[The Watchtower
March 26, 20:30 EST]
Diana stood in the exact center of the Javelin bay, sword in one hand and her lasso hanging idly from the other. She kept her head high and posture rigid as she stared out of the narrow, rectangular windows in both of the airlock doors. Flashes of Hal Jordan's green constructs and quick bursts from the Manhunters' weapons were the only lights she could see against the black of space. Every now and then, a powerful attack would connect with the hull and make the Watchtower shudder. She just gripped the hilt of her short sword tighter and frowned darkly at the battle taking place just outside.
Beside her, Captain Marvel was unconsciously shifting his weight from foot to foot and looking around the hangar in wide-eyed unease. He ground his teeth anxiously, and the noise set Diana's nerves buzzing. Since getting over her initial disapproval of Billy's age and the fact that he'd kept it from them, Diana's relationship with the young hero had greatly improved. She'd tried to put forth the effort to make herself more accessible so that he could turn to her for advice and guidance if he wished for it. However, she still found him to be too immature and naïve sometimes.
Huntress and Ice were both perched atop two Javelins on either side of the airlock doors. Huntress had her crossbows loaded and ready, keeping her dark eyes fixed on where their targets would enter. Her whole body looked poised to strike.
"You might want to move out of the line of fire, Princess," Shayera called down from her place high above in the rafters.
Diana didn't look at her, "I face my enemies head on."
"Your funeral," Huntress remarked dryly. She was looking at Diana out of the corner of her eye and had one eyebrow cocked judgmentally.
Diana bristled at the verbal jab but did not give into her irritation. These were her teammates. It would not do to encourage dissension between them just before a battle. She would just have to show them.
"Wonder Woman." Diana suddenly heard Clark's voice in her ears. "There's trouble heading your way."
"Get ready," she said quietly to her comrades. All four tensed in preparation, and Diana listened for more information.
"There's a Manhunter ship coming in to dock. Green Lantern took out its engines, but it's not slowing down, and we can't destroy it. There are living humans inside. Acolytes." Clark's voice came over the communicator.
Diana sighed internally. This was not good news. The acolytes would no doubt be armed with Manhunter weapons. On top of that, Diana and her team would be at a disadvantage. They could not fight full force and risk killing them.
She had no doubts that this was exactly what the Manhunters had intended – lying to and brainwashing humans only to use them as meat shields.
"Cowards," she spat bitterly.
Above her, she could hear Hawkwoman's wings ruffling agitatedly, "It's cold is what it is."
"How many are on board?" Diana asked grimly into her microphone.
"Easily a hundred. I'm sorry, but we can't stop them. We can barely even move as it is." His voice was tight and laced with frustration.
"Let them come," she took a deep breath to calm her fury and narrowed her eyes at the door. "You're more effective outside the Watchtower. We will handle its defense from within."
The satellite lurched back from the impact of the ship, and both Huntress ad Ice were almost thrown from their Javelins.
"They're on you now," was the last warning Diana received before static took over the frequency. She turned her earpiece off and tossed her hair out of her face, taking command of her troops.
"Ice, I want a thick, uneven coating on the floor. The acolytes will not be able to navigate in such treacherous terrain in heavy armor," she said very quickly. The white-haired heroine nodded and immediately got to work, holding out both hands and sending ripples of ice out from her position.
"Wait," Captain Marvel called in a tone much too boyish for his voice. "I know you, me, and Hawkwoman will be fine, but how will Huntress and Ice fight? They can't fly."
"Ice is the best adapted to the slick conditions out of all of us," Diana assured him.
"And I wouldn't have started fighting crime if I couldn't handle a little frost," Huntress said cockily, seeming not at all concerned. "Have you seen how cold Gotham gets in the winter?"
As Ice started creating tall, wide barricades beneath the wings of the Javelins for cover, Diana continued, "Huntress, stay out of sight and pick them off before they notice you. Aim for the joints and spine."
Again, Billy balked at her words, "But they're human! We can't kill them!"
