Growing Pains Novel Growing Pains - Chapter 51

“What do you an he’s in space!?”

The STAR labs scientist in front of

shrugged helplessly. “Just so. We received an alert that a satellite was struck by sothing and Superman volunteered to help clean up the debris and move the rest into a stable orbit until it can be safely brought down.”

“Well, when will he be back?”

“It’s going remarkably fast so far. If there are no complications, things should be cleaned up in a day or two.”

I let out an audible groan at that.

He was going to be busy for two days!? And of course he was going to avoid

when he got back, either because he wanted to check up on things in tropolis or because he needed to ‘catch up on work’. Liar, I’d seen him write an entire article in less than five minutes with superspeed before. He didn’t need more than an hour for a month of work let alone a couple days!

So Operation: Punch Superman was on hold…again.

Now what was I going to do?

My stomach rumbled and I idly covered it with a hand as I walked out of STAR labs.

Lunch sounded good.

-o-

It was kinda funny how people treated booths and cars out in public.

Like, there seed to be this unspoken understanding that beyond checking if a space was occupied everyone did their best to pretend anyone in them didn’t exist unless they were doing sothing to draw attention. Hell, except for one kid that was pulled away by his distracted mom, everyone was even ignoring my tail and the mound of plates in front of !

It was also sothing I was taking advantage of while blatantly listening in on the two guys in the booth next to

as I finished off my fourth cheeseburger.

“I’m telling you man, gator aint nuthin like chicken.” The guy with so sort of baseball hat was saying to his bearded friend. “An’ if you think that you either never had it or soone did you dirty.”

“Screw you,” Bearded guy scoffed. “I’ve had it plenty. A cousin of mine brought up a bunch last ti he was up here. Tasted a bit off but it was basically the sa.”

“You an the sa cousin that either deep-frys everything for twenty minutes or grills it well-done? Cause then I could see them tasting the sa. Either overdone or turned to charcoal.” Hat guy argued back.

“He’s getting better about that.” Bearded guy said defensively. “And no, I cooked them. A little chewy, but tasted just like chicken.”

“And I’m telling you they aint the sa! Gator is closer to quail with a little bit of fishy undertones.”

“Never had quail.” I heard Bearded guy admit as I slid out of my booth and headed for the door. “What’s that like?”

“...well it’s a bit like chicken…”

I laughed a bit under my breath when I heard that, but kept walking. I didn’t want them thinking I was laughing at them when they gave

the idea of what I wanted to do today.

“I’m gonna eat a dinosaur.” I muttered aloud to no one in particular.

Sure, alligators weren’t exactly the sa as a T-Rex or sothing, but I vaguely rembered that they had basically been around mostly unchanged for millions of years. And that ant it was close enough to count!

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

And as a bonus going south would take

through Washington DC. Which ant I could drop in and say hi to Wonder Woman for a bit. I already knew she probably wouldn’t be up for a spar - sothing about setting a proper image as an Ambassador - but I didn’t think she would mind

stopping by on my way to Florida.

Maybe if she wasn’t busy she could join !

-o-

I waved at the two guys in suits that pulled handguns at

while I touched down in front of so sort of fancy governntal building. “Hi there! I just need to head inside to find Wonder Woman real quick. You mind getting out of the way?”

I saw the instant the two recognized , because both of them glanced at each other and swallowed heavily. Props to them though, neither one showed any nervousness beyond that.

“She’s in a conference right now and this is a restricted area, you need to leave.”

“Sure,” I said casually. “I just want to say hi first and then I’ll leave.”

They didn’t move. Which would have been kinda impressive if I had co here with bad intentions for the people inside, but I hadn’t so it was just a bit annoying instead.

“Co on guys, do you really think you can stop ?”

“They couldn’t, but I probably could.” A new arrival said from off to the side.

I looked over and felt a massive smile break out across my face. “Donna!” I quickly rushed over to give my friend a hug. One that she returned almost imdiately. “What are you doing here? I thought you would still be on Themyscira catching up on things?”

Donna pulled back and frowned at . “I guess that ans you didn’t get our ssage?”

ssage? When was I supposed to get sothing like that? And from who?

“No? But that doesn’t matter right now, if you’re here then I can take you along on my really important mission.” I declared, grabbing her by the wrist and dragging her past the guards and into the building while everyone was distracted. “We just need to say hi to Wonder Woman first.”

“Mission? I…wait – wha? Califa, slow down and explain!”

