So, Luthor and Gul thought they could use me, uh? Sure, neither of them knew of VEGA (as a matter of fact, no one sans Clark, Kara, and John did), but still, given how paranoid/intelligent they were they could have at least thought about the possibility of me having an AI. Waller, though? She was smart and decided to leave me be for the moment, at least until she got cloaked drones or something like that sent to Mars.
Pff, as if: the only reason Lex got so close was that I forgot about Mars' missions; after that I made VEGA scan the whole planet and its orbit constantly to make sure we wouldn't be caught off guard again.
So, after yet another week of me saving people, fighting crime, and being mysterious, VEGA found something.
"Slayer, I discovered something that will interest you."
Io and behold, VEGA's 'something' did in fact interest me: it was Clark talking to a tall blonde whose buff chest was free for all to see, with an outrageous beard covering his face and carrying a trident, both standing on a forested beach located in the Eastern Coast. I thought it was your average secret conversation away from prying eyes until the camera zoomed out to sho the submarine-sized atlantean warship and a company of atlantean soldiers lined across the beach. Why did Aquaman bring a small army just to talk with his friend?
"It seems that Mr. Kent wishes for Mr. Curry to communicate with us, but lacks the capacity to do so outside of bringing him to Mars on his ship."
"And the entourage?"
"Apparently they are afraid."
"Afraid? Afraid of what?"
"That the U.S military might not take well to their presence."
Well, what do you know, the people that claimed they could wiped out the surface considered a technologically inferior country dangerous enough that their king had to be accompanied by a company and their equivalent of an AT-AT.
Yeah, I used the AT-AT as a comparison.
So, it was time to meet yet another superhero from this world. Just to dick with them, I opened a portal underwater. However, before I did that, I 'disabled' the ship's weapons without the crew noticing with help from VEGA. Why? Well, read further and you'll understand.
After doing the deed and just as my head surfaced, I heard Clark talk to Aquaman, obviously talking about me.
"I don't care if some man from space does not like me." I heard Aquaman say. He was facing Clark, and so where his troops, and the sand muffled my steps so they didn't either see or hear me walk out of the sea.
"And I'm telling you that he's... standing right behind your army?" Clark said when he finally saw me, what with me being the tallest person there. Aquaman followed his gaze, and saw a most ridiculous sight? What did he see, you might ask?
Why, of course, me shoving my way through the line his surprised men.
The troops farther from me raised their weapons and took aim the moment I was away from them, but I ignored them as I walked towards their king and the kryptonian. I mean, what are some shitty, water-powered rayguns compared to the might of Hell?
Sadly, one of them did not like me treating his boys like bowling pins: the general, the guy with the most pimped out armor. Yes, not a general, but the general, the second highest rank in Atlantis' military. Why did the king of the Seven Seas bring his second in command with him for some 'maneuvers'? Was he actually afraid of the supposedly interdimensional space marine? No idea.
It provided me a way to show what kind of man I was to them, though.
"Stay away from the King of Atlantis, surface dweller!" The guy said, but I blatantly ignored him as I shoved him aside. He screamed some more before grabbing my arm. The poor fool thought he was strong enough to stop me. "Didn't you hear me?!"
I didn't even bother to look at him before acting.
The moron only managed to speak some more before I grabbed his hand (had to hold myself, else I'd have pulverized the bones), pulled out the doomblade, and held it against his neck, all in one second. He didn't even have time to scream.
Well, he did, but a little cut made clear that he'd end up losing his Adam's apple... and that at the very, very minimum.
"One more word, I'll cut your head off." I growled at him before giving a little push. Okay, it wasn't exactly little given he kinda flew towards the water, but I used the minimum effort possible: any higher, and he would have ended with several broken bones, regardless of his supposedly superhumanly thick skin and dense bones.
Which, as later turned out, weren't THAT thick or dense. Just not with the moron.
"That man is my general." Aquaman growled as I walked up to them. Apparently he had balls of steel, because he was willing to 'threaten' a man a foot taller than him, twice as broad at the shoulders as he was, armored from head to toe and uncaring if he was being aimed at by thirty soldiers with 'hydro-pulse rifles', VEGA said they were called.
