Shelton Lyle (Prime Earth)

Shelton Lyle^[1] was Heartless, a serial killer who preyed on unhoused parents in Bludhaven. As his name suggests, he ripped out their hearts in front of their children.

History

Origins

Like Bruce Wayne, Shelton Lyle was born the only child of a wealthy Gotham family. However, while Thomas Wayne was a compassionate doctor, Shelton's father Charles Lyle was a ruthless insurance executive who made his money denying people the payments they were entitled to.

Shelton showed signs of being a budding psychopath from an early age, setting fires and torturing and murdering animals. He showed no emotion and never spoke. His parents were unable to handle him and so gave responsibility for raising him to the family's butler Gerald Chamberlain. Unbeknownst to them however, "Gerald Chamberlain" was himself a sociopathic murderer who had killed the real Gerald Chamberlain and stolen his identity.

Gerald recognised Shelton as a kindred spirit and nurtured his psychopathic tendencies, taking him to slaughterhouses and zoos where he could watch animals being eviscerated. One day, Gerald took Shelton to Haly's Circus, where they saw the Flying Graysons fall to their deaths. This finally provoked a reaction from Shelton, who was exhilarated at seeing the Graysons die, and by the misery that their deaths had caused to those around them, particularly their son Dick Grayson.^[1] Because of this he describes Dick as his "first" and claims that he made him who he is.^[2] This also created a lasting bond between him and Gerald, as Gerald understood his feelings and warned his young master that nobody else would.

The deaths of the Graysons brought Shelton out of his shell, and he became talkative and superficially personable. He learned to use his good looks and charm to manipulate people, became popular at school and even managed to fool his parents into believing he had outgrown his violent tendencies, although in reality, he was still the same cruel boy he had always been. He became a bully and lead other teenage boys in victimising weaker kids. When Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson stood up to him, Shelton let his mask slip and mocked Dick over the death of his parents, resulting in Dick knocking out his teeth.

When Shelton came of age, Gerald planned to murder his parents by sabotaging their helicopter so he would inherit their wealth. However, Shelton was also onboard the helicopter and was almost killed in the crash. Gerald forged an emergency transplant form to replace Shelton's damaged heart with his dying father's intact one, saving his life. When Shelton woke up, he was happy to know his parents were both dead. Shelton and Gerald further decided to replace all his damaged bodyparts with cybernetics, transforming him into Heartless.^[1]

Heartless

Shelton and Gerald moved to Bludhaven, where he used his remaining inherited wealth to found "Shel Pharmaceuticals", a company which developed and charged exorbitant prices for cures to diseases in developing nations.^[3] He also stalked the streets at night, killing homeless people in front of their children to relive what he felt when he saw the Graysons die before Dick's eyes. His only weakness was that his enhancements placed a great strain on his heart, requiring him to regularly replace it with the ones he harvested from his victims.^[1]

Nightwing first became aware of Heartless when he murdered a homeless father named Martin Holt.^[4] Dick had booked Martin and his son Elliot a hotel room with his recently inherited wealth just before the murder and so was questioned by the police. They accused him of killing Martin and many other homeless people who had been found with their hearts cut out. Barbara was able to provide an alibi for Dick and he was cleared, but he realised that a serial killer was loose on the streets.

Nightwing tracked Elliot to a tent city of homeless children on the docks. He sent Tim Drake in disguise into the encampment, who found Elliot and learned that Martin had been killed by a "man without a heart", and that several other kids in the camp had also been orphaned by Heartless.

Two henchmen sent by Blockbuster came to the camp to terrorise the kids for stealing without Blockbuster's permission. Nightwing and Robin fought them off, but Heartless was waiting for them and set the camp on fire.^[5] Nightwing fought Heartless while Robin evacuated the children, and quickly found that, although Heartless possessed enhanced strength and speed, he did not actually know how to fight and Nightwing defeated him through superior skill. As Heartless had expected, the kids fled to the pier so he detonated a bomb which cut it off from the shore and set it on fire, allowing him to escape while Nightwing tried to save them.^[6]

He later murdered an assassin who attempted to kill Dick on Blockbuster's orders, believing that only he should kill Dick Grayson.^[7] Nevertheless Blockbuster continued to try to have Dick killed, but he managed to escape all assassination attempts, to the point that no professional assassin would accept a contract on him.^[8] Heartless broke into Blockbuster's office^[9] and asked to buy control of Bludhaven from him, saying he wanted to let Dick build the city up and give it hope, only for Heartless to kill him and take the hope away again. Blockbuster refused and threw Heartless out the window.^[10]

