"Maybe this time you'll learn."
His father's voice was cold and merciless, without a shred of pity or remorse, as he held Mark by the back of his head before the incoming subway cars. Then…impact, and blood flying as mangled bodies as tons of steel, flesh, and bone were smashed against her invulnerable body. A lesson to teach him the fragility of humanity and what they built in the wake of Viltrumite might.
All he could think of in the heat of the moment, though, was the sheer and unrelenting horror of it all. Eyes wide open and unable to escape as he tried to struggle in vain beneath his father's grasp. Eventually the abuse was too much, and the train cars went flying off the rails, no doubt taking even more lives in the process.
Mark gasped as he hit the ground, tears streaming down his face. It was too much for him, as his father spoke to some truth of his existence or what he felt deep down inside.
"These people are meaningless. They're cavemen without us." He crushed a man underfoot, without even thinking about it.
And yet, Mark couldn't believe it. "You're wrong. I've seen you save people. I've seen you almost die to protect them. Maybe you were a Viltrumite when you came here, but you've changed! You were happy here!"
As if his plaintive plea to his father would change his mind, as the man turned to face him fully.
"Sure, I was happy for a time, but I'm loyal to Viltrum. Not this pathetic excuse for a civilization."
Mark stared, mind racing, before he tried to dart forward and attack. An attempt to preemptively strike, to stop his father from doing… anything.
And then he was struck, and the dream ended.
Mark woke up gasping, the same way he'd woken up every day in the wake of the Chicago Incident. Writhing in his bed as he played through the events of the day, of his attempts at stopping his father, trying to keep him from taking over the Earth. All of them in vain, ultimately, as he was little more than a convenient punching bag for the man.
He found himself in his bed, as the physical wounds had already begun to fade. Bit by bit, as the healing of his species proved more than capable of taking care of the broken bones, ruptured flesh, and other injuries that he'd sustained from the man. What was less capable of being pieced together was his own psyche, though.
Just the memories of what had happened still felt fresh, like they'd occurred just the day before and not weeks prior. Some of that was supposed to fade with time, people told him. Assured Mark that eventually it'd all seem like a bad dream.
He wished they'd give him more concrete timelines than eventually, or someday.
Glancing over at the side of his bed, sitting there was his phone, loaded with a few messages that morning from Amber. Before everything had happened, their relationship had been on the rocks. If there was one thing that had come about from the Chicago Incident that could vaguely be called good, it was that they'd managed to patch things together.
M: You up?
A: Yeah. How are you feeling?
M: Still tired. Gotta help with the cleanup s'more later today, but got some free time after.
M: Wanna hang
A: Sure. You won't be too tired?
M: It's not really tiring, just depressing.
M: With how everything went I
M: I shouldn't say anything
A: It's fine
A: Well it isn't but, like
A: If you ever want to talk about it, more
A: I'm here
The teenager paused, feeling his mind being thrown for a loop. It was hard to contend with the warm feeling in his chest when it came to the hot panic that threatened to come over him when it came to thinking about what had happened. So he split the difference, just responding with a simple word rather than commit one way or another.
M: thanks
Mark didn't know if he'd ever be ready to talk about it as he stepped out of bed and got ready for the day ahead. It wasn't as if nothing in his superhero career up to this point hadn't been hard or rough. But it had par for the course and was rather normal for the most part. There'd been deaths, yet he'd managed to save more people than they'd lost. It seemed like a good turnover rate to him.
Stepping down the stairs once he was dressed for school, his mother was already awake and downstairs. Or she'd never come upstairs, judging by the bottle of wine he saw sitting on the kitchen counter. Weeks on from the Chicago incident, she looked haggard in ways he couldn't have ever recalled seeing her.
Just… tired.
"Hey, Mom," he greeted, and she managed to perk herself up from where she'd been staring at her phone, giving him a wan smile in return.
"Hi Mark." Getting up, the woman moved to give him a hug that was a bit too fierce, a touch too close. "How are you feeling?"
"The same as the day before," he assured her. Something about seeing him battered made her wonder if he was made of glass, Mark presumed. Or maybe that was just the prerogative of mothers everywhere to be concerned for their sons.
"That's good," she sighed. "Getting ready for school?"
"Yeah. I've missed enough of it, I think." It was weird that he was craving school, but the fact of the matter was that he found himself longing for the normality that it provided more than anything else.
"True," she laughed, as brittle as it was. "I'll be here when you get home. My sabbatical from work hasn't quite ended."
