Chapter #10 – In the Flesh
The original Batman and his protégé from the future quietly stood across the table from each other. Each man was intent on repairing the damage to the fried circuitry in the Temporal Displacement devices Diana and Lantern had brought into the future. As it turned out,Batman had managed to completely shut his off before Lantern powered up the time machine in 1853, preserving it from any damage. Unfortunately Diana and Lanternleft their respective devices still running whereupon the circuitry was fried as soon as the teseractopened.
While they were being careful to repair the circuitry in the correct manner, both men were extremely competitive. For his part, Bruce Wayne felt somewhat overwhelmed by the technology of this time and wanted to show the "younger" man he was still technically proficient, no matter what year it was. To Terry McGinnis, the race was a chance to compete with Bruce Wayne during his prime years, when both his physical and mental faculties were honed like the blade of a samurai.
Barda's incoming call startled them both, then she and Diana were displayed hovering over Metropolis on the viewscreen. "How's it going, Batmen?" Barda's voice rang out.
"You're funny." Terry replied over the comm link. "Did you show Diana your favorite rooftops to pee on yet?" He looked over at Bruce and whispered an aside. "For a woman her size, she has the tiniest bladder…"
"I HEARD that McGiniss!" Barda yelled back over the comm, then her face settled back to a somewhat moreplacid countenance. "Anyway, back to business. Lantern and Warhawk picked up a security alert at WayneTech's building near Columbus Circle. I know it's almost midnight. The guard didn't call in at his appointed time.He may have decided to quit his job to go party with his friends, but it's worth looking into as the rest of the city is quiet as it can be considering there's about a million drunks walking around Times Square."
Terry looked at Bruce with a frown. "That doesn't make sense. I pay those guys way too much money to watch a lighted bowling ball drop off a forty-story roof. It's got to be Chronos!"
"Let's get moving!" Bruce replied. "Where's Dick?"
It was 11:28 p.m.
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Diana and Barda raced towards Columbus Circle, skimming over the office and condominium towers as they made their way northwards. Diana waited while Barda contacted the other two teams to advise them to form a perimeter around the building. Once Barda was finished directing the teams, Diana looked at her with a cocked eyebrow.
"Pee stops on the rooftops?"
"When a girl's gotta go…" Barda replied with a grin, then her face tightened a bit when she considered her background. "It's not as if I was raised with the best manners." She admitted.
"Where are you from?" Diana asked.
"Apokilips via Genosis." Barda replied. "Darkseid invaded Genosis when I was a child. My parents were killed during the invasion. Granny Goodness took me out of the orphanage a few weeks later then started training me along with the rest of the Furies. Later, she imbued me with my powers. I met Scott Free, my husband when I was a teenager. He was alsoan orphan. Weescaped earlier this millennium but found we had nowhere to go. Orion advised us to try living on Earth so we joined the League. Scott was killed a few years later…" she stopped herself as she realized she was about to convey too much information about the League's history.
Noting Barda's evident grief, Diana sensed that her own future might somehow be linked with the death of Barda's husband. She elected to change the subject as there was nothing to be gained by reliving that tragedy. "So how long have you been dating Batman?" Diana asked as they passed over 60th Street heading uptown.
"A few years." Barda replied. "It started out as lust…that whole dark and brooding thing can be attractive in an odd way…"
"Tell me about it." Diana muttered, rolling her eyes.
"…then we got serious."
"How serious?" Diana asked.
"Pretty serious." Barda replied. "To be honest, I'd been kind of lonely for awhile on Earth. There weren't many candidates who held my interest. Then I met Terry. Back then, he made me laugh. He was so much fun when we first met but things changed. Lately, he's gotten so obsessed with being Batman that he doesn't have any time for me. I used to rationalize we weren't meant to be a long term thing because Granny practically made me an immortal, but I was just in denial. He likes the job too much."
"I can relate to that." Diana replied with an angry shake of her head. "They can be maddening sometimes, can't they?"
"All the time." Barda shot back, then landed on the street in front of the WayneTech building. "We're here."
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Lantern and Warhawk were waiting for the two women in front of the buildings. As soon as they landed, Warhawk turned and shattered the doorway with his energy mace then hopped through the gap he'd created.
"Wait for us!" Barda yelled, rushing through the broken doorway to upbraid her teammate for his impertinence.
As soon as she reached him, Warhawk pointed to the pool of blood on the floor. There was a visible trail leading behind the security guard's desk. He strode over to the desk, then knelt down to feel for a pulse, already suspecting there was no hope for the main who lay prone behind the desk. There was no trace of life as the man had obviously bled out. Warhawk shook his head in dismay then rolled the man over to inspect the wound.
