I shattered the sound barrier, leaving Washington D.C. far behind me.
"Logistics, update," I barked over the comms, checking the digital readout on my wrist.
"Sir, twenty-four hostiles remain active," a technician replied, his voice tense. "I'm also receiving a distress ping from Tether Tyrant and Magmaniac. They're pinned down by a single variant in Pennsylvania, right along your flight path to the Atlantic."
"I'm on it. Keep tracking the international clusters," I ordered, adjusting my trajectory.
I reached Pennsylvania in seconds. Below me, a massive crater had been carved into the middle of a highway. Magmaniac was desperately blasting torrents of superheated plasma to keep the variant at bay, while Tether Tyrant was using every ounce of his tether's strength to bind the clone's arms.
Variant 18, my mind instantly registered as I zeroed in on the hostile's bulky frame. He tried to boil his planet's oceans to extort the global governments. I buried him in a glacier to subdue him.
I didn't slow down. I dropped out of the clouds like a meteor, driving both of my boots directly into the variant's spine. The sheer velocity of the impact snapped his back instantly, driving him twenty feet deep into the asphalt.
Magmaniac and Tether Tyrant collapsed to the ground, panting heavily.
"Good work holding him," I told them, hovering above the crater. "Catch your breath and stay on standby. I'm going to need y'all."
Before they could respond, I pivoted and shot east, out over the Atlantic Ocean.
I pushed my speed to Mach 15. The air around my Bio-Reactive suit roared, but internally, my body felt perfectly fine. My smart atoms were eagerly drinking in the unobstructed solar radiation above the clouds, perfectly fueling my reserves for the long task ahead.
As I moved, my mind ran cold calculations. Fatigue wasn't my biggest problem; it was the clock.
Every minute I spent crossing an ocean was a minute these variants spent causing havoc and possibly slaughtering civilians. The global mortality rate was climbing, and the collateral damage to the planet's infrastructure was reaching catastrophic levels.
I pushed forward, and what followed overseas wasn't a series of battles, but a global execution tour.
I landed in the Eastern Hemisphere like a localized natural disaster. I found a variant terrorizing the Red Square in Russia; Variant 21, a psychotic speedster who tortured beings of smaller planets for fun in his timeline. I caught him mid-stride and snapped his neck without breaking my flight path.
I crossed into France and slammed into Variant 34, a religious zealot who believed Viltrumites were divine, heaven-sent beings and everything else was beneath them, driving his skull straight through the iron beams of the Eiffel Tower.
I blurred into China, decapitating Variant 8, a brutal warmonger who had enslaved the continent because they refused to raise statues of him, leaving his headless corpse to roll down the steps of the Great Wall.
I descended on Egypt, intercepting Variant 13, a tyrant with a pharaoh complex, and suffocated him under hundreds of tons of limestone at the Pyramids of Giza.
In less than twenty minutes, I executed eight variants.
"Sir, there's an emergency!" my logistics lead suddenly shouted in my earpiece, her voice tinged with absolute panic.
"Yes, what is it?" I asked, slowing my flight speed to a constant.
"Four variants managed to slip the international sweep! They retreated back to the U.S. to regroup with the remaining hostiles, and they have hijacked a global broadcast network!"
My wrist-display flared to life, feeding me the live visual.
Standing in a ruined news studio, looking directly into the camera, was a variant in a pristine, unblemished yellow and blue suit. He was smiling.
A cold chill ran down my spine. Variant 35. The Politician.
An extremely dangerous variant. He was highly intelligent, dangerously charismatic, and completely lacked moral empathy. He had smiled, shaken hands, and signed peace treaties with his world's governments, convincing them to fully trust him and lay down their arms—right before he slaughtered them all in their sleep with a serene smile on his face, like he was doing them a favor.
He was a master manipulator; playing Cecil's paranoia against him to dismantle the GDA from the inside, tricking the Guardians of the Globe into a suicide mission against Robot's drone army, and even manipulating his world's Eve into trusting him implicitly before literally ripping her heart out of her body and crushing it.
