Inside the Devil's Manor—that bedroom that always carried the lingering scent of sulfur and ancient parchment—
The air seemed to have frozen solid.
Ian Kent, the nominal master of the manor, was currently held fast in the grip of his godlike father, Clark Kent, dangling like a kitten seized by the scruff of its neck.
Ian's mind was racing, working out how to construct a glib, silver-tongued defense for his behavior of "borrowing" Ultraman Tiga's method to illegally gather light energy and convert it into dark energy.
He'd even prepared several different lines of argument, attempting to repackage this "light harvesting" behavior as a necessary and innovative application of energy research.
However.
"Wells really couldn't manage something like this... but I can!" Every one of those thoughts was shredded apart by a sudden streak of red lightning that set the teeth on edge.
Crackle—!
Crimson light split through the air like a wound tearing through space, and a figure clad in a reverse-colored Flash suit appeared abruptly in the center of the hall. The high-frequency vibration humming off his body swallowed every faint sound in the room.
He steadied himself, and that signature voice—laden with infinite malice and mockery—came through the mask, every syllable carrying a sensation like an electric sting.
Upon his arrival, the Reverse-Flash's face was still vibrating intensely. That might fool the Flash, but not necessarily Superman, whose development had taken a strange and unexpected turn—advancing far beyond anything recorded in history.
So he had taken additional precautions, using the properties of the Everyman Project to sculpt a new face for himself.
"Honestly, I'm surprised. The stench of demons in here is quite something—hardly the sort of place you'd expect that sanctimonious crowd from the Justice League to gather."
His tone was as full of mockery as ever.
Infuriating.
Ian felt his father's hand on the back of his neck tighten sharply. He didn't bother pretending it hurt—he immediately wriggled like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, squirming and offering his rebuttal.
"Slander! This is blatant slander! Aunties and uncles, you have to see reason here! This is merely a manor with a 'demonic aesthetic'! Thematic décor! You understand? Like a themed restaurant! In essence, it is a perfectly healthy, environmentally conscious, entirely lawful structure that aligns absolutely with the Justice League's core values!"
Ian had no intention of letting his manor get torn down.
"..."
Aquaman, Diana, and the others didn't actually dare tear it down either—none of them wanted to end up on Ian's list. And so they all turned their eyes toward the one superhero present who actually had the standing to offend him.
"You. Be quiet."
Clark's expression was deeply strained, and the low, commanding gravity in his voice instantly made Ian swallow every last rebuttal he'd been preparing.
Then Superman's gaze swept forward like two searchlights, fixing sharply on the uninvited guest.
"Reverse-Flash. Eobard Thawne. You got away once—that doesn't mean you'll get away a second time. It seems the lesson from last time still hasn't taught you to behave."
Clark stepped forward, his overwhelming presence bearing down like a mountain. To everyone's surprise, the Reverse-Flash—who had just been speaking in sneering, contemptuous tones—actually stepped back half a pace.
That high-vibrating figure stuttered for just a fraction of a second, as though some deep, instinctive fear rooted in the survival instinct had been awakened.
He quickly forced himself to steady, however, and when his voice came through the mask again, it had dropped lower, carrying a rare note of reluctant resignation—making the deliberate effort to stand down.
"I'm not your enemy. At least not today." He made clear that he hadn't come here to fight, though he refused to lose all dignity and strained to keep his back straight.
"Ha."
Aquaman let out a short, contemptuous laugh.
"What we'd prefer is a permanent solution—guaranteeing you can never appear as an enemy again." Diana stepped forward, the Lasso of Truth glimmering with golden light in her hand.
Though the Sword of Hephaestus remained sheathed, the killing intent radiating off her was unmistakable. As an Amazon princess, she understood well that showing mercy to certain enemies was the same as cruelty to yourself.
Ian, still dangling from his father's grip, immediately lit up with excitement, as though he'd spotted a chance to demonstrate his "heroic spirit." He wriggled hard and called out, "Yes, yes, yes! Count me in! I want to contribute too! I'm a superhero too! Once it's all over—after the dust has settled—can I have the Reverse-Flash's legs?"
