(Aden's P.O.V)

I stepped through the boom tube and onto my meditation peak. Sitting cross legged on top of the flat mountain peak, I sank into a spiritual trance. My awareness stretched out to cover the whole air realm. I could feel the wind screaming past the mountains, the clouds coalescing above me, roiling around in their own omnidirectional path. Unguided. Unrestrained.

Air visibly entered my nostrils with one huge breath. I could feel my lungs expanding, the slight taste of chill on my tongue and down my wind pipe. I held it and released another breath. This one steamed from my mouth.

"What is air?"

I asked myself. A brief image of Breeze flashing into my mind. The words came out easily.

"Air is...freedom. Air is childish joy that can swiftly shift into heavenly fury. Air is a container that holds all. Air is the rawest form of reality. The rift between material and the immaterial. Unseen, intangible but unavoidably significant. Air is the absence of the void of space. Air is the absence of a vacuum. Air is inverse vacuum...air is occupied space. Therefore air is the absence and presence."

Both of my voices intoned. I now had a path.

I opened both pairs of my eyes the same time Yaotl unravelled the last Chaos Pockets. This one had been deep in Antarctica. The place was...weird. Cold but not Constantine's prison cold. To my energy sense it felt as if a thin shawl was covering over everything.

"My master. It has been done."

Yaotl stated, dropping the head of a humongous baboon like creature with white fur infront of me.

"Mmmh...a Yeti? We are in the middle of nowhere. Who supplied the imagination to allow the Chaos Being to form?" I wondered out loud.

That had been the running theme at least. Chaos beings forming due to the mass belief in a tale, legend or myth by the locals. But the nearest settlement here was tens of miles off.

Yet...a shimmer in space caught my eye before it disappeared, making me feel as if something was amiss with the entire continent. And I wasn't talking about Superman's Fortress of Solitude either. I narrowed my eyes and filed the suspicions away for later. There wasn't time to follow up on them. Not when I knew that the next few months would be fraught with danger.

It was something I could feel. Like the sword of Damocles hanging over my neck. Ever since Match had told Kori and I about the nightmare he'd had...this ominous feeling gripped my heart and refused to let it go. Something was coming. Something catastrophic. Something world ending.

I stood up on the ice ridden landscape, Yaotl on my side and looked up at the sky. And something told me...it was headed straight for me.

"I'm waiting..."

I whispered, the words drifting across the white environment.

The boom tube that swallowed us took us straight to my dimension.

(Kuiper belt- Reach Ship) (Asteroid Field)

(General P.O.V)

"It's time."

The Scientist told the ambassador.

"No. Not yet."

Frustration was evident on the scientist's face.

"Why? We have been monitoring the entire star system and given the recent clash of Apokaliptian forces and Being X, it is the perfect time to launch a strike. My algorithm predicts a 64% chance that Being X suffered injuries during his fight with the earthen god. The power he expended to destroy Darkseid's enforcer was on the upper scales of planetary annihilation. Any creature, even the strongest scarab in our ranks, would be left in a weakened state after that. We need to capitalize on this."

The Ambassador spared a glance at the Scarab enforcer looming behind the Scientist. Without a word, a blade morphed with a mechanical hum on the Scarab's limb that he plunged right through the scientist's back.

The scientist gasped in pain as purple blood spurted out of their chest, along with the black blade that had erratic electric flashes running up and down it's length.

"A pity."

The scarab warrior said, stepping over the body he had just made dead.

"This will not look good. To be frank though, they had a point. "

He stated, retracting the ominous blade on his forearm.

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"The council will have questions, you mean?"

The Ambassador prompted, waving a hand to pull up a map of the solar system.

"Mmh." The Scarab hummed in confirmation.

"The Scientist overstepped their jurisdiction time and time again. Testing my authority is akin to questioning the council itself. I work for the benefit of the Reach empire. And in turn, you all work for me."

The last part was delivered through a stern glare.

"Understood." The Scarab answered.

"Good." The Ambassador then pulled up the map of another star system light years away from earth. The map displayed the image of a planet made entirely of metal.

"The Scientist's impatience would have cost us unnecessary resources clashing with the Metahumans on earth, especially Being X. But, with a certain nudge in key places, we can reap the benefits without suffering any losses."

Laughter rumbled out of the Scarab.

"Brilliant! You seek to point Mongul and his Warworld towards earth. He will be interested in someone strong enough to destroy Apokaliptian forces as if they were nothing. A being strong enough to destroy one of Darkseid's top lieutenants. And when they clash, the inevitability will happen, destruction. From there we can disguise our mission into a peace offering endeavor to keep the Lanterns of our back. The planet itself will be left ripe for our taking."

"Exactly."

The Ambassador stated.

(Aden's P.O.V)

"Kids, I want to introduce you to someone."

I announced, appearing before my family without much fanfare.

