Growing Pains - Chapter 47
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Growing Pains - Chapter 47
'Hmm, that could have gone better.' I mused as I floated over the unconscious body of the lizard that almost got away.
I mean, I caught him before he could raise the alarm, but I'd also ended up blowing a giant hole in the wall when they realized I was in the vents and started shooting them up. Someone was going to come and notice that at some point if they didn't discover the door I had just disabled by blasting the control panel.
That meant I was now on a timer to get stuff done before alarms started going off and the lizards ran off with their evil, bioweapon creating scientist or the bioweapon itself. Or even worse, decided to use the thing.
Which…wasn't great for me.
I was decently confident that I could take the whole base by myself if they were all like the partols I ambushed so far. But I couldn't exactly punch a virus.
And if the lizards were planning on using this weapon on a whole spacefaring warrior empire like the Thanagarians, who probably had better healthcare than all but maybe the best Earth had to offer, it wasn't going to be some easy-to-get-over thing like a common cold.
I needed to find the scientist, now.
And as I looked down at the bodies of the patrol I had just beaten, I think I knew how I was going to do that.
I'd learned a lot from Batman, afterall…
-o-
"Wakey, wakey." I crooned as the last of the important looking lizardmen I'd captured regained consciousness.
He looked a little startled to be hanging upside down from the ceiling, but pretty soon that was going to be the least of his worries.
"A little birdy told me you all have been naughty, trying to build a bioweapon to win your war without a proper fight." I gathered a bit of Ki into my eyes, just enough to make them glow. A pretty pointless technique overall, but one that let me copy the soulless glare of Batman's cowl without a mask of my own.
"So…who wants to tell me what I want to know? Or do I have to be…" My tail flicked out and tossed the crumpled up form of one of the lizardmen's helmets. One I'd crushed before any of them woke up after taking it off the grunt in question, but they didn't know that. "...creative?"
-o-
Britlok awoke with a splitting headache and realized fairly quickly that, one, he wasn't dead and two, he had been captured and hung upside down. A decent power play by his captor, showing respect for Britlok's abilities by ensuring he was put as off-balance as possible as he woke up…and the complete control they had over him by not only managing to do so without him being able to struggle, but three other Gordanians as well. Who could have…
The Saiyan!
Britlok forced himself to focus through the blood rushing through his head and look for his captor. It was…harder than it should have been, possible concussion then, but he managed. To a point.
The Saiyan was partially hidden in shadow thanks to a light source behind them that made their outline blurry, but they were bigger than the child the outpost had seen. Adolescent or adult depending on where they were in their development cycle. The terrifying thing though was the eyes.
Solid pools of gold staring directly into his mind. Looking for the slightest excuse or weakness to devour them all, as seen by their disapproval of the development of a bioweapon.
And their words…a little birdy told them?
"The Thanagarians…" He whispered in horror. "...they unleashed a Golden Saiyan on us…"
He felt one or two of the others stiffen in horror at his words, the more educated grunts that had access to existential threats the Gordanians faced.
Britlok could barely focus through the headache that was forming, but he was unsurprised to hear one of the grunts telling the Saiyan what it wanted to know. Maybe if they did so it would turn on the Thanagarians…
-o-
"That was weird." I muttered as I shut the door behind me. All the lizardmen were still tied up but I put them back on the floor because how they reacted after waking up…yeah, that was really weird.
Maybe I hit them too hard? One of them mumbled something that I didn't catch and then all of them practically shouted the answer to everything I asked which didn't really mesh with the whole slaver with a superiority complex image I had gotten from the conversations I'd overheard. I mean they were still slavers and still trying to unleash a species specific bioweapon so I wasn't going to feel bad about it, but…man, I wanted to rub it in Birdbrain's face that I used things Batman had only indirectly taught us better than he could. If he ever found out it only worked because I broke them I would never hear the end of it…
Well the good news was that I had the location of the scientist's lab now. As long as no one asked how I figured that out I just wouldn't bring it up.
Now I just needed to get there…
After a quick check that no alarms were going off – as far that I could tell, anyway – I ducked back into the vents and followed the directions I'd been given as best that I could since the vents didn't perfectly follow the corridors.
