DC: All for One Chapter 27 — The Symbol of Fear (Patreon)

BOOM

BOOM

BOOM

The city shook with every impact as the two gods tore across the skyline.

So powerful were they that the people below could do nothing but run, scattering through the streets like insects beneath a boot while glass rained down from a thousand shattered windows and the towers above them groaned and came apart.

"RUN!" Robin shouted as he sprinted toward a group of civilians caught beneath the shadow of a collapsing building, his legs burning as he pushed himself harder than he ever had, but he could already see he wasn't going to make it. 

He fired his grapple and the line shot out and wrapped around the waist of the nearest one, a woman, and he yanked her back hard enough to pull her off her feet just as the building came down, but the others were still beneath it when the world folded in on them.

Robin jumped, landed and rolled and came up screaming, "NO," already clawing at the rubble with his bare hands even though he knew, he knew there was nothing left under there to save.

But the gods above him did not stop.

"Robin, move!" Batgirl screamed from somewhere behind him, he turned toward her voice and started to react but it was already too late, the gas tanker that had been bleeding fuel across the intersection for the last two minutes finally caught, and the entire block went up in a wall of orange that swallowed the street and threw Robin off his feet and through the front window of a corner store, the glass tearing across his shoulders as he tumbled across the floor and slammed into the far wall hard enough to knock the breath out of him.

He lay there for a moment.

Then he pushed himself up, his left shoulder hanging badly as it dislocated from the impact.He grit his teeth and slammed it back into the socket against the wall with a wet pop that made his vision white out for a second. He staggered to the broken window and braced himself against the frame and looked up at the two figures wheeling through the smoke above the burning city, and for the first time in his life Robin understood, truly understood, that there was nothing he could do here. 

He had spent his whole life training to make a difference, to stand between the innocent and the things that hunted them, and now he was standing in the ruins of a store watching two beings on an entirely different level to him. All he could do was watch. 

The street outside the window was almost a wasteland.

A man sat upright against a fire hydrant with no legs below the knee, looking down at himself with an expression of mild confusion as though he had misplaced his keys, his hands patting the empty air where his shins should have been, and then he simply tipped sideways and stopped moving. 

A young woman dragged herself across the pavement by her elbows, leaving a long red smear behind her, her mouth opening and closing without any sound coming out, she made it perhaps six feet before a chunk of concrete the size of a car came down out of the smoke and ended her. 

A child stood alone in the middle of the road, untouched, completely unharmed, screaming for a parent who was not coming, and Robin watched a Saviour, one of Ethan's own men, break from cover and sprint across the open street and scoop the kid up and shield it with his own body as the windows above them blew outward in a glass hail that opened the man's back to the spine but left the child whole.

Further down the block a bus had been thrown through the front of a bank, and the people inside it were burning. 

Robin could hear them, he could hear every one of them... there was a smell in the air now that he would carry with him for the rest of his life, he gripped the window frame until his knuckles cracked. 

This was what it meant to be human in the presence of gods.

...

Above him Superman broke the sound barrier with a crack that flattened what was left of the windows on the entire block, closing the gap between himself and All for One in less than a heartbeat, his fist already drawn back behind his shoulder before he buried it in the centre of his chest.

All for One was gone before the sound of the impact finished rolling across the city, hurled backward through the air, he punched through one building and then a second and then a third, the structures coming apart around him until he brought his hands up and summoned a cascade of reddish-black platforms at his back with [Hard Light Projections], stacking them one behind the other so that each one shattered against his momentum and bled off a fraction of the force until the last of them held and he stopped, hanging in the air with the ruins of three buildings collapsing beneath him.

But he couldn't rest a moment as Superman was already on him.

The second punch came and All for One blinked out of its path, the fist passing through the space where his head had been and displacing the air with a concussion that blew out an entire floor of windows on the tower below. The third came and he blinked again, and this time when he reappeared he was inside Superman's reach, and he drove his fist into the Kryptonian's jaw, then deflected the return blow with his forearm and snapped a short hook into Superman's stomach that folded him forward, then he dipped around behind him before Superman could recover.

Superman swung his arm in a wide backhand arc and All for One met it with a punch of his own, their fists colliding at the centre with a shockwave that rolled outward in a visible ring and cracked the faces of the buildings on either side of them, and in the half-second that they were locked together All for One's eyes flared and the [Heat Vision] tore out of the mask and washed across Superman's face, blinding him for the two seconds it took All for One to vanish, reappear behind him, seize the trailing edge of his cape, and swing him in a vicious arc through the top of an office tower.

Superman went through the glass and through a dozen floors of cubicles and conference rooms and support columns, the building shuddering with each level he punched through, until he came to rest in the wreckage of what had been a break room. 

He pushed himself up onto one knee.

He raised a hand to his mouth and touched his lip and looked at his fingers and saw the blood there smeared across his skin.

"Is that the first time?"

All for One descended through the hole in the ceiling, drifting down through the pulverised drywall, his boots touching the broken tile without a sound. "The first time you've bled? I would be surprised if you even knew the colour of it."

"Shut up," Superman said as he got to his feet, swaying slightly, blood running down his chin and dripping onto the front of his suit. "You don't know anything about me. I'm the same as everyone down there. I bleed. I hurt. I'm just as human as any of them."

There was a pause, and then a sound came out of the mask that might have been a laugh.

