Chapter Text
"Mine?"
"Yes, Master?"
"Are you ready to enter tier four?"
"Already?"
" Are you ready?"
Jason sees Tim's eyes narrow under his mask, his jaw set in determination, "...Yes. Permission granted."
"Begin Acute Order: You are to go back in time and ensure that we are the ones who sign the Contract. Ensure that you and I are safe and uninterrupted for the duration of our time with the Contract. Do not allow our past selves to realize you are there. You are not to change any of the flow of events or time that has already occurred; instead you are to ensure that what has already occurred happens as it did. Once our safety in this cave prior to the signing is ensured, unseal the entrance at the moment it was unsealed and return to me ten minutes in my future unless a need to protect me necessitates that you to return earlier. End Acute Order. Do you need anything clarified?"
"No, Sir."
"Execute."
Jason feels a surge in his senses as they suddenly expand beyond the three dimensions of space around him and he becomes the overlapping pattern of himself dancing across the battlefield, lacing together the events of their little war like an apprentice tailor's slipshod stitches. He finds himself dazzled by his own glory, the possibilities a stationary rush which exists only within the geometry of his higher dimensional selfhood. He chooses the peak, the summit of this pattern and collapses back into that which can experience time as humans do.
Wind whips through his hair, catching and dragging at his feathers as he plummets towards the ground.
Snow whirls around him. He's falling through a blizzard threatening to bury the whole valley within a mere day.
Exhilarating terror is the only sensation stronger than the chill cutting right down into his bones.
The knowledge of future and past is already lost to him; the structures creating those memories are fundamentally more complex than this portion of himself. He still knows three things though: He just traveled through time effortlessly. His half folded wings are slowing him down more effectively than any glider. He's roughly ten miles up, give or take, and therefore has a few minutes to consider his next move even if he chooses to keep freefalling.
He opens his wings fully, finding the transition from using mechanical gliders to flesh and bone shockingly easy. He's one of the most grounded Bats - at least in terms of fighting style - but up in the air now it feels like he was born to fly. He grants himself a few seconds to take in the pure freedom of soaring through the sky before focusing on the fight ahead.
Jason surveils the battlefield below, circling it like a vulture. They are in a valley, the sides of which are so steep it's almost more of a canyon. It narrows on one end towards the cave where he and Tim were - technically still are - and widens on the other, giving way to an endless, barren landscape of drifting snowbanks and strange twisted metal mountains. The fighting is all in the valley, the cacophony of battle faintly audible even from up here in the thin, frozen air.
Most of it is an incomprehensible blur of tiny dot people and shifting colors. Clouds of snow and ash float through the air, obscuring and revealing multitudes of unknown supers in turns. Even if he did recognize someone, there's no guarantee they would or wouldn't be trying to kick his ass. Any given Hero might have a good reason to try to stop this. Any given out and out evil fuckhead might have a good reason to keep it from being stopped. Case and point, one of the few faces that can be made out from this far up is Trigon, caught in melee with something even bigger than he is.
The living volcano oozing white hot magma and spitting massive ash clouds into the air is certainly intimidating. Fighting it seems to be boring Trigon. The six armed fucker doesn't even seem to be putting any real effort in. He's doing only exactly enough to keep the massive lava monster in one place while a scintillating pattern of various glowing sigils flash beneath it.
Honestly, Jason would prefer not to aid the embodiment of all evil if he can possibly help it, temporary truce or no. However, whoever else is fighting that thing has a good chance of being a real ally. He's got a hunch that Trigon isn't the one making that glow happen, and all the people he's got a clear loyalty guide to are mages. This lightshow has way too many pentagrams and trees of life in it to be tech, which just leaves people like Constantine and Zatana.
Besides, the main threat crawling towards them seems to be Brainiac shock-troops. Considering that as a robot, Braniac could just copy its own personality, break off contact with the copy to establish a low level of independence, and then be both commander and commanded, it's not exactly hard to puzzle out what its goal might be.
