---Watchtower, cafeteria---
A week later
Before Barnes was a banquet befitting a king, a table filled with juicy towering burgers, steaming hot dogs, and golden salted fries, the breakfast of heart disease champions. Like light in a blackhole, this spread stood no chance of escape.
Amidst his act of supreme gluttony, Diana joined the Doom Slayers company, fitted with a far more demure breakfast of a Phyllo pastry, olive bread, and a mug of black coffee.
“Tell me, Barnes.” Wonder Woman asked, gazing upon the feral beast ripping into his prey of saturated fats and processed mystery meat. “Yeah?” he replied sheepishly through a mouth filled with a dense clump of protein, noticing Diana's rather concerned presence.
“I noticed over the radio chatter between you and Clark that your father had served as a marine?” Diana asked.
Swallowing the pile of food in his mouth, Barnes replies, “Yeah, in my family we are born into it. The service runs in our blood and will die in it. Service was just the most efficient way to satisfy that longing for death, along with protecting the innocent. Speaking of, you served in World War Two, right? Not as a paper pusher, though?” Barnes asks.
“I have been in several wars; I am no stranger to that same lust for action. I found my true love in the late nineties, private Steve Trevor; he’s a colonel now,” Diana uttered with a sense of longing.
“Nice to find a kindred spirit. I want to ask, when did this Earth's World War II end, and who won?” Barnes asks.
“The Allies won in 1945; why?” Wonder Woman answers, contemplating the bizarre question.
“On my dad's earth, it ended in 1946 with a Nazi victory; they conquered Earth, and it wasn’t until the late eighties that the resistance took back Earth. I was asking because of the lack of Reichsmarks,” Barnes said, making Diana's eyes go wide open, wondering how one of the most incompetent nations in history managed to win.
“Many innocents must’ve perished...” Diana said somberly, her thoughts slowly trailing off as she realised that the actions she took in this universe were futile to help Barnes’ universe.
“Yeah… When America gained the capability to fire nukes, they just unleashed the power of the A-bomb and sent Germany to hell and back.” Barnes says, also thinking about the innocents who died.
Wonder Woman scoffs at the last part, at how the U.S. could be so lax in using a weapon so powerful. She picks back up her trail of thought and fires off another question: “Another thing, I also heard your father was both a Marine and a Knight; what’s with that?”
"Well, first he got kicked out of the Marines for shooting his officer because he was ordered to shoot civilians. He was then put into the UAC as security, and when the demons invaded, he went through their portal and closed it off, leaving him trapped and, a few weeks later, in hell. He found another portal, which led him to Argent D'Nure, where he was enslaved, forced to fight his way up ranks, and it caught the attention of the species called the Maykrs, who are pretty much pseudo-angels who ended up dabbling in Hell's power. Anyway, one of them called the seraphim was the one who gave my dad his powers.” Barnes says this as he then gets cut off by Wonder Woman.
“I had gotten that part when Zatanna used the lasso on you when you first came here.” Diana smirks.
“Yeah… My dad was a very sad man for a long time because the demons killed his first wife, first son, pet rabbit, and blew up his earth. He didn’t find love for a long time until he met my mother,” Barnes explains, receiving a sympathetic look from Diana.
A long pause lingered between them as Diana was unsure how to cut through the uneasiness that lingered in the air. Like a knife through butter, Doomguy cut through the aura of unease with a sharp cough. "Well, that’s pretty much a summary of my dad's life; want to know mine?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard enough about your dad. I do want to know your origin story though.” Diana says, eager to depart from the topic.
He chuckles as he starts talking, “My mother raised me, but when I turned ten, I was taken by the Night Sentinels and was trained from the bottom up, just like how they trained my dad. They taught me how to box, grapple, shoot, and how to use a sword. It wasn’t until I was seventeen when my powers kicked in.” This surprises Diana, not knowing that Barnes only recently discovered his powers.
Diana thinks about her comrades' childhood, which was all too similar to that of a Spartan. She conjures up an image from the plenty of stories her mother told her, all too brutal to think about.
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“Tell me more about yourself, Diana. I know you're an Amazonian, and I want to know more about your society beyond the embellishment on the internet,” Doomguy asks.
Before Diana could reply, the public announcement system went off with Batman's voice at the helm, cutting the conversation short as he asked for Doomguy to head towards meeting room 2B.
Quickly using wet wipes, Doomguy wipes away the oils and sauces on his bare hands as he equips his gauntlets and gets up to leave.
“Let's talk more later, Diana,” Doomguy says as he puts his helmet back over his head, the visor reflecting Diana’s face back at her as he turns to leave. The rhythmic bang of his boots clashes against the hardwood floors as he makes pace to the meeting room. Doomguy approaches the door, putting his helmet between his arm and body, resting it on top of his hips. As he angles his face towards a small camera to the side of the door, a monotone beep is heard from the facial scanner, the door parts for him submerging into the wall, allowing him to enter.
