To absolutely no one’s surprise, Faust attempted to betray us the moment he had all the pieces of the relic.
While Donna and I were hiding out nearby waiting for the best moment to make our appearance, Wonder Woman forced him to undo the petrification spell on her mom in return for the pieces and once he had them, he almost immediately attempted to turn the both of them back into stone. He wasn’t expecting the Flash to interrupt and steal the little medallion that let him cast the spell though. He wasn’t expecting Batman, Martian Manhunter, and Superman to drop in either. Though to be fair, I wasn’t expecting Batman either… when had he joined up?
However, not even with more members of the Justice League were they able to catch Faust.
Oh, they beat him like a drum. So much so that we weren’t even going to get involved at first and instead focused on looking for his backup escape plan, but the issue was it was really hard to actually keep a magician caught when they could teleport away.
Faust kept the Justice League off balance just long enough to get close to Wonder Mom, who was still clearly weakened from her time as a statue, and vanished in a flash of purple. Not that he went all that far, relatively anyway.
I felt his and Wonder Mom’s Ki reappear deep underground, so obviously he had simply relocated to the place where he could use the relic. Wonder Woman seemed to know that too, and started leading the rest of the Justice League there.
Donna and I followed after them, flying just far enough away that they didn’t notice us.
It probably helped a lot that they were all rushing after Wonder Woman, who was obviously worried about her mom. They didn’t even notice when the two of us made two quiet ‘woah’s of awe when we followed them into the underground temple.
It was absolutely trashed in a way I’d never seen on Themyscira before. Even after Faust attacked the island. Going by the smell and the occasional skeleton scattered in the rubble, my guess was that at some point there had been a major battle down here and the survivors just… locked this place away without even cleaning up the bodies.
There wasn’t much time to take in the sights, though.
While we were trailing behind, Faust had already used the relic to open what looked like a portal to hell.
Even worse, someone had already come through it.
“Is that Lord Hades!?” Donna hissed.
“Yeah, looks like we figured out who Faust was working with.” I whispered back. “Seriously bad news.”
Because unfortunately, the DC version of Hades was less ‘chill guy that just hung out in the Underworld if you didn’t bother him’ and more… ‘totally willing to burn the world to the ground if he wasn’t the one ruling it’.
I’d actually been really thrown off by that when I was getting lessons on the Greek gods which had been a mandatory part of my education by Mel. Hades had betrayed the other Gods during the war with the Titans and been thrown into Tartarus for it.
At least until Faust let him out.
“Okay, we definitely found out what Faust was after. Let’s go kick their butts.” I decided and prepared to charge down and join the fight.
Only for Donna to grab my arm before I could move.
“Are you crazy!? No, don’t answer that. But that is a GOD down there. A brother to Zeus!” She hissed in my ear. “Even if we did go down there, we would only get in the way!”
“I didn’t sneak all the way down here just to watch.” I argued back. “Besides, it’s only one guy now!”
Hades was apparently not much of a team player and had either stolen Faust’s lifeforce or rapidly aged him to the point he looked like he was going to turn to dust any minute. I couldn’t actually tell which. But the point was, it was one guy versus the Justice League and I was missing out arguing with my friend instead!
“One guy that’s a GOD!”
“You seem really hung up on that part.” I pointed out.
Donna’s hands twitched towards my neck before she balled them up and forced them back to her sides. “Yes, most people would be!”
I snorted at that. Most people didn’t dress up in colorful uniforms to fight crime, monsters, and aliens, but most of her friends did that and she said nothing to them. Fighting Gods didn’t seem like that big of a step up to me.
“Well, figure out what you want to do then because Hades brought friends.”
While we were arguing not only did more of those demons Faust had first ambushed me with start coming out of the portal to Tartarus, but he had also pulled off his ‘Ruler of the Dead’ shtick and had reanimated all the dead bodies that had been left lying around. The Justice League was starting to get overwhelmed by sheer numbers… and Hades wasn’t even fighting them seriously anymore, just shooting the occasional fireball whenever one of them started doing too well against his minion army.
