"Who the hell are you?"
Director Bones' voice cut through the ringing silence, sharp, rude, and lacking any gratitude for the man who had just been saved by the skin of teeth. The skeletal figure stood tall, his translucent skin glowing with a faint, sickly light that revealed the shifting, radioactive organs within his chest. His eyes, or the hollow sockets where they should have been, were fixed on Kenji's porcelain mask with deep-seated suspicion.
Besides Kenji, Zeph's reaction was immediate. The devil's wings snapped open with a sound like wet leather, membranes twitching as a low, guttural growl vibrated in his chest. Blue energy began to lick around his fingertips, his eyes narrowing at this mortal.
To Zeph, this low life trash skeleton insulting his master was a transgression punishable by immediate death, and he would grant it if it so desired to leave this world so soon after being saved.
The air grew heavy with the smell of sulfur and static as Zeph prepared to show the walking bones why it should know its place.
"Enough."
Kenji raised a single hand, his voice calm but layered with a weight that forced Zeph to freeze mid-stride. The devil's jaw tightened, his posture still coiled like a spring, but he stepped back into Kenji's shadows, standing behind him.
"Ah, late introductions, I'm—" Kenji started, as he smiled politely at his fellow humans in front of him.
But he never got the chance to finish.
[Danger Sense]
His body screamed at him. His head snapped toward the crumpled, headless remains of the vampire Firestorm. The corpse was glowing, it was vibrating at a frequency that made the very air hum. The body's glow was getting brighter.
"Oh—shit."
Kenji's stomach dropped. He had been so focused on the removal of the threats and his petty revenge on Wonder Woman that he had momentarily forgotten that Firestorm is a living nuclear reactor. When the consciousness controlling the "Firestorm Matrix" is extinguished, the spark doesn't just go out. And without a stable host, that vent becomes a multi-megaton detonation.
"Everyone, down! Now!" Kenji roared, though he knew "down" wouldn't save them from a ground-zero nuclear event.
In a blur of motion fueled by high-tier Agility and the sheer panic of a Gamer who didn't want to see a "Loading Save" screen so soon in a manner of speaking, Kenji's hands blurred.
He used Gravity Grip to seize the glowing corpse. With a grunt of exertion, he flung the radioactive remains straight up into the upper atmosphere, the body trailing a streak of white-hot plasma like a reversed shooting star.
Simultaneously, he slammed his palms together, grounding his feet into the cracked pavement.
A sphere of dense, violet energy erupted around the survivors, Bones, Peacemaker, Killer Frost, and the others. Kenji poured every ounce of his active mana into the barrier and used gravity to cover them to increase the field.
A heartbeat later, the sky detonated.
The explosion was catastrophic. It was a blinding, silent flash of absolute white that erased the grey clouds for miles, momentarily turning the eternal night of this world into a mock noon.
Then came the sound, a roar that felt like the earth itself was being torn in half. The shockwave rolled over them like the wrath of a god. For seven miles in every direction, the landscape was scrubbed clean, leaving only a glass-smooth crater where the city street had been.
Inside the shell, the pressure was immense. Kenji's knees buckled, his teeth grinding as he fought to keep the spatial integrity of the shield from collapsing under the weight of a multi-megaton blast. The violet light of the barrier flickered, straining against the raw heat of the sun being born and dying in the upper atmosphere.
When the light finally faded and the roar became a dull ringing, Kenji dropped the barrier and collapsed to one knee.
"That was close," he rasped, coughing into his hand. "I almost died because I killed the enemy. God."
"We have to move. Now," he said firmly, forcing himself to stand and dusting off his charred suit. He could already sense the distant, frantic movements of the vampire swarm through his enhanced senses. That detonation was a dinner bell that every vampire within five hundred miles would hear.
No one argued. The rudeness from Bones was gone, replaced by the wide-eyed silence of people who had just survived certain death.
"Everyone into the car!" Bones shouted, his voice cracking with uncharacteristic urgency. Guess no one wanted to wait for the man of steel to come find them.
As they piled into the reinforced vehicle, Kenji jumped onto the roof. He turned to where Zeph was, the devil looking at where the devastation had happened, then looked back at Kenji with awe in his eyes, looking ready to declare him god if by the look in his eyes where to go by.
"Zeph, regroup with the others. Continue the job I gave you," Kenji commanded. "And make sure the rest stay clear of this area. It's about to be swarmed by every bloodsucker within three states. If you see a high-tier, report it immediately. You did good here."
The devil nodded, looking happy when Kenji complimented him. A magic circle appeared under him before taking him away. Kenji wasn't worried, his pawns had set up a localized base in the ruins of an old building and had fortified it with anti-vampire magic. They were safe enough for now.
The car's engine roared, tires screaming as they tore down the road. The drive was a nightmare of evasion. Vampires began to converge from the side streets, shrieking, pale blurs of hunger.
Kenji didn't let them get close. Every time a vampire lunged for the car, a violet spark of Gravity or a flick of his fingers sent them tumbling away from the asphalt as fine dust. He was a silent sentinel atop the speeding car, a white mask cutting through the dark.
