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Chapter Text

Renee Montoya collapsed face-first on her couch. It had been a rough week, and a rough week on the GCPD was a very rough week. It was bad enough that they had all sorts of supervillains to deal with regularly. It was bad enough that many of them were suffering with various mental illnesses. But the way her fellow officers used those villains to justify their treatment of the citizens of Gotham was sickening. Word got out pretty quickly that Gordon wouldn't tolerate that kind of thing, and rather than curb the behavior, a layer of obfuscation had formed in the command structure, keeping word from getting to the Commissioner.

Every day, Renee found herself thinking that maybe Luz had been right after all. And when she wasn't thinking that, she was wondering if maybe she should finally open that box under her bed. It was addressed to her, from someone named Vic Sage, with the admonition "Only open when you're ready."

She should've taken the package in to the bomb squad to have them check it for explosives or chemicals, but she recognized the name. Vic Sage was a private investigator who had a knack for digging up stuff even the GCPD had missed. At one point, when she was on paid leave for insubordination, he had enlisted her aid in tracking down a group distributing high-tech weaponry of alien origin to the gangs of Gotham. Sage had called them "Intergang."

She had watched while he brutally, efficiently took down members of the high-tech gang in the faceless guise of the vigilante "The Question."

That night, she killed someone, shooting a gang member dead before he could get the drop on Sage.

She still wasn't entirely sure if she'd done the right thing by killing that man.

She definitely hadn't done the right thing by not reporting the shooting to her superiors, at least legally, but given the corruption those same superiors were hiding from the commissioner...

She hated it here. She wanted to go visit her cousin in Connecticut, and by extension the hidden branch of their family in another dimension known as the Demon Realm. Ironically, there was a lot less corruption there.

There was a knock at the door.

"Go away," she groaned. "'m dead."

"Well, you heard her, guys," the familiar voice of the cousin in question, Luz Noceda, said from the other side of the door. "She's dead."

"We should probably go make funeral arrangements," another voice - Hunter - proposed.

"We should start divvying up her stuff," a third voice - Vee - said at the same time as Hunter.

"Oh no, you don't!" Renee said, trying to get out of the couch. Given the position she was in, she ended up rolling off onto the floor in a heap before she dragged herself to her feet. "Hang on, hang on, lemme just..."

She looked up and noticed that the handle for her deadbolt was glowing with a familiar dark purple aura, and it unlocked itself before she could get to the door to unlock it herself.

"Sorry, prima," Luz said, letting herself and her siblings into the apartment. "I don't like staying on the streets of Gotham at night any longer than I have to.

"Nobody does," Renee said. "Come in, come in! Is anyone else with you, or is it just you three?"

"Just us," Luz said. "The rest of la familia is coming by car, they'll be a half hour or so, most likely."

"Porque, though?"

"Prima," Vee said. "You didn't forget what day it is, did you?"

Hunter looked around the room. "Probably," he said. "This place looks like she hasn't had time to do more than work and sleep in weeks."

"You'd be the expert on that," Luz teased, but when he held up a fast food bag, she gasped. "Renee! Tacos Del Payaso Loco?! Doesn't Joker own this place?!"

Renee shook her head. "No, but they sure didn't work too hard to quash that rumor. And don't judge, it's on the way home from the precinct."

"Why wouldn't they want to distance themselves from that dude?" Vee asked, eyeing the bag suspiciously.

"Free advertising," Hunter said with a shrug, tossing the bag aside. "In any case, probably not safe to eat from there. Anyway, Renee... Repeating Luz's question, do you know what tomorrow is?"

"Uhhhhhh.... raid on Two-Face's warehouse? No, wait, that was last Thursday. Tuesday!" she corrected herself hurriedly.

"Try again, prima favorita," Luz said.

"Oh, it's uhhh..." Renee checked her phone. "The thirteenth... thirteenth... esperanse the thirteenth?! Holy Titan, it's my birthday tomorrow."

"Holy Titan it's your birthday tomorrow," Luz agreed with a grin.

"So why are you here ahead of the rest of la familia?"

"Luz and Vee couldn't wait to see you, and Madre didn't want them flying through, or even over, the streets of Gotham without at least one more person," Hunter said, "and she made it very clear that she wanted it to be me."

"Please help us, Renee," Luz said, grinning, "we seek asylum from the tyrannical reign of la chancla!"

"Oh no," Renee said. "No, you know the rules. Whoever incurs la chancla..."

"...must face la chancla," Luz intoned with a hand over her heart, then broke down in giggles.

"You do have tomorrow off, right?" Hunter asked. "I mean, I'm new to this whole 'time off for birthdays, holidays, and weekends' thing but you do get that, right?"

Renee took a hissing breath. "I mean. Normally, yeah, but I don't honestly remember if I asked for tomorrow off..."

Luz held out her hand, her palisman familiar, Stringbean, slithering down her arm and taking her place above Luz's hand before turning into her magic staff. As soon as she felt the comfortable weight of Stringbean's staff form, Luz spun the staff in a circle, and Renee's phone levitated out of her jacket pocket and into Luz's waiting hand. "Prima, you've got the commissioner on speed dial?"

Renee frowned. "Luz, you can't."

Luz grinned. "I think you'll find I can, easily." She tapped on the screen. "Boop! See? There's the contact. I can just hit dial and then ask the commissioner to cut you some slack for your birthday, just a quick little tap of the fingie. I've been told he's really understanding."

"Please don't," Renee said, then immediately changed topics. "You've been told. Who by?"

Luz grinned. "Who do you think?"

"Of course," the off-duty detective said. "Of course mi prima just casually talks about my boss with the Batman. Of course."

"Not casually," Luz said. "I don't think Bats is capable of doing anything casually."

Hunter stifled a laugh.

"Oye," Luz said. "You of all people don't get to laugh at someone being uptight."

Renee grumbled and attempted to snatch the phone out of Luz's hand. Luz, grinning, tossed it to her other hand to keep it out of her reach. They all froze when they heard the sound of ringing, however, Luz having accidentally hit 'dial' on the device when she caught it.

"Oh no," the three Nocedas and one Montoya said simultaneously.

"Go for Gordon," the commissioner said over the phone after two rings.

"Ahhhhahaha," Luz laughed nervously. "Hola, commissioner! I am soooo sorry. This is Renee Montoya's cousin, Luz. I didn't mean to hit dial on her phone, but now that I've got you on the line..."

"Hang on. Luz, you said?" There was a muffled growl on the other end of the line. "Someone wants to talk to you."

"What are you doing in town?" growled the familiar voice of the Batman.

"Oh, hey, there, Bats," Luz said, grinning. "Actually, la familia entera is coming to town this weekend, porque mañana es el cumpleaños de mi prima."

"Hm," Batman grunted. "Tomorrow, you said?"

"Si."

"I'll smooth things over with the commissioner. Tell Detective Montoya I said happy birthday."

"Uh... will do. You feeling okay? You're being... surprisingly accommodating today."

"I'll tell you later. Stay safe, Miss Noceda."

"You, too, Mr.-"

"Don't you dare."

Luz laughed, and hit "hang up" before Batman could say anything further.

Vee grinned. "You know he prefers to be the one to do that, right?"

"That's why I do it every chance I get," Luz replied.

Renee stared, openmouthed. "Luz, do you know Batman's identity?"

Luz laughed. "I mean, he knows mine."

Renee shook her head. "Luz Noceda, do you know Batman's secret identity, the most prized piece of information in Gotham City?"

Luz grinned. "Maybe," she said. "I was hoping to get him to confirm it, but he wouldn't even let me get it out before he cut me off. Spoilsport."

Vee twitched, looking around fearfully.

"What's up?" Renee asked.

"Gunshots," Vee said. "Silenced. Sounds like a rifle from the roof of your building."

"Mierda," Luz and Renee said. Luz, Vee, and Hunter quickly changed into their costumes using magic (or shapeshifting, in Vee's case), then Luz used illusion magic to make the three of them invisible. Renee opened a window and climbed onto the fire escape, then moved aside so they could fly out unobstructed.

"See you up top," she whispered to the supernatural superhero team, and started the climb up the fire escape while the trio flew up above to get a better idea of what was going on.

Vic Stone, Cyborg, grimaced, having narrowly deflected the shot with his forearms' built-in force-field projectors. "Okay, I've narrowed down the vector. You can narrow your search to between seventh and eleventh, north-northeast of here."

"Ten-four," came the businesslike tones of his teammate, Dick Grayson, more famously known as Robin. "You heard the man," he said. "Titans, go!"

The Teen Titans converged on the area. The alien princess, Koriand'r, better known by her nom de guerre, Starfire, was the first to see anything out of the ordinary. "I am seeing someone on the metal stairs outside one of the buildings, climbing up towards the roof."

"Better go stop them," Garfield Logan, the green shapeshifter known as Beast Boy, called out. "We don't need any civilians getting caught in the crossfire." With that, he jumped off the roof he was on, turning into a hawk and angling himself towards the area in question.

"I'm sensing some magic in the area," the half-demon sorceress, Raven, put in. "Does Wilson have any history of working with magic users?"

Robin frowned. "Not typically, but he'll work with anyone the job calls for. Keep your guard up, Titans."

One of the advantages of casting an illusion spell yourself was that you could sense the illusion in action. This meant that while she, Cardinal, and Snakeshifter were invisible, Good Witch could pinpoint their locations as though they weren't. Consequently, when she found the sniper, a man in body armor with a helmet that was bisected orange-and-black, she could tell that he was tracking Cardinal's movements somehow.

"Cardinal," she whispered into the earpiece radios they'd been gifted by Flash's support team. "Whoever he is, I think he can see you."

"No kidding," Cardinal said, and was only barely able to teleport out of harm's way with the power he'd inherited from Flapjack when the would-be assassin pulled the trigger. "You're the one casting the illusion spell, can you do anything about it?"

"Well, maybe, if I could figure out how he could see you in the first place," Good Witch said back.

"Infrared," said an unfamiliar voice. "He's tracking your friend using infrared."

Good Witch blinked. "Who are you and how did you get on this channel?"

"The question," the young male voice on the other end of the radio said, "is how did you get on this channel?"

"What the heck do you-- THIS IS A PRIVATE CHANNEL!" hissed Good Witch.

"Good Witch, whoever else that is, can this maybe wait?" Snakeshifter said. "Cardinal is getting shot at."

"I can take it."

"NO YOU CAN NOT," Snakeshifter, Good Witch, and the stranger all said.

"Ugh, hang on, I'm going to patch the rest of my team into this conversation."

"Wait hold on, you can't just patch other people in!" Luz objected. "I don't even know who you are!"

"His codename is Robin," another voice put in. "I'm Cyborg. Our other teammates are Beast Boy, Raven, and Starfire."

"Hello," said a cheerful female voice. "I am pleased to report that the person I saw was not a civilian after all but a police detective."

"Detective Montoya," Good Witch said. "Yes, I know."

"Ah," said Robin. "Montoya's one of the good ones. Stick with her, Starfire."

"Snakeshifter, do you have a good angle on him?" Cardinal said. "I mean, I can keep dodging these shots all night, but we're on a time limit here."

"I can get above him," Snakeshifter said, "but given the kind of hardware he's packing, I'm not sure that's good enough."

"It's not," Robin said, his tone familiar.

"Okay, baby Batman," Luz said. "Dial it down a notch."

"Oooh, should not have said that," Cyborg said.

"Listen, I know when someone's imitating a mentor figure," Good Witch said. "I used to do it myself when I was a teenager."

"I am not," Robin said, and dropped the argument when a gunshot narrowly missed him.

"Good news," Cardinal said. "That one wasn't aimed at me. Bad news: It was definitely aimed at someone."

"Me," Robin said. "Titans, Wilson is on the roof of the building Starfire's at. Close in and let's take him down!"

The team converged on the building, and Snakeshifter saw an open opportunity as the infamous mercenary assassin Slade Wilson took a moment to reevaluate targets. Assuming the shape of the most terrifying thing she could think of, she dropped out of the sky above him with the form, and, more importantly, mass, of Warden Wrath.

Wilson, though caught off-guard, still managed to get out from under the shapeshifting demon and, with a twisting over-the-shoulder throw, hurl her off the roof towards the street. Inspired by her display, Beast Boy stooped towards Wilson and quickly shifted from his hawk form to his human form, then from there into a rhinoceros, letting the momentum of his dive carry him into the mercenary.

Starfire let fly with a couple of starbolts, carefully gauged to minimize the damage to the building if she missed, and Robin used the distraction to slip in close and batter at the man's defenses with his batons. Wilson, himself a match for the Caped Crusader, managed to hold off all of these attacks. When Cyborg got close enough to hit him with a sonic blast, he found himself struggling with disorientation, giving Good Witch the opening she was waiting for.

She took a leap off of Stringbean in midair, letting the invisibility spell drop, and snagged the staff on her way up, quickly spinning a spell circle with her and then slipping back onto the staff with a minimal loss of altitude. Reaching out with one hand, she released the circle she'd spun, and a massive blast of purple-black energy slammed into Wilson with the force of a freight train, pinning him against the brick wall of the rooftop stairwell with irresistible telekinetic force.

The witches landed in front of the magically pinned, and also thoroughly stunned, mercenary, with the Titans coming up behind them. Robin stepped up to put some bat-cuffs onto him, and Luz pulled her own phone out of a secure pocket in her costume.

Bruce Wayne stared at the caller ID on his phone and let out a long-suffering sigh.

"Problem, sir?" Alfred asked.

Bruce shook his head, then answered the phone. "How did you get this number?"

"Come on," Luz Noceda answered. "You know better than to ask that."

"What do you want?"

"I was just curious about something."

"You know I'm having this call traced, right?"

"Uh-huh, and I cannot wait until you see what that trace says."

"Don't you have other priorities right now, Miss Noceda?"

"Eh. Threat's secured. Your buddy Gordon's enroute. Right now, my top priority is my curiosity."

Bruce, who had just received a signal from the Batcomputer that insisted with 99.86% certainty that Noceda's call originated from the Sea of Tranquility on the moon, sighed. "About what?"

"Whatever happened to 'No one works Gotham but me'?"

"That still stands."

"Really? Hang on." He could hear the sound of her hand covering up the handset, but he could still hear her shouting out. "Hey, any of you guys tell Batman you were working in Gotham tonight?"

Immediately afterwards, he heard the familiar voice of his own sidekick saying, "I don't need permission."

"Good Witch," Batman said, dropping the Bruce Wayne façade. "Let Robin and his team know to stay put. I'm on the way."

He tried not to feel a sense of satisfaction at hanging up on her the way she had done to him earlier.

Commissioner Gordon had come and gone with a team to take Wilson into custody. Renee had gone back downstairs to her apartment. Even Batman had come and gone, checking on the status of everyone involved in the fight and trying once again (and failing once again) to get Good Witch and her team to agree not to operate in Gotham when they were in town. Eventually, frustrated, he just bade both teams farewell and gave Robin a significant look before zip-lining back to the Batwing and heading for home.

Vee and Beast Boy hit it off pretty quickly, with her asking for suggestions for forms she could assume in the Human Realm, and offering Beast Boy some examples of Demon Realm wildlife to mimic. Some of the demonic shapes didn't feel right to him, but he was thrilled to add the slitherbeast to his repertoire.

Robin and Hunter found common ground as well, although even Robin found Hunter's training as a child soldier to be a little extreme.

Raven, on the other hand...

Raven found herself staring into the eyes of someone whom every instinct told her was a normal human, but seeing something... else. Something unfathomable. She found herself looking into pupils just a little bit deeper and darker than should be possible, and, for a moment, seeing the visage of a dead god.

"I..." Raven shook her head. "I was going to ask you what you did to Sam Scudder, but..." She shuddered. "I've an idea."

"Oh. That asshole," Luz said with a dismissive snort. "It's not so much what I did to him, it's what he opened himself up to."

"Care to elaborate?" Raven said, leaning against the wall where Luz's telekinetic blast had left cracks from the impact of Slade Wilson.

"So, a while back, when I was a teenager, I kind of died."

"It happens," Raven said noncommittally.

"Mm-hm," Luz agreed. "Anyway, between this life and the next is a place I just call The Place Between, where I met a being of unfathomable power called the Titan. I'm sure he had a name when he was alive, but the only things I had time to know him as were The Titan, and King's Dad. Oh. King's my little brother, by the way."

"So your little brother was the child of this dead god?"

"Yep," Luz said, shrugging. "And he was about to pass on completely and the last thing he did before he passed on was give me his power so that I could save the Boiling Isles from my enemy."

"No offense, but... why did he care?"

Luz grinned. "Well, partly because his son and I, and our adoptive mother, lived there. Partly because the people of the Boiling Isles were his people, because the Boiling Isles was his body. Mostly, though, I think just because he cared. In general. Like. Nobody deserves to be wiped out by a genocidal puritan with delusions of martyrdom."

Raven tilted her head. "That's... a lot," she said.

