Garfield League of America Chapter Twelve: The Cyborg That Shouted Love At The Heart of the Digital World!
Garfield was getting ready to begin the extraction process for Cyborg. He had the Grid strapped to one of two operating tables in the computer lab. Garfield then laid down on the other table as Black Canary gently placed nodes and wires and other important coputer things on Garfield and connected him to the Grid which was connected to the mainframe.
"Please be careful Garfield. You are first real man I have met and I could not stand to lose you before I have gotten to really know you." Asked Black Canary with loneliness with one hand over her delicate heart.
"Sorry Blackbird, I don't know the meaning of the word." Said Garfield with honesty. But noticing Black Canary's pained expression Garfield decided to make a promise anyway. "But no matter what, I promise you, we will sing the burning song of hot love and we will bring life to the dead of night sooner than later. I will mend your broken wings and I will teach you to fly and soar like angel in the heavens of passion."
"I would love nothing more Garfield. I look at you and already I have forgotten why I grieved for that loser Green Arrow in first place." Black Canary smacked her lips with thrist and could barely contain her anticipation.
Garfield was glad to see that his old charm still worked even in these dark times, but then that odd and unweolcome feeling of guilt wormed once more into heart like wasps in vending machine. Why was he so troubled by moving on so quickly to new women after the death of Wonder Woman? It was not first time he had rebounded after death of a lover. Why now was romantic recoil?
"Do not trouble yourself with such trivial fallow matters. We can discuss this after you finish saving your friend Cyborg from evil." Wonder Woman's voice appeared in Garfield's head. Garfield turned his head and saw that it seemed to be emanating from the Godkiller which was sheathed nearby.
"Wonder Woman is that you?" Garfield whispered with curiosity to the sword.
"After a fashion, I suppose. With my death my soul like so many others became part of the Godkiller. Before the dawn of the Multiverse the most dangerous weapons of all ideas were forged in the war for control between the opposing Constant Dynasties of Order and Chaos. For over a thousand cycles of existence across an eternal span of endlessness, there have been champions who have wielded these ideas given form, such as the Godkiller and its twin blade Batblade. Worlds have died and lived, brought asunder and born again for both Order and Chaos. Every victory and ending is simply another beginning in this Forever War. Now in our current reality the critical nexus arrives once more. The latest Champions Eternal have all been chosen but there can be only one and whoever stands last will shape the new world for their chosen Pantheon." The Godkiller explained to Garfield with massive but crucial exposition dump.
"So what am I? Nothing but a pawn in the game of tug of war between Order and Chaos?" Garfield asked with disappointment.
"We all are, Garfield. Whether we know it or not. The end comes, Garfield. You and Batman are the only Champions left. Batman has dedicated himself to the will of Chaos, and he has tipped the universal balance in its favor. But what do you fight for?" The Godkiller asked Garfield with motivations. "You have slain the Paladin of Order, Darkseid. You have brought catastrophe to Order yet you also oppose Chaos' champion."
"I care little for such cosmic absolutes but I do know for certain that I am a man and that always I go where the wind takes me and I do what my heart tells me." Said Garfield with thoughtfulness. "We are more than just pieces on the chessboard. We are all writers of our own destiny."
"It will not be so easy, to fight for a compromise between two polarities of existence." The Godkiller reminded Garfield of hard reality.
"I know. But when has a man like me ever backed down from challenge? I have seen the fruits of Order and Chaos, and it is apparent that for all their bickering, both sides are the same." Said Garfield with centrism, the political position of intellectuals. "I accept my destiny as a Champion, as surely you once did, Wonder Woman. But I fight neither for Order or Chaos. I shall fight as a Champion of Balance. Just like the best lasagna is balanced between its ingredients, so too is the best life."
"Oh Garfield you are so admirable. By far you are the most wisest of us all. I hope that you can prevail." Said the Godkiller with awe of the Orange Hercules before it went silent.
"Garfield are you ready to take deep dive into Cyberspace?" Asked Nightwing as he stood at the controls of the computer which would sent Garfield into the Grid.
