"You have to start out learning to believe the little lies to believe the big ones."

[matchmadeinhell]

They had to try their best to do this thing incognito. After all, the plan was get in, get the shard, get out, and while several of them were total unknowns in this world, three of them ran the risk of being recognized by some of the resident superheroes and supervillains since they were from a similar dimension and had equivalents here.

Nightwing, not so much since he usually wore a mask, but Cassie and Kon didn't wear masks as part of their costumes, and Kon especially wore a very familiar face. He was younger than Kal but still approaching adulthood now and that meant his cloney resemblance to the current de facto ruler of the world was pretty uncanny now.

That was why Kon was in disguise. He was wearing his usual jeans, black long-sleeved shirt, black boots, and black gloves. But he had a dumpy, shapeless, brown jacket over top of it all, a blue baseball cap, and a pair of dorky, large-framed glasses. Fortunately, spring was only just starting in this world and hadn't quite chased away the chill of winter so they could all bundle up with clothes that made them look innocuous.

The magical door had appeared in an alley, against a nondescript wall. As soon as they were all through and had closed it behind then, Kon peered around a corner to see if he could recognize where they were by the city's night-time skyline.

"Looks like Gotham." A pause. "It's hardly recognizable, though. I've never seen Gotham this clean."

He squinted instinctually, trying to peer around some more with his X-ray vision and found it working in full when he usually struggled with it back in the Guardians' universe. He held up his hand and poured on the teke, creating a field around it.

"My powers seem to be stronger here for some reason. The ones that are limited in the Guardians' universe are back, like my teke. You guys feeling the same? Most of us are superheroes or equivalents in our worlds. Being in a superhero universe might be amping up our powers or something. Maybe making the belief stronger."

It all ran on narratives, right? Stories? This was a story superheroes were supposed to be in.

Comments

[holydefendersbatman]

Batman, to his credit, did seem to be carefully considering everything Zatanna had said, though he still clearly had concerns.

"You're sure?" he asked Zatanna.

[holydefendersbatman]

Zatanna nodded.

"At worst, he'll just say no. But maybe if someone talks to him, someone that understands grief..." She raised her eyebrows at Bruce.

There were very few people in existence (especially now after he'd lost so many friends) that could get away with being that direct with Batman.

[holydefendersbatman]

There was an almost comical pause.

"I'm not good with teenagers," he said flatly.

Completely and totally true. Despite the fact he'd raised and mentored a few, nevertheless, completely and totally true.

At the very least he seemed to have decided to trust Zatanna's judgment.

"Zatanna's already tried to talk to him and I doubt he'll trust any of us. He's already had people from our world trying to entangle him in conflict." He nodded towards the others. "It'll have to be one of you."

[willbeyourhope]

Zatanna initially gets a shrug. "Normally I'd say to just let me at him to gauge things, but going by those videos, I might not make it back to think about it. So yeah, I'll gladly take any help I can get, even if it's overdoing it."

For the rest of the discussion, he listened, but at the end of it, Haruto laughed quietly, in a sort of hollow, dry 'well how about that' manner. "Well, he's not the only one who lost their parents at a young age," he comments, then sighs. "Though my instance wasn't connected to my magic. However..." He folds one leg over the other, linking his hands together over his stomach. "Mine is connected to resisting falling into despair. Maybe I could be of some help, there."

[morescaredofyou]

"I'll come with you," Peter said. He didn't volunteer why. It was still hard to talk about Uncle Ben, and there were a lot of people here who he didn't know that well, if at all. But he could talk to this Timothy Hunter - and it wasn't even just about finding allies. Peter knew what that felt like. This kid needed help too, not just this world.

[holydefendersbatman]

"Thank you," said Zatanna. "Even if he doesn't agree to help, I just...hate seeing him like that."

Next to her, Batman nodded a subtle little nod, making it clear that, though he hoped they could get Hunter on their side, Zatanna wasn't the only one that thought it'd be good to for someone to speak to a lonely, lost orphan for his own good.

[injustice_npcs]

"While we're on magical allies, is there anything else we can use, anyone else we can go to?" Batwoman asked them. "Magical artifacts we can find, now that we've got more manpower to hunt them down? That's Superman's big weakness."

There were still other Leaguers to go over but they'd struck off on a tangent and had gotten pretty productive while on it. So far the newcomers had contributed a lot.

