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"Well guys, I'm going to be honest here. You screwed up big time" Bruce let out a resigned sigh.
"You really can't blame us you know, we did our best considering the fact that we were searching for you all along" said Diana
"And a fat lot of good that did didn't it?" He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth.
His teammates looked at him with pain in their eyes. "Well, if that's how you really feel…" Barry let the unfinished sentence hang.
Bruce brushed a hand through his long hair, "look guys: that's not what I meant. I appreciate everything you've done for me. You know how I am; I let my temper get the best of me some-"
"No you don't" Barry cut him off. "You never did that; let your temper get the best of you that is. You had such control over yourself, like you were a machine or something. But ever since you got back you've been behaving so…so volatile."
At these words Bruce snapped, "Well I'm sorry I get mad every so often nowadays, must have something to do with being locked up in a room for seven months on end." He left the room in a rage.
They had no fixed place; it would be too dangerous for the operation. The five of them kept moving around from city to city, state to state in the hopes of picking up new recruits and always staying two steps ahead of the enemy. However the LA base was one Bruce particularly liked. He had always found the name painfully ironic; the city of angels, one of the most sinful places in the world. Sure it may have nothing on Las Vegas or Amsterdam but still; clubs, casinos and everything and in between. Bruce had never been a particularly religious person, but the biblical story of the fall of the angels had always got him thinking. 'Tis better to rule in hell, than to serve in heaven', but was it really?
He had lived many heavy years filled with so much pain. Yet nothing had hurt him half so much as Superman's betrayal; to think that something, someone that good had fallen so much. The city of angels was beautiful no mistake, but it wasn't enough not what he wanted. He wanted the whole world to be beautiful, for everything to be beautiful, but he had been robbed of that. "I hate him" he said, "I hate him so much that when I see him, I don't care how much stronger he is than me, I'm going to throw him on the ground, and I'm going to look into his eyes and I'm going to whisper in his ear, whisper sweet nothing as I cut him off piece by piece. But I'm not going to kill him then. I'm going to give him seven days. And every day I'll go and sit next to him, and I'm going to cut a little bit more out of him, maybe a nose, maybe an eye. And then one day, one day…one day there will be nothing left; nothing." He coughed into his own hand, coughed blood.
His chest constricted, and he saw the city before him, but it wasn't a city anymore. It was something else altogether. It was a fragment out of hell, there was nothing beautiful left; everything worth existing was gone, there was only fire and ash. The city had been razed to the ground and the people were being driven like slaves, driven by monsters in black cloaks and black cowls so nothing could be seen but their skeletal hands and their bony wings, they flew amongst the people pushing them forward, pushing them down and dragging them up, building, breaking and building again. The sky was the shade of purple an old bruise attains, with flecks of blood red here and there, the city laid out before him was in ruin, he could hear its agony, its cry for help, and before it all, stood a gigantic silhouette, and enormous figure wearing a hood with its head bent, yet as Bruce looked upon it, it lifted its head and showed itself. Bruce stood shell shocked for a second and then he leapt, leapt with everything towards nothing, leapt towards the hooded monster, leapt towards superman.
And as he jumped he grew wings, mighty black bat wings that burst from his back and propelled him towards his smiling adversary. A spear appeared in his hands as he soared towards the towering menace, and just as he was close enough to plunge his weapon deep into the emptiness, it swallowed him whole and he fell into a black abyss.
As he fell straight down the enemy materialized, he stood smiling in front of him, so close, yet so far. He felt he could touch him, yet he felt he would never reach. The man lifted his hand and a beam of light shot forth that enveloped Bruce completely. Yet it was not an illuminating light, it was a searching light, a light that blinded the enemy so you could attack a light that shone in places where it was supposed to be dark. It was a black, dark light and as it shone upon him, Bruce felt as if he had lost himself, lost himself and everything that made him what he was, made him a man. The light stripped him of his wings, his weapon, his clothes and his very flesh. And when they were the only things left, the light shone ever darker and his bones cracked open too, and then everything spilled out for his enemy to see, to take.
But from beneath them all shone another light, his own light. A light that fought against that which superman had lain against him, a light with which he pushed his enemy back. Suddenly he was the one on the ground and his enemy was the one who was reaching out to him, reaching forward to stop him, but he would not relent, he shone ever brighter, shone until he had obliterated everything, ever fragment of that which had made up his enemy was hidden from sight.
