Equestria Girls: Justice League

"... Just a feeling."

That was all the answer he had given Diana on that day, the same day the world had grieved their saviour by great monuments whilst Lois Lane had grieved the love of her life by a simple grave in Smallville.

Bruce Wayne didn't quite understand why he hadn't told the truth to the amazon back then. Diana had simply asked why the extraordinary people of the world would have to fight. It had been a perfectly valid question, and Bruce had a... somewhat concrete answer.

Perhaps it all came down to the fact that, even now after Clark's death, the ragged vigilante of Gotham City still didn't truly trust anyone, even reclusive amazons like Diana whom he had fought side by side with. He might've learned that Men can be good, but that didn't mean that they all could be trustworthy. After 20 years in the most crime-ridden city on Earth, he should know.

Another possible reason was that, maybe deep down, he was afraid that she would not believe him. Hell, there were times were he didn't really believe it, either.

Thoughts like these plagued the man's mind as he sat by one of the Batcave's many computer screens. Bruce was leaning forwards, chin restin on his steppled fingers while his tired eyes observed the same four files over and over again. He was feeling sore in a few places, but ignored it in favour of immersing himself in his research in order to unwind a bit. The musty air of the cave did wonders for his sweaty scalp.

It had been another long night for Gotham's caped cruisader. A night spent solving Nigma's sick puzzles, tracking Cobblepot's latest less than legal business transactions, and hospitalizing a number of low-life criminal scum. All in all, nothing out of the ordinary.

What also wasn't out of the ordinary was how his fateful friend and butler wordlessly walked up and placed a silver tray on the desk, balancing a much needed cup of steaming black coffee and a midnight snack. Bruce briefly glanced sidelong, reverie temporarily broken.

"Thank you, Alfred." he acknowledged tiredly, but nonetheless appreciative as he eagerly brought a cup to his lips and took a sip of the expertly made coffee before returning his attention to the screen. As for the butler, he simply remained standing there, looking unsure if he should say anything or just move on.

"... Master Wayne," Alfred finally started with a sigh, using that same mix of an exasperated and lecturing tone Bruce had been hearing ever since he was a child. "I have long since accepted the fact that you will most likely never lie down in a bed and sleep at a reasonable hour ever again-"

"Really, Alfred?" Bruce asked wryly, a small and rare smirk dancing on his lips, "You've accepted it?"

The old butler shrugged unapologetically, "I never said I had to like it."

That got a barely audible snort out of the grizzled billionaire as he continued to sip his coffee. But Alfred looked far from amused, instead looking almost concerned for the last living Wayne.

"But, nonetheless, I can't help but wonder why you spend hours upon hours observing the same footage of these same...unique individuals. Surely you've seen everything there is to see at this point?"

Whatever small amount of levity that Bruce had felt abruptly disappeared, a frown on his face as he put down his cup. It looked as if he was staring at the screens, but Alfred knew better. His not-so-much-young master was lost in a particular grim thought.

"... I meant what I said at his funeral, Alfred." There was no need to specify whose funeral he was refering to, "The special people of the world need to stand united, now more than ever."

"But why this sudden obsession with recruiting?" the butler couldn't help but ask, "You've been a one-man act ever since..."

Alfred abruptly cut himself off, the words dying on his tounge as a tense silence settled over them both. It was as if a storm had passed over Bruce's face, his eyes and scowl dark while his powerful fists clenched at his sides.

Had Alfred slipped up like this a five years ago, then all Hell would have broken loose. But Bruce liked to think that he had let himself move on. So instead he chose to clench his eyes shut and breath in and out to calm himself down, knowing that the pent up rage, sorrow and guilt would do neither him or his old friend any good.

Having soothed himself, he opened his eyes and could see in the corner of his eyes how remorseful Alfred looked, and felt any remaining rage melt away. Swallowing, Bruce instead decided to answer his butler as calmly as he could.

But both of them made a clear point of not looking over at the worn, beaten and defiled old uniform on display in the cave.

