DC: A New Beginning-Chapter 63: Flashpoint

Flashpoint World.

After the war between Atlantis, Themyscira, and the humans who were dragged into this conflict, the Earth was left devastated and in ruins.

Looking down from outer space, a pure, glowing white ball of light, roughly one-fifteenth the size of the Earth, slowly expanding outward like a cancerous tumor growing on its host.

The edge of the glowing ball touched the Earth’s surface, and there was a ring of bottomless cliffs dropping down into pure darkness.

The shockwaves and gravitational fields continued to tear at the ground and rocks along the edge of those cliffs.

The lava churned and roared without stopping, and the smell of scorched earth.

Yet even this hellish landscape could not escape being mercilessly consumed by the ever-expanding gravitational field until it too became part of the glowing ball of destruction.

The high-energy particles had already penetrated to the Earth’s core. In just five more seconds, the entire planet would be torn apart completely by that world-ending orb of light.

Not far from the glowing ball of destruction, a tall tower-like device was shooting a golden beam of light straight up into the sky, completely nonstop.

At over a thousand meters above the ground, the beam spread out and became a massive golden magnetic field covering an area of tens of thousands of miles in every direction.

Inside this magnetic field, the flow of time had been accelerated to over twelve thousand times its normal rate.

To those inside the magnetic field, the expanding orb outside appeared perfectly motionless, standing silently in the distance beyond a thousand meters, its blinding white radiance blotting out the sky.

The difference of more than ten thousand times in the flow of time gave the survivors inside the magnetic field fifteen hours for their final struggle.

Moreover, the one who had single-handedly built this entire magnetic field was none other than the Flashpoint World’s Lex Luthor.

Lex had just detonated the super satellite in the timeline where Superman had been, but in doing so, completely lost the surveillance feed from that timeline.

But for Luthor, the final words shouted by Superman had already provided enough information.

Because during the apocalyptic war, the Kryptonian prisoner that Batman had released had single-handedly and effortlessly interrupted the life-and-death battle between the Amazon Queen and the King of Atlantis.

Luthor had originally assumed that even if the other world possessed a group of capable superhumans, their strongest member would be roughly on par with that Kryptonian prisoner.

But from Clark’s final desperate scream, Luthor now knew that Clark had been completely defeated without being able to put up almost any resistance at all.

Clark had barely even managed to escape to the upper atmosphere just to pass on that one message.

So without hesitation, Luthor had detonated the super-satellite, hoping to catch that unknown enemy from another world off guard.

Luthor’s prominent brow hid the deep emotions in his eyes, but the white-knuckled grip on his chair’s armrests and tightening across the back of his hands made it clear that he wasn’t nearly as calm inside as he appeared.

Luthor’s life had never gone smoothly.

In a world full of superhumans doing whatever they pleased, Luthor had spent his entire life quietly building up his strength through wealth and intelligence.

As the owner of LexCorp, a billionaire whose fortune rivaled that of Wayne Enterprises, he lived an even lower profile life than Thomas Wayne.

He had spent years collecting data on every powerful superhuman and non-human, advancing technology, stockpiling weapons, and dreaming of one day taking down all those annoying superhumans in one single strike.

But just when Luthor was on the verge of success, Atlantis and Themyscira went to war with each other.

The spreading flames of battle destroyed several human cities, and humanity had no choice but to fight back.

In the very short time before Luthor could turn all his resources into an actual force against the superhumans, the war exploded into something large enough to bring about the apocalypse.

By the time Luthor rushed to the center of the apocalyptic battlefield with his team, the tyrant Aquaman had already been defeated by Superman and, consumed by bitter hatred, had activated his doomsday bomb designed to drag the entire world down with him.

At that point, the world had roughly half a day left to live.

Looking at the glowing orb, which at that point could only cover one city, Luthor hadn’t felt particularly hopeless.

He believed he had prepared more than enough. Even with only half a day left, Luthor figured that was plenty of time to deal with the doomsday bomb within a safe margin.

Luthor quietly took his team and rescued the barely alive Batman.

