He only wanted to save his son.
As if it happened just last night, he had once watched Bruce die, killed by a thug who he later beat to death with his own fists, in an alley.
His name was Thomas Wayne, also known as Batman.
When the war between Aquaman and Wonder Woman spread across the globe, a stranger appeared.
The man said his name was Barry, also known as The Flash, claiming that the reality Batman belonged to was actually an accident, with its ultimate origin in the Speed Force.
The Flash, looking like a shy big boy, said he originally intended to go back in time to save his mother but accidentally caused a huge calamity.
Thomas took quite some time before believing him, because Barry told him that it was supposed to be the father, not the son, who was shot in Crime Alley.
All of this gave Thomas hope.
He chose to trade his life for Bruce's, so he gathered some friends who fought alongside him.
He devised a plan and rushed onto the battlefield between Atlantis and Paradise Island at a critical moment, buying time for The Flash to correct the entire world.
Watching the golden electric light enveloping the red uniform speed away in front of him, the heavily injured Batman fell to the ground, looking at his back. He pinned all his hopes on The Flash, asking him to deliver a letter to his son.
Then he waited to die, along with this nightmare-like reality.
........
Flashpoint World, Wayne Manor.
The nightmare did not die; something allowed the world to persist. At that time on the battlefield, Batman clearly watched the white light from the explosion about to sweep the globe, but a blue light descended from nowhere, suppressing everything.
If the patient on the operating table could no longer be saved, then he should just be allowed to pass away, not continue the surgery.
Thomas didn't know exactly what this blue light was, nor did he know what kind of person wanted to do this. But since their reality hadn't been erased, does it mean The Flash failed?
Did Bruce still not survive? What kind of power was the Speed Force?
The war continued.
Conflict, floods, and the deaths of hundreds of millions of people.
Thomas originally held hope, but now.... just sat in the Bat Cave, playing with a small remote control in his hands, elbows resting on his thighs, calmly thinking.
The emblem on the front of his uniform was also a bat, but underneath the black symbol lay a red circle like a scarlet sun, representing blood and hope.
Yet today he finally reached the end of the road.
It had been years since The Flash last left, and Thomas had been trying to reconnect with him while searching for a way to rewrite the world.
But this was destined to not go smoothly; his allies had died in battle after battle, and now he was the only one left.
Moreover, because he had repeatedly attempted to destroy the world and disrupted others' strategies, Wonder Woman and Aquaman finally reached an agreement on something; they temporarily ceased fighting and sent their armies together to deal with Batman.
Alfred had died in a recent battle, and now in the entire world, only Thomas continued to fight.
But almost all the plans he could use were sealed off; Gotham City was occupied by the enemy, the cosmos was blocked by the enemy, they had already pushed him back into the Bat Cave.
The defense installations here were pretty decent, but only just decent; faced with tens of thousands of troops, Batman, as an ordinary person, was difficult to turn the tide.
The remote control in his hand was precisely the overload starter for the nuclear reactor below the Bat Cave. Now he just hoped Wonder Woman and Aquaman valued him enough to come personally.
That way, he could drag them down to hell together; if making the world better was impossible, then eliminate the source making it worse.
The alarm sounded in the darkness, the enemy had already entered the range of the manor, with Atlantean warriors dressed in scale armor and Amazonians wearing high-heeled boots.
But the surveillance did not show the figures of the two kings.
Batman sighed, his plan had fallen through, he picked up the photo on the table beside him, looking at his wife and child's faces.
Two gunshots of the past took them away, and today, the trigger in his hand will take him to their side.
Thomas pulled up his hood, sitting in the chair looking towards the Bat Cave stairs, the enemies would enter from that direction, and if he delayed long enough, or showed a strength these ordinary enemies couldn't counter, he might cause their kings to take action.
He put the photo frame back on the table and lifted a heavy machine gun from the ground next to him; ammunition in the Bat Cave had been severely consumed, with about ten thousand bullets left, hopefully, they could sustain a bit longer.
If not, then only mutual destruction remained, ending his nightmare journey.
"Buzz!"
Just as he was ready, a familiar golden electric light suddenly appeared in front of him, like a car wrapped in a golden bubble appeared.
The familiar Flash, Barry, is running wildly on the treadmill on the rooftop, making all the illusory scenes gradually turn solid.
Too fast, his thoughts cannot keep up with the changes in reality; a few people have already pushed open the car door and stood in front of him.
"Don't shoot, Dr. Wayne, it's me, The Flash, Barry."
"What the hell...?" Thomas was momentarily unable to accept it. If Barry had successfully corrected the world, then what was this reality?
Immediately afterward, he saw Wonder Woman and Aquaman getting out of the car, and he quickly placed his hand on the remote control.
