“Six hours ago, I picked up traces of Kryptonite radiation outside the Batcave. I believed that this meant someone was coming for me, with a plan to lure in, and ambush Superman. The ambusher used a sophisticated robot with both elements of kryptonite, and a copy of Captain Cold’s gun to cripple Flash; if not for his speed, and J’Onn’s quick response, he would be dead, instead of merely…. Merely… missing his legs below the knee and left arm.”

  The cloaked figure sat at the table they used for formal meetings, looking around at those present; Wonder-Woman, J’Onn, the seemingly incongruous 17-year-old Billy, still in his street clothes, Superman, and Aquaman were all present, with a projection of Green lantern hovering above one of the other seats.

  “Five hours ago, when Oliver Queen’s body was found, I instead believed they were planning on taking out all current and past Justice League members, as well as any other heroes. I immediately requested we all go on lockdown and stick together, as it appeared our enemies were most likely working together to take us down.”

  Batman leaned back in his chair. “As we all know, Captain Cold has been in jail for the past few weeks. His Cold Gun has been in a secure facility controlled by Amanda Waller for that time. I considered the possibility that this was her doing, or some other villain team-up…. But…”

  He looked down at the table… then removed the cowl, exposing his face. “I now know the truth. This isn’t aimed at the Justice League. It wasn’t aimed at Superman, or even Batman…. But at Bruce Wayne.”

  He glanced at Superman. “You’ll probably find, when you get back to work, things are….. Busy. Half an hour ago, Lex Luthor entered his building, made a comment about how amused he was at Oliver Queen’s death… and a new secretary he recently hired set off an explosion; a shaped charge that killed him and his security guards, but left the rest of the building intact.”

  “Every other person on the richest ten people on earth list had an assassination attempt; and at least a dozen others in the top hundred. Many of them worked. Vandal Savage survived an attempt on his life, but whatever is suppressing magic on earth seems to have also interfered with his recovery. Jeff Bezos’s yacht went down with all hands. There’s a rumor out that I’m dead, though I released a statement about that.”

  He sighed… and looked around. “We know the cause of the anti-magic ward. This Jason Bennet character believes someone like Mxyzptlk has been warping reality, screwing with us all, and after a trial run with a smaller-scale one he used against Circe, he deployed a larger one of a level of power that seems impossible. Which means the ward and the assassinations… are likely unrelated.”

  “We need to come to a decision. Merely being wealthy doesn’t make their deaths any more significant, so if not for the fact one of the assassin robots was sent after me I wouldn’t even consider this a problem for the league. In fact…. It might well not be. Most likely, aside from myself, whoever this is doesn’t care about us.”

  J’onn gave a slow nod before looking around the table. “Whoever it is, they know Bruce Wayne is Batman, and want him dead. They killed one of our own, and crippled another. Unless we simply plan to throw Batman to the wolves, the decision is already made; we must stop them. To that end, I’ve put out requests to some of the auxiliaries; with Wonder-Woman and Captain Marvel out, we can use any help we can get. In addition…”

  He glanced at Batman. “DeathStroke has indicated that he is actively hunting whoever heads the organization responsible. Apparently, in the event Luthor dies, he gets a substantial payout for ensuring whoever ordered it dies as well. Obviously we don’t want to work with him… but observing him may uncover useful information.”

  The table was quiet for a moment. Superman rose to his feet. “I’ve seen the machine in question. I can spot it from much further away than its kryptonite can impact me. Whoever it is has at the very least given away their target list; I can sweep around Vandal Savage’s hospital, and each of the remaining people on the list, looking for anything out of the ordinary; and especially for more machines like that one.”

  J’onn nodded. “Should I have words with Bennet, about the ward?”

  Wonder-woman gave a low sigh. “He’s not going to shut it down willingly. He’s half convinced that my father and the other Olympians are responsible for what he calls the ‘game’ earth is being put through. We need to either get that ship out of here, or destroy that thing.”

