DC: One for All Chapter 2 — Sewer Goblins (Patreon)

(AN: Done like 100k words in this story or close enough to so imma start making it available to everyone)

"You can't keep doing this!!!"

"Every night you go out there and every night you come back worse. You had a concussion last week, David. A concussion. You're fifteen years old."

"Mom I'm fine—"

"You are NOT fine." She slapped the counter and the sound of it was loud enough that all three of them flinched. "You have broken ribs that haven't healed yet and you're going out there and getting into fights with grown men and criminals and God knows what else, I am telling you right now, David, this stops tonight."

"I can't stop..."

"Mom...I can't just stop, you don't understand, I have a responsibility—"

"A responsibility to WHO?" She was crying now, or close to it. "To a city full of strangers? To people who don't know your name and wouldn't care if they did? What about your responsibility to us, David? What about your responsibility to yourself?"

"All Might chose me." 

"He chose me and he gave me this power and I can't just sit here and do nothing with it. I can't let him down."

His father spoke for the first time.

"All Might didn't choose you, David."

The kitchen went quiet.

His father pushed off the doorframe and took a step into the room, his hands still in his pockets. "He was dying and you were the only person there. He didn't pick you son he just didn't have a choice."

David stared at him.

"And if you really want to do the right thing," his father continued, "then you'd pass it on. Give it to someone who can actually handle this lifestyle. Someone who's better trained for it. Someone who won't get themselves killed."

Something inside David cracked.

It wasn't a feeling he had words for, not anger exactly, but something hotter and more raw than anger, something that reached up from the center of his chest and spread outward through his arms and his hands and into his fingertips, he opened his mouth to say something, to scream something, but what came out of his hands came first.

Black tendrils erupted from his fingers.

They were dark, almost liquid, whipping outward in every direction with a force that sent the kitchen table skidding across the floor and smashed the window behind his mother. 

David looked at his hands and saw the tendrils were multiplying, splitting, branching, crashing into walls and wrapping around furniture and he couldn't stop them, he didn't know how, he didn't even know what they were.

"David—" his mother said.

"RUN!" He grabbed his own wrist with his other hand and tried to hold it down but the tendrils just erupted from that hand too, thicker now, faster, smashing through the cabinets and ripping chunks out of the ceiling. "MOM, DAD, RUN, I CAN'T—"

His father reached for his mother but the tendril caught the support beam in the center of the kitchen and went through it like it was paper and the ceiling groaneed. 

David looked up and saw the cracks spreading across the plaster in every direction he tried to pull the tendrils back, tried to will them to stop, but they wouldn't listen.

The last thing he saw before the ceiling came down was his parents faces.

...

David opened his eyes as he woke up from his dream, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling in an unfamiliar room. He let out a long slow breath through his nose and pushed himself up to sitting.

His hand went to the pillow next to him automatically, fingers searching for the neck of the whiskey bottle he kept there every night. 

There was nothing there.

"Oh right," he muttered, rubbing his face with both hands. "I'm at Selina's."

He stood up and immediately regretted it as the hangover announced itself with a spike of pain behind his eyes that made the room tilt sideways. His mouth tasted like something had died in it and his body ached from the bouncer fight in ways that were just now making themselves fully known. He stretched his arms over his head and felt his spine pop in about four places before he shuffled toward the bathroom.

He was halfway down the hall when he heard it.

"—avid. Dav— ... —isten to—"

David sighed. 

"—ou need to— ... —ot what he would've— ... —isten to us—"

A second voice joined the first, layering over it, slightly clearer. 

"—asting it. You're wasting everything he gave you, everything we built, and for what? So you can drink yourself to—"

A third. 

"—eeds you. The world needs you, David, you have a duty, a responsibility that you can't just—"

"—isappointed. We're all disappointed in—"

"—e didn't give you One for All so you could—"

"Shut up," David said.

"—unning from it won't change what you—"

"I said shut up." He said it louder this time, pressing the heels of his palms against his temples. "All of you, shut up, I'm not doing this right now."

He pushed into the bathroom, yanked open the medicine cabinet, and grabbed the bottle of mouthwash off the shelf. He unscrewed the cap, tilted his head back, and drank directly from the bottle, the mint burning his throat and filling his sinuses, and he kept drinking until the bottle was half empty and his eyes were watering.

It wasn't enough.

"—ould be ashamed—"

"—e chose you because he saw something in you, and look at what you've—"

"Yeah, well," David said, wiping his mouth and setting the bottle down, "maybe he should've picked someone else." He stared at himself in the mirror for a moment, the bruised face, the bloodshot eyes, and then walked out of the bathroom.

The smell hit him before he reached the kitchen. Something cooking, something involving garlic and butter and what might have been roasted chicken, it was so unexpected in the context of Selina Kyle's apartment that he actually stopped in the doorway and blinked.

Selina was standing at the stove with a spatula in one hand and a pan in front of her, her dark hair pulled back in a loose knot, wearing a black tank top and what appeared to be actual sweatpants, and she was cooking. Genuinely cooking. Not reheating, not microwaving, but standing over a stove like she was in a 50's advert

David leaned against the doorframe. "Huh," he said. "I didn't think Catwoman could be domesticated."

