Thea herself thought the mood swing was pointless. Diana pulled her close and they sat in silence for a long while before Thea finally settled.
Using a human heart to align with the heart of heaven—that was her current state. She was stronger than any human heart, of course, but she hadn't reached the heart of heaven's level. Her cultivation of inner state wasn't deep enough. Her vision wasn't wide enough. She hadn't progressed step by step and tempered herself the conventional way—she'd learned the Fifth-Dimensional arts and forced a shortcut.
The whole world pressed down on her. Now the smallest ripple produced an enormous emotional swing.
For a full day Thea was visibly distracted. Batman kept shooting Diana strange looks. The meaning was roughly: You two trying out some new game? The big fight's almost here. Pace yourselves.
People like Superman and the Flash were too straightforward to pry. Oliver, being her actual brother, couldn't comfortably ask about anything that obviously sat in the "private" category.
As the League's reserve member, Supergirl had apparently flashed back to some inappropriate mental imagery. Her cheeks went pink.
Fortunately the League respected democratic freedoms and personal privacy. Even a busybody like Batman could only manage the most indirect glancing questions. No one else would touch the topic.
All those probing stares were mortifying Diana. The worst part was the unspoken convention that nobody actually asked—which meant she couldn't go around grabbing collars and explaining. She just stiffened her face and ignored every odd look.
With Diana as her shield, it took Thea a full three days to recover. The universe's will was her, but she was more than just the universe. Easy to say—very hard to actually link the two while holding them separate.
Even though her world was cell-sized compared to the real universe, she'd glimpsed that highest tier. Of the creator-tier heavyweights, God sat at the pinnacle and made it look effortless—He had severed His connection from His world. The world was His creation, but He wouldn't stay forever. Thea suspected His true body had long since absorbed enough power and knowledge and departed.
Lucifer and Michael sat one tier below. They were immersed in world-will and couldn't pull themselves out. Whenever they could let go, then they'd have transcended.
Thea had managed to pull free because her world was so small. The worlds the Lord of Heaven and the Lord of Hell had created were vast. Fundamentally different scale.
Her starting point was low, so she'd take it slow—start with a small world and grow it bit by bit. That was one path. The two heavyweights, as favorite sons visiting God daily, naturally set the bar at its absolute ceiling. When they worked, they worked big—jumping straight to parallel-universe-sized worlds was well within their range. Different roads to the same destination; each method had its merits. You couldn't say one was more elegant than the other.
"I think I'm back." She ran a self-check and found nothing off. She sank her focus back into the small world, merging her thought with the world-will. This time—no wrenching pain, no thousandfold attachment. The world was her, but she wasn't entirely the world.
The Stone Man was still searching alone. He didn't know how big the world was, didn't know what he himself was—only that maybe up ahead, or maybe tomorrow, he'd find the answer.
Thea didn't interfere. She let him act on his own. The ending was already set: the Stone Man would burn himself at the end, adding something new to this world. His death would also mark the formal beginning of the Two-Dimensional World's evolution into three dimensions.
She wasn't going to stop him, and she had no intention of doing so. If she couldn't even let go of one of her own creations, she had no business doing any of this.
The path had been twisted, but things had worked out anyway. The Two-Dimensional World was basically taking care of itself now. From here on, she could sit at home and wait—the world would evolve on its own.
It hadn't been smooth, and the process hadn't matched her estimates, but everything was on track now.
Her mental force had taken heavy damage—she was operating at only eighty percent combat strength. But her realm had jumped to a level that surprised even her.
Her ranking among the Endless had shot up dramatically. She was now No. 20.
Her old trick of burning willpower had completely stopped working. Willpower represented sentient life's comprehension of death—not her own comprehension. She was the one aspiring to become the Second Sister of Death; it wasn't the masses who were going to do it for her. In the end, she had to walk the final steps herself.
Good luck was on her side. Merging with the world-will, she'd seen the Stone Man's future fate—born from nothing, then burning himself, using his death to bring new life to all living things. That one cycle made up the hardest, most exasperating stretch of realm progression. She didn't exactly have centuries to slowly grind it out.
...
Metropolis. The Hall of Justice.
Batman had practically pitched a cot here. A crowd of heroes wanted to help, only to realize they'd be getting in the way. They were reduced to standing around and watching.
The teleporter on Luthor's side was already installed. Give the man credit—a billionaire with no superpowers whatsoever, he'd handled every job himself. Machinist, fitter, welder—all with locally sourced materials, working nearly around the clock. Three days to completion.
Today was the formal crossover. Given the suppression of that world's will, the first batches in would be the "reformed villains." Amanda's Suicide Squad was assembled first. Government agents, military special-ops teams, and the hundred-plus ex-members of the Cold Flame Order under Mr. E.
The Suicide Squad would go through wearing power-dampeners, disguised as ordinary civilians. Their job was the dirty work—assassinating local leaders, assassinating generals, blowing up arms depots, creating openings for ground forces.
The military brought extensive materials to expand Luthor's portal. Several special-forces units would branch off to seize strategic positions. Population wasn't a takeaway target—those were all bad actors, and they couldn't be rehabilitated in the available time. Earth's own population pressure was already high; they didn't need that crowd.
But resources were fully accessible—ores, rare metals, tech outputs, all could be packed up and carted off. Several of the world's great powers had been battered nonstop by Black Lantern, White Lantern, and Indigo Tribe crises. Right now they were waiting to strike a war-profit fortune to restock their treasuries. Without that, they'd have zero interest in fighting a dimensional war.
Meanwhile, Mr. E was prepping an emergency magical portal. If something went sideways, people could retreat to Earth. He also had another task—summoning Thea's avatar into that world to suppress the world-will.
"Let's divide up the assignments." Batman's tone sounded collaborative. It wasn't. He was making declarations.
Hal Jordan had just been revived by the Underworld and had barely made it back for this operation. When he heard that command-voice, he frowned and started to speak.
Simon Baz wasn't about to steal thunder from the "greatest Green Lantern," so he stayed tucked behind him, quietly doing his invisible-newbie act.