Chapter 42: Worst Day to Invade!... Part 1

[AN: The chapter, after lengthening it, was way too long so I decided to cut in in half but post both chapters at on the same day. And just to let you guys know, the fighting and action are in the next chapter, due to cutting the final draft of chapter 42 in half.]

[Third Person's Point of View]

Kara and Acnologia can be seen sitting on a comfy bed while watching a Harry Potter movie. Acnologia seems to be munching on some popcorn while Kara seems to be bewildered at what is currently happening. She turns to face Acnologia before she speaks.

"So... This is what you wanted for your birthday?"

Acnologia keeps munching on some popcorn before turning to face her then nods before he answers her question verbally.

"Yeah, that's one of the two things I wanted for my birthday."

Upon hearing this, Kara's eyebrow rises a little before she asks.

"And what's the other thing?"

The movie stops as Acnologia wears a serious expression, he leans close to Kara as his right hand pushes her to lay her back on the comfy bed. Everything beside them and the bed seems to disappear along with their clothes. He then speaks when they are close enough to feel each other's breath.

"The other thing is... you."

.

.

.

"MY BODY IS READY!"

With unkempt hair, Kara yells as she gets up from her bed before realizing that what just happened was a dream. Upon realizing this, she dugs herself into her blankets out of embarrassment while thinking to herself how she was glad that her powers were partially locked right now.

Thanks to Acnologia's Symbiote, Kara could now suppress her abilities such as her overly and annoyingly enhanced senses along with her super constitution which usually prevents her from doing normal human stuff such as falling asleep after watching a series of movies or waking up yelling without worrying that your screams or sudden rapid movement would level anything within a city length radius from you.

There was also the fact that now Kryptonite was no longer effective on her which was good because the last five purse snatchers she caught all had a piece of Kryptonite on them. She had once again scoffed at her cousin's words that said that Kryptonite was a rare element.

However, what Kara did not know was that those purse snatchers were arranged by the government to test the intel they had just received from their liaison within the Justice League regarding Supergirl no longer being weak to Kryptonite. 

Still, not everyone was okay with how Kara used her Symbiote. Sadly for Kara, the one person who was not okay with her usage of the Symbiote was none other than her cousin, Superman. Kara wished that it was because of her recklessness but that was not the case.

In fact, she was pretty careful with how she used her Symbiote from having the symbiote absorb her clothes that way she did not have to hide them when she changed into her super suit or change at all to having it alert her of danger though that did not mean that she was not prone to make mistakes.

The thing is that since the symbiote had no true will of itself, it simply acted according to its host's wish. For example, the day after she received her Symbiote, Jonathan Kent, Clark's adoptive father, informed them that he had a Brain tumor, Kara thought that she would like him to survive and be cured.

Before any of them could realize it and faster than both Kryptonians could act, the Symbiote launched a tendril straight through Pa Kent's head and removed the tumor while completely healing Pa Kent.

Thanks to their X-ray visions both Kryptonians could see what the Symbiote was doing so they quickly came out of their shock but Martha Kent, who did not have such vision prowess, thought the worst and fainted out of shock.

When she came to, Jonathan informed to her that his tumor was supposedly gone which prompted Clark to explain to her that Kara's Symbiote had cured Jonathan. Now a normal person would have asked a hundred questions but Martha was simply happy that her husband was cured.

In hindsight, Jonathan also did not bother asking questions about what had just happened due to the very first thing they learned when raising Clark... Throw away common sense and accept it as it is, or you risk losing your mind. That day, Kara started to train to better control her Symbiote.

Still, if she was honest with herself, her only true mistake was to tell her cousin that her Symbiote could sense people's emotions towards her and that she could set predisposed orders on how the Symbiote should act depending on which emotions that was aimed at her.

Clark started to insist that she put lust from guys to a twelve danger level on a scale from one to ten. This started a debate among Kryptonians about Clark's overprotectiveness and Kara being too young to date which ended up with Kara storming off and deciding to try something human which was watching in movies her room until she fell asleep without even knowing.

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*BOOM*

In Metropolis, a hole made of a geometric assembly of light can be seen forming into the sky with a large explosive sound preceding its formation. This scene garnered the attention of the citizens who stayed to observe and film it while those who had survival instincts ran away as they called the police.

Superman quickly arrived at the scene and witnessed a man, clad in mostly red, wearing a strange helmet as well as driving a strange contraption, exiting the hole that seemed to originate from a place far away from Earth.

*Crash*

As Superman noted that the hole seemed to be the byproduct or effect of a teleporting device, the man piloting his strange device crashed into the ground. Superman quickly went down to see if the man was alright and noticed that his clothes were torn indicating that he had just left an intense battle.

