"We need a task force at the epicenter," Batman told Superman via video conference a few minutes later.

Damian watched over his mentor's shoulder as the Kryptonian's expression became momentarily annoyed, then smoothed out under a fresh dose of patience. "I don't have anyone to spare from the civilian rescue efforts," he replied gently. "I'm sorry, Batman, but you're going to have to start the search for Nightwing and Red Robin on your own. This is too large of a crisis for me to pull people away from the population centers."

Grayson would come after you, the boy glared behind his mask. It had irked him earlier when he'd first realized that he and Batman were the only ones going after the missing men, but he'd written it off as a minor inconvenience. They didn't need the JLA in order to do what needed to be done, or so it had seemed at the time. To hear a direct request for aid being dismissed, though, brought his upset back to the fore. He'd drop everything and run to the scene if someone else needed his help, especially if it was another JLA member, but no one can be bothered to do the same for him now? This is bullshit.

"You have no idea about the extent of this crisis," the cowled man growled.

Superman glanced off at something off screen, his face now wary. "...What are you talking about?"

"He's talking about the fact that we're sitting on a force field a thousand feet above the ground!" Damian snapped, needing to let some of his anger out. "Is a force field important enough to deserve some of your precious manpower, since their lives obviously aren't?"

"Robin..." Someone screamed out of sight on the other end of the conversation. "...Sorry. It's bad here. But a force field...you must be mistaken."

"He's not," Batman stepped back in. "And I have the scans to prove it. This was not a natural disaster; it was very much man-made, and my guess is that whoever is responsible for it is hiding below. There's no other reason to have a barrier like this over uninhabited country."

There was a long pause. "...You're positive it's a force field? A legitimate force field?"

"Yes."

"Yes!" the boy echoed his counterpart. "Quit boggling and do something!"

"...Hold your position. I'm on my way."

The call blacked out, and a minute passed without a word from either of the plane's occupants. Damian paced in exasperation, every muscle he possessed tensed in anticipation. Maybe he can just punch through it, he thought. Or...or burn through it with heat vision. Could heat penetrate a force field? He wasn't sure, but he didn't see why not. Sunlight had to get through, after all. That should do it. That has to do it.

"He's here," Batman recalled him to the window. Sure enough, a red-caped figure was standing in mid-air a few dozen feet away. It was clear that he wasn't using his powers to maintain his altitude, and as that sunk in a gesture was made for them to join him. "...Let's go."

Without the landing gear down the stairs opened only halfway before coming to rest against the invisible shell with a heavy thunk. Balancing on the edges of the risers, they made their way to the bottom. Batman strode towards the waiting hero as if he was on ordinary ground, but Damian had to pause momentarily before he stepped away from safety. He had swung about without worry at heights like this on plenty of occasions, but walking on air without a lifeline was not a concept he was comfortable with. If the force field gave out suddenly, the only ways he could avoid a swift and splattery death would be to try and grapple back up to the still-running plane or to hope that Superman would catch him, and neither firing at a small target nor owing a debt of gratitude was terribly appealing.

The adults were going to discuss how to deal with the barricade, though, and he couldn't miss that. Drawing a deep breath, he lowered one foot cautiously. It stopped just like it would have if he was on the ground, and some of his fear eased. There was still the risk of it vanishing, but there was nothing he could do about that from on top of it, and for now it was holding his weight with no problem. Chastising himself for his fear, he jogged to catch up.

"Well? Are you convinced?" Batman asked with crossed arms.

"This is impossible," Superman replied, "but...here we are."

"And there they are," a gauntleted finger pointed towards the earth, "somewhere. Nightwing, Red Robin, and whoever is responsible for the quakes here and at the other locations."

"…I suppose it won't help your mood any if I point out that at least they've both dealt with mass murderers before."

"No," the cowled man snarled, "it won't."

"Right. Sorry." He paused. "You're sure they're under here? How much of the trail is covered?"

