234 CHAPTER 218

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[David Lance POV]

The world was rotten, heroes, villains, politicians, and businessmen. All playing an endless game, and meaningless game.

The game, the structure that kept the wheel turning and turning, was impossible to break, I knew that much, it pained me to admit it. But, in a world where having powers is about as common as it gets, shattering the status quo was simply impossible to do.

Nevertheless, it was possible to change it. To alter what's already there, to move it into a path of progression.

In my time in the Injustice world, or Earth 22, I learned a lot of things. Most of which I would rather forget, but if there was something I was grateful for, it was that this world had shown me how futile all of this was.

An endless cycle that led to nowhere.

Not a single group had the entire fault for this. Every part of the structure was as guilty as the last, the heroes, the villains, the businessmen, and politicians.

They all benefited from this broken system, after all, without it, they wouldn't know what to do.

Heroes needed villains to exist, and vice versa, politicians needed villains and heroes to push their ideas, their campaigns for power, and the businessmen, well, they would reap gains out of it all.

As much as it sickened me to admit it, this system worked flawlessly for the ones that collected the gains. It was a well oiled machine that had been calibrated to do what it was meant to do perfectly.

Well, it was time to calibrate it again.

When I came back to my universe, I had time to think. To ponder on the situation of the world, and what I wanted to do about it.

I no longer wanted to be a hero. But I couldn't let the world burn as I watched.

This thought burned my mind constantly, until eventually I decided to take matters into my own hands.

If no one wanted to fix the situation, I would.

This, however, wasn't something I couldn't do alone. As strong as I was, there were limits to what one single person could achieve, and I was well aware of that.

I had strength to face any kind of threat this world had to offer, but that alone meant nothing.

If overwhelming strength was all one needed to change the world, Superman would have succeeded a long time ago.

I needed a team, one that wasn't afraid to get their hands dirty, one that wasn't afraid of being hated by everyone.

That reason alone disqualified the one I trusted the most, Raven.

I loved her.

With all my heart, I loved her. Which is why I couldn't let her be by my side in this, because when everything came crumbling down, I didn't want her to be there.

Besides, I was certain she would have tried to talk me out of this, and I'll admit, she would have succeeded.

With Raven out of the way, I set my aims into other horizons. Slade Wilson.

Slade Wilson, better known by his codename, Deathstroke, was an elite mercenary, a war hero, and super soldier, considered to be the world's greatest and deadliest assassin.

His skills gave him more merits in the army than most could count. However, the experiments they had put him through revealed in time a list of side effects, like his paranoia and his increased bloodlust.

Sure, he had become stronger, faster, more agile, and had as well gained the capacity to use up to 90% of his higher brain functions, making him a tactical genius, but what had given him all of that, was also, slowly but surely destroying it.

In short, what had made him the perfect soldier had also destroyed him.

He was perfect for what I intended to do.

So, I waited for him to come to me, just like I knew he would. And when he did, I made him an offer he couldn't decline, I offered him a solution to his problem.

Slade laughed at my offer and plan.

He didn't believe I could achieve either, but nevertheless joined, perhaps it had been the fact that I had beaten him as if he was nothing, or that I hadn't lied when I was talking to him, but something had pushed him to join me, and whatever that was, I was glad.

With Slade came his daughter, Rose Wilson, or Ravager, who joined my cause with her father, though I wasn't sure if she had joined to follow her father or out of her crush on me.

As for Slade and Rose doubting my words, I didn't mind it at all, after all, I was one to support proof over words. I would show them I was a man of my word, in time.

With Slade and Ravager on my side, I set my aims for my next target, Red Hood. At first, I wasn't sure if he existed in this universe or not, I knew for a fact Jason Todd existed, but that wasn't a guarantee Red Hood would.

But, I still searched for him.

I had nothing to lose, but time.

Luckily for me, the DC universe loved to repeat iterations and events across all realities, and I found him, in the first place I had looked, in the League of Shadows.

It wasn't easy to convince him, it took some talking, but knowing what I did about it, it was easy to know what buttons to push.

Next was Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn.

They were both villains, sure, but that wasn't always the case, more than not in many universes they would end up joining the heroes, Harley more than Ivy.

I knew that, just as well as I knew that I could manipulate Ivy through Harley.

I wasn't exactly proud that I intended to use Harley's infatuation in me to get what I wanted, but it had to be done.

Be that as it may, things weren't always so simple.

Out of everyone I had recruited so far, those two... proved to be the most... difficult ones, so to speak.

Ivy tried to kill me, and Harley, while happy to see me, was hesitant, thinking I had abandoned her.

I took my time explaining things to them as I dealt with Ivy, tying her up before putting a power-dampening collar on her.

From there, it was all a matter of how I presented my idea to them, and my goals, as well as what they could both gain from it.

I targeted Ivy's insecurities about her plans, her goals, and how she knew that someone would always stop her, offering her an alternative, if she was open to hearing me out.

Her face was one of complete confusion, and I couldn't blame her, for her, until now I was a hero, yet here I was trying to talk her into joining me.

At first, she assumed I was trying to make her a hero, to which she laughed at me.

I laughed back, before going a bit into my goals.

Her expression of mocking and defiance vanished as her face darkened.

"That doesn't sound like something a hero would do." Those were her exact words.

"The world has enough heroes and villains as it is." That was my reply.

Now willing to listen, if anything out of curiosity, Ivy remained silent as I continued to explain, answering her questions and more.

My plan benefited her, more than she would out loud admit, after all, destroying the status quo would open a window for her goal, saving the green of the planet.

I could see the grinds on her head moving, as she weighed her options, and it wasn't until Harley said she would join, that the stubborn Ivy decided to as well.

Now, there was only one last target on my list.

One, that I would have to ease into all of this, one step at a time. Amanda Waller.

Finding her was easy enough if you knew where to look, and once I did, I visited her, in costume, my new costume, and had a heart-to-heart with her, leaving her with more questions than answers.

Now, I simply had to wait... wait long enough for Waller's paranoia to do its thing, and when it did, I would visit her again.

But that could wait, Waller's role wasn't necessary right now, it would be when I started to actively act, but until then, my team was complete.