Destination Unknown
by P.H. Wise
A DCU Crossover Fanfic
Chapter 12: Across the Rainbow Bridge, Part 5
Disclaimer: The DC Universe and its associated characters is the property of DC comics. The Marvel Universe and its associated characters is the property of Marvel Entertainment LLC. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is owned by Fran and Kaz Kuzui. Some of the text of this chapter is taken from the Flashpoint comic series. I don't own that, either.
Eight Months Ago…
The earth convulsed, and Europe fell. Cities were reduced to rubble by the tectonic upheaval: Venice fell into the sea. Barcelona fell. Rome, destroyed. The Vatican City, gone, the prayers of those who dwelt therein unheeded, though not unheard. Half of Berlin collapsed. The dikes in the Netherlands burst apart, and flood waters raced inland in their wake, washing away city and countryside with equal indifference. Millions died in those first terrible moments, with millions more to come. And on the western coast of Wales, near St David's, Queen Diana of Themyscira stood with her assembled people, a nation of refugees now without a home after the sinking of their paradise, looking out upon the oncoming tsunami. It was still miles away, but the sight of it brought a chill to her heart. With her supernaturally acute eyesight, she had just watched the destruction of Ireland. All of it, gone, washed away by the oncoming wall of water.
Artemis of Bana-Mighdall swallowed, but no other sign of fear escaped her at the sight. "Our diviners report seismic trauma across the entire European continent, my Queen."
This was Arthur's wrath. The sheer scale of it was mind-boggling. He was really prepared to destroy all of Europe for revenge? Just to kill her? The thought of all the innocent people who would die in this… this deluge… "Damn you, Arthur," Diana murmured. "Would you see us all consumed by your oceanic realm?"
At Diana's side, a young blonde woman with violet eyes and a brown and tan uniform cried out in pain.
Even with the oncoming tsunami, Diana - Wonder Woman - turned her concerned gaze to the young woman. "Terra?" she asked. "Are you all right?" It was a small thing to be concerned with, a tiny thing, but not meaningless. Even in the face of the utter destruction of everything she had ever known, never meaningless. Not to her.
Tara Markov grimaced, and spoke through teeth clenched against her pain, "It's my brother. Our… our connection allows me to share his pain. Gods, they're using Brion to do this! They're using his powers, and it's killing him!"
"It's killing us, too," Artemis muttered.
The tsunami rushed forward, and the sound of the oncoming surge of water grew, building upon itself until it was all consuming.
"Great Hera," Diana said, and for the first time, there was despair in her voice. "All is lost."
"No," Tara said, clenching her fists, power gathering around her. "It doesn't end this way. Not while I have a shred of power left. I will NOT permit this!" The ground heaved beneath their feet, and most of St. David's was pounded to rubble in the tumult. And then the whole island began to rise in the face of the Tsunami. Up, up, up it went, rising even as the water broke upon it. All of Wales rose, and England with it. The central mass of the U.K. sheared off and upwards along the line of the Scottish lowlands. Scotland drowned less than a minute later.
All of England and all of Wales lifted more than half a mile to clear the rising sea.
"Terra!" Diana yelled, "Terra, you have to stop! Before you kill yourself!"
Tara Markov collapsed, heaving for breath, her face covered in sweat. Diana caught her before she could hit the ground. "... There, my queen," Tara murmured. "Your new… Themyscira."
Now…
Tara sat on the edge of the water on side of the Victoria Memorial, staring at the ground, deep in thought. This place had become Diana's capitol building: the old royal family of England had been deposed, removed, exiled to an estate in Wales. That had been a mistake. One she was sure Diana would never have made if not for… She sighed. Things were bad, now. The resistance had been a tiny thing. It might have remained a tiny thing but for how things had been handled, with Diana still in shock and hotter heads making decisions in her stead. The old Queen of England, Elizabeth II herself, had stood her ground before the Amazons and told them in no uncertain terms what they could do with her occupation. It had been a little magnificent.
Amazons patrolled the grounds, now. She herself was always guarded, day and night. For without her to counter her brother's powers, New Themyscira would fall within a day. He had been coming closer for the last several days, and her sense of him grew ever stronger as he did. But he wasn't the only thing approaching. There was something else. An echo. A power drawing near that felt… she wasn't sure. Whatever it was, it wasn't in pain, so at least there was that much. There had been several assassination attempts. Atlantean agents seemed to infiltrate the palace on a weekly basis, though none had succeeded thus far. Tara wasn't sure if that meant that Amazonian security was just that bad, or that Atlantean infiltration teams were just that good, nor was she entirely sure which was the more worrying thought, but it was better than being alone. Better than being abandoned, like she was when…
Complex, troubling emotions bubbled up from within her at the thought, and her train of thought stopped in its tracks. Abandoned? That hadn't happened. She'd never been…
Tara's thoughts broke off entirely as she sensed something approaching from below. Something carving its way through the very earth, and sealing the wound behind it as if it had never been. The echo. The echo was coming here. Was this another assassination attempt? Something else entirely? Better safe than sorry. She rose to her feet. "Guards!" she called.
No sooner was the word out of her mouth than the ground split open, and a young woman rose up through it, with the hole sealing behind her and leaving no sign of her passage. A young woman with short black hair and violet eyes dressed in a form-fitting black and white costume who, apart from the black hair, could have been her twin. Tara stared at the girl, her eyes wide. "Who… who are you?"
The Amazonian guards rushed up, weapons at the ready, armor gleaming in the light of the setting sun.
Atlee spared a glance to the guards, and then, with a nervous smile, replied, "I'm Atlee. I come in peace. Take me to your leader!"
Tara blinked. "... Huh," she said.
Arthur of Atlantis cut an impressive figure, seemingly standing on the waves themselves as the sea continued to roil with the rising of the Atlantean fleet. Great ships began to break the surface, then, possessed of all the power and fortitude Atlantean technology mixed with magic could give them. The flagship rose beneath him: he stood upon its deck as it cleared the surface, and the colours of the sunset placed the scene in spectacular relief. All around him, his army rose. He, tall, muscled, clad all in gold and green scaled armor, his eyes as blue as a robin's eggs, sea-water still dripping from his blonde hair, surveyed his assembled forces and spoke. His voice was a lovely, rolling, resonant thing: a rich baritone that commanded respect. "My people," he said, "the time has come to end this war. We all know what happened on the day of the Themysciran betrayal. A day that should have joined two peoples - the day Diana of Themyscira and I, your king, were to be wed - instead began a war which has raged for more than a decade. You have all heard the stories. You have all seen many battles at my side. Even with all that he have suffered in the war, we might have had peace."
He took a breath and steadied himself. Grief had crept into his voice as he spoke, but when he went on, anger had taken its place. "That peace died forever the day Diana murdered my wife! I will accept nothing less than the complete destruction of the Themysciran people. This day, Mera, Lady of the Tides, Queen of Atlantis, shall at last be avenged! We will make them pay. Them, and all who stand with them. My people!" He thrust his trident into the air, and there was a crack like thunder. Almost instantly, dark clouds thick with the promise of storm began to roll in, moving with preternatural swiftness. "DEATH TO THE AMAZONS!"
The Atlanteans raised their weapons as one, echoing his cry with a deafening response, "DEATH TO THE AMAZONS!"
