Chapter 22: Exile on Main St.
FOUNDERS ISLAND
The civilian rescue operations that Kid Flash and Jay Garrick were conducting were slow-going. Or at least slow-going when compared to how quickly Speedsters preferred to operate. As fast as they could manage, they were ferrying people one or two at a time, past the Speedster buzzsaw perimeter that Max Mercury, Jesse Quick, and Avery Ho had set up, across the water and onto Miagani Island, which was closest.
And Founders Island was an island populated by three million people.
On the Founders-facing coasts of Miagani Island, Bleake Island, and the mainland, GCPD had set up SWAT encampments armed with rocket launchers, ready to fire on Founders Island should the worst come to pass.
Yeah, rocket launchers. Because this was Gotham City, and that's how the SWAT team rolled.
And in Washington DC, the President of the United States was holding dark and stormy talks with his advisors about The Gotham Situation. Amanda Waller may have been one of these advisors. And the words "nuclear weapons" may have been spoken at least once.
But the facts were these:
The numbers of the Soldiers of Nemesis were not going down.
With each civilian that died, their numbers grew.
They were formed by divinity, which meant that not only was magic useless, but said divinity was strong enough to allow the Soldiers of Nemesis to wound even Kryptonians.
Power levels were going down.
Ammo was running out, and the only person on supply duty for that particular commodity was Zatanna.
And even then, firearms weren't all that effective against the Soldiers anyway.
Furthermore, while the Soldiers of Nemesis were not susceptible to fatigue, the superheroes on Founders Island most definitely were .
All of this information leads one to a most tragic and deeply unfortunate conclusion, from which there was no work-around.
Some of the superheroes protecting the Earth from this menace were eventually going to start dying.
Mera saw no end to it.
She and her husband Arthur, King of Atlantis, the Aquaman, moved down Kane Avenue, from fire hydrant to fire hydrant, yanking them out of the ground for usable water to fuel Mera's hydromancy.
This place was filthy. So much so that she couldn't use the same water for long. It came into contact with the ground, with the side of buildings, and using it too long rendered the water to black sludge from pollutants, with which she could do nothing.
More so, looking at the dire grime of even the cleanest parts of Gotham City, she noticed that there were holes in everything. In automobiles, in the sides of buildings, in the streets. Great cavities from which the Soldiers of Nemesis had formed themselves.
She had used a spray to shear the heads off of two Soldiers on the corner of Kane and Twenty-Ninth when she saw first hand that the more of these Soldiers of Nemesis there were, the smarter they seemed to become.
One advantage that some of the superheroes fighting these blasted things had was that they could fly.
But the Soldiers had seemed to have found a way around that.
They started jumping off of buildings, attempting to tackle or cut the airborne heroes.
It wasn't as though they could die from the fall, after all. There was still plenty of Founders Island from which they could reconstruct themselves.
Mera saw this first hand when one of them jumped off of the LexCorp recruitment office and landed on top of a passing Starfire, who was strafing the ground with her green Starbolts.
Starfire wavered in the air a bit, before she and the Soldier that was on top of her crashed through the twenty-second story window of the investment firm across the street.
Mera was broken from this reverie by the sound of shearing metal, and a groan that chilled her heart. As much as she feared it, as much as she tried to convince herself that it was not so, she knew what it was before she turned around.
A Soldier of Nemesis was standing behind Aquaman, with its right spike having punctured the golden scaled armor at his back, his spine, his heart, and through the ribcage and armor on the other side.
Arthur Curry, the Last Blood of Atlan, the man Mera loved with a brightness and a fury that dwarfed the stars themselves, had died instantly. His mouth hung open, his eyes were half-closed, and his proud and muscular frame sagged on the end of the spike.
As the Soldier kicked her husband off the end of its appendage, Mera of Xebel tried to reckon with what she saw, what it meant, all the while conventional sanity just ebbed from her.
And the water she was presently controlling, suspended above her right and left hands in transparent orbs, started boiling.
Mera destroyed the Soldier of Nemesis that killed Aquaman with magnificent jets of boiling water as she screamed, and screamed, and screamed…
On the other end of the island, the odd couple of Miss Martian and Grifter did battle with the Soldiers of Nemesis on Fillmore Street, with Grifter pumping bullets into them and Miss Martian reducing them to rubble with her telekinesis.
Miss Martian took point on the end of the street, giving Grifter time to reload in front of the Exxon station.
It was the fault of neither Miss Martian or Grifter for what happened next. Both had powers of telepathy, granted, but Soldiers of Nemesis had no minds to read.
