How did you imprison someone with superhuman abilities? It was a question that a lot of comic book universes asked, and just as many had their own answers. Power suppression technology tended to be a very common way in both Marvel and DC, though the specifics varied wildly depending on continuity.
In Worm, you had the Birdcage, an inescapable nightmare of a prison that had a bunch of space whale super science bullshit invested to make it really hard to break out of. Marvel had the Raft, DC had all sorts of revolving door prisons, the list went on. I hadn't any idea what hole the GDA threw their toughest nuts into, but I figured one had to exist.
They called their version the Icebox. I approved.
Far enough away from major metropolitan population centers, it was a facility dug into the earth, reminding me more of a bunker than a traditional prison. You could drive right past it and not even realize what you were near, from what my eyes were telling me. Only a front business on the surface made it seem anything other than just an old mine, the buildings where they based their tours out of.
It was also where they had stowed my viciously bestial opponent, after I'd put him into suspended animation. While I could have just teleported in, I went through the meandering, long list of security measures just for the sake of politeness. Even if I still found the retina scanners to be incredibly useless for me.
Many of the others were dependent on things like keycards, verification codes, and calling other locations to ensure that I was a trusted visitor. Really, I'd call it overkill, yet in a superhero universe, not going the extra mile just seemed unreasonable. Regardless of all of the hoops I had to jump through, though, I found myself moving through the main area of the prison in the end.
Past the rows of reinforced cells, where the worst of the worst were located. Supervillains that I dimly recognized from scanning past news reports and others who I didn't at all. To the deepest and newly refrigerated portion of the facility, which was a rush order for their most recent prisoner. Considering the threat level of the man in question…
Well. It seemed appropriate when he'd tear through everything here like a hot knife through butter if he ever woke up.
I took in a long, cold breath and let out an exhale of hot air. Around me I could see my breath with every exhale, but that made sense considering where we were.
Thokk's frozen form in the ice was clear as day to me, along with his reduced vitals. But he was very much alive. As I watched him in the frost, below that surface of crystalline fractals that covered him, his heart was still beating. Respiration still occurred through hairline cracks so thin that my ice release hadn't fully eliminated them.
Despite all odds, he was living, and wasn't that something? I had to marvel at the kind of hardy organism that could survive all of that and keep going, the sort of extremophile that could likely withstand the void of space if need be. Though, his frozen prison wasn't the same it'd been when I'd originally erected it around him.
Carved into the ice was an array of fūinjutsu, or, well, whatever modified, bastardized version you could call what I'd created. It was meant to absorb as much natural energy from the environment as possible to upkeep the makeshift jail. That, and a spot where I could dump in my vast amounts of chakra as well, which I did every so often to keep the containment up.
It was good practice, honestly. Emptying out my reserves until I was low, and then waiting to regenerate it back up at the prodigious speed my species was known for. Though, even I knew this was not a suitable long-term solution. That was why I was meeting Cecil here after all.
The man of the hour teleported in with the same gusto, and I restrained my instinct to twitch to violence as he did so. Begrudging him the usage of his extremely useful system was fine and dandy. That didn't mean that it wasn't something that made my instincts scream for a first response whenever it happened.
"Any change in his condition?" he asked, genuinely concerned and curious. After all, if Thokk got loose, even groggy but healed from the ice…
Well, the number of people on the planet who could stop him was counted on one hand. Me, Omni-Man, and maybe Invincible. The kid, though, was young, and I didn't think that he was ready for the type of brutal, no-holds-barred fighting style that Thokk preferred if push came to shove.
Between me and Omni-Man, too, there was the elephant in the room that only one of us wasn't a murderous deceiver. So naturally, neither Cecil nor I was in any kind of rush to push to see what he might do.
"No," I answered Cecil, sighing softly. "He's still in dreamland. Or whatever it is that murderous lion men do when they sleep."
"Good," he nodded decisively and relieved. Then he paused, looking me up and down, as if noticing my outfit for the first time. "The new costume isn't in yet?"
"Art's got a schedule, and I'm still waiting on the first draft of it to try out," I admitted, glancing down at my own decidedly lackluster fit of blue jeans and a t-shirt. "Trust me, I don't plan on going out to save lives like this."