"AND DEATH TO ALL WHO STAND IN OUR WAY!" Aquaman cried.
The Atlantean army roared its approval, striking trident and sword and rifle against shield in a tumultuous clamor. Their creatures joined their own voices to the din, then, shrill cries mixing with fog-horn bellows as terrible things rose from the depths to do battle with the immortal women who had wronged them.
In that moment, three figures - a man and two women - descended from above, two rich red capes billowing dramatically in the wind. Superman, Power Girl, and Karen Zor-L looked upon the Atlantean host, and they were greatly displeased. And in a booming, deadly serious voice that cut through the din and all but demanded the attention of all within the Atlantean host, Superman said, "Stop. Right. There."
Arthur leveled his trident at the three. "Who comes to challenge the might of Atlantis?" he asked. The contempt in his eyes became startlement when he recognized one of the flying beings. "Kara?" He did a double-take, and then furrowed his brows. "Kara! Why do you side with the surfacers against your kin?"
Superman glanced at Power Girl with an eyebrow raised, and Karen smirked. "I feel like we've been here before," she said quietly, "Have we been here before?"
Power Girl flushed with embarrassment. "I'm going to have to deal with this all day, aren't I?" She sighed. "At least nobody's tried to attack me with natural, unprocessed materials, yet." She briefly considered whether or not to correct Arthur's misconception. She decided against it: it would needlessly complicate an already complicated situation. Then she spoke in a loud voice to carry the sound to Arthur and the Atlanteans, "I do not side with surfacers against my kin, my king." She gestured to Superman and to Karen. "This is my family. We have come to stop you from making a serious mistake. Will you hear us?"
The last golden gleam of the sunset faded. The sun sank beneath the horizon, and it was night. The clouds passed overhead, blotting out the stars. Arthur's expression became cold and distant, his body language closed off. The contempt returned to his eyes, and Power Girl wanted to wince at the sight. "I will not," he said imperiously, "A Lady of Atlantis is not greater than its King. Not even if she is the granddaughter of Arion. You will not defy our vengeance, Lady Kara. You and your family will stand aside."
Power Girl all but ground her teeth in frustration. "You don't understand, Arth… my king. This world is ending. We have a chance to save many, but you have to cooperate with us!"
"Lies," Arthur sneered. "This is the hour of my victory. And if you will not stand aside." He leveled the Trident of Neptune. "Then you will be destroyed." He thrust the trident forward, and three pillars of water burst from the surface of the sea, each lashing out at one of the Kryptonians.
All three Kryptonians flashed aside, and each pillar met only air.
As if that attack had been a signal, the Atlantean army opened fire. Bolts of energy lit up the night as the soldiers with ranged weapons fired upon the three heroes, and an instant later, fireballs, hexes, lightning bolts, ice spears, pillars of water, and dozens of other assorted magical attacks filled the sky.
Battle had been joined.
Queen Diana of New Themyscira was the most beautiful woman Atlee had ever seen. That was not hyperbole. That was not exaggeration. That was simple fact. Hers was not the beauty of mortals, but the blessing of Aphrodite herself. She was six feet tall, and Greek, and flawlessly built like the Amazon she was. Her sapphire-blue eyes were large, her lashes dark, her nose straight, and her flowing black hair like the night itself. But this was not the whole of her beauty: There was more to it than that. It was almost impossible to define, to put into words, but there was a presence, a charisma, a weight that took her human features and transformed them into something more. She was goodlier. more divine than any who walked beside her. Her armor was silver save for the red breastplate she wore, with a long grey cape draping down to the floor behind her. And she was regarding Atlee with a skeptical look. "Artemis raises a good point," she said. "How can we believe anything you say? How do we know this isn't some Atlantean trick?"
The Amazons had brought her to the White Drawing Room of Buckingham Palace, resplendent all in gold and white. Two ebony-veneered cabinets sat against the wall at either end of the room, the great mirrors above them reflecting all the room's light back upon itself. Four chandeliers hung down from the reversed-cove ceiling, with a single much larger one above the center of the room that filled the place with light. Atlee sat in one of two golden couches: Diana sat in the other, with Tara and Artemis and several guards standing off to the side.
Atlee looked up. "Use the Lasso of Truth," she said.
Tara blinked. "Lasso of what?" A beat passed, and she blushed. "Oh. Right."
Diana didn't look surprised. "You know a great deal about me," she said.
Atlee nodded. "Enough to know that you know I'm not lying even without the lasso."
Diana smiled. "You have no intent to deceive that I can detect, but others have defeated my insight, and even if you do not intend to deceive me, that doesn't mean what you're saying is true."
"So, Lasso?"
Diana nodded, and unhooked the lasso from where it hung at her armored hip. "This may be uncomfortable," she said, and when Atlee nodded, she began to bind the girl with the lasso of truth.
She was right. It was uncomfortable. Even as Wonder Woman bound her wrists with the lasso, Atlee felt something shifting within her. There was a sense of falling away, like being drawn down into a whirlpool at the center of which lay… truth. A sane mind cannot long endure under conditions of absolute reality, but Atlee would not have to endure it long: only long enough to tell the truth. She shifted uncomfortably. "I realize this situation obliges me to say something snarky," she said, "But my brain keeps seizing up at the thought that I've been tied up by Wonder Woman."
Artemis glared, and Tara rolled her eyes, but Diana only smiled gently as she patiently completed her task, tieing first the girl's wrists and then her arms behind her back. The lasso secure around Atlee, Queen Diana stepped back, surveyed her work, and then nodded once.
Atlee could feel it working. The possibility of falsehood had been removed from her. The thought of asking how she could tell if it was working both occurred to her and became so ridiculous that she nearly laughed out loud, and holy astronaut gods but that was dangerous. Her eyes widened. "Oh, wow."
Tara got a mischievous look in her eyes, then. "Maybe we should test it, see if it's working," she said. She looked at Atlee. "You wanna…"
Diana cut her off before she could say anything else. "That's enough, Tara," she said.
Tara Markov took a breath. "... Yes. Of course. I apologize, my Queen."
Diana nodded in acknowledgement, and then turned her attention to Atlee. "Now, Atlee, you are bound by the Lasso of Truth. You will be unable to speak a lie, and should you lie by omission or otherwise attempt to mislead me with true statements, I will know. Do you understand?"
Atlee nodded. "I understand," she said."
"Who are you?"
Atlee didn't look at Tara Markov. "I am Terra of Strata," she said. "My name is Atlee."
Tara's eyes widened. "What? That's impossible."
Diana held up a hand, and, after a moment, Tara fell silent. The Amazonian Queen waited a beat, and then asked her next question. "Why have you sought an audience with me?"
Atlee looked at Diana, then. "Because the universe ends today. Everyone who was ever born, who lives now, and who might have lived in the future will never have existed. Because the alternative is even worse. Because we have a plan to save as many people as we can, and because if you help us, we will be able to save far more innocent lives than we would have been able to save on our own."
Dead silence, save only for the faint, almost subaudible hum of the lasso.
Queen Diana of New Themyscira took a long, shuddering breath, looked Atlee in the eye, and said, "You have my complete, undivided attention."
