I do not own Superman, or any other D.C. character mentioned. The rest, I made up for my own story. This is a fanfic, and not for profit, so just enjoy.
SUPER
By LJ
Part 5
"Diana," Bruce shouted, coming awake even as the noonday sun poured in through the open curtain.
"Another nightmare, Master Bruce," Alfred asked as he turned from opening that particular curtain to let the light and air into the room. "Perhaps you are working too hard again," the older man suggested, his once dark hair white as snow, though his shoulders remained as ramrod straight as they had ever been.
Bruce eyed him blandly, but did not reply as he wiped a hand over his weathered features just beginning to show the first signs of age as he slid down that peak from mature adult into middle age. He did not fear age as such, but he did fear loosing his edge. It was a fear that kept him striving to improve himself, body and mind, for years now.
For the fear was not so much of aging, as it was losing a war he had declared when he was still a child, standing over the bloody corpses of his own parents. It was a war he refused to lose, no matter what it cost him.
"Not so much a nightmare, as a memory," Bruce scowled as he accepted the bitter morning tea he had come to favor. It was also healthier than the black coffee he had once preferred in more youthful days. "I keep reliving that day. Something about it….nags me."
"Ah. You refer to your compatriot's untimely departure from this world," the wise butler, and longtime friend nodded as he refilled Bruce's cup as he sat on the edge of his bed, his naked body betraying the scars of his private war.
"That's just it," Bruce said, looking up at him with a more familiar gaze usually reserved for his alter ego's use. "I'm starting to think that she didn't die. I think…..something else happened to her."
"Begging your pardon, sir," the old man drawled as he turned to serve him the breakfast tray he had prepared just twenty minutes ago. "But you yourself were there when that villain's light-ray vaporized her. Are you sure you're just not in denial?" His tone could not help suggesting the implied, "Again."
"No," Bruce replied curtly, ignoring the breakfast tray, and rising from the bed only to drop down to start the first pushups of his morning calisthenics without bothering to dress.
"No," he panted after he reached the one-hundred mark, and kept going. "I have…revisited that moment in my mind dozens….of times, Alfred.
"I have studied the tapes of that mission until they're almost worn out.
"It was something on them that kept bothering me. I think my subconscious figured it out last night."
"Then what do you think happened," Alfred asked, not prepared to doubt his employee and friend's instincts when they had been proven right so many times over the years.
"Accidentally, or not, Diana was….sent somewhere. Or taken. I don't know which.
"I do know…..she isn't dead."
"You are that certain," he asked as Bruce did a fluid somersault, landing easily on his feet to stand before him before reaching for a slice of the plain, wheat toast.
"Completely," he stated before he bit into the toasted bread with a thoughtful look that suggested his mind was already working on something far removed from breakfast, or his usual regimen.
He did not stop, however, until he finished both. He was, if anything, disciplined. Alfred knew that better than anyone in the world. Even his occasional teammates in the Justice League.
"I assume you'll be spending your nights below, then," he asked later as he collected the empty tray, and glanced back at where Bruce dressed quickly, and efficiently in casual attire. "Until you solve this conundrum?"
"Alfred," he said as he pulled on a sport coat that matched his tan slacks. "Almost fourteen years ago, Superman vanished without a trace, and hasn't been seen since.
"Even Lois gave up on his returning by now. She even had Clark declared dead in an arranged accident.
"You've heard all the theories as well as I have. I now believe the disappearances might well be connected."
"Are you suggesting….?" "I don't think Dr. Light killed Diana. I think she was taken by whatever took Superman," he told him as he turned to the door himself. "I just need to prove it, and then find a way to track them both down."
"I'm sure the villainous scoundrel would be delighted to be spared an extra life sentence, but….how do you intend to prove such claims, sir? I'm not sure the court is ready to accept your….uncanny gift of deductive reasoning as evidence."
"True enough. Which is why I need to speak to some experts after I find the evidence I need to support my theory, and find out what did happen to Earth's two greatest heroes," he told his longtime friend.
"I'm sure if anyone can, sir, then you will."
Bruce said nothing as he went to the door he selected. One that opened on a dark shaft that went straight down into the bowels of the earth itself. Alfred, by choice, chose the more conventional method of using the bedroom door to depart.
