Still not a signifier of safe passage. Shaman, after all.
"I am entering because I am concerned about the physical and mental health of the owner!"
"Really?!"
I swear,
Vic Sage, if that's you talking, after all this hassle...
I just about manage to avoid clutching my chest as Kara appears besides me. But I definitely twitch. Not that I think she paid it any attention. Her injuries… Look like they've healed. Not even a bruise. It's nice to see that as air headed as she can sometimes appear, she does actually take medical instructions seriously.
To be fair, her injuries weren't super-severe. Just a little eye damage and burns that a Silver-Age kryptonian could heal in hours...
"Ah… It's more that the G.P.A. are concerned about his physical and mental health, but they made a reasonable argument. Is Kara One doing alright?"
"Sure is! Robo-Uncle-Jor'El already started growing her a new nose!" She frowns. "I tried to do a 'got your nose' joke, but she didn't like it!"
Understandable, especially if she's under red sun lamps to make it easier to work on her, and she's feeling the pain of the missing bits...
"Heh. Ah-."
Her eyes widen and she gestures to me. "See!"
Admit it, you chuckled too, folks. Accidental dark humour...
"She and I have different senses of humour. And I have a far greater tolerance for mutilation. Just… Bear it in mind in the future."
"Okay!" She turns back to the lighthouse and-.
True, OL thinks nothing of losing a body part here or there. Kind of
disturbing when compared to the average person, mind.
"Kara, don't-."
Woompf!
She vanishes in a red and blue blur-
Sadly, OL, there's little stopping a kryptonian that powerful once she starts moving...
Woompf!
-and then reappears.
"He's not in there!"
Given her vulnerability to magic, I wouldn't be surprised if she could have flown right through an entire magically-concealed temple and not noticed...
I bow my head slightly and then push-.
Klonk.
I pick the door up off the floor and repair the hinges which Kara tore off during her rapid ingress.
...Are the contents of the
rooms still there? Given the breeze super-speed would produce...
"Kara, while there are situations where it's correct to smash through a door, a wellness check-up usually isn't one."
"It was like that when I got here!"
<Tommy Lee Jones frowning.meme>
Sure it was.
…
Ring, review door scan.
Door in the frame, damage to hinges consistent with super strength impact, and if I play the recording back in slow motion…
An open and shut case, I expect.
I take a holoprojector out of subspace so that we can both watch her blast the door out of its frame, double back with a sheepish expression on her face, and then prop it back into place.
"Mopey Kara sure did get better fast! And she stole my clothes!"
This is why the Silver Age Superman kept her hidden in the early years, isn't it? Not as a secret weapon, but because she's so dang much
trouble.
I shake my head as I send the holoprojector back into subspace before taking a look around. Door mat, tiled floor, coat rack with three blue trench coats and an umbrella, an empty shoe rack and a wooden bench. Light fitting… Uses a filament bulb. A little odd, but not untoward.
Probably some paranoid thing about fluorescent light bulbs, I wouldn't wonder.
"Question?"
Kara puts her hands on her hips. "I did say he's not here!"
Again,
shaman. Magical concealment is not a difficult trick, as the Ring-scan warding circles show.
"There are ways to disguise one's presence even from sophisticated sensors, and he's a street shaman."
"Hiding with magic is cheating! Hmpf!"
Well, she's got the 'huffy teenage girl' act down pat, if she's not on the up-and-up.
She actually folds her arms and tosses her hair. Ah, while she's here:
"Kara, why did you throw the Peace Operative belts at LexCorp?"
...OL, you did think to
recover them, right? Or would that risk exposing something to Lex?
"Because he's Lex flipping Luthor!" Um? "On my Earth he's a criminal mastermind, so everyone knows that he's evil! I don't get why he can pretend to be a normal businessman here, but it's silly!"
"'Silly' as in..?"
There are
probably unwritten rules about that sort of thing. Same reason you don't go after a hero in his civilian identity. Admittedly someone like Clark Kent, being in his pyjamas doesn't make him
less invulnerable.
"He's the bad guy! Arrest him and throw away the key!"
"Are you aware that there are parallel universes where Lex Luthor is a good person?"
Also little things like evidence being a requirement... Even with the new legal stuff, people just can't lock someone up on the League's say-so.
"And there's probably a parallel universe where the Earth is ruled by squirrels! That doesn't mean that I'm going to assume that squirrels are people here!"
"But if you saw squirrels acting in an unsquirelly way, would you hold off until you were sure that they weren't from squirrel-Earth?"
Or that one alien race that's had several Lanterns in recent years.
"..! Maybe!?"
"So, while we may suspect that Mister Luthor is a bad guy, and we may pay him a certain amount of special attention as a result, until we can prove that he's a bad guy, we shouldn't throw things at him. Okay?"
Also, he may have any number of plans on dead-man's switches. Plans that might make Scorched Earth doctrines look
tame.
"Fffiiiiiiine!"
"Especially if that technology is resilient enough to survive the impact and he could hand it to his research and development division."
That's like just handing him the cookie jar and telling him to eat as much as he likes.
She blinks at me, eyes wide. "Gosh darn it! We need to get it back!"
"Kara, what did I say just now?"
"That we need to get it back!"
Good grief. One-track mind coupled with the attention span of a sugar-rushing toddler.
"No, not 'what did you say'. What did I say?"
"I know we can't do anything until we can prove he's not a squirrel! But we can't leave them with him!"
...Okay, forget about the squirrels! Not important right now. Focus on the
rest of it.
Can't we? Batman would probably want them back, but right now I don't trust Batman's judgement. Do I trust Mr. Luthor's judgement more? … No, but in this one instance it's in his interest to stop Batman's global police force. Would Luthor being imprisoned or killed be better or worse than him stopping Batman?
Probably better to let the League politely request them back. More formal and open, where he can't fiddle around.
Joy of too many variables to calculate.
Batman turning into an evil New God is far worse than anything Mr. Luthor is likely to do. And he's doing it right now. But I suspect that he'll also be easier to talk down. And I don't think that Mr. Luthor would go the same route, if only because he's aware of where it leads. He might use them to make New God henchmen… Except that he's already got high end power armour and the Danner Formula, so that doesn't really add anything to his power while giving Darkseid a clear route to subvert him.
And I suspect he'd rather accomplish his goals with
human technology, rather than piggy-backing off a vulnerability like that.
I think… If I clearly and unambiguously point that out to him… It's probably best to leave it with him. But I doubt that's an argument that Kara Two would accept.
"The Justice League have the ability to seize Apokoliptian technology. Really, we can just walk up to him and ask for it, though since you were aiming you might have to pay for his window."
And big picture windows like those are expensive just on size. Never mind materials involved, especially if he went the transparent armour route.
"Phooey!"
"Alternately, we could leave it with him and watch what he does. It would be tempting for him to use it to do something illegal, and once he does-."
Heck, he could find and expose some unnoticed vulnerability they hadn't picked up on.
"We'll know he's a squirrel! And then we'll have him by the nuts!"
…
"We will indeed."
Certainly, when you hold a man's 'legacy' in your hand, you hold his
full attention.
A couple of decades back, suspended animation notwithstanding?
