Post by redsycorax on Mar 29, 2019 23:25:56 GMT
Sadly, many alternate Earths suffer under the burden of global dictatorship and totalitarian repression of civil liberties and human rights. On Earth-10, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan won the Second World War and one hideous outcome was the extension of the Nazi Holocaust to encompass all of that world's Jews, Sinti and Romani ("gypsies"), homosexuals, the intellectually disabled and psychiatric patients. On Earth-30, Superman assumed power within the Soviet Union after Josef Stalin's death and he presided over the expansion of an almost-utopian Greater Soviet Union to near-planetary domination- and the lobotomisation of supervillains. On other Earths, totalitarian galactic Roman Empires presided over a terrorised galaxy, while still others harboured a corrupted United States or United Kingdom that had achieved planetary domination.
Thus it was on Earth-948. Here, the former United States fell to a charismatic demagogue in the 1930s and after a coup d'etat destroyed Washington, the new capital was created in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Per Degaton had metahuman collaborators at his disposal, given that John and Mary Kent were true believers in Degatonism as a creed and Calvin Kent became his strong right hand as a result. Thomas and Martha Wayne funded him, and enabled him to invade Canada, Central America, Mexico and Brazil. The Vigilance Society backed the tyrant and aided him in the War of European Conquest (1938-1944), the Australasian Anshluss (1946), the East Asian War (1947-1953), the War of African Acquisition (1955-1956) and finally the War of Soviet Extermination (1964-1968). Many of the VSD's more human members perished as a result of the manifold wars that were waged to consolidate Degaton's global hegemony. Finally, when Overlord planted the Degaton flag in the smoking ruins of the Kremlin in May 1968, the world was at one.
Human rights and civil liberties vanished as the global dictator continued his grip and his loyal lieutenants- Overlord, Darkwing, Penthesilea, Greenflare, Predator Hawk, Momentum and Darkmage- ruthlessly suppressed dissent.
1933:
Buzz Windrup laughed to himself as he poured another whiskey and downed it. With the declaration of martial law, he would be able to rule the United States- or the Democratic Republic of America as it had been renamed, he reminded himself- with the iron fist it deserved. No more tolerance for those uppity Northern Negros, New York Jews, socialist and anarchist agitators. It was just a damned shame Guiseppe Zangara's guns hadn't killed Eleanor Roosevelt and that Washington had been sacked and ruined when Windrup stole the 1933 US federal election. Ah well, no matter. He was so intent on his alcoholic thrall, he didn't notice the young redhaired man fitting a silencer to his pistol and taking careful aim before he fired. Windrup, the first absolute dictator of the Former United States, died convulsing as Per Degaton stepped over his prone and dying body. Within his body, immortogenic heritage swirled, and the mutant in question nodded to himself. Seizing control of the former United States was the first step- but only the first.
1938:
Sent to Earth from the dying inhabited planet of a red dwarf sun nearly forty two light years from Earth, the starship burned bright as it entered the Earth's atmosphere and within its impervious hull, the infant inside gurgled as he observed the changing lights while the vessel braked and adjusted its trajectory to make a safe landing. Fortunately, this world had not yet developed artificial satellites or long-distance radar, although Kryptonian surveillance of the planet had noted that it was on the precipice of developing such science. Ultimately, the vehicle completed its descent and landed in the fields of John and Mary Kent, two Kansas farmers. As they ran toward the cooling vessel, they heard the sound of a squawling, puzzled baby. For a while, the childless John and Mary debated whether or not to keep the baby, but ultimately, altruism won out. John and Mary had almost lost their farm during the Depression, were it not for Chancellor Degaton's rural relief package. He picked up the receiver of the newly installed telephone and called the necessary authorities. The next day, a government black maria drew up outside their home and Degaton's National Police picked up the alien infant.
Later, as he dandled the infant on his knee, Degaton thought what an excellent Overlord this baby would make when he reached maturity...
