| Salem - October 16
Within the Tower of Fate, a gathering of powerful mystics stood in a wide circle around the tower's great bell.
Kent Nelson. The Phantom Stranger. Jason Blood—now fully transformed into Etrigan the Demon. John Constantine. Zatara. Joseph. And one unexpected addition: a villain known as the Wizard, recruited by the Phantom Stranger for this desperate effort.
"Let us begin," Kent Nelson said.
They joined hands. Mystic energy swelled, coiling through the chamber as the bell began to hum—then rang. The air vibrated as they chanted in unison.
"FATE FATUM REGIT, ORDINE CAECUM VINCULUM TRAHO. IGNIS SATANAE IN UMBRAS TENUIUM LOCUM PRODIT. EGO QUISQUE EST NUNC HIC VIDETE CAELUM ET TERRAM. ADAM OMNES PATEFACIO QUOD NUNC LATET IN ILLIS. UMBRA UMBRA DISSECA ET FILIAM CHAOS IN LUCEM TRAHO."
Moments passed.
Nothing happened.
Confusion rippled through the circle, disappointment settling like a weight.
"How could we fail to locate her with this much power?" Zatara asked.
"This Chaos brat, with powers so complete, Our paltry magic suffered swift defeat," Etrigan growled. For some reason the demon only spoke in rhyming couplets.
"Then we make her come to us," Constantine said. "And we already have the bait."
"Summon Klarion," Kent replied, holding the Helmet of Fate just in case. "Let her come to you. The goal is to lure her here so we can destroy her anchor. I've loosened the Tower's entry wards, and we've prepared a containment spell to trap her the moment she arrives."
Every minute Joseph spent here, hundreds—perhaps thousands—were dying. It had been nearly ten minutes since Child's emergence, and she had already struck sixteen cities at random, leaving fire pillars and unnatural disasters in her wake. The frequency was only increasing.
The League had issued global warnings, but no government could mobilize within seconds, and none possessed countermeasures for supernatural catastrophes of this scale.
The League itself was scattered across the globe, stretched impossibly thin. Child appeared in a new city every thirty seconds.
Sebas guarded Cassandra and her school just in case. The Team, inexplicably, remained trapped in Martian Manhunter's psychic simulation—who himself was hardly useful against apocalyptic firestorms.
If Joseph had known Child would appear so soon, he would have accelerated production of the androids he'd designed—the Luthor-bots. Bureaucracy had cost them time.
Worst of all, Child's physical location remained unknown. No pattern. No trace.
Joseph took grim comfort in one truth: the longer she existed on the mortal plane, the higher the death toll would climb. Destroying her anchor was the path with the fewest total casualties.
He loosened control of the Chaos Nth Band, allowing Klarion the capacity to possess him. To his surprise, Klarion hesitated.
[What are you doing?] Joseph demanded through their psychic link.
[Did you feel that pulse when she appeared?] Klarion replied, panic bleeding through his voice. [She's going to kill me—kill us.]
[Help me stop her, or you're dead either way.]
A long pause.
[…Fine.]
Klarion possessed Joseph's body. The gold elements of the Nova suit flared crimson.
With a sweep of his cape, the Phantom Stranger relocated to the roof of Tower as Klarion began his work.
From the backseat of his own body, Joseph watched as Klarion raised a thin pillar of fire from the floor to the clouds, pulsing Chaos magic outward—an unmistakable beacon.
Minutes dragged on.
Five passed.
Child did not come.
Joseph reclaimed control, ending the spell as his suit's colors returned to normal. "She's not taking the bait. She knows Klarion's here—and she doesn't care."
[That psycho enjoys prolonging suffering even more than me,] Klarion muttered from the band.
"Nova, any visuals?" Joseph asked.
//None at the moment.//
Joseph turned back to the others. "Child's attacking globally. I'm needed out there. If you locate her, have Stranger teleport me or contact me through League comms."
Without waiting for a response, he opened a boom tube and vanished.
**
| Sydney - October 16
Joseph emerged into devastation.
A volcano rose at the heart of the city, rooted beneath a pillar of fire 100 feet wide. The sky burned crimson, ash clouds swallowing the horizon as lava flooded the streets. Buildings lay crushed or displaced, sirens screaming beneath the roar of chaos.
Red Tornado was already present, launching tornadoes to cool the lava and rescue civilians—but there was only so much one android could do.
Good thing Joseph had arrived.
He channeled the Speed Force, slowing time around him. The priority was minimizing casualties before addressing the volcano itself.
