Chapter 32: Line In The Sand
The Lord had long forgotten his past, his memories long consigned to oblivion, not needed or wanted. Indeed, the only thing he could even call remembering was brief flashes in dreams, of a heated blade that tore into his face, whoever wielding it ignoring his screams…
He couldn't even remember if he had screamed. Perhaps he had stopped eventually, knowing they did nothing but bring more pain.
But that was then, and this was now. The past didn't matter. His injuries didn't matter. All that mattered was that he knew the truth, and that he finally had the power to make that truth a reality.
Jump City's Correctional Facility was known as just that, an ordinary prison for housing ordinary people. The metahumans the Titans defeated went to prisons with metahuman holding capacities, like Iron Heights or the Slab. It didn't make the prison any less dangerous though.
His ability to sense people's "essence" now enhanced ten times over, the Lord didn't even have to go into the prison. He could feel the sense of corruption, evil, and malice a hundred feet from the jail. Here was a great lie of this society: the idea that a prison provided any beneficial aspects. Bullshit. Rehabilitation was a lie. Men like this could not and did not want to be changed. And locking them away produced no great purpose rather then making them better criminals and feeding their hatreds and sick desires. When you put a whole bunch of psychopaths and predators in one place, all you got was concentrated psychopathism and predatorism, for lack of proper words.
It was not needed or wanted. Not being able to tap your potential was bad. Thinking reality owed you ANYTHING except the potential you refused to tap was bad. But humans who would kill and harm others and steal their potential, all because of insecurity that they could not tap theirs… that was inexcusable. Unforgivable.
Not practical.
The Lord held out his hands, and black power crackled and then exploded off of them, flying out and into the prison. It blitzed through the structure, tearing and burning apart every human it met. A legion of men who were united in their enjoyment of a scream now united in a scream. The prison and surrounding buildings exploded as the Lord burned away the taint, not sparing anyone, not even the guards. Most were as bad as the prisoners, poisoned by the atmosphere and becoming just as brutal and cruel as the thugs they were supposed to guard. And the rest…had nothing to offer society anyway.
The Lord turned and flew on.
Before he managed to cleanse everything (and he was speaking mostly in metaphors when he said this would be humanity's final night: it would take some time to clean up the world), he was sure people would write and speak about how terrible his deeds were, and how all the death he would cause made him a monster.
How wrong they were. Death was one of the most natural acts of existence. All things were brought to life with the inevitability that it would end. The purpose of life was to be born, and perhaps enjoy your time in any way you could before you died. Your time would come, but then again, the other natural desire was to make it last. Immortality can only be achieved via children. To produce and raise them, you had to have the abilities to stave off death, at least for a time. But, in the end, death was part of life.
And indeed, everything living was encoded with that desire, a feeling that ran through the deepest parts of all things: the desire to survive. Those who did not have the proper desire in place quickly died out, as it should be. And those who did not have the proper tools either evolved them or died out as well. It was natural and almost beautiful, in a way.
And then…mankind.
Indeed, as the Lord swooped down into an alleyway where two groups of punks were engaging in a gang war, he thought of sharks. As a group of boys, high on drugs and the sense of invincibility that came with youth, ganged up on another boy and began stomping on him on the ground, he reflected that despite the brutality, it couldn't match the brutality of a great white. Jaws was remembered for a reason: for a fairly accurate if entertainment oriented show on why sharks were perhaps the greatest pure predators on the Earth, and definitely in the water. The way sharks were designed to kill, and the savagery that they could bring to the act…it was truly the act of a king among beasts.
But the Lord would not be seeking to wipe out the shark species. For all their brutality and savagery, they lacked the key thing that took an animal and made him into a human: malice.
The act of killing should be done to survive. To eat, or to try and avoid being eaten, to protect the grounds where you eat and perhaps to protect your young so they could eat. Those were the grounds for death.
Not because they had a different skin colour.
Not because they had a different way of thinking.
Not because they were taller or shorter or smarter or dumber then you.
You killed to survive.
You did not kill for the sake of doing it.
Death was natural. But mankind had perverted it into a blasphemy, taking their desire to survive and filtering it up through their brain until it became a "good reason" to kill someone else.
Indeed, the two gangs fighting were ultimately just expressing their desire to survive. But their modern brains, conditioned by the safety of their modern society and no real predators, warped those instincts into sacrilege.
As The Lord fired out blades composed of shadows, ripping apart the gang members, he pondered this problem.
