Chapter 114: The Age of Heroes
"How…?" Green Arrow couldn't help but ask, still stunned.
Green Lantern smirked. "A.R.G.U.S. contacted me a couple of months ago. Said they liked what they saw during the Dominator Invasion and asked if they could keep my number in case of an emergency. I agreed, because your boss is kind of terrifying. Then, a few months later, I turn on the news to see this. I was already planning on coming over to help out, and Yamashiro calling just made it official."
"Well, thank God that you did," Black Canary commented, glancing around at the unconscious metas. "We would've been killed if it hadn't been for you."
"It was no problem, pretty lady." Green Lantern winked. "I'd do anything for an angel with a face like yours."
There was a moment of silence as Black Canary flushed at the blatant flirting. Green Arrow was not as… restrained.
"Do you want me to shoot you?" He demanded the other man, suddenly losing any gratitude he had for the save.
Lantern held up his hands in a calming manner. "Sorry, sorry. I heard you two might be a thing. Still had to take the chance though."
"Just get us out of here," Oliver grumbled, crossing his arms. "This city isn't going to save itself."
"Right." Lantern pointed his ring at the ground, creating a flat platform for Arrow and Canary to stand on. Once they were settled in, he began flying towards the direction of where the rest of the metas were waiting. Oliver drew another arrow, notching it, and slowly began aiming it towards a direction that was suspiciously near Green Lantern.
Laurel placed a hand on his arms, pushing the arrow down. "No, Arrow."
"But—"
"No."
Kara snarled as she pierced the torso of a fire-wielding metahuman with her heat vision. She had already knocked out the metahuman called Atom Smasher, by far the most dangerous threat in this area, and after nearly getting spliced by a particularly tricky meta, she had decided to go the distance route and take out people using her heat vision and the force of her various blows. Many were too scared to go near her anyway after she had punched out the biggest guy on the streets.
Well, except for the particularly stupid ones.
She turned around in exasperation as her super-hearing picked up the sounds of increasing loud screeching. It was a meta that had hawk wings sprouting out of his back, rearing back a mace to strike her head. Supergirl lazily held up a hand to block the mace, only to blink as new person shot down from the skies and kicked the meta, sending him careening down into the streets with an ungraceful crash. She looked down at him for a moment before glancing up her unnecessary savior and blinking again.
It was a woman, taller than her, in a white suit with a pair of red angel wings embossed in the front. She had a black cape that served as a cloak of some sort, much like Kara's own cloak. But her eyes…
"… Aunt Astra?"
She could see her aunt smile beneath her mask. "Call me Archangel, little one. Sorry I was late, by the way. Yamashiro had me pick up some extra help along the way."
Kara shrugged, and smirked. "Any help is welcome, Archangel. Who did you bring?"
Black Lightning grunted as he blasted another charging group of metas. These guys really were endless. The S.T.A.R. Labs group better hurry. I don't think we can keep this up for much longer.
It was then he found himself wrapped with metal cords. "Ah, come on!" he couldn't help but complain.
"Dnuobnu mih!" Before he could complain some more, the metal cords dropped into a useless pile around his feet. The meta that was responsible for his brief captivity then found himself bound with a pair of ropes and gagged.
Much like any other sane person, Black Lightning gaped. "What the hell?"
"Sorry. Saw you and couldn't help but intervene."
Black Lightning blinked as a woman in a sexy magician getup and fishnet stockings came into view. She tipped her top hat at him, giving him a suave smile. "And you are?"
The woman's teeth gleamed. "Zatanna. Zatanna Zatara."
J'onn clicked his teeth as a wall of fire began to descend upon him. "Oh dear," he said dryly, before flying upwards to avoid it.
The metahuman responsible started cursing him out, only to be chopped on the back of the neck by someone else. J'onn floated down when he saw who it was, raising an eyebrow. "Thunder?"
Anissa Pierce, aka Thunder, gave him a wave. "Hi, Manhunter."
"… you do realize your father will kill you when he finds out you're here, correct?"
She shrugged. "It won't be anything new."
