For what was meant to be a fight for the sake of the human race and their right to decide their own future, Dick Grayson had to admit, losing the fight was way less catastrophic than the picture that had been painted for them by Hal Jordan and John Stewart. Said picture had been the extinction of the human race if they proved to be too much trouble, and enslavement if they didn't put up enough of a fight.
So, the heroes of Earth took upon themselves the task to fight for Earth. To win that fight despite the overwhelming odds. And, instead, they found Tarble to be way, way, way stronger than anyone thought he would be. And slightly more reasonable, but still firmly in the realm of 'I'll kill you if you annoy me too much.'
"Things are… pretty much fine," Dick responded to the question that promoted the thought as he looked at the Wayne Manor. It had been a few weeks since the battle and Earth was still recoiling from the aftermath. The NUN was a surprise. Lex Luthor being the head of it being an unwelcome one. But, it couldn't be denied that a lot of lives had been spared with his tech. Teleporting everyone with a human genome to a pocket dimension saved so many civilians. As did selective targeting of those that weren't human.
It was pretty alarming to learn that Lex had some of Superman's DNA, but it had done its job. At least until it let Tarble into the pocket dimension.
"Are you sure?" Barbara Gordon questioned, sounding doubtful. "Things don't sound fine."
"The Wayne Manor got blown up pretty good," Dick explained, eyeing the busted out wall and ruined living room, feeling an ache in his chest at the sight. "But, it's nothing that can't be repaired with some time," he said, idly kicking a loose board. Barbara was back in the pocket dimension, which some were reluctant to leave. Lex had made it to house the entire population of Earth comfortably. Given Earth wasn't designed for the same, it was little wonder why some wanted to stay.
"The planet isn't on fire, no one is dying, and things are going… pretty much fine," Dick admitted. Tarble was still on the planet, which was reason for unease. His empire was building a space elevator on the continent of Antarctica. Another one on the South pole too. A constant reminder that the battle… had been lost. Too many surprises, too big of a lack of cohesion… too little preparation.
And he meant it. In a way, outside of a completely ruined Gotham city, things were almost normal. He would suit up, patrol around for looters and gang activity, and do his thing. Those that had been displaced were kept in the pocket dimension until they had homes readied for them, but plenty others returned to Earth and began looting those that were either missing or shops that were closed because of a labor shortage.
But, overall…
"It kinda feels dumb," Dick admitted, taking a seat on some rubble. "We fought so hard, and some of us even died, but things just returned to normal right after. It's like… why did we even bother, you know?" he asked, letting out a sigh. He was glad to speak to Barbara; the time dilation effect had been scaled back to be one to one with Earth, making the call possible.
"Hindsight," Barbara offered as a reason. "And just because things haven't changed much yet doesn't mean that they won't change at all. Tarble's currency is going into effect soon. We're going to be a part of a galactic economy. That's going to change things a fair bit." she pointed out, and that was a fair point. It was just that things that
/felt/ like they hadn't changed much, not that they hadn't. The world kept spinning, he did his patrols… it all felt so normal.
Though, as he turned his attention to the nonexistent skyline of Gotham, it was evidence that things had changed a great deal and they would never be the same again. Dick had gotten his shots in, and he had even taken a few. His ribs were busted, as was his arm and leg. He probably shouldn't even be out of bed, but he felt so restless that he had to go out and do something. Anything other than lying around.
"What do you think?" Dick asked, picking at an exposed nail with his fingers.
"I think it's going to be a long road," Barbara admitted. "Tarble kept his word -- he avoided killing where he could, but he did kill. I can't say we didn't force his hand into it, but we took losses. Martian Manhunter was set on fire, Dick. Megan says that he hasn't slept since the fight." she pointed out, and not to mention Tarble's express willingness to destroy Earth and everyone on it. Tarble treated it as a last resort, but the fact of the matter was, it was an option for him. That made it tricky to deal with him.
Elongated Man had also died. Aquaman lost a hand and he nearly lost his wife. Zatanna had her throat crushed and she nearly died. Dr. Fate's host was also killed. The superhero community was close knit. It had to be. There were times when it felt as if they were fighting the entire world at times. Dick couldn't say that he knew Elongated Man well, but he still felt his loss. The death of a single hero had the entire community -- Justice League, Teen Titans to the older Titans -- all mourning.
A figure stepped into Dick's field of vision -- Cassandra Cain, his one and only little sister. Sorta. They were family through adoption, but she had been his sister before a piece of paper made it official. Cass smiled at him, offering a small wave as a greeting. She was dressed in casual clothes, her dark hair cut short and her eyes were as dark as her hair. Her exact opposite in appearance and personality stood next to her, Stephanie Brown. His sorta kinda sister or something.
