[Western Crossover] City of the Red Death

When I was born, blessings came to me.

When I was born again, madness came to me.

On Ira Samael Smith's birthday, Metropolis was destroyed.

His father, a Green Lantern who had traveled all the way back to Earth from Sector 2768, held a small birthday party for him at school. Surrounded by his classmates, Ira made a wish. As he blew out the candles, the nuclear bomb planted by the Joker reduced Metropolis to rubble.

His father used his life and his power ring to raise a final shield. It saved them, but they were buried beneath the dust. Radiation outside and the sealed entrances kept them from taking a single step beyond the school building. Still, everyone believed the Justice League would surely rescue them, just like every other time, just like every disaster before.

But no one came. No one set foot in Metropolis.

Their food and water ran out. They fought and devoured one another to survive, until at last Ira was the only one left alive. He climbed out of the ruins with the power ring, only to see blue skies and white clouds, and planes flying across the heavens. The voices of superheroes arguing rang out across the world. Batman and Superman were fighting over whether superheroes should kill the Joker. No one had wondered whether Metropolis might have even one other survivor...

No one came to save them.

Ira had once wanted to be a better person. He was gentle and forgiving, and constantly fought against the chaotic thoughts in his head. But he realized no one cared what he said. Even the heroes of old were fighting, and even killing, over their own positions.

So Ira decided to give everything its due.

Scalding blood, crimson rage,

Taken from the corpses, still warm.

Great hatred boils in my heart,

And for you, I forge a road to the underworld!

Intelligent life-form identified.

Ira Smith, from Sector 2814.

Your heart roils with boundless fury.

You belong to the Red Lantern Corps.

Ira Samael Smith was an orphan of the sort found everywhere in Gotham.

His parents took a job with Wayne Enterprises, working on urban planning and design for Gotham. But on their very first day in the city, they were in a car accident. His parents died in the hospital, and the organization called the Court of Owls took him away, remaking and training him to become a Talon.

Talons must be loyal to the Court of Owls. They are combat tools without a will of their own. Yet, in his dormant dreams, Ira could visit another world, where his parents had not died in Gotham and he lived happily with his family. That other world was once his hope, the reason he still held on to his humanity through the brutal training.

But on his birthday, even that happy dream finally shattered.

He was left with nothing... or so he thought.

The turning point came with a mission assigned by the Court of Owls. He was ordered to assassinate a tights-wearing weirdo who had recently appeared. Assassinating the Bat-Weirdo was incredibly difficult for him, but Ira had no reason to refuse. He could only go.

...Why is this bat flying through the sky? What kind of bat are you?

Then Ira was bundled up and taken away, and ended up becoming a superhero's trusty sidekick.

To Ira, none of it was real. It was all an illusion. But even in this dream, he would forge his own path and find the meaning of life behind the heroes.

Reader Advisory:

1. Ira is a beautiful, strong, and tragic character with a genuinely good personality, a good kid driven mad by circumstance. But he's not the kind of beautiful, strong, and tragic character who's easy to dom. You could say he's an exceptionally handsome and formidable top, maybe (?!)

2. Takes a little inspiration from Dao Gui (the madness and confusion, though I may not be able to capture the same feel).

3. There will definitely be a lot of OOC characterization. Read with caution!

4. This story is actually a crossover of Injustice, Flashpoint, and Earth-3, with three worlds in total. Mentioning this as a potential trigger. If it's not a dealbreaker, you can forget Earth-3 is involved and treat it as a very simple bit of foreshadowing (?)

5. The story may not be very kind to superheroes. It is Injustice, after all. The Injustice story here will draw more from the comics than the game, since the comics have more content and detail. Also, the comics have plenty of superheroes saying awful things and behaving badly. Some of the more extreme lines are quoted directly from the comics, and will be noted in the author's comments. If you really can't handle this, don't click in. It'll be better for everyone.

6. It really is tragic. Everyone suffers (in the Injustice world), but in the Flashpoint world you can see the socially anxious shell of Almond Batman, which is, in a way, a safe haven.

7. Not lighthearted or funny at all.

8. No CP in the main story. After it ends, I may write a separate book of CP bonus chapters about Ira as an adult. The CP is Flashpoint Superman.

Theme: Creating a happy life takes effort from everyone