Ice-cold rainwater mixed with mud plastered half of Damian Wayne's face.
Batman's boot—thick and heavy, marked by battle—pressed down on his cheek like a slab of stone, the immense pressure forcing a groan from his cheekbone.
The muscles of his face warped and twisted. Even breathing became an ordeal.
Humiliation, rage, and an uncontrollable primal fear at being face to face with a father who was a complete stranger—all of it tangled together, and in the end, it drove Damian to shout the words he had least wanted to shout.
That his father was Bruce Wayne.
Damian, who had always sneered at name-dropping and who harbored no shortage of contempt for Batman as a father figure, was still a child at the end of the day—even if he was among the most impossible children in the DC universe.
He still couldn't escape the instinctive human desire to survive. He did not want his life to end here, erased in this stretch of the past.
"I—my father is Bruce Wayne!!"
The words hit the stormy air like a thunderclap.
After Damian's shout, the foot pressing down on his face eased—the pressure stuttering, then dropping away—followed by a silence that seemed to solidify the air itself.
But Batman did, at last, stop applying force. Whatever was running through his mind, Damian's shout had clearly triggered something considerably stronger than passing interest.
"Hah... hah... hah~"
With the pressure gone, Damian gulped down air in ragged gasps. The cold, blood-tinged air flooded his lungs with a stinging bite, and he could still feel the weight of Batman's gaze bearing down on him.
"It's true. Everything I said is true."
Damian struggled, trying to press his advantage while he still could.
"If you don't believe me, ask me anything! I know where the Batcave is! I know Alfred! I know you have nightmares at night—about that alley, about the pearls..."
If "dancing on the edge of danger" had a human embodiment, Damian was demonstrating whose brain he truly took after.
Like father, like son—except it was the mother's side showing.
"Shut up."
The response to Damian's desperate disclosure was not the safety of a father recognizing his son. It was a single punch—no technique, no flourish, not even a trace of paternal feeling. Just pure, precisely calibrated force.
"Thud~"
The blow landed squarely on the side of Damian's head, the force controlled to perfection—enough to strip him of consciousness instantly, not enough to cause permanent brain damage.
When it came to measuring force, Batman had always been a professional.
"Ugh!" Damian didn't even get to finish his next sentence before his vision went black and every sound and point of light withdrew into nothing. A large lump rose on his skull at a speed visible to the naked eye, and his entire body went limp and collapsed into the mud—out cold.
The poor young master of the Wayne household had received nothing from Batman but the absolute composure and efficient handling of a potential threat.
Jonathan, dangling from the drones overhead, saw this and nearly split his eyes trying to burst through his bonds, thrashing wildly. "Let him go! You have no idea what you just did!"
"Is Damian dead?" Jordan, still kneeling in the mud, was too wracked by the Kryptonite's weakness to form a complete sentence—he could only stare at Batman in wide-eyed horror.
"The lot of you..."
Batman straightened up, didn't even spare another glance at the unconscious Damian—as though that earth-shaking declaration from moments ago had never happened—and stood with total composure.
Of course.
Beneath that mask, his brow was certainly drawn tight.
His mind was running at full speed.
Regardless of why or how someone had shouted the name Bruce Wayne in front of him, Batman had concluded that the circumstances and origins of these three children who had appeared out of nowhere were almost certainly far more complex than he had initially imagined.
"Truly... unexpected."
He made a quick series of inputs on his wrist-mounted control panel.
From somewhere in the distance, the roar of an engine grew from a murmur to a rumble.
The Batmobile—hard lines, raw power contained in black—tore through the curtain of rain like a phantom of the night and swung to a precise, controlled stop at the edge of the battlefield.
It might one day be considered a relic in the Batcave of the future, but in this era, it was the very symbol of cutting-edge technology, a machine that embodied it all.
Batman moved with practiced efficiency, loading the unconscious Damian inside.
Jordan—still on his knees, weakened by the Kryptonite—and Jonathan—lowered from the drones, temporarily restrained—each in turn received the "stranger's iron fist" courtesy of their dear Bat-uncle.