Stephanie has been Robin for a time, but he hadn't really known her until she died. Which was his fault -- he had been working through some personal stuff. Or so they had all thought. Then it turned out that her death had been faked, and she returned to Gotham some years later. He liked Stephanie. She was good for Cass, her extroverted personality framing well with Cass' introverted personality.
But she was dating Tim, who was his little brother, so that made the family tree difficult to follow.
"Looks like my ride is here," Dick said, standing up. "See you soon?"
"You will," Barbara said, making a promise before the call ended. Dick stood up with a small wince -- he really shouldn't be going out at night, because he was paying for it now. Cass and Stephanie walked over, Stephanie offering a lopsided smile.
"Any word on Tim, yet?" she asked as they made their way inside of what was left of the Wayne Manor. The living room was a complete loss. Worse was the hole in the floor that went straight down to the Batcave. Dick didn't like to think about how close they had cut it. Tarble had nearly arrived before they popped into the pocket dimension.
Dick shook his head, "Nothing too recent. Last I heard they were dealing with space pirates a couple thousand light years away." he said, causing a disappointed look to pass over Stephanie's face.
"Would have been nice to know that. I thought they were still on Tameran," Stephanie remarked lightly, and Dick winced on Tim's behalf. He knew that tone. All girls had it. It meant that their significant other was in the dog house the next time they met. Dick wasn't exactly surprised either. Tim was probably one of the smartest people that Dick had ever met, but he was really bad at reaching out and giving updates.
He treated texts as if each word and emoji stole a day of his life or something, so his messages were short and concise and he typically left it to others to inform everyone else that would want to know.
"How… long?" Cass asked, frowning at a hole in the wall that had once been the secret door to the Batcave. It was an unsettling feeling to know that someone other than the family had made their way into the Batcave. For so long, it was a hidden sanctum. Now, it was exposed to the light of day.
To her question, Dick shrugged as they made their way down. "Tim didn't give a time frame, but I expect him to be back in a few weeks." So, a month overall out in space. They could use him and the Teen Titans back on Earth, but they were doing great work out in space. The information they gave painted a picture of the empire that Humanity and Earth would be joining.
There was some good, some bad, and some things that could go either way.
"Did he leave a message for me?" Stephanie asked and Dick fought to suppress another wince. He loved Tim. He did. But he made it difficult sometimes. "Cass?" Stephanie asked, looking at her best friend. There were no secrets from Cassandra Cain. Because of a horrible childhood, she grew up speaking body language as her first language. She only managed to start talking in the last year. It made her a peerless fighter. It also made her a human lie detector.
"No message. Sorry," Cass said as they arrived in the Batcave. The lighting was better with the hole in the ceiling. So, that was nice. Though, everything was wet because of the rain caused by Tarble. But, you had to take the bad with the good.
Stephanie aimed a sweet smile at her, "Don't be. I'll just make the little gremlin suffer when he remembers he has a girlfriend," Stephanie said, not sounding angry. Her relationship was a bit weird in that regard, but it seemed like she understood that it was Tim being Tim and she accepted it for what it was.
The trio came to a stop on a teleport pad that revealed itself as they approached -- the stone floor giving way to a metal platform that rose up in front of them. Stepping on it, he looked at the other two, "Ready?" he asked, and when he earned nods, he placed his hand on the touchpad. It registered his palm print and the ground beneath their feet began to glow.
Then they found themselves on a similar platform, now in Earth's atmosphere on the Watchtower. Standing across from them was Bruce, though the world knew him as Batman. The older Wayne wore a deep frown on his face that hadn't left since their defeat. The plans and back up plans that he had made hadn't worked. As if Bruce needed another reason to be paranoid. He was going to be insufferable for a long time to come.
"Are we the last ones?" Dick asked, stepping off of the platform with Cass and Stephanie in tow. Stephanie was looking around in awe at the dull gray corridor and the featureless room. Dick wasn't sure how long she had known about the Watchtower, but it was her first time on it. She was like a little kid at Disneyland.
Bruce shook his head, "You are." he answered shortly as both of them drank in the other's appearance. Bruce looked tired. The kind of tiredness that told Dick that he was relying on micro naps for sleep. His injuries were also slow to heal -- the Hellbat suit was to blame there. Dick had known about the intensive strain it put on the body, but he never expected it to be so much that even Bruce was struggling to rebound from less than an hour of use.
The powersuits that he and the rest of the Batfamily had used were lesser versions of the Hellbatsuit. Not as fast, not as strong, not as durable, but they didn't actively shave off years of life with each minute spent inside.
"Alfred's going to scold you for not sleeping enough," Dick said as Bruce turned around and began walking down the hallway.