Neither of them knew about the Soldier that had formed itself from the pavement, and the glass, and the metal of the front of the gas station behind them.
And neither of them would have ventured a guess that this Soldier would have torn through the gas pumps to get to them.
The explosion killed Grifter instantly, turning him to vapor and ash.
And Grifter… was lucky.
The explosion engulfed Miss Martian in flame so quickly that she didn't have time to go intangible.
And if Kryptonians had a major and near-insurmountable flaw in Kryptonite, so too did Martians, be they white or green, in fire.
Miss Martian-M'gann M'orzz-dropped to her knees and screamed, her green skin cracking, her red hair singing and flaking away.
And the last thought she had, before the agonized screams in her mouth in turn ate her very consciousness alive, was simply:
Please don't let them see me like this…
Six seconds later, she was dead, what was left of her body overriding her conscious shape-shifting abilities and reverting to the dessicated, smoldering remains of her angular and monstrous White Martian form.
So M'gann M'orzz, the final White Martian, perished in a dirty street, in a dark city, on an island at war, one-hundred-forty million miles from the red sands of home.
Miss Martian was the niece of Martian Manhunter.
M'gann?
And because he had telepathically linked all of the heroes on Founders Island to himself, Martian Manhunter just felt Miss Martian die.
M'GANN?
His grief, his fear, his sorrow, his rage, spread from his mind all the way up in the Justice League Watchtower, to everyone on the ground of Founders Island.
And because they all felt those emotions in different ways, some got more reckless. Some got more apprehensive. Some just locked up altogether.
So, until Nightwing finally told him to "SHUT THE FUCKING T-COMMS DOWN!", even more heroes got wounded or killed.
And after that, they had to resort to conventional radio comms. Which took a while, and even then didn't include everyone on the ground.
Needless to say, this didn't help matters much.
And above Gotham City, the final grave exclamation point descended as the tide of battle turned in favor of the Army of Nemesis.
It finally started snowing.
AMUSEMENT MILE HALL OF MIRRORS - THE MAINLAND
Amusement Mile had been in Gotham City in one form or another since 1885. Come for the Ferris Wheel and the award-winning Turbo rollercoaster, stay for the cotton candy and funnel cakes.
There was a ten year period that Amusement Mile suffered considerable financial hardship, which, of course, coincided with the rise of the supervillain known as The Joker. When the facility closed down every October, The Joker and Harley Quinn moved in and used the Fun House as his base of operations just in time for Halloween (a concept not unremarked upon by the Clown Prince of Crime himself). Even when the place was open, attendance dropped sharply, as guests did not want to be on hand if The Joker got a wild hair up his ass and wanted to move in while the place was still open… even though he only ever did that the one time.
Amusement Mile was closed for the winter presently. The long rows of carnival games stood shuttered, the food kiosks stood empty, the rides lay inert. When the bright colored lights were off, Orphan thought that Amusement Mile looked haunted. Though by what, she could not say.
She and Oracle walked down the long wooden boardwalk, their bootfalls thumping loud behind them. The snow fell in big, heavy flakes. Orphan looked up, and saw that the clouds had parted. The moon hung heavy, low, and full over the Atlantic Ocean.
Orphan noticed that Oracle's shoulders were bunched up, and it wasn't from the cold. Barbara Gordon got like this whenever stress was upon her, viciously tapping at her keyboard, doing… whatever the hell she did. They way she spoke, Orphan thought Oracle must have ruled the world in secret.
"Is… something wrong?" Orphan asked.
Oracle stopped. She put her gloved hands inside her leather trench coat, and turned to her.
"I haven't seen Jason Todd in years," Oracle said. "He was dead, and now he's not. He's one of the bad guys now, and he's done terrible things, but… He was a kid the last time I saw him. I… I went to his funeral. Dick and I still go to his grave every year. We walk through that door, and I have no idea what happens next."
Oracle was quiet for a spell, before she turned and started walking again. Orphan followed.
Apparently, Oracle either could not (or did not want to) deduce that Jason Todd was not acting of his own free will when he shot up The Seahorse Tavern. The mob hit at Esteban's and what went down at the Sorrento were on him, yes, but the fact remained that Jason was reconstructed for a very specific purpose, and Jason was trying to meet that purpose, no matter how horrible it may have been.
And Lord knew Cassandra Cain had been there.
Oracle was itching for a fight. And Orphan, who had literally been conceived to be a lethal weapon, thought that maybe, in this one instance, violence may not have been the answer.
