December 3, 2010 (Earth-3 Standard Time)
The World Watches
The city skylines of Earth-3 flickered as screens on buildings, phones, and devices everywhere were suddenly hijacked. Static gave way to a single figure standing in shadow, his silhouette illuminated from behind. The time was precisely 18:00, and across the world, people paused to witness what was about to unfold.
"People of Earth-3," Raj's voice resonated with an unnatural timbre that seemed to bypass ears and settle directly into the minds of listeners. "Tonight, you remember what fear feels like."
The shadow stepped forward, revealing himself in the harsh light. Raj—or rather, Nexus—stood wearing a form-fitting black suit lined with glowing circuitry patterns that pulsed with each word he spoke. His eyes shimmered with an intelligence that felt alien, predatory.
"For generations, you've cowered under the boot of the Crime Syndicate. You've accepted terror as the natural order." His face split into a smile that never reached his eyes. "But this time, the fear isn't yours."
With a flick of his wrist, the broadcast split into three separate feeds, each displaying a different location. On each screen, an identical version of Raj appeared.
"Tonight, I hunt the hunters."
Clone Alpha vs. Power Ring: The Cathedral of Nightmares
18:05Location: Metropolis – Cathedral of Saints Broken by Fire
Harold Jordan had always known fear intimately—it was, after all, the source of his power. The ring that had found him, that had whispered promises of control and dominance in exchange for feeding on his terror, had transformed him into Power Ring, the Syndicate's emerald nightmare.
But as he hovered in the abandoned Metropolis Cathedral, surrounded by fractured stained glass that reflected his green glow in a thousand distorted angles, he felt something new. Something worse.
The shadows moved wrong.
"Harold," a voice called, seeming to come from everywhere at once. "Do you know why I chose this place for us?"
Power Ring's hand trembled slightly as he conjured a defensive sphere of sickly green energy. "Show yourself, copycat!"
"Because cathedrals are built to amplify. To take a whisper..." Raj's voice suddenly dropped to a hush that somehow filled the entire space, "...and make it shake the foundations."
A figure emerged from behind the altar, walking slowly. No weapons. No visible tech. Just Raj, his hands clasped behind his back, eyes glowing with a soft amber light.
"I don't need your theatrics!" Power Ring snarled, launching a cascade of constructs—monstrous claws and twisted beasts, manifestations of his own inner demons. "The ring knows your fear!"
Raj didn't dodge. Instead, he closed his eyes and began to hum a single, resonant note. The constructs struck him—only to ripple like water meeting water, passing through and around him before reforming behind him.
"Let me show you something, Harold." Raj opened his eyes, now pulsing with emerald light that matched Power Ring's own. "Fear isn't a weapon. It's an ecosystem."
With a gesture, the stained glass fragments around them began to vibrate, each piece catching and reflecting the green energy from Power Ring's constructs. The light fragmented, multiplied, twisted—and suddenly the constructs weren't attacking Raj anymore.
They were turning toward Harold.
"What—" Power Ring gasped as his own monstrosities morphed, becoming more grotesque, more primal. "The ring controls fear! It doesn't feel it!"
"Doesn't it?" Raj took a step forward, and the entire cathedral seemed to constrict. "Every nightmare you've ever channeled, every horror you've inflicted—where do you think they go, Harold? The ring doesn't destroy fear. It stores it."
The constructs surrounded Power Ring now—his own creations, but twisted, corrupted, more aware. They gnashed teeth of emerald energy and reached for him with claws made from his own power.
"Stop this!" Power Ring screamed, his ring flaring wildly as he tried to reassert control.
"I'm not doing anything," Raj said softly. "I'm just... reflecting."
Power Ring lashed out desperately, sending a beam of concentrated energy directly at Raj's heart. The beam struck true—and then bent, coiled like a serpent, and flowed back into the circuitry of Raj's suit.
"You wield fear like a child swings a stick." Raj's voice deepened, resonating with otherworldly harmonics. "I am the storm that taught it how to scream."
With deliberate precision, Raj raised his hand and pulled from the shadows a construct of his own creation—a tall, ethereal figure with blue skin and ancient eyes filled with cold judgment. A Guardian of the Universe, but twisted, corrupted.
Power Ring's eyes widened. "No—that's not possible—"
"Your ring's previous master knows this shape well, doesn't he?" Raj walked forward as the Guardian construct loomed larger. "Volthoom remembers his creators. And his destroyers."
"The ring protects me!" Power Ring shrieked, holding up his hand like a shield.
"From external threats, yes." Raj nodded. "But I'm not attacking your body, Harold."
