ALTMANESQUE (adj):
Displaying traits typical of a film made by Robert Altman (1925-2006).
Usually naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective, and often with
a subversive twist. Hallmarks include numerous characters, and
overlapping dialogue.

Four weeks prior to this afternoon, Alfred Pennyworth had taken Cassandra Cain shopping for clothes to be worn at the wedding of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle.

"Suit," Cassandra had said.

Alfred had begun to protest. "Certainly a young lady such as yourself would prefer a dr-"

She cut him off right there. She yanked the collar of her sweatshirt aside, showing the veins of scar tissue that marbled her entire body, starting at the collarbone.

Cassandra had nothing against dresses, but people seeing her crowded cemetery of scars would cause them to give her the Concerned Face.

The same Concerned Face that Alfred gave her at that moment, on the front steps of Wayne Manor.

"Suit," Cassandra had said again.

To which Alfred slowly smiled. "As you wish, Miss Cain."

The result of that afternoon was a three piece suit, black, with a black and gray striped tie. It was, as Stephanie Brown had called it when she saw Cassandra wearing it, "GQ AF."

And it was in this suit that she sat now, in the front row of the ceremony, absently pulling at the small ponytail in which she had tied her short mop of black hair. Hair that had gradually thickened with continued exposure to hair conditioner. She gazed at the sight in front of them.

Bruce standing center stage in his tux. Selena standing across from him in a custom Vera Wang wedding dress.

The bridal party consisted of Selena's long-time confidant and friend Holly Robinson as the maid of honor, with Holly's wife Karon Jasper, Selena's current protege Stephanie Brown, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Lois Lane, and Selena's former partner in crime Harley Quinn serving as bridesmaids.

Heaven and Earth had to be moved to secure Harley Quinn's place at the ceremony, as she was a committed patient at Arkham Asylum. An elaborate ruse was embarked upon, concerning top secret stakeout missions which required Doctor Quinzel's assistance. Naturally, these stakeouts did not exist. Batman had a hard time lying to the staff of Arkham Asylum, but that's apparently what he had Nightwing for.

Speaking of whom, Dick Grayson acted as Bruce Wayne's best man. The groomsmen consisted of Bruce's butler and surrogate father Alfred Pennyworth, the current Robin Tim Drake, WayneTech's head of Research and Development Lucius Fox, and Black Lightning himself, Jefferson Pierce.

Ted "Wildcat" Grant, the man who trained Selena in boxing and martial arts, walked her down the aisle.

Lian Harper, Roy "Arsenal" Harper's daughter, served as the flower girl.

Twelve-year-old Billy Batson, who became the hero Shazam with the utterance of one magic word, served as the ring bearer. It wasn't something he particularly wanted to do, but relented as the request was personal. For no friendship formed on the periphery of this blessed union was more unexpected as the friendship that had arisen between Billy Batson and Selina Kyle. They were both foster kids, after all. At various functions surrounding the wedding and at the rehearsal dinner, Billy and Selina had found themselves hanging back, standing against walls, looking at the array of superheroes in their midst and quietly judging them.

And if those familiar with the players involved wondered aloud where on Earth Bruce's best friend Clark Kent could be, one need only look at center stage, for Clark, in his Superman outfit, was the one performing the ceremony. His deeds as Superman had resulted in several religions ordaining him in an honorary capacity, and some of those ordainments had actual legal ramifications, not least of which was the ability to perform marriages.

The bride and groom invited almost everyone they knew that they felt comfortable sharing their secret identities with.

This wedding ceremony was not held in a church. So vast was the guest list that it necessitated an aircraft hangar at Gotham International Airport.

More than those present, those absent were also of some note.

The Martian Manhunter J'onn J'onzz, for instance, was in the Justice League Watchtower in space at the present moment, keeping an eye on things, as human gatherings such as these didn't agree with him. Plus, if he placed a telepathic field around the airport that made any member of the press or any airport security personnel suddenly have better, more productive ideas than checking in on this hangar, then that would make a dandy wedding present, wouldn't it?

The Justice League held a lottery among themselves as to who would watch over Gotham City in Batman's absence this afternoon, and the one who drew the short straw was the Green Lantern Guy Gardner. Gardner thought that selection was rigged. Gardner was right. But his girlfriend Tora "Ice" Olafsdottir was on patrol with him, so it's not like he couldn't say he was having a good time.

Perhaps most controversial was the absence of Green Arrow Oliver Queen, who had recently broken up with longtime girlfriend Dinah "Black Canary" Lance in spectacular and dramatic fashion. An occurrence whose regularity was, sadly, common. Eager to avoid any displays of acrimony or perhaps even violence between the two on such a special occasion, all thirteen members of the main wedding party were asked to vote as to whether or not Ollie or Dinah would attend the wedding, as having the two in the same place at the same time was virtually untenable.

The votes came back twelve to one in favor of Dinah, with the lone vote of dissent being Superman, who voted for Ollie's attendance as he knew no one else would.

Oliver Queen considered this a personal affront, and the members of his group (dubbed "Team Arrow") declined their invitations. Emiko Queen, Mia Dearden, Cissie King-Jones, John Diggle, and Felicity Smoak were not in attendance.

The only one in Oliver's orbit that came besides Dinah was Roy Harper, Ollie's former sidekick. Roy and Ollie weren't as tight as they used to be, it was a great way for his daughter to meet his friends, he hadn't spoken to Dick or Donna Troy in ages, so why not go? Roy was in the front row as well, past Barbara and Kate Kane.

And it was at the front row of this massive throng of people that Cassandra Cain found herself, with Barbara Gordon sitting on her right, and Ralph Dibny, The Elongated Man, sitting on her left. Ralph himself was sitting next to his wife Sue Dibny, a detective whose skill and reputation were so great that they rivalled those of The Dark Knight himself.

Cassandra looked at Superman doing his preamble, standing there in between Bruce and Selina, her eyes almost glassing over. She wondered, and not for the first time, why Batman would lessen himself so, that he would deign to be Bruce Wayne for most of his day. Batman was a singular redemptive force that punished the guilty and protected the innocent. Bruce Wayne, on the other hand, was just a man. A man with power, a man with wealth, yes, but a man nonetheless.

Cassandra reckoned, not for the first time, of a strange fantasy scenario where she herself would be worthy enough one day to wear the symbol of The Bat on her chest. If so, would she ever take the uniform off, save for bathing or sleeping?

Next to her, the Dibnys started whispering among themselves.

"I smell a mystery," Sue said. "Why do you think Bruce invited this many people?"

"We don't get to see each other outside of the world ending or funerals," Ralph said. "Can't a guy invite everyone he knows to a big day like this?"

"When he's Bruce Wayne?" Sue asked. "When he's Batman? No he can't. Know why I think he did it?"

"Do tell."

"Because he knows," Sue said, "that none of us thought he'd ever do this. So he invited everyone just to prove us all wrong."

Ralph chuckled lightly. "You know that story about Bela Lugosi's funeral? Buried in his Dracula cape. Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre standing over his casket, Boris asks Peter 'Want I should stake him to make sure he's really dead?' This wedding shouldn't remind me of that, and yet…"

Cassandra, unable to tolerate this rudeness further, leaned forward and got Ralph's attention by glaring at him.

This glare shut Ralph down the same as everyone else.

Not only had Bruce and Selina invited all their friends, they had invited people they were only vaguely familiar with. As was the case, a whopping thirteen rows behind Cassandra Cain, with the Doom Patrol.

Rita "Elasti-Woman" Farr, Kaye "Crazy Jane" Challis, and Kate "Coagula" Godwin were there, with Cliff "Robotman" Steele and Larry "Negative Man" Trainor at the aisle.

The ceremony was at the vows section now. Bruce had decided to give the standard, while Selina opted to write her own, which sounded like a vaguely self-aggrandizing stand-up routine. To anyone who knew them, this was in character for both the groom and the bride.

Robotman sighed. "They're going to ask me to do The Robot."

"Shh," said Negative Man.

"Oh, what?" asked Robotman. "We're thirteen rows back. The had to install loudspeakers so we could hear what's going on up there. Which means they can't hear us."

Sitting in front of them was Eddie Bloomberg, who went by the codename "Red Devil" and very much looked the part, turned to look at the two.

"Well I can, dumbass, so pipe down."

"Anyone ever tell you it's not polite to eavesdrop?"

Red Devil took the measure of Robotman (who, as the name suggested, was the brain of Cliff Steele in a robot body) and asked "Has anyone ever told you that you look like the tin shit I don't give?"

"W-We're sorry," Negative Man said quietly, trying to defuse the situation. "We'll be quieter."

Red Devil nodded, harumphed, and turned back to the ceremony.

"They're still going to ask me to do The Robot," Robot man said, a great deal quieter.

"What's The Robot?" Negative Man asked.

"It's a dance," Robotman said. "They're going to ask me to do it at the reception, I just know it. It's… It's just degrading."

"So don't do it."

"Then who's gonna talk to me?" Robotman asked.

Indeed, not only had Bruce and Selina invited people they were only vaguely familiar with, they had invited people that they didn't know at all, but might want to be on a named basis with. For six rows behind the Doom Patrol, on the other side of the aisle, was The Movement out of Coral City

They were on the younger side, too old even to be Titans at this point, though not renowned enough or old enough to even have the Justice League know their names. They consisted of Holly Rae "Virtue" Hunter, Roshanna "Tremor" Chatterjee, Christopher "Burden" Van Dijk, and Drew "Vengeance Moth" Fisher. But it's the two members in the middle that are of the most interest at the present moment: Kulap "Katharsis" Vilaysack, and Jayden "Mouse" Revell.

Mouse had the ability to control rodents, and as such, he had neither the inclination nor the incentive to bathe. Katharsis thought that on a given day, Mouse smelled like sweaty ballbag, complete failure, and the souls of the damned. It took the entirety of the rest of The Movement to not only force mouse to take a shower, but to show him how.

Sitting there, scrubbed, his tuxedo (paid for by Bruce Wayne himself) engulfing his skinny frame, Mouse looked as though his foray into personal hygiene and grooming was giving him Vietnam flashbacks.

Katharsis saw something was moving in the pocket of his tuxedo, and rolled her eyes.

"Mouse," Katharsis said, trying to keep her voice down. "Tell me you didn't bring a rat to Batman's friggin' wedding."

He looked at her in shock. "There's going to be free food," Mouse said. "I can't leave Mortimer at home when there's gonna be free food. Mortimer's my favorite."

"They're all your favorite," Katharsis said.

Mouse blushed a little bit. "I know," he said, "but he's my favorite favorite."

And it was with this admission that the conversations between attendees at this wedding reached their climax. For it was at this point that Superman said the words everyone was waiting to hear.

"You may now kiss the bride."

No one, not even the closest friends of the two parties involved, goes to a wedding for the wedding itself. Those who say otherwise are selling dresses and tuxedos.

The main event of the day, as the sun began its slow saunter into the western sky hidden by Gotham City skyscrapers, was the reception.

This reception was held in the hangar next to the one in which the wedding took place. Superman had given generous use of his Superman robots from his Fortress of Solitude to both cater the event and tend bar. Zatanna Zatara was in charge of both decoration and cleanup, because she could say "Noitaroced" and "Pu-naelc," and the job would be over.

It was up to Barbara Gordon to perform DJ duties, which was a touch misleading, as all she had to do was use a Spotify playlist that she and boyfriend Dick Grayson had assembled. Both it and the loudspeakers were run from her phone.

