Thinking there's a Motherbox

“...you think maybe there's a chance there's a Motherbox here?”

Dinah was taken aback. “A Motherbox? That's…I highly doubt that.”

“The Ninth Circle has existed for almost a century. I wouldn't be surprised if the technology of the Motherbox is what has let them stay ahead of the curve. The JSA and the Justice League—despite so many heroes among them, not a single one found that their villains were colluding with the Ninth Circle. That their money and resources were being held by a shadow organization.”

“Even my mother…” Dinah muttered. “It’s a good line of thought but as compelling as that sounds, there’s no evidence for it. It’s just your gut speaking.”

“Is it?”

‘I probably wasn't close enough to detect the Motherbox when I was outside. More specifically, I wasn't close enough to detect the cloaking around it.’

Aaron put his hand in his robes and voila! Produced a remote device that was pointing to two states: high level radiation and low level radiation. Right now, the arrow was pointing off the radiation scale.

“See this?” A device that Aaron created that was totally fake and that he had to pretend was actually functional. “It shows the radiation levels. My whole time here, I've been thinking how weird it was. Then it hit me; a Motherbox might be the reason for all this. Why even Kryptonians haven’t been able to find it, the Motherbox researched and calibrated itself and this place to prevent them from finding it.”

She wasn’t a scientist. Dinah was a martial artist, singer, and hero. She was not Batman who could have figured out this was a shame device instantly.

And as for how and why Aaron found it, well, he was the Chosen One. He had more than X-ray and telepathy and super hearing, he had thermal vision and the ability to sense life itself. That was something the Motherbox hadn’t accounted for.

While Black Canary inspected the fake device, Killer Frost started to speak on her own accord and further drift away the heroine’s scrutiny. “Let's put on our thinking caps here. This underground shitshow has four floors: the top is where the cameras and monitoring systems are. Below is the storage and sort-of below it is the treasury. Then here, the last floor. We walk down this hall and we'll reach the chamber where Dante talks to his cronies—”

“So you,” Dinah retorted.

“Shut up.” Killer Frost huffed. “Point is, among these four-ish levels, where would the Motherbox be? I sure as hell haven’t seen it.”

“Hm.” Aaron closed his eyes. Although his telepathy was ineffective, his ability to sense life was not. He pretended to be deep in thought when in reality, he was seeking the location of the potential Motherbox.

“Knowing how villains work, it would be the location with the most guards,” Dinah said.

“Or maybe with Dante.”

After all, he found Green Arrow, the guards in between, and the guards protecting him, but the Motherbox and Dante? If Dante could not be sensed, then that meant he had to be with the Motherbox. Although where the Motherbox was hard to tell…

“Let's get Green Arrow first,” Aaron said. “He’s an expert hunter. He'll know what to do.”

He had the experience with the Justice League and was Aaron's best bet on learning more. So, they started jogging. Better to be stealthy about this. Plus, outright running would cause his dick to start flopping in his black bathrobes. That wouldn’t do for his image.

This whole section with Black Canary was supposed to be monitored by Killer Frost. A faraway corner so that her devastating powers wouldn’t bring the whole thing down. The ground soon became a red carpet. The lamps and hall itself became a cracked scarlet. The first five Underground Men came into view, garbed in red cloaks and carrying heavy weaponry.

Seeing Killer Frost, they did not suspect anything—not until she stomped a foot down and immediately froze the guards and their comms. It was over before it started. “Good going,” he told Frost.

“Think I can get my Justice League card?” the ice woman joked.

“As if.” Black Canary rolled her eyes as she jogged over and inspected the Underground Men. They were, as Aaron had heard from Shado and Cheshire, burned in the body and mind. Flesh red from burning and minds buzzing with the sole purpose of serving Dante, their leader.

“These machine guns—alien tech.” Black Canary analyzed the frozen machine guns. “They even have a Kryptonite mode.”

“In case of Superman or Supergirl.” Killer Frost crossed her arms. “Makes sense.”

“But where did they get the Kryptonite?”