“Okay, fine. You’re right. We need to help them.” Donna admitted, grabbing a sword and shield out of some nearby rubble. “Just stay away from the portal. The last thing we need is you getting sucked into the Pit.”
“I’m always right.” I said, ignoring the rest of what she said and flying up into the air. Once I had a good view of the entire fight, I did my best impression of a bullet hell shooter – spamming blasts of Ki that tore through the zombie soldiers like tissue paper and at least staggered the demons.
I couldn’t get all of them, but with most of Hades’ army suddenly dust the Justice League was suddenly doing a lot better.
“Califa, what are you doing here?!” Wonder Woman shouted once she spotted me. “And Donna?! Leave! The both of you!”
“Oh, another daughter? It seems you’ve been busy since I was locked away, my dear Hippolyta.” Hades sounded pretty much like I expected. Arrogant in an oily way which just made me want to punch him in the face. “And some kind of mutated monkey? Did you adopt some sort of stray out of pity?”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
Yeah, definitely going to punch him in the face.
“Don’t even think about it Hades! I won’t let you lay a hand on any of my daughters!” Wonder Mom yelled and charged him with her sword swinging.
“Hah! No need to get so worked up. We’ll have plenty of time to get acquainted.” Hades smirked, casually catching the ancient blade and backhanding Wonder Mom into the ground.
“Hey, Hades!” I called, flying forward as fast as I could. “Aquiant this!” And then I hit him as hard as I could across the jaw.
Maybe I only noticed because I was focusing so much of my own Ki in my hand when I hit him, but Hades’ own Ki felt… weird… in a way I couldn’t really describe. I had no time to think about it either, because while the jackass god definitely felt my punch – he wasn’t going down from just the one.
“Insolent pest!” He snarled, eyes and teeth shifting into something more monstrous than what his face currently looked like.
I raised my hands up ready to defend…
And then rushed forward again when Donna blindsided him from behind. Hades actually cried out in pain when I punched him back just for Donna to try stabbing him through a gap in the black armor he wore, but her sword was just as old as the one Wonder Mom had tried using and ended up snapping before she could do any real damage.
She didn’t hesitate to throw it away and kick him in the teeth though.
The two of us actually synced up really well, our teamwork falling back into the same patterns we developed in the mirror as we wailed on the god. We weren’t doing a whole lot of damage, but we were keeping him off balance and too preoccupied to do anything else.
At least until he shapeshifted into some kind of large grey lizard-like thing with three tongues and managed to grab the both of us with a hand each and pin us to the ground.
I could see what I guessed was some sort of hellfire building up in the back of his throat – but instead of getting worried about it, I looked just over his shoulder and smirked.
That was about all the warning he got before Wonder Woman dive-bombed him from above and drove him into the stone floor.
Wonder Mom stepped up between me and Donna and handed her another sword. “Quick, Diana, the key! It’s our only hope!”
“No!”
Hades burst out of the ground and tried to stop Wonder Woman and when he missed, swipe at the rest of us. I got between him and Wonder Mom and did my best to absorb the blow, but he hit hard.
But not hard enough I couldn’t hold him in place for a bit.
Wonder Mom and Donna both stabbed at him with their swords but once again Hades caught one in his free hand. And he actually caught Donna’s between his teeth briefly – before he bit down and shattered it, any way.
Part of me made a note to either get her a decent sword that would last more than five minutes or tell her to stop trying to use them at all, because she was going through them ridiculously fast.
I pushed that thought aside as Hades overpowered Wonder Mom and swung her into me and Donna, sending the three of us to the floor in a tangle of limbs that we all fought to free ourselves of as quickly as possible to mixed results. Not only did one of them elbow me in the kidney, someone also managed to step on my tail while we rushed to get up.
But there was no time to call them out on it. Hades was building up that fire breath attack again and we weren’t in position to dodge. So I did the first thing I could think of and fired a Ki blast directly at him.
