Extra long chapter this week!

Bon Appetit.

---

"I don't know if the Gordanians can detect us appearing inside their ship, but I am going to assume they can," I said as we reappeared in the middle of an empty hallway, "so be ready for a fight."

Like with all my magic, my teleportation worked with intent, and when I teleported us, I wanted it to drop us somewhere on the ship without any enemies. But that doesn't mean that a shit load of Gordanians soldiers weren't on their way to our location.

I was barely done speaking when alarms started blaring around the ship, and a Gordanian started yelling through the speakers.

"Someone doesn't sound happy to see us," Kid Flash quipped after the yelling over the speakers stopped.

We all turned to Starfire for answers.

"They have discovered our presence inside the battleship," Starfire translated for us, "Trogaar just ordered all his men to find and eliminate us."

"Great!" Robin groaned.

"Who is Trogaar?" Miss Martian asked kindly, having sensed something dark in Starfire's voice when she mentioned him.

"Trogaar is the commander of the ship," Starfire replied hatefully.

From what she told me at the pizzeria, Trogaar was a sadistic piece of shit. She hated him almost as much as she did the scientists who experimented on her. When she wasn't being experimented on, Trogaar had her fight his men in the arena with her hands chained together so she couldn't use her starbolts.

To make things worse, with the shackles restricting her movements, she could barely make use of her strength to fight back, that it was many against one also didn't help. I could only guess how much it stung her pride as a warrior princess to struggle with warriors many times her inferior.

I took a step forward and peeked around the corner, searching for any Gordanians waiting to ambush us.

"Let's go," I said when I saw that the coast was clear. Choosing a hallway at random, I walked into it with Starfire and Cassandra at each of my sides.

"Are we really going to follow orders from this guy?" I heard Kid Flash whisper to Artemis when he thought I was too far to hear him, "For all we know, he is working with the slavers and is luring us into a trap."

"He seems to know what he is doing, and Starfire trusts him," Aqualad answered, "but keep your guard up and your eyes open for anything suspicious."

I sensed Aqualad signaling something to Miss Martian before they all stopped talking. Making it kind of obvious that they switched to talking telepathically with each other.

Rude.

Whatever, I had my own shit to focus on.

Such as the fact that I never had the chance to raid a spaceship before. Heck, I have never been on one before today, but even I know that fights on an enemy ship were supposed to be extra nasty.

We had no way to know the layout of the ship and if there were any internal defenses or hidden traps. Well, I had a way to know, but it would make the team all the more suspicious of me and honestly make this way too easy.

Raiding a spaceship is precisely the kind of adventure Cass and I had been searching for to relieve us of our boredom.

Speaking of relieving my boredom.

"Have we met before?" I asked Miss Martian, "You look familiar."

Miss Martian swallowed nervously, "Uhm, no I don't think so."

"Are you sure? I could have sworn I flirted with you before." I commented casually.

"Eep," Miss Martian blushed and ran away to the other side of the group. I could briefly hear Artemis tease her before they took their conversation mental.

After walking for a while without encountering any enemies, we came to a split in the hallway.

"What now?" Artemis asked.

She tried to look down both corridors to figure out which to take, but they were pretty much identical to each other. Both corridors were made of the same kind of metal and were empty of any signs or anything else that could reveal where they lead to.

"Let's split up, and each take a corridor," I suggested, "Cassandra, Starfire, and I will go right, and you guys go left."

"Wait!" Robin said quickly before we could split up, "It's better if we divide the teams more evenly. I will go with your team."

Kid Flash's lack of opposition and screaming about it being a bad idea told me all I needed to know. They had already talked this over telepathically and agreed to this plan of action.

The little robin thinks he can spy on me, how cute.

I shrugged my shoulders to show I didn't care either way, "alright, let's go."

"Good luck," Miss Martian called as the teams split up and each went one way.

We walked in silence for a few minutes before Robin broke it, "So what are your powers?"

And it begins.

"If we are going to fight together, we should know what the others can-"

That is as far as he got before several green scaly aliens appeared at the end of the corridor we were walking in.

The Gordanian soldiers looked like lizards standing on two feet. They stood 8 feet tall with long scaly tails and wings that looked too small to carry the weight of a human, let alone the weight of an 8 feet tall lizard person.