As Bruce and Selina made their exit (the official explanation was to drop by Wayne Manor to pick something up), the guests began their slow migration between hangars.

Roughly half an hour after the ceremony proper, everybody, sans bride and groom, was in the reception hangar. They were milling about the tables they had scouted, eating food, getting drinks, and a few adventurous souls had even venture to the dance floor.

Roy Harper and his daughter Lian were not among them.

When Dick Grayson happened upon his best friend and his daughter, Roy was almost comatose, his tuxedo jacket hanging on the chair behind him, his head held in his hand, supported by the elbow on the table.

And little four-year-old Lian was tugging on the sleeve of his other arm.

"I wanna daaaaaaance," Lian said, skating gracefully the line between being adorably precocious and adorably annoying.

Roy ran a hand through his light red hair. "I'm sorry, kiddo, I had a really tough night at work before a flight was really long. I'm pooped."

"Don't say poop."

Dick got to the table just as Roy said "Pooooooooop."

Lian giggled at this.

"'Sup, Pixie Boots," said Roy to Dick, and Lian waved at him.

"Hey, Roy."

Roy looked about his surroundings. "You ever think you'd see the day? Bruce Wayne getting his head out of his ass long enough to get hitched?"

"Language," Lian said. "Dollar for the jar when you get home."

"You're absolutely right," said Roy.

"It was a theory," Dick said. "Wasn't sure how it'd pan out till now. How are you and Ollie?"

"Me and Ollie are me and Ollie," Roy said. "It comes and it goes. How are you and Babs?"

"Fine enough that I'm actually getting suspicious," Dick said. "You and the rest of the Titans still running the pool one when I'll screw it up?"

"Garth has you down for getting dumped on November fourteenth."

"So he's an optimist, then?" Dick turned to Lian. "How are you, Lian? Still mad you had to miss Halloween to come here and do this for us tonight?"

"Uh-huh," said Lian.

"Oh, I'm sorry about that," Dick said. "How about I make it up to you? I can't find my girlfriend anywhere… and I could really use someone to dance with."

Lian's eyes lit up. She looked at her father, who nodded.

"Okay," Lian said.

"Great," said Dick. "I have a problem, though. See, I don't know how to dance, so I'm gonna do whatever you do, alright?"

"Alright."

"Great," Dick said, and held his hand out. Lian took it, and led Dick out to the dance floor.

Lian twitched and shook to her own four-year-old's approximation of what dancing looked like, and Dick tried to keep up as best he could.

It continued this way, until Dick heard a high-pitched "Awwwww!" coming from behind him.

Dick stopped dancing, and turned around.

None of the tables were looking at him. They were all seemingly engaged in conversation.

"What the hell?"

"Language," Lian said, still dancing. "Dollar for the jar."

The table that had Awwwww- ed Dick Grayson and Lian Harper was the table at which the teenage girls in the group Young Justice sat, and it was at that table that Cassandra Cain had found herself, alongside her best friend Stephanie Brown.

To Stephanie Brown's right sat Cassandra "Wonder Girl" Sandsmark, her blonde hair draped over her shoulders, and her pretty blue eyes cast down at the table. Being as both she and Cassandra Cain shared a first name, it was decided upon by the group that Miss Cain would go by "Cass," and Miss Sandsmark would go by "Cassie." Cassie was, as her crime-fighting name implied, Wonder Woman's sidekick: A girl from Gateway City who'd been endowed with the power of the Amazons.

To Cassie's right sat Anita "Empress" Fite, a black girl from Louisiana with martial arts training, mind control, and teleportation abilities. She tucked a stray bit of hair behind her right ear in embarrassment after the temporary Awwwww -ing bout of insanity that had just occurred.

And to Anita's right, rounding out the set, was Jinny Hex. She was the great-great granddaughter of notorious and famed old west bounty hunter Jonah Hex. Her brown hair was tied in a ponytail beneath the tattered old cowboy hat that she was wearing along with her creme wedding dress.

Jinny was not embarrassed the same way the other four girls at the table were.

No, Jinny Hex was curious.

"Alright ladies," Jinny said, "cards on the table by show-a hands… Who here has had the sex dream about Dick Grayson?"

There were five women at this table.

Four of them raised their hands.

Cass was among them. She remembered the first time she had seen him down in the Batcave, before she had even known her own name. She'd been under the impression in her years on the street that the men and women on billboards that were almost untouchably aesthetically pleasing were artificial. That they were drawn the way she'd seen them done on boardwalks in New York and here in Gotham City.

So to see someone as stunning as Dick Grayson up close after her years fighting to survive on city streets all around the country was as though she had passed through some kind of barrier separating the mundane from the sublime.

The dream, in and of itself, wasn't particularly graphic. Just seeing his muscles moving beneath immaculate skin, his smiling lips, his blue eyes. But it was enough.

Two things happened as a result of The Dick Grayson Sex Dream.

The first was that the dream itself had displaced, even if just for one night, the nightmare she'd had every night of the man she had killed in Macau when she was a child.

The second was that she awoke feeling refreshed as she hadn't in living memory.

Doing something as passe as chasing after boys was not something in which Cass would indulge. It served as a distraction from her crimefighting work as Orphan. It distracted from her training as a warrior. It served as a distraction from her efforts to read, to write, to speak (the extent of which had been rather impressive under the tutelage of Barbara Gordon in the almost year-and-a-half they had known each other).

But even Cass had to admit that being interested in other people romantically and sexually may not have been the worst thing for an eighteen-year-old girl to be.

"Yes," Cass said as meekly as she could with her deep, raspy voice. Her hand was shoulder length in embarrassment.

"Hell yes," said Anita with her hand also raised.

"Oh," Cassie said with a far away look in her eyes, her hand daintily raised. "You wish to hear of The Dream."

Cassie folded her arms in front of her, her blue eyes lost in reverie. It was almost as though a light bloomed from the table to her face like she was telling a ghost story around a campfire.

"I was atop a pyramid," Cassie said, "beneath a cloudy dark sky. I was tied naked to a stone altar upon which was carved worn and ancient runes in Sanskrit. At ground level were thousands of worshippers, praying in tongues and writhing to appease a God with a name no mere human being could pronounce. And then… He ascended. Clad only in a black speedo, a wolfskin cloak, and a bull's skull for a mask. And he held, in his hand, a chalice made from a ram's horn. Once he reached upon the summit of the pyramid, he held that chalice over my body. When he emptied it upon my willing body, I saw that it was filled with…"

"The Holy Spirit?" JInny asked, ruining the moment with a look of both revulsion and awe. "Because the way your thirsty keister's goin' on, I'mma really hopin' it was The Holy Spirit."

"Jesus Harold Christ…" Stephanie said.

"Guys?" Anita asked

"...on a rubber crutch," continued Stephanie. "Cassie, what is wrong with you?"

"Guys," Anita interjected yet again. "You haven't noticed something?"

"What?" Cass asked.

"Steph didn't raise her hand," said Anita.

And now every eye at the table was upon Stephanie Brown.

"What?" Stephanie asked.

"Dick Grayson not good enough for ya?" Jinny asked.

Stephanie looked at everyone else at the table. "Well… Y'know… He's alright."

"I bared my soul to you," Cassie said, looking almost betrayed. "My very soul."

"I'm just saying," Stephanie said, "that some of us don't have such pedestrian taste in men."

"And who trips Spoiler's trigger?" Anita asked.

Even Cass had to hear this one.

Stephanie opened her mouth to speak…

...and whatever answer she was going to give was lost to time as a ruckus arose at the next table.

"Oh, come on!"

The heads of all five young women turned.

The boys of Young Justice were sitting a table over: Conner Kent, Bart Allen, Tim Drake, and a guest they were entertaining at present, Billy Batson.

Conner Kent had apparently heard something that had offended him greatly. And now that he saw that he had gotten the girls' attention, he composed himself, and hunched over the table to maintain both intensity and privacy.

"What do you think they're talking about?" Cassie asked.

"Don't know," said Cass.

Stephanie scoffed.

"They're boys," she said. "They're probably being dumb and gross."

Tim Drake saw that his best friend Conner had lost patience with Bart.

"Oh, come on!"

"What?" Bart asked.

Conner had seen that he had embarrassed himself and had gotten the girls' attention… including one whose attention he was fixated upon lately. He hunched over to collect himself.

Conner Kent was Superboy: A clone made of combined DNA strands of both Superman and Lex Luthor. He'd only been free from the Cadmus tank form which he'd been grown for a couple of years now, and he was having trouble acclimating himself to accepted social norms: namely that you didn't start yelling at someone during a wedding reception without a few looky-loos.

Bart Allen went by "Impulse," and he was a time-traveler from the thirtieth century. The grandson of the late Barry Allen (who himself had traveled forward in time), he had been raised in a virtual reality environment that allowed his mind to work at quantum speeds, and boy did it show.

Wow, Tim thought. Speedsters are weird.

And sitting to Tim's left was Billy Batson.

At least his origin's easy to explain, Tim thought. A wizard said "Hey, kid. Say 'Shazam!' and you'll turn into a superhero." No muss, no fuss.

Billy was eating some of the little mini-quiches that the Superman robots had prepared. And he was diligently staying out of the conversation at hand.

"Seriously?" Conner asked.

"Yeah," said Bart.

"Daedra?"

"Yeah," said Bart yet again, his wild brown hair quivering on his shoulders as a result of his enthusiasm. "I-I-I don't know why my answer bothers you so-"

"Because I thought we were having a serious Pop Theological discussion," Conner said. "The question at hand being, which gods from video games you'd feel the most comfortable worshipping."

"And I gave my answer," said Bart.

"Daedra," Conner said yet again.

"Ye-"

"Because they're evil , Bart," Conner said intensely. "Or at the very least so morally gray so as to make no difference whatsoever. If you said the Aedra, we wouldn't have a problem, but saying you'd worship Daedra is tantamount to you saying you'd worship Satan, which… Okay, I'm not gonna lie, it makes you more interesting than I thought you were five minutes ago."

"Leaving aside the moral affiliations of my deities of choice…"

"Which you can't," Tim said, "they being gods, and all."

"They're active," said Bart. "You talk about the Aedra, but they went into hibernation after creating Mundus. A hibernation that-that-that they haven't woken up from! On the other side of that moral coin, you have the entire civilization of the Elder Scrolls universe that's spent billions of years where their only contact with divinity is through negative reinforcement and the indulgence of vice! From that, you have a whole lot of other questions. Like…"

"Like how the only things that happen profusely are sweating, bleeding, and apologizing?" Billy asked.

"Like how your hyperactive little munchkin ass sat through the entirety of a Bethesda game?" asked Tim.

"Here I am," Bart said, "trying to bring some… some…"

"It's, like, the opposite of what I picked," said Conner.

"Who did you pick?" Tim asked.

"The Maker," Conner said. "Andraste."

Bart and Tim said, simultaneously and with respective eye-rolls: "Dragon Age."

"Right," Conner said, his icy blue eyes widening. "Dragon Age."

"Like I said," Bart said. "Mine are active. Yours are…"

"Exactly," Conner said, "Mine aren't. You want certainty. I don't."

"What's religion without certainty?" Bart asked.

"What's religion without doubt?" Conner asked in return. "The activity of the Daedra leave no room for doubt in the minds of the people in Nirn. In Thedas, you have chanters on every street corner, prophecies in every book, but every major action that happens can either be chalked up to The Maker's Will, or human ingenuity."

"Or Elven, Dwarven, or Qunari ingenuity," said Billy.

