DC: All for One Chapter 34 — I Can Never Lose! (Patreon)

(AN: Arc finale… thought I’d post early. Idk if I’ll do a chapter next Thursday, I might. Anyway hope you like it.)

"Citizens of Gotham. Today marks the beginning of a new era."

"All for One has given you security."

"All for One has given you order."

"All for One has given you purpose."

"Soon our leader will address the city from Wayne Tower Plaza. Attendance is mandatory for all citizens within all districts. Failure to attend will be treated as an act of defiance.

"All for One provides."

"All for One protects."

"All for One endures."

The speakers bolted to every lamppost in the city blared the message on a loop while columns of Saviours in full tactical gear marched civilians down the main avenue toward Wayne Tower, hundreds of them packed shoulder to shoulder shuffling forward.

A woman near the front of the line tripped over a crack in the pavement and went down on one knee and the Saviour nearest to her drove the butt of his rifle into her back making her hit the ground hard, the people around her flinched and kept walking, stepping around her, the Saviour then grabbed her by the collar and hauled her up and shoved her forward again.

"Keep moving," he said. "All for One doesn't like to wait."

"All for One sees all."

"All for One knows all."

"Resistance is not courage."

"Resistance is selfishness."

"The old world taught you to fight."

"The new world asks only that you listen."

"Listen to All for One."

"Trust All for One."

"Love All for One."

Three blocks back a man in the crowd pulled away from the line and tried to duck into an alley, and two Saviours peeled off and followed him and caught him before he made it ten feet and slammed him face first into the brick wall. The man started shouting about his rights and one of the Saviours put a hand over his mouth and the other one drew a sidearm and pressed it against the back of his skull and fired, the two Saviours then walked back out of the alley and rejoined the formation without a word.

"The age of heroes is over."

"The age of villains is over."

"There is only All for One."

"There has only ever been All for One."

"All for One provides."

"All for One protects."

"All for One endures."

The screens on every building showed the same image on a loop, All for One's mask rotating slowly against a white background.

"All for One provides."

"All for One protects."

"All for One endures."

_____________________________________

Seven miles from Wayne Tower in the industrial district, in a warehouse that had been abandoned, Robin sat on an overturned crate next to a barrel fire and stared at the flames without actually seeing them.

Batgirl sat across from him in the same posture, her cowl down around her neck and her red hair hanging limp and dirty around her face. Neither of them had slept in two days and neither of them had eaten in longer than that.

After the portal had closed and they'd found themselves in a storm drain beneath the East End with Mira unconscious between them, they had tried to get back. They had spent three days planning an approach on Wayne Tower using what little they had left, and they had gotten within two blocks of the tower before the drone net picked them up and the response was so fast and so overwhelming that they had barely made it out alive. Robin had taken a bullet through his left shoulder during the retreat that Batgirl had dug out with a pocket knife and a bottle of vodka they'd found in an abandoned apartment.

That had been a week ago.

On the filthy couch against the far wall Mira lay curled on her side under a blanket they'd pulled from a dumpster and she was shaking. She hadn't been able to find anything to use since the base was destroyed and the withdrawal had set in hard, sweats and shakes and vomiting, and on top of that whatever her ability was doing to her was making it worse, her face going tight with pain at random intervals even when nobody was talking to her or near her.

The barrel fire popped and Robin looked at it and after a while he started talking.

"I've been thinking about routes out," he said emotionlessly. "The bridge checkpoints are too heavy to force, but the old rail tunnels under the river might still be passable if the Saviours haven't found them yet. The eastbound line that runs under the bay, the one that was shut down during the earthquake reconstruction, if the flooding hasn't collapsed it entirely we could wade through and come out on the Jersey side."

Batgirl didn't look up from the fire. "The flooding would be chest-deep at minimum. Mira can barely walk."

"I know. But it's that or we try the sewers south and come out past the checkpoint line near the old rail yards. There's a gap in the drone coverage along the waterfront between two and four AM, I've been timing it from the roof."

"Then what," Batgirl said.

"We go to Metropolis," Robin said. "Or Star City. Or anywhere that still has heroes who can fight. We find whoever's left."

Batgirl didn't say anything for a moment and then she nodded. "Okay. The sewers are safer than the tunnel. We'd need to carry Mira but between us we can manage that. We'd need to go soon though, before she gets any worse."

From the couch Mira pushed herself upright. It took her three tries, her arms shaking, and when she was sitting up her face was grey and wet with sweat and she looked like she might pass out again at any second.

"We can't leave," she said. "What about everyone else. What about all those people he's got locked up in the tower. What about all the people in the city who are being marched around by those soldiers. We can't just leave them."

Robin's jaw tightened. "I can't do anything for them, Mira. He won. There's nothing left to fight with. No weapon, no plan, no allies. Every single person who tried to stop him is either dead or captured and the three of us are sitting in a warehouse eating out of garbage cans."

"But you're heroes," Mira said ad her voice cracked and she started to cry. "You're supposed to, you don't just, you can't give up, that's the whole point, you never give up, heroes never—"

She doubled over and threw up on the floor beside the couch, a stream of bile that was mostly nothing because there was nothing in her stomach, Batgirl was up and beside her immediately, pulling her hair back and putting a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Batgirl said quietly. "We didn't mean to upset you."

Mira waved her off weakly and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "It's not you, it's, it's fine, it's my stupid power. I can feel how upset both of you are right now, like I'm drowning in it, and it's not just feeling it, it's like your sadness gets magnified inside me." She pressed her hand against her forehead. "When you're hopeless I feel like the whole world is ending."

Robin sat very still for a moment. "I didn't know that's what it did."

"Yeah, well," Mira said, closing her eyes. "Welcome to my life."

Robin looked at the fire again and his voice dropped. "I don't know what to do. I'm not like Ethan. I'm not a genius. I always thought I was smart, I thought I was this great detective who could figure anything out because Bruce trained me. But Ethan outplayed me at every single turn, every single time. He saw everything I did before I did it. I couldn't outsmart him when I had a team and a base and a weapon designed to beat him, so how am I supposed to do it now with nothing?"

"Robin, that's not—" Batgirl started.

"It's my fault," Robin said. "All of it. If I had just called Bruce the first time I found Ethan, back at the very beginning, we would've taken him together and none of this would've happened. Oliver would be alive. Diana would be alive. Hal would be alive. Clark would be alive. All of them gone because I wanted to prove I could handle it on my own. I'm a failure, Barbara."

Mira got up off the couch.

She swayed and nearly went down and caught herself on the arm of the couch and then pushed off it and walked unsteadily across the cold warehouse floor to where Robin sat and she grabbed his arm with both her shaking hands.

"You don't have to be like him," she said, and even through the pain and the withdrawal her eyes were focused on his. "His way doesn't need to be the only way to win. Stop trying to out-think him and out-plan him and out-genius him. You're not him!"

She winced hard, her whole face scrunching up, and her grip on his arm loosened and her legs gave out and she went sideways. Batgirl caught her before she hit the ground and helped her back to the couch and laid her down and pulled the blanket over her.

