Chapter2
The boy swashbuckles with imaginary foes, reliving the exploits of his hero on the screen. He laughs merrily. His parents look on as they walk arm in arm. A man steps out from the alley, holding a pistol. A smile creeps into his face as he speaks. "We'll start with the lady's pretty pearls." He rips them from her as the three stand on in shock. The father starts to protest. A bullet splits the night and the father's head pulps, dropping him to the ground in front of the boy. The mother screams and another shot silences her for all time. The man stares at the boy and salutes, the gun held at a jaunty angle against his own head. He drops the string, spilling the pearls like raindrops on the mother. "See ya around, kid." The man walks off, leaving the boy to mourn and scream into the night as The Batman is born.
The father looks upon his world and wishes he could weep. The air is poison, the planet itself is killing them all. He looks at the birthing matrix as his mate asks him if there is no other way. "No, within the day, perhaps even the hour, our planet will explode. We will die, but out son shall live. He will be a god among those we send him." his mate looks on and takes cold satisfaction. "It is well then." The father launches the matrix towards it's destiny, his secret dying with him as the planet erupts soon after. And so, Superman begins his journey to the never ending battle.
The sands fuse together from the heat of his people burning. He has locked his mind away from the Great Voice. He has no choice in the matter. H'ronmeer's curse is spreading as quickly as thought, engulfing all. He enters his home and holds his mate close. K'hym appears, smoke shuffling off her brow. His soul shatters as his mate and his child embrace each other and combust. The ashes of his life cover him. He cannot join them. The perpetraitor of this horror must pay. Behind his wall of protective fire, Ma'alefa'ak laughs for reasons secret even to him. He goes now to bring about justice on what was once his brother. J'onn J'onzz, last of the Manhunters, leaves the last of his old life behind and sets off on the course of his new one.
"No!" Ron Stoppable fell out of bed in a tangle of sheets and pillows. His face ran with a cold sweat as half remembered images of bullets, pearls, green rock and red sand still danced across his brain. His chest was pounding, fit to burst. He desperately tried to recall the dream, it was important. "I have to remember it." But the dream has fled from him like dew evaporating in the Sun on a crisp desert morning. All he can recall is a rake thin man, white as snow, standing at a gate of horn with a look of sorrow upon his face.
"I'm tired Shego. Tired of the failure and the humilation. Stoppable was brilliant!" Shego looked up form her nail filing in genuine suprise. Drakken never called him that. Before, it was always 'The buffoon.' "I knew she had that communicator. Never thought to track it's transmissions. The force field? Threw it into the back of a closet because it was worthless. Even you! He scared you, didn't he? You feared him. you respected him." Drakken walked over to his workshop table and commented on the devices he had lying there. "Look at this! The neuro-compliance chip! Just imagine what Stoppable could have acheived with it. And all I did was force you to listen to my rants about childhood trauma!" Drakken threw the chip down in self disgust and sat down in a huff. "I want what he had. Power. Fear. Respect. And I know now how I shall get it. No more half cocked schemes. No more short sighted plans." Shego sighed. She had heard all of this before, and it bored her. "Ok. So you have a fully cocked plan then?" Drakken smiled, not an evil smile, but one that sent a vein of ice water shooting into her heart none the less. "Indeed I do Shego. Indeed I do."