ALL NOVEL Chapter 61.1
“Haaa… hahahaha… Well, I had a blast. How about you?”
Kara stared at the Villain, his back against a piece of rubble and his purple suit half destroyed by the impact. Such a fragile man… and yet, such a dangerous enemy if given time and motivation.
Kara could just step on him now, crush his head even easier than she did Faust’s.
Then she dismissed the thought and turned to check on her girlfriend, she was far more important than the clown any time of the day.
Kori was already up, floating a few centimeters above the ground and watching where the portal had been, making sure it was well and truly gone. Her armor looked damaged, a small dent on the side of her belly where Major Force’s blast had hit her, but it hadn't been breached.
Slowly, with pained movements, the Joker grabbed a pack of cigarettes from his chest pocket and pulled out one, staring at the thing with a confused face for a second before sighing. “Ah, I don’t even have a lighter, and it seemed like such a good deal at the time.”
“What kind of deal?” She couldn’t help asking while thinking about his fate.
She had already used both her vision and the remaining sensors on her armor to verify he didn’t have any last tricks hidden away —he did, but nothing that could threaten her or Kori— so she felt safe just considering him.
The problem was… she wasn’t sure he wouldn’t come back, there was more than one being capable of that in this universe after all. If one needed proof, a portal to Hell had just been formed not even 20 meters from where she stood.
Granted, nothing from over there had really crossed over, but could she risk it?
“My soul,” the Joker started to laugh again, but had to cough and ended up just snickering. “I found it pretty funny that someone thought it was valuable.”
Well, that was one worry off her chest. Kara had been fairly sure the Joker had made a deal with Neron, but she couldn’t even guess what he had asked for. A pack of cigarettes was both harmless and completely in character.
Still, could Neron make use of Joker’s soul once he was dead? Could the Demon resurrect him or turn him into one of his own species?
All around her, she felt the shadows moving, stretching impossibly wide before starting to gather in pools at the corners of the underground parking lot, gaining a new depth she hadn’t known was possible.
Staring at one particularly large spot, she swore she could sense something looking back, her new senses telling her something large and powerful was paying attention to her, but no matter how hard she looked, she only saw darkness.
With a beep, Kara felt the magic-draining device locking onto her chest, the armor itself making sure it couldn’t be dislodged before completely draining her.
So, it had been three minutes.
From the corners of the room, the shadows exploded in motion, gaining physical substance as they wrapped around the plant’s roots, covering them in pitch-black tentacles that seemed to consume anything they touched.
No longer under the Joker’s control, the plant had been content to just dig deeper into the ground for nutrients, but the shadow’s attack awoke the damn thing, vines, and roots fruitlessly attempting to fight off the assault.
Without infernal energy to fuel its power, the botanical horror lost.
Checking the drones outside, Kara saw Minion 3 had stopped shooting and even the Martian Manhunter was flying away from the plant as fast as he could. A simple command later and Kara had all her drones rush towards her, picking up her expended dimensional lock on the way.
On top of a tall dark tentacle, The Shade stood with his arms open, only his face remaining uncovered by the shadows, a minuscule human thing in the middle of the deep shadows he was controlling.
Soon, the darkness had covered the entire plant like a blanket and it started disappearing, sinking into the shadows slowly at first, but speeding up as less and less of it remained. They were almost done here.
Three drones flew towards Kara, the nanomachines that formed them starting to disassemble, becoming material to fix the holes in her armor —a literal patchwork solution at best; the tiny machines weren’t a match for properly forged plates, but it would do for now.
Reactivating and snapping back into position with the quick fix, Kara’s shoulder gun fired four times, four beams of heat burning through the Joker’s arms and legs while also cauterizing the wounds so he wouldn’t bleed out.
The Clown screamed, his muscles tensing from the pain to the point he instinctively curled onto himself, his limbs falling uselessly to the ground, the cigarette sleeping from his limp fingers
“Was that strictly necessary?” Kori asked through their private channel while floating to Kara’s side and watching the man taking deep breaths while trying to overcome the pain. There was no reproach on her tone, only genuine curiosity.
“Unfortunately,” Kara said, let’s see him do anything without limbs. “I’d rather kill the bastard, but I don’t want to risk him coming back.”
