42 Chapter 42 - Revolution

Millions of protesters were out, flooding Moscow's streets and boulevards. Though to call them mere protesters would not do them justice. It was not a simple protest; it was a violent riot. The effects of Satan 3's detonation were felt in over half of the European continent... but the ones that suffered the most in its aftermath was none other than the Russians themselves. Of the eleven nuclear power plants that had exploded, 5 belonged to Russia. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died or contracted terminal illnesses in the aftermath.

Russians were strong people. They were used to bear with hardships and cruel regimes. They were used to endure. But everyone has a limit. And with the unjust death of so many of them in such a short time, they could no longer remain silent.

Only 4 days after the nuclear missile's launch, the fortress of Kremlin was cut off from the rest of the world - now, millions of people were surrounding it from all sides. It was only the military's heavy artillery guarding Kremlin's walls and the river that surrounded it that kept the enraged population from burning it to the ground. It was a revolution. Except for Kremlin, the government's buildings were vandalized or even demolished all across the Russian Federation and all the politicians that managed to preserve their lives escaped outside the country.

Had it been just an ordinary revolution, the government would have used the military against the population without a second thought. It wouldn't be the first time. It was no secret how many innocents were brutally killed during the Communist Regime. It was estimated for more than 60 million people to have been killed behind the Iron Curtain during the Communist period. But this time around, the situation was completely different. Satan 3's detonation caused an outcry on an international scale. Tens of millions of people protested everywhere in Europe, USA and Eastern Asia. Satan 3 was not a weapon that humans should possess. Everyone feared for their future. For a while, the mass destruction and death that this weapon had caused despite having been launched in a remote location on the globe, made everyone forget all about their race, nationality or religion. When faced with the possibility that they could all be killed at the same time one day if a new World War were to start, as one, tens of millions of people cried out for actions to be taken.

The USA's and the EU's governments were not blind to what was happening nor were they deaf to the masses of people's demands. During the Summit that took place at Berlin 2 days after the missile's launch, USA and the European Union openly declared that should Russia use the military to slaughter the population, they would invade the country with their full strength. And if a nuclear war was to start, Russia was assured to go out first. Because despite their strength, it was in the end only 1 country against the rest of the world. They would be razed off the map. Besides, not everyone in the government was a psychopath. Among the men in power, there were also persons that actually cared about their people... Obviously, the government was not going to use a nuclear weapon anytime soon. Alexander Makarov himself had been taken down from his position and now, the government was like a herd of sheep with no actual, strong leadership. And that was the reason for the current situation: the Russian Federation's capital was completely frozen. Over 6 million people were surrounding the Kremlin screaming and shouting in rage. It looked like an ocean of people was assaulting a barely withstanding fortress. It was only a matter of time before the government's fall.

From atop one of the towers overlooking Kremlin fortress' walls, someone began to shout using a very high tech megaphone. But no device could possibly cover the enraged voices of 6 million people screaming at the same time. It was only, after a few good minutes, that the crowd noticed the person from the tower trying to speak to them and quieted down just enough for his voice to be heard.

[WHY ARE YOU ALL HERE? WHAT IS THAT YOU WANT?]

It was a spokesman of the government, sent to attempt the start of a negotiation with the masses.

Why were they all there? After everything the government did, they had the courage to ask such a question? - it was the thought running through everyone's mind. If they were angry before, the man asking that question was like pouring gasoline on a fire. It became a raging inferno.

But it was in that very moment, just a second before the crowd could erupt, that a surprisingly powerful scream shook the air:

[MAKAROV'S HEAD WE WANT!]

It was as though a volcano's eruption. In the heat of the moment, as one, the 6 million people began to roar at the same time:

[MAKAROV'S HEAD!]

[MAKAROV'S HEAD!]

[MAKAROV'S HEAD!]

Caught in the moment, nobody noticed that the man that had screamed for the first time had had a foreign accent - that he was not a Russian native. And nobody noticed how said man suddenly disappeared, as though he had teleported away.

'It's time for the 2nd phase.' the man spoke into his wireless transmitter, this time in English. 'Take out their artillery. I'll bring down the fortress' walls.'

'Got it.' a woman's voice came from his earpiece.

Six different men appeared next to the walls of Kremlin, spread to all of its sides. At the same time, they all cocked their right arm back. Then, a deafening series of booms resounded and the massive walls of the fortress were blown to pieces. No special ability, no fancy moves - brute strength alone.

What followed next was a stampede. Like the unstoppable force of an enormous tsunami, the rioters invaded the Kremlin, trampling everyone under their feet.

