As soon as I left the office, I proceeded outside towards the open courtyard passing and ignoring the kids who were having fun along the way. My eyes flickered around where I saw a few adults here and there helping out or supervising some of the children answering one of my questions on who was helping run the orphanage. Not far away, I also saw Nat relaxing with a few teenagers discretely keeping watch of the kids as two boys tried to flirt with her causing my jealousy to spike slightly.
I knocked myself out of that thought pattern quickly and focused on my current objective. As much as the temptation to just relax and sleep my worries away under the shade of a tree was appealing, I had work to do that was no less important. I willed for my green lantern suit to cover me as I continued walking forth while on the side observed as my clothes got seamlessly transmuted to form the standard form-fitting female green lantern bodysuit that left nothing to the imagination although I felt self-conscious for being a bit underdeveloped. I turned 14 not long ago so I still have room for puberty to hit me like a truck, probably. After mentally cheering myself up for a bit, I shrugged off my useless thoughts and took a second to look back at all the kids enjoying themselves before lifting off the ground, effortlessly hovering towards the sky.
I cloaked myself because a flying emerald glowing light streak would draw attention easily and cause more problems than I have time to deal with right now before launching myself at a faster speed breaking the sound barrier and flying higher past the Stratosphere. In the less than 24 hours since I had gotten my ring, I had gained enough experience to fly around easily and do some minor tricks here and there. Adrenaline pumped in my veins as the exhilaration of flying at such high speeds kicked in only enhanced by the fact that I couldn't feel any physical strain or g forces being exerted on me. My environmental shields had already flared allowing me to breathe comfortably as the air continued thinning the further I went as I marveled at Earth's breathtaking beauty.
In mere seconds, I had already ascended past the stratosphere relishing the panoramic view of the earth as I continued forth watching as the blue that had been covering most of the sky finally revealed the vast endless darkness of the void of space. I finally made it to space, I laughed in childish glee at the slight sense of pride I felt at achieving one of my previous life fantasies before turning to look at the bright blue planet I now call home. I couldn't resist taking a few photos as I observed the awe-inspiring spectacle before me. I took a moment to enjoy the view of the yet-to-be-polluted earth, its radiant oceans along with the lush greenery covering most of its continents as I slowly drifted away. I laughed in amusement thinking of the jealousy my space-obsessed friends would have shown if they figured out I was the first one among us to successfully make the trip and I was currently in the Marvel Universe.
I pushed the negativity that was about to emerge from my reminiscing down and enjoyed this moment. A sudden glint drew my attention causing me to tilt my head to observe a satellite some distance away in orbit. I mauled over my thoughts for a second before deciding my next move.
'Ring, create a new databank before scanning and hacking the nearby satellite. Download all available data without arousing any suspicions. Filter out any useless data, possible viruses, and backdoors.'
[Affirmative]
In the meantime, I flew close to the satellite to closely observe it. I was acting like a farm girl but I wanted to see for myself how it looked up close.
[Process complete.]
The alert from my ring brought me out of my little science fair trip.
'That was fast well from your scan was there any evidence of us flying around and checking for whether the location of trainee green lantern Irene Adler is under any satellite surveillance.'
[From the systems, the only evidence is the presence of blurry photographic records taken of a green unidentified object flying around the Ural mountain range in Russia
while recorded more than 9 hours ago and currently, there is no satellite that has been recording or monitoring western Massachusetts specifically.]
'Good, replace all evidence of our traces with a blurry mirage image of the mountain range. Explicitly erasing it might cause more questions if anyone saw it before so let them think their satellites are malfunctioning.'
[Affirmative]
'Also do we have a galactic standard map?'
[Negative but I have obtained the current incomplete map of the sol system from NASA's tracking as the Voyager satellite has yet to pass Neptune.]
'Sweet, ring create a backdoor access into the satellite network and can we FTL somewhere.'
[FTL travel is only available within the mapped locations of the sol system.]
'Excellent then, create a memo for me and add satellites to the list. I will need to have my satellites around by the end of the week probably. Plot a flight path to the far side of the moon.]
Receiving a flash in confirmation, I created a pair of visor glasses and flew away following the navigation display. Along the way, I mentally checked over some of the data I obtained also displayed on my glasses. I had gained a gateway to the US government's backdoor and in turn a part of S.H.I.E.L.D along with the coordinates of their satellites a few of which are decommissioned and much information about some of the world's history. It's 1985 and from the records, Peggy Carter is still S.H.I.E.L.D's director and Howard Stark is still alive. Xavier is around and has just started his mutant school in the mid-seventies after much criticism and stuff after Magneto appeared on live television as a terrorist and the government claimed that the president's assassination in the same year was the work of mutants. That was back in 1973, so about twelve years ago and mutants have been facing an increase in prejudice and discrimination.
'Ring, from the data we obtained is there any information regarding sentinels.'
[Several records have been identified of a weapon currently under development by us military under the name Sentinel.]
'Add that to my memo also ring can you scan and digitize data from all the physical records I collected in subspace?'
[Affirmative. The process will be completed in one minute.]