He waved off my concern. "It's fine. We can cook up something that looks similar enough to your old outfit to tide us over until Art's finished. His work's worth waiting for."
A thoughtful hum escaped me. "I'm surprised you guys haven't tried to get him to work for you before."
"We have," Cecil admitted, sounding pained that it wasn't the case. "However, he's refused us every time. Likes to be independent."
"I can't blame him. If he was part of the GDA, he probably couldn't gouge your heroes for their costumes." Money was functionally no object to me now, but the human I used to be would have died on the spot when the original figures for how much the costume would cost were thrown around.
Considering that it was going to be taking the kind of damage that superhero fights usually entailed, I didn't think that was unreasonable. But goddamn if my spirit didn't fly out of my body a little.
Pausing again, Cecil squinted over at the figure in the ice consideringly. "Is it feasible to remove parts of the containment if we wanted to implant something inside of him?"
That made me frown. "...Gonna put a strong maybe on that one. There's so little I know about his biology, just as a baseline, that I couldn't tell you if doing that would wake him up or not."
He was a carbon-based lifeform and was close enough to earth-based mammalian life that I could make some broad assumptions. Of course, I didn't know enough about Thokk's species to make these more than firm guesses. There was the chance he was just a very exceptional member of his species, and for the most part they weren't nearly as outrageously strong as he was.
It wasn't what Cecil wanted to hear, given the way his face twisted at the answer. Thankfully, he wasn't the type of man who got angry at the messenger. "Then do you have any bright ideas on how to deal with him?"
"Maybe," I shrugged, eyebrows furrowing together as I gave it some thought. "It depends on how willing you are to unthaw him and try diplomacy. Preferably offworld." Bringing him to the moon, creating an isolated pocket of atmosphere, and then slowly but surely unthawing him awake to have very pointed negotiations could theoretically work.
"I'd rather not, but I can see the value in trying to come to terms with him."
"Machine Head, the crime boss, hired this guy somehow, so at least that should theoretically be a lever that we can use." That was enough to give anyone pause, wasn't it? The notion that anyone could be hiring people of Battle Beast's caliber on Earth. "How did he manage to do that in the first place?"
"Earth, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't really matter on the stage of space politics," Cecil stated, not sounding too frustrated with that fact like some leaders in his shoes might have been. "We're not really spacecapable in any real reliable way, and we have scant few dealings with the powers outside of Earth."
I could see the but coming a mile away. "Few isn't none, though."
"You're right. Machine Head managed to cultivate those dealings. That fact, and a few other things he gave up, is the only reason he's not buried in a hole like this."
Part of it did rub me the wrong way, yet I could see the logic in it. The fact of the matter was, cutting plea deals was just a part of the criminal justice system. Whether you liked it or hated it, it was what it was. "So he managed to avoid the Icebox by giving some people up?"
Cecil nodded. "Some of his connections. The ones I really want, he's holding close to his chest. I'm hoping a few years in maximum security prison will loosen his tongue, though."
It depended on how much of a hardened criminal this guy ended up being. The superheroes of the world and the GDA would know better than me there. One of the reasons why it was so nice to work with them was that I could generously leach off of their experience for all of the things I didn't know.
"What connections, though?" It occurred to me that I didn't actually know a lot about what passed for organized crime in this new reality of mine.
Like, I knew it existed; that was the entire point we'd involved ourselves with Machine Head in the first place. Specific factions or crime families, though, were something I had absolutely no familiarity with.
The human man paused, giving me a sidelong look, as if gauging how much he wanted to inform me about. In the end, though, he sighed, as if coming to some kind of internal resolution. "There's an international criminal syndicate that we've only ever caught glimpses of. One that he's got close ties with, apparently."
Okay, apparently they had their own version of Intergang or something! "What's it called?"
"The Order."
I paused, letting the name roll around in my mind. "It's kind of…pretentious as far as names go."
Cecil scoffed. "They're supervillains, Genji; being pretentious and prideful is practically a job requirement for some of these idiots." There was more vehemence in his voice about the matter than I'd expected.
"I'm surprised you're not inured to their idiocy by now."
"The root of most supervillainous crime is megalomania, kid. Do you know how many people we've seen put away who, if they'd just used their powers or knowledge legally, could have been billionaires by now?" He asked, and to be honest, I didn't know the answer.
