The comm crackled again in Kara's ear, Bruce's voice still there, still trying to hold the line before things slipped too far.
"I know what you're thinking," Kara Zor-El said, her eyes locked forward, breath steadying there was something softer in her voice it almost sounded like an apology. "I really do and I thank you for considering that."
For a split second, she closed her eyes.
Then she exhaled.
"But I'm sorry, Bruce… I can't do that, I have to stop them here."
Up above, inside the Batwing, Batman's expression hardened instantly.
"Kara!"
His voice sharpened.
"Damn it, you need to.."
The line stayed open.
She just stopped listening.
Because the moment he raised his voice,
She attacked.
The ground shattered beneath her feet as she launched forward like a missile, red torn cape snapping violently behind her, a streak of heat and fury cutting straight toward Querehsha.
Querehsha barely had time to react.
Kara hit her like a missile the impact detonated the street, sending a shockwave that flipped cars, blasted even far away beasts off their feet. Querehsha's body folded under the force, her back slamming into the ground hard enough to crater it before Kara drove her deeper, fist already coming raining down on her.
Each strike landed cracking bone, tearing flesh, smashing the Monarch's form apart faster than it could properly regenerate.
"You talk big game, but you can't handle this can you?" Kara snapped, grabbing her by the throat and dragging her through the ruined street, carving a trench through concrete as sparks and debris erupted around them. "You come here to my world, threaten to destorying it, and worst of all you insulted my one and only.."
She slammed her into the side of a building so hard the entire structure groaned and began to collapse.
"How about you try surviving me first?"
Querehsha hissed, her body already knitting itself back together even as pieces of her still fell away. Her smile returned, twisted but she was clearly angry.
"Oh, I am enjoying this! Seeing your pathetic resistance.."
Her abdomen split open unnaturally, and from it poured a swarm, hundreds of insectoid horrors spilling out in a churning mass, wings buzzing, stingers gleaming with venom.
They surged toward Kara in a wave.
Kara didn't step back, her eyes ignited. A beam of heat vision tore through the swarm, vaporizing entire sections instantly. She spun with it, carving a burning arc through the sky, incinerating hundreds, before they could even reach her.
Still they came.
Querehsha attacked through her own swarm, her stinger snapping forward again, faster this time.
Kara caught it mid-strike.
Again, but this time, Querehsha anticipated it.
The stinger split.
Multiple barbed tendrils shot out from it, wrapping around Kara's arm, tightening, trying to pierce.
Kara's expression hardened.
"Not happening!"
She pulled her Hard.
The force alone ripped Querehsha forward, dragging her straight into Kara's waiting fist as it collided with her face, the impact sending her flying through another row of buildings in a violent chain of destruction.
Kara didn't chase immediately.
She hovered there, chest rising, eyes flicking briefly to Rakan and Raven.
These Monarchs were a problem.
Across the battlefield,
Raven stood facing Rakan, her cloak billowing as dark energy coiled around her, Rakan circled her slowly, claws flexing, his white beast form towering over her, blood still dripping from wounds that refused to fully heal.
"You're not like the other one," he said, voice low, assessing. "You seem much more calm, despite that you are facing a superior being, one that will kill you shortly."
Raven didn't respond to that, her eyes glowed brighter.
"Spare me the bullshit," she said quietly.
The shadows beneath Rakan's feet shifted.
And then something within them erupted.
Dozens of black constructs, spikes, chains, blades shot upward, piercing through him from multiple angles, locking him in place. The force alone lifted him off the ground, suspending him in a display as dark energy surged through the constructs, tearing at his form.
Rakan roared.
The ground cracked beneath the pressure of his strength as he forced his body to move, muscles bulging, claws tearing through the constructs one by one. Even as they shattered, more replaced them, binding, restricting him.
Raven raised one hand.
"Azarath… Metrion.."
Rakan vanished.
Her eyes widened a fraction, he then reappeared behind her.
Too fast.
His claw tore across her side before she could fully turn, the strike ripping through her defenses and sending her crashing across the ground, dark energy scattering like broken glass, Raven slid to a stop, one hand pressing briefly against the wound, her expression tightening a bit.
"Shit.." she murmured.
Rakan didn't give her time to recover.
He was already on her again.
This time, she moved first, the space between them warped as she blinked out of existence, reappearing above him, both hands raised as a massive sphere of compressed dark energy formed instantly and slammed down onto him.
The explosion swallowed him whole.
The shockwave rippled outward, flattening everything in its path.
For a moment,
There was silence.
Then he stepped out of it.
Burned, torn and bleeding but The Beast Monarch was smiling.
"Lovely," Rakan growled, rolling his shoulder again as bone cracked back into place. "That's more like it!"
Raven's eyes narrowed.
Her attack had worked.
It had hurt him. but it hadn't killed him.
They weren't just strong.
They weren't just fast, they kept coming back.
Again and again.
"Immortality, is that it." she whispered, more to herself than to him.
"Close enough," Rakan replied, lunging at her again.
This time, Raven didn't try to overpower him.
She outmaneuvered him.
