Rachel pushed the door open with dull and cold eyes and walked downstairs like a puppet, sitting straight-backed on the sofa.
Snap.
After the snap of fingers, Rachel's eyes became lively again.
She looked at Emperor Viktor standing by the door. Her once expressionless face started to show a bit of disgust.
"Why are you doing this? Every time someone comes, you hypnotize me, and when no one's here, you wake me up."
He showed a completely different side from how he acted in front of others and smiled gently.
"I didn't want to control you. In my timeline, we spent more than seven hundred years together. Back then, you also often disapproved of some of my actions, but I could persuade you every time."
Rachel responded with actions.
She stood up from the sofa and went upstairs without looking back.
"Your timeline no longer exists, and you are not the person I knew. I'm not interested in your story at all."
He fell silent for a moment and looked around with a complicated expression.
Even though he had seen it many times and remembered every detail of the villa, he clearly never had the chance to build such a home with Rachel in his timeline.
In the end, he left the villa.
He didn't even know if the small wooden boat anchored more than ten miles away had drifted too far with the ocean currents.
...
On the other side, at the Watchtower.
"Do you feel reassured now?"
Looking at Viktor in armor, who came to the Watchtower again after switching places with Ryan Choi, who returned to Earth, Batman asked flatly.
Zatanna was just a diversion.
In reality, Viktor already entered the villa with Zatanna's magical help and personally confirmed Rachel's condition.
He somewhat confusedly rubbed his helmet.
"Yeah… I think so. I don't know if it's my imagination, but she seemed to have gained a little weight."
Behind them, a sparkle of magic appeared, and Zatanna teleported into the Watchtower.
She happened to hear Viktor's last sentence and complained irritably.
"That jerk."
Since she had just helped him, Viktor didn't get angry and just chuckled.
"Why do you mean by that? It sounds like you suddenly have something against me."
Zatanna replied bluntly.
"To be honest, the future you was a complete jerk. To think I previously thought you were a decent person. If your future self was that bad, I doubt you're much better now."
Zatanna was very upset, and her words were without mercy.
It was clear that she had been badly frightened by Emperor Viktor earlier.
Superman, on the side, watched with a smile, raising his hand to scratch his ear.
Batman immediately turned his head and focused on Superman's ear.
Viktor was about to argue with Zatanna, but when he noticed Batman's reaction, he quickly raised a finger and gently pressed it against Zatanna's lips, stopping her from continuing.
Even though the latter smartly closed her mouth, Zatanna viciously glared at Viktor's side.
Superman, who had been watching the scene for fun, suddenly froze.
Seeing everyone suddenly quiet down, Superman's face shows a bitter expression.
He slightly raised his hand and pointed at himself, as if asking a question.
Viktor and Batman both nodded. Then Batman gestured for them to continue.
Zatanna's eyes lit up. She turned her head and pushed Viktor's finger away.
"He must be a violent maniac, a control freak, maybe even a pervert!"
Viktor felt speechless.
'This woman was using this chance to insult him as much as she could?'
"I can accept a violent maniac, but what's with a control freak and a pervert?"
"Wow. You locked up a pretty girl in a remote house by the sea in a deserted area. Do I need to describe more?"
Seeing that Batman had silently moved next to Superman, Viktor twitched his mouth.
"That's not me. Besides, that house is a home I built together with Rachel with our own hands."
Batman raised his hand and sprayed a specially prepared molecular anesthetic into Superman's ear.
Zatanna finally stopped talking and stared at everything without blinking.
Superman, looking very uncomfortable, quickly bent down and tilted his head.
He shook it a few times, and a tiny person, previously invisible to the naked eye, fell out of his ear and grew bigger in midair.
In the end, Atomica hit the floor with a thud. Without realizing it, Zatanna had moved closer to Viktor.
After he activated some kind of signal jammer, Batman gestured that it was over.
"So… who is she?"
Zatanna had no idea about her.
After all, she only received a notification from the Justice League asking her to cooperate with Viktor in putting on an act.
Viktor spoke in a sarcastic tone.
"Based on your understanding, she was just a beautiful woman knocked out by a dark bat-costumed weirdo."
Batman didn't even bother to respond to that level of insult. He kept focusing on examining Atomica's.
"Hey?!"
Zatanna elbowed him.
"A petty man like you doesn't get much attention from girls."
"Why do I need to get much attention from girls?"
He was somewhat baffled.
He wasn't like General Kreeg, who had been ordered to come to Earth and produce a lot of offspring.
Zatanna turned to look at him as if he were some rare animal.
Did a man this pure really exist? Why was Constantine, who kept bothering her, such a complete jerk and terrible person?
Soon, Batman found a small device near Atomica's mask.
He held it in his hand, scanned it several times through his helmet, and then put it back.
Looking at that set of data completely decoded in structure and transmitted back to the Batcomputer for rapid analysis, Batman finally spoke.
"We can now confirm that Rhonda Pineda was also from another world. She was likely a scout preparing for an invasion."
Viktor pushed away Zatanna, who won't stop arguing with him.
"More importantly, I'm curious—how did you notice it before I did?"
Batman slowly turned his head and looked at him.
Just as Viktor thought Batman was about to give some bullshit excuse like "because I'm Batman,"—
"From Superman's usual behavior, he never scratched himself in normal situations unless he was trying to hide embarrassment, and he just scratched his ear."
Viktor thought.
'Is this guy even human?'
Atomica had been sent by the Crime Syndicate as a spy because almost no one could notice her movement at a microscopic size.
Atomica's plan was perfect.
Unless he deliberately used his bio-field to scan, Superman wouldn't notice her.
As for Viktor, he wouldn't notice either unless she looked at him directly.
Then, because Superman scratched his ear, Batman just found her out like this.
"Record of scratching itches?! Are you even a normal human?"
"I'm Batman."
…There was nothing more to say.
He didn't want to listen to Batman's nonsense anymore and brought the topic back to Atomica's unconscious on the floor.
"What now?"
...
600 POWER STONES = 1 BONUS CHAPTER
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