"Clean shot with a laser." He pointed to the wound. "Cauterized around the burn marks but punctured the carotid."
Barda turned to her new companions. "Chronos carry a laser?"
"Batman took one of them out in our last mission but he's still got one of them working." Diana replied grimly. "How many floors does this building have?"
"92." Barda answered from the console.
"Let's do a floor by floor search." Lantern suggested. "And hope he's here. Otherwise he's set this up as a decoy and he's gone to another part of the city."
"It's still the only lead we have." Diana replied. "We'll take the odd floors, you take the even."
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The engineering lab Chronos procured for his bomb building project had all of the equipment he needed to fashion a low-yield nuclear weapon powerful enough to reduce most of Metropolis to a smoking crater. His main problem was that the equipment he required was scattered about in unfamiliar places. He wasted a few precious minutes trying to locate a sautering iron but managed to round up the rest of his shopping list without much difficulty.
He learned how to build a nuclear bomb from his graduate days at the University of Chicago. That university was the first place to record an atomic event in human history. In the 1930's Enrico Fermi had proven that a chain reaction could be initiated when he compiled a huge stack of uranium rods under the football bleachers. Those same scientists were moved two years later to Los Alamos, New Mexico where the Manhattan Project fashioned the world's first atomic weapons for use during World War II. Since then, the university had taken almost cult-like pride as "the home of nuclear bombs". The weapons lab at Los Alamos would usually start recruiting some of the best and brightest every spring. Accordingly, Walker Gabriel had seen schematics for various bombs in the physics department as professors would argue yield equations with their students on the blackboards and in computer simulations.
Based on that experience, Chronos knew if he could just fashion a suitable trigger to implode the plutonium into a more compressed mass, a tremendous amount of energy would be released. He only needed to locate a brick of plastique or other comparable explosive to encapsulate the plutonium, then set a timer to detonate the whole thing.
His new problem was finding the plastique.
Chronos tore through the laboratory looking for a safe or other likely spot where explosive compounds might be stored, then caught himself with a chuckle. He spied an operating computer workstation then ran a search on the WayneTech intranet. A second later, he was immediately rewarded. "Weapon Design" on the 84th floor he read, then set off for the elevator, skipping lightly as he went, picturing the expressions of horror on the League's faces as he vaporized the city.
It was 11:35 p.m.
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Dick Grayson nervously piloted the Batwing along the northeastern seaboard towards Metropolis while the Batmen continued to work on the Temporal Displacement devices. Given that his legs were useless, he'd protested that he was hardly qualified to fly the Batwing a few minutes earlier when they found him in one of the recesses of the Cave. Bruce and Terry paid no heed to his protests,unceremoniously heaved him into the pilot seat, then strapped him in. Bruce and Terry settled into the jump-seat and co-pilot's seat, respectively, then feverishly returned to complete their repair work. Dick gripped the controls tightly as the Batwing rose off the landing pad, then Terry engaged the autopilot-assist, allowing Dick to fly the plane without touching the rudder and brakes at his feet.
As they passed over Newark, Dick turned on the Forward looking Infra-Red ("FLIR") system then slaved it to the Navi-Computer on his right, punching in the final coordinates at 77th and Sixth Avenue. Static and Lantern-Ro were orbiting the building near the top floor while Micron and Aquagirl were visible on the street.
"Where do you want me to drop you off?" Dick called out to his two companions, still focused on their task.
The Batmen didn't respond initially as they worked to complete their repair tasks. Finished sautering the last positive lead on his device, Bruce looked up in triumph. His euphoria only lasted for a moment then he scowled darkly at the man seated next to him, already displaying a finished mechanism.
"Not bad for an old man." Terry observed.
"Not bad for a kid whose parents haven't even met yet in my time." Bruce retorted as he strapped the device onto his bicep.
"Touche'." Terry smiled under the mask, enjoying Bruce's patented sarcasm for the first time in a year before he secured his own device around his arm. Remembering the urgency of their mission, he looked at Dick. "Drop us off on the roof."
"You got it."
Dick settled the craft into hover mode then edged the Batwing closer to the roof. There was a large communications array that prevented him from landing the plane. Once the plane assumed a hover over the roof, Terry and Bruce unbuckled their harnesses. Dick touched the control panel and the canopy slid back, allowing the two men to stand up in the cramped cockpit.
