Capítulo 140: Plan
"Fuck, where are we going to bury them all? - Those were my first words when our magnificent trio finally made it out of the sewer under the moonlight, having previously finished off the rest of the jackal-headed freaks that had come through the portal, and at the same time replenished the stock of magic ingredients.
All of Gotham was in chaos. Well, it's often chaos, but this time it was truly epic. It used to be that daredevil criminals and other outlaws, doped up with weapons and loaded with motivational speech performed by some supervillain, would start terrorizing civilians, distracting the attention of the police and redistributing money while the aforementioned villain was quietly minding his own business or pulling out a bat. The only thing is that such events affected one of the islands at most, and even then, let's say that the concentration of criminal elements was unevenly spread over the area, so the forces of law and order were quite successfully managed to contain the contagion in a limited area. For example, the recent riots in Blackport, which seemed to cover the entire neighborhood and a couple or three adjacent blocks, had hardly affected the dock dwellers, as there was little to gain from them, but it was quite realistic for them to suddenly "disappear," especially if a small group of them went into the slums.
So, getting back to the situation at hand, now literally the entire city was suffering from an invasion of parademons! Rich or poor neighborhoods, shopping centers or ordinary apartments: there was no escape from the hundreds of flying creatures. They were indiscriminately grabbing panicked people and dragging them to the nearest portals, of which there were exactly ten for the whole city, and at the same time trying to crush the pockets of resistance, bringing more chaos and confusion.
Here and there fires broke out, flocks of armored cyberjukes flew in the sky, panicked people screamed, gunshots were fired, sirens wailed, and aliens roared with joy. And worst of all, many major cities around the globe were under similar attack!
"I wish I had your enthusiasm..." Green Lantern muttered unhappily, shooting down a trio of invaders with his rocket launcher. - We barely closed one portal, but there are hundreds of them in different parts of the world.
"There must be a vulnerability. There's logic in the parademons' actions, which means there's a control center, but we just need to figure out where it is," Bats replied glumly, helping to reduce the enemy's manpower.
"Yeah, except he's not likely to be on this side. Shit!"
Lantern spotted several demons dragging civilians in their clutches and with a blaze of green aura, rushed to the rescue.
I contacted Harley and asked her to keep an eye on Mouse while the two men were having an intellectual conversation and reducing the bug population. Although the commissioner's daughter had gotten a nice physical boost, she hadn't had time to get used to the new powers yet, and I'd feel better if she was accompanied by an avatar of one of the Eternals. I had time to evaluate the strength of armor and reaction speed of the new monsters, so my beloved should not have any big problems with them. I'd like Abby to look after the two beauties, but I have a feeling that Swampy will go into berserk mode again and go out to smash monsters Hulk-style, ignoring the collateral damage.
Before I could fully engage in the fight, two things happened at once. Hal tensed up and created a six-meter-long mech with all the trappings, like a machine gun built into his arm and a homing turret on his shoulder and a rocket pack, and the undemons stopped attacking and started flying off somewhere to the east of the city.
"Yes! They're scared! There's a reason I decided to create this little girl."
The joyfully dancing green huge humanoid robot, which had been slaughtering monsters by the dozens up to that point, made me feel envious. I doubt very much that the man knows at least a little about robotics, even if he is connected with aviation, judging by his flying uniform and badge, but no, the OBHR is quite functional and can even fully utilize the built-in guns.
"I wouldn't get too excited if I were you," Gloomy Mouse grew even more gloomy. - Parademons know no fear. They don't care about casualties, because more will come from the portals. Something else is clearly involved.
Suddenly, there was a noise of jet engines overhead, and in a couple of seconds, Victor landed nearby with a portal device in its hands, which for some reason did not tend to explode or turn into another portal funnel. Hal immediately pointed the main weapon of his robot at the new protagonist, managing to assume a pathos pose.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Hello, everyone," Flash appeared in a red flash next to Victor, who, having estimated the caliber of Lantern's machine gun, sidled away from Cyborg. - Uh, I see we have a newcomer on the team. I don't like having weapons pointed at me, even if they are cool mech weapons," he said quickly.
"What's going on here? - Diana landed next to me, kicking up dust. - I thought we were supposed to be fighting against parademons, not each other.
"Ha-ha-ha, the usual newbie introductions. You remember the first time I met our iron-headed comrade? There, too, it almost came to shooting. You could say it's a tradition," my voice becomes extremely serious. - Cyborg, I strongly recommend that you create a fully enclosed, opaque helmet.