"What a joke..."

All for One blinked forward and his fist sank into Superman's stomach to the wrist, and as Superman doubled over All for One caught his head in both hands and slammed a punch into his face, then another, then hurled him sideways across the room through a row of cubicles that exploded into debris. "You stand there and you tell me you're just as human as them. You. The being who can hear a heartbeat across an ocean. Who can crush a mountain into dust." He walked through the ruined office toward where Superman was pulling himself up out of the debris. "Do you have any idea what it actually means to be human? Any idea at all?"

"It means—"

"It means a cage." All for One's voice rose for the first time. "It means being born into a life you did not choose and cannot escape, trapped inside a body that fails and ages and dies, helpless from the first breath to the last. Some of them never even get the first breath. Some of them die in the dark before they ever see a light, and even then the universe does not so much as pause. That is humanity. That is the inheritance every one of those people down there was born with." He kicked Superman in the face and Superman's head snapped back. "But you, you can do anything. You can be anythin. There is nothing, nothing, human about that."

"A cockroach has more in common with humanity than you do..." He drew his foot back to kick again but this time Superman caught it.

His fingers closed around the boot and he twisted and unleashed his Heat Vision up the length of the leg into the chest, and as All for One reeled Superman surged up off the floor and tackled him through the wall, and the next wall, and half a dozen after that, the two of them bursting back out into the open air over the burning city locked together, and Superman started raining punches down into the mask, each one a thunderclap, each one driving them lower toward the streets.

[Flashbang]

The detonation went off an inch from Superman's face, a sphere of white light and overwhelming sound that ripped through every one of his heightened senses, he screamed and his grip came loose, and in that instant All for One's hands closed around his throat from both sides while the two of them dropped out of the sky like a falling star.

The slot in the faceplate opened and All for One drew in a long breath as they fell.

[Flashbang]

[Sound Blast]

[Air Blast]

[Sonic Scream]

He turned at the last moment and hurled Superman down into the street ahead of him and released his combination of meta abilities.

The combination came out of him as a single coherent wall of force, and it hit the block beneath them like the hand of something biblical. The street did not crack so much as it all crumbled.

When he was done there was aperfect circle of devastation two hundred feet across blowing outward from the point of impact and at the centre of it Superman was driven down through the road surface and into the sewer line beneath and the bedrock beneath that, his body taking the full weight of the convergence and for a moment there was nothing but rubble.

Then, down in the bottom of the smoking crater, Superman moved.

He came up out of the broken earth on his hands and knees, his eyes would not focus, the world swimming and doubling in front of him, a high ringing drowning out every other sound so completely that he could not hear anything. Blood ran freely from both his nostrils and from both his ears, sheeting down the sides of his neck, he spat blood onto the rubble and dragged himself up the side of the crater one handhold at a time and stumbled out over the lip onto what was left of the street.

He looked around.

There were bodies everywhere, dozens of them, scattered across the ruined block, he turned slowly in a full circle but there was no direction he could look that did not have the dead in it. 

And then finally something behind his eyes that had held for twenty five years began to come apart.

"You look rough, Superman."

All for One drifted down through the smoke and settled onto the cracked earth a dozen feet away. "Truly. A god should carry himself better than this. Look at you, bleeding from the ears, swaying on your feet. Is this the symbol of hope? Is this the man they think will save them?"

"How..." Superman's voice shook. "How could you do this." He turned toward All for One with his fists trembling at his sides and his face wet from both blood and tears. "These people. These are the people you said you were going to save. How could you kill so many of them?" His voice climbed and cracked. "WEREN'T YOU GOING TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE?"

All for One was silent for a moment.

"I was."

He looked out over the ruined block, at the fires and the dead and the smoke climbing into the dark.

"I wanted to make the world better. For everyone. That was the truth of it. The Future Foundation was the beginning of it, a better world, built in the open, given freely to the people who needed it most." His head turned slowly back toward Superman. "And then you arrived. And you exposed me... and do you know what those people did, the ones I fed and housed and healed, the ones who had nothing until I gave it to them? They turned their backs on me and they cheered for you. After everything I did for them... that is how fickle they are."

"So I learned that some things truly were impossible... even for me," he continued. "I can only make the world better for those who want it made better. The rest, the ones who would rather kneel to a flying man in a cape than be guided by someone who truly wishes to help them... they will simply have to die with the old world."

"You don't have the right." Superman's whole body was shaking now. "You don't have the right to take their lives. To decide for them. To force your will down their throats and call it salvation. THEY DIDN'T CHOOSE THIS."

"I have every right." All for One spread his arms. "I was born of this earth with the power to dominate all of it. I am humanity's will given form, its saviour, the final purpose of everything that crawled up out of the mud to become what we are. And I will not, I will not, stand aside and let a foreign entity from outside this world walk in and unmake everything I have bled for."

Superman closed his fists until his gloves creaked.

"I won't let you do this," he said his voice suddenly turning ice cold. "I'm going to stop you..."

All for One opened his mouth to answer.

But he never got the chance.

Superman crossed the distance between them so fast that he simply ceased to be in one place and was in the other, the air where he had stood imploding into the vacuum, and the punch he threw cleared the entire crater of rubble in a single outward blast and caught All for One squarely in the chest, the sound of it rolled out across the whole of Gotham like a second collapse, and a moment later All for One was gone, hurled across the city, across one district and then another and then another.

