High above the New Chicago skyline, Anissa was furious.
She had watched Kradd get dragged away by some unidentifiable machines, but she didn't care to save him. She wanted to finish this quickly. She launched herself at the Mark Grayson, moving at hypersonic speeds, rearing her fist back for a blow that would shatter his jaw and end the fight instantly.
She threw the punch.
It never landed.
Mark didn't try to block it with brute strength like a typical Viltrumite. Instead, he pivoted on his heel, slipping past her guard with a fluid martial arts stance he had drilled into his muscle memory for months. He caught her wrist, used her own immense forward momentum against her, and delivered a devastating, open-handed palm strike directly under her chin.
The technique of the strike rattled her brain inside her skull, sending Anissa spinning wildly through the air.
She caught herself, touching her stinging jaw in absolute shock. This wasn't how Viltrumites fought. Her people were brawlers. They were open, aggressive, and relied entirely on overwhelming force without a single thought for defense.
But this boy... he was fighting like a master assassin.
Anissa roared, flying at him again in a flurry of high-speed strikes. Mark parried, feinted, and deflected. Even though he was not relying solely on his heritage; his way of fighting was brutal. When Anissa finally overextended to grapple him, Mark casually tossed a high-yield GDA flashbang directly into her face.
The blinding light disoriented her just long enough for Mark to grab her by the collar, twist his hips, and hurl her toward the ground with a flawless, supersonic judo throw.
Anissa crashed into the side of a glass skyscraper, shattering the facade. Enraged, she bounded off the steel girders, moving faster than Mark could track, and drove her knee directly into his ribs.
Mark grunted in pain, coughing blood as the blow sent him rocketing downward. He plummeted toward the crowded city streets, smashing through the corner of a massive high-rise apartment building.
Tons of concrete, glass, and steel instantly broke loose, raining down toward the screaming civilians on the sidewalk below.
Anissa sneered, watching the boy fail to protect his precious humans.
But the debris never hit the ground.
A massive wave of brilliant pink energy swept over the falling concrete. In a fraction of a second, the lethal, multi-ton debris was transmuted into thousands of harmless, fluttering butterfly petals and soft cotton. The pink light surged upward, wrapping around the destroyed corner of the high-rise, instantly manipulating the base matter to rebuild the steel girders and glass windows until the building was completely whole again.
Floating nearby, entirely unbothered, Atom Eve casually lowered her glowing hands as if she had just swatted a fly. For a girl who could rewrite the laws of physics with a bored flick of her wrist, this was child's play. That was on top of the fact that the pink energy had also reinforced the steel griders,, making the structure denser and stronger than before, openly mocking Viltrumite destruction.
Anissa stared in paralyzing horror. The power to manipulate base matter on such a scale... it was god-like. It defied every law of physics the Empire understood. Anissa had spent centuries breaking worlds with her bare hands, yet this human girl could un-break them without breaking a sweat. 'What are these primitive Earthlings?' she thought, a cold sweat breaking out on her neck.
SNICKT.
A sickening tearing sound brought Anissa back to reality.
A blinding pain erupted from her stomach. She looked down, her eyes widening in disbelief. Her abdomen had been sliced wide open, her innards threatening to spill out into the open air.
Mark hovered right beside her. In his hand, held in a lethal reverse grip, was the razor-sharp bone-blade he had quietly swiped from Thula's porch swing before taking off.
He didn't give Anissa time to scream or counterattack. Moving with the fluid, merciless motion of a surgeon, Mark spun the blade. He systematically and brutally slashed the tendons in the back of her knees and the joints of her shoulders, instantly crippling her mobility.
Before she could even fall, Mark's hand shot out, wrapping around her throat in a death grip, holding her paralyzed, bleeding body suspended in the air.
…
Back at the suburban house, Lucan was alone, furious, and out for blood.
He stood over Brit, breathing heavily. The human was battered, his jacket in shreds, but he simply refused to die.
"Use your sonic weapons, human!" Lucan roared, driving his boot into Brit's ribs. "Summon your little tricks!"
Brit spat a wad of blood into the grass, groaning as he stood back up. He had the GDA sonic emitters strapped to his belt, but his logic was ironclad. If he activated the frequency, it would cripple Lucan, yes but the indiscriminate waves would also cause agonizing pain to Thula and potentially scramble the developing brain of their unborn baby just a few feet away. He wasn't going to risk his kid.
"I don't need tricks to kick your ass, sideburns," Brit wheezed, raising his fists, relying entirely on his absolute invulnerability.
Lucan snarled, rearing his fist back to punch the human's head clean off his shoulders.
Before the blow could land, a shocking, enraged roar echoed across the lawn.
Lucan was suddenly hit with the force of a freight train. He was sent tumbling backward, tearing up a massive trench in the manicured grass.
Lucan scrambled to his feet, wiping dirt from his thick beard, and looked at his attacker. Standing there, wearing an apron over a t-shirt, was a man with a bare upper lip.