He knew Batman’s true identity was Thomas Wayne of Gotham City.

He had intended to work alongside Thomas to solve the doomsday ball of light together and then rebuild a new world no longer ruled by superhumans doing whatever they wanted.

But Thomas, who had already made peace with dying, gave Luthor an answer that was completely impossible to accept.

The doomsday ball of light that had driven every ordinary person in the world to despair was not actually the biggest problem, as Luthor had assumed.

"Our timeline is wrong. A normal world is coming—a world where my son is still alive."

Seeing Thomas’s smile in his final moment of clarity, Luthor snapped for the first time in his life.

The man who had always prided himself on being a gentleman raised his fists for the first time.

"What do you mean, a ’normal world’?! What about us?! What about the rest of the US?!"

After venting his emotions, Luthor regained his composure.

He pulled the handkerchief from his chest pocket and wiped at the blood, staring coldly at the barely breathing Thomas Wayne.

Luthor’s gaze had never been this cold before. He ordered his people to take Thomas away and keep him alive.

"The ’normal world’ will be a world personally saved and built by me—Lex Luthor!"

For the rest of that half day, Luthor had no time to think about dismantling the doomsday bomb anymore.

How to save the timeline while preserving everything he had was the problem he needed to solve first.

But fortunately, fate hadn’t entirely turned against him.

It sent him a simple, naive speedster from a parallel world.

...

Luthor rose from his seat and watched the Flash with a mind-control device, metal tubes connecting to his body pumping in high-energy nutrients and extracting Speed Force energy, running endlessly inside a giant hamster wheel with no stopping ever.

"Eve."

A woman with a neat bun hairstyle and a crisp white secretary’s suit walked briskly over.

"Boss?"

"I need to step out for a moment."

Luthor gestured toward the Flash running endlessly in the hamster wheel.

"Keep a close eye on his vital signs for me. Don’t let any of his readings drop below the critical level."

Eve glanced at the tablet in her hand, looked back up with a perfectly professional smile.

"Of course, Boss."

Luthor nodded, casually smoothed his suit jacket, and stepped out of the underground office constructed from specialized metal alloys.

He intended to use the Speed Force to locate another timeline where he could retain all of his current existing memories, wealth, and everything he had.

But Luthor quickly discovered the problem. The speedster simply couldn’t survive having that much energy drained out of him at that scale.

After all, the energy required just to maintain the accelerating magnetic field was already an astronomical amount of energy.

Luthor swiftly began working on a second plan, which was to take every last bit of armed force he had left and fight his way straight into another world.

He used certain methods to read the speedster’s memories, hoping to gather information about the enemy first.

What he found was a pile of things he couldn’t make sense of.

In this speedster’s world, a portion of individuals with superpowers were referred to as "superheroes."

Even though Luthor had nothing but disgust for that word, he had to consider one important question.

This speedster called the Flash had teammates back in his world.

There was a very good chance those teammates would notice the Flash was missing and would come rescue him.

At the time, the Kryptonian prisoner who called himself Clark had even suggested to Luthor that they simply reach out directly to the other world and ask for help.

Luthor, of course, completely dismissed this suggestion and pointed to the superhumans of their world and the human military that had locked Clark up for decades as examples.

"Human nature is cruel. If most of the superhumans in our OWN world are like this, how could you possibly trust people from another world?!" 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

Clark fell silent.

"But what if they come to rescue him anyway?"

After that, Luthor quickly came up with a new plan.

He split the timeline into multiple branches to prevent the other side from traveling directly to their own timeline.

Then, Luthor sends most of the other superhumans and military forces of this world into different temporary timelines.

Especially the incredibly hotheaded Amazon Queen, in order to successfully control her, Luthor used a swarm of nano-bugs that could slowly eat away at brain tissue.

Clark alone was a different matter.

Luthor had never seen an alien who had been locked up and imprisoned, subjected to all kinds of cruel experiments and surgeries for decades, and still somehow held kindness toward this world and hope toward other worlds.

However, Clark voluntarily stepped forward, asked Luthor to let him go, and stepped onto the timeline-splitting device himself.