Joseph erected several dome-shaped protective forcefields over densely populated areas. He cooled lava with water tornados, siphoning water from the Parramatta River using Red Torpedo and Red Tornado tech, and moved those trapped by the flows with his anti-gravity field. Many would feel nauseous, but better motion sickness than death.
Next, he tackled the ash clouds. Using his weather wand, Red Tornado tech, and gravity manipulation, he created a tornado to lift ash and toxic gases above the breathable atmosphere, siphoning the clouds into space—a maneuver he had performed six days earlier at Yellowstone.
Now, the Chaos feedback loop.
The pillar of fire at the volcano's base was the key sustaining the eruption. Drawing on Vandal Savage's centuries of occult knowledge about Klarion, Joseph recognized the structure: ritual anchor, symbolic focal point, self-sustaining loop. Normally, it could not be attacked physically—but he possessed anti-magical metal that could.
Alien Excalibur appeared in his hand as he dove into the fire pillar, enduring the heat and chaotic energy that threatened to melt even his nth-metal suit. Focusing his Nova Sense, he located the conceptual spine—the line where Child's will bound reality to Chaos—and drove his vibroblade through it.
To ensure permanence, he cast a spell:
"ORDO DISSOLVE, CHAOS LIGAMEN! NUNQUAM RECURRE FLAMMA!"
The spell shattered the Chaos binding anchoring the pillar to reality, severing Child's connection to the volcano. The fire pillar would collapse seconds later, unable to reignite.
Finally, Joseph turned to the volcano itself. He projected an anti-gravity lattice beneath the surrounding buildings and terrain, freezing everything in place. Drawing on Red Volcano's geokinetic tech integrated into his nanites—and amplified by the Strength Force—he interfaced with the magma chamber. He halted the flow, redistributed pressure, and locked fault lines into inert positions.
Then, combining geokinesis with the Strength Force, he opened a controlled subduction pocket beneath the volcano. The magma sank silently into the earth, and the volcanic cone collapsed inward. From the city's perspective, the volcano and fire pillar would vanish instantly—no seismic waves, no trace of magic or chaos.
Joseph released the Speed Force, and time resumed normally. Only the tornado siphoning ash and the wreckage left behind signaled the disaster that had almost been.
As the sky gradually shifted from red to blue, he let out a small, exhausted sigh. Focus like that was draining. Nova topped him off with psychic energy, revitalizing his mind.
'Thanks, Nova,' he intoned.
Civilians below began cheering as they realized the danger had passed. Joseph allowed himself a brief smile but didn't need their approval—he would act the same without it. With great power comes great responsibility, and he carried more than most could imagine after inheriting Vandal Savage's mantle as Earth's protector.
Red Tornado approached. "Are you responsible for the disappearance of the pillar of fire?"
"Yes," Joseph said, his attention already on incoming alerts. Videos of Manhattan's reversed gravity, red waters in Poseidonis, demons in Taipei, and blizzards in Agra—all accompanied by pillars of fire—appeared on his HUD. Child was still at large, spreading chaos.
"You saved Sydney. Why do you look unhappy?" Tornado asked.
Joseph rolled his shoulders and opened a boom tube. "What's there to be happy about? Job's not finished."
**
| Douala - October 16
Joseph reappeared wherever Nova detected disasters.
At each site, he unraveled Child's Chaos magic as thoroughly as possible before vanishing to the next crisis.
He could feel her awareness sharpening. Each time he repaired the damage, Child escalated—creating disasters faster. Joseph answered by pushing himself harder.
The League and Justice League Dark were helping, but together they had saved only a handful of cities in the time Joseph had preserved dozens. So Joseph also enlisted the help of the Network and Secret Society of Super-Villains through his mind control nanotech.
He had just stabilized Ibiza after a catastrophic flood when he crossed the globe to Douala, Cameroon, where thousands of Mami Watas surged from the Wouri River. He cut them down without hesitation. As his blade slid free from the last creature, the air went still.
[She's here!] Klarion screamed.
Joseph's danger sense flared. He twisted aside just as a small, drifting crimson flame passed where his head had been. It looked harmless—until it struck the ground.
The impact obliterated the earth, blasting out a crater the size of several blue whales.
"So you're the one restoring Order with Klarion's Chaos magic," said a small blonde girl in a tailored school uniform, standing beside a diamond golem. She spat the word Order like an insult.
She instantly reacted and vanished in a flash of red—a smart move, since Joseph's sword was where her anchor had been less than a second later.
Her voice, however, lingered in the air: "Let's see you counter this."
Then Joseph felt a powerful wave of magic as if reality shifted.