This bastard is on some Aizen or Orochimaru shit. Just a very dastardly, smooth-talking bastard.
"Citizens of Earth," he said smoothly, his voice echoing across every television, phone, and billboard on the planet. "Do not be deceived by the propaganda you've received. The man claiming to protect you is lying. We are not unstable clones. We are the true Invincibles, from across the multiverse. And your so-called hero is—"
"Logistics!" I roared, my composure breaking as the realization of what he was trying to do hit me. "Hack the network! And cut that feed right fucking now!"
"—exactly what he claims we—"
The feed on my wrist abruptly cut to static.
"Transmission severed, sir," the technician breathed heavily.
The "Clone" narrative is the only thing keeping my reputation intact, I thought, gritting my teeth. If the world ever found out I was responsible for this mess, the backlash would be disastrous.
"Where are they?" I demanded, burning a fiery trail through the atmosphere as I headed straight towards the United States.
"Times Square, New York," logistics reported. "Sir, there are fifteen total variants remaining. And they've all converged there."
Most likely a trap, I mused. At least they aren't running around anymore.
"Listen to me," I ordered, formulating a rapid counter-strategy. "Contact Cecil immediately. Tell him to coordinate a mass stealth transport. I want Tether Tyrant, Magmaniac, Oliver, and the remaining Guardians teleported directly into the subway tunnels deep beneath Times Square. Stealth insertion only. And give me the status of Atom Eve."
"Yes, sir," the technician said, typing away. "Eve is conscious and already en route with the team."
"Perfect, let's get things moving quickly," I said, cutting the comms and pushing my speed to the absolute limit.
When I finally descended into the heart of New York City, it was terrifyingly quiet. Times Square—usually the loudest, brightest intersection on Earth—was dead silent. The massive digital billboards were sparking and dark. Scattered across the streets leading up to the plaza were the broken, bloody bodies of local heroes and independent vigilantes who had tried to hold the line before I arrived.
Hovering dead center in the middle of Times Square, flanked by fourteen other blood-stained variants, was The Politician.
I scanned the group of fifteen, internally sorting them instantly. Eleven of them were above-average variants—strong and capable of turning parts of the Earth into rubble, but nothing to be truly concerned about. However, hovering directly behind The Politician were three distinct powerhouses that made my stomach drop.
The first was Variant 22, the unknown tech genius Angstrom and I had overlooked. He had hidden his intellect flawlessly during our initial battle and his time in the holding cells. He smiled at me, casually peeling back the skin on his temple to reveal metallic plates—an implanted cybernetic chip that hadn't been picked up during his internal scans. By the way fragments of debris were floating around him, it clearly allowed him to wirelessly interface with technology.
He let himself get captured just to see what we were up to, I realized, glaring at his smug visage.
The second was Variant 41, a battle-hungry psychopath cursed with a thirst for combat similar to Battle Beast. He was brutally fast and utilized a lethal pressure-point combat style that stopped me from supercharging my solar reserves. He had slaughtered his world's Nolan, the old and new Guardians, and carried a mace forged from their reinforced bones. He had planned to leave his Earth to hunt down other empires until I arrived. I only subdued him by dragging him into orbit near the Sun and outlasting him until his body physically stopped from the exertion.
But the third powerhouse—hovering slightly above the rest with his arms crossed—gave me the most concern.
Variant 42. The Apex Variant, I thought, recalling how difficult he was to face.
