AN: I own none of this, except maybe my OC's.

So, kicking off the next part of the series with this one. It originally was meant to bridge between the first trilogy and the second, but it kind of exploded out on me. I owe thanks to Illusorygentleman for his continued support and advice, and I really recommend his work. Totally go check that out some time, and leave him a review. And me, leave me a review please, I love interacting with my readers. I've got to have two or three by now. For those couple of you, thank you for your continued support and views!

December 23rd
Metropolis
2006 EST

If ever there was a chance to say that Hell had come to Earth, this was it. The Reach invasion had been child's play compared to the terror which had been wrought. The Boom tubes opened a little before sundown, and the Parademons had spewed forth, an unending tide of death and destruction; mere heralds for their master, Darkseid.

"Cover the evacuating civilians!" Fractal called out, ducking behind a wrecked car to avoid the fiery blast of a Parademon. The beast shoved the ruined vehicle away, and was prepared to belch flame again, when a devastating impact took it to the ground.

"Cover this!" Godiva said from the back of the creature. She wrapped her arms around its massive neck, planted her feet on either side of it, and wrenched, snapping the thing's neck and nearly twisting its head off in the process.

"Okay, yes that." Fractal said, sending his companion swarm out onto the streets to start breaking the damaged cars down into their constituent molecules, to fuel his efforts. Several cars were sacrificed to the greater whole, as the nanite swarm, obedient only to Fractal, began to swell exponentially.

In his state, Fractal was nearly defenseless, so Godiva ripped a lamppost from the ground and began swinging it like a baseball bat, swatting more of the Parademons out of the sky around them.

"Make it quick over there." Godiva called out, trying to ignore the cuts and burns covering her body. Her costume was in tatters, barely enough to protect her modesty, assuming she cared about such things.

"Almost finished, just say your prayers." Fractal said, using the steel, aluminum, and rubber from the cars, but also the trace amounts of precious metals one could find in an automobile, as well as the fuel, and willed his creation into being.

"I thought I told you I was atheist." Godiva countered, leaping high into the air to wrestle down another Parademon who'd dared fly into her coverage.

"I more mean to the Goddess you know quite well." Fractal retorted, and stepped into the swirling, amorphous mass of material which was currently coming together at his command. Steel became the skeleton, aluminum the skin, and rubber the muscles of his monster. A short convoy of semis, now abandoned, provided more than enough material to offer protection from the mindless creatures.

In the sky, the full moon grew darkened as storm clouds rolled in. Thick, black, and fearsome, they blotted the sky out, concealing the stars, and lightning began arcing across, as furious as the woman who commanded it.

A few blocks away, Daeva, her small body seeming bigger than life, stood on a rooftop, away from the traffic of the main swarms of demons. "I need them closer, to make sure it arcs correctly." She said, looking to one of the men to her side.

"I'll corral them." Mustang replied with a grin, and started eyeballing a good choke point. "Just say the word."

The storm belonged to her. The primal forces of nature were hers to command. It was thunder and lightning, her enemy, no, the world's enemy, and her. "Bang." She whispered into the whipping winds. At that moment, a massive group of the Parademons, swarming their way into the center of Metropolis, got hung up, smacking an invisible wall and turning into a pile on each other.

The lightning struck the gathered mass. There must have been a thousand of them in there. Another bolt, and another. Lightning was striking the same place, several times over, and it was at her will. The energy arced and coursed through the metallic and organic bodies of the mindless creatures. They were nothing but machines, driven by pain and subservient only to their master. And at that moment, they were even less than that, just molten, misshapen things, more detritus to fall to the ground.

"Air Force say their jets are clear." Koa replied, shouldering a massive multi-barreled rifle of Atlantean design. He began cutting the thing loose, unleashing his own storm of red energy bolts into another swarm of the Parademons. They didn't care, they just kept coming.

"My turn." Mustang drawled, and launched himself into the air. Doing some very quick estimations, he calculated his safe range, and worked out his boundaries. "All aerial members of the Justice League and gathered allies, you have five seconds to go to ground, on my mark." He said on the radio, and began applying his will to his work.

"Five." He said, and a torrent of laser blasts from Koa scratched several Parademons off his back.

