Chapter 43: Chapter 43: Decisions

I looked at the female furies and Steppenwolf that were laying on the ground unconscious and wondered what I should do with them.

It would have been fine if they had died in combat against me, but after using my full power in the Ikari state, I was easily able to knock them out. I thought about it and realized that it would be a waste to kill them off.

Of course, I didn't just knock them out without planning to do something afterwards, but I was now questioning if that was the best course of action. Darkseid had his sight on me, so now it begged the question of how I should act, knowing this.

A desperate attempt to appease him would be to return the female furies without harming them, but would he leave me alone afterward? Wouldn't he just wait until I let my guard down and take his revenge for this slight? Obviously, that would be his way of doing things.

There was no way in hell that he would let me go after having escaped him. Maybe he would consider me letting the female furies go an even greater insult and decided to hunt me down personally.

It didn't matter to me how he would react to me releasing them back to him, as I had no intention of doing so. Ignoring the fact whether or not he wanted revenge, the same couldn't be said about the ones that were now lying at my feet.

Maybe they wanted revenge for being beaten by me or wanted to prove their worth to Darkseid. Since they knew they couldn't best me, they might decide to not target me and instead go for the people around me, and that was something I wouldn't allow.

Another obvious solution would be to just kill them all and be done with it. A significant portion of Darkseid's forces would be gone just because he tried to kidnap me. That thought was amusing, and killing them all would save me some trouble in the future, but it wouldn't actively benefit me.

Maybe it would save as a warning to him, but a warning was just that. It wasn't something that I could count on. I couldn't count on Darkseid being afraid of the consequences of further aggression. Darkseid would just prepare more thoroughly next time.

Next time he wouldn't try to kidnap me, but just try to kill me by teleporting me into a black hole or something. Possibilities to take me out without having to directly fight me were there and I would most likely be unprepared for it.

Given, I haven't heard or rather remembered of a DC movie where the villain just killed the hero by sending them into a black hole via boom tube or whatever, but the possibility was there and I refused to be on the reactive side. Constantly worrying about when he would attack wasn't how I wanted to spend my time with.

So instead of getting blindsided by letting them all live or kill them all, the idea of mind controlling was the most appealing to me. It was the option with the most potential benefits to it. It would be unlike controlling some human criminal organization. Having an elite task force comprising new gods was just too tempting, not even mentioning what other things having new gods close-by entailed.

I already had experiences with controlling humans and meta-humans. A new god would hopefully be only a bit more difficult.

From what I sensed as I invaded Granny Goodness' mind, that seemed to be the case, so I should be able to do it, given some time. I would take a month before I could confidentially say that I had one of them under control. It might take less time since some of them were already brainwashed by Granny Goodness. However, I wasn't sure about the specifics.

As this thought arrived, I knelt down next to Big Barda, who I knew had been brainwashed. I placed my fingertips on her temples and invaded her mind, sensing its nature.

The differences to an unaltered mind weren't easy to notice, but from the memories of Granny Goodness, I had seen glimpses of how she operated, so I knew what to look for.

The mind could be compared to a paper that would get folded bit by bit with the experiences of one's life until it forms a unique figure. Mind control alters the figure, adds folds to the paper, which in turn changes the subsequent folds to change the outcome.

The art of mind control was to make the changes natural, so that the resulting figure would be coherent and be accepted by the person's mind. Not to mention, it couldn't be folded contradictory or it would just be an unstable figure which would unfold itself.

The nature of the person would decide future folds, which should only be steered towards a welcome outcome. It took either a lot of time to change a person's nature, but the mind control would be more stable and long term.

For a drastic change of of the mind, one had would have the best outcome if one worked from the ground up and to do so would be to unfold the figure back to a flat surface again, but like a folded paper would leave creases in the paper even if it was unfolded, the mind would be equally marked.

Traumatic experiences would leave scars and bad habits could return if one wasn't aware of what connects to it. Environmental triggers or words could lead someone to fall back on something they had ignored or things they had thought to have overcome. So even if one escaped the mind control, it would leave a scar behind.

