One year later…
Dick Grayson, Nightwing, had been sleeping with Barbara Gordon, Batgirl when he got the call on his cell from Wally West, Kid Flash. His right hand reached for it on the stand next to the alarm clock and once he had felt it in his palm, he spoke into the ear-piece muttering a single "Hello?"
"Rob, it's Wally. Are you ready now? They're going to close the city in half-an-hour."
Dick yawned.
"Yeah, I'm ready."
He turned over to his girl and said.
"Barb…time to get going. We have to leave right away."
Barb, who was already awake, was on her way to the room of Jason Todd, the second Robin. The only other occupants in Wayne Manor, besides Alfred the butler, were Megan Morse, Miss Martian and her own beau, Kon-El, Superboy. Both were dressed in their PJs when they met Barbara outside of Jason's door.
"What is it?" Megan was the first to ask.
"Wally called us about…."
She stopped herself, knowing what was currently happening outside the manor's material world. Then she shook her head and forced it out of her mind.
"Just get dressed, I'll wake Jason for you."
"But we weren't going to," Kon-El objected.
Barbara stopped to face the couple.
"Of course, you weren't. I just assumed you would."
Another thought crossed Megan's mind.
"Where are we going to meet the others?"
"Outside the city's limits. Wally's bringing them in his uncle's car."
Then she disappeared into Jason's room, where they could hear her attempts at waking the rude boy.
"Get up, Jason."
"Blow it out your ass, Babs, I'm sleeping."
"Do you want to be here when the city's gassed?"
"No?"
"Then get up and start packing!"
Next came the sound of ruffling clothes, followed by more expletives from Jason that came under his breath.
Dick could remember back to a year ago when he was at the Nest, a fancy high-top restaurant that had once been managed by the Penguin, who used it to gather signatures from wealthy customers and he wanted to be arrested to meet the county's greatest forger. As Robin, he and Batman put a stop to that plan. Following it's change in management, in the memory he was currently seeing, he was with Bruce and his neighbors J. Devlin Davenport and the Drakes.
The wealthy men (and woman) were served with dishes of Maison and beef ragout. They supposed to meet with Vicki Vale, but she had other matters to attend to, namely her job. She was at the Gazette, overseeing reports of a new virus that had been popping up…right in the very center of Gotham. No one else seemed to care, they were obstinate and ignorant, confident that life was going on just as normal. The news was eventually broadcast on TV and displayed throughout the internet, but at this stage, they were nothing but mere rumors. Even Bruce and his fellow neighbors caught wind of this on their tablet phones.
"You know, Bruce," Dana Drake was saying. "I'm surprised the Gazette hasn't been reporting anything else about the reconstruction of Washington after that big battle with the Justice League. I think the government is trying to hush everything up as to what we could do with our industries now that the EPA's been totaled."
Bruce, knowing the answer, swallowed his piece of beef whole down his throat and his tone went serious…the dead seriousness of his alter-ego.
"All I can say is Dana, is that Pamela Isley won't like that."
Dick agreed.
"Yeah, she thinks we're not the only ones who deserve to be here. We had better be careful with the way we manage our factories, Bruce, I wouldn't want a certain plant lady giving mankind a huge slap in the face again."
Davenport chuckled.
"You're joking, Dick. Even with the EPA out of commission for the time being, there's still the law."
"The law is corrupt here," Jack Drake corrected him. "Even with Commissioner Gordon's help, we can't have anybody like Thorne or Maroni locked behind bars. The only people we can rely on are superheroes, even some who are not allied with the Justice League."
They soon had worse than that. After the first month of Poison Ivy's solitude, the virus had completely effect Gotham's crops and was soon heading to Metropolis by the wintertime, where the snow became toxic, causing coughing fits from those who swallowed it. Snowball fights, as it was known, had become a thing of the past and when summer rolled around, the greenhouse effect was starting to engulf a grand eighty percent of the East Coast. Around that time, Barbara was at a supermarket where meat packages were disappearing from shelves, having no hint of fresh new stocks returning from the slaughterhouse. Cattle animals were apparently turning into an endangered species and pretty soon, so would they.
Barbara was now dressed in her Batgirl outfit when she approached the Batmobile. Although it could usually accommodate two people, there was still enough room for Jason to sit in the back between the two front seats, his hands clutching them being his seat belts.
Alfred the butler, came to see them off.
"I wish I would be coming with you, young masters, but my brother Wilfred has offered me my previous position back in the armed forces. I have to fight for the sanity of this world."
