Archive of Our Own

Hall of Justice, Washington D.C

The man moves swiftly through the air, stopping only as he reaches the front entrance to the sprawling complex that served as the center of the man’s Regime. This in it of itself wasn’t unusual, but even still, something was off. Very off. The armed men standing armed guard outside of the Hall were jittery. He could tell. Their heart rates were through the roof and before his arrival they had been whispering to each other about what had unbalanced them. 

“I can’t believe he did it..”.

“I can. Pushing him too fucking far. That’s what we did..”.

“This is bad. Real bad..”.

It stops as soon as the high councillor touches down on the ground though, his red boots landing on the concrete and the man seamlessly moves from flying to walking, his cape fluttering out behind him while the soldiers snap to attention. He doesn’t spare them a glance, his face rigid in grim determination. He didn’t know the specifics, but he did know that something big had happened for him to be summoned here today.

Superman, the leader of the Regime that had brought “peace” to the world, begins to ascend the steps that lead up to the Hall, his eyes fixed on the glass doors that lead into the interior of the building. He only gets about halfway up the stairs when the doors burst open from the inside, a very familiar figure rushing out towards him.

“Kal!”

The woman continues to rush towards him, finally reaching the Kryptonian in order to throw her arms around his shoulders, hugging him close. He frowns even more at this, never having seen the woman like this before. It took a lot to shake Diana, Queen of the Amazons. “Diana…”. He brings his hand up to her back, gently rubbing the bare shoulder that was exposed to him, the woman responding by burying her face in his chest, seemingly relieved now that he was here.

“What’s happened?” 

Superman was all business at the moment, not caring about anything else other than getting to the bottom of whatever had been done. He knew that it involved him. It had to, in some way or the other. He was always the source of every frustration and setback to his plans. 

Wonder Woman pulls back, trying to collect herself as she remembered that the soldiers were watching, and that she needed to pull herself together and be the representation of strength she knew she had to be. So she moves back from the man, and then to his side, though a little set back from him in order to show her subservience. 

It didn’t work to assuage Superman, who had seen the completely uncharacteristic fear in the woman’s eyes. He was getting more and more worried by the second. 

“We found them, Kal”.

“Found who?”

She was quiet for a second, not sure how to break the news to the man as they finally managed to get past the doors and into the Hall proper. It was a lot larger inside than the size of the doors might imply, with high marble arches and a large space that would allow for the convergence of many heroes. There were quite a few already inside, all milling nervously about something that was laying on the floor between them. 

He saw Yellow Lantern, Bane, Aquaman, Cyborg and Raven, all waiting there for him.

“The Flash and Hawkgirl”.

Diana’s voice was low, and her eyes were downcast, the woman refusing to meet the man’s eyes. “That’s good then” Kal says, missing the point that was being made. The Flash and Hawkgirl, two of his oldest friends. They’d been missing ever since the Regime had attempted to capture Bruce yet again. It was supposed to be a cut and dry mission. In and out. No fatalities. But it hadn’t gone that way, and for that, he was disappointed.

Diana had put her sword through Harley Quinn’s chest, killing her instantly, while Zatanna, Plastic Man and Deathstroke, the last members of the Insurgency who hadn’t been captured, aside from their leader of course, had been subdued and brought in. All were duly executed for their crimes against the Regime. It left a bad taste in his mouth to do it, having been friends with all of them with the notable exception of Deathstroke. 

But he’d had a plan that he had to stick to.

Threaten to publicly execute these last few members of the opposition, draw Batman out, and arrest them all. After that? They’d all most likely spend the rest of their lives behind bars. But as he watched the specially made gallows, waiting, just waiting for the black clad hero to show up, he realized that he wasn’t coming. He couldn’t look weak. Not now. Not on the verge of total victory.

So he had them killed after half an hour of the Batman not showing himself. Zatanna had been hanged, her mouth gagged to prevent her from using her magic. Her body swung there for two full days until it was cut down and incinerated.

Plastic man? He’d been burnt to a crisp right in front of everyone, nothing left of the jokester of the Justice League, reduced to nothing more than ash. Deathstroke had been the most fun for him personally, though he hated that he could describe it as “fun”. He’d strung him up and slowly cut off his arms, and then his legs before finally decapitating him, preventing the man’s metahuman abilities from keeping him alive and reforming his body. Super Soldier serums were nothing in comparison to the power that Kal held within him.

It had been a smashing success, but it was still not enough. Not when Bruce was still out there, plotting, a symbol of hope that he just knew in his gut would resist the Regime until his last dying breath, always a thorn in his side. ‘If only you’d joined us Bruce’ he thinks, wishing that he hadn’t had to fight the man who had once been his best friend. ‘We could’ve really saved the world’.

He kept moving forward, unable to do anything but as his eyes were fixed on the congregation in front of him, all of which were just starting to notice him. He could see the very same expression on their faces as he’d seen on Diana’s something that was even more disconcerting. If they were scared, the Earth’s greatest protectors who’d done awful things on behalf of the planet and the people on, then he had reason to be concerned. 

Hal was the first to recover, his expression twisting into one of rage as he approached the high councillor. “This is your fault!” Hal shouts, moving up to the man and pointing a finger right in his face. Superman idly wonders if he was going to hit him, but after all this time all of them knew better than that. “If you hadn’t split us up, if you had…”.

“Hal” Diana interjects, wanting to calm the man down. “This is not the…”.

“This is exactly the right fucking time!” the Yellow Lantern shouts, not wanting to be calmed down at all, not when his anger roiled so uncomfortably within him. “He stopped us from going after them right after the assault on Batman’s last base. He said that they were fine, and would show up soon…”.

“Watch yourself Hal” Kal warns, his eyes just beginning to take on a red hue. The former Green Lantern wasn’t listening though, wanting to vent much more than he had already gotten out. “You executed them. In broad fucking daylight. The last friends he had, and I’m using that word loosely”.

“Yo, Hal, cool it…”.

“Not now Cyborg” the Lantern says, though he does indeed take a deep breath to calm himself down, recognizing that he’d waded into dangerous waters. “Everything we’ve been doing, it’s all been to tick off Batman. Unbalance him. But none of it worked” he says, making his speech to all of the heroes. “We got everyone else but him, and we’ve been just chipping away at anything that might keep him grounded. He doesn’t have anything left Kal”.

“Which will make him weaker” Kal says, crossing his arms over his chest, defiant in the face of the man’s argumentative criticism. “He has nothing left to fight for”. Hal just shakes his head, chuckling to himself. “You really think that’ll make a guy like Bruce give up? Really?” 

“What did he do? You said that you found them” Kal says, tired of this conversation and wanting to get to the heart of everything that had started it regardless. “Are they alright? Have they received…”.

Bane and Raven move off to the side, while Cyborg remains where he was, averting his eyes from the sight before him, not wanting to look at it any more than he’d already had to. Kal steps forward, seeing the two figures on the ground in front of him, and almost vomits immediately. 

Hawkgirl….had been skinned completely, her wings plucked out leaving nothing but light brown stumps at the base of where they’d sprouted from in her back. She was bound by her ankles and hands, placed in such a position as to have her rear end pushed up into the air. She was still wearing her mask, bloody, lidless eye sockets looking out at the man who’d led her and the others into battle time and time again.

She was positioned like a Thanksgiving turkey atop a very large white platter that collected a fair amount of the blood that constantly dripped from her body. “By Rao….” he says, stepping back in shock at seeing one of them like this. This sight was too horrible, too...unnatural, so he turns to the other figure laying there on the floor, and sees the Flash.

His body was emaciated and shrunken, seemingly caved in at places. His skin was grey and sallow, and his hair? Grey. It looked like he’d aged one hundred years since the man had gone missing.

“He...he wouldn’t have done this” Superman says, shaking his head vigorously, refusing to believe that the Batman could’ve been behind this. That he would stoop to this level. “Done what?” Hal asks, once again vindictive. “Kill them? We once thought that about you too…”.

“If you have a problem with what we have done Jordan” Diana says, forgetting her fear in her rage, anger that was mixed between what had happened to her friends and the fact that Superman was being questioned right in front of her. “Then why are you still here?”

“I don’t know,” he admits, glaring at Superman’s back. “I guess I believed in what we were doing but...I…”.

“He’ll pay for this” Superman says, not caring for the internal emotional struggle and external personality clash happening right behind him. “He...he finally decides to kill, finally, and what does he do? He kills two heroes!” he snaps, beginning to pace back and forth in front of the corpses. “Two heroes dedicated to protecting this world. So much for his unimpeachable code of honor”. 

All of them were silent, not saying anything else as the facts are outlined before them, though there was something more to be said. “What?” Kal asks, finally noticing the loaded nature of the quiet around him. Cyborg steps forward, something in his hand. “There’s uh...there’s more”. In his hand was a CD, words written in marker across the face.

“Watch me”. 

It was followed by a smiley face which, oddly enough, had bat ears attached to it. Superman didn’t even care how odd it was to see such a thing coming from the dark knight, he just scowled down at the item and nodded, signalling Cyborg to show it to those around him. The half man, half machine nods, and places the CD on an open panel upon his arm, letting it close as a projector, the man being linked to the entirety of the computer systems of the Hall of Justice, turns on in the middle of the sprawling hall.

All eyes turn towards it, wondering exactly what their former friend turned adversary would have to say for himself now that his macabre message had been delivered. It takes a second, but eventually, the shaky camera work on display rights itself, Bruce having been leaning forward to fiddle with the camera, getting it to land right on him.

“There we go” he says within the video, setting himself down within the chair, coughing for a second as he tries to get comfortable. He looked awful, his skin sallow and a large amount of cuts and bruises dotting his face and body, the upper portion of which being bare. He sighs, looking downwards with a strange expression on his face.

“Hello Clark”.

The words boom out across the hall, shocking everyone into a hushed quiet, though the high councillor himself only glares at the man on the screen, not even feeling it as Diana moves upwards to grasp his elbow. “It’s been a while since we talked hasn’t it?” Bruce continues. “I assume you have Diana there as well. Hello to you as well old friend”.