I hummed in confirmation, as I mentally removed all the information from my visor only leaving the navigation display before sighing in exhaustion. It seems I have more work than I bargained for on my hands. I proceeded to increase my speed causing me to arrive at the moon in less than a minute. As I soared over the moon's surface, I couldn't help but let myself get carried away for a few seconds leading to me spotting the historic Apollo landing site marked by a flag which I lost interest in just as fast and proceeded to switch on my life force scanning for the famous inhuman city Attilan.
Almost as soon as I made it to the moon's far side, I picked up on multiple life signs a few kilometers away, alongside my ring flashing to indicate the completion of its previous task. I smiled at the other readings I was getting as soon as I got to the city's presumed location flying high above. From an outsider's point of view, there would be nothing interesting about this place and I would have probably missed it also if it wasn't for the life signature of about twenty thousand people I am currently picking up.
Pumping more power into the glasses and switching between different perspectives of view shows me a protective dome that is shielding the city within from an outsider's view as well as providing a contained artificial atmosphere for its inhabitants' survival. As my ring went through the routine of hacking and retrieving their data, I couldn't help but continue observing one of Marvel's biggest fuck ups apart from mutants. The universe just hates mutants and everyone can agree to that but for Inhumans, they caused most of their own problems in the first place.
Through my glasses, I observed past the invisible barrier in the city. From a general point of view, the city is a magnificent display of architecture and advanced technology, the first of its kind I have ever seen with my own eyes but as always appearances might be deceiving. Tracing my view from the wealthy districts of the city located in the middle, I dragged my vision surveying the streets and infrastructure slowly taking in all I could see moving towards the outer district walls. From the tall royal palace adorned in beautiful murals and carvings, past the highly guarded facilities, to the lower districts which had more functional looking common housing facilities to the run-down streets where you could see people get shunned, suffering in hunger, poverty, and those with physical mutations and deformities hiding away looking terrified and some even traumatized. All this advanced technology, a supposedly advanced society but still the same bulshit no matter where you go, Inhumans some of them claim to be superior to the apes down on earth so they seclude themselves leading to most of their problems and all this jazz I'm getting as readings from their top society only made their image in my eye drop even lower. If a strong enough virus is dropped into their small bubble called home it would probably wipe out more than two-thirds of their population.
'Ring, have you acquired the genetic record of the one called Blackagar and checked the status of the society yet?'
[Affirrmative, Blackagar the current ruler of Attilan's genetic makeup alongside that of their entire race has been stored. Currently, the society seems to be in a state of unrest due to rumors of a civil war over resources with a possible rebellion underway. Among the top echelons an individual named 'Medusalith Amaquelin' a member of the royal family represents the group that has been pushing for the rights of the common civilians in the ruling council but her plea is only met by denial while it seems there are rumors of the king being behind this and him having the intentions of exploiting this opportunity to push to unite and strengthen blood ties in hopes for a stronger next generation.]
Well, it seems this is a different universe than I originally knew and black bolt here is a douchebag. What would you expect from a hierarchical medieval type of society whose high echelons are mostly part of a genetic council and would only see to use you for potentially stronger genetic material and hold it in value over the lives of thousands of their citizens suffering due to abnormal mutations and such. For such an advanced civilization they really are dumb enough to have all their important genetic records stored on machines but I can't blame them, a competent spy lanterns power ring is their best weapon. Although that is the case, this seems like a good opportunity to get an ally out of this situation and a possible base of operations but I'll hold off on this plan for a while. I have already bugged their systems for any further development for now I only came here for information collection. Now towards my final goal of the day which was my main goal in the first place, getting myself a safe base for myself.
"Ring, plot an FTL course to the geosynchronous orbit of Mars, and launch me there."
I was so excited about the new experience and truly I wasn't disappointed. After a five-second counter-warning from my ring, I watched as the stars stretched around me and my perception of the world got twisted for a second or two. Six seconds later, I dropped out of FTL in orbit of the red planet. That was an experience, faster than light for sure although it kinda takes away the rush of flying at relatively high speeds by myself.
"Ring scan Mars for any signs of life sentient or not or any artificial structures and highlight the location."
My ring flashed in confirmation before I spent a while playing with my constructs for a few minutes. I finally figured out how to generate matter and it was actually simple, I just needed to envision the material to be used for the item during the projection of my constructs and push more power into it causing the energy to be used to generate matter in the corresponding parts thus forming permanent objects as evident by the basketball and concrete tile I am currently holding. Thank ROB for the Starheart's addition otherwise, I would be stressed out figuring out how to forcefully transmute matter for months probably but I'm pretty sure my method was typically brute-forcing my way through the problem and would be highly consuming on the energy and inefficient. I need to train or else I'm more stupid than Captain America trying to choke a robot.
[The planet Mars is a barren wasteland although results of planet scans indicate traces of salvageable fossil records confirming the existence of lifeforms once although we might not be able to recover the genetic makeup of lifeforms correctly from their remains.]
Traces of life on Mars once, that is intriguing but right first now that I had confirmed the planet was safe and free, I can finally begin constructing my base.
_________
AN// I added a few powers I missed in the previous chapter I kinda missed a few lol. I will probably make an auxiliary chapter later containing the MC's powers and character images. Next chapter would be following in like 30 minutes or less. Anyways thank you all for your support and feedback. I hope you continue enjoying the story.