You know, for being a multibillionaire, Bruce Wayne sure as Hell had shitty firewalls shielding his most valuable information. Of course, VEGA could hack into practically anything if I asked him to do so, so there's that.
So, long story short Bruce was stereotypically concerned about me, and Clark was... unestereotypically also worried concerned about me, apparently because not many people here were as strong as I seemed to be to them. Back at the now groundbound Fortress of Doom, I spent several days refurbishing the interior of the place because I had lots of rooms
"Vega, find me some crimes to stop."
"What kind of crimes, Slayer?"
"The kind that someone like Superman can't stop in time, but still some muscle to stop." Couldn't let him have all the fun, did I? As for Flash, he operated mostly in America, so no need to worry about the red streak getting ahead of me. Of course, with my teleporting system, the entire planet was my 'playground' so to speak.
Oh, but I haven't explained why did I want to become your typical crime-fighting vigilante (although you might have an idea): for the simple reason that to earn people's trust, I had to make small things before I can start doing the big, important things that would eventually put me in a pedestal. That, and the drones were already taking care of the components for my big plans of the future, and I was bored with just watching Earth from my new screens (I found the plasma flat monitors gathering dust deep in the Fortress).
Of course, I didn't want to start by fighting the small small crime, like mugging or robbery. No, I wanted the big ones, the ones where the aid of a superstrong guy like me was outright compulsory to stop.
First, there was this crazy ex-mayor in Italy, some Luigi Bianchi who did not take well not being reelected by the city, some nameless municipality in Tuscany. As in, he became nuts, robbed a gunshop to take a rifle, went to the city hall and held everyone there at gunpoint, threatening to kill them one by one unless they elected him again. It was a bit hard taking him seriously, however, what with him beng a fat little man with a ridiculous moustache and who looked like a clown without makeup, covered in sweat and all that. Hell, he kinda resembled Mario and everything, which probably explained things.
Well, it seemed funny at first... until the man actually shot one of the women taken hostage in the knee, blowing it off, and then began taking potshots at the people outside the building, proving he knew how to fire a rifle. Someone had to intervene before he actually killed someone and save the wounded from bleeding out, but neither the Carabinieri nor the Polizia didn't want tot just barge in in case he decide to just off the hostages. Enter Doom Slayer.
Also, I think I had seen something similar happen before, but didn't remember where, and not in this world either.
"I want my attorney! And a recount of the elections! No matter what the results are, I want my job back!" I heard Luigi scream at the top of his lungs, emphasizing each sentence with a shot, before I left to get him. As for how was I able to understand italian, I just did. Chalk it up to divine power from the Divinity Machine.
So busy he was rambling about 'showing them who the Caesar is' and all that crap that he didn't see a portal appear right in the middle of the room and me stepping out. The hostages did, but they were either too stupified by my sudden appearance to react, or smart enough that they knew help had come and didn't want to botch it.
"Mister Bianchi! Release the wounded hostage and we might be able to... what the hell?!" Aaand the police saw me standing behind the ex-mayor, prompting the guy to turn around and stare stupidly at my armored chest for a few seconds, before looking up and staring at my polarized helmet.
The face he got when he saw his own scared shitless expression mirrored on my helmet? Priceless.
Luigi didn't have time to scream before I dope-slapped him in the face with enough force to both make him crash against a nearby wall and rip off his jaw.
No, it did not kill him. It was partly because he himself hadn't actually killed anyone and I didn't want to start doing so myself yet, partly because, in hindsight, there was no need to: he would end up spending the better part of a year on a bed because, even though I held back, he nonetheless was slapped by a giant-ass of a man in the face and then slammed against a brick wall at a dangerous speed: at the very least, he would only eat with a straw for the rest of his life.
Then, after making sure the other hostages were fine, I approached the wounded girl, who had already lost consciousness. I grabbed her and her detached leg, then did the same with Luigi, opened a portal to the nearest hospital with an ICU wing, dropped them off, and then left as quickly as I had arrived.
After that the national channels of Italy began gossiping about the Soldato Verde (Green Soldier), which in turn made America talk even more about me and wonder who I was, where did I come from, and all those same questions they talked about days before. So did Bruce, who didn't become more paranoid but did wonder out loud the fact I had acted in Europe all of sudden.
Also, it turned out that Alfred is half-scot from his mother's side. And has a FN FAL hidden in his room and is not afraid of using it against Superman. Gotta admit, the dude's got balls of chrome steel.
A kidnap attempt, a prototype stealing, and a yet another robbery later, VEGA found a high-speed rail in Germany that ran at full speed and could not stop because the controls had sorted out in the middle of the route. To make matters worse, the urban section it would eventually pass through was not designed with trains that moved at more than a hundred kilometers per hour, with several police cars and a chopper giving chase. It was the perfect recipe for a derailment, one that Superman couldn't get to in time.
Fortunately, they had me watching over them.
Yes, I know, a train having its brakes broken with no one to blame them for it is an accident, not a crime, but still. And besides, I found out it was no accident.
The passengers of the train, already terrified because of the possibility of them dying, got understandably freaked out when the mysterious man from Italy suddenly appeared in the middle car.