S
"You want what," the silvering head of the scientist turned super-villain sputtered as he looked up at the caped vigilante that had helped thwart him for years. Right up to that point one of his force beams struck the Amazon bitch hard enough to overwhelm her defenses, and vaporize her.
Something that had shocked even him at the time. He had not realized they were that deadly.
Not that he had time to celebrate. The Bat had quickly disarmed him, fueled by his rage over the loss of his colleague, and had delivered him to the authorities, and a surprisingly speedy trial aided by recovered security footage that showed him clearly aiming at Wonder Woman's back as she deflected his henchmen's gunfire that would have cut down nine hostages in the bank in cold blood.
The moment when his beam struck her full in the back, vaporizing her, still chilled even him.
"The exact frequency of the light beam you used when you were firing those force beams that day," the grim hero said in that cool, gravelly tone he had that tended to cut right through your spine vertically, and into your very heart.
"Why," he spat. "So you can steal my work after you locked me in here for defending myself," he demanded, which had been his only defense. One the jury didn't buy.
Neither did the cold eyes that narrowed on him.
"Listen very carefully," the Bat growled at him. "There is a chance, a very slim chance, that you may not have killed Diana."
"Wonder Woman's not dead," he frowned. "Then…." "Shut up, and listen," the hero snapped in a low voice made all the more menacing by the way his cape fluttered as his body leaned forward, as if he were about to strike at him right through two inches of reinforced safety glass that made up the partition between them.
Dr. Light didn't think that barrier would hold for a second if the Bat wanted him. He was absolutely positive of that.
He had heard how the cowled hero had gotten in and out of Arkham countless times without being seen by anyone other than those he went to visit. Usually to pull information out of recalcitrant enemies for one of his endless campaigns against those he deemed evil.
"When you struck her with that force-beam, I need to know the precise frequency of the light that hit her."
"I'm right. Aren't I? I mean, if she's not dead, I can appeal this death sentence, and…..?" "The frequency," the darkly clad hero growled. "Or you'll wish you were already dead."
The villainous scientist took one look at those slitted, opaque eyes locked on him, and did what any man in his situation would do. He began to talk.
S
"I think Diana is still alive," Batman told the assembled members of the League he had specifically called to the meeting he had arranged in the Watchtower, rather than risk eavesdroppers at the earthbound headquarters that had become a sieve between the media, government agencies from across the globe, and even a few part-time heroes that cared more about the fame than the job.
Not one of the five said so much as a word as they looked around amongst themselves, measuring one another's reactions. Finally, John Stewart, back on Earth to relieve Kyle who had been called to a deep-space mission that was apparently hush-hush Guardian business shook his head.
"Batman, I'd be the first to say I'd like to believe you, but….we were all there when Dr. Light blasted her with that laser."
"Exactly. All of you were there, but did any of us stop in the heat of the moment to examine the evidence.
"My….subconscious finally got my attention after five years of bad dreams."
They all looked at him, but no one replied to that. Everyone knew the grim nature of the man beneath the cape and cowl, but everyone knew he had saved their collective lives more times than they could count with his sometime infuriating paranoia, and seemingly over-preparedness.
"All right, Batman," J'onn J'onzz asked. "I don't have to be a mind reader to know you have something in mind. Please, enlighten us. I, for one, would be ecstatic if one of our bravest and best were still alive somewhere."
"That's just it," he smiled his grim, characteristic smile. "I don't think she's the only one. I think whatever happened to her, happened to Superman first."
"Superman," Captain Atom exclaimed. "Batman, it's been almost fifteen years since he disappeared without a trace. We've hunted for him for….."
"I know," he cut Atom off before the oftentimes rigid military man could convince the others of things he had yet to say.
"Just listen to what I have learned, and then let me show you something."
"I believe our companion is entitled to be heard out," Dr. Fate's sonorous voice echoed from behind his helmet. "We all know he is not a man given to impulse, or false claims."
"I agree," the Flash spoke for the first time, his mercurial nature not slowed in the slightest by the years that had finally added maturity to the younger hero's features. "Bats may be a bit scary, but I've never known him to be wrong."
Batman caught J'onn's steady stare, and John's faint nod, and cleared his voice to speak.
"We've all lived the nightmare of Diana's apparent passing for more than five years.
"This week, I started putting a few things together, however, that makes me think she, and Superman, are still alive. That they were not killed, but….taken somehow."