1939:
Thomas and Martha Wayne, two Gotham socialites, had bid goodbye to their newfound friend Per Degaton, having funded the political ascent, media expansion and propaganda of the Democratic Republic's new Chancellor. On the way home, Martha cradled their sleeping son Bruce in her arms, until gunshot shattered their limousine window, killing their driver at once. Degaton heard the distant sound of gunfire, realised what it must be, and ran toward the melee as Joe Chill leant in through the window and tried to take the necklace off Martha Wayne, only to have her husband barrel into him and start pummelling him. But Chill found the gun in his hands and shot Thomas through the head, turning his gun on Martha when she screamed for help. If Thomas had only been able to delay Chill for ten seconds longer, Degaton and his National Police detachment would have reached them in time. But instead of mourning them in bewildered tears, an eight year old hand took Chill's dropped gun and shot the murderer of his parents through the heart. Then Bruce Wayne collapsed to his knees, sobbing in desolation. Gently, Degaton laid his hands on Bruce Wayne's shoulder as a raven flew overhead. Degaton saw the mature steel in Bruce's gaze and knew that he would make an excellent soldier in his newly founded Vigilance Society of the Republic.
1940:
Lady Penthesilea shook her head in sorrow as she stood over the bodies of the slain Queen Hippolyta and Princess Diana, the latter so acheingly young. She stared levelly at Paula Gunther, the assassin, and said levelly: "Take her away. Scylla and Charbydis will have her for their meal tonight."
"I will not be alone. Others will try to find your island as I did and succeed!" raved the fascist, as she was womanhandled, struggling, to the Precipice of the Gorgons, and her death. She turned to the transceiver and rose as she saw Per Degaton's form coalesce in its viewsphere:
"My condolences. If only we had found out in time, you would not have lost her royal highness and her much-respected daughter."
"Chancellor Degaton, as it is, Themiscyra welcomes your Republic's aid. If it had not been for your naval forces, we would have been invaded by that Nazi fleet. Our isolation is at an end. Clearly, you need Amazon assistance in your war against the European aggressors. Female US Navy personnel are welcome on Themiscyra and as the new Queen, I will gladly join your Vigilance Society, if you will have me."
"We value your noble civilisation's assistance and welcome your aid in our time of trial. Thank you, Your Majesty." Penthesilea ran her hands through the fabric of the warrior ensemble uniform then pulled the tunic over her head and donned the lassoo at her side. A wonder woman strode from the palace.
1944:
Young Kal-El and adolescent Bruce Wayne, now dressed in his uniform as Darkwing, stood on the bridge of the DRV Manifest Destiny as the megatank rolled over the streets of Berlin before it unleashed the warriors of his Vigilance Society on them. 1940 had been an excellent year for the harvest of metahumans- the Republican Bureau of Security and Surveillance had arranged for several incidents to occur that had buttressed its forces. A chaos mage, Kent Nelson, had volunteered his services to the DRA's cause as Darkmage, while radio propagandist Alan Scott found a mystical artefact and named himself Greenflare, and a biochemical anomaly incident resulted in Jason Garrick's attainment of prodigal velocity as the speedster Momentum.
True, the Axis League of Europe had assembled its own metahuman ensemble against them- the mage Zoloman, the biochemically enhanced supersoldier Ubermensch, the Valkyrie known as Hellegunde, the former crimefighters Grosshorn Eule and Fledermaus, Seawolf the aqualychanthrope and the pyrokinetic Fleshburn. But they had been forced back as the Vigilance Society surged forward as the vanguard of the DRASF.
Penthesilea, with her sword and blade, cut down Hellegunde on the zeppelin on which she stood. Darkmage's words of power caused Zoloman to combust in crimson and golden flame before he could even cite an incantation. Greenflare removed the air within a power-ringed bubble and asphyxiated Fleshburn, while Momentum surged forward and suffocated Grosshorn Eule and his son Fledermaus within a vacuum vortex. As Ubermensch stepped forward, Degaton gave the merest hint of a nod and his two 'secret weapons', Overlord and Darkwing, surged forth from the megatank's observation deck. Ubermensch had almost no time to register his oncoming doom as the diminutive Overlord ploughed into him, decapitating him on the spot. As he slumped to the ground, Darkwing wove his way through the defensive array within the Fuhrerbunker and kicked open the door where Eva Braun had just ingested her cyanide capsule and Adolf Hitler was about to shoot himself. He balled his fist and knocked out the last remaining source of resistance to Chancellor Degaton's War of European Conquest. In August 1945, Hitler, Mussolini, Oswald Mosley and Marshall Phillipe Petain all dangled at the end of ropes, an archaic spectacle of capital punishment, but a symbol of the demise of fascism. Given how its inhabitants had suffered under that yoke, ironically they welcomed Degaton's new leadership.