Rain plastered her dark hair flat against her head, and she could smell the sea, and the ozone-scent of weapon discharge, and sulfur from the fireballs, and the sweat of the Atlanteans. The rain muted the scents, made them more distant, but didn't erase them completely. She didn't really feel the cold: she hadn't much noticed temperature variations since after that first month spent without access to sunlight in the custody of the Fantastic Four. The rain made it a little harder. Not much, but a little. Her vision could pierce any amount of rainfall, but though it could not harm her, rain hitting her eyes was at least distracting. Blasts of golden light shrieked through the air, most of them impact against the cliffside, each impact shattering stone like it was made of glass. But Karen was not alone: Power Girl and Superman flew beside her, each soaring gracefully through complex evasive patterns that they made look easy. It wasn't.
Karen had always heard that combat was chaotic. That you never really knew what was going on. That you just had to focus on what was in front of you, and on your objective, and hope that everyone else was focused on theirs enough to let your side pull through. But it wasn't like that for her. She still wasn't completely used to having her brain function at full Kryptonian processing levels, but it was happening more and more, and… it was like the world was in slow motion. She could see the individual rain drops drifting down towards the ocean below. She could hear every battle cry in the Atlantean host, every roll of thunder in the clouds above, see every bolt of energy, every spell moving about. She, Power Girl and Superman moved as one, swooping down into the Atlantean host. Something was building on their flagship. A low, subsonic rumble that was slowly gaining amplitude. They hit the first of the creatures - a titanic crab-thing with a glowing heart of living flame - in unison, each moving faster than the speed of sound. Power Girl hit the joint for its left pincer, Superman hit the right, and Karen shattered one of its legs. The creature was old and strong, and none of them would have been able to do the damage that they did to it without the assistance of Sir Isaac Newton. Its exoskeleton splintered with the three impacts, spilling liquid fire out into the sea around it, sending up great gouts of superheated steam as the creature roared in agony. It began to regenerate almost immediately, the cracks in its exoskeleton sealing over with lines of golden light which visibly solidified into new shell. It swept up its still healing claws to snap at them, but they were already past, in amongst the flock of flying things. Karen ripped a barnacle-encrusted wing from a creature with webbed feet, an insect-like body, and an equine face and muzzle. The beast screamed as it fell into the waters and disappeared.
The battle continued, too fast for any human eye to follow. An enchanted net cloaked in a jury-rigged perception filter took Power Girl while her attention was focused on a whole rank of soldiers firing their magi-tech rifles, and she called out. Instantly, Karen and Superman were there, tearing her free of the net before the foot soldiers could close in with their enchanted tridents and swords. They fought in support of each other, never getting too far away. Twice, Karen's tornado-force frost breath stopped a massed attack on Superman which was on the verge of overwhelming him. Twice, Karen's heat-vision sheared through a blade that had been just about to bury itself in Power Girl's back. Three times each, Superman and Power Girl saved her in turn as they tore the Atlantean fleet to shreds and cast down soldiers scaling the cliffs only to catch them before they could fall to their deaths on the rocks and fling them into the water instead. Even then, even working together in support of one another, they would have failed had the Atlantean host been able to bring its full strength to bear upon them, or been able to separate them.
In that moment, three stood against thousands, and they fought the entire Atlantean army to a standstill for thirty minutes. By the end, the blows which had landed were beginning to tell: although Karen had avoided almost every shot fired at her, she had taken a few hits, and each one was like a bee-sting: Non-fatal, but extremely painful nonetheless. At the end of thirty minutes, half the Atlantean fleet had been reduced to rapidly sinking wrecks, and half of its beasts of war slain or driven back beneath the tide.
Then the sound which had been building grew rapidly in strength as, within the Atlantean flagship, the device in which Geo Force was imprisoned reached full power, and combat ceased for a moment that seemed eternal as the cliffside seemed to visibly recoil, the stone flowing like water as it flattened instantly into a long, slowly rising channel that led to London. The entire island of New Themyscira began to sink, and in London, both Tara and Atlee cried out in agony.
"Brion…" Tara whispered. "What have they done to you?"
A wave of water rushed up the channel towards London, and was frozen into ice an instant later by triple blasts of frost-breath. Pressure built upon the ice, doubling and redoubling. The ice cracked even as Karen, Superman and Power Girl poured on more cold, freezing more and more water until it seemed a mighty glacier had formed in the channel.
"Wait!" an Atlantean soldier cried out, "That's Power Girl! She's weak against natural, unprocessed elements!" With that, he scooped up a handful of rocks and threw one at Power Girl's head.
Caught up in freezing the wave of water with her frost breath, she didn't bother to dodge it. It hit her in the forehead and bounced off, doing exactly nothing. She paused a moment, and then glared at the Atlantean. "No! None of that! Shame on you!"
The Atlantean soldier looked sheepish, and dropped the other rocks he was holding.
Reinforcements were rising from the ocean, now, and though New Themyscira had stopped sinking, it was now low enough for a landing to be practical. Atlantean ships were disgorging troops faster than even three Kryptonians could throw them back into the sea as long as those Kryptonians were unwilling to use lethal force. Even worse, the Atlanteans had finally seemed to adapt to the presence of three veritable gods on the battlefield: every spellslinger still conscious was focusing everything at Karen herself, having recognized her as the weakest link in the chain and trying to take her down first before they moved on to focus on the other two. It was getting harder and harder to avoid taking hits. First a fireball set to airburst exploded ten feet away, singing her and forcing her to shut her eyes against the magical heat. A second wizard took advantage of the moment's distraction and clipped her with a hail of ice-spikes, opening up long, shallow cuts on her left arm and leg. Things were starting to get bad. And then, at thirty two minutes, Power Girl called out, "Back!" and she, Karen and Superman flashed away from the Atlantean forces.
And as she flew away, Karen felt a thrill of sheer exhilaration, and let out a loud cry to give it voice. She felt more energized than anything else, and it seemed strange to her: she'd expected to feel tired, but she didn't. Thirty minutes of battle would have been exhausting for a human, but for them? Lacking injury, they could have gone on indefinitely. Each of them was battered, each was bleeding, but they had done their job, and done it without taking serious injury. More to the point, they had done their job: thirty two minutes of battle would translate into a three hour delay for the Atlantean forces as they reorganized, re-equipped, and prepared to march on London.
Life was rarely fair, but it didn't always suck. Unless your name was Layla Miller. Then it sucked, though generally only on days that ended in Y. If she had to pick a particular moment when her life went pear-shaped, she'd probably say it had been that time the entire world went crazy. One minute everything was normal, the next minute, mutants were the dominant species and Magneto ruled the world. Even worse, she'd been the only one who knew what had happened. At first, anyways. When the world had gone back to normal, she hadn't. Her life had continued to snowball into the weird and the sucky. It didn't help how she was a little bit chronologically displaced. Probably the only bright spot in the whole thing was Jamie. Sure, he didn't trust her very much. Sure, he wasn't interested in her the way she was in him, but hey, bright side: if he was interested in her, he'd be a creepy pedophile. … Yeah, OK, so that didn't help. Nor did it change the fact that she was walking blind as far as prescience went. She'd known that she and Jamie needed to come along for this excursion, but ever since they'd actually entered the Flashpoint, her knowledge of the future had flatlined. Probably had something to do with being inside an unstable timeline, but that didn't make it suck any less.
