Upon hearing his new name, Object X suddenly grew dizzy, light-headed, nearly numb. It was if the floor had opened up beneath him and he was now plunging down, down, down, in a never-ending freefall. The falling sensation lasted so long it became floating... drifting...
He never would have expected to behave this way even a few short days ago, but then he no longer knew who he was anymore. He had shed so much of his identity by now that he suddenly felt as if all the rules had changed. He was no longer required--or able--to maintain his old sense of decorum, bravado, self-protection. He was naked and defenseless inside and out now.
As he drifted in empty space, he found himself weeping. He cried and cried, and the tears flowed through his entire body, draining him of some once-vital essence. And--surprise!--it felt good. It felt tremendous. The sensation of tears pouring out, of his limbs shaking, was the only thing that connected him to his body, to the earth. Once they were all gone, he'd be able to fly...
He could hear Strange laughing. Laughing at him. Seeing the other man wearing the costume, it felt as if "Batman" was now a separate entity, one who was now standing outside him, mocking him. Celebrating his defeat.
And--to his surprise--Object X discovered that he himself was now thoroughly aroused; not only was his penis fully erect, but every nerve ending in his body seemed alive with erotic energy. He looked at himself in the mirror once more and found a man he did not recognize: a prisoner, a helpless speck of a man, hairless but for his unkempt cheeks, stripped bare, eyes red from crying, hands travelling to his stiff cock.
"Go ahead," Strange said, regaining his composure and assuming the gentle tone he usually used with Dic--Object Y. "Jerk yourself off. Celebrate your new life, Object X. Let the jism flow. Remind yourself that it contains the last few drops of whatever remains of your old, divided self. Purge yourself. You know how much it hurt to try to be two people in the same body. All those years of struggle--let them go. Expel the old battles from your body. Only then can you open yourself to your new reality."
Object X: the very name was so complete a rejection of his prior life, of any sense of identity, of his very humanity, that it thrilled him to his core. He was now working his shaft with such fury and intensity that he had room in his mind for nothing else. He wanted now to obey, longed to flush the past from his system and surrender ever more thoroughly to this man who knew him so very well and had changed his life so very thoroughly. Everything that was happening now, he realized, was in fact the culmination, not the destruction, of his life's work. He was destined to reach this level of awareness from the day he'd first donned a mask. Every hero's dream is to be defeated, to be born again as something not higher than his fellow man, but far lower. Every hero, by definition, meets a tragic end--
--and I am no hero, he realized at the precise moment of orgasm, which was every bit as cleansing as Strange had told him it woud be. I am ... Object X.