CHAPTER ONE
GOTHAM CITY. THE DINING ROOM OF AN UPSCALE HOTEL.
"A guy who dresses up like a bat clearly has issues," Bruce Wayne declared flippantly, leaning forward with a wry smile. His comment drew laughter from the social elite gathered around him at the tables in the hotel dining room. Everyone that is except for Richard Earle, who seemed to be growing increasingly annoyed at every word that came out of Bruce Wayne's mouth.
"Sir?" The hotel manager approached Bruce cautiously but with a tone of annoyance premating his otherwise reserved demeanor. "The pool is for decoration and your friends do not have swimwear."
Bruce craned his neck to see what the manager was referring to. Jenna and Heidi, Bruce's arm candy for the evening, had taken it upon themselves to take a dip in the reflecting pool that ran around the perimeter of the elegant dining area.
"Well, they're European," Bruce said by way of explanation.
"I'm going to have to ask you to leave," the manager replied condescendingly.
Without hesitating, Bruce took his checkbook out of the inside pocket of his jacket.
"It is not a question of money," the manager said through gritted teeth as he watched Bruce write an amount on the check and then scrawl a hasty signature.
"Well, you see," Bruce said as he stood up and casually crammed the completed check into the manager's pocket. "I'm buying this hotel, and setting some new rules about the pool area." He raised his glass to the other guests who looked at him in bewilderment. Then he sauntered over to the bathing beauties to join them in the water.
A bit later in the evening, a very damp Bruce Wayne walked toward through the lobby with an arm around each lady; the girls wore white bathrobes that had been provided by the hotel staff. They giggled and whispered to each other as they stumbled toward the large glass doors that led out to the parking lot.
From somewhere just behind them, a soft female voice caught Bruce Wayne's attention.
"Bruce?"
He paused and turned toward the sound of the voice. For a moment he expected to see his childhood friend and confidant Rachel Dawes standing here. It was not her. Standing before him instead was a striking redhead in a svelte black evening dress.
"I'm sorry, have we met?" Bruce asked. He motioned for his two dates to continue on to the car without him.
The redheaded woman shook her head. "I apologize, I shouldn't have been so informal. Mister Wayne," she corrected herself. She reached out a shy, awkward hand. "My name is Mary Jane Watson."
He took her hand delicately and held it for a moment.
"What can I do for you, Miss Watson? If you're going to ask if you can take a dip in the fountain, it's fair game for anyone as far as I'm concerned," he said with a disarming grin.
She raised an eyebrow. "What? Oh, um, no, thank you," she said, looking at Bruce's dripping wet suit. "I… um… this is going to sound very strange, but please hear me out. I have something for you."
She reached into her handbag and pulled out a silver armband. It had the letters JLA engraved on it.
"What's this?" he asked.
"Mister Wayne, I know full well how crazy this is going to sound. But someone gave this to me, years ago. A man in a costume. He told me to give it to you."
"A man in a costume?"
"Yes. At the time when he gave it to me, you were missing. Presumed dead. I didn't know what to think. Part of me wanted to believe that the man in the costume was some crackpot. Maybe that's exactly what you're thinking about me, right now. But he seemed so serious. Like me getting this bracelet to you was the most important thing in the world. The man who gave it to me was badly injured. I think he was dying. It's a moment that has haunted me ever since. So when I saw on the news that you were alive… that you had come back to Gotham City… I just knew I had to find you and give this to you."
Bruce took the armband from her very carefully. He turned it over in his hand, studying it.
"I'm not sure I understand," he said with a shrug.
"I don't understand it either, Mister Wayne," Mary Jane admitted. "I'm sorry that I don't have a better explanation to go with it other than a very bizarre story. But if it was meant for you, I wanted to be sure that it got to you."
"Thank you…" Bruce said slowly, still trying to wrap his head around what this woman was telling him. "The man who gave this to you, you said he was wearing a costume. I'm curious, what kind of costume?"
"Oh. It was all tattered and ripped. But it was red and blue. And it had…" she gestured to her chest. "I think it was supposed to be a spider? A spider logo, on the chest."
"Hmm." Bruce shook his head. "Bat men. Spider men. What will they think of next?" He gave his usual charming smile.
Mary Jane gave a small smile back and a polite laugh.
