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Jason lay flat on his chest at the edge of a cliff, half-broken binoculars pressed to his eyes, scanning the massive complex below. The fortress stretched across the dark landscape like a wound...black spires, walls reinforced with metal that seemed to absorb light, towers that stabbed at a sky that had no stars. Somewhere in that maze of nightmare architecture, his target waited.
Dove lay on her back beside him, staring up at nothing, her legs crossed at the ankle. She had given up looking at the fortress years ago. There was nothing new to see.
"So," she said, idly picking at a thread on her sleeve, "how does he do it? Does he like... really have a power? Splitting himself between a rich billionaire and him?"
Jason didn't lower the binoculars. "No. He has no powers. He just goes out at night and beats up criminals. And during the day, does his lavish billionaire stuff."
Dove propped herself up on her elbows, her brow furrowed. "But like! They have wildly different values. Bruce Wayne is a very well-known playboy. He's slept with half the models in Gotham." She waved a hand. "And Batman is so stoic. Like, other than Catwoman and that Talia bitch, I haven't heard of a single other woman getting in his pants."
"He's just pretending."
"Really?" Dove's eyes widened. "Must be crazy how a billionaire can act that well and pretend to be stoic and tough." She nodded slowly, processing. "That actually explains a lot, you know. The planes and special gadgets."
Jason finally lowered the binoculars and looked at her. "The billionaire is the act. Batman is the real person. Bruce Wayne is the trick." He turned back to scan the fortress. "That's why he's special. And that's why every single variant of him is a fucking pain in the ass."
Dove was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was softer.
"Wow. He really is the greatest hero ever."
"Debatable." Jason gestured at the fortress below. "Anyway. What am I looking at here?"
Dove flipped onto her stomach, mirroring his position, and kicked her feet up behind her, playing with them absently as she spoke.
"Oh yeah, that." She pointed at the complex. "It's actually quite obvious, no? The Batmans... they all live there. Under the rule of their leader." She paused for effect. "They call him the Batman Who Laughs."
Jason turned his head slowly. "The what?"
"Yeah." Dove nodded, clearly enjoying his reaction. "Wild, isn't it? He's kind of an odd case. I've gathered that just like the others are mixes of things and Batman, he must be a mix of his worst enemy...Joker....and him."
Jason stared at her for a long moment. Then he looked back at the fortress.
"Fucking hell."
"I agree."
Jason raised the binoculars again, scanning the towers, the walls, the black spires that seemed to pulse with something alive. "What about the gate? You're sure it's in there? Place sounds like a fortress, but I'm assuming the gate is massive, no? How can it fit inside?"
"Good question." Dove rolled onto her side, resting her head on her hand. "Thankfully for you, yours truly has been here for years. And years. Before they built this fortress." She pointed at a tower....tall, narrow, reaching higher than the others. "The gate you're talking about is in that tower. You see it?"
Jason adjusted his binoculars. "It's way too narrow."
"Indeed." Dove sat up, crossing her legs. "And the gate isn't at the bottom. No no no. It's all the way up there. Top of the tower. They built the tower around it." She held up her hand, index finger and thumb barely an inch apart. "The gate is usually stagnant. It becomes the size of this. Very tiny." She spread her hands wide. "But it stretches like crazy after a while."
Jason lowered the binoculars and raised an eyebrow at her.
Dove looked at her hands. Then at him. Then back at her hands.
"Oh." A flush crept up her cheeks. "Fuck. Yeah. I guess... just like anal, but like, way stretchier. I'm talking covers the sky type. Started sprouting shit out.....like this place. We all came out of it." She cleared her throat. "Anyway. Yeah. That's your target."
Jason's expression didn't change. "Very classy."
"Look." Dove threw her hands up. "I've been here for like....I don't know....ten, twenty, thirty years. I can't even tell time here. We don't age. Shit don't rot. Nothing changes. It's like we're out of time." She crossed her arms. "Don't judge me for my lingo."
Jason grinned. "I ain't judging. I like a woman with some spice."
Dove froze. Then a slow smile spread across her face.
"Oh. Is that you flirting with me?" She laughed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Wow. I'm actually flattered. You know, I haven't received a compliment since like... well..." She gestured at the darkness. "Yeah. A long time ago." She looked him over, her head tilted. "I actually find you a quite presentable gentleman. Your appearance is... pristine."
Jason narrowed his eyes, still smiling. "You better work on that compliment. I ain't taking a sophisticated aristocrat back to my home world."
Dove snorted.
Jason pushed himself to his feet. "Okay. Guess it's time we strike."
Dove scrambled up. "Oh. Like... now?" She looked at the fortress, then at him. "What's the plan?"
"Plan?" Jason rolled his shoulders, cracking his neck. "I don't do plans. I'm just slashing it all."
He raised his hand.
"Dimensional Spiderweb."
The air did not tear. It did not scream. It simply... split. Lines of impossible sharpness raced from his fingertips, across the cliff, down the slope, and into the fortress below. They moved in perfect geometry....horizontal, vertical, diagonal....a web of destruction that covered the entire front of the complex.
