A.N. This is a split chapter. Continue onwards when you finish reading this segment.
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Chapter 12
-Nathaniel Adams (Captain Atom)-
Captain Atom had developed a healthy appreciation for the difference between knowing something was dangerous and understanding just how dangerous it could be. His military career had taught him to respect weapons, his transformation had taught him to respect the forces of nature, and his service with the Justice League had introduced him to things that made both categories seem embarrassingly narrow. He had stood against alien armadas, absorbed energy that would have killed ordinary men a thousand times over, and faced enemies whose power could turn a city into a crater before anyone had time to sound an alarm.
Yet none of those experiences had prepared him for the peculiar discomfort of sharing a room with Son Bardock. The Saiyan did not need to raise his voice, flare his aura, or demonstrate a fraction of his strength to inspire caution. He merely had to be present, and Nathaniel Adam's senses would remind him that the universe had a great deal more energy in reserve than he had ever imagined.
The Watchtower's operations centre was quiet enough that he could hear the ventilation system cycling through its regular sequence, although the steady stream of information on the main consoles ensured there was never any shortage of things to occupy his attention. Several holographic displays hovered above the central platform, showing weather patterns, emergency-service communications, satellite imagery, and the latest reports from the League's network of orbital and terrestrial sensors. Captain Atom sat before the main console with his hands moving between controls, checking alerts and keeping an eye on the various feeds that tracked unusual activity across the planet.
It was routine work, important precisely because it was usually uneventful, and he appreciated having something straightforward to do after the past few weeks had introduced a new cosmic problem that nobody could quite define. He had learned to enjoy the quieter duties between missions, when his greatest responsibility was making sure the League did not miss a developing emergency simply because its members were busy dealing with something else.
His attention wandered, briefly, to the hologram occupying a separate display near the rear of the operations centre. It showed the Breach, or at least the best representation the League had managed to construct from the information provided by the Grand Minister. The image was not a photograph in any conventional sense. It was a composite rendering assembled from measurements of gravitational disturbance, energy displacement, and the strange fluctuations in reality that had accompanied the rupture's appearance. What it depicted was a wound across the boundaries separating two cosmologies, a distortion that did not behave like a portal, a wormhole, or any other phenomenon that Earth science had managed to categorise. Its edges shifted continuously, sometimes appearing to fold inwards and sometimes stretching into branching patterns that made the hologram look less like an opening in space and more like a crack spreading through a sheet of glass. Every attempt to establish a stable model of its structure had produced another set of exceptions, leaving the League with an increasingly elaborate visualisation of something they still did not understand.
The Grand Minister had been surprisingly candid about the limits of their knowledge when he visited the Watchtower. The being had arrived with the composure of someone accustomed to discussing the destruction of universes over tea, explained the circumstances that had brought Bardock into their reality, and made it clear that the situation was considerably more serious than a stranded alien with extraordinary powers.
The Breach connected separate cosmologies governed by different metaphysical principles, and its influence was not confined to the point where the two realities touched. Entities had already begun crossing between them, whether deliberately, accidentally, or because the disturbance had made the boundary between their respective existences less reliable. The ruling powers on both sides were cooperating to contain the damage, but closing the rupture was another matter entirely. According to the Grand Minister, it was an active wound in reality, not a door that could simply be shut once everyone had passed through it. Captain Atom had listened carefully during the League briefing, and the more he understood, the less he liked the situation.
The readings were worse now than they had been when the Grand Minister first supplied the data. The changes were not dramatic enough to trigger an immediate emergency response, but they were consistent, and consistency was what troubled Nathaniel most. The disturbance was growing. Its boundaries shifted in ways that made simple measurements unreliable, yet the overall pattern suggested that the area of influence was expanding rather than settling into a stable configuration.
The Green Lanterns had been searching for the corresponding opening on their side of the cosmological boundary, using the Grand Minister's information to narrow their investigation, but so far they had found nothing they could confidently identify as the source. John Stewart and Hal Jordan had both reported anomalies, false leads, and several places where the surrounding energy conditions resembled the supplied data without matching it closely enough to be useful. The universe was vast, and the search was complicated by the possibility that the Breach did not occupy a conventional location at all. It might be hidden behind a distortion of space, displaced across dimensions, or anchored to something that their instruments could not yet perceive.
