GreedEman: I think power girl is supposed to be Galatea in the tags. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.
Re: Neither "Power Girl" and/or "Karen Beecher" were included in the Character List for JLU, which is why I'm hoping enough-people post to the Help line that it'll change.
Kalbario: love the way this went. As a primer for a new story, laying the ground work is important. I'm looking forward to how things go from here. To be honest, it was disappointing what they did with Galatea. Happy to know she is now in good hands under house Valentine.
House Valentine: There is always a chance.
I'll be honest. I'd like to see the Argoan in the harem d(O
Re: Well, it helps that this is a half-sequel/half-off-shot of a long-established story. I've done MOST of the work in my Teen Titans works already, so I don't have to be so heavy-handed with the elaboration. As for Galatea, I mean, it could've been worse; she could've been made "on the cheap" like Maxwell Lord's Ultimen.
For the time being, Ventus is being treated like Galatea's "Handler/Rehabilitation Councilor". Even though the vast majority of the Legion of Doom all bit it when Lex inadvertently brought back Darkseid, there's still plenty of Villains to go around, natural disasters to avert, and new super-criminals cropping up. Because for all intents and purposes, if a Villain doesn't have a deep Philosophical reason for doing what they do, they're basically "lazy bums who don't want to work for a living".
And fun fact, while the Legion of Doom's membership roster initially consisted of Angle Man, Atomic Skull, Bizarro, Black Mass, Blockbuster, Bloodsport, Cheetah, Copperhead, Crowbar, Devil Ray, Doctor Cyber, Doctor Destiny, Doctor Polaris, Doctor Spectro, Dummy, The Electrocutioneer, Evil Star, Fastball, Giganta, Gentleman Ghost, Goldface, Grodd, Heatwave, Hellgrammite, Javelin, The Key, KGBeast, Killer Frost, Lady Lunar, Lex Luthor, Livewire, Major Disaster, Merlyn, Metallo, Mirror Master, The Monocle, Neutron, Nightfall, Parasite, Psycho-Pirate, The Puppeteer, The Puzzler, Queen Bee, Rampage, The Shade, The Shark, Silver Banshee, Sinestro, Sonar, Sportsmaster, Star Sapphire, Tala, The Tattooed Man, The Thinker, The Top, Toyman, Tsukuri, Volcana, and Weather Wizard (counting in at 59 members, no Support Staff), the only survivors by the end of the series were Lex Luthor (until he "died"), Atomic Skull, Bizarro, Cheetah, Evil Star, Giganta, Heat Wave, Sinestro, Star Sapphire, Toyman and Volcana, with the fates of Doctor Destiny, Major Disaster, Bloodsport, Lady Lunar, The Electrocutioner and KGBeast left ambiguous.
Talk about a sweet multi-kill on Darkseid's part. And damn if the Legion of Doom doesn't have a hell of a turnover rate~
As for LoamyCoffee's comment, Mumbo Jumbo was never given a "Real Name" in the Canon so I had to pull one out my ass. It also comes up in the Chapter 38 of TT:2o4E as flavor text.
P.S.
Galatea's name got added to the List. YAY!
Though honestly, I'm surprised that got overlooked for the last decade or so...
*TTxJL*
Galatea was a bit of a shameless flirt despite only just waking up from a years-long coma, and while Ventus wasn't exactly a "cherry boy" anymore, the older-ish woman had a presence about her that rivaled Blackfire's in terms of raw sexual potency. Like most of the League's better-looking heroes and heroines, Supergirl was an object of much sexual fanatasization, and by the transitive property of such, the same extended to Galatea who had looked... the way she did... back when Supergirl had still been all "knees and elbows" as the saying went.
Her being completely naked, sans a buttoned-up lab coat and socks, certainly didn't help matters either, but Galatea's rumbling stomach served as a genuine excuse (read: distraction (read: emergency eject button)) to move things along.
As the two of them unashamedly raided the mess for food, Galatea flash-roasting some freshly-ground coffee with her Superstrength and Heat Vision respectively, Ventus filled her in on everything she'd missed after Cadmus' final offensive stroke against the Justice League. How Gorilla Grodd rebranded the Secret Society into the Legion of Doom, the villain community's shadow war against the ever-expanding Justice League, that thing where everyone in Africa had been briefly turned into gorillas, capped off with Apokolips' second invasion of Earth where Heroes and Villains teamed up worldwide in the ultimate real-life crossover event.
Well, all that and the "ceasefire" between the Justice League and Project Cadmus, of course. But the literal politics were just less-interesting to the Cadmus asset.
"Well damn, sounds like I missed out on all the fun," Galatea hummed disappointedly between bites.
