Fingers grasping the edge of a chunk rubble- formerly shop wall- J'onn pulled himself up, knees straightening with pain. It was a foreign sensation, true pain. The spine-trembling pain that set every nerve on fire with numbness and stabbed knife-less.
Pain pain pain.

J'onn shook it off.

There was time for pain later. He would allocate ten minutes that evening to the pain, but for now, he would grit his teeth and clench his fists.

It had been a long time since anything had made him feel pain like that.

Constantine was concocting a new plan, certainly, but J'onn did not think it would do any harm to try a little one of his own while Constantine was nowhere to be found.

A few metres from him, Diana and Batman were rallying with Billy and Kendra, putting their heads together to discuss their further actions with Constantine MIA, Nightwing on crowd control, and the rest out cold.

J'onn reckoned it about time to step in.

"Any word from John?" The Martian asked, walking towards his teammates with the stability of a newborn foal.

Diana caught him as his legs were about to give in, draping his arm over her shoulder and holding up his waist. Ashamedly, for a reason she dared not to place, Diana did not meet his eye, but said all the same, "You should sit. Tezcatlipoca's magic is much stronger than anticipated. We will need your strength to combat it."

"I will be fine." J'onn said, the words leaving his lips softer than he'd intended.

Captain Marvel looked at Batman, pointing with his eyes at the two of them, mouthing 'see, they're lo-'. The Dark Knight's unresponsive glare stopped him in his tracks.

J'onn removed his arm form around her shoulder, able to support himself standing still, "Though I fear I am too weak now to be much use as a physical combatant."

"You were closest to the god when it attacked, you can hardly be blamed." Batman said, perhaps a gram more of warmth in his voice that usual.

His eyes on the Batman, Wonder Woman could look at J'onn, and as she did so, an idea flew to her mind as if Athena herself had fired it at her brain from Mount Olympus.

"Your physical strength may not be a viable weapon, but perhaps your mind..." Diana said, each word  forming slowly as though she were savouring the taste of the blossoming idea.

J'onn looked back at her. She'd had the same idea.

"I was just about to suggest-"

"Attempt to disable them through a telepathic connection." Diana finished for him.

"And so it starts." Shazam clasped his hands together and batted his eyelashes. Batman's very pointed stare begged for professionality.

Kendra peeked around the corner of the building they were gathered behind. Tezcatlipoca had moved forwards another two streets, spewing more of their dreadful toxic fog. Like corrupted white horses, the black cloud gushed over the roads and pavement, clashing against floodgate-like buildings and engulfing lampposts.
They, with their striped, skinless skull and hungry leopard claws, were only a few streets away- and picking up the pace.

"Whatever you're thinking of doing- hurry up because it's closing in on us!" Hawkgirl reported, flying back to the others.

J'onn looked to his collapsed teammates- the ones who had fallen down and in to the fog- and his resolve strengthened. Barry might be the first awake, but the others...

"I will try."

Billy floated over, from peeking above the caved-in roof, "Um do you want us to distract it?"

J'onn responded the affirmative. It would be easer to seep in to Tezcatlipoca's mind if the god wasn't focusing all their efforts on keeping the Martian out. He did not feel guilty about asking his friends to distract the god: it would not take too much effort, and they had what looked like half the Mexican military to help them in keeping the god busy.

The others subtly spreading out, placing themselves around Tezcatlipoca, remaining above the death-cloud and out of sight.

BOOM.

There went another ineffective grenade.

Over the coms link, Diana cried, "Now!", and the three of them leapt in to sight of the god of death.

Batman had stayed behind, keeping an eye out for J'onn when his eyes would be shut, and monitoring the conditions of the unconscious teammates. And tracking where that pesky magician had gotten to- they hadn't found any traces of the cult nearby, so it was unlikely Constantine had done.

Closing his eyes to better his concentration, J'onn reached out to the obtrusive invisible conscience that was Tezcatlipoca. He snuck in through a back door of sorts. The part of the mind that ponders the menial things- how spaghetti is made in factories, what kind of sofa your nan used to have, the colour of your new bedroom lamp, and so on: terribly, boringly menial. And to his great relief, Tezcatlipoca did indeed possess such an area in their mind. Oh it was small indeed (so very small in comparison with the vastness of other sections), but it's existence was indisputable.

