Disappearance

I went outside and looked out of the lake in my backyard, looking for something. Honestly, I was lucky that it wasn't destroyed the last time when Metallo attacked. I dived into the water before swimming towards an inconspicuous rock on the riverbed. With my telekinesis, I cleared the area before I lifted my attack ball out of the water.

Maybe it would be wiser to hide it inside my training hall, but I figured if either one was discovered, at least the other wouldn't. Not that the attack ball was worth much anymore, since I could survive in space and probably reach another planet on my own.

Not to mention that spaceships weren't that uncommon. Alone on the Watchtower, there were several available.The only thing that might be of worth The technology to absorb energy out of the atmosphere was indeed impressive, but...

Wait, did I remember that correctly? It might be a good idea to hand the attack ball over to the energy department... I shook my head. This wasn't important right now. The reason I had dug it up wasn't for the attack ball itself. I opened it and took out the thing which I wanted to inspect. The Ankh.

After placing the attack ball back into the riverbed underneath some boulders, I headed into my training hall. Kara was in school, so only Raven was present. She opened her eyes when she saw me come in. Her eyes wandered down to my wet T-shirt and almost immediately her skin slowly turned red. I held up the Ankh. "I have to do some experiments. Make sure no one disturbs me."

I didn't expect her to guard me and she probably knew that, but it was to give her a sense of emergency, distracting her from her emotional response. I was already getting good at distracting her.

With that being done, I headed for the prison cells, or rather the room beside it. I had excavated another room for the magic artifacts that we would be gathering. It wouldn't be convenient if I had to enter Raven's room for every magic artifact in the future. Raven agreed and already had set up a basic barrier to reduce the magic leakage and the possibility of being tracked down.

I set the Ankh on a pedestal before I began to work. My telepathic senses brushed against the Ankh. I was especially careful since I didn't know what kind of reaction it had to the new influx of energy. Not to mention that I didn't want to crush the Ankh and potentially lose whatever it could offer me.

Maybe I should wait for Shayera to come back and tell me about it. That certainly would take away the danger of the unknown, especially considering that this Fal-Tal guy seemed to have been the ruler of his race. It wouldn't surprise me if the activation of the Ankh needed a special key and any unauthorized access would lead to explosions or the like.

Alas, Shayera was out with the Justice League, and contacting her over the comms was what I wanted to avoid. So, if I didn't want to wait, I would have to do it by myself.

With the patience and experience I had cultivated through my training, I knew what the best approach was. Unbothered by the potential dangers that came with an ancient alien artifact, I continued my probes.

As I tried to sense for anything from the Ankh, the results weren't positive. I came up with nothing. It was as if it was just a normal object. Maybe I had to touch it. I grasped the two handles of the Ankh while continuing to get a reaction to my telepathic probes. However, even after trying for several minutes, nothing happened.

"Maybe I have to wear the amulet?" I muttered before heading to my training bedroom to get it. Usually, I would keep it here since it helped me regenerate more quickly, but I wouldn't wear it all the time, since I feared it might negatively influence me even if all the evidence showed that it didn't disrupt my Zenkais or the training effect.

Regardless, I still didn't want to wear it all the time. It felt like I depended on it for some time now already. Because of it, I hadn't even thought about creating a technique that would help me breathe out in space, even though it was one thing that would eliminate a major flaw: breathing air.

If I didn't need to breathe, the limits to the environment I could fight in would decrease sharply, but I digressed. I was getting distracted from what I needed it for. So, while wearing the amulet, I grasped the Ankh again and tried to connect with it telepathically.

It took a moment, but I clearly felt that something inside the Ankh stirred. Just after realizing something happened, my consciousness sank into the Ankh. I was about to retaliate, but I could clearly sense that the pull wasn't strong enough to imprison me. If I wanted to escape, I could forcefully tear myself a way out. So instead of escaping now, I waited for the Ankh's actions.

Suddenly, an influx of information entered my mind. The Ankh had a weird name given by the Kalvar race that I couldn't be bothered to remember before I focused on the images that the Ankh was showing me, though it was more than that. It was something akin to memories, not unlike how I read someone's mind, just a lot clearer and organized.

I sifted through the memories and found that it contained the mission of Fal-Tal and, with it, the information needed to complete it. The strain got increasingly worse as the information went into the detail of the training methods and battle techniques recorded on it. That's right, the Ankh carried with it the telepathic training regime that was used for those in the Kalvar with exceeding potential.