His eyes drifted to the wine bottle further down the counter. "Mom, uh. You're sure you're going to be fine here."
"I promise. It's just…" She trailed off, her voice getting choked up. "It's fine. It will be fine."
"... Alright, Mom. Have a nice day today." Giving her a short hug, he went out to go catch a ride with William, who might have already been waiting for him outside by this point.
The rest of the day was perfunctory, and while his body was present, his mind kept wandering, even when he spoke with William, Amber, or even Eve when he saw her in class. It wasn't until he'd gotten out and changed into his costume that it felt as if his mind was breaking through the static. It made him feel something, even if the feelings were mostly bad ones, as he flew out over the city.
Most of the work was still ongoing across Chicago to repair the damage from his father's rampage. Teams of people working nearly around the clock to clear rubble and debris or begin new construction through the aftermath of all of the destruction. They were still finding bodies, weeks after the incident.
The death toll, as Mark last heard it, was over a thousand people. It might have been higher if it wasn't for Eve and the rest of the new Guardians deploying onto the scene to rescue people and bring some semblance of order to the chaos. Even so, all of those deaths felt like a personal failing on his part. Mark knew that wasn't the case, logically, but the heart was hardly so easily swayed.
He could throw himself into the work of trying to clean up the city, as if it'd distract him from his other, impending woes. Tomorrow they were going to see his father, after putting it off for however much time that they could.
And… Mark didn't know if he was ready for it.
For obvious reasons they had his dad imprisoned underground, deep away from anyone else. The Icebox was what he'd heard the prison nicknamed, and frankly, he could see why. There was just the faintest chill in the air as he and his mother entered the structure, heading down the layers with Cecil in tow, as they went through the different degrees of security checks.
Past airlocks and scanners of all kinds, and then heading into the deepest, most secure reaches of the prison. Glancing back at his mother, she was pale. Maybe not quite ready to meet the man who'd called himself her husband.
"... I think I should go first."
"You sure, kid?" Cecil asked, giving him a second concerned look.
"No," Mark admitted. "But I want to give my mom some time to collect her thoughts."
"Mark, I…" She trailed off. "J-Just be safe in there. Okay?"
"I will, Mom," he assured her, standing before the massive vault-like door that wound open as he stepped through the threshold and into his father's cell.
His father didn't look good.
Not in regard to his wounds, most of which had healed at this point, if only due to the nonsense rate of Viltrumite healing. There were hints of new scars on his facial features, but his hair was already coming back in from where it'd been destroyed off of his skull. No, the difference between the man that he'd grown up around and the man in front of him was more stark.
It was like someone had drained him of something vital, crucial, defeated as he was. His eyes stared down, off into space, as if seeing something that only he could watch. The expression on his face wasn't quite slack or hangdog, but something deeper, a more profound kind of melancholy. Though the nature of the prison that they'd stuck his father in might have something to do with that. It had Taijitu's strange, supernatural fingerprints all over it when Mark looked around the space.
Unlike the alien's proclivity for using cryokinesis, this place was covered in very different kinds of controls. His father was stripped basically to what was basically a prison uniform, planted in a mechanical frame that was ostensibly supposed to keep him in place. Personally, having been on the other end of his father's strength, Mark didn't have a lot of faith in it holding.
What he did have more faith in were the reams of elaborate calligraphy that were covering it. There were even some that had been seemingly tattooed on his father's face, right underneath his right eye, in characters that Mark couldn't recognize. He didn't know much about Taijitu's powers, but he did know that they were a lot broader than most superheroes, ranging from simpler elemental effects to more elaborate constructions that resembled super-science.
If Cecil had involved him in the manufacturing of this prison, Mark had to believe that it was more or less secure. Or at the very least, designed in such a way that it'd make his father seriously regret trying to escape. Standing in the threshold of the room, though, Mark couldn't take another step further in.
Not when his emotions were swirling inside of him, a mess without beginning and end.
What was he supposed to feel here? Hate? That was what everyone would tell him was appropriate, the correct emotion for someone like his dad, who'd killed so many people over the course of their fight. It'd be the rational, logical thing to feel when faced with something like this, with someone who'd betrayed everything that he'd ever taught Mark to believe in.
Not that he'd ever really been that man, apparently. It'd been a mask his father wore, a facade. Who knew who the real man beneath it was? Evidence would suggest an unfettered monster, but even so…
Mark still loved him.
Despite it all, despite the beatdown and all of the deaths, he still loved his father. It was pathetic, no matter how much anger wanted to swallow up everything that their relationship had been. How much of it had been lies, and how much of it had been real? That was the poison that tainted his every memory of the man now.
