Bab 49: Projects
I slowly flew up towards the spaceship and entered it without issues. There were only the usual suspects for monitoring the situation, Martian Manhunter, and one other person in the Watchtower. I entered the central control station, where J'onn noticed my entrance. He looked over his shoulder to nod in my direction.
"Greetings." He said before turning back to the monitors slightly above and ahead. There wasn't much to see, just a few natural catastrophes. Nothing to worry about. The normal disaster relief organizations could handle that.
"Hey. You guys got my message?" I asked before picking up the file about some statistics that I was too lazy to read through.
"Yes. Fortunately, there were no signs of Apokolips' invasion, otherwise, it would have been dangerous. We were...occupied." The Martian said before shaking his head. I couldn't help but raise my eyebrow.
"What was more important than the possible invasion of Apokolips?"
"A rogue Amazonian spreading a virus in order to kill off the world's male population. We almost didn't make it." He summarized the entire event and I could see why the focus shifted towards something immediate. How could they have time to prepare for an invasion when half the human population was incapacitated?
"Yikes. A hardcore feminist. Glad it worked out in the end, but man, there is always something going on, isn't there?"
"Indeed. It never gets boring." He chuckled slightly before something caught his attention on the monitor. I saw Wonder Woman being filmed on the news battling a cat person? Was that this Cheetah girl? I knew little about her, only remembered her being something like Wonder Woman's rival and that she made out with Batman after he was captured...
J'onn was probably directing her for whatever needed her attention more than the brief bout with Cheetah. As he handled that, he talked to me. "You said that you handled the situation, but you seemed injured... I heard Apokolips is rather formidable. Were there any issues?"
"Not really. I had quickly handled Apokolips forces, but Darkseid was another beast." Thinking about the fight with Darkseid made me realize there were some areas I could improve in, hell I even noticed it against the furies, after all, I was already struggling when fighting against 5 that were my physical equals, the furies, plus someone that was stronger than me, Steppenwolf. I was clearly lacking in handling group fights.
My comment made his typing hands freeze for a moment. He glanced at me with narrowed eyes before continuing his task.
"Then I am glad you survived. I heard Superman speak of Darkseid's prowess. He is not someone to underestimate. We will need your accounts about how he fought and his invasion force so we can prepare for the event he decides to invade earth."
I nodded at that. Oh, that's right. I believed Superman had a brief encounter with him. Besides, getting as much information about an enemy truly was the best course of action to take when one knew of the threat. "Well, I can tell you what I learned, but I don't think it will be much of a use in the future."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I killed him." I said, picking up an opened half-empty bag of potato chips, though I quickly thought better of it. Those were probably Flash's. He had the tendency to make a mess, and I had no desire to eat all the little crumbs mixed with his spit.
"I see. Then it really won't be nec-" Before he finished speaking, his eyes widened and his hands stopped once again. "D-did you say you killed Darkseid??"
"Yeah, your ears work perfectly fine!" I said to him, giving him a thumbs up. "I am starving, so I will catch you later. Oh, and by the way, Apokolips is also gone."
I could practically hear him being dumbfounded as I headed out and made my way towards the fridge for some free food.
With a wave of my hand, everything flew out of the closets and arranged itself on the table. I dug into the things that needed little preparing while cooking the other things with telekinesis. This power wasn't the strongest in my repertoire, but my guy, it was the most practical one, or at least up there.
While I was emptying the food reserves, another life force approached me. "Ayo, what's up?" I greeted Shayera, aka Hawkgirl, with a fist bump, who seemed to have come out of a shower just now. Not surprising, since she had been in the training room just now.
She returned the greeting before sitting down next to me. It didn't seem that she was too exhausted, probably didn't exert her too much in case I brought bad news and she needed to fight.
"Nothing much. Just the usual." She said, placing her mace against the table before grabbing something from my food stash. She was the only one allowed to do that. After meeting the Justice League in person, she quickly became my favorite person from the Justice League.
Not that I had a problem with the others, but she was one of my people, so to say. It was quite easy to understand what I meant when she snatched away my food, which turned into a full-blown food war.
After we had our fill, we sat down bloated on the chair. "So, how was it? Against Apokolips' forces, I mean. Back on Thanagar, I had heard some stories about the planets that were invaded by Apokolips ... They rarely ended well."
