3. Heroes of Earth
There was an expected tension in the air. As many times as Barry had visited the prison in his past world, it never went away. It didn't help that this world's Iron Heights Penitentiary was new to him – a different layout and different guards. And a different father too.
Barry knew it to be the case; his memories showed a man that looked nothing like the father he remembered, but it was one thing to know that and another entirely to see it for himself. The memories that Barry had, for lack of a better word, inherited in this world were still incongruent for him at some level, conflicting with the memories that he originally had. It didn't hurt anymore to think about one set over the other, just… strange. It felt like he almost slipped into a different world, one where he had a slightly different, yet similar personality. The other Barry had lived a life so similar to his, but things had changed enough that they were not the same person.
That raised the question – what happened to the other Barry, the one of this world that had been here before he woke up in his body? Was he alive or dead? Was he in him? Was he in him? Was he even himself anymore, or some multiversal amalgamation of Barry Allens?
The longer he thought about it, the less it made sense to Barry, so he shelved it – for now.
There was movement on the other side of the glass from where Barry was sitting, so he immediately leaned forward, his hand ready to take the phone handle on the side of the glass.
An older man stopped in front of the booth, with an officer behind him that uncuffed him. The man sat down and picked up his phone.
"Barry," Henry Allen breathed out, a smile breaking out on his face. "How've you been? Have you been eating good?"
"Dad," Barry replied, a smile creeping onto his face as well. For some reason, he felt it – the love he had for his father that shared almost no resemblance to the father of his past. This man was older, his hair grayer, his build broader and bulkier, but in essence Barry could feel he was the same man. Or at least, as close to it as the universe would allow. "No, I've been good, yeah."
He wanted to hug his father, but the pane of glass stopped him.
"Are you sure you've been eating? You look thin, kid," Henry noted. "I'm bigger, and I'm in here!"
"Well," Barry wiggled his shoulders slightly, his head bobbing side-to-side, "I've been a little busy, you know. School, coursework, there's this girl I met."
"A girl," Henry nodded. There was a short pause between the men. "Does she make you happy, Barry? Being with her, I mean."
"I… I think so, dad, but honestly, we've only gone on like three dates, max."
Henry raised an eyebrow. "Already losing track of the number of dates? Slow down there, son."
"Heh," Barry chuckled slightly, but his smile fell away quicker than he would've liked. His father's smile likewise did the same. The elephant in the room, of course, was omnipresent. It had been for everyone after the message.
"So…" Henry broached the topic, "aliens."
"Aliens," Barry confirmed.
"They exist."
"Well, Superman was always around, right? And Zo—I mean, the guy on the TV said he was an alien like them."
"You know," Henry admitted, "I guess I never really thought about it like that. Superman was… well, he is Superman. I didn't really consider him different than the rest of us."
Barry swallowed and nervously smiled. "Yeah, that's true."
"Barry, are you okay?" Henry asked, leaning closer to the glass. "I'm serious. Are you okay?"
"I'm just a little worried, I guess. About the whole alien thing."
"I think you'd be insane if you weren't. But I'm not, Barry, and I don't think you should be either."
"Are you going to say it's because of God? Because you know tha—"
Henry laughed, cutting Barry off. "I know, I know. And while I do have my faith that justice will be done, it's not because of that. No," Henry placed a hand on the glass, which Barry reciprocated. "It's because I believe in Superman. I believe that he was sent here for a reason, and that this might be the reason, and I believe that he's a good man that will do what is right and what is needed. And, you know there's all sorts of other heroes out there these days, I hear. There's a lot of good people out there that are going to stand up these guys."
Barry looked down, his hand still on the glass mirroring his father's. "I hope so, dad. I really do." When he looked back up, Henry looked like he was struggling to hold in tears, though his smile remained.
"Next time we talk, Barry, everything will be fine. I feel it in my gut, and it's not just that fishy tuna sandwich we had for lunch."
"Ha," Barry weakly chuckled. "I get it. Because it's actually fishy, right?"
"I always knew you inherited my sense of humor." Henry looked up and to his right for a moment. "Alright, Barry, I've got to go. But next week, right?"
"Yeah, dad, I'll be here."
Henry nodded. "I love you, Barry."
"I love you too, dad," Barry whispered as his father stood and hung up his phone. Henry's hand lifted off the glass, and so did Barry's in response. For a few moments, Henry stared at him through the glass before he turned away with the officer, who promptly re-cuffed in him.