"Right," said Conner. "Fact of the matter is, Faith without doubt isn't faith. Uncertainty leaves a place for people in the universe."

"I have to ask," Tim said, "if power is at a premium or not. How powerful can the god of the Dragon Age universe be if the third game straight-up lets you role play as an atheist?"

"Power is not at a premium," Conner said. "Power is not only never at a premium, but power is a goal post that can be pushed back. How can a god not be all-powerful, when they've created the universe? They don't need light shows, and they damn sure don't need fetch quests for helmets and axes. It's either creation or a horrible accident that everything is the way it is in Thedas, and that balance needs to be maintained."

"Why do you need to go to Thedas for that?" Bart asked. "We have that here."

Billy almost spat out his mini-quiche. "We have th -You're on a superhero team with the daughter of a Greek God, you raging dope!

Either the three male members of Young Justice whom Billy addressed didn't hear that, or they elected to ignore it.

"So who did you pick, Rob?" Conner asked Tim, addressing him as Rob, as Tim Drake was Robin.

Tim folded his hands on the table in front of him, and smiled.

"The Eoran Pantheon," Tim said.

Conner furrowed his brow. "Huh?"

"From Pillars of Eternity."

"Oh I know where they're from," Conner said. "It's just that… We're having a discussion about which video game gods we'd feel most comfortable being real, and you picked the game where the big twist is that the gods… aren't real."

"Oh they're real," Tim said. "They're just artificial. Made by human hands."

"Or Elven, Dwarven, Aumaua, and Orlan hands," said Billy.

"Right," Tim said. "They were created by Kith to give answer to big philosophical questions. And now that they're up and running, their power is dictated by how many worshippers they have. You picked Andraste because it makes a place for everyday people in the universe. I picked mine for the same reasons, I just think that spot in the universe should be the center."

"But if people are powerful enough to create their own gods," Bart began, "then why do we need gods at all?"

"Dude," Tim said, "why do we in this universe need superheroes at all? If there's a battle that needs pushing in the direction of justice and peace, then what's wrong with a little supernatural or superhuman-"

"Or divine," Billy said.

"-or divine shove in the right direction? We're dead center in a world with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. We know it can work."

Conner shook his head. "It just feels like cheating. Anyway, Billy, who did you pick?'

Billy had just put one of the mini-quiches in his mouth and, as he had manners, waited until he chewed and swallowed before he finally said:

"Raiden."

Tim, Conner and Bart just stared at him for a moment.

"Raiden," Tim said.

"Yeah," said Billy.

"From Mortal Kombat."

"Yeah. He has lightning powers. I have lightning powers."

"And that's it?" Tim asked.

Billy picked up another mini-quiche and asked "I need more?"

A moment of silence resulted from this. A moment that was broken by Tim.

"Well," he said, "at least none of us picked Bloodborne. Because then... then I'd have started worrying."

Barbara Gordon caught up with Helena Bertinelli on the outskirts of the parking lot near the reception hangar. Even in the dark, Barbara could see the lavender dress she was wearing augment her dark skin and black hair.

She herself was wearing a dark green dress, tasteful without being prudish, that brought out her red hair.

"Helena," Barbara said,

"Babs," Helena replied. "Where's Stinky-Tits? I thought the two of you were joined at the hip now."

"She's hanging out with girls her own age," Barbara said, "and please stop calling Cass that."

"Never."

"Where are Zinda and Charlie?"

"Zinda's hitting up potential dance partners," Helena said. "She made her way to Apollo. It was funny."

"And Charlie?"

"Misfit's ace," Helena said. "She's not looking to dance with anyone. She's here for the free food."

"And you?"

"I'm on a diet. I'm just here looking for dance partners."

Barbara smiled.

"I have a question, Miss Analyst," Helena said. "Which of these cars is not like the others?"

Barbara scanned the rows of cars that gleamed under the Gotham moonlight… and found one a couple rows deep that didn't fit in. It was a blue Tercel.

And the windows were foggy.

"Someone's getting up to the bidness in that Tercel," Barbara said.

Helena turned her head and fixed Barbara with a devilish grin that every Catholic girl on Earth had, Barbara included.

"Wanna embarrass some Young Justice kids?" Helena asked.

Barbara smiled back. "I live for it."

Barbara and Helena were as stealthy as they could possibly when they were each wearing high heels. The doors to the Tercel were locked, but the locks were hooked to the car's onboard computer. A computer that Oracle herself could easily hack with her phone.

Once those doors unlocked, the two inside would hear it, so they had to work fast.

Barbara looked at Helena, and mouthed "One… Two… Three."

She hit the button on her phone.

The doors to the Tercel unlocked.

Barbara and Helena stood straight up, and whipped open the back door of the Tercel on the driver's side.

"What are yooooOOOH MY GOD!" Barbara clutched her hand to her mouth.

Dinah Lance had worn a gray dress to the wedding. The neckline came up to her coolarbone, while there was a slit in the chest that revealed a conservative, yet very visible hint of cleavage.

And it was within the slit of this dress that Ryan Choi, Hong Kong native and current Atom, had his right hand.

Dinah was on top of him, her high heels on the floor behind the driver's seat. She actually had to get off of him and roll to his left side so she could see what the hell was going on.

Barbara, Helena, Dinah, and Ryan all looked at each other.

And for a moment that seems to encompass the entire rise and fall of an empire, no one said anything.

It was Helena who broke the silence.

"Dinah," she said. "Please tell me you're not defiling a blessed Catholic Sacrament by getting up to Ho Shit in the back of a rental car."

"Wow," Barbara said. "I… just…"

"Have you lost your mind, young lady?" Helena asked. "Because I will help you find it."

"I mean… What?"

"E nough," Dinah said. "Both of you. What the hell are the two of you doing breaking into people's cars?"

"We thought you were two of the Young Justice kids," Barbara said.

"You know that doesn't make it even the slightest bit okay."

"What are you doing?" Helena asked.

Dinah looked down at Ryan's hand, which was still in the front of her dress, then looked back at Helena, saying "I'd have thought that was obvious."

Barbara cleared her throat, and said "Ryan, please get your hand off my best friend's boob."

Dinah immediately looked at Ryan, and said "Don't you dare. You're doing nothing wrong."

Ryan looked from Dinah, to Barbara and Helena, and then tried to look literally anywhere else, while still keeping his hand where it was.

"Is this wise?" Barbara asked. "I mean really?"

"Why is this not wise?" Dinah asked. "I'll have you know that-that Ryan here has a thing for redheads."

Which Barbara knew to be true. The only girlfriend she'd known Ryan to have was the supervillain Giganta, who had red hair. Word 'round the campfire was that Professor Ryan Choi and Doctor Doris Zuel had broken off their engagement as they couldn't see a relationship between a hero and a villain working at this stage in their lives. Ironies abound at the wedding of Batman and Catwoman.

Helena rolled her eyes and said "Dinah, you dye your hair blonde."

"I know!" Dinah said. "And what kind of superhero would I be if I turned that kind of challenge down?"

"You know why," Barbara said. "Ollie. "

"What about Ollie?" Dinah asked. "Why are you assuming I'm getting back together with him?"

"Because…" Barbara ran a hand through her hair. "Because you always do."

"I know," Dinah said. "And… And something has to give eventually. It needs to be now."

Dinah sighed. "We get together, he screws up, and then I leave. He apologizes, and the cycle starts again. I'm tired, Babs, I really am. I'm tired of burning the best part of my twenties waiting for a guy who's considerably older than me to grow up. I'm tired of being a surrogate mother to Roy Harper when I'm only three years older than he is."

A silence passed as Dinah looked at Helena and Barbara, who were both looking at their shoes.

"If I love Oliver Queen as much as I say I do," Dinah said, "then this has to happen. He's not going to learn anything if I go back. He's not gonna grow. I'm not doing this for me. I'm doing this for the girl in Ollie's life that comes after me. And I'm jealous of whoever she is, because she'll find a better Oliver Queen than I did."

Another silence passed. Barbara's mind buzzed with responses to this, but they all came up woefully short.

"Just… Let me have fun," Dinah said. "Ryan's fun. And I don't care if it lasts." She looked at Ryan. "You don't care if this lasts, right?"

Ryan Choi's mouth opened and closed like a screen door in a high wind before he finally said "There's no good way to answer that question."

Dinah looked at Helena and Babs.

After another long silence, Barbara finally put her hand on the car door.

"You have two have a good night," Barbara said.

And just before she shut that door, Barbara heard Dinah ask Ryan "Now where were we?"

Barbara and Helena walked back to the reception hangar in an uncomfortable silence.

Artemis of Bana-Mighdall was staring daggers into Cassandra Cain.

Some months ago, Barbara Gordon set up a series of four fights in the Clock Tower's holo room to fully test Cassandra's combat skills.

The first fight was against Bird of Prey Black Canary. She was a formidable martial artist whose trainers included everyone from Wildcat to the near-mythical Lady Shiva herself.

Black Canary was fast.

Black Canary was strong.

Black Canary was skilled.

And, over the course of ten minutes, Black Canary was brutally and summarily disassembled. The funny thing was that after she was delivered a sound and thorough beating, Dinah Lance wanted to be Cassandra's friend.

The same could not be said for the second fighter, Charlotte Gage-Radcliffe, who was also in the Birds of Prey under the codename "Misfit." Misfit was a metahuman roughly Cassandra's age with teleportation abilities. Misfit's problem was that she moved her shoulder in the direction of where she wanted to teleport. She moved her shoulder toward Cassandra, and vanished in a cloud of pink smoke. Forearmed with the knowledge that Misfit was going to pop up behind her, Cassandra broke into a spinning backfist that laid Misfit out in one punch. In the complete opposite of Dinah's post-fight demeanor, Miss Gage-Radcliffe actually ran and hid when Cassandra saw her at tonight's wedding.

The fourth fight was the most interesting one. It was against Justice Society member Judomaster, real name Sonia Sato. While Cassandra Cain was so skilled that she could predict an opponent's blows before they themselves made them, Judomaster was surrounded by a force-field that caused all blows aimed at her to miss. The two just swung at each other for forty minutes, neither landing any punches or kicks, until Barbara called it a draw.

But it was that third fight, the one against Artemis of Bana-Mighdall, that caused the silent friction at Bruce and Selina's wedding.

Unlike the other three, Artemis did not show Cassandra even the token amount of respect.

"Try your best, whelp," Artemis had said. "Your skill is worthless. You are no Amazon."

Which was true. Cassandra was not an Amazon as Artemis of Bana-Mighdall was.

What was also true was that Amazons had their pressure points and nerve clusters in the same places as regular people. Cassandra waited for her opening, and made a blindingly fast series of four nerve strikes that locked Artemis in place, unable to move or even blink, like a living statue. The only capability in such a position being shallow breathing. At which point Cassandra just shoved her over, winning the fight.

Stephanie Brown called it "The One Hour Photo." Because one was stuck in one position, like in a photo, for an hour.

So tonight, on the night of Bruce and Selina's wedding, Artemis, on her way back into the reception hangar, glared at Cassandra Cain.

And Cassandra, just to piss her off, winked at Artemis and gave her the finger-guns.

Flush with anger and embarrassment, Artemis raised her nose in the air and walked back into the train of her red dress flowing behind her.

In the evening air, with music thumping from within the hangar, Cassandra looked at Stephanie, who seemed preoccupied with something else.

Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran, who operated under the superhero nom-de-guerre Starfire, was talking to her date, the Green Lantern Jessica Cruz.

"Are you alright?" Kory asked.