"It was pretty bad, not gonna lie, but nothing I couldn't muscle through." I shrugged off her concern and told her I got rid of Apokolips and Darkseid. The news shocked her even more than it did for J'onn, probably because she had heard more horror stories about the dead tyrant.
"Y-you killed Darkseid, wh-what, how??" Her eyes perfectly portrayed her shock and disbelief at the news.
"Well, I created a big ki attack and threw it at him and his planet. You know the usual." I explained as I took a deep slurped the rest of the shake through the straw.
She was flabbergasted by my casual remarks. Obviously, I did that on purpose. I didn't need to mention how much I struggled.
"Unbelievable." She finally concluded. I shrugged in response. Nothing much to talk about it. She sank back into her chair, blankly looking into the air before seemingly realizing something. She turned towards me with a complicated look. "...You really are holding back against me."
I almost choked when I heard this. Didn't think she would be hung up on that, though it shouldn't surprise me. We had a little competition since the beginning. With a wry smile, I responded, "Kinda...". I believe no one in the Justice League knew about Super Saiyan, or even Ikari, for that matter, so they thought my peak would be when I used Oozaru.
I didn't disturb her afterward since she seemed to contemplate something, as she had a thoughtful look on her face. She sighed before getting up and telling me she had something to do.
After that little spiel was over, I said my goodbye to J'onn, telling him he could inform the others about me having eliminated the threat known as Apokolips. I could recount my story in great detail to J'onn, but I was sure that Batman and Superman had some questions each for their own reason and I didn't want to repeat myself over and over again.
I quickly left the station after telling J'onn that I will cover his and Batman's shift next month. Had to make up some time, especially since I often neglected my monitor duties, but for now, I had something else to do.
Besides my upgrades regarding the increased range for artificial gravity and the speed of time, there was still the data I got from Warworld. The planet that was able to drain my life force.
With that incorporated in my training chamber, it would help my ki control a lot and might even be a key factor in giving me a complementary environment to help me develop god ki, after all from the DBS mange I knew it had something to do with powering up without ki leakage.
Not to mention that I could also use the data to have the scientists work on a machine that could use my ki as an energy source. Then I wouldn't need to steal plutonium anymore.
It also came in handy, since plutonium might not be able to handle the energy output needed to speed up time and increase gravity inside the chamber. Especially since gravitational time dilation was a thing, meant that these two forces were counteracting inside the chamber.
Usually, a higher gravity meant that the time would proceed slower than in places with weaker gravity, but I wanted it to proceed faster instead, which meant I needed more energy than if it was just in regular gravity to counteract the slowing of time because of the increased gravity. Gladly, Dr. Knight and Dr. Wakati seemed to have hit it off quite well on that topic.
Regarding creating a device to drain my ki. Of course, there were concerns that something like draining my ki could be used against me, but my plan was to be immune against something like that. So, even if somebody knew of that particular fact, if I had experience training in an environment that actively drained my ki, that information would be completely useless. Not to mention that there might be a limit on how much could be absorbed by regular tech.
At least, that was the case for the Big Gete Star. An artificial intelligence that was optimized on absorbing entire planets as a source of fuel couldn't take the energy of two Super Saiyans. So, even if somebody like Brainiac had access to this technology, as long as it wasn't as efficient as the Big Gete Star, I just needed to have an output equivalent to two Super Saiyans, simple right?
Frankly, I had some reservations about it, but the benefits were just too tempting and the threats weren't too intimidating. Besides, I couldn't get that idea out of my mind anymore. I already had a boner from fantasizing about my training chamber with all its new features. A Saiyan's wet dream...
All that being said, another key aspect came up concerning this idea of mine. This all wouldn't work if I didn't find an energy person to research it. Dr. Knight and Dr. Wakati weren't completely ignorant about that topic since they had powered their devices just fine until now, but their resources usually are military classified. Despite Westmob's new upcoming contracts with the government, it was a hassle to procure these things.
Besides a scientist for energy, I also needed a genius for the biomedical field, so the research on the long-term consequences of high gravity could be sped up. There were some candidates that I could look into, but some stood out, with one of them being Michael Holt.
He had an impressive resume of 14 Ph.Ds, though I usually preferred an expert over a jack-of-all-trades, a genius would of that degree probably was on par with any experts in their fields, especially considering that the scale of intelligence in DC was excessive beyond belief.
The problem was I didn't have any proposals for him. Dr. Wakati and Dr. Knight were 'easily' pulled in since I gave them the funds and motivation to continue researching their passion. Michael Holt didn't seem to have a lack of means as a self-made multi-millionaire.
