The 1960s….

In the short time that Ray Palmer had been the Atom, he had helped his girlfriend Jean Loring with legal cases, been invited to join the Justice League of America, and visited a microscopic world. He had begun to think that he had seen it all, until he saw something quite unexpected: the Atom.

Ray was working in his laboratory one day, when a six inch man appeared in front of him and landed on the laboratory bench. The man’s clothing looked surprisingly familiar. He had a costume very similar to Ray’s Atom uniform, but with one major difference: The face mask did not cover his hair.

“Don’t worry, Ray,” said the little man, “Just let me explain.”

“By all means,” said Ray, and sat down on a stool.

“I’m you from over 20 years in your future.”

“That explains a lot of first impressions,” said Ray, and then asked the thing which was foremost on his mind, “Do Jean and I get married?”

“Yes, but if you don’t take my advice, you also get divorced. That’s why I’m here. As history stands so far, I spent too much time playing super hero, both with and without the Justice League of America. I spent too much time and money working on scientific experiments, and I even spent too much time (pun intended here) in the past, using Professor Alpheus V Hyatt’s Time Pool without his permission. It took him a while to forgive that. Jean was lonely, and a home wrecker from her office moved in while Ray was out saving the world. They tried to make it work, but recently, for me that is, Jean and I talked alone. She said that I remained her one true love. She went on to say that she came to understand that her times of waiting for Ray to take a break from science and super heroes during our marriage years were really only a reciprocated echo of the time that I (as you) waited while she put her career ahead of the chance to get married to you. She’ll still come to realize that in time, but you have to spend the time with her. Believe me, the outcome is too horrific to contemplate if you don’t.”

He would never tell Ray 1960s just how horrific. A tribe of alien visitors including Ray 1980s’ new girlfriend Laethwen all murdered by members of the CIA who were controlled by an evil global secret society. The CIA operatives had learned Ray’s identity in the 1980s, learned of his romance with Laethwen, and incinerated his tribe behind his back, so that the Atom would return to the United States and assist the CIA. After he had learned this, Ray had permanently shrunk the CIA members and left them to make their way in a world of relative giants.

“You’re telling me I should change my future and your past, to save a marriage with a woman you claim was an unfaithful wife… will be one to me,” said 1960s Ray.

“She made a mistake, regretted it, and wished we could undo the damage, to both of us. What she didn’t know is that I’d never told her of the Time Pool.”

“Of course, that’s how you’re here!” said Ray 1960s.

“Yes. I had many adventures with that, exploring the past and learning about history … only to waste what has become my past with Jean. You could change that,” said Atom 1980s.

“So what do I do?” asked Ray, “That Time Pool in particular would go to waste without someone my size to assist Professor Hyatt, even if he doesn’t know he’s being assisted.”

“There is someone else your size, smaller actually,” said Atom 1980s, “I talked to him in my time. He was considered a super villain in the 1960s, but he trusted me with secrets which revealed that he was not truly malevolent, that he could change his ways and work for good instead. I refer to the Mouse Man.”

“I heard a fair bit about him from Wonder Woman. He’s barely out of his teens,” said Ray 1960s, “Would he really reform in my time?”

“That and earlier times,” said Atom 1980s, “I’m convinced that he could aid Professor Hyatt openly, if you could arrange his release from the cage in which Wonder Woman imprisoned him. Not only that, but Professor Hyatt could operate the Time Pool with full awareness of the Mouse Man’s presence in the past, and extract him back to the present. Professor Hyatt would not be able to see the Mouse Man’s activities in the past, but he could still use the Time Pool to return Mouse Man to the present at some arbitrary ‘time’ of Professor Hyatt’s choosing.”

“I don’t know how I’ll get Wonder Woman to go for it,” said Ray 1960s.

“You just ask her to remit the Mouse Man into your custody,” said Atom 1980s, “Wonder Woman will probably assume that you want him to work with you in your Atom identity on a scientific experiment requiring another person of your own size. That would be enough to ease her concerns. In fact, the equally safe reality will be that the Mouse Man (whose future self has guaranteed the benevolent reform potential of his past self) can be trusted to work with Professor Hyatt.

“I’ll do it,” said Ray 1960s, “I can’t lose Jean, and it sounds like I’m doing Wonder Woman a favour, if she won’t have to worry about a fourth encounter with an unreformed Mouse Man.”

“I’ll fill you in on the fine points, and then I’ll really have to return to my time,” said Atom 1980s.

Ray 1960s activated the size controls that reduced him to six inch size and made his costume visible to the naked eye. The Atoms of two times talked for a while, and then the 1980s Atom seemed to disappear through a hole in the air.

“So that’s what it looks like when I do that with Professor Hyatt’s Time Pool,” thought Atom 1960s.

At the next Justice League of America meeting, the Atom waited for a suitable opportunity to talk to Wonder Woman alone, and then explained his need for the Mouse Man’s assistance in a top secret experiment.

Wonder Woman’s mouth opened wide as she laughed.

“It would be good to see him out of that cage and serving the same cause you do,” she said, “He was too funny to remain in the ranks of my bitterest enemies. He’s yours.”

Ray soon introduced the Mouse Man to Professor Hyatt, and explained that he believed the two could work together to make time travel beneficial for the study of history. Ray then began to make changes in his own life. He limited his involvement with the Justice League of America. He left time travel to the Mouse Man. He limited his time in the laboratory, and he made one more change, which only seemed fair, given what he’d learned about the potential Jean Loring of 1983.

Ray told Jean that he was the Atom, that he had been helping her with her legal cases to speed up her availability. He asked her to seize the moment and decide whether career advancement was more important than their love for each other. This time Jean was happy to advance their engagement, and the Paul Hoben of 1983 would find a partner elsewhere, without destroying one of the greatest potential romances of Super Hero and wife.

The Mouse Man worked with Professor Hyatt until they were able to modify the Time Pool enough to send a small person to a specifically chosen point in time. Both of them agreed that it would be interesting to send someone back millions of years, to see prehistoric eras. Professor Hyatt set the machine to take the Mouse Man back millions of years.

The Mouse Man went through the Time Pool and hit some strange force which bounced him back to Professor Hyatt’s laboratory in the 1960s, his present.

“Professor, what happened?” asked the Mouse Man.

“According to the instruments, you only went back about 6000 years,” said Professor Hyatt.

“But the world’s been evolving for millions of years, and so have we,” said the Mouse Man.

“That’s what many scientists have believed,” said Professor Hyatt, “But there is another school of thought, one which was often frowned on. Nonetheless, I learned it: The size of the sun has been decreasing at a rate that can only be measured over hundreds of years, but measured nonetheless. My calculations confirm that, if the sun had been around millions of years ago, it would have been so large, that it would have touched the earth and burnt it to a cinder long before the 20th Century. A number of Christians among the scientific community believe that the world was literally created by God in six days, just as Genesis records.”

“Then why is evolution so popular?” asked Mouse Man.

“Because it leads people away from any belief in intelligent design by a benevolent creator God. Evolution is widely taught in universities throughout the world, so that Christianity can be undermined, atheism can be fueled, and people can be turned away from any thought of a master designer calling them into a relationship with Him. Some believe that demons themselves are responsible for the spread of atheism and evolution. The fact that you just hit some sort of obstruction in the time stream 6000 years or so ago implies to me that creation must have indeed begun back then.”

“If that’s true, it may not be our right for me to try to witness THAT,” said Mouse Man, “Could you send me back to some time shortly after the flooding events in the time of Noah’s Ark? We could debate the origin of the world and of human beings indefinitely, but I’d rather just go back and see what’s happened in the 6000 years we can access.”

“I formed the same conclusion myself,” said Professor Hyatt, “I’ll see what we can do next.”

A few decades after Noah left the ark…

The Mouse Man found himself in a kingdom where many men were off fighting an ancient war. One man had stayed behind, an evil man named Vandar Adg. He had abandoned his military post and snuck back to the kingdom. Even the king had gone to fight, leaving the women to perform the menial chores of the kingdom.

As the Mouse Man, too small to be observed by either the uncouth looking Vandar Adg or the women of the kingdom, continued to monitor the city from thousands of years ago, he saw a strange light approaching from the sky at great speed. Then, as it drew closer, he realized it was an object, a comet that came incredibly close to the earth’s surface, without actually striking it. The young 1960s Mouse Man, Vandar Adg and all of the women were bathed a strange light, and then the comet left the vicinity of earth, to continue its journey through the universe, not returning to earth again until the 30th Century, where its effects would slow down the aging process of the Legion of Super-Heroes, so that many of them would be called ‘Lad’ or ‘Boy’ or ‘Kid’ long after their initial debut as teenage super heroes.

For now, the Mouse Man was unable to feel the effects of the comet’s rays, but continued to walk through the city looking at the women’s reactions to the sudden appearance and disappearance of the comet. Then he saw someone who seemed strangely familiar. The woman wore no lipstick, in accordance with the people of her time period. Her hair was somewhat longer than that of the average 1960s woman, reaching halfway down her back. Yet she was six foot four and, in her primitive way, very beautiful.

“Wonder Woman!” he thought, “I’d heard she was older than she looked, but how can this be? She’s been alive from this time until my time and still looks like a 34 year old in the 1960s.”

Vandar Adg would go on to realize that the comet had stopped him from aging. He would leave the kingdom and wander the world and become its most enduring criminal, later taking the name Vandal Savage.

The women would watch their husbands return from war, some dead, some alive. Yet all of those women would outlive their husbands. The unmarried women would take husbands too, but in the end, all of them would see their husbands die of old age, while they remained young. A few of them were prepared to live discrete lives in human history, remarrying only men of high risk occupations, so that the chances of seeing their husbands grow old and die would be unlikely.

Most of the women knew that they could only continue on in isolation. Having married once, and seen the outcome, they dared not marry again, nor live with men at all, as what became known as ‘Man’s World’ was subject to normal aging processes.

They retreated to an uncharted island in the vicinity of what became ancient Greece. They called it Paradise Island, and settled there. Cut off from mainstream society, they were unable to read the creation stories which Moses eventually recorded in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible, namely Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy), and unaware that the comet had caused their aging to stop, they soon believed the ancient Babylonian myths of the pagan goddess Aphrodite. Without Christian men to lead them, they built their entire culture around belief in a goddess who didn’t exist.

The comet’s effects on women were not singular. Unlike Vandar Adg, the women found their speed and strength and intelligence dramatically increased. In time, they called themselves Amazons, and in the 1940s, they would encounter a wounded Major Steve Trevor, who would win the heart of their named Princess Diana for the first time in thousands of years. Diana would return to Man’s World and assist him as both Diana Prince and Wonder Woman. In the 1960s, she would have three encounters with the Mouse Man.

The time travelling Mouse Man knew none of this, but his trip to the past had exposed him to the historical rays of the comet too. He would now never age beyond 23. He had not been able to give Professor Hyatt any information that would have revealed the true origins of the Amazons (as he did not know it himself). Yet he was back in the 1960s having arrested his own aging process.

In the years ahead, he made more journeys to the past. The next was to the 6th Century BC, where he witnessed an extraordinary adventure: An ancient king named Nebuchadnezzar had a dream, which he could not understand. Yet it made a significant impression on him. He called every magician, fortune teller, mystic and witch and medium in his kingdom to his palace and asked them to both tell him the content of his bizarre dream and its explanation. None of them could do it. In a rage, the king had them all put to death. Finally, four followers of God named Daniel, Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego were miraculously able to tell the king the content of a dream which he had not related to anyone, and to explain it.

Hiding in the king’s court, the Mouse Man heard the explanation unfolding.

“It’s a prophecy covering every era in human history from 6th Century BC down to 20th Century AD,” thought Mouse Man, “It predicts every major world power, the failed attempts to reunite the nations of Europe right down to Hitler’s time … all in cryptic prophetic language that churches in my time are only beginning to understand in the light of historical hindsight. God gave this dream to King Nebuchadnezzar, and then then gave only his people the means to understand it. Everyone involved in occult based magic and psychic powers ended up helpless and dead. Boy will Professor Hyatt be amazed at this!”

Mouse Man returned to the 1960s and related all that he had discovered.

He made more visits to the past, and saw Jason Blood involve himself with a magician and become possessed by a demon, condemned to centuries of unholy war with supernatural powers. He saw Zatanna’s mother Sindella die as a result of involvement in magic. There were numerous examples, and every case, he saw that occult based power led eventually to tragedy and despair.

By 1977, he had made many notes with Professor Hyatt and had many discussions.

“I don’t get it,” said Mouse Man at last, “Why do magical powers always lead to awful outcomes and/or death? I would have thought that such powers enabled people to stave off such troubles.”

“I’ve been studying the Bible more since you first hit the creation wall at the beginning of time,” said Professor Hyatt, “Deuteronomy Chapter 18 has one of the scariest warnings, and the most ignored warning, in all of the Bible.”

Professor Hyatt read it aloud:

‘Don’t sacrifice your children in the fires on your altars. Don’t let your people practice divination or look for omens or use spells or charms, and don’t let them consult the spirits of the dead. The Lord your God hates people who do these disgusting things, and that is why he is driving those nations out of the land as you advance. Be completely faithful to the Lord.’

“But people haven’t been,” Professor Hyatt went on, “Demons have made the occult more popular than ever, and everything you’ve reported from 6th Century BC down to present day has given us a unique insight into the consequences.”

“But Wonder Woman has a magic lasso, and she only fights for good. Think of all the good she’s done,” said the Mouse Man.

“It’s an indication of how far you’ve come, that you can say that of the woman who defeated you three times in the 1960s,” said Professor Hyatt.

“I was acting out the wrong way back then. She had a right to catch me and imprison me,” said Mouse Man, “And I’m grateful to you and the Atom for giving me a new chance all these years.”

“All these years!” said Professor Hyatt, “Do you realize that it’s been over a decade!”

“Sure,” said Mouse Man.

“But you haven’t aged.”

“Wonder Woman hasn’t aged in thousands of years,” said Mouse Man, “Oh! … That’s it. The only common experience we’ve had is the exposure to the passing comet in that time when I was back in the past! I must have met Wonder Woman when she was in her thirties. I was 23, and neither of us have aged since exposure to the comet stopped it, if it was the comet.”

“It’s the only theory that makes any sense,” said Professor Hyatt, “But who are we to know what tragedy might not already have become of Wonder Woman’s use of a magical weapon?”

Neither of them were aware that Wonder Woman was soon to undergo the greatest tragedy of all. Steve Trevor would die, permanently. Diana had been widowed when she outlived her aging husband thousands of years earlier. Now she would see her second love die before they could ever marry.

“Then she must be warned,” said Mouse Man, “But she’ll never believe that one of her earlier enemies would have a benevolent motive for asking her to give up one of her most potent weapons.”

“She will if I vouch for you, and if we tell her what you learned of her early life. Only the Time Pool could have made that possible. She’d have to believe you then,” said Professor Hyatt.

“What if all this Bible stuff is just religious conjecture?” asked Mouse Man, “You haven’t really disproved evolution completely. What about Giganta? Professor Zool apparently evolved her from a gorilla.”

“Why don’t you go back and find out?” asked Professor Hyatt, “I can send you back to what must have been the gorilla’s early years, if she was a gorilla. If she was a girl all along, then she’ll be a young adult girl. I’ve accessed records of where Zool claims to have found her. Zool and I once moved in the same circles of scientists.”

So the Mouse Man was soon sent back in time and space, with the use of the Time Pool’s latest setting. He reconnoitered the area until he came upon what was undoubtedly a beautiful eight foot tall red haired young woman..

“Giganta! But you’re not supposed to be a girl in this time!” said Mouse Man.

“That’s a cryptic comment, coming from a rather small guy!” said Giganta, “You seem to know my nickname. What’s yours with a costume like that? Rodeo Rodent?”

“It’s Mouse Man,” said the erstwhile villain, as Giganta’s huge hand lifted him up and dangled him in front of her face.

“Mouth Man indeed!” she laughed.