"Ohhhhh yeah," Luz said. "Anyway, it turns out Scudder was using the Place Between for his little mirror tricks, and while I'm a pretty good witch out here, pun absolutely intended, in there, time is kind of... not really a thing... so in there, I still have the powers of a Titan. Which is to say, the power of a living god. Or, you know, a Dead God."

Raven nodded. "Places like that, if you have that power, you are that."

"Yeah, when I'm in there, it's like... I'm me but I'm not me. I'm more." Luz shuddered. "I don't like it."

"You don't?" Raven said, curious.

"Well, I do, but I... don't like that I do."

"I understand that," Raven said. "None better." When Luz gave her an open-handed gesture, she took the invitation. "My... father... is a demon. Not like those from your Demon Realm. He is a powerful being perhaps comparable to one of your Titans, but... unquestionably evil. He created me as a weapon. A tool he could use to extend his influence to other realms."

"That... is awful," Luz said. "Want me to kick his ass? Because I will, I will absolutely go to whatever dimension he's hiding in and give him a taste of el poder de Stringbean en la cara!"

"I..." Raven shrugged. "I'm not sure that's the best idea."

"Of course not," Luz said with a grin. "It's one of mine."

Raven allowed herself, briefly, to smile at that. "Because I was created to usher in the rule of Trigon," she said, "the most destructive aspects of my power are on a hair trigger. One of the things that can set me off is powerful emotion, either my own or others'. I have to keep my emotions in check at all times."

"Oof," Luz said. "Yeah, I can't, uh. I'm not great at controlling my emotions, myself."

"I doubt that," Raven said. "After all, Scudder turned himself in. Alive. In one piece."

Luz pondered that for a moment, only to be interrupted by Detective Renee Montoya, who had arrived back on the rooftop with a stack of pizza boxes. "¡Oye! Superheroes! ¿Quienes quieren pizza?"

"Oh dang," Luz said. "I want pizza! Raven?"

Soon, the Teen Titans, the witches, and, as the evening rolled on, the rest of the Noceda family, got comfortable on the roof of the apartment building, sharing pizza and stories, while in the distance, Gotham continued to be Gotham, with all that implied.

Chapter Text

Camila Noceda was having a good evening. Her kids had come by to visit, which was always good, and, even better, with the exception of Vee, they and all their loved ones were in the Demon Realm. She knew there was no way she could stop her kids from being superheroes, but every minute in the Demon Realm was a minute they definitely weren't in danger from whatever looming supervillain threat kept them occupied.

It was ironic, really. A few years ago, she had wanted to keep her daughters in the Human Realm to keep them safe. Now, thanks to the efforts of all her kids, as well as their allies, the Demon Realm was one of the safest places she could think of. It had started off with one extraordinary person. The Superman of Metropolis. Her kids had gotten it into their heads to meet him, and when they'd flown up to Metropolis to do just that, their need to protect others had driven them into a conflict with some kind of cyborg supervillain calling himself Metallo.

The three of them had become heroes, and their loved ones soon joined in. At this point, the only members of the family who weren't superheroes were herself, Eda, and King. (Lilith and Raine, on one memorable family visit, had temporarily adopted the monickers of Lady Raven and Bard to foil a bank robbery they had gotten caught up in while running errands in downtown Gravesfield.)

And tonight, Camila and Eda were on a date. Not a night out on the town, however. A quiet night in, talking, smiling at each other. Over the past few years, they'd gotten very close over their coparenting of Luz, the Good Witch of the Boiling Isles and, more recently, of Gravesfield. Camila had gone a little overboard with the meal - she was used to cooking for at least seven anymore - but she and Eda were healthy eaters. (Eda liked to blame the Owl Beast, but Camila took her healthy appetite as a compliment to her cooking.)

They were lingering over their meal, which they had clearly filled up on some time ago, just spending time in each others' company, when the doorbell rang.

Camila had started to get up, but Eda beat her to it, gently placing a hand on her shoulder and insisting she relax. Stretching (and maybe showing off a bit when she did), Eda made her way to the door, ready to tell whoever it was to take a hike. When she opened the door to find Wonder Woman standing there, hand on one hip but still slightly tense, she frowned. "Well I was going to tell you this better be important to interrupt date night," the Owl Lady said, "but given who you are..."

The amazon warrior nodded briskly. "I was told this was the home of Good Witch?"

Eda grinned, her gold fang glinting in the light of the setting sun. "Close enough," she said. "She really doesn't live in the Human Realm anymore, but it's her home when she visits," she said. She blinked. "Wait, why did I say that?"

"I apologize," Wonder Woman said, indicating the loop of enchanted golden rope laid across the porch, that Eda was standing on. "It's an emergency, and I didn't have time to do the whole secret identity tango with whoever answered the door."

Eda squatted down to examine the Golden Lasso of Truth, and let out a low whistle. "Wow," she said. "That is some really fine enchantment work."

"It ought to be," Wonder Woman said, wrapping the lasso back up and hooking it to her belt. "The enchantment was done by Hestia, using Her own Hearthfire."

"I don't know who that is," Eda admitted, "but if she's still alive, pass her my compliments. Anyway, the kids are back in the Demon Realm right now, but I can pass along a message."

"Please do," Wonder Woman said. "We need to talk to them, immediately."

"Life or death?"

"Much, much more urgently than that," the Themysciran said, and settled herself against the porch railing to wait.

Eda shrugged. At times like these, she was grateful that her Penstagram scroll had its own enchantments, so that she could simply pluck it from the ether despite her magical disability. She took a picture of Wonder Woman and sent a message directly to Luz's private account.

From inside the house, Camila called out. "¿Hermosa, quien es?"

Eda grinned and turned her head to reply. "Wonder Woman," she said. "She's here for the kids."

Camila gasped. "Eda, you terrible woman, invite her in!"

"But it's date night," the Owl Lady complained. "The kids will be here any minute-"

"And she can wait in the living room," Camila said soothingly. She turned to the world-famous superheroine and found herself saying, "Come in, please! We were having mofongo if you want some."

Wonder Woman smiled broadly. "If it isn't an imposition," she said. "I haven't had mofongo in decades."

Luz sent the pic of Wonder Woman to everyone in the private Team Owl chat as soon as she saw it, with the message "she says it's urgent." The group converged on the Owl House in minutes, ready to step through the portal door as a team. Anyone watching in Gravesfield would have witnessed the bizarre spectacle of a glowing portal opening in place of the front door of a small cottage in the woods, followed by all but one of the town's nationally-famous superheroes stepping through the portal.

Abomination, the superheroine who fought using constructs of magical slime, mounted her staff and flew at incredible speeds through the forest to a house just outside the woods, where she stopped and spent a moment ensuring she looked presentable. The others, laughing, followed behind at safer travel speeds.

Inside the home, Wonder Woman, Eda, and Camila were chatting amiably over mofongo and apple blood imported from Eda's supplier in the Boiling Isles, getting along remarkably well. When the doorbell rang, Camila rolled her eyes. "Ay, I keep telling them they don't have to do that," she said, easing out of her seat and moving to let the heroine into her home.

"Hola, Camila," the lavender-haired heroine said, offering a hug.

"Hola, querida," Camila said. "Come in, come in. We're having mofongo. Is everyone else behind you?"

"Everyone except Vee and Masha," Amity said, removing her helmet and hanging it on a rack by the door. "They're on the way over from their place in Gravesfield." She then looked over to the dining room, where Eda was sitting, chatting with...

Oh. My. TITAN.

It really was Wonder Woman. Amity could feel a fangirl squeal of epic proportions building up in her chest, just aching for release. The rest of the world faded, so that all she could hear was her own breathing and heartbeat. She was vaguely aware of the door opening again behind her, of someone coming closer. The loving arms of her batata wrapping her into a hug from behind shook her from the near-trance she had put herself in just thinking of introducing herself.

"I know, right?" Luz said with a grin. "Come on, I'll introduce you!"

"You know Wonder Woman and you didn't tell me?" Amity said in a mixture of awe and mild betrayal.

"Claro que no," admitted Luz, "but I'm not gonna let that stop me." She took her wife by the hand and dragged her into the dining room, letting Amity do the blushing for them both.

Eventually, once the fangirling was out of the way, the team sat down around the dining room table with Camila, Eda, and Wonder Woman, and the amazon explained the threat.

"A few hours ago," she said, "a traveling circus was attacked just outside of Gotham City. The attackers seemed to be targeting specifically a performer in the big top, one Scott Free, an escape artist going under the name Mister Miracle."

"An escape artist named Scott Free?" Luz said with a grin.

"Disappointed he isn't a defense lawyer?" asked the amazon with a wry grin.

"Kinda, yeah," the human witch admitted.

While Wonder Woman continued, Masha quickly paired their phone with the new TV provided by Wayne Enterprises and pulled up information regarding the escape artist and the attack from various social media and news platforms.

"In any case, Mr. Free was able to keep the attention of the attackers long enough for the crowd to be evacuated, managing to disable or outright destroy three of the attackers before Batman arrived on the scene. Between himself and the Bat, the attackers were subdued in minutes, but before any could be interrogated, their leader gave a short message and activated some kind of neural self-destruct."

"What was the message?" Hunter asked, frowning.

"It was simply this: You have thirty hours to prepare.

"After that, Mister Miracle advised Batman to gather every champion, defender, and hero he could muster, the more and more powerful, the better." Wonder Woman gestured at the assembled witches, demon, and humans. "Batman contacted who he could, but he said in terms of networking with other heroes, he defers to you."

"So you want us," Luz said with a barely controlled grin, "to gather every single hero we know?"

"Basically, yes. Batman has set up a headquarters in a repurposed hangar a few miles from the field the circus was in." She slipped a finger in between her bracer and wrist, and pulled out a thumb drive with a bat-symbol-shaped case.

"Wow," Masha said, slipping the thumb drive into an adapter sewn into her courier bag and forwarding the information on it to Team Owl's devices. "Someone needs to tell him that things can be other shapes than that."

"You're just jealous you can't make a custom thumb drive like that," Willow said.

Unimpressed, Masha reached into their bag and pulled out a thumb drive shaped like Vee. "I do have a 3D printer, remember?"

After contacting everyone they knew, Team Owl made their way towards Gotham. Those who could used a mixture of flying and short-range teleportation to cross the distance in as short a time as possible. Masha, on the other hand, chose travel by motorcycle, which had a lot of their equipment built into it.

It took a little over an hour for almost everyone to arrive, with the exception of Eda, who couldn't in good conscience sit out a threat to her adoptive daughter's home realm, and Camila, who was Eda's ride and was bringing the rest of the leftovers.

The temporary headquarters was impressive. From above it just looked like a small-aircraft hangar for a private airstrip. As the witches flew down to the front of the building, they noticed it had been well-secured. Various inobtrusive scanners whirred to life around the building as they approached. Inside, computers connected to those sensors, and also linked with the network of supercomputers collectively referred to as the Batcomputer, verified the identities of everyone in the group, and the hangar doors opened automatically to admit them.

"Okay," Masha said as the team filed in through the entrance. "This, I'm impressed by."

From further in the building, a wry, gravelly voice spoke. "I'm glad it meets your approval. I take it you're the one who gave Good Witch my phone number?"

Masha grinned. "To be fair," they said, "I gave her your secret identity's phone number. She didn't tell me it was yours."

Batman smiled slightly. "I appreciate that. Now, for security reasons, we're operating on a codename basis in here for the moment. What shall we call you?"

Masha grinned. "Originally, I was thinking Oracle, but then I was like, may as well call me Cassandra because none of these dipshits listen to me."

At this, Batman actually laughed. "Cassandra it is."

"Oye," Good Witch said. "My moms are on the way. Mom, you can call Owl Lady, but Mamá isn't... involved."

"You're bringing a civilian into this?"

Wonder Woman came into the entrance area from the room Batman had come from. "Oh, is Camila coming? Please tell me she's bringing more of that mofongo she made."

"Are you kidding? She's gotten into the habit of making way too much food since we moved out, so I'm sure she is."

"Fine," Batman said, clearly outvoted. "Come on back to the meeting room and we'll get started."

In the next room was one of the most fantastic, exciting things Luz had ever seen, and she had once defeated a giant monster that used to be a seventeenth century witch hunter using the power gifted directly to her by a dead god. The walls of the room were massive high-definition computer displays, showing information about Mister Miracle and the alien cyborgs he and Batman had fought. In the center of the room was a large, round table with several chairs evenly spaced around it. Each chair had, above the headrest, a symbol on it. She recognized the stylized S that was the crest of the House of El, the logo used by Superman, but on two different chairs. One was occupied by Superman, but the one to his left was also occupied, this one by a younger blonde woman who was chatting with Superman with an easy familiarity.

Next was the lightning bolt logo of the Flash, whom Luz had briefly met after Gus's enemy Sam Scudder had showed up in Gravesfield looking for the illusionist. He was currently fidgeting with some kind of multidimensional puzzle-cube thing, like a Rubik's Cube but in five dimensions. If it hadn't been for her experience with crossing dimensional and temporal boundaries, Luz knew it would give her a migraine even to look at. As it was, however, she figured he was about thirty seconds from solving it at the rate he was going.

Next was an unfamiliar person dressed like Robin Hood, sitting in a seat with an arrowhead logo on it. He grinned and waved cheerily to her, then turned to his right, where THE COOLEST LOOKING WOMAN IN THE WORLD was. She was dressed in a black leather jacket, a black sleeveless top, fishnets, gloves, boots, and a domino mask. Luz felt a mixture of envy and awe at the woman's ability to pull of that look. The logo on her chair was a bird. Next after her was a seat with a stylized representation of Stringbean, followed by a stylized cat head reminiscent of Amity's Abomination helmet, a cartoony representation of Vee's natural basilisk form, Gus's mirror talisman, an image of of Waffle, crossed vines representing Willow, the familiar stylized bat representing Batman, a dramatic bird logo, a different dramatic bird logo, a circle that was half circuit, half stylized face, a star... there were more, both familiar and not, and a number of chairs with no logo at all. Grinning, Luz walked up to one of those. She held out her hand and Stringbean slithered down her arm and up into position as her staff. She held the staff out and engraved an image of Hooty onto one of the blank chairs.

"Who's that for?" growled Batman.

"The Owl Lady," Luz said. "My mentor and formerly the most powerful witch in the Boiling Isles. She's on her way."

"You did say she was on the way. Your mother, right?"

"Yeeeup." Luz popped her P. "Well, my mom, anyway. I see you've found some other heroes yourself."

"Indeed," Batman said, nodding to the Robin Hood looking fellow. "Green Arrow there operates out of Star City, as does his partner, Black Canary." He nodded at the empty seats between his own and them. "Those seats are for Nightwing and his Titans."

"Oh, he did that codename change he was talking about?"

Batman smiled with the pride of a parent seeing their child grow into their own self. "Yeah, he was just waiting for the new costume to be assembled, it turns out."

The Titans walked into the room and Luz grinned. "Well," she said, "I think that's almost everyone. Mom and Mamá are in the station wagon so they're probably going to be a bit. Shall we get started or wait?"

Batman gestured at a countdown timer displayed on the screen. It read "25:56:38" and was counting down from there.

"That's... pretty exact."

"The countdown is translated from a device on the alien's belt. It took an hour to be certain of the translation."

"It's called a Mother Box," said a new voice from across the room. Luz looked over and saw the red-and-yellow costumed Mister Miracle, exactly as he had looked in the news footage earlier. "And that is a countdown to the destruction of Earth."

Chapter Text

25:55:57

"That is a countdown to the destruction of the Earth," Scott Free - Mister Miracle - had said.

Hunter - Cardinal - whistled. "Been a while since we had an apocalypse on our hands, huh, guys?"

Mister Miracle's eyes widened. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Apocalypse," Wonder Woman said. "From the Greek apokaluptein, meaning 'to uncover.' Thanks to the biblical Book of Revelations, the word has become associated with end-of-world scenarios."

"That can't be coincidence," he replied. "The invading army will be coming from a world called Apokolips. Their leader, Darkseid, set out to conquer the universe, oh, millenia ago, but thanks to a treaty with New Genesis, he's been unable to act. I don't know why he's breaking the treaty now. New Genesis will certainly retaliate."

"Well, that's good, right?" Good Witch asked.

"That depends on your perspective," Free replied. "What's your opinion on martyrdom?"

"Rather not do it again."

Flash stared at Good Witch for a moment, then looked over at Mister Miracle. "What do you mean, martyrdom?"

"New Genesis will definitely retaliate once Apokolips breaks the treaty. By the time they're aware the treaty has been broken, Earth will be either subjugated or barren and lifeless."

"Well, that's a cheery sentence to walk in on," a sarcastic voice called out from the entrance. All eyes turned to the entrance where Camila Noceda stood next to the Owl Lady in her harpy form, tall, athletic, surprisingly foxy for her age, and grinning. "Heya, kiddos."

"Hey, Owl Lady!" Good Witch called out. "You're just in time for the end of the world!"