When I unfolded the changes inside Big Barda's mind and returned it to its prior state. I could see how deeply the influence of Granny Goodness's brainwashing went. The creases would help me impose my own changes to it, which would speed up the process by a lot, but it wouldn't be as fast as I would have liked.

If the mind of a human or even meta-human was that of a paper, a new god's mind was that of a metal plate. I could see why Granny Goodness resorted to brainwashing the children that she picked up from that orphanage from a young age and ceased to do so later on. It would be too much of an effort to control them now. Not impossible, but a waste of effort.

Of course, they didn't know that it would be several times more difficult to do the same to me, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered to kidnap me and instead would have opted to convince me to join their side voluntarily.

I let go of her temples after I put her and the others into an artificial coma. There was just no time for me to control them. From the first assessment, I could already guess that Mad Harriet, the green-haired one with claws, and Stompa, the burly one, would be the easier ones to control.

Gilotina, the swordswoman, was probably the most difficult of the female furies to control, but even if I failed to mind control them, it wouldn't be too much of a loss to have some of them die on me.

The only one that I truly cared about was Steppenwolf. He was older than the furies, so he ought to have some interesting knowledge. Of course, the most important thing was his strength. If he hadn't played around in our fight, I wouldn't have taken him out this easily.

It would take me too long to control only one of them without raising suspicion. The initial thought of mind controlling them into my spies was therefore easily dismissed.

There wasn't a believable story for why they hadn't communicated back to Apokolips for longer than half a day since they could leave this planet and invasion behind, despite anti-teleportation devices being used. Besides, I wasn't even sure if my mind control would last after Darkseid decided to brainwash them again.

True, I wasn't even sure if Darkseid would even notice that I had mind controlled them. I knew Granny Goodness was mostly responsible for brainwashing and the like, but that didn't mean Darkseid didn't know the telltales.

I just didn't know enough about Darkseid to confidently say that he wouldn't notice it. If he did, I would just send these new gods back to their previous master.

However, that didn't mean I would not mind control them. Being new gods made them the powerhouses of this universe, and having them as my subordinates would be incredibly useful, especially to protect my people when I wasn't there.

That being said, the biggest boon would be god ki. I couldn't sense their life force but they were clearly healthy individuals, which meant that their life force was just something I didn't have any experience sensing.

God ki in the Dragon Ball Universe was something that even the experienced fighters couldn't sense without prior knowledge about it and given that these are supposedly gods meant they were running on that god ki juice.

I wanted that. I needed that. To become a Super Saiyan God, the minimum requirement had to be the possession of god ki. How I achieved that would be another topic, but having different examples of beings using god ki would give me enough hints and data to progress more rapidly.

Just knowing that god ki was pure, gave off a tremendous pressure, and that it was somehow achieved by powering up without leaking any ki wasn't enough to tell me all about how to actually generate said ki or even master it. Having some test subjects would give me a leg up on this, at least, which was why I was reluctant to kill them.

As I thought about it, I wondered about Diana. Wasn't she a demigoddess as well? Why could I sense her? No, wait. Wasn't she a clay sculpture or something like that?

I put that string of thought away and focused back on the present. I inquired about the situation of the other parties and got some reassuring news, though it seemed that Raven and Kara were still occupied with Kalibak. It didn't help that I remembered little about Kalibak other than him being the son of Darkseid, but Granny Goodness was useful in giving me a basic rundown about the foolish new god, as she would describe him.

I warned the two about him since he should be stronger than any single fury, so Kara should have a hard time against him alone, though I hoped that her teaming up with Raven was enough to close the gap.

Instead of interrupting their fight, I called Maxima to my side. She wasn't needed to clean up the smaller camps and therefore directly teleported to me. She glanced at the downed furies and Steppenwolf in surprise before she looked at me with a slightly glazed look in her eyes.

I coughed slightly, which made her roll her eyes, "I need you to keep them imprisoned for a while. They shouldn't be waking up soon, but let's not take any chances."

She nodded at that, "Nate, thank you. Without you, this would have been a lot worse."

