Gotham Among Other Gods update

In the bathroom, Bruce wetted a towel, wrung it out, and ran it over his body, quickly wiping away the sweat that’d built up as he induced Dinah into their marriage in the most classical way. Recalling the paganistic way he and Diana had been wed, it was hard not to see the church and the ceremony as a rather elaborate convolution of the elegantly simple, biological, spiritual facts of what they had done. An act which well might have heralded the ultimate expression of their union, a child.

Running the towel under the running tap again, he wrung it out and ran it over his face. Dinah had at first been receptive to him carrying her to the meeting room, before thinking better of it. The next thing he knew, she was on her feet and telling him to give her a minute, to meet her in the meeting room. Apropos enough, Bruce though, as he prowled there naked, wearing only a whiff of cologne he’d applied to himself. There was something to be said for romance.

In the meeting room, he found that the round table emblazoned with the first draft of the Justice League’s fabled emblem was still there, though its majesty paled in comparison to Dinah. She hadn’t freshened up—cooling sweat glistening in an awesomely feminine manner on her naked body—but she had put on an old pair of fishnet stockings. The difference between them and the custom-made kind she now wore… their make much more conductive to her active (to say the least) lifestyle… was a matter of degrees, but as a lover and a detective, Bruce was intimately familiar with the difference.

“Look what still fits,” Dinah said, giving a wiggle most impressively climaxing in her crossed legs. Dinah was a fantastically lithe, slender woman, with her justly famous forty-two-inch legs as good to the touch as they were to look at. Her stockings added a risqué, even lascivious note to what would otherwise be aesthetic perfection. It was almost whorish, the way Dinah wore them, but in the best possible way. She took a body that would rival Diana’s and gave it her own unique energy, making herself just as attractive in her own way.

“That’s not the fit I’m concerned with.” 

Bruce approached her, each step seeming to pump fresh blood into his hardness. Dinah mewled happily to see him grow. Her thighs clenched together. Bruce reached down to those fishnet-clad legs and wrenched them apart, exposing her bare crotch before he ripped a hole in the stockings over it. Dinah gasped as she listened to her fishnets rend and tear.

“Those are historical artifacts!” she hissed with faked outrage. “You’re destroying a part of our legacy!”

“Our legacy shouldn’t get between me and your cunt,” Bruce growled. Dinah’s eyes flashed, and Bruce could see her holding onto a poker face to keep from giving away how aroused his gruff voice made her. He’d once thought that his brusque manner and take-no-prisoners approach to almost everything would prove a turn-off to women; not that he’d much cared at the time.

But over the years, he’d discovered quite the opposite was true. Almost every woman he drew into bed seemed to have a taste for his domineering side. As much as he strove to follow Diana’s example in his relationships and be more open, more emotional, in the bedroom the exact opposite seemed to be needed. No matter how powerful the woman, how worthy of respect or how arrogant she might be in mien, they all seemed to appreciate being left with one or two bruises that had nothing to do with combat.

It was enough to make him wonder if they had a type or if he did.

“I’m going to fuck your pussy,” Bruce said, and he could virtually hear the opening clench. Speak of the devil. “But I’m not going to finish in there, not when I’ve already filled it up. So where do you want me to finish, Dinah? In your face? On your tits?” He dropped his voice several octaves at once. On the streets of Gotham, it was enough to make criminals lose control of bodily functions. Here, much the same; different bodily functions, though. “Maybe in your ass.”

Dinah’s voice dipped as well. “You think I’m just gonna tell you?” As much as she appreciated the surprising care and affection that Bruce could show her, now she wanted the Batman. And the Batman didn’t make love. Batman fucked. 

“You’ll be in for a lot of pain if you don’t talk.”

“Do your worst. Fucking break me.”

***

Years later, Bruce grinned to himself with more than a hint of lechery as he recalled what had happened next. As good a martial artist as Dinah was, she’d found herself very quickly laid across his lap while he sat down on that table which had figured so prominently in their shared fantasies. He’d ripped the back out of her stockings, denying her even that modicum of cover, and then brutally spanked her, vowing not to stop until Dinah begged for mercy or his cock or both.

