The black smoke coiled through the shattered plaza like ink through water. Twelve possessed bodies rose from the rubble—A-Train, The Deep, Black Noir, the remaining Vought security personnel who had been caught in the blast radius. Their eyes were black. Their mouths were open. Their movements were no longer human.
Azazel stood at the center, wearing Homelander's body like a crown. The cape was tattered. The star-spangled suit was burned and torn. But the body beneath was perfect. Kryptonian-level strength. Flight. Heat vision. And now, demonic intelligence piloting every cell.
"Kill them," Azazel said.
The possessed attacked.
---
A-Train hit Barry at Mach 3. The impact cratered the street and Barry went through a fire hydrant, water exploding skyward. Before he could recover, A-Train was on him again. Not running. Teleporting. The demon inside had twisted his speed into something unnatural—flickering from point to point without crossing the space between.
Barry threw a punch. A-Train flickered. Barry hit air. A-Train flickered behind him and drove an elbow into his spine. Barry gasped. Tried to phase. The demon's hand closed around his throat and held him solid.
"You're fast, little runner. But I don't run. I step."
Barry saw the next blow coming and couldn't dodge it.
---
The Deep erupted from a subway entrance, riding a wave of black water that crashed through the plaza with the force of a dam breaking. Diana met it head-on, sword drawn. The water split around her blade. The Deep came through the spray, his trident crackling with black energy.
His eyes were not his own.
". This body is quite good vessel," he said. The voice was layered. Wet. Wrong.
He thrust the trident. Diana deflected it off her bracer, the Nth metal ringing.
She countered with a slash that should have taken his arm. He dissolved into water, reformed behind her, and drove the trident toward her back. She spun. Caught it. Kicked him in the chest. He flew backward, hit a wall, and stood up laughing.
"I can't die, Amazon. Not anymore."
Diana's grip tightened on her sword. "Everything dies."
---
Green Lantern John Stewart threw up a sphere around himself and Barry, green light hardening into a shell that withstood the first telekinetic wave. The second wave hit harder. Cracks spidered through the construct.
"They're everywhere," Barry said, wiping blood from his mouth. "How many are inside them?"
"One per body," John said through gritted teeth. "But they're coordinated. Like a hive."
A third wave hit. The sphere shattered. John grabbed Barry and launched skyward, but Black Noir was already in the air above them, blades drawn, possessed silence radiating menace.
John threw a green fist. Black Noir sliced through it. The blades were coated in something dark that ate through the construct light.
Black Noir dove.
---
Oliver Queen was pinned behind an overturned truck, firing arrow after arrow. Explosive tips. Shock rounds. Every shot landed. Every shot was ignored. The possessed security guards walked through the fire like it was weather. Their bodies smoked. They didn't stop.
"These guys don't stay down," Oliver muttered.
"I've noticed." John's voice was strained. The green sphere had shattered completely. He was fighting hand-to-hand now, constructs flashing and dying as Black Noir's blades cut through them.
Oliver nocked his last explosive arrow. "Where's Superman?"
---
Superman was buried under three hundred tons of collapsed skyscraper.
Homelander—Azazel—had punched him through the tower's central support. The building had folded. The debris had entombed him.
For ten seconds, Clark didn't move. His whole face was bleeding. His jaw was swollen. His left eye wouldn't open. His ribs were cracked—he could feel the grind of bone with every breath. The heat vision had burned through his suit and seared the skin beneath. His ears were ringing. His hands were shaking.
He pushed. The debris shifted. Steel beams groaned. Concrete cracked. He rose through the wreckage like a swimmer breaking surface.
Azazel was waiting for him.
The demon prince hovered at the edge of the crater, arms crossed, Homelander's smile stretched too wide. Black smoke leaked from the corners of his eyes.
"You're still alive. Good. I wanted to break you more than once."
Clark spat blood. "You're not Homelander. Are you demon? "
"Yes, so, you know about demons"
Azazel raised one hand. Telekinetic force slammed into Clark, drove him back into the rubble.
