A day at work in STAR Labs weren't going to get Karen's nerves, but the loss of a former boyfriend plus lab rat gone wrong managed to get her in the worst possible ways. There was however one way to completely bring her shock out of existence, and that was to show that same person inside her house without any sorts of warning. As soon as Karen opened up her locked apartment and turned the lights on, Victor was there sitting on the living room.
"Oh my god." Karen began. "V... Vic...?"
Victor Stone came back into her house, surprisingly came back with a face that didn't look so robotic. He stood up from his couch and faced his girlfriend directly. Karen had a lot more balls compared to most of the peoples who had faced him, and she didn't even back away.
"How..."
"Skin grafts." Victor said. "I got a few friends. I got a few peoples who should help me to look normal. For that moment, I have to cover myself like a mummy. As for the hands, well, prosthetics are everywhere now so..."
"We... we would've helped you too, Victor." Karen said. "You know that."
"You would." Victor said. "My dad wouldn't."
"Yes he would."
"No he wouldn't." Victor said. "He never trusted me. He never believed me."
"For god's sake, Victor." Karen said. "I'm not the one who started this whole project of resurrecting you." Your father did. He wouldn't have done that if he didn't care for you."
"If he did, he would've done everything on his power to find me." Victor said. "The robotic project that this originally came from is called I-45, codename 'Cyberion'. Instead of putting some effort on trying to find me, he puts all of his efforts on that stupid armor."
"And that automatically means that he doesn't care for you?" Karen said. "Victor, I know you're not a moron."
"And you don't know my dad."
"I've been with your dad for years!" Karen said. "He cares for you, Victor. Believe me. I have lost count how many times he begged you to come home."
"Did he?" Victor said. "What's stopping him to find me, then?"
"That's a lot more complicating." Karen said. "I know that you're not going to believe it, but he's been under pressure this whole time. ARGUS wanted him to develop some form of a weapon against... aliens."
"Aliens?" Victor said. "Karen, are you even listening to yourself?"
"I'm serious." Karen said. "The alien called himself a Kryptonian. His planet presumably has a higher strength of gravity compared to ours, which makes him incredibly superhuman."
"Can you prove it?"
"I'd love to."
##
Her daily patrols didn't usually come into something this bizarre. Who would've thought that an ancient historical artifact would be the number one target for random mercenaries and thugs to deal with? Mia Queen AKA Speedy had to don her mostly black with some yellow touch outfit to battle up these morons who thought that a place like this would be an amazing one to rob. Unless if someone was incredibly interested in stones.
Speedy managed to classify the threats that are surrounding the museum. There were only about five mercenaries including one woman. Hitting a woman was going to be the last thing that she would ever do, so she put the woman last on her priority list. Sneaking through their backs managed to give her quite the advantage of tonight. However, she had the hairy feeling that the woman knew a lot better than what she looked.
Using a long-range microphone, she was able to pick up the conversation between the mercenaries. However in this case, she didn't even have to, because she could overhear their conversation in the distance.
"This is the place?" one mercenary said.
"Of course." the woman stated. "This is exactly the place where you can get it."
"In an ancient relic museum?" one man complained. "How are you going to find it here?"
"There are some meteorites that fall from Earth that are misclassified as an ancient relic." the woman continued. "I know all of these meteorites and where to find them, and I know exactly their look and color of it."
"So what is this 'Red Stone' turns out to be?"
"This 'Red Stone' is misclassified by some morons at the Central University as the 'ancient' remnants of the Pre-Columbian era." the woman explained with a disturbingly calming monotone. "When in truth, it actually is a meteor from outer space falling down about two years ago."
"How did nobody noticed?"
"Government has a bunch of peoples that can make things disappear."
"That sounds like a conspiracy theory."
"That's why I didn't share it with you." the woman said. "I have a thing with ancient relics and stones. I know exactly what and how they looked and I can easily distinguish them with meteors. Sufficed to say that they got this one wrong, and intentionally so. I don't know why, but let's continue before we come into aliens as our conclusion."
The heist group managed to reach this 'Red Stone' thingy that they were looking for. When tallied, the stone was nothing but a waste. The cost was probably about $399 plus tax, but they were looking out for it regardless.
"There it is." she said. "The meteorite stone at its glory. Not sure why nobody turned this one to dust or sell it down to the flea market."
"How are we going to get it?"
"Just break open the glass." she said. "The security has been disabled. Nobody is going to notice."
"How do you know that it's disabled?"
"Don't speak unless you went to the security systems about five minutes ago."