The Gordanian men immediately opened fire with their staff weapons, shooting blue blasts that burned through the air. Before the energy blasts could reach us, I waved my hand and made a red bubble shield with arcane symbols on it appear around us.

The energy blasts impacted my shield harmlessly before dissipating.

I frowned as I noticed one energy blast go wide and hit the wall of the corridor instead of my shield. The energy blasts scorched and burned a few inches into the ship's unknown metal that was used for space travel in an instant.

Those are some dangerous weapons. Luckily the energy blasts are pretty slow compared to a gun from earth.

Starfire barreled out my shield, passing easily through it with it being made to keep things out and not in, her eyes and hands afire with green, ultraviolet light. One of the Gordanians stopped firing and got in a combat stance before yelling something I can only guess was meant as an insult with the way Starfire growled in anger.

Starfire parried the energy blasts aimed at her from the other soldiers with her energy clad hands and continued moving in a straight path to the Gordanian who insulted her.

The Gordanian soldier crossed his arms in front of his chest in an X to block Starfire's telegraphed punch. That turned out to be an epic mistake, however, when Starfire changed her posture at the last second.

Instead of punching him, she opened her hand and grabbed hold of him. In an incredible feat of strength, she lifted the 8 feet tall Gordanian soldier up with one hand before slamming him into the corridor floor with a mighty bang, denting the metal floor slightly.

Not letting off, she leans over him and punches him in the face, stunning him. After that, she starts hammering on him until his head turns into nothing more than a red smear.

While Starfire was busy with her temper tantrum, the other Gordanian soldiers took the chance to aim and shoot at her defenseless back.

Concentrating, I make a shield appear at Starfire's back to block the blasts.

Cassandra silently appears next to the closest Gordanian. The distracted Gordanian doesn't even notice her before she hits him on his back with a palm strike, right between his wings. A shock wave passes through the Gordanian's body and throws him a few feet away, with all his internal organs ruptured.

The battle pauses for a second as everyone looks in shock at the tiny girl who just killed an extremely durable alien with one strike. What no one knew, however, was that her hands were alight with energy, only visible for those able to see or sense Ki.

At first, I was planning to give Cassandra an ability on top of the assassin's training I took from her father's mind.

That is until she said no, that is.

David Cain, Cassandra's father, may have been a child-abusing bastard, but he had beaten one important creed in his daughter's head, borrowed power wasn't strength. It was weakness.

Unless you have bled and shed tears for it, it wasn't truly yours.

Something I could respect, I also wouldn't want a power someone could take away from me whenever they wanted to, which is ironic considering, I still don't know where my own power came from.

So instead of giving her an ability, I have been increasing her lifeforce and thus her Ki capacity over the years until it became something completely inhuman. Cassandra has so much lifeforce pumping in her little body that she can live for centuries at this point.

Being the combat prodigy that she is, Cassandra had taught herself to do things with Ki no other human on the planet had ever done before. With a few ideas from various Wuxia and Anime, I read and watched in my previous world, thrown in for good measure.

The last three Gordanian's soldiers get a red magic arrow to the head courtesy of yours truly, blasting their heads into gore.

"What the hell are you guys doing!" yelled a stunned Robin, still standing within the boundaries of my shield.

"What?" asked a confused Cassandra, who without anyone except me noticing, had appeared back next to me.

Her Flash Step was so fast that to the untrained eye, it looked like teleportation.

"What do you mean, what!" Robin stalked up to the still confused Cassandra, "You can't go around killing people!"

"But they were bad?" Cass's face was set in an adorable frown.

I left Robin to try and explain why you shouldn't kill bad people who were trying to kill you with all their might to Cassandra and wandered off to where Starfire was standing, glaring down at her kill.

"So...what was that about?" I asked, pointing to the now headless Gordanian. Starfire had acted a lot more aggressive during this fight than I had come to expect of her.

The comics and shows made it seem like she didn't hold a grudge against her captors. But I should have known better, no one is simply going to forgive the people that made them a slave, after all.

"He called me the weakling of the arena!" Starfire growled, her hands curling into a fist.

Those unfair fights she had experienced against the Gordanian soldiers in the arena were a bigger hot button to her than I had assumed.

I put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it, "well, you proved him wrong."

"I did," Starfire said, turning to me, some of her normal mirth returning to her voice.

