The shower in my quarters was the only place I could let the mask slip. I leaned my forehead against the cool tile, letting the lukewarm water wash away the sweat and the metallic tang of the Zeta-energy.
"Ring," I spoke. "Status on the secondary storage."
"Unstable. Harmonic variance is increasing. Recommend immediate discharge into a low-impact construct or internal feedback will occur."
"Internal feedback" was a polite way of saying my arm would explode.
I dried off, threw on a fresh black hoodie, and sat cross-legged on the floor. I should have known this couldn't work. Though the ring is capable of holding other energies like electricity and radiation. Zeta energy was essentially pure teleportation so even if i created a subspace for it the energy would still be unstable.
I had to get rid of it but I couldn't just throw a green fireball at the wall. I needed something quiet.
I closed my eyes and visualized a complex, rotating clockwork mechanism—a thousand tiny gears, all interlocking, all made of that stolen, jagged zeta energy. I forced the Ring to shape the "dirty" energy into the machine. The whirring sound in my ears intensified, a high-pitched whine that made my teeth ache.
Focus. Imagine. Control.
The construct flickered into existence in the center of the room. It wasn't the smooth, steady emerald of a Lantern. It was a sickly, sparking lime green. The gears ground against each other, shedding sparks of raw power that dissolved before they hit the carpet.
With the Sharingan active, I watched the flow. Every time a gear slipped, I saw the kinetic imbalance a microsecond before it happened and adjusted my will to compensate. I was burning off the excess.
9%... 7%... 4%...
When the secondary storage finally hit zero, I let the clockwork shatter. I slumped back, my lungs burning.
"Secondary storage depleted," the AI reported. "Main Battery: 6.3%. Total system integrity: Stable."
"Great," I whispered. "Now I need to think of a different way to charge this thing"
I headed out to the kitchen area. If I was going to be the "relatable" newcomer, I needed to be seen. I found M'gann—Miss Martian—hovering near the stove, looking distressed at a pile of burnt cookies.
"Oh! Vex," she said, her skin turning a light shade of pink. "I was trying to make a human 'snack,' but the heat settings on this planet are very... aggressive."
I looked at the blackened husks on the tray. My Sharingan, even deactivated, recalled the exact temperature settings and timing for standard baking I'd seen in a legal deposition regarding a kitchen fire years ago.
"You didn't account for the altitude," I said, leaning against the counter. I kept my tone casual, slightly bored. "Happy Harbor is at sea level, but the internal pressure in the Mountain is regulated higher. Low and slow, M'gann. Try 325 degrees, not 450."
She beamed at me. "You're very observant, Vex. Robin said you had a 'detective's eye.'"
"Something like that," I replied. "I just don't like seeing good ingredients go to waste. "
I grabbed a glass of water, watching her reset the oven. She was the heart of the Team, and the easiest to influence. If she trusted me, the others would follow.
"Do you like it here?" she asked, her telepathic touch brushing against the edge of my mind like a stray hair.
I didn't flinch. I let her feel a carefully curated layer of 'loneliness' and 'confusion,' hiding the cold ambition beneath it. "It's better than where I was," I said truthfully. "But I don't like being a guest. I like being useful."
"You will be," she promised. "Once you're trained, we can go on missions together! It'll be wonderful."
I smiled, a small, calculated thing. "Yeah. Wonderful."
As I walked back to my room, I felt the weight of the mountain above me. They thought they were rescuing a stray. They didn't realize I was already mapping the exits, copying their fighting styles, and siphoning their power.
Batman was coming tomorrow. I needed to be ready for the world's greatest detective to look me in the eye. I needed to make sure that when he looked, all he saw was a kid with a ring he didn't understand.