The lighting is dim, only a dull glow emerges from the darkness. Bruce finds himself lying on a cold floor, the shadow of the railing cast upon his face. As he slightly moves his head, a flickering light comes into view.
Whispers drifted from outside the room. Bruce forcefully opens his eyes to see Batman organizing something on the table. The light shines on the side of his face, as resolute as a mountain.
Bruce coughs twice, feeling a pang of pain in his chest. Looking down, he finds himself shirtless with his chest wrapped in bandages. His broken arm also appeared to be well set, despite erratic jolts of pain coming from the wound.
"You and Tim broke into the Shield," Batman says as he continues writing, "They can only help me to hack the protective shield now, in order to save you."
Bruce chuckles deeply, "You're more decisive than I thought, even quicker than dealing with Joker."
"Still far from it." Batman stands up, takes a glance at Bruce, and says: "It seems you want to draw others' attention, particularly mine. I'm not sure why you're doing this, but you better behave if I'm to give your teacher an explanation."
Bruce looks up at him, seemingly trying to detect something from his serious face, but Batman quickly turns and leaves.
As Bruce watches him leave, he waits until his figure completely vanishes before closing his eyes and delving deeper into his consciousness.
There's not much there, but a cluster of extremely dark and heavy energy has remained in the depths of his soul—it's the dark energy from Barbados.
In Bruce's universe, due to Lucifer, the traces of the Owls have been completely wiped out. However, this doesn't mean they don't have a Court of Owls. The new Court of Owls is led by Bruce, with Lex and Pamela involved, even involving the Twelve Families of the Underworld.
Previously, to solve the city's traffic problem, Bruce creatively used the Owl's account to fraudulently get a large amount of energy from Barbados. The vast majority of it was given to Roy, used for repeated trial and error to create the perfect traffic network in Gotham city. However, some energy was kept by Bruce himself.
Preserving this kind of energy was no easy task. Luckily, Bruce had an archangel's temperament and system administrator permissions. This energy not only did not erode Bruce, but it also remained perfectly intact by him till this very day.
Bruce brings this energy downwards, navigating through his subconscious passageways until he reaches the Dreamworld. After determining the direction, he finally finds the corresponding entrance and proceeds with the energy, into the entrance way above.
Meanwhile, in New City's Wayne building, lies the Court of Owls' base. A group of odd-looking, wand-wielding Pelican Priests chant around a giant array.
If anyone understands this ancient language, they would realize that they're constantly chanting:
"Praise the Dark Dragon Barbados, you are the deepest darkness, the mightiest source, you give us bright eyes and sharp claws, we pray to you... Barbados... we pray to you..."
The surrounding members of the Court of Owls all raise their hands, chanting the prayer together. Their voices gradually unify, lowering and spreading further, until even the room's air starts to vibrate.
The air trembles, creating ripples. Tiny waves spread from the center of the array. The massive dark power has arrived.
The oldest Pelican Priest standing in the centre is startled, then overjoyed. He rasps out, "The Dark God has responded to us! He favors us!"
He never expected the Dark Dragon Barbados to respond so quickly, bringing along an unprecedented powerful force. With this force, they could win the war within the city, even eat up the invaders.
On the ruined streets, patrol after patrol of Apocalypse Star soldiers continue to search for survivors. The moment the detector picks up a life signal, a few lasers fire, crushing whatever it is in an instant.
But suddenly, the mechanical soldier at the end of the line hesitates. The light in its eyes flicker, and the next moment its targets its gun at its comrades up in front. Three soldiers are pierced through by the laser gun, skewered like candies on a stick.
The others immediately turn around on high alert, firing energy bullets indiscriminately, causing collateral damage to the surrounding soldiers and equipment. But they don't care, continuing to bombard until that place is reduced to a flat ground.
However, in the smoke that obstructs their view, an invisible mech, indistinct on the scanning equipment, flies in. It first snaps the body of the worm soldier with the implanted exoskeleton, then pierces through the energy cores of the exoskeletons on the two giants in front.
Before the remaining few members of this small squad react, the mech explodes. The powerful explosion instantly shattered all remaining mechanical soldiers in the vicinity into pieces.
Hidden behind a house two streets away, Stark heaves a sigh of relief. He presses a button on his wrist communicator to see another face of Stark appear inside.
"Didn't think we'd have the chance to cooperate." Stark's voice echoes through the communicator.