"Clark changed everything, Alfred." Bruce's eyes were misty, recalling the his experiences with the Kryptonian, "His arrival, his actions, but his death most of all." he turned around, properly facing the old butler with a tense, yet detemined look. "This world needs protectors... The next general Zod or Doomsday won't be beaten by some old man dressed like a bat alone."

"Master Wayne... Bruce," It was one of those rare moments in his long life where Alfred Pennyworth felt to be at a loss as to what he should say, "Superman was-"

"More human than I could ever hope to be." Bruce finished grimly, turning away and focusing back on his many computer screens, pointedly ignoring the disappointment of the old man's face.

"I failed him in life, but I will not fail him in death." his voice grew lower, darker as he returned his attention to the files he had stolen from Luthor, watching over the extraordinary footage as he had done so many times over these last few weeks. He still couldn't look away from the most mysterious one, the video with the mutilated body and that strange, shifting box.

"... Something is coming, Alfred." He revealed after a small bout of silence between the two. It was not a fact Bruce was particularly happy to think about, but it was a fact nonetheless. "I don't know what, and I don't know when, but Earth won't stand a chance as things are now."

Alfred's lips thinned, "But, with all due respect, sir: How can you know this?"

Bruce once again went silent, not sure as to just how he should answer that relatively easy question.

There were plenty of factors that had made him so determined to unite the right people, and a damn good reason for how he knew that something would be coming sooner or later.

His visiting Luthor was perhaps the most telling one, the deranged little weasel's promises of a bell being heard across the stars, and that 'they' had heard it... Informing everything that was out there in the vast and unexplored cosmos that Earth had just lost its greatest defender and was ripe for the picking.

And the bell could not be unrung, as Luthor had been so eager to tell him.

And yet, there was one dream, a vision of some sort, that Bruce couldn't shake off his mind no matter how hard he tried. By all rights he should've just dismissed it as some crazy dream caused by sleep deprivation. He was no stranger to those, after all.

But no, this dream had been different, and not in a good way.

Unlike most of his dreams, he could remember every little detail of it as if it had been any other bizarre event in his, admittedly, bizarre life. It had been the night of Lex Luthor's little cocktail-party, when he had presumably fallen asleep whilst encrypting the meta-human files.

At first he had been haunted by visions of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, filled with nothing but waste, destruction, demons... and an evil Superman. And if those images hadn't been disturbing enough, once he had thought that he had woken up, it had gotten even stranger and all the more disturbing...

It was quite a shock for Bruce to have thought that he had escaped from another nightmare, only to find himself face-to-face with something even more unnerving.

For right there, in his cave, in his desk, there was a great blast of lightning and... rainbows?

Yep, of all the things that could've spontaneously appeared in his lair, it was a vortex of some kind coloured in all the colours of the rainbow, spreading colourful and flickering lights all over the grey innards of the batcave.

But Bruce wasn't too focused on the colour-scheme, moreso he focused on the unstable looking vortex flickering about. The man could only sit back in his chair, feeling light and wind just eminating from the strange phenomenon, papers on his desk blowing away in all directions.

It was as if Bruce's usually highly analytical and capable mind had been short-circuited, for all he could do was continue to stare as... as a human-looking figure began to appear in the energized storm.

It looked almost like a robot, made up of a metallic, dark blue body with energy lines with the rainbow's colours coursing through them. While it was hard to get a look behind it, there seemed to be two appendages sticking out, also armored, almost looking like a pair of wings. Bruce couldn't help but notice that it looked beat up, colour fading and wicked scratches all over the thing, as if it had been through a warzone of some kind.

And yet, it was all very hard to tell. To Bruce, the figure almost looked as if it were simply a vague shape made out of fire or a glitching computer-visual, constantly flickering and glitching about as if it were unstable, as if it didn't belong in this reality.

“BRUCE!" The sudden voice must've come from the mysterious figure, and Bruce himself was too stunned to even begin to question how this... whatever it was knew his name. It wasn't a voice he recognized. All he could tell that it sounded like a female. A young female, early twenties at most. The voice was already raspy, and it wasn't made any better with how it screamed in utter desperation, pleading for Bruce to, "LISTEN TO ME NOW!"