I got turned around a few times and once I simply couldn't find a way forward so I left the vents before ducking back into it after I found another entrance farther ahead but eventually I passed over one of the less busted up sections of the mountain base and figured I was in the right place when I saw two grunts guarding a door at attention unlike the more casual postures I'd found them in when I was doing my earlier snooping.
…the human woman working behind a glass window was also a pretty big hint.
I looked around for a way to sneak up on the guards, but by coincidence or on purpose for once there was no easy way to sneak up on them that I could see. I cracked my knuckles and smiled. Direct way it was then.
I raised a leg and kicked at the vent's grating, causing it to smash into the opposite wall and kick up quite a bit of dust, before flying out and making a hard turn to rush the two guards. They had only just started to react to my sudden appearance when I grabbed both of them by the head and smashed the two of them together. I quickly backflipped back down the hall and got ready for them to retaliate…only to see that they were both unconscious from that single hit.
"..."
These lizardguys were kinda weak, huh? Which was weird because they were supposed to be fighting Hawkie's race to a draw and she never went down in one hit.
Maybe these guys were just weaklings and the only real fighters were the ones that left earlier? If that was the case that would kinda suck, but at least I got some stealth practice in.
After a mental shrug I simply walked up to the lab door and pressed a button before just walking in, much to the scientist's annoyance.
"Look, I'm doing the best I can already and bothering me every half hour isn't going to make me work any faster or magic up materials I just don't have. So can we just skip the threats this time and acknowledge that you'll just have to wait till I'm done?" She snapped without even looking at me. I guess working with alien lizard slavers was making her a little tense.
"I'd rather get you to stop working, actually." I replied flippantly. "I heard you're working on something pretty nasty and I'd hate to have to break your knees because of it." That was a lie. As far as I was concerned, evil scientists automatically had their knee privileges revoked but I'd at least give her a chance first.
The woman froze at the sound of my voice before whipping around to face me. I gave her a smile and a wave.
"You aren't working with the Gordanians, are you?"
Was that what the lizard guys were called? "Nope! Unless you count giving several of them an unscheduled nap as working with them."
"Oh, thank God! You have to help me get out of here!"
"...huh?" That was not what I was expecting from someone working with alien lizard slavers. "Um…okay. Why do I need to get you out of here, exactly?"
"I'm Doctor Amelie Roquette, I'm a virologist working for STAR Labs. About three weeks ago I was kidnapped by the Gordanians and forced to work here…but, shouldn't you know this? You're one of the Justice League's sidekicks, right?"
Annnnd she officially ticked me off.
"No, I'm not one of the Justice League's sidekicks. I'm not anyone's sidekick." I growled. "More importantly, where's the bioweapon and how do I blow it up?!"
"You don't blow up a bioweapon, you idiot!" The scien– Amelie hissed back. "That's just asking for part of it to spread uncontrollably! But that's not the point. There is no bioweapon. The Gordanians wanted me to make them immune to a virus that was fatal to their enemies, but you can't just 'program' a virus like that. Certainly not in just one week. One mutation would make the whole thing uncontrollable, not that the leader of these aliens would listen to me!
"I've barely even mapped out how the virus interacts with the Gordanian immune system, let alone weaponizing it against a single species, or making them immune, or any other crazy demand they have!
"So can you just help me get out of here so we can call the actual heroes to deal with this whole mess?!" Amelie ranted, breathing a little heavily at the end.
She seemed stressed.
But that also didn't match up to what I'd already overheard while I had been sneaking around the base. The lizardguys definitely had her working on what they believed was a weapon, and they even said it was already deadly to humans.
"So what, you just ran tests and made stuff up for a week while you were waiting to be rescued?" I asked.
"W-well…"
Oh that didn't sound good.
"Okay, look, they kept me locked up in here working all day constantly and kept demanding updates. If I wanted to stay safe I needed to show them at least a little improvement towards what they were asking me so I might have made a few vials that should be less infectious towards their biology. But nothing like the superweapon they wanted! For anyone else it would be the same if they ran into the virus anywhere else on Earth!"