"If we get out of Gotham," Batgirl said, kneeling beside the couch, "maybe we can come back with more heroes and try again. But alone, with nothing, we don't stand a chance, Mira. I wish that wasn't true but it is."

Mira looked up at her from the couch. "I believe in you guys," she said quietly.

Batgirl smiled though it was strained and tired.

A sound from the far end of the warehouse made both Robin and Batgirl snap to their feet, Robin's hand going to the two batarangs he had left and Batgirl pulling her cowl up and dropping into a fighting stance.

A cough echoed from the shadows. Then another. Then  footsteps and a moment later a figure came into the edge of the firelight.

He was dressed in a long trench coat with the collar turned up and a hat pulled down and a cloth mask covering his face from the nose down. The skin above the mask was ruined, covered in radiation burns that had eaten through the surface in patches of raw red and peeling grey, and his eyes, what was visible of them through the damaged tissue, were bloodshot and weeping.

"I'm not here to fight," the man said in a wheeze. "Put down your weapons cough I couldn't hurt you even if I wanted to."

"Who are you," Robin said, not lowering his guard.

"Doesn't matter," the man said. He coughed again. "I'm here as a friend."

Batgirl's eyes moved across the burns on his face. "Those are radiation burns," she said. "Severe ones. How did you—"

"A gift," the man said, "from our supreme leader." He said the last two words the way you'd spit out something rotten.

"What do you want," Robin asked.

The man stood there swaying slightly, and then another coughing fit took him and he doubled over with both hands on his knees and when it passed he straightened up and reached inside his coat and pulled out an envelope.

He held it out toward Robin.

"Ethan destroyed everything I ever cared about," he said. "My work. My colleagues. My future. And as you can see I'm not going to be around much longer to do anything about it myself." He pushed the envelope forward. "So I came to find the only people in this city who might still have the will to ruin his life."

Robin didn't take it. "You came to the wrong place. There's nobody left who can beat Ethan. Superman couldn't. The Justice League couldn't. The greatest detectives in the world couldn't. A couple of sidekicks hiding in a warehouse aren't going to do any better."

The man coughed again, pulling his mask down to spit blood on the floor, and then pulled it back up. "Just take the envelope," he said. "What's inside it will destroy Ethan Kane. The hero the city thinks he is. What's on this drive will take all of that away from him."

Batgirl frowned. "Even if it did, it wouldn't matter. So what if we ruin his public image? He won't just step down. He'll drop the act and take over as All for One openly."

"Maybe," the man said. He doubled over again and threw up, yanking his mask down just in time, the mess that came out of him was streaked with red and black. When it passed he wiped his mouth and straightened. "I don't care what happens after. I'll be dead inside a month." He pushed the envelope into Robin's chest. "Do what you want with it."

Robin took it.

The man turned and walked back into the shadows, coughing as he went, and a moment later the warehouse door creaked and then he was gone.

Robin and Batgirl stood in the silence he left behind.

"What's in it," Mira asked from the couch, lifting her head.

Robin opened the envelope and a small USB drive fell into his palm. He turned it over once, then plugged it into the wrist terminal on his gauntlet. A video file loaded and began to play, and all three of them watched the small screen.

Robin's face changed.

Batgirl leaned in and her eyes went wide.

They watched the whole thing in silence.

When it finished Robin looked at Batgirl and Batgirl looked at Robin and neither of them spoke for several seconds.

"If we showed that to the public," Batgirl said slowly, "he would lose everything, every person who still believes in Ethan Kane. All of it, gone."

From the couch Mira groaned and threw up again and Batgirl went to help her, holding her while she heaved.

Robin nodded, staring at the screen. "But it's like you said. We get rid of the hero and only the villain remains."

Silence.

"What do you want to do?" Batgirl asked.

Robin opened his mouth and was about to speak when Mira grabbed his arm again. She was grey and barely conscious but her grip was firm and her eyes found his.

"You're not like him," she said. "So stop trying to think like him."

Her face twisted in pain and her eyes rolled back and she went limp, unconscious, and Robin caught her before she slid off the couch and laid her back down gently.

Batgirl looked at Mira and then at Robin. "We might need to find her a doctor. The withdrawal combined with what her power is doing to her, she's getting weaker every day. If we don't get her help soon—"

She stopped because Robin wasn't listening. He was standing perfectly still with his eyes fixed on a point on the far wall and something was happening behind his face, something that hadn't been there five minutes ago.

"Robin?" Batgirl said. "What is it?"

He didn't answer right away.

Then he smiled.

It was small but it was a real smile and Batgirl hadn't seen him smile in weeks.

"She's right," Robin said. "I'm not Ethan. And I should've never tried to be. I've been spending all this time trying to outthink him, trying to beat him at his own game, trying to be smarter, and that was wrong from the start because that's not who I am."

He turned and grabbed Batgirl by the shoulders. "Can you rebuild the weapon? The one Dorado made?"

Batgirl blinked. "What? Robin, no, of course I can't, I have no idea how the internal—"

"I don't need it to work," Robin said, cutting her off. "I just need it to look like the original. Same shape, same size, same components on the outside. Can you do that?"

Batgirl stared at him for a moment, her mind working. "I mean, probably, I got a good look at it when Dorado was building it, and if I can find the right parts from the junk in this warehouse I could fake the exterior. But why would you want a weapon that doesn't—"

"I have a plan," Robin said.

Batgirl's mouth fell open slightly. "You have a plan."

"I have a plan. I need a couple things to make it work. I need the fake weapon, I need you to stay here with Mira and get it built, and I need to get into the Batcave."

"Wayne Manor has been under Saviour guard since the takeover. There are patrols—"

"I know but I need equipment." He pulled his mask on and headed for the warehouse door.

"Be careful," Batgirl called after him.

He slipped out into the dark.

It took him the better part of three hours to cross the city and reach the grounds of Wayne Manor, moving through the sewers for most of it and coming up through a drainage grate on the edge of the property. The manor was dark, the windows boarded, and two Saviour patrols walked the grounds on a rotation he timed from the tree line before he moved.

He moved to one of the side entrances, the one that Bruce had built into the cliff face behind the manor for emergencies.

He climbed down through it and dropped into the Batcave.

Only to find it had been stripped.

The display cases were empty, the suits gone, the weapons racks bare, the Batcomputer's hardware gutted and removed. Every piece of equipment, every tool, every vehicle, all of it taken. The cave was a shell, nothing but the rock walls and the empty platforms and the bats circling overhead.

Robin stood in the middle of it and cursed under his breath.

He'd needed weapons.

Equipment.

Maybe armour, something that could take a hit from Ethan.

He sat down on the steps that led up to the empty computer platform and put his head in his hands and tried to think.

He needed to be able to distract Ethan long enough for the plan to work and he wouldn't last 1 minute against him the way he was.

Then he remembered something.

Something Bruce had said to him.

He sat up and removed his head from his hands and then taking a chance he spoke out loud.

"Tango-lima-seven-bravo-echo-niner-four-lima-charlie."

The cave was silent for a moment.

Then he heard the sound of something beeping.

"Password confirmed."

Robin's head came up.

