Egypt, at night, mileenia ago, a group of people with the symbol of the hawk are galloping through the desert sands, their leader riding ahead
Carter Hall (Voiced by Sean Schemmel): There is a feeling you get at the beginning of an adventure. You feel it in your veins, the channels, your heart starts pounding, beating only for discovery. My name is Carter Hall, and this is my final journal. I have lived many lives. But I still remember that night like it was yesterday. A young boy has spied something in the sky. A light, and we rode out together, my princess, my advisor, our guards, all to see what it was.
The horses all let out a neigh as they rear up, knocking some of their riders off, as the leader looks up to see a ship crashing into the sands, before exploding into chunks of scrap metal, one of them decapitating one of the guards, and another splitting his head clean in twain, much like Kronika at the end of Klassic Towers
Carter: But it was no sign. It was a clue to the greatest mystery in the history of mandkind, and it was written in metal.
2019, a volcanic eruption is in progress as a Scientist (voiced by Matthew Mercer) is panicing
Scientist: R-Record Message. The tremors started 40 minutes ago and have only grone worse. I don't know if the rest of the research team made it out in time. It's too late for me. The lava will engulf the base in minutes. I stayed to protect what we've been learning about and made a breakthrough. I keep reading and rereading the data, hoping it comes together, hoping what I saw wasn't true. People need to understand, there's something… There's something fucking wrong with the earth's core. There's something in the metal…
As he removes a drive, a white hand comes out of the lava, and it's King (Voiced by Robin Atkin Downes) riding on his Blue-Eyes White Dragon, who roars, as Batman (Voiced by Kevin Conroy) is in a mech suit
King: Dr. Madison. The only way out is through that sodding volcano. Get in.
Dr. Madison: B-Batman, King?
King summons Frostosaurs, who roars and freezes the lava down into a rocky (but still hot) form, where they go through
Dr. Madison: Oh god, oh god…
Batcomputer (voiced by Kimberly Brooks): Pressure Mounting.
Batman: Compensate. We just need to break through into the open ocean.
Batcomputer: Temperatures surpassing safe levels. Suit will not hold.
King: He said compensate, damn it!
They head out as the lab erupts into flames from the lava, which melted the ice, before exploding, as Aquaman (Voiced by Phil Lamar) and Kojin Shinigami (voiced by Khary Payton) who is riding on Danger! Nessie!, see the two
Kojin: I see my boy King.
they intercept him, with King wearing scooba gear
King: Aquaman, get him to the surface!
Aquaman: What about you, King?
King: I need to retrieve the data card from Batman's pressure suit.
Aquaman: The Lava flow will comsume that behemoth in seconds! Leave it!
King sends Frostosaurus, who creates a blizzard that freezes the lava solid, as batman goes to get the data card from the suit, as the pressure crushes it.
Batman: I can't. There.
They head up to the surface, where the others are out, with Rikion (voiced by Ian James Cornett) and Josh (Voiced by Matthew Mercer) tending to the survivors
King: The others?
Aquaman: Kojin's dino friends are pulling them to shore now. No casualties.
Batman: Thank you, Aquaman
Aquaman: Sperg Crew, this was a Wayne Enterprises black site, an off-the-books drilling operation in MY domain.
Rikion: What are you getting at, Arthur?
Aquaman: He wasn't just keeping this place hidden from the surface world. He was keeping it hidden from me.
Aquaman looks over at the caped crusader
Aquaman: What are you looking for, Bruce?
Batman just glares a hole right through the King of Atlantis, as Hayden (Voiced by Brian Drummond) walks up, and grabs Aquaman, lifting him off the ground as his hands grow to claws
Hayden: With what he knows is locked underneath Atlantis… Is that really the question you wanna go with? What we need to be asking is simpler then that, Aquaman. What are THEY hiding?
Above, Lady Blackhawk (voiced by Jennifer Hale) is piloting a helecopter
Lady Blackhawk: He can look all he wants, but he won't find out. Lady Blackhawk to control. Bring me home.