"Mhmm…"
I wasn't really sure if I could believe her, but at the same time I just realized that I wouldn't be able to do much if she was lying. So I was going to punt the whole issue to the Justice League and if Amelie was lying for some reason she could try lying to Batman.
"Alright, fine. Let's get out of here."
Amelie breathed a sigh of relief and rushed over to a computer and quickly grabbed what looked like a thumb drive and shoved it in a pocket.
"This has all my data on what I did while I was here. The information about a completely alien immune system alone is invaluable for research purposes." She defended seeing my curious look.
I just shrugged. It wasn't like that was going to slow us down much.
"So how did you get this far in the base anyway, and how are we going to sneak out without them noticing us?" Amelie asked.
I scratched the back of my head as I thought about it. I didn't think a normal human her size would have an issue crawling through the vents, but at the same time I hadn't been thinking about it. "I used the air vents to sneak around most of the time so we could probably sneak out that way if we can find our way back to the exit. I didn't exactly keep track of which way I was going the whole time."
"What? Why not?!"
"Why would I?! I wasn't expecting to have to lead someone else out of here!"
Amelie gave me a slow disbelieving look. "You weren't expecting…but aren't you working with Hawkgirl to rescue me?"
I gave her a look back. "Hawkie was looking for you? And no I just stumbled across the base and thought it would be fun to sneak in and poke around."
"...you thought it would be fun…to sneak into a Gordanian outpost…just on a whim?!"
"I mean I didn't know they were Gordanians but, yeah kinda?"
"You're insane!"
I scowled at her. "Saiyan actually. Now are you going to get in the vent or are we just going to go through the halls? Cause I'm fine with either."
"We can't go through the halls." she snapped at me. "They would raise an alarm immediately!"
Almost immediately after she said lights started flashing and a klaxon could be heard going off in the distance.
I just looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "Well, alarms going off. Vents or halls?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Support the Author at ko-fi.com/azurawriting
or over at patreon.com/AzuraWriting to read a few chapters ahead in the rotation
'Hmm, that could have gone better.' I mused as I floated over the unconscious body of the lizard that almost got away.
I mean, I caught him before he could raise the alarm, but I'd also ended up blowing a giant hole in the wall when they realized I was in the vents and started shooting them up. Someone was going to come and notice that at some point if they didn't discover the door I had just disabled by blasting the control panel.
That meant I was now on a timer to get stuff done before alarms started going off and the lizards ran off with their evil, bioweapon creating scientist or the bioweapon itself. Or even worse, decided to use the thing.
Which…wasn't great for me.
I was decently confident that I could take the whole base by myself if they were all like the partols I ambushed so far. But I couldn't exactly punch a virus.
And if the lizards were planning on using this weapon on a whole spacefaring warrior empire like the Thanagarians, who probably had better healthcare than all but maybe the best Earth had to offer, it wasn't going to be some easy-to-get-over thing like a common cold.
I needed to find the scientist, now.
And as I looked down at the bodies of the patrol I had just beaten, I think I knew how I was going to do that.
I'd learned a lot from Batman, afterall…
-o-
"Wakey, wakey." I crooned as the last of the important looking lizardmen I'd captured regained consciousness.
He looked a little startled to be hanging upside down from the ceiling, but pretty soon that was going to be the least of his worries.
"A little birdy told me you all have been naughty, trying to build a bioweapon to win your war without a proper fight." I gathered a bit of Ki into my eyes, just enough to make them glow. A pretty pointless technique overall, but one that let me copy the soulless glare of Batman's cowl without a mask of my own.
"So…who wants to tell me what I want to know? Or do I have to be…" My tail flicked out and tossed the crumpled up form of one of the lizardmen's helmets. One I'd crushed before any of them woke up after taking it off the grunt in question, but they didn't know that. "...creative?"
-o-
Britlok awoke with a splitting headache and realized fairly quickly that, one, he wasn't dead and two, he had been captured and hung upside down. A decent power play by his captor, showing respect for Britlok's abilities by ensuring he was put as off-balance as possible as he woke up…and the complete control they had over him by not only managing to do so without him being able to struggle, but three other Gordanians as well. Who could have…
The Saiyan!