Then Batman methodically loaded all three unconscious children into the Batmobile's narrow but reinforced rear containment compartment. He himself vaulted nimbly onto the exterior of the vehicle, seizing the specially designed grip handles.
"Hmmm~"
Blue plasma jets ignited beneath the Batmobile.
The heavy frame lifted slowly from the ground and began to climb.
Just then.
Down in the mud below.
The young Superman, briefly knocked unconscious by the Kryptonite's effects, stirred and opened his eyes. The green curse still lingered inside him, sending waves of weakness and nausea rolling through his body.
"I'm not dead?"
He struggled upright, pressing a hand against his still-aching chest, just in time to catch sight of the black figure clinging to the Batmobile as it rose into the sky.
Their gazes met once more through the air—the hostility between them had not diminished one bit for the unexpected interruption.
"You're just temporarily not dead. We're not finished." Batman's low voice carried through the rain—less a threat than a cold statement of fact.
The Batmobile carried him away toward Gotham.
Left behind, Superman watched the direction the Batmobile had disappeared, his expression complex—but he remained resolute, speaking in a quiet voice with an absolute chill of his own.
"I agree."
There was something in Superman's bearing at that moment that felt unusually sharp—almost ancestral in its coldness.
"Clark! Clark!"
Salvation had a way of always appearing beside Clark at precisely the right moment.
As though everything had always been arranged by some unseen hand, from somewhere in the distance came Lois Lane's urgent voice—she was running through the rain, stumbling forward with every other step.
"Lois!"
The cold edge in Superman's eyes melted away in an instant. His attention snapped toward her and he turned, moving to meet the reporter who was racing toward him through the downpour, overwhelmed with emotion.
"I'm fine."
Clark murmured his reassurance, folding the worried reporter into his arms.
"That man... why did he suddenly leave?"
Lois stared at the direction the Batmobile had vanished beyond the skyline—shaken, yet filled with confusion. She had already sensed, instinctively, that Batman had been calculating against Superman.
And she had been right to be uneasy—the events had proven it.
That attitude Batman had shown just now—as though he wouldn't stop until one of them was dead.
She had seen it clearly from where she stood at a distance.
"Only for now." Superman's gaze turned back toward Gotham's brooding silhouette and he shook his head. "He seems to have... run into something he finds more troublesome than dealing with me."
As Superman said this.
Beneath Gotham City.
On the other side of the city, the young Batman had already returned to his most heavily equipped Batcave. The damp air carried the scent of engine oil, electronics, and stone.
Many devices that would one day be antiques were humming with activity.
For lack of cutting-edge processors, the computers here were nothing like the compact machines of future generations—enormous banks of computing equipment emitted a low, constant drone, the streams of data on the screens scrolling past like a waterfall.
"Hah... hah... hah~"
This was the panting sound Ian was most familiar with.
Possibly more familiar to Ian than the panting sounds from American, European, Japanese, or Korean sources combined.
Fortunately, Ian was not here.
So Batman was spared from having his composure shattered.
He was only feeling the slightest bit unsettled right now.
Bruce Wayne, still in the Batsuit, stood before the main console. He had removed his helmet, but his face remained shadowed with the gravity and exhaustion of battle.
And a trace of... something that defied easy description. A kind of irritation.
"What exactly is the situation here?"
He stared fixedly at the large display before him, split into three feeds—each showing one of the children sealed inside specially reinforced glass stasis pods. Jonathan, Jordan, and Damian were all held in enforced suspension, ensuring safety while analysis proceeded.
"Master Bruce."
Alfred appeared. Though aged now, he stood straight-backed and sharp-eyed—far from the state he would one day need to reach, when he would have far more of Bruce's personal life to worry about.
The consummate gentleman carried a silver tray bearing a glass of water and a towel, but at this moment, the expression on his face was more interesting than anything on the tray.