A section of the cave floor behind the main platform split open, hydraulics whining as a massive panel slid aside, and from beneath the rock a platform rose on pistons, and on the platform, locked in a containment frame that still had power running to it from a backup generator buried stood something that Robin had heard about but never seen.

Robin stared up at it, his mouth open, his heart hammering in his chest.

"Justice Buster online," the computer said. "Awaiting pilot."

_____________________________________

The plaza outside Wayne Tower had been transformed.

Massive screens had been erected on scaffolding along every side of the square, and speakers had been mounted on poles at fifty-foot intervals so that no one standing anywhere in the area could escape the sound. The crowd filled the space from the tower steps all the way back to the barricades four blocks away, thousands of people packed shoulder to shoulder, most of them silent, most of them staring at the ground or straight ahead with the hollow expressions.

Saviours in tactical gear lined the perimeter in formation, rifles across their chests, drones circling overhead, and at the top of the steps in front of the tower's main entrance a podium had been set up.

Inside the tower, two floors above the lobby, Ethan stood at a window overlooking the plaza and studied the crowd below. Sofia stood to his right in a dark fitted suit with her hair pulled back, and Poison Ivy was to his left in a flowing green dress that was growing small flowers along the hem. The Saviour commanders flanked them in a row all of them standing at attention.

"Today is the day," Ethan said, looking at each of them in turn. "Everything we've built, everything we've sacrificed, everything we've endured, it all culminates in the next hour. The performance is simple. All for One takes the podium, delivers the address, and halfway through, I will arrive and confront him. The fight plays out and All for One falls and the cameras capture every second of it, and by tonight I am the man who killed the villain that the Justice League couldn't beat."

He looked at Sofia. "When the shooting starts, don't react. None of you react or get involved."

Sofia stepped forward and put her hand on his arm and squeezed. "I'm happy the day is finally here," she said. "We've waited so long for this, after today nobody will ever question you again."

Ivy examined one of the flowers growing on her dress with a disinterested expression. "Just make sure it doesn't run long," she said. "I have saplings to attend to."

Ethan turned and watched down below as All for one exited the building and walked to the podium.

"Citizens of Gotham," All for One said. "You have been brought here today to witness the dawn of something that has never existed before in the history of this world. A new era. A world without crime, without corruption, without the weakness that has kept humanity crawling on its belly for millennia."

The crowd was silent.

"I understand that many of you are afraid. Fear is natural. Fear is the body's recognition that something unknown is approaching. But I did not bring you here to frighten you. I brought you here because you deserve to see what is coming with your own eyes, so that when the old world falls and the new one rises from its ashes, you can say that you were there at the beginning."

All for One raised both hands to the crowd.

"What we are building will require the destruction of what came before. That is the nature of creation. You cannot plant a garden without first pulling the weeds. You cannot raise a cathedral without first clearing the ground. The pain you have experienced, the loss, the uncertainty, all of it has been the necessary work of preparation. And I stand before you today to tell you that the preparation is nearly complete."

"You stand now at the gates of my kingdom. And I, in my generosity, have opened those gates to you. What lies beyond them is a world where no child goes hungry, where no family is broken by addiction, where no one is exploited or abandoned or left behind. A world where every human being reaches their full potential."

"A utopia."

"My utopia."

"I have elevated myself above the old heroes who failed you. I have dismantled the old systems that kept you small. And now, on this day, you will witness my final—"

"NEVER!"

The voice came from the middle of the crowd and every head in the plaza turned toward it, the crowd parted around the figure like water around a stone, people stumbling backward to get clear of whoever was crazy enough to interrupt All for One in the middle of a public address.

Ethan stood in the gap the crowd had made, wearing a set of futuristic body armour, a compact energy pistol in his right hand. "I won't let you do this!" Ethan Kane shouted down in the plaza. "I won't let you continue to terrorise this city and destroy innocent lives. You've taken everything from the people of Gotham, their freedom, their safety, their heroes, and I'm here to tell you it ends today."

All for One, still at the podium, turned toward the voice and let out a laugh that rolled across the speakers. "Ethan Kane," it said. "I've heard a great deal about you. The little philanthropist who thinks he can save the world by handing out free internet." The laugh came again. "Go home, boy. Go back to making phones and leave the business of gods to those who actually possess the power to conduct it."

People in the crowd started reaching for the Ethan Kane figure, trying to pull him back, grabbing at his arms, shaking their heads. "Don't," a woman next to him whispered. "Please, don't make him angry, he'll you—"

"Don't do it Ethan..."

"He'll hurt you..."

"Come back..."

Ethan shook them off. "If Superman isn't here to stop you then I will!" he shouted. "If the Justice League can't fight you then a citizen of Gotham will!"

All for One floated off the podium and hung in the air above the crowd looking down at him. "You are not a hero, Mister Kane. You are an insect. And insects get—"

Ethan raised the energy pistol and fired.

The blast caught All for One square in the chest and blew him out of the air, the figure tumbling backward over the crowd and slamming into the face of the building across the plaza with a crack that sent chunks of masonry raining down.

The crowd screamed and scattered from the impact zone and every screen in the city showed the moment Ethan sent him flying.

Ethan activated the rocket boots built into his armour and launched himself into the air after All for One, the crowd below gasping and cheering as the philanthropist they'd watched on TV for the past year took flight and continued the attack, firing blast after blast as he flew towards him.

All for One recovered and returned fire with hard-light projections that Ethan dodged, banking left and right, and they fought across the skyline above the plaza while the cameras broadcast every second of it to every screen in the city.

All for One threw a punch that Ethan blocked on his armoured forearm and answered with a kick to the midsection, All for One staggered and fired heat vision that Ethan rolled under, and then he came up and hit it with a three-shot burst from the pistol that drove the villain backward through a billboard.

"I'm going to end things All for one!" Ethan shouted as he flew towards him grabbing him by the throat and pointing his gun at him.

Then the broadcast stuttered and every screen in the plaza flickered at the same time, the image of the fight above cutting out and being replaced by static for half a second, and in the air above the crowd both figures paused, frozen mid-combat.

A moment later the static cleared.

What replaced it was a video, shot from a fixed camera position in a dark underground chamber, the audio that came through the speakers was clear enough that every word carried across the plaza.

On the video Ethan Kane stood in the chamber surrounded by figures in owl masks.

"There is only one god of humanity," the Ethan on the screen said.

"His name is All for One."

Then the video showed him rise from a chair with restraints torn apart on the floor around him, and the people in the owl masks started screaming and dropping, and a blue-white light poured from his hand toward the ceiling as he killed every single one of them.

The video then replayed over and over.

The plaza went completely silent.

Thousands of people stood in the open air and looked at the screens and then looked up at the two figures floating above them.

"What?!"

"Does that mean?"

"Ethan is all for one?!"

"No it can't be..."

"You heard him!"

"Does he worship him?!"

"It has to be the same person right?!"

"But there are two of them!"

"Kane is All for One."

"He's All for One, oh my god, he's been All for One the whole time—"

In the control booth behind the stage the Saviour technicians were frantically working the consoles, trying to cut the broadcast, trying to shut it down, but the signal had been hijacked at the source level and nothing they did could stop it.