He wasn't sure if it could ever be undone, really.
"Dad."
Lifting his head up, his father looked at him, those formerly vacant eyes focusing on his son. It'd been weeks since he'd seen the man, since he'd dreamed or thought about what he'd say to him. For all of the lives lost, for the statements made about his mother and humanity at large. Things he'd yell at the man, rebuttals, attacks, all sorts of hate that threatened to boil out of Mark at the darkest of moments.
Here and now, though, all of them just flew through his head. He was blanking when faced with the reality of his father's condition. Or maybe just the state that he was in.
"Mark," his father spoke, a singular word with no followup. There weren't any requests to know how he was doing or how his mother was. Maybe on some level the man could understand that a line had been crossed. That trying to speak those things aloud would be transgressive in a different kind of way.
As if it'd be papering over the events of the month prior.
"You're healing up well," he commented, as if they were talking about the weather. Both of them had likely healed entirely at this point, and even now he was a little leery of the restraints keeping his father in check. Still, the statement wasn't quite so much an olive branch as something safe and ultimately meaningless to get them talking.
"It's been going… adequately," his father admitted. Shifting position ever so slightly in his bindings.
The movement still made Mark flinch back, and his father saw it. Instead of the cold, callous eyes that'd used him as a human battering ram against all of those people in the subway, though, there was an expression of sadness there. Regret, pain, and emotions that he didn't even have the qualia for to describe.
Swallowing thickly, Mark tried to keep the talk going. "Mom's here. She's got some things to say to you, but she's waiting for me to come out first."
"Ah. I suppose I knew I'd have to face her, but… but actually talking to your mother, after all of that, just seems so…" There was a look he'd seen from his dad before, the same one he got when he'd made a mistake that was the prelude to his mother giving him both barrels or yelling at the man.
It was enough to make Mark laugh, just at the sheer incredulousness of the deluge of memories. "Remember when I was seven, and you were about to take me into the woods for that wilderness survival training? Gave me a compass and a map and told me to find my way back?"
"She put the kibosh to that pretty quickly," Nolan responded, giving a small smile, his eyes wistful. "Said it was inappropriate, no matter how much I assured her that I'd be hovering over you, ensuring that no particularly large predators would get to you."
"That just made her more upset."
"It did, didn't it?"
They stared at each other for a few more seconds, and Mark felt the old thing that'd been between them flicker back to life for a moment. Right before they both laughed, whether it was at the old story or the insanity of the moment, he didn't know. But they both laughed, and while it lasted they were in a world where nothing had changed at all.
But everything good had to end eventually, so when the chuckles trailed off, Mark braced himself for the question that had been on his tongue. The question that had been restrained for ages during this conversation.
"... Why'd you do it, Dad?"
It was a statement that hung in there, that had remained unanswered for days and days, no matter how much Cecil wanted to torture it out of Nolan. Taijitu had the techniques to force compliance, sap his strength, or outright deliver some positively brutal damage to the man once given the time and room to do so. But actually forcing him to answer even the most perfunctory of questions…
Easier said than done, when there was so much that they wanted to know. Not just about his father, but about Viltrum, whether or not they actually had the means to send reams of soldiers just as strong, fast, and durable as his father. Was an invasion coming tomorrow, or did they have time to plan?
Strangely enough, despite how badly they wanted these answers, their only source of getting them was also invaluable. It was a real catch-22, where going too far would inevitably actually destroy the source of the information. So now Mark was here to try and do what Cecil and psychoanalysts couldn't.
His father's jaw worked back and forth, internally warring with himself as he thought it over. Something eventually did pass behind his eyes, though as to what resolution it was in particular, Mark didn't know.
"... The Great Purge, the one I told you about that halved our species. Do you remember it?"
"Yeah," he nodded, flashing back to the words his father had given him before they'd begun fighting. Or, well, before his father had begun to thrash him across the country. "I remember."
"It weakened us more than I'd led you to believe," he sighed, something in his shoulders sagging as he continued to speak. "To the point where the expansion of our empire slowed down dramatically because of it. Numbers of Viltrumites that were formerly able to man bastions or force worlds into compliance simply no longer existed."
"I'm not seeing where this is going."
"Just… just wait. It'll be made clearer." Taking a moment to collect himself, his father spoke again. "The plan to infiltrate worlds that I was a part of had a secondary goal. To find species with genetics that were so compatible with pureblood Viltrumites that the resulting offspring were functionally the same."