  Superman grimaced… and looked around the room. “...The terrible thing is, he might be right. There was a time in the past that Mxyzptlk’s powers were stolen… and the whole world was re-written to the whims of a madman, even worse than that imp. Until it started breaking down, everyone thought it was all normal. Before we ask him to shut off the ward, we should make an honest assessment… perhaps even speak with him about it… and figure out why he’s so convinced this is all unreal.”

  “...I received word from Athena. Whatever the ward is, it seems more effective against the Gods than anyone else. Zeus is almost completely powerless right now. If we don’t do something about it soon, Olympus may fall to her many enemies.”

  Bruce Wayne looked around the room… then at Wonder-woman. “I…. will contact mister Bennet myself. Hopefully he can be made to see reason… or has a sufficiently convincing argument. If not… with it emitting that kryptonite aura, I think it best if myself, J’onn, and Hal get together on this one. Along with anyone else we can bring along; its hard to imagine that ship won’t be well-defended.”

  ***

  The problem with wanting to strike the Watchtower while there were multiple members of the League there; he had no idea when they were there, or not. They didn’t use shuttles, they just… teleported, using some variation of Cyborg’s Boom Tube technology; something that Ascension had tried, and failed, to get a copy of.

  The Dragonslayer III had a wide variety of weapons; and in fact even as they sat there, manufactories in other, nearby star systems, as well as now on Europa and Venus, were building more material; though most of what was going on in the solar system was for colonization.

  The collapsing torpedoes; which would form two extradimensional spaces in a twisted spiral shape, then overlap them; causing everything nearby to, hopefully, be shredded and tossed among a variety of realities; were the ones he’d want to use for this.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  In the aftermath of one striking the Watchtower, nothing larger than a human femur would remain; and hopefully none of them could recover from that. But.

  The Green Lantern might be able to shield them from it. The Martian might be able to phase out of this reality to avoid it. And if the Flash or the Kryptonian had even a fraction of a second’s warning, everyone would be shoved into a teleporter in the time it took the missile to travel a meter.

  So. He didn’t just need them all there. He needed them all there, and to do something to keep them there while he struck.

  He studied the watchtower on the video; Ascension and the crew were all busy with their own plans, though likely Ascension was thinking about this problem as well. Most of his solutions felt… bad. Which, if his power was working properly, meant any sort of direct challenge would lead to his death.

  So. What to do?

  ~Jason. Incoming call from the Watchtower; Batman on the line.~

  Huh. Well then. Might as well. He set his helmet beside himself, and turned to face the screen, hitting the ‘Accept’ button. “Batman, this is Jason. I thought you were going to give me a few days to review evidence. We were going to meet up back on the tower and either shake hands or kill each other.”

  After a moment, the cowled head appeared on the screen. “That was before the Flash got crippled and you covered the world in an anti-magic ward.”

  Jason blinked in surprise. The flash was crippled? What the hell could do that? He glanced off-camera at Ascension; the same red-head gave a quick nod. Ascension had crippled the Flash? How? Why? He didn't really get involved in Ascension's Anti-Oligarch operations, but....was the Flash one?

  “....That’s…. Admittedly, I’m not as familiar with your team as the locals. But… how did someone cripple the Flash?”

  Batman studied him… and seemed to come to a decision. “Your surprise seemed genuine. I’m glad I was able to look you in the eyes when you heard. It was actually an attempt to kill me; the attacker was simply prepared for Superman or Flash to intercept them; they apparently didn’t even come in with Flash as a target.”

  Jason nodded thoughtfully. That made more sense. Bruce Wayne was a multi-billionaire who lived just outside one of the most poor and miserable cities on earth. “...Anyone trying to kill you would get a response from one of them in minutes at best, milliseconds at worst. Far too fast for them to get out of the range you could easily search. Something to slow them down would be needed. Huh. Do you need anything for him? The medical technology I’ve got over here is all the way down to perfect cloning, so worst-case scenario I can regrow him something.” He could do something to keep him perfectly safe and healthy... and out of the way til the source of the problem was dealt with.

  “He heals extremely fast… but there are limits. If we want him on his feet again, we need healing magic… which your ward stops. We also need to track down whoever is after me, and others, and stop them… which is difficult with all the magical members of the team out of the fight.”

  He sighed. “Well. I can understand that… and would even be willing to give your healer and him a ride outside of the ward’s radius; it currently extends a bit past Pluto. Can have him out there in a couple of hours; unless your teleporter can already do that.”

  Jason focused on the cowled figure. “What I’m not willing to do is drop the ward, and risk myself or humanity being toyed with any further, especially since whoever it is might well be angry I’m interfering. It won’t be dropped until the entities responsible have been dealt with. Considering I have yet to be completely certain who those entities are, and don’t plan on just starting a random killing spree…”

  Batman stared at the figure through the screen. He was considering what Superman had told him, earlier. That there’d been a previous time reality had been re-written. Some madman put in charge. He’d never told him about that before. Why?

  “...Why are you so sure our reality has been tampered with?”

  “Superman. Darkseid and Brainiac, as well, but mostly the Kryptonians. Absolutely cannot be natural occurrences. And you’re smart enough that you should already know that.”

  Batman grimaced. “...Looking human is unlikely, I’ll grant you that. But its possible the universe simply favors..”

  “No. He’s genetically engineered. Fake. Kryptonian genetic code has words in it; in a language I have yet to decipher. He looks human, because he was built to look human. Not a single other species that was natively born in the galaxy looks even a fraction as close to human as he does; and genetically compatible? Impossible. Which casts his conflict with the other Kryptonians in an entirely different light. They were also built to look human. Why?”

  Jason shook his head. “There’s only two possibilities. Some powerful being; like the imp I found records of in the past, or Zeus; created him and the other Kryptonians for his own purposes. Or the Kryptonians themselves are playing some sort of game with us.”

  “How are you so certain he’s fake?”

  “Excalibur. One of your heroes used it to cut Zod. I got a skin sample from it. Tested it. I could send you the results, but that’d be pointless; run the tests yourself. Get your own sample.”

  On the one hand, the arguments made sense. He’d been suspicious of Superman at first. He’d seemed dangerous. An unknown that could wipe out humanity at a moment’s notice. It had taken years of the man proving again and again he was trustworthy, that Batman could rely on him, before he’d really trusted him.

  But…. why hadn’t he told him about the re-write? He’d as much as admitted that what this extradimensional human was saying might be possible.

  Superman had proven himself, numerous times… he believed. He couldn’t be certain. If reality itself could be altered, why not memory? He had a machine built to reinforce memories, help him resist telepathy. But what if it were subverted? “I’ve got samples. I can look over them. But for now… the ward needs to come down. We’ve got murderers, dangerous ones, to track down, and we may well need our magic-users for the job. One of our former members has already been killed, and one of our current ones crippled.”

  “Not yet. If you want it to come down, help me find out who is doing this. I can see the pawns, but where’s the king? The moment that ward comes down, you can’t be trusted anymore…. And unless whoever attacks is actively dying from the lack of magic, I’ll have to consider anyone who tries to shut it down to be an agent of the ones responsible.”

  Jason shrugged. “If the lack of magic is killing them… I’ll happily give them a ride out past pluto. If they insist on trying to put the earth in danger by shutting off the ward….”

  He focused on Batman. “I’ll do what I need to to protect it. She might not be my earth; but she’s the one I’ve got.”

  He paused. "However. Its not completely hopeless, and we don't actually need to get in a fight. If whoever it is would be on earth.... the ward actually helps me find every powerful source of magic its suppressing. The little things, I can't. But if you'd like to help track down possible suspects....so long as you're willing to prioritize whoever is toying with reality over whoever is killing rich people. Which... frankly I couldn't care less about one way or another."

  Batman nodded thoughtfully. "...You can locate every powerful magical being on the planet. And most of them are helpless right now if they don't have non-magical protection?"

  "Yes."

  "....I'll talk to the others. I might take you up on getting the Flash a flight out of the perimeter with a healer. We'll see."