justinq719: Jesus Christ! First, a tour almost gone wrong at Wayne Enterprises and finally taking down BANE IN FRONT OF BATMAN! Jeez, I wouldn't be surprised if Batman paid Virgil and his girls a visit. Oh, and Virgil had the right idea, when visiting Gotham City, YOU BRING IN SOME HEAT WITH YOU, NO EXCEPTIONS!

Re: Glad to have such an exuberant first reaction. Yeah, the Wayne Enterprises tour may've been a bit more comical than in mainstream Young Justice, but I thought it weirdly appropriate since in the DCAU, it's always places like LexCorp or Stagg that has things go horribly wrong, but never at Wayne, so I thought I'd poke around with the idea a bit. As for Virgil cutting Bane's Venom artery, if Earth-12 Batman can do it, so can Virgil in Earth-16H. As for Batman visiting them, maybe not all three of them, though digging into his history will reveal his connection to Giovanni Zatara and Martian Manhunter, and you need to be on "a certain level" to stand with the likes of them.

jebest4781: man this was absolutely enjoyable to read and once again I laughed hard throughout many parts of the chapter. will be funny when the time comes when Batman looks up Virgil and makes the connection with his relationship with other people connected to the League

Re: Fortunately, Virgil has some goodwill within the superhero community, though I'm sure he'll be able to figure out that "Vincent"/Wildcard wouldn't become a Hero for purely Altruistic reasons; he's even stated explicitly that he's doing so "recreationally". However, given his motivation isn't immaterial in nature, that means his behavior can be predicted; of course I use the term loosely. If Zatanna or M'gann are in trouble, Batman can count on him to get involved; if Robin or Kid Flash are in trouble, Batman can expect him not to care as much which is "within predictive ranges".

hawkeyestratos1996: so will the nanites use the venom virgil was exposed to ?

OmegaDelta: Wonder how the nano machine's will react to tje venom in his system and if it will give him a permanent strength boost? Keep up the good work.

Re: You'll find out this-chapter~

LuckyShadowWolf: I love the callback to my previous comment about MIB quotes, especially since you used my number 1 fav quote by Agent K himself. Poor Lucious just can't catch a break from hungry killer cafeteria food, a rampaging robotic sex roach, and the the wrath of a scorned pregnant woman messing up his tour. Also I wonder about what consequences Virgil will have to deal with due to his investing with Penguin, taking on an unvetted delivery, and defanging Bane right infront of Mr. I-Must-Know-Everything Batman. And bad news for whoever makes Virgil's rage boil over cause unless I'm mistaken about those last couple of lines his rage counter has just started ticking!

Re: The killer cafeteria food was inspired by Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, not gonna lie. I always found that troupe a bit funny. As for the "rampaging robotic sex roach", the Sonic Hammer looking like a dildo joke was actually Spaceman's idea if you want to thank anyone. As for investing his money with Cobblepot, technically there's nothing illegal about it, and the individual bills can't be traced back to Vertigo because it was exchanged illegally for other illegal contraband. As for Virgil's "BS Limit", the fact that he was able to have part of a romantic evening with his girlfriend helped "cool his head" from all the escaped prototypes at Wayne Enterprises, so the "counter" would've basically been reset. A good night of sleep would do the same thing.

Blaze1992: . . .
I thought Wayne corp wouldn't be like this but I guess you went with the more comic filled one?
By the way will Virgil ever have a rival, I don't mean like Joker rival but more along the lines of Catwoman? Aka not a murderous nutjob just a very good criminal?

Re: As "Wildcard", he'd probably have a shared nemesis with Zatanna/Miss Martian, since Virgil doesn't plan on having a Solo Career, and thus not "step on any toes" from the villain's perspective. As for "Special Agent Washington", he isn't really in the business of leaving warm bodies behind to become nemeses, so I'd have to say no on that front as well. When it comes to people who challenge his ability… Not sure if anyone will fall in the Catwoman/Black Cat archetype just yet. Wetworks and Covert Ops don't really leave much room for nemeses.

Yu Narukaze: Okay, I'm not sure if this has been brought up yet (I *have* read up to the current chapter, but I usually bypass the reader responses), but I really have to ask: is Virgil Snake's brother? Because having 3 other fetuses shrivel up and die in that dream, when only one of the three known Big Boss clones is still alive, and he's close to dying of old age... I have a nagging feeling that Les Enfant Terribles created a fourth clone on Earth-16H. Sure, he's considerably younger than the other clones, but he could have been created much later; cloning tech doesn't run out like fertility does. This would also explain the comments on his Growth Potential, since Big Boss canonically had ridiculous potential as a soldier due to his genes. Potential" in this context is of course distinct from actual "skill".)

Re: No, Virgil isn't Snake's brother. Liquid Snake aka "White Mamba" aka "Eli" already fills that position in the mythos. As for the fetus dream, Snake and Liquid were Two of Octuplets and the other Six were terminated; in order for Virgil being part of that to "track", he'd have had to be one of the same in the batch of fetuses, and too much time had passed. That and he looks nothing like the original Snake.
Of course, enough time has passed and enough clues have been scattered in foreshadowing, so if anyone's paying attention, yes Virgil has ties to Les Enfants Terribles, but no, he isn't a clone of Big Boss like Solid and Liquid Snake were. The 3 Fetuses being terminated is Prenatal Genetic Memory to his time in the womb when the rest of his Quadruplet siblings were similarly Terminated like in Les Enfants Terribles; the reason this was done was to bolster the Growth Potential of the remaining offspring in lieu with the "Super Baby Method".
Also, Big Boss didn't have the same sort of "potential" as Liquid and Solid Snake. Big Boss was already that skilled, and the Growth Potential was implanted in Liquid and Solid so that, within their Accelerated Lifetimes, they'd be able to reach that potential in the timeframe that The Patriots wanted. If you look at it like an RPG, then heightened Growth Potential would be like an "EXP Multiplier", and Big Boss had a higher "Stat Cap" which was passed on to his cloned progeny. The reason The Patriots cloned Big Boss was similar to Amanda Waller activating Project: Batman Beyond in the Earth-12 DCAU; because The Patriots needed "another" Snake.

Raidentensho: Dear God! Virgil is cursed to the extreme here! still, i am hoping that he will get a break at some point. i do wonder if all this misfortune and alterations will lead to him being able to stand with the Middle-weight Leaguers at least. looking forward to more. this will be epic. until then, later!

Re: Magic has its price; the severity is dependent on both writer and/or continuity.
And don't worry, Virgil will get some downtime, though given all the shit he's been through, he'll want to dedicate that time to training since there have been too many "close calls". Even with all he's gone through, in a serious fight, Robin, even a year before the events of Young Justice take place, could kick his ass; mind you, that's without the Suit, something Virgil won't always have.
As for the future… I have some interesting plans for that. Young Justice has timeskips aplenty between seasons, so I think there's some wiggle-room to work with instead of the Five Years Later spiel you get at the start of Season 2.

MoreTemptation: I actually am all for the Artemis x Vergil route. I felt like you were hinting to that when they first encountered each other, and I also felt like they had some similarities with each other, one obvious thing being the bow.

Re: Their common ground has the makings for a good friendship, yes.
Whether or not I explore that relationship is up to time.

*ARMOR WARS*

Hargreave & Rasch Biomedical Clinic
November 23, 18:12 EST

Fortunately for Virgil, his sponsors did have a clinic nearby; likely to manage those running clinical trials for their next-gen medications, since Gotham like many cities was rife with people desperate to make ends meet.

The facility wasn't nearly as grand as Wayne Enterprises', but it was clearly fortified against vehicular collisions since biomedicine was a hot Black Market item. The pylons on the streetside definitely shored a strong defense in that regard.

"So what do you do for these people exactly?" Bullock asked as he eyed the H&RB logo above the door.

"I run clinical trials for their medicine," Virgil answered. "I'm in good health which is why I'm eligible, but I'm obligated to alert them to any sudden changes," he said fishing for his H&RB ID card. "You guys try to stay out of trouble. I'll be back as soon as I get the green light."

The décor inside was a blend of modern and futuristic aesthetics, lots of white tiles and paneling with neon blue lighting. Probably to lure people in, make them feel safe and more-willing to have who-knew-what injected into them.

"Excuse me," he said walking up to the woman at the front desk. "I… called ahead."

"Ah, Mr. Valentine," the woman replied as she scanned his ID. "Yes, Dr. Yumeno will see you in Examination Room #9."

"Thank you-" 'Wait…' "Dr. Yumeno is here?"

"In a… manner of speaking," the woman returned before turning her attention to another client.

Virgil contemplated what this meant, but steeled himself as he made his way into the examination room marked 9. Stepping in, it looked like what you'd find at an ordinary street-side clinic, though the tech looked a bit better. The whirring of pneumatics sounding as something moved in the corner of his eye, Virgil whipped his gun up as a slender chromed android with Dr. Yumeno's face walked up to him.