The Guardian construct opened its mouth, releasing a silent scream that somehow echoed through Power Ring's very being. Inside the ring, something ancient stirred in response—awakened from slumber by a call it couldn't ignore.
"No, please—" Power Ring collapsed to his knees as his ring began to glow white-hot, Volthoom's consciousness surging in recognition of its ancient enemy.
"It's responding to your fear, Harold. Just as it always has." Raj knelt beside the trembling man. "It's just that now, for the first time, you and Volthoom fear the same thing."
The ring exploded in a flash of emerald light, sending Harold sprawling across the cathedral floor. Where it had once been, only a smoking crater in his hand remained.
Raj stood over him, his shadow long and distorted across the shattered man. "You always feared being powerless. Now you know what that feels like."
Clone Beta vs. Ultraman: The Reactor Core
18:00Location: Central City – LexCorp Experimental Fusion Plant (Decommissioned)
Clark Kent—or Ultraman, as Earth-3 knew him—had never understood the concept of holding back. Why would the strongest being on the planet restrain himself? Power was meant to be used, to be demonstrated, to crush opposition.
When the interloper had challenged him to meet at the abandoned LexCorp fusion reactor—the site of Luthor's last stand against him years ago—Ultraman had laughed. The facility was saturated with broken kryptonite containment cells, the mineral's radiation still leaking into the atmosphere. It had been his playground, his charging station.
"Are you really that eager to die?" Ultraman called out as he smashed through the reactor ceiling, his body glowing with absorbed radiation. "Or just stupid?"
The reactor core sprawled below him, a cathedral of twisted metal and pulsing kryptonite veins that ran through the concrete like infected blood vessels. In the center stood Raj, or his clone—perfectly still, hands resting at his sides.
"Neither," Raj replied calmly. "I simply understand chemistry better than you do."
Ultraman laughed, the sound echoing harshly against the metal walls. "Chemistry? I'm going to tear you apart molecule by molecule, and you want to talk science?"
He dove downward with supersonic speed, the air cracking around him as he aimed his fist at Raj's chest. The impact should have liquified any normal human—instead, Raj shifted slightly, one hand coming up to brush Ultraman's wrist as he passed.
The touch was feather-light. It shouldn't have done anything.
Yet Ultraman felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his arm, radiating outward from where those fingers had made contact.
"What the—" He spun around, disbelief darkening his features. "What did you do?"
Raj was examining his own hand with mild interest. "Interesting," he murmured. "Your cellular structure is already adapting. But adaptation requires understanding the threat."
Ultraman roared and unleashed his heat vision, twin beams of concentrated energy that could melt steel in microseconds. Raj didn't attempt to dodge—instead, he extended his palm, and the beams struck it directly.
For a moment, the heat vision seemed to be absorbed into Raj's hand. Then, with a subtle shift, the energy emerged again—not red, but a cool, piercing blue.
The blue beam struck Ultraman in the chest, and he gasped. It felt... wrong. Weakening.
"You're familiar with green kryptonite," Raj said conversationally, walking around the perimeter of the reactor core, his fingers trailing along the glowing green veins embedded in the walls. "It irradiates you, charges you. On your Earth, it's a battery, not a poison."
Wherever Raj's fingers touched, the green glow began to shift, changing hue in his wake.
"But there are other isotopes, other frequencies of radiation that your body doesn't know how to process." The veins were turning blue now, the color spreading like ink in water. "On my Earth, scientists developed many varieties of kryptonite. This one—blue kryptonite—has some fascinating properties."
Ultraman tried to lunge forward, but his movements were becoming sluggish. "I'll kill you—"
"No, you won't." Raj shook his head. "Blue kryptonite negates Kryptonian powers completely. And right now, you're breathing it in with every desperate gasp."
Ultraman looked down at his hands in horror as the glow faded from them. He tried to summon his heat vision, his super strength—nothing responded.
"This can't—I am power—I am—"
"You're a bully who confuses strength with worth." Raj's hands were glowing blue now, the radiation he'd absorbed remolding itself to his will. "And like all bullies, you've never prepared for a fight you couldn't overpower."
Desperate, Ultraman tried to escape, to fly upward toward the hole he'd made in the ceiling. He barely managed to jump before crashing back to the ground, his invulnerability fading rapidly.
"You feared weakness," Raj said, approaching the fallen tyrant. "So I became it." He knelt down, blue energy coursing between his fingertips. "Congratulations. You're powerless by your own design."