She expected to feel some guilt, torturing the Clown like that, but there wasn’t any, thankfully, there was only a small amount of spiteful satisfaction instead. No, Kara mostly felt safer.
“I did not know that was an option. Villains are certainly obstinate, yes?”
“That’s one way of looking at it. I think Earth’s just special that way, Heroes do it too from time to time.”
Finally, Kara felt the energy leaving her, the power of Aten draining from her body until, with a flash of lightning, she was no longer a champion of the gods but simply Kara again, the amulet containing Teth-Adam's soul was also back in her hand.
She felt… diminished, tired, clumsy and unnaturally aware that most of her cells still weren’t functioning at their peak, even if they were well on their way there.
Thankfully, the feeling quickly faded away and Kara had to recognize that gaining the power of the gods wasn’t quite as large a power-up as reaching a yellow sun… or even becoming a Kryptonian in the first place.
Still, it had been interesting, having the muscle memory and experience of an ancient warrior, one easily able to match Kori or Wonder Woman in ability. Kara had felt graceful.
Perhaps she should increase her physical training.
Her armor was also back to normal, but it seemed like losing the transformation hadn’t fixed the destruction Circe’s magic had wrought upon its frame. There was still a hole in the shoulder area and several circuits had been destroyed, lowering the armor’s overhaul performance by 47%.
Ugh, she'd have to reforge the entire thing later, at least it would be faster than the first time.
With a command, Kara had two of her drones lock the Joker inside a shield, administering a heavy dose of drugs to knock him out. The remaining drones scattered through the parking lot as fast as they could move, scouring the place until, only a few seconds later, she found the device she was looking for.
Above them, The Shade had almost finished banishing the plant to the shadow dimension. Lowering his arms, he reverted back to being only a man, his clothes regaining their texture and becoming merely black, losing the darkness of the Shadowlands.
Kara was almost out of time, she really doubted the Martian would just let her kill the Joker, much less take him away altogether. No, better if he was already gone when the Hero got here.
Connecting one of the drones to the machine, Kara deactivated it, then thought better and also had the nanomachines start to disassemble the teleportation blocker, stealing both its coding and design. —the Fog had been a hacking tool before she repurposed it after all.
Another command had some of her machines also consume the gloves the Joker had been using to control the plant and any other device she found in the abandoned hospital for later study, including what little of Red Volcano had been left behind.
With teleportation no longer blocked, she quickly called her platform back and used a drone to move the Joker on top of it.
Once she was at her moon base, she’d put him inside one of her stasis pods, preferably as far away from Poison Ivy as she could manage… and with as many redundant safety measures as she had available.
Rao, she really needed to have somewhere better to put prisoners if she was going to keep acquiring them, using her Cousin’s fortress just wouldn’t cut it anymore and the moon base was much too important.
That personal dimension idea was looking better and better by the second.
“Do you wish for me to deal with The Manhunter?” Kori asked, finally sheathing the Sword of Beowulf. Kara hadn’t seen it, but the Tamaranean must have recovered the weapon during the fight.
“...Why? What’s the point of having minions if they can’t handle something like that?”
Well, Green Arrow would be able to deal with the Manhunter much easier than her, and he could also take the chance to report back to the Justice League as he was meant to do.
Kara wished she could believe Major Force’s explosion had killed Neron, but she knew better than to even hope for it. Regardless, even if the Demon knew her true identity, it was still best that Forge didn’t interact or cooperate too much with the Justice League. After all, it’s not like every single Villain just shared information, even when they could benefit from it.
No, the impression she got from the Demon was that he truly enjoyed his deals too much, he’d be loath to just give away information. Kara had no illusions that her alternative identity would last forever, but the price for that information would probably be someone’s soul and not many people were willing to pay that, not yet.
So, for now, her Forge identity should still be safe from The Light, and probably even from the other Villains that had been here. There was no reason to push her luck and appear to be too involved with the Heroes… Also, she really wanted a bath.
No, she needed a bath, a long, relaxing bath.
With one last look at the hole where the portal had been, Kara stepped onto the teleportation platform and extended her hand. Kori took it, floating down to land beside her.
With the Joker safely behind them, Kara teleported back to her Moon base.