He smirks to himself for a second, a light bit of laughter escaping before he grunts and twists his neck, bringing him back down to a state of calm. That was highly uncomfortable for them to hear. Batman laughing? Right after he killed two of their friends in such a brutal way? Or was this before? They weren’t sure.

The man just stops, looking down sadly at the ground of wherever he was, a place they couldn’t tell much from asides from the fact that it had dilapidated walls behind him. “It’s been quite an eventful few years hasn’t it? So many things have changed. I never told you this Clark but…”. He looks directly at the screen for this. “I miss it. How we used to be. All of you. Me. Heroes. Dick. Zee…”. He stops for a second, getting teary eyed, but he quickly collects himself.

Hal looks towards the corpse of his friend, the dead speedster still lying on the ground atop a tarp. He missed the way things used to be too.

“I never told any of you this back then, and maybe I should’ve. It doesn’t matter. It’s too late for all of that now. Far too late”. He leans back in his chair and sighs, bringing his hand up pinch at the bridge of his nose. “I considered you my family. The people I loved…”.

That hit all of them, though they buried it quickly enough. It was always hard to deal with the memories they all had. Fighting Batman wasn’t like fighting Lobo or Darkseid. It was gut wrenching at the best of times, a feeling that they could still bring to the surface despite all the hate that bubbled up to the surface over the years.

Even Superman has a barely perceptible change in his facial expression, softening ever so gently before he forces himself to be hard once more. He wasn’t called the Man of Steel for nothing, and he’d taken advantage of that moniker to the best of his ability as of late. ‘Fear is the only thing they understand’. It was a universal truth, one he understood perfectly well. 

“But...those times are gone. And now? Here we are”. He leans forward, peering directly into the camera to make the next series of statements. “I have nothing left, Clark. You’ve taken it. All I’ve had. My sons. My daughters. My friends. Alfred…”. The others weren’t exactly sure of what he was talking about, and they looked toward Superman, pondering what he meant by that.

“Is this it?” a voice shouts from the rear of the hall, a man walking in, his feet clicking quickly as they move across the tile. “Is he surrendering? Giving himself up?” Nightwing had a look of excitement on his face, ecstatic for the proposition of this war coming to an end, finally ceasing. Superman turns and raises his hand, gesturing for him to be silent, needing to hear the rest of his adversaries speech. 

Damian stops, finally able to get a look at the entirety of what happens, and he almost hurls at the sight of the burnt and charred flesh of Hawkgirl in front of him. “Ohh God…”. He looks towards the screen, seeing his father personally for the first time in a long while. “He...he did this?”

“Shhh. Be silent Damian”.

Diana was glaring at the screen, a distinct urge to draw her sword and go searching for the man, ending him for his crimes. She is just barely able to keep herself calm, though the fact that she didn’t know where the man was in and of itself posed a bit of an obstacle. She would overcome it. ‘Hera’ she calls out mentally, somewhat uselessly as her gods were now forever separated from her and her sisters, another casualty of the Batman’s meddling. ‘Help me find him, so that I may end this..once and for all’.

“I don’t really know why I’m making this video for you” Bruce says, shrugging his shoulders. “I mean, in the end...when it happened? That was the end. I see it now. I couldn’t go to you, my friends for help, not when you would’ve killed me on sight. And with my access to anyone who might’ve helped me gone...my last few friends dead...I tried on my own though you know?” he says, looking somewhat pleadingly at the camera, wanting them to believe him.

“What’s he talking about?” Hal asks, picking up on the strange tone of what the Batman was saying. Nobody answers him, hoping that the Caped Crusader would provide an answer himself soon enough. 

“I really did, but I just couldn’t make it work. It all happened so quickly. I should’ve seen it but...I guess I didn’t”. He stops, smiling ominously at the camera, something that makes all of them very uncomfortable. “I’m warning you about what’s coming. Giving you a peek. Short and simple”. The smile drops away, and a much more typical glare replaces it.

“I’ve realized another truth recently Kal-El” he says, spitting the name scornfully. He takes a moment to pick up where he left off, gripping the side of the desk before him ferociously, somehow managing to dent the wood, such was the strength of his grip. “I hate you”.

The words were whispered, almost inaudible. But before anyone could convince themselves that he didn’t say those words, he repeats them. “I hate you. All of you. So much. I can’t even express it right. I hate you”. He glares at the camera, panting heavily with the force of his anger behind him. “But even with that hate, I want you to know...I tried to save you. Even now. It only gives me a bit of satisfaction that I failed”.

“Failed at what?” Aquaman, King of Atlantis demands, marching forward and clanging the end of his trident into the tiled floor. “Stop speaking in riddles!”. The man was just venting his frustration, not actually speaking to the man as he knew he wasn’t there. Bruce launches into his explanation.

“The Joker...he was a lot smarter than I ever gave him credit for” Bruce says simply, folding his hands in front of him. “A genius even. He planned even more steps ahead than me. I admit it. When it comes to mayhem, he was the master, and you, Kal” he says, pointing at the screen and through it to the man who was thousands of miles away or, perhaps only a few hundred feet. They couldn’t be sure. “He saw in you his greatest tool. But remember, you were only the tool to him. Not the end goal. No. He knew how to play things”.

He breathes deeply, smiling again and coughing, turning away for a second, though that doesn’t stop him from speaking for long. “He knew what buttons to push with you, and in turn, knew how to press my buttons. I’m assuming you finally got my little gift?” he asks, splaying his hands out, gesturing to the screen before him, though in reality at the bodies of the two leaguers that were still on the ground. “You must’ve if you’re watching this. You see, they were fine for a while. Imprisoned. Safe,” he teases, as if the word he spoke meant the direct opposite.

“I wasn’t like you. I would never kill. It was the one rule I set for myself. The one thing I wouldn’t let myself do. That made me weak, Kal. You were right, but oh so wrong too”. He leans back and groans, slamming his hands on the desk instantly after, making them all jump in fear.

He had a horrible smile on his face, twisted in maniacal glee.

“I received a tip from one of my informants about a weapon you were holding. I thought it was on the up and up of course, so desperate was I to beat you. But I approached it all carefully, slowly, methodically” he chuckles, reaching back to brush his hand through his dark locks. “As it turned out, all the preparation was useless in the end. I found a canister. A gas canister at an abandoned warehouse in Gotham. One the Joker must’ve used a few years ago. I was going to leave it but...you know me. Curiosity killed the bat or rather...freed the bat”.

They were growing more and more uncomfortable by the moment, feeling as if the man’s laughs were echoing right through the Hall itself, each turning to look over their shoulder in fear for the vigilante that they were somehow standing right there.

They see nothing, which only adds to their unease. 

He stops laughing, coughing into his hand to collect himself, wanting all of it to get out, the whole sordid tale. “It exploded as soon as I got close to it, filling my lungs with a strain of Joker Toxin that I’ve never come into contact with before. I was readying myself to die, falling to my knees and trying to get the antidote that I always kept on me, but...the funniest thing happened” he says, looking up. “Nothing. Nothing happened. I was fine. Safe. Perfectly well”.

He licks his tongue over his lips, exposing the whites of his teeth with yet another smile, Bruce smiling more in the few minutes it had taken to make this video than any of them had ever seen in real life interactions with the man. Damian himself was the most frightened, knowing his father in and out. Whoever this was? This wasn’t his father. Not anymore.

“I went home, thinking it was nothing but...hehehe...wouldn’t you know it? I did a little blood test on myself, and do you want to know what I found?”

“We should turn this off” Raven says, stepping forward and raising her hand with her eyes locked onto Cyborg, though Superman instantly overrides her. “Shut up. I want to know what he’s planning”. His eyes didn’t shift away, locked as they were onto the screen. The demoness backs down, but she still felt like the best course of action was to turn it off.

“My DNA was being rewritten at the very core. Still me, sure, but the other part? The Joker...he was part of me now. Worming his way through every thought, replacing my own desires or changing them slightly to suit the new normal”. He puts his hands on the side of his head and shakes, moving back and forth.

“I tried. I tried so hard. So hard to fight it. So hard. So hard. But it all came back to me. Every night. Everything you did to me” he says, almost sobbing. “I dreamed of it every night. How Dick died…”. Damian looks down at this, remembering that he’d been the one to kill the man he saw as his older brother. “Huntress…”.

Diana still carried the guilt of snapping the woman’s neck with such ease, but even now she fought to push it down and away. ‘It wasn’t my fault. She stood against the regime. She brought it on herself’.

“Zee...Tim….Barbara…”.

Those...those were all on Superman. All had been executed, though Barbara and Tim had died prior to the staged execution of the sorceress and her other comrades. Their deaths had been quick. Gun shots right to the temple, delivered by his soldiers. It had been merciful, as recognition for their past memories. 

“Alfred…”.

Kal feels his breath hitch at that, knowing exactly what the man was going to say, though he desperately hoped he wouldn’t. He couldn’t see the man’s face, it was still being buried in his head, and yet he knew what he was going to say. “You sent Mr. Zsasz into my home. Had him kill my father”.

All eyes instantly turn to Superman, the others not believing that Bruce would straight up lie about something like that. The man was many things, but a liar? No. He seemed far too shattered for something like that anyways. “That true?” Hal asks, advancing on the High Councillor, forcing Kal to turn to face the accusation.

“I did...what needed to be done”.

“You do that more and more now” Hal asks. “Don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Make excuses” the Yellow Lantern clarifies. “To justify how far over the line you’re willing to go. You had Alfred killed? Why?”

“To draw him out” Diana says, having known that her lover had planned such a ruse and supported it. She advances on the Yellow Lantern, wanting to cut him off at the pass. “It worked”.

“At what fucking cost?!” he roars back.

“Enough!”

Kal was having a hard enough time keeping his mind straight with all that Bruce was revealing to him alone, and he didn’t need the added issue of infighting on top of it. “I did what I did, and that’s it. Problem with it Hal?” he asks, advancing on the man and instantly reminding everyone of what had happened to Shazam, Billy Batson, when he decided to go against Superman. As much as the Yellow Lantern didn’t like it, he liked living more, and backed down.

Yellow.

The color of cowards.

“Hehehe...heheh….”.

Sounds from the computer screen projector begin to beg their attention back to it, and they all turn to see Bruce shaking in laughter. It started off low and restrained at first, before growing into a greater crescendo once again.

