After thinking it through carefully, Joey realized that this twisted reality really had fulfilled part of the innermost wishes of the four people at the center of the explosion.
Even if each of their desires conflicted with one another, the power of Fate had still intertwined all four of them together.
Martha wished for her son Bruce to live happily, free from the tragic destiny of being Batman.
And so this world created a harmonious Wayne family—and a carefree, spoiled Bruce Wayne.
As for Bruce himself, there was never really anything left for him to wish for.
More accurately, Bruce Wayne had ceased to exist a long time ago. The only survivor who walked out of Crime Alley that night had been Batman.
That was why Batman still existed within his heart. And when the Bat awakened once more, enemies like the Joker and Two-Face naturally followed close behind.
As for Diana...
Joey still wasn't ready to think too deeply about that direction.
But after realizing all this, Joey finally began to seriously examine his own subconscious desires from the very beginning of the incident.
According to the 'origin story' of this reality, he was merely a war correspondent who had narrowly survived death.
And because of that experience, he had gone on to produce outstanding reports and even won a Pulitzer Prize.
Thinking about it carefully…
Wasn't that exactly the kind of life he had once wanted before being transported into another universe?
Granted, considering both his ethnicity and the subjects he reported on, even surviving a nuclear bomb probably wouldn't have been enough to earn him a Pulitzer.
But surviving an artillery shell?
That possibility alone had been enough to tempt his imagination into longing for such a future.
Even before encountering Raven in the previous universe, Joey had already been drifting through life aimlessly.
Afterward, once he truly began relying on his Kryptonian powers, his path had become one soaked in blood.
And now he was trapped in the mire of this universe.
Perhaps, deep down in his subconscious, Joey truly wished he were still nothing more than an ordinary flesh-and-blood journalist, living peacefully in a normal world.
But a dream was only ever a dream.
Even after severing the identity of his second life as a Kryptonian, that peaceful future still could not be realized.
Diana standing before him—and the entire world itself—were all waiting for him to save them.
He didn't have the luxury to indulge in sentimental fantasies now.
"ROAR!!"
Doomsday, who had just been left dazed by the rebound of its own attack, charged forward once more and slammed a headbutt directly at the motionless Joey.
"Die!!"
The creature's rate of evolution had once again surpassed everyone's expectations.
In less than two hours, it had gone from a mindless beast driven solely by murderous instinct to speaking human language.
And then Doomsday immediately smashed itself senseless again with that same headbutt.
The bone-spike armor covering its skull even shattered apart under the sheer force of the collision.
Perhaps it had evolved a degree of intelligence…
But it still clearly couldn't comprehend the situation it was now facing.
Even though Joey had rejected it on a deeper level, the two of them were fundamentally still one and the same.
Which meant any attack Doomsday directed at Joey was, in essence, equivalent to punching itself in the face.
Unwilling to accept this, Doomsday's eyes flared crimson as it unleashed a heat vision blast large enough to engulf Joey's entire body.
As for Joey, standing at the center of the beam, the only harm he suffered was that the attack arrived too suddenly and shone too brightly.
With his current human-level reflexes, he hadn't even had time to close his eyes.
The searing brightness stabbed into them like being hit point-blank with an industrial laser pointer.
Doomsday, however, suffered far worse.
Its already burning exterior was charred black by its own heat vision, and the entire exoskeletal armor covering its body was completely vaporized by the blast.
"I really can't believe my other half turned into… this."
In Joey's original memories, he had seen two completely different fates.
He had expected his other half to be a Kryptonian whose mental state lay somewhere between the two versions of Kara.
So how had it become this?
But now clearly wasn't the time to dwell on that question.
What Joey needed to do was retrieve the remaining fragments and restore everything back to normal as quickly as possible.
Watching Doomsday charge at him once again, Joey instinctively raised a hand to block.
And with nothing more than an ordinary mortal body, he effortlessly caught the incoming claw.
More precisely, it's finger.
No matter how violently Doomsday struggled to free itself from Joey's grip, the seemingly unstoppable monster could not move Joey's hand even the slightest bit.