"Host of the Life Spirit!"

The man yelled as he got up and started walking towards Superman who noticed that blood was flowing down the man's mouth indicating injuries. The man grabbed Superman's costume's collar and resumed though this time, Superman noted that his tone grew weaker with each word.

"Must... warn... Host... of... Spirit..."

The man then feinted and would have fallen to the ground had it not been for Superman grabbing him. Superman with no idea what to do with this mysterious man decided to contact the league, hoping that one of the Green Lanterns was available at the moment to help identify the mysterious man.

Upon getting the confirmation that Hal Jordan was available to meet up at the Hall of Justice, he reassured the citizens who were still around that there was nothing to worry about before he took the mysterious man and his device and then flew to the Hall of Justice.

After a thirty-minute flight, Superman arrived at the Hall of Justice. Frankly, he could have been there in five minutes but once again he needed to mind his surroundings and not fly too fast to either hurt the mysterious man or his surroundings with the aftershock of his speed.

The seven muggings, three burning buildings, and one hostage situation that he stopped while he was heading there did not help Superman arrive faster though it was in moments like these that he was glad that the Justice League existed. 

He was revered as the most powerful Superhero slash man on the planet but even he knew that he could not save everyone by himself. He was not fast enough to be in two places at once... at least without leveling everything that was near those two place.

Anyway, when he entered the Hall of Justice, he was greeted by Hal Jordan A.K.A Earth's first Green Lantern also known throughout the Green Lantern Corps as the Guardians of the Universe's biggest pain in their ass.

"So Sup, what can I do ya for?"

Hal quipped even though he knew the reason why he was called here. The man liked to quip and joke when the situation was not severe... as a matter of fact even when the situation was severe he still liked to joke especially if it caused his enemies to get annoyed.

'That attitude is the main reason why Bruce and Hal don't get along.'

Superman thinks before he points at the man that he is holding and then speaks.

"He crashed in Metropolis before he fainted. His injuries don't look too severe so he must have passed out due to exhaustion. The reason I called for you was because the technology that he has in his possession seems alien to me.

As a matter of fact, I don't remember seeing this type of technology in Krypton's datalog-"

"Alien to you? Well, that's ironic."

Hal interrupted Superman as his ring started to scan the mysterious man. The scan was quick and Hal looked at his ring as if it was telling him something. Superman patiently waited for Hal to inform him of what the Green Lantern ring said as he put the mysterious man on a nearby coach.

"Well, I won't bore you with the long story and I will keep it short. This man is from New Genesis, he is from a race that the ring refers to as *Scoff* New Gods-"

Superman interrupted Hal by asking him a question.

"Like the ones on Apokolips?"

Hal noted a worried tone in Superman's voice before he reassured the man of steel.

"Yeah but no. Like John and I said before Apokolips is the home of New Gods but what the ring omitted to tell us, because they deemed it irrelevant to our question at that time, was that New Genesis was also the home of New Gods.

They are basically split into two factions, one opposing the other. While Apokolips conquers planet after planet, New Genesis offers protection from Apokolips to other planets. They seem to have worked with the Guardians in the past or so the ring says. All in all, he is not here to invade Earth."

Superman sighed after hearing this. He was not afraid to fight Apokolips but he was afraid of the damage that the fight would cause and how many lives would be lost during as well as because of said fight.

His friends in the league might call him a boyscout but he is not naive enough to think that there is no possible way that the Justice League can fail. He simply hopes that the each league member's combined might is enough to save the day.

They informed the rest of the avaible leaguers of who the mysterious man was and a task was assigned to some members that were free to guard the New God until he woke up. At that point they would contact the Watch Tower for further instruction.

Truth be told, the league had seen better days public relation wise. Due G. Gordon Godfrey's rant on how secretive the Justice League had been coupled with how he covered Kite-man's murders to pay the latter as a victim as well as a hero, which in hindsight was not too hard to do if the Joker death parade was any indicator of it, to further discredit the League's image, public opinion of the League were down.

Now for most, expecially Batman, that would not stop them from doing what they did which was to save lives but due to public opinion going down, the trust people had in the Justice League was starting to get affected which made it harder for some heroes to save people as they would often flail when being rescued.

It might not seem like a big issue when you are someone like Superman or Shazam or Martian Manhunter but when you are someone like Green Arrow or Black Canary, a flailing citizen hanging on top of a burning thirty story building would be difficult.

Now some may think that due to Kite-man's action Gotham would erupt in chaos as there were now two empty territories ripe for the taking. There had been cases like this a numerous time before where a criminal faction lost its leader thus losing its hold over their territory.