Lucan didn't realize who it was for a full three seconds. When it finally clicked, Lucan's face contorted in absolute disgust.
"Nolan?!" Lucan roared, his voice thick with betrayal. "You cut your mustache?! You shame the Empire! You strip away your own pride to play house with these insects?!"
"I'm… just following… orders," Nolan stated coldly, cracking his knuckles.
Lucan charged. The two Viltrumites collided in the center of the street with a shockwave that shattered the pavement. It was a brutal, ugly brawl. Headbutts, gouging, and bone-cracking strikes. Lucan was fueled by pure zealotry, while Nolan was fighting with the rusty, desperate strength of a man defending his home.
The fight was an absolute dead heat, tearing the street apart. Lucan finally managed to get the upper hand, grabbing Nolan by the throat and rearing his fist back for a killing blow.
Suddenly, Brit stepped directly between them.
Lucan's fist slammed into Brit's chest. The kinetic force meant to kill a Viltrumite dead-ended harmlessly against the human's absolute invulnerability.
"Nolan!" Brit yelled over his shoulder, grabbing Lucan's wrist to keep him temporarily anchored. "Grab my legs! Fastball special!"
Nolan didn't hesitate. He knew exactly what Brit was planning. He dropped low, grabbing Brit by the ankles.
"Trust me!" Brit yelled.
Nolan spun on his heel, using his immense Viltrumite strength to twirl the indestructible human around like an Olympic shotput. He built up blinding, supersonic momentum before releasing Brit directly at Lucan.
The air imploded, producing a deafening sonic boom that cracked the asphalt in every direction. Brit hit Lucan waist-high. The impact sounded like a bomb detonating.
Lucan braced himself, fully expecting to shatter the fragile human upon impact. Instead, his impenetrable Viltrumite skin stretched, tore, and completely failed against Brit's absolute, unbreakable density.
Brit's indestructible body tore entirely through Lucan's torso in a geyser of blood and viscera.
Lucan gasped, his eyes going blank as he looked down at the massive, gaping hole in his stomach. He collapsed onto the ruined asphalt, dead before he even stopped twitching.
Brit tumbled to a halt a few yards away, groaning as he sat up. He was entirely unharmed, but he was completely bathed from head to toe in Viltrumite blood.
"God," Brit muttered, wiping a chunk of gore off his forehead with a grimace. "I'm gonna need a really long shower."
…
High above the city, Mark hovered silently, holding the crippled, bleeding Anissa by the throat.
He cracked his neck, his face a mask of cold, unfeeling execution. This had gone on for too long. These Viltrumites were a plague. Anissa needed to be put down like the filth she was.
He raised the bone-blade, angling it perfectly to sever her cervical spine.
At that moment, the air around him grew completely, unnaturally still. The ambient noise of the city below simply vanished.
A heavy, immaculate white-gloved hand clamped gently onto his shoulder.
Mark froze. He hadn't heard anyone approach. He turned his head and saw his master, Sebas, standing there, casually hovering in the air without displacing a single molecule of wind.
Sebas tilted his head slightly, an odd, chillingly polite smile resting on his face.
"Master Sebas?" Mark asked, confused, lowering the blade slightly.
Sebas looked down at the bleeding, immobile Anissa.
"Young Mark," Sebas spoke, his voice smooth, cultured, and completely at odds with the hyper-violence around them. "If you squash a scout, the hive simply sends more. Instead, we will let them live. Allowt them to return back to their filthy nest, so we may follow them back and exterminate the plague at its source."
Sebas stepped forward, walking on the air as if it were a marble staircase. His pristine white glove glowed with a faint, pulsing green aura. He placed his hand over Anissa's ruined stomach.
The alien magic went to work. The flesh knit together, sealing the massive, fatal wound but only just enough. Sebas purposefully healed her so she wouldn't bleed to death in the vacuum of space, but he deliberately left the severed tendons in her joints irreparably damaged. She would survive the trip home, but she would crawl back to her Emperor like a broken dog.
"There, little pest," Sebas whispered, looking down at her terrified, wide eyes. "Go on. Take us to your nest."
Sebas leaned in closer. His polite smile vanished.
In its place, an aura of dreadful, world-ending intimidation erupted from the butler. It was a pressure so suffocating, so infinitely vast, that Anissa's Viltrumite mind practically shattered under the weight of it. It bypassed any form of physical pressure and targeted her supposedly unmatchable biology. Her Viltrumite DNA, an evolutionary code built to be the apex predator of the universe, suddenly screamed at her that she was prey. It felt as if Death itself had placed its hand on her shoulder.
"Warn them," Sebas commanded, his voice echoing directly inside her soul with a cold, terrifying finality. "Tell your Grand Regent that the Great Betrayer, and the legacy of the betrayed, are here on Earth. Tell him to either leave this planet alone in fear... or I will personally clear away his Empire like dust from a mantelpiece."
[A/N]:
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