Shaking my head to the negative, the man continued. "The Lizard League is one of the most persistent pains in my ass, and it all started because some egghead got it in their mind that splicing human DNA with reptiles was a good idea. As opposed to using that groundbreaking medical technology for literally any other purpose."
When he put it like that? Yeah, I could see where Cecil was right to be that upset. It was basically the case of Sauron, from Marvel, who didn't want to use his technology for logical, reasonable purposes. He wanted to use it to turn people into dinosaurs.
"Okay, I see where you're coming from," I readily agreed, though my thoughts pivoted toward something else that had come to mind. "But what does the Order actually do?"
"A little bit of everything you could imagine," Cecil surmised. "Or so we think. There's so little we know about their operations outside of the fact that they exist that it's tough to get concrete information on them."
Hmm. I wasn't in a rush to delve into genjutsu, especially when I'd have to adapt the discipline specifically for the people of this world. But it did seem like it could prove an option to rooting out at least some of their agents if they remained a persistent problem.
"Is that something you need, like, help with?" I offered, trying to at least be conciliatory. Though, Cecil ultimately waved me off with a hand.
"When their big guns come out to play? Sure. But this sort of cloak and dagger whack-a-mole is what the GDA exists for," the balding man reassured me. "We'll get em'. It's just a matter of time."
I'd have to take Cecil's word for it. When it came to espionage and how to actually deal with an organized crime faction, I had functionally little understanding or knowledge of how to bring them to justice. Outside of a vague conception of the RICO act's existence, my best help to traditional law enforcement would likely remain punching people really, really hard in the face.
Boo-hoo for me, I guess.
Something else did occur to me, though. "... Any chance we can use Machine Head's space connections to hire our own overpowered alien mercenary?" Because, well, some problems you could just solve by throwing ludicrous amounts of money at them.
Much to my disappointment, he shook his head as he began to walk out of the cold cell. "It was thrown around but in the end decided to be too fiscally irresponsible. The amount of rare earth metals that he had to pay just to get Battle Beast interested in the contract was considerable. And by your own admission, he was mostly in it for the thrill of it."
I clicked my tongue in irritation but had to acknowledge his point. Hell, it also brought up the fact that any chance of Thokk helping for the hell of it was null and void. I'd kind of betrayed his desire for a good, clean fight at the end there. With good reason, mind you. Logical arguments didn't tend to work on maniacs like this, though.
"Welp. There goes that idea…"
"I do have some good news for you, though," he continued, looking back at me to shoot a smile over his shoulder. "Remember that request for training resources when you were in the hospital?"
Just like that, my excitement was starting to spike again. "Yes? Are you telling me you guys managed to put something together?"
"Sort of," Cecil admitted. "Mind giving me a ride back to HQ?"
"Too good to teleport there yourself?"
"When it costs the gross economic output of Lichentenstein every time I teleport, it's a little irresponsible if I don't just ask someone else to teleport me there, yeah."
I didn't know the GDP of a tiny European microstate off the top of my head, but I had to imagine that even for a relatively tiny country, it probably wasn't a small amount of money to burn daily.
It was all I could do to just squint at the man, the judgement that was clear in my thoughts written large on my face. "... You just like teleporting around, don't you?"
He paused, staring me right back in the face, before giving up and sighing. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."
At least he was honest about it, as I gave a short laugh. "Fine. To save the global taxpayers some dollars, I'll take us back to the GDA HQ."
Besides, I'd be lying if I wasn't a bit interested to see what they had in mind to help me raise the ceiling on my strength. I created a matte black plane before us that we both walked into. One second we were in the icebox, and the next we were gone. Once ensconced in the deep, bunker-like reaches of the GDA base underneath the Pentagon, it wasn't long before we were meeting with the scientist who'd been put in charge of my request. An older Black man, whose hairs were starting to go gray, with brown eyes and a little bit of a gut. Still, he seemed excited about talking about his work.
"To recap, you said chakra is made of two components, physical energy and spiritual energy, yes?" A scientist in a white lab coat stood before me, perhaps not looking for clarification but just a final confirmation to ensure nothing had been lost in translation the first time around.
"That's correct," I answered, following after the man, with Cecil beside me, as we walked through a part of the GDA facility that I hadn't paid much attention to.