"I'm still a few reindeer short of a full sleigh!"
He was practically bouncing with eagerness.
His eyes filled with unmistakable longing for his "reindeer."
"...?!?!"
Before his words had even finished echoing.
Barry Allen—the Flash—who had been standing nearby in a state of alert, reacted as though by pure reflex, whooshing several steps away from Ian.
The expression on his face was written with wariness and a trace of genuine concern.
"Those are called reindeer, not moose—not that it matters, because you're not actually planning to keep deer." He understood all too well what Ian meant by "reindeer"—the legs torn from Black Lightning in the last incident, dismantled by Ian through some method or another. Heaven only knew how many more schemes like this were still rattling around inside the kid's head.
"You shouldn't have come, Thawne."
Changing the subject.
The Flash turned his eyes toward the Reverse-Flash, his tone complex—wary of a nemesis, but carrying a faint, barely detectable undercurrent of connection, the bond of two beings who each carried a side of the Speed Force.
"Hm? You don't get to dictate to me." The Reverse-Flash's throat visibly worked beneath the mask as he swallowed, betraying the genuine tension he was feeling.
The real pressure was coming primarily from Superman.
"You can of course arrest me right now, lock me up, or even... kill me. With the power you currently have, you might actually be able to manage it. But without me, I promise you... you will not be able to travel through time, you will not be able to stop all of this from changing, and you will not be able to restore the world to what it was."
His voice carried the conviction of someone burning every bridge behind him.
His gaze bored through the mask and locked onto Superman. "Look outside, Superman. Use your super vision—take a close, careful look at those churches. And the Capitol."
He had no other choice. Even with his stomach hollowed out with unease, the Reverse-Flash had to push forward.
"Hm?" Clark's brow furrowed deeply. At that, he turned his head, his vision piercing through the manor's thick stone walls and reaching out toward the distant city skylines.
The next moment, his expression underwent a remarkable transformation—from confusion to shock, and then into something that defied description, a gravity that looked like something had shattered his understanding of reality.
No one knew what Clark saw.
All anyone knew was this:
The invincible Superman's lips moved silently, his body trembling—yet in the end, he said nothing.
"Clark, what happened?"
Diana noticed his reaction at once and immediately pressed him.
Aquaman Arthur also turned an inquiring look his way.
Clark slowly turned back and shook his head, his voice low. "...Nothing."
Even so, the razor-sharp, unsheathed-blade presence that had radiated off him moments before had clearly receded, replaced by a careful, measured weighing of options.
"Based on the countless evil things you've done, Thawne, we have no reason to trust you."
Superman stared at the Reverse-Flash. His words were still hard-edged, but the statement itself was already a concession—a probe that left room for a reply.
"You have no choice but to trust me!" The Reverse-Flash attempted to reclaim some initiative, raising his voice and lacing it with his characteristic arrogance. "Only I have the understanding of the Speed Force, of the timeline, that—"
"No. That's not right." Barry cut him off suddenly, a flash of comprehension crossing those blue eyes. He fixed his gaze on the Reverse-Flash, as though trying to see through that vibrating shell to the core of him.
"I understand now. If this era has already been rewritten into a complete mess, then the future you were born in... must look even more unrecognizable."
"It might not even exist anymore. Am I right, Thawne?"
"You're not here to help us. You're racing against your own erasure. You have to correct all of this before the ripple effects of the temporal paradox reach you—before every trace of your having ever existed gets completely wiped out!" There was a reason he was the Flash—he truly understood his nemesis's nature as well as anyone alive.
"Yes, yes, exactly—Uncle Barry took the words right out of my mouth." Ian, who had been listening with eyes shining bright, immediately raised the one hand he could still move freely, attempting to insert himself into this "battle of wits."
"Actually... I had already thought of this situation too! I remain the most intelligent person in the—"
He didn't get to finish before Superman's hand clamped over his mouth. And, as usual, no one paid the slightest attention to his self-promotion. Every eye in the room was on the Reverse-Flash.