Blockbuster was eventually brought down by a coordinated attack on his operations by Nightwing's superhero allies. His henchmen abandoned him and the people of Bludhaven no longer feared him. Desmond was reduced to fleeing into an alley, where Heartless was waiting. Heartless told Blockbuster that Bludhaven belonged to him now and ripped Blockbuster's heart from his chest, killing him.^[11] Shelton had Gerald transplant Blockbuster's heart into his chest, believing it would be able to withstand the strain of his cybernetics and allow him to reach his full potential. Before he was put under anaesthesia, he told Gerald that he loved him and saw him as his true father.^[1]

Blockbuster's right hand man Sal Maroni was also arrested and turned states evidence. The BPD arrested crimelords, politicians and corrupt police officers throughout Bludhaven; creating a power vacuum in Bludhaven's underworld which Heartless quickly filled, murdering and intimidating his way to the top of the syndicate.^[12]^[13] He used his new army of henchmen to assault Bludhaven Private Prison and free and arm the inmates. He did this partially to demonstrate that Bludhaven could not be controlled and changed, but mostly so he could meet Tony Zucco, the man who killed the Flying Graysons. He found Zucco in the middle of the riot and told him he was his biggest fan and hoped they could work together. Nightwing and the Titans quickly stopped the breakout, but Heartless and Zucco escaped.^[14]

Shel Pharmaceuticals developed a vaccine for a mosquito-borne disease which was ravaging the nation of Vlatava; but demanded more money for it than the impoverished country could afford. In desperation, Vlatava hired the twin acrobat thieves Double Dare to steal the vaccine. One of them, Margot Marceau, was caught during the heist but the other Aliki, managed to get away and inject herself with the vaccine. Shelton's mercenaries hunted her through the city, causing immense collateral damage. When Aliki attempted to escape the city via train, they shot out the rail bridge and sent the train crashing to the street below. They captured what they believed was Aliki, but was in fact Batgirl in disguise. Nightwing and Aliki followed Batgirl to where the mercenaries had taken her and Margot. Batgirl had already broken free when they arrived and they fought the mercenaries until Shelton called Nightwing up to his office. Nightwing tried to arrest Shelton, but as the mercenaries were officially classed as independent contractors and he had just fired them, Nightwing had no legal recourse.^[15] Shelton took the opportunity to give Nightwing a glass of water laced with Fear Toxin to induce vertigo and make the hero unable to perform his usual acrobatic feats.^[16] The Marceau sisters got away with the vaccine, but Shelton did not care.

Zucco told Shelton about The Hold, a secret bank in Bludhaven's Old Fishing District serving the city's elite criminals and storing billions in wealth. Shelton decided to rob it and Zucco lead him to the hidden entrance. Heartless easily killed the minimal security, but when they got inside they found that it had been stripped bare.^[17]

Fallen Grayson

With Blockbuster gone, Dick Grayson's Alfred Pennyworth Foundation was able to make sweeping positive change to Bludhaven. As such Dick became universally beloved in the city and a symbol of hope for its people, just as Shelton had wanted. He started on the next phase of his plan to destroy Grayson and cause the entire city pain. To do this he radically changed his MO and began recruiting an army to wage war on Bludhaven, adopting a symbol for himself and importing vast quantities of guns into the city.^[18] He also forcibly recruited all of Blockbuster and Maroni's lieutenants into his new Heartless Army by kidnapping their children.

Shelton and Gerald attended a fundraiser for the Alfred Pennyworth Foundation in Gotham. At the fundraiser he disingenuously greeted Dick and Barbara Gordon like old friends and told Dick he admired the work he was doing and was excited to donate.^[19] Heartless and his forces staged a fire in order to evacuate the building. When almost everyone had gotten out, Shelton ran up to Dick and told him that he couldn't find Gerald. The two "searched" for him while Zucco secretly injected drugs into the fake smoke. Dick found Gerald seemingly collapsed on the floor, but in fact he and Shelton were both wearing gas masks. Dick passed out from the drugs, which also prevented him remembering what had happened. Shelton then carried Dick outside where he was loaded into a fake ambulance driven by some of his men.

