The shimmering pink barrier held firm, absorbing the relentless kinetic hammer of superheated plasma fire.
Inside the dome, Dick let out a long, ragged sigh of relief, his shoulders slumping for a fraction of a second before his combat instincts kicked back in.
Beside him, Mark blinked hard behind his mask, his gaze locking onto the floating pink platforms.
Atom Eve, he thought, his brain clicked ever so slightly as he recognized the red-haired hero from the local news.
And right beside her was Rex Splode, tossing explosive kinetic charges like playing cards, alongside Dupli-Kate splitting into a small army, and Robot hovering in his heavy mechanical suit.
High above the battlefield, Atom Eve descended gracefully on a staircase of solid pink light. She touched down near the brothers, her expression tense but resolute.
"Thanks for holding the line," Eve said, her voice cutting through the distant roars of explosions as she tossed a localized energy shield to deflect a stray plasma shell. "You two kept them from pushing further into the downtown core."
"Happy to be of service," Dick panted, wiping a streak of dark alien blood from his jawline with the back of his gauntlet. "Though calling backup about five minutes ago would have saved us some dry-cleaning bills."
Mark managed a breathless, tight smile, nodding at Eve. "Yeah. Seriously. Good timing."
And then, the introductions were violently cut short.
High above, the jagged red-and-brown spatial rifts flared blindingly bright.
Thousands more green, oversized invaders surged through, their plasma rifles instantly locking onto the six heroes.
A renewed torrent of emerald fire rained down with deafening fury.
Dick cursed, dodging a blast that melted a nearby fire hydrant into a puddle of glowing slag. "Can't someone do something about those damn portals?!"
"Working on it!" Robot's metallic voice chimed through as his suit's processors whirred furiously.
"Move! Move! Move!" Dick roared, instantly shifting back into high-octane combat mode.
Another all-out battle erupted.
The six-person team fell into a fierce, brutal rhythm.
Dick and Mark acted as the absolute muscle, tearing through the vanguard with terrifying efficiency.
Every punch Mark threw turned air into shockwaves, while Dick moved with acrobatic, lethal grace, his reinforced escrima sticks shattering bone and armor alike.
Meanwhile, the Teen Team brought devastating tactical support.
Eve wove complex constructs of hard light—razor-sharp discs and heavy barricades—slicing through infantry platoons.
Dupli-Kate's clones swarmed the flanks, tripping soldiers and disarming heavy weapons, while Rex Splode bounced glowing, volatile trinkets into enemy clusters, turning them into a chain reaction of fiery confetti.
Amidst the chaos, Robot's internal analysis finally synthesized. He fired a burst of data packets directly to the team's comm-links. "Preliminary tactical analysis complete. These invaders are extra-dimensional entities. They identify as Flaxans."
Rex threw a glowing coin that detonated an alien mortar emplacement, shouting back over the noise, "Yeah, no shit, Einstein! We can clearly see they're from another dimension!"
As Rex watched Dick and Mark carve an absolute path of carnage through a dozen foot soldiers in a dizzying, gnarly sequence of flying limbs and crimson mist, he froze mid-throw. "And who the bloody hell are those two?!"
Dick vaulted off a collapsing wall, bringing his boot down hard on an alien's skull with a sickening crunch.
He flipped mid-air, catching a plasma rifle blast on his gauntlet before shouting back, "I'm Nightwing! And that's my brother, Invincible!"
Rex's eyes widened behind his tinted goggles as he blasted another charging soldier. "Yeah, right. But where the fucking hell are the Guardians of the Globe?!"
Hearing the name, both Dick and Mark winced inwardly as cold knots tightened in their chests.
But there was no time to grieve.
"Doesn't matter!" Dick bellowed, his voice carrying an unyielding command that brooked no argument. "We need to hold this position and make sure these fuckers don't leave the perimeter!"
He locked eyes with Robot amidst the flashing lights of plasma fire. "Robot! Shift your vector coordinates ten yards left to plug the alleyway gap! Atom Eve, lock down the overhead airspace!"
Rex stared at him in sheer disbelief while dodging a hail of green fire. "Who the hell made you the leader?!"
"The situation did!" Dick fired back, his escrima stick flashing as he cracked another alien's jaw.
And just like that, an effortless coordination took over.
The six heroes operated as a singular, synchronized machine.
