8

August 9, 2015

My body quivered, drenched in sweat as I stubbornly continued to levitate. I was seated in the classic meditation pose, hovering a few feet above the ground. My brow furrowed and I clenched my fists as I strained my magic to its limit in order to remain in the air. It had been nearly seven hours since I started meditating, something that had become my nightly routine.

Although my digital self constantly ran in the background, my main consciousness still occasionally required sleep. Of course the petty needs of my body were no excuse to stop improving, so I devised a training method. I currently needed a full night's sleep once every few days, but I found I could mostly replace it with meditation, extending my need for sleep to once every two weeks.

Through meditation, I would work to increase my mental power and control while also growing my magic. The best way to expand my magical capacity outside of upgrading my potential was to repeatedly expend my reserves, which was becoming somewhat more difficult as they increased. My current way was to magically levitate for as long as I could while also channeling power into my wards. I continued to boost and refine my anti-scrying ward as much as I could while also adding lesser wards against demons and the forces of chaos.

What was currently limiting me the most magically was knowledge. All I had so far came from the internet and my own research, which was going far better than it had any right to but was highly limited as long as I lacked solid data. A portion of me was constantly on magic forums and websites, trying to glean information for or on the few genuine practitioners on there. Unfortunately, those I tracked down all knew ever less than me. Any serious magicals employed conceptual defenses that I was currently unable to break or weren't online in the first place. Since gaining drones I had been searching physically as well, with the same lack of success. I was sure I would find something eventually but the good stuff was probably hidden behind wards I couldn't detect. It was a frustrating loop of being unable to locate/penetrate magical protections because I lacked knowledge and being unable to obtain that knowledge because I couldn't break or detect said protections.

Stewing in irritation broke my tenuous focus and I collapsed to the ground, covered in sweat and magically exhausted. After resting for a few moments I got up to take a shower before starting my day. As the warm water washed over me I considered the progression of my plans. Ray and I had finished designing/testing our anti-pollution nanites and recently set up the first batch. The system was based around high-altitude platforms that controlled and released then nanites. The nanites would then spread out and eliminate greenhouse gases, bringing them down to a much healthier level. Once we had global coverage our estimates had the planet returning to an optimal climate within a decade.

This was my biggest PR coup yet, with me and Ray essentially being hailed as the saviors of humanity for solving the climate crisis. This perception was helped by Ray publicly praising me for saving him in the aftermath of his lab accident. My friendship with Ray Palmer had solidified over the past few months, he really was a genius, and working with him made the climate nanite project come along a lot quicker. He was genuinely grateful to me both for my initial help and my aid in the project, which had been a lifelong dream of his.

I wasn't the only Luthor in the press, however. Unfortunately for Lex, his portrayal was substantially less positive. Lois Lane published an extensive report lodging multiple credible-seeming allegations of corruption and criminal activity against the Luthor Corp CEO. As one of her sources for the article, anonymously of course, I knew they were all accurate. Lex was quick to go on the offensive, but there were already calls for him to at least step down as CEO, if not face prosecution.

As a Luthor, high ranking company executive, and savior of the human race I was of course an obvious choice for replacement. Several Op-Eds were suggesting I take up the position of CEO, only some of which I arranged.

Progress also continued in my more secretive pursuits. I took my suit out for a traditional superhero first night out, patrolling the city and beating up muggers. All of my tech performed as expected in the field and more importantly, I had quite a bit of fun. Descending silently from the sky behind a group of thugs menacing a victim before massively amplifying the air pressure above them, knocking them to the ground, unable to move an inch, is exactly as cool as it sounds. There were a few witnesses to my nightly exploits in the people I saved, which would hopefully start spreading the rumor of a new hero emerging. I traveled around to a few cities, doing a night patrol in each of them, and even allowed for a few blurry photographs to be taken. All of this built up a mysterious image for my hero persona.

The final test for my armor was assaulting a League of Assassins base. Up until now, this was something I left to my drones and nanites, providing backup for Sara and the previously captured, now brainwashed, assassins that made up our "faction." Said faction had been steadily expanding and I now controlled around 20% of League territory in North America.

The rest of America was split between HIVE, Nyssa, and Thalia. Nyssa and Thalia, the progressive and traditionalist fractions respectively, were locked in a bit of a cold war, mainly focusing on HIVE and David Cain's extremists. HIVE had major roots in South American in addition to their North American territories. They were heavily investing in the US as Damien Darhk prepared to move on Star City.