He could see the doubt, confusion, and more written on some of the faces he knew well, but only J'onn and Fate kept their reactions well masked. Fate for obvious reasons, and the Martian, he knew, was a master of stoicism.
"How about an explanation," Nathaniel asked as he went on, explaining he felt something else was involved in plucking the missing heroes from their ranks.
"I have one. Tentative, true, but it's a start, and that is why each of you is here.
"First, let me show you something I managed to isolate."
He turned, and activated a monitor on the conference room walls. The chaos of the all-out battle with the flagging Legion of Doom that tried to reform after Luthor's apparent reformation filled the screen, and he quickly isolated Diana, standing in front of the hostages while the Legion's henchmen fired wildly at them, trying to buy time to escape.
The image froze, rotating almost eighty degrees until they had a side view of the powerful Amazon, and her determined profile as she stood with bracelets blurred even in the stopped still, she was moving so fast to deflect the lead rain from the innocents behind her.
"I always felt something was wrong about this moment, and I finally found it.
"I slowed this down almost ninety-seven percent before I finally found my first clue. Watch carefully."
In almost torturous slowness, Light rose behind Diana, having taken cover behind the hostages himself as the more powerful members of the League battled the other metas he had recruited. They watched as frame after frame the villain's dark scowl turned, and he lifted a thick wrist that was actually a trademark gauntlet to point at Diana's back.
They were ready to protest this macabre show until they saw the moment of apparent death. The moment that Diana vanished, reacting as if she were pulled into a powerful vacuum three frames before the beam of light even struck her former position.
"There," Batman said with all the conviction of the righteous. "You see?"
"We all saw it, Batman," J'onn murmured, though his voice betrayed his own emotion for one of those rare times the Martian let his true feelings out.
"I ran a full spectrum on the light-beam just in case, and I have even rechecked with Dr. Light himself concerning the frequency and strength of his force-beam. I retested his equipment myself to be certain of that fact. It could not have done what we just saw."
"Especially since she disappeared before it ever struck her," Wally stated unnecessarily. "So what did happen," he asked, looking back and forth between the stopped image that now showed only a stunned group gaping at where their colleague had been.
"I ran all the available video evidence through every scanner I could, but I didn't find anything until I tried studying the audio track."
"Audio track?" "Of course," Nathaniel nodded. "Sound has differing frequencies, just as light. Some of which can only be detected by……"
"This frequency," he said, using the remote to rewind the tape, and playing it at a super slow rate once more, "Sounded for just .four seconds before Diana vanished," he told them as a shrill, grating whine filled the speakers, and jarred their hearing.
For a moment, every man in the room felt an odd vertigo, then the world stabilized, and they were staring at a blank screen once again.
"That is my evidence," Batman told them somberly. "And that is why I have sent for each of you.
"Dr. Fate, if there is any mystical source to this sound, this….phenomena, I would like you to see if you can find it. You would know more than any of us if this phenomena has a supernatural source."
"I shall begin my research immediately," the blue and gold garbed mystic hero nodded as he stepped back from the table, and simply vanished.
"Walter, Nathaniel, you both have insights into the physical world, and its underlying principles that none of us can duplicate. I would like you to revisit the scene, and using this frequency as a guide, see if you can detect anything that might have…..caused this sound, and its results."
"You really think Superman got snatched like Diana, then," Wally asked bluntly.
"I think it's possible. Remember, Clark's mother mentioned he had said he was first woke up by a strange sound right before he disappeared."
"Still, Batman, if the strongest of us could be taken by whatever that sound was, how are we going to help if they haven't been able to return after all this time?" "I don't know. I don't know anything else at this point. Other than I am absolutely certain they are both still alive, and waiting to be found," he told Captain Atom.
"We'll do what we can," Nathaniel told him as the silver hero rose to stand beside his chair. "I have a job the brass want taken care of in Panama, but after that, I'll get right on this one." "I appreciate that, Captain," Batman nodded. "And while it goes without saying, I would prefer this search did not become common knowledge until we know something definitive one way, or the other."
"We know the drill, Bats," the Green Lantern who now lived in another space sector with his wife Shayera, once better known as Hawkgirl, nodded. "So, what do you want me to do?"