This would be the prelude to a gang war but that was not the case this time since Riddler's and Joker's territories were up for grab. The two most powerful faction in Gotham decided to split those two vacant territories among themselves.

Instead of going to war over them like it usually happen for one vacant territory, the Penguin took over the Riddler's turf while the Falcone family took over Joker's territory. This relieved Batman from the task stopping a turf war though unknown to the Dark Knight, the Church of Blood had specific plans for Joker's turf.

Anyway to remedy this distrust from the mass, a concensus was made between the Justice League and the U.N. The concensus was that a selected few members of the U.N would be allowed into the Watch Tower as a show of good faith.

That is something that not all Leaguers were okay with and Acnologia vocally stated that concensus to be the dumbest decision ever made thus far, another reason he was glad to not be a hero and a show of weakness from the Justice League.

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"Host of the Life Spirit! Where is the Host of the Life Spirit!"

As soon as the mysterious man woke up, he started to yell and storm the Hall of Justice looking for someone to answer his question. The leaguers present there managed to stop and calm him before they informed the Watch Tower that he was awake.

Due to the danger of Apokolips being known, the foundings members of the Justice League all came to the Hall of Justice as soon as they were informed that the New God was awake. In barely twenty minutes after the news of the New God reached the Watch Tower, all seven foundings members were at the Hall of Justice.

"You said that you are looking for the Host of the Life Spirit, mister?"

Superman spoke first with an amical tone to which the New God responded with a stoic grunt before speaking.

"My name is Orion and yes, I am looking for the Host of the Life Spirit."

"Why are you looking for the Host of the Life Spirit? Who is said Host of the Life Spirit and what is a Life Spirit?"

Batman asked even though he knew the last two questions that he asked. After the Dark Heart and counting the numours times Acnologia used Life Spirits, Batman would have had to be blind, deaf and dumb not to realize that he was using Life Spirits.

Naturally since Life Spirits were in the mystic side of things, Batman consolted his long time friend, mentor and colleague Giovanni Zatara about how that was possible and if there was any danger from Acnologia using Life Spirits.

Giovanni was simply unable to answer any of Batman's questions, he explained to the Dark Knight that since Life Spirits were generally beings with no shape or individuality, he had never heard of anything about someone being able to host one. This meant that he had no answer to give.

Still Giovanni did advice Batman to do one thing which was to never let John Constantine within a continent's lenght near Acnologia. When asked why even though the Dark Knight already knew the answer, Giovanni simply had a migraine imagining what trouble John followed by a week's worth of nightmares.

Anyway, the point is that Batman knew who the Host was but he was feigning ignorance as to not give any information to someone they had just met and had no idea his intentions for Earth were. Orion looked at Batman before answering.

"A Life Spirit is many things but generally, it is the creation of the Endless as well as the instrument which birth life through hope and reaps it through despair throughout all worlds. As for who is the Host of the Life Spirit..."

[AN: I feel like if I am going to repeat something then sometimes I should at least add more context or something new to it so to inform the reader as oppose to just recapping stuff.]

Orion took a small futuristic box that was on his device, which is currently floating beside him, and pressed a button before resuming.

"Mother Box, show them the Host of the Life Spirit."

*Bip* *Bip* *Bip* *Bop*

At his order, the futuristic box lit up as it made a few scifi sounds before it showed a hologram projection of Acnologia, who is currently underwater, crouching with his back onto someone's grave. 

"He is the Host of the Life Spirit. According to Mother Box, his name is Acnologia and you all know him."

Orion said as he points at Acnologia who does not seem like he is in a good mood but Orion does not care about this as he continues.

"And as for why I am looking for him, Darkseid has caught wind of his abilities and the supposed fact that he gain obtain the Anti-Life Equation. You might not know Darkseid but-"

"Oh, we know Darkseid. Matter of fact, he seems to be planning on invading Earth which let me tell you has given us a massive workload as well as being a pain in our asses."

Hal Jordan interupted Orion with a confident tone earning himself a Batglare. The reason why he earned a Batglare was because he had just ruin Batman's test to see what were Orion's true intention.

Had Orion's intention been something that would endanger Earth then chances were that he would either lie or omit something in his explanation which they could have detected had he finished his story, though that depended on the fact that it was withing what the Green Lanterns had informed the League about Apokolips.

"Good this saves us a lot of time and explanation, to get straight to the point, Darkseid must never under no circumstance obtain the Anti-Life Equation. So I must determine whether or not the Host of the Life Spirit can obtain the Anti-Life Equation."

Not carring about the Batglare, Orion spoke which made Wonder Woman ask a question.

