Our Flag Still Flies – War of Rebellion Arc –

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Part Fourteen: Down With the Revolution?

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This one is brutal too, so be warned. Basing on events in history that are heavily dramatized.

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The marching feet of soldiers from far to the wall's edge came out to hunt. Shutters on every window were bolted as Richard awoke, chained to the General's bed within his quarters, gagged with a rope of cloth and trembling from a bad dream. All but the General, who was nowhere to be seen.

Four……four hours!

Richard quickly took a glance and saw what time. It was too late, he had to break out of his binds. Find a uniform. He wore tatters still. The man had not bothered….He'd be headed to –

Shots were fired as he shut his eyes, pulling with a retched gasp at the chains that kept him. His ankles too, as soon as he'd realized just what the General had wanted by doing this. Richard was no soldier, he did not believe in a war this great to happen, so he tried again to call past the gag.

Nothing.

Tears threatened to leak free, yet Richard shook his head. No. He still had to find his allies, his rebel allies and save Korina. He had seen Jason; he'd been so sure of that. There was his youngest sibling that was still alive. Richard rumbled like the smog clouds restless, outside the bunkers as he whimpered and fussily tried again to wedge free in a way a good friend of Bruce's had taught him years ago. In the art of escaping, the body had to have no limits. His arms relaxed, the cuffs soon felt too big as the boy shed through as a snake, until one wrist was freed. Now, onto the second as he heard it pop.

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Tara's eyes had seen destruction before, but this time it was her grave of many to blacken with the willingness of a thousand reaper's sickles. Grant was laughing as the faces of screaming woman and children were his targets. Rosa stopped the ones protecting their front; the wall dividing her home with someone else's side. She just went on autopilot and took out too many, while Tara's wrists shook, until the General's warm glove came to her. She gasped, seeing the pleased look in his eye, and knowing she'd have more to be offered once this was over. Blushing, she was let go and aimed her meta – powers at the next target. All while the man grinned beyond and spoke in a low, vibrating purr.

" That's, my girl…." (This Slade is a creeper Slade, mind you. Power mad.)

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Joey had his eyes set on a woman in a cowl as he chased her within reason. He knew that she was strange at first, that was until his mind felt a shock and a green bat flew out to thrash at his narrow – sighed timidity.

"That's what you get! Ravagers!!" The green bat transformed and the hooded woman pulled out her wrists to cast a curse to stun their victim.

"That's one down." Rachelle told her ally, Gareth."

"That it is, where are the others then all off to, lov?" (Context is off, but I wanted him to be joking in it since this is a revolution – alt timeline story in the past.)

Rachelle groaned and the green fellow shrugged, humming to himself as the two went to find their comrades. All while a few beats away, a star was getting ready to explore its own power…

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The lab in Bluddbechia was not impenetrable. The rumble below the streets where a tired angel was kept awoke her. She sought out the noises coming from the streets about her head, then saw that the guards were with their resistant party.

Or so, she believed.

The hood of one not aware, (Red hood) the ones below looked to be clad in black as the night. Three of them, all with the Insignia of Wayne and the rebellion. The shape of her case had started to break, the mechanics coming undone as threads to a tapestry, eons old. "Who…. who are you?" She looked up and rubbed her eyes as arms took her to stand and lean into warm armored friends….

"We're here to bring you to the resistance. Lady Korina."

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Rosa tried to connect telepathically with her brother, yet she held her skull and groaned. Stricken back by, by an intruder!

"Grant. Joe's been taken." She told her second in command. He growled and rammed his weapons through the chest of a rebel as they spilled blood onto his boots. He crinkled his nose at disgust, kicking the dying corpse into the rubble, before looking to his sibling's one good eye. "Figures." He huffed. "Leave this early extermination of those rebel leaders to me."

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Richard's last leg was let loose as he massaged it to stay awake. Now, in tatters he had to go join them. This contract was binding in the beginning, but it surely could not stop him from going through that door.

He took his first steps. The steps he'd wanted to take to find his betrothed all of those months ago. Before this war, before his father –

Richard ignored the ache in his chest as he gripped the knob.

Ah, locked. Good. He could use some exercise. To the window, there was only a space big enough to crawl through. he took it and popping out, he saw plenty of dogs on their chains and men holding them a few yards away. Quietly, a mist or the smog from the fight was a cover enough as he tried to coat himself in dirt to throw off the dog's scent. It worked, until he got to a hole in his plan. The barred gate. No. he had to find another way. There had to be something.