Bruce Wayne told her a few days ago, after they had found out that David Cain was in Gotham City looking to draw her out, that the worst thing anyone in their position could possibly do was make things personal.
And Orphan thought it was high time that she took that advice.
"Oracle?"
Oracle stopped and turned to her. "Yeah, pumpkin?"
Orphan decked Oracle in the face.
Hard.
The force was so strong that Oracle's green holographic mask cut out, leaving the sheer black mask underneath. She dropped as though she were a marionette whose strings had been cut.
Orphan walked around, and dragged the unconscious Oracle by her armpits over to the brochure stand, propping her up into a sitting position. Then she put Oracle's hands in her pockets, and buttoned up her trench coat because it was snowy and freezing. Just because she needed to be dropped didn't mean she needed to catch cold.
As she stood, Orphan reckoned it was for her own protection. Oracle didn't know that Jason might be at the end of his rope. Neither had a clue what was going to happen next. And if it came to the absolute worst, she reasoned that the world just might need someone like Oracle more than it needed someone like her.
Now that she was alone, Orphan began her walk to the Hall of Mirrors at the end of the boardwalk.
The Hall of Mirrors stood in contrast to all of the other buildings that dotted Amusement Mile. While they were creative and grandiose, the Hall of Mirrors was a flat red box with a glass door in front.
A glass door that had been shattered. With a hole big enough for Jason Todd to fit through.
Or her.
A light came from the hallway off of the entirely black lobby, and Orphan followed it.
There was a narrow corridor, with two mirrors on either side taking up the expanse of the walls. In the middle of this corridor sat Jason Todd, with a bomb made of half of a plastic suitcase on one side of him, and a half-empty six pack of beer on the other. In front of him was a small battery-powered camping lantern.
He looked up at her. Both the whites of his eyes and the lids beneath them were red.
"You're not Tim Drake."
Orphan regarded this pathetic display, and took off her mask.
"No," Cassandra said, her breath coming out in a thick puff of steam. "I'm not."
Jason blinked at her, before his head dropped, and he was staring at his lap again.
Cassandra slowly walked to him, and sat down.
"It's, um… It's okay," Jason said. "You can control the yield on that bomb. I adjusted it. It's only gonna take out this building."
Cassandra tilted her head. "And… you?"
Jason nodded without looking at her. He raised a bottle of beer to his lips.
Cassandra knew just from the smell of him that he was drunk off of just the one beer in his hand.. He was using that stuff to hurt himself.
She just snatched the bottle out of his hand, and he looked at her in confusion. Her first instinct was to dump it out, but that might start a fight. Instead, Cassandra raised the beer to her own lips, and started chugging. And…
...and Cassandra was expecting to hate beer just by the smell, but she had to admit, she kinda liked it. It seemed to warm and spread throughout her stomach. The slight bitterness made her jaw tighten, but it was a bitterness she could get used to. Not like coffee, which was gross no matter how much she tried, and no matter how many times Babs told her she'd get used to it.
When she turned twenty-one, beer was on her to-do list. Provided the world didn't end. Provided she ever found out when her birthday was.
Cassandra put the empty bottle on the floor next to her, and let out a small belch that warmed her throat.
Jason just blinked at her, before his hand reached for the rest of the six pack.
Cassandra was quick, though. Her left hand darted out, and brought the six-pack over to her side.
Jason just blinked at her again. She had been worried about a fight breaking out separating the drunk person from their beer, but she needn't have been. There was no fight left in Jason Todd.
They sat there in the cold silence of the Hall of Mirrors before Jason took it upon himself to speak.
"Nemesis… she's in my thoughts. She's in my memories. I don't feel her now, but…"
That explained a lot.
"I know," Cassandra said.
More silence. Cassandra saw little beads of moisture fall into the lap of Jason's leather pants, and she knew he was crying.
"I've done something terrible," he said with a watery voice.
"So… have I," Cassandra said in reply.
Jason used the edges of his palms to get the tears out of his eyes, and then he looked at her.
"I know how I got here," Jason said. "I'm… I'm trying to piece together the stuff that led me to this, and… and it's… it's like I was pulled here. I grew up poor. Because I grew up poor, I stole. Because I stole, I somehow became Robin."
HIs eyes clouded over, and Cassandra briefly wondered if he had fallen asleep with his eyes open.