"Again," Good Witch said with a smirk. "So, what kind of end of the world are we talking about this time?"

"Aliens," Mirror Master said excitedly.

"Okay, Mister Miracle," Batman said, redirecting the conversation back to their source of information. "What are we looking for?"

"Darkseid has a number of lieutenants, each with their own style. He'll use them to get Earth ready for invasion. These lieutenants and the parademons will all have Mother Boxes, all synchronized with the same countdown as the one we retrieved. When the countdown reaches zero, the invading force will arrive, targeting the areas of greatest potential resistance."

A map of the world appeared on the screen, with several targets indicated. "Most of the targets appear to be on this continent," Mister Miracle said, gesturing at North America, "but there are other hotspots in other parts of the world as well."

Batman stood up and walked up to the display. "Star City," he said, indicating the city. "Gotham. Metropolis. Washington, DC. Central City. Gravesfield. There's no land mass in this area in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean," he said. "Nor at this point in the Mediterranean."

"Themyscira," Wonder Woman said in a whisper, then, louder, "That's not true. There is an island there that isn't on any map. It should be impossible to find for any but the gods."

"Ha," Luz said. "What if the other one is Atlantis or something? That would be wild."

"That's a possibility I hadn't considered," Batman said.

Cardinal raised a finger. "Wait," he said. "Tactically, wouldn't it make more sense to exploit areas with less resistance than to attack the strongest points?"

"It's a show of force," Nightwing said, the first time he'd spoken since the meeting proper started. "This Darkseid wants to crush any resistance quickly and decisively. If he can take out the most powerful beings on the planet," he gestured to the people in the room, "then who else would stand up to him?"

"Someone would," Superman put in.

"Don't be so sure," Mister Miracle said. "I grew up on Apokolips. I've seen the level of indoctrination Darkseid subjects his people to. The degree to which their individuality is crushed. People don't resist after that."

"You did," Good Witch commented. "Someone always does, in the end. Nonconformists, malcontents..."

"Weirdos," Cassandra said with a grin and an affectionate squeeze to Snakeshifter's shoulders.

"Weirdos," Owl Lady and Good Witch said, like an oath.

Batman shook his head at the team dynamic between the witches. "Whatever you call them, pockets of resistance will always crop up. It's more likely you never heard of them because of information suppression and because a smart resistance will strive to keep a low profile."

"Yeah, we're not going to be doing that," Mirror Master said.

"Not at all," Batman acknowledged with a grin. "We're going to have to be as bold and visible as possible. A symbol." He nodded to Superman, then looked back at the hotspots on the screen. "But first, we need intelligence. Mister Miracle, what can you tell us about Darkseid's lieutenants?"

"Not much," Miracle admitted. "My wife would be the one to ask, but she's off looking into that right now. She should be here soon, however."

"Here," Batman said, head snapping around to glare at the escape artist. "What do you mean, here?"

"She'll be tracking my Mother Box to this location using one that's paired with it. It's something we arranged before we left Apokolips, so we can always find each other."

"Awww," Abomination said. "That's sweet!"

"Sweet or not," Batman said, "when she gets here, the hangar's defenses will engage."

Naturally, it was at that moment that the hangar went on lockdown, massive barriers engaging over every possible entrance. Red lights flashed in every room, and a klaxon went off, causing Beast Boy and Snakeshifter to clamp their hands over their ears.

Renee Montoya stared at the box. She knew its contents by heart: two pistols, eight boxes of custom ammunition, one featureless mask that matched her flesh tone, one voice modulator, one pair of gloves, one armored trenchcoat with matching fedora, and one letter.

She stared and she thought about the way she had been shut down at the GCPD. They'd cut her off from everyone before they put her on probation using fabricated evidence. It was like the bad old days, before Jim Gordon. It reminded her of everything her prima had said about cops.

She opened the box and laid its contents neatly out on her bed. Picking up the mask, she sat back down, holding it in her hand, weighing it. On the one hand, it weighed barely a few ounces. On the other hand, its weight was immeasurable.

"Detective Montoya," growled the familiar, but unexpected, voice of the Batman. She spun around, reflexively reaching for a sidearm that she had been forced to turn in alongside her badge.

"Not anymore," she grumbled. "Not as of last week. What do you want, Batman?"

"Information," the Bat growled. "But first, let your cousin in."

Renee sighed and started towards the entrance to her apartment, getting there just as Luz knocked.

"Is there a reason you broke into my apartment?" Renee snapped at Batman.

"Hey," Luz said. "I knocked."

"I know you did, prima," Renee said. "Thank you for that."

"Do you want your neighbors to see the Batman coming in your front door?"

"Fair enough," Renee acknowledged.

"You could take off the costume," Luz pointed out.

"Think about that," Batman said. "Would he attract more or less attention in this neighborhood than the Batman?"

"Aaaand you have another point."

"¿Que quieren?" Renee said, cutting to the chase.

"To save the world," Luz said. "Naturally."

"Oh, naturally." Renee rolled her eyes. "What does this have to do with me?"

"Intergang," Batman said, and now he had her attention.

24:07:17

The team consisted of Batman, Nightwing, Good Witch, Abomination, and, at her insistence, Renee Montoya, with the costume and equipment bequeathed to her by the Question. The plan was Batman's. Good Witch, however, insisted on one change - the signal they would use to coordinate their entrances.

"I like it," Nightwing said with a grin.

"No," Batman said firmly.

"Hey," Good Witch replied. "If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution."

"Emma Goldman," Batman acknowledged the anarchist origins of the quote. "I understand the sentiment, though I'm not sure it applies here."

"Come on, Bats," Question said, her voice distorted. "Live a little."

Good Witch made shushing gestures at the others. "Stringbean's in position," she said, her eyes taking on a faint purple glow. "Hey, any of you ever heard of Intergang taking hostages?"

"What do you mean?"

 "They've got someone locked in one of these offices."

"That's definitely not their usual M.O." Batman pulled up the building schematics on a small handheld device. "Where are they?"

Luz indicated the office in question. "Right there," she said. The office was towards the middle of the building.

"Abomination," Batman said, "you'll be closest. Make extracting them a priority."

"Got it."

"Good. Everyone in position. We've got twenty-four hours to save the world."

Good Witch grinned, holding up her phone.

"Okay, fine, we can use your entrance cue," Batman said, rolling his eyes at the childish superheroine.

Grace paced back and forth, grimacing in frustration. It had been twenty minutes since these Intergang members had locked her in this ugly, disused office. She jiggled the handle again. This sort of thing was the reason she hated Gotham city. A citizen could barely go a week without being kidnapped by a gang, or poisoned by the Joker, or subjected to cruel games by the Riddler... She should've gone to Metropolis with her brother.

She sat down on the slightly warped metal folding chair in the dingy office and tapped her feet impatiently. Within moments, she realized she was tapping them to the beat of a song that was growing in volume, seeming to come from every surface in the building.

She blinked. "Is...  is that Kesha?"

The members of Intergang interrupted their work, having also noticed the strange music.

"I feel your heart beat
To the beat of the drum"

Suddenly, the room exploded into chaos. A monster made of some sort of purple goo erupted from the floor beneath the loading docks. The side doors were blown in with shaped charges. Some kind of witch on a staff blasted her way in the front door, singing along with the song, "Oh what a shame that I came here with someone!" If anyone noticed the single word changed in the lyrics, their objections came in the form of gunfire, but it seemed less likely that was the motivation for the gang members shooting at her.

At that point, the Batman smashed his way in through the skylight, and the fight was on.

"Yow!" Good Witch said, corkscrewing out of the way of some kind of energy blast. "Are those lasers?!"

"Intergang specialize in high tech weaponry," Batman said, quickly taking down a trio of gang members before hurling a batarang into the side of a large energy rifle of some sort, causing the weapon to short out and misfire. "Possibly alien weaponry."

Good Witch slammed the butt of Stringbean's staff form against the ground, sending out a telekinetic pulse that hit every gang member in the room, knocking several off their feet. Spinning bean around in a complex pattern, she conjured a series of spell circles with the staff, then pirouetted, letting Stringbean intersect with each of the circles, which sent binding spells towards several of the gang members.

Nightwing slipped out of the back office he had started in, Cassandra's thumb drive having copied a staggering amount of data in a ridiculously short amount of time. Slipping the drive into his utility belt, he headed towards the office Good Witch had indicated.

Abomination was there, as planned. The hostage was backed against a wall, and Abomination was clearly becoming frustrated trying to calm her down.

Nightwing looked the two of them over. Abomination was clearly better suited to fighting than dealing with bystanders, so he stepped up beside her, hands out in a placating gesture, and took over. 

"Hey," he said. "I'm Nightwing, this is Abomination. We're here with a few others to get this Intergang situation under control and to get you out of here safely. What's your name?"

"Grace," the woman said hesitantly. "My name is Grace. What do you mean 'safely'? According to these... these Intergang people, in a day there's gonna be noplace safe."

Grace absolutely did not fit in with Intergang, or, indeed, the sort of people who spent their time in Gotham's warehouse district, where the gang had set up shop. She looked like she had stepped out of a 90s movie representation of LA, a punk aesthetic, but with designer clothes. Her close-cropped red hair and striking face were reminiscent of Annie Lennox. Her crop-top white T-shirt, midnight blue skirt, and leather jacket all clearly designer.

"We have a safe house," Abomination offered. "Far from here, and if need be, there is a quick escape from there as well."

Grace relaxed, smiling slightly. "Okay," she said. "Okay, take me to this safe house."

Chapter Text

17:48:23

"Whatcha lookin' at, Hun?" Willow Park, wearing her Mulcher costume, coaxed her palisman, Clover, to fly alongside Waffles and Hunter.

"Luz and Vee are trending on social media."

"Is it about how adorable all you Nocedas are? Because that needs to go viral."

Superman and Supergirl flew alongside the two, matching pace with them despite their insistence the two kryptonians could go ahead without them. Clark grinned at the witch and grimwalker pair, while Kara rolled her eyes.

"Unfortunately, no," Cardinal said. "Nothing quite so nice." He handed his phone over to Willow, who glanced at it. After a moment, there was a creaking sound, the plant witch squeezing the phone case so hard Hunter was worried he'd have to replace the phone itself.

"Dang," Supergirl said. "I don't think I've ever seen you that mad, Mulcher."

Willow turned the phone screen around so that the two Superpeople could see it, then started scrolling, knowing their powers would let them read everything at a glance even at a distance.

"Hashtag burn all witches?" Kara said, her expression darkening.

"The only Good Witch is a..." Clark grimaced.

"Send demons back to hell?!" Kara's eyes began to glow.

"Hey, please don't melt my phone, those aren't cheap," Hunter said, seeing the accumulation of power in his friend's eyes.

"Sorry, sorry. What brought all this on?"

"I don't know," Hunter said. "Hang on, I'll call Masha."

Willow raised a finger, already on her own phone. "What the heck is astroturf? Okay. Yeah, could you? Thanks, Mash, you're a peach, I don't care what your wife says about you."

Hunter hissed at her. "Vee and Luz" he whispered.

"Oh!" Willow said. "Don't tell your wife and her sister, huh? They've got enough crap to deal with. Okay, you got it. Love ya too, sib."

"There is definitely an advantage in all of you being related to each other," Kara said with a grin.

"Well, everyone but Gus," Hunter put in.

"I keep telling Camila to adopt him, too," Willow offered.

Superman, Supergirl, Mulcher, and Cardinal arrived in front of the Metropolis City Hall, where the protest and counter-protest were on the verge of violence. It had all started with a Metropolis PD officer shooting an unarmed metahuman. The victim survived the shooting thanks to their metahuman powers keeping them alive long enough for them to receive medical attention.

Luz had been following the case online since it happened. "They're afrolatine, like me," She had said. "Queer, like all of us. No matter how you slice it, it's yet another cop shooting yet another unarmed minority, and you just watch what happens when that pig walks."

"Oh, come on, batata," Amity had replied. "This isn't the Emperor's Coven we're talking about. It's police."

"You just watch," Luz said, growling at the newscasters.

Luz had, unfortunately, been correct. The cop had been suspended with pay pending an internal investigation, which had taken all of three days before the finding that the use of force had been justified.

That had been two hours ago.

Now, here on the streets of Metropolis, multiple communities had come together to protest the finding and demand something be done about the way law enforcement treated minoritized communities in Metropolis and elsewhere. The protest was already in progress, but once the ruling had been announced, it had begun growing, and the small counter-protest across the street also started building in size.

Superman was worried it would only take a spark to cause an inferno that would consume the thousands of people gathered in front of City Hall and for blocks beyond.

"Cousin," Supergirl said as they flew down towards the crowds, "have you ever seen anything like this?"

"A few times," Superman said, grimly. "It's like... Have you ever seen dust in a grain silo?"

The others shook their head. "Seems harmless. Just. Little particles of wheat chaff floating in the air, until, if the silo is close enough to empty and the air is dry, you get this saturation of grain particles."

Mulcher looked horrified at what he was describing. Cardinal and Supergirl looked confused.

"Okay, farm boy," Supergirl said. "What does any of that have to do with this nightmare."

"That kind of grain chaff is flammable," Mulcher said. "Remember when we had that accident at Hexside when a firebee got into the silo my Senior year?"

Cardinal went pale. "Oh."

"Yeah. That's how we found out how resiliant I am when I was a teenager," Superman said.

"Yikes," Mulcher said.

"Let's talk about this so-called Good Witch," a man yelled out over the airwaves. An image of Good Witch was projected behind him. "Oh, sure, she seems helpful, right? Helping cats across the street, getting little old ladies out of trees, the usual."

The image behind her now shows her side by side with Snakeshifter, a strange, horrifying demonic humanoid with yellow skin, a red tunic, and a blue cape, and a man with a trenchcoat hurling fireballs at something or someone off screen.

"But as our ancestors knew, witches associate with demons."

"Look at this creature." the man said, gesturing at Vee's basilisk form. "It calls itself 'Snakeshifter' but what is it really? What does it want? Look at those teeth. The claws. That is a predator, and its prey is people. You're watching Godfrey. We'll be right back."

"Okay," Cardinal said. "What's the game plan? Because let me tell you, I do not like the look of these crowds."

Superman nodded. "Okay, well, Kara and I will head down and try to calm them down. You two stay back for now. Something about this really doesn't sit right with me." So saying, he glided over to the crowd and interposed himself between the two groups, hands out placatingly.

Supergirl, following his lead, landed beside him and held her hands up, hoping to get the crowd's attention.

Willow and Hunter, meanwhile, scanned the crowd and began to notice something. Some people in the crowd were pointing at the two of them, and ignoring the kryptonians, and it didn't matter which group they were with - the looks they gave the two witches were hostile.

"And the name. Snake-shifter. It's telling you right out that it's not human and it's a shapeshifter. You can't trust it. You cannot. Today, I have with me an expert with experience with these demonic - yes, I said demonic - creatures. Mister Hopkins, welcome to Godfrey."

"Thank you," the middle-aged man opposite the show's host said. He looked the part of a historian. Tweed jacket with elbow patches. Glasses. Clean-cut brown hair. "Yeah, I've dealt with that monster before," he said. "It was masquerading as a little girl at the time."

"Disgusting," G. Gordon Godfrey said. "These creatures moving among our children."

"I had video evidence of it, and even managed to capture the creature, but a biologist working for a secret government agency assaulted me, illegally imprisoned me, and stole my specimen."

"Of course," Godfrey said, and glanced over at his producer, indicating with a significant look that their guest was treading close to undermining his credibility. "Government corruption by these witches, demons, and so-called 'heroes' is our next topic, but for right now, we have to go to commercial. You're watching Godfrey. We'll be right back."

17:30:12

While Batman, Abomination, and the Question returned to the hangar, Cassandra continued their work on the alien computer in the Intergang warehouse. Nightwing kept watch on the building - and also assisted the talented hacker - with the rest of the Titans patrolling around the area.

"Aaaagh," Cassandra said after a moment. "This is just... it's... I thought I could hack pretty much any system on earth. But this... it's like it was designed by aliens."

"I mean," Nightwing offered with a wry grin, "it probably was?"

"Oh yeah." Cassandra smirked. "So when it comes to terran computers I am still undefeated." They pulled out their phone and started scrolling through contacts.

"Undefeated," Nightwing scoffed, thinking about the Bat-Computer.

"Undefeated," Cassandra said, also thinking about the Bat-Computer, then turned their attention to their phone. "Hey, Beegee, are you busy?"

There was a pause.

"Okay, yeah, sorry to bug you but I kinda need your help with something major."

Another pause while whoever BG was replied again.

"Wait, are you fighting?" Pause. "Wii Sports. Right. Does Wii Sports always swear in Russian?" Another pause. "Those were gunshots. Yes they were. Yes. They were." Cassandra made their way over to their motorcycle, parked a few feet away inside the warehouse, where they pulled out yet another tablet. "Okay, there you are," they said after a moment. "I'm pulling up the security cameras in the area. Too late, I already have. Oh. Hehehehehehehe oh, Beegee, your pops is gonna murder you if he finds out, but not before those mobsters. Yikes. That is... that is a lot of reinforcements. What did you do, Beej?"

