I was enjoying the dance with the alien, dragon-squirting monsters, who were trying to sing along, having correctly grasped the song's main message: "Khe-e-e-e-i-sshs, Mahashera!" I did not like Steppenwolf, who, while everyone was staring at my performance, had an unintended hole in his body.
The Darkseid general didn't seem to expect such insolence at all, so he stared at the blade sticking out of his chest for three seconds, until a spark of reason flickered in his eyes.
"Kha!"
The alien was not going to give up so easily, though he should have thought about it, given the poor condition of his armor, of which only some metal strips remained, forming armored pants and partially covering his left arm. He turned sharply and threw the Amazon and his sword away from him, and then, losing liters of blood that left his wound as if under pressure, he waddled toward the humming artifact hanging in the air.
"Kha... No... Master, I will not let you down... There is still time..."
According to all comic canons, the defeated enemy with a broken heart still had the strength to talk. And maybe even to give the heroes a preventive kick, but Wolf decided to stop at the first option.
"Where are you going? - Aquaman quickly stepped in front of him, preparing his trident for battle, while he kept squinting at my minions, who had stopped dancing and were sniffing at something carefully, talking in their own fiery language.
~U-u-um~
With a quiet hum, Victor's energy cannon began to build up a charge, Bats pulled out a couple of his deadliest batarangs, and Flash prepared a Velcro grenade.
"You've already failed," a heavy clanking voice suddenly sounded from the side of the obelisk, sending shivers down my spine.
Holy shit, that's not a statue!
I looked at the bust of the ruler of Apokolips with interest. The rough, stone-carved features were only remotely human. Deep-set small eyes, a nose with large wings, a wide jaw, and a too large mouth made him look like a toad, and the corners of his lips were pointed downward, suggesting that the Justice League's main adversary was not the friendliest person.
Realizing that Darkseid was at least as strong as the dead Clark, only without the obvious vulnerabilities and unable to fly, I chuckled nervously, causing the nearest cyberbug to slip his paw through the illusion and stroke my shoulder reassuringly. I hope it was Harley...
Oh, well. I couldn't let the bastard into our world, so I had to get on with my duties, despite the fact that no reinforcements had arrived from the portal for the second minute, or I wouldn't have been able to choreograph so safely.
"Flash, Cyborg, blow to the starting point," I whispered quietly into the speaker and, without attracting attention, began to stealthily walk toward the spatial rift.
"But-" Despair slipped into the sagging Wolf's gaze.
"The colony's reserve has been depleted, and your experiment never yielded the desired results."
"If Desaad hadn't taken..."
"That's enough. I don't need your pathetic excuses. You have completely failed the mission. As for you, defenders of Earth," the scrutinizing gaze of the red eyes lingered on each of us for a moment, giving us goosebumps, "this is not the end. I will come to your world and turn it into another factory, first taking what is rightfully mine," the golem said gloomily, and then the statue began to melt until it turned into a black obelisk.
"Ra-a-a-a-a!" a desperate roar from what appeared to be the former General Darkseid made the Parademons startle.
In desperation, Steppenwolf lunged at the sea lord ahead of him, but the wound had a greater effect on him than I thought. He didn't even have time to raise his axe before Aquaman stabbed him with his trident. Diana appeared at his side and swung her sword sharply. The leader of the invasion army's head rolled across the floor until he was staring at the ceiling with a blank stare.
By this point, I had reached the portal and was studying the unusual structure. In theory, one spatial enchantment could be destroyed by another by simply shoving them into each other, but the problem was that it wasn't an enchantment in front of me. The whole thing looked like a real rift in space, through which I could barely make out something like the machines in the movie The Matrix. It was like trying to fix a broken dam with a skein of scotch tape - it made no sense at all, only a good thing wasted on bullshit.
The world beyond the rift was impressive. A dark sky covered with heavy clouds, occasionally illuminated by flashes of lightning. Against the backdrop of the clouds stood several tall, gloomy black towers with many dark yellow pods entangled with tubes where the replenishment for the army was maturing. Even strange to see such a thing, as Apokolips from my recollection looked more like an endless city that might be envied by Qhorn himself due to the abundance of red color and the brutality reigning everywhere. Right next to the entrance, on a small platform, there were two unfamiliar dead characters in black robes, as well as some kind of control panel that had been destroyed by an RPG explosion.
Eh, I'm not likely to be able to close a thing like this, but here's something else I can still do.