Luthor tried to hold him back.

"You’re the last chance this base has for any kind of armed resistance."

"No. If they truly break through all of your layers of defenses and reach this place, then the only real chance left depends entirely on what kind of people they are."

Clark told Luthor he would go ahead and observe.

If the people coming were truly a group of justice-minded "superheroes," then Luthor would completely reconsider the plan of asking the other world for help.

Of course, as things turned out, Clark had failed.

The people sent from the other world didn’t just include one completely unexpected speedster. There was also a terrifying superhuman capable of crushing Clark without effort.

Otherwise, Clark’s final desperate cry to transmit information would not have sounded so hopeless.

Luthor walked to a corner of the base that was covered by the magnetic field.

Even though Luthor was seen as the savior who had gathered all the last survivors in the world together, and had absolute authority over every survivor in the base who depended on him... This one person was different.

Luthor couldn’t figure her out and didn’t really want to deal with her. But the current situation no longer allowed his personal preferences to influence his decisions.

A short purple women’s blazer draped over her shoulders with messy, curly green hair.

A grotesque scar stretched outward from the corners of her mouth with messy, randomly crossed stitches holding them together.

She was crouching on the ground, her face deathly pale, and seemed to have spotted Luthor from far away.

She stood and began clapping and laughing as she walked toward him.

"Oh, look who it is! My great benefactor!"

The cuff of Luthor’s sleeve shifted slightly, and a tiny pocket pistol dropped into his palm.

He pointed the gun straight at the woman.

"Stay back, Joker."’

"Ooh, ooh, ooh, what’s the matter, Luthor? I don’t have any of those superpowers you hate so much."

The Joker raised both her hands, and she stopped walking. Her fingers danced through the air as if tapping an invisible keyboard.

Luthor’s gaze was caught for just an instant. His brow tightened sharply, and he pressed his index finger straight against the trigger.

"What are you doing?"

The Joker let out two eerie laughs.

"I’m playing the Croatian Rhapsody. No piano, but with things this exciting, thrilling, you’ve got to pair it with something classy."

Luthor kept his eyes fixed on her.

"Things this exciting, huh. So it seems you already know why I’ve come to find you."

"Of course, of course, but I have one condition."

The Joker’s smile faded just a little.

"I know you have Batman. Help me keep those people from the other world occupied, and you give Batman to me."

Luthor’s brow furrowed.

To be honest, even now, he hadn’t given up on the idea of getting his revenge on Thomas.

It was the first time in his life that he had felt hatred to go completely mad, and yet he had still held himself back from killing Thomas.

It’s because he had been saving that moment for after he successfully built his new world, and could stand on Thomas’s face and tell him:

’Your son is gone. The normal world you imagined will never come. This world belongs to Lex Luthor.’

But in the end, Luthor agreed to the Joker’s demand.

The two of them made their way to the timeline fracturing device.

"When they enter our world again, I’ll use a pre-designed program algorithm to scatter all of them across different timelines. But the one with the strongest life-force energy reading, I’ll send directly to you."

The Joker listened quietly until the end, and she spread her hands wide toward Luthor.

Luthor cautiously took two steps back.

"You said you had only one condition."

"What? Does providing me with the appropriate weapons and support count as a separate condition too?"

The Joker withdrew her hands and brought them to her mouth, letting out an exaggerated shriek.

"Are you really planning to send a helpless woman like me to deal with someone who can fly through the sky and vanish into the earth?!"

Luthor’s expression darkened. He gritted his teeth, and the muscles in his cheeks twitched and tightened.

"That goes without saying. What do you need?"

"Every single weapon you’ve designed and built against superhuman up to this point."

Luthor’s instinct was to refuse outright, but after a long moment of thought, he gave a slow nod.

He produced a test tube filled with a high-concentration nano-metal toxin.

"If you succeed and to make sure you don’t come back and turn it on me, you have to drink this first. Then I’ll hand over all the weapons."

The Joker snatched the test tube from his hand. She popped the cap off and downed the entire contents in one gulp.

"Deal!"

...

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