Might as well be glorified water guns compared to even the pistol. Mostly because one of them shot at me when I reached Clark and Aquaman, either accidentally or deliberately, and this caused a chain reaction that ended with most of them shooting in my general direction. The plasma strikes did made me flinch, but by now you already know most weapons from Earth just couldn't hurt me, so instead of retaliating I stood there and shrugged the barrage.
Aquaman didn't, and the only reason he didn't get hit by a stray shot was that Clark put him behind him. Fun facts: Aquaman is what could be considered a 'glass cannon': he's strong even for an atlantean, and his trident is quite sharp (and because it's magical in nature it can hurt Clark), but normal guns can hurt him if he's not wearing that scalemail of his, so naturally anything stronger than a hunting rifle can actually kill him if he goes barechested like that.
Imagine what could have happened if I hadn't disabled the cruiser, whose crew also went crazy and tried to fry me despite their king standing literally right in front of me. Fortunately, that also meant I shielded him from the mangic shooting.
"Stop your fire, dammit!" Aquaman shouted at the top of his lungs.
By the time his boys realized what they were doing and stopped, a part forest had been burned (and if not for Clark it would have ended in a forest fire), and the sand around us glassed.
I merely dusted myself ala Luke Skywalker, only with sand, actual sand on my real body.
"Your soldiers lack discipline."
"You nearly killed their superior!" Aquaman growled as he clutched his trident, clearly wanting to impale me, not knowing what would happen to him if he tried.
Fortunately for him, Clark did, because he put himself between us and put a hand on Aquaman's tridents. "Arthur, don't do something you might regret."
I glared back at Aquaman, although he didn't realize it because I polarized the helmet, and ignored Clark. "Superior? He'll share blame, then." Time to talk about the reason I was there.
This did confuse Aquaman, whose glare half-morphed into a confused stare. "Blame for what?"
Instead of talking to him, I turned to Clark. "Did you tell him?"
Clark, remembering what I was talking about, shook his head. "No, I was about to, but then you came before I could get to it."
"Should have been straight with him."
Understandably, Aquaman did not like the ease with which I spoke.
"What the Hell are you two talking about?!" He shouted at us. "You've been several days flying over and saying that you need to talk to me, I come to the surface, and then this Starship Trooper wannabe comes out of the ocean, manhandles Brak, insults me, nearly gets me killed, and then mocks the Atlantean Army!"
Before Clark could explain why did we want to talk to him, or even open his mouth for that matter, I put a hand behind my back to call the piece of bomb and then showed it to Aquaman. "You know this?"
Aquaman, finally calmed down, grabbed the shard and inspected it while muttering something under his breath. His cursing stopped abruptly the moment he saw the symbol engraved on the metal, previously frowning eyes now widened in shock. "The Red Trident?" He then shook his head. "Where did you find this?"
"In a train in Germany that had been sabotaged." I told him, making him flinch. So, he did know something at least. "Speak."
It was at that moment that the assholish general, Brok or whatever, came out of the water "You dare to-"
That was as far as he got before I pulled a 'gun aimed at annoyance to make it shut up'. Then again, it was the first time anyone in the planet, let alone the universe, saw me pull a weapon literally out of thin air and aim it at him.
The fact it was the Super Shotgun out of all the weapons in my arsenal, and one with a bayoned attached to it, probably didn't help. The games don't really show how actually big the damn thing is since Doom Slayer is a shaved gorilla in green armor, but to give you an idea the combat shotgun is chambered for 8 gauge shells, just like Halo's shotties, only a bit meatier (and no, don't ask me how did I reach that conclusion, the fact it can damage armored vehicles should suffice).
The Super Shotgun's are significantly larger than that. Think of them as small shells repurposed for buckshot. Or dinoshot, or pinkyshot, or whatever the fuck shots exponentially larger than buckshot are called.
"One more word from you, and I'll blow your head off." I growled at the little man, who ignoring the fact he was a high-ranking officer and standing in the presence of not only his monarch, but also his troops, nodded frantically and stepped back. Then, I turned back to Aquaman, who finally showed fear, only not of me. "Start talking."
"Doom Slayer-" Clark began to say before I interrupted him.
"Not now." I turned back to Aquaman. "Speak."