Vixen snarled as she was tossed to the ground by the powerful arms of the half-shark meta she had been squaring off against. King Shark, the other metas called it, and it was a fitting name indeed. Mari lost count of all the times she had to dodge the man's powerful blows, ducking under his sharp jaws. Even with her powers, this was not an easy battle.
She cursed when she lost her footing after one ill-fated kick, landing on her back harshly. Having been fighting hard for the last several minutes, she struggled to get up, wincing as King Shark placed a foot on her chest, stopping her cold. He roared into her face, spit flying off onto her face.
"GET OFF HER!"
A silver, metallic fist slammed directly beneath King Shark's jaws and sent him flying away. Vixen's mouth dropped slightly, even as she took the proffered hand. It belonged to a tall man in a red, white, and blue get up that made him slightly resemble Captain America. Around his neck were some dog tags, which he pulled into his suit the moment she was up.
"Who are you?" she asked, genuinely stunned.
He smiled awkwardly at her. "Steel."
The name resonated with her instantly. "You mean like…"
"… Commander Steel, yeah." Steel paused. "I'm his grandson," he added.
And just like that, Mari felt an immediate kinship with this man. "The original Vixen… she and Hourman were my grandparents."
Steel rubbed the back of his head. "I figured. I researched a lot about them, and their names came up a lot together."
Mari smiled. Steel smiled back.
Then the moment was broken when another meta, this one with the ability to manipulate concrete, tried to trap them into the ground. Steel instantly shattered the concrete, and the two exchanged looks.
"We can talk later," Mari said, face becoming determined again. "We've got an army to deal with first."
"Right!" Steel agreed, and both charged forward, invigorated.
Both took comfort in the fact that the Justice Society of America's legacy still lived on — through them.
As the Justice League and their new allies gradually turned the tide against Zoom's army, the man himself was currently engaged in another chase-fight with the Flash. The two ran up and down several buildings, clashing and clawing at each other with a ferocity only two vicious speedsters like them could have.
Eventually, this led to them skidding off the roof of a building and onto another building below, where they both crashed ungracefully. If it weren't for their enhanced metahuman physiologies, they would've both been seriously hurt by that. Barry used the ledge of one building to help pull himself up back to his feet, watching Zoom do the same across from him.
"Why didn't you attack me while I was talking to Iris?" He couldn't help but ask, somewhat curious, "Why did you wait?"
Zoom tilted his head. "I only thought it was fair that you'd get to say your last goodbyes to her."
Barry narrowed his eyes. "Jackass."
The other speedster ignored the insult, continuing to speak. "I do hope you gave her some good memory to hold onto after you're gone."
"I didn't need to. After I destroy you, I'm coming back to her." No matter what.
"It's not wise to make promises you can't keep."
"Then maybe you should've taken your own advice!" The Flash shouted back, before speeding forward. Zoom met him head-on, and the duel renewed.
Vibe breathed heavily as he, Pied Piper, and Firestorm squared off against the Evil Twin Squad, as he had dubbed the doppelgangers inside his head. It was three against four, but despite the numbers difference they had managed to hold their own thus far. Barry's training, combined with their general familiarity of working together (whether as scientists or superheroes) and the knowledge of what could happen if they fell here kept them going. So much so that Vibe and Pied Piper hadn't sniped at each other even once over the course of the fight.
"Another combo?" He heard Piper whisper over to him. Vibe nodded discreetly, and the two shot their hands forward, into making another vibrational soundwave blast.
Only to stop when Reverb smirked and created a breach right beneath his brother and Killer Frost. "You think I wouldn't notice what you're trying to do?" he called out to his doppelganger. "You're stalling. For what, I can't figure out, but I'm sure it has to do with that little group you snuck into the lab. My brother and Frost should take care of it."
Firestorm roared and threw a particularly fierce fireball at him, which was soon counteracted by Deathstorm. Vibe glanced at Pied Piper. "Hartley—"
"Send me," Hartley nodded. Vibe opened a breach beneath his feet, causing his partner for this battle to disappear. He closed the breach quickly, and then turned his attentions back to Reverb. The two doppelgangers glared at each other before once again clashing their respective vibrational blasts against each other.