“Hahahahah...HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

“Turn it off!” Raven roars, her eyes splitting into their trademark double pairs in her fear. Cyborg himself was frozen in fear, his eyes glued to what was happening to the man right before their very eyes. The skin of his hands was becoming...pale. Paler than he’d ever seen it, practically white. It spreads up and down his arms, and finally down to chest and shoulders. His face was still hidden though, not allowing them to see what had happened there.

“What the hell is happening?” Nightwing screams, not knowing how to respond to this, while Bane himself just crosses his fingers over his chest and forehead. “Dios mio…”.

The man keeps laughing, though eventually it slows down until nothing but an eerie silence remains, his face still hidden from them. Slowly, he begins to raise it, exposing his forehead, and then his eyes, which now were green in place of their normal blue. His face was entirely white, much like the rest of his body. 

He smiles again, looking directly into the camera in his new form.

“He knew, Boy Scout” he teases, enunciating the words in a low and yet breathy growl. “He knew what you would do, and he knew what I would do. He knew just how far you’d go. He knew what was going to happen, and he knew how to make it even better. He knew! Hehe...AHAHAHAHAH!”

“Alright, fuck this shit!” Cyborg shouts, reaching down to the panel on his arm, wanting to turn off the whole thing so that they couldn’t see this anymore. “We gotta plan to take him...ugghh...wha...what’s...what’s happening?” the metal man asks, the servos and gears in his arm failing as he reaches out for the panel where the CD was, locked just in place.

“It’s starting….” Bruce says on screen, rising and moving off into the rear of the room, where he continues to chuckle ominously to himself. “I’m not there to see how it’s all happening of course. I mean, how could I? I had other work to get to while making this video so I had to make sure to get all my ducks in a row”. He was moving towards a case, which he opened, revealing what could only be described as a batsuit if Clive Barker had designed it.

“Cyborg” Superman says, moving forward, concerned about his friend as he struggles to move, and can’t. He was stuck there, right on the floor. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t...I don’t know!”

“Right now” Bruce supplies part of the conversation between them without being present. “Cyborg is feeling the effects of what I call the Cuckoo Protocol. Get it? Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Hahahahaah!”. His laughter only ceases when he reaches down for the chest armor, a long sleeved black shirt with what looked like leather strips over the shoulders and across the chest.

“The common cuckoo bird really likes laying its eggs in the nests of other birds,” he explains, strapping all the leather down over his chest. “It just comes along and, poof! Pushes the eggs already there out, laying its own and allowing the mama bird to raise them for her, unaware and none the wiser”.

Cyborg begins to groan out in pain, the human half of his face twisting up in such a way as to make the others aware of that fact. Diana rushes forward, right alongside Arthur, both men trying to assist their friend. “Vic?! What’s happening?”

“I don’t...I don’t…”.

His voice was glitching, breaking in and out as if it was a computer that was off the fritz, and the whining of more servos in his legs can be heard. “I came up with the name after I realized that I didn’t have the batcomputer anymore” Bruce says, continuing his monologue by pulling on his black pair of leather gloves, making sure they were tight. “I really missed it, but you destroyed it in the cave Victor. I really wanted a new one, and it came to me, you were perfect!”

Victor begins to convulse, his metallic body rattling and shaking as spit begins to coalesce around the corners of his mouth, joined quickly by blood. He opens to speak, and instead, only a froth of blood comes out, coating Aquaman and Diana both while causing them to step away. “By Atlantis, what has he done to him?”

“I needed to make a few changes of course. I don’t want my PC walking around. I like it more stationary”.

“Urrrrggh….urrrgggh…”.

“Kal do something!” Diana cries out to the man who was supposed to be able to do anything, but all the Kryptonian dictator can do is watch, his keen eyesight allowing him to pick up on what was happening inside the Titan’s body. 

Nanites.

Billions, maybe even trillions, all replicating themselves at a faster and faster rate, rewiring Cyborg down at a base level that he couldn’t fight against. It was happening too fast, and using his heat vision to incinerate the nanites, the only option he had, would’ve killed the man.

But judging from how he looked now? That might’ve been a mercy.

“I also like my computers with less...meaty components, so I had to fix that too. Right now, Cyborg has a multitude of my newest little creations inside of him, working like busy little bees for my vision. I do that a lot now. Create things. You have no idea how freeing it is to just...laugh. What kind of toys the mind can design for your own amusement” Bruce says over his shoulder, reaching into a crate to retract the final piece of his new costume.

The cowl.

It was black as usual, with the high pointed ears, but all around the eyes and the back of the head was a ring of spikes composed of a strange shiny metal that none of them had ever seen before. Cyborg himself now had a steady stream of blood and pus pouring from his mouth, bits of flesh as well that were being expelled from the body. Parts of his lungs, his kidney.

“Kal?”

Diana had backed away from Cyborg, giving up on any hope of actually being able to save him, and was now instead looking for some sort of answer. A vow of revenge. A plan. Something! Anything! But all Kal could do was look on at his friend, viewing in vibrant clarity the horror that was befalling him. It was like watching an ant colony eat a man from the inside.

“No...he...he wouldn’t. Couldn’t” he whispers to himself, though everyone else heard it. “He’s Batman. He...he wouldn’t…”.

Bruce had put on his cowl, and as such he now turns to look directly into the camera, the very image of horror as he smiles down with murderous glee at all of them. “Enjoy the rest of the show. And ohh, just in case any of you decide to leave the Hall before I show you all of your gift baskets?”

He brings up a detonator, and clicks a button, which seemingly does nothing.

They all looked around in confusion, wondering exactly what had been done. All save for Superman, who’s eyes widen as he hears what happened. He could hear the horrified screams, the massive explosion. Death. He could hear death. “That was Metropolis. I decided to knock it down again with the help of an old friend. Anyone remember the Atomic Skull? You really should’ve gotten rid of his corpse better Kal” this new twisted version of the Batman teases. “I mean, it’s dangerous to leave that stuff laying around”.

“I’ll kill you” Superman vows, speaking to the man that wasn’t there.

“I’ll see all of you soon. But even still, I don’t want to be a bad host. Cyborg? Make sure our friends see what they’ve won. What they’re...walking away from in all of this”. The video feed finally cuts with this final message, leaving the screen completely black in its wake, and the members of the Regime either horrified or enraged. “We need to kill him. Now!” Aquaman shouts, waving his trident about as if he was holding court over Atlanteans.

“Batman mixed with the Joker? That’s probably the worst news I’ve ever heard”.

“We must stay calm” Diana says, speaking to Hal directly, the man who had spoken last. “We will strike back and we will overcome this new threat, just as we always have. By staying together. By trusting in the strength of the Regime. By trusting in Kal. But first…”. She turns sadly to Cyborg, who was still sitting there, alive, his single human eye that remained twitching.

“Cyborg? Victor?” she asks, stepping forward once again, and gently reaching out for the man’s shoulder. “Can you hear us? Can you speak?” She touches him lightly, feeling nothing but the cold of steel as she shakes him lightly. This was all it took.

The man’s head, the human part that remained, detaches from the machine, and then falls off to the slide, sliding down his metal carapace and then plopping onto the floor with a wet sound, leaving a bloody trail that runs the length of his shoulder and arm. Diana was shocked, and so were the others, especially Raven who, despite being a demoness, had just watched her last teammate from her days as a Titan die.

The innards were left open where the head had been, exposing the CPU and all the other tech that Silas Stone had crammed into his son in order to keep him alive. But the brain? The brain was completely gone, having plopped out along with the rest of his head. Damian looked on in awe and fear of what his father had just done, even while under the genetic influence of the Joker. Hal just wretched and vomited onto the floor, everyone unable to fully process what had just taken place.

Cyborg’s body begins to hum, the open spot on its head being instantly covered up by a metal shield that instantly clangs upwards, protecting its central systems from any damage. His single remaining eye glows bright red, the systems booting up without the input from the man who’d once been a part of the machine. 

“Alright” Kal says, already putting Cyborg out of his mind. “We have to get out there. Find a way to lure him out…”.

“Woah, hold it there” Nightwing says, stepping forward and trying to seize control of the system. “I saw it on your face. Metropolis? It did go up, didn't it?” Kal nods slowly, wondering what the man was driving at. “He said not to leave. How many other cities could he take out if we don’t listen to him?” It was a surprisingly intelligent statement from the headstrong and arrogant man, one that was instantly countered by Diana.

“He’s just one man..”

“You are forgetting Wonder Woman” Bane says, stomping forward. “The nature of the man we are fighting. Él no es un simple hombre”. Diana glares at the villain who’d taken the Regime’s amnesty, wanting to fight back and take the initiative before the others chimed in with their own opinions. All around them though, the screens that lined either side of the hall flick on, most filled with nothing but static.

Except the far right one, which presented a clear image. It was of the sea, under it at least, where countless bubbles were moving upwards, an underwater drone trucking alone, the noise of its engine giving that fact away. “Aquaman…Arthur Curry. Fish man” Cyborg’s voice booms out, though this time much more robotic in nature. The blonde king is instantly on edge, not knowing what to do.

“I decided to pay a little visit to your kingdom under the sea” the voice says, just as the drone itself turns to move through the blackness all around it, lights just peeking out around the corners to hint at what was coming. “It was really nice, I have to admit”.

“We must destroy Cyborg’s body” Aquaman states, something that instantly angers Raven who steps forward in a rage. “No!”.

“We have no choice!” the man booms. “It’s now working for Batman. We…”.

“You might want to spend time watching what’s going to happen in place of arguing, Aquaman” the voice booms out, making it clear that Batman had not only corrupted Cyborg’s systems, but was now speaking directly through him. “After all, how often do you get to witness the death of an ancient civilization?”

At that exact moment, a high pitched screech emanates from out of the drone, just as it turns to look at the city in all its splendor. It wasn’t loud enough to hurt them of course, though it was mildly annoying. What they were all looking at though was the splendor of Atlantis, its high buildings and glowing lights that added an ethereal quality to everything surrounding it, even the sea above and below it.

Just as abruptly, the screech stops, and Aquaman is left to glare at the scene in front of him, unsure of what was happening. All was quiet, the drone continuing to float in the slight current that was washing over it while it stared at the city before it. 

