Chapter 19: That Sinking Feeling

The link was working exactly according to plan. Via the connection with the former Hawkgirl, the magicians could all collectively sense a picture of what was happening insidethat energy cloud. It was certainly an interesting picture, but this wasn't the time for sightseeing.

Especially when, through the link, they all felt the presence of the Leaguers trapped in there already. Separate, distinct presences.

It had worked. So far.

"Everyone, we must work together," Doctor Fate was quick to announce to the rest of the bunch around him. He was the most powerful of them all, therefore he lead this effort. But no matter how powerful he was, facing so many unknowns as they were with this mind-stealing energy cloud he knew that they dare not split duties. It would take all of them working together to ensure that they could pull this off. With there being so many stolen minds in that cloud counting on them, they would do everything possible to help them pull this off. Still, despite all the pressure on them and him in particular, Fate had spoken with such great calmness. "We must take one of them out of there. It is a tough ask, but we have to use one of them as a test subject to make sure the extraction works as well as the insertion."

"Then take Batman," Zatanna was quick to speak up. For some, it seemed to be a little too quick.

"Is it your brain your thinking with with that choice, or something else?" Etrigan growled. Zatanna was quick to flash him a glare worthy of the man in question.

"You of all of us should know that Batman would be the first of them up there to volunteer to do this!" she snapped. "And he's the one of all of the Leaguers up there most like the hundreds of people from this city we also have to save! We have to know that this'll work for all of the people up there! Admit it, Jason, Batman is the logical choice. Everything else is irrelevant."

"Zatanna is correct," Fate stepped in before the argument could carry on at all. "Everyone, listen to me. Batman is our target. He is the one we shall extract first. Let's make sure that we do it right, that he makes it out in one piece, and that it is safe for the rest to follow him. Concentrate now, all of you. Time is not our friend today, and neither we, nor Batman, can afford for us to make any mistakes here."

She continued to ignore the situation that was so engrossing so many others, despite the rumours that were circulating through the medical bay around her. Dr. Susan Conway's duty was first and foremost to her patients and, as long as she had some, there was nothing in second place. The danger to the world was irrelevant next to the care those patients of hers deserved.

But no matter how focussed Conway was on her job, she never liked to see more work coming her way. That only meant someone else was in a dire state. And that was exactly what Conway was faced with now as a pair of the Watchtower's civilian staff surged through the door.

Carrying an unconscious Shayera Hol between them.

Conway didn't need to hear any explanations to recognise the symptoms. She had been looking at the exact same set for hours now from the other four. That energy thing, whatever it was, had claimed another leading member of the Justice League.

"Get her on the bed!" Conway quickly instructed the two men before addressing her nurses, already bustling over into position herself. "We need to hook her up like the others, stat! We need to... We nee..."

But she never finished that sentence, trailing off midstream. Something else had just caught her attention, something important enough to take Conway's focus off her latest patient.

"See to Shayera!" Conway barked out the command to her head nurse. "Just do exactly what we did for the rest! You two, with me. Looks like Batman might need us!"

For Batman's heart monitor had changed in its tone. That was what had caught Conway's attention. And she had instantly recognised the signs. They just needed to be checked to make sure they weren't a false hope, that they weren't just the start of a major crash and burn.

It seemed Batman was starting to awaken.

He had all the medical sensors and life support kit ripped from his body before the medical staff could finish the job themselves, before his eyes had fully opened even. As soon as he felt himself awakening, Batman knew at least the gist of what had happened. He had somehow been ripped out of the cloud. He was back in his body again, and from what he had heard in those first seconds he had quickly deduced exactly where he was.

But what Batman knew more than any of that was that this wasn'tthe place where he needed to be.

