Chapter Text
An alarm sounds in the bridge of the Watchtower, “Warning, inter-dimensional wormhole opening in Crux sector: -60 degrees, 12.5h.” The computer starts to repeat itself, prompting Mr. Terrific to silence the voice. Pressing a few keys, the main screen opens over the main window with 6 different views of Earth’s upper atmosphere and onward. On all of them is empty space. Seconds later, the space seems to warp before a swirling dark blue light appears.
“This doesn’t look like Boom Tube technology…”
Mr. Terrific’s comlink picks up a signal from one of the employees on the lower floor, “Mr. Terrific, something is coming through the wormhole.” The scans come up onto his screen of the energy levels.
“Green Lantern, Captain Atom, Dr. Light report to the teleportation bay immediately.”
Green Lantern answers through the comlink, “What’s the situation?”
“There’s a wormhole opening on the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. We’re picking up massive amounts of energy coming from something that is traveling through it. You and your team are our first response.”
Green Lantern enters the bridge, followed by Captain Atom and Dr. Light, who all step on the teleporter and disappear. Mr. Terrific confirms their successful teleport by their location when he is interrupted by an employee’s shout, “Sir!”
Mr. Terrific turns his attention back to the screen to see an explosion rip its way out of the wormhole. As debris scatters from the ball of fire, he calls “John, what’s your status?”
“We’re fine, got a shield up in…what?” a pause. “Keep the explosion contained!”
“John what is happening?” Mr. Terrific sees him on the screen speeding towards Earth.
“No Time!”
“John? John!” Mr. Terrific calls out, “Get me a visual on what Green Lantern is after.” He watches the screen shift as it zooms in on Green Lantern’s position. John races to a small object flying ahead of him, a pale shade against the darker hues of the upper atmosphere. Mr. Terrific zooms in on the object.
“Is that…a child?”
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John Stewart has seen plenty of strange events in his life. From his days as a marine and being in dangerous scenarios, to his days as a member of the Green Lantern Corps, which brought a host of otherworldly happenings to his extensive resume, to which the Justice League has only added to. He’s been a kid again, he’s traveled through time forward and seen his son and backward almost to creation. He’s met intelligent gorillas in their hidden city, been on trial for destroying a planet, fought countless monstrous creatures and performed even more rescue missions.
Upon seeing the child falling from an exploding wormhole toward the earth, he had already directed his will to save the boy. There wasn’t a moment where he dwelt on the impossibility of the situation; he had seen something like this before.
As he catches up to the falling child, and notices that the boy doesn’t have any protective equipment or energy around him, much less any clothing at all (strangely, only red boots a green belt and… black briefs?). He presses his will further, knowing that he has even less time. If he was any less concentrated on accelerating, he would have heard Mr. Terrific through his comlink. As it is, John is finding that this rescue is forcing him to his limits in speed.
“I need more…he’s going to be torn to shreds if he doesn’t burn up first…I need more speed!”
Forming elaborate shapes has never been a forte of his, unlike some of his comrades in arms. Why make a green gun to shoot a green bullet if you can skip the middle man and just fire the green bullet? But this has never meant that he couldn’t make constructs as his will dictated.
Noting that he will have to recharge his ring after this sudden rescue, he forms a simple rocket around himself. The thrusters kick in, as the windshield protects against the atmosphere. Closing the distance between them, he sees the red lines of heat around the boy’s body.
He has seconds.
He doesn’t stop to think whether the kid is even alive or not. He does push his ring to even greater power, reaching a speed that could match Superman’s (when he wasn’t trying, that is). However, the explosion the boy was thrown out of rockets the boy well beyond terminal velocity. John knows that the atmosphere is slowing the boy down in this case, which is thankful for, but that doesn’t change the fact that entering the atmosphere unprotected is something only a few heroes can do. John isn’t moving more than five miles per hour faster, forcing him to keep on the pressure.
He catches up to the child, brings him into the small shuttle and then proceeds to work on the next step: slowing down. At this point John realizes just how fast they are going, and that he’s now fighting gravity and inertia with a weakened power ring.
He shifts the thrusters to point to earth, and prays that his ring can hold out. Space disappears behind the blue sky. The ground rises to meet them, he recognizes Australia and keeps pushing to stop falling. His ring begins to flicker.
“Just a little more.” John says through clenched teeth. He cuts off the thrusters, shifting the remaining power of his ring to shielding himself and the boy.
The two smash into the Australian plains, John’s green shield dissipating with the dust after the impact, the green glow in his eyes subsiding.
John groans, “That was a little close…hey kid! Kid!” Still holding the unresponsive boy, John checks for a pulse. He frowns, “Was I too late? Or were you already dead before that?” He sets the boy on the ground and stands to call Mr. Terrific when he stops.
He looks again at the child. The black briefs do not look exactly as they would on any other child with that physique…it is almost like they aren’t made of fabric. The green band around his waist seems too close fitting to be a belt; in fact it couldn’t be any normal piece of clothing at all. The red boots could just fit snugly, but there isn’t a single crease or wrinkle on them at all.