Selina didn't turn around but her grip on the spatula shifted in a way that suggested she was considering using it as a weapon. "Call me that again and I'll put this spatula somewhere that will require surgery to remove."

David held up both hands in surrender and backed away from the doorframe before crossing the kitchen to the cupboard above the fridge. He opened it, scanned the contents, and pulled out a bottle of Hendrick's gin that was about three quarters full. He found a glass in the next cupboard over, poured himself a generous measure, and took a sip while leaning against the counter.

Selina glanced over her shoulder at the glass in his hand. "Still a raging alcoholic, I see."

"Nah," David said, taking another sip. "I'm a social drinker."

Selina let out a small giggle that she tried to suppress and failed. "Just being around someone doesn't make it social, David."

"Who made that rule?" he said as he walked over to the kitchen table with his glass and dropped into a chair, stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing them at the ankle.

Selina shook her head while she plated something, then turned and looked at him properly for the first time. "How'd you sleep?"

"Fine," David said into his glass.

"Mhmmm." She put the spatula down and crossed her arms, giving him the look. "How did you really sleep?"

"Terribly," he said.

She didn't press it further, which was one of the things about Selina that David genuinely appreciated. She knew when to push and when to leave it alone, a skill that most people in his life had never managed to develop. She just nodded, picked up the plate, and walked it over to the table before setting it down in front of him.

David looked at the plate. It was a full meal, roasted chicken with some kind of herb crust, potatoes, greens, the kind of thing that required actual effort. 

"This doesn't look like breakfast," he said.

"Because it's not," Selina replied, sitting down across from him with her own plate. "It's seven PM."

David's eyes went to the clock on the microwave. 7:04 PM. He had slept for roughly sixteen hours.

"Oh shit," he said.

"Yeah," Selina said, reaching across the table and flicking him on the side of the head with her finger. "You've slept all day. Now eat. I'd wager you haven't had a meal that didn't come in a cardboard box for months."

"Not wrong there," David admitted as he picked up the fork and started eating, and within about thirty seconds he'd abandoned any pretence of pacing himself and was putting the food away with a speed and enthusiasm that would have been embarrassing if he'd been around a stranger. 

He hadn't realized how hungry he was until the first bite hit his stomach, his whole body seemed to wake up and remind him that whiskey and burgerland did not, in fact, constitute a balanced diet.

Selina watched him eat with an expression that was equal parts satisfaction and mild disgust before she started on her own plate. After a few minutes of comfortable silence she set her fork down and folded her hands under her chin.

"So what's the plan?" she asked.

David swallowed a mouthful of potato. "Go into the sewers, find whatever goblin snatched Vanessa, find the girl, send her back to her family, get paid."

"How wonderfully simple."

"Overly complex plans are a Lex Luthor thing," David said, pointing at her with his fork. "I have no need for seven contingencies and a double betrayal."

Selina giggled at that but it faded quickly and she went quiet for a moment, turning her glass slowly on the table. "How are you doing, David?" she asked. "We haven't really talked in a few months."

David paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. He set it down and looked at the table for a moment before looking back at her. "You know me," he said. "I'm alright, just working and keeping myself busy."

Selina looked at him the way she always looked at him when he said things like that, but in the end she didn't push. She just nodded and went back to her food, and David went back to his, and neither of them said anything about it.

He cleared the plate in another few minutes, eating everything down to the last green, and then pushed his chair back and stood up.

"Leaving already?" Selina asked, looking up at him.

David nodded as he brought his plate to the sink and set it down. "I'm serious about needing to get this done, Selina. Every hour that girl is gone is an hour she might not have."

Selina was quiet for a second, then stood up as well. "I've still got some of your clothes in my closet," she said. "If you want a fresh pair?"

David nodded and thanked her, then walked back toward the bedroom where Selina's closet took up most of one wall. He opened it and found, pushed to one end behind Selina's considerably more extensive wardrobe, a small section of men's clothing that he recognized as his own. Things he'd left here over the months and years during various stays and visits and incidents. 

He pulled out a pair of dark jeans, a black henley, and the battered brown leather jacket that he'd thought he'd lost. He got dressed, pulled on his boots which were still by the door where he'd left them, and headed for the apartment entrance. Selina was waiting by the door, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed.

He was about to say goodbye when she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him in a hug. "If you need me," she said, "call." Then she kissed him on his lips, a kiss that lasted a few seconds, enough that he could feel the warmth of her lips.

David nodded when she pulled away. "I'll see you around, Selina."

She stepped back and let him go.

He made his way down through the club, which was in full swing again with the evening crowd starting to filter in, and pushed out through the side exit into the alley.

The manhole cover was right where the security footage showed it would be, set into the asphalt about twenty feet from the club's side door. David crouched down, hooked his fingers into the slots, and pulled it up and slid it aside. The smell that came up was a wet stench of standing water and decades of accumulated Gotham filth, he leaned back from it and blinked a few times. "Only smells marginally worse than up here," he commented as he swung his legs over the edge and dropped down into the darkness. 

He landed in ankle-deep water that was warmer than he would have liked and immediately pulled a small flashlight from the pocket of his jacket, clicking it on and sweeping the beam down the tunnel in both directions. He picked a direction based on nothing more than instinct and started walking. He moved slowly, checking every junction and side passage, looking for anything that might tell him which way his quarry had gone.

