Chapter 19: Light the Fuse
Twilight descended on the grounds of Wayne Manor after a long and languorous day of regrouping, confessing, contemplating and fighting. All who were able and willing stood in front of the Batcomputer in the Batcave, with Barbara Gordon at the head.
"First thing's first," Barbara said. "Cullen, close your eyes."
Cassandra stood on the far left of everyone else in the Batcave, next to Stephanie, who was sporting fresh new bruises on her face from their encounter in the evidence room that morning.
Apparently, Stephanie had felt the need to prove something to herself, and walking into the human buzzsaw that was Cassandra Cain was the best way to do it. Though Stephanie had acquitted herself almost frighteningly well, she still lost. You needed to be able to fight to be…
Says who?
There were those words again. The ones that had been tantalizing her, mocking her, showing her new possibilities containing even more new possibilities ever since she had been made fully aware of how small she really was, adrift on but a single Earth among the infinite.
Cassandra looked down at her hands.
She was to meet her destiny with these hands. Either killing targets as her father commanded, or protecting the innocent as Batman wished. Both ways through violence. But just because she was trained to be this way didn't mean she had to be this way.
Cassandra remembered a time a few months back when Stephanie invited her to come along on one of her PE classes. Juniors had the opportunity to have their PE classes off of school grounds in their second semesters, and Stephanie's class had theirs at the MacGruder Avenue Bowling Alley on the mainland.
She'd only had two tries with a bowling ball, and she'd guttered both times, but now she remembered the guy behind the counter at the bowling alley. He was overweight and balding, just spraying some kind of spray into the bowling shoes and resting with his head in his hand the rest of the time.
And it was only now, standing in the Batcave, that it dawned on Cassandra that if she wanted to, she could work at a bowling alley for the rest of her life. She didn't want to, as she had reflected that being a superhero was the most fulfilling use of her time, but she could. She could trade in a life of combat and vigilantism for a life of boredom and free cheese fries.
Cassandra didn't know why the very concept made her feel less tired, less tethered to the ground. She just knew that it did.
Next to Stephanie, a few feet away, was Cullen, who looked at Barbara and asked "Seriously?"
To Cullen's left was Harper and Tim, and Cassandra could see that they were being… weird. It was their body language, the way they stood. They were standing far apart, but they were a little too open, as though they wanted to be seen standing far apart.
And any illusions that Cassandra had had about the wisdom of adults was...maybe not shattered, but at least dented by the fact that Kate and Diana were standing to their left, and they were being weird in the exact same way.
Cassandra had to wonder just what the hell was going on here.
Alfred was upstairs being Alfred. Selina was in the rear of the Batcave, out of view, at Bruce's bedside.
Cassandra had spent a small amount of time at in the medical bay today as well, after the fight with Stephanie. She had sat in the chair next to the visibly tired and worried Selina and just stared at the comatose Bruce in complete silence.
Mister Mxyzptlk had said that the soul did not matter, but staring at him lying there, Cassandra felt Bruce Wayne and Batman blur into one in a way that they hadn't for her before. She knew they were the same person, but she still treated them like different people. She had deferred to Batman's confidence and she had, she was sorry to admit, pitied Bruce Wayne.
The way he wandered the Earth in a constant state of befuddlement, well-meaning but clueless, seemed to grate on her in a way that she couldn't fully comprehend. There was a dissonance there that caused her feelings to sour without her actually meaning them to. How could this guy put on a mask and become such a different person?
But watching him lie there his chest absently rising and falling with every breath he took, Cassandra discovered that Mxyzptlk was wrong. The soul did matter, or at least it did in a way that he either didn't divulge or didn't understand.
Bruce Wayne was the soul of Batman. Which meant, in Cassandra's estimation, that Batman led with Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne tried to be the best person he could be, and he used both his successes and failures to be a better Batman.
Cassandra thought there was something to that. It danced on the periphery of her brain, just out of sight, just out of reach…
"Yes, Cullen," Barbara said. "Seriously."