Meanwhile, at Mogo, home of the Green Lantern Corps, the Guardians have summoned Hal Jorden, their ace, for a unenviable task
Ganthant (Voiced by Brian George): Hal Jorden of Earth. I am temporary pulling you from active duity. I have a private mission for you of paramount importance. This mission MUST remain secret from your fellow lanterns, particularly your fellow earth men
Green Lantern is a bit surprised at this
GL (voiced by Steve Blum): This isn't going to be one of your happy little secret missions, is it, Ganthet.
Gantet: There are rumblings in every corner of the Multiverse. Whispers of a stirring in the dark. A terrible truth is coming to light on your home planet. And we must not let it.
GL sees that the threat is coming from… Wayne Mansion?
GL: Wait, THESE are the coordinats? THIS is the source of the threat?
Ganthet: Is there a problem? Hal Jordan?
GL is later seen flying over Wayne Mansion
GL: No. No problem at all
He lands in the Batcave, where he sees Freddy Kruger (voiced by Robert Englund
Freddy: Man, there's more spooky shit in this place every time I visit… Oh, sup Hal? Still mad about the Nightmare Sinestro incident?
GL: rolls eyes Out of ALL of the Entity's best and brightest, she sent you?
Freddy: Same reason your little smurf friends sent ya.
GL: All right, let's find out what's got Ganthet's robes in a bunch and get the hell out of this mausoleum.
Freddy: Good idea-
Freddy gets flying kicked by Duke (voiced by Robbie Daymond), and he regains his footing, his claws sparking against the floor of the cave as he puts his hat back on
Duke: I don't think so. Sorry, guys. I'm on strict orders from Batman. Nobody is allowed inside the cave right now. Not even family.
GL creates a hand construct that grabs Duke
Freddy: Yeah, that's not suspicious at all.
Duke: Thought I read that ring of yours didn't work on yellow…
GL: It does if you know what you're doing.
Freddy: Hal, that doesn't make any sense. At all. Still, glad to see Batbreath's still recruiting teenagers that the hockey puck hasn't killed yet. You're kinda new. What's your name? Yellow Robin, Canary? Big Bird?
Freddy does a laugh as GL rolls his eyes
GL: See, Freddy, that's why I never did like you. I never laugh at my own jokes.
Duke: All you two need to know is that Batman left me here with a job to do, and if you don't get out right now, you're going to regret it.
Freddy: Aww, how cute, you're doing the voice and everything. Seriously though, what's your name, kiddo?
Duke: Duke Thomas. I don't have a code name yet.
Freddy sees Jason
Freddy: Yo, Hockey Puck, Mommy dearest sent you here too?
Jason just tilts his head and stabs his machete in a holographic wall
Freddy: Hal… Explain this. motions to Jason stabbing at the wall
Duke: What is he doing?
GL: Looking for something… There.
The trio go in as Duke goes after them
Duke: H-Hey, come back here!
Meanwhile, in the Campus, it shows a screen with a crazy woman, saying "Die" repeatedly, while Ra's Al Ghul (Voiced by Dee Bradley Baker) is talking with Junko Enoshima (Voiced by Erin Fitzgerald)
Ra's: Mrs. Enoshima. Her name is Elaine Thomas.
Junko: She seems nice enough.
Ra's: She was, once. Before The Joker ripped her mind apart. Before her son, Duke, had her moved into Wayne Manor. I made her the offer many years ago. The offer to join a secret battle that stretched back to the dawn of time. An offer to live forever.
Monokuma (voiced by Brian Beacock) waddles up, and hops on a nearby stack of crates
Monokuma: She didn't take you up on it, I'm guessing? So why is the great and all powerful Demon's Head walking down memory lane?
