Growing Pains

I don’t know what I was expecting training with Batman to be like. Maybe getting strapped into fake giant death traps and needing to fight off robots with one arm tied behind my back or maybe brutal hand to hand lessons in certain styles while getting quizzed on detective mysteries.

Calmly moving through tai chi stances with Robin while a Gi-wearing Batman (He was still wearing the mask) corrected my posture was not on the list.

“This wasn’t what I was expecting when you said you would train me.” I couldn’t help but say as I moved through the forms I’d been shown.

“Body control is very important for learning martial arts. Tai Chi is very good for learning both awareness and control, things you will need in other styles. Especially if you need to control your strength to human levels.” Batman explained again.

“Still think it’s weird we agreed to train her at all.” Bird Brain commented. No one paid him any attention though, as was proper.

“Yeah, but this would be easier if you just used your Ki to make yourself stronger instead.” I insisted for probably the fifth time. “Then I wouldn’t need to be so careful.”

“We’ve tried that. But until Robin or I can do so it would just waste time. So we’ll focus on practical things first.”

“It would help if your instructions didn’t suck.”

“It would help if you weren’t too stupid to follow basic directions Bird Brain!” I snapped at Robin.

“Basic directions?! ‘Feel the warm glowy stuff in your body and make it do stuff’ aren’t directions! It doesn’t even make sense!” The moron snapped back.

“Of course, they’re the basics! They’re so basic I shouldn’t even need to teach you how to do it! It’s like asking me to teach you how to breathe!”

I thought Batman would have been a really impatient guy, but he must have the patience of a saint to put up with someone as stupid as Robin.

“I take it someone taught you how to do this on your homeworld?” Batman asked calmly while stopping me, correcting my stance, and making me start over.

I actually had to think about it. There weren’t a whole lot of interesting memories from old-Me so I tended to not think about them a lot. Most of them were just being bored traveling from one planet to another while jerk-dad tried to get me killed off.

“Not really?” I eventually replied. “I mean I learned some stuff by watching others but I was getting sent on missions too much for anyone to teach me.”

“Missions? Like the one you’re on right now?”

“Yeah! There aren’t a whole lot of Saiyans available so we usually get a mission right after we finish the last one. I think. I always got a new one a few days after I got back from the old one.”

“Wait, does that mean you stole planets from other races before?! How could you!” Robin shouted loudly.

“Robin.” Thankfully Batman silenced him with a stern word before turning back to me. “Did you not train for these missions then?”

I focused on shifting my weight the way he had shown me. “Kinda? Like I did exercises and stuff, but the missions were supposed to come first. And they were kind of a let down, honestly, I always finished them super fast. The first one was supposed to be this really advanced civilization or something but they ended up blowing themselves up before I got there. I spent a long time just looking for someone before I realized I had the planet to myself.”

I was so focused on my form that I didn’t see Robin stumble out of his stance and stare open mouthed at me. I didn’t see Batman stiffen up either.

“And how old were you at the time?”

I paused what I was doing and thought about it. That was my first mission and I think it took a few months to actually get to the planet. So…

“Maybe three and a half or so?” I said uncertainly. “Still no idea what that is in Earth years, but around that.”

“...and how many missions have you been sent on?”

“This is my fourth!” I gave him a bright smile. “The second was full of giant killer reptiles that wanted to eat me.”

Robin raised an eyebrow. “Giant killer reptiles, huh? How did you beat them?”

I shot him a smirk. “I waited until I was bigger than them and then squished them all.”

Robin looked a little green at the thought. Wimp.

“What about the third?”

“That one was fun! It was full of carnivorous plants.” I replied to Batman. “It was too bad about the allergies though.”

“Allergies?”

I nodded seriously. “Yep, the plants were allergic to laser beams.”

“Geez monkey girl, that's really messed up.” Robin said.

“Your face is messed up!” I shouted and pounced on the brat. I wasn't going to let him insult me like that! Batman allowed it, just as long as I stayed in human levels.

-o-

Coast City was similar to Metropolis in many ways.

While it wasn’t built as a testament to what the technology of tomorrow might bring to the table, it was a city that had become known for being the home of a man with powers far beyond the average person. Only instead of those powers being the result of alien biology, the Green Lantern was granted powers by alien technology and inducted into a galactic peacekeeping force.

Similarly to Superman, Green Lantern seemed to appear when needed only to vanish once the trouble was taken care of. The fact that there were two more Green Lanterns active elsewhere made him even more mysterious…

…unless you happened to know that Green Lantern could be seen coming and going from the same direction multiple times at different angles and could do the math to discover his likely launch point.

The sun was just about to set on the California coast when Green Lantern Hal Jordan landed in the alleyway a few streets down from his condo. It was a great blind spot and helped him ensure no one was going to target him while he was ‘off the clock’ as it were.

It was also one of those places that normal people had no reason to hang around in. So seeing a costumed man waiting patiently in the middle of the alley looking like he expected Hal to be there was a bit of a shock.

“Green Lantern.” The man dressed up like a bat greeted him calmly.