1946:
As the sound of battering grew closer to his office within the New Zealand House of Representatives, Prime Minister Peter Fraser stood, awaiting the inevitable. He had been expecting it ever since America's 'mystery men and women' had stormed Australia, leaving devastation in their wake and razing the purpose-built capital of Canberra to the ground. From then on, it would only be a matter of days before New Zealand joined its former British Imperial dominion in defeat and occupation. Finally, he faced Overlord as the door disintegrated into fragments. Fraser closed his eyes and started to pray. Penthesilea strode forward and injected the head of state with a barbiturate solution that would bring death quickly and tidily. After all, he had been a valiant opponent and deserved that, at least. Overlord's heat vision incinerated the New Zealand flag as the last source of resistance perished in Australasia. The Germans had had a word for it during the era of Nazism. Anschluss.
1953:
The East Asian War was almost over. Tokyo was caught in a firestorm and Overlord prepared to close in on the devastated Imperial palace. He walked into the shattered halls and ruined beauty, stepping over the charcoal-hued incinerated human bodies as Darkwing nodded: "I'm getting lifesigns from that room. It's probably their imperial family."
"They look so small and insignificant."
"They're figureheads, Cal. What really happened here was the work of Japan's war premiership and we've devastated their armed forces and the chambers of their Imperial Diet. Penny put Togo and their other warmongers to death. Besides, we can utilise Hirohito and his family as our own puppets. All he needs to do is surrender."
"I can manage that. <Your Imperial Highness, we are not monsters. We will spare you and your family, but on one condition...>"
A day later, the new Japanese flag incorporated a red sun disc and a small but significant D in its corner. From thereupon, the former Imperial armies were allowed to govern their former co-prosperity lands once more almost with impunity, except for ultimate sovereignty, resting in distant Cheyenne, within the hands of the unageing Per Degaton. And with that, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Korea and China also fell to the advancing armies of Per Degaton. After South Africa fell shortly afterward, in 1956, the Soviet Union only remained the bulwark of free humanity. But their turn would come.
1968:
The War of Soviet Extermination took longer than many of the other conquests on Earth-948. This USSR had not suffered the losses of the Second World War and had had three decades to expand its own armed forces and acquire its own anti-metahuman deterrents. Jason Garrick, Bartholemew Allen and Wallace West all fell victim to the Soviet anti-tachyon fields activated to stop their specific metahuman acceleration abilities, Predator Hawk was mown down as Red Air Force hypersonic fighter jets mastered the air and launched projectiles at him. Greenflare fell to a radiation weapon that simulated an electromagnetic pulse, disrupting the operation of power ring. At the end, Overlord, Penthesilea and Darkwing stood alongside Degaton as they set foot on the safety site, one hundred kilometres from Moscow's blackened soil. Calvin Kent's face was scarred by an attack from a kryptonite dagger by a desperate Soviet assassin, while Penthesilea wore a black armband for her cousin Antiope, who had perished in the assault against Vladivostok on the Soviet Pacific coast. Darkwing wondered about both of them, given how much store they placed on their pride, indomitability and strength. After Stalin's death, Krushchev took over and had ruled the USSR for the last fifteen years. There were rumours about Soviet superweapons and Degaton had felt frustrated at the delay that accompanied the fall of the last barrier to world domination. But over the last four years, they had steadily forced the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics back from its Eastern European satellites and its own intensively developed Siberian territories. But the myth of the Vigilance Society of Degaton's impregnability had been shattered and with it, resistance began to silently emerge across the length and breadth of Degaton's empire. Degaton handed a projectile to Overlord and nodded to him, handing spectacles to Darkwing and Penthesilea and motioning them behind a leaden reinforced barrier as the Degaton Global Empire's core asset rose over the besieged Soviet capital. Indoctrinated since birth, Kal-El felt neither revulsion or distaste at what he was being requested to do on behalf of the regime that he had safeguarded and preserved for the last three decades.
