Chapter 261: When Out And About, Identity Is What You Give Yourself!
Outskirts.
The night wind was cool, and the distant volcano glowed faintly red, as if an unspeakable anger was brewing deep within the earth. The Flash, Barry Allen, stood at the edge of a scorched earth, panting, his uniform still dusted with the ashes from when Doomsday had sent him flying with a punch earlier. He had just rushed over from Central City—or, more accurately, pulled himself away from the outrageous developments involving Reverse-Flash.
And at this moment, standing beside him, was the legendary Amazon warrior, demigod of Olympus, and veteran member of the Justice League—Diana Prince.
Or as the world knew her, Wonder Woman.
Wonder Woman Diana, staring intently at the three-headed, six-armed figure in the distance, voiced her suspicion, which was based on “divine perception” but was actually a psychotic break.
“So chaotic, so warlike, treating order and life as playthings… this aura, I am familiar with it. He is likely Ares, the old god of Olympus who incites war and chaos!”
Wonder Woman’s voice was resolute, carrying a tone of certainty.
“Ares?” The Flash, Barry Allen, beside her, nearly choked on his own saliva. He turned his head, looking at Diana as if she were some rare creature, his tone filled with disbelief, “Ma’am, are you… are you alright? Did you just come from Arkham in Gotham?”
“Ares is a figure from Greek mythology! That’s mythology! A story!” Clearly, the Flash suspected that Wonder Woman’s mind was not entirely stable and she might have some mental issues.
He truly seemed like a divine doctor.
The judgment was indeed accurate.
In fact, there were few heroes in the Justice League who weren’t mental patients. Of course, they wouldn’t admit it. At this, Diana’s heroic eyebrows shot up at Barry’s skepticism, and she was extremely displeased: “Mortal, are you questioning the judgment of an Amazon Princess?”
“I am the daughter of Zeus, from Themyscira! Mythology is precisely the history of my civilization’s existence!” Normally, Wonder Woman didn’t like to bring up her background. It was mainly Barry’s suspicious gaze that made her furious; how could Wonder Woman not know what Arkham was?
She had been playing a game of cat and mouse with Batman in Gotham for the past few days over a piece of Lex Luthor’s anti-humanity evidence. At a recent banquet, Batman, using his billionaire status, had stolen a confidential document from Luthor, and after Batman left, Wonder Woman, who was attending the banquet as a socialite, also took it.
The two parties had made initial contact and had some clashes.
“Zeus… daughter?! Wait, you’re saying you’re a child of a god?” The Flash, Barry Allen, widened his eyes, feeling that the amount of information he had received today was more fantastical than the past year combined.
He looked at Diana. Although she appeared simply beautiful, her armor, the Lasso of Truth, and the powerful aura she faintly exuded were indeed unusual.
If there were beings like Superman in the world, creatures that defied reason, then perhaps the powerful gods in ancient myths were also beings of flesh and blood like Superman?
The Flash began to believe.
“Yes, that’s right.”
Wonder Woman responded definitively.
“And you, who are you?”
Wonder Woman’s memory of the Flash’s speed was vivid; he possessed a speed that even her own eyesight couldn’t track, which truly made her feel a sense of disbelief.
So many superhumans in the world.
“Me? I’m the Flash…” After a moment of hesitation, the Flash first had his partner retrieve information about the woman before him.
Then, he decided to engage in a less suspicious exchange with other superhumans. After all, they might have to cooperate later, and it was always good to understand each other better.
“I was originally an ordinary person, but one day…” Of course, the Flash was still cautious and didn’t reveal his real name.
He simply told his story honestly.
Wonder Woman listened, stunned.
“You mean… your speed isn’t a gift from the gods? A single lightning strike created a mortal faster than Hermes?” Wonder Woman was astonished by the Flash’s origin.
Just as the Flash was astonished to meet a demigod. Two individuals, one from a secluded mythological island and the other from a modern city that believed in science, were now like two “pure” college students who had stumbled upon a new continent, engaging in a candid exchange across cultural barriers.
“It wasn’t ordinary lightning,” Barry tried to explain, but regarding the essence of the Speed Force, he himself was only vaguely grasping it at the moment.
“It’s… a cosmic power called the ‘Speed Force.’ A particle accelerator explosion, plus lightning, and some… well, a unique constitution, connected me to it.”
Barry did his best to say something comprehensible.
However.
He underestimated the “savage princess’s” cultural level. Of course, it wasn’t that Wonder Woman wasn’t cultured; she was indeed very cultured, but the difference between STEM majors and humanities majors was quite significant.
As someone from the magic side, Wonder Woman was certainly not a STEM major.
“Speed Force? What is that? Is it that powerful?” Diana chewed on the unfamiliar term, which was clearly not within the divine power system of Olympus.