At first, Dinah had kicked and screamed so wildly that Bruce had almost thought she’d safeword—but the slightest slowdown in his broad hand viciously laying into her naked ass had only prompted Dinah to rather obscenely demand he keep going. He’d kept spanking her ass until the firm young flesh seemed like it would be permanently reddened. Then she’d spread her legs to show him the wetness running from her like a sieve. Suddenly she was humping her rosy-red ass up at his slaps at a tempo that merged her mock-punishment with coitus. When she finally moaned, unable to take anymore, he’d fingered her. It’d taken barely one knuckle to finish her off, after which she’d only been able to lay there as he endeavored to fuck her through the table as promised. 

As it turned out, she had become pregnant in the gymnasium—and after the meeting room, Bruce was surprised it wasn’t twins.

Now, on a glade in Paradise Island as luxurious as any penthouse or manor they’d ever been in, Bruce and Dinah reenacted that test of just how far they could go, how much they could take. Bruce wore his costume, his fly lowered to give Dinah the pleasure she craved as much as she deserved. Dinah too was in costume, her stocking-clad legs wrapped around Bruce’s body, calves tangled in his unruly cape. The fishnets covering her groin had been ripped apart, despite being much sturdier than the ‘civilian model’ Dinah had worn in that meeting room once upon a time, and her panties were pulled to the side. Despite the all-encompassing pleasure Bruce took in fucking her, as any man would, he took a degree more in the thought of the famous Black Canary having to go into action with her already lurid stockings sluttishly ripped away from her womanhood. It was possible that Dinah enjoyed the idea too, or just that she took too much pleasure from the sex for any more to be apparent.

Bruce had senses sharpened to a razor’s edges and a photographic memory, but aside from a few scars, he could see barely any difference between how Dinah had looked on that fateful night and her appearance now. She certainly seemed to be in just as much ecstasy as she had been back then. And she certainly seemed to be just as tight.

“You have a great cunt, Dinah. It only gets better and better,” Bruce said in a hot rush of breath. He arched back out of her, thinking of how wisely Dinah had blown him before letting him between her legs for this second round. He didn’t feel the surging pressure in his balls, just a savory relish in fucking her. Despite his reputation, his discipline wasn’t infinite. He was grateful that the blowjob had given him the chance to really take his time with her, trying to give her even more pleasure than he had on their honeymoon. She deserved it even more after proving to be such an incredible wife.

“And your cock is still a perfect fit!” Dinah replied, clenching her legs on Bruce’s hips to force him slowly into her. With her musculature, they were virtually lethal weapons, and she knew from experience that having Bruce locked in like this, with her able to control the motion precisely, gave her the most incredible orgasms. It felt almost unfair to other women. If they knew how good it could be in this position, none of them would ever skip leg day.

Just then, Bruce’s communicator rang, pinging inside his cowl. Dinah’s face contorted as she saw the interruption coming, but Bruce was unwilling to stop rewarding her. Putting his gloved hand over her mouth to still her ecstatic moans, he marshalled his voice and picked up the call. “Batman here,” he said, still pitching his hips slowly against Dinah’s groin, entering her with pleasure enough to make any other man howl and cry out.

“Bruce.” It was Diana. The sound of her musically accented voice only increased Bruce’s lust, and he saw Dinah’s eyes roll back into her head as he drove himself into her more eagerly. Not long now… “It’s Deimos. He’s gathered all his forces, it looks like everything is laying siege to Wayne Tower. The building’s on lockdown, holding for now, but we’ll need to mount a response soon if we’re not going to give them squatters’ rights.”

Dinah’s hands shot up, clawing fruitlessly at Bruce’s chest armor, as he reviewed the facts—ironically delaying his own orgasm with his detachment. Having Amazon foot soldiers patrolling Gotham had largely alleviated the riot conditions and driven the monsters and cultists underground, but the Deimos-possessed Joker and his last golden apple still had to be retrieved before the situation could be considered truly resolved.

“Going after the apple stored in the vault there,” Bruce replied. He felt warmth, even through his protective glove, as Dinah’s hot breath rushed out of her mouth and into his covering hand. “Can we teleport it out?”

“No, all the teleporters are offline. We don’t even know what’s wrong with them, they’re just gone.”

“And communications?”

“Severely compromised. We can’t get a signal more than a quarter-mile past the city limits, and we wouldn’t get that much if it weren’t for your signal boosters.”

