White Mask went quiet for a few seconds, but Cecil had learned by now that it was just him organizing his thoughts.
"You already know a part of the answer," he said. "Remember what I said about Omni-Man's fight with the Guardians?"
"Yeah, though a little elaboration would help. Explain to me how the fight goes."
White Mask tilted his head to the side. "…I don't remember every second of the fight, but I'll try."
Cecil's mind was already running through simulations. Based on what White Mask said, the Guardians actually had a good chance of winning, but something went horribly wrong.
"When all the Guardians are gathered, that's when Omni-Man strikes. While they search for the one that sent out the emergency signal, Omni-Man tries to take out the Immortal first," White Mask recounted. "But Red Rush spots Omni-Man's ambush attempt and pushes Immortal out of the way."
Go for one of the two powerhouses on the team first, and the rest of them would shortly follow. An admittedly good strategy.
"After the shock wears off, they retaliate. I don't know the exact sequence, but I recall War Woman trying to hit Omni-Man, Darkwing using his gadgets to distract and Aquarius shooting high-pressure water from his hands to hold Omni-Man off. Omni-Man keeps trying to take them out during all of this, but Red Rush either diverts his punches or pushes his teammates out of the way."
It was a sound tactic. Red Rush did tend to be the team's insurance policy sometimes. And as long as he kept everyone out of Nolan's reach, the heavy hitters like War Woman and Immortal could afford to stay on the offensive.
"Unfortunately, Red Rush changes tactics for some reason and starts going for Nolan directly."
Cecil's eyes widened, a cold realization settling in his gut. That was a death sentence. Against Nolan, Red Rush could only be support. The moment he traded evasion for offense and stepped into Nolan's reach, he forfeited the biggest advantage the team had.
"Red Rush manages to land a few glancing blows, but they don't do anything. Omni-Man simply catches him right after and crushes Red Rush's head with his bare hands before the others can do anything to stop him."
Cecil closed his eyes, his mind flashing to the horrific implications of such a death.
For someone like Red Rush, whose brain processed information exponentially faster than a normal human, that struggle would have felt like an eternity of agonizing pressure. He'd have been conscious for every crack of bone and every burst vessel, his own super-speed turning his final seconds into a lifetime of torment.
"The Guardians pretty much lose their shit after seeing one of their friends die, and they start hammering Omni-Man. After that… Look, I can't clearly recall the rest of the fight from that point on. Can I just tell you how each of them dies?"
"Sure. Better than nothing," Cecil said with furrowed brows.
"Darkwing gets slammed into the floor and his head pops like a balloon. Omni-Man stabs his hand through Green Ghost's face. He uses War Woman's mace to smash Aquarius' head into pieces. Martian Man has what is essentially his 'heart' ripped out while restraining Omni-Man. Omni-Man twists War Woman's neck so far back, her eyes are stuck looking behind her and she coughs out blood before dropping dead."
White Mask's voice had gone flat in an unnerving, clinical way. Rather than describing gruesome murders, it sounded more like he was reciting a report.
Cecil could guess why. If White Mask truly saw all those deaths from his vision, including when Nolan and Mark fought in Chicago, Cecil wouldn't be surprised if it had traumatized or desensitized him.
Heck, it might even explain why the kid was so willing to kill. In his vision, Omni-Man had essentially flipped sides, leading to all those deaths he described. He'd already seen what an unchecked and unrestrained supervillain could do.
"What about the Immortal?" Cecil asked.
"He asks Omni-Man why he was killing them."
"Does he get an answer?"
White Mask shook his head.
"Omni-Man just decapitates him with a swipe of his hand and collapses on the spot."
Cecil stood there in the stifling quiet of the motel room, processing the sheer magnitude of the information White Mask gave. He had spent years analyzing the Guardians, cataloguing their every strength and weakness. He had never envisioned them as a collection of broken bodies in their own headquarters.
And yet, the ending was the most vital piece of the puzzle. It was "proof" that the most powerful being on Earth could bleed and be beaten. The Guardians fought to their last breath and lost, but they succeeded.
But the professional part of his brain, the part that had survived this long by trusting nothing, was screaming at him to be careful. He knew how easy it was to manipulate someone who was desperate for an advantage. If this was a setup, or if White Mask was just a puppet for someone powerful looking to sow discord between the GDA and Omni-Man, then taking action based on this vision would be the quickest way to trigger the very catastrophe he was trying to avoid.
He couldn't afford to be wrong. Not about this.
"What I'm understanding here is that their teamwork's key for their survival and victory."
"Yeah," White Mask agreed, nodding. "If they let themselves get picked off one by one, they fall apart. In my opinion, if Red Rush just kept the rest of them safe and didn't start attacking Nolan, they could have won."
Cecil filed it. It was better strategic intelligence than anything his analysts had produced on the subject, and they'd been working the problem for years.
"Okay. So the Guardians are one of the countermeasures we have. What else is there?" he said.
"A researcher," White Mask said. "He's a mad scientist I would prefer dead or locked up, but what he's capable of building could be an asset worth having."
