Chapter 95: The Truth about that Day
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Dean knew exactly why he had come to Earth-3.
It wasn't to save the world. He wasn't a messiah, a chosen one, or some cosmic answer to a dying planet's prayers. He was just a son—a lost tadpole in a broken multiverse, swimming through chaos in search of his mother.
As soon as he found her, Dean would leave this world behind without a second thought.
No hero speech. No sacrifice. Just family.
And yet, Earth-3 made it hard to ignore its darkness.
He didn't buy for a second that the Crime Syndicate—this world's twisted version of the Justice League—had managed to severely wound the Anti-Monitor. The Anti-Monitor, of all beings.
Dean knew the scale of that name. Knew the weight it carried across realities.
The Anti-Monitor wasn't just strong—he was cosmically absolute. Stronger than Darkseid. Born from the goddess of creation herself, Perpetua. He wasn't a villain you "beat" in the traditional sense. He wasn't a conqueror. He was an eraser of universes, a living entropy armed with the one thing Darkseid desired most:
The Anti-Life Equation.
The idea that this bunch—the psychotic, self-serving Crime Syndicate—had managed to take him down? No. Dean didn't believe it for a second.
There had to be another reason. A twist in the story.
A collapse.
Dean's thoughts flashed back to something Pandora had told him. A memory etched in clarity: the moment she mentioned the statue of the Holy Lord—the original source of the twelve talismans—falling out of the magic box.
That statue had first emerged on Earth-3. That much was certain.
But something had gone wrong. Something had diverted the path. Instead of manifesting in its full glory here, the statue had landed in the main universe as nothing more than stone—its power scattered into twelve talismans, lost to time and space.
Was it possible… the Syndicate had gained access to that power?
Was that how they defeated the Anti-Monitor?
If so, then the answer—once again—lay with Night Owl.
Dean didn't waste time.
"Rather than debate your twisted sense of justice," Dean said calmly, "I'm far more interested in how you managed to defeat the Anti-Monitor."
He held up a shimmering charm between his fingers—a talisman carved with the insignia of the rooster.
The Chicken Talisman.
"Did you use these?" he asked, waving it lightly in front of Night Owl's emotionless mask. "Did you borrow the power of the talismans?"
Night Owl's expression was unreadable behind the owl-like visor. Only his mouth was visible, the lower half of his face stoic and calculated.
"Spell?" he asked flatly. "Is that the source of your magic?"
He made it sound like he was seeing the talisman for the first time. But Dean wasn't so sure.
This wasn't just conversation. It was a chess match, played with glances, tones, and misdirections. Each word chosen carefully. Each silence filled with suspicion.
Both of them were probing, testing. But only one of them had any real information.
And Dean knew exactly what Night Owl—Thomas Wayne of Earth-3—wanted most.
"You really don't know?" Dean tilted his head innocently. "That's strange. This one was given to me by Dick Grayson. I figured you'd have at least a few."
He dropped the name like a grenade in slow motion.
The effect was immediate.
Night Owl's body tensed, every line of muscle sharpening like the feathers of a bird of prey ready to strike. His voice didn't change, but his eyes—those cold, predator's eyes—filled with a glint of raw, unfiltered need.
"Dick Grayson?" he said, voice lower. "You mean… Richard?"
Dean had him.
Unlike the Bruce Wayne of the main universe, Thomas Wayne—this Earth's Night Owl—had no illusions of honor or restraint. He didn't care about sidekicks. Didn't value family. Didn't believe in legacy.
Except for one.
Richard John Grayson.
The Eldest Son.
Unlike Batman, who treated Dick like a son, Thomas treated him like an equal—a brother forged in blood. And to get him, Night Owl had committed atrocities: orchestrating the murder of the Graysons just to create a shared trauma. A bond.
It worked—for a while. Until Richard discovered the truth.
Heartbroken, betrayed, he died on a mission soon after. Some said it was an accident. Others whispered it was suicide.
Night Owl never recovered.
Even sending Alfred across universes—his so-called "backup plan"—wasn't strategy. It was desperation. A long shot to find another version of Richard Grayson in another reality.
Dean watched the man unravel behind his emotionless façade. He could feel the heat of obsession radiating off Night Owl like a chemical reaction.
He sighed inwardly.
Young Master… you really are something else. You break hearts, shatter timelines, and even the men in other universes fall for you. The ultimate succubus of the DC multiverse.
"Ahem," Dean cleared his throat, smirking faintly. "Sorry. Got sidetracked. Back to business."
