Chapter 6

"Check the guards for any archaic writing on them." Nightwing commands to his colleague. "If you can't find anything, destroy their armor. Blood has cast some kind of a visual field spell, and I think it's coming from the point of view of the guards."

A black and gray haze surrounds the two guards as guards are stripped of their uniforms.

"What is going on here?" Wonder Woman screams. "Wally explain"

The Batman clad Flash pauses momentarily to interject, "Not now Diana. Arthur; break the containment spell in her cell."

Nightwing turns over onto his hands and knees. "Superman, can you hear me?"

Superman raises his head to the youth. "How fast can you get me down from here?"

"You've lost a lot of blood. Arthur will carry you. Who caused the bruises on your face?"

Superman shakes his head, "I only remember waking up in the cell."

Arthur sits in his cell with his eyes closed. His hand traces around the symbol painted on the ground of the cell. In Flash's cell, Batman slowly gets to his feet in a wobbling disorientation. "Where'd you put John's ring?" Batman asks as he moves to Arthur's cell to free him. Nightwing reaches far into his mouth to his back molar. Around it is a thin twine that falls down his throat. He gags as he pulls on the string feeling a small lump come up from his stomach.

" I really wish I didn't see that." John says as he sees the familiar green ring immerge from his mouth.

When Arthur's hand finishes breaking the containment spell, Wonder Woman breaks through the roots like they were made of paper. Just as quickly, she smashes through the rock stalactites and then continues to break the rest of them. She then helps Superman down from his torturous position. Batman finishes freeing Arthur and walks to John to try to take apart his shackles. He doesn't even look at Nightwing to give him a thought or impression. He just does what has to be done.

Arthur's hand reconnects with his shackled wrist behind him and he walks toward J'onn's cell. Nightwing raises his hands and stops Arthur.

"Leave him there. You concentrate on getting Superman out of here into the yellow sunlight."

"Are you out of your mind? Do you expect us to-"

"Bruce can get Superman out of here quickly, but he can't do it carrying a 500 pound Kryptonian. I need you to follow Bruce out of here with Clark."

"That's why we need J'onn"

"Something just kicked the hell out of Superman and it's powered by the fires of hell. J'onn can't be near fire and we're dealing with Hellfire here. J'onn's safe in there and I need Clark healthy now."

Wonder Woman interrupts, "Why don't I"

"Not now!" Nightwing looks into the view screen. He sees in his view screen that Brother Blood is in a fit of rage. Holding the little girl in his hand, he drops her on the throne as if she were a distracting thought. Nightwing jumps back a little at the sight. Brother Blood walks to the white altar pounding his arms hard in front of the flame. He is temporarily blinded and distracted. Nightwing gets to his feet heavily hands the emerald ring to John.

"How much time do you have on your ring John?"

"I should be good."

"Wonder Woman and John, I need you two to distract Blood long enough for Flash and me to grab my daughter."

A look of surprise fills the leaguers faces. Diana is the first to respond with "Daughter?"

"I'll explain later. Face the H.I.V.E. troops head on, but don't wipe them out, I need as much of a distraction as I can get. Keep them fighting until Flash comes back. Then lay them all out. Flash, we need to go NOW!"

Arthur looks back at "Why should we listen to you? If we get J'onn out of his cell"

Nightwing glares back at Aquaman and yells, "If you don't do what I say right now, I'm going to do to you what you wish you could do to Black Manta."

With this, Nightwing can see the look of anger and resentment. He hates using that, but Nightwing needs to save his daughter and he knows he doesn't have enough time to debate why he should be allowed to usurp leadership of the JLA temporarily.

While all the league members are arguing, Batman's in the background trying to help Clark up, "Arthur. Do as he says."

"We're not just going to leave J'onn here."

"Come back and free him after you get Clark out of here. J'onn can't be allowed to come anywhere near the fight when we're dealing with the fires of Hell. If you can get him out in time, make him relieve Diana. Wonder Woman and John… go now."

With that, Diana and John fly toward the distant opening for the dungeon. Green Lantern puts up a green wall and pushes through the steel door. WWII opens up when the soldiers begin to unload their guns on the heroes. Green Lantern stops the artillery with a green wall that catches the majority of the shots. Wonder Woman flies around to the artillery bunkers and disables the mag rifles. John looks to his right and sees a huge, thick metal door. In a second the door is a giant, metallic placemat.

Flash grabs Nightwing and they race around the battle ahead of them. He dodges the rain of bullets around them toward the doorway. Green Lantern expands his shield into the doorway to help them get to the hallway.

They get there in an instant and race to Nightwing's daughter. Nightwing pushes the pain surrounding his body into the back of his mind.