"And what will you do if he can?"

Orion turned to look at Wonder Woman then answered her question.

"Then I must bring him to New Genesis for both his as well as this planet's safety."

"You say that Darkseid must never obtain this Anti-Life Equation but what is it actually?"

Martian Manhunter asked in a calm tone after noticing that Orion was starting to get irritated. Orion now looked at Martian Manhunter before he answered his question.

"The Anti-Life Equation is a transcendental mathematical formula originally said to allow those who knew it to dominate the will of any sentient race. It is the ultimate goal of Darkseid and in turn it is the ultimate goal of Apokolips.

Were Darkseid to ever obtain that equation, it would signal the end of free will and everyone would be bound to do his biddings which is why the wise High-Father, determined to stop Darkseid's madness, is searching for the Life Equation with the full support of New Genesis."

Orion's words shocked the founding members and were it not for the Flash telling the other six that he once used an equation to get faster, dubbing it the Speed Equation, they would have been skeptic of Orion's words.

"This is why I must get to-"

Seeing that they were believing what he was saying to a certain extant, Orion decided to add more but he stopped when he saw someone appearing between them out of nowhere. That someone was an attractive, pale goth girl dressed in casual clothes, a black top, and jeans.

She wore a silver ankh on a chain around her neck and has a marking similar to the eye of Horus around her right eye. Hal smiled when he noticed her but Batman's next words made him shred any thoughts of asking her out.

"Death."

Upon hearing Batman call her name, Death looked at him then at the rest of the League and finally at Orion before speaking.

"Oh, don't mind me. Continue what you guys were talking about, I'll wait."

This caused everyone to look at her than at each other before trying to figure out why she was here or more specifically who she was here for and as they were trying to figure this out, a minute of silence reigned before Death decided to speak again.

"Okay, I see there is some sort of misunderstanding starting to form here so I will clear it up for you guys. People usually see me when they are dead but since the dawn of time on rare occasion, like you can count it on one hand... depending on how many fingers you have on said hand, some can see me if they are going to do or are doing something that will make their death a certainty.

Now in my opinion, just being visible to the one or the ones that will die mid-conversation, will make him, her or them look crazy so I decided to make myself visible to all of you."

Hearing this, Batman had an idea and proposed to not led Orion visit Acnologia which made Death disapear but she returned once Orion, who due to his iritation had not noticed this, yelled that he had to meet Acnologia which made Death reappear.

"Orion is the one that is going to die, isn't he?"

Batman asked causing Orion to calm down before Death replied by shrugging her shoulder then speaking.

"Maybe."

She then added.

"Look, I said it before... I don't meddle with people's life... usually... though if I had to give advice that help one with living longer then others then it would be to use common sense once in a while such as... Oh... I don't know... maybe... perhaps... possibly....

Not spying on someone, on their birthday no less, when they are at their mother's grave, who can, by the way, also sense your gaze, and has made up their mind to brutally and visciously murder whomever is spying on them if said individual or individuals are dumb enough to approach them at this moment."

After she said this while looking at Orion, Death disapeared once more. Batman grunted as he missed the occasion to ask Death why she did not take the Life Spirit like she had implied to have done last time she appeared on the Watch Tower.

[AN: Chapter 28 for those that are wondering.]

Orion also grunted before his tapped a button on the Mother Box which shut down the now known live feed of Acnologia's current situation, which had shown Acnologia looking at them just before the hologram stopped.

It took a couple of seconds in that akward silence before the conversation resumed and a consencus was made which was to way for Acnologia to be done visiting Atlantis' late Queen's grave as Aquaman suggested then call him.

Normally, Orion would not have agreed to this as the importance of his mission was of the utmost importance but when Death of the Endless appears before you and clearly hints that you are going to die if you continue to do what you are doing then the smart move is to not do that.

Aquaman went to Atlantis while some of the founding members, along with the other leaguers that were already there, took turn watching Orion or as Batman explain keeping him company while the others went back to do what they were doing.

It took five hours before Aquaman returned with Acnologia. Aquaman had got him up to speed with what was going on so when the rest of the founding members, which were away, arrived the conversation resumed with Orion asking the question he wanted to ask.

"Is it true that you possess the means to obtain the Anti-Life Equation?"

"Yeah, I do and before you even think of offering your so called protection, know that I am not gullible enough to think that New Genesis are the good guys simply because they oppose Apokolips.

Chances are that your so called High-Father would rather eliminate me then risking Darkseid getting his hands on the Anti-Life Equation through me. Risk, might I add, that is as small as the chance of me being convinced to give New Genesis the Life Equation."

