Listening to the voice emerging from the shadowy figure before him, Lex Luthor's eyes widened. Far from showing fear, he let out a nervous, unhinged laugh. As the laughter spilled out, his hands and feet twitched erratically in time with the sound—a clear sign that he was losing his grip on sanity. Heisenberg could tell that some kind of energy from an unknown space was, at this very moment, making contact with the Earthling Lex Luthor through the Doomsday-spawning gene liquid.
Just like that, Luthor stepped closer and closer to Heisenberg, finally stopping a mere half-meter away. Standing there, Luthor faintly sensed a trace of heat, and he warily eyed the magma flowing through the gaps in Heisenberg's armor before shifting his gaze to the helmeted head, the face completely hidden.
"Who are you?"
He asked longingly, glancing back at the blood-soaked incubation chamber.
"Though you look more like some unknown creature, or perhaps some dark god or the like… my intuition and a bit of deduction tell me that you are the very lifeform Doomsday nearly crushed to death in its grip just moments ago!"
At that, Lex snapped his head back, looking at Heisenberg with anticipation.
"If I'm not mistaken, I saved you—or rather, my actions awakened you from some unknown state!"
As his words fell, Lex suddenly burst into laughter. It went on and on, unbroken, until he was almost out of breath, yet he still didn't stop. By the end, his laughter had devolved into a duck-like honking… heh… heh… heh…
It was then that, though Lex remained that frail Earthling, Heisenberg saw boundless darkness within his eyes. Through Lex's eyes, Heisenberg seemed to glimpse a world filled with brimstone and fire. Seated upon the highest throne of that world was a being dreaded by endless universes.
Looking into those eyes, Heisenberg couldn't help but purse his lips and say contemptuously:
"Darkseid."
As his words fell, the Lex before him suddenly spoke. Mere mortal as he was, inexplicable flames now gushed from his mouth. The fire, etched with infinite darkness, annoyed Heisenberg enough that he blew out a breath—wintry frost extinguished the flames, and in that moment, Lex spoke.
"You… are you of the ancient god race, or are you a Kryptonian?"
"Heh, why do you assume they can't be fused into one inside me?"
Heisenberg let out his trademark disdainful chuckle. As he laughed, he willed his helmet to recede from his head. His face was thus laid bare before Lex, and the red glow gradually intensifying in Heisenberg's eyes made Lex blink in astonishment.
No—it was Darkseid who was astonished!
The Lex controlled by Darkseid spoke with evident shock:
"A staggering sight. In all my wanderings across eight hundred thousand universes, I have never seen an ancient sun god and a Kryptonian merge to give birth to such pure darkness as yours!"
At this, Lex—or rather, Darkseid—curled his lip with interest.
"I will find you. You will join me. I shall wait among the stars for you to bow before me!"
"Heh, I'm not like you. I don't share your tyrant's heart or your unfathomable lust for control. I never expect you to kneel before me, so your fate is already sealed, Darkseid!"
"Feeble words from a feeble being. You have not yet walked three hundred thousand worlds. You are not yet qualified to gaze upon the multiverse!"
"Then remember my name, Darkseid. This newcomer will soon step on your head to ascend the stars. And I… I am Heisenberg!"
The instant the words left his lips, Heisenberg's eyes blazed with heat vision. That brilliant beam pierced straight through Lex Luthor's eyes, instantly killing the man still steeped in Darkseid's consciousness.
As Lex collapsed, two smoking holes in his head, a sound like a nuclear explosion suddenly rang out from the distant sky beyond, from the depths of space. No human on Earth could hear it, but Heisenberg could. Through the ruptured ceiling of the Kryptonian ship, Heisenberg looked toward the heavens.
"Mm, seems I came back a moment too late. The nuke went off. So I still have to face a Doomsday that's eaten its fill of energy… Heh."
Heisenberg grinned with excitement, then flexed his right hand.
"Just perfect."
…
Two seconds earlier.
When Clark had carried Doomsday into space, the creature—having yet to master flight—immediately fell into a massive disadvantage. It was much like Heisenberg's battle with Thanos: in a fight in space, the ability to fly was absolutely critical. Even though Superman's strength was far inferior to Doomsday's, he briefly gained the upper hand. Just like Heisenberg before him, he poured out his power, launching a relentless assault on the monster.
At that moment, the approaching Red Bird nuclear missile caught Superman's attention. He spared the briefest instant to glance at the nuke, then his eyes widened, a flicker of panic creeping into his heart.
Could a nuke kill him? He didn't know—he'd never tried, and he'd never even thought about it. But in the next instant, when he looked at the completely uninjured Doomsday…
Superman gritted his teeth. He had long realized his attacks seemed to do nothing. Since he could barely hurt Doomsday himself, why not try the nuke? He lunged at Doomsday, grappling him from behind, his arms straining to wrap around the monster's neck, thicker than his own waist. He positioned Doomsday's chest toward the nuke, then fought to hold him there, keeping the creature squarely in its path.