Captain Atom understood the frustration of searching for a target that refused to remain within the boundaries of a known system. His own powers depended on an intimate relationship with energy, allowing him to perceive, absorb, and manipulate forces that most people could only detect through instruments. In practical terms, he could sense a nuclear reaction before conventional monitoring equipment registered its full intensity, and he could recognise the difference between familiar energy signatures even when they appeared at comparable levels. That ability had proved invaluable during League operations, particularly when dealing with unfamiliar technology or threats whose behaviour did not fit ordinary scientific expectations.
The Breach, however, was like trying to measure an ocean by examining a handful of water while standing on a shore that kept moving. Every reading offered information, but the larger picture remained stubbornly beyond reach. Nathaniel could tell that the phenomenon was changing, yet he could not tell what the changes meant, and he had no intention of pretending otherwise.
He looked again at the hologram, watching a bright line ripple along the simulated edge of the rupture before splitting into several smaller branches. The display adjusted its projection to reflect the latest data, and a series of figures appeared beside it, each representing a measurement that had to be qualified by a warning about uncertainty. Nathaniel had read the technical notes several times, but he still found himself thinking about the fact that the Grand Minister had referred to the damage as something that could threaten both realities if left unchecked.
He had not said that destruction was inevitable, nor had he suggested that the two universes were about to collide. The danger was more complicated than that, which somehow made it worse. A conventional catastrophe could be studied, modelled, and met with force proportionate to the threat. The Breach might require them to protect something they could not fully understand from consequences they could not reliably predict. For a man accustomed to dealing with problems by identifying the source and applying the appropriate response, that was an uncomfortable position to occupy.
The other uncomfortable part of the situation was Bardock himself. Nathaniel had only exchanged a handful of words with the Saiyan, and even those encounters had been brief enough that he could hardly claim to know the man. He had seen him crossing the Watchtower, speaking with other League members, and once standing beside the main observation window while the Earth turned slowly beneath them. Bardock had appeared perfectly at ease, as though the station were simply another building he happened to be visiting. There had been no obvious aggression in his manner, no attempt to intimidate anyone, and no reason to suspect that he was looking for a fight. In fact, the Saiyan had seemed almost disappointingly ordinary when viewed from a distance. He walked, talked, ate, and occasionally complained about things that sounded remarkably mundane.
The problem was that Nathaniel's powers did not allow him to judge Bardock by appearances alone. Whenever he came within a certain distance of the alien, his senses registered the energy inside him, and the discrepancy between Bardock's relaxed behaviour and the sheer magnitude of what he contained left Nathaniel struggling to reconcile the two.
Captain Atom had once considered himself a walking power source with a man trapped inside it. His transformation had given him access to an extraordinary reservoir of energy, together with the ability to absorb and redirect forces that would have overwhelmed almost any conventional defence. If he chose to release enough of that energy at once, he could theoretically inflict destruction on a planetary scale, although doing so would threaten the integrity of his containment system and might leave him unable to control the consequences. He had never seriously contemplated such an act, and the fact that he possessed the capacity did not mean he regarded it as a reasonable option. It was simply part of the burden that came with his abilities. Knowing what he could do had made him more cautious, not less, because the consequences of losing control were too severe to dismiss. He had always assumed that, among the League's more powerful members, he understood the nature of overwhelming energy better than most.
Then he had sensed Bardock, and that assumption had become very difficult to defend.