"His name?"
"DA Sinclair. He's currently a student at Upstate University." White Mask's voice sharpened. "And I need you to understand that I'm flagging this as urgent. Extremely urgent. Because based on what I saw, there's a strong chance he's already kidnapping people to experiment on."
Cecil's eyes narrowed. "What kind of experiments are you talking about?"
"He calls them ReAnimen, lobotomized people with cybernetic upgrades. Mark finds him during his visit at Upstate after a friend of his is kidnapped by Sinclair. You take him into GDA custody before making a deal with him since you found his work useful. You put him to work and make him produce ReAnimen at a larger scale by supplying him with the corpses of soldiers instead of living subjects."
White Mask yawned. "The ReAnimen are formidable, though. They're strong enough to threaten Invincible when he first gets his powers and a group of them can distract Omni-Man for a short while."
Which means they were strong enough to be meaningful weapons against a Viltrumite, or at minimum, something that could buy them time during an engagement.
"I'm recommending you find him before the body count gets worse and before he becomes a bigger problem," White Mask said. "What you do with him after is your decision. But if his technology ends up in the wrong hands rather than yours, that's a problem you'll regret not preventing."
Cecil added Sinclair to the growing list of things to validate. He'd have agents at Upstate University by morning, before the sun came up.
If White Mask is right about this, I'll have to make a deal with another devil.
He'd already made quite a few of those. What was one more added to the pile?
"I appreciate the advice. What else?"
"This one is more specific. Aquarius should know about it. There's a creature in his territory and they call it a Depth Dweller. The screech it makes produces a specific frequency of sound. A frequency that incapacitates Viltrumites."
Cecil eyes sharpened. This was the best thing he'd heard so far.
"If I recall correctly, it immobilizes them completely because it messes with a Viltrumite's inner ear and causes immense pain. It even stops them from flying," White Mask said. "Mark had to fight the Depth Dweller since Omni-Man killed Aquarius. Since he was wearing an earpiece you gave, you managed to capture a recording of the sound. It was one of the few things that could take a Viltrumite entirely out of a fight without requiring direct confrontation."
"Aquarius really knows about this?" Cecil asked as he stored the thought away.
"I'm not sure." White Mask shrugged. "But the creature should be in his territory regardless of whether or not he's thought about its military applications. I'd approach that carefully. The last thing you need is to tip your hand about knowing that the Viltrumites are a close threat before you're ready."
"Noted," Cecil said, inwardly surprised that the kid thought that far ahead. "Know about anything that can engage a Viltrumite at equal terms?"
"Just one," White Mask answered. "Though this guy isn't really an asset that I would count on."
"I'll be the judge of that."
"Battle Beast," White Mask emphasised, as if the name itself possessed weight. "A bipedal lion alien filled with an unending lust for battle. He fights because fighting is the only thing he considers meaningful, and he only respects opponents who can genuinely match him. He's one of the very few beings I saw that could physically overpower and rip a Viltrumite to shreds. He nearly did it to Invincible. Easily, at that."
"A giant space cat that can rip Viltrumites apart, huh?" Cecil said. "And what if he becomes a threat to Earth?"
"Battle Beast won't be one unless we give him a reason to." White Mask shook his head. "His ultimate goal is to have a fight that results in an honorable death for him. The only relevant topic in his mind would be whether he's able to fight a 'worthy' opponent or not."
Cecil had dealt with numerous world-ending threats ever since he became the director. But he'd never encountered one whose primary motivation was simply the quality of the battle itself. It was, he had to admit, a particularly tricky variable to consider.
"How likely is he to show up?" Cecil asked.
"Not sure. In my vision, Machine Head somehow found and hired him. The tin can probably figured out that Battle Beast only wants a good fight and used that to convince him somehow. But with Machine Head now locked up, he might just ignore our planet completely unless he finds out about Omni-Man."
Cecil filed it under "No clean answer currently available. Monitor and react."
"That's pretty much it for all the Viltrumite countermeasures I can think of off the top of my head. I'll let you know if I remember more. Besides, you have more big threats to worry about."
You gotta be kidding me, Cecil thought to himself, sighing.
"Of course. How many?"
"Just two," he said. "You should have these on your radar from now on. One is potentially immediate and the other is preventable."
"Tell me the potentially immediate threat first."
"The Flaxans." White Mask leaned forward. "Aliens from a parallel dimension where time runs faster. They'll invade multiple times through a portal in downtown Chicago, all within a week. Their technology and persistence will be the main problems. The first wave will age rapidly on arrival in our dimension and die before they can lock the city down. But they adapt and return within days—for us, by the way, but decades for them—with tech that fixes the aging problem. By the time they've adjusted enough to fight here effectively, they're a genuine organized military threat."
An invasion of aliens from another dimension? He'd dealt with plenty of those before, but this one seemed to be on a larger scale.
"How were the Flaxans stopped in your vision?"
