Now hold on a minute!
Watching this unfold, Cyborg felt like both his processor and half his brain were about to short-circuit.
Did Captain Atom even know what he was saying right now?
Did he know who Joey was?
A being who could single-handedly subdue Wonder Woman, force Aquaman to surrender, and withstand a magnitude-12 earthquake with nothing but his flesh and blood.
And you just had to come at him this hard?
Fine, go hard—but at least bring more people!
You brought one guy—this… what's-his-name, Teth-Adam—and the way he's looking at Joey is already off. If a fight breaks out, it'd be a miracle if this guy doesn't turn around and slap Captain Atom instead!
Does Captain Atom even know how many metahumans are under them right now?
Basically the strongest bunch on Earth—like Aquaman and Wonder Woman, who are all down there, collecting corpses.
Cyborg figured those two wouldn't mind burying a couple more.
No matter how incompetent the idiots in the White House and the Pentagon were, they shouldn't be giving reckless orders like this and sending Captain Atom in to mess things up.
And Captain Atom himself—what's wrong with him? What was he thinking accepting this job?
Wait—Cyborg suddenly realized—the people in the White House really weren't all that rational to begin with… and Captain Atom's brain really did have issues.
Otherwise, that whole incident before wouldn't have happened—when Captain Atom was ordered to go alone and negotiate with Atlantis.
Not to mention how he ended up captured by Aquaman and used as a living battery for a doomsday weapon, almost unleashing a seismic wave that would've collapsed half of Western Europe.
Some people learn from their mistakes. Others make the same mistake again.
Cyborg was pretty sure Captain Atom belonged to the second group.
"What's gotten into you today, Nathan? Don't you remember—it was Superman who saved you from the Atlanteans?"
Cyborg was still trying to salvage his completely irrational friend. He didn't want to spend every future Memorial Day standing at Nathan's grave.
That long weekend was supposed to be a happy holiday—perfect for taking the family to the movies—not mourning some guy who got himself killed.
"Stop being stupid, Nathan! Think about your wife, your daughter. Didn't you even invite Superman over for dinner before?"
"Calm down! We're on the same side—why are you doing this?!"
Captain Atom remained unmoved.
"Hand over the Kryptonian corpse."
Cyborg's response was immediate—zero wind-up, a full-force armored punch:
"That's enough, Nathaniel!"
Boom!
In an instant, Cyborg accelerated forward, propulsion systems roaring, and slammed Captain Atom straight into the troposphere with a single punch.
Amid roaring thunder and flashing lightning in the storm clouds, Captain Atom was met with a relentless barrage of punches—Cyborg driving him farther and farther away from Joey with each strike.
"Wow. Those two must be really close."
Black Adam watched as Cyborg and the repeatedly pummeled Captain Atom disappeared into the distance, then immediately turned his attention to his true target—Shazam.
"How about catching up with your predecessor?"
"Can't you two just wai—"
Before Joey could finish, Shazam stepped forward, lightning gathering around him.
"Bring it on, you traitor!"
"…Fine. Forget I said anything."
Now Joey really had nothing left to say.
He couldn't help but wonder—was all that praise Black Adam gave him earlier really sincere?
Or had he just been waiting for this moment?
If Black Adam could hear his thoughts, he'd cry foul—his respect for Joey had been completely genuine, just as real as his hatred for Shazam right now.
But Joey couldn't bring himself to intervene directly—not just because of Black Adam, but because of Shazam too.
Joey didn't care about their thousand-year feud with the wizard Shazam—but clearly, they did.
Interfering would be an insult to both of them.
So he simply let them have their one-on-one battle.
"If you're going to fight, take it somewhere else!"
Not that either of them could kill the other quickly—it wasn't any easier than Joey trying to beat another Superman to death with his fists earlier.
Two bolts of lightning flashed.
In that single instant of light, Shazam and Black Adam had already exchanged over a dozen blows—and carried the battlefield from the ruined Gotham all the way to the Sahara Desert in North Africa.
With those two walking disasters gone, Joey turned his attention back to Cyborg and the other walking nuclear weapon.
After the initial impact, Captain Atom easily restrained Cyborg's mechanical arms.
Cyborg might have a steel body—but Captain Atom was already a being of plasma. Physical attacks meant very little to him.
"Victor, are you going to betray your country and oppose the entire North American mi—"
"You dumbass!"
With his arms restrained, Cyborg generated a new limb from his body and slammed it into Captain Atom's face, cutting him off mid-sentence.
"I'm trying to save you! You really want Angela to become a widow again? Want Peggy to lose her father again?!"
Captain Atom himself had been created in a failed military experiment. The explosion didn't just transform him—it sent him ten years into the future. For everyone else, he had been dead for a decade.
For him, it had only been an instant.
It had taken him a long time to rebuild his relationship with his family.
Cyborg knew this—not because he snooped through military databases, but because Captain Atom told him personally—at his own dinner table.
Though honestly, the only other thing Cyborg clearly remembered was that Angela's cooking was pretty good…
Which made it even harder to understand—he'd said all this, and Captain Atom still didn't get it?!
"Nathan, why are you so willing to blindly follow orders from those bastards in the White House and throw your life away, instead of facing the fact that this world is about to enter a new order?"
Cyborg didn't believe Captain Atom could beat Joey—not to mention Aquaman and Wonder Woman were still around.
If he kept this up, there was only one outcome: death.
Cyborg had always known the people in the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon had a huge problem with Joey.
To be more precise—they hated him to the bone.
Joey had just been respectfully addressed by Black Adam as 'the Liberator of Africa' and praised for having 'intimidated those oppressors.'