With methodical precision, Raj pressed his palms to the ground. Blue kryptonite began to crystallize around Ultraman, forming first at his feet, then climbing up his body despite his increasingly feeble struggles.
"What are you doing?" Ultraman gasped, genuine fear in his voice for perhaps the first time in his life. "You can't—"
"I'm not killing you," Raj explained as the crystal coffin continued to form. "I'm containing you. This sarcophagus will continuously emit the precise frequency of radiation needed to keep you exactly as you are right now. Human. Vulnerable. Mortal."
The crystal closed over Ultraman's face, his scream cut short as the formation completed. Through the translucent blue surface, his face remained frozen in a rictus of rage and terror.
Raj stood, brushing crystalline dust from his hands. "For a man who's spent his life dealing in fear, you never developed much tolerance for it."
Clone Gamma vs. Owlman: The Labyrinth of Logic
18:15Location: Gotham – Owlman's Tactical Labyrinth (Substructure beneath Wayne Tower)
Thomas Wayne Jr. had built his reputation on preparation. As Owlman, the Syndicate's strategic mastermind, he was never caught off guard, never surprised, never outmaneuvered.
His underground maze beneath Gotham was the physical manifestation of his mind—constantly shifting, adapting, analyzing. Holographic walls could appear and disappear at his command. Drone sentries patrolled with perfect precision. Every angle was covered, every contingency planned for.
Standing in his control room, surrounded by monitors showing every corridor of his labyrinth, Owlman watched as Raj entered the main entrance.
"Welcome to my domain," Owlman's voice echoed through hidden speakers. "I've been studying you, analyzing your patterns. Your capabilities are impressive, but fundamentally limited by the constraints of a singular consciousness."
On the screens, Raj smiled directly into one of the cameras. "Thomas Wayne Jr.," he said. "The man who has to be the smartest person in every room."
"I don't have to be," Owlman replied. "I simply am."
He pressed a button, and the corridor Raj was standing in began to transform—walls shifting, floor panels rotating, the entire geometry of the space rewriting itself in seconds. It was a trap that had claimed dozens of would-be assassins and heroes alike.
Raj didn't move. Instead, he closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, they glowed with an inner light.
"Predictive algorithms," Raj commented, casually sidestepping as a panel opened beneath where he had been standing. "You're calculating the most efficient configurations to disorient and capture. Clever."
Owlman frowned. The intruder shouldn't have been able to anticipate that move—his system used quantum randomization to ensure no pattern could be detected.
"You think yourself a chess master," Owlman activated another sequence, sending armed drones converging on Raj's position from three separate corridors. "But you've entered a game where I've already calculated every possible move."
Raj didn't attempt to fight the drones. Instead, he raised his hand and released what looked like glowing motes of light—thousands of them, filling the corridor and spreading outward. The drones' targeting systems locked onto the particles, confusion evident in their erratic movements.
"Chess is limited by its rules, Thomas," Raj's voice came not from one direction, but seemingly from everywhere at once as the light particles began forming duplicate images of him throughout the labyrinth. "I prefer games where reality itself is negotiable."
On his monitors, Owlman watched in growing alarm as his systems reported Raj's presence in seventeen different locations simultaneously. The drones, programmed to prioritize threats, began firing at each other.
"Light constructs," Owlman muttered. "Clever distraction, but ultimately futile." He activated his master control, initiating a full security lockdown. Every corridor would seal, electromagnetic pulses would disable any technology not hardened to his specifications.
The lights in the command center flickered briefly.
"You calculate ten thousand outcomes," Raj's voice came from directly behind him. "I wrote ten thousand and one."
Owlman spun around, batarangs instantly in hand—but the room was empty. When he turned back to his console, the monitors showed something impossible.
Every camera feed displayed the same image: Raj, standing in the exact position where Owlman himself was standing, making the exact same movements he was making, with the exact same expression of controlled alarm.
"Mirror neurons," Raj's voice explained from the speakers. "Your brain is being fed its own output in a recursive loop. You're watching yourself through your own surveillance system."
Owlman tried to override the system, fingers flying across the keyboard—only to watch "himself" on the screen doing the same thing.
"Stop this!" he demanded.
"I'm not doing anything," all the screens responded in unison. "Your security system is simply responding to what it perceives as the greatest threat in the facility. You."
A sudden realization dawned on Owlman. "You've inverted my targeting logic."
"Not inverted. Perfected." Raj's actual form stepped into view from a hidden entrance that shouldn't have existed. "Your drones are programmed to eliminate the most dangerous individual in your maze. Right now, that's you."
The sound of mechanical movement came from the corridor outside the control room. Owlman's own security drones were converging on his position, weapons primed.