The real Ethan let for of All for one and stood there floating. There was no expression on his face. No shock, no anger, no nothing. He just looked down at the crowd as they stared up at the two figures and then back at the video and then back again, soon the murmuring turned into shouting, and the shouting turned into something closer to a roar, thousands of voices demanding answers.

Even if he tried to deny it, even if he walked out onto that podium right now and told them it was a fabrication, a smear campaign, only a fraction of them would believe him.

In less than a minute his entire plan had been utterly destroyed.

He dismissed All for one with a thought and he faded from the air above the plaza like smoke, and the crowd below saw that too, saw the villain dissolve into nothing.

Ethan floated down onto the podium and the crowd surged backward from him, people tripping over each other to get away, he stood there and looked out at the sea of faces that had been marched here to witness his triumph and every single one of them was now looking at him with disgust and fear and the dawning recognition that the man who had fed them and housed them and given them free phones and built them medical clinics was the same man who had killed Superman and murdered a million of their neighbours.

The commanders crowded in behind him, all of them talking. "Sir, should we disperse the crowd?" "Do we switch to the contingency?" "Should we shut down the external feeds?" "Sir, the broadcast is still running on every channel, we can't—"

"It's too late," Ethan said.

"Sir, what do we—"

"Sir, the perimeter teams are asking—"

"Sir—"

"SHUT UP!" Ethan screamed, and the force of it silenced every voice on the stage and sent the nearest commanders stumbling backward.

His eyes began to glow red and he turned toward the crowd.

[Heat Vision]

Something then hit him in the chest so hard it felt like the his body folded in half around him.

The impact lifted him off the podium and launched him backward through the front entrance of Wayne Tower, through the lobby, through two interior walls, glass and concrete and steel disintegrating around him as he tumbled end over end through the building until he slammed into a support column deep inside the structure.

Before he could push himself out of the rubble the thing that had hit him came through moving fast, ten foot tall and armoured head to foot in dark composite plates with a cowl-shaped faceplate glowing with blue sensor lights, it grabbed him by the front of his shirt and drove him through the column and into the next wall and through that wall too.

It caught him on the other side and started hitting him, reinforced fists slamming into his body one after another, each blow driving him deeper into the wreckage, and then it grabbed him by the ankle and spun him and threw him upward, his body tearing through the ceiling and up through three floors of Wayne Tower until he burst out through the roof and into the open air.

A grapple line shot up after him and the cable wrapped around his leg and went taut and yanked him back down into the ground in front of the tower, the plaza cracking beneath him in a crater that sent the crowd screaming and running in every direction.

The armoured suit stood over the crater and the blue lights in its faceplate pulsed steadily.

Ethan crawled out of the broken earth and pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and looked up at the thing standing above him.

"You can't be Batman... so it has to be.... Heh... Robin," he said. "You were the last person I expected to see."

Robin landed on the ground in front of the crater with a boom that cracked the plaza tiles beneath his armoured boots and sent a tremor rolling outward through the concrete. The blue lights in the faceplate pulsed as the suit's targeting systems locked onto Ethan.

"It's over," Robin said through the suit's speakers. "Everyone in this city just watched that video. Everyone knows that there is no Ethan the saviour anymore. There's just you. All for One. A murderer, a liar, and a fraud, standing in the open for the first time in your life."

Ethan pushed himself to his feet and stood at the edge of the crater and watched the crowd that was still running, thousands of them pouring out of the plaza in every direction, climbing over barricades and trampling each other in their desperation to get away from him, the same people who had lined up to buy his phones, the same people who had shaken his hand outside the stores, the same people who had cheered his name on the steps of the hospital, and not one of them was looking back.

Ungrateful.

Every single one of them, ungrateful. He had given them everything. He had fed them when their own city had let them starve. He had healed them, housed them, protected them, and the moment they saw the truth of what it had cost, the moment they understood the scale of what he had done for them, they ran from him like he was the disease instead of the cure.

"Just give up now Ethan," Robin said again. "This suit was built to fight the entire Justice League. It was designed for the scenario where the most powerful beings on the planet went rogue and needed to be stopped. So whatever you're thinking right now the answer is you can't."

Ethan turned his head slowly and looked at the armoured figure standing in front of him.

"I am beyond the Justice League," he said. "I am beyond everyone. I am beyond every hero and every villain and every institution that has ever existed on this planet." His voice rose. "I AM A GOD!" he screamed, and the lightning flared bright enough to cast shadows across the entire plaza. "I am the GOD of humanity and you are NOTHING, you are a CHILD in a COSTUME playing with a dead man's TOYS, and I will NOT be brought low by a child!!!"

A moment later the thudding of feet echoed across the plaza as the Saviours arrived. They came from both sides of the plaza in tactical formation, five dozen of them, rifles raised and trained on the armoured suit, they fanned out in a semicircle behind Ethan with their weapons up and their fingers on their triggers.

Robin turned the suit's faceplate toward them and raised both hands. "Stop," he said. "Listen to me. All of you. I know that many of you are soldiers. Veterans. People who served this country and came home to nothing, no jobs, no support, no one who gave a damn about what you'd been through. I know Ethan gave you a purpose when no one else would. I know he made you feel like you mattered again, like you were part of something that was worth fighting for. And I understand why that matters, I really do."

Some of them kept their weapons trained on him. Others shifted slightly, their aim wavering.

"But he doesn't care about you," Robin said. "He never did. You were tools. Every single one of you. The moment you stop being useful to him he'll throw you away or kill you, and if you don't believe me then try and remember has Ethan ever shown anyone mercy if they go against him, if they have any kind of difference in opinion... HE KILLED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WITHOUT A SINGLE BIT OF REMORSE, YOU MEAN NOTHING TO HIM!"

The wavering spread.

Two of the Saviours in the front row lowered their weapons by an inch. A woman on the left side of the formation took her finger off the trigger and looked at the man beside her.

Ethan noticed.

"More traitors," he muttered and he raised both hands and seized twenty of them in a telekinetic grip and he began to squeeze. Their bodies lifted off the ground, their arms pinning to their sides, their armour creaking and their ribs beginning to crack.

This scared the rest of them and they looked at their comrades as they were being crushed and popped like watermelons.

However before he could fully pop them a missile hit him in the chest.

The warhead launched from the Justice Buster's shoulder mount and crossed the distance in a fraction of a second and detonated against Ethan's torso, the explosion throwing him off his feet and sending him tumbling backward across the street, his body bouncing off the pavement before he slammed into the base of a building on the far side.

The Saviours he'd been crushing dropped to the ground gasping and clutching their ribs.

Ethan pushed himself out of the rubble but something was different now. The air around him had changed, thickened, as if the atmosphere itself was recoiling from him. A visible distortion rolled off his body in waves, the malice coming off him so strong it was almost physical, and the Saviours nearest to him stumbled backward wnd almost fell over.

Some of them broke formation entirely and ran, dropping their weapons and sprinting for the side streets. Others, the ones who had heard what Robin said and believed it, turned their rifles toward Ethan and opened fire.

The bullets hit him but flattened and fell to the ground like rain.

