First Meeting

Close your eyes for a moment — well, keep them open just enough to listen — and imagine the most extraordinary afternoon Metropolis had ever seen.

The sky went dark first. Not the slow dark of a rainstorm, but a sudden dark, as though someone had pressed a button and dimmed the world. When people looked up, they saw a warship. An enormous, silent warship, gray as iron and covered in angles and spines, drifting over the city towers like a shadow that had forgotten to leave.

From it came the Parademons.

They poured out by the hundreds, wings beating like mechanical bats, their eyes burning red, screeching as they dropped toward the streets. People ran. Cars skidded to stops. And far above the noise, a pair of blue eyes opened wide, and Clark Kent was already changing.

Superman hit the sky like a sunrise.

He swept through the Parademons and for a moment it seemed like he could handle this alone. But then a grapple hook zinged through the air from a nearby rooftop, and Batman was there — landing silently, already scanning the nearest creature with a device no bigger than a pen. Bruce Wayne had been tracking strange energy readings for two days. He had come prepared.

The harbor erupted next. Aquaman — Arthur Curry, King of Atlantis — rose on a wave he had called from the deep ocean, his silver trident aimed at the sky. Far above, a green ring blazed: Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern, spinning an enormous emerald net that scooped a dozen Parademons from the air at once. Wonder Woman arrived from the south, golden Lasso of Truth uncoiling. And somewhere in the blur between one blink and the next, Barry Allen had run up the outside of a skyscraper and carried everyone inside to safety before any of them could blink twice.

The one who saw the truth was Victor Stone — Cyborg. Half of him was flesh, the other half the most advanced technology ever built into a human body. His sensors swept the Parademon formations and found a pattern beneath the surface. They were digging. Down through the street and rock, toward something buried long ago: a Mother Box.

A Mother Box is an ancient, living computer from a world called Apokolips. Small enough to hold in two hands, powerful enough to open a Boom Tube — a doorway through space — and bring the tyrant Darkseid himself through to the streets of Metropolis. Victor broadcast what he found to anyone who could hear him. Eight voices, on eight different frequencies, heard it at exactly the same moment.

Superman was already diving.

He went through the street like it was water — down through the dark earth and rock, following the tunnel the Parademons had dug. There it was in a chamber far below: the Mother Box, pulsing with orange light, warming up, beginning to hum the deep sound of something about to wake. Clark closed both hands around it and pressed with everything he had.

The hum died.

Above, the warship's lights flickered. Then, with a sound like thunder running backwards, it folded through a crackling portal and was gone. The Parademons scattered without their signal, dissolving into dark energy before they could find the ground.

Slowly, one by one, eight heroes landed on the same rooftop.

They stood there looking at each other in the sudden quiet. Superman with his cape settling around him. Batman with his arms folded, already thinking about what would come next. Wonder Woman with her golden lasso coiled at her hip. Aquaman steadying his trident. Green Lantern letting his ring's light fade to a soft glow. Barry Allen, still breathing a little fast from the evacuations. Victor Stone's eyes flickering as he ran his post-mission scans. And J'onn J'onzz — the Martian Manhunter — who had been watching from above, invisible as thought, finally becoming solid and real on the rooftop with the others.

Nobody had planned this. Nobody had trained together or held a meeting or even exchanged phone numbers. They had simply arrived, each drawn by the same reason, and each of them had done what only they could do, and together it had been exactly enough.

Batman was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, very simply: "That won't be the last time."

It was not the longest speech ever given. But everyone who heard it knew it was the truest.

That night, the stars above Metropolis felt a little closer, as though the universe itself was paying quiet attention to what had happened on that rooftop. Because something had started there — something that would matter for a very long time.

The Justice League had found each other.

Rest easy. They are out there.