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"Yes!! Awesome!!"
Harley excitedly jumped up. Without caring about the occasion, she hung onto Homelander's neck and gave his handsome face a big kiss.
"I knew you were the best! Love you! Sweetheart! I now allow you to call me 'Little Pumpkin'!"
"I'll keep calling you that, Little Pumpkin." Homelander patted her waist.
"No!"
Bruce Wayne slammed the table, his voice stern.
"This absolutely won't do! Homelander, you have no idea how terrifying Superman is!"
"And it's not just about power! Our enemies also include Darkseid and the entire Apokolips army!"
"We only have one chance!" Bruce stared at Homelander. "One chance to correct all mistakes. We can't gamble that on your personal heroism!"
"Correct mistakes?" Homelander narrowed his eyes, catching the key point in those words, and looked directly at Bruce.
"Tell me, what's your chance?"
Bruce glanced at Cyborg and The Flash.
The three exchanged a look. Finally, Bruce nodded. He knew he had to convince this powerful outsider.
Cyborg walked over to a huge instrument covered with canvas and pulled off the cloth.
It was an extremely complex-looking mechanical device. Huge rotating wheels, dense coils, and a control panel connected to countless pipes.
"This is the Cosmic Treadmill."
Bruce introduced.
"Our plan isn't to defeat Superman. Because at this point in time, we've already lost."
"Our goal is... a reboot."
"And the core of the plan is The Flash." He pointed at Barry Allen beside him.
"Barry has a miraculous power called the Speed Force. If he runs fast enough, he can reverse time and return to the past."
"Our goal is to have him use the Cosmic Treadmill to return to the day Metropolis fell, or even earlier, to the moment the Batcave was attacked."
"Prevent that tragedy from happening."
"As long as Lois is alive, Superman won't fall, the Justice League won't collapse, and Darkseid's invasion will be kept at bay."
"All of this... this hellish future, will never exist."
Bruce finished explaining the core of the plan in one breath.
"But," Cyborg added from the side, "the Cosmic Treadmill isn't some elevator you just press a button to teleport."
"It needs to charge up."
"When Barry runs and accelerates on it, he can't move or stop."
"That's when he's most vulnerable."
"And I need to directly connect to the treadmill's mainframe to set his time landing coordinates."
"During that process, I can't fight either."
Cyborg pointed upward.
"And once the Cosmic Treadmill activates, the massive energy waves released by the Speed Force will be like lighting a flare in the dark night."
"Superman's super senses will instantly detect us."
"He'll fly here from Metropolis in seconds and kill us all before Barry can travel through time."
"So, we need Kryptonite." Bruce took over, his gaze firm.
"Even if it only weakens him a little, even if it only blocks him for a minute."
"That's our only chance of winning."
After speaking, Bruce looked at Homelander, waiting for his response.
The hall fell into brief silence.
"Ha..."
Homelander suddenly laughed.
"You're telling such an important plan to someone you just met for the first time?"
"What if I'm a spy sent by that imposter?"
"What if I'm Darkseid's lackey?"
"With your security awareness, no wonder you lost so badly."
"At this moment, aside from faith, everything else is a dead end." Bruce looked directly at Homelander, his voice low. "I have no choice. My intuition tells me you're not one of his people."
Homelander shook his head, the mockery on his face growing stronger.
"Forgive me for being blunt, Batman."
"Your so-called plan to save the World is truly foolish."
"So foolish I thought it was dreamed up by an elementary school dropout."
"What do you mean?" Barry Allen couldn't help but interject from the side.
"Have you considered the consequences?"
Homelander walked around the still-unfinished Cosmic Treadmill, lightly tapping the metal casing with his fingers.
"There's a very simple logical paradox here."
"If this fast-legged kid really runs back to the past, saves that woman named Lois, and changes history."
"Then..."
Homelander pointed at the dilapidated walls around them, pointed at the scars on each person.
"...what happens to 'us' here?"
"If the past is changed, then this desperate timeline won't exist. If it never existed, then the future Flash wouldn't run back to save anyone."
"You can't possibly not know this simplest grandfather paradox." Homelander continued, ignoring Bruce's increasingly grim expression.
"Your so-called changing the past can't save this present World."
"You'll only create a new timeline, a parallel Universe."
"In that new timeline, everyone might live happily, Lois is alive, children are born, everyone picnics in the sunlight."
"But what about here?"
Homelander stomped his foot hard, making the ground tremble.
"This damn wasteland! This World full of ashes and corpses! It still exists!"
"The suffering here won't disappear!"
"And you're just running away!" Homelander pointed at Bruce's nose, mercilessly exposing the wound in his heart.
"You want to create a beautiful dream and hide in it, pretending none of this ever happened."
"And the cost... is completely abandoning this World, abandoning everyone here!"
"The remaining billions of people will die in pain and torment because of your inaction..."
Bruce's face turned pale.
His body trembled slightly, a flash of pain in his eyes.
Did he know?
As one of the smartest people in the World, how could he not know the theories of the multiverse and time branches?
But he could only gamble, bet that The Flash could rewrite reality and overwrite this erroneous timeline.
Because aside from that, he truly didn't know how to win.
"No... as long as Flashpoint occurs, reality will be rewritten..." Bruce tried to argue.
"That's you deceiving yourself!"
Homelander roughly interrupted him.
"I've seen the multiverse, Batman. I know how time works."
"Those who play with time will ultimately be destroyed by time!"
This was the key point. If they let this Flash kid run back and mess with the timeline, and if he really triggered a Flashpoint, the entire Universe would be reset.
Who knows if there would be a place for Homelander in the reset DC World? What if he got erased by time?
"Your behavior is what should be corrected!"
Homelander's eyes suddenly glowed with red light.