I then modified the portal so that it went from the car to Berlin, so that they could leave, which they did after several confused BPOL peeked their heads in. Making sure that all of the passengers went across, I made my way to the locomotive and found the driver and a few other staff trying to salvage the situation before they all died, not knowing they were saved.
"The system is broken, guys! I can't stop the train!" The driver screame in german as he tried his best to stop the vehicle, not realizing I was not one of his colleagues at first, even ignoring the quiet rumbling I made as I walked. "We need to-" He managed to say before turning and seeing me standing there, inspecting the damage.
Completely busted to Hell and back. It would not stop on its own unless I took every last drop of oil, and even then physics would ensure it would keep moving for quite a while.
"What happened." I asked (well, more like said), again somehow speaking german despite not having studied it.
The driver forced himself out of his stupor, unable to afford getting intimidated. "I don't know! The control desktop was fine an hour ago and then it began to fume before shutting off! Can you stop fix it?!"
"No." In truth I could, but it would take me time, time I didn't have, and even then I later discovered it wasn't just the controls that were broken. I then pointed backwards. "There's a portal in the middle car leading to Berlin. Everyone's already there. Go." Yeah, that was the longest sentence I muttered since arriving. Expect me to talk more because this was not the game where Doom Slayer never spoke.
"But the train can't stop!"
"I'll make it stop, but not with you here." I said before again gesturing towards the back. "Leave."
His fellow workers did as I said and ran to the wagon as fast as their legs could take them, but the driver hesitated a bit. Giving me one last look of apprehension, he ran towards the middle car, leaving me alone with a smoking control panel and a train that was moving faster and faster by the minute. Now the death toll would be zero, but that still left me with a runaway train.
A runaway train I was about to forcibly stop. The first thing I did was to shoot the engine so that when it stopped, it would stay that way. Then, after making my way outside and to the locomotive's nose.
Have any of you seen either Spiderman 2 or Hancock, were both heroes had... radically differing ideas when it came to stopping railway vehicles? Well, I have seen both, and decided to try if I could do the same. Of course, instead of using my feet to fruitlessly break the sleepers, or jumping in front of the train and making it crash against me to stop it, I took a middle point: I gradually sank myself on the ground between the rails; too slowly and the train would keep going fast, too fast and it would crash against me.
It wasn't just an effort to not destroy an expensive HSR (aside from the engine, but those are easier to replace), but also to test how strong was my body, because just fighting superstrong villains didn't fully reveal my strength and fortitude level.
Or, in layman's terms, I wanted to imitate Peter, but without the webs, and see how long I could resist a few thousand tons and the arth itself pushing against me.
It turned out to be quite alot, because after a full minute of me digging across the ground like some sort of human plow, the train fully stopped, and I digged myself out of the asphalt, a bit winded and obviously dirty, but otherwise completely fine, and not just because of the Praetor suit.
The small police convoy that had been chasing the train (and then watching me stopping said train) pulled over near me and pulled their weapons, falling on their training because they just didn't know what to do in case they encountered me.
"Hands up in the air!" The lead officer exclaimed.
I merely glanced at him before walking inside. One of the cops had to have a twitchy finger or saw something that wasn't there, because he accidentally fired at me, and a few others followed suit. It did nothing to me, however, and they stopped when I entered the cab.
"VEGA?" I asked the AI. "Scan the controls, see if there's anything that could tell us what hapenned."
"Scanning." VEGA said before doing so. "The interior of the controller has remains of a small explosive device inside, alongside the braking system, the lightning and several other systems of the vehicle."
So, the failure of the train was no accident: someone had planted bombs inside the controls panel, the brakes, and the other crucial parts of the train, but without actually blowing up the train itself to make it look like an accident. Sabotage, but from who?
Since I had yet to start my own investigation in the matter, and needed the train to do it, I did the most logical thing: ignoring the cries and orders to stand down from the BPOL's small army that had gathered around me, I opened a portal large enough to pull the cab through to give it a more thorough inspection back at the Fortress.
And guess what I found after disassembling the cab, sprinkled inside the controls?
A piece of metal with a three-pronged trident pained on it. Well, at least LexCorp wasn't involved in the matter, so I could rule out Luthor, and Intergang was mostly based in the States, so it wasn't them. But then, who it was? What bastard was willing to derail a high-speed train and kill hundreds of people?
"VEGA, start searching for anything related to this symbol."
Vega ended up with too much references to Poseidon, Neptune, the sea in general, forks, and surprisingly retiarii gladiators (although to be fair, they did use tridents), but what interested me the most was: Aquaman, the self-apointed King of the Seas who fiercely protected his realm from anyone who wanted to hurt it, but that included things like whaling, pollution and the like. Was he involved on this? Very unlikely despite his attitude towards the surface, but at the same time this was not mainstream DC, so everything could happen. What should I do with him? Was he a villain here? Did I just find myself with a plot in my hands?
Later I discovered that it that Aquaman had nothing to do with this, but at that moment I didn't know it.
And then, just when I was considering just outright kidnap the guy, I was rudely reminded of the fact that since the Fortress of Doom was now landed, anyone with a telescope powerful enough to see Mars' surface could in turn catch a glimpse of the Fortress and the industrialized area around it.
That and, say, a rover taking pictures out of it. Or a ship-owning kryptonian and his friends landing near the Fortress.
Yes, Superman had a ship.