Mr. Terrific snaps him out of his observations, “John, what’s your status?”
“Unharmed but out of juice. I think we should take a closer look at this kid though. Something seems…off.”
“My scan’s only picking you up John, is the kid alive?”
“That would be the question.” The boy’s hair is perfect, and when John picks him up, he realizes that it isn’t hair at all. His skin isn’t porous, and other than a few scuffs of dirt, shows no sign of any damage. “I’m ready.”
The next moment John is back on the watchtower, where Mr. Terrific greets him. “Glad you made it. So, this is him, huh?” John doesn’t respond as Mr. Terrific stares at the child for a few seconds. “You’re right, this is strange.” He motions over to two employees behind him holding a stretcher, “You go and recharge, John, we’ll be sure to look into this.” John places the boy on the stretcher and nods, going back to the teleporter to go home.
Mr. Terrific tells the two, “Take him to the mechanical repair bay and stay there until The Atom arrives.” They nod and leave. Mr. Terrific says through his comlink, “Excuse me Ray, do you have a moment?”
“Currently tweaking some nanomachines I’ve been working on, but what’s the issue?”
“We need your expertise on something we just found. It’s heading to the MRB right now. Contact me when you get there.”
“Sure thing Mr. T.”
Mr. Terrific frowns, having never been fond of the nickname, and returns to his place as monitor of the Watchtower. He sighs, months have passed since Darkseid and Lex Luthor disappeared from Metropolis. The world hasn’t stopped needing saving, but the threats could never match the level of those within the past few years. Seeing the various heroes on missions throughout the world and beyond, the fact that Green Lantern was in the Watchtower at all speaks to the low volume of calls requesting for attention. Even some of today’s “missions” were simple public appearances, presence in diplomatic talks (Not all of which dealt with Earthly nations), parades, and the like. To be frank, a robot kid falling out of a wormhole that wasn’t associated with Apokolypse or the gods is easily the most interesting thing that has happened since Lex Luthor saved the world.
Ray Palmer calls him, “I’m here Mr. T, what’s the story?”
He catches him up to the events that have happened, and then continues, “We just need you to check to see if this thing is dangerous, if it can be activated, destroyed, etcetera.”
“You need a professional opinion? I’m here to help. Check back in every couple of hours, I can tell I’m going to have a lot to say.” The Atom replies. Mr. Terrific can hear the excitement of the scientist.
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The Atom climbs out of the robot boy’s chest compartment, the only easily accessible entry point for the scientist to study the mysterious construct. He had run multiple scans of the robot before entering and noticed that, with few other entry points, there must either be a rather advanced auto-repair system, or whoever maintains this robot must have highly advanced technology. Luckily, he can shrink to explore what he is afraid to break.
And this robot is already in bad shape. What’s more, the small parts that he had found broken were not as frail as he had thought they would be, some of the metal being unlike anything he had seen before. He’d have to analyze the alloy and its properties later.
He walks over to retrieve his tool bag, along with a few raw materials for recognizable parts when Mr. Terrific checks in on the video screen. “How’s it coming along, Ray?”
“This is one heck of a robot, that’s for sure. Whoever built this kid is a genius, maybe even a little crazy with the number of intricate parts in here. He’s damaged though. I’m going to try my best to get him activated, but without having any schematics on the robot or on the parts themselves, not to mention what some of them are made of, I’m just going to have to rebuild them by close observation of the original, or leave them alone and hope they aren’t too essential; though until the robot is activated it will be difficult to determine the parts’ functions. Seriously, take a look at this.”
Ray sends a picture of a large room lined with hexagonal mirrors of varying sizes. “I took this when I was exploring around. This is in the head. It was nearly pitch black, so the light you see is from my flashlight. Some of the mirrors were not as reflective as others and some were cracked or damaged.”
“Is this what I think it is?”
“If your hunch is that this is a brain, then yes, that’s what I think too. Which is why I’m not touching this place at all until I can get some feedback from this kid.”
“So you think it is safe enough to activate then?”
“I wouldn’t say that exactly…” Ray starts, earning a stern look from Mr. Terrific. “This technology is phenomenal, the design is pure genius, I HAVE to see this boy in action.”
“Ray, it’s a robot, that usually means something dangerous around here. I’m not going to have a weapon rampaging through the Watchtower.”
“Wait a minute, Mr. T, have a little faith in me. First off, from what I’ve seen so far, this ‘bot takes quite a bit of energy to run at full capacity, and as I said before, he’s pretty beat up. I’m not going to repair him fully until we can determine him to be non-threatening. And Two, If my hunch is correct, based on the structure of the ‘brain’ that I showed you, along with the system of sensors that looks oddly like a nervous system, plus the heart-shaped power core, then we’re dealing with a highly advanced form of A.I. here. One that can sense things and maybe even learn.”
“So you’re saying that it could be smart enough to trick us…”
Ray cuts his train of thought and doesn’t have a reply.
Mr. Terrific sighs, “Just be careful, Ray. I’m interested too, but don’t let that enthusiasm cloud your judgment.”
“Right.”
“Good Luck.”