"Don't forget to thank the other two as well. I will come back soon. I will make them suffer a bit more. Oh, and help Kara and Raven out if they need it. They mentioned that they are currently fighting Kalibak."

She opened her mouth to say something, but quickly closed it again before giving me a hard nod, "Of course."

With that, I shot into the sky and headed towards the nearest camp that they had previously discovered. There were multiple ones with hundreds of these parademons. I didn't bother too much with them and just annihilated the camps with ki blasts.

I quickly eradicated the ones in the section that I was meant to take care of before stopping midair. There was a reason I didn't go out to support the others, besides giving the two a challenge, and that was because I had my mindset on someone else. Someone more formidable. Who else could it be besides Darkseid?

There were still doubts in my mind, but I just couldn't keep my body under control anymore. I had thought that I was under control after all the years I had been occupying this Saiyan body. In the beginning, I was leaning into my Saiyan nature, but in the months after coming to earth, I had suppressed my instincts, or rather, I directed it into training.

I schemed, building up security nets in case I ended up in a precarious situation resembling my past life. Scheming, lying, manipulating. These were part of my daily life in prison and they were tools I had grown familiar with over the years, but this wasn't something my body was urging me to do. Certainly, some traumatic memories helped in that regard, but I had to consciously decide to do it. It didn't come to me as easily as it had previously.

In the past years, I used my drive, steered it, into several areas to improve, which made me think I was above my Saiyan instincts. Now my body was showing me it still had a say in my actions. Quite ironic how I had taught Raven that her emotions weren't controlling her and here I was struggling with the same thing. Pot calling the kettle black.

But even with that knowledge in mind, I couldn't stop thinking about it. From the Granny Goodness' memories, I could see how powerful Darkseid was, and he was not a pushover, far from it. He vastly outstripped the other new gods.

Even his uncle Steppenwolf paled in comparison, bowing to him in submission. A dozen times stronger than Steppenwolf is probably a good estimate of Darkseid's strength and that was only viewing his strength when he was just spamming his Omega Beam. An estimate of 264 million for the absolute ruler of Apokolips.

I was sitting comfortably on just above 4 million, so even as a Super Saiyan, I was weaker by a rather considerable margin.

Rationally, I should go back to mind control my captured new gods and train with my time-slowing device for another month or so. That should be enough to rise my base strength by another million at the very least. That would make me almost equal to his strength, but I just couldn't bring myself to do that.

I thought in the past months I was able to focus my attention on scheming and building a hidden 'criminal' empire, because my mind had the last say, but that was only because I didn't have an opponent that would be worth my time.

Looking back at it, I was never truly in control. The few instances there were enemies I thought would be fun to fight against. I instantly engaged with them while I threw caution to the wind. The demon-Kara and the other demons and sons of Trigon were probably the only situations where the opponents were threatening. I risked being captured in outer space, so I could face off the mastermind, but in the end, left being disappointed.

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And now I felt almost compelled to face off Darkseid because he could best me despite being a Super Saiyan. It made my blood boil. My body begging for me to head to Apokolips and pick a fight with the terrible new god.

It was strange that it was never like this with the other Leaguers since I could sense how formidable their life force was. I hadn't known that they couldn't bring out their true potential initially, so I should have been equally excited to fight them back then as well, right?

I pondered for a moment before the answer came to me. I didn't feel like my life was threatened by them. Maybe my body knew that they couldn't exert the strength that they were projecting, or it was my prior knowledge of the heroes that I couldn't see them as a threat.

I was excited to fight them, but it wasn't the same I was feeling now. With them, I could rationalize and delay my desires as much as I wanted to, but this was different.

The demons of Trigon or Darkseid's forces weren't the same as the heroes of earth. If I was caught lacking, they would end me, no questions asked. It excited me. The prospect of an epic battle. The prospect of death. Two beings fighting it out with all they had.

A real battle. No pretend fight. No spar.

But what really sealed the deal for me was Granny Goodness's memories of Darkseid's prowess. I could feel it. He was stronger than I was and I could only estimate by how much, but I might be wrong by the true extent.