Ethan looked at them shooting at him with the same weapons he had given them, wearing the same gear he had provided, standing on the same ground he had taken for them, and he shook his head slowly.

"No matter what I do," he said, "it seems the people around me will always follow the cancer that is heroes."

[Blink]

He appeared in the group and the first saviour died before he finished raising his rifle, Ethan's hand going through his chest and out the other side. The second died when Ethan grabbed his head and twisted it around backward. The third and fourth died together when Ethan swept his arm in an arc and a blade of diamond-hardened bone extended from his forearm and cut them both in half at the waist.

He moved to the next one and the next, each kill taking less than a second, the bodies dropping around him. A Saviour tried to tackle him from behind and Ethan caught him by the throat without turning around and crushed his windpipe and dropped him. Another fired point blank into his face and Ethan didn't flinch, just reached forward and pushed the rifle barrel aside and drove his fist through the man's stomach.

"STOP!"

Robin crossed the plaza in a single bound and slammed into Ethan shoulder first, the impact throwing both of them through the wall of the building behind them and into the lobby beyond.

"[Muscle Augmentation]"

"[Strength Enhancer]"

Ethan's body swelled as the stacked abilities fired, his frame expanding, the muscle packing on and he slammed his fist into the Justice Buster's chest plate. The impact rang through the armour like a bell and launched Robin backward through the lobby, his armoured body tearing through a row of elevator doors and crashing into the shaft beyond.

Robin fired the suit's flight system and rocketed back out of the shaft and hit Ethan with a right cross that snapped his head sideways, then followed with a left that caught him on the jaw, Ethan took both hits and answered with a headbutt that cracked the suit's faceplate and sent fracture lines spiderwebbing across the blue sensors.

They crashed through the far wall together and back out into the open air, tumbling through the sky above the plaza, hitting each other as they fell and rose and fell again. Robin caught Ethan's fist and drove his foot into Ethan's stomach and Ethan doubled over and fired his heat vision point blank into the suit's chest, the beams washing across the plates without leaving a mark.

"This suit was built to take Superman's heat vision," Robin said, and he grabbed Ethan's head in both armoured hands and headbutted him back, the reinforced cowl cracking against Ethan's skull. "Yours isn't going to do any better."

Ethan roared and fired an [Air Burst] at point blank range that hit the suit like a freight train, the force pushed Robin back ten feet through the air but the suit held its ground, the stabilisers firing in the legs and the back to keep him upright, and he came forward again swinging.

Robin's right fist connected with Ethan's ribs and Ethan grunted and caught the follow-up punch and held it and tried to crush the gauntlet in his grip, the metal groaning.

"SHAZAM!"

The word tore out of Ethan's mouth and the sky split open above them and the lightning came down in a column of blinding white that struck him dead centre and flooded his body with power. The golden lightning that had been crawling across his skin exploded outward in a dome of energy that threw Robin backward through the air, and when it cleared Ethan was floating above the plaza wreathed in crackling electricity.

He hit Robin before the suit's systems finished recalibrating from the electromagnetic pulse.

The punch came down like a hammer and caught the Justice Buster on the top of the shoulder, the force of it drove Robin straight down out of the sky and into the plaza below, his armoured body cratering the tiles and the concrete beneath them and the sewer line beneath that. Ethan dove after him and landed on top of him with both feet and started hitting him each stroke like a thunderclap.

Robin caught one of the punches and then brought his other fist up in an uppercut that caught Ethan under the chin and launched him thirty feet into the air.

Ethan stopped himself midair and came back down fast, his knee leading, and it connected with the Justice Buster's chest plate in a impact that finally cracked the outer layer of composite, a fracture line running diagonally across the bat emblem on the chest. Robin staggered and Ethan hit him again, a right cross that turned his head inside the helmet, and then a left hook to the body that dented the side plating inward.

"When I'm done killing you," Ethan said, hitting him again, driving him backward step by step, "I'm going to kill everyone in this city. Every man, woman, and child. This place is unsavable." Another hit. "These people are unsavable." Another. "I'll burn Gotham to ash and find somewhere else and start again with people who actually deserve what I'm offering."

Robin caught the next punch in his gauntlet, the armoured fingers closing around Ethan's fist, and he held it there with the suit's full strength bracing against the impact. "You'd destroy an entire city because they didn't worship you?" Robin said through the cracked faceplate.

Robin threw Ethan's fist aside and fired rockets at, the warheads hitting Ethan in the chest and detonating in an explosion that blew him through the entrance of Wayne Tower and into the lobby. Robin followed, flying through the smoke, and caught Ethan mid-recovery with a tackle that drove both of them through the marble floor and into the level below, the tiles and the support beams parting around the Justice Buster's bulk like paper.

They hit the lower floor and Robin tried to pin him but Ethan got both feet against the suit's chest plate and kicked and the force launched Robin upward back through the hole they'd made and into the lobby ceiling. Before he could drop back down Ethan was already through the hole after him and his fist connected with the side of the suit's head in a right cross that cracked the faceplate across the left sensor array and sent Robin spinning through a row of support pillars that snapped one after the other as his body tore through them.

Robin caught himself on the fourth pillar, wrapping one armoured arm around it and swinging his momentum into a reverse kick that caught Ethan in the chest and sent him stumbling back three steps. Robin pressed the advantage and charged, throwing a combination that Ethan weaved through, slipping the first punch by tilting his head, catching the second on his forearm, and answering the third with a hook to the suit's midsection that dented the abdominal plating inward and made the servos beneath it whine.

Ethan grabbed the suit's right arm before Robin could retract it and twisted, the metal groaning, and he used the leverage to swing Robin off his feet and hurl him laterally through three office walls in succession, each one disintegrating around the suit in a spray of drywall and steel framing. Robin crashed through the third wall and into a conference room where he hit the table in the centre and split it in half and went through the window on the far side.

He fired the flight system and stopped himself in the air outside the building and turned back just in time to see Ethan come through the window after him feet first, both boots connecting with the suit's faceplate in a dropkick that drove Robin downward and through the ceiling of the floor below.

Robin hit the floor inside but before he could recover Ethan was on top of him, both hands locked around the suit's helmet that he was trying to twist it off.

The servos in the neck joint screamed as Ethan's started to rip it off, warning lights flooded Robin's display. He reached up and grabbed Ethan's wrists and put several charges on him that shot out from a port on the gauntlets.

The explosion threw them both away.

Robin then lunged after him but Ethan recovered faster than he expected and sidestepped and grabbed the suit's outstretched arm and redirected Robin's momentum, using his own weight against him to sling him across the room and through the exterior wall. Robin burst out into the open air again and the flight system caught him but Ethan was already there, having blinked to a position above him, and both fists came down together in a hammerblow that drove Robin down four stories in a straight line, the air screaming around the suit as it dropped.

Robin fired every thruster the suit had and arrested the fall ten feet from the street, the jets scorching the pavement below, and he looked up just in time to catch Ethan's knee on the chest plate completely fracturing it. The impact folded the suit backward and Robin felt his own jaw slam shut inside the helmet hard enough to make his vision flash.

Ethan grabbed the suit by the chest plate fracture and his fingers dug into the gap and he started tearing it open with both hands, the composite peeling apart, the layers of armour separating one by one as he ripped into the suit's core.