"I want you to contact the Guardians," he told the Lantern who was only back temporarily to fill in for the younger Lantern now patrolling their sector. "We both know they are notorious for holding information close to the vest, as it were. Find out if they know anything about this matter that might help us in our search."
"What will you and I be doing," J'onn asked as the others rose from the table, heading toward the transporters.
"I want you to go with me to Themyscira."
"You intend to see Diana's mother?" "No.
"That is, not in particular. I want to speak to Harbinger. Either she, or one of the Amazon's gods may know something. She is our best source of information from that arena."
"Queen Hippolyta may not take to men just invading her realm again, especially without Diana as our emissary this time."
"I've already contacted the queen to arrange an audience after briefing her on my suspicions," Batman told him in the same forbidding tone. "She's expecting us."
"Of course," J'onn said, never failing to be surprised by his companion's cleverness in spite of being a telepath. Not that he abused that talent. "I cannot help but wonder, though….."
"What," Batman asked as they approached the transporter even as the others vanished.
"If they were….taken somewhere else, just what have they been doing all this time?" "I've wondered myself," he murmured as he stepped onto the transporter pad, and nodded to the masked heroine on duty that day.
Huntress barely glanced at them as she stared at the coordinates he had requested earlier, and punched them into the computer before sending them back to Earth.
S
"Clark," Diana shouted as she rose into the sky, the leaking tanker trailing volatile liquid that threatened to explode any second as the flames below began to attempt to follow the spill to its airborne source.
Even as she shouted, a colorful blur flew by too fast to track, and the flame vanished even as a blast of super-cooled air rose around her. A glance to her left showed the oil storage tanks were cooling, too, and only a few of them still smoldered.
Setting the leaking tanker atop a ruptured storage tank to let the fuel spill back into the open container, she rose back into the sky to see if anything else required her immediate attention. She grimaced as she saw the devastation left behind by the lightning strike that had turned the fuel storage facility into a deadly inferno for several minutes before she and Clark could arrive to help.
What sickened her most were the charred corpses of those they had not arrived in time to save. Nothing could bring those poor people back, but she frowned all the more as she flew down to where Clark stood studying something on the ground near one tank that looked more like it had imploded than exploded.
"This was no lightning strike," he told her grimly as he studied the jagged wound in the damaged tank as sirens of rescue and fire units only then began to announce their arrival.
"Someone deliberately destroyed this tank to start this inferno?" "Yes. The lightning from the storm was just happenstance. The damage was done by this device," he said, having gathered a few scorched fragments that obviously composed a timer, and wiring harness that had been attached to some kind of explosive.
"Another test," she guessed, both of them having reached the conclusion that someone was out there arranging seemingly random tests of their strengths and abilities of late that ran from one extreme to the next. Ironically, while much of the world knew they were here by now, very few people actually knew how she and Clark had saved the world from a horrendous alien threat that fateful day they made a united stand against the American military on their island. The dimensional rift had been written off as a hoax by most. Or special effects to sell something by others. Those that had not seen the startling footage had been more interested in the latest reality show airing to even care that their world had been in mortal danger.
Then, too, there were the many conspiracy theorists who wrote the entire thing off as mass hysteria created by a secret lab somewhere that leaked a biological weapon that created a series of bizarre, but strangely uniform delusions.
Diana wanted to ask why they were being tested now, but in the time she had been on this version of Man's World, she had seen more madness than even their own world offered at times.
"This emergency is over," Clark told her, looking up from the charred fragments he held to catch the look of dismay in her eyes. "You head back, and I'll catch up after I brief the authorities."
"Not an auspicious start to the day," she sighed as she turned to see the arriving paramedics stop to gape at her more than they were looking to the wounded that yet needed their aid.
"We saved some lives, and kept this from turning into a worse disaster," he told her. "Never discount our efforts, or our influence. Sometimes hope isn't easy to hold, but it's all we have."
"You're right," she sighed, remembering Artemis' charge given just a few months ago when it seemed they were alone against this entire world.
They had gained some acceptance among most of the nations, though some still looked with suspicion, or outright disdain at her in particular. Women on this world still had a long way to go before they could claim true equality, or freedom. Especially in certain parts of the world.
"I'll meet you back home," she told him, and leapt up into the air to use the air currents to fly up to her hovering aircraft built for her by Clark after he had finished their island' new defenses.
