Chapter Thirty Two.
An ever present shadow swooped down from the sky below before dropping down onto the ground. Astra stood outside of the base and waited for the go ahead. A few of her loyalists, the few which remained on Earth after most of her former forces had been sent away, waited for the go ahead.
She could not give the go ahead until Indigo was able to tell her. Plenty of time passed with Astra impatiently waiting. While she could see that there were no human guards at this base, there did not mean that there were not plenty of security measures that she would have to deal with.
When one added in the fact that several of the walls had been lined with lead, well Astra could only begin to guess there was trouble and lot of it.
"I've taken a look at the security," Indigo said. "And I've disabled all of the motion sensors and the alarm leading inside of the building."
Astra took that as her cue. She knocked down the front door and allowed it to smack into the ground. What she noticed entering the facility did not please her at all. In fact, it made Astra's already sour mood take a turn for the worst.
Several large battlesuits lined the wall. Then several smaller ones, which resembled Metallo, line the opposite wall. Each of the suits contained a slot which would have easily added Kryptonite into them. Astra's frown only deepened the further she got down and walked down.
High tech and dangerous these suits were, especially in the hands of these people from Cadmus. Astra placed her hand on the edge of the suit and then analyzed it. They were impressive weapons, she would grudgingly have to admit that.
"General?"
Astra snapped out of her analyzing of all of the suits in the base. One of her guards took several quick strides over towards her.
"Yes."
"There are several lead lined boxes in the lower level."
Astra figured about as much. Parts of this base, secret rooms had been lined with lead as well. The one crippling limitation X-Ray vision offered was the inability to look through lead. Astra moved in very carefully and took the forbidden wall, the wall which did not allow her easy entry.
"I suggest you stand back," Astra told her troops.
Each of the troops took a step back. Astra had no idea what was behind this wall. Before diving in, the General carefully checked for a weak spot, some place in the wall which did not have lead. When that search came up pretty empty, Astra reared her arm back and then smacked the wall down. A rumble echoed through the room.
The moment the dust settled from the falling debris, Astra walked into the room. More boxes full of weapons and other boxes lined with lead. They must have had the largest stockpile of Kryptonite imaginable, because Astra could think of nothing else they would want to hide in these lead line boxes.
"Facility Six has been looked over," Astra said. "I'm sending a complete list of inventory to you as I speak."
"Copy that," Indigo said. "You may want to destroy the facility once you find out how it's tied to the Cadmus network, if at all."
"Right," Astra said.
Astra moved about to locate a computer terminal. She came up empty handed when arriving at that one point. With a rough shrug following, Astra kept her forward momentum. She swept room by room and found absolutely nothing.
"Looks like they disconnected this base from the Network," Astra said.
"That would be the third base they did so," Indigo said. "It seems illogical that they would leave the weapons behind, doesn't it?"
Yes, it would. Astra hated when people acted in a way which did not make sense, at least to her mind. Regardless, the base would have to go up in smoke and they would have a ready made way to get that base going and get it to go up in smoke. She rifled through one of the crates and pulled out an incendiary device.
It was a modified version of alien technology which Astra used many times before. Countless times before in fact, so it was just a matter of programming it to go off in three minutes, which would give the Kryptonian survivors just enough time to clear the base.
"The Goblin's taken out Base Seven already," Indigo said.
Menace as the Green Goblin might have been, Astra was not going to argue too purposely that he was doing some of the heavy lifting. She set the bomb and turned to her troops.
"Clear the area!"
X-X-X
Running a high level government operation, especially to protect the world, was going to have it's share of complications. Every time someone came to Lillian within the past day, they came to her with some really bad news.
That's why Lillian developed a very supreme dread of opening doors. The individual who rushed him almost fell upon his face in front of her.
Lillian sighed, reached out, grabbed him by the underside of the chin, and forced him up to look at her. The trembling man shook for the next couple of seconds before Lillian barked out of her order.
"Report to me," Lillian said. "And don't tell me it is another facility."
"I'm sorry, boss...but….."
So, it was another facility. That would mean half of the Cadmus storing houses had gone up in smoke. And she could only in a few of them on that nutcase Osborn. That was the most galling and most extremely frustrating thing about it all, at least in the back of Lillian's mind.
Another Cadmus facility, just wasted to the ground, and Lillian was none too pleased to hear of it. She locked her gaze on the man in front of her, who trembled ever so slightly. Perhaps it had not been a good idea to torment the help, but Lillian expected one hundred percent competence.
"Lena...she found out," Lillian said. "That's the only expectation."
Osborn targeting the Board of Directors was a miscue, but really, Lillian did intend for him to take Lena, so the two of them could have a chat. Unfortunately, the Goblin went off of the rails and now that they had what they wanted from him, it should have been a matter of exterminating that beast and putting him out of his misery.
Unfortunately, Lillian underestminated the Green Goblin's ability to adapt to a situation.
"It's about time I take this matter into my own hands," Lillian said.
"He's killed eight of our operatives."
"I'm aware of that."
Lillian slammed her fist on the table.
"Don't you think that I'm fully aware of the people who are dropping like flies around me, thanks to the Green Goblin. Yes, I'm aware that he's killing people. And I could be next on the list, if he managed to get to me."