“No disrespect intended, but I didn’t know you lisped,” said Mouse Man.

“I don’t,” said Giganta, and opened her mouth wide.

As he watched, he found himself heading slowly into her mouth.

“What are you doing?” he called in surprise.

He saw Giganta’s laughing tongue stretched out in front of him, as she vocalized her pleasure in what she was planning.

“Oh you can’t be serious!” he said, as he suddenly felt her moist tongue making contact below him.

Mouse Man looked back at the top of her throat.

“I’m in an eight foot tall woman’s mouth!” he thought, “So much for her being a gorilla. It obviously wasn’t true, but I’m about to be swallowed by the latest living evidence to disprove evolution.”

For some reason it was getting harder and harder to maintain the same position on her tongue. He felt himself sliding towards the back of it. He pushed out at her side teeth, sending himself forward on her tongue, or backward from the point of view of his own body, but he knew it was futile delay of the inevitable. If Giganta intended to swallow him, then her huge mouth would have no trouble at all in dispatching his permanently shrunken body.

Was she merely teasing him, or would she do it? She was a known criminal in his time, but this Giganta had never heard of the Mouse Man. She might not even have yet heard of Wonder Woman, even though the Amazon had been active in Man’s World since the 1940s.

He realized that Giganta was merely playing with him. The Tongue of War would end whenever she chose to end it. At that point she would either remove him from her mouth or-

Suddenly he saw that the angle of her tongue was now sloping downwards in front of him, much more than hit had been before. He slid helplessly down and into her throat. He felt the most incredibly powerful pressure as the huge woman began gulping against his diminutive struggling efforts to resist. Each time he was able to hold his position for up to thirty seconds, and would then be gulped down another two or three inches.

Giganta was winning. She would eventually have him in her stomach. It was only a matter of time.

And time was what saved him. Just as he reached the bottom of her throat, he found himself pulled back into 1977.

“What a vore star spectacular!” he thought, as Professor Hyatt greeted him with interest.

He kept the matter of his having been eaten to himself, but said that he had been confused by an eight foot human girl Giganta in the late 1950s.

“Was she or was she not a gorilla at some point?” Professor Hyatt asked, “Will we ever know?”

“You could send me to a slightly later point in time, and I’ll stick around unseen and observe,” said Mouse Man, who figured that Giganta would be convinced that she had eaten him for good.

She would not expect him to return from her future.

As he secretly observed Giganta in the past, he saw that Gorilla Grodd, who had at that point not yet first encountered the Flash, had made a secret visit from Gorilla City to the outside world. He heard Grodd tell of the city and its scientifically advanced culture.

“So the Amazons aren’t the only unusual race of beings living in a hidden location,” thought Mouse Man.

Giganta talked of her dreams of criminal conquest too.

“I could use a willing assistant,” said Grodd, “But could I trust a human? I do have a metamorphic machine, that could turn you into an ape.”

“An ape! You must be kidding,” said Giganta.

“I suppose so,” said Grodd, “Though it’s a shame. You must be the finest physical specimen on the planet among humans. You’d have made quite an ape.”

“You’re probably not the sanest ally I could count on,” said Giganta, and turned to walk away.

Grodd suddenly struck her from behind and knocked her out. As Mouse Man looked on, the super gorilla took her to his machine and forced her to become an ape. He promised to return her to normal, but only after she had aided him in his crimes.

Mouse Man was pulled back to the present by the Time Pool, and told Professor Hyatt all he had learned so far. Both of them agreed that the best way to learn the rest of Giganta’s origin was to send Mouse Man back to when Grodd first fought the Flash. Mouse Man made the journey and learned that Grodd’s clashes with the Flash distracted him from any further conspiratorial interaction with Giganta. In fact it was Professor Zool who found the ape and put her through the same tests as Zool had already performed on a number of other apes.

Zool was a believer in evolution, and when he turned Giganta into a human, he was convinced that he had evolved her. In fact, all he had done was restore a girl to her true form. As only Mouse Man and Giganta now knew, Giganta hadn’t been evolved from a gorilla. She had been temporarily metamorphosed into one and then the process had been reversed by a scientist who never knew her true origin.

“Who knows what would have happened if she had wanted to join Grodd’s banana republic willingly,” thought the Mouse Man, who was now finally ready to take the Bible at its word on every issue, despite the prevalence of the supernatural events he had seen in human history.

1978 came around, and Mouse Man knew that he had to stop Wonder Woman from continuing to use her magic lasso. He hadn’t seen her for so many years, and they had been opponents back then, except for the Diana who hadn’t noticed his presence thousands of years in the past. Even after all his amazing adventures in time and space, the Mouse Man had to psyche himself up.

Though not as tall as Giganta, nor as bulky, Wonder Woman was taller than most men. She had great speed, though not in the super speed category of the Flash, super strength, though not to the extent of Superman, and great intelligence. The last time he’d seen her had been when she handed him over to the Atom.

Was there any reason to hope that she would not think he’d gone back to crime, if he asked her to do away with her magic lasso? Could he really save her from the fate of all who involved themselves with the occult?

Days of prevaricating were interrupted when Professor Hyatt called his attention to an important newscast.

“Here atop the United Nations building, the Cheetah has bound Wonder Woman in her own magic lasso and is threatening to throw her to her death unless the U.N. meets her billion dollar ransom demand,” said Clark Kent for WGBS, “Can even Wonder Woman survive a fall from that height under such conditions?”

What Clark could not tell anyone was that he had never been so unable to sneak off and change to Superman. Could he subtly use his super breath at an angle, to cushion Wonder Woman’s fall, if Cheetah made good her threat?

Mouse Man had no idea that Clark Kent even was Superman.

“I’ve got to help,” said Mouse Man, “Send me there.”

“I can’t move you in space without some time displacement as well,” said Professor Hyatt, “I’ve always sent you back years at a time. I’d have to recalibrate it to send you back only a few minutes.”

“Then let’s do it,” said Mouse Man.

Soon he arrived on his shortest trip back in time, just beside the bound body of Wonder Woman, while Cheetah had her back to the Amazon. Cheetah was yelling her threat through a foghorn to the crowds and reporters below.

Wonder Woman gaped in surprise at the Mouse Man’s sudden appearance.

“Explain later,” he whispered into her ear, “I’ve got to untie you quickly. It’s the only way you’ll have the strength to stop her. As soon as I’ve done it, you have to stop her without using the lasso.”

Mouse Man scurried around her body, undoing the lasso, until Wonder Woman was free. Then he jumped out of the way, and watched the Amazon jump to her feet, and head lock Cheetah from behind.

“Impossible! Who got up here to help you” she snarled, as Wonder Woman forced her away from the edge and turned her around, “Mouse Man! But why would you help Wonder Woman?”

“Let’s go, Cheetah,” said Wonder Woman, and marched the villainess towards the greatest invention of Amazonian science: her telepathically controlled invisible plane.

Wonder Woman flew Cheetah down to police, and then returned to collect Mouse Man and the lasso.

“I’ve so much to tell you. You’ve got to get rid of that,” said Mouse Man, “Atom’s project was a time travel machine.”

Mouse Man explained everything he had learned about the history of the occult and the dangers of magic, and finally watched her surprise as he told of his visit to the city where her younger self lived at the time of the comet, and how it had stopped them both from aging.

“I never knew Vandar Adg, but he must have become Vandal Savage,” said Wonder Woman.

“You have so many powers from the comet, which are innately in your own body. Can you believe me about the lasso?” asked the Mouse Man.

“I do. You either saved my life or the United Nations’ billion dollars,” said Wonder Woman.

“Cheetah was homicidal,” said Mouse Man.

“She did raise one interesting question though,” said Wonder Woman.

“What was that?” asked Mouse Man.

“She worded it as to ask why you saved me. An equal question of consistency would be why you fought against me so much when we first met.”

“Well I’ve reformed.”

“But you’ve done more than stay out of trouble. You’ve helped advance man’s knowledge with time travel, and performed a heroic deed for which I can never repay you. It just doesn’t make sense that you’d once have been willing to … “

“Be a super villain? Well I think Professor Hyatt’s Christian influence changed me too.”

“But why the short career of crime in the first place?”

“Do you really think I should tell you?”

“Yes.”

“I was a boy in the 1950s. I grew up with such a massive crush on you from everything I saw on the news reels, but why would Wonder Woman be interested in me? I was just a kid, and you had …”

“Steve…”

“And my immature self found the one way to interact with you was to become the one thing that would get your attention: a criminal. In some ways I even loved it every time you caught me. At least I was in your hands …. Your lovely hands.”

“You’ll never age, never die like Steve,” she said.

He wondered why she was taking notice of that now.

“Does this mean you might … like me?” asked the Mouse Man.

“I did have Steve back then, until very recently, but I must admit I did always think you were so cute. Do you still have the ability to make me your size temporarily?”

“I guess so. I haven’t used it in the past. I was just an observer with the time pool most of the time, but it should work, but wouldn’t Wonder Woman be stronger at full size?”

“Yes, but Diana would like to hug you.”

He realized that she was now holding him right in front of her lips. Mouse Man’s dreams were all coming true in that moment. He reached out a little, gripped her lower lip in his hands, pulled himself a little closer. Sensing his intentions, she moved her palm closer to straighten him up, and let him kiss her full sized lip. He enjoyed and then drew back.

“Thank you so much for forgiving my early days,” said Mouse Man, “You can only imagine how long I’ve always wanted to do that, every time we were fighting.”

“I think I did too, at some subconscious level, even while all that was going on”, said Diana.

“Really?” asked Mouse Man.

“Yes, but as far as I knew, you were a super villain, and I was somewhat spoken for until last year.”

“Well at least neither of us have lost any years to aging, though it has been a long time.”

They began to date, and the Mouse Man would enjoy both the size differential aspects of kissing a relative giantess and the size compatible aspects of cuddling a temporarily shrunken Wonder Woman.

To his delight, Diana began wearing beautiful long elegant dark blue or black dresses and low heeled shoes for their dates, removing her bracelets and tiara and covering her Wonder Woman costume’s other parts completely. Some of the dresses were sleeveless. Some had long sleeves and some had short. Each of them complemented her beauty in slightly different ways.

He loved the sight of the towering Diana at home in her beautiful dresses as she cooked and served their meals. He loved sitting on her bare shoulder, looking at the side of her cheek or feeling her giant kisses. How many men would have gladly married her for a few decades of happiness, had she remained in Man’s World and made her condition public? Yet she had saved her widowed self, only for Steve Trevor and now for the Mouse Man himself, who had the same condition by virtue of time travel back to a critical moment.

He was even able to dispel any of Diana’s belief in the idea that Giganta had been born a gorilla. He left out the details of his having been eaten by the young woman who went on to become Wonder Woman’s eight foot enemy.

Giganta herself had no reason to believe that the Mouse Man she had once eaten was the same Mouse Man who had subsequently fought Wonder Woman in the 1960s. However, she never forgot that meal, and wondered about this apparently new Mouse Man and began to think of getting her hands on him. For that she would have to take on Wonder Woman, and the chances of winning were very remote.  

Giganta had watched the news coverage of Cheetah’s United Nations battle with Wonder Woman. Mouse Man’s involvement had been undetected, because of his size, but Giganta knew that Cheetah would be the best person to help her deal with Wonder Woman, in order to enable Giganta to get at Wonder Woman’s delectable dating partner.

Giganta assembled every enemy of Wonder Woman who wasn’t currently incarcerated, and they agreed to launch an all out assault on the Amazonian Super Heroinne. Angle Man became their tactician and planned the attack.

First they busted Cheetah out of prison, knowing that this would draw out Wonder Woman. Then, while Wonder Woman was busy fighting all of the others, Giganta began to search the area surrounding the prison, until she came upon the Mouse Man, who was observing the battle.

“I didn’t think you’d find yourself much use against my team of villains,” said Giganta, seizing the Mouse Man, “But I also knew you’d want to be close to your girlfriend. It’s the last you’ll ever see of her.”

Giganta ran away with her tiny captive in hand.

“She obviously wants to eat me, like she did last time, when I was in the past,” thought the Mouse Man, “But she doesn’t know that I’m the same guy. She won’t expect me to be aware of her plans.”

Giganta took him to her house and set him down on a table, releasing her grip on him.

“If you’re going to get rid of me for revenge on Wonder Woman, there’s one way you could do it that would be preferable to me,” said the Mouse Man, “You have a beautiful big mouth, Giganta. Would you be interested in eating me?”

“As it turns out, that’s what I had in mind, little man,” said the huge woman.

“Well you’re big enough to swallow me whole, and this is a lovely venue to do it,” said Mouse Man.

“Maybe I should have just asked you out on a one way dinner date,” said Giganta, “This isn’t about revenge on Wonder Woman. I’ve been wanting to gobble you down, ever since I first learned of Wonder Woman’s tiny dating partner.”

“I know a great Mouserole recipe that you could make with me,” said the Mouse Man, “Can you take me to your kitchen?”

“It’d be my pleasure,” said Giganta, and soon set him down on her kitchen bench.

Mouse Man began suggesting various spices, which Giganta proceeded to fetch from drawers. While she was doing it, Mouse Man managed to silently summon all the mice in the area to find their ways into the house and head for the kitchen. Soon there were several of them on the floor.

Giganta shrieked with rage at their unsightly presence and ran for the broom closet. She opened the kitchen door to the back yard and began chasing the vermin from the kitchen with a broom. While she was occupied, the Mouse Man managed to get to the oven, which was beside the kitchen bench, and hide himself well behind it.

Giganta drove all the mice out and came back with a bucket and mop and noticed Mouse Man’s absence.

“So it was you who brought them here somehow to cover your escape,” said Giganta, “Well I’ll find you as soon as I’ve cleaned the floor.”

Giganta mopped the floor and then spent a long time searching the kitchen.

“You must be able to climb like a real mouse to have gotten down to the floor,” she said, “But you won’t get out of this room.”

It was a stale mate for a long time, and then Giganta suddenly guessed what he had done, and tried to reach behind the oven to grab him. Her hands and arms were too large.

“Why don’t you just give up and let me go?” asked Mouse Man, “It’s not fair to eat someone against their will.”

“I’m hardly going to get a willing volunteer, am I?” said Giganta, “And what would you know about fairness? I gave up on that a long time ago.”

“When?”

“When I was 16.”

“Why?”

The 1950s…

Dale Roland was the skinniest guy in the school. For years the teachers had done their best to protect him from bullies, but 10th grade was the hardest time he’d had to date. One day after school, he was walking to the bus stop, when two of his worst enemies stepped out of an alley way and walked towards him.

There was no point in running. He’d consistently come last in any athletic activity at school. He’d be outrun, caught and beaten up anyway. Arnie and Val drew nearer, and then Arnie grabbed him, while Val snatched his bag and emptied it into the gutter, books and all.

“Thanks for getting me suspended last time you dobbed us in,” said Arnie.

“Why don’t you let him go?” came a voice.

“It’s the freak,” sneered Val, “Weren’t the doorways big enough in your old school, Doris?”

Dale could now see that it was the new girl Doris, who’d transferred from another school. She was seven feet tall already, and had red hair and a heavily built body, which he’d begun to admire from afar as soon as she’d come to the school.

“I said LET HIM GO!” said Doris.

Dale had never seen her like that before. No one had.

Doris took hold of Arnie, forcing him to release Dale. The girl had just surprised the largest bully in the school with the true extent of her strength. She heaved the teenaged thug against the wall, before Val shoved her from behind, catching her off guard.

As she regained her balance, Arnie swung at her. Doris dodged, and punched Arnie with unprecedented female strength and knocked him off his feet. She pivoted around and launched an equally devastating blow at Val, who took it in the chest and buckled over.

There was no fight left in either of them.

“Get your sorry selves out of here, and if you ever bully anyone in the school again, I’ll really finish this!” said Doris and watched them leave.

“Thank you so much,” said Dale, “I’m so glad you came to our school.”

“I got teased for my unusual height at an all girls school until I got sick of it and transferred here,” said Doris, “It looks like we’ve both had a hard time.”