"Fly into the portal and destroy the towers," I ordered the rest of the minions, who were shocked by the brutal massacre of the second Steppenwolf.
Honestly, after dancing together, I wouldn't have the heart to kill them, but at least they'd be useful. In a good way, of course, I should have sent the cyberjukes after my comrades, so that they could call them to action, too, but judging by the fading sounds of battle and the fact that the mutated aliens perceived only primitive orders, there was no point in bothering.
"I need help!"
I was distracted from contemplating the beauty of the other world by the tense voice of Cyborg, who was trying in vain to pull the crates apart. It was not working so well, but it was impossible to simply cut off the Amazon cube's power supply, because there was no telling how the Unity would react to such a setup. Besides, such synchronization is unlikely to be destroyed simply like that, and it would be impossible for my craft to have its own source during the unification period. Victor mentioned that the Cubes are intelligent machines, so it's unlikely that they started the merger without affecting the fake.
"I'm coming!" Aquaman grasped one of the polyhedron's faces and slowly dragged it toward him, leaving small furrows on the floor.
Diane also didn't refuse to help by latching on to another facet.
The magic boxes clearly didn't like this attitude, as they naturally started screaming, generating dark prominences, but it had absolutely no effect on the heroes' resolve.
"A little more! - The cyborg, helping himself with additional limbs, was moving the crates farther and farther apart, and the greater the distance, the smaller the spatial gap became, which soon disappeared altogether, when a small gap appeared between the artifacts.
And the strange thing was. If the two Mother Cubes on the edges were really square boxes, then somehow between them there was a relatively small parallelepiped, dotted with red columns, which, like an original equalizer, were vibrating in time with the soundless music.
"Flash," the Victor hissed with difficulty.
Before I could blink, a red silhouette appeared behind Cyborg's back, shrouded in blue lightning.
~Whu-u-u-um~
I had just time to embrace the parademon standing next to me in a gentle hug, feeling the pleasant roundness of his roundness, when an invisible force threw the pair of us away, to the accompaniment of shattered glyphs and shattered illusion.
"Phew... That was powerful," I wrinkled my aching back, which had met with a couple of cyberbug corpses, and updated my disguise, feeling that it was a little easier to cast spells, and got upright, helping my beloved up.
"Uh-huh," Aquaman was stronger, so he easily left the hole in the hive wall made by his own body.
A dozen seconds later, our somewhat shabby company gathered in the center of the room to gaze with interest at what the Mother Cubes had become, for now only one of them could continue to bear that proud title.
The right box turned out to be a copy created by me, and after the Unity was broken, it turned into an incomprehensible twisted art-object, reminiscent of an artifact from the game "Stalker". It was the only "Cube" around which the remnants of subtle spell weaves could be discerned. As they faded away, the structure of the object became more and more fragile, covered with many cracks, and in a couple of seconds it simply collapsed into shapeless pieces under its own weight.
Basically, if everything was more or less clear with the magic copy, at least where the twisted box came from in the first place, the sight of the center box caused me more of a great perplexity.
While the device was hidden by the red equalizer bars, it could be mistaken for a Mother Cube flattened on both sides if one wanted to. Now it was perfectly clear that the artifact had nothing in common with the other boxes and was indeed a high-tech device, with dark yellow metal bumpers on the corners of the device, engraved on them with the semblance of microchip tracks. But the center of the device attracted the most attention, as it was a large translucent stone of bright scarlet color, covered with a thick transparent lens. And the image of the incomprehensible box was completed by the main body, made of some glossy black material, outlined with blue-green jagged stripes, which seemed to girdle it, aspiring to the central part.
"I have my doubts that the Atlanteans got a special version of the Mother Box," I voiced my thoughts to my companions, trying to see something with my true gaze.
Unfortunately, the object lying on the floor was not eager to share its secrets, having polluted the surrounding space with energy with demonic coloring, and there was no desire to come closer.
"You're right. My mentor said it was a cube with symmetrical ornamentation on all sides, not something else," Aquaman confirmed his worst fears.
"So Darkseid has his own Mother Cube now, and he can attack Earth at any moment..." Diana's words made Flash jump up and wiggle his head, peering into every dark corner as if a red-eyed monster would appear, terrifying half the multiverse.
"I don't think it's that simple. I've been studying the Themyscira Chronicles. Even with all three artifacts and the support of the mystics, Darkseid couldn't invade Earth. And once here with his legions, he delayed Unity long enough to allow the people of the planet to unite and fight back."
