Milk_Is_My_Drug
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Chapter 99: When Hope Crumbles
🕑 Added 2025-07-16 08:00:06 +0000 UTCThe sky above Metropolis burned with fire and smoke. The cries of the wounded and the clash of gods echoed through the torn city streets.
Toward the rear of the battlefield, where broken buildings and collapsed towers provided brief cover, Ace and Rex stood among a sea of shadow soldiers. The inky-black beings, loyal only to the Shadow Monarch, waited in eerie silence for their next command of their princess.
Rex clutched his shotgun tightly, knuckles white. His eyes were wide, not with awe but horror.
He stared at the blood-drenched battlefield, where bodies dropped like flies and screams never ceased.
“Why?” Rex’s voice cracked. “Why this madness? What’s the point of all of this?”
Ace’s eyes stayed focused on the chaos, her expression unreadable but her heart heavy. She replied quietly, “Some relish in devastation… and destruction.”
She paused, gaze darkening.
“That’s why Dad hates violence. He hates this sight.”
Above them, a swarm of Parademons and Paradooms twisted through the clouds like a storm of metal and bone.
Ace’s eyes shimmered with golden light.
The moment her gaze locked onto the flying horrors, they screamed and dropped from the sky like falling stars, hundreds crashing into the earth below with bone-crunching force.
The effect, however, didn’t last.
Ace narrowed her glowing eyes, a frown tugging at her lips.
“Something is wrong…”
The moment her focus slipped, or her enemies passed beyond her sight, they began to rise again, shuddering as sparks danced across their bodies, the machines inside them repairing the damage.
A blur of cosmic white light zipped toward her.
Courtney hovered nearby, her staff glowing as she battled above.
She shouted down, “Ace! Why are your powers not working on them?”
Ace looked up, her eyes still glowing.
“They are working… but these things… they’re not fully biological.”
She motioned toward the twitching creatures as they rose again.
“They’re part machine. The tech inside them… lets them recover almost instantly.”
Courtney’s face tightened in frustration. She had hoped Ace’s powers could thin the enemy’s numbers.
Instead, they were only slowing them down, delaying the inevitable.
Even so, Ace didn’t stop.
Her eyes flared again, golden light shining like twin suns, and once more, hundreds of enemies fell, crashing into the concrete with sickening thuds.
Without hesitation, the shadow soldiers surged forward.
They moved like a flood of death, striking down the grounded creatures with brutal efficiency. Swords of darkness, claws of shadow, and pure numbers overwhelmed the temporarily paralyzed invaders.
Courtney watched in silence, hovering just above the carnage.
Her grip tightened around her staff.
Thank the stars they’re on our side.
Rex remained frozen beside Ace, his breathing shallow. The sound of war was a storm in his ears, and his fingers clenched around his shotgun like it was the only thing anchoring him to reality.
His eyes darted across the battlefield, scanning, searching, dreading.
He pressed closer to Ace.
___________
The battlefield was chaos. Smoke and fire danced in the air, screaming steel clashed with roaring fury, and blood slicked the ground beneath trembling feet.
The Teen Titans were barely holding the line.
Their tight formation of Nightwing, Starfire, Cyborg, Beast Boy, Raven, Jinx, and Blue Beetle moved with precision and desperation. Each breath, each strike, each dodge was survival. And they weren’t alone.
Fighting beside them were allies from a fallen world: a Robin with Bruce Wayne’s blood in his veins, another sickly Raven, and even a Superman and Lois Lane from a crumbling alternate world.
Together, they fought like a cornered animal. Teeth bared. Blades drawn.
But when the skies opened and tens of Paradooms descended in unison, like the jaws of Hell clamping shut, their hearts dropped.
Even Starfire’s fire dimmed. Cyborg’s scanners froze. Raven’s breath caught. They had survived so much, but this?
This was death.
Until the sky erupted in fire.
A wall of devastation magic, searing red and inky black, surged from the top of a ruined skyscraper. It tore through the wave of Paradooms, incinerating them mid-air, leaving only shrieks and smoking metal.
All eyes turned skyward.
Atop the burning tower stood a giant shadow, black and red, its form unclear and yet divine in its terror. Magical fire poured from its clawed hands like a judgment long awaited. Surrounding it were smaller figures, same race, same rage, each hurling wave after wave of destruction onto the invading horde below.
Lois Lane fired a pulse gun into a charging Parademon, its body slumping lifelessly.
She muttered over the noise, “I wish we had those things back home. One is holding Darkseid. others taking on his top forces. And these guys…" she motioned to the shadows above, “they’re just slaughtering monsters like it’s nothing.”
Superman from her world nodded solemnly.
Raven of this Earth, her face pale and solemn, spoke up for the first time in what felt like eternity. Her voice was low, almost reverent.
“If only their king… Ashborn… were here. This war could already be turning.”
As if her words had summoned it, the shadows beneath her twisted.
A shape began to rise. Enormous. Primal.
From the dark beneath her cloak, a massive, bear-like creature erupted with a roar that split the sky. Its fur was made of writhing shadow, its eyes burning blue. Teeth like swords, muscles like coiled storms.
The group recoiled instinctively.
Raven took a stumbling step back, fear twisting her features. The creature had been there the whole time. Hiding inside her shadow.
She swallowed hard, her voice breaking. “Everyone almost knows by now… it is not a secret”
The others stared in disbelief as the bear snarled at her, its gaze sharp with warning. Then, without a word or sound, it turned and charged forward, crushing soldiers beneath its titanic weight, rending armor and bone alike.
Starfire watched it vanish into the fray and blinked. “What was that?”
Raven, voice hushed, replied, “The reason I couldn’t speak freely. Ashborn left that thing in my shadow.”
Cyborg tracked the beast with a visor scan, mouth agape.
“Then it’s good you didn’t say anything,” he said, eyeing Raven. “That thing would’ve made you into food.”
The alternate Superman, bruised but standing tall, watched as the shadow bear decimated entire platoons with bestial rage and supernatural power.
He cracked a smile.
“Now I want to meet this Ashborn.”
___________
The shoreline trembled beneath the weight of war. Aquaman, Mera, and a contingent of the surviving Green Lanterns from Oa stood at the edge of the battlefield, battered but unyielding. Near them in the sea, the Atlantean warships, their cannons unleashing powerful bursts of energy, shattering the air with each shot as they targeted the swarms of flying Parademons overhead.
Aquaman’s eyes flared with fury as he watched his people fall, warriors of Atlantis being shot down or dragged into the air and torn apart, their screams echoing over the crashing waves. One of the great ships exploded in a thunderous burst of flame and shrapnel, raining debris into the ocean.
He growled, knuckles white around his trident. “No more!”
Beside him, Mera struck down a charging Parademon with a spear of water. She glanced over her shoulder, voice trembling with disbelief. “This is madness… how many of these things do we have to destroy before it ends?”
One of the Green Lanterns, panting and injured, turned to her grimly. “Darkseid doesn’t just conquer planets… he enslaves them. He turns their people into his army. And this one…” voice dropping, “he’s conquered entire dimensions. Gods know how many armies he commands now.”
Aquaman stepped forward, jaw clenched. “I don’t care how many. We don’t give up. If we do… it’s the end of everything.”
But even as he spoke, the skies above rippled with a familiar and terrifying distortion. Another Boom Tube opened.
From it poured dozens of glowing green figures, descending like silent meteors.
For a moment, confusion washed over the defenders.
Aquaman narrowed his eyes. “Lanterns?”
But one of the remaining Green Lanterns took a step back in pure horror, his ring flickering with fear. “No… what have they done?”
The new arrivals were Green Lanterns no longer. Their bodies were fused with twisted machinery, green power glowing from corrupted circuitry and mechanical limbs. Half-machine abominations, their eyes devoid of will or mercy.
And then the sky turned green.
An overwhelming wave of emerald light surged from the corrupted Lanterns, blanketing the city in a blinding glow. The defenders shielded their eyes, only to hear the scream of engines torn from the sea.
The Atlantean ships, all of them, were dragged violently from the ocean, hoisted into the air like toys.
Aquaman stepped forward in horror, his voice breaking. “NO! STOP!”
But it was too late.
In coordinated precision, the corrupted Lanterns crushed the floating ships with their power, one after another. Explosions lit the sky as Atlantean soldiers were vaporized or hurled to their deaths. The ocean was littered with debris, corpses, and the fire of sinking wreckage.
Within minutes, the majority of Atlantis’ mighty fleet was gone.
Mera collapsed to her knees, tears brimming. The remaining Green Lanterns stared in silence, despair taking root.
But worse still, far beyond their view, across the world, Boom Tubes continued to open.
And from each one, massive drills, titanic, hellish machines, descended from the portals. They embedded themselves in Earth’s crust with earth-shattering force and began to drill, deep and fast.
Darkseid wasn’t just waging a war. He was ending a planet.
And though Earth’s defenders had shown more resistance than he had expected, it was nowhere near enough to stop him.
Comments
HugoH
The fight is already starting to drag a bit. Please tell me Ashborn is going to show up next chapter