"Are you two done over there?" I yelled over to a scowling Robin and bored looking, Cassandra.

"No, we are not done!" Robin glowered at me, "I am not letting you kill any more people."

I was tempted to ask him what he was planning to do about it but held myself in. We weren't here to start a fight with the team or the Justice League after we finished beating the team into the ground.

We were literally fighting a race of slavers who go around ransacking planets for slaves, and Robin still wants to save them. This is why I could never be a hero. I could never leave pieces of shit like this alive.

It isn't even like he could throw them in prison for life. The only organization he could hand the Gordanians over to were the Green Lanterns, who would let them off with a slap on the wrist because of the agreement that stopped them from meddling with the Vega Star system.

"Let's try to keep things non-lethal from now on, girls."

Cassandra nodded, not caring either way. Starfire, however, gave Robin a dirty look for trying to stop her from killing her captors and regaining her honor.

"Don't worry. They will get what is coming to them one way or another," I offered her softly.

Starfire stared into my eyes for a moment before turning to Robin and giving him a reluctant nod.

---

(The Team)

Artemis released another exploding arrow from where she was hidden behind a grunting Superboy.

Unfortunately, he wasn't grunting from anything good, but from the energy blasts that were striking him all over.

Her arrow hit the mark like always and blew up one of the turrets shooting their way. She turned her gaze towards the others to see how they were fairing just in time to see Miss Martian rip two guns out the ceiling while Kid Flash ran around them, concentrating their fire on himself.

On the other side, Aqualad made a shield of water in front of himself with one water-bearer to block the blasts before walking up to the last turret and slicing it in two with his other water-bearer in the form of a sword.

"Thanks," She told Superboy gratefully as she got out from behind him.

If he hadn't jumped in front of her when the turrets suddenly popped out the ceiling of the hallway they were walking in, she would have been swiss cheese by now.

"No problem," Superboy grunted in response, playing with the holes in his shirt.

"You know," Kid Flash said after a moment, "Starfire, the person the Gordanians came to earth for, is already on board. Nothing is stopping them from turning the ship around and leaving with all of us on board."

Kid Flash's words made everyone stop in their tracks and then pale when they realized that he wasn't wrong.

"Oh no," Miss Martian muttered, scared.

"Why would you say that!" Artemis screamed in anger.

"It is the truth," Kid Flash defended himself.

"Let's hope that like us, the Gordanians haven't thought about that possibility," Aqualad said stoically.

Even though he said that their pace noticeably increased after that as they raced around the ship, trying to find the bridge and the ship's captain as soon as possible.

Sadly they didn't have any luck finding anything other than empty rooms, more internal defenses, and even more traps.

They were getting nowhere blindly searching such a big ship without knowing its layout. Getting desperate, Aqualad ordered Miss Martian to search for any nearby minds standing around in one place, indicating that they were guarding something.

Miss Martian closed her eyes and concentrated on using only her telepathy, closing off everything else from her mind.

"There is one person standing guard in front of a door not far from our current position," Miss Martian informed them after opening her eyes.

"Are you sure it's only one person?" Superboy asked as they raced to where Miss Martian was guiding them, "You were mistaken with the number of enemies once already."

"Dude!" Kid Flash scolded, elbowing Superboy uselessly in the side to shut him up.

"That is different," answered a downcast Miss Martian, "I am sure I sensed only two minds in the pizzeria. To make sure, I searched for their minds again when I linked us up, and still nothing. I can't sense them."

"Are they blocking you somehow?" Aqualad asked with a slight scowl.

Miss Martian was one of the world's strongest telepaths. Even her uncle, Martian Manhunter, had acknowledged that her aptitude for telepathy was better and stronger than his own.

"I don't think so. It's less blocking and more like they don't have minds at all."

"They are robots!" Kid Flash exclaimed, sure of himself.

"I think we would have noticed if they were robots, stupid!" Artemis scolded before slapping him on the back of the head.

Before they could continue, they arrived at their destination.

"Are the Gordanians supposed to be that big?" Kid Flash asked as he stared at the 12 feet tall, fully armored Gordanian standing in front of a door.

Noticing them, the Gordanian pressed something behind his ear and started yelling in his language.

"I am going on a limb and guess that he just informed everyone where we are."