"Because I was Robin," Jason said with new gravity, "I died. Because I died, I was brought back… and because I was brought back, those… Those people died. And I can blame Nemesis if I want to, but I have so much anger in me. And it was used against me. Used against them. There was… there was no other way this was panning out. Nothing good comes out the hate I have."
Jason finally locked eyes with her.
"This was destiny."
Cassandra furrowed her brow. She leaned in, touching his arm and making sure that he couldn't look anywhere else.
"Destiny," Cassandra said, wrapping her lips around the word because she'd never said it aloud before, 'is… bullshit."
Jason just blinked at her. "How can you say that?"
Cassandra looked to her right.
There were two mirrors taking up the walls on either side of them, Which meant that their reflections, double, tripled, quadrupled, going on and on forever.
For infinity.
Infinite Cassandras.
And infinite Jasons.
She pointed to one of the infinite Jasons. "What's… he like?"
Jason looked at her in confusion. She pointed to another.
"Or… that one?"
In a monotone, Jason said "I have no idea what you're talking about."
Why couldn't people just get what she was saying? Now she had to take precious time rummaging for new words, needing to see if each and every one lined up with a thought and an emotion. They had to be in the right order, too.
"We… go on… forever. And… not… all of us… end… the same."
Jason stared at one of his reflections before he looked back at her. "So... because there are infinite versions of me, one of them has it better than I do."
"Yes."
"And that's supposed to make me feel better?"
"Yes."
Jason let out a sharp gust of air, which was as close to a derisive laugh as he was getting tonight.
"How?"
"Because," Cassandra said, "no one… decides… what's next. Except us."
Jason began slowly breathing in and out. He was angry.
"What's next?" she asked.
"What's next?" Jason asked. "I'm triggering this bomb, taking out of the building with me in it. That's what's next!"
Cassandra nodded and looked at the bomb. Calmly, she reached over, flicked off the big red switch, removed the vial of orange gel at its center, and put it in one of the compartments of her yellow utility belt.
Jason didn't move. Didn't speak. Just glared at her with big blue eyes. It was plain that it didn't occur to him that she would actually do that, or that she would be so casual about it.
"Am I gonna have to fight you for it?" Jason asked.
Cassandra smirked, and said "You can try."
His cheeks reddened, but he finally just hung his head.
"Jason."
He looked at her again.
Her smirk went away. "What's… next?"
FORDMAN'S DEPARTMENT STORE - MIAGANI ISLAND
It had gotten so bad she was leaving a blood trail.
Stephanie's left eye was swollen shut. A couple of her back teeth were loose. She was fairly certain a couple of ribs were broken. And she had so much blood in her mouth that she was fairly sure that, if she (or the Multiverse) lived through the night, she would never eat rare steak again.
Damian picked her up off the ground, and punched her in the face. It didn't knock her over, but the kick in the stomach did.
Her head hit the cold tile of the women's wear department so hard that her ears started ringing.
"I am versed in more martial arts than you are even aware exist," Damian said, pacing around her. "Japanese Iaido. Chinese Baguazhang. Indian Silambam. I am versed in numerous forms of weaponry from the Firangi to the Qiang to the Gladius. And yes, before you ask, even the Katana, though I consider them inferior weapons."
He stood next to one of the creepy mannequins, and with one savage movement, ripped off its left arm.
"But I think," Damian said, "someone as base and as trivial as you will appreciate this even more."
He hefted it in both hands, and brought the mannequin's arm down on her back. Those things were harder than they looked, and it took a lot for Stephanie not to lose breath and exert energy groaning in pain.
She tried to curl up, but Damian knew just where to bring it down. Again and again he battered her with the mannequin arm until mercifully, the damned thing finally broke.
Breathing heavily, Damian smiled down on her.
"Nothing to say?" he asked. "No further gifts from that trash barge God gave you instead of a mouth."
Stephanie rolled over onto her back. She sat up straight, fixed him with her one good eye, and let both saliva and blood fly from her mouth as she yelled out:
"OOMPA LOOMPA DOOMPADEE DOO!"
Damian screamed with rage, and kicked her in the face. Her body shot back, and the back of her head hit the tile again.
Beyond the stars she saw, and the numbness that blow to the back of the head brought on, Stephanie thought she saw something.
She thought she saw sweat forming on Damian's brow.
The greedy part of Stephanie's mind wanted to act now… but the rational part convinced her to let this go on, opting to be more safe than sorry.
Being that the possibility existed that in the midst of his torture session Damian might kill Stephanie by accident, she had to wonder which one was the safe side, and which the sorry.
