(General P.O.V)
"COMPUTER, LOCKDOWN THE WATCHTOWER."
Wonder Woman said while bursting into the room along with Superman, Hawk-man, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter.
"Is everybody unharmed?"
Superman asked in concern. The question was directed to the teens who still looked surprised at how unexpected things had turned out.
"They are fine. I got here before anything could happen."
The Flash answered.
"Dammit!" Aqualad said, slamming his arms through the table tennis. The wood splintered off into numerous shards as the table was turned into two pieces.
"He got away. Again!"
Aqualad fumed.
Green Lantern's ring glowed as he scanned the room.
"Energy signature of Boom tube activity."
He informed the others. Superman's eyes pierced through the room, combing through it with his Supervision only to come up empty.
"There doesn't seem to be anything else."
Wonder Woman nodded.
"Manhunter will make his way towards Miss Martian and Superboy, while the rest of us will split up and try to find any whereabouts of Aden. That or whatever he wanted to access the Watchtower for. He played us for fools. Not again."
She finished relaying the orders in a hard tone and left the room.
"Kaldur, you need to calm down!"
Artemis told him, placing a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it off and stormed out, following behind Wonder Woman and the rest of the League in anger.
"This is not like him…"
Wally muttered, looking worriedly at Aqualad's back.
"We have worse things to worry about. I just accessed the surveillance footage from the interrogation room."
Robin said, his fingers dancing on the holographic display projected by his wrist computer.
"You mean hacked."
The Flash remarked offhandedly.
Boy Wonder, Kid Flash and Artemis almost jumped up in shock.
"Uncle Barry! I thought you left with the League?!"
Kid Flash asked. The Fastest Man in the world sighed, staring at his slightly vibrating hands.
"Something is wrong with my speed. I can't seem to control it."
Streaks of lightning randomly flashed around his body.
"It didn't seem like it…but before I burst into the room, I could feel something suppress my speed momentarily. I couldn't go into Flash time."
Wally gasped at The Flash's words. He understood what a big deal Flash Time was. So Flash telling him that, left him shocked. Wally focused on deep within himself and sighed in relief when he felt the familiar erratic current of energy that powered his super speed.
"Sorry guys, not to take away from that, but we got bigger fish to fry. Look at this." Boy Wonder cut in by enlarging the screen. Artemis' eyes widened from where she was looking over his shoulder. Two separate video frames begun playing. On one side, there was a clip showing the team playing table tennis and on the other, the footage showed Green Lantern Stewart leaving the interrogation room. The Flash frowned.
"John was telling us he couldn't remember how he got there. As a matter of fact, I can't remember why we even let him walk Aden to the interrogation room alone."
"Unless it was all part of Aden's plan." Artemis surmised.
"I thought it was strange the way he allowed us to capture him so easily. The Aden I know would have stubbornly fought tooth and nail. Made us work for it."
She then went silent as the rest of the video played. Aden raised his head and stared at the camera, a small mischievous smile appearing on his face. Three things happened next at the same time. First, he disappeared from the room, second, the door to the interrogation room turned to scrap metal and lastly, Aden appeared on the other footage showing the team, relaxed and missing the handcuffs that had previously been on his hands.
Silence dominated the room.
"This…this is bad."
Kid Flash finally spoke up.
"Yeah. That's not an ability we want to mess with. It also makes sense why The Flash was affected. His speed would invalidate its effects. Aden knew that, so he must have come up with something else to make sure you wouldn't intervene in what he was planning."
Robin agreed, tightening his fingers into fists.
"Am I… missing something?"
Artemis wondered. She had no clue what was going on, just that everyone suddenly looked spooked.
The Flash straightened up.
"Aden can stop time." He dropped a bombshell. "The League needs to hear this. You three will make your way to the rest of your teammates while we try and ran a check through the Watchtower's systems to find any anomalies. Understood?"
The Speedster gave the order and left without waiting for an answer.
Robin swiped the clips away and started keying in something else into the holographic keypad.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
"I'm calling Batman. No one else knows the Watchtower like he does."
Despite spending almost 10 hours combing through the system and running diagnostic checks every few minutes, nothing turned up. There were no traces left of Aden's actions during the time he had free reign of the Watchtower and that scared them more than they let on.
(Aden's P.O.V)
I appeared in Sanctuary and sighed as the light of the Boom Tube faded away.