"How bad can this tape be?" Cullen asked. "And if it is that bad, shouldn't I be getting used to this kind of thing now?"
Barbara sighed. "I think I was about one or two years older than you when I was tracking down Dollhouse. Dollhouse eats people. Knowing then what I know now, I'd have put that off for a few years. Humor me, you little shit."
Stephanie looked over at Cullen. "Yeah, you little shit, humor her."
Cullen sighed, and put his hand over his eyes.
"I'll tell you when we're done," Barbara said. "We got this from the security cam of a bar near The Cauldron called The Seahorse Tavern."
Barbara reached down and pressed a button on the Batcomputer's keyboard.
The enormous screen of the Batcomputer came alive with the feed from the Seahorse's security camera above the entrance. This feed had no sound.
The bartender was behind the bar. The waitress was doggedly ferrying drinks from the bar to the scattered and meager selection of patrons.
And then Jason Todd walked in.
He took a seat at the bar.
He spoke to the bartender.
The bartender brought him a beer.
Jason screamed soundlessly.
And a few seconds later, seven people were dead.
The feed cut to static. Cassandra looked at everyone else in the room.
Stephanie and Diana were horrified. As was Harper, but Cassandra reckoned that she had about as little to do with dead bodies as her brother, and she had turned a shade of pale green that clashed with her blue hair.
The faces of Tim and Kate showed no emotion at all.
And Barbara just looked tired.
Tim folded his arms. "So… that's it, then."
Barbara nodded.
"What's it?" Harper asked.
Tim looked at her. "Any hope we had of rehabilitating Jason? Any hope we had of bringing him into the fold? It's gone now. Not like it wasn't gone before after the mob hit and the Sorrento, but it's really gone now."
"Jason Todd," Barbara said, "is just another bad guy."
"Hera forgive him," Diana said.
"Because we can't," said Kate.
Cassandra was still aloft on her thoughts of infinite Earths. Yesterday at about this time, she'd have recoiled at what they were saying, judging Jason this harshly when she herself had done something not entirely dissimilar when she murdered Faizul.
But now?
Now something was off.
"Again," she said.
They all looked at her.
"What?" Barbara asked.
"Play… the tape… again."
Barbara just nodded. "Cullen, keep your eyes closed."
"Fine," he said.
The tape played again, and Cassandra studied it.
She had seen the way Jason was moving before. Countless times.
The most memorable time was when she had fought Gunhawk during a mission a few months back. Orphan's reputation had apparently preceded her, and as soon as he knew who he was fighting, he backed away with his hands up in mortal terror.
Jason was moving like Gunhawk had, only… in reverse somehow. As though he was being pushed instead of backing up. And once the guns came out, his movements were ragged, on the jerky side, not the kind of person who could utterly waylay Robin in a fight.
Someone, somehow, made Jason do what he did on that tape. Under great fear of indescribable pain.
The tape came to an end a second time.
"Did you get what you needed?" Barbara asked.
Cassandra nodded.
"What was it?"
Cassandra didn't have the words right now. The ones she knew didn't seem good enough.
"I don't… know… yet," she finally said.
Barbara sighed, pressed a button on the Batcomputer's keyboard, and the screen went blank again. "Cullen, you can open your eyes."
Which Cullen did.
"I just don't know why he'd do it," Tim said. "He was gung-ho about only killing bad guys when we talked, but I take it the people in that bar weren't bad guys?"
"Between the seven of them," Barbara said, "There were two DWIs and one public indecency. They weren't bad people at all. This is just… senseless."
Silence settled over them. A silence that seemed to still Diana and Barbara the most. Until…
"Umm," Cullen said, "are we just gonna sleep on how Stephanie got those bruises?"
"Sparring," Stephanie said.
"With what?" Cullen asked. "A bear?"
A blast of static filled the loudspeakers and marred the screen of the Batcomputer, startling everyone.
"Does the Batcomputer normally do that?" Harper asked.
