Obligatory Disclaimer : I do not own anything (except maybe OC characters) all characters, places, worlds, universes…etc mentioned here belong to their respective owners and/or companies.

This is purely a work of fiction. Not meant to offend or incite, but to entertain and (maybe) inspire.

RISE

His heart was filled with intent, but his fist could not convey his conviction. I allowed him to rain down his fury on me. It barely stung. His flurry of punches and strikes all aimed at lethal spots on my body barely fazed me. A strike across my face filled me with disdain for him.

How does a man such as he become so weak?

So feeble.

So frail.

I caught his strike. My palm wrapping around the hard leather glove of his balled up fist. He was shocked to say the least. I slammed my forehead down on his face. The hard metamaterial of his cowl helmet cushioning some of the impact force, but it was enough to stun him and send him stumbling backwards.

He observed me, his eyes trying to find a weak spot – something for him to exploit and bring me down. And like an enraged bull, he dashed for me, wielding his anger like a spear meant to impale me. I struck him, breaking his stride and destroying his charge.

It was disappointing. I expected more from him.

"Peace has cost you your strength." I said, lending him a piece of my wisdom. "Victory has defeated you" He wasn't so appreciative. He roared in my face as he once again lunged for me. His wicked strikes combined with a finesse he had left to rot in ignorance and complacency. A lesser man would have long crumbled under the vicious and relentless strikes, but I wasn't a lesser man.

His negligence would be his downfall.

His doom.

My fingers dug into his shoulders like hooks, I ripped him off the metal platform and tossed him off the railings. He reacted fast, widening his inky black cape. And true to his name sake he fluttered to the floor like a graceless falling bat. I followed after him, like red on blood, I tormented him.

He was my hero. And yet, I regretted meeting him, alas the saying was true.

This man left me feeling utter disappointment, like a father watching his child willingly fall into disaster.

My moves were brutal but clinical. Fierce but result oriented. I did not hide the loud pounds of my feet against concrete, I did not silent my heavy swings nor my derision. I aimed, I struck and delivered pain and torture.

His breaths were becoming labored. His ignited spirit was a flame past its prime, it was about to be exhausted. I wanted to give him one last chance to prove himself. I let myself lag, he latched onto the opening like a leech onto flesh.

He groaned and grunted as he struck me with all he had, channeling his innermost strength into his hands. His very purpose into his style, like an artist would transfer his vision to reality through his paint brush. It was flashy and visibly intimidating.

But he was a butcher with a blunted blade, trying to hack away at a dragon's scale. It was as pointlessly useless as having naked children trudge through the frozen tundra of Antarctica.

I shifted his grip from the back of my head to my shoulder, ending his relentless combo of body shots meant to drive the wind away from my lungs, I rotated using the momentum to send my fist into his face. He stumbled like a wounded animal, crawling away and back to his feet he widened the distance between us. I followed after him one step at a time. He aimed for my head and swung, I dodged under it and struck at his midsection. He folded as the air was viciously driven out of him. I half knelt, bringing our eyes to level. His conviction was weak, his spirit was on the verge of collapse, holding on only by the skin of his teeth – teeth that were about to break and shatter beneath my knuckles. I sent my fist rocketing upwards, slamming against his chin. Like a bow bent backwards, he flailed as he careened backwards, nearly falling on his back – a boot to his chest accomplished that.

He lay prone on his floor. His breaths short, hard and strained. He raised his head, I imagined the water from the cracked pipe helped alleviate his fatigue but it would catch up to him soon – a glass of water could not put out an inferno.

He tossed black pellets from his utility belt at me, I swatted them away, even as they exploded on contact. The heat tickled my skin, it was less than the pain of my rebirth, weaker than the flames I had to walk through during my days of training with the league. The pain wasn't going to be impeding me not when I was in near constant agony.

"You have forsaken yourself. You have thrown away your fangs. Your purpose is blunted. Bruce, you are lost" I sighed. It must have maddened him, he dove for me like a car without brakes. I picked him up and body slammed him to the floor, his momentum adding an extra kick to the impact. He tossed the bat-shaped shurikens (batarangs) at my face, I leaned my head to the side, letting them sail away. It granted him the distraction he needed slide into the shadows.

I would've facepalmed if it wouldn't have been so out of character for me to, I walked around the place, strutting like I owned it. "Bruce, do you really think the darkness is your ally? You merely adopted it. I was born in the dark, moulded by its heartlessness. I didn't see the light of day until I was a man..." I recited. Mixing the truth with poetry as I reminisced to my days in the pit, the place of my second birth. I had already found him hiding in the dark behind the shadow of an aged stone column, he was as noticeable as a candle in a cave. "..by then, it was already blinding!" my hand shot forward, accurately coiling my fingers around his neck. He let out an uncharacteristic "Urk!" to which I silently chuckled as I lifted him off the floor, suspending him in my grip.

