Saga Legion Of Doom

Once upon a time, a brilliant and dangerous man named Lex Luthor decided to gather the most fearsome villains in the entire world into one secret alliance. He called it the Legion of Doom, and he sent a personal invitation to Black Manta, promising a prize so enormous that even Manta, who preferred to work alone, found himself tempted.

The plan was bold, even by Luthor's standards. A coordinated strike on Fort Knox, the most heavily guarded treasury on the surface world, and on Atlantis itself, both at the very same hour, splitting the attention of the Justice League across land and sea at the exact same moment.

Manta had never worked well with others. He preferred the quiet certainty of a plan he controlled entirely by himself. But the chance to strike at Atlantis while its greatest defenders were busy elsewhere in the world? That particular temptation proved simply too strong to resist.

Manta agreed to lead the underwater half of the operation, guiding a squad of Legion divers toward the royal treasury of Poseidonis while Luthor's own forces struck the surface world far above. And for a while, remarkably, everything went according to plan. Atlantean guards, stretched thin trying to respond to strange reports of trouble across the surface, simply could not hold every corridor at once. Manta's eye-beams cleared one vault door after another, and crates of ancient gold began stacking neatly inside the Legion's waiting transport.

Then something changed.

Aquaman returned early, having sensed that something was deeply wrong the very moment reports of strange activity near Fort Knox reached his ears. He did not hesitate. He gathered Mera and Aqualad, and together the three of them raced back toward Poseidonis as fast as the current would carry them.

The moment they arrived at the treasury, the entire tide of the battle turned.

Mera sealed the flooded corridors with towering walls of hardened water, trapping half the Legion's divers in place before they even realized what was happening. Aqualad, remembering every single lesson from that long-ago chase through the kelp forest, seemed to anticipate Manta's every movement before Manta even made it, cutting off his escape route through the narrow service tunnels one by one.

For the first time in many years, Black Manta found himself completely surrounded, Aquaman's golden trident hovering mere inches from his chest. He looked around, searching desperately for his Legion allies, expecting reinforcements to arrive at any moment and even the odds.

He found none.

It turned out that Luthor's forces, facing unexpected trouble of their own back at Fort Knox, had already abandoned the underwater half of the mission entirely, leaving Manta and his divers to face the full might of Atlantis completely alone, with no backup coming at all.

"Villains make poor partners," Aquaman said, not unkindly, as he gathered the stolen crates of gold and guided them carefully back toward the vault where they belonged. Black Manta said nothing at all. He simply stood there, furious with himself for trusting an alliance built on nothing sturdier than shared greed and empty promises.

In the confusion that followed — guards regrouping, Legion divers scattering in every direction, Mera's water walls slowly dissolving back into the current — Black Manta found a narrow gap and slipped away into the dark, empty-handed and entirely alone.

He swam for a long time afterward, saying nothing to anyone, turning the whole experience over and over in his mind. The defeat itself did not sting nearly as much as the lesson underneath it. In the Legion of Doom, he now understood clearly, nobody was truly on anyone else's side. Every villain there was looking out only for themselves, ready to abandon an ally the instant things grew difficult.

David Hyde preferred it that way, if he was honest with himself. At least alone, in his own submarine, in his own hidden trench, he knew exactly who he could trust: nobody but himself. And somehow, strangely, that felt like the safer way to live.

Weeks later, when a new envelope arrived at the edge of Hyde's Reach, sealed with Lex Luthor's mark and promising an even greater prize for the next scheme, Black Manta studied it for a long moment, turning it over in his gloved hands. Then, without a single word, he dropped it into the glowing heat of a thermal vent and watched it curl into ash.

He did not need partners who would vanish the moment trouble arrived. He had his submarine, his helmet, his hidden trench, and a rivalry with Aquaman that, strange as it seemed, felt more honest than any alliance Luthor could ever offer him. At least with Aquaman, Black Manta always knew exactly where he stood.