Re-equipping his helmet as he enters, he can see Batman and what he would describe as an extremely overweight African-American woman wearing a purple suit with a skirt alongside Batman. They looked like they were locked in conversation before turning their attention over to him.
“What’s with the land whale?” Doomguy asks, chuckling as the door closes behind him.
“Great, he has a sense of humour." The black woman says, sarcasm laced into every word of the sentence, mumbling to herself as Batman takes the lead in greeting each other to one another.
“Doomguy, this is Amanda Waller. All you need to know is she has deep connections within the United States government and the CIA," Batman says as a hologram of a satellite view of an island appears in the middle of the room.
“Your new assignment is a little redemption on your fuckup in San Francisco; don’t act like we don’t know it’s your fault for bringing those ‘Hunters’ to a populated part of the city. Execute this mission exactly as you're going to be told; the CIA destroys all evidence, and you won’t need to go through endless court hearings.” Waller says, dominating the conversation immediately after opening it.
“So you want me to sneak onto Santa Prisca... Isn’t espionage sort of your thing, Batman?” Doomguy inquires. “What exactly do you have in mind? Stealth isn’t really my forte.” Doomguy follows up, questioning why he’s even involved with this briefing.
“I will get to that, but, during recent raids on remnants of Intergang done by Batman and special forces with some close inspection of their weapons and important documents, we think that they are being armed and funded by a nation called ‘Qurac’” Waller says, garnering a question from Doomguy.
“If you’re so certain they funded and armed the death of thirty thousand civilians, why don’t you send a couple of warships and bombard them too shit?” Doomguy asks.
“Honey, if we went to war with any of our enemies just based on our speculation, the world would have ended several times by now,” Waller retorts.
“But what we do know is that there is a large concentration of every single faction that the Justice League fights against, including the League of Assassins, Intergang, and Banes cartel. Your mission is to find proof that Qurac funded or armed the attacks across the US.” Waller says.
Doomguy scoffed at the easy façade of this whole mission. “So all I need to do is teleport in, find some documentation or files, then teleport out?”
“It’s not as easy as you’d want to think. We have reason to believe they are using teleportation jammers along with teleportation detectors that can identify the unique radiation signatures that portals emit. Instead, you’ll be on board a mini-submarine, which will bring you into this small cove in the north of the island." Waller says this as the map zooms in. “You will maintain complete radio silence with us and us with you, which means you’ll be on your own until the mission is done.”
“If they’ve had these the entire time, why haven’t they used them the whole time?” Doomguy, questioning the validity of the information that Walker has.
“We think that they have only recently developed the technology to do this; along with thermal imaging satellites and our own research into this shit, it seems like the power consumption and cooling for them to be able to do this is massive, so it hasn’t been rolled out into the field.” Walker stays silent as Doomguy prepares another question.
“Okay, you still haven’t answered my initial question, though. Why isn’t Batman going instead of me?” Doomguy raised his eyebrow while turning his head to the left, despite his helmet still covering his entire head.
“Because we have confirmed satellite imagery of the island and have a positive I.D. on at least four more of the Doom Hunters you fought back in San Francisco. We are not certain that there are only four of them on this base; we think that there might be even more than that. At least if you’re caught, you can run away or be able to fight back,” Waller said.
"You'll be dropped here," Waller continued, pointing to a secluded cove on the island's northern edge. "From there, you'll need to make your way to the central compound. We've identified several potential entry points, but each is heavily guarded. Stealth is paramount."
"Understood," Doomguy replied, his voice steady. "What's the extraction plan?"
"Once you have the evidence, you'll need to make your way back to the cove. The mini-sub will be waiting, but you'll only have a small window for extraction. If you miss it, you'll be on your own until we can arrange another pickup," Waller explained.
“Okay… What happens if I miss both extractions?” Doomguy asks, wanting to know if there was a contingency to the contingency.
“The plan is for you to get out, then we will use a nuclear strike to take out the island, so if you find yourself in a firefight with the entire island, just hope your armour can withstand half a megaton of TNT.” Waller nonchalantly blows off the consequences of a nuclear weapon on the Doomguy.
“Tch, so the Enclave wants me to get rid of remnants of the Brotherhood of Steel." Doomguy mumbles, referencing the similarities between Intergang and the Brotherhood of Steel faction from the Fallout series with their usage of power armour and fanaticism.
“What?” Waller asks, either not understanding the reference or mishearing Doomguy completely.
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” Doomguy says as he waves his hand around, disregarding what he had just said.
“Alright then, your mission starts in twelve hours,” Waller says as she walks onto a large pad, which then envelopes her body in a bright, white light as it teleports her to wherever she is needed.
“Ugh, so it seems I need to give Uncle Sam a new chew toy to play with,” Doomguy sighs to himself, being a courier for the U.S. government with his new mission.
He looks around for Batman to ask him for advice, but notices that he has completely disappeared. He exited the room long before Doomguy could have ever noticed.