He found it about a hundred yards in. The wall of the tunnel was damaged, the old brick cracked and scraped in parallel grooves that ran along the surface at roughly chest height, as if something very large had been moving through here and brushing against the sides as it went. David stopped and ran his flashlight along the marks, following them down the tunnel and noting how the concrete floor was gouged as well with  scratches torn into the surface by something heavy.

He crouched down and examined the floor marks more carefully, tilting his head as he traced the pattern with the beam of his torch. 

Something was wrong. 

He'd dealt with Killer Croc before and he knew what Croc's tracks looked like; large, clawed, reptilian, but fundamentally human in structure with the same number of toes you'd expect to see on any foot, just bigger and nastier. 

These were different. 

Whatever had made these marks only had two contact points, two sharpened claws per foot, long and sharpe and driven deep into the concrete with a force that suggested significant weight.

This wasn't Croc.

Danger

David closed his eyes and sighed before he straightened up slowly and pocketed the flashlight.

"I really don't get paid enough for this shit," he muttered.

He turned around.

The thing was right there.

It was enormous, nearly seven feet tall, hunched forward in the tunnel so its head didn't scrape the ceiling, it was wearing the same dark cloak from the security footage, the hood pulled forward to shadow its face. In its arms it cradled a strange object, a box roughly the size of a briefcase, metallic and covered in intricate geometric patterns.

It charged him with a rose which David tried to sidestep but the tunnel was too narrow and the thing was too fast and it hit him center mass like a freight train, both arms wrapping around him and driving him backward off his feet. The impact emptied his lungs and then he was airborne, flying backward through the tunnel, the ceiling and walls spinning around him, he tucked his chin and threw his weight sideways, converting the uncontrolled tumble into a midair rotation. 

His feet hit the wall, then the ceiling, and he pushed off and landed in a crouch on the tunnel floor, one hand in the water and the other up in front of him, sliding backward a few feet before he came to a stop.

The thing was already coming again, barrelling down the tunnel toward him with the box tucked under one arm.

David feinted left, dropped right, let the thing's free arm swing over his head close enough to feel the displaced air, and then pivoted on his back foot and drove his right fist into the creature's exposed ribs with everything he had.

CLANG

The impact jolted up through David's wrist and into his elbow and his shoulder like he'd punched a lamppost.

Though he had managed to shift the cloak on impact, making it fall away from the creature's body enough that David could see what was underneath. It wasn't skin. It was armour kind of like a bug, layered in overlapping plates that covered a body, and above it, staring down at him from under the hood, was a face that was wrong in every way a face could be wrong.

"Ahhh shit," David said.

The creature's fist caught him in the chest before he could move. It felt like being hit by a car and he went flying again, this time tumbling end over end down the tunnel and splashing down in the sewer water face first, the current, such as it was, pushing dirty water into his mouth and up his nose as he slid to a stop.

He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, spitting filth, and looked down at himself, soaked head to toe in Gotham sewage.

"Oh come ON," he said. "I literally just showered."

"What the hell was that?"

The voice came from behind him and to the left, from a side tunnel he hadn't noticed, and when David turned his head the flashlight beam caught two figures standing at the junction. Two men, both in costume, both looking at him with very different expressions.

The first was a man in dark armour, a full cowl covering most of his face with pointed ears rising from the top, a black cape hanging from his shoulders, and white lenses in the mask. David knew him immediately, not just from reputation but from personal experience, from a handful of encounters over the years that had been tense, productive, and never friendly.

The second was someone David had never met in person but recognized from the news. Tall, athletic build, wearing a green and black bodysuit, with a mask covering his eyes and a ring on his right hand that glowed green. He was looking at David with an expression of pure bewilderment.

Batman and Green Lantern.

"David," Batman said as he approached through the ankle-deep water and extended a hand.

"Batman," David replied as he took the hand and let himself be pulled to his feet, sewer water streaming off his jacket and jeans.

"Are you injured?" Batman asked as he analysed him. 

Green Lantern looked between the two of them. "So are you gonna introduce me to your boyfriend or..." he said, gesturing vaguely with his ring hand.

David pointed down the tunnel toward the sound of heavy footsteps that was getting louder. "Not the time to crack wise, buddy."

The creature burst out of the darkness at the end of the tunnel its cloak billowing behind it as it charged directly at the three of them.

Green Lantern stepped forward and raised his ring and a massive green fist materialized in the air in front of him, he launched it down the tunnel with a shout. The construct connected with the creature's chest and for a moment it looked like it would be enough, the thing's forward momentum slowing, its feet digging trenches in the tunnel floor, but then it reached up with its free hand and swatted the green fist aside like it was batting away a fly. 

The construct shattered into dissolving fragments of light and the creature kept coming and before Green Lantern could form another construct its arm swept out and caught him across the chest and sent him hurtling into the tunnel wall hard enough to crack the brickwork.

David and Batman both dove in opposite directions as the creature barrelled through the space where they'd been standing. Batman rolled and came up in a crouch and fired his grapple gun, the line shooting out and wrapping around the creature's leg. 

