Bayou Bartholomew
October 1, 16:34
Dealing with the Injustice League—the team of misfits put together by The Light to throw the Justice League off their scent—did not require a complicated plan. Especially since I elected to go at it alone.
This also meant I could deal with them as I saw fit and would at worst, have to answer some uncomfortable questions and endure looks of suspicion from my heroic peers.
That is if I went ahead with my scorched earth plan; wiping the control center, its unpleasant inhabitants, and its neighbouring environs off the map. It was a tempting notion, but I rejected it.
I could see this slippery slope from a mile away and hence chose to avoid it. The consequences for ridding the world of these characters were not things that could hold me back or down in any shape or form.
But that mere thought itself—that I could get away with murder if I really wanted it is what stopped me cold. However, I wasn't willing to treat the Injustice League with baby hands either.
They had caused real damage and loss of life in gross numbers even before they pulled this stunt. So I made a compromise. Instead of indulging my darker fantasies of a world where none of them existed, I elected to terminate some of them and leave the rest.
The choices came easy. Considering that the Joker called himself a member of this group, it wasn't hard to see why.
The wide, lipsticked grin on his chalk white face entered the scope of my sniper rifle. I moved my aim up slightly and took in the wicked delight on the mad jester's narrow face, the chaos caused by his direction of the plants no doubt responsible for his joy.
Reassured of my place in the air above the bayou, I lined the reticle up on his pale forehead and pulled the trigger. The mile and a half distance disappeared like that, and the Joker ceased to be no more, his head and upper shoulders gone.
Realtime scans of the structure the villains initially trusted to keep them from sight showed them grow still at the sudden change before scrambling like rats.
The second round, designed specifically for the capture or kill of flying bricks, cut through the distance and caught Black Adam in the shoulder, piercing his invulnerable skin and yanking him down to the earth.
All over the bayou, Ivy's plants responded to her frantic emotions. They coiled and rose out of the swamp in large numbers, no doubt doing their best to shield their mistress and locate me.
Luckily for Ivy, she would not be dying today. Outright insane and crazy she may be, but I saw the potential for something great. It all hinged on her though. If she refused, well… there was more than one way to deal with people like her.
Wotan, the blue skinned sorcerer, had conjured an opaque bubble shield around himself and Vertigo. As a rifle made personally by me and for me, such obstacles were nothing before the scope integrated into it.
It pierced through the defenses raised by the sorcerer and gave me a good view of the man himself. He was in the process of casting a spell, no doubt trying to locate me. I chose to let him know what I thought of his efforts with a bullet.
Like a missile through tissue paper, the projectile tore through the shield and arrived in front of the immortal viking, embedding itself in his chest and launching him out of the sky like a falling meteor.
Like Ivy and Vertigo, he was one of the lucky ones. That bullet, in addition to healing his injuries and sealing off his powers, would lock him in stasis for the foreseeable future or till the day we got him into a proper cell.
During his unceremonious and undignified fall to the ground to join us peasants, Vertigo received his own bullet and it slammed him back-first into the walls of the control center.
His arrogance alone should've warranted that this place turn into his burial site, however his brother wanted to look him in the eye and try him for his crimes. So he got a pass. However it was the last he would get.
Any other attempt at villainy would be his last.
A bright flare of lightning accompanied by the blast of thunder echoed in the distance and drew all eyes to it. After seconds of intense struggle, Adam had managed to rid himself of the bullet. Though his formerly pristine suit now showed a hole that would not mend.
"SHOW YOURSELF CUR! FACE ME LIKE A MAN!"
"Be quiet and take three more."
I pulled the trigger three more times at the maximum velocity the rifle could handle. They struck Adam in that same shoulder again, his waist on that same side, and his knee also. They launched his body backward in a spiral toward the control site, breaking the wall and depositing him back inside the building.
