The SHIELD Quinjets hovered above the soldiers and the civilians.
I watched as multiple armored men emerged from the aircraft, spreading out in a tactical formation that covered the beach and surrounding area.
Their movements were coordinated and purposeful, each soldier taking a position that provided overlapping fields of fire while maintaining clear lines of sight to both Diana and me.
While they did not raise their guns at us directly, it was abundantly clear who they were wary of.
Their body language, the angle of their weapons, the way they positioned themselves - everything indicated they viewed me as the potential threat in this situation.
Not that I blamed them. From their perspective, an unknown individual had just vaporized hundreds of hostile creatures and a significant portion of the ocean with energy beams from his eyes.
Caution was a rational response. And, they did not directly point their weapons at me, so I had to give them that.
Soon, two people separated from the main group and approached us. One was a man with thinning hair. The other was a young woman with distinctive red hair pulled back.
I had an idea who they might be based on Alex's memories, but I could not know for certain.
After all, you cannot really recognize someone's face in reality from how they appeared in illustrated comic panels. The art style of comics often emphasized certain features or simplified others in ways that did not translate directly to real people.
People like Diana were exceptions.
The way she dressed was too unique not to recognize her - the ancient Greek-inspired armor, the massive sword, the skeletal horse that breathed fire. Those were unmistakable identifiers.
But these SHIELD agents? They could be anyone.
Alex's memories showed me that SHIELD employed thousands of operatives, and while some were more prominent than others, I could not rely on comic book artwork to identify specific individuals.
Diana leaned slightly toward me and whispered,
"Please don't kill them. These humans are annoying, but they do this to protect their world."
I looked at Diana calmly, my expression neutral.
The look I gave her clearly asked the question without words: Do I look like someone who kills without reason?
I am not some mindless destroyer who eliminated threats simply because they existed.
I am an emperor, and emperors need to think strategically about when to use force and when to exercise restraint.
But then again, I thought to myself, I will kill any being or race that might pose even a spec of threat to my people.
Not immediately, not without consideration, but ultimately without hesitation if it becomes necessary.
The man and woman reached us, and they were joined by an older man in a military uniform who emerged from the group of soldiers.
This third individual had the weathered appearance of someone who had spent decades in military service.
All three of them stood before Diana and me, and the height difference was immediately apparent.
None of them reached even six feet tall, which meant they had to crane their necks upward to maintain eye contact with either of us.
Narrator's POV
The man with thinning hair spoke first, his voice pleasant and professional. "Hello, Miss Diana. It's been some time since we met."
Diana nodded slightly. "Indeed, Son of Coul. Though I would not call you trying to restrain me as a meeting when all I was doing was helping this planet by taking out the last Basilisk."
Son of Coul? Kon-Rao filed that information away.
Apparently, Diana knew this man and had some history with SHIELD. And from the sound of it, not entirely positive history.
The man kept a neutral smile on his face as he replied, "Misunderstandings happen, don't they, Miss Diana?"
Diana smiled at his attempt to divert the conversation away from past conflicts.
She knew this man well, understood his tactics and personality.
She viewed him as someone who seemed innocent and friendly on the surface, yet was calculating and manipulative underneath - though not necessarily evil.
The man turned his attention to Kon-Rao, his smile remaining in place. "And I presume you might be a friend of Miss Diana?"
Before either Diana or Kon-Rao could respond, the old military commander interrupted. His face had been growing increasingly red during the exchange, and now his patience apparently broke.
"Endangering a massive number of lives with this insanity and without any military coordination!" he barked, his voice carrying the harsh edge of someone used to being obeyed without question. "Let alone my approval!"
The man Diana had called Son of Coul maintained his pleasant demeanor.
"Calm down, Commander. Without them, the city would have suffered massive casualties. You saw live what I saw in the broadcast."
But the Commander was not interested in logic or gratitude. "But sir, for all we know, they might be in league with those damned things!" He gestured angrily toward where the gateway had been.