It didn't stop until All for One threw his arms back and shot two bursts of air behind him, the recoil killing his momentum and dragging him to a halt in the air with the city smearing past beneath him.

But Superman was on him almost instantly before he stopped.

His punches came in a blur, faster than the eye could follow, dozens of them a second hammering into the chest and mask, each one cracking the air, the wind of them began to spin around the two of them in a spiral until a tornado tore open in the sky with All for One at the centre of it taking every blow. "ARE YOU HAPPY!?" Superman shouted over the roar of it, still punching. "Is this what you wanted? Is THIS what you wanted?" and another punch landed, and another, the mask ringing under each one.

All for One teleported out.

But Superman was there with him in less than a tenth of a second.

He drove his fist into the side of the helmet, then caught All for One's arm and yanked him back into range and hit him twice more, then he grabbed the faceplate in one hand and flew straight down, screaming toward the earth with All for One's head locked in his grip, they hit the street below in an eruption of concrete and fire that flattened everything for a block.

Superman stood over him in the smoke.

"You were right," he said in a cold voice. "I'm not human. I never was. I've spent my whole life pretending, holding back, treating everyone like glass because I was so afraid of what I am." He reached down. "So let me stop pretending... I think it's time you met the Kryptonian."

He grabbed All for One by the leg and threw him straight up so hard that his body broke the sound barrier on the way, a white cone bursting around him as he tore into the sky, and Superman launched after him, catching up in an instant and driving a punch into his spine that sent him higher, then another, and another, each one knocking him further up through the clouds, the air thinning, the blue draining out of the sky toward black.

On the fifth punch All for One caught his fist.

His hand closed around Superman's knuckles and held them, the two of them hanging in the upper atmosphere with the curve of the earth showing far below.

"It wouldn't have been as satisfying," All for One said, "if I'd beaten you while you were still pretending to be human."

He drew his other fist back.

[Quake]

A sphere of pale white light wrapped itself around his fist, the air inside it shuddering and vibrating like glass under pressure. He slammed it into Superman's face and the blow didn't just hit, it cracked the air itself, the shockwave rippling outward in a dome that distorted everything behind it, the vibration tore through Superman's skull and rattled every bone in his body even though it had barely touched him, and it would have launched him a mile back if All for One hadn't kept his grip on his fist. 

He hauled him back in and hit him again, the quake bursting against his cheek and splitting the skin, the air rupturing with a sound like the sky being torn in half, and again, the sphere detonating against his jaw and snapping his head sideways, blood spraying from his lip and freezing instantly in the cold thin air, and again, and again, each impact shaking him from the inside out.

Superman caught the next one.

His palm closed over the glowing fist and the air between their hands seemed to crack down the middle, the two forces grinding against each other.

He roared and surged forward, pushing All for One higher toward the edge of the atmosphere where the air gave out entirely.

But All for One wasn't going to let him.

He teleported behind him and locked an arm around his throat from behind, dragging him into a headlock, and put his mouth right against the side of Superman's head where he used [Sonic Scream] directly into his ear, the frequency boring straight into his skull, and while Superman thrashed against it All for One drew in a long breath through the open slot in his faceplate.

[Fire Breathing]

[Flame Manipulation]

[Kinetic Booster]

The fire came out of him orange for half a second and then turned blue and then white as he cranked the heat past anything a normal flame could reach, and the kinetic booster slammed all of it out at once with the force of a freight train, point blank, right into the back of Superman's head and shoulders. The blast lit up the upper sky like a second sun, and Superman screamed and went tumbling out of the headlock and fell, dropping back toward the earth, until somewhere in the descent his senses came crawling back to him and he spread his arms and caught himself, hanging in the air with smoke pouring off his shoulders.

All for One was already coming down at him.

They met in the middle and the fight tumbled across the sky, the two of them trading blows as they fell and rose and fell again, punching each other through the burnt-out husk of a skyscraper, bursting out the far side, grappling and breaking apart and slamming back together, Superman catching him with an uppercut that sent him spinning, All for One answering with a quake-wrapped hook that cracked the air and rattled Superman's teeth, the both of them carving a path of destruction across the Gotham skyline that left a dozen buildings split open and burning behind them.

Superman grabbed him and flew straight up again, harder this time, the two of them punching through cloud and then through the last of the air until the black of space opened up around them and the stars came out and the earth turned slowly far below. In that moment Superman thought that he had him, that out here with no air it was over.

"You think I didn't account for this?"

All for One's voice came through even in the vacuum of space. "Taking me to space and trying to cut off my air supply. I designed this suit knowing you might try exactly that, but I'm afraid it won't work, Superman. There's nothing up here that saves you and nothing up here that stops me."

He brought his fist back, the quake sphere blooming around it, and he triggered the [Kinetic Booster] at the same instant before he teleported in front of him and slammed it into Superman's chest with the combined force of both, the shockwave rupturing outward crushing the air out of Superman's lungs and cracking the emblem on his chest. The attack then hurled him back down toward the planet like a ball fired from a cannon.

All for One dove after him.