“But your height’s great. I like you much more than any other girl in the school or anywhere,” said Dale.

“I didn’t think a regular guy would ever be interested in me. I guess you’re actually a very special guy. I’ll help you pick up your books.”

They gathered up everything that had fallen from the bag and had soon packed everything.

“Would you like to go out with me on Friday night and see a movie?” asked Dale.

“Sure,” said Doris.

They made their arrangement, and Doris waited outside the cinema on the Friday night, but Dale never came. So surprised was she at being stood up by such a promising potential boyfriend, that she walked the streets trying to work out why. Her steps took her towards the alley where she had rescued him two days earlier, and she saw a police cordon with tape.

“What happened?” she asked.

“A boy’s been murdered, stabbed to death. He went to the local high school.”

“So do I,” said Doris, “Who was it?”

To her horror, she learned that it had been Dale. She told the police of the incident two days earlier, and a search of Val’s and Arnie’s houses soon yielded some clothing with small, barely noticeable blood stains at Val’s place. They were interrogated until they admitted where they’d disposed of the knives they’d used, charged and locked away.

1978…

“Do you think that the word fair even remains in my vocabulary?” asked Giganta, “Dale was handsome, shy, and cute. We didn’t get one date! That’s a lot less than you had with Wonder Woman. Where was your Amazon when Dale needed her? Well I’ve made sure she won’t be there when you need her, and you’re going to be my dinner!”

“Not likely,” said the Mouse Man, “I’m staying put.”

Giganta squeezed her fingers down behind both sides of the oven and pulled until she’d ripped her own oven out of the kitchen furnishings. She put it on the kitchen table and loomed in front of Mouse Man.

“It’s all over for you now, little man, and you’re lucky I want you to go down whole, after you made me wreck my own kitchen to get at you.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” said Mouse Man, as Giganta seized him and carried him into the living room and sat on a couch, “It can be changed. I have a way to time travel back to when you were teenage Doris. Arnie and Val can be stopped, as long as you can pinpoint the date it happened.”

“How could I ever forget that date? As far as I’m concerned, it was the worst day of the 1950s?” said Giganta, “But as if I’m going to give you the chance to trick your way into another escape attempt with a phony story like time travel.”

Giganta opened her mouth and tilted her head and lowered him slowly towards her tongue, which now formed the following words:

“Take a good look, Mousey. You won’t be coming back out again.”

He stared in at her approaching tongue and wondered how to convince her. He’d been mercilessly eaten by that beautiful mouth of hers once before.

That was it!

“Doris! I mean Giganta, I can prove it to you! This isn’t the first time you’ve eaten me. Do you remember eating another Mouse Man once, back before you became a gorilla?”

“Yes, but how did you know?”

“I was him! I time travelled.”

“But I gulped him all the way down.”

“Did you feel fed afterwards?”

“Oddly enough I didn’t. But how could you possibly have escaped my stomach, if that was you?”

“The Time Pool is so small that only I can use it, and the Atom if he still wanted to. Its operator simply called me back and I was drawn from your stomach in the past to the Time Pool in my present.”

“I guess it must be true,” said Giganta.

“Well I can go back to the Friday afternoon in the 1950s when Dale was killed in that alley and stop them. I’ll ask the Atom to go with me. He retains the ability to have his full weight even at tiny size. He’ll give Arnie and Val a hiding, and then we’ll get them booked for attempted murder.”

“What have I got to lose?” asked Giganta, “I guess I already got to eat you once. I wonder if that will still have happened after my younger self gets that date with Dale.”

“Maybe you’ll never become a gorilla,” said Mouse Man, “You can take me at my word. I feel for your situation.”

He told her all about his own long crush on Wonder Woman, and the time he had to wait to win her heart. He left out his knowledge of the origins of the Amazons, but convinced Giganta of both his ability to change her past and of his sincere concern for her romantic well being.

“There is one thing you could do for me though,” said Mouse Man.

“Let you go, of course. It won’t work if I don’t.”

“Yes, but if I’m going to go back and save your true love, you have to save mine. Do you know where that lot took Wonder Woman?”

“Yes, we planned it. She’ll be at Angle Man’s latest secret lair.”

“You have to take me there, after Atom gets me help from Wonder Woman’s Justice League friends to even the odds. There’s too many for three of us to take on.”

Mouse Man contacted the Atom, who managed to enlist Green Arrow, Black Canary, the Flash and Hawkgirl. The five Super Heroes, along with Mouse Man and Giganta were able to make a surprise entry and free Wonder Woman from the villains.

Soon after that, Mouse Man and Atom made their way into the past, while Wonder Woman stayed with Professor Hyatt. While the Atom threw himself into the fight, the Mouse Man carefully gathered up the falling knives, which Arnie and Val dropped in the fight. The finger prints would be useful in convicting the boys for attempted murder. Atom flew off and returned to the scene moments later as Ray Palmer, so that he could hand the defeated boys over to the police without having to explain the presence of the Atom in the past. The police took a witness statement from Dale and were about to ask Ray Palmer for the same thing, when they noticed that the man had mysteriously left the room unseen.

The Atom left the police station at miniature size, before the need to identify himself arose, and felt confident that Doris would now keep her date with Dale that night.

With Atom and Mouse Man back in 1978, and 1950s Doris none the wiser about their involvement, she met Dale at the cinema and enjoyed the movie, putting her huge arm around him for most of the second half. After that, they went to an all evening malt shop, enjoyed sodas together, and then Doris walked him home.

“I know it’s traditional for the guy to do it,” said Doris.

“I understand. It works better if you protect me. Nobody could hurt you,” said Dale, and noticed that Doris had stopped walking with her body touching against his.

He stretched up and kissed her. He felt her powerful arms embracing him, and was hugged tightly against her huge body and enjoyed every moment of it immensely as they kissed and cuddled under a street light.

Dale and Doris continued dating throughout their teenage years, and into their twenties. Doris never met Grodd, was never turned into a gorilla, and never met Zool.

Mouse Man would remember both timelines, but the world at large would never know of a super villain named Giganta.

1975….

Doris and Dale were exploring a fairly untraveled American jungle, when they came to a glowing cave. They went inside, looked around and came out, to find that everything outside had changed. The jungle was now giant sized, but not only that, it was totally different.

“That cave must have taken us to another world,” said Dale, “I don’t know how, since we came out the way we went in, but it has.”

They walked a little way, and then saw a giantess approaching.

“We’d better get out of here,” said Giganta, and ran for the cave.

They reached it just before the giantess could grab them, and waited until she gave up and left. Then they walked back out, to find themselves once again on their own world.

“It must alternate as a doorway to both worlds, one at a time,” said Dale, as they headed back into the jungle of their own world, “It’s not safe for us to explore that world, now that you’re no longer the biggest woman around. Though you are still my favourite.”

“I should hope so,” said Doris, “But the funny thing is that I feel like I could…”

Both Doris and her clothing began growing until she was as big as the giantess they had seen in the other world.

“How did you do that?” asked Dale.

“It must be something in the unusual chemistry of my own large body, activated by that world or the cave,” said Doris.

“Yes, the glowing light in that cave’s walls could be radioactive, but only to you. It’s given you the power of giant size.”

“And apparently the power to shrink down to my regular eight feet height too,” said Doris and reduced herself to the size that Dale had admired for years.”

“I guess we can explore it, with you to look after me,” said Dale.

“It all began for us, with me looking after you,” said Doris, with a trace of amusement in her voice that Dale had never seen before.

“Can you do something else for me in that world?” asked Dale, with a shyness that she had not seen in him since they had first started dating.

“What?” asked Doris.

“Kiss me while you’re a giantess,” said Dale.

“Sure. You’d really like that, would you?”

“I sure would.”

They went back to the cave, and then out again, this time into the giant world. Checking around for other giants, they found themselves apparently alone, and Dale watched his beautiful girlfriend grow to enormous proportions again.

She gave him a marvelous kiss, and then lay down and let him rest on her upper body.

“When I first started dating you, I didn’t think it could get any better, but I love you even more now,” said Dale.

They made many trips to the giant world together, telling nobody on their own world of its existence, and the 1978 of the altered timeline rolled around in due course. One day they made their way into the giant world again, and Doris sat down with Dale at around 1pm and looked down at him.

“I feel like a picnic lunch,” she said.

“But we didn’t bring any food. Even if you shrink back to normal size, there’s nothing to feed either of us.”

“Isn’t there?” asked Doris, “I was thinking mainly of a good meal for myself. I’ve looked after you well over the years, but I’ve seen you in a different light since I acquired my power. I can’t deny it any longer. Can you see how you might be able to assist me for a change?”

“Do you mean you’re asking me to be the picnic food?” asked Dale.

“You wouldn’t suffer, given our size differences,” said Doris, “I’ve thought about it a lot.”

Though Doris no longer had any memory of having eaten the Mouse Man in a previous timeline, she had still acquired the same desire to eat a smaller man as a giantess in this case. Had the original timeline remained, she would still have found the cave and acquired the power to grow to giant size.

“I must admit, when we were in that outdoor restaurant having fish and chips a few months ago, I saw you pick up chips one or two at a time, and put out your tongue to lower them onto it. There was something about the way your tongue sparkled in the sunlight. It made me imagine things.”

“What sort of things?”

“Like being lowered onto your tongue, or being licked.”

“Or being eaten,” said Doris.

“Yes! We’ve been together for two decades, and it’s the only thing we haven’t done. You don’t want kids, and neither do I. We’ve talked about that early in the piece. The only thing we haven’t done is this.”

“We really are made for each other!” said Doris.

“You know what would make it even better.”

“What?”

“Knowing you’d have done it even if I said no.”

“I would.”

“Is that what you were leading up to just now?”

“Yes. I was just taunting you with the invitation. I expected you to bow out. You surprised me.”

“Does my enthusiasm spoil it for you?”

“No. I just want to gobble you down.”

“Well your view makes it better for me.”

“Let’s on with it then,” said Doris.

“Now?” asked Dale.

“No time like the present,” said Doris.

“But it will be the thrill of a lifetime for both of us. I was thinking we could build up to it.”

“Or that you could change your mind and escape back on earth?”

“No, not at all, I promise. If we stay here, you can stay giant sized and take me on a few dates here first. I can’t get away from a giant you, and I don’t want to.”

“Alright,” said Doris, “I’ve made enough arrangements here since we discovered this world, so that I can function in it effectively.”

They dated for a few more weeks, and each of them enjoyed the anticipation. Lying on Doris’s neck at nights was a pleasant experience for Dale with the thought of being gulped down inside it in the near future.

Doris brought a giant picnic rug and set it up on the day concerned. She lifted Dale up and put out her tongue slowly and licked him.

“Oh Doris, it’s incredible. I love being eaten by you!”

“You’re quite a treat yourself,” said Doris.

After a series of interesting mouth play movements, Doris was ready to finish the meal.

“You’d better be going down then,” she said.

“I’m all set,” said Dale.

“Have a good ride, darling,” said Doris, and slid him into her mouth and slowly down her throat, “… Let’s hope the next one is not quite so willing.”

Wonder Woman and Mouse Man were enjoying their love affair, with no idea that an incumbent version of Giganta would soon be menacing the world.

Mouse Man, Wonder Woman and Vandal Savage and the other Amazons would live agelessly into the 30th Century, and would eventually encounter the Legion of Super-Heroes, but that was another story. For now the Justice League of America had seen a number of relationships continuing successfully. Green Arrow and Black Canary were growing closer together. Superman was involved with Lois Lane. Flash and Atom were married to Iris and Jean. Hawkman and Hawkgirl were pleased that Hawkgirl had recently joined the team. Something in the altered timeline had prevented Elongated Man and Zatanna and Red Tornado from meeting and joining the Justice League.

Bruce Wayne’s romance with Silver St Cloud had taken a surprising turn for the better in the altered timeline. Having seen news reports of Wonder Woman’s public involvement with the somewhat small and vulnerable Mouse Man, Silver had been inspired to leave her worries for Batman’s safety behind and hold onto their relationship.

Alpheus Hyatt retired, and left the Time Pool in the care of Wonder Woman, so that Mouse Man could continue to use it.

Not long after Giganta ate her long time boyfriend Dale, Wonder Woman and Mouse Man were visited by a familiar looking eight foot tall woman.

“Do I call you Doris or Giganta in this timeline?” asked Mouse Man.

“Actually it’s Miniscula,” said the woman, “I come from a parallel earth, where everyone is so large that you, Wonder Woman would be the relative size of your Mouse Man to the people of our earth. I’ll call it earth-G for giant and call yours earth-M for miniature. I discovered a glowing cave, but couldn’t fit into it, except for my hand and forearm. Its radiation gave me the ability to shrink from my regular size to this one. I went inside, explored the cave, and came out to find that I was on your world. The next time I went in and came out again, I was on my own world, and so on. I took the name Miniscula because of my shrinking power, and used it for petty crime.”

“Then why should we trust your word on anything?” asked Wonder Woman.

“Because there is one thing I would not be prepared to do, though the urge is there,” said Miniscula, “Namely, eating young men from your world. I recently saw a parallel version of myself from your world, who had acquired the power of growing to the size of my world’s inhabitants after she first entered the cave that links our worlds. She brought her boyfriend there and ate him, while I watched from concealment.”

“That must have been Giganta,” said Mouse Man, “She was a foe of yours in a previous timeline here, Wonder Woman. I altered her past to prevent it, when I used the Time Pool one time.”

“When she’d finished swallowing the man, she said aloud to herself, ‘Let’s hope the next one is not quite so willing.’ I knew that she meant to come here and lure other young men from your world to ours, where she could enlarge herself unnoticed and eat them whole. I know how much she wants to do it, because I’ve resisted the urge myself,” said Miniscula.

“How ironic,” thought Mouse Man, “Even though I changed her past, Giganta still retained her taste for swallowing young men whole. Her counterpart here, though involved in other crime, is so against eating people that she came here to warn us.”

“Could you take us to this cave and show us the way to your world?” asked Wonder Woman, “We can lie in wait for Giganta there.”

Miniscula led them to the giant earth and was walking them through the jungle at her reduced eight foot height, when a costumed figure jumped out of the trees and began wrestling with Miniscula. He looked exactly like the Atom, except that he was six foot tall. Mouse Man and Wonder Woman realized that it must be Atom-G, who was their size while in his shrunken form.

“Wait!” said Wonder Woman, “She’s just helped us to save people from a villain from our world, which parallels yours in a number of ways. In fact the villain we’re after is called Giganta, and she’s a parallel version of Miniscula.”

“I guess that’s possible,” said Atom-G, “I just noticed that you look like my Wonder Woman, except for not having her skirt. Alright, Miniscula. I’ll take their word for it, but next time I see you, I’ll bring you in.”

Miniscula thanked him and left.

“There’s a Wonder Woman here?” said Wonder Woman.

“Up here!” came a voice, and Wonder Woman and Mouse Man looked up to see the towering form of Wonder Woman-G stepping into view.

Her costume was identical, except that instead of discarding the skirt early in her career, she had opted to wear an even longer one and her boots only came up to her ankles. She was too large to even notice Mouse Man.

“I feel a bit strange talking to a giant version of myself,” said Wonder Woman-M, “It’s not altogether comfortable.”

“If I remain this size, Wonder Woman-M and I can swap notes about our two worlds,” said Atom-G.

“If you put me gently in your palm and carry me off a little way, and talk softly, I’ll shout loud enough for you to hear me!” called Mouse Man to Wonder Woman-G.

“Who was that?” asked Wonder Woman-G.

“Me, the Mouse Man! I’m like a dot. I just jumped from my Wonder Woman’s shoulder to the top of your boot!” called the Mouse Man, “Lower your hand!”

Wonder Woman-G opened her palm and placed it gently beside her boot. Squinting, she saw the Mouse Man step onto it. She stood up and walked off into the jungle and then sat down.

“Have you actually teamed up with your world’s Wonder Woman?” asked Wonder Woman-G.