It wasn't long before the concrete gave way to the stagnant, humid air of the swamps. The smell of rot and cypress replaced the scent of ozone. They skidded to a stop near a murky bayou where the fog was thick enough to taste.
"Don't forget her!" Bones shouted as they scrambled out.
Peacemaker popped the trunk, and Kenji felt his eyebrows shoot up behind the mask. Resting there, pale and unconscious but radiating a faint warmth that felt like a tiny ember in a blizzard, was Kara Zor-El. Supergirl.
'Holy shit,' Kenji thought, his heart skipping a beat. He knew she was a key player in the DC vs. Vampires storyline, helping them in later chapters, but he'd never really read the comics, so he had no idea where she had been. They could use her power right now.
She looked fragile, her Kryptonian cells likely starving for the light he knew she wasn't getting in this world of red skies.
The water in the swamp began to churn, bubbles rising from the depths. A massive, scaly head broke the surface, yellow reptilian eyes fixed on them.
"Password," Killer Croc growled, his voice like grinding stones beneath the water.
"Do we look like we have time for this bullshit, you overgrown purse?" Peacemaker snapped, his hand hovering over his holster.
Croc snarled, fully emerging from the water, a mountain of muscle and scales, but he submerged again, reappearing a moment later to hand over a small glass bottle.
Ray Palmer, The Atom, jumped out from it, expanding to full size in a flash of white light that cut through the swamp mist.
"Oh, thank God you're here," Ray panted, his suit covered in swamp grime. His eyes immediately darted to the car. "Did you get her? Is she okay? We were worried."
"We got her," Bones grunted, lifting Kara's limp form with a gentleness that didn't match his skeletal exterior.
"Yes! Let's go, quickly! Nightwing's scouts are everywhere!" Atom waved them.
A light flashed, and space seemed ot shift. The world folded in on itself, a sensation like being pulled through a needle's eye, and suddenly, the humidity of the swamp was gone, replaced by crisp air.
Kenji stood in Kandor.
The bottled city of Krypton was a masterpiece of architectural ego and alien elegance. Golden spires reached toward the crystalline ceiling of the container, and sweeping walkways connected floating platforms that defied gravity with effortless grace.
It looked like a utopia trapped in glass, a museum of a dead race. But as Kenji turned in a circle, taking in the high-tech majesty, he noticed the chilling silence that lay over the golden avenues.
There were no crowds. No children playing in the plazas. No Kryptonians anywhere. It was a ghost town, a mausoleum of advanced science.
Kara stirred as Bones set her down near a terminal. She leaned against a crystalline pillar, her eyes wide and wet as she took in the last real piece of her homeworld. "Why… why is it so empty?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "Where is everyone? Where are my people?"
Ray Palmer's face fell, his shoulders sagging. He motioned for them to follow as they walked through the silent streets toward the central hub. "When we first got the idea to bring refugees here, we thought the Kandorians would welcome us. That we'd have an army of super-powered allies to take back the surface."
He looked at the floor, unable to meet her eyes. "But Nightwing's forces found the bottle before we did. Dick knew the threat a city of Kryptonians posed. By the time we found it from the vampire stash... There was no one left. They were used as cattle for a while, it seemed, before being 'retired'."
The implication was a cold weight in the air. The vampires hadn't just conquered the city, they had fed on an entire population of bottled Kryptonians until the "bottles" ran dry.
"We're here," Ray said, stopping before a massive door.
The doors hissed open, revealing dozens of figures in various states of disrepair. Heroes like Wildcat and Huntress, villains who had turned to the resistance like Captain Cold.
"I'm back!" Atom announced, his voice echoing in the hall.
As the room erupted into a cacophony of relief, urgent questions, and the clatter of weapons being checked and future plans, Kenji tuned them out.
He walked around, his eyes scanning the alien text around him. His "Gamer's Mind" and high intelligence stats are helping him out, as the language seemed to come slowly, but he translates.
The tech here was centuries ahead of anything on his Earth. Kryptonian knowledge... the Phantom Zone projectors, the sun-eaters, the genetic codex... He thought of his wife's company back home, sure there were too much for that, but he was sure there were things that could be of human level still.
He started to head deeper into the city to explore, his curiosity piqued, but a wall of solid, golden light shimmered into existence, blocking his path.
"Can I help you?" Kenji asked, turning slowly.
Doctor Fate stood there, the Helmet of Nabu glowing with an ancient, judgmental light that seemed to look right through Kenji's mask and into his very soul. To his left stood John Constantine, lighting a cigarette with a flick of his thumb despite the recycled air, and to his right, Raven, her hood pulled low, her dark magic swirling around her feet like ink in water.
'Ah, the magic gang,' Kenji thought. He had never liked Doctor Fate. The "Lords of Order" were just another set of cosmic fools with too much power and not enough humanity, always talking about the "Balance," then go and pull some shit that just didn't make sense to him.
"Who are you?" the hollow, dual-toned voice of the Helmet demanded, echoing with the authority of a thousand years
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