Jessica was hunched over, her hands on the knees of her green dress. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's just… I mean anxiety and agoraphobia… it comes and goes, and… and I just don't think I can handle hundreds of people right n-"

"Jessica Cruz."

Jessica looked up at Kory, who was standing up straight, statuesque and formidable in her revealing purple dress. Kory was six-and-a-half feet tall to begin with, but her seemingly infinite mane of curly red hair, extending down past her waist and culminating in a fringe of flame that never actually seemed to burn anything, just made her seem taller.

The tall, golden-skinned Kory looked down at the relatively diminutive Jessica. "Do you know what I am?" Kory asked.

Jessica paused for a moment, before she said "Hot as Hell?"

"I am your shade," Kory said. "You are in the shadow I cast. Anything that wishes you harm, anything that bears you ill will, will have to pass through me to get to you. And nothing passes through me."

Kory extended Jessica a hand.

"Would you like to walk in the shade with me?"

Jessica tentatively took Kory's hand, and Kory led her back into the reception hangar.

"I am getting better at the metaphors," Kory said.

"You sure are, lady," said Jessica.

Cassandra looked from them, to Stephanie.

Stephanie was looking at them as well, but she seemed lost in a deeper level of thought concerning what she had just seen.

She snapped out of it when she saw Cassandra looking at her. She smiled, and the familiar gleam returned to her eyes.

"Hey Cass," Stephanie said. "If they make a movie about our lives, which one of us do you think Scarlett Johansson would play?"

Cassandra had no idea what this meant.

Stephanie was about to say something, when they both heard a scuffle of shoes from around the corner of the hangar.

"Hello?" Stephanie asked.

Cassandra and Stephanie peered around the corner and saw a lone figure leaning against the wall that Cassandra recognized immediately.

It was Conner Kent.

"Hey Con," Stephanie said. "What, uh… Whaddya doing back here?"

"Nothing," Conner said.

Cassandra's ability to read body language let her in on people's emotions and intentions. She could tell what they were feeling.

And this ability utterly failed her at the moment, as Conner was standing perfectly still.

He didn't even move his lips when he spoke.

"O...kay," Stephanie said. "Do you need help with the, uh… with the nothing?"

"No," Conner said. "I'm fine."

Still not moving his lips.

Stephanie was about to say something, when a mass of people started filing out of the hangar. Cassandra looked toward the commotion, and saw that a limo was pulling up.

Bruce and Selina.

Conner took this opportunity to bolt from Cassandra and Stephanie, and back into the hangar.

"There they are," Stephanie said.

Bruce and Selina straightened themselves out in the limo, as they saw the gathering throng of people surrounding them outside.

"Your autopilot is slow as hell," Selina said. "I don't even know why you needed it."

"I needed it," Bruce said, "because you insisted on having sex in the limo."

"That doesn't mean we needed the autopilot."

"It was that or mentally scar Alfred for the rest of his life."

Selina smiled, and kissed her brand-spanking new husband on the cheek.

"You'd think that with all the jet-setting and thievery I get up to, I'd have had sex in a limo before now," she said.

"That's me," Bruce said, grinning. "I'm a giver."

They kissed each other on the lips, before they looked out the tinted windows yet again.

"You invited everyone, didn't you?" Selina asked.

"As close to everyone as I could," Bruce said. This was important to him. Almost a lifetime of secrecy trying to hide his weaknesses, and now that he found a source of honest power, he wanted to show her off to anyone who would sit still long enough to look.

"There's Space Cabbie," Selina said, still looking out the window. "There's Grifter, and… Oh my God, you invited Protector?"

"Yes," Bruce said. "Is something wrong?"

"Yeah…" Selina said. "Just… Just don't tell him I have weed in my clutch, alright? I'll never hear the end of it."

Bruce and Selina entered the reception hangar to thunderous applause.

It was during Dick Grayson's best man speech that he revealed the present that all assembled, collectively, got for the both of them. Bruce Wayne was a billionaire, sure, and through Kyle Security Selina Wayne (she took Bruce's last name for reasons she shrouded in mystery) was a millionaire herself. But there are some things are worth more than money.

Through a vote held in secret from the bride and groom, Catwoman had been inducted into the Justice League, with all the rights and privileges that the position entailed.

After they fed each other wedding cake made by the Superman robots, Bruce and Selina took to the floor for the customary first slow dance.

It was to Fade Into You, by Mazzy Star.

And given the lyric "I think it's strange you never knew," combined with the fact that it took Selina a whopping eleven years to find out that Bruce was Batman the song was, like their vows, judged wholly appropriate by all who knew them.

There was a break in the music.

The slow dances were about to start.

And the unlikeliest person to dance with him was the fourth woman he'd asked.

"Me?" asked Harley Quinn. She rapidly blinked her pale blue eyes in disbelief.

"Yeah," Tim said. He didn't believe he was doing this either.

Harley had been sitting at her table all night, save for trips to the bathroom and the bar. No one sat with her. She was the only supervillain at a wedding reception full of superheroes. She wasn't the one with the highest body count, though Hal Jordan had possession by a yellow flea from space for all the red in his ledger. Harley didn't.

Tim felt sorry for her.

And he hoped she would feel sorry enough in return to dance with him.

"You… wanna dance… with me?" Harley asked.

"Yeah," Tim said. He ran a hand through his black hair, the stupidity of this idea settling in him like a bowling ball in his stomach.

"I dunno, kid," Harley said. "Dancin' with your boss' therapist? That's… That's like…"

Harley squinted, and started moving her hand in front of her, as though working an abacus only she could see.

"Uh…"

"Shaddup, I'm doin' math."

Tim nodded, and waited in silence until she was done.

When she was done, Harley peered at Tim and said "That's five steps away from slow-dancin' with your mom."

Tim sighed. "You could have just said no."

"Wouldn't-a been funny, now, would it?"

"Ha-ha," Tim said, all of the mirth in both his voice and his body seemingly sucked out by a vacuum cleaner.

"That's the spirit," Harley said. "Good luck, Bird-Boy."

Shoulders stooped head down, Tim walked away from Harley, stopping only when he heard a girl's voice behind him.

"How is it a boy as pretty as you has such shitty luck?"

Tim turned.

There was Stephanie Brown, smiling at him, blonde hair cascading over her black bridesmaid dress. It wasn't the best form for bridesmaids to have black dresses at a wedding, but it also wasn't the best form to get married on Halloween. Bruce and Selina did both.

Tim had dated Stephanie for a few months at the beginning of their respective superhero careers as Robin and Spoiler. He noticed that she was… distant, and he got the feeling that she was only going out with him just to say she had a boyfriend. A concept that Stephanie herself didn't exactly refute when Tim opted to break up with her.

Apart from Stephanie's bestie Cassandra Cain straight-up levelling Tim in the throat after Steph unsuccessfully explaining what a break-up entailed, she seemed to want to be friends with him. And, in defiance of the dashed hopes and ruined acquaintances of exes past, extraordinarily good friends is precisely what Tim Drake and Stephanie Brown wound up being.

Tim sighed.

"I know exactly why," he said.

"Do tell," said Stephanie, hand on her hip.

"I'm Gary Cherone."

Stephanie's brows lowered in confusion. "Who's…"

"Gary Cherone," Tim said again. "The third lead singer of Van Halen. Um… Yeah, the first Robin was Dick Grayson, right? Golden God, goes on to be Nightwing, everyone loves him."

"I don't see it."

"The second Robin, Tim said. "Jason Todd. And he, uh…"

Tim looked around to see if anyone was listening in.

"He died," Tim said, continuing, "before he could screw up or start sucking. I'm the third Robin. I'm Gary Cherone. I'm the one who gets one shitty album before the band implodes, and they're stuck doing reunion tours."

"How do you know so much about Dinosaur Rock?"

"Because my dad's a dinosaur," Tim said. "I'm not the dynamic front man who got the party started, and I'm not the solid and underrated middle child. I'm Gary Cherone. I have a very Gary vibe."

"Then don't put out the vibe."

"The vibe was thrust upon me," Tim said. "Harley Quinn was actually my fourth strike of the night."

"Who were the other three?" Stephanie asked.

"Toni, Violet, and Maxine."

Meaning Argent, Halo, and Cyclone.

"I know Cassie Sandsmark is hung up on Conner, but you couldn't ask Anita or Jinny?"

Tim shook his head. "We made an agreement beforehand not to accept each other's pity."

"Good man," Steph said, before scanning the periphery of the dance floor.

"I notice that Cassie and Conner aren't uh…"

Tim all of a sudden thought his shoes looked quite interesting, and Stephanie seemed to know what that meant.

"Tim," she said. "Is Superboy crushing on someone who isn't Wonder Girl?"

"I am not at liberty to divulge that information."

"Which means yes."

"I cannot confirm or deny that at the current time."

"Just say yes, Tim."

"Any testimony is inadmissible without my attorney present. My rights have not been read to me."

Stephanie huffed. "Fine. As for the subject at hand."

She pointed over Tim's shoulder, and he followed her finger…

...to Mary Bromfield.

She was Billy Batson's foster sister. Straight-A student, applying to college. She was Tim's age. She was tall and she was pretty, her brown hair in a braid that descended to the back of her red dress. With the same magic word used by her foster brother, she became Lady Shazam.

And she was leaning against the bar, scrolling through her phone.

Stephanie smiled. "Through hope, young man, all things are possible."

"I thought it was through God all things are possible."

"Haven't been to church in years," Stephanie said. "Hope's more my thing. You gonna stand here with your ex, or are you gonna ask a pretty girl to dance with you?"

Tim took a deep breath, and said "Right."

He began his walk toward Mary Bromfield. He opened his shoulders like a book, stood up straight, lengthened his stride. Tim Drake was a great many things, but for the ten seconds it took him to reach her, he expelled from his very being the foul and stultifying essence of Gary Cherone.

He was almost there.

Keep it simple, Tim. Don't go for the pick-up line. Just ask her to dance as simply as you possibly can.

He stopped two feet away from her. He inhaled to speak.

"H-"

"No."

She didn't even look up from her phone.

His shoulders closed again to their defeated stoop. He turned, sighing, and walked back to where he was…

...to Stephanie Brown, laughing like mad.

Tim spread his arms out wide and grinned like a crazy person. For Tim Drake was that peculiar kind of teenage boy that took a series of jaw-dropping defeats as the ones he endured this evening as proof of his own invincibility.

"Yes," Tim said. "Yes, laugh at my pain."

Stephanie, for her part, kept laughing at his pain.

"I wonder who I can get shot down by next," Tim said before dropping his hands to his side and looking to his right.

"Is that Stargirl?" he asked. "Hey, Courtney!"

After the wedding ceremony, the newly minted Selina Wayne threw her wedding bouquet over her shoulder. Tradition dictated that the woman who caught it would be the next one who got married.

The woman who caught it was Power Girl.

Pity poor Kara Zor-L. Superman, after all, lost his planet getting to Earth. But the woman who went by the name Karen Starr in civilian life was from a parallel dimension with its own Earth (known colloquially as "Earth 2" ).

As she was Kryptonian, she too lost her planet. After that, she lost her entire universe getting here.

She lived every day with a beleaguered sigh and an almost palpable grudge against this place and how it was different from home. The cities were in the wrong places. Half of the movie stars were different. The fast food restaurants had weird names. This Earth didn't have her favorite root beer, and all the ones she tried here just weren't the same.

And these were just the tiny petty grievances.