Shock. Confusion. And something else—a faint, barely perceptible... joy, perhaps?
All of these emotions cycled across the old man's face in quick succession.
"The results are in, sir." Alfred's voice maintained a butler's composure, but a slight tremor gave away the turbulence beneath. "According to the final confirmation of the DNA analysis... Subject A—that is, the boy you've been watching this whole time, the one whose temperament appears to be rather... spirited..."
He paused, as though choosing his words carefully, then spoke with a tone of absolute certainty: "...must share an extremely close and direct blood relation with you."
"The probability that he is your direct biological descendant is... ninety-nine point nine eight percent." The number landed in the quiet of the Batcave like a hammer blow.
"..."
Bruce's jaw clenched instantly. He was silent for several seconds, his gaze locked with almost physical intensity on the feed showing Damian's face—which, even in unconsciousness, wore an expression of utter defiance.
"So." Bruce's voice came out dry.
"There's still a zero point zero two percent probability that he isn't, correct?" He was almost visibly clinging to that negligible statistical margin as a last line of defense.
Alfred's expression shifted to one of gentle exasperation. He set the tray quietly aside and inquired in a tone that was carefully circumspect—even tentative.
"If you'll forgive my impertinence, Master Bruce. During your... shall we say, more youthful years—your mid-teens, or early twenties, perhaps—is it possible that there were moments of... impulse, wherein certain... possibilities may have arisen that you yourself were not aware of at the time?"
The old gentleman had done his considerable best to make that inquiry sound as tactful as possible.
At those words, Bruce's mind involuntarily flashed through some extremely blurred fragments—remnants of his years as the wild, untethered "Prince of Gotham." Those galas, those models, those...—but he pressed the images down hard and fast, his brow creasing deeper. "I'm quite certain I couldn't possibly have a child."
His tone carried a conviction that bordered on obsessive.
"Oh? My dear Master Bruce, how can you be so certain?" Alfred raised an eyebrow, his manner composed, but the words struck at the core of the matter. "To my knowledge, you have not... lost the capacity for fatherhood. Is that not so?"
The remark landed like an invisible punch, hitting some precise vulnerability in Bruce. His expression shifted—something distinctly uncomfortable crossed his face, and in that same instant, he involuntarily became aware of a certain region that had very recently received pointed attention, which chose that moment to make itself felt with a dull, lingering ache.
"..."
Only Batman knew just how utterly speechless he was right now.
The capacity for fatherhood?
He could be entirely certain he "previously" had it.
But after that precise and merciless blow to a certain sensitive location just earlier, he genuinely could not confirm this with one hundred percent certainty without a thorough medical examination.
"This little brat..."
Bruce stared at Damian on the screen, squeezing those words out from between his teeth with what could only be described as grinding reluctance, the complexity of emotions in his gaze dense enough to serve as the final reading comprehension passage on a performing arts graduation exam.
Alfred's expression, in contrast, was entirely unlike Bruce's.
The way he looked at Damian had begun to soften with something that could only be described as the warmth of vicarious affection.
"I must say, Master Bruce." Alfred even leaned forward slightly, studying the contours of Damian's face on the screen with great care, his tone carrying a trace of unmistakable nostalgia.
"Setting everything else aside, this child... his brow, his bearing—and especially that air of insufferable arrogance that even unconsciousness cannot quite conceal... he really does look very much like you did as a boy. I would wager that his temperament, too, is much like young Master Bruce's... shall we say, memorable."
Perhaps this was simply the unique tenderness that skips a generation.
Alfred was, in many ways, half a father to Bruce Wayne—and had been present in his life even longer than his own father.
He was, in this moment, genuinely moved.
The remark, however, added several more lines to the visible strain on Bruce's face.
He turned away in silence.
He stopped looking at the boy on the screen—the boy he was half tempted to simply have committed to Arkham—and walked toward a more concealed section of the Batcave, deeper in, secured with more layers of defense than the rest.
The storeroom there held items that were uncategorized or exceptionally dangerous.
