Chapter 5.
by Carycomic
WASHINGTON, DC
As Zatanna's Secretary of Defense, the Kryptonian formerly known as Superman might have been able to best Giganta in less than sixty seconds. But, as he had still not returned from his flight to Gotham City, the second line of defense for the Ivory Palace (formerly known as the White House) had been forced to go into action. And predictably, despite the vast amount of ordnance at their disposal, the Rocket Red-armored Amazons of Bana-Migdahl were only having a minimal amount of success in slowing her down. This, in turn, necessitated the activation of the third line of defense.
The 'goddess' Zatanna, herself.
Consequently, there was an explosive eruption of white smoke at the edge of lawn parallel to the palace's main entrance. Followed, seconds later, by the materialization of Zatanna in her thousand-foot-tall giantess form. Top hat, tuxedo, fishnet stockings, and all!
"Well, well, well," chanted the erstwhile Princess of Prestidigitation. "Who do we have here? Someone trying to overthrow me? Something tells me you're biting off more than you can chew, little girl!"
Giganta scowled. "What you've done is wrong, Zee. Part of you should be able to sense that. No matter how mind-controlled you are! That's why you should be fighting with every ounce of your being to cancel this wish. To restore both your own free will and that of the rubes who now worship you."
Zatanna frowned. "Rubes?! There's only one person I know who uses circus slang while still referring to me by my old nickname. Boston Brand!"
"Oh, crap!" muttered the spirit within Giganta's body.
"namdaeD, emoceb deppart ni tsoh ydob! atnagiG, nrut otni yffulf etihw tibbar!"
Whereupon, the redheaded escaped convict was immediately transformed into an albinistic lagomorph with pink eyes and droopy ears. One that Zatanna swiftly picked up, by the scruff of the neck, with her right hand. While simultaneously doffing her top hat with her left.
"otnI ueapahc obmil uoy og. reveN ot nruter!"
Whereupon, Zatanna released her grip on Giganta's neck. The pseudo-rabbit vanishing into the top hat's internal darkness like starlight into a black hole! The self-styled 'goddess' then replaced her top hat back on her head. Following which, she smiled at all on the on-lookers along Pennsylvania Avenue who had been watching the struggle with morbid fascination.
"It's all right, my children. The emergency is over. Order has been restored."
And, as expected, everyone jubilantly cheered. A moment later, Zatanna was back in the master bedroom. She then looked at the ring on her right hand with a most lascivious grin.
"Now, my faithful little lover, where were we?"
Suddenly, however, the grin left her face as she experienced a wave of vertigo!
"What the. . .?"
During the brief scuffle between 'Giganta' and Zatanna, Catwoman and the Atom had formulated a contingency plan for depriving her of her magic ring. Or, at the very least, rendering it powerless. They decided that, when the self-styled 'goddess' returned, the Atom would enter her right inner ear in order to disrupt her sense of balance! While Catwoman would acrobatically traverse from her right shoulder to the elbow of her right sleeve and, downward from there, to her right fourth finger. There, she would remove the shrunken Lamp of Larko from the ring's central setting before jumping down towards the carpeted floor of the bedroom. By which point, the Atom would have exited Zatanna's right ear and begun his own descent towards the bedroom floor! Altering his size-and-mass, en route, in order to control his body's rate and angle of descent so that he could safely intercept the Feline Felon.
It was this plan they had now enacted. Hence, the aforementioned vertigo. Yet, just as they were nearing the tops of several strands of carpeting, they found themselves landing on an entirely different surface. Namely; the cupped palms of Wonder Woman!
"Good job, you two! Now, let's get out of here faster than Hermes with a hotfoot."
Whereupon, the Amazing Amazon changed the trajectory of her invisible plane's flight path back towards the broken glass panel of a nearby French door. Unfortunately, in her excitement over making it to Washington from Salem, Massachusetts, in the proverbial nick of time, she had momentarily forgotten about her fellow Amazons. The ones colloquially known as 'The Mig-Dolls'!
Every single one of which was now hovering directly ahead of her aircraft.
tbc