They fell together, faster and faster while continuing their fight, the atmosphere screaming back to life around them, the air igniting against their bodies until the two of them came down over Gotham wrapped in fire like a falling meteor. Superman fought to turn away, throwing his weight sideways, trying to steer the descent out over the bay, away from the city, away from the people, but All for One reached out and seized him with his telekinesis and locked him in, holding him on course, and the two of them came down together and hit the Narrows.

BOOM

Whole blocks went up, tenements and shops and streets all lifting off their foundations and crumbling in the same instant, a crater opening where a neighbourhood had been, ringed with the broken stubs of buildings and filled with dust and fire.

After a moment All for One floated up out of the crater.

Half of his suit was torn away, the nanite weave shredded down one side and his mask was cracked across the middle. Down below him Superman was on his knees in the bottom of the crater, his own suit hanging off him in ribbons, the cape gone entirely, blood running down his face from his hairline.

All for One looked around at the devastation.

"You know," he said, "I think this place used to be called the Narrows." He laughed. "I can't really be sure anymore though."

Superman roared and his eyes flared and the heat vision lanced up out of the crater, but All for One threw up a wall of hard light shields stacked one behind the other. The beams burned through the first and the second before they died against the third, and then he turned the shields into enormous fists and brought them both down and slammed Superman flat into the bottom of the crater.

"Is this it?" All for One drifted lower, looking down at him. "Truly? I'll admit, for a moment there, I thought I was about to be taught a lesson. That I was about to see the true Kryptonian. I was almost excited." He spread his arms. "And this is what I get. You on your knees in a hole in the ground." He laughed again. "Maybe I was wrong about you being a god after all. Maybe you're just a strong man who finally met someone stro—"

CRACK

Wonder Woman's fist took him across the jaw.

She came out of the smoke like a missile and hit him so hard the cracked half of his mask blew off completely, he then tumbled back across the ruined ground and stopped himself by digging his feet into the ground.

The instant he stopped a red blur tore through the smoke and All for One's body jerked and snapped as various punches came, hundreds of them, thousands, faster than even superman, hammering into him from every angle at once before he could so much as raise a hand. 

Then a green shape phased up through him from below, Martian Manhunter, solid again in an instant with a fist that cracked into the base of his skull and knocked him sideways through the air. 

Then from behind, Aquaman came out jumping on a car and gaining height with his trident already leaving his hand, it crossed the gap in a silver streak and punched clean through All for One's shoulder and carried him backward out of the air and pinned him to the ground.

Then coming from above came a massive green jet that Green lantern had summoned it crashed into All for one and exploded making another crater. 

While All for one was distracted Wonder Woman dropped down into the first crater where Superman was still on one knee with blood running down the side of his face. She landed beside him and put a hand under his arm and helped him to his feet. "Kal, are you alright?" she asked, her eyes moving across the burns on his shoulders and the crack in the emblem on his chest.

Superman shook his head and straightened up, wincing as his ribs shifted. "I'm fine, don't worry about me, what about the people? What happened to them, did you find a way to help them?"

Wonder Woman was silent for a moment then she shook her head. "Everyone I tried to help died within half an hour," she said quietly. "All of them. Whatever he did to them, whatever was causing the pain, it killed them before we could even figure out what it was. There was nothing we could do, Kal."

Superman's fists clenched at his sides and his jaw tightened until the muscle stood out like rope, and two tears broke from the corners of his eyes and ran down through the dirt and the blood on his face. He took a step forward and stumbled, his knee buckling though Wonder Woman caught him by the arm and held him upright.

"What's wrong?" she asked in a little bit of a panic. 

"I don't know," Superman said, looking at his own hands. "I feel weaker. I don't know what he did but something isn't right."

"Then go," Wonder Woman said firmly. "Get above the clouds and into direct sunlight and recover. We have this handled."

"Diana, I can't just leave, the city is—"

"Kal." She gripped his arm harder. "We have it handled. Go. Now. Recover and come back when you're ready, we will hold him until then."

Superman looked at her and then at the smoke rising from the second crater, and he shook his head once more before he bent his knees and launched himself straight up, punching through the clouds and climbing until he rescued space.

Down below the Justice League gathered at the edge of the crater. "Okay so what's the game plan here?" Flash asked, looking between them. "Because I just watched him go ten rounds with Superman and he's still standing so I'm really hoping someone has a plan that's better than hit him until he stops because that doesn't seem—"

Before anyone could answer the trident came spinning out of the smoke.

It screamed through the air like a javelin and would have gone clean through Green Lantern's chest if Aquaman hadn't snatched it out of the air an inch from the construct barrier, the impact shoving him back three feet.

The smoke blew away and All for One stood at the centre of the second crater, his suit torn and sparking his mask gone, and his exposed mouth was smiling. "I have no interest in fighting a team of b-rated heroes," he said. "If Superman couldn't put me down I fail to see what any of you are going to accomplish here tonight."

"B-rated," Flash said, his whole body tensing. "Did he just call us b-rated?"

"I'll show him b-rated," Hal said, his ring glowing.

"Enough." Martian Manhunter's voice cut through both of them. "Do not let him provoke you. He wants you angry do not give him what he wants."

All for One tilted his head. "I don't need psychological warfare to deal with this level of opposition. I'm simply being honest with you."

