"How did it go? You're not hurt?" The Valkyrie cared about her lover. She'd seen Black Thea's soul as well, knew that the woman was already gone. Which meant only one enemy remained.
"I'm fine. Fine." Thea's reply was casual. The most dangerous moment had already passed. She could sense the Spectre entering this universe. The young miss had completed her own task—and, in soap-opera terms, rescued a wandering soul along the way. The next fight had nothing to do with her.
Five meters tall. A tattered green robe and hood draped across him. The Spectre had finally arrived on the battlefield. And standing far across from him was his old opponent—Eclipso.
Their war had stretched across thousands and tens of thousands of years. The Spectre could fight at full power. Eclipso, sealed behind the Heart of Darkness, was always in this half-bound state. He had basically never won across all those millennia.
To both of them, this fight—predetermined in outcome—was more like recreational entertainment.
Once a century, they would each take a turn out in the world and have a brawl. Eclipso was sealed in the Heart of Darkness—but in a way, wasn't the Spectre similarly sealed inside this great world?
If Black Thea had ever known that the towering evil archvillain she'd struggled against for years was also the same archvillain who came out every century to find a luckless host, that the host-fight-bodysnatch-fight cycle had played out countless times before—there was no telling how she'd have felt.
As if sensing his old opponent's arrival, Eclipso slowly emerged from the heavy mist. He was still wearing Black Thea's body, but the appearance had shifted dramatically. The eyes elongated, the narrow lids leaking black mist, ears tapered like an elf's. Standing across from the five-meter-tall Spectre, Eclipso looked dainty—but the layered demonic aura around him had condensed into something almost solid.
The two heavyweights, reunited a century later. Not the first time. Not the last. Just one more clash on a long, long road. Both were calm. Both squared off without making the first move.
The young miss had already moved into spectator mode. She tugged Diana with her, retreating.
Diana had been almost out of energy earlier. She'd recovered some, but she was still tired. She'd need a long stretch of rest after this. Plenty of divine power lost—but the gains weren't small either. The Valkyrie's confidence was back. The thing that had been undermining her wasn't anyone else; it was Thea, the cheat-mode young miss. Now that she'd come to grips with her own strength being more than respectable, her face was lit up with confidence—confidence rooted deep, the kind that left Thea momentarily dazzled.
"What are you staring at? ...So, who do you think wins?" Catching Thea looking, Diana elbowed her gently and asked it casually.
Even without asking, she already knew the answer. She still wanted the confirmation.
"The Spectre, no question. Eclipso is half-sealed, and we've taken several whacks at him along the way. He's not pulling more than half his combat capability into this."
They were having this conversation in low voices, well away from the battlefield.
The other fronts had finally checked in. Superwoman was captured. Superman, in his own words, didn't know why Lex had just exploded mid-fight.
Thea didn't comment. She knew exactly why. With Black Thea dead, there was no one keeping the metahuman-ability stew inside Lex's body in balance. He had nowhere to discharge it. He blew himself apart. There was no second outcome.
Johnny Quick had also died. Bad luck for him. He'd been bagged by the Rogues like a parcel and the secretary had wired Captain Cold the payment. Right after the handover finalized, Thea had deployed her Death Domain across the world, severing every cross-dimensional connection.
That included the Speed Force dimension. Without the Speed Force accelerating cellular regeneration, Johnny's severed leg sprayed blood like a fountain. Captain Cold wanted to save him. But without the Speed Force, taking a Cold Gun blast would just kill Johnny faster. They hadn't been ready for any of it. Less than thirty seconds, and he was gone...
Sea King made a fast escape—straight into the ocean. Considering the size of the seas, even Aquaman didn't bother chasing.
Worth noting: Earth-3 Hal Jordan's Power Ring. Thea had forcibly knocked it offline. Then, surging on Diana's courage, the ring had come back on—and mutated into a genuine Green Lantern Power Ring.
It found a member of the government office staff who'd come in with the follow-up forces: Jessica Cruz.
Maybe Diana's feminist worldview had quietly influenced the ring. Maybe it had been the ring's own choice. Either way, the first Earth-born female Green Lantern was born.
The Crime Syndicate had been completely shattered. Earth-3 was greeting "peace and justice."
Government troops were sweeping the planet for every resource, every piece of intelligence, every piece of technology.
Even the bleeding-heart Superman and Flash didn't have many objections to raise. They could only ask the troops not to take ordinary citizens' supplies. The technical archives going to their own government, that they could understand. Ass shapes brain—they were Earth-1 superheroes after all.
The Rogues quickly accepted government employment as a vanguard unit, helping clear out the gangs entrenched in the back streets.
The Suicide Squad fit right in too. Bad guys, all of them—and they understood how Earth-3 villains thought better than anyone. The Black House government fell to a strike team they led personally.
The fight between the Spectre and Eclipso had begun. Both opened with sweeping energy attacks. Eclipso's specialty was manipulating mortal hearts, but his true form was sealed; he relied more on borrowing universal laws to fight. If you forced a label on him, he'd be a mage. The Spectre liked to brawl. He more or less qualified as a warrior.
Eclipso pushed his own height up to five meters as well. The longer Thea looked at his appearance, the more it struck her as something straight out of demonic iconography—pointed ears, fangs, claws, purple muscle all over. Whether he was meant to look like that, or whether the elderly Presence had simply set the design that way when running an alt account, was anyone's guess.
The Spectre roared again and again. He liked to use raw physical strength—overwhelming his opponent through sheer energetic pressure.
Eclipso could only play to his own strengths and away from his weaknesses. He kept the energy strikes coming. Ghostly blue beams hammered into the Spectre's body. The Spectre returned in kind, every blow at maximum force. The two heavyweights had been at each other from the opening bell with everything they had.
They fought hard enough to crack the world. The shockwaves drove hundreds of meters (~330 feet) deep into the earth. This battlefield would probably remain a zone of churning energy chaos for the next century or millennium.
Thea and Diana retreated to the Earth-3 Watchtower. By this point Batman was busy downloading every file the Owlman base had. As for Thomas Wayne Jr. himself, he had vanished into the crowd. Facial recognition, satellite tracking, every method came up empty. At least, Batman said nothing was coming up—a claim Thea felt entitled to keep a question mark over.
Then there was Deathstorm, who had turned into a glowing orb in front of dozens of witnesses. Whether he'd self-destructed or escaped, no one was sure. The young miss played innocent—didn't see a thing.
Aquaman reported the same on Sea King: didn't see anything. The Justice League searched as best it could. Whether any of these missing people would actually be found was a real question.