Chapter 5.1- All of Infinity in the Palm of my Hands

Zod and Jor-El. The training, wisdom and experiences of both of these pillars had been gifted to me by that machine. No cause to use either of those gifts, I’d let them take the backseat as what I’d been born with had been more than enough to take me as far as I’d gotten. But now? I leaned heavily on Zod’s training. Left on my own, I’d have given in to panic. Left with only Jor-El, I mioght have wasted away trying to study the remnants of the Chitauri tech that the nuke had left.

But trained to be a soldier and leader, my inner Zod knew the most important things to do. The first step was checking my suit. As expected, all systems were at full power and capacity. Energy would never be a problem in this suit. Not if everything kept working as it should. My power source? A miniaturised arc reactor stored between the suits centerpiece that held the engraved symbol of the House of El. Unlike Tony, I wasn’t going to be using it for its own attacks, so I could keep it covered, and also unlike Tony, my arc reactor was actually a fully sized one. Large enough to take the size of an entire room. So how did it fit in my chest piece? I hear you ask. Brainiac tech, of course. Well, not quite Brainiac tech. The building blocks were in already there, and with a result in mind, it had only taken Kelex centuries in simulated time within our computer core to crack the secrets and come up with our own version.

Even with all the time, the machine itself was the size of a large hall,  but it could send things down to practically microscopic levels. The Arc Reactor ordinarily large enough to occupy a room had the surface area of a single bead when the machine was done. It was a wonder for compactness and discreteness, but it also meant that if anything went wrong, I’d have practically zero chance of fixing it. Its why the steel chestpiece was called steel but was anything but. It was an alloy of Krypton’s densest substance. Hard enough that even I wouldn’t be able to simply break through it.

The rest of the suit, nanotech that flowed from the centrepiece was also in tip top shape. The only thing passing through the portal had lost me was Kelex in my ear. We hadn’t bothered to add a kernel of Kelex to the suit itself since the original was always going to be my man in the chair. That oversight meant I was practically flying in on my own. I’d trust Kelex to reach out to me eventually, but it was my duty to get to more recognizable space.

That was why my next act after making sure everything I had was in good order was reconnaissance. I flew over to the closest piece of wreckage and began to salvage what I could find, searching for any form of computer or navigation system.

XXXXXX- TWELVE HOURS LATER

Single minded discipline and focus. If you asked what Zod’s greatest strength was, this would be the answer I’d give you. After going through training made with him as the template, I’d inherited much of that strength and it was the only reason I still hadn’t given up. Finding a computer had been the easy part. With supervision and senses, finding what I was looking for was easy. All I had to do was catalogue the wreckage into categories and figure out what a computer or the remnants of one would look like.

The first one was found in minutes, but had been much too brutalised to find anything on. I eventually found a computer module that was mostly intact, but the difficult part had been interfacing with it. Getting it to do what I wanted or even searching it for information had been a hell and a half. I’d had to build my own interface that could convert the code the Chitauri ran on into kryptonian code with a universal cypher. One was already baked into the suit’s systems so the entire thing wasn’t impossible, just very very hard.

Hard enough that with intellect rivalling Krypton’s brightest mind, it had taken half a day for me to even come close to completing the device. The first test had been a partial failure, but that gave me the information I needed to complete the interface. It should only take me another few hours to fix everything.

XXXXX

One thing that the MCU really skipped over was what exactly Thanos was. And what was that? An intergalactic warlord in truth. He wasn’t just a raider or something like that. No, Thanos took planets and added them to his empire. It was nothing compared to the greats like the Nova or Kree, but the fact that he controlled multiple solar systems by virtue of what was essentially his own personal strength and that of an army he’d built on his lonesome.

A single person at the helm of such an empire should have been impossible. That was the kind of strength Thanos had. Part of me wanted to fly off right now and confront him but I quite liked the thought of being alive much too much for that. Even if I was stronger than Thanos (and that’s a big if), could I take him on and his Black Order? Ebony Maw alone was a planetary threat at the least. Cull Obsidian had strength to match up with the hulk, and there was Proxima Midnight along with the rogue daughters- Gamora and Nebula. There were too many variables to take into account. If I tried and failed, I’d either die or draw the mad Titan’s attention and make sure he’d be prepared for me the next time.

No, I’d stick to my original plan. Face Thanos on a battlefield of my own choosing with four infinity stones on my side.

But all of that aside, the reason we were talking about the mad titan now was that the Chitauri mothership was at the very center of Thanos controlled space. The Kree and Nova Empires were lightyears away, and Xander itself was almost on the other end of the galaxy. Earth, the blip that it was, was even further than that. My next actions could only be decided once I secured transportation capable of travelling the galaxy at any speed slower than a crawl.

A/N; Working on it. Let’s keep going.