Philadelphia, 4:17 PM.

June 11th, 2010.

“Aiden, how do you deal with stress?” Dinah asked calmly.

“Same way as everyone else, I guess,” Aiden said thoughtfully, “I do things I find entertaining.”

“Give me some examples,” Dinah said dryly when he didn’t elaborate.

Aiden fought down a smile.

“I listen to music, I exercise, visit new restaurants, try new foods,” Aiden said smoothly. “Same thing as everybody else, like I said.”

“Interesting,” Dinah said simply, “What did you end up doing after our last interview? Any nightly activities to take your mind of things?”

Busted huh? Well, even if they thought he had helped the Snowman make his getaway, that didn’t mean he had to admit to it. They hadn’t tried to take him in, so they must not have had any actual proof.

“You want to know what I do late at night to relieve stress?” Aiden laughed, “I don’t think that’s the kind of thing I would want to talk to my therapist about.”

He could almost hear her roll her eyes.

“Nothing illegal, I would hope,” Dinah said wryly, killing his joke in its bed.

“Nope,” Aiden said easily, “I’m a good boy, you know? I stayed inside and listened to music all night; I’ve always been a fan of that one song, what’s it called again? Smooth criminal?”

“I’m familiar,” Dinah said dryly.

Apartment, Philadelphia, 9:58 PM.

June 21st, 2010.

Aiden snatched up his burner phone and glanced at the number, but it said unknown.

“Hello?” Aiden said idly.

“Bubbles, I am contacting you in regards to a job.” A digitized voice said hopefully. “I find myself in need of your uh, protective services?”

Aiden snickered at the sound of his code name; hearing someone else call him it so seriously was hilarious.

“Blue? What's the job this time?” Aiden wondered.

“Uh, the same as last time-hem-at a different location, of course.” The digitized voice said seriously.

“What do you need protection from? Same as last time?” Aiden asked curiously.

“Yes, the same individual. Virago seems to be quite adept at finding me, although I know not how.” The digitized voice said suspiciously.

“Alright, keep in mind I’m only there to provide protection, I will not be assisting in anything else.” Aiden said firmly, “Have you found me any additional clients yet?”

“Uh-not as of right now?” The digitized voice said sheepishly, “Hem-I’ll be handling that business as soon as this job is finished, fear not.”

Aiden frowned at the answer.

“The same rate as last time then,” Aiden declared, “No discount for you.”

A muffled curse floated over the line.

“Very well,” The digitized voice said sullenly.

“Where and when?” Aiden said, amused.

Philadelphia, 11:48 PM.

June 21st, 2010.

“I’d expect more than an hour notice for this kind of thing, you know,” Aiden said dryly as he touched down in the alleyway.

“I see I have nothing to fear tonight,” The Blue Snowman bemused, “Not with the Batman protecting me.”

Aiden fought a smile down from behind his new mask. He really needed to do something about the mask situation, but it was a job for another time. The Blue Snowman looked much the same as he had last time, although the scratches and dents that had littered the armor were gone.

“Fixed your armor up, huh? Looking good, Blue.” Aiden said easily.

The Blue Snowman practically preened at the compliment.

“Yes, only an hour or so of work-for someone of my caliber, of course,” Blue said happily, handing over a brown paper bag.

Aiden took it and opened it to find a small stack of hundred dollar bills, his thousand dollars payment.

“Of course,” Aiden said, amused, “Remember if we encounter anything other then Virago, you’re paying me extra.”

“Of course!” Blue said easily, “I doubt we will encounter anyone at all, Bubbles! I’ve got a foolproof plan of attack tonight.”

“Lead the way then,” Aiden said simply.

Blue led them down the alleyway, into another branch where a white van, with what had to be fake license plates, was parked. Aiden assumed he was driving, given that the Snowman immediately climbed into the back, and the van dipped alarmingly from the weight of the suit.

“I’m a driver as well as a bodyguard now, huh?” Aiden rolled his eyes before opening the front door and getting inside. “What if I didn’t know how to drive?”

“Uh-I suppose we would be walking?” Blue said sheepishly, “I’m afraid I cannot fit in the front in my suit.”

Aiden assumed the man had driven here with the suit off in the back, and gotten changed on-site, or had someone else deliver the van to the alley.

“You should come up with some kind of mobility option,” Aiden said easily, pulling out of the alleyway.

“Mobility option?” Blue said thoughtfully. “Did you have something in mind?”

Aiden shrugged, turning onto the main stretch.

“Make some rollerblades or something that fits in the shoes, maybe,” Aiden said distractedly.

“Um-I was kind of going for a theme here.” The Blue Snowman said cagily.

Aiden rolled his eyes.

“You have some crazy ice tech. Use ice skates instead and make the road icy or something.” Aiden suggested.

“Hey, that’s not a bad idea,” Blue said thoughtfully. “Hmm.”

Aiden drove the van towards the destination, as the villain started mumbling to himself about what he might need to make the idea work. There was something absurd about the idea of sticking to a theme when a much easier and more effective idea was present.

