Harley stopped playing around.
The grin on her face sharpened into something wild as lightning began to crawl across her skin. It started as faint sparks along her arms, then surged outward in bright, violent arcs that wrapped around her entire body. The air around her hummed with pressure, sand lifting off the ground in slow spirals as divine energy gathered.
Faora noticed first. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she adjusted her stance. Car-Vex shifted beside her, tension rising as instinct warned her that something had changed.
Harley rolled her shoulders once, electricity snapping louder with each movement. "Alright," she said, voice lighter than the power building around her, "Johnny gave me permission to stop playin' nice."
The ground cracked beneath her feet.
She launched upward in a blast of lightning.
The impact of her takeoff alone sent a shockwave tearing across the desert, forcing both Kryptonians to react. They shot up after her, chasing into the sky.
Harley met them head-on.
Faora struck first, her fist cutting through the air with lethal precision. Harley didn't dodge. She caught the punch mid-swing, lightning flaring brighter on contact, and twisted hard enough to throw Faora off balance. Before Faora could recover, Harley drove her knee straight into her ribs.
The sound cracked like metal splitting.
Faora's body folded slightly from the force before Harley followed with a brutal backhand that sent her spinning through the air.
Car-Vex came in from above, both fists raised. Harley vanished in a flash of lightning.
She blitzes behind her.
A punch landed square between Car-Vex's shoulders, sending her plummeting downward like a missile. Harley didn't give her time to fall far. She shot down after her, grabbed her by the leg mid-drop, and swung her back up into Faora.
Their bodies collided midair.
Harley stayed in motion, never slowing. She flew faster than before. Faora tried to counter, her strikes precise and controlled, but Harley overwhelmed her. Every block rattled her arms. Every hit came heavier than the last.
A punch to the face snapped Faora's head back.
Another to the stomach drove the air from her lungs.
Harley grabbed her by the throat and slammed her downward.
They crashed into the desert hard enough to blast sand outward in a massive ring.
Before either Kryptonian could recover, Harley dragged them both back into the sky.
Her grip tightened.
Lightning surged.
She drove Faora into Car-Vex with a force that echoed across the battlefield, then followed with a rapid series of blows that blurred together. Fists, elbows, and knees, each strike landed faster than their bodies could stabilize.
Cracks began to show in their armor and their injuries kept piling up faster than they could heal.
Car-Vex tried to retaliate, but Harley caught her arm mid-swing and twisted until something gave. The sound was sharp and ugly. Harley didn't pause. She slammed her fist into Car-Vex's chest, once, twice, three times, each hit backed by divine force that rippled through her entire frame.
Faora lunged again. Harley turned and punched Faora in the face. The transparent mask broke. Pieces flew into the air.
Car-Vex followed a second later.
Harley grabbed her head and slammed it forward into her own knee.
The second mask cracked.
Another hit finished it.
Both masks broke completely.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then everything changed.
Faora's expression shifted first. "Ahhh! Kugggg!!!" Her breath caught. Her body stiffened slightly as her senses spiked all at once. The air hit her lungs differently now. Too dense and rich.
Car-Vex staggered midair, her movements losing that sharp, controlled precision. Her eyes widened as sound, light, and pressure overwhelmed her all at once.
Their Kryptonian physiology is suddenly overwhelmed by Earth's atmosphere, which is far richer and more "intense" than the air on Krypton. Their suits previously filtered this, but now that their suits were damaged, their newly enhanced senses and lungs are bombarded by the unfiltered environment.
Both of them were barely maintaining their flight.
Harley hovered in front of them, lightning still dancing across her skin, though her expression softened just a fraction as she noticed the shift.
Faora looked at Harley.
Her voice came out strained, but steady enough. "Finish it."
Harley blinked once.
For a second, the chaos around them faded from her focus.
She looked at Faora, then at Car-Vex, really taking in the difference. These two were not like the hollow soldiers breaking apart below.
These two were alive and looked somewhat sane.
She exhaled slowly, some of the tension leaving her shoulders.
"Sorry, sweetheart, the old me would've smashed your head like a watermelon. But I ain't that gal anymore," she said with an awkward smile as she remembered her past before she met John and her life changed. "Besides, you look alive, unlike your freaky swarm of husks, and I already got enough blood on my hands..." For a moment, she visualized all the lives she had taken during her run with Joker. "I don't want to add anymore if I could avoid it. So, stay down there like two good girls. And maybe when this is all over, we could have some ice cream while jumping on golden pogo sticks."
Their bodies dropped from the sky, hitting the desert below with heavy impacts that sent dust rising in thick clouds.