And amidst that light Bruce felt something tugging at him, pulling him back. And backwards he was pulled until finally, finally he emerged from the nightmare.
He was lying on the balcony, the league members stood over him. He leapt up and glanced out over the city. It was all just as he remembered. His knees gave out under him and he passed out.
He woke up many hours later in his bed, his clothes and the bedsheets were soaked through with his sweat and the league stood in a loose circle around him. They all jumped up when he came around.
Apparently he had suffered from a fit, he had been standing on the balcony when suddenly he had fallen to the ground and started convulsing. Barry had come to talk to him when he saw him writhing on the ground silently; no one knew what to do so they had settles for throwing water on him and shouting his name until he came around.
As soon as he assured them that he was absolutely fine and that there was nothing to worry about, he called for all of them to get some chairs and a table, and to make them comfortable. While they were gone he spared himself a moment of thought.
What had happened, he had seen the city in ruin and superman in a hood and cloak, that he had fought him and vanquished him with a light from the very depths of his being. What that meant was plain enough to see, it was his psychology, his fears about what was happening and was going to happen. He lived under the constant fear of superman's dictatorship and he believed his spirit mind and body, his being was purer than superman ever could be and that in the end he would vanquish him. But that was not the problem, the problem was the just gazing out in the night at the city he had a fit, a fit!
Just how deep did the scars of the punishment he had suffered go?
He took several deep breaths to calm himself and tried to think up the symptoms, what had he been doing when he had been struck with the attack? He had been gazing out at the city, thinking about how beautiful it was, he had been thinking about the Christian story of the fall of the angels, maybe that was it? Perhaps intense, focused, or even philosophical thought over long periods of time was what triggered his attack and could possibly trigger it again?
But no, it wasn't only that, he had been thinking about superman too. He had been thinking about what he would do to him, how he would destroy him, how he would tear him apart bit by bit, stretching out his suffering and making him beg for-argh!
He felt his chest spasm again; had they implanted in him somehow, something to stop him from thinking ill of superman, their beloved dictator? No, that couldn't be it, he had gone through a full body scan as soon as he had gotten back, and there was nothing in him to make him subservient to their wishes. Somehow his body must have developed a weakness or defense mechanism against strong emotional feeling, possibly his heart had weakened and could not bear the increased blood flow that resulted from strong emotional feelings.
When he thought of how they had damaged, how much they had weakened him, it made his skin crawl. The rage he felt towards those bastards was palpable. He would find them and he would make them-crap! His chest underwent a spasm again. He would have to learn to control himself better.
It was around this time that his teammates managed to settle themselves in around him. He pulled the table closer to himself and picked up a metal scale and pencil that his teammates had been thoughtful enough to include with the desk along with a few pieces of paper. He brushed the paper around and drew a rough square on the table's wooden surface along with a much smaller circle.
"Imagine this square represents superman while this circle represents us. Now due to seven months of neglect we have lost a lot of our cause's strength due to people either losing our faith in us, or people believing the rebellion had been broken before it begun. Those will be the easiest to win back over, the real problem lies in the fact that even if our numbers were restored and multiplied a hundred fold, we would still have less than superman, we need to win a lot, and I mean a phenomenally large lot of people over. Now here's what we're going to do. People, if they wanted to do what right, to help the good guys and to serve the just cause, they would have joined us already. There are only two things that suppress a man's desire to do what's right, and those are greed, or fear. Now superman's oppressing them, his officers are taking all the goods and luxuries in life for themselves, with his backing and vast army behind them. So not counting a very small percentage of the people, it's not greed that's holding them back, its fear. And what I propose we do about it is this. The thing about people is that they like to be on the winning side. No one wants to be the loser, if they think that they have to choose between us and him, and we are going to be the ones who take away the spoils, them they will flock to us like cattle. What we need to do, is something; or a series of things so outrageous, that when they witness them first hand, they will have no doubt whatsoever as to who are the winners and who are the losers. And what that's going to be is…"
Well folks, I'm afraid that's all for today. Thanks for all your great reviews and I will see you tomorrow.