“What’s…”

Something skirts by the camera, its legs kicking out so quickly that nobody could really get a fix on it, the dark shape almost indiscernible as anything more than humanoid. The Regime members all watch it dart forward towards the city, wondering what in the hell it could’ve been.

It wasn’t alone though.

One more joins it, followed by two, then four, then fifteen, the figures all rushing towards the city with reckless abandon. “Arthur” Diana says, turning to the man whose domain was now being viewed. “What are those?”

The blonde man only looks on, not knowing the answer to that, but knowing in his heart that whatever they were, it wasn’t good. More and more dart by, their shadows giving way to much more visible outlines as the drone plunges forward, moving towards the light of the city. “You know Arthur, I was considering how to turn the loyalty of your people against you” Cyborg booms out, reminding them that his remains were still under the control of Batman.

“But the logistics were just too much. Impossible, even for me”.

Arthur gripped the shaft of his trident fiercely, trying to contain his rage. “But, I couldn’t exactly just leave them there, alone, without them knowing just how much of a patsy their king is. Subservient to Superman”. Arthur turns to Kal, glaring at the man, demanding he do something. He was just as enthralled as the rest though, watching the screen intently as the face of one of these creatures is revealed.

He can only see large bulbous eyes, right above a flat flaring snout and a maw of razor sharp teeth that looked as if they belonged to a shark more so than any other creature. Its skin was greenish blue, translucent lights indicative of a deep sea dwelling creature lining its body. It had claws too, weapons that looked no less intimidating than the teeth in their maw. 

The drone moves along with this makeshift army closer and closer to the city, finally breaching its walls. The men standing guard there look on in horror, one of their facial expressions caught on camera, just in time for his death to be shown to the Regime.

The creature slashes his claws outwards and slams them through the Atlantean soldier’s chest, blood spurting out instantly and clouding the water before the creature leans in and attaches its jaw to the open wound, gnawing intently as the man screams. They were only focused on this singular soldier’s death rattle, but all around they could hear the same sounds. Sounds of horror and death.

“No!”

“You spent so long trying to protect your city, your kingdom from us surface dwellers” Batman chuckles via Cyborg. “Sitting on your throne of moral indignity. As if you were any better than us. Now Arthur, I’m teaching you a lesson. The sea? It isn’t your friend. Just because you can take to seals and galavant with whales doesn’t make it so”.

The drone pans away, giving a wide angle shot of the now besieged city, its defenses being taken down with expert precision, and the defenders dispatched with animalistic savagery. “Hehehee..look at all that! It’s almost shameful to see it go. Say, Arthur? Your family...Mera...Arthur Jr.? Are they still in the palace?”

Aquaman’s eyes widen in fear and rage, and he advances on the machine that was now serving as the focal point of Bruce’s communication with them. “Bruce, I swear by Atlantis…”.

“I’d hurry up if you’re going to make a vow of vengeance” Cyborg says, his single remaining eye glowing red. “Especially by a city that’s not going to be there very soon”. The drone pans lower, moving down onto what passed for street level in such a place, where the true horror was being revealed. Women and men, children, everything, it was being torn apart by these creatures which seemed to have a supernatural strength.

Soldiers fought back, and every so often, they downed one, but just as quickly as they opened fire, downing one of the creatures, the others swarmed over it, eating not only the corpse of their fallen comrade but charging at those that had killed it. It was a battle that the Atlantean marines, so often used to intervening as a military force on the surface as Superman’s pawns, were little able to counter.

The drone stops for a second, looking up at the golden palace that contained not only Arthur’s throne, but also his family. The man gulps, beginning to pant in fear. He was too far away. “I have to get to Atlantis”. He turns abruptly, and marches over to the far side of the room where the teleporter was. “I can beat them back. I can save my city”. He approaches the panel, and places hand, palms down upon it, though all that was returned was a flashing red screen. “Access denied?” he asks, not understanding why.

“Ohh Arthur. Did you really think that I’d be so cruel as to let you actually get there? To let you actually go to Atlantis and witness the death of your family with your own eyes? No, no. Only the best for my friends. I’m giving you a front row seat in comfort. Maybe when their little bitty corpses are resting on the seafloor you can be thankful that I spared you from that”.

“Bruce...please…. Don’t do this”.

“Do kings beg? I was under the impression that kings don’t beg,” returns the sardonic voice, the drone moving once again, this time ascending just a bit so the city can be seen in all its destructive splendor. “My deadwaters are really going to town huh?” he asks, just as one of the main Atlantean batteries explodes, silencing the gun that had been doing precious little good before. 

“Hidden as they were for all those centuries, deep in the Marianas Trench. It took a while to get them here, but with the allure of free food and such a delightful supersonic wave? They couldn’t resist”. That explained the sound they’d heard at the beginning of all this at least. It had been a signal of some sort, something that lured them in.

The drone was moving up the steps to the palace now, the guards being cut down with ease, not unlike their other comrades. “Bruce, they are innocent of all this” Arthur continues to plead. “They are not part of this war. Leave them be”.

“I was thinking about it but...no. No I don’t think I will. You see, Kaldur'ahm, who I’m sure is somewhere in the city, his bones being picked at right now, he didn’t stop and let all those innocent protestors in Washington D.C live. Were they part of this war?”

“That wasn…”.

“A king takes responsibility for the actions of his subjects” Bruce teases, just as the front doors to the palace are kicked open, the deadwaters moving in with an arming speed, no doubt spurred on by their blood lust. “And I’m afraid this is just the price you’re going to have to pay Arthur”. The drone moves quickly into one of the side rooms, following along with the deadwaters who had a clear sense of where to go to sate their hunger.

It panned out, as the figures of Mera and her personal guard were revealed, the woman clutching their son to her chest as she looked out fearfully. “Bruce…”.

“You killed my sons”.

“No! No! Keep them back! Protect the Prince!”

They could hear the horrified cries of Mera, Queen of Atlantis, right at that moment, and the men square up, forming a phalanx of protection around the woman. It would do no good, the deadwaters surged forward, drawn to the cries and fear of their quarry. Mera couldn’t use her powers to push them back, holding Arthur Jr. as she was. “Please! No! Arthurrrrr!”.

The king of Atlantis turns away, tears rushing down his cheeks from his eyes as he hears his wife and son cry out, all of them being cut to pieces and feasted upon by the monstrosities that Batman had summoned and then let loose upon them. He wanted to feel rage, but all he could feel was pain.

The man falls to the floor, resting on his knees and letting his trident clatter to the floor, nobody making a move to comfort the man. They all had their eyes locked on the mass murder that they were witnessing, part of them refusing to believe them. “No...no this is all a trick. It has to be!” Damian shouts, moving forward towards Cyborg’s corpse and drawing his escrima sticks. “He wouldn’t do this. It’s him trying to get into our heads. We have to shut this down”.

He draws his hand back, about to strike at the formerly sentient supercomputer with them. 

“Damian no!”.

Diana’s warning came too late, as the replacement Nightwing brings the weapon down upon the steel, and is instantly electrocuted, his body spasming as volts go right through him, charring bits of his skin. He screams out in pain.

“AHHHHHH!”

After a minute that felt like hours, the hero falls back, smoking onto the ground, groaning out in pain while Diana rushes to him, wanting to help in any way she could. “Damian! Damian!” she shouts, trying to get him to speak and tell her that he was okay. She gets no response, but she does know that the man is alive. She angrily turns to the machine, speaking to Bruce. “Your own son Bruce! How could you!”

“He said it himself” the machine booms out in response. “Superman was more of a father to him than I ever was. And yet, he just stood there...and watched. He did nothing to save the man who thought so much of him”. Kal looks away, ashamed and finally prompted into action, dropping to his knees at Nightwing’s side and lifting him up onto his back so they could at least see his face.

“It’s going to be alright Damian”.

“Aside from that, nothing would’ve happened had Damian not replaced the wooden escrima sticks that Dick was partial to for steel ones. I suppose you got what you wanted, didn’t you Damian? You got to cause more pain? Too bad you didn’t know it was your own”.

The screen that showcased the now destroyed city of Atlantis flicks off, leaving nothing but darkness there, it’s purpose having been served. But as soon as this one was off, another one flicked off, showcasing another aerial view, though this time it was from above the waves, and moving much faster.

“Onto more important matters than my pathetic excuse for offspring” Batman says. “Diana, you might want to pay attention. Do you see that island in the distance?” he asks, though there was nothing revealed to them on screen. At least not to the others besides Wonder Woman who could plainly see Themyscira in the distance.

“Wayne…” she warns, abandoning Nightwing for the moment as she stands once more. “Do not…”.

“Don’t what?” he asks with laughter tinting his voice. “Don’t pay your lovely mother and sisters a visit? Or don’t use the magic Zatanna left with me before she died to reveal the island to all of “man’s world”? Which one Diana? I need you to be clear”.

Looking at the camera angle made it clear that they were viewing what was happening from a much larger craft, most likely the batwing, the nose of which now glowed purple with a series of runes having been painted on it. They burst out, sending a wave of energy forward across the waves of the Aegean, rushing towards the island.

For a moment, nothing happened, and they were all left waiting. Waiting for the inevitable shimmer that occurs when the burst of energy breaks the barrier that had kept the Amazons separate from the rest of the world for eons.

“Diana…” Kal says warningly, stepping forward and placing a hand on her shoulder. “I...I don’t think…”.

She shrugs him off and advances forward, her heart beating so rapidly in her chest that she was sure the others could hear it. “Bruce…”.

“Do you think pleading will work on me Diana? Especially when it didn’t work for Arthur? Hahahaha!” Batman chuckles, before becoming contemplative. “Though...you do have a much nicer rack than he does. Tell you what. Give me a little jiggle of those sweater puppies and I might just give up on this little plan of mine” he says crudely and in a completely out of character way. 

“You bastard!”

“I take it that that’s a no then?” he asks. “Ehh, ohh well. To be honest? I wasn’t actually going to honor that agreement anyways”. The batwing was getting closer and closer to the island, its sinister purpose no doubt close to being revealed.

“Diana, I’m going to stop it. Stay he….”.