The only reason Jason can tell who they are from this high up is that Braniac is the only villain that has got an actual uniformed army with him. His troops stand shoulder to shoulder, their ranks spanning a few miles, all in a real formation using actual war tactics. The sheer difference in coordination and discipline between the one real army and the vast chaos of all the amassed supers is stark from Jason's bird's eye view. It gives him the impression of a Green Beret taking a junior high school food fight way too seriously.
That decides his first target, now how to attack? Tempting to go Dragon but that might draw too much fire towards the people he's trying to protect. Best to figure out how to leverage this form first.
Jason estimates that he weighed about 240 pounds as a human in armor, and that he's gained a foot or two of height. So, based on the rule of thumb 'double the height, quadruple the weight', that's got to be at least another fourty pounds, and the wings have got to add another eighty to a hundred on top of that. Terminal velocity should be perfectly achievable at this height. Better yet though, he can propel himself down much, much faster. Mach ten faster.
A vicious grin spreads across his face as he thinks, [What a perfect, snowy day it is to become a living artillery shell!]
He tucks his wings in tight and hurtles himself down like a peregrine falcon towards a group of brainiac soldier bots. At the last possible second he spreads himself out, aiming to catch as many enemies with this strike as possible. The thirteen who he slams directly into are shattered into miniature shrapnel grenades that take out several of the other troops near them. The icy slush they'd been marching through explodes up around them as a mist of muddy grey. Then finally he hits the ground.
The entire planet is pure crystalline bismuth, a highly dense and ridged substance to land on. This sadly denies Jason the massive crater he was hoping for. It also presents a fascinating new problem, because cannon balling his way through the now obliterated warbots has only bled off a scant half of his blistering speed. All that energy still has to go somewhere, and the forces of physics cannot dissipate it by their preferred method of turning him into paste.
So instead Jason bounces like the absolute bounciest of little rubber balls. He is tossed upwards, cartwheeling, limbs flailing, desperately trying to figure out how to steady himself in the air for only the second time in his entire life, at about three-thousand five-hundred miles per hour.
"HOW IN THE FUCK DOES BIZARRO DO THIS SHIT?!"
It's not going so great.
He bounces along the icy metal ground like a skipping stone across a lake, managing in turns to toss himself higher or slam himself back into the ground again for another bounce.
Until he comes to a bone-jarringly sudden halt. A hulking, humanoid mountain of muscle spotted with protrusions of craggy, spiked bone has snatched him from the air by one of his wings. It is disturbingly silent, the face a vicious, warped mask of acidic, unthinking hatred. It rams its other fist into him with the force of a small nuclear detonation.
There is a moment of surreal confusion as the punch does absolutely nothing. Then a second moment of vicious elation and relief as the punch does absolutely nothing!
He returns the blow with one of his own, full strength, no holding back, not even bothering to keep his guard up. He's got nothing to lose and no ability to lose it; caution is meaningless now. He still manages to do depressingly little in the way of damage back to it before the damned thing bites his left arm. Its teeth don't manage to puncture the metal of his armor, but they still find ample purchase in the joint gaps, trapping him like a crocodile preparing for a death roll. It grabs one of Jason's other wings and attempts to pull him apart, rend him limb from limb. He knows with absolute certainty that if he wasn't invulnerable, this would have been at least his third death this fight.
Jason holds his other hand ridged and drives his claws up through its neck and chin, hooking his arm around the jawbone. Then he braces both legs against the hulking beast's chest and shoves with every bit of strength he can muster. There is a long, sickening, wet tearing sound he rips the thing's jaw clear out of its face. It staggers, shaking it's head like it's trying to physically throw the pain off of it, still utterly silent. Its blood spatters across Jason from the torn throat and drips down onto him from his gory trophy.
It finally throws him away from itself, back into the thick of the Braniac troops.
Jason drops low and trails his claws along the ice, allowing both friction and the swath of robots he's been tossed through slow him down enough to take back control of his trajectory. Before he can rally though, a blur of blue and red streaks towards the strange spine plated thing, slamming into it and pushing it away and out of Jason's line of sight.