No, wait, not his face. Dr. Yumeno's face was showing on a small television screen in the shape of a human face. And for whatever reason, a lab coat had been thrown over the android's shoulders.

Either someone did it for a lark, or it was done to make it look "more human" and thus put patients more at ease.

"Dr. Yumeno?!"

"In the flesh. So to speak," the man replied.

"How…? What?"

"Remote telepresence device. Has tactile sensors so Hargreave & Rasch physicians can conduct examinations anywhere in the world," the man replied. "So," he said as the android's torso opened up and a bank of scanners extended toward him. "What seems to be the trouble?"

"I ah… got exposed to the neo-steroid Venom during date night…" he began awkwardly.

*ARMOR WARS*

What followed was his bloodwork being done right there in the clinic. Despite controlling a robot body from who knows how many miles away, its dexterity was quite incredible, though given anachronistic examples of robotics technology back in the 50s, it was to be expected that modern tech, though isolated, could be so-considerably incredible.

"So…" Virgil hummed a while later from his seat. "What's the verdict?"

"Well, good news is the addictive chemicals in Venom have been successfully contained, and your medical nanotech is flushing the waste materials out of your system as we speak. In addition, your nanotech should give you a bolstered immunity to any future Venom and derivative neo-steroid exposure."

"And the bad?"

"Well, it isn't so much 'bad news' as it is, you'll need to endure a brief 'adjustment period'."

"And what exactly will I be adjusting to?" he asked, recalling the horrible Oh-God-I-Pulled-Every-Muscle-In-My-Body feeling from before.

"Tell me, have you ever heard of… Hourman?" Dr. Yumeno questioned.

"I think so…" Virgil hummed. "Guy was… Justice Society, back in World War II, right?" he asked racking his brain. The topic had come up in American History by one of his more liberal schoolteachers if he recalled properly. "What does that have to do with what's going on now?"

"Well, to answer that, I'll need to give you a little history lesson," Dr. Yumeno answered. "Dr. Rex Tyler was originally a chemist who discovered the Miraclo Formula during World War II and with it became a member of the All-Star Heroes. After the war, Dr. Tyler retired from his superhero career rather than register with the government, but his son, Rick Tyler, sold the formula to a member of the military industrial complex, General Slaycroft. General Slaycroft in turn, provided the neo-steroid to anti-communist groups to further America's political goals during the Cold War."

"I sense a 'however' coming."

"However…" Dr. Yumeno paused, realizing he'd walked right into it. "When his funding was cut, General Slaycroft moved his operations to the Marxist-Lennist socialist state, Santa Prisca, where he hired a man by the name of Dr. Randolph Porter to modify the Miraclo Formula into something that could be used for more than a single hour each day."

"Sooo…" Virgil hummed as the pieces began to fall into place. "Venom is a modified version of the Hourman formula?"

"Exactly. In Santa Prisca, it's called 'Porter-Peña Duro', street-named 'Venom' due to the crippling withdrawal symptoms that follow a cessation of use."

"But… why tell me about the Miraclo Formula at all?"

"Because after cycling your bloodwork, it appears that your medical nanotech has 'purified' the Venom in your system, converting it back to its original state; Dr. Rex Tyler's Miraclo Formula."

At this Virgil sputtered. Hourman might not've been a heavy hitter like Wonder Woman, Captain America, Green Lantern, or Red Tornado, but Hourman in his own right was no slouch back in the day when things could still be considered "normal", and to find out he had that same stuff swirling through his veins-

"However, before your imagination gets away from you, I should probably tell you now that the captured Miraclo Formula particles are largely inert."

"Oh."

Not that he was too disappointed. A single hour of superhuman abilities followed by a twenty-three hour "cooldown" did not sound all that appealing in a modern setting.

Or at the very least not to him.

In order to use the Miraclo Formula earlier than the time before, you'd have to wait a whole other day, and steadily down-track before starting the cycle over again.

Not the sort of thing you could use every day as-needed. Definitely not reliably.

"Hold on…" Virgil paused. "How do you know so much about Venom's origins as Miraclo?"

"Let's just say we have a… resident expert, on the subject, and leave it at that."

Virgil shrugged. If the doctor didn't want to elaborate, that was fine. If the Miraclo Formula in his system had still been active, that would've been a whole other story. That it was inert but still in his system, probably meant he'd just piss it out in a few hours.

"That being said, while the Miraclo in your system is inert… I'd like to test something."

"Oh?"

*ARMOR WARS*

A minute later and Virgil found himself standing in the hallway outside Dr. Yumeno's "office". He'd been asked to stand in place while the doctor's robot proxy walked off to set something up, and he hadn't questioned the man. Most people would want to hurry things along, but given what he'd been through within the last hour, a reprieve from the relative weirdness of his life was welcomed.

"Mr. Valentine. Look toward the end of the hall. What do you see?"

"I spy with my little eye… an eye chart."

"Good. Good. Can you read it?"

"Not from this distance."

"Actually, that's what we'd like to test out."

" . . . Huh?"

"Humor me, alright? Just because the de-Venomized Miraclo in your system is inert, doesn't mean it didn't do nothing too your system."

"So you think… the Miraclo might've still managed to give me superpowers?" Virgil asked trying to digest it.

"Of a sort, possibly. That's what we're looking to find out," Dr. Yumeno replied. "Now," he said grasping the teen's shoulders with chromed fingers and turning him around. "Let's begin the testing, shall we? Its your body that might or might not have superpowers, so don't be afraid to try everything."

"I did get some in my mouth too. How do we know I don't have 'super tongue powers'?" he asked sarcastically.

He would later realize how pervy that sounded, and how he could never utter such a thing around an acquaintance of the female persuasion who was "thirsty" lest they ask to "test it".

"We'll test that next week. For now, we're seeing to your eyes."

" . . . Welp. Here goes something."

*ARMOR WARS*

That being said, there were only so-many ways one could "look at" something.

"And you're… really sure this is a scientifically viable way of determining if I got superpowers from that stuff?" Virgil asked as he strained his eyes several minutes later, still staring at the same eye chart at the far end of the hall.

"Proof positive of the Meta-Gene is still a relatively recent discovery, so there's an infinite number of ways one could become Meta-Positive."

"Right, right…" Virgil grumbled. He'd read the forums, either by or about teenagers across the country who became Meta-Positive after some kind of accident, or injury.

The story was always the same; they got it into their heads they could be the next Superman or Wonder Woman or Batman, and a week, a month, or in some rare cases more-than a month later, and they'd wind up in the morgue looking like they'd been spat out of the wrong end of a Catholic-themed autoerotic asphyxiation fetish party.

Almost none of them bothered to train their powers before trying to do the "lone vigilante" thing, whereas those that did had more stopping power, but would always wind up biting off more than they could chew and turn up in the morgue one way or another.

If they were lucky, they'd survive their first fuck-up and have the good sense to move to another state.

He envied not having to worry about shit like that.

For now at least, but that was a story for another day.

Somewhere along the line, he got the idea into his head to focus on using only his right eye, covering up the left and squinting.

The next moment a heady feeling came over him, the hallway tunneling inward until he could see the eye chart with alarming clarity.

Squinting open his other eye, the moment his binocular vision came back into effect, his right eye snapped back to normal ranges of vision.

Painfully.

"Ah, I take it you've found the right 'trigger'," Dr. Yumeno said as Virgil rubbed his aching eye.

"Yeah. Sucks ass though…"

"Well, with a little more training I'm sure it'll become a real asset," Dr. Yumeno replied.

He looked like he wanted to say more, but that could've just been a trick of the TV screen he was projecting himself through.

"My advice, try to avoid fooling around with that eye of yours unless absolutely necessary. We'll run a more in-depth battery of tests when you return," he stated, a slot in his torso spitting out a sheet of paper. "Here you are. A clean bill of health."

"Oh, so that's really a thing…" Virgil hummed. "So this won't affect my trip any?"

"Not unless you experience bouts of crippling blindness. Good luck!"

Before Virgil could ask what the man went by that, the android's face monitor blanked out, and it began to mechanically stride down the hall and out of sight.

*ARMOR WARS*

"Sooo… Clean bill of health?" Gaige asked nervously as Virgil hopped back into the car.

"Clean bill of health," he returned, albeit begrudgingly. "Docs just told me not to strain my eyes too much."

"And the Venom?" Bullock asked. "Isn't that stuff super-addictive?"

"Only if you take it for extended periods like Bane does, and even then you need a special pump to keep it flowing into your system; or more-specifically, your bloodstream near the blood/brain barrier," Virgil returned. "Don't worry. They gave me a medical cocktail to flush it out of my system."