After knowing how to train, the Ankh activated the program to train their descendants with potential by creating telepathic pressure on the mind. The pressure was meant to make the psychic energy more resilient and denser, but a problem quickly came up as the pressure built up and finally maxed out.

The pressure the Ankh could release wasn't able to affect me. My powers had already grown too far for their Ankh to pressure me, making this function a useless one.

As I quickly went through its contents once again in the hope of something else, I realized the Ankh was useless to me now, especially after memorizing the techniques that might come in hand in battles, though most of what it showed was on the defensive side or counterattacks.

It seemed like they were fearing telepathic attacks by the Thanagarians before optimizing the 'perfect' counterattack that was to reverse the situation of a mind invasion.

After going through everything a third time, I called for Raven to have a look. First, it was so she could remember and learn the techniques in there, and second, to see if the pressure was enough for her to train with, which I doubted since her powers in that area had grown tremendously. However, she might get some other inspiration from the techniques recorded on it.

Afterward, I once again focused on the furies, trying out some things that I had learned just now to accelerate my progress with the minds of these new gods. I spent an entire day with the utmost focus on that task.

I carried on deep into the night since the progress I made that day brought me close to finishing converting Stompa. Next up would be Lashina and Big Barda, which I probably need 2 days each, then the most difficult of them was on the menu. Steppenwolf. Not only was his experience rich, but he also must have acquired a lot of knowledge over the years.

He would probably be the most valuable asset I had from Apokolips besides the Zenkai I got after killing their ruler.

...

For another two days, I spent my focus on Lashina. I had already finished up with her after one and a half days, and now I was ready to put my telepathic hands on Big Barda. I would have liked to spend more time on mastering Super Saiyan during these two days, but with my focus and ki divided among my clone who was sitting in front of the monitors in the Watchtower, it was more effective to concentrate on this task first.

Dividing my attention on multiple things generally just slowed down the process of both projects, even with clones. It probably would have to wait until they could act independently, and then my progress would skyrocket to a degree that only my time-slowing device could compare to.

Though it seemed like I could turn my attention back to my mastery again as I picked up a communication request from the Javelin-7 as in version 7. Didn't know why some people were so hung up on calling them on their specific designations.

"Javelin 07 to Watchtower. Come in." Batman's voice rang out through the comms as I accepted the communication call while watching their flight trajectory on the sensors. They were already close only a few more minutes before they arrived.

"Watchtower here." I answered per protocol.

"Prepare the landing bay. We're coming in." Batman called out.

"Fucking finally." I responded before pressing some buttons to open up the gate, granting them to land. I looked through the cameras into the landing bay, waiting for them to arrive, but then something else attracted my attention.

Some instruments monitoring for anomalies around the world picked something up. A large and strange energy frequency covering the entire earth and even spreading into space. I turned back towards the landing bay and still found it empty.

"The fuck are they doing?" I muttered before looking at the sensors that were detecting spaceships in the near surroundings, but it came up with nothing.

I couldn't help but frown and immediately sent out a request for the Javelin, but I only received static as a response. Even their life forces seemed to have just disappeared. Thinking for a moment, I looked back at the strange energy output the Watchtower had registered.

"No way, is that a coincidence." I redirected all the monitoring instruments and sensors to finding and pinpointing the location of the source of the energy output.

They started searching and analyzing the new information that was coming in en masse. Was it another dimensional travel again?

The way they had disappeared from my senses was extremely similar to that time. Even after looking at the data presented to me by the cutting-edge technology that the Watchtower offered, it appeared to be extremely similar to the incident where they had disappeared to another dimension a few weeks ago.

After a few more minutes of searching for the origin, I was pointed to a place somewhere in Cuba. The senses focused on the signal and triangulated the location before the energy output was stopped, giving me an area the size of a 5th of Cuba, which included several Cuban moist forests, which I feared was the place where it most likely originated from.

The likelihood of me finding the place in such an extensive area was almost nonexistent, but fortunately, I didn't have to rely only on my own senses. The instruments predicted that it should have some effects on electrical devices, which meant I needed to follow any signs of anomalies in that regard.

By using the news and multiple reports of power blackouts, I could determine whether the origin of whatever created the energy output was near a city or not. As expected, there were several reports of sudden power blackouts, but it wasn't just one city.

The reports came from several locations and, by visualizing the entire situation on a map, I could see that the blackouts happened in a circular pattern, meaning that whatever I wanted to find was in the middle of it.

I surveyed the area and looked out for more news while sending out another clone who was now headed to that area. With my clone watching the situation from above and another on the ground, I should find the location in an hour at the very most.