"Have fits of static that only occur on standard definition televisions?" Barbara asked. "No. No, it doesn't."
Another blast of static, and David Cain's face loomed large on the Batcomputer's screen. Cassandra felt her heart almost stop.
"Forgive the sound and special effects straight from Windows Movie Maker," David said. "How else would you know we'd hacked the Batcomputer unless we were obvious about it?"
Everyone in the Batcave bristled.
"Now," David said. "This message is pre-recorded, so I won't be taking any questions. Just know that the game isn't over yet. My associates and I are in possession of three devices powered by an experimental explosive that we liberated from a ship in Gotham Harbor."
The first one to speak was Harper. "The Quraci explosive. The one I was tracking as Bluebird that led me to the Maronis."
"The devices themselves are rather easy to deactivate," the pre-recorded message of David Cain said. "Just a simple off-switch. The catch is… you have to beat us to get to them."
The image of David's face dissolved, showing instead a map of Gotham City.
"The fellow you know as One," David said, "will be at the Hall of Mirrors in Amusement Mile on the mainland."
A small red dot appeared at the corresponding location on the map. Tim glared at the screen.
"The gentleman who refers to himself as Two," David said, "will be at the old Fordman's Department Store on Miagani Island."
Another red dot popped up on Miagani Island, and Cassandra could hear Stephanie crack her knuckles.
"And as for little old me?" David asked. "I'll be in the gymnasium of PS 1147 on Bleake Island. And I do believe 1147 is where both of the loveable little Row scamps go to school, don't they?"
"That motherfucker," said Harper. "Sorry, Diana."
"We leave our locations at eight if you don't show up," David said. "The bombs blow at eight-fifteen. If you lose, the bombs blow at eight-fifteen with you in the blast radius. Speaking of which…"
Three wide circles appeared on the map, indicating the blast radius of each explosive device.
"There's no need to crunch the numbers, Miss Gordon," David said. "I've already taken the liberty. Your failure or tardiness will result in the deaths of one-hundred-seventy-five thousand citizens of Gotham City, so… Be there or be square. End transmission."
Another blast of static, and the screen of the Batcomputer returned to normal. Yet another pall of silence settled on those gathered.
"How," Stephanie said, "did those tools hack the Batcomputer?"
"Damian," Tim said. "If he's an amalgamation of a bunch of different Damian Waynes from across the Multiverse, then some of them had to know their ways past the armada of firewalls Bruce must have put on that damn thing.
"A hundred and seventy-five thousand people," Kate said. "It's… it's crazy."
"It's genius," said Diana.
They all looked at her.
"If those explosives go off after Nemesis activates the Stone, then that's one-hundred-seventy-five thousand fresh soldiers in the Army of Nemesis."
Kate blinked. "That's the size of Italy's standing army."
"It is so sad that you know that," Stephanie said.
While Kate glared at her, Diana said "Harmonia's goal was to distract us and spread us thin, and it seems that the goal of Nemesis is the same. And we do not know where the Stone is, compounding our problems further."
With that, Tim's eyes widened. Whenever he got this look on his face, Stephanie had always made a point of saying "Jinkies!" Cassandra didn't know what that meant. Nevertheless, Tim had his Jinkies-Face on.
"Or maybe we do," Tim said, and he walked to the Batcomputer.
"You smell a clue, Scooby?" Barbara asked.
"HA!" Stephanie yelled, broadly smiling. "Great minds do think alike!"
"Shut up," Tim said, and he brought up a screenshot of the map with the blast radii of the explosive devices.
"Anything about this seem funny to you?" Tim asked.
"Is anything funny about that many corpses?" Harper asked.
Cullen folded his arms. "That just sounds like a challenge."
"Founders Island," Tim said. "Seems to me if you wanted to sow chaos, the financial center of the city is where you start, not what you avoid."
As Tim brought up searches, his fingers running along the keyboard with speed, Kate asked "Yeah, but where on Founders Island? It's a big place."
