9. Krypton's Chance

"You're right," Flash said, marveling in both awe and horror at the sight before him – it was a sight that, even with what he had seen before, was still mighty to behold. "This is a really big problem."

He and Kara had sped over the coasts of North Africa after Lantern had reached out to them, and Barry could finally see what had gotten Lantern so worked up. Before them, even at the distance they were out at, was a veritable storm cloud of destruction. In the center was a structure that rose high into the sky. Its three-legged design was most definitely alien, and from its bulbous top, black smoke poured out in voluminous quantity with every passing moment. The ground around it had already been transformed from the native sand and rock into something that Barry had never quite seen before.

"What the hell is it doing?" Lantern remarked over the commlink. "Is that the terraforming process?"

"I—I think so," Flash hesitantly said. In his honest opinion, though, he wasn't sure. He had never seen the world engine that Superman had once told him about in the Indian Ocean. The Kryptonian ship that had haunted his nightmares for years above Metropolis was different – it had pulsed a gravity wave of some kind, while this seemed to be fundamentally changing the land beneath it. Already, blackened rock and scorched earth could be seen at the foot of the machine. Even the air had started to become different in a way that Barry could both smell and somehow taste on his tongue.

"Hn," Kara grunted, and suddenly they dipped slightly, causing Flash's stomach to drop slightly. They leveled out, only to drop again after a few seconds. He could feel her grip on him weaken slightly.

"Kara!" Barry worriedly cried out. She half-turned to him, her face visibly tense. "Are you okay?"

"I… feel… weaker," she managed to say, her body almost shivering beside his. The two were only meters above the desert sand, and finally she gave out entirely and they fell onto the sand, rolling to a stop.

Flash rose to his feet and was beside her fallen form in the blink of an eye, where she was spluttering and struggling to rise to her knees.

"Hey, don't worry," Barry said, propping her up on his chest. "I'm right here. Do you need me to get you away from it?"

She shook her head, pushing herself off of Barry and into a standing position, albeit with some hesitation. "I… I am fine. It is the air – the world engine has become terraforming this land into what Krypton was. I think it is affecting me."

"So, you're losing your powers?" Barry asked. He thought about it for a moment. If Kara couldn't fight at her full strength, then he and Lantern would have a harder time against whatever defenses the world engine had.

"I will be fine," Kara reiterated. She breathed deeply, shuddering a little as she did so. "I have to be."

As if on cue, Lantern's voice crackled to life in his ear. "Barry, where the hell are you two? This thing's got, I don't know, tentacles! Damn!"

Barry looked up, where he could see a small green figure in the distance flying around and avoiding what appeared to him to be black metal tendrils emanating from the top of the world engine. Every now and then, the green figure would stop and conjure a bright green object, but at virtually every turn, the tendrils simply pushed and broke through the conjured shield.

"We have to help him, Kara," Barry said, turning to her. She looked back at him out of the corner of her eye, her fists squeezed as she breathed sharply through her clenched teeth. Finally, she shook her head.

"No," she firmly replied. "He will need to handle himself. We need to deal with them." She turned with her back facing the world engine, leaving Barry confused.

"Wait, who's 'them,' Kara?"

Kara didn't respond, so Barry spun around and looked for enemies before he spotted a Kryptonian dropship behind them, quickly decelerating as it came to a landing position. When the dropship came to a halt, its ramp lowered almost instantly, and within a few seconds, Barry could faintly make out a number of figures disembark. Kara inhaled and took off toward the dropship, and with little extra thought, Barry followed, making sure to keep slightly behind her to let her lead them. When she stopped about twenty yards away from the dropship, he also exited the Speed Force to skid to a halt beside her.

As far as he could tell, she was staring down the lead figure of the five Kryptonians that had just arrived. One of the Kryptonians was an unusually large brute – Barry noted with no small amount of anguish and hate that it was likely the same Kryptonian, or one substantially similar between the universes, that had killed the other Bruce. Kara's red cape billowed slightly in the wind, a stark contrast to the nearly all-black armor sported by the other Kryptonians.

"Kara Zor-El," the lead Kryptonian said – a woman whose name Barry vaguely recalled as Faora. "The traitor."

"Faora," Kara responded, in a tone that was somewhere between anger and sorrow. "How could you? How could Zod do this? And why would you follow him to this point?"