Bruce grunted assent. He’d long ago fortified the predictably unreliable Gotham cell network with his own transmitters. Dinah’s thighs tightened, snakelike, around his waist, threatening the integrity of his armor as well as that of his ribs. Orgasm. He continued at the rhythm he’d set; there was no point in stopping before the call was through. And Dinah was truly multiorgasmic, to the point of double digits—though it helped when she’d been spanked.

But he only had so much time. 

“You’re the expert here—is this usual for Deimos?”

“No. He’s a fear-god; he hates frontal assaults. Much prefers psychological manipulation. You know, a pussy.”

Bruce grunted at Diana’s surprisingly vulgar humor. Despite her elegance, she had an earthiness that could put the average seaman to shame. Reaching down with his other hand, he ripped down Dinah’s bodice, his eyes fairly bulging at the sight of Dinah’s enormous breasts. With a twist of his wrist, he disengaged his gauntlet and left Dinah biting down on the glove, while he squeezed and massaged Dinah’s ample cleavage in both hands. She seemed to enjoy it, judging by how her sex tightly rippled around his pistoning member.

The fear-god aspect reminded him of Scarecrow, who’d been possessed by Phobos before being neutralized. Even then, the demigod had expressed himself mostly through Scarecrow’s usual MO, only turned up to eleven. If that was the case with the Joker…

“I think the Joker’s madness is getting to Deimos,” Bruce said, though his voice came out hoarse. It wasn’t easy to carry on a steady conversation while pinching Dinah’s stiff nipples between his fingers. 

“You think that’s possible? He’s only a man, after all.”

“Those who the gods destroy, they first drive mad,” Bruce quoted. “I’ve seen his insanity daunt the Spectre. And no offense to your religion, but Ares’s children are nowhere near that level.”

“No offense taken. What do you want to do?”

“Meet them head-on. All available forces. If Joker’s taking control of Deimos, we have to take him out before that maniac realizes what he’s capable of.”

“Agreed,” Diana said. Bruce suddenly realized he could hear wind whistling through the comline. Strange he had missed it before, but he had been very occupied. “I’m taking the invisible jet out for that plan we discussed. Think you can get along without me?”

“No,” Bruce said bluntly. “But we’ll try our best.”

“I hope you realize how reassuring that is, coming from you.” He could hear Diana’s smile over the line. “Give my best to Dinah.”

“Always.”

“Let me hear her?”

Bruce tore his glove away from Dinah and without that as a gag, she was utterly unable to hold back. “Fuck me full of cum, you beast! Nnnh! Give me a gallon!”

“Earn it,” Bruce said, a touch at his wrist-computer opening a line to the communicator at her collar, tying her into the call between himself and Diana. As he did so, he drew himself out of the orgasm blazing through Dinah’s cunt and brought his cock to her mouth, where it was eagerly accepted. Diana could hear every minute sound as if she were right next to Dinah: a thick torrent of cum gushed out of Bruce, pouring heavily down Dinah’s throat. Dinah tasted the salty, bittersweet flood and moaned shamelessly as she swallowed. She gulped loudly as Bruce kept coming, wincing as his seed filled her mouth again and again. 

The moment Bruce felt his orgasm dwindling, he pulled out, inadvertently allowing his still pulsating manhood to shed a final ejaculation right in Dinah’s face. He had no time to allow her to recover. After quickly zipping up, he stooped to pick up Dinah and sling her over her shoulder, carrying her towards the nearby Batwing. Her refractory period would be long over by the time they reached Wayne Tower.

“I don’t think I quite caught that,” Diana said, sounding both richly amused and more than a little aroused. “I hope you’re willing to repeat it for me after you win this one.”

“Absolutely.”

“Here, here,” Dinah said weakly, and a little queasily. “Just so long as you provide the technical assistance. I think I’m… full…”

Bruce was suddenly glad he hadn’t taken the Batboat there.

***

The fight was as cacophonic as any Justice League battle, even Tim not to discern any strategy in all of it. In the sky, he caught glimpses of powered fliers unleashing their energies on the larger monsters, but that was above Tim’s paygrade. All he could do was focus on putting down as many of the cultists as possible in the melee. There wasn’t much else a man with a bo staff could do when gods and monsters were on the playing field.

