DC 8

It's been almost two weeks since I released my doom device in the city of Gotham and I had to admit that the people who lived here had ridiculous adaptability.

After a few hours of pointless attempts to stop its advances, they gave up and issued a public warning. Frown that moment on the casualties dropped sharply, except for a few idiots who thought they could watch the spectacle from up close or some moronic thugs who thought they could steal the machine.

Just two days after that, someone released an app that constantly tracked the killer machine and alarmed everyone once they got too close or were in its path.

Despite the reduced deaths, it still caused damage in the nine digits. It destroyed homes, schools, hospitals, parks, and even several Wayne Enterprise-owned establishments. A few days ago, it fell into one of the rivers surrounding the city and did not manage to get out, so it just started digging tunnels beneath the city, causing new problems.

If the continuously forming tunnels beneath the city weren't problematic enough, they now also had to deal with being cut off from fresh water, gas, and electricity. They were basically fucked. If the people of this city still liked to live in this city despite its criminality, then they definitely no longer wanted to live there anymore.

I was expecting the city to fall very soon, either by everyone leaving, anarchy breaking out, or the tunnels collapsing. I knew that the Bat family was in a bad situation but not to the point where they would ask others for help, it was hard to imagine that Batman would contact the likes of Superman and Aquaman before he was ready for them but I seemed to have downplayed the urgency he was feeling.

Batman had yet to make any contact with them to my knowledge, so a first contact with them to ask for their help to deal with me was unlikely but not impossible.

I was staying on the top floor of Gotham's best hotel, overlooking the city, thinking that it would be just another regular day of power outages, earthquakes, and collapsing roads when I suddenly saw a red and blue figure float in the sky, looking down to where I knew the Doom Car was, frowning.

Superman was watching the chaotic tunnels underneath the city with his X-ray while trying to understand what that abomination he was seeing was. He had heard some things about it on the News but didn't think too much of it since he knew that Gotham had its own protector, so when that very guy suddenly contacted him, asking him for help, he knew it was bad.

He flew through a few meters of earth before arriving before the monstrosity. Since he never encountered something that could harm him on this planet, except Kryptonite, he just raised his hands to try and stop the monster's advances, clearly not expecting to actually feel slight pain and getting pushed back.

Looking at his bloodied hands, he didn't react in time as he was caught by a tentacle and dragged into its mouth. For a moment, all he knew was pain like he had never felt before until he was finally shot out of the exhaust.

The was no part of his body that was not injured and bloody but he was alive and the wounds were already healing. After getting over the pain and recovering for a few moments, he decided to think of a plan.

He tried punching it with all his might which only lead to it getting thrown against a wall and the parts that were actually blown of to return to it, bringing it back to perfect condition.

While his punch had no effect, he noticed that it had trouble moving after landing upside down from being thrown against the wall. This gave him a new idea, he flew at it with max speed, before grabbing it and throwing it up, through the ground and above the city.

Before it could come down again, he flew at it from below and started punching it upwards again and again until they reached space, where, with one last all-out punch, it started floating away from Earth to who knows where.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he made his way back to Earth to deal with the person who was responsible for all this. Along with asking for help, Batman also provided him with a file that gave him details about the perpetrator's appearance, personality, and powers.

It didn't take him long to spot the mastermind in a fancy hotel, watching everything going on while eating a chocolate cake, without his strange cape on. It was safe to say that even if Superman was going to hold back his punches, he was not going to be gentle.

The last thing Talex saw before everything went black and he was transported to an unknown location, was a red-blue blur and a fist coming to greet his face.