Beast Boy breathed fire toward the ground in a long sweeping arc, trying to keep the three armies from crashing into each other by deterrence. It worked for about thirty seconds. Then the soldiers started jumping through the flames anyway out of rage for the opposite sides, some of them catching fire as they did, stumbling forward burning and screaming.
Finn meanwhile looked upward and watched the sky.
There was a kryptonian up there. Female, moving fast above the battlefield. He turned it over in his head, trying to work out if it was Zala or Lara from this distance. Then a second one appeared, male this time, black haired, moving toward the woman.
That must be Kal-El, he thought.
Then the female kryptonian punched him. Hard enough that Kal-El dropped like a meteor into the middle of the armies below. The armies swarmed the crater immediately and Kal-El had to fight his way out before he could get anywhere. Somehow he made it to where Diana and another female kryptonian were standing.
Diana was on her knees beside what was left of her mother. Kal-El crouched beside her, trying to get her attention, saying something to her.
Queen Annisa dropped beside Diana and whispered into her ear. Finn couldn't hear it from above but he could see Diana's face as she heard it. Annisa was telling her something that required a decision. Diana's expression shifted as she processed it.
Diana got to her feet. Her hair was a mess, her face even worse. She turned toward her forces and called upon the Amazons, her voice echoing across the field. Then she turned and hit Kal-El so hard he flew out of sight, shouting at her army to charge and avenge the death of her mother.
The Amazonian army charged with even more ferocity than previously.
"Cease this madness at once!"
Batman had already jumped. His cape spread wide to slow the drop and he landed near the crater Kal-El had made, drawing his sword as he recovered.
Kal-El was pulling himself up from the ground, coughing. "Bruce, thank the gods…" He got one knee under him. "It is good to see you—"
Batman's sword came up and pointed at him.
Kal-El paused, confused.
"You tried to kill me," Batman said. "Brother."
"Brother? Kill you?" Kal-El's face was genuinely lost. "What are you talking about?"
"You stabbed a piece of stone into me," Batman said. "If not for the fact that I am like you, perhaps I would have died. No… actually… the opposite. If not for the fact that I am like you, it would have been a light wound. But alas…"
"I don't get it, Bruce." Kal-El pushed himself fully upright. "Can someone, anyone, explain what the hell is happening here?!"
—
Something hit Beast Boy from the side.
An energy blast, greenish, coming from a figure floating nearby. The dragon form shuddered and the passengers lurched hard, everyone grabbing for a handhold. Finn got both hands around the ridge in front of him and held.
When he got a proper look at the attacker his first thought was the Joker. Milky white skin. Green hair. A messy and scarred face. His body looked corrupted, the skin mottled. He almost looked like a demented version of the Joker, that much is clear.
"Lex Luthor!" Richard then shouted from further back, gritting his teeth as he held on. "The Green Man!"
"Lex Luthor?!" Finn said out loud. Isn't that the fucking Joker? How is it that he is Lex Luthor now?!
Raven raised her hand. Black energy shot from it and hit the man directly. It did nothing. A greenish field stopped it completely and the man didn't flinch.
Finn took a closer look at the man's hand.
A ring. Green, glowing, the energy coming off it in waves.
A Green Lantern ring.
A Joker named Lex Luthor wearing a Green Lantern ring…. What the fuck is happening?! He ran that through his head once, then again, and it still made no sense whatsoever.
Then from the ground below a voice cut through the noise.
"Green Man!"
Queen Annisa, standing in the middle of her army, her face twisted with rage. She raised her hand and the lightning that came out of it cracked the ground beneath her feet, rippling outward. The bolt hit the Green Man directly and he dropped out of the sky.
It was at this moment that Finn knew. He was way out of their league.
Then, suddenly, the female kryptonian in the sky, who by now Finn had guessed was probably Queen Lara, fell out of the sky. She was hit by someone, another kryptonian by the looks of it, female too. It was definitely not Zala though, as Zala was on the ground.
She hit the ground hard, and the thing that had hit her landed on top of her a moment later, one foot pressed to her chest. Finn looked at the attacker.
It was Queen Lara.
The exact same face. The exact same hair. Standing on top of another Queen Lara with her eyes building up a red charge.
"You have too much power to live," the one on top said. "...What are you?"
The two of them looked at each other.
The battlefield had gone briefly quiet around the crash site. Shocked at the sight of two Queen Lara fighting one another.
Then a voice from somewhere in the middle of the soldiers.
"Fire!" someone shouted. "Use fire on them!"
Batman turned toward the source. Alfred. Standing among the soldiers with his helmet on.
A one handed man nearby lifted a crossbow, lit a bolt, and fired it at the Queen Lara on the ground.
The bolt touched her and her skin instantly burned away.
What was underneath was not a queen. Pale white, alien-like, the shape of it shifting as it scrambled upright. It ran, turned invisible before anyone could move. The battlefield stood in silence around the space where it had been.
Richard was quiet for a moment.
"They will look like us," he said. "Sound like us. Mingle with us. But they are not like us…"
Constantine's prophecy. Interpreted as the Els from the very beginning. By Constantine. But now, that case looks to be thrown out the window. Now, whatever that thing was, the prophecy was almost definitely pointing at them.
In the middle of the battlefield, Constantine stood without moving, the fighting going on around him, his mind clearly somewhere else entirely. He had read his own prophecy very wrongly, and now he was realizing it in the middle of the war he had helped start because of it.
"Alfred!" Batman called. "How did you know? How did you know the weakness of that… monster?"
Alfred pulled his helmet off.
"I'm sorry, Bruce. I'm so sorry." His voice was weak, shaking. "I didn't know they were here…"
"They?" Batman said. "What is that, Alfred? Do you know something about it?"
"You always know that I am a survivor of a war…" Alfred said.
His skin suddenly turned green. His eyes went red. His face shifted into something very alien to the human mind. Yet, it was not as unpleasant as the pale-white creature. His looks… are more dignified.
"That war," Alfred said, "was not in this world."