"Why? Most heroes have a part of their face uncovered. And there's no point in hiding, because I can't change my appearance and blend in with the crowd," Victor answered calmly, who had more or less gotten used to having a bunch of implants in his body.
"That's a hell of a comparison. Bats is the most paranoid among us, he even lets his voice through a special device, but he still leaves a decent part of his face open so the cops can see that he's white. In your case, it works the other way around, since even your conditional allies are willing to attack you."
"Ha-ha-ha-ha-khf.
Hal coughed, trying in vain to hide his laughter, which earned him an extremely disapproving look from the Cyborg.
"And I remember why I hate you. I'm sick of your racist jokes."
"Oh, here we go. Old Joker's being accused of something bad again, and I was just trying to lighten the mood. You're all so serious, it's like alien invaders are attacking the earth, ha-ha-ha!
"I'm sorry," the green-suited superhero, embarrassed and trying to ignore my roaring, canceled his hold on the form, and a few moments later, the huge humanoid robot was pulled back into the artifact. - Because of the device in your hands and your unusual appearance, I figured you were in league with this monster. My name is Green Lantern, and I am in charge of this sector of the galaxy, protecting it from all sorts of threats.
Judging by the glances, the last part of the speech was clearly directed at the warrior, but she was not too impressed by it and simply called her name in response.
"Nice to meet you, Flash," the speedster introduced himself cheerfully. - My power is super speed, and I also do cool website design, so you can contact me if you want a personal page.
"You've already heard my nickname. It reflects quite accurately the powers available to me: networking and modifying my own body," Victor briefly introduced himself.
"All right, we're all here," the last words were echoed as Mouse's voice called for attention. - Cyborg, did you manage to hack the device?
"Partially. I followed your advice and now I can definitely say that the central server exists, and if I connect to it, I can theoretically reverse all the portals and then destroy them."
"I don't want to sound skeptical, but will it work? - Barry pointed out cautiously. - Their technology made it possible to copy the functionality of a techno-magical device in just a few days. What's to stop them from repeating the experience and invading Earth again?
"Apokolips is located in another dimension, and its position relative to Earth is unstable. Now it is incredibly close to the border of our world, so, to create portals, the power of only one Mother Cube is enough."
From Cyborg's rather convoluted explanations, where he tried to explain on his fingers the theory of the multiverse and the principles of interaction between different worlds, we can conclude that Earth was just unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
To begin with, Apokolips itself is on a different plane of existence, called "The Fourth World". And this plan is not just another dimension, where there is its own version of Earth with an ordinal number, such as Earth-0, Earth-2 or Earth-11, but it is literally a whole separate world, existing in a single copy for the entire local multiverse! But that's not all. The Apokolips Plan has been assigned a number: "Four" because it is an order of magnitude higher than the dimension where ninety-five percent of the limitless multiverse is located. It is like comparing two-dimensional and three-dimensional worlds, only the difference will not only be in the number of available coordinates, but much deeper on the physical and energetic levels. In principle, this is one of the reasons why Darkseid incredibly rarely leaves his planet, preferring to send minions, because in our three-dimensional dimension four-dimensional creature is not too comfortable.
So, despite the fact that Apokolips belongs to a different plane of existence and flies in the infinite void, purely technically its route can cross some worlds, which allows to reduce energy consumption for the creation of a boom pipe. True, the reduced distance between worlds is not enough, unless you consider the cases of partial coincidence of the orbit of the planets, but here comes into play the recent events with the failed Unity, because of which the energy background of the Earth became a little higher, literally a little bit closer to our planet to the fourth dimension. It is quite possible that this little thing would not have been enough, but, as luck would have it, this morning there was a powerful electromagnetic flare on the Sun, and the solar wind raised the energy background a little more. In sum, it would seem, not the most large-scale events led to a sad outcome, and now the Earth is plagued by crowds of monsters, and the brave heroes need to destroy the central teleportation device.
"Hmm, wouldn't it be easier if we just held on until the planets split up? From what I understand, the box would run out of power and the portals would just stop working. It's suicidal to go into the lair of a multiverse-sized villain. Hey! Don't give me that judgmental look," I said.
I was totally uncomfortable with the idea of going to Apokolips, which Cyborg described as an ecumenopolis, a planet-wide city populated entirely by hostile life forms.
"Unfortunately, it's not that simple," the dark-skinned boy shook his head negatively. - Darkseid is going to terraform the Earth in the near future, and then its energy will become even closer to the fourth dimension, which means that nothing will prevent the Mother Cube from being used on a permanent basis.
"You're right. They've already begun this phase of the plan," Gotham's chief defender broke the heavy silence.
