Darkseid thought Thea's job was awfully light—possibly a little unfair to him. But considering how important the Anti-Life Equation was, he swallowed his displeasure.
Mage-type gods were genuinely rare, especially ones of Thea's caliber. Her grasp of space and time far exceeded his own. If she personally sealed off the area, the Anti-Monitor would have no path of escape.
As for the possibility of her flipping on him after the battle—locking the door so he couldn't leave—Darkseid wasn't worried. His power could shatter any spatial barrier. Worst case, he'd flip the table and crack the planet in half. He had no qualms whatsoever about doing exactly that.
There was risk, and not a small amount. But after considering it from every angle, he found no fatal flaw. He nodded. "Agreed."
With the cooperation settled, both deities vanished from Hell simultaneously. Places like this had too many major players. Best not to linger.
Eclipso was assigned to the Spectre. The Anti-Monitor was assigned to Darkseid. The remaining Earth-3 threats—Ultraman, Super-Woman, and the rest—each had their own opponents to deal with. As for that supposedly terrifying Earth-3 Luthor, he was an idiot, hardly worth the mental energy.
Counting the enemies and pairing them off, the lineup worked well. Thea didn't have much to do in this fight—at most she'd be there to lend a hand if someone ran into trouble.
But she didn't slack off. Being prepared never hurt.
The fight against the First Lantern had exposed a problem with her toolkit: her insta-kill attack lacked a burst option.
It wasn't like Nekron's style—wipe out a crowd with a casual gesture. Hers required several seconds of setup.
Against lower-tier enemies, that wasn't much of a drawback. Against peers, it was a serious limitation.
No one was blind. If they could see the attack coming, they could dodge.
An insta-kill attack that couldn't hit anything was worthless.
She needed something she could draw-and-cut in a single motion.
Advancing her cultivation realm would be the most direct solution, but she didn't have time. Her foundation was already showing signs of instability, and she lacked the insights needed to break through. That path was out.
Her thoughts branched out, and she quickly hit on an imperfect workaround. Back in the Underworld, she mustered substantial "manpower" and materials, and forged a scabbard in the zone of deepest resentment and death-aura.
She'd originally planned to make a sword-case. She'd store the Nightsword inside to soak up death-aura between fights. Draw, cut, instant kill—very satisfying.
Unfortunately, it clashed with her personal aesthetic. Flowing sleeves, tall crown, grand robes, a sword-case strapped across the back—that looked great. Her current cape-and-robe wardrobe? A sword-case looked ridiculous on her. So she scaled it down to a scabbard.
Functionally it was close to the same. The only real loss was longevity: a full case might have provided death-aura for three insta-kill strikes. The scabbard could only supply two.
She figured that was probably enough. Enemies who couldn't be killed in two strikes wouldn't die in three either.
The Spectre hadn't specified what material was ideal for sealing Eclipso. Thea picked through the Underworld and pulled several massive stones that looked preposterously durable—resistant to pressure, corrosion, and magic—and stored them in her spatial pocket. One of them might come in handy when the moment arrived.
Her daily research on the Two-Dimensional World still had no lead. Her mental tendrils penetrated the world—and then what? She didn't know. There was no prior experience to draw on, and racking her brain in a vacuum was genuinely painful.
To avoid dragging Diana into it and affecting her development, she didn't tell her lover. She had to work it out alone.
Stuck, she decided to go ask someone.
Lucifer was out of the question—God's son, running his own private universe as its god. The outside cosmos could detonate and he still wouldn't come out. Destiny, her old big brother of the Endless, had the power, but he'd been ducking her.
Of the remaining candidates, the Monitors and Anti-Monitor seemed impressive on the surface—vast, seemingly immeasurable power, apparently unfathomable—but they were basically high-ranking puppets. Thea wasn't impressed at all.
The Anti-Monitor aside—the Monitors looked like they could casually create and destroy universes, recording every event that unfolded within them. In reality, they were inseparable from the universes themselves. They were one with them.
A single universe existed; its individual Monitor existed. The universe died; the Monitor died with it.
If a universe evolved into a sci-fi civilization, that Monitor had a futuristic aesthetic. If a universe reached the peak of melee warfare, the Monitor was an armored giant.
Thea suspected they didn't even have a concept of self. They weren't like her or Darkseid—individuals with their own joys, sorrows, emotions. They were more like living programs.
She'd rather die than walk that road.
Setting aside everyone capable of creating worlds who wouldn't bother with her, one name remained. The candidate lived nearby—Thea just hadn't committed to making contact yet.
***
Not Heaven, not Hell, and nowhere exotic. The "person" she was looking for lived on Earth. In Metropolis.
One stop from the Daily Planet—the kind of neighborhood where the city's struggling residents chose to settle. Safe streets, cheap rent. The tenant mix was eclectic but basically stable.
Superman himself had lived here for a long time when he first arrived in Metropolis. Rent was affordable, commute to the paper was short. He'd only moved out after marrying Lois, his wealthy reporter bride.
Thea wasn't here looking for him today, or for anything he'd left behind. She was looking for Superman's old neighbor—a woman who appeared to be quite elderly.
She found the woman on the rooftop, hanging laundry. White hair, face creased with wrinkles, wearing a baggy green T-shirt that didn't fit her frame.
The old woman turned, spotted Thea, and was startled. Even without dressing up, Thea's clothes were top-tier—and though this neighborhood wasn't the slums, nobody around here wore anything that expensive.
"You... can I help you, miss?" the old woman said hesitantly.
Thea looked her over from head to toe, then seemed to relax. "I know who you are. The Princess of the Fifth Dimension. You have no power left at all now?"
Her deepest secret laid bare—the old woman first froze in shock, then a resigned calm settled over her. She laughed softly, almost to herself, wiped her hands on a towel, and went back to hanging laundry. If this stranger already knew her true identity, there was nothing to fear. She spent a full thirty minutes hanging the laundry.
Thea didn't speak the entire time. Her eyes tracked the old woman's every movement.
"Stop watching, young lady," the old woman said eventually, with a trace of bitterness. "Or as you'd put it around here, some kind of deity. I'm just an old woman now. I don't have any of the power you're worried about."
"Care for a drink, young lady?" From the pile of laundry, she produced a bottle of beer and held it out.
Thea's guard never dropped that low. She shook her head and declined.