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Never-Ending Battle: Lex Luthor
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A weakness. It may not seem like much, my good man (or whatever you are), not after I’ve successfully discovered just how vast and wide-ranging your abilities are, but it is there nonetheless. A chink in red and blue armor that otherwise might be just a bit too invulnerable for my own good. A failing, in actuality, and now you’re no longer intimidating--now you’re just a challenge. A good one, one worthy of a man of my talents and intellect, one that will break the boredom inherent in a life of endless minutiae and the mundane details needed to run an empire, but a challenge just the same.

And you’re new around here, so you might not know, but I never turn down a challenge. And I never lose either. Oh, you might think you’ve caused me some sort of set-back by ignoring my unspoken ultimatum and coming back to blind the world with your flashy powers, but it is always brain that beats brawn, my dear friend, mind over matter, which means I’m not afraid.

No, truthfully, this is a welcome diversion. An interesting test I can use to stretch myself. It was awfully helpful of you to confront me yourself and let me know just whose side you’re on (I might have wasted days or weeks trying to convert you to my employ otherwise), but it was also a gauntlet thrown down at my feet, and now I can use you in my schemes whether you work for me or not.

“Superman has morals,” I tell my manservant, and that is that.

I’ve already won, you see. Once you accept morals, you accept limits, boundaries that you refuse to cross and thus, *cannot* cross. You wall yourself in behind limits that make you less than you can be, and when there are lines you will not step over, there are victories you will never obtain.

So you may be able to fly from one end of this city to the others, and you may be able to survive the point-blank explosion of a bomb, and you may even be all but invulnerable, but as long as you will come to the pleading call of a victim, as long as you treasure life over power…well, this is a challenge, but it won’t be a contest.

Total power is what you have, my friend, yet you allow yourself to be inhibited, put under the control of what others decree right or wrong. That’s your second mistake (your first, naturally, was setting yourself against me), but I’m reasonably certain it won’t be your last.

Because *I’m* not inhibited or controlled, and there isn’t a single line that I won’t cross should the occasion warrant it. Ruthless--a good word--and those who are willing to put it all on the line are the ones who eventually walk away with the spoils.

So enjoy your moment of fame. Enjoy the newspaper articles and the keys to the city and the applause of Lois Lane. In the end, it won’t matter, nothing more than a spark in a pan. In the end, you *will* fall.

And I will be there, savoring my triumph.

That is, after all, what it means to be Lex Luthor.

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