Bruce gestured toward the door and gave a sort of half-wave with the armband. "Thank you for this, Miss Watson. I promise I'll take good care of it. Whatever it is."
Mary Jane nodded. "Mister Wayne? Do you have any idea what it is?"
Bruce looked at the armband carefully once again. "I don't," he said. Then, a bit more seriously, he added, "But it does feel like it might be important."
. . . . . .
WAYNE ENTERPRISES. APPLIED SCIENCES DIVISION.
Bruce rode the rickety old freight elevator down to the sub-basement of Wayne Enterprises that had become home to the Applied Sciences Division, and thusly also become home to the department's sole remaining caretaker Lucius Fox.
"Mister Wayne," Lucius said in surprise, rising from his seat in front of an array of computer monitors. "To what do I owe the honor?"
"I have something of an unusual request for you, Mister Fox," Bruce replied.
"Oh I've come to pretty much just assume that," Lucius chuckled. "Not much reason for you to come all the way down here for something run-of-the-mill now is there?"
"No, I suppose not," Bruce replied. He delicately handed the JLA armband to Lucius. "I'm wondering what you can tell me about this item."
Lucius took the armband from Bruce. He turned it over a few times, studying it from each angle. "JLA," Lucius said aloud. "What's that stand for?"
Bruce shrugged. "I haven't got a clue," Bruce replied. "It was given to me at a hotel by a mysterious redhead."
Lucius raised an eyebrow. "Now you really have my attention, Mister Wayne."
"I wish there was more to the story," Bruce said. "I'm hoping you can help me figure out if there is more to this object than meets the eye."
Lucius turned the armband over a few more times, inspecting it further. "Hmm. Well, let's see. Fairly lightweight metal. Seems sturdy enough. Obviously meant to be worn on the forearm. It looks like… oh, hold on here," he said. He pulled a pair of reading glasses out of his breast pocket and put them on, then took a closer look at the bottom of the armband. "There seems to be some kind of data port at the base of this thing."
"Data port?" Bruce repeated. "Are you saying the armband is some kind of storage drive?"
"Perhaps," Lucius acknowledged. "Let me see what I have here."
He began shuffling items around on his desk, opening and closing several drawers, and sorting through various cords and cables that he had stashed in them. After a few minutes he seemed to find what he was looking for, procuring a thin black and silver cable out of one of the drawers. He shut the drawer with his knee, then moved a stack of old newspapers away from his workstation. Lucius sat down and plugged one end of the cable into the port on the bottom of the armband, and the other end into an adapter beside the computer.
The computer started humming and cranking as it attempted to load the information that was on the armband.
"There is an incredible amount of data here," Lucius remarked. "The storage capacity of this armband is far beyond what you would see on even the most advanced computers today." Lucius began typing some commands on his keyboard. "The data is encrypted, which is not surprising I suppose. Let me see if I can get past it."
After a few moments of typing, Lucius froze. He removed his eyeglasses. He turned and stared at Bruce incredulously.
"Is this your idea of a joke, Mister Wayne?" he asked.
"I'm sorry?" Bruce asked.
"These files are encrypted with an algorithm that I wrote myself."
"Isn't that a good thing?" Bruce replied. "Does that mean you can decrypt the files?"
"That's beside the point," Lucius said. "I've never shared this algorithm with anyone. It was something I was developing just before Mister Earle decommissioned my projects and shuffled me off to this basement with the rest of the relics down here. I never got a chance to implement it for anything other than a few of my own personal pet projects. How in the world did someone else get ahold of it?"
"I assure you, Mister Fox, if someone is playing a joke here it isn't me," Bruce said. "Although I'm now even more curious about this object than I was before."
Lucius slowly turned his attention back to the computer screen, seeming a bit unsettled. He started a few commands running on the workstation.
"It will take days to run a decryption on all of this data," Lucius said with a reluctant sigh. "You really need something a lot more powerful than what I have down here. Let me see if I can at least get us into one or two of the files so we can get some idea of what we're dealing with."
"I'm in no hurry," Bruce said. "Right now this has my full attention."
Lucius leaned back in his chair and stroked his chin. "Well now I really don't know what to make of this, Mister Wayne," Lucius said. "The dates on these files don't make any sense."
"How so?"
"The date of creation on these files…" Lucius shook his head. "Some of them are ten, twenty, thirty years from now! Some even more than that!"