"No," Diana agreed very calmly. "But these acolytes are traitors to their planet, no matter how misguided. We cannot end their lives, but we can cripple them."
"I'm on board," Huntress grinned darkly while Billy paled in horror. Her penchant for using excessive force against villains was well-known. It usually only served to alienate her from the other Leaguers, but it was most welcome today.
"Captain Marvel and Hawkwoman, you will attack from the air," she went on, undaunted. "I will be in the middle with Ice. Is this understood?"
"Can you hear yourself?!" Billy looked distraught. "Talking about crippling people?! This isn't how the Justice League does things."
"It is not. You're right," Diana's voice softened, and she moved closer to Billy and placed a hand on his thick arm. "But we don't have a choice. Our world is at stake, and these acolytes absolutely knew what they were getting into when they signed up to attack the Justice League. Such reckless foolishness has repercussions."
"Can't we save them?" His eyes were full of fearful sadness as he stared up at her, and Diana was struck by how good he was. He was still immature and naïve, but he was one of the kindest souls she'd met.
"We'll try," she spoke quietly with a regretful tone. "But we can't help anyone if we are defeated here. You must protect yourself first, and we can deal with the acolytes when we are standing victorious at the end of the battle."
Billy still wasn't happy with the circumstances, but he remained quiet and accepted her reasoning with a dejected nod.
The airlock doors gave a great metallic clang that echoed throughout the hangar's high ceilings. The gears started grinding haltingly and then began slowly opening the outer door.
"They must have hacked into the system again like they did with the zeta tubes," Shayera slammed her Nth metal mace into her palm and made the spiked head spark and crackle with electricity.
Diana was unconcerned, "Don't try to stop them. We're ready."
She watched the outer doors slowly lift open wider and wider until Manhunter acolytes decked out in red and blue armored space suits and helmets started filling the wide docking area right in front of them. They just kept coming nonstop until Diana heard the doors grinding shut once more. The chamber hissed as the airlock vented with oxygen, and then the inner doors lifted open.
The acolytes within were laughably untrained. Instead of attacking before the doors were fully open, they just stood there in loose formation, unguarded. Huntress did not waste the opportunity. She unloaded a full magazine of crossbow bolts into the front line's kneecaps.
Apparently, their armor wasn't as impenetrable as that of the androids, because Diana saw several of the bolts sticking straight out of the metal.
The acolytes hit the ground in surprised howls of agony, and the ranks crumbled. Some of the quicker ones took cover behind the bodies of their wounded and returned fire, but Huntress had already disappeared into the shadows. Diana held her ground and brought her arms up to deflect the energy blasts. They were armed with an array of pistols, batons, and staffs. Diana intended to see if they knew how to use them.
Huntress continued to rain down bolts on them from a new direction, and when she paused to replace the cartridges, the acolytes rushed out of their cover. The first few lines barely made it two steps onto Ice's expansive deathtrap before losing their footing and crashing to the ground. The acolytes behind them likewise tripped over the prone bodies of their fellows and fell, sliding out in every direction.
It would have been comical if Diana wasn't so outraged at the blatant lack of regard that the Manhunters had for their underlings. They were being used as pawns – sacrificed for nothing. Diana shook the thought from her mind. This was not the time to feel sorry for her enemies.
Hawkwoman certainly didn't. She dove from her perch with a powerful cry and slammed her mace into the ground in the center of the fallen acolytes. Her mace erupted in great sparks that sent convulsing jolts into the acolytes. The shockwave from the impact slammed into the ones still standing and knocked them back in a wide ring.
While they were still down, the thick layer of ice beneath them reached up quickly with snapping and popping fingers to grow around their arms and legs like a prison. Hawkwoman swung her mace back for another attack and launched herself towards the airlock, energy blasts splashing harmlessly against her shield.
