There’s this common refrain that you hear a lot: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again. And then, having the audacity to expect a different result. I supposed that the Flaxans, in their own way, were in the grips of such a singular madness. They couldn’t swallow down their defeat, and so they’d spit it out. Nurtured it in the grudging way that hatred and antagonism were fed, carefully, over however many generations there were between their second invasion and their third.
On some level I did wonder what rhetoric was used to try and justify all of this to themselves. It must have been a point of pride to have conquered worlds in the past or to have drained them of their resources. The notion that they could have been rebuffed was a wound, a bleeding hole in the culture that no amount of time might have patched.
This time, they were obviously keen to finish the job.
It was a good thing that someone smart had kept the area evacuated after the last invasion. Whether or not they were just being safe rather than sorry, I appreciated the lack of distraction. If nothing else, Flaxans had prepared well for their invasion with new weapons and vehicles that they’d brought to bear.
Not just the flamers they’d been wielding before, but upgraded versions of their rifles as well. With my Byakugan activated, I could track the situation readily, even miles away, and take note of the various new mechanical monstrosities that they’d brought to their newest invasion.
If there was a saving grace, it was that I was actually in the city and not halfway around the world in a music lesson. Working on that puppet design had lit a fire under my ass, especially the fuinjutsu designs that I hadn’t been putting that much thought into originally. Something I was torn away from when the alert for the invasion went up, and I met up with the Teen Team once again.
With Invincible even in tow as we all flew toward the incursion point. The boy spared me a nervous glance, but outside of that we were all focused on our flight as a unit. I, Atom Eve, and Invincible flying on our own power, while Robot piloted his bike with Dupli-Kate and Rex-Splode inside of it.
“I have bad news,” Robot spoke, said in that monotone inflection of his.
“Ohhhh! Robot’s got bad news, everybody, did you hear that? Hey Robot, what’s the bad news?” Perhaps Rex could be a little crass about the way he handled his stress, but such was life. Everyone had their own coping mechanisms.
Some guys resorted to sarcasm; I personally liked tearing the source of his stress apart with my bare hands. Everyone had to find a strategy that worked for them.
Without missing a beat, Robot continued with his grim prognostication. “There are too many of them, their technology has advanced too far, and they’ve rendered themselves immune to our timestream. We should consider this city lost.”
“If you guys didn’t have me, maybe,” I murmured.
“I will contact Cecil and suggest a nuclear response if we cannot contain this threat.” Which was…well, I guess from the perspective of a hyperlogical machine, that made plenty of sense. It wasn’t like it was my first choice, but if I needed to deny the area to the enemy, it was a functional way to do so.
Besides all of the nuclear radiation that’d be in the air, but that was a problem for the victors to solve. Whoever that might have been. The only thing that seemed, uh, problematic, was probably the fact that it’d also take out no small amount of civilians in the process. That was an unacceptable outcome to me.
Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one who seemed scandalized by the idea. Invincible seemed just as shocked as he chimed in next. “What?! No, no way.”
“We’re not nuking anyone, Robot. And we’re not giving up,” Atom Eve pitched in, sounding personally affronted by the proposition.
Dupli-Kate even scoffed a little. “What are we, Fight Force? We don’t give up.” She didn’t waste any time leaping off of the bike as they came swooping down, with Rex-Splode following her closely.
“I love you, man, but sometimes you’ve got a screw loose…”
With that, he was gone, jumping into the fray alongside everyone else as Invincible and Atom-Eve took to the frontlines. Flying alone with Robot still, personally I felt like I had to defend the guy at least.
“...If it’s any consolation, I do think the nuclear option is still on the table if things get bad enough. Or something just as destructive.”
“Thank you, Taijitu.”
Could I rival a nuclear blast in pure destructive potential…? Maybe, if I used nearly all of my chakra in the process.
Either way, there was a fight to be had, and there were fewer people as personally powerful as I was and capable of confronting this threat. So I darted forward, willing myself through the air on currents of chakra, and into the fray. One moment I was alongside Robot. And the next, I was flying through a vehicle, casting a wave of ice that froze a squad of Flaxans on the spot with a wave of my hands, and sinking into the simplicity of combat.
For the first time since I’d arrived on this planet, something actually managed to hurt me. It was enough to take me so far aback, to make me flinch, that I was unprepared for the second haymaker that came from the massive suit of power armor. Or the third kick from the other armored Flaxan that had approached, eagerly trying to beat me down.
The first hit punched me through a hotel lobby and onto the street on the other side, where the hulking mass chased after me, leaving destruction and debris in its wake. It moved faster than something of its size should have, and frankly, that was on me for assuming that it was slow and lumbering. That was a mistake that I wouldn’t be making again, if I had any say in it.
Nor was I wounded, not in any real degree, even if my chest ached from the strike itself. Now, if these two units managed to properly pin me down or work as a squad…
Then I could theoretically be in some trouble.