That day marked the fall of the Russian Federation's government.

Scene Break

On a very large screen, the events that transpired in Moscow were being played. Besides the tens of helicopters with reporters from various media channels from all over the Globe, there were also countless other drones recording the events.

'That's terrifying.' a red-costumed man whispered.

The other occupants of the room did not say anything but they fully agreed with his words. Watching a crowd of over 6 million enraged people unleashing their fury was nothing short of terrifying. Even the usually confident Superman and the composed Wonder Woman and Green Lantern were silent, watching the scene enraptured.

All of a sudden, when the sound of a series of explosions was heard, the Justice League members all jumped up their feet. Batman rushed to the keyboard and his fingers blurred as he began to type on it. The image was zoomed and replayed in a separate window in the corner of the screen so they could see better how the walls of the Kremlin had been brought down.

'Metahumans got himself involved!' Green Lantern exclaimed.

But they couldn't discern any of those men's physical features except for the fact that they all seemed to be tall and very well built. Except for that, nothing else. They were all dressed in thick clothes to protect themselves from the cold as it was natural to do during a winter night in Russia. They all wore Russian winter hats and thick woollen scarfs were covering the bottom half of their face. Furthermore, they seemed to have not used any special ability - it looked like they demolished the walls with brute strength alone.

'Hold on! Can you play the image of the 6 men destroying the walls in parallel?' Superman asked.

Batman nodded and the screen was split into 6 sections. Then, he played the 6 videos at the same time.

'Do you all see what I'm seeing?'

When the videos were played simultaneously, the others finally noticed what Superman had picked on before them: that the 6 men had used the same movement, at the very same time, to destroy the walls.

'It's like they were robots...or clones.' the Flash muttered to himself, before he slapped his forehead, loudly.

'Clones! That's it! Who's the only person we know that can make copies of himself?'

The Flash was the first to realize it because he had also been the first to have suffered because of that technique when the clone he had punched exploded in his face and left him with 2nd and 3rd degree burns all over his body.

'They don't look alike-' someone began to say only for Flash to cut them off:

'How can you be sure? They are dressed in thick clothes and nothing of their physical appearance can be disclosed!'

The others were silent for a moment, surprised at how vehement was Flash about it. The speedster was not one to act like that usually. He rarely involved himself so seriously in 'grown-up' talk; he was usually just joking and flirting around with any woman that happened to be around him. The situation on hand, however, was way too grave for even the light-hearted superhero to be joking around.

'Even if the points you make are valid, it's impossible to be him.' Green Lantern said and shook his head.

Neither of them spoke his name but everyone else knew whom they were talking about. Four days have passed since they all narrowly brushed past death - four days since they heard nothing from Uzumaki Naruto, Supergirl's clone or Uzumaki Naruto's demonic beast. And from what Batman gathered from speaking with Barbara Gordon, she and Uzumaki Misaki also did not know anything about his whereabouts except that he had told Misaki previously to not worry if he were to not come back home for a few days.

'Doctor Fate did not teleport them with us... nobody could possibly survive that. That nuclear missile was beyond anything mankind has ever created. It reshaped the geography of the land.' Green Lantern said grimly.

The Flash did not continue to support his point of view but inwardly, he knew it. His instinct was telling him that it wasn't the last they heard of him.

'Green Lantern has made a valid point. Besides, we know very little about the Russian Federation's metahumans. It could very well be someone that has this ability. Furthermore, we don't even have a proof that those 6 men were only clones and not real humans.' Batman said.

Green Arrow, who had been silent until then, couldn't help scoffing:

'Real humans? Tell me, what human can blow up a fortress' walls with a casual punch? Mind you, fortress walls that reach to over 30 feet in height and over 12 feet in thick?'

The rest fell silent at that statement. Ever since the metahumans appeared, the ordinary people fell behind in nearly all the aspects. Be it strength, vitality and even intelligence, there was always a metahuman that could achieve better results than an ordinary human. And, especially in the last 20 years, when the number of metahumans appeared to have grown significantly, not few were the ones that were scared.

Green Arrow was inwardly terrified as well. When the Justice League got wind of the USA government's Project Cadmus, Green Arrow was one of the few superheroes that actually dared to admit it to the other members' faces that he didn't think that that project was a bad idea, that it brought a sense of safety and security for the ordinary people, knowing that there was an organisation would keep in check other metahumans. But, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on which side one looked), Project Cadmus was destroyed before it even had the chance to come out in public. This top-secret organisation signed its demise certificate the moment Lex Luthor had tried to manipulate Uzumaki Naruto and blackmail him with the life of his sister.