Bruce was about to jump the 30 feet to the helicopter pad when he felt a tap on his shoulder. Dick handed him a small device he didn't recognize. "Spectrometer." Dick replied helpfully before Bruce could ask. "Might help in your search."
Bruce automatically placed the device into the container nestled in the small of his back. "Thanks." He muttered, wondering if Dick had a touch of Alzeheimer's at his age. 'Spectrometer will be useless here.' He thought, then jumped from the trailing edge of the Batwing.
A moment later the Dark Knight and the Tomorrow Knight landed on the roof. Bruce landed with a hard thud then rolled to spill the remaining energy from his descent. Terry gently floated to the roof, using the retro-rockets in his boots to arrest his descent at the last second.
Bruce looked at him enviously. "I've got to get working on those soon. The landings on my ankles are starting to take their toll."
"You're not a kid anymore." Terry replied with a grin, then tapped the comm link on his cowl. "Barda. Sit-rep."
"We're coming up floor by floor. Haven't seen anything yet. Just passed 47."
"Gotcha. We're on the roof. Coming down. Make sure it's us before you kill anything."
"Understood. Barda out."
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Bruce tried the door on top of the helicopter pad but it didn't budge. He reached into his pocket to grab a small amount of plastique to blow open the door when Terry popped into his sight-line.
"What do you think you're doing?" Terry asked, then waved his hand over the security pad next to the handle. The door clicked open immediately. "Being Chairman of WayneTech does have its advantages. Especially for buildings that I…we own." Bruce strode forward into the doorway then stopped and turned as he sensed hesitation from the future version of the Dark Knight.
"What is it?" Bruce muttered, scanning the darkened corridor for possible booby-traps.
"Your friend must be pretty smart." Terry replied as he punched in a series of codes into the security system. "He fried the internal surveillance system."
"How did he do that?"
"There's no virus in the system or anything. It's almost like he just shocked it into submission." Terry replied with a frown. "Strange."
Bruce hesitated a moment to get his bearings. Terry chuckled behind the cowl. "This way." He mumbled as he squeezed by the larger man, then led the way into the building. "Come on into my world."
"This is all yours now, is it?" Bruce asked as they made their way inside.
"You left it to me and Dick…"
Bruce raised his hand to stop Terry before he got any further. "I don't want to know." He growled, then started making his way down the stairwell. "What else have you got in that suit I should know about?"
"I never wore your suit so I couldn't tell you all of the differences." Terry replied. "You just saw the jet-boots. Armor. Strength upgrades. I'm almost ten times stronger wearing the suit. There's a stealth mode too, see?" he asked, then clicked a button on his belt buckle and blinked out of existence in front of Bruce, then reappeared a moment later. "Pretty cool, huh? The big upgrades were integrating most of the surveillance components you kept in your belt directly into the suit. Video, Audio, IR, you name it, I've got it."
Bruce nodded, picturing all of the enemies in Gotham he could defeat just by putting on the suit. He pulled out a flashlight and started looking around the 92nd floor. "What's up here?"
"The top five floors are dedicated offices for executives in the communications, media, finance and R&D groups." Terry replied. "There's a large conference room up here for parties and receptions."
"Media?" Bruce replied with a frown. "I never diversified into media."
"You'll decide to buy the Daily Planet in a year or two." Terry replied. "Let's get moving downstairs."
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Chronos finished lasering open the safe containing the explosives with a satisfied grunt. The locking mechanism had been harder to cut through than he'd anticipated but five minutes later the door fell open with a satisfying thump as it crashed tothe floor. He froze for an instant, worried that the sound might trigger an alarm, then chuckled as he grabbed a few bricks of C4 from the vault.
"After all, who's going to catch me?" he asked the walls rhetorically, then made his way back to the elevators to return to the engineering lab.
It was 11:54 p.m.
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By the time they hit the 12th floor, John Stewart and his son the Warhawk developed an efficient system for scanning the floors for intruders. Efficient for them anyway. Lantern pried the fire doors locking down the elevator columns open with his ring then Warhawk barreled through the opening, hoping the rapid attack would surprise their quarry. He flew over the cubicles and partitions at full speed in one direction while Lantern would go the other way, then meet on the opposite side of the floor before moving onto the next floor. Each sweep took them fifteen seconds to scan.
They just finished up the 64th floor.
It was 11:55 p.m.