New Themyscira couldn't be taken by anything less than an army now, if that, with the new defenses he had built around their island home. Blending his Kryptonian science with the technology around them, he had still managed to surpass anything the humans of this dimension could ever hope of reaching at their current level of development. Their liaison with the American government had been quite interested in the alien technology, especially the medical sciences, but both of them had downplayed that angle.
"I would no more give children a loaded weapon, as hand them technology they are not ready to utilize properly," Clark had sagely replied to the woman who had ironically been swayed to their side by Diana's brutal treatment by her own government when she had first arrived on the planet.
Settling into her aircraft that she had left to hover high over the oil field, out of sight among the clouds and smoke that still covered the skies, she closed the hatch, and took manual control of the aircraft that was five times faster than anything on the planet. She kept the speed low, all the same, not wanting to alarm anyone as she flew over American airspace before banking away from the southern coastline, and out to sea. Once out of their airspace, she accelerated again, and turned toward her home, as she now considered their island, still musing over how to broach a touchy subject with Clark she had been pondering of late.
She was not quite to the island when she heard a mayday being radioed from north of her position, and turned toward it without hesitation. She did not care that it came in Egyptian rather than English. One point she had refused to yield on when Ms. Graves had first contacted them to start building diplomatic relations with them, was that she and Clark were here to help all people. No matter their politics, or race. She did not care if someone was not from an accepted country, or nation in the eyes of others. She was here to help all men, and hoped her example would eventually inspire others to follow their example.
She remembered Artemis had told her that together, she and Clark had technically fulfilled her first charge from the gods on their own world. They had inspired others to rise up, helped inspire, and after a fashion create new heroes and heroines that would eventually unite the many nations to lead their own world into a better future. Not all of those metas, after all, she was reminded, wore costumes.
Now, she had been told, they were sent here to repeat their first, and most important mission on this world. To inspire, and help steer the people of this world toward a future that would not end in the inevitable cataclysm the gods foresaw for this grim, militaristic world bent on self destruction. She, and her companion had been unknowingly dropped into a madhouse, sent unwittingly to repeat a success they had never truly felt they had achieved on a world that didn't seem to care for them.
So far, even with Clark at her side, she felt like she was fighting a loosing cause. Little wonder, she still kept much of Artemis' cryptic, and at some points, grim message from her companion. Better to leave him his own blissful ignorance, than to reveal yet another bit of evidence that the gods could be uncaring when it came even to those they favored at times.
S
"Tell me you have something," General Billings demanded after he walked into the covert laboratory, still incensed after watching the latest display of unnatural power by the two aliens that had invaded his world, and his nation.
Dr. Jacob McKinley barely shrugged as he turned from the microscope as he eyed the officer who had installed him, and his team in the research facility in a location so secret even he wasn't sure were he was at the moment. Of course, being all but abducted, and transported while unconscious helped maintain that secrecy. Especially with the only elevator out of the lab guarded by two men with detonators as well as the usual weapons.
One might risk conventional weaponry in a bid for freedom, but if the guards didn't input a certain code within one minute of anyone using the only way up and out of the apparently underground facility, then the entire shaft exploded, along with everything underground.
Hardly an incentive to risk a bid for freedom.
"I'm not sure what we have, to be honest," the oldest scientist on the ten man team replied. And they were all men. Billings had vocally stated he didn't want some emotional female screwing things up.
"Just report," the officer spat, noting that Jacob had sent everyone out of the lab for their meeting as he had ordered.
"First scope," he pointed, "Is the single hair we finally managed to acquire from the alleged Kryptonian.
"Frankly, I cannot even begin to decipher his DNA. If his own world's scientists did, then they must be true geniuses. I can't even begin to map the genome that houses his genetic makeup, let alone his apparent abilities.
"I hope that isn't all you had to report," the general said in a harsh tone as he turned from the bizarre image of the alien genetic matrix only partially represented by the single hair follicle recovered from the Hastings' home after a special team had been sent through it with a forensic team to look for anything that might reveal the alien's abilities, or weaknesses.
"Second scope," Jacob gestured to the one he had been using.
"I trust you had better luck with the tissue and blood cultures taken from the prisoner at Guantanamo."
"What do you see?" "Wait one damn minute. What is this," the scowling officer demanded as he turned to him after a second glance into the microscope.