Not technically untrue.

"So… What now?" Gaige questioned.

"I say we go back to Bullock's place, batten down the hatches, and keep our heads down until we leave for the train tomorrow morning," Athena suggested.

"Sounds as good a plan as any," Bullock replied, pulling out into traffic.

Sure, maybe when he was a rookie he would've been chasing after the action, but as he got older, wiser, and closer to retirement, he appreciated the desire to do the aforementioned.

*ARMOR WARS*

Gotham Train Station
November 24, 6:15 EST

"I don't know how we did it, but somehow we managed to avoid anything else crazy happening to us," Athena said as she hefted her luggage onto the platform the following morning.

True to form they'd returned too Bullock's place, battened down the hatches, and kept their heads down. Nothing weird happened street-side, and enough off-duty cops lived in the building that they didn't have to worry about anything happening in the middle of the night.

Virgil didn't wake up with "bouts of crippling blindness", so that was a plus too.

Since they'd packed their belongings the previous light and set out a change of clothes beforehand, the departure for the train station was almost instantaneous, though since they had a little time to burn and a siren in case things got dicey, they allotted to get some McDonalds, with Virgil treating Bullock to whatever he wanted as added thanks for putting up with the three of them.

To the man's credit, he showed some restraint, ordering less than his girth would imply.

"Fingers crossed I don't have to come back here too soon," Virgil nodded.

He did have friends (or one friend and business associate) in Gotham, but it didn't mean he wanted to live there. Given the Joker's random, chaotic tendencies and his own shit luck, doubly-worse because of his Magic, he wouldn't put it past the universe to fuck with him and drop him into the Joker's lap for one of his mad schemes.

Hence the insistence on taking the earliest train out of Gotham they could book and getting the fuck "out of Dodge".

"Hey uh, Athena," Bullock spoke up as he walked them over to the line to Metropolis. "When you get back home-"

"Don't worry. I'll put in a good word for you with mom~"

"That wasn't what I was going to say."

"Yes it was~"

"Can you prove it?"

"I don't need to~"

" . . . Touche," the man replied. "Good luck in the big city, kiddo."

"You too! Try not to get killed by a super-villain or anything!" she replied with a smile.

"Dammit, Athena! You've doomed him! You've doomed him all!" Gaige cried drawing weird looks.

*ARMOR WARS*

Thankfully, another "crazy person" in Gotham wasn't something that people paid attention to in Gotham, unfortunately, so the three teens were able to find their seats with relatively little difficulty. The trio waving to Bullock through the windows, they got their tickets checked as they made their way to the middle-tier train car, where pairs of comfortable-looking seats flanked the windows, facing one another in quartets for company or privacy.

"Window seat! Dibs!" Gaige said happily.

"Gaige, there's a million of those thiIIINGS!" he yelped as the ginger hooked her elbow with his and hauled him into the seat beside her own.

"Hey, what's the big idea?!" Athena demanded.

"Hey, you got to go to a fancy restaurant and eat Kobe steak! Let me have this!" Gaige bit out.

" . . . Fine, fine," she sighed, stashing their luggage in the overhead compartment before sitting down with a huff across from the mad genius, arms crossed and pouting, Virgil trying to diffuse the situation before things could get any worse.

*ARMOR WARS*

A collective sigh of relief leaving the trio's lips as they left the Gotham city limits, the sky seemed to brighten as they distanced themselves from the dour, hazy cloud of gloom and smog of Gotham. It was only when the city was well out of their sights that they were able to truly relax.

By the time the refreshment cart came along, Athena was the only one awake, Virgil and Gaige having nodded off in the warm sun filtering in through the window.

Athena definitely bristled when Gaige leaned her face away from the sun and into Virgil's shoulder, but the girl-genius' heart softened when her not-a-rival desperately muttered the word- "Safe…" -under her breath, fingers desperately clinging to the brunette's own.

She decided to let Gaige have this small comfort, since as long as she was interested in Virgil, any feelings Gaige had for him would remain unrequited.

She might've been Moxxi's daughter, but she did not believe in "free love".

At least not as far as she was concerned. She didn't believe in kink-shaming.

*ARMOR WARS*

Metropolis
November 24, 7:53 EST

All that separated Metropolis from Gotham was the Delaware and a couple hours by train, but it showed in the countryside on the departure and approach from one city to the other. While Gotham was surrounded by swampland, forest, and ruined industrial complexes that criminals and paupers alike would hide in, the approach to Metropolis was marked by rolling plains, small towns that got passed over for further expansion, and clear skies all the way. Both cities may've been "supervillain central", but if given a choice, it wasn't hard to imagine why people would choose Metropolis over Gotham.

Speaking of which, first-timers to Metropolis on the train began pressing themselves to the windows as the city rose up on the horizon, glass and steel spires glistening like gemstones compared to Gotham; a marvel of the modern world.

"Hey, you two," she said shaking their shoulders. "Wake up, we're here."

"Huh…?"

"-having a nice dream…"

"Get the sleep out of your eyes, we're approaching Metropolis now."

At this declaration, Gaige immediately perked up, pressing her face to the window as she beheld Metropolis in all its splendor. Virgil's reaction was more muted, more analytical. New York may've been founded well before, but in terms of scope of its sky rises alone, Metropolis had it beat. Something to be expected when one of the richest men in the world could turn the whole thing into his playground. The added infrastructure of overpasses and monorails only further increased Metropolis' interconnectivity within its borders.

"Big… Definitely big…" Virgil muttered. Even this far out on the approach, he still had to crane his neck to see the tops of some of the buildings.

New York may've been one of the major entry points for immigrants, but it was Metropolis where everyone wanted to hit it big.

"Oh! Look! There's the Daily Planet!" Gaige said excitedly, pointing to a building in the distance, where atop it was a golden banded globe.

"Huh. You don't say," Virgil hummed.

It wasn't that the building wasn't impressive, there was definitely a history behind it, and the big golden globe on top made it one of Metropolis' more-iconic landmarks.

It's just, after witnessing how-easily a building could be consumed by Biomass, it was impossible to look at anything that large and not imagine what it'd look like covered in fleshy red-and-black tendrils.

'I almost forgot that cities could look this clean…' he thought to himself, shielding his eyes with some cheap plastic shades he'd bought… in Vegas?

Hard to say.

That whole clusterfuck was all a blur. On the one hand he wanted nothing more than to abandon those homicidal maniacs, but if he did, and they got caught, they'd talk, and who knew what could come out their mouths?

*ARMOR WARS*

"Sooo…" Virgil said as he and the girls disembarked, the station a veritable font of activity, whereas Gotham was like a gurgling faucet. "Where're we staying this time?"

"Your mom have another boy toy we can crash with?" Gaige asked.

"Not in this case…" Athena sighed. "My mom booked us a cheap-ish hotel within walking distance of the Suicide Slum, but not close-enough we'll have to worry about it."

"Are the police as-useless here as they are in Gotham?" Virgil asked critically.

"Not to my knowledge. Superman may've taken the wind from their sails a bit, but LexCorp keeps them well-funded, so we shouldn't have to worry too much," Athena hummed. "Still, just in caaase~" she said rolling up her sleeve, revealing what looked like an ordinary Superman-brand watch.

"Hm?"

"I don't know if this is keyed into the right frequency or whatever, but if Superman's anywhere in Metropolis when I set this off, it should get his attention; assuming the forums about Superman's range of hearing are even partly accurate."

"I'd rather not rely on Captain Underpants, but I won't begrudge you for keeping a 'big gun' in reserve," Virgil whispered back. "Come on. Let's flag us a cab and get dressed for our big meeting," he said guiding the girls down to the street level.

Stepping out and raising his right arm, palm forward, with his free hand going to his mouth he let out a shrill- *TWEEEET!* -and called out- "TAXIII!"

He may not've been a born-and-bred New Yorker, but he could hail a taxi just fine.

*ARMOR WARS*

The hotel room Moxxi had booked for them was a one-bedroom with one bed.

Gaige had made a saucy remark saying she'd let Athena share with Virgil if she "got the next one", but Virgil wisely sidestepped the whole confrontation by calling room service for an additional pillow and blankets.

He'd still have to sleep on the floor, but the floor of a Metropolis hotel wasn't the worst he'd ever contended with.

The bedding in the Red Zone was never comfortable, and the general air of oppression and fear of an Infected finding you in your sleep didn't make things any easier, but whenever he salvaged a good blanket or pillow, Dana was always the first to get them.

A cranky Dana was… well… a cranky lady trying to eke it out in a Quarantine Zone.

"Athena, you all set?"

"Yes."

"Alright then. Let's head to LexCorp!" Gaige said eagerly.

*ARMOR WARS*

The actual journey to LexCorp was less than stellar, but they'd allotted themselves plenty of time in the event of delays.