Robin slammed both fists down on Ethan's arms trying to break his grip but Ethan held on and kept tearing and the chest plate split further, a gap opening that was wide enough to see the internal framework beneath, the wiring and the servo housings and the reinforced mesh that was the last layer between Ethan's hands and Robin's body.

Robin drove his knee up into Ethan's body and his grip loosened for a fraction of a second and Robin tore himself free and created distance, the flight system carrying him back thirty feet. The suit's damage readouts were critical across the board now.

Left shoulder offline.

Right grapple system destroyed.

Chest plate compromised at sixty percent.

Faceplate integrity at thirty percent.

Power reserves at eighteen percent.

Ethan hung in the air across from him with blood running from his nose and his mouth and a gash across his forehead, but the lightning still danced across his body and the grin on his face was a grin.

He came at Robin again and this time Robin couldn't keep up.

The first punch caved in the left side of the helmet and Robin's ear started ringing.

The second tore off the right gauntlet entirely and it fell end over end to the street below.

The third was a quake-wrapped straight right that hit the centre of the damaged chest plate and the shockwave blew through it and the chest plate shattered and the armour beneath it cracked and Robin felt the impact reach his actual body and he felt something in his body break.

Ethan grabbed him by the exposed framework of the suit's torso and pulled him close and drove his forehead into the cracked faceplate and the glass finally gave and the shards fell inward against Robin's face, cutting his cheek and his forehead, and for the first time in the fight Ethan could see Robin's actual eyes through the broken helmet.

"You were never going to beat me in this thing," Ethan said, holding him by the suit's skeleton. "I'm barely even trying and yet look at you!"

Robin's one remaining gauntlet closed around Ethan's wrist.

And held.

The suit was dying.

The power was at nine percent and dropping.

The armour was shattered.

The weapons were gone.

The sensors were dark.

But the servos in the left arm still worked and the grip strength of a single Justice Buster gauntlet was still comparable to superman. Robin locked it around Ethan's wrist and squeezed and the mechanisms engaged and Ethan's eyes widened as he realised he couldn't pull free.

"NOW!" Robin screamed, his voice echoing across the plaza. "BATGIRL, DO IT NOW!"

Ethan's head snapped to the left.

His eyes focused on a nearby rooftop.

Batgirl was standing on the edge of the roof.

She had a weapon in her hands.

A weapon he recognised immediately, the same weapon that Dr Dorado had built.

The weapon that was supposed to be able to strip his powers.

The weapon he had destroyed.

Except apparently he hadn't destroyed it, or they had rebuilt it, and Batgirl was up there right now pointing it in his direction and she wasn't alone, the junkie girl was beside her, standing behind Batgirl with her hands pressed against her own head as if she was in pain.

"No..." Ethan said.

He immediately smashed Robin into the ground without a second thought and flew straight toward the rooftop at maximum speed, crossing the space in seconds and came down on the roof in an impact that cracked the entire surface and sent Batgirl stumbling backward.

She raised the weapon. "Stay back Ethan or I'll use it I swear!"

Ethan looked at the weapon in her hands.

Then he looked at her face.

Then he started to laugh.

"A fake," he said. "It's a fake. You built a replica and came up here with it hoping that, what, I would be frightened enough to surrender? That the sight of it would make me give up? Is this honestly the best you had left?"

He reached out with his telekinesis and tore the weapon from Batgirl's grip and crushed it in the air between them, the components shattering and the copper coils snapping, and the pieces rained down on the rooftop around their feet.

"You've lost," Ethan said. "Do you understand that? You have nothing left. No weapon, no allies, no plan. This is the end of your story, Barbara."

Batgirl backed away from him but her eyes moved, very briefly, to the girl standing behind her.

Mira stepped forward.

She was shaking so badly she could barely stand, her face grey and slick with sweat, her arms wrapped around her own body, but she bent down and picked up the largest piece of the shattered weapon from the ground and held it in front of her in both trembling hands as if it were a sword.

Ethan looked at her.

"What are you doing," he said.

Mira didn't answer. She just stood there holding the broken piece.

Ethan laughed again. "You're going to, what, stab me with a broken piece of a fake gun? Is that the plan? The heroic junkie makes her last stand with a piece of scrap metal?" He shook his head. "This is pathetic... you're just a pathetic little junkie who could never achieve anything let alone put a scratch on me!"

He stepped forward and grabbed the piece out of her hands and tossed it off the roof and then he grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off the ground.

"I told you in the base," he said, looking up at her dangling in his grip. "I could smell the ability hiding inside you. Whatever it is, it's mine now."

He reached inside her.

The extraction was rough and Ethan made sure it hurt, twisting the meta-gene as he pulled it loose the way you'd rip a tooth out by the root, and Mira screamed, a scream that went on longer than most of his extractions because he held the connection open and let the pain build before he finally tore the ability free.

It flowed into him.

One more stolen power on top of dozens that he barely registered it going in.

He dropped her and she hit the rooftop and lay there curled on her side gasping.

"There," he said. "Now you're not even—"

ba-dum

He stopped talking.

His mouth stayed open but no words came out.

ba-dum

Something was wrong.

He blinked and shook his head slightly as if he'd gotten water in his ear.

"Now you're not even worth—"

ba-dum

He stopped again.

There was a hum... not a hum exactly.

More like a murmur.

Like a room full of people talking on the other side of a wall, the individual words impossible to make out but the combined sound pressing against the edge of his awareness in a way that was starting to become distracting.

He frowned and touched the side of his head with one hand.

ba-dum

"What is... AHHH!"

He felt a lance of pain through his brain making him stumble back.

For a moment he didn't understand what was happening, he thought perhaps he was behind attacked by some sort of psychic, but he very quickly realised what this was.

Emotion.

Not his emotion.

But everyone else's.

It came pouring into him through every pore of his consciousness, a flood of human feeling so overwhelming that his mind was suddenly drowning in it.

He could feel the terror of every person within a hundred metres of where he stood, the raw screaming panic of the civilians running through the streets below.

"What," he gasped. "What is, what is this—"

"Forced empathy," Mira said from the ground, looking up at him through a curtain of dirty hair. "Welcome to my life."

The wave intensified.

It wasn't just the people outside anymore.

It was the people inside him.

The vestiges he had been suppressing for months, the fragments of every power he had ever absorbed, the echoes of their consciousness that he had crushed and silenced and locked away in the dark corners of his mind, he could feel their emotions, their terror.

But it wasn't just the vestiges.

It was the people he had fused with.

Diana's rage hit him first despite being repressed she had spent every moment fighting against the walls of her prison, and the force of it made Ethan scream and clutch his head.

Then Shazam's terror, the raw fear of a child who had been absorbed screaming and who had never stopped screaming inside the dark, and the fear was so awful that it short-circuited Ethan's ability to think and his legs gave out completely and he dropped to his hands and knees on the rooftop.

He felt that terror as his own and could do nothing to stop it.

Then Artemis.

Her grief.

The grief of a woman who had loved him, who had believed in him, who had given him everything she had, and who had watched him become a monster and had been unable to stop it.

