| Solar System - September 29
Joseph headed home after the high of his new powers began to fade.
He had already been in space among planets and stars when he fought for Thanagar, but without the threat of war he now had more time to admire the beauty of space up close.
Mercury looked light gray, like the Moon—a barren, rocky world of dust and cooled rock hardened over billions of years. Its atmosphere was virtually nonexistent.
'Two out of ten on appearances,' Joseph thought as he picked up a rock for a souvenir before blasting off toward the next planet.
From a distance, Venus appeared as a calm, yellowish-white orb. Thick, swirling clouds gave it a soft, smooth appearance, but they completely obscured the surface. From the surface, Venus was a hellscape: dark, rocky, volcanic terrain shrouded in a perpetual orange gloom.
There was no evidence of life on either planet—at least not according to Earth and Mars. Not that he particularly cared or wanted there to be. If Earth ever became uninhabitable, humanity could try settling Venus since Mars was already inhabited. Something to think about for the future, once he fully assumed the position as CEO of LuthorCorp. Not that he'd allow anything to happen to his planet.
The atmospheric pressure on Venus was ninety-two times that of Earth, and temperatures were hot enough to melt lead. The sky had a yellowish-orange hue from thick sulfuric-acid clouds, and the constant pressure produced an oppressive feeling of being crushed. It wasn't particularly suitable for humanity.
"Three out of ten on appearances," Joseph thought, grabbing another rock before blasting toward Earth. Nothing would top his beautiful big blue planet.
On the way back to Earth, he spotted something moving at high speed in the same direction—about two percent of the speed of light. That wasn't debris.
He closed the distance and identified the rider from a dozen miles away.
Lobo. On a spacebike.
Joseph knew Lobo from the Gordanian mothership data and from reading hundreds of Gordanian minds. The man was infamous across the universe, and his own backstory had been spread with pride: Lobo reveled in his reputation.
His name, Lobo, came from a Khund dialect meaning "one who devours your entrails and thoroughly enjoys it." In Interlac, Hahn Sho Lobo also meant "the Main Man." He was the last of his people for one reason: he had killed them all.
He came from Czarnia, a virtual paradise that knew nothing of war and where Czarnians were nearly immortal. When Lobo was born, his evil was so obvious the nurse who delivered him went insane—becoming the planet's first mental patient in ten millennia—after the infant Lobo bit off four of her fingers.
Lobo knew he was one of a kind and wanted more. Inspired by the idea of genocide, he engineered a swarm of lethal, scorpion-like creatures, unleashed them on his people, and wiped out his entire species but himself. He called it a science project and gave himself an A. Since then he had traveled the galaxies collecting bounties.
He was a sick fuck. A nihilist. An unrepentant mass murderer. Joseph would be loath to let him continue living.
He tried pulling Lobo into the Dream State from a few miles away. It didn't work.
He hadn't fully determined the effective range for pulling people into the Dream State—somewhat dumb but he'd never needed distant assassinations before, thanks to the rest of his power set. Either way, he would determine the limit today.
Five miles. Four miles. Three miles. Two miles. One mile. Four thousand feet. Two thousand feet. Five hundred feet. Fifty feet.
Twenty-five feet.
Something finally happened—but not enough. He'd only brushed against Lobo's presence, not pulled him in.
His mind, even enhanced, was still human. His psychic reservoir was massive, but trying to wield it was like using a garden tap to drain an ocean. Even the Speed Force couldn't help him here. A lockpick, no matter how fast, couldn't crack a thick steel door.
Lobo reacted instantly, whipping his hooked chain behind him through the vacuum with such force it shattered Joseph's hastily erected Strength Force–reinforced telekinetic barrier. The links coiled around his arms and torso, locking him down.
A savage yank reeled him in as the space bike spun to face him, belching a storm of crimson energy bolts. Joseph let them land, absorbing their charge as they hissed into his armor. Muscles straining with Strength Force, he fought against the chains while simultaneously trying to throw Lobo from the saddle of his bike.
The infamous Spacehog, a customized SpazFrag666 boasting a miniaturized 17-liter powerplant with triple turbo and a full HandsOff facility—meaning it possessed some degree of artificial intelligence. It resembled a large motorcycle without wheels, complete with handlebars and fused engines and vents at the rear, giving it an overall delta shape.
It was capable of interstellar and atmospheric flight despite showing no obvious means to contain an atmosphere or protect a rider from the heat of re-entry—not that Lobo needed it; he was as durable as they came.
The bike also radiated an aura that resisted Joseph's gravity manipulation. Telekinesis failed too; Lobo clung to the seat like a tick.
Then the Czarnian reeled him in and swung.
The fist blurred forward even though Joseph was now able to travel and react to 5% the speed of light.
Joseph barely registered it before impact. Lobo's haymaker cracked across his face, snapping his head back and sending him spiraling upward. The blow hit harder than Despero's best. His Nth metal helmet absorbed the worst, already smoothing the dent back into place, but the shock still rattled his brain.
His nose cracked despite Strength Force bolstering his body. Shockwave's tech integrated into his suit couldn't help because he had nowhere to disperse the kinetic impact to.
Another savage tug of the chain yanked him back.
Lobo was playing paddleball—and Joseph was the toy.
No more.
From the torso of his suit, Joseph began extruding an Nth metal blade, black as obsidian.
//Applying Silver Swan's sonic scream technology to the blade. By channeling energy, the weapon will vibrate at ultra-high frequencies.// Nova's voice was calm and clinical, anticipating his intent.
The protruding tip buzzed faintly, sparking against the chain links. They didn't yield.
What the hell were these chains made of?
Joseph grinned despite it. He had just made a vibroblade. He poured Nova Force into it, golden energy flaring along its edges until the weapon glowed like molten steel. Heat and vibration finally bit into the alien alloy, severing the links.
But his brief triumph cost him—Lobo's fist was already inbound.
Joseph flung the cut chain away with an anti-gravity burst, twisting aside at the last second to evade Lobo's fist. Using the momentum, he launched his own counterattack.
His fist cocked back, loaded with Strength Force. He swung forward—a textbook perfect punch.
On top of that, Nova layered Shockwave's seismic tech onto his arm, amplifying the blow with the force of an earthquake. Where Shockwave's suit capped out at Magnitude 6.9, Joseph's reinforced body allowed for Magnitude 10.
The strike landed square on Lobo's face. The shockwave detonated, hurling the Czarnian millions of miles in seconds.
Joseph finished extruding the blade out from his chest and into his hand—a greatsword styled like Nimokar's from the arena.
'Nice,' Joseph thought since he couldn't speak while being in the vacuum of space. Then, half-jokingly, 'You shall be known as the Alien Excalibur.'
//…//
'What? Gotta entertain myself somehow.' Joseph thought before launching after Lobo and the Spacehog, ready for round two.