Every strike he threw met empty space, every movement countered by precise, controlled shifts in position, her magic bending distance, redirecting force, turning his own momentum against him. A gesture of her hand sent chains wrapping around his arm mid-swing, redirecting it into the ground. A flick of her wrist twisted gravity around him, forcing him off balance just long enough for her to strike back with concentrated blasts of dark energy, and she even managed to get rid of the Kryptonite claws teleporting it away from his hand.
She wasn't stronger, but she didn't need to be.
She was smarter, but even that had limits.
Rakan adapted.
His next strike came from an angle she didn't expect.
His claws clipped her shoulder, just enough.
Just enough to break through.
Raven staggered back, her breath catching for a moment as dark energy flickered around her unevenly.
Rakan noticed.
"There it is," he said, grin widening. "Human limits."
Raven straightened slowly, her hand lowering from the wound, her expression settling back into a calmer look.
"Yes," she said.
Then her eyes flared brighter.
"But I wouldn't say that I'm human."
Suddenly the ground beneath Gotham didn't just crack, It erupted as concrete split apart under pressure as something vast moved beneath the city. Then came the roots, massive, writhing and alive, bursting upward in violent surges that tore through streets, skyscrapers alike.
Hunters were thrown back instantly as the earth itself rose to meet them, panic spreading through their ranks as entire blocks were swallowed in a rising forest of twisting, armored roots. Some fired instinctively.
Kara hovered mid-air, eyes narrowed as she took in the impossible expansion below her, while Raven floated beside her.
And then,
Querehsha laughed as she stood amidst the rising corruption like a queen witnessing her garden bloom at last, arms loosely crossed, smile stretching wider as the roots spread further and further outward, consuming Gotham piece by piece.
"Finally," she said, almost lovingly. "It took long enough."
Kara's gaze snapped to her instantly.
"What the hell is this?" she demanded.
Querehsha tilted her head slightly, as if entertained by the question.
"One of my works," she replied calmly. "Or rather… the result of one of my soldiers. A lovely girl from my earth."
Kara frowned harder.
"I don't care whose earth it's from, what is it doing!"
The Monarch's smile widened.
"Spreading."
The roots were growing faster now, crawling outward like an infection.
"It will cover this entire planet," Querehsha continued softly, almost fondly. "And once it does… there will be nothing left worth calling life."
Raven's eyes narrowed, her head turning slowly as she assessed the expanding destruction below.
"This is bad Kara, I don't think she is bluffing this thing looks like it'll unleash something toxic." she said quietly.
Querehsha chuckled again, as if she could hear every thought they were having and didn't say.
"Oh, it is worse than you think."
Far above, inside the Batwing in Gotham's smoky skyline, Batman was already watching it unfold through layered telemetry and ground feeds.
The roots. The spread pattern. The biological readings.
His voice cut immediately through encrypted comms.
"Martian Manhunter."
Then Martian Manhunter responded, calmly. "Bruce. The anomaly we detected before the gate opened… this is it, isn't it?"
Batman's eyes narrowed slightly as he zoomed in on the corrupted zones expanding beneath Gotham.
"Yes," he said flatly. "That's it."
Then J'onn again: "So you did go to her, as you said you would I assume?."
"Of course I did." He brought up a separate feed, Arkham containment protocols, sealed bio-cell readings, isolation wards reinforced with anti-spore dampeners.
"I identified the growth signature beneath Gotham the moment it surfaced. There was only one known meta on Earth capable of that kind of systemic botanical corruption."
His eyes flicked briefly to a secured file.
"Poison Ivy."
"But whoever did that was not our Poison Ivy."
J'onn's tone sharpened slightly. "An alternate variant I assume."
"Exactly," Batman confirmed. "Which led me to the conclusion that these Monarchs aren't native to a single reality. They're pulling assets, biological, magical, tactical, from multiple Earths, that wolf like monarch used Kryptonite to fight Superman is another proof of that."
He leaned forward slightly as the roots surged again on the feed.
"And now our Poison Ivy is the countermeasure... Fear not," he added, "She can contain it. At least long enough for us to stabilize the field."
His gaze shifted briefly to another monitor, Fortress of Solitude diagnostics, kryptonian vitals fluctuating dangerously.
J'onn followed his line of thought instantly. "What of Superman?"
"I've developed a partial countermeasure for the poison that infected him. Yellow sun radiation can stabilize his system, but that woman monarch's toxin is unlike anything on record. It's adaptive and very potent."
"It's worse than Ivy's."
He paused for a moment.
"And that's an understatement."
J'onn's voice lowered slightly. "So he will survive?"
Batman's jaw tightened.
"We can't lose him right now, so I'll do whatever I can."
A silence followed that statement.
Then J'onn spoke again.
"From our side, we will hold the line. The shadow lanterns and the hunters are performing above expectation despite their initial mental collapse. Many are no longer thinking.. They are fighting on pure survival instinct."
Batman's eyes tracked a group of hunters regrouping beneath collapsing infrastructure, firing in synchronized bursts as instinct replaced fear.
"That's what war does." he said quietly.
/-\
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