Waiting for his answer.
The Reverse-Flash fell silent. That high-vibrating yellow figure seemed to stutter for a fraction of a second. He didn't directly confirm anything—but that silence itself was the best answer he could have given. Sidestepping Barry's question, he instead said in a dark, flat tone.
"You're all in the same boat. The changes to the timeline spread like a plague. No one is immune."
"Batman—Bruce Wayne. That man is the clearest warning you could ask for, standing right in front of you. Is the state he's in right now still not enough to make you understand what's at stake?"
Mention of Bruce Wayne—how he had simply ceased to be, vanishing from the world without a trace—cast a shadow over every heart in the room.
The Flash Barry Allen gave neither agreement nor denial; he was more concerned with practical matters.
"Enough talk, Thawne. Even if we grant your intentions the benefit of the doubt for now—how exactly do you plan to get us through time? Time has been locked. Those were your own words."
The Flash wanted to understand the reasoning.
But the Reverse-Flash seemed to have no intention of explaining in detail.
"Not 'us.'" The Reverse-Flash shook his head. That crimson gaze swept across every League heavyweight present—and then that finger, crackling with current, pointed precisely at Ian, still dangling from Superman's hand.
"Only him. Only this kid still has even a sliver of a chance to go back to the past and turn all of this around."
"Me?" Ian went blank for a moment. He'd more or less pieced together the chain of events—Jonathan, Jordan, and Damian had been sent back in time by a Weeping Angel, triggering the world's upheaval—but he still didn't understand why both Batman's cryptic hint and the Reverse-Flash's direct naming were so certain that he was the key.
"Why me?"
It couldn't be that even something like this came down to looks.
Or maybe.
Had his future self achieved a single eternal breakthrough, locking down all of time?
Ian's mind spun with the thought.
Wild ideas kept coming, one after another.
Superman, meanwhile, had already homed in on the critical detail buried in the Reverse-Flash's words. His brow furrowed, his tone growing even more serious. "'A sliver of a chance'?"
"Thawne—you mean you don't have complete confidence in this either? This is nothing more than a gamble?" It wasn't just Jonathan and Jordan he was worried about—and perhaps Damian too, depending on his mood.
He was equally afraid that Ian might run into something catastrophic as well—though if Ian somehow didn't, that would lead to a different kind of worry entirely.
"What else do you suggest?"
The Reverse-Flash let out a brief, hoarse laugh, carrying with it a honesty that was almost exasperated.
"That's right. It's a gamble. I've spent a long time researching how to break open a locked timeline, and at this point I've only found some starting threads—some theoretical possibilities. As for how things got to this state? You only have yourselves to blame."
"Time and again. Playing with time like it's a toy."
"And you never should have let a bunch of kids who don't know their own limits get anywhere near something like that—something from outside the universe entirely, operating on rules completely incompatible with our own physics!"
As he spoke, he raised a hand and pointed toward a corner of the hall, where a safe encased in thick material and layered with complex runes sat—the containment vessel Batman himself had constructed to seal the Weeping Angel that had set everything in motion.
The Reverse-Flash clearly had some knowledge of these extra-universal intrusions, and his tone carried unconcealed wariness and revulsion.
"You're right."
Clark fell into silence, a deep guilt and self-reproach crossing his face. As a father, and as the League's leader, the responsibility he bore was undeniable.
"This isn't all your fault, Clark." Aquaman Arthur clapped a hand on his shoulder, trying to offer some comfort, though his own voice was no less heavy.
Seeing this, Ian immediately tried to preemptively extract himself from any blame.
"It definitely can't be pinned on me either!"
He looked toward the Flash.
"This really wasn't me this time. I already told everyone it was that statue."
The Flash visibly twitched where he stood.
"That's not the point right now."
Ian dodged the subject entirely, then turned his head toward the Reverse-Flash.
