The Bat – Jeep drove silently ploughing through the flat Illinois ground, leaving nothing behind but a large dust cloud behind it. Nothing can be see in the endless landscape, save for a couple of hills, a few forest patches and a couple of stray dinosaurs that acted as if the Bat – Jeep was invisible. Garfield sat in the passenger seat of the Bat – Jeep looking around him as if everything around him has personally insulted him in some way or another. Garfield turned his head to look at Nightwing, who's face gave nothing away, his long wild hair whipping around like a windsock in the air.
"That story you told me man" Nightwing said suddenly as if he was fed up with the long silence "About what happened to you, in Titan's Tower…"
Garfield said nothing. His face was as stone cold as ever, however there was a small flicker of shock that can be detected if one were to look hard enough. He wanted Nightwing to shout at him, to yell at him, to tell him off, to hit him, to harm him! He had personally murdered his two brothers and his girlfriend and yet here he was talking to him like how a mother would talk to their 5-year-old child who accidently broke their favourite mug. He didn't deserve to be spoken to like this!
"Well. I'm sorry for making you do this, Garfield. If I'd know what you'd been through…I…I at first thought that the Titans…that they…they were taken down by a rabid Cheetah or something like that."
Garfield could tell that Nightwing was only telling half the truth. He had known Nightwing for a good portion of his life and he can tell whenever he mixes the lies with the truth, but the hardest part was figuring out which one was the truth and which one was the lie, and something inside Garfield told him that Nightwing knew the truth about what happened before he even stepped a foot inside his farm. The only question was how long? It could have been when Nightwing went into the crime scene that was Titan's tower, but when could he have done so? An hour later? A day? A month? A year? With Nightwing combined with the villains taking over, it was impossible to tell. He rummaged through his pockets and withdrew his faded-out Titan's phone. Part of him wanted to throw the god – dam thing away. To destroy it, and by doing so it would erase the memory of that night. To make him forget everything and yet at the same time something was stopping him from even letting a drop of water come into contact with it, as if its entire existence is tied to him being alive and so much a scratch to it would cause permeant damage to his body.
"Forget about it pal" Garfield said solemnly. He eyed the GPS screen in front of him as if it can provide all the answers he needed. "So. We're in Illinois now, which means we entered Black Adams Lair."
Nightwing sighed as if recalling an unpleasant and embarrassing memory "Yes. Black Adam has been a bit…complicated lately. Over thirty years ago nobody dared even scratch a car in fear of facing Black Adams wrath, but now…he has been…up and down. One day he would unleash the door of hell on a someone who nicks a can of soup from a supermarket when he is on the other side of his territory, the next one could commit murder in front of him and he wouldn't even lift a figure to stop them."
"Right…" Garfield said, unsure on how to respond to this statement
"The last time I heard from Raven, she was under intensive care from Constantine in the house of magic, and I know that it is permanently rooted here in Black Adam territory for some reason" Nightwing said. He sighed the most Un – Nightwingish sigh. "The past only hurts if we let it catch up with us Garfield. We learnt that time and time again. Am I right?"
But Garfield wasn't listening to Nightwing. He was looking in silent horror. at the horrific thing that was right behind them.
At first Garfield thought that he was looking at a giant T – Rex, with a body the size of a truck, legs as big as a house that caused earthquakes with each tip toe it made, a tail as long as a stadium thrashing rapidly in the air like a shower head on full blast water, eyes the size of dinner plates, a giant nose with each nostrale the size and width of an entrance to a tunnel, arms as big as a man, a mouth as wide as a monstrous rocky cave, teeth as sharp and as big as stalactites and stalagmites that looked as if it can tear through metal like marshmallow, and an endlessly long slimy tongue that could easily serve as a waterslide provided that someone is stupid and brave enough to even enter the mouth of the dinosaur. Garfield had personally transformed into on a number of occasions and seeing one in the flesh rather than actually being one is simply magnificent to behold to see something that was thought to be gone from the face of the Earth back from the dead. This magnificent sight and awe-inspiring feeling was immediately followed by pure horror as he realised that there was something off about this particular creature.
He knew that dinosaurs came in many colours from green to grey just from this road trip alone, but this T – Rex was pure black. No wait. It looked like it was covered in black gooey tar. Then Garfield thought that he was looking at Black Beetle, one of Blue Beetle's mortal enimies, but that was impossible, he knew for a fact that…what was his name again? Garfield had forgotten the name of the person that wore the Black Beetle alien suit, but he knew for a fact that he had died over twenty years ago from one of the various stories that Nightwing told him whenever they got bored in their travels. So what was it doing here?
Finally, Garfield realised what he was staring at. The Black Beetle had found it's new host. A T – Rex and it doesn't look happy at all.
"Holy $%£&!" Garfield shouted in pure horror as he saw the Black Beetle T – Rex come storing full speed towards the Bat – Jeep. It was 100 meters away, 50 meters, 25 meters. Nightwing seemed to have deciphered that Garfield was looking at something bad and floored the accelerator, but the T – Rex lazily increased its speed causing meteor sized craters, dust clouds the size of a skyscraper shot up into the atmosphere and city destroying earthquakes with each step it made. It unleashed a hideous monstrous deafening cry of anger that sounded like a cross between a fog horn, nails on a chalk board, and a million babies screaming on a plane, the hideous sound was so loud, so loud that it almost flipped the Bat – Jeep over had it not been designed to face off against metahumans like Black Canary.