"Batman, please, you need to re–!" one of the doctors – Conway from the sound of it – began to protest, but Batman wasn't even going to listen to her for a second. Instead he was already leaping from his hospital bed, marching away immediately towards the command centre. He didn't allow himself to even pause to look at the other cots in the medbay. The doctor's could surely continue with their medical care without his attention. He didn't even pause to check on Diana. The urge to look across at her was strong, especially as he was struck by the oddest sensation of practically being able to feel her still in the cloud, still fighting.

But he had to remember those eight months of training. He had to remember the bigger picture beyond Wonder Woman. He had to remember he had a whole world to save, as well as her.

"Batman to Superman. Respond. Now!"

The battle was fully raging again, the battle that they just could not find a way to win. The only weapon they had that worked was unusable – it could kill as many as it saved. But lives were still at stake. Many countless lives. Lives which couldn't be given up on. They would just have to do everything that they could and hope, desperately hope that the others could pull off the plan. They could only continue to unleash every one of their collective powers that they had to try and slow down that cloud's rampage down.

They could only keep on fighting the good fight. That was what Superman had been doing for years. Unless the unthinkable ever happened, that was what he would keep on doing for years.

He simultaneously blew out icy breath and blasted heat vision at the cloud as it began to sling another deadly tentacle towards the city. With his enhanced hearing Superman could already hear the screams of anticipated pain. However, he knew he couldn't let it become true hurt, become death. He wasn't the only one determined to stop that from happening either. Every Leaguer with the ability to make a difference was around him trying to do exactly that. Green Lantern's ring was forming a barricade to try and block the tentacle. Captain Atom was unleashing highly directed radiation away from any frozen part of the cloud, hoping that it would weaken the thing's power and enable the others to block the energy. Red Tornado was trying to simply blow the cloud away with his winds. Dr. Light, Booster Gold, Stargirl and many others, they were all trying something too.

They had to. The cloud had already struck the city once. An entire skyscraper had fallen, along with all the lives housed within it. GL and Shayera had only just avoided that devastating energy themselves en route to getting the Thanagarian inside the cloud, but there had been no saving the people in the tower. The cloud had used its built up energy, twisting it into devastation. No longer was it just attempting to absorb minds. Now it was undoubtedly intent on destroying them. Now it was overpowering itself, turning those tentacles into lightning rods of death. It was throwing so much energy into everything it hit it literally shook them apart, be it metal, glass or flesh.

It was evil, destruction incarnate. It had to be stopped.

Thankfully, in putting so much power into its attack it had weakened its defence. With so much energy being put into the tentacles, into its targets, it didn't have as much energy to throw into holding the Justice Leagues' attempts at bay. It took all of them, all of their combined effort, but they had found they could do it.

The combination of everything they were throwing at that tentacle worked. It was halted only fractions away from the city, deflecting away as if from an invisible barrier, whimpering back to the main body of the cloud. But it was halted.

The problem was that the next blast was following only seconds later. Constantly. The Justice League were doing everything they could, stopping every attack that they could, but Superman knew that they weren't all fast enough. He might have been able to cover the entire city in the blink of an eye. With the speed of light on there side, GL, Booster and Dr. Light might have been able to do likewise. But they couldn't all manage it. One of these times the cloud would be able to strike the city again before the League could stop it. Any moment know, it was almost certain that more people were about to die.

As he sent more heat vision and ice breath at yet another tentacle, Superman was silently cursing the silence over his commlink. He needed to hear from either Fate or Mr. Terrific. He needed to hear that the people who were taken in that cloud were being freed, that they were safe. He needed to hear that Batman, Wonder Woman and all the others were safe. He needed to hear that the magicians had the cloud weakened.

He needed to hear that the time had come when they might actually be able to drive it away.

He needed to hear that the time had come when he could save his city.

But that wasn't what he heard. It wasn't a message from Fate that rang through his ears. Instead it was an altogether different voice, a very familiar voice. A very dark voice, a dark voice that it was such a relief to hear alive and well.

"Batman to Superman. Respond. Now!"

"Batman, its Superman! You're all right! Where are you? What's–?"