Delays like traffic getting bogged down because of a bank robbery that'd been busted by the Science Police; apparently Superman was helping with disaster relief overseas.

After disembarking halfway to the LexCorp Tower, the trio of teens made their way on foot, fast-walking while still taking in the sights. Bludhaven may've been better off than Gotham, but Metropolis blew the spit-shone part of Bludhaven out of the water. The general brightness of the place a little irritating, Virgil thankful he packed some shades as a just-in-case/better-to-have-it-and-not-need-it-than-not-have-it-and-really-wish-you-had, but the girls seemed to be having a good time, and it was rather nice doing something "normal" again.

"Look! Up in the sky!"

"It'd a bird!"

"It's a plane!"

"It's-"

'Damn memes…' Virgil grumbled as the locals did their schtick. 'And here I thought this only happened in those damn cartoons…'

"No wait! It is a plane! And that plane's on fire!" a woman pointed out, finger extending skyward, everyone craning their necks to see a four-engine jumbo jet sailing over the city, one of the engines belching smoke from the back end.

"Oh no! That plane's going to crash!" another woman cried.

"I assume stopping a plane from falling out of the sky is a little 'much' for you?" Athena whispered, her tone yet hopeful she was wrong.

"Eeyup!" Virgil nodded, turning his back on it.

"So you're not going to do anything?" she asked.

Not condemningly. Just curiously. Like she wanted to hear more.

"Nothing I can do. If airlines wanna skimp on maintenance because their planes are heading for Metropolis and they think Superman will save them every time, that's on them. It is most-definitely not-my-problem," Virgil said dismissively.

Having Magic didn't automatically make him feel "all powerful" like it would for most non-magi dipping their toe into "the deep end". If anything, the general "powerlessness" he felt after being stranded in the Red Zone kept him firmly grounded in reality. Even after becoming the Nanosuit's gene-locked pilot or whatever the egg-heads called it, he still accepted the fact that with or without it, there were people leagues above him, and all he had going for him was a willingness to fight dirty.

"Come on. LexCorp Tower waits for no man," Virgil hummed ushering the girls over, Gaige cheekily linking arms with his- "So you don't get lost~" -she said, prompting Athena to do the same, albeit without the witty banter.

*ARMOR WARS*

"Okay… I'll admit… That is pretty impressive…" Virgil said as he and the girls stood across the plaza in front of LexCorp's Metropolis HQ.

The building was an impressive black spire with rounded corners and darkened windows, wider at the bottom half than the top, a stylized green L with sharp angles emblazoned proudly upon the southern face. Held within were countless offices, subsidiaries, and R&D labs supplying the military industrial complex with the next and newest tool of capitalist dominism.

"And we'll be seeing… who exactly?" Gaige asked, staring up at the impressive precipice.

"According to the invitation, I'm set to interview with Mr. Luthor himself, and then a tour of the facilities," Athena answered looking at the letter she'd received. "Apparently, Mr. Luthor prefers to recruit top-notch talent personally."

"Well if you're anything, you're top-notch," Virgil nodded, adjusting his attache case, ready for another song-and-dance.

Since Metropolis' supervillain scene was notably worse than Gotham, hopefully the front desk wouldn't give him too much trouble over it.

*ARMOR WARS*

The LexCorp security at the front office were extremely tolerant of Virgil carrying in firearms once he'd shown off his documentation, though it probably helped pointing out that he was afraid of him and his friends- "getting caught up in a super-villain attack perpetrated toward Mr. Luthor."

Well, either they bought that, or whoever Mr. Luthor had with him at all times could handle "a teenager with a gun". Or Mr. Luthor had a personal forcefield generator.

Or something. Who knows, maybe the building had killer robots at every corner. Or there were laser emitters between the tilework.

Who could say? With fully-functional AI coming out in the Cold War but everyone else saying it wouldn't happen until 2030, and the expected emergence of AGI aka the singularity by 2060, who knew what kind of anachronistic stuff could exist out there?

The Nanosuit, even in its prototype state, was proof of that.

The gang was allowed to take Mr. Luthor's personal Express Elevator to the top-most floor, and whatever inertial dampeners were equipped in it must've been top-of-the-line, because the minutes it took them to get from the ground to the penthouse were well within the single digits rather than the double.

Upon arriving, they were greeted by a Caucasian woman with brown eyes and light brown hair; she was rather "handsome" for a woman, but not wholly unattractive in the heterosexual sense, clad in a dark business suit with a red tie and a short skirt, but not too short, and sensible shoes.

In short, Lex Luthor's assistant and bodyguard, Mercy Graves; her Secret Service-like dedication had earned her a reputation all her own.

"Good morning. I'm Mercy Graves, I'll be showing you into Mr. Luthor's office," the woman greeted curtly.

"And a good morning to you too," Athena replied, Virgil and Gaige trailing behind her as they traversed what appeared to be a showing-room of relics, artifacts, and art-pieces from around the world in bulletproof cases.

Entering into the large double doors through a brief rectangular tunnel filled with what Virgil assumed were more security measures, exiting the other side, Lex Luthor's office was-

"LAND SHAAAAAARK!" Gaige suddenly shrieked, Virgil whirling around at the shout, eyes going wide and hairs standing on end as he leered into the jet-black eyes of a Great White, tail lazily swishing.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," a charismatic voice said as Virgil snapped his sidearm up, the teen looking over his shoulder to see the man of the hour.

He wasn't into big business, but even he could recognize Lex Luthor at a glance.

Clad in a business suit that cost more than most of his employees made in a week, he was tall, not too broad in shoulder, an immaculately shaved head surrounding one of the most-brilliant minds on the planet.

Mechanically inclining his head back around, Virgil saw that it wasn't a quote/unquote- "LAND SHAAAAAARK!" -as Gaige had so-eloquently screeched, but that the rear half of the room consisted of an impressive wraparound aquarium filled with numerous sharks and tropical fish.

How the man kept some of the more expensive-looking species from being eaten, he had no idea.

"There's no reason for alarm. That aquarium is housed in some of the strongest ballistic glass my company can create," Luthor said in a soothing, disarming tone. "Please, sit," he said inclining to one of the small waiting areas off to the side; likely for subordinates. "After I've had a few words with Ms. Moxxi, we'll be on our way."

Virgil nodded, stiffly holstering his weapon before sitting on a black couch facing the aquarium, Gaige sidling by him and clutching at his hand desperately, frightened eyes never leaving the "not-a-land-shark".

"Please, take a seat," Lex said to Athena from across a desk potentially made of some near-extinct African wood. "So, Ms. Moxxi, can I call you Athena?"

"Only as long as you aren't trying to seduce me."

"Ha ha! Oh, god, I needed a good laugh today," Lex said laughing deeply from his gut. "Most interns don't have it in them to crack wise in my presence."

"What can I say? My mother taught me how to handle myself in front of powerful men," Athena shrugged.

"Good, good, I need people with a little more spine, and not the worthless Yes-Men I so-often have to settle for so frequently," Lex sighed despairingly.

From there the conversation turned to Athena's technological abilities; when she started, what her schooling was like, inquiries as to why she stopped, and so-on. To her credit, Athena handled herself incredibly well, answering questions or deflecting them with confidence. No talk about her coming to work with him "after completing your higher education, paid for of-course by a LexCorp scholarship" as the man said, so obviously he was making small talk, working his charisma.

It wasn't any of Virgil's business until shit went down, so he settled on tending to Gaige, rubbing her back to sooth her nerves from the shark-related jump-scare.

"Thank you… That really helps…" she returned with a smile, none of the flirty sass from before present. "I can see why Athena's so-hesitant to let you go."

"Yes, well… That's the kind of girl she is," Virgil returned with a nod; wouldn't be good to give Luthor too much leverage.

He was a billionaire philanthropist to be sure, less of a playboy than Wayne or Stark, but Luthor didn't get to where he was just by being nice. Of course, nothing ever stuck, and any Superman-related incidents always had another fall-guy between him and Lex, so the tycoon had never been convicted of anything.

"They really are quite beautiful. In a primal sort of way," Athena hummed leaning ever-so-slightly into him as she eyed the sharks. "Unchanged for over four-hundred-million years, apex predators in their own right. It's easy to see why they haven't had to evolve all that much. Maybe next time I'll make a robot shark!"

'Please don't…'

The only reason Virgil didn't say that aloud, was because it'd mean telling Gaige to act against who she really was, and he just didn't have it in him to do that to such a sincere, honest girl.

The anarchy fetish was a separate matter, though.

As the conversation went on, Luthor asking Athena what she could and couldn't do, whether she wanted to stay stateside or abroad, and so-on, he watched as Gaige idly doodled on an issue of Time magazine featuring Lex Luthor on the cover. There was a lot of technical stuff on the outlier he didn't understand, but it definitely looked like a suit of powered armor.

