Diana closed her eyes, smirking. "So anyone can now watch sunsets over the Vanetian coral cities? How… domestic."
Gohan flopped onto the bed, sighing into the sheets. "Transparency's part of the job. Besides, it's not like they can see in her—"
The ceiling trembled.
Diana hovered midair, mischief glinting in her eyes. "Testing structural integrity," she said—then dropped like a comet.
The impact cratered the bed into the floor, shaking the chamber hard enough to crack a distant window. Gohan's head poked out from the rubble, hair dusted with plaster. "Diana?!"
She straddled him, unfazed, her grin razor-sharp. "Relax. You said the broadcast's privacy locks are engaged." Leaning down, her whisper warmed his ear. "But if you plan to destroy me tonight, maybe reinforce the bedframe first."
Gohan flushed scarlet. "DIAN—!"
The scene cut abruptly to the hallway outside, where Vermont paused mid-stride, teacup rattling on its saucer. He glanced at the cracked door, sighed, and kept walking.
"Youth," he muttered. Suddenly a blur zipped passed the angel.
His staff pulsed, he glanced over at it before peering into it. "I understand Lord Gohan said he would deal with her after a bit of rest, but tampering with divinity…"
"You think you're so fast you schmuck!" The little girl yelled, as she fired a ki blast that almost seemed to be heading straight for Vermont, but he didn't budge as the Ki blast sped passed him as another blur seemingly crushed the ki blast in an instant.
"You have to promise to keep your word when i catch you," She called out as he stopped and grinned.
"I had my fingers crossed," Trunks shrugged.
"Wha!?- you LIAR!" The young girl screamed as her power surged before charging after Trunks.
Gotham City – Batcave
Damian and Barbara sat in weighted silence, the cave stretching beyond the reinforced glass. Batman stood motionless by the Batcomputer, his cowl masking all but the sharp line of his jaw.
"I presume you mastered invaluable lessons," he said finally, voice graveled.
Barbara leaned back in her chair, fingers laced. "You could say that." Her tone carried the calm of someone who'd stared into the abyss—and carved their name into it.
Batman turned, assessing. "Damian?"
The boy smirked, arms crossed. "I could beat you now. Barely breaking a sweat."
A beat. "Your confidence remains… unchallenged," Batman replied, dry as dust.
Barbara snorted. "Translation: Your ego's galactic-sized, and I've still got better odds against Bruce."
Damian bristled. "We're gods compared to what we were—"
"Gods don't pout when they lose at checkers," she shot back, nodding at the half-finished game on the table.
Batman interrupted with a raised hand. "Power isn't the lesson." His gaze locked on Damian. "Control is."
The boy rolled his eyes but stayed silent. Some battles, even he knew, couldn't be won with fists.
Batman raised his hand and pressed an intercom.
"Flash. Report to Gotham S.T.A.R. Labs. We may need your speed—things are escalating."
He turned to Damian and Barbara. "Lets go,"
Gotham City – S.T.A.R. Labs Perimeter
The Task Force X jet trembled midair, warning lights flaring like a Christmas tree on overdrive. Sparks popped along the cockpit panels, the tech straight-up having a meltdown.
Harley Quinn squinted out the window, her usual manic grin twitching.
"Uh, Flag? My phone just rebooted itself… back to factory settings. That's, like, a bad omen, right?"
Rick Flag didn't answer with words—just a sharp slap to his failing tablet.
"Quantum pulse is climbing fast. If this hits critical, forget surveillance—the worlds gonna be wiped cleaner than Waller's conscience. And that's saying something."
Down below, the scene was chaos incarnate. The lab looked like a war zone—cables fried, smoke everywhere. Right in the center? Black Mask. Holding a strange, jet-black sphere. It hummed like it had a mind of its own.
No warping reality. No flashy lights. Just… data breaking.
Security monitors? Gone.
Magpie's stolen chip? Toast.
Clock King's watch? Back to twelve o'clock sharp.
"I got the schematics!" Clock King shouted, holding up a clearly fried hard drive. "But this core's cooking my gear—we gotta—"
CRASH.
Enter King Shark—like a truck made of meat and anger, tearing through the wall like it was paper. His cyber-eye sparked violently.
"NO MORE LASER EYE!! SHARK. MAD."
Deadshot ducked as energy blasts tore through the air, raising his wrist cannons.
"Drop the disco ball, Mask! That thing'll wipe more than your rap sheet—like your whole damn jawline!"
Magpie lunged at Harley, blades sparking—but one stuttered, glitching mid-swing.
"You don't get it!" Magpie shrieked. "This baby wipes the board clean—no fingerprints, no records! Do you know what collectors would pay for that kind of magic?!"
Harley blinked. "Wait—this ain't a time thing? I been makin' clock jokes all day!"
She looked genuinely annoyed for a second, then shrugged.
Deadshot fired off a blast, barely missing. "That's why you kept saying 'tick tock' like a damn cuckoo clock?"
"You weren't listenin' at all, were you?" he growled.
Harley paused just long enough to yank a pin from a grenade with her teeth, then bonk herself on the head with it.
"Oopsie!" she grinned, tossing it behind her without looking.
She ducked under Magpie's swinging blades and pulled a metal bat from seemingly nowhere—
CRACK!
—shattering it over Magpie's skull.
"She's fine," Harley said brightly, stepping over the twitching villain. "She's got insurance, right?"