They were still in Metropolis, maybe a day in the past relative to where they'd been before, and Irma was still unconscious, and that was bad. Almost ten minutes since she'd passed out and still no sign of stirring. She had a backpack under her legs to elevate them, and a jacket serving as her pillow. Layla had conscripted a couple of bystanders into helping her move Irma out of the street and onto the sidewalk. A crowd had gathered. Someone had called for an ambulance, and traffic was getting pretty well backed up.
A change in breathing told of Irma's waking. The teenaged mutant didn't try to sit up. She opened her eyes, and then she shut them again, and put a hand to her forehead. "... How long was I out?" she asked.
"About ten minutes," Layla replied. She held up three fingers. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
Irma looked confused. "Um…"
Layla frowned. "Open your eyes." Irma did so, briefly. After a second or two, during which Layla checked to make sure that one pupil wasn't bigger than the other, Irma clenched her eyes shut again. "Do you know where you are?" Layla asked. "Do you know your own name?"
Irma opened her eyes again and blinked a few times. "My name…" The confusion hadn't faded from her tone. "Um. How long was I out?"
"About ten minutes. You hit your head pretty hard when you dropped out of Phoenix-mode. I think you have a concussion."
"Head hurts…"
"That's normal," Layla said. "Don't try to move. You can't afford it until we've ruled out neck injury. If your neck is broken, you could sever your own spine with something as simple as turning your head."
Irma shuddered, and became still. "I don't think I could if I wanted to."
It was another minute before the EMTs arrived. Between Karen's and Kara's battle against Doomsday a few blocks away and the damage caused by the Phoenix, today was a bad day for Metropolis. Even as the EMTs were loading Irma onto the ambulance, she looked up at Layla with a look of distant fear. "Oh!" she said. "Oh God. They're hungry, Layla. They're so hungry!"
Layla really didn't like the sound of that, and it showed. "Who's hungry, Irma?"
"They are hungry," Irma murmured. She might have shaken her head from side to side if it hadn't been immobilized. "They are coming."
They are coming...
The cease fire with the Amazons was not without its complications. There was resistance within the Amazonian ranks as well as the human ones. The people of Britain wanted nothing less than to see the Amazons expelled from their land and their rightful Queen restored. The Amazons were disinclined to grant that request. The peace was holding for now, but it wasn't something that could last more than a few days. That was fine. All they needed was a few hours. The portal was open now, and even as Captain America watched, the first group began to move through. There were two primary locations that would be receiving refugees thus far: Asgardia and Providence. That much, at least, he had been able to secure. He hoped that they'd get more sites opened up in time to help, but bureaucracy did not move at the speed of crisis. Even with two cities ready to receive them, once extremely advanced and the other literally divine, space was going to be a problem. Moving two and a half million people and all the supplies they would need to another universe was a logistics nightmare on a scale that even the good Lord had never seen, and even then, it only worked because they had both the Flash and Kid Flash on the job. Having two super-powered beings able to move at near the speed of light without damaging the surrounding environment or anything that they carried was as close to a godsend as he had ever seen.
They'd gotten more help from the other side, thankfully. The Fantastic Four were rendering assistance, and most of the Avengers he'd brought with him had gone across to help. But there had still been complications. Probably the biggest was that the Amazons were sending some of their own to be evacuated through the portal. It wasn't something they liked to talk about, but a minority of the immortal Amazons had taken human mates, and a smaller subset of those - nine hundred and ninety seven - had subsequently given birth to half-mortal children, all of them daughters. Those children and their mothers were being evacuated with the civilians by Diana's order, and none of the humans were willing to live with them. So the Amazons were being moved to a third location, despite the extreme complications that it brought and the difficulties involved, they were going to New York. To Mutantville, which was otherwise a near ghost-town in the middle of the city.
Tony stepped up next to him, not wearing his armor. "This is a bad idea," he said.
Steve looked up. "What?"
Tony gestured to Jamie Madrox, who was currently wearing Tony's armor and carrying Steve's shield. "This."
Oh. That. Madrox had come to them a few minutes ago with a crazy idea, and he'd only been half listening: there had been other, much bigger issues to deal with. He focused his attention on it, now, gave Madrox a look, his eyebrow raised. "So, you're sure this is going to work?" he asked.
Jamie Madrox grinned. "No idea. Never tried something like it before."
Steve and Tony exchanged glances, and both shrugged resignedly.
"Here goes nothing," Madrox said, and started stomping his foot.
Oranges and lemons, say the bells of Saint Clements.
Karen wasn't sure what brought the old nursery rhyme to mind, but she'd thought of it on the way back to London Bridge from the mouth of the Thames. The evacuation was in full swing by the time she, Power Girl, and Superman had arrived. The Stratans had already gone through the portal to Earth 616. There were four queues, now, each alternating through the main portal as people emerged from the three relay portals: one in Metropolis, one in Central City, and one in Coast City. American had come through to assist in the defense of the main portal, and they were busily fortifying the area, building upon what the Resistance had already established. It seemed strange that the only humans who were going to survive from this entire timeline were people who happened to be lucky enough to live in London, Metropolis, Coast City, and Central City, and, in the case of the Americans, were also lucky enough to have been chosen for evacuation. That's all. No one else. All told a little more than two and a half million people out of a steadily dwindling population of billions. She'd heard that there were some very ugly scenes going on at the evacuation sites in those cities. Nobody was explaining what was going on, and it was being kept as quiet as possible, but people still talked. The Flashes were still moving supplies and equipment through, and she caught sight of them every now and again as blurs of red and yellow.
Consequences. Every act had consequences. Every thought. Every whispered word, everything spoken out loud, every action, every inaction.
"Suppose a trolley is running out of control down a track," Ms. Pryde had said. "In its path are five people who have been tied to the track by a mad philosopher. You've managed to make it to a control panel and if you flip a switch, the trolley will be diverted onto a different track. Unfortunately, there's a single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch or do nothing?"
She'd never gotten around to writing her answer to that.
When will that be? Say the bells of Stepney.
She wasn't sure. Maybe there wasn't a good answer to find. Maybe that was the point.
"Hey," called a familiar voice.
Karen looked up and saw the rest of her team approaching - the New X-Men. She smiled, though it was more sad than anything else. "Hey," she said.
Noriko and David and Julian and Cessily, Santo, Joshua, and Laura. Noriko was the one who had spoken. "How'd it go?" she asked.
Karen shrugged, and then winced. She was still bleeding from her injuries. Everyone looked tired, but Joshua and David looked more tired than anyone else. "We held them back for half an hour," she said. "I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but Peej seemed satisfied." She looked around. "Things look pretty calm here."
Sooraya was the one who answered. "That girl, Atlee, she managed to settle things with the Amazons. I have been speaking with their leader, Queen Diana." She looked thoughtful beneath her veil, and Karen saw it, even if none of the others did. "She is… an interesting woman. I would not have thought she would make time to speak with me, but she did."
Karen, Noriko and Laura exchanged glances. "What did you think?" Noriko asked.
Sooraya was silent for a long moment, and the others waited while she thought. "I'm not sure yet," she said at last.
"Everything in place?" Karen asked.
