Superman, gripping Ian.
Like holding a kitten that was trying to make a run for it.
"Oh, this damned scruff of fate." Ian's entire body went rigid in an instant, unable to move. He struggled to twist his head around, meeting Superman Clark's deep blue eyes.
"Easy, easy! My neck's gonna snap! I know I was wrong! I'm still a kid! A child, here!" Ian struggled a few times, only to find it was completely futile.
He had no choice but to give up resisting and instead play the "innocent American child" card. There was no helping it—he'd profited far too much from that last incident, raking in both magic and money hand over fist.
Now being called to account, Ian admitted to himself that he probably deserved this—but given another chance, he'd still do it all over again.
"No use playing dumb."
Superman Clark took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing his tangled emotions, and said in a low voice, "We didn't come here for whatever happened in the small hours."
As the saying went—no one knows a son better than his father.
Clark knew that to get Ian to cooperate, he first needed to keep him calm.
"Hm?"
At that.
Ian did stop struggling for the moment, his head tilting slightly, a weak, sheepish expression crossing his face as he tested the waters. "So is it because... I bribed a bunch of senators, got my hands on a lot of dirt on the folks in Congress, and was trying to get Mom or Big Brother fast-tracked into the presidency, and that got exposed?"
Heaven only knew how many secretly committed misdeeds were flashing through Ian's mind in that moment—there was no helping it, he feared nothing in heaven or earth except for these two parental figures, Lois and Clark.
"...?!?!?!"
Superman's pupils instantly blew wide. He was completely thrown by the question, his brain momentarily failing to process it—clearly, this was the first he'd heard of any of this.
"What were you bribing senators to do?"
Clark asked instinctively—clearly, even possessing such overwhelming power hadn't let him see this coming, which said a lot about how thorough Ian's secrecy had been.
"Uh..."
The instant Ian saw Superman's reaction, his super-intelligence kicked in again, and he immediately realized this wasn't the issue at hand. He swiftly swapped to a "forget I said anything" expression.
He quickly changed the subject, continuing to fish for information: "So is it because... I bought a bunch of nukes? I swear! Grandpa was the one tempting me with a really good discount price!"
"Grandpa's so bad, so bad."
Well, it wasn't that Ian particularly enjoyed throwing his grandfather under the bus—it was just that, compared to risking exposure of something far less exposable, voluntarily revealing something more exposable was clearly the wiser move.
"!!!?!?!"
Even though this was a minor matter as far as Ian was concerned, the shock it delivered to Clark was anything but minor—even the rest of the Justice League's expressions had gone wonderfully complicated at this point.
"No! What do you mean you bought nukes?"
Clark's expression cycled through more changes than a Sichuan opera face-changing act, his eyes going wide as though he'd just heard something genuinely spine-chilling.
Bought nukes?! At a discount?!
What in the world was his father-in-law up to?!
Were this grandfather-grandson duo trying to team up and destroy the world?!
"I think he's eaten too many mushrooms and wants to use the nukes to grow more." Aquaman Arthur offered up his own opinion with complete sincerity—few people knew that within the Justice League, and even among the New Gods, he too counted as something of an abstract entity.
"Good idea."
Ian gave him a manual thumbs-up.
"Ian Kent!" Wonder Woman Diana, standing nearby, genuinely couldn't take any more of this and called out sharply to put a stop to it. She had the sense that if this kid kept talking, the trouble would only keep multiplying.
Besides, at this rate, the Justice League wouldn't need to do anything else today—just dealing with all the dirt he was self-confessing would keep them busy for a year.
"Stop confessing your own crimes! The most important thing right now is Bruce!" Wonder Woman Diana made a zip-the-lips gesture, all but explicitly telling Ian to quit being a walking demolition expert.
Aquaman Arthur, hefting his five-pronged trident, grunted in agreement. "That's right! Kid, I might not be all that fond of that control freak Bruce, but the Justice League can't function without him!"
At that.
Cyborg Victor's mechanical eye flickered wildly, and he added with a note of anxiety.
"Batman can't die!"
"I seriously suspect Bruce Wayne planted a bomb inside my body! He sends me an encrypted code on a regular schedule—I always thought it was some kind of system patch, but now that I think about it, it might actually be entering a safety code for the bomb! If he never comes back... I'm definitely going to explode!"
It was only because Bruce Wayne had vanished that Cyborg even dared to say his name so directly—after all, no one understood better than him just how much control Batman held over the Kryptonian tech embedded in his body.
"What? There's something like that going on too?" The moment Cyborg said this, Green Lantern Hal Jordan beside him seemed to have a sudden realization, and his face went pale!
"Wait! Now that you mention it..." Hal's voice trembled slightly. "That guy Bruce... he regularly takes me out to dinner! And he always specifically tells me to come 'on time'! Don't tell me... don't tell me there's some antidote mixed into the food that needs to be taken on a schedule?! Am I poisoned too?!"
