Badlands
Prologue
They say you could see the Metropolis skyline from the watchtower in the Before Time. Before the country was split, torn apart by Civil War. They say it shined in the setting sun; the rays glinting off of the windows like a halo around the seat of power for LuthorCorp. They say the city teamed with life, held millions of people in her glass towers. What I wouldn't give to have seen the city in its heyday.
Metropolis, where the war between East and West began and ended. The country surrounding the city now is a wasteland of human and mutant remains. Nothing survived the bombing but the cockroaches and the rats. We only know that because we can see them scurrying in the dark with our looking glasses. Yet another remnant left over from the past that we've adapted to our future. Like the books and stories we've dredged from the litter and our memories.
I'd heard the story of Giants and Madmen; who hadn't? It's a tale we all grew up on. The youth of the new nations running through the wreck of civilizations past, playing our games of superhero and super villain. Racing past the corroded symbols of the men themselves nearly overgrown with vines and weeds we chased each other, swooping, hollering, blasting each other with pretend guns. We didn't understand then. We didn't know. But we know now.
We know how cruel the game we played really was. A re-enactment of history, of when the walls went up and bombs came down and man tried to blow himself apart. When the lives of two powerful men, who in their own way tried to save us, ended in the sea of destruction before me. The charred, empty land that nature had yet to reclaim even these hundreds of years later. At least, that's the best reckoning.
And that's where I'm going tomorrow, into hell itself. Hopefully, to find our heroes who had to be left behind in the ruin. To give a proper burial for men of vision who sought to end the fighting before it begun, but whom humanity ignored. Humanity which needed instead to destroy itself in some warped attempt to learn that pride is a sin. Power, corruption, greed - these men understood. 'I was wrong', they did not.
It is said, in the story of Giants and Madmen, that the sins of the father fell upon on the shoulders of his son, and that was the end of the nation. That even Superman could not save him in the end. Try as he might, pride won. To save those he loved, Superman gave his life. And the world won.
And that is where I go, into the badlands. To find my piece of history and bring them home.