C.1

[I highly recommend reading the prologue to understand what happened before this. If not, you might become a little confused. Anyways, it's just my advice.]

BANG!

As Max's lifeless body slowly fell to the ground, his soul had already gone somewhere else.

...

Gasp!

Max woke up in an unknown location. He briefly inspected where he was, and by the looks of it, he was in a dark alleyway.

'Is this hell?' He thought.

He still had all of his memories. To him, it was as if only a second had passed since he killed himself.

He got up from the ground and examined himself before everything else.

He still wore the same clothing he was the day before. A plain black t-shirt with some basketball shorts and skating shoes. This was his favorite outfit because it was very comfortable.

He quickly noticed that his blood-filled body was completely clean. Not one trace of Laurentino's blood was there.

He patted his pockets to see if his smartphone was with him, but unfortunately, it wasn't. He really only had his clothes and his body.

'If this is hell, this is way better than depicted in every piece of writing out there.'

He began walking out of the alleyway he had woken up in, still confused about what had led him here.

His footsteps were completely silent, a byproduct of his 13 years spent as part of The Black Hand.

Suddenly, a screen-like hologram appeared in front of him.

That startled him and he immediately entered a fighting position.

As the most accomplished assassin in the world, he not only was a master in the art of assassination but was also incredibly skilled in kickboxing.

A few seconds passed since this hologram appeared in front of him, but nothing had happened.

He slapped himself in the face to see if this was a hallucination, but it turns out it wasn't.

He then turned his head to the side, but the hologram maintained in his line of sight no matter what he did.

Max, filled with curiosity and confusion, grabbed a metal pipe that was near his feet and proceeded to try and touch this hologram with it.

It didn't work.

The metal pipe phased through the hologram as if it wasn't even there in the first place.

'It's really a hologram. Who did this to me? Am I in a simulation? Was I experimented on? I clearly remember dying, yet here I am, intact. Did the same thing happen to Julia and Nat?'

Finally, seeing that none of his experiments worked, he proceeded to touch the hologram with his finger, but this time he got a reaction from it.

It felt as if his finger was touching something solid, but he clearly remembered what happened to the metal pipe before, it simply phased through it.

After he touched the hologram, lines of text appeared on it.

*You are in the following world: Comics DC Flashpoint timeline.*

*Mission: Kill Thomas Wayne aka Batman and Martha Wayne aka Joker.*

*Choose one of the following to complete the mission:*

*All of Agent 47's abilities and knowledge (no risk of developing double-personality disorder).*

*Precognition.*

*Super Speed.*

'What? I'm in another world? I thought this was hell. Is this some kind of weird torture they use over here? Is my body just really in a weird machine that's torturing me by creating this false hope that I'm still alive? That's a very good method.' Max quickly thought.

He wasn't believing what this hologram told him in the slightest.

Although he had watched some cartoons and read some comics when he was a kid in the orphanage, he stopped as he grew older and realized that superheroes were merely works of fiction and that the real world was much more cruel than that.

However, even though he didn't believe this, some part of him desperately wanted this to be real and not be hell because it meant that Julia and Natalee suffered the same fate, which means they can reunite someday!

He was already prepared for hell because he believed himself to be a prime candidate for being there, but this doesn't seem like the hell he was thinking of.

'Maybe I'm overthinking things, but if this is actually hell and I'm stuck in a machine torturing me, I might as well enjoy this false hope they're giving me.'

His eyes went to the first option, the Agent 47 one, and his head was immediately filled with information about what abilities he was going to inherit if he clicked that option.

That helped him a lot since he had no idea about who this Agent 47 was.

'A master assassin, huh. I'm pretty confident in my assassination skills already, even after spending 8 years away from that life, that life still exists in me. Although a little rusty, my skills are still there. But, by the looks of it, Agent 47 is more skillful than me.'

Then he looked at the second option. This time no information entered his brain because he knew what Precognition meant.

The ability to predict or see future events and outcomes.

'That one is pretty amazing. But, there are downsides. My brain might not be able to handle all of the information that I predict and consequently will simply shut off for some time, paralyzing and incapacitating me. Or, if I use it too often, I could end up being trapped in the potential outcomes of things and end up lost in my visions. There's also the problem that Precognition might make my sentience obsolete since if I can perfectly see all the consequences of my actions, there's no need to mull over which course of action is "correct". I merely have to act. I wouldn't like that. I very much appreciate my sentience.'

Finally, he moved to the last one. This one was also incredibly self-explanatory.

Super Speed, the power to move at, you guessed it, super speeds.

'That's also pretty good. However, it's the same thing as Precognition. There are always some limitations. Don't even get me started on the physical consequences of moving at super speeds. With Super Speed comes other supers, like super exhaustion, super damage to my body, super pressure on my joints, super injuries, and a super difficulty to breath while moving at super speeds. I'd also need some sort of super senses with this power because if I can't even see where I'm running to, this power would be useless and very dangerous for my own body and health. If I had some sort of protective aura against all of these, I'd naturally pick this one. However, there doesn't seem to be.'

Max was faced with a tough choice now.

He still hadn't discarded Agent 47's abilities because any increase to his own abilities as an assassin was useful, but the other 2 were also very enticing.

Seeing that his mission was to kill Batman and the Joker, he understood that he was going to have to back to his former life as an assassin. Spend days or weeks simply on planning alone, finding the precise day to act, do surveillance to find the perfect spot for the assassination, do meticulous background research on the target, and the most important of all, pulling the trigger on someone.

Although he hadn't read or seen comics or cartoons in years, he still remembered that Batman was probably one of the most metal humans in fiction. Give the guy some prep time and he can bring the demise of an entire civilization if needed.

The Joker wasn't much of a problem since he wasn't nearly as smart, meticulous, or crafty as Batman. Even if he was, Batman is the fucking Batman.

'This is going to be a tough mission, fitting of hell.'

He thought about what option to choose for half an hour. This wasn't an easy choice for him.

In the end, what he discarded were Precognition and Super Speed as he was worried about his own health. Since he didn't have anything telling him that he'd have a way to eliminate the downsides, he chose not to take the risk.

He chose Agent 47's abilities and knowledge.