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Jason donned the mask with the red trim that he had decided to have in case they were captured. Despite Cassandra saying it was foolish, he cared none much for their disagreements. The shadow slunk by against the wall as Cassandra and Duke took Korina from danger in Lucius Fox, the dear inventor and friend of the Wayne household, to his contraption that would fly instead of simply glide from the guards through all of the smoke. Jason promised to make it out, he had to know that there were none left, and when he'd spotted the dirty, rag wearing boy, he thought otherwise. He didn't look familiar because of the grime, and he did talk a bit more refined than Jason would have liked as the second son of Wayne threw a hand over the mouth of the rather startled survivor. His body was littered in marks, bites, and scars that seemed to have healed over.

"Let off – who are –

"Shhush!" Jason threw a finger to his own lips. "I'm the rescue party, and you'll be explaining everything once we've gotten you to safety."

"Where? I have to go! They are killing in his name! I have to put a stop –

"You?" Jason let go of the boy and cocked his head at the explanation. "Be butchered by that immortal?? Are you insane?"

"I'm not. I'm the only one he wants to ruin, not them. This has –

"He's been planning to take the wall for months, sorry." Jason threw up his arms before swinging one out, until the kid side stepped him altogether. "I can't or he'll kill her…you can't keep me from my family."

"Fa…. wait!" There was a resounding blast as Richard used it as a chance to get freed. The guards had opened the gates, this was his chance and with the smog –

"You'll be shot on target!!! Stop!" Jason shouted over the storming men taking to their units, Richard's feet far faster as Jason was soon left in his dust.

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Richard went to a bunker and got some suitcases to pop open. He grabbed anything that fit and made sure he had a weapon on just in case the General's Ravagers got any bright ideas. "The rebellion won't happen yet." The boy bit his lip, then sneaked out to infiltrate the ranks. Such a cluster that he found his way to the warzone in no time.

When he'd surely wished that he had not.

Burned bodies, and strange soldiers with clawed, talons for hands.

This was a project, a project to wipe the enemy out.

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Rachelle looked up, then held her skull as Victor and Wallace both made sure to keep Joey bound. "I sense someone." Rachelle groaned a bit as her eyes got wider with each step into the light again. "He's here! I can sense him! It...it is! Richard!"

Gareth gasped and was off with her to see if it was a trap. There was no other telepath that the General had reared off of hatred. There was none, but a boy who could connect lives. Who had survived beatings and humiliation daily. He was here, and she could taste his scars. Acrid and burning in her thoughts.

"Richard??"

The General turned and like a whip his arm went out, he directed Rosa to attack the boy wonder up on his mountain of bloodied bodies.

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"He's not supposed to be here, General?!" Tara was in a panic, this was her time to prove herself. She had made sure to get that boy into as much trouble just to have the man's bed back. He had to go….

Her eyes boiled yellow as Slade's grew wild with a scare that even he had not pictured. That child was dangerous! "Talon! Bring her down!"

"NO!" Richard went for it. He attacked with a sharp saber like knife as its jagged teeth cut into Rosa's arm, her growl as feral as her father, as she sprang at him with her polished twin swords.

"Dear gods !" Gareth threw a palm to his face. "Why can't we stop it?? We can hel –

"We have a traitor right here; we can't interfere and get captured as well, Gareth." Victor told his friends. "I'm sorry. Rachelle however moved swiftly, Grant taking her on as her barrier of magic had him shouting out, "Where is Joseph!!?? Give him back to us, witch! Traitor! You're a part of this!! Quit lying to them!"

Victor watched as his plan to leave was soon up to Wallace. Wallace took the body of the unconscious telepath and Victor stayed behind to save Rachelle and Gareth from being taken in, alive. This was no war; it was a slaughter and a way to bring them out of hiding.

For it had worked, wonderfully. Richard was with his knife out and Rosa was avoiding what those now golden eyes told. That a talon in him was what her father had always sought. Through pain and malevolence, his true self was buried and now, now she saw how deadly a killer could be among her father's ranks.

"You…...mon…. monster! Stay back!"

"Richard!!" Rachelle moved as Tara finally had seen enough. She tripped the General's little girl when none had seen her do so as much as lift a pinky, and then, the young half talon struck.

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Bruce awoke to a den fully of moaning or dead corpses, amid them being his newly betrothed. She was getting far worse as her body resembled a large snake, her head, of a woman with matted, dark tresses. "Talia…. you have….to…stop…. the curse…." He tried to swim through the sea of dead offerings as she fed on each and every heart. Every scream a temptress could even want. ~ No…...no…. I'm still not yet satisfied…I want flesh, give it to me…. give me….your eternity inside me!! ~

~Mother! ~

Bruce heard it, the sound of a child so afraid as the illusion turned t dust, her body into an unkempt state while her bedroom locks undid themselves. Bruce hid beneath the sheets and pretended to be dead.

The boy came forth, his frown presented as he looked over her state of dress. "You'll catch ill if you don't wear your robes, mother."