“Yes,” said Mouse Man, “Not only that, we’re in love.  Is there a Mouse Man on this earth?”

“That’s not something I’d ever want my Atom to know about,” said Wonder Woman-G, “But I suppose you should be told.”

Elsewhere, Wonder Woman-M and Atom-G were talking too.

“I’d better keep my hands to myself,” said Atom, “It’s just that you look so much as Wonder Woman does to me when I’m at my Ray Palmer height, it’s hard to keep from…”

“You’re with her?” asked Wonder Woman-M, “On my world, the Atom married Jean Loring.”

“There’s a Jean here,” said Atom-G, “She married her high school sweet heart. She’s Jean Hoben now, quite a pretty lady too, but my heart belongs to Diana.”

Mouse Man-M sat on Wonder Woman-G’s palm, looking out at the doubly gigantic lips of Wonder Woman-G, as they began to tell him of his counterpart.

The 1960s, on earth-G…

Wonder Woman-G fought Mouse Man-G three times. After she had captured him for the third time, she smuggled him off to her home on Paradise Island, and placed him in a large pan of water over a hot fire.

“You won’t be troubling me again,” she said, “Let me know when you’re getting warm. I don’t want to overcook you.”

“Overcook me! Surely you’re not going to eat me, Wonder Woman! You’re a super hero.”

“I know it’s a little out of character, but you just look so delicious,” she said, “I’ve caged you the last two times, but your culinary appeal is hard to resist, and you are a villain, after all.”

“Only to get your attention, Wonder Woman. That’s why I really did it.”

“Do you mean to say that you’re in love with me?” asked Wonder Woman.

“Yes! If you weren’t dating Steve Trevor, I’d have asked you out.”

“Well allow me to ask you in,” said Wonder Woman.

She sprinkled salt into the pan around him, and stirred the water with a spoon.

“The world won’t accept you as a Super Hero, if you do this,” said Mouse Man.

“They’ll never know about it,” said Wonder Woman.

“Couldn’t you just put me into your beautiful mouth for a while and then let me go? I’d even enjoy that,” said Mouse Man.

“I’m sure you would. I’ll enjoy swallowing you,” said Wonder Woman.

“It’s getting very warm now,” said Mouse Man, still amazed that she was going to do this to him.

She took a large ladle, scooped him out of the pan and onto a plate. She put the fire out and carried him to her private dining table and sat down.

“I guess you’re salty now,” she said, and gently picked him up and licked the salt from him.

“There’s not much more to say then, is there?” said Mouse Man.

“Except for Thank you,” said Wonder Woman.

She gave him a long slow kiss.

“I hope that’s some consolation,” she said.

“It is! At least I won’t think of myself as your enemy now, even if you do.”

“Friends, if you like,” said Wonder Woman, “I think I’d feel this way about eating you, whether you were villain, hero or mere civilian. Now I’m going to put you into my mouth for a while and then you’ll have to be ready for a strong gulp.”

“I wish it could end differently. I love you, Wonder Woman,” said Mouse Man.

“In you go, Morsel Man,” said Wonder Woman.

Before he knew it, he was inside her mouth, and shortly thereafter, he was gulped down her throat.

1978, earth-G…

“You ate him!” said Mouse Man-M, “Giganta once did that to me, but I got out of her with the aid of the Time Pool.”

“Well didn’t you enjoy it just a little bit?” asked Wonder Woman-G.

“I’d have enjoyed it more being in my Wonder Woman’s mouth, though I’ve never talked about it,” said Mouse Man, “But I wouldn’t want to be eaten and gone. I love being with her too much.”

“I felt that about Ray,” said Wonder Woman-G, “That’s why I broke up with Steve Trevor. He married Etta Candy. She’s his widow now. I asked the Atom if I could eat him and then if he could use his further shrinking ability to pass through my stomach wall and out into the fresh air again. We did it over and over and still do. He loves it as well, and we’re very attached.”

“So you wouldn’t eat me, would you?” asked Mouse Man.

Wonder Woman-G put out only the tip of her tongue and lightly touched the top of it against the relatively ant sized Mouse Man-M. Her tongue was a giant version of Wonder Woman-M’s, but he hoped she wouldn’t feel the urge to draw him into her mouth with it and swallow him.

“You needn’t worry,” she laughed, “It’s not the same when you’re that small. I’m surprised your Wonder Woman hasn’t considered it though.”

“We’d better get back to her,” said Mouse Man.

They returned to Atom-G and Wonder Woman-M.

“I think our best chance to save Giganta’s next meal is to hide out in the Invisible Plane where I left it on our world’s side of the cave,” said Wonder Woman M,  “If we can surprise her before she even has the chance to lead a lad into the cave, we can probably make sure she doesn’t eat him.”

The earth-G heroes agreed and said their farewells. Soon Wonder Woman-M and Mouse Man-M were talking in the Invisible Plane.

“It’s hard to believe that Giganta ate her own boyfriend,” said Wonder Woman.

“Have you ever thought of eating me?” asked Mouse Man.

“No, not even when we were on opposite sides,” said Wonder Woman, “That was so long ago too.”

“Wonder Woman-G eats Atom-G all the time. They both love it. He can get out again afterwards with his powers. I can understand why Atom-G likes it. You have the loveliest tongue I’ve ever seen, Diana. Do you think I might be tasty?”

“I suppose so, but I don’t want to eat you up. I hope you don’t want me to do that.”

“No, I wouldn’t, but it would be nice to see if you like the taste of me … now. Could you bring yourself to lick me?”

“If it would make you happy, I’d love to,” said Wonder Woman.

This time, the touch of this Wonder Woman’s tongue was just what he wanted. The size difference was much more suitable, as he saw her sparkling taste organ come slowly out of her mouth and lick his tiny face and shoulders. Now he subconsciously recalled looking into her mouth during all their early fencing matches and subsequent dates. It looked and felt beautiful to have that immense tongue swishing against his body.

“Oh Diana, that was the best … for me anyway,” he said at last, “What do you think?”

“You do taste very nice,” said Wonder Woman, “I wouldn’t mind having you in my mouth, so long as I don’t swallow you.”

“Thought you’d never offer,” said Mouse Man, “I guess you can always open wide and let me out when Giganta shows up.”

Wonder Woman’s beautiful mouth opened as far as it could in front of him, and the Mouse Man slid in onto her tongue and lay began moving around in the limited space available to him on the inside of her mouth.

By the time that Atom-G had aged and died, Wonder Woman-G was still in her ongoing prime. She retained the look of a beautiful woman in her thirties, and still had it in the 30th Century. By the time that the Legion of Super-Heroes reached adulthood, they invited Wonder Woman to join their ranks. They fought against the Fatal Four (Tharok, Mano, Persuader and Emerald Empress), the Legion of Super-Villains, and various other villains.

One on occasion, the adult Legion of Super-Villains were auditioning for new members, and rejected a number of applicants, not on the basis of their powers, but on the fact that those applicants were inexperienced teenagers, who would be no match for the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Feeling a little discouraged, the following members formed the Legion of Substitute Villains:

Scream Girl – a renegade from Tyroc’s home of Marzal, who chose to stay on earth and use her voice powers to commit crimes when Marzal vanished to its other location.

Divisible Kid – a boy who took a formula which enabled him to split into thirty smaller versions of himself, each two (earth-G sized) inches tall.

Might Lass – a girl from a planet where it rained all day every day and evaporated in the constant moonlight all night every night. Her mother invented a ray which would give her super strength, but outside her planet, she found that she only had the strength, when it was raining.

Filament Lad – last survivor of a planet whose inhabitants could project intense light from their bodies

Trouncing Boy – a rare escapee from the planet Lythll, who had perfected a similar level of martial arts ability to that of Karate Kid.

Childfire – a younger clone of Sun Boy created by Dr Regulus, who possesses the same powers.

Stun Boy – able to fire knock-out beams from his eyes. (Origin unknown)

Platter Cheater Lad – the Vandar Adg of earth-G, who had been experimenting with ancient chemicals (without an adult chemist’s knowledge) at the age of 13, when the comet passed over the ancient city. Not only did he acquire the same agelessness as Wonder Woman, but the ability to allow meat to be bitten from his body and eaten with no blood loss, no pain, and total rejuvenation. As this world’s Vandar Adg had been born later than the Vandar Adg of earth-M, he would remain a 13 year old, rather than an adult, throughout history. He stayed in the shadows, largely outside civilization for long periods at a time, and set up new identities to conceal his ageless existence. It was not until the 30th Century, that he developed any interest in crime.

They held their first meeting in their secret headquarters, and began discussing a way to elect their leader.

“I think we should hold a contest to see who can ambush and defeat the newest member of the Legion of Super-Heroes,” said Stun Boy.

“Wonder Woman! An excellent idea. She’s no pushover,” said Might Lass.

“Why chance getting captured by her one at a time?” said Scream Girl, “Why don’t we lure her out with a fake distress call, and then all jump her at once. Whoever finds a way to bring her down becomes our new leader, and we’ll keep her as hostage to stop the Legion of Super-Heroes from interfering with our future activities.”

So the Legion of Substitute Villains sent Divisible Kid to stake out the area outside Legion Headquarters. Each of his tiny selves was well hidden, until he was able to report a day when every Legionnaire except Wonder Woman was out on missions. Then he radioed in his team to send the distress call.

Might Lass was singing to herself in the shower at the time:

“I’m only mighty when it rains.” As it was a sunny day, the most she could add to the team was one more non-powered opponent to keep Wonder Woman occupied.

Wonder Woman soon turned up in the field that they had chosen, and then the Legion of Substitute Villains sprang up from the long grass and attacked her.

Stun Boy aimed his knock out vision at Wonder Woman, who quickly deflected it with her bracelets. The first bolt went off at an angle, and hit Scream Girl, knocking her out. The second bolt hit Stun Boy himself, and the villain passed out.

Trouncing Boy and Might Lass leaped into the fray, running interference, but neither of them was strong enough to prevail against Wonder Woman, who quickly knocked both of them out.

Filament Lad approached Wonder Woman, and began lighting up his body. Seeing the imminent danger, Wonder Woman grabbed hold of Divisible Kid to shield herself, but the boy managed to separate into his miniature selves, just as the light reached its brightest. Now each of the Divisible Kids was unable to see his other selves and rejoin as one. His vision would not come back for hours.

During the second that this action had happened, Wonder Woman had jumped aside at amazing speed, grabbed Platter Cheater Lad and tossed him at Childfire, just as the boy had turned on his heat. Platter Cheater Lad found his outer flesh suddenly cooked, with the affect that (though painless to him), the effect drained Childfire of his heat emissions for the moment.

Ducking behind the confused duo, Wonder Woman threw her tiara at Filament Lad, knocking him out too.

Hours later, Trouncing Boy, Might Lass, Childfire, Stun Boy, Scream Girl and Filament Lad awoke in separate cells in Science Police Headquarters. Each cell had been specially prepared to resist their powers, though in Might Lass’s case, all that was needed was to choose a cell with no sprinkler.

For Divisible Kid, the experience was a little different. Each of his selves had a mind of its own and could make its own decisions, while he was separated. When rejoined, he would acquire the memory of all of them. For now, one of his selves awoke and looked up at the face of Wonder Woman. He saw that he was on a plate at a dining table.

“I’ve hidden each one of your other selves in a different drawer in various parts of my house,” said Wonder Woman, “Around a millennium ago, I ate a villain your size named Mouse Man. Some time after that, I repeatedly ate my boyfriend the Atom, until he passed on. I’m going to eat you whole now, and then wait until you’re completely digested, before eating another of your selves tomorrow. I shall do that once a day until all of you are gone. By waiting, I’ll ensure that you won’t be there to rejoin with your next self in my stomach after I’ve eaten him.”

There was nothing that each miniature Divisible Kid could do except wait to be eaten. One of them managed to escape his confines and came across Wonder Woman’s diaries, while she was out on a Legion of Super-Heroes mission. He found the 20th Century volumes, and learned of the cave that led to earth-M, where people were all his current size. Unable to locate and free his other selves, he resigned himself to Wonder Woman eating all of them, and fled to earth-M, and lived out the rest of his days as a normal sized person on that world.

Wonder Woman could never understand his disappearance, but when she had eaten all of the other Divisible Kid selves, she turned her attention to a room in which she had locked Platter Cheater Lad.

“When Childfire cooked you, you smelt distinctly delicious,” said Wonder Woman, “I’m prepared to keep the Science Police and the other Legionnaires from learning of your existence, and I’d like you to live here and be an endless supply of food for me. I shall build a larger oven, sometimes cook you and sometimes eat parts of you raw. It’ll be the first ongoing opportunity to eat someone I’ve had in a millennium… and there’s one more thing.”

“What’s that?” asked Platter Cheater Lad.

“I think you’re deliciously cute, and everyone throughout time has found me beautiful. You’re the one I’d like to choose. Since you’re going to be here anyway, would you like to be my boyfriend until you’re …?”

“Dead. I never will be,” said Platter Cheater Lad, and explained his origin.

“But that was the comet that stopped me aging too,” said Wonder Woman, “Tuckerbox of Joan! You must have been that one boy in the city at the time it happened. I wondered what had happened to you. I’d forgotten what you looked like.”

“Well it has been thousands of years,” said Platter Cheater Lad, “And I accept your offer, Wonder Woman. I’d love to be partly eaten by you and also to be your boyfriend.”

“Well could I have some of you for dinner now?” asked Wonder Woman.

“Absolutely,” said Platter Cheater Lad.

He watched in glee as Wonder Woman revealed her sparkling tongue and licked the flesh of his slim arm first, before biting into his upper arm and chewing and swallowing its meat. It took about an hour for it to regenerate, after she’d eaten her fill, and then they sat down at the couch and began kissing each other.

The author Primescribe was staying at a friend’s place, having taken half a week off work for various reasons. He was still wondering what to do about the situation concerning Wonder Woman-M, Giganta and Mouse Man-M (which needn’t have been specified, since Mouse Man-G had been eaten by Wonder Woman-G at some point earlier in the story).

He considered the fact that, ever since Atom-M had visited his past self in chapter 1, Primescribe had effectively licensed himself to rewrite any aspect of the DC time line for fan fiction purposes. It occurred to him that he could take characters who had died at some point later in the original DC Comics time line, and incorporate them into what was happening in Primescribe’s story in the late 1970s. He would start with a line like:

Mouse Man was lying comfortably on Wonder Woman’s tongue in the Invisible Jet, in an unexplored part of an American jungle.

Earth-M, late 1970s…

Mouse Man was lying comfortably on Wonder Woman’s tongue in the Invisible Jet, in an unexplored part of an American jungle. He enjoyed the soft moist touch of her sensuous taste organ, so glad that he had been able to save her from Cheetah, ecstatic that she had reciprocated his feelings, grateful that she had willingly given him the mouth play that he was now enjoying, satisfied that he had been chosen and allowed to replace Atom in the time pool adventures, pleased that he had altered time to prevent Doris’s original loss of Dale and gorilla transformation … and yet concerned that Doris had gained the power of giant size in the trans-dimensional cave, at which point her natural giantess vore tendencies had kicked in.

Suddenly, Wonder Woman’s mouth opened behind him. He eased his body around, so that his head was facing outwards and his legs were relocated to the back of her mouth. It was then that he saw the reason that she had opened her mouth. Giganta was walking towards the cave entrance, with a late teenaged boy. The lad was blond haired, slim and pleasant to look at, Wonder Woman considered. He wore a dark blue two piece suit, a pale blue shirt and a black tie.

Wonder Woman leaped from the plane, and made several more rapid leaps until she landed just in front of the pair, blocking the entrance to the cave. She pivoted around to face them, put out her tongue, and used it to flick the Mouse Man straight at Giganta’s eye, which was normal sized at this point, along with the rest of Giganta.

Mouse Man struck her eye enough to stun her nerves a little, while Wonder Woman maneuvered Giganta into a head lock.