Tim stopped, and turned around in the seat to look at them.
"Harmonia was running us all ragged," Tim said. "With the mob war, with Black Mask's murder, with bin Sayel. Trying to distract us."
"Yeah," Cassandra said.
"But that's just it," Tim said. "Batman isn't the only one you distract. Batman is a huge part of the ecosystem in Gotham City. You don't just distract him. You distract anyone that Batman could use to get to you. And in Gotham, that means cop and criminal alike. And there's only one place on Founders Island that the crooks won't go near, and the cops can't go to yet."
Tim swiveled in his chair back to the Batcomputer and hit a button. A picture of a building under construction came up.
Cassandra had to wonder if Tim planned his little speech around that button press just to be dramatic.
"The new Gotham Central," Tim said. And then he went back to work on the keyboard.
"I dunno," Barbara said. "Think you might be stretching a bit?"
"I'm looking up the construction bid for the precinct," Tim said. "If Harmonia knew the Stone would be underground for three thousand years, she'd have pulled a lot of strings in the meantime to make sure she had the power to dig. And we have… Harmony Enterprises."
Kate furrowed her brow. "Konstantin Fotos," she said.
At which point Diana's eyes lit up. "Of course!"
"What?" Cullen asked. "What'd I miss?"
"The guy in National City who had the Blade of Resurrection," Kate said. "He was the head of something called Harmony Enterprises."
Tim looked at Barbara. "That sound like a connection to you?"
"It damn sure does," Barbara said in reply.
"We leave," Diana said. "Now."
It felt weird walking around in her Batwoman costume in Wayne Manor. They didn't have a chamber for her down in the Batcave as she worked independently from the rest of Batman's network, so she had to change in her guest room.
This was the preferred version of the outfit, not the modular one she wore in National City. That one was plate armor, which slowed her down. Batman could be lightning fast while under enough armor to make a Sherman tank jealous, but Kate Kane was an actual person with an actual life, and there weren't enough hours in the day for that much cardio and lifting.
The one she had on in the guest room now was skin-tight spidersilk treated with the Shear thickening compound. Bane with a buck knife couldn't put a hole in it. The cape was a nanotube composite, also resistant to knives and guns, and kept her cool in the summer and warm in winters such as these. She got it from her apartment after she and Diana had helped everyone back to their bikes on Miagani Island the night before. After going to the airport to pick up their stuff from their National City excursion and explaining to the pilot of her private jet how his two passengers disappeared mid-flight.
Diana told him that the life of a superhero such as herself was a perilous one, and that such things happened both to her and the people that accompanied her. Which was true, without getting too specific.
And the pilot bought it, so...
Batwoman reached into her red utility belt and pulled out an envelope folded in half.
On the front it said "Renee."
"Did you put white makeup on over the bruises you got in National City?"
Batwoman looked toward the door.
Wonder Woman stood statuesque and resolute in the doorway, there in the outfit given to her by the Gods. Sword at her waist and shield at her back.
"It's an identifying feature," Batwoman said. "Can't be too careful."
"I see," Wonder Woman said. "And the red lipstick?"
Batwoman smiled with ruby red lips over glistening white teeth.
"It draws the eye," Batwoman said. "It's a distraction."
Wonder Woman looked as though she was going to say something, but opted instead to remain silent. Instead, she pointed at the envelope in Batwoman's hand.
"Who is that for?"
Batwoman looked down at the envelope. "Renee Montoya," she said. "I've been carrying this every night I've been Batwoman. In case I don't make it."
"I do believe our friend from the Fifth Dimension mentioned her last night," Wonder Woman said.
"He did," Batwoman said. "I was going to ask her to Bruce's wedding, finally tell her who I was, but…"
"You didn't tell her you were Batwoman?"
"No," Batwoman said. "Renee's a cop, and she found a woman on the force named Maggie Sawyer, and uh… Good for her, y'know?"
Wonder Woman didn't say anything.