"How's it going in there?" Slade called into the breach room as he continued to fire into the crowd of approaching metahumans that were down the hall. Task Force X, along with Amanda Waller, were alongside him, fighting off the group until the pulse machine was set up.
"We're almost done!" Harrison Wells called back, snapping a wire into place. Next to him, Caitlin was standing up one of the antennas while Dante dealt with the television screen. That one was pivotal — it would display the strength of the refracting field. When the field reached a certain level of strength, that is when they would release the pulse for maximum effectiveness.
"Good! I—" Whatever Slade was about to say was cut off by the door inexplicably shutting close. The three civilians glanced up and stilled in horror.
Rupture and Killer Frost were both standing in the middle of the breach room, looking menacing. The former swung his scythe around while the latter smirked, twisting her fingers in a visible cold snap.
"Now what do we have here?" Killer Frost asked languidly, cold breath escaping her lips.
Dante drew his gun and shakily fired it, aiming at both metas. Rupture lazily blocked it with his scythe and blasted Dante back, sending him back-first into one of the walls. "DANTE!" Caitlin screamed and rushed to him to help, only to let out a yelp as the ground around her became slippery. She fell face first, only just barely managing to stop her face from hitting the floor.
"Oh no, Caity," Caitlin heard her doppelganger taunt her, approaching with an audible click-clack of the heels. "Need some help?" The doctor shivered as a brush of cold air washed over her back.
"I've been waiting a long time for this," Rupture rumbled as he aimed his scythe directly at Dante's wincing form.
"Then you're going have to wait a little bit longer!"
Pied Piper dropped down from the sky and blasted both evil doppelgangers with two sonic blasts. He kept both his gauntlets trained on them, allowing Caitlin to get to her knees and crawl over to Dante. "Are you alright?" she asked.
Dante winced again but nodded. "The monitor…"
"Come on," Caitlin grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up to his feet and back to the monitor, picking up the wires for him to connect. "How are we on the machine, Dr. Wells?"
"We're almost good, Snow! Just a little bit more!" The sound of something sparking punctuated that statement.
"Right." But before they could keep going, another body flew over in their direction. "Hartley!" Caitlin cried out, as Hartley groaned in the corner he had been sent to.
"You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?" Killer Frost hissed as Rupture and her once again approached their doppelgangers.
"How many of these assholes are there?" Green Lantern complained as he blocked a series of electrical blasts by another group of metas.
"Anywhere from several hundred to over a thousand!" Green Arrow shouted back, shooting another meta in the back. "Zoom apparently cowed most if not all known metahumans on his earth into working for him. Combined with the population of Iron Heights, and even if our plan works, we're still going to be fighting for a while."
"Well that sucks," Lantern grunted, creating a giant insulating sheet to cover him from another blast, before morphing it into a giant air fan and blowing the metas away.
Over in another part of the street, Black Canary was fighting off several metas herself, alternating between her tonfas and the Canary Cry device around her neck. While it was nowhere as powerful as her doppelganger's sonic scream, it was enough to stun the enemies around her. Long enough for her to strike them with her electrified tonfas and knock them out, at least.
"Well, well, well. What do we have here?"
Canary only had enough time to spot Black Siren from the periphery of her eye before she fell to her knees as the familiar force of the woman's sonic scream washed over her. She could hear Arrow and Lantern do the same from behind her, the latter taking it harder since he had never experienced it before. Just when she was about to pass out, it stopped, but before she could catch herself, Siren grabbed the front of her suit, her deft hands snatching the collar of the Canary Cry off her neck, toying it with her fingers.
"What a cute little trinket," Siren commented absentmindedly before crushing the device in her hand. "And you called me a cheap knockoff. Were you really so desperate to be like me that you had your little nerds make this for you?"
"Canary!" Black Canary heard her partner call out.
"Oh, shut up Ollie!" Siren called back, dropping her doppelganger to her knees.
Lantern blinked. "Ollie?" he asked weakly.