"With both elements rising commensurately, as you increase your physical prowess, grow older, or become more intelligent?"
"Mhmm."
"Well, in terms of the spiritual energy, I'll admit that we're not up to par to beat whatever training your species has derived there. Maybe with more time, but…" The older man shook his head, frowning softly. "At the moment, though, we've got some equipment that can assist with the physical aspect of your growth ambitions."
My curiosity was well and truly piqued, though like most situations, I was also trying to see where the throughline of this situation was. Then again, it wasn't as if the concept of this kind of Charles Atlas superpower were that uncommon in superhero settings. Nor did the people of this world lack the capacity to grow fairly strong on their own.
The humans of this world did have the two required components to wield chakra. However, whatever you needed to connect the two systems just wasn't present. I wondered if it was some secondary nervous system that was grown or unlocked with ninshū. Whatever the reasoning might have been, though, there was one more thing that needed to be taken into account.
Almost every character you witnessed in the course of Naruto was the end result of a millennium of alien genetics filtering out into the wider population. Nearly every kekkei genkai of note was descended from the Ōtsutsuki, and all of their chakra pathway networks had likely been assisted by that stable infusion of dominant genes over centuries of eugenics.
That, however, was a chain of thought that could be investigated later. Maybe with an actual medical professional who could help me turn my chakra-derived mad science ideas into something that wouldn't kill people in the process.
My own musing had kept me distracted as we entered into a large chamber. Standing in the center of it was what I could only call a vaguely upside-down, trapezoidal hunk of metal, with two points underneath it where I could surmise someone might be able to use their arms to lift it up. Attached to it at four different points of the massive chunk were arms, or actuators of some kind as well.
Below it was what could be a very utilitarian metal bench. Or, maybe an anvil for all I knew. "What is this?"
"A prototype that we've rarely had cause to use," Cecil explained, gesturing to it. "Basically, you get under it, and it creates increasing amounts of weight, like a regular bench press exercise."
Already, I was growing a little excited the longer I leered at the whole machine with covetous eyes. "Oooh. Can I try it out?"
"That's what we're all here for," he confirmed, as I practically skipped over to the bench press. On a nearby catwalk there were staff and other technicians who were likely needed for the actual operation, getting into position as I slid underneath the weight and got my arms into position.
A slight, slim chance existed that this was some kind of elaborate trap to kill me. If that was the case, though, I deserved to die for falling for this comically large weight. Anyone who fell victim to a set-up that could have been engineered by ACME and Wily Coyote deserved whatever ridicule they received. Also, that was just my stupidly paranoid brain talking.
The GDA might have some shady things going on behind the scenes, but that was par for the course for governments around the world. As long as it didn't trip into global illuminati shenanigans or outright evil, madcap plans, I could forgive a lot of things. Some things were beyond the pale, true, yet Cecil hadn't crossed those lines with anything I'd seen yet.
"Start her up!" I called out, a broad grin spreading across my face as I braced myself for the weight.
"Starting," someone responded as the vast machine whirred around me. There were likely all kinds of finer technical details that were inside of it or responsible for the correct operation. None of that really mattered to me, though, as I felt the weight begin to press down.
It was…
Well, as I flexed my muscles and began to push up against the massive plate before me, it wasn't that hard to tell that it was certainly heavy. Maybe the heaviest thing that I had personally had to lift since I'd been on this planet. Genuinely something that made me feel the network of inhumanly dense fibers across my body actually be put into action.
Up and down it went, slowly, as I got the feeling for how much it was pushing me. And coming to an uncomfortable realization the longer I did so. "...This might be a little too light for me."
It went so silent in the chamber, save for the whirring of the mechanical actuators being put to work, you could hear a pin drop. "Excuse me?" There was something incredulous in the tone of the Black scientist that I'd been talking to before. "That's the heaviest thing we have."
"How heavy is it?" I asked, genuinely curious. They told me a number that was so high it couldn't possibly be true, and I blinked. "That can't be right. There was a little bit of strain, but I'd have to do a ton of reps to really get anything out of this." Even then, that'd be due to just repeating it over and over again rather than the weight itself.
