Metropolis:

---

^{December 25th, 2020 - 0224 hrs | Justice League Headquarters - Metro Tower}

The teleporter released a bright flash, and once the light cleared the figures of two heroes emerged. The faceless detective known as The Question sluggishly walked out of the teleporter, endless gadgets and equipment hanging from a belt wrapped around his torso. He slumped down into the nearest chair, releasing a sigh as he removed the Santa hat from his head and his mask from his face. "... Duncan. Did I ever tell you that you know the weirdest fucking people?"

"Vic- I assure you there is no one more aware of that than me at this moment." Duncan concurred, stumbling out of the teleporter and holding his sleeve over his nose to stem the incessant flow of blood that freely poured from his nostrils after the psychic ass-kicking he'd just endured. Turning and abruptly flopping onto the floor, not even bothering with a chair as he put his back up against the teleporter's main control module and let out something between a groan and a growl as he held his aching head.

Of course the biggest badguy from his solo-days would choose to lay siege to London on the one night he and Q drew the short straws and had to be the only ones on-call on Christmas Eve.

Slumping his shoulders slightly at that thought (and subtley giving up on trying to get the pins and needles feeling out of his extremeties), the vertically-unimpressive superhuman cast a glance down to the blood-caked sleeve of his leather jacket and, more specifically, at his watch.

"Aw, fuck... I almost forgot." The Champion half-laughed, half-grimaced as he peeled off his domino mask "Merry Christmas, Man."

Upon hearing his friend wish him a Merry Christmas, the human enigma released a short chuckle, smiling forlornly. Christmas. It always brought back fond memories of his childhood, and his mother. He hadn't exactly had a Merry Christmas for the last two decades, not since...

He cut off that train of thought. It'd be best not to start crying in front of someone. He had a reputation to uphold.

Vic rubbed his temples, wincing slightly. "Merry Christmas. Think Jack Tar's gonna be getting coal in his stocking this year," he cracked.

But really... Don't have any family to celebrate it with, and Tot's not a big fan of celebrating holidays. Far as I'm concerned, it's just a normal day off."

"Remind me next time to tape one to the front of my boot before I shove it up his ass." The younger man laughed in response as he levered himself onto his feet with some effort, still leaning on the console for support and hissing slightly the whole way up.

Exhaling a little as he finally got himself onto his feet, Duncan gave his friend and co-worker of some three years, give or take, an appraising glance.

It wasn't often that Vic talked about stuff like this.

Shifting his head slowly to one side, and then to the other in thought, the man finally clicked his tongue as he spoke.

"Well, if you're up for it... I'm having Christmas at my place this year." Duncan offered with a small wave. "Got plenty o' space to crash at the lighthouse and ye'd have both me and my mom cooking dinner..."

Vic quirked an eyebrow at Duncan's proposition, mulling it over. You know, it would be nice to have somewhere to go for Christmas. Plus, Duncan was a damn fine chef. Add to that, and Vic had been on Monitor Duty with Duncan before... He knew how his mother cooked.

This wasn't an opportunity he could pass up.

"... Y'know what, what the hell? I don't have anything better to do." The masked vigilante stood up... Only to bite his tongue to hide a bark of pain. It'd been well over a year now, but the phantom pains in his knee alongside his recent injuries from Jack Tar and his Red Coats made him experience a whole new meaning of the word 'pain'.

Shaking his head, Vic gritted his teeth and pushed through. He'd gone through worse. Walking over to Duncan, he offered the younger a hand up. "Your mother knows about your, ah, 'line of work', right? Don't need her asking why you're so banged up."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that..." Duncan responded with a snort as Q helped him fully upright and he reached over punched in the necessary key on the console "Any illusion that I was just a mechanic ended the day I came home from The States for thanksgiving with my reptillian girlfriend."

Finally making his way over to the teleporter pad under his own power, his metagenes finally getting to work and causing the pins-and-needles feeling across his body to slowly ebb away, the Champion let a small smirk form across his features as he wiped his bloody nose one last time.

"We might haf'ta work on your French though. Grandma's still not that great at English." He chuckled slightly as he stretched a kink out of his neck "Buuut, in the meantime, we got most of a day to recuperate and a few bottles of rum to drink. We'll figure it out."

Giving Duncan a mock offended look, Vic said, "I'll have you know my French is perfect. Listen." He paused for a moment, then said with a chuckle, "Je ne suis pas arnaquer Rorschach, je le jure."

"Careful with that, ya don't want to piss off Alan Moore again, do ya?" Champ couldn't help but get in one last dig before the teleporter came to life.

