Exactly what she was waiting for.
Thea's mechanical arm had been fully primed long before the fight began, concealed beneath her combat suit so her opponent couldn't tell. Now, watching the woman's smug, full-powered punch come flying toward her, Thea only sneered inwardly.
So you're proud of your strength, huh? Fine—let's see what science can do.
She met the punch head-on.
The black-clad woman's eyes widened in alarm. She's countering directly?! For a split second, she wondered if this Earth woman possessed superhuman strength as well—but there was no turning back. She committed, throwing her full weight into the strike.
Bang!
A dull, bone-shaking impact thundered across the clearing.
A tidal force surged up the stranger's arm and into her shoulder; her entire body lifted off the ground and flew backward over five meters before slamming down.
What the—?! How does she have that kind of power?!
Well-trained reflexes saved her from total humiliation. She flipped mid-air, landing in a crouch, her mind spinning for a counter-strategy.
Thea lowered her arm, assessing the hit with satisfaction. She'd dumped her arm's entire output into that strike. The prototype's upper limit was rated for ten tons, but factoring in recoil and human biomechanics, the practical delivery was around five.
The stranger, meanwhile, was strong—maybe a ton and a half at most. Comparable to Bane on a calm day. Caught off guard, she'd taken the full brunt of the blow; her arm hung half-numb, her overall combat strength dropped by at least twenty percent.
Thea herself felt some recoil, but the arm's shock-absorption system took most of it. She merely slid half a step back, then charged forward, pressing the attack before the other woman could recover her footing.
"Who are you?!" the woman demanded, frustration cutting through her pain.
Thea arched a brow. "You first."
"I—I can't tell you. I have… obligations. But listen, we're fighting by mistake! Tell me who you are, maybe—maybe we can talk!"
She was already being pummeled like a training dummy—there wasn't much pride left to salvage.
Oh, now you want to talk? Thea thought darkly. Where was that energy when you blasted my hoverboard? Trying to trick me for my name, are you? So you can hunt me down later?
She smirked. "Fine then! My name's Barbara Gordon!" she declared boldly, voice loud and righteous.
Thousands of miles away, the real Barbara Gordon, deep in training with Batman, suddenly sneezed.
The black-clad woman repeated the name under her breath. "Barbara… Gordon. I'll remember that."
She glared murderously, though it didn't help—she was still being absolutely demolished. She didn't have the protagonist's luxury of a "power-up flashback."
When she saw Thea wind up for another blow—one aimed straight at her face—panic finally overtook restraint.
That kind of force could cave her skull in. Forget protocol.
"Time—Stop!"
She thrust her right hand forward.
An invisible field rippled outward, freezing the world around them.
Thea halted mid-strike, body suspended in the air, arm extended, expression locked. She had no awareness at all—completely frozen within the bubble of altered time.
The black-clad woman gasped for breath. She couldn't stop time globally—that was impossible—but she could slow it drastically in a localized zone. Even so, the act came with a terrible backlash. No one could truly deceive time; mortals were servants of it, never masters.
She meant to retreat immediately. But then she noticed something that made her blood run cold.
Thea—supposedly frozen—was moving.
Just barely, almost imperceptibly… but she was moving.
Her eyes widened in horror. That's impossible.
Only one explanation existed: the woman in front of her wasn't some random anomaly. She was a fixed point—a pivotal presence in this timeline. The countless threads of fate that touched her made the entire temporal flow resist manipulation.
Trying to freeze her wasn't stopping one person—it was challenging the entire time stream.
Even if her whole organization mobilized—hundreds of agents, multiplied a thousandfold—they couldn't overpower the temporal inertia that protected someone like that.
It all happened in a single second, but that one second drained everything she had.
Her once-elegant face shriveled like a corpse; her body convulsed, muscles collapsing inward under the crushing backlash of time.
No more… can't hold it…
She tried to disengage the effect—too late.
A violent surge erupted inside her body, detonating from within.
The explosion was instantaneous—silent and absolute.
Her form disintegrated, atomized in a flash of energy.
Time itself recoiled.
When the distortion faded, Thea's body lurched forward again, completing the punch she'd thrown seconds earlier.
She blinked in confusion at the sight before her: nothing but scorched air and drifting particles.
"…Huh?"
Her memory remained intact. One moment she'd thrown a punch—next moment, her opponent had literally exploded into dust.
"Did I… do that?" she muttered. "One hit kill? Did I just go full Saitama?"
But there was no denying it. The enemy was gone—utterly obliterated. And while many villains were fond of faking their deaths, this one had been reduced to molecular confetti. No coming back from that.
Still, something felt off. She could sense… something faint inside her. An unfamiliar presence, like a trace of foreign energy now mingled with her own.
She couldn't tell what it was. No reference point, no comparison. Just… something new.
Meanwhile, not far away, two figures hid behind a patch of tall grass, whispering urgently.
"What do we do, Ray? Thea just killed the Time Wanderer! She's planning to take my younger self back to Star City—this is a disaster…"
The blonde woman in white looked utterly flustered.
The tall man beside her—Ray Palmer, Doctor of Physics and chronic optimist—scratched his head. "I'm a physicist, not a time-travel physicist. But, uh, this Thea's way different from the one we know."
"No kidding," the woman muttered, glaring at him.
Before either could decide what to do, their comms unit buzzed.
"Lance. Palmer. The timeline shows the Wanderer's signature terminated. Was that you two?"
The voice on the line sounded half-amazed, half-amused.
The pair exchanged a helpless look and sighed in unison.
They'd love to take the credit.
But no—that definitely hadn't been them.