Ra's: Mrs. Thomas reactivated, briefly, a few weeks ago. I've been monitoring to make sure she hasn't revealed anything she shouldn't to anyone she shouldn't. But she remains incapable of divulging our secrets, no matter how hard the Batman pries. We needn't worry about her. Our secrecy is paramount to our success. The multiverse is careening toward a crisis unlike anything we've seen before, and it will be up to the Sperg Crew, including your betrothed to preserve mankind's future. If any of us survive long enough to see it…
Back to the journal, and to Hawkman fighting against an army of demons
Carter Hall: From that night on, that faithful night in the Egyptian desert, my story is well known. The ship was made of a mysterious substance called Nth metal. It gave me, my wife and our mortal enemy, Hath-Set, eternal life. Sending us into a cycle of reincarnation. Shiera and I fighting on the side fo good, Hath-Set on that of evil
It shows the two reicarnated in the Middle Ages, the Renascence, and even the old west
Carter Hall: We were born hundreds, even thousands of times over, cast against each other.
It shows Hath-Set and Hawkman fighting over the milenniums
Carter Hall: But the truth is, sometimes, in those dark moments in between lives, before being born again, I would catch glimpses… Glimpses of something bigger, a mystery behind our lives, our story.
It shows a dark and ruined city, with a gigantic statue of a dark Batman, with drones with the bat logo around it
Carter: Something terrifying. Something on a scale I'd never seen before. A dream… No, not a dream, a nightmare, echoing through the metal.
Carter wakes up in a cold sweat
Carter: So I began following a mystery of my own. Something I told no one about. Not until now.
Carter looks at his mace
Carter: Here in these pages. A mystery that would take me places I never dreamed.
Meanwhile, in a lunar batcave, Batman meets up with GB (voiced by Christine Marie Canabos), who was sent there by King to look into something during John's exile and torture by Dharkon
Batman: Computer. Send a message to Lucius. Black Site 14 is down. I want site 15 up and running within the week. Keep this one away from the ocean.
He puts the Shadow Drive iin the computer, as GB looks up
GB: W-Why are you here?
Batman just looks at her, before going back to his computer
GB: Create uplink to the Shadow Drive. Adding new geological data for comparisons.
He then hears footsteps and their leader, John (voiced by Todd Habberkorn) and Mister Terrific (voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson) walk up, his hands in his pockets, and a hole in his side
John: So, it's as bad as you thought it would be?
Batman tosses some batarangs out of reflex, only for John to pull out his Desert Eagle MK XV and shooting all of of them, both the bullet casings and the batarangs falling down with a clang
John: What did my guns ever do to you? Or his T-spheres?
Batman: Throw off the calibration of my computers. I didn't realize you two were back, John, Michael.
Mr Terrific: This mystery of yours has made me a little queasy about crossing back and forth. It seemd time I came home for good. But Mr. Terrific keeps his promises. Here's all the data I could gather from the other world.
Batman: Have you told anyone what we've been working on? On either earth?
Mr Terrific: I didn't put "Fair play" on my jacket for laughts. I know what's at stake when the Batmans comes and says he needs a second set of eyes to help see the big picture. You don't break that trust.
GB: And now, what is with that "big picture"?
Mr Terific: I'll be honest, GB. I have a IQ of 179, but I have NO idea what any of this means. The frequency that's being generated across the multiverse is growing stronger, but it's not steady at all. It seems… Random. Like a compass spinning wildly out of control.
Batman ponders it, alongside John
GB: That just sparked an idea, didn't it, John? There's nothing in the multiverse that we Spergs know of that could get a clean reading of this data.
Mister Terrific: It would take something massive, something practically cosmic in scale.
Batman: Yes. It will, and where it leads me, there might not be any coming back. And you three. I'm going to need you to do something while I follow this path to the end. I've already extracted the molecules I needed from his body. We all agreed that he was too unstable, that there was no end to what he could do if we weren't careful. But we're going to need him for what comes next. It's time to let HIM out of the box.
Mister Terrific and GB are shocked, while John smirks
John: You damn right it is.