Aquaman breathed deeply. "They're a... group of atlanteans who do not like what the people of the surface do to the oceans: pollution, fishing, all that stuff." He then shook his head. "And I don't like it either when the surface believes it can do whatever it wants to the oceans. However, they're a bit more... extreme when it comes to make clear what they think Atlantis should do."
"More extreme in what sense?" Clark asked.
Before Aquaman could respond to him, VEGA called me. I raised a hand indicating them to shut up and then listened in. "What is it?"
"Slayer, the Voyager of the Seas is being boarded by several dozen atlanteans equipped with the Atlantis armed forces' armor and weapons, several of them sporting a red trident."
VEGA then showed me an ocean liner in the middle of the Pacific ocean under a sunny sky, which would have been a normal sight... if not for the atlantean ship surfaced near it and the armored figures climbing its sides.
The moment they got to the upper deck they began killing the passengers indiscriminately, some not even bothering to shoot them and beating them to death which, given that atlanteans are significantly stronger than the average human, was easy for them, before gathering the survivors and dragging them inside the ship.
That included children.
"I am currently spying their communications. It seems they want to ram the ship into Seattle's docks." VEGA continued
"Just that? No demands or anything?" I growled, too angry to realize I had said that outloud, earning confused looks from the others.
"No, Slayer. If I may, the captain has already send a distress call, but both the U.S Navy and the Coast Guard are too far away to stop them in time without destroying the Voyager of the Seas. Even then, the Red Trident have brought a bomb to the ship in case they can't accomplish their primary goal"
So, the classic murderous terrorists whose cause involved killing first, demanding stuff later. How did I react to this turn of events? By teleporting straight to the ship and murderfucking the hijackers? By going to the deep end in a moment of irrationality, and wiping Atlantis off the map with the BFG-9000?
The first one, of course. First, however, I had to... show my displeasure to the man that had the most to do with this, despite everything pointing that he had nothing to do at all with what I saw. I grabbed Aquaman by the throat and raised him up as high as I could, before throwing him to the sand. Again, he had nothing to do with the Red Trident, but at that moment I wasn't thinking straight.
Clark cried something, and the atlanteans charged, but one shot from the Super Shotgun into the air stopped them; some even dropped their rifles in fright. It might sounds stupid to you for them to act like that because of some slugthrower, but the SSG going off sounds like an artillery piece being fired.
"W-why the Hell did you do that for?!" Aquaman screamed at me after recovering.
"A cruise ship is being hijacked by atlanteans. They're killing passengers indiscriminately."
I felt two hands grabbing me by the shoulders "Where?!" Clark screamed both in horror and anger, as he (as already told) grabbed me by the shoulders, not caring about the height difference between the two of us.
I looked at him straight in the eyes. "Pacific ocean, five nautical miles from Seattle. They want to ram it into the port. No demands. Start flying."
The moment I closed my mouth he was already flying northwest at mach 5. However, even as fast as he was, he wouldn't arrive in time to stop the ship from crashing and killing thousands.
Which was good, because he'd most definitely be an obstacle for me and what I had planned to do with the Red Trident.
I watched as Superman went supersonic before turning to Aquaman. "Stay here. And pray you have nothing to do with this." Once more, I knew he didn't, but at that moment I just didn't care, and besides I wanted to scare his ass for being... an ass towards me, justified or not.
I opened a portal to the ship and walked in, leaving a hundred confused and angry atlanteans behind. I did not care the possible repercussions that could come from threatening the sovereign of a nation, too busy planning the rescue of the Voyager. As for why did I tell Superman to fly instead of bringing him with me, he might have been a help stopping the Red Trident... but also become an obstacle.
Because he would have done anything to stop me from giving those fucks what they deserved. And a show of force for the whole world to see what happened when you crossed the line with me near.
Before that, however, VEGA had a ship to save.
..........
So, we meet Aquaman. Next chapter will be the beginning of the long awaited RIP AND TEAR YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR!!! Only the beginning, though: I'm gonna have to use two chapters.
Once more, did I write the characters right?
Not so dumb question (at least to me) for Halo/Mass Effect fans: would a Mass Effect-enhanced Punic supercarrier (Silaris armor, cyclonic barriers...) be an even match for a CAS assault carrier?