The villains standing before Gabriel had no idea death awaited nearby; Janus stood but feet away. The cloaked Super raised both antimatter gauntlets, Janus wouldn’t know what hit him. Before he could execute, Alfred’s panicked voice brought him out of his hunting daze.

Initiating emergency file transfer. DON’T MOVE!

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Dossier: Calamity

Classified Mutations: Class 6 Strength, Class 4 Toughness, Class 4 Speed.

Special Abilities:

Ruin*

Anything hostile to Calamity will experience a catastrophic failure.

Activation Type: Automatic

Area of Effect: 100 meters

Uptime: Approximately 5 minutes of intense combat.

Power Transfer

Calamity can absorb one other Super’s special abilities through physical contact at a time.

Uptime: Indefinite, until she replaces her Transferred skill.

*Ruin loses effectiveness when Calamity uses Transferred abilities.

**Presumed KIA by Red Global; body never recovered.

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Alfred’s voice was an anchor in the storm. Anything you throw in her direction will fail. You’d disintegrate yourself if you shoot now.

Gabriel grit his teeth. Patience would make sense of the situation - he’d find his window.

“Part 1? You’re counting your own steps wrong. We ‘neutralized all resistance’ already. Activate the portal.” Calamity mimicked Janus.

Her mocking irked Janus. His eyes bulged, his head twitched, and Calamity let out a yelp.

As she fell to her knees, Janus leaned down and squeezed her face tightly. “You will remember your place, animal. You are nothing, save a means to an end. Don’t forget why I pulled you from the wreckage - why I changed your face and planted you back into the Sentinels - after your ‘friends’ here abandoned you in the Rockies. You have one purpose, and it is NOT. Telling. ME. What. To. Do!”

The fear in her eyes seemed to satisfy any need Janus had for a response. He tossed Calamity aside like a toy. “I see now that if I’d left this up to you, I’d be finding new help by morning. You forget who we’re dealing with.” Janus sneered and spat Zero’s direction. “Though he seems to be having more trouble than expected.”

Zero’s eyes locked onto Janus, who gave a tiny start. His face made it clear that it wasn’t from fear. He smacked his lips, eyes wild like he was relishing the possibility of Zero breaking his restraints.

“Taking a while to code your way out of that Time-Warp? It took me years to get the hang of your little parlor trick. If you don’t hurry up,” he signaled Calamity closer, “your silver sidekick here won’t be ‘kicking’ much longer.”

He howled at his own joke, then flickered over to the horn-shaped stalagmites while Calamity moved next to Omicron Beta. “Let’s see how you take Bulwark’s Quakes while your molecules are trapped.”

She reached out with a finger, and Omicron’s arm burst into dust. Then she ran her hands across his midsection, and his legs vanished. His body was being held up by whatever force trapped them. Soon, Omicron was just a floating head.

Zero’s foot moved a fraction of an inch.

“You have no idea how much trouble you’ve given my friends since you showed up in this time, illegal.” Calamity cooed as she patted Omicron’s metal cheek. Half his face vaporized.

Patience had paid off, Calamity was occupied, and both enemies were on opposite ends of the cave. Gabriel moved to finish Janus with an antimatter blast the size of a truck when a strange ringing peeled across the cavern.

He could feel his insides resonate with the sound. If it didn’t sound crazy, he would have said his cells were reacting. Janus seemed affected as well - the Villain’s head shot up to look towards the captive Supers.

Zero’s eyes shone with blinding light. The glare he gave Calamity was so intense she shrunk back, reflexively reaching out to vaporize what remained of Omicron Beta.

Zero took a step.

“J-Janus!”

All the sound in the world stopped, and Gabriel froze in place. His body turned into a prison and the air into concrete. A crucial, all-encompassing rule of reality had checked out for the day, and his brain couldn’t make sense of it.

Had time… stopped?

Alfred?

There was no response.

Zero took another step, reaching for the traitorous Calamity. His body flickered between his old upright position and his new location like a glitch in a video, but he made steady progress - in millimeters.

Gabriel couldn’t move, but the invisibility orb still seemed to work - which was great because Janus was walking around free as a bird. The angry shapeshifter surged forward, snarling.

Before he could move very far, a beam of pixelated energy rose from the earth and latched onto his ankle. Zero grinned from across the room, tugging harder at the force shifting him back - taking another step toward Calamity. “You might have rigged a trap in the fabric, but you took a big risk coming in here, old friend. What would Aphrodite say? ‘You’re being reckless, Arjun!’”

“Leave her out of this, you coward.” Janus launched a ball of green energy at Zero. The energy ripped toward the trapped Supers, tearing through space with a screech. Before the attack hit, it froze in midair, separated into blocky chunks, and pixellated out of existence.

Zero chuckled. “I’m basically-”

“God here? How many times have you given the same old spiel? Piss off, Dante…” Janus shook his head. “You’re never going to change, are you? Still the same self-righteous boy you’ve been for eons.” He spat out that last word.

Zero made a face like a disappointed clown, then shrugged. “Former Lieutenant Singh, I don’t pretend to know why you’ve been masquerading as Lady Justice, but I can assure you that if you don’t tell me what you’ve done with her, the outcome-”

“Will be worse than I can imagine - cue Demon transformation - I get it - after all these years by your side.” Janus shot out of his restraints shifting into a puff of smoke and reappearing on the far side of the rocks that looked like… horns?

No, these weren’t rocks. Close up, it was clear the horns were some kind of technology, covered in sediment. How long had it been down here?

Janus twirled the glowing green gun. “I was Lady Justice the whole time, ignoramus. You never once thought to deep scan me - all the precautions I took… what a waste. Tsk tsk.” He leaned against the ancient machinery. “This was the idea all along. Ever since we last saw each other. When your bitch of a wife ruined my plans, I-”

“Ex-wife.” Zero corrected.

“FUUCK! You’ve never taken a single thing seriously, have you? I’m trying to rid humanity of an alien scourge, and you insist on getting in my way. In the name of what, again? Karma? Balance? You pathetic hippie!”

“What we each saw in that room was real, Janus.” Zero was now inches from Calamity - though it might as well have been an ocean for how fast he was moving.

“I refuse to believe the Golden City would be overrun by deformed mongrels. You've forgotten the combined might of the heavens. We are the gods of this realm. We can’t just trust these creatures will find their path to the light. We must guide them. I must guide them.”

“I may not remember everything, but I know for a fact we aren’t here to be kings. Don’t make me do this.” Zero’s face twisted in disgust.

All at once, Janus’ body shattered. In his place stood a teaming mass of cold white energy. Emerald energy arced subtly over his arms and legs, cascading around a circular bright green logo of a tree. A tree that everyone who didn’t live under a rock had seen a million times over.

It was Yggdrasil, the tree of life - the emblem of the most famous Hero of all time. Janus was Quantum?

Quantum was an evil space god?