[Shit. Lost it. But at least someone has it covered.]
With blood soaked hands he cracks the stolen jaw in two like a wishbone. No longer are they organs; now they are twin spiked clubs. It feels good to finally be armed again. He aims himself back in the direction of the lava beast and starts cutting a path.
Jason has been in thousands of fights, every one of them a highwire dance, always a single misstep away from death or permanent disability. Because of Talia's training, he's also been in a real war before. He knows what it's like to be one of a million meaningless, skittering things in an engine of death and despair; killing and knowing that no amount of skill or perseverance can save your skin forever.
This is neither of those. This is a harvest, a thousand foot-soldiers mere wheat before his scythe, an inconvenience just the same as the snow and ice. He carves them out of his way, hacking through a jungle of tangled, stabbing limbs and gnat-swarms of laser blasts. Finally he breaks through the wall of them and sees the ring of mages working furiously to banish the molten behemoth. Spotting Zatana among them, he yanks some cords out of the nearest robot, lashes the jawbones to himself and starts running towards her.
Before Jason can get even halfway across the buffer zone a shockwave rolls out from the cave. The same shockwave he felt from ground zero when he first completed the ritual, a rolling sphere of darkness that makes every combatant on the field except for Jason shudder and collapse as it passes over them. The whole of existence seems to tilt off its rightful axis and onto his axis.
Trigon is one of the first to recover, his voice booming across the battlefield, "The Compact is bound, my goals here complete. I would wish you all luck, but I don't actually care." With that the Arch-fiend simply deserts the battlefield, like an asshole. A conflagration of hellfire swallows him up, leaving only ash and a great big nothing where the first line of defense against the massive lava monster used to be.
Jason skids to a halt in front of Zatana, helping her up from where she's fallen, thankful that he grew up learning to leap rooftops in a city that regularly ices over. Zatana looks up at him blearily, and shouts above the deafening hiss of ice sublimating into steam upon contact with the swiftly growing flows of lava, "What side are you on?!"
"The Contract signers' side," Jason yells back, "Master sent me back in time to make sure nothing happens to us!"
"Oh thank goodness, Typhon is still weak! We managed to keep him from properly manifesting in this world, restricting him to his volcanic aspect. If you can destroy his corporeal form now, we can banish him for good!"
"On it!"
Jason has already been taught the folly of attempting to ram into something heavier than himself today. It's time to even the playing field a little. He leaps into the air, wings assisting, and then transforms.
Growing to stretch over a mile long and wider than an eight lane freeway, he floats within his own personal lightning storm. His every nerve crackles with restless energy from the raw power coursing through his veins. His whoop of joy comes out a deafening roar of rolling thunder.
Typhon attempts to grab him, fingers trailing through nothing but clouds as Jason coils his serpentine, semi-solid storm dragon body out of his reach.
Sunlight falls upon the valley for the first and last day since it's creation as Jason pulls the blizzard right out of the sky, cloaking himself in a hurricane of hail, snow, and lightning. Then he wraps his body length around Typhon, claws digging into its shell as it crackles, cools and hardens. Like a python he constricts until the giant bursts into a glowing pile of slag that can't even support it's own weight.
Typhon attempts to rally, to reform and pour heat and ash into the storm, to stop the cold, but a storm need not fear such things. Typhon's powers are of of destruction, of calamity, and a storm is nothing but the calamitous, destructive mixing of hot and cold. The huricane becomes a tornado. The aura of violent winds around him scatter ash and meter long obsidian blades far and wide as Jason again coils, cools, and crushes.
Finally the mages rite snaps into full power around Typhon, sending a column of light up into the sky, briefly turning the entire battlefield into a shifting kaleidoscope of color. When it fades the only trace of Typhon left is the lake of melted ice and snow, quickly freezing over again.