“So… you suspect that three-headed, six-armed guy, likely named Ian, is actually Ares, the god of war?” Barry didn’t want to continue discussing his origins.
He steered the conversation back to the main topic, his tone full of disbelief, “That… the god of war from Greek mythology? The god of slaughter? The kind who wears armor and rides a warhorse?”
Diana nodded, her expression serious: “His words and actions, his fervor for war, even that unsettling oppressive aura… are identical to the Ares in my memory.”
She was still having an episode.
Fortunately, the Flash was relatively normal.
“But if what you’re saying is true, as the god of war, to gain greater power he would need to instigate war. He doesn’t seem to be trying to start a war, though.”
“And, I have very reliable information, that person is from the future, a speedster from the future.” Compared to Diana’s guess based on pure intuition with no evidence, the Flash naturally preferred to believe the information his future self had given him, even though he didn’t know if his future self wanted this Ian to die in the past or not.
“Uh…”
Diana was stumped by the Flash’s question.
She also found it contradictory.
That figure was fighting another, seemingly more evil monster. If it were truly Ares, he should have let the monster cause more chaos.
But if that figure was a good guy, what good guy would first take down Superman, the embodiment of justice, and then hold him like a toy, posing with him?
Diana fell into a mental deadlock.
And beside her.
The Flash was thinking broadly.
He thought about how Ian was a speedster from the future, calling himself the God of Speed, and how the civilization Wonder Woman belonged to seemed to have a similar being.
“Hermes, the person you mentioned who wasn’t as fast as me, was that ancient god one of the earliest speedsters?” The Flash attempted to explain mythology with science.
“I don’t know.”
Diana gave a straightforward answer.
“It’s very possible. For a speedster, time isn’t a linear structure. If someone can travel back from the future to our era and call themselves the God of Speed.”
“Then it’s natural that a speedster could travel from the future, or even from the present, to the past and become the fastest god in a pantheon!”
The more he thought about it, the more it seemed reasonable. Just as Barry was letting his mind wander, trying to connect mythology with science, Ian’s battle with Doomsday in the distance entered a new phase.
Under Ian’s intentional, “nutritionally balanced” “feeding,” Doomsday evolved at an astonishing rate, like a super-fruit that had been artificially ripened.
Its physique became even more colossal, its entire body covered in extremely thick, monstrous armor that seemed to be a hybrid of organic and mineral matter. Sharp bone blades protruded from its joints, and from its back, terrifying bone wings made of energy and bone, like those of a demon, extended.
At this moment, Doomsday was no longer what it was at the beginning. The energy fluctuations emanating from it made Barry and Diana, who were kilometers away, feel a tremor of fear.
Yet, Ian was not worried about this.
Instead, all three of his heads revealed expressions of satisfaction, as if saying, “A promising student.” Grayish-white lightning coursed around him, and he spoke with an arrogant tone that seemed to look down on all nine heavens.
“Ants look at the sky, how can they know the vastness of the universe? Mayflies shake trees, how can they understand the infinity of time and space? His evolution is all within my grasp, all changes are but illusions.”
This was meant to placate the increasingly uneasy Superman.
However, it wasn’t very effective.
It, on the other hand, had a significant provocative effect on Doomsday.
Although Doomsday could not speak, its intelligence, based on its instinct for destruction and desire for evolution, fully understood the undisguised contempt and mockery in Ian’s words.
Its dark iron-colored body began to emit an abnormal red light due to extreme anger, and energy surged madly within it, like a volcano on the verge of eruption!
“ROAR—!!!”
The ultimate red-hot Doomsday let out an eardrum-splitting roar. It flapped its pair of tattered energy bone wings, and its massive body, with unprecedented speed, hurtled towards Ian like a meteor! Dark red destructive energy condensed on its fists, determined to blast this being that had repeatedly humiliated it into elementary particles!
“Heh, the pinnacle of heroes, the pride of the world, first there was Ian… you heard nothing.” Ian almost let slip, and quickly shook Superman’s head vigorously, hoping to shake that memory out.
“What I mean is, first there was me, the God of Speed, then there was heaven.” Ian only changed his words after seeing Superman’s eyes roll back and bubbles foam from shaking him at five million miles per second.
Attempting to instill the correct memory into Superman again.
Five of his six arms began forming complex hand seals, drawing upon the grayish-white lightning around him to construct a defense. The remaining arm still held Superman by the scruff of his neck.
It’s no wonder Ian was called the King of Brainwaves in Metropolis.
He was using the Speed Force as a temporal stasis field, but it did slow down Doomsday’s speed considerably. However, it wasn’t the genuine temporal stasis field and couldn’t truly stop Doomsday.
“ROAR!”
Doomsday’s entire body glowed.
