Inside the ship, Brainiac rose slowly from his throne.
He stood before the holographic projection floating in the air before him, studying it with the cold, methodical patience of someone who had catalogued entire civilizations. The image depicted a group of Earth's defenders gathered below,nd amongst them, unmistakably, the symbol of the House of El.
Kal-El.
He was of no particular concern. Brainiac knew every weakness of a Kryptonian by memory inside and out.
What gave him pause were two individuals standing amongst the group,both bearing mismatched eyes, both radiating an energy density his sensors were struggling to fully quantify. The girl especially. Her physical description matched nothing in his documented records across thousands of catalogued species and civilizations. And yet the readings coming off her were extraordinary,more powerful than Kal-El, more powerful than Kara, more powerful than anything he had encountered on this planet so far.
That was worth noting.
He shifted his attention briefly. His connection to the nanobots implanted in Kara's brain confirmed her location,still on Earth. Imprisoned, most likely. From what he was seeing gathered below, she may have actually needed her full strength to deal with these particular individuals.Interesting.
But first,he needed to see what they were capable of.
Brainiac pressed several controls on his arm without further deliberation.
Dozens of sections across the ship's hull split open simultaneously. A massive swarm of robots poured out into the sky in every direction, darkening the air around the ship like a storm front. And descending smoothly beneath them,came Brainiac's sleek android form.
"People of Earth."
Brainiac's voice carried across the city below with mechanical clarity.
"Reckoning is upon you. Surrender,and I will make your world a jewel of the Kryptonian Empire." A pause, perfectly calculated. "Should you resist, I will burn this world to ashes. And from its ashes, I will build the Kryptonian Empire regardless." Another pause. "Either way,this is going to happen. The only question is what condition your world is in when it does."
His gaze swept across the group below and settled briefly on Max and the others.
Max quietly suppressed the urge to simply snipe Brainiac out of the sky with a ki blast, ship and all,and get it over with. He let the urge pass.
Then he turned to Thena.
"You said you wanted a fight," he said. "You've got one."
Thena's smirk was immediate. She was already gone before it fully formed, blasting off toward Brainiac at full speed.
"Wait,Max" Superman spoke.
Max raised a hand without looking at him.
"Calm down. I wouldn't have sent her if she couldn't handle it." He watched her streak across the sky. "Hopefully this will be enough to satisfy her appetite for a while."
"And after this," Max added, his gaze sliding sideways toward Terra with a slight grin, "I'll show her why it was pointless in the first place."
Terra slowly leaned away from him.
-----
Thena stopped directly before Brainiac and his army, hovering calmly in the air between them.
"How about no?"
"Resistance was to be expected," Brainiac said without inflection. "Fire it is then."
Every robot in the swarm surged toward her simultaneously. Thena didn't move. Didn't flinch. The laser beams they unleashed struck her body and dissipated against her without leaving so much as a mark. The swarm closed the distance,and then found themselves stopped cold, shoved violently backward by an invisible force that radiated outward from her in every direction.
Thena raised one hand toward them almost lazily.
"Almighty Push."
The gravitational force erupted outward, hurling the entire army back in a single violent wave,robots scattering across the sky like debris. Even Brainiac was pushed back, sliding several meters through the air before stabilizing.
He processed the data for approximately one second.
Then he burst forward at incredible speed and drove a punch directly at Thena's face.
Thena reacted. One of the Truth Seeking Orbs drifted smoothly from behind her and positioned itself between them as Brainiac's fist made contact and was simply gone up to the wrist. Erased on contact without ceremony.
Brainiac's eyes widened and before he could process it, Thena's hand had already closed around one of the remaining orbs. It shifted and elongated in her grip, morphing into a sleek black staff. She swung it in a single clean arc.
Brainiac was bisected at the waist.
She kicked his top half away without looking at it.
Recognizing the threat his android body had failed to neutralize, Brainiac immediately redirected the army. Every robot's eyes lit up simultaneously as they trained their weapons on Thena,kryptonite blasts converging from every direction, combining mid-air into a single thick beam of concentrated energy that screamed toward her.
Thena twirled the staff in her hand and blocked it without effort. The beam dissipating.
She paused for a moment, looking at the staff. Then she compressed it back down into a sphere. It began to glow in her palm,softly at first, then brighter.
She tossed it into the middle of the swarm.
Her free hand formed a single seal.
"Particle Style,Atomic Dismantling Jutsu."
The glowing orb expanded,swelling outward into a gigantic, blinding white cube that rose into the sky and quietly swallowed everything within its boundaries. The robots. A significant section of Brainiac's ship. All of it consumed by the white.
When the cube vanished,Nothing,not even dust. Just empty sky where an army had been moments before.
Down below, the silence was profound.
Cyborg's mouth was open. Superman's was too. Only now, watching the last of the white light fade from the sky, had the full reality of Thena's transformation truly registered for either of them.
They hadn't noticed it when they arrived here in the heat if the moment,but it seems thena has now also acquired the transformation that Max once had when they first encountered Darkseid and apparently, he'd also given her one of his eyes.
They were pulled from their thoughts by a dull thud as Brainiac's bisected top half crashed to the ground directly before them.
It began to move but Max's hand was already in motion. A receiver rod left his fingers and punched clean through its head before it could produce a single word. The android went still.
"Dang," Terra muttered.
She turned toward Max. The others were already looking at him too.
Max returned their stares evenly. "What?"
"Nothing," Cyborg replied, turning his attention back toward the damaged spaceship to see what Thena would do next.
Then a loud crackle split the air behind them.
Everyone spun instantly.
Wonder Woman's sword was drawn before she'd fully turned. Batman's hand moved silently to his utility belt, fingers hovering over his batarangs. Cyborg's arm morphed into a White Noise Cannon and leveled itself at the source. Terra stepped behind Max without thinking, positioning herself away from whatever was about to happen.
A rectangular portal crackled and hummed before them, its edges unstable and flickering.
Then a voice came from the other side.
"Wait,we have no hostile intentions!"
"Then come out," Cyborg said, his cannon still trained on the portal.
"Okay. I'm coming out slowly."
Two hands emerged first, open and raised. A body followed carefully,and Mr. Terrific stepped through, hands still up. His eyes swept the group immediately and landed briefly on Max. Something shifted in his expression,just for a fraction of a second, a barely perceptible widening of the eyes, before his face returned to neutral which did not go unseen by Batman.
The rest of the group emerged behind Mr. Terrific one by one,and that was when the real reactions started. Another Superman. Another Wonder Woman and-
"Constantine?" Cyborg asked, squinting.
He sounded genuinely unsure whether to be relieved or concerned.
End of Chapter..
Chapter 44:Heroes from a different timeline
Chapter 45:The truth about the multiverse.
Chapter 46:Galaxy Impact!
You cab read advanced chapters at patreon.com/darker knight
An:was up guys hope ur good after a long 150+ chapters the final major arc has finaly ended at currently chapter 173 which means the fanfic will be ending at around 179-180 chapters,thank you so much for reading guys much appreciated.