Bright yellow Ki slammed into bright orange flames and I had to pour even more energy into the attack to not be immediately overwhelmed.
“Can’t keep this up for long.” I grunted at the two next to me.
“It won’t need to be long.” Wonder Mom assured me and shouted towards Wonder Woman, “Diana, destroy the key!”
I heard Wonder Woman scream in the distance followed by the sound of breaking stone. All of a sudden the hell portal lit up even more and began sucking in everything around it!
“No, I will not be denied!” Hades screamed and clawed at the ground to not get pulled in. He even started to crawl towards us while it was everything I could do just to stay in place.
If we didn’t do anything he was going to escape.
“Hold on to me, I have a plan.” I shouted, trusting Donna and Wonder Mom to grab me before I got sucked into Tartarus.
“This better be a good plan, Califa!” Donna shouted back.
I didn’t bother to explain, just cupping my hands and focusing. “Kaaaa…meeeee…haaa…meee…HAAAAAAAAA!”
Every scrap of Ki I could gather at the moment focused into one giant beam that slammed into Hades and ripped the god off the ground, sending him hurtling for the portal.
Then my blood turned to ice when on the way there, Hades managed to grab Wonder Woman by the leg and started dragging both of them through the gateway until Wonder Woman managed to toss her lasso onto a stone pillar and stop the both of them.
I raised my hand in and gathered a bit more Ki in my palm, but hesitated to actually shoot another Ki blast. If I missed or they moved the wrong way at the wrong time…
Wonder Mom didn’t share my hesitation though.
“Hades!” She shouted, loud enough to get the god’s attention, and then hurled her sword at him. Right in the face. “Back to the Pit with you, Monster!”
The sword still might not have hurt Hades that much, but the shock was enough for Wonder Woman to get some room and kick herself free of him. And while all that was going on, the demons and zombies were either being dragged through the gate or disintegrating into dust. All up until the moment Hades passed through the portal on his own, the doors on the portal magically slammed shut on their own, and the cavern was suddenly dead silent.
-o-
Our group was mostly silent while we headed back up to the surface. Because as great as stopping a god from escaping from Greek hell was… it didn’t actually do anything for the rest of the Amazons that were turned to stone.
“Is there nothing we can do for them?” Martian Manhunter asked while all of us looked over the ruined city from the steps of the temple.
“I still have this snake-headed doohickey?” Flash offered holding up the stone coin Faust had used when we saw him turn Wonder Mom to stone and back.
“But only Faust knew the spells.” The Martian pointed out. And Faust had apparently died or something at some point during the fight. Apparently because I was too busy fighting Hades and missed it, and none of the heroes were worried about him managing to get away.
“Maybe we could go ask Circe again?” Donna offered. “She might be familiar with what Faust used to–” She paused as her jaw dropped open.
I quickly turned to look and saw all the petrified Amazons start to glow as the sun started breaking over the horizon. Then the coin in the Flash’s hand started glowing too.
“Yeow!” He cried as it apparently heated up and glowed brighter and brighter.
And then in a flash of light that left everyone blinded, the coin seemed to explode.
“Look!” Wonder Woman exclaimed and pointed at one of the nearest statues. I followed her finger and watched as the stone seemed to peel back until the Amazon had turned completely back to normal. And then it started happening to the one next to her. And then the next. And the next!
Pretty soon all the Amazons were back to normal, if extremely drained from being under the spell. But they were okay.
“But how?” Flash wondered.
“Faust’s enchantment could only last as long as he willed it.” Batman explained
“So now that he’s gone…” Superman trailed off.
“The spell is broken.” Wonder Woman finished, relieved. “It’s a miracle.”
While she, Donna, and Wonder Mom hugged it out over all the Amazons being okay, I just sat down on a pile of rubble and smiled happily.
We managed to save the world, the Amazons, and I’d gotten to punch a god in the face.
Nothing could ruin today for me.