Britlok forced himself to focus through the blood rushing through his head and look for his captor. It was…harder than it should have been, possible concussion then, but he managed. To a point.
The Saiyan was partially hidden in shadow thanks to a light source behind them that made their outline blurry, but they were bigger than the child the outpost had seen. Adolescent or adult depending on where they were in their development cycle. The terrifying thing though was the eyes.
Solid pools of gold staring directly into his mind. Looking for the slightest excuse or weakness to devour them all, as seen by their disapproval of the development of a bioweapon.
And their words…a little birdy told them?
"The Thanagarians…" He whispered in horror. "...they unleashed a Golden Saiyan on us…"
He felt one or two of the others stiffen in horror at his words, the more educated grunts that had access to existential threats the Gordanians faced.
Britlok could barely focus through the headache that was forming, but he was unsurprised to hear one of the grunts telling the Saiyan what it wanted to know. Maybe if they did so it would turn on the Thanagarians…
-o-
"That was weird." I muttered as I shut the door behind me. All the lizardmen were still tied up but I put them back on the floor because how they reacted after waking up…yeah, that was really weird.
Maybe I hit them too hard? One of them mumbled something that I didn't catch and then all of them practically shouted the answer to everything I asked which didn't really mesh with the whole slaver with a superiority complex image I had gotten from the conversations I'd overheard. I mean they were still slavers and still trying to unleash a species specific bioweapon so I wasn't going to feel bad about it, but…man, I wanted to rub it in Birdbrain's face that I used things Batman had only indirectly taught us better than he could. If he ever found out it only worked because I broke them I would never hear the end of it…
Well the good news was that I had the location of the scientist's lab now. As long as no one asked how I figured that out I just wouldn't bring it up.
Now I just needed to get there…
After a quick check that no alarms were going off – as far that I could tell, anyway – I ducked back into the vents and followed the directions I'd been given as best that I could since the vents didn't perfectly follow the corridors.
I got turned around a few times and once I simply couldn't find a way forward so I left the vents before ducking back into it after I found another entrance farther ahead but eventually I passed over one of the less busted up sections of the mountain base and figured I was in the right place when I saw two grunts guarding a door at attention unlike the more casual postures I'd found them in when I was doing my earlier snooping.
…the human woman working behind a glass window was also a pretty big hint.
I looked around for a way to sneak up on the guards, but by coincidence or on purpose for once there was no easy way to sneak up on them that I could see. I cracked my knuckles and smiled. Direct way it was then.
I raised a leg and kicked at the vent's grating, causing it to smash into the opposite wall and kick up quite a bit of dust, before flying out and making a hard turn to rush the two guards. They had only just started to react to my sudden appearance when I grabbed both of them by the head and smashed the two of them together. I quickly backflipped back down the hall and got ready for them to retaliate…only to see that they were both unconscious from that single hit.
"..."
These lizardguys were kinda weak, huh? Which was weird because they were supposed to be fighting Hawkie's race to a draw and she never went down in one hit.
Maybe these guys were just weaklings and the only real fighters were the ones that left earlier? If that was the case that would kinda suck, but at least I got some stealth practice in.
After a mental shrug I simply walked up to the lab door and pressed a button before just walking in, much to the scientist's annoyance.
"Look, I'm doing the best I can already and bothering me every half hour isn't going to make me work any faster or magic up materials I just don't have. So can we just skip the threats this time and acknowledge that you'll just have to wait till I'm done?" She snapped without even looking at me. I guess working with alien lizard slavers was making her a little tense.
"I'd rather get you to stop working, actually." I replied flippantly. "I heard you're working on something pretty nasty and I'd hate to have to break your knees because of it." That was a lie. As far as I was concerned, evil scientists automatically had their knee privileges revoked but I'd at least give her a chance first.
The woman froze at the sound of my voice before whipping around to face me. I gave her a smile and a wave.
"You aren't working with the Gordanians, are you?"