Noriko nodded. "Yeah." None of them looked up towards where Sinestro floated some fifty yards above the crowd. "At this point, we're just waiting for the refugees to escape. We figure we have at least until the… um, the Gorilla armies get here, assuming we can hold off the Atlanteans."
Josh seemed to take in Karen's injuries, then. He looked very, very tired, but he took a breath and approached her. "You're hurt," he said.
"It's not bad," Karen said. When Josh moved towards her, she shook her head, "I know I haven't been healing as fast here as I did back on your Earth, but give me an hour or two and I'll be fine. Save it for someone who really needs it."
"OK. Yeah." Josh let out a breath. "They've been keeping me busy. The Resistance had a lot of people at death's door before the cease fire happened, and..." he trailed off.
"And you're tired," Karen finished.
Josh nodded.
Karen spotted something out of the corner of her eye, and unlike a human, her Kryptonian peripheral vision was perfectly clear. Irma. Irma and Layla had just emerged from the portal from Metropolis. Layla was scraped up but otherwise fine, but Irma looked a bit worse for wear.
"Irma?" she asked. She was at the blonde girl's side a moment later. "Holy Crom, what happened?"
Irma looked up, and her eyes didn't focus on Karen immediately. It took a second or two. "... Oh," she said, and seemed relieved. "Hey, Karen."
"What happened?" Karen asked again.
"She hit her head," Layla said at the same time that Irma said, "I died."
Dead silence. A moment later, Irma followed that up with a somewhat defensive sounding, "I'm an X-Man. I got better."
Everyone who wasn't Karen seemed to think that made perfect sense, and their tension visibly faded. "... You what?" Karen asked, horrified.
Irma leaned on Karen, wrapping her arms around the taller girl. It felt good, but it didn't make Karen any less worried. "I was only dead for like a minute. I'm fine."
"She's got a concussion," Layla repeated, not quite rolling her eyes. "She really will be fine, though. She just needs rest, and to not make it worse by getting knocked in the head again."
Karen looked to Josh. "Josh, can you…?"
Josh nodded. "... Yeah. Just… give me a second, OK?" After a few seconds, he took a deep breath and moved over to Irma, putting a hand on her head. Nothing happened. "Uh, Irma? I'm a little nervous about trying to heal a brain injury when I'm this tired. I, ah…"
Irma looked at him. "Then don't. I just need…" she trailed off, as if she'd lost her train of thought, then regained her focus, "I just need rest. And if it comes to it, you can always heal me after you've had some time to sleep."
Josh stepped away. "Sorry," he said.
"Are you sure?" Karen asked.
Irma nodded. "I'm sure."
A warmth grew in Karen's chest, then, affection mixed with need. Irma looked up. She was warm in Karen's arms, and her eyes were very blue. Their faces were only inches apart, and drifting closer. Then Irma, her arms around Karen, drew their bodies together even as Karen, with deliberate gentleness, cupped Irma's face with her hands and kissed her. A long, long kiss. A kiss of youth, and full of fire and passion, Karen's whole world concentrating into Irma's body pressed against hers, lips joined, eyes drifting closed, minds united for one shining moment, saying without words things that words would only dilute.
Josh coughed.
Karen and Irma both opened their eyes and glanced to their left, where Josh was still standing awkwardly close.
"Oh, don't mind me," he said.
Laughing, the two girls broke their kiss and stepped away. "Good luck," Irma said.
Karen smiled a brilliant smile. The moment ended. Then the line began to move, and Layla called out, and Irma returned to Earth 616 with a group of Metropolan refugees.
The wait was a kind of torture in itself. Having two geokinetics helped with the preparations helped: one of them could concentrate on holding off Brion's continual attempts to sink New Themyscira while the other assembled fortifications and closed off possible approaches to their positions. Twice more, Nightwing, Power Girl, and Superman had gone out to harry the Atlantean advance. Nothing as involved as the last time: strike and fade, kill a deep-sea beast, disrupt a formation, and then retreat. The human military types weren't particularly happy that none of the Kryptonians were willing to kill their enemies, but they took what they could get. They were even less happy with Queen Diana's insistence that she be allowed to try to talk the Atlanteans down before the defenders started shooting. To make matters worse, another force had just made landfall to the south: Gorilla Grodd was coming to England, and his armies were coming with him. And through it all, a sense of dread was building. The psychics among the refugees and the defenders could feel it more strongly than the others: something else was coming. Something dark.
The storm rolled in on the city a few minutes after the Kryptonians' initial holding action. Howling wind, driving rain, thunder and lightning. The refugees were moving sullenly, now, hunched down against the wind as they moved through the portal. Every few minutes, one of the Flashes would move an entire group through, and it went a long way to speeding up the process, but it was still a muddy, uncomfortable affair.
When the Atlantean forces appeared on the horizon, Queen Diana took Layla Miller and a handful of her personal guard to parlay with the King of Atlantis. Lightning flashed, illuminating the scene in fitful bursts, rain-drenched figures standing between the two forces. Diana, helmetless, her hair unbound, stood before Arthur of Atlantis, and there was silence but for the sound of rain.
"Diana," Arthur said.
"Arthur," she replied.
"The arrow of speech is nocked. Let it fly."
Diana looked upon him, and she loved him. "Arthur," she said, "You must stop. The world is about to end, and our conflict will mean nothing if no one remains to be the victor. I can prove what I say. Please, if you ever loved me, please let me prove this to you."
"This same lie," Arthur sneered. "I liked it no better when it was spouted by Kara, traitor to Atlantis."
"Arthur," Diana said, and grasped the lasso of truth, wrapping it around her wrist, "It is no lie."
Arthur's eyes narrowed. Silence fell. And then, "I will let you prove this to me."
Diana gestured to Layla. "Ms. Miller," she said.
Layla stepped forward.
"What is this?" Arthur asked.
"All you need do is take her hand. She will show you everything."
Arthur of Atlantis took Layla Miller's hand. His eyes glowed green as she did… something. Memories of an erased timeline flooded into his mind, and he gasped, and staggered back, his eyes wide as the glow slowly faded.
"My God…" Arthur whispered.
"History was broken," Diana said, "and the whole universe spins towards its doom. But it can be repaired. Time can be rewritten. Something good can come out of all of this. A better world, Arthur. But we have to work together, or the timeline will never be restored."
Arthur sighed, and looked down. "... I know," he said sadly.
Diana smiled hopefully, and the tension seemed to leave her body. She held out her hand. "Come with me, Arthur. We can fix this, together."
With no warning whatsoever, Arthur spun and punched Diana in the jaw as hard as he could, and the force of the blow sent her flying backwards into a concrete wall, which shattered upon impact. When he spoke, his voice was low and furious. "You think I would side with you for any reason?" His voice rose, "You think I would FORGIVE YOU!? You killed my wife!"
Wonder Woman climbed out of the rubble, her jaw set, her eyes as cold as ice. "You get one free shot, Arthur," she said. "That was it."
"Understood," Aquaman replied.
Wonder Woman shook her head. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry."
Aquaman said nothing. His face contorted with fury, and he turned and stalked back to his army, his honor guard following in his wake. After a moment, Wonder Woman, Layla, and the Amazon guards did the same.