Each bullet, hardened with my matter strengthening device, had been designed to lodge into their targets and push themselves deeper, resisting attempts to remove them and growing hooking tendrils all the while increasing their respective weights by over ten thousand tons.
Adam wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Which was fantastic news because the first bullet(Joker's) that had embedded itself in the plant's main body had finished taking a scan of the whole structure and the technology used to facilitate this whole scheme.
That meant I could go scorched earth now—on the plant—not the villains.
A quick mental nudge to The Bus opened a hatch on its lower side and a cannon poked out, glowing blue lines pulsing along its length and growing brighter by the millisecond.
While the annihilation beam charged up, I focused on the last three members of the Injustice League—Ivy, Ultra Humanite, and Atomic Skull—huddled up with their backs against one another behind scores of giant green, mud covered tendrils.
As if that could stop me. Three quick trigger pulls tore through several meters of plant tissue and separated the group, launching them in three different directions.
Like a lance from the heavens, the beam unleashed by the cannon arrived and pierced through the part of the plant that had grown out of the dome like nothing. It continued deeper into the structure itself, where Adam lay trying to free himself.
By taking active control of the cannon with my watch, I intensified the beam of pure matter unravelling energy and expanded its range, swallowing the monstrous plant and the entire control site in its radius.
I flew closer to the giant blue pillar while it worked and checked on the captured villains, ensuring that they were secure before using The Bus' tractor beam to pick them up.
After a few more seconds, the beam began to thin and then, it finally fizzled out, revealing a drastic change in terrain that stood out in a stark manner in a place largely known for its swamps.
Like the case in Bludhaven, there was no smoke, no falling debris, nothing. Just empty space and an unnaturally carved section of the ground that looked very out of place.
If you thought that was crazy, imagine the fact that there was someone alive and moving in the radius of what had been ground zero of a mass annihilation event. These gods sure built their champions tough.
Black Adam was still alive, though from the way he looked, I had a strong feeling he didn't want to be. The yellow sash around his waist, what little hair he had and his boots were gone. His suit clung to him in tatters and he staggered, every attempt to stand up ruined by the bullets weighing down his right side.
Oh wait, he managed to remove one. Not that it mattered.
Jumping onto the Soulsword, I let it carry me to him. I didn't even get close enough to say or do anything. With a sudden bellow of rage, he took off in a flight that kept him close to the ground and lunged for me.
I threw out my right hand and the Soulsword flew out from under me towards it, morphing itself into a knuckleduster that sat snugly around my gloved fingers.
As soon as my feet touched the ground, I sidestepped to the left, putting myself on the side I had deliberately weakened for this exact purpose. My strength and speed, enhanced by a magnitude of 100 by my suit, proved its legitimacy and rocked Adam's world when my fist impacted his cheek.
The ground beneath us cratered and the air burst from the sheer force, visible shockwaves emanating from the epicenter of the strike.
Adam didn't get to fly away. Not today.
The magitech version of a Sandevistan built into the suit responded to my will and slowed things down even more. In the same breadth as I landed the punch, I drew my right hand back and slapped the same spot with my left, sending him along with even more force.
The web line I planted with the slap grew taut with unbelievable force but held and brought the evil champion back to me, right into a knee strike to the face, his nose cracking but not breaking.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
For the next minute, I vented all my rage on him, ruining the perfect albeit out of place crater, turning it into a scene of utter destruction and carnage.
Of course, this beatdown wasn't solely for my enjoyment, not that a huge part of me didn't find it utterly satisfying.
The other purpose of this thrashing was to decipher how the enchantment that gave him his powers worked. This planet didn't need a Superman with no compunctions about taking life, so I decided to do something about it.
Once I figured out how to turn him off forever, I ended things. A web line yanked him into the air and I leapt toward him, the Soulsword morphing into wolverine style claws around my fist before being wreathed in electricity.
BAM!
I stabbed them into the center of his chest, where the lightning bolt on his suit used to be and smashed him into the ground, cratering it even further and throwing up huge chunks of rock around us.