Superboy screamed and jumped at the Gordanian before punching him on his armored head. The rest of the team watched in shock as the Gordanian took two steps back from the impact before bracing himself and backhanding a stunned Superboy in the corridor wall, putting a dent in the form of Superboy's body in the metal wall.

"...fuck," Artemis swore out loud, commented what they were all thinking.

The Gordanian took a step to continue beating on the dazed Superboy when Aqualad intercepted him with a water hammer to the side of the head.

The blow did as much as Superboy's punch, which was to say that he may have given the Gordanian a scratch, but it did its job of distracting the Gordanian long enough for Miss Martian to lift the dazed Superboy out of the dent in the wall and put him down out of harm's way, next to the rest of the team.

Aqualad retreated to stand in front of the team while keeping an eye on the Gordanian for any sudden moves.

"Are you alright?" Miss Martian asked Superboy as he shook his head from side to side to clear it.

"I am angry!" He grunted, glaring at the Gordanian.

The Gordanian roared and charged at them, moving a lot faster than someone that big and heavily armored should. Aqualad changed his water-bearers in a dome shield and met the Gordanian charge head-on.

Aqualad grunted from the impact but held his ground until the Gordanian's momentum came to a complete halt. Grabbing this chance, Superboy jumped over Aqualad's water dome and clasped both his hands together before hitting the Gordanian on top of the head using all his strength.

"*BANG!*"

It was a mighty blow. That almost blasted everyone off their feet with its shock wave.

It was, however, not enough.

The metal floor groaned and distorted under the Gordanian's feet, and his helmet dented slightly at the point of impact, but other than that, he was fine if a bit dazed.

"You gotta be kidding me," Kid Flash muttered.

Not giving up, Superboy finished landing before changing the direction of his blow, his clasped hands once again hitting the still dazed Gordanian but this time in the stomach from below.

The Gordanian got lifted off his feet and into the air, right in the path of an exploding arrow. The explosion rocked the corridor and threw the Gordanian further down the hallway.

"Do you think-" The Gordanian slammed his hand into the floor with a roar, "-nevermind."

"Artemis cable," Aqualad ordered, "Kid-"

"Got it," Kid Flash answered, racing away before Aqualad could finish his sentence. In a second, he was running circles around the Gordanian as nothing more than a yellow blur, distracting the Gordanian who tried to swat him like a bothersome fly.

Artemis took an arrow out of her quiver before attaching a cable to it, "get ready!" She told Kid Flash telepathically.

Taking aim, she let the arrow fly just as the Gordanian turned around to swat at Kid Flash behind him. Grabbing her end of the cable, Artemis handed it to Aqualad.

Kid flash watched the arrow fly through the air at him in slow motion before catching it.

Kid Flash first ran around one of the Gordanian's legs, binding it with the extra durable polyester cable attached to Artemis's arrow before running in between the legs of the Gordanian giant and doing the same with the other leg.

Noticing what he was planning, the Gordanian went to move away and snap the cable. The cable groaned and stretched but held if barely.

Kid Flash, on the other hand, felt something tugging at his foot and looked down to see that a piece of cable had gotten entangled around his foot.

"Oh, shi-" Kid Flash screamed as he tripped and fell down in front of the Gordanian.

"Wally!" Miss Martian and Artemis screamed in distress.

Sitting up, Kid Flash looked up just in time to notice a fist bigger than his head heading for his face...and nothing. Opening the eyes, he didn't know he had closed, Kid Flash stared at the fist suspended inches from his face, struggling to break its invisible bonds.

"Hurry up!" Miss Martian yelled, her voice straining from the concentration it took to stop the fist of such a strong opponent with her telekinesis.

Kid Flash hurried out from under the giant and handed his end of the rope to Aqualad, who met him halfway.

Miss Martian let out a sigh of relief as she finally let go of the Gordanian's fist.

"Superboy, go high!" Aqualad ordered, grabbing a good hold of both cable ends he pulled with all his might. The cable pulled tight around the Gordanian's feet and broke his balance, uprooting his legs out from under him and making the giant fall over backwards.

"Gladly," Superboy smiled.

Taking a running start, Superboy waited for just the right moment before jumping. Concentrating all his strength in his right fist, he punched the already falling Gordanian in the face with everything he had.

"*BANG!*"

The force of Superboy's punch and gravity slammed the back of the Gordanian's head on the metal floor with enough force to shake the whole hallway, if not the entire ship.