He was the toughest opponent I had fought so far, a variant leagues ahead of the rest. In his timeline, the GDA discovered Nolan's true intentions early and orchestrated a trap using the Flaxan dimension—whose invasions had been a plague for years in that timeline—to avoid a world-ending conflict. However, the plan backfired, and the variant accidentally got trapped instead of his father. The decades spent constantly fighting the Flaxan Empire accelerated his growth; he reached his absolute Viltrumite physical prime in record time. He returned with a conqueror's mindset, murdered Nolan, Battle Beast, and Conquest, and crippled his world's Eve to neutralize her threat. He became the strongest being in his universe by default after the Coalition of Planets sacrificed themselves to wipe out the remaining Viltrumites with an enhanced Scourge Virus. To ensure no one could ever impede his rule, he pushed his Earth far enough away from the sun to freeze the planet, setting it to apocalyptic temperatures that only he could survive. When Angstrom first told me about him, I requested him as a litmus test for my abilities after tearing through standard variants with ease. Boy, did that backfire. It took Angstrom and me billions of Cyber-Earth Reanimen, experimental movement dampeners, and a localized solar flare just to paralyze his senses long enough to snap a high-frequency sonic collar around his neck. We even isolated him from the other variants in a specialized holding cell because of how strong he was.
"You're fast," The Politician called out, his charismatic smile completely devoid of warmth. "But not fast enough to save your reputation."
I hovered fifty yards away, my face completely blank.
"You can't win this," I said coldly.
"We don't have to," The Politician replied, casually gesturing to the towering skyscrapers surrounding us. "While you were playing overseas, we did a little structural engineering. Every building in a three-block radius has been meticulously cracked at the foundation. If you break the sound barrier, if you release a shockwave, or if you even breathe carelessly around us... the supports snap."
He smiled, his eyes gleaming with malicious triumph.
"Millions of your precious citizens, crushed to death in an instant," he whispered. "Stand down and submit yourself. You've lost."
"You really think it's that simple?" I asked, my voice flat, intentionally dragging out the conversation to buy time. "You drop these buildings, you lose your leverage. Then, I'll just kill you anyway."
The Politician chuckled, opening his mouth to counter, but I had already stopped listening. I hovered in the dead silence of millions of hostages, keeping my face entirely unreadable while feigning compliance. My logistics team was discreetly feeding me updates through my earpiece. The backup I asked for—Eve, Oliver, Tether Tyrant, Magmaniac, the Guardians of the Globe, Capes Inc., and Brit—had successfully infiltrated the subway systems directly beneath the variants.
I crossed my arms and discreetly tapped the activation sequence on my wrist.
Below the street, twenty of Robot's drones and Eve surged upward through the maintenance shafts, silently deploying high-tensile cabling and localized energy shields to brace the cracked foundations of the surrounding skyscrapers and cast massive, interwoven energy barriers to shield the millions of civilians trapped in the plaza.
The moment the buildings and the people were secure, Magmaniac unleashed hell. The asphalt beneath the variants' feet instantly superheated and liquefied. As the ground gave way, Tether Tyrant's alien symbiotes erupted from the boiling sewers, violently wrapping around three of the standard variants and dragging them screaming into the underground darkness.
All hell broke loose in an instant.
I blurred through the confusion, shattering the skulls of five standard variants before they could even react. But as I pivoted to execute another five, the air displaced violently around me. The four powerhouses converged on me. The Apex Variant slammed into me, driving me straight through a skyscraper and into the bedrock of the city. They didn't give me an inch to breathe. They fought as a flawless, terrifying pack, with the Apex acting as the heavy-hitting anchor.
I tried to absorb their blows with my suit and return the kinetic output, but that strategy immediately became a double-edged sword. The sheer, coordinated force of the Apex, the Politician, the Tech Genius, and the Battle-Hungry variant hitting me simultaneously overloaded the suit's regulators. The armor began to glow a blinding, unstable white. It started violently rupturing bit by bit, burning my own skin with the absorbed energy and exposing my body.
Knowing I couldn't just tank their hits for much longer, I actively looked to exploit gaps in their formation, parrying and strategically choosing which punches to absorb just to keep my organs from turning to mush. We hit the sky, shattering windows for hundreds of miles as the sheer velocity of our movements ignited the air. Every time the Apex and I clashed, the resulting shockwave instantly vaporized the clouds above New York.