He braced himself and pulled, trying to slow the thing down or yank it off balance, but the creature didn't even stumble, it just kept running, and the grapple line went taut and then Batman was being dragged through the sewer behind it, his boots throwing up spray as he skidded across the tunnel floor, one hand on the grapple gun and the other grabbing at the wall for purchase.

"God damn it," David said, watching Batman get hauled down the tunnel like a water skier. Green Lantern was pulling himself out of the cracked wall beside him, shaking his head.

They both took off running after the creature, splashing through the water, Green Lantern flying a few inches above the surface while David sprinted alongside him.

"This is a hassle," David panted as they ran. The creature was fast, faster than it had any right to be at that size, and it was pulling away from them even while dragging Batman behind it. He could hear Batman's grapple gun motor whining as it tried to reel in the line.

"Fuck it," David said.

[One for All: 5%]

Gold lightning crackled across his body in a sudden burst, arcing between his fingers and up his arms and dancing across his shoulders. The world slowed down around him as his muscles flooded with power and he launched himself forward, the water exploding behind him from the force of his first step. He ran three strides on the tunnel floor before angling left and planting his foot on the wall, running along the vertical surface as easily as if it were flat ground.

He closed the distance in seconds, ran past Batman who was still being dragged, and reached the creature. He kicked off the wall, twisted his body through a full rotation in the air, and brought his heel down on the back of the creature's head with a flying axe kick that carried the full momentum of his sprint behind it.

The creature's face hit the tunnel floor and the impact cratered the concrete, the shockwave sending a ring of water spraying outward in every direction. Its grip on the box loosened and it slid across the floor, and the creature's body went still.

Batman slowed to a stop as the tension left the grapple line, reeling it back in with a press of the trigger while he got to his feet and brushed water and debris off his cape. He looked at the downed creature, then at David, who was standing over it with gold sparks still flickering across his body.

"Thanks for the assist," Batman said.

David sighed and shook the remaining energy off his hands. "Yeah, well, I didn't want to draw it out any longer than I had to."

Green Lantern caught up to them, floating to a stop, his eyes were wide behind his mask as he stared at David. "Hold on, hold on, hold on," he said, holding up both hands. "What was THAT? What did you just do? Are you a meta? Are you enhanced? Was that magic? Because that looked like—"

Danger

David grabbed both of them and shoved them backward as hard as he could. All three of them hit the ground just as the creature reared up from the crater and opened its mouth and a torrent of flame erupted from its jaws. The fire filled the tunnel in a wall, rolling across the ceiling and superheating the water on the floor into a hissing cloud of steam, David pressed himself against the ground and felt the heat wash over his back close enough to singe the collar of his jacket.

The fire stopped as abruptly as it had started and when David looked up the creature had scooped the box back into its arms and was running again, disappearing down the tunnel at full speed.

"Okay," Green Lantern said from the floor, his hair smoking slightly. "That was rude."

"Don't let it get away," Batman said calmly as he got up and gave chase.

They followed it through a series of increasingly large tunnels until the passage opened up into a wide circular chamber, some kind of junction point where multiple sewer lines converged, the ceiling rising high enough that Green Lantern could fly comfortably. The creature was in the center of the chamber, crouched on the ground, pressing the box against the wall with both hands.

Green Lantern cracked his knuckles and floated forward. "Alright ugly, playtime's over. Step away from the glowing box before I—"

The creature looked up at them. "Hail Darkseid," it said and the moment they left the creature's mouth his body lit up like a sun.

"Ah fuck," David said as the realization hit him. "That's gonna blow up."

Batman was already moving, reaching for Green Lantern's shoulder. "LANTERN, GET BACK—"

BOOOOOM

The explosion was blinding, vaporizing the water on the floor and cracking the walls and turning the air itself into something that burned. Green Lantern threw both hands forward and a green dome snapped into existence around all three of them, the force of it driving Green Lantern backward across the floor.

When it was over the chamber was scorched black. The creature was gone, nothing left but a dark smear on the floor where it had been crouching. The box was still there its surface blackened but intact. 

Green Lantern dropped the dome and immediately leaned over with his hands on his knees, breathing hard. "You're welcome," he said to no one in particular.

David walked to the edge of the crater and looked at the box, then back at Batman who was approaching from the other side.

"You mind explaining to me just what the hell that thing was?" David asked.

Batman crouched at the edge of the crater and examined the scorch marks on the floor, his white lenses narrowing. "I'm not entirely sure," he said. "I've been tracking it for three days now. I linked it to the disappearance of at least six people in Gotham over the last two weeks. Whatever it is, it's been operating underground, taking people from the surface and bringing them down here."

Green Lantern straightened up and walked over. "Same on my end," he said. "People have been vanishing all over the country, not just Gotham. Coast City, Keystone, Metropolis, Star City. At least a hundred confirmed disappearances that I know of, probably more."

"Damn it," David said, running a hand through his wet hair and staring at the box. "I've been investigating a missing girl and her trail led me down here, I assumed it was Killer Croc but clearly it was this thing. Any idea where the missing people actually are?"

"Afraid not," Batman said, standing. "This is the first time I've gotten close enough to make contact."