Batwoman walked up to Wonder Woman and handed her the letter.
"Odds are," Batwoman said, "you're gonna be the one walking out if anyone's walking out of this at all. If Renee's gonna find out her ex bought it in a goofy costume, I think the news might go down better if the Princess of the Amazons gave her the news."
To her credit, Wonder Woman did not break out any sort of spiel about having hope and faith or whatever. She merely took the letter and put it in a leather pouch on the waist of her bodice.
"Just so you know," Wonder Woman said, "it is the height of gaucheness to task the woman vying for your affection to give a former amour an anguished declaration of love from beyond the grave."
"It's not a…" Batwoman huffed. "It's an apology."
Wonder Woman squinted slightly and folded her arms, the very picture of innocent curiosity.
"You know how I met Renee?" Batwoman asked. "She was the cop who pulled me over for a DWI. Batwoman wasn't the reason Renee and I fell apart. She just helped. I was a mess long before I put on the red and black S & M suit and started punching the mentally ill."
Wonder Woman simply nodded.
"See that?" Batwoman asked. "Being ugly, dirty, and common. The thing I'm trying to protect you from."
"You tell me your faults before asking me to deliver an apology for your misdeeds," Wonder woman said. "Forgive me if the signals are on the mixed side."
Batwoman didn't know what to say to that.
Wonder Woman stood to the side of the doorway of the guest room, stretched her hand out into the hallway, and bowed slightly, beckoning Batwoman through.
They were silent for the walk down the grand staircase to the manor's main foyer, save for one question.
Batwoman looked at the sword on Wonder Woman's waist and asked "Is it true that thing can kill a God?"
Wonder Woman stopped her descent. It seemed as though a shadow had settled over her.
"I pray we do not have to find out."
Once at the main foyer, there seemed to be some slight confusion. Batwoman tried to go left while Wonder Woman seemed to want to go toward the front door.
"The entrance to the Batcave is this way," Batwoman said. "I'm sure there's a motorcycle with a Bat motif down there. Wouldn't do for us to go down there on a Harley."
Wonder Woman shook her head.
"We fly," she said. "I'm faster than any vehicle, and I can go in a straight line. There's no traffic in the sky. Or at least not as low as I plan on flying."
"We fly?"
"Yes."
"You mean you fly."
"Yes."
"And what, you're gonna carry me?"
"Yes."
Batwoman blinked. "How?"
"Like how I carried Bruce into the medical bay."
"You mean bridal style?"
Wonder Woman sighed, folded her arms, and said "If you prefer, I can carry you by your armpits."
"Why aren't you dressed yet?" Barbara asked as she stood in the entryway to the medical bay.
Barbara Gordon was in her Oracle get-up, save her green holographic mask. Selina thought she looked a little on the humorous side, with the black leather pants, the black leather longcoat and the gray plate armor underneath. Like an extra in Johnny Mnemonic, which was a movie Selina had seen only once twenty years ago, yet she somehow still knew the names of all the characters.
Selina, for her part, was still in the clothes she'd worn since last night. She still hadn't slept. She still sat at Bruce's side in the Batcave's medical bay.
"I don't know, Barbara," Selina said. "Maybe it's because I'm not going."
Selina looked back at Bruce, and she could vaguely sense that Barbara was pinching the bridge of her nose.
Barbara walked further into the medical bay.
"You… You do know what we're up against, right?" Barbara asked.
"An angry Goddess, two technical Robins, the guy who trained our deadliest member, and rock soldiers that can end the Multiverse," Selina said. "So make sure that the Multiverse doesn't actually end, alright? I still haven't seen Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I just keep putting it off."
Barbara let her breath out, and closed her eyes.
"Need Tylenol?" Selina asked. "I'm sure we have some down here."
Barbara sighed again, and stepped forward.
"When I first put on the Batgirl costume," Barbara said. "I called my shot. I asked myself who was the supervillain I most wanted to fight and take down, and the answer was clear. It was Catwoman."
