First, before we get to Superman, let's talk about the rover. Would you believe me if I told you it took me days to see the damn thing recording us from atop a nearby dune? Because that's exactly what happened. Imagine my face when I realized that a small robot had been watching the works around the Fortress and the Fortress itself for at least a day.
No, I'm not going to tell you what exactly I was making around the Fortress, it's a surprise.
"VEGA, what is that?" I asked VEGA as I looked at the rover through the heavy cannon's scope. Why? Because it was several miles away. Yes, the camera it had allowed it to see that far, and no, I could not do that even with the helmet on, it lacked a zoom.
"It appears to be a-"
I stopped him. "I know what a Mars Rover is. What I want to know is how did we allow it to get so close to the Fortress." Yeah, us, not just VEGA: how the fuck did I miss a car-sized space RC moving at walking speed towards my base, even during our first survey of the planet, I did not know.
"It seems we missed it during our initial survey of Mars. You specifically asked for possible native ruins, not foreign unmanned vehicles."
Typical for an AI to follow orders to the letter, but he was right about that. So, momentarily forgetting I could just open a portal to bring it to me, I ran the several miles separating me from the retreating rover, whose operator realized the space marine they had been spying on for however long had seen them, but being a three hundred-pound drone it barely moved a hundred yards before I reached it.
The first thing I did when I got to it was disable its camera without destroying it (those robots were expensive even with all the other tech available here, especially the lastest models of 1999), and then make VEGA intercept the last images it recorded. Nothing we could do with those already recorded and sent. On its side it had a blue ball with a black L, kinda similar to the NASA symbol.
Kinda, because instead of 'NASA, it had 'LexCorp' blazened right in the middle.
Well, damn, I really hoped it was just NASA watching over me, instead of the private company of Superman-hating Baldie that most definitely had an interest in me, or rather my stuff. I wasn't surprised he could afford to make his own space program and 'rent' their machines, however, since he was filthy rich, ambitious as fuck, and actually made the discovery of my location public. Something that, again, I didn't know of at first until I asked VEGA to tap the Internet and saw the Fortress on a TV screen.
Yeah, people could see not just the Fortress, but also the stuff the drones were building on the area around it which fortunately hadn't yet reached the point where it was obvious what they were making. And no, it wasn't weapons.
That could not be allowed. They already knew I was doing something on their proverbial backyard (they already had the capacity to go to Mars), I did not want them to know WHAT exactly I was doing before being able to explain myself to them, lest they accidentally started World War Three out of fear of me or even dumber reasons.
After mentally kicking myself in the head for being so fucking careless, I composed myself. The situation was still very much salvageable, and not only that, I could also use it to show off a bit of my capabilities. Well, VEGA's, but they didn't know I had an AI with me.
"Vega, sweep the area to see if there are more rovers, and if there are hit them with an EMP wave. I don't want any more uninvited guests spying on us."
"As you command."
It turned out there were indeed other rovers heading our direction, five in total: three from NASA, one from Russia, and the last one from LexCorp. After VEGA disabled them, I made the drones bring them all to me. Then, I took them back to where they came from, starting with LexCorp's own space program.
Stepping out of the portal, I found myself in a veritable pandemonium, specifically one taking place in a room that looked awfully similar to NASA's mission control, with researchers, engineers, scientists and such ilk crying and running around. Apparently they did not expect their second rover to just come offline just like that, and were trying to fix the problem, not knowing that an EMP had fried its circuits. Some of them did see me and understandable freaked out, but the others were too busy being already freaked out to notice me. I merely stood and watched how the situation unfolded.
"What the heck happened?!" The head honcho of the place screamed at the others. I think he already asked that even before I came, he simply was hysteric to no end. "Why is the other not responding?!"
"We do not know sir, it sorted out somehow!" A technician responded as he frantically tried to raise the connection with the rover. "It's not responding!"
"I know that you idiot! I'm asking HOW did it sort out!" The man screamed as he grabbed the technician by the neck and shook him.
"Again, we don't know!" The poor devil managed to spew out as his throat was being compressed.
"Luthor will have my head if you don't fix this! Just sending them to Mars costed four billions!" The leader screamed before throwing his victim aside and pulling on his hair. I swear the guy actually ripped strands out of his own hair. "And we lost BOTH of them!"
"We oughta be more worried about the spaceman realizing we've been recording him and his house for three days." An engineer snidely pointed out. "Didn't you see how fast he ran at Explorer-1?"
"Johnson, that brute hadn't done anything during those-" One of the scientists that had yet to see me standing there began to say before another, one of the few that DID, tapped her in the shoulder. "What is it?"
The man merely pointed at me with a shaky arm. The woman, annoyed by his attitude, turned around to see what he was scared of... and froze still when she saw me standing right there with them, rovers over the shoulder.
They stared at me for a few seconds, before I dropped their toy on the ground and turned around. The sound of several hundred pounds of metal and wires finally made everyone realize they had a guest, but said guest was already leaving.
"Wait!" I heard one of the technicians scream. That was the last I heard before I crossed the portal.
Why did I deliver their toys to them in person, instead of just shoving the rovers through a portal to their location, as I did with NASA and the russians? To scare them and make sure they wouldn't try to spy on me again, but without actually being violent, of course. Of course, I'd have known if they had tried to do it again the moment LexCorp sent a rocket to space, but it was the sentiment of the act what counted.
Unfortunately, because of Lex's toy now everyone knew that the mysterious green soldier who had been saving lives across the world had his home on Mars, and was also doing something there. You will not believe the million conspiracies it spawned, and how many of them were eerily close to DOOM's lore: that I was a martian, that humanity originally came from Mars, that I was a soldier from the future...
Sadly, all action has consequences, mine included, and in my case it involved a certain kryptonian and his friends landing on Mars, just a mere mile away from the Fortress, wanting to know... several things, really, now that he could actually do so: the classic 'who are you' and 'where are you from', the understandable 'why are you so brutal', and so on and so on.
So, yeah, Superman had given the the components of the pod that brought him to Earth to S.T.A.R Labs so they'd build him a functional spaceship.
Fortunately, I HAD already planned to get him to come here to talk to him. He didn't know it, but he just made that part easier for me.