"Me too," Green Lantern said, walking toward the box. "But we will get some insight once I crack this thing open." He held his ring hand out toward the box and the ring emitted a thin beam of green light that swept across its surface in a scanning pattern. "Ring, identify this object. Origin, composition, function."

The ring hummed for a moment. Then: "UNABLE TO IDENTIFY. MATERIAL COMPOSITION AND ENERGY SIGNATURE DO NOT MATCH ANY KNOWN DATABASE ENTRY." 

"ORIGIN: UNKNOWN."

Green Lantern stared at his ring like it had just told him the sky was purple. "That's impossible," he said, and with genuine disbelief in his voice. "The ring knows what the Guardians know, and the Guardians know everything. Their database covers every known species, every civilization, every technology in the observable universe. For something to come back as unknown..."

"Womp womp," David said as he walked past Green Lantern and crouched beside the box, tilting his head to examine it from different angles while scratching his chin. The geometric patterns on its surface were unlike anything he'd seen before.

Batman moved to stand beside him. "Have you seen anything like it before?"

David shook his head. "No. Looks alien though."

"Like the guy from Metropolis?" Green Lantern suggested from behind them. 

"I doubt it," David replied without looking up. "A guy like Superman wouldn't need a bunch of goons to do his dirty work. Whoever is behind this is either off-world and running things remotely, or incredibly weak and relying on proxies to do what they can't."

Green Lantern crossed his arms. "It's possible he could be working as an agent for whoever is doing this though. We don't actually know anything about him, where he's from, what he wants, what his agenda is—"

"Racist," David muttered.

Green Lantern's head snapped toward him. "Excuse me? How is that racist? I'm talking about an unknown alien entity with unexplained powers who showed up out of nowhere, that's a legitimate security concern, not a—"

"Would you say the same thing if he was human?" David said, standing up.

"That's not the POINT, the point is—"

"It's the only lead we have," Batman said, cutting through the argument. 

Green Lantern gestured toward Batman. "Thank you. That's literally what I was saying."

David looked at the box for another moment, then turned on his heel and started walking back toward the tunnel they'd come from. "Sounds like a plan. You two have fun with that."

"Where are you going?" Green Lantern called after him.

"Home," David said without turning around. "I've got a hangover and I smell like a sewer and I'm officially past the point of just a regular missing persons case. Good luck with your alien mystery box."

He made it about fifteen steps before Batman's voice caught up with him. "It's possible that your missing girl is still alive," Batman said. "It's clear they're being collected, not killed. And if the box can tell us where they've been taken—"

David stopped walking.

He stood there in the tunnel with his fists clenched at his sides. He knew what Batman was doing and he wouldn't let it work. 

He wouldn't...

He turned around.

"You're a bastard," David said, pointing at Batman. "You know that?"

Batman said nothing.

"Fine," David said, walking back toward them with his jaw tight and his eyes hard. "Come on, let's go before I change my mind."

...

After they all left the sewer Green Lantern created something that looked remarkably like a small plane, complete with a cockpit, wings, and what appeared to be a passenger cabin behind the pilot's seat. Green Lantern floated up into the front and settled himself in.

David looked at it, then at Batman, then back at the construct.

"After you," David said.

Batman climbed in and dropped into one of the two passenger seats in the back while David took the other. The construct sealed around them and then they were moving, accelerating straight up through the sky.

David leaned forward between the seats after they'd been in the air for a few minutes, tapping Green Lantern on the shoulder. "Hey, question."

"What."

"The ring... it makes stuff, right? Like, anything you think of?"

Green Lantern glanced back at him. "It creates hard-light constructs fueled by willpower. Anything I can visualize with sufficient concentration, I can manifest. It's the most powerful weapon in the known universe."

"So if you thought about a sandwich with like... steak and cheese and some diced pickles, could you make it?"

Green Lantern paused. "I mean... technically yes. It would be a construct sandwich though, made of hard light. You couldn't eat it."

"But it would look like a sandwich."

"Yes."

"Could you make it taste like a sandwich?"

"That's... I don't think that's how it works. The constructs are solid light projections, they don't have flavour."

"But you just said it's powered by willpower. So if you really, really wanted it to taste like a sandwich wouldn't it?"

"No, because the ring doesn't alter the fundamental properties of light to include—"

"What about texture? Could you make a construct that feels soft? Like, pillow-soft?"

"Well yeah I—"

"So it CAN have physical properties beyond just being hard light."

"That's not what I—"

"So if it can be soft, why can't it be flavoured?"

"The ring doesn't make flavour, it makes photonic energy constructs that are based on willpower and imagination and—"

"So really the only thing stopping you from making me an actual edible sandwich is... what? Imagination?"

Green Lantern's grip on the construct tightened and the plane wobbled slightly. "It's NOT about imagination, it's about the fundamental physics of how the emotional electromagnetic spectrum interacts with—"

"The emotional what now?"

"The emotional electromagnetic spectrum. It's the foundational energy field that—"

"Emotions have a spectrum? Like a rainbow?"

"Yes, actually, each emotion corresponds to a different colour of light on the—"

"So your ring is green because it runs on... what, jealousy?"

"WILLPOWER. Green is willpower. I literally just said that thirty seconds ago."