PS 1147 - BLEAKE ISLAND
Robin and Bluebird drove their motorcycles on nearly abandoned highways and empty bridges through falling snow.
And as they did, a plan formed in Robin's mind.
One that just might work.
PS 1147 on Bleake Island was… a high school. With no interesting background information or architectural quirks whatsoever. It was a cube, with another cube in the back that housed a gymnasium. PS 1147, for good and all, disproved the axiom that every building in Gotham City had a story behind it.
As they parked their bikes on the curb, Robin could see that Bluebird was muttering to herself. And some of these utterances, while under her breath, were fit for neither church, nor network television before eight PM.
"What's wrong?" Robin asked.
Bluebird stopped, but her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket, and sighed.
"The whole destroying-the-world thing?" Bluebird asked. "I can forgive that. It's at least ambitious. David Cain abusing his daughter I can't forgive, but it's common enough that it doesn't surprise me… But these motherfuckers made me come back to my school in the middle Godfisted winter break. And that… that is a bridge too far."
Robin nodded. After that, a couple of seconds were spent in the muffled silence that fresh snowfall provided.
"You have a plan?" Bluebird asked.
"Technically, yeah."
Bluebird shrugged. "Better than nuthin'."
And with that, they walked.
They walked along the right side of the main school building, the light of the moon showing them the way. They left footprints behind them in the courtyard separating the two buildings, and they finally got to the gymnasium, which was a smaller clone of its boring and larger blocky sibling.
They stepped through the double doors and stood there in the lobby that housed the school's pitiful trophy collection. Both Robin and Bluebird stood there a moment, neither speaking, but both thinking:
At least this place is heated.
After a few seconds they walked through the archway, and into the basketball court.
The steel stands were retracted into the wall, beneath the small rectangular windows through which the moon shone, providing this humble court with the only illumination available. The hoops were up as well, having been retracted into the ceiling.
And in the middle of the darkened gymnasium, on the half-court logo for the school's basketball team (The Fightin' 47s), was an explosive device made out of half of an old plastic suitcase. There was a big red switch and a tube of orange explosive gel in the middle.
"There it is," Robin said. "You want to do the honors?"
"I'll keep a lookout while you do it."
Robin nodded, and walked toward the bomb. He was five feet away, when:
"Hands up, Robin. And turn around."
David Cain's voice.
Robin turned around.
David had a pistol to Bluebird's head. She had been caught completely unaware, having apparently dropped from the ceiling and making no sound doing so.
Robin figured that, yeah, this was the guy who trained Orphan.
David looked at Bluebird. "You. Taser pistols out and on the ground. Unless you want me to use your brains to dye your hair purple."
Bluebird kept her brow furrowed in an attempt not to look as terrified as Robin knew she had to be. As he himself had been the first time he'd had a gun pointed at his head.
She slowly removed the taser pistols from the inside of her leather jacket and dropped them on the floor of the court.
"Kick them away," David said.
Which she did.
Then David's eyes turned to Robin.
"You," David said. "Utility belt. Over here. Now."
Robin sighed, trying not to look too eager, as he removed his utility belt, placed it on the ground, and kicked it over to him.
David took a small disc out of the pocket of his leather jacket, and threw it at Robin's utility belt. It stuck with adhesive, and David immediately kicked it away.
A few seconds later, the utility belt destroyed itself when every item within activated simultaneously.
Robin suppressed a smile.
And now we wait…
David's eyes then turned back to Robin. "Where is my daughter?"
"She's the one who sent me here."
David glowered. "So in addition to being weak, Cassandra is also a coward."
"I don't know about that," Robin said. "Still waters running deep the way they do."
David shrugged. "I didn't plan on killing anyone, and I didn't plan on having someone around who talked enough to provide last words. Time makes fools of us all. Got anything to say before I put bullets in the two of you?"
"Oh, I'm not dying tonight," Robin said.
"How do you figure?"
Robin folded his arms. "A couple of days ago, I didn't think I'd live to see twenty. Now? Now I think I'm gonna live to at least thirty just to spite you. I'm gonna go to college…. And I'm gonna be the best Robin ever by doing the one thing no Robin's ever done."
"I'm not curious," David said, "but you've clearly practiced this speech, so go ahead."
"I'm gonna retire," Robin said. "I'm not gonna get fired, and I'm not gonna die. It won't be tomorrow, it may not even be next year, but I'm gonna hand this R off to the next kid with some kind words and a handshake. Because I lived to see the end."
"I beg to differ."
"You beg for a lot," Robin said. "But before I do that, though…"
Robin's eyes landed on Bluebird.