As time dragged on, the sheer mountain of alien bodies piled high across the charred asphalt.
The streets of Chicago were choked with smoke, glowing wreckage, and the acrid smell of ozone and alien viscera.
More forces continued to pour from the portals, seemingly endless in their malice.
Until, abruptly, the tide turned.
A massive, double-barreled Flaxan tank suddenly ground to a halt.
Its heavy metal treads didn't just stop—they began to warp, flake, and rust away into orange dust within seconds.
Nearby, a group of heavily armored Flaxan foot soldiers staggered backward, dropping their plasma rifles.
In a matter of heartbeats, their green skin withered and sagged, hair turning stark white, their bodies rapidly aging decades in a terrifying flash of biological acceleration.
One by one, they collapsed, dropping dead like mosquitoes in a frost.
Mark stared in sheer bewilderment as an entire squad of charging invaders turned to brittle skeletons right before his eyes.
He lowered his fists, looking around the street. "Uh... okay. What just happened?"
Even their high-tech hovering machines and heavy artillery were disintegrating into rust and dust.
Realizing they were aging and dying at an exponential rate in this dimension, the remaining Flaxan vanguard panicked.
Like deer fleeing a forest fire, the surviving invaders scrambled backward, diving headfirst back through the swirling red-and-brown rifts as fast as their rapidly aging legs could carry them.
Within seconds, the portals flickered violently and winked out of existence, sealing shut and leaving behind an eerie, heavy silence broken only by crackling fires and groaning metal.
"Dimensional time dilation," Robot's steady voice analyzed as his suit scanned the residual energy signatures in the air. "The atmospheric variance between our dimension and theirs accelerates their biological and mechanical aging exponentially. They couldn't survive here for long."
Dick exhaled a long breath, wiping a mix of sweat and alien grime from his forehead.
He sheathed his sticks and looked around at the apocalyptic wasteland of the street. "Well... fortune favors the brave, I guess."
The rifts were gone, leaving behind mountains of alien corpses, discarded weaponry, and smoking craters.
Dick lifted his arm, caught a whiff of his blood-stained, charred costume, and visibly grimaced. "Ugh. Fuck. I need a hot shower. A really, really long, scalding hot shower."
A few feet away, Mark stood frozen, staring down at his blood-soaked hands.
The adrenaline was finally wearing off, leaving behind a heavy, shaky wave of shock from the sheer volume of killing he had just partaken in.
Noticing his brother's paralysis, Dick raised his voice, cutting through the quiet. "Hey! Calm the F down little bro! You did great. Now, shake it off, learn from it, bury it in your heart so that we can get that shower. I don't want mom to kill us right after fighting off an alien invasion."
Mark blinked, letting out a nervous, breathless chuckle as he looked at his suit. "Yeah, that would be the most embarrassing thing ever. If Mom smells this on us, she's going to kill us dead before the aliens even get a chance."
A few yards away, Robot, Rex, Dupli-Kate, and Atom Eve stood watching the two brothers.
Covered head-to-toe in gore, casually joking about their mother's wrath amidst a city block of carnage, the Teen Team exchanged deeply concerned, baffled looks.
Were these two guys even right in the head?
Rex leaned over toward Robot, muttering under his breath with a sideways smirk, "I'm calling it now. Those two belong in a psychiatric ward."
Robot turned his robotic visor toward Rex. "Negative. My psychological telemetry scanners indicate no clinical signs of—"
"It's a metaphor, tin can. Get a grip," Dupli-Kate interrupted, crossing her arms with a slight shake of her head.
Meanwhile, Atom Eve stepped forward, her eyes lingering on Nightwing and Invincible.
As she looked at them, a strange, persistent prickle of familiarity tickled the back of her mind.
She couldn't place it, but something about their posture, their cadence, felt bizarrely familiar.
It was like she had met them somewhere before.
Before she could voice her thoughts, a low, thrumming vibration shook the air above them.
The sound of heavy helicopter rotor blades and roaring jet engines echoed down the canyon of skyscrapers.
The group looked up to see a fleet of sleek, heavily armed GDA aircraft descending through the smoke-filled sky, ropes deploying tactical squads onto the rooftops.
Dick rolled his eyes behind his mask, crossing his arms as he watched the federal cavalry finally show up after the war was already won.