If you haven't grabbed any snacks before reading this chapter, better do so now!
"Damn it!" Starfire growled, her fist slamming into the scorched, rocky ground with enough force to make the planet Mogo groan beneath her. The surface trembled, sending a ripple through the strange living world as if it were protesting her anger. Kyla-el just floated above, looking on with an almost amused glint in her eyes.
"Wait a minute, Starfire. Diana went after him." Kyla-el said as Starfire's eyes brightened, but she soon slouched as if nothing had changed. Starfire's eyes, usually so bright and full of hope, seemed dimmer as she realised the truth of their situation. For all her strength, she couldn't just punch her way out of this one.
She let out a sigh and hovered upwards, joining Kyla-el in the air, her arms crossed. "Oh, don't pretend you're happy about this." Kyla-el said, noticing Starfire's cheerful reaction that soon turned dull.
"We still have to deal with them." Kyla-el jerked her head upwards, motioning at the swirling mass of energy above them.
Nine Ravens, ethereal yet terrifyingly real, had taken form high in Mogo's atmosphere. Their presence warped the sky, twisting the clouds and distorting the stars. Each Raven was ringed by an aura of a different color—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, grey, white, and pink. Power rippled from them like heat from a desert, distorting the very space around them. Their bodies were now complete, and their auras calm, as they surveyed their environment.
Then, as if in silent agreement, the Ravens looked at each other—and in a blur, they scattered in nine different directions. Beams of color streaked out from Mogo into the distant reaches of the galaxy.
"Fuck! They're fast!" Kyla-el cursed, her eyes glowing as she tracked their paths, each one disappearing faster than light. "And there are nine of them, and only two of us." She turned to Starfire, meeting her in the high air. The glow from the fleeing Ravens painted streaks of color across both their faces.
"I think you already know what my plan is, right?" Starfire asked, her voice steadier now, but with a hint of old mischief returning. She looked up at the stars, following the last glimpses of the departing Raven variants.
Kyla-el allowed herself a small smile. "You never stop surprising me. You want to capture them all, bring them together, and try to… merge them? To bring back Raven?" She was impressed, not just by the courage but by the sheer audacity of Starfire's plan.
Starfire didn't answer directly, but her silence was an answer enough. There was a brief, mutual understanding that passed between them. They both wanted Raven back—but which one? The Raven they knew? Or the new, mysterious one?
Kyla-el spoke first, her tone careful, "You know they're more powerful than we are—much more. There are nine of them, and two of us. And now they're scattered across different galaxies. Who knows what they'll do out there?"
Starfire didn't look away. She just nodded.
"Still, we don't even know where Metron sent her. He said 'eternity'—but what does that mean? An illusion? A prison? I doubt any illusion could hold her for long, but… she's really vulnerable now. We have to act." Kyla-el said with urgency.
Starfire immediately reached out, grasping the air as if grabbing a memory. Her fingers closed on a glowing thread—an echo of the energy trail left behind by one of the Raven variants. The strand shimmered in her hand, pulsing with unknown power.
"We can track them through this," she said, letting the thread slip through her fingers. "But without Diana's motherbox, it'll be slower."
Kyla-el shook her head in thought and came up with an idea, "Diana took her motherbox with her. But we can always get another… on Apokolips."
Starfire grinned, a little of her old fire returning. "Then let's make a quick stop there. We'll need all the help we can get."
The two shot off, vanishing into the night sky, leaving only a lingering tremor on Mogo's surface.
Meanwhile, in the folds of time itself, Metron reclined in his Mobius Chair. He was giggling—actual, honest giggling—something few would ever believe possible from the cold god of knowledge.
"Damn it, that woman nearly killed me!" he muttered, his fingers touching a wound on his torso that still oozed faintly. The Mobius Chair glowed around him, pulsing with strange symbols and equations as it worked to keep him alive. As the chair travelled deeper through time, his wounds began to close, flesh and blood returning as if he'd never been touched. Time, for him, was medicine and more.
"Now, let's keep going… go to the events before this imposter became as powerful as she did." He punched coordinates into the air, the Mobius Chair spinning through colors and centuries.
But a whisper echoed beside him: "Kyla almost killed you, but I'll finish the job."
Metron's eyes snapped open. He looked around, finding only the endless spiral of the time-stream and the Mobius Chair. "What? Who's there?" he demanded, but there was only silence.
"I must be hallucinating. Am I scared?" He laughed, shaking his head. "No. I'm Metron. I thirst for knowledge beyond anything—nothing scares me. I must just be tired."
But the feeling didn't leave him. Instead, it grew—an itch at the edge of his mind, the sense that something was fundamentally wrong.
Then he saw her—Diana, running alongside him through the time-stream. She wasn't floating or flying like usual—she was running, sword sheathed at her hip like a master swordsman, one hand on the sheath and another resting on the hilt as her eyes were blazing with focus.
"Thanks to you, I now understand travelling through time. And more importantly—without the Speed Force," she said, a smile flickering across her lips.
Metron's hand shook. "No! This isn't possible! You can't be here!"
But Diana only smiled wider, and in that instant, Metron lost concentration. The time-stream twisted, and suddenly, they landed—hard—on an Earth very different from what they knew or were used to at least.
Everything was chaos. The sky was blood-red, and every human had been transformed into a hulking, bone-covered monster—Doomsday.
Metron clutched his wound, now gone, as one of the Doomsdays leaped at him. The Mobius Chair's forcefield blasted it away, but dozens more swarmed the ruined city.
"Don't kill them unless you're prepared to erase them completely," Diana warned. Her eyes flickered as she observed the endless tide of monsters. "They adapt faster than you think."
"You think I don't know that?" Metron scoffed.
Metron scowled. "But what are you doing? Don't you want to get rid of the imposter? Let me do my job!" He tried to reason, but his mind was already spinning. If Diana could follow him here, if she could learn to travel through time without the Speed Force or the Mobius Chair—then he was in more danger than ever.
Diana, standing behind him, drew her sword, its edge gleaming with impossible sharpness. "You're not just going to erase her, are you?"
Metron hesitated, his fingers twitching over the controls. "I… I'm going to eliminate that timeline. Eradicate the anomaly. It's the only way."
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