'Sitting in the office of a man with his own shark tank is a little unusual, but at least nothing weirder than that can happen,' Virgil hummed to himself as he rolled his shoulders. 'It doesn't count as jinxing it if I think it… right?'

The hairs on his neck suddenly standing on end, Virgil kept his composure. For all he knew it could've been nothing.

Or it could've been everything.

Eyeing the reflection of the polished aquarium glass and closing his left eye, willed his right into action, panning the exterior view of Luthor's office.

The burning was only slightly less than before, but he didn't need to keep it up for long.

He'd found what had made his hairs stand on end, and if the stiffening of Mercy's body was anything to go by, she'd seen it too.

"ATHENA! GET DOWN!" Virgil shouted, blitzing to the girl and tackling her to the floor, putting his body between her and Luthor's desk.

"LUTHOR!" Mercy shouted, doing much of the same, but with the wall beneath the panoramic-view windows moments before they exploded.

*ARMOR WARS*

'Holy fuck… What happened…?' Gaige muttered as she held her head, ears ringing from the blast.

Before he'd left, Virgil had shoved her to the floor and thrown a couch cushion over her head. The distance from the blast and the couch itself had shielded her from the shockwave, so she was easily better off.

"Mmmmah… Mmmmah… Mmmmah…!" Gaige said with her fingers in her ears to stop the ringing.

Star Academy had plenty of shit exploding enough that doing so to fight of fits of Tinnitus had become a common campus practice.

Peeking around the corner of the couch with a hand mirror, Gaige's eyes widened as she beheld a flying figure approaching Luthor's office from the distance.

Astride a futuristic-looking rocket-powered glider with swooping wings, a bat-like prow, and enough weaponry on the undercarriage to level a building was a man all-clad in green segmented armor with flexible darker green armor underneath. His head was encased in a terrifying-looking helmet to match styled after a snarling goblin, the eye lenses a frightening yellow.

In short; supervillain. If he called himself "Green Goblin" or something to that effect, she wouldn't be surprised.

"LUTHOR!" the man said in a booming voice, courtesy of his helmet as he floated a few yards away from the hole he'd blasted in Luthor's office; to the man's credit, only the glass was destroyed.

"And just who… might you be?" Luthor asked as Mercy helped him to his feet, shielding her employer as she put out the last of the fire from the blast on her suit and picked some glass from her hair.

"You know what you've done, Luthor. You took everything from me! EVERYTHING!" the man raved, drawing a grenade from his belt stylized like a jack-o-lantern.

"Do you realize… how little that narrows it down?" Luthor returned calmly; as though being held at grenade-point was a common occurrence.

'Ohhhh crap…!' Gaige muttered, mind awhirl as she estimated the interior dimensions of the grenade, the thickness of the casing, and what kind of explosives it could be packing based on the perceived weight. 'We need to get out of here, but this guy's so-unhinged he might blast us too,' she said eyeing Virgil and Athena, the latter of which was being shielded by Virgil, his hand snaking around Athena's back and…

1

3

1

3

1

3

'What?' Gaige thought as Virgil kept signaling 'one' and 'three' with his fingers out of the Green Goblin's view.

Eyes widening a moment later, she turned to the attache case which had been left behind, and nodded.

*ARMOR WARS*

"Any final words, Luthor?" the Green Goblin demanded hoisting his grenade over his shoulder to throw.

"Let the children go. They have nothing to do with this."

"So you'll die with the lie? VERY WELL THEN!"

*SHFFFFFFFF!*

Yellowed lenses turning over the man's shoulder, he bore witness to a silver attache case being slid across the carpet toward the teenagers on the opposite side of Luthor's desk.

The blond being herded toward the red-head by the brunette, with a kick of his foot the case was kicked up and opened, firearms scattering-

"LEX! RUN!" the brunette said raising up a P90.

Luthor and Mercy going left, a hail of bullets in three-shot bursts assailed him. The Goblin was only mildly-annoyed by the hail of low-caliber bullets pinging off his armor.

Only too late did he realize he wasn't the intended target.

*BOOOOOOOOM!*

"AUUUUUUUUGH!" the villain shouted as he was blown off his glider by his own grenade, glider dipping down to retrieve him as thick smoke spilled into Luthor's office.

"GIRLS!" *COUGH!* "WE'RE LEAVING!" Virgil said as the five of them made their way out of Luthor's office, grabbing a wrist in each hand before bolting to the stairwell on the left.

He had enough composure not to go for the elevator, no-matter how fast it was.

Though the elevators had stopped running in the Red Zone, there were plenty a night where he was forced to wake and run to a new residence with Dana because an elevator in the building they were in suddenly failed and kicked the Infected up into a ravenous frenzy.

"TIME TO GO!"

*ARMOR WARS*

"Fuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck!" Virgil chanted like a mantra as he ran frantically down the stairs, wrists still clenched in his hands as he ran from the topmost floor, the stairway a veritable blur around.

Pulse pounding in his ears, he could've run faster, but then he might've hurt the two in his care. In the case of supervillains, it was more-important to put distance between you and them instead of hunkering down. In fact, more than half of all supervillain-related fatalities were caused by people being flattened by debris because they were too scared to leave their hidey-holes; even when the opportunity presented itself.

Sure, the League tried its best to get the civilians out of the line of fire, but nothing could be done about the ones that hid themselves too well, and though the League got a little bad press from each fatality, it'd been going on for so-long now that people had come to accept that sort of thing as normal; like vehicular fatalities or drug overdoses. Or vehicular fatalities caused by drug overdoses.

"Virgil, can you stop already?!" Gaige shrieked.

"Yeah… Yeah sureahhhhhhh! What the crap!?" he yelped seeing Lex Luthor at his side and not Athena. "Ohfuck! I grabbed the wrong wrist by mistake!"

"Don't worry, I'm sure Mercy has your friend in the other stairwell," Lex said adjusting his suit.

"Oh FUCK! Her mother's gonna have my ass for this!" Virgil yelped.

"Yeah, and not in the sexy fun way~" Gaige giggled.

"Mercy, report," Lex said into his watch.

"I have the Moxxi girl. Which stairwell are you in now?"

"The west stairwell."

"I'm in the east. Tell me where you are. I'll make my way towards you."

"Belay that. Get Ms. Moxxi to safety, we're taking a little detour."

" . . . Very well, Mr. Luthor. Nothing will happen to the girl."

"Good to know," Luthor nodded, turning off his phone.

"Sooo…" Virgil hummed. "That guy was new? Did you steal the guy's glider patent or something?"

Luthor's PR team may've been top-notch, but there were some things even his money and influence couldn't cover up.

"Hardly," Lex huffed adjusting the lapels of his coat. "It's easy for anyone to justify calling you a thief if you're more-successful than they are."

"I'll take your word for it."

"So what was this about a 'detour'?" Gaige asked.

*THOOOOOM!*

"The fuck was that?!" Gaige shrieked as the building shook.

"Since I escaped, that goblin cretin's probably bombing the building," Luthor answered.

"That's bad!"

"Not to worry, I've fortified this building to withstand missile strikes," Luthor waved off, the building shaking oncemore. "Still, we should get rid of him sooner rather than later."

"Where are we going?" Gaige asked falling into step behind the man.

"Superman's only around when he isn't needed, and absent when he is," Luthor answered. "The only ones who can save us-"

"Are we humans ourselves," Virgil finished. "Right?"

"Oh? A fan of my work?" Luthor asked with a raised brow.

"Only vaguely. Sure, Superman can do things that ordinary people could never achieve, but most of the disasters he saves people from are things that could've been prevented with a little preventative maintenance," Virgil answered. "Just because a god-like 'savior' is on our planet doesn't mean we can grow lax. We do that, we become weaker as a species, and in a universe teeming with life, weakness could very well mean extinction."

He could've gone on with a tangent like "if other Kryptonian survivors arrived on Earth and wanted to subjugate everyone, who would Superman side with?", but right now there was more-important shit to worry about.

"I couldn't have said it better myself," Luthor said with a smile, unaware of Virgil's tormented thoughts.

*ARMOR WARS*

"Sooooo… Did you just memories all the key codes or what?" Virgil asked as Luthor's fingers danced across the keypad without even looking.

"When I have the time," the man hummed.

"Where is everyone?" Gaige asked looking around.

"The building's being bombed by the equivalent of an attack helicopter, so I put out the evacuation order. Everyone should be making their way to the underground garage."

"But not us?"

"No… I'm going to need your help repelling this…"

"Green Goblin?" Gaige offered.

"Yes, that guy," Luthor said ruffling her hair. "Honestly, super-villains and their names. How utterly… juvenile."

