The three ice-users — Mera, Caitlin, and Frost — each grabbed a mercenary and got to work experimenting with their water and ice control. As for the subjects' comfort — sorry, as long as no one died, anything was fair game. These men had shown up armed and uninvited at private property in the middle of the night. Hard to argue they were the victims. Their adjacent abilities had never been properly measured against each other.
Some heroines had an academic spirit about it — the cold trio, meticulously testing their powers side by side. Others were simply there to have fun — Livewire and Poison Ivy, both former villains in their original timelines, left their respective opponents in states that bordered on helpless.
Spread evenly, it worked out to roughly one mercenary per heroine, maybe a little more — hardly enough to satisfy. Most knocked their target down and stepped back. This was recreational. About as competitive as a company year-end raffle — participation was the point.
Cassandra, small and absolutely lethal in her focus, was the exception. She ran a precise circuit of the entire battlefield, methodically dropping every last mercenary before she finally stood down.
When he saw his entire strike force taken out like a punchline, Damien Darhk would have to be a special kind of oblivious not to recognize what he'd walked into. But wanting to escape and being permitted to escape were entirely different things — Raven had him locked down, and his magic against the princess of Trigon's bloodline was simply embarrassing.
Thea pulled Felicity aside for a quiet word. Felicity gave her an odd look — why is she standing there with both hands clasped behind her back like some kind of seasoned master? — but didn't overthink it. The former hacker called in a drone, its massive wide-angle camera lens sweeping across the assembled heroines. Spotting the camera, most of them immediately shifted into their best poses.
Blissfully unaware he'd become set dressing for a group photo op, Darhk kept fighting with desperate futility — until Raven's magic and Cassandra's fists together finally put him down.
The man who had spent a lifetime believing himself at the absolute ceiling of human potential — his sorcery formidable, his martial skill relentless — had been thoroughly and efficiently proven wrong. The world is terrifying. That was his final thought before unconsciousness took him.
"Everyone gather 'round!" Thea called out. She directed the heroines to stack Darhk and his crew into a tidy half-meter wall of bodies, then lined everyone up along the back of it.
The goons who were still conscious didn't dare twitch. They served as remarkably cooperative set dressing, even the ones only pretending to be out cold.
Click.
Twenty-nine official members, plus Stargirl — a self-invited plus-one who'd brought nothing but enthusiasm — thirty heroines total, frozen in a single frame. Solemn faces, ridiculous faces, everything in between. The Justice Girls' first official group activity, documented for posterity.
Deep night. The precinct was down to a skeleton crew, so the captives were trussed up where they lay and left to wait for morning pickup.
The heroines exchanged good nights and drifted back to their rooms.
Thea and Diana's room.
"Come on, untie me already... it feels really strange," Thea said, doing her best impression of a girl sweetly pleading.
The smile on Diana's face was threatening to overflow entirely. "Let's play a little game first. A role-playing game, I was thinking..."
[Five hundred words omitted.]
The mercenaries were delivered to Star City Police Department at first light. The officers — unaccustomed to having this many criminals to process — were thrilled, and hauled everyone in with great enthusiasm.
Darhk himself was brought back to the Oversight Commission. Thea had originally planned to hand him to the D.E.O., but given that organization's impressive track record of losing high-value prisoners, her own facility seemed more reliable. She found him a cell. He was small-time as far as she was concerned.
The demonic idol that had been the source of his dark power was smashed on the spot. Trading with demons for borrowed strength was a classic League of Assassins technique — dangerous, and with a hard ceiling on how far it could take you.
She did recall that in the show, this heavyset pale-faced man had planned to cleanse the surface world with a nuclear warhead and retreat underground, where he'd apparently cultivated a rather impressive cornfield. Thea couldn't help wondering whether he had some kind of latent agricultural talent. A very unusual place to put your skill points. Well — if he was genuinely good at farming, Nevada had plenty of desert that could use the help.
A routine interrogation was scheduled before processing. Standard intake questions — name, gender, occupation. What nobody expected was for that standard intake to produce results.
"Commissioner, he says he's affiliated with an organization called H.I.V.E.," Diggle reported, barely containing his excitement. "The interrogation specialists asked three separate times. No indicators of deception. According to his statement, it's a large and well-staffed operation."
Thea's interest sharpened. "H.I.V.E.?"
She picked up the transcript and read through it.
Reassuring, on one front — no Hydra, no Umbrella Corporation analogue. H.I.V.E. looked more like a mutual grievance society for the wealthy and disgruntled.
Darhk seemed to be running purely on spite: I'm not comfortable, so everyone else shouldn't be either. He was angling to goad Thea into conflict with a network of powerful elites.
What he hadn't accounted for was that his petty grudge had just handed her an excellent pretext. One of the names on that list was the loudest opponent of the Queen family's current political push. She'd already been considering engineering a convenient traffic accident. This was far cleaner — she'd simply show up and take everything.
Darhk swore categorically that the listed parties were co-conspirators. Every scrap of evidence — genuine, embellished, and strategically arranged — was compiled and assembled. Thea led the strike team personally.
In the glorious chain reaction of mutual betrayal that followed, she walked away with an impressive haul: two deputy mayors, one senator, and three prominent civic figures placed under arrest. The charges were real enough — corruption, insurance fraud, financial crimes — but fell somewhat short of the treason and crimes against humanity she and her mother had been aiming for.
Fabricate harder, or fabricate smarter? She rested her chin in her hand, thinking.
"Commissioner! New development!" Diggle reappeared, waving a fresh transcript.
Thea skimmed it — and snapped her head up. "Mr. Diggle, you're absolutely certain that H.I.V.E. was established by extraterrestrials with premeditation? We have to be responsible with a claim like this. We need hard evidence."
Diggle produced an evidence bag. "Found in the basement of one of the properties. The device self-destructed before we could contain it, but this is all the residue we recovered. Professor Stein confirmed — the metal is not of terrestrial origin."
Thea took the bag and examined it. Silver-white metal, scarred with blast damage — but the composition was genuinely unlike anything from Earth. What had started as a minor cleanup detail was developing into something considerably larger. She gave the order immediately: "Their communication networks are still active. Put your best investigators on a full deep dive. Report directly to me."
The Commission's evidence was airtight. A group of extraterrestrials had been embedded in human society for an extended period — and they had infiltrated the highest levels of government.
Facing that threat, the loudest political voices went instantly silent. The turbulent controversy evaporated overnight. The international Justice League initiative — which had been advancing with considerable momentum — suddenly announced, citing "venue coordination difficulties," that it would be delayed by three months. Thea heard through Mera and Caitlin that the initiative's primary organizer, Golden Guardian, was absolutely furious.
On a separate note: Diana had officially resigned from the Hepburn Foundation. Whether that was a return to her true path or simply a lateral move was debatable — the Louvre had been courting Wonder Woman for some time, and the curator had made a personal visit. Diana had always held a genuine interest in historical artifacts. After a brief conversation with Thea, she caught a flight to Paris and reported for her first day of work.