Was that what the lizard guys were called? "Nope! Unless you count giving several of them an unscheduled nap as working with them."
"Oh, thank God! You have to help me get out of here!"
"...huh?" That was not what I was expecting from someone working with alien lizard slavers. "Um…okay. Why do I need to get you out of here, exactly?"
"I'm Doctor Amelie Roquette, I'm a virologist working for STAR Labs. About three weeks ago I was kidnapped by the Gordanians and forced to work here…but, shouldn't you know this? You're one of the Justice League's sidekicks, right?"
Annnnd she officially ticked me off.
"No, I'm not one of the Justice League's sidekicks. I'm not anyone's sidekick." I growled. "More importantly, where's the bioweapon and how do I blow it up?!"
"You don't blow up a bioweapon, you idiot!" The scien– Amelie hissed back. "That's just asking for part of it to spread uncontrollably! But that's not the point. There is no bioweapon. The Gordanians wanted me to make them immune to a virus that was fatal to their enemies, but you can't just 'program' a virus like that. Certainly not in just one week. One mutation would make the whole thing uncontrollable, not that the leader of these aliens would listen to me!
"I've barely even mapped out how the virus interacts with the Gordanian immune system, let alone weaponizing it against a single species, or making them immune, or any other crazy demand they have!
"So can you just help me get out of here so we can call the actual heroes to deal with this whole mess?!" Amelie ranted, breathing a little heavily at the end.
She seemed stressed.
But that also didn't match up to what I'd already overheard while I had been sneaking around the base. The lizardguys definitely had her working on what they believed was a weapon, and they even said it was already deadly to humans.
"So what, you just ran tests and made stuff up for a week while you were waiting to be rescued?" I asked.
"W-well…"
Oh that didn't sound good.
"Okay, look, they kept me locked up in here working all day constantly and kept demanding updates. If I wanted to stay safe I needed to show them at least a little improvement towards what they were asking me so I might have made a few vials that should be less infectious towards their biology. But nothing like the superweapon they wanted! For anyone else it would be the same if they ran into the virus anywhere else on Earth!"
"Mhmm…"
I wasn't really sure if I could believe her, but at the same time I just realized that I wouldn't be able to do much if she was lying. So I was going to punt the whole issue to the Justice League and if Amelie was lying for some reason she could try lying to Batman.
"Alright, fine. Let's get out of here."
Amelie breathed a sigh of relief and rushed over to a computer and quickly grabbed what looked like a thumb drive and shoved it in a pocket.
"This has all my data on what I did while I was here. The information about a completely alien immune system alone is invaluable for research purposes." She defended seeing my curious look.
I just shrugged. It wasn't like that was going to slow us down much.
"So how did you get this far in the base anyway, and how are we going to sneak out without them noticing us?" Amelie asked.
I scratched the back of my head as I thought about it. I didn't think a normal human her size would have an issue crawling through the vents, but at the same time I hadn't been thinking about it. "I used the air vents to sneak around most of the time so we could probably sneak out that way if we can find our way back to the exit. I didn't exactly keep track of which way I was going the whole time."
"What? Why not?!"
"Why would I?! I wasn't expecting to have to lead someone else out of here!"
Amelie gave me a slow disbelieving look. "You weren't expecting…but aren't you working with Hawkgirl to rescue me?"
I gave her a look back. "Hawkie was looking for you? And no I just stumbled across the base and thought it would be fun to sneak in and poke around."
"...you thought it would be fun…to sneak into a Gordanian outpost…just on a whim?!"
"I mean I didn't know they were Gordanians but, yeah kinda?"
"You're insane!"
I scowled at her. "Saiyan actually. Now are you going to get in the vent or are we just going to go through the halls? Cause I'm fine with either."
"We can't go through the halls." she snapped at me. "They would raise an alarm immediately!"
Almost immediately after she said lights started flashing and a klaxon could be heard going off in the distance.
I just looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "Well, alarms going off. Vents or halls?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Support the Author at ko-fi.com/azurawriting
or over at patreon.com/AzuraWriting to read a few chapters ahead in the rotation