John stepped out of the pagoda, the heavy silence of the inner sanctum replaced by the crisp, biting air of the compound. The moment the doors hissed shut behind him, he toggled the dial on his internal bio-regulators. He deactivated the adrenal manipulation and took a long, steadying breath.
It had gone better than he'd dared to hope. In that heightened, calculated state, his poker face had been absolute. He knew Ra's al Ghul was a master of reading the smallest fracture in a man's composure, but John had given him nothing, no erratic pulse, no micro-expressions, no tells. Every word and action had been measured.
The only true test had been that flicker of the impossible. When Ra's had gestured and performed something John could only classify as genuine magic, his mind had screamed to react. If not for the dampening effects of the adrenaline surge, his heart would have been hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
He looked back at the structure, a realization finally clicking into place. There had always been an atmospheric "wrongness" inside the pagoda, a static charge in the air that made the fine hairs on his neck bristle the second he crossed the threshold. Seeing Ra's use that power made the puzzle pieces fall into position.
With understanding came a cold, sharp edge of fear. Magic was, by its very nature, unreasonable and stubbornly unpredictable. John's first thought immediately darted to his Ajin status. Science and biology he could avoid and stay away but he had no idea if his "demihuman" nature emitted a signature that sorcery could sniff out like a bloodhound.
Fortunately, the display of power hadn't been directed at him. Also he realized now that the pagoda itself was anchored by a localized magical field, a shimmering tension in the fabric of reality that caused that persistent, unnerving sensation.
John turned and began to walk across the compound, his mind already shifting gears toward his new job. He needed to start as soon as possible. In this world, leverage was bought with results, and he needed that promised pay in his pocket and soon.
His hunger for money wasn't driven by greed, but by a singular, obsessive goal, leaving this world. It was a simple objective with an impossible execution. He was a man stranded on a very wrong shore and needed to get off and away.
He now could possibly secure the massive funding required but he was missing the two most vital components of the journey, a ship capable of the void, and a star map to guide him to a home he wasn't even sure still existed.
John wasn't paralyzed by the scale of his ambition, in the DC Universe, the impossible was just a high-priced commodity. Now that he was embedded within one of the world's premier underground powers, the resources of the League of Assassins were at his fingertips. The black market is a bbackyard of wonders, and he knew that somewhere in the shadows of the criminal underworld, there was a scavenged hull or a decommissioned alien scout ship waiting to be claimed.
A star map would be the trickier find, but John was a pragmatist. He didn't need a map of the entire Multiverse, he just needed a single, verifiable route to a habitable alien world. If he narrowed his search parameters, the "needle in the haystack" became a lot easier to pull out.
As for the vessel itself, he didn't need a pristine cruiser. A broken-down wreck or a damaged shell would suffice. His confidence in such second hand products came from an analytical understanding of the reality he now inhabited. This was a world of super-geniuses.
The comic book landscape was practically tripping over brilliant minds scientists who could rewrite the laws of physics and engineers who could build fusion reactors in a basement. The tragedy of this world, which John intended to exploit, was that many of these brilliant individuals ended up as small-time criminals or C-list villains. Whether it was a lack of funding, a grudge against the system, or simple desperation to support their fringe research, they were out there, hiding in the fringes of the underworld.
To John, they weren't just criminals, they were the untapped labor force that would build his ticket off this rock.
Building an entire interstellar vessel from scratch was a fool's errand, but breathing life into a shattered hull? That was a miracle that could be bought with enough credits and the right set of hands.
This was the core of John's strategy. By leveraging the League's deep-rooted connections to the global black market, he could gain access to technologies that didn't technically exist. With his foresight, his meta-knowledge of this universe, he could pinpoint the exact "washed-up" geniuses needed for his goals.
However John had other problems, his action of suddenly funneling massive amounts of capital into a private aerospace project would set off every alarm in the league. Ra's al Ghul didn't tolerate outliers, and the League's shadows were always watching. His sudden obsession with wealth and his cryptic side-projects would eventually be brought before the Demon's Head.
John's only viable solution was to lean into the mask. He couldn't hide the activity anyway, so he would just have to frame it. He decided to plan ahead to cultivate the persona of a young man who found a sudden interest for the cosmos and had good enough money to pursue that goal.
It was the best way to offer the League exactly what they had long wanted, a hook into his soul. If he presented space as his singular, driving obsession, the League wouldn't just watch him, they would likely facilitate his progress but as a leash. As long as he was building his "dream," they held the keys to his loyalty.
But to John, the leash was irrelevant. Once the hull was sealed and the engines roared to life, the weight of the League's oversight would vanish in the vacuum of space. He just had to survive the "watch" long enough to reach the launch pad.
The immediate hurdle, however, was his operational capital. He needed a base of operations, a city where the scrap was plentiful, the geniuses were desperate, and the black market was thriving. He already had a destination in mind, though the mere thought of it made his skin crawl. He had been hoping to avoid the "hot zones" of this world, but his options were thinning.
He could either set up shop in the gleaming shadow of the Man of Steel, where a flying blue cape could see through his warehouse walls with a glance if he catches his interest, or he could move to the city of Red Lightning, where the sound barrier was shattered ten times before breakfast and no secret was safe from a speedster's curiosity.
Both Metropolis and Central City offered the high-tech salvage he needed, but they also came with the highest concentration of "heroic" interference in the world. John weighed the risks, the watchful eyes of a god versus the hyper-accelerated perception of a blur.
Ultimately, the choice was simple. Gotham. It was the city of his body's birth. If he had to choose an adversary, he'd take the Bat over a god or a blur any day. A man, no matter how skilled, was still bound by the laws of physics. A man could be outmaneuvered, a man could be escaped.
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