Chương 17: Teacher and Student, Talking

On the flight to Salem, Diana was visibly holding something back. Kaelvorn was the one who noticed and asked first.

"Something wrong, Ms. Prince?"

"Just, don't take it personally, the Batman surveillance thing. He's like that with everyone. And what he said back there." Kaelvorn's eyebrows went up, genuinely surprised.

"Take it personally? Being watched? What about that's worth being upset over?" Diana blinked, thrown a little. The first time she'd found one of Batman's listening devices planted on her, she'd lost her temper hard. She eased off her lead in the flight and studied Kaelvorn's face more carefully. The kid genuinely looked unbothered. That confused her more, not less.

"You've barely landed on Earth and you're already getting surveilled without consent. Doesn't that eat at you? Having your freedom clipped like that?" Kaelvorn shook his head flatly, took two seconds to think through how to actually answer, and then, unexpectedly, something like a smile crossed his face.

"I've been on Earth almost twenty days now. Take out the first three unconscious, and everything after, the week recovering, these eight days with you, all of it's felt like a vacation."

"No training pushed past my physical limit. Nobody forcing me to fight someone my age, or older, to the death."

"No instructor ready to hit me or scream at me for existing." His eyes went a little unfocused, clearly sliding into something heavier.

"You know, I heard the actual word vacation for the first time after I got here. On Viltrum, time off is something warriors earn after at least five hundred years, and only after real, distinguished service."

"For the first decade of my life, every single day I opened my eyes, all I had waiting for me was fighting, injury, killing... and an instructor ready to scream at me or knock me down." Diana had genuinely treated helping Kaelvorn as just another League assignment when Bruce first reached out to her. She hadn't known a single detail about his past. This whole week, she'd just been training him as a young warrior who needed help in a few specific areas.

To her, this past week and change had felt almost like reliving her own early training back on Themyscira, except she was standing on the teaching side of it this time instead of the learning side. It wasn't until she heard the actual detail of his past, laid out plainly, that shock gave way to something closer to grief on his behalf.

"How does a species like that even exist?" Back when she'd first arrived in human society, she remembered describing life on Themyscira to people and watching their faces do something strange, like they were constantly being reminded how much more savage the Amazons were compared to human civilization. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Now she understood that reaction from the other side.

Whatever positive impression she'd had of Viltrum, if she'd had any at all, dropped straight into negative numbers. And her sympathy for this mostly expressionless kid deepened right along with it.

"So I should be grateful you didn't storm off and deck Batman?" Kaelvorn cut a slightly exasperated glance forward, privately wondering if this world's Diana had some kind of personal grudge against the guy.

"I haven't hidden much of my past since I got here, or what Viltrumite culture actually is. Viltrum treats conquering other planets as tradition, practically a point of honor. It's completely reasonable for some people on Earth to be wary of me." Kaelvorn sighed.

"Put it more bluntly, Ms. Prince. I've watched plenty of League footage on TV by now. Your members' personalities come through pretty clearly across the interviews and the original press conference from when the League launched."

"No offense, but outside of Batman, most of your team reads as fairly naive."

"Superman, the Flash, Shazam. All the type where I could win their trust just by playing up how much I've suffered. None of them could stand up against a targeted setup."

"Aquaman, Green Lantern, and you, Ms. Prince. Either you've got a whole population to manage, or some other organization pulling your attention elsewhere. None of you can actually make the League your main focus." Diana opened her mouth on reflex, ready to push back, and got cut off by Kaelvorn's next line, which jumped topics entirely.

"I read an old article that mentioned a Mr. Wayne, who has ties to Batman, apparently covered most of the League's operating costs early on out of pocket. Which means even your primary funding traces back to Batman's personal connections." Buried in that sentence was a secret Diana was obligated to keep, and it left her stuck without a comeback for a solid few seconds.

"Funding. Planning. Communications. Base relocation. Threat assessment."

"For an organization famous across the entire world, it's genuinely being run by one person." Diana's eyes went wide, and she found herself with absolutely nothing to counter that. Two years ago, Batman had actually been the single member most opposed to forming the League in the first place. And now here he was, the entire operational backbone holding it together.

"It's not just him. Cyborg helps too." After holding it in for a while, Diana finally managed a rebuttal with basically no force behind it at all. Kaelvorn didn't say anything further on that one. He had a sharper read on Cyborg than he was letting on. Someone sitting on cosmic-tier technology whose main contribution, apparently, amounted to functioning as a super-server and an AI backend.

In a place that supposedly championed free speech, Cyborg had never once stepped in to manage public opinion, and the League had still gotten dragged online in every direction imaginable. But Cyborg was also the only member who'd appeared exactly once, at the League's founding two years ago, and never showed up in public again after that. As far as most of the general public knew, Cyborg was just a cybernetically enhanced soldier packing serious firepower. Nothing more.

Whatever Cyborg's actual capabilities really amounted to sat well outside anything accessible through ordinary media, so Kaelvorn had no real reason to have that information either. Kaelvorn cut through a bank of clouds, breathing out a small cloud of condensed vapor, and spread his hands toward Diana, who was still glaring at him.

"I can tell all of you are genuinely gentle people. So I get why Batman reads as difficult to deal with, from where you're standing."

"But from where I'm standing, Batman's just more direct with his words. Up to this point, he's honestly come across as more considerate than the gentlest instructor Viltrum ever produced." Kaelvorn wasn't exaggerating for effect either. Start to finish, all Batman had actually done was warn him a few times, reasonably, from an Earth-first perspective. That beat every instructor who used to snap his thigh bone for fun without a second thought.

This was the first time in her life Diana had heard an opinion on Batman this genuinely unhinged, and she grabbed a fistful of her own hair in something like real pain.

"Kael."

"Ms. Prince?" Diana's teeth ground together hard enough to hear.

"I want you to remember something. If you ever wake up one day and find you've lost your powers, go rob a bank in Gotham for me."... What? A statement with no discernible meaning attached. Filed under things not worth engaging with. Kaelvorn dropped altitude a little, studying the layout of the city coming into view below.

"Are we actually at Salem already, Ms. Prince?"..... +40 advanced chapters on Patreon [email protected] /YATOOO