It wasn't hard to see why Green Lantern's mind went there.
Because honestly, this was exactly the kind of thing the old Bat could pull off.
"You know, now that you say it, you really might be onto something!"
After being "reminded" by these two, the other League members—the Flash, Aquaman, Wonder Woman—all began showing flickers of uncertainty and panic on their faces! They started racking their brains, trying to recall whether Batman had ever done anything resembling "routine maintenance" or "special attention" on them.
In an instant, the mood shifted from interrogating Ian to a full-blown panic over Batman's potential control tactics.
"What's wrong with Uncle Bruce?" Still oblivious to the situation, with Superman's hand still on the back of his neck, Ian blinked curiously. "Did he finally catch AIDS?"
"I always said that Catwoman lady was unclean..." It wasn't that Ian particularly enjoyed badmouthing Batman—he was using provocation as a tactic, a faster way to extract the real information.
And sure enough.
Just as he'd predicted.
"Smack!" Superman finally lost his patience completely and slapped the back of Ian's head, cutting off his nonsense. He could feel his blood pressure skyrocketing.
If his blood vessels were to actually burst.
That pressure alone might be enough to punch a hole straight through the planet.
"Come outside with me!" Clark had no patience left for any more nonsense indoors. He simply hauled Ian out, like a sack of potatoes, walked outside the manor, and shoved him into a spot where he could clearly see the changes happening to the outside world.
The demon soldiers, the demon butler, the demon guards, the succubus maids—at this point, no one knew where any of them had run off to; not a single one could be found anywhere in the manor.
"These demons sure know which way the wind's blowing."
There was no resentment or grievance in Ian's heart—only admiration for the wisdom of his own servants. Well, what could he say—he was simply an excellent lord of the manor who thought about things from every angle.
If even his servants were this clever.
What did that say about their master?
If you got that, give yourself a round of applause.
Just as Ian was indirectly congratulating himself in his own head.
"See for yourself!"
Superman pointed toward the street outside.
At his words.
Ian finally turned to look outside, and only then noticed just how bizarre the world had become—cyberpunk-style Metropolis actually bore some resemblance to the vision he'd laid out for Amerika in his Diary.
Super vision.
Ian had that too.
Though not as powerful as a Kryptonian's, thanks to the power-up he'd received earlier that morning, his eyesight could now cover the entirety of Metropolis and part of Gotham as well.
Especially after Superman's prompting, Ian channeled his divine power to enhance his vision further—so not only Gotham and Metropolis, he could even make out the veins on a single leaf in Los Angeles.
There.
The first thing he saw was Amerika—People's Hospitals had sprung up everywhere, along with genuine medical insurance service centers; healthcare was no longer a "service."
It had become a "basic guarantee of survival."
Hospitals were no longer oppressive white labyrinths but vibrant public spaces, full of life. There were no longer so many insurance denials, no more five-thousand-dollar emergency room bills for a single visit.
Diabetes, hypertension—all treatable for free. Yes, this was the communized Amerika from Ian's diary, and the changes didn't stop there.
The former private elite school at the foot of the Hollywood Hills now bore a sign reading "Los Angeles First Vocational Labor Institute." The wrought-iron gates once ringed with security had been completely torn down, replaced with stone pillars engraved with "Everyone Has the Right to Education"—knowledge was no longer restricted to the elite class.
There were no more hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars student loans either.
Lunch debt had vanished as well.
The public transit system had been entirely freed from private corporate control, and even more thoughtfully, "customized commuter services"—point-to-point shuttle routes—had been launched in every major city for laborers in remote farming communities.
Even the military.
Now got paid on time, no longer had to pay for their own food, no longer had to take out loans to buy their own uniforms and weapons, and every soldier, upon discharge, actually received a real severance payment, put directly into their hands. The world was truly warping—all manner of irrational structures, creations, and social systems were materializing out of nowhere.
That said.
"Isn't this... actually pretty great?" Ian had no idea why this change had occurred, but if sacrificing one Bruce Wayne was all it took to bring about such a wonderful Amerika...
He was willing to pin his Uncle Bruce down in Hell and never let him out again. As for the DC universe needing a Batman—well, whoever ended up wearing that suit could just be Batman, couldn't they?
"Oh, I can send Uncle Bruce to Heaven, don't worry about that." Ian's views on life and death had, over these recent days, developed a rather different slant from those of ordinary people.
This little speech of his only made the Justice League's expressions even more spectacular.
"..."
A brief silence followed.
"This isn't about Heaven and Hell."
Superman gave a concise rundown of the situation—how Jonathan and the other two had been sent back in time by a Weeping Angel, how this had triggered the collapse of the timeline, and how Batman had just dissolved into nothing right before their eyes.