Tara Markov wasn't sure what to think of this other girl, this other Terra who looked so much like her. Terra of Strata. Strata. It sounded so very familiar, and yet… She couldn't put her finger on it. Something was wrong. There was something - an awful, empty feeling - and it was growing. She realized with a start that she'd stopped fighting Brion, stopped fighting his attempts to sink New Themyscira. Atlee picked up the slack.
"What's wrong?" the other girl asked.
Tara shook her head. "I don't… I feel weird."
Was that fear in Atlee's eyes? She looked down at her hands, and something dark seemed to flicker on her finger, just for a second. "Atlee, what's happening?"
Was there a brief hesitation before she replied? Tara couldn't tell. "You've been touched by the power of the god-blooded, Tara."
Tara blinked. "What does that mean?"
Atlee sighed. "Among other things, it means you're not so easy to affect with changes to the timeline. It's not as strong in you, because you're human, but it's still going to do something."
An awful thought occurred to her then, and that gnawing emptiness seemed to spread from her heart down into her limbs, upwards into her head. "... Atlee," she said, "In this other world, am I dead?"
Atlee didn't meet her eyes.
It began with the Atlantean assault. They rushed across the killing field that the defenders had prepared, confident that their magic would protect them from the weapons of their enemies. The Kryptonians heard it first - a faint, distant buzz coming from above. When she heard it, Karen blinked and looked upwards. What the hell was that?
I do not know. Says the great bell of Bow.
They came in a great horde, screaming their battle cries even as monstrous, flying things with barnacle-encrusted wings soared overhead. Great, chitinous crab-giants lumbered between ruined buildings, smashing through some, going around others, their flaming hearts glowing ever brighter within them as the moment of contact drew near.
That was when the claymores went off. The American troops who had come through to assist in the evacuation and defense had spent two hours deploying them: a line of claymores that covered all the major approaches to their position. Each one fired seven hundred 1/8th inch steel spheres into the Atlantean army. Each mine sent out a fan-shaped wall of steel spheres 6.5 feet high and 50 meters wide at 1,200 m/s. Even with their protective magics, the effect on the Atlanteans was horrific. Men and women died, their bodies pulverized and rendered utterly unrecognizable as ever having been human. Scores of beasts were killed, maimed, or otherwise incapacitated. In one moment of carnage, eight hundred Atlanteans died, and still they came on. The mortars fired next, and still more died, though far fewer than would have unprotected by Atlantean magic. The Atlanteans returned fire with their guns and their spells, and the Thames itself rose up in their defense, pillars of water striking with impossible force to scour away the American and resistance mortars, and the buzz grew ever louder.
Everyone with a gun was firing now, and more Atlanteans died as they charged the defending fortifications, blood and gore mixing with the rain and running down towards the Thames. Then the Atlanteans reached the lines of the defenders, and the screams of humans joined with dying Atlanteans, and still the refugees moved through the portal. Most of those escaping now were Londoners and citizens of Metropolis - the portal from Coast City had closed a minute ago, and only a trickle now came through from Central City.
The Avengers fell back to defend the refugees, with Ms. Marvel, Spider-Man, and Iron Man dealing with incoming fliers. They were all fighting, now. Hero clashed with hero in the streets of London. The earth shook as Atlee and Tara Markov strained to undo the damage that Geo Force did with every breath: great chasms opened sealed again in the space of seconds. Mountains of rock rose up over the Atlantean host only to be shattered like glass, and every shard sent flying away from the battle to merge harmlessly back into the ground. Through it all, through the din of battle, the explosions, the sounds of bones cracking, of swords cutting through flesh, a faint buzzing grew ever louder. It was like a swarm of insects: maybe flies, maybe locusts, and getting closer by the second.
"We've got problems!" Julian yelled, his voice barely audible over the din of battle.
"I KNOW!" Karen yelled back. A shadow seemed to pass over the sun, dimming the light.
"NEW problems! We've got black rings incoming!"
Karen looked up. Her face paled, and it came to her in a flash of horrified realization: the Blackest Night was here. There had been no Flash or Green Lantern to stop it, therefore it hadn't been stopped in this timeline: it had only avoided Earth. Until now. The Black Lantern rings descended like locusts upon the bodies of the fallen. She could hear their whispers, now: "Flesh." "FLEEESH." "Flesssh..."
"We have to keep them away from the portal!" Karen called. "Don't let ANY of them get through!"
Julian concentrated, forming a vast telekinetic barrier between the rings and the portal, and grit his teeth in frustration: they couldn't close the portal yet. The last refugees was still moving through it. Innocent people fleeing to Earth 616 to escape the death that waited for them otherwise.
Defenders and Atlanteans alike began to fall. The resistance was hit harder than the others: horrible, hungry figures descended from above and unleashed crackling black blasts of energy that ripped life and light from the living body. Canterbury Cricket. Grifter. Count Vertigo. Jinny Greenteeth. More. All dead.
Black rings lit upon the bodies of the fallen Resistance. The same happened across the battlefield with the other dead. Then a voice spoke, cold and pitiless as the grave: "Jeramey Chriqui of Earth. Bobbie Stephenson of Earth. Cole Cash of Earth. Count Vertigo of Earth. Jinny Greenteeth of Earth. RISE."
Six rings blazed towards the open portal to Earth 616. Wolverine caught one of them with his claws and cleaved it asunder. It sprayed black sparks and fell to earth in two pieces, dead. Surge hit the others with a blast of lightning, and though they wavered, they pressed on: five rings hit a wall of telekinetic force. Three deflected violently and hit the ground hard enough to send up sprays of dirt. Two punched through the barrier like it wasn't even there. One deflected off of Captain America's shield. The last went through portal and vanished from sight.
More rings were coming. More and more, and more.
Here comes a candle to light you to bed.
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.
The Flash and Kid Flash ferried the last refugees into the portal with the Avengers guarding their flanks. "Let's move, people!" Captain America shouted. More rings were incoming. The Avengers moved through the portal. The Flash emerged from it. A moment later, it snapped shut with a pop of displaced air.
The dead rose.
In that moment, the battle degenerated into sheer, panicked pandemonium. Black Lanterns and unclaimed rings swarmed through the sky. Amazons and Atlanteans and the undead and those members of the resistance left alive battled furiously. The three Kryptonians ceased holding back against the undead, and each became a whirlwind of destruction, burning and freezing and crushing their enemies with abandon: the Black Lanterns fell to pieces around them, and still the undead came, forming and reforming and claiming every corpse that fell as one of their own. Soorayah scoured them to the bone, and X-23 cut, and cut, and was cut in turn, and regenerated, and the lantern facing her laughed madly as they fought. A dozen Jamie Madrox dupes, all in Iron Man armor, each carrying a copy of Captain America's shield blazed a trail through the battle, repulsors firing into the mass of the undead as he cut a swath to Layla. One of the dupes scooped her up and fled into the London Underground with a dozen Black Lanterns pursuing, each of which were cut down by the other dupes unloading with repulsor fire.
Heroes fought, and heroes died. Batman went down under the grasping talons of a dozen necrotic Lanterns. One of them came up with his heart in its hands, crying aloud in joy. The clouds themselves recoiled as Nekron, Lord of the Unliving, descended from the heavens and lit upon the battlefield, and Death came with him. And into that chaos, into that battlefield drenched in gore and horror, the arrival of Gorilla Grodd and his armies went utterly without notice or comment.