[matchmadeinhell]

Superboy had done his research and he had an idea that he didn't much like - actually that he hated.

Partly because it was something that could possibly even kill him.

"I know this is basically the 'nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure' option here, but this might get...bad. And we might need a nuclear option in case it all goes to hell." What he was about to suggest wasn't an option to take lightly. "Jim Corrigan's in Arkham, right? Insane and bound by a magic cast by Mister Mxyzptlk."

Try saying that five times fast, non-DC universe people.

"And old Mxy didn't do anything to the Spectre, just locked him inside and made his host nuts while he pretended to be the Spectre, right?"

[holydefendersbatman]

"The magical seals that have been cast on Jim Corrigan are nearly unbreakable. There's no way to free him with the magical firepower we have on hand. Even if we get Tim Hunter's help, he probably isn't powerful enough to beat 5th dimensional magic," Zatanna said, shaking her head.

[matchmadeinhell]

"The Spectre's supposed to be the spirit of God's vengeance, right? Only a few things are powerful enough to even touch him, because supposedly he answers to a higher power, is made up of the strongest magic of all - of magic that isn't even magic."

It was supposed to be something even beyond it.

"So then we go higher than Doctor Fate, we go higher than Tim Hunter, we go with something magic that's supposed to be attached to the Big Man himself."

Kon jerked a thumb at the ceiling, implying which Big Man he meant.

"Because if it's imbued with that kind of power it can probably free a being made of that power."

A power above all magic, because that power was (supposedly) what had shaped all of existence.

"The Spear of Destiny. If we can find it."

[goddamnwingman]

Dick had sat back, listening. He had, of course, heard of Tim Hunter and figured he was probably a good choice. And back up would be nice, even if the kid couldn't get involved directly. For very good reasons.

Mention of the Specter, though, makes him sit up straighter, looking to Kon. "That's one hell of a nuclear option there, Kon."

[mark_in_the_sands]

"It's a hell of a nuclear option, but it needs to be discussed before we start moving," Cassie said firmly. "We probably won't have the time to talk about it later, and the last thing we want is to be pushed to the nuclear option without fully understanding it."

[morescaredofyou]

"Um, question?" Peter said, raising his hand like he was in class. "What are we even talking about here? The Spear of What now? And this Spectre guy is...what? A really, really angry ghost?"

[willbeyourhope]

Haruto leans over slightly toward Peter. "It sounds like a minion of a god of some kind, but I'm not entirely certain," he says, making a perplexed face.

[have_mustache_will_travel]

"Bingo! Give that boy a stuffed toy!" Harley declared and from seemingly no-where produced a plush bear dressed in a batman outfit that she slid across the table to Haruto.

"The Specter is the Spirit of god's vengeance here on Earth! A cosmic entity! And not just any ole god like Zeus or Buddha or Princess Celestia, I mean the big guy! Morgan Freeman in spiritual form."

Diving for the keyboard she started tapping buttons till she got the pictures she wanted of the aforementioned specter, practically in Batwoman's lap while she did so because Harley Quinn is not big on personal space.

"He's supposed ta use his incredible divine powers to punish the truly wicked, usually ending his victim's lives in creative and ironic ways." Here she gestured to some rather gruesome and graphic images of the specter laying waste to men who presumably had done terrible things. Some were aged till they were nothing but bones, others were crushed with his hands as he grew into a giant to smite them.

"Heavy magic! Like big leagues. Plenty of crooks back in the day used to think he was a myth that people talked about to scare each other into going straight...but then again people used to say the same thing about you-know-who~"

Here she fluttered her eyelashes at Batman and blew him a kiss.

[goddamnwingman]

"What Harley fails to mention is the trigger for the Spectre's powers. He's the embodiment of Divine wrath and judgment and is charged with bringing justice to those who do evil, such as spilling the blood of the innocent." Which, Dick figured, should mean that Harley would be a bit less enthusiastic about him being around, seeing as her hands were probably the bloodiest in the room. "He's bound to the soul of a human, though, as a way of keeping the spirit..." He paused. "Accountable is the wrong word. But the idea is that the human is meant to be impartial and keep the power of the spirit reigned in if it isn't needed.