The Gordanian's body bounced once, twice, before coming to a complete halt.

The team stood there for a moment, waiting to see if the Gordanian would stand up again or if he was finally unconscious.

"Now, I'm alright," Superboy told Miss Martian after the Gordanian stayed down.

"So...that just happened," Kid Flash quipped.

"I don't know about you guys, but a room that needs this much protection must contain something important," Artemis noted as she inspected the closed door the Gordanian had been guarding, "A little help here, please."

Aqualad and Superboy slammed their hands in the seam between the doors and pulled them in opposite directions, prying the doors wide open.

Inside was some sort of engine room with numerous Gordanian crew members sitting behind consoles typing away. These Gordanian's stood only 6 feet tall and had no weapons.

That isn't what got the team's attention, however. That honor went to the big screen in the middle of the room, showing the picture of a charging weapon.

All the crew members stood up and turned around when they heard the doors get pried open, ready to surrender. They were engineers, not fighters. It wasn't their place to fight.

Their fear turned into terror when they saw the unconscious body of Captain Weetro lying behind the team of boarders. Captain Weetro was the second in command of the ship and lost only to Commander Trogaar when it came to strength.

"Do you understand me?" Aqualad asked the room. If not, he had to have Miss Martian read one of their minds and see what she could figure out about their plans.

The crew members looked on confused, making it obvious that no, they didn't understand him, that is until one of them pressed an implant behind his ear.

"We surrender?" He said in fluent English, his words coming out like a question.

Seeing this, the rest of the engineering crew followed his lead and also activated their implant's translation feature to inform the boarders of their surrender.

"What is that?!" Superboy growled, pointing to the image of the charging weapon on the screen.

"That is the particle weapon," the same crew member answered easily.

"What is it for?" Aqualad asked this time. He could guess from the name alone, but he had to be sure.

"The Commander has ordered it charged, to blow up the city currently under us."

"Shut it down!" They all shouted simultaneously.

"We can't," the crew member cowered, "only the Commander can stop the particle weapon after it has been started."

"What if we destroy the power source that is powering the weapon," Miss Martian suggested, throwing in her own two cents.

"That won't work. The particle weapon gets its power from the engine of the ship," the crew member explained, "and if you destroy the ship's engine, it will blow up and take us and half the city with it!"

"Well shit, what now?"

"Now, he is going to take us to Torgaar, and we are going to make him turn it off," Superboy snarled while slamming his fist in his open palm.

---

(Alexander)

I watched as Robin jumped around the latest Gordanian patrol group we have encountered so far, throwing exploding and taser batarangs among the group like no one's business.

After the smoke cleared, all the Gordanians were unconscious.

Robin had taken it on himself to beat the Gordanian soldiers as fast as he could without leaving any for the rest of us. Not that I didn't understand where he was coming from.

Starfire had decided to interpret my suggestion of non-lethal combat to mean that as long as the Gordanians were alive at the end of the battle, everything goes.

Robin had learned that little fact the hard way when Starfire ripped a Gordanian's arm off and beat him unconscious with it before leaving him to bleed out.

I don't know a whole lot of Gordanian physiology, but I'm 99% sure that without immediately healing, he was pretty much done for.

We arrived at the door leading to the bridge just as the others also arrived with the smallest Gordanian we have encountered so far in tow.

"Why do you have a Gordanian with you?" I asked. Everything I have seen of the Gordanian race so far, showed them to be an aggressive race that didn't accept weakness.

They didn't seem like the type to surrender.

"We had him guide us here," Aqualad explained. He then went on to explain what they had found out and about the particle weapon that was currently getting ready to blow up the city.

"I have seen the Gordanians use the particle weapon only once before," Starfire said, her face paled as she thought back to when the Gordanians blew up a pirate ship in their way. All it took was one shot, "We must hurry. We can't let Trogaar fire that weapon!"

"That is something we all can agree on."

"Get back." Starfire ordered, turning to the heavy doors, her hands glowing with green energy, "I will blast open the doors!"

"Or," I interrupted before snapping my fingers. The doors lit up with red light before opening by themselves.

The inside of the bridge was what you would expect from the bridge of a spaceship. Consoles and screens were everywhere, with the crew needed to control a spaceship as big as this one sitting behind them typing away, and of course, there was a big ass throne in the middle of it all for the Commander to sit in.