He stops as he’s about to finish his sentence, hearing yet another city go up in atomic smoke. “Eeeeeehhh!” Batman screeches, making the sound of an alarm. “Nope, nope, nope! That’s not how I set the rules down” he says. “I warned you Superman. No trying to save the day. Besides, you're no boy scout anymore. Why would you even want to save a few pesky bitches secluded away on their island? Your desire to just cost Star City its existence”.

“No…”.

“How many people would you be willing to let die, Superman?”

“How many cities?” he asks, demanding an answer. “Ohh, well...hehe. I forgot. So many doomsday weapons just laying about, I couldn’t really be sure. I’ll give you a hint though! Around the world? The number is somewhere between one more and ninety nine”.

Kal looks away, shaking his head in rage as he clenches his fists.

“Do you want to keep testing me? I’ll admit it’s a fun game but I’d have to question your sanity. After all, the very definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results”.

“What do you have planned for my sisters?” Diana asks, no longer caring about all of the cities that were in danger, not when her own home was under such a threat. “Simple really. I’m part Joker now, part Batman. Both? Well...they enjoyed female company” he teases. “I need a Harley Quinn of my own of course! New me, new girl! Catwoman is out because well...I wanted to do a little experiment on just how many ways there were to skin a traitorous bitch of a cat” he hisses angrily, some of the old Bruce shining through despite the decidedly unnatural words that escaped his lips.

“And the original, the OG if you will...someone who I came to see as a friend and ally unironically...she was gone. A shame really. She was perfect. I hate to start from scratch but...I do as I must. You see Wondy, I thought that I’d open up...auditions”.

The word was spit out so softly and so low that it sent shivers up the woman’s back, having a feeling that whatever was about to happen was the furthest thing from good as possible. “Hippolyta is naturally out of the running of course” he says, the camera angle switching to below the aircraft, exposing the shore that the batwing had just crossed over.

“Being that...you killed her and all..heheheheheeHAHAHAHAHAAH! I’m sorry...I’m sorry, it’s just...hehe….Amazonian matricide. You’re probably the only one who could ever have pulled that off! And probably will be the only one ever!”.

She was ashamed of this sordid part of her past, the act having been necessary to secure the warriors she needed to pacify man’s world. She hated that she had to do it, but her mother. She was so unyielding. So steadfast. She refused to abet her “daughter’s madness” as she had called it. So, Diana had forced her to abdicate in the typical Amazonian way.

Trial by combat. To the death.

“But...anyways, anyways. Yeah! I figured that if I was going to start with the best, I should go to Paradise Island where the strongest female warriors had fought for years and years to perfect their craft. To become the best”.

The batwing was now over the living quarters of the Amazons, the white marble buildings easily visible in the hot sun of midday. The bottom of the batwing opens up, the bombay doors ready to drop something down upon them, which was quickly revealed to be a series of bombs with smiley faces and hearts on them.

The writing read, “to the Amazons with love, your B-Man”.

The mechanism drops the barrels, which begin to fall down towards the ground where all of the Amazons had assembled, looking up into the sky at the intruder into their domain with awe in their eyes. The cameras of the batwing zoom in, giving Diana a clear view of some of her sisters, all of whom she recognized.

There was Nubia and Phillipus, Phoibe and Artemis, all Amazons who had only begrudgingly gone along with her plans, simply out of being beaten into submission. “A man has to look to his future doesn’t he?” Batman asks, the barrels falling ever closer and closer to the ground until they finally impact, smashing open and exposing a green gas that instantly spreads out over the entire ground and covers the women, who all instantly begin to cough, dropping their swords and spears to the ground in order to try and cover their mouths and try and prevent the inhalation of the gas. She knew instantly what he’d done, and her eyes widened in horror. Bruce begins to explain it regardless.

“You see, I made more of the Joker’s new and improved toxin. Changed a bit here and there, expounded on a few different things but in the end? Essentially the same”. One cue, the warriors begin to laugh, their hands moving away from their mouths as they look at one another, unable to stop the cacophony that rises up into the air.

“AAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! HAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHA!”

“No!” Diana shouts, slamming her fist down on a desk and shattering it into a million splinters, all of which go flying about. “I will find a cure for this Wayne. I swear it. And you will die a painful death!” He doesn’t answer, instead just adding his own laughter to the Amazons, whose skin was rapidly becoming paler and paler, and their hair, once a myriad of different hues and shades, quickly became green.

“Wayne! You fucking bastard answer me!”

“I’m sorry Princess. I’m sorry it’s….It’s just...it’s so funny because you’re not going to be alive to do anything about it”. The screen abruptly shifts, showing that time had passed since the very first strike upon the island, and now the changed warriors, in various states of undress, had assembled before the man was seated on Diana’s throne. 

A camera was shakily recording him, the light sound of chuckling heard from behind it as it was being held by one of the changed Amazons. He waits a second, looking out over his dominion of women who had painted their shields and remaining armor in splatterings of green. Bruce, or whatever creature had replaced him, rises and splays out his arms.

“Ladies. It’s time. Time to see which among you shall take their place at my side. Now, doesn’t that sound fun? Don’t you want to entertain me?”.

“YESS! YESS! ANYTHING FOR YOU!” they all call out in sync, raising their spears in a sonorous war cry. Their faces were all split by a horrible smile. “Good. Let’s see which one of you wants to be my mistress of mayhem the most! Kill! Kill! Kill for your king! Kill! For the Batman Who Laughs!”

It didn’t take much more than that, and the trained warriors and sisters fell upon each other with swords, shields and spears, cackling like hyenas. Nubia was the first to get a kill, slicing the heart from Lycia in one swoop, laughing like a madwoman as she turned to Batman. 

“My love! Do you see how dedicated I am to you? How much blood that I spill in your name?”

Her distraction was enough to allow Artemis to move up behind her, and thrust a spear right through her midsection, causing the woman to snarl out in pain and horror, all the while the ever present laughter was still there. “No! No! Not her Batman! Never her! She’s weak! She doesn’t...Hahaha..HAHAHAHAH! She...she won’t make you laugh!”

The carnage continues, shocking everyone as Amazon falls upon Amazon, Artemis turning back to turn on some more of her sisters in time for the camera to zoom in on Batman, who smiles down at the blood stained sands of the Amazonian training field before him. The fight rages on, but Batman once again begins to speak. 

“I took special care for this one. Unlike the shindig I had planned for Arthur, I preplanned all of this. It’s a surprise you didn’t know about any of this Diana”. The woman looked away, fuming at what she was watching. “But, eventually? We did have a winner. One woman who was so desperate to be my main squeeze that she triumphed over everyone”.

“I’ll kill you”.

“Don’t you want to know who it was?” Bruce mocks, not even acknowledging her threat. “I mean, it’s actually pretty funny considering everything. You Amazons, heh, you sure are a repressed bunch! As soon as she was done, I just wanted you to know that we fucked over the dead bodies of your sisters, and she loved it. They’re still there you know? I’m not one to clean up after my messes. If you had some time, maybe you could even get out there and bury a few of them...maybe”.

“Bruce, this is over. You’ve gone too far!” Superman shouts. “You’re a monster. No better than the Joker!”

“Ohh but you’re wrong on both counts, as usual Clark. You see, I’m no monster. At least not one of my own doing. No. That was you. You and the Joker. Together. You’ve created me you see” he says. “You took everything from me, and he gave me the escape button. A way out from all of the pain you’d caused. Your betrayal”.

“None of this would’ve happened if you’d killed the Joker years ago!”

“And none of this would’ve happened if you would’ve just stopped at him” Bruce hits back, the smile still coloring his voice. “How many years did you let Luthor or Lobo live for? The Atomic Skull? Chemo? Cheetah or Ares for you Diana? Black Manta...the list goes on and on. You demanded a standard of me that you yourself never ascribed to Clark. You wanted me to cross a line that you weren’t willing to until everything had been taken from you”.

Superman had no rebuttal for that and Batman takes advantage, continuing. “You had everything. So many blessings to count. A family that loved you. A childhood. A wife. A child on the way. Sure, the latter two were taken from you, but when you look at someone like me? Who never had anything…”.

“Except your massive wealth!”

“A cold comfort Diana. A cold comfort. Wealth doesn’t bring a little boy’s parents back, nor does it hold him and hug him when he is scared at night. Erase the memory of their dead bodies laying out on the floor of some alleyway. But I digress. Even if you had the right to do what you did, why did you do it to so many others?”

“I…”.

“You widowed Vic Sage, Diana. When you killed his wife, Huntress. Such a good soldier. I wish she was here today. I could only imagine the damage her crossbow could do to this little society you’ve built up around you”. 

“That was a mistake” she retorts.

“Was it? A mistake is stepping on someone’s foot. A mistake is breaking a glass. A mistake is putting your whites in with your colors and putting in too much bleach. Snapping a woman’s neck in cold blood? No...no. Whether you two knew it or not, you wanted to kill. To have a firm hand with criminals. Hehehe...kinda funny”.

“Nothing about this is funny,” Superman glowered, though Bruce only laughed harder. “Of course it is Super Jerk! It’s all funny. Don’t you see? It’s all a sick joke. We’ve come full circle. You killed the Joker and started this war, and he came back...welllll kinda. It’s still me. Just what I really want to do is coming out,” he admits. “It’s scary isn’t it, you big hypocrite? How much you hated that I wouldn’t just take a life. How you didn’t believe me when I said that I’d walk down a dark road if I did that...and yet...you’re so afraid now”.

“I fear nothing”.

Bruce laughs uproariously at that, the machine causing it to boom about with an alarming amount of echoing about the hall. “Yes you are. You’re practically pissing your tighty whities! I can feel it Clark, and I always did. All of you...you always feared me. Deep down you knew that I was not to be fucked with. Not to be crossed”.

“You’re nothing Bruce. Just an animal to be put down”.

“Well that’s nice of you to say Clark but before we send the dogcatcher out after me to deliver an admittedly well deserved spanking, I want you to see something yourself. I thought you’d be interested to know but...hehe..you weren’t alone Clark!”