In the corner of my eye, I could see the weaker variants pushing back the heroes on the ground. But whenever I tried to create a small opening to assist them, the Apex cut me off, matching my speed instantly. He redirected my lethal blows, tried to break my arms, and systematically targeted the glowing, damaged regulators on my suit, recognizing them as breakable technology.
The other three were also a nightmare. They never attacked from the same angle. Variant 41 aimed for my eyes and ears with lethal pressure-point strikes. Variant 22 used his cybernetics to hack nearby GDA satellites, raining orbital lasers down to break my aerial momentum. And Variant 35 hovered back, waiting for the moment that I briefly dropped my guard to deliver devastating blind-spot strikes. If I dodged or redirected them, they'd seamlessly redirect their momentum so they never hit each other.
I had to get creative. I grabbed Variant 35 by his pristine cape, using him as a shield to absorb a world-shaking punch from the Apex. The impact stunned the Politician long enough for me to hurl him into Variant 22, reversing the trajectory of his own summoned orbital strike. I dragged them out of the sky, plunging us straight into the Atlantic Ocean, using the crushing oceanic pressure to try and slow their movements.
But we all erupted back into the New York skyline seconds later, trading devastating blows. Below us, Oliver and Eve saw me getting pushed to my absolute limits. They broke away from the ground fight and shot into the sky to even the odds.
"Mark, I've got your back!" Oliver yelled, throwing a haymaker at Variant 41.
Huh?! I thought briefly, then exclaimed. "Oliver, no!"
The battle-hungry variant just laughed. He swatted Oliver out of the sky like a fly, sending him crashing into the pavement below. Then, he blurred directly in front of Eve. Before she could raise a shield, he grabbed her leg and snapped it with a sickening crunch. As she gasped in agony, he drove his knee directly into her chest, caving in her ribs, and brutally impaled her straight through the abdomen with his forearm.
"Weak," he spat, tossing her dying body aside.
Her heart stopped before she even hit the pavement.
And then, the mental blocks shattered.
A blinding, catastrophic explosion of pure pink energy erupted from Eve's corpse as her powers activated, repairing the fatal trauma instantly. The shockwave of resurrected god-tier energy hit Variant 41 point-blank. He screamed as the pink light completely disintegrated him at the molecular level, leaving absolutely nothing behind.
The Politician, the Apex, and the Tech Genius froze for a microsecond, their attention captured by the impossible blast.
I seized the opportunity and blurred behind Variant 22, driving a rigid spear-hand straight through his neck. As he instinctively covered the gaping wound, I grabbed him by the jaw and hurled him directly into the fading radius of Eve's energy blast. He disintegrated instantly.
Two down, and only two to go, I thought as the Politician and Apex refocused their attention on me.
Their eyes burned with pure rage as they readied themselves to resume the beatdown. I braced myself. My suit sparked—pieces destroyed and flaking off—and my body was bloody and battered, but my internal reserves were still good.
I can handle these two much easier than all 4 at once, I mused, readying to supercharge myself as the two variants moved forward. It's still gonna be a challenge with the Apex, but he's battered too and as long as I have the Sun, I can outlast both of these guys long enough for—
I couldn't finish my train of thought.
The sky suddenly split apart as an object moved past my head at incredible speeds from the upper atmosphere. It slammed directly into The Politician. A sickening sound of ripping flesh and shattering bone echoed across the ruined city. The charismatic variant was instantly, violently bisected, his top half spinning away into the rubble.
The Apex and I stopped dead, staring in absolute shock at what had just appeared between us.
Ain't no fucking way, I thought, genuine surprise washing over my face.
Standing there, his massive cybernetic arm dripping with The Politician's blood and his scarred face twisted into a terrifying, psychotic grin, was Conquest. His Viltrumite uniform was covered in the blood of countless other variants he had clearly been slaughtering on his way here.
"Stand ready for my arrival, worms!" Conquest stated, the absolute thrill in his voice sending shivers down my spine.
I stared at the legendary Viltrumite executioner, my mind struggling to process the absolute insanity of the situation.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," I whispered.
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Well, what do y'all think?