Tim's glider wing was forged from a rare cosmic alloy—lightweight, rigid, and razor-sharp. He swept past Wonder Girl's restraints and severed the machine's connections with two clean, precise cuts.
Without that constraint, Cass flexed both arms and snapped the metal binding clean off.
A crack of her wrist brought out the lasso—coursing with lightning—and she whipped it upward toward Bart Allen at the machine's peak. Freed, Impulse pivoted immediately and pulled Blue Beetle loose.
On the other side, Tim had already freed Jonathan and Beast Boy.
"NO—!" The power feeds failed across the board. The equilibrium inside the leader's body shattered. He barely managed the word before the fire swallowed him whole.
The explosion shook the earth. The underground base lurched into violent tremors.
Cascades of soil broke loose from above, beginning the countdown to total collapse.
The middle-aged woman screamed and ran.
Of the cultists, those too fanatical to think had been dealt with by Damian and Raven. Those who remained had signed on for money and comfortable circumstances. With the ceiling coming down, who had time for a handful of teenagers? They fought each other to be first out the door.
"I am your god! Come back—kneel!" The shaved leader walked out of the flames.
Kryptonian cells had reinforced his body. The fire was going out on its own. Debris launched from the explosion's center struck him with hollow thuds.
His face was scorched black; his imposing robe had burned away at the hem—from a distance, he looked more like a refugee than a divine being. The Blood Brotherhood leader paid none of that any attention. Arcs of electricity crackled at his feet—the Speed Force he'd drained from Bart Allen—and several cultists who'd nearly reached the exit were cut down before they could escape. He reached out, licked the blood from his fingers, and the face that had once carried a fraction of authority now looked like something out of a nightmare.
"Children—you are privileged to witness the birth of a true god! HAHAHA—!" He laughed with unhinged delight, raised his right hand, and tried to replicate Blue Beetle's energy cannon. No matter how hard he focused, not a single spark answered.
He cursed under his breath. He didn't know that Blue Beetle's entire power set was Reach alien technology. He assumed the problem was with his machine's extraction process.
Wonder Girl's abilities also failed to manifest. Frustrated, he fell back on Beast Boy's power instead.
Limbs stretching, bones cracking and erupting outward—the Blood Brotherhood leader, originally 1.9 meters (6'3") tall, became a two-meter-plus green-furred beast.
"Nothing special. His power is already bleeding out." Raven spotted it first. A bolt of shadow, dark as ink, left her hand.
The rest converged.
Jonathan was incandescent with rage—he attacked like a small lion, each strike carrying a personal grievance.
The leader was fighting with borrowed Speed Force, and high-speed movement was not something you just picked up. This was a temporary acquisition, losing velocity by the second. Exercising any real control over it was beyond him.
Bart Allen nimbly outpaced him—lacking serious offensive options, he looped around to the back and delivered a hard kick.
The leader went down in a tumble. Before he could get his bearings, Wonder Girl's lasso snapped around him, and Beast Boy—transformed into an elephant—sat on him.
He was still thrashing. Jonathan landed one final punch, and the self-proclaimed god was knocked unconscious.
"Move—it's coming down!" Raven grabbed Damian—who had sprinted out of the leader's private quarters carrying a small bag—and teleported everyone to the surface.
They lay in wait outside. Every person who emerged from the exits got knocked out. They captured over three hundred people. The standout prize was the middle-aged woman who'd deployed the poison smoke and used them as lab subjects. Tim handled her personally—thorough enough that she was wailing long before he was finished.
When they learned that over two hundred had escaped through a secondary passage, the Titans split up. Damian and Raven stayed to guard the prisoners; Tim took the rest in pursuit.
"He's completely fried..." Raven crouched over the Blood Brotherhood leader she'd hauled out and examined him. Multiple incompatible energy types colliding inside a single body—from where she stood, that was barely distinguishable from suicide. She genuinely couldn't fathom what kind of mind arrived at this plan—and then somehow, impossibly, made it work.
"Hey. What were you grabbing in there?"
Damian hadn't been in the final fight. Instead, he'd come out carrying a bag. Collect enemy intel after the fight—probably a Bat-family tradition. A few sharp eyes had noticed, but only Raven asked.
"Let me check." Damian drew the items out one by one.
"Fake." Raven tossed aside a grimy strip of cloth. This was a shroud? Please.
"Also fake." She set down a wooden stick. The Spear of Destiny? I may not know much, but don't fool me.
"Hm... this one might be different." She picked up a worn piece of parchment and turned it over several times, expression uncertain.
"What is it?"
"This parchment carries a crushing weight of sin on it. I've only ever felt something like it from one person."
"Who?"
"...Judas." Raven hesitated and used the ancient name rather than the Stranger.
Damian stared at her blankly. With gods and magic already part of daily life, adding a Judas to the ledger wasn't particularly shocking. He waved his hand: if it's useful to you, take it.
Raven turned it over in her hands, conflicted. The parchment was brimming with power—but she couldn't access it. And to put it more precisely, no one could. It was like those items in games with a dramatic name and an all-question-mark stat sheet: impressive-sounding, with effects that were all question marks.
Returning it to the Stranger was not happening. Raven held her grudges for a very long time.
But keeping it was risky. If word got out that she had a relic of this tier, her demonic father, Trigon, might show up on Earth in person.
In the original timeline she'd have had no good option except to bury it somewhere and hope. But now there was an obvious answer. She reached out, located Thea's position, opened a portal, and fed the parchment through. Then she passed along a summary of events.
Thea and Diana had just left Atlantis, having had a remarkably productive conversation with the Rao priests. A handful of alien-powered individuals were no match for a combination of overwhelming force and measured persuasion—the priests had agreed to travel to the oasis and spread Rao's gospel.
They hadn't taken two steps from the water when a portal opened directly in front of them, dropping a parchment and a voice message at their feet.
Thea listened through the whole account first. This Blood Brotherhood figure rang a bell—from the Teen Titans: The Judas Contract storyline. The participants here were somewhat different, and the setting had shifted, but it had to be the same group.
As for the man who'd absorbed multiple different superpowers and declared himself a god—she had nothing to say about that.
But the Judas Contract.
She looked at the parchment in her hand. She'd always assumed the title was a metaphor—a reference to Terra's betrayal of the Teen Titans. But with Terra and Deathstroke both on her side now, neither of them connected to the Titans in any meaningful way, that particular betrayal had never happened.
And yet the contract itself, apparently, was very real.