"Incredibly convenient how they showed up at the same time as the creatures."
His eyes locked onto Kon-Rao as he said this, making it clear that the Kryptonian was the primary target of his suspicion.
There wasn't any change in Kon's expression, but the ones who were getting sweaty were the soldiers around them.
Many were looking at their Commander with expressions of shock and disbelief.
These men had watched the red-haired man eliminate an entire invasion force that they were being decimated against. They had seen him vaporize miles of ocean with a casual display of power.
One soldier leaned close to his companion and whispered, "If this senile old man wants to die, he can die. But why is he dragging us into this?"
Others apparently shared the sentiment. It showed in their body language, in the nervous shifting of their positions.
The soldiers all had one single thought running through their minds: If this man decided to retaliate, none of them would survive.
They were correct, of course.
If Kon-Rao chose violence, every person on this beach would be dead before they could fire a single shot. But the Emperor had no interest in killing these people. They were not threats, just frightened humans trying to protect their world with inadequate information.
Just then, the man Diana called Son of Coul interrupted the Commander's rant. His voice remained pleasant, but steel lay beneath the friendly tone. "That's enough, Commander. You are to be relieved of your command here, effective immediately."
The Commander's face turned an even deeper shade of red, but he said nothing further. He simply turned on his heel and stalked away toward one of the Quinjets, his back rigid with barely contained fury.
Son of Coul turned back to Diana and Kon-Rao, keeping that smile on his face. "I apologize for that. The Commander is tired. The stress of the situation has clearly affected his judgment."
Kon-Rao analyzed what had just happened. He was trained in statecraft from birth, so this little charade could not escape him.
Coulson... he now identified, had not stopped the Commander in the beginning. He could have interrupted the man's tirade immediately, could have prevented the entire embarrassing display. But he had chosen not to.
Why? He knew Diana from before and apparently trusted that she was not a threat but an ally. But he did not know Kon-Rao.
He did not even know his name. While they were flying here, he had probably run every scan and database search available to SHIELD, but found nothing about the mysterious red-haired man.
Coulson had seen Kon-Rao vaporizing the creatures.
He had seen the display of overwhelming power. Yet he let the Commander's confrontation proceed.
He wanted to see how the Kryptonian would react to a weaker man bursting out with accusations and hostility. He wanted to analyze his personality, to determine whether such a powerful individual would be an asset or an enemy to Earth.
It was actually fairly clever as far as human tactics went.
Let someone else provoke the unknown entity while you observe from a safer position, then step in to defuse the situation and position yourself as the reasonable party.
But Coulson got nothing useful from his little test. Kon-Rao had maintained a calm, neutral expression throughout the entire exchange.
No anger, no amusement, no visible emotional response at all. His face remained as impassive as carved stone.
Little did Coulson know that Kon-Rao was also examining humans through this interaction. And right now, the Emperor of Kryptonians was not forming a particularly favorable impression of them.
The Commander's immediate leap to paranoid conspiracy theories despite witnessing Kon-Rao save the city.
Fear was understandable. If a being with Kon's powers appeared in front of Kryptonians when they were on Krypton and did not possess any powers, even they would be afraid.
Though the Commander's decision to lash out like that was completely beyond Kon's understanding. He was the one who was responsible for the lives of his soldiers, and it was a stupid move to throw accusations at someone who possessed the capability of wiping them all out.
Such decisions of challenging a being whom you had no hopes of beating were only understandable in the time of war.
Even if Kon dropped his reasoning standards, the Commander needed to at least have some backing, some sort of power that could threaten Kon, before he spoke those words.
Though the Commander was lucky, Kon was analyzing rather than letting a few insignificant words from an insignificant fool drive him to rage.
'Barbaric and irrational,' Kon-Rao thought.
These were the words that formed in his mind as he observed the humans before him. Especially for Coulson and the Commander.
And it was not even due to what happened right now. It was more related to the history of human civilization.
....
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