"Green Lantern, ignore David. He's an alcoholic," Batman said from the other seat, his voice cutting through the conversation. Both David and Green Lantern went quiet and looked at him. "I haven't seen him drink since the start of the flight so it's likely he's sober and bored and he's purposely trying to irritate you to pass the time. He'll keep going until you either snap or give him a drink. Since you can't give him a drink, he'll keep going."

There was a moment of silence.

"Way to ruin the fun Worlds Greatest Detective," David said as he leaned back in his seat and folded his arms behind his head.

Green Lantern cleared his throat and adjusted his grip on the construct's controls, straightening up in his seat. "I knew that," he said. "Obviously. I was playing along because I felt sorry for him... I didn't fall for it at all."

"Sure you didn't," David said.

"I DIDN'T."

David stared at the back of Green Lantern's head for a moment, then sat forward again. "So can the ring make whiskey?"

Green Lantern's shoulders went rigid. "I've never tried and I'm not going to."

"Why not?"

"Because shut up."

David sighed and slumped back in his seat.

Batman set the box down on the floor of the construct between his feet and turned slightly toward the other two. "If you're both done," he said, and neither of them interrupted so he continued. "Superman appeared in Metropolis roughly three years ago. He's demonstrated flight, super strength on a scale that's difficult to quantify, invulnerability to conventional weapons, heat vision, freeze breath, enhanced senses including what appears to be x-ray vision. Multiple intelligence agencies have tried to determine his upper limits. None of them have succeeded. Best estimates put him somewhere in the range of—"

"We'll be fine," Green Lantern said with a wave of his ring hand. "I'm here."

Batman looked at Green Lantern for a second, then turned to David with an expression that was difficult to read behind the cowl, but David understood what was being asked. It was about what David was willing to do if things went sideways, would he intervene if Superman was the one responsible. 

David sighed. "Maybe," he said. "If you can spot me a hundred."

Batman grunted, which could have meant yes or no or go to hell, and turned back to face forward.

"Approaching Metropolis," Green Lantern announced from the front as the skyline materialized ahead of them. "I'm going to set us down on a rooftop near the Daily Planet building. That's the general area where the most recent sighting was, so—"

He dismissed the construct.

There was no warning. 

One second the green jet existed and the next it didn't, dissolving into sparks around them as Green Lantern transitioned smoothly into free flight. While David and Batman were left to gravities mercy. 

Batman was ready for it. 

He dropped maybe ten feet before his cape snapped rigid behind him, catching the air, and he angled his descent toward the nearest rooftop and landed in a roll that brought him to his feet.

David was not ready for it.

He dropped like a stone and hit the rooftop hard on his shoulder before bouncing and tumbling across the surface in a series of rolls that carried him all the way to the edge of the building where he slammed into the concrete edge with his legs hanging over the side and his fingers scrabbling for a grip.

"SON OF A BITCH—" he shouted as he caught the edge and hauled himself back over, lying face down on the rooftop for a moment before rolling onto his back.

Green Lantern floated down and landed beside him, hovering a few inches off the ground with his arms crossed and a grin on his face. "You okay there, buddy?" he asked, his tone dripping with the kind of false concern that made it clear he was enjoying this considerably.

David sighed from the ground, staring up at the Metropolis sky. "Peachy."

Batman walked over and looked down at him. "Are you okay?"

David pushed himself to sitting. "Yeah," he said, brushing gravel off his jacket. "I'm going to go to the store." He held his hand out toward Batman, palm up, fingers beckoning. "Gimme."

Batman stared at him blankly. 

Despite his experience David had no clue what he was thinking, he could be able to give him money, kiss him, propose. The only reason he knew he wasn't about to be punched was because his danger sense wasn't going off. 

Eventually he reached into his belt and produced a crisp ten dollar bill and placed it in David's palm.

"$10? Are you kidding me?"

Batman did not react or reply he simply stared at him. 

"Cheap ass," David muttered before he pocketed the money and walked to the edge of the rooftop and stepped off.

He dropped four storeys and landed on the sidewalk below in a crouch that cracked the pavement under his feet, straightening up and brushing off his jacket while two women who had been walking past screamed and stumbled backward and a man with a briefcase dropped his coffee. 

David ignored all of them and started walking down the street with his hands in his pockets, scanning the storefronts until he spotted a liquor store on the corner with a neon OPEN sign buzzing in the window.

He pushed through the door and the little bell above it chimed and he made his way past the register and toward the back where the shelves of bottles stood. He stopped in front of the whiskey section and started scanning labels.

"—avid. David, listen to us, you can't keep—"

He reached for a bottle of bourbon and turned it over to read the label.

"—unning from this. You were chosen for a reason and every day you waste is a day someone needed you and you weren't—"

"—isappointment. That's all I feel when I look at what you've become. You had potential, real potential, and you've—"

"Unless one of you has a drink suggestion," David said under his breath, keeping his eyes on the shelves, "you should shut up."

There was a brief silence.

Then the seventh holder spoke.

"...tequila, actually. The añejo on the second shelf. It's really good."

David looked at the bottle the seventh was indicating, a mid-range añejo in a clay bottle with a cork stopper. "Ooooh. Not bad." He picked it up and examined it. "Though I do get pretty weird on tequila, last time I had it I woke up in the bathroom in the bar with no name in my underwear with Harls."