I felt the desire build up in me as I tried to reason what the best course of action would be, even as I opened the portal to Apokolips. Granny Goodness and the other elites of Apokolips had a boom tube with her in case the situation became dire and they needed to escape. It could even ignore some anti-teleportation technology that had been known to be in possession by a few individuals.

Thoughts of the things I should do that would be infinitely wiser. I should go back and train some more. I should call for backup. I should use the furies and Steppenwolf to ambush him. I should...

There were so many should's in my mind that it was numbing. Some or even a combination might have been the course of action if I were a human, but I wasn't. This wasn't just to fight a nefarious villain that I knew from a show or revenge for attacking my friend's home planet, this was an opportunity to test myself against one of the most powerful beings in this universe.

I was going to kill Darkseid with my bare hands or die trying.

...

Kalibak was the first son of Darkseid, but he could never earn his father's approval, which was more than just a difficult task since even if he followed his father's orders to the T, he had earned his father's ire for not excelling his expectations.

So, for years he tried to do better, throwing himself into the most dangerous situations to accomplish something praiseworthy, but until now it had earned him nothing but contempt. Mainly because he never quite accomplished what he had set out to do, or it had proven disadvantageous to his father.

Maybe he was as useless as his father proclaimed, which filled Kalibak with guilt. Even as useless as he was, his father was still putting up with him after all these years of failure. Hopefully, one day, he could prove himself to be an asset.

He had hoped that the day was today, but as he received another hit to the dome, his next failure was getting closer. He truly didn't want to see the disappointed gaze of his father as he looked down on him from his throne, but it seemed he prove once more how useless he was.

He was tasked with distracting the ones that his father's newest interest might take with him from earth. They were to be distracted until the one they called Shallot was to be captured. Kalibak hadn't gotten the signal to retreat, so he tried his best to remain steadfast, but it became increasingly difficult.

He had expected Superman and the other members frequently seen around Shallot to accompany Shallot to this world, but his cousin Supergirl had taken that role with another woman who proved herself as exceedingly annoying.

In their initial clash, he had the upper hand in terms of strength and speed, but shortly after the situation reversed and Supergirl grew stronger and stronger. If he had taken her out from the beginning instead of having thoughts of capturing her to earn his father's compliments, he might be in a better position now.

Her strength was still not comparable to his, but it had closed the gap to where Kalibak couldn't resist the two working in tandem.

Kalibak swung his metal club, wanting to send Supergirl flying, but another portal let Supergirl escape his strike. Not the first time the one that Supergirl called Raven had done, but there wasn't much he could do about it.

He couldn't close the gap towards Raven as she would just teleport somewhere else in the room or was intercepted by Supergirl, so the only way to end this was to end Supergirl first.

A searing pain came from his shoulders before he dodged to the side to escape her Heat Vision. He jabbed his arm into the metal floor and ripped a piece out of it before throwing it at Supergirl.

The momentum of the projectile didn't stop and would have hit Supergirl if a portal didn't appear before it, swallowing it whole. Kalibak had learned what that meant, so he directly dodged to the side.

The piece of metal crashed into the spot where he had stood just a moment ago.

He swung his club at the approaching Supergirl again, only for her to duck underneath it and punched his sides. Involuntarily, he crunched together, only to be met with a kick to the face. His back took in the brunt as he skipped over the ground before slamming into the wall.

Injuries stacked as his enemies improved in the battle, not only growing stronger, but adapting to his fighting style. They were injured as well from the initial clash, but now Kalibak wasn't able to lay a finger on them and it infuriated him.

Suddenly a call from Apokolips came in, calling all the forces back to it. Had they finished the capture of Shallot? He hesitated for a moment. Could he go now in shame after failing to capture Supergirl?

Before he could contemplate it some more, he got a reality check from his two opponents. Being grabbed by the Kryptonian and slammed into the ground was not a pleasurable experience. Being bombarded with sharp metal projectiles, even less so.

He grew more annoyed at his helplessness, but their mission was accomplished and after the last mishap of letting the Queen of Almerac escape before she was captured and brainwashed, was still a fresh memory.

