Tonnage

Fabrication.

>>

Nightwing takes them to an area that requires a key card, and then they all pile in. Tom has to duck to make it, but he's kinda getting used to that at this point. They walk into a large room full of odd workout equipment, testing devices, scanners, and anything else you can think of that could sort out the capabilities of an entity. They are approached by a woman on the low side of middle age. She obviously has some Asian in her, but the lighter brown of her hair and her facial features make that likely only part of her heritage. Her lab coat is somewhat made a lie by the stretchy pants she wears under them, but the clipboard, pen, and tablet she carries seem official enough.

“Welcome! I am Doctor Hallie Van-Eirdin but generally, the people around here call me some variation of 'Doc' or 'Doctor Van.' I should have everything set up for you, but if you have any trouble with the machines due to your size or any other reason, or if you have questions feel free to contact me. I'll be up in the observation booth, and if I have any suggestions I'll let you know.”

Then she walks off and the whole herd of them walks over to the first machine.

A treadmill. Oh, the fun he's having.

Nightwing sees his expression through the porthole and chuckles. “Sorry, Tom. But we need to know what we're working with, so we need a baseline. It doesn't do us any good if we sort out a sweet setup and, say, it slows you to a crawl because it bangs against your calf. Or that the weight is balanced poorly for you due to your different body dimensions than standard.”

Tom sighs. “Should I do this in or out of costume?”

Cyborg and Nightwing glance at each other, then they both turn back to him, nod, and say together: “Yes.”

Tom looks their way. “Both?”

Cyborg shrugs. Kind of an interesting motion, given the limitations of his metal chassis. “If you want something similar to what you have, getting both sets of statistics would be beneficial. Up to you though, I'm just here to offer some help if you want it. No pressure. Believe me, I am well aware of how irritating the dog and pony show can get. Been living with it for years. But getting these numbers will help us.”

Tom gives the half-machine man a considering look, nods in acceptance, and steps on it. The two hours of annoyance as he is poked, prodded, worked, scanned, and asked to drink various nasty tasting things for contrast when half of their scans fail to penetrate his epidermis well enough to get anything of substance. Doc Van has to come down twice to assist with various machines and the look on the faces of people that hadn't seen him in action gets more and more excited as the results begin to come in.

>>

Batman walks quietly into the primary meeting room for the core members of the league. The original members, the ones that were there from the beginning.

Power levels mean little here. Batman himself has no superpowers at all, and the range of abilities in the room is vast. But they are all reliable for the defense of Earth. And five of them plus a bonus are all in here watching in real time as Tom is put through his paces.

“How is he doing?”

Superman nods, not taking his eyes off the screen. “He's impressive. Not Kryptonian levels by any stretch but overall in the league I'd probably put him somewhere in the middle of the pack aside from one thing.”

Sitting down, Batman nods. “His durability is impressive.”

“It's beyond impressive, Bruce. Against a purely physical attack with no energy component, he jumps easily to 'S' class.” He turns to Bruce. “Against a purely physical bludgeoning attack he can give me a run for my money. The durability of his tissues is immense. If he had the strength to match, he'd be a shoo-in for excursions to Apokolips. Even as is, I could take him along as support with no real worries unless he met one of their heavy hitters. He could smash most of their line troops for days and not care.”

Wonder Woman speaks then, her own eyes interested as she takes in what is happening on the screen.
“Quiet. They are testing his gravity ability. I have been curious about this, the way he stopped that vehicle was impressive. I want to hear what the Doctor has to say.”

On the screen, they can see that Tom has been asked to stand on a thicker portion of the station floor in an area used for testing things that one probably shouldn't be testing when there is an infinite vacuum being held at bay. He stands on it and does his thing. Then they attach a winch to a harness they have him in for testing, and they start trying to remove him from the floor that so loves him now.

The clicking continues. Endlessly it seems. At four thousand tons, the floor begins to warp up and they immediately shut it down. Many eyes start scanning the data.

