Growing Pains

I panted heavily as sweat poured down my forehead.

Water crashed back together as the last of my Ki beam fizzled out, I had nothing left to sustain it.

I watched it until the last traces vanished and the only thing left was a few gentle waves washing up to shore. With one final sigh I forced myself to relax and flopped backwards onto the sand.

Ki training was hard.

At first I had simply tried to recreate a bunch of techniques all at once and quickly found out aside from simpler energy attacks, I was actually pretty bad at it. I had no idea how to do tricks like the multi-form, spirit bomb, kaioken, instant transmission, or anything like that. It really drove home how hard creating techniques that weren't just huge beams of energy was.

So instead of wasting time trying to figure those out, I was training my control.

To an outsider it looked like I was just firing Ki blasts out into the ocean, but I was constantly forcing the beam to be certain sizes, certain intensities, and moving it around once I fired it. Then once I was getting low on stamina, I would focus on drawing more out. Both increasing the amount of Ki I could comfortably use and making sure I could put up a fight even when I was exhausted.

I'd like to think I made some really great progress. There was just one problem…

"I'm so BORED!" I whined.

Yep, after a while even shooting giant death lasers got boring.

I tried coming up with different games, setting goals, and just about everything I could think of to stay motivated, but it obviously wasn't working.

The worst part was that I couldn't just go find someone to fight anymore. With the Justice League so new, the heroes were busy coordinating and working with governments about stuff and getting their headquarters modernized. Several of the times I went looking for them it turned out they simply weren't in the area anymore. And all the villains I'd be interested in were hiding out until they could figure out how the League would function. Sure there were still criminals and disasters getting cleaned up by different heroes, but the story of Donald Oz, the most unfortunate thief in history, had most of them spooked.

Donald had been in the middle of stealing some jewel when he found out that not only had he tripped an alarm, every single member of the Justice League had just so happened to be in the nearby Mount Justice getting the old WWII hangout of the Justice Society refitted and decided to take a break to deal with him.

It was obviously hilarious overkill for a normal human, but the people that regularly tried facing off against demigods now realized that there was a chance they could wind up facing their own particular demigod and potentially some friends.

And since most villains were cowards, they decided to lay low.

At this point I realized if I wanted to fight someone more challenging than a SWAT team, I would need to go looking for them specifically or force them to come to me.

…and I knew just the person that could help me with that.

-o-

Finding who I was after turned out to be a bit harder than I thought.

Especially because it turned out I missed her by a day when I decided to check out her workplace. Only a lucky overheard conversation between a pair of secretaries let me know when she was expected at a specific airport with a layover allowed me to catch up and start looking.

Even then I almost missed her and her partner because rather than go to a hotel like a normal person, Lois Lane jumped into a car and immediately headed out into the desert and the weapons demonstration field out there with her photographer in tow.

The demonstration was actually pretty cool and I was glad I decided to see what Lois was doing before I went about meeting her in person. It featured some kind of remote control android thing that was supposed to allow the military to respond to issues where normal humans would be wiped out. I guess it made sense the government would still want a way to deal with another alien invasion themselves even with the Justice League stepping up.

The whole thing was interesting enough I didn't feel the need to interrupt and so I planned on simply flying down to meet Lois after the show, but then she and her friend followed some military guy into a bunker and I could feel my already generous patience running out.

-o-

"...to the passive AI system, the IR-0n system slowly adapts to improve the wearer's reaction speed and movements." I overheard the military guy saying after I snuck into the bunker. While I wasn't exactly trained in stealth by Batman, you pick a few things up if you watch him long enough.

"That's great and all, Lieutenant, but what about the concerns that this will create similar problems as Lexcorp's Series Alpha battlesuit?" Lois Lane asked skeptically. I actually remembered reading about that!

Lexcorp made a really neat robocop thing that was supposed to give police similar capabilities to Superman, but the guy wearing the prototype was driven insane by it and the whole thing was scrapped. I guess the military decided to pick up where they left off.

"We've taken precautions against that. The wearer has less direct integration than with the Series Alpha and since the drone is remote controlled there is less physiological dependence on the abilities provided by the IR-0n system." Military guy reassured her. "The effective range is drastically cut down until more advancements can be made, but to the wearer it's just like getting in a car rather than putting on a suit."