I attracted little attention when I landed at the edge of a Cuban moist forest. It was rather far away from any cities and I just headed into the woods while sensing for life forces that matched the powers of humans.

Although the energy output might have been a natural occurrence of some sort, the more likely bet was some villain was going wild and trying to take over the world or something else cliche.

With that in mind, I focused on finding a group of humans, but it wasn't that easy since the life force wasn't that dissimilar to other mammals with a similar level of life force. My scouter wouldn't help me in that regard either.

Although my scouter would be more accurate for the lower power levels as they somewhat blended into each other for me at such a low level as the human average, it didn't provide from what creature the power level it sensed belonged to.

My senses were still more accurate in that regard. Humans usually gave a different feel to their life force. It was hard to describe with normal humans, but it got increasingly easier with more ruthless people since their mindset was reflected in their aura, making sinister people easier to recognize from animals since more animals weren't that sinister.

Of course, there were exceptions to anything and animals weren't that nice either. Dolphins, for example, who most would think as something harmless, had a lot of sinister members among their race.

Obviously, the life force didn't just differ in that regard, so it made it easier to learn their difference once one had bothered to recognize them. I sped through the forest, arriving at a village far away from civilization.

The people panicked at the sight of me and directly moved to their weapons. Uninteresting, just some poachers, I noted before seeing a couple of tourists inside crude cages. They were dirty, frightened, and some were injured. A human trafficking ring?

I didn't care for the details and just homed in on the life force, taking every human trafficker out in a single breath, while leaving the tourists safe and sound before I released them out of their cages. After sending them to the nearest city's police station and giving them food and something to drink, I headed back into the forest.

There was only that group of human traffickers, but there were more poachers which were quickly taken out as I made my way deeper into the forest. These clashes with poachers hindered my speed a bit, but I dealt with them as fast as I could until I came to one of the bigger groups that I was able to sense in the forest.

After arriving at the location where their life force was, I noticed they were underground. This place was carefully chosen. The trees formed a canopy that covered the ground, making it difficult to see the situation even with the Watchtower's scanning instruments, but that was the exact reason I had sent a clone to walk around.

With my telekinetic energy covering the ground, I used it to sense for any openings in the ground. I even looked into the ground to make sure I didn't miss an entrance.

I covered more and more ground until I noticed something strange. Without hesitating, I arrived above the location and dug my hand into the ground before piercing into the steel that was hiding underneath.

With a yank, I dragged the metal elevator out of the ground before I tossed it to the side. The cement walls in which the elevator was anchored in was extending deep into the ground. Knowing that I had found my destination, I jumped down.

There weren't many people present, which surprised me since it was obviously a top-level facility. I walked through the corridors before frowning. Several life forces disappeared, just like the ones of the Justice League. They were standing close to each other.

Was it intentional or not? Were they already escaping? I questioned as my speed burst out in order to catch one before everyone disappeared. It wasn't until a thick door of a metal alloy I didn't recognize that I had to stop. Not only had it a protective energy barrier covering the strange alloy, but some automatic turrets immediately started firing some special armor-piercing rounds after registering my presence.

Someone didn't want anyone to come here, it seemed. Given that there were living corridors down here as well, someone had put a lot of effort to keep this little hideout a secret, going so far as to make their workers live underground for god knows how long.

The bullets crashed into my protective ki aura covering my clothes before falling harmlessly to the ground. With a thought, the turrets were ripped out of their mounting, and the energy barrier shone brilliantly when my telekinetic force impacted it.

I ripped a hole into the barrier before pulling the steel gate out of its hinges, tossing it behind me. The energy barrier didn't activate again after some noises that should be little explosions inside the walls.

Probably destroyed its function, but I truly didn't care right now. I stepped inside just to see a portal close. It looked like a whirling boom tube portal.

I looked around and found several controls, which looked more complicated than necessary. Everyone inside this facility had disappeared. Obviously, they were leaving because of me. They were probably already on the move the moment my movement in the forest was noticed.

There was no way they wouldn't have realized that they sent out massive energy for anyone listening to detect it. I just hoped that I came before their plan had already succeeded.

Or was their plan to kidnap the Justice League? Now that I was here, instead of answers, more questions opened up, but I would have time to look for clues. It seemed like they left in a hurry and there were a lot of papers strewn across the floor inside the previous rooms that might shine some light on the situation.

With that in mind, I collected the papers in a flash and speed-read through them. Time was of the essence, as I didn't know what happened to the Justice League or what their goal was with them. So, I needed to amass as much knowledge as I could before whoever was here before could make their next move.

