Reply To: The Genius Scientist and the God of Evil: Universe/DC Comics

“If what I’ve read about this place in my little hacking session is true, we don’t have much time before these Justifiers arrive where we are!” Washu fretted.

Kiyone grabbed her gun from her holster and loaded it. “Tell me, are these people criminals or just poor souls who aren’t in control of their actions?”

“Anyone can become one Kiyone,” Barbara told her. “We believe their helmets are playing the Anti-Life Equation directly into their brains.”

“Stunning it is then,” the detective nodded, setting her gun’s settings appropriately.

“Look, we need to get out of here now! I’ll create a doorway to my lab! We’ll be safe there!” Washu started furiously typing.

Mister Terrific ran over to her and threw his hands up. “We need to warn the others, like Black Canary and The Ray, to avoid here! Damn it, I wasn’t even supposed to BE here for this long…We can’t leave until I send out a warning! Besides, it will be safer for you at the Castle with me or the Fortress of Solitude…”

“Stop right there! You have no idea whether my lab is safer than your little Fortress of whatever! By arguing with me you are wasting valuable time! Either let me get Oracle out of here to a place they can’t find her so you can go back to your little Chess based organization or risk losing both of your free wills to an evil God!” Washu yelled.

The doors and windows smashed open. Several people with silver helmets on barged into the room. Kiyone started to fire shots at the men and women descending on the group.

“Anti-Life justifies our actions!” the Justifiers cried as one.

“You all go, I have sensitive material here that I need to destroy before it gets into their hands! I’ll handle Black Canary and Green Arrow before I head back!” Mister Terrific told the group.

“But Michael…” Barbara started.

“Look, I need to teleport to Checkmate anyway! It’s my duty as White King. Don’t worry about me Oracle, that crazy girl might find something we overlooked! Keep me in the loop!”

Katsuhito looked at Mister Terrific. “I’ll help you hold them off. Ladies, go!” The elderly Japanese man took a wooden sword from his side and started to attack the waves of Justifiers. Washu looked on in horror and admiration at the action and set to work.

“I need a moment to reconnect to the lab’s subspace dimension. Kiyone, draw them away as best as you can! Mihoshi, don’t touch ANYTHING!” Washu ordered.

Mihoshi turned around and started to run over to the them. “Okay Miss Washu! I won’t…wahhhh!” Mihoshi screamed as she fell down. She hit a metal table, which rolled into several Justifiers. It hit one of them in the head, knocking his helmet off his head. The helmet flew in the air and landed near the blonde. She picked it up and stared at it. “Huh? Oh, I should hold on to this!”

By this point Washu opened her subspace door. “Get in! I don’t know how long we have so please familiarize yourself with the Hakubi evacuation procedure!”

The Justifiers continued to pour into the room. Katsuhito was doing everything he could to stop them from coming. Suddenly, he looked very calm and sullen. “Mister Terrific, do what you must. This is not my fight to win.” With that, the former Juraian prince gave everything he got to give his friends the time they needed to escape. One simple kick later, Mister Terrific, who had been fiddling with the controls to a teleportation chamber, was thrust into it and was immediately sent away to the coordinates that he had plugged in. Kiyone, catching Katsuhito’s idea, shot the controls of the machine, disabling all of the inhabitants from following the third smartest man on the Earth.

Oracle looked at the chaos descending upon her and made her choice internally. ‘This isn’t a good idea, but what choice do I have at this point?’ She rolled herself into the door. Close behind, she heard the sounds of Kiyone’s gun and a giant “No!” Though she longed to look back, Barbara Gordon knew it was better to move on before she would begin to doubt herself, or worse become a Justifier.

The red headed woman looked around this new unknown place. There did not appear to be any legitimate walls in this lab. It seemed to just…exist. There were various machines that scattered the plane, but Barbara did not know how they got here, or where “here” was. She wheeled herself around, taking in everything she could. For just one fleeting moment, the Red Skies and the Anti-Life Equation left her mind and the inner child in Barbara emerged.

“Breathtaking, isn’t it?” the voice of Washu asked.

The three Japanese-esque women had entered the lab, sweaty and panting. Mihoshi was wailing like a baby, clutching something like a teddy bear, and Kiyone looked like a ghost.

“Where is your friend?” Barbara asked.

“He…he didn’t make it. They got him,” Washu said bitterly.

Barbara gave them a look of remorse. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. There will be a happy ending to this story. I swear it,” Washu bit her lip. “We owe it to Lord Tenchi.”

“Is Tenchi the mutual friend you all were mentioning before?” Barbara asked.

Kiyone nodded and slunk to the floor. “Damn it, we are better than this Mihoshi! The Galaxy Police have faced worse threats than this; why can’t we get a hold of the rest of the squad?!”

“Time,” Washu started. “It is in flux on this planet. I don’t know how he did it, but roughly four weeks have passed in the time we entered the subspace lab initially to the time we entered the Hall of Justice. If my calculations are correct, the rest of the Galaxy has only experienced maybe three days at most.”

“How is that possible?” Kiyone asked.

Washu shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

“So am I right in assuming this is another dimension like the Phantom Zone or a pocket universe?” Barbara inquired, wanting to get these kinds of questions out of the way fast.

Smiling, Washu brought up a holographic display of several different layers of reality. “What you see here is a dimensional map. We are presently in a subspace lab I created. It borrows one of your pocket dimensions and bends it to my will.”

Barbara blinked at this development. “Wait, you CREATED this dimension? You didn’t find it?”

“Is that so hard to believe?” the scientist laughed. “Didn’t Superman’s father create the Phantom Zone back on Krypton?”

“Miss Washu, how did you know that?” Kiyone asked. “I thought Mihoshi was the only one with any familiarity with Earth heroes.”

“I hacked into her boss’ computer,” Washu said, pointing at Barbara.

“What?!” Barbara was floored. “How did…?”

“It was simple really. I have technology that far surpasses anything developed by human hands. Your boy Wayne had some serious roadblocks in his system, but without you or his butler at the other end enabling protocols beyond the ones in place already, I managed to read it like a book.”

Observing the angry look on Oracle’s face, Washu sighed. “Look, I could care less about your secret identities or anything like that. What does the greatest scientific genius in the universe need with Batman or Superman or even Ambush Bug? Hell, when this Crisis is over I’ll help strengthen the system. I needed to research Darkseid and your ‘Bat-Computer’ was the easiest way to do it.”

“Thanks…I suppose,” Barbara grumbled. ‘I do not trust this woman one bit. If she were to ever change her mind…’

“Mihoshi, stop gripping your gun like it’s a pillow and get up off the floor!” Kiyone berated.

Wiping away her tears, Mihoshi looked up at the three women. “I’m not holding my gun Kiyone! I’m holding this thing!”

The blonde haired woman showed the group what she had been cradling: a familiar silver helmet. Washu and Barbara’s jaws metaphorically hit the floor.

“That’s a Justifier Helmet!” Barbara cried.

“If we can study it and figure out how to cancel out the Equation…” Washu started.

“We can save the Earth!” The two ladies of technology exclaimed at the same time.

Kiyone couldn’t help but give Mihoshi a hug. “Do you have any idea what you have just done Mihoshi?”

Thinking for a moment, Mihoshi shook her head. “Uh, no not really.”

“You have given us the advantage we need to beat the Gods! You’re a hero Mihoshi!”

With that, Mihoshi’s sniffling for Katsuhito changed into crying tears of joy: tears that hopefully will signal the return of miracles and the fall of evil.