"If you'd never gotten your powers, I could have written off humanity as a failure on that front. Waited for your mother and you to pass before bringing the planet into compliance," he explained, as a sinking, horrible realization began to dawn on Mark. "When you got your powers, that was no longer the case."
"Are you saying that all of this was for what, some kind of fucked-up test to see if we could breed with your people?"
"Initially, yes," his father freely admitted. "Our numbers are low enough that it was an imperative to see. And once I understood how strong you were, it was a matter of if, not when, Viltrum would take more of an interest in humanity. I'd… hoped to steward the process. To convince you to join me."
It was enough to make Mark's head spin as he took in the enormity of it. He knew that his father loved him, heard him admit it in the throes of their fight when he wasn't getting his face smashed in. But it was a different kind of love than what a human would have for their child. Or maybe it was the same, and his father just didn't want to admit it.
All Mark knew was that he needed air. To breathe, to do anything, other than let the anger bubbling up inside of him spill out. "So that's all we were to you? A means to an end?"
"No! No."
Weirdly enough, as messed up as it might have been to think about, he was willing to extend his dad a bit of grace on this. If his mother didn't mean anything to him, the man wouldn't have thought twice about silencing her when she'd discovered the truth about his slayings of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Or he would have been a bit more aggressive about, ugh, completing the mission with more women.
"...I need time to think about this," Mark spoke, taking a step back. "I… I know you love us. But this is all so crazy."
"That's understandable. It's a lot to take in," his father agreed, something in his face breaking in sheer relief at his son's words. "It was good to see you, Mark."
He didn't know if he could say the same. A lot of things had been mentioned or glossed over, but one thing did stand out to Mark as he watched his father there. At no point had there actually been an apology about anything that he'd done. There'd never been a singular spot where his father came out and outright said "I'm sorry" for everything that happened.
Maybe he never would. Whatever upbringing on Viltrum had made him so set in his ways, his high-fucking horse of racial supremacy would prevent him from saying those words. Perhaps it was right around the corner. Mark didn't know, and there were no words that could come out of his mouth that wouldn't just poison things.
So instead, he just settled for something safe. "I'll try to come and visit you again when I have the time."
With that, he moved to leave, stepping out of the prison and finding his mother there, waiting. She'd been listening to everything, and the face she was making was downright sad, angry, and a mixture of things that Mark didn't even know how to begin to decipher.
"Mom…"
"It's fine, Mark," she lied, badly, eyes wet. "Your dad's safely secured. We're just going to have a talk."
Giving the restrained man behind him a look and seeing the complex expression on his face at the sight of his wife, it felt better to give them space. He trusted his mother, even if she wasn't in a good way at the moment either.
More than his father, anyway, which wasn't a tremendously high bar to clear.
With the last sight of his mother standing before his father as the door closed, Mark didn't have the faintest clue how that situation was going to turn out. Some things that had been spoken couldn't be unspoken. But it wasn't his problem to deal with, and frankly, his head was already swimming to begin with.
Walking out into the corridor, Cecil was standing there, looking as grim-faced as ever. Though more tired than he usually did, judging by the fresh bags under his eyes. "That was…"
"It explains why he was so insistent on taking the planet over," Cecil admitted. "Less keen on the whole eugenics, breeding stock plans that the Viltrumites might have for us, though."
"I'm trying not to think about it."
The director could only give him a nod. "That's fine. After all of this time, we've at least got something out of Nolan. It's more than we had before. At this point, extracting the information is a marathon, not a race."
That was the hope, anyway. If the Viltrumites had been so languid and willing to wait twenty years, hopefully they'd be similarly slow to capitalize on any further plans. Or so Mark could hope.
"I'm going to head out. I need to, to fly or do something," Mark spoke up, breathing in deeply, before exhaling. "Anything to clear my head."
"There are a few minor situations we could direct you toward if you want to be put to work."
"Good. Anything is better than focusing on this."
He didn't know what the future was going to hold. Frankly, all Mark could do was take it one day at a time and focus on the elements of his life that were in his control to handle. Graduating high school, hanging out with his friends and Amber. Things that could actually be dealt with by him.
All he could do was hope things would remain stable for a little while longer.
Naturally, things couldn't stay the way they had, even as he was trying to catch up with Eve, William, and Amber. Mark had known that it could prove difficult to maintain relationships with people who weren't superheroes or connected to the lifestyle anymore, but having get-togethers and hang-outs interrupted all the time was probably one of his least liked aspects of the job.
The GDA wouldn't have contacted him if it wasn't for a good purpose, though.