The first time Nathaniel learned that Bardock had destroyed a planet comparable in size to Earth, he had initially assumed there was some important qualification missing from the story. Perhaps the planet had already been evacuated. Perhaps it had been an artificial construct, or a demonstration conducted under circumstances that made the apparent scale of the destruction misleading. He had heard the account from one of the League's senior members, and the details had sounded almost casual, as though the destruction of an uninhabited world's physical equivalent were merely an extravagant way to settle an argument. When he asked for clarification, the answer had confirmed the essential point. Bardock had destroyed a planet as part of a demonstration, and the people discussing it had treated the event as evidence of how much power the Saiyan possessed rather than as an extraordinary moral or scientific question. Nathaniel had been horrified, but the horror had been accompanied by a curiosity he found difficult to suppress. He wanted to understand the mechanism, the scale, and the degree of control involved. He wanted to know how an organism could contain that much energy without disintegrating beneath its own internal pressure.
The opportunity to learn something had presented itself by accident. Nathaniel had been returning from a briefing when he encountered Bardock in one of the Watchtower's corridors, the Saiyan walking alone with his hands resting loosely at his sides. He had considered stepping aside and allowing him to pass, but Bardock had noticed him and offered a casual greeting that made avoiding a conversation seem unnecessarily rude. Nathaniel had returned it, then asked a question about the Saiyan's energy because the opportunity might not present itself again. Bardock had answered without apparent offence, although his expression suggested that he found the question more technical than interesting. Nathaniel had concentrated on his senses, trying to identify the energy signature with the same care he might apply to an unfamiliar reactor. He had found no clear match. The energy was not nuclear, electrical, electromagnetic, or anything else he could describe using the terminology he knew. It was a living process, intimately connected to Bardock's biology, circulating through him with a consistency that suggested it was not simply stored power waiting to be released. Whatever its nature, it was being produced, consumed, and redistributed continuously, as naturally as blood moving through a human body.
The quantity was what had nearly undone him. Nathaniel could sense energy without needing to absorb it, but the experience was not entirely passive. A sufficiently powerful source could press against his awareness with an intensity that was difficult to ignore, and Bardock's internal reservoir had felt less like a single source than an entire landscape of overlapping forces. The energy moved through him in vast, controlled currents, each apparently responding to the Saiyan's body and intent. It was not merely a large quantity waiting to be unleashed; it was active, organised, and constantly being metabolised.
Nathaniel had tried to estimate its scale, comparing it to the energy signatures of stars, planetary systems, and the most extreme phenomena he had encountered. The comparisons became useless before he could reach a reliable conclusion. He could only describe what he sensed in terms of an impression: if even a fraction of that energy were released without control, the consequences might extend far beyond a single world. His mind had reached for galaxies because nothing smaller seemed adequate, although he knew that he lacked the evidence to support a precise calculation. The estimate was not a scientific measurement. It was an attempt to put an incomprehensible sensation into words.
Bardock, meanwhile, had stood there looking at him with mild curiosity. He had not transformed, flared his aura, or done anything to suggest that he was making a demonstration. He had simply waited while Nathaniel struggled to process the information his own powers were feeding him. When Captain Atom finally asked whether the energy was always circulating at that level, Bardock had shrugged and explained that it was a natural part of his physiology. He could regulate how much he released, but he could not simply stop the underlying process any more than a human could choose to stop having a heartbeat indefinitely.
The answer had been delivered with such casual certainty that Nathaniel had needed a moment to respond. He had spent years learning to control his own power because he knew the consequences of allowing it to overwhelm him. Bardock seemed to regard an energy reserve that dwarfed Nathaniel's own capabilities as an ordinary feature of being alive. It was the difference between a man carrying a dangerous weapon and a creature whose basic biology could make the weapon look insignificant.
What had disturbed Nathaniel most was the realisation that Bardock was not visibly exerting himself to contain the energy. There was no constant strain in his posture, no indication that he was fighting to prevent an internal explosion, and no hint that his attention was consumed by the task of maintaining control. He was talking to Nathaniel about the nature of his powers as calmly as another man might explain his preferred method of making coffee. The Saiyan's energy did not seem to be pressing against an unwilling prison. It was part of him, and he moved through the world with the ease of someone who had lived alongside it for so long that he barely needed to think about it. That did not make the potential danger any smaller. If anything, it made it more difficult to comprehend. Nathaniel knew what it was like to fear the possibility of losing control, but Bardock appeared to have built his entire approach to combat around ensuring that the possibility never became a reality. His restraint was not a sign of weakness. It was the reason everyone else could stand beside him without noticing what he was capable of.