White Can sighs and says, "If not for Pepper, I would never have cooperated with a fool like you. Why didn't you stop her from leaving?"
"You know why."
White Can of course knows. Pepper couldn't leave the business of Stark Industries. She couldn't just pack her bags, and drive away like a regular person.
He was wanted for evading arrest, while the other Stark no longer had a body, leaving Pepper with the responsibility of managing the group, which she was determined to do as a promise to Stark, and she would not let go easily.
But as she couldn't run before, she couldn't run now. Pepper was now hiding in a Stark Group safe house. This was why the two Starks, one good and one evil, had decided to join forces. The aliens were too powerful, and the Stark Group's defenses might not hold them off. They had to unite to protect Pepper.
The basic pattern now was that Stark, living in the network, had hacked the communication device of the Apocalypse Star team by capturing their armor with White Can, and could thus invade the exoskeletons of the team members through the communication network, leading to mutual slaughter.
After causing chaos, White Can would manipulate the self-destruct mecha made of captured armor to completely eliminate the alien squads approaching the Stark Building.
"This can't go on," Stark said, "They will find out that too many soldiers are disappearing in the same area and increase their search efforts here. Eventually there will be infiltrators we cannot defend against."
White Can wanted to argue but had to admit that Stark was right. This continuous passive defense was unsustainable, but if he were to delve into the lab to create stronger equipment, Pepper would be in danger if he didn't keep eliminating these patrol squads.
But if he continued to eliminate them in this way, he would eventually need stronger equipment to deal with stronger enemies; he was fed up with situations beyond his control, and feeling fearful at every moment.
"I will stop my manipulation of the Stark Group security defense network: You control it, and build the equipment. We need to annihilate these damn aliens," White Can said after inhaling deeply.
From within the safety room, Pepper noticed the lights in the corridor, which had intermittently been flickering, suddenly fully lit up. She rushed to the window to see the entire building was brightly lit again.
"Someone lost," Pepper stepped back in disbelief, "Who lost?"
But Natasha, standing behind her, sighed, Pepper turned her head to look at her. Natasha looked straight into Pepper's eyes, "Someone chose to give up; he conceded defeat."
"Who?"
Stark's voice echoed in the room, "Pepper, I will take full charge of the lab from now on. Don't worry, the invaders will soon be driven out."
Pepper put her hand on the door, her eyes widening in disbelief. She recognized the voice of Iron Man, the so-called hero. That jerk had chosen to concede defeat?
She understood that in these circumstances, the resources of the Stark Group would be crucial for anyone's survival, even the most intelligent people in the world need something to fall back on.
And such a selfish character would always prioritize his own interests. Otherwise, he would not have poisoned a whole city just to sell them the same virus to profit from later.
Pepper later understood White Can's desperate APP scheme and was absolutely worried about his evil intentions, because during a game about her safety between a moral hero and a villain devoid of humanity, the one who cared more would lose.
White Can lost.
Pepper was terribly shocked by this fact.
Natasha, standing behind her, gently rubbed her forehead. The experienced agent was absolutely positive that White Can did this on purpose: to buckle under feign surrender, to retreat in order to advance. Guilt can always be a good weapon.
Just as Stark had predicted, after the last attack, the Apocalypse Star officer in charge of this area finally realized something was wrong. He mobilized dozens of squads in a mighty attempt to encircle the Stark Building.
The production line in the Stark Group's lab was just getting started, and it wasn't producing enough mecha yet. A lot of the old mecha was lost during the conflict between the two Starks. White Can had no choice but to make a stand.
More and more Type Demons were gathering around the Stark Building, the few dozen mechas couldn't cover all directions. White Can gathered them all on the west side while standing on the east side to resist the first wave of attack.
Natasha saw this through the camera and realized that White Can was serious, he was ready for a fight to the death.
Seeing the situation outside the window, the female agent stopped Pepper who wanted to open the door and said, "Stay here, ma'am. We all know that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s support won't come. I have to help him."
Pepper looked desperate, the female agent glanced at the communicator in her hand, saying, "Don't worry, Nick still has a trick up his sleeve. We have to hold them off, wait for my good news, ma'am."
After saying this, she strode out of the safe house, joining the defense of the Stark Group Building.
At the same time, at the S.H.I.E.L.D. Base, Nick cursed, not at the aliens, but at those damn Germans from Hydra who had been let in.
"They're all fucking useless!"