[Recognized: Attano - B07]
I stepped back into the Cave and immediately wished I hadn't. The overhead lights hardly mattered — Diana's aura filled the room the way a thunderhead fills the sky. She had me by the collar before I could so much as clear my throat, pulling me close so her voice dropped to a dangerous, intimate growl.
"DANTE!" Her eyes were steel. "What have you done?"
I couldn't meet her gaze. Not because I was ashamed — God, no — but because looking at that particular kind of disappointment was worse than any interrogation. I let my eyes drift to the floor, anything that wasn't those steady, royal eyes.
"Sorry, Diana," I said, the word tasting like metal. "But I had no choice. Ivo was building something that could copy the Justice League. Especially me. If he finished—if AMAZO learned "that" ability—You get extinct in real time."
She let out a long breath that was half-sigh, half-suppressed hurricane. "There is always another way, Dante."
"Maybe," I said, shrugging as if a shrug could fold a dying man back together. "Maybe there would have been if we had six more hours and a crate of sedatives and Batman wasn't making us split trucks into a stupid treasure hunt. But we didn't. So I did what had to be done."
"You killed him." The way she said it was not a question.
"Yes." Short, flat. That was the word I used to describe it: yes. No theatrics. No guilt-laced pretense. Ivo was dead because I decided he would be. No one asked whether he deserved it — because the world is not some morality play with an audience to give standing ovations — but they would have to answer what would happen if AMAZO learned [Bend Time]. That answer smelled like extinction.
News had already bled back through the Cave. The Young Team had found Ivo's body — bloodied, final — not the graceful end of a villain in storybooks but the ugly payoff of real violence. AMAZO's parts were supposedly en route to STAR Labs — or were, until I'd destroy it piece by piece to prevent anyone could recover it—quiet, clinical, the sort of bureaucratic tombs that make things inconvenient to resurrect.
She squeezed my collar as if she could squeeze an explanation out of me. "You do understand the gravity, Dante. This is not your decision to make. The League — we — cannot operate on unilateral executions. There are protocols."
I let my face be a half-snarl. "Protocols are nice for meetings and press conferences. They don't stop a machine that learns. You know what Ivo was building: a contagion. His corpse would still have the recordings, the blueprints… leave that head on a truck and someone smarter than him — or someone with resources — pieces it together. Then what? 'Sorry, the android learned my ability and used it on the Justice League while it took a sabbatical'? Cute."
She released me finally, the fight leaving her hands but not her posture. "The League already knows and they are not pleased. Especially Batman"
If Batman's displeasure was a measurable force, the cave would have already collapsed into rubble. I felt it before I saw him: a shadow folding like a storm front, surgical and cold, swallowing the heat out of the room.
He was there before his cape finished settling. He was always there when the world tilted too far. He looked at me like a judge looks at someone about to be sentenced — not yet passed, but the scales already tipping.
"Dante." His voice was nothing like Diana's growl. It was tight, small, and went straight for the thing inside you you tried to hide from everyone, including yourself. "Explain."
I could have said a hundred things. I could have lied and draped it in honor and strategy. Instead I kept it small, honest in the way criminals are honest when there's no pleading left. "I found Ivo. He had AMAZO half-rebuilt. I timed him with [BLINK], made the wipes on his monkey-guard real quiet, and I killed him. And destroy the upper body of AMAZO to prevent anyone — Ivo, Ivo's apprentices, whoever — from copying my power into a sentinel."
Batman's mask didn't move. His eyes, though — they were knives: cold, sharp, patient. "You were on probation. You were explicitly forbidden from participating in this operation. You resigned, then left the Cave without coordination. You killed a scientist and this is..."
"Necessary." I interrupted. My voice was calmer than I felt. Half-lies come cheap; conviction is the costly currency. "You were sending kids to guard pieces of a thing that can become god. I did a thing you couldn't stomach. You hate that I did the messy part." The grin I gave him had no joy. "You can have the lecture, Bats. You can have the legal tango. Or... you can be pragmatic. Amazo's upper parts have been destroy. Not in a truck. Not in a lab. Understood?"
He stepped closer, and the air grew colder. He smelled like ozone and midnight. If his voice had been a blade earlier, now it was a scalpel. "You are not the League's executioner. We have rules because—"
"—because we like pretending we are better than the monsters," I finished for him. "Yeah. I know. I read your speeches. I climb into your mythology. But when a machine can learn to copy my grand, little tricks and weaponize them against you — your rules become a countdown to bullets." I tried to temper it with a shrug, but my hands trembled a little anyway. Rage and adrenaline are shitty stabilizers.
"By the way, I am going to resign and quit the team," I added, crisp as a knife. "But I already figured you're not going to let me be — a killer out in the open without supervision."
Diana eyes wide. "Dante!"
I looked at her. "Yes, Diana. I know. You work so hard to keep me from bloodying my hands even more, and I will always be grateful. But this… this is not where I belong." The words were softer than my grin, and for a second it felt almost like truth.