"There's no time for any of that! Listen to me. You have to stop what you're doing. You have to leave Diana and the rest exactly where they are."

"What?" Superman could hardly believe his ears. "Batman, I don't know what you've heard but that's our only way of stopping this before Metropolis fal–!"

"Dammit, listen! What you're doing won't work in time. We have a better plan. Stop Fate. Now, or Metropolis is doomed. I'm on my way down, I'll explain everything, but you have to trust me. Trust Diana, Flash, J'onn. Shayera. Stop Fate, and we can stop this! Superman, stop him now!"

Batman's voice was forceful, determined, without any doubts. He truly believed that what he was saying was right. And no matter where he had just been, Superman was sure that Batman would be thinking clearly. That said, Batman was suggesting that they give up what they had been sure was their only hope. He was saying that what they had been fighting for would lose them everything. Superman couldn't believe it. He just couldn't. But he also had trust. He trusted his friends. He trusted Bruce.

It was time for another leap of faith. It was time to show that trust.

"Superman to Dr. Fate," he quickly switched channels. He didn't have to hang up on Batman. Batman had already gone, clearly already convinced that he had done enough with a self-assurance only Batman could have.

"Go ahead Superman," Fate's voice returned, a note of irritation in his usually constantly calm tones. "Please make it quick. I must get back to the enchantments if we're to –"

"I need you to stop, now!" Superman instructed. "There's been some new information. Despite what you think, what we're doing won't work. We have to stop. We have to have faith."

"I'm sorry, I don't understand," Fate was quick to counter. "If we stop now then everything will be doomed! We mu–!"

"Fate, I can't explain now, we just have to stop," Superman answered before Fate could even finish. "I know that you've got Batman clear, but we have to leave Shayera, Wonder Woman, Flash and J'onn where they are. Apparently they have their own plan, a better plan. Apparently they're our only real hope. Fate, please. Stop the spells. We have to trustthem."

The line was silent for a while. Then came just a few short words that confirmed Fate had gotten the message, before that line went completely dead. "I hope you know what you're doing."

Needing to help block another attempted strike on the city by the cloud meant Superman couldn't respond aloud, but it did heighten his feelings about what his response would have been.

"I hope I do too. I hope Batman does. I hope this plan of his will work.

"I hope our friends in the cloud can save us all."

This day just kept getting weirder and weirder. The Imperium. She was fighting bloody Imperium again. Shayera knew that the explanations behind thisone would be a corker, but she wasn't sitting around waiting for that. There was a fight to be had, and Shayera Hol was going to have it. Heavens knew she had enough rage built up, courtesy of a certain indecisive ex-marine.

Her mace pounded through another pair of the alien soldiers, smashing them apart into chunks of gloop, though it was gloop that was soon beginning to combine where it fell. At least it was doing until the rapidly moving feet of the Flash sped right through it, his fists crashing through a pair of Imperium soldiers who had been closing in on Shayera's back.

Shayera might not have known what was going on in there, but she still knew that they were vastly outnumbered, to the degree that even with all their abilities and skill they had no right to win this one. By all rights the Imperium should be surrounding the four of them, unleashing the barrages from their weapons, cutting them all down. But the aliens weren't doing that. They couldn't.

Because they could not see. Channels of light had them blinded, separated, making it ever the more possible for Shayera and the Flash to engage the Imperium. Making it ever the more possible for them to win.

With a brief second on her hands, Shayera dared to glance back to where she had joined this party. She didn't need to see the intense concentration on both Wonder Woman and J'onn's faces to understand that somehow the two of them were responsible for the light shield that was giving them such a good chance; the simple fact that the two weren't in the fight proved that. What she didn't understand was the importance of it, why they had to stand and fight here, instead of carrying out the plan that Fate had sent her in here to complete. What was it that the guys in here had been up to before she had arrived? Now that was a question Shayera really fancied hearing the answer to soon.