Hal's jaw tightened and he shot forward, his ring blazing as a massive battering ram construct formed in front of him, but All for One moved first, throwing his hands forward and summoning a colossal hard light jet fighter of his own and he slammed it into the green construct head on, the two projections grinding against each other in a shower of sparks before the red-black one detonated and threw Hal backward through the air. Hal threw up a shield around himself and caught himself, but the force still drove him skidding across the ground.

Flash zoomed across the battlefield and hit All for One before the debris from the constructs had finished falling, a thousand strikes a second hammering into the torso and the head and the arms, the impacts coming so fast they sounded like a single continuous punch. Two thousand. Three thousand. All for One's head snapped left and right and his body rocked under the barrage.

Then All for One smiled through the hits.

"Let's change the playing field."

[Quake]

He brought his fist down toward the toward the bay, and the shockwave tore across the ground in a visible wave that split the air and kept going, hitting the waterfront and making the air tremble. 

Everyone paused for a moment before they watched as Gotham Bay came rushing into the narrows.  The water surged through the broken narrows in a wall of black that swept over the rubble and the wreckage and the bodies, filling the crater and pouring through the streets, but before it could settle All for One raised both hands.

[Ice Manipulation]

The entirety of the water that had flooded in froze and became a landscape of ice that covered everything, the streets and the buildings and the rubble all buried beneath a frozen plain that stretched in every direction.

Flash tried to run towards All for one again and he made it maybe forty yards before All for One blinked, vanishing from the spot where he'd been standing, and Flash's fists hit nothing but air and his momentum carried him forward into a ridge of ice that he crashed through in a spray of frozen shards, tumbling end over end.

All for One reappeared between Aquaman and Wonder Woman.

He drove his fist into Aquaman's face before the king could raise his trident, a straight right that connected with his jaw and rocked him sideways, then he kicked the back of his knee and dropped him and grabbed him by the collar and threw him directly into Wonder Woman's incoming punch, the two of them colliding and Aquaman going tumbling across the ice and into a shelf that cracked under his weight.

All for One shot forward and buried his fist in Wonder Woman's stomach, doubling her over, then snapped an uppercut under her chin that lifted her head but she came back swinging, a cross aimed at his temple, but he caught it, locked his grip around her wrist, and headbutted her, and before she could recover he opened his eyes and the [Heat Vision] tore out at point blank range.

The beams hit her square in the chest and drove her backward, her boots carving trenches in the ice, until she brought her bracers up and crossed them in front of her and the beams deflected upward off the metal in a shower of sparks. She flipped backward, the motion carrying her heel up under his chin and launching him upward off the ice and into Martian Manhunter who was descending from above.

J'onn laced both hands together and spiked him down like a volleyball, the sledgehammer blow driving All for One into the ice with a crack that sent fracture lines running in every direction.

Green Lantern came in from the side with a massive spiked fist construct and swung it down at the crater, but All for One threw up a hard light shield and the green fist shattered against it, then he reached down and grabbed the ice beneath him with both hands and reshaped it, pulling up a giant frozen hand that closed around Hal's body and yanked him down to the ground, the ice creaking and groaning as it pinned him flat.

Martian Manhunter charged.

All for One turned to him and took a breath.

[Fire Breathing]

The flames erupted from his mouth in a torrent that went from orange to blue in less than a second, and they hit J'onn dead on. The Martian screamed, a sound that none of them had ever heard from him before, his body seizing as the fire washed over his skin.

All for One laughed and spread his arms and the flames arced outward from his palms and curled around J'onn in a sphere, trapping him inside it. "Do you feel that, Manhunter? Such a pathetic weakness..."

Before he could finish him off however Wonder Woman hit him from behind and wrapped both arms around his waist, lifted him off his feet, arched her back and drove the crown of his skull into the ground in a suplex that shifted the entire ice sheet beneath them, a crack running out from the impact point for a hundred yards in every direction. She held him there, face down, one arm locked behind his back and her knee in his spine.

"J'ONN, DO IT NOW!" she shouted.

Martian Manhunter was on the ground, smoke rising from his skin, his body trembling, but he heard her. He forced himself upright and his eyes began to glow and he reached out with his mind.

The physical world fell away.

...

Martian Manhunter found himself standing in a vast empty space, a mindscape that stretched in every direction without boundary, no sky, no ground, just a flat grey plane that went on forever. And sitting in the middle of it, cross-legged on the floor with his hands resting on his knees, was Ethan Kane.

J'onn walked toward him slowly his hands outstretched. "Ethan," he said quietly, "I am sorry. I do not want to do this but you have left us with no other choice. I am going to shut your mind down now... at least this way the fighting will stop and no one else has to die tonight."

He reached for Ethan's head.

Ethan's hand shot up and grabbed his wrist.

J'onn tried to pull free but the grip was like iron, the fingers digging in.

Ethan's eyes looked up at him and they were completely empty.

"Do you want to know why I am fate's chosen," Ethan said.

J'onn pulled harder but couldn't break free.

"Do you want to know why it is my destiny to create the perfect world."

"Let go of me!" J'onn said. 

"Destiny blessed me with All for One," Ethan continued, his grip tightening. "But it is only me, only me, who can control the chaos it brings." He reached up with his free hand and placed it on J'onn's forehead. "Let me show you what happens without me."

The grey plane cracked open.