Again, crickets, as I could feel everyone staring at me as I hefted up the bars and let the machine rest while I got out from under it. Cecil's piercing stare in particular, as the gears visibly worked behind his eyes, was notable. "Alright. So we'll have to get the science team working on something else that'll help you handle weightlifting. There are a few other odds and ends they theorized might help, though."
"Such as?" I perked up, making my way over to the man.
While my powers were exceptional in terms of allowing for me to grow them further, rare in this setting, that didn't mean the GDA had zero experience with the concept. Which meant that the training plan and ideas they introduced me to were drastic in some regards and a bit nonsensical when it felt like they were just throwing things at the wall to see what would stick.
Having me submerge myself in molten lava to try and increase my physical fortitude? I could see where they were coming from, and it sounded like the type of bullshit that might get me closer to unlocking Yōton through spiritual resonance with the elements. Or some shit that sounded straight out of a cultivation novel.
Mmhmm, yes Junior, submerge yourself in lava to harness the dao of hot rock, bow to your grandaddy's wisdom. Any foe who challenges you will be courting death by lava.
Other options that were provided to me were less sound. Some sort of VR submersion situation was potentially outlined in question marks, as if that might be enough to stimulate rapid learning. Going to specific harsh environments in the solar system, like Mercury or Venus, given the fact that I didn't have to breathe and didn't require an environment to operate at full capacity.
As far as the outlines for future training went, though, I figured that the GDA was going to keep me busy for the foreseeable future. Not that it was, admittedly a bad thing. Depending on when Omni-Man finally went mask off, who knew if that slight amount of training would provide the edge between life and death?
More than anything else, though, as I left the base with a conditional agreement to some of the exercises, I realized something. If I was really going to start making some progress with my abilities, I needed to do more digging for more abilities from Naruto, rather than purely focusing on chakra quantity, throwing ice at things, or being an eternal punch-kick merchant.
Thankfully, I had an idea of where to progress that process, outside of what I'd already been doing.
The routine for being a Guardian of the Globe continued apace through all of this. It just wasn't all that interesting to think about, because a lot of the day-to-day monotony for being a reactive force was waiting for something to happen. I'd been a bit twitchy before I was amped up with chakra, and with the ability to see so much stuff around me, I tended to get involved in situations where my assistance could trivialize crimes or threats in moments.
But if having my body battered by Thokk had taught me anything, there were probably at least some things that the rest of my teammates could have provided in that situation.
Monster Girl wasn't quite as strong or tough as me. That didn't mean she wasn't good enough to have given me some kind of help when I was boxing that maniac in the Arctic. Shrinking Rae was already someone I was kind of afraid of, and if she could have gotten inside of Thokk, for all I knew, she could have ended the entire thing right then and there. Robot might have been able to give me a tactic that would have kept those eight people from dying, too.
As for Kate, Rex, and Black Samson…
Well, I'm sure they could have been helpful somehow too! Probably! So no matter how much I wanted to run from the endless drills, I stuck with them. Because in a future crisis, you truly did not know how much the actions of a single person could matter. That said, there were times when I needed privacy for my training.
Partially because I didn't want some of my trump cards to be seen by anyone, GDA or teammates included. And partly because I just liked the peace and quiet of being somewhere deep in the wilderness to practice some of this stuff. Especially if it ended up being a lot more destructive than I thought it'd be.
"Do you think I can ditch today's training session?" I asked, glancing over at Robot as everyone gathered for the day's drills. "There are a couple of things that I want to try out, but I don't think they're generally safe to do around people."
"Of course you can train alone," Robot answered, as if it was the simplest thing in the world. "You're trustworthy to maintain your own drive, and your abilities, much like my own technological innovation, are somewhat self-directed and require a degree of isolation that I know you can maintain with no distraction."
Kate snorted, a hand on her hip as she smiled my way. "In Robot-speak, that means he trusts you won't get distracted like Rex might."
"Hey!" The teen in question perked up. "I've got tons of self-motivation. You think I got these abs lazing around?" He slapped his stomach to illustrate, and to his credit, Rex was incredibly in shape.
He had the body of someone who'd been run through the wringer from a young age, or at the very least had their nutritional intake optimized for maximum gain. That was before you mentioned all of the cybernetic implants that were riddling his body. I didn't know what the full extent of them were, though I guessed they were at least part of the source of his abilities.
