As expected, the government was more than willing to support me in suppressing the capes, I even got an unexpected but welcome sponsorship from Lex Luther himself.
I started my return small by simply creating a small company to earn enough money to get started before I decided to become a lawyer. Naturally, I got a visit from the Bat at some point, even if I didn't take residence in his city anymore, but he was quickly driven away when the police arrived.
This was when I started making lists of crimes each cape had committed, starting with countless charges for battery, trespassing, and vigilantism. It was fun to watch these heroes run from the law but to really corner them I needed to become a politician, something I was not particularly keen on becoming.
To make things even harder for the heroes, I decided to become a lawyer for many villains and criminals. Until now, heroes would just catch criminals and throw them into prison but most have never even had a trial.
Under my charges, many criminals were released from prison and each time they got caught, the heroes needed to give solid evidence of their crimes- innocent until proven guilty and all that.
It goes without saying that the heroes and even some of the civilians were not very happy with my actions but the support I was receiving from the government only kept increasing. Batman and even the Flash tried to put me in prison but I never committed any crime since my return and even wrote a book about my unjust capture in Gotham and my imprisonment without trial.
Naturally, I skipped over the details of being responsible for the destruction of the children's hospital and the Doom Car and I left no evidence that allowed the heroes to bring me to court.
After over a year of playing and planning, I finally got enough supporters and voices to get the Superhuman Registration Act through.
It was fun to see the law become the heroes' worst enemy. Batman especially was viewed as very conflicted, on one hand, he was catching criminals while on the other he was a wanted criminal with multiple charges and failing to appear in court. The only capes who appeared in court were Flash and Superman, who got sentenced to prison only to be released not soon after to help stop some world-ending threats.
Was I the only one seeing the irony that a very law-abiding person became their biggest problem and many criminals actually held goodwill to me? Despite all of Batman's talk about not wanting to become a tyrant, he was on his best way to becoming one.
Naturally, I also made a few enemies I could not do anything about, like Lois Lane. That reporter had been a pain in the ass from the very beginning, though I could understand why she disliked me s much… I did put her husband in prison several times and gave him a large debt.
Yep, many heroes had to pay large sums to their victims for bodily and emotional damage, sums that the simple pay of a reporter or forensic chemist did not cover. Batman still failed to pay up and it looked like I could not do anything to him without breaking a few laws myself and risking everything I did so far but I didn't need to get the caped crusader to prison, Bruce Wayne would suffice.
You don't get to have a second life, secret hideouts, and highly advanced weapons without the government knowing if you did not evade taxes. All I had to do was say a few words to a few IRS contacts and they were investigating every penny he earned and spent. These guys did not take the loss of even a single dollar lightly.
I was slowly becoming every hero's worst nightmare, but their nightmare was only beginning. I was preparing to launch an anonymous website revealing every hero's, villain's, and anti-hero's identity and history. The chaos that would cause would be phenomenal.
Of course, there was one person I could not reveal. After a year of messing around, I naturally found some traces of my kids on the planets. Of all the things she could have done, Viliana decided to become a hero and join the Teen Titans.
I didn't think she knew I was that obnoxious guy who was making her life so hard since this was not my usual way of doing things and I never told my family what I was going to do, but it was only a matter of time before we had a very awkward talk.
Speaking of family, the only ones I had contact with were Leo and his now-pregnant wife. They opened a cat cafe in Gotham of all places and l visited them sometimes. Despite Freyna being pregnant for around 6 months already, the only thing showing it was her constantly changing mood and impulses to eat the strangest things.
This was the first time someone from my family had gotten pregnant, at least with both parents being godly beings, so it was pretty new territory for me too but I was guessing that her pregnancy would be completely different to humans or anything I encountered so far and would most likely take several thousand Earth years.
The poor Leo suffered a lot from her destructive and cuddly mood changes and to make it worse, she went on full mother mode, making friends with every woman who had experience with kids, which just so happened to include a certain Demon Head's daughter.
I could only attribute these two women whose personalities couldn't be more different becoming friends to them both being mothers.
As for Ianara… no clue, she's probably somewhere sleeping.