They see the egg of Plastic Man. Meanwhile, back in the Batcave proper, Hal, Duke, Freddy, Jason and Letherface are seen walking through, his ring lighting the way
Freddy: Seriously, Duke. Only Batman would have a secret cave INSIDE his secret cave.
Duke: I told you, you're not supposed to be here!
GL: What is this place?
The all too familiar voice of The Joker (voiced by Mark Hamill) is heard
Joker: Oh, I can clear that up for you…
Freddy gets into his fighting stance, glaring at Duke
Duke: Don't look at me! I didn't say anything!
GL: Ring, how many life signatures ahead?
His ring, voiced by Kirk Thornton, starts fritzing up
Ring: Cannot comply… Interference
GL looks at his ring
GL: This doesn't make any sense…
Joker: It wouldn't, would it? A mystery never does at first.
Freddy: Mystery?
Joker: Oh yes, our friend with the pointy ears has been following it for years now.
Duke: Alfred, is that you?
Joker: It all started with a tooth. A metal tooth that could bring the dead back to life. The bedrock of an organization that stretched back centuries.
Duke: The Court of Owls. Right, Dick? I mean, if you're not Alfred, you have to be-
Joker: You see, a metal shouldn't be able to DO what this "Electrum" could do. No compound of gold and silver could make the dead talons walks again, and so Batman had his thread and he pulled and he extracted something from the metal, a strange substance he had never seen before. A metal that science couldn't explain
Hal winces in pain as his ring feels like it's on fire
Freddy: Hal! What's wrong?
GL: My ring… It's burning
Joker: Oh, you can feel it, can't you? The power. So could he, and it consumed him. What was this strange metal? What was its connection to the Owls. Why did it share an energy signature with so many of the most powerful artifacts of the planet? Doc Fate's helmet. Aquaman's trident, Wonder Woman's bracers?
They keep walking through the darkness
Joker: And so he formed the first team. The first of many tasked with investigating all of this. A team that could move outside Batman's usual realm of influence. Together these Outsiders would operate without the knowledge of the Justice League, the government, or even his precious Bat-Family, uncovering more hidden truths about the metals…
Freddy: Wait a sec… Batman had a Black-Ops team?
GL: Something's really wrong here. I've been to every corner of the Multiverse and my ring has never done this before. We should fall back
Joker: Oh no no nononono, you can't do that. I've been DYING for the chance to see you both face to face. We're all connected you see. I was hoping someone would come meddling. It's been so lonely down here.
Duke: Look, I'm done kidding around. We're talking about Batman. You think I don't know he has secrets? If he's been putting together some kind of mistery for years and he hasn't told me, he has a reason.
Joker: Oh you can't turn back now. This next bit's the best part. It all has to do with a liquid metal shimmering and green. A metal that changes everything. They call it Dionesium. But he wasn't the only one who found it, was he?
Duke: No…
GL: What the hell is going on here? Who are you?
Joker: Oh, I think he's starting to put the pieces together. Just like I did
Joker: You see, he was dragged into this world for a reason. The same reason I'm sure your celestial bosses and that spider sent you two digging for answers.
Freddy: Show yourself!
Joker: Because Batman is getting closer to the truth
Ring: Cannot comply. Anomaly Detected
Lantern screams in pain
GL: My arm's on fire. Let's go back to the cave. I can bring in the League. Something's VERY wrong here.
Freddy: No, we keep going, Hal.
Joker: Oh Mr. Green Lantern, are you afraid? After helping me fight the Regime, After we joined that other lightning guy against some walking jack o lantern?
GL: I don't get afraid.
Joker: Oh, I think you do. I think we all do, it's all in that moment of discovery. When you're about to learn something you will never be able to unlearn. Something that puts all the pieces together, and you finally see the truth and your world changes. And you know it'll never go back the way it was before. But if you're so very brave, then just open the door.
