Erza hardly had time to think. The moment the shockwave of Superman's entry blasted Kenji out through the reinforced wall, she was already summoning steel to her hands. The vacuum left by Kenji's sudden exit was filled with the acrid scent of ozone and the realization that their primary protector and friend had been removed from the board in a fraction of a second.
"Requip"
The blade and armor materialized mid-motion, her boots skidding against the cracked linoleum tiles as she pivoted. Behind her, the "Catwoman" hit the floor in a messy, disjointed heap after Kenji's initial slam. Selina Kyle coughed, a raspy, wet sound that shouldn't have come from a living woman. Erza didn't spare her a second glance, she knew a predator when she saw one, and the woman on the floor was no longer human. Erza had no reason to spare the woman, especially in a world like this.
Selina scrambled up with animal elegance, her movements jerky and unnervingly fast. Her pupils had thinned to razor-wire slits, reflecting the dim emergency lights of the ward. She bared her fangs, a low hiss vibrating in her throat as she ignored Erza and launched herself straight toward the most vulnerable target in the room, or at least who she thought it was, Harley Quinn.
Harley, for her part, scrambled backward, her eyes wide as her former friend turned undead thief bridged the gap in a single, desperate leap.
But before Selina could reach her prey, a whip of dark, violet-tinged flesh lashed through the air with the crack of a breaking sound barrier.
SHLICK.
Erza saw the limb fly before she even processed the strike. She heard the high-pitched, inhuman scream that followed. Then she saw the black, viscous blood spray across the ward's peeling wallpaper, steaming as it hit the cold air.
Selina stumbled back, clutching the ruin of her shoulder, her left arm had been severed cleanly at the stump, cauterized instantly by the sheer intensity of the mana flowing through the weapon that had done the deed.
The whip recoiled, shifting and hardening as it retracted into a familiar sleeve. It was Vandalieu's arm, now normal again, though the veins in his pale hand still glowed with a faint, necrotic violet. The boy's eyes were as dull as ever, showing no triumph, only a cold detachment.
'Guess Harley holding him that close paid off for her,' Erza thought grimly. The boy-monarch didn't even look at the woman he'd just maimed, his expression remained a flat, polite void that was somehow more terrifying than the vampire's rage.
Erza didn't give the vampire a chance to regenerate. She rushed forward, a blur of scarlet hair and silver steel. She knew that in this world, mercy was a luxury that would lead one to a shallow grave.
In a single, decisive arc, she removed Selina's head from her shoulders. The head rolled twice across the floor, the expression frozen in a mask of predatory shock before the body began to dissolve into grey, foul-smelling ash.
"We need to go. Now," Erza said firmly, her eyes scanning the room. "Kenji needs our help, and we are sitting ducks in this room."
She had barely glimpsed what had taken him, but the sonic boom and the red-and-blue blur left no room for doubt. It was Superman. And from everything Kenji had told her about this world's "Man of Steel," she knew this was the one fight he had desperately wanted to avoid. If Kenji was struggling, they were in a race against time.
"Ah, doll, I don't mean to kill your vibe, but we have other things to worry about ourselves!" Harley shouted, gesturing wildly toward the gaping hole in the wall.
Dozens, no, hundreds, of vampires were pouring toward the asylum like insects drawn to the scent of a fresh kill. The noise of the battle outside, the thundering blows and gravity pulses, was acting like a dinner bell for every starving undead in Gotham. They were coming from the sewers, the rafters, and the shattered windows.
Erza turned to assess her remaining charges. Vandalieu could clearly take care of himself, he was currently manifesting extra eyes along his neck to track the incoming swarm.
Harley seemed determined to use the boy as a human shield, but in doing so, she was ironically under the best protection available. But Sora was still out cold, a dead weight on the floor, and Jim Gordon, despite his grit, was still just a man with an aging revolver. She had to protect them, which meant she couldn't rush out to Kenji's side without leaving them to be slaughtered.
"Requip — Flame Empress Armor!"
Her Heart Kreuz plate dissolved into blazing scarlet scales, heat blooming around her like a furnace awakening in the heart of winter. She slashed her sword through the air, creating a literal boundary of roaring fire across the ward's entrance. The flames would help even a little, Kenji had told her that vampires were weak to fire.
She rushed into the fray, staying just far enough to cull the front lines without abandoning the group. These vampires were different from the one she had faced before, the girl she battled. They were weaker, frenzied fodder driven by instinct.