"You tell me. That is what we got from your contacts, sir."
"Even I know that isn't blood, or skin. It's….…It's……."
"Dirt.
"Specifically, a kind of clay.
"Not being a geologist, I cannot isolate its origin for you, but having grandchildren, I can guess it is Mid-Atlantic in origin."
"And what does being a grandparent have to do with…..?"
"Haven't you even looked at the books, general," Jacob McKinley asked him pointedly. "I've been reading them as avidly as my grandchildren since the media first broke this story."
"I assume you have a point to make here," the officer asked curtly.
"You haven't read them, have you," Jacob sighed.
"General," Jacob told him. "In the back story of the alleged….Amazon, she was made from clay after the queen of the Amazons prays to her gods for a child. Clay that is miraculously given life, and gifted with incredible powers by what we know as the mythical Greek Pantheon."
"So, the Greeks created her….?" "You're missing the point. This heroine was fashioned out of clay according to the stories.
"Clay infused with the powers of all the gods when it was magically brought to life."
"So, you are telling me this….clay is magic?" "I believe that once….tissue, or blood is left behind, it must….revert to its original state. Without the magic of the host body to sustain it, I believe it becomes ordinary clay once more. Which would explain these samples."
"Just tell me how this helps us," General Billings spat irritably as he glanced back at the thin spread of dry clay on the slide.
Jacob warred with his own conscience for a moment, and then remembered his grandchildren. The ones the general had threatened to shoot them himself if he didn't give him his best work. The war didn't last long.
"If I'm right, we might be able to devise a way to sap the woman's energies, be it magic, or whatever, from the female's body. If I'm right, that leaves nothing but an inanimate, clay stature behind.
"After all, all the reports we have indicated she was already weak when first found. That implies she not only might, but can lose her power. And if it happened once, then it can happen again."
The general's smile spread slowly across his thin, almost skeletal features. He was a man that looked as if he enjoyed deprivation. Maybe he did. "And if you could drain that energy from the bitch," Thomas Billings smiled coldly, having little use for women in general as any true misogynist did, "You could theoretically infuse it back into another host afterward. Right?"
"I don't honestly know.
"I'm still calculating the time, factors, and energies involved in the apparent decay of these samples from living tissue to dry earth in the time frame presented since they were first taken.
"If my speculations are correct, I might be able to devise a theory as to what manner of radiation, or power, fuels the host, and how it could be….manipulated. It might even give us an indication as to the true nature of whatever 'gods' gave her those powers in the first place."
"Consider the last a command, doctor. It's not enough to simply neutralize one of them. We need an agent that can stand up against the other.
"So far, we have nothing.
"I want that weapon, and you will make it for me.
"Just remember what happens do you fail," he spat as he turned to leave the lab. "And next time you contact me, I expect more from you than a few samples of common earth."
Jacob sighed as he watched the man leave, and shook his head.
Pompous ass, he thought, but did not dare voice aloud.
He had no wish to hurt anyone. Let alone a woman that had apparently suffered enough just coming to their world from all he had heard. For even he could guess there was a lot of gaps in the clinical reports made available to them, and the reality that woman must have faced before she was rescued by her super-powered companion. Still, he had no way of contacting anyone outside the lab to warn them. No way to reach anyone that might be able to help them. If only he did. But who could help him? Especially here, in whatever prison that maniac had locked him, and his team in, determined to overturn his scandalous resignation for his role in the fiasco that first revealed to the world that there were heroes, real heroes, alive and well on Planet Earth.
If only he could reach someone….anyone….He might be able to warn someone.
To warn them.
S
Bruce had his cowl back as he ran the information through his powerful supercomputers that had covert access to date from all over the globe. Fate had found nothing of a mystical nature when he had investigated, so far as he could tell. Considering he was likely the most powerful mystic in his acquaintance, that was saying something. He had already guessed as much when he spoke with Harbinger after doing the usual prerequisite, and polite banter with the Amazon queen. All in vain, for the woman had nothing she could tell him.
All she knew was that Clark and Diana were beyond her sight. The gods, she added, were simply silent on the matter. As usual.
The implication, however, was that they were alive, but simply some place that kept even her arcane sight from penetrating whatever barriers masked them to see where they were, and what was being done to them. J'onn later confirmed her words were true, not that he didn't trust her.