Ultimately, it must have been a mistake.
Assuming for the sake of argument that humans had been created by some higher power that arranged these things, be it God making something in his image or mother nature placing a unique survival skill in one kind of animal or just fate rolling a dice and tossing whatever came out together, granting humanity intelligence must have been an error.
Or rather, the method of doing it was.
Once again assuming that there were higher beings, and adding to that assumption by the presence of an error that they are not ABSOLUTELY, UTTERLY infallible, one could assume that, by their very nature, that mistakes made by such entities were very very few. But by the same assumption, one could probably accurate predict that when a mistake was made, it was a hell of a big one.
Much like mankind and intelligence.
Granting the gift of an advanced cerebral cortex, giving homo sapiens the only true triune brain, was not the mistake. But such a system takes time to develop, and indeed the process of human civilization shows how a species will utilize its gifts over thousands of years.
The error lay, in the course of designing, adapting, and perhaps perfecting this gift, that whoever or whatever ran reality did not RE-ADAPT THE OTHER PARTS OF MANKIND.
Perhaps the apes that had eventually become humans were meant to be special in one way or another (indeed, the erroneous preconception that we evolved brains and then started walking upright is reversed: we first began walking upright and then developed the brain) but before that time, they were just like other animals. Before the cerebral cortex, they commanded the same systems for other animal minds: a "reptile" brain for the task of motion, and the limbic system which controlled instinct, or if you would, the four F's: feeding, fighting, fleeing, and fucking (add in sleep and protecting one's young as variations on those). If humanity was given the gift of true thought, of being able to think beyond the base ideas of survival, to plan and explore, to be able to think in metaphors and introspect, then why in the hell were we left with these primitive, problem causing parts within our brain as well?
It was either a mistake, or a joke. A grand cosmic joke, where a species is given the ability to ascend beyond their own set state, yet held to the ground by their still there animal instincts, which were altered by intelligence on the way up.
When the brain got it right (or perhaps rather when it was able to properly adapt the animal instincts), you got such great human things as science, the ability to understand and record the inner workings of everything around you, and such great human emotions as courage, and compassion, and perhaps the greatest of all, love.
And when the brain got it wrong…
Difference. Greed. Fear. Jealousy. Hatred. Racism. Insanity. And sometimes, even Evil.
Waste.
Perhaps, in the end, that was humanity's greatest curse. All animals of the same species are given a pre-set program when they are born, to serve until they die.
But not humanity. Humanity was Unique. Humanity was blessed and scarred with difference. And for all the great things that had brought, it had also brought endless death, war, destruction, horror, and atrocity.
Yes, perhaps it was not a mistake. It was a joke. A joke on a level beyond the ability for humans to understand.
But the Lord had tapped the potential that all mankind possessed, using all he could muster and more, and he had finally ascended to that level.
And he wasn't laughing.
And that was what the Lord knew he ultimately had to do as he flew among Jump City, annihilating everything in his path, wiping out all the scoundrels and worth-nothings that society had to be rid of, sparing one or two along the way who actually had potential to become so much more then they were with the right help. He had to eliminate difference.
Once it was all done, there would be no more reason for mankind to hate, fear, or covert his fellow man. When he was done, there would be no more governments, no more religions, no more groups pitted against each other. He would cleanse all their brains of their delusions and stupidities. If he had to, he would eliminate skin color and sex as well, turn humanity into a race of blue-skinned asexuals. But difference had to be destroyed. Otherwise humanity would keep fighting until there was nothing left of their society, their civilization, their world. It would all be gone, and all in the name of waste.
How many would survive the purge? A million? Maybe two? Once it was over, the Lord would gather them up, and he would show them the truth. And once their minds were clear, and all parts of their animal self were banished to oblivion where they belonged, the Lord would show them how to tap the greatness that lurked inside all humans. True, they would not all make the same things, and some would not be able to do as much as others, but they would be united in their acts of tapping their potential, and making a true paradise out of the rotting cesspool their society had once been. And if any deviance popped up, the Lord would deal with it immediately.
How long would he live? Was he immortal now? Maybe. He would have time enough to learn once he had culled the flock and properly taught the remainders. Time enough to take this planet and its greatest species and build a Utopia, free of all the terrible things difference brought to it. He would take the darkness that had threatened to swallow humanity, and he would use it to save humanity instead.
Was this a fascist totalitarian nightmare? Some people would definitely perceive it as that. But that was irrelevant. What mattered was the truth.