"Hey," he said.
Bluebird was still a scared teenage girl with a gun to her head, but she managed a strangled "Hey" in reply.
Robin shifted his feet. "You, uh… You wanna get coffee sometime?"
Bluebird blinked, and said the only reasonable thing, given the circumstances.
"Huh?"
"Coffee," Robin said. "Would you like to get some? With me, I mean, not just in general."
Bluebird blinked some more, but some life came back into her regardless. "We're doing this now?"
"Yeah," David said. "We're doing this now?"
"Yes," Robin said. "We're doing this now."
Bluebird looked from Robin to David, and then back again.
"Well," Bluebird said, "the thing is, uh… I have friends, and they aren't gonna be used to having someone as, uh… someone like you around, y'know? All preppie, and… and normal. Oo… It's not a no, I'm just saying it's gonna take some time to get them acclimated, know what I mean?"
Robin looked at her in disbelief. "You can stick your tongue down my throat, but you can't be seen in public with me?"
"Oh, for Christ's sake," David said. "Listen, the two of you are going to die right now. I'm not sure that's sunk in."
Robin's eyes went back to him. "Oh, shut the fuck up, Dave! You've already lost!"
He had put so much stink on that that David momentarily looked nonplussed.
"How do you figure?"
"You ran like the little coward that you are when Orphan took your implants out of commission with that EMP disk. And Damian used one of those little charges on Batman's utility belt to activate every piece of equipment inside to put him at a disadvantage. It isn't hard to put two and two together and guess what would happen if you saw Cass here in her Orphan outfit. You'd have done to her utility belt what Damian did to Batman's, and you just did to mine."
David scrunched up his face. "I still don't see what advantage you have with all your gadgets destroyed."
"You didn't destroy my gadgets," Robin said. "You activated them. Including a signal beacon I got from some friends of mine a couple of days ago. And those friends should be here any moment."
David sneered. "Batman's out of commission and your other friends are a little busy right now."
Robin sneered back.
"The people in Batman's network aren't the only friends I have."
BOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!
Something tore through the side of the gym and through the retracted steel stands, knocking the three of them off their feet, and letting in dust and a violent blast of snow and December air.
Tim Drake didn't believe in God, but took some time to thank Him anyway, because this could not have been timed better.
From the massive hole in the side of the gymnasium, the silhouette of a lone figure appeared, and stepped through, revealing themselves.
It was a teenage girl, her long blonde hair cascading over a brown leather jacket. She was wearing a red, yellow, and blue shirt underneath, stylized with the yellow in the middle to look like a W. A red knee-length skirt came down over blue leggings with a star motif.
It was Wonder Girl.
Young Justice had arrived.
Wonder Girl wiped some of the dust away from her face.
"Uhhh, who are we fighting right now?"
David had already gotten to his feet. Robin knew well enough to stay down. But he pointed at David.
"Him," Robin said. "That's Orphan's dad."
Wonder Girl looked at David.
Cassandra "Wonder Girl" Sandsmark was as bright and cheery a person as could be, without being annoying about it. On the nerdy side, yes, but it was endearing.
But beholding David Cain, Wonder Girl's eyes just… went… dead.
"Oh," Wonder Girl said. "So you're the one who did all that to Cass."
Wonder Girl began her advance toward him, David squared up.
"Do you have any idea what happens… to people who hurt little girls… when they're standing in front of a FUCKING AMAZON?"
David threw the first punch. He was fast.
Wonder Girl, however, was a damn sight faster.
She clocked David Cain with a right that sent spittle and a front tooth flying. Before he could drop, however, Wonder Girl grabbed him by the collar of his leather jacket, and used her Super Strength to fling him to the ceiling of the gymnasium.
On his way up, Wonder Girl cupped her hands to her mouth.
"IMPULSE! UP TOP!"
Through the hole in the wall behind her, the red and beige blur of Bart "Impulse" Allen sped past, and rebounded up in the air where David Cain was still performing the act of falling.
Using his speed to bounce from wall to wall, Impulse managed to punch David Cain a whopping six times before he hit the ground.
As David struggled to get to his feet, Robin heard a familiar Texas drawl behind him.
"Whatcha got there?"
Robin turned his head to look.
Bluebird was standing right next to Jinny Hex. And Bluebird had picked her weapons back up.
"It's a taser pistol," Bluebird said.
"Ya don't say," said Jinny. "I got me somethin' a sight similar. Mind if I give yours a test ride?"