As much as she tried not to be too emotional, Barbara gave Alfred a hug while Dick and Jason saluted him.
Megan, knowing that their Bioship had been impounded after Wally decided to take it for a thrill ride, saw alternate means of transportation in a pastel blue Cadillac station wagon from the early seventies, reminding her of her sitcom days. She drove, while Kon took the passenger seat after loading the top and rear wagon with two sleeping bags, pots, pans, two boxes of corn and a bag of rice next to cheese flavored snacks, including Kryptonian-themed cereal boxes and colorful fruit packs resembling the dead planet's flora, fauna and crystals. Kon was well-equipped with Lex Luthor's shield slappers, already sticking one to his right shoulder, but even with the artificial ability to fly, having to carry all of this with Megan's help would be much too difficult to handle.
He said to Meagan in a calm voice.
"Grandfather Jonathan's farm is stocked with enough supplies to satisfy an army for months, maybe even years."
"As long as the virus doesn't kill it," Megan replied as she turned the key.
Her eyes were locked dead onto the road before the Batmobile's turntable. The Batmobile itself went first while Megan followed them behind. As they drove onto the main road, not looking back to watch Alfred waving them good bye, Megan's thoughts went back to her uncle, the Martian Manhunter. It was shameful to see that her own flesh and blood had to disappear along with the rest of the Justice League when they had figured out the root cause of the virus.
Batman had suspected Poison Ivy and he interrogated Harley Quinn (the only human Ivy liked next to Catwoman) on her current whereabouts. But even after she denied all information, it was clearly obvious that the Venus fly traps guarding her lair was an obvious sign that she was still inside, waiting for mankind to treat the Earth as it should have been treated long ago.
But when they got there, an unwelcome visit from the home of the villainess of vines had its disadvantages. Before Superman could even fly off, every last member of the League was dragged to the floor by vines with sharp thorns that brought torturous venom into their bloodstreams. Rather, it weakened them rather than killing them. Within the next minute, they were inside Ivy's lair, hanging completely upside down in sickly green cocoons as she walked over to them, an evil smile pursed across her poisonous lips.
"A day of reckoning is coming, heroes," Ivy told them. "Once the last human being is dead, the Green will reclaim this planet and I will no longer have to put up with man's industrialization destroying it."
"So you must be the cause of the virus," Batman noted.
"Obviously, yes. After the battle in Washington weakened the EPA to a minimum, I decided to take action…by doing something that I should have done a long time ago when I first embraced the Green."
"So you are willing to create a mass extinction event because of our destructive ways?" Wonder Woman was appalled. "On Themyscira, we treat nature with respect and so do the Atlanteans."
"Don't forget us Thanagarians," said Hawkman from beneath his growing cocoon. "We basically worship the fauna of birds, hence our monikers."
His wife Shayera glared at Ivy.
"You fucking bitch," she gritted under her teeth. "Do you think we will let you get away with this?"
Ivy smiled deviously.
"Of course you will. Once my toxins turn you into the very trees that you deserve to be, the world will have no one to protect its citizens and all of humanity will have is each other…for dinner."
With a sinister chuckle, she walked closer to Batman.
"Since we both strive to see evil-doers punished, we could have been…a most extraordinary team, but since you care for your precious mammals rather than the plants that provide you with the daily food and water you consume…you are now part of the problem."
She moved closer to his head and even though Batman didn't want it, he was forced to feel the poisons and the toxins secreting from Ivy's lips pouring into his throat.
Superman, weakened by the Kryptonite laced vines, was next, followed by Flash and the Green Lanterns. Then the Atom was crushed, Doctor Fate met his fate and the female members of the league were slowly turning into bark, still and horrified figures that would forever remind Poison Ivy of who her enemies were and why she concocted her plan in the first place.
Back in Megan's car, as they crossed over the bridge, Kon, head low and eyes solemn, decided to brighten up the mood by conversing with his girlfriend.
"Megan, you know about the Kents right?"
"Absolutely."
"Do you think of them as nice?"
"I think they will be. Aren't farm people usually nice? Even if they don't have much to do?"
"Well, yeah, but some can be pretty cranky at times. Look at all the famers you see on TV, shaking their fists at trespassers."
Megan laughed.
"That's just a stereotype."
Kon countered this.