"Eh, I give the girl style points for alliteration," Virgil shrugged as they entered the lab. The walls were lined with banks of computers, work benches, and drafting stations, while in the center of the room…

"Behold, the LexCorp Police Battlesuit Mark 3, also known as the Series Gamma Police Battlesuit," Lex introduced proudly.

If the Series Alpha was a sports car, then the Series Gamma was closer to a swat truck. Instead of the smooth swooping lines and silver armor components over a black bodysock, the Gamma was a born-and-bred mechanical exoskeleton with head to toe turbo-hydraulics and highly-pressurized pneumatics. The armor was definitely a sort of poly-alloy, lightweight, yet incredibly solid, all in black with a metallic sheen on the non-moving parts, matte on the rest. While the helmet was all-encompassing, a clear visor covered the face with a black secondary visor shielding the eyes, which was good because even if the Alpha had been "nearly indestructible", the completely exposed face of Corey Mills, was not.

It was a miracle the man didn't find himself getting a lead filling from a "back alley doctor".

The man was certainly deranged-enough not to care about that sort of thing…

"Sooo… Who's going to pilot this thing?" Gaige asked.

"In this situation, the ideal pilot would be a dedicated tester familiar with the systems, or even Mercy. However, the longer we wait, the greater the risk of a LexCorp employee coming to harm, and as CEO, it's my responsibility to see to their safety," Lex stated with crossed arms. "However, it seems we're fortuitous enough to have a fresh candidate nearby?"

"Oh? Who?"

The next moment a darkened finger was pointed straight at him.

" . . . Eh?"

"I noticed your reaction time when the Green Goblin was coming at us. You're young, but you're fit, and you have good instincts. Army brat, perhaps?" he asked with a tilt of his head. "I get a lot of those in R&D. Normal life's too boring for them, so they're more than happy to hazard a little risk for their reward."

" . . . Something like that," Virgil admitted with a sigh, looking at the Gamma before turning his eyes back to Luthor. "This thing isn't going to make me go nuts, is it?"

While technically this wasn't his problem and he could just say 'no', the longer he waited, no matter how-miniscule the risk, the possibility existed that Athena would come to harm, and him not being able to do anything about it didn't sit right with him.

That and Moxxi would have his ass if anything happened to her little girl, and again, "not in the sexy fun way".

"Don't worry. We've worked the bugs out," Lex said reassuringly.

"So why is this the Gamma instead of the Beta?"

"Because we could do so much better than the Beta," Lex said dismissively. "Glad I did. The overhaul yielded much more substantial results," he said proudly.

" . . . It's not going to stick me with any needles, is it?"

"No, it won't."

"And I won't have to shave my head?"

A lesser-known fact about Corey Mills' descent into madness.

"No, we upgraded the connection points."

Before Virgil could open his mouth to ask another question, the building shook once again, this one feeling closer.

" . . . Gaige," Virgil asked over his shoulder.

"Yes?"

"If I start going nuts, slap some sense into me."

"You got it!"

*Slap*

"EEK!" Virgil yelped, cupping his buttock before rounding on her.

"Just checking~"

" . . . Help me into the damn suit," Virgil said stripping out of his clothes.

*ARMOR WARS*

Within the case, the outer armor components were swiftly removed by a series of manipulator arms, leaving only a black pseudo-mechanical body sock in its wake. While on-display it had a heroic V-shaped silhouette, but inexplicably the material slackened, pooling to the floor as though the air'd been let out of it.

"Here, you'll want to wear these," Lex said drawing out what looked like a pair of speedo trunks from a drawer. "They're designed to keep your 'undercarriage' in order."

"Th-thank you for that…" Virgil admitted with a nervous flush, thankful it wasn't only the creators of the Nanosuit who put time and energy into that for male pilots.

"Also, before you get behind the curtain, you might want something to help make yourself comfortable," he said folding the body sock over his arm, and then gesturing to an out-of-place spice rack on the wall beside a hanging curtain.

"Baby powder and corn starch…?" he said eyeing the canisters of stuff in aforementioned rack. "Okay but whyyyyy?"

"Well, during the development of the Beta and Gamma, the test pilots would always argue between talcum powder and corn starch before putting on the 'body sock', and light skirmishes would break out when one camp would throw out the aid of the other, so eventually we decided to keep both on hand," Luthor shrugged. "It makes for a funny story, at least."

"I see…" Virgil said grabbing the body sock and a canister of corn starch before stepping around the curtain. "Gaige, no peeking."

"Sorry, not sorry~"

Stripping out of the last of his clothes and adjusting himself, he felt parts of the trunks flanking his genitals tighten against his pelvis, while the area between loosened, cupping him almost-perfectly; more-so than any jock strap he'd used before.

"Won't it be a problem that I don't know anything about this suit?" Virgil asked as he covered himself with corn starch before sliding into the suit, which tightened around his form with an electric hum the moment his feet were through the socks.

"Don't worry, Gaige and I will be supporting you from here. All you need to do is either chase off or draw the Green Goblin away from LexCorp. The Science Police will be in-bound in a few minutes."

*Boom!*

"Dammit, how many of those things does he have?!" Virgil asked angrily as he ascended the central platform and stepped into a pair of mechanical boots, the manipulator arms assembling the armor components onto his body, bolting them in. "Huh, I thought it'd be heavier."

"The under-armor acts as scaffolding using micro-hydraulics to augment your strength and agility," Lex explained as his fingers danced rapidly across the keyboard. "Gaige, can you do a flight check the onboard systems?"

"You got it!" Gaige nodded going to the indicated station.

"Alright, kiddo, here's a rundown of the suit. You have Infared Thermal Scanning for living targets, UV Scan for forensics, Sonar Motion Detector for tracking movement, and a Targeting Assist to compliment your onboard weapon systems; you think it, the suit does it," Lex said making some last-second adjustments to the assembled armor components. "Phase Shift Armor uses electricity to reduce physical damage, while the Heat Absorption Coating converts heat and light into more electricity. The armor itself grants the speed and agility of fifty men, +66% of the Beta, while also bolstering reaction speed. Weapon systems include a Split-Beam Laser Cutter, shoulder-mounted Grenade Launcher, Gatling Submachine Guns, Sonic Emitters, and an Electroshock Incapacitation Field Generator. Grenade types include Flash Bang, Concussion, Tear Gas, and Sticky Foam. You should be able to switch between non-lethal Rubber or Armor-Piercing Bullets as-needed."

"Um… Slight problem," Virgil realized as he rolled his shoulders. "I don't know how to fly this thing."

"Don't worry, we've got subliminal messaging for that."

"Wait what-"

*ARMOR WARS*

"And you're sure I didn't get turned into a corporate slave just then?" Virgil asked a minute later.

"Don't worry, it's just something one of the interns whipped up to help the pilots get used to the suit," Lex answered over the comm as he ran down the hall. "Tell me how it works. If you actually catch on and don't need the auto-pilot, I might have to hire that programmer on full-time."

"Good to know. Where am I going?"

"At the end of the hall I'm going to lift one of the security shutters. The windows are stationary though, so you'll have to get a little rough. And don't worry about the glass, it won't hit anything important on the way down."

"Hey, Virgil."

"What?"

"When you get to the window, use the Split-Beam Cutter, I need to make some adjustments for your use."

"Alright," Virgil nodded, approaching the window shortly after. All the shutters were down save for one that was lifting. "Activating cutter!"

A single black-light beam lancing from the emitter atop his hand, the auto-aim in his visor compensated and lanced the beam through the window before it went in opposite directions and cut horizontally. Angling his hand, he cut two more lines with the Split-Beam making a triangle.

"I'm going in hot! Let me know where the Goblin is!" he said making his way to the window, really hoping the jet boots actually worked.

*ARMOR WARS*

"Where arrre you Luthor? Come out, come out, wherever you arrre…!" Green Goblin cackled as he lobbed another grenade into the LexCorp building. Though he'd already blown out plenty of windows, the security shutters proved more resilient, though the building would definitely come down with enough bombs.

Thankfully he'd come packing to bear. His Goblin Glider not only came with a supply of Goblin Grenades, but it had a micro-manufacturing plant that could make custom grenades for shrapnel, gas, and even Kryptonite as-needed.

Three guesses who those were for; first two don't count.

A pane of glass suddenly coming free from one of the windows, the Green Goblin flew left, eyes going up and down only to find nothing out of place. Had someone tried to jump and lost their nerve at the last second?

The sound of compressed gas hitting his sensors, the next moment a powerful blast struck the right wing, practically capsizing him.

"WHAT?!" he howled, rounding to the opposite side of the building where someone had just rounded the corner.

"LEAVE! THIS IS CORPORATE PROPERTY!" the powered armor pilot shouted through built-in megaphone as he bore down on him like a falcon.

Vertical thrusters on the Goblin Glider lifting him up and away from the armored man's flight path, the moment he passed underneath another powerful blast struck him in the back, threatening to cast him from his glider.