As the red diode signal clicked on, Overlord released the bomb that he held in his hands, and turned back toward the waiting DGE forces several miles away. A mile below, Nikolai Krushchev realised what the device must be and ran for his personal high-speed elevator to the underground deep-impact Soviet bunker. However, the Soviet Premier never made to his underground contingency headquarters. At 08.15.33 AM, on August 6, 1968, Earth-948's first nuclear weapon was dropped on Moscow. Its yield was 100 megatons, the largest such deathmonger manufactured on many other alternate Earths, but then, Degaton wanted to make an 'example' of the last remaining defiant obstacle to his global conquest. In the holocaust, over seven million people perished, whether from vaporisation, third degree and second degree burns, immuration within fallen masonry, incineration within the fires started by the blast, or cumulative radiation poisoning due to their proximity to the centre of the blast, over Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet Theatre. Five million were gravely injured and the death toll would rise in the coming weeks and months.
But Moscow's fiery immolation did more than that. Across the length and breadth of Degaton's Global Empire, hairline cracks began to emerge in the face of such inhumanity. When he reached his apotheosis, the immortal leader of Earth's billions of inhabitants found that it was short-lived. And despite the fact that he now exerted global control, uprisings and rebellions began in the wake of those millions of deaths.
2018:
Fifty years later, Degaton was fighting on multiple fronts, despite reaching out to the victims of global nuclear holocaust, famine and plague on three other allied Earths. He had survivd numerous assassination attempts, but parts of his allegedly global dominion were now 'no go' areas for his troops. Even Overlord had baulked when he was hit by a large Kryptonite projectile and took months to recover, his abilities restricted in the wake of his unexpected ambush. Penthesilea was no longer Queen of Themiscrya, as an Amazon revolutionary army had overthrown their queen. But even the committed Amazon Queen could not bring herself to mount vengeance on her sisters. Richard Grayson was now Darkwing, as a successful assassination attempt had felled the first Darkwing on a visit to Gotham to oversee a Wayne Enterprises spaceforce contract. But Grayson had also paid a price, with his marriage to Barbara Gordon ended by his acquisition of the cowl. He had been forced to shoot her when she had been revealed as instrument in Operation Overthrow, the attack on Overlord.
And then Degaton overreached, attacking Earth 500, a world where the Justice Alliance of America defended its inhabitants with intellect, passion and determination. Against its members, Per Degaton's metahumans were no match. And thus, in a matter of minutes, the would-be multiversal tyrant fell from his throne, imprisoned in a green power-ringed bubble, and set drifting within the vastness of Bleedspace. His metahuman servitors were tried for their role in his war crimes. Overlord was sent into the Phantom Zone for eternity. Penthesilea was imprisoned by her sisters on Themiscyra and died several decades later. Richard Grayson was the sole occupant of a prison complex on Earth-948's moon and died halfway through the new century.
While Per Degaton may have outlived many of his alternate iterations, what he endured as a consequence was no real life forevermore.
THE END
Thus it was on Earth-948. Here, the former United States fell to a charismatic demagogue in the 1930s and after a coup d'etat destroyed Washington, the new capital was created in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Per Degaton had metahuman collaborators at his disposal, given that John and Mary Kent were true believers in Degatonism as a creed and Calvin Kent became his strong right hand as a result. Thomas and Martha Wayne funded him, and enabled him to invade Canada, Central America, Mexico and Brazil. The Vigilance Society backed the tyrant and aided him in the War of European Conquest (1938-1944), the Australasian Anshluss (1946), the East Asian War (1947-1953), the War of African Acquisition (1955-1956) and finally the War of Soviet Extermination (1964-1968). Many of the VSD's more human members perished as a result of the manifold wars that were waged to consolidate Degaton's global hegemony. Finally, when Overlord planted the Degaton flag in the smoking ruins of the Kremlin in May 1968, the world was at one.
Human rights and civil liberties vanished as the global dictator continued his grip and his loyal lieutenants- Overlord, Darkwing, Penthesilea, Greenflare, Predator Hawk, Momentum and Darkmage- ruthlessly suppressed dissent.
1933:
Buzz Windrup laughed to himself as he poured another whiskey and downed it. With the declaration of martial law, he would be able to rule the United States- or the Democratic Republic of America as it had been renamed, he reminded himself- with the iron fist it deserved. No more tolerance for those uppity Northern Negros, New York Jews, socialist and anarchist agitators. It was just a damned shame Guiseppe Zangara's guns hadn't killed Eleanor Roosevelt and that Washington had been sacked and ruined when Windrup stole the 1933 US federal election. Ah well, no matter. He was so intent on his alcoholic thrall, he didn't notice the young redhaired man fitting a silencer to his pistol and taking careful aim before he fired. Windrup, the first absolute dictator of the Former United States, died convulsing as Per Degaton stepped over his prone and dying body. Within his body, immortogenic heritage swirled, and the mutant in question nodded to himself. Seizing control of the former United States was the first step- but only the first.