Well, perhaps to a degree.
More promising were the reports back from Wally, and Nate. Both reported finding an odd sensation they couldn't explain. Nate was more forthcoming in stating he had sensed a small tear in the spatial continuum that had not quite healed even after all this time. He was reluctant to explore it further, and he explained bluntly that he had no idea what trying to probe the semi-healed rift might do to him, or the world around him. He mentioned quantum super-positioning, which implied that an infinite array of possibilities that existed simultaneously beyond the realm perceived might be involved, and to simplify the theory, that only by seizing on one as the most immediate reality did one perceive that reality.
He suspected that something, or someone, had shattered the dimensional probabilities, and drawn their companions into any one of those infinite realities beyond their own. He simply couldn't begin to track them, or attempt to probe that rift without causing some unanticipated calamity they did not wish to come about if he were wrong.
Still, Nathan's certainty that there was a path beyond their world bolstered Batman's own beliefs.
Pooling their collected data, except for John's report as the Lantern had yet to return, he was now running all possible scenarios through his computer, and reexamining every conclusion himself. If there was anything to find, he would find it. If there was any chance, however remote, of bringing their missing teammates back, he would take it.
He would not allow himself to rest until he was certain one way or the other that his colleagues were safe.
He just hoped the Guardians were more forthcoming than usual, and could, or would help them.
Wherever they were now.
S
Clark hovered over the floundering ship Diana had pulled into the Spanish harbor just before he arrived, and waited for her to return from reporting to the officials on the scene who viewed the ship with some suspicion due to the recent rash of terrorist bombings in their nation the previous week.
"You handled that well," he told her as she hovered in the air, using the air currents as easily as she had ever done now that her powers had been restored in the new world they had come to only recently.
"Do you think so," she asked.
He gave her a faint smile, understanding her frustration as she hovered in the air before him as she waited for her aircraft to circle back toward her.
"I wanted to bash in their thick, empty skulls," she admitted. "Calling me a whore for showing myself to men without proper covering."
"They were a part of our world, too, Diana," she was told as she slipped down into the cockpit as her aircraft slowed just enough as it neared her to allow her to board.
"I know that, Clark," she told him before the cockpit slid closed, switching to the comlink frequency they shared again thanks to Dr. Chang's cleverness in adapting their old Justice League transponders to a new communications system. "It's just…..they were grateful enough to be saved when I first showed up.
"Only the moment we reached shore, and other witnesses, they turned back to that patriarchal nonsense most men seem to enjoy using as a hammer to keep down women on…..
"Well, on almost every world I've ever visited as yet," she huffed moodily when she caught his expression.
"I understand how you feel, Diana.
"But isn't that why your gods sent you here? To help show these people that they, women included, can be so much more? To give them a chance to learn what you've been teaching so admirably, and so well for years back home?"
She sighed, and smiled up at him where he flew alongside her aircraft, and then laughed.
"You still see the good in everything, don't you," she accused him lightly.
"I try."
"Maybe that's why you ended up here, too?"
"Your gods didn't say?"
"The gods are very good at not saying things even while addressing you in the floweriest of speeches," she admitted, not wishing to burden him with the fact he was taken as purposely as she.
"I had noticed," he grinned as they turned back toward their island, remembering a few less than welcome encounters he had experienced at her side when her gods were involved.
"Listen, Clark," she suddenly blurted, deciding she couldn't duck the matter forever. "There is something I have been wanting to discuss with you."
"You can talk to me about anything, Diana," he told her. "You know that."
"I know," she replied. "You can, too, Clark."
"I'm fine," he assured her.
"You haven't said much about….your wife."
Clark sobered, his smile fading as they flew on, the island within sight now.
"There isn't much to say, is there," he asked her pointedly. "You told me it had been nine years since I….left even before you had disappeared.
"Who knows how the time lapse works here, or how much time has passed now. Even Lois wouldn't wait forever, and I wouldn't expect her to have to do so."
"Clark….."
"It's all right, Diana. I have accepted it."
"Of course you have," she drawled.
"Well, I am working on it," he replied with a faint smile.
"So am I, Clark," she told him with a wry expression. "So am I."
They flew on without speaking for a time.
Then the next call for her inevitably sounded over their comlinks.
