Superman didn't leave a second to waste. He flew upwards with a speed strong enough to create a wind. Like a blue-and-red comet, he was tearing through thousands of the swarm that was large enough to slightly blot out the sun. He spread out his arms and spun, flying fast enough to shred anyone that came within a few feet of him.
Wonder Woman dashed towards the middle of a crowded plaza, using her sword to slice through anything that threatened the running civilians.
"Get inside and lock the doors!" she commanded, and she herded them towards the nearest building.
Flash within seconds had run through the surrounding buildings outside the plaza and carried everyone as far away from the city as he could as clusters of Starro's crashed through windows. Before they could get anyone, they would simply vanish.
"Report!" Batman's voice cut through the comm channel.
"There are too many of them. We're not going to catch them all," replied Superman.
"Then we don't. We prioritize the most densely populated areas," replied Batman.
The team nodded.
The first scream happened four minutes into the fight. Wonder Woman had heard it. She turned towards the sound and saw a man collapse to his knees with his hands clawing at his face, to which a Starro was now attached. He stopped screaming.
The man stood back up, his movements more robotic. He turned his head to face Diana.
"I have been curious about your kind ever since I landed here," it spoke.
She didn't attack him. He was still a civilian, and he could still be saved.
"J'onn! A little help please," she asked.
J'onn felt it from a few blocks away. Like a light being switched off in an apartment block.
"Killing the Starro's that have already attached won't help. If you cut that psychic connection forcibly by killing the Starro, you might kill the host too," J'onn replied.
"Then how do we separate them?" asked Diana.
"I'm the only one here who can, but it'll take too long to do it with every individual, but creating the link to the central intelligence also takes time. I might be able to direct everyone in time to stop a full connection," J'onn answered.
J'onn hovered in the air and stayed still. He spread his consciousness wide throughout the city like a web while Starros phased through him, trying to attach onto something they could see but not touch.
"Diana, you have five seconds to save the man in front of you," he told her.
Diana dashed towards the man. She grabbed the Starro and tore it off his face, the tendrils withering around before crushing it. The man collapsed and breathed heavily. He was alive.
"Flash! Three blocks north of you, the woman in the blue coat," J'onn said.
"On it!" Barry responded. In an instant Barry was there, and the Starro was on the floor.
Hundreds of Starros converged onto Superman at once. He hovered in the center and let them come.
His eyes glowed red. His heat vision swept across the sky in arcs, vaporizing dozens with each pass, the air filling with the smell of burnt plastic. He accelerated with his fists held out in front of him, crushing through small clusters of Starros like a bullet. He could feel sharp and cold pressures around his body. Starro's attached to his suit, trying to get to his face while others tried to pierce his skin, to no success.
He watched as a cluster made its way above a mother and her stroller. He dove after them, catching the last one a few feet away from the baby. He closed his fist around the mother's face, crushing the creature into a paste, releasing the mother.
From the chaos on the ground, people filmed on their phones with trembling hands what looked like the end of the world but all looking at their hope. If anyone could save the world, it was him.
Shayera watched as a cluster of Starros banked towards her like a flock of birds. She swung her mace in a wide arc, causing the cluster to scatter into the wind as fragments. She launched herself up into the air, with tall buildings on either side of her.
She didn't see the stray Starro coming at her from behind. She looked back and was ready to swing, but it would've been to late. Hawkman was hovering behind, his mace raised as the creature was swatted away into pieces. His wings were beating hard, and he looked at Shayera the way you'd look at a crush.
"I had that," she said.
"You were welcome," he replied.
She rolled her eyes before continuing her flight, Hawkman moving alongside her like they had been flying together for decades.
"Your left," she called.
"Got it!" He swung his mace, sweeping his flank in a clean arc. "This is weird for our reunion."
"Focus," Shayera replied.
Arthur watched as thousands of Starros broke into the ocean. He understood immediately where they were heading.
"They're targeting underwater settlements," he said, diving into the water with his trident ready. "If they reach the deep communities before I do..."
He hit the first cluster eighty feet down, swinging his trident in wide sweeping arcs, crushing many of them with each strike, but there were too many descending into the ocean from every direction. He was surrounded and alone, but not for long.
A pod of orcas with armor arrived first, summoned by his call, and tore through the swarm. Behind them was something bigger. A humpback whale. It crashed through the swarm, and with a sweep of its tail, scattered hundreds of Starro's into fragments that drifted towards the ocean floor.
"Tell Mera to seal the city immediately!" he ordered a nearby fish. "If even one of those things makes it beyond the gates, we could lose control of the kingdom."
The fish did its own salute before speeding away.
Barry had never felt more useless. He was surrounded by dozens of civilians, now controlled by Starro. He couldn't attack them. They were still people. All he could do was make sure they couldn't harm anyone else.
"J'onn, I need help. I don't know who's still in there and isn't..." Barry exclaimed.
"I have you," J'onn replied. "The woman ahead of you, in a gray cardigan. Now the man on your left, in the blue sweater. Behind you, a child."
Barry followed his directions, a blur of red racing across the city, ripping the Starro's off and transporting the now safe civilians far away.
Hal Jordon's ring flared green, a wall eighty feet high and spanning across half a city block that was growing by the second as swarms of Starros slammed against it in waves.
"Holding on my end!" Hal reported.
John was beside him and had taken a different approach. An enormous armored soldier that was swatting away entire clusters out of the sky.
"Same over here, though mine's cooler," John replied.
"Yours just a toy soldier; mine's a fortress," Hal replied, changing his construct to make it look the wall of an unpenetratable castle.
"At least mine moves," John chuckled.
Hal's wall split down the middle, turning into a pair of massive hands that clapped together, crushing the Starros between them with a thunderclap.
"Mine can multitask. Yours just stays in one spot and punches things," Hal rebuted.
"Effectively."
"Boringly."
"Stop competing," Batman told them.
"We're not," Hal replied.
"Oh, we absolutely are," John said with a smug smile.
Both of them continued developing increasingly elaborate constructs despite the reprimand, but competition turned out to be an effective motivator.
Sophist appeared on the roof of a nearby skyscraper, overlooking everything and watching the chaos below. Superman spotted him first, and Sophist could see his mouth moving. A few seconds later Batman came towards him with a fighter jet.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Observing," Sophist replied.
"That's all?"
"I considered helping, but then I remembered how irritating you people are, but I'll be generous and give you another hint. You need to disrupt the connection between the hive and the central intelligence," Sophist answered.
"How do we do that?" Superman asked, stopping his flight a few feet from Sophist.
"That would be cheating. I can't do everything for you. The answer is obvious if you think about it. At least I thought so, considering we have the greatest detective among us. Everything I do has a purpose," Sophist answered.
The sky changed. High above the city, the crimson mass had decided to move. It started to descend.
Windows shattered across the city as winds as strong as a hurricane wipped across.
"Seems it's done warming up," said Sophist.