1938:
Sent to Earth from the dying inhabited planet of a red dwarf sun nearly forty two light years from Earth, the starship burned bright as it entered the Earth's atmosphere and within its impervious hull, the infant inside gurgled as he observed the changing lights while the vessel braked and adjusted its trajectory to make a safe landing. Fortunately, this world had not yet developed artificial satellites or long-distance radar, although Kryptonian surveillance of the planet had noted that it was on the precipice of developing such science. Ultimately, the vehicle completed its descent and landed in the fields of John and Mary Kent, two Kansas farmers. As they ran toward the cooling vessel, they heard the sound of a squawling, puzzled baby. For a while, the childless John and Mary debated whether or not to keep the baby, but ultimately, altruism won out. John and Mary had almost lost their farm during the Depression, were it not for Chancellor Degaton's rural relief package. He picked up the receiver of the newly installed telephone and called the necessary authorities. The next day, a government black maria drew up outside their home and Degaton's National Police picked up the alien infant.
Later, as he dandled the infant on his knee, Degaton thought what an excellent Overlord this baby would make when he reached maturity...
1939:
Thomas and Martha Wayne, two Gotham socialites, had bid goodbye to their newfound friend Per Degaton, having funded the political ascent, media expansion and propaganda of the Democratic Republic's new Chancellor. On the way home, Martha cradled their sleeping son Bruce in her arms, until gunshot shattered their limousine window, killing their driver at once. Degaton heard the distant sound of gunfire, realised what it must be, and ran toward the melee as Joe Chill leant in through the window and tried to take the necklace off Martha Wayne, only to have her husband barrel into him and start pummelling him. But Chill found the gun in his hands and shot Thomas through the head, turning his gun on Martha when she screamed for help. If Thomas had only been able to delay Chill for ten seconds longer, Degaton and his National Police detachment would have reached them in time. But instead of mourning them in bewildered tears, an eight year old hand took Chill's dropped gun and shot the murderer of his parents through the heart. Then Bruce Wayne collapsed to his knees, sobbing in desolation. Gently, Degaton laid his hands on Bruce Wayne's shoulder as a raven flew overhead. Degaton saw the mature steel in Bruce's gaze and knew that he would make an excellent soldier in his newly founded Vigilance Society of the Republic.
1940:
Lady Penthesilea shook her head in sorrow as she stood over the bodies of the slain Queen Hippolyta and Princess Diana, the latter so acheingly young. She stared levelly at Paula Gunther, the assassin, and said levelly: "Take her away. Scylla and Charbydis will have her for their meal tonight."
"I will not be alone. Others will try to find your island as I did and succeed!" raved the fascist, as she was womanhandled, struggling, to the Precipice of the Gorgons, and her death. She turned to the transceiver and rose as she saw Per Degaton's form coalesce in its viewsphere:
"My condolences. If only we had found out in time, you would not have lost her royal highness and her much-respected daughter."
"Chancellor Degaton, as it is, Themiscyra welcomes your Republic's aid. If it had not been for your naval forces, we would have been invaded by that Nazi fleet. Our isolation is at an end. Clearly, you need Amazon assistance in your war against the European aggressors. Female US Navy personnel are welcome on Themiscyra and as the new Queen, I will gladly join your Vigilance Society, if you will have me."
"We value your noble civilisation's assistance and welcome your aid in our time of trial. Thank you, Your Majesty." Penthesilea ran her hands through the fabric of the warrior ensemble uniform then pulled the tunic over her head and donned the lassoo at her side. A wonder woman strode from the palace.
1944:
Young Kal-El and adolescent Bruce Wayne, now dressed in his uniform as Darkwing, stood on the bridge of the DRV Manifest Destiny as the megatank rolled over the streets of Berlin before it unleashed the warriors of his Vigilance Society on them. 1940 had been an excellent year for the harvest of metahumans- the Republican Bureau of Security and Surveillance had arranged for several incidents to occur that had buttressed its forces. A chaos mage, Kent Nelson, had volunteered his services to the DRA's cause as Darkmage, while radio propagandist Alan Scott found a mystical artefact and named himself Greenflare, and a biochemical anomaly incident resulted in Jason Garrick's attainment of prodigal velocity as the speedster Momentum.
