Bart was shock; he couldn't believe his eyes. It never occur to him the consequences of failure... Being brought up in what was essentially a video game had rendered the boy known as Impulse completely oblivious to the concept of mortality. At least, until today... He learned in only a few short minutes what mortality was, when himself and his allies in Young Justice decided to play with fire... Especially when that fire went by the name of Doomsday...
Doomsday glared into Impulse's eyes; his cold, red eyes burning like hot coals through Bart's soul under the bony protrusions... The monster's gray, stone-like body rippled like molten steel as he advanced on the boy, growling like a hungry wolf under his breath...
All of Bart's friends lay beaten at the creature's hands; Wonder Girl impaled on the steel reinforcement of what was left of the Daily Planet... Superboy lay on the sidewalk in a pool of blood, barely moving at all... Empress and Lobo trapped underneath the ruined Daily Planet… Secret watching the entire scene in horror from above, too afraid to move... And Robin... Oh God, not even the Joker deserved what happened to Robin...
"Bart!! Get the hell out of here!" Arrowette shouted, just before Doomsday's massive fist collided with her fragile body, plowing through her back like Jello...
"N--Nooo!!!" Bart screamed, zipping away from the monstrosity as fast as his slightly-bigger-than-average feet could carry him. His friends were dead... There was nothing he could do... Even Superboy didn't stand a chance against that thing... And he didn't even want to think about what Doomsday did to Robin...
He kept running, tears falling down his cheeks. The droplets of salty water hadn't even touched the ground before he arrived at his house in Manchester. Max Mercury had already gone several days earlier to help Superman on Apokolips along with the entire JLA... Things were not going well at all... Bart looked at himself in the mirror, nearly vomiting as he stared at his costume covered in blood...
"OhgodwhatamIgonnadonow???" He paced back and forth, holding his face with his hands in agony as he burned a hole in his room's floor... Tears kept falling from his eyes, and no matter how hard Bart wished them away, they just kept falling... He couldn't take it, seeing his costume splattered with crimson...
Quickly taking it off and changing into some normal clothes, Bart sat in the corner of his room, rocking back and forth. Those images, they wouldn't leave... Robin screaming Kon's name as Doomsday broke the superboy's spine with an earth-shattering elbow drop... Robin lost it then... He lost his cool... Robin! The mysterious leader of Young Justice... How could he have lost his cool? He was supposed to be the calm one... The one everyone looked to as an example... As a leader...
"Robin..." Bart sobbed the boy's name aloud, his golden eyes bloodshot and red from all he had seen... That brute had taken hold of Robin and…. God, he couldn't bring himself to recall the scene, and yet it kept replaying in his mind a million times… Kon screaming at the top of his lungs, Robin's corpse lying on the ground next to him, unrecognizable save for his shredded cape...
"Bart!" Preston's voice sang from outside the window. "Bart! Dude! You won't believe what happened! That Doomsday guy is loose in Metropolis!"
"Preston?" Bart shuddered as he zoomed to the family room and opened the front door, too shaken to look him in the eye. "I know already, I..."
Then the crashing began... In the months and years following, Bart never was certain what he felt first, the impulse to save Preston, or the instinct to run... Even for Bart, the scene looked so unreal... The truck literally came down from the sky out of nowhere, tossed from miles upon miles away...
"Baarrt--" Preston's voice was shaking, so full of fear and disbelief at the same time... Bart snatched Preston in his arms and blazed into a secluded alley, barely acknowledging the explosion that utterly destroyed the place he called "home"...
"Bart... You saved my life..." the blonde stammered, staring in awe at his best friend. "But... If you could move like that... You must be..."
Bart hung his head between his knees, staring down at his bare feet... He'd done it, he'd blown his secret... But the sacrifice had been worth it. That day, he'd been able to save one life.. One friend... For Bart, that was easily worth it...
"You must be..." Preston stuttered on, looking Bart from head to toe. "You must be Kid Flash!!"
"URK!!" Bart almost fell over, the image of a suicidal Impulse hanging himself flashing into his thoughts. "I'm not Kid Fla--"
"Huh?" Preston replied, obviously confused. A cartoonish Max Mercury pounded an equally cartoonish Impulse on the head in Bart's mind.
"Nevermind..." Bart sighed, sitting down in the alley next to a trash can. He wiggled his bare toes as a million thoughts raced through his head (as routine as that is). His partners were dead, the JLA and JSA were on Apokolips, and Doomsday was still on the rampage...
"Hey Bart," Preston nudged his friend with his elbow, pointing to their surroundings. "Isn't this Gotham City? I thought this place was like, no man's land..."
"RUN FOR IT!!!" Bart could hear dozens of people screaming for their lives as explosions rocked the skyscrapers of Gotham City... From the level of pandemonium, Bart knew instantly what had happened... Doomsday had arrived...
"IMMMMMPLSSSSS...." That deep, throaty growl came from above Bart, filling the air like grinding rocks boiling in oil. The smell, it was like rotting flesh and motor oil mixed with the unmistakable stench of blood...
"N--NOOOO!!!" Bart ran like lightning, snatching Preston up on the way. As fast as he was going, vibrating through hordes of screaming people and debris, Bart could feel Doomsday's presence above him, falling from the sky... Closing in....
Bart screeched to a complete stop as the behemoth exploded into the concrete in front of him, spilling chunks of rock all over the street. Bart thanked his lucky stars that he and Preston were still vibrating, or else they both would have been slain by the debris alone!
"IMMMMMPLLLSSS..." Doomsday gurgled, ripping apart a nearby automobile and holding the door like a makeshift sword... Bart backed away, a frightened scream escaping his lips as Doomsday approached...
"BAAAAAAARRT!!!!" He turned to his left side and realized with a shudder that it wasn't his own voice he'd heard... Before even the fastest teen on Earth could react, Doomsday pounced upon Preston... The scream stopped abruptly, chilling Bart to the bone as warm blood ran over his bare feet like a river...
"You--YOU BASTARD!!!" Bart ran at Doomsday with everything he had, headlong into the monster's destructive path. His little fists and big feet flew like jackhammers into Doomsday's body, the boy's skin splitting like paper from the monster's bony hide.
Bart pushed himself to the limit as six or seven Impulse "scouts" blazed into existence in a golden aura of energy. Utilizing everything they could get their hands on, the fleet of 'Barts' struck at Doomsday like a lightning storm...
...And when it cleared, Doomsday stood unharmed, only angrier...
Then, a miracle happened... It was like an act of divine intervention as Oracle flipped the switch to the Phantom Zone Projector... Doomsday simply wretched out of the dimension, leaving behind the former Batgirl and the world's fastest teen...
"Are you--" Bart whispered as the other 'Barts' disappeared. "Are you... Oracle?"
"Yeah, that's me," The wheelchair-bound woman replied, offering a hand to help Bart from the ground. "Impulse, I presume?"
Bart burst into tears, hugging Oracle and burying his face into her shirt. The woman could only hug him back, rubbing his back gently as she sang him a lullaby... What else could she do?
[To be continued…]