Gotham City – S.T.A.R. Labs Courtyard
Barry Allen slammed into a stop, barely avoiding a floating Sentinel No. 2. The kid's battlesuit was impressive—sleek, and definitely hacked together with military grade stability.
The voice modulator cracked as he spoke. "D-don't make this hard, Flash."
Barry tilted his head, studying the twitching voice.
"…Are you shaking?"
The boy fired off a pulse—it shorted every traffic timer nearby, plunging the street into blackout.
"My suit has mapped your paths. You can't outrun me—"
But he could.
Flash vanished, reappearing behind him, casually opening a panel in the suit.
Out fell tangled wires… and a kid's crayon drawing. A stick-figure family.
Barry's voice softened. "Kid, you're running tech even Batman wouldn't go near. Your sister's been looking for you." The last part obvious bait.
The boy tensed. "Shut up! I've got protocols—!"
"Yeah. And they don't stop your voice from shaking."
Barry stepped closer. "Let me help."
Then… static. A shriek through the visor.
Waller's voice. Cold. Brutal.
"Kill. Him."
Inside S.T.A.R. Labs
The core's black fractal patterns now stretched across nearly every surface, devouring digital signatures like some techno-horror movie villain. DNA logs? Erased. Camera footage? Ghosted.
Flag wrestled Black Mask, gloves sparking as the core's surface started eating into the tech.
"Harley—the case!"
She didn't hesitate. Dived straight in, slamming a lead-lined briefcase over the core.
"Time for night-night, glitchy!"
But it was too late.
A pulse ripped through the city.
No flames. No noise. Just… silence.
Gotham's lights died.
Phones went dark.
Even the Batcomputer… choked on error codes.
Watchtower – Mainframe Chamber
Boom Tubes hissed open like soda cans under pressure before beeping and turning red.
OFFLINE.
Batman, Damian, and Barbara stepped into the Watchtower. Damian's checkers piece clattered to the floor, forgotten.
"Just made it,"
Superman floated above the city. "Power's back… but GCPD's evidence servers? WayneTech patents? Gone."
Bruce stared at the core's schematic. Now? Just noise.
"Waller didn't want to keep the core," he said flatly. "She wanted to prove it worked."
Martian Manhunter tossed a discarded glove onto the table. Inside? A note scribbled like homework:
Sentinel No.2 = Twin Brother = Family = Protect.
Cyborg looked grim. "Why kids?"
Bruce pulled up a hidden file—Project Clean Slate.
"Because adults ask questions. Kids just want to save family."
The screen glitched, settling on one final message:
ERASURE PROTOCOL ACTIVE. ALL DATA IS TEMPORARY.
Even the Batcomputer was buckling. Drives blinking red like they were bleeding out.
Damian scooped up the black king piece. Rolled it in his fingers.
"Predictable. You let them think they won."
Barbara knelt at the console. "Batman doesn't let people win. He rigs the game."
Batman didn't reply—just ran his gloved fingers over a fried drive. Tiny marks—punctures, almost too small to notice.
Barbara's eyes widened.
"…Morse code. Nano-level. You turned the pulse into a decoder key."
Damian grinned. "Old man's backups were never just backups."
Bruce nodded. "Digital traces can be erased. But physical changes? Not so easy."
He synced the drive. Holograms burst to life, shifting binary into fragments of schematics.
> …_ _ …
> … _ _…
> . _ _. _…
Martian Manhunter blinked. "S.O.S.?"
"Breadcrumbs," Bruce said. "The data's still here. Spread across every drive. Waller got her test run. I got my test results."
Superman folded his arms. "You gambled everything on Morse code?"
Batman's response was calm. Absolute.
"No gamble. Just preparation."
The hologram finished reconstructing—a partial schematic.
Project Clean Slate.
Now stamped with a tiny W in the corner.
Damian flicked the black king into the light. It landed dead center on the W.
"Checkmate."
Barbara raised an eyebrow. "More like a stalemate. You still lost the board when he walked out earlier."
Bruce didn't answer—just a flicker at the corner of his mouth.
"I've delayed the cascade, but that core's still charging. In five minutes, the world goes dark. One-minute blackout window. Maybe less. Some closed-shell systems might be buried deep enough to survive the pulse."
He gestured toward the drives. "These run on an autonomous backup—hardware-based, not software. A fail-safe I embedded in case of a military-grade EMP."
A faint ticking echoed through the silence.
"There's a mic calibrated to that exact signal. If the ticking stops, it means one thing—an electromagnetic strike. The Watchtower hasn't been breached, so that narrows the cause. The algorithm monitors the signal constantly."
He turned slightly. "Once the beep stops, mechanical pins drop. The drives reboot manually. That triggers a Morse sequence, which reactivates the system."
Barbara blinked. "You planned for all that? I keep forgetting how far ahead you play the game."
Bruce's voice barely changed.
"I don't believe in surprise endings."
He was already typing before he finished speaking. "Cyborg—allocate a member to every country that allows us to operate. Keep the peace when the panic hits. Because it will."
"The chance takers," Barbara nodded—then a new voice cut in from the hall.
"It's good to be back," Vixen said as she stepped into the room, the doors hissing closed behind her. "Last I checked, we've got a god on our side now."
She moved toward the monitor, eyes scanning the data. "And we're running out of time. Is asking Gohan for help really off the table?"
"Do you need him to wipe your ass too?" Power Girl called as she entered, boots echoing on the metal floor.
"No," Bruce said firmly, still focused on the screen. "We don't involve him. He just saved our asses. The Justice League is more than capable of dealing with this."