"The curvature we saw on the lidar and radar maps suggest a dome of approximately thirty miles in diameter. Judging from our current GPS coordinates, that puts roughly the latter sixty percent of their course inside."

"And there's not much chance of them having only covered forty percent of their route in two full days," Superman finished for him. "Okay."

An idea struck the listening boy. "Could the force field let things out, but not in?" he postulated. That would be the clever way to make one, at least to his way of thinking. You could launch attacks without ever risking your seat of power, he strategized. If someone was smart enough to figure out how to make this stupid thing, they must have been smart enough to think of that, too.

Batman's lips thinned. "If it does, we have an even more serious problem on our hands than we think. Our own people haven't gotten anywhere near this level just with double-sided repulsion; if someone with sinister intentions has managed to do not only this," he tapped the heel of his boot against the solid sky, "but to have also made it one-sided..."

His shoulders slumped. "...Then we're screwed."

"More or less."

"The question is, who's the someone?" Superman pondered aloud. "We weren't aware of any of the usual suspects working on a project of this nature. It's so easy to detect the amounts of energy that the experiments take that there's no way any of the people we monitor are behind it."

"The real question is, how are we going to get inside and find-" Batman cut off as they were shifted a few centimeters from side to side. Damian suppressed a gasp only with great difficulty, thinking that their permission to treat the atmosphere like a conference room was about to be revoked. After a few seconds the motion stopped, and his heart's panic-pounding slowed.

"...Aftershock," Superman identified the movement. "It probably didn't do too much more damage on the ground," he added.

"We'll know that for sure once we're inside. As I was saying, the real question is how to get there."

"I have a couple of ideas. You might want to wait in the plane, though; if I manage to break through it could shut the whole thing down beneath us."

"Mm," Batman gave a single nod. "Let's go, Robin."

They trekked the short distance back to the half-deployed steps. Damian had never been so happy to have the material beneath his feet be opaque as he was when he lifted himself onto the first riser. Standing beside his father a few seconds later, he watched Superman rise some fifteen feet above the translucent impediment. Then the Kryptonian turned and rocketed back downward, approaching the surface at a right angle with his fists extended for a knockout punch that could have felled a dinosaur.

Both of the figures in the Batplane gave snorts of laughter as he hit the barricade and was sent spinning away. It wasn't truly funny – given the situation it was quite the opposite, in fact – but the moment was so tense as to be primed for comic relief. As soon as he'd contained his amusement Damian was flooded with guilt and disappointment. I didn't mean that, he apologized to no one. I wanted him to get through, I just...it looked funny when he bounced off. That's all.

Batman, the set of whose mouth revealed that he had been wrestling with similar emotions, cleared his throat. "He'll try heat vision next," he spoke grimly. "Step back so I can close the door."

"What? Why? We're on a perfect dome; the reflection is calculable, if it happens." We don't have any time to waste with safety precautions. We need to be ready to go if he gets through.

"Yes, but we're already sitting on top of an impossible object. I don't want to risk there being physics at play that I'm unaware of. The plane can take a shot of his heat vision without faltering; you and I cannot. So step back."

The last sentence was an order, and he obeyed it with a sigh. The steps closed behind them, and they moved to the side windows. As soon as the door latched itself shut, Superman looked downward.

Work, Damian narrowed his eyes at the blockade that he couldn't see. Work, god damn it. I don't even care if it's Kent that breaks through instead of us, so long as someone can get in there.

But it was pointless. Twin beams of concentrated heat acted exactly as their creator had, hitting the force field and ricocheting away into the sky. The attempt went on for only the space of a breath, just long enough for the result to become clear, and then Superman started towards the plane.

The stairs folded back down to meet him. "...I'm sorry," came immediately once he'd reached the top. "There's not much else I can do right now, I'm afraid."

"What about a sustained heat blast?" Batman asked immediately.