"Which is where we run into the first part of the problem. The Spear can be used to free the Spectre and he can use his own power to fix Corrigan, but..." He leaned forward, looking at them each. "It'll get messy. Even with Corrigan's judgment to reign him in, there's going to be a lot of deaths. Not just of Superman and most of his Justice League, but a lot of people around them. And it might not be people who have killed innocents but anybody who has killed somebody else." And with that, he glanced toward Batman before turning back to the others.

He reached over, silently asking for the keyboard to pull up some pictures. "The other half of the problem is what we need to do it." He managed to bring up a picture of Adolf Hitler holding an ancient spear. "The Spear of Destiny, also known as the Lance or Spear of Longinus. It's the spear that was used to pierce the side of Christ to check that he was dead on the cross. During World War II, it came into the possession of Hitler, who used it to prevent American superhumans of the time from interfering. Before the Spectre at the time was able to take it away, Hitler managed a ritual that's basically cursed the Spear. It'll corrupt those who holds it with that same sort of megalomaniacal madness."

[daddyphantom]

"Nuclear option is a pretty good description for it then," Danny said, referring to the potential death toll instead of the Spear.

"Is it just touch the spear, turn into a Hitler clone? With the mustache, goose-stepping, failed art career, and everything else it implies. Or is it a little more subtle than that?"

[holydefendersbatman]

"It's dangerously subtle," said Batman. "Righteousness turns to zealotry. Confidence to arrogance and then to megalomania. It has no affect unless someone is in direct contact but it only takes a few minutes before it starts affecting their mind."

Batman shook his head.

"Which is one of many reasons why using it to free the Spectre is out of the question." He stared him down. "Not the least of which is that it would be tantamount to murder. And like Nightwing said, the Spectre wouldn't restrain himself to killing just Superman and the League, it would go after everyone who could be conceivably considered a dangerous criminal or a murderer."

He looked Superboy in the eye.

"Yourself included."

[matchmadeinhell]

That finally got him mad but rather than yelling, he just got more animated.

"Was there some part of 'nuclear option' that everyone missed here?" he said, looking around the table. "The reason I chose 'nuclear,' specifically, is because of the irony. Because nukes don't hurt Kryptonians. Depending on how close we are to ground zero, they don't even jack up our clothes. You have to go bigger and badder than nukes."

Kon looked around the table.

"When I got brainwashed by my version of Lex Luthor and he made me attack the Teen Titans? I leveled the entire team in the space of maybe five minutes. By myself. Without even being with it enough to get tactical about it like Supes can. Hell, we were lucky I was all brute force, it meant as soon as I knocked everyone out I left before I killed them. Superman can go toe to two with Darkseid, Mongul, Doomsday, Solomon Grundy. With people we treat like angry gods. He can survive nukes. He can hold a black hole in his fist."

He nodded towards them all, deciding that he needed to show them the thing they weren't considering.

"You're all juiced up on the super-pills right now, right? Fast as you're all gonna be. So try to stop me. Right now. I'm gonna whack each of you on the back of the head. Try to stop what I'm about to do."

He blurred and in the course of maybe a single second, every single person at the table would have felt a sharp, slightly painful tap, to the back of the neck - Batman included - before Kon was back at his seat. Anyone that blinked would have missed it.

"That's a broken neck for each of you. What was that, maybe half a second? Quarter of a second? Less? And he's faster than me." He turned to Cassie. "Cassie was the only one that came even close to stopping me - not that any of you could even see it since she moved at superspeed, too."

He sat forward in his chair.

"I know you think because he's been such a monster - because of Ollie, because of Dinah - that he's lost control, but you're wrong. You're all still alive. He still thinks he's not a monster so he's still been holding back. Even with how brutal he's been, that's been him holding back."

[holydefendersbatman]

"I don't see how snapping my spine -"

[matchmadeinhell]

"He could've ripped you in half like a kid tearing through tissue paper while opening his presents on Christmas morning," Kon interrupted. "That's what normal people are to people like us. Walking, talking, wet paper towels." He added, animatedly, "And not even the Brawny paper towels, the cheap store-brand kid. Every day, every single second, we have to hold back, to the point it just turns into an unconscious thing. When we're punching people through walls, we're holding back. When we're lifting up buildings, we're holding back. When we're punching villains like Doomsday so hard the shockwaves break every window in the street? We're holding back."