Night Owl narrowed his eyes, forcibly steadying himself. He knew Dean was baiting him—but it didn't matter. Dean knew too much. Too much.
"Alfred must've told you," he said quietly. "There's no other explanation."
Dean raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"
"You're too familiar with me. With him. Alfred can't betray me… not willingly. So either you've captured him… or you've found a way to extract his memories."
Night Owl wasn't stupid. Unlike Batman, his world had been frozen in the shadow of five-year-old battles. The Anti-Monitor. The Syndicate. The Watchers. He wasn't up-to-date with multiversal shifts—but he wasn't naïve.
Dean didn't deny it.
"Relax. Your Alfred's fine," Dean replied. "He picked the fight. I just responded. If he'd asked for help instead of aiming a gun at my head, I might've actually helped him. After all… he's Alfred."
Night Owl exhaled deeply. He understood what was happening now. Dean had flipped the board and taken control of the conversation. And he didn't like being on the back foot.
So he dropped the act.
"I'll tell you," he said plainly. "Everything you want to know about the Anti-Monitor. The real story. All of it."
"But in exchange," his eyes sharpened again, "you tell me everything about Richard."
It wasn't even a question. There was no hesitation. Night Owl didn't even ask about Alfred again.
He made his choice.
Dean's expression twisted into something between amusement and pity.
"Deal," he said.
To Night Owl, his own life meant less than dust. But Richard Grayson? The Young Master? He was Thomas Wayne's sun and moon.
And now, for the first time, Dean had something even the Crime Syndicate didn't:
Leverage.
Even if it meant exposing the dirtiest laundry of Superwoman, Ultraman, and the rest.
And Night Owl didn't care.
He would trade it all—secrets, alliances, power—just for a glimpse of the boy he once called brother.
It was, for the most part, just as Dean had suspected.
The Crime Syndicate—that warped mirror of the Justice League—hadn't defeated the Anti-Monitor through raw power or brilliant strategy. They had relied on spells—specifically, the power of the ancient talismans. Each member had claimed one, wielding its mystical energy to survive what should have been their annihilation.
Ultraman had acquired the Ox Talisman, granting him superhuman strength that could even match cosmic-level threats.
Deathstorm had seized the Dragon Talisman, channeling its fiery breath and energy projection into a weapon of mass destruction.
Johnny Quick had once possessed the Rabbit Talisman, enhancing his already formidable speed into something unnatural—light surpassed, time reversed.
The Monkey Talisman had ended up in the hands of Superwoman, the so-called Super Queen, bestowing upon her the power of shape-shifting. A fitting gift for someone who made deception and manipulation into an art form.
But there was a crucial detail that Night Owl left out—whether intentionally or not.
In the chaos of that battle, he had observed injuries on the Anti-Monitor before the Syndicate even engaged him. Deep, ragged wounds. Signs of a prior war. It wasn't the Crime Syndicate that had brought him down… not alone.
Dean caught the omission but didn't press it yet. His tone remained calm and detached.
"As far as I know," he said, voice level, "the Rabbit Talisman was reported stolen. Do you happen to know where the thief might be now?"
Dean didn't need to explain the subtext. He wasn't just asking about the talisman—he was asking about his mother.
On Earth-3, if there was anyone with the means to track her… it would be Night Owl, the Earth-3 analog to Batman. Cold, brilliant, obsessive. Dean was certain he had surveillance on every member of the Syndicate. It would be completely in-character for him to keep tabs on his so-called "allies."
But Night Owl shook his head.
He didn't know where Su Min was. If he did, he would've already retrieved the Rabbit Talisman himself.
Among all twelve talismans, the Rabbit Talisman was the most crucial. With it, Johnny Quick had reached velocities beyond light itself—allowing him to fracture the laws of physics, fold time, even reverse death… temporarily. It had been the Syndicate's final contingency.
And now, it was gone.
If Night Owl was telling the truth… even he had no idea where Su Min was now.
A cold thought slithered into Dean's mind.
Had something happened to her?
He shut the idea down immediately.
He wouldn't let that fear take root. Not now.
Night Owl, meanwhile, had grown impatient. "Enough," he said coolly. "I upheld my end. Now give me what I want. Tell me everything about the Eldest Son."
Dean didn't hesitate.
And he didn't hold back either. In fact, he answered almost too quickly, with a kind of exaggerated casualness that immediately set Night Owl on edge.
"He's my first Robin," Dean began, voice light. "My best partner. The kind of ally you only get once in a lifetime."