But it too would have to wait. She tore her eyes back from her two friends, back onto the search for new targets. In a flicker of motion she was in the air again, mace ready for another devastating blow on these Imperium fiends, regardless of how and why they were here. The rest, whatever it was, she would leave to J'onn and Diana.

There was still a fight to be had, and she would have it.

Every day her respect for Batman seemed to grow. Every day she got more impressed with how he managed to do what he did without any kind of powers to help him out. Today that was happening more than ever.

Wonder Woman's mind was racing. An epic battle was being waged in there. There was the fight to simply create the light, the shroud that was the key to inspiring the Martians into helping them save the world. J'onn still hadn't given the word. He still hadn't received any signal that the Martians were now willing to help them drown the cloud in the ocean and buy them the time to save the world. Hera, for all Wonder Woman knew they might not have even begun to convince the Martians they didn't need to be afraid any more yet. But this would work. She was sure of it. And so she had to make that light, and she had to keep it effective. Everything counted on it.

But that was only half the battle. There was also the fight to keep her mind free of distraction. She was finding out for herself just how much concentration was needed for a single mind to have such an effect on the environment in here, particular one without the strengths of telepathy. Thank Hera she had the goddesses to give her strength and wisdom. She was only just about managing to succeed in giving J'onn enough to work with. The distractions certainly were plentiful. Even the simple urge to join the actual fight needed restraining. The urge to explore that odd connection she felt with Bruce when she had been sure she had felt him awaken took far more effort to keep at bay. No matter what she knew, no matter what Shayera had said, no matter how hard she fought, with all the inexplicable things that were going on, Wonder Woman couldn't help but worry about Batman. Ignoring the chance to put those worries aside was damn near impossible. She didn't know how she managed it.

All she knew was that she had to. The light had to remain in place. She had to give Shayera and Flash the chance to win this. They were certainly doing that, but that meant nothing. Things could change quickly, very quickly. She couldn't allow that to happen. She had to put in place the means to strike fear into the Imperium, the means to inspire the Martians, the means to save the world.

With Batman gone, she had to. However long it took. It was her job. Everything else, no matter how important it was to her, would have to wait.

Everything. Even Bruce.

Despite the unwanted interruption, the plan was back on track. Despite all that was racing through his head, J'onn still had enough spare concentration to recognise that they were still winning. It was working.

That was the message that J'onn made absolutely sure his fellow Martians were hearing. It was working. The Imperium aren't worth truly fearing if you dare to stand up to them. Dare.

As he knelt there, beside the clearly concentrating Wonder Woman, J'onn kept transmitting that message telepathically. He just hoped that the other Martians were listening.

It was working. The Imperium aren't worth truly fearing if you dare to stand up to them. Dare.

M'vall heard that loud and clear. She didn't need J'onn to repeat it to her. She heard it well enough the first time. All the rest of the Martians around her clearly did too.

She had remained silent still, even as things could well have come undone. Admittedly she had expected all of the groups efforts to fall apart when the Bat Man's mind left the cloud. She had expected that to be the moment when the plan became incomplete, when J'onn and the humans would die. She had expected that to be the moment when the fear of the Imperium that she had felt for centuries would be proven wise.

But it was actually the moment when she was proven wrong. When the Wonder Woman took the Bat Man's place, M'vall saw to the full what these people were, who they were. She saw their determination to stop the cloud, and she saw that they could stop it.

It was the moment when even the strongest of opinions and terrors crumbled. It was the moment when M'vall could suddenly not deny that J'onn J'onzz had been right. It was the moment that she realised that the Martians couldn't hide any more. It was the moment that she realised that the risks to their lives were worth it for what it could mean to billions of others.

It was the moment that M'vall M'jolnyk decided to take a stand, the time to test how strong their telepathy made them in this cloud. It was the time for her to try and save this planet by drowning the cloud as J'onn and his friends desired.

And all of the other Martians would be going with her, M'vall had no doubts about that. The Martians, the great pacifists, were going to war.