Back at the journal, as it shows Egypt in the present day
Carter: You don't even realize when it happens. One minute you're following the clues, and the next, they're pulling you forward, dragging you. For years I studied Nth metal alone, trying to unlock the secrets of its abilities. What I came to understand was that it was conducting energy… Powerful energy from somewhere beyond my understanding. I dug deeper. Followed every clue I could find. Until one day, I got a glimpse. A glimpse of a story that began with the first men to walk the earth. Three tribes, or rather… Four. And something else. I was a part of something bigger. Something beyond my control. And I would do everything in my power to uncover what had been taken from me. The secret that stretched back to the dawn of my species. No matter what the cost.
At the Arctic Circle, King is flying on Blue-Eyes, with John standing on the batwing, folding his arms, they land in the Fortress of Solitude
John: Hm…
Batman: Clark, I know you're in there. Let me in.
Superman (voiced by George Newbern) opens the door
Superman: You know, It wouldn't kill you to say "please" every now and then.
Batman: I think it actually might.
Using his X-Ray Vision, Superman see's something dodgy with his friend
Superman: What's wrong, Bruce? You look worried. Your heart's racing.
Batman: I'm fine.
Superman: Bruce.
Batman: There's a room you gave me, years ago, deep under the fortress. I asked you never to look at what I put inside. I told you that the day will come when I would need to open that door and that I would have to walk through it alone.
Superman: And I never have. Not once. Bruce. If this is too big for you, I'm right here. You know that, don't you?
Batman: I do. Thank you, I do. It won't be long now. I'm not trying to keep people this time. I swear that's not what I'm doing. I just need to Understand what I'm looking at first.
Superman: I've seen that door, Bruce. There's nothing from this world that could open it.
The two look and see that Mister Miracle (voiced by Joshua Tomar) has entered the Fortress
Mister Miracle: I think that's why he called me.
They head deep into the fortress
Mister Miracle: You built a secret room at the top of the world with one door and a lock that no human could EVER unlock. What did you do to the key?
Batman: I shot it into the sun.
Mister Miracle: That's a joke, right? Right?
They see a massive door
Batman: Can you open it?
Mister Miracle flies up to the door
Mister Miracle: They don't call me Mister Miracle for nothing.
He opens it, as dark electricity is unleashed, and (voiced by Roger Craig Smith) lands down
Exe: It's about time you showed up, Bats.
Mister Miracle: Batman. That CAN'T be what I think it is. You can't have been stupid enough to hold onto-
Batman: Thank you, Scott. That will be all.
The New God opens a boom tube
Mister Miracle: Batman. Whatever has brought you here, you need to turn back now!
Batman: That will be all.
Batman walks up the stairs, seeing the multiversal tuning fork, which is spewing out dark energy that Exe has been feeding off of to hold someone, or rather someTHING at bay
Carter Hall: I wish I could go back to that moment and warn myself. I write this journal to pick up anyone foolish enough to pick up my trail. Whatever you do, do not follow in my footsteps.
Batman: Like a compass… Computer. Run all vibrational data through the tower. We should be able to track the exact dimensional frequency of the Dark Energy
Computer: Receiving Data…
Batman: It's time then… Time to see what's in the dark once and for all.
Back at the Batcave, Hal and co. are going deeper into the cave, having just opened the door
Carter Hall: I beg of you, whoever might be reading this, however many generations might have passed. Do not follow the mystery of the Metals. Some mysteries are best unsolved. Some doors best left unopened, because through them, all you'll find is horror.
Freddy: Batman, what the hell have you gotten yourself into this time…?
Joker: Oh, I can tell you that, Pizza Face. This is a mystery that stretches back to the dawn of time. It's bigger then all of us, and it sure as hell is bigger then you. You don't understand. All that was just a cruel joke. You're just another couple of pieces of Batman's puzzle. Just like me!
Joker is writing numbers on the wall, before looking over his shoulder, laughing like the psycho he is