Chapter 11: Molossus
The quakes had chosen just about the worst possible time to return. They had started up again at the exact same moment that Wonder Woman had charged into action, ready to tear the Imperium apart that were blocking their path to the core of the cloud. Thankfully, she was able to simply take off and fly over the tremors, but that didn't mean that she didn't recognise the dangers as a whole. The need to win this fight was even more pressing than ever.
Not that Wonder Woman needed any more motivation. She didn't even need the threat of so many innocents' deaths to make her want to fight, not this time. Batman had seen to it that her rage was overflowing anyway.
She knew that behind her Bruce was charging into battle too, albeit without her speed having nothing there to fire his signature grapnel onto in order to literally swing into action. She knew that his mind would surely be working away even as the testosterone began coursing once again. He would be trying to figure out what these quakes were, if it affected their plans at all, and he would somehow continue to do so even in a few seconds time when he was in the midst of the Imperium horde. She knew him well enough to know that with absolute certainty. She also knew him well enough to know that she could leave all of that side of things to him. She could let him be the one to worry about the increasingly aggressive tremors. She only need worry about not letting it affect her.
She need only worry about the battle. For her, everything else could wait until afterwards. Everything, no matter how pressing it might be on her mind.
For the fighting had begun.
Even as she flew the energy blasts were being fired at her by the Imperium soldiers, but she had both arms raised ready in front of her. It was a simple task for her to start batting all the shots away, not letting any get through. She even managed to send a few straight back at their shooters, creating at least temporary holes in the bodies of all of the ones she hit.
But that wasn't the only reason that her fists were raised. She was on the Imperium in a heartbeat, her fists a whirlwind of motion as she tore all the ones nearest to her apart. They tried to stop her, but they just hadn't the strength. Even if they'd been solid they wouldn't have done. Getting in this close, it was easy for Wonder Woman to take the Imperium's guns out of the equation, literally tearing them from their owners hands before ripping apart the owners themselves with her powerful strength. Of course, these gelatinous beings could well reform quickly, but for now they were done.
The problem there was that Wonder Woman had only struck a few of them, and that there was a whole lot more where they had come from. A whole lot more between them and their chance of saving the day.
But she wasn't alone either. The batarangs came whistling past her just as the last of her bunch melted in her hands. More of the aliens had been starting to come after her, drawing their weapons her way from all sides. That was until the batarangs had struck, anyway. These weren't a type that Wonder Woman had seen before. They were a combination of the old explosive variety and Batman's smoke pellets, both blowing up around the nearest Imperium to Wonder Woman that were still standing and simultaneously creating a smokescreen all around her, preventing any more distant soldiers from getting a shot at her. Through the smoke they had no aim, and the few shots they did get close to being on target were easy to swat away. The ranged attack had been effectively taken out of the equation, but she couldn't just stand here and wait for the Imperium to come to her. Wonder Woman was about to surge through the smoke to engage the enemy head on when she heard the growl, now right beside her.
"Superman and the rest must have found a way of destroying the cloud," Batman informed her, clearly referring to the ongoing quakes. He spoke quickly, urgently, completely emotionless. It made Wonder Woman's anger build some more, even as she shielded him from those shots getting through the smoke. "And if the Boy Scout is looking to destroy a potential life form, things must be bad. The cloud must be right by the surface, which means people are getting absorbed. Now we have to do more than move the cloud. We have to warn Superman that those people aren't dead, that they're alive in here with us, before he gets us all killed."
Even as Batman was speaking Wonder Woman could have sworn that she saw some human civilians suddenly appear from nowhere behind them, before disappearing equally as quickly. They were in and out so fast it was almost like they weren't ever really there, but Wonder Woman knew that her eyes weren't deceiving her. Those people were now also trapped in the cloud, out of their bodies. And they were coming in in droves. Endless droves. It didn't take a genius to recognise the cloud must have settled over an entire city, nor that those captured citizens were being whisked away immediately to wherever the Imperium wanted to turn them into human batteries. Those people were in dire need of help. Yet there was nothing that neither Wonder Woman or Batman could do for those people right now, even as they continued to stream into the cloud and then out of sight straight away. They were going too quick for even Flash to have caught them. All they could do was make sure that they all survived this.
They had to get these Imperium out of the way. They had to reach the core. They had to stop the cloud's attack. Now.
"Then I suggest we get back to it!" Wonder Woman snapped at Batman in response to his urgent statement. She didn't wait for his reply. There was nothing stopping her this time. Taking off a metre into the air, she soared through the smokescreen as fast as she could muster, fists once again raised at the ready. She would not fail those people.