"Doesn't seem that much different to me if you decided to call them 'wearers' rather than pilots or something."

"Haha, sorry but the name started out as part of a joke. Here, see for yourself." Another man walked in from an adjoining room. Rather than a military uniform, he was in some kind of hi-tech bodysuit with a bunch of rings surrounding his limbs like halos except for his legs where the rings got wider the further down they went. "This is Specialist Michael Rhodes, one of our 'dress wearers' to use the full term. For some reason the boys don't like being called that so it got shortened to 'wearer' pretty quick."

Ah, cause it looked like a hoop dress.

"Couldn't tell you, LT." Rhodes said jokingly. "I think dress wearers fits just fine. Helps I know I pull it off damn fine."

"Well at least one of you boys has an ego not made out of glass." Lois commented even as she wrote down some notes. "Do you mind if…?" She asked leadingly, motioning to her photographer.

"Not at all, so long as he gets my good side."

"You don't have a good side, Rhodes."

"I dunno, he looks kinda cool from above." I announced my presence as I hovered down towards the ground.

The four humans jumped simultaneously at the unexpected noise and all reacted differently. Military guy (I should probably figure out his name) went for a sidearm that wasn't there. Specialist Rhodes jumped away from the group and flicked his eyes between me and the door he walked out from, probably where the drone thingy's pilot seat was. And Lois grabbed her photographer friend and immediately pulled him behind her and started edging away.

Good reaction speeds on all of them. The only one that I saw do something stupid was the photographer, since his first reaction to an unknown voice in a secure military bunker was to point his camera at me and take a picture.

"Was the flash really necessary?" I complained.

"Sorry!"

"Who are you?! How did you get in here?!"

Wow, he seemed stressed.

"Hi, I'm Califa! I snuck in." I answered casually.

"The alien that attacked Metropolis. Are you here for the IR-0n system? It won't do you any good, the control system is too big for you to move anywhere." Military guy growled.

"You mean the robot thing? Yeah it was cool, but I'm not here for that." I pointed at Lois. "I'm here for her."

"...I see. Specialist Rhodes, take Miss Lane to the back and get plugged in." Military guy said gravely. "I'll buy you some time."

"Lieutenant?!"

"I'm not about to let a hostile alien kidnap a citizen of the US right in front of me. Now get moving!"

"Sir! Let's go, you two…" I watched as the three ran out of the room but made no move to stop them, even when the security door slammed into place and locked with a loud hiss of hydraulics.

While I waited for the robot to get here I turned my attention back to Military Guy. I was really curious what he was going to do to buy time. But after several seconds he still hadn't made a move.

I fidgeted awkwardly and moved around trying to get him to do something, but he just kept standing there watching me.

"So aren't you going to do something?"

"I am doing something." He said back calmly.

I waited a bit more trying to figure out what he could be doing and came to a boring conclusion.

"You're just stalling aren't you?"

Military Guy laughed. "You went toe to toe with one of the most powerful people on the planet. What did you expect a normal human to do?"

"If you just wanted to wait until the robot got here, you could have said so." I scowled and sat down on the floor. "I got excited for nothing. Lame."

"That's it? I admit I was expecting you to blast past me once you realized my bluff…"

I raised an eyebrow at him. "Yeah but if I did that, I wouldn't be able to fight your robot."

Besides, I could sense Lois wasn't going anywhere. So there was no reason not to leave her in the secured room while I played with stress tested their robot.

The bunker rumbled a bit as a tall mechanical form crashed through a concrete wall and looked around the room, arm raised to blast something. I couldn't help but laugh privately when the machine paused and looked back and forth between Military guy and me, clearly not expecting to see his boss unharmed and me just waiting for him to show up.

I didn't give him time to think the situation over though. In a second I rolled to my feet and leapt at the robot, punching it back through the hole it made and even creating a new one in the roof. I wanted him to go all out. No holding back because he was scared of bringing the bunker down on him and the others!

"Okay, now we can really cut loose!" I grinned as I watched the robot recover from being punched through a building, floating on some kinda jet-boots and looking barely scratched from the impact.

"You're kinda a brat aren't you?" Came the slightly modulated voice of Rhodes, but he settled into a more aggressive stance anyway.