"Dammit, of course he's the fastest man alive. His reaction time alone is enough to let him beat a thousand of me without breaking sweat. The Flash will forever be…the most hax character I know."
I still had one last stop to make. After arriving on Sanctuary, the MDP had begun to resonate with something a few thousand miles away from the island, so I knew which step I needed to take next.
I weighed my options, I could complete that final step then take a shower and rest or vice versa, Take a shower first, rest and then complete the final step to upgrading my realm. I went for the second option. I didn't know if I would be booted out of the Elemental Dimension as it underwent changes, so the only time I would get the chance to bite on some sweet sweet Grango was now.
My decision made, I stripped out of my sweety costume and sighed in relief as I soaked my tired muscles into the hot spring of one of my islands. My tense muscles loosened as my eyelids felt heavy. A boom tube appeared at my back and I sank through it, finding myself inside my bathroom back on Earth. I toweled myself off and then left for the bed. Seeing the comfy apparatus of fine rest almost brought tears into my eyes.
I sank into the sheets and it was lights out for me.
A few hours later, looking at the clock showed 8 of them had passed, I woke up to blinking alerts in my vision. Guess the system was sick and tired of being ignored for so long. I yawned and carried out my morning duties, though looking at the time, it was past 2. Oh, so not that far from the morning. After brushing my teeth and what have you, I settled down on the bed and started going through the notifications one by one.
(Chain Quest initiated.)
(Destroy Galiel's known associates 2/5)
First mission:- Famine and drought! A trail of endless hunger. The demon Mnemoth is causing destruction in Africa, a cute little country called Kenya which is roughly the size of Texas. The big bad devil doesn't like that a certain someone is disparaging his name and running his reputation even more to the ground than it already is. So he has dispatched you, Aden Strong: Demon Hunter to send this Foodie back to hell where he belongs!
Objectives-
1. Kill Mnemoth or exorcise him.
2. Do so before he triggers his special skill and devours the shit out of you.
3. Do so before he crosses the boundary into Sudan, successfully triggering canon events.
Time limit: 24 hours.
Mission Difficulty: Hard.
Mission Status: Complete.
All Objectives Cleared
Rewards:- 50 Training Points
30 Training Points For Objectives Cleared.
(Urgent Mission!!!)
(The Demon Mammon wants to use the access node of the Green and the souls of over a hundred humans to infect the world with a virus designed to turn the earth into a hellish wasteland and the humans and creatures into demons subservient to him and him alone.)
Mission Objectives:
-Stop him at all costs!!
-Save Swamp thing / Become the new champion of The Green.
Mission time limit: 5 minutes.
Mission Difficulty: Hell.
Mission Status:- Complete.
- Objectives Cleared.
- Hidden objective nulled by completion of the second objective.
Rewards: 100 training Points.
50 training points for objectives cleared.
(Urgent Mission!!!)
(Mammon has taken over Superboy and now wants to wreck you. Defeat Super Mammon and serve him his ass. Luckily, you used your brains and cheated you smart boi.)
Mission time limit: 50 hours.
Mission Difficulty: hard.
Mission Status: Complete.
Rewards: 50 training points.)
(Congratulations!!! You have successfully completed a Hell ranked difficulty mission with minimal injuries. Maybe we should re-evaluate the danger factor of these missions huh Rambo? no? Spoilsport. After tarrying the results, A New Perk has been rewarded for your efforts:-)
Spark Of Enlightenment:- Once for every Element, you can choose to enter a trance of true enlightenment for one full week and master a sub-skill of your choosing to Master Level without any backlash or side effects. The Sub Skill can be anything of your choosing as long as it's aligned with the corresponding element.
Whoa. A wide smile lit up my face for two reasons. One, was the new perk that I had just gotten and two were the training points. With this and my progress coupled with the dedication to grind my ass off, I would be seeing a nice increment in my power level before the next mission rolled around.
To put things into perspective, Spark Of Enlightenment gave me one week in a trance to master one sub skill completely. Based on the fact that I could control time in the Elemental Dimension, I could shorten that time to less than three days without destabilizing the while realm. Then I could use the next two days to buy a strong training partner from the System that would allow me to go all out without holding back. That would ensure I was familiar with the new mastered Subskill before I carried out the next mission. Win fucking win.
"Christmas came early this year."
I said to no one while staring at the beautiful display box.
Training Points: 285.