After that encounter, Captain Atom had submitted a report to Batman detailing what he had sensed. He had been careful to distinguish between what his powers had directly registered and what he had inferred from the experience, because Bruce would have little patience for an assessment that presented speculation as fact. Nathaniel could not provide an exact energy measurement, nor could he identify the underlying mechanism, but he could confidently state that Bardock's internal energy reserves exceeded anything he had previously encountered by an enormous margin. He had also noted that the Saiyan appeared to circulate and metabolise the energy continuously, suggesting that it was inseparable from his biology rather than an external power source.
Batman had asked several precise questions, most of which Nathaniel could not answer, then requested that he continue observing Bardock's activity where practical. Nathaniel had agreed, although he had made no secret of his reluctance to repeat the original encounter. He was a professional, and he would do his duty if circumstances required it, but there was no reason to seek out an experience that had left his stomach turning and his instincts insisting that he was standing beside something capable of erasing the stars.
The memory lingered as he returned his attention to the Breach. He wondered whether Bardock's arrival had altered the situation in ways the League could not yet detect, or whether the Saiyan was simply another consequence of a much larger failure in the structure of reality. The Grand Minister had explained that the rupture had been formed by events on both sides, with the destruction and energy released in Bardock's own cosmology intersecting with a separate disturbance in theirs. That detail bothered Nathaniel because it suggested the problem had not been caused by one isolated mistake. Two separate events, each severe enough to damage the boundaries of existence, had somehow converged and created a connection between worlds. If that was the case, understanding Bardock's arrival might be only a small part of the work required to understand the Breach itself. He looked at the expanding hologram and wondered whether the League was trying to solve a problem that had already outgrown the methods they normally relied upon. The answer, judging by the latest readings, was probably yes.
The operations-centre doors opened behind him, and Captain Atom turned away from the hologram as Hawkwoman entered. Shayera Thal carried herself with the purposeful stride of someone who had already decided what needed doing and was merely waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. Her wings shifted slightly as she passed through the doorway, the metal of her harness catching the overhead lights. She wore her usual expression of practical impatience, which made her look as though she had walked into the room expecting to find a problem and was mildly disappointed that nobody had created one yet. Nathaniel checked the duty roster on his console and looked back at her.
"I thought Wonder Woman was next on the rota." he said, gesturing towards the empty station beside him. "Unless the schedule has changed since I checked it, Diana should be taking over in about ten minutes."
"She asked me to fill in." Shayera replied, making her way towards the console. "Apparently, she's got something more important to do than stare at a screen for the next few hours."
Nathaniel glanced at her. "More important than keeping an eye on the planet?"
"That's not how she put it, but I imagine she'll find a way to justify it when she gets back."
"Where is she?"
Shayera sat down and began reviewing the current displays, checking the status of the orbital sensors and the communication feeds before answering. "On the Moon, last I heard. She's gone to train with Bardock."
Nathaniel stared at her for a moment, certain he had misheard. He had been prepared for an answer involving a diplomatic meeting, a mission briefing, or some new emergency that required Diana's attention. He had not been prepared for the prospect of Wonder Woman voluntarily taking the Saiyan somewhere without an atmosphere and encouraging him to practise hitting things. The Moon was not exactly a fragile environment by the standards of the solar system, but it was still a celestial body with a finite mass and a surface that could be damaged. He had no idea what Bardock's idea of a training session involved, and after the previous day's encounter with Amazo, he was not inclined to assume that it would be gentle.
"Training?" he repeated, hoping the word might become less alarming if he said it aloud. "With Bardock."
"That's what I said."
"On the Moon."
"Yes, Nathaniel. The Moon. The large grey object orbiting Earth. I can arrange for a diagram if that helps."
He ignored the jab. "Do you know what they're training for?"
