The ejection mechanism beside his hand had failed along with the ship's damage, and there was absolutely no way he could leap clear in the brief instant before that heat vision reached him.
So how was he supposed to survive the Kryptonian monster's heat vision?
Without a second thought, Batman ducked down and hid himself inside the Batwing.
In preparation for the fight against Superman, he had specifically added resistance to extreme cold and heat vision to the Batwing and a whole array of his gear. The frontal armor of the Batwing offered the strongest resistance. Now was the moment to test whether that armor would hold.
But the instant Batman crouched down, a flash of gold streaked past the corner of his eye.
BOOM!!!
A tremendous crash sounded right in front of him, followed by a rapid succession of energy impacts.
BZZZZT—BZZZZT—BZZZZT!!!
The concussive noise hammered against Batman's eardrums, and he knew at once that someone from outside had come to his rescue.
Crouched beneath the control panel, he understood that the moment to bail out had arrived. With resolute determination, he rose, immediately catching sight of the tall, silhouetted figure standing before him.
Just as I thought.
While holding the console and vaulting sideways out of the aircraft, Batman's mind raced through the information on the woman now shielding him.
Diana Prince!
Among the metahuman files he had obtained from LexCorp, she ranked at the very top—an Amazon warrior suspected to be hundreds of years old. Her earliest recorded appearance dated all the way back to the First World War!
But this was no time for historical analysis. The moment Batman hit the ground, he drew his custom grenade launcher. The weapon still held one last round—a canister packed with kryptonite powder.
Beside him, Diana deflected Doomsday's heat vision with the Aegis Shield strapped to her left arm, and at the same time, she shot Batman an annoyed question.
"It would have been better to leave this monster on the uninhabited island where it landed. Why bring it to the city?!"
"First, this is an abandoned port—no civilians. Second, this is where we have a weapon that can kill it!"
Bruce answered quietly, his voice as steady and mechanical as ever. The explanation made Diana nod in understanding.
"Fine. I'll hold it off. But where is this weapon that can kill it?"
As she spoke, she swept her right hand out, and the God-Killer—the Sword of Hephaestus—materialized in her grip.
Batman likewise raised his grenade launcher.
"Someone's already retrieving the kryptonite spear. I still have one kryptonite round here—I can buy you some time!"
"Not necessary yet!"
Diana gave a confident laugh and shook her head. Hefting her shield, she launched herself straight at Doomsday.
Her shield slammed square into Doomsday's chest.
But the creature did not flinch or evade. It took the full force of the Amazon's shield bash and answered by hurling a fist directly at Diana's face.
Diana narrowly twisted out of the way. She then dismissed her sword and shield and brought her arms together with a resounding cross-collision before her chest.
In that split second, a vast divine power erupted from the Bracelets of Submission. Even Doomsday was hurled backward more than fifty paces by the shockwave.
Far away in Metropolis, Heisenberg watched this attack and sighed with a rueful shake of his head.
"The gods in Marvel are worlds apart from the ones in DC. The ancient gods here are each more terrifying than the last—they wield powers that are practically laws of reality itself."
As he mused, he casually drew forth Gungnir, gripping the now exponentially amplified divine spear in his hand.
That's right—his own Asgardian runic power had grown significantly stronger simply by coming to the DC universe. His runes were even beginning to seep into this universe's sun. The power of the sun god within him was hungrily seizing dominion over this world's celestial authority.
Heisenberg paid little mind to his steadily intensifying divinity for the moment. He aimed Gungnir in Doomsday's direction and began to pour power into it.
But after a few seconds, he abruptly shifted his aim.
He pointed the spear skyward, then hurled it with all his might, sending Gungnir streaking beyond the atmosphere and vanishing from sight.
At that exact moment, Clark, who had just regained consciousness in space and was racing back toward Earth, was startled by the spear that shot past him.
"What the hell?!"
Clark instinctively wondered, but he immediately accelerated again. Doomsday was still alive. He had no time to waste on anything unrelated to the creature.
Moments later, Clark came screaming back into Gotham airspace, intercepting Doomsday just as the creature was knocked back by Diana's Bracelets. With one kick, he sent Doomsday crashing into a chemical plant in the distance, setting off a massive, violent explosion.
Behind Wonder Woman, Bruce frowned helplessly at the sight.
Before his brow had even fully furrowed, Superman was already touching down in front of him.
And it was only then that Superman noticed something strange about Doomsday.
After being kicked into the chemical plant, the creature was actively absorbing the energy of the explosion. The countless blasts and flames were visibly vanishing into Doomsday's body.
"Uh, it can absorb energy?" Superman muttered in grim realization.
Earlier, he had been nuked by the humans' "Red Bird" nuclear missile and sent into a dehydrated stupor, drifting unconscious for quite a while. He hadn't seen the creature absorb the nuke's energy, nor had he known it possessed this trait.
So now…
Wonder Woman curled her lip.
