Smoke billows and soot blows like a sandstorm through the twisted metal of Metropolis skyscrapers; buildings that tumble like toy blocks before the beings that grapple in the skies.
Bruce Wayne is forced to evacuate his car, pushing forward on foot through the wall of debris and ash that burns his eyes and forces him to cover his mouth and nose. Children walk hand in hand through the destruction, frenzied teachers trying desperately to lead their charges out alive.
Bruce finds a girl who's mother will never come home again.
But he's looking for someone. Someone who came to Metropolis as part of a social outreach program, someone who must be around here somewhere, helping with evacuation because Bruce can't imagine him doing anything else.
Bruce plunges through the ruins of Metropolis, searching for his son.
He fumbles with semi-functioning technology, the casual tracker Dick carries spluttering as it tries to force its signal to penetrate the haze; the technology not designed for the unfolding disaster. The beings tear at each other as they glide through the air, grunts and shouts filtering down to echo off the streets below.
Bruce finds Dick.
The 16 year old is a distant blur, guiding people from a collapsing building onto the street, small in the distance, body tight with confusion and stress, but alive.
Bruce dashes forward, because Batman and Robin need to regroup now, but then wind blows him forward so hard that he overbalances and skids along the torn concrete.
He raises his head to see the black clad being punch the blue one into the building above Dick. The building shudders, and Dick's motions to help an elderly woman hobbling outwards take a desperate touch to them, but the structure holds steady.
The black clad entity is above Bruce, and Bruce stays still on the ground because nothing so inhuman has ever been seen before, and even Batman has no plan for this, and the being yells, arms spread wide: "I'm going to kill you, Kal El; just like I killed your coward of a father!"
The blue alien tenses, eyes glowing red with unmistakeable rage as he hovers floors above Dick. His hands clench into fists and he jerks, hands colliding with, shattering the masonry of the building as he leaps forward, the battle of titans blowing somewhere Bruce doesn't track.
But the decimated stonework launches earthward from the inhuman pressure of the terrible fist, shatters and falls, and Bruce scrambles forward and runs, even as Dick takes the children in his arms and shoves…
Bruce watches tons of stone slam into Dick's human body, sending dust upward in a burial shroud of ash.
Bruce runs with scraped knees and palms as panicking civilians tear past him, past the still and silent pile of rubble stacked around his son like a fallen monument to humanity.
Bruce notes, as he dashes forward, that there are no people pushing to exit the half-blockaded exit of the building. Dick had gotten them all out.
Bruce skids to his knees beside the rubble, finding out Dick's head under the stone and reaching with trembling fingers to search for a pulse. The blank nothing he receives freezes and numbs his fingers.
Frantically, he casts his eyes over the large slabs that pin Dick in, and throws his whole weight into trying to move them. There is a shift, a muted scratching, but only of a few centimeters, and no matter how hard he shoves the stone remains immovable.
Bruce collapses and reaches down to do what he can, to cup Dick's face in his palm and thumb over his cheek.
He shudders, and kneels there, holding what he can of his son, until a terrible crashing draws his attention and the dots of the two beings rise ferociously from the apartment building they leveled and tear at each other in the sky.
Bruce's grip tightens as his eyes narrow in hatred. Who were these things? What were they? Did they bleed?
A vibrating pulse runs against his leg, the concealed bat-communicator he'd taken shakes with the urgency of Alfred's call. He slips a hand into his pocket and withdraws the device, placing it against his ear.
"Master Bruce, what is going on? Are the two of you alright?"
"...Dick is dead."
"M-Master Bruce…"
"That thing killed him. It wasn't even trying; it didn't even know he was there. It lost control, it got angry, it just barely lost control and it killed my son. Dick was strong, trained, intelligent - the best humanity had to offer, and that thing accidentally killed him with a flick of it's hand. It's too dangerous to be left alive. Find it's weakness. We're going to regroup; plan... we're going to kill a god, Alfred."
"...I was under the impression that we didn't kill people, Master Bruce."
"That thing hardly counts as a person. Besides..." Bruce's hand tightened around Dick's scalp. "...there are about to be some changes around here. No more diamond absolutes."