“If you grow, you’ll break your own neck before you’re ten feet tall,” said Wonder Woman.

“If you don’t let me go, I’ll eat this little friend of yours!” said Giganta, turning her head and moving her mouth towards the Mouse Man.

Mouse Man had fallen onto Giganta’s shoulder. He looked into Giganta’s amazing opening mouth. It was exhilarating to consider the possibilities, but he much preferred Wonder Woman’s tongue, and was relieved to know that she would indulge his mouth play fantasy without actually swallowing him. He leaped over to Wonder Woman’s shoulder and held onto her long feminine hair.

“You won’t be eating anyone now!” said Wonder Woman.

“Dove!” said the boy suddenly.

With that, there was a kaleidoscope of yellow and black light surrounding them for a moment, and then the boy was gone. In his place stood a boy in a pale blue and white costume, complete with mask.

Wonder Woman studied his jawline and felt certain that the boy had used some sort of transformation power to alter his suit into the costume. It had to be the same boy.

“Let her go!” said Dove.

“You don’t realize what you’re asking,” said Wonder Woman, “She’s going to take you to a world of giants, enlarge herself to giant size and eat you.”

Dove had used his own limited level of super strength to help Giganta to pry Wonder Woman’s arm loose from her neck. Seizing the opportunity, Giganta expanded to her giant size, and seized Wonder Woman in one hand, while gently picking up Dove with the other. Then she sat down.

“Is it true, Doris?” asked Dove, “You just tried to eat Mouse Man. Were you really going to eat me?”

“Yes,” sighed Giganta.

Wonder Woman burst free from Giganta’s grip, and leaped over to her other hand, adding her strength to Dove’s until the junior super hero was also free. They landed on Giganta’s leg, and then jumped to the ground.

“It’s no use,” said Wonder Woman, “Together we’re strong enough to stop you.”

She lifted Dove and ran to her plane with him, and quickly settled him in the passenger seat. Mouse Man jumped down from her shoulder onto the instrument panel, though he couldn’t see it, and watched as Giganta felt about for the front of the plane, estimating its position from the visible presence of the three occupants. Giganta lifted the plane up and held it in front of her face.

“We’ll just take you on together again, Doris,” said Don, “Unless you put the plane down.”

“I know,” said Giganta, “I just wanted to say goodbye and explain. I really did love you every bit as much as my first love, Dale. It’s just that I like eating cute younger men too. I wasn’t going to hurt you, just gobble you down whole.”

With the danger over, Dove changed back to the familiar form of Don Hall.

“It looks like we were both suppressing secret super powers,” he said, “You realize that I could have put up quite a disturbance inside your throat, if you’d managed to get me there.”

“Yes,” said Giganta, “I wish I could have eaten you today, but I’ll never tell anyone your secret identity.”

“And I’ll never tell anyone about your growth power,” said Don, “Can you take me home, Wonder Woman?”

“Yes,” said Wonder Woman, “And I won’t take you captive for what you might have done, Giganta … at least not this time. But I’ll be watching you. If I catch you trying to eat someone again, all bets will be off. From what Miniscula told me, being eaten was what Dale wanted, but you can’t go around luring unwilling participants to that other world and swallowing them.”

Giganta released her grip on the Wonderjet and watched it fly out of sight. She walked back to civilization and made her way home by public transport. She climbed into bed and slept for ten hours, until there was a knock at her front door. Doris checked that her tailor made night dress had not slipped out of place, and walked to the front door and opened it.

Don Hall was standing there.

“I’ll never go to any isolated places with you again, but if you’ll still have me, I haven’t stopped loving you at all,” said Don.

Doris put out her larger arms and embraced him in the doorway, lifting him off his feet. He felt her large full lips pressing against his mouth, and the presence of her tongue sent waves of memory into his thoughts. He recalled the sight of her mouth opening and closing when she had been speaking to him at her giant size in the presence of Wonder Woman and Mouse Man.

Her powerful embrace was driving him wild with enjoyment. Years of seeing his muscular aggressive brother having all the success with dating had given way to his being the first choice of the largest woman of all. Her eight foot tall beautiful body entranced him, and he was not going to lose her, even to the immutable fact that she was only kissing him now, because her scheduled plans to incorporate him into the content of her stomach had been interrupted.

“I can’t help it,” he said eventually, “You’re so special, Doris. I love you so much.”

“I guess it’s bigger than both of us,” said Doris.

“Well perhaps not bigger than your other size,” said Don.

“The Don is not dead,” said Doris.

Earth-Prime, September 2012…

As far as he could tell, Primescribe had lost the readership of Pixis, back when he had Christianized the origin of Wonder Woman in chapters 1 and 2. Whether one of his favourite authors would have gone on to enjoy the fantasy of the later chapters (which were admittedly fairly one track minded in the general direction of giantess vore and mouth play), Primescribe didn’t know.

Still, he had found his way past the Greek gods references in Carycomic’s latest pastiche “The Fates doth conspire” to pick up the story in later chapters, and Cary seemed quite happy to return the favour with his usual plethora of interesting reviews for ‘Mouse Man – Time Master’.

He was still wondering what Cary would make of all the Legionnaire puns in chapter 9, when one final thought entered his mind:

“The story’s been up on the forum for over a week, and I haven’t once thought to look at the read count!” thought Primescribe, “Oh well, let’s see what I can do with the other DC character who was also originally due to die in the late 1980s.”

Earth-M, 1982…

Jason Todd was 13 going on 14. He had grown up admiring the Teen Titans. Of course he admired the Justice League of America too, but he had no super powers and was only a child. It seemed so unlikely that he could ever even be like Batman. Yet Robin and Speedy were something more realistic to aspire too. He was part of a travelling circus, and had recently lost his parents to the murderous activity of Killer Croc. What he didn’t know was that this would have happened a year or two later in a previous timeline, which had been thrown a little out of kilter by the Atom’s time visit to his 1960s self.

What would it be like to be the Mouse Man, Jason wondered. His romance with Wonder Woman was now well documented by the media. To Mouse Man, the beautiful amazon super heroine would be like a giantess.

Still, Jason reflected, even if he were five years older and super powered, he would only fit in with the Teen Titans, not the Justice League of America. Yet Wonder Girl did not turn him on even half as much as Wonder Woman. Mouse Man was very fortunate to have won her heart, Jason considered.

One day, when the circus was performing on the civilized edge of an American jungle (which has been the location subject of several previous chapters LOL), Jason went for a walk at the beginning of the first of the two weekdays that the circus performers took off as their ‘weekend’, as they naturally had to do a show on weekends to draw the available customers.

By mid-morning, Jason came to a cave and went in to explore it. It seemed to be glowing. When he found he could go no further, he returned to the cave entrance, to find that everything outside seemed to have grown. Not only that, but he was looking into the astounding presence of a beautiful giant sized woman, who was seated in front of the cave entrance.

The lady wore a fairly long skirt, had long dark hair, and the most beautifully familiar facial features that Jason had ever seen. In fact, apart from her size, she could have been Wonder Woman’s twin sister. She was proportionately a little less slender than Wonder Woman’s figure, but this seemed to make the giantess even more attractive to the infatuated boy.

“Don’t worry. You haven’t gone crazy,” said the giantess, “And I really am Wonder Woman, but not the one you know. Each time you go in and out of that cave, it takes you to either my world or yours, in alternate outcomes. You can call me Wonder Woman-G, as I’ve already met yours, whom I call Wonder Woman-M.”

“This is amazing!” said Jason, “I was thinking how lucky the Mouse Man of my world is to be dating a Wonder Woman who is giant sized to him. Your Mouse Man must be my size. I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but I wish I’d met you first.”

“Not at all. I’m very flattered,” said Wonder Woman, “I never dated my Mouse Man, but I’m dating the Atom here, and he is your size, though a little taller because of his adult age.”

“I’m Jason,” said the boy, “Wasn’t your Mouse Man interested in you like ours was interested in our Wonder Woman?”

“I believe he was,” said Wonder Woman, “But he never reformed, and he was so delicious that I ate him years ago.”

“Wow!” said Jason, “Our Wonder Woman would never have done that, even to a criminal.”

“Have I offended you?” asked Wonder Woman-G.

“I don’t think so,” said Jason.

“I’m glad,” said Wonder Woman, “The Atom’s often busy with scientific work on the week days. I recently met the Wonder Woman and Mouse Man from your world at this spot. It was only a few years ago. I thought I’d like to come here on my own some time and see if any other young men came through that cave to this world. It’s lovely to meet you, Jason.”

“I think so too,” said Jason, not sure where he stood, given her mention of dating the Atom, “I think you look even more beautiful than my world’s Wonder Woman.

“Call her Wonder Woman-M,” said Wonder Woman-G, “It’s the terminology we decided on, to distinguish between the two earths.”

“I’m Jason Todd-M then,” said Jason.

“I’ve been eating Atom several times over the years,” said Wonder Woman, “With his advanced size control, he is always able to find his way out of me again afterwards. It makes him the perfect dating partner for me. There’s just one thing he doesn’t have though: your youth. I think a teenaged boy like you would be even more tasty and tender. How old are you, Jason?”

“I’m only 13,” said Jason.

“I think you’d make a lovely meal for me, you know.”

“Are you going to eat me?” asked Jason.

“Not without your permission,” said Wonder Woman, and pushed a part of her long hair back behind her ear, until it bobbed into a new position, “Mouse Man was a criminal. You’re just a little boy. However, I would very much like for you to give me your permission, Jason.”

“Wow!” said Jason, “Do you realize what you’re asking me to do?”

“I have thought about it a lot,” said Wonder Woman, gently picking Jason up and holding him in front of her mouth, “But you have indicated to me that you feel a strong liking for me. I hope you’ll consider it.”

Mouse Man-M and Wonder Woman-M had kept the mouth play aspects of their relationship very much a secret. It was not known to the media or anyone else on their earth. However, Jason Todd-M nonetheless found the sight of Wonder Woman-G’s mouth to be unparalleled in its beauty.

“Are you and the Atom married?” asked Jason.

“No. I doubt we ever will be. We’re more interested in my eating him than we’ll ever be likely to be in marital activity. The relationship works well as it is.”

“Oh Wonder Woman, I’ve always wanted to be Wonder Woman-M’s boyfriend. I’d love to be yours even more, if only for one day … and then I think I would be willing to give you my permission to eat me.”

Wonder Woman’s giant mouth dropped open happily, and Jason caught a marvelous glance at her ecstatic tongue. To him it could well have been a moist mattress. He could see himself enjoying every aspect of the dating and eating that would go on between them if she accepted his offer … at least as far as the top of her throat.

“I was married once,” she said, “It was thousands of years ago. I would not have cheated on my husband in any way, even for the pleasure of eating you.”

“I wouldn’t have asked then,” said Jason.

“But I’ve been a widow for a long time.”

“You’ve lived thousands of years?” asked Jason.

“Yes, but a temporary romance with you would be nothing that Atom need know about. I was hoping to take you to Paradise Island and eat you in my private dining chamber at the palace. I’m sure I could give you some happy times in my bedroom beforehand if you’d like to have our date there.”

“Oh Wonder Woman, I’d love to!” said Jason.

“Call me Diana,” said Wonder Woman.

She carried him over to her invisible jet, and sat in the cockpit, resting Jason in the lap of her skirt. He looked up in admiration, as the beautiful Amazonian giantess smiled down at him and then concentrated her eyes on the view in front of the plane, so that she could fly.

Looking up as time went on, he could see into the clouds which drew nearer, and he could enjoy focusing his vision on the towering chest and neck and face of the beautiful woman who was taking him home for dinner.

When they reached Paradise Island, she took him into her bedroom, lay down and let him climb between the upper halves of her breasts. He eventually made his way up to her shoulder and kissed her cheek. Then she turned and kissed him slowly and affectionately.

For hours they enjoyed each other’s company, and then the day drew near to an end.

“Have I made you sufficiently happy with my end of our bargain?” asked Diana.

“More than my wildest dreams,” said Jason, “I’m yours to eat.”

Wonder Woman looked more breathtaking than ever before, as she emerged from the bed in a sleeveless pink evening gown and took him to the kitchen. She warmed him up in her oven and then served him at a grand regal dining table. Diana sat down, smiled at him and talked for a while, and then lifted him up towards her lips.

He saw the tip of her tongue come out and lick her lips, and then retract into her mouth as she drew him closer to her mouth. Then the tip of her tongue came out again and pressed against his face.

“You’re delightfully delectable,” she said, “Thank you so much, my little darling Jason.”

“You’re welcome, arousing Amazon,” said Jason.

Diana opened her mouth and placed him gently onto her tongue. He enjoyed the feeling for some time, and then felt himself being drawn into her throat, and slowly gulped down. When he was almost to the bottom, he felt himself being drawn back upwards, and realized that she was coughing.

Soon he was back out on the palm of her hand.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to choke you,” he said, “I couldn’t move in there. I was relying on your giant gulping to get me down.”

“I know,” she said, “And you weren’t choking me at all. It’s just that you’re not a criminal like Mouse Man. You’re a sweet adoring adorable little boy. I can’t do it, not completely.”

“You gave me what I wanted, and I enjoyed the gobbling too, as far as it went. I’ll keep my word.”

“No, you don’t have to. I won’t hold you to it,” said Diana, “I’ll take you back to the cave in the morning.”

When the plane was approaching the giant world’s jungle, he found himself again staring up at Diana in admiration, and haunting sadness … until the plane touched down.

“This is it. We’re there,” said Diana.

Jason burst into tears.

“I don’t want to go back,” he said, “You can eat me again, whenever you like, if you want to, and cough me up again. I just don’t want to go back there and never see you again.”

“I think I feel the same way about you,” said Wonder Woman, “That’s why I didn’t gulp you all the way down. You do realize that I might not be able to control the accuracy of gulping you part of the way down my throat each time. One day you might make it to my tummy by accident.”

“I’ll take the chance,” said Jason, “I would have gone right down anyway, if you hadn’t changed your mind.”

“It seems that I love you and the Atom both, in different ways,” said Diana, “And I love eating both of you too. Very well then. You can live secretly in my bedroom at Paradise Island. I’ll come and see you and eat you as often as possible, and entrust my most reliable Amazon to your care when I’m away. I have a lot to think about.”

After a while, Ray Palmer-G began to notice that Wonder Woman-G was going to Paradise Island far more frequently. He wondered if the Amazons were in any sort of trouble.

“Maybe Diana feels she can’t confide an Amazon secret, but I want to help,” thought the Atom-G.

So he reduced himself to even tinier size, the next time Diana had to leave, and concealed himself in the long tresses of her hair, watched her board her invisible jet and fly to Paradise Island. When she entered her bedroom, he saw that there was another tiny person there, who was only a teenaged boy.

As Atom-G watched on in shock, he saw Diana greet the boy with a passionate kiss and then proceed to eat him, after announcing that she would soon “cough him up as usual.”

He waited until the routine was over and bided his time until Diana was ready to leave. As soon as her plane reached Ivy Town again, he grew to regular Atom size and spoke.

“Don’t bother knocking on my door, Diana. I was in your hair the whole time. I know all about your toy boy. Is he from earth-M?”

“Yes,” said Diana.

“How could you do this to me?” asked Ray, “I thought you liked eating ME.”

“Except that you’re so often busy with your scientific experiments. Jason was there for me, and he offered to be eaten forever. Coughing him up was an afterthought.”

For hours they tried discussing the issue, but deep down, both of them knew it was over. Wonder Woman returned to Paradise Island to declare her complete love for Jason. It would be years longer before the boy caught up with her age and overtook her. She would most likely enjoy spending his twilight years with him too. They were already inseparable.

Atom-G felt such a need for a fresh start, that he went to the cave and came out in earth-M.

“I’m normal sized to these people as the Atom,” he thought, “I need never grow to Ray Palmer’s regular size again, but I can still be the Atom here, by shrinking even smaller, as the limits of my reduction capacities are still undiscovered. This world’s Wonder Woman is in love with the Mouse Man, but I doubt I could see myself with the image of Wonder Woman after what’s happened anyway.”

