The white-haired Kara was the original… and the blonde Kara was the clone?
To the blonde Kara, that was completely unacceptable.
"You're lying! I'm not a clone!"
After Joey dropped the white-haired Kara with a single punch, the blonde Kara staggered forward despite the intense Kryptonite radiation, desperate to defend her own identity.
"I have all my memories! I remember how I came to Earth! I remember even earlier than that—I remember my classes on Krypton, the nice pastry place near my home, and the drangs at the zoo! I remember... remember..."
The blonde Kara suddenly began swaying dizzily.
The Kryptonite radiation was starting to affect her too.
Or maybe it was the collapse of her own memories that terrified her.
Because now she realized something horrifying.
Her memories weren't continuous.
"You pitiful little... clone...!" the white-haired Kara coughed violently.
The custom Kryptonite ring Batman had provided was monstrously powerful.
At this point, the white-haired Kara could barely finish a complete sentence before coughing up blood.
The Kryptonite radiation was spreading rapidly through her body. Green veins bulged visibly beneath her skin, and every breath became ragged and strained.
The living metal armor covering her body flowed frantically, attempting to seal the breach and form a radiation barrier around the wound.
But the Nth-metal fragment lodged there kept disrupting the repair process.
To Kryptonians, exposure to this level of Kryptonite radiation was even deadlier than nuclear radiation was to humans.
The fact that the white-haired Kara could still remain conscious at all under such conditions already proved she was vastly tougher than most Kryptonians.
Maybe the old Joey would've felt a little sympathy for her.
Now?
Not a chance.
After all, it hadn't even been two or three days since she'd distracted him with dirty jokes, dragged him into a prison cell, and beat the hell out of him.
This white-haired Kara was obsessive, dangerous, and completely unhinged.
Joey had already learned that lesson firsthand.
Meanwhile, the blonde Kara could barely stand watching this anymore.
Even while growing weak and disoriented from the Kryptonite radiation herself, she still worried about her enemy.
"Her cells are collapsing! Joey, take the Kryptonite away!"
"Relax, Kara. She's doing just fine."
Joey steadied the blonde Kara, who was already struggling to stay upright under the radiation exposure, then removed the communicator from his ear and placed it onto hers.
"Cyborg, teleport her out first. Then beam the us back. Prepare a containment cell for our prisoner."
Justice League communicators also functioned as signal decoders for the Watchtower's teleportation system.
Once Cyborg granted the necessary permissions, a pillar of white light descended instantly, teleporting the blonde Supergirl back to Earth before the overwhelming Kryptonite exposure could completely overwhelm her.
Next came the easy part.
Cyborg only needed to send over a few more communicators via drone, recalibrate the teleport destination, and beam the Kara in front of him straight into a prison cell.
"I'm about to remove the Kryptonite ring from your chest."
Joey kicked the white-haired Kara over like a sack of wheat sprawled across the ground, then crouched down beside her, muscles tense as he carefully reached toward the ring embedded in her armor.
"You'd better behave yourself."
Only now did Kara finally realize what had happened.
Her cousin had used her own trick against her.
Even with her eyes bloodshot and bleeding from the Kryptonite radiation, Kara still somehow found the energy to keep making awful jokes through blood-covered lips.
"A gorgeous lady is lying completely helpless right in front of you... and you seriously don't wanna do anything about it?"
"You really are an unpleasant woman."
At this point, the only thing Joey wanted to do was shut the original Kara's mouth for good.
He reached down and removed both the Nth-metal shard lodged in her chest armor and the Kryptonite ring, sealing the latter back inside the lead-lined box.
"Especially compared to your clone."
Even though that clone Kara had blood on her hands as well, compared to the white-haired Kara in front of him—or even Joey himself—she was far closer to the meaning of the name 'Superman' as Joey understood it.
Unfortunately, she had been born in the wrong universe.
Superman's moral code was simply too luxurious for a world like this.
Even Joey himself could only afford to follow parts of it.
Like right now.
He still chose to take the risk of removing the Kryptonite, allowing the white-haired Kara to absorb yellow sunlight and recover her strength while purging the radiation from her body.
In her current half-dead condition from Kryptonite exposure, if he threw her straight back into a red-sun prison without giving her even a moment to recover, there was a good chance she wouldn't survive.
Freed from the Kryptonite radiation, Kara lay flat against the barren ground and let out a long breath, as though an enormous weight had finally been lifted from her body.
Even while recovering, though, she still couldn't stop running her mouth.
"Mercy toward your enemy is—"
Joey cut her off immediately.
"I know how the rest of that quote goes. So just shut the fuck up."
After another four or five seconds, figuring Kara had recovered enough strength to move again, Joey started urging her back to her feet.
"Quit lying there. Cyborg's teleport drones should be here any second now."
"I can't get up!"
At the same moment, back inside the Justice League Watchtower, Cyborg—currently operating the teleportation system—was growing increasingly confused.
"Why the hell isn't the teleporter working?!"
Dozens of sectors away, both Joey and the still-collapsed Kara immediately realized something was wrong.
Especially Kara.
Because she desperately needed sunlight to recover, she was far more sensitive to the changes in the solar radiation around them.
It wasn't that she didn't want to stand.
After basking under the yellow sun for several seconds, she still hadn't regained enough strength to properly rise.
The sunlight had changed.
Something about it was different now.
"Be careful, Kal-El. Something's wrong with this sunlight!"
With the assistance of her armor, Kara barely managed to force herself upright before leaning back-to-back against Joey, scanning both the skies and the planet around them with wary eyes.
"If your people still haven't teleported in, then I'm assuming your teleport system's been blocked too. Get ready for incoming enemies."
"I know," Joey replied quietly. "I already see it."
Unlike Kara, whose strength had been severely weakened, Joey himself hadn't suffered much reduction in power yet.
His vision swept across the entire planet, then the entire star system, quickly locating the source of the solar anomaly.
A massive translucent green barrier stretched across nearly half the star system, enveloping the planet's atmosphere in layers of shimmering emerald light.
It was a construct formed entirely from willpower.
The barrier disrupted the tracker's signal transmission, rendering teleportation coordinates useless.
At the same time, it distorted the spectrum of sunlight reaching the planet, preventing it from empowering Kryptonians.
To create a Green Lantern projection on this scale, there were only two possibilities:
Either several of the strongest Green Lanterns were unleashing their full power together or an entire Lantern Corps-level force was working in complete coordination.
Considering that, in this universe, two of the greatest Green Lanterns were either already dead or had never become Lanterns at all, the latter possibility was far more likely.
Already mentally prepared for the worst, Joey extended his super-senses across the entire star system once more.
What he saw and heard... was disturbing even to him.
The brief clash between himself and Kara earlier had probably been nothing more than an appetizer.
Now the real main course had arrived.