Chapter 10- Mix Matched Magic

Batman-

Even superheroes need to sleep, so eventually the Justice League was shown to the guest rooms and everyone turned in for the night. Well, almost everyone. J'onn didn't really need to sleep so he went up to the roof to look out over the city. Natasha wasn't going to let her guard down around so many strangers, so she went to the gym.

And of course, Batman wasn't going to sleep away the night, that was his time. He had put a lot of effort into changing his circadian rhythm, and not even an alternate dimension was enough to make him change. But without patrol, he found himself at a bit of a loss. After prowling around the Tower for a while, he gave in to his own curiosity and headed to Stark's lab.

The genius obviously hadn't slept either and was looking a little frantic. Loud rock music blared through the speakers and holographic projections lit the space in an eerie blue glow. Tony mumbled to himself as he flicked through the images almost faster than he could comprehend them, trying to see a pattern or a link, anything that he could follow or investigate to send the Justice League home.

Batman stood still just inside the door, observing his new ally. He didn't like relying on anyone, especially someone as undisciplined and eccentric as Tony Stark, but he had to respect the man. He was brilliant and driven, if a bit egotistical. And he became Ironman to right the wrongs that his company had perpetrated. As the owner of a big company himself, Bruce could understand that.

Finally, when it was obvious that Stark wasn't going to notice him on his own, Batman stepped forward breaking through the projected diagram.

The music cut out as Tony squealed and toppled out of his chair. A robot in the corner wheeled forward, waving a fire extinguisher and beeping excitedly.

"Warn a guy," Tony snapped at Batman before immediately addressing the robot. "No, DUM-E, put it down. Put. It. Down. Don't make me take away your extinguisher privileges."

The robot beeped sadly as it slowly lowered its arm. It perked back up when Tony tried to get up and slipped on some spilled coffee, falling back on his butt. Tony glared at the robot when it started to raise the extinguisher again, so it beeped and retreated back to the corner.

Batman suppressed his smile as he offered the inventor a hand up. Tony sighed as he accepted the help. "Kids, you know," he said offhandedly, watching the robot with a softer expression than Batman had seen from him so far.

"Very true," Batman acknowledged, giving in enough to smile.

Tony spun around and blinked owlishly. "Wait! How do you know that? Do you have kids?!" His voice got progressively higher as he spoke.

Batman glared. His homelife was not usually something that he talks about, especially to "colleagues'' but he had a feeling that Stark wouldn't drop it even if he asked. He admitted, "I have a young ward back home. He is 11, and very precocious."

"Wow, the big scary Bat-guy has a kiddo at home. Who knew? Well, that explains why you're so anxious to get home. Who's with him? Is he with a Batwoman?"

"No, he's with the man who raised me," Batman hedged, ready to change the subject even as Stark's eyes twinkled with curiosity. "What have you found?"

Though he groaned loudly and pouted in disappointment, Tony brought up the readout of the energy signature. "I've been over this thing a hundred times. It's not like anything I've ever seen."

Batman nodded, grateful to be back on task, and walked around to see it from Stark's angle. He considered the data, looking for anything that he could recognize, hoping for a clue from his world. "It resembles sound waves," he said, commenting on the type of diagram that Stark was working off of.

Stark waved his hands. "Simplified, but not inaccurate. I thought it would be easier to visualize it like that."

Batman nodded and considered the display. "Talk me through it. Maybe we can break the code together."

Tony nodded and launched into an explanation on everything he had done and researched so far. He seemed pleasantly surprised that Batman could keep up with him. Together they figured out a new approach and started scanning the logs from Stark's satellites, looking for other odd radiation signals. They found two.

"This one is definitely Asgardian," Tony said, pointing at the older one. "I'll have to give Thor a heads up that his brother, Loki, is back."

Batman tuned him out. The other signal looked familiar but he couldn't place it. He brought up the original signal, comparing them but they looked completely different, but something made him think they were familiar.

Then the door opened, interpreting their thoughts. Hawkeye and Wonderwoman walked in, both carrying coffee, even though there was a coffee machine in the lab.

"Ahh, a goddess bringing ambrosia, what did I do to deserve this?" Tony said, holding out his hand to Diana.