Barry sat there a little longer, the phone still held to his ear, before he sighed, finally hung up his side, and closed his eyes.
It was time for him to get to work.
"Barry, you're late," Bruce noted as Barry entered the small building. It was a warehouse on outskirts of the Port of Gotham owned by Wayne Enterprises, which made it a convenient place to meet up. The billionaire owner of the warehouse was already dressed in his Batman gear—an armored affair compared to what the old Bruce wore, with metal plating and heavy padding—albeit with his cowl off.
"I don't see anyone else," Barry responded, looking around. "Unless everyone's hiding."
"No, you're the second one here." Bruce paused. "After me."
"So how I am late then?"
"If you're not first, you're late."
Barry blinked.
Bruce sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "Barry, you're probably the fastest man alive. You're the 'Flash.' If anyone gets to the scene before you do, you've already failed. You should be first, every time, everywhere."
"Well…" Barry trailed off.
"Did you case the place before you walked in?" Bruce asked.
"Did I what now?"
"Case the place." Bruce walked toward Barry. "You're faster than anyone I know – maybe even faster than Superman. You can look around before you actually come in and no one would be any the wiser. Also, tag – you're it."
"Huh?" Barry questioned. He looked around, then spun around. A red laser dot was spot on the center of his torso. "Oh."
"Oh, indeed," Bruce mirthlessly quoted. "I want you to think about these things, Barry. You have the speed, so use it.They may save your life one day, or the life of someone fighting beside you."
A beeping from Bruce's wrist cut him off, and he quickly checked it. "Showtime," Bruce stated, pulling on his cowl.
Barry just blinked as Superman dove through the skylight of the warehouse and landed gently in the middle of the empty space.
"Hiya, guys," Superman said with a small smile, his hair just slightly askew from flying. A simple comb of his hair with his hand fixed that problem. "Am I early?"
"You're late," Barry said with a smile as he turned to Batman. The Dark Knight gave no response, and Barry promptly turned back to Superman. "No, I'm just kidding, you're actually early."
"You're just on time," Batman finally spoke up.
A giant green hand pushed its way through the warehouse's front doors, and a green-and-black-suited man with a green face mask floated in.
"Okay, that's a lot of green," Barry commented. The floating man's eyes narrowed.
"I told him the same thing," a familiar voice called out. Barry turned to see none other than Arthur Curry, the Aquaman, walk in underneath the floating, green-dressed man. "He didn't appreciate it either."
"Arthur!" Barry cried out, before realizing that he probably shouldn't have. He just couldn't hold it in, though – Arthur's was the first familiar face that Barry had seen since waking up in this world. He looked identical to his counterpart, all the way down to the slightly sour expression that seemed to be permanently stuck on his face.
"Do I know you?" Aquaman asked, his usual gruff tone shining through. "Because I think I would've remembered meeting a weirdo like you."
"Uh, I guess not," Barry sheepishly responded. Despite Arthur's familiar appearance, it didn't seem like this Arthur remembered anything from other worlds. Barry felt himself deflate slightly at that – he had begun to hope that maybe someone out there could remember things. "I'm Barry."
"Hmph," Aquaman snorted, walking past Barry. "Bats. Supes."
"Arthur, good to see you," Superman responded.
"Who's the new guy?" the floating man asked, his green mask facing down at Barry. "He doesn't even have an outfit, unless his whole shtick is 'Hi, I'm Barry the Regular Man' or something like that."
"Oh!" Barry exclaimed. He focused for a moment, feeling the familiar sensation of the Speed Force just outside the realm of reality as he knew it with his five senses for the first time since arriving in this world. Grinning, he pressed his ring open and let it rip, feeling the sensation of pure speed as the world grinded to a halt around him. Absentmindedly as he put on his outfit, he noticed Superman's eyes slowly but steadily tracking him, so he flung up his regular clothes in front of him where they froze in mid-air between them and resolved to remain facing the opposite direction.
A burst of lightning later and he came to a stop, letting the excess lightning dissipate around him.
"Better?" Flash asked, looking up at the floating man.
"Show-off," mister green-lover scoffed. He came down to Barry's level and extended a hand. "I'm Hal Jordan – Green Lantern."
"Barry Allen, the Flash," Barry introduced himself, taking Hal's hand.
"That's a fairly apt name," Green Lantern admitted.
As is your own. You've certainly got a lot of… green."