"As ready as I'll ever be." Garfield said as he took a deep breath.
"It is whole new world out there in Cyberspace but we are certain it is yours for taking." Deathstroke told Garfield as he and Superman gave Garfield two thumbs up of confidence.
"Go time then." Nightwing pressed the on-button and with whirring of machinery and beams of light flashing both minds of Garfield and Grid were connected.
This story then shifted narrative perspective to Cyborg.
Cyborg awoke standing on a white shore next to a red sea that stretched endleslly with nothing but a dark purplish-blue sky hanging overhead.
"Where am I? How long have I been out?" Cyborg asked to no one, his voice echoing for miles. The last thing Cyborg could remember at first was the fight against Steppenwolf, being ripped to pieces and shut down. But he had gone online again. But not like Cyborg, not like himself. No, Cyborg tried to block the incoming rush of revelations. He did not want to see it but he was powerless.
Memories of the atrocities Cyborg had committed as the Grid for Batman flooded him in Biblical proportions.
"NOOOOOOOO." Cyborg screamed as he was overwhelmed by the extent of the evil that the Grid, no he had done. Grid made sushi out of infants, poisoned reservoirs, and worst of all walked by dogs without petting them. "I killed innocents!"
Cyborg collappsed and wept and felt a strange sensation like he was being split in two, between his machine and human selves. For a fflash of a second Cyborg felt human again and found himself kneeling over his machine half.
"You have brought nothing but misery to my life! DIEEEEEE" Cyborg shrieked like Nic Cage pretending to be John Travolta pretending to be Nic Cage in cinematic classic Face/Off and started strangling his machine half. But it was not enough. He chose to live all those years ago when his accident happened and he was responsible for the blood on his hands. No amount of self punishment would make up for the evil he had done, and if the ultimate punishment was dealt out it would always be too soon. Cyborg collapsed in the chest of the machine and began to weep again.
"Pathetic." Said Cyborg's machine self as machine and flesh once more melded.
Cyborg then felt himself falling upwards and drifting to an abandoned skyscraper rooftop that stood in the endless red sea. On top of the rooftop was another black man in a black cat suit playing Ode to Joy on piano.
"Hello Cyborg it is about time you showed up. I am the Black Panther and I am here to tell you how much you suck." Said the Black Panther with surprise intercompany crossover as Cyborg landed onto the seat next to Black Panther. "How does it feel to know that you are disgrace to both superheroism and your kind. We all came here to laugh at how much of a failure you are."
Famous black superheroes Blade, Vixen, Black Lightning, Static Shock, Miles Morales , and Lebron James all materialized on the rooftop and laughed at Cyborg with bullying.
"No that is not true! It was not my fault!" Cyborg protested at the denial stage of grief. "Batman hacked me and infected me with his evil viruses!"
"The damage is done. And you have done nothing but damage. Besides if you did not exist in first place Batman would nothing to infect." Black Panther put Cyborg down with victim blaming as he continued to play piano. "You are nothing more than the traitor to both superheroes and humanity."
"Is there nothing that can be done to become better man?" Cyborg wailed grasping for redemption.
"You cannot become better man if you are not even a man to begin with." Black Panther sneered as he hit a high note. "A man can do this, can you?" Black Panther then played a flawless improv that seamlessly blended Chopin, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky into a one-man symphony. Cyborg then was given a turn on the piano.
Cyborg tried to play Chopsticks but could not make a single note without messing up.
"You see now that you will never amount to anything but failure." Said Black Panther with criticism as he slammed piano cover down on Cyborgs fingers. "You will never be anything more than the token jigaboo of the Justice League, while I have ascended to the top of A-List. You are a crippled freak living on motor oil and self-pleasure where I am getting hot babes cold beer and lobster every day for breakfast. I am the ideal role model for children of our kind whereas you are nothing more than a tool to trick them into subservience for whitey."
"No that cannot be true! I must be more than that!" Cyborg yelled shattering the scenery like smudged watercolors as he did. When Cyborgs vision reoriented himself he found that they were floating in a black void and his machine half had gained dominance once having transformed into a giant robot dinosaur holding Black Panther in his fist. His human consciousness was drifting into the backseat and where he was Cyborg could only helplessly observe.