Acnologia coldly stated which caused Orion to yell in shock.

"You can also obtain the Life Equation?!"

"Think for a second, if I can get the Anti-Life Equation what makes you think that I can't get the Life Equation?"

Acnologia said in a rhetorical tone to which Batman decided to join the conversation.

"How many lives would it take?"

His question steemed from his guess that Acnologia would obtain those equation through his transmutation ability. Acnologia looked before answering his question.

"Roughly speaking, about a million-"

"There is no way, both of those equations are simply worth a million lives?!"

Orion shouted as him being a New God, he had know how powerful each of those Equations were as they had the power to save or enslave reality as he knew it. Acnologia looked at Orion before speaking in an irritated tone.

"They aren't and you would have known that had you not rudely interupted me! Now as I was saying, it would require about a million planets, with the same size as the Earth and filled to the brim with lives, I am talking per square inch type of filled, to obtain one of those equations."

Pure horror and grim could be seen on the face of the founding members and Orion as they imagine how many lives that would amount to. Acnologia did not care about that and his next words brought them about of the dreadful scenes that they were imagining.

"Which is something I would not do... not out of some sense of heroic or something like that but because I have no need of such equations and I would soon see everything in existence destroyed then become someone else's tool for useless, generic and boring universal domination."

Acnologia then left the room leaving the founding members and Orion to discuss among themselves before Orion return to New Genesis to report what he found to High-Father. Orion had said that his true mission on Earth was complete as it was to assess Darkseid's chances of obtaining the Anti-Life Equation should he capture Acnologia.

Seeing that simply capturing Acnologia would not automatically make Darkseid gain the Anti-Life Equation, Orion saw no reason to bring Acnologia back to New Genesis. Since according to Death's words, Acnologia could kill him then it was safe to say that he would not be easily captured by Darkseid.

Orion would be first to admit that he had major anger issued and trouble with controlling said anger but that did not mean that he was in anyway dumb.

There was also the fact that Acnologia could acquire the Life Equation which meant that the situation had change and High-Father would need to be inform and personally make decision on what New Genesis' next step would be.

That is something that Batman had noticed when Acnologia deliberatly informed Orion that he could also acquire the Life Equation on top of its dreadful required amount of lives. By doing that, Acnologia had diminished the possibility that New Genesis would destroy Earth or so Batman said to the founding members when Orion left.

Batman was in agreement with Acnologia towards the distrust of New Genesis as from his point of view, if Earth represented Darkseid's way of acquiring the Anti-Life Equation then to New Genesis, Earth's existence would be too big of a threat to let left alive.

All in all, there was now fewer chances that New Genesis would attack Earth to prevent Apokolips from acquiring it and simultaneously more chances of New Genesis becoming Earth's ally if not then at least the status co between New Genesis and Apokolips was somewhat restored... in a way.

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In a white space devoid of anything beside a giant door, death seems to appear out of nowhere and sit at the top of the door. Just as death appears, a four-yellow-eyed raven flies up to death and land on death's shoulder.

"You know its not nice to go around and acting like you are me without my permission."

Death's voice resounded through the white space yet the death that was sitting on top of the giant door had yet to talked. Facing the giant door, another Death appeared as she walked towards the giant door though she seemed to have a cosmetic mask on her face and slices of cucumber on her eyes.

"And before you say anything, change your appearance I do not like it when you make that sadistic smile while looking like me."

As death was opening her mouth, Death spoke before her.

*ZZZZT*

A crackling sound mixed with that of pixelation could be heard as electricity flowed throughout death's body before it started to crumbled and disipate via dozens of equally sized white rectangles leaving only a white, featureless humanoid figure who now sported a sadistic wide grin.

"Better?"

It asked with a voice that sounds feminine and ended with a sharp accent. The voice also sounded like it was an almagametion of different people speaking at the same time. Death simply shrugged her shoulder before speaking as she turn around to leave.

"Better and next time ask for my permission before you turn into me... unless you are doing my job for me... got that, D."

D. simply said nothing and kept his wide grin and if one were to look closely at the door that he is sitting on then they would see that there were two figure painted on it. On the bottom right was a silhouette-like man.

His hair seems to be made of fire, his mouth is wide open and from the looks of it, one would think that man is laughing while holding a sword and a spear. Fire seemed to be shot towards him but it was blocked in a way that made the flames take the shape of the sun around the man in question.

A little bit above the man, around the midpoint of the door and far to the left, was a black dragon spewing those very flames that were going towards the aforementioned laughing man. On top of the door, D who was grinning finally spoke.

"It's about to get interesting."

[AN: Want more? Like Thanos, I want those STONES!!!]