She was alone here. Her entire reality was wiped from existence by a vast cosmic crisis. No one who knew her, really knew her, existed anymore. The Kal, the Superman, from this place just wasn't the same. And not only that, but this world had its own version of her. She knew she didn't have to compete with Kara Zor-El (whose civilian name was Kara Danvers, and whose superhero name was Supergirl), but there was always that running tally in the back of her head. She does good, so I must do better.

It was foolish, of course. Not that heroics, which was their stock and trade, was a competition. It was that even if she won this imaginary contest, there would still be no place for her here. And no amount of reassurances from Clark, or Lois, or Jonathan and Martha Kent, or even Kara Danvers herself would ever change that.

And as Karen walked, bouquet in hand, past Detective Chimp and Congorilla at the bar, she sat down and pondered the other thing that bothered her. That always bothered her.

I don't remember the men in my universe being such complete pieces of shit.

She didn't want to come to this wedding. She didn't give a single solitary damn about Batman, Catwoman, or their relationship. But because Clark would put on that sad face of his if she decided not to show, she came.

And that's when the staring started.

For Karen Starr was, in a term that she would use for herself, "top-heavy." And even though her creme dress wasn't something that was particularly low-cut, people still stared while trying to look like they weren't staring. All the men. Even the men who were into other men. Even women who were into men tried to peek, looking at a simple dress (which was downright prudish considering the slingshot and doily that Starfire was wearing), and seeing the Power Girl outfit.

Ah, the Power Girl outfit.

It was a red shoulder cape, blue boots, and a white leotard that was cut dangerously low.

For the explanations she had given, for the complete bullshit line about "not having her own emblem," and the Rah-Rah-Girl-Power! spiel about how mens' gazes shouldn't define her, the fact of the matter was that Karen had never told a single soul about the reason-the true reason-that she wore the Power Girl costume.

It was a sweat issue.

She tried the full body stocking thing once. Only once. And after a single arduous rumble with the Earth 2 Ultra-Humanite, she looked like she peed herself while she was hanging upside down.

Why did everyone think she wore white? Any darker, and the sweating would have gotten worse.

And it's not as though the cleavage window could be any more modest than it was. She did most of her flying horizontally, which meant a lot of air would be passing through two sizeable and tightly bound masses of skin tissue.

Resulting in a loud farting noise wherever she went.

So the current iteration of the Power Girl outfit was what she was stuck with. Enough room to spread herself out, and a nice cooling breeze all the way down. She'd take everyone's looks (and the open fawning and comments of pricks like Wally West) if she didn't sound like she gorged herself on refried beans while looking like she had just stepped out of one of those crummy broken showers they have at the beach.

Karen plopped herself down at the barstool, in front of one of the Superman robots that was tending.

"How may I help you, Power Girl?" the robot asked.

"Uhhhh… Jim Beam, on the rocks," she said.

"I am to remind you," the robot said, "that with your Kryptonian metabolism, you will feel no effects from the alcohol."

Karen rolled her eyes. "But I can still drink it for the taste. Pour it."

"Of course," the robot said. It made her drink with just the two ice cubes the way Rao intended.

The voice of the person sitting next to her called out. It was deep, drawling.

"You drink Jim for the taste?"

Karen turned her head and blew a lock of blonde hair out of her blue eyes.

This was Vigilante. The singing cowboy hero.

Born Gregory Sanders, the son of a sheriff in Wyoming in 1915, he'd been displaced in time, same as that Lady Blackhawk chick who palled around with Black Canary. He ran about on his lonesome, with no affiliation, with two six-shooters refurbished to fire non-lethal laser rounds.

He was a rangy cuss, wearing a tux and a black cowboy hat, drinking what he was drinking beneath a bandana, keeping to his gimmick even at a formal occasion.

Karen didn't even know they even made formal bandanas, yet there it was. It looked to be made of silk.

"So what if I am, Roy Rogers?"

"Then may I compliment you on your grit, miss," Gregory said. "Though it wouldn't be my first port-a call on the subject of sippin' whiskeys."

Karen nodded. "What are you drinking?"

"Old Crow," Gregory said.

"Old Crow?"

"If my choice of beverage offends you, miss, I rightly apologize."

"You do know the booze is free, right?" Karen asked. "You don't have to go for the cheapest, nastiest thing they have."

Gregory sighed. "The players behind this here shindig, Bruce and his girl, are worth more money than I ever thought was countable back during the Depression. Times like these, I reckon a fella could do with some humility."

"Hence the Old Crow?"

"Hence the Old Crow, miss."

Karen nodded, and they both fell into a momentary silence.

"Congratulations, by the by," Gregory said.

Karen looked at him. "On what?"

"Catchin' the bouquet, and all."

And he was so country when he said it. "Boo-Kay."

"Can you do me a favor?" Karen asked.

"If'n it's in my power to provide," Gregory said, "I'd be happy to oblige."

"Please stop calling me 'miss,'" Karen said. "You make me feel like I'm teaching school."

"Ain't no shame in teachin' school," he said, "but I suppose I can accommodate ya."

"Thank you," Karen said, and took a draw off of her drink.

Another silence passed, and Gregory broke it yet again.

"I have me an automaton from outer space servin' me my Old Crow," he said. "I'd ask whether 'r not wonders would ever cease, but I've spent enough time in this strange-as-all-hell epoch that my capacity for wonder's 'bout shot."

He drank some of his Old Crow, and the blue eyes above his bandana winced.

"It's a right and damnable thing," he said, "losing one's ability to imagine the great and miraculous strides folks'll take into the future. I came up when movies in my neck-a Wyoming travelled from town to town with their own organists. Wasn't nothin' crowding the horizon but the broad blue of creation. Miracle-a the grace of the Almighty and whatnot. Now I see cities big enough to start clawin' at the pearly gates themselves. The sum and total-a humanity's knowledge in a little plastic gewgaw no bigger'n a stirrup on a saddle. 'Nough to make a man's head spin. But when that man's head stops spinnin'... That's when a funk sets in."

Karen felt a twinge of pity, and even identified with Gregory.

For a second.

For one solitary second, before she figured out what was going on.

In terms that her drinking buddy would appreciate, this was not Kara Zor-L's first rodeo.

Karen had heard the Lonely Guy schtick before. The I'm-the-Last-of-My-Kind runaround as well. Both from superheroes and supervillains. They tried to relate to her, her experience, all the while trying to slither their way into her white leotard.

And she knew Gregory was pulling the same kind of shit.

She knew it because he hadn't looked at her once. Not once.

He's playing the Nice Guy card, trying to maintain my opinion of him.

Karen started laughing. It was high and bitter.

"Have I said something that struck you as humorous?" Gregory asked.

Karen finished her laugh, and rubbed her mouth.

"There are two kinds of men in the world, Roy Rogers."

"And who might they be?" he asked.

"The first kind," she said with an edge in her voice, leaning in, "are the kind of men who stop at nothing-and I mean absolutely nothing-to look at my tits."

Karen knew this Vigilante guy was an from a bygone era, and she had to bet that he'd have flinched upon hearing a word that couldn't be said on network TV. It was why she said it, after all.

He didn't flinch. He just stared forward as the Superman robot refilled his Old Crow.

"Not everyone stares," Karen said. "Most people just try to get a sideways glance. Some wait till I'm looking away to take it all in. Hell, Kyle Rayner? The Green Lantern? He's an artist. Has a sketchpad with him that he's always doodling in when I'm talking to him. And when he speaks, he looks up from the sketchpad, to my eyes, and then back down when he's done, taking in everything on the way up and down. He's clever, I'm not even mad at him for it, but I still notice."

She turned toward him in her seat.

"But then," she said. "Then, there's the other kind of man. The kind who won't even look at me at all because they might accidentally look at my tits. They're so hellbent on trying not to be That Guy that they vault toward becoming That Guy."

Karen polished off her drink, and turned her whole body back to Gregory.

"If you ask me which one I respect more? It's the first kind. They see something they like? They look. And I've had no shortage of reminders in my life that there's a lot there to like."

Karen leaned in. "Now ask yourself which one I think you are."

She pressed her arms in toward her body, enhancing the cleavage that her dress would allow her to show. Karen glared at him, as though he first hurdle before the starting pistol sounded.

You're not winning this one, shitkicker. You just entered the dojo with Pai Mei. You ain't getting out alive.

"If'n I've offended you," Gregory said, "alls I can do offer my sincerest apologies."

Karen sneered. "Then l-"

He looked at her.

Karen was expecting a deep breath, a couple of practice blinks, before he quickly craned his head to the general direction of her eyes.

But the blue eyes of Gregory Sanders effortlessly glided from his glass of Old Crow directly to her eyes. Quick, but not too quick. Like he was following the bouncing ball.

It caught her off-guard. She intensified her glare and tried not to blink. Two such guidelines that Vigilante apparently felt no need to follow. His eyes were bemused. Happy, almost. And he blinked at his leisure.

They maintained this eye contact for a moment before he spoke.

"Ain't never metcha 'fore this evenin'," he said. "Alls I've seen is pictures of Power Girl. But I hope you don't mind me sayin' that if'n I had to pick a feature of yours I found most compellin'? Well… That'd be your eyes. So much so that I've no compunction to gander any further south than I already am. Only request I'd make is, I wouldn't go confusin' simple saloon etiquette with an affront to your sensibilities."

And he kept looking into her eyes, seemingly not wanting to look anywhere else. She could sense him smiling beneath that black silk bandana over the lower half of his face, before his eyes glided back to his drink.

Karen's breath escaped her in a rush. Her cheeks burned with both embarrassment and defeat.

It took a while… but Karen started laughing again.

This was a different laugh though. Full. From the diaphragm. Genuinely amused. In fact, if Wally West saw how she was laughing, he'd have ammo for enough lewd remarks to last a lifetime.

Oh, he's good.

This may still be a gambit. May still be an effort to wrangle her into bed. But if that was the case, then Vigilante had shown enough skill that he had earned, in her estimation, a little more indulgence. Maybe not enough to actually sleep with him, but a slow dance, maybe. A drink and a conversation, definitely.

And who knows? Karen thought. He might even be genuine.

When she stopped laughing, she wiped her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said, still blushing a little from the embarrassment. "It's just-"

"No apologies necessary," Gregory said. "I understand."

She adjusted herself on the stool before she said anything else.

"You have a little lady running around here somewhere?"

"Nope," he said. "I come to this occasion stag."

"Awwww," Karen said. "What's Roy Rogers without Dale Evans?

"That'd be a question for Roy Rogers," Gregory said, "and I feel I must commend you for your scholarship-a the cinematic greats."

Karen shrugged. "The Late Late Show's The Late Late Show no matter what reality you're in. Feel like dancing, cowhand?"

"I'm known for my singin' and I'm known for my shootin'. Can't say as I'm known for my dancin'."

"It's a slow dance," Karen said. "No one will notice. Just put your arms around my waist and move slow."

"Well," he said, "since you make it sound so enticin'..."

"Great," Karen said. "But there's one thing we have to do first."

"What's that?"

Karen held her hand out to the bottles of booze behind the bar.

"What whiskey do you recommend for the taste?"

Every Breath You Take by The Police (which, it should be noted, was the favorite band of the dear departed mother of the bride) is a creepy song about stalking and surveillance that people who have a tragic inability to divine the meaning of lyrics can't seem to help dancing to at weddings.

Then again, a song about knowing where everyone is at all times being played at the wedding of Batman may be powerfully on brand.

Near the front of the space in this hangar reserved as a dance floor, where the tables met the empty patch of concrete, Wally West, The Flash, was dancing with his wife Linda Park.