"That's flattering," Selina said.
"Yeah," Barbara said. "But if I knew that Catwoman would fall apart over some guy who's gonna wind up being fine anyway, I probably would have picked someone else."
And there it was. Selina had heard-tell of this from both Dick Grayson and Dinah Lance. It was the patented Barbara Gordon Pep-Talk. Start with an insecurity, get your subject angry, and then rally them into where you wanted them to go.
Legend had it that Bruce was like this before. Selina wouldn't know. She'd only been close to Bruce since he'd started taking medication to get his more assholidh tendencies under lock and key.
Selina looked at her. Hearing this from Barbara, she seemed to find something within herself.
Not anger, no. Anger was common. She had loads of that.
This… This was righteousness.
Selina's eyes flared, betraying no sign of how tired she was. She arose from her chair with her shoulders back, and walked toward Barbara with long strides. Barbara was the taller woman, but she seemed to shrink. Apparently, in her years of giving the Barbara Gordon Pep-Talk, no one had reacted quite this way.
"I'm not falling apart over some guy," Selina said softly, her vivid green eyes doing more talking than her voice. "I am tending to my husband."
Barbara tried to get some of her previous swagger back. "Look-"
"Let me ask you a question," Selina said, cutting her off. "Who… the fuck… do you think you're talking to?"
Any swagger that Barbara tried to get back was instantly depleted. She just looked at Selina with her mouth open.
Selina turned back to look at the comatose Bruce, before levelling her gaze back on Barbara.
"See," Selina said, "he's under the impression that I make him strong. And you know what? I think he's right. He gives and he gives and he gives, and this city takes, and takes, and takes. Which is why, just this once, when he wakes up down here, he's not gonna see a rocky ceiling. He's not gonna see his long-suffering butler. He's going to see me."
Selina took another step forward.
"Because someone has to be here," Selina said. "Someone has to tell him that on the other side of the divide, a son he thought was dead and a son he didn't even know he had are trying to kill us. He's going to hear this in as delicate a way as humanly possible. And he's going to hear it from me. Because I am his wife, and that is my job."
"Selina, I'm-"
Selina took another step forward, which cut Barbara off all by itself.
"He has so much faith in you," Selina said. "In all of you. What was it he said? We're all imperfect, but we're imperfect in different ways?"
Barbara nodded.
"Well," Selina said, "now is the chance to prove it. I'm telling you to prove it because I can. It isn't Batman's gadgets or skill that keep this city safe. It isn't his money or his Goddamned prep time. It's his eye for talent. Which brings me back to my original question. Who… the fuck… do you think you're talking to?"
Barbara didn't say anything.
"I am the Lady of Wayne Manor," Selina said. "And you will do what I say when you are in my home."
Selina decided to let that settle before she started speaking again.
"I really don't give a shit that you've been down in this cave longer than I have," she said. "I'm not Cassandra Cain, so I don't need you to teach me anything. I'm not Helena Bertinelli, so I'm not desperately seeking the approval of someone who used to wear a Bat on their chest a million fucking years ago. I'm not in your panties like Nightwing, and I'm not Schrodinger's Fuck-Buddy like Black Canary. So the next time you condescend to me, talk down to me, order me around, or give me one of your bullshit little Birds of Prey rah-rah speeches, I will dropkick your tragic absence of an ass out the front door of this house, and you will never… ever… come back. Are we clear?"
Barbara seemed to have gone pale. And she was already pale to begin with. In the end, she simply nodded.
"Good," Selina said. "Now go save the world. Go save every world. If Bruce wakes up and we're feeling good about it, we'll join you. If not, then, well, you're just gonna have to make do. And you wouldn't be down here if he didn't think you couldn't."
With that, Selina turned and walked back to her chair.
She didn't hear Barbara so much as move behind her. Selina didn't think Barbara was used to being spoken to in such a way, so she reckoned that she was searching for something with which to reply. Some kind of cowgirl looking for a bullet for her empty gun about her person, and not finding one.
