Barbatos Is About to Become a Puppet?

The World Forger had largely achieved his goal by now.

Through repeated torment at the hands of the Batman Dragon, Anti-Monitor, Time Trapper, and others—being dragged into the realm of death and returned, only to fall back in again; being transformed by Emperor Joker; being forced to beat himself up...

After layer upon layer of weakening, after countless brushes with death, Parallax Hal had finally become so feeble that he no longer had the strength to resist Brainiac extracting Parallax from his body.

Even at the moment Emperor Joker had just captured him, Hal had still been capable of using Parallax's power to flee back to the timeline of Zero Hour upstream along the Over-Time Stream. But now, he had become completely helpless, like meat on a chopping block.

Just moments ago, the World Forger had controlled Parallax Hal and injected the Anti-Matter Universe's energy within him into the Anti-Monitor Dragon. Objectively speaking, this had increased the Anti-Monitor Dragon's power, but it had also completely emptied the Anti-Monitor's control over Parallax Hal.

The Anti-Monitor Dragon fled for his life, while the First Lantern saw that the World Forger made no move to stop him.

At that moment, Brainiac had already returned from the void. He had locked away the Parallax extracted from Hal in a place known only to him and the World Forger. Looking clearly deranged, he walked up to the World Forger to receive his orders. The First Lantern watched him and felt a chill run down his back.

"What about the Time Trapper?"

He turned and asked the World Forger, but immediately received a noncommittal answer. "The Time Trapper went where he should go. I assigned him some other tasks, so he's a little busy. I made a deal with him."

The World Forger refused to elaborate,