Once again he was out in space, because Cecil had gotten the kind of news that had everyone in a tizzy. Signatures from the early response system of something coming into the solar system. For very obvious reasons, on the heels of one alien invasion, everyone was a little on their toes and somewhat reticent to see if it was the Viltrumites coming for round two.
When nobody knew, but they were all praying that it wasn't now, when just about everyone was at their weakest.
This time, it wasn't just him there in Earth's orbit. In the weeks since his fight with his father, Taijitu had healed as well. For the most part the alien seemed fine, physically, but even Mark could tell that there was just something off about him. He didn't seem as prone to the easygoing smiles and waves that he used to offer as much.
Something about him seemed sterner. A harsh determination and readiness seemed to be filling him as he waited for whatever threat was coming their way. Then again, Mark had been the first one on the scene after the man had defeated his father. He'd seen what was left of him.
His face, swollen no worse than his father's, with a wrist that looked like it was tenuously holding on. Battered, bruised flesh all over, turning his typically pale skin a splotchy array of unfortunate colors. Not even breathing, to the point where Mark had feared he was dead until the other first responders had arrived and informed him that Taijitu didn't need to breathe.
Now he was here, a month into the future, ready to fight once again. Even if his hands were shaking. It was fine, considering that Mark's hands were shaking too. In a strange way, it made him feel better to know that he wasn't the only superhero who had left scars on his father.
Of course, the figure that came out of the black was not someone who'd even remotely pass for human, like Viltrumites would. Much to Mark's relief, as he raised a hand to get the ever-ready-for-violence Genji to stand down. The orange, cyclopic alien coming into view wasn't an enemy but a friend.
"Invincible!" The telepath communication came through. "Oh thank heavens!"
"It's just you…" Mark internally breathed a sigh of relief as the two of them looked at each other.
"I thought it was too late. I have to warn you," Allen spoke, fixing a stare at Mark.
"Warn me?"
"When I returned to the Coalition of Planets to tell them I'd been going to Earth instead of Urath, they lost their minds. Earth is off limits," he intoned, voice grave. "There's a Viltrumite living on your planet."
As to what seemed to be happening, Taijitu beside him looked totally lost. Looking back between Mark and Allen, clearly understanding that there was a conversation going on without him but totally unable to take part in it.
Honestly, though, the seriousness that Allen was taking everything after what had happened made Mark crack a very small smile. "Oh. That."
"What? You already know?"
Mark turned, flying toward the moon, and Taijitu flew after, following the two as they landed on the lunar surface. Moving to settle some rocks for seats, Mark telepathically intoned back to Allen. "Uh, yeah."
"I don't understand."
"Grab a seat. This may take a while. Also, can you loop in my friend here?"
"Oh, sure."
Taijitu flinched briefly, which Mark took as him receiving the unfamiliar burst of telepathic communication. He didn't attack outright, though, which was better than what Mark could have hoped for. Instead, they all settled down, and the two of them began to share their story with Allen.
His reaction by the end of it was more than a little gobsmacked.
"So, you're a Viltrumite, but you don't work for them, and your dad tried to take over the planet but was defeated? By this guy?" He jerked a finger over at Taijitu, who was sitting on a rock of his own, watching Allen keenly.
"We've got my dad imprisoned right now. Currently, we're trying to figure out the whys; pump him for information too. Taijitu is responsible for maintaining the prison, but if I'm honest…" Mark sighed mentally. "My dad's kind of mentally out of it."
"That's super weird for a Viltrumite. They don't just give up; they… either complete their mission or die trying," Allen explained, before turning to Taijitu and exchanging a burst of information his way. One of the downsides of this style of conversation was the way that, well, it was only capable of talks going one way or another.
"Well, the fact that there's anyone capable of actually fighting a Viltrumite is something that the Coalition will want to know. That there's one that's been defeated, too, and is being held prisoner," Allen spoke up, looking almost a little excited. "Sometimes you can take one down with overwhelming firepower, but that's rare. Really, really rare."
"I'm not sure if I'd call it a stomp," Mark pointed out. "Taijitu almost died fighting my dad."
"Still vastly better than what most civilizations can manage," Allen shot back, exchanging a back and forth with Taijitu after saying that. Whatever they were saying, though, Taijitu seemed to be shaking his head quite vigorously at the notion.
The talk or responses didn't seem to be going the way that Allen had wanted, judging by the vaguely disappointed expression on his alien face. But ultimately, he wasn't taking it that badly, as he turned back to Mark.