It was easier to lure in the scientists that had the passion but lack of means because evil -read short-sighted - cooperation didn't see their potential and trust me there were a lot of those around, there was just too much talent running around to be considered important. It was probably why some of them turned to villainy.
It kind of reminded me of how game companies exploited the passion of their employees for games to hire them for a poverty wage or made them work unpaid overtime. Heh, even Westmob, a former mafia was doing better than those. Well, at least I paid them accordingly or never forced them to work overtime. I just had some personal requests, that's all, so I wasn't truly exploiting them.
I just wanted passionate employees to help with my projects, and in turn, I would throw money at them. Either way, I would just make Westmob search and try to recruit the necessary scientists. I couldn't be bothered to micromanage that. They should only contact me in case they needed someone more persuasive or for important decisions.
After thinking for a moment, I secretly sent a clone to Westmob and had him deliver the data of the Warworld, while I went to go groceries shopping.
It didn't take long for me to gather everything that I needed and headed back home. With a look around, I saw Raven sitting and Kara lying on the couch, with Kara's feet resting on Raven's lap. Weirdly enough, Raven wasn't reading anything but massaging Kara's feet. It wasn't too surprising since she was our designated head and back masseur after training.
"You done already?" I thought they wanted to go out.
"We just took a look at how fast they are progressing with their headquarters in Jump City. It's just a dimensional travel away, so we didn't take long." Kara said while playing a video with a familiar-sounding intro on her phone.
♪Picking up speed, running out of time,
Going head to head, it's a way of life.
You gotta fall down, meet ground, to get back up again.
Let's-♪
"By the way, what are you going to do with those furies?" Kara asked after muting her phone when I almost figured out which show it was. Raven looked up, interested as well.
"What, you got sympathy for what I am going to do with them?" Raven frowned as I said that before she was reminded to continue her massage by Kara's fidgeting feet.
Kara raised an eyebrow. "You have three extremely attractive new gods locked up in your basement. I am just curious about what you are going to do with them."
I smiled helplessly, "Kara, I am not a rapist. I don't need to resort to something like that and I wouldn't call Mad Harriet and Stompa unattractive either?"
She smugly and somehow dangerously smiled at that. "No hesitation at all, really? Who knew that you immediately knew who I was talking about? I never said those two weren't attractive. Maybe you Saiyans have a thing for plus-sized women or women with sharp teeth, what do I know?!" Great, jumped right into that one.
"I know you wouldn't do that to them, but do you need me to watch over you? What if they take advantage of you? Maybe you trained hard, pass out and they try to take advantage of you while you sleep..."
"...Right. Don't worry, I will take care..." I dazedly said while putting away the groceries. "...Either way, I am just removing the mental commands that they received during their brainwashing. "
"They were being brainwashed?" Kara asked, surprised.
"Yeah. Darkseid wasn't really fond of free will. Tyrannical God and all that." Of course, the furies were truly brainwashed, but some more than others. Steppenwolf, for example, wasn't brainwashed at all, but that wasn't something they needed to know. It's not like Darkseid could claim something else.
"So, after helping them, you want to set them free and roam the planet? What if they suddenly slip back into bad habits?" I guessed that was a reasonable concern. If I truly let them be their own person, that might be a valid point to look out for. I might tell that to Kara when we were alone, otherwise, she might bring it up again.
"Don't worry, I will keep a tight leash." I reassured while pouring myself a shake for later.
"Ooh, kinky." I rolled my eyes at Kara's comment as she went back to her phone. After I made myself a quick snack, I went downstairs to 'help' the furies. Break or make them.
...
After I spent the entire day playing with Harriet's mind, I called it off for the day. There wasn't much of a personality left, but her mind would recover with time. It would take time, longer than it would for humans, even though a new god's recovery was higher. It was partly because I needed a greater force to mess with her mind. I cut deeper, so to say, which needed a longer recovery.
I was hesitating whether I should use another while Harriet recovered, but if there were problems in the end, I would directly lose two new gods instead of just one. Perhaps a meditation session for tomorrow would keep me occupied in the meantime. Although I couldn't physically train, nothing could hinder me from training my mind. It would also help with my mind-controlling plan.