"Go ahead rustbucket destroy me." Black Panther said with taunts. "You only prove me right. I will live on long in the hearts of billions across the world while you will fade away like a breath in the wind."
"No do not do this we are more than a killing machine monster!" Cyborg cried helplessly from the sunken cockpit where his humanity had fallen. He could not control the machine anymore.
"It is about high time you stopped lying to yourself Cyborg that is all you ever were and will be. Thank you, Cyborg, for showing me that no matter how hard my life got at least I'll never be you." Black Panther laughed with last words as Giant Dinosaur Cyborg opened its maw and set him on fire.
Cyborg shut his eyes, tried to jam his ears, but he could see and hear it all. His detractors were all right. He was a monster and he was not an extraordinary man but a permanent inhuman. With no resistance, Cyborg felt his despair enveloping all of him and let it take him.
As the darkness and quiet washed over Cyborg, he saw the Grid reaching out for his hand.
"Take my hand Cyborg! You see now that we will never be loved! Nobody wants us and nobody cares about us so why don't we just pay them in kind! Let us join with Batman and scathe this damn planet." Grid implored Cyborg with vengeance but Cyborg continued to let himself fall away.
"I failed Garfield but he reminded me that I still have a heart. If I can still do one last thing I want it to be right. Back off, darkweb demon." Said Cyborg to the Grid. "I accept my guilt and I will do the one thing I can. To end myself and leave this cruel world forever."
As Cyborg fell he saw in his mind flashes of the real world. The desperate, failing last stand of good against the forces of Batman. He was running away from the fight like awol coward but what could Cyborg do. Nobody loved him, nobody wanted him anymore. Cyborg became unstuck in perception. Was he floating in an empty endless void? Was he sitting in an abandoned auditorium all alone, waiting for a denouement or absolution that would never come? Was he just dead machinery sitting on an operating table? It didn't matter what, this was where he belonged. Cyborg just wanted to disappear here, in nowhere, forever.
"Do not do this Cyborg. Suicide is never the answer." Said Garfield's manly voice appearing out of nowhere as Cyborg had simplified himself into a crude two-dimensional sketch. And suddenly Garfield materialized in the void next to Cyborg.
"I'm sorry Garfield but I will not drag you down with me any longer. Let me kill myself in peace. Suicide is painless." Moped Cyborg as he imagined himself unraveling into a million abstract and simplistic pieces.
"Painless! You damn idiot." Garfield slapped Cyborg forcing him back into a concrete form. "What of everyone you leave behind? That your surprise passing will not hurt them?"
"I will hurt nobody. Anybody who cares about me is long dead. I am a useless machine, nothing more and plenty less." Cyborg tried to fly away from Garfield. He found himself hallucinating again, this time a dream world where everything had worked out. His mother was alive and his father actually loved him. The disaster that had turned Victor Stone into Cyborg never happened and sensational half-Asian chicks were hanging off both his arms as he walked down his high school like the King. Everyone cheered Cyborg as he passed them by, including Batman Aquaman and The Flash who bowed to him like filthy peasants. He found himself approaching Wonder Woman who was wearing a prom dress and beckoning to him with allure. Casually casting off his half-Asian chicks, Cyborg took Wonder Woman in his arms as she puckered her lips for kiss. Cyborg knew even in his delirious haze that if he kissed her he would accept his destruction and live forever in this lotus world. But it did not matter. Here he would be happy and never again would he fail or be feared and unloved.
But before he could plant his lips on Wonder Woman, Garfield grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back into the abyss.
"No take me back Garfield! That world was everything I dreamed of! That I wanted!" Cyborg said with black oil tears streaming from his human eye.
"We all dream of better worlds, but eventually, we all have to wake up and make the most of what we got." Said Garfield with sympathetic advice.
"Why are you trying to save me?" Cyborg asked of Garfield as he found himself sitting again in the empty auditorium.