Nightwing moved closer to Cassandra, who angled the tablet so he could see both the street map and the security camera feed. A young woman in a clearly homemade - but well-made - dark purple variation of the Batman costume, with long red hair, was holding her own against a steadily increasing amount of large, threatening men he recognized as members of the gang run by a man known simply as The Russian. He nodded briskly, then ziplined up to the broken window in the roof to gather the other Titans and provide support.

"Yeah, try to hold on a bit longer, Beegee," Cassandra said. "You've got friends incoming."

"Look at this," sneered G. Gordon Godfrey. "Look at it. Good Witch. Abomination. Cardinal. Snakeshifter. Mulcher. Mirror Master. This team, who call themselves the Hex Squad - THE HEX SQUAD - have been seen, individually and as a group, associating with virtually every so-called superhero in the good old US of A. And what do we have for heroes? The Flash, a man naming himself after a sex crime! Wonder Woman? Well I wonder where this woman comes from! The Titans. Look at this degeneracy!" An image of Starfire appeared on the screen. "Aliens and what's this?" Starfire was replaced with Beast Boy and Raven. "More shapeshifters? More dark magic?" Cyborg. "Killer robots. That's who we're supposed to trust to defend us?"

Godfrey turned to face a different camera, and the feed switched to match.

"I told you earlier that we would be talking about government corruption. Well, let's talk about it, shall we? From local police here in Metropolis working hand-in-hand with the dangerous alien invader who calls himself 'Superman' to members of the military working side-by-side with Wonder Woman, a woman who openly claims to be from an island that, and I quote, 'no man has ever seen.' These aliens, demons, and witches have completely subverted governments and businesses - we all know that Superman and Supergirl both seem to have a vendetta against Lex Luthor, a man whose only crime is being a technological innovator whose businesses serve to better all of mankind. But they're not the only ones."

Once again, a picture of Good Witch and Abomination, this time at a protest, holding up a sign saying "WE PROTECT US." "Here's so-called 'Good Witch' and the appropriately named Abomination at a terrorist rally in Connecticut. These self-confessed witches think they're above the law, and so do their superhero and alien friends."

17:23:19

Someone threw a brick at Mulcher. That's when things erupted. The brick fell short of the airborne plant witch. She and Cardinal, relying on years of flyer derby reflexes and teamwork, sprang to action. Cardinal used the magic he inherited from his namesake to flash into the path of the brick and catch it before its arc carried it into the crowd, while Mulcher flew down to cover his back.

A bottle flew their way, and another. It wasn't long before the things being thrown started getting past them and hitting protestors, who then started throwing objects back. Glass bottles. Bricks. Cans. Whatever was close to hand. Superman and Supergirl gave up trying to talk the crowd down and started focusing on preventing injuries, catching or vaporizing objects in midair, while Mulcher and Cardinal did their best to keep up as well.

The situation had gone from barely manageable to a disaster, and the presence of so many civilians was keeping the kryptonians from doing more than keeping up.

The Motherboxes were disguised as typical high-end cellular phones. They had cover to maintain, after all.

"Brother."

"Sister! Now, this is a pleasant surprise. I hadn't expected to hear from you until zero hour."

"An unfortunate aspect of my work is that the timing is highly dependent on others, brother."

"Am I to take it you have infiltrated their ranks?"

"Even better. I have the target in custody now. I am preparing to take her to Apokolips to face judgement."

"This may affect the timetable, sister."

"It can't be helped, brother. I see from the news that your work is also proceeding at a faster than anticipated pace."

"These people are cattle, sister. They beg for control."

"Indeed." The sister looked at her motherbox, which had a flashing indicator that her transport was ready. "It appears I am to depart now. Farewell, brother."

So saying, Amazing Grace strolled over to where she had Luz Noceda bound around the torso and legs, easily lifted the latina witch over one shoulder and turned to face the clearing in the Gravesfield, Connecticut forest she had given as coordinates. The sound of a Boom Tube opening was muffled by the forest between them and the town of Gravesfield. She strolled into the dimensional rift, smiling, heedless of the small purple stowaway that had wrapped herself around her bonded witch's upper arm.

Chapter Text

12:17:28

Camila Noceda sat stiffly in midair. She tried to remind herself that she was not, in fact, in midair unsupported. She reached out and felt the seat, the canopy, the inside of the cockpit. But her eyes told her otherwise. "Why is it invisible?" she asked the pilot.

"I never asked," the amazon said. "When Hephaestus grants you a boon, you don't go asking probing questions like 'why is it invisible,' you just say 'thank you' and take your leave before his wife gets jealous."

Camila had to think back to her university days to remember what she could about the Greek pantheon. "Wait... didn't Aphrodite cheat on him, like, constantly?"

"That's true," Wonder Woman acknowledged, "but even though she resented being made to marry him, she still would get jealous. It's best not to anger the gods if one can help it."

"I suppose," Camila said. Even with the incredible speeds Wonder Woman's invisible jet could achieve, it was still taking time to get to the island of Themyscira, and she was becoming increasingly nervous as time wore on. She started tapping her fingers on the invisible armrest of the invisible chair she was seated in. The invisibility of the jet was not helping with her nerves. "Why did you want me to come again?"

Wonder Woman, one of the most powerful beings on the face of the Earth, had the temerity to look embarrassed at the question. "I am hoping your unique perspective will help with negotiations with the Queen of the Amazons."

Eda scoffed, surprising Camila, who'd thought she was asleep. "Unique perspective, huh? What perspective is that?"

Wonder Woman looked even more embarrassed. "As the mother of a heroine... who ran away from home... to become a champion in another world..."

Camila's eyes narrowed. "Lo entiendo," she said and Wonder Woman flinched at the tone.

"Mom voice truly is universal," she muttered under her breath, and Eda laughed, one short, loud bark of a laugh.

Wonder Woman visibly steeled herself as she led the other two women ashore after landing on the island of Themyscira. "Stay close," she said. "I do not know what sort of welcome awaits us." As she led the two women deeper inland on the paradisiacal island, she sought out a path of marble stepping stones. The island hadn't changed much from when she left it, and she felt a combination of homesickness, nostalgia, and dread, which caused her stride to falter.

Seeing her trepidation, Camila moved closer to the superheroine and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. "She will be glad to see you," she said.

"I wish I had your confidence, Mrs. Noceda," Wonder Woman said, before taking a deep breath and resuming the walk to the palace. Now, they were getting into more inhabited parts of the island. Women working, women talking. Women living their lives. Soon they began to take notice of the wayward Amazon princess and her two companions. Whispers began to arise. The name Diana made its way through the island of Themyscira like a wildfire, spreading organically from one to the next.

The rumor reached Queen Hippolyta a full minute before the trio of women arrived at the palace.

Nobody approached the three of them, though everyone stared. At the doors to the palace, two amazon guards nodded briskly to the princess and opened the doors for her and her guests.

It must be stated that Hippolyta had not been adequately prepared for what entered her palace. She had been told her errant daughter, Princess Diana of Themyscira, had returned, and that was true.

She had been told that there were two other women, strangers to the island, accompanying her, and this was true.

She had not been prepared for the appearance of these other two women. Hippolyta recognized in the shorter, brown-skinned woman the air of a mother, a powerful core surrounded by softness. The other, older-looking but active, was the perfect vision of the crone, aged and wise, and more than a little sly. Hippolyta was not one to ignore symbols like an appearance of the Maiden, Mother, and Crone in her throne room, even if the maiden was her own daughter.

"Mother," Diana said, lowering herself to one knee and keeping her eyes trained on her own feet.

Hippolyta opened her mouth to speak, then froze. The tall, skinny woman accompanying her daughter, with the grey hair and the ostentatious gold hook for an arm glanced her way with affected casualness, and Hippolyta noted that one of the woman's eyes was grey. That in itself was notable, but when a small owl emerged from the woman's bushy grey hair and alighted on her shoulder with a soft hoot, it was too much. The words were not there. If this was not Athena Herself, then the Grey-eyed goddess was surely sending the Queen of the Amazons a message. A message to do with mothers and daughters, if she was reading the signs correctly.

Queen Hippolyta shook off the momentary revelation that had frozen her in place. Portents and omens could wait. Her daughter was home. She quickly strode across the marble floor, leaned down, and gently coaxed her daughter to her feet before pulling her into a long-missed embrace. "Welcome home, Diana," the Queen said. "Please, introduce me to your friends."

"O... of course!" Diana, having not expected such a warm greeting, found herself at a loss for words. After the hug, which she hadn't realized how much she missed until she was receiving it, she took a moment to gather her thoughts and turned towards Camila, who was looking extremely nervous. "This is Camila Noceda," Diana said. "Her daughter, Luz Noceda, is one of the many champions I have worked with in Man's World, a woman who calls herself Good Witch and fights for the downtrodden when others turn away."

"It is an honor to meet you, Camila Noceda," Queen Hippolyta said, nodding.

Camila, for her part, managed a serviceable bow, and said, "Likewise, your Majesty."

"And this," Wonder Woman said, indicating Eda, "is Edalyn Clawthorne, also known as the Owl Lady, who was Luz Noceda's mentor and surrogate mother while she was in another world, cut off from her birth mother."

Eda grinned and gave an extremely casual two-fingered salute. "Heya, Queenie," she said, and Camila sputtered, struggling not to laugh.

Queen Hippolyta arched an eyebrow, but did not comment on the extremely informal greeting. "So, daughter mine, tell me what brings you home after one hundred seven years without so much as a missive."

Wonder Woman winced and Eda and Camila shared a look that said, quite clearly, "kids."

Apokolips

Holding Cell Block 437A, Cell 24,782

Luz was barely conscious when she was dragged through the Boom Tube to Apokolips. Grace had turned out to be an infiltrator, and one with superpowers, to boot. Luz barely dodged her first attack, but the second had hit her like a freight train. After that, some kind of alien taser had been used to render the human witch unconscious, and when she woke up, she found herself in an industrialist nightmare - massive metal structures belched out smoke that blotted out the sky.

She got a close-up look at the creatures Mister Miracle and Batman had fought - Miracle had called them Parademons - and shuddered. They looked like some unholy hybrid of insect, reptile, and machine. If it weren't for the machine parts, they would've been at home in the Boiling Isles. They seemed barely controlled, a police force of rabid beasts, and Luz had no doubt they were going to be unleashed on her home soon.

Luz had been thrown into a cell in what could only be described as a dungeon. Prisons, for all that she hated them, at least had some nods towards accommodation. She was in a stark, six by six room with no furnishings. She took stock.

The room lacked any furnishings, the door a solid slab of metal with a grate apparently laser-cut into it rather than bolted in place. Patting herself down, she discovered her phone, a spare set of earbuds, and, wrapped around one arm, Stringbean, inanimate and masquerading as a decorative cuff.

"Heya, power noodle, I'm glad to see you here."

Stringbean hissed to life, writhing slightly on her witch's arm. <Glad to see you, too, Mamí. I worried they would take me from you.>

"Me, too, querida. I guess they just didn't recognize you for the awesome palisman you are. Now. Let's see about busting out of this place." She started feeling her way around the room, looking for any weak points she could find.

Themyscira

Queen Hippolyta's Private Dining Chamber

"Now," Hippolyta said as the four women sat around a beautiful crystalline table. "I would love to spend time catching up on all the things you have done over the past hundred years, but I suspect more pressing matters brought you here."

"Yes, Mother," Diana said, lowering her eyes apologetically. "My colleagues have been made aware of a threat that affects the entire world. A warlord known as Darkseid is threatening invasion in less than a day -" she glanced over at Eda and Camila for corroboration.

Camila checked her phone. "Eleven hours, fifty-seven minutes," she said. There were a number of unread text messages, but the meeting with Hippolyta took precedence. She set the phone face-down on the table, fidgeting nervously with it.

"The invasion targets a number of cities in Man's World," Diana continued, then paused for a moment before continuing. "And Themyscira."

Hippolyta stared, wanting to disbelieve her daughter, but could not. "How do you know?"

"The invaders use devices to communicate and coordinate," Diana said. "We have obtained one of these devices and were able to use a similar device to decode their messages. One of these messages showed a map of their targets and the priority level of those targets, and there is no mistake. Themyscira is among them."

Camila flipped her phone face up again, pulling up the photograph she had taken of the map in question, and slid it over to Hippolyta so that she could see the map for herself.

"So... what you're saying..."  Hippolyta started, then stopped, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "What you're saying is that you have come home to warn us of an invasion, and that no place on the body of Gaia is safe." She frowned. "I will not finally have you come back only to lose you again. Preparations will be made. Go tell Philippus to make the preparations, then come back here. I want to spend as much time with my daughter as I can before the fighting starts."

As Diana made her way out of the room to find her mother's General, the Queen slid the phone back to Camila and sighed heavily. After a moment, she looked at Camila and Eda and asked, plaintively, "How do you do it?"

"Do what, Your Majesty?" Camila asked.

"Your daughter goes out into the world and fights against those who would oppress the weak. How do you not bundle her up and stuff her into the safest room you can? How do you live, knowing your children are risking their lives and you cannot stop them?"

Camila let out a long breath, considering how she should respond. "Partly, Your Majesty, it comes down to the fact that I can't stop her. Mostly, though? To answer your question of how I live? I live in fear, Your Majesty. Every night when she goes out, I live in terror that she won't come back."

"Camila," Eda said, softly.

"No, Eda, I don't tell Luz and Vee this, but I have to say it. It terrifies me that they're out risking their lives like this. I support what they're doing - Lord knows I can't do what they do - but I still worry. The threats these superheroes face, estan tan fuerte, so strong, and for all their magic and powers, I worry about my daughters every day."

Hippolyta looked at the door to the chamber they were in, where Diana had just left, and the look of worry and pride mirrored Camila's own.

Gotham

Warehouse District

"I think that's got it," Cassandra said, holding out their fist.

"Finally," Batgirl said, fistbumping her fellow hacker. "I can barely feel my fingers." With that, she stood up and stretched, then reached for her helmet to take it off, before remembering that there were others in the room who didn't know who she was. "How the heck did you end up working for the Titans, Mash?"

Masha laughed. "Oh, that is a long story. Also, I don't work for the Titans."

"They're married to a shapeshifter from another dimension, and their wife's superhero team is working with ours and a few others to stop the end of the world," Beast Boy said from a corner where he was playing on a handheld game console. "Boom. Story shortened."

"What."

"Batgirl." Everyone in the room sat up a little straighter at that.

"Um... h... hi, Batman," Batgirl said, looking like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" the Dark Knight said, glowering.

"Um... saved the day with elite hacking skills and a toolkit rivaled only by my bestie here?" Batgirl gestured at Cassandra with a thumb.

"I'm talking," Batman said, looming closer, "about the Russians."

"What about them? They were trafficking teenagers. Pre-teens, even. Someone had to take them down."

"That someo-"

"Oh no," Batgirl said, startling everyone else. "No no no no no, you, of all people, don't get to say 'that someone is the police.' No." She took a step closer to the Caped Crusader, hands on her hips. "The police are on the Russian's payroll and you know it. I get that there's an IAD investigation going on, I get it! But in the meantime, those children were being harmed."

Batman grimaced. She wasn't wrong. "Nevertheless," he said. "You endangered an ongoing investigation with your reckless actions. And you endangered your life."

Batgirl opened her mouth to object, but Batman cut her off.

"Look," he said. "I get it. I do. You look out there, and you see all those people being harmed. And you think 'someone has to do something.' But someone is doing something. And I do not want to stand in front of your father and tell him his little girl got killed trying to emulate me." He frowned. He couldn't believe what he was about to say. "So, since I know I'm not going to stop you, I'd better get you trained. And better equipped."

Apokolips

Holding Block 437A - Sewage & Wastewater Pipes

The holding cells on Apokolips were sparsely appointed - or, rather, not at all appointed - but they did have drainage if only so that Darkseid or his Generals wouldn't have to wade through filth when interrogating a prisoner. Given the sheer number of prisoners interred in the dungeons of Apokolips at any one time, it was necessary that the pipes be rather large, although the Apokoliptian engineers strove to keep them too small for prisoners to escape through.

They did not, however, reckon with a slender, determined latina and her palisman companion, nor with the possibility of a prisoner using magic to access the pipes or accomodate their size.

Luz Noceda squeezed her way through the pipe inch by agonizing inch until finally managing to squeeze her head and one shoulder out of a joint where the pipe she was in opened into a much larger sewage system. With some wiggling and grunting, she managed to squeeze her arm out, then pull herself further out. "Not unlike escaping Mother's womb," she quoted. "God, what a memory."

<You remember that?>

"No, no," she admitted. "It's from a movie. I'll show you it when we get home. Ladyhawke. Very romantic. Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer in that weren't exactly my bi awakening - that's still Morticia and Gomez Addams in the movies - but they're a close second. You'll like it, it's about a curse and true love and shapeshifting. Also Matthew Broderick is in it, and everyone affects an English accent even though it's set in medieval France."