"Not if I tell him you've been sneaking out," was Bruce's retort, so he hadn't lost his mental edge. That was reassuring. Dick spared a glance at Cassandra, who frowned at Bruce's back. Her dark eyes flickered to meet his gaze and she held out a hand and tilted it back and forth. A so-so gesture. Dick preferred a thumbs up, but it was better than a thumbs down. Bruce was doing alright physically. So it might not be necessary to tie him to a bed and knock him out so he had time to recover.
Bruce, as if sensing the exchange, glanced over his shoulder and sent them both a look of annoyance. "We will be beginning soon," he said as a door slid open to reveal a large open room. On one side, there were tall windows that offered a good view of Earth while in the center of the room was a very large round table that had the Justice League emblem etched into its surface. Inside, there were a lot of heroes -- the Justice League, members of his own team, the Titans, while Raven was the only one present to represent the Teen Titans. There were independent heroes as well -- Static Shock, Arsenal, and so on.
As soon as Dick entered the room, he felt the tension. There was almost a straight divide between the heroes and along that divide, Dick heard a lot of the same arguments happening all at once. He looked between the two leaders of the divide -- Wonder Woman, and Aquaman. It shouldn't have come as too much of a shock to Dick to see it, but it was. Arthur Curry almost looked like a different man as he stood across from Wonder Woman, a deep frown on his face as he listened to her speak.
Cass reached out to get his attention, a frown on her own face, "Angry." She voiced, picking up on the tension in everyone's posture.
However, things went silent as Bruce walked forward and took a seat at the table. It was a power move that Dick recognized from Bruce's days as CEO. He was taking control of the room. No small feat considering the number of strong personalities inside the room. "We lost," he voiced, his tone heavy but even, going as far as to push back his cowl to reveal his face as Bruce Wayne. Dick caught a few shocked looks, but Batman's secret identity was an open secret after so many years of being a hero.
Others drifted to the seats offered at the table, but plenty preferred to stand. "Humanity has formally surrendered to King Tarble and his empire. In five months and two weeks, the Earth alliance and all government bodies will dissolve. This is not the outcome that we wanted, but it is the one we are dealing with."
"Hal Jordan might as well have been on Tarble's side with how bad the intel he gave us was," Oliver Queen, or Green Arrow, voiced from his seat at the table. Dick knew that was a similar opinion to what Bruce held.
"It's not right to blame him," Dick spoke up, taking a seat of his own. "Hal didn't know about the Super Saiyan transformation or whatever that second one was. The intel that he gave was of a threat firmly within our ability to deal with. It was his military that we were worried about," Dick reminded. He believed that. Hal and John told them what they knew -- that Tarble was a genocidal and ruthless general that killed billions. And they hadn't been wrong.
Tarble was guilty of committing genocide. He was absolutely ruthless. And he had killed billions. All that was undeniably true.
The mistake was looking at what Tarble did instead of who he was. At the Why behind the What. If they had -- they being all of them -- then they would have foreseen that Tarble could be reasoned with beforehand instead of expecting a battle that might have never come if they played their cards right.
"The fault lies with all of us," Dick reminded, and some heroes looked disappointed, knowing that he was right.
"Why we lost is not why we are here today," Bruce interjected, leaning into his chair. He looked so exhausted that he might very well doze off at any second.
Wonder Woman nodded, "It is to address what we will do now." she continued, crossing her arms as she sat across from Batman at the other end of the table. "We were defeated. Humanity has offered its surrender. As protectors of humanity, in that duty, we have failed. Now, we must decide our next steps. In six months, humanity will be absorbed into Tarble's empire -- do we allow ourselves to be absorbed? Do we lay down our arms and armor? Or do we continue to resist?"
That was the point of division that was dividing the heroes. The 'what now' that came with defeat.
Unsurprisingly, Arthur spoke up, "Humanity has formally surrendered, but there are still many that intend to resist." he spoke, waving a hand as a hologram appeared above the table. They were news headlines of people protesting in the streets about being absorbed into an alien empire. Dick would like to say it was a small number, but it wasn't.
People weren't happy. At all. They viewed themselves as a people that had been conquered. And they intended to resist, Dick saw that when a molotov was thrown at an alien spaceship in Africa that was giving out food and water. The aliens, to Dick's surprise, just walked through the flames and kept working. They wore different armor than the last aid mission -- it was thicker and Barbara said that the shields even prevented air from getting near the armor.
Tarble was prepared for another attack on his aid missions. And, so far, he was being proven right to be wary.
"Which is an insurrection," Wonder Woman pointed out. "Allying with disgruntled masses will be a declaration of war on Tarble's empire and a violation of our charter."