"Depends on what side you would've been on," Ventus hummed as he watched with morbid fascination. She had an hourglass figure that most supermodels would commit war atrocities for, but she could really pack it in, having already eaten enough food to feed a dozen people and showing no signs of stopping.
To stay classy, he averted his gaze just-enough so he couldn't catch flashes of Argoan "cheesecake" every couple of minutes.
Unfortunately, the "anti-truth serum" in his veins more or less laser-etched that into his memory...
"Whatever side would've let me bust some heads," the clone answered unashamedly.
Whether it was from the context of her words or the embarrassed flushes she drew out of him with every show of skin, Ventus didn't know.
"Hey, you sure you should be eating solid food so-soon? I mean, you've been on an all-UV diet until now, haven't you?"
"Eh, artificial sunlight is like junk food, and even if I don't have to eat like everyone else, the taste is enjoyable, at least," Galatea shrugged as she finished off the last of her food before giving him a look. "So… How'd you get to be in the League's 'B-Team'?"
"I terminated Deathstroke the Terminator."
" . . . Wait, for real?" she blinked after a moment of sustained eye contact and steady heartbeat, finding none of the 'tells' that he were lying to her.
"I have the ten-million-and-change bounty to prove it. I mean, not all of it, I spent some of it, but..."
"Well damn, looks like this monk has fists of fury~"
"I don't normally dress like this," Ventus said as he adjusted his shawl.
It'd been fun dressing as a palette-swapped Air Nomad at first, but the novelty wore off.
"All the indigo's a little hard to look at, yeah," Galatea hummed as she looked down at the leavings of her meal. "So… What'm I supposed to do now?"
She felt it best to just get at the heart of things.
"That's all on you. The whole 'clone labor' thing's a huge subject after that full-on 'Beaches of Normandy' episode Cadmus pulled on the Watchtower; not to mention how people have been combing over the Star Wars prequel trilogy and drawing so many parallels to real life," he answered. "Is there anything you want to do? Anyone you want to see?"
" . . . What happened to Professor Hamilton? Since the 'Beaches of Normandy' episode?"
"Considering the various crimes against nature he perpetrated, it's a wonder he hasn't been shot and tossed in a ditch somewhere," Ventus replied causing the clone to wince.
Such was the depths of her bond with the man.
" . . . He's in retirement in the countryside," he amended when he saw how much his flippant comment had hurt her. "Most of the top staff involved in the actual cloning took leave from the field once the oversight committees finished ripping them and Cadmus a superfluous new asshole, what with how the Ultimen panned out. From what I hear, he met someone, started up a family of his own the way God intended. He's a farmer now if you can believe it."
"Oh… I see…" Galatea trailed off. "Is he… Is he happy?"
"I'd assume so. Things could've gone much worse for him. He could've wound up like Dr. Milo."
"What happened to him?" Galatea asked raising a brow.
*JLUxTT*
In another time and place, the answer would've been as-follows…
"After a super-powered warthog tore up his lab in what Cadmus jokingly calls 'The Spoiled Bacon Bits Episode', Waller cut his funding and booted his ass down the corporate ladder to office bitch. He tried to get revenge on Waller and Hamilton both by siccing that deformed Superman clone, Doomsday, on them, but it went… badly for him."
"How badly?" Galatea inquired.
In response, Vincent grabbed an apple from the nearby bowl and held it up for her to see, her superhuman vision honing in on the flexing tendons in his hand.
*SPLAT!*
"Does that answer your question?" he asked shaking the apple-goop from his palm.
"I have a vivid imagination, so yes~" she grinned, finding the display kinda hot.
*JLUxTT*
However, since this is an "Elseworld" where Superman had his "Mullet Phase" after fighting a legit Doomsday not native to the Earth-12 continuity to the death…
"After a super-powered warthog tore up his lab in what Cadmus jokingly calls 'The Spoiled Bacon Bits Episode', Waller cut his funding and booted his ass down the corporate ladder to office bitch. Amazingly-enough he was able to keep his head down despite the hit to his ego. Later, after that complete and total fiasco up on the Watchtower, Dr. Milo slinked off into the private sector with everything he'd been able to learn from his time at Cadmus and tried to get back into the market for untraceable neo-steroids for pro athletes."
"Neo-steroids like Venom?"
"That, but intended to be completely untraceable."
"What happened to him next?"
"He put one too many 'uppers' in his latest batch of 'sauce' and got fucked to death by a bunch of horny gym rat werewolves who all wanted to be the next Anthony Romulus. After that, they fucked what was left of him some more until animal control and Batman finally responded to all the noise complaints."
"Gross."
And coming from one of Cadmus' liquidation assets, that was saying something.
"Well, what do you expect when you splice human and timber wolf DNA together?" the wind-wielder huffed.
