Absolute Power #4 (2024)

Oliver Queen orders all the Bureau of Sovereignty's forces to regroup at Gamorra Island, expecting a full assault from the heroes. He runs down their tactical situation for Waller, detailing all their recent defeats, but when he mentions what happened to the Brainiac Queen, she actually strikes him across the face and yells at him to shut up about her. Despite their setbacks, she expects to be able to hold the heroes off with their soldiers armed with seized weapons and Task Force VII and has Failsafe activate the Multiversal Gate to be their ace in the hole. In the Dark Roads, the heroes discuss their final plans. Hal Jordan goes on alone to deal with the Multiversal Gate while the rest of them gather for the frontal assault. Nightwing tells Air Wave to stay close to him. Batman Boom Tubes them to Gamorra and they charge at the Bureau defenders. Sarge Steel, who is commanding the first line, gloats that the heroes are hopelessly outgunned, but when the soldiers try to fire their exotic weapons they backfire and painfully shock them. Waller furiously demands to know what happened, then notices that Green Arrow is gone and screams after him. Meanwhile in the basement of the Metahuman Detention Centre, Barry Allen tries to fight off the three evil speedsters. Johnny Quick activates the portal to bring Waller's Multiversal Army to Earth 0. The Bureau soldiers discard their captured superweapons and switch to conventional arms. Nightwing has Jon Kent carry him to Waller's location while the rest of the heroes keep the Bureau occupied so Batman can achieve his objective. In the basement villains from across the Multiverse start coming through the portal, but Green Lantern swoops in and creates a barrier across it, holding them back. Barry punches out the speedsters and runs to try and deactivate the portal but struggles to do so as he doesn't recognize the technology. Green Lantern's barrier begins to crack and he calls for reinforcements to help. On the surface, the heroes overcome the Bureau soldiers, with Wonder Woman personally punching out Steel. They blast their way into the facility with a bazooka, but Task Force VII is on the other side. Task Force VII orders the heroes to surrender and they refuse. Meanwhile Jon and Nightwing break into Waller's command centre, but she brings out a chunk of Kryptonite to keep Jon at bay. Batman, Blue Beetle and Time Commander sneak into the electronics lab in the Detention Centre. They find the device Green Arrow was building and Time Commander completes it; with it they will be able to remove Task Force VII's "chrono-healing" ability and reverse their timelines to just before they stole the heroes' powers. The released energy will then return to their original owners and restore their powers. However, Paradise Lost overhears them and attacks them when they try to deploy it. In the basement, the Flash Family runs in and joins their willpower with Green Lantern's, reinforcing the barrier over the portal. In the control room, Failsafe restrains Nightwing and Waller says that she is going to kill all the superheroes to "end the chaos". However, Green Arrow picks up the temporal device, loads it onto an arrow and fires it at Paradise Lost. This creates a chain reaction that returns the stolen powers to the heroes, although it is immediately obvious that the transference was not perfect and some people have received different powers than they originally possessed: Fire and Ice have switched powers and Beast Girl can now transform into animals when she couldn't before. Waller sees this and has a nervous breakdown, screaming "No!" over and over again. Failsafe, affected by the same energy surge as its brethren, powers down and Nightwing says it is over. Waller pulls out a gun, planning to kill Nightwing and escape through the multiversal gate; however, Dreamer jumps out of a portal and punches Waller to the ground, revealing that she hid in Jon Kent's dreams after the explosion at the Fortress of Solitude. The repowered heroes easily destroy Task Force VII and Oliver reveals that he was working deep cover inside the Bureau of Sovereignty. Martian Manhunter had implanted a sincere belief in Waller's cause inside his mind to fool the Bureau's psychics, and it had just recently expired as they had originally planned, allowing him to actively sabotage Waller's arsenal and gather the necessary materials to create the temporal device. Batman is annoyed that they kept that a secret, but Martian Manhunter says he would have told them if he hadn't been captured so quickly, though he also points out that Batman being upset about someone having secret plans is essentially the definition of "irony". The heroes run down to the basement to help hold off the invading villains from the Multiverse. Barry tells them that if he closes the gate they will be cut off from the Multiverse forever, but Superman says they have no choice. Barry shuts down the portal, causing the control panel to explode. Meanwhile, in the control room, Waller rants like a crazy person that even if the heroes beat her, she still fooled the entire world with her fake footage and the world's governments will chase them off the planet because of what she did, screaming "I WON!" Nightwing calmly says that was the "villain rant" he was counting on and reveals that Air Wave has been invisibly with them in the room the whole time, broadcasting to every device on the planet the whole time and revealing her deception. He tells her that she's finished. Forty-eight hours later, the Flashes meet up and Jay and Wally confirm that their access to the Multiverse has been cut off, and Barry reveals that his powers are gone. Meanwhile, Waller wakes up in a prison cell. Dreamer, who is standing just outside, tells her that she has been sentenced to life in solitary confinement at Belle Reve for her crimes. Waller smugly predicts that she can easily bargain or blackmail her way out with the secret information she has on every hero in the world, but when Dreamer asks her where the Batcave is Waller is unable to answer. Dreamer asks her more rapid-fire questions about the world's heroes, and to her shock Waller discovers that she can't remember any of it. She accuses Dreamer of erasing them from her mind, but Dreamer reveals that she instead locked them away just below Waller's conscious mind, so she will always be just on the verge of remembering but never able to do it. Dreamer walks away, telling Waller that she will spend the rest of her life struggling and failing to remember all the secrets she hoarded over the years, the ultimate torture for a control freak intelligence operative. Waller defiantly says that she will find a way back, but Dreamer warns her not to strain her mind too much, implying she may have implanted a Suicide Squad bomb in her brain. Waller demands to know if she did, screaming after Dreamer "Answer me!" as she silently walks away. While the Fortress of Solitude is being rebuilt, Green Arrow calls Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman to Mount Justice, the League's original headquarters. Each of them chides him for his actions and the consequences: several heroes are badly injured, Red Tornado may be dead, multiple people's powers were altered by the energy transfer, and most importantly he did his undercover plan without informing them. Green Arrow admits that is all true but defends himself by saying that they all made mistakes because they were all going it alone and weren't a team anymore and that none of this would have happened if they had been communicating with each other like they used to. He says the world needs a Justice League and suggests reforming it as a bigger and more proactive organization. They reveal that they are already working on that, with Batman showing him plans for a new Watchtower satellite.