Before he could recover, the demon was on him, fists hammering down with the full force of a Kryptonian body backed by hellfire.
Each punch shook the ground. Each impact sent shockwaves through the city. The cameras caught it all. The world watched.
Clark tried to block. Azazel's fist went through his guard and broke two more ribs. Clark tried to fire his heat vision. Azazel laughed and caught the beams on his chest, smoke pouring from the impact but the body beneath unharmed.
"Your fire doesn't work on me, Kryptonian. This body was made from my essence. Your powers are useless."
Clark swung. Connected. Azazel's head snapped back, then forward. The smile never left.
"Again."
Clark swung again. Azazel caught his fist. Crushed it. Clark screamed.
---
Diana was bleeding from a dozen cuts. The Deep was relentless.
His water form made him impossible to wound permanently, and the demon inside him had no fear of the sword. The lasso burned him—truth was toxic to demons—but he was fast enough to avoid it most of the time.
She needed to change tactics.
"John! I need light!"
John Stewart was still airborne, dodging Black Noir's blades. "What?"
"Light! The brightest you can make!"
John's ring flared. A sun-bright pulse erupted from his fist, flooding the plaza with green-white radiance. The Deep screamed. The demon inside him recoiled from the light.
Diana lunged. Her sword went through his chest—not flesh, but the black smoke within. The demon howled. The Deep's body collapsed, unconscious, the smoke pouring from his mouth and fleeing into the ground.
"One down," Diana breathed.
---
Barry was losing. A-Train was faster now. The demonic possession had removed every physical limit. Barry dodged, but each dodge was narrower. Each counter was slower.
"You can't outrun me, Flash. I'm not bound by physics anymore."
Barry's mind raced. A plan formed.
He ran. Not away. In circles. Faster and faster. A-Train flickered after him, matching his speed, closing the gap. Barry accelerated. Mach 5. Mach 6. The air around them began to vortex, a tornado forming in the center of the plaza.
"What are you doing?" the demon hissed.
"Running you out."
A-Train's legs buckled. The host body—not the demon, but the flesh—couldn't sustain this speed forever. Barry pushed harder. Mach 7. The tornado lifted debris, water, smoke. A-Train stumbled. Barry reversed, hit him with a punch that carried the momentum of a transcontinental run. A-Train went through a wall. The demon screamed. The host went still.
Barry collapsed to one knee, gasping. "Two."
---
John caught Black Noir's blade on a construct shield and twisted. The shield became a vice, locking the blade in place. John pulled. Black Noir stumbled forward. John's other hand came up, ring blazing, and a green fist the size of a truck slammed Black Noir into the ground.
The demon screamed and fled the body. Black Noir lay unconscious, finally silent.
"Three," John said.
---
Hawkgirl descended through the smoke like a thunderbolt.
She had been holding the perimeter, keeping civilians back, coordinating extraction. But the perimeter was gone. The plaza was a war zone. And she had seen Superman go down.
Her Nth metal mace hummed with ancient power as she dove. Azazel was standing over Clark, fist raised for another blow.
She swung.
The mace hit Azazel between the shoulder blades. The demon screamed. Not a human scream. Not a supe's scream. A demon's scream. Nth metal disrupted magic. Disrupted possession. Disrupted the very essence of what Azazel was.
Azazel turned. His black eyes found hers.
"You. Bird women, what are you ? "
"Me."
He threw a telekinetic wave. She flew through it, wings folding, mace swinging again. This time he caught it. His hand closed around the Nth metal and smoke poured from his palm where it burned him.
"That stings," he said. "But it won't stop me."
He threw her. She crashed through the facade of a department store, glass and mannequins shattering around her. She was up in three seconds. Back in the air in four.
Azazel was already turning back to Superman.
"Are you alright, Superman?" Hawkgirl shouted.
Clark's response was to pull himself upright, ribs grinding, face a mask of blood and dust. His one open eye found hers.
"I've been worse."