The screens switch for one final time, turning to the one in the middle which abruptly turns on, showcasing rather grainy footage of an operating table. An operating table that held a blonde woman on it, a collar with a glowing green rock on it that Superman recognized all too well. In fact, he recognized a lot about the woman. The blue suit. The red cape. The crest over her chest.

The house of El.

“Kara?” he asks, stepping forward to look at the woman whom he’d known from the archives in the ship that brought him to Earth was meant to be his protector. He hadn’t known why she wasn’t on Earth, but he’d always assumed that her ship had run of course, lost to the deep recesses of space. She was his family, his cousin, and apparently she was alive. The only remaining family he had in the entire universe.

“Who? Clark, who is that?” Diana asks, needing to know what was going through the man’s mind at that moment. “It’s...It’s my cousin. He has my cousin”.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but...hehe, new variation of an old story. Starts with a dying planet, a pod sent off world with the hopes of being able to save at least part of their world. So desperate were the scientists to save their pathetic little boring, sterile world. We all know about our little baby dictator” Batman teases, a figure putting up a crude drawing of a spaceship rocketing across the sky, containing baby Kal.

“But what we didn’t know was that another had been launched. His older, much more beautiful cousin. She was meant to pave the way for him here. Protect him and raise him on the ideals of...blah, blah, blah. I’ve always found it boring. Always. Your preening about your stupid fucking planet Clark” Batman mocks. “As if they were so advanced. So much better than us. Tell me then, why did they wind up blowing themselves up too? Pfft...good riddance to bad rubbish Clark”.

“Hehehehehe!”

The paper is taken away, revealing the woman who was still struggling on the medical table. “She landed a little while ago. Maybe a week or two, and I’ve been studying her. Poking her feetsies and testing her reflexes and what not”.

“LET ME GO!” the woman shouts, struggling in vain against her bonds as Batman himself, dressed in his new get up, approaches from the darkness, a green hued needle in his hand. “I found her, after she crashed in Gotham. And you know what? I decided to keep her. After all, what one Harley did, two could do even more….”.

Superman wasn’t even going to bother protesting at this point, knowing that it was useless. He was stuck here, unable to do anything other than watch what was about to happen to his cousin, a woman he hadn’t seen since he was a baby. She had apparently gotten to Earth finally, after all this time, and was about to be taken from him.

Another loss. Another piece of Krypton.

On the screen, Kara thrashes about, fighting against the horrifying visage approaching her. “No! No! Stop! Please!”

“Ohh sweetheart, my dear little Kryptonian” Bruce says, reaching out to rub his hand over the protesting girl’s cheek. “After this is all over? You’re going to feel so free that you’re not going to be able to believe you even hesitated. With the ease of a practiced doctor, Bruce reaches down and grasps her arm in one hand, further steadying it amongst the clamps that keep her pinned down.

The needle goes in right after, and Kara winces, not looking as the green liquid is induced right into her skin, only able to do so with the help of a kryptonite enhanced needle. “There” Bruce says, retracting it just as quickly, showcasing the now empty medical tool for the camera. “All done. That wasn’t so bad now was it?”

He follows up his question by getting close to the woman’s face, kissing her cheek as she squirms, still fighting to break free of her bonds. “Tell me, anything feel...different? Maybe a little more free? A little...Ohh I know! Let’s test your funny bone” he says, caressing the captive woman in an obviously romantic way, leaning in close so that his breath impacted lightyl against her. 

“Let's see if you like this joke. A man walks into the forest, and finds a talking tree. He starts chopping it down, but the tree doesn’t like that and he protests loudly. “You can’t cut me down,” he says. I’m a talking tree. And the man just smiles and laughs, getting ready to swing his axe. “You might be a talking tree, but you’ll dialogue”.

Kara had her head turned to the side, her face scrunched up in agony and her eyes closed, but slowly, very slowly, a smile broke out over her face, and her eyes, once a vibrant blue if he remembered her file correctly, were now green. “Haha...hehe...HAHAHAHAHAHA!” She begins laughing like a madwoman, her skin turning rapidly as she thrashes about, trying to fight the changes.

Her mouth was open, the very visage of twisted glee.

“AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!”

Her body had changed completely, overtaken by the same murderous glee that had consumed first Batman, and then the Amazons. Kal felt a bit of him die inside, losing another family member in such a gruesome way. But he remembers Diana’s words, and promises himself that he would aid the attempts to cure them.

‘We’ll kill him. Right in front of everyone. He’s going to fucking pay. He’s going to pay for all of this!’

The screen fades to black and the voice of Bruce returns, still speaking through Cyborg’s remains. “Alright Clark. I think we’ve had more than enough fun with all the buildup. Sufficiently primed with foreplay. Kara sweetheart? My dove? My murderous little princess of mayhem? Why don’t you deliver the house warming present?”

“Kara? She’s here?” Superman asks, whirring about this way and that, trying to catch a glimpse of the woman that he was still hoping to save. ‘Another one. There’s another one!’. He was so distracted by this thought that he wasn’t thinking straight. Unfocused. He didn’t see the shape rushing at the glass of the front of Hall of Justice at top speed, and he didn’t see it as it made impact, shattering right through the glass and skidding across the floor, parts of it coming apart at the seams.

A grey, decayed arm goes flying, followed quickly by a leg that was sent careening off down a hallway as the corpse dents the marble floor, letting out a steady stream of rotten entrails. It keeps going, slowly coming to a stop only as it reaches most of the way across the Hall of Justice, stopping at Superman’s feet.

“We managed to nab something out of Metropolis for you before it went kaboom for a second time” Batman chuckles. “I thought it would have some sentimental value and didn’t want it to burn with the rest of the shop when it went up in flames, you know? I’m a really good friend”.

Kal was ignoring this for the moment, looking down instead at the rotting decayed corpse, that if it weren’t for one solitary item, he wouldn’t know who it was. But he saw the locket around her neck. The very same one that he’d given her on their first anniversary. 

It was Lois. 

His wife.

The man drops to his knees before the rotting and decayed body, unable to countenance what was little more than bones before him. He reaches out and takes hold of it, shaking his head in utter disbelief that someone would do something like this. It was...it was...only something the Joker would think of, and only something that Batman would be able to pull off.

“Lois…”.

“They really didn’t do a good job with the embalming, did they? Kinda fudged it up. But hey, that’s alright. Not on you. After all, you were so busy cleaning out Arkham and establishing your dictatorship that you couldn’t be bothered with something like mourning your wife. You never really did take an opportunity to do that did you? Trust me...I know tragedy aversion when I see it”.

“You…!”

He was enraged, angry enough that he could probably take on Doomsday and Darkseid all at the same time, and he rose, ready to smash right into Cyborg and reduce the device Batman was using to speak to millions of atoms. Then he would find Batman himself, and tear his arms and legs off, one at a time.

Before he could do anything though, he feels a massive gust of wind that brushes right by him, followed by a quick jab into his neck that sends him spasming to the ground in horrific pain. He blocks out everything but the pain, unable to focus on what was happening around him. How Bane was seemingly snatched up by nothing, and then thrown up into the air, a hole appearing in the roof of the hall. 

Raven was the first to react, her hands now encased in her singular purple, black energy, her eyes splitting once again and her skin glowing red. It was unfortunate that she wasn’t looking behind her at where the real threat was coming from. A shadow emerges from one of the side halls, and without the barest of thoughts, notches an arrow and lets it loose, the projectile flying through the air and impacting right against the rear of Raven’s cape, continuing on into her throat and then out the other side, severing her vocal chords and cutting off her ability to breathe.

The demoness was powerful and had many abilities at her disposal, but immortality was not one of them. 

She gasps, blood already pouring out of her throat as she tries and fights to staunch the flow, falling to her knees as she is unable to. She looks towards Diana and Superman, both on the ground, with the latter comforting the former, who had a long yellow shard embedded in his neck that the Amazon warrior only finally succeeded in pulling out.

Yellow Lantern? Aquaman? They were shocked into stillness, forming a perimeter around their wounded leader as if to protect him from any further assaults. She was a goner and she knew it, nobody here cared for her in the way the long gone Titans had. She begins to fall to the floor, knowing that her plans to unleash her father had failed.

This pain was nothing compared to what was waiting for her in the Hellish plains below, where Trigon would no doubt delight in torturing his daughter for her utter failure. She died, bleeding out right there on the floor, unmourned. 

“Gold...gold kryptonite…” Superman says, having turned to take away the object that was in the woman’s hand, though a terrified tone was present in his voice at seeing it and knowing that it had made contact with him. He drops it away, hoping to mitigate its effects, but it was too late for that. Far too late.

He could already feel his powers being taken away, drained in all actuality, as his body is shuffled around to be dependent upon the yellow sun in the same way that humans were. “Kal...what does…”.

“His powers” a voice says from the side, Raven’s murderer revealing herself, or at least her shadow, which was still shrouded in darkness as she rests against the barrier, a bow in her hand. Damian was rising at this point, finally able to push past the pain to stand up, while Diana draws her sword and shield, placing them before her to indicate her willingness to fight. She’s joined by Hal and Aquaman, both of whom form up beside her.

“Show yourself! Who….”.

“If you insist my queen” the woman titters out, laughing cutely as she sways her hips and walks into the arena, slowly exposing her greaved ankles, and the pale flesh of her legs. Diana knew that this was going to be hard, whichever of her sisters that it was. She is prepared though, or at least…

She’d thought she’d been.

The woman was holding her sword and shield as well, though a sickeningly bright smile had been painted in black over the shield, another bat symbol with a smiley face where the head was. Her dress, if it could even be called that, was open at the sides, exposing a generous side portion of her breast and thighs, while having a plunging neckline to reveal the opposite side, held together only by a series of strings threaded through the middle.

She had long green hair, flowing out behind her over the half mask she wore, of course keeping with the bat motif. But it was her face and dress, the tattered remnants that the woman had fashioned it from at least, that made Diana want to weep.

“Donna?”

“One and the same, sis” the woman titters back, squaring off against the Amazonian queen who had overthrown her mother to seize power. “Surprised to see me? Come on Diana, out of all the Amazons left on Themyscira, which one would come out on top? Which one would please my Batsy the most?”

This...this was a horror that she never even thought could be witnessed in this world, and yet, here it was, plain as day right before her. Her sword falls to her side, and her grip on her shield decreases to, her face gaunt, expressionless. “No...no….”.