Although, like Desaad had told him, capturing Shallot's allies would absolve his previous mistake, he begrudgingly knew the idea to capture Supergirl and Raven wasn't something he could do alone.

He swung his club upward as he tore through the metal floor to use the shrapnel as projectiles. Supergirl crossed her arms to protect her eyes before she was aided by a black energy barrier.

He didn't care if he injured them because his goal now was to return. With a tap on his device, a portal opened up behind him, which he promptly jumped into.

"Oh, no you won't!" A shout echoed from Supergirl as she pushed herself off the ground and towards the closing boom tube's wormhole.

A sudden boost in her speed was almost enough to catch up on him, but the portal already closed before she could reach it and he begrudgingly traversed to the other side.

It was just a moment before he arrived at one of the designated spots to which the portals would lead towards. It was the lair of Desaad.

"Strange. Why didn't I appear in Granny Goodness' spot?" Kalibak asked out loud, as he hoped for Desaad to answer, but no answer came. Granny Goodness had led the invasion with Steppenwolf as backup, so unless her stabilization spot was broken, there was no reason for Kalibak to appear here.

Of course, one didn't need to use these spots to teleport to Apokolips, but it certainly helped if anti-teleportation technology was used by the enemy. These places at key points on Apokolips were almost always accessible with a boom tube.

There was something wrong, Kalibak decided as he looked around. Chunks of walls were scattered around the room and the roof had a noticeable hole in it as if a missile had hit the place.

He stepped off Desaad's portal stabilization spot before he noticed the lack of guards that usually these key points would have patrolling around it. There was no sign of Desaad either. Ignoring the puddles of blood and scattered corpses that were surely left behind by Desaad's torture sessions or wantonly killing, he made his way outside of this lair.

Suddenly, a loud explosion sounded out, and the floor seemed to quake at the force. Kalibak's eyes widened in understanding. "Could it be? Apokolips under attack??"

He rushed out to find a world of fire and pain. Groans of miserable mortals filling the surroundings with ambient noise. It seemed like usual, but the lack of mortals being whipped was disturbing to the ears.

The surrounding buildings were destroyed as well. Something was wreaking havoc on the planet, but Kalibak couldn't see the invading force. He expected to see the new gods or more importantly Orion of New Genesis, to arrive, but there were no signs of them.

It wasn't until a streak of green lightning, which seemed to divide the heavens in two, appeared in the sky as it left a collapsing building behind. The building was the residence of Bernadeth, Desaad's sister. It didn't bode well for her if she was visited by the assailant, who seemed to possess great power.

She wasn't a warrior like many others. Her expertise was in making plans, not that Kalibak knew the full extent of the usefulness of making plans, but he didn't need to as Darkseid saw her value.

Kalibak decided to do what he could best: confront and kill the assailant. He looked at the shining light that hovered in front of his father's throne room, bent down and used his immense strength to jump towards the light.

Unfortunately, he hadn't managed the ability to fly yet, which was something new gods were able to learn after an extended time of training. He had worked on it for some time, but until now, the ability eluded him. So, the only way to reach the light was by jumping.

He could hear the groundbreaking apart after he jumped away. Ignoring the miserable cries of the soldiers and other mortals as they were being crushed by the collapsing ground, he focused on his self-imposed task.

As he approached the light at breakneck speed, he noticed that the light housed a familiar figure. It was the target which the invasion was started for. Did Shallot escape his prison after being captured or did Shallot come here on his own?

He quickly dismissed the latter idea of Shallot coming here on his own admission. No one was crazy enough to enter Darkseid's territory and expect to leave alive.

So, the only thing that had to have happened was Shallot escaping his prison somehow. This was a great opportunity, Kalibak realized. If he could recapture Shallot, his father surely would approve of him.

Being motivated by that notion, he reared his arm and punched out at the back of Shallot's head. Unexpectedly, he missed. He was only able to glance at Shallot, who stared at him with smoldering yellow eyes, before he was grabbed by the neck. His momentum immediately halted.

"Man, you have one big ass head." He heard before his vision grew dark.

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