Villains really were insane.

At this time of night, there wasn’t a great deal of traffic, which kind of made the white van stand out a bit too much, at least he thought so. The fact that the back end was still dipping low made it even more suspicious.

He followed his client's directions, not really sure where the hell is the city he was now and pulled them into an alleyway.

“Were here!” The Blue Snowman said, pleased.

The van bounced as the armored man hopped out the back, and Aiden stepped out of the vehicle a moment later. The villain ambled over to the wall of the alleyway and placed it'ss gauntleted hand on it.

Almost immediately, it started freezing over, the growing patch of ice spread in a circular pattern.

Aiden watched, intrigued by the amazing piece of technology; it was like the collar in a way; how the hell could these people generate enough energy for these devices to function with so little space? It was less impressive in the case of the giant armored suit sure, but he’d seen the massive refrigerated rooms they had back home or even liquid nitrogen, but this was something else entirely.

“That should do it!” The Blue Snowman said happily.

The man took a step back before striking the wall with one of his massive hands; the wall shattered into a million pieces and fell to the alleyway floor. Aiden felt a chill go down his spine, and it had nothing to do with the temperature.

He couldn’t help but imagine what that would do to a person if Blue had been less concerned with Virago remaining alive, he might have been able to grab onto the hero and freeze her. Aiden wasn’t even sure he could survive something like that, at least not at his current level of power.

He was pretty sure that he remembered one of the movies that Broly had been in, the guy had been frozen under a lake or something, and later he just woke up without issue, which made absolutely no sense in hindsight.

Yeah, Aiden wasn’t going to test that one out any time soon. He leaned against the wall of the alley, waiting for Blue to return with his loot. This was not quite what he had imagined when he had first thought of providing bodyguard service. If Blue hadn’t sent out some feelers before the next time he called, Aiden might have to ditch the villain. He was playing pretty close to the edge here; hell, he had probably crossed it already.

An alarm suddenly started going off from inside the building, and Aiden stared at the hole in the wall in disbelief. How many robberies had this guy performed exactly? All that experience, and he was still setting off alarms? No wonder everybody kept on finding the idiot.

“Jesus Christ, man,” Aiden said as The Blue Snowman scrambled out of the hole. “I thought you were going for stealth?”

“I was!” The digitized voice wailed, “I didn’t mean to! Let’s go before Virago shows up again!”

Now they had to drive away in a god damned suspicious van as well; he should have just flown the guy to his destination.

Blue crawled into the back of the van, and Aiden heard something crack ominously in the undercarriage. He eyed to bottom of the car suspiciously as he climbed into the driver's seat; he didn’t like the sound of that.

“Dude, you should make your suit sleeker, all that weight is useless,” Aiden said idly as he pulled out of the alleyway. “You should probably just rebrand entirely at this point; your reputation is shot.”

“I don’t want to!” The Snowman whined, “I think it's cool.”

Aiden winced at the unintentional pun.

“Just think of how awesome it would be if you were zipping around the city all fast-like in your redesigned sleek blue suit, and everybody was like, whoa that villains so cool! I wish I were as chill as him!” Aiden said with faux excitement.

The Snowman was suspiciously quiet for a long moment, and he glanced up back in the mirror. Blue was nodding thoughtfully to himself with his hand on his chin.

“What would I change my name too?” The Blue Snowman said slowly.

Aiden tried to think back to any of the old mythology stuff relating to Ice or snow, but the only thing that was popping into his head was that god damned pokemon, Articuno. Who was that frost giant guy from Norse myths? He could remember Skadi, the god of mountains and skiing or something silly like that. Wasn’t Loki part Ice-giant or something? He might actually exist here, so it would be best not to suggest that.

Aiden had spent a lot of his free time as a youth looking into all the strange gods and goddesses that ancient cultures had come up with. The strangest one he could remember was the god of hinges, which was hilarious.

“I’m drawing a blank,” Aiden admitted, “There's a bunch of myths about snow monsters, demons, and gods though, just google it.”

“What the heck is a google?” The Blue Snowman said curiously.

“Ugh, I forgot again.” Aiden sighed, “Just-look it up on the internet.”

They arrived back at the original alleyway, and Aiden hopped out of the front seat.

“Are you sure you’re alright from here?” Aiden said curiously, “The hour isn’t up yet; I can stick around until you get back to your lair or whatever.”

“I don’t have a lair,” Blue said imperiously, “Besides, I’ll need to get changed, and I don’t want to reveal my secret identity to you, because it’s a secret.”

“You better find me some clients soon, or I’m I’m going to rip your helmet off and jam it up to your chunky ass Snowman,” Aiden said easily. “Cya.”

“I will-!” The Blue Snowman said quickly, before pausing in outrage. “Hey! My ass isn’t chunky!”

Aiden zipped off into the air, rolling his eyes; Villains were seriously weird.

Apartment, Philadelphia, 6:05 PM.

July 3rd, 2010.

Aiden rubbed at his eyes tiredly; he felt like he almost had it that time. It was just a matter of building up the required Ki to keep it up for a useful amount of time.