"You dare strike me from behind?!"

"Oh I dare! What're you going to do about it? Luthor's gone and the Science Police are on their way."

"I don't buy it. Luthor would never abandon his castle!"

"What, are you about to tell me that thing you're on is a 'gargoyle'?"

"Hrrrrgh!"

Chucking another Goblin Grenade at his attacker, instead of ducking upward the man retreated, a purple ray firing from the top of his hand and intercepting the grenade, blasting it well outside the point it could've struck him.

"Oh-hoh! So you're one of those types, eh?"

"Don't you fucking dare…!"

"HEY THERE, FOLKS! PARTY FAVORS FOR EVERYONE! YOU GET A GOBLIN GRENADE, AND YOU GET A GOBLIN GRENADE, AND YOU GET A GOBLIN GRENADE!"

A mad cackle leaving the Green Goblin's lips, with a sudden spin the mad villain dove-bombed the street level, cackling madly mad throwing Goblin Grenades near the rubber-neckers who stayed to watch.

Rank-and-file were always dependable for that.

"ALL OF YOU! CHEESE IT!" Virgil shouted as he shot after the Green Goblin, maneuvering fins across the armor keeping him on the straight-and-narrow as he shot past the Green Goblin. Flipping forward and firing his jet boots downwards, the armored teen landed with a *Clank* before a young woman, wrapped his arms around her, and shot off again just as the area she stood on was blasted to smithereens.

The Goblin cackling madly as he shot towards a tour bus in the distance, the undercarriage of his glider opening up to reveal a large missile, the Green Goblin peeled off the moment it was launched, the missile shrieking through the air towards the bus, which picked up speed once word got out of their impending doom.

"Luthor! What kind of missile is that?" Virgil asked hastily as he shot after it.

"Looks like its impact-based. More than enough to kill everyone in that bus," he responded quickly.

"Are you secure in the lab?"

"Yes. Shutters and turrets will slow the Goblin down even if he tries to go inside."

"Alright, I'm going for the missile then!"

The Gamma responding to his thoughts, his jet boots poured the speed on before slowing down the moment he was alongside the missile to match its speed. Purple light lancing through the center of the missile, which to him was now standing still, its rocket guttered out, and with a powerful chop the warhead was separated cleanly at the spot indicated.

"Where'd the Goblin go?" he asked panning his gaze, the warhead tucked under his arm against a magnetic holster.

"He's retreating-No! Wait! He's targeting the Science Police! It seems he refuses to go quietly."

"Dammit!" Virgil swore as he shot off in the direction of the waypoint indicator. "Where's Captain Underpants when you really need him?"

So-focused was he on the task at hand, he missed the gut-busting guffaw that came over the line.

*ARMOR WARS*

"Dammit! I timed this assault to Superman being overseas and everything!" the Green Goblin howled angrily as he lobbed Goblin Grenades at the approaching Science Police vehicles, flipping them every which way as he rained superior firepower on them. "I'll get you for this Luthor! I swear it!"

"Not on my watch, snotball!"

"YOU?!" the Goblin raged looking over his shoulder.

"Surrender and die!"

"Shouldn't it be 'surrender or die'?"

"I know what I said!"

A shoulder-mounted grenade flying toward the Green Goblin, the villain contemptuously dodged to the left, only to be caught in the blast radius of the grenade when a UV laser struck it mid-flight.

"Oh ho, interesting strategy. I'll have to make note of that," Luthor hummed with a smile as the Goblin angrily brushed shrapnel from his suit.

"Be impressed later! Are there any condemned buildings I can force him into?" he asked pestering the Goblin with his SMG. "I need somewhere I fight him without an expensive price-tag attached."

He'd rather not contribute to the societal problem of SPBs and other "empowered individuals" levelling peoples' places of work.

"Well, actually…~"

"Send it to my HUD, I need to keep collateral to a minimum!" Virgil said minimizing the audio with a blink-command before locking onto the Goblin's glider. "Computer! Scan!"

"Sorry, but the Penetrating Radar is still in Beta," Luthor said forcing it through.

"FUCK!" he swore. "Fine, guess we're doing this the old-fashioned way then!"

Closing the distance, the Green Goblin raised a grenade to his hand and prepared to throw, quickly regretting it as a hail of SMG rounds set it off, blasting him off the glider once again. The Goblin tumbling into a nearby office building, Virgil let out an obscenity as he trailed in after him. A red [Proximity Alert] suddenly flashing across the uppermost region of his HUD, all of a sudden the Goblin Glider bowled him over, bodily slamming him to the floor and wreaking havoc on the office building as the Green Goblin bolted to the opposite end of it, crashing through the window before remounting his glider.

"Luthor! Gaige! Don't let me lose him!"

A red [Target Lock] appearing in the distance, Virgil kept after him. Locking his heels together and putting his hands together like a swimmer's dive, he shot through the air like a torpedo after the Goblin who tried to shake him now that the Science Police were well out of the way. His legs feeling the burn from the continuous rocket use, Virgil eyed the Green Goblin and the waypoint indicator to the safe-fight zone.

The word "Nitro" coming to mind, a Turbo-like gauge you'd find in any video game appeared in the corner of his sight, afterburners of his boot rockets firing and sending him careening towards the Green Goblin who'd thought he'd gotten a bead on his top speed.

Slamming shoulder-first into the Goblin Glider and threatening to dismount the armored villain once again, as the Green Goblin struggled to regain his equilibrium, Virgil's hydraulic-augmented fingers dug into the back of the glider as he trailed behind it. Firing foot thrusters for leverage, he drove his right fist into the rear thruster of the glider, engine bucking around him and battering his armored hand before he wrenched it free.

"Well that looks important!" Virgil smirked tossing something expensive-looking to the wayside before grabbing onto the underside of the glider and putting his back against it.

"What are you doing?!" the Green Goblin cried as he fought for control, auxiliary thrusters practically useless.

"Changing the battlefield!" he said angling the glider towards a building highlighted [CONDEMNED] in his HUD; a course that the Goblin Glider was unable to fight without its primary thruster.

A panicked cry leaving his lips since there was nowhere near-enough for him to jump without painting the street a very ugly color, seconds later aged brick and drywall imploded as the two armored individuals slammed bodily into the side of the condemned building.

*ARMOR WARS*

"Ah! Ugh! Dammit! Sonofa-" the Green Goblin cried as he tumbled off of his Glider, smashing through aged furnishings and drywall into a conjoining hallway.

Shakily getting to his feet, the armor doing nothing against the concussion now wracking his brain, before his visor could pierce the dust and debris, the exoskeleton-clad man from before bodily tackled him at the waist, smashing the two of them through the wall and into another room.

The Goblin landing on his back, found himself being punched repeatedly in the face as the armored figure straddled his stomach, armored helm rattling and visor lenses cracking before he bucked Luthor's attack dog off with his own enhanced strength. Rounding on him with enhanced agility and clamping his hands down around the armored figure's neck, before his thumbs could crush the trachea, a high-pitched whine like a defibrillator sounded before a wave of electricity sent him flying, the words [Electro-Incapacitator] briefly alighting across the armored man's HUD.

The Green Goblin sailing backwards into what appeared to be a kitchen, with contemptuous ease he wrenched the nearby kitchen sink out of the counter before chucking it. Before it could connect however, the Gamma's enhanced reflexes allowed him to catch it before chucking it right back with double the force and contemptuous ease, the Goblin letting out a pained- "AAUUUGH!" -as the ceramic broke against his body armor and threw him back oncemore, sternum fractured if-not broken.

Getting up once again, blood pounding in his ears and adrenaline surging with furious anger, the Green Goblin lunged at the armored man to rip him to shreds.

Before he could follow through however, forearm-mounted cannons were leveled at him, a concussive blast of compression waves comparable to the Black Canary's [Canary Cry] blasted him off his feet, ears rattling before his skull followed as he struck a support beam.

The Goblin shakily getting up, lens fragments falling away exposing his eyes, before he could dive back into the fray another shoulder-mounted grenade was lobbed between his feet, a pink sticky foam spreading over his legs and pinning him against the wall from the waist-down as the casing broke. Fighting against the pink mess, he was unable to escape before it hardened around him, creeping into the gaps between his armored plates and under-armor.

"Why are you getting in my way! The one I wanted was Luthor!" the Green Goblin shouted as he punched the armored foam, which only deformed instead of cracked.

"If Luthor was the only one you cared about, you wouldn't have chucked grenades at the Science Police, or tried to blow up a freaking bus," Virgil spat, the face shield briefly retracting before snapping back into place. "Way I see it, you're just another delusional super-villain. Only difference is… I'm less-inclined to let you off Scott free," he said levelling a Blacklight Laser at him.

