Owlman had indeed left countermeasures against Ultraman. His Watchtower fired a unique electromagnetic pulse that crippled the Fortress of Solitude's outer defenses.
"Who are you—a swarm of insects!" The man looked nearly identical to Superman, but his face was twisted with menace, and the logo on his chest wasn't a capital S but a U. Surrounded by a cordon of Lanterns, he showed no fear. His eyes glowed with savage light, like a man-eating beast.
"You think I didn't anticipate Owlman's little tricks?" Ultraman sneered. As his words landed, a swarm of alien creatures came pouring out of the Fortress of Solitude. Each looked different, but they all shared one thing: their bodies had been partially cybernetically modified, and Ultraman controlled them remotely.
Some spat acid. Some split into duplicates. Some melted into shadow for ambushes. Even though the Lanterns had braced for the worst, the sheer variety of abilities caught them off guard.
"Looks like that old bastard failed. I told them—soft Earth humans can't be trusted. As always, I'll have to handle this myself." Deathstorm had managed to send out one last message before the end. Ultraman now knew these intruders came from another dimension—a dimension he and his crew had coveted for a long time.
Ultraman swept his gaze across the battlefield, and his eyes locked automatically onto Batman.
This guy looked unremarkable, but he was clearly leading the formation around him. Perfect target for making an example. Bullies the weak, fears the strong—that was Ultraman's nature, and it was about to lead him into the choice he'd regret for the rest of his life.
He didn't say a word. He just struck. Bypassing the Green Lanterns charging at him, he shot straight at Batman.
"What the hell?" The speed was so blistering that Ultraman had no time to process what was happening. He just saw a streak of yellow light flash past his eyes.
In that critical instant, he twisted his body hard—but the yellow light still carved a blood groove across his shoulder.
When Ultraman turned to look again, he found Batman now wearing a black-and-yellow combat suit, with only the cape still black. Most importantly, on the middle finger of his left hand, Batman wore a ring—and the ring radiated a light that made Ultraman deeply uncomfortable. Yellow light.
What was that? Another ring like the Green Lantern's? Ultraman dismissed it at first. On Earth-3, Power Ring Hal Jordan was little more than a placeholder, which had left him with a long-standing contempt for ring-bearers. But now, with doubt creeping in, he scanned the battlefield—and quickly registered the problem.
Dazzling. Multicolored beams of light flooded everywhere, and a great many of them were the yellow that made him uneasy.
"Get him! All of you, get him!" Ultraman didn't dare engage personally now. He desperately drove his mechanical creations into the Yellow Lanterns to fight in his stead.
A seasoned Green Lantern could simulate kryptonite wavelengths. A seasoned Yellow Lantern could naturally simulate stellar wavelengths.
Batman had only worn this temporary Yellow Lantern ring for a short time, but he'd studied the sun for years and could calculate stellar wavelengths accurately. This was a homework problem he'd once assigned Damian—child's play to him.
Ring tech, that high-end alien hardware, he'd spent considerable time studying its full lifecycle—from manufacture to use to destruction.
He hadn't reverse-engineered much. But when it came to familiarity with Lantern rings, he ranked just behind Sinestro himself.
As for whether he could channel fear? Ask Two-Face down in the Underworld—still terrified that Batman might leap out of a corner—or any of the Gotham scumbags on the streets above. Plenty of them were qualified to weigh in on that question.
"You're done!" Batman didn't flinch. He'd traded blows with Darkseid himself. Some Earth-3 wannabe like Ultraman didn't faze him in the slightest.
He flung three yellow light-construct Batarangs.
Ultraman couldn't figure out why this yellow light could hurt him, and he wasn't about to find out the hard way. He twisted aside in a panic, scrambling to evade the Batarangs.
He'd been undefeated on this Earth for too long. Too many easy wins had erased any instinct for defense. Deep down, he had no concept of what to do when attacked. He had only ever loomed over others, never been the one struck.
By the time he caught Batman charging at him from the corner of his eye, he was already several beats too slow. A fist sheathed in golden-yellow light came rocketing at his face.
"You dare?! You insignificant Earthling!" Ultraman snarled, throwing out a hand to catch Batman's fist. He intended to crush this audacious enemy from the hand bones up through the arm, then grind his whole body to powder.
Unfortunately, the moment his hand met Batman's fist, a wave of weakness flooded through him. The strength that could move planets seemed never to have existed. Caught flat-footed, he ate Batman's left hook square on the cheek instead.
Reflexively, Ultraman spun and tried to flee. But Batman had logged thousands of hours flying mechs and gliders. Without hesitation, he took to the air in pursuit.
One man with his speed gutted by stellar wavelengths. One man amplified by a Yellow Lantern ring. The outcome wasn't even a question.
Before Ultraman could even escape the moon's vicinity, Batman caught up, kicked him in the back, and sent him sprawling. Then the fists came down like rain.
"This can't be happening—this has to be a dream! I'm invincible!" Ultraman's face was a mess of blood, but he kept howling like a rabid dog.
Batman answered the question in his stunned eyes. "You worshipped your own power for too long. You forgot you had any weakness at all. You depend on raw strength and have no willpower whatsoever. You're the weakest man on this planet."
With that, he slammed a final punch into Ultraman's skull. By that point, the stellar wavelengths had stripped Ultraman down to barely above an ordinary human. Combined with the psychological collapse, he passed out cold on the spot.
"Pathetic, isn't he?" Batman asked Superman, who'd just caught up.
Ultraman's long-term kryptonite consumption had left trace radiation in his body, but Superman could grit his teeth and endure it on willpower alone.
Watching from a distance, Superman had grown uneasy about his old friend's pursuit and followed.
Sidestepping the question of weakness, Superman felt quietly vindicated. His own path wasn't wrong. Batman had just confirmed it indirectly: willpower mattered more than raw strength.
If Ultraman had possessed even a sliver of will, Batman might not have beaten him. Ultraman had defeated himself, plain and simple.
"Without kryptonite to absorb, he's got nothing. Let's haul him back to Earth and lock him up." The two reached a quick consensus on what to do with Ultraman. No indictment, no defense, no jury. Life sentence, effective immediately.
"What about that thing?" Superman pointed at the Fortress of Solitude still hanging in the sky.
"Tow it back to Earth," Batman said flatly.
"No."
"No."
Superman immediately objected. Thea's voice came through into both their earpieces, and she objected too.
The Fortress of Solitude was Kryptonian black-tech of the highest order. It absolutely could not fall into Earth hands—not even an Earth-3 version of it.
Earth was somewhere between Tier-3 and Tier-4 civilization. Krypton had been between Tier 8 and Tier 9. These weren't fixed values; they were averages.
Earth had inventions that punched above its tier. Krypton did too. The Fortress of Solitude was the textbook example.