The pain of that grief, the sheer crushing mass of loving someone who was incapable of loving you back, hit Ethan like nothing he had ever experienced in his life.

"STOP!" he screamed.

But he couldn't stop it.

Ethan who had a brain like a supercomputer, who was a once in a generation genius, who was able to maintain control over dozens of vestiges inside him suddenly lost control.

He could now feel Diana clawing at the walls inside him. He could feel her hands pressing against the boundaries of his consciousness, pushing, tearing, fighting with everything she had, and for the first time since he had absorbed her the walls were cracking.

"No," he gasped. "No, no, I control this, I am, I am in control, I—"

Shazam hit the wall from the other side, his terror had turned to rage now and he slammed against the inside of Ethan's mind with everything he had.

Artemis pushed too and the three of them together, tore at the prison he had built around them.

And the vestiges helped.

Every stolen fragment, every echo of every person Ethan had ever taken a power from, rose up at once like a tide. They were small individually, whispers, impressions, nothing more than the faint residue of people who had lost a piece of themselves to him. But there were dozens of them, and together, empowered by the empathy that was forcing Ethan to feel every one of them for the first time, they became a wave.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHUHHH!!!" Ethan was screaming now, on his hands and knees on the rooftop, golden lightning arcing off him in uncontrolled bursts that scorched the concrete and hit the buildings nearby.

His body was phasing violently, the edges of him blurring and splitting, his skin was cycling through colours that shouldn't have been possible, the stolen abilities fighting each other beneath the surface as the control that held them all in place began to collapse.

"STOP IT," he screamed. "ALL OF YOU, STOP IT NOW, I AM ALL FOR ONE, I AM THE GOD OF—"

"AHHHHHHHHH!!!!"

Diana broke through first.

The light that erupted from Ethan's body was blinding, a pulse that blew outward from his chest, and from the centre of it a figure emerged, coalescing out of his body, and Wonder Woman fell to the rooftop on her hands and knees, her lungs drawing air for the first time in weeks.

Ethan screamed and clutched his chest and the second figure came, Shazam, the man falling out of his body, hitting the rooftop and rolling and lying there sobbing.

The third figure came a moment after. Artemis crawled out of his body almost gently and she fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around herself.

Ethan collapsed.

He hit the rooftop face first and his body convulsed as the remaining vestiges rioted inside him making his entire body unstable.

He lay on the rooftop shaking and diminished and more human than he had been in over a year.

Batgirl stood at the edge of the roof and looked down at the plaza below where the Justice Buster lay in a crumpled heap and inside it Robin was already moving.

He crawled out of the wreckage and stood up though his body screamed at him from a dozen different places, bruised ribs and a cut above his eye and his left wrist swelling and his right knee throbbing, but he was up, he was moving, and he started running.

He fired the grapple and the line caught the edge of the building above and he swung upward, pulling himself hand over hand up the side of the structure.

He came over the edge of the roof and saw Ethan, on his face, shaking, his body smaller than Robin had ever seen it, the aura of malice and invincibility that had surrounded him stripped away.

He walked across the rooftop toward Ethan.

His body hurt with every step but he kept walking, his boots crunching over the scorched concrete, past Diana who looked up at him as he passed and didn't try to stop him.

He stopped in front of Ethan and looked down at him.

Ethan was trying to get up.

His arms were shaking and his face was wet with something that might have been sweat or might have been tears, it was impossible to tell because his face was doing things it had never done before, his features contorting through expressions that looked wrong on him.

He got to his knees.

He looked up at Robin.

"I can feel them," Ethan whispered. "I can feel all of them. They're all, they're all in here, I can feel what they felt, the fear, the pain. I didn't, I never understood what that meant, I didn't know it felt like this—"

Robin hit him.

The punch connected with the side of Ethan's jaw and snapped his head sideways and blood flew from his mouth and he went down on his hands, Robin stood over him and hit him again, a straight right that caught him on the cheek and drove him to the groung, and then he reached down and grabbed the front of his ruined suit and hauled him up and hit him again.

"That's for Clark," Robin said.

He hit him again.

"That's for Hal."

Again.

"That's for Oliver."

Again.

"That's for Wildcat."

Again.

"That's for Detective Chimp."

Again.

"That's for Dr Dorado."

He kept hitting him. Each punch landing, each one drawing blood. "That's for Renee," Robin said. "That's for Jim. That's for Barbara. That's for Artemis. That's for Shazam. That's for every single person in this city that you killed or tortured or imprisoned or lied to."

"And this one," he said, "is for Bruce."

Robin kicked him in the chest and Ethan flew backward off the rooftop and over the edge and fell.

He dropped six stories before his float ability kicked in for half a second and slowed him and then cut out again and he tumbled another three stories and hit a fire escape railing that bent around him and then he fell the rest of the way and hit the plaza below cracking the tiles beneath him and lying there in the rubble.

Robin jumped off the roof after him, firing his grapple to slow his descent, and landed on the plaza twenty feet from where Ethan lay. Diana dropped down beside him a moment later along with all the others.

They formed a semicircle around Ethan as he pushed himself up onto his knees in the centre of the plaza, his body still flickering with all his uncontrolled power, ice forming and breaking on his skin, bone spikes emerging and retracting, his eyes going red and then dark and then red again.

"You can't do this to me," Ethan said, and his voice cracked on every other word. "You can't. I was going to make the perfect world. Everything I did, everything, all the killing and the planning and the sacrifice, it was all for something, it was all building toward a world where no one would ever have to suffer again. You had no right to take that away from me. NO RIGHT."

He looked at Robin with something that was almost childlike in its desperation.

"I could've killed you," Ethan said. "Do you understand that? I could have killed you a hundred times over. At the asylum, at the gala, at the mansion, at your little base, every single time we crossed paths I had the power to end your life and I CHOSE not to. I let you live, Robin. Every time. You owe me. YOU OWE ME."

Robin just looked at him.

Ethan tried to fire his heat vision and it sputtered out of one eye, a thin beam that scorched the ground beside his own knee and made him flinch away from himself. He tried to summon a hard light shield and the construct formed for a quarter of a second and then shattered into fragments. He tried to use air burst but the compressed air fired backward out of his back and threw him forward onto his hands and his wrist buckled and he screamed again.

"WHY WON'T THEY WORK," he screamed at his own hands. "WORK, DAMN YOU, WORK—"

He tried to blink and his body phased halfway and then snapped back, leaving him gasping on his hands and knees with his vision doubled.

Robin shook his head slowly and there was nothing on his face now except an exhaustion that went deeper than the physical.

"What was I ever afraid of," he said quietly.

Ethan's head whipped around and his eyes were frantic. "SAVIOURS!" he screamed at the empty plaza. "SAVIOURS, TO ME, ALL UNITS CONVERGE ON MY POSITION, THAT'S AN ORDER!"

Nothing happened.

The plaza was empty.

The speakers that had been broadcasting propaganda all day were silent.

"SOFIA!" he screamed. "SOFIA, WHERE ARE YOU, GET DOWN HERE!"

Silence.

"IVY! ANYONE! SOMEBODY ANSWER ME!"