Perhaps, due to his own mastery of lightning and the magic cancelling claws in his chest, he must've sensed the energy building inside me and what I was about to accomplish. Or maybe, he could see his own death coming.
Regardless, none of it mattered. Blooded and with fewer teeth than when I first struck him, Adam clawed and looked at me with desperation, but I ignored it all and smiled at him, muttering the words he'd dreaded saying for the past millennia.
"Shazam."
Pure, unadulterated lightning followed the path of my hand and the claws into the evil champion and undid his transformation. This resulted in a blast and release of energy that obscured us briefly. When it passed, the real Adam was revealed.
A beyond decrepit old man with a wide open mouth releasing hoarse sounds and fingers that may have well been bones clung to me for dear life. This pathetic attempt ceased when I removed my claws and undid them, the old Adam turning to dust and becoming no different from the one on the ruined ground.
.
.
.
.
Ritual site
October 1, 16:34
POV: Roy/Arsenal
Captain Marvel's secret identity… was a ten year old boy.
The hero with the powers of Superman and then some, with none of the weaknesses, turned out to be a little kid. Though thinking about it now, him being that young was his weakness.
In this situation however—he still could not fathom what Klarion sought to gain from splitting the world in two—the prepubescent hero's ability to switch between his kid and adult form turned out to be a boon for both world(s).
Sometimes Roy wondered if there was some divine force monitoring Earth, moving things behind the scenes to ensure there'd be a solution to every villain that popped up and every dumb scheme they cooked up.
Because how was it possible for a world splitting situation to happen in the same world Captain Marvel existed in? And Spider-Man, Elliot, too. He was the main reason Roy strongly believed in this someone or something.
For him, this meant that his doubts at them successfully undoing the split were—not unfounded, but rather irrelevant. Whether he believed the bullet would work or not, the world would go back to normal.
Even without this realisation, he'd have been able to take the shot but it felt great, reassuring to know that even something as insane as creating separate dimensions for adults and children could be overcome.
"Arsenal," the young Batson's voice came through his comms. "Agent Laski says to ask if you have the shot."
"Got it lined up since we got here."
"Huh?"
"Yes. I have the shot."
"Okay. Give me a second… Okay I'm back. He said we should use a countdown."
"Cool with me. When does it start?"
"Wait. Lemme ask him… Okay. He says we count down from five and shoot on one."
"Wait. Ask him if we shoot after one or on one."
"Wha— oh okay… He said after one. Is that okay?"
"It is. Start the countdown."
"Okay. I'm coming… It's starting… now!"
""Five.""
""Four.""
""Three.""
""Two.""
""One.""
"Fire."
Perched atop the air more than a mile above the ritual site, Roy kept a tight control over his grav-boots and rifle. He pulled the trigger, firing at the target he'd had a literal birds eye view on for the past ten minutes.
He could make out the flashes of light from the battle below him. It all came to a halt when his shot tore through the shield protecting the ritual and struck the gem.
The first thing that changed were the multiple flashes of yellow morphing into existence around the site, increasing the number of people present.
They were all adults, two of them bound and gagged on the ground and the rest dressed in tactical suits, the designs of which he's seen in Elliot's files long ago.
Shield. These were his agents.
The world had gone back to normal. Though Klarion didn't seem too bothered by it. In fact, Roy observed through his scope, the child satan had a pleased expression, a wide crooked smile on his equally crooked face.
"See ya later armadillos," the Lord of Chaos caught his pet cat, which had shrunk down from its Sabretooth tiger form and leapt into his arms. "Unless I see you first."
He waved to the side and ignored everyone to walk toward the portal he conjured with the gesture. It collapsed before he could disappear into it. The cause for this was revealed to be a bullet, one that struck Klarion in his forehead and staggered him.
*********************
10 advanced chapters on: https://patreon.com/MasterReigen