Chương 21: That Prince With the Nice Ass

A wide lab inside the Watchtower ran under a constant low hum of machinery, cold blue light pressing a certain solemnity into the whole space. Batman stood in front of the massive holographic console, the edge of his black armor shifting slightly in the recycled air current. His eyes stayed locked hard on a molecular model cycling through the display. Days of precise computation had gone into reconstructing it. A Viltrumite cell's microscopic structure.

He tapped the console, and the screen split into two comparison sets. On one side, Superman's cellular energy flow under yellow-sun radiation, followed by the distribution pattern of magic particles inside Shazam's cells. Both showed the clear signature of externally introduced enhancement, energy paths traceable straight back to their source. The Viltrumite cell model on the other side looked nothing like either of them.

Pale gold energy radiated outward from the cell's core, brightening and dimming in a rhythm close to breathing, with no external energy anchor anywhere in the pattern. Entirely self-generated, from the inside out.

"The ability's coming from the cell itself. Not an external boost, like Superman or Shazam." Batman's voice came out low and rough, some hard-won certainty settled into it. Days spent running the blood sample pulled off Kaelvorn through a high-resolution particle analyzer had finally caught something. Unusually active microscopic particles buried deep inside the cell structure. They matched no known atomic configuration on record.

Highly autonomous, capable of self-repairing cell damage, absorbing energy surges, even optimizing themselves during cell division. He input a command, naming the unknown particle Viltrumite atom, and logged it into his private encrypted database. Right after, a report on elemental interaction popped up on screen, red warning markers taking up most of the display. Out of the 118 known elements on Earth's periodic table, only three showed any meaningful corrosive effect on Viltrumite atoms.

But all three could only be synthesized in trace amounts under the extreme heat and pressure of a particle collider, with a decay window under a full second. Whether measured by production cost or actual combat viability, both numbers rounded to zero. Batman's brow locked into a hard knot, his finger dragging across the screen to the search term cosmic elements. If nothing on Earth worked, the answer had to sit somewhere further out.

He activated an encrypted channel immediately and reached Hal Jordan, who'd just gotten back to Earth off a space assignment, tone leaving no room for argument.

"Get to the Watchtower now. Urgent test, need your help." Half an hour later, a set of distinctly unhurried footsteps echoed through the Watchtower's entrance. Hal Jordan walked in wearing the signature Green Lantern uniform, spinning his ring on one finger, and let out an impressed whistle the second he cleared the doorway.

"Whoa. This place makes the Hall of Justice in New York look like a broom closet. If I'd known you were hiding a spot like this, I would've stopped putting up with the UN's endless complaining every single meeting." He looked around at the tech on display as he walked, moving quickly toward the section where Batman was working.

"So what's the emergency? You need me to simulate some monster's energy signature again?" Before Hal even finished the sentence, Batman raised a hand sharply, cutting him off, eyes snapping toward a specialized observation chamber in the corner of the lab. Inside sat the purified Viltrumite atom sample.

What had been a stable, softly suspended cluster of pale gold particles was now agitated, violent, tumbling inside the container like something set on fire, showing early signs of pushing straight through the energy barrier holding it.

"Don't move." Batman's voice went cold instantly, his mind running fast, a bold theory forming underneath the calm. He stared at the particles, then at the ring on Hal's finger, and spoke low.

"Approach slowly. Don't activate the ring. Keep your speed steady." This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. Hal, thoroughly confused, slowed his steps anyway. As the distance closed, the Viltrumite atoms grew more agitated by the second, the energy shield around the container starting to ripple visibly. When Hal reached a point three meters from the chamber, Batman gave the order.

"Activate the ring. Release green energy in stepped frequencies. Start at the lowest band, ten percent increments. Log the atomic response at each step."

"What exactly is going on here? This thing's more sensitive than the Corps' own energy detectors." Hal grumbled, but focused anyway, a faint green glow bleeding slowly from the ring, adjusting frequency exactly as instructed. At first, the Viltrumite atoms just spun faster. As the green frequency climbed, the particles suddenly began clustering together, the scattered gold points condensing into something closer to a stable energy crystal, the whole reading spiking hard.

The data on the holographic display refreshed itself violently, and Batman's expression only got heavier. Under the green light's influence, Viltrumite atoms were completing a structural evolution at a genuinely alarming rate, cellular load capacity and energy conversion efficiency both climbing several times over from baseline. And the rate of that evolution kept increasing on its own.

"Emotional will. That kind of energy..." He said it under his breath, arriving at a conclusion that landed hard.

"Viltrumite atoms respond to the subject's emotional will, capable of driving unconventional power spikes. Every baseline reading we've logged so far becomes worthless the instant the subject's emotional state swings hard enough." He turned to Hal, something in his tone more serious than Hal had ever heard from him.