It turned out that it wasn't a robot, after all, as the featureless vizor lifted upwards, revealing the figure's face to Bruce. Or at least, most of it.

The woman, for Bruce was at least sure of that, was wearing a black mask covering parts of her upper face, but he could still take notice of her obviously cyan skin, though that too seemed to be marred by all manners of scratches and scars. Her eyes were a fine shade of magneta, but their beauty was tarnished because of how they were wide and scared, alit with not only pain, but desperation. Bruce felt as if she starred into his very soul.

Her voice, much like her entire body, seemed to shift and glitch, echoing in an unatural and haunting way as she screamed at him, "IT WAS LOIS! LOIS LANE! SHE’S THE KEY! BARRY HE-" A pained expression briefly crossed her face before she shook it off, "BARRY SENT ME!"

None of those names meant anything to Bruce. For while he knew Lois Lane was a Pulitzer-price winning reporter at the Daily Planet and appeared to worship the Man of Steel, that was all he knew about her. And as for Barry... He wasn't sure he had ever even met a Barry.

The confusion must've been evident on his face, as the woman gained a similar expression, before it was shortly replaced by one of realization and of panic, "WAIT… A-AM I TOO SOON!?"

Bruce couldn't have answered even if he had wanted to. Right after she had asked this, there was a particularly violent flicker, making it almost look as if the woman had completely faded out. She let out a bloodcurling, pained scream that was made only worse through the otherworldly echo.

"DANG IT, I’M TOO SOON!" It almost sounded as if the woman wanted to cry, the pure regret and helpless rage in her tone one that Bruce himself had used before. But she then seemed to shake it off, once again focusing those hardened magneta eyes at the seated vigilante. "LISTEN! YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT HIM! ABOUT HER! FEAR THEM BOTH!"

The voice began to grow weak, the flashing rainbow-portal seemed to flicker away and fade, and the armored woman fading along with it. Bruce could only partly hear what it yelled out to him next, but every last syllable was edged into his memory, "THE TEAM… -IN CANTERLOT! … -UESTRIA!"

Shortly thereafter, the rainbow-vortex looked as if it was colapsing in on itself. All the light and the flickering figure disappearing into one singular and flickering ball of light, yet the voice still screamed out one final message and plead:

"FIND US, BRUCE! YOU HAVE TO FIND US!”

Then the ball of light had imploded, and Bruce Wayne woke up at his desk, desperatly catching his breath as his computer bleeped in the background, signaling the finished encrypting of Luthor's files.

"Master Wayne?" Alfred's inquiry managed to snap Bruce out of the bizarre memory, and the vigilante realized that he must've simply sat quietly on his road down memory lane.

He spared a brief glance up at his fateful butler, the old man which had stood by his side all his life looking at Bruce much like a conscerned father would. There were a precious little amount of things that he had never told Alfred, even after all these years of fighting crime.

Still, he kept his mouth sealed tight, keeping this disturbing vision to himself, not so sure as to why. He still feared, or rather hoped, that it had all just been an elaborate dream, set upon him by his then growing paranoia and overall fear of Superman.

Yet there was something about the desperation of that woman's plea, how she had begged of him to find them, whoever 'them' might be... Bruce couldn't help but feel that it fit oddly well with what he had now set on to do. But that could've simply been a coinsidence. Dreams are fickle things, after all.

So why couldn't he stop thinking about one of those words he had managed to pick up from the faded and scrambled echoes? A word that, for whatever reason, seemed to have inptrinted itself into his subconscious, making it pop up in his head every now and then:

'Canterlot'

He couldn't deny that it sounded familiar. Shaking his head, Bruce decided that he could always look up the word tomorrow, but not at the moment. He had more work to do, he thought as he began to type away on the keyboard. He needed to find these people.

Realizing that he still hadn't answered Alfred, who now started to look concerned, Bruce decided once again to avoid speaking directly of Luthor's ominous words, and of the haunting dream that just wouldn't stop eating away at his mind.

Letting out a small sigh, Bruce didn't look at Alfred as he answered, telling his old friend the same lie he had told Diana. His words were barely above a whisper, yet they echoed like a taunt in the dephts of the cave,

"... Just a feeling."