"WHAT THE £$%& IS GOING ON GARFIELD!?" Nightwing bellowed, swerving left and right in zig zags so violently that Garfield felt himself about to throw up all of his internal organs.
"I DON'T KNOW!?" Garfield cried looking on at the thing that was chasing them "A T – REX WITH BALCK BETTLES FACE ON IT! DOES IT REALLY MATTER!?"
Nightwing unleashed a tirade of unintelligible words as he began to punch violently at the dashboard trying to find a particular button. He switched on the radio which blared a weird Egyptian sounding song, he unleashed a flame thrower which emitted an inferno from the back of the car, but the beast that was chasing them walked through it without so much as breaking phase, it was no so close that Garfield could smell it's breath that smelled like all the foul smells in the world from clogged up sewers to the bowls of a slaughterhouse had merged together. The smell was so strong and bitter, that it murdered Garfield's nose and he swore that he could have thrown up everything inside of him including his own skeleton. He felt a drop of it's saliva fall on his right hand and it burnt into him like acid, while sticking onto it like some kind of superglue. Finally, Nightwing found the right button and out of thin air a large weapon that looked to be a fusion between a machine gun, a revolver, a flame thrower, a spear launcher, a bow and arrow, a harpoon gun, a tank, a laser gun and a missile launcher came out of the back of the Bat – Jeep.
"Now will you start blowing holes in him please!" Nightwing screamed at Garfield.
Garfield didn't have to be told. He aimed this bizarre weapon, only briefly feeling the immense power that he had held in his hand, a weapon that took down over 12% of the superheroes. Garfield looked down at the piano keyboard of triggers that he started to slam down upon. At once so many things were fired from the weapon so rapidly that they became a blur, the sound was so loud that it only added to the loud sounds that came from the super T – Rex, but nothing, not even an armada of heat seeking missile seemed to have stopped it.
Garfield swore as a well-aimed tank missile came into contact with the T – Rex's mouth immediately dissolved in it's acid like mouth as if it was a cheap mint.
"Are we anywhere safe yet Nightwing!?" Garfield screamed still firing as many weapons as he could at this juggernaut of a beast "Because I ain't kicking it's ass!"
"I'm BLIND!" Nightwing practically screamed still driving in random and sudden swerves and violent zig zags. "YOU TELL ME!"
Suddenly, the black T – Rex is right in front of the weapon it opened it's mouth to gobble up the Bat – Jeep, Garfield could now see the grotesque insides of the beast, he saw what looked to be half of a jet plane near its grotesque interior muscles, his eyes, nose, and mouth were overwhelmed with the stench and he felt himself getting stabbed all over by the dinosaurs teeth, he felt the numb pain as he felt his blood flood out of his body, he tried to aim the weapon inside of the beast, but the weapon clicked uselessly to show that it had ran out of ammo. He felt himself about to be sucked in and…
That was when everything happened at once. First, he saw pure, royal black about to get swallowed whole by the beast, then he heard an all too familiar sound. The sound of a phoenix. It's hypnotising, soothing, calming cry seemed to grind time to a halt. Even the black T – Rex seemed to have stopped mid gulp to listen to this phoenix song. Then flames. Giant, royal blue flames! The flames around the black T – Rex seemed to be cutting through the thick skin like a cheese wire, leaving the large royal blue flames on the cut marks of the T – Rex's skin, Garfield closed his eyes and then…he opened them again and found himself back in daylight. The cool afternoon breeze blowing into his face.
He looked around him. They were on a large plain with next to nothing to be seen on the horizon. He turned to see what looked to be the body of a regular T – Rex, with its head and neck missing, where it used to be was a large ring of royal blue fire. Around the Bat – Jeep was the burnt out shell that used to be the head of the T – Rex, and on top of it looking both very proud and very distraught was a royal blue phoenix.
The phoenix looked young. It was relatively small around the size of a medium sized dog, it had a small black beak no bigger than a walnut, talons no bigger than an over sharpened pencil, an impressive 1-meter wing length and the most beautiful feathers imaginable. Each feather was a delicate shade of blue, and each single feather seemed to be on fire with a similarly coloured blue flame, which gave an almost hypnotising look and smell. It gave a soft, soothing caw, a soft, warm, comforting, soothing and relaxing song came out of its beak that can bring anyone to sleep, and then, the phoenix vanished suddenly to be replaced by a small young boy.
The boy looked like any 8-year-old boy in terms of size and physical posture. He wore nothing but a large purple cloak, a blue t – shirt, blue jeans and glasses as thick as carboard. But there were several things that made him almost instantly unique. The first thing that struck out about the boy was his royal blue skin that made him look like a cartoon character, on his forehead was what looked to be a large sapphire that even from a distance looked like something menacing was inside of it, the boy also had large, wild blue hair that made it look like he had a tempest on his head with it going all over the place and finally then there was an over – sized fang on his mouth…just like Garfield's.
Garfield sat frozen unable to speak on what he was looking at. He stared at the boy so intently that he felt his eyeballs about to pop out of their sockets. 'No…wait…it can't be…there is no way that…there is no way that…that boy is…'
But the boy seemed to have read Garfield's mind, and gave a small smile "Yes. I am real. Hi Dad."