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Working in tandem but at a slightly slower speed since Bruce couldn't fly, he and Terry breached the 84th floor door. While neither of them could see anything amiss in the lobby, the smell of burnt metal immediately assailed their nostrils when the door swung open. Terry scanned the floor with his built-in infra-red goggles. The IR picked up a hot-zone in the south-west corner of the building. Quietly,he motioned Bruce to follow.They made their way towards the hot-zone, trading positions onpoint as they moved down the hallway to cover their approach. When they reached the end of the hallway, simultaenously they sprang into the room hoping to catch Chronos red-handed.He wasn't there. Instead, the door to the safe was easily visible even to human eyes as the metal still glowed hot from where it had been lasered open.
"Chronos, I presume?" Terry quipped.
"Obviously." Bruce barked as his mind raced through the possibilities of what Chronos might be contemplating. "What was in here?"
"Let me check." Terry replied, then moved his fingers over the residue in the safe, scanning the compounds with his suit. "Looks like standard plastique explosives. Doubt more than a few pounds. Think he's going to try and blow something up?"
"Could be." Bruce mused.
"What's his target, a bridge support, subway tunnel, sky-tram?" Terry asked rhetorically. "I thought he was a thief, not a killer."
"He wasn't," Bruce replied. "Until tonight."
The two men moved back to the stairwell to continue their search. Bruce puzzled over the plastique theft, not quite able to put the missing pieces of the puzzle together. He shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs amassed during his coma. "Let's think about this." He voiced aloud as they searched the 83rd floor. "What does Chronos have that would allow him to fry the security system in the building? Why would he need the plastique?"
Terry looked at him thoughtfully as they finished their search of that floor. "You ever figure out what he uses to power his suit?"
"Never had time to get close enough for a real inspection." Bruce replied dryly.
"It would have to be something small, but powerful." Terry replied. "You guys didn't have the kind of power cells we use these days. I have two in my suit…"
"Of course." Bruce interjected, then toggled his comm link. "Lantern, where are you?
"72nd floor." Lantern replied. "What's up?"
"Can your ring track radiation? Like a geiger counter?"
"No problem." Lantern replied over the link. "Give me a second to…there! I'm getting something localized above me. It's not on the roofbut I can't pin down its exact location."
"I can." A voice cut in over the comm link. Bruce recognized it immediately as Dick Grayson's. "I'm reading a massive gamma radiation signature on the 78th floor. Unless you guys have five MRI machines going at once, it's got to be him."
"Meet us there." Bruce barked into his comm link, then sped down the hallway to the stairwell.
It was 11:58 p.m.
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The Batmen arrived in the lobby of the 78th floor a few moments later. Barda and Diana were waiting for them. Two seconds later, John Stewart and Warhawk arrived from inside one of the elevator shafts. Warhawk forced the doors open with his energy mace with a primal scream, nearly decapitating Barda in the process as the door flew open.
"Sorry." He mumbled sheepishly. Barda glared back at him but didn't have time to lecture him on his "smash-first, ask later" tendencies.
Diana observed the exchange with a twinkle in her eye. "He's definitely Shayera's son.Which way?"
Terry quickly scanned the floor with his built-in infra-red optics, pirouetting on the balls of his feet to complete the sweep. He'd almost completed a circle when he found his target. "He's in an engineering lab on the south side of the building."
"What he's doing?" Barda asked, hoping they still might have the element of surprise.
"Can't tell. He's got his back to me."
"There's always the old-fashioned way." Barda replied, raising her Mega-Rod to blow down the demising wall.
Terry grabbed her wrist before she couldblow openthe wall. "Let's see if there's a quieter way to do this, all right?" He touched the button on his belt, rendering him invisible.
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Chronos had just finished molding the plastique around the plutonium when he sensed that something was amiss. A small thump reverberated through the lab then the floor went quiet again. It might have been the normal paranoia for a recently converted psychotic, but whatever raised his suspicions, he didn't feel like waiting around for his enemies to invite him to tea, especially since the only thing remaining to complete his bomb was to arm the timer.
Knowing that his back was literally already up against the wall in the lab, Chronos slowly turned to face the open area behind him. He couldn't see any signs of an intruder, but his senses were still piqued, so he shrugged his shoulders and thought, 'the hell with it', then unleashed a series of laser bursts across the lab. As had happened so many times that evening, luck was on his side again. One of his final bursts caught a man squarely on the chest, flinging him across the room where he slammed against a filing cabinet before dropping to the floor. Chronos did a quick double take as he realized the man had literally appeared out of thin air, then stepped forward to get a better look at the prone figure.
While the comatose figure on the floor was unfamiliar to his initial glance, Chronos eyes flashed with anger when he saw the pointy black ears. Sensing his plan was in jeopardy, he dove back across the room and armed the bomb with a one-minute timer right before the walls imploded around him.