"How long do you give it?" Wally asked.

"Give what?"

"You know," Wally said, looking around. "The marriage."

Linda almost choked on her words. "Wow."

"What?"

"There's whistling past the graveyard, and then there's whistling at the funeral."

"Don't tell me you weren't thinking it."

"Thinking what?"

"That Batman is way too Batman to be of any real use to anyone. In a personal manner, anyway."

Linda sighed. "You know he's going to therapy, right?"

"There's therapy," Wally said, "and then there's Batman. He's gonna rip that poor doctor to shreds, whoever the hell they are. And I think Selina will put up with Bruce for two-and-a-half years before she realizes she'd married to a paranoid chode, and takes him for half of everything he has. And ya know what? Good for her."

"You don't think they signed a pre-nup?" Linda asked.

"Bruce Wayne?" Wally asked. "Hell no. Him bringing up a pre-nup is him admitting he might be wrong about something. I'd say that'll be the day pigs fly, but I'm in the Justice League, and you see a whole bunch of wacky shit in my line of work.

"Do you think people asked questions like that about us at our wedding?"

"I don't care," Wally said.

"You don't?"

"No. Because now I have two beautiful kids and a wife so hot that it's actually kind of offensive."

Linda smiled. "Of fen sive?"

"Yeah," Wally said. "See, watch."

Wally stopped talking, and just looked at Linda.

His eyes grew wide. He stopped dancing. He put his hand to the chest of his tuxedo shirt, clutching for pearls that weren't there.

"Oh my God," Wally said. "How dare you?"

Linda laughed.

Past them were Mera and Arthur, who themselves were to the left of Ralph and Sue. Next to them, however, were the Prom King and Queen of any superhero get-together: Clark Kent and Lois Lane. They were, of course, dreamily staring into each other's eyes. Clark grin was haphazardly plastered on, as though the look of contentment on The Last Son of Krypton's face was the last thing that needed to be done before quitting time.

"You did a good job with the ceremony," Lois said.

"Thank you," Clark said. "I get the feeling that everything went in one ear and out the other for everyone, though."

"Aww."

"But I'm not the star of this particular show, so it's okay."

Lois nodded, and Clark just sort of absently looked around at everyone else on the dance floor.

"Something up, Smallville?" Lois asked.

"It's just…"

Clark took a deep breath. "My friend is happy. He's trying to be happy. He's letting himself be happy. And that's…"

"Never thought you'd see the day?"

"Darn tootin'," Clark said.

A smiling Lois said "You're a good influence on people."

Clark kissed his wife on the forehead as their dance took them past Lucas and Andrew. Lucas was trying to look as intimidating and butch as he possibly could be in front of all the other superheroes, in spite of the fact that he was wearing a tuxedo, and his husband had his head on his chest with his eyes closed.

Carter and Kendra took up the corner of the dance floor. Everyone else let them have that space, so their wings didn't bump into anyone. But the couples like Hal and Jillian, and Jefferson and Lynn had to stop and quietly stare at what was unfolding.

Because so soon after her break-up, Dinah Lance was dancing with Ryan Choi. She was eyeing him greedily, and Ryan, for his part, had a face that was equal parts contentment and apprehension. As though he were partaking in a buffet with only the dim awareness that one of the chicken wings was poisoned at random, and he didn't know which.

"So how do you think dyed-blonde brunettes stack up against redheads?" Dinah asked.

"I think... I'm a physicist."

"Which means..."

"Which means," Ryan said, "more experimentation is required to develop a working hypothesis."

Dinah raised her eyebrows. "Y'know, as far as dweebs go, you're on the slick side?"

"Thank you," Ryan said, actually sounding genuinely touched.

"Slow your roll," Dinah said. "I said a little bit."

Apart from this scandal that no doubt Oliver Queen would hear about soon, right next to them on the dance floor was the true odd couple of the evening.

Put your hands together, friends, for Zinda Blake and Alfred Pennyworth.

The latter was a proper English gentlemen on the cusp of being elderly, while the former was a temporally displaced fighter pilot from the 1940s. The debate as to which one of the two was older than the other would, no doubt, take up an entire semester of a philosophy course.

Oh, and she was the one who asked him to dance, by the way.

Tim Drake was not the only one that Harley Quinn shot down for a dance. Indeed, she had been fielding requests all night, and had turned them all down with varying degrees of intensity. She even sent Holly Rae Hunter to the bathroom crying, the poor dear.

The one request Harley did not turn down, the one person who didn't seem to be embarrassed to be talking to a supervillain at a superhero's wedding, was Coagula from the Doom Patrol.

But it could have been that Kate Godwin had opted to wear a tied-dyed dress and black Chuck Taylors to a wedding that may have appealed to Harley most.

Harley peered up at Kate. "Somethin' wrong, sugar?"

Kate sighed. "Why is it that cis people always compliment my hair?"

"Ya got nice hair."

"I know," Kate said. "But it's the only thing they compliment. As though knowing I'm trans robs them of all creativity."

"Eh," Harley said. "Tryin' ta be nice is like sleepwalking for these bozos. It's like there's no effort at all."

"I know, right?" Kate asked. "I want them to be nice, but would some variety kill these people? Just once, I'd like someone to compliment my shoes."

Kate looked down at her Chucks.

"They're really nice shoes."

"Yeah they are," Harley said.

Jackson Hyde asked Christopher Van Dijk to dance, and they seemed to be making the most of it. Kyle Rayner held Alex DeWitt close and smelled her hair. Sapphire Stagg got lost in Rex Mason's eyes.

Barbara Gordon had her arms around Dick Grayson's neck. Their foreheads were touching.

"I'm gonna say something embarrassing," Barbara said.

"As embarrassing as the time you tried to give me a lapdance on my birthday, and you fell and hit the coffee table?"

"We never speak of that."

"Oh, we speak of that."

"It is lost to time," Barbara said. "Like-Like the library of Alexandria. We don't know what went on there."

They both smiled, and both of their smiles faded eventually.

"I saw you cutting a rug with Lian, earlier."

"That kid's great, isn't she?"

Barbara didn't say anything. She pulled her head away from his and looked him in the eye.

"If no one's gonna tell you you'd make a great dad," she said, "it may as well be me."

Dick smirked at this. "I seem to recall your actions with a certain martial arts prodigy that mark you as prime mom material."

"Eh…"

"You'd kill it."

Barbara smiled. Neither of them said anything.

"Are you asking me?" Dick asked. "Or is this you wanting me to ask you?"

"I don't want to get married yet," Barbara said. "I'm just a little curious as to why you haven't asked me yet."

Dick sighed, thought a while, and said "I keep waiting for me to screw up."

Barbara squinted at him, before putting her head on his shoulder.

Next to them, Karen and Gregory were standing eye to eye, their arms around each other's waists.

"I'm curious to know what you look like under that bandana, Vigilante."

"Well," Gregory said, "seems to me there's two types of women in the world…"

Karen threw her head back and laughed.

Beyond them, to the left side of the dance floor, Dawn Granger told Hank Hall that he had something in his teeth. Next to them, Scott Free ran a finger through Big Barda's hair.

And in the middle of them, Jessica Cruz danced with Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran.

"A wedding may not have been the first date spot I'd have picked," Jessica said. "But, uhh… I'm really glad I'm here."

Jessica got up on her tiptoes, minding that she didn't brush her chin across Kory's chest, and planted a brief, chaste kiss on her lips.

It was their first.

And Kory, whose species had the ability to learn language through kissing, beamed broadly, her fully green eyes taking on a glorious sparkle.

"Now I know Spanish!"

But not everyone was dancing.

Outside the hangar, nursing her third gin and tonic, Kate Kane stood, looking at the smudgy, oily expanse of the Gotham sky where the stars should have been.

Some months prior, Kate had been dumped by her girlfriend Renee Montoya. In the aftermath of that, Kate and Renee had at least managed to remain cordial and civil to one another.

Renee had broken up with Kate because she found Kate to be secretive and isolated. This was because Kate Kane was Batwoman, and she wanted to keep Renee safe.

It took a horrifying drug trip from a hallucinogenic plant that had to be destroyed by Swamp Thing for her to realize that it was more than likely that she had had it backwards.

She didn't keep secrets from Renee because she was a superhero.

She became a superhero in order to keep secrets. Because secrets leant her an air of invulnerability, even if only to herself, that she felt she needed in order to survive.

Then she had seen the famously secretive and notoriously paranoid Batman invite superheroes from all over hill and dale to come to his wedding to Catwoman. He had heard horror stories of how Bruce used to be, and had seen that he had bent himself into all sorts of unnatural shapes to improve. If Kate was being honest, it even gave her hope for herself.

But she knew herself well enough to know that in order to enact such a seismic change within, it would have to happen as though she were performing a cannonball into the deep end of a swimming pool.

Kate Kane was going to invite Renee Montoya to Batman's wedding.

She was going to tell Renee everything. She was going to reveal her identity as Batwoman. She was going to invite the woman she desperately loved deeper into her life.

Only for that plan to go up in flames when Renee told Kate that she was seeing someone else.

Though Renee didn't divulge this person's name in their conversation, it took some of her own detective work to find that Renee's new flame was named Maggie Sawyer. She was a cop, the same as Renee was; a recent import from Metropolis. She had a daughter from an earlier marriage. She was responsible. She was open. From the date that Kate saw the two of them on, she was a laugher who liked red wine.

Kate wouldn't have called what she did "stalking." It was, but Kate wouldn't have said that.

Maggie Sawyer was, in essence, a great many things that Katherine Elizabeth Kane was not. And in the dense fog of her own heartbreak, one thought shone through enough to guide ships to land.

Good for her.

And so Kate Kane stood outside the reception hangar, drink in hand, wearing a pantsuit and a white dress shirt with the three buttons undone, staring at a dingy sky, wondering what came next.

Kate could hear footsteps on the cement out here. They were heavy. They were coming closer.

"I wish I could see how nice a night it is," a woman's voice said. "The definition of irony is that lights shine so bright that they darken the stars."

It was a woman's voice. It was on the deep side. It was familiar, somehow, though Kate couldn't quite place it.

She wasn't going to look. For a reason she couldn't have put into words even to herself, she wanted the mystery to play out longer.

Kate just nodded.

"I find it disheartening to see someone out here, absently staring at the night's sky, trying to get away from the joyous union of two souls," the woman said.

"Hey," said Kate. "You're out here too."

"Then I should know, should I not?"

Kate smiled.

"Would it be the height of impropriety to ask what vexes you this evening?" the mystery lady asked.

Kate sighed.

There was a construct in the mind of Kate Kane. She called it "The Kate Kane Advertisement." It was the persona she put on to make herself look and feel untouchable. To rob those who would seek to demean, belittle, or take something that was hers any sense of satisfaction.

And Kate… just wasn't feeling it tonight. Maybe it was the booze, maybe it was the heartbreak, but she felt like being honest for this one hot minute.

"The life of a woman in this world is treated as the road to her wedding," Kate said. "I can go on and on about how awful and unfair that is, but it's the truth. And on that road, there are no shortage of assurances, people telling you not to worry because one day, you'll find someone who loves you for who you are… And the longer I live, the more I find that I wouldn't wish something that horrible on anyone. Can you imagine? Someone loving me for who I am? Someone honestly thinking to themselves 'No, no, I won't ask for anything better in life. I'll just take you.' And… And that just breaks my heart, knowing someone that unfortunate is just destined for me somewhere. I wish I knew smoke signals or semaphore to warn them off somehow."