"You haven't seen the half of it. I've got an actual green lantern back at home that I use to charge the ring." Green Lantern held up his right hand in a fist, letting Barry see a silver ring with an inset stylized green lantern on its face.
"Huh."
If you're done with the meet and greet," Batman's gruff voice called out from behind them, and the two superheroes turned to see the other three men gathered in a half-circle facing them, "then we can begin."
"Right," Flash nodded. "Sorry."
Batman placed a small device at the center of their circle and activated it, projecting a translucent hologram in the air. Flash felt that nervous tension return, that unsolvable knot reform as the projector showed the three-legged Kryptonian ship.
"The threat we face is a ship of Kryptonians," Batman began.
"Kryptonians?" Aquaman asked. "What the heck is a Kryptonian?"
"I'm a Kryptonian," Superman said, arms crossed as he looked at the Kryptonian ship's hologram.
"Oh," Aquaman intoned. "Oh."
"If you'll let me finish," Batman interjected, with a slight amount of tension in his voice. "As I was saying, a Kryptonian ship is currently in orbit. Thanks to confirmed intel, we know that the leader of the forces, General Zod, is currently parked in orbit above the Mojave." He clicked a button on his wrist, which switched the hologram from the three-legged Kryptonian vessel to a geographic map of the western United States. "The military has already setup an encampment near that location."
"Zod wants me," Superman sighed. "Which means I have to surrender myself to him. We don't want to fight if we don't have to."
"I don't like that plan," Green Lantern spoke up. "What's the guarantee that he won't just wipe us off the face of the Earth once he's done with Superman? I say we face him head-on and take our chances with the rest of the ship."
"I—I don't think we should do that," Flash said, causing four heads to turn toward him. "Zod's a powerful guy, and I don't know if we can beat him and his army."
"His army?" Aquaman's eyes narrowed. "What do you know about this Zod?"
"Flash is one of our sources of intel," Batman intervened. "He gathered crucial intel for us before this meeting. I trust his information." He looked at Barry, who nodded nervously in relief.
"If Batman trusts him, then that's good enough for me," Superman concurred, also softly smiling at Barry. "But that doesn't solve the issue of how we're going to face Zod and his people."
"I can gather some of my best warriors," Aquaman said, "and we can bust in his front door on that ship of his."
"An army… they're all Kryptonians, man," Green Lantern shook his head. "Do you really want to fight an army of Supermans?"
"I thought you wanted to face him head-on a minute ago," Aquaman indignantly replied. "Now you want to kneel before him?"
"A minute ago, I didn't know that Zod had an entire army of Kryptonians behind him. That changes everything!"
"It changes nothing," Batman's firm voice echoed out, silencing dissent and reasserting control. "Our objective remains the same – we're here to defend Earth, and that means that we need to do whatever it takes to defend Earth."
Green Lantern shook his head slightly. "I don't know. I don't know if we can fight this guy, and I don't know whether we should. Look, I'll fight, but what you're proposing is a suicide mission if you just want to run into Zod and go toe-to-toe. The only one of us here that can do that is Superman, and we've only got one of him. We don't even know how many Kryptonians he's got on that ship or what kind of weapons they have either. Hell, we don't even know how to get into the ship to find out!"
"Sometimes, the easiest way in is through the front door," Batman cryptically said.
"I… have no idea what you mean," Green Lantern admitted.
"When Superman goes to meet Zod this afternoon, the rest of us will be waiting in the wings. The Kryptonians' attentions will be focused on Superman, which gives us a window to get into that ship."
"And why do we want to get into the spooky alien ship?" Aquaman asked, both hands held on his trident in front of him. "Sounds like a death trap to me."
"Because we need to understand what the Kryptonians are planning before we can stop it," Flash said explained. This was the part that he had already rehearsed with Bruce earlier. "Sabotage, espionage – we need to be onboard to do that."
"And having a man or two onboard to help Superman if things go south won't hurt either," Batman followed up.
"Well, it sounds like it might hurt a lot – for the guy who gets onboard."
Batman glared at Aquaman for a moment before he continued speaking.
"The plan goes like this: Superman will greet Zod on the ground where the military has setup their designated checkpoint. If the Kryptonians use a dropship to pick him up like they did when they communicated with the military, then Flash will sneak onto the ship before they take Superman onboard. If they don't, we will still have Lantern in the air waiting to sneak in from below. That way, we get two bites at the apple."