Trogaar was big...almost twice as big as his soldiers, standing at 14 feet tall with muscles bigger than volleyballs spread all over his body, he made an intimidating sight.

The person standing next to his throne, however, had all my attention. Standing next to Trogaar was a 7 feet tall brown Beetle Warrior from The Reach Empire.

I had not expected to encounter someone from The Reach this soon. Starfire did mention that they had a hand in the conquering of her planet and people, but I thought it was more of a once done wipe our hands of it kind of deal. I didn't think that they would go through the trouble of sending a Scarab with Starfire's transport ship.

Trogaar opened his mouth to no doubt begin his monologue when a magic beam blasted him in the face and through his throne.

"What?" I asked as everyone turned to me, "I hate it when villains monologue."

I ignored Kid Flash muttering about the pot calling the kettle black, and turned my attention to the brown Beetle who still hadn't moved an inch from his place, not even when my attack had passed mere feet from him.

They really should stop telling that kid important secrets. If I didn't already know that they knew my identity, Kid Flash would have given it away countless times already.

Trogaar extracted himself from under the rubble of his throne and the destroyed pieces of consoles he had impacted, showing that he was perfectly fine if more than a little pissed off.

"You guys take care of Trogaar," I told the team and Starfire as I walked to the Beetle with Cassandra at my side, "Cassandra and I will handle the brown Beetle."

Kid Flash opened his mouth, but whatever he wanted to say went unsaid as Trogaar roared and charged at them.

I got ready for the first real fight since I got on board this spaceship and was immediately disappointed when the brown Beetle started monologuing.

You gotta be kidding me.

The Reach, bla bla bla.

We are superior, bla bla bla.

We own bla bla bla.

"Are you done?" I interrupted, bored, "can we just skip to the part where we kick your ass?"

The warrior Beetle raged impotently at the slight against his pride or some other shit and charged at me, his hands transforming into scythe blades.

Cassandra jumped in front of me and met his blades head-on with her bare hands. Instead of cutting her hands off, there is a clang as the Beetle's scythes meet the white KI blades that appear around Cassandra's hands.

They exchange a few blows, blade meeting blade in rapid strikes as the two of them test each other.

It became evident fast that the Beetle was stronger than Cassandra even when she was enhancing herself with KI, his every blow cutting through the air like a fierce hurricane.

And it became evident just as fast who the better swordsman or rather swordswoman was. The Beetle's attacks were too uniform, too rigid, like a machine. Cassandra, on the other hand, was fluid like water, fast, strong, and unpredictable.

Already there were nicks all over the Beetle's armor. He would never beat her by relying on the scarabs machine-generated sword style, and he must have realized it too because he went for an obvious kick to open some space between himself and Cassandra.

What wasn't obvious, however, were the boosters on his legs activating mid-kick, boosting the speed and force of his kick dramatically.

Having never fought an opponent like this before, Cassandra was caught by surprise and was forced to change her interception of the kick into a block at the last second. The kick slammed on Cassandra's crossed arms with enough force to destroy a building and blasted her away.

Wings formed on the Beetle's back as he took to the sky, his arms transforming into plasma cannons.

My slight to his pride still fresh on his mind, the Beetle turned to me and let loose a barrage of plasma at where I was standing. The plasma burned through the air, leaving a trail of burned oxygen behind as it went right through my body, showing it to be nothing more than an illusion.

Surprised, the Beetle turned around, his sensors warning him, only to get hit with a magic blast to the face. The force of the blast propelled the Beetle back to the ground, right to where Cassandra was waiting with her KI blades at the ready.

Our mental link telling her exactly where to be.

Cassandra put her hands together. Her two smaller KI blades started merging before becoming a 2 feet long sword made out of blinding light.

Waiting for just the right moment, Cassandra swung her sword with all her strength, aiming to cut the Beetle in half.

As Cassandra's KI sword was inches away from reaching the Beetle, slits opened in the Beetle's armor, boosting him slightly off course, making Cassandra's sword cut clean through his right arm instead of his waist.

The Beetle's arm went flying through the air as he cried out in agonizing pain. Blood started streaming like a broken faucet from his stump before the nanites of his armor encased it, plugging up the breach in his armor and probably stopping the bleeding of his stump.