Boy there were a lot of these guys. An awful lot. But there was also an awful lot of that light that Wondy was now throwing everywhere.

At the speed that Flash was running, there wasn't time to pick out the gaps in the brightness, and there especially wasn't time to stop and count the bad guys. But he didn't have to. Bats had made his job in all this perfectly clear. He just had to fight the badguys, and thanks to that light, he could do that to his heart's contempt. At the best of times it was ridiculously hard for someone to shoot him. Now that they couldn't even see him to try and aim, it was surely impossible. All Flash had to be aware of was a stray, lucky blast. Keeping his eyes open for any need for a sudden dodge, Flash just kept running.

And kept punching every Imperium that he came close to.

He was the forward battering ram of the fight too. First Wondy and then Shayera were there to keep the light-makers covered, freeing him up to attack full on, particularly as he was so suited to the conditions. Still, Flash wasn't completely unaware of his surroundings. He might not have reacted to it but he had noticed that moment when Bats disappeared and Shayera showed up. It was safe to say that he was wondering what the hell was going on, but he was too busy turning alien soldiers to mulch to ask questions. He just had to get on with it and worry about his friends later, had to trust in them to look after each other while he looked after them all collectively. And so he had just got on with his job, got on with his almost endless fight.

But this time was different. This time he saw far more arrivals, an army of them.

And exactly the arrivals they all needed. The plan wasn't only working, phase one had just been completed.

This Flash had to stop and watch.

Wonder Woman continued to fight, continued to concentrate hard, continued to make the light. She might not really have been able to see it, but she could certainly hear the sounds of battle, particularly Shayera's ongoing war crys. But none of that broke her vital concentration.

However, the next moment something happened that did. Luckily, it was also something that meant that it didn't matter.

Several times now they had witnessed the Imperium soldier's emerge from nowhere, looking almost as if they had grown from the ground, clearly using the power of the cloud to traverse it at incredible speed. Apparently they weren't the only ones to know how to pull off such a trick.

The Martians knew it too.

They had done it. The cavalry had arrived. And there were a whole lot of them. Nowhere near the numbers of the Imperium, but plenty. And with their telepathic strength, that ought to be enough. Already they were proving their power. Wonder Woman could feel the pressures being taken from her mind. The Martians had taken over making the light, or some of them anyway.

"Quickly," J'onn addressed them as soon as they appeared, leaping upright. Wonder Woman matched the action. Immediately she was at a crossroads. Now that she was no longer needed here mentally, she wanted to go and join Shayera and Flash in the fight, but she also knew that she needed to be here to make sure the Martians did this according to plan. As for J'onn, well he just seemed to be having to fight from showing how glad he was that his people had had a change of heart. "The cloud is attempting to destroy a city of this world, not just absorb it. But the city is beside a vast ocean. If we sink the cloud into that ocean, we will save lives, and drive the Imperium away from us. We need to sink the cloud now."

One of the Martians stepped forward, standing directly face to face with J'onn, looking him right in the eye. Clearly this one was the leader. For an unbearable second she just stared at J'onn before speaking blissful words. "We have received your message J'onn J'onzz. We now understand. We are here to help, and we shall follow your lead. Let us save this planet."

At that Wonder Woman – and J'onn too – couldn't help but smile. The plan had worked. Already J'onn and his army of fellow Martians' eyes were beginning to glow in concentration. Already Diana could feel as at least one Martian took over creating the wall of light. More importantly, she could feel the tell-tale signs of the cloud significantly moving. It was working.

And she knew that, just as J'onn had said, the Imperium would be fleeing back to where they had their captive humans stored up as batteries, to focus on trying to use their own combined mental powers to undo what the Martians were doing. With all that light the Imperium couldn't do enough to kill the Martians and stop them that way. They would have to go back to the shadows from whence they came.

The plan had worked. Now it was time to watch the fireworks, and maybe create a few more. Wonder Woman took off again, ready to engage the Imperium until they ran, if nothing else than to keep the Martians safe while they – for the moment at least – saved the world.