"A nickname of mine, shortened from my real name," Green Arrow answered, struggling to get back to his feet. "She knows it because she's Black Canary's doppelganger from Earth-2."
Siren was about to approach him as well, but was stopped by Canary weakly clutching at her coattails. She rolled her eyes. "Really?" the metahuman asked, kicking Canary in the side and forcing her to roll over. "Can't you see that you can't win?"
"Don't… care…" Canary huffed, ineffectually hitting Siren's leg with one fist.
Her doppelganger scoffed and kicked her again. "Pathetic. You're hardly worth the effort." She hummed. "You know what? After Zoom puts down the Flash for good, I think I'll ask him to go for Starling next. And once we're through with conquering that city, I'll ask him to give it to me. I am his top lieutenant, after all."
"No…" Canary weakly moaned, once again dragging herself over to Siren. She clutched the front of Siren's leather suit, using it to pull herself up with what little strength she had left.
Siren didn't even bother pushing her off this time, instead smirking down sadistically as she watched Canary struggle. "My own personal fiefdom. Won't that be a riot?" she spoke sveltely into Canary's ear.
Canary froze. She glowered up at her doppelganger. And then…
"NO!"
It was as if the entire world slowed down the moment Black Canary shouted that word. A force, a power that she had never felt before, emanated from the very core of her body and through her vocal chords, before rushing out of her mouth in a powerful shockwave that covered the entire street. Siren was blasted back from it, sent tumbling onto the concrete in complete shock. She managed to catch herself, and she looked up at her heaving doppelganger in disbelief and even a bit of fear.
Laurel panted heavily, putting a hand to her throat as she glanced at Green Arrow and Green Lantern, who were in similar stunned amazement. Had she—But how? And then it hit her — the Dark Matter Collector. The explosion.
She was a metahuman. More than that, she had Siren's sonic scream — no, her cry.
Her Canary Cry.
A surge of confidence rushed through her, and she pushed herself back to her feet with her hands. She stood shakily, but steadily, watching as Siren did the same across her. They made eye contact.
And then, as one, they screamed.
"Supergirl," Wells yelled into his comm, "Start the refracting field now!"
"On it!" There was an audible whoosh! that followed that, and Wells felt his shoulder sag, ever so minutely. They almost had it. He snapped on the headphones he had made to protect him from the pulse when it finally started. That done, he frowned and glanced over, above the machine.
Now, to protect it.
The E2 doppelgangers had completely ignored Wells and the machine in favor of playing around with their doppelgangers. Caitlin and Dante had been forcibly separated, the former struggling to dodge her doppelgangers ice blasts while the latter kept on shooting fruitlessly with his gun. Hartley had tried to intervene several times, but was barely able to stand, and soon had his gauntlets frozen to the walls with a thick sheet of ice, effectively taking him out of the fight. And Task Force X was still trapped behind the locked metal door, fighting off a huge force of metahumans.
Wells drew his own gun but didn't fire. As callous as it was, it was better to wait. If he drew attention from the metahumans now, they could destroy the machine and this, all of this, would be for nothing. The fate of all Earth-1 depended on this. He couldn't risk it.
Though he was sorely tempted to, when Rupture had the tip of his scythe near Dante's neck.
"I told you I would kill you," Rupture told his shaking doppelganger in a low voice. "Now, I fulfill my promise." He heaved the scythe upwards, letting it glow crimson red before he struck down.
Dante, panicked, held up his hands and closed his eyes, waiting for the pain. Adrenaline coursed through him, before growing hotter and overwhelming until—"ARGH!" Rupture shouted as a huge red blast of energy, identical to his own powers, shot from Dante's hands and slammed into him, sending him flying into the upper walls of the breach room.
Everyone else in the room gaped at either Dante or Rupture or both in shock. Dante slowly opened his eyes, and then looked down at his hands. "What just happened?" he asked, though to who even he didn't know.
"You're a metahuman," Hartley told him, still in awe.
Dante whipped his head around to look at him. "Are you serious?"
