Chapter 42

Onboard the Titanic, Neo-Gotham

David Clinton, now known as Chronos, walked into a dining room aboard the Titanic, holding the hand of his wife, Enid.

"Enid, I must say that I am vexed; yes, vexed is precisely the word."

"Y-you mustn't let yourself get upset, David." Said a nervous Enid; before he'd become a time-travelling conqueror, David Clinton had been weak and easy for her to boss around; now, it was her turn to be scared of him.

"You're right, dear," Chronos said, before looking at the clowns, a gang known as the Jokerz, whom he'd sent to kill the League, "but here we are. Now, look at it from my point of view; I go to the trouble of taking over the whole city, just so I can have a place to keep my collection…"

"And it's a beautiful collection, David." Added Enid, hoping that her husband would forget that she'd called his collection a worthless pile of trash.

"I was gonna say the same thing, boss," said the fat Joker, called Chucko, "for instance, this is a really nice boat; big!" the other Jokerz nodded, but Chronos leaned in with a glare.

"Don't patronize me, Chucko, and especially don't interrupt me."

"I'm sorry."

"Sorry, what?" the Jokerz looked at each other; they hated doing this. "Everybody?"

"Sorry, Lord Chronos." The clowns said in unison.

"It doesn't seem right." Chronos said as he paced, "I go to the future, I give you the technology that gives you all your powers, I let you run amok in my city, in return for the occasional… security job, and what do you do in return?"

The twins looked at each other. "Ummm…" they both said.

"That was rhetorical!" shouted Chronos. "The point is, I gave you an easy job: take care of Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Ben Ten; it should have been fifteen minutes work!"

"But the Justice League showed up!" protested the big one, named Bonk, "They got in our way!"

"Yes, they did," agreed Chronos, "and the question arises: who told them where and when the four would show up? I mean, I told you; and I only know because I'm the undisputed master of space and time."

"I'll look into it, boss." Said Chucko confidently, "I'll find out where the leak was."

"No, don't trouble yourself, Chucko," Chronos said sadistically, as he leaned in to whisper in the clown's ear, "I already know."

He touched the button on his belt, and an image of the past appeared before them all. It showed Neo-Batman handing a large sum of money to someone.

"Someone's getting a payoff," said Chronos, "yes, he is."

The image soon showed who was getting paid; it was Chucko himself. The other Jokerz stepped away from their soon-to-be dead comrade.

"Chucko, Chucko, Chucko." Said Chronos in a mock-disapproving tone, "You've been a very bad clown."

Then Chronos opened another time-tunnel, grabbed Chucko, and hauled him inside. When they emerged, they were in the late-Cretaceous period. Chronos pushed the clown forward.

"Enjoy your stay." Then Chronos returned to the future. Chucko looked around, and saw a T-Rex charging at him. He activated his energy-sword.

"You think I'm scared!?" yelled the clown. "I'll be runnin' this dump in a few ye…" he looked up and saw a very large asteroid heading towards the Earth. "Oh, phooey."

…

As Chronos stepped out of the time-tunnel, he looked at the very frightened clowns.

"Do you know what killed dinosaurs?" he asked, getting a chorus of silently-shaking heads. "Well, Chucko does; and unless you want to find out firsthand, you'll go finish off the Justice League. Skedaddle! Time is money!"

The Jokerz ran off, and Chronos sat down on the couch, next to his wife. "Actually, time is the non-spatial continuum in which events occur linearly, usually in the direction of increased entropy, but the clowns seem to relate better to the money thing." He pulled his wife into a non-reciprocated embrace. "Oh, Enid, look at what I've done; and you said I'd never amount to anything! I guess I showed you!"

Enid gave a weak smile, as her husband let out a mad cackle, then continued. "Now, I've taken over all of Gotham, which gives me plenty of space to store my antiques; did you notice that I took that stuff out of the garage? You can park there now, if you like."

"Thank you, David." Enid seemed to remember something. "David, didn't you once say that it was dangerous to take important things from the past, that it could damage time somehow?"

David's eyes narrowed. "Don't you think I can handle it?"

"O-of course I do!" Enid got up and began giving her husband a massage. "Dear?"

"Hm?"

"Do you know what would make me happy? If you let my mother out of the… thing, like you promised."

"We'll see." Chronos said, in a tone that meant "no". "Rub my neck."

Enid did so, but she continued to talk. "It's just that, it seems cruel to keep her there so long…"

"Your mother also said that I'd never amount to anything," Growled Chronos, "and you agreed with her!" he got up, his whole body shaking with insane rage. "Whatever I do, whatever I accomplish, it will never be enough for you, will it!? I just wanted you to love me! I'm sick of this and I'm sick of you!"