The Flash stared at the nightmarish scene, his eyes wide, a space around him the only calm in the storm. A hundred Black Lanterns were converging on him. They'd be upon him in seconds.
"FLASH!" Surge cried, "GO!"
The Flash surged forward, vibrating through the unliving tissue of a hundred Black Lanterns and vanishing from the battlefield.
At that moment, Sinestro abandoned the battle. His ring flared brightly, a green aura sprang up around him as he matched the Flash's vibrational frequency. Then he rocketed forward and burrowed into very fabric of the cosmos, following in the Flash's wake.
Despite the grimness of the moment, Karen's eyes blazed with a fierce hope. "Do we have it?" she asked. "Are we ready?"
Power Girl landed beside her, then, "Sooner is better than later," she said.
The New X-Men plus Karen and Power Girl fell back from the battle, gathering beneath Hellion's telekinetic shield. Prodigy held up his glowing Green Lantern Ring, "Here goes nothing…" he muttered.
Prodigy locked onto Sinestro's ring with his own, and the world dissolved into light.
The Flash ran. Into the time-stream, yellow lightning streaming off of his form, he ran, back, back and across and down the moment he had decided to save his own mother, to the moment he had altered history and created the Flashpoint. He caught up with his past self, racing on the cosmic treadmill, light spiralling madly around them both.
Past Flash didn't stop, but shot a shocked look over his shoulder at the sight of his future self. "What the hell is going on?"
The Flash looked upon his past self with compassion. "I know what you're feeling," he said. "And I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry." He seized his past self by the shoulder.
"What are doing!?" Past Flash demanded, trying to shake him off. "Let me go! I have to SAVE her! I can save my mom! NONE OF THIS NEEDS TO HAVE EVER HAPPENED!"
There were tears in both of their eyes, now. For what he had done, for what he had lost, for hope denied.
He threw his past self from the cosmic treadmill, and the moment of ultimate potential, the moment which could change the universe, forward and backward, crystallized in the air. Time broke, and the Flashpoint became. "NO!" Past Flash screamed as paradox roiled around them both like a living thing. Then Past Flash was gone, erased from existence, and the Flash ran on through the time-stream.
Three worlds arose before his eyes. Three distinct timelines. The one he knew, and two others along with it. Places of wildness and of Authority. Places where history had gone very differently. "What the hell is this?" he asked.
A woman's face shimmered into view, cloaked, mysterious, and shrouded, her eyes glowing in the shadows. "The history of heroes was shattered into three worlds long ago," she said, "Splintered to weaken your world for their impending arrival. You must all stand together. The timelines must become one again. You can help me fix that, Barry Allen, but at a cost."
"Like hell," Power Girl said, and punched Pandora in the mouth.
The light shattered like glass, fragmenting around him. Barry screamed as he fell through the timeline, and landed…
Landed on solid ground. He skid to a halt in the center of a vast chamber dominated by three pillars of light in which the three timelines could be seen, each of them moving towards some common darkness. They were each within a great ritual circle inscribed with runes carved from the bones of the universe itself, and leaking fragments of the long-dead Bleed that separated alternate worlds like open wounds. The ceiling was high and arched, the walls were full of stars. The Flash, Sinestro, Power Girl, Karen, and the New X-Men had come at last to the Sanctum Sanctorum of Pandora, goddess of the fourth world; and the power of the godwave moved upon the deep.
"What have you DONE!?" Pandora shrieked, rising to her feet in fury, power building within her.
"Stopped you," Power Girl said. "You're a liar, Pandora. The history of heroes was never split the way you describe. I remember everything. I remember the Crisis, and the infinite Earths that came before it. I remember how worlds lived, and worlds died, and better men and women than you gave their lives and the lives of everyone they knew and loved to give the rest of us a chance. I won't let you destroy what we've built with that chance. Not now, and not ever."
Pandora's eyes narrowed, and there was a flash of recognition. "You…!"
The Flash rose to his feet, then. "Us, actually." He nodded to Power Girl, and she returned the gesture.
Karen stepped forward next, and then Prodigy, and Dust, and X-23, Surge, Mercury, and Rockslide. "All of us," Karen said.
Pandora sneered. "Insects. All of you, insects. I am not unprepared for such an intrusion. I can still accomplish the change, even from here." She opened her hand, and everything seemed to happen at once.
The Flash vanished in a blur of red and yellow, and both Karen and Kara Zor-L rushed forward at full speed, each unleashing a blast of heat-vision as they went. But Pandora had already prepared her contingencies: this was her sanctum sanctorum, the holy of holies, and the center of her power, and she had used her magic to program a hundred different if/then statements into the very fabric of its reality. Spells discharged, and light and heat bent away from Pandora's living flesh even as a hundred balls of red light shot out of the floor and converged immediately upon the three who had attacked her. The Flash evaded them all, triggered still more with his approach, evaded them in turn, tunneled through every defense, his speed conduit building upon itself again and again, until he struck her in the stomach with an infinite mass punch. The power of the speed force flared wildly, yellow lightning crackling across the building. The effect was less than it should have been: it had to pass through layers upon layers of defensive magic, burning out each one in turn, but it still had enough force leftover to send her flying into the star-filled wall, and a spiderweb of cracks went out around her in its wake.
The New X-Men went into action, then, Mercury, X-23 and Santo moving up towards Pandora on foot even as Surge fired off a blast of electricity at range, and Julian created a telekinetic barrier before them as they ran: energy bolts splattered against it, and he staggered with the effort of holding it up against them even as Prodigy let loose with a blast of pure green willpower which hammered into the pinned form of Pandora.
"ENOUGH!" Pandora roared even as the twin kryptonians converged to strike her from either side. A wall of power roared out from her, sending both Kara and Karen flying backwards. "Sinestro!" she roared. "Aid me now, and the world shall be yours to reshape as you see fit!"
Sinestro laughed. "I see. And you need my assistance against these children? Very well, old woman. I shall indulge you."
Sinestro gestured, and an all-consuming force of gravity sprang into existence. The New X-Men were pulled into it in a heartbeat, and in another they might have been slain had Prodigy not rose up and disrupted his construct. Even as Rockslide, Mercury, Dust, and Surge clambered to their feet, Sinestro glared down at Prodigy. "Do you think you can best me with your will, boy?" he asked.
Prodigy met his gaze, unafraid. "Only one way to find out," he replied.
As will clashed with will behind her, Karen shot forward, sending heat-beams and whirlwind breath before her as she went, Power Girl at her side, The Flash blurring beneath them, attacking as one to beat down Pandora's defenses. The shield collapsed. Karen's fist flew through it, and…
Pandora caught her by the wrist in a grip as implacable as time itself. She strained against her, testing strength against strength, and Pandora sneered. "Do you seek to test yourself against a god, Kryptonian? Better than you have failed."
Power Girl's punch was caught in Pandora's other hand. Green light flared violently behind them where the others battled against Sinestro, and for a moment, it seemed like Pandora was the stronger.
"... You know," Karen said, "I've thought about it for a long time, and I think I have answer to the question."
Pandora raised an eyebrow. "Question?"
