"Ohhh..."
Barry Allen let out a cry of bitter disappointment. The five mechs had not combined into the giant robot he had imagined. Instead, they had formed something resembling a spacecraft. All their thrusters spewed blue-white exhaust at once as they charged toward Starro.
"J'onn, prepare psychic protection for Superman. Clark, follow me."
The ice-blue lead mech rotated to the very front, its armor plates unfolding layer by layer to reveal dozens of launch ports.
The missiles detonated simultaneously five hundred meters from Starro's surface.
There were no flames, no shock waves, only transparent ice crystals spreading through the air like a wall.
This was an enhanced version of Doctor Fries's cryogenic technology. There was no need to consider thawing; it simply used extreme cold to slow molecular motion. Under these conditions, even field fluctuations would gradually cease.
"The psychic field is collapsing locally!"
The voice of J'onn, the Martian Manhunter, rang through everyone's minds. His telepathy allowed him to see that region. Starro's once seamless pink Bio-Electric Field now resembled an apple with a bite taken out of it, exposing a pitch-black hole roughly two hundred meters across. Its edges had frozen in midair into bizarre crystalline structures, like an icy scab over a wound in the universe.
"Clark, get in there."
Although Superman had no idea what lay inside, he instinctively obeyed Batman's command, stretching out his arms and hurtling toward the breach at full speed.
The edges of his cape froze into rigid sheets the instant he entered the near-absolute-zero zone, but his Bio-Electric Field immediately allowed his body to adapt.
Inside, Starro was no longer the smooth fleshy mass seen from a distance, but a living hell of countless writhing tubes, pulsating sacs, and flickering nerve clusters. Every inch of surface secreted fresh spores, and pink