Before Hartley could answer, Dante was blasted with ice, forcing him to roll again in groans, wrapping his arms around himself to warm up. His attacker, Killer Frost, scowled down at him as she stepped away from her own doppelganger to finish him off. Caitlin, brave woman that she was, tried to stop her anyway.
She hit Killer Frost in the back of the of legs, shouting "No!" Cisco would never forgive her if she had allowed his brother to die on her watch.
Killer Frost's scowl deepened and she turned around, slapping Caitlin's hands away, before forcefully grabbing the other woman's chin. "You're a nuisance, Caity. I hate nuisances." With that, she used her powers to slowly begin freezing her doppelganger's face, watching as Caitlin's skin begin to turn a disturbing shade of blue.
And then, locks of Caitlin's brunette hair turned white.
A blast of cold exploded from Caitlin, as her skin turned pale and her eyes glowed an icy sapphire. Killer Frost, much like Rupture, was sent back, barely managing to stay upright. "Impossible," she whispered, as her doppelganger turned into a near mirror image of her.
Caitlin looked down at her hands, at the white, cold air wafting off them, and then back at her doppelganger, feeling fierce in a way she never really had before. "This is Central City," she replied, lifting those same hands, palms out, "Everyday of our lives is the impossible."
Killer Frost, still in shock, had no time to react as she was blasted away by Caitlin's powerful, if somewhat uncontrolled, cold energy. She was knocked to the ground, almost unconscious and in front of the pulse machine. Then the monitor observing the refracting field Supergirl was making let out an audible ding!.
"Here we go!" Wells shouted to the group, before turning on the pulse machine.
When the pulse started, nobody really knew what was going on except for the Justice League. At least until every denizen from Earth-2 started wincing from the vibrational dissonance, as their nervous systems were disrupted. Several fell to their knees, which many of their opponents took advantage of.
Black Siren, who had been engaged with her doppelganger in a scream-off, stopped screaming as the dissonance hit her, and as a consequence was knocked off her feet as Canary's Cry hit her, knocking her out before the shock could. Canary breathed deeply as she felt her boyfriend's hand on her shoulder, smiling when she heard a "Well done, pretty bird," rumble from his mouth.
All around Central City, similar cases to Black Siren occurred. Deathstorm dropped from the sky, clutching his head he split into Ronnie Raymond and Martin Stein for the first time in several years. Reverb fell to his knees as well, collapsing onto his stomach. Rupture and Killer Frost, who were about to rouse from their forced unconsciousness, found themselves knocked back into it.
And as these metahumans from another world fell, the criminals of this world exchanged looks. "Book it?" Leonard Snart asked his sister.
"Book it," Lisa Snart agreed.
Len nodded. "Mick!" He called out to his partner Mick Rory. "You've got the car ready?"
The Flash ran to a stop as he heard the pulse echo throughout the city, and watched dispassionately as his tormentor grabbed his head as the dissonance began to affect him as well. "What did you do!" Zoom roared, wincing at the pain.
"We won," Flash replied, voice filled with calm fury.
Zoom glared at him. Then, not willing to stick around any longer, opened a breach. The Flash tensed as he jumped through, before shooting forward, reaching out—
And disappearing with him.
You don't know how long I've been waiting to write this chapter. The duels between the doppelgangers, Laurel, Caitlin, and Dante finally getting their powers, the birth of the expanded Justice League. This is what this arc has been building up to. This is the Justice League arc, and here, the Justice League finally cement their legacy as the first, and greatest, superhero team.
And now, we are about to have the last fight of this arc. The fight this entire act has been building to — the final duel between the Flash and Zoom. Be prepared, everyone. Be prepared.
By the way, the title of this chapter has nothing to do with ArlyssTolero's story on AO3. I had this chapter title planned for a while. He and I had something of a laugh about it when we found out.
I highly recommend his Arrow: Rebirth series for all you readers, especially if you like Lauriver or just great worldbuilding and good storytelling in general. He's incredibly talented.
Please comment or review, flames will be ignored, constructive criticism welcome, and don't forget to update the TV Tropes page!