DC: A New Beginning-Chapter 61: Erasure

Viktor hadn’t expected that he would be the first one to activate his locator device and get pulled back.

After he appeared in the Batcave with a look of helpless resignation, the letter was nowhere to be seen in Batman’s hands.

He was focused intently on the data displayed across the Batcomputer’s screens.

Before Viktor could even begin explaining the situation, Shazam came tumbling out of a portal that snapped open in an instant, covered in several deep cuts all over his body.

Shazam’s eyes still clearly showed he hadn’t fully recovered from the shock. He raised his hand and pressed it against the bleeding gash on his neck.

The magical lightning crackled constantly around his body in response to his emotions.

Viktor walked over and extended a hand toward Shazam. The other man grabbed his arm with a slight trembling.

Looking at the cuts on Shazam’s body, Viktor immediately recognized the pattern.

"Wonder Woman?"

"Yes... Yes."

Using Viktor’s supporting grip to help himself up, Shazam pulled himself up off the ground.

There was still a trace of fear in his expression, but the safety of the environment was gradually allowing him to settle down.

The wounds began closing at a visible rate.

"That was insane. I’ve never seen that kind of aggressive killing intent in Diana’s eyes before."

Shazam stood up and looked down to check the spots where he’d been injured moments ago.

Then he seemed to remember some additional details.

"But there was something weird. Over there, I got surrounded by a lunatic Wonder Woman and a whole group of Amazon warriors. While I was trying to talk to them, I flew around dodging them and moved to other cities, but I didn’t see a single person anywhere."

Shazam clearly hadn’t figured out what was going on yet.

Once his wounds had completely closed, he raised his hand and patted down his hair, which had gotten completely messed up from the battle.

Viktor raised an eyebrow and finished Shazam’s thought.

"Except for the group that was waiting to ambush you right where you landed, the entire rest of the Earth had no other human beings on it at all?"

Shazam stood there blankly, trying to remember.

"Now that you mention it... yeah, it did feel that way. I didn’t get the chance to check multiple cities before those lunatics who were dead set on killing me caught up with me pretty fast."

A look of understanding appeared in Viktor’s eyes.

"And then you activated your locator."

"No."

Shazam’s expression became complicated when he heard the slightly teasing tone in Viktor’s voice.

"The fighting was too intense. They were completely focused on killing me, and I never even had a chance to pull out the locator."

Viktor gave him a look like he was watching a complete idiot, and raised his left hand to show the locator strapped to his wrist.

"Was the situation really that intense? How long does it take to just tap the back of your hand?"

"This is a precision device that can travel between worlds and get home!"

Shazam shot back without even thinking.

"There’s no way I’d just wear it on my wrist like that. Obviously, I kept it somewhere safe on my body. If I hadn’t been so worried about breaking the locator during the fight, I would have knocked those crazy ladies out a long time ago."

’Hm?’

A flicker of puzzlement crossed Viktor’s eyes.

’How was Shazam able to hold his own and potentially win against the Flashpoint Wonder Woman while simultaneously being surrounded by a group of Amazon warriors?’

Even though he had considered that between different universes, even the same person could have different power levels without any extra factors involved...

In the movie, the Flashpoint Shazam, who was made up of several kids merged together, was supposed to have been instantly killed by the Flashpoint Wonder Woman.

Batman’s voice suddenly came through, interrupting Viktor’s thoughts.

"The situation is worse than anticipated. Based on the feedback data collected by the locators, it looks like you were all scattered into different timelines."

Shazam turned to look at Batman, and the shock on his face was impossible to hide.

"Different timelines. How did they even do that?"

"Regardless of how they did it, it means they are draining the Flash’s power without any limits."

There was urgency running beneath Batman’s words.

"We want to rescue him quickly, and they’ve come up with this method to deliberately drag out the time and slow us down."

"In a situation like this, no matter how many people we send, except for a speedster who can freely travel between different timelines, everyone else would have to keep jumping into their world over and over until someone finds the right timeline."

"And our world’s speedster is already in their hands. Though they may not have even considered that we still have a Reverse-Flash."

Shazam stood there with his mouth wide open for a moment. Then, finally, the nervous and scared expression that Viktor had been waiting to see earlier slowly appeared on his face.

Shazam’s face fell into a look of visible distress. He held both hands up in front of him to show he really did not want to do this.

"So what you’re saying is, the next time I go in, there’s a chance I run into those lunatics again. Or possibly a Superman who’s actually willing to kill."

Shazam imagined another version of Superman who was bold enough to go toe-to-toe with Zeus.

After a long moment of muttering to himself, he couldn’t hold back a single helpless exclamation.

"Oh my God. How are we supposed to fight that?"

Viktor shook his head and disagreed with what Shazam said.

"No. In fact, I stayed in that world all the way until it completely destroyed itself before I activated my locator to come back. From the moment I entered, the entire world began to fade, like someone erasing a drawing with an eraser."

"There might be a small difference between timelines, but it shouldn’t be too far off. There’s no way the Flash has enough energy to keep powering an endless number of permanently existing timeline universes."

Batman agreed with Viktor’s assessment and simultaneously delivered a conclusion that Shazam found difficult to accept.

"You knocked out the Wonder Woman and the Amazon warriors in that world, but they’ll just be erased along with that temporary timeline when it disappears. Whoever came up with this idea and convinced their entire world to go along with this plan to stall us from rescuing the Flash is both incredibly cruel and incredibly arrogant." 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Viktor looked at Shazam, who had gone completely blank, and let out a sigh.

"I told you they were fighting for survival. They’ll use absolutely any method available to them."

Viktor understood the difficulty of this more than anyone.

Back when the Viltrum were invading planet after planet, some civilizations that appeared to have absolutely no capacity for resistance still managed to fight back, pull off miracles in their last stand, and kill off a few Viltrumites before the end.

That was the final roar of a civilization that refused to just quietly disappear.

And this was the DC universe on top of that. There were countless people here who could suddenly explode with power at the most critical moment.

"So are you going back in? If you lose, they take your locator device, and the people waiting in ambush in that timeline win their chance to survive and cross over to our world. If you win, they simply die. That’s all."

He watched as Shazam stood there in silence and then turned his gaze toward Batman.

"Is there a way to actively control which point in time we enter that world? In theory, their real main force should be hiding in the timeline furthest away from the apocalypse."

Batman turned back to the computer screen, tapped a few keys, and then his deep voice was especially heavy and serious.

"How many temporary timelines they’ve split off is unknown. Even the timeline furthest from the apocalypse could have a margin of error of a few seconds more or less."

"It might even be completely the opposite of what you figured out. If that person is arrogant enough... and on top of that, they should also have technology to interfere with us from their side."

"I’ve already contacted Oracle and Cyborg to provide remote technical assistance. Until then, you’ll still need to go in yourself to explore and gather more information about them."

"The Flash might not be able to hold on much longer."

From the moment Batman shook his head, Viktor had already moved to stand at the spot where the portal had opened before.

The moment Batman finished speaking, the portal opened immediately, and Viktor stepped straight through without hesitation.

This time, there was only one person in sight.

A person who was nothing but skin and bones while floating in midair with a black Kryptonian suit.

...

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