The wind blew through the empty square and nobody came.

He turned back to the people standing around him and his eyes moved across them one by one, searching for something, anything, and when he found Artemis he reached toward her with his hand.

"Artemis," he said desperately. "Artemis, please, you, you know what I was trying to do, you believed in it once, you can believe in it again, just help me, just this once, please—"

Artemis looked at him from where she stood, her face was wet and her jaw was trembling but she didn't move toward him and she didn't speak.

"Barbara," Ethan tried, turning to Batgirl. "Barbara, we, we had something, didn't we, back at the beginning, you understood me, you were the first person who ever understood me, please, I just need—"

"You brought this on yourself," Robin said.

Ethan's face twisted and he screamed again, a wordless sound that was more anguish than rage, and he clutched his head with both hands. "IT HURTS," he screamed. "MAKE IT STOP, I CAN FEEL EVERYTHING, I CAN FEEL ALL OF THEM, THERE'S SO MANY OF THEM, THEY'RE ALL SCREAMING INSIDE ME AND IT WON'T STOP, WHY WON'T IT STOP, PLEASE MAKE IT STOP—"

"That pain you're feeling," Robin said. "Every bit of it. You caused it. Every person screaming inside your head right now is someone whose life you destroyed. You're feeling what you've done, Ethan. For the first time in your life, you're feeling what you've done."

"I CAN'T," Ethan screamed. "I CAN'T HANDLE IT, IT'S TOO MUCH, PLEASE, JUST TAKE IT AWAY, TAKE THE POWER BACK, TAKE IT OUT OF ME, I'LL DO ANYTHING—"

"No," Robin said. "I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure you spend the rest of your life feeling exactly this way. Every day. Every hour. Every second. You're going to feel what those people felt, forever."

He stepped forward and kicked Ethan onto his back.

Ethan scrambled, rolling over and pushing himself up and trying to run. He made it ten steps before his knees gave out and he crawled across the broken plaza on his hands and knees, the most powerful person on the planet reduced to crawling through rubble.

Robin walked after him at a normal pace.

He drew a wingding from his belt and threw it.

It hit Ethan in the back of the head and he went face first into the concrete.

Ethan pushed himself up onto his knees, slowly, his face a mask of blood and tears and snot, and he started mumbling. "It can't end like this," he said. "It can't. It's not fair. I don't understand. I don't understand how this happened. I had everything. I had EVERYTHING. My plan was perfect. It was PERFECT. Every step accounted for. Every variable considered. Every contingency addressed. How did you win? How did YOU win? It doesn't make sense. A sidekick and a junkie, that's what beat me? THAT'S what destroyed everything I built? How? HOW?"

Robin stopped a few feet in front of him and looked down at the broken figure kneeling in the rubble.

"The fact that you don't know," Robin said, "means you never could have built a better world for people."

Ethan's face changed.

The desperation and the confusion and the pain all burned away in an instant and what replaced them was something akin to pure rage.

His fists clenched and his teeth bared and his eyes started glowing red, and the black-reddish lightning started crawling across his body again but it was wrong too, arcing in random directions, scorching his own skin.

"No," Ethan growled through his teeth, pushing through the pain and the chaos and the screaming inside his head by sheer will. "NO. I am ALL FOR ONE. I am the GOD of humanity. I will NOT lose. I will NOT die on my knees in front of a you. I will kill everyone here. I will kill everyone in this CITY. I will—"

"Ethan, STOP!" Artemis screamed, stepping forward.

"DON'T DO THIS!" Barbara shouted.

Black lightning erupted from his body.

Robin was blown backward off his feet and thrown twenty yards across the plaza by the shockwave.

Ethan was still on his knees forcing every stolen ability in his body to activate at once, trying to override the instability through raw willpower alone.

His skin started to crack.

Thin lines of white light appeared across his face and his arms and his chest, spreading like fractures in glass, and the black lightning got worse, the arcs reaching further and hitting harder, and the ground beneath him started to buckle and the buildings on either side of the plaza started to shake.

"GET BACK!" Diana shouted, grabbing Robin and pulling him further from the epicentre. "EVERYONE GET BACK, NOW!"

All of them ran and took cover behind whatever they could find, the corner of a building, an overturned car, a collapsed wall.

Meanwhile Ethan was screaming.

It was a sound that didn't have a beginning or an end, a continuous howl that carried across the empty plaza while the white fracture lines across his body widened and brightened and the black lightning built and built.

"I AM A GOD," he screamed, and his voice was barely recognizable, warped by the power tearing through his vocal cords. "I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED BY INSECTS. I WILL REMAKE THIS WORLD IN MY IMAGE. I WILL—"

BOOOOOOOOOOOM

Everyone covered their eyes as a flash emanated from where Ethan knelt. It wasn't like a bomb. It wasn't like any explosion any of them had ever seen or felt. It was a white sphere that expanded outward from Ethan's body in every direction and everything it touched was simply gone, the plaza tiles vaporised, the concrete beneath them vaporised, the buildings on either side of the square losing their lower floors in an instant as the sphere ate through them, the air itself seeming to tear apart inside the radius of the blast.

The shockwave that followed hit them a second later and threw every one of them off their feet and through whatever cover they'd taken.

When it was over Robin pulled himself out of the rubble of the storefront. His ears were ringing and there was blood running down the side of his face and his left arm wasn't working properly but he got to his feet and looked at where Ethan had been.

There was a crater.

A perfect sphere carved into the earth, thirty feet deep and sixty feet across, the edges of it smooth, almost polished, the concrete and the soil and the rock beneath it all removed with a precision that made it look like it had been scooped out by a giant hand.

There was nothing inside it.

No body.

No debris.

No residue.

Nothing.

Ethan Kane was gone.

Robin walked to the edge of the crater and looked down into it, and stood there for a long time, the others gathered around him one by one as they pulled themselves out of the wreckage.

Diana first, then Shazam, then Batgirl, then Artemis limping around the corner with her hand pressed against a cut on her forehead.

They stood at the edge and looked at the empty space where the most dangerous person on the planet had been, the wind blowing through the ruined plaza.

"Is he," Shazam started. "Is he actually, is he gone? Like really gone?"

Nobody answered right away.

"He tried to force his own powers past the breaking point," Batgirl said quietly. "The instability combined with the forced activation of every ability simultaneously, his body couldn't contain it. The energy had to go somewhere."

"He incinerated himself," Batgirl said.

Robin stood at the edge of the crater, his whole body was shaking, and then suddenly his knees gave out and he sat down on the broken ground at the lip of the empty hole and put his face in his hands.

"It's over," he said. "It's finally over."

(AN: I wonder how many of you expected that ending. Anyway this is how it's been planned from the beginning, I've always tried to parallel Ethan with Light from death note. Both of them started with good intentions but then believed their own hype too much, so yeah he always had to lose. As for the justice buster armour, I envisioned it being kind of like the armour from Batman returns part 2 but kinda bigger and not like the tank that it actually is so if you're confused why Robin was fighting like that that's why. So yeah that's the end of the second arc hope you enjoyed it. Third arc will be interesting and a time for character development.)