After a fight with Trigon, Dick is pulled through a portal into hell and finds himself badly injured in a completely hostile world.
Left to his own devices and surrounded by all kinds of monsters, Dick has only one option. Survive as long as possibl...
"Yes Lois, they are fine, but I still have to do some checkups to make sure there are no dangerous viruses or bacteria attached to them, since Superman was in direct combat with the creature. While they don't affect kryptonians, they might harm humans. Therefore, the two will stay in quarantine with me overnight and are expected to leave the Manor tomorrow morning. So don't worry.....No you can't talk to them right now. The cell phone would mess up my equipment......Lois they are fine. I have to go now."
Batman just hung up on the upset woman on the other end of the line and sighed heavily. He couldn't just leave Lois in the dark like this while all the night journals were already reporting on the events in Metropolis, even to Jonathan's misfortune. Although he only told her a harmless version of the events, to not worry her unnecessarily. But this was already enough to make the temperamental woman furious.
After all, not only her husband but also her son had been involved in this case and rightly she was worried. So Bruce decided to play the scapegoat and drew her ire to himself.
Clark could think of his own way to resolve this situation in the morning.
The bat put his phone away and entered the destroyed room together with Damian.
Splintered glass and small pieces of concrete cracked loudly under Batman's heavy boots as he and Robin took a closer look at the demolished lab. With all the lights destroyed, it was only thanks to special night vision equipment that they were able to spot and analyze the many pieces of evidence in this darkness.
Damian used one of the crumbled walls as a jumpboard to reach the white lab ceiling and pulled a long narrow object out of one of the broken light tubes. Examining it, he eyed the sharp solid nib, which looked more like a throwing knife, and turned to his father:
"The monster is sensitive to light. That's why it disabled all white light sources with these projectiles. I assume these are special tail feathers, since the rachis and vanes are centered, and they were used for long-range attacks."
Batman stepped closer to the boy and took the black object.
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The feather was indeed very sharp, but something else caught his eye. Batman's brows drew together as he spoke:
"This feather is not only very sturdy, but also has small rakes. When these enter a body, you can't just pull them out again. They get caught like a velcro and would tear everything apart. This also explains why some parts of them remained in Superman's body. They had gotten stuck to the flesh."
Damian listened attentively to his father's words and thought back to the operation half an hour ago. He had not been aware of it before because of the situation they were in, but in fact he had the impression that the individual splinters were literally glued to the flesh. This also explained the fatal extent of the wound and the extremely rapid blood loss. A smooth spike would not have destroyed so much tissue.