Not wishing to waste time but so awfully intrigued, J'onn poked around a little. He delved in to the little memories that dotted the corner of Tezcatlipoca's mind: what the streets looked like before they were covered in mist; the crunchiness of the humans he had accepted as a summer sacrifice nine-hundred and sixteen years ago; the red symbol emblazoned on the flying blue man's chest.

J'onn now slinked his way around a general hub of thoughts and memories, so rich, so many and so old. Memories of creation, memories of death, memories of darkness. He could lose himself in them and never find his way back out.

No. J'onn had a task at hand.

He moved towards the most alluring and recognisable part of the god's mind: the active control centre. Tezcatlipoca would be able to sense him now, infiltrating their train of thought, penetrating the metaphysical membrane of their concentrated bubble of immediate ideas.

What was the god's purpose?

A tremor ran through the space wherein the fragment of J'onn's conscience floated.

I SENSE YOU CREATURE

J'onn was acutely aware that the voice did not speak Martian, but the words translated to him like sugar dissolving in water. For the sake of human readers, they have been translated to the widely spoken English language.

The Martian searched for reasoning in the god's mind.

JUSTIFICATION IS WHAT YOU SEEK, STRANGE GREEN ONE.

"Strange green one"... no, J'onn did not like that at all. Though he supposed it would make sense for a human god to be unfamiliar with lifeforms not of the Earth. He wondered whether Tezcatlipoca registered him and his comrades as mortals; J'onn remembered that he was in the god's mind, he need only look for the answers.
But Tezcatlipoca was privy to his thoughts now that J'onn had entered their realm of thought, and gave the Martian an answer of sorts.

YOU ARE NO GOD TO CHALLENGE ME. NO MERE MORTAL. A SPIRIT CREATURE OF OTHER GODS, MAYHAP.

From his physical body, J'onn's ears registered a great trembling beneath his feet, the crumbling of stone- no, brick-, and a resonating, grating sound like a very large nail upon an even larger chalkboard.

In Tezcatlipoca's mind, J'onn was given a dreadful gift- a morbid thought. A waking lucid dream, J'onn drifted in to the scene. Desolate, save a few scattered bones. An ashy quality to the air: there had been fire here, or at least, there had been smoke.  The god in dressed in a spotted cat's pelt loomed over another, hypothetical J'onn J'onzz. They reached down to his shoulders and wrapped two hands around the neck and head. In a single grand and powerful motion, Tezcatlipoca pulled the martian's head off, bloody spraying from the severed neck like water from lawn sprinklers. The body collapse backwards and J'onn saw his knobbly spine poking out of the top of the mound of flesh that his head once sat upon. Unhinging their jaw, Tezcatlipoca raised the pale green head to their mouth and snaked a greedy tongue out, rolling the head around it- drawing it in to their mouth. The jaw shut, and J'onn suffered the crunching, chewing, swallowing sounds of his head being passed in to the godly digestive system.

He left the thought as soon as he'd regained enough sense to remember that this was a threat, a mere contemplation of the deity; not a prophecy.

I WILL CONSUME YOU, SPIRIT. I WILL CONSUME ALL OF CREATION.

The god hadn't moved more than a few dozen metres in an hour, this consumption of all creation might take a while yet.

THESE BLASPHEMOUS CREATURES ARE UNDERSERVING OF THE GIFT OF LIFE. HUMANITY HAS SQUANDERED OUR MIRACLES OF CREATION. NOW THEY SHALL KNOW ONLY DEATH.

Another image ran through the god's mind, a nightmarish dream to J'onn, and an aspired fantasy to the one he inhabited.

Blackened trees leafless, their spindly arms penetrating the silent atmosphere like Satan's pitchforks. Dead earth bearing the husks of-

J'onn left the thought, exiting the main centre of ideas entirely, digging deeper and deeper. Squeezing through the nooks and crannies, the tight corners like corridors with entrances that J'onn might have taken the time to label: 'desires', 'incantations', 'core memories' and so on.