Whatever further snappy comments Duncan had for his teammate died in his throat as, very abruptly, the power went out.

"...What."

This was immediately followed a loud sonic whine and an ear-splitting thrumming of growing intensity as the lights on the pad below the two began to pulse in an ominous fashion... which was around the time the younger man began to notice his hand fading in and out of existence like he went back in time and forgot to make sure his parents got together after screwing up how they met.

"What."

Vic watched in awe as Duncan's hand fluctuated between physical and transparent. He looked down at himself, noticing the same thing was happening to him. "... What the f-"

With a flash, they were gone.



"-uck?" Vic finished. He felt an odd sensation, like he was falling.

Then he noticed that they weren't in the Tower anymore.

No, they were in the sky.

Below them, he recognized the Gotham Skyline. He didn't have time to note the peculiar absence of Wayne Tower, because he was too busy screaming in horror. In between his screams, he damned Ted Kord and his family for the rest of eternity for designing the shoddy teleporter.

Staring dumbstruck at the rapidly-approaching ground below him, the Champion had something a bit more simple on his mind than his screaming comrade.

'Aww, man... this is gonna suck.'

Head snapping up to look back at Q, the one person here who was not exactly prone to surviving high-speed encounters with the ground, Champ was momentarily relieved to see the grappling gun exposed to the world by all the gusting wind, still strapped to the older man's wrist.

'Momentarily' here meaning, he didn't really waste any more time to think things through before planting his boot in the Question's side and shoving him closer towards one of the buildings they were now skimming by on the way to their fateful encounter with the ground. Knowing the older hero didn't exactly have the luxury of waiting for his cable to fully unwind and grab onto something.

"- I'M GONNA HAUNT THAT BASTARD KORD UNTIL THE DAY HE DIES, AND THEN I'LL FUCKING FIST FIGHT HIM IN HELL!" the reporter continued to rant, only for Duncan to kick him towards one of the buildings. Snapping out of his terror-fuelled rage, he realized just what his ally was trying to get him to do.

Acting fast, he flipped the switch on his wrist, the cable from his grappling gun shooting out and the hook penetrating through the concrete. He flipped the switch again, quickly being pulled up and onto the roof of the ten story building. The speed would've broken his arm from the whiplash, if it weren't for the exoskeleton's microfiber weave tightening it to his body and protecting any of his bones from breaking.

Panting, he looked at the streets of Gotham, finally picking up on the odd differences. The names on the buildings were different. Wayne Tower was gone, instead replaced by a building with the name Kasimir on it. What else? ... Oh yeah, and there were herds of creatures from Greek mythology swarming the streets.

"... I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

Meanwhile, with more than a few muttered profanties and a thundering BANG!, The Champion slammed back-first into something... squishy... followed by the pavement. Eliciting a sizeable cloud of debris, both concrete and... mysteriously fleshy to launch into the air as he made his mark on Gotham in the most literal sense imaginable.

For a moment, the still-unmasked young hero could only lay there in his own crater as bits of all that he'd just launched into the air with his dynamic entry came back down to pelt him and everything around him with great vim and vigour. Before his mind finally snapped back to reality and registered the pain of dropping a few miles from the sky and slamming into the ground.

"Awww... fffuuuck... my... life..."

Now, Duncan MacAodhan was invulnerable. But that still sucked.

The smell wasn't helping, either...

"Aw, fer... the fuck did I land in?" the now gore-coated man asked out loud as he struggled to sit up, wiping the gunk off his face as he did so.

The massive, bovine horn that came screaming from the heavens and embedded itself scant centimetres from a particular part of his anatomy he held most-dear provided only more questions than answers.

"...What?"

He didn't much time to dwell on that, however, as another thundering crash rang out through the streets and a dumpster came hurtling out of an alleyway and across the street like a deranged goddamn pinball. Followed immediately by some kind of... massive... armoured car that came screaming out of there and hurtling straight towards him.

"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me..."

And it was about that moment that the Lion of Nova Scotia took an armoured bumper directly to the teeth.

---

Blackstar shouted in horror as the tank of a car rammed right into the man covered in minotaur guts, the Grimobile jolting upwards before coming to a complete stop. "Oh God, oh God, oh God... Mal... Uh, I think... I think I killed somebody." The sounds of Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls was playing through the vehicle's sound system, the upbeat tempo of the song contrasting sharply with David's inner turmoil.

Watchdog, who'd been busy scanning through the buildings surrounding them for any more hidden pests, head snapped right back towards his foster-brother after the massive 'BANG!' that jolted the entire Grimobile, glowing eyes visibly wide beneath his blacked-out visor.