The concussion from the blasts literally blew him off his feet against the windows, but his suit protected him from the worst of the blasts. He fell backward against the reinforced window, crushing the barrel of his laser under the weight of his suit.
Batman entered the room through the gaping hole a moment later with Diana at his side. Barda followed closely behind then leapt across the room in a flash when she saw Terry collapsed on the floor.
Still dazed, Chronos contemplated trying to arm his temporal displacement machinery but stopped when he realized the power source which fueled it was now on the table, counting down to their final destruction. A moment later Diana crushed the circuitry on his wrist mounted computer, preventing any final means of his escape.
Batman paid scant attention to Chronos, opting instead to determine a way to disarm the bomb.He edged away from them then groanedwhen Diana lifted him off the ground, one hand wrapped tightly around his neck. Across the room, Batman examined the device on the table, trying to determine a way to disarm the bomb. The clock read "45" seconds to go.
"How do you disarm it, Chronos?" Batman yelled over his shoulder as he traced the lead wires off the trigger.
"You don't." Chronos replied with a maniacal laugh. "I'm going to bring in New Year's with a bang."
"John, can your ring contain a nuclear explosion?" Batman barked.
"No way." Lantern replied. "I'll have to fly it out of here."
The six heroes and the criminal reeled when the nose of the Batwing pierced the office windows a moment later. The wind roared around them, scattering papers and loose materials around in the whirlwind.
"No," Dick's voice rang in over the comm link. "I'll fly it out of here. The Batwing's faster than any of you."
"No!" Bruce yelled over the comm "I'll do it!"
The canopy opened, revealing Dick's calm face. "We don't have time to argue," he yelled. "Besides, you can't fly this thing!"
Lantern nodded in agreement then deftly picked up the bomb with his ring and set it on the co-pilot seat next to Dick. The older man locked his gaze on Bruce, who by now was struggling to free himself from Warhawk's firm grasp.
"See you around, Old Man." Dick whispered, then engaged the engines at full speed, heading east.
Twenty seconds later the Batwing and the nuclear bomb it carried detonated 75 miles over the Atlantic Ocean. Lantern-Ro looked for any trace the vehicle but nothing was ever found. The Batwing and its pilot were vaporized in this explosion.
Terry regained his senses a few moments later as a million voices down in Times Square belted out 'Auld Lang Syne' at the top of their lungs, ringing in the New Year. Some of the voices reached them on the wind. Barda helped him to his feet but he didn't free himself from her grasp when he stood up. "Happy New Year." He whispered, then surprised himself by kissing her. She was surprised but didn't pull away. "Happy New Year" she whispered back, eagerly returning his kiss.
Across the room, Diana had secured Chronos with her lasso, then turned him over to Lantern and his son. Lantern encapsulated Chronos in a plasma bubble then flew them back to the Watchtower. Warhawk followed, trailing his father in tandem southwards along the skyline. After she watched them depart, Diana knelt down on the floor to comfort Bruce, collapsed against the wall with his head in hands.
"He was a hero." Diana whispered, "In our lifetime and in theirs. You trained him well."
"So much of this was unnecessary." Bruce replied grimly, looking at Chronos as he disappeared against the skyline. "I wasn't meant to see the death of my son. In my time or in his."
"The Fates were kind to him." Diana argued softly. "Dick got to say goodbye to the people he loved. I only hope that I face my own death with the same courage."
"You're immortal, Diana." Bruce replied in a clipped monotone. "You'll never have to worry about that."
"After all of this, I'm not sure I believe that any of us are immortal, Bruce." Diana replied, then offered her hand to help him to his feet. "For Dick's sake, promise me we'll make the right use of whatever time we have left, okay?"
Bruce didn't reply but from his expressionDiana took comfort from the fact thathe was at least considering her plea. He reached up and grabbed her hand then looked over towards their two companions, still embraced in a kiss.
"Cute." Bruce observed with a hint of disapproval.
"They look good together," Diana shot back loudly, then whispered so Terry and Barda couldn't hear, "Of course, not as good as us…"
Terry and Barda reluctantly broke apart, then looked down at the floor, embarrassed by their public display of affection. Terry made a show of testing his suit but the circuitry was fried by Chronos' laser assault. He looked over at Barda. "Can you give me a lift back home?"
"Sure." Barda replied, then looped her arm around his waist. Diana did the same to Bruce a moment later then the four heroes took flight to the Watchtower.
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