She cut through them like wheat, her blade trailing arcs of fire that turned the undead into pillars of ash. Each swing was a testament to her mastery, a dance of death that kept the tide at bay.
Nearby, Vandalieu was a catastrophe in miniature. He had stopped pretending to be human. Blades sprouted from his back like a metallic forest. Extra limbs fired mana spheres so dense the air crackled with the sound of breaking glass. Even Jim Gordon was holding his own, his jaw set as he fired precise shots into the swarm.
"Holy water rounds," Jim grunted, catching Erza's surprised look as a vampire exploded into dust upon being hit. "People really think I'd walk around a vampire city without prep? I'm the Commissioner, not a rookie. I've spent thirty years watching Gotham's monsters, I know how to pack a suitcase for Hell."
But despite their efficiency, the numbers weren't decreasing. They just kept on multiplying. The very ground seemed to be vomiting up more of them, fueled by some dark, distant will.
The city seemed to groan under the weight of massive explosions from what she assumed were the quakes from Kenji's fight, they were rocking the foundation of the asylum, threatening to bring the entire structure down on their heads.
Erza realized with a pang of guilt that even if she went to him now, she might just be a distraction in a battle between monsters like those.
Then, Jim's phone rang, and he answered it. After a while of taking, he caught the call and his voice roared over the gunfire.
"Good news and bad news!" Jim yelled, his face slick with sweat.
"Yes?" Erza shouted back, cleaving a vampire in half from shoulder to hip.
"Good news, Barbara's close! She's coming from the West with a recovery bird! Bad news, the Vampire King himself is on their tail with his inner circle! They're moving fast."
Erza's heart sank. The king himself?. If the King's followers were even half as powerful as that Wonder Girl, this rescue mission was about to become a massacre. They were out of time for surgical strikes. They needed a distraction big enough to buy them time as they escaped.
"We need something to keep the vampires occupied while the plane lands!" Erza commanded, looking at Vandalieu.
"Okay," Vandalieu said flatly.
Large, nauseating amounts of mana began to pour out of the small boy. Erza actually shuddered, her instincts screaming at her to get away from him. She hadn't felt this much raw magical pressure even from Acnologia, the Black Dragon.
It was a cold, suffocating tide that made the shadows in the room stand upright and the light seem to dim. It felt like death, heavy and absolute. Like it would swallow you whole.
Van slammed his palms into the earth. The ground shook as it dissolved. Stone, rebar, and the remains of fallen vampires began to swirl together in a violent vortex, animated by his dark will.
"Death Construct: Golem Legion."
Four colossal golems, each the size of a two-story house, clawed themselves out of the Gotham soil. They were faceless, brutal shapes of earth. They began to thrash through the vampire ranks like giants among ants, their every footfall crushing dozens of the undead into the dirt.
Just then, Erza felt a searing heat against her chest. The shard on her necklace, the Chaos Resonator, began to pulse with light. The Chaos Shard was near. Very near. At that exact moment, a wave of vampires burst from the West, led by a figure standing atop a nearby skyscraper. The King. The vampire King.
A black-ops plane, scarred and battered, roared overhead as it came out of the horizon heading towards them. It banked hard, descending rapidly toward the asylum's courtyard as the side hatch slid open. "Let's go! Let's go! " voices screamed from the interior.
Erza didn't hesitate. She grabbed Sora and Jim, slinging them over her shoulders like sacks of grain. She swapped her armor for Flight Armor, increasing her speed as she leaped toward the plane's open hatch. Vandalieu snatched Harley with a single extended, multi-jointed limb and leaped after her, his golems roaring as they continued what they had been made for.
"Wait! What about Kenji?!" Erza screamed as the plane began to lift, the engines whining as they fought for altitude.
Dozens of vampires who made it pass the golems leaped into the air, but they hit an invisible wall mid-air, a purple shimmering barrier.
Vandalieu didn't speak. He simply pointed to the group chat interface floating in the corner of Erza's vision.
Erza gripped the edge of the hatch as she read what Kenji had sent, her knuckles white. She looked down at the purple dome that now encased a square mile of the city like a gilded cage. Inside that dome, Kenji was alone with Superman, Shazam, and the approaching King and hundreds of vampires.
"Let's go," she said, her voice trembling with a rare flash of raw emotion. She pulled the hatch shut, cutting off the sound of the wind. "Kenji said he'll make it back. And the idiot doesn't have the permission from any of us to die just yet."
Van nodded at that, as he kept his eyes on the dome below as they started leaving the city.
The plane punched upward through the ash, leaving the roaring golems and the purple prison behind.
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