"He got completely erased?" Once Ian heard this, his expression also went through some spectacular shifts. He processed it for a few seconds, then suddenly jerked his head up with a sharp gasp.
Except his focus was, as ever, bizarrely off-target.
"So what you're saying is... the three of them went off to the past together, as a group?" Ian's voice jumped an octave, laced with disbelief—and a touch of genuine depression.
"They didn't bring me?! I got left out?! This is bullying! Blatant bullying!" Ian knew that even if Batman had died in the past, he could still track down his own Uncle Bruce somewhere in Hell.
There was no need to grieve here.
Because that would be invalid grief.
That was how thoroughly his super-intelligence had reasoned through the whole situation. However, the fact that his focus was so clearly off the actual point left the rest of the Justice League members standing nearby feeling a deep sense of exasperation.
"...?!?!?!"
No one could really understand Ian—his perspective and mindset, shaped by ruling over portions of both Heaven and Hell, meant the entire League was looking at him with rather strange expressions.
"Seriously?" Wonder Woman Diana crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow at him. "That's genuinely all you care about? The world is on the brink of collapse, and you're only worried about whether your little friends brought you along to play?"
"What else would I worry about?" Ian shot back, completely righteous, as though he'd suffered some unbearable injustice. "You're an old hermit from your island, you have no idea how brutal American-style bullying really is! This is psychological exclusion and isolation! It'll cause permanent damage to my mental health! The world's resilience is way sturdier than you give it credit for."
"This whole 'world on the brink of collapse' thing doesn't scare me anymore—I'm not some fourteen-year-old kid. Everyone knows Uncle Barry's messed with the timeline plenty of times already, am I wrong?"
As he spoke.
He pointed at the Flash.
"..."
This time, it clearly wasn't an unfair hit—the Flash's embarrassment was practically overflowing, and he looked like he wanted nothing more than to activate the Speed Force right then and dig himself a hole to climb into.
"Uh..."
It wasn't just the Flash—Ian's words left even Wonder Woman, raised on the isolated Themyscira, momentarily speechless, unable to counter an argument that, annoyingly, actually held some logic.
Of course, she was a reasonable woman.
There were, however, men present who weren't quite so interested in reason.
"Smack!"
As the father figure here, Clark of course had no obligation to be reasonable. Superman smacked the back of Ian's head again, not lightly this time, forcibly yanking his train of thought back on track.
"Listen, Ian!"
Clark's voice was deathly serious. "Barry can't time travel right now, and the time machine in the Hall of Justice won't start either. Before Bruce disappeared, he told us this has something to do with you."
"His last words were to come find you." He stared straight into Ian's eyes. "So—about time, about how to resolve this crisis—is there anything you need to tell us?"
Clark was clearly trying to extract an answer from Ian.
However.
At this, Ian's expression shifted from wounded innocence to genuine bafflement.
"Has something to do with me?" He pointed at his own nose, eyes going round. "I haven't even evolved any time-related powers yet! Is Uncle Bruce trying to frame me? Just because I 'borrowed' his name a little for some side projects, is that why he had to get revenge on me right before vanishing?"
It wasn't unreasonable for Ian to think this way.
He trusted Bruce Wayne.
Batman had surely seen something like this coming in advance.
So.
It wasn't without reason that he might've set up a little payback against Ian ahead of time.
Precisely because of this, Ian immediately started shouting.
"Batman's a notorious liar! Everyone knows it! You can't trust a Gothamite! You all need to go find the Infinity Family for this! Go find Lucifer's old man—God himself!"
"They're bound to have a way!" Ian tried to wriggle free of his father's grip. "Let go of me first! I'll go contact my connections right now!"
"I guarantee I'll get this handled beautifully!" Ian declared with conviction—he genuinely did feel that, given how the world had changed, certain aspects might actually need his personal correction.
"Is that so?"
Superman stared at the way Ian's eyes were darting around, at his eager, itching-to-bolt body language, and didn't buy a word of it. The hand gripping the back of Ian's neck didn't budge an inch.
Clark knew this youngest son of his far too well.
Let him go?
Heaven only knew what opportunity Ian would find to slip off into the past himself and stir up even more chaos.
"Clark." Wonder Woman, having carefully observed Ian's reactions, didn't think he was acting, and after a moment's thought, she stepped forward to speak.
"Perhaps Ian genuinely doesn't know the specifics. I think we still need to find a way to travel through time," Diana reasoned. "Perhaps Barry, for some reason, is no longer able to personally travel through time, but the Speed Force itself surely still retains that capability. What we need now is to find a way to use the Speed Force to open a passage through time—it doesn't necessarily have to be Barry himself who travels."
Her proposal did make sense, and the rest of the League—Cyborg, Aquaman, even Green Arrow—nodded along in agreement.
