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Oh wow. I would imagine Bruce giving Tim the Nth degree for this, because honestly? It could have been so much worse.
That part could've been so critical that they died on launch or reentry. They might not have heard the noise, and been too far out to fix it. Or what if the Watchtower wasn't there? It could've been a disaster. People could've died. Because Tim wasn't getting enough sleep and designing critical systems at the same time.
That's reckless and negligent, to say the least. The sleep deprivation isn't good for his own health, and they have been trying to help him. But someone can't be helped if they don't let themselves be helped, so they took a step back. And look where that ended up? A potential disaster. It's one thing to willingly endanger your own life, whether with vigilantism or sleep deprivation, it's another for the consequences of your own actions to have almost killed many people.
Just because he wasn't willing to sleep.
Yeah, I don't think Tim's going to get off light with this one.
It was a normal day at the Justice League Watchtower Satellite. Heroes were milling about, Batman was monitoring Earth from the deck, there was an astronaut tapping on the glass, Flash was joking with Martian Manhunter...
What, what was that 3rd thing?
Batman looked up and saw in front of his view of Earth was an astronaut, wearing NASA's latest suit design. He stood up which alerted Flash and Martian Manhunter to the strange sight.
He tensed as the astronaut began to phase through the walls and entered the deck. Batman was able to activate the intruder alarm when the astronaut removed their helmet.
The astronaut was a caucasian male approximately in his early forties. There were bags under his blue eyes like many of his own cohorts, and he had black hair as well.
"We need to dock."
"Excuse me?"
"Who are you?" asked Martian Manhunter.
The astronaut's face brightened immediately upon noticing Martian Manhunter. "Oh! I'm part of the manned Mars mission! We just launched and were on our way, but something is making a weird noise, and we don't know what it is. Since we're so close, can we just dock one of your garages so we can figure out what it is and fix it?"
Batman recalled that NASA had launched less than a few hours ago.
"How did you get through the glass?" asked Flash.
"I'm the token metahuman crewmember. So can we dock or not?"
"Of course," said Martian Manhunter, looking at Batman. And what was Batman supposed to say? No?
In the parking garage, Martian Manhunter was talking the other crewmembers while the Watchtower's engineers and the metahuman astronaut, who they learned was named Danny Fenton, inspected the space shuttle and tried to figure out what was making the strange noise.
Batman watched from the sidelines as the others bustled about. They had been at it for an hour, and Batman wondered if he should ask Tim to come by and help. He had informed Tim of the development while the astronauts were docking. After all, he had been involved in some of the designs of this particular spacecraft that were done by Wayne Aerospace.
He was doubtful that Tim could help that much. After all, in all likelihood it wasn't something he designed that was the problem.
Then, one of the engineers fiddled with something and Batman suddenly heard loud rattling.
A crewmember who was listening to Martian Manhunter startled and their eyes widened. "That's it! That's the sound!"
"What it that?" asked Batman.
The engineer pulled out a piece of equipment that had the Wayne Enterprise logo on it. "This module is broken," she said, "it could be repaired but honestly," she inhaled sharply, "this thing is a hot mess."
Mr. Fenton jumped and landed on the ship like the artificial gravity didn't affect him. When he saw the logo on the broken equipment, he shook his fist at the sky.
"Of course it's something by Wayne Industries! We give them half our budget hoping they're share some cool alien inspired technology like whatever they did to build this satellite and instead we get half-assed garbage!"
Batman made a point to not share the latest gadgets with the US government (he didn't trust them), but he wouldn't call their products that weren't built using alien tech garbage. That seemed a little harsh.
"Seriously, was the person who designed this sleep-deprived when they made this?" Suddenly Batman found the walls and floor to be incredibly interesting and looked away.
"Oh that's par for the course when it comes to the stuff they give us."
"I am so sorry."
As they discussed how to improvise a replacement for the equipment quickly enough to avoid drastically altering the astronaut's flight path, Batman got a text from Tim.
So I'm free now. Did the astronauts figure out what was wrong or do they need me? - RR
He texted back.
They figured it out. The engineers have it handled. - B