The other vestiges erupted immediately.

"—on't encourage him! What are you DOING? We're supposed to be—"

"—eally? Really? He asks for drink advice and you GIVE it to him? What is wrong with you? This is exactly the kind of—"

"—even, I swear, you are the worst of all of us sometimes—"

The first holder's voice cut through the chatter.

"—nly ever tried vodka before, not counting the cheap whiskey that Nine seems to prefer, which I would not classify—."

"—id he just, did the FIRST really just weigh in on—"

"—lease, both of you, stop it, you are not helping, we need to get through to him about—"

"Young Beckett, I need to—"

David grabbed the tequila off the shelf, ripped the cork out with his teeth, and started chugging, the tequila burning down his throat and he kept going until his eyes watered and his stomach protested and All Might's voice drowned under the flood of it. 

The eight user didn't speak much... which was good. 

David didn't think he could handle what he would say. 

He lowered the bottle, now about half empty, and stood there for a moment with his eyes closed breathing through his nose.

He put the tequila back and grabbed a second bottle, the bourbon he'd been looking at originally, and carried both to the front counter.

BOOM

The floor shook and the whole building trembled, bottles rattling on shelves, and through the store's front window David could see a plume of dust rising from somewhere a few blocks away. A woman in the cereal aisle gasped and grabbed the shelf. The man behind the register gripped the counter with both hands and went pale.

David set his bottle on the counter and reached for his wallet. "Hey, you wouldn't happen to have a flask would you? Doesn't have to be nice, just something that holds liquid."

BOOM

The shopkeeper was staring out the window where a second tremor had just sent a car alarm blaring down the street, his mouth hanging open. He didn't seem to have heard the question.

"Hellooooo a flask?" David repeated. "Silver, steel, I'm not picky."

BOOM

Another impact, closer this time and hard enough to crack the window. 

The shopkeeper finally looked at David with an expression of total disbelief. "Are you an idiot?" he shouted. "Can you not HEAR that? Something is happening out there, we should be—"

"What I don't hear," David said, sliding the ten dollar bill across the counter, "is my change being counted out."

The shopkeeper stared at him for another second, then looked at the ten, then at the window where another plume of dust was rising, and apparently decided that the fastest way to get rid of this lunatic was to give him what he wanted. He punched the bottles into the register with shaking hands, pulled coins from the drawer, and slid the change across the counter.

"Thank you," David said pleasantly as he scooped up the change and his bottle and walked toward the front door just as a third impact shook the building hard enough to knock a shelf over behind him.

BOOM

He pushed through the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk just as a green sphere bounced down the street in front of him like a bowling ball, cracking the concrete every time it hit the ground, and inside it David could see Green Lantern and Batman tumbling over each other. The sphere hit a parked car and crushed it flat before bouncing off and rolling another thirty feet and finally coming to a stop against a fire hydrant, which exploded and sent water spraying everywhere.

David sighed and took a pull from the bourbon bottle.

He turned to look in the direction the sphere had come from and saw a figure floating about twenty feet off the ground at the end of the block. His eyes were glowing a faint red and his fists were clenched at his sides, his expression suggested the conversation had not gone well.

[One for All: 30%]

The power hit him like a wave flooding through his muscles, gold lightning crackling across his body. The street under his feet cracked from the pressure of it, racing outward in every direction.

He pushed off the ground with enough force to shatter the pavement where he'd been standing, launching himself into the air toward Superman, and in the same motion he cocked his right arm back and threw the bourbon bottle straight up with his left hand, sending it spinning high above the rooftops.

Superman saw him coming, his eyes narrowed and he drew his own fist back, the red glow in his irises intensifying, and they met in the middle of the street about fifteen feet off the ground.

Their fists connected.

WHOOOSH

The shockwave blew outward from the impact in a wall of compressed air that shattered every window on both sides of the street simultaneously, sent parked cars skidding sideways across the road, ripped awnings off storefronts, and knocked a lamppost clean out of the ground.

Superman's eyes went wide.

David could see it, the genuine shock in his expression, the slight widening of those blue eyes as his fist, which had probably never met equal resistance from anything on this planet, was stopped dead. For a fraction of a second they hung there, fist to fist, gold lightning dancing off David's arm and sparking where it touched Superman's knuckles.

Then David moved.

He twisted his wrist and caught Superman's fist, rotating his grip and using the man's own forward momentum against him, pulling him and throwing Superman over his shoulder and down into the street.

Superman went through the delivery truck parked below them like it was made of tin foil, the vehicle folding in half around his body as he crashed through it and out the other side, skidding across the asphalt in a shower of sparks and debris until he came to a stop about forty feet away, crouched on one knee with his cape settling around him.

He looked up at David wirh a smirk before he launched himself forward, a blue and red blur, crossing the distance between them in less than a blink, David was already bracing for the impact when Batman's voice cut through the chaos from somewhere behind them. 

"ENOUGH, CLARK."

Superman stopped abd pulled up short about five feet from David, his fist still cocked and then slowly, very slowly, he lowered his hand. Superman's expression changed. "Fine then, Bruce Wayne," he said, as he used his x ray vision to learn his identity. 