Diana was right behind her. An acolyte swung his staff down at her, and she blocked it with her sword, balancing her weight on one foot and kicking him back several yards. Diana threw out her lasso and looped another acolyte. She hooked her leg around the rope and dragged him to his knees, spun around, and swung him into four more acolytes. She uncoiled her leg and dropped to the floor to avoid a burst of energy blasts that soared right over her and kicked out the legs of the female acolyte beside her. She hit the floor flat on her back, and Diana drove an elbow into her gut. The metal caved in like a soda can over her ribcage, and Diana could hear the acolyte gasping to breathe.
She rolled back to her feet and tackled the nearest acolyte, similarly crushing the armor around him like a corset and tossing him aside. When she looked up, Diana saw Shayera knocking acolytes away right and left. Behind her, one raised its baton at the back of the Thanagarian's head. Diana hurled her lasso at the baton and ripped it from its owner's hands. Deftly catching it out of the air, she turned it around on the acolytes and fired at their legs.
Billy was taking a decidedly less violent approach. He landed behind the rest of the acolytes and clapped his hands together once, sending out a massively devastating concussive blast of sound. The windows of the Javelins shattered, and eardrums ruptured from the force. His one attack took down a third of the remaining acolytes.
Huntress and Hawkwoman steadily brought that number down further and further, taking hits to their shields instead of directly. Ice created a constantly shifting, frozen fortress out of the hangar. She directed the ice pillars to shoot out and take hits for her teammates, dissolve into mobile snow storms that blinded the acolytes, and trap anyone who was stationary for longer than five seconds.
They were winning – pushing the acolytes back and knocking them unconscious without any fatalities so far.
That's when the first shield finally broke. Shayera and Diana were both taking the most hits, being right in the middle of the fray, and it was the Thanagarian who lost the invisible barrier first. It shattered with an audible crack, but Hawkwoman paid it no heed. She just kept swinging her mace and hovering just above the field.
Two energy blasts hit her left wing at the same time. The first bent the wing inwards and ignited a small circle of feathers, and the second tore completely through it. Diana heard her let out a startled scream of agony and watched her drop to the floor amidst a crowd of Manhunters. They all turned their weapons on her and fired.
"Take them out!" Diana cried, sprinting to her friend's aid. She backhanded one acolyte out of her way, slammed the butt of her sword into another's face, and rolled between the legs of another, hamstringing them as she went.
Billy leapt into the air and landed right near Shayera, standing over her and using his own still active shield to cover her as well. He slugged an acolyte in the chest and delivered a powered down uppercut to a second.
Huntress peppered the rest of the acolytes with bolts, sacrificing her position to allow Diana a clear path. The acolytes turned their weapons on the violet clad hero next, and Huntress dropped to the floor as they destroyed the control room balcony she'd taken as her vantage point.
When Diana reached Hawkwoman, the winged warrior was already getting back to her feet with Billy's help. Her mask had been cracked open from the energy blasts, and she ripped it free of her head with a disgusted groan, eyes burning angrily and soft orange hair spilling down around her shoulders. Her injured wing tucked close to her side, the edges of the wound burnt but cauterized.
"Can you still fight?" Diana asked quickly as Shayera grabbed for her mace.
"Try and stop me!" Hawkwoman growled furiously. She took a few unsteady steps before finding her balance and breaking into a run at the acolytes, screaming in rage the whole way. Some of the untrained humans stood their ground as she advanced, but most backed away – alarm and terror radiating from their body language – and tried to flee.
Diana had to smile. These weren't emotionless Manhunter androids they were fighting. They were human – organic, imperfect humans – and they could be intimidated. Diana exchanged a look with Billy before throwing herself into battle once more. She twisted an acolyte's shoulder out of its socket and vaulted into a somersault midair to slam her heel into a featureless helmet.
She spun around to meet another acolyte head on when the Watchtower lurched again and most of them were knocked over. Diana widened her stance to stay upright, and her eyebrows turned downwards when the air pressure alert started going off again.
