Once again I was out in the wilderness training to fully master my abilities.
This time I wasn't focused on pushing my body to its limits or firing off massive Ki attacks. Instead I was following the advice I'd gotten from both Batman and my trainers on Thymescira. I had touched on a new technique on the Preserver's ship on how to shape and harden my Ki. Now I needed to fold that into the rest of my fighting style to the point that it became something I could do in an instant even in the middle of a fight.
Of course, I wasn't even at that point just yet.
Right now I was standing in front of a giant rock focusing on cutting down the time it took me to shape my energy.
A beep from the recording device I'd begged off Batman signaled me to start. I drew my Ki to my hand as fast as I could and focused it into a hard point around my outstretched fingers. As soon as that was done I thrust my hand into the rock.
Instead of shattering, my hand sunk into the rock like it was soft clay. Success.
I took a step back from the rock I was using as a practice dummy and let out a deep breath. I'd already been at this for a few hours now. I was getting tired.
Still, I needed to check how much time it took me to actually pull off this attempt, so I wandered over to the recorder and played back the last attempt from the start signal to when I actually moved.
One and a half seconds.
Not bad from when I first started out, but not great for an actual fight. I'd have to keep working on it— my stomach decided to loudly remind me I hadn't eaten in a while —after a snack break, that is.
Probably the best thing that came from agreeing to Wonder Woman's request to check out what the Sidekick Squad had been getting up to was Megan's almost unending tide of baked goods. So while I made another dent in the mountain of cookies she had given me, I decided to look through some of the messages that had come in while I was off in space.
Technically, I had never actually retired from being a mercenary even if I didn't really accept jobs either. But that meant I still had an account to the job forum TotallyNot!Luthor had set up.
Of course because I never used it much, I was basically given the same jobs as the faceless goons that some of the more professional villains or semi-legal government agencies used occasionally when they didn't want to use their own henchmen.
I wasn't exactly going to be running in the same circles as Deadshot or Deathstroke, but I checked in occasionally because seeing what the schemes the F-tier villains were hiring for was sometimes hilarious.
Someone called the Penny Plunderer was hiring people to break into some rich guy's mansion to steal part of his coin collection. And not even something reasonable like a bunch of gold coins either. No, he was specifically after a rare penny. And nothing else.
He was offering twenty dollars for the job. Heh.
But anyway, messages.
One of the things the forum did was send out alerts when some of the bigger names were planning on pulling something in a certain area. Naturally that only applied to members of this particular forum and only if they felt like sharing, but sometimes that little extra bit was what separated a mercenary from risking getting arrested for a job, to finding themselves in the path of a runaway death robot fighting Superman in the streets.
I tended to use it for the opposite of its intended use as a way to figure out where the interesting things were happening around the world with… mixed results.
It didn't help that like 90% of the user base was located in North America, which meant I usually only heard about things elsewhere after they happened!
Anyway, let's see…
Something was happening on some island called Santa Prisca – no details, just a general warning to steer clear.
A few members of the Justice League had been spotted hanging around Colorado for a few days so most jobs out that way were on hold.
Two mafia groups were about to kick off a proxy war in Gotham, but knowing Batman, he probably already knew about it and was going to dismantle the whole thing before I even got there.
In Florida there was — actually, nope! I was going to avoid that entire area until I was sure Swamp Thing wasn't holding a grudge.
The last thing I needed was him calling Wonder Woman and getting me in trouble.
And finally there was… hrm – the last message wasn't really a warning, but more of an open announcement that something was happening in New Mexico that probably had to do with alien tech.
So basically clear out if you didn't want to deal with aliens or get there fast if you wanted a chance of swiping some alien tech before the government disappeared it all.
That sounded like it could be interesting, and even better, there was a reward for any info about what the tech was. Which meant I could grab it for myself, either keep it or kick it over to the Justice League depending on what it was, and get paid!
It was the perfect plan!
-o-
Okay, there might have been one or two small issues with my plan.
As it turned out… deserts are really freaking big and everything looked the FREAKING SAME!
Even finding the area the job was reported at was a challenge and the only reason I managed was because my Ki Sense picked out a bunch of people inside of what I thought was solid rock.
I mean seriously, who builds a town into a cliff face?
Secret bases and hideouts were one thing, but an actual town?
That just seemed silly.