However, Lillian Luthor was not going to hide under a rug. No, far from it. She was going to stand about as tall as could be, without any shame at all. She did not fear anyone, she did not fear Osborn.
"Do we have any more doses of OZ ready?" Lillian asked.
Her aide blinked a couple of more times.
"Given what happened to the last test subjects….."
Lillian slammed her hand on the desk one more to time to get the attenion of the man. He looked jumpier than a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Just about ready to collapse in a fit of paranoia really.
"I'm going to ask you this one more time," Lillian said. "And I want a straight answer. I don't want you to stammer about test subjects or anything like that. I want it point blank, no going around it. Do we have any more OZ formula?"
"YES!"
Lillian smiled. That did not seem like it was too hard at all, even though this particular spineless fool did his best impression of someone who was about ready to crack under intense interrogation.
"You may go."
The man never looked happier to get up and get the hell out of Lillian's office. To be honest, Lillian received a very preverse amount of joy of making him scramble to the door as fast as he could go.
The woman rose up from her desk. She thought about the OZ formula, but perhaps it would not be a good thing to use given Osborn's degrading mental state. However, there were other ways to rip the Goblin apart and Lillian amused herself in imagining each and every one of them.
Lillian's palm pressed against the book shelf and gave her a secret entrance. A spiraling staircase, barely lit up, gave her all of the coverage that she needed. The second Lillian descended those steps, she knew where she had to have been. Lillian came down to the foot of the steps and then paused.
She decided to go for it, opening the door. A small blast of light emitted from the room. She designed the suit to take on Kryptonians hands on or rather she modified one of Lex's old designs.
Against the Green Goblin, it would do.
X-X-X
The Green Goblin briskly flew across the sky. Several Cadmus guards looked up at him. It was the first verse, same as the first. Those fools thought they could get the better of him.
"You know, you've lost a few good men this way," The Green Goblin said. "I would give you the offer to stand down, but why bother? You both know it is going to be a waste of both of our times."
The Green Goblin rained down fiery hell in the form of massive pumpkin bombs which dropped down to the ground. The screams kept echoing from the Green Goblin's rampage and he pulled back, a wicked ear to ear grin passing over his body, constantly happy with what he gazed upon down on the ground.
"And now, I believe I'm going to knock on the front door."
Green Goblin's version of a knock was a pumpkin bomb just blowing down the door. He entered the facility and was almost impressed by the armory inside.
"You've been a hard man to get ahold of."
The Goblin whirled around and came face to face with Lillian Luthor. His voice dropped to an almost serious tone, representing the Norman Osborn of old, more than the manic and crazy Green Goblin.
"I'm impressed with you, Lillian," The Green Goblin stated in his most calm tone. "I did not think that you had it in you to stand upt o me and fight like a woman. It's very impressive."
"I'm not here to impress you," Lillian told him, her tone growing wicked and her eyes narrowing. "I'm here to bring you down ot the level."
"Oh, well, you think that you are," The Green Goblin said. "I really wanted to make our partnership work out. But, I'll be honest, I intended to stab you in the back to take control of Cadmus. Because, I knew in the end you would get around to it as well."
The armor on Lillian clicked into place. She held an energy cannon at the Green Goblin who performed a death defying move to avoid the blast. The ceiling came flying down. Lillian used an energy field to prevent the debris from crushing her.
"Nice armor!" Green Goblin said. "But, I'm just going to have to use a bigger can opener to get it off of you."
The Green Goblin whipped his finger to send bio-energy coursing through it. It hit Lillian right in the chest plate and knocked her back a couple of feet.
An electrified net wrapped around the Green Goblin. Misery and pain hit the disguised Norman Osborn before he broke out of the net.
"Bagged your limit this season."
A strand of webbing launched down and prevented the Green Goblin from hurling off an explosive pumpkin bomb to go with that explosive retort. Spider-Girl descended from the heavens and smashed both of her feet into the face of the Green Goblin, to send him hurling directly off of the glider.
The Green Goblin pulled himself up to a standing position and snapped his jaw back into place.
"Spider-Girl," Lillian said.
Batgirl and Supergirl dropped down to the ground as well. Supergirl paused for a second.
"Guys, we have a bit of a problem," Kara said.
"Lillian has remade one of Lex's greatest hits," Lillian said.
"All of my enemies in one place," Lillian said.
Kara would not be going out on a limb to think that Lillian had onboard Kryptonite based weapons in this suit.
"Oh, just more people for me to blow into smithereens!" The Green Goblin yelled.
This was not the threesome that Kara really wanted right about now. With the Green Goblin on one side and Lillian Luthor on the other side, both intending to kill her, each other, and her companions.
Supergirl blasted off to nail Lillian only for the armor to push her back like a pingpong ball. The Green Goblin sent a miniature rocket through the air from the glider.
Not going to be easy. Spider-Girl left herself open for an attack as well by trying to stop a collapsing falling pillar. Supergirl did the only thing that made sense, throw her body into harm's way.
They had to work out something to take out these two dangerous threats. Even if they were working against each other, they still caused enough damage.
End.