In that fleeting instant, countless thoughts flashed through Superman's mind. Would Doomsday die? Would this monster, capable of slaughtering all mankind, finally vanish? Would he himself die? Could he withstand the blast of a nuclear weapon? If he died, what would happen to humanity? What would happen to Lois?
Through his mind raced an infinite reel of everything beautiful, everything he clung to. It never once occurred to him to ask why humanity would launch a weapon of ultimate destruction while he was still locked in battle with the creature. He only ever thought of humanity's need for him; he only ever cared about their goodwill. He never cared whether humanity truly cared for him.
Right before his eyes, the nuke drew nearer, and nearer, until—
BOOM!!!
A silent explosion swallowed them both. No one could say exactly what temperature a sufficiently powerful hydrogen bomb reached when it detonated. But Clark knew. When the hydrogen bomb exploded before him, it released heat nearly a thousand times that of the sun's core. The sun's core was a mere fifteen million degrees, and ten million degrees was just the temperature needed to trigger fusion. This hydrogen bomb instantly reached ten billion degrees Celsius. As it hurled Clark deeper into space, it vaporized every drop of moisture in his body in an instant.
As for Doomsday, he was blasted in the opposite direction from Clark, hurtling all the way back to Earth.
At that moment on Earth, people still seemed steeped in grief. With the ascending nuke and its detonation, many believed they had witnessed the mutual destruction of Superman and Doomsday. So when Heisenberg flew out of the Kryptonian ship, what he saw were countless Metropolis citizens staring at the sky, their faces filled with sorrow. He could hear countless people praying for Clark; he could hear countless others cursing him to die. Yet whether they prayed or cursed, it only made Heisenberg snort with contempt.
"To think they actually believed a nuke could kill a Kryptonian… Heh."
As he spoke, he slowly rose higher, coming to rest atop the tallest building in the city—the LexCorp Tower, nearly a third of it destroyed.
Under his gaze, a Batplane was hurtling toward Metropolis from the direction of Gotham. At the same time, in the skies west of Metropolis, a goddess was using her Lasso of Truth to tether the clouds, soaring toward Doomsday.
Inside the Batplane, Bruce coldly eyed the control panel, which was displaying a series of data on Doomsday. After a brief review, Batman spoke calmly into the communicator to the butler on the other end.
"The creature's energy emission frequency is almost identical to Clark's. It's a Kryptonian lifeform."
"And so, Master Bruce, what's your Plan B?"
Listening to Alfred, Bruce nodded and spoke methodically.
"Since it's a Kryptonian lifeform, kryptonite will be its eternal weakness. But I only have one kryptonite bullet left. So I'll lure it from Metropolis to Gotham, find the kryptonite spear I dropped there, and then drive the spear into its body."
"Perhaps, sir. You make it sound even simpler than putting an elephant into a refrigerator."
Over the comm, Alfred's tone was teasing, but his face was taut with tension and worry. Still, as the perfect butler and assistant, he would never let himself become a hindrance to his master. He knew he could never convince Bruce to flee, so he could only ensure that Bruce's mission ran into no trouble. He swiftly began pulling up every scrap of information on the location of the kryptonite spear. In a matter of seconds, he found something useful, and quickly spoke to Batman.
"Sir, I've discovered that Mr. Kent's girlfriend is still lingering near the site of your battle. I'll contact her and ask her to help search for the spear. For now, you only need to lure the monster to Gotham Harbor."
"That's worthy of you, Alfred."
Batman nodded coldly, then suddenly accelerated the aircraft. In the blink of an eye, a volley of bat-bullets peppered Doomsday's body. The harassment from Batman irritated the shedding Doomsday more and more. Tearing away the weak skin it had outgrown from the energy surge, the creature exposed its new, bone-spiked hide and unleashed an immensely thick blast of heat vision.
Batman dodged the heat vision by a hair's breadth, banking the plane in a wide arc and heading straight for his city—Gotham. Plan B was working. His Plan B always worked.
Doomsday immediately gave chase, while Batman relied on nimble, serpentine maneuvers to evade one attack after another. At last, Batman reached the Narrows in Gotham—the site of his and Superman's battlefield was close by.
But the more critical the moment, the more likely something would go wrong. Doomsday, constantly leaping in pursuit, had mastered flight in the process. Now able to fly, the creature's attack patterns became infinitely more agile, and the Batplane was struck almost instantly. A third of the aircraft sheared away, and Bruce, along with the plummeting plane, spun down and slammed into the ground.
BANG!!!
Inside the wreckage, Bruce shook his dazed head.
THUD!
Forty meters across from him, Doomsday landed on the ground as well. The eyes fixed on Bruce began to blaze with gathering heat. Watching the building heat vision, Batman expressionlessly unbuckled his chest harness. He managed it in an instant, but there was no longer enough time to escape the fully charged blast. In the very moment the heat vision fired, Batman furrowed his brow and said with utter calm:
"It's over…"
/-\
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