From beneath the surface they came, pouring up through the fractures in the mindscape, dozens of writhing masses of shadows that were not quite shapes and not quite faces but something in between, fragments of stolen minds, echoes of every ability Ethan had ever taken, each one carrying a piece of the person it had been ripped from, and they surged toward J'onn like a tide. 

The first one grabbed his ankle and he felt the wrongness of it immediately, climbing up his legs, wrapping around his arms, clawing at his face, their mouths opening into black holes that pulled at his consciousness.

"AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" J'onn screamed.

He screamed and thrashed and tried to phase through them but he couldn't, and they pulled at him, tearing, devouring, and through all of it Ethan sat on the ground and watched with a small smile on his face.

"GET OUT," J'onn screamed. "GET OUT OF MY—"

Ethan flicked his wrist and ejected him from his mindscape. 

...

Outside, Wonder Woman watched as Martian Manhunter's glowing eyes went dark and he let out a scream that curdled the air and then went limp, his body hitting the ice and not moving, she opened her mouth to call his name but the back of All for One's skull smashed into her face, the headbutt snapping her head backward, and before she could recover he grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder and seized the golden rope of her lasso where it hung at her hip, looping it around her throat and pulling it tight.

He floated up off the ice with her, rising above the frozen landscape, Wonder Woman clawing at the lasso around her neck while her legs kicked at the air.

Flash saw it and got up and started running towards All for one, albeit a lot slower so he could keep better traction. 

All for One looked down at him and pointed and the ice beneath Flash erupted.

[Precognition]

[Ice Manipulation]

Spikes shot up from the ground, hundreds of them, and with his precognition active All for One tracked every dodge before Flash made it, leading him, herding him to where a spike caught him through the left foot and pinned him to the ice making him scream, and before he could vibrate free five more punched through both his legs in rapid succession, the ice going through the meat of his calves and thighs.

"FLASH!!!" Aquaman came roaring across the ice with his trident. 

All for One caught him with a telekinetic grip that stopped him dead, his body locking rigid, and then slammed him down into the ice face first hard enough to crack it, and held him there.

"Time for an ass kicking buddy!" Green Lantern shouted as he came in hard and fast with a massive green sword construct materialising in his hands as he swung at All for One's back trying to free Wonder Woman. All for One turned and caught the sword between his palms and shattered it.

Hal formed twin hammers and brought them down from both sides but All for One blinked between them and reappeared behind him and kicked him in the spine. Hal spun with a shield but All for One punched through it. Hal formed a cage around him and All for One tore it apart with his bare hands. Hal threw everything he had left, a rapid fire barrage of constructs, fists and chains and walls and spears, and All for One walked through them, breaking each one as it came, closing the distance easily.

"You're the one I feel the best about Lantern," All for One said as he caught a green lance and snapped it in half. "You're a traitor to the human race... enforcing laws for what amounts it a private military..."

"LET HER GO!" Hal screamed and threw himself forward, every ounce of willpower he had left pouring into a single concentrated beam that hit All for One in the chest and actually pushed himband burned him.

All for One looked down at the beam hitting his chest and then looked up at Hal. Then he blitz forward and with one hand he sharpened the bones in his fingers till they were points like a spear and thrust his hand through Green Lanterns chest and out through his back.

"NO!" Wonder Woman screamed from below, still choking on her lasso.

"HAL!" Aquaman roared from where the telekinesis pinned him.

"NO NO NO NO NO," Flash screamed, thrashing against the spikes that impaled him.

Hal looked down at the arm through his chest, his mouth opening and closing, and a line of blood ran from the corner of his lips. All for One pulled his arm free and he let him drop. 

The Green Lantern hit the ice on his back and lay there with his ring hand still raised and the green light guttering like a candle in the wind.

All for One tossed Wonder Woman aside, the lasso unlooping from her throat as she crashed into an ice shelf. "I told you," he said. "I told every one of you. My will is unbreakable. It does not bend, it does not crack, it does not compromise. Everything you are, everything you represent, the justice, the hope, the league of heroes who thought they could impose their order on the world, all of it breaks on me. I am the wall that your ideals die against, and when the dust settles the only thing left standing will be the world I build on top of your graves."

CRACK

A sonic boom split the sky and Superman came down out of the sky like a missile, his eyes burning red, the fire of reentry still rolling off his skin, and the punch he threw caught All for One across the jaw and sent him spinning across the frozen landscape, his body bouncing off the ice a dozen times before he caught himself and skidded to a stop.

Superman crossed the distance again and hit him again, and again, the punches coming savagely with nothing held back, and All for One answered in kind, the two of them tearing across the frozen narrows in a brawl that was uglier and more vicious than anything that had come before. Superman slammed his forehead into All for One's face and All for One answered with a quake-wrapped hook that cracked the air and split the ground beneath them. 

Superman drove his knee into his stomach and All for One teleported behind him and hit him in the kidneys. Superman spun and caught him with a backhand that sent him through an ice ridge and All for One came out the other side with a kick that snapped Superman's head sideways.

They crashed through frozen buildings and across the ice fields and through ridges of debris, each blow stronger than the last, neither of them stopping, neither of them slowing, and eventually Superman caught both of All for One's hands and their fingers locked together and both of them roared, pushing against each other, the ice beneath their feet cracking and spiderwebbing outward.

[Muscle Augmentation]

All for One's frame swelled again, his shoulders widening and his arms thickening. The pressure against Superman's grip increased tenfold but Superman was still pushing him back, still overpowering him. 