Although I had a lot of plans for the next few days and was quite excited to work on them, my mood took a bit of a dip the next morning. Coincidentally, this evening was the monthly meeting with the Justice League for discussing all sorts of things. It was usually incredibly boring. If I had known that it was today, I would have delayed my return by another day. Oh, well...
After I finished my session with Harriet's mind, I came into our little meeting room. I looked at the time displayed on my scouter and found it to be almost 12 at night.
We usually scheduled the meeting in the early night. It had mostly to do with the crime happening a bit later. Now we were still fresh and hadn't run around on patrol the entire night fighting crime, which was a better moment to discuss some things than in the morning when we had just gone to bed.
Midday was also not that appropriate since we all had our lives besides our hero work, so to schedule a meeting during the day was even more impossible.
The others were already gathered around the round table with only Flash missing. Flash was usually the last to arrive. With his set of superpowers, it was too ironic to not be done on purpose, or maybe some cosmic force made him run late all the time?
And yes, I know, a round table, how cliche, but it was best to 'acknowledge' our equal positions even though some were in the position of the decision-maker more often than others. I, for myself, was disinterested in deciding the endless policies. I couldn't come up with better policies than the paranoid Batman, anyway.
In fact, he was probably the one that had 'suggested' most of the protocol, with Zatara coming at a close second. They were all things that would make the Watchtower safer. Of course, the others had taken it upon themselves to suggest, change, and add things.
"Today, the 24th of November, we discuss Shallot's encounter with the new god Darkseid, and his army of Apokolips." Batman said after openly pressing the record button of a portable recorder as if he wasn't recording everything that was happening in the Watchtower.
"Shallot, could you explain how you came into conflict with Darkseid?" Batman continued while the others were just listening with bated breaths, at least those that knew of Darkseid. Even Zatara had shown up for this, surprisingly interested in my little adventure. Was Darkseid a known force in the magical community? Flash and Wonder Woman were relatively nonchalant about the entire situation, given that they didn't seem to know much about Darkseid besides hearsay.
Although it didn't appear that way, Wonder Woman could have heard it from her mother. I believed Darkseid had faced the Amazonian once before or was that only in the Cinematic Universe?
"Well, I was returning home when suddenly Maxima turned up at my place. After I healed her, she told me about Apokolips invading her planet, so I headed there and help out."
"Ehm..." Flash raised his hand, "Who is Maxima?"
"Oh, right. That happened before we grouped up. She is a friend of mine and the Queen of Almerac, an alien planet. It's not far away from here, just a few lightyears actually."
"Wait, do you mean the one that declared you to be her husband and when you rejected, kidnapped you?" Superman asked with a frown. True, that happened in Metropolis. I had just met Kara back then. Haah, good times. I nodded as a response to his question, which earned a few disbelieving noises from the others.
"Hmph. I wouldn't be surprised if her declaring you as her husband was a turn-on for you Saiyans." Green Lantern jokingly teased. I had already told them a few basic mannerisms of Saiyans. Therefore, it wasn't a surprise that he would have been correct if I was a normal Saiyan, so I just kept quiet, which made GL halt for a moment. "...are you serious?"
"What do you mean by you healed her?" Batman interrupted. I would have guessed that he would be interested in how Saiyans ticked or did he already guess that and therefore deemed it at unimportant? Well, information about how I healed someone might be just more important to him.
"Yeah, I use life force, remember? I can help someone absorb some, which in turn makes them recover quicker." He just nodded before digging deeper. "What happens if you give a lot of life force to someone?"
He questioned, but I honestly didn't know for sure. Maybe they would explode, turn younger, or increase their strength? Hadn't truly thought about it, but continuing that thought, how did it affect me besides making me able to use ki techniques and getting insanely strong? How did it affect my age? Was I truly only going to live as long as a regular human? The author had said that, but I had my doubts. I needed to investigate it more closely.
"I have no idea. Maybe explode, or develop cancer." I shrugged, and he accepted it before urging me on with my story. He already knew that I wasn't fond of doing any tests. He already had a sample of my DNA and could forget of getting more of it.
I had no plan on becoming the reason something like Cell came to be and grew too strong for anyone to handle.
"As I was saying, after she invited me, I and Supergirl went over after alerting you guys of possible invasions. Apokolips had already pushed the soldiers of Almerac back to their cities with their ability to transform the kidnapped soldiers into parademons of their own ranks. After being pushed back, most of the populace had hidden inside the city where they had force fields keeping them safe from Apokolips' army. With me and Supergirl as reinforcement, we wanted to counterattack their..."