-o-

Diana did her best to listen carefully to what the Conference Head was saying. But after hearing the sa argunt only slightly reworded for the eighth ti in a row, even she was having trouble preventing her eyes from glazing over in boredom.

What made it worse was the fact she technically didn’t need to be here at all.

Gods knew her position as Themyscirian Ambassador had little to do with the topic at hand, but she had specifically chosen to attend this eting so Donna could gain so experience interacting with people in a more professional setting.

Diana was regretting that decision now, though.

She could only hope that soone called for a recess so she could quietly slip away without soone trying to use her absence as a political lever for either side. Thankfully, she had earned enough respect through her work as a superhero that even politicians just assud she had sothing urgent to attend to so long as she didn’t abuse the privilege too often.

Almost the second she finished that thought, the doors to the conference room slamd open as an unfortunately recognizable Saiyan barged through dragging a confused looking Donna by the wrist.

“Hi Wonder Woman! Just stopping by to let you know I’m taking Donna with .” The tailed nace said cheerfully. “We’re gonna go eat a dinosaur!” And just as quickly as she ca, Hurricane Califa swept back out of the building, still dragging the younger Amazonian behind her.

Diana blinked as the two teens disappeared and the rest of the room turned to look at her before slowly packing up her things and standing.

“If you’ll excuse , it seems like I have a situation to handle.” Diana said calmly. “I hope all of you have a pleasant day.”

If anyone noticed that she was deliberately moving slow just so she would actually have to leave to chase down her ward and her kidnapper, they were smart enough to keep it to themselves. Now the issue was figuring out what Califa ant by ‘eating a dinosaur’ and how much trouble the Saiyan was going to cause doing it.

-o-

Donna took so more convincing, but when Wonder Woman didn’t imdiately chase after us demanding we stop she eventually loosened up and started following

without being pulled along.

We spent most of the flight catching up with what the other had done since the last ti we were together. I told Donna all about sneaking into a secret mountain base and getting into a fistfight with a giant alien lizard guy. She told

about what she had been up to on the island.

Mostly what I expected, getting caught up with the rest of the world and learning where she fit in with the rest of the Amazons. Funnily enough, l had taken over as her combat trainer. Sothing I wanted to talk more about later, but right now Donna was going over a story where she went exploring in one of the ocean caves in Themyscira and ended up fighting so kind of corrupted ocean nymph.

It was a pretty relaxing way to spend the flight down South and it wasn’t all that long before we started seeing marshland.

If we just wanted to hunt down an alligator and be done with it, it probably wouldn’t take more than an hour. But now that I had Donna tagging along I wasn’t going to settle for just any alligator. I wanted the biggest, tastiest one I could find.

That ant going deep into the marsh instead of just grabbing one of the little ones at the edges we saw on the way in.

The thing was? The further in we went, the weirder things got.

At so point the wide open marshland gave way to a canopy of trees so thick that even though it was the middle of the day, it seed like twilight. Old, partially rotted trunks started poking up from the water all over the place and the animal and insect noises vanished. And if that wasn’t weird enough, there was a sort of pressure all around us, like the swamp itself was telling us that we weren’t welco.

…I bet there was a really old alligator in there just waiting to beco dinner.

Donna apparently didn’t share my enthusiasm.

“Califa, sothing is wrong about this place. We shouldn’t be here.”

I just waved her off. “Nah, it’s fine. You’re just imagining things because the swamp is super creepy. All we have to do is go in, find our prey, grab it, and leave. Simple.”

My Amazonian buddy still wasn’t convinced. “I’ve only felt sothing like this when Queen Hippolyta showed

the entrance to the Underworld. This place is sacred to sothing. We’re not welco.”

Part of

agreed with her, but I also wasn’t going to be scared off by so weird feeling. No self respecting Saiyan would! So instead of doing the smart thing and listening to Donna, I flew forward a bit before turning around to face her.

“We’re here to find the oldest tastiest dinosaur in the swamp. Are you really going to get scared off by so trees? Besides, it’s not like they can do anything to us.” I declared as confidently as I could until I noticed Donna wasn’t looking at

anymore. She was looking at sothing over my shoulder.

“Um, about that.” She said pointing behind . “I wouldn’t be so sure…”

The oppressive feeling around us intensified and there was a shifting sound behind .

I cautiously looked over my shoulder just in ti to see a bunch of vines and swamp muck coming together to form a vaguely saiyanoid figure that towered over both of us.

“You trespass in the domain of the Parliant of Trees. Leave now or suffer the consequences!” The massive shape bood.

Well…that wasn’t good.