Nightwing: Out of Time 4 – The Final Conflict

Chapter 2

By Christopher W. Blaine

e-mail: darth_yoshi@yahoo.com

DISCLAIMER: Nightwing™ and all of the characters and situations previously copyrighted by DC Comics Inc. remain the property of that entity and are used without permission for fan-related entertainment only. This original story, and all original concepts and creations contained herein, are ©2004 and the intellectual property of Christopher W. Blaine.

He continued to fall through time.

Because he was not actually inside time, the minutes and hours meant nothing to him. He had no idea that he had been falling for months, crashing through the barriers that existed to separate the true from the false.

He remembered the battle with Per Degaton and falling from the time sled and after that his memories were not pictures of what had happened, but more of a collection of sensations, as if he had passed through the physical body of another person. In truth that was a fairly simplistic explanation of what was happening to him.

When someone traveled through time, someone like the Flash for example, they normally headed forward or backward along a hypothetical straight line. If they deviated from that path, moved sideways, they had to alter their physical bodies so that they could pass through the dimensional walls without causing permanent damage. Others did it through science or magic, but the procedure was essentially the same.

Nightwing was doing simply smashing through the barriers, dragging temporal particles from other realities with him. In time, those particles would be rejected by the reality and would eventually find their way to their own dimensions. In the meantime, however, his fall was wreaking havoc with the normal flow of time.

Various versions of himself were popping up in his world, each with their own history that was being blended with his own and with each barrier that fell, more background was added.

But Nightwing didn't know this, he only knew that he was falling and nothing was ever going to make it stop. He was lost in time; no, he corrected himself, he was out of time.

Oracle had outlined her plan to all of them and divided them into groups to pursue the goals she said were necessary in order to achieve the safe return of the normal flow of time. Jade Lantern opened the gateways and very soon, Oracle was alone on the rock.

It took only a few moments before they found her.

The first to arrive was Waverider, emissary of the Linear Men, a group of individuals dedicated to maintain the fluidity and virginity of time. The second was the Phantom Stranger, a "man" dressed in a suit, fedora and cape. Waverider was not a good sign; the Phantom Stranger was an even worse one.

"You have broken too many temporal laws, Oracle," Waverider said, trying his best to sound authorative. Though he possessed a muscular body that was highlighted by photonic flames, he was very much a little boy on the inside. He had once been normal and now he was still learning to be much more. "You've dragged Hypertime variants out of their realities and sent them dashing off into various portions of the time stream. My bosses are not real happy."

"Indeed," the Phantom Stranger remarked in a voice that sounded almost angelic. "Your intentions are noble, but your actions are reckless."

"No more reckless than those my father is accused of making in trying to bring an evildoer to justice," Oracle replied.

"Look, kid, this is way beyond just trying to right a wrong. Nightwing has royally freaked up time," Waverider told her. She said nothing about the reference to her age but instead listened calmly. "I've got orders to correct this by any means possible."

"And what exactly does that mean?" the Phantom Stranger asked, slowly turning towards the Linear Man. "Just because you guard the flow of time does not mean you can decide its path."

"That's our mission, Stranger," Waverider remarked, trying to sound braver than what he was. The truth was that he did not agree with the orders of his superiors, but being a Linear Man sometimes meant doing things you did not want to do. "This doesn't concern you."

"But it does concern me and my siblings," Oracle said. Waverider made to say something but felt ridiculous arguing with a child. The Phantom Stranger must have read his thoughts.

"Do not let appearances deceive you; young Mary is only a child in body, not in spirit," the Stranger commented. Oracle simply smiled as he continued. "This Per Degaton is the one responsible; he is the one who needs to be brought to justice."

"Protecting time is not about justice, it's about maintaining the status quo," Waverider responded.

"Which is what we are trying to do. Lightning and Titan are even now pursuing our father, to stop his unauthorized travel through time." Oracle spread her arms wide. "Darkwing had gone to observe and protect the conglomerate Nightwing that even now exists on Earth…"

Waverider nodded but the Phantom Stranger did not reply. The Nightwing that was living in the true time line was merely a combination of all of the Nightwings from the realities the real one had burst through. Because he had been absent from his world, his alternate time line duplicates were drawn into his own.

Every moment that they remained in the true time line, the more their realities would start to merge and that only added to the inherent instability of time. "Your calculations are off," Waverider told her.

Before she had come to this rock, Oracle had stopped by the citadel fortress of the Linear Men and had presented her case before them. They had refused to help and had ordered that she was to return to her own time line. Obviously she had refused. "What do you mean?"

"It is why I am here; time is becoming unstable at an exponential rate." The Phantom Stranger waved his arm in the air and a small image appeared. It showed a city on what appeared to be Earth. She did not recognize it. "This is Metropolis in the twenty-third century, approximately two hundred standard years from today."

The scene started to change as the sky turned a stark white, as if a nuclear explosion had occurred just beyond the horizon. Suddenly, the buildings began to crumble and the people melted away into nothing even as they tried to run away. Within ten short seconds, the scene was completely blank.

"At the current rate of decay, time will end two centuries hence. This cannot be allowed," the Phantom Stranger said.