Squeezing a little further out of the pipe, she grinned. "Let's try again." She tried her hardest to do a Morgan Freeman impression, but could not quite pull it off. "Luz crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit-smelling foulness I can't even imagine- or maybe I just don't want to."

<What were you doing with your voice there?> Stringbean asked, as Luz squeezed out of the pipe and lowered herself so that the palisman could form into a staff beneath her to ride down on.

"Morgan Freeman."

<You sounded like Hunter.>

"First of all, how dare you?" Luz grinned. "You know what it is? You're just an unappreciative audience. I w..." She stopped.

<Mamí?>

"Nothing. I just... I almost said I wished King was here." Luz shuddered. "I do not wish my little brother was here in the sewers under an alien prison." She used Stringbean to draw out a spell circle and stepped through it, changing into a spare costume in darker colors. "There we go. Clean clothes, and I stand out less. Now... Upstream or down?"

Central City

Big Belly Burger

Gus Porter, Hunter Noceda-Park, Willow Noceda-Park, and Barry Allen sat at the all-night fast food place.

"I hate this part," Barry said.

"The... burgers?" Hunter blinked, looking at the speedster in confusion.

"No, no, the burgers are great. Love the burgers!" He grinned, then grimaced. "Waiting. We don't know what they're going to do. We don't know where in the city they're going to attack or what form the attack is going to take. All we know is when it's coming."

"Ah," Hunter said, understanding. "The waiting."

"Well," Gus said with a grin. "The waiting is the hardest part."

"Every day," Hunter said solemnly, "you see one more card."

"You take it on faith," Gus said.

"You take it to the heart," Hunter replied.

The two of them joined together to sing the last line of the chorus, and Barry just facepalmed, laughing.

Willow, returning with a tray laden with entirely too many burgers, rolled her eyes. "Hey, you're lucky. I married the blonde one. I have to deal with this all the time."

"Ahh, you love us," Gus said, grabbing a pair of burgers from the tray and handing one to her husband.

"I love Hunter," Willow said with a grin. "You, I tolerate."

"Wow. Cold."

"That's my Captain."

"Hey," Gus said. "I was an Emerald Entrail, too. She's just as much my captain as..."

"No she isn't," Hunter said immediately.

"Yeah I heard the implications as soon as I said it."

"So, Barry," Willow said. "Has Iris been to the doctor yet?"

"Yeah," Gus said, excitedly, "what's the news, man?"

Barry frowned. "Wait, how did you know she was going to the doctor? How do you know there's news?" 

"Barry," Willow said. "It wasn't hard to figure out. She's been nauseous. Had mood swings. Food cravings, especially protein, calcium, and salt. Complaining about putting on weight."

"Okay uh... yeah." Barry nodded. "When you put it that way, it seems kind of obvious."

"If it makes you feel any better," Hunter said, "I still don't know what any of that means."

Barry chuckled. "What, did your parents never give you The Talk?"

Hunter scowled. "Barry, I want you to think about that question very hard."

Willow elbowed him in the side. "Be nice, scrunkly mine."

Barry nodded. "Right, right, you're just so much like your sisters I forget you weren't raised by the same people."

"To be fair, none of us had anything like the same childhoods," Hunter said. "Luz had the most normal one of the three of us, and she ran away to another dimension during her teenage years."

"Vee did, too," Gus pointed out. "Just, the other direction."

"This is true." Hunter sighed. "But no, Barry, my so-called 'uncle,' the seventeenth-century witch hunter who intended me to die before I became an adult, did not teach me about the griffons and the firebees. Although the fact that you're bringing that up means... oh my Titan, Barry are you going to be a father?!"

Barry grinned.

"Oh my Titan, yesssssssss," Willow said, pumping a fist. "Hang on hang on hang on I have to call her and say congratulations."

Pulling out her phone, she froze, staring at the screen.

BestNoceda3
Guys? Have any of you heard from Luz? She left for Connecticut a while ago and as fast as she flies she should've been back by now.

11:28:46

Chapter Text

Apokolips

Sewer & Drainage Pipes

08:11:23

Luz sighed, leaning against a wall, watching the...  She hesitated to call whatever was in these pipes with her "water" but it was definitely a liquid of some kind. She settled on "fluid" as a descriptor and forced herself to avoid thinking further about it. She watched the fluid flow by.

"Okay, Bean," she said. "Let's go over our assets."

<Okay!>

"I've got you..."

<Check!>

"I've got my phone... with zero signal..."

<Check?>

"I've got ADHD..."

<Check!>

Luz kicked at a bit of trash sitting on the walkway, knocking it into the fluid. "I bet Bruce would have like a billion different plans for getting out of here," she said. "He'd be all 'Rah I am the night, my first priority is finding a way off this planet, I think strategically and that is why I would never be in this situation,' and then he would, like start searching for some kind of teleporter or something."

Earth

29°56'47.9"N 41°22'37.5"W

-3800 Fathoms

Heading NNE @ 30kn

"Okay," Vee said, irritated. "Why are we at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean?"

Batman toggled a control on the dash of the Batsub. "We're approaching one of the areas targeted by the invaders. Time is running out and we need to ensure as many of the targeted areas are prepared as possible."

Vee frowned. "Let me rephrase that. Why am I at the bottom of the Atlantic?"

Batman grimaced, knowing what was coming, but hoping to get the basilisk to see reason. "If your sister's theory is correct, we will need to negotiate with Atlanteans. Having someone who can shapeshift into a form that breathes water will doubtless make negotiations easier."

"First of all," Vee said, "it was an offhand comment, not a theory. Secondly, my sister is missing. I should be up there searching for her, not down here wasting precious time."

Batman's grimace deepened. "Snakeshifter," he began, then stopped, turning to face her. "Vee. Your sister is one of the most competent heroes I know. I've done my homework on your entire family, and you are, each of you, powerful, talented, and skilled, and that is a formidable combination. If your sister is out of contact, there is only one real possibility for where she is and how she got there. Searching for her now would be a waste of time. She'll find a way back to you all."

"What do you mean?"

Apokolips

Sewer & Drainage Pipes

06:48:59

"Okay," Luz said. "Okay, this isn't hopeless. They're preparing for an invasion in..." She checked her phone. "Seven hours holy crap no wonder I'm hungry."

Stringbean hissed with concern and spiraled her way around Luz's torso, glowing softly. After a moment, Luz's hunger pangs faded and she stared at the palisman in awe.

"I did not know you could do that," the human witch said. "Gracias, Bean."

<De nada, Mamí,> the palisman replied, a note of fatigue in her mental voice.

"Oye. Are you okay, preciosa?"

Stringbean didn't answer, and, notably, didn't make eye contact.

"Bean, are you okay? Did doing that hurt you?"

<Not really,> the palisman hissed.

"What does 'not really' mean?"

<All I did was share some of my lifeforce with you, Mamí, no importa nada.>

"Share som..." Luz suddenly had a mental image of Flapjack dissolving into light and energy, reviving her brother after he drowned trying to take Belos with him. "Bean, never do that again, ¿entiendes?"

Earth

Atlantic Ocean Depths

Vee was panicking. Batman had just told her his reasons for assuming that Luz had been abducted by their enemies, and his reasoning was sound. The odds of that were higher than any other reason for her to have gone silent.

"Vee," Batman said. "Vee, listen to me. Your sister did what only one other person in the history of my career has done before. She used her skills, knowhow, and contacts to unmask me. She managed to get my contact information without telling her source why she needed it. I would give five people on this planet even odds of surviving where she is. Myself, Clark, Hunter, Oliver, and her." He paused. "I suppose I should add Scott Free and Barda to that list as well, now."

Vee sniffed.

"Your sister, at the age of fourteen, with no powers and no training, began a quest that carried her through to the defeat of a four hundred year old parasite with absolute control over a realm that is by its nature hostile to human life. She started out with nothing and by the end was at the center of a revolution. If anyone can make it home from there alive, she can. I have faith in your sister. All I'm asking is for you to do the same."

Vee sighed. "You're right, but also... She's really reckless. She's got just as much of a chance of antagonizing the entire planet while she's over there."

Apokolips

Sewer & Drainage Pipes

06:13:00

"Good Witch," a sinister, deep voice spoke over what seemed like every loudspeaker on the planet. "You think you are clever to escape from your cell. You think you are powerful. Know this. You are still on my world. Every hand is raised against you. You will be brought before me. You will face the Omega Sanction for your hubris. Your loved ones will watch. Treasure the time you have left. What follows will not be pleasant."

Luz grimaced. "I'll show you unpleasant," she muttered.

<What are you doing, Mamí?> Stringbean asked.

"Organizing a dance party," Luz said, scrolling through her phone's playlist. 

<What are you doing?> Stringbean asked again.

"Gonna be reeeeeeeeally annoying. Like sooooooo annoying," Luz said, before casting a similar spell to the one she had used before the raid on the Intergang warehouse, magically hijacking the planetary address system.

By the time the loop would eventually be stopped, hours later, every Apokoliptian on the planet had a physical revulsion to the sound of Darude's "Sandstorm."

Gotham

Warehouse District

Word was out on the street. There was a new vigilante prowling the night. Someone inherited the mantle of the Question, and this new Question was out for blood. She - the new Question was apparently a she - was on the streets, leaving a trail of the battered, bruised, and broken in her wake.

Rumor had it she was filling in for Batman while the Bat was off doing whatever the Bat does when there are no Bat sightings, and some of the gang members who ran afoul of her found themselves almost wishing Batman would come back. She didn't say much, but it was very clear what she wanted. "Intergang," she growled at another gang member as she pinned him against the wall.

"I... I don't-"

A flurry of blows later, and she asked again. "Intergang."

When no information was forthcoming, she knocked him unconscious, then reached up to tap on her earbud. "I am coming up completely empty. Any luck with the computer, Cassandra?"

"Yes and no," the nonbinary techie replied. "We've got a lot of information, here. Like. A lot. It's going to take a long time to get anything useful out of this thing."

"All I need is an address. One address. Get me to another Intergang hideout and I will get the information I need."

"That I can get you. Here. I'm sending you an address that looks promising." There was a pause. "And apparently I'm sending backup, too."

Apokolips

Parademon Staging Area

03:45:12

With time rapidly running out, Luz found herself returning to an area she'd avoided previously. The weird insect-lizard-cyborg things that she had noticed - the ones that matched the grainy security footage Batman had showed everyone - were gathering in large numbers near large metallic platforms.

"That's got to be some kind of transporter," Luz concluded. "Huh. I guess doing things the Batman way does work."

<Now what, Mamí?> Stringbean hissed.

"Well. We could wait for the invasion to start and try to sneak through the transporter with one of these groups..."

<Waiting, though.>

"Yeah, not my greatest superpower." Luz lowered herself from the grating she was peering out of before pulling out her phone, not wanting the light of the LCD screen to attract attention. "A little under four hours," she said, checking the timer. "What can we do with that time?"

<Sabotage?> the snakeshifter palisman suggested.

"It would have to be something that wouldn't be noticed until it was too late. I don't have the know-how to sabotage the equipment here... Ugh, if only glyphs still worked, I could set something up that wouldn't be noticed until I set it off."

<Show me,> Stringbean said, diving into Luz's pockets and pulling out a notepad and pen.

Luz sketched out a glyph combo she and Hunter had worked on between the Day of Unity and their return to the Demon Realm. She'd never gotten the chance to test it before Papa Titan's passing had rendered glyphs inert. "Here you go, Bean," she said. "See, this ring of ice and plant glyphs generates a combustible gas that builds up in a sphere about three times the diameter of combo when you trigger it, then, once enough time has passed, the light and fire glyphs in the center trigger and set off the whole thing." She glanced up at the grating. "Back in the day, I could take out that entire room just by having one of these about eight feet across." She sighed. "But I have no idea how to replicate this using palisman magic."

<Don't have to,> Stringbean argued. <Palismen are->

Luz gasped, remembering Hunter's words all those years ago.

Luz grinned, watching the palisman she'd later come to know as Flapjack peck at the Golden Guard's ankle, trying to get his attention.

"Hey!" Hunter yelled. "Stop! Get away from me!"

"Come on," Luz said, trying to placate the Emperor's Right-Hand child soldier. "He's just being friendly."

"I don't care!" Hunter had replied. "These things are made from wild magic! It's dangerous!"

"-made from Wild Magic!" Luz finished for her palisman, excited. "Bean, does that mean you can still trigger glyphs even without Papa Titan?" She frowned. "I suppose, even without a Titan powering them, glyphs are still a language, and we can still speak it, but will anyone be listening?"

<Should be possible,> Stringbean said, hesitantly.

"What's that tone?"

<It's.... it's risky, Mamí.>

"How risky?"

<No no no no no no no no, no va a matarme, pero...>

"¿Pero que?" Luz said. "There's a lot of stuff that can happen that won't kill you that's still bad, Bean."

<I could go inert for a while.>

"A while."

<A day?> Stringbean managed to convey the concept of a shrug without moving. <It's like a witch going through burnout, except witches don't turn into wood carvings when it happens.>

"Bean," Luz said, then glanced down at her phone.

03:40:58

03:40:57

03:40:56

"Shit. Let's do it." She frowned, then said, more sternly, "Do not let yourself be seen."

<De acuerdo, Mamí.>

"Come back to me," Luz said, much more tenderly.

<Sí, Mamí.>

Lamumba
03:30:24

In a small building in the savanna, designed to be easily deconstructed and moved if necessary, a satellite phone rang. The building served as an office and living quarters for a pair of wildlife conservationists. Noted zoologist Mark Logan and his former child actress wife, Marie led a small team of mostly volunteers working alongside local experts to restore numerous native animals to pre-industrial numbers with remarkable success. There were few pieces of modern technology. The sat phone was one. There was a camera set up at a nearby watering hole that used a separate satellite connection to stream to MewTube.

Marie grumbled her way into the office to pick up the phone. Mark was out in the field early this morning, and she had gotten to bed just a few hours prior, herself. She glanced at a clock. 8:30 in the morning. A reasonable enough time, she supposed, but not for her. Not today. When she managed to focus enough to make out the caller ID, however, her mood shifted and she immediately answered.

"-the phone pick up the phone pick up the phone," her son was saying.

"Garfield?" Marie said. "Are you caught in a storm or something? There's a lot of wind."

"Oh thank God," her son said. "Mom, sorry, I'm flying right now, sorry about the noise, is Meg around?"

"Meg?" Marie paused, confused. "Garfield Logan, is something wrong?"

"I don't want to scare you."

"Garfield Mark Logan, you're scaring me now."

"I'm sorry, Mom," Beast Boy's voice came over the phone. "It's... it's bad. There's something bad coming, real soon, and we need any help we can get. Megan's the only one I know who's anywhere near one of the places it's set to happen, so I need to talk to her."

Earth

Atlantic Ocean Depths

"Batman," Vee said, "I can't believe I'm saying this but..."

"We have company, I know," the Bat said as a group of humanoids in streamlined, scalloped armor swam up around the sub. Quickly, he flicked a couple of switches on the sub's console. "Attention," he said into a microphone. "I come with urgent news. Please alert whoever is in charge of your defenses."

"That," a voice rang out, "would be me." The Atlanteans parted before the Batsub to reveal a man in thinner armor, a bronze scale mail covering his torso, with dark green scales covering his legs. He held a trident in one hand, which he leveled at the cockpit of the sub. "I am King Arthur of Atlantis. You are a long way from your world, surface dwellers."

"It's necessary," Batman said.

"I'll be the judge of that," the king said. He angled the trident towards Batman. "You, I recognize, Batman." He shifted the trident to point at Vee. "The lizard person I don't."

"I'm more of a snake than a lizard," Vee said.

"Ah," King Arthur said. "That would make you... Snakeshifter? You're not a Gotham hero."

"You know a lot about us," Batman commented.

"No more than is publicly available," the king admitted. "So. Assuming we can take you at your word, what is it you would have of Atlantis?"

"There is an attack coming," Batman said, a display activating in the viewport of the Batsub where the Atlanteans could see it. "We were able to gather some intelligence, and are working on gathering more, but among the things we learned were the locations being targeted and the timeline. There are currently less than four hours to prepare for the invasion, and the list of targeted locations was what directed me here. I don't know how, but they know where you are, and they're coming."

"I suppose you want our aid in fighting off the invasion," the king said.

"I doubt you'll have the manpower to spare, especially on such short notice," Batman said.

"Then, do you somehow suppose you will be allowed free rein of our kingdom, surface dwellers?" Arthur said, eyes narrowing. "Command of our forces?"

"I'm not a fool, Your Majesty," Batman said. "You know the men. You know the equipment. You know the terrain. We would only be in the way. As it stands, I have just enough time to give you this warning and return to the surface before the invasion begins."

Vee frowned. "Wait, we're..." She glared at Batman. "You lied to me. You said you needed me down here!"