"By all means," said Bluebird, handing Jinny her taser pistol.
Jinny took aim and fired. The shot landed squarely in David Cain's neck, wrapping him in blue tendrils of electricity, and eliciting pained screams, dropping him back to his stomach on the floor.
"Hm," Jinny said. "This little girl don't hardly have a kick. Who made it?"
"I did," Bluebird said.
Jinny smiled. "Well I'll be. You got a hankerin' to try mine?"
"Y'know," Bluebird said, "I think I just had my first-ever hankerin'.""
Jinny reached into her brown longcoat, and pulled out one of her own electric pistols. It was a massive thing that looked like it came off the cover of an old pulp sci-fi magazine. She handed it to Bluebird.
As David yet again tried to get to his feet, Bluebird fired.
The shot was loud, and the bolt of energy hit David in the ribs, wrapping him in even more electricity, and dropping him yet again.
"Daaaaaaaamn," Bluebird said.
"Kicks like a mule, don't she?"
"I dig it, though. It actually feels like you're shooting it."
Robin looked back over to David. He once again tried to get to his feet, and this time was successful…
...only to find that he was standing right in front of Anita "Empress" Fite.
Empress was a master martial artist with limited teleportation powers. For the task at hand, however, she would need neither.
For she also had limited mind control capabilities.
"I'm gonna need you to do me a favor," Empress said, putting her hands on the hips of her bronze armor. "I'm gonna need you… to stop hitting yourself."
David Cain's right hand curled into a tight fist, and flung at high speed toward his face.
THWACK!
His nose started bleeding, and he started weaving on his feet.
"Stop hitting yourself."
THWACK!
"Stop hitting yourself."
THWACK!
"Stop hitting yourself."
THWACK!
"Stop hitting yourself."
THWACK!
"Stop hitting yourself."
THWACK!
"Stop hitting yourself."
THWACK!
"Stop hitting yourself."
THWACK!
"Okay, seriously dude, stop hitting yourself."
David's fist finally uncurled. Both eyes were well on their way to swelling shut, and he had even gotten blood in his white hair. But, weaving though he may have been, he was still standing.
Or at least he was, until Empress unleashed a roundhouse kick that laid him out.
After a moment, David tried getting to his feet yet again. The look in his swelling eyes was one of true fury. Robin, just by eyeballing it, guessed that the former operative for the League of Assassins, he who trained one of the deadliest hand-to-hand fighters on the planet, did not appreciate being made a fool of by an assortment of schoolchildren.
David finally got to his feet, and let out a roar.
But that roar died in his throat when he saw who was standing in front of him.
It was a brawny young man in jeans and a black t-shirt. His muscular arms were folded over the red emblem on his shirt, which was that of the Kryptonian House of El.
It was Superboy.
Also known as Conner Kent.
And judging from the look in his icy blue eyes, Robin had to guess that Superboy was not happy to see David Cain in the slightest.
David blinked, and then unleashed some moves. A jab in the sternum, a chop to the side of the neck, and a palm strike to the forehead.
Nothing happened.
And David looked greatly disturbed by that.
Superboy, for his part, just furrowed his brow.
"Is that that One Hour Photo thing I've heard so much about?" Superboy asked. "Yeah, that's not gonna work on me. Kryptonians don't have nerve clusters in the same place."
David smiled, looking confident.
"Kryptonian?" he asked with a mouth that had been repeatedly busted during the last few minutes. "Are you as piss-scared of getting your hands dirty as the other Girl and Boy Scouts running around with that S on their chests?"
But Superboy just smiled.
"You do know I'm a clone of Lex Luthor too, though, right?"
And David Cain… looked an awful lot less confident.
Superboy grabbed David by the collar of his jacket and hoisted him up into the air with one hand.
"There is nothing I want more in this life," Superboy said, "than to beat you until you're nothing more than a gross smell. But there's a problem."
Superboy brought David down to eye level.
"I really like your daughter," Superboy said. "And as evil as you are, I don't want to hurt her father. So… goodnight."
And with that, Superboy very gently placed the index finger of his left hand on the side of David's windpipe.
Being as he was Kryptonian, it would have been a blood choke from anyone else.
And David Cain was painlessly flung into unconsciousness. Superboy gently placed him on the floor.
With all that done, everyone looked at Robin. Bluebird helped him to his feet.
"You called us," Impulse said. "And we came."
"Yeah," Wonder Girl said. "We're Cenobites like that."
Everyone looked at her.
"Y'know," Wonder Girl said. "From Hellraiser?"