The smoke swirled in a vortex as she surged through. It turned out that she did so just in time. The Imperium had not been sitting back and waiting for them to act. They had been charging themselves, ready to pass through the smoke themselves and remove the defence Batman had provided. In fact, they had managed to get close enough to it that they had no reaction time at all to deal with the enraged Amazonian Princess raging their way. They hadn't the chance to stop her beating them all. It took just one brilliantly aimed throw of her tiara for every one of the latest brave batch of aliens to be split in two, collapsing to the ground like falling rain.
Wonder Woman just caught the looping tiara before more of the countless Imperium around her finally managed to react to her assault, getting her hands free again in time to keep those shots away. Just. There was at least one very close call, but Wonder Woman was not about to dwell on it.
Her charge through Batman's smokescreen had been aimed straight for that towering pillar of light that was surely the cloud's control core, an effort to create a path through to it. However, the Imperium weren't stupid. They must have seen what she was doing, especially as she had made no real efforts to hide it. Showing tactical nouse of their own, Wonder Woman watched as they began to reorganise, to get more bodies in her path, blocking her way.
But she, too, wasn't stupid. And the Imperium had no idea that it wasn't actually her that needed that path through. Their's had been a good strategy to at least keep her at bay for a time, but it could also play straight into her hands. If she could keep drawing them all too her, then perhaps Batman could do what he did best; make it past the enemy completely unnoticed. Perhaps she could keep the enemy busy enough to allow Batman a route to the core. It wasn't the most cunning of strategies, but given the dwindling time constraints it would have to do.
And so she engaged again, going right into the heart of the Imperium horde even as they began to circle her position. She wanted to look behind her, to see if Batman had cottoned on to the plan, to see if he had made it safely out of the smoke, but she didn't dare to, not without risking giving her plan away to the enemy. She just had to hope, and have faith in Batman's well proven abilities. For now, she would have to just focus on utilising her own.
It was a flurry of motion. Wonder Woman kept the Imperium close, on all sides. As she turned one into a puddle on the floor, she made sure another stepped forward and took its place. It meant that she couldn't stop fighting for even the merest fraction of a second. She had to constantly keep on guard from even sides that she couldn't see. She had to keep her fists flinging around, keep twisting and turning, keep countering endless attempts to strike or kill her as the Imperium turned their own equivalent of fists into deadly weapons.
But in doing so, she was also stopping them from shooting at her, and in turn that meant she was drawing more in ever closer. She kept fighting them, kept holding them off and defeating them all at the same time. Even when they did get the odd punch through, she refused to allow herself to feel the pain. She just kept going. She kept infuriating them by her refusal to go down, her refusal to be beaten, her refusal to die. She was keeping them a hundred percent focussed on her. It didn't matter if it wasn't something that she would be able to keep up indefinitely. She just had to buy enough time. The gods would see to the rest.
Bruce would see to the rest.
It was just as she punched another Imperium soldier apart that both she and all of the aliens saw it at once. It was one of the oddest of moments that could occur in the midst of such an intense a battle. For a second, everyone just stopped the fighting and looked up across the battleground. Their signal to do so was the sound of another explosive batarang, especially as it came from the same direction as the core. Wonder Woman looked up just as the fires faded, no smokescreen accompanying this one. She looked up just in time to see all the Imperium left on guard up there fall under the flames.
She looked up just in time to see that, completely unnoticed, Batman had made it through.
He was a stark contrast against the core, the man dressed in black against the intensity of light. Still, it was unmistakable seeing him take his hands and lay them flat against it. No, laying them flat inside it. He was in. However that thing worked, Wonder Woman knew that Batman had made it in. From what she was seeing she immediately figured that, just as being physically inside the cloud took one's mind away into the entity, physical contact with the core must provide mental access to the cloud's brain, access to hopefully control this thing. She also figured that Batman must have already known that, reminding her again about all the emotions she had tried to bury down since the fight had begun. Thankfully this time she had even more motivation to allow her to quickly fight them away.
The plan to get Batman to the core had worked. Now he just had to stay alive up there long enough to save them, all those civilians lost to the cloud and all that remained alive down below in the real world.
And she was his only hope.
