Endless Legacy Ch. 9 (DC Comics) (Patreon)

A/N: In which picking such a cute and cuddly animal might have been a mistake.

-x-X-x-

He’s never named anything before, he abruptly realizes. Perhaps that’s why the first several ideas to pop through his head all sound like things his father would approve of. Because even now, even after Lex Luthor abandoned him and left him all on his own in his previous life… Lucien still automatically seeks his approval before anything else.

Nose wrinkling, something twisting in his gut, a low growl leaves Lucien’s lips.

“Fuck it. Your name is now Spot.”

“Mrow.”

The Snow Leopard Cub’s mewling voice makes him blink as it continues to look up at him, blinking those big eyes it has. Sighing, Lucien reaches down and picks Spot up off of the straw within the crate, lifting the cub high into the air like this is the Lion King or something. Except this isn’t the Lion King and he’s not a monkey last he checked, so he pulls the cub into his arms and supports its bottom, holding it close to him.

Immediately, his powers told him everything he could ever want to know about Spot. His new pet is healthy at least, but then Lucien could have guessed at that. The Lex he was currently dealing with might be a clone that pales in comparison to the real thing, but the clone didn’t know that and Lex Luthor never did anything by half. Frankly, Lucien would be a lot more worried if the cub HAD shown up ill or diseased or with fleas or anything like that.

But no, Spot is picture perfect, even as he shifts and wiggles in Lucien’s arms, mewling pitifully and demanding to be let down. Lucien does so, watching the Snow Leopard Cub slowly toddle around, exploring his new environment carefully.

… He was in charge of someone now. HE was in charge of what was effectively a newborn baby. He’d asked for Spot on a whim, trying to squeeze something useful out of his father. Maybe if he was more like Lex, Lucien could compartmentalize it and just not care… but the truth was, he was like his father in some ways and very much unlike him in others. He cared, more than he’d ever been able to acknowledge or understand before now.

After all, he couldn’t have a pet in his last life. He’d been too sickly for anything, even goldfish. After all, on particularly bad weeks he would find himself lying in bed all day long, barely able to get up to get water. Not exactly conducive to keeping even a damn goldfish alive.

But now here he was, stronger than ever with a bright future ahead of him. And if it turned dark, if anything happened to him, he got to rewind and try again for an indeterminant amount of times before his soul fractured and he stopped being himself. Yay.

Spot though… Spot represented the first real step into this new life of his. Things weren’t going to go the way they had before. Obviously, Lucien knew that… but there was a difference between knowing something and experiencing something. The cub carefully exploring his new surroundings was the experience that Lucien had truly needed to give him a kick in the pants. More so even than what had happened between him and Mercy the day before.

“Mrow.”

Blinking, Lucien looks to see that Spot has stopped and is looking at a specific box in particular. His living room is filled with all of the things he will presumably need to take care of a Snow Leopard Cub… but Spot starts to paw at that box, sniffing at it. Right… Lucien can guess what’s in there. Letting out a soft chuckle, he makes his way on over.

“Need help with that, Spot?”

“Mrow?”

“Yeah buddy… breakfast time.”

-x-X-x-

An hour later, they’d both eaten and Lucien had even managed to go through some of the boxes. He doesn’t understand half of it, but he’ll learn as he goes along. After eating, Spot had quickly proven just how unprepared he was for taking care of a baby animal… by showing Lucien what said baby animals tended to do once they ate. No, not nap, though that had come after. The other thing first.

Lucien had cleaned up after the cub, and now Spot was sleeping in a comfy-looking cat bed. However, seeing the cub curled up in the small bed… Lucien was already imagining just how big Spot would get. He was a cub right now. But Snow Leopards got big. Maybe not as big as some other wild cats could get, but plenty big enough that keeping an adult Snow Leopard as a pet would be… challenging to say the least.

He wasn’t about to just give up on Spot though. Especially not when the cub had already paid a life’s worth of rent and then some. After making sure he and Spot were both fed and the cub was fast asleep, Lucien hadn’t just been opening boxes. He’d been multitasking. In the back of his mind, he was turning over everything he’d learned from Spot while his hands worked on prying open crates.

There was a laundry list of reasons that he’d chosen a Snow Leopard Cub, after all. Sure, maybe there were other creatures on the Earth that could have helped him more, and sure, maybe there were options that would have been easier to care for then Spot was likely to be. But… at the same time, Snow Leopards were one of the toughest cats imaginable for their size. Not as big or powerful as a lion or tiger, sure… but what they did have, they sure made good use of. They were killing machines plain and simple.

With Spot’s help, Lucien could already see ways to enhance himself. All of his senses would gain improvements from the blueprint he’d pulled from Spot, and he could also increase his strength and durability a fair amount as well. He could effectively make himself superhuman, albeit on the lower end.

It wouldn’t be enough though. What he’d gained from Spot could probably allow him to give any would-be muggers on the street a run for their money. Faster reflexes, tougher skin and bones… he could probably handle a knife-wielding assailant at the very least. But he wasn’t going to be bullet proof. And being part Snow Leopard wouldn’t stop a hit squad from coming and taking him, if that were to happen.

Letting out a low breath, Lucien’s eyes flicker to Spot’s sleeping form again. Hm, he really might have made a mistake in picking something that started out so loveable. He was incredibly starved for affection, and while Death was great… what they had between them was so intense and so carnal that Lucien could admit he needed something more… normal.

It certainly said something about his life that having a Snow Leopard as a pet was considered ‘normal’, but then that was just par for the course when being the son of Lex Luthor he supposed. Spot was already filling a place in Lucien’s heart that he hadn’t even known was empty or in need of filling. He was rapidly becoming attached, and it felt like it was much too late to do anything about it.

