Both of us stood there, watching as the girl fell to the ground gasping, but not for lack of air. For what I remembered of the cartoon, tamaraneans were similar to kryptonians in that they could obtain energy from star; on the other hand, this universes' kryptonians did need oxygen even when fully charged.
There was, of course, the issue of this particular tamaranean not being Starfire as usual in DC, but Blackfire, her usually good yet bitchy, sometimes a form of dark grey sister. And she didn't have the same armor/cuff system Starfire wore on the cartoon, so she may have not been a prisoner. As for Blackfire herself, she looked night the same as the cartoon, leopard and all, if a bit older when comparing her with what I remembered (I didn't read the comics).
"Shouldn't she be asphyxiating or something? Or freezing? Or, you know, lay dead?" Grundy said. For obvious reasons, the girl couldn't hear him speak, though she may have felt the vibrations he made, because she then looked up and saw us. Given the first things on that strange satellite she saw were an armored soldier and an undead giant respectively, added to her already volatile personality, it was understandable the way she reacted.
Namely, by ramming into me with enough force to cause a cloud of dust around us, then beating my helmet as hard as she could even as we rolled on the ground, where she procceeded to basically try to bury me by punching.
Even as she dug us deeper into the Moon, I simply did nothing, deciding to let her tire herself out. Like the rest of the Praetor suit, the helmet was all but indestructible to most attacks, berserk tamaraneans included. As a matter of fact, her knuckles began to bleed, although she didn't seem to know or care.
Eventually, a minute or so later, her, anger gave way to astonishment when it finally dawned on her that my faceplate didn't even have as much as a crack on it. She was both royalty of a species of superhuman beings and aware of her strength, so it was a surprise for her.
I didn't wast the chance she gave me by kicking her off, careful to not split her in half, but that simply meant reminding Blackfire of her flight and energy blasts, blasts she promptly began bombarding me with. Too bad (or good, given she was unwittingly depleting her energy reserves) for her, Grundy was both strong enough to restrain her with little problem, heavy enough to not fly off the Moon if careful, and uncaring of her state.
He still landed a nautical mile from me.
"For a twig, she's pretty damn strong!" Grundy said as I approached them, a screaming Blackfire doing her damnest to escape his embrace. "Also, I think I dislocated her arms."
VEGA didn't bother to translate what she was screaming about, and not just because most of it was insults about our parentage, but nonetheless he was already creating a rough conversion of the tamaranean languange for me. A quick jab to her face put an end to her defiance.
"Now what?"
I merely opened a portal to the Fortress. There, both Rachel and Garfield watched in confusion as we brought the unconscious alien female.
"Who's that?"
"An alien orange girl that landed on the Moon. Pretty strong, too. I mean, not Superman or me strong, but there's a Slayer-shaped crater." Grundy said before dropping her on the ground, where Garfield began prodding her. "Yep, dislocated arms. My bad."
I watched as Rachel fixed Blackfire's arms, then cast a paralysis spell. "She won't move until I want her to, and it can hold Clark. What will you do with her?"
"For now, she's going to the dungeon." In a moment of foresight, I kept Waylon's cell in the Ripatorioum, just in case someone close in power had to be imprisoned, even if she wouldn't move.
Naturally, Grundy did not like that. "What?"
"She's not like the others. Too strong, can fly, and those balls. Besides, if she wakes up, I'm sure you'll handle her."
Grundy rolled his eyes before grabbing Blackfire and taking her to the Ripatorium.
"Did you do anything to her?" Rachel asked me.
"Aside from giving her the concussion of her life and Grundy accidentally dislocating her shoulders, no."
"I will call mister Kent, he will want to know about her and might know more than we do." VEGA said.
An hour later, Clark stood by me on the main hall as Grundy brought a now fully conscious Blackfire back. While angry, she didn't try to escape this time.
"She looks very close to a human." He remarked as Grundy set her down on a chair. "If not for her skin, she could pass for a normal girl."
"Have you ever meet someone of her species before in your travels across space?"
"No, but by your description of her her people could be related to kryptonians, at least to some point." They weren't, not at all, but he didn't know. "But maybe Kyle knows of them."