Humanity needed to be cleansed and then guided. It may not have been fair. It may not have been desired. It may not have been right.
But it was what humanity needed.
And ultimately, it was what humanity deserved. They could have saved themselves. They all had the ability. It may have taken great amounts of hard work and sacrifice, but humanity had had millennia to understand what the Lord knew. But they chose not to. They chose to go the easier path, following their instincts, and committing horror after horror after horror, blinking out the bright lights that managed to spring up, drowning them under a tide of their uselessness, and for what?
Waste.
Humanity had lost the right to decide its future. It had lost it long ago. It did this to itself. It was what it needed and deserved.
And it was time.
And so went the Lord's thoughts as he flew from end of the city to another, leaving nothing but destruction in his wake. He stopped at one end, preparing to double back and clean up what was left.
His last thoughts before it happened was that despite the fact this was what humanity had sentenced itself to, most of it would not stand by and let themselves be destroyed. After all, so many were ruled by their survival instincts, and enough would be able to tap their brains to know that their best chance to stop him (which would not happen, but they'd try anyway) was to send their best and brightest after…
"STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
And then something hit him. Hard. Hard enough to send him flying into the ground, making a large crater as he was buried in the concrete.
The Lord blinked. Well, that was a bit unexpected. He lifted himself up and was not surprised to see what he saw when he floated out of the crater.
New staff in hand, Robin stood there, his eyes as hard as flint, his fellows all there as well, ready to stand alongside him and fight.
"Like I said before, end of the line monster." Robin spat. The Lord cocked his head.
"And so the lie is so great they ignore my mercy and continue to make the foolish stand. Do you really have any idea what you face, Titans?"
"A god? Well then god, let me tell you a little something. According to Greek legend, the gods came from somewhere, from beings of even greater power. They were called the Titans. So are we."
"Ah, speaking of Cronos and Zeus, are we? Children, you are not ones who can banish me, no matter how you try and mix your metaphors. One last time, I will go against every belief I have, simply because I respect how you have tapped the better aspects of this foul, corrupt species. Stand down. I do believe I could use you in my world."
Robin cocked his own head.
"You claim the truth? Lord, there is no absolute truth. You command nothing but your own madness. Perhaps we do as well. But our truth speaks of this: you are the bad guy, and we are the good guys. And we WILL stop you." Robin said.
"And he won't be alone."
A new figure floated down from the sky. The Lord recalled how strongly he had been hit, and looking at the new figure, he finally understood who had done it. None of the Titans could have mustered the strength, but this boy certainly could, the teenager with a skintight blue and red costume with a black leather jacket and shades, the big S on the back of his jacket very familiar.
"Superboy." The Lord said.
"And friends." Superboy replied.
A dark figure bounded down from the building, landing next to the Titans. Her outfit was also very familiar: a black all body outfit with a horned cowl, a yellow bat outline on her chest, and a mask sewn shut at the mouth.
"Batgirl." Batgirl stated. A quick blaze of red and gold zipped past her and stopped to reveal a familiar child with a bowl-shaped haircut.
"Impulse."
A blonde teenage girl in blue jeans and a black shirt with a double W on it flew down next to Superboy.
"Wonder Girl."
A line shot from a building, and another blonde teenage girl slid down on it. She wore a red outfit and mask, except for her skirt, which was white. A large quiver of arrows hung from her back, and she clutched a large, powerful looking red bow.
"Arrowette."
The next appearing figure had a real fancy entrance: a white gas suddenly plumed from the cracks and suddenly manifested as a human. Specifically, another girl. The fact that she appeared to be composed entirely of some kind of gas made it a little more difficult to make such identifications, but she wore a white full body outfit and a grey overcoat that was much like Neo from the Matrix movies.
"Secret."
The final entrance was also fancy: a smoke bomb (at least that's what it looked like) exploded, and out of it stepped a black girl with red hair in a purple costume, carrying a staff.
"Empress." She said. And she was the last.
"So you decided to make a stand…by calling in more foolish children? Name or not, you are far more Teen then Titans. Having a knee-jerk membership drive won't help you or save you." the Lord said, and shook his head.
"We're not the Titans. They're the Titans." Superboy said.
"What's in a name? You're still all children."
"We may be children, but we know who we are. And we know who you are." Robin said, as all the new teenagers gathered around the Titans. "You're the criminal who needs to be brought to justice. And we are that justice." Robin said.
"You're still just children." The Lord said.
