CHAPTER 189

The Omega beams seemed to hit Ace but Darkseid was the one sent flying as he let out a grunt due to the hit, his armor scared by the intense impact of the deflected Omega beams. 

"What just happened?" Aqualad asked, as they stared in bewilderment. They didn't get how Darkseid was the one to get hit when Ace was the one at the other end of the attack. 

Upon contact with his deflective field, Ace had increased the force, acceleration and intensity of the Omega beams. 

Raven breathed out a sigh of relief while her hands glowed with dark energy as she continued her fight against the parademons. 

Suddenly, Darkseid's parademons stopped pressing on the young heroes as they swirled around him. He flew out of the rubbles, trying to maintain his usual demeanor but this time he was too pissed to remain as relaxed as he often was. 

"You really think you can win against me?" Darkseid rhetorically asked with a low growl as the fight was unlike any of his previous battles. 

"I have turned one hundred thousand worlds to dust, looking for Anti-Life, looking for those who robbed me of my glory. I will stride across their bones and bask in the glow of Anti-Life, and all of existence shall. Be. MINE."

"Blah…Blah…Blah…" Ace quickly dismissed his rants. 'I don't even know what the fuck this anti-life crap is all about.' He thought to himself, uninterested in the actual reason Darkseid was so obsessed with earth. 

The swarm of parademons which swirled around Darkseid, suddenly flew towards Ace as they now focused their attacks on him. 

A few spat fire out of their mouths even before reaching him, while the rest blitzed upon him. It was an all out attack which would prove difficult for most to get out of, Ace wasn't like most people. 

The continuous sound of explosion echoed as he was bombarded by fire balls from all directions and the parademons blitzkrieg through the smoke in an attempt to rip him apart, limb for limb. 

The heroes watched in suspense as they themselves could not predict the outcome, but Darkseid knew that wouldn't be enough to take him down. 

From the smoke, sudden spike pillars erupted from the ground in all directions, making their way through the chest of each parademon in Ace's perimeter. He immediately took out every parademon in the area as the spiked pillars went as far as where Darkseid was, but he destroyed them with his fists and Omega beams. 

"What the fuck…!!" NightWing exclaimed as he witnessed the unbelievable sight, they immediately evacuated the premises themselves so they wouldn't get caught up in cross fires between those two. 

The smoke cleared up and Ace stood in the middle of the towering pillars with his left hand nonchalantly tucked inside his pocket as the blood of dead parademons dripped down the rocks. 

He watched Darkseid destroy each of them that came his way, then he started to manipulate them into diverging and changing their directions like large serpents so they dodged Darkseid's blows and wrapped around his limbs. 

"Let's see how creative I could be with transmuting the earth." Ace muttered, making clear that it was more like an experiment than an attack. 

Multiplying their toughness and durability, the serpent-like pillars helped spread our Darkseid as five converged together and started to spin like a drill. 

It struck at Darkseid like a vicious viper as the rest let go, sending Darkseid to the ground with an insane force. 

Darkseid got to his feet as he clenched his fists,  raising both arms in the air as a red glow appeared from his fist all the way to his elbow. 

"That's new." Ace remarked. 

The glow emitted from his arms grew brighter and brighter as it seemed to pack in more energy. It charged up to max and he violently smashed it against the ground. 

The impact created a shockwave which took down every stone pillar around the area, but Ace remained standing like nothing happened. 

Darkseid immediately flew at him but got stuck mid air like he was restricted from moving even the slightest muscle as Ace had his telekinetic grip on him. 

He was going to shoot Ace with his Omega beams but remembered how it turned out the previous times and focused on trying to break free. 

Ace spotted Superman flying in from a distance, having an intense glare in his eyes like he wanted to drag Darkseid to the depths of hell himself. 

Ace darted at Darkseid mid air, striking his chest with his fist as he extracted every air from Darkseid's lungs in the process, multiplying the impact of his strike by a hundred folds as he sent Darkseid off with a sonic boom that instant. 

He turned to see Superman fly towards Darkseid, probably wanting to tag into the fight and get his second round against Darkseid. 

"That should buy me some time." Ace muttered as he turned around and spotted Nightwing in a distance along with the other young heroes as they could finally catch their breath. 