The way she talked, Speedy believed that she was not a moron and that she intentionally said that so that these mercenaries can be captures. Speedy checked on the security status of the museum, which she connected through wireless configurations. The security systems were active, and that breaking the particular glass is going to trigger an unhealthy alarm. She actually observed her getting inside the system and she didn't even break anything. She just knocked the guards out and left.
However, that wasn't the case. As soon as one of the mercs got their hammers out and broke the glass open, the alarm did not trigger, despite the fact that the security systems were active. There were probably some malfunctions on the speakers or the wiring or the programming. Whatever the case, either she was a great hacker or the security here was an absolute joke. Speedy couldn't even trigger the security systems manually.
"Let's get them, boys." she said. "The money's big enough for all of you here."
"I don't think so, young lady."
One mercenary had his gun pointed at the lady, which was a rather interesting move. Speedy went out of the cover and took her aim in the distance with her tranquilizer injector arrow ready, and witness as the insanity ensued with this man.
"I don't think this is part of the agreement." she said, not a single damn given to the gun pointed at her.
"You were never a part of this, Raven." the merc said, giving away her name. "You just joined in and you think that you could get away with one million dollars after that nifty little trick that you showed to Drakon. You're not going anywhere."
"Is this the part where you're going to kill each other because you're going to get one less share?" Raven said. "I think I've seen that in a movie somewhere, but you're in real life. That's not going to work."
"We'll see about that."
There was a little bit of calm that was on Speedy as she witnessed from the distance that the gun's safety mode was on, which means that whatever kind of trigger that he pulled, it's not going to get any bullets out. However, even with the gun's safety mode on, as soon as he pulled the trigger, the gun quite literally exploded on his hand, causing a major burn and an absolutely degrading cry of pain.
The other mercs pointed the gun to her as well, but she managed to give a good glance at them and warned them about their future fates.
"I'm not going to do that if I were you, gentlemen." Raven said. "I have rigged every single one of your gun including the spares that you put on your shoes. If you're going to kill me, I'm afraid you're going to have to do that the old-fashioned way."
Without even a single change of emotion from her face, the other four men charged at her with knives on their hands. She dodged the first one easily and knocked him out by grabbing him, flipping him over her body and slamming him down the floor.
Two men charged at her with pocket knives. One slashed her by a side swing from the top, which she dodged easily. His next attack was unfortunately his downfall as she blocked his arm swinging towards her. She knocked him out by what literally can be described as a machine gun punch, repeatedly punching him in probably about six or seven punches a second right on his chest and then ending it by a punch to the face, knocking him out.
The other guy with a knife charged at her with a downward swing from the top, but she grabbed it easily. She disarmed the guy and she had the knife to her advantage. She took the knife and slashed the guy in a direction that surprisingly would not harm the actual person. What instead ended up with was the guy standing still, and his pants literally dropped, revealing his embarrassing boxer.
And surprisingly, not even a smile came out of her face out of that amusing scene. Even Speedy had to let off a scoff in the middle of her sneaking session. The guy attempted to grab his pants down, but Raven kicked the back of his foot causing him to kneel and then knocked him out by kicking his head on the side and pinning it down to the wall.
The last man was very hesitant on moving even a single foot towards Raven. As Raven moved forward, he backed away one step at a time before slipping and falling down. He crawled back away from Raven and her terrifying stare and what she did to completely knock him out in business was to literally say the magic word that only kindergartners would fall to it.
"Boo."
The man literally went up off his prone state and started to run away for his life. What a coward.
"You guys are boring me." Raven said. "I'm going to have to take this stone myself."
That's when Speedy entered the game. She shot off her warning arrow right towards the wall near the stones. The warning arrow got Raven's attention, and there was nothing else blocking them both except for a compound bow.
"So you finally showed up." Raven said. "You're not as early as I heard you were."
"I'm not late. I'm just hiding off, watching you around." Speedy said. "Nice trick, by the way. Where did you learn Wing Chun?"
"What do you want?"
"Just back away from the stone." Speedy said. "Or I'm going to trigger the alarm."
Raven scoffed. "Go ahead. I just broke through the glass. No alarms."
"Do you really think that's what I meant?"
Sooner enough, both heard the sound of police sirens approaching in the distance, but Raven was smirking, thinking that she had the upper hand.
"By the time the police come in here, I'll be away with the stone." Raven said. "I suggest you should back off."
"I'll do that." Speedy said. "Only if you can knock me out first."
Speedy shot one arrow towards her, but Raven grabbed it with ease.
"You think you're the only one with tricks?"
