people we're supposed to?"
"I don't know what it is with you, but have you lost your mind? We don't murder people. We're the better people."
"Being the better person is about as useful in war as a twig. We don't do this now then everything we worked for will be ruined! Can you really live with yourself if you turned the other way your entire life? Knowing what is happening out there?"
The Creeper stepped between them.
"Uh, lady, gentleman. I think you're both missing the big picture. We are thiisss close to getting killed and we're arguing about morality? Honestly, who cares who has the better morality? What's going to happen? Buddha is going to come down from the heavens and give you a brand new car? Please. Look. I'm not a creature of morality. I've done some pretty horrible things in my time. But, I mean, come on, people. Lighten the hell up. We came here to stop the damn Justice League. Now are we doing this or not?"
Hawkgirl and Jon were silent. She raised her mace.
"Sorry, Jon, but I'm going to do what I came here to do."
She flew off and Jon chased her down the hall. The Creeper sulked on Jon's bed.
"Well, at this rate, I guess I won't be able to bring The Kinks back together either."
"Open your eyes, Bruce."
He was standing above the Question, electrical prod in hand. J'onn was standing over him.
"Oh the chicken stuff was just fun and games. Now we're going to get to the real interesting parts. You're going to loosen him up as I peel back his mind. He hides his memories very well from me. I'm surprised that it could be done. Nevertheless, by the end of tonight, I will make sure that he forgets Ra's."
Bruce felt pressure on the arm carrying the prod. It began to move on its own closer and closer to the Question.
"And what are you going to do with me?"
"Kill you of course. Well, have someone else do it. I don't like to get my hands dirty as you can see. Maybe a lesser rogue you never thought would be able to do it. That would be sublime."
"I figured you'd kill me but what do you think will happen when you do?"
"Are you speaking about your friends in high places...such as the Watchtower? I've disposed of them already."
"No. The people on the ground."
"Hmmm...I haven't thought of that. Oh wait. I have. As soon as you're gone, I have blackout teams in front of Barbara Gordon's, Dick Greyson's, and TIm Drake's homes. The world will forget about you shortly after that."
"You really thought this through."
The prod inched closer to the Question.
"You just forgot one thing."
"Amuse me."
"I'm the goddamn Batman."
Bruce twisted his arm and electrocuted J'onn. He fell flailing on the floor as Bruce pushed the prod deeper into J'onn. He finally lifted it up to see J'onn twitching unconsciously on the ground. Bruce turned to the Question.
"Are you all right?"
"Oh...just in the most unbearable pain of my life but...yeah...peachy."
Bruce unstrapped him and carried him on his back. The Question leaned over slightly.
"Now how do you propose we get out of here?"
"We'll make it up as we go along."
Hawkgirl flew into a monitor room with Jon right behind her. Several guards followed. He closed the door.
"There's three guards behind me that will not hesitate to drop you."
"I'd like to see them try."
Jon lit his ring.
"Then I will."
"You can't leave now, Jon. You're in this for the long haul."
"I'm putting an end to this madness now."
"Give me a second."
She turned on a monitor. Jon looked over to see STARS and STRIPE fighting alongside Contras in Latin America. Fire and explosions followed in the background as they moved into a village. Women and children tried to flee as the contras got them on the run. A man stood up to protect his family but he was gunned down right in front of them. The contras ran into a house and lit it on fire. A kid screamed from the house yelling for his family. STARS and STRIPE turned the other way as this was going on.
"It has spread from Africa. The same images getting closer and closer to home. Do you want to see this in America? Justice League death squads trying to uphold whatever government they deemed just and right?"
"Dear G-d...how...why..."
"Because we turned the other way, Jon. We turned the other way."
His ring dimmed.
"...I'll do it."