I shook my head at him, as he tried clawing at my arm. I outclassed him, like a tank outclasses a bicycle. This is where dedicated training gets you. I had been out there fighting master assassins, trading blows with beasts who hid beneath the thin skin of humans but shared nothing with them, tossed and turned with men who made demons look like saints.

Burned, beaten, bruised, flayed, stabbed, impaled, abused, molested, tortured. And yet I not only thrived, but survived.

I came out on top, I broke them all and buried them beneath my feet. While he tussled with street rabble, while his conviction was constantly chipped away by thoughtless, inflexible ideals. And when he won, he celebrated in that victory putting away his edge in a framed glass case hung above his head like a prize. While all I had were scars to remind me of what would come if I did not improve myself and a dream – a single dream of seeing my home again.

I slammed him with rage, hearing parts of his ribs crack. I raised my fist and brought it down. His cowl began to fracture, I brought down another and it broke. Bringing his bare face to view. I brought down another breaking his nose, chipping tooth and shattering jaw, making him bleed.

I rose over his prone form. "You disappoint me, Bruce" I said. About to slam my boot down on his head when she interrupted. I expected it.

"The deal is annulled miss Kyle" I stated. Catwoman in her full body leather outfit stood over the unconscious bat. She understood the meaning behind my words, I could see her gaze alternate between him and I.

She sighed, fixed her sights on me and responded in her lovely challenging tone."...Don't be a sourpuss darlin-!" she was surprised by the uncharacteristic speed I exhibited or maybe it was the swiftness with which I took action. That made her unprepared, even as she utilized her quick reflexes and reactions to try somersaulting away, she was just too unprepared. Not as trained as we were, true combat was not her forte.

She lashed her whip forward, stinging me across the face as it impacted my breathing mask. If I was the less disciplined version of myself that was addicted to the drugs, this would be where she would cut off the delivery tubes, leaving me suffering the debilitating side effects and too weak to defend myself.

Too bad for her it wasn't.

I gripped her whip and pulled. Dragging her along right into my grip. "Your nine lives won't be enough to save you" The claws on her arms cut razor thin lines through the flesh of my arm as she relentlessly clawed at me, quite fittingly like an enraged cat. I wasted no time in snapping her neck. Watching it bend bizarrely to the side after a sick crack – a way it was never meant to, her tongue sticking out of her opened mouth. Her eyes painfully wide open. Her body writhing as the last vestiges of life vacated her body. I tossed her far away, keeping the smell of her soiled body away from me. Sometimes people shit themselves when they die. I casted a last glance at her, I admit it was truly a waste of a very fine piece of ass.

"NO! SELINA!" Bruce cried as he once again rushed me, fury was severely blinding his reason. I had broken this man.

"Tell me Bruce, is your spine as strong as your spirit?" I asked, driving my elbow down onto his back. He let out a painful cough as he collapsed to the floor. I hefted his body over my head in one swift motion and brought it down on my knee. I felt his vertebrae shift, but I wanted to hear it crack instead. I hefted him higher this time. And with a primal roar I brought him down on my knee.

–– CRACK!

Batman was folded over backwards with his spinal column touching pushing against the skin of his stomach. It looked a bit similar to the icebox scene in Deadpool 2, where deadpool falls over the edge of a metal table and his spine is folded in half. That is what this looks like, but more raw. Bruce Wayne was literally broken in half over my knee. He was convulsing uncontrollably in my arms as tears painful slid down his eyes, it was almost serene, like a scared and lonely child seeking the warmth and love of his angelic mother during a cold night. Except this was a morbid scene with glorified savagery.

"No, no it is not" I concluded.

So much for being my hero.

He is well dead, but just to be certain. I grab his head and twist it all the way round, a full 360 degree rotation. Crushing his windpipe, brutally tearing his axial vertebra and the muscles that held his head in place, with one final grunt, I ripped it clean off, severing it from the spine using nothing but pure strength. This was unmatched gore and untold brutality. His blood dyed my hands red.

I could hear one of my men retching his guts out in the background, I eyed my current second in command who understood what I wanted and swiftly put a bullet through the – vomiter – lesser willed man. While I held the still warm head of batman, the whites of its droopy eyes looking out into nothing, the snot and dribble sliding down the face in a thin trail. The drops of blood leaking from the large mess of raw flesh that was once a neck dripped into the velvet pool below adding to its mass, as it spread around the twitching headless body of the bat, like his cape normally would.

Revive from that.

I held it by the hair and brought it up to the camera lens. My message was properly conveyed, there were no need for anymore words.