Faora cocked her masked head slightly to one side. "General Zod has done nothing that I did not believe was the right thing for Krypton."

"Krypton?" Kara said with disbelief. "Krypton is gone, Faora. It will never return."

"And that is where you are wrong, daughter of El. That is why the Sword of Rao had to transform into the Sword of Krypton. Rao had failed us like he failed our home, so now we will forge Krypton anew far beyond Rao's reach."

Only about half of that explanation made sense to Barry, but the underlying gist that he gathered was that Kara and Faora had known each other before any of this had happened, and possibly to good degree, too.

"Faora…" Kara began, trailing off with disbelief on her face. "What happened to you?"

In response, the older Kryptonian woman pulled off her rebreather mask, squinting as she did so with visible tension in her jaw. Barry saw Kara flinch slightly at the motion. A few seconds passed in silence, Faora clearly adjusting to the still-foreign atmosphere.

Finally, she replied. "You are the one who has changed, Kara Zor-El, not us. You are the one who stands against your own people with these…" she looked at Barry, "lesser beings."

A witty retort rose in Barry's mind but died on his tongue. While he was about ninety-percent sure he was still faster than these Kryptonians, drawing attention to himself didn't seem like a wise thing to do. At any rate, it seemed like Kara was going to respond for him anyway.

"Lesser," Kara repeated. Her eyes flicked to Barry and then back to Faora. "I have come to know the humans. They can be violent and rageful, unfair and unjust. We both saw that in our time on Earth. But they can also be kind, generous, and loving. I have seen the good they have within them along with the bad, and I have hope for them. They are no more and no less a complex people as we once were."

Faora sneered, a cruel and condescending look on her face. "You have hope them? You have fallen far, daughter of El. Where is your hope for your own kind?"

Kara balled up her fists. "If we are to be defined by Zod, then all I have is fear for what is left of Krypton."

Faora turned to her side. "Nam-Ek, deal with the human. I will deal with her." The hulking giant said nothing but strode forward to Barry.

Almost instantly, Barry entered the Speed Force, but to his horror, the Kryptonian brute only moderately slowed down instead of coming to a near-full stop. Was he that much slower, or were these Kryptonians faster than the ones he had fougtht before? He quickly backed away as he saw Kara fly into Faora and the two of them blast off into the distance. Behind the brute, the other three Kryptonians had raised their rifles at him.

Barry moved without thinking. Their… plasma beams, or whatever they were to his untrained eyes, were still as eminently avoidable as they had been before, so he moved out of the way even as the brute moved toward him at somewhat startling speed. Backing up in a half-circle, he routed around the brute and spun around to take the rifle out of the three Kryptonian soldiers' hands; despite their superior strength, they clearly weren't at the level of Kara—much less the past Clark that one time Barry had actually fought him and nearly ruined a pair of pants doing so—and their grips of their rifles were only steady enough to hold onto said rifles, not deal with a speedster bumping them out of their hands.

To his side, he could see the brute—Nam-Ek, as Faora had called him—run toward him at perhaps just a little slower than the past Clark had been after getting resurrected by the Mother Box, so he quickly began to spin to create a cyclone, kicking up an inordinate large amount of dust for the size of the vortex and sweeping all three of the regular-sized Kryptonians off of their feet.

Nam-Ek reached a hand toward him and just barely brushed Barry's shoulder as Barry ran up the ramp of the dropship and phased through its front to the other side. He took a breather at the exertion, but barely got in a breath of dusty air before Nam-Ek burst through the dropship entirely, shredding the Kryptonian vessel into small chunks in a fiery explosion that forced Barry to phase again to avoid shrapnel.

The overwhelming desire in Barry was to run away – if he ran at his top speed, he was fairly certain that Nam-Ek would be left in the dust somewhat literally. But he saw Hal. Green Lantern was still flying in the distance, trying to avoid those metal tendrils that emanated out of the world engine as he failed to find an opening to destroy the entire contraption. Kara was nowhere to be found, likely off fighting with Faora still. If he left, then Nam-Ek would just turn to Lantern. He couldn't leave. He couldn't let Lantern stand alone.

Barry strengthened his resolve as he fell backwards, still phasing through the shrapnel that threatened to pierce him like it had the younger Barry, once upon a time. Nam-Ek was still reaching forward, unscathed by the explosion or flying shards of metal, with his hand mere inches away from Barry's face. He ran through his options in the time he had, his mind still firing at full speed even if his body was a little slower than he remembered.

