Batman's Answer
Bruce Wayne abandoned restraint.
He activated contingency vaults that predated the Justice League—Nth-metal lattices, Apokoliptian logic engines, Phantom Zone hard-light prisons tuned to Saiyan ki signatures.
Batman was not trying to win.
He was trying to last long enough for Superman to finish the job.
.....
Elsewhere
Wonder Woman's Dominion
Diana tightened her grip on the Regime.
Publicly, she preached strength and unity.
Privately, she expanded Themyscira's reach—recruitment through coercion, and kidnapping young men for forced breeding programs, indoctrination through myth, building an army loyal not to peace, but to her vision of order.
No atrocities were announced.
They never are.
.....
Elsewhere
....
(Marvel)
Across collapsing jump-points, Marvel's multiversal hunters struggled.
Sorcerers read dead futures. Cosmic entities followed echoes that went cold. Even the Living Tribunal found no stable coordinate.
Zar was learning.
He no longer moved like a traveler.
He moved like a fixed disaster, appearing only where conflict was inevitable.
.....
POV switch
....
The Saiyan at Work
Hidden beyond perception, Zar trained.
Not forms.
Not transformations.
He forged new techniques, ki constructs designed to fracture divine authority, attacks that punished immortality itself, counter-resonance fields tuned against angelic time-locks and erasure waves.
Every motion was direct
Every breath he took, carried restraint.
The multiverse searched for him.
But the next war would not begin on their terms.
It would begin when Zar finished creating the weapon he had become.
End of the chapter