“Yes. Yes. Also! Distractioooon!”

She takes the woman by surprise, Diana not having enough time to discern her meaning when a dark shape descends from above, hissing and scowling, but also laughing, a ferocious smile exposing the maws of teeth. Cheetah. Barbara Ann Minerva.

She came down on Wonder Woman’s back, slicing her claws, now painted black, right into the woman’s skin before further digging them into her shoulders, and somersaulting away, her claws skittering and sparking against the marble floors as she lands besides Donna, presenting a united front.

“Good kitty. Batsy will be so happy!” Donna coos out, running her hands over the furry woman’s back, the fur spiked in certain sections, with strange tribalistic writing all over her body. All of them referencing bats. “Hehehe...I hope so! I’m a good kitty. I love my Mr. B!”

“Well, he’ll be sure to know that now”.

A beam of red heat vision shoots out, moving right towards Hal and severing his hand, the hand that held the yellow lantern ring upon it. The detached appendage goes skittering away, and the former pilot howls in pain, grasping his wounded arm at the same time as he is grabbed roughly by the new intruder into this arena.

Kal was trying to reach Diana, the woman having rolled over in pain, convulsing at the poison that had been given to her, courtesy of the Cheetah’s claws which had been liberally dipped within poison, though the exact nature of said poison was unknown. “Diana…” Kal says worriedly, though his attention was partially on the woman behind him, who was now holding the Yellow Lantern up by his arm. 

Hal flailed about but eventually he tried to go in for a punch, aiming his remaining fist right at the pale skinned, green haired woman. He manages to land one on his jaw, where the entire hand shatters instantly, and the woman laughs aloud, smirking down at her captive. “Kara…” Kal says, trying to reach the woman as he stands, forgetting about the wounded and poisoned Diana for the moment.

He holds his hands up, approaching the woman as if she was a wild animal, trying to soothe her. She was completely different now, up to and including her style of dress. Gone was the costume that had seemingly been modelled on his own, and in its place was a spaghetti strap crop top, cut off at the middle, and a pair of tattered jeans.

“Hehehehehe…”.

“Put...put Hal down, Kara. I can help you. I swear” he says, not knowing exactly how he was going to do it, but knowing that nothing would stop him. “What he did to you, it can be reversed”. Yellow Lantern was grunting out now, looking fearfully towards the High Councillor and his friend, needing him to do something.

“Clark...please…”.

Kara snaps to the man, her smile dropping for a second, replaced by an angry scowl. “This toy is boring. Beggins? Really? What are you? A dog...hehe...a dog. Cute little yellow puppy. Heheheheeh!”

Without any hesitation, she swings him about, moving his body through the air as if it was nothing more than a ragdoll, and with all the force the newly arrived Kryptonian could bring to bear, she slams him downwards against the floor, his body turning so that his face was pointed downwards. He shouts one final time, before slamming into the marble and having his face cave in and his skull cracked wide open, like a melon that spews its contents in a wide arc all about him.

“No!”

She doesn’t stop there, nor does she notice the man’s plea, smiling viciously as she swings the man back and forth, up and over each of her shoulders onto each side, bashing his body against the floor and leaving a mass of blood spatters. Hal was dead, but even now Kara was toying with his corpse, tossing it about like a dog and its chew toy. 

Soon though, she grows tired of this game, and tosses the limp and destroyed body away like it was trash. She then proudly surveys her surroundings, nodding along at the splotches of red that dominated the floor. “Hehehe...looks like a modern art piece...Batsy!” she shouts, looking up onto the second floor, the area still shrouded in darkness. 

“Yes my dove?”

“Do you think I can be an artist, sweetheart?” she asks, gesturing around her with glee, hearing the remaining three Regime members form a defensive position, with Arthur and Damian holding up their respective trident and escrima sticks to ward off the changed Donna Troy and Cheetah, while Superman continues to look on in shock and horror at Kara and what she had done.

“Where is he?” Arthur asks, his sadness forgotten for the moment, replaced by a rage that consumed him like a fire. He was going to kill Batman for what he’d done. For killing his family and his kingdom. “I...I don’t know” Nightwing sputters out, fearful as Donna and Cheetah pace around them, the two laughing maniacally.

‘Without my powers...we’re in trouble’ Superman thinks, finally getting a dose of what Bruce and the rest of the Insurgency must’ve felt for years. Powerlessness. Fear. He wasn’t able to really think on that though, not before a dark shadow steps forward and reveals himself, smiling down at them.

Batman.

Bruce.

Or rather what had once been Bruce Wayne. 

“You finally showed your face then coward?” Kal asks with a snarl, looking up at the man who had done all of this. “Hehehe...that would be me, yes Kal. How very astute”. He turns back to Kara and nods, appraising her work with unhidden pride. “Hmm...well you know what, my love? I think you have a very promising career ahead of you” he says, drawing a grappling gun and hooking it onto one of the high up rafters before jumping down to the main floor.

“Really?” She asks, love and affection in her eyes, the Kryptonian approaching the man, who then takes her into his arms where he nuzzles his cowl-covered nose against hers. “Of course. As a matter of fact, my wedding present to you? I’ll kill all the other artists so that my girl is the only one left”. She coos out against him, letting the man gently caress her pale cheek with his equally pale finger, a fact that makes Kal steam.

“Get away from her…”.

“Ohh Clark! Almost forgot about you there” he says, releasing the woman who pouts for a second before the smile returns and she simply moves up behind him, obviously subservient. Cheetah and Donna were not happy about that at all though, jealous in equal measure of the affection. “Batsy! Did you forget about us? I killed Raven for you baby!”

“Pfft, that is nothing, little girl. I have incapacitated Wonder Woman” Cheetah says, smirking at the woman who was still somehow alive, but frozen to the ground, her eyes now darting about in horror. “S...s...st...stop…”.

“I didn’t forget about you my lovelies!” Bruce smiles, licking his lips lasciviously which only draws sounds of appreciation from the two women. “You’re all going to be rewarded for what you’ve done. Anything my pretties want in the whole wide world”.

“We only want you…”.

“Bruce, this is insane. This isn’t you” Superman says, trying to plead to Bruce’s better nature, something that Batman had done multiple times throughout the span of their little war for Clark. He would give him roughly the same response.

“Ohh, but this is me, Clark. Maybe more me than even I’ve ever been. Wrap your head around that one” he teases, drawing a bag that had draped around his back, dropping it to the floor and moving to his knees to open it. “But, before we get to the main event, I want to clean up all my other business. Set the board anew you know?” he teases, reaching into the bag for something.

“Damian, my son. My lovely bouncing baby boy! My pride and jooooy!” he sings out, rhyming his words, which only disquieted everyone else. “I’ve got you a little present”. He pulled out something he had, wrapped in newspaper. “Figured that we could play ball sometime but, you know me. I’m not a normal dad soooo...the ball I chose? It’s a little...unorthodox. Here, you first. Catch!”

He tosses the item outwards, and despite his trepidation and fear, Damian can’t help but catch it, letting the weight of the object settle in his grasp. It was bloody, the red crimson seeping through the paper. Nightwing was still, unable to do anything but look down on the object.

“Go on….” the Batman Who Laughs urges. “Unwrap it Damian! I got it special for you after all”.

Slowly, as if not by his own volition, his hands dart out and work on tearing away the paper, slowly revealing what was hidden beneath. As he goes on and on, revealing more and more, he begins to feel an overwhelming sense of dread. Whatever this was, it wasn’t going to be good. 

The paper falls away finally, and Damian is dead silent as he lays eyes on exactly what the object was, and he nearly vomits.

In his hands, being held right at that moment, was the decapitated head of Talia Al Ghul, her eyes wide in fear and her mouth still open. The man drops the head as soon as he takes it all in, letting it clatter to the floor while he steps away. “What the fuck?! You fucking animal!” He was beyond angry now, and tears rolled down his cheek at the death of his mother.

“You fucker! You motherfucker! I’ll kill…”.

“Ohh no, Kara, doll?”

“Yes Batsy?” the woman asks. “Damian is being a naughty little boy. Not appreciating the present I got him. Be a dear and bring him over here so we can give him a spanking”. She nods happily, bobbing her head up and down right before she bursts through the air, faster than anyone could even see, and before anyone knew it, Damian was gone, brought back towards his father and held tightly in the woman’s grasp, high up, right under his arms as if he was a baby.

He couldn’t strike back with his hands, but he does try to kick at the woman, though this does next to nothing. “You always were a spoiled little brat Damian” Bruce says, placing his hands behind his back and smirking, approaching his son and former Robin. “But that’s not really your fault is it? I mean, with that rapist mother of yours whispering into your ear about how great you were going to wind up being...you never had a chance did you?”

“Fuck you”.

“Impudent to the end” he chuckles, standing right beside the woman who was constantly darting her gaze back and forth between Damian and Bruce, the smile never leaving her face as she gets ready to do as he ordered.

“You were always a disappointment Damian. Always. You were never going to be anything. And that is tearing me apart inside as a father” he says, lightly laughing as he finally looks back at Kara. “I want you to know how that feels, so...Kara, my dear?”

“Yes Batsy!”

“You already know what I want. Good girl. Very good girl”. Bruce pats her rear end, making her chirp in pleasure. “You’re first tonight”. She giggles at his whispered words, but just as quickly refocuses on the mission at hand, looking back towards Damian. “My babies are going to be so much better than you were,” she says. “They’ll make their daddy laugh”.

She pushes her fingers and her thumbs into his armor, hard enough that the audible crack of bones could be heard, especially his ribs which break like kindling. Nightwing screams in agony, trying to force her to let go by moving and thrashing about, but simply breaking his bones hadn’t been her objective.

“You know what my favorite ice cream is?” she asks the man who just grunted out in pain. “Banana splits”. She pulls, using her grip on the man to yank the two halves of his body in opposite directions, increasing the strength with which she pulls by a few decibels each second.

A tearing sound is heard, and Damian howls in pain as blood begins to seep down from his legs, the body being split from bottom to top. “Bruce god dammit he’s your son!” Kal pleads,  watching as Nightwing is literally torn apart, but nobody heeds him, something that was very new for the dictator who’d gotten used to every one of his words being listened to. 