"Probably whatever Diana wants to work on. She likes testing herself against people who can keep up with her, and Bardock seems to enjoy a challenge. From what I've heard, she asked him to spar, and he agreed. Or was it the other way around?" Shayera tapped her chin before shrugging and she adjusted one of the displays, bringing up the latest status report from the Watchtower's exterior sensors. "It isn't as though she hasn't fought powerful opponents before. She knows how to look after herself."
"That's not what concerns me."
"Then what does?"
Nathaniel hesitated, trying to find a way to explain the problem without sounding as though he were afraid of a man who had done nothing to threaten him. The truth was that he was afraid, at least in the instinctive sense, and he had enough experience with dangerous situations to know that pretending otherwise would not make him more useful.
"I've sensed Bardock's energy up close. You haven't, at least not in the way I have. Whatever you think you understand about his power from watching him fight, it doesn't begin to describe what he's carrying around inside him. The amount is difficult to quantify, but it is so far beyond anything I've encountered that I couldn't even find a reliable comparison. He could be restraining enough energy to devastate a planet, perhaps far more, and he does it without appearing to exert himself at all."
Shayera stopped adjusting the controls and looked at him properly. She had heard the reports about Bardock, heard how he thrashed the League's heaviest hitters, watched the footage of his fight with Amazo, and seen enough of his conduct around the League to know that he was not an ordinary alien. However, there was a difference between understanding that someone was powerful and hearing Captain Atom describe him as a source of energy so immense that even his own abilities could not provide a useful scale. Nathaniel was not easily frightened by a display of raw power. He had fought beings who could level cities and had personally survived events that should have killed him. If he was warning her about Bardock, she assumed there was a reason.
"You're telling me that Diana is going to the Moon to spar with someone who could accidentally turn it into a collection of asteroids?" she said.
"I'm telling you that I don't know what would happen if Bardock lost control, and I would prefer not to find out."
"Has he ever lost control?"
"Not that I've seen."
"Has he threatened anyone on the Watchtower?"
"No."
"Has he done anything to suggest that he intends to hurt Diana?"
"No, but—"
"Then perhaps you're getting ahead of yourself."
Nathaniel frowned. "I'm not saying he's going to attack her. I'm saying that his capacity for destruction is so far outside the scale of what we normally deal with that we should be careful about what we encourage him to do. You can be perfectly reasonable and still cause catastrophic damage if you don't understand the forces you're working with. I know that better than most."
Shayera studied him for a moment, then leaned back in her chair. She was not dismissing his concern, but neither was she willing to treat raw power as proof that someone could not be trusted. Her own life had taught her that strength was often the least interesting thing about a warrior. The question was how that strength was used, what discipline stood behind it, and whether the person wielding it understood the difference between winning a fight and surviving one. Bardock had destroyed Amazo quickly, but he had also watched the Team struggle before intervening, and he had not killed the machine until it became clear that leaving it intact would create further risks. His decisions could be debated, but they did not suggest a man who simply released power without thinking about the consequences.
"You're making the same mistake people make when they look at Diana." she said. "They see the sword, the armour, and the stories about what she's done, and they assume the important thing is how much damage she can cause. It isn't. Diana knows how to fight, and she knows when not to. Bardock may be dangerous, but everything I've seen suggests he understands that distinction. If he wanted to cause trouble, he'd have plenty of opportunities without waiting for someone to invite him to the Moon."
"That's a fair point," Nathaniel admitted. "It doesn't make me feel any better about the situation."
"You're allowed to be uncomfortable. Just don't confuse that with evidence."
He gave her a reluctant nod. Shayera could be abrasive, particularly when she thought someone was wasting time worrying about a problem that had not materialised, but she was rarely careless about the things that mattered. Nathaniel had not expected her to share his level of concern, and he appreciated that she had at least considered the substance of his warning rather than dismissing it as cowardice. The truth was that he did not know Bardock well enough to judge his character with confidence.
His fear was rooted in the energy he had sensed, not in any act of aggression the Saiyan had committed. He could not reasonably condemn someone for possessing a dangerous capacity, particularly when his own existence was defined by the same problem on a smaller scale. Still, he would have preferred it if the people responsible for the League's decisions took the possible consequences seriously before arranging a training session on a celestial body.
