The pink tissue in the petri dish was still writhing.
Only the size of a palm, it was one of the samples cut from Starro's core. After being thawed from a container kept at minus two hundred degrees, the lump of flesh had actually begun slowly regenerating, extending fine tendrils from its surface in an attempt to find a host and continue dividing.
Through the electron microscope, Batman watched the pink cells secrete tiny silicate needles, as though arming themselves.
"I scanned its reactions to thirty-seven hundred common compounds."
He spoke over the comms channel. On the screen, the red areas indicating violent reactions clustered around a few molecular formulas. "The most unusual result was its response to calcium carbonate-four hundred and seventy times stronger than its average response to the other compounds."
"You're saying a monster that crossed interstellar space, one even Superman can't do anything about, is actually afraid of lime?"
Barry Allen asked incredulously, "That reminds me of street thugs getting into fights."
"It's catalytic decomposition. Calcium carbonate triggers a silicate reorganization reaction inside Starro's cells, causing their structure to destroy itself. Like..."
Batman watched a drop of limewater land on the Starro tissue sample. The pink lump immediately disintegrated at an astonishing speed.
"Like throwing a torch into a powder magazine," J'onn finished for him. "But..."
He looked at Starro, which had already landed in New York, its body burying almost a quarter of the city beneath it.
"Based on the main body's volume, density, and regeneration rate... we'd need to detonate at least forty thousand tons of high-purity calcium carbonate powder inside it to trigger a chain reaction."
"Forty thousand tons isn't difficult for modern industry."
Batman repeated the figure and brought up Gotham's industrial database. "Gotham has no large calcium oxide plants, but the