"Would I flip the switch or do nothing?" Karen asked. She took a breath. "Because whatever a life is worth, it's worth infinitely more than my own wounded conscience." And she tilted her head backwards, and then smashed her forehead violently into Pandora's nose with a sick crunch. Pandora released them both and staggered backwards, nose clutched in one hand, blood flowing down through her fingers, and then Karen, Power Girl, and the Flash all struck her at the same time, sending her flying backwards through the pillar of light which showed the Wildstorm Universe.
The pillar exploded, its connection to that world destroyed, and Pandora rose from the wreck in wrath. "Damn you," she hissed. And then she triggered all her remaining defenses. The chamber pulsed with power. There was a roaring sound and a flash of light, and then pain.
Karen, the Flash, Power Girl, and all the New X-Men collapsed beneath the power of that magic, and circles of light appeared around each of their wrists and ankles, binding them in place.
All except Mercury.
The light passed through her and vanished, finding no purchase upon her body. Unnoticed, unheeded, she picked herself up from the shadows where the blast had thrown her and looked up at the two triumphant villains.
Sinestro descended to the floor in the midst of the circle, observing the fallen heroes. "I have done my part," he said. "I will have my reward." His gaze softened as he considered the pillar of light which showed New Earth and its associated universe. "Don't worry, Abin," he murmured, and held forth his hand, the Green Lantern ring shining upon his finger. "I'm going to save you. I'm going to save everyone."
Pandora drew her sword and spoke a word of power, and it began to glow with a soft light.
The light of Willpower sprang up around him, blazing like a green star, and he spoke the words: "In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight." Will. With enough will, a Green Lantern can do anything. Produce any effect. Not without cause are they called the most powerful weapon in the universe. Sinestro focused his will upon a timeline in flux, here, within the crystallized Flashpoint, and elements within that world began to shift in response. Unguided, unfocused at first, but gaining in intensity and direction. "Let those who worship evil's might beware my power - Green Lantern's light!"
Without warning, Pandora stepped in and smoothly brought down her enchanted blade and severed Sinestro's hand at the wrist. His hand, and the Green Lantern ring with it, hit the floor amidst a spray of blood.
Sinestro screamed.
"I cannot allow you to do as you will, Thaal Sinestro," Pandora said, though her tone was gentle. "I am sorry, but yours would not be a world which could survive what is to come." She looked upon the two remaining pillars and sighed. "In truth, I am unsure if the world which will come of the combination of these two will be able to survive, either. All three were necessary to ensure that. But two merged together will have better chance than one world alone." She walked to the center of the circle, then, preparing to cast the spell that would trigger the power stored here and join two worlds as one.
"Please," Power Girl said. "Please, don't do this. You'll be destroying everything. Killing two entire universes. You must know that this is wrong."
Pandora looked upon the captured heroes. "You don't understand. The New Gods are dead. Highfather and Darkseid, dead." Sorrow built in her voice. "Lightray, Orion, Big Barda, Mister Miracle, Granny Goodness, Infinity Man, the Forever People, all dead. We can no longer shield you from what's to come. This is the last chance. Something is coming that will devour this world and every world if it is not stopped." She spoke with conviction, now. "I do what I must for the good of the multiverse. You never stood a chance against me, Kara Zor-L. The only one who could have stood against me is now safely returned to your world." She smiled, but there was little joy in it. "I admit I was surprised by the presence of an entity like the Phoenix, but she is gone, and all is well." She looked upon the bound heroes, then. "It could not have happened any other way. I have had all eternity to prepare for this moment. You didn't really believe that you could put a stop to my Flashpoint with pluck and heroism, did you?"
"We were kind of hoping, yeah," Santo said.
"Then you're a fool," Pandora said, her eyes flashing. "You are all fools. You will meet your end here, now, while the timeline is in flux. And when it stabilizes, there will be no place for you within it. My triumph over you and yours will be absolute: you will not simply die. You will never have existed."
Mercury moved, rushing for the central pillar - the one which held the image of New Earth, shifted now into her war form, claws extended, moving at full speed.
Pandora gestured, and a blast of magical force took Mercury off her feet. She skidded to a halt in front of the pillar and looked up in a daze. Pandora sneered. "You. Your resistance to my magics is formidable, but you are mortal. You will not stand against the will of a goddess."
Mercury rose to her feet, her form wavering with her exhaustion for a moment before stabilizing, claws extended. "We'll see about that," she said. She charged Pandora. She took three magical blasts as she went, each staggering her, each slowing her. A fourth sent her to the ground at Pandora's feet. She reached up with her claws.
There was a note of pity in Pandora's voice as she considered Mercury on her knees, still reaching for her, still trying to stop her. "And so it ends as we both knew it must," she murmured. "What did you hope to accomplish with your defiance, child?"
Mercury coughed, looked up, and grinned. "A distraction, mostly."
Pandora blinked. "Distraction?" Her eyes went wide, and she turned in time to see Sinestro, a glowing green hand forged of pure will now holding his ring to the stump of his wrist, unleash a beam of concentrated nuclear fire into the two pillars that remained. "No." Pandora said in vain denial. "NO!"
But there was nothing she could do. Her contingencies were exhausted, and she had not enough time to unleash a spell. Sinestro had split the atom with his will, and now he focused the ensuing blast into a beam of destructive energy which sheared the two pillars in half and punched clean through the far wall, leaving a blazing after-image burned into the vision of any who saw it.
The pillars exploded violently, sending shards of crystal in all directions. The great ritual circle turned black, fragments of the Bleed burning through the floor and shattering it in turn. Then the stored energy, and every ounce of living paradox within the structure of the sanctum was discharged all at once. "I will not be mocked, old woman," Sinestro said. "If the world will not be rebuilt in my image, then it certainly won't be rebuilt in yours. So says Sinestro."
Pandora writhed in agony as she suffered a simultaneous backlash from stored magical power and paradox alike. It wracked at her, stripping away great and terrible sheets of her flesh, twisting her into something unrecognizable yet still alive, still screaming. "Damn you!" she shrieked. "Damn you all!" Power flared violently, and hurricane force winds flung the captive heroes backwards even as their bindings failed.
Sinestro stood against the onslaught, utterly unmoved. "You should never have betrayed me," he said.
She looked upon him, then, the goddess upon the Green Lantern, and went very, very quiet. Her fury had reached a new height: no longer a screaming rage, but a quiet, deliberate thing. She fixed her cold, furious gaze upon Sinestro, and uttered her sentence upon him: "You will regret this, Thaal Sinestro. I curse you. Darkness and sorrow you shall know for all time. Every joy shall be spoiled, every hope brought to nothing. Hubris will follow you, and your ruin will ever come from within your own heart."
Sinestro regarded her calmly, utterly unimpressed by her words. "You cannot curse me with what I already suffer, witch."
The sanctum broke. The Flashpoint shattered. The last thing Karen saw was Sinestro looking up at the empty sky, the whole of reality splitting open around him as the Bleed ate through the remnants of the sanctum, and into that chaos he whispered, "I'm sorry, Abin."
Then the world became a hurricane of fire. Karen was screaming. Every fiber of her being was in agony as she fell through the disintegrating Bleed; for the changes wrought to the timeline which had returned its existence had been undone. She fell through it as its reality unraveled, and her friends fell with her.
Then a rainbow-colored light. Strong hands lifting her.
Then darkness.
END CHAPTER 12