Kyle Rayner. There were of course John, Guy and Hal, but Kyle was the first human in this universe to put on the ring, and a friend of Clark. I haven't mentioned either of them until know by virtue of them not coming to Sol. According to Clark they did know about me, but only the bare minimum. I didn't know at that moment, but I was going to mee them soon... and not in favorable circumstances, to say the least. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
"Are you sure I didn't have to bring my translator?"
In response, I pointed at the ceiling. "VEGA's already translated her language, we're just waiting for the final tuning... and for her to talk first."
"You'll be begging for a quick death when I'm done with you." She growled. That was good, it meant the translation was complete.
"Good, we understand you. Can you understand us back?" I asked.
Blackfire was taken aback, fully understanding what I said. "What the-"
"My AI took the liberty of analyzing your screams of rage and insults as you tried to cave my skull in."
Clark looked at me, alarmed. "You didn't tell me that."
"There was no need to: she didn't do anything, and in fact the most she managed was cutting her knuckles." I told him before looking back to our guest. "I am Doom Slayer, and this is Superman. The people back there are Rachel Roth and Solomon Grundy.
Blackfire merely glared at me.
"We are part of a group that protects the nearby planet of threats the local peacekeeping forces can't, both from the inside and out. And until you tell us your intentions, you're the latter, and believe me, you don't want to be a threat."
Blackfire continued to glare at us for a while, before finally sighing. "Okay then, I can see I'm not going to escape from you. I am Komand'r, queen of planet Tamaran."
"'Commander'?" Clark repeated, between puzzled and suspicious, eyes narrowed at her. "Are you a soldier?"
"Komand'r, you stupid alien plebeian! I'm the queen of the tamarans!" Blackfire screamed at him before, surprisingly enough, acquiring a depressed look. "At least, I think I still am."
"Why are you here?"
"Straight to the pint, eh? Well then. I was... let's say exiled from my world."
"By who?"
"An outside force none of us ever knew existed." She began to explain." I'm not going to bore you with the small details. One day, not so long ago, we were attacked, by an army of winged monsters from space. They promptly began to attack anyone they could, and even though they were weaker, they soon began to kill us. No matter how many of the creatures we killed, there were ten for any that fell, and even the mightiest guard can only be in one place at a time. Only me, my sister and a few others could push them back, but they always came back. It only got worse when the freaks' masters decided to involve themselves. THOSE killed my already weakened troops like nothing."
Blackfire then looked away, a forlorn and even scared look on her face.
By then it was obvious to me and Clark (whose jaw tightened to the point I could heard his teeth grind) who, and what, had attacked her planet.
Apokolips. Not the planet itself or Darkseid, however, else she would have mentioned them.
"And then their leader decided to involve himself, a monster of a man. That murderous bastard."
"Did this leader look like an animal, with an oversized head and a beard but no mustache?"
I knew who he was talking about: Kalibak, one of Darkseid's sons, and the most disappointing for him. Him conquering an entire planet wasn't that surprising: despite his lack of intellect and self esteem, he was still a powerful force capable of matching Clark punch by punch, something that few could do. Besides, not every tamaranean was a fighter.
Plus, despite being a somewthat dimwitted thug most of the time, there was a damn good reason he was called the Cruel, something that millions of people learnt the hard way.
"How... how do you know that?"
Clark, for some reason, looked at me for a second before looking back at her. "I've fought him before, him and his family." Clark explained. "His people invaded our world before, but we managed to drive them out."
"How the hell did you fight them off?!" Blackfire-Komand'r screamed, incredulous.
"It's a long story, and it wasn't that easy either." Clark replied, not really wanting what exactly happened. "Was a planet with him? I mean, did he come from a planet that appeared in your system?"
Blackfire, without more context about Kalibak, took it wrongly. "A... planet? That bastard can move planets?!"
"No, but his father can, and not in the way you think either." Clark assured him. "But did he?"
"No, he didn't. He and his forces came on a ship, if a rather stupidly huge one."
"That means he's acting by himself, then." Clark muttered. "Weird, yet comforting."
Blackfire, understandably, thought otherwise "Comforting? That bastard slaughtered millions of my people and enslaved the rest!"