"You think so? I overheard Clark talking to Bruce the other day about buying his father's farm so they could bring in supplies in light of the famine. They also mentioned something about the air force slaughtering us with nerve gas for the sake of survival. 'If the unthinkable were to happen, Clark,' Bruce said to him. 'We may need to take drastic measures. You may need to tell your parents that it is for their own good.' But then Clark says 'Bruce, I will not have you put words into my mouth regarding the ultimate fate of the family who raised me since I was a baby!' The argument went on and on until they saw me and kicked my ass out of there."
"So they still treat you like a child…"
Megan lowered her head in mourning.
"Like Uncle J'onn."
"You are you know."
Her face lit up at Kon's reply.
"What do mea—oh! Ha, ha! Hello, Megan! If I lose my virginity, I become a woman."
Then, as if her powers were extended to clairvoyance, the next thing Megan saw was red. The red imagery of a man assaulting a woman in the most extreme way.
Barbara, in the Batmobile, was frightened on the inside. But it became external when she heard an explosion and people running towards them, but not at the Batmobile directly…at shops, at stores, at restaurants, hauling their loads onto a truck as the GCPD struggled to keep them under control. A riot control van raced into the scene to pacify the mob, but the Batmobile and Megan's car continued to drive through, away from this display of collapsing society and humanity and further down to the façade of Gotham Academy, away from the blaring sirens, the firing of guns from roofs and faces of those who were mad with starvation and the horrible sights of anarchy.
While trying to recover from that horrible scene, Megan asked Kon.
"So all we have to do is take the main road, right?"
"Right?"
"But where do we meet Wally and the others?"
"Somewhere outside the city limits, that's what Dick told me. But even with our powers, we might need something for the non-powered, like Green Arrow…firearms."
That vision of red came into Megan's mind again. This time, it was that of a man peering over a dead general.
It was Jason's suggestion that they should stop there at the academy to pick up their neighbor Tim Drake, who was currently bunking there with his parents out of town. They were going to need some extra company in his opinion.
"You sure about this?" asked Nightwing.
"Sure," Jason said. "We may not have enough room in the Batmobile, but at least I can persuade him to join us. After all, it's the youth who survive, not the old."
Inside, they found Tim accompanied by his current date, Stephanie Brown (everyone nicknamed her "Spoiler" for her constant knack of giving away movie spoilers). The teachers saw to it that Tim would be permitted to leave the school and Stephanie wanted that request.
"What about your parents?" asked Tim.
"Same as yours, in Vietnam trying to find a cure for the virus. I'm not sure how to get ahold of them and now…"
She gulped, dreading the following words.
"There have been reports of cannibalism there."
Stephanie nearly burst into tears as she hugged her beau, longing for the safe green pastures of the world outside Gotham. Even Jason's roguish heart was melted upon seeing this. So, of course, it was agreed that Stephanie should join them on their trek.
As for Megan and Kon, they had gone elsewhere…a gun shop right next to one of the Maroni crime family's fronts. To their surprise they saw Roy Harper, the Red Arrow and his girlfriend Cheshire, whose real name was Jade Nguyen, confronting the owner, who was giving a strict "no guns no permit" sort of talk.
"We need some guns if my partner here is willing to fend for herself. She can't rely on her fists alone you know."
But the owner, Mr. Hugh, had shook his head no.
"As I said before: You need a permit."
"I'll show you my permit."
That was all Cheshire had to say. First, she gave him a right uppercut, driving him to the floor. Her fingers formed the shape of a knife as she broke the glass to smithereens, the guns were now exposed to all and when Mr. Hugh recovered, Cheshire fired a shot aimed directly at his stomach. Megan and Kon cringed, even more so when she turned over her right shoulder and grinned.
"Well, are we gonna meet the others, or not?"
The two young heroes slowly nodded their way out of their traumatized state.
It was the break of dawn when they arrived at the city limits. The rest of the team, Wally, Rocket, Zatanna, Artemis and Aqualad were there in Barry's car, a red and yellow van that he dubbed the Flashmobile. After a quick hug between Nightwing and Kid Flash as well as a few greets, they noticed a pair of policemen, whom Barbara recognized as Harvey Bullock and Clancy O'Hara, guarding the city limits. So they quickly hopped into their cars and raced down the road just as a news bulletin reporting all cars to remain within the limits or face death was announced on the police radio.
When the policemen saw this, O'Hara asked.
"Should we go after them?"
But Bullock, knowing that the drivers were superheroes, plainly shook his head.
"It's either us, or them."