Harley hovered for half a second longer, then her eyes snapped wide as realization clicked into place.
"Oh!"
She turned midair, scanning the battlefield below.
"HEY!" she shouted at the top of her lungs, her voice cutting through the chaos. "BREAK THEIR HELMETS!"
She pointed down at the remaining Kryptonians.
"They can't handle the air here! It messes 'em up! And maybe we can save them later."
And just like that, the fight changed.
Within a few minutes, it was all over. All the Kryptonians were squirming and struggling to breathe while their senses were overwhelmed.
"Alright," Harley landed beside Maureen. "That's a wrap-up."
Superman, John and Kara landed before them.
"So, who has this codex?" John asked, looking toward Superman and Kara.
Just then, another beam of white light appeared in the middle of the battlefield and from within walked out a man in a heavy combat suit. His black cape was fluttering in the air. And he has the same helmet with a transparent mask, like Faora and Car-Vex.
"Zod!" Kara clenched her fists.
"Kara Zor-L. We've been looking for you," Zod said with a calm expression. He then looked at his arm and tapped some kind of command.
Multiple portals appeared all around Earth and Kryptonian terraforming machines emerged from those portals, hovering in the sky. One of them appeared over the desert. Then Zod tapped another command. Those machines activated, releasing energy beams.
"Terraforming has begun," Zod said as he looked up in the sky. "This world must die, so that ours may live again."
Zod's words had barely settled when the massive machine hovering above them pulsed once, then released a focused beam straight down into the earth. The light drilled through sand and stone with terrifying ease. The ground shook, not like an explosion but like something deeper, something structural. The desert floor cracked outward in jagged lines as heat and pressure surged from below.
'Tsk. This's gonna be annoying to deal with,' John thought as he looked up in the sky. 'Gotta take down the mothership...' He looked down at Zod. 'I'll let Kara and Superman handle him.'
All over the world, the same thing was happening.
In Metropolis, a beam tore through the heart of the city, carving a glowing path straight into the ground. Buildings around it shattered under the pressure wave. Glass rained down like a storm as people ran in every direction, panic spreading faster than the destruction itself. Police sirens screamed, overlapping into chaos as emergency lines flooded beyond capacity.
Inside a high-rise command center, screens flickered violently as systems struggled to stay online. Technicians shouted over each other, trying to stabilize feeds that kept cutting out. "We're losing infrastructure across multiple cities!" one of them yelled. "Power grids are collapsing near impact zones!"
At the JSA base, the heroes have regrouped around a central display. Batman stood at the front, his eyes locked on the global map as red markers spread across continents.
"They're targeting the planetary core," Batman replied, his voice low and controlled. "If they succeed, they'll rewrite the entire biosphere."
"What do we do?" Flash asked.
"I've tried to hack them, but their technology is far superior. It'll take time..." Batman replied, looking grim.
"Time which we don't have," Cyclone said as she sat down on a chair.
Outside, Guy was using his constructs to destroy one of the machines, but it was useless. His constructs were shattering before he could hit it. Hawkman tried to fly in and smash it with his mace, but once again, it didn't matter. The force field around the machine was so strong that it was repelling all their attacks.
Back to the base...
The reality cracked like a mirror as Dr. Fate walked out. He took off his helmet and said, "Have faith in our friends." He looked at the live feed over the desert. Thanks to Batman's backup plans, they managed to get the communication up and running.
"You peeked into the future again, didn't you?" Batman asked.
"Yes, I've foreseen certain possibilities and what I said back then still stands. No harm will come to Earth as long as the Champion is with us," Dr. Fate replied with a calm expression.
[Back to the desert]
"Krypton is gone, Zod," Kara said as she flew in and stopped a few feet away from Zod.
"Your uncle hid the key to Krypton's rebirth inside a Kryptonian child..." Zod started to explain as he took a step forward. "...all the genetic material needed to start again coded inside the DNA and sent to Earth in an escape pod."
Kara's eyes widened.
Zod continued, "We thought it was Kal-El. But we were wrong..." He stopped and pointed at Kara. "We've finally found it. You are the one... Kara Zor-L. It is your blood, we must harvest."
"Harvest blood? Freak's a vampire? I'd have brought garlic if I knew we're facin' vamps," Harley chimed in as usual.
Zod continued, "Your sacrifice will allow Krypton to live again."
"This world is my home," Kara said as her eyes began to glow red. "And I'd be damned if I let you destroy it."
Kara unleashed her heat vision.
At the same time, John shot up into the sky.
--
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