"ARE YOU SHITTING ME, UNIVERSE?!"
A month of work, of trying to work out the mysteries of shrinking tech with what he could figure out from the Fortress and Ray Palmer's work, and this is best he can get?
A 20 meter tall hunk of junk that will take a freaking year to unshrink Kandor!
Oh sure, he could make one powered by his own solar reserves. Except that would take years to make a stable one that wouldn't explode or possibly make the city BIGGER THAN THE PLANET!
He had tried using magic, but there were only so many times you could say 'grow' backwards in different languages before it stops working. He only managed to double it's size before the diminishing effects got on his nerves. Couldn't use Runes, because of how dense the shrunken glass was.
Thank Rao he was able to get a better drone in there to communicate with them. Didn't have to worry with any more suicide attempts, judging by how loud the cheering was.
He had left a few drones to play with children. Some of them were used to fly the kids around the city. They'd have to get used to that considering they'll be doing it on their own in a year's time. Probably less, if his theory on the ridiculously dense glass blocking solar radiation bore any fruit.
Unfortunately, the tech salvaged from Brainiac's ship had been very bare bones, little of it having to do with size alteration. Most of the surviving pieces of the ship had been salvaged by various industries and long since cannibalized to improve Earth's own tech. And Palmer's work had all revolved around a stabilizing suit, which, while helpful, hadn't made it much easier, since he was unshrinking a whole city, not a single person.
Which led to him venting his frustrations here, a dozen miles above New Krypton's surface, screaming at the stars.
"Trouble in paradise, Kryptonian Prime?" a teasing voice said behind him.
"Bury yourself, Quasar Baby," he told the grey-skinned mutant Kryptonian.
H'El frowned. "I don't like that nickname."
"And I don't like being called a name from myths. I am no champion of the gods."
The adopted son of Jor-El tended to get on his nerves. Ever since he had found his ship adrift between galaxies (a supernova had knocked it off course), the accidental quasi-clone was both one of his few friends and his greatest annoyance. A good listener when he needed it, a second opinion to bounce ideas off of, and a loud mouth who annoyed the hell out of him for fun. H'el's most annoying trick was his unique ability to teleport by swapping his atoms with those at his destination, which bugged the hell out of Vahl-Or, since he couldn't hear him coming.
They were best friends, but given his few other friends couldn't survive the gravity of the semi-artificial planet, he didn't think that was saying much.
"So I'm guessing it's not going as well as we hoped?" H'el said.
"No. The best we can get is a year of continuous exposure, not counting the time it'll take to dig out a hole big enough to put it in eventually. If we try to use our solar reserves, it'll either explode or make the city bigger than the planet."
"Which would cause the bonds connecting atom to atom to break, effectively disintegrating everyone."
Vahl-Or looked sidelong at H'el. "You're unusually calm about this, given how you reacted when we found out where Brainiac had disappeared."
H'el shrugged. "Bastich is deader than empty space, and Kandor is safe. Don't see a reason to panic over it. I'm more concerned about you, Golden Boy. You're usually the calm one."
"I'm well, just frustrated. When I was young, I had always imagined this being easier. I had seen the records of Kandor being shrunk, and thought undoing it would be as quick. Even when I logically knew the barebones tech we got would make it take longer, I didn't expect it to take THIS long."
"Harder than we thought, huh?"
"Yeah. Yeah, that sums it up, pretty well."
"Well, let's get started. That hole won't dig itself."
H'El teleported away. Vahl-Or sighed, before extending his senses to find him.
Locating him in an empty field, he moved...
... and found himself face-first in the dirt, a ton of ground flying into the air from impact.
What.
"Ummm... Vahl-Or, are we digging already, or did you fall asleep?"
That... was fast. Much faster than he had intended.
Lifting his head, he went to wipe the dirt from his hair, before pausing at what he saw.
What appeared to be electricity, was arcing between his fingers.
"What the hell?"
"...Okay, first of all, RUDE."
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Whatever has happened to Vahl-Or? Find out in the next issue.
For those who recognize H'El, do not expect him to be anything like his comics counterpart. He is going to be massively OOC.
I only know him from wikis and quora. Not to mention, his history is different.
He knows he is a clone. While I don't know the reasoning in the comics, here, cloning is only illegal to prevent overpopulation. And to be frank, I don't know why the clones themselves would have to hide. They did not ask to be made. The one who did the cloning should be punished. (That's not even considering that in some canons, all Kryptonians are pretty much test-tube babies.) So here, he is well aware of his true origin, and is treated as just another citizen. His creator? Sent to the Phantom Zone.
As for the "Quasar Baby" nickname, from what I know, the samples he was cloned from were exposed to the energies of a quasar. Got that from Quora, so not sure if that's canon to the comic. This is my story, though, so it's true here. (Vahl-Or tried exposing himself to a quasar once. Got sick for a few days.)