My gaze snapped back to Batman. "You aren't going to let me walk off and become a one-man reaper with no oversight. So I'll propose an alternative. One that benefits both of us."
Batman's eyes narrowed. "Speak."
"I could still be part of the League's black ops capability," I said, voice even, persuasive in the way someone selling a dangerous drug pitches the antidote. "But only in an alternative division — independent, compartmentalized. No League press releases. No public oversight. You and the League and their protégés keep your hands clean and your reputations intact."
I watched him soften fractionally at the word reputation — the tilt of his jaw told me more than a speech ever could.
"While I do the dirty work," I continued, leaning forward like a man offering a business deal, "I target and eliminate the people you can't. War criminals with plausible deniability. Cartel heads who live behind corporations. Scientists building toys like AMAZO who think ethics is a footnote. I reduce the number of monsters who graduate into the rogues' gallery. I make your job easier."
I let the silence taste for a beat, then tossed the part I knew would make them flinch. "I am not evil. Okay, the evil part is the killing. But my objective is simple: safer streets, fewer children sold, less rot. Also — practical mitigation: I have an ability called [Shadow Kill]. Whatever I do leaves no corpse. No body to raise questions, no DNA trail, no trophy for a shadier puppet to steal."
Diana's breath hitched. Her hands tightened reflexively at her sides. The phrase landed like a stone in a quiet pond; the ripples were immediate.
"And if you think me being alone is risky," I added, leaning back and letting the persuasion complete itself, "appoint someone to watch me. An Amazonian warrior, perhaps. Someone with the strength and discipline to keep me accountable, who understands the calculus of justice without choking on the mess. If she thinks this is a good idea, it's much easier to stomach."
The room stilled. I could see their brains working — the gears grinding like a clock about to break.
Batman's voice was low as gravel. "You're essentially asking for a sanctioned assassination program — a black-ops death squad under the League's banner."
"Not under the banner," I corrected smoothly. "Under the radar. Contained, documented—technically deniable. You get plausible deniability and results. I get the legal cover to keep doing what I'm already doing, just with less paperwork and more ammo." I shrugged. "Win-win."
Wonder Woman's expression hardened. "You do not get to decide who lives or dies because you can. You are asking us to bless murder with a signature and call it protection. That is monstrous, Dante."
"You're being dramatic," I said, because someone had to be the voice of cold practicality. "You'd all rather we tie our hands and wait for the next humanoid plague to learn our moves. I did the job when your plan left holes big enough to drive a truck through. If there was ever a time to consider unconventional options, it was when an android can become a god by auditioning our powers."
She stepped forward, head held high — an Amazon cutting through argument with moral weight. "There is always a better way. You are not a tool to be licensed for murder. The League protects people because we stand for life. You are asking us to betray that oath."
Batman's eyes didn't move from me, but his hands tightened just under his cuffs. He weighed the words, the options, the risk. Politics wasn't a thing we admitted to at the kitchen table, but it sat there like a cold guest.
"Diana is right," he said finally, careful. "We cannot sanction murder. We cannot institutionalize what you've done — even if you claim it was necessary."
I let a thin laugh escape—black, humorless. "Then suspend me. Arrest me. I didn't come here for a medal. I came here with a solution. You want to make examples of me for the children? Fine. But make no mistake: remove me from the field and that contagion I stopped… it will live on in circuits and blueprints. It will be reborn by someone less recognizable than Ivo. The League will have to fight a smarter, faster AMAZO. You'll write reports while the world dies."
Batman's jaw worked. He hated ultimatums — hated them for the way they forced choices into moral corners — but he also hated losing options. He'd just had one of his options taken and brutalized by my hands.
Wonder Woman's voice softened, but didn't bend. "This is not about making the League comfortable, Dante. This is about who we are. There are ways to deal with threats that do not make us perpetrators."
Her conviction had the power to rally armies. For a second, the cave felt like an Amazon assembly. I respected her for that. I also considered her naive. Respect and contempt are occasionally roommates.
"Fine," I said, letting my voice slice through the Cave's silence. "I'll give you two options. Simple. Clean. And I'll even give you time to deliberate."
Their attention locked on me — Batman, rigid as stone; Wonder Woman, fire simmering in her eyes. Good. The stage was mine.
"One," I raised a finger, deliberate, precise. "You accept my proposal. I do what you won't. I kill the bastards who thrive in the blind spots of your justice — and no corpse is ever left behind. You assign me an Amazonian companion if it soothes your conscience. Someone who can keep up with me, someone who can say they tried to hold the leash." My lips curved into something sharp. "That way, you get your oversight, and I still get results."
I let the pause stretch before I raised a second finger.
"Option Two: I will completely resign as a hero and vigilante. I will stop killing villains, never again use my powers to proactively protect or save lives, and I will leave a normal human life. I will gladly surrender myself for the crimes I have committed."
"I'll give you both until tomorrow."