From somewhere behind the wrecked fire hydrant, Green Lantern's voice carried across the street. "Who the fuck is Bruce Wayne?"

"Stingy bastard, that's who," David answered as he reached his hand up above his head, his eyes still on Superman, and caught the bourbon bottle as it came back down from where he'd thrown it.

Superman's eyes moved between the three of them, settling on Batman who was walking toward them through the spray from the broken hydrant with his cape pulled tight around him and the box under one arm. "What are you doing in my city?" Superman asked, the patience in his voice was clearly running thin.

"I suspect the same thing you are," Batman said as he reached the group and held up the box, turning it so Superman could see the geometric patterns on its surface. "We found this in the Gotham sewers along with one of those creatures you faced. We need to know what it is."

"David Duke over here thought since we were dealing with alien technology, we should come to the only alien we know," David said, jerking his thumb toward Green Lantern.

Superman raised an eyebrow. "That's a little racist."

"First of all, David Duke? Really?" Green Lantern said, walking over to join the group, his ring projecting an umbrella around himself that was deflecting the hydrant spray. "Nobody even knows who that is anymore. Second of all, it wasn't about you being an alien, it's about the fact that you might recognise the tech or the species responsible."

"If a human was responsible," Superman said, folding his arms across his chest, "would you go around asking every human you met if they knew who did it?"

Green Lantern opened his mouth to respond but Batman stepped between them.

"Do you know anything about it?" Batman asked, holding the box up closer.

Superman looked at the box for a long moment, his eyes narrowing again in a way that suggested he was examining it with more than just visible light. "No," he said. "I don't. It's unlike any technology I've ever seen before, and that includes Kryptonian." He said the last part looking directly at Green Lantern.

Green Lantern threw his hands up. "Oh come ON. I'm basically a space cop. How can I be racist? I patrol the entire sector, I protect every species in it equally—"

"Hope you've got your body cam switched on," David said before taking a sip from his bourbon.

"If you're all done," Batman said, and his voice carried the particular quality of a man who was rapidly losing the ability to pretend he had patience, "we should take this somewhere that isn't the middle of a public street."

He glanced pointedly at the wrecked truck, the shattered windows, the broken hydrant, the cracked pavement, and the growing number of people who were filming them from behind parked cars and mailboxes.

...

After a bit of bickering Superman showed them an empty warehouse where they could be alone and discuss their next steps. 

Batman set the box down on a metal table in the center of the warehouse and they gathered around it. 

"We should take it to a lab," Batman said. "I have equipment in Gotham, but I'm not sure how reliable it'll be when it comes to unknown technology..."

"I agree with the lab work," Superman said, standing across the table with his arms folded. "But that's going to take time. We should prioritise the missing people. If there are more of these boxes then we need a way to trace them. Find one, find them all, find where they connect."

"That's all so long," Green Lantern said, leaning against one of the shelving units with his ring hand tapping against his thigh. "We know these things are dangerous, we know they're connected to disappearances, and we know the creature turned itself into a bomb to protect it. The simplest solution is just to destroy them. All of them. I can generate enough energy to—"

He raised his ring toward the box but Batman's hand shot out and caught Green Lantern's wrist before the ring could fire.

"We don't know what destroying it would do," Batman said calmly. "For all we know these boxes are the only link to wherever the missing people are being held. Destroy the box, you might destroy the connection. Or you might trigger another explosion. We can't afford to act on assumptions."

Green Lantern lowered his ring. "Fine. Then what?"

David had been standing slightly apart from the group, leaning against a support beam with his bourbon bottle, half listening and half watching the box. He straightened up. "Why not have him fly them into space?" he said, nodding toward Superman. "If we're worried about what happens, take them somewhere where the only thing they can damage is empty vacuum."

The warehouse went quiet.

Batman looked at Superman. 

Superman looked at Green Lantern. 

Green Lantern looked at Batman. 

Then all three of them looked at David with the same expression.

"That's..." Green Lantern started.

"Not bad," Superman finished.

"It would yield us the best results quickest," Batman said, already running calculations behind the white lenses. "If we can locate all the boxes simultaneously—"

BEEP

The box turned red.

It happened extremely fast, the geometric patterns on its surface flaring from gold to bright crimson before letting out an alarm. 

Batman reacted first and kicked the table and the box flew off the surface, tumbling through the air, and he threw himself backward in the same motion, putting distance between himself and the artifact. The box hit the ground and didn't stop glowing, the red intensifying and then the air above it split open and formed some kind of portal.

The first creature came through before the portal had finished forming, diving through the tear headfirst and landing on the warehouse floor in a crouch, the same chitinous armour, the same insectoid face, the same burning orange eyes. It opened its mouth and let out a shriek that bounced off every surface in the warehouse.

Then a second one came through. 

And a third. 

And a fourth.

They poured out of the portal in a rush, shrieking, their wings buzzing as they spread out across the warehouse floor. 

David set his bourbon bottle down on the nearest shelf and then pushed himself off the support beam and cracked his neck.

"I definitely am not getting paid enough for this," he said.

(AN: So as I'm sure you can tell we are jumping into the DCAU war story which is basically the formation of the justice league and a pretty dark universe in general. Let's see if the user of One for All can change that. Hope you enjoyed.)