Finally, Selina said something.
"Do you love Dick Grayson?" she asked.
After a moment, Barbara said. "Yeah, I do."
"How much?"
"With everything I have."
The fact that Barbara had tried to manipulate her into doing what she wanted didn't make Selina angry. It just made her want to handle business.
But this did make her angry. Not the big, showy kind of anger, but the insidious bubbling kind.
"So you walked in here," Selina said, "and you just pretended you didn't know what it was like, huh?"
In the underground chambers beneath the new Gotham Central on Founders Island, excavated by Harmonia's acolytes, Nemesis smiled.
Nemesis had sent them on their appointed errands. Jason went to the abandoned carnival, David went to the gymnasium, and Damian went to the old shop.
Moreso, Nemesis had gotten them right where She wanted them in a mental capacity as well.
Damian needed little prodding. He was the perfect sycophant, ever eager for approval, ready and willing to go to the ends of the Earth for his Goddess, not even questioning why She needed him to perform so pedestrian a task as going to a toy store in the first place.
There was some reassurance that David Cain required in order to make him pliable. Harmonia had appeared before him in a vivid display of light, a great show of her divinity to cow a wayward mortal who was intent on giving himself to the drink. Harmonia provided a sign of redemption. But Nemesis sought to make Herself different. Nemesis sought to make Herself a beacon of power, and Cain was eager to please. When She reached out with Her consciousness to learn about this vibrant and dangerous world that had sprouted from Her passing three thousand years ago, She learned a curious phrase.
"America loves a winner."
And if She needed proof, David Cain provided it.
And as for Jason Todd?
Jason was terrified.
He was so easy to pick apart. He had been so sure of himself, so sanctimonious about his goals in the world in which he found himself alive again, for all intents and purposes. Yet the matter of his demise was so dire. It was home to Nemesis. She had never toyed with someone who had been so brutally murdered. So unjustly slain. Or at least not one who was still, technically, alive. She had never held so deep and so complete a dominion over the very essence of a mortal before that. Causing him misery, bringing his thoughts and his memories to the front of his mind, causing him pain was the most fulfillment She had ever had dealing with those below Olympus.
Which is why She thought it was a shame that She couldn't cause him more anguish, flay his mind further…
But Nemesis was the Goddess of Grudges and Blood Feuds. And vengeance waited for no one.
Vengeance on those who sat atop Olympus, weakened and depleted from centuries of declining worship. Three thousand years after the fact, they would still execute Her simply for attempting to live up to Her potential.
And certainly vengeance would be wrought upon the vile and traitorous slattern in whose body Nemesis now resided. Every second She spent in the body of Harmonia was a new and fresh agony. Just the very indignity of it, holding forth in the worthless shell of one who would betray her fellow Olympian, her fellow Goddess…
Nemesis had said that She was not the Goddess of Elaborate Plans, but what She had in store for the decimated group of wayward heroes coming to stop Her and the mortals She held in Her thrall was about as complicated as She cared to get.
Nemesis closed Her eyes…
...and the Stone called to Her.
The thing She created. The vessel with which She would become all-powerful.
And it was here, underground, beyond the wall of dirt in front of which She presently stood.
Nemesis reached out Her hand, and closed Her eyes.
The soil rumbled. Dirt fell away in sheafs and reams, and vanished into pure and undiluted nothing.
Two feet deep… Four feet deep… Six feet deep…
Until a glimmer appeared.
A green, translucent stone big enough to be hefty but small enough to fit in the palm of a Goddess' hand loosed itself from the dirt, and floated toward Nemesis.
Her fingertips wrapped around it, and She opened Her eyes.
It was shining. Pristine. As fresh and as fine as the day She stole into the domain of Hades and crafted it from the waters of the River Styx.
Drenched in the blood of the unjustly slain, this Stone would raise Her unstoppable army and bring an end to a world that had been derelict in its dread of Her these past three thousand years.
And now, yet again, Nemesis smiled.