He did not look for anything up there. No, what J'onn was after would be found much lower down, in a realm that perhaps the god of death thought unreachable.

WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO FIND GREEN CREATURE?

Past the god's wide halls of knowledge and memory, below the waste area of disregarded morsels long forgotten. Out of Tezcatlipoca's mind and in to somewhere new.

NO-

A lonely, lonely somewhere occupied by a screeching, scratchy, throaty voice. It cried and would not stop.

Get me out- oh get me out! HELP! Help. I don't know where I am! PLEASE.

"Hello? ", the Martian reached out.

The crying stopped.

"Hel-hello..?" They sobbed. J'onn couldn't register the gender- he settled on 'they'.

"It is alright, I can hear you. I know you are frightened and I understand why, but I am pressed for time- to help yourself, you must speak quickly, I don't know how long I can-"

He was gone.

"H-hello?"

They received no answer, and the screaming reignited once more louder and louder still.

Meanwhile, J'onn was jolted out of harm's way, carried through the air, surrounded by a purple glow. A car sized chunk of roof crashed in to his former place of standing.

He was released and recovered in the air quickly, floating down to his rescuer.

Eyes widening at the newcomer, J'onn greeted, "Thank you Raven.", receiving a respectful nod from the Titan.

"There'll be time for pleasantries in a mo," Constantine chided. "In case you've missed it, there's a big bloody god on our lawn tryna kill everyone."

Batman grabbed the lapels of John's coat, "A god you are trying to put against my son!" He growled.

The magician pushed Batman off of him, pointing a finger in his face, "Your kid may just be our only option here. He's got the Egyptian god of death on his side for fuck's sake! What do you-"

"Father," Damian stood between them, brow heavy-set at mouth firm.

Conner and Billy froze where they floated together, several metres away, watching with rapture disproportionate to the situation.

"People are dying. Superman has been completely incapacitated. No attacks have worked so far." His expression hardened. "I know what to do, Anubis and I have discussed it- we have a plan." Damian's eyes softened, and he implored, "My life is not worth all of humanity. Do not try to protect me by risking them."

Raven might have clutched him to her heart and never release him at those words. It was too terrible a sentiment to allow. That he might die for the world to continue turning.

Why should it turn without him? How could it?

Bruce placed his hands on his son's shoulders, quiet and truthful and pained, "Then you don't know what you are worth to me."

The empath could appreciate the glorious, shifting display made by their aura's as father and son embraced. But Tezcatlipoca loomed closer and closer, and the distractions of the Justice League would not hold.

Damian and Anubis were as one, standing in Tezcatlipoca's direct line of sight, on either ends of the isolated main road.

An entourage of murky, toxic mist accompanied the Aztec god, swirling about their waist, as though they waded though a revolving ocean of shadow.

Eyes closed, Robin allowed Anubis' godly magic to flow through his veins, reaching down to the laced of his boots and the tips of his gloves. Damian opened his eyes and his irises were amber.

The Egyptian god spoke through his lips, the resulting sound being that of so many voices, old and young and strong and infirm- voices of the dead-, speaking as one.

"By the light of the dying sun, and the darkness of the living moon. In the name of Anubis. He who presides over the duat. God of the dead. Promised of the dying. Shepard of souls. You are named FALSE GOD!"

Tezcatlipoca screeched their indignation, falling upon all fours and pounding towards the boy with a billion voices.

"I summon Ra!"

A.N:

Oopsie daisies, I guess we're stopping here then.

Soooo how did we find that one then my darlings? Any thoughts, questions, perhaps answers? I'm sooooo excited to see your reactions!!!

Also I'd just like to take a moment to scream that we've surpassed 50k reads?!!!! I love you all so much. So so so much. Just thank you! Thank you thank you thank you!

I don't want to think about where I would be without you all. It's such a blessing and a privilege to be able to write for you my darlings. <3

-Bats :3