Nevertheless, even as she acted Wonder Woman's mind now couldn't help but wander. It wandered to Batman, and to his safety following his extraction.

And, at the same time, she wondered what the hell they were going to do next to put a real end to this thing.

Combined as one solid unit, they were still doing absolutely everything that they could to keep the cloud at bay, but likewise it was doing absolutely everything that it could to claim more lives. Still those destructive tentacles were lashing towards the city, using all sorts of tricks from decoys to pure power to try and get around the Justice League's defensive efforts.

But thankfully none had really managed to get through yet. Thankfully together they were holding this thing off. Thankfully no one else had been killed since the fall of that initial tower.

But despite all his own personal efforts against this thing, GL had still noticed as Superman had been distracted by a call over his communicator. More than that, he had been able to listen in, and he had heard it all.

Initially he had just had to hide his joy at hearing Batman's voice, and it wasn't anything really to do with knowing that his friend was indeed still alive. It was knowing that Shayera had made it, knowing that if the magician's had gotten Batman out, then she must have made it safely in. She had made it.

But then he had truly heard Batman's words. He had heard Batman very firmly commanding Superman to stop Fate from extracting anyone else. He had heard Batman essentially consign Shayera, Flash, J'onn, even Diana to the prison of that energy cloud. He had heard Batman completely dismiss the only plan that they had been able to come up with to try and end this thing. That certainly got GL wanting to hear what was going on, especially as Superman complied with Batman's request.

Another attempted attack on the city by the cloud had distracted him from all of that. He had to focus on making a shield of green to try and block the tentacle, while Superman and all the rest unleashed their own respective powers in tandem. It was damn close again, too damn close. The tentacle was only a metre or so from smashing into the streets of the city were a convoy of military personnel were rapidly extracting civilians from a nearby building. The Leaguers were almost caught off guard from the cloud's change of tactics, having focussed on the skyscraper's until then, but thankfully these heroes were not stupid, or slow. They made it, just in time.

GL had been the first to react to the change. His mind was ready, focussed, determined to stop this thing. That meant he was concentrating so much on spotting where the next strike would go that it took him a moment to spot that another attack wasn't coming. In fact, it was more than that. The cloud wasn't only ceasing to attack, it was retreating again, but not skywards this time.

It was sinking, fast and literally. Rapidly the vast energy dropped, falling lower and lower, but that wasn't something to worry about. It wasn't over the city any more. It was over the ocean. It wasn't long before the steam was rising. It wasn't long before the cloud, despite seemingly somewhat fighting itself, began to disappear below the waters.

GL could hardly believe it. Batman had certainly been right when he said they had a plan. This was not the doing of anyone out here. Damn. How the hell had they pulled that off?

GL was only just closing up his low-hung jaw when he heard another call to Superman coming through. It was a few words in before he could draw his eyes off that sinking cloud and onto the Kryptonian to see his reaction.

"Superman – and any other senior Leaguers who ought to listen in – it's Green Arrow. You guys ain't gonna believe this, but Batman's just beamed down here. And from the look on his face, I get the feeling he might want to talk with us all. You better not keep him waiting. Especially if I'm not actually going crazy like I think I must be – did that thing really just kamikaze into the sea?"

There was plenty of disbelief in Green Arrow's voice. GL was certainly feeling plenty of it himself. His eyes darted back across to the cloud as its last vestiges vanished below the waters. Only when it was gone was he turning back to see Superman respond, silently giving him the eyes that they both needed to get down to Green Arrow's position fast.

They had light at the end of the tunnel, even if the route to it was still unclear. They had a real chance at last. They had to take it.

"Arrow, its Superman. Tell Batman we're on our way. And we're very eager to here what on Earth is actually going on here."

A/N:

Kindly review away folks. I do like hearing what you think.

Plenty more of this to come. Stay tuned!