"He could have easily just killed you all, or worse." Clark ccountered. By worse he meant, of course, being taken directly to Apokolips which, given their overall power, would have meant very bad news for the universe on the long run, not that it changed anything.
Rachel decided to speak "What made you leave Tamaran?"
"My councilors more or less begged me to find someone who could liberate us from the aliens. Rather stupid of them, but then, none of us could fight against that thug. I wouldn't go alone, however: my sister, Koriand'r, would accompany me in my mission."
"What happened to her? Why wasn't she with you on the ship?"
"I'm not sure where my sister is, we split when the ship jumped. We barely had need to use it until now, thus we don't really understand how it works" She then sighed. "Wherever she is now, I hope it's not Tamaran."
"Couldn't you call the Green Lantern Corps to help you? This is the kind of situation that would force them to act directly." Neither of us were really sure about that, given their usual hands-off modus operandi (and ignoring the fact they were very stretched thin9, but the threat of a member of Apokolips' ruling cast might have been enough to force their hand.
Komand'r grunted. "The Corps and Tamaran have... bad blood between them, to put it lightly. I don't really care at this point about that part of our history, but my people wouldn't take well to them coming, help or not. All I want is to kick those freaks off my planet."
"What about your sister?" Rachel asked
"Don't misunderstand me, I love her, but Tamaran takes preference. Besides, other than that bearded freak, I'm fairly certain she can take on anything the galaxy throws at her."
To summarize, Kalibak had for some reason gone solo on a planet of powerful aliens, clearly to earn respect from his father, and actually pulled it off; unexpected from someone like him, given everything I knew. On the other hand, it could be a part of a bigger ploy. We didn't know, but what we did know was that Apokolips had conquered another planet.
Then, there was the fact Komand'r didn't seem particularly upset about what she had gone through, or at least not as much as I expected her to be.
"You'll help me? Jut like that?" Komand'r asked, both incredulous and suspicious
"It's who we are." Clark replied with a smile before frowning. "And this is something I want to see with my own eyes." He then turned to me. "But we might need some reinforcements, just in case."
I nodded "VEGA, call everyone available."
"Solomon Grundy, exploring the final frontier?" Grundy pondered before shrugging. "I wouldn't be as strong, both in strength and plants, but I could go."
"There's still a loose end on Earth I want to take care of." Rachel said as she looked at me. "But I don't hink it'll go anywhere, and if it did, I would know. Besides, I always wanted to see the stars, the real stars, from up close."
"And as much as I want to, I don't think I can take on Kalibak and an army of parademons."
"There's no need for that. VEGA can bring us to Tamaran."
Clark blinked as he stared at me, surprised. "You mean... move the fortress?"
I nodded. "It can move between universes, remember? A jump to the other side of this one is nothing as long as VEGA knows where to go, and since our arrival, he's been surveying the galaxy, just in case, but I think you can help with that.
Clark didn't bother to ask how it was possible, knowing how advanded my technology was, but in truth it was a result of the Fortress' magic.
In the end, it was decided: me, Clark, Rachel, Grundy and a few others (Wally, Ayame, Pausanias, Mecha-Boi, Kara and John, plus a late and rather surprising addition that nonetheless ended up being very welcome) would accompany Komand'r back Tamaran to help her liberate her people from Kalibak, just in case he had brought more forces. As for Garfield, he would stay with Clark's parents. But as powerful as each of us were, and as Komand'r noted, we couldn't all be everywhere, and while incredibly resilient, the Fortress of Doom sorely lacked offensive capabilities, and the ones it had I didn't want to reveal, not yet, not even to non-earthlings.
Not that the lack of numbers couldn't be solved.
Remember at the beginning of the story, when I laid down several works around the Fortress? Well, not all of it was for future human colonization. It was also that the rest of the League when they found out, did not take kindly, especially Bruce, even though it paid off in the long run.
But first, though, we had to prepare and, most importantly, know where our destination was. Good thing we had a map of the entire Milky Way galaxy.
"Where's Tamaran?"
Another arc begins, and the Justice League (or at least a chunk of it) will be going on their first interstellar mission/quest/adventure/journey. Hope you liked this chapter.