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-ΩΩΩ-
Inexplicably, Batman opened his eyes. He was certain he shouldn’t’ve been able to, considering Darkseid’s Omega Beams had just landed a direct hit. Death was a price he had been prepared to pay, even welcomed after violating the rule he had defined his career by, but apparently he’d managed to cheat it once again.
Opening his eyes, however, he found that all was not well, after all.
He’d still been in the once abandoned bunker when Darkseid fired his Omega Sanction, but he could feel a light breeze that shouldn’t have been possible underground.
Much more alarming, however, was the fact that Darkseid was not only still alive, but in significantly better condition than he should have been. This was no incarnation into a human body, but the New God’s original body, skin of stone and all.
The only reason Bruce didn’t fall into despair immediately was that he could see the situation was markedly different from what it had been when last he blinked.
He was no longer confronting Darkseid alone, in the midst of the New God’s attempted takeover of the Earth. Instead, he was outdoors, standing in the bright sunlight in the middle of a devastated city street he recognized as Metropolis. Much more heartening than even the bright light and fresh air, however, was the fact that Darkseid was currently surrounded by what had to be every single heavy hitter in the Justice League who had been immediately available. Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, two Flashes and three Green Lanterns, Black Canary and Red Tornado, Zatanna and Zatara, even Metamorpho and John Constantine were there, lurking behind the front line fighters, presumably watching for opportunities to take potshots.
And, of course, flanking Batman were the two remaining founding members of the League and his closest friends, Wonder Woman and Superman.
A moment of silence nearly deafened Bruce before he realized that, aside from Diana and Clark, everybody was looking expectantly at him. In their defense, they could hardly have realized that he had just been unexpectedly displaced into this situation.
Well, no matter. Batman lived and died by the illusion of always being in control, even when he wasn’t, and he could have hardly kept that up without some level of skill in improvisation.
“Darkseid,” came the signature growl, “you’re surrounded, and hopelessly outnumbered. Surrender or leave, and this doesn’t have to get violent.”
He hadn’t really expected the ultimatum to be effective - after all, he’d been in a world held under sway of the Anti-Life Equation not thirty seconds ago - but the former prince of Apokolips actually seemed to be rattled by it.
It wasn’t just Darkseid, either - Aquaman and Hal Jordan were the closest allies in Bruce’s line of sight, and he read surprise on their features, as well. Had he been subject to some sort of temporal shenanigans, and displaced a version of himself who was a complete milquetoast, or something?
“The Life Equation will be mine, human. Accept your fate and kneel before Darkseid, the rightful ruler of all existence!”
That… was decidedly incorrect. Since when was Darkseid searching for the Life Equation?
Actually, come to think of it, the New God’s voice wasn’t quite right, either. Moments ago, Darkseid’s voice had been commanding, gravelly, and possessed not the slightest hint of the human whose body he had incarnated into. This Darkseid’s voice was no less booming, but it was smoother, somehow, and more demanding than commanding. If Batman wasn’t currently staring down an extinction-level threat to the Earth, he might have said it carried an almost whiny quality to it.
The sun beat down on the ruins of a Metropolitan city street, the only sounds audible to those with merely human senses the distant cacophony of evacuating civilians. The assembled heroes stood ready, waiting for their leader to respond to Darkseid’s demand, to initiate hostilities or give some signal for battle to be joined.
The tension stretched out for one long moment, then two, before finally, something had to give. Rather than Batman, however, the breaking point turned out to be Aquaman, though Bruce couldn’t have guessed how the other hero would break the silence if he’d spent his entire career dedicated to that single question.
The king of Atlantis fell to his knees, tearing at his costume with both hands, and gasped for breath. “Please,” he managed to choke out, “I can’t take it anymore.”
Before Bruce could draw Darkseid’s attention away from the afflicted hero so one of the Flashes could evacuate him, Arthur Curry’s next sentence froze him in place through simple, dumb, shock.
“Please, Bruce, I need you to fuck me!”
-ΩΩΩ-
“So, let me make sure I’ve got all of this straight.
“Twenty three years ago, when the Anti-Monitor began destroying the Multiverse and was defeated by Superman, the metaphysical impact of that event caused a dirty reset on the timeline, undoing the majority of the actual damage done in his campaign but not wiping anybody’s memories of the events that transpired.
“Unfortunately, the metaphysical backlash was so immense and undirected that it caused a biological change in every species in the known universe which is capable of interbreeding with Homo sapiens sapiens, specifically. That biological change caused those species to become incapable of self propagation, except in extremely limited cases through technological means.
“Darkseid, shortly thereafter, left Apokolips with the goal of dominating the universe as a tyrannical despot to whom all sapient life is answerable. In service of that goal, he began searching for the Life Equation, which grants its wielder the ability to cause spontaneous pregnancy in anybody who understands the Equation in its entirety, with the belief that as the parent of virtually all newborn life in the universe, all sapient life would swear fealty to him.
“In the course of searching for the Life Equation, Darkseid became convinced that parts of it were held in the species consciousness of Earth’s humans, around whom the reproductive epidemic seems to center, and so came to Earth with the intention of dominating the minds of every human on the planet to search for pieces of the Equation, which was when the Justice League intercepted him in Metropolis.
“Did I miss anything?”
With a wet pop, the former Prince of Apokolips let Bruce slip out of his mouth to answer. “We call the new biological sex Omegas, Master.”
Bruce set a hand on the back of the Omega’s head and guided him back down. “It was rhetorical, Uxas, nobody told you to stop sucking.”
The… well, he was still a billionaire playboy in this reality, actually. The billionaire playboy enjoyed the renewed sensation for a moment before heaving a sigh and massaging his temples.
Technically, he should be doing his best to return to his original timeline, but he could hardly ignore the fact that doing so would be no different than leaving this one to die a slow death, as hundreds of species across the known universe slowly petered out, unable to continue their lineages. The obvious solution was to help this world first, then start working on a solution for his own problems, but even with a live specimen to help, it was impossible to say how long it would take the universe’s top minds to come up with a long term solution to the depopulation crisis.
Until then, Bruce had a duty to this new universe. It would be wrong to simply abandon them in their time of need, when he had founded his whole life on the idea of helping those who needed it.
Looking out on a strange Earth from the central room of the Watchtower, it seemed that he was in for quite a few years of nonstop soreness, at the least. Still, it wasn’t all bad, he supposed. For some reason, somebody had installed a throne in the Overlook Room, and ostentatious and gaudy as it was, Bruce found it was quite a nice spot to relax.
As his comrades in arms gathered around him on all sides, as well, some hiding their neediness better than others, a few already curling protective arms over swollen bellies, even Batman had to admit that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if getting back to his own universe took longer than anyone was expecting.
-Ω Fin Ω-