"Did Diana say anything else?" he asked.
"She said she wanted to see how Bardock fights when he isn't holding back quite so much." Shayera's mouth twitched. "I told her that sounded like a terrible idea. She said she wasn't planning to ask him to destroy the Moon, and that if he thought she was in danger, he'd stop."
Nathaniel looked at her in disbelief. "That's her plan?"
"More or less."
"She intends to rely on his judgement to keep her safe while she encourages him to push his limits."
"She trusts her own ability to judge people, Nathaniel. It's one of the reasons she's still alive."
"And if her judgement is wrong?"
"Then she'll deal with it."
He exhaled slowly. There was little point arguing further. Diana was not reckless in the ordinary sense, and she would not have agreed to train with Bardock if she believed he was incapable of controlling himself. The fact that she had chosen to do so suggested she had reached a conclusion that Nathaniel's limited interactions with the Saiyan had not allowed him to reach. He could respect that, even if he did not share her confidence. It was also possible that the session would be entirely uneventful, with Bardock demonstrating a few techniques and Diana learning something useful about an unfamiliar fighting style. That was the outcome he hoped for, and he decided it would be better to concentrate on the work in front of him rather than imagine increasingly elaborate disasters.
Shayera returned to the console, scrolling through the incoming reports until she reached the latest status update from the Green Lanterns.
"Still nothing on the Breach," she said. "John's team has checked the latest coordinates, and Hal's looking at a possible dimensional distortion near the outer edge of the system. They don't think it's the right one, but they're going to investigate anyway."
"That's the third false lead this week."
"Fourth, if you count the anomaly near Mars."
"I do count it. I'm sure J'onn does too."
"Then it's the fourth."
Nathaniel rubbed his forehead. "At this rate, we'll have searched half the observable universe before we find anything useful."
"Assuming it's in the observable universe."
He looked at her. "You think it might not be?"
"I think we have a collection of readings that don't agree with each other, a visitor who comes from a reality with different rules, and a cosmic entity who says the problem is getting worse but can't tell us where the other end is. I'm not ruling anything out." She tapped the display and brought up the projected location of the most recent anomaly. "If the Breach is growing the way the models suggest, we may be looking for a moving target. Or the readings may be showing us the effect of the disturbance rather than the place where it originates. Until we know more, every search is going to be an educated guess."
Nathaniel gave her an approving look. "That's a much better summary than the last report I read."
"That's because I don't have to write it for a committee."
He smiled faintly, then turned his attention back to the central display. Shayera's assessment was not encouraging, but it was sensible. The League had to continue gathering data, even if the search produced more questions than answers. The Green Lanterns were well suited to exploring the outer reaches of the system, and their rings gave them access to capabilities that ordinary spacecraft could not match. If the Breach was concealed by some distortion of space or dimension, they might eventually find a way to detect it. The problem was that time was not necessarily on their side. The Grand Minister had made it clear that the rupture was dangerous precisely because its behaviour could not be predicted with confidence. Waiting for better information was necessary, but waiting too long could turn a difficult problem into an irreversible one.
He checked the sensor feeds and saw no immediate alerts. Earth was quiet by the standards of the past few days, with no major emergencies reported and no unusual energy signatures appearing on the planetary monitoring network. For a moment, he allowed himself to appreciate the calm. The League had become accustomed to a steady stream of threats, and there was always a temptation to believe that a quiet period meant the universe had finally decided to leave them alone. Nathaniel had long since abandoned that illusion. Sometimes quiet meant that nothing was happening. Sometimes it meant that something was happening beyond the reach of their instruments, and the first sign of trouble would arrive only when it was too late to prepare. The Breach had made that second possibility difficult to ignore.
Shayera glanced at him while reviewing the next set of incoming reports. "You know, if you're that worried about Bardock, you could just ask him about his training methods instead of avoiding him."
Nathaniel gave her a look. "I haven't been avoiding him."
"You've managed to be in a different part of the Watchtower every time he's around."