Star City was an interesting place, being the location of Ra's death. The issue of Ra's body was a key point for all factions. By now it was likely somewhere off the coast of Star City, in the Atlantic Ocean, and would take major effort or magic to recover. The traditionalist faction was desperate to recover it while and was obstructed by the extremists and progressives, who valued their newfound independence. A large reason behind Darhk's move to Star City was likely to interfere with the recovery of the body or to retrieve it himself, either to destroy or use in some sort of empowerment ritual. After all, this it was the Green Arrow's territory, the man who killed Ra's, and some in the League were reluctant to cross him.

The vigilante faction, controlled by Red Hood, held very little territory, more concerned with brutally eliminating crime. Cain's faction had significant territory in Europe, but their main power came from their spies and sleeper agents.

Africa was a battleground between the traditional and extremist factions and in Asia, tensions were increasing between the Middle Eastern-based traditionalists and the Japan-based progressives. HIVE and the traditional faction were engaged in brutal combat throughout Australia.

Overall the League of Assassins civil war was quite the mess, a globe-spanning shadow conflict. My faction would soon reach the stage where it would start to be either courted or targeted by the others, which was when the real work would start. For now, I was just slowly building up my number of assassins.

My suit continued to work perfectly during the assault. All of my personnel were equipped with specially designed noise-blocking earbuds so I spread out my drones and unleashed a debilitating sonic attack. We all rushed the compound, coming across collapsed assassins covering their ears and restraining them as we went. This continued and it was looking like another routine mission until I came across someone still standing.

A short yet powerfully built man stood before me, casually dressed and wielding a masterfully crafted katana in one hand. He had close-cropped black hair and an old blade scar running down through his left eye. The man glared at me through his single eye before rushing at me with a furious battle cry, his sword angling to separate my head from my shoulders.

In the second or so of real time it took him to reach me within my mindscape I had all the time in the world to analyze the situation. I briefly wondered why he wasn't disabled by my sonic attacks like all of his comrades before checking his chi level. The assassin's chi put him at near-peak human and he clearly had some skill in using it. I detected small chi barriers around his ears, protecting him from my attack, and quite a lot of chi imbued into his opening strike in order to increase the damage.

Next, I ran through the database of League members I had accumulated from Sara's knowledge and the other league bases to discover his identity, as he clearly wasn't just some mook. His facial scan was rapidly compared to images and identifying characteristics of LoA operatives, resulting in a 92% match.

It appeared I was facing a skilled assassin and swordmaster known by the League moniker of Raqis Alshfara, Blade Dancer in Arabic. He was considered one of the top ten swordsmen in the League of Assassins, known for his calling card of decapitating unsuspecting targets in a single strike. Some of the League's top assassins developed signature styles for when Ra's wanted a kill to be traced back to him in order to spread fear. That the Blade Dancer was one of them spoke highly of his talent and dedication to his craft.

All this information came to me in an instant and I processed it before sidestepping, dodging his initial strike. I allowed my combat prediction models to take over my movement, seeing this as a perfect opportunity to refine it. The assassin unleashed a rapid series of powerful strikes while I focused solely on dodging.

Raqis Alshfara got in a handful of strikes towards the start of the fight, his chi enhanced sword digging some shallow gashes into my armor. As our melee continued my software speedily evolved, decreasing the frequency of strikes. The damage to my armor was repaired at a visible rate by my nanites, causing the swordmaster to intensify his glare and redouble his attacks. The battle went on for a few minutes, with him landing fewer and fewer hits on me as time passed.

Eventually, the advancement of my combat model slowed substantially and I was ready to end the fight. Instead of dodging the next attack, I caught the Blade Dancer's blade in my hand. He had a small moment to glance at me in surprise before I sent a high voltage electric shock through the sword and into his body, knocking him unconscious.

Even as my mind reviewed my costumed exploits I soon arrived at Luthor Corp and from there my office, where there was a load of reports waiting for me. I split off one part of myself to deal with those while another reviewed the Cadmus situation. They were once again enraged, this time that J'onn J'onzz aka The Martian Manhunter had escaped their clutches. Even worse, he was actually reappointed as director of the DEO with full knowledge of his alien nature.

I could actually sympathize with them here, it was pretty ludicrous that an alien was leading the country's defense against alien threats. While I knew J'onn didn't have any malicious intent, it probably wasn't the best strategy overall. To have a live, powerful alien specimen almost in their hands only for him to return to running the agency they helped found, now as an open alien must truly burn.

A combination of this and Lois's story had made Lex intolerable to be around recently, he was almost always in a state of murderous rage. I on the other hand wasn't too concerned, by now all Cadmus personnel that mattered were infected with my nanites and I had started subtly erasing myself from the organization's records. One thing I found and made note of was the location of all of their alien detention facilities as well as Jerimaih Danvers, assisting that rescue would certainly make me more popular among team Supergirl.