"Please… just… let me go…" he rasped out, some of his original personality starting to return.

"Why? So you can hurt more people with last month's trash? I don't think so," Virgil growled tightening his fist, the light from the emitter on his laser cutter intensifying.

"Wait, stop, please!" the Goblin pleaded in a suddenly-whinier voice, hands raised frantically in surrender. Wrenching the snarling goblin-themed helmet from his head free and tossing it to the wayside, what was revealed was the face of a gaunt middle-aged man with short-cropped auburn hair. The look in his eyes was terrified, further punctuated by the toxic green of his irises, veins of a matching color creeping up his neck, with patches of skin to follow. "It-It isn't my fault!" the man pleaded, voice free of the voice modulator in his helmet.

"You hurt all those people. Maybe even killed them."

"The Goblin did all those things, I had nothing to do with it!" the man begged, no longer struggling against the riot foam.

"Sorry, whoever-you-are, but I ain't buying what you're selling. Mental illness doesn't magically absolve you of responsibility; especially after you've hurt people!" he snapped back.

Said words were ironic since in Gotham, mental illness totally absolved you of responsibilities. Especially after you've hurt people.

"I see then…" the man said in a subdued tone. "Godspeed," the man replied in the Goblin's gravelly tone.

Proximity sensors going off as the Green Goblin keyed something into his palm-pad controller, Virgil shot up with his rocket boots without a second thought. Heels clipped ever-so-slightly by a bat-shaped brow, Virgil was sent spinning wildly and crashing into the ceiling, catching a momentary glimpse of the Goblin's glider and the sharp blades protruding from the front, a glider-shaped hole in the wall behind him.

By the time his auto-balancer came into effect, armored feet clattering against the dusty floor for purchase, the Green Goblin had already been impaled by his own blades, mouth and eyes wide as he tried to push the glider off of him, pinned as he was like a butterfly to a picture frame.

"Uuugh… That's gotta hurt…" Virgil cringed, watching the copious amounts of blood trickle down the man's suit in thick rivulets.

"Puh… Please…" the gaunt man gasped, his voice reverting once-more to what may've been its original tone, once upon a time. "Don't… Don't tell… my son…"

He didn't die straightaway, though his upper body falling onto his glider would certainly make you think that. The biometric scanner of the Police Battlesuit read the trauma caused by the two serrated blades cutting through his abdomen, catching multiple bends of intestine and both kidneys, and the man's vitals were steadily dropping.

Virgil took stock of what the Police Battlesuit had on hand, but without any medical supplies or even training, he couldn't staunch the bleeding even if he'd wanted to.

Plus, even if he did manage to remove the blades, and did have the medical aid and know-how to treat the wounds, the man would've bled out within seconds of freeing aforementioned blades. That was how-severe the wounds were.

'Huh… I didn't hesitate to dodge his glider, but why don't I feel worse about this?' Virgil thought to himself, watching the last trickles of blood gurgle up from the man's lips.

"Virgil, what happened?" Luthor's voice asked over the comm.

"Dunno. Guess he'd rather kill himself than get caught," Virgil shrugged dismissively.

"I understand. That's… unfortunate," Luthor said in a knowing tone.

Which only confirmed Virgil's suspicions that Luthor could see the entire thing.

Thankfully, whoever the Green Goblin really was, was something Luthor wanted swept under the rug, so Virgil could count on the man to keep his name out of it.

Of course, that just left one final piece of business to attend to.

"You wanna know what else is 'unfortunate'? What I'm going to you if this suit makes me go nuts!"

"For the fifth time, the Gamma Series Police Battlesuit will not make you go crazy!"

"Yes, well, I just watched a guy whack himself right in front of me, so excuse me if I'm a little tense!" Virgil huffed.

"Right, right, of course, it's only natural you'd be stressed," Luthor sighed. "I'm having one of my mobile labs brought around. You'll be able to disembark and remove the suit there."

"Good. Glad we understand one another," Virgil nodded, casting one last look at the Green Goblin before walking off with a huff.

Whoever the man was, whoever his son was, it wasn't his problem anymore.

*ARMOR WARS*

The mobile lab Luthor mentioned had a skylight Virgil was able to drop in through before the media could arrive en-force, which was good because Virgil could almost feel Lois Lane breathing down his neck as the techs got him out of the battlesuit.

Amazingly-enough, the only injuries he sustained from that altercation with the Green Goblin were a crisscrossing of 1st degree burns on his right forearm resembling touching a hot grill. When the techs went over the Gamma's black box, it was discovered that the reason those burns were there was because, when he'd "fisted" the thruster, though the armor held firm, the insulating layer underneath was damaged by the spinning blades.

Again, fortunately, the Science Police had surrounded the building perimeter minutes after driving the Green Goblin through one of the walls, so any evidence of his involvement would be slow to flow, if nonexistent altogether. There certainly wouldn't be any DNA evidence since the suit was wholly self-contained.

Well, there was that wad of spit he spat out, but he was sure it'd dry up before anyone came around.

Of course, since he, Athena, and Gaige were seen taking Luthor's private elevator up to his office, their involvement with the incident would be known soon, if not speculated, so they couldn't return to their own hotel room either.

Fortunately, they had a magnanimous host, even if his motives weren't purely altruistic.

"Go ahead and use one of the company apartment penthouses. I already have a few hands gathering your belongings, they should meet you there shortly," Luthor told them as one of the help let them into a spacious room, large-enough for a family of four overlooking the Metropolis cityscape.

"Sooo…" Athena hummed, fretting over Virgil even though the Gamma had taken most of the beating. "That happened."

"Yeah. Who do you think that guy was?" Gaige asked curiously.

"Whoever he was, it is not my problem," Virgil said cracking his neck, rubbing a bit of corn starch off his neck. "Don't have to know, don't need to know, don't want to know."

"What's the difference?"

"Having to know something means someone else needs you to know it, needing to know means you yourself want to know it, wanting to know means you want to know but it isn't a big deal if you don't."

"Wow, you're just firing on all cylinders today…"

"Shut up. I just killed a man…"

"I don't think it counts if you dodged."

"Oh, so you were watching?"

"Kinda had to," Gaige shrugged. "Still, at least it'll be easy not to tell the Green Goblin's son about what happened."

"Assuming it isn't publicized at least," Athena hummed.

"Let's just hope we don't get caught up in any other superhero bullshit," Virgil grumbled. "I'm hitting the shower. Got corn starch in places I'd rather not have corn starch."

"Personally, I'm a firm believer of baby powder."

"Nobody cares, Gaige," Athena growled.

*ARMOR WARS*

Meanwhile, at LexCorp HQ…

"Alright, boys! If you want those bonusses, you'll have all of this cleaned off by noon tomorrow!" Luthor shouted as he came in to supervise the reconstruction, the crews doubling their pace. 'Troglodytes. Wave a little money in their faces, and they'd even sell their own mother,' he thought bitterly as he eyed the damage.

As far as attacks on his person went, the damage wasn't anything he was unacquainted with, though given the damage the Goblin's shape charges had caused, damage he shouldn't have been able to inflict on his building, he'll probably have to pump a bit more money into the glass-related super-textile cells.

Not a huge loss. Even if he spent money like drinking water like that party-hound Wayne did, he'd still be well into the black.

And thankfully, the shark tanks remained intact this time.

Feeling the crunch of laminated paper under his foot, Lex overturned some debris the crews had missed to find one of his Time magazine likenesses staring up at him, a peculiar sketch with footnotes drawn over his torso and crossed arms.

"Hmmmmm… Interesting…" Luthor hummed as he picked up the paper and eyed it, close attention paid to the angular S on his chest in the drawing.

To Be Continued…

*ARMOR WARS*

I don't know why, but for some reason this chapter flowed out like water after my previous story update (Chronicles of Zhu). A major source of inspiration for this, apart from finding a new and creative way to introduce Peter Parker/Spider-Man in to the Earth-16 universe, was Superman the Animated Series Season 2 Episode 21 "Prototype". The idea of a super-suit, which eventually became the Earth-12 Steel suit, always fascinated me, and Lex would've had a good thing going if he didn't rush it through production.

In Earth-16H, the story of the LexCorp Police Battlesuit is largely the same, its only the setting that's slightly different since in Earth-12 (DCAU) its implied to happen in the 90s, while in Earth-16 these events would've happened sometime in the 2000s. Corey Mills being "the guy that went nuts" was really fun to mesh with the Red vs Blue reference when Church/Alpha realized that Washington was the guy in Project Freelancer "who went nuts" in the 6th Season of Red vs Blue.

Anyhow, this chapter was longer than I first anticipated, but I'm happy with the way it turned out, and hope it garners some interesting Reviews.

Until next time!

P.S.
Bonus Points for anyone who can guess what the "Gamma" looks like based on the clues I snuck in.