He began to make his way through the jungle, until he saw two teenaged super heroes battling a team of criminals with shotguns. One of them was about to take aim at the girl. Shrinking down to the Atom size of his earth-M counterpart, Atom-G jumped at the man’s hand, using a substantial weight to force him to drop the gun in shock. He punched the man unconscious, and then reduced his weight and floated towards the super heroine, until he landed on her shoulder, shrinking even smaller, so as not to be noticed on earth-M yet, as the fight came to an end.

“It’s finished, Vicki,” said the boy, “We can change back now.”

“Sure can, Chris,” said the girl.

Before he knew it, the miniature Atom-G was somehow drawn into a strange wrist watch on the girl’s wrist, which had the letters H, E, R and O on it. Having dialed H for HERO in the 1980s, Vicki and Chris returned to their regular lives, unaware that the Atom-G was now trapped on the inside of the glass surface of Vicki’s watch. For weeks he looked up at her, unseen as she sat in classes at school, walked from one place to another, ate meals and put the watch on her bedside table while sleeping.

Finally another emergency came up, and Vicki dialed the letters and became a completely different super heroine. At that point, the watch also released the Atom-G, who quickly fled the scene. Apparently, the scientist realized, the watch had the power to transform the girl into a number of heroines, releasing the power from its surface when the dialing was done. When the super heroines changed back into the girl, the watch drew super power back into it, including the unnoticed Atom-G.

He realized that he could not be around when the girl changed back again, or he would once again be trapped in the watch. He would just have to avoid that heroine, which would be difficult, because her identity changed with each use of her dial. Nonetheless, he would eke out a new life for himself on earth-M. He soon noticed that the top of his mask had been torn off and retained by the watch when it had released him. From then on, he would have a slightly different costume, but that would only serve to distinguish him from the local Atom-M. He would need a new name too, for that purpose, and decided to call himself the Neutron.

In 1985, a powerful but insane super villain named Chade the Shaving Man brought about the Crisis of Infinite Beards, which struck every bearded man on the planet dead overnight. Neutron was commissioned by Big Bearda and given the help he needed to defeat Chade, but the bearded men could not be brought back to life. As Neutron introduced himself to Atom-M and began to move in super hero circles, he soon learned that Donna Troy Long and Dinah Lance had been left without their partners.

Both girls were keenly interested in him, and he suddenly realized that he had gone from being the unfortunate man in a triangle between Wonder Woman-G and two males, to being the man who had to choose in a triangle between himself and two females: Black Canary and Wondergirl.

“I’ve never dated a younger girl,” thought Ray-G, “But would Wonder Woman-M’s sidekick remind me too much of what I went through with Wonder Woman-G? On the other hand, is it wise to enjoy myself in Black Canary-M’s mouth, given what could happen if she needed to let loose her sonic canary cry?”

He did not want to become involved in a process of two-timing, something for which he felt he could never excuse Wonder Woman-G having done to him. He decided to stay active with both of the girls and get to know each of them over time, giving no noticeable definite interest in either girl, until he had made up his mind. This way he would keep the door open, without betraying either girl’s feelings.

He was too old to actually join the Teen Titans, and too confusingly similar to Atom-M to join the Justice League. However, he could still go out and aid either girl on solo missions.

Occasionally he returned to earth-G and confided in his friends Jean and Paul Hoben about the whole affair. Both promised to keep his secret identity, but asked if they could write his memoirs purely from the Atom’s perspective, without mentioning that he was Ray Palmer. His story to date was published on earth-G under the title ‘Vore of the Atom’, in reference to the number of times that Wonder Woman-G had eaten him.

Jason’s identity was kept secret, as well as the location of the connecting cave to earth-M. The exact means of travelling between the earths was never mentioned. Not that it would have done the giants any good, as Miniscula was the only inhabitant of earth-G who had received shrinking power from the cave, in order to enter it. The only other thing which Ray kept from the Hobens-G (and hence from the world) was the super heroine identities of Dinah Lance-M and Donna Long-M, as they would be the same for their earth-G counterparts. The super heroine careers of Atom-G’s two potential earth-M love interests would never be revealed to anyone on earth-G, except for the one person in the story so far who already knew:

At one point, Wonder Woman-G paid a call on Ray-G and the Hobens-G, while they were discussing the success of the book.

“I don’t mind the publicity,” she said, “It’s not as if the world is learning that I cheated on a husband, just that I dated two guys at once until I made my choice. I would like to know what your little Dinah and Donna are like though.”

“Not that different from the Dinah and Donna of our world,” said Ray-G.

Dinah or Donna? It had quite a ring to it, when said like that.

The meeting broke up and Ray-G returned to earth-M.

“I could be Dinah-mite or Tag-a-Long Neutron,” he thought.

In the past, he had found Diana’s age and experience exciting. The woman had been widowed thousands of years before he had been born. Yet there was something about Black Canary-M that reminded him more of Diana-G than Wondergirl-M did. The younger girl had no baggage, unlike Black Canary-M who had been widowed once to Larry Lance and then lost the second great love of her life Green Arrow.

Wondergirl-M had only been widowed once, and at a much younger age, to an older man to whom she had not been married for nearly as long as Diana-G or even Dinah-M. There was a sweetness and fresh outlook on life in the younger girl, one which added to the considerations floating about in Neutron’s mind.

Ryter Worppe was approaching the age of seven, and had lived for over two years in an orphanage in the United States of America. The orphanage had been set up in the early 1900s initially for girls, and had acquired the land next door and raised the funds to build a boys building in the 1950s and begin taking on boys as well.

In May 1975, he was adopted by an elegant recently widowed lady in her 50s, who told him that she had been a teenage orphan there in the depression years of the 1930s, and wanted to give back some of the love that she had received by adopting a boy. The lady had aged beautifully, and young boys were often programmed to have crushes on significantly older women until they reached adolescence and then homed in on girls their own age.

For the next eight years, the lovely woman cared for Ryter, as her own daughters had grown up and moved away from home. She was very affectionate, and the strongest bond formed across the generations between the widow and the child. In fact, in 1982, the lady showed Ryter through her old photograph albums, including her wedding photographs.

“That’s extraordinairy,” said Ryter, “I could swear that back in the early 1940s, you looked just as Wonder Woman does now.”

“Exactly as Wonder Woman looks now, and as she looked back then,” said the lady, “My maiden name was Diana Prince. I was engaged to be married, but couldn’t get away overseas to do it. Wonder Woman had just arrived in America. She hadn’t aged visually for thousands of years, having stopped aging in her thirties, but she looked identical to me in my twenties. We met at a time when she was seeking an identity to hide her Wonder Woman persona. I’ve never told this to anyone else, but I should be able to tell my own family, as I’ve always treated you. I know I can trust you. I left the country to get married, and Wonder Woman put her hair up, took my glasses and became, for all intents and purposes, Diana Prince.”

“What a fantastic story!” said Ryter, who had admired Wonder Woman for years, “To think that Wonder Woman’s World War Two history is tied in with your engagement and marriage.”

“Well Wonder Woman fought the Nazis throughout the war, along with other criminals,” said Diana, “But I grew older and had children, while she stayed young and unmarried. There were many rumours about a romantic involvement with a man in military intelligence named Steve Trevor, but he aged normally and died in the late 1970s. Wonder Woman went on, looking as youthful as ever, and is now well known to be dating her erstwhile nemesis Mouse Man.”

Diana’s photographic tour of her past revealed the fact that she met her fiancé in her early 20s, and that she had already begun to look very attractive in her teenage years. Nobody would ever know what Wonder Woman had looked like as a teenager, as it had been thousands of years earlier. Whether she would have resembled the Diana Prince of these photographs was something reserved purely for speculation. However, the 1930s pictures of the teenaged Diana Prince had catalyzed feelings in Ryter which had been forming in the back of his young mind for seven years. How he wished he could have known her back then. He knew that she was destined to meet her fiancé and get married in her twenties, but he had visions of her beautiful adolescent self growing up in the orphanage which had also housed him in his early years.

In April 1983, now into her sixties but still very attractive, the elderly Diana died, leaving Ryter orphaned once again. He wrote a letter to Wonder Woman’s post box address, explaining his foster mother’s history, to establish the connection between Ryter and Wonder Woman, and asked her to contact him.

Wonder Woman responded, introduced him to Mouse Man and included the boy in her close circle of friends. It took only a month to convince Wonder Woman that she would be fortunate to adopt the boy and carry on where her former doppleganger had left off. Keen on having a man to talk to about his infatuation with the photographs of teenaged Diana Prince, Ryter turned to Mouse Man.

“My size is permanently reduced,” said Mouse Man, “But I once used a slightly modified approach to temporarily shrink Wonder Woman down to my size, back when we fought in the 1960s. I’m sure it would work on you too.”

“How would that help?” asked Ryter.

Mouse Man told Ryter about his adventures in the Time Pool, which could only send someone the size of the Mouse Man through it into the past.

“I could give you the reduction treatment, have Wonder Woman send you back to the orphanage in the 1930s, and bring you back later. You’d be able to have dates with teenaged Diana Prince in the 1930s, and then come back here to this time and be restored to full size the same way that Wonder Woman was in the 1960s. It would work, if you don’t mind the size difference. Trust me, it’s fun dating my own Diana Prince at this size.”

“I’m sure it would be,” said Ryter.

Mouse Man discussed the idea with Wonder Woman, who looked at Ryter and smiled at the implication that Ryter was attracted to a younger version of herself. Flattery, if nothing else, motivated her to use the Time Pool in the desired manner, and Ryter was soon reduced to tiny size.

“You might like something I made for you,” she said two days later.

Wonder Woman handed the tiny boy a smaller version of Mouse Man’s costume.

“Have a nice time in the 1930s, …. Mouse Lad,” she said.

“Mouse Lad?” asked Mouse Man.

“I’m honoured,” said Ryter.

Soon he had discarded his casual clothes and changed into his Mouse Lad outfit. Wonder Woman placed Mouse Man gently on her shoulder and set the Time Pool for the year in which Diana Prince would have been 16.

“There’s one more thing you should probably know,” said Wonder Woman, “Just for the sake of seeing how origins tie together.”

“Really?” asked Mouse Lad, “What’s that?”

“The name of the orphanage you gave me was Midvale. Around a quarter of a century later, it became the earthly home of the secret identity of Supergirl. I became friends with the Girl of Steel in the 1960s and she told me a few of her background details. You can take a lot more joy in where you’re going for these dates,” said Wonder Woman.

“Both Supergirl and Wonder Woman are connected with the late Diana Prince’s past,” said Mouse Lad, “I’m thrilled, and ready to go.”

Wonder Woman activated the Time Pool, while Mouse Man waved goodbye.

Mouse Lad was sent back to Midvale Orphanage in the 1930s. He dropped out of the Time Pool and landed in the bushes. It was around two o’clock and he could see a number of teenage girls in sports uniforms playing baseball. He looked around the field, straining his tiny eyes to see recognize Diana Prince from his recollections of the photographs that her elder 1980s self had shown him in 1982. Some of the girls had their backs to him, as they stood in their fielding positions.

After two strikes, the batter hit the third ball and began to run. The ball came flying over the heads of the girls and landed in the bushes just behind Mouse Lad. The nearest girl turned around and came running towards the bushes that concealed him.

“It’s gone into the bushes! I’ll get it!” she called.

“Home run!” called the lady teacher who was umpiring the game, when the batter had no trouble clearing all four bases in record time.

Mouse Lad saw that the beautiful girl running towards him with dark hair bobbing and teenage eyes twinkling through her glasses was none other than Diana Prince. She stopped and saw him and gaped in surprise, snatched him up and put him into her shirt pocket and searched around for the ball.

She shook her head wildly as she reached down to pick it up, and her glasses flew off her head and into the bushes. Diana retrieved the ball and threw it back to the pitcher.

“My glasses fell off!” she called, “Someone else substitute for me on the field, while I look for them in the bushes!”

She set Mouse Man back down on the ground, lay down on her stomach, lifted her head and rested it on her palms, with her elbows touching the ground, and smiled down at Mouse Man. She was his Diana, the woman who had taken his child self from what would become the orphanage’s boys wing next door, but now only two years older than him.

“Hello little boy,” she said, beaming admirably, “Did you make that costume yourself?”

“No. My … foster mother did,” said Mouse Lad truthfully, “I’m Mouse Lad.”

He thought it best not to tell her his real name, lest a more complicated time paradox be created by her elder self recalling their 1930s meeting when she came to adopt him in 1975.

“You look really cute in it,” she said, “Why are you so small?”

“My foster mother’s boyfriend invented a shrinking process,” said Mouse Lad.

“Where do they live?” asked Diana.

“It’s hard to say,” said Mouse Lad, “Geography becomes so unfamiliar when you’re this size.”

“I suppose it does,” said Diana, “I’ll have to get back to the game soon, or the teacher will become suspicious. I’ll hide you in my pocket again until school’s out.”

That night she hid him under her pillow until the lights were turned out, and then let him snuggle against her cheek on her pillow. He whispered that he loved her, and she felt about for him in the dark with her lips, and pressed them against his face. It was the culmination of his wildest dreams and more. She had years before she’d meet her fiancé and future husband, and these were his years to enjoy.

Wonder Woman pulled him back to his own time during the day, while she had left him in her dormitory and gone to classes. From then on, his visits to the past were timed for her after school hours and weekends.

One Friday afternoon, he asked her if she would like to go steady with him.

“I don’t think I could go steady with someone your size,” said Diana, “But as a matter of fact, I was thinking that you’d make a steady diet.”

She smiled mischievously.

Mouse Lad was stunned and then incredibly aroused. To think that his sweet friend from the 1970s and 1980s, who had raised him so responsibly was this carefree and sneaky back in her teenage years. She was going to eat him with great amusement.

The woman who would go on to provide Wonder Woman’s secret identity, get married, raise two daughters, become a widow, and adopt him, and show him the very photographs which would inspire his trip to the past … this woman was now, back in the past, a teenaged girl who was even now laughing at the helplessness of his situation, which she was willingly going to inflict.

It didn’t matter in the long run. The Time Pool would rescue him from her stomach, he figured, unaware of the fact that it had in fact once saved Mouse Man from a permanent outcome in the stomach of the Doris/Giganta of a previous timeline. Mouse Lad would make the most of his time in her exciting mouth, and then he would be pulled back to his own time.

The only drawback would be that he could not explain his presence to a girl who would assume that she had eaten him, if he were to return to the past for another visit.

“When?” he asked shyly.

“Sunday morning. My dormitory friend will be collected by her new foster parents tomorrow, and everyone else sleeps in,” said Diana, “You’ve less than two days to go.”

She smiled with mirth and suddenly put out her tongue and licked him. It felt magnificent.

“Well that was nice actually,” he said.

“Enjoy it while you can,” said Diana, “It’ll be a lot nicer for me on Sunday.”

On the Saturday night, Diana rested him on the cupboard top between her bed and the window, which was open on such a warm night. They talked for a while, and then she gave him some folded clothing to sleep on and fell asleep herself. The sun arose at 5:30am and he noticed that a piece of paper had appeared on the cupboard top beside him. He read what had been written:

“Mouse Lad,

A major fault has developed in the Time Pool. We can still get a fix on you, but can’t bring anything back from the past until we get the Atom in to help fix the machine. Thankfully it still sends objects into the past. Hence we were able to explain the situation to you with this note. You’ll just have to wait in the 1930s until we can get the machine going again. Sorry for the inconvenience, but we’re sure you’re enjoying the company you’re in,

Wonder Woman and Mouse Man.”

Mouse Lad was flabbergasted. It meant that when Diana began gulping him down her throat, he would not be retrieved by the Time Pool. What could he do?

The window was opened, but for him, the distance to the garden bed outside was like the height of a skyscraper building. To Diana, the window ledge only came up to below her waist.