"Four." Lighting kept striking, the bright flashes bringing down whatever they struck.

"Three." On the streets below, the Titan came to life, a massive monstrosity of metal comprised of microscopic machines, and it began going to work.

"Two." A single Parademon, separated from the pack, was nearly torn in half by a very unhappy blonde.

"One." Potential energy flooded the area Mustang had set out for himself, as Superman, Captain Atom, Wonder Woman, all three Green Lanterns, the Hawks, and a dozen others dropped low to the ground

"Mark!" He called out, and the potential energy became kinetic. The air was filled with a sharp, screaming sound, as even the air passing over the web of telekinetic filaments became cut. One could only imagine what it did to the swarm of Parademons.

On the roof, Koa had to cover his ears, enhanced as they were for his job beneath the waves. The extremely high frequency noise played hell on his biotechnologically enhanced hearing. He saw his partner count down, his hand hanging by his side, one finger every five seconds.

It rained gore and pieces of metal on the streets of the city as the last of the Parademons to swarm flew through the close knit mesh of filaments, their speed in flight their undoing. Mustang just stood there, unfazed, counting down the seconds. "Airspace is clear." He called over the radio after he ended his effect. "Looks like that was the last of them too."

"Good anchor, but it's getting bad here." Superman called over the radio. "Fractal, get your team here, we still have civilians to…" and then the communique went dead. Down below, several buildings got blown through by something. Something blue and red.

"We better go." Daeva said, and took to the skies herself. Koa slung his weapon over his shoulder and took off after them, taking long leaps from roof to roof, while Mustang followed to cover their backs.

Deke pushed his thoughts out, looking for one unique brain processing the entire scene.[You doing okay?] he sent to that magnificent mind, currently making those amazing leaps and connections.

[I am, be careful up there, and I love you.] Batgirl replied. She was down on the ground with the team, helping clean up the Parademons not caught up in Daeva's lightning, or her boy's web. She whipped a quick trio of kicks into one of them, rotating her body to work her way up, starting by striking it on the knee, then the hip, and finally springing off to drill it in the face. The maneuver brought a whole new shock of pain through her body. If her arm wasn't broken, she'd eat her cape.

Two of them slammed into each other as Miss Martian simply willed it. Blue Beetle was ripping them apart with his sonic cannons, while Superboy and Wondergirl set about bashing away. They were all tired, most were bleeding or burned, and Kid Flash was running on empty.

A few arrows flew across the street, one black, the other red, as Tigress and Red Arrow depleted the last of their ammunition, retorting to their bows and martial arts skills. Cheshire stabbed a few on a quick pass through, but she was bleeding and burnt too, like the rest.

A green mammoth wrapped its trunk around a fire hydrant and ripped it from the ground, allowing Aqualad to bring his water bearers to full. He used them first to drive several of the Parademons into a building, taking them temporarily out of the fight, and giving Bumblebee and Guardian a chance to keep them from getting back into the fray.

Not far away, Red Robin and Nightwing were disabling the Boom tube, making sure no more of the things could come through. "Back to it?" he asked his friend, mentor, and brother.

"Always." Nightwing said, and darted back towards the mix.

The Movers set down not far from where Superman had been blasted through the buildings, and set about covering more people as they fled the scene. At this point, with most of the League handling the straggling Parademons, it was a simple matter to direct people and cover their escape.

As the fight moved, the team got their first glimpse of Darkseid. Massive, terrifying, and utterly unconcerned about people trying to hit him. He grabbed Wonder Woman around the torso and tossed her, like a child might discard a toy, and his eye beams chased the Flash down the street, almost catching him. It was truly scary.

And apparently, the perfect opportunity to do something stupid. "Hey brah, the civilians are clear." Koa said, not even bothering to shoot at Darkseid.

"You got a plan?" Mustang asked his salt brother. A few months ago, Atlantis has begun recognizing formed familial bonds with surface dwellers, and Koa had insisted his team be recognized as his family. In all technicality, it was for more executive purposes, but he didn't care, Ohana was Ohana.

"I'll distract him, you hit him. Might be our only chance." Koa said, and set his giant gatling plasma rifle aside.