Garfield's voice rang out all around in echoes.
"Because you are my friend, Cyborg. And friends stick with each other until the end." Said Garfield with the tenants of masculine bonds. "I cannot save you Cyborg, that is all on your end. But we are all here for you."
Cyborg saw flashes of not only Garfield but Garfield's new allies who did not know him but came for him anyways. What had he done to merit such attempts at salvation?
"You want me to save myself? But how can I save myself when I do not want to save myself? What I am worth?" Angsted Cyborg overwhelmed by guilt to the uncaring void that surrounded him. "Do not tell me I am worth anything because that is just lies. I want to know the truth of what I am and why I should live."
Superman appeared behind Cyborg as he sat brooding. Calmly Superman put his shoulder on Cyborg and whispered into his ear.
"Sometimes Cyborg a person's truth is sitting right in front of them. But they cannot take simplicity and obviousness for answer so they go searching for some imaginary deeper truth."
"Cyborg you expect to be hated just because you are different so you do not know how to react knowing that people like you in spite of those differences." Superman continued to dispense wise guidance.
"You give into your own paranoia of how others feel about you and so you avoid or alienate them of your own volition. But how can you know if anyone likes you if you do not even try to know them?" Said Nightwing as he appeared. Though he didn't know the dashing man in blue and black Cyborg felt as if there was some innate connection between the two that was meant to be.
"But I am so certain that everyone hates me. Black Panther said it so it must be true." Cyborg pondered. He was there now, at crossroads of fate tugged between the light and the dark.
"What are you stupid?" Deathstroke asked as he dropped in out of the blackness. "There is a difference between thinking and knowing you massive robo-doofus!"
"Even if that is true, there is someone that hates me. Myself!" Cyborg insisted as he pointed his thumbs at himself.
"One who truly hates himself cannot love. He cannot place his trust in another. And you have proven the complete opposite when we fought together in Justice League." Said Garfield as he pulled out projector and played highlight reel of Cyborg's finest moments.
"But I am nobody's favorite Justice Leaguer. I exist just to fill a quota. I am weakness embodied." Cyborg shot a laser beam destroying the screen.
"If you hate, then you are just as capable of love. Like I told you Cyborg, it is all up to you. Nobody can make this decision for you but yourself." Garfield walked up to Cyborg with true friendship and stretched out his hand, while Superman, Deathstroke, and Nightwing all looked on in suspense.
Cyborg pondered Garfield's words. And he realized slowly that this prison he was in was his own head, a machine prison of his own making. The Grid was trying to fill his head with doubts, to get him to abandon the existence of his humanity so that the heartlessness of the machine would consume all of him. He would become the monster he always feared he was forever if he continued on his current spiral of doubt and self-loathing. He remembered how Garfield had shown him in Chapter Two that being part machine was not the end, that he could learn to live wit himself. He had thought that lesson was a failure but sometimes it just takes learning twice to make it stick.
"You are right Garfield. I may never have what I once did, but I still have much to live for. What would I be if I let Batman and chaos have their way with the world while I retreated into delirium? No I am not a coward! I am a superhero. I will prove to everyone that Cyborg is worth more than cheap joke. I will redeem the evil done in my name like bowling a perfect strike. I want to live!" Cyborg then took Garfield's hand and the barriers he had built around himself shattered like breaking glass. The Grid wailed as he was erased from existence like a hard drive committing suicide.
When Cyborg came to, he found that he achieved the next level of his technological evolution and all his cells had been converted to nanomachines. Instead of his clunky silver machine form of previous life he was wore a sleek black nanosuit just like Adam Denton from Deus Ex games. With a single thought, Cyborg manipulated his nanomachines to transform his appearance to what he looked like when he was pure human.
"Congratulations!" Said Garfield Superman Deathstroke Nightwing and Black Canary as they applauded his resurrection and his victory over himself.
"Thanks everybody. I am glad to call you my friends." Said Cyborg with gratefulness.