I watch fascinated as the nanites left the Beetle's detached arm and streamed towards the main body, leaving an unarmored green alien arm lying on the ground.

"Y-You!" The beetle screamed in rage, his voice seeped in anguish, "I will kill you!"

Even though his eyes were covered up, I could feel his hateful glare cover me like fire. If glares could kill, we would have been deader than dead.

The Beetle's leftover arm changes into a plasma cannon twice as large as his previous one's, which he aims at Cassandra. What he doesn't notice in his blind rage, however, was the figures of the others fighting Trogaar behind Cassandra, or he did notice and he simply didn't care anymore.

Before he can shoot, Cassandra Flash steps next to him and slaps the underside of his cannon, changing its aim to the ceiling of the ship. The plasma cannon goes off and blasts a hole right through the durable metal of the ship before continuing into the sky.

Teleporting next to them, I make the metal under the Beetle's slither up until his feet are encased in metal. At the same time, a red energy chain shoots out the floor and wraps around his cannon arm, keeping it aimed to the sky.

This won't hold him long, but it didn't have to.

I watch silently as Cassandra stabs the struggling Beetle warrior in the chest and out the back, right through his scarab.

Right in front of our eyes, the armor around him starts falling apart, becoming dust until there was nothing left.

We are left staring at a Reach alien bleeding from his mouth.

"You won't get away with this," The Reach alien glowered at us, his eyes full of hate, "I have sent an emergency message to the homeworld. The earth will rue the day that they made an enemy of the Reach Empire!"

Finished saying his final words, the Reach alien closed his eyes before dying, the abrupt destruction of his scarab killing him.

"Yea, Yea!" I answered uncaringly.

Pulling her sword from the Reach alien's chest, Cassandra cut his head off as an extra measure, to make sure that he was truly dead and stayed dead.

Just like I taught her.

There will be no miracle 'I survived somehow and got a powerup for no good reason' for my enemies as long as I had anything to say about it.

As I was fighting the Beetle, or rather Cassandra was fighting the beetle considering that she did most of the work, I had kept a close eye(sensing ability) on Starfire and the team's fight against Trogaar.

While Trogaar was indeed tougher and stronger than the regular Gordanian, it wasn't enough when put against seven enemies.

Of which three were heavy hitters who could hurt him plus another four. That while not much of a direct threat, could still distract him and get him ready to be pummeled by one of the three heavy hitters.

So it was no surprise to me that minutes after Cassandra and I were done with our fight, they finished theirs.

Hell, I am convinced that either Superboy or Starfire could have beaten him on their own.

The team and Starfire look over at us to see if we need any help, certain of their victory against Trogaar. Their eyes widen slightly when they see us standing next to a headless corpse.

I watch with my sensing ability as a supposedly defeated Trogaar reaches behind his ear. I speed up my perception of time and take a quick 20-second glimpse into the future to figure out what he was planning.

Retuning my perception to normal, I let Trogaar continue what he is doing.

Trogaar starts laughing maniacally, bringing the attention of the others back to him, before pressing his implant three times. Immediately alarms started blaring around the room, and the Gordanian crew members all start screaming.

A second later, a super-charged magic arrow blows Trogaar's head up, showering the team with blood and gore.

Artemis, Miss Martian, and Kid Flash scream in both disgust and horror as they get showered in blood. The rest simply looked at the now headless Trogaar with a horrified look on their faces.

Except for Starfire, that is. She was smiling at the corpse of her former tormentor.

"What did you do that for!" Superboy yelled. He was glaring at me and looked like he wanted to pummel me into the ground.

"I was trying to stop him from activating what I am pretty sure is the self-destruction of the ship," I turned to the cowardly Gordanian that the team had brought with them, "am I correct?"

"Yes, the ship's destruction will destroy everything within a radius of 100 miles," the Gordanian whimpered in fear.

"Let me guess, you can't stop this one either," Artemis grumbled. Even though she was acting like it was a foregone conclusion, there was still a little hope in her voice.

"No," the Gordanian was outright crying at this point.

I lean down and kiss Cassandra on the lips before pushing her so that she was standing next to the others. Cassandra cried out my name as an elaborate magic circle appears under their feet and teleports them away.

"What about us?" the Gordanian asks falteringly.

"What about you?"