The Green Lantern on Earth at the moment, a stalwart and dependable man by the name of Jon Stewart, whistles low. “According to the ring scanners, he created the power-based equivalent of a very small black hole that only attracts him. The only way you are ever going to move him once he's done that is if you can either pull up the ground under him or overpower something that can turn planets into gravel and paste. I'm going to have to report this. Something like that, if modified to effect materials that are not him? Could destroy a planet. Gravitational forces like this are not to be taken lightly.”

Flash is looking at the screen in curiosity. “I wonder if he is tapping into something like the Speed Force? Some kind of 'Gravitational Force' that allows him to do these kinds of things?”

Booster is frowning at the screen. “Not only do I not have any records of him, but I have no records of anybody having this power set ever. I have no idea where this came from. At all.”

“Welcome to the club.” Is Superman's response. “I spent some time poking around the Kryptonian records I have. There have been some individuals that have interesting effects on gravity. Usually allowing flight. But this? As far as I know, this is unprecedented.” He turns to the group. “Granted, a few of us could do the same kind of thing through brute strength, but look at him. If anything, he looks bored. His stamina for most things is incredibly high, but in this case, I'm not convinced it is costing him any strain at all.”

Batman muses at this point. “I have intelligence from the rest of the Gotham defenders that have worked with him that he is practicing a tactic that would include using this to wield improbably large weaponry, and is having trouble with it because moving when this ability is on is mentally challenging for him. But assuming practice and perseverance win out, he'll be armed with something in the fifty to a hundred and fifty-pound range, he'll be impossible to hurt or trip up, and his own weapon won't affect him so he'll be able to wield the thing as if it was a rapier.”

He hits a few buttons to move the screen over to the materials labs where they will be working on planning out his setup, as the people in the testing area are finally heading that way. Then he checks the rest of the statistics that were gathered.

He can lift nearly five tons over his head. He can carry just over eight on his back. This puts him in the middle ranks of strength-based metas. His senses are fine, though nothing exceptional. Human standard. His speed is shocking, though not because he is genuinely fast. Many in the league could at least keep up with him. But to see a man his size and shape, meta nature be damned, managing a running speed of twenty-three and a half miles an hour is simply astonishing.

Then there is the elephant in the room. The statistic that they can't get, but hardly need to. Part of the various scans that they attempted and failed included checking the body for stress indicators. Stamina. How long can he do what he does? While the laws of conservation of energy would indicate that there must be a point at which he can go no further, these two hours of being worked and abused did nothing to him, and he was going easily as strong at the end as he was any other time.

J'onn, who has been mostly silent during this process, merely taking things in, speaks at this point. “His mind is not shielded from abilities such as mine. I have not pried. It is however a weakness that he should be made aware of.”

The lot of them look back to the screen as they see the people they were waiting for entering the weapons and armor labs.

>>

Tom is getting a little hungry at this point. He'd skipped lunch to make sure he wasn't late after shopping, just shoving a couple of small breakfast pastries into his gob and washing them down with a root beer. Starfire has gone off to be poked and prodded in the medical wing, and he's almost to the point of asking they stop for a meal. But the room they are walking into forces him to shove that aside for a moment as Cyborg points to the table in the center of the room.

“Okay, Tom, lay it out. We'll see what you've got, talk about options, work up a schematic, and get to it. What are you looking to get out of this? What's your goal here?”

Tom looks down at the pile of fire-resistant cloth, the crude pack, and the helm. The sandals he's forced to wear and the rudimentary gauntlets he'd spent four days putting together, and drops his head.

“I feel like maybe I should have gotten the emergency training first, and then tried to do this. When I put this together, it was mostly because my Uncle was scared that if Scarecrow knew I'd survived my parents, he'd come back to pick up the spare. Things kind of spiraled out from there and using it for work. But for something dedicated to rescue work, I'm not sure. Never really done it before.”

He barely feels a slap on his arm, and when he looks over he can see Orphan scowling at him. Spoiler doesn't look thrilled either. He nods in acknowledgment. It's kind of hard to argue with what they are referring to.

“Okay, yeah. I guess I can start there.”