They planned to frame Dick as Heartless and ruin his life in revenge for Dick knocking Shelton's teeth out when they were kids. However, when one of the fake paramedics searched Dick to take his cellphone they found Nightwing's mask, revealing that their two greatest enemies were the same person. Gerald murdered the paramedics and told Shelton and Zucco that this was a huge opportunity, but nobody could know except the three of them. They took Dick back to Bludhaven, dressed him in a Heartless costume and dumped him on a rooftop with a duplicate of his gun and a dead man, framing Dick for his murders.^[20]

Dick Grayson disappeared, although Batman continued to act as "Nightwing" in the city. Heartless ordered Zucco to kidnap the mayor and he broke into her home with a band of henchmen. However, Dick Grayson had returned to the city and foiled them. Zucco fled, calling Heartless to tell him Grayson was back, and Dick chased after him. Dick caught Zucco in the stairwell and told him that he knew Zucco had meant to kill him rather than his parents, which Heartless heard over the phone.^[16]

In one last attempt to bring out Nightwing and claim his heart as his own, Heartless broadcast a message to the people of Bludhaven, once again masquerading as Dick Grayson. In it, he announced that he would destroy Haven within the hour, a park and children's shelter erected in honour of Alfred Pennyworth. As Heartless and his henchmen advanced towards the shelter, they were stopped by a group of Bludhaven citizens blocking the entrance. Heartless ordered his men to carry on with their plan and kill anyone standing in their way, but the incoming battle was interrupted by the arrival of none other than Dick Grayson, seemingly walking his dog Haley.

Having now revealed to the world that he has been framed by Heartless by being in the same place as him, Dick then revealed to the henchmen that their children had just been found and freed by both the Bat-Family and Bludhaven PD. With Heartless' only leverage on them now gone, the henchmen charged at their former boss and swarmed him, however Heartless managed to get away and make a run for the docks, where he planned to board a boat and leave the city. Dick, now in Nightwing gear, pursued him and despite his greater speed, Heartless allowed Dick to keep pace with him simply for a chance and one more moment of petty bullying: when they reached an overpass just outside the docks he jumped down, believing that Dick would not be able to follow and mocking him for it. However, to his shock Dick leapt down after him and kicked him in the face, knocking Heartless' teeth out once again in the process.

Right as Nightwing was about to arrest him however, he was stopped by Gerald and Zucco, who had been once more freed from captivity just moments prior. This distraction allowed Heartless to subdue Nightwing, leaving Gerald to finish him off by aiming a gun at his head. Right before he managed to get a shot off, Gerald was bitten in his arm by Haley, who had gone after her master in an attempt to help him. This caused the butler to fall off the jetty, but not before shooting Haley in the chest, severely wounding her. As Nightwing tended to his dog, Heartless turned to Zucco and aimed his gun at him. He revealed to the crime boss that he used to look up to him and that the murder of John and Mary Grayson was what inspired him to adopt his M.O., only for Shelton to be deeply disappointed when he learned that Zucco had been targeting Dick the whole time. Shelton then fired his Heartless gun directly into Zucco's face, killing him instantly so Dick would be denied justice.^[21]

Defeat and Death

With Zucco now dead, Heartless turned his attention to Nightwing for a final confrontation. The two fought for a while, with Nightwing clearly having the upper hand and Heartless pushing his enhancements to their limits in an attempt to kill his longtime adversary. This strain lead Blockbuster's heart, which was a transplant from a gorilla and not a metahuman heart as Shelton had assumed, to finally fail and Heartless to suffer a heart attack. In a show of mercy, Nightwing offered to save Shelton, only to be interrupted when the latter made a last ditch attempt to tear out his heart with his bare hands. When that approach naturally failed, Shelton told Nightwing that there is no way to save him but that he will die content, knowing that everyone will remember his name and his actions as Heartless. Nightwing then revealed that he would ensure Heartless' true identity never be revealed and Shelton would not get the notoriety he craved. While Heartless would stay a nameless symbol of Bludhaven's perseverance and humanity, the only people who would truly be remembered will be his victims. With this revelation, Blockbuster's heart finally gave out completely, leading Shelton to die with the knowledge that he will do so completely forgotten - heartless and faceless.^[21]

Powers and Abilities

Powers

Cybernetic Enhancement^[10]
- Superhuman Durability: Heartless was able to survive a fall from the top of a skyscraper with only moderate injuries.^[10]
- Superhuman Reflexes: Heartless was able to catch Nightwing's thrown escrima stick in mid-air.^[6]
- Superhuman Speed: Heartless can move and run faster than Nightwing, who has trained his body to the peak of human potential.^[6]^[21]
- Superhuman Strength: Heartless is approximately as strong as Blockbuster.^[10] He can punch through a brick wall^[1] and deadlift a truck.^[21]

Abilities

Weaknesses

Heart Condition: His enhancements put great strain on his heart, requiring it to be regularly replaced with the hearts he harvests from his victims.^[10] He believed he had overcome this limitation after he had Blockbuster's heart transplanted into his chest;^[1] but it too gave out, killing him.^[21]

Other Characteristics

Psychopathy^[1]

Paraphernalia

Weapons

Heartless' Gun: Heartless uses a gun that fires a claw on a cable which can rip the heart out of a person's chest.^[4]