"If whoever's carrying these particles ever gets their hands on any emotional ring, their capability would scale exponentially. Possibly past anything either of us has ever catalogued as metahuman." The amusement drained off Hal's face slowly, replaced by something closer to genuine concern. He understood exactly what an emotional ring was capable of. If something out there could actually catalyze off that power in return, the fallout didn't bear thinking about.

Hal opened his mouth to press for more detail, and Batman cut him off before he got the chance. Batman activated the Watchtower's teleporter.

"Come with me. Gotham, the secret lab. We need to run this further." Right as the beam wrapped around both of them, he gave Hal a hard warning.

"Until I've confirmed Kael is reasonably safe, you do not meet him under any circumstances. And your ring does not get anywhere near him. Understood?"

"Relax. I'm not exactly eager to go poke an alien kid who apparently gets buffed by Green Lantern energy." Hal shrugged it off, though not quite with the weight the situation deserved. The instant the two of them landed in Gotham's secret lab, the surveillance console lit up with an alert. On screen, a black-haired teenager appeared on a Gotham street. Kaelvorn. Fresh off saying goodbye to Superman. He was frowning, rubbing at his own arm, an obvious discomfort on his face.

His second time in Gotham, and something felt wrong the entire time. A hard-to-describe itch was crawling up out of his bones, spreading through his blood and out into the rest of him. And the more he walked in a specific direction, the worse the itch got. Like something inside him had woken up, hungry to answer whatever energy was calling it from outside. What he didn't know was that the thing pulling him along was Hal Jordan's ring. On the monitor, Kaelvorn's path kept drifting steadily toward the secret lab.

Beside Batman, Hal had already closed his hand into a fist, the ring glowing faintly, something eager flickering in his eyes. As a Green Lantern, powerful energy resonance like this triggered his curiosity on instinct. He was practically dying to walk over and test it firsthand.

"Don't move." Batman shoved Hal against the wall, one arm pinned hard across his shoulder, voice about as severe as it ever got.

"I'll say it once more. You do not make contact with him. The consequences aren't ones you want to find out about." While holding Hal down with one arm, he activated an encrypted channel with the other, speaking into the earpiece.

"Who's near Gotham right now? I can't step away from this."

"I'm at the Gotham docks working last week's smuggling case." Nightwing's voice came back fast through the comm, a lightness in it.

"What's up, Bats? Trouble again?" Batman didn't waste time explaining. He forwarded a basic file on Kaelvorn straight to Nightwing, keeping it short.

"Track him down. Keep him away from my position for now." He killed the channel and turned back to stare down Hal Jordan. Maybe because he'd rarely seen Batman push this hard on anything, the eager look on Hal's face finally lost the fight. He threw both hands up, signaling he'd behave.

"Fine, fine. Stop staring at me like that, you're giving me actual goosebumps." Elsewhere, Nightwing looked over the file that had just landed on his terminal. An alien teenager, only fourteen years old. Viltrumite. Apparently currently being hunted by his own homeworld.

"An alien refugee this young?" Nightwing's eyebrow went up, his mind drifting, unwilling, to the tragedy of the second Robin, killed two and a half years ago. Over these past two years, Batman had gone noticeably darker, more violent, than before. Small-time thieves regularly ended up beaten badly enough that their own mothers wouldn't recognize them.

Nightwing, who'd already broken off from Gotham to run solo in a neighboring city, kept coming back every few weeks specifically because he was worried Batman bottling all of this up would eventually curdle into something worse. Officially, he was helping. In practice, he was keeping close tabs on Batman's state of mind.

"No way... he just, what, worked through it on his own with zero warning signs? Is this guy seriously trying to find his next Robin out of a pool of alien refugees?" After thinking it over for a while, Nightwing decided to go check it out in person. He dropped any pretense of staying under the radar, swung onto the motorcycle parked on the curb, and gunned it toward wherever Kaelvorn was.

A few minutes later, Kaelvorn found himself frowning at a young man on a motorcycle who'd swung into a stylish drift right across his path. The guy pulled his helmet off and shook out the hair the helmet had flattened, with a certain deliberate flair to it.

"Dick. Dick Grayson. Heard you're looking for someone in Gotham?" Before Kaelvorn could get a word out, it took him about two seconds to dig this specific detail out of the back of his old-life memory. The Bat-family's prince with the famously nice ass. Huh. Batman's this considerate?

"You know I'm looking for someone? So Batman sent you?" Hearing Kaelvorn say that only confirmed Dick's own theory harder.

"Whoa, obviously. You're in luck, kid. I'm a private investigator, born and raised right here in Gotham."..... +40 advanced chapters on Patreon [email protected] /YATOOO