Batman's success may have caused all the fighters in the battle to momentarily pause, but it was a short moment. The Imperium practically seemed to forget that Wonder Woman was in amongst them upon seeing the Dark Knight up there with the core like that. With his back to them and his hands – and focus – clearly in that core, the Imperium must have thought that he was an easy target, not to mention a vital one. Considering that they had so many defending this thing, they would surely want Batman dead before he could utilise it against them, and there was nothing that he could do to stop them achieving that goal, or he would already have done it. Scores of Imperium rifles were already trailing his way.
But there was still plenty that Wonder Woman could do.
She was not slow to act. Quite the opposite, in fact. The lasso was drawn from her hip in less time than it would take to bat an eyelid. It didn't take her much longer to unleash it either. The Imperium never got the chance to shoot before she had them. The lasso swallowed within its noose all the scores who were a fraction away from shooting Batman down. A quick tug on the rope and that noose tightened. All Wonder Woman had been thinking about was dragging those alien fiends off of their feet, ruining their aim at the very least. As things were, crashing the Imperium together as the lasso dragged so many to such a small focal point saw each of the gunmen felled into a mass puddle of white on the floor. There was nothing they could do to harm Batman now. It would surely take them too long to separate themselves out from that mess.
But those still weren't the only Imperium around, not by a long shot. They were just the ones who had been quickest on the draw. And Batman was still more than busy with the core. Wonder Woman only needed the briefest of glances to see that it definitely still had his full attention. With all these Imperium still around, that meant he still needed defending and, just as she had promised, she would be his guardian angel throughout it all.
It was one of the shortest flights she had ever taken, but Wonder Woman threw herself high into the air, soaring the small gap that had stood between her and where Batman was at the light of the core. Mid-air she twisted so that she came down back-to-back with the Dark Knight, landing with her bracelets at the ready. It took next to no time for her to get there, but she still only just made it in time. The Imperium were no mugs. Just because she had beaten the quickest and the nearest, the rest were still going to open fire at the sight of the biggest threat their plans had faced.
The blasts bounced off her bracelets as Wonder Woman used all of her speed and skill to keep the unequivocal multitude of incoming shots at bay, shielding Batman, who didn't even seem to be paying any notice to all that was going on just behind him. In that instant Wonder Woman felt sure this was the toughest barrage she had ever had to keep at bay, there was so much coming in from so many different angles. It was like some sort of crazy dance, the way she was having to move her hands to stop them all. She didn't know how long she would actually be able to keep them all at bay, didn't know how long it would be until one shot would manage to sneak its way through. The amount that there were, and the plausibly endless nature of them, made that scenario entirely possible, regardless of all of her skill and experience. Already Wonder Woman felt the unusual sensation of the effort needed being slightly draining. Already her teeth were gritted in angry determination.
But she had a reason to stop them all, a bigger reason than she had ever had before when using her bracelets for protection. She wasn't only saving the world. She wasn't only protecting herself. She was saving Bruce, warts and all. The Imperium would not get past her. She would make sure of it. She had to. She had to keep them well and truly at bay. All of them.
Or else she would truly lose everything.
Wonder Woman was so focused on the effort that she hardly noticed as suddenly the magnitude of incoming shots began to wane. It took her several moments before she began to truly clock on, before her eyes showed her the truth beyond the image her mind had created to help her fight on without distraction. It was then that she noticed that not only were the Imperium steadily ceasing to fire, they were retreating, falling back like the waves of the ocean. One by one they were vanishing, disappearing, lost to the environment as the first batch they had fought within this energy cloud had done earlier. Wonder Woman remained en guard as long as any remained, the fall back of the aliens gradual, but it was almost immediately clear that they were pulling out.
The thing was though, Wonder Woman had no idea what that truly meant. She didn't know if ultimately it was a good thing or not. She didn't know what it would mean for the outside world, for the people that the cloud was threatening. She didn't know what it would mean for all of them already swallowed up by the cloud. She didn't know why...
Only when the last soldier was gone did she dare to look around. Even then she had to make sure the coast was clear first. With so many of them being around, it would have been easy for one of the Imperium to not vanish with the rest, to try and unleash some sort of trap. Wonder Woman would not allow herself to fall victim to such a ploy, but she also wasn't going to stand around waiting for one once it became obvious that none was forthcoming. Only then did she turn around.
What she saw when she did so was startling. The second she saw it she was amazed that she even needed to turn to notice it. The central core, that pillar of light, was pulsating. It was glowing even brighter than before, pulsing the light in bursts that climbed from the bottom right up into the higher reaches were visibility faded. The pulses were so strong and bright that Wonder Woman could practically feel the energy radiating through them. Immediately she was convinced that it was the reason the Imperium had pulled out. Whatever the core was doing, it had them running. It had given them a reason to no longer want to be here, and that reason could very well have been fear.
But Wonder Woman felt some of her own then. Whatever was going on with that control cluster of the cloud, Batman was still touching it, his hands still inside it. If those pulses really were something that the Imperium feared...
But no. Wonder Woman threw aside the doubts as forcefully as she could. Batman was still standing, his face and jaw still firmly set in concentration. What was more, there was no signs of pain, no signs that the cloud's core was doing severe damage to him. She couldn't let her personal feelings cloud her judgement. She had to stick to the facts, just as Batman would be doing if positions were reversed. He was still working, using the control cluster to fight the cloud's assault on the Earth. He was undoubtedly the cause of the Imperium's flight. Now that they were gone, she had to see if there was something that she could do to help him.
"Bruce, what's–?" she began to ask, but infuriatingly he must have known that it was coming, even with all that was distracting him from his surroundings.
"I told the cloud that its had had its fill," he explained in answer to the unfinished question. His voice was steady, without pain, though there were traces of strain from the effort he must have been putting in to the core, in making his thoughts dominant. "It's in Metropolis right now. The Justice League are trying to stop it. Superman and Captain Atom have found a way to destroy it, but its already absorbed hundreds if not thousands of people. The Imperium are trying to draw more in to give them greater control of the cloud as a whole. I couldn't manage to convince the core to back away by command. So I tried a different tack. I told it that the Imperium had all the minds absorbed that they desired, that they needed. I told the cloud that it didn't have to stand around and let Superman and Captain Atom destroy it. I told the cloud it no longer had any need to hang around. I told the cloud that it could back off on its own. That meant the Imperium no longer had a need to defend this place. They think they've got enough minds on hand already to counter anything that we do and that its more important for the soldiers to be getting to work manipulating those captive minds so that they can use their energies to get even more power over the cloud. That way they can try and counteract the damage Superman's causing."
"So do we still have a problem?" Wonder Woman quickly asked. She could tell that Batman's tone had a distinct lack of finality to it. "Aside from finding some way of rescuing the citizens of Metropolis and then getting us all out of here, I mean."
"Unfortunately," was Batman's grim reply. His teeth bared slightly as he spoke this time. He was clearly proving an old adage wrong. He was a man multi-tasking; talking to her and working the control cluster all at the same time. "The job's not done. The people aren't safe yet. The cloud won't be quick enough. Superman and Captain Atom's assault is working. The cloud won't be out of Metropolis before they've destroyed it, and they can't stop attacking until its clear, for the people's sake. They can't know what's happening, they can't know that it's pulling out, that it's had it's feed for now. They can't know that everyone in here is still alive. We have to warn them, before they destroy the cloud, us and all of those absorbed civilians. Our bodies may be kept alive out there, but if this cloud goes, there is no way back for our minds. Any of our minds. If we don't stop Superman, we'll all die."
"So how do we do that? How can I help?" Wonder Woman rather desperately questioned. It was clear that they didn't have long, but her warrior spirit meant that no matter how long they had she couldn't just sit back and watch things unfold. She knew that the two of them were surely the only hope. If the Martians were able and willing to use their powers to stop the Imperium and move the cloud away, Wonder Woman knew that Wally and J'onn would have gotten through to them by now. But they clearly hadn't. No, it was surely all up to her and Bruce.
"I need to go deeper into the core, bypass the Imperium's control," Batman answered with a growl. Even as he was speaking Wonder Woman could see him pushing his arms literally deeper in, halfway up the forearms now. Not only that, but his voice got slightly more strained. "I doubt I can take full control, but I might be able to send a message. Princess, I need you to stand back. Whatever happens, keep away from the core. No matter what it does to me, don't join me in there. It's too dangerous."
"Bruce, I'm not just going to stand here and watch you suff–!" Wonder Woman immediately began to protest. She could see what he was doing. It was what he always did, preparing to risk sacrificing himself rather than allow anyone else to share the danger, even if it diminished that risk. Well, she was not going to allow it this time. However, Batman was most insistent.
"Princess, please! You can't join me in the core. Promise me that you won't, and I promise you that I'll explain everything to you as soon as we're safe. You have to trust me!"