Lightning was out – his gloves were still on, and even if he took them off, there was no telling whether or not it would be enough to take the brute of a Kryptonian down. The last time, it had taken both himself and younger Barry combined to generate enough electrical charge to stop the brute, and Barry's own connection to the Speed Force was already more tenuous than it had been then. If he couldn't generate enough of a charge to incinerate Nam-Ek, then he would be back to square one.

Fighting head-on wasn't an option. Barry was pretty sure that he would get blasted apart by a single punch from the Kryptonian. He had a relatively solid physical constitution, but it didn't extend to Kryptonian-level punches. And Barry was certainly not rushing to find out, one way or the other.

Phasing was another potential choice, considering he had already used it on Kryptonians before. But phasing was, despite how he made it look sometimes, not a simple or easy thing to do, and the precision it required to not chop off something from his own body when he was trying to phase was not conducive to a real battle. He was as likely to lose a hand as he was to stop the Kryptonian's heart, and with Nam-Ek moving at an appreciable speed, there was little room for error. If he failed, then he'd be dead, and Lantern would be stuck trying to deal with more problems. Not an option, then.

His speed was his only viable tool, then. Fitting enough for the fastest man alive.

"Lantern!" Flash yelled, still retreating from Nam-Ek's grasp, "Get down here and flank him!"

Lantern didn't respond, but Flash could see the green figure begin to swoop downwards, bringing the tendrils with him in hot pursuit. Within just the span of a few seconds, Flash sidestepped Nam-Ek, causing the Kryptonian giant to stumble forward slightly as he clenched at thin air while Lantern flew just over his head. Still too slow to catch for nimbler Green Lantern, Nam-Ek barely had a moment to see Lantern fly past him before being slammed full force by the metal tendrils, throwing him across the desert sand with chunks of his armor flying apart from the impact.

"Damn, that actually worked," Lantern noted over the comm even as he was still being chased. His voice was a little strained to Barry's ears, the first sign he had heard of Lantern being physically pushed by the endeavor. "But it looks like the big guy's not out of the fight yet."

In the distance, Flash saw Nam-Ek rise to his feet, his armor having been shredded by the equally strong metal of the Kryptonian tendrils. His rebreather mask was flickering, with a gaping hole on the top that was rapidly expanding. The brute tore off what was left of his mask and armor to reveal a black skinsuit underneath and an almost-inhuman-looking face for a Kryptonian.

"This dude's ugly," Barry remarked. "Like, wow."

"Are we sure he's Kryptonian?" Lantern quipped, flying in circles above the world engine. "Because none of them look like him."

Nam-Ek's face was scrunched up—though Barry wasn't sure if that it just its normal appearance—and began to walk toward the speedster. Suddenly, the Kryptonian shot forward like a speeding bullet, pushing off the ground with much faster acceleration than Barry thought he could. Without his armor, Nam-Ek was even faster, as if unburdened by the extra weight.

Barry, without thinking twice, ripped off his gloves and quickly generated electrical charge by running in place, aligning his hands in the triangle formation that grounded the electric buildup. Bolts of orange lightning shot forth and cascaded over Nam-Ek, but the brute simply kept speeding forward, almost skipping across the desert without concern for the lightning that collided with him.

"Shit," Barry breathed out, barely dodging out of the way as Nam-Ek collided with one half of the destroyed Kryptonian dropship behind him. "I can't scratch this guy."

"Look," Lantern grunted in reply, the sound of metal clinking behind him noticeably audible over the comm, "if you want to trade with me, be my guest. I've been flying here for like half an hour now and not only can I not figure out how to break this thing in half, but these tendrils also want to do very bad things to me."

"We need Kara back," Barry said, watching as Nam-Ek emerged from the wreckage unscathed, save for burn marks on his skinsuit. "We don't have the firepower for this."

Nam-Ek suddenly fell to his knees, clutching his eyes as he roared for the first time. It was a monstrous sound, and behind his hands, Barry watched with growing fear as he saw the tell-tale signs of Kryptonian heat vision emerging as an orange glow. Finally, Nam-Ek tore his hands away from his face and rose as he unleashed the beams, shooting straight upwards into the sky.

