Earth -32
Gotham City
That night...
BANG!
BANG!
How did I feel in that moment, when my whole world was changed?
"We're done here, kid," that man said pointing the smoking gun at me. "Get down on your knees, close your eyes and you ain't gonna get hurt."
When I stood there helpless as my mom and dad's blood was running into the gutter? I felt nothing. Like the sky and the ground broke apart and all that was left was a void as big as everything. And that void was inside me. I didn't feel anything. Not even fear. And without any of that pushing me down to kneel near mom and dad, I stood up and ran after him. The man with the gun. Then it came to me.
"Bruce Wayne," green flowing light in front of me spoke and presented the ring to me.
"You have the ability to overcome fear. Welcome to the Green Lantern Corps."
I didn't overcome fear. It was obliterated from me. And I didn't give a thought to the word "Corps" or even what the Hell it was talking to me. All I cared about was him. After I took the ring, it took me to him, to the man with the gun, digging through dad's wallet.
"YOU BASTARD!" I yelled when I confronted the man with the gun.
"What the-" the man with the gun said startled as he saw and threw dad's wallet away.
"T-take the money!"
"I'm not helpless now!" I yelled pointing the ring at him.
"DIE! KILL HIM!"
"ERROR!" the ring protested. "First Law of the Green Lantern Corps: Lethal Force not permitted!"
"I d-don't care!"
I didn't feel fear or doubt.
"DO WHAT IS SAY!"
"Willpower at 100%." the ring begun to comply.
"Willpower at 117%."
I just felt the void inside me.
"HE DESERVES TO DIE!" I yelled as the ring's energies materialized as the void inside me.
"ERROR! Willpower at 181%. ERROR! WILLPOWER EXCEEDS-SKWAAARK-
MALFUUUNCIKRXBLTDZ-LETHAL FORCE
ENABLED.
SSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
And I released the void, letting it out on the man with the gun. I had the most powerful weapon in the universe on my finger as the man with the gun got to learn the last thing he ever learned. But I would have given it up to have my mom and dad.
"R-ring..." I asked as I returned to them,
"Bring my mom and dad back."
"ACTIVATING."
"Bbbbbbruwwwwuce.."the ring made dad and mom's remains speak. " We l00000ve youuuu..."
"DEACTIVATING."
I would have traded everything, so I didn't feel so helpless. So alone.
Final night...
They called me a hero at first, but that title didn't last for long. I killed without remorse or boundaries. Why would my enemies deserve to live when my parents didn't? Why!? The Ring worked by my willpower. And I'm willful to an extreme. But the void was inside me, too. I cracked open the Ring. Pushed it past the light. I let the Darkness inside
me escape. And in the Darkness... I wasn't alone anymore.
"Green Lantern," the police commissioner greeted me as I arrived to the roof of Gotham Police Department. "I wasn't sure you'd show up."
"Gordon," I told him. "I advise you to remain polite with me. The last cop who threatened me regretted it."
"W-we've got a couple of missing persons cases, thought you'd find it compelling," the police commissioner told me with a shaking voice. "Most recently my detectives have been trailing a particular individual. He disappeared suddenly Tuesday night.
Wh-what were you doing Tuesday night?"
"Okay, okay. I figured out your game," I told the Gordon without even looking at him. "I know who you're missing. Penguin."
"Lantern," Gordon told me having suddenly grown himself a spine. "What did you do to him!?"
"Just look up, Jimmy," I told him as I pointed my Ring up in the sky and highlighted them for him.
"See? There's his spleen. And his brains..."
"Lantern... this has to stop. This isn't justice," Gordon told me really trying stand up to me. "I-I don't care what you can do to me. Someone has to stand for what's right! What you did to Detective Bullock... God help him. I know you're hurting, but-
"You don't know me," I said summoning my Lantern
Battery on the roof.
"I'm not an idiot! It was only a couple of years ago,
Gordon said, telling me what he thought I wanted hear.
"'Three dead in Crime Alley.' Aren't you tired of feeling like this.... Bruce?"
"SHUT UP, GORDON!" I told him. "You have a daughter, right? Sad."
SSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
"She'll have to grow up without her father... alone." Bruce said as he killed him.
"ENOUGH!" Was yelled from above me as my Ring gave me a delayed alert.
"Alert. Bruce Wayne of Sector 2814. Incoming Green
Lantern Corps."
And there they were above me, the old blue skinned men in their robes who had forged my Ring and the other Lanterns to who they had given the Rings to. They thought they had come to seize me.
"You are a damaged Lantern, and we are here to fix your transgression," one of the blue men told me while pointing his finger at me. "You have done the unimaginable. You let Darkness into your Ring. This could pollute the entire Green Lantern Corps! Hand over your Ring, NOW!"
"Ganthet, you're all tizzy over this scrawny poozer?" one of the other Lanterns spoke. "Leave 'im to me."
"Whoa! This is wild!" I said with sarcasm in my voice
when I turned to face them. "There's a ton of you! But...Ring?"
"INITIATING BLACKOUT''
"I've got friend now, too," I told them as the Darkness surrounded them with everything I had seen and felting in there. "I made them in the Dark.
SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
As I withdrew the Darkness back into the void inside me, all that was left of the Green Lantern Corps was nothing but black bones. They might have been like me, but their willpower needed light to work, so their rings couldn't have worked in the Dark where there was none of it.
"Ssss-" I heard one of them still alive. "Stop. Th-the
Darkness... It destroys everything.."
CHOK!
As I ripped of the Guardian's head off. I let that last one out of its misery, but I still felt the same. Can you imagine? The most powerful weapon on my
finger... and still I felt vulnerable. Helpless. I missed them. I couldn't take it anymore. I didn't want to be Bruce Wayne anymore. I didn't want to be Green Lantern. Standing in front of my Lantern Battery,
I still felt submerged in a shadow. Like I never left the cave under my mom and dad's house, with the Darkness, and the bats. So, I climbed inside and merged with my Lantern Battery. I became.... the Dawnbreaker.
" With Darkness Black, I choke the Light."
"No Brightest Day escapes my sight as I turn the Dawn into Midnight!'
"Beware my power...Dawnbreaker's Might!"
But just at that moment the world begun to crumble away. I recognized it immediately as the Void inside me. The Darkness that consumed all light. I couldn't even see the stars, but I could hear him speak to me when they arrived.
After the destruction...
"Nice Earth you got here, how's it working out for you?"
Floating in the Void in the Darkness, I came across them, my elders. They were me, but they were older than I was.
"Call me the Batman Who Laughs, and I'm recruiting." their leader spoke to me as he stood on the debris that was once my Earth along with his sons and the two he had with him.
"This is the Red Death and Murder Machine. You'll be fast friends, I'm sure. You have so many things in common. Revenge, Justice.... first names, hah hah hah....
I looked at the two other men, the one in red and the one made of machinery. They were both on their knees with their hands also forced on the ground.
Then he spoke to me again.
"There is a world bathed in light. The people there are fools who deserve to be dragged into the Dark. Their world will crumble like yours. MY LORD BARBATOS DEMANDS IT! You are a warrior of the Darkness. You can extinguish the lights of this bright world. And if you do... Barbatos will spare you from this oblivion and give you what you most desire.... your parents back...... alive."
That last part caught my attention.
"All my Lord Barbatos demandes is your obedience," the Batman Who Laughs told me before I had the chance to answer. "Will you kneel? Or will you die?"