Which changed things at least a little bit. Before, Lucien could safely say he had one goal and one goal only. Making his beloved Death cum. It was a good, strong, worthy goal in his own personal opinion, and in this case, he felt like his was the only opinion that mattered.

Now however… while that overarching goal had not changed in the slightest, he had a new mandate as well. Raise and protect Spot. The cub had stopped being just a way to get some superhuman attributes the moment that Lucien had first laid eyes on him, and he wasn’t going to lie to himself and say it was otherwise. It wasn’t just about his own safety anymore. Now he had a Snow Leopard to look after as well.

So… what? Did that mean he had to go after his father or something, just to make sure Spot stayed safe? That sort of preemptive bullshit was certainly something Lex would do in a heartbeat. But on top of that, this wasn’t even really his father. It was a damn clone. If Lucien moved against the clone given what Mercy had said, it would only result in his real father popping back up at the worst time.

He still needed to get to work though. While trying to take LexCorp from his father might have seemed like the most obvious option given he was Lex’s son and thus his heir… it was a bad move for a number of reasons. A bad opening move, at least. If he was going to turn on his father, he needed to bolster his defenses massively in a number of other ways first.

Sitting down at the dining table, Lucien steeples his hands together in front of him and thinks. He needed more… everything. Personal power, yes… but not just that. He needed financial power and political power as well. With the right moves, he could step out from under his father’s shadow and make something new. Something that was entirely his.

It wouldn’t be easy of course… but it also wouldn’t be too difficult to get started. After all, Lucien had two massive advantages. One, his mind. Two… he was from the future.

Some of it was foggy, and it was true that he hadn’t gotten out much… but he still remembered things. He still remembered some of the major events that occurred over the next six years and he could use that to his advantage in a number of ways.

In fact… Lucien’s eyes flicker over to the kitchen and he stands up, making his way to a letter he’d not even bothered to open, leaving it to clutter up the counter with a whole bunch of other unopened mail that he’d discarded there. It was about a week old, technically. But for him, it was eight years ago. Frankly, it was a wonder he’d even remembered it.

Then again, it was an invitation to a gathering put on by THE Bruce Wayne. The Wayne Manor Gala was a yearly affair and one that Lucien was pretty sure he was never invited to before this year. Nor was he invited to it after either, not even in the two years he’d had left before he was ultimately kicked to the curb by his cruel, cold father.

However, for whatever reason… this year he’d gotten an invitation. In the original timeline, he’d ignored it of course. He was too sickly for such gatherings, and if he’d tried to go, his father would have stopped him. If somehow he’d slipped through Lex’s net and attended anyways, his father would have punished him. But now? Now things had changed. Now Lucien was better and could represent their family name with something approaching poise.

More than that though, he could represent HIMSELF at the Gala. Bruce Wayne might have been a billionaire playboy, the quintessential billionaire playboy in fact, but he still had a massive company. And the Wayne Manor Gala would be filled with plenty of more serious and self-respecting businesspeople as well. Never mind that Bruce Wayne probably didn’t know the first thing about where his money came from… his party was still an opportunity that Lucien could ill-afford to pass up.

Or could he? Going to the Gala WOULD be a big move… and make big waves as well. He had ideas swirling around in his head about how he could already use such a thing to his advantage, but there was still every possibility that it would backfire and bring his father down upon his head before he was ready. The Gala was high risk, high reward… but it would only give him greater influence, it wouldn’t put money in his pockets right now.

No, if he wanted to make money outside of his father’s wealth, Lucien would need to use his considerable intellect along with his future knowledge… to invent something. It wouldn’t be difficult, to be fair. The world had been accelerating in development long before this time, and in the next eight years it would accelerate even more.

With a clear mind for the first time in his entire life, Lucien even had ideas floating around in his head that would involve improving upon some of the inventions he could steal from the future that he’d come back from. Patent the right thing, and he could become a millionaire overnight. Though that path would also draw his father’s ire eventually, once Lex found out about it. But it would probably take a little longer than if Lucien went to the Wayne Gala.

And yet, what were political and financial power in the face of personal power? Lucien could attend parties and file patents all day long and his father would still have plenty of hit squads to send after him if he decided Lucien was being too much of a nuisance. But Lucien didn’t have to rely upon money, or intellect, or friends to protect himself like Lex did. He had personal power as well.

Through Spot he was gaining several improvements. Feline agility. Enhanced senses. Maybe even claws, though he was still figuring that part out. Right this moment, as he sat there thinking, Lucien was currently already in the process of enhancing his body for the first time. He’d repaired it before, but now… now he was improving it. While just sitting there.

However, no matter how useful Spot was, there was no denying that there were more useful people out there. More useful ‘templates’ that he just needed a single touch to take for himself. If he could lay a finger on a Kryptonian for instance, he would truly be in the money. Or any one of the other dozen alien races that lived on Earth.

And indeed, with his foreknowledge he even knew of some key moments where he might be able to run into those sorts of people.

Then again, he wouldn’t have to risk running into an active super battle to touch a superhero or supervillain if he had enough money or influence to get them to give him just a single moment of their time. He wouldn’t even have to convince them of anything. Arrange a meeting, shake their hands, talk about the weather… and it would be done.

There were lots of paths forward. Lots of ways to achieve his goals, both in the immediate and the long-term. But one thing was certain… no matter what Lucien chose-

Blinking, Lucien finds himself taken out of his thoughts when a fuzzy sensation intrudes upon his steepled hands. He looks down to see the spotted face of a certain Snow Leopard cub poking out from under his hands. Spot, having climbed up onto the table while he was deep in thought, looks at him curiously, seemingly having already imprinted on him by this point.

“Mrow.”

Smiling, Lucien unwinds his hands and reaches under Spot’s chin to give it some rubs. Then, he makes his decision.