"Then we're YOUNG JUSTICE! And so, to one and all, JUSTICE GO!" Robin yelled, and the teenagers swarmed forward.
The Lord chuckled.
"You know, if you are here to protect this city, it's a good thing you decide to confront me in this direction." The Lord said, and thrust out his hand.
"MOVE!" Robin yelled.
A gigantic blast flew out of the Lord's hands, destroying everything in front of him. The blast flew on and detonated off in the distance, the explosion blasting another mushroom cloud in the distance.
No sign of the so called "Young Justice" remained when the smoke cleared. The Lord sighed.
"Too bad…"
The smoke around the Lord's head suddenly contorted, and the Lord gasped and coughed as the dirty air turned into something stronger. Caught by surprise, he reared back…
And Raven appeared out of the shadows behind him, grabbing him and yanking him back into the darkness.
Across the world, the Sahara desert was also covered in night, the lifeless sand dreadfully cold to match the blistering heat of the day. There was virtually no life around, except for the cactuses. It was truly a dead zone.
Then a shadow portal opened in the sky.
The Lord flew out, righting himself and stopping, hovering above the ground. A second later various teenagers began falling out of the portal, even as a zipping blur deposited more in the sands. Within three seconds the Titans and their new allies, dubbed "Young Justice" were all there.
"No one for you to kill out here, Lord. Just you, and us. And only one side is leaving." Robin said.
"Nice work pulling us all out of the way Impulse." Beast Boy said.
"And nice work with the gas there. Useful ability your body has." Savior said to Secret. The girl made out of gas smiled shyly.
"So…you want to make a stand out here?" the Lord said.
"Hell yeah."
"…..Very well."
The Lord floated down, landing on the sand. He held out his right hand and darkness swirled around and out from it, and then it cleared having formed a new sword, a katana at least eight feet long.
"Do you stupid children actually think you can defeat me?" he asked.
"Maybe, maybe not. But we won't surrender, as long as there is a hope that we can stop you." Robin said.
"Heh, Spoken like a true child. Very well then. Make your stand." The Lord said as he brought the sword to his side. "And learn the harshest truths of all: only the fittest survive. And he who lives on hope DIES OF STARVATION."
The teenage heroes streamed forward. Like Robin had said, they were the closest to the Lord when he was causing his destruction. But there was another reason.
If the children fell, the adults would take their place. And hopefully the adults would have worn the Lord of the Night down enough so that they could handle it.
In any case, the Titans and the new ones charged forward, knowing this was for all the marbles.
And no matter the result, best or worse, they all knew their future could be summed up in four words.
Suffer The Little Children.
Alright alright, before you start yelling "Hey I don't know who so and so is!" I've put a handy guide up below. So go read that, and hope it's enough, because this won't end without death…
In the chapters of Black and White, the Titans have battled sociopaths, monsters, lunatics, and demons, and perhaps they think they've seen it all…
But now they and their allies will battle a god…
They ain't seen NOTHING yet.
Who's WhoRobin called a bunch of teenage superheroes to help out with the Lord. Here is a short biography of the new arrival's names, real names, origin, and powers…to the best of my knowledge. If anyone wants to email me and add some info it would help. Anyway, here's all the info I have.
Superboy
Real Name: Conner Kent (given to him by Clark Kent's parents, who are raising him).
Origin: When Superman was "killed" by Doomsday, a genetics lab called Cadmus tried to take some of Superman's genetic material to clone a new Superman. However, they could not completely figure out how to clone kryptonian genes, so they had to graft human genes onto the clone as well. The clone was being "grown" when some stuff happened and the clone busted out, not fully grown, so he appeared to be a teenager. The clone promptly became Superboy.
Powers: Unable to perfectly clone Superman, the scientists at Cadmus gave Superboy a power called "tactile telekinesis". This ability allows him to mimic most of Superman's powers, and also grants him a useful "wild talent" where he had make anything shatter by touching it. However, the true extent of this "substitute power" is not yet known.
Batgirl
Real Name: Cassandra Cain
Origin: Her father, David Cain, was one of the world's greatest assassins, and not being of sound mind, he decided to raise his daughter to be the proverbial perfect weapon. Indeed, so great was his devotion to teaching her combat techniques that he didn't even teach her how to talk. However, when he put her to the test at the age of ten, by dressing her up and sending her to talk to a crime lord (who suspected nothing until Cassandra put her fist through his throat) the killing made Cassandra realize how much she disliked murder, and she fled her father. The teenager eventually ended up in Gotham, where she assumed the role of the third Batgirl during the course of the "No Man's Land" event (long and complicated, don't ask). Taken under the wing of Batman and Oracle, she eventually learned how to speak.