"Woah!" Lantern cried out. "I almost got a haircut from that."

"We're outclassed." Barry felt that horrible sensation return. He wasn't strong enough – or perhaps the Kryptonians were too strong this time. He didn't know which was the case, but it didn't matter because the result was the same. Even with Lantern, against a Kryptonian that could power up like this, there was little hope that either of them could scratch him.

It didn't mean that Barry couldn't try, though.

Running as fast and far away as he could, Barry felt that charge buildup again and dashed all the way back, hoping that he had generated enough. He stopped just short of Nam-Ek and unleashed all of it on the Kryptonian, but it was to no avail. Nam-Ek yelled in obvious pain and fell to one knee, but already, he was beginning to look at Barry with glowing eyes even as the lightning ripped at and puckered his skin.

The heat vision's beams came quickly, and Barry barely pulled himself out of the lightning throw—which had locked him in place—to push himself to the side and out of the way of the beams. Even so, he wasn't quite fast enough, and one of them caught the side of his right shoulder. Barry tumbled away into the sand, coming to a rest some distance away. He groaned face-first into the sand, the wound hot and painful even though it was already beginning to heal.

Raising his head slightly, Barry saw Nam-Ek approach like a hunter coming to their wounded prey. There was an almost sadistic quality to it, especially since Barry knew that the Kryptonian could have easily arrived near-instantly to kill him. Instead, on that impassive and crude mug that Nam-Ek called a face, there was nothing to indicate hurry other than the still-glowing eyes, illuminating the periphery of his face underneath the skin.

Gathering his strength, Barry was about to reach into the Speed Force to rush out of the vulnerable position when he felt a woosh of air from over his back and a figure slam into Nam-Ek, causing the Kryptonian to tumble away.

"Kara?" Barry called out, blinking his eyes. "Oh, that was close."

"I am not this… Kara you speak of," the figure said, partially obscured from Barry's upward view by the Sun above, its rays cascading through and around the world engine's smoke enough to be bright.

Barry blinked again and sat up. The figure moved out of the direct way of a ray of sunlight, revealing a woman with light-olive skin and dark hair that had been intricately braided so that it wrapped around her head rather than flowing freely. Her silver tiara was more like a diadem or circlet, sitting on the front of her forehead rather than on the top of her hair. Her breastplate was a deep red save for the silver belt-like pattern that broke up the red breastplate from the lower skirt-like tassets that were slightly lighter blue than much of her outfit. A bodysuit that seemed to run from her legs to her neck was also that same dark-blue color, with silver bracers on her forearms and silver pauldrons on her shoulders, and the look was completed by a pair of over-the-knee metal boots that matched the same red color as her breastplate.

More simply put, it was Wonder Woman, but with a different look in both outfit and appearance. What did remain was the lasso hanging from her hip and the sword and shield she wielded in her hands.

"Wonder Woman!" Barry exclaimed. Truth be told, he didn't care anymore about trying to hide his asymmetrical knowledge; he needed all the help he could get, and if this Diana was anything like the old one, then she would be trustworthy.

She frowned. "Wonder Woman? I am Diana of Themyscira. Who are you?"

He bit his lower lip. "I'll tell you, but first we've gotta deal with him," he pointed behind her at Nam-Ek, who was shaking his head as he pushed himself off the sand, "and that," he finished, pointing at the world engine. "My friend in the air needs help as well."

Diana seemed to assess the situation quickly. "We will deal with this monstrosity of a creature first. Then, we will stop this machine that is fouling the air and land."

Barry nodded, tapping into the Speed Force. He ran past Diana's left, drawing Nam-Ek's attention almost immediately. The Kryptonian activated his heat vision swiftly—which he seemed to favor quite heavily after finding the power within himself—but Barry was faster, the beams harmlessly glassing the sand behind him as he continued to sprint toward the brute. Nam-Ek swiped at him but Barry skidded underneath, sliding on the sand as he saw Diana follow up with a swing of her sword toward the Kryptonian. Nam-Ek raised his left arm to defend, and to both her and Barry's surprise, the sword, instead of passing through the flesh and bone, almost dinged like metal-on-metal against the bone, slicing only through the flesh of Nam-Ek's forearm.