So far, even with all the death and murder and senseless rage killings, his restraint had been impeccable. That was one thing Kon had realized while reading the comics. That's why several people sitting at the table were still alive. That's why the resistance had lived to get away more than once. Superman was too rage-happy, too willing to kill, and that was why some people died in each clash. But he also hesitated, held back - and that was why some of them always got away.

"We're talking about breaking into his fortress and freeing his prisoners. Convincing his parents to turn against him and taking them away from him in a situation he'll just mentally chalk up to kidnapping. Bringing in allies he thought were off the board. And you and your team are teaming up with absolute strangers from another dimension that he has no emotional connection to, like, at all, to try to drop ten tons of superheroic bricks on his head."

He leaned forward.

"His completely delusional brain is going to see that as an act of war, and he's going to see a bunch of us as evil, otherdimensional intruders from another world that aren't worth sparing. He's going to stop holding back. And so are the other Leaguers - because that's just him. He's not even the only one we have to worry about."

He pointed at Bats.

"You can't plan for everything. Even if everything goes perfectly, there's still like a 95% chance this is going to end with all of our heads crushed like grapes or heatvision lobotomies. If we don't have a backup, if we don't have some kind of big, red button to push in case it all goes to hell - a situation a bunch of us -" he gestured to himself, Catwoman, Harley, the ones the Spectre would likely target "- would already be dying in before the Spectre could get to us anyway - then...well, it's just your whole world, and, you know, the entire universe at stake, right? We're only going against a team of superpowered psychopaths led by a guy who can literally break a planet with one punch. Small potatoes, I guess."

[willbeyourhope]

"...well, this went from ludicrous to incredibly heavy in the span of a few minutes," Haruto says, mostly to himself. He sighs faintly, reaching out to poke the bear Harley presented him with in the nose, tipping it over. "It's not an ideal solution for sure, but probably worth keeping on the backburner, for the good of the multiverse," he says with a rather dire tone. He was obviously uncomfortable with it, but the more Supes got hyped up, well...

[mark_in_the_sands]

"We're not here because we've accepted your authority, Batman," Cassie said coldly. "We're here because you're holding the multiverse hostage. You don't want our help, fine; give us the shard and we'll go."

No, at this point they wouldn't go, but apparently Batman needed to be reminded what brought them to this table.

"In case you weren't listening to Nightwing because you'd already gotten what you'd wanted, "We don't do as you order us. We have a say in the tactics and in the planning. And that means all of us"."

She leveled a glare at Batman. "So unless you have input that isn't a feet-stompy tantrum, I repeat my previous suggestion that you shut up and let the grown-ups talk."

[have_mustache_will_travel]

Harley groaned rubbing the back of her head even though Kon hadn't really hit her that hard.

"Well when you put it like that you make that big red button sound pretty tempting. Even more then usual for me. And we all know how much I love big red buttons."

But Harley wasn't smiling for once, because she may have hyped up the Specter before but she wasn't so addled in the head that she didn't know just who was going to have to answer for the big crime that had started all of this.

Joker may have carried it out but Harley had helped.

And while Joker was dead, Harley had spent almost every moment since then on the run ducking Superman and his goon squad. It had cost her the lives of two people who had gone out of their way to help her.

And so if it came down to it, she'd release the spirit of justice herself just to put a stop to something she'd helped start.

And what a punchline would that be? Not being killed by Joker or any of the other criminals they'd dealt with over the years. Not even death by the American Justice System. Death by guilt. Her mother would be so approving.

She couldn't help but smirk when Cassie piled on to help put their "Fearless leader" in his place.

"Call me crazy, but I'm with them." She jerked a thumb towards the teens surprising probably no one.

[morescaredofyou]

"I'm not," Peter said, almost surprising himself when he spoke up. "Because when you guys are talking about the nuclear option, you're talking about killing him, right? And not just him. Everyone else in this universe that this Specter decides is guilty. You know we have someone like that in my world, called the Punisher. He's not the embodiment of godly wrath or anything - he's just a guy - but he does the exact same thing. And you know what? He's a murderer. A crazy, sick murderer, who thinks that he's justified, just because the people he kills are criminals."

Peter looked around, his fingers clenched together tightly. They were probably all going to hate him, now. They'd all been a unified front in front of the psycho Bat guy, and now Peter was breaking ranks. But he couldn't just say nothing.

"Is that really what we're planning here? That it's okay for us to cause the deaths of who knows how many people? That as long as we save the multiverse, it doesn't matter what he do in the process?"