"Don't be nervous, Mr. Wayne. We are the Justice League, uh, from another reality," Su Ming raised his hands to indicate he meant no harm; Diana and Arthur also stepped back a few steps, leaning against the Divine Speed device.
The eyepieces of this Batman uniform are red, appearing like a demon's gaze in the darkness. Su Ming calmly met his eyes but explaining why the Flashpoint World still existed would indeed involve too many things.
Batman glanced at Aquaman, who was noticeably different from the one he knew. In his reality, Aquaman was a short-haired pretty boy who wielded a five-pronged trident.
But the one before him had long wavy hair and a bushy beard, looking like a primitive actor who escaped from a museum. The trident in his hand emitted a mysterious blue light, clearly a powerful divine artifact.
As for Wonder Woman, although she wore a red hooded cloak and looked identical, her aura was vastly different. This one seemed much kinder, and her position was closer to that of the person in yellow and black armor.
"Who are you?" Thomas asked.
"I'm Deathstroke, a mercenary. Perhaps there's no version of me in this reality, but that's beside the point. The point is, your son needs help right now."
"What does that mean? The Flash? No, this is a trick, a cruel joke."
Barry tore off the mask, bewildered, and said, "No, Doctor, this is not a joke or a trick. What he's saying is true; something's not right."
"Speak!"
"Uh, it's been seven years since I fixed the timeline. For us, everything is back on track, but someone is still maintaining the Flashpoint World, no, maintaining the existence of the past Multiverse. This is Earth's other-dimensional version.
.... I don't know how to explain it, maybe Deathstroke can?"
It was Deathstroke who proposed the plan. Barry merely borrowed quantum equipment from the Star Laboratory, then modified a Lightning Vehicle to start running.
But it was Deathstroke who brought out the Jester Badge and Medusa Mask, using the X Metal within him to perform a series of incomprehensible operations, truly sending the group back to the Flashpoint World.
Logically, this is impossible because the past Multiverse has already been rebooted, and Barry, being in the know, saw it all clearly.
But by temporarily converting them into a quantum form, akin to the Justice League Transporter, the group went through the Divine Speed Plane back to before the universe rebooted?
Barry didn't know what to say; he felt he still knew too little about Divine Speed, truly a power that could turn the impossible into possible.
Unfortunately, it just couldn't save his mom....
"If we need to explain, it's not impossible, but now is clearly not the time. Arthur, Diana, prepare to execute the plan." Su Ming exhaled, the helmet melted off his face: "It's the Undersea People and Amazons who want to kill Batman, you know what to do."
"With me here, they won't succeed." Diana twirled her Fire God Sword in her hand, and Arthur patted his chest, assuring that the Atlanteans were all on him.
Before coming, Barry briefly told them about the world once created by Divine Speed, where in this twisted reality Wonder Woman killed the Sea Queen just to be with Aquaman, and Aquaman cheated then regretted, even starting a war....
After hearing this, Diana and Arthur were speechless. What kind of change was this? Divine Speed was too damnable!
"The atomic vibration frequency here is normal, this isn't a parallel world or time stream, this is our world, we've arrived home." Oliver put away a small device in his hand, joining the conversation between Deathstroke and.... old Batman.
"This is a Ghost Realm, a parallel historical projection of Earth 0 in another dimension. If you insist on looking at an old problem with new eyes, you could understand it as the Earth negative 0 of the Dark Multiverse."
Su Ming had too many things he couldn't say, so he could only use a relatively ambiguous statement to explain to Green Arrow.
The actual situation was different; the truth is that he utilized Divine Speed, quantum entanglement, X Metal, and his own characteristics to take everyone on a 'journey' through time and space.
The Medusa Mask could react with the Jester Badge because the pre-Flashpoint world was maintained by Dr. Manhattan, one serving as coordinates, the other as energy.
Manhattan wasn't entirely confident in merging the Watchmen Universe into the Main Universe, so he simultaneously cut out the ten years of the Flashpoint world.
Quantum inherently holds the concepts of both time and space, for him, the past is not much different from now.
If the new Multiverse went wrong, here would be the backup Earth, able to swap with the post-New 52 reborn Earth.
Just like a boot disk in a USB drive, if something unexpected really happened one day, all Manhattan needed to do was paste the backed-up system files back in and then reboot the system.
Once the computer was rejuvenated, he could continue his attempts.
This was the most down-to-earth explanation Su Ming could think of, but it couldn't be said, Batman of Earth 0 was too suspicious; the more that's said, the more wrong it becomes.
Su Ming knew what he had told them, and when Batman asked, they wouldn't hide these secrets, and would turn around and spill them.
"Wait, negative 0? What genius taught you math? I've never heard of a negative number for zero before." Oliver looked incredulously as if he was being teased, while Thomas seemed to be lost in thought on the side.