A week after forming the League, crime around the world seemed to simply cease to exist; mixing superfast beings like Supermand Flash with portals that could open in any part of Earth does that. Granted, there were a lot of naysayers complaining about the liberal use of my portal network, but aside from them nobody really cared about the violation of boundaries due to the results and our combined image as heroes. As for the remnants of the League of Assassins, I dealt with them myself. They would no longer be a scourge on this planet.
As for John and the pit, well, let's just say that mystical pits that can bring the dead back to life, powerful but unskilled stage magicians and pieces of taxidermy shouldn't mix, and let's leave it at that.
I still remember that lion from Sweden moving despite being nothing but fur and skin and Zatanna screams.
Seeing that no world-threatening danger was in sight, I decided to start my next project: reform villains, starting with the ones living in the Fortress. That, and something that ocurred to me after watching Garfield watch a nature documentary with a forlorn look, something that required the cooperation of Grundy... who had become distant a couple days after Rachel's awakening.
Not wanting to aggravate him, I raked my mind for a solution. At first I didn't understand his distant attitude and desire to stay away from me, even as I asked Rachel if she knew if something was wrong with Grundy.
And then a thought struck Rachel: Ra's al Ghul. Not him possibly returning, of course, but the fact I had killed him myself... after promising Grundy, if a long time ago, that he'd be the one to do the deed. I had robbed Grundy of the payback I had promised him. The fact that she was the one to tell me this spoke volumes of just how far it had slipped my mind.
Grundy had grown a giant tree near the ironworks to perch on and stare at the martian horizon, more morose than really angry. This was yet another show of his increasing mastery over the Green, given that all he needed was a seed. Climbing the tree was of course easy; the hard part would be talking to Grundy, if not by much.
"Say, how long did you say until people might actually come here to live?" He asked me as I reached him and sat next to him.
"Five to seven months, maybe less with the more adventurous ones. Thinking about the environment and the possible damage the settlers might do to it?" Akane and her boyfriend had finally fulfilled their report on Mars and decided to go back to Japan. It still took some time for them to get some recognition, but in the end their was accepted, if with some skepticism.
Grundy chortled. "'Environment'? This planet, or at least its surface, is dead. Dry and cold. Unless someone, let's say you, decides to bring true life back to it, everything anyone might do will be more or less taking advantage of a giant corpse. So, how's Rachel doing? I mean now."
"She's taken a liking to Garfield." Indeed, even though their first interactions had been awkward to say the least, eventually he fully warmed up to her. It helped that she too could turn into animals to make it easier for him to accept her. She, in turn, was simply happy to be with a child that didn't seem bothered by her unsettling skin colour. As for me, just the fact I gave no damns about her bloodline despite my past, and the obvious, was enough.
"Ha, now that's something you don't see every day. You know, I think I know where is that going. Pretty sure you do, too. Hell, I think you know why am I like this."
"Is it about not killing Ra's? Rachel told me."
Grundy nodded. "I'm not going to mope about it, I'm not some stupid brat laser-focused in revenge and willing to do stupid things like resurrecting a bad guy just to kill him myself. But still, I'm not going to let go of it like that either. Give me a week or more to sulk about it; after that, I'll be fine."
Understandable, given that Ra's was, while not the sole reason he was himself, definitely the main one, and of course the one who had him tortured and killed. He said best himself, no point moping for something that couldn't be reversed. "I'll do that, alright."
"Thanks. Is there anything else you want from me?"
I nodded. "There is. I want you to talk to Poison Ivy."
Grundy rose an eyebrow at that. "Poison Ivy? You mean the plant nut?" Being the avatar of the Green, Grundy had a much greater comprehension of plant life than Ivy did. Therefore, he reached a simple conclusion: she was, despite what many thought (including Ivy herself), an insane misanthrope who merely used her eco-terrorism as an excuse to exercise her power over those who couldn't fight back, no matter the fact she actually cared about plants.
Victor, Harvey, and even Waylon could be redeemed to be either heroes or able to live among normal people, if with some unconventional help. Ivy, however? There simply was no helping her get out of her mindset. Then again, she had lost my sympathy the moment I found out she killed two hundred people before my arrival. Waylong had the excuse of suffering of an extreme form of atavism, but Ivy could only feel the pain of certain plans close to her location, not the entire fucking Green. Grundy could, all the time, and the fact he didn't become homicidal, or even care for that matter, spoke volumes of her delusion.
She wouldn't be killed, though. I'd do to her what I did to Luthor, but first she had to feel the pain she had caused on her flesh, to suffer as much as she had made others, and who else but the real guardian of the Green to do so?
That said, someone had to protect the world's forests from that kind of thing. Not actual logging since they could just rotate for the trees to grow back and thus not damage the environment irreparably, but fields and such. They're neither profitable nor lasting due to the bad soil.
"Grundy, do you feel the pain plants feel as they die?"
"Not from up here."
"And down there?"
"Hundreds of hectares are lost per day, but it's just an itch at most." He said with a shrug. "I mean, I'm a zombie, so it's not like I can actually feel anything."
"And yet you do."
"Yes, I do." He then looked down at me, a quizzical expression on his face. "Am I going to like where this is going?"
"I'd like you to try and help the world's rainforests. Despite everything, her ideas weren't bad, just the overall purpose and execution."
"You want me to kill loggers in the Amazon? I mean, at the very least some of them don't have other options, if what they say in TV is true."
"No, no, I don't mean killing... in general." Let's be honest in this: this wasn't normal Earth, but DC Earth, where tycoons and magnates cut down entire jungles out of greed, power, to discover secrets that could endanger mankind, or simple spite; some killing would end up being necessary anyway. But that wasn't the reason. "Besides, you wouldn't be doing it just for Earth's biosphere, but the people that depened on it."
First, though, I had to bring a man with a cold heart the way keep it warm... permanently.
Short chapter with not that much in general, but don't worry, the next one will be either longer or have more meat. Also, I've started a Stellaris self insert which is basically a Planetary Annihilation one, except the SI is not a robot (it's literally in the title, 'I ain't a giant robot'), he's got a clone army, and while obviosly powerful is not truly OP, plus also dealing with diplomacy, economics (if barely) and the consequences of something that powerful going into other universes, even though that last part has just begun.
There's only one Doom Slayer, even though he's a self inserted guy . So, no 'Doom Slayer kills the DCU' or evil Doom Slayer. Still, those are good ideas for omakes.
As for the hypothetical titles, yours are nice, but a tad direct and blunt. They'd be more biblical/religious in tone or not as heavy due to DOOM's origins and the stuff it deals with taken seriously, like for example:
-Abandon All Hope.
-See No Evil.
-At Doom's Gate, Inferno and the titles from the game that seem fitting.
-Deliver Us from Evil.
-Judgement Day/Apocalypse.
-Hell Hath No Fury
-The Unholy Crusade.
-Hells Breaks Loose.
And so on.