"That's called scheduling."
"Of course it is."
"I have responsibilities here."
"And I'm sure those responsibilities require you to take the long route around the cafeteria whenever he sits down for lunch."
Nathaniel stared at her. "Have you been keeping track of where I eat?"
"No. I just happen to notice when someone makes a point of not being in the same room as a man who's done nothing to threaten him."
He was tempted to protest, but there was little point. He had, in fact, adjusted his movements to reduce the chance of another close encounter with Bardock. He had not considered it cowardice, merely sensible risk management, but he could see how it might look from the outside. The Saiyan had been polite during their previous conversation, and there was no evidence that he had any particular interest in intimidating him. Nathaniel's discomfort was his own problem, and he would have to decide whether avoiding Bardock indefinitely was compatible with his responsibilities as a member of the League.
"I'll speak to him if there's a reason to." he said at last. "I'm not going to go looking for an excuse."
"That's a start."
"Besides, what would I ask him? How he manages to contain enough energy to make my powers feel like a party trick?"
"That sounds like a perfectly reasonable question."
"It doesn't feel reasonable when you're standing next to him."
Shayera's expression softened a fraction. "I get it. I don't have your powers, so I can't feel what you felt. But I've fought beings whose strength was enough to make everyone else in the room nervous, and I've learned that you can't judge someone by what they could do if everything went wrong. You have to judge them by what they choose to do while things are going right. Bardock could have hunted down and killed Amazo's master for what happened to those civilians, and he didn't. He could have turned that fight into a demonstration of his own superiority, and instead he ended it when he decided the machine had become a problem. That doesn't make him harmless, but it does tell us something about how he thinks. At the very least, he honours his word. He agreed not to go out of his way to kill and he's kept to that pact."
Nathaniel considered her words. He had seen the footage of the Amazo fight, and he remembered the way Bardock had moved through the confrontation with an almost clinical efficiency. The Saiyan had not appeared to struggle, but neither had he seemed particularly interested in prolonging the battle. He had intervened when the machine targeted him, dismantled it, and destroyed it before it could adapt further. The decision had been abrupt, but it had not been arbitrary. Bardock had explained that he did not consider courtesy towards the League a reason to preserve a dangerous machine, and while Nathaniel might have disagreed with the exact timing of the destruction, he could understand the logic. The android had already demonstrated its ability to copy powers and exploit the Team's weaknesses. Leaving it intact would have meant gambling with other people's lives simply to preserve an opportunity for further study.
"You're right about one thing," he said. "I need to separate the danger of his capabilities from the evidence of his intentions. Those are not the same thing."
"They rarely are."
"But I'm still going to be concerned if I hear that he's training on the Moon."
"That's your privilege."
Nathaniel shook his head, then returned to the holographic display. The image of the Breach shifted again, its branching edges crawling across the simulated surface like cracks spreading through ice. He wondered whether Bardock had any more information that might help them understand the rupture, or whether the Saiyan was as much in the dark as the rest of them. The Grand Minister had supplied the League with the best information available, but even a being of his stature had not claimed to know everything about the phenomenon. If the Breach had been caused by events on both sides of the cosmological boundary, there might be details Bardock could explain that the League had not yet considered. Nathaniel made a note to request a more detailed briefing if the opportunity arose, although he had no intention of seeking Bardock out merely to satisfy his curiosity.
The thought of Bardock being on the Moon returned to him with unwelcome persistence. He imagined Diana standing on the grey surface with her sword in hand, facing an opponent whose energy reserves defied any meaningful estimate. He imagined the Saiyan testing a new technique, releasing a little more power than intended, and the shockwave travelling through the lunar landscape with enough force to disturb the surrounding dust for miles. He imagined a crater appearing where there had previously been a mountain, followed by an awkward conversation with the scientific community about why the Moon's surface had suddenly acquired a new geological feature. None of those scenarios was especially likely, but Nathaniel had spent enough time around the League to know that unlikely events had a habit of becoming tomorrow's incident report.
Shayera caught him looking at the lunar tracking display and followed his gaze. "You really are worried about the Moon."