Then, in the middle of battle, Tim’s mind wandered to the point of disassociation. He was going through the motions, almost mechanically parrying, dodging, attacking, but he was thinking of Cassie. How their recent reconciliation was only her condescending to him, the calm before the storm, her giving him a sweet and easy time before she left him. After all, how could he ever please her? He was just a man—she was a metahumans, able to take and give a level of pleasure he would never be capable of. She’d be happier with someone like Kon, who could match her muscle for muscle, then she ever would be with him…

***

Dick was the tip of the spear for an Amazon phalanx, his escrima sticks breaking apart the monstrous offensive like a rocky shoreline breaking apart the surf, allowing the Amazons at his back to pick apart the stunned orcs as he shattered their formation. Straining muscles ached and bruised skin throbbed; it was hard not to think of how those rocks on the shoreline eventually got broken down into sand. But he kept at it. All he could do was…

Suddenly Dick was mind-blowingly cognizant of his children. He had been aware of Josephine and Carl almost from their conception. He’d been there for Donna’s pregnancy tests, the hours of labor, raising them, feeding them, from changing their diapers to reading their bedtime stories. And he was also aware of how frail that connection now was, like a rope unraveling over a hot flame. He didn’t know where they were in all the chaos, didn’t know what danger they were in, even whether they were alive or dead. He had tried to direct them to the lightest fighting, telling himself they were needed even at their young age, but he couldn’t know that they were safe. For the first time since they’d been born, he didn’t know if his connection to his children was real or a thing of the past.

As he broke down crying, the Amazons moved to shield him, protecting him from the waves of monsters that otherwise would’ve taken advantage of his sudden panic.

***

Bruce felt the same dread, the coiling anxiety left behind by loss, seemingly endemic to all he’d gathered around him. He’d lost his parents once, his family, his world. Decades later, he’d only gained more to lose, and any such loss—his children, his wives, his acolytes—would shatter him. It had happened before, and he could remember each hurt like it was a scar emblazoned on his body. Jason Todd. Harold Allnut. Vesper Fairchild. Harvey Dent. 

But Bruce had felt these terrors before; the birthing pains of each new, consummated relationship. He knew they were both real and unreal. The world was a cruel and capricious place, where only a fool wouldn’t be afraid of losing those he loved. But that fear made him stronger, more determined than ever to protect those he love. He let the fear pass through him and over him, a fever burning itself out, as his rage and determination and adrenaline lent power to every blow he struck. His foes were sent flying as if struck by a much stronger man, bones broken, consciousness sent fleeing from their bodies. 

Absently, he realized Deimos or the Joker or the ungodly hybrid of the two was behind this psychic attack, but he also knew that his team would overcome it. Keying his mic, he barked two words: “On me.”

***

Tim followed Bruce to the courtyard of Wayne Tower, where the possessed Joker was directing his mystical power directly against the wards Zatanna had installed in case of just such an eventuality. The magical collision was rippling through the physical world, reducing the fountain in front of the tower’s façade into rubble, and melting gaping holes into the steel shutters that protected the doors and windows of Wayne Tower from physical attack. A hardened core of Deimos’s followers, demon and human, protected him as he cast his spells, and Batman plunged directly into them. Tim followed suit, still feeling a nagging sense of doubt over Cassie’s love for him. He ignored it, telling himself it was all Deimos’s lies. He would prove himself to Cassie beyond a shadow of a doubt.

***

Dick did the same as his father and brother, telling himself that each threat he neutralized was one his children wouldn’t have to face. He took courage from both the valiant charge Bruce was making and the bravery Tim was showing. He wasn’t alone. He didn’t have to save the world by himself. He just had to hold the line.

If his family could do it, so could he.

***

Bodily hurtling a cultist out of the way, Bruce came to Deimos at last, an unholy amalgamation of the Greek god and the Gotham madman. He reacted instinctively, throwing a punch aimed at reducing that ghoulish grin to splinters once again, but the Joker caught his fist in a purple glove warm enough to be on fire.

“Whoopsie-daisy!” the Deimos-thing cackled through Joker’s lips. “Looks like the sock’s on the other foot now, Bats! I’ve got all the power, and you’ve just got a closetful of issues and no Sigmund Freud in sight!”