"You haven't seen my trick yet."
The arrow was blunt, so it could be designed as anything that Speedy wanted on the fly. The blunt arrow turned into a rather harsh flashbang, causing a massive disorientation to Raven's side. Raven, who got her eyes closed, couldn't focus on right. So Speedy shot her with a tranquilizer arrow to knock her out of existence.
However, the tranquilizer somehow bounced off away around Raven, as if she was being protected by some sort of a force field. Speedy kept shooting more on tranquilizer arrows, but the effects were again the same. They bounced off of her and didn't even have a chance to enter any of her body territory.
"Oh, I see how this goes." Speedy said. "Either that was voodoo magic or you got some stolen tech. That's a shame. I really thought you're going to play this fair."
Raven regained her vision and made her last words. "Sorry, not tonight."
In a stunning display of sorcery, she grabbed the rock using telekinesis, created some sort of a dark portal right below her, and being transported below like the Italian on the game that she played ages ago. For a quick turnaround, Speedy threw some throwing knives at her, but again it was no use as the knives couldn't penetrate her force field.
"Almost got her."
##
"Your dad is put under pressure by ARGUS to develop these armors." Karen said. "Believe it or not, he initially refused. He doesn't want any of his weapons to be used by them, not even against aliens, because he worries that they might use it for the future."
"He does?"
"Turns out that your dad isn't as heartless as you think, is it?" Karen said. "The armor is actually done and he begs to ARGUS for another week for testing, but he doesn't want any of the ARGUS soldiers to use it."
"Then who should use it?"
"The vigilantes could be a good bet."
Out of the blue, Speedy appeared on the side of the kitchen door, leaning on its side and observing the couples giving explanation towards each other.
"So this is the Cyborg?" Speedy asked. "I wonder. What kind of weapons does have in those huge arms?"
"A non-lethal sonic blaster." Karen said. "This isn't really the time, Speedy."
"Oh Karen," Speedy said. "Would you please spend just a little time for the muscle? The last patrol was quite interesting."
"Wait, you two knew each other?" Victor asked.
"Vic, it's me. Mia."
Speedy opened her hood and mask to reveal the short purple-haired Mia Dearden Queen behind the mask. That alone was enough to astonish the relatively huge man.
"So you spend your day getting drunk and being dumb on Twitter and the night beating up bad guys and take down mafias?" Victor asked.
"It's a good cover." Mia said. "What do you think?"
"You're just going to reveal your identity to him?" Karen said.
"No offense, but do you expect someone to listen to him?" Mia said. "Besides, I'm not even sure why he has to be here. He's been lost for like two or three weeks and he just pops up right here without warning. Where have you been anyway?"
"I'm away." Victor said. "I guess in some ways I deserve it."
"Don't be ridiculous." Karen said. "Nobody deserves what happened to you, Victor. Nobody."
"What if I did?" Victor asked. "What if I do deserve all of this?"
"Does it really matter?" Mia asked. "If you ask me, what matters is that you have cybernetic enhancements. You got super strength and sonic blaster and all those good stuff. Now what matters is how you're going to use it. Are you going to use it to do bad or to do good? Choose bad and you're putting yourself on the same level as the sorceress thief."
"Sorceress?" Karen asked.
"Our tonight's thief used voodoo magic to get out." Mia said. "I shot her with a flashbang arrow and was about to tranquilize her, but she used her magic for some form of a force field that bounced off literally all of my tranquilizer shots. After that, she opened up some portal in the bottom floor to get down one level lower. Couldn't get to her."
"I don't know about you but that sounds absurd." Karen said.
"Really?" Mia said with a condescending tone. "You're talking into a half-human half-robot and helping a Robin Hood wannabe on capturing a sorceress supreme and let's not forget making armors for the government to defeat aliens from outer space. Your entire world is absurd. Deal with it."
"Okay, I get your point." Karen said. "So I assume that's all the reason why you visit me?"
"Can you counter-react magic?" Mia asked. "Or more importantly, do you know someone who knows some real, legit magic?"
"You're hunting a sorceress?" Victor asked.
"No, I'm hunting down a psychopathic clown." Mia said. "What do you think? In fact why are you here anyway?"
"I want to warn Karen." Victor said. "I want to warn you to keep my father in check. You're the only one who can do it. I can't trust my father, but I can trust you."
"Like I said, Victor. I'll do my best." Karen said.
"Great." Mia said. "Now you may kiss the bride. Can I borrow your room for a change? Also, if you're coming in for the hunt, I don't have a spare oil for you."