In preparation for that, I had started cataloging Cadmus bases and deciding which ones I wanted to keep for myself. All of the rest I was adding to my planned data dump that I would be sharing with the authorities, helping them to uncover all the other Cadmus members and assets. A fair portion of Cadmus funding came from secretive, military discretionary funding that was almost untraceable. Almost nobody would know exactly how much there should be so it would be easy for me to acquire a few billion dollars completely detached from myself for use in highly sensitive projects.

For the next few hours up until lunchtime I worked in my office while my expanded mind busied itself with dozens of projects, as was the norm for me now. One section was focused on writing my next symphony while another refined an ideal political philosophy I could share that would further my goals for society. Both these tasks were made vastly easier by my ability to essentially model anything inside my head.

It is often said that one of the hardest things about the creative process is getting the ideas that sound perfect in your head out into an actual piece of work without diluting them or having them come across as nonsense to others. As a creative person I frequently struggled with this in my past life, but now it wasn't much of a problem for me. Not just due to Lena's genius, (although it did help) but thanks to my ability to control my own mind and make the gap between my thoughts and the page almost meaningless. I could do the entire process inside my head and that made it all unspeakably easier. Think of all the amazing works of art and knowledge that would come once I released some form of this to the public. It would take human creativity and innovation to a whole new level.

Over the past few days, I had noticed a fair bit of suspicious internet activity that was far too advanced to be human. I assumed this was Indigo, as it was around the right time for her to pop up in the show. Although I was fairly confident in my digital powers I was in no rush to engage a member of a race of alien supercomputers in combat.

My suspicions were confirmed when my monitoring of the US nuclear arsenal was tripped, a powerful digital force overwhelmed the base's defenses. Indigo emerged from a cell phone into the physical world and easily slaughtered the soldiers manning their stations before imputing the correct codes, launching a missile at National City. This event put me in a somewhat tight situation. Although Kara stopped the nuke in the show, there had already been significant deviations from Arrow verse canon (something I was generally in favor of with how many stupid things happened in them, just not when it involved nuclear weapons) so I couldn't put all of my eggs in that basket. I was quite certain I could disable the missile fairly easily, but doing so would reveal me to Indigo and even if I escaped I would lose my anonymity and gain a powerful enemy.

On the other hand, while I wasn't the most moral person I didn't feel very comfortable with condemning an entire city to nuclear hellfire in order to stave off possible future issues. Stuck between a megalomaniacal alien AI and thermonuclear devastation I joined my coworkers in frantically watching the news and hoping that Supergirl would save the day.

Tensions rose as the missile neared the city's airspace and I digitally prepared for a difficult fight. The missile came into view of the news choppers hovering over the National City waterline, rapidly perused by a blue and red streak racing through the sky. Supergirl caught up with the missile and started to push it upwards, altering the trajectory. Indigo's rage echoed through the digital realm as she initiated the in-flight detonation process. I prepared to step in, but the DEO was on top of it and informed Kara, causing her to take out the computer system with her heat vision. The missile, now dumb and disabled, fell into the sea and Supergirl rocketed off to battle Indigo.

Kara demonstrated a distinct enmity to walls as she blasted through the military base directly into Indigo and then kept going until she eventually rammed Indigo into a crater in the desert. While Indigo was still dazed, Supergirl thrust a hacking spike into her chest. This allowed the DEO's techs to attack her main consciousness directly, bypassing all her powerful defenses. With a vicious virus inside her systems, Indigo was no match for Supergirl. Her body was destroyed and her consciousness shattered.

Nearly everyone, myself included, let out a sigh of relief once it became clear disaster was averted. Kara did a very nice job there, I would have to remember to reward her once we got to know each other. Of course, there were quite a few people at Luthor Corp whose view of Supergirl did not improve thanks to this incident. Chief among them was Lex Luthor himself.

I made my way towards Lex's office, interested in seeing exactly how bad he took today's events. Partly to gauge how far he was from his rampage and also because I found his deranged conspiracies amusing. As I entered the hall to Lex's office I could hear some muffled yelling, then a loud slam. The doors to Lex's office flew open and Mercy Graves rushed out, her eyes damp, obviously struggling to maintain her composure. She passed by me without acknowledgment, too caught up in her own thoughts to notice me. After a moment of thought I turned and followed her. My mean older brother had made his most loyal minion upset and I saw it as my duty to comfort her.

Mercy led me to one of the private executive breakrooms and I gave her a few minutes before entering myself, locking the door behind me. Mercy startled as the door opened and upon seeing me instantly moved to stand at attention.