"Down here," Batman said, "I was able to talk to you, and keep you from running off by yourself to look for your sister and possibly getting yourself taken as well."

"Take me home," the basilisk said, angrily. "Now."

Apokolips

Parademon Staging Area

03:25:15

Fifteen excruciating, terrifying minutes passed. The lizard-bug-cyborg things milled around, staying in their designated area but in a chaotic mass of movement. They gave the impression of barely-contained violence, a malevolent eagerness to do harm. Luz, being bonded with Stringbean at a deep psychic and spiritual level, could still perceive the palisman despite the snakeshifter being concealed by an invisibility spell.

Bean worked slowly, evading physical contact with the horde while she carefully drew out the glyph her Mamí had showed her, using the information she'd been given along with her estimation of how much of her own life-giving magic it would take to activate the glyph to ensure that the spell's area of effect would be large enough to envelop the entire chittering mob without burning through the entirety of her magic. While there were all sorts of autonomic reflexes in place to prevent it, it was possible for a palisman to expend all of their magic, which would not only render them temporarily inert, but permanently so - a state equivalent to death.

She hadn't told Luz this, but she knew the human witch at least suspected it, if not outright knowing herself.

In any case, the glyph was made, traced out in Stringbean's own magic so that it would be visible to Luz and Stringbean. It hovered in the air an inch off the ground, intangible and invisible to everyone else.

<I'm back.>

Luz reached out to the palisman and cuddled her close to her face, peppering kisses over the small purple snake. "I don't ever want you to take a risk like that again, Bean, okay? That was terrifying!"

<I promise,> Stringbean said. <Are you ready?>

Luz nodded. "We'll wait here until it's almost time, then we'll cast an invisibility hex and get out there so we can set off the trap spell and escape as soon as whatever teleporter or whatever activates. It's foolproof!"

<I dunno,> Stringbean said with a laughing hiss. <We're some pretty dedicated fools!>

Earth

New York City

Jones Detective Agency

02:58:12

"Mister Jones? Earth to Mister Jones," Bridgette said, knocking on the detective's office door a little louder.

John Jones, private investigator, shook off whatever was distracting him and looked up at his secretary. "Bridgette, what are you doing here this late?"

"Couldn't sleep," the woman said. "Looked out my window, saw your light on. We ain't got no cases right now, Mister Jones. What are you doing up this late?"

Jones sighed, then shrugged. "Couldn't sleep either," he said after a moment. "Got a bad feeling."

"You and your feelings," Bridgette said. "How bad we talkin'?"

"The worst," John said.

Bridgette shivered. John's "feelings" had a nasty habit of turning out to be accurate. "Safe house bad?"

John frowned. "I don't know," he admitted. "Bad, though."

Bridgette shook her head. "Shit," she swore. "Well, I'm going home and lock up. You oughtta do the same, Mister Jones.

"Expecting a call," he said brusquely. "Go on, Bridgette. Be safe crossing the street." And after, he thought, but didn't say.

Bridgette nodded and backed out. He could hear her locking the office up as she left, maybe out of habit, maybe because she feared for his safety.

He frowned, closing his eyes again and extending his senses. His "bad feeling" came in the form of vague fears and concerns from minds as distant as he could reach. The people humans called superheroes had gotten wind of some bad news, but they were far enough from him that he only had the vaguest idea. One thing that kept cropping up, however, was a clock, counting down the hours until some dire event.

He tried reaching out to his protege, but she was half a planet away, and had lately been refusing to use her psychic abilities out of some guilt or trauma she would not share with him. He got a vague sense only, that she was upset and thinking about him.

The phone rang.

"Hello," he said calmly. "Jones Detective Agency, John Jones speaking."

"J'onn," the voice of M'gann M'orzz said, trembling. "Something is coming. Something is coming tonight and we don't know how bad it's going to be, but it's big."

"What, child?" J'onn J'onzz asked, trying to calm the other down both with his voice and with his mind. She was too closed off, too far away.

"Some kind of invasion. A being called Darkseid from a place called Apokolips."

J'onn felt the names like a jolt to his memory. A vision overtook him, of the Parademons of Apokolips swarming across the red sands of his beloved homeworld. Even the dread warrior race of his homeworld of Ma'aleca'andra, those who made their skin as white as their sharp teeth, with jagged protrusions from their limbs and joints, had fallen before the onslaught.

J'onzz had only survived through luck. The planet had been razed, left lifeless, and he sought refuge on the neighboring blue planet of Earth. M'orzz herself had been raised on another world. The two of them were thus the only survivors of Ma'aleca'andra, the world the humans called Mars.

"No," he said, trembling.

"J'onn," M'gann said, pleading. "J'onn it's happening, and we need your help to stop it."

"It cannot be stopped!" J'onn said. "I lost everything to those beasts."

"J'onn," M'gann said, her voice breaking. "My family, J'onn." The images of Mark, Marie, and Garfield Logan came to his mind, shaded with all the compassion and care he'd had for his own family, draped with a blanket of fear.

He had lost his own family to the Parademons.

"No," he said again, but this time, the word meant defiance. "No, you shall not lose your family. We shall not lose our new home. No." His form blurred, melted, and shifted until it was the familiar blending of human and Ma'aleca'andran - Martian - that he had been using in his own heroic work. "I have been having visions," he said, "from the minds of your colleagues, I suppose."

He turned invisible and floated out the window, securing it behind him as he flew up above the New York skyline.

"Probably, yeah," M'gann said.

"How much time do we have?"

02:37:35

Chapter Text

00:00:00

Titans Tower

Jump City

Nightwing and Starfire had stayed behind in Gotham, in part because Batman was cutting it close, and in part because Gotham had a dearth of super powered heroes. Villains, yes, but most of Gotham's heroes had few to no superpowers.  Consequently, Cyborg, Beast Boy, and Raven were the entirety of the Titans available to defend Jump city. They nervously scanned the city from their headquarters in Titans Tower, catastrophizing while watching the timer.

At the exact moment the timer reached zero, the sky opened up. With a sound like a mallet hitting a taut steel cable, a tunnel into nothing expanded above the city and a swarm of black specks poured out of it. Quickly, Cyborg zoomed in on the image, and the specks resolved themselves into what Mister Miracle and Big Barda had called "Parademons," monstrous cybernetic creatures that descended upon the city to tear it apart.

"Titans," he said, in an approximation of Dick Grayson's professional tone, "go!" The three of them launched themselves into action, determined to defend the city in their teammates' absence.

Warehouse District

Gotham City

Nightwing looked over his team. Batgirl, while new to the job, had proven herself competent enough in the fight against The Russian's henchmen. How competent she would be against an army of super-powered alien monsters, he had yet to know. The Question, whom he knew to be (former?) GCPD Detective Renee Montoya, was competent, agile, and had experience dealing with super-powered villains and heroes. Her own cousins being among the first superheroes helped. Starfire, fellow Titan and friend. Batman was still not back yet, having detoured to Gravesfield, Connecticut to drop off Snakeshifter. As the time counted down, Dick was sure Bruce would stay in Connecticut rather than waste time trying to get to Gotham when he wouldn't arrive in time.

As the sky over Gotham Harbor opened up, Dick rallied the others to action and launched himself into a glide towards the invading swarm.

Training Grounds

Themyscira

"It's time," Queen Hippolyta said to her companions - her General and longtime lover, and her guests from the World of Man. Eda had declined the offer of weaponry and armor, claiming that the armor would impede her movement and that her talons and palisman would be weapon enough. Hippolyta had chuckled at the mention of "talons" before, but as the sky was rent asunder by some foreign magic, the woman had quickly revealed another strange magical trick of hers - turning into a siren. Eda referred to the form as her "harpy" form, but Hippolyta thought that siren was more accurate.

Camila Noceda, on the other hand, had readily agreed. She would avoid combat if at all possible, but every bit of protection she could be afforded, she took. Hippolyta had helped her put on the bronze and leather armor herself, and Camila had chosen a simple club as a weapon. After equipping the woman, she'd had one of her guards take her to where the younger Amazons sheltered.

Camila had expressed shock that there were children on Themyscira. "Foundlings," the guard had explained. "Sent here by the gods."

"By the gods?" Camila asked.

"Indeed."

Camila, knowing better than to question this after the past decade or so, simply entered the shelter and proceeded to keep the children focused on her. Better curiosity about the newcomer than fear of what they were sheltering from.

Lexor Hotel

Las Vegas, NV

Zatanna Zatara grimaced. She had just retired to her suite, having completed her last show of the night an hour before, and was ready for a long, uninterrupted night of sleep. She was not at her best.  Therefore it took her a few moments to register what she was seeing outside her window in the sky above Las Vegas. During those moments, after the sky had been rent asunder by some sort of dimensional tunnel, horrific creatures out of a science fiction nightmare had begun pouring out of the tunnel and attacking the city.

"Leas eht latrop!" she called out, and the Boom Tube slammed shut with a sound like a thousand thunderclaps. A hundred parademons, still in transit between Apokolips and Earth, vanished into the Place Between, lost for all time.

"Pop never had to deal with stuff like this, I bet," the stage magician muttered, then, with a wave of her hands, summoned her wand and stage outfit. Another quick spell let her step through the window into the air above Las Vegas, and she began her spellcasting in earnest.

On the Vegas Strip, amidst the terror and screams of the citizens and tourists, Mister Miracle gaped openly at the sky. "Did you see that?" he asked his wife in awe. "Someone shut down the Boom Tube!"

Big Barda, grinning a savage grin, seized the nearest parademon by the throat and hurled it into its fellows. "Impressive," she said, "though I much doubt that will stop them." Sure enough, moments later, another Boom Tube opened, disgorging still more parademons. Moments later, that, too, collapsed, banishing yet more parademons to the Place Between.

Moments later, another opened, and, above the city, too distant to hear, Zatanna Zatara screamed in frustration.

City Square

Central City

Barry Allen was a red blur, as usual, streaking across the streets of his hometown, pushing himself harder and harder to defend everyone from attack. The more he fought, the faster he ran, the more parademons he saw pouring out of the portals. Mirror Master, Mulcher, and Cardinal were fighting valiantly, though at the speeds Barry was running, they appeared to be standing still. Nonetheless, they were holding their own. For one moment, Barry was stunned to see Cardinal moving at speeds approaching his own - he hadn't known his friend was another speedster - but that moment passed and he was once again moving at normal (imperceptibly slow by comparison) speeds.

Barry's thoughts were a litany of curses, an unbroken string of obscenity as he pushed himself harder and harder to cover a wider and wider area. Soon, he found himself fighting parademons throughout the city. A second later, he made a brief detour to check on other friends.

Warehouse District

Star City

Green Arrow lined up another shot. He had long since moved from using his normal nonlethal arrows to hunting arrows, then from there to arrows which ignited, or exploded. Anything to give his attacks greater stopping power. Beside him, Black Canary was relying more on her sonic powers than physical attacks to hold her own against the invading swarm.

"I hate to say it, Di," Green Arrow said, "but we are really, really outgunned."

Dinah Lance took a moment to catch her breath, her throat raw from screaming. She wanted to say something like "speak for yourself," but the fact that she could barely get a word out betrayed her. He was right. "Ollie," she said after a moment, "we need help."

Oliver Queen swore. "We're supposed to be the help," he said, but he tapped an alert button on the strap for his quiver, sending out a distress signal to the hangar that Batman had set up as a headquarters, where the Bat-Computer would send that signal to the rest of the heroes.

By the time he had done so, the Flash was already in the city, having been enroute already. As he added the neighboring city to his route, Barry leaned in, muscles burning, the Speed Force crackling around him like a tunnel made of lightning.

Town Square

Gravesfield, Connecticut

Batman, Snakeshifter, and Abomination stood at the ready, barely in position before the sky opened. Even for the people of a supernatural hotbed like Gravesfield, nobody was prepared for this. As the Boom Tube appeared in the sky above Gravesfield, a tremendous jet of flame erupted from its depths. One figure propelled itself from the explosion, singed, trailing smoke, but alive. With a whoop, Good Witch rode her palisman down towards the statue of the Brothers Wittebane, kicking the stone representation of Philip's head on her way past.

Snakeshifter and Abomination hopped aboard their own palisman staff and flew over to meet her, the three of them embracing in midair and spinning around each other. Separating, they flew back down to land, ready to use their staffs to fight off whatever invaders remained after the explosion.

"Good Witch," Batman growled, nodding at her.

"Batman," Good Witch said in a poor imitation of his growl. "Nobody works Gravesfield but me."

"Really?" the Dark Knight said, giving the impression of arching an eyebrow despite his cowl not being able to do so.

"No not really," Luz said with a grin. "Thanks for coming."

Above them, the flames and smoke from the Boom Tube cleared up, revealing a lone figure standing in front of the portal. At this distance the figure was difficult to make out. Tall, broad-shouldered. Red pinpricks glowed in his face. As he got closer, more features became apparent. His face, grey-skinned and stern, was like a granite statue. His body was covered in armor in midnight and black. His expression was one of disdain.

"Good Witch," he said, and she recognized his voice as the one that had threatened her over the Apokoliptian public address system. "Your time has come. For your impudence, you shall face the ultimate retribution, and the last thing you will be aware of before your doom is that your efforts have been in vain."

"Blah, blah, blah," Luz taunted. "Believe it or not, you're not the first blowhard tyrant I've taken down." She held Stringbean at the ready, her wife and sister at either side, while Batman faded back into the shadows to flank the villain.

Darkseid grimaced, and energy lanced forward from his eyes towards Luz. She barely managed to cast a shield spell in time, and the spell began to flicker almost immediately. Vee and Amity spread out, readying their own attacks, while Luz, thinking quickly, took a page from her mentor's book and spun Bean in a whirling pattern that generated two spell circles side-by-side. Just as she finished the casting, the shield spell collapsed, her palisman's energy nearly spent. The Omega beams blazed through the air between the shield and the first spell circle, disappearing into nothingness before erupting from the second circle, redirected towards Darkseid.

Unflinching, the Apokoliptian ruler glared at her, the beams parting around him and quickly angling around to strike at Luz from another direction.

Abomination attempted to shield Luz with a barrier of abomination matter, but the beams passed through it unhindered, erasing the matter they passed through completely. Snakeshifter took a deep breath, attempting to absorb the energy of the beams, but they were not magical in origin, and were entirely unaffected.

Luz tried to spin another shield spell, but Stringbean was spent, apologetic thoughts barely coherent as they were enveloped by Omega energy. Moments later, where Good Witch had been standing, there was nothing, not even a cloud of vapor to indicate she had been there. Vee and Amity screamed in grief, horror, and fury, and launched themselves at the villain without regard for the consequences.

Location: Unknown

Time: Unknown

There was a brilliant flare, blinding the Flash, and he stumbled, tumbling across the landscape at speeds that would vaporize someone not protected by the Speed Force. Eventually, he rolled to a stop. Dragging himself to his feet, bruised and bleeding, open gashes in his costume where it had been sliced by some unfathomably sharp blade, he looked around and found himself in a completely unfamiliar place.

The ground was glossy, black, and uneven. The sky was a mottled pattern of crimson and dark purple. The air burned to breathe.

"What the hell?"

He expected his voice to echo, but there was nothing for the sound waves to reflect off of for miles, so instead it seemed strangely muffled.  Grimacing, Barry ran.

He didn't run at the unfathomable speeds he had managed before, but instead took his time, keeping himself below mach 2 so that he could look around at his surroundings.

In the distance, he saw what looked like the splintered remains of a forest, so he angled himself towards the blasted tree trunks.

When he arrived, however, he saw that he had grossly misjudged the scale. With nothing to compare the objects to, he had assumed they were much smaller than they were. As he drew close, he realized that what he had thought were tree trunks were the shattered remains of buildings.

As he wound his way between the blasted out husks, he began to recognize the size and shape of their cross-sections. Soon, he came to a stop in front of what he now knew to be the nearly atomized remains of the building he lived in. His wife had been in that spot. His unborn child. Children? He didn't even know.

Barry Allen fell to his knees, strength leaving him.

"What... what happened?" Had Apokolips used some planet-destroying superweapon, that had wiped out everyone in an instant? So quickly that not even Barry could see it happening?

No one survived? No one?

Barry started running again, trusting his memory to help him navigate the blasted wasteland. Gotham. Gone. Blüdhaven, erased. Star City, a crater. Los Angeles, a glowing crater. New York, a field of glass with blackened seawater lapping at it.

Barry Allen, the Flash, the fastest man alive, looked in horror at the dead world that had been his home. As he stared, waiting for reality to reassert itself and everything to be back the way it had been just a few minutes prior, he saw a shadow moving towards him.

He frowned. There was a... person?

There was something person shaped moving towards him.

He blinked, and whatever it was was closer. It was a humanoid shape. Scale was still impossible to tell, but he guessed it was about human sized as well. He blinked. It was closer again. When he looked at it, it was walking towards him with a purposeful stride, moving at a normal human rate. But when he blinked...

