I do not own the rights to the Justice League.

And Now For Something Completely Different

In a typical suite, in a typical hotel, in a typical suburb outside Kansas City, an atypical scene was occurring.

"You idiot! How could you let yourself be caught on camera? First the girl, now this."

The idiot, wasn't really an idiot. He was actually a good guy that had a horrible case of bad luck. Not that it mattered to his boss. His actual name (Louie), age (27), and the fact that he was aspiring to be chef didn't matter to his boss at all. What mattered was that in the span of a few days he had screwed up big time. First, he had jumbled getting the device by bringing a girl along and letting her get away. Then he had went and let his face be captured on camera while doing his job.

"What does it matter? It's not like they know us here," said a guy in the corner. Louie actually considered him a good friend, despite only knowing each other for a couple days. But like Louie, he didn't matter to the boss either. The other two guys in the room just laughed, enjoying Louie being berated for his mistakes by their boss.

The boss in question ran his fingers through his hair. While it was true the authorities wouldn't be able to identify the idiot since he technically never existed in this world, it still wasn't great. The authorities were smarter than he initially thought, and it was getting harder to pull off each theft. No matter. He was almost done here anyway.

He was just about to berate the idiot again (he couldn't be bothered to remember the idiot's actual name) when the idiot spoke.

"That's her," he said excitedly, pointing at the TV. "That's the girl!"

His boss looked at the girl on the TV. "Are you sure?"

The idiot nodded. "Positive. That's her. She's even wearing the same hoodie."

Louie (the idiot) hoped this would be enough to appease his boss. It was.

"If you want to save your jobs, it'd be wise to get moving and bring her to me. Louie and his friend exited the room, not willing to risk making their boss madder. Once they were gone, the boss switched his attention to the remaining men in the room. "You two," he ordered and threw a small watch-like device to them. "It's time for a trial run. Once done, come back here so we can pack up and leave. Once we have the girl, we'll be done with this world."

"You sure? It's nice not having the League breathing down our neck," said one of them.

"Of course I'm sure! Now get moving!"

Once the remaining unfortunate idiots (they have to be considered unfortunate due to their line of work) left, their boss went back to his phone.

"Is everything alright?" asked the elderly voice on the other end of the line.

"Fine. Everything's fine. I managed to find the girl the idiot brought with him."

The voice was quiet for a moment. "I'm not so sure about this anymore. Perhaps we've gone too far..."

"Too far?" laughed Louie's boss. "Of course we've gone too far, and now there's no going back." Then in a suspicious tone he asked, "You're not getting soft on me old man, are you? You're not about to go to the League are you?"

"The League are the last people I would turn to, you know that. Continue with what you're doing and keep me updated."

In a mansion, somewhere outside Central City...

The former governor sighed as he put his phone back on the hook. He was old, and as such was prone to make mistakes. It seemed as though he had been making mistakes a lot recently. One mistake he was smart enough not to make was to back out now. Doing so would probably result in his death, or worse.

Though, he had been telling the truth when he said he wouldn't go to the League with what he knew.

As rain quietly pattered against the window, he considered his options. He certainly wasn't about to go to the League. But then again, who could he turn to? There was one person, but she was a bit of a last resort. Last resort or not, she was still better than nothing, and was his only hope for correcting his mistake. Picking up his phone he dialed the number he needed. "May I please speak to Amanda Waller?"

On the WatchTower

"He's stable for now," replied the nurse. A whoosh of the cape was all she needed to know that he entered the room. As for knowing the answer to his question, it didn't take a genius to figure out what he wanted to know. It seemed like every League member, along with every staff memeber had stopped by at some point in the past couple minutes, inquiring after the latest patient.

The dark knight looked at the patient who was still asleep in the bed. Someone had changed him out of his suit and into a hospital gown which was currently covering the bandage on his shoulder. Batman considered his friend rather fortunate that the bullet had went straight through his shoulder instead of getting lodged somewhere inside his body. The doctors had a hard enough time getting the wound to close (a high powered laser was used to cauterize it), the last thing they would have needed was the trouble of having to dig through his body to look for the bullet.

Batman felt a hand being placed on his own uninjured, shoulder. "I'm sure Clark will be fine. Remember the time after the fight with Toyman? You were the only one to believe that he was still alive somewhere," spoke Wonder Woman reassuringly.

He knew that she was just trying to comfort him. She had a point that he had still believed Clark was alive while everybody else believed he was gone. But this time things were different. Clark, Superman, had been hit by a bullet. From preliminary tests there were no traces of kryptonite or magic. It was an average, everyday, run-of-the-mill bullet. And it had pierced Superman's skin, wounding him, which was suppose to be an impossible feat for the Man of Steel.

The fight should have been simple. A robbery at the First Bank of Metropolis. Clark was on his lunch break and decided to take care of it. While he did enjoy the League, he missed fighting on the small scale for the little guy, which had given him his start as a superhero. Seeing the robbers threaten him with guns, he smiled. The fight would be over in time for him to still manage a a meal before heading back to the Daily Planet. He couldn't have been more wrong. By the time other members of the League arrived, the robbers were gone and he was unconscious and bleeding while paramedics tried to tend to his wound with little success.

"Bruce, are you okay?" asked Diana, concerned by his silence.

He was saved from answering when a staff member ran up to him and informed him he had a message.

"Hera help us," whispered Diana as Batman walked out of sight.

When Batman saw who the message was from, he couldn't help but curse her. Was she calling to gloat after what they had done? Sure he didn't have proof at the moment, but he wouldn't be surprised if they were at fault.

"Waller, what do you want?" he growled into the phone.

"I'm not the one who injured him. Believe me, we are working on bullets capable of such a thing, but we're saving them for when they are needed. Not when he's on his lunch break."

"What do you want?" he repeated, ignoring the fact that she knew he was on break. He could question her about that later; right now there were more important things to discuss.

Waller considered how much information she wanted to reveal. Doubtless the world's greatest detective would find out everything in time, but she wanted to keep her advantage as long as possible. Unfortunately to do so, still meant revealing some of what she knew. "It's not a question of what I want. It's a question of what you want. I have some valuable information on the origins of a certain bullet. But in return I want something."

"What?"

"I tell you what I know. In return, a certain device ends up at Cadmus."

"Done," he said without hesitant.

**Author's Note**

Thanks to Loki's Son and Jana Girl123 for constantly reviewing every chapter. I like hearing what people think, and I get chapters written faster.

This chapter is really short, but it has a lot of information in it that'll make sense in later chapters. Next chapter will return to Suzy and Gardner, and things will start picking up.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to review!