"It certainly does sound like a disaster waiting to happen," Galatea hummed, grateful more than ever that her DNA matrix was fully stabilized.
The Ultimen had more or less been made "on the cheap", like coffee filters; the bigger costs of overhead actually came from the actors who helped reinforce their artificial memory implants than it did to actually make them. She on the other hand was prohibitively expensive by merit of how-little Argoan DNA they were able to source and how-important it was they get her "right" the first time around. Her accelerated aging had been later stabilized once she'd reached her physical peak. It was a prohibitively expensive procedure in of itself, but given how-infrequently viable samples slipped past Superman's notice, it was a necessary expense since her Argoan DNA couldn't be mass-produced in this century.
"Well, his Cadmus research was based around Dr. Kirk Langstrom's, so that was always a given," Ventus shrugged as he held an apple contemplatively in his hand before returning it to its bowl.
Galatea, musing on all she'd been told as she disposed of her trays, returned to her seat in the empty mess hall a minute later and looked her "warden" in the eye.
"Does he… Does he know I'm awake?"
"I don't know, but if he doesn't already, that's on you too."
"So… Why'd Cadmus or the League or whoever send you here?" she asked, changing the subject.
"I have a Power Ring, and I'm already acquainted with Cadmus so I'm not going in blind."
"Right, right. Wind Dragon's meta-gene came from you," Galatea recalled before pausing contemplatively. " . . . Then how come he didn't look like you?"
"Marketing, probably," Ventus shrugged. "One of those 'appeal to the minorities' things, you know?"
"Well that sounds like an awkward thing to say in the board meeting; 'Hey guys, even though we have this great 'all-American' DNA sample to work with that'd make teenagers and lonely women swoon, let's make the team leader Chinese'," she pantomimed in a disturbingly accurate male Yes Man sorta voice.
It was like she had a built-in voice modulator.
"Actually, I think Wind Dragon was Japanese."
"Doesn't change the whole 'racial diversity' thing Maxwell Lord went with," Galatea shrugged, only passingly famliar with Cadmus' rotten eggs. "What ever happened to him, anyway?"
"Well, if Cadmus swept that thing with the Ultimen under the rug the first time around, that cat definitely got out of the bag once the clean-up crew started piling up all the bodies on the Watchtower."
"So then they all just… laid there after Supergirl took me out?" she admitted bitterly, more over the fact she'd lost than over what happened to her clone army.
"They were basically meat-robots, and their 'central control unit' got taken out like what happened with the Trade Federation's B-1s over Naboo."
"Oh? Well that sounds like an interesting story~"
"It's not mine. It was from a movie."
"Oh?" she blinked. "Well, I guess life can be stranger than fiction," she said leaning back in her chair, staring idly at the ceiling. "Hey uh… sorry about before. Dadd-Dr. Hamilton," she swiftly amended, "always insisted I apologize when I legitimately wronged somebody."
"It's fine. My girls back home got violent with me once or twice, so it's nothing new."
"Your 'girls', huh? Didn't know I had a Casanova on my hands~ Should I be worried about my purity?" she asked coyly, Ventus clapping a hand over his mouth at the slip. "Oh my god are you blushing? Now I have to know~" she cooed eagerly as the blood vessels in his face dilated.
"WALLERRRRR! If I make it out of this in one piece, I'm going to have your ASS for this! And NOT in the kinky fun way!" the wind-wielder shouted into the nearby camera.
At this, Galatea cackled prettily, long and loud.
*TTxJL*
AN:
As I was writing this chapter, I remembered how in my Teen Titans story, I'd already established how Superman had his "Mullet Phase" after fighting Doomsday; hence why Blackfire was able to get a copy of the "Black Suit" to make up for her in-universe genetic defect at the start of her redemption arc. As such, I had to tweak Achilles Milo's origin story to better-fit-into "Earth-12V" after refreshing myself on things and learned that that version of Doomsday was basically a deformed Superman clone.
His first-ever appearance in the DCAU, the one that stuck with me the most, even more than twenty years later, was in Batman: The Animated Series Season 1: Episode 43: "Moon of the Wolf". So, I figured in a universe where "Doomsday Lite" didn't kill him, that the most-fitting end for him were to be how he "began"; fucking around with lupine DNA and pro athletes.
Almost as-bad a cocktail as accelerated aging and nanomachines.
And speaking of which, having Wind Dragon's meta-gene come from Ventus was my favorite bit of "Retro-Lore" in the "Teen Titans: Elements" continuity. It just really helped bind the worlds of Teen Titans and Justice League (Unlimited) together, you know?
Anywho, tell me what you think of Ventus and Galatea's rapport, and I'll see you all next time!