"Where did your message come from?" Wally asks.

"Vic designed a device for Jesse when she was with the Titans. It's supposed to send a message through the Speed Force to a receiver. It can only be used when a speedster's in speed mode and Jesse left before we could get a chance to test it."

"How'd I get the receiver?"

Nightwing looks at Flash and responds "You should watch your stuff more closely."

Flash slightly chuckles causing Dick to crack a smile. "Turn left here."

Behind them, Wonder Woman and John are fighting off a battalion of guards. Diana deflects all the bullets upward to the ceiling. As she flies low, she catches the legs of the guards and throws them toward the heart of the opposition. The H.I.V.E. troopers fire their guns whether teammates are in the way or not. John is having a hard time protecting catching bullets with all the maniacal and chaotic firing. Very rarely does the Amazonian princess see such contempt for human life. In each scenario, she is disgusted by it. In frustration, Wonder Woman attempts to end the battle quickly. With a speed reaching the Flash's, Diana attempts to break the nozzles of all the guns in the room.

A green loop surrounds Wonder Woman's waist with a thin line of emerald light leading to Green Lantern. "We can't end this too quickly." He removes the light from around her and continues with his attention on the army ahead of him.

"Such disregard for their fellow man is wretched."

"Yeah, well, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it."

With inhuman strength, Wonder Woman Lifts the thick, previously knocked door and flies headlong into the opposition holding, deflecting and misdirecting the army.

"You don't find it surreal that we are doing as Nightwing has instructed?"

With a cracked smile, Green Lantern replies, "No more surreal than watching Nightwing say 'jump' and hear Batman ask 'How high'."

With a smile, Wonder Woman commences pummeling the enemy.

Flash and Nightwing come to a large, metallic door. They stop just outside it. Nightwing pulls his mask off, pulls out two small metal shards out of the mask and gets on his knees in front of the door. Wally interjects a thought, "You know I could just go in and get her by myself. Vibrate through walls and"

"My daughter can't. We have to clear a path for you. Besides, I think I'm going to have to distract Blood for your getaway."

Nightwing gets the door open and gets ready to fly. "Are you suggesting I can't outrun Brother Blood?"

"Not him, I think there's someone else." A hiss rises from the door and it opens. Nightwing gets to his feet. When it's two feet open, a gray and black streak flies into the doorway. By the time the door is completely open, Flash is standing above the prone bodies of five heavily armed troopers.
"Who?"

Flash lifts up Nightwing and taps into the Speed Force. Nightwing replies, "That's not your concern. I need you to make sure you save my daughter. Keep running until you're out of here… Keep running until you get to the Watchtower. Contact Dr. Midnight or Mr. Terrific and make sure someone checks up on her. Keep running no matter what happens."

"What's going on Dick?"

"Just do it. I need you to. And when all that's done, get Clark... then tell Diana to let loose, hurry up with the guards and then help Clark."

Three H.I.V.E. troopers are running down a dark hallway, each holding a high impact weapon. In the shadows, they see a bright red object hunching down, poised to pounce. All at once they begin to pull out their artillery and aim at the darkness. The Flash costume clad hero jumps above them and knocks the rifles away. A swift kick to the middle guard's head knocks him to the ground. He then grabs the right trooper's gun with both hands, pushes it into his stomach and tosses him toward the other guard. He leaps in the air and flip kicks the two fallen guards. He checks them before calling out, "It's clear, let's go."

Arthur steps out of the shadows with the prone Superman and drags him slowly into the light of the hallway. "Well, you surprised them."

Looking down, Batman tugs at the rubbery cloth. "It's not my fault. This costume is not best suited for stealth."

Arthur looks to Batman and smirks.

"I look ridiculous in this thing."

Arthur replies, "Wally wears it."

"Wally looks ridiculous in this thing."

"And there's no cape. How can you bear it?"

Superman shakes his head and says "Can we focus here? We need to get out quickly."

"If the concentration of magma and brimstone is any indication of the center of the compound, then we're definitely headed out of the facility; however, it's not easy to determine the distance. Most likely, we're underground based on both Blood's and the H.I.V.E.'s usual base schematics."

"We have to find an elevator?"

"Unless we can find stairs."

Superman lifts his head to Batman and asks, "How much time do you think we have?"

"Chances are, Flash and Nightwing are already in Blood's chambers right now. I believe that gives us three minutes."

"All right then. Let's just keep heading from where these soldiers are coming from."

Flash comes up to a large door way and kicks in the doorway. He's running on a stone bridge over a pool of blood. The two heroes can't see the end of the bridge. Nightwing tells him to stop. Flash slows down and stops just short of seeing a fuming teenager yelling at a dark black flame.

