It was still the Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic, but now it wasn't lonely at all. Every member of the Justice League was there, plus one reporter.
Batman had shown up too. Lois was amazed—she hadn't expected the entire Justice League to gather.
"I heard it was a big interview with top reporter Lois Lane. How could we not come?" Kaitou Kid was excited to meet someone straight out of the original stories.
Lois looked at Kid and noticed that offstage, he looked really young and loved to talk. The quietest of them was Batman, but that was no surprise.
Lois asked a lot of questions, and Kid answered the most. Everyone glanced at him—no one realized Kid was such a chatterbox. In videos online, he always looked like a calm gentleman, in complete control, saying just a few words to steer everything. But here he was, talking non-stop. He also knew an unbelievable amount about everyone in the Justice League.
Lois realized even when she asked personal questions about the members, Kid could spill details. Like whether Batman had an assistant—everyone thought Batman was a lone wolf, but Kid said he had a partner named Robin who was currently away at college.
Batman was shocked that Kid even knew Robin's whereabouts. How did Kid know so much?
Then there was Wonder Woman's family history—Kid recited it like it was nothing. How Flash got his powers? Kid had every detail. Even what Superman's parents did for a living—Kid knew that too.
Suddenly, everyone fell silent and turned to stare at Kid. They hadn't known him that long—Batman had only known him a little over a year—yet Kid seemed to know everything about them. Some of these things were secrets they'd never shared, even with each other. Like what Superman's mother did for work—Superman didn't even remember himself since he was just a baby when he came to Earth, and Jor-El's AI had never told him.
"Kid, I've always wondered—how do you know so much? Like how you knew the Kryptonians' weaknesses before and everything about the Elite. Can you tell me where you get your information?" Superman asked earnestly.
Flash added, "It's like we don't have any privacy at all."
Kid realized he'd gone too far—he always had this problem, getting too familiar after just a couple meetings, especially when he already knew so much about people. Even though they hadn't known each other long, he was incredibly familiar with them—their past, present, future, sadness, joy, loneliness. In this world, Liu A'dou wasn't all-knowing, but when it came to the main heroes, he understood them inside and out.
But now his knowledge was making the others suspicious.
"Uh, I did say I've been to the future, right? In the future, your stories are already public. That's how I know so much—from those records and from what you all told me yourselves," Kid explained. He didn't want to lie, but if he said he was from another timeline, they might see him as an outsider.
After all, in countless parallel universes, everyone feels a sense of belonging to their own world. Anyone coming from another universe would be seen as an invader, someone to be wary of.
Saying he'd been to the future made sense—and it was true, Kid really had gone there.
Flash remembered. "I almost forgot what you told me back then," he said, recalling how Kid had helped him catch Reverse Flash.
Flash explained the story to everyone, and they were shocked Kid had experienced something like that.
Lois was amazed too. Not only were there aliens, but now time travelers? Her whole worldview was being overturned. Seeing how the superheroes accepted this so easily, she realized how ordinary she still was. But she couldn't hide her curiosity about the future. "Mr. Kid, could you tell me something about it?" she asked.
"The future isn't fixed," Kid said. "The future I saw was just one possibility out of infinite universes. Every choice we make creates a new branch and a new universe."
"So you mean there are lots of versions of ourselves?" Lois asked.
Liu A'dou nodded firmly. "Yes. And each version of yourself could be different—your identity, whether you're alive, your personality. In some universes, there's also a Justice League, but the members might not be us. There could still be a Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, but they might not be the same people as now. Batman could be a scientist, Superman might be General Zod's child, Wonder Woman might not even be an Amazon. Do you get it?"
Lois nodded that she understood.
Kid went on. "There are also universes where we die early for all kinds of reasons, so there's no Justice League at all. And there are universes where this same group of people stays together, but we form the Injustice League instead—doing bad things, taking over the world."
Lois gasped. If there really was an Injustice League, who knew what the world would be like? Even if it was just Kid talking, and there was no way to prove parallel universes existed, the possibility was scary enough.
"Every choice creates a universe?" Flash murmured to himself. He was thinking about whether going back to save his mother would affect this timeline, or if he could save her without changing this world.
"Flash, you're thinking about your mom again, aren't you?" Kid asked. He knew each of them carried a burden, and for Flash, it was his mother.
Flash fell silent.
"Actually, in the future you tried many times to go back and save her," Kid said. "But every time you did, it only made things worse. You nearly destroyed the world."
Another story. Lois thought these things couldn't be published as news, but they were fascinating as stories. She'd already gathered enough material for a whole series—she didn't mind if Kid shared more.
Seeing everyone staring at him, Kid stood up, moved to the side with his back to them, and sighed. "Alright. Even though Flash told me not to tell his past self about this, the future is what we make it. So I'll tell you."
"Flash, you definitely can save your mother—that's for sure. But the one who killed her was Reverse Flash. If you save her, you can't catch Reverse Flash. That triggers a whole chain of events—a butterfly effect. Superman's ship crashes into Metropolis, causing massive destruction. Superman gets locked up by the government and never sees daylight again. And you, Flash, lose your powers, leaving you helpless against criminals. You'd end up watching your mother get killed in a crime all over again. As for Batman…"
Kid suddenly stopped. Everyone looked at him, confused. "What about Batman? Does he disappear?"
"Batman still exists, but not the Batman we know. It's your father who becomes Batman. The one who dies is you—not your parents."
Crack—a cup in Batman's hand shattered. There was actually a universe like that?
"After losing his child, Batman's father carries two guns and hunts criminals through the city. The worst criminal of all is the Joker, who in that world is his wife—your mother."
Crack-crack—now everyone else's cups shattered. This story was over the top. Batman and the Joker as husband and wife? That was a dangerous thought.
"Your mother is driven mad by grief after losing you, becoming the Joker. And your father's only goal is to kill her. Batman's whole family is a tragedy in that world."
"As for Wonder Woman, her fate is completely different too. She doesn't become a friend to humanity. Instead, she turns the continent into a battlefield, leading the Amazon army into war with Atlantis. Floods drown everything, and the entire continent ends up underwater."
…it all sounded plausible, but it was way too extreme. They tried to laugh it off, but these stories were too close to home. It was hard to just forget them. Thinking about how their fates could be so different in another universe, they started to believe Kid's theory a little.
But parallel universes were something they still hadn't encountered—at least for now.