Anyways, once I found the place it didn't take me long to find the other mercenaries and the reason whoever created the forum post thought there was alien tech here. The mercenaries were easy to spot because they had taken over an area and had all kinds of science devices pointed at the only completely intact building around.
The fact that the building was also covered in a shimmering field that extended out a couple feet was also a pretty good hint I'd found the right place.
Which led to the next issue…
How did I actually get inside the field to take the thing generating it? Because if the mercenaries were stuck sitting outside pointing gadgets at it, there must be more to whatever was surrounding the building than a slightly disappointing special effect.
I needed more info before I decided to just stick my hand in the field and see what happened. The impulse was there, but the lecture I'd get from most of the Justice League about sticking body parts into unknown powerfields if they found out just wasn't worth it.
And the only people here were greedy mercenaries that were going to try to wring every advantage out of me for just scraps of information.
…this was going to SUCK.
-o-
"It's some kind of gravity field." The mercenary captain I'd found said immediately. "Starts off relatively mild around the edges at 5Gs and then ramps up towards the middle of the field. No idea what it's like at the center beyond enough to kill an ordinary man in seconds."
I did my best to not gape like an idiot.
Going by the captain's snort I probably wasn't all that successful.
"Don't look too surprised, kid. We only took this job because it sounded easy and we were in the area. But a small-time outfit like ours doesn't have the tech to deal with the field or the muscle to push back much when the bigger players show up. We both know that if you felt like it, you could go through my boys like tissue paper. Easier for us both to just give you what you want and you move on with a better impression of us and us without any broken kneecaps."
"That's…pretty smart of you?"
He just laughed. "Have to be smart if you want to stay in the game for more than a few years without getting the wrong type of attention." He said, before walking off. "If you ever wind up on the other side of Ironcore PMC, go easy on us, yeah?"
I honestly had no idea how to react to that.
So I did the mature thing and ignored it in favor of doing something else.
Still, a gravity field, huh?
Depending on how it worked, that would be the perfect training tool for me. I was long past the point where just strapping weights to myself did much beyond getting in the way of my own movements. And lifting bigger and bigger rocks was… fine, I guess for strength training… but not great for certain muscle groups and pretty boring in general.
Now the question was, could I even use the thing?
The mercenary captain said that the field got stronger towards the middle, which was fine, but if whatever was causing the field was too strong or just a one use thing, then I'd be getting my hopes up for nothing.
I wasn't going to hang around this weird cliff-town just because the field was here in the case I couldn't move it. And if it was just going to burn out in a few hours or something then it wasn't really going to help me much.
The good news was that I could actually check for myself now that I knew what the field was. Five times gravity would be rough to a normal human, but wasn't even an issue for baby Saiyans. As long as the gravity didn't jump to something ridiculous while I was inside, it should be easy enough for me to at least check out the inside of the building and see what was causing the field in the first place.
So soon enough I was back in front of the shimmering field surrounding the building and after an experimental poke with my tail to make sure the captain was actually telling the truth… I stepped into it.
…
Huh, enhanced gravity was weird. It almost felt like standing under a waterfall, but smoother? It was hard to describe.
I took a few seconds to adjust to the new feeling and then quickly made my way inside the building to look around. Not that it took me long.
The building itself wasn't all that big but the thing I was looking for was in the main room right as I walked in the door. A glowing bronze sphere sitting on a table next to one very dead human.
From the look of it, the guy had just been some old antique collector or researcher and had the bad luck of activating whatever the sphere was – killing him in seconds because just like the captain said, the closer I got to the sphere, the higher the gravity got.
Thankfully, I could still move even where the gravity was most concentrated even if it was a struggle, but now I had another issue.
How did I turn this thing off?
Turning the orb over in my hands a few times didn't reveal any obvious buttons but I must have hit something because the glowing stopped and the gravity went back to normal.
Weird, hope I didn't accidentally break it.
Shrugging, I found a pouch for the orb and tied it to my belt. I'd play with it later once I was in a better location than a small room with a dead guy in it.
Speaking of which, I should find someone to take care of that.
I quickly stepped outside, eager to find someone who could help but before I could even start looking, I was stopped by a smooth female voice.
"Well now, can't say I was expecting someone to beat me to the artifact, especially not someone so young… but I'll have to insist you turn that over to me before you get hurt."
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