"Don't lie to me."
He almost smiled. "Get the others. I'll hold him."
"You can't."
"I don't have to win. I just have to keep him busy."
Azazel raised both hands. The ground beneath him began to glow. Hellfire. Black and orange and wrong. The temperature in the plaza dropped and then soared. The air itself began to scream.
Your world will be under our control?" the demon laughed.
---
In the Batcave, Bruce watched the feeds. Every camera. Every angle. Every League member bleeding. Every civilian screaming. Every demon laughing.
Bruce's hands were motionless on the console. His face was stone.
Think, Bruce thought. Think. What do you do against something you can't punch? Something that wears the strongest body on Earth and calls it a vessel? Something that has magic, telekinesis, immortality? Something that can't be exorcised because the host was never human?
Clark was losing. Diana was exhausted. Barry was drained. John was running low on ring charge. Oliver was out of arrows. Hawkgirl was the only one landing hits.
Think.
The Lazarus Pit. Too far. Too slow. Too unpredictable.
The dimensional portal. Months from completion.
Stephen Strange. Not found yet.
Dr fate can't contact
Should I contact angel pray, will they come.
The Men of Letters archives. What was in the archives? Exorcisms were useless. Azazel wasn't possessing a human host. He was possessing his own blood, grown in a Vought laboratory, shaped into a weapon.
This wasn't standard demonic possession. This was a demon reclaiming possession real body.
Think.
What kills a demon prince?
An angel blade.
May be worth try.
The Colt. A myth. A story. Not confirmed. Not available.
The demon-killing knife. Same problem.
What else?
What else?
The mystic had been running combat analysis throughout the fight. Bruce pulled up the data, scanning frantically. Azazel's energy signature. Homelander's vital signs. The demonic possession overlay.
Wait. The vital signs. Homelander's body was still alive. Still human enough to bleed. The demon was powerful, but it was still bound to a physical form. A form that could be hurt. Clark's punches had landed. Diana's sword could cut him. Hawkgirl's mace could burn him. They hadn't been fighting uselessly. They had been accumulating damage. Small. Incremental. But real.
And if the body could be damaged enough—if the vessel could be rendered non-functional—the demon would lose its grip. Not exorcised. Just... evicted. Forced out of a broken container.
Bruce's hands moved across the console. "Mystic. Analyze the damage threshold required to force Azazel from Homelander's body."
"Calculating. Based on observed resistance to Nth metal, Kryptonian-level trauma, and magical disruption, estimated threshold: catastrophic multi-system organ failure combined with sufficient magical interference."
"He's Kryptonian-level durable. How do we cause catastrophic organ failure?"
"The body is durable externally. Internally, the organs are reinforced but not invulnerable. Internal hemorrhaging has already begun from Superman's impacts. The demon's healing factor is compensating. If the healing factor can be interrupted while simultaneous trauma is applied..."
"The demon loses control of the vessel."
"Correct. However, interruption of demonic healing requires magical disruption. Nth metal is effective but insufficient in current concentration. A stronger magical source would be required."
Bruce was already out of the chair.
He knew where to find stronger magic. He knew exactly where.
The question was whether he could get it in time.
---
The plaza was hell on Earth. Literally. Azazel had opened fissures in the ground, and the fires of the pit licked upward, illuminating the battle in orange and black. The possessed continued to fight, their numbers replenishing as more Vought security personnel fell and were claimed.
Clark was on one knee. His breath came in wet gasps. Blood dripped from his chin onto the fractured concrete.
Diana stood in front of him, sword raised, body between the demon and the broken Kryptonian.
"Move," Azazel said.
"No."
"You cannot stop me. You cannot save him. You cannot save this world."
"I can try."
Azazel smiled. The expression was almost gentle. "I admire that. Truly. It's been centuries since anyone tried to stop me with nothing but a sword and a prayer."
Diana's grip tightened. "It's been centuries since I've needed more."
She lunged.
The sword met black smoke and the world went white.
---
She went flying in air.