The danger was not in the hangar, so the breach must be in another part of the tower. Another violent quake struck, and Diana felt unease coil through her mind. Two hits. That meant two breaches in the hull one right after the other. Mister Terrific and the Watchtower's defenses were getting overwhelmed, which meant that Superman's group and the Green Lanterns were faring the same.
She went into a frenzy, cracking open armor and breaking bones as fast as she could. They needed to end this battle quickly so they could help the other teams if necessary.
A few minutes later, Ice took out the very last acolyte with a massive, ice covered fist to the jaw. He fell down hard and stayed motionless while the five heroes took a moment to catch their breath. Diana sheathed her sword and took stock of her wounds. Only Huntress still had her shield intact. Diana's had shattered long ago, and now she had a few nasty burns on her shoulders and legs. It was nothing that would take her down like the first time she'd encountered a Manhunter though.
"Ice, can you patch up my wing?" Shayera was examining her injuries as well, and the fist-sized hole in her feathered appendage looked bad. Diana didn't know if it could be repaired.
"You shouldn't try to fly with it," she admonished breathlessly. "You could make it worse."
"I can handle it," Hawkwoman waved off her concern.
"Heads up," Billy suddenly straightened upright, both eyes fixed on the airlock doors. Diana turned around to look for herself and saw the windows lit up in violent, bright red light.
Clark had just used his heat vision to vaporize a host of Manhunters. An attack of that magnitude took a lot out of him and usually left him temporarily weakened for a time. If he was resorting to dangerous methods like that, then things were getting worse.
It soon became apparent why.
As soon as the red light faded, Diana saw the clusters of Manhunters covering the outside door. In an instant, her sword was back in her hand, and she was shouting for everyone to get ready. They were trying to break in. And, this time, it wouldn't be helmet covered humans attacking, but actual Manhunter androids. They'd used the humans to wear them out and were now coming themselves to finish the job.
Diana was so focused on the Manhunters beginning to break into the airlock that she didn't notice the lone acolyte that had been feigning unconsciousness get up behind them all and slip out of the hangar.
0000
000
00
00
000
0000
[The Watchtower
March 26, 20:45 EST]
Barry ran as fast as the cramped space would allow. He dodged and weaved through energy blasts that moved so slowly that they seemed to be frozen in midair. He snatched energy pistols and batons right out of the hands of Manhunters and fired them to intercept energy blasts that were already on their way to his teammates. Dashing through a tightly compacted platoon of androids, Barry tore armor pieces off of every single one of them and cleared the area while Oliver sank arrows into the exposed, glowing green cores.
He ducked beneath sinister, black batarangs and skirted around Hawkman's gleaming Nth metal axe as he swung it back in a wide, slow motion arc. Barry went for a group of Manhunters in the corner that had all decided to go after Bruce at once. He darted to each one of them like a pinball machine, vibrating his hands into the robots quicker than they could begin to process.
They all detonated one after the other not seconds apart, throwing shrapnel everywhere.
On the other side of the monitor womb, a single Manhunter detonated seemingly by itself. Barry saw the fiery plume billow outwards and knew that Atom was behind it. He couldn't see the shrunken down hero that selflessly offered to help protect his nephew's identity all those weeks ago, but he knew that Atom was there. When the Manhunters breached the hull and came pouring in, Atom had immediately gotten to work slipping between the miniscule gaps in the armor panels and rewiring the Manhunters' cores to explode.
Another one blew instants later, and Barry stopped letting himself be distracted. He sped up to a Manhunter and collided with it head on, leaning all his weight and momentum into sinking his fist into its chest. The blow completely caved in the armor plates and sent the android rocketing into the wall behind it, the force tearing off one of its arms in the process.
Barry's vision started fighting against him then, and he came to a sudden halt as soon as he felt it. Slipping into relative time was a neat trick, but Barry hadn't totally mastered it yet, and he was still afraid of getting stuck in it – forever moving so fast that the rest of the world seemed to be standing still in comparison. It was one of his most frequent night terrors.