As for exactly whom Africa had been liberated from, and which oppressors had been shaken—Cyborg felt there was no need to name them one by one.
Not to mention that Superman's other companion had previously confiscated all weapons from African extremist groups, South American anarchist forces, and factions in the British civil war, then dumped them into the ocean, keeping those conflicts within a temporarily manageable level.
As for where those weapons originally came from, Cyborg—being the absolute master of the cyber world, capable of tracking every connected financial transaction and logistical movement on Earth—knew perfectly well.
He had expected that people who disliked Superman would try to trip them up.
But he hadn't expected it to happen like this.
This level of decision-making was so stupid it was comparable to immediately declaring war on that superpower across the Pacific and starting a thermonuclear war that could never be won—if not even worse.
"You see, this is one of the reasons the President fired you right after the war ended."
Captain Atom's metallic surface emitted a reverse energy flow, neutralizing Cyborg's propulsion. At the same time, a deadly mix of gamma radiation bloomed in his hand, instantly melting both of Cyborg's arms.
"You call that Kryptonian a new order. But to the authorities, he is a new threat."
"He has no parents, no lover, no friends, no secret identity—he exists almost completely detached from human society."
"Do you understand how dangerous an individual like that is to the entire human world?"
Of course Cyborg understood.
If not for the imminent Kryptonian invasion, that Kryptonian might have already begun his next move.
If he could force Amazons and Atlanteans into submission with sheer power, he could just as easily repeat that process with other nations.
And when that happened—would he become a philosopher king, a charismatic authority figure?
Or a tyrant? A butcher?
That was a question worth observing and guarding against—for everyone, including Cyborg.
But right now, in Cyborg's eyes, that issue had become completely secondary—barely even a concern at all.
Because in a few days, whether human civilization would even continue to exist was already in question.
A far more immediate threat stood right in front of them.
At a moment like this, Cyborg couldn't understand why they were even fighting among themselves.
"What the hell are we even talking about right now? This is all nonsense! The Kryptonian army is about to arrive!"
"Who the hell still cares what this one Kryptonian plans to do with global politics?!
"Is the White House and the Pentagon seriously going to concentrate their already limited resources on dealing with the only Kryptonian willing to help us?!"
"That's exactly the point, Cyborg—"
Captain Atom's gamma beam swept across Cyborg's waist, severing his mechanical lower body entirely. He knew what he was about to say sounded stupid—but it was the truth.
"They don't trust you. And they don't trust that Kryptonian."
"The information about the incoming invasion comes from you and him. To them, both of you are unreliable sources."
Cyborg immediately flew into a rage.
With his remaining arm, he grabbed Captain Atom by the throat while trying to generate another arm to shut his mouth.
"At a time like this, those bastards are still playing games?! My decryption has never been wrong!"
Losing his limbs didn't hurt nearly as much as being called an 'unreliable source.'
He still tried, futilely, to prove his point.
"If those idiots don't trust me, they can have scientists from S.T.A.R. Labs or Queen Industries re-decode the data! They'll reach the exact same conclusion!"
Captain Atom couldn't help but sigh at Cyborg's naivety.
"No, Victor. You still don't understand. This was never about decryption. It's not even a scientific issue."
Lightning from the storm clouds struck Captain Atom again and again, each surge charging his energy form brighter, illuminating his cold indigo metallic face.
And yet, somehow, Cyborg could sense deep conflict and pain behind that expressionless facade.
That was when he realized—Captain Atom might have always been more rational than him.
"I already told you the fundamental reason, Cyborg."
Captain Atom repeated it slowly, word by word—no matter how absurd it sounded.
"They don't trust."
A powerful energy matrix gathered in his palm, aimed directly at Cyborg.
He was preparing to carry out his other assigned order—eradicate Cyborg, who had seen too many secrets.
"Nathaniel, don't do this! You know this conflict is meaningless! I've run the calculations countless times—you can't win!"
Cyborg's scanners showed that Superman would arrive in 3.62 seconds.
Captain Atom could also feel the sonic booms in the distance as the air shattered layer by layer.
He knew he couldn't truly eliminate Cyborg.
The Victor Stone before him was merely an interface—a projection interacting with the physical world. The real Cyborg existed across the vast digital space.
But the people giving orders wouldn't understand that.
So he still had to do it.
"No, Victor. This was never about winning or losing."
Light erupted.
Under the overwhelming energy output, Cyborg's metallic shell melted layer by layer—followed by the exposed heart and organic tissue beneath.
It seemed slow—but at that level of power, turning Cyborg into ashes took only an instant.
What little remained of his human body scattered into the air.
Captain Atom watched the ashes drift away, his expression complicated.
He knew Cyborg's character well—well enough that he had never doubted the truth of the Kryptonian invasion.
But that didn't mean he would abandon his primary mission—to eliminate or contain that Kryptonian.
If everything went according to plan, if everyone executed their roles perfectly—
Then a laboratory or a prison would be that Kryptonian's final destination.
In Captain Atom's eyes, the plan wasn't complicated.
Though complex plans usually meant lower fault tolerance—
This one was almost too simple.
So simple it was like describing how to put an elephant into a refrigerator.
First, provoke the target—like now.
Captain Atom wasn't even sure if killing Cyborg alone would be enough, but he had no better option.
Second, lure the target into space—where the specialized strike team assigned to this mission would engage.
Third—and most important—
Everyone involved should try not to die before subduing or killing the target.
As for whether they could win—
That wasn't his concern.
He was a soldier.
He followed orders.