Something to ask the GDA about later. The technology was interesting, even if I didn't have much of a grounding to understand it at the moment. However, the thing about a long life ahead of me was that I could find the time eventually to learn the science. No matter how boring I might find it.
"In the gym, maybe," Shrinking Rae commented. "Outside of it…?"
Rex opened his mouth to debate it before closing his mouth and shrugging. "Alright, fair."
It was soft ribbing toward Rex, though a lot of the friction that existed in the group didn't seem to be there as well. I didn't think that everyone was on the same page or vibing one hundred percent quite yet. There was still a little irritation between Black Samson and the other members of the team when things went contrary to how he was used to. However, fights against external threats did have a way of bringing people together, which was why we were probably past the worst of it.
… If I didn't just jinx myself by saying that.
Regardless, I could only smile back at the bunch of them. "Thanks. Let me know if there's an emergency, too," I told them, creating a portal and stepping through it to a point where I'd already scouted on one my many, many times, flying or teleporting around the globe for whatever reason. The trust that was put onto my shoulders, even with how new I was to the planet, was humbling in its own way.
It wasn't like I was even using it to screw around! I mean, at least this time I wasn't using it for that. The purpose really was just to go deep enough into nowhere, trying to clear my mind and focus. There was only one way to really increase my spiritual energy, and that was to create jutsu, mess around with existing ones, and just learn new things.
Which was easier said than done.
Jutsu, when it came to how they operated as a system, tended to scale on a letter grade rank from E to S. Almost always that came with a level of complexity that grew as you went higher, though that wasn't always the case. Many of them were tied to the actual capacity you possessed for the elemental affinity in question, too.
There was a reason why I was such an ice merchant, besides the fact that I just really liked freezing things. It was cool, heh, as far as powers went, and a lot of my favorite characters in anime also were throwing around stupid amounts of ice. Haku, Tōshirō Hitsugaya, and Kuzan—the list went on. Plainly, it was just a badass way to fight.
Perhaps that had something to do with why I'd been thrown into a body with such a targeted association with the field. But I'd also been squandering my potential in other ways, and I didn't intend on just relying on what was functionally a fancy quirk of my specific bloodline. The Ōtsutsuki were the progenitors of basically every clan in Naruto, and it was time to show off why that was the case.
Specifically by delving into something that was functionally considered mythical by most of the elemental nations: the Kekkei Tōta.
I was somewhere in the Ural Mountains, enjoying the view, as I hovered with crossed legs and my hands outstretched in front of me. Unlike messing around with puppets, this wasn't a matter of just applying technical knowledge to chakra sciences, things that I knew in and out. It went deeper, relying on me to focus on molding three very different affinities inside of me.
AKA, the mystical side of being a space parasite that I'd been dodging with a vengeance. There was nothing wrong with being a Sage or innovating to gain enlightenment so you could use Ninshū. If anything, it was objectively a good thing to do. The problem was that it was also boring, despite the fact that I was wielding the literal lifeforce of the universe at my fingertips.
I liked goofing off, playing video games, catching matinees, and punching people through buildings. Those were aspects of my new life that came very easily to me, because they were fun and kept me engaged easily. Trying to delve into the mess of memories of the body's former owner to sift through what was actually feasible to use so that I could chase power and become stronger was…
It was fine.
I wasn't coping at all.
"Stupid Omni-Man…" I grumbled as I tried to create a solid construct of chakra in my hands. The cube that I was imagining, though, collapsed into particles, a difficult capability even for me to meet. "Stupid Thokk… forcing me to actually put in work."
For the sake of my precious, comfortable life, though, I'd put my nose to the grindstone. Even if I would also be bitching and moaning to Cecil and Robot about it later. This would have been easier if I'd been thrown here as a Saiyan and brainrotted with an addiction to growing stronger.
Oh well. I'd have to settle for being a member of a different positively broken race. With that final thought, I got back to work, throwing chakra at my problems and seeing what stuck.
Author's Notes
Dust release work, ho! It's time to commit war crimes with chakra; he's going to need it.
Additionally, if you would like to read ahead, you can find up to ten chapters ahead via the linktree in my profile. For the time being, all adult content like future smut in anything I write, will be on , though in due time I'll likely try to get the processing and authentication through on to be able to post it there as well. So be mindful of where you're supporting me.