When he returns to Fallen Angel form the battle lines have already drastically shifted. The Brainiac troops are in full retreat, filing back into their ships and portalling out. The gap they leave makes obvious the flashes of yellow and orange from speedsters battling it out on a scale inaccessible to all but themselves. Everyone sentient seems to be regrouping and catching their breath as best they can while not getting turned into mulch by the hundreds of monsters, animals, and other assorted things that seem to be attacking anything and everything that gets close to them.
Jason lands back next to Zatana, "How are you holding up?"
"I'll live- Shit! Who's blood is that? It's not yours is it?"
"Nope! Not mine! I have no idea whose it is!" Jason feels like he should probably be trying harder to cover up his glee, cause the power-mad, blood-soaked glee is definitely freaking her out a bit, he can tell.
"Well. Thanks for the assist, uh, Red Hood still I guess?" She grimaces and carefully extricates herself from his arms, muttering, "Certainly enough red."
"Red Hood'll do, why fix what ain't broke? Though I would also be happy with my actual name!"
"Don't know it."
"Huh, really? Not that I'm complaining, it's probably for the best, I just thought the whole league knew our identities."
"Nope. I knew some of you out of costume already, but Batman despises me. He'd never trust me enough to tell me any names I didn't already know."
"Oh, well in that case allow me to introduce myself! The name's Jason Todd, Property of Master, nix the last half of course," he says, giving her a winsome, horror movie smile. Then it dawns on him, "Wait Batman's not here is he?!"
"Of course he is! The whole League is fighting a mini civil war over this and at least two members of his family were about to do something self sacrificing in the middle of it. How could anyone have convinced him not to come!"
"Oh for fuck's sake. He's fighting against us, isn't he?"
"I'm honestly not sure. On the one hand, I do believe he'd unravel reality for his family, on the other hand, half his plans revolve around shit exactly like this so he might be supportive? Either case, he insisted on bringing Blue Beetle and Booster Gold along for reasons he refused to give, and I haven't seen any of them since this whole thing started. If you're already going back in time, you might need to go back a lot further."
"Shit. Okay can you get out of this dimension on your own?"
"What? Why?"
"You've been meaning to get us food right?"
"Uh, no! Actually I've had my hands full with much more important things than getting you more food!"
"Oh. Well I remember you bringing us some kind of greasy tex mex and lying to us about that. You definitely said that you'd been meaning to get us food for a while. I'm pretty sure that happened like maybe ten minutes from now so uh... I guess go take a lunch break? That's not a request by the way. I'm phrasing it kind of like one to be polite, but I literally cannot take no for an answer."
She mutters something under her breath about bats and assholes and their fucking convoluted plans, then says audibly, "Fine, let's just hope this doesn't tear any new holes in the fabric of reality. Ekat em ot Ocat Lleb!"
With a flash and a puff of glittery smoke, she's gone.
Jason once again launches himself into the air (He's getting half decent at doing that as long as he starts from a stationary jump!) Gaining a few thousand feet of height and looking down, formulating a plan.
Step one, be invisible. Or well, technically indetectible, or maybe even unsensible? Neither of those roll off the tongue. He glances down at himself, and sees yes, he's now translucent, excellent. Step one down.
Step two, give himself a really clear sign for when he needs to go back in time further, preferably with an explanation of when he needs to go to and what he needs to do once there. He waits a few seconds. No other hims show up, so he guesses it's not time yet. Cool.
Step three, figure out how to tell friend from foe now that the only ones he had confirmation for have fucked off. He could try asking, but that's generally pretty difficult to do in the middle of a firefight, and there's no guarantee the person on the other end won't just lie. On the other hand, his Master forbade him from harming friendlies, so ostensibly he should just be able to start swinging and if the hit connects, they're who he's supposed to be wailing on anyways. With draconic fire breath, he could even do that sort of test en masse.
He's tempted. So very, very tempted. It wouldn't even risk killing anyone.
But no one except for him would know it wasn't supposed to hurt them. So he'd also be burning any and all potential bridges with the people who aren't already trying to kick his face in. Sure, he gets his ribs rearranged by supposed 'friendlies' nearly every fight he has allies in, but it's generally best to strategically avoid that inevitability for as long as possible. Common sense, once again sucking all the fun out of everything.
