Providence
October 11, 17:33
Just to make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me, I brought up footage of the battle in the swamp and did a comparison between what Ivy looked like back then and now.
Her red hair remained as fiery as ever and her beauty still added a few more notches to the universal hotness scale. The only major change I wanted to confirm and actually did was her countenance.
In simple words, she no longer looked crazy. Knowing what I did about her condition and the urges she's had to live with for years, the change was so drastic it was immediately observable. Not just to me but to my fellow spectators.
Now most people would call me crazy by getting Batman and Killer Croc in the same room. They were bound to fight, no question. Either Batman would want to bring Croc to justice or Croc would want some payback for all the previous times he'd gotten his ass handed to him.
I solved this problem with a simple warning; we could all watch the doctor speak to the mentally liberated Ivy and appreciate the fact that I'd successfully set her on the path to rehabilitation and redemption, or the two of them could be relieved from the premises.
Batman from the island entirely and Waylon to his room where he'd watch the proceedings from a screen.
Frankly, I thought Croc would take the final option since he hated dealing with people. But I guess Ivy's impossible transformation warranted him seeing the aftermath with his own eyes. Though the presence of Superman in the observation room too did some of the heavy lifting.
"What's going to happen to her now?"
Batman, with his gaze still held forward, answered Croc's question. "She'll be sent to Arkham once the doctor is finished."
"Arkham? Why? She's no longer crazy!"
Oh oh. Big boy was getting angry.
"You're right Waylon," I butted in before Batman could give any more dry ass replies. "But think about it this way; Ivy's problem went on for quite a while. Cured or not, it has left its marks on her. And even I can't remove them. That's what Arkham and the doctors there are for. She's not going there because she is crazy. She's going there because she was. We'd all love for her to go back to her normal life like nothing ever happened. However, even you know that is not possible. At least not right away. There's also all the crimes she committed and the people she killed. A lot of people will want their pound of flesh—"
"And they can't get that if she's in Arkham."
"Yes. Also, that's Ingrid Karlsson. You've heard of her right?"
"That's her?" Croc somehow looked taken aback but even more interested in the discussion happening below. "That explains everything. The guys who escaped Arkham wouldn't stop talking about her, like she was a saint."
I chuckled. "She was just nice to them."
"Do I have to go there too?"
"Only if you want. However, if you accept the job offer, you'll have to speak to her. Often."
"…"
The conversation died down and we continued to spectate up till the point the good doctor finished. She left Ivy for a short moment and met us in secret, though Croc chose to stay back for some reason.
She gave a brief report on her findings and observations and I gave her a watch once she finished. It would not only serve as a way for us to remain in contact, it would ensure that Arkham's insanity wouldn't overstep its bounds.
She didn't seem to think so due to her seeing nothing but the best in these people, but I told her that buddying up with Gotham's mentally impoverished population could wind up hurting her.
Calling the likes of Amygdala and Victor Zsasz timebombs was not an exaggeration.
To that, she just gave me her signature disarming smile, the one that seemed to pacify Batman's rogues gallery with supernatural efficacy. The only reason I didn't roll my eyes and shake my head was her accepting the watch.
Batman and Superman left right after our little meeting came to a close. The former to Arkham for whatever his paranoia whispered to him and the latter, to work and then home I would guess.
Me? I helped the good doctor and her new patient with transportation back to Gotham. A portal took both of them off my hands and left me alone to move on to the day's next agenda.
Another portal brought me to a chamber several miles under the main Providence lab, one where Mike was already present.
"How ready are we?"
"Ninety nine percent before you arrived."
"Oh. Then let's get the party going."
Fighting the urge to rip my clothes off or use magic to vanish them, I exercised patience and undressed slowly. One by one, I peeled off my jacket, shirt, pants, socks, and shoes and handed them one after the other to Mike, who played the role of butler and took them without question.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him arrange them neatly on a metal table nearby before picking up a tray from that same table. He came towards me and I glanced at the Father Box, still tightly restrained by Technopathy.
