"A pet?" Mark whispered.
The sorrow in Mark's eyes instantly vanished, replaced by a blinding fury.
Mark lunged and tackled me, carrying us past the open front door. He flew up, far away from where Debbie could be hurt.
"This is the only way, Mark! Calm down!" I yelled over the rushing wind as we grappled in mid-air.
"I will not calm down!" Mark screamed, swinging a wild punch that I easily caught. "This is insane! What do you think is gonna happen?! Did you seriously think that I'm going to go enslave my friends for a bunch of aliens I've never met?!"
"This is my life! These are my people!"
I tried to reason with him. "We have a responsibility to Viltrum—"
"I don't give a shit about Viltrum!" Mark roared, headbutting me with all his might. "And I don't care if I live a fuckin' million years! This is my home and I won't let you destroy it!"
"You don't know what you're saying," I said, forcing my voice to harden into steel. "And I can't let you interfere."
"I know exactly what I'm saying."
"So be it." I said in resignation.
The sky over Chicago erupted.
What followed was a one-sided, brutal beatdown as I systematically dismantled my own son.
We crashed through skyscrapers, shattered highways, and carved canyons through the heart of the city.
Mark fought back. He swung wild haymakers, tried to grapple, and attempted to use his flight to gain advantage. But I'd been fighting for a thousand years. Every move he made, I'd seen a hundred times before. I countered his attacks and exploited every opening.
With every punch I threw, the physical sensation of it chipped at my own heart.
I drove my fist into Mark's stomach, sending him crashing through a commuter train car, his body tearing through metal like paper, passengers screaming and diving for cover.
Flash.
I saw Mark at seven years old, swinging a plastic bat, hitting his first-ever home run as I cheered from the bleachers.
I grabbed Mark by the leg, yanking him out of the wreckage and slamming him face-first into the asphalt, cratering the street, water mains bursting beneath us.
Flash.
I saw a ten-year-old Mark on the beach, his small hands carefully packing wet sand to build a castle, proudly showing it off to me.
I brought my elbow down on Mark's spine, hearing the bone crack.
Flash.
I saw Mark at fourteen, wrapping himself in silver duct tape, striking a heroic pose in the living room, proudly declaring Duct-Tape Man was going to be Omni-Man's sidekick.
The city was a warzone. Fires burned in a dozen locations. Emergency sirens wailed in the distance. And my son lay broken in the centre of a ruined intersection, blood pooling beneath him.
I stood over him, breathing hard. My uniform was torn. Blood, Mark's blood, covered my hands.
Tears mingled with the dust on my face as I raised my fist, preparing to deliver the final blow to my own blood.
CRACK!
A heavy mace came flying out of nowhere, striking me perfectly in the temple. The sheer kinetic force sent me flying sideways, tumbling through the rubble of a collapsed storefront.
The attack, even though painful, was oddly nostalgic.
"Thank Zeus we made it in time!" a voice rang out.
I slowly moved my head, clearing the ringing from my ears and saw, standing protectively in front of Mark's broken body, was a ghost from my past.
It was War Woman! The very same warrior whose neck I had snapped in the Guardians' headquarters a month ago.
My mind struggled to process the impossibility of her presence when more ghosts materialized from the dust. Darkwing dropped from the shadows of a ruined overpass, Green Ghost materialized through the ground, and Martian Man uncoiled from the gaps in the rubble.
Finally, Red Rush appeared in a blur of crimson, skidding to a halt beside them. "Sorry, I was busy evacuating everyone into those portals."
'Portals? Someone opened portals to evacuate civilians? Someone healed the Guardians? Someone healed Allen?'
"Kaisen."
The rage that flared in my chest was immediate and consuming.
That boy. That cursed, meddling boy had his hands in everything. He'd turned my mission into chaos. He'd exposed me. And now he'd brought back the very people I'd killed to get Earth ready for the great plan.
The resurrected heroes turned in unison to face me.
"Omni-ma— Nolan!" War Woman demanded, her grip tightening on her mace. "I only ask you this. We were your friends! We have fought life and death side by side! So why?! Why betray us?"
"I don't waste my breath on dead Guardians!" I roared.
I blitzed forward, desperate to get to Mark and leave with him.
But Green Ghost, seeing my intention, phased her arms through Mark's chest, pulling the boy's body with her as she sank into the concrete, effectively hiding him under the rubble.
War Woman stepped forward, swinging her mace with all her might. "We are no longer guarding the innocents! We seek revenge for our fallen Allies! We are now Avengers!"