It was closer again, and he was beginning to suspect it was larger than he had first estimated.

He had to make a decision. Move towards it, move away from it, or wait for it. He was frozen. Something about the shape unnerved him.

He refused to blink, and the thing kept walking towards him. He had no doubt he could outrun the thing. He had equally no doubt that it didn't matter. He refused to blink.

The world blinked.

It was standing before him, ten feet tall, black as night except for its face, which was brown and vaguely familiar, and its talons, which were bone-white, and looked like they were made from exposed bone.

It spoke.

It knew his name.

Chapter Text

Gotham

Warehouse District

The Question grimaced behind her mask, not that anyone could tell. When her aunt and cousins had come to help her move a few years ago, she had taken another step into the bizarre world that life as a Gotham City Police Detective afforded her regular glimpses into.

Her cousins were costumed heroes, with actual magic. Most of them came from a world filled with demons and witches and also the most freedom she had ever experienced in her life. They had fought, personally, to secure that freedom.

With that, her life had changed, mostly for the better, but also for the dramatic. And so, here she was, trying to fight off alien invasion by things called "parademons," alongside three costumed heroes, in a costume herself.

"Regulation sidearm isn't cutting it," she said, after unloading an entire clip at a parademon and barely scratching its skin. "Gah, really wish we had some of that STAR labs tech Gordon requisitioned for the Meta Response Unit."

"I'll see what I can dig up," Cassandra's voice responded through their communicators. "There's bound to be something useful in all this Intergang stuff."

"That's evidence!" Nightwing objected, slamming his batons into the base of a parademon's skull and stunning it momentarily, before being knocked back with a backhand.

"Not if we don't survive," Batgirl replied.

While they waited for more information from Cassandra, the group started making their way back towards the warehouse to regroup and resupply. The journey was a slog, a brutal fight through powerful enemies that it took their combined power to bring down or drive off, during which Cassandra was mostly silent, until their excited voice came over the communicators.

"Hang on hang on hang on hang on, guys, there's a case here that's got like three exclamation marks in the manifest. Let me see if I can find it. What's a manhunter?"

"What exactly does the case say, Cassandra?" Starfire said, a note of panic in her voice.

"Mask: Manhunter (one), Staff: Manhunter (one), Uniform: Manhunter (one)."

"That is... less concerning, but still concerning," Starfire said, making her way back to the others. "Have you ever heard of the Green Lantern corps?"

"There's a guy out on the west coast calling himself Green Lantern, any connection?"

Starfire laid down covering fire, giving Nightwing, Batgirl, and Question time to regroup. "They're a sort of interplanetary peacekeeping force."

"Great," Masha said bitterly. "Space cops, for when the fascism needs lasers."

"The Green Lanterns do have a better reputation than that. The Manhunters, however..." Starfire shuddered. "I have heard tales of how the Manhunters of Oa began an intergalactic war of oppression, decimating entire cultures they deemed to be unlawful. They were meant to be the perfect peacekeeping force, robots programmed to protect the innocent from the guilty, but their programming was inflexible. The program was discontinued centuries ago and replaced with the much more flexible Green Lantern corps, but there have been rumors that many of the Manhunter robots are still functional to this day, enforcing their rigid sense of justice, and executing any that oppose them."

"This says mask and uniform tho..." Masha said, and there was a grunt and cracking sound over the communicators.

"Cassandra are you okay?!" Batgirl called out, panicked.

"Fine, fine, just prying open this case to take a look." Nightwing's phone beeped. "There, that's what it looks like."

Nightwing brought out the phone and examined the image on the screen. A chrome mask, humanoid in shape, with a pronounced jaw and eyebrows, fixed in a dispassionate expression, next to a staff made of the same metal material, with visible circuit patterns cut into the staff's surface, on top of some type of clothing in dark blue with red trim.

Starfire shuddered. "That matches the depictions I have seen of the Manhunter robots. I have had many nightmares of those faces. Please be careful."

Themyscira

Training Grounds

The invading force was small, but powerful. Amazons, many having trained for centuries to fend off invasion from the World of Man, or the forces of Ares, or any number of other threats, relished in the combat. Edalyn Clawthorne and Queen Hippolyta fought back to back, the former having adopted her "harpy" form and alternating between unarmed combat and using her palisman staff to cast spells, and the latter relying on the shield and sword that had served her for centuries.

"You fight like an Amazon, Edalyn!" the queen called out with zeal.

"I'm gonna assume that's a compliment, Your Majesty," Eda said, grinning like a maniac as she tore into another parademon with hook and claw, "because your Amazons absolutely fight like Wild Witches."

"Among the highest," Hippolyta replied.

Eda, in between fending off one invader and the next, spared a glance towards the creche that Camila had been hustled off towards. "Mila, you'd better be safe over there," she muttered, then threw herself back into the fray.

Gotham

Warehouse District

Starfire, Nightwing, Batgirl, and Question continued to fight their way through the streets of Gotham back to the Intergang warehouse where Cassandra was holed up. Along the way, they rescued who they could, providing cover while civilians ran for the nearest shelter. The Wayne Foundation had constructed emergency shelters in every part of Gotham they could, in the event of natural disasters... or unnatural ones, which were more common in Gotham.

"Hey, boy blunder!" the familiar voice of on-again off-again supervillainess Harleen Quinzell called out.

"A little busy, Harley," Nightwing responded. "Could you maybe try to murder me after we're done dealing with the alien invasion?"

Harley pouted. "Awww, don't be like that, Baby Bat! I didn't even shoot you a little!" So saying, she pointed a revolver in his direction and pulled the trigger, the blast punching through the attacking parademon's armor and blowing it back into the wall behind it. "Aliens, huh?"

"Aliens," confirmed Question, resisting the urge to make the Ancient Aliens meme gesture, but only barely.

"Okie-doke!" Harley said, then pulled out her phone, hitting speed dial. "Hey, Red. Baby Bat says aliens." There was a pause. "Yeah, no, haven't seen him yet." Another pause. "Yes I'm sure he said aliens. What? No! I swear he said... Look, you wanna talk to him? He's right here. I'll put you on speaker."

She put the phone on speaker as promised, just in time for the heroes to hear Poison Ivy saying "not put me on speaker! I'm on speaker now, aren't I?"

Themyscira

Foundling Creche

Camila looked around the creche. Most of the children were dressed in what she had begun to identify as typical Themysciran garb, the light summery robes with minimal golden decorations. One, however, incongruously, wore jeans and a T-shirt. The shirt was, in the low torchlight, either black or midnight blue, with a ring of white stars on the chest. It was clearly mass-produced, and stuck out like a sore thumb. The girl's long, black hair reminded her of the pictures Camila had seen of Eda's older sister prior to their reconciliation, and her expression reminded her of Luz after her first return from the Demon Realm. Determined, a bit grim... Maybe without the self-recrimination Luz had. Hopefully.

"Hola, niña," Camila said softly. "I'm Camila. What's your name?"

"Donna," the girl said, sparing the woman a glance. "You're from outside, aren't you?"

"Si," Camila said. "I'm from a place called the United States. I suspect you might have heard of it."

Donna grinned. "Haha, yeah. I've always wanted to go. One of the big cities. New York, Gotham, Star City, Jump City...." She got a wistful look on her face that reminded Camila of the way Luz talked about the Boiling Isles.

Camila wrinkled her nose. "Gotham," she said, with a joking tone of disgust. "I have a sobrina who's a detective on the Gotham Police Department."

"Wow, really? Have you met Nightwing?" Donna's posture relaxed as the woman spoke.

"Not personally," Camila said, "although I know mija knows him. Sometimes I feel like she knows everyone. He was at the meeting we had the other day to get ready for uh...."

Donna made a moue of disgust. "Yeah," she said. "For uh. You can say it, you know. We know it's an invasion or we wouldn't be in here."

Camila noticed that the other girls were listening in on their conversation, so she turned slightly to face them as well as Donna. "Yes," she said. "It's an invasion. There are heroes all over the world fighting back against it, though, including the Amazons, so there's nothing to worry about, okay?" She smiled brightly and hoped her own worry didn't show through.

Gotham

Warehouse District

"Cassandra, we are here and we have brought the company! Please tell me you have not done anything dangerous!" Koriand'r called out as she entered the warehouse, followed by Nightwing, Batgirl, Question, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy.

"Define 'dangerous,'" Masha's voice called out, with a mild electronic distortion to it. They stepped out into the main warehouse floor, wearing a new outfit. Their body was wrapped in skin-tight, black armor with large features that appeared somewhere between a shoulder pad and a pauldron. The armor had red trim along the edges of the pauldrons, and along the front of each side of the chest piece, as well as down the sides of the arms and legs. They were wearing the same dispassionate mask they had sent the picture of. In a holster on their right hip was a small metal rod. "This thing is cool as heck, you guys. It's got telescopic sight, thermal, spectrographic analysis, energy readouts, you can track people's movements...  the suit is full body armor with some kind of forcefield and check this out!" They pushed off with their toes and as soon as they did so, jets fired from their heels, lifting them up off the floor. "It's super intuitive, too, like, zero learning curve."

They looked over at the group, hoping they would be impressed. Instead, Starfire had a look of terror on her face, Batgirl looked like she was looking for weaknesses to take advantage of, Nightwing looked singularly unimpressed, and Question... well, Question had no visible facial features and was therefore impossible to read. And behind them...

In a split second, Masha had pulled the baton from its holster and dropped back to the floor in a ready stance, alarmed at the presence of two of Gotham's most notorious criminals.

Starfire positioned herself between the manhunter and her friends, readying her energy blasts. "I will not let you harm my friends, manhunter! Release Cassandra or be dismantled!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Masha said, raising their left hand in a show of peace while still holding their staff in the right. "Starfire, it's me! It's me! I just... look, it's really scary out there and I just... I can't... self-defense my way out of the end of the world, right?" They reached their hand up and tapped a release on the side of the mask, causing the sides and back of the mask to collapse into the sides of the faceplate and taking it off. "Look," they said. "It's me. It's just me. My wife and her family are out there, fighting to save the world, and I just... I didn't want to feel helpless anymore."

"Look, all this is really touching, but the city is still being invaded by aliens out there," Poison Ivy said, irritated.

"Okay, what are they doing here?" Masha asked, gesturing at Ivy and Harley.

"Believe it or not," Nightwing said, "they're part of the plan."

"Would Batman approve of-"

"It was Batman's plan," Nightwing interrupted them. "Cassandra, you can access the Batcomputer from here, right?"

"Easy, squeezy, lemon breezy," the hacker replied, sliding back into the computing station they had set up earlier. "I need a better codename, though, Cassandra is just a name."

"Great, we need to see where the invaders are focusing their attacks so we can get out there and hit them where it hurts. Question, Batgirl, let's see what kind of gear we can find in here to even the odds."

"Okay, so... what about me and Red?" Harley Quinn asked.

"I really really really really hate to say this, but..." Nightwing hesitated, then managed to grumble out "see if you can find any gear you like."

Boiling Isles

Bonesborough Outskirts

The Owl House

"Ren?"

Raine Whispers-Clawthorne looked up from the scroll on which they had been scribbling notes for a new composition. Luz had introduced them to Catalan folk music, a style that they felt they could blend with their own style to create something synergistic. Ideally, using the music of two worlds would let them access some truly astounding magical effects. The end goal was to set up a means of communication that didn't involve opening the portal door. Pondering this all left them silent for a moment, so their adoptive son cleared his throat and called out a little louder.

"Ren, can we talk?" King asked, frowning slightly.

"Sure, bud. What's up?" Raine said, turning fully to face the young titan.

"Mom's not back yet," King said, simply.

"No," Raine said.

"And I haven't heard from my sister since yesterday..." King said, tapping his claws nervously in front of his belly.

"No," Raine said again. "No, there's... There's something happening in the Human Realm right now, and Eda and Luz want us to stay safe in the Boiling Isles until it's over."

"Wait, they contacted you?"

"Eda and Camila did, briefly, yeah. They're leaving the portal door sealed until it's over and they want us to not open it from our side until we hear from them. In the meantime, we need to take care of your niece for Hunter and Willow, yeah?"

King nodded solemnly. "Yeah," he said. The young titan was gangly and still a bit short. While he was in his early twenties, the fact was that by Titan standards, that was still quite young, and his emotional state reflected that. Still, his powers were growing, as was he, and he ached to be out there having adventures with his big sister again.

Themyscira

Foundling Creche

Camila thanked her lucky stars that she had gotten her daughter's story from multiple sources, including Luz, King, Eda, Willow, Gus, and Hunter, as well as the legendary versions of events spread through the Boiling Isles. Between them all, she had plenty of stories to share with the children to keep their mind off the invaders that were being fought off by their elders outside.

She tried hard not to think about Eda, out there fighting alongside the Amazons. She tried not to think about her daughters, out there fighting the invasion in Connecticut alongside their friends, spread out over the country, and other heroes around the world.

Instead, she told the children about the time her daughter's baby brother had accidentally sprayed her friends with a shrinking potion at a carnival. She talked about the time she had competed in a race on magic staffs, and had maintained a steady lead until her daring high-speed maneuvers made her baby brother airsick.

The Themysciran children listened with rapt attention, none moreso than Donna, who Camila guessed was in her late teens. The young woman clearly had a taste for adventure that Camila found familiar. She reminded Camila of her kids, both the Noceda kids and their friends. She made a note to introduce them when this crisis was over. She refused to accept a future where that wouldn't be possible.

Gotham

Warehouse District

Dick didn't know what a plasma-jet war hammer was, but he knew that in literally any other circumstances, it would be a terrible idea to let Harley get her hands on it. Not only, however, had she found it, she'd already given it a custom paint job. She and Ivy, who hadn't even bothered to look for equipment, had already left for Gotham City Park, where the ecoterrorist's plant control powers had more to work with.

Masha, pulling up security camera footage in the area, whistled. "Dang," they said. "I think... I think maybe Poison Ivy has been holding back until now. This is... this is terrifying." They adopted a solemn expression. "Nature," they said, "is healing. And she is kicking ass!"

"That's why recruiting her was always part of the plan," Nightwing said, securing his modifications to his batons. "All right, I'm equipped. Where do you want me?"

"Medical plaza," Masha said.

"On it."

"Starfire," Masha called out. "Business district, Wayne Plaza."

"I shall head there momentarily," the alien princess said. "But first, I wish to apologize for my assumptions. I did not mean to threaten you."

"No, I get it," Masha said. "Trauma triggers are a thing. I'll see if I can modify the helmet after this whole mess is over, but for now, it should help keep me alive. I hope you understand."

"I hope so," Starfire said. "I like you alive."

"I like me alive, too," Masha said, before turning their attention to Batgirl. "Hey, BG, you okay over there? I need you and Question both over at GCPD, they're under siege and it is not going well."

Boiling Isles

Bonesborough Outskirts

The Owl House

King had a horrible, sinking feeling. The worst part of it, though, was that it was identical to the feeling he had had once before, when his big sister had gotten between the Collector and the curse blast that dissolved her on the final day of the conflict against Belos. He tried to make the feeling go away; tried to reason it away; tried talking to Ren about it. It remained. It worsened. He was convinced that his sister was gone, again, and his father wouldn't be able to bring her back this time.

"No," he moaned, clutching his head. "No no no no no no no no..."

When Raine found him, rocking back and forth on his heels, tail wrapped around his feet, hands clutching at his head, they coaxed him into a hug and held him, rocking back and forth and humming Raine's Rhapsody and wondering just what their family was up to on the other side of the portal door.

Gotham

Gotham City Police Department HQ

Rooftop

Batgirl and the Question both grimaced, not that anyone could tell with the faceless antihero. "Okay," Batgirl said. "I need you to do the talking here."

"Right," Question replied. "No problem. Go up to the police commissioner and tell him 'Oh hey, Batman's out of town, I'm the backup, oh and by the way, this is Batgirl, any similarity to any relatives of yours, living or dead, is purely coincidental."

"You knew."

"This isn't my first rodeo. Okay, good, Bullock's gone, he's alone." So saying, Question shot out a zipline and swung down onto the GCPD rooftop, where Commissioner James Gordon was standing next to the Bat Signal. Batgirl swung down behind her.

"Damn," Jim Gordon said, staring out at the skyline. "Wherever he is, I hope he's fighting."

"He is," Question said, "but he's not in Gotham right now."

Gordon, startled, turned to face her. "You're... the Question, right?"

"That's me. We're here to help, but it would help to have a sitrep."

"We?" Gordon looked past Question to where Batgirl was standing in the shadows. "Ah. Another one, huh? What can you tell me about what's going on out there?"

"Alien invasion," the faceless vigilante said. "We've got every hero we know fighting back, and we've recruited a few... others."

"Others?"

"Batman had Nightwing reach out to Poison Ivy..."

"...and where Ivy goes, Quinn is sure to follow," Gordon said with a grimace.

"Exactly."