The Amazon smiled at him, but turned to hand the mug she was holding to Batman. He smiled at her, ignoring the disappointment radiating off Stark. Batman admitted to himself that he was flattered at Diana's attention and was not above being a bit petty to keep it to himself. He waved her over to explain what they were doing. She knew more about magic than he did anyway and probably had some good suggestions.

"This is nothing I've seen before, but I have also never seen magic analyzed like this," Diana admitted, leaning over Batman's shoulder to get a closer look. "What does this represent?" she asked, pointing at a readout about the frequency of the magic signature.

On the other side of the lab, Hawkeye pinched himself to avoid laughing at Stark's wistful expression. "Sorry, Tony. You'll just have to accept my offering instead," Clint said with only a little of his inner mirth showing through.

"Yeah, as pretty as you are, Katniss, you're a poor substitute for a real Amazon," Tony complained as he accepted the coffee. "I bet she's a better muse too."

Hawkeye rolled his eyes. He agreed, of course, Diana was out of this world, but so out of his league that he was comfortable admiring her from afar and enjoying her company. She, at least, never scoffed at his choice of weapon since they still used bows on Themyscira. Instead of rising to Stark's bait, he glanced over the three energy diagrams that Stark was comparing. "What are these?"

Tony sighed into his mug, bringing himself back to the matter at hand. Not that it was any less frustrating. "A dead end. We were seeing if any other odd radiation had popped up lately and hoped that it would give us a lead to who or what brought the new band to town. But obviously they don't match."

The archer examined the diagrams. He tilted his head like a dog. "Have you tried combining them?" Clint asked after a minute. Something was tickling his brain, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He had unusually good spatial recognition and an instinctive understanding of physics that helped him make the kind of shots other people called impossible, but he never finished highschool, not even a GED. So he wasn't very good at explaining things, especially to people like Stark who lived on a different level.

Stark glared at the blond. "Obviously," he snapped, insulted at the insinuation that he overlooked something. He even flung the floating diagrams together, mirroring what he tried earlier.

"Okay," Clint said, drawing out the word while he tried to come up with an explanation of what he was thinking, "but that's only leaving them on top of each other, right? What about adding them up, you know, like waves where they get bigger when you add them up?"

"Like waves," Tony said, trailing off in surprise. He stared at Clint like he had been hit upside the head, just blinking while his brain processed everything. Then his face cleared and he whooped with excitement. "Waves! Of course! Batman, come here, come here. Look! You said it before, they look like sound waves, so what if we treat them like sound waves. And if we add them together, like so, they react like sound waves, making a completely new sound, which drum roll please," JARVIS obliged with an appropriate rat-a-tat-tat over the speakers, "lines up perfectly!" He slammed his hand on his desk, narrowly missing his forgotten coffee cup. "Conclusion: We have two magic users who, when their magic combined, brought you all here."

Batman nodded seriously, his brow furrowed in thought. Noone, except maybe Diana, had a clue how excited he was to finally make progress. "You said you knew one of the signatures, Thor's brother? If we find him, we find out who he's working with," Batman said, sounding almost cheerful.

Spurred into frantic activity, the two men turned back to the displays and readouts, forgetting about their friends and the coffee they brought. They weren't even talking, just flinging data back and forth, which with the blue holographic readouts looked kinda like a weird snowball fight.

"That's gratitude for you," Hawkeye scoffed.

Diana smiled at her teammate's broad caped back. She felt no offense at his apparent dismissal, she was used to his intense drive and focus. She admired his strength and dedication, even if he could be frustrating as a friend. Then she turned to consider the archer. "You are not the clown you pretend to be," she observed, raising an elegant eyebrow at him. "You see more than most."

"Good eyes," Clint brushed off the compliment, blushing a little but clearly uncomfortable so he moved the conversation off himself. "I'm just glad they are making progress, not that I don't enjoy your company, of course."

Diana nodded, disappointed in his brush off. She wondered what happened in his life to make him so dismissive. Man's world had its dark side and Diana was still learning some of the consequences of it. "I am enjoying our visit here but I am ready to return home," she agreed without pushing. She smiled at him instead to show how much she had grown to like the man.

"My lady," Clint said, offering his arm in an uncommon show of chivalry.

Diana laughed and accepted the archer's arm, unable to resist a teasing squeeze on his bicep as he escorted her out of the lab, leaving the two geniuses to figure out how to track down the magic users and force them to undo their spell.