So instead he'll prioritize. Play goalie. Only bother testing anyone who looks like they're getting too close to his Master and past self for comfort.
It's got a lot fewer steps than he likes his plans to have, and it lacks the ideal B-Z backup plans, but it's still a plan.
As he swoops lower the glint of a sniper's scope aimed towards the cave catches his eye along the ridge of the nearest mountainside. He lands behind them and carefully approaches. They're draped in white camouflage, but a familiar pair of silver boots and a red eyepiece are still visible amidst the snow.
Huh. Innnnteresting, maybe the whole suicide squad is here? Well, time to test loyalties either way. Jason takes a jawbone from his hip and brings it smashing down onto his legs - or at least he tries to. At the last possible second Jason is wrenched backwards a good meter or so by his collar, the leash going taught to the point of choking him. Either the invulnerability doesn't extend to this or else getting strangled just sucks no matter how little damage it does. The sniper whips his gun around and fires as the snow behind him is disturbed.
The bullet that goes pinging off of Jason's forehead is especially irritating because he knows that wasn't a fluke. This fucker had done the calculations for his head height in the split second between seeing the shape of the snow piling up around his legs and pulling the trigger. That level of competence is simply infuriating.
" Ow," Jason says, as the collar loosens and he allows himself to be seen, "Hi, Deadshot. I'm not trying to kill you and that was fucking annoying, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't shoot me again."
"Funny thing is, the blood soaked stabbing implements in your hands say differently. Who are you, and how do you think you know me?"
He takes the hint and drops the jawbones, "Don't worry, I'm not your stalker, know you by professional reputation only. I'm the Red Hood, Property of Master, nix the last bit, though I guess that also answered the third question."
He puts the gun down, "You're the one who just signed the contract."
Technically that shockwave wasn't about the signing, it was about the binding, but also this Jason technically did just sign- ah screw it, he's not about to wade into that mess, "Yup. First order: make sure we aren't fucked with. Landed to see if I could get some info. I have no clue who is fighting who."
"Then catch" Deadshot tosses a communicator to him, "And get lost before you give away my position completely. I'll give you a rundown while you're in the air."
"Got it," Jason politely returns to invisibility, slips the earpiece in and scoops his weapons back up, diving off the edge of the cliff face.
"Alright, biggest factors still on the playing field are the Justice League, Dr. Fate's Wonder Wizards, the random fucking monsters everyone and their mother seems to have brought in, the Legion of Doom proper, and then finally Luthor's current hire of mercenaries, which includes me."
"I thought you were still stuck with Waller?"
"Did I ever say I wasn't?"
"Hm, fair enough. What's the read on the League? I heard the Bat is around, and I'm pretty sure I saw the big blue boyscout myself."
"The JLI brought in just about everyone, not that it did them much good. They were so split by infighting I don't think they managed to do much more than fight themselves. That was before the darkness," the crack of a silenced rifle shot comes in over the comm, "My bet's on them being quite a bit more cohesive now."
"They aren't exactly the type to slit our throats while we're weak."
"Exactly. Lex and everyone under his banner are in a similar boat. He wanted to be the commander, obviously, but somehow his plan B involves protecting whoever did get it, hence why I'm up here rather than lobbing a bouquet of grenades at you."
"Not sure I like the sound of being Lex's Plan B much better, honestly!"
"Still retained your sanity if not your soul, I see," Deadshot chuckles, "Personally it's Dr. Fate's team that's really got me worried. I heard they actually considered turning it over to Brainiac just to be sure it got signed at all."
"Well shit. Desperation like that doesn't bode well," Jason clocks a streak of spotted yellow fur darting in between the rocky terrain, headed towards the cave entrance and dives to intercept, becoming visible again, "Cheetah sighted and she looks like she's not good on the whole letting us have it plan."