"Not inaccurate," Empress said, "just inappropriate."
"Okay," Robin said. "First thing's first."
Robin walked over to the suitcase bomb. He flipped the red switch and removed the vial of orange gel, before coming back and handing the vial to Impulse.
"Can you get rid of that for me?"
"Sure thing," Impulse said. He sped off through the hole in the building in a streak… and about a second later, he was back.
"Where'd you put it?" Robin asked.
"Ocean," Impulse said. "Right in the middle, too."
"Thank you," Robin said. "Second thing's second."
He turned to Superboy.
"You remember that thing I said a couple of days ago about how lying to the girl you like is important?"
"Yeah," Superboy said.
Robin looked back at Bluebird for a second, before he turned back to Superboy.
"Ignore that," Robin said. "I have no idea what the hell I'm doing."
Superboy smiled, and said "You know, I figured as much."
"Say Robin," Jinny said behind them. "You bein' the gentleman of the group, you seem to have forgotten to introduce us to the lady here."
"Right," Robin said. "Bluebird, this is Young Justice. Young Justice, this is Bluebird."
"I'm Impulse," Impulse said.
"Empress."
"I'm Wonder Girl."
"Uh, Superboy."
Jinny doffed her cowboy hat. "Jinny Hex, miss."
Bluebird gave a meek wave, and said "Hi. I'm Harper."
"Oh," Impulse said. "We're at that stage already? I'm Bart Allen."
"Anita Fite."
"Cassandra. Not to be confused with the smaller, quieter, Asian-er Cassandra."
"I'm Conner."
"Still Jinny Hex, miss."
"Dude," Superboy said. "We have to get to Founders Island. It's bad there, and we need all the help we can get."
"Right," Robin said. "One more thing before we go, though. Bart, do you have your phone on you?"
"I do," Empress said. She took it out of a compartment on the side of her armor, and handed it to Robin.
Robin took the phone, went over to the unconscious David Cain, and knelt over him. His cape obscured what he was doing from everyone else, but he got up, and walked back a few paces, and what he had done was revealed to all present..
He had taken the index finger of David Cain's right hand, and jammed it up his nose.
And Robin was now in the process of taking a picture of this peculiar sight with Empress' phone.
Once he was done, Robin handed the phone back to Empress, and said "Thanks."
Everyone just stared at him.
"What?" Robin asked. "He hurt my friend. Fuck that guy."
FOUNDERS ISLAND
It had begun so positively, with Batwoman fighting back to back with Wonder Woman in front of the Jitters on MacClendon Avenue. There didn't seem to be so many of the Soldiers when they got there, and soon after, the night came alive with glorious sounds.
Starbolts. Blasts of Heat Vision. Canary Cries.
But the longer it went on, the more there seemed to be an underlying throb of desperation to everything.
And the snowfall, as well as Martian Manhunter's psychic despair at the death of Miss Martian, coincided with Batwoman running out of explosive Batarangs.
She got two of her standard Batarangs form her utility belt and used them as double-edged knives, weaving in and out of danger between the Soldiers of Nemesis, planting them into their featureless stone faces, and watching them fall. In the cold, in the snow, Batwoman felt herself burning up. She must have sweat off the makeup she'd applied to conceal the bruises that Stelio had given her in National City.
Batwoman poured her anger into her strokes, her resentment into her thrusts. It was a never-ending wellspring of energy that kept her going past the point that she normally would have dropped. She was alone here, on this street, in this world, granting punishment to the blank Soldiers unleashed by two deranged Goddesses.
And all it took to bring Batwoman back to the rest of existence was one world.
"Kate…"
Batwoman turned around.
Wonder Woman was standing there.
And she was beautiful.
Her blue eyes gleamed, and the falling snowflakes formed their own field of stars in her black hair.
But she was pale.
Too… Too pale.
Wonder Woman wobbled on her feet, and would have fallen to the street had Batwoman not caught her.
She looked down and saw a gash in Wonder Woman's left side. It had pierced her armor and had drawn far too much blood. It had flowed down her side, down her exposed thigh, and into her boot. She had left a red trail behind her in the freshly fallen snow.
"One of them got me," Wonder Woman said weakly. "These Soldiers are divine, Kate. I can't… I can't feel myself healing."
The magic of the Soldiers had overridden her ability to heal.
And the euphoria of battle vanished from Batwoman's mind in an instant.
Because if this situation with the Army of Nemesis didn't resolve itself soon, then Wonder Woman was going to bleed to death.