True, the Axis League of Europe had assembled its own metahuman ensemble against them- the mage Zoloman, the biochemically enhanced supersoldier Ubermensch, the Valkyrie known as Hellegunde, the former crimefighters Grosshorn Eule and Fledermaus, Seawolf the aqualychanthrope and the pyrokinetic Fleshburn. But they had been forced back as the Vigilance Society surged forward as the vanguard of the DRASF.
Penthesilea, with her sword and blade, cut down Hellegunde on the zeppelin on which she stood. Darkmage's words of power caused Zoloman to combust in crimson and golden flame before he could even cite an incantation. Greenflare removed the air within a power-ringed bubble and asphyxiated Fleshburn, while Momentum surged forward and suffocated Grosshorn Eule and his son Fledermaus within a vacuum vortex. As Ubermensch stepped forward, Degaton gave the merest hint of a nod and his two 'secret weapons', Overlord and Darkwing, surged forth from the megatank's observation deck. Ubermensch had almost no time to register his oncoming doom as the diminutive Overlord ploughed into him, decapitating him on the spot. As he slumped to the ground, Darkwing wove his way through the defensive array within the Fuhrerbunker and kicked open the door where Eva Braun had just ingested her cyanide capsule and Adolf Hitler was about to shoot himself. He balled his fist and knocked out the last remaining source of resistance to Chancellor Degaton's War of European Conquest. In August 1945, Hitler, Mussolini, Oswald Mosley and Marshall Phillipe Petain all dangled at the end of ropes, an archaic spectacle of capital punishment, but a symbol of the demise of fascism. Given how its inhabitants had suffered under that yoke, ironically they welcomed Degaton's new leadership.
1946:
As the sound of battering grew closer to his office within the New Zealand House of Representatives, Prime Minister Peter Fraser stood, awaiting the inevitable. He had been expecting it ever since America's 'mystery men and women' had stormed Australia, leaving devastation in their wake and razing the purpose-built capital of Canberra to the ground. From then on, it would only be a matter of days before New Zealand joined its former British Imperial dominion in defeat and occupation. Finally, he faced Overlord as the door disintegrated into fragments. Fraser closed his eyes and started to pray. Penthesilea strode forward and injected the head of state with a barbiturate solution that would bring death quickly and tidily. After all, he had been a valiant opponent and deserved that, at least. Overlord's heat vision incinerated the New Zealand flag as the last source of resistance perished in Australasia. The Germans had had a word for it during the era of Nazism. Anschluss.
1953:
The East Asian War was almost over. Tokyo was caught in a firestorm and Overlord prepared to close in on the devastated Imperial palace. He walked into the shattered halls and ruined beauty, stepping over the charcoal-hued incinerated human bodies as Darkwing nodded: "I'm getting lifesigns from that room. It's probably their imperial family."
"They look so small and insignificant."
"They're figureheads, Cal. What really happened here was the work of Japan's war premiership and we've devastated their armed forces and the chambers of their Imperial Diet. Penny put Togo and their other warmongers to death. Besides, we can utilise Hirohito and his family as our own puppets. All he needs to do is surrender."
"I can manage that. <Your Imperial Highness, we are not monsters. We will spare you and your family, but on one condition...>"
A day later, the new Japanese flag incorporated a red sun disc and a small but significant D in its corner. From thereupon, the former Imperial armies were allowed to govern their former co-prosperity lands once more almost with impunity, except for ultimate sovereignty, resting in distant Cheyenne, within the hands of the unageing Per Degaton. And with that, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Korea and China also fell to the advancing armies of Per Degaton. After South Africa fell shortly afterward, in 1956, the Soviet Union only remained the bulwark of free humanity. But their turn would come.