"And what if something goes wrong. Say I get shot down before I can get onboard," Lantern said, "or Flash gets caught onboard the hypothetical dropship. What are we supposed to do then?"
Batman sighed. "Only what we can do – try not to get caught, talk first if you do get caught, and fight only as a last resort. On the off chance that Zod isn't trying to pull anything on us yet, we should still play it by ear cautiously. We don't have enough information yet, so we take it slowly and steadily until we do."
"And what am I supposed to do in all this?" Aquaman spoke up. "Zod and the military are in the middle of a freaking desert and I'm more of an aquatic kind of guy, as you may have noticed."
"You're the backup plan," Batman explained. "If Plan A goes completely wrong, then we need you and your people ready to fight. We need soldiers on both coasts ready to go on a moment's notice."
"Getting Atlanteans to fight for surface-dwellers?" Aquaman snorted. "You'd have a better chance of finding Themyscira than that. I can muster a few people, the ones that I trust the most and are loyal to me, but I won't be able to assemble the Atlantean army for this. Not this quickly."
"You'll have to, Arthur," Batman said, walking toward the King of Atlantis. "You're the only one here that can do that, and your people will need to defend themselves if Zod comes after them – which he will if he intends to wipe out humanity first."
Aquaman pursed his lips. "I'll use that to try and persuade people." He shook his head. "No promises, though. The only thing I can offer you is the hope that maybe this crazy-as-hell plan of yours will work."
Batman clasped a hand on Aquaman's shoulders. "That's all we need."
"Alright," Lantern said, uncrossing his arms. "I'm in. It's a shit plan, I'm probably never going to like it, and it sounds like a surefire way to get killed, but I'm in. I don't want to fight an army of Kryptonians still, but I'm also not going to be the coward here that sits out because he's too scared."
Batman turned to Flash.
Barry bit his lower lip in nervousness. "Yeah, I'll do it. I don't know if I can sneak by Kryptonians because they can move really fast, but I'll do it."
"So, we have a plan," Batman said.
"And we have a team," Superman interjected, looking at the four others. "I believe that matters more."
"The Justice League," Batman continued.
There was a pause.
"The what-now?" Aquaman frowned.
"Yeah, I'm going to have to agree with fish-boy over there," Lantern concurred. "Justice League? Really?"
"Call me fish-boy one more time and I'll make you part of a flyboy shish-kabob," Aquaman responded about as calmly as he could.
"The Justice League," Flash repeated. "I mean, I think it's a pretty neat name." Barry hoped that he was enough to persuade them.
"You've got to be kidding me," Aquaman shook his head. "We're really gonna go around calling ourselves the Justice League?"
"I suppose it could be worse," Lantern muttered. "We could be the Superhero League, or the Do-Gooders. Maybe the Justice Society."
"One of those is not like the others, flyboy," Aquaman replied. "I'd take Justice Society over Justice League any day of the week."
"It's the Justice League," Batman said firmly, his tone leaving no room to broach the topic. "End of discussion."
"Alright, Bats," Aquaman put a hand up in front of him in a show of deference. "You're the boss."
Barry felt a small kindling of hope in his heart – the birth of a little possibility. The possibility that they might not die, that they might succeed where he had failed, that this world would not be like the world that he couldn't save. That Zod wouldn't be the end of humanity like he had been in the other universe. No, in this world, they had assembled the mightiest heroes Earth had to offer, and they were all ready to fight alongside each other for the future of the world.
They had the strength of Clark Kent – the Superman.
They had the mind of Bruce Wayne – the Dark Knight, Batman.
They had the will of Hal Jordan – the Green Lantern.
They had the tenacity of Arthur Curry – the King of Atlantis, Aquaman.
And they had the speed of himself, Barry Allen – the fastest man alive, Flash.
The nexus of possibility and uncertainty for the future.
"We're gonna do great, guys!" Barry exclaimed, unable to contain his excitement and hope.
The four of them turned to him.
"Dude, you need to learn some timing," Aquaman remarked. "Because I think you just ruined the moment."
To Be Continued
Notes:
Barring any unexpected delays, the third and final chapter of "The Last Daughter of Krypton" will be releasing tomorrow - check it out if you haven't yet! It's not essential reading for The Dawn of Justice, but I think that it will augment the experience of the next few chapters with additional backstory and context.
Casting:
Henry Allen: John Wesley Shipp (The Flash, 2014)
Arthur Curry: Jason Momoa (Aquaman)
Hal Jordan: Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick)