The rain was letting up, leaving the streets of Central City glistening under the broken emergency lights. But the air still crackled with unnatural energy. Two final, pulsing breaches remained open, each disgorging a fresh wave of chaos.
Batman's voice cut through the comms, calm and absolute. "The breach at 5th and it is the source. It's generating the others. Arrow, you're with me. We close it at the source. Superman, Shazam, containment and cleanup. Keep them off us."
On a rooftop overlooking the unstable vortex of energy, Batman didn't wait for a reply. He was already firing a grappling hook. Oliver Queen landed silently beside him, his bow in hand.
"You have a plan for that?" Oliver asked, his eyes fixed on the swirling, violent tear in reality.
"The energy is unstable. It needs a counter-frequency," Batman stated, pulling a modified device from his belt. "I'll plant this at the epicenter. You cover me. The metas it's spitting out will be drawn to protect it."
Oliver nocked an arrow. "Just another Tuesday."
Down on the streets, it was anything but quiet.
"Okay, big guy!" Shazam yelled, zipping past Superman. "I see three over by the library! That makes my count… eight!"
Superman hovered for a second, a faint smile on his face as he scanned the area. "I count nine. You missed the one with the wings on the clock tower." With a sonic boom, he was gone, a blue and red streak intercepting a flying meta before it could dive-bomb a news van.
"Hey, no fair! You've got X-ray vision!" Shazam complained, but he was already laughing, slamming into a woman who was firing blasts of molten tar. The impact sent her sliding back fifty feet into a waiting net of Superman's precise heat vision, solidifying the tar around her.
It was a bizarre, high-stakes dance. Superman moved with impossible grace and economy, every movement calculated to neutralize a threat with minimal collateral damage. Shazam was a thunderclap of raw power, all bright lights and booming laughs, but his hits always landed exactly where they needed to.
"Ten!" Shazam shouted, encasing a meta's legs in a block of ice.
"Eleven," Superman corrected calmly, using his freeze breath to gently lower a levitating car full of civilians back to the ground before pinning the telekinetic meta who'd lifted it against a wall with a focused gust of wind.
Across town, the scene was darker, more tense.
Patty Spivot, her CCPD vest soaked through, helped an elderly man out of a wrecked bus. Her sergeant had ordered an evacuation, but she'd stayed behind to make sure everyone was clear.
"Almost there, sir, just a little further," she said, her voice steady despite the adrenaline.
A low growl echoed from the other end of the street. One of the last metas, a hulking brute with skin like cracked asphalt and claws that scraped grooves in the pavement, had spotted them. It was one of the ones spat out from the main breach, and it was heading straight for them.
Patty drew her service weapon. "Stop! CCPD!"
The meta didn't even slow. It broke into a charge, a rumbling juggernaut of destruction.
Patty fired. The bullets pinged off its hide. She stood her ground, firing again and again, a desperate, futile act of bravery. The meta was ten feet away, its clawed hand rising to strike.
Time seemed to slow. Patty closed her eyes.
Then, a sound like the sky tearing open. A streak of scarlet lightning cut between her and the meta.
The world snapped back to normal speed with a thunderclap. The meta was gone, slammed through the wall of a nearby building. Standing in front of Patty, his back to her, was the Flash. Red suit, bright yellow lightning emblem, a faint haze of steam rising from his shoulders in the damp air.
Patty lowered her gun, her hands trembling. She'd heard the stories, seen the blur on the news. But this was different. He was… real.
The Flash turned his head slightly, just enough for her to see the profile of his cowl. "You okay?" His voice was faster than a normal person's, a low, vibrating hum that was strangely calming.
She could only nod, her breath caught in her throat.
"Get to safety. It's almost over," he said. And then he was gone, a red blur vanishing down the street.
Back at the main breach, Batman was a phantom in the chaos. He moved through the shadows, dropping smoke pellets and using targeted, non-lethal explosives to disorient the meta-human guards. An energy blaster took a shot at him; an arrow from the darkness above severed the weapon's power pack before it could fire again.
"Thanks," Batman grunted into his comm.
"Don't mention it," Oliver's voice came back, cool and focused. "Just plant your toy."
Batman reached the epicenter of the swirling energy. The device in his hand whirred to life. He slammed it into the ground, and a low, resonant pulse began to emanate from it. The breach flickered, the violent purple light stuttering.
The remaining metas, sensing their lifeline was dying, went berserk, converging on Batman's position.
That's when the Flash arrived.
He became a storm of motion, a red tornado. He didn't punch them; he disassembled their momentum. He'd run past one, and its legs would be tangled in cabling. He'd zip around another, and its weapons would be dismantled into harmless components at its feet. He was a force of pure physics, neutralizing threats with impossible speed.
On the rooftop, Oliver saw his opening. He fired a series of explosive arrows into the ground around the breach, creating a perimeter of fire and confusion, keeping the stragglers back.
"The frequency is synchronized," Batman said, his fingers flying over a wrist computer. "The breach is collapsing."
The unstable vortex began to shudder violently, sucking light and debris back into itself. The other, smaller breaches across the city winked out of existence one by one.
With a final, deafening implosion, the main breach collapsed, leaving behind only scorched asphalt and an eerie silence.
The last meta, confused and disoriented, was gently pinned to the ground by Superman, while Shazam landed nearby, his lightning fading.
"So… who won?" Shazam asked, looking between Superman and the now-clear streets.
Superman gave a small smile. "The city did."
On the ground, Patty Spivot finally let out the breath she'd been holding, watching the red blur stop in the middle of the street. The invasion was over. The Flash stood for a moment, a solitary sentinel in the aftermath, before vanishing once more into the city he protected.