The fortified walls didn't explode. They didn't crumble.
They fell apart.
Block by perfect block, cut into neat cubes, the walls collapsed inward. Towers toppled in segments. Battlements slid apart like puzzles solved in reverse. The entire front face of the fortress simply ceased to be a defense, replaced by a mountain of debris and a clear path to the tower beyond.
Jason grinned.
"Let's have fun, shall we?"
He jumped.
Dove stood at the edge of the cliff, watching him descend toward the chaos. Then she laughed—a real laugh, not the hollow sound from before. Something had woken up inside her.
"Guess we're doing this."
She jumped after him.
....
Jason walked through the breach his slashes had carved, debris crunching beneath his boots, the acrid smell of smoke and something older....something rotting....filling the air. The tower loomed ahead, narrow and black, its peak lost in the perpetual darkness of the nightmare sky. He had maybe a hundred meters of open ground between him and his objective.
He made it ten.
They emerged from the rubble like roaches from a burning building...silent, relentless, wrong. One wore a stitched mask over a mouth that would never speak again, his movements jerky and unnatural. Another was half-machine, red lenses glowing where eyes should have been, hydraulics hissing with each step. A third wore a tattered hood and carried a scythe that dripped with something that looked like fear made liquid.
Batman variants. All of them. All broken in different ways.
Jason didn't slow down.
His hand came up. Slashes raced forward....invisible, absolute. The silent one folded in half. The machine split at the waist, sparks showering across the ground. The scarecrow-thing lost its head before it could take another step.
Three bodies fell.
More were already coming.
Jason kept walking.
The red blur hit him before he could raise his hand again...a streak of crimson lightning that punched him once, twice, a dozen times before he could even process the first impact. His body lifted off the ground, carried by the force of blows that should have turned his bones to powder. He crashed into a pile of debris, stone and metal raining around him.
"Oh..." The figure landed where Jason had been standing, tilting his head with predatory curiosity. The red suit hugged his frame, the bat-mask fused with a lightning bolt emblem on his chest, yellow light crackling around his fists. "You are different. Many would die from my mere touches."
Jason pushed himself up, shaking off the debris. His ribs ached. His jaw throbbed. Nothing was broken. He spat out a mouthful of blood.
"Red Death," Dove said, landing beside him, her hands already glowing with white light. Her voice was tight, controlled. "Mix between Flash and Batman." She glanced at Jason. "He's a problem."
"Flash is a problem in any world." Jason rolled his shoulder, feeling the joint pop back into place. "And now he's mixed with Batman." His eyes tracked Red Death's movements.....the constant vibration, the barely contained speed. "Tsk."
The ground shook.
Another figure landed hard enough to crater the earth, his massive form silhouetted against the faint glow of the burning fortress. He was huge....bigger than any Batman had a right to be....his skin a patchwork of scarred gray flesh and black armor, bone protrusions jutting from his shoulders like broken spears. When he opened his mouth to scream, the sound wasn't human.
"AGHHHHHHHHHH!"
Jason recognized the sound. He had heard it before, on his world where a laughing monster had nearly beaten him to death.
"A...Batman mixed with Doomsday," he said.
"The Devastator." Dove's light flared brighter.
Lightning struck again, but this bolt didn't fade. It coalesced into a third figure....broad shouldered, armored in bronze and leather, a helmet shaped like a bat's skull obscuring his face. In his hand, a sword that hummed with divine energy, crackling with the power of old gods.
"Batman with the powers of Ares," Dove said. "God of War. He calls himself The Merciless."
The three of them formed a loose semicircle....Red Death crackling with stolen speed, Devastator rumbling with barely contained rage, Merciless holding his god-killing blade like an extension of his own arm.
"Dove..." Red Death's voice was a whisper wrapped in static. "You finally come to die peacefully?"
"I don't think she deserves peace." Merciless stepped forward, his sword leaving a trail of golden light in the air. "Perhaps we torture her. Send her back out there... alone... again."
"AGHHHH!" Devastator slammed his fists together, the impact sending shockwaves across the battlefield. "DEATH! TO THE ENEMIES OF BARBATOS!"
Jason looked at the three of them. Then he looked at Dove. Her hands were steady. Her light was bright. Her eyes were clear.
"Yup." He cracked his neck. "I expected a fight as tough as this." He glanced at her, one eyebrow raised. "You sure you're up for this, Dove?"
Dove smiled.
It wasn't the fragile smile from the bunker. It wasn't the hollow laugh from the cliff. This was something else....old, sharp, forged in years of surviving a place that wanted her dead.
"I've been ready." White light coiled around her arms, her shoulders, her chest....not just glowing now, but burning. "You may know a Dove from your world. But I'm different from them." Her eyes locked onto the three monsters in front of her. "I am true peace."
The light exploded outward.
"Peace delivered through violence."
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If you Like this story! Check out my other story ! Shadow Monarch in Danmachi!
AND
If you wish to read more or simply support me just because ? than check out my patréon at
"https://www.patréon.com/Riadooo"
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want !