Victor had finally cured his wife and become a hero, Harvey got himelf rid of Two-Face forever, and Poison Ivy became what she said she beloved and protected. The new Ivy that Raven created, named Pamela and with the alias of Flora, has sworn to protect both nature and man across the world, only killing when no other option was avaiable. It'll be a matter of time, but eventually she'll redeem the name of her predecessor.
Now the only one left, and by far the hardest to help, was Waylon.
I couldn't have found someone so different from Ivy, if only in nature. As for Ivy herself I could have done better, more about her. But people like Ivy, Ra's misanthropes and their ilk in general who talk low about humanity's flaws yet refuse to see them in themselves and set themselves apart despite being fully human are, to put it simply, in my shitlist to seek and destroy, not just due to Doom Slayer's past but also because, frankly, I hate them after having read and seen too much fiction involving such creatures, claimers of humanity's evil despite themselves being human, and worse than most to boot. True, Waylon too had a bone to pick with the rest of mankind, but aside of having much better reasons he didn't have the capacity of destruction Ivy had, his anger was much more justified and understandable: all she had was some chlorokinesis and a single betrayal from the one who changed her (and by someone who didn't seem that trustworthy either).
Now, again, only Waylon remained. One might think that simply changing his body and therapy sessions with me would be enough for him, and I'm pretty sure it would have worked with other, more simple Killer Crocs.
With this Waylon, however, it was much complex than that.
The first thing to do was stopping his mutation from growing worse and destroying his mind. It wouldn't reverse his status straight, but again that could be done aside, and we didn't want to get rid of his power either. The solution to the dilemma was very simple: making Waylon able to change between his the-current form and an hypothetical normal body, what he'd look like without his mutation. akin to your average shapeshifter, so that he could at least have a normal life.
There was a problem with that, though, and while it did involve his condition, he himself wasn't the cause: years of abuse, beatings, seeing people he cared for and cared about him die and more had made him unwilling to be considered a human being, even though deep inside he wanted to be accepted by others. His past was sordid, to say the least.
So, simply changing him wouldn't be enough. Brainwashing him or simply killing him and creating a more clone was out of the question, as much as John told me to do it.
His behavior wasn't the only part of the problem. VEGA ran several simulations, and they showed that most people would still react negatively to Waylon even when he had done something positive that would have earned praising had someone else done so. Granted, he was a known cannibal, but his killcount was actually on the middle end compared to the others: Ivy killed two hundred, Harvey seventy or so (though admittedly most of them had been mobsters trying to kill him first), and Victor less than a dozen; in contrast, Waylon had only killed thirty seven people, though he did eat thirteen of them.
A combination of attitude, past, appearance and primal instinct made it practically impossible for the public to accept him. Yes, you read that right, atavism. Even Bruce admitted to have a sense of unsettlement when he fought Waylon, even as he defeated him. Something about genetic memory from back when bipedal reptilians were the apex predators on Earth and mammals no much bigger than rats, VEGA told me, and which affected all mammals of Earth (with several exceptions, of course).
But that strength, that drive to fight, to live, never stopping trying to get ouf of his cell not trying to escape, but simply refusing to lie down and die, was something I couldn't turn away or keep under a lock, no matter how many of the people wanted me to.
This world didn't want Waylon, and he didn't want to be here either.
And that was what gave me the idea.
I'm putting the story on hiatus, but only for a single chapter, to rest from it and to prepare for the reason this one is so short and narrative-exclusive.
I'm not trying to make the SI seem justified in his actions, simply tell why he did that now with Ivy, why did he react like that. If it doesn't look like it to you guys, my fault for not being good at this stuff. And yes, I'm biased for Killer Croc: he's way more relatable and understandable than a good deal of DC villains other people are sympathetic to, like of course Poison Ivy. That, and I simply like him.