Arthur scowled deeply, "Which won't matter in six months. We made mistakes with Tarble the first time. We underestimated him. And we have learned from those mistakes." His stance was clear. He wanted to continue the fight against Tarble. Dick looked to his missing hand and the by far more noticeable absence of Queen Mera.
It was obvious that he was speaking from personal bias. Queen Mera nearly died from being skewered with his trident. Two weeks later, because of the magic on the trident, it was still touch and go. Why he didn't want to submit to Tarble was obvious, but his push to fight back showed that he thought he could win. That next time, it would be different.
"Our allegiance is to the people. I don't care what
Lex Luthor had to say about anything. If the people want to fight, then I think we should fight. We protect humanity, but we aren't their parents. We don't decide their course," Barry Allen spoke, jabbing a thumb at Earth.
"Unless what we need to do is protect humanity from itself," Stephanie spoke up. "Tarble kicked our butts and he did it solo. Well, mostly. If he comes with an army, then we can kiss Earth goodbye. The people protesting are the same people protesting every change under the sun."
"You're speaking in favor of that tyrant?" Arthur glowered at Stephanie, who shrugged with a stunning amount of indifference.
"Pretty much? Look, I don't
like Tarble, but I have some pattern recognition skills from my days as Robin -- every time Tarble escalates it's when someone attacks people under his care. His soldiers? He starts throwing hands with Earth. That big guy, Broly? Someone mindwhammied him and Tarble was going to super nuke earth." she stated her opinion, her tone fierce and argumentative. "I think that if we start a war, then Tarble's going to decide to end it."
Wonder Woman nodded, "He stated to me that he kills his enemies. The reason why our losses were so few was because he didn't consider us enemies." she voiced in favor of Stephanie's conjecture, and Dick frowned, knowing that it was true.
"He also spurned help from villains," Dick muttered to himself. Tarble had a number of chances to gain some allies. Instead, he actively fought against them. He called them traitors to Earth. Which was… weird. Tarble was a calm, calculative, and ruthless man. There was no other way to say it. But teaming up in that situation should have been the obvious choice. Instead, he fought everyone, and fought those that offered to help him twice as hard. His motive could only be described as completely irrational. Which didn't fit.
"That doesn't make it better," Arthur argued. "Those are still the actions of a tyrant. Can any of you stay that you want to be lorded over by a man that kills his enemies without anything resembling mercy? That murders and calls it Justice?" he asked the room, and there were a number of shuffling feet. His words resonated with a number of people. They resonated with Dick too. "If humanity decided to fight against him, then he would kill them all. Men. Women.
Children. He's done it before. I cannot accept such a man as my ruler and the ruler of my people."
Wonder Woman frowned, "Capacity and willingness are two different things. The War of Light was beyond our ability to comprehend. I cannot claim that I would have done what Tarble did in his position, but you are assigning malice and desire to his actions that are not there. You forget that Tarble only responded to provocation when his people suffered unjust acts. A tyrant, he might be, but he is not evil."
"Nor is he beyond redemption," A familiar voice spoke up, making Dick turn around in his chair to see Clark entering the room. He looked mostly fine. Seeing bandages on him and his arm in a sling was almost weird to see. Clark looked at him, offering a slight nod as he took an open chair at the table. "Tarble respects us. He said as much to me. He wants to expand the Justice League to the point that it encompasses his empire."
Arthur looked as if he was about to snarl and bare his teeth at Superman. "You want to join forces with him?" he questioned, sounding furious that was even an option.
Clark, however, nodded. "I think we are limiting ourselves in scope. Our duties of upholding Truth and Justice don't just apply to humans. Our responsibilities don't start and stop on Earth. I believe that we should use the time granted to us to make peace with the change that has happened and make the most of it." he spoke, and there was a beat of silence in the room as everyone considered their stance's carefully.
Dick didn't really know what he wanted to do. Arthur wasn't wrong. Neither was Clark. Or Diana. Or Stephanie. He could easily see all of their points and how valid they were. There just wasn't a clear course of action that was marked as the right thing to do.
Because their decisions would impact humanity. If they backed the resistance brewing, then humanity would find itself at war, a war they very well might not win. Or, they could encourage the transition into Tarble's empire which would soothe a lot of worries. Defeat or not, a lot of people still put a lot of trust in the Justice League. To the point that people were begging them to either fight Tarble or end the protests.
"I think we should put it to a vote," Dick said, earning the attention of everyone. "A collective decision. Our charter with the UN has an expiration date. It doesn't matter. What we should decide is what we believe is the best choice not just for ourselves, but for humanity as a whole." he said, earning nods all around as people quickly took a liking to the idea.
"Alright. All those in favor of supporting the resistance?"
Hands went up.
"All those in favor of integrating with Tarble's Empire?"
Hands went down and others went up.
And a decision was made.
...
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