The Kryptonian screamed in pain and anger from the deep slice, a punch coming out from his right arm that caught Diana's shield and forced the Amazon backwards, her feet drawing lines across the sand as she stayed upright from the blow. Her face was still impassive as she looked at Nam-Ek, who now stood, clutching his amputated arm, between Diana in front of him and Barry behind.

"Diana!" Barry yelled, drawing both Nam-Ek's and Diana's attentions. "Get him to the world engine!"

The Amazon nodded, and Barry sped away from the world engine to Nam-Ek's left, before returning again with built-up electrical charge that he promptly unleashed on the Kryptonian. He knew it wasn't enough to do anything more than slightly burn and singe Nam-Ek, but he saw Diana routing behind him, and the moment she passed over his head, he pulled his hands apart and cut off the flow of lightning just in time for Diana to slam into the Kryptonian with her shield. Nam-Ek flew a considerable distance backwards, well within range of the blackened terraformed landscape beneath the world engine, and he writhed in pain as the burgeoning Kryptonian atmosphere in the vicinity of the world engine began to rob him of his strength.

"The air is toxic there," Wonder Woman said with a frown. "I would advise to not breathe it." She noticeably held her breath as she flew forward, and Barry did the same as he sped into the radius of the world engine's reach.

Nam-Ek was still struggling to stand properly, so Barry immediately dove feet first into the Kryptonian's shins, knocking him off-balance to fall forward. Before he fell, though, Diana swept in and swung upwards, her blade cleanly arcing through Nam-Ek's neck with a little blood spraying out as his head flew up and his body went down.

Still holding onto his breath, Barry gestured up at Lantern. Wonder Woman followed his gesture and nodded, flying upwards—something that Barry had never seen Wonder Woman do before—toward the Lantern as Barry sped back out of range of the world engine, beyond the wreck of the Kryptonian dropship.

He spluttered for breath as he made it back to the sand of the Nairomian desert, turning back to see Wonder Woman's blade slice through the metal tendrils and then her and Lantern combined attacking the world engine itself. Lantern conjured all manners of green objects ranging from a train engine to a gigantic green hammer to pummel the outside while Wonder Woman sliced through the hull to enter the machine.

After a few minutes, the world engine erupted into a fireball, an explosion massive enough to send a powerful shockwave over Barry. Moments after that, both Wonder Woman and Lantern floated down to him.

"Wow," Lantern remarked, eyeing Wonder Woman up and down. "Wow. I didn't notice because we were fighting at the time, but has anyone ever told you how gorgeous you are, beautiful?"

Diana rolled her eyes. "Over seventy years in Man's World, and nothing has changed with men."

"Hey," Lantern shrugged, "it's not every day that I see a pretty woman that can also kick my ass. And today alone I've seen two. I must've died and gone to heaven."

"Is your friend… always like this?" Diana asked Barry.

He nodded in response. "Just about." He thought for a moment. "Oh, right," Barry said, extending a hand that Diana took. "I'm Barry – the Flash. That's Hal Jordan, Green Lantern." Lantern playfully saluted.

"Diana," Diana re-introduced herself. "I came when I saw the news."

"The news?" Barry questioned.

Diana had a small smile on her face. "You, and the other heroes, are on every television station across the world. I came here because it was the closest for me. It seems like it was fortunate that I did."

Barry nodded. "You bailed me out there for sure." He paused. "Wait, where's Kara?"

Lantern frowned. "Wasn't she fighting one of the Kryptonians?"

"I did not see this Kara when I arrived," Diana noted. "If she was here, then she is long gone."

"Come in, Kara," Barry said, pressing his commlink to connect to hers. But there was no reply, only the static of an empty channel. He felt a little fear rise in his heart for her. Nam-Ek was much stronger than he remembered from the past timeline. It stood to reason that Faora could be equally stronger as well. Was Kara strong enough here, in this world and time, to face her?

He shook his head. There was nothing to be done about it because they had no way of finding them. All he could do was trust that she could handle herself.

"Is there another attack still ongoing?"

"Bialya and Metropolis," Diana said. "There were also reports from the Pacific, but the speculation was that it was underwater. Some militaries have sent ships toward the area."

"Bialya first, then Metropolis," Barry said resolutely. "Let's finish this."

To Be Continued

Notes:

The proper terminology for armor has eluded me for years at this point. I hope I did a passable job of describing Diana's armor.

Casting:

Diana Prince: Melissanthi Mahut (The Sandman)