"Hey, Batboy." Ace called out as he suddenly appeared behind Nightwing and everyone reflexively jumped into their battle stance. 

"When did you…? What'd you just…? " NightWing was caught in the middle of processing how Ace had appeared in their midst and how he had referred to him.

"Wow, you scared the hell out of me man." Beast Boy stated while placing his hand on his chest, catching his breath. 

"What are you doing here? I thought you were the one fighting Darkseid." Aqualad side, putting aside their grudge from their previous encounter. 

"I don't have time for chit-chat, I need to contact Batman." Ace said. 

"Why?" NightWing inquired. 

"Shut up Bat face and just do it, or else you want my fight with Darkseid to completely level the city." Ace replied, completely ignoring Raven as he spoke. 

"Hey, watch it dude." Beast Boy warned. 

Nightwing furrowed his brow, clearly not a fan of how rudely Ace spoke to him but he was mature enough to put personal feelings aside and contacted Batman to know his location. 

Immediately Ace got the information he wanted, he took off without saying a word, headed straight for Batman. 

"Tell me you've got a plan." Ace inquired from Batman as he descended right in front of him. "As much as I'm enjoying myself, this fight could destroy whatever is left of this city, so we need to put an end to this as quickly as we can." He added. 

"We have a plan but we've encountered a bit of an issue." Batman said as he gestured at Cyborg who was working on putting himself together as quickly as he could, with help from Batman. 

"Oh, the coffee machine lost its legs." Ace sarcastically remarked. 

"Haha… Very funny." Cyborg gave a dry response, not paying mind to Ace's insult. 

"LexCorp messed around with this Mother Box and now it's proving difficult to lock-in on Apokolips signature. If we activate it just like that, we risk sending our people along to Apokolips." Batman summarized.

"Okay, let me see the box for a second." Ace requested. Cyborg looked at him with suspicion in his eye, then turned to Batman who gave a subtle nod of approval. 

Cyborg reached his arm forward and it opened up to reveal the Mother Box, then handed it over to Ace. 

"Okay, let me see what I can do." He tapped on the side of his watch and a black cord made of nanotechnology rolled out of it, the tip morphed and connected with the mother box, an act which would come back to bite him in the ass later on. 

"Connect to the Mother Box and help undo whatever modifications were done to it and take it back to its default state." Ace commanded Gwen his AI and the red spot in the middle glowed bright red for about two minutes before losing its glow. 

"There, now figure out how to open that portal and send those bastards back to their hell of a planet." Ace said as he unplugged his cord from the box. "If you'd excuse me, I'm quite busy. You know, beating the shit out of a warlord and all." He said while slowly lifting off the ground, then saw Wonder Woman's sword on the side and telekinetically called it into his hands. 

He then took off into the night skies, headed for Darkseid. An idea had popped into his head and he was more than willing to exploit it. 

Upon arrival, he witnessed Darkseid overpowering Superman who was bleeding from his lip and the side of his head. "That's for Aquaman." Superman yelled in anger as he landed a blow on Darkseid. 

Darkseid blocked his second blow, pulled in him for a headbutt, then closed the space between them as he grabbed Superman by the neck. 

"Had I known one human's death would pain you so, I would have killed more. And kill more, I shall. Carry that agony with you into oblivion, Superman." He said as his eyes glowed, his Omega beams ready. 

With a sadistic smile, Darkseid was about to release his Omega beams when Ace appeared out of nowhere and drove the sword into one of Darkseid's eyes, then yanked it out. 

*Aggghhh!!!* 

Darkseid screeched in agony as he let go of Superman and blood spilled out of his injured eye. Superman made use of the opportunity and struck Darkseid. 

Clearly filled with rage, he attacked Ace with a solid right hook. Ace simply increased the radius of his deflective field as Darkseid's large fist made contact and sent him back with the same force he had in his blow. 

Ace accelerated through the air and got his hand on him, hoping to cause him internal pain. He tweaked with his bioelectricity and Darkseid let out a strident cry as electricity pierced through each cell across his body and steam evaporated off him. 

Ace quickly stabbed his other eye before he could regain himself, leading to another agonizing cry as he swung his hands around in an attempt to grab hold of any of them. 

Superman immediately exploited that opportunity and used both hands to hold Darkseid's head, drilling his heat vision into his injured eye sockets as he continued to screech in pain.