"Wait, baby, please!" begged Enid, "Isn't there anything I can do to make this right?"

"I sincerely doubt it." Chronos marched to the captain's quarters without another word. He sat down and brooded.

"Marriage to the wrong person can be difficult, can it not?" Chronos turned to see a man in a white lab coat on the other side of the room, looking at him in disapproval. "Trust me; I've seen enough relationships over the millennia to know."

"Who are you?" demanded Chronos, reaching for his time-belt.

"No need for violence, I simply wish to talk, one time-traveler to another." The man gave a disarming smile. "I am Professor Paradox, and I know that you are David Clinton, though I believe that you go by Chronos now, correct?"

Though he was losing his grip on sanity, Chronos was intrigued by this other time-traveler. "What do you want? If it's antiques you're after, I'll have you know that these are all mine!"

Paradox shook his head. "I have no need for trinkets such as these, or any belongings, for that matter. I do have a warning, however."

"A warning? About what?"

Paradox looked at him sternly. "If you do not surrender to the League immediately, everything will be gone; your collection, your "troops", your wife, everything. All of time will unravel; all of reality, the multiverse itself, will cease to be."

Chronos laughed. "That's it? A pathetic attempt to make me give up? Don't be ridiculous! Get out of my…" but Paradox had already vanished, leaving Chronos to do nothing but fume.

…

Meanwhile, At Justice League HQ

After an hour regaling the future-heroes with what happened in the Old West, everyone was brought up to speed. Paradox confirmed that every piece of future-tech that Tobias Manning had stolen had indeed been destroyed. Batman hadn't said much, leaving the story-telling to the others, while he worked on something at the computer.

Ben, meanwhile, was trying his best not to learn too much about his future; Paradox had warned him many times over the years about the dangers of knowing what could happen. Still, he was amazed; while he and Kara loved each other very much, he hadn't known if they'd start a family. After all, they'd only been dating for 10 months. He hadn't even known if it was possible to have a child with a Kryptonian, but now proof, in the form of Kenneth Max Tennyson, was right in front of him.

He returned his attention to the computer, which showed a picture of David, now calling himself Chronos, wearing a ridiculous green and white jumpsuit with an hourglass on his chest.

"We still don't know much about him," said Neo-Batman, "but obviously, he's a time-traveling warlord; he's littered the streets with buildings he's stolen from other timelines."

"Oh, trust me, dude, he isn't a warlord." Ben smirked as he spoke. "He was a collector of random stuff when we first met him."

"He's causing severe damage to the space-time continuum," said Paradox, "and if something is not done soon, we will see the destruction of the multiverse; the end of reality itself."

"So, it's Aggregor-bad?" asked Ben.

"No, it's much worse," said Paradox, "while Aggregor wanted to reshape reality in his own image, this is simple annihilation; the end of everything that ever was, is and will be."

"Oh." Ben glanced at the others, who looked shocked, then shrugged. "Pretty bad, then."

"I've got something that might prevent that." Everyone turned to Batman, while Paradox had a slight smile on his face. "While we were in the Old West, I got a good look at his time-belt." He typed a few more keys on computer, then pulled out a small disk. "I've written a program that should disable it."

"If we can get close enough to upload it." Said War Hawk.

"If we can get our hands on the belt," said Wonder Woman, "maybe we can stop any of this from happening in the first place." Then, to the others' shock, Wonder Woman began to disappear! "We could even undo the deaths of…" she never finished her sentence; she vanished entirely.

"Diana!" yelled Batman, stretching out his hand to grab her, but she was already gone.

For a moment, all the others could do was stare in horror.

"She… never left the island?" asked Bruce.

"Or she was never born." Replied Batman.

"Time is running out," said Paradox, pointing to a monitor, which showed a massive wave of light that was slowly erasing everything in its path, "quite literally so."

"We need to find Chronos." Said Neo-Batman after a moment.

"How?" asked Static, "He could be anywhere."

"I don't suppose you could tell us, Paradox?" Ben asked hopefully.

Paradox shook his head. "The map of the timestream is becoming obsolete; Chronos' meddling is interfering with my powers. I can't locate where he is now; all I could do was try to dissuade him, but that endeavor failed. I'm sorry."

"Batman?" asked Ken, "Where are you going?"

"Sometimes the old ways are best." Answered the Dark Knight, as he marched to the door.

"It won't work," Neo-Batman protested, "you don't know your way around here; a lot of things have changed."

Batman turned his head. "Are criminals still superstitious and cowardly?"

Bruce nodded. "Yep."

"Good enough for me." Then he walked out.