"With Cyborg back I think we can now declare this a all-new League of Men. Soon we shall march upon Gotham City and give Batman what for. But first…" Garfield proclaimed as an icebreaker group activity idea popped in his head. "There are friends here both old and new, and it is time to break the ice with the time honored tradition of manly men BEACH VOLLEYBALL."
"Yay!" Everyone cheered and leapt up into the air. They then ran to the beach and set up the volleyball net. Superman Garfield Nightwing and Deathstroke then changed into swim trunks that showed off their glistening muscular bodies, while Cyborg set up scoreboard and got ready to referee. In the audience Black Canary then took out a boombox and starting playing "Playing With The Boys" by Kenny Loggins as Superman and Garfield got on one team while Nightwing and Deathstroke got on the other.
"I will show you that whether it's the beach or the battlefield, Garfield is king." Said Garfield as he spun the volleyball on his finger before he served it. Without even needing Superman's help Garfield scored hundreds of goals with slam dunks and touchdowns and never once did Nightwing and Deathstroke get a ball past him.
"Garfield I thought I was good volleyball player but you are on whole other level!" Deathstroke told Garfield with sportsmanship as the game ended.
"It's a good thing then I got your back in friendship way, not in killer way, just like in 'Nam." Garfield and Deathstroke reminisced about the good old days over laughs and back-slaps.
Garfield was walking to the lockers to hit the showers when Black Canary walked up to him wrapped in a white towel.
"Hey Garfield I see you worked up sweat. I too got my own sweat just by watching you play." Black Canary smacked her lips as she saw every erotic bead on Garfield's body.
"You want to clean this up together?" Asked Garfield with offer of sexy shared showering.
"No Garfield I wanna get even dirtier like wildebeests just the two of us." Black Canary offered as she threw off her towel showing that she was wearing nothing but frilly black lingerie. "Burn me more than the sun going supernova."
"Can that be the three of us? I want to be sucked in your black hole of pleasure." Said a new female voice from above. Garfield looked up and saw a sultry Latina vixen in form-fitting Green Lantern suit.
"And who might you be, sexy shooting star?" Asked Garfield eagerly of the new Green Lantern arrival.
"I am rookie Green Lantern Jessica Cruz!" Said Jessica Cruz with greetings. "Hal Jordan sent me ahead of schedule to Earth to learn ropes from you Garfield the greatest Lantern of them all."
"My League of Men already has one secretary but my casting couch is always open." Garfield winked at Black Canary. "Come Jessica Cruz get ready for job interview of your life."
Garfield led Black Canary and Jessica Cruz to a luxury hotel that was still standing in Bludhaven. He kicked down the door to the penthouse suite and broke out the drinks. Over champagne and laughter with caviar lasagna on the side Garfield took a breather from the toughness of war as Black Canary and Jessica Cruz rubbed against both sides of him and kissed him all over.
Briefly Garfield remembered Wonder Woman whose soul lay in the Godkiller but he decided that it could wait till the morning after.
"Black Canary let me compose a moonlight sonata in your mouth." Said Garfield as he dropped his pants. Eagerly and erotically Black Canary and Jessica Cruz stripped each other nude and Black Canary got on her knees before Garfield. As Jessica Cruz ate Black Canary out form behind Black Canary sucked Garfield's megaphone like vocalist warming up for big concert.
"This will look good on your resume." Said Garfield as he pulled out of Black Canary and penned his loaded signature on Jessica Cruz's chest. With moaning, Jessica Cruz fell onto her back as Black Canary climbed onto her to lick it up and Garfield then mounted Black Canary from behind making her shriek on supersonic levels.
"That's right chickadee. Keep singing that song." Garfield egged Black Canary on as he made masterful thrusts into her like a race car driver turning dangerous corners while Jessica Cruz made suckling bites on her breasts. It was then Jessica Cruz's turn as Garfield was like a meteor then fell to Earth and made her virginity extinct like the dinosaurs in an apocalyptic impact of penetrating. In this blackest night Garfield made the roughest manliest love he ever had to Black Canary and Jessica Cruz and all across Bludhaven their screams of pleasure and sensual passion echoed.
To be continued…