"Please save us too," the Gordanian said, dropping to his knees, "We will be your slaves."

Hmm, I never had an alien soul before.

Whatever, I will just kill them if they refuse to sell their souls.

Reaching out for all the short Gordanians on the ship, which as far as I could tell indicated their stations in life, I teleported all of them to an underground base where another me would be waiting for them, this time without wasting power making useless magic circles.

I teleport myself outside the ship, keeping myself in the air by standing on a magic circle, and come face to face with a glowing battleship.

Like literally glowing. If this wasn't an indication that it was about to blow, I don't know what is.

Closing my eyes, I concentrate on putting a barrier around the whole Gordanian battleship. I succeed just as the ship goes nuclear, blasting my barrier with an explosion strong enough to destroy half a city in one go.

My barrier cracks all over as I try to contain the explosion as best as I can. Just as it looks like I would succeed, my barrier shatters, and I get hit by the last bit of scorching hot shockwave that hadn't dissipated yet.

The scorching shockwave passed over me, burning my clothes and skin before rag-dolling my agony-filled body out of the sky and down to the city.

My flaming body briefly breaks the sound barrier before hitting the asphalt, hard. I feel my left arm snap the wrong way before everything goes black.

"Alexander!"

I blink awake slowly, my everything crying out in agony.

Standing up, I notice Starfire flying my way with a crying Cassandra in her arms. The moment they are close, Cassandra jumps out of Starfire's arms, and Flash Steps to my side. She throws her arms around me and cries in my embrace.

Starfire follows soon after, embracing both of us.

All this hugging isn't really helping with the pain of my broken arm and burned skin.

"I am glad that you are alive, friend Alexander," Starfire said, "I haven't thanked you for helping me yet."

And just like that, I felt a whole lot better.

Sensing something, I looked up just as the Bioship became visible and the team disembarked.

"Are you okay?" Miss Martian asked, worried.

"I will live."

"Did you manage to get the Gordanians out of the ship before it exploded?" Robin asked, looking around as if I had them hidden somewhere(which I did).

"I couldn't waste power on teleporting all of them. I barely had enough power to keep that explosion in check as it was."

"Waste power!" Robin yelled, "those are lives you are talking about!"

"Don't you blame me," I yelled right back at him, " if you had just killed Trogaar, none of this would have happened. If you want to blame someone for the deaths of those slavers, blame yourself."

Robin rocked back as if I had slapped him in the face.

"Let's go," I told Cassandra. I look down at Starfire still in my embrace, "are you coming?"

Starfire gives the team one last look before nodding.

A magic circle flickers on and off under us. I grimace before giving it a nasty look. The circle stays this time and starts to glow before whisking us away.

---

"What did you think of the team?"

"Weak," Cassandra answered from her place within my arms. We were currently in our bedroom, lying on the bed.

Cassandra was playing with my formerly broken arm. Even though she knew it was already completely healed, she was still worried.

"Yea, but you have to admit that they have potential."

Cassandra took her eyes off my arm and peered up at me, "you admire them."

"Honestly, I respect them for the dedication they have to complete strangers," I admitted freely, "I just don't want to be one of them."

"Why?"

It sounded like she was asking me why I didn't want to be a hero but I knew better. She was asking why I had tricked them if I respected them.

"The deception wasn't really for them. It was for those watching their every move." I explained, "Did they buy it?"

Cassandra nodded.

"Good, that should give Batman and the Light a good idea of my fake skills and how I fight, and more importantly, my completely fabricated limits."

From now on, I am going to keep being the standard magic-user that fights from afar, with Cassandra being my close combat protection.

Deception thy name is Alexander.

"Good acting, by the way," I teased Cassandra.

Cassandra pouted and snuggled deeper in my embrace.

The shower in the bathroom adjoining our bedroom stopped running, and a completely naked Starfire walked into the room.

"Are you ready for your thank you?" Starfire asked, posing to showcase her D-cups.

"I love my life."

---

For those who hadn't noticed(Shocking I know but people tend to miss obvious things) I went with a more mature Xena warrior princess Starfire, and less of a ditzy blond Starfire.

---

I also have a Pat-reon, so if you want to read an extra chapter or two faster than the public release or just want to support me by leaving a dollar in the tip jar, you can do so at www - Pat-reon - com - heavensMonarch