It sounded like a viable breakthrough.
However, agreement was one thing; the awkward silence that followed was another matter entirely.
"So." Aquaman Arthur gestured with his trident toward the still-rapidly-transforming world outside, asking in a low, gruff voice, "Who's actually going to pull this off? Drawing up the plan, finding the method, coordinating the resources... Normally, this kind of task falls to Bruce, doesn't it?"
The question landed on the group like a bucket of cold water.
Having lost Batman—their brain, their planner—they suddenly felt like a scattered, disorganized mess, utterly at a loss in the face of a crisis this complex, one that struck at the very root of time itself.
Aquaman Arthur continued.
He gestured helplessly at the world outside. "As things stand, at this rate, reality might fully solidify and lock into place within just a few hours—and after that, there'll be no undoing it. I don't think the lot of us... can find a way to bypass the Speedster and directly tap into the Speed Force to travel through time, not in such a short window."
"Don't look at me." Wonder Woman, feeling everyone's eyes on her, shook her head. "Magic can't do it—at the very least, Themysciran magic isn't capable of directly interfering with the flow of time on this kind of scale."
Powerful as she was, this simply wasn't her domain of expertise. As she spoke, Diana walked toward the corner, where Constantine sat bound tightly with the Lasso of Truth, his mouth taped shut—clearly subdued by Diana earlier, mid-rant or mid-mischief.
"Riiip~"
Diana tore the tape off Constantine's mouth.
"You absolute bastards!" Constantine had been listening in this whole time, ears perked, and being trussed up like a prisoner had left him plenty resentful.
So the moment his mouth was free, he immediately fired off a jab. "Heh! So the Justice League's nothing without Batman around, is that it? Can't come up with a plan? Can't solve a crisis? So are you the Justice League or the Batman League? Well, this is certainly eye-opening!"
Constantine truly did have a venomous tongue, and his bluntly accurate dig left every League member present with hot, flushed faces—embarrassed, yet with nothing to say in rebuttal.
"Shut it!"
Arthur, his composure broken, had a short fuse, and at this he raised his trident, its tines glinting coldly. "I say we bleed this guy a little first, see if that clears his head!"
Seeing that the brutish Aquaman wasn't joking and genuinely looked ready to follow through, Constantine backed down instantly, with remarkable speed!
"No, no, no! I was just messing around!" he hastily called out, his tone softening at once. "Believe me, I was just... just a bit on edge!"
"What I mean is, my magic can't get us through time either! Because the rules of magic themselves are being rewritten—I can't even cast most basic spells right now! I'm just as helpless as the rest of you!" He clearly understood exactly why Diana had chosen this moment to free his mouth.
"Hm?"
Wonder Woman used her abilities to confirm Constantine was telling the truth, and her expression grew even more troubled. She sighed. "So the path of magic is a dead end too. Perhaps... I could go back to Themyscira and search the ancient texts, or ask my mother, to see if there are any gods on Earth, hidden away, who hold dominion over time."
"There's no time for that." Superman immediately shot down the suggestion—the changes to the outside world were accelerating.
"Then what exactly are we supposed to do?" Aquaman raked his fingers through his hair in frustration, feeling utterly useless.
Just as the group hit a deadlock, at a complete loss, Flash Barry Allen, who had been quietly mulling things over off to the side, finally spoke up. "Maybe... we could turn to the expertise at STAR Labs?"
"Their research into the Speed Force and cross-dimensional physics runs deeper than anyone's." But he immediately hesitated. "Though... with Dr. Wells involved... it might be hard to guarantee nothing goes wrong..."
What he actually meant to hint at was that Harrison Wells was secretly the Reverse-Flash, Eobard Thawne, and that involving him in a project touching the very core of time itself carried enormous risk—the man could very easily use the opportunity to pull something.
But before Barry could finish the thought, just as he was about to bring up the matter of Dr. Wells—
Whoosh—!
A streak of lightning, like a venomous serpent tearing through space.
Appeared abruptly before the entire group!
As the lightning faded, it revealed a figure clad in a dark yellow reverse-Flash suit, a fully enclosed helmet covering his face. He stood there, radiating a Speed Force entirely different in nature from Barry's.
The Reverse Speed Force.
Saturated with malice and a hunger for control.
"Wells really couldn't manage something like this..." The Reverse-Flash—Eobard Thawne—had arrived, and remarkably, the moment he opened his mouth, he actually tried to whitewash and conceal his own identity. Though no one could say for sure whether he was doing it on purpose, or whether he already knew his identity had been blown.
In any case.
The Reverse-Flash's arrival was, without question, a twist none of them had seen coming. The man brushed off the wary, hostile stares from the group, along with the threat radiating off Superman, without a flicker of concern.
"But I can."
The Reverse-Flash seemed unusually anxious himself, even—afraid.