After handing the Speed Force Crystal to Savitar and ordering the Speed Legion to link with it as quickly as possible and join the impending war, He-El waved Savitar and Reverse-Flash away.
After Savitar and Reverse-Flash withdrew from the command room, only He-El remained, seated upon his throne.
A stream of silvery-white liquid, like mercury, flowed out from the gaps in the command room, passing through the holographic projections as though gathering amid the cosmic starfield before He-El. It formed into a beautiful woman draped in gauze, with a tall and graceful figure, ever-changing temperament and bearing, and exquisite features that matched He-El's aesthetic standards.
"Master." Zero condensed into form and offered He-El a slight greeting, revealing a relieved, radiant smile.
Even the Solar System displayed in the hologram seemed dim beneath her smile, and the brilliant stars of the cosmos could not compare to her brightness and beauty.
"You've worked hard, Zero." He-El looked at the mechanical body Zero had condensed, something that could be called her core, soul, vital data storage—every word used to describe what was most important.
The moon-sized Zero Mothership was Zero's mechanical body, while the woman before him could be considered Zero's soul, her true body, and her most important core. So long as she existed, it would not matter even if the Zero Mothership were utterly destroyed. Zero could simply rebuild herself with machinery.
These were no ordinary liquid metals. They were metal cells, a form of higher metal life.
Within the Mechanical Corps, only Zero and the seven Marshal-class Battleships had become higher metal lifeforms. Only they could detach themselves from their mechanical bodies like this and act through cores constructed from liquid metal cells.
Of course, metal cells were nothing unusual on New Krypton. Back when He-El had been in the