When he slowed down enough for the Manhunters to actually see him, they locked on and began shooting at him too. He still had little trouble dodging energy blasts, but now he was reentered into the direct teamwork equation.
Oliver had his hood thrown back and was running to avoid the blasts, rapidly shooting arrows as he went with incredible accuracy. One of the Manhunters leveled its baton at Hawkman's exposed back, and Oliver shot an arrow right into the barrel of the baton. The weapon backfired and exploded with a chain reaction that took out a cluster of seven Manhunters.
Stubbornly refusing to watch his own back, Katar plowed through the Manhunters, swinging his axe and literally chopping them down like trees. His shield had protected him from most of the energy blasts, but that was gone now. Angry red patches and blackened feathers covered his body, but he ignored them easily. He slashed open chest pieces with the long metal claws attached to his gauntlets and ripped out cores. When a Manhunter slammed its staff into his ribs with enough force to send him flying, Hawkman just rolled back to his feet and lifted up into the air to dive bomb them again with a furious roar.
Barry zoomed over to steal the weapon of a Manhunter that had realized Atom was inside it and had turned its pistol on itself to take him out. He fired right at a second Manhunter lightning fast until the pistol overheated and melted in his hand. Barry flung it aside and pointed both of his arms straight out at a small group of Manhunters converging on Bruce. He rotated them at superspeed and sent twin cyclones crashing into the androids, knocking them away.
Bruce bent backwards to duck beneath an energy baton swiped at his head. He pulled two thick metal discs from his utility belt and flipped onto the Manhunter's back, attaching them both to the sides of its head before jumping back off and rolling right up to another android. While he was hurling explosive batarangs into the chinks in its armor, the first Manhunter went rigid, jerking like it was short-circuiting. The lights in its eyes flickered erratically and then went out for good when the Manhunter slumped over, deactivated.
Barry smirked. Electromagnets.
"Good one, Bats," he grinned, zipping over to help Oliver.
"Now, why didn't I think of something cool like that?" the blond-haired archer looked comically dismayed, and then his expression twisted into an evil kind of glee. He reached into his quiver and shot another arrow at a Manhunter. This one burst open on impact and coated the android with a generous amount of thick, amber colored liquid. The Manhunter immediately started smoking, and Barry could see its metal armor start bubbling. The amber liquid was eating away at the Manhunter, quickly reducing it to a melted heap of scraps on the floor.
"An acid arrow?" Bruce said more than asked, looking decidedly unimpressed. Behind him, Hawkman soared past with two Manhunters on each arm. He slammed them into the wall and started tearing them apart.
Bruce just selected a smaller, lighter looking batarang and threw it high into the air, pressing a button somewhere on his glove. The sleek batarang fizzled in mid-air and sent out EMP waves, rippling outwards several yards and effectively killing thirty Manhunters in the process. Barry skidded to a stop and poked one of the deactivated Manhunters, knocking it over easily. He grinned over his shoulder at Oliver, who had a sour look on his face.
"Bats just threw down the gauntlet," he grinned. "You gonna just take that?"
Oliver's face lit up in determination, and he pulled four arrows out of his quiver at once, "Not likely."
"Contest is over," Bruce dismissed the impending challenge before it even began, running over to one of the downed Manhunters and hefting it into a corner where he started pulling off its armor pieces and faceplate. "Flash, I need you to cover me."
"You got it," Barry zipped over to him and took up a defensive position. "What's the plan?"
"Question and I have been developing a virus since the Watchtower was first attacked by the Manhunters," Bruce explained, producing a small holo-computer from somewhere in his belt and getting to work hooking it up to the damaged robot. "I needed an actual, current Manhunter to analyze in order to complete it."
"And you need me to keep them off you until you have it figured out," Barry finished the thought for him and sized up the remaining host of androids from where he was standing. Many of them were already stomping their way over and taking aim on the two heroes. "Not a problem. Leave it to me; I won't let a single energy blast through."
He didn't look back, but he heard Bruce's dark, brooding tones over his shoulder, "I know you won't."