"You think you've won?" Owlman snarled, reaching for his emergency override. "I built this system. I can shut it down."
"You could," Raj agreed. "If time moved linearly for me."
Owlman pressed the override button—and nothing happened.
"I disabled that twelve seconds ago," Raj explained. "Or, more accurately, I will disable it five seconds from now. Causality is such an interesting constraint to work around."
The walls of the control room began to shift, the entire chamber compressing. Owlman found himself being herded toward a containment pod of his own design.
"You built this place as a physical manifestation of your mind," Raj said, watching as Owlman was forced into the pod by his own security protocols. "Orderly. Logical. Unprecedented. But minds can be hacked, Thomas. And so can mazes."
The containment pod sealed shut, trapping Owlman in the very prison he had designed for his most dangerous enemies.
Through the transparent front panel, Owlman glared at his captor. "What happens now? You kill us all?"
"Nothing so merciful," Raj replied. "You created a world of fear. Now you get to live in it—from the other side."
The Threefold Fall
18:45 Location: Central City Dockyard – Syndicate Broadcast Relay Platform
The global broadcast never wavered. For hours, citizens of Earth-3 had watched in stunned silence as their most feared oppressors were systematically dismantled by what appeared to be the same man in three different locations simultaneously.
Now, as the final confrontation with Owlman concluded, the feed shifted to a single unified image. A grand plaza in what had once been Washington D.C., now renamed Syndicat Square after the Crime Syndicate had dismantled the old government.
Three identical figures walked into view from different directions, each dragging or transporting their defeated target. Clone Alpha pulled a shell-shocked Harold Jordan by the collar, the former Power Ring's hand still smoking where his ring had been. Clone Beta hovered several feet off the ground, the blue kryptonite sarcophagus containing Ultraman floating beside him. Clone Gamma marched forward with military precision, Owlman's containment pod rolling obediently behind him.
The time was exactly 21:57—less than four hours since the first attack had begun at the cathedral. The Crime Syndicate, which had ruled Earth-3 with an iron fist for decades, had fallen in a single evening.
The three clones converged at the center of the plaza, positioning their captives in a triangle formation. Then, in a display that defied conventional physics, they stepped toward each other—not meeting, but merging, their forms rippling and flowing together until only one Raj remained.
He looked directly into the cameras that were broadcasting his image across the globe.
"People of Earth-3," his voice carried the weight of absolute certainty. "For generations, you've lived under the boot of creatures who ruled through fear. Who convinced you that terror was strength, that cruelty was leadership."
He walked around the circle of defeated Syndicate members, his steps deliberate and measured.
"I have not come to liberate you. I have not come to save you." His eyes glowed with inner fire as he faced the camera again. "I have come to replace them."
The declaration hung in the air, stark and uncompromising.
"The Crime Syndicate ruled through fear because they believed fear was the ultimate power. They weren't wrong." Raj's voice dropped to a near whisper that somehow remained perfectly audible. "They were simply unworthy of wielding it."
He raised his hand, and every screen around the globe flickered briefly before displaying a simple insignia—a stylized nexus of lines forming what looked like a mask or perhaps a crown.
"Bow or be broken," Raj announced. "The throne of fear has a new king."
The broadcast cut to black.
The Rebellion Watches
Across Earth-3, the rebellion that had fought the Syndicate for decades watched in stunned silence. Victory had come—not entirely unexpected, but with an execution that left even the informed resistance leaders unsettled. The triumph left a complex aftertaste.
In Metropolis, deep within the underground laboratory that had been his sanctuary since his public "execution," Lex Luthor replayed the footage of Power Ring's defeat for the third time. His fingers traced the scar that ran from his temple to his jaw—a parting gift from Ultraman during their last confrontation.
"Fear turned inward... poetic," he murmured, his voice carrying to the massive figure standing nearby. "But Nexus plays too deep a game."
Sea King—the rebellion's amphibious powerhouse—shifted uncomfortably, water dripping from his scaled armor as he leaned against the wall. "It's working. For now."
"Is it?" Lex turned, his eyes reflecting the blue glow of the monitors. "We agreed to his plan, provided the resources, even gave him the intel on the Syndicate's weaknesses." His voice lowered. "But he didn't tell us everything. The extent of his powers, the way he'd dismantle them... that wasn't in the briefing."
Sea King's webbed fingers tensed around his trident. "We needed someone who could do what we couldn't. Someone outside their predictive models."
"And we got him," Lex replied, his tone neutral but his eyes calculating. "The question is, what else did we get that we didn't bargain for?"