“Luthor,” Aaron answered, earning looks from the ladies. “Luthor gets arrested, what happens to his money? Obviously, some of it is seized by the government, some in his own private labs or whatever, but some also comes here. Luthor is a man of back-ups and planning and with the number of times he’s been arrested, the Ninth Circle has definitely been secretly stockpiling and researching his tech and Kryptonite. With time, the Motherbox could probably figure out a way to replicate Kryptonite.”

Killer Frost perked up. “That’s possible?”

“The Motherbox is a living computer with a connection to god itself, or so the rumour goes. Boomtubes, merging, healing—you name a miracle and it can do it. Give it a decade and recreating Kryptonite is no different.” Aaron stared at the machine gun. “Does it have a calibration for Nth Metal too?”

“It does.”

“Then that’s probably it. The Motherbox has been replicating bullets of various metals in case of a Justice League attack.” Aaron’s X-ray eyes scanned what was on their person too. “Grenades and C4s, all that can be calibrated. Definitely the type of tech only Luthor can make—or in this case, the Motherbox replicated.”

“...who are you?” Black Canary asked, genuinely impressed.

“I like to think of myself as a detective. Spirits, ghosts, magic, murders, I do everything and anything."

“Hrm. So that’s her type…” Black Canary muttered. She was referring to Catwoman. Batman was the World’s Greatest Detective and her biggest love, and now she moved on to Aaron, another supposed detective.

“We should keep moving,” Killer Frost said. “These five guards come every hour to check up on me. And now that they’re not coming back…”

“They’ll know something is up,” Black Canary said. “Should we conduct a head-on **** or stealth our way to Oliver?”

“There’s a big ass chamber up ahead. See, this whole floor is a spider-web that leads to the center. The pathways that splinter off are where the other prisoners are kept.”

“Others?” Dinah asked. “Like who?”

“Nobody you would know. They’re business men, investors, that sort.”

“Dante probably kidnaps them and replaces them with his clones,” Aaron deduced.

That caught Dinah by shock. “W-what? Clones?”

“If Kryptonite is possible, then so is human cloning. Clones that serve to his whims alone,” Aaron said. “We’ve had superheroes and supervillains since World War II. And yet, even with Superman and Batman at work, villains always rise. Terrible people with great influence do even more terrible things.”

“We have to put a stop to this,” Dinah declared. “Cloning and **** and conspiring towards injustice…it’s wrong—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it.”

“Huh?”

Killer Frost lazily shrugged and walked, raising a hand as she went past them. “I said I’ll do it. I’ll rescue those hapless chumps.” Killer Frost shooed them away. “Come on. I know this place pretty well. I’ll freeze these fuckers and they won’t be able to do a damn thing.”

“Are you sure?” Aaron asked. “At some point, they’ll know you’re the enemy. You saw those machine guns, they can calibrate to anything, even molten bullets.”

Killer Frost was quiet for a moment, thinking with her back facing them. “Do you remember Superman’s speech? When he fought against those elite chumps? I remember. He talked about dreams and about his dream was to keep fighting for a better world. To keep fighting until the bitter end.” She sighed and shrugged, smiling. “But guess what? The fight hasn’t stopped. It won’t stop. But it should. At some point, it has to. If we want to get there, if we want to live in that nice, pretty world, a couple of us bad gals have to make the change.”

She wasn’t acting. This wasn’t about Aaron or lying to Black Canary. This was about change. This was wanting to put that first step into being better. Killer Frost was bored when he got here. She was bored when she helped kidnap Black Canary and Green Arrow.

Killer Frost was bored of this life.

“I’ll see you on the flip side.” She winked at Aaron, smirking, and then ran off. He wasn’t sure what to be mesmorized by more—her ass or her speech. Aaron was leaning towards the speech.

Black Canary was the same, stunned to silence. A villain trying to reform? It wasn’t unheard of. Certainly not. And yet, to witness it for herself…

“Let’s go,” Aaron said. “Frost told me where Oliver was being held too. And fortunately for us…” He pointed upwards. “There are vents to crawl through. Are you ready?”

Black Canary drew in a breath, serious and ready without having to say it.