As Bruce walked, he spoke in a low voice—both as explanation to Alfred and as argument to himself.
"An enemy could have used a hair sample, blood, or some other biological material I'd inadvertently left behind. This could be the Joker's scheme—you know, if he sets his mind to something like this, he's entirely capable of pulling it off."
"Of course, it could also be the League of Assassins' handiwork, or even an enemy from the future, attempting to plant a chess piece near me and compromise my judgment through this method. Genetic engineering, cloning technology, temporal manipulation... there are far too many ways to explain the appearance of this alleged 'son.'"
Batman Bruce Wayne ran through every conspiratorial possibility his suspicious nature could generate—each one sounding entirely internally consistent, each one perfectly characteristic of Batman's wariness.
To this.
Alfred said nothing.
He simply smiled—the warm, knowing smile of a doting parent.
Bruce Wayne could not bring himself to look at his butler. At last, he came to a halt before an alloy safe that required multiple biometric verifications and a rotating cipher to unlock.
As he worked through the complex authentication sequence, he added one final thought.
"Of course... it isn't that I'm afraid of the possibility of having a child..." Batman's sentence went unfinished. He had, in fact, already considered the possibility that Damian and the other two had accidentally traveled here from the future. Indeed, numerous details about all three children pointed toward that conclusion.
And yet.
What of it? Batman simply refused to accept it—or rather, was unwilling to accept the fact that his future son had turned out to be a little devil. That was all.
"I need a more precise method to verify these three children's origins." The words fell, and the safe gave a soft hiss, its heavy door swinging slowly open.
Inside, no super-serums. No nuclear launch codes. Only a handful of items, each one radiating a subtly different energy signature.
"A more scientific method."
Bruce's gaze settled on a single sealed vial.
"And how do you intend to proceed with that verification, sir?"
Alfred's voice came from behind him.
Batman did not turn. He simply lifted the vial with great care—and golden arcs of electricity reflected in the deep blue of his eyes, lending them an air of quiet, unfathomable depth.
"Time will give us the answer." He held up the sealed Speed Force sample, his voice returning to its usual measured certainty. Inside the vial, there was no liquid—only a coil of living energy, shifting and churning with an inner life of its own, throwing off minute flickers of golden lightning.
At nearly the same instant that the Bruce Wayne of the past raised the Speed Force vial.
In the future—amid a timeline in chaos—on the street outside STAR Labs, the outlines of the surrounding buildings were warping and flickering like a television signal breaking up, struggling to stabilize into some fixed form, though the rate of change here seemed slightly slower than in Metropolis or Gotham.
Crackle——!
A reverse-colored crimson lightning bolt tore through the air, and the Reverse-Flash, Eobard Thawne, appeared in the middle of the street with a slight stagger—clearly, the effects of the shifting timeline were already making him unstable.
"Damn it!" The Reverse-Flash knew he was running out of time, and his expression showed it. The moment he materialized, he felt that gaze—scorching as the surface of the sun.
Here. Now.
Superman had already been hovering in the air, waiting for him.
He still had Ian Kent dangling from his hand like a baby chick—and Ian, for his part, was cradling a takeout box of boneless chicken feet, chewing away with great contentment and a look of happy anticipation on his face.
"You really are abnormally powerful." The Reverse-Flash shot Superman a deeply wary look—this was an existence whose speed had already surpassed the limits of his comprehension and the records in any history book he'd ever studied.
It triggered something primal and instinctive in him.
Fear.
Just then.
One after another, figures arrived—the Flash, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg—each appearing in turn, until the Reverse-Flash found himself encircled from all sides.
"So how exactly are you planning to make me a Speedster?"
Ian swallowed his mouthful of chicken and asked, half-muffled and full of anticipation, his eyes shining bright. This wasn't merely his own curiosity—it was the question on every hero's mind.
"There are only so many ways to become a Speedster." Barry kept his gaze fixed on the Reverse-Flash, laying out his hypothesis. "Sounds like you're planning to use STAR Labs' particle accelerator—recreate the accident, repeat on Ian what happened to you and me?"
