Chapter 74 - The Next Destination 

(AN.: Now, sorry for the silence once again. I'm not trying to make up excuses, but the usual thing that happens happened. No, don't grin and start it, I'm not dropping the fanfic, I just caught a cold or stomach bug or whatever. I had a fever over the weekend and some other nasty stuff that doesn't need to be mentioned… Feeling better now, and while I hate the fact that I feel like a frail, weak little shame of my old self, I can't help it.

Anyway, thanks to the illness I am once again, behind what we had planned.)

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High up in the vast space an elongated silver object could be seen floating. It was a very futuristic looking vessel, a unique space ship, completely one of its kind! This ship, no space station, was Spencer's Bioship, a living organism, a definite wonder of the universe, one of its kind.

The bioship was currently just outside the blast zone of a once lush, purple planet. It had a rich, jungle biome, with a myriad of unique lifeforms. Small, medium, big��� you could have found all manners of beasts on the planet's surface, and even below that. It was also the home of a particular species, that from the outside looked taller than the average humans back on Earth, with two small differences. The first difference being the colorful tails, while the second would be the strange ritualistic markings that signified their power and even standing amidst their own.

Even though they were a proud race, that valued and respected one's power above anything else, they lived their lives in relative peace. They were mostly, generally good-natured, and while some individuals' pride oftentimes turned to haughtiness or straight arrogance, that was mostly due to the nature of their connection with their respective elements. Individuals with a link to water were mostly calmer and kinder than others, while those with a fiery temper were often related to the most ancient, and also the most powerful force of nature, the fire.

They even had beings recorded in history with powers similar to mythical gods. One snap of their fingers could demolish mountains and large masses of land. Some had control over time itself, capable of altering the very fabric of time around them.

Still, even with all this power and might, or maybe because of it, ultimately they were now gone. Removed from the threads of history, no chance of them to ever return. Their home, the Fashacalli's planet was now nothing more than a collection of space debris floating around a star lifelessly for all eternity.

*SIGH*

A long, and tired sigh broke the tranquil silence of the floating bioship. In the makeshift medical bay that housed only three, occupied medical beds stood Spencer against the large window looking outside, thinking about the adventure he had in this place.

While it was short, it still was meaningful to him. He reached a new height in terms of power. Even now, he wasn't sure where his limits were. He gave another long exhale, and turned away, looking at Bey'on who stood next to a bed where a large and bald giant, Milo was lying unconsciously. Cassa and Shaya, the other two that Spencer rescued at the very last second for reasons still not completely known even to him, laid on the two beds next to him.

A floating metallic tabloid frame kept floating up and down around Milo's frame, emitting a light green light, scanning through his large frame.

Bey'on was busy looking over a holographic image of his body, a frameless and material free screen that was connected to the strange floating medical droid. She had an unhappy, frowning expression on her face, as she looked over to Spencer.

"You know, I'm not a doctor, I'm a scientist…" She spoke, first voicing her dissatisfaction with being forced to check the conditions of three aliens all of a sudden. Spencer, as usual, didn't bother explaining anything at all. Worse was, that this whole process seemed completely pointless, why couldn't he do it?

Still, she acquiesced to the request, as the usual cheeky glint that shined in his eyes, gave some sort of vague idea what he might have been planning. So even if she was slightly dissatisfied with it, she reported her findings.

"They are okay now, just mentally fatigued. After a day or two, they should wake up. However, and I'm sure you can also feel it, they have too much weight on their minds. The emotional weight, the loss of their home and loved ones might be too much for them to bear."

Then, looking back at the three, she voiced the question that burned in her mind.

"What are your plans with them? Are they to be used as the other two?" While she tried keeping her tone insipid and nonchalant, it still curved in the end, revealing her true intentions. She was clearly hopeful and expectant to have three more test subjects for her experiments!

Spencer, however, crushed her dreams immediately. He shook his head, as he answered.

"No. While Ego and Tiger are to be meant for you to work on your project to give them a more… bipedal form, these three will be used for something different."

He didn't explain further, he simply turned towards the door and left the room, walking towards the cockpit, with Bey'on following closely behind.

Entering the cockpit Spencer sat on the main seat. Swiping his right hand at the screen, he watched with great interest as a list of planets popped up, sorted by their relative distance from their current location.

Seeing how greatly Spencer immersed himself in the database, Bey'on silently turned and left towards her lab. While she wanted to know what their next destination would be, she was just as eager to start working on her newest project…

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Already having both Ego and Tiger in large testing tubes from the moment Spencer made her aware of what she was allowed to do. She pulled up yet another tabloid holographic device to monitor their physical condition and stability, scrolling through the screen briefly enough to get what she needed, she moved on to the next immediate step.

"He said to make them bipedal and allow them to talk like us. Okay… Should be simple enough! Maybe I should also make them able to shift between forms? Yeah, that sounds good." She spoke with a little excitement as she was looking forward to this experiment.

Walking over to a table holding individual vials containing their blood, Bey'on took them both and placed them within a bio replicator to increase the sample size without taking too much from the source. A short waiting period went by before the machine signaled the completion of the replication, she immediately began the rest of the experiment with their blood at full haste, breaking down small sample sizes to grasp the fundamental structure of their DNA.

Once she had completed that step, she started with Ego's sample and began to experiment by adding different strands of alien DNA whilst the screen in front of her displayed the simulated appearance that would ensue upon the fusion of the two. Taking roughly five minutes as she went through approximately 1,287 different strands of DNA, she found a particular match amongst the thousands supplied to her by Spencer.

