Nightwing: Out of Time 4 – The Final Conflict

Chapter 3

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.

Lightning was the first to spot her father.

She was surprised that Titan was able to keep up, but she had been able to impart some of the Speed Force to him, using a trick he had learned from the Flash. His magically enhanced body easily accepted the kinetic energy that Lightning supplied to him, but it was something she had to keep doing constantly.

While she ran, kept them on course and kept the conduit to the Speed Force open, Titan used his analytical mind to study what he had learned so far about the man whom he assumed was his father. In all, he had determined that no less than seven time lines had become intertwined, starting to merge into one. At some point in the future, all of the children of Nightwing would either become one being, cease to exist or co-exist in one reality. That would certainly mean a lot of child support for Dick Grayson he joked to himself.

It helped to try and maintain a sense of humor in all of this because if he was going to die, he wanted to do with a smile on his face. "Die proudly," was the Amazon phrase.

According to Oracle, the rips in time had started as far back as the early 1940's, and moved steadily forward all of the way to the era where Black Robin was a member of the Justice League. Throughout all of those intervening years, different Hypertime versions of Nightwing started popping up in the main time line, dragging a little piece of themselves with them. It got so bad that the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st century had to intervene after they detected a high rate of time distortions.

The Legion had assumed that Nightwing being moved forward in time, beyond a point where he was supposed to die, had caused the distortions. Titan was not so sure that the explanation given by the Legion was the correct one. "I assume you want me to catch him?" Titan asked. He was amazed at how fast the words left his lips.

Lightning nodded. "I'll give you the speed but I'm not strong enough to catch something of his mass busting through time. You need to be careful, though."

Titan was curious and asked what the problem was. She smiled as they put on a little extra burst of speed. "There are some schools of temporal thought that theorize that the longer a body accelerates through the time stream, the more unstable the space-time continuum is throughout their mass. In other words, there is a possibility that stopping him suddenly may open up a wormhole."

The son of the Amazing Amazon did not like that thought at all. "Am I fast enough to escape?"

"Nope. But if it makes you feel better, you'll kill all of us, so be gentle," she said as she placed a hand on his forearm. "Brother."

He felt even more of the Speed Force pour into his body and it was like drinking ambrosia. He felt alive and charged and couldn't wait to sprint forward. He wondered if it was like this for all speedsters and if it was, no wonder they were all drawn to the Speed Force as a final destination when their mortal lives were over. When he got back home, he would make it a point to talk about the experience with Hermes.

He concentrated on the falling image of his father, realizing that in the spaces of time, there was no up or down and that he was not actually falling. He was instead moving in a direction other than forward or backward. He took a moment to look down at his sandaled feet and was amazed that they were still holding together. Unlike the costume he wore, which was based upon ancient Greek armor, his shoes were not magical.

His mother had often complained about how he would wear out shoes as he grew. It occurred to him then that if they were not successful in this venture, then he would never see her again. That thought bothered him greatly.

He had never considered himself a "momma's boy", but he supposed deep down inside he was. His father and mother had both loved him, but his father's mortality always seemed to be a dividing line between them. He supposed that was why he took more after his mother in his super-heroing; besides, he had never thought Grandpa Bruce was all that scary anyway.

Lightning watched as Titan surged forward to catch hold of the man that could have been her father. She wondered if he was as much of a bastard as her real one was. She cursed herself, realizing that she was being unfair. Her father had not been ready to be a parent and the simple fact had been that while he liked screwing her mother, he had never actually claimed to be in love with her.

Dick Grayson had tried his best to be a father, but it had actually been her Uncle Wally, as in Wally West the Flash, who had been the biggest influence in her life. Jessie Chambers, her mother and the person whom she got her name from, had something of a volatile personality and she and her father just never seemed to get along.