He sounded almost like he was pleading, but it was not that that won Diana over. He had said he would tell her everything, that he would explain everything to her. And it was clear that he meant everything. He was going to give her the answers she had sought since she had first seen him back in the Watchtower teleporter bay what now seemed like an entire age ago. She was going to find out if they had a future, if his paranoia had made him go back on his word. There was no if in his promise, no doubts that he wouldn't survive this if he did it alone. Of course that could be due to arrogance or hidden truths, but Wonder Woman did trust Batman. Implicitly.
"Do it," she softly said in simple response. She didn't need to say more. She just backed away a couple of steps to give Batman the indication he needed. However, she couldn't hold back from giving him a kiss on the cheek before she did so. Batman seemed to pause for the briefest of moments after that, but as soon as Wonder Woman stepped back his attention was back fully on the core. He even pushed his arms in deeper, right up to the elbows.
The next few seconds felt like the longest ones that Wonder Woman had ever known. She was watching everything and nothing all at the same time as Batman's full concentration was unleashed on the cloud. She couldn't tell what it was that he was doing, and she couldn't see if it was working or not. But she could see the pulsing light climbing the tower of brightness getting even stronger, even more rapid. Batman was certainly doing something. But at the end of those seconds, Wonder Woman got very scared that 'was' was the key word in that sentence.
For it was then that Batman started to yell. There was warning signs, but she was too slow to react to them. Batman had begun trembling even more than the still shaking environment, starting with those arms buried in the core but expanding throughout his entire body. At the end of that, the yells began, with increase volume every moment.
And they were pained yells. Very pained yells. Batman was being wounded by his efforts, hurt. Badly.
In that moment Wonder Woman knew that what she had told him didn't matter. She had stepped back based on the thought that Bruce would be safe, that he wouldn't be hurt by his efforts, that he would survive. Now she could see that that thought had clearly been a wrong one. Batman was suffering. She couldn't just stand back and watch. It was in her character to help those in need, regardless of who they were. For the one man she would ever truly love, that trait was amplified countless times over. Besides, Batman couldn't know how this core worked. No-one could. Even the Martians had believed this form of life was a myth. Batman could have been wrong about this thing. Wonder Woman was not about to let that possibility get him killed, no matter the risks to herself, no matter that it would mean breaking her word.
And so she leapt forward, springing into action once again. Batman's screams were as endless as J'onn's had been earlier. In no time Wonder Woman was at his side. In even less she had her own hands plunged into the core, ensuring as she did so that her left hand grabbed hold of his right. She didn't know how this thing worked. She didn't dare just pull Batman out of there, not knowing what effect that would have on his body and mind. She didn't dare sacrifice all those civilians absorbed by the cloud, the Martians, J'onn and Flash too, just to stop Bruce hurting.
But maybe she could help him. Maybe she could take the hits from the core, maybe she could be the one it hurt instead of Batman, allowing him to focus on saving the world. Her gods-given endurance would mean she could take more than he could. Perhaps together they could end this. Perhaps in doing this together, she could save him.
However, before she could even begin to feel the sensations and effects of mentally accessing the cloud's core, she felt the pain. The same sort of pain that was still flooding into Batman began flooding into her, and she couldn't hold back from screaming too. It was intense. It was like her head was being split open many times over.
But then, through the pain, she began to feel something else, something more. She began to see more. It was odd, it wasn't the normal way of sight, but she could suddenly see all around the cloud as well as within it. She could see Superman and Captain Atom and how they were destroying the cloud. She could see and feel the urgency of the Imperium to get out of there now that they were convinced they had what they needed.
And she could see Batman's ongoing efforts to warn Superman about what was really going on. Suddenly she could see exactly what he was doing, almost as if the thoughts were her own. She didn't hesitate before joining in, instantly knowing exactly what do to to lend her own strength to his efforts. She concentrated away from the pain, firmly focussing onto those efforts. What was more, she could see them starting to work.
But it was in that moment that she saw something else, that she recognised something else that was going on here. She realised why Batman's plan had suddenly felt like it was her own. As more such thoughts began flooding to her, so did more pain. The sudden desire to extract herself from the cloud was intense as her mind rapidly felt like it was being overloaded with thoughts and images, but she had to resist.
Wonder Woman knew that Batman would now be feeling the same thing, that they both had to get out of the core before they were lost to it. She knew that.
But even as both she and Batman continued to scream in pain, Wonder Woman also knew that they had to wait, that they had to stay in there until their warning to Superman got through.
They just had to manage that before the core consumed them both, before they were both lost...
A/N:
There you go. Took longer than I thought to get this out to you all but life got in the way for a while there.
Anyways, enjoy, and don't forget to let me know what you're all thinking via the reviews!