The Guardia…Avengers coordinated flawlessly.
War Woman swung her mace in wide arcs, forcing me to dodge into Martian Man's extending limbs. The Martian wrapped around my arms, pinning them just long enough for War Woman to crack her mace against my ribs. I tore free, but Red Rush was already there, delivering a hundred punches to my kidneys in the span of a second before zipping away. Darkwing's explosive projectiles detonated in my face, blinding me, and when my vision cleared, War Woman's mace was already swinging toward my skull
But I was a desperate man with nothing left to lose.
Fighting through the agonizing emotional weight of my actions, I tore through their defenses. I was injured, exhausted, and bleeding, but my raw power was absolute. I shattered Martian Man's grip, swatted Red Rush aside, and drove War Woman to her knees.
The Avengers were battered, failing and on the back foot.
TWANG.
A sharp, resonant sound echoed through the battlefield.
My body flinched violently. It was the same accursed sound of the gremlin that had trapped me in that maze for days. My muscles locked in momentary panic outside of my control.
"WHERE IS OMNI-MAN?!" a voice roared.
From the newly opened tatami gate, Immortal shot out like a missile. He saw me and charged, driven by the absolute fury of dying by a traitor's hand. His first and only move was to push his thumbs directly inside my eyes, intending to gouge them out and blind me in his rage.
But my combat reflexes overrode the panic. With a swift chop of my hand, I sliced through Immortal's torso, bisecting the hero in a shower of blood. Again.
Seeing their newly resurrected leader fall again angered the Avengers and broke something in them. They stopped coordinating, stopped being tactical and just attacked with everything they had left.
The battle raged through the night, a relentless war of destruction and desperate survival.
Hours bled together as the heroes fell one by one.
War Woman collapsed from blood loss. Red Rush's leg snapped when I caught him mid-dash. Darkwing ran out of gadgets and I finally broke him. Martian Man's body finally gave out from exhaustion and core damage, just as I'd done with Green Ghost.
By the time the sky began to lighten, I stood alone in a crater that stretched for miles. Fires burned on every horizon. The entire city center was gone, just rubble and ruin remained.
The Avengers lay scattered across the battered concrete, broken and unconscious, but still breathing.
I slowly made my way toward the center of the crater using my one good arm to hold a horrific gash on my stomach closed, desperately holding my own guts in place.
"Mark..." I rasped.
I looked down at the broken body of my son. Mark's teeth were shattered, his face an unrecognizable mask of swelling and clotted blood.
The boy barely breathed with agonizing labor.
"Why did you make me do this?" I asked, my voice breaking. "You're fighting so you can watch everyone around you die!"
I went on my knees to get as close to my injured son, holding back every fatherly instinct.
"Think, Mark!" I grabbed him by the collar, pulled him close, forgetting my wounds for a moment as the words came out in a roar that tore at my throat. "You'll outlast every fragile, insignificant being on this planet. You'll live to see this world crumble to dust and blow away! Everyone and everything you know will be gone!"
I shook him, desperate for him to understand.
"What will you have after 500 years?"
Mark shifted slightly. He looked up at me through blood-filled, swollen eyes.
"You, Dad," Mark whispered, gushing blood over his lips as tears streamed down his face, but his eyes, his eyes were still looking at me like I was his hero. "I'd still have you."
I froze. My fist, raised to deliver the final blow to finish what I'd started, to complete my mission and drag my son back to Viltrum for indoctrination, froze in the air.
I looked at the broken body of the boy. At the way he was still looking at me with love and hope despite everything I'd done.
I looked at the battered, breathing bodies of Avengers - the ghosts of my horrific betrayal that I couldn't bring myself to finish off.
I looked at the burning city I had sworn Debbie to protect.
And something inside me, something that thousands of years of Viltrumite conditioning had tried to bury, broke free.
I couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to finish off my son. I couldn't bring myself to kill the heroes I had bled with.
I lowered my fist, my expression twisting into unbearable agony.
"ARGGGH!"
I lay down in the rubble next to my son, tears finally spilling freely over my cheeks.
I quietly sobbed, a broken sound, desperately trying to suppress the overwhelming sorrow of destroying my loving family in a single day.
And even in that moment, even drowning in grief, a part of my mind, the part that had been conditioned for a thousand years, latched onto a name.
A target for my rage.
"Curse you..." I wept into the dust, my voice a broken rasp. "...Kaisen."
[A/N]: Drop Them Stones!! And push our Rankings to get me motivated!
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