"Hell yeah." Mustang said, and began gathering potential energy. Physics class had almost done more for him than his med school courses in this regard. Instead of taking off and accelerating, he did all of his acceleration first now. The ground beneath him began bowling, the pavement cracking and compressing into a large semispherical hollow as the energy he was gathering couldn't be properly contained.

A block and a half away, his love silently cried out, and her pain fueled him. Hawkwoman knelt over her injured husband, and her anguish fueled him. Guy Gardner was furious at his inability to harm Darkside, and his will fueled him. The collective emotions of the people around Mustang drove him, pushing him into an even higher gear.

"Hey, big, ugly, and purple!" Koa called out after getting away from anyone else. "Yeah, you!" he said, when Darkseid turned to face him. "Your momma suck Cthulhu dick!" He shouted, and threw an empty city bus at him.

Darkseid casually blasted the bus with his eye beams, unsure what the thing was trying to accomplish, but enjoying the agony its failure caused. He turned, still on the path to conquest, when, some distance away, the sound barrier broke suddenly.

Mustang released that potential energy, allowing it to become kinetic, and he launched himself directly at Earth's invader. In the moment, he was on a ballistic path, ready to hit the monster once and send him packing back to wherever he came from. His efforts had hurt too many people he cared about, too many people he loved. Maddie was bleeding, Barbara was suffering, Tim was scared and M'gann was barely functioning. No, to hell with that, this ugly bastard needed to go.

Darkseid watched for a moment, and swatted the thing away as it came close, and carried on its path.

December 28th
Boston, Massachusetts
1022 EST

Pain, lots, and lots of pain. Horrible pain, stinging, aching, very prominent and insistent pain. All the colors of the rainbow, and all thirty two flavors.

Deke felt the tube in his throat first, and that had to go, yesterday. Trying to put as little effort as possible into using his powers, he deflated the balloon holding the tube where it belonged, and pulled the thing out, which of course hurt like the devil.

"Bloody hell, stop that!" He heard in a soprano voice with a British accent. "You're going to hurt yourself worse you stubborn mule!"

He coughed and heaved, trying to calm his gag reflex, as his vision grew into focus. Aasha was sitting across from him, in some kind of hospital room. She was dressed in a set of slightly too big scrubs, her hair was a mess and she had no makeup on. She rushed to him, tried all her might to sit him back down, and kissed him on the cheek. "Calm down and behave, I have standing orders." She said in her big girl voice.

She rarely did that, so it must be serious. Deke, still trying to get over extubating himself, and not that gently, tried to do as he was told while she rushed out of the room. He took a moment to glance at the equipment, and wasn't that offended that, despite all manner of pain, his vitals looked not that horrible.

A couple of people in scrubs rushed in, logging vitals and checking pupillary reaction. One of them, a middle aged black man with a stethoscope around his neck, seemed to be in charge. "Mr. O'Connely, I'm Doctor Franklin, you need to calm down. You're going to throw yourself into shock or ventricular tachycardia. We've already been warned that sedating you is worthless, so if need be, I will have you fully anesthetized. Do I have your attention?"

"Yeah." Deke croaked, taking a deep breath and realizing that was a horrible, horrible mistake.

"You have a list of fractured bones as long as my arm, contusions over your entire body, you lost a lot of blood, and if that wasn't enough, you just work up from a four day coma. That being said, I understand you're a med student, so you should also know better, and you probably know what's going to happen in the near future."

"MRI's, CT's, therapy, exams, and the answer to my question." Deke said hoarsely.

"Your question?" Doctor Franklin asked as he eyeballed the young man's vitals on the equipment, satisfied they were leveling out.

"Where am I?" Deke asked, finally relaxing back into the pillow on his bed.

"STAR Labs Boston. You and the rest of the injured members of the Justice League and their allies were brought here for treatment." Doctor Franklin said. "I'm going to order you some hydromorphone, if, that is, you actually react to that."

Deke pondered it for a minute. "Go low on the dosage. I can self-heal but I can't be too messed up, and can you run me a banana bag with a side of glucose please?"

"I normally wouldn't, but if you promise to ask for a normal dose if the pain gets too bad, I'm willing to give you a chance." Doctor Franklin said, making some notes on Deke's chart. "We'll get you out of ICU in a few hours as long as you're showing signs of improvement. Also, I think you have a visitor."