"...Wait, what?" Mal asked in surprise as he looked into Dave's panicking face, a mixture of surprise and horror snaking it's way into his voice "Are... are you sure?"

The boy's eyes then slowly trailed away from David towards the front of the vehicle... or more specifically, the roughly head-sized dent in the armoured subframe.

"Like... really sure?"

"Mal, this thing is a fucking tank, I'm pretty sure I turned that guy into fucking hamburger meat!" David shouted, gripping at his head. "Oh fuck me with a porcupine, I killed a guy, and mom's gonna be so pissed, and I'm never gonna be able to live with myself..."

Now this put Mal in an odd spot, not only because he was fairly certain that a guy turning into hamburger meat wouldn't leave such a giant dent in the frame of their foster-mother's armoured car.

After all, he had killed before. Worn down over nearly a solid year of non-stop fighting by rage, fatigue, desperation and many other things he was too young and immature to really comprehend or think about, he had crossed that line and hadn't even given himself the time to think about it, he was so consumed with trying to stay alive and keep fighting.

Karen tried to tell him it wasn't his fault, that he didn't know any better.

But that was a lie, he knew damn well what he was doing.

But he had tried.

He tried so Goddamn hard...

Shaking that train of thought out of his head, the younger brother awkwardly reached over and placed a hand on his elder's shoulder, trying his best to sound reassuring.

"Look, Dave... I don't think the whole fucking Grimobile would've jumped like that if you hamburgered a guy, and I don't see any bits of people dangling of our bumper so..." Mal began with at least an attempt of a smile (which Dave wouldn't have seen anyway, with his helmet in the way) as he glanced to the rear of car to see what they actually hit... and then abruptly froze.

There was a guy there. And he was getting up.

"Uhh... correction. You did hit a guy." The eleven-year-old swallowed audibly as he spoke "And he looks pissed."

Slowly, Blackstar lowered the back window of the Grimobile and looked at the costumed man standing up, jaw dropping as he looked at the absolutely livid expression on the man's face. Almost in sync with his brother, he gulped audibly. "... Malcolm. If I die... Take care of mom and Ker for me."

To that, Mal could only nod numbly.

"Yeah... sure..."

---

Grunting, hissing and all around not a happy camper Champion managed to pick himself up into a sitting position for the second time that day, still sitting quite securely in his hole full of broken concrete and bits of cow-gore.

'Merry Fucking Christmas my face...' He growled internally as he got to his feet, somewhat aided by anger the whole way up as he bore a hole into the back of the now-stopped vehicle, the implications of being run over by an armoured vehicle in what was clearly Gotham at night not at all lost on him. '...Swear to God, if that's Bruce in there after all this time, I'm gonna put my boot right up his-'

That train of thought abruptly derailed as the rear-window of the vehicle slowly slid open and, instead of the scowling, cowled grimace he was almost expecting he found... well, two masks he didn't recognise.

And upon closer inspection as he stepped forward, he was pretty damned sure they were being worn by kids.

A sigh escaped him at that as he pinched the bridge of his nose and knit his eyes shut.

He was really kinda hoping that was Batman in there.

So, swallowing his annoyance just a bit, Duncan forced something close to a grin on his face (that unintentionally came out even more terrifying than his previous expression, what with all the bits of minotaur and concrete dust caked to his mug), and closed the remaining distance between himself and the vehicle, leaning close to get his head near the window and attempting at least to sound calm and composed, he finally spoke.

"...Bit late for a joyride, innit boys?"

David looked at the beaten up man as he approached, his peeved expression morphing into a disturbing grin. Really, it was terrifying, and Dave was almost certain he and Malcolm were dead meat.

Then the man joked about it being too late for a joyride.

"Uh... We're protecting the city from, well..." he pointed at a harpy not too far away playing around in some guts. Wordlessly, he fired his grappling gun at the beast and swung it into a brick wall, knocking it out at the very least.

Then, a thud was heard as something, or rather someone, landed on the Grimobile. "Champ!" the Question, having reapplied his mask, said, sliding off the armored car and approaching his colleague. "Is this the Batmobile? If so, it's either the real Batman, the imposter, or..." he paused, taking in the two kids dressed in costumes he didn't recognize, "... Two kids going for a joyride in the Batmobile."

David quirked an eyebrow behind his mask at the faceless man. From what he looked like, it was that guy from Hub City that his mom told him about. Except, y'know, it actually looked like he didn't have a face and he was a lot taller than how mom described, maybe even taller than her. Add to that the weird things he was talking about, Batman, the Batmobile...

"... Who's Batman?"

TO BE CONTINUED...