"Too risky. It, ah..." His mien became sheepish. "...It wouldn't be the first time I accidentally caused severe weather changes by glaring at the sky. Let's just leave it at that."

"A punch from far away, then," Damian put in. "It might throw you into space if it doesn't work, but you don't break, so..." So do it already.

"That wouldn't be a bad idea," Superman acknowledged kindly, "except that the field has absolutely no give. If I come at it at top speed from even a quarter mile away, there's a chance I could affect Earth's orbit, rotational speed, or both."

"...Oh." The ability to literally punch a planet to a new set of coordinates in the universe was something worthy of respect, and a thread of awe wended its way into his usual disdain for super-humans. He'd known Clark was ridiculously strong, but he hadn't realized just how far that power extended. The man's stock ticked up a couple of points in his head. "Well what, then? We have to do something."

"Mm. We'll check where it meets the ground," Batman ruled unilaterally. Punching the button for the stairs once more, he started towards the cockpit. "We may be able to find something there."

Using constant reads from the lidar, the plane skated along the top of the force field. Their rate of descent was paltry, but twenty minutes after they'd started moving again they were stepping out of the aircraft and onto good ground. There might not have been any guarantee that it wouldn't begin to shake again at any second, Damian mused, but he'd take it over an invisible floor in the clouds any day of the week.

They ranged out along the barrier's edge, but it didn't take long for their endeavor to prove fruitless. Damn it! he cried as the men, their faces darkened by defeat, drew in on either side of him. There were no weak spots that they could find, and the field continued beneath the surface of the earth to a depth of at least several hundred feet. That was all the further down Superman had dug, but it was enough to tell them that tunneling wasn't likely to be a viable option.

A rabbit suddenly emerged from the grass a few yards away. "Look," he pointed it out.

"...What about it, Robin?" Superman frowned.

"If it comes closer we'll know whether or not the field is doubly repulsive," Batman filled in as if it should have been obvious. "Back away and give it space."

They did, but the rabbit didn't seem to notice. It hopped forward, mouthed something up off the ground, then hopped again. On the third leap it halted in mid-air and tumbled backward. After a pause and a twitch of its ears it tried again, with the same result. Finally it took off in the opposite direction, disappearing back the way it had come.

"Well, that answers that. We're stuck out here, and everything in there is...well, stuck in there," Superman assessed.

"Do you believe that we need a task force now?" Batman pressured.

"...Yes. You have your task force."

"About freaking time," Damian muttered. Both adults glanced at him, one wincing, the other almost smirking. There should have been a group here to begin with, and you know it, he raged silently at Superman. Your call earlier was wrong, Kent. Grayson's done far more for you than any civilian ever has. Probably Drake has too, but...anyway, you were wrong not to send people sooner.

"Ah...look, meet me at the Watchtower and we'll get it organized, okay?" the shame-faced Kryptonian suggested. "The closest Zeta point that we know hasn't been compromised is in LA; you'll be able to get there much faster than back to Gotham."

"Right."

"Okay. See you both there." With that he took off, rising towards the gray thunderheads that were beginning to gather.

When they were alone, Damian turned to his father. "...Batman?"

"Yes, Robin?"

"Do you think...we can solve this, right?" It seemed so hopeless, and his morale flagged every time he remembered what it felt like to put one's hand up in mid-air and have it be stopped as if it were against a brick wall. It's just science, he gulped. We're good at that. We can get in there, can't we? There's got to be a way...how long can he…can they…last in there?

Fingers landed on his shoulder, squeezed, and withdrew as quickly as they'd come. "I'm going to do my damnedest, son," a low promise was whispered. "...Now let's go."

"...Okay." Batman started towards the waiting jet, but Damian hesitated. Staring out over the open high plain that had been cut down the middle by something he didn't know how to fight, he sniffled quietly. I lied, Dick, he moaned to himself. I do care. I…I care a lot.

Now, he thought as he turned away, all he could hope was that he'd get a chance to make sure Grayson knew as much.