When she looked at Titan, she was reminded of the woman that her father had eventually married, Donna Troy. But that wasn't possible because Oracle had told her that Donna Troy was dead. In Lightning's time line, Donna became a stepmother to her and the two of them had been reasonably close. Yet Titan's mother had been Wonder Woman, an icon of the super-hero community and someone Lightning had worked with on several occasions. She could not see the Amazon princess falling in love with her father.

She continued to run and watched as Titan reached Nightwing and demonstrated agility and sensitivity that his giant frame seemed to make impossible.

Nightwing became aware he was no longer alone and he opened his eyes and felt like, for a moment, that he was looking into a mirror. A man with vaguely familiar features and long dark hair was running to get in front of him. At least he thought he knew who this man was or who he might be; his mind was becoming numb to all of the sensations it had experienced.

Titan caught Nightwing in his arms, matching his speed to the tumbling hero's and very gently began to bleed off enough speed to stop the forward momentum, but not enough to drop him into another reality. He wasn't exactly sure of the physics involved, but Lightning had explained that if you stop in the time stream, there was a chance you could "fall in".

"Easy there," Titan said and Nightwing could feel the Superman-like muscles ripple and flex has the giant of a man slowed them down. He tried to speak but it had been so long since he had used his vocal cords, they were paralyzed. "Don't try to speak, you have time shock."

Nightwing only nodded and allowed the man to do the work. He was being rescued, but he had so many questions that curiosity was getting the best of him. When the final slowed to a "trot", Nightwing turned his head to see a woman approaching with a familiar ponytail. He managed to croak out a single word. "Jessie?"

Lightning at first thought that he had recognized her as his daughter, but then realized that he probably thought she was her mother. They did look very much alike, especially in costume. "That's my name, but I'm not who you think I am," she said. "Like Titan said, don't try to speak. As you slow down and you'll start to feel normal again."

They made a u-turn on the highway of time and started to make their way back. "That was easy," Titan said. "Too easy."

Lightning had to agree. If Nightwing was causing all sorts of temporal rifts and tears, they should have encountered anomalies out the wazoo. "You thinking what I'm thinking, brother?" She had taken to calling him that ever since Oracle revealed the true nature of their existence.

"He's not the problem, the real problem. It's like as he passes through a reality, Degaton is following, dragging his…his…time virus."

"Deg…degaton…" Nightwing managed to get out.

Lightning put a hand on his forehead. "God! You are so stubborn! Quit trying to talk!" She removed her hand and imparted a little more speed to Titan as he was starting to slow down. "We know from the historical record that jackass here attacked Per Degaton when he was stranded in the early 21st century."

"According to my grandmother, who fought him in the 1940's," Titan added, "there is no evidence that he ever did anything like that. There were never any reported sightings of him past the mid-twentieth century."

"And I've been to the future several times…"

"Ah, but the future of your own timeline," Titan pointed out. "All of our timelines seem to branch off at the point where Nightwing encountered Per Degaton."

"Fell off time machine…" Nightwing wheezed out.

"We know," Lightning answered. "Now shut up!" She wondered how her mother had ever fallen in love with a man who simply would not listen. Of course, he had never claimed to love her…

"The simple fact is that it isn't the true Per Degaton; it's a Hypertime duplicate with a faulty time machine. He somehow ended up in the true timeline where he encountered Nightwing." He looked down at the weak-eyed hero. It had probably been a long time since he had the "time" to sleep.

Lightning considered the revelation. If the true Nightwing had somehow been dropped into Hypertime, with a residual time anomaly attached to him, then it was possible as he tumbled through the barriers between realities, his duplicates would end up assuming his life. What was happening though was that instead of a multitude of different lives, they were compounding into one "super" life.

And that was what was draining, in essence, time. "He's the symptom of the disease," she concluded. It could have been any hero that would have fallen off of the time machine and the result would have, possibly been the same. "The problem is that crappy time machine the duplicate Degaton is using."

"Which is why in Black Robin's future, the Legion of Super-Heroes investigated. They thought it was Nightwing because he wasn't a normal time traveler." Titan realized then that his time line had started when that Nightwing had been taken back to the past. It was after that adventure in the future, in Black Robin's time line that he had come back and fallen in love with Princess Diana.