Such unawareness, Bruce wondered.

"I am well, child. The air does not faze –

"What of the curse??" He finally spoke it. She hid her eyes and to her side, to the side where Bruce was, she patted for her son to seat himself. Even in the middle of the night here, it still was never dark as the city in which Bruce had been sworn to upon his own birth. "My son, join me here. I wish to discuss, your future."

"I do not care about that; it will not come. Grandfather will not –

"Your grandfather has a grand idea and we shall do whatever we must to secure it in our history." She chided the boy. "Here. Now."

He grumbled and clambered over, her arm pulling him in as her slender but delicate fingertips brushed against his still warm face. Hers felt like ice. That was not untrue, what the curse was capable of….

Bruce remained a dead man under them as the boy shifted to get comfortable. "Are you feeding again, mother?" The youth tried to peek, yet Talia shushed him from it and pulled the child to her sheet clad chest this time. He could smell death and rot, but the flowers that bloomed upon corpses as well. Sighing, she petted his head and sweetly tried to be as she was before the demon had devoured her. Before her father too was consumed by a heavy affliction to gain what he too desired.

"Your Grandfather has taken so many lives, yet he plans to build upon their sorrows and wake anew with the rest of his followers. We must provide all of our support, even to those that may say he is wrong. I know you have made your brother feel welcome. Timothy is a very good boy, is he not?"

"He makes me feel safe, yet ever since the slave you sought came to stay with us, he is…. strange…. He does not come to me as he did before and wanders. I –

"That man was once aa powerful provider for your brother in his old life." She whispered in the child's ear. That man however does not have to know, just be well with him and do not act out. You are the son to the Al Ghul Empire. Out legacy depends on you to be at your most behaved. Will you not do as I request?"

"Yes, mother…" The boy was already so calm in her arms, in the arms of a demon possessed queen. "Yet, Timothy…will you not have Grandfather explain everything?"

Bruce bit his lip. She'd talked to cry for help. Damian snuggled in tighter to his mother's chest.

This was his chance.

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Richard pulled back his arm, he saw blood on it as Rosa coughed, choking clots and spitting out what wetness he'd forced from her and back into her lungs. Slade looked on, but his pity was not there. He instead looked up, and OVER the boy's shoulder.

"He is nearly to completion, General Wilson."

"Cobb." Slade snorted. "Come here to disturb the peace with your henchmen?"

"No, but yours are on loan." Cobb raised a finger as he pointed to the boy, the blood as if he wasn't even present to be heard by his successor of the Court. "That boy will progress; for whatever curses we of the Order of Minerva permit, they'll see to it that you cannot stray from your original terms."

"He's a fighter, he just won't embrace it –

"TAME him, then." Rosa coughed once more, before a fellow soldier talon put her down. Grant screamed and ran to his sister. He snarled at his father, afraid to step out and die alone. Richard. A boy he knew was a fallacy of a cultist's child of lore. There were no such realms, and his father…. his father….

Grant hung his head, letting her eye fall shut as he went to recover himself beside Tara. However, she had a hidden grin across her lip. He dared not say a thing, as Richard was stricken by a vile of the electrum that kept him in this state. In reverse, it made him collapse as Slade's men went to recover the escapee. "Remember; the day of the god of mortals is upon us. The blood of the knight's son will find the eternal pools of light. And when they are sure to lose faith, there will be only our world to conquer upon its passing of judgement unto the next ruler of this plane." (Thomas in this does not run the Owls. But Ra's may? Find out! It's a prophecy among them but what does the General know??)

"He's –

Rachelle was pulled away by Wallace as he'd come back. He saw the boy he'd grown up with and swallowed. Blood, there was blood everywhere. The red head tried not to think about the latter. "We have to leave, Rachelle…. there is always tomorrow…. I'm sorry, we have to leave him."

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Ok, so! Slade made a deal with the owls that goes beyond Wayne's kid being his chip to bargain so Slade actually works for the ones who allowed him to come to power. Also! Tara was acting out purposefully because she knew Richard would be in more trouble and she like in the damned Judas contract, has a crush on her keeper. Gross. Not ok, and Rosa wasn't mourned?? The Jumperei knights' descendants took Joey hostage?? Richard is part talon, of course but why is Talia turning into a full-blown serpent because of a curse her father worked on getting to have his plans – aha ! So? The prophecy was "Remember; the day of the god of mortals is upon us. The blood of the knight's son will find the eternal pools of light. And when they are sure to lose faith, there will be only our world to conquer upon its passing of judgement unto the next ruler of this plane." Well, Bruce's son is Damian, but why is Richard involved…. unless, he is going to kill him??? Nope! NO spoilers. This is getting weird already, based on like I said, the Doom that came to Gotham. Find out!

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