Then an idea struck him. Mouse Lad managed to grip all four corners of the paper, and then jumped out of the window, using the paper like a parachute. It carried him slowly down to the ground without injury. He ran through the flower bed, and then began the long run across the lawn. When he reached the bushes where he had first been found by Diana on the day of the baseball game, he looked back and saw Diana stepping out of the window

She had awoken, and would be after him in no time.

He backed into the bushes, and saw Diana crossing the lawn in a fraction of the time that it had taken him. His mind flashed back to the sight of her in her school sports outfit running towards him when the ball had landed behind him. This time she was crossing the lawn in her night dress, which looked far more dainty and feminine. Yet this time she was coming to catch him and swallow him.

“You wouldn’t even make it to the other side of those bushes,” she giggled, “Here I come to catch you and eat you all up!”

Mouse Lad backed away, making use of any cover he could, as she stepped confidently into the bushes and searched until she found him. Laughing high above, she towered in front of him and bent down to grab him.

“I’ve got you, little Mouse boy,” she giggled, lifting him up in front of her face.

“Please don’t fully eat me,” he said, “We can have more fun and happiness together.”

“I’m going to have more fun and happiness when I have you in my tummy,” laughed Diana.

Eventually the Time Pool would be repaired. If he could only stall her.

“Could we wait until the holidays and then make a special occasion of the gobbling event?” he asked her.

“I don’t think so,” said Diana, “I’m not going to give you weeks to make more attempts to escape.”

“Couldn’t you put me in a cage or hide me in your drawer and lock it?” asked Mouse Lad.

“Why are you so keen to delay the inevitable?” asked Diana, “Wouldn’t you be better off to get it over with now?”

“I’d have more time with you, and the holidays would give you more time to take me somewhere special to eat me,” aid Mouse Lad.

“Today is Sunday, and I have the dormitory to myself. It’s the best holiday I could hope for,” said Diana, “You might as well stop trying to talk me into delaying it, Mouse Lad. It’s not going to work.”

Diana took him to a garden tap, washed the boy and her hands, and then set him astride on her shoulder. She was serious and amused at the same time, as she strode confidently back to the window and climbed into the room. She looked elegant and grand as she sat on the edge of the bed and turned her head to kiss him one last time.

Then she placed him gently on the bed beside her well dressed legs. He looked up at her lovely face and thought of the life that she would go on to lead after this. He had already seen and heard much about it from her older self and the photographs. She had a wonderful life ahead of her, and she was going to gobble him down without the slightest concern.

“One day you’ll have children of your own!” he said, “You might even have a boy just like me. How can you do this?”

“I’ll show you,” she said, and picked him up and held him in her finger and thumb, dangling him over her outstretched sparkling tongue.

“You know that’s not what I meant by the question,” said Mouse Lad.

“Hadn’t you better look where you’re going, instead of at my eyes?” she said, noticing that he had turned up to meet her eyes with his petition for mercy.

He obeyed her, gazing at the marvelous exciting tongue which was stretched out just below him, staring beyond into her wide open mouth and the dark throat beyond.

“I hope you know I’m still in love with you,” he said.

“You’re so cute,” she said, “And so delicious!”

He had been looking forward to being eaten up until the moment when he had read Wonder Woman’s and Mouse Man’s note from the future. As a parachute it had almost saved him. Maybe it could still save him!

“I dropped a piece of paper outside. It’s how I got down,” said Mouse Lad, “It will tell you something vital, effectively hint at something vital about your own future.”

She put him down, looked out the window, leaned out and retrieved the message and read it.

“You’re from the future? What year?”

“1983,” said Mouse Lad, “I was adopted from this orphanage in 1975 and raised by your future self for eight years, until you died.”

“But there are no boys here,” said Diana.

“There will be in the late fifties,” said Mouse Lad, “I recalled the photos of you from this time, as shown to me by your older self, fell in love with you and came back to see you.”

“So I’ll be dead by the time you travel back then,” said Diana.

“Yes.”

“Then even my older self has nothing to lose if I eat you now,” said Diana, “I’ll look forward to meeting your younger self in my later years. I won’t give anything away. Now down you go.”

“No! Please!” said Mouse Lad, as she slid him onto her awaiting tongue and into her laughing throat.

He felt her gulping with pleasure, as he was carried down further and further into the teenage tummy of a young woman whose happy future was already a matter of history to him.

Suddenly he found himself back on the Time Pool platform, with Wonder Woman and Mouse Man looking at him.

“But you said it would take months to fix the machine,” said Mouse Lad.

“It did,” said Wonder Woman, as she used the machine again, and retrieved the tell tale sheet of paper from the past as well.

“That didn’t stop us from still setting the machine to find you and retrieve you from the time you were in,” said Mouse Man, “It was my idea. We thought we’d spare you the wait. After all, Wonder Woman is your foster mother now.”

He had done all that worrying for nothing, but he still felt that he could not return to the teenaged Diana Prince again. For one thing, it would be too risky if anything more serious happened to the Time Pool. Another fault might make rescue from Diana’s tummy completely impossible forever. Besides that, from her point of view, she had eaten him once. It would be better to leave her to live out the remaining years leading up to her marriage.

Mouse Man restored his size, but he could always be reduced again and travel back to meet other pretty single women in the past.

The son of Egghead and Olga, born in 1969 on earth-M, was a teenaged boy by the mid 1980s. He had been named Humphrey, by his parents, and grew up in Gotham Boys High, telling many stories about his father’s escapades against the Dynamic Duo: Batman and Robin.

Soon Humphrey took on a name of his own: Humphrey Dumphrey, as he had a rather egg-shaped belly rather than an egg-shaped head, given that he’d inherited his mother Olga’s Bessarovian head of hair. As soon as the lads were of school leaving age, Humphrey Dumphrey and the members of The Egg-stroverts (as he called his little school boy society) were led off into the jungle by Humphrey to form their own tribe.

Meanwhile, Atom-G had reduced himself so small, that he looked (barring the missing top of his mask) like the Atom-M of the smaller world earth-M and called himself the Neutron. Having been the subject of both Black Canary-M’s interest and that of Wondergirl-M, he decided that Black Canary was the one who had caught his attention the most.

Neutron soon began accompanying Black Canary on her Star City crime patrols, which she maintained in honour of her late boyfriend Green Arrow, who had perished in the Crisis of Infinite Beards, before the defeat of its initiator Chade the Shaving Man.

An alliance formed between Chronos, who was feeling the need to branch out from Ivy Town, and Clock King, who was currently enjoying the Green Arrow’s absence in Star City. As soon as the two met, they were impressed by the similarities in each other’s styles, and decided to team up and have (pardon the pun) the TIME of their lives in Star City.

First to respond to the threat were Black Canary-M and the Neutron, who launched themselves into a fight. Neutron was tiny and hard to deal with, but Clock King managed to make a lucky swing at Black Canary with his cane in the shape of one of the hands of a clock. It struck the side of her neck, and thus did not deliver a fatal blow. However the impact somehow jarred Black Canary’s vocal chords, and she found herself unable to deliver one of her sonic canary cries.

On earth-M, Neutron effectively had one power that Atom-M did not. He grew to his earth-G size, having modified the costume to remain visible, and became like a giant. Seeing Canary in danger, he quickly seized and subdued both of the time inspired criminals, and tied them up for the police.

Neutron then reduced himself to tiny size again, and rode on Black Canary’s shoulder until they reached her home.

“Maybe I can repair the damage to your vocal chords from the inside,” said Neutron, “If you don’t mind opening your mouth wide.”

“You mean you’re willing to go down inside me and massage my wounded inner neck?” asked Black Canary.

“Yes, but don’t test your cry until I’m out of there, no matter how improved you might feel,” said Neutron.

He slipped into Dinah’s mouth and slid slowly down her throat, until he came to the affected area. Applying principles of Atomicupuncture, he soon cured the jarring damage to Dinah’s throat, slid back up and out and asked her to test her cry.

When they’d cleaned up all the glass from her picture frames and kitchenware, Dinah and Ray were satisfied that the treatment had been a screaming success.

Back in the jungle, Humphrey Dumphrey and the tribe of Egg-stroverts discovered the cave which led into earth-G and decided to enjoy the abundant space and fruit of the giant world’s jungle.

In the mean time, on earth-G, Cat-Anna, the daughter of Cheetah and Catman, born in the early 1960s, had also grown up and acquired a following of her own. Cat-Anna and her Miaowing Commandoes eventually went on an expedition into the giant earth’s jungle, in search of wealth to advance their rebellion against mainstream society in honour of their parents.

So adept were the Miaowing Commandoes at slinking through the jungle with the silence of creeping cats, that they did not alert the relatively tiny Egg-stroverts to their presence. They soon became aware of a tribe of small people, all dressed in egg-like clothing, all male, and all young.

Very carefully, so as not to cause the tribe to scatter, Cat-Anna and her women began to secretly snatch up members of the Egg-stroverts, take them back to their base camp and eat them.

It took several days before Humphrey Dumphrey managed to catch them in the act, without being seen himself. He immediately called a secret meeting of the whole team in the very cave that had enabled them to reach that world.

“I’ve seen enough to know what’s happened to our missing members,” said Humphrey, “They’ve been poached by giant women wearing cat masks.”

“You mean we’ve stumbled onto a world of giant Catwoman wannabees?” asked one of the Egg-stroverts.

“No. From memory, Dad only ever met Catwoman once, when some other villain busted six criminals loose in Gotham Penitentiary,” said Humphrey, “These women don’t seem to be trying to emulate a local Catwoman. Anyway, we’d better wait until night and then sneak out and see if it’s safe to venture further into the jungle and avoid being eaten.”

Of course, when they emerged from the cave, they found themselves back on their own earth-M with no more need to fear the giant women. The Egg-stroverts who’d already been poached by Cat-Anna and the Miaowing Commandoes were duly eaten and soon forgotten.

In the meantime, word of Mouse Man’s romance with Wonder Woman-M spread like wildfire throughout the tabloids and talk shows of earth-M. Fans of the couple were purchasing Wonder Woman costumes and full sized Mouse Man costumes, as none of them had the ability to shrink, and holding parties and special functions. Some of the tallest women around were keen to wear Wonder Woman costumes and date shorter men of average height, while some of the shortest men around were keen to wear the Mouse Man costumes and date taller women of average female height.

Their group was soon named the Wonder Mice. They held events all over the world, and sure enough, eventually held one in the jungle not far from the cave that linked them with the giant earth. One of the lads, still wearing his Mouse Man costume, was not having much success with any of the girls, and decided to take a walk in the jungle to settle his nerves. He found the cave and emerged in the giant earth-G’s jungle and wondered if he had really shrunken to the size of the real Mouse Man. Then he went back in the cave, returned to his own earth, and then again to the giant earth, until he worked out what was happening.

He decided to explore earth-G for a while, until he saw what seemed to be a giant Wonder Woman, dressed slightly differently from the one he knew, walking through the jungle towards him.

“I’ve grown very fond of this jungle,” she said, picking him up and sitting down on a log, looking very attractive in her outfit in that position, “But I never expected a new Mouse Man to pick up where the other one left off.”

“You’re a very beautiful Wonder Woman,” he said.

“Well thank you, but flattery won’t help you, young man. I ate the first Mouse Man some time ago, and I’m going to eat you up as well. You’ll be sorry you ever put on that costume.”

“But you don’t understand,” he said, realizing that Wonder Woman-G had mistaken him for a criminal Mouse Man from her own world, “I’m not really a Mouse Man, just a fan of his.”

“At that size. I don’t think so,” said Wonder Woman, laughing confidently.

She put him into her wide open mouth and closed it.

“I’m from the other earth!” he called, but she couldn’t hear him, “I’m just part of the Wonder Mice! It’s a fan club.”

It was no use. He was lying on her tongue with no way to persuade her to open her mouth and hear him out. It was evident now, that on this earth, Wonder Woman and Mouse Man never formed a romantic relationship. Yet something quite different had transpired between them.

Owing to a misunderstanding, the same thing was about to happen between the earth-M fan of Mouse Man-M and the earth-G Wonder Woman.

Suddenly Wonder Woman’s tongue angled on a slope, and the Wonder Mouse could not retain his position on her tongue. He felt himself helplessly sliding towards her throat, and into it. From then on, the gulping of the giant Wonder Woman’s neck took him down, down, down.

The future…

Terry McGinnis, the world’s latest Batman was battling a new alliance between the Jokerz and the Royal Flush gang. None of them could match the training that he’d received at the hands of Bruce Wayne and his sensei’s former student. Yet the sheer weight of numbers were keeping him on his toes, and Bruce kept doing his thinking, guiding his steps and … being boss. He’d been his own boss as Batman in his youth, and the boss of every sidekick from the original Robin to Tim Drake.

Now he was even Batman’s boss. He realized that he was getting older and older, that one day Terry would have to be able to think on his feet unaided, and then there was Terry’s lack of scientific expertise. How could he maintain and repair the Bat suit after Bruce died?

Suddenly Bruce’s concentration was interrupted by something he hadn’t heard in a long time. A sound beeped in the Batcave. He had installed a system which would let him know when the electronic door bell had been rung upstairs in Wayne Manor.

“Bruce, you still there?” asked Terry, as Bruce caught the sounds of punches and kicks hitting home in the background.

“Someone at the door upstairs,” said Bruce.

“I’ve got this,” said Terry, “You’re gonna have to regain a life of your own some time.”

There were no scientific weapons to work out, no mysteries to solve, just a large number of criminal thugs waiting to be taken out by Batman. Bruce couldn’t help with that anyway.

“I’ll be back,” he said, and went up to answer the door.

It was Mary McGinnis, Terry’s mother.

“Mr Wayne, may I come in?”

“By all means,” said Bruce, and showed her to the lounge room.

There was an old portrait of Thomas and Martha Wayne, and a more recent one of Bruce in his youth with his teen ward Dick Grayson. They both sat down, Bruce in an armchair, and Mary on a couch.

“I’ve talked with Terry sometimes, about how much future there would be for him at Waynetech. He’s never really even told me what he does. I guess I’m just looking for … more certainties for my son.”

Bruce had once taken a bold step and trusted Barbara Gordon with Dick Grayson’s Robin identity, hence revealing his own Batman identity in the process. Shortly after it had led to the end of a blossoming romance between Dick and Barbara. Although he’d never admitted it to Dick, he felt pangs of guilt over that outcome. Yet here was Terry’s mother with questions, and Bruce himself didn’t know, he’d just been thinking in the Batcave, what future he could offer Terry: wealth certainly, but not guidance from a dying elderly man who’d never had a wife or children, only brief painful attempts at relationships with criminals like Selina Kyle and Talia.

“I’ll show you something only Terry knows about,” said Bruce, and opened the door to the steps that led down to the Batcave.

Mary followed him down in silence and looked in awe and surprise at the many mementoes and costumes associated with the Batmen who had made Gotham a legendary city to live in. Then she looked at a video screen and saw signs of a fight, apparently from the POV of someone who had a video link to the Batcomputer’s video screen.

“Wayne! You back yet. I’m just about done here. Might as well send Barbara’s team for the biggest pick-up operation in years.”

“That’s Terry!” said Mary.

“You’ve done well, McGinnis. Wrap them up and take the rest of the day off,” said Bruce.

“We need to talk,” said Mary.

They went back upstairs and sat down again. As Bruce explained all that had gone on in the new Batman’s career, and how it had started, he found that Mary was taking it all in, responding to everything he said with a strange new pride in her son, but looking off to the side. In fact, she was looking at the picture of a young Bruce Wayne, and her questions were moving away from Terry’s activities, to more personal questions about how being Batman had affected Bruce.

“So you never had a personal ongoing relationship?”

“No.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Maybe I didn’t deserve one. Look what I did to Dick and Barbara.”

“They could have salvaged that, and she might never have become the Commissioner who gave Terry a chance in his new role,” said Mary, “I wasn’t wild about it for the first few minutes of discovering it down there, but it does fill in some gaps about his behaviour that have bothered me for a while. Bruce, you were so handsome, and such a caring man. It’s not right that a man should let all that go to waste and devote all the attention of his youth to spending time in combat with the worst criminals of Gotham.”