"Maybe he was just bored. You know, wiping your ass on the throne for thousands of years isn't much fun, and this is a fun fight."
"We don't know the logic of immortals," Diana replied wisely.
After standing in silence for a moment, Cyborg was the first to wake up, and with the words, "We should check out what this thing is," he slowly approached the device, releasing several metal tentacles from his palms.
In a couple of seconds, I could see the budget cosplay of a wizard girl and a tentacle monster. The first was an innocent box, and Victor took the role of the monster, starting to penetrate various technological holes with his tentacles, and at the same time scanning the body of the device with the rays from his eye implant.
Judging by Harley's smile, and the way she started nuzzling into me, asking for affection, I wasn't the only one with similar associations.
~Woo-hoo-hoo-hum~
Suddenly there was a low-pitched rumble from the side of the crate, and the stone in the center of the structure flickered red, hinting that nothing good was about to happen.
"Move aside! - The superhero exclaimed, throwing the dangerous object away from him and immediately creating in his left hand a strong shield of intertwined metal strips grown directly from his own body.
The precaution came in handy, as the explosion destroyed part of the level with the obelisk, creating a pile of shockwaves. Despite the timely action, we were still going to get hit, but the reworked glyph helped us avoid serious injury by trapping the shrapnel and once again pleasing me with its effectiveness.
"Huh, what the hell was that, experimenter? - I asked, when my hearing recovered a little.
Victor rose heavily from the ground and sighed very sadly.
"It was a repeater that mimicked the Mother Cube of the Atlanteans."
"Fuck..."
"For once, I'm inclined to agree with you. If Apokolips sets up mass production of such devices, our planet is in for some fun times."
As we made our way outside, killing the occasional parademons, Cyborg shared his findings, which were not encouraging at all. The destroyed device was indeed a repeater designed to transmit energy from the Atlantean Mother Cube. Its efficiency is low, but the fact that someone managed to replicate my craft using a technological approach is already alarming. Of course, we can't be a hundred percent sure of the latter, since copying charms and ba-hion were involved in the creation, but it looks as if the deception was discovered, created a copy with a different binding, and then decided to test it on an unnecessary planet. I mean, how would the fakes react to the Unity? It's not for nothing that Darkseid mentioned a colony and a failed experiment.
It's also a great opportunity to terraform, and at the same time open a portal to bring in an army. Although there is a big question as to why the portal was opened not on Apokolips, where the cyberjuk reinforcements could come in an endless stream, causing problems even for the sun boy, but on the colony. I really hope this is due to the fact that Darkseid's planet itself is in a different dimension and very far from Earth, so it's impossible to create a proper transition there without normal Unity. Or the gray-skinned freak feared that the artifacts might explode, destroying not only Earth, but also the world connected to it.
"By the way, what are we going to do with this Cube? - Flash asked suddenly, squinting at the box in Cyborg's hands. - We have to protect it somehow, or Darkseid will be able to get to it quickly.
The eyes of those present crossed on me for some reason.
"Uh! I disagree!"
After ten minutes of desperate bargaining, appealing to the conscience of superheroes and common sense, it can be concluded that I hate democracy. For some reason, it was decided by a majority vote (Victor was against it) to entrust the relic to me, since I had successfully defended it once.
I should have agreed to take the artifact for myself right away, showing unprecedented enthusiasm and grinning mysteriously. They might have changed their minds, thinking I was up to some mischief.
However, despite the unsuccessful attempt to give up the position of the keeper, in the process he managed to get a couple of cool technologies out of Bats, which he had previously stolen, and agree on a personal teleporter when it was created. Still, Cyborg had already had two devices with the ability to create portals in his hands, so he should have understood the general principles. I'm not going to keep the Mother Box with me anyway, and I'll give it to Abby, who is more suitable for the role of a guardian due to her immortality and ability to transform into a huge elemental.
It's good to be a hero from a superhero comic book. I admired the dawn after defeating the mastermind, symbolizing the changes and the superiority of Beaver over Donkey, and in the next frame there is already a handing out of plushies, like keys to the city, or some fun party in the circle of friends ...
We seem to have dawn here, too, illuminating the ruined city, which is slowly overgrowing with plants designed to expel alien energy, but you can't enjoy the view for long. Someone has to get busy collecting trophies and helping the wounded Amazons who have yet to be transported home. Zee is not iron to create stable portals and apply powerful buffs without rest, so Bats will have to organize a transatlantic flight, and quite possibly more than once, given the number of people who want to return.