And so he does. Explaining what worked, and what didn't. He shows them the crushed Go-Pro housing, though he's already fished the unit itself out and thrown it away as smashed garbage. He explains the two screens mounted inside the diving helm, and that they were there to help with visibility options. That the helm itself, while adequate, was nearly torn off of him by Croc before he could counter, which would have been bad news all around. And finally, he asks if whatever they do can include one of those grapple guns that the Bats use. Not to fly around the city. But to anchor things to himself and to be able to offer assistance to people in areas he can't easily get to. He does ask for one other thing that occurred to him. He's not sure it'll work or is a great idea, but it had occurred to him after the other night so he wants to throw it out there.

“So, as for the pack? Right now it's mostly full of big pressure tanks full of air and acetylene. There's another with fire retardant foam in it that we threw on for fun and as a safety precaution 'cause I was mostly using it for welding. We have a piece of darkened glass we slip into the brackets in front of the porthole when I'm working. I like all that... capability? I like having all the options. Came in handy against Croc, anyway.” He ignores the look of those who haven't heard and continues quickly.

“But I'm not sure I need quite this much of it, and I was thinking that with a larger pack and smaller tanks, we could do what Nightwing was saying and use the extra space for modules. But I... I kinda think the best module to have would be a six-foot tall one that is set up to safely haul somebody out of a hazardous area. Like a...” He grimaces. “Well, kinda like a heavily padded and armored coffin with an air supply? Strapped in like it was a vertical stretcher?” He looks around. “All I could think of when Croc showed up was that if I didn't stop him he'd bring the place down on us. I'd have probably made it unless my air got screwed up. I'd like to have a way to save whoever I'm trying to help from the same kind of thing if it happens again.” He looks down at the floor again. “If, you know. If you think we can get that to work.”

There is silence for a few moments as the experienced heroes take in this massive young man, and it is for the first time clear to all of them just how green he really is as a hero. Not for the suggestion. Nothing wrong with that, Victor is already working it into the schematic. But the tone and look on his face reveal that he is most likely still having deep thoughts and possibly nightmares about what could have been. What had happened to his folks, and what nearly happened to them.

Spoiler nudges him in the side. “You did good, Tom. We all made it. And next time, you'll be better trained, better equipped, and mentally more ready to do it. It's really all about practice and getting used to things.”

Nightwing nods in agreement. “A bit of desensitization happens after a while. Makes it easier to get through the bad stuff when you are more used to dealing with it.”

Cyborg hands over the tablet that he has been fussing around with for ten minutes.

“Something like that work?”

Tom can only stare at the screen in shock. “Yeah. Yeah, that'd work fine.” Then he grimaces. “Repairing this thing is going to cost a mint.”

Robin nods. “Probably. But it won't be you who pays for it. Within reason, the League will supplement the cost of basic gear. Yours is a bit more than a bullet-proof jacket but I don't see that making a difference to the people in charge if you are using it to save lives. It's expensive by your standards. Not ours.”

Tom gives them an odd look. Nightwing elaborates while grinning.

“No, he's right Tom. Our equipment is hideously expensive to produce. Mostly because we are just poor, normal people who can't just say to heck with it and keep packing on more and more weight to carry around. We have to get into miniaturization and lightweight materials to even be able to function. That's ignoring our electronics, which aren't off the shelf either. If you need repairs you can't handle, let me know and we'll sort it out.”

All at once, half of a dozen machines in the room start rumbling to life and Cyborg smirks at them. “Basics are getting done. Let's see about putting together some ideas for other modules. I have all of your air, electronics, and power sources on the sides of the pack, and the center is a gap that you can fit a coffin in, though it'll stick over your head a good two feet when it's on there. Otherwise, it gets in the way of your running.” Turning back to the table with a big grin, he motions back to the screen. “This is gonna be a hoot. Haven't done anything like this for a while.”

Tom stands tall and backs up a pace so he can see everybody at once.

“Thanks, guys. I mean it.”

Spoiler smirks at him. “Not a problem, we'd do the same for any second cousin.”

This causes Cyborg and a few other people who are looking in from afar to be confused. But Tom just smiles at her and blushes.

Just a little bit.