Dick bulldozed into the Joker, knocking him off-balance and into Tim’s whirling bo staff, but Deimos quickly recovered and knocked them both aside with crunches of bone to focus on Batman. 

“All those wonderful toys and cute little playmates you’ve got, but I’ve got the real deal. Omnipotence! Omniscience! There’s no one in this whole crummy world more powerful than—“

The pregnant clouds above finally burst, not so much releasing rain as propelling it downward, shooting it into the streets of Gotham with enough force to zing off the pavement, the buildings. And above the clatter of the downpour came the tinny sound of the rainfall resounding off of hardened metal.

“Go on,” Ares said. “Finish that thought.”

“Father!” the Deimos-thing babbled, all of Joker’s mad laughter fleeing it. “I was just… the apples were for you, father, a gift to aid in dominating this world—“

“I have my own plans for this world, and my own orders for you. Orders that have not been obeyed.” The ominously looming suit of armor that was the only mortal perception of Ares advanced on Deimos, who backpedaled pathetically. “Look at you! Intertwined with a mortal! Stinking of humanity!” Literally reaching a gauntleted hand into the Joker’s body, which split around it like taffy, Ares locked onto a phantasmagorical figure of light and wrenched it free of the Joker’s flesh and blood. “Begone with you!”

He hurled Deimos’s spirit away, and it bounced painfully off a flaring wall of light in Zatanna’s words before careening—or being sucked—up into the night sky. 

The Joker’s limp body, like a snake’s shed skin, toppled to the ground, a golden apple rolling out of the purple overcoat.

Ares eyed it hungrily. “My thanks to you, Diana of the Amazons. Had this farce gone on, it could’ve proved… embarrassing. I trust you’re satisfied by my fatherly discipline.”

Bruce was only half-listening, as he was looking over Dick and Tim for injuries, but he looked up to see Diana floating down from the rooftops—no doubt where she had landed her invisible jet.

“I am pleased with its result,” Diana said diplomatically. “If we’re finished here, let us both retire to our own domains.”

“Finished? Not quite,” Ares said. He hadn’t taken his glowing red eyes off the apple. “You called upon the gods for aid, little hero. You owe me a boon in return.”

“I informed you of a snake in your garden. Left unmolested, it would’ve bitten both of us.”

“Oh? Then it was out of concern for my safety that you paid me a visit?” Ares’s voice was dark with sarcasm. “Give me the apple, child. Such things are weapons, and who better to find a use for a weapon than the God of War?”

“An unused weapon is the best kind,” Diana retorted.

Ares conjured a sword from his living armor. “I think both of us must take the word of others on that.”

“Too often true,” Diana agreed, drawing her own sword.

They took flight, coming up at two converging angles to meet fifty feet above the apple, grappling and trading blows and crossing swords as their speeding bodies continued to soar upwards until they split the crowd.

Bruce scanned the scene frantically. He could hear the wind growing, feel the rain intensifying, see flashing blue-white lightning illuminating the storm-dark world. When gods fought, mortals could only take shelter. The monsters had been reduced to half-primal states with the removal of Deimos’s influence, while the cultists were similarly demoralized if not outright exorcised. All of them were in danger from the growing storm.

“Get everyone inside!” he shouted, both into the howling winds and over his comm. Sheltering Tim and Dick under his arms, he led them to the entrance to Wayne Tower. There was no point in undoing the lockdown. The side effects of the magical assault had left gaping holes in the security, letting them waltz right in. He got his sons to safety, then turned around to run back outside. 

His heavy hitters had, without needing orders, flown up to join in the fight against Ares, while the street-level were following his orders and clearing the area. It wasn’t as simple as coming in out of the rain. The torrential downpour reduced visibility to nil, with the wind as deafening as it was freezing. As he watched, hailstones the size of baseballs started bombarding the skyline, chiseling painfully at the windows when not breaking squarely through. Bruce registered this while knowing there was little he could do about it. He picked up two downed cultists, one on either shoulder, and carried them back to Wayne Tower. Dick and Tim, walking wounded, were waiting to handcuff and corral the enemy combatants when he brought them in. 

It was on his eighth trip outside that lightning struck him.