The mention of STAR Labs set the Flash's mind working, and his tone filled with both disapproval and wariness. He knew better than anyone just how unstable and dangerous that kind of accident could be.
"Heh."
The Reverse-Flash let out a dismissive laugh.
It was only when looking at the Flash that the presence which Superman had suppressed in him showed any sign of recovery. His tone carried a near-pathological arrogance.
"Barry Allen... I've said it before. You are a miracle that cannot be replicated. Your creation was the convergence of countless coincidences and cosmic gifts. And it was precisely in seeking to understand you—to study that singular miracle that is you—that I came to grasp certain truths... about time, about the nature of the universe."
His tone had turned strange and oracular, like a philosopher lost in his own theory.
"Stop speaking in riddles." Superman had the least patience for theatrics. His brow furrowed, his overwhelming pressure bearing down on the Reverse-Flash like something tangible.
"Thawne! What exactly are you going to do? Now. Immediately. Tell us."
Under Superman's gaze—the kind that felt like it could melt steel—the Reverse-Flash's composure cracked. He swallowed, and at last dropped the philosopher's act.
He spoke plainly, pointing to a critical figure.
"We need the help of someone with enough... weight. Someone like Batman."
He stated his plan.
"Batman?"
Everyone blinked.
Wonder Woman stepped forward, her brow furrowed, her tone carrying a distinct edge. "Bruce has already disappeared because of the timeline's collapse!"
She looked like she suspected the Reverse-Flash was playing them.
"We cannot ask someone who has vanished and can no longer appear to help us... Ian also said just now that Batman's soul is not in either Hell or Heaven."
Aquaman Arthur added his voice, grim and seconding the thought.
Superman said nothing, but his expression carried its own clear note of displeasure. To this, the Reverse-Flash merely tilted his chin up slightly—and a trace of the smile unique to Speedsters crossed his face.
"Already disappeared? No, no, no... that is not how a Speedster perceives the world." The Reverse-Flash looked toward the Flash, and Barry, hearing those words, blinked.
"You mean we can seek out a Batman from the past to help us?" The Flash's mind worked in a Speedster's patterns—it was just that years under the care of the STAR Labs team had left that mind somewhat out of practice when it came to independent thought.
"But both you and the Reverse-Flash have lost the ability to travel through time. So how would we reach a past Batman to ask for his help?" Even without Batman, Superman still knew how to use his head.
He had identified the unsolvable contradiction in the Flash's plan in the first instant.
"Or perhaps we could... stub a cigarette out on this Reverse-Flash until he invents a cross-temporal communication device! Trust me! A little burning and his brain would definitely start working properly!"
"He's a man from the future—he knows more than any alien!"
Ian raised his hand with the suggestion.
It was an idea so innocent-sounding—no, so seemingly devoid of conscience by nature—that it sent a chill down the Reverse-Flash's spine. And then he watched Superman appear to actually be considering it, which alarmed him even more.
"No! We don't need to travel through time! And we don't need any communication device!"
"You need to trust Bruce Wayne!"
"He will help us create a new Speedster. In fact, you may not have realized yet—before he 'disappeared,' he had already prepared a plan for you."
It was hard to say whether the Reverse-Flash was only expressing such profound faith in Batman's mind because he didn't want to be stubbed with a cigarette. His tone had become strangely certain, carrying with it the calm of someone who had glimpsed the workings of fate.
"Yes. Bruce Wayne understood his own character very well. Which is why he knew you would have a window—one chance to make Ian Kent a Speedster and deliver him to that moment in time where everything went wrong."
The Reverse-Flash spoke.
And in his eyes.
The crimson light of the Reverse Speed Force blazed and flickered with violent intensity.
That power.
Seemed to carry his vision along with it—piercing through layer after layer of temporal fog, finding its way to that past moment in time, where a Batman had just raised a Speed Force vial and was preparing to observe the future.