The time I went through the information that was scattered on the floor wasn't long. I was lucky that the information pertaining to the project wasn't redacted and censored to hide information. The only information that was censored was the identity of the sponsor of this organization.

Maybe they didn't expect someone to find this place. It might make sense since the place was almost impossible to find with the personnel evidently living here, but an organization that was cautious enough to take these precautions wouldn't forget to censor their information in case they were caught, would they?

After all, if someone like me found them, they would be finished. However, as I went through the information, it became increasingly clear why they hadn't bothered to hide their tracks.

I had to connect the different papers containing different subject areas, but I couldn't quite understand what they wanted to do. It probably only appeared to be familiar because I had contact with the subject by talking to scientists who researched something similar.

After all this time spent with experts in that field, I could tell that they were trying to do something with space by glancing over the available information, or rather, they wanted to move through space safely. There was a lot more information, but it was too advanced for me and I couldn't quite decipher it.

Were they trying to build a machine with which they could travel to another dimension like that one hero, Turbine something, of that other earth? I could understand why that would be an enticing prospect. An entire earth, especially one without a civilization that could withstand an invasion, would mean resources en masse.

They had attracted no attention, having stocked up with all the necessities to live down here for years. Not only did they not have any contact with the outside world, but they didn't even have a way to connect to the outside or leave at all in case of an emergency.

Probably only the sponsor could contact them here, which made me wonder how they knew what materials they needed for the device before even researching it?

Or did they already research it and were now only constructing it with the available scientists, only overlooking the process for flaws and in case something unexpected happened? At least, that would make sense why they completed cut themselves off the outside.

As I thought about this point, I realized something. If the ones building this device knew how to build their portal because they had already built it before, then it could explain why they didn't care to contact the outside.

Maybe they came from another earth and brought the resources to build another portal that could connect them to their earth. Was this an invasion of another earth? Did the ones stationed here travel to the other earth to inform them that their invasion plan was discovered? Did they want to retreat or accelerate their plans?

At one point, I didn't continue to try and understand the information and just recorded everything with my main body. Even if the information wasn't the exact field that my research team was studying, it still might be helpful for some of my projects. Since it was regarding space, it at least had to be somewhat helpful.

However, all this brought up an important fact. If the Justice League was transported to another earth, how could I find them? I would either have to wait until my research team could replicate the machine with the correct coordinates through the papers I had gathered or...

I looked at the device with the control panel as the thought of activating the machine again entered my mind. If I went there, I could confront the masterminds behind this before their invasion took effect.

Just as I made up my mind and approached the control panel to search for the coordinates and the activation button, I noticed the device wasn't functioning anymore. At least, there were several warnings of something being broken reported on the display.

It seemed like they had made some mistake? Maybe they accidentally activated it and only had a short period of time to take the route back home? It could be that they activated it and realized their mistake before deciding to head back to their home earth in order to avoid me or prepare more resources and try another time?

Honestly, I was already getting tired of all the theories that either could be true or not. I would only know for sure after I got my hands on one of them. Just as I contemplated my next move, the device suddenly activated.

Without forewarning, energy was supplied to the machine and a terrifying whirlwind of darkness and light, coupled with an intense storm of lightning and thunder, appeared on the pedestal.

The wind was intense and I could feel the pressure on my skin as the storm continued to brew. It gave me the impression that if I was lost in that storm, it would rip me apart. I was surprised by that feeling since I was already on top of this universe with nothing really able to harm me, but I guessed the space between two universes wasn't that easily overcome without preparation, luck, and happenstance.

The heavy broken gate on the floor was sent flying before crashing heavily into the far-off wall. The papers I had gathered were flying around before they were sucked into this whirlwind, only to be disintegrated after being subjected to the lightning.

I was sure that I had pressed no buttons and accidentally activated it. Not to mention that the display still stated that it couldn't be activated. Perhaps it couldn't be activated from this side? If that was the case, they might have decided to go through with their invasion. I squinted slightly as I waited for whoever decided to invade this earth.

After a brief moment, I was able to see several figures traversing through the space tunnel storm. Some ran while others flew through it. A dim green light gave me an idea of who was coming through this portal.

My senses were still obstructed by the terrifying storm, so I couldn't confirm my guess, but after the figures arrived and landed on the cement floor and the portal closed, I recognized them immediately.

The life force was something I was familiar with and I could finally breathe at ease. It would have been a bitch and a half to figure out where and how to reach them when they weren't in this universe. Now I relaxed again.

The Justice League returned. However, just when I breathed at ease, I noticed something...