Power. Strength. These things were the most sought after. Every single person with a hint of ambition in them wanted one – if not all – of it. An individual goes to their job to make money with which they would use to ensure their lives were comfortable and secured. That was a form of power, after all you truly are never satisfied with what you have. Hence the reason why they aim for more – higher salaries, promotions, better houses, finer men or women, better food...etc the list goes on, it all comes down to one fundamental purpose – a better life. And power was necessary for that because if someone else with more power than you have comes along and decides that they want what you have, you will lose it all.

No one truly wants to die, everyone wants to live to witness another day. Those who face despair and decide to run from it, always regret it. Those who shirk away from confronting their hardships and responsibilities find themselves destitute and without purpose. Even at that no one truly wants to die. Why would you want to lose out on enjoying your "better life.

Strength to bring down those against you. Strength to trample on those who would trample on you, strength to tear down those who rise against you. Strength to protect your "Better life" and ensure that nothing threatens it. Strength allows you to enable your will.

Alfred wished he had strength. Alfred wished that his body was that of his past prime and not this ailing thing, because maybe then he'd have been able to have done something. And more than anything Alfred prayed for strength to live long enough survive this disaster.

He saw the broadcast – everyone in Gotham had seen the broadcast. The brutality by which that monster dealt with Bruce made him shiver. Alfred had seen a lot of things during his days in the queen's service. What the brute had done, wasn't mere physical decimation. It was a systemic psychological breakdown hidden beneath physiological collapse.

It was the most profound definition of torture he had ever had the misfortune of witnessing.

He broke the spirit, and then the body. He destroyed the soul and then incinerated the husk that was the body in a blazing fury of wickedness.

How long had it been since he had been sitting here staring at the figures on the TV screen but barely even making out their voices? The crack of Bruce's spine was as deafening as the crack of midnight thunder. It sounded like the singular clap of a mad god above – like the breaking of a sacred soul. The crack was all he could hear now, it occupied his ears and flooded his mind. The figure of Bruce folded over, it was wrong, it was just wrong.

He imagined that it was all a dream, perhaps a nightmare that would soon fade, but the devil stood before him. It had stepped out of the shadows cast by the large looming halls. Its massive steps unmuted as it inched nearer towards him. The mask over its mouth amplifying the sound of its intake and outtake of air, giving the illusion of a dragon's periodic breath. The large heavy coat draped over his shoulders like the regal tunic of a conqueror. He sauntered towards the seated old man.

He knew not when, but something had gripped hard on his shoulder. When Alfred stared up, he was face to face with the monster. Its eyes betrayed no emotion or feeling, not even a hint of elation. Just a burning gaze of inglorious purpose.

"He was once my hero too." It spoke as though it understood his pain. "Oh but I do" it said, as though reading Alfred's mind.

Alfred had made up his mind. His hand hidden behind the arm rest of his seat shot forward, in his grip was a silver 9mm pistol pointed straight at the monster wearing the face of man. A powerful grasp latched onto his, immobilizing his trigger finger. He tried rising out of his seat, but the grip on his shoulder held him down.

Slowly but surely the barrel of the gun pointed towards him. His death was imminent, it was eventual and that was unchangeable. Like the fingers of the clock forever moving from one digit to another, Alfred now stared down the dark barrel of his gun. Terror gripped his heart, causing to beat wildly and sporadically. An ache began to take over his chest and the underside of his arm, his breath becoming hard and strained – an indicator of a heart attack.

––BANG!

The clap of localized thunder echoed deafeningly through the deserted mansion. A thin trail of smoke spiraled away from the tip of the pistol. Alfred lifelessly slumped backwards into his chair, a thin line of blood trailing down the bloody hole in his head. Bane admired the weapon, it held history, it had a story to tell.

Bane pulled down the drawn back eyelids of Alfred. Laying his prized pistol over the man's chest in a rare display of courtesy. He pushed the chair Alfred sat on to the side, allowing him full access to the antiquated grandfather clock that stood silently strong – an unwavering time keeper, a silent astute watcher through the ages.

Bane pulled the clock fingers into the code sequence of 10:48. A memorable number with deep meaning that only two people knew of, and both people were now deceased. Gears whirled and click into place, the grandfather clock receded into the wall, where it once occupied now a passage into the deep secret reaches of the Batcave – a secret system of tunnels and caves beneath the Wayne Manor.

Bane took a step into the rocky gray metal box of the elevator, the machine hummed as it lowered into the belly of the large cave, the bats screeched away as lights erupted with a deep hum showering the Batcave in a brilliant white that brought all its contents to view; A set of Batsuits – armors encased in glass, vehicles ranging from two wheeled bikes to mobile tanks, an assortment of gadgets, tools, lab stations, monitors and a large mainframe computer resting against the cave wall.

"One step closer" The man in the mask pronounced, walking into the glorified bunker filled with multi-billion dollar technology.

Thoughts?