"Ms. Luthor! I-" she gasped in surprise.

"Relax Ms. Graves," I told her gently, moving up to her and guiding her back to her seat. "I saw you leave my brother's office and just wanted to make sure you were alright."

"That's very generous of you Ms. Luthor," Mercy said, still trying to remain formal.

"It's my company too, caring for my employees is only right," I stated firmly. I sat down next to her on the sofa and put my arm around her shoulder before continuing. "Why don't you tell me what happened?"

Mercy relaxed into me and took a few deep breaths to calm herself, also breathing in the lust pheromones I had been releasing since entering the room.

"We were both watching the National City nuke crisis in his office," she started. "Lex was getting angrier and angrier as it went on. He's been on a hair-trigger ever since that Lane bitch's latest article came out."

I nodded in agreement and she continued, "Once the situation was resolved Lex launched into one of his usual diatribes about how Superman was responsible for it. He believed it was part of the alien plan to make humans grateful to and dependent upon them. Lex said that by showing how they stopped the nuke they were implicitly showing that they could choose not to in the future. Superman was adding nuclear weapons to his arsenal. For the next few minutes his rage only increased as he ranted about the alien agenda."

She paused for a moment to gather her composure before carrying on, "I mentioned offhand that it was still a good thing that the nuke didn't go off and Supergirl killed the alien responsible. I just meant that I was glad the aliens were restrained by their facade and that they eliminated a powerful asset in the computer alien but it set Lex off. He slammed his fist down on his desk, called me a traitorous alien whore, and told me to get out of his sight!"

She let out a distressed wail as she finished before collapsing into my arms, clearly distraught. The Luthor family had a long tradition that gave me serious Game of Thrones vibes. When Luthor's were in their mid-teens the family would hire a retainer of similar age to serve them. This would build up loyalty from a young age, creating a dedicated minion. Young Lena was denied her own retainer due to Lillian's hatred of her, but Mercy was Lex's. Each retainer was highly skilled but came from unfortunate circumstances, often secretly engineered by the Luthor's themselves. Then when they were chosen by the Luthor's, making the family appear as saviors in their eyes. It was clear even to the previous Lena that Mercy held all the Luthor's, Lex especially, in very high regard. She was clearly quite hurt by Lex's careless words.

"Lex has been getting even more angry and distant, making it harder and harder to connect with him. I'm afraid he might push me away after this," Mercy lamented.

"I'm sure Lex is more reasonable than that," I said unconvincingly, perfectly fine with her eroding faith.

"Lex has always been distant, but I used to have hope he would eventually open up to me. There are still so many ways I want to thank him and the family, but now that he is shutting me out I'll never get the chance!" she continued despondently.

"You want to pay back Lex for what my family did for you, right?" I asked her.

Mercy nodded and I elaborated.

"Have you ever thought that might not be the best way to go about it? Lex is getting worse and even if that changes I don't think he wants the type of gratitude you seem interested in. He's not the only Luthor, though."

That caused Mercy to freeze, her mind obviously racing. It was clear she had never thought about it that before but was now thoroughly examining the implications of that idea. She unsubtly ran her eyes over my body, liking what she saw if the way her thighs started rubbing together was any indication. After going through Lena's memories concerning Mercy I came to the conclusion that she was essentially a Luthor-sexual, focused mainly on Lex. It appeared my theory was correct. The combination of Lex's actions and my pheromones amplifying her attraction to me made it easy for her to include me in her focus once it was pointed out to her.

"No, no he's not," Mercy eventually replied, her cheeks darkening as she stared at me.

"Exactly," I told her with a hungry grin, "and I would never neglect or harass my cute employees as Lex does. That's what you want, right?"

"Yes, Ms. Luthor," Mercy gasped out, squirming under my gaze.

"Mmmm, perfect. With Lena Luthor in charge, good, loyal girls like you have every chance you could want to show how grateful they are and be rewarded for it," I purred.

"Yes!" Mercy almost moaned as my voice and pheromones both rolled over her.

"Come, show me how grateful you can be," I commanded, reclining into the couch.

WARNING 18+ VISIT: https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/lewd-genius-a-lena-luthor-si.14202/ or Johnny Smithers

I smiled lewdly as I observed Mercy's nude body draped over the couch, her lower half still soaked with girl cum. Even with my enhanced endurance, I was still feeling a little worn out thanks to all the orgasms. I took off the strap-on and shrunk it back down before looking around at the mess of clothes and sexual fluids scattered across the room. Sighing, I released a wave of cleaning nanites and then took a seat on a newly clean section of the couch to rest for a moment. Turns out, converting hench girls can be a lot of fun, I'm already excited for future opportunities.