Nightwing lets go of the Flash and lets him fly off "Go, now."

The black and gray streak circles the throne and heads out of the room. It's shortly followed by large red ball of flame.

Nightwing jumps into the light of the chamber, "Hey Blood have you seen my daughter anywhere? She's about yay big…. Black hair… looks like an alien? Ring any bells?"

Brother Blood looks directly at bloodied hero and charges. "This is your fault. You did this to me." Vines become alive behind Nightwing and reach out for his legs. "You're going to cry blood when I'm finished with you."

Nightwing leaps into the air, avoiding the vines. "Wow, that was a terrible pun. You're still new at this, so I'll forgive it this one time." He rolls to the ground and is immediately on his feet. He circles the throne room avoiding the hellion. Brother Blood points his arm in Nightwing's direction and a flame bursts out. Nightwing springs to his hands and feels a sting of pain in his shoulder. He instantly shifts his weight to compensate, but the shift makes him move closer to the fire. Through his costume, he feels a slight burst of heat along his hip. He ducks behind Blood's throne. Once there he looks down to see a slight flame has engulfed his costume. While he pats on it to put out the pain, he feels a bruise forming from the day's turn of events. He decides to taunt Blood further to truly infuriate him. "If that's the best you have, you might want to rethink this whole "world conquering" thing. There's a whole world of people who could make you cry… and I don't even have powers."

For a second, Nightwing thinks to himself about whether his plan is going to work or not. Before he has the chance to think further, Blood has walked into a position where he can assault. Another flame flies and Nightwing pushes off the throne towards the pool of blood. A tentacle of hardened blood rises from the pool and falls toward Nightwing. He stops himself and dodges the monstrous object. The blood liquefies leaving little pools in the ground where the tentacle left an indentation.

Rolling he sees another bolt of fire pointing from Blood's arm. In a last ditch effort, Nightwing dives into the bloody water. In the water, Nightwing swims as far as he can toward the bottom. The depth of the pool is nerve racking. There is a copper taste invading his mouth. Blood begins to seep into his cracked lens, but the thickness of the crimson liquid allows no visibility. All Nightwing can do now is estimate where he is, how deep he is and how deep he can go. At ten feet below the surface, he feels the bottom. He grabs a few rocks and starts to swim laterally along the pool. He keeps swimming and thinks. "Blood is going to try to lift all the blood in pillars like he had done previously. He's then going to realize he hasn't received that much telekinesis when he sapped Connor of his powers during their last encounter, so instead, he's going to solidify the blood." Nightwing feels acid in his lungs as they crave for air. He swims toward the surface. "I think Garth told me, he must stand equidistance from the overcast spell, so that would put him…"

Nightwing plants his right hand on the rim of the pool and pulls himself out of the water and vaults forward. He immediately throws two of the rocks toward two feet in front of the altar. The first on hits Blood in the nose and the other one immediately hits him in the left shoulder. With as much speed as he can muster, he leaps into Blood. With a remaining rock in his hand, he begins to punch Blood. Each hit feels like electricity up his forearm, but he punches nonetheless. The effort is well worthwhile as he pushes Blood back farther and farther until he hit's the other end of the pools edge. They both fall into the pool and Nightwing continues to pummel his foe. Nightwing wraps his legs around Blood in such a way, that he's faced down in the blood, but he has his right hand free to reach back and hold the edge of the pool and his left hand free to hit Blood in certain spots forcing his air supply to recede.

Nightwing screams, "You need him alive or else Trigon can never come! Your deal will forfeit and you'll go back to hell! Is my daughter that important to you?"

Instantly, Nightwing feels his right shoulder dislocate and his collarbone shatter as it feels as if a burning demolition crane has grabbed him. The pain forces him to let Blood go. Nightwing is lifted up out of the water and thrown like a rag doll to the ground face down. He hears a booming shaking his very psyche. "Dosvidanya Tovarich."

Nightwing looks up to see the red ball of flame that chased his daughter and Flash. If it caught up to them, they'd never escape alive. Nightwing had to pull it away. Nightwing knew that the only thing it hates more than anything else in this world is the guy that sent him to Hell. Nightwing looks up to see Hell's Superman. Ishmael Gregor. Sabbac.

To be continued……

Yeah, I know… I probably went too far with this one. I realize I don't need to write this now as Beatty and Dixon are both doing a good job on Nightwing and now it's WAY too far fetched, but I figured I should finish the story regardless. Again, any criticism or advice would be greatly appreciated.

I'm sorry with how late this installment was. My life's been very WTF? recently and I haven't had time to sit down and write. Fortunately, there are only two more chapters, so I'll try to finish it this month.