"And how do you know? - Hal wondered, who for some reason did not like Mouse's equanimity very much. But it was not surprising, because he had made it, having managed to whistle the ring "without using superpowers".
"The water's on fire," Bats turned slightly and jabbed his finger at the ocean where the fiery element raged.
A huge whirlpool appeared in the sea in the east, and above it bright flames blazed and hundreds of parademons flew. For a complete entourage, only the music "Voland's Hymn" from the movie Master and Margarita is missing. Hmm, though it should be saved for when Trigon invades Earth. If only we lived to see that time...
Not a couple minutes later, a huge anthracite-black dome rose out of the water.
It was not enough that the ground shook under our feet, and all over the city, like mushrooms after the rain, giant black towers began to grow like Sauron himself would envy. The fiery eye at the top was missing, but it was nicely replaced by stylish red illumination on the facade, as well as impressive-sized teeth forming a kind of crown. As soon as the buildings appeared, the cyberbugs hovering around them immediately rushed back into the city to hunt down the civilians once more.
"Why do they need humans? - Green Lantern asked perplexed, as he began to reduce the population of the creatures flying by again.
"Assimilation. The entire captured population of the planet will soon be transformed into new servants of Darkseid," Cyborg replied grimly.
~Bah~
Something exploded overhead, and the corpse of a golden beetle with a fractured skull collapsed from above.
"Mr. J! - a joyous whirlwind of a beautiful blonde woman came at me. - I've been looking all over for you, and it's a good thing Mousey was able to track your smartphone!
"Sweetheart, you don't have to worry about me, I'd rather stay home."
"Um, Mr. J-" she hesitated strangely, and then continued in a whisper that required her to climb me like a koala up a tree. - Do you remember that magic box we have lying around our house?
"И? - I made a pitying expression, already imagining the approximate development of events.
"Well... Abby didn't like the distorted energy monsters that came after him. Not at all," she nodded, giving weight to her own words as she took a moment to open her arms. - But we'll have the coolest garden in the neighborhood!
"Huh, really! - I hugged her tighter, burying my face in her silky hair.
The house was insured for a tidy sum, and I'd already seen an angry elemental in action, so it was a good bet that the underground part of the mansion would survive, since it housed a compact nuclear reactor. Though, to be honest, my skills in magic are already enough to create a cozy secret lair on my own, because Zee's library has three huge shelves devoted to this area, and in English. I'll build it from scratch, and I'll be sure that there won't be any bookmarks, because I've been paranoid lately. Maybe I should spend less time at Bats.
***
"Brrrrr, it's so sugary, I have a spontaneous urge to eat a lemon," Green Lantern said and shrugged, looking at the cooing couple who'd been at each other for five minutes, despite the chaos around them. Though the monsters flying over Joker occasionally lost control and fell to the ground, floundering stupidly, the madman didn't even bother to finish them off, entrusting that honor to his comrades.
"I think they look really cute," the girl in the bat costume fighting next to him answered him, who had joined their friendly group too unnoticed.
"Oh, hey, I didn't see you there," a welcoming smile appeared on the man's face. - Green Lantern, protector of this sector of the galaxy from alien threats.
The scarlet-haired beauty threw an electro-batarang at another jackal-headed alien and looked around perplexed, her gaze lingering on the huge black towers nearby.
"Batgirl. You're not doing so good."
"Well, everyone has bad days."
"What are you gossiping about? - Suddenly the girl found herself in the green-haired man's arms, but, contrary to Lantern's predictions, instead of indignation, she leaned back and gave the former criminal a kiss.
***
"Uh... That's... - the superhero in the green tights hovered concretely, looking at our couple.
I smiled contentedly. I'd sent Harley to help Diana and Bats, or he'd be sure to get a blue screen when he saw two passionate kissing beauties, because my favorite would hardly limit herself to a light kiss.
"Don't sleep."
~Bah~
My words were accompanied by a revolver shot that killed a bug that was scurrying along the ground. I didn't hesitate to cast flashes over the area, using a spell from the school of reason, so that the enemies couldn't see anything and had to reach us almost by feel.
This episode helped me to release the accumulated stress and to rush into battle with renewed vigor, but our battle didn't last long. After only five minutes of trying to come up with a sane infiltration plan while saving people, the armored bugs circling above us suddenly flew apart, and Cyborg froze, staring lost at the huge dome in the ocean, which was opening majestically in the manner of a creepy metal flower.
"We're too late. He's here," he whispered with only his lips.
Estado de energía semanal
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