Powers: Batgirl is human, but she may very well be the greatest martial artist in the world. Greater then Robin, and maybe even greater then Batman, Batgirl's ability to read body language and battle in hand to hand is virtually unmatched. Put this way: A villain in the Batman mythos, Lady Shiva, possesses martial arts skills so great that even Batman had yet to beat her in a one on one fight. Batgirl bested Lady Shiva in one. Case in point.
Impulse
Real Name: Bart Allen
Origin: When you can run faster then the speed of light, set places in time seem to lose some of their meaning. Hence, the confusing origin of Bart Allen, the grandson of Barry Allen, the second Flash who died during the Crisis of Infinite Earths event back in the mid 80's. His father was fathered by Barry Allen in the 29th century but for some reason Barry returned to the 20th, leaving his son, and eventually Bart to be raised in the future. However, Bart eventually returned to the past as well, and became Impulse.
Powers: Impulse commands the ability to tap into the Speed Force and run at speeds approaching the speed of light. This allows him to not only move really fast, but run up walls, across ceilings, and by "vibrating" his molecules at super-speed, phase through objects. He also commands the ability to make "speed force clones" of himself, copies of himself that command all his abilities and let him experience what they experience. Also, Bart can remember anything he reads at super-speed.
Wonder Girl
Real Name: Cassandra Sandsmark
Origin: Originally a teenager who got her hands on some ancient Greek artifacts, the Sandals of Hermes and the Gauntlet of Atlas (which granted her speed, flight, strength, and stamina), Cassie eventually somehow got up to Olympus, the home of the Greek Gods which also created Wonder Woman, and managed to speak with Zeus, King of the Gods. Zeus was impressed with her bravery, and granted Cassie her own powers that did not need artifacts to be used.
Powers: Wonder Girl commands powers similar to Wonder Woman's, so she has superhuman strength, endurance, and the ability to fly at great speeds.
Arrowette
Real Name: Cissie King-Jones
Origin: Her mother was the original Arrowette, Olympic archery medalist Bonnie King, Bonnie was obsessed with Green Arrow and hence became the original Arrowette. Cissie's mother trained her to follow in her footsteps, which may have been due more to the fact that Bonnie wasn't completely mentally stable. In any case, Cissie assumed the identity and used it.
Powers: Arrowette has near perfect aim with a bow and arrow, and many special "gimmick" arrows ala Green Arrow that have special effects.
Secret
Real Name: Unknown (called Suzie)
Origin: Secret was a woman with a unique metagene that allowed her to transform her body into gas. The activation of that gene was tragic though: her insane brother (who would later become the dangerous villain Harm) needed a "sacrifice" and threw a radio into the bathtub when she was taking a bath. Somehow, this activated her metagene. This somehow led to her becoming a ward of the D.E.O (Department of Extranormal Operations) who kept her in an air-tight room and studied her until she realized the extent of the "bad things" they were doing and escaped. The department chased after her with the intent of destroying her, but they were fooled when a container of gas was substituted in her stead to them. They destroyed the container and went on their merry way. Hence, Suzie can live in freedom, abet in "secret".
Powers: Originally a normal girl who could covert her body into a gaseous state, Suzie has found her power growing stronger as she aged, to the point where she is permanently stuck in her gaseous form. However, this ability allows her to change her shape and size at will, and she can also alter her body's toxicity, from points where she functions as "Knock Out Gas" to theoretically making her form dangerously poisonous. I am unsure of her ability to change her density, but I believe she can do that too.
Empress
Real Name: Unknown (to me)
Origin: This is the only one I lack information about. I know that Empress has some kind of roots in voodoo, and had some tragedies happen involving her mother and father, but where she came from and such I lack details. So, all I know is that she came from a forest, and she has some kind of connection to Arrowete. If anyone has better info I'll be glad to hear it.
Powers: Not fully know. She appears to have a kind of limited telekinesis (in a battle with Robin, she literally froze him in his tracks with some kind of mental command/attack) and possibly a teleportation ability to appear out of smoke. She appears to practice some kind of magic, most likely voodoo. She carries a staff and is also very skilled in swordmanship. Besides that, I have no idea. So why am I using her? Because her name is so cool!