"So... Yellow Flashy, how exactly are you planning to send me back? Do I need to strike a particular pose?" He assumed the other party had some technological means—perhaps a time machine originally built for returning to the future.
He was already eager to try.
However.
The expression on Ian's face—like someone about to head off to an adventure summer camp—only made Clark's heart clench tighter. Let this unpredictable, differently-wired youngest son of his travel back into the past?
Heaven only knew whether he'd make everything worse.
That was the greatest concern.
And yet, at this moment, Batman's status was unknown, the timeline was continuing to deteriorate, and while the Reverse-Flash's words couldn't be taken at full face value, they seemed to be the only visible way forward.
"Haah."
Superman's formidable mind was hitting a wall—lacking his external brain made it noticeably underpowered. He could only keep his stare locked on the Reverse-Flash while pushing his super hearing to its maximum, trying to catch the true thoughts hidden within the other man's heartbeat, blood flow, and the finest tremors of muscle fiber.
And of course.
The ability to hear surface thoughts was engaged as well.
Beneath the mask, the corner of the Reverse-Flash's mouth seemed to curl into a twisted, sinister arc. He leaned his body slightly forward, dropping his voice very low—
Yet the words detonated in Ian's ears like a thunderclap.
"Simple enough, kid."
"I'm going to make you... a Speedster."
A bombshell.
...
There, inside the Devil's Manor.
While the tense negotiations and standoff surrounding time travel played out.
At the other end of the timeline.
At the node where every mistake had only just begun... the story was only now getting underway—at the moment the three of them had just been sent back in time by the Weeping Angel.
"Thud!"
"Ow!"
"What the hell!"
Three underage children made their ungraceful, pain-filled arrival, their voices of distress mixed with the splatter of mud and water, ringing out in a dim, damp back alley.
Jonathan Kent, Jordan Kent, and Damian Wayne had crashed down onto cold, filthy ground in a thoroughly inelegant—though textbook-perfect—face-plant.
A torrential downpour showed them not a shred of mercy.
Puddles covered the ground extensively.
So they became soaked through and dripping as a matter of course. The rainwater, biting with cold, washed over them, sluicing away the strange sticky grime that had clung to them from who knew where.
"Ugh! Ptah!"
Jordan was the first to struggle upright, spitting mud out of his mouth, his face a picture of confusion and misery. "Where the hell are we?! Weren't we just dealing with that stone statue a second ago?"
Jonathan also straightened up with a pained wince, rubbing his bruised arm. He looked around, and by the light of a distant, dim street lamp and the neon signs of nearby shops, took in their surroundings—a narrow alleyway, crumbling brick walls plastered with paper advertisements long since soaked to pulp by the rain, trash cans knocked every which way, giving off a rotten, sour stench.
The sound of car engines drifting in from the street was sluggish and old-fashioned, and the signage on the distant shops carried the unmistakable aesthetic of a different era.
"No idea... but it's definitely not our Metropolis. It might not even be our time." A thread of unease ran through Jonathan's voice.
"You mean we time traveled?" Jordan struggled to focus and activated his super hearing. Instantly, a flood of chaotic sounds crashed through his mind, making him squint in discomfort.
"My God... what am I hearing? Is that a radio playing Michael Jackson's 'Beat It'?"
"And... Wham!? And so many other songs I've only heard on the old records Dad keeps in his collection... This feels like it could be... the eighties? Or the nineties?"
"Or possibly a parallel universe?" Damian was the last to get to his feet. His movements were comparatively nimble, but his expression was just as grim, and rainwater streamed constantly from his black hair. As he wrung out a soaked sleeve, he offered up another possibility.
"Time travel or parallel-universe displacement—either is possible."
"How incredible!"
The natural troublemaker clearly hadn't the faintest conception of fear.
"Wherever this is, Dad will definitely find a way to come get us." Jonathan took a deep breath, working to steady himself. As the more grounded of the brothers, he recognized that panic wouldn't solve anything right now.
"The most urgent thing is that we need to figure out exactly what's happened to us."
"And to understand precisely what kind of situation we're in."