Oracle was speechless and Waverider looked down at the ground. "I've been instructed to detonate a temporal bomb in order to divert time." Oracle was deeply shaken and she started to look even more childlike. "All of the divergent time lines will destroyed and Nightwing will be erased from the continuity."

"And what happens to him? The real one falling through time."

"He will be eliminated," the Stranger answered. "Unless an alternative can be found."

"There is no alternative," Waverider said. "I came to warn you that once this is over, the Linear Men will be coming for you Oracle. You're too dangerous now." Waverider jumped into the air and slipped into a hole in time.

The young woman, who, on her world, was middle school student Mary Grayson, turned to the Phantom Stranger, tears forming in her eyes. She had only wanted to help, to prove that her gifts were not a curse, but something that could help mankind. She had the unique ability to see into not only the future, but also possible futures. Her parents had been unsure of what to do with her. She was trying to show them that she was fine.

In order to prove she was all right, she had to save the universe. Not a big deal for a girl whose worst problem should have been which boy to go steady with this week. Suddenly, she remembered something that the Phantom Stranger had said. "You said something about an alternative," she said, her voice returning to normal.

"Nightwing's fall through time is the end result of a problem that started with Per Degaton," the Stranger said before turning away. "Is it better to plug the dam after it leaks, or fix it so it never occurred to begin with? You are a powerful being, Mary Grayson, but you have much to learn before you take your spot among your peers."

Then he was gone and Oracle was all alone.

He was called Per Degaton and he was destined to die a fool.

At least that was what history indicated, but he knew better. In the early 1940's, he had been a lowly technician in the lab of Professor Zee. Zee was a genius, something that Degaton was not, but he was not a tough guy, something Degaton thought he was. With that time machine he had tried several times, unsuccessfully, to become leader of the world. He was defeated time and time again by the Justice Society and later the Justice League. Each defeat was more humiliating than the previous and each time his hatred for super-heroes became even greater.

On one mission to the future something strange had happened; he had encountered a deviation in the time stream. Had he possessed the scientific training and discipline of the man who had created his time machine, he would have realized that what had happened was that the true Per Degaton had traveled back into the past where he would meet his ultimate fate.

The Per Degaton that now contemplated a death he was sure would never happened was a Hypertime alternate.

He did not realize that he was no longer in his own time; he only possessed a hatred for the man who had been his greatest foe, Nightwing. It had been this Per Degaton that had traveled to the future in order to lay out the complicated plan to kill Nightwing in New Metropolis, never realizing that he had crossed into another time line when he had done so.

In fact, he had no idea that he, himself, was a time anomaly, creating tears in time as he moved in and out of centuries from this reality to the next. The Linear Men, Oracle and the Phantom Stranger were even now pursuing the true Nightwing, thinking that he alone was responsible for the destruction that was occurring to the time stream.

But none of that concerned Per Degaton as he walked over to look outside at the streets of 1961 New Orleans. This was the perfect place for him to hide; a period when the Justice Society was inactive and the Justice League members had not even been born. The little girl was still sleeping, the daughter of Nightwing, and for that Per Degaton was thankful.

When he had traveled to the future, he had sought out Ra's Al Ghul, an immortal villain that had confronted the Batman several times in the Caped Crusader's career. Though Al Ghul found Degaton an oddity, he did provide him with the equipment to carry out his threat against New Metropolis. Then he had explained the origin of the Black Robin.

Andrea was the cloned daughter of both Nightwing and Tara Markov, a super-villain who had once posed as a hero called Terra. She had been created to serve as a doomsday weapon against the Batman. She was to have been trained to become an assassin and she would be sent, at the appropriate age, to gain the trust of the Masked Manhunter. The plan had backfired, though, when one of Al Ghul's operatives suddenly developed a maternal instinct and had kidnapped the young child to raise away from Al Ghul's control.

The unidentified woman succeeded in raising young Andrea to become a super-hero. When she reached adulthood, she had sought out Bruce Wayne, her "grandfather" who had provided her with the money and equipment necessary to carry out her own personal war on crime as the Black Robin.

The man looking out the window and sucking slowly on the glass of whiskey knew all of this. He also knew that the Legion of Super-Heroes had captured him for his crimes, even though Earthian, the killer of Black Robin, had managed to get away. Per Degaton had been taken to the 31st century to stand trial for violating several time laws, but he had managed to escape through the aid of none other than Ra's Al Ghul.

What he didn't know was the true circumstances that had occurred to bring him to this point. He had no inclination of the twists and turns time had taken to bring him to this sweaty hotel room with a little girl he had to admit, but only privately, he did not have the guts to outright murder. Adults were one thing and even killing in an impersonal way (such as his plot to blow up New Metropolis), but even with the added courage of whiskey he could not kill her.

He sighed and reached down for the pack of cigarettes he had purchased an hour before. He had left, hoping that the little girl would simply wake up and run away, but she had remained sleeping. He lit up and inhaled, wondering lightly if he was really supposed to die the way he had read in the history books at the library. It didn't make sense.

Nothing made sense anymore.