"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]

"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?"

[willbeyourhope]

"I don't think anyone is saying it's okay," Haruto pipes up. "I know I'm not. I'd rather not do it at all, and if there's a chance of being able to do this without losing any more lives, I'll fight tooth and nail for it to happen--" He glances up and around, expression solemn and serious. "And I don't think I'm the only one who would."

"There's a reason Kon's calling it an absolute, last-ditch plan."

[goddamnwingman]

Dick managed a thin smile for Peter. "If you think for a moment that even thinking of this option is an easy thing for us, you're very much mistaken." He nodded to Batman. "And I know you don't like him, but the fact that Batman hasn't had any stronger objections to the idea than reminding us that some of our heads will be on the line says a lot." Because Dick knew Bruce and, when the idea had come up, he'd expected him to jump straight in and remind everybody that they don't kill. That it wasn't an option at all.

The fact that he hadn't told Dick exactly how tired this man who was so like his own father was.

"However," he continued, "Kon is right. We don't have a lot of options. Kal is stronger and faster than all of us put together. Wonder Woman is stronger and faster than any of us except Kon and Cassie. Hal's powers are limited only by his own imagination...and frankly, we should be glad it's him and not Kyle because Hal's never had much of an imagination." Kyle as the Yellow Lantern in this scenario was not something that Dick wanted to think about in the LEAST. "Even getting all the help that we're talking about, asking the Kents to try to talk Kal down, getting some of his people back on side? We are going in severely outnumbered and overpowered. All the power pills in the world are not going to change that. And short of finding a way to shove Kal though a red star and seeing if there's a Green Lantern Corps to call to take him into custody, the fact of the matter is that we need to be prepared to do something should we fall in the fight. And freeing the Spectre kills far fewer people than letting Kal go free would.

"What I'd really prefer is some option that would allow us to depower Kal and allow us to arrest him. And keep him depowered.." He made a motion to the area around them, more meant to encompass the entire world. "This world has only known a dictator for over three years now. A man who is more powerful than them, who has used that power to basically scare everybody into submission to where they're afraid to step a toe out of line because that makes you a criminal and we know what this Superman does to criminals. I want to see him brought to justice for that. All of them brought to justice. And not the Spectre's brand of justice, either. Human justice." He paused and let out a sharp breath. "Which may well still mean that he dies, but if that happens, then at least it will be by jury. This world has lived in fear long enough. I want to be able to remind them of what heroes really can be."

[matchmadeinhell]

"The Spectre isn't some crackpot that runs around killing people and not caring if it destabilizes countries."

Kon knew who the Punisher was. He'd messed up Mexico but good by killing a lot of the cartel leaders and some corrupt government officials without thought for the consequences, and Luthor already seemed to have plans to take advantage of that back home.

"He's sort of like...a natural force of nature in our world. A scary one, but something that's always been there. And if we deliver these people to the police, half of 'em are probably going to wind up getting the death penalty anyway."

Kon slumped back in his chair.

"But like I said, nuclear option. Last ditch. Nightwing's right that we need to try to find some way of depowering him first. And we do have something for that."

Kon reached into one of the little pouches at his belt and pulled out a little lead box about the size of a jewelry box, and placed it in the middle of the table, leaning back and crossing his arms.

"Is that -?" Batman started to ask.

"Yeah, it is. One of Kuk's people gave it to someone that ambushed us on another mission like this to another world. Don't open that when I'm around unless you want to get puked on." Kon shrugged. "Kryptonite doesn't hurt a Kryptonian unless it's from the same universe so it won't work as is, but that's all the more reason that it might be useful. Messing with it to see if it can be worked into something that takes his powers away permanently won't waste anything since it's already useless right now. The worst that can happen is it stays useless. There's a bunch of different types of kryptonite and it has all different effects. Maybe that can be used to make a type of it that gets rid of his powers permanently."

[goddamnwingman]

"Right. So, if nobody else has anything else to add?"

Dick paused a moment, looking around before starting to type again. "All right, then. Kon and Cassie, you'll head to Kansas to talk to the Kents. Be careful, though. I'd be very surprised if there isn't some sort of watch on them." If the Superman here wasn't a complete idiot, of course.

"Haruto and Peter, you'll go with Zatanna to talk to Timothy Hunter, leaving Danny to come with me to talk to Blue Beetle. We all have our comms, so we should be able to keep in touch just fine. If there's trouble, radio and we'll get there as soon as we can."

Dick kept typing. "Once we're back, we'll sort out searching for the Spear and getting the Titans out of the Phantom Zone. While we're gone, though, I'd like those who are staying here to research different types of Kryptonite, their effects and how they might be created. When we get back, I'd like Peter and Danny to work with you guys on how to get it to happen." He raised his head, giving Batman a very definite 'look'. Because he knew who was likely going to be in charge of that part of things. "We're only going to get one shot at the takedown, so don't rush things. We don't have all the time in the world, but we need to do this right."

With that, he stood up. "Be careful, everybody. And good luck."