Jordan nodded in agreement—but almost immediately, a far more pressing discomfort surged up. He plucked at his T-shirt, now soaked through and plastered to his skin with filth.
"Agreed—but before any of that, we need to find somewhere to get sorted. I'm about to pass out from my own smell. I really, really want a hot shower right now."
The expression on Jordan's face was one of extreme disgust.
"Exactly." Damian nodded with deep feeling. He was particular about cleanliness at the best of times, and standing here in this waste-running back alley, soaked and filthy—it was worse than being killed. Even the comparatively less fastidious Jonathan felt like he'd just been dredged out of a septic tank.
"Alright, shelter first."
Jonathan agreed, then started patting down his pockets. "Let me see what I've got on me. Uh—I've got fifty dollars in cash. Jordan, what about you? Do you have any money?"
Jordan dug through his soaking pockets for a good while and produced only a phone, its screen blacked out from water damage, which he held up helplessly. "I'm used to paying with my phone."
"Modern society, advanced technology—who carries around a lot of cash?" It was a fair point. Jonathan sighed, gesturing toward the street outside the alley, where a sign for a Blockbuster flickered. "Do you think the hotels around here look like the kind of places that take Apple Pay?"
Blockbuster—a long-defunct video rental chain. On the nighttime streets, the vehicle models were clearly outdated, the storefronts old-fashioned in their décor, the scattered pedestrians' clothing slightly out of date. Everything pointed to a world they didn't recognize—one that was, at minimum, more than a decade behind, or possibly even earlier.
"No money is no obstacle for a trained Gothamite." Damian let out a cold snort, a flash of wisdom crossing his face that was entirely inappropriate for his age.
Without hesitation, he rolled up his soaked sleeve.
From a hidden compartment in his tactical belt, he produced a slim, slender wire, and turned a sharp gaze toward a Ford sedan—old-looking, parked on the roadside just outside the mouth of the alley.
"Hey! That I know how to do! Let me be your lookout!"
Jordan immediately perked up, eager to get involved. With something to do, even something questionable, some of the oppressive unease lifted.
"Are you insane?! This is a crime!" Jonathan's eyes went wide in shock, and he hissed in a lowered voice, trying to stop these two lawless individuals.
"In Gotham, this is a basic survival skill. Extremely common." Damian didn't look back—he had already crouched down beside the driver's side door of the Ford.
The wire slid expertly toward the lock.
"But this isn't Gotham!" Jonathan was nearly beside himself. He felt like a completely normal person stranded among two absolute disasters.
Just as Jonathan moved to physically stop them—
"BOOM!!"
A dull, massive explosion rang out, from a distance of several city blocks away, and the faint tremor it sent through the ground beneath their feet was unmistakable.
All three boys froze instantly.
"What was that?!"
Jordan snapped upright.
His super hearing made the sound of that explosion hit him with far greater clarity.
"An explosion! About... three blocks from us!"
Jonathan had already transformed into his armor in an instant, the speed of his transformation remarkable—and with the Armor's active state came an extraordinary capacity to sense and perceive his surroundings.
"Let me get a better read on it!" Jordan immediately focused, activating his super hearing once more, directing his auditory focus precisely toward the direction the explosion had come from.
He filtered out the rain.
And the distant music and crowd noise.
Homing in, trying to catch the sounds coming from the explosion site.
And then he heard it—the terrified screams of people, the crash of falling debris, the crackle and snap of burning flames, and... something else. A sound that carried tremendous weight.
Something like footsteps—with a quality of grinding metal in them.
There was a fight happening.
And the scent of Kryptonite dust in the air.
Before Jordan could even pinch his super-sensitive nose, a voice cut through the noise—low, hoarse, utterly without warmth—like an ice-cold spike driving through layer after layer of sound, drilling itself with perfect clarity into Jordan's eardrums.
"Clark. Tell me... do you bleed?"
The voice was asking that question, in a tone of terrifying, almost supernatural calm, as though it had drifted up from the depths of Hell itself.