1968:
The War of Soviet Extermination took longer than many of the other conquests on Earth-948. This USSR had not suffered the losses of the Second World War and had had three decades to expand its own armed forces and acquire its own anti-metahuman deterrents. Jason Garrick, Bartholemew Allen and Wallace West all fell victim to the Soviet anti-tachyon fields activated to stop their specific metahuman acceleration abilities, Predator Hawk was mown down as Red Air Force hypersonic fighter jets mastered the air and launched projectiles at him. Greenflare fell to a radiation weapon that simulated an electromagnetic pulse, disrupting the operation of power ring. At the end, Overlord, Penthesilea and Darkwing stood alongside Degaton as they set foot on the safety site, one hundred kilometres from Moscow's blackened soil. Calvin Kent's face was scarred by an attack from a kryptonite dagger by a desperate Soviet assassin, while Penthesilea wore a black armband for her cousin Antiope, who had perished in the assault against Vladivostok on the Soviet Pacific coast. Darkwing wondered about both of them, given how much store they placed on their pride, indomitability and strength. After Stalin's death, Krushchev took over and had ruled the USSR for the last fifteen years. There were rumours about Soviet superweapons and Degaton had felt frustrated at the delay that accompanied the fall of the last barrier to world domination. But over the last four years, they had steadily forced the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics back from its Eastern European satellites and its own intensively developed Siberian territories. But the myth of the Vigilance Society of Degaton's impregnability had been shattered and with it, resistance began to silently emerge across the length and breadth of Degaton's empire. Degaton handed a projectile to Overlord and nodded to him, handing spectacles to Darkwing and Penthesilea and motioning them behind a leaden reinforced barrier as the Degaton Global Empire's core asset rose over the besieged Soviet capital. Indoctrinated since birth, Kal-El felt neither revulsion or distaste at what he was being requested to do on behalf of the regime that he had safeguarded and preserved for the last three decades.
As the red diode signal clicked on, Overlord released the bomb that he held in his hands, and turned back toward the waiting DGE forces several miles away. A mile below, Nikolai Krushchev realised what the device must be and ran for his personal high-speed elevator to the underground deep-impact Soviet bunker. However, the Soviet Premier never made to his underground contingency headquarters. At 08.15.33 AM, on August 6, 1968, Earth-948's first nuclear weapon was dropped on Moscow. Its yield was 100 megatons, the largest such deathmonger manufactured on many other alternate Earths, but then, Degaton wanted to make an 'example' of the last remaining defiant obstacle to his global conquest. In the holocaust, over seven million people perished, whether from vaporisation, third degree and second degree burns, immuration within fallen masonry, incineration within the fires started by the blast, or cumulative radiation poisoning due to their proximity to the centre of the blast, over Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet Theatre. Five million were gravely injured and the death toll would rise in the coming weeks and months.
But Moscow's fiery immolation did more than that. Across the length and breadth of Degaton's Global Empire, hairline cracks began to emerge in the face of such inhumanity. When he reached his apotheosis, the immortal leader of Earth's billions of inhabitants found that it was short-lived. And despite the fact that he now exerted global control, uprisings and rebellions began in the wake of those millions of deaths.
2018:
Fifty years later, Degaton was fighting on multiple fronts, despite reaching out to the victims of global nuclear holocaust, famine and plague on three other allied Earths. He had survivd numerous assassination attempts, but parts of his allegedly global dominion were now 'no go' areas for his troops. Even Overlord had baulked when he was hit by a large Kryptonite projectile and took months to recover, his abilities restricted in the wake of his unexpected ambush. Penthesilea was no longer Queen of Themiscrya, as an Amazon revolutionary army had overthrown their queen. But even the committed Amazon Queen could not bring herself to mount vengeance on her sisters. Richard Grayson was now Darkwing, as a successful assassination attempt had felled the first Darkwing on a visit to Gotham to oversee a Wayne Enterprises spaceforce contract. But Grayson had also paid a price, with his marriage to Barbara Gordon ended by his acquisition of the cowl. He had been forced to shoot her when she had been revealed as instrument in Operation Overthrow, the attack on Overlord.
And then Degaton overreached, attacking Earth 500, a world where the Justice Alliance of America defended its inhabitants with intellect, passion and determination. Against its members, Per Degaton's metahumans were no match. And thus, in a matter of minutes, the would-be multiversal tyrant fell from his throne, imprisoned in a green power-ringed bubble, and set drifting within the vastness of Bleedspace. His metahuman servitors were tried for their role in his war crimes. Overlord was sent into the Phantom Zone for eternity. Penthesilea was imprisoned by her sisters on Themiscyra and died several decades later. Richard Grayson was the sole occupant of a prison complex on Earth-948's moon and died halfway through the new century.
While Per Degaton may have outlived many of his alternate iterations, what he endured as a consequence was no real life forevermore.
THE END
