Seated in a fresh and more comfortable swivel chair than the one I had in the museum hideout, I looked at Mike's bracelet and what he was working on on the screen and leaned forward.
"Hey man. You sure this is what you want?"
"Yes… I appreciate that you treat me like a fellow person and even more so for this opportunity, but I am not human and I feel no obligation to pretend to be one."
"Okay man. Your choice is your choice, there's no problem with that," I said and leaned back.
The body he'd designed for himself was obviously robotic but retained a humanoid construction, and it had some easily recognizable motifs seen in the Cyberpunk universe.
In fact—I picked up the datapad and quickly executed a search—it looked nearly identical to the Noveltech Samson Full Body Conversion, a borg developed with construction work in mind.
The differences stemmed from the few elements he'd incorporated from the Raven Microcyberntices Wiseman, a full body conversion developed with netrunning in mind. With enough money and a buttload of scrap, I could have him out and about on his own feet in two months.
If I succeeded in making the component modeled after my mentor's transmutation and successfully integrated it into the printer though, that time would drop drastically. 2 days wouldn't even be out of the question if I was willing to work nonstop and pull all nighters.
Motivated by that thought, I shifted my attention to the unoccupied monitor and scooched forward, dragging my chair along. The things on my to-do list had piled up messily in this short period of meeting the League, joining them, and then the team.
And though with the flame active the long jumbled list was no longer overwhelming, it was hard to choose a point to start from. So I went with date and time, using the order in which the ideas and plans came to me.
First thing on the list was the web shooters. Creating them was long overdue. I was still on the fence about going full Spider—skin tight suit, spider emblem and spider eyes—but the webs were paramount. They were too effective for me not to incorporate into my arsenal.
To get the shooters to work exactly like I remembered though, I didn't just need to work on the hardware, I needed to brush up on my chemistry. From the little I'd gleaned from Black Spider's suit and his own shooters, his web fluid just didn't… shoot right.
I mean, it hit what he aimed at but his webs didn't fly in thin lines. They were thick ropes that he only managed to control by first gathering a ball of the fluid on his wrist and then shooting said ball.
It was crude and not what I wanted. The pettiness of that desire was not lost on me, but I convinced myself perfecting the shooter would further distinguish myself from him. Changing the color would even do more.
I mean, his webs were red. An assassin using webs the color of blood? That guy enjoyed his job a little too much.
Settled on a decision, I added "chemistry" to the web shooter list item, wrote down "Cyberpunk datapad" beside it, drew a line between them, and then circled the two.
Next on the list was my super suit. Miniaturization and Efficiency really didn't lend itself to clothing—at least not to the level I'd reached with it—so I'd really been stumped on this front. The arrival of my latest reward had changed that.
If one good thing came out of that corporate ruled hellscape, it was the ton of developments geared toward making people immune to bullets and to a little extent, survivability and fashion. I could finally make a suit worthy of being called "super."
List item number three was where things took a sharp turn. It was about getting Martian Manhunter to do what I asked my mentor to do today. Not the transmutation of course, but for him to use telepathy and telekinesis while I scanned the effects.
Even without the results in hand, M and E was already giving me hints that I should lower my expectations. Scanning psionic activity in action should give me the ability to make devices that reacted to thought, that much was guaranteed, but anything beyond that was murky.
It was a bit disappointing, but after thinking about it a bit, I realised it wasn't that crazy.
My memories of fiction weren't vast and all reaching. Hell, I didn't even watch the later seasons of the show I currently lived in, but the little I knew about technology and psychic stuff was that the former was always used to somehow enhance or block the effects of the latter.
Cerebro was the biggest one that came to mind, and funnily enough, thinking of the psionic boosting device actually cleared up the murk clouding up the psychic tech tree. This served as further evidence of what I'd deduced.
Psionic technology could only work with what was already available i.e. thoughts, emotions, or psychic powers. The brain/consciousness/mind, whatever the accurate terms was, was the integral part, without it, psionic tech was useless.
Nodding and smiling at what I'd been able to dig up with that short period of contemplation, I quickly typed in every point and idea so they wouldn't slip my mind.
For number four, I went straight into the plan Batman gave me one week to formulate. Based on all I knew about Cadmus and The Light, the plan to rescue Speedy, free the clones, and then the Genomorphs hinged on three things.
They were communication, insider information, and transportation. My tech could only solve two of these problems, the other one I'd leave to the League.
Both communication and transportation hinged on the Zeta technology and my ability to shrink them. I was ready to go, and so was M and E, but my pocket wasn't.
As for time, we had that. We were in April, and Dubbilex set the fire that drew the kids to Cadmus in July. We had more than three months to get the plan and everything else right.
Getting Batman to foot the bill would require him to actually like my plan and agree with it though, so I had to make it perfect. In the spirit of that, I created its own sheet and dumped everything there.
While I was doing this though it hit me—with the souped up 3D printer I would upgrade with Captain Atom's scans, the matter of resources would be easily dealt with.
Adding point number five and labeling it "fabricator," I moved it to the top of the list and drew a curved arrow that tied it to point four. I took my time to write down the parts I'd need to make it a reality right under it and moved on.
On list item number six, I basically merged every miscellaneous thing not urgent at the moment, one of said things turning out to be important and leading me to edit the psi-tech point.
Manhunter had density shifting as a power too. Scanning that would no doubt help my research into the fabrication of stronger materials or even devices that could phase.
Together with Mike, I worked the whole night, printing the parts of the web shooter and speedrunning the chemistry knowledge in the Cyberpunk datapad.
It was so extensive that I had come up with ideas for different kinds of webs even though I hadn't learned nearly enough to improve the formula Black Spider used: explosive, bulletproof, and tranquilizer webs.