All for One opened his mouth.

[Sonic Scream]

The scream hit Superman at point blank range and his grip faltered for a fraction of a second, and in that fraction All for One won the contest and slammed Superman down onto his back, the ice shattering beneath him, and before he could rise All for One brought his fist down.

[Quake]

The white sphere detonated against Superman's chest and the shockwave tore outward, the ice lifting and folding like a wave, and buildings across the city that were already damaged began to collapse.

He hit him again. 

[Quake]

But before he could continue Wonder Woman's lasso looped through the air toward his arm. But he teleported a foot to the left and caught the golden rope in his fist and looped it around Superman's neck in a single motion. He then yanked the other end and pulled Wonder Woman over to him and pointed his free hand at Diana.

[Air Burst]

The blast caught her square and launched her across the ice field, her body tumbling end over end until she hit an ice wall and went through it.

All for One dragged Superman up by the lasso and threw him, the golden rope whipping him through the air and into the ground, then he yanked him up and threw him again in a different direction, and again, and again, each impact cratering the ground until he planted his feet and hurled him one last time. 

Superman panted heavily as he got up, his eyes flared and he flew at All for One his fist connecting with his chin and sending All for One up into the sky, but before he could actually go up Superman caught his leg and swung him back down into the ground, then he kicked him across the frozen surface sending him tumbling through debris and wreckage until he slammed into the remains of a destroyed car.

All for One moved up to his knees slowly before he coughed and a spray of silvery-red substance came out of his mouth, splattering across the ice in front of him, he coughed again and more came up and he spat it out and braced himself on the wreckage of the car.

'It seems the nanites have all burned out,' he thought. He'd created specialised nanites that focused on boosting his natural regeneration, but it seemed even they had their limits. 

He looked up at Superman who was walking toward him across the ice, bloodied and burned and half his suit hanging off him in shreds, but still moving, his fists clenched and his eyes still glowing red.

All for One had hoped that things wouldn't come to this... but it was likely he would need to consider the secondary option, the plan B he had held in reserve. 

He was just thinking about how to implement it when a sound cut through the air that made him stop.

A scream.

Flash was screaming, thrashing against the ice spikes still pinning his legs, also Aquaman who had broken free of the telekinetic hold and was crawling across the ice on his hands and knees toward the same spot. 

When All for One followed their eyes he saw Green Lantern lying on the ice with his ring hand still raised and the green light gone out completely. Using his x ray vision All for one could see that he had just died. 

The ring slid off Hal Jordan's finger.

It lifted into the air on its own, a small band of metal that suddenly blazed with brilliant green light, it hung there for a moment and then it moved, fast, crossing the frozen battlefield in a straight line, and it stopped directly in front of All for One and floated at the level of his hand.

"Ethan Kane of Earth."

"You have the ability to overcome great fear."

"You have been chosen."

"Welcome to the Green Lantern Corps."

The ring slid onto his finger.

A wave of green light washed up his arm, crawling across his damaged suit and for a moment the uniform of the green lanterns covered his body. 

"How... that can't... that can't be possible," Superman said in shock. 

"NO!" Flash screamed. "NO, TAKE IT OFF, GET IT OFF HIM, THAT'S HAL'S RING, THAT'S HAL'S—"

All for One looked at the ring on his finger for a long moment. "It is entirely expected... for there was no greater fear than having your entire purpose in life almost be destroyed... the fear of having to return to who I used to be... the fear of everything I was being unmade..."

"LOOK AND SEE THE RESULT OF MY COMING FACE TO FACE WITH MY GREATEST FEAR!!!" All for one shouted as he let out a pulse of power with the ring that sent a beam so powerful into the sky even superman could barely hold himself on place. 

"This can't be happening..." Flash said with his fists clenched. 

They were doomed. 

But then All for one  reached up with his other hand and a lattice of crystal grew out of his palm.

[Crystal Manipulation]

The crystal wrapped around the ring and encased it completely, sealing it inside a shell that cut off the green glow instantly.

"But even so I will NOT taint myself with this," he said with disgust. "I will not wear alien technology. I will not become another servant of a foreign power." He crushed the crystal tighter around it and shoved it into the pouch on his belt. "My power is mine. Born of this earth and belonging to no one else."

He raised his arm.

[Air Burst]

[Quake]

[Kinetic Booster]

A white sphere the size of a car formed at the end of his fist, the three abilities layering on top of each other, and he fired it at the ground in front of him. The blast hit and the ice and earth lifted up like a wave, a wall of frozen debris and rubble rolling forward across the battlefield toward the League. 

Superman and Wonder Woman had to fly, scooping up Flash and Aquaman and the unconscious body of Martian Manhunter and carrying them up and over the wave and away, setting them down on a rooftop three blocks south.

Superman set Flash down gently and turned. "Is everyone—"

A blade of green crystal punched through his back and out through his chest.

Superman's mouth opened and a choked sound came out of him, his hands reaching down toward the point where it emerged from his sternum, the green light from the blade washed across his face and the veins in his neck stood out and his legs buckled.

All for One's boot connected with his spine and kicked him off the blade, and Superman fell forward off the edge of the rooftop and hit the ground below.

"KAL!" Wonder Woman screamed and charged.