Kate laughed in spite of herself. Or maybe to spite herself. She didn't know right now.

There was a pause once she stopped.

"It pains me to say," the mystery woman finally said, "that I don't harbor the gladdest of feelings for the person who made you feel this way about yourself."

Kate laughed again. "And what would you say if I told you I made myself feel this way?"

Immediately, the woman said "Then I would say that the things we tell ourselves at our lowest moments have the strangest habit of not being true."

Kate smiled. "You're smooth," she said.

She could practically hear the smile in the woman's words when she said "I have been accused of a great many things, but smoothness is not one of them."

Kate nodded.

"I'm about headed for a refill," Kate said. "Want to take this conversation inside? See if we can't turn talking into dancing?"

"And if I told you that a romantic entanglement is the furthest thing from my mind at the present moment?"

"Then I'd say that's what I tell myself most days as well," Kate said. "But… then again… you're out here, too."

There was another long pause. Was that consideration? A weighing of options?

Then the answer came.

"You have a good night," the mystery woman said. "I would tell you to be strong, but you wouldn't be at Batman's wedding if you weren't."

The sound of shoes turning around. Of the woman walking away.

Kate turned to ask her name…

...only to find that she already knew it.

The whole world did.

Kate saw the soft and inviting mass of muscle rising from the hem of a blue backless dress. She saw brawny, tanned arms that culminated in a pair of ancient metal vambraces about the wrists. The tresses of long black hair draped over her supple shoulders.

And Kate Kane was overcome with horror at what she had just done.

Oh, no...

I just put the moves on Wonder Woman…

The music had stopped. The evening was over. The lights were on. People were slowly filing out of the reception hangar in various stages of sobriety.

And outside the reception hangar, Cassandra Cain walked toward the throng of people in between Stephanie Brown and Tim Drake.

"Cassie Sandsmark," Stephanie said, "cornered me for fifteen minutes just to tell me how she couldn't get into Doctor Who because there was a scene where some guy was fighting aliens in his apartment with a baseball bat."

"That's it?" Tim asked.

"Yeah," Stephanie said. "The show with the rubber aliens, and her suspension of disbelief just craters at someone having something from a game people in his country don't play. I swear, that girl is too pretty to be that nerdy."

Tim stopped dead in his tracks, and rolled his eyes.

"Just… Just don't do anything stupid like tell her that, alright? She made it to her senior year of high school without hating herself. It's a miracle."

"Oh, Stephanie said. "Hey…"

At which point she mimed locking her lips shut and throwing away the key. A gesture which, on its face, Cassandra found terrifying. Was there a subset of people walking the planet with keyholes in their mouths that she didn't know about?"

The three came upon some members of the wedding party. Cassandra saw Babs and Dick wrapped around each other. Cassandra immediately broke away from Tim and Steph, and tapped Babs on the shoulder.

Barbara Gordon turned from Dick. "Yeah, Cass?"

Cassandra pointed to an empty section of the pavement, and beckoned Barbara over.

Barbara turned to Dick, and said "I'll be right back."

Once Cassandra and Barbara were well away from anyone else, Cassandra readied herself, and concentrated.

Cassandra Cain's first language was body language. She had been raised in an environment with almost no auditory and written stimulus. So speaking was hard for her. Made even more so when, upon suspicion from Barbara, Doctor Leslie Tompkins diagnosed Cassandra with dyslexia. Which Cassandra had to take their words for. Being as she had no other experience with words and language up to this point, she found it hard to believe that words and letters didn't get turned around and lost for everyone else the same way they did for her.

She also thought that a word that was difficult to speak and read was meant to be applied to people like her who had difficulty speaking and reading was grossly unfair.

But what helped was sign language. She couldn't properly vocalize long sentences (not yet, anyway), but she could sign each of the words she wanted to say and speak them at the same time so that they could form a long sentence.

So, with the story Barbara had told her about what had happened with The Undying fifteen months prior, Cassandra signed and spoke at the same time.

"I. Spit. In. Zatanna's. Food. When. She. Wasn't. Looking."

Barbara Gordon pulled Cassandra into a mammoth hug, and erupted into laughter at the same time.

"That's-I'm glad you have my back," Barbara said, trying to hold her giggles at bay. "But… But you shouldn't do that. That's not nice."

Barbara started laughing again, when Cassandra heard someone clearing their throat right next to them.

Cassandra and Barbara both looked.

It was Lois Lane.

"Hi," Lois said. "Do, uh… Do you mind if I borrow her for a second or two?"

"I wouldn't be the person to ask," Barbara said. She looked down at Cassandra.

"Right," Lois said. "Sorry. Cass, is it alright if I talk to you for a bit?"

Cassandra looked at Lois.

She had the Concern Face. But the way Lois held herself, the way she had her body all scrunched in instead of open to her, Cassandra thought that it wasn't her that Lois was concerned for.

Cassandra nodded.

She and Lois both walked further away from the departing guests, until Lois stopped and looked at her.

"Hi," Lois said.

Cassandra just waved.

"Um… Stephanie told me that you two ran into Conner tonight."

Cassandra blinked.

"Or I should say, Stephanie told Selina, and Selina told me. He was acting a little weird, was he?"

Cassandra had barely met Conner, so she didn't know to judge that behavior against anything else he'd done.

"Was he standing perfectly still? Not moving his lips?"

Cassandra nodded. And with that, Lois Lane's Concern Face amplified.

"Ho, boy," Lois said. She looked at Cassandra, and sighed. "I think I know what's going on here."

Lois took a second to collect herself.

"I think… I'm pretty sure… that Conner… likes you."

Cassandra nodded. "Okay," she said. Which was fair. She didn't know Conner all that well, but he seemed agreeable for the most part.

"No," Lois said, "Y-You're not getting it. He likes you the way boys like girls they want to be their girlfriends. He wants to do boyfriend things to you. With you. Sorry. That first one didn't come out right."

And so it was that Cassandra Cain was overcome with pure mortal terror.

She had developed an interest in boys, this much was true, but the prospect that any of these boys would rear back, apropos of nothing, and take an interest in her back seemed at first unlikely, and then horrifying.

"Ohhhhhhhhh," Cassandra said.

"Right," Lois said. "I don't have a lot to go on, but I think that's what's happening here."

Cassandra blinked and asked "How?"

"Well," Lois said. "I just need you to know up front, that nine times out of ten, I don't give a rat's ass about the love lives of teeny-bopper superheroes. And even if I did, I shouldn't be telling you this at all. It's called burning a source in my line of work, and the people who do that deserve to burn in Hell. But I have heard from the Kents that he left a picture of you that Tim or Steph or whoever took in the pocket of his jeans one laundry day at the farm."

Cassandra nodded, and again asked "How?"

"Okay," Lois said. "You read body language right?"

"Yes."

"And you caught Conner standing absolutely still?"

"Yes."

"You think that might be because he was trying to hide how he felt? Like he didn't want to weird you out or make you uncomfortable?"

Cassandra took a deep breath. That made a whole lot of sense, just laid out like that.

"Again," Lois said, "normally I don't care. But here's the thing. Both of you are both pretty new at the whole Being-Regular-People thing, so I actually think that if the two of you decide to, y'know, start seeing each other, you might do some good for yourselves. But here's the other thing."

Lois slowly and gently placed her hands on Cassandra's shoulders. Cassandra let her.

"There is a lot of Clark in that boy," Lois said. "He may play all surly and intense, but I can tell. There's a heart in there big as the farm in Kansas he lives on. So I tell you this: If you hurt him... If you break his heart in any way... Then I need you to know that I have a husband who can set you on fire with his eyes. He won't, because he's the nicest person on Earth. But he could. And that's something you might want to consider."

Cassandra took another deep breath. She tried to will the images and sensations that her thoughts usually manifested as into something resembling coherence.

Conner was... Cute? Was that the word? Stephanie liked using that word for people, but she didn't really know if that applied to Conner or not. She mentally compared Conner to Dick Grayson, which was the only other person she had ever thought of in a physical capacity, in the context of an unbidden dream or no. And yet... her mind wandered towards Conner's arms. Particularly how they looked in that black t-shirt with the S on it. Conner's arms required... consideration...

...more consideration...

...wow, even more consideration...

She couldn't shake the damn things. Every time she tried to drag the image of Conner Kent to a corner of her brain, his arms moved slower than the rest of him, leaving blurry after-images beneath closed eyes like bright headlights from oncoming traffic.

Competing with this sudden fascination with Conner Kent's arms (seriously, where was that coming from?) was that this talking-to from Lois meant that she was worried about Conner and what the future held for him. And that Lois was telling Cassandra to be careful with someone else instead of telling someone else to be careful with her made her feel… light.

It felt good.

This was the height of idiocy, of course. Thinking about a boy like the fools she saw on television would distract her from her work. From her training. So no, she couldn't do it.

And the simple fact was that Cassandra Cain had killed a man. That that she was a child reacting to stimuli that she had been exposed to since birth did not matter. So even if she wanted to, she didn't deserve it.

And Cassandra Cain was someone who couldn't read, who could barely talk, and looked like a giant dog chewed her from the neck down. If Lois was right, and Conner liked her in the way she said he did, then he wouldn't feel that way for long.

So that was the end of the matter.

No.

No, it wasn't the end of the matter.

Because the curiosity, simple as it was, of what Conner would be like around her without locking himself in place physically to keep from telling her how he felt about her with his entire body just grew and grew, like a dry sponge under a leaky faucet. It just kind of bulged and swelled, like...

...like Conner's arms, now that she thought about it.

Cassandra had to literally shake her head to get the thought out. She said the one word that she knew Barbara said when she was as frustrated as Cassandra felt right now.

"Shit," Cassandra said.

Lois blinked in confusion.

"Okay," she said. "Good talk." Lois lightly patted Cassandra's shoulder, and she walked away.

From deep within this whirlpool of ideas and fear, Cassandra Cain knew but one thing for certain. That when she got back to the Clock Tower, she was going straight for the holo room.

She really needed to punch something right now.

"How do you feel?" Clark asked.

Bruce, Clark, and Diana were huddled in their own little group outside the reception hangar. They were but a few feet away from Kory and Jessica Cruz, who were trying to make conversation with Cassandra Cain, Tim Drake, and Stephanie Brown. And they themselves were a few feet away from an animatedly conversing Helena Bertinelli and Kara "Supergirl" Danvers.

Bruce knew how he felt. He felt apprehensive.

Not about the wedding. He felt fantastic about the wedding. But Selina wasn't here right now. She was off somewhere else, talking to Billy Batson and Mary Bromfield about if they could get some of the reception's leftover food to their foster home.

If Bruce Wayne's mind was left to wander, it usually went toward work.

Black Manta had escaped from prison three months after he was apprehended for his role in what The Undying did to Gotham City. Talia al Ghul had left during The Undying's occupation, and hadn't been heard from since.

Yet, according to what Aquaman told him here tonight, there had been no attacks by Black Manta or any groups affiliated with him upon the kingdom of Atlantis. As for the League of Assassins, they had gone silent. No assassinations matching their MO had been reported by Interpol of the FBI.

Talia al Ghul and David Hyde, two of the most dangerous people Batman had ever faced, had been at large for well over a year, and… nothing. They were either planning something big, or they were off the board altogether. Bruce didn't know which was worse.

But Bruce thought Clark was talking about the wedding.

"I feel great," Bruce said.

"Why do I think the word 'great' means something different to you than it does to everyone else?" Clark asked.