S
"If I am right, they will have left a definitive energy signature that can be traced through the dimensional walls to whatever…..place or time they were taken," Bruce told Robin as he studied the data flowing over the computer screens before him in endless loops. "It's just a matter of detecting the pattern, and then using it to track whatever force….." "It's a matter of going blind if you keep staring at that crap much longer," the teen hero told him, grabbing the arm of his chair to spin the brooding man around. "And don't forget, we still have Bane out there tearing up Gotham again."
"I haven't forgotten him. He's a minor annoyance, at best.
"He will hit the diamond exchange tonight, and that is where we will catch him. In the meantime….."
"In the meantime, get some rest, because starting at the squiggly lines, and flashing lights is going to drive you nuts. As I'm sure Alfred will agree," Robin added as he caught sight of the ever dapper manservant as he descended into the cave with a covered tray of hot food with an uncanny grace and dignity in spite of his advancing age.
"Actually, Master Drake, I've long since given up commenting on the deplorable state of my employer's mental state."
"Funny," Bruce growled. "I didn't know you were a comedian, Alfred."
"Whatever made you think I was joking, sir," Alfred asked with deadpan aplomb.
"Fine, fine. I'll give it a rest. As soon as I set the scan to alert me whenever….." "Eat. Rest. I can handle the tech stuff. Remember?" Bruce stared at Tim, shook his head, and nodded. "I know. Just….make sure you keep the variables in mind when….."
Tim's stern stare cut him off, reminding him that the younger man had a streak of steel in his own spine when he wished to use it. He chuckled quietly, rubbed a hand over his whiskered chin, and said, "Well, I could use a shave, too.
"I don't think the city is ready for a bearded Batman."
"Heaven, forbid," Alfred drawled as he pointedly handed the tray to Bruce before he could pass.
S
Thomas ignored the press that hounded him of late.
Ever since the president had assigned that bitch that had snitched on them in the first place as the first ambassador to those aliens, he had heard nothing but bad news. Bad enough he had to publicly apologize for being a patriot, or so he viewed it. He even had to step down, and give his command to a man with less than half his experience, and none of his drive. A man that would rather compromise, and excuse America's enemies than face them with resolve.
Men like that made him sick.
These unnatural foreigners made him sick.
He wasn't finished, though. Not just yet.
You didn't serve your country as long as he had without making friends, or establishing contacts that could be used even after you were forced out of your career. He had been using his own not inconsiderable wealth to finance the setting of traps all across the globe for the two would-be champions for weeks now, but so far, all he had done was allow them to garner more praise, and more favorable media coverage.
They simply did not seem to have any limitations on their powers.
Even the female had grown in power and ability to the point she was now flying, and tossing around armored vehicles like kiddy cars. All his tests indicated they had likely yet to even show the true potential of those powers as they proved more than a match for anyone, or anything thrown at them to date.
He was beginning to think even a tactical nuke might not stop these aliens.
Not a good thing from his perspective.
And it had cost him out the ass, on top of using up a lot of favors to get those tissue samples out of the lab down on the Clinton.
Still, if the head geek had really found something, he might not only be able to neutralize the bitch, he could take her powers for himself. Powers he could use to become a true American champion, put down that pretentious clown in long underwear, and then take care of his country's enemies once and for all.
Yes, he could do all of that.
He just had to ensure his science boys were properly motivated.
Maybe an execution, he mused solemnly.
Nothing like a public execution to motivate those soft-hearted liberal sorts that felt everyone should just throw down their weapons, hold hands, and sing happy songs. As if that were all that was needed to change the world.
Morons. Worse. Hippies.
He sneered at the thought of those useless, drugged-out zombies that had grown up to infiltrate the country with their filth and nonsense at virtually every level. Bad enough they had spit on brave soldiers when they were young. Now they were turning the country into a weak-kneed socialist copy of itself that was afraid to even speak up for itself any longer. Even their liberally minded offspring weren't worth the cost of a bullet to put them down.
Well, he'd fix them all.
He'd show them true power, and set his beloved country back on the straight and narrow. And he would start by getting rid of those so-called heroes who didn't even have the guts to act like real Americans, if that was what they wanted to be.
After that, the sky was the limit he mused privately with a secretive smirk. He could even take the White House, and show the country what a strong, determined man of principle could do with the power of right on his side.
He'd show the world.
To Be Continued…….