Sea King glanced at a sealed folder on Lex's desk—the original proposal from Raj, delivered months ago with promises of liberation. "We do what we've always done. Adapt. Survive."
"And plan," Lex added quietly. "Always plan."
In the Central City Resistance Bunker, formerly a network of subway tunnels converted into the rebellion's largest stronghold, Katana stood rigidly before the main viewing screen. Her sword—the Soultaker—clutched tightly in her hand, gleaming with the same blue energy that now encased Ultraman. She had provided the rare minerals necessary for Raj's transmutation process, but seeing the finished product made her jaw tighten.
"Good men don't build sarcophagi," she said, addressing the room without turning. "This is power that cuts both ways."
Behind her, Solomon Grundy—the rebellion's unstoppable enforcer—growled in simple satisfaction. "Sun-man choking. Feels good." His massive gray hands clenched and unclenched rhythmically, having personally helped transport equipment to the LexCorp facility days before the confrontation.
Katana finally turned, her eyes dark with concern. "We knew his strategy. We approved the tactics. But seeing them executed..." She looked down at a communication device that still showed Raj's detailed assault plan. "He has given us what we wanted. Now we must be vigilant for what he wants."
Grundy's brow furrowed, primitive understanding dawning slowly. "New boss same as old boss?"
"Perhaps worse," Katana replied softly. "The Syndicate ruled through fear, but they were predictable. This one..." She glanced back at the screen where Raj now addressed the world. "This one thinks like us. Plans like us. That makes him more dangerous."
In the shadows of Gotham, a different kind of meeting was taking place. The Loyalists—those who had found protection and privilege under the Syndicate's rule—gathered in hushed conference.
"He broke them without raising a flag," whispered a former Syndicate administrator, her voice trembling. "Three against one, and they never stood a chance."
"The people will rally to him," another added. "They've been waiting for someone to overthrow the Syndicate. They won't care who did it or why."
An older man, who had once served as Owlman's intelligence officer, leaned forward. "You're missing the point. The Syndicate ruled through brute force and obvious terror. This... Nexus... he's different. He didn't just defeat them. He turned their own weapons against them. Power Ring's fear. Ultraman's radiation. Owlman's logic." He paused, his eyes narrowing. "That makes him infinitely more dangerous."
Across the fragmented resistance cells of Earth-3, leaders and fighters alike watched the broadcast end, each processing what they had witnessed. For some, it was a moment of jubilation—seeing their oppressors humbled brought savage satisfaction. For others, particularly those who had led the fight for years, the victory rang hollow.
In his sanctuary, Lex Luthor switched off the monitors and turned to the assembled rebellion leaders who had been summoned for this moment.
"The throne is empty no longer," he stated simply. "Time to decide if we kneel—or plan again."
Sea King gripped his trident tighter. "We never planned to kneel to anyone."
"No," Lex agreed. "But we also never planned for this. A liberator who might become our next oppressor."
A tense silence filled the room. Victory was theirs, but at what cost? The rebellion wasn't sure, but they knew one thing—this fight was far from over.
In a control room miles away from the plaza, Dr. Harleen Quinzel leaned back in her chair, a glass of champagne dangling from her fingers as she watched the final moments of the transmission. The clock on the wall showed 22:28—the broadcast was wrapping up exactly on schedule.
"Dramatic," she commented as Raj entered the room, removing the neural interface crown that had allowed him to control his clones remotely. "Maybe a little over the top with the 'bow or be broken' bit, but I suppose the masses respond to theatrical displays of power."
Raj's expression remained neutral as he set the neural crown on its charging station. "Theatricality has its uses. Fear requires visceral imagery to take root."
Harleen's smile widened. "And fear is the point, isn't it? Not just to defeat them, but to replace them. To become the monster that keeps other monsters at bay."
"The Crime Syndicate maintained control through fear without purpose," Raj replied, finally allowing himself a small, satisfied smile. "Our fear has direction. Structure. A goal beyond mere dominance."
"Phase One complete, then." Harleen raised her glass in a toast. "To the new world order."
Raj didn't take a glass for himself. Instead, he turned to look at the global map displayed on the main screen, markers already lighting up where resistance cells were beginning to emerge in response to the power vacuum.
"Phase One complete," he agreed. "Phase Two begins at dawn."
Harleen's eyes gleamed with something that might have been madness, or perhaps perfect clarity. "And what exactly is Phase Two, my dear Nexus?"
Raj's reflection showed in the darkened screen—his eyes holding a determination that bordered on the inhuman.
"Reconstruction."