Chương 29: Turning Back Young

The Batcave's metal hatch hadn't fully cooled yet, cold light from the console still tracing the side of Batman's face. Data streamed across the display, fast.

"Compared to the last set of readings Bruce Wayne logged on him, his overall physical output is running roughly 3. 7 times higher now." Hal Jordan leaned against the rock wall, head turned toward the screen in front of Batman, something genuinely stunned in his eyes.

"A species like this actually exists. I need to get this comparison data back to Oa, or there's a real chance they don't take Viltrum seriously enough." Batman nodded, shifting slightly to give him room. Hal raised his ring and pulled a quick read off the Bat-computer's display. The Green Lantern ring lit up faintly, transmitting the data. Once the transfer finished, something heavier seemed to cross Hal's mind, worry flickering across his face.

"And that kid's compatibility signal's probably already logged with the Yellow Lanterns by now. Sinestro's not going to pass up a specimen like that."

"The Yellow Lantern Corps is holed up somewhere in the antimatter universe right now. Even preventive work on our end is a stretch." There was a real weight in his voice, nothing like the carefree tone from earlier. He glanced down at his own ring, its blink rate speeding up slightly, and some of the tension eased off his face.

"Oa's sending a few more Lanterns out. They'll hit this sector by tomorrow morning at the latest, staying near the solar system. Any sign of a Yellow Lantern signal again, they can move in immediately." Batman didn't look up, fingers tapping lightly across the console, pulling up a star map projection of the solar system's surrounding region, red warning lines crossing between the stars like a net.

"The League will handle Earth's internal defense." His voice stayed low, nothing extra in it.

"Kael's threat rating has come down. I gave him a comm just now. Any sign of a Yellow Lantern incursion on his end, we coordinate immediately."

"Don't worry. If they're bold enough to tear a hole out of the antimatter universe, I'm the first one on it." Hal raised a hand, and the Green Lantern's light surged, wrapping his whole body in green, cutting through the cave's hidden exit overhead and vanishing into the night sky in an instant. The cave settled back into quiet, Batman still watching the console, until Nightwing's voice cut through it.

Nightwing was holding an empty plate, glancing both ways, and swept some clutter off a nearby table before setting it down. He glanced toward the empty tunnel entrance, something resigned in his voice.

"Tried talking to that girl. She's a lot more guarded than I expected." Nightwing rubbed at the space between his eyebrows, adding on.

"The whole time, it was either eating steak or dead silence. Asked her about her background, her plans, nothing. No response at all." Batman listened quietly. He knew Nightwing well enough. If Nightwing genuinely hadn't gotten anything out of someone, he usually didn't stick around chatting like this. Normally he'd just slip away with his tail between his legs, maybe file a report later over the encrypted channel.

Watching the man who'd raised him act as hard and stubborn as a rock, Nightwing pulled a few exaggerated faces behind Batman's back, then reported the rest in a considerably lighter tone.

"Only thing I got was when I brought up Kael. She said she helped him make peace with everything he did on Viltrum." Nightwing shrugged, dragged a stool over, and sat down.

"That's it. That's the whole thing." Batman finally looked up, switching the cave's main-chamber surveillance feed. A faint trace of lingering purple magic still hung in one corner.

"Full-time surveillance on her, all sectors, twenty-four hours. Watch every move she makes. Nothing slips through." He waved off the surveillance and the star map projection, pulled up an anomaly-alert program instead, his tone heavy. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Before he left, Kael implied something to me. That girl's situation runs parallel to his own. Whatever's tracking her is worse than Viltrum." Nightwing's expression went serious instantly, pushing up out of his seat and leaning toward the console, eyes tracking the faint energy signature Batman had pulled up.

"Worse than Viltrum? What exactly is she?"

"Kael says she came to Earth looking for help, but he wouldn't tell us the actual core of it." Batman's eyes stayed sharp the whole time, like the man simply didn't get tired, like no stack of cosmic-scale problems arriving one after another could dull his read on anything. But this time, he finally opened that other encrypted channel again. He reached out to someone else.

"Oracle. Keep close tabs on those two. Log anything abnormal and report it immediately." Meanwhile, in one of Gotham's deep back alleys, Kaelvorn and Rachel walked side by side. The streetlamp at the mouth of the alley hadn't been maintained in years, its light flickering unevenly, throwing both their shapes into rough, broken outlines on the ground.

"You get enough to eat?" Kaelvorn glanced over, thinking back to Nightwing shuttling that plate back and forth, and couldn't help a small laugh. Riding on his ability's stamina boost these past few days in Gotham, he hadn't been eating on any kind of schedule either, and his mind was starting to feel it. Rachel rolled her eyes, hard, no attempt to hide it at all.

"Frozen steak, not even heated all the way through. My own stolen bread's softer than that." She paused, something mocking creeping into her voice.