"Thanks to you, the difficulty just went up, Kal-El."
"Oh?"
Superman glanced at her, then looked to Bruce with confusion.
"She's with you?"
"I thought she was with you!" Bruce replied, thoroughly unamused.
Hearing this, Diana cut them off with a frown.
"This is not the time to discuss me. Keep your focus on the monster. We can't hit it with too many attacks—it feeds on energy to survive. Most of what we throw at it only accelerates its growth."
"Physical attacks aren't very effective either. It's not a native Earth creature. It comes from another planet," Superman answered, gazing at Doomsday with a heavy sense of kinship. "It comes from my planet."
"Heh. I've killed plenty of things from other worlds."
Diana declared this with absolute confidence, drawing her sword once more. God-Killer in one hand, Aegis Shield in the other, the Amazon stood before Superman and Batman, eyeing the distant Doomsday as it continued to vent the energy it had absorbed.
Whether from exhilaration or agony, Doomsday's entire body crackled with golden electricity as the energy within it reached another threshold.
Suddenly, Doomsday threw its arms wide and savagely stretched its frame. Another immensely violent pulse erupted, radiating outward in all directions.
At this, Batman sucked in a grim breath. With no time to say anything, he rolled back behind the same boulder that had sheltered him earlier.
Diana blocked the pulse's full force with her shield. Superman simply tanked it.
The shockwave scoured the entire port, toppling countless structures before it finally, briefly subsided.
Staring at the now-paused Doomsday, Diana felt her battle-lust surge to its peak. Shield raised, she took two steps forward, ready to launch herself skyward and deliver a truly devastating blow.
But just then…
The sky lit up!
Behind the boulder, Bruce stared, stupefied, as the world around him suddenly brightened. He rushed out from behind the rock and looked toward the sky above Gotham.
There, in the distant heavens, an immense, blazing sun had appeared!
"What the hell is that?!"
Diana stared up in disbelief, her eyesight sharp enough to make out the spear rotating within the center of that sun. Yet she could not recall any famous spear associated with the sun.
As for Clark, standing behind her, he was the most dumbfounded of all.
Bewildered, he raised his hands. The moment that second sun appeared in the sky, the energy within his body had suddenly surged to at least three times its normal level.
"That's a sun. A real sun. I can't believe it!" Superman exclaimed in shock.
Even as he spoke, all of Gotham and the neighboring Metropolis were thrown into stunned amazement. Countless people whipped out their phones and began recording the sky, now as bright as high noon above the two cities. One moment it had been the dead of night, and the next, daylight had come.
While the citizens were merely astonished, Diana sensed something far more profound.
She snapped her shield back up before her and shouted a warning to Superman and Batman.
"That's primal divinity—a sun god! A sun god of Earth has joined the battle!"
"A sun god?!"
Superman could scarcely believe his ears. All his life, he had absorbed solar radiation as his power source, and he revered Earth's sun as a second mother. He had never imagined an actual sun god existed on Earth!
At that moment, the colossal sun began to descend. Diana and Superman braced themselves as the blazing sphere, carrying immeasurable force, slammed directly into Doomsday's body.
In an instant, an energy field far exceeding the earlier shockwave erupted. The searing solar energy forced both Superman and Wonder Woman back over eighty meters.
Once the energy subsided, Diana immediately opened her eyes wide and stared toward where Doomsday stood.
And there, in a sight that left her utterly shaken, Doomsday was pinned to the ground with a golden, fiery spear driven through its chest.
Staring at the unfamiliar spear, Diana racked her brain. As a demigoddess herself, how could she not recognize an artifact belonging to an ancient god of Earth?
But she truly had never seen any sun god who wielded such a spear.
Unlike Diana, Superman's first instinct was to scan their surroundings. When he confirmed that they were still in an uninhabited zone and that the radiation from the spear's impact had not spread into the city, he let out a long, relieved breath.
Yet barely a moment later, he tensed again and urgently sought out Batman's location.
An energy blast powerful enough to hurl him and the formidable woman beside him dozens of meters back would have flattened every building and boulder in its path. With nothing but his previous gear, Batman had no way of surviving that.
But when Superman finally located Batman, eighty meters away…
Eighty meters away, Batman was huddled up for dear life, trying desperately to evade the spear's energy wave. But he could not withstand it. The boulder in front of him melted into magma in the blink of an eye, leaving him completely exposed to the spreading energy field.
In that instant, Bruce was fully prepared to die.
But in the next instant, another figure appeared before him.
A man clad head to toe in pitch-black Gothic plate armor, lava flowing through the seams of the metal. He made no defensive motion whatsoever, yet the boundless energy obediently flowed around him on either side.
Moments later, the energy ceased. The man turned and looked down at the battered Batman on the ground.
And then, Batman heard a teasing remark that made him want to groan.
"Tsk tsk. Bats, where's your Plan B?"
/-\
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