“I was always saying I’d get crime under control, and then it would be different. But it never happened.”

“I … don’t think I’ll ever stop wishing we’d been the same age,” said Mary, “You’re practically the father Terry doesn’t have, and that portrait will haunt me forever. But then, even if you could restore your youth, you’d just pick up the suit and go out and fight crooks with Terry, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe one lifetime of that was enough,” said Bruce, “Maybe I could let go. More than that, I could restore my youth.”

He began to tell her the strange story of Ras Al Gul and Talia.

“They’re both dead now, along with all their followers. Many were defeated and killed, and a few who remained went over to join Kobra,” said Bruce, “But Terry, I and one other person on earth know of the locations of the Lazarus pits that restored their youth from time to time. I could be the young and available Bruce Wayne you wanted, but I’d need help to get to the pit, and to use it too. Will you trust me and give me time?”

“I guess I’ll need to use the time to explain our … connection to Terry,” said Mary.

Bruce showed her to the door and then went down to the Batcave and contacted the Justice League Unlimited. Soon he was joined at Wayne Manor by a very tall woman who covered most of her body in a large trench coat and wore a veil.

“You’re the only one who can do it,” said Bruce.

“I know I am,” said Barda, “I’ve done it once before, for myself.”

They looked back in their minds, to decades earlier. Big Barda and her husband Scott Free aka Mr Miracle had come from alien worlds called Apokolips and New Genesis, where they had been born in a low population race of people with bodies that never aged beyond adulthood and often had great powers. For a time they had mistaken themselves for gods, but there was only one real God, and Barda had long since discarded any nonesuch title for herself.

Mr Miracle had billed himself as a super escape artist, and made a fortune for himself, Barda and the original earth born Mr Miracle’s former assistant Oberon, a middle aged midget with loyalty and honesty. The time eventually came, when a villain from Apokolips named Kanto had impersonated an earth man, and sabotaged one of Scott’s public escapes, so that it took the life of Mr Miracle. Barda and Oberon had shared their grief, and grief had turned to love. Oberon had confided in Scott’s old Justice League friends, that he felt inadequate for the ever youthful Barda at his advancing age. It was Batman who had gone to both Barda and Oberon, and explained both the potential and the mind warping side effects of the Lazarus pits. Together, Barda, Batman and Oberon had gone to a pit that Ras had abandoned after a fight with Batman went bad. Oberon had immersed himself in the pit, and Barda had used her Mother Box device to perfect the Lazarus chemicals’ effect on Oberon. He de-aged stably, without any mental incoherence, and lived out his years again, not alone this time, but married to Barda.

Recently he had aged again and decided that he could not see the value in reliving several happy decades. He asked Barda to let him die gracefully, and wished her the best for any relationship she sought after he’d gone.

Now Barda used Mother Box again, to restore Bruce’s youth, until he was around the age of Mary McGinnis, and to ensure that there would be none of the mental corruption which had exacerbated the evil tendencies of Ras Al Gul’s already decadent mind.

Bruce and Mary found Terry accepting of the situation, because it got both of them off his back and gave a boy in his teens the first real chance to be his own Batman. Barda offered to take over Bruce’s role of maintaining the Batsuit. With her knowledge of advanced scientific technology, she would have no trouble, and could even make a few improvements. She had never really liked the JLU. Superman was getting on, even for a Kryptonian. Warhawk was temperamental and arrogant. Micron never took her fancy. Green Lantern was a bald child, and Aquagirl was a woman. No dating possibilities there, but Terry McGinnis. That was another story.

She began going out on patrol with him. His toughest opponents were tamed by Barda’s nega rod, and soon ever Spicer, Kobra operative and rogues gallery criminal in Gotham were learning that crime no longer stood a chance with both Batman and Big Barda stationed in Gotham. Their services were needed less frequently, and the Terry McGinnis of this timeline had never met Max. Dana had given all her attentions to another boy (who in this timeline had never had the rat like facial features that had socially isolated him).

So it was natural that Terry McGinnis would have a rapid infatuation with a much taller, much older, (although visually only 15 years older) stunningly beautiful, super strong, technologically advanced woman who had made his job so much easier.

One day she simply pulled his mask off in the Batcave, planted a powerful kiss on him and sealed their love forever with a promise to spend all his life with him. There was always the choice to be made later by Terry, in his twilight years, as to whether he use the Lazarus Pit and Mother Box combination, or whether he echoed the choice made by Oberon. For now, he was on cloud 9.

Atom-M and Wonder Woman-M had a visit from Rip Hunter, professional time traveller of the late 1950s onward, who had added to his time technology and was now able to monitor any fluctuations in the timestream. He explained this to them, but said that he had not perfected his time monitor until after Atom and others had made so many significant changes to the timestream, that it had had the unpredictable Time Ripple effect of causing the Golden Age Flash Jay Garrick to die in 1945 near the end of World War II.

“Too much has been changed for me to have kept track of all of it. I can only think of one solution to the loss of the Golden Age Flash from 1945 onwards,” said Rip Hunter, “We must further alter time to introduce the Silver Age Flash sooner. Atom, you would be privy to his powers and origin. That’s why I can’t undertake this mission myself, but you must go back to time when the Silver Age Flash was merely a teenager, and recreate the circumstances that led to his acquiring his super speed, so that it happens earlier in his life. He will then fill the void of his pre-deceaser, to coin a phrase. You could also introduce the newly created teenage Silver Age Flash to the widow of the Golden Age Flash. She would be very familiar with the Golden Age Flash’s powers and methods and could act as his mentor. I will make my time machine available to you, in case you need to send someone normal sized through time. I’ll leave you to act in privacy and collect it after your mission is over.”

Rip Hunter departed.

“To do that we’d have to learn what combination of chemicals caused his powers, take that combination back through time and provide lightning as well. We just can’t do all that on our own,” said Atom, “We’ll have to form a team composed partly of Super Villains with the gifts necessary to get the job done. They’ll help us in return for a fresh start. It’ll be a group of people specially selected to bring the Silver Age Flash about in the Golden Age. We’ll call it the Silver Age Squad.”

Soon Atom had assembled his team, and was addressing them.

“Alright we have the Silver Age Squad members as follows: Mouse Lad and myself, newly shrunken to tiny size once again, Livewire, who will provide the simulated lightning fired in a specific direction, guided by my hands at full size (while she is blindfolded to preserve the Silver Age Flash’s young identity), me to prepare the exact chemicals needed, as I have the scientific knowledge and the size control to sneak into his laboratory in 1956 and obtain the chemicals. The chemicals will be set up in the teenage boy’s room while he’s at school. I will lead a blindfolded Catwoman and Livewire to the property, so that they don’t learn the address and identity of the Silver Age Flash. Then Mouse Lad will help Catwoman to break in. She will then plant the chemicals. Livewire will hide outside the window and wait until the boy is in his room and then send the lightning at the chemicals. Before the boy even realizes that he’s become the Silver Age Flash, I’ll lead the women away, return them to the present, and then go back and introduce the Silver Age Flash to the Golden Age Flash’s widow.”

“So one lightning emblem character, namely me, will actually help create another,” said Livewire, who had acquired her own abilities earlier than the 1990s in this new timeline.

“That’s basically it,” said Atom.

“And I get to work with the beautiful Catwoman,” said Mouse Lad.

“When this is over I’ll make an oven roast of you the first chance I get,” snarled Catwoman.

“You both need to keep focused on the job,” said Atom.

He asked Barry Allen what date he got his powers, and Barry worked it out from the dating on police reports he was working on just before his accident.

Atom time travelled back alone to 1956 and took inventory of the chemicals on the laboratory shelf, and then purchased the same chemicals in the present, and took the Silver Age Squad back to 1946. He blindfolded Livewire and Catwoman, and all four went to Barry Allen’s backyard, while his parents were at work. Atom removed the blindfolds, and sent Mouse Lad and Catwoman over to the house to break in.

“If you hold me close to the lock, I can pick it,” said Mouse Lad, and noticed that Catwoman was frequently licking her lips, “Are you serious about eating me?”

“What else do you expect from a Cat?” asked Catwoman.

“I guess we are naturally enemies, when you think about it,” said Mouse Lad, “But I don’t hate you at all, even though you want to eat me.”

“I don’t hate you either. I think you’re cute and no doubt delicious,” said Catwoman.

With that she put out her tongue and slowly licked his shoulders and face.

“I … really enjoyed that, actually,” said Mouse Lad.

“Tell it to my tummy when the fun’s over,” said Catwoman.

He turned around and worked on the lock, still talking to her.

“I was eaten by someone in this time era and rescued by time travel. I don’t think I’d mind what you’ve got in mind, if you went out with me a few times first.”

“You’re just a boy,” she said, “Why should I date a tiny boy?”

“I’ll be safe with the time pool staff after this mission’s over. You’ll be unlikely to ever catch me once you’re released back into society. If you promised to date me first, I could surrender myself to you willingly.”

He heard the lock move, and removed his hands and turned back to face Catwoman.

She surprised him with a slow kiss.

“We’ll work out whether you get dated and eaten or caught and eaten later,” she said, “It’s time to plant some chemicals.”

They finished the job, and then everyone hid in the backyard, with Catwoman blindfolded once again, and Livewire guided to the window blindfolded as well, as soon as Barry Allen was home. He was in his room doing his homework, when Livewire’s blast of lightning came through the window and gave Barry quite an ecstatic shock.

Atom led the others back to the time machine, returned them all to the present, had Catwoman’s and Livewire’s sentences commuted to time served, and then returned the time machine to Rip Hunter. Using the Time Pool, operated by Wonder Woman and Mouse Lad, Atom returned to 1946, explained to Joan Garrick that a teenaged boy had acquired the same super speed of her late husband Jay, and asked Joan to intercept Barry on his way to school and take him under her guidance.

Atom returned to the present.

Joan caught the same bus as Barry, whispered that she was the late Flash’s widow, and that she had learned of Barry’s speed, and asked him to come over on the weekend. Barry became the new Flash and soon fell in love with his mentor Joan Williams Garrick. As a result, he never met Iris West, and found that Joan’s Golden Age experience which had slowed her aging was a pleasant surprise. Iris was never killed by a vindictive Reverse Flash Professor Zoom. Time ripples caused him to fall in love with Giganta instead of Iris West  Doris declined his affections, saying that Zoom and Zool sounded too corny for words. Rather than kill her out of unrequited love, he tried to kill her boyfriend, but was defeated by a far more seasoned Barry Allen Flash and his friends. The universe only benefitted from the final changes to the timeline, proving that Rip Hunter’s theories had been well justified.

In a security building in New Gotham city, a man now known only as Inque 0.5 faced yet another day of being fed soft sloppy food through a funnel, by a woman whom he had no choice but to listen to. She talked on and on about subjects which were of no interest to him, while Inque 0.5 wished for a moment of peace, that he might think over the way the great love of his life Inque had betrayed him.

After being secretly video taped professing his love for Inque, by his boss, humiliated and dismissed for no good reason, he had had freed her from the frozen captivity brought about by the new Batman with Mr Freeze’s cold gun. She had then rejected his romantic advances, and amused herself by betraying his request to be like her. Not content to merely deny him her power, she deliberately gave him only half of the formula treatment that had changed her from human form to that of Inque. So he retained a human pinky white skin colouring, but a deformed shapeless body over which he had no control.

Expecting to wake to another day of the same undeserved torment, Inque 0.5 was surprised to see one of the complex lights go on in the middle of the night, and even more surprised to see that it had been turned on by Inque.

“I didn’t know if I’d ever recover my control of my form or my freedom,” said Inque, “But thanks to an elderly doctor who had once tried to assist Matt Hagen aka Clayface to regain his human form, I was able to adapt her process and stabilize my Inque form. I can do the same for you, but first I must undo the terrible cruelty I heartlessly forced on you. Here is the rest of the formula.”

Inque injected the man with a syringe full of bright pink liquid with white sparkly dots apparently included in it.

“Do you feel the change happening?” she asked.

“Oh yes, yes, yes!” said the man, and found that his body morphed into a dark blue form with a few hints of white and black, “No more Inque 0.5 for me. Now I can truly be Inque 2.0. Thank you!”

“It’s the least I could do,” she said.

“But what made you change your mind about helping me?”

“God convicted me of my evil nature in the only way I really left Him to do it. He showed me how it felt to be betrayed by someone I loved, namely my daughter. After all I did for her, I was left wondering why I’d cared so much. I cried out ‘Why is this happening to me?’ and then God spoke audibly straight into my brain, reminding me of every self involved criminal act I’d ever done, and then finally of the way I treated you, a good caring man who was guilty of nothing but loving me and risking all to help me. I never deserved a good man like you, and you certainly didn’t deserve a bitchy bad woman like me.”

“Please … don’t call yourself that. I didn’t deserve what my employer did. He never repented. I’d give anything to have you and this new power,” said Inque 2.0.

“Your control over it won’t last, unless I give you the old Clayface stability 2.0 treatment,” said Inque, “We have to get to the doctor’s seafront complex now.”

Inque took him there and modified his condition further, and then the two began to date.

Within weeks, Batman (Terry McGinnis) found himself facing an onslaught of villains from his rogues gallery, all teamed up in what they hoped would be a final attack on New Gotham’s primary super hero. The latest members of the Royal Flush Gang and the Society of Assassins were aided by a gang of Jokers who had acquired Slappers (the patches which imparted a temporary dose of Bane’s power). They had freed Spellbinder and Shriek and Mad Stan and formed the worst army of villains that Gotham had seen in many years. In this timeline, Blight was the only super villain who had not retained his abilities.

After taking a pounding that was on the brink of damaging his advanced Batman suit, the latest dark knight began to wish that the rejuvenated Bruce Wayne had put on one of his own old Bat suits to help, instead of settling down with Terry’s own mother. However, help can come from strange places. Just when all hope seemed lost, two largely blue figures ploughed into the super villains.

“I don’t believe it,” thought Terry, “It’s Inque, and …. another Inque. They’re taking down stacks of them in very little time. I guess I’d better get back on my feet and help.”

Terry felt a new burst of inspiration, as he shrugged off three attackers, and started firing Batarangs at others. Inque seemed immune to Shriek’s attacks, as did Inque 2.0. Then, out of the blue (pardon the pun), both Inques stopped fighting the villains, and began to fight, not Batman, but each other. Terry looked around for the explanation, and saw that Spellbinder was using one of his mesmerizing illusion devices on the Inques. They would have been seeing something which he had conditioned them to see, something that led them to believe that they were fighting the villains without interruption, Terry guessed. Each of them would have seen the other as one of the Society of Assassins, or one of the Royal Flush Gang.

But the Assassins were all down. Not even their fighting abilities had been of any effect against the powers of the Inques. Terry did his best to ignore the onslaught of the four members of the Royal Flush Gang who were still standing, and managed to fire off three Batarangs, before the second and third one successfully knocked out Spellbinder’s devices. The Inques snapped back to normal and saw Terry’s troubles.

“Three against four,” said Inque 2.0, “I’d say that’s in our favour here.”

He threw himself at Queen, smothering her against her own flying card, until she passed out from lack of breath. Inque herself did the same thing to Jack, while Batman managed to loop his rope around Ten and King and tie them together.

“Thanks for the assist,” said Batman, “Although I honestly didn’t expect it.”

Inque explained everything to Batman.

“I think the law would consider any unserved sentences commuted for pain and suffering already sustained by you guys, and I’d welcome the help any time you want to do this again,” said Terry, “Besides, I left the retooled freeze gun at home.”

Inque laughed.

“Never thought of myself as a team player before,” she said.

“I wouldn’t hold out for membership in the Justice League Unlimited yet though,” said Terry.

“That’s okay. If your old man and his dog joined us, I guess we could always call ourselves Mysteries Inque.”

“Just as well Bruce got young again,” thought Terry, “Or he’d be turning in his grave.”