The trouble was that Lex's mind didn't seem entirely intact. The visible symptom: too many powers, too little control. Sometimes he used one perfectly. More often, he just hurled abilities around in chaotic bursts.
Of the four combatants, the two heroes were holding back at every turn. Superwoman was stuck dead-center in the brawl. She wanted to bolt—wanted it about a hundred and twenty different ways—but Lex had her escape route cut off, and he was using her as a human shield.
For a while, the fight was a knot no one could untie. The two heroes kept trying to peel Superwoman out of the engagement. Her own desire to flee was overwhelming. But Lex wouldn't let her go, and the result was a tangled mess.
Mid-skirmish, Lex suddenly remembered he had another power. His shoulders rolled, and a dark green ripple spread out in every direction.
Within a hundred-meter (about three-hundred-and-thirty-foot) radius, everything froze in an instant.
Every person, every object stopped moving. Visible motion, invisible motion—every physical process inside the radius came to a halt.
This was the moment that revealed their relative strength. Superwoman's body turned slowly, her lips parting as if she meant to say something.
Superman was still mid-punch, except the punch was hundreds of beats too slow. The Flash was a step better—but high-speed running was off the table. He looked like a retiree out for a morning jog in the park, plodding along.
As the source of the effect, Lex was untouched. His eyes flicked between Superman and the Flash, as if weighing which one to kill first.
"Inertia Wave—that's the Turtle's technique!" The Flash's alarm cut through the slowed atmosphere. Thea had studied the Turtle's ability, and Green Arrow had later used inertia-slowing grenades to help take down Savitar. Savitar had been worn down until he died. The slowing field was overwhelming—without prior preparation, there was almost no way to counter it.
Even at this brutal pace, the Flash forced the words out, then prepared to drag Superman past the boundary of the field.
The stronger an ability, the steeper its restrictions. Thea's research had shown that even the Turtle Man himself could only sustain it twice in a single day. Past that, his cells couldn't supply the energy. Even so, if heavy slowing was used past a certain threshold, the user himself would slip into a low-speed state—and slow further, and further, until he stopped completely. Once life processes stopped, that was that. He'd be dead.
The Flash had no time to dwell on the cost. He grabbed Superman, and the two of them—brothers in misery—staggered toward the boundary together. A villain would have abandoned the other to save himself, then mocked whoever got caught. Heroes didn't think that way. They went together.
What he'd guessed was about right. Lex had ripped this ability out of the Earth-3 Turtle's corpse. He could only use it once a day, and afterward he felt like garbage—sluggish, mentally fogged. He'd used it twice since acquiring it. The aftereffects had been so brutal that, over the years, he'd nearly forgotten he had the technique at all.
This time it had paid off. Untouched inside the field, his face splitting into a manic grin, he lunged at Superman.
Less than a hundred meters separated them, but Superman and the Flash had been crawling forever. Lex covered the distance in an instant. He ducked Superman's frozen punch effortlessly. Blue electricity crackled between his fingers as he reached for Superman's throat.
A golden lasso whipped down from the air like a coiling dragon. With Lex's fingers half a meter (about a foot and a half) from Superman, the rope snared his wrist. He had a half-second to wonder why Superwoman was suddenly trying to stop him—and then he noticed that the lasso wasn't the same one he knew. Before he could think further, the rope yanked, and the unstoppable force sent him hurtling in the opposite direction.
The force was irresistible. Lex was flung hundreds of meters before he even registered being hit. Without him as the source, the slowing field collapsed.
Everyone could move again. Superman and the Flash had still been able to push themselves a little inside the field, but at a steep cost—and with Lex's powers compounding, they'd been wearing thin.
Reinforcements had arrived just in time.
Clad in full armor, with a blood-red cape and the Lasso of Truth in hand. The figure was unmistakably heroic, and Diana gave a small nod to the two of them before turning her gaze toward Superwoman.
Before she could open her mouth to ask, Lex came rocketing back in, faster than before. "Your powers are mine!"
Diana now joined Superman and the Flash, three on one. With the Valkyrie's arrival, the fight finally tilted into a clear advantage.
The gods had granted Diana a stack of resistances—immunity to slowing effects, to mind control, to psychic shock—plus terrifying defense against wind, fire, lightning, and elemental attacks across the board.
Lex cycled through several abilities in succession and couldn't budge her an inch. The Valkyrie carved a deep cut into his left arm—bone-deep, blood pouring out, the bleeding wouldn't stop. On the other side, Superman and the Flash, even while holding back, could clearly take down Superwoman. The Crime Syndicate's total collapse was within reach.
Owlman, hidden deep underground, and Batman, observing from the sky, both watched the battlefield. Each judged that the fight was approaching its endgame, and each began executing their own contingency plans, preparing for a post-Earth-3 era.
And on Mars, Thea—finally—had succeeded in suppressing the Evil World Will. Watching Diana enter the fray, she let out a sigh. This wasn't the end of the fight. This was the beginning.
"Bullying these guys doesn't take much skill. Looks like you've grown—you're worth fighting now." A wild, untamed voice rang out from beyond the perimeter. But before the words came, no one had seen anyone there.
Short golden hair. A face exquisite to the last detail. A black armored dress. A longsword traced with blood-red veining in her hand. The young woman watched them with utter ease—or rather, watched Diana.
This unexpected enemy had been completely missing from every intelligence stream. The Outsider's interrogation, Nightwing's reconnaissance, even Batman currently siphoning Owlman's archives—none of it had mentioned her.
Yet they all recognized her face. And not just them—even an indigenous islander from the South Pacific on Earth-1 would probably have known her. Wasn't that Miss Thea? Only her bearing was different. Colder. More distant. Not a single trace of human warmth, as if every soft thing had been hammered out of her—leaving a soul-stealing blade where a person used to be.
"You've finally appeared." Diana had been expecting this. Deep down, this fight was one she'd waited a long time for. Until now, the enemy had stayed hidden so well that she hadn't been able to track her down. Now that she'd surfaced, only one thing remained: the fight.
"You're challenging me? Coming up fast, aren't you. Did my counterpart give you a hand?" Evil Thea sat sideways on a boulder, the blood-veined sword laid across her knees. She glanced at Lex, who looked like he was about to speak, and waved him off lazily. "Go play somewhere else. This woman is out of your league."
Lex bowed like a mouse spotting a cat—frantically, repeatedly—then turned and bolted. Superwoman, baffled but not stupid, took off after him.
"You go too. Leave this to me," Diana said quietly to Superman and the Flash.
"Let me help." Superman, who genuinely had no appetite left for fighting any more pregnant women, offered the assist. But Diana knew exactly what Evil Thea was capable of, and she turned him down.