Themyscira

Foundling Creche

Camila had just finished describing her daughter's "King-ceañera" celebrating not only her eighteenth birthday, but also the completion of the Boiling Isles revitalization project and her enrollment into the Academy of Wild Magic, when the sound of fighting started getting louder.

"Okay, Niñas," Camila said quietly. "I need you to move back. Find a safe place to hide. Don't come out unless you hear an adult you know tell you it's safe. ¿Entienden?"

The girls nodded. The older girls started gathering up the younger ones and leading them back into catacombs behind and beneath the creche that were there for the express purpose of hiding children from invaders. Donna, being the oldest, took charge, hurrying the children along while trying not to panic them. The girls, for their part, did not complain, but some were on the verge of tears.

Camila readied herself. It had been years since she had been in a real fight. Throwing a baseball bat at Kikimora didn't count, she told herself, meaning it had been decades since she carried a bat with her for self-defense as a teen. She had been taking self-defense classes, and had renewed her old gym membership. She did not delude herself that she was any kind of warrior, but she was a mother and there were children to defend.

When the parademon broke through the creche defenders, she was more ready than she had given herself credit for, battering the thing with her borrowed bronze club with a fury pent up from years of stressing about her daughter's risky lifestyle choices.

It wasn't going down. It was barely fazed by her assault. She didn't relent. She continued battering away, trying to drive the creature back.

Seconds into the fight, when she felt her endurance flagging, there was a sound like a whip crack, and the fist of Donna Troy interceded between Camila and the parademon, driving the latter back into the wall with a force and speed that rivaled Wonder Woman's.

The young Amazon whistled. "Theá, lady, if you had powers, you'd've clobbered that thing like ten different times. Remind me not to piss you off."

"I have a lot of pent up stress," Camila admitted. "When your daughter is a superheroine, you need an outlet sometimes."

Gotham

With their new alien upgrades, the various heroes (and two villains) defending Gotham managed to at least slow down the Apokoliptian invasion, carving out safe areas for civilians to evacuate to. Even so, their backs were to the wall.

"Give me some good news, people," Nightwing said on their communicators.

"Well, the equipment is working," Batgirl responded. "They still have the numbers, though."

"Holy crap you guys, this uniform is SICK," Cassandra added. "I mean, I'm not, like, a great fighter or anything but whoo I would have been dead like six times over by now otherwise. WHOA!"

"Friend Cassandra, are you all right?" Starfire asked as she fought off wave after wave of parademons.

"Yeah, just... whooo, these jet boots maybe aren't as intuitive as I might have said back at the warehouse."

The heroes fought on, refusing to yield. It was a losing battle, but none of them acknowledged that fact. They simply fought on, faces grim.

Earth

Location Unknown

Time Unknown

Barry stared at the massive creature before him, the thing that knew his name. "Y... yes?"

"Oh, thank Titan," the creature said, in a voice that was familiar but oddly distorted, overlaid with a deep rumbling voice and an echo he wasn't entirely sure was sound, but something in his mind. His skin and brain itched to look at it. "When I arrived and you weren't here, I thought I had missed you and we had lost."

"Wh... what?"

The creature pressed a clawed hand against the bridge of its muzzle-like nose. "Barry can you do me a favor and close your eyes? Normally, doing magic in front of a single witness is easy, but doing it in front of every human being on the planet makes it incredibly difficult. Your scientific mind is making reality too firm for me to alter."

Barry, trembling, closed his eyes. "What do you mean 'every human being on the planet'?"

"Ah, much better!" came the familiar voice of Good Witch, although still with a bit of a bassy growl to it. "You can open your eyes now, Bar."

The Flash opened his eyes and the figure before him was much more identifiable, being a taller, more athletic-looking Good Witch, albeit still with the furry pelt from neck to toes. She had large bat-like wings draped over her shoulders and a glowing symbol above her head like a halo, nestled between two long, slightly bent horns. "Luz?"

She grinned back, revealing that the one fang hanging over her lower lip was part of a matched set. "That's my name, don't wear it out!" she said with a wink.

"Luz, what did you mean 'every human being on the planet'?"

"Yeah, so... you want the good news first or the bad news?"

Barry took a deep, steadying breath. "The bad news seems to be that we lost and everyone died. This good news better be phenomenal."

Luz took in a hissing breath between her fangs. "You're not wrong," she said cheerfully. "We're currently standing in the remains of a world where all our friends and family failed to save everyone. Together, we might've had a chance, but with me dead and you missing, the few heroes we had were stretched too thin. Even the villains weren't enough to turn the tide."

"You sound awful happy for someone talking about the death of everyone she cares about," the Flash said suspiciously.

"I am happy. First of all, my baby brother is still alive in the Demon Realm, along with my niece, who's a teacher at the Academy of Wild Magic, good for her, but secondly, you're here."

Barry frowned. "And that's enough to make you happy? What about your wife? What about my wife? What about my children?!"

"That," Luz said, "is the good news! See, until you existed, I was trapped here and now. I can't just... move through time. Not without getting lost in the possibilities. I've spent, oh, thousands of years with possibilities because of Darkseid, and I'm all discombobulated about it."

"What."

"So, I've been waiting here to find out if you had already been and gone or what, and you showed up and now you're here!"

"I still don't know how I got here. Now. Whatever." Barry shook his head trying to clear the fogginess that trying to decipher Luz's excited infodumping was causing.

"You ran," Luz said. "Duh. Like. That's your whole thing. Okay. You're pretty smart, you're a scientist - even if you are a cop, yuck - so I bet you can wrap your head around this. Have you heard the theory that if you oscillate one end of a wormhole, you can get the two ends out of sync so much that a ship going in one end can come out the other before it enters?"

"I've read the theory, but it's impossible to prove, we just don't have the tech."

"True, but what if you had a single body moving fast enough to open a wormhole, and erratically enough to oscillate it at the same time?"

"Impossible," Barry said. "You'd have to go, like, 1.6 times the speed of light, minimum, and not even I'm that fast."

Luz's grin widened. "Are you suuuuure?"

"Are you saying I can run faster than the speed of light?"

"Yep! And if you do it right, you can run through time, either direction, as far or as near as you like."

Barry stared. "How do you know this?"

"I've seen you do it, dude. Either you from the future or an alternate universe version of you, not really sure, but yeah. You can just... do that. And if you do that, I can follow you and not get sidetracked into Neo Tokyo or something this time."

"Okay, and then what?"

"Then, with you and me there to back them up, the others won't be so overwhelmed, and one of us takes down Darkseid or drives him off or something. I don't think I can win him over like the Collector or anything like that, especially not after the stuff I pulled on Apokolips, but, I mean, between you, me, Diana, and Clark, we can beat him. Bruce can think circles around him, and if you think fast enough, so can you. We got this, dude."

"And all of this destruction?" Barry said, gesturing at the wasteland around them.

"Never happened." Luz grinned. "And that's why I'm happy. So. Are you ready to save the Earth?"

"Lead the way, demon lady."

"No no no, after you, I insist," Luz said.

"Oh no, ladies first."

"Dude I literally cannot lead the way, we'll end up in the wrong universe, you have to go first."

"Oh. Yeah." And with that, Barry Allen, the fastest man alive, wasted no further time, accelerating to unbelievable speeds in the blink of an eye.

Next Time: The Omega Sanction

Chapter Text

The Omega Sanction is arguably the most destructive of Darkseid's uses of the Omega Force. When someone with the power and disposition of the New God of Apokolips wants to truly punish someone, he does not trifle with imprisonment, or even with death. What he does is far, far worse...

Boiling Isles

Above the Titan's Heart

All Saints Day

Luz, Eda, and King stared in dumbfounded horror as the Collector embraced the gigantic beast's muzzle. "It's okay, Luz," the Collector called out, "we can all be friends now!"

Luz, seeing Belos begin to charge up his corrupting breath weapon, climbed aboard Stringbean and the two of them moved at a speed that Flapjack would have found impressive.

It's okay Mami, Stringbean said. We've done this before.

The snakeshifter palisman kept saying things like that, but Luz didn't mind because Stringbean was absolutely still her sweet, perfect Power Noodle. They interposed themselves between the Collector and the sickly green flames, Luz holding a hand up to conjure forth a shield to protect them.

Luz reassured the Collector that they hadn't done anything wrong, that some situations were more complicated and couldn't be resolved with kindness and forgiveness.

Then the pain started.

The fungal growth spread along her fingers, and it burned like she had dunked her hand in the boiling sea. As it spread, the pain grew, and Luz could feel her nervous system being torn apart, atom by atom. She opened her mouth to say something to King and Eda, but all that came out was a scream. Her perception twisted, making the few seconds remaining in her life seem to drag on for interminable hours as the fungus consumed her.

Under the effects of the Omega Sanction, a victim is taken from one parallel universe to another, living increasingly worse lives, with increasingly worse deaths at the end of each.

The Place Between

The Titaness shifted Her... weight wasn't quite the right term, but it was the most appropriate. In the Place Between, She was most aware of the vast fractal that was Her own existence. She was aware that that existence was itself spun off from another, which was spun off from another, and She was aware of other spun-off existences similar to Her own.

She was not omnipotent, though to most mortals, the difference was negligible.

She was not omniscient, though the amount She knew vastly outstripped people with linear perceptions.

It was, in fact, possible to catch the Titaness off guard.

Stringbean hissed at Her from behind and She spun around, eyes widening in shock. Her own Stringbean slithered out from her voluminous curly mane of hair, and hissed cheerfully at her multiversal twin.

"Well, hello, little one!" the Titaness said. "What brings you here by yourself?"

Gravesfield

Connecticut

Halloween

Luz stared in horror as the Belos-possessed Hunter seized Flapjack out of the air.

"Goodbye, Evelyn," the witch-hunter sneered, and Luz, furious, leapt at him, unthinking.

She wrenched the palisman out of his grip, tossing the little cardinal aside so that he could flutter away to safety, and felt something sharp and wet and cold. Looking down, she noticed that he had driven his twisted scythe of an arm into her abdomen.

"Well, now look what you made me do." Belos/Hunter sighed. "Ah, well. Not every soul can be saved." He shifted his rot-tainted limb back into an arm, grabbed her by the entrails, and pulled.

Something kept Luz from going into shock, but the pain caused her legs to give out beneath her.

Belos kicked her down the slope, where she rolled into the filthy water flooding the Old Gravesfield graveyard.

She was vaguely aware of her friends and mother, above the water, screaming in horror. She felt her mother's arms around her, pulling her towards the surface.

Then, she was aware of nothing.

The Omega Sanction is an endless punishment. No one can escape on their own. All they can do is suffer, life after miserable life. Death after horrific death. For all eternity.

The Place Between

"Something," the Titaness mused, frowning. "Is keeping Me from reaching her still." She frowned, her brow creasing slightly. "It burns. It is anathema to My power."

Stringbean hissed. She had spent years with the Titaness by this point. After being separated from her witch, not once, but twice now, she was being kept apart from her, and she knew her witch was suffering without her.

"No," the Titaness corrected. "Not death. Death is natural. This is something... other."

Stringbean hissed again.

"Clever little power noodle," the Titaness said. "Yes, yes. You are still connected to her, and even before you hatched, you existed. Even before she carved you, your wood was there. Yes. We can use this."

Stringbean grinned. the other Stringbean, the larger one, grinned as well. They would save their witch, the two palismen and the Titaness who felt so familiar.

"It pains me to think of your witch suffering the way she is," the Titaness said, "but at this point, we can but wait. Each time she comes through here, however briefly, gives us an opportunity to reach her. Do not lose hope, small one."

The Demon Realm

The Boiling Isles

The Titan's Skull

Day of Unity

Luz cursed herself. She had fought so hard to get here, to save everyone from the draining spell, to confront the mastermind who was trying to destroy this place she loved.

She had thought herself ready.

Now, as the stone crept across her body, approaching her head, she felt the chill of death, of the end of her life approaching, as her body slowly turned to something resembling granite. It felt... familiar.

She started trying to bargain with Belos, anything to get the petrification to stop.

Suddenly, the strangest thought struck her.

No.

Don't give him the satisfaction.

She wasn't sure if the thought was hers, but it was compelling.

Her vision went black.

The Place Between

The Titaness stared intently at a spot in the viscous black fluid that made up the floor of the Place Between. Her massive shoulders tensed up. Her already bestial posture hunched more. She shifted Her hips, readying for a quick, decisive movement.

There was a subtle flash of light beneath the surface, and the Titaness lashed out, Her boney claw darting beneath the surface to drag a startled Good Witch out from beneath the surface.

"What... the titan... was that?" Luz gasped.

"You keep coming back here," the Titaness said.

Luz stared at Her. She was enormous. Even bent over into a nearly quadrupedal stance, She towered over her. Her body was powerfully built. Limbs like tree trunks rippled under dark fur. On each shoulder, symbols glowed. Luz was able to identify the one on the left shoulder as some sort of variant of the Titan's plant glyph. That, and the vines writhing around that bicep confirmed her suspicions. The other shoulder had the Titaness's fire glyph on it. 

The Titaness's face looked vaguely like a human face stretched over a broad muzzle like an elk or deer. It reminded Luz of Pan in the Guillermo Del Toro movie, but something about it was familiar, too.

"Why do you keep coming back here?" the Titaness asked.

Luz swallowed. "I... I don't know," she said.

The Titaness nodded slowly. "Tell me about the first time you died," She said.

Luz recounted the time she had died saving the Collector from Belos, and then been resurrected by the Titan.

The Titaness nodded, staring off into time and possibility. "All right," She said. "Tell me about the second time you died."

Luz swallowed. "The... the second?" She frowned. The memory was there, somewhere. Something tried to hide it from her, but it was there. She saw a flash of a cruel face, grey, with glowing eyes. A beam of energy. "Darkseid," she said in a low whisper.

The name seemed to trigger something in the Titaness. Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly, then narrowed. "There you are," She reached out with one hand, her power coursing from her into the void overhead. "He... he fractured your timeline. This is vile. He has your soul lashed to the wheel of fate, dragging you through the worst timelines his power can put you through."

"C... can you free me?" Luz asked. "My world is fighting for survival."

The Titaness sighed. "It will take time," She said. "I am holding you here in the Place Between, and I will have to let go to do it. You will go back into the cycle, unable to save yourself. Your lives and deaths will continue to get worse. It will... be very painful."

"More painful than the time Belos disemboweled me after killing Flapjack?"

The Titaness nodded, sadly.

Luz grimaced, then steeled herself. "No me importa," she said. "My friends need me. Mi Mamá is fighting those parademon things without powers, even."

"It is worse than that. After you died, tied turned. Barry Allen stretched himself to the breaking point trying to fill in everywhere he could get to, and he broke the time barrier doing so, cutting himself off from the rest of the fight." The TItaness waved a hand and one of the cubes of the Place Between stretched itself into a rectangle the size of a large TV, displaying images of the fight. "With neither you nor the Flash, the other defenders of Earth fell soon after. Barry arrives in a future where Darkseid has won, humanity has been destroyed or enslaved, the Earth ravaged by the same forces that have rendered Apokolips into the world you were imprisoned on. By the time the Flash arrived, Earth was destroyed."

"So... even if I get out of this, we're doomed?" Luz growled in frustration, her feet beginning to submerge in the fluid of the Place Between.

The Timestream

No Place, No Time

"And then I got sucked back into the Omega Sanction and the next world was one where I ended up recruited by the League of Shadows and died at the hands of like, the son of Batman or something?"

"Nightwing? Or the new Robin?"

"No no no, he has, like, two more after the new one? And one of them is an assassin? El petirrojo asesino. Anyway, he goes through a little Golden Guard phase before he finally levels off into a pretty cool dude, and I was sent after him along with this grimwalker-like thing called The Heretic? And I got killed by Robin it sucked a lot."

"I think we're almost there," Flash said. "Are you sure you have time for this explanation?"

"What do you think it's San Dimas rules? Nah, it's Back to the Future rules, my dude, it's we got all the time we want, we can time travel, rules. Anyway, this is important. Have you ever seen Dark City?"

"Oh, with the dude from Ever After, right?"

"That's... that's the guy but what a way to describe that movie."

"Look, I had a crush on Drew Barrymore."

"Who hasn't? Anyway, between me, Stringbean, the Titaness, and the Titaness's Stringbean, we decided to Dark City the Omega Sanction. As long as Darkseid was making me live multiple lives, we hijacked the thing to make those lives useful. I have spent the last, um.... I think forty thousand years? Give or take? Learning how to fight, how to use magic, how to use Titan magic... and most importantly, what it'll take to kick Darkseid off Earth for good."

"And what's that?"

"Mostly, you, Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman," Luz said with a grin. "But also just a whole bunch of paradoxes."

"Paradoxes?"

"You guys are powerhouses and no doubt about it. After the whole training montage from Apokolips, so am I. But Darkseid still has the numbers advantage. You and me? We can fix that, so long as we don't really stress a bunch about causality."

"I... feel like stressing about causality is kind of important though? Since we're time traveling and all?"

"You better learn to relax real fast then, hermano, because we're here."