"Thirty years from now?" Bruce repeated. "I don't understand."
"Unless someone is playing a very elaborate prank on us, Mister Wayne," Lucius began. "These files were created in the future."
These words hung in the air for several long minutes as Bruce Wayne and Lucius Fox simply looked at each other, and then stared at the computer monitor waiting with bated beath for an indication that any of the files were available for them to access.
After nearly ten minutes of the computer cranking away, a logo finally appeared on the screen. In big block letters, it read: "Justice League Avengers."
"Well I guess now we know what JLA stands for," Lucius remarked. "That mean anything to you, Mister Wayne?"
"No," Bruce said, leaning in closer to the screen. His mind was racing. "Should it?"
Almost as if in answer to the question, one of the files finished decrypting. It was an audio file. The recording began to play over the computer's speakers. Lucius turned the volume up a few notches.
"Iron Man to Lex Luthor," a staticky male voice said on the recording. "Do you read me, Lex?"
"I read you, Iron Man," a second voice on the recording replied.
"I found the Phantom Zone projector," the first voice said. "How are you coming with the teleporter?"
"It's in worse shape than I remembered, but I think I've almost got it back up and running," replied the second voice.
"All right, I'm heading your way now," said the first voice.
"One question," the second voice said. "How do we get Darkseid here? The Phantom Zone projector is portable, but the teleportation pad sure isn't."
"I filled Superman in on our plan a moment ago," the first voice responded. "He said he'll take care of it."
The recording ended here.
Bruce and Lucius just stared at the screen.
"What the hell have you stumbled into here, Mister Wayne?" Lucius asked.
"I don't know," Bruce replied grimly. "What was that name he said at the beginning? 'Iron Man'?"
Lucius looked at Bruce incredulously. "Haven't kept up with the news lately, Mister Wayne?" He rolled his chair over to the stack of newspapers. He rifled through them for a moment. Eventually he found the one he was looking for. He turned back to Bruce Wayne and unfolded it, then held it up dramatically.
The front page of The Chronicle sported a photo of a man in a suit of red and gold armor. The headline read: "Who Is The Iron Man?"
Bruce took the paper from Lucius, his eyes quickly scanning the article.
"You really didn't hear about this?" Lucius rolled his chair over to another computer and began typing in a web address.
"What's that?" Bruce asked, looking up from the paper.
"It's called YouTube, Mister Wayne," Lucius replied.
On the screen was an image of billionaire industrialist Tony Stark holding a press conference. Lucius pressed play on the video.
"I'm just not the hero type, clearly," Tony said, addressing the reporters in the video clip. "With this laundry list of character defects, all the mistakes I've made, largely public…" Colonel James Rhodes leaned over and whispered something in Tony's ear. "The truth is…" Tony paused thoughtfully for a moment, staring down at a notecard in his hand. Then, after some delay, he lowered the index card, apparently disregarding it. He proclaimed confidently, "I am Iron Man."
The video clip ended with the sound of dozens of reporters clamoring as they all sprang to their feet and shouted questions.
. . . . . .
THE CALIFORNIA HOME OF TONY STARK.
Tony Stark fumbled his way into his dark living room. JARVIS, Tony's AI assistant, usually would have turned the lights on automatically upon his arrival.
"JARVIS?" Tony called out, trying to find his way in the darkness.
"Welcome … hooome… siiirrrrrr…" JARVIS's English-accented electronic voice slurred its speech as it seemed to unexpectedly power down.
"I am Iron Man," growled a raspy voice from the far corner of the room. "You think you're the only one putting on a costume and rattling the cages?"
"Who the hell are you?" Tony exclaimed.
From out of the shadows, a figure that looked like a demon emerged. As Tony's eyes adjusted to the dim light, he realized it was actually a man wearing a horned cowl and a cape. A bat emblem was emblazoned across the figure's chest.
"Someone like you," the Batman replied. "Someone who'll rattle the cages."
"Oh," Stark replied, a bit confused.
The Batman seemed to glide through the air as he approached a desk in the middle of the room. He clicked on a desk lamp, finally providing a bit of illumination. Batman set the silver armband on the table so that the light reflected off the JLA insignia etched into its smooth metallic surface.
"I'm here to talk to you about the Justice League Avengers."