Resisting the entanglement of the Speed Force, it broke free from the Speed Force’s blockade, its eyes focused solely on crushing Ian with pure obsession. Just as Doomsday’s heavy fist was about to connect, Ian, for reasons unknown—perhaps he was nervous after almost revealing too much and wanted to wash Superman’s brain again of what he shouldn’t have heard.
He instinctively swung Superman, whom he was holding, like a humanoid weapon, and smashed him towards Doomsday!
“???!!!!!!”
Superman had just started to recover.
Then he felt like it would have been better if he hadn’t.
He didn’t even have time to curse.
“BANG—!!!”
A dull thud.
Superman’s head made intimate contact with Doomsday’s bio-armored fist. Doomsday’s forward momentum momentarily faltered, while Superman felt his vision go black, as if he had been hit on the forehead by a planet. A visible bump instantly formed on his forehead!
To put it simply, the current young Superman’s physical quality was weak.
“Uh… sorry, sorry!” Ian quickly steadied the star-eyed Superman, his middle head showing a slightly apologetic expression.
“Subconscious, purely instinctual reaction! You don’t know, the weapons I used to use, they looked almost exactly like you.” Ian’s statement was actually the truth.
However, this statement was even harder for Clark to believe than a lie.
What kind of normal person’s weapon looks like Superman!
Why do I feel like this strange creature doing this… feels natural, feels practiced?! Has he gotten used to using others as weapons?!
“…” High in the sky, Superman, with a large bump on his head and his dignity in tatters, looked at Doomsday, who had been repelled by his head and had fallen into a nearby volcano that was erupting due to the battle’s aftershocks, and no longer wished to comment on Ian’s outrageous behavior.
“You’re waiting for it to get stronger, why?” Superman, holding the bump on his forehead and enduring the dizziness, asked in a deep voice again. He had to understand what this mysterious person was thinking.
“Because the strong are lonely?”
Ian shook the arm he had used to swing Superman, as if relieving a non-existent soreness. Seeing that Superman didn’t believe him at all, he could only respond honestly again.
“I actually said before, I was trying to see if I could deceive history, to see if I could add some new tricks to the predetermined history of ‘Doomsday being defeated tonight’.”
“At the same time, it’s to maximize the use of this… well, you, our Kryptonian ancient biological weapon, to test its limits and to cook myself a feast.”
Saying that.
Ian felt like he was about to drool again.
“Kryptonian ancient biological weapon?” Superman caught the keywords, his pupils constricting, “This monster called Doomsday… is from Krypton?”
He finally began to piece together quite a few facts from Ian’s erratic statements.
“Yes, that’s the situation.” Ian nodded and began to act as a commentator, “Doomsday, a failed product of Kryptonian ancient genetic engineering.”
“Lex Luthor got a sample of it from somewhere. Combined with Kryptonian technology he stole from you—oh, right, he’s also been secretly researching Kryptonian spaceships and your genes, and cobbled this thing together. The purpose, I guess, is to prove that mortals can slay gods and other cliché plots.”
Ian knew Luthor better than the current Superman.
Superman’s face instantly turned extremely ugly. He cursed under his breath, “That madman! He’s a complete and utter lunatic! Even those who’ve taken too much fentanyl aren’t as crazy as him!”
Using Krypton’s legacy to create such a monster, Luthor’s actions had crossed his bottom line.
However, it wasn’t the time to settle accounts with Luthor. He immediately remembered Ian’s previous words, his eyes narrowed, and then he spoke again in a low, prolonged tone.
“Wait… didn’t you say before that Luthor stole ‘your’ technology?” He couldn’t look directly at Ian as he tilted his head, only staring intently at Ian, who was still grabbing his scruff, with his exceptional peripheral vision.
The movements of Ian’s three heads froze simultaneously. He realized he was not adept at weaving long-winded lies. However, with three heads, his skin was definitely thick enough.
“Don’t I look like a Kryptonian?” Ian immediately and without batting an eye, forcefully explained. He even addressed Clark by name in Kryptonian.
Kal-El.
Without waiting for Superman to recover.
His middle head tilted up and spoke in a tone full of vicissitudes.
“I am an ancient Kryptonian god, slumbering since ancient times. Krypton’s destruction, that catastrophe that engulfed the entire galaxy, awakened me from my eternal slumber.”
Ian stole the script of an ancient sun god.
These words made Superman’s heart skip a beat.
He felt inexplicably uneasy.
Krypton’s destruction had always been a deep scar in his heart. To some extent, as the last Kryptonian sent away, he indeed carried the psychological burden of being a “traitor.”
“Could he really be… some ancient Kryptonian entity?” Clark couldn’t help but have such a doubt, clearly being fooled by Ian.
Poor old father.
Still too young.
Of course, the reason for this uneasy feeling, besides Ian’s combat prowess, might also be related to the concussion he sustained from the bump on his head, which was a common ailment for Kryptonians.