A sickening noise echoes out, and with one final very forceful pull, the man is torn right apart, his intestines and bits of bone and blood falling down to the floor, forming a puddle of goop that just sat there, right beneath the two almost perfectly sliced down the middle pieces of corpse.

“Yuck...I’ve got Robin on my sneakers, Batsy…” Kara whines, tossing the bits of the corpse away in two totally different directions, allowing them to slosh and slide across the floor, adding to the myriad of bodies that were already there.

“You...you killed him”.

“I can always make more Kal,” Batman says, advancing forward and squaring off directly against the man who now only had the very reluctant Arthur at his side, who himself was staring down the horribly changed Kara who cackled in malicious glee. “We’re having fish tonight puddin’!” she says, causing the man to raise his trident.

“Not before I spear you”.

“Sorry, already taken, fish breath”.

She rushes forward, punching outwards as she begins combat with the king of the sea, though she was holding back, wanting to savor the feeling of dishing out so much pain. Batman meanwhile, smiles at Superman, unmoving as he keeps his hand behind his back. Kal raises his fists, signalling his desire to fight. 

“Fancy a bit of fisticuffs huh Clark?”

“I can beat you Bruce. Even without my powers”. He tried to sound firm in his words there, but he knew that the man would pick up on the slight quiver in his voice. To tell the truth, he was petrified, thinking of nothing more than the fact that Batman was the best hand to hand combatant that he had ever known, and knew that he didn’t stand a chance.

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yes”.

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to see” he says with a smile, looking behind the man to Donna and Cheetah, who were eagerly advancing on the helpless Diana. The poison had paralyzed her, so she was aware of everything that was happening, but she could only look on in horror as she is advanced upon by the two newly minted henchwenches.

“Well, look what we have here” Cheetah says, lifting her hand and teasing her clawed finger across the woman’s pinky, drawing just a bit of blood as she presses it inwards. “Ohhh we’re going to play eeny meeny miney moe?” Donna asks, bringing her sword down to the woman’s ankle and pressing the tip into the skin.

“I was thinking more like...doctor. Except, much more surgeon than doctor. It looks like we have to amputate, nurse Donna” Cheetah purrs, bringing her claw down fiercely, and severing the pinky entirely. Diana groans in pain, watching as the small finger falls from her body and onto the floor, the dismemberment having begun. 

“I’ve always hated how beautiful  you were Diana” Cheetah whispers, just in time for Diana to press her sword into the woman’s ankle, and then kneel down to twist and shimmy the sharp blade down from side to side, sawing across her flesh and bone with ease. The woman was crying silent tears of extreme pain, but neither one of them were moved by that. 

“We’re going to fix that”.

Her whisper is followed up by yet another finger being removed, clattering down right besides the other as her foot is swiftly sawed off. “I always hated you too Diana” Donna says, positively feral at how she was cutting down the woman. “Everyone thought you walked on fucking water. Everyone looked at you like you were a goddess yourself. But now? Nobody is going to look at you, not even our Batsy”.

Cheetah chortles, reaching up to scratch her claws across her face, leaving the long horrid marks right in her skin. She couldn’t stop this. She tried to move, tried to fight back, but she just..couldn’t.

“He’s only going to be looking at us from here on out” Donna says, looking for another target, which she rapidly finds in the woman’s shoulder blade. She thrusts her sword in deep and twists, her immense strength breaking Wonder Woman’s collarbone.

Nobody could hear her screams, but they were there. Right in the confines of her mind.

Across the room though, two other much more traditional battles were being waged, with Kara grasping the trident from Aquaman’s arms and tossing it away, vowing to herself to pick it up later. She wanted it because it was shiny. But the man was still in the way, trying to fight her even now.

“For Atlanti…”.

“You talk way too much, and I’m in the mood for some fish sticks”.

She lets loose with her heat vision, incinerating the man in a beam of awful red light, which toasts and chars the skin of the usually very hardy sea king. He tries to fight it, but with Kara increasing its intensity, he couldn’t keep it up for long. Arthur Curry falls to the ground, defeated with his skin nothing more than a blackened husk, though that doesn’t stop Kara who advances on him, still burning him away.

Only when she doesn’t detect a heartbeat, does she stop looking down at her work that was still smoking. “Oops. I think I went a little too hard. Sweetie?” She calls out, turning to see Batman dodging one of Clark’s fists, the vigilante instantly reaching up to grasp the now all too human and vulnerable arm, and snaps it. 

“AHHHHH!”

“Yes babe?”

“We might have to get some takeout tonight” she retorts, smacking her hand against her forehead and sighing, acting as if she was a wife who had burned the meatloaf again. “That’s fine dear. We’re celebrating anyways”. He lets go of Superman, the High Councillor stepping back, grasping his devastated arm, just in time to see Batman draw a knife from his belt.

“It pays to train in hand to hand Clark”.

“Bruce...please…”.

“I’m tired of hearing that word,” the corrupted former hero says, walking towards the retreating man who now had no allies left. “I’ve heard it for five years now. Everyone. People, friends, innocent. All of them begged you. Ohh please Superman no! Heheheh...all of them begged, and you never actually gave them any mercy”.

Superman made to turn and run for it, exposing his back to the man, which was the worst thing he could do. Batman lunges forward, and jabs the knife right into the man’s flesh, using the added weight of his body to push the man to the ground where he reaches behind him with his one good arm to try and pull the weapon away.

He turns his head, and comes face to face with the corpse of his dead wife, whose empty sockets glare back at him with what felt like disdain and hatred. Bruce notices this, and takes advantage, cackling as he straddles the man’s back, pinning him to the ground as he retracts the knife.

“You were never special, Smallville” he says, using the term that Lois always called him. “And you’re realizing that now. Without your powers, without your lackeys? You’re nothing, and you’ve always been nothing”. Clark grimaces in pain at the heat of the knife wound. Bruce quickly brings it down again, slamming it once more into his flesh before quickly retracting it.

“ARE YOU HAPPY NOW CLARK? HAHAHAHA! ARE YOU HAPPY NOW THAT I’VE CROSSED THE LINE! HAHAHAHA!”

The knife comes up and down, piercing the previously invulnerable man’s body with the ease of a hot knife through butter, blood pooling out under the kryptonian. He closes his eyes, trying to be at peace with the fact that he was going to die. 

“SHE WOULD’VE HATED YOU!” Bruce continues to shout, his laughter taking on a strangely painful tone that lets them get a glimpse of the Bruce that was still inside. “WHAT YOU’VE BECOME! I HATE YOU FOR WHAT YOU BECAME! FOR WHAT YOU MADE ME INTO!”

The knife keeps coming up and down, bringing with it crimson sprays that splash over the two men, though Bruce only takes pleasure from the feeling of the warm blood coating over him, proof that he’d finally triumphed over the man, the proof of his victory being clear right in front of him.

He knew Clark was dead.

He could just feel it, but regardless he keeps stabbing up and down, trying his best to vent all his accumulated rage from across the span of decades. His parents' bodies laying in that alley, carrying Dick’s from the asylum. And now. Clark’s corpse, cut up like a pincushion, and all by him.

It was funny.

All of it.

Utterly hilarious. He now knew exactly what the Joker was talking about, and as he stands up, moving off of the corpse of the man who’d been his best friend, he laughs, just like he wants to do. “Hehehehe...hahahahahah….haha…”.

“Batsy!’

Kara throws herself forward into the man’s arms, to which he responds by grasping her and twirling her about, bringing him the attention of the two other women who had advanced to such a point in their dismemberment of Wonder Woman, who was now also dead on the floor. Cheetah herself had worked her claws around the woman’s face and peeled the skin away, which she then followed up by wearing it like a mask.

“Hey Donna! Look! I’m Diana. I’m so smart and special. I’m a strong Amazon who bends over for Superman whenever he wants me to!”

“Hahaha! Spot on!’

The face slides away, leaving a thin residue of the woman’s blood, her armless, legless, and torn up skinned body remaining on the ground as the two walk away from their quarry, now intent on joining the man they loved.

“Puddin’!”

“Batsy!”

“Did we do good?” Cheetah asks, molding herself into Batman’s right side, eyeing Donna with jealousy as she does the same to his left. Kara, feeling a bit put out, turns and presses her back to his chest, teasing him by shaking her rear end on his groin. She punctuates the action by moving up and down, trying to excite him. “You all did excellent. I knew Joker made a mistake, only stopping at one” he says, smirking at the three women who look up at him with wide worshipful eyes.

‘At least it’ll all keep them fighting each other to keep me happy’ he thinks, having a practical idea behind turning these three women in particular. “Awww….welllll what do we do now Batsy baby?” Cheetah asks, rubbing her hand up and down his chest, now suddenly careful to prevent her claws from injuring him. “Well...we have a checklist, my favorite kitty cat. My darling Amazon. My babe from another world” he says, stepping over the corpses as he works on exiting the hall, his business being done here.

“First and foremost? New Robins. I need one or two. What’s a Batman without a Robin?” he asks teasingly, moving slowly for the three to keep up. “But I don’t want to waste my time again. I need the best of the best. Stock that I make and rear into the murderous little devils I need. You three ladies up for helping with that?”

“Of course!” they all chirp out at the same time, indeed eager not only for a chance to unleash their own little hellspawn upon the Earth. “Aside from that though? We have a bunch of friends to meet. Scores to settle, and most of all? A world to make laugh”.

“Yay!”

“Where do we start then puddin’?” Donna asks, genuinely curious about where they were going. “Back to Gotham of course” he smiles, eyes fixated on the horizon and all the plans he had. “After all, it’s best to start at the beginning isn’t it?” The group exits the now silent hall, leaving nothing but corpses and death behind, Earth’s greatest heroes turned into their greatest “protectors”, those who ruled with an iron fist were all dead on the ground, unable to protect the world from what was to come.

They’d pushed arguably their greatest hero, a man who refused to budge from his ideals, to completely abandon them. And a man who had nothing left...was a man to be feared. Certainly not to be laughed at. 

He was the one who was going to laugh now. And he was finally going to enjoy it. Bruce was free, finally free...but at what cost?

A world that laughs.