I picked it up and gave him a nod. Steadily breathing in the filtered air, I enjoyed the cold of the smooth and sterilized floor as I stalked toward the massive pod waiting in the room's center.
Like every piece of technology, it obeyed my command and opened its doors for me with a hiss of air, faint steam wafting off into the nearby space.
Situating myself inside on the foamy construction, I held the Father Box over my chest with both hands and nodded again. The pod closed shut and I dug into the Father Box with my technopathic tendrils, not just relaying its final commands but doing the equivalent of holding and moving its hands at the same time.
That beep and hammer hitting anvil sound reverberated across the pod and my skull when it began. Crimson light filled every inch of my sight as lines of the same began to crawl over my exposed form like circuitry.
They covered me from head to toe in mere moments, and that is when the death throes of the Father Box began to sound in my ear and spirit. I ignored it and squeezed, crushing the box and ending its suffering.
With the Tenth Metal now in its rightful place on my body, I sent Mike the go ahead through Technopathy and knocked out myself with a spell. Because staying awake for the next part was something even masochists would not agree to.
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Mike P.O.V.
With the green light from his master and friend, Mike started the part of the process the rebirth pod had been constructed for.
His connection to the room's systems brought it online and the signs of its operation became immediately apparent. A sudden flare of blue light clashed with the red that had taken center stage in the pod and fought fiercely with it.
Through the single transparent pane in the device's front facing side, he observed the two bright colors war with each other. Even when the pod repositioned itself horizontally, the bursts of illumination that escaped the small gap did so like beams at a concert and bathed the room in their shifting glow.
Owing to his knowledge of the entire process down to the last minute detail and his current monitoring of Elliot's vitals, Mike knew the lights weren't really fighting or anything of the sort.
In fact, they were working together. The red represented the remains of the Father Box, the preprogrammed Tenth Metal that had been layered onto Elliot's biology. While the blue brought with it his master's own programming and restructuring effects.
Before the changes to include the Father Box's most important parts in the ascension, the process would've only involved this blue light. Having come far in the realm of matter manipulation in both the organic and inorganic worlds, Elliot had devised a way to reliably give anyone superior physical attributes.
And while the potency of these abilities would've been limited due to the inherent nature of the human body and his own understanding of particulate physics, no one, not even he, would complain at having the strength and durability of Superboy in addition to the unkillability of Vandal Savage.
Elliot would've been fine with the regeneration alone, but with the inclusion of the Father Box, he saw no reason not to surpass these limits. By capitalizing on the reality warping nature of Element X, he cranked things up to eleven.
The blue lights didn't simply restructure his body on the atomic and molecular level anymore, they programmed the Tenth Metal with a plethora of new instructions, chief of which was to take the enhancements as fast as they could go.
To make sure the boost didn't get out of hand, he added the scans he'd taken on Superman, Superboy and Martian Manhunter to the data on New God physiology he'd pilfered from the dead Father Box's databases as a reference.
That was the whole deal with the lightshow.
Due to the… loose nature of the results Elliot desired, it was a bit difficult to pin down exactly how long the process would take. However, calculations showed it wouldn't take more than three hours.
And the numbers were right, Mike observed, not just from his vigilant policing but from the stabilizing light that had shifted from red and blue to a bright, static purple.
He waited a little bit more and the purple faded, dying down slowly till things in the pod grew quiet and dull. His digital intent didn't reach the awakening protocol before the monitoring systems told him Elliot had awoken on his own.
In the real world, his master rose out of the pod, phasing through the metal. He hovered above it, staring off into space vacantly.
"Sir?"
He broke out of whatever held his attention captive and stared straight at him. "Ah… sorry," was all he said before the entire room became host to a multitude of screens, each depicting a different scene.
"I'm connected to every computer on Earth."
Questions and implications cascaded down Mike's digital mind like a densely deploying build. He'd made known his curiosity about the project's name before they started, asking if his master wanted to be a god.