"My God this is confusing," Lightning said, exasperated.

"Who are you?" Nightwing asked, his voice a little stronger. Titan looked down and smiled. "My name is Titan and this is my…sister, Lightning. We are from the future."

"Yeah, we came to save you after you were foolish enough to jump on an operating time machine," the speedster added. "Were you always so reckless?" She mentally smacked herself; of course he was! He had, after all, gotten her mother pregnant on a one-night stand. Yet, when she looked into the face of this man, she could almost immediately tell this was not the man who had been her father. The man who had contributed biological material for her conception had been a hero, but he had never really grown up. The rebellious side of him that had been emulated by his younger stepbrother Jason Todd was what had led him to seduce Jessie Quick.

She wondered where in Hypertime her reality had branched off. No doubt it was sometime in his past because there was a maturity that radiated from this man that Jessie had never felt around her father.

Titan, on the other hand, was surprised by how much this man he was carrying acted like his own father. "I don't like Hypertime adventures," Nightwing said before biting his tongue. "Ow!"

"Neither do we, but it can't be helped," Titan responded.

There was a pause while Nightwing wetted his whistle. He was getting his strength back in leaps and bounds as they moved to approach the main timeline. "You said I fought an alternate Degaton?"

Lightning nodded. "That's out theory at least. Don't worry, though, we have a Green Lantern tracking him through time with the son of Poison Ivy."

"Poison Ivy? She ends up having a child? Who would be dumb enough to attempt to have sex with…" He caught the grin on Titan's face and recognized it immediately. It looked like his father's face. He quickly turned to Lighting and remembered that he had thought she was Jessie Quick. "Oh, no…"

"Let's just say that you have a very checkered future ahead of you," Titan said, chuckling slightly.

Nightwing shook his head. "I don't believe it…who is your mother?" he asked Titan.

"Wonder Woman."

Nightwing couldn't help but smile and Lighting gave him a stern look that melted the grimace away. "But you're not really my children, right?"

"Now that sounds like my father," Lightning commented.

"I take it the version of me you know isn't very nice," Nightwing said.

"He's an ass."

Jade Lantern lit another cigarette and Darkwing commented that she was killing herself. She held up her power ring. "Cures cancer," was all that she said.

The Gardner paced the rooftop. "You're sure that he's in this time period?"

"The ring doesn't lie, but there is a problem. He's not alone; he's being tracked. His temporal signature is all wacky, making me wonder if he isn't the problem and good-old dad is being made the scapegoat." She stepped over to the edge of the rooftop and looked down into the streets of Kennedy-era New Orleans.

"You said he is being tracked?" Darkwing asked.

"Yeah, someone powerful. The ring tells me that it's another Green Lantern."

"I thought you hate being called Green Lantern," Gardner asked, sarcastically. Jade Lantern smiled; it was like having an annoying little brother, something she had always wanted.

"I do, but it is what I am. Member of the Corps in good standing. Also the best looking one since Hal Jordan." She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. "Now there was a hunk of Corpsman. He could charge my battery…"

"I'm so happy that I have fans, even in this time period," a voice said from above them. The three heroes immediately split apart and looked up to see a green glow that seemed to encompass the entire sky."

"I do not believe it," Darkwing said, shielding his eyes.

"Oh, we are so dead," Gardner replied.

Jade Lantern instead threw down her cigarette. "If it's a fight he wants, it's a fight he'll get."

Parallax, the former Hal Jordan, shook his head slowly. "I follow the path of a deviant traveler and what do I find but a lost little Lantern." He held out his hand. "Give me your ring and I will let you live in this time period, or any time period."

"Sure, right after you kiss my left buttocks, pal," she said, thinking it was ironic that only a moment ago she was fully engaged in a fantasy dealing with just that. "You want the ring, come and get it."