"Well, I've got my questions from Taijitu. Especially about his race, but I've never heard of an Ōtsutsuki before. And if they were able to fight Viltrumites, I get the feeling that they would have been heard about before now."
"What's next for you, then?"
"Report back to Talescira, the Coalition of Planets headquarters. There's a power struggle brewing at the furthest reaches of space, Mark. We're trying to gather enough planets and civilizations to actually fight back against the Viltrumite Empire."
Huh. Countless billions of lives, banding together to try and fend off the predations of Viltrumite tyranny. It made his own struggles seem a bit small in comparison. Like he was part of something much grander.
"Well, let me know if there's anything that I can do to help."
"Taijitu did mention that you were helpful like that," Allen mentioned with a smile, glancing over at the pale alien. "He also said that your planet's authorities might actually be willing to share or help out with certain things that'd be useful for dealing with them?"
Some of the countermeasures that Cecil deployed against his father hadn't actually done all that much. Though to his understanding, they were also barely more than prototypes, without any real understanding of how they'd actually fare against his father. He hadn't seen any, but if it did help the war effort out there, and they could get something in return to help the Earth…
"Sure. We can try to bring you to Cecil so you can hash that stuff out."
"Is he your world leader or something?"
"He's…" Mark paused, thinking about it and the massive amounts of power the man held. "Basically the closest thing we have to it, yeah."
"Then I'll be fully empowered to negotiate with him, though my ship in the solar system's outer orbit will need to be kept abreast of the situation."
From there, it was just a matter of heading into the atmosphere so they could actually breathe and give Cecil an update. While he was no less leery of anything alien after the attack by Mark's father, the prospect of alien technology and theoretical assistance in the event of an actual sustained invasion by the Viltrumite empire was a bit too tempting to resist.
The three of them were directed toward the Pentagon, where Allen was quickly met and shepherded away by various GDA staffers, eager to take him to go meet with Cecil. It left Mark and Taijitu alone in the hallways, the alien next to him looking somewhat more relaxed. Not as much as he used to, but a touch more, given that things hadn't devolved into another fight.
It didn't stop him from being a little curious about one thing, though. "What did Allen end up asking you?"
"To go fight the Viltrumites with the Coalition of Planets," Taijitu answered, taking a breath of air as he glanced over at Mark. "I told him I'd think about it. As I am right now, if I had to fight one as strong as your father again, there's no guarantee I'd win. Let alone multiple at once."
Something like determination glinted in that pupilless gaze of his. "If I'm going to do it, I'm going to do my best to do it right. Get prepared, ensure that the Earth will be somewhat safe in my absence, and only then will I head out."
"Stepping up your training then?"
"By an order of magnitude," Taijitu assured him. "You're more than welcome to join me with the sessions that I've been having with Rudy. The two of you are roughly in the same range of durability."
Mark had heard through the grapevine what had happened with Rudy, and frankly, it was still a little bit of a mindfuck. He'd transferred his mind into a clone of Taijitu, with the alien in question willingly giving up his DNA for the process. Just when he thought his life couldn't get any weirder, it turned out that someone was keen to show him that wasn't quite the case.
Regardless, the notion of actually getting stronger in a proper way did seem enticing. He couldn't do a thing against his father when the time came, and they still didn't have much in the way of an idea of how strong he was compared to other Viltrumites. By his own admission he was a sterling agent, but that was still a very nebulous concept.
Taijitu, however, knew how to fight. Not just with superhuman speed and strength, but actual technique and skill. It was a very short list as to people who'd be able to actually help him hone those abilities on a meaningful level.
"Sure. How bad could it be?"
The ominous smile that drifted over Taijitu's face was already beginning to make him rethink the decision. Despite it…the old cheer was back on his face, a little bit anyway.
"Don't worry, Invincible. We'll ensure you'll learn the spirit of YOUTH in very short order…"
He may have made a mistake.
Author's Notes
We’ve got this interlude and another coming up. I’ve also read a lot of the feedback concerning stuff like how it doesn’t feel as if he has perfect chakra control, or martial arts prowess, and I’ll endeavor try and show more of that as time goes on.
Otherwise, I’m getting ahead in terms of chapters written, which feels nice. Having a backlog is the ideal state of existence. It feels divine.
Additionally, if you would like to read ahead, you can find up to ten chapters ahead via the linktree in my profile. For the time being, all adult content like future smut in anything I write, will be on , though in due time I'll likely try to get the processing and authentication through on to be able to post it there as well. So be mindful of where you're supporting me.