His answer had been "I want to have the power without all the baggage."
Watching him now, Mike wondered if there was any difference.
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Providence
October 11, 20:13
If I were to count all my abilities now, it would include all I could accomplish previously with technology, magic, or a mixture of both. And more. There were too many to count—for the average person, but not for me.
There was no confusion about what I'd become, what I'd turned myself into. Back then I coined Orphan Box, but even that wasn't accurate, though it was the only one that came closest to a descriptive name.
This whole undertaking had been done to prevent the thing with Klarion and his cat from ever happening again. So the first thing on the table after I woke up was strength and durability tests.
However, owing to the nature of the Tenth Metal dispersed throughout my particulate structure as a computer—since I'd programmed it that way—it came on, or more accurately, I woke up to find it fully booted up and running.
And this meant a connection to every single device remotely connected to the internet.
Too stunned by the fact that I could process every data stream with no loss in sanity or focus, I simply went with it and cycled through the world that had literally been placed in the palm of my hand.
The screens, formerly invisible until Mike prompted me to his presence, changed according to my faintest whims. Be it the secure havens of presidents, top secret bunkers, server farms in places that had no names… all of it came to me so easily that I doubted things for a moment.
My mind shifted to Shield and the screens reduced in number, the scenes on all of them changing. The audio input I was also receiving changed, allowing me to intercept the call from the hospital to Frances Kane's mother alongside Economos.
The girl had woken up, and the woman straight up told the hospital she didn't have a daughter anymore before cutting the call.
A split second was all it took for directives on how to proceed were drafted up and forwarded to Economos and Agent Dawson. One of my watches flashed into existence within my palm and I pushed it forward into the tiny Hush Tube, dropping the device off to the agent.
She'd know what to do with it.
The eagerness to explore this whole new world was there. And so was the need to address every worrying thing I'd glimpsed. But I reined it all in and gave Mike my attention. There would be time to address everything.
"Sorry," I apologised to Mike and hovered close to the ground.
"Are you still up for the tests, sir?"
"Hell yeah."
A larger Hush Tube opened with my declaration and I dived straight into it, Mike going through to our new destination from its opposite end.
We were still on Providence (outer space tests would come later) near a large freighter Mike had fished from the ocean floor. He'd repaired and cleaned it up enough for what we had in mind.
There was no need for communication. I simply floated down like I'd been flying my whole life and hovered a few inches above ground, looking for a good spot to grab.
I quickly concluded that wasn't necessary and simply went forward, pressing my palms flat against the rust covered hull and clenching. My fingers dug into the metal like it was dough and I heaved.
Loud creaking and metallic echoes of stress rolled across the clearing. Yet despite its protests, the freighter parted ways with the ground obediently and came to rest high above my head, raining down dirt and detritus.
Barely feeling the weight, I flew higher and higher with the derelict wreck till I was high enough above the island that what I was about to do wouldn't harm even the tallest trees on the highest peaks.
Aware that only Superman could pry this ship from my grip with major difficulty, I spun around with it, the sheer weight of the vessel and the speeds it was moving at putting the wind in a chokehold for miles.
On the last rotation, I angled my grip upward and let the ship fly. Over 75,000 tons shot to the sky like a reverse meteor while I held out an arm. Stormbreaker left Subspace and fell into my grip with a satisfying smack.
I called upon its lightning powers and pure, destructive electricity, fueled by my magic, filled me to the brim and compounded upon itself repeatedly. The energy soon reached the point I deemed enough and I let it all out.
It erupted from my chest, expanding and coning out into a skyscraper sized beam that lanced toward the falling vessel. Thunder rolled in the dark, cloudy sky as night turned into day.
When the energy finally fizzled out and the night regained its proper place, the ship was gone. Vaporized. Removed from existence entirely. I calmed the lightning in the skies down and rested the haft of the hammer on my shoulder.
With a wide smile, I flew back down to join Mike and slapped the wooden haft into my left hand.
"Did you get all that?"