Starfire keeping secrets didn't make Joey feel uncomfortable. Everyone had secrets of their own.
If he obsessed over things like this all the time like Batman—hiding his own secrets while prying into others'—he'd eventually turn into a complete psychopath.
Still, he couldn't help but wonder just how significant a secret it must be for Starfire not to get angry even after learning that Joey was considering siding with Krypton.
Ever since recovering from her severe injuries, Starfire's mental state had been… off. Though, to be fair, she hadn't exactly been normal even before that.
After some rather thorough and intimate 'exploration,' Joey did indeed uncover a massive secret hidden within her.
During her previous battle with another Superman, when her chest had been pierced through… she had actually died.
It wasn't a near-death recovery like Joey had assumed. Tamaraneans didn't possess that kind of resilience. At that moment, Starfire had already stepped into the realm of the dead.
The land of death was silent and dark. Before she could even glimpse much of it, a pure white light pulled her back.
That light was warm and pure, like a gentle breeze brushing across her soul—yet powerful enough to reverse death itself, bringing her spirit back into her body.
It was an infinite light capable of creating life.
Its name is—
"What is it called?"
Joey asked eagerly, even stopping what he was doing.
A force that could bring the dead back to life was irresistibly tempting—even to him.
"Mmm."
Noticing Joey's lapse in focus, Starfire shifted into a more comfortable position. Turning to face him, she wrapped her legs around his waist and leaned close to whisper in his ear:
"If you want to know… you'll have to try a little harder."
Meanwhile, Batman was working with a newly reconstructed Cyborg to calibrate the Watchtower's surveillance and sensor systems.
This system was precisely why the space station was called the Watchtower.
In another universe, the Justice League had used it to monitor Earth and the entire solar system for emergencies, allowing them to respond instantly.
If the station were still in orbit, monitoring everything across the solar system would have been effortless.
But now, the station was buried deep beneath Gotham.
A sensor array designed for space didn't function well underground.
And considering that placing it back in orbit would make it nothing more than a target for the approaching Kryptonians, Cyborg—under Batman's approval—had hastily modified the system so it could function deep within layers of rock thousands of meters underground.
This was its first activation.
Using administrator privileges, Batman fully powered up the Watchtower's sensors, finally extending his vision across the entire planet once again.
Very quickly, he detected an anomaly.
A ripple-like marker appeared on the global map—triggered by the geological hazard detection system.
Batman frowned, suspecting the sensors still weren't properly calibrated:
"Why is there a magnitude-four earthquake in the Arctic?"
The probability of earthquakes occurring at the North or South Pole is already extremely close to zero. Especially in the Arctic, there isn't even an exposed continental shelf—everything is covered by thick ice.
Even if there were intense tectonic activity beneath the Arctic, the mechanical energy waves would be absorbed by the massive ice layer. So for an earthquake above magnitude five to occur in a place like this is clearly abnormal.
"The sensor system has completed its third self-check. This isn't a sensor problem."
Standing nearby, having just finished maintenance, Cyborg began retracting the cables extended from his new body back into the console. After seeing Batman attempt to clone a new body for Hawkgirl, he had followed suit and built himself a new body—one even better than the one he had lost before.
At this moment, he had returned to his original half-human, half-machine form—a state where his high-speed processors were once again influenced by the emotional hormones produced by human flesh.
This kind of chaotic feeling was… honestly, great.
Otherwise, Cyborg wouldn't be able to feel this level of secondhand embarrassment in such an awkward situation.
"Uh… yeah. Nothing's wrong in the Arctic either. This is definitely just a sensor malfunction."
Batman turned slightly and gave Cyborg a sidelong glance—the kind of look reserved for idiots.
"So what you're saying is: the abnormal seismic readings might be caused by a sensor malfunction… but at the same time, it's unlikely that a sensor malfunction would cause abnormal readings?"
Cyborg couldn't help but sigh internally—this really was a younger version of Batman. Totally different from that old bat. He had perfectly summarized the contradiction in his words.
"Anyway, let's not dig into the earthquake thing anymore!"
With a thought, Cyborg manipulated the console and instantly suppressed the seismic readings, which were about to reach magnitude five.
"No one understands electronics better than me—this is a system error."
If preventing someone from dying of social embarrassment counts as saving a life, then Superman and that Green Lantern girl definitely owed Cyborg two lives already.
Originally, Cyborg shouldn't have known the cause of the earthquake. Superman's Fortress of Solitude was also a product of Kryptonian technology, and in theory, it could block external detection.
But that theory relied on one important condition: that certain two people would remember to turn off their communication devices before… doing certain things.
At the very least, that would've spared Cyborg from relapsing into his habit of secondhand embarrassment on the spot.
When the communicator detects the wearer's life signs dropping rapidly due to injury, or spiking sharply due to entering combat, it automatically activates.
Fortunately, as the administrator of the communication network, Cyborg had forcibly disconnected the two micro communicators located in the Arctic before things escalated.
Otherwise, if Shazam had heard it, it would've seriously damaged the kid's mental health.
When Starfire was first resurrected, she only felt her consciousness wrapped in a dazzling white light. The moment she opened her eyes, she had already been reborn.
As she left the silent realm of death and returned to the world of the living, she heard a single, ethereal sentence echo within her soul:
[Koriand'r of Tamaran — Reborn!]
Weak from the decay of the entire universe, it hid within a dimensional rift deep inside Earth, recovering its strength.
It is the Life Equation, the continuation of the light of creation—the will, essence, and primordial light of the universe.
It is connected to all life in existence.
It is the Life Entity.