"It's a start, at least," said Diana.

"It's better than I'm feeling," said Clark. "My wife and I are reporters, we just attended the biggest news story in America today, and we're neither of us are writing stories on it. I feel like I just went AWOL from the military."

Bruce sighed.

"Well," Clark said. "I'd better head out. I'm going with Conner back to Kansas, so I can chat up Ma and Pa for a bit."

"Where is Conner?" Bruce asked.

"Oh he's probably hiding from, uh…"

It was at this point that Clark suddenly turned red from embarrassment. He looked back at the people behind him.

Bruce could have sworn Clark looked at Cassandra.

"Cassandra?" Bruce asked. "Why would Superboy be hiding from Cassandra?"

"Ohhhh," Diana said. "So she's the one."

"The one what?" Bruce asked.

Diana smirked, and said "It would be best if you found this one out on your own. Did you hear that your Orphan beat Artemis in a fight?"

"Yes."

"Did you laugh for an hour after you found out as I did?"

"No."

"Well," Diana said, "I suppose that would be too much to ask."

Bruce frowned.

"I'm afraid I must take my leave as well," Diana said. "Thank you very much. It was a lovely ceremony. And again, congratulations."

"You have a good night," Bruce said

Diana smiled, bowed, and flew away on the spot.

"Now where's Conner?" Clark asked, looking around. Bruce knew Clark was using his x-ray vision, because he peered deep into the side of the reception hangar and said "There he is."

Clark turned back to Bruce. "Gotta fly."

"You always do."

Clark waved goodbye before heading back into the hangar to collect Conner. Bruce slightly bowed his head in return.

And then Bruce Wayne was alone.

He turned to the rapidly thinning parking lot, and held his left hand in his right.

Bruce just couldn't stop touching his wedding ring.

He was a detective by nature. He clung to the tangible. And the band of gold around the ring finger of his left hand told him he was getting better.

Bruce Wayne was in therapy now. It was with a psychopathic clown in a mental institution, but it was still therapy. He was taking antidepressants as well, which he felt made quite a bit of difference.

It was uncomfortable. He was only a little sad, as opposed to despairing. He was only a little angry instead of furious. He felt like he was cast among multitudes who were all in on a joke that he didn't get.

But he'd take it.

If it meant he was married to the only woman who could make a sad, angry orphan collapse into a pile of giggles, he'd take it.

Bruce thought of Selina and smiled. He had no idea why she put up with him.

But that was the same thing Clark said about Lois, and Clark was the best man he knew. So even his confusion as to why such a vivacious source of life would even bother trying to pierce the veil of impenetrable human darkness that formed Batman meant he was on the right track, somehow.

Bruce heard the clacking of high heels on concrete approaching him. He turned, expecting to see his wife.

It was Starfire.

As he turned back to the parking lot, Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran stood next to him in silence.

Bruce had been hard on her during Dick Grayson's days as Robin. He had told him to stop seeing her. He had told her to stop seeing him. He had considered her too frivolous a person to occupy the time of someone like Dick, who had so much potential.

He collapsed inward with embarrassment. Starfire was a more than capable hero, and Batman never recognized it. He refused to. She… She threatened him, somehow.

And it seemed like so long ago.

"Congratulations," Kory finally said, her mass of hair lightly rippling in the chilly Halloween breeze.

"Thank you," Bruce said, and tried to think of something else to tell her that wouldn't sound embarrassing.

He finally settled on "You and Jessica seem to make for a wonderful couple."

Kory smiled slightly. "She is a wonderful woman. She makes me laugh."

"Those are the ones you want to hang on to," Bruce said, and held up his wedding ring.

"There is nowhere I would rather be right now than by her side," Kory said. "But I am not by her side… I am here with you."

There was an edge to that, and the smile that had been developing on Bruce's face, a genuine one of the kind he seemed to find easier and easier to give nowadays, withered and died.

"Dick Grayson seems to be good to Barbara Gordon," Kory said. "He could be good to me, but he could also be… short-tempered. He could isolate himself. He could shut me out. And now the person that he could be on his best day is the person that he is everyday. And when it happened, I was not with him. He moved on. So did I."

"I'm sure Dick is sor-"

"I do not blame Dick Grayson for the way he was," Kory said. "I blame you."

There was no anger to this, as she'd have shown it. There was no passive-aggression, as Bruce wasn't entirely sure Tamaraneans were capable of such a thing.

No. This was hatred.

And while the fury of Starfire could be a fiery sight to behold, her hatred-her honest hatred for Bruce Wayne-ran cold.

"My people are free with their emotions. Free with their desires. Do you know why that is?"

Bruce didn't say anything.

"Because," she finally said, "they know that regret can be deadly. Deadlier than a sword. Deadlier than a laser bolt. We may have done things wrong, but there, in the moment, there was no regret."

She was silent for a time. Bruce felt his stomach almost disintegrating.

"I have regret in my heart now. Dick Grayson was my introduction to humanity on planet Earth. How good they can be. And it was only by getting away from you that he became the good man he should have been from the beginning. I have done well for myself, in spite of you. I have Jessica Cruz in my life now. But there shall always be that regret. He was my first. He was, as you humans call, 'the one who got away.'"

"I'm sorry," Bruce said. It was the same kind of apology Batman made to the families of murder victims. It was low, it was quiet, and it was almost achingly sincere.

"I do not believe you," Kory said. "And do you know why?"

Bruce, yet again, said nothing.

"This wedding," Kory said. "This… vulgar spectacle. The most maliciously private man I have ever met decides to get married in front of everyone he knows, and I ask myself why that is. It is because it is a show of force. Bruce Wayne is changing, so he must let the world know that he is changing. You did not want to share your happiness with these people. You wanted to prove them wrong. The only thing I have ever known you eager to share is how strong you think you are. It is a display typical of Batman, and we both know it."

Bruce felt his hand shaking, and it was only now that Kory deigned to look Bruce in the eye.

"I say these things to strike at you," Kory said. "I do not deny it. But I also say these things out of fear. Fear that what you did to Dick Grayson, you will do to Stephanie Brown, to Cassandra Cain, and to Tim Drake."

Bruce felt a fury rise up in him. "What?"

"I know you will say it is not true," Kory said. "I know you will say that you have changed. But you have yet to face a true test with them. There has yet to be a sure sign of adversity. And when it comes, you will be the man you have always been. They will seek an approval you will not give. And under you they will rage… they will break… or they will die."

"No," Bruce said.

Kory blinked slowly.

"How can you deny it, Bruce Wayne?" Kory asked. "You've already done one of each."

And Bruce... didn't have anything to say to that.

"I must thank you for the food, at any rate," Kory said. "But if we never converse again, Bruce Wayne, then I shall feel as though X'Hal has smiled upon me."

With that, Kory walked away.

"Jessica?" she called, and Jessica Cruz, who had been talking to Kara, looked over at her.

"¿Te gustaría encontrar un lugar apartado para hablar?" Kory asked.

Jessica turned red, and immediately started sputtering.

"Uh… I… Just… Yeah!"

Kory smiled, took Jessica's hand, and walked away into the dark.

And Bruce Wayne was alone again.

His emotions and his thoughts engaged in warfare from which there was no clear victor. All that was left was red.

He didn't hear his wife walk up to him. He only heard her say "Well, hello there."

Bruce looked at her. She must have known immediately that something was amiss. He could feel himself having gone pale.

"Sailor?" Selina asked. "What's wrong?"

Bruce and Selina's wedding was a very important occasion indeed.

But it was not the only important thing happening on this Halloween night in Gotham City.

In fact, were one to rank the occurrences this evening in terms of relevance, of events that would shape the coming weeks, years, even decades in both this world and the worlds beyond, then the marriage of the World's Greatest Detective to the World's Greatest Thief would have come in at a healthy-though-unspectacular fourth place…

Tomas Diaz was on his way home from his shift at Big Belly Burger when he decided to cut through an alley on Bleake Island.

This was how he got mugged.

He didn't get a look at the guy before he clubbed him in the forehead, and he for damn sure didn't get a good look at him when the blood started pouring into his eyes.

"Nothin' personal," the man who mugged him said in a deep voice. "We all gotta get paid somehow."

Tomas saw the gun, though.

He was visited by the lonesome, maddening image of his abuela being the only one at his funeral when he saw the silhouette of the man who had accosted him suddenly go rigid.

The mugger screamed through clenched teeth, and even through the bloody haze, Tomas could see the veins of blue electricity wrap around him before the mugger collapsed on the cold dirty pavement of the alley next to him.

Then, footsteps.

A voice, a girl's voice, saying "Please-be-alive-please-be-alive-please-be-alive…"

The silhouette of a girl reached down. Not for Tomas himself. For the mugger.

She was checking for his pulse.

"It worked!" she finally said, and Tomas saw this girl shove something that looked like a modified pistol into the black leather jacket she was wearing.

Tomas got up into a sitting position, and rubbed some of the blood out of his eyes.

"Are you alright?" the girl asked. "Do you need me to call someone?"

"No," Tomas said. "I, uh… I don't have health insurance. I know a guy, though, he'll patch me up.."

"Oh," the girl said. "I guess… um… at least have a better night than you were having?"

And with that, Tomas could hear the girl start to walk away."

"Wait," Tomas said.

The footsteps stopped.

Tomas got enough of the blood out of his eyes that he could see to whom he was speaking.

She was wearing a blue mask over her face, and from her head appeared to be a blue… mohawk?

White, rudimentary armor was on her chest beneath a black leather jacket. She had at least two piercings on her face, and God knew how many more in her ears.

"Who are you?" Tomas asked.

A moment, then she spoke.

"Bluebird," she said. "Call me Bluebird."

The moon hung fat over Gotham International Airport. After the wedding, after the reception, after Bruce Wayne told his wife what the Princess of Tamaran had told him, and after Selina Wayne had threatened to (and these are her exact words) "claw that big Chee-To's eyes out," the hangar that had hosted the wedding itself stood empty and desolate.

Within that darkened hangar were two men. The one on the left was taller than the one on the right.

They were both wearing black leather jackets. They wore helmets with built-in gas masks and voice modulators. Though the short one had to wonder why, as no one on this crummy, smelly planet knew him.

There were small patches on the lapels of their leather jackets. The one on the taller one simply had the number "1," while the shorter had had the number "2."

Gotham City was a city of iconography, after all, and One thought it best to fit in.

As One and Two surveyed the drafty, empty hangar, they both listened to a voice that only they could hear. It was a woman's voice, high and seemingly built for cheeriness.

It was not cheery now.

"Hundreds gathered here for a union," the woman's voice said directly to One and Two. "Two people gave of themselves to each other… And they did it without you."

"Now tell me," the woman's voice said. "How does that make you feel?"

Some fifteen months prior, a beautiful woman and a three foot gentleman that might most generously be described as "an imp" stood on a rooftop overlooking a tunnel, through which a collection of superheroes emerged after defeating The Undying.

And that same beautiful woman and that same imp now stood outside the wedding hangar containing One and Two.

The woman stood in vintage clothes from the forties, sunglasses on at night, long and voluminous black hair blowing in the breeze behind her. In her boredom, she was scanning the skyline for something to grab her attention.

But the imp, in his orange and purple jumpsuit and bowler hat, stared intently at the hangar.

After the imp blew a bubble gum-scented cloud of smoke from the cigar he was chomping on, he finally spoke.

"Those two are gonna be trouble," Mister Mxyzptlk said. "You heard it here first."

TO BE CONTINUED