"This is what you called eating for free?" Kaelvorn blinked, thrown for a second, then burst out laughing once he worked out what she meant, a little embarrassed.

"Can't really blame him for that." He pointed back the way they'd come, roughly toward where the Batcave sat.

"Think about it. A hidden base tucked into a sewer under a cliff. Whatever food they're stocking is going to prioritize cans and frozen stuff. Long shelf life, easy to store. Taste's not exactly the point." They reached the mouth of the alley, and Kaelvorn stopped walking, the loose, casual air draining out of him, something more serious settling in.

"Rachel. If you don't want to keep drifting like this, come team up with me instead." His tone was genuine, nothing testing or probing in it at all.

"At minimum, you won't have to steal to eat, or barely make it through the night in some abandoned corner." Rachel's expression went cold instantly, her feet stepping back half a pace on reflex, a faint purple glow rising around her, wary eyes locked on Kaelvorn.

"You've seen my memories. You know exactly how terrifying He actually is."

"That demon could tear through the dimensional barrier looking for me at any moment. Anyone who gets close to me gets pulled into endless dark along with it. Why would you go looking for that kind of death?" Kaelvorn stayed quiet a moment, then lifted one finger and shook it slightly.

"That thing you're talking about wants to swallow Earth whole. But Viltrum's fleet could also show up someday. Either threat means total annihilation for this planet." Rachel froze. She thought back to the civilizations in Kaelvorn's memory, the ones wiped out entirely, dressed up as the glory of conquest. Honestly, an individual Viltrumite's combat power might not match Superman's. But a handful of those warriors could easily tie Superman down, pin the whole League in place fighting them.

And the rest of the Viltrumite force could plow through every ordinary human left on Earth in almost no time at all. That kind of crushing, wholesale destruction hit more directly, and faster, than Trigon's creeping dark corruption ever could. She genuinely couldn't say which disaster would actually land first. Which meant her situation and Kaelvorn's currently sat in roughly the same place.

Both of them carrying something lethal on their backs, and the second ordinary people found out, wariness and rejection were the only things waiting for them. That specific loneliness, nobody to lean on, nowhere that actually felt like it belonged to you. She understood that better than almost anyone. The tension in Rachel's shoulders eased, just slightly, something complicated settling into her eyes, and she stopped pulling away from Kaelvorn's presence.

"So what's your actual plan going forward?" She said it like she'd already agreed, in principle, to the two of them teaming up. Kaelvorn looked up at the night sky.

"Before you helped me, all I wanted was to survive quietly on Earth. Viltrum's nightmare had me by the throat for so long I couldn't breathe past it." He wasn't someone naturally burning with ambition or fire. Thirty years of an ordinary, low-key life had stamped something permanent into a middle-aged soul underneath everything. Whatever impressive record he'd racked up on Viltrum had never once shaken the bone-deep fact that he'd already surrendered to life, bowed his head to it, more times than he could count.

Not until Raven stitched the other half of that blood-soaked soul back into his mind. Only then did Kaelvorn find something back in himself that he'd been quietly, subconsciously sneering at his whole life.

"... I want to get stronger than Superman." He turned to look at Rachel, and for the first time, not a trace of that old exhaustion from his past showed on his face.

"Get ready for the day Viltrum might actually come." Rachel's dead-fish stare gave nothing away, but she asked anyway, almost on reflex.

"And if they never do?"

"Then I'll go find them myself. Tear through this universe, and if they're not in this one, I'll go find them in another. I'll put down anyone who stands against me until Viltrum exists as something completely different." Right after saying it, Kaelvorn tacked something on.

"Obviously, once I'm actually strong enough for that. Or properly prepared, at least." Kaelvorn, genuinely excited now, opened his mouth to ask what Rachel thought of all that, only to find her staring at him with something close to the look you'd give someone genuinely simple in the head, open disdain sitting at the corner of her mouth.

"Who asked you about any of that airy nonsense." Rachel rolled her eyes, her tone blunt enough to leave no room for softening.

"I was asking where we're actually going to live. When it was just me, sleeping in a warehouse or hiding in a sewer didn't matter. You're the one who said we can't keep living like that..." She paused, then threw out something more practical.

"And food. We can't just keep running on what I steal, or mooching Batman's frozen steak every few days." Whatever conviction had settled on Kaelvorn's face froze solid. He coughed, awkward.

"That, uh. I do have an escape pod. Not huge inside, but cleaned up a little, it'll fit two people fine."

"As for food, don't worry. I can fish. You won't starve." Rachel sighed and didn't say anything else, apparently accepting an arrangement that sounded like it had zero future and even less appeal. They walked on a bit further, and Rachel suddenly added one more line.

"I genuinely regret helping you. Your soul's got no flavor left in it at all anymore. Being this young again is genuinely nauseating.".... +40 advanced chapters on Patreon [email protected] /YATOOOO