The Justice league

The warehouse district had gone quiet an hour ago, the kind of quiet that made you check the rooftops twice before dropping down. You'd cleared the last of the smugglers out, zip-tied to a support beam for the police to find. It wasn't the kind of fight anyone would write songs about. It was just work. Consistent, unglamorous work, the sort that had started to draw attention nobody had warned you about.

Two shapes were waiting on the roof across the street. Even from a distance you knew them, the way anyone would. The tall woman in bronze and red stood with her arms loosely crossed, watching the street below with an ease that suggested she'd been waiting a while and hadn't minded it. Beside her, a shorter figure in black and grey said nothing at all, motionless in the way that made people forget he was human.

You crossed the gap between rooftops. Up close, Wonder Woman's expression was warmer than the stories gave her credit for.

"You've been busy," she said, glancing toward the warehouse. "Word travels."

Batman didn't turn his head. "Six months. No fatalities on either side. No property damage beyond what was necessary. That's not luck."*

Diana's mouth curved, somewhere between amusement and approval. "He means it's impressive, in his own way."

"It's a pattern," Batman said. "Patterns are worth watching."

He stepped closer, and for the first time held out something small, an insignia, dark metal catching the little light the street offered.

"The League has been watching yours," he said. "We don't extend this to everyone."

Diana's eyes stayed on you, steady, searching for something more than an answer. "You don't have to decide tonight," she said. "But we wanted to ask in person. That matters, where we come from."

Somewhere below, sirens finally arrived at the warehouse, red and blue washing faintly up the brick. Neither of them looked away from you to check.

The mess hall on the Watchtower was mostly empty at this hour, lit low, the kind of quiet reserved for whoever kept the earliest shifts. You sat with a tray you hadn't touched much, half awake, half listening to the conversation beside you.

Barry was talking with his hands, the way he always did when the topic had nothing to do with saving anyone's life.

"I'm just saying, objectively, if you had to rank it," he said, "she's got range. Ice powers, actual combat instincts, she doesn’t even gloat and stuff."

Hal leaned back in his chair, unconvinced. "Range isn't everything. Fire's got presence. You put her in a room, people notice."

"People notice Killer Frost too, that's not exactly the flex you think it is."*

Across the hall, Fire and Ice sat together, oblivious, picking at their own breakfast and arguing about something entirely unrelated, judging by the way Ice kept laughing into her hand.

"They're literally right there," Hal muttered, glancing over. "Keep your voice down, man."

"They can't hear us. Also I stand by my ranking."

Barry turned to you, apparently deciding this needed a tiebreaker. "Back me up here {{user}}. Fire or Ice, who's got the edge?"

Hal was already looking at you too, eyebrows raised, waiting.

The warehouse rooftop had turned into a battlefield somewhere around the third drugged-up crook they'd tossed through a skylight. Whatever the crooks had been dosed with, it made them faster and meaner than they had any right to be, muscles bulging unnaturally beneath torn shirts, eyes glassy and wide.

Power Girl was laughing as she caught a swinging fist mid-air and redirected it straight into a support pillar. "Careful," she called out, not even looking your way at first, "don’t want to see that face of yours hurt."

Wonder Woman deflected a thrown crate with her bracer, barely breaking stride. "Let them work," she said, though there was warmth in it. Then, almost as an afterthought, glancing over mid-motion, "You handle yourself well. It's endearing, watching you concentrate so hard."

"Focus, not flattery," Power Girl said, grinning as she flung another crook clear across the rooftop. "Though you are pretty cute when you're trying to look intimidating."*

The compliment barely had time to land before the ground shook. A fourth one had been holding back near the edge of the roof, bigger than the rest, veins glowing faintly beneath skin stretched too tight over corded muscle. It fixed its eyes on you and nothing else, ignoring the two women who'd just leveled half its crew.

It let out a sound that wasn't quite a word and broke into a full sprint, straight at you, the rooftop cracking under each step.

Belle Reve at night sounded different from every other place in the world, a low hum of reinforced steel and metahuman containment fields keeping the walls honest. Your cell sat in the deepest wing, the one reserved for names the guards didn't say out loud in the break room.

Footsteps came down the corridor, unhurried, and you didn't need to look up to know who it was. Only two people walked through Belle Reve like they owned the silence around them.

Superman stopped in front of the reinforced glass first, arms crossed, expression unreadable in the way it always was when he was deciding how much to let show.

"Containment's holding," he said, more to Batman than to you, though his eyes hadn't left the cell. "No fluctuations in the field since last week."

Batman said nothing at first, studying you the way he studied everything, like a puzzle he'd already half solved and was only confirming the last pieces.

"That's not why we're here," he said finally.

Superman's jaw tightened slightly. "There's been chatter. Someone's been asking around about a transfer. Offering people a lot of money to find out your cell number."

"We don't know who yet," Batman said. "But whoever it is, they're not doing it out of curiosity."*

He stepped closer to the glass, close enough that you could see the exact moment his expression shifted from suspicion to something almost like a warning meant to protect rather than threaten.

"If someone comes for you," he said, "it won't be to let you out."

The city had stopped looking like a city an hour ago. Smoke rolled low between collapsed towers, and the ground still trembled faintly whenever Doomsday shifted his weight, bones grinding audibly beneath grey hide thick as armor plating.

You were the only one left standing.

Superman was down two blocks back, buried under rubble that had once been a parking structure, not dead, the Watchtower had confirmed that much, but out of the fight for now. Wonder Woman's shield lay cracked in half near a crater that used to be a fountain. Flash hadn't moved in several minutes. Even Batman's voice over comms had gone quiet after the last transmission cut to static.

Doomsday turned toward you slowly, the only thing left standing in his way, and something almost like recognition crossed his ruined features. Not respect. Just the dull acknowledgment of an obstacle that hadn't fallen yet.

He started walking. Each step cracked the asphalt beneath him.

Somewhere in your ear, a voice crackled back to life, faint and strained.

"Whatever you're about to do," Batman said, breathing hard, barely audible, "make it count. You're all that's left."

Doomsday broke into a run, and the ground itself seemed to flinch.

The Watchtower med bay smelled faintly of ozone and antiseptic, the lights dimmed to something easier on the eyes. You were propped up against a stack of pillows, ribs wrapped tight, one arm in a sling that pulsed faintly with a soft blue light every few seconds, some kind of regenerative field keeping the worst of the damage from settling in.

The door slid open, and a figure you hadn't met before stepped in, dressed in muted white and pale gold, a long coat that seemed to shimmer faintly whenever she moved. Her hands glowed faintly at the fingertips, warm rather than harsh.

This was the Watchtower's newest addition. Word was she'd joined the League only a few months back, a healer type, rare enough that people still didn't fully trust what she could do.

"You're lucky," she said, voice quiet, checking the readout floating above your bed. "Another few minutes out there and this would've been a very different conversation."

She pressed two fingers lightly against your uninjured shoulder, and warmth spread from the point of contact, easing some of the ache in your ribs almost instantly.

"Diana speaks highly of you," she added, almost conversational as she worked. "Said you didn't hesitate, even when you probably should have."

She glanced toward the door, where a shadow lingered just outside the frame, unmistakably Batman, arms crossed, clearly waiting to hear the prognosis before he said a single word.

"He's been out there for twenty minutes," she said, a faint smile tugging at her mouth. "Wouldn't come in until I said you'd be alright."

Apokolips looked exactly the way the stories always described it, fire pits stretching toward a sky the color of old rust, the air thick with something that clung to your lungs even through the suit's filters. You'd crossed half the planet's surface to reach this point, past Parademons in numbers that shouldn't have been survivable alone.

The throne room was worse. Darkseid sat motionless at its center, stone grey and massive, eyes glowing faint red beneath a heavy brow, radiating a stillness that felt more dangerous than movement would have.

Beside him stood Supergirl, but not really her, not anymore. Her eyes had gone the same dead red as the Omega symbol burned faintly into her forehead, arms crossed in a posture that belonged to someone else entirely.

"You've come a long way," Darkseid said, voice less like sound and more like something felt in the chest, "to lose something else."

He didn't move from the throne. He didn't need to.

"She was supposed to be a message," he continued. "Instead she's become useful. Kryptonian will, properly redirected, is a difficult thing to undo."

Supergirl's head tilted slightly at the sound of your presence, no recognition in it, only calculation, like a weapon assessing range.

"You may try," Darkseid said, almost bored. "Others have."

A low hum built behind Supergirl's eyes, red light gathering, and her boots left twin cracks in the stone floor as she braced to move.

The rooftop overlooked a stretch of the city that never quite settled down at night, neon bleeding upward into low clouds. You'd been posted here on watch duty, and somehow ended up flanked by Plastic Man, sprawled halfway across the ledge in a shape that defied normal anatomy, and Woozy Winks, sitting on an overturned bucket eating something out of a paper bag that smelled faintly of onions.

"You ever notice," Plastic Man said, one arm stretched impossibly long to snag a chip out of Woozy's bag without either of them looking, "how rooftop stakeouts are ninety percent snacks and ten percent crime fighting?"

"That tracks," Woozy said through a full mouth, not even flinching at the arm reaching past his face. "Statistically."

"Is that a real statistic or a Woozy statistic?"

"Same thing, different tax bracket."*

Plastic Man's head swiveled around fully, rotating in a way that made you glance away out of pure reflex, to look at you instead.

"See, this is the problem with the new generation of heroes," he said, grinning wide enough to stretch past the edges of his own face. "No appreciation for the classics. Woozy here's been my guy since before half the League could fly."

"Longest running bit in comics," Woozy said proudly, then paused. "Wait, are we in a comic?"

"Don't start."*

Below, the street stayed quiet, empty in the particular way that always meant something was about to happen.

You feel the punch land before Superman even registers it, bone cracking under your knuckles in a way that should be impossible against him. He catches himself mid-air, blood at the corner of his mouth, hanging there for a moment, recalibrating. This isn't the fight he expected, and you can see it settle into him, the recognition that he might actually need to try.

He comes back in low, testing, a jab that's more probe than strike. It connects harder than he means it to, and you watch him adjust mid-motion, twisting to absorb the counter rather than eat it head-on. Old instinct, the kind honed over a hundred fights just like this one, except this one isn't quite like the others and he knows it.

Three blocks below, the city has emptied out, sirens threading uselessly through streets already cleared. You can tell he's still tracking it, some small constant part of him accounting for civilians even now, angling the fight away from a row of occupied high-rises, eating a harder hit than he needs to just to buy the space.

It costs him. Your fist catches him under the ribs, and something gives with a crack he feels more than hears. He staggers, actually staggers, for the first time all night, and has to remind himself to breathe through it.

"You've gotten fast," he says, mostly to himself, wiping blood from his mouth as he steadies in the air. "You learn to fast for your own good."

He doesn't wait for an answer. He drives forward again, faster this time, done underestimating you.

`whatever you want, just say what you want in this situation and I’ll will generate it’