"Sapien DNA? I suppose that would be a malleable yet delicate enough DNA structure to combine with this sample..." Finding a potential match for Ego, she proceeded to combine the strand with his sample, fusing the two complex structures in a manner that wouldn't cause an immediate breakdown of the DNA and the organism.

Taking roughly another 5 minutes, her speed and perception accompanied by the tech in her lab allowed for her to achieve a perfect fusion between the two samples. Placing it in the simulation she was shown a rather bulky bipedal lifeform mostly matching Spencer's parameters, shown to have darkish green skin and a natural carapace covering all of its vital areas without hindering movement.

Reading through the physical parameters of this new form, she saw that it was weaker than his natural form, but the ability to revert would deem this information useless. Extracting the new sample from the machine and placing it in a small vial, she walked over to the tube Ego resided and placed the vial in a slot that promptly closed.

Swiftly beginning to work on Tiger's sample, she repeated the same process as she did with Ego. Taking another 10 minutes to fuse his DNA with Sapien DNA and placing the vial in the slot designated for his testing tube.

"Now we wait!"

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Currently still scrolling through the list of planets for the last 20 minutes as Bey'on worked, Spencer grew increasingly uninterested in the potential destinations on this map. He began to look through a list of planets orbiting a red dwarf star after going through a large number of others listed. Scrolling through the list of planets around a red dwarf star, Spencer's eyes widened in surprise.

"I didn't expect them to have this planet listed on here!" Examining the information on the rather familiar planet and homeworld to a significant figure in the DC franchise, he immediately designated it as the next planet he'll grace with his presence as he needed their boundless genetic code to further increase his power to its limit.

After entering the coordinates to his next destination, he was informed that the trip would take roughly 12 hours before activating the ship's autopilot and warp functions then promptly leaving the cockpit of the bioship.

"Before anything else, I'm going to have to take a more accurate test of the current limits of this new body of mine. That little rock speed examination wasn't enough to provide any accurate data."

Entering his newly upgraded training room, he briefly stretched his body before proceeding with the tests. Approaching a full-body apparatus designed to test his strength, giving it the name Nexus, the machine applied force throughout his self using different gravity devices connected through his body and fueled by the ship's perpetual energy core, it had no current limit to the amount of force it can generate in the machine.

"Nexus, for my first-time start at 1 million tons." Vocally setting the machine's weight on his body, Spencer felt no immediate differences, continuing to move his body freely within the machine.

"Maybe a little higher... Nexus, set it to 5 million tons!" increasing the weight even further, he still felt no immediate change upon his body.

"Nothing? How about 1 billion?" Setting the weight to a higher degree than before, he continued to feel barely even the slightest strain on his body. Seeing as his manual input may take longer than he would like it to, he decided on a better option.

"Nexus, continue to increase the weight by increments of 10 billion tons and slowly add to it until I say stop." A deep humming could be heard as the energy from the ship's core began to surge towards the machine. Every passing moment the weight behind the machine would increase dramatically.

Roughly a minute passing, Spencer finally began to feel a pressure begin to build on his body, though not enough to cause any change in his demeanor, he still felt it. After some more time passing, the machine had hit the 20 digits and continued the rise, approaching closer to the 21 digits and potentially further.

At the moment his body felt slightly strained, causing him to put up resistance against the pressure pressing down on his body, but he allowed the weight to continue increasing.

Approximately 5 minutes gone by, Spencer's body could be seen under extreme stress, his veins bulged violently as his eyes became bloodshot. His skin turning red and covered in sweat from the amount of pressure his body was under, currently residing in the 24 digits, he felt as if his body was on the verge of exploding from the weight pressing on his frame.

"Nexus stop!" Holding the weight for roughly 30 seconds, he yelled out to Nexus to stop the machine before he was crushed by the pressure he was under. Promptly exiting the machine, he stretched his body once more before healing any internal damage that may have ensued from being under that amount of strain.

"What was the load?"

-'The data shows that Your body was under approximately 30,946,402,538,509,310,008,358,376 tons before you signaled the cancellation of the test, would you like to save this to the archive?'-

Stuck in a temporary daze from the numbers he heard, he was dumbfounded before quickly regaining his composure.

"Yes." Confirming the saving of his data, he decided not to dwell on the absurdity of that amount and move on to his next test, his speed test.

Approaching another addition to his lab, something he would like to call the quantum treadmill, it's a treadmill he created to feed on the energy he produces to balance out his movement speed and keep track of how fast he is moving using a specially designed tracker to monitor him.

Placing the tracker on his right arm, He stepped on the treadmill and slowly began to pick up the speed. Within seconds his figure slowly began to blur out of existence, increasing in its transparency until his body promptly vanished, the number on the machine continuing to rise by the thousands.

Running at his maximum speed on the treadmill for as long as he could, he finally decided to stop after keeping that pace for almost half an hour as he could feel no fatigue and he felt he could go no faster.

Progressively slowing down and getting off the quantum treadmill, he looked at the data that presented itself on the display

[3,353,083,145 mph] Observing the data on his speed, he saved it into the data archive whilst removing the tracker from his arm, he made his way out of the training room.

Entering the ship's lounging area and sitting on the couch that formed from the floor as he approached it, putting up his feet and sitting back.

"Now we wait till we reach our destination and for those three to wake up..." He sat comfortably, waiting for his next conquest to set its course.