“Uh, hi there. You’re that guy from Gotham right? The urban legend?” Hal had been vaguely aware of the ‘Batman’ from some late night TV shows on modern day legends. He had dismissed it as just normal hoaxes trying to scare people or cheat them out of money like those Bigfoot hunter shows, but then Superman had shown up and Hal had gotten a magic ring from a dying alien. He was a little more willing to not dismiss things immediately after that.

Bat-guy nodded. “I’ve heard your ring can access information from all over the galaxy. I need your help.”

“Woah, woah. Slow down there, spooky, yeah the ring can access the Green Lanterns’ databases but we can’t exactly go handing that stuff out to anyone that asks!” There were rules, not that Hal always agreed, but the phrase monkey with a flamethrower was a good way to sum up some of the incidents caused by other Lanterns freely sharing advanced technology.

“I only need information about an alien race that recently arrived here.”

Another one? One of these days Hal really needed to figure out exactly how many aliens were actually on Earth. Still, if they were already here that meant he could justify sharing some things without issue.

“Alright, still not sure I can give you what you're looking for but ask away. What am I looking up?”

“Sayians.”

Hal barely needed to prompt his ring for the information before a green construct with the information scrolling down it appeared in midair.

“Anything in particular? Looks like they’ve been around for quite awhile.”

Tall, dark, and broody considered the request for half a second. “I need to know what will happen if the person they sent to conquer a planet fails to do so.”

Conquer the planet?! How had he not heard of this before now?

[Lantern Hal Jordan - Sector 2814 requested all local media broadcasts from planet designation ‘Earth’ be muted unless there was a significant risk of life while on patrol around the sector] His ring unhelpfully informed him.

And how was an invasion not considered a significant risk of life?!

[Invading party was confronted by local forces and defeated in less than four local hours. Threat level was decided to be nonurgent]

That was…okay, he clearly needed to tweak some settings before this happened again. The last thing he wanted was to come home to find out his city was blown up because the ring didn’t think to warn him before something happened.

“Uh, okay…going by this, as a whole Sayians don’t leave their own sector of space that often. No reports of them invading for a few hundred years. The last one was a Saiyan that turned pirate five decades ago and tried taking over a planet as a base of operations and was stopped by the local Lantern. Looks like we might just have a bad actor trying to carve out their own territory.”

There was a minute frown on spooky’s face that Hal might have missed if he wasn’t specifically looking for it. “You're sure? According to the girl herself she has already conquered three other planets before arriving here.”

“Three? Did she say how?”

Hal actually relaxed a bit when spooky told him about a dead civilization, a planet full of super predators, and carnivorous plants. That sounded more like someone scavenging the planets no one wanted for some reason or another. Not the beginnings of an aggressive invasion. He even said as much to his sudden visitor.

“So yeah, don’t think we have much to worry about in terms of an invasion on the horizon. Give me a few hours and I’ll find them and kick them off the planet. It’s kinda my job after all.”

“Don’t bother. I have her handled.”

The invader was already beaten? This guy must be a pretty impressive metahuman if he could take down a Sayian. Hal could easily admit the average human didn’t really stand a chance against one.

“Still, I should check her out. If she’s invading planets then she needs to either be deported back to her race or imprisoned before she hurts people.”

“There’s no need for that. I’m training her to limit any collateral damage.”

“Woah, hold up. You’re training the alien invader?!”

“Yes.”

“...Why!?”

“Because she is a child acting under the orders of another to invade planets. If she stays here we can stop her from being used by whoever sent her here and potentially draw that person out. If she is sent back we might be responsible for sending a child to an abusive environment. I refuse to allow that.”

Hal made a quick check on Saiyan biology to confirm this wasn’t just a species that happened to look like human children making use of a cover, but sure enough, while Saiyans grew in stages unlike humans that grew continuously to adulthood ,that only meant the invader -the girl- could be as young as eight earth years or as old as fifteen. And considering they could easily live to be 200 years old, she truly was a child.

“Alright, good point. And you’re sure you can control her?” Spooky nodded, “then I’ll ask the Corp to investigate any rumors of someone using Saiyan children as shocktroopers, with any luck – what the hell?”

The second Hal started looking for incidents regarding Saiyan children used like that he ran headfirst into a security wall marked Alpha Lantern eyes only, and the date of the block was several thousand years old. That didn’t make any sense.

“Something wrong?”

“I got locked out when I went looking for similar incidents. That shouldn’t happen without a very good reason.” Hal turned away so he could focus on the readings his ring was giving him. It was starting to look like he was going to take a trip to Oa to get to the bottom of things. “I’ll need to investigate more. You think you can keep an eye on the kid for a while?”

“I am training her.” Was the deadpan reply.

“Right, well, leave me some way to get a hold of you. If there’s someone out there using kids as an invasion force, I want to make sure we can catch him and I might need to talk to the girl about that.”

“No need. I’ll ask myself and update you if there is anything you can do.”

“Wait just one second,” Hal turned back fully expecting to give Bat-guy a reality check that this went beyond just Earth and was a Green Lantern matter, only to pause when there was no one there.

“Ring, scan for lifeforms.”

[There are 4,207 Human sized lifeforms nearby within a one kilometer radius]

Definitely was going to tweak those settings after this.

“Scan for the guy in the bat suit I was just talking to.”

[There are zero lifeforms nearby meeting the criteria ‘guy in the bat suit I was just talking to’]

Well…dammit.