I continued my story with only a few interruptions of who this and that were. Besides being clueless about the generals of Almerac, I knew more about Apokolips. In fact, I had more knowledge about the ranks of Apokolips' army than was available to any other. Even other planets that had thwarted their invasion or New Genisis wouldn't know as much as I did. It was therefore necessary to keep quiet about a few things, not that the others were able to tell if I had left something out in my retelling.
Of course, specific things about my techniques were also left out. There was no need for me to tell them about my ability to create clones or that I could transform to get even stronger, at least for now. So, I changed some scenes, but either way, they wouldn't know if I had changed something since I was the only one around during my fights.
The only ones that could raise an objection were the furies that were currently in a coma inside my training hall, which was also something that the League didn't know about.
Even if Superman was vigilant and monitored my vitals, which I knew he wasn't doing since by now I already knew the tell tales from Kara, he wouldn't be able to pinpoint what I had exactly left out.
"...and then I blew up Darkseid with his planet in a last effort attack. I barely survived and was picked up later by Maxima and Supergirl." I finally finished after about 10 minutes of retelling my trip to Almerac and then Apokolips. After I stopped talking, I was only met with silence.
"Damn." Flash suddenly said. "That was one wild story, better than the virus we had to deal with. A battle of epic proportions. Fortunately, you were there to save the day." Flash nodded to himself.
"You destroyed an entire planet and killed millions." Batman accused.
"Dude. Did you remember Darkseid was an evil god? His minions consisted of other evil gods and parademons." Flash interjected, to which Batman grunted and retorted that there were other beings besides those on the planet.
"I can't believe I say this, but I agree with Flash." Hawkgirl supplied. "Darkseid had only let those people on his planet alive that are broken beyond repair. They were mostly enslaved people of long-destroyed civilizations. Other invaded planets had already attested to them not turning away from Darkseid, despite the opportunities to do so. Even Thanagar had decided to kill anyone of Apokolips on sight because the chance of them turning their back on Darkseid is almost nonexistent. Destroying Darkseid with Apokolips was the best outcome, not only on this occasion, but for the entire universe."
She nodded at me to reassure me that my choice had been the correct one. I was surprised to hear her argue this diplomatically. Some of the others seemed to acknowledge that I had acted adequately, even if they didn't outright say it. Just a small nod after Hawkgirl spoke was enough to show their stance.
If there was someone conflicted, they didn't show it. The only one that looked troubled was Superman as he wore his emotions on his sleeves. Maybe it had something to do with him having been to Apokolips, but he wasn't comfortable for one or the other reason.
Batman looked unsurprisingly stoic. We all knew that there was no way innocent people would survive the conditions of Apokolips and the rule of the tyrannical god.
"I did what I needed to do and I would do it again." I said, looking at Batman, who narrowed his eyes. We both knew if it was a planetary threat like the invasion of the Imperium happened again, Batman would use lethal force as well. Maybe even exterminate the other side.
Perhaps it was because the enemies were aliens and would put earth above any other planet, but I knew if it had been earth that was attacked, he wouldn't have batted an eye at me destroying Apokolips. Even he understood some situations needed actions of the extreme, even if he didn't use them if the situations weren't dire. Almerac being invaded by Apokolips was one of these scenarios. Perhaps one might have an issue with me pursuing the head of the invasion, but me possibly killing some innocent wasn't the issue.
With a planetary invasion, one couldn't make sure that every enemy survived, but that wasn't why he pointed out that I had killed millions by me blowing up Apokolips.
Even though his eyes were covered with those white lenses, I could see it. This wasn't what he wanted to question. He was talking about something else. Our eye contact objectively didn't hold on for long, but for me, it seemed to drag as my mind raced for an answer to what Batman wanted to figure out... or was he hinting at something?
He broke the eye contact and brought up other issues that needed our attention after the consensus of my actions being justified was reached. We then continued to talk about some things that popped up after the virus had spread by that Amazonian. Although the virus had been prevented from doing the worst, it still affected many people around the world and caused some problems afterward.
It took a few dozen minutes to talk about everything that needed our attention before we separated again. I had expected that Batman would give me a talk, but it seemed that he wasn't ready yet to confront me. If he was, he would already knock on my door. Perhaps he was just guessing some things and trying to feel me out? I didn't know the answer, but I had the feeling that I would come to know soon.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone