"The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny"
The sky ripped, a great rending tear that revealed for a billionth of a second the vast and terrible underpinnings of reality as the human race understood it before synchronizing with another universe whose every quark vibrated at a slightly different frequency from the one Earth's heroes called home. Veena's assembled champions looked with awe at another world, another existence that awaited them on the other side of a portal that hung wider than any dimensional tear any of them had ever experienced. Many of them had seen parallel timelines, even visited them through openings natural and artificial... but never on this scale. The Grand Concordance was bigger than anything they'd ever imagined.
And on the other side, they saw people waiting for them.
Some they recognized. Professor Psycho had only recently been banished from their universe through the combined efforts of Adventure Girl and the Frontier Foundation, but now she floated in the exact center of the gaping tear in reality on a coruscating nimbus of interdimensional energy that amplified her telepathic powers until gravity itself rippled under the psionic leakage emanating from her nextstep brain. Behind her, waiting on the other side of the portal, her handpicked Dystopians waited for the terrifying forces to stabilize so they could step through.
Others had only been reported by the unlucky few who'd stumbled through a gap in the universe and found themselves in a twisted, inverted version of the reality they knew. Thrillkill smiled eagerly, flying in tight circles as she impatiently waited for the chance to introduce herself to a whole new world of victims. The Supremacy tightened her grip on her silver girdle, held taut much like her muscles in preparation for the assault. A version of the Broot almost indistinguishable from the one the assembled heroes recognized thumped his tail on the ground, ready to vent his frustration on another existence that refused to recognize his power. The Lurking Dread and his sidekicks, Metus and Discordant, checked the fuses on their fear gas bombs one final time.
And at the head of the army, they saw a man hovering in the air. His face was known to them, even if the twisted smirk of triumph he wore transformed him from the paragon of virtue they knew into a cruel, leering monster. He wore the trophies of a hundred conquests, taken from his own parallel selves in the last instants before he crushed the life out of them and made their worlds his colonies, and he flew through the tear in reality before it stabilized as if the impossible energies it unleashed meant nothing to him. The Rescuer's alternate self, the leader of the Punishment Detail. Imperil.
He burst through to the other side and spoke in a booming voice that could be heard for miles. "Citizens of Earth-21246!" he cried out, holding his arms wide in imploring welcome. "Today ends the terror you know as self-determination! Today begins the blessed, eternal embrace of our benevolent leadership! No longer will you have to suffer the burdens of deciding your own futures, your own destinies, even your own thoughts! We, the grand and glorious rulers of the Pan-Universal Empire, have arrived to free you at last from freedom itself."
The Supremacy flew through the stabilizing portal, silently smirking at Professor Psycho as she passed her secret ally. Imperil had his uses--all men did, especially in those primitive worlds that had yet to understand the virtues of feminine power--but his primary use was as a stooge and a figurehead. And it was speeches like these that reminded her just how very good he was at it.
"There have been misunderstandings," he continued, "between our peoples. Some of you have failed to grasp the wonder that is subjugation, and yes, we have had to send the Punishment Detail forth to remedy your confusion with our loving discipline. And yes, your champions have repelled us--even now, we see that you await the chance to join in battle again. But the Grand Concordance and the Way that has Opened has amplified our ally's mental gifts to an irresistible degree. Your confusion will clear, replaced by a complete and total understanding of your new place at our feet. Professor, if you would?"
Her mental energies fully gathered, Professor Psycho lashed out with a wave of pure telepathic might that bathed each and every single human being on the face of the planet in her will. No human was powerful enough to withstand it. Even the most indomitable mind would fall in the face of such an overwhelming onslaught, their very notion of freedom twisted and perverted into blank, blissful obedience until they begged to serve the new order that awaited its chance to gain foothold in this universe.
But she found no free will waiting to contest her. The entire human race, its superheroes and supervillains and the ordinary people who walked among them, all existed in a state of mental subjugation so complete and total that Professor Psycho found no weak points in their mystically controlled minds. They were united in a mutually reinforcing network of compliance to a greater power, tied together by a spell that held them in an unbreakable grip intertwined with a strength she recognized as readily as she did her own. Korina Psyche's telepathic power. A psionic force operating on the same same frequency, the same wavelength, as impossible for her to break as if it was her own.
"They're ready for us," was all she managed to say before Earth's heroes charged en masse at the host invading their reality and the battle was well and truly joined.
* * * * *
For some, the fight ended quickly. Captain Tomorrow targeted the Lurking Dread and his allies with a force-cage mere instants before their gas bombs went off, trapping them in a concentration of potent terror-inducing toxins that overwhelmed the antidotes they had dosed themselves with. Moments later, they knocked themselves unconscious fleeing in panic directly into an invisible wall.
Others found themselves far more equally matched. Adventure Girl sped through the air in a lethal dogfight with Thrillkill, snatching civilians out of the line of fire mere instants before a burst of killovision seared the air where they stood. "You can't protect them all, sweetie!" the leering blonde crowed, smashing through the sides of buildings as she raced her way around the globe at supersonic speeds. "That's why I always win over you boring old goody two-shoes versions of me--it's just so much easier to wreck stuff than it is to keep it safe!" She scooped up a statue in passing from a town square and lofted it into the air, and Samantha Steele barely managed to steer it to a safe landing with her venture-breath. "More fun, too!"
Adventure Girl raced ahead, firing off venture-vision blasts at the woman pursuing her as she used her other senses to detect bystanders and move them out of harm's way. Her mind raced even faster, desperately trying to find some weakness in a villain she couldn't be more evenly matched with... and one who wasn't afraid to use her morality against her. Another day, she might have lost time and energy in self-doubt and worry, but Veena's control kept her perfectly focused on the battle and every strategy she could possibly use to win it. "I don't suppose we could talk this through, could we? Just sit down for five minutes and have a conversation about what you think you're going to get out of this whole 'invading Earth' nonsense?"
Thrillkill snarled, drop-kicking a sedan into a power station and clenching her fists in excitement at the resulting shower of sparks. "Talk is boring!" she cried out. "I'm all about action, baby. You stop to think, and pretty soon you're wondering whether that guy you just killed had a family and if they miss him and stuff, and then you just get bummed out. I'd rather get on to the next big thing, you know?" She made a hard left, aiming directly for a hospital, and Adventure Girl had to brace herself and accept the impact as her double slammed into the only obstacle that she couldn't crash straight through. She felt her ribs bruise, a pain that she scarcely imagined possible before today.
She reared her head back and bashed it straight into the bridge of Thrillkill's nose, sending the other woman reeling backwards in surprise and pain. "It's always smash first, ask questions later with losers like you," she growled, following it up with a burst of venture-vision that collided directly with the energies of her counterpart. "That's why you always lose... you never plan ahead. You're so busy trying to cause damage as quickly as possible that you don't even consider what you could do with something really dangerous like the--"
Thrillkill smiled, her killsenses following Samantha's glance upwards at the Liberty Squad's satellite headquarters. "Got some really good stuff up there, huh? You know, I wonder if your biometric security system is smart enough to tell you apart from someone who's identical to you in literally every aspect. Guess we'll find out, huh?" And with that, she darted straight upward, cracking a dozen sonic booms in her haste.
"Wait!" Samantha cried out from behind her. "Wait, you don't understand! The Parallax Key is in the Level 10 Security Vault for a reason! You mustn't try to gain access! Even I don't have clearance to--" But already the oxygen was thinning, making absolutely no difference to either woman's invulnerable body but rendering conversation impossible. Thrillkill sped into orbit, angling her body to fly directly at the airlock that irised open to let her in.
She had only a few moments' head start on Adventure Girl, but Thrillkill once again had the advantage of utter disregard for property damage. She tore directly through several levels of the station's infrastructure, heading directly to the most secure vault without even stopping to glance at the other weapons and artifacts the Squad had confiscated over the course of their battles. "Is this the one I'm looking for?" she called back without looking, bashing her fist repeatedly into a barrier made of dwarf star metal. "Because it might not want to let me in, but I guarantee you there's not much that can stop me when I put my mind to something. And if your Parallax Key is anything like mine, babe, then--"