All for One reached out with his telekinesis and seized her mid-flight, her body locking rigid, and he pulled her in and caught her by the face with one hand [Quake] bloomed around his fist and he slammed her head into the rooftop, the concrete cratering beneath her skull, and she went limp.

Aquaman roared and came at him with his trident and All for One caught him by the throat and [Static Charge] erupted from his palm, blue-white electricity pouring through Aquaman's body until his eyes rolled back and his legs gave out and he dropped.

Flash could barely stand, his legs torn and bleeding from the ice spikes, but he pushed himself up and raised his fists and tried. All for One looked at him for a moment and then kicked him in the head and sent him tumbling across the rooftop until he lay still.

Below, Superman was on his hands and knees in the street.

The green crystal blade was gone but the wound was still there, his hands were shaking as he pressed them against his chest and looked at the blood, his blood, running between his fingers.

All for One dropped down from the rooftop and landed in front of him.

"I was hoping it wouldn't come to this," he said. "I wanted to show the world that I could beat you without resorting to something like this. To show them that your strength meant nothing when measured against the will of humanity. That a man, a real man, born of this earth, could bring their god to his knees with nothing but what he was given at birth."

He kicked Superman onto his back.

Superman gasped, his hands still clutching his chest, the green light from the wound crawling up the veins in his neck. "...how..." he rasped. "...how do you have Kryptonite."

All for One laughed and knelt beside him, and he held up his hand and a blade of green crystal grew out of his palm. 

[Transmutation]

He traced the tip of it slowly across Superman's skin, leaving a thin red line. "Did you think I would be doing this if I wasn't assured of my victory? Did you really think I would challenge you to a fight in front of the entire world without knowing I could win it? I'm not one of your cartoonish Saturday villains."

"Months ago I tracked down Rex Mason," he said. "Or you may know him as Metamorpho. His ability is complicated to use, I won't bore you with the details, but I had enough time to learn how to generate Kryptonite at will."

Superman's face went white.

All for One flicked the dirt off his chest. "Don't worry," he said. "I won't be using it to kill you." He shifted his weight and climbed on top of Superman, straddling his chest, his knees on either side of his ribs. 

"I want to enjoy this myself...."

The first punch landed on Superman's cheek and snapped his head sideways, the second landed on the other side and snapped it back, the third broke his nose and the blood sprayed across the pavement.

But it wasn't over there All for One kept hitting him, over and over, his fists rising and falling. "I BEAT YOU," he shouted as his fist came down. "YOU TRIED TO TAKE EVERYTHING AND I STILL BEAT YOU." Another punch. "I GREW UP NOTHING." Another. "I WAS NOTHING." Another. 

"YOU TRIED TO TAKE MY LIFE!!!”

Superman's face was a ruin, both eyes swollen shut, his nose flattened, blood pooling in his mouth and running out the sides.

"They're going to remember this," All for One said, his voice dropping as his fists slowed. "Every person on this planet is going to remember the night that a man killed Superman with his bare hands. Not a god. Not an alien. A man."

He hit him again. 

And again 

And again 

"AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!" He wrapped quake in his hands and hit him so hard he felt Superman's skull crack beneath him. 

Then he stopped.

He sat there on Superman's chest breathing heavily. He could feel Superman's heart beating slowly beneath him, it started to get slower and slower... until finally it stopped. 

All for One sat there for a moment longer and breathed heavily. Then he climbed off the body and stood up and reached into his belt and pulled out a small pouch and pressed the clasp and nanites flowed out and reformed into a fresh mask which he fitted it over his face. 

Then he pulled a small sphere from another compartment and tossed it into the air in front of him, and it hovered and a red light blinked on and the lens opened.

A camera.

"People of Gotham.... No... people of the world," All for One said. "What you are witnessing is the end of an era."

He stepped aside so the camera could see Superman's body on the ground behind him.

"For years you have lived in the shadow of people like him. You have waited for them to come and save you. You have prayed to them. You have built statues of them. You have handed them the responsibility for your own safety and your own future and you have sat back and waited for them to fix everything that was wrong with the world."

He gestured behind him.

"That is over now."

He walked the camera across the battlefield, past the unconscious and broken bodies of the Justice League, past Wonder Woman face down in the concrete, past Aquaman slumped against the wall, past Flash lying in a pool of his own blood, past Martian Manhunter and he stopped beside the body of Hal Jordan and stood over it.

"Your heroes have been beaten," he said. "No one is coming. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not ever again. The age of heroes is finished and the age of waiting for someone else to save you is finished with it. From this moment forward you will live according to my will. The world I build will be the only world there is, and you will find your place in it, or you will be removed from it."

"If you want to pray... it will be to me... if you want to build statues they will be in my honour... that is your life from this moment forward."

He looked directly into the lens.

"For any who think otherwise," he said, and he raised one hand and pointed across the ruined skyline toward the centre of the city where the GCPD headquarters stood.

BOOM

The building detonated and a massive fireball tore through the structure from the ground floor to the roof, the walls blowing outward in every direction, and the entire building collapsed in on itself in a column of smoke and fire that climbed hundreds of feet into the air.

"Do not make the same mistake they did," All for One said.

The red light on the camera blinked off.

(AN: I hope all of you enjoyed the big fight, I tried to make it as interesting as possible while not being repetitive and boring. Anyway hope you enjoyed.)