"Nova, what just happened?"
//It appears everyone over the age of 18 in the world has disappeared.//
"All adults are gone," Joseph asked, dazed. The words felt unreal even as he spoke them, like saying them out loud might make them false. The implications were massive—death and chaos on a scale never before seen, with over seventy percent of the world simply gone in an instant.
Babies held by their parents, kids in cars, children undergoing important surgery. The images came unbidden, stacking one atop another, each worse than the last. He couldn't save them all. No matter how fast he was, no matter how much power he wielded, the math was brutal and absolute.
Joseph's mind went blank, a rare and terrifying silence where plans and contingencies usually lived.
Wait, did that mean…
"Show me footage of the Team."
The Team in the mission room on tables appeared on his HUD. M'gann was floating above the table while everyone else lay still. But there was an empty table. One space conspicuously bare.
Kori was absent.
No. This couldn't be. His chest tightened, something cold and heavy settling behind his ribs.
//It appears something had gone wrong. Footage from earlier showed Martian Manhunter telling Batman and Red Tornado that M'gann's mind wrested control from him, and some of the Team believed they died and are in comas. If not awoken soon, they may all die in reality.//
[All the adults disappeared in the world? That bitch. I was going to do that.] Klarion protested before shrieking in agony as Joseph allowed the Order magic in the Order Nth Band to flood the Chaos Nth Band.
Joseph understood why Savage had been sowing chaos for centuries. When faced with an immortal, sadistic force that could not be reasoned with or erased, brutality became less a choice and more a necessity. For that reason, Joseph took grim pleasure in Klarion's screams.
The screams reminded him he couldn't lose focus yet. Satisfaction could come later. First, he needed results. He needed answers. He needed Child to scream louder than this.
[I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please make it stop.] Klarion begged, panic bleeding through the psychic link, leading Joseph to relent.
[Speak. Tell me what you know. And you better not be wasting my time.] Joseph demanded, his mental voice cold and razor-sharp.
[She cast a spell to split the dimension into two.]
At that, Joseph released a slow, controlled sigh of relief. His initial fear—that the adults had been erased entirely—was thankfully wrong, even if the alternative was hardly comforting.
Klarion continued. [I would've needed help from more magicians and a magical gem to act as a conduit for the spell, but she's powerful enough to do it alone. The most suitable locations are places where people disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Anjikuni Lake Village. The Flannan Isles Lighthouse. Dyatlov Pass. The Village of Hoer Verde. There are hundreds of other places she could've chosen.]
Joseph tried casting a spell to locate the epicenter of Child's spell, but just like when the Justice League Dark tried to locate Child, it was blocked.
No matter. Even if there were thousands of possible locations, it wouldn't slow him down. Distance was meaningless to him. There was no place he couldn't reach with boom tubes and speed alone.
First, he had to deal with the Team.
He opened a boom tube to the Cave and walked through.
Everyone except Robin, Kid Flash, and Superboy appeared to be in a deep coma, their vitals stable but their minds trapped elsewhere.
If M'gann managed to wrest control from Martian Manhunter—someone far stronger psychically than Joseph—there wasn't much he could do directly.
Only his defense was among the best in the universe. His offense was at the level of an average New God and wouldn't be able to do much.
Using Amazo tech to simulate Martian physiology wouldn't work either. Amazo had no true consciousness and could not replicate the depth of a Martian mind, only surface-level abilities like density shifting and shape-shifting, as Joseph had seen in the footage when Amazo fought the Justice League.
Then Joseph figured something out.
Why did he need to elevate himself to M'gann's level… when he could bring M'gann down to his?
He was an energy vampire, after all. Psychic energy was still energy.
Walking up to the floating M'gann, he began absorbing her psychic output carefully, deliberately. It would leave her exhausted and in need of days—maybe weeks—of recovery, but it was a price he was willing to pay.
Eventually, she had been weakened enough for him to enforce his will on the simulation under her control. It came easy to him with all the times he'd done so in the Dream State.
The Team—who had been trapped in an unwinnable scenario, replacing a fallen Justice League during an alien invasion—snapped awake. Several gasped. Some shouted. Others stared blankly, shaken and traumatized, having watched friends die while believing it was real.
That was something they could unpack later with Black Canary.
//Child has resumed her attacks.// Nova intoned.
Joseph had bigger problems than delayed teenage trauma. He needed to keep moving. He generated a hologram projector with his nanites that would project his form, allowing Nova to brief them later as he stepped away.
Then he willed open a boom tube to the latest scene of Child's cruelty. Humanity, he knew, could be crueler still—and many teenagers would exploit the sudden absence of adults.
"Nova, auto-translate and broadcast the following message throughout the world."
**
| Fawcett City - October 16
Billy Batson was with his Uncle Dudley, watching a news report about Captain Marvel stopping Ibac and Sabbac, when his uncle vanished mid-sentence—along with Cat Grant on television and every other adult in Fawcett City.
Billy's first instinct was to transform, but fear stopped him. What if becoming Marvel made him disappear too?
So he ran through the streets of Fawcett City. He made sure no one saw him as he entered a derelict photo booth and ordered the computer to teleport him to the Justice League.
Unfortunately, the computer did not recognize Billy as Captain Marvel, so he had to come up with a different plan. As he walked past an electronics store, Nova appeared on every television screen.
"Several disasters are happening right now—"
**
| Metropolis - October 16
Cassandra sat with her friend Sharon and the other kids in her class in the auditorium of her elementary school, where Sebas had taken charge and gathered the whole school.
She wondered how Sebas was the only adult in the world, but she chalked it up either to the fact that he wasn't human—given Cassandra had never once been able to read him, unlike how she could occasionally read Joseph's body language—or the fact that Joseph was some sort of magician. Though that was a secret, and she was good at keeping secrets.
Sebas gave everyone permission to use Lexpads and Lexbooks to pass the time until the adults came back, or else there was no way a bunch of kids would stay still.
So everyone's screens showed the same thing as the superhero Nova appeared. He was cool, but Cassandra thought Joseph was cooler.
When she grew up, she'd be a secret magician just like Joseph.
"-But don't lose hope."
**
| Gotham City - October 16
Jason Todd found himself with older teenagers named Barbara, Bette, and her boyfriend Andrew, along with several other young children, as they listened to the broadcast.
He hoped his mother and Mr. Jack were okay.
"Elders, take good care of the younger ones."
**
| Dakota City - October 16
Rocket saved a bus full of children that hung precariously off a bridge.
"Keep each other safe,"
**
| Paris - October 16
Two children clutched each other as Nova spoke.
"Et attendez le retour des adultes."
And wait for the return of the adults.
**
| Taipei - October 16
On the other side of the world, children found comfort in the message.
"因为我会找到解决办法—"
Because I will find a solution.
**
| Roanoke Island - October 16
It had been ten minutes since Child had split the dimension in two.
Joseph, in between saving cities during Child's and his dangerous game of tag, went to hundreds of potential locations where Child's spell could be located.
Then he felt it.
Chaos magic. Dense. Powerful.
A red barrier encircled the entire island.
Bingo.
"For I am Nova."