Superman had spent the last three months locked in a battle of wits with Checkmate. The intelligence agency kept leveraging the advanced weaponry inside the Fortress of Solitude, while Superman countered by gathering evidence of Checkmate's threat to global security.
Batman, meanwhile, was neck-deep in his own mess. The Joker had kidnapped Alfred. Did the Joker know their real identities? Had the Bat-family been fully exposed? Nightwing and the others demanded answers, and Bruce's response was flat: "Don't panic. It's not a big deal."
It turned out to be an astronomically big deal. In the end, the Joker fell from a ravine—fate unknown—but the seed of distrust had already taken root among every member of the Bat-family.
Oliver Queen—Green Arrow—had apparently either been drinking too much or gotten his brain caught in a door. Two months after Shado gave birth, he came clean about having a secret child. The missus was furious. She packed up the baby and went home to her parents.
After that, the Flash got framed by the Thinker—DeVoe—and thrown in prison.
Green Lantern Kyle Rayner had moved in with Soranik, only to discover she was Sinestro's daughter. He ended up hunted across the galaxy; last anyone heard, he was hiding somewhere several thousand light-years from Earth.
Aquaman was locked in another round of his eternal love-hate grudge match with his brother. Diana, missing Thea, had sunk into a low mood of her own.
In short: the Justice League crew had spent the past three months getting collectively stomped. As if by some unspoken agreement, they'd all vanished from the public eye at once. The only silver lining was that Hal Jordan had returned to the Green Lanterns and rejoined the superhero roster.
"I see... sounds like a real headache." Thea offered no opinion, just a quiet murmur.
Diana looked her up and down. Twice. "Goddess of Death? Where do you stand compared to Highfather now?"
An excellent question. Thea immediately straightened up, radiating the gravitas of a grandmaster. "We're about even."
Diana's eyes were pure skepticism. Thea pressed her lips together. "You don't believe me?"
"I believe you, I believe you—fine, more or less." Diana thought it over. "So is this the end of the road for you? Is there anything beyond this?"
The question deflated Thea instantly. She knew the Endless existed beyond her current ceiling, but how to bridge that gap was a deeply frustrating puzzle. Burning more faith-power wouldn't yield many more insights at this point, and disasters even bigger than Blackest Night were vanishingly rare.
Early-stage progress as a New God was rapid, but at her current tier, every step forward was agonizing.
She could push as far as Yuga Khan's level at most—but so what? The power was immense, sure, yet Thea couldn't shake the feeling that he'd gone down the wrong path.
Stacking divine seats to your body's limit, then swapping out the weaker ones for top-tier seats, until you carried nothing but the strongest—it struck her as grinding for gear. Prioritizing raw power while ignoring what you actually needed as a person. Unsustainable.
Look at Yuga Khan's track record. The man was half-unhinged. Thea strongly suspected that hoarding too many top-tier divine seats had scrambled his mind.
Become a powerful idiot? She'd rather not.
Diana read the answer on her face. Having always followed Thea's trail to chart her own growth, the idea that there was no trail left ahead was a blow.
Telling Diana "there's no path forward" was partly deliberate—a nudge to add some pressure. Thea could observe death through the lens of life, obtain the Life Equation, and almost certainly break through to a new tier within the death hierarchy. But Diana might not be able to walk that particular road.
The remaining options—the Judas Covenant of sin, the Silver Coins of redemption, even that lingering shadow from Earth-2—none of them were necessarily a fit for Diana either.
They had reference value, certainly. But finding something that truly aligned with who she was? That was the hard part.
The divine seats most suited to Diana were sitting in Highfather's hands—things like Justice and Equity. Unfortunately, Highfather had treated them reasonably well. Turning around and killing Highfather crossed even Thea's line. She filed it away as a contingency plan—one she absolutely could not share with Diana.
Thinking of Highfather, Thea paused. "I can't go back to New Genesis. But I poured a lot into the Magic Legion. If you offer to take command, I don't think he'll refuse."
Diana frowned slightly. "Me? Lead the Magic Legion?"
"But I'm no good at magic. I'd rather use a sword than a spell." The warrior goddess muttered, sensing that her partner was making some kind of strategic play—and worrying she'd botch it.
Betraying Highfather was Diana's hard line. But she'd spent the overwhelming majority of her life within the Greek pantheon. Highfather, wary of the couple's closeness, had adopted a hands-off approach with Diana—come or go as you please. Overall, her loyalty to the New Gods wasn't particularly strong. It was more her personal code of honor holding her in place.
Thea clapped her on the shoulder. "Since when does leading the Magic Legion require being a mage? Who made that rule? Does a leader need to know everything? You're overthinking this. I'd put it at seventy percent odds Highfather says yes."
Diana was only half-convinced, but seeing Thea's unshakeable calm, she decided to trust her.
She opened a Boom Tube. Less than half an hour later, she was back.
"Judging by that look on your face, it worked?" Thea asked serenely.
"Did you two discuss this beforehand?"
"Of course not. It's simply in the multiverse's best interest." A two-sided standoff could destroy the multiverse with one wrong step. A three-way balance, where both sides kept each other in check, was the best guarantee of stability.
If Thea had broken away from under Darkseid, his temper would have demanded she be crushed immediately.
But Highfather wasn't like that. He was principled, far-sighted, and thought in terms of cosmic safety. Allying with Thea against Darkseid offered too many advantages.
Still, as the Goddess of Death, she couldn't lean too far to one side.
Neutral, tilting toward justice—that was the balance she needed. Sending Diana to inherit the Magic Legion meant having a bridge between both factions when the time came.
"I can never keep up with all this scheming..." Diana scratched her cheek, half-comprehending.
"Adorable!" It was a rare expression. Thea pounced on the moment—phone out at Flash-level speed—and snapped a photo.
"Into the embarrassment archive!" She uploaded it to her private server before Diana could blink. Diana understood magic well enough, but modern technology? Electronics? Hopeless.
"You—!" Diana's reflexes were fast. She snatched the phone, pulled up the photo, and paused. In the picture, she looked dazed and slightly confused.
"Thea Queen! You are dead—" They chased each other through the empty village like a pair of ordinary people.
When the mood hit its peak, there was naturally another round of intimacy. Thea, freshly boosted, finally had the upper hand. Even Diana's multiple counterattacks couldn't reclaim the initiative against the onslaught—but Thea had underestimated the warrior goddess's tenacity.