"Die!!!"

Breeze shouted, sending forth thousands and thousands of wind blades my way.

I smirked as the wind dissolved a couple of meters away from me. I had told her to always take the chance and attack me to see if I could get a spark of inspiration on what the next sub skill was. After that brief meditation exercise, I'd felt more connected to the wind than could be explained so projecting a sort of zone of air negation 5 meters around me was now possible.

It wasn't completely a vacuum but something very close. I knew that this paired up with air constructs and invisibility would add up to the elusive sub skill that I had to master to move on to the next level.

"Dad!"

"Papa!"

"Big daddy!"

My eyebrows shot up to the roof at Kai's greeting. I heard a snort and looked Starfire's way. She was chuckling while trying to hide it. A prank? Did they not know I was the king of pranks?!

"Muhahahaha!"

Dextrous air fingers started tickling both her and Kai while I was getting mobbed by the other three. Sai occupied his position on my left leg, hugging it with as much intensity as he could. Match did the same for my right leg, squeezing it up until I actually felt some pain! And Breeze of course was on top of my head.

"Hiya! Giddy up horse daddy!!"

Where in the hell are they getting all this from?

"Hahaha hahaha stop! No more! Hahahaha!"

Kai laughed and laughed as I absolutely tickled the crap out of both her and Kori. Of course when a ball of green flame passed very close to my head, I stopped immediately. So Breeze decided to retaliate. So it became a sort of spar. A spar with deadly elemental attacks getting thrown around.

It was awkward fun. Very awkward fun. Halfway through, Breeze started fighting with Sai. So Match joined in. So Kai focused her attention on match and stopped trying to burn me with her destructive flames. So Kori became the referee and I was left on the sidelines, wondering what sort of unhealthy competitive spirit was she fueling and if my family was actually crazy.

(A couple of hundred meters away)

"My master."

Yaotl's voice sounded out from beside me in my White Shadow form. We were standing a few hundred meters away on a hill, looking down at my main body, Kori and the kids. The Jaguar had requested it. He had suggested scouting the whole island for danger despite my telling him and him intimately understanding that I was the lord and master here. If you ask me, Yaotl was simply nervous to meet them.

"Yes Yaotl."

"Is it normally so..."

He struggled to find the word so I helped.

"Rowdy? Loud? Crazy?" I laughed, an action that had him looking at me in surprise. This being the first time I'd done it.

"Oh Yaotl, you have no idea. Come, let's go meet the family."

I told him and disappeared in one step.

Through my awareness, I felt Yaotl pause for a second then he started running after me. Before I could exit through the tree lines, a boom tube appeared at the front, in my White Shadow persona and I portaled out. Now that the chaos pockets had been taken care of and Yaotl was poised to be introduced to the rest, I had a few things to handle.

The hulking form of Yaotl broke through the tree lines as he gingerly walked over towards my main body. I smiled.

"Yaotl, over here."

My words caught the attention of the kids and Kori. They stopped their playful competition and turned to look at where I was pointing.

Yaotl arrived before me and bowed.

"Master Aden. Forgive me for the intrusion."

"It's okay Yaotl. You're not intruding at all."

I answered, wishing he wasn't so adamant in being stiff and formal. I would have to educate him on taking it easy.

Breeze took the chance while he was in a bowed position to prop her tiny self on his back.

"Giddy up huge black puss!"

Oh for the love of all that's holy...

"Breeze, get off his back. Right this second young lady."

Kori ordered with the narrowing of her eyes.

Breeze yelped and came to hide behind me. I patted her back in comfort. Don't worry Breeze, even I don't like making Kori mad.

"Greenie meanie daddy."

She whispered.

"Why don't you say that to her out loud?"

I whispered back, to which she shook her head vehemently, making me chuckle.

"Everyone meet Yaotl."

(General P.O.V)

(New York)

The boom tube emptied out inside the basement of an obscure building in New York. Above me, you could clearly hear the activity going on as one of my Master's disciples conducted a class. A gym bag was slung over my shoulder more for show than anything.

The basement layout was simple. Only two rooms. The door to the upper level was set to the left of the first room. Which in and of itself was a huge empty sparring chamber with weapon racks to the side. Then another door led to the second room which doubled as the locker and storage room.

I walked on the sides of the sparring room, briefly bowing at the figure meditating in the middle of the place where I'd gotten 3 months of physical punishment. Then I pushed the door to the locker room and walked in.

I changed without a word, into a comfortable shirt and shorts and came out a few minutes later.

Again without word, I sat next to my martial arts master and entered a thought cleansing meditative trance.

1 hour later, Ben Turner otherwise know as Bronze Tiger opened his eyes.

"You're late, fool."

His voice was deep.

I breathed out.

"Yeah...sorry about that master. The world was going to shit."

"Mmmh." He hummed. "I figured."