He smiled faintly.
"Currently operating as Nightwing, in Blüdhaven. Still active, still fighting the good fight."
Then came the twist.
"He's also in the middle of a… personal crisis. One I'm not entirely sure he'll recover from. If he can't pull through…" Dean trailed off with a sigh, "he might leave me."
Night Owl's expression turned murderous.
"You can't fix it? You're just going to stand by and watch your partner fall apart?" he snapped. "Are you useless? Are you—"
"It's an emotional crisis," Dean cut in dryly.
Night Owl froze.
"…"
At that moment, Dean rose to second place on Night Owl's list of the most hated people in the multiverse.
The number one spot remained uncontested.
"Dong dong."
A soft knock echoed through the quiet of the safehouse.
Then, a smiley-faced canister rolled in across the floor.
It hissed—then exploded in a puff of green gas.
Dean's instincts kicked in. He dove toward the back cabinet and pulled out a spare gas mask, strapping it on just as the room filled with laughing mist.
Across from him, Night Owl moved with equal precision, retrieving his mask from beneath the desk and locking it into place.
The air was filled with mad laughter.
And then the door blew open.
A figure stepped through the smoke, clad in a crimson top hat and matching trench coat, a wide grin spread across his painted face.
"I heard from Harvey," he declared gleefully, "that the prophesied savior had been kidnapped by a little owl. That must be you! I've come to save you!"
His voice rang with theatrical joy.
Jester of Justice. Earth-3's Clown Prince of Chaos.
The Joker.
Dean just stared.
He recognized the green gas immediately. Laughing gas. Too many puffs and even the strongest would drop into a fit of agony—or worse.
He adjusted his mask.
The Joker walked in like he owned the place, then casually plopped down between Dean and Night Owl as if this were some kind of multiversal tea party.
He glanced between them with curiosity. "You two seem awfully tense. What were you chatting about? Secrets? Plans? Can I join?"
Unlike his main universe counterpart, this Joker was a hero—or something like it. He led the Resistance, a rebel force fighting the Crime Syndicate's regime.
But in spirit, he was still the same.
Unpredictable. Unstable. Unbound.
The Joker didn't fight for good or evil—he fought to tear down systems. Whether ruled by tyrants or heroes, he saw all order as chains. And he delighted in breaking them.
Night Owl didn't flinch. He'd dealt with this Joker before.
He turned to Dean, voice razor-sharp: "It's time to choose. Who are you aligning with—the Resistance? Or me?"
Dean sighed, almost annoyed. He looked at the Joker and gave a half-smirk.
"Mr. J, your timing could not be worse. I was this close to winning Night Owl over. Just a little more sweet talk and he might've come to our side."
The Joker waved a hand dismissively.
"No, no, no. I came at exactly the right time. Any later and you'd have been completely fooled by the little owl's charm."
Then, his tone dropped into something darker.
"They didn't defeat the Anti-Monitor, Bruce. They stalled him. He was already dying when they found him."
Night Owl went completely silent.
Dean leaned forward, suddenly intrigued.
"How do you know that?" he asked.
The Joker grinned wider, lifting his hands and mimicking puppets.
"Oh, I was there, of course. Night Owl knows. Don't you remember, little owl? That day at Arkham… when we played hide and seek…"
Before Dean could respond, a memory surged to the forefront—disjointed, but vivid.
A dragon-headed monster fell from the sky into the sea.
Lasers beamed from its eyes, stretching into the far void of space.
But the Anti-Monitor… he tanked them all. Carried the monster's attack with his own body, then descended in a cosmic dive, slamming it back into the abyss with one devastating punch.
The war had already begun—long before the Syndicate arrived.
And the Joker had seen it all.
---
The dragon-headed monster crashed down like a meteor, shattering the land as it slammed into a remote island. The force of the impact split the ground beneath it, but the creature wasn't even dazed. It moved with impossible speed—blink, and it was gone.
In the next instant, it appeared directly in front of the Anti-Monitor.
The divine beast didn't hesitate. Its serpentine tail—thick with muscle, adorned with shimmering scales—lashed out in a blur and cracked across the Anti-Monitor's face, staggering him. The monster followed with a roar, exhaling a blast of celestial fire that washed over the Anti-Monitor like a tsunami of flame.
But the fire—no matter how blinding or intense—couldn't pierce that cosmic armor.
The Anti-Monitor stood tall.
And so did the dragon.
