In the sky, Bryce continuously spewed torrents of seawater, trying to smash through the green light barrier. It was a futile effort. While her power could flood a city and was a natural disaster for mortals, its direct attack power was limited. After several attempts, most of the water was simply blocked, splashing back onto her own face.
She was cut off from her Dead Water army, which was bound to the ocean below, unable to fly.
Upon reaching a certain altitude, the rocket transformed into a flying vehicle, suspending the three of them in the air.
"How are you going to deal with her?" Diana couldn't free her hands and was unable to engage in aerial combat. Moreover, she wasn't confident she could defeat Bryce.
"Your Highness, just maintain the current situation. A little sunbathing will take care of her."
"Sunbathing?" Diana didn't understand the principle behind this plan. Although Bryce would weaken when she left the water, her performance against Aquaman Arthur when she first arrived in Gotham suggested she still had considerable combat power in an oxygen environment.
"How naive," Bryce said coldly. She had stopped spewing seawater. "You think you've imprisoned me, but you have no idea that you've just fallen into my hands."
With that, she clamped the trident in her teeth and began to climb the Lasso of Truth, hand over hand. It was true. The three were trapped, suspended in the air. Unless the Lasso of Truth's restraint was released, all they could do was watch Bryce approach.
"Alan, think of a countermeasure quickly." Watching Bryce get closer along the lasso, the overwhelming pressure, like being on the edge of an abyss watching the undead climb up, made Diana panic. She couldn't help but ask for help from Alan, who always had strange and wonderful methods.
"Your Highness, don't be afraid. I have connections in the underworld. We can get reincarnated together."
"What nonsense are you talking about?" Diana raised her hand to use the Green Lantern ring to manifest an attack. However, being unfamiliar with the ring, her attack methods were too simplistic. Bryce simply stopped and easily shattered it with her trident. The Green Lantern ring's power was determined by the wielder's will. Diana didn't lack will, but she hadn't undergone professional ring training and couldn't truly unleash its full potential.
"Face the fear of death." Bryce wore a smug smile, as if seeing her opponent's miserable state before death.
Thwack!
Suddenly, she felt a pain in her thigh. Bryce turned her head in confusion to see Alan behind her at some point and a syringe stuck in her perky buttock. Alan, standing on a flying skateboard manifested by the sinister ring, quickly pulled away and flew around her.
"Guess what I injected you with?" Alan said with a smug expression.
When did this happen? Alan shouldn't have been on Diana's back. How did he suddenly appear next to Bryce? This question immediately lingered in both women's minds.
Actually, when they ascended into the sky, Alan had used the thief's invisibility to detach from his armor. Through the power of the sinister ring, he achieved flight. As for the so-called manifested flying vehicle suspending the three of them, it was a complete illusion created by holographic projection. After all, the armor itself had flight capabilities. When Diana had asked earlier, it was the AI that had mimicked Alan's response with a completely expressionless face.
"What did you inject me with?" Bryce was alarmed, certain it was a drug targeting her, but she wanted to understand its effect to counter it.
"A super-strength desiccant," Alan said with a wicked, triumphant grin. "I'm going to turn you into a human-sized packet of silica gel. Permanently dry. Heh heh heh..."
"..."
Retch!
The effect was immediate and violent. Seawater gushed from Bryce's mouth as if a fire hydrant had burst inside her. She tried to close her mouth to prevent water loss, but seawater sprayed from her nostrils and ears, her cheeks puffing up more and more, unable to control the deluge. Bryce never dreamed she would be defeated in this manner.
Diana couldn't have guessed Alan would defeat his opponent this way either. The gushing seawater continued for what seemed like an eternity. Bryce's eyes had already rolled back, her body hanging limply in the air, bound by the Lasso of Truth, with seawater still trickling from her mouth, though the flow had slowed considerably. By now, she was unconscious, dehydration causing her to lose her senses, leaving her completely drained of strength. As the last bit of seawater was expelled, it marked the defeat of The Drowned.
In the ocean below, the Dead Water army, no longer sustained by Bryce's power, instantly disintegrated into black water.
The Hall of Justice.
Inside the Justice League's headquarters, the mood was grim.
"The invasion crisis is resolved, but Batman still hasn't returned."
The Justice League's heavy hitters and many members gathered, discussing strategies to rescue Bruce. Meanwhile, Alan, leading his two teams, was posing for publicity photos.
"The pose needs to be cooler, the gaze firmer, the chin a little higher, the aura more powerful..." Alan instructed the Midnight Bullies on how to pose while Joker Arthur snapped pictures with a camera. A super-team needed promotional photos, and having a tangled relationship with the Justice League was a great selling point, a good way to ride their coattails. Honestly, outside of Gotham, who even knew who the Midnight Bullies were?
"Alan, do you have any suggestions?" Clark turned and asked. Even with Constantine and Doctor Fate, the Justice League couldn't divine Bruce's location, indicating he wasn't in this dimension.
The bearded Constantine sat in a corner smoking, his eyes subtly avoiding the blankly staring Nanaue. After all, the two of them had a past they'd rather not recall.
"Just ask Barbatos for him, right?" Alan answered, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"..."
The crowd was speechless. Through interrogating the captured Court of Owls criminals, they had learned what kind of being the Bat-God Barbatos was. How could he possibly release someone so easily?
"He might not give you face, but he'll definitely give me face," Alan grinned, explaining, "I raised him to max stars and max constellations in the game. He has no reason to refuse my request."
"What do you mean?" Clark was getting more and more confused, feeling like they weren't talking about the same thing.
"Literally what I said." In fact, Alan already had a plan, but if he said it out loud, it wouldn't work.
"Bring Bruce up." They understood he meant to bring up the Dark Knights, not their own universe's Batman.
Originally, many members didn't know Batman's identity. Now, unless they were deaf and blind, everyone knew that Gotham's richest man, Bruce Wayne, was the middle-aged cross-dresser who liked to hang around the city skyline at night.
The seven Bruces from different negative universes were brought out, each in a unique prison. Bryce was kept in a special dry container. The Murder Machine was reduced to just a head with a signal blocker installed to prevent him from hacking networks. The Devastator was trapped in a red-light tempered glass cage. The Red Death was immobilized within a single crystal. The Batman Who Laughs, The Dawnbreaker, and The Merciless were now like ordinary people, restrained with electric shackles.
"What do you want to do with them?" Diana asked casually.
Alan waved his hand. "Strip them naked and parade them through the streets."
"You can't..." the heroes all protested in unison.