He took a deep breath and brought his Ki forth again, slowly pushing it outwards into a spherical shell that encased him entirely. He scrunched his face up in concentration and slowly raised the amount of Ki until the shell suddenly became visible in the room.

The pale blue energy shield rapidly flickered into visibility; until it slowly started to solidify.

Aiden grit his teeth as he pushed the sphere outwards, and it grew in size slowly until it was almost twice the size. He reached his current limit again and strained as the drain began to bleed his reserves dry. He could keep the drain to a trickle in the normal-sized shield, but as soon as he made it this big, it became a problem.

How the hell Broly had managed to make a shield large enough to encapsulate himself and his dad; while remaining strong enough to survive in space as an untrained baby was insane; but he was pretty sure they had rewritten that in that later movie.

When he had first attempted to create the shield, he had tanked his Ki in under a minute, but now he could comfortably keep it up the condensed version for almost ten minutes, at least when it wasn’t taking any damage. He wasn’t sure how quickly it would deplete then, but he had a feeling he would find out eventually-

The shield abruptly shattered as he lost control again, and sparkling shards of solidified ki evaporated into motes of light in the air before vanishing. Aiden took a deep breath and brought forth another one, slowly working through the steps to increase its size once more. He was getting better; his progress almost felt tangible in a way; the energy was becoming easier to control the more he used it, and the amount he was wasting was diminishing as well.

He was optimistic that the end result would be a sustained orb of Ki that wouldn’t cost him anything other than the initial cost to keep up, at least when he wasn’t taking damage. He couldn’t be an effective bodyguard without at least some method of protecting his clients from general harm.

The less time he spent beating up heroes, the better, and playing those situations on the defensive was the best course of action longterm.

He had managed to up his collar to level five now, and through a great deal of effort and frustration, he had figured out a way to use it while inside the apartment. He had to keep himself from touching the ground while it was activated, which mean constantly using a precise amount of Ki pushing himself into the air to stop him from falling through the roof of the neighbor below him.

He had to stop, turn the collar off and wait for his Ki to regenerate all the time, but the time he could spend with it on was growing, the more he practiced and the less Ki he uses to keep himself afloat.

Aiden had made some progress on the mask situation as well; if a balaclava and plain white face mask could be considered progress. It would absolutely break as soon as it took so much as a single hit, but his balaclava would conceal him.

What he needed was to needle The Blue Snowman into making him a more durable one of some sort, something metal perhaps, but the villain had been quiet since the last job. Aiden wasn’t sure if this was because he had no intention of fulfilling his end of the bargain, or if he just hadn’t found anyone yet.

Either way, he could survive a couple of months with the money he had accumulated; the free food was a lifesaver in that regard. He would have been completely screwed if he’d had to pay for it himself; he didn’t eat anywhere near the amount that Saiyans had in the show, but it was still several times the normal amount.

He would locate an opportunity eventually, and in the meantime, he would only grow more capable of defending himself and others from the numerous threats that littered this crazy world.

The shield shattered again, and he brought it forth once more.

He’d had another interview with Dinah, and several innocent questions that were trying to get him to admit where he had been during the last Blue Snowman raid. He’d stuck to his guns, and once again, he had come out of it unscathed.

Aiden also had another appointment with Emil Hamilton, who had seemed more energetic then he had seen the man before. His ‘S-cells’ had grown again, but the rate had slowed down somewhat, and Emil had predicted that the rate could speed up or slow down, although the mechanism wasn’t yet understood.

It definitely had to do with his Ki usage, although he was starting to think there was more to it than just that. He had definitely used more of it in the last month than ever before, but the rate had slowed.

It was possible that certain utilisations of Ki contributed to the spread more effectively; his first assumption was that it was an internal vs. external divide. The more Ki he used to enhance his body, the more it spreads, while using Ki outside of his body would cause little to no spread at all.

He had started trying to recreate the Solar Flare, but he was thinking of dropping it for now and coming back to it. He could already think of several things from the source that might be classed as internal useage.

Roshi had that technique that made him swole; it made his muscles massive, which was likely the result of concentrating a massive amount of Ki in his muscles. Trunks, Vegeta, Goku, Freiza and Cell, had all managed to do something similar, although three of them had been in Super Saiyan at the time, while the other two were just obscenely powerful. Broly got massively swole as a result of his transformation, and Garlic Junior could do something similar as well; there were probably others he was forgetting, but increased muscle mass via Ki use seemed fairly common.

There was that one bigass namek in one of the movies who could somehow increase his size to that of a giant as well, which was a lot like the giant ape form, at least in that one regard. Where did that mass come from? Where does it go?

Aiden shook his head and concentrated again.

Tien and Piccolo could split into multiple forms with the multiform technique, which might well count as internal. He’d done something to split his Ki back when he was first messing with it, which might be a good lead on how to go about uncovering that one.

Sweat rolled down the side of his face as he struggled to hold the expanded energy shield up. He had plenty of time to figure it all out; there was no need to rush.