It would take a while before they saw the light of day.
I stayed in the cave till 12:00 midnight.
Walking by my lonesome in the large and unfamiliar belly of a mountain and listening to the thunder-like intensity of my own footsteps was a bit weird, but I powered through and made it to the Zeta-tube.
Mike being with me definitely helped.
When I summoned the holo computer and chose my destination, it suddenly dawned on me that I could be in any major city in the world in mere moments. I smiled and stood there for a while, my mind blank but racing at the same time.
It was a weird state to be in, and when I came to my senses, I looked around in slight embarrassment and quickly put in my destination, the light of the beam swallowing me when I walked into the tube.
.
.
.
.
The large screen of the Batcomputer was occupied by the comms device Batman and the League used to maintain contact with each other in their crimefighting and superheroing endeavors.
Due to Specialist's enthusiastic recounting of his meta-knowledge as he described it and his own breakdown of the possible consequence of certain events, Batman and the League as a whole agreed that Speedy's kidnapping had been a data leak of massive proportions.
And it wasn't a leak to just anyone, but to the absolutely worst group of individuals it could have possibly gone to.
With characters like Lex, the Brain, and Ra's in the mix, it was a given that the hidden locations and secret bases the cabal considered important would have security measures tailored with the League in mind.
Once such security measure Specialist had confirmed was the presence of jammers that scrambled their secret communication channels and interceptors that relayed their messages to those who had no business hearing them.
To solve this problem and a few others, particularly pertaining to the Cadmus mission, Specialist had volunteered himself and his abilities. He had designed new and improved comms that not only used miniaturized Zeta technology and power cores, but also doubled as psi blockers.
The blueprint for these comms wasn't the only thing he sent though. In addition to the already impossible achievement of a worldwide network of thought controlled computers and communicators was a helmet that was basically an enhanced psi shield.
In his explanations, the piece of headgear differed from the earpiece in that it masked one's psychic presence completely. A wearer wouldn't just be immune to psychic phenomena, they would be completely invisible to it.
These two were the best out of the three designs sent over, though the last was nothing to scoff at.
Likely in an attempt to find a way out of Cadmus that didn't involve letting The Light know the League had their eye on them—though Batman didn't fail to see other places this new and improved design could be used—Specialist had created a smaller version of the Zeta technology the League used.
He had done that in the comms—those were even smaller versions of this (watch battery sized)—but while they could only transmit signals and maybe some microorganisms due to their size, this one, the size of a manhole cover, would be portable and be able to teleport one person at a time.
Zeta-Platforms, he dubbed them.
Batman had forwarded the designs to the scientist that maintained the League's Zeta-Tubes as part of the Erdel Initiative and asked for his opinion on the designs.
Specialist had been nothing but cooperative, and the all clears from Wonder Woman, Zatarra, Manhunter, and from himself gave him confidence of not just his intentions with these designs, but the viability of them.
However, trust needed time, and until the young man had had enough time to prove himself and demonstrate the qualities most members of the League wanted to see, they would have to double check and verify everything he put forward.
Seated behind the computer named after his alter persona with his cowl lowered, Bruce Wayne examined the list of items Specialist had sent over with the blueprints.
According to him, the enhanced fabricator would come online and be fully operational in 4 to 5 days as soon as he got hold of these items. After that, development of the new designs themselves would take roughly a month.
Quickly going down the list, the dark knight came to the understanding that these were things Specialist could've purchased or built on his own if he kept up his coding hustles for a month or three. It would be expensive and time intensive, but it would be doable.
Batman moved away from the list to start sourcing the stuff through his secure channels when a call came through. It was pretty easy to identify the caller on the big screen, so when he saw who it was, he pulled on his cowl and answered.
"Dr. Strange."
"Batman," said the blonde haired man in a lab coat. "Where did you obtain these designs? I have to meet the team that came up with this. This… " he waved a few crumpled sheets, "this is… I have no words. Calling it centuries ahead wouldn't even be accurate."
"Strange, remember what we discussed. No trails. I gave you that computer and access to this encrypted channel for a reason."
"I know I know. I'll shred them once I'm done. Now about—"
"You'll burn them, and wipe the printer's memory card."
The scientist agreed without hesitation.
"Okay. But you have to let me meet these guys. Whoever they are, what they have achieved is nothing short of groundbreaking. They are going to revolutionize the Initiative."
"Are the designs viable?"
"Viable?" Strange laughed like he'd heard a joke he couldn't openly laugh at. "They are more than that. These… Zeta-Platforms are not just smaller, they'll use significantly less power than before, and if I'm reading this right, they'll have increased range. I'm talking interplanetary and maybe even interstellar. The transportation will also be more resistant against disruptive effects, and the trace Zeta radiation after each transfer will be drastically reduced. You have to let me meet this team so I can work with them on this."
"That's not possible at the moment?"
Strange's excitement made a deep dive into disappointment. "What? Why?"
"It is a matter of trust and safety."
"Yours," Batman added when the scientist was about to rebut. "The League is in the process of vetting them. During this period we cannot allow them to know about you. If something were to happen to you or other members of the initiative, the maintenance of the Zeta-Tubes would be affected."
It took a while, but Strange calmed down and accepted this excuse. "Fine. You're right. It seems I got too carried away," he said and gathered and bunched together a group of sheets.
"I'll burn these right away. When should I expect to meet them?"
"The time and date will be communicated to you."
"Alright. See you then."
Adam Strange's feed winked out and Batman went back to what he was doing, checking his own inventory and the other avenues available to him for the resources Specialist needed.
Before that though, he made a quick mental note to stop by STAR Labs and Strange's home to make sure the man had done the right thing.
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1-10 advanced chapters on: https://patreon.com/MasterReigen