"I'll call it in. See if you can flush her out of cover."
Jason hurls a jaw at her from the front, forcing her back and then grunts with exertion as he breaks off the crystal she'd been hiding behind and tosses it closer to the entrance. He'll need it sooner or later anyways, "She's all yours!"
Another tinny crack of his rifle sounds over the comm and a split second later Cheetah goes down, a single round having gone through both her legs.
"Did I just see you miss?"
"Oh you fuckin wish," Deadshot snort derisively, "Mr. Megalomaniacal hasn't given word for a kill shot."
"Zatana left the cave yet?"
"Didn't even see her go in. I take it you'd prefer her not shot?"
"It'd be appreciated."
"Lucky you, I don't charge for not bothering."
"Love it when I get a good deal-" He turns only to find the point of a sword digging into his trachea, and Ravager's hand holding the hilt.
"Hello again tall, violent, and handsome, been a while since I had a knife against your throat."
"You want help with Little Miss Stabs-a-lot?" Deadshot asks.
"Hey again beautiful," Jason says back, equally flirtatious as Rose had been, ignoring Deadshot in his ear, "How's horrifically murdering us going?"
"Ohhh-kay, offer of help retracted. You've clearly got whatever the fuck is going on there covered." Deadshot disconnects the comm unit and Jason carefully bites his tongue so as not to laugh.
"It'd be going an awful lot better if you could find me a way to slip passed you and pay a visit to your worse half," Ravager says moving right into his personal space, letting the blade drag across his throat, "You know I really don't get to do this sort of thing anymore, we should make it special. I'd love to have you watch while I split him open right down to the hilt."
"While that does sound incredible, I'm sadly gonna need to take a rain check," he says to her, bursting back into storm dragon form and tail whipping the convenient massive metal slab he made earlier into the doorway, sealing it shut. He curls above it like a gargoyle, sweeping away the bulk of the storm so that he can keep track of her and anyone else who might be coming.
Tilting his head sideways so that he can look down at Rose, he sees her gesturing. Middle finger he recognizes, most of the others he does not. She's probably trying to say something at him, but he can't hear a thing. Even if he pressed his head to the ground he's pretty sure it'd just be meaningless squeaks. He tries to tell her this. His voice is thunder, and cannot be made into anything lesser no matter how he tries.
Hmm... He's afraid to try picking her up like this, each of his claws is vehicle sized. He's getting visions of those videos of robots that can't manage to pick up eggs right. Well, Jason guesses he'll just have to wait for her to give up.
Over the next few hours Jason tail flicks a yellow lantern into the stratosphere, gently shakes Rose off of his head after she climbs onto it and stabs him, smites Bane with lightning, body blocks the four different RPGs that Rose aims at the doorway, sends hail to shatter Mirror Master's mirrors and acid rain to render the shards even more useless, watches Rose go into and blow up a nearby but unconnected cave system, then finally when she climbs onto his head yet again and stabs at his Hells-be-damned eyeball he decides he's had enough. He shoots up into the sky with her clinging to his mane for dear life and shakes her off on a random cliff.
She is still gesturing and trying to say something at him, but he's not going to bother transforming in order to listen at this point, because he just glanced back towards the cave, and saw two of himself there. One has just lifted the slab out of the doorway, and is staying well out of sight, the other is right behind Tim, about to be given the very order that will start this loop all over again.
He swims through the air, weightlessly coiling, turning, spinning. A slow motion ribbon dance without a dancer. The self he does not yet remember being flies up to meet him, transforming so that he can join in the dance. Jason learns that his glorious rolling thunder voice cannot speak mundanity; it can only sing poetry. His future self sings to him a poem of a cold world in infancy, a deep lingering pain, and promises that home is soon at hand.
Again Jason ascends into his higher self, regaining that elated, tranquil, indescribable stillness of totality, and then collapses back into himself, as the next form he must hold, in the next moment he must inhabit.
In the guise of a fallen angel Jason finds himself standing hip deep in snow, ten short hours after this dimension was created.