//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: Equestria's Reckoning 
// by suijin228 
//------------------------------//


Equestria's Reckoning
Chapter 1


Pain.

Not the pain one feels from a cut or a broken bone; a lifelong pain. One that I have felt since I was first cast down into the darkness.

Since I was born, I was in pain. Emotional from the loss of my mother, physical from the pain I received in the hellhole that was called a prison, spiritual as God watched down on my and left me to suffer. I was alone, I was nothing but a bane to others existences as long as I continued to live.

It wasn't long before I was called that; Bane. A single word just about summed up my existence. I was hated and despised in that prison, and eventually I fell into the darkness. It took years, but eventually darkness made its mark on me. And as the years went on, I came to realize a few things.

I was born in darkness, raised by it, and molded by it. Where others feared the darkness, I relished in it. Darkness was my closest friend, it was my greatest ally.

Yet I couldn't allow others to be one with it.

Darkness may have made me who I was, but I would never wish my pain upon a child.

When Talia was born, the prison was abuzz, talk of rape and torture plagues everyone's mind for days. When Talia's mother was taken, I raised her. Not with the darkness whom I was closest with, but in the light, someone I'd believed to be an enemy.

I raised her up to see the sky as the limit, protecting her as best I could. And when the time came, I let her go. I suffered horrendous wounds that even the quack of a doctor couldn't fix, but I would gladly take them any day for the chance to save her.

A week later the soldiers came, and I took my first steps out into the light.

The light was unfamiliar, blinding even. I would have wandered around for years, knowing not where my purpose lay had it not been for Ra's, Talia's biological father. He showed me that with every light, there lay shadows. Shadows I grew to find as extensions of my familiar darkness.

The darkness rose me through the shadows, and when the time came to leave the shadows, I was ready.

I left, trained in true darkness, and when the darkness choose to have Ra's leave their presence, I moved forward. I was the darkness' child, I was the only one truly fit to lead the shadows. With this I could have lived a powerful life, a life with no one to try to oppose me. But I left that behind to venture out into the light with Talia, to try to spread darkness to Gotham.

It was those faithful events that happened in that city that brought me to my current situation. Mr. Wayne and Ms. Kyle, Mr. Wayne was easy to follow, he was a shining beacon in the darkness; yet he could move through the shadows as easy as I. He truly was a dark knight.

Ms. Kyle was another story. Lying, deceit, murder, thievery. She was a true child of darkness and showed promise. Yet she had hopes of living in the light, willing to do anything to achieve it; even willing to fire a small missal at me while my back was turned.

That was how I found myself in this curious situation.

Talia had the plan and the drive to go after Mr. Wayne while I was just the muscle and the face of the organization that Mr. Wayne trained under before killing Ra's. It took nine years of planning, beginning immediately after his death, but Ra's' plan would become a reality. Gotham would be burned to the ground, and the earth salted.

But as the plan moved forward, I noticed Talia change. Where she once disliked her father for banishing me, saying that she was only following her father’s plan to destroy Gotham so that she could kill the Mr. Wayne, she she seemed to become more and more fanatic as time went by.

At times, I would see her talking to herself, as if she was talking to the ghost of her father. At those times, I felt small traces of worry. Ra's always spoke of immortality, but he never explained how it was that he achieved it.

These ghost conversations, as I began to call them, began to become more frequent, as Talia transformed. The original plan was to install fear and pandemonium into Gotham, through which we would rise up and control it through the league before releasing deadly gas and poison into the air and water supply, much like how Gotham had already been dealt with. Soon that changed to blowing up the city and escaping, a plan that I was OK with at the time of it coming from Talia's mouth.

But as the 'ghost talks' continued and I worried more and more about the stability of Talia's mind, she proposed one final plan; The destruction of Gotham, through the use of a self made atomic bomb.

While the planning of such an idea was similar to Talia, I could only see madness in her eyes. The end result of the planning was everyone, including the league of shadows, being destroyed in the blast.

I wanted to yell, I wanted to plead, I wanted to know if this was even the Talia I knew. I loved her as a daughter once, and to her I was more of a father than Ra's, but with this plan didn't end with us sinking together in the darkness. This plan ended in a blinding bang, and it would be the last.

But I couldn't say no.

As much as I wanted to stop her from doing this crazy plan, I saw that little girl that I raised so many years ago who I promised I would look after forever. I kidnapped the doctor, I ruined Mr. Wayne's life, I handed Talia the key to a possible atomic bomb, and I Broke the batman, and always hoping that Talia would come to her senses and change the ending of our story.

But she never did.

In those six months, I had only fleeting contact with her, and when I did get into contact, she spoke only of fulfilling her father’s dream. As she left to finish off her plan, I fully prepared myself for death.

What I didn't expect was for it to happen so soon. One moment I was ending Mr. Wayne's life, and the next I was shot halfway across the room. In the several times I spun uncontrollably, I saw Ms. Kyle on Mr. Wayne's bat cycle, a devious smirk on her face. I felt myself fade out of consciousness several times, knowing that it was only my heavily plated steel and Kevlar vest that kept me from instantly dying from being hit by what was essentially a miniature missile. 

This leads me to my current situation.

I felt weightless, as if I was floating in an abyss. Long ago I'd lost feeling in my feet, yet the feeling in my legs remained. Pain was flowing through my body making me to believe some sort of spinal injury had taken feeling from my feet. I believed I would just float on into oblivion when I felt something grab me and pull me out of my weightless abyss. With that, I heard a voice ring out before unconsciousness claim me once more.

"Well well well, look what Trixie has found."

Chapter End.

A.N. Hey everyone, Suijin228 here with my try at a Bane fic. I made this because, frankly, I'm surprised I haven't seen a mainstream Bane fic come out. This is my hope at creating a wave of Bane fics by inspiring authors and setting the bar. I realize my writing isn't the best, so if anyone can do better and wants to take their shot, go right ahead. Keep goin and stay golden^^