"The Teen Team and Mark were the ones to fight off the waves. They would've lost the last one, but Omni-Man had recovered from his fight with the Guardians by that time. He decimated their invading army and went into the portal," White Mask said.
"What? Why?"
"Because they're competition. He says something along the lines of 'Earth isn't yours to conquer,' before he completely annihilates their civilization using the sheer force and energy produced by his super speed. It was like nuclear bombs were going off in his wake." White Mask held the back of his neck and looked at the ceiling. "I saw him wipe out entire cities in seconds, Cecil. Seconds. It was the most insane feat I ever saw in my vision. Nothing even comes close."
There went what little optimism Cecil had. How the hell were the Guardians or anyone else stopping that? Even if they did manage to take Nolan down, what about the other Viltrumites?
"We'll keep an eye out for them," Cecil said, holding his forehead as he tried to ignore the migraine banging inside his head. "And the other threat?"
"The Sequids. They're a hive-mind of small, parasitic creatures that attach to a host and control its mind. There are millions of them and their goal is to unify the entire universe. Thankfully, they're on Mars. They shouldn't become a threat anytime soon unless Earth still sends a team of astronauts to the planet."
"Let me guess. The upcoming Mars expedition turns sour?" Cecil asked, already knowing the answer.
"More than sour. The Martians are only able to supress and resist the Sequids because of their shapeshifting powers. Normal humans can't do that. I forgot the guy's name, but one of the guys on the expedition team becomes the host of the hive mind and they try to invade Earth after ruining Mars."
A deep, aggravated sigh escaped Cecil's lips.
What the hell was so goddamn attractive about Earth? Why did every alien and inter-dimensional piece of shit out there want to try and take over his planet?
There were seven other planets in this solar system and countless more in the wider universe. Go mess with those. But no. It always had to be Earth.
Was this rock really that damn special?
A mind-controlling collective intelligence, currently being supressed by Martians loomed over humanity. Great. At least it wasn't an immediate crisis and was easily preventable. Thank fuck for that.
He added Martian Man to the list of people to talk to after this.
"That's it?" Cecil asked just to double-check. "You really having nothing else to add?"
White Mask shook his head. "Nope. That should be everything. Like I said, I'll let you know as soon as I can if I remember anything important."
Cecil looked at the blank white mask and ran through everything he'd been given over the last hour and a half.
He'd sat across from some of the most sophisticated liars on the planet. None of them sounded like this. None of them built in their own limitations this methodically.
But he also noticed something else. Something White Mask hadn't mentioned or alluded to even once. A glaring issue that might just poke a big hole in White Mask's credibility.
"You've mentioned Mark a few times," Cecil said, keeping his voice neutral and his tone conversational. "According to you, Mark developing his powers is the trigger that sets everything in motion."
He paused just long enough for the weight of his next words to have a greater impact.
"But what about the girl?"
White Mask slowly froze.
There was nuance to it, however. Cecil read it as the kind of stillness that happened when someone ran a fast internal search and came up empty. It wasn't an immediate red flag, but it didn't do the kid any favors, either.
"The… girl..?"
"Nolan's other kid," Cecil clarified. "Mark's twin sister, Aria."
The clarification only seemed to short-circuit the kid's brain even more. Like a rusty hinge, his head turned towards the ground before circling back to Cecil.
"Omni-Man has a daughter?"
-x-
A/N: There's the big surprise I've been saving, though some or most of you probably saw it coming. As you can see, I went with the OC route instead of the genderbend route.
I also need to talk about the poll about the number of love interests because I only realized my mistake after checking earlier today. In my sleep-deprived state when I published that chapter, I forgot to set strict rules and mistakenly assumed that I did, and in doing so, it made tallying the votes confusing as fuck.
If I only counted the total unique comment votes alone (ignoring those who voted for 3 or said that they couldn't care either way), the votes for two love interests surpassed those who voted for one by approximately 7 points. However, the two most liked paragraph comment votes were the ones who voted for only one love interest. Do you now see how confusing that is for me?
Given that situation, I couldn't decide on how to tally the votes fairly, so I've decided to have a redo. This time, I'm setting strict rules for votes that count.
Follow these steps:
Go to the chapter comments specifically and look for my comments. They'll be the two author-liked comments. One for each number of preferred love interests.
To give a valid vote, you must reply exactly "+1" (nothing else, no extra text, no emojis, no explanations) to the comment of your choice.
What counts as an invalid vote (these will be completely ignored and not counted):
Replying "+1" to both author comments.
Replying anything other than the exact text "+1" (examples: "+1!", "one", "two", "I vote for 2", "+2", "yes", any emojis, or added sentences).
Posting your "+1" anywhere except directly under one of the two specific author-liked comments.
Replying to the same comment more than once.
Any reply that tries to vote for both options or stay neutral. Any joke, meme, question, or off-topic comment.
Once again, only clean, single "+1" replies to exactly one of the two author-liked comments will be counted. Everything else is invalid.
This time the rules are iron-clad so there's zero confusion when I tally the votes.