Joey was still the same Joey—the same reporter Joey.
He still hadn't regained any superhuman strength.
From beginning to end, the Doomsday that encountered Joey had merely been struggling against itself.
Joey reached out and dragged the desperately resisting Doomsday toward him with ease. It didn't feel any more difficult than hauling around a chicken by the neck.
"It's time to end this farce."
He had already spotted the other half of the Helmet of Fate fragments glowing within Doomsday's chest.
All he needed to do now was to pull them out.
But when Joey reached toward the fragments embedded in Doomsday's chest, he quickly realized that the creature's pectoral muscles were absurdly overdeveloped.
Even using all his strength, he could only loosen the fragments slightly.
Maybe he needed help.
"Diana?"
Joey turned toward Diana, only to discover that she had already collapsed to one knee, slumped forward on the ground without responding to his voice.
"Diana?!"
Even without super-vision, Joey could tell her condition was terrible.
After being exposed to such lethal nuclear radiation for so long, even an Amazon's healing factor had its limits.
There was no more time to waste.
His eyes swept downward and landed on the Kryptonite sword lying near his feet.
Left with no alternatives, Joey gritted his teeth.
"Sorry about this… other me."
Raising the Kryptonite sword high, he swung downward in one brutal strike.
Without the protection of its bone-spike armor, Doomsday's chest was instantly ripped open by a massive wound.
Blood erupted everywhere.
Covered from head to toe in the sheer volume of spraying blood, Joey aimed directly for the creature's vitals and drove the blade inward.
The Doomsday that had been resisting with all its strength immediately went limp.
Its first death had arrived.
Climbing onto the collapsing monster's chest, Joey ignored the overwhelming smell of blood and forced himself past the nausea rising in his throat.
Then he raised the Kryptonite sword again and hacked downward like a butcher chopping meat.
More blood burst outward.
Bathed in crimson, Joey carved away at the fragments of the Helmet of Fate embedded in Doomsday's chest piece by piece with all the finesse of slaughterhouse work.
Each time a fragment was removed, the blood-soaked Joey felt the burden weighing upon him lighten slightly.
Only after he finally tore out the very last fragment with crude, savage force did Joey realize that the blood coating his body was beginning to fade away.
And alongside it, Doomsday itself also began disappearing.
Its corpse and spilled blood gradually became transparent until they vanished completely, as though the creature had never existed at all.
The only proof it had ever been there was the scorched, shattered earth and the radioactive dust still drifting through the ruins.
Amidst the devastation, the fragments Joey had extracted floated upward into the air, radiating golden light as though waiting for something.
Then, in the next instant, streaks of gold shot across the distant horizon.
The remaining fragments came flying in from afar.
Dozens of pieces collided together and, in a burst of blinding radiance, reassembled into their original form, the true Helmet of Fate belonging to this universe itself.
The version Raven had brought was clearly another Helmet from beyond this universe.
But regardless of which version it was, both still contained the will of the Lord of Order, Nabu.
And that realization awakened another fear within Joey.
As the embodiment of Order, Nabu naturally sought to protect Earth—the world containing the spark of existence—in order to preserve the universe itself.
But that logic only applied to a normal universe.
Only where existence persisted could there even be such a thing as 'order.'
This universe, however, belonged to the Dark Multiverse—a realm forged from dark matter.
Here, long-term survival of a universe was the anomaly.
Self-destruction was the natural state.
So did that mean this universe's Helmet of Fate actually preferred destruction over preservation?
Before Joey could fully process the thought, the Helmet answered the question through its actions.
Because the very first thing it did after reforming was to run.
A streak of golden light shot into the heavens as the Helmet of Fate accelerated into deep space at incredible speed, breaking through the atmosphere, crossing beyond lunar orbit within moments.
"BOOM!"
Joey caught up to it on the dark side of the Moon, grabbing the Helmet with both hands just as he had done with the other Helmet of Fate before.
But this time, he did not recklessly crush it.
"Until everything is restored to normal," Joey growled,
"you're not going anywhere."