The clash of power wasn't about strength anymore. Both entities realized something simultaneously—physical force and raw energy were useless here.
They could not destroy one another through conventional means.
Without a word, both combatants shifted tactics. At the same moment, they lunged forward, each one seizing the other by the shoulders in a bone-crushing grapple. The pressure between them began to warp reality itself.
The sky trembled.
The ground buckled.
Then, space shattered like a broken mirror around them—gravity and matter collapsing into a singularity—and both titans tumbled into the swirling abyss of the void.
No one on Earth-3 saw what happened after that.
Not even Night Owl or the Joker, who had been observing from the shadows. The only clue left behind was in the aftermath.
Six meteors streaked across the sky like burning comets.
Night Owl, always prepared, fired his grappling line and intercepted five of them, reeling them in with cold precision. The Joker, cackling through the madness, managed to snatch just one.
And the Anti-Monitor?
Gone.
Vanished without a trace.
"This… is the real story," Joker said, his voice unusually calm for once. "That creature was the true hero. The one who fought the Anti-Monitor to a standstill. The Crime Syndicate didn't defeat anyone—they just showed up after the real battle was over and claimed the credit like opportunistic parasites."
He let out a bitter laugh.
"The world was already crumbling with fear when the Anti-Monitor appeared. The Syndicate just rode the panic, turned it into power, and used it to tighten their grip."
The Joker turned to Night Owl, mocking him with theatrical exaggeration—leaning into his face, pulling back with a sneer, gesturing wildly.
But Night Owl didn't respond.
He stood silently, cold eyes unreadable behind the lenses of his mask.
The Joker checked the oversized watch strapped to his wrist—a smiling cartoon face ticking at the center.
"Time's up. We should probably get moving."
Dean's hand went to his hip. From his side, he drew Changhong, the legendary sword forged in starfire.
"You're leaving already?" he said with a grin. "We just cracked open the owl's nest. I bet he's got all kinds of goodies stashed in here."
Dean wasn't wrong. Just as Batman had a contingency plan to neutralize every member of the Justice League—the infamous Tower of Babel protocol—it only made sense that Night Owl would have built a plan to take down the Crime Syndicate.
And if that plan had been hidden in this safehouse?
Then this was karma.
Tit for tat.
But the Joker wasn't feeling adventurous anymore.
He grabbed Dean's arm and tugged, hard.
"I'm here to save your life, remember? Let's not forget why I'm wearing the hat in this story," he muttered. "You really think Night Owl's just talking to you for fun? You don't see it, do you?"
He leaned closer, his grin tight.
"He's stalling. He's waiting for backup."
Dean rolled his eyes. "Harvey already told you, didn't he? I took down Gotham's entire army by myself. If it's just Night Owl and his support team, they're not exactly keeping me up at night."
The Joker just shook his head.
Not in disagreement—but in caution.
He scanned the shadows with narrowed eyes. Something in his demeanor changed.
Then, suddenly, he stopped walking.
A sigh escaped his lips.
"…It's over," he muttered.
Dean raised an eyebrow. "What's over?"
"He's coming," Joker said quietly. "That thing."
There was no laughter in his voice now.
"I don't like dealing with him face-to-face. If it were through a monitor, I might still have the nerve to say, 'I want to play a game with you.' But in person?"
He didn't finish the sentence.
Dean barely had time to turn his head when a shadow passed overhead. A black figure dropped from the sky like a thunderbolt and landed directly in front of them, his boots cracking the pavement beneath him.
The figure stood tall—inhumanly perfect in form.
Sculpted muscle under jet-black armor. A bright crimson owl emblem blazed across his chest like a warning light. Cloaked wings hung from his shoulders, resembling a predator ready to strike. Razor-sharp talons extended from the gauntlets on his arms. The armor pulsed with a low, predatory hum.
A mechanical voice echoed through the air, laced with disdain and synthetic venom:
[Flesh is a weakness, little Thomas. When will you understand that?]
Dean froze.
Behind him, Night Owl landed in a silent glide, his cape folding behind him like the wings of a raptor.
"Enough talking," Night Owl ordered, his voice calm and merciless. "Kill the clown. This lunatic calls himself Bruce—cut him down to the bone. Leave nothing but a talking stump."
[You do not give me orders.]
The armored figure's voice cut through the tension like a blade.
Dean swallowed hard. Now he understood. Now he saw why the Joker ran.
Because this wasn't just a soldier.
This wasn't just tech.
This was the Hellbat.
A monster forged in cold steel, with no soul left behind.
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