"I'm worried about Diana, and I'm worried about the possibility that two people with enough power to alter a landscape are going to spend the afternoon testing each other's limits on a body that happens to be visible from every telescope on Earth. The Moon is part of the problem, but it's not the whole problem."
"That almost sounded reasonable."
"It was reasonable."
"Almost."
He ignored her and opened the orbital monitoring interface. The Watchtower could track the Moon's position and monitor large-scale disturbances on its surface, although the system was not designed to observe individual sparring matches. He could at least check whether any unexpected energy spikes appeared during the training session, provided the readings were clear enough to distinguish from ordinary lunar activity. He did not want to become the sort of colleague who monitored every move another hero made simply because he was nervous, but he also did not see the harm in keeping an eye on a potentially dangerous situation. If nothing happened, he would have wasted a few minutes of his time. If something did happen, he would rather know about it before the first emergency call reached the Watchtower.
Shayera noticed the new display and gave him an amused look. "Are you seriously setting up a monitor for their training session?"
"I'm checking for unusual activity on the lunar surface."
"Of course you are."
"Given the circumstances, it's sensible."
"Whatever helps you sleep at night, Nathaniel."
He selected the relevant sensor feeds and configured the system to flag sudden changes in surface temperature, seismic activity, or energy output that exceeded the expected background levels. The process took only a few moments, and the resulting display showed the Moon as a pale sphere surrounded by a series of faint measurement grids. Nothing unusual appeared. Diana and Bardock had not yet produced any detectable disturbance, which was reassuring, although Nathaniel knew it did not guarantee that the session would remain uneventful. The Saiyan's ability to control his energy was precisely what made him difficult to assess. A being capable of containing enormous power might produce little or no measurable disturbance until the moment he chose to release it.
He leaned back in his chair and allowed himself one final glance at the Breach before turning his attention to the ordinary duties of the Watchtower. The rupture continued to expand in the hologram, the Green Lanterns continued searching for its counterpart, and somewhere beyond the planet's atmosphere Wonder Woman was preparing to test herself against a warrior whose capabilities Captain Atom could barely comprehend. Nathaniel had spent years learning to live with extraordinary power, and he knew that fear was not a particularly useful response unless it led to better decisions. He would continue monitoring the Breach, provide Batman with whatever information he could gather, and speak to Bardock when a suitable opportunity presented itself. Until then, he could only hope that Diana's confidence was justified and that the Saiyan understood the importance of restraint as well as she believed he did.
For the first time since the Grand Minister's visit, Captain Atom found himself sincerely wishing that the League's problems could be measured in something as simple as miles, tons, or megatons. Those were quantities he understood. They could be calculated, compared, and used to make reasonable predictions about what might happen next. The Breach did not respect those limits, and Bardock seemed to carry an entire universe's worth of uncertainty beneath his skin. Nathaniel looked at the lunar display one last time, saw nothing but the familiar grey landscape, and let out a slow breath.
"Please," he muttered, too quietly for Shayera to hear, "let there still be a Moon when they finish."
Hawkwoman glanced at him from the neighbouring console. "Did you say something?"
"Nothing important."
"Good. Because if you start praying over the lunar monitoring system, I'm going to tell Diana you've lost your nerve."
Nathaniel turned back to the main display. "I'd rather you told her I was being prudent."
"That doesn't sound nearly as entertaining."
He gave her a resigned look and returned to his work, while the Watchtower continued its silent orbit above the world they had sworn to protect. Beneath them, the cities carried on with their ordinary lives, unaware of the growing wound between realities or the calculations being made in an orbital station far above the clouds. The League had no clear answer for the Breach, no confirmed location for the other end, and no reliable estimate of how much time they had before the situation worsened.
For now, all they could do was watch, learn, and prepare for whatever came next. Captain Atom had faced enough impossible situations to know that preparation was often the only advantage a person had, and he intended to make the most of it, even if part of his attention remained fixed on the Moon and the two exceptionally powerful warriors currently occupying it.
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A.N. Continue to part two.