It was during that moment of silence that Batman received a call.

'Master Bruce?'

'Yes, Alfred. Did anything happen?'

'That it has. You'd probably want to check out the local news channel of Metropolis City...or any other news channel for that matter. It's being broadcasted everywhere.' the butler said and Batman ended the call.

Turning his attention back to the screen, he accessed one of the local news channels of Superman's city.

'...and one of the highest ranked government officials was found dead 8 hours ago in the hotel room she had booked in one of the hotels located in the central area of Metropolis City. Josh Cooper at the scene will come up with more details about the incident.'

The image changed, showing a reporter in his late 30s.

'Amanda Blake Waller was found dead 8 hours ago in her living room when one of the hotel's employees came to check the minibar. Her death was not natural and the criminalists confirmed that it was a murder. And a rather brutal one at that. I have seen the body but the footage cannot be shown to the public. It's too gruesome.'

'Her body showed signs of severe physical trauma but the cause of her death appears to be the two wounds in her head. The criminalists are the firmly convinced that a metahuman was involved given the special nature of the wounds...'

Batman closed the news report transmission and immediately accessed the files of the investigation concerning her death from Metropolis City's Police Department's database. When a photo of Amanda Waller's corpse appeared on the large screen, there was nobody amongst the Justice League members that did not understand what had caused her death: in the place where her eyes should have been, there were two black, charred holes that protruded all the way through the back of her skull.

'That's a wound only a Kryptonian's heat beams could cause.' Batman said categorically and looked at Superman.

From what they knew, there were only 2 Kryptonians left alive: Superman and his cousin, Supergirl. But nobody even thought about suspecting any of them for being responsible for such a gruesome act. Superman was the type that would rather sacrifice himself instead of killing someone and Supergirl, despite being not a restrained as her cousin, was just a teenager. A teenage girl with a bubbly personality. There was no way she would be capable of murdering someone in cold blood.

'I knew they were still alive!' the Flash said. 'At the very least, Supergirl's clone has to be alive. This looks just like what an evil Kryptonian clone on steroids would be capable of doing.'

Scene Break

Themyscira - a realm known as the Amazons' heaven. Its beauty and splendour were enough for one to think of it as of the mythical Garden of Eden. It was a Paradise. However, deeply buried within the confines of the island lay a secret very few except for the Amazons and their gods knew of. It was proof of their past, a large black stain in their history. It was a reminder of their loss at the men's lies and their cruelty.

Beneath the Island of Paradise, lay its polar opposite - the Doom's Doorway, the Gates of Tartarus. The Amazons' eternal punishment was to guard it even at the price of their lives. Because imprisoned there was not only the God of War of himself, the Amazons' archenemy but also the man that the Amazon hated the most - Heracles, the God of Strength - for raping their queen, enslaving the rest of the Amazons and selling them like cattle.

But with the help of Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, the Amazons freed themselves. Despite their promise to the goddess to not kill their captors, when the Amazons rebelled, they enacted a fierce vengeance against the men that tricked them by taking advantage of their hospitality. The Amazons had slaughtered them all and, empowered by Hera's blessing too, they managed in the end to corner the two gods that had put them through all their suffering - Ares and Heracles. Hippolyta, the Amazons' queen was just about to deliver Ares the finishing blow and kill him when none other than the King of Gods, Zeus, intervened.

Despite the Amazons' outrage and thirst for vengeance, Zeus did not want to see his two sons being killed. However, he was not completely blind to their deeds either. Ares was bound with a pair of bracelets that rendered him a mere mortal and then imprisoned in the Tartarus.

As for Hercules, for his heinous act of raping Hippolyta and enslaving the Amazons, he was punished more severely: he was transformed into one of the 2 pillars of the Gates of Tartarus. For the next thousands of years, he was cursed to suffer under the torment of the abyss' creatures, feeling the pain but being unable to retaliate.

Not long ago, the Justice League's core members have become privy of some of these secrets as well after a very powerful sorcerer named Faust opened the Gates of Tartarus. Through sheer luck alone, the Justice League managed to thwart Faust's plans and stop Hades from escaping. But in the process, the Key to the Doom's Doorway was destroyed. They thought that from then on, the Gates would remain closed forever. So many things happened since that moment that some of them have almost forgotten about the incident altogether. It was just a distant memory. Little did they know what an enormous effect the current global unrest, fear and discord will have on the not so far future. Little did they know that, after making a deal with his uncle, Hades, Ares managed to get rid of the bracelets that were sealing off his divinity.