It was a good thing that I didn’t intend on giving either of them the opportunity to put me in the ground. Chakra was molded inside of me and then exploded out in a wave of ice that surged forth from my body toward the approaching duo. Not enough to pierce their suits, with the speeds they were going at. More than enough to slow them down just for a long enough instant, as my brain operated off pure animal instinct.
Sometimes, it was better to apply brute force to a problem that needed solving. That was my thought process, anyway, as I sped up, body and flight propulsion enhanced with chakra as I met the one who’d initially punched me with a vicious uppercut of my own. A violent strike that sent it going flying in the air, directly upward. My body was right after it, streaming chakra in blue trails as I pumped as much as I could into my movement and proceeded to break the sound barrier.
Glass windows shattered for blocks around me. I chose to focus on the Flaxan before me, whom I proceeded to absolutely hammer with a flurry of blows that it couldn’t even properly defend against. Punches were denting the dense chest as it spat up blood, eyes wide with shock from my actions as we went from the atmosphere to the stratosphere in seconds.
Now that it was just me and this poor bastard, I let myself revel in the deep, primal, alien fighting instincts and smiled with feral delight. “Is that it?! IS THAT ALL YOU’VE BROUGHT FOR ME?”
Maybe I just had some penchant for tempting fate, because that was right when its shoulders on both sides opened up to expose rows of missile pods, primed and presumably ready to blow me up, for as much damage as they might do. Not that I was going to give the Flaxans the benefit of the doubt anymore or underestimate their attacks.
They’d proven they could hurt me, and thus I had an obligation to stop taking these Flaxans lightly. It was why I didn’t make a hand seal but merely thought it, and some makeshift fire elemental release of blue flame bloomed to life at the missile pods. The obvious response as the explosion tore the armored suit apart and sent me flying back down to earth.
Again, it actually hurt, in a way. I felt the heat of the attack against my robes, the kinetic pressure of being pushed back in a way that might have actually worn me down, but as long as I had chakra to reinforce my body, I’d be fine. If anything, I actually used the propulsion from the explosion to hasten my journey back down to the surface.
Most of this couldn’t have taken more than twenty seconds, as I felt myself being put through my paces in ways that were frankly incredibly fun. Well, I didn’t like all the killing or mass property damage, but who didn’t want to have a cool shonen fight with aliens? Everyone did, and anyone who said otherwise was a filthy fucking liar who couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth.
When I got back to Chicago, the state of the battle, as it was, wasn’t great.
Dupli-Kate, Rex-Splode, and Robot were having some difficulties. That was putting it lightly, given that the three of them were more or less limited to mostly human physicality and movement capabilities. Which was surprising in the case of Robot, since you’d think an AI would go with bigger suits or more offensive capabilities, but I wasn’t the artificial existence in question.
Rex was doing his best to explode what he could but had to keep up a constant retreat as he ducked behind cover to avoid being incinerated by the new rifles the Flaxans had brought. Whereas Kate, well… I didn’t want to speak bad about her, not really. In a situation like this, though, she was kind of useless. If she wanted to keep up, I’d have to recommend to her to get some kind of proper weapons or armor, because otherwise she was just adding to the dead bodies on the ground.
Invincible, meanwhile, was getting his shit rocked by one of the exosuits that they’d been fielding for this invasion. Maybe it was just inexperience talking or just a real lack of strength on the kid’s part. It wasn’t a good look to be held down and pummeled into the concrete this hard, though.
Whereas Eve was mostly focusing on evasion, as she hastily tried to dodge the armored Flaxan I’d been fighting. Like any gentleman, I wasn’t going to leave a lady to clean up my mess. Accelerating just shy of breaking the sound barrier, I slammed into my target and formed a blade of ice, trying out something new.
Harder, harder than I’d ever tried to make ice, I then applied a current of chakra and molded it on the spot to try and achieve chakra flow. It wasn’t something I’d thought about before or even knew might happen as I proceeded to stab forward with the long, odachi-sized weapon through the chest of the Flaxan.
The results were interesting, at least to my Byakugan-capable eyes. It screeched, one pained, agonized noise that didn’t seem to mean anything, until ice started spreading from the wound. Crystals erupted from the chest and began to flash-freeze the entire Flaxan exosuit, as the exposed head began to turn a dark, dehydrated color, and ice began to cover that too.
In moments it was dead, as I found a new way to get rid of my foes. A little fucked, as that sort of death by degrees seemed painful, yet if they didn’t want to die in war they shouldn’t have invaded. Simple as that.
“T-Thanks,” Eve panted, looking more terrified at the frozen statue than thankful.
“It’s nothing,” I shrugged, pulling my blade back and looking at the rest of the incursion proper. Despite the fact that I’d killed so many of these guys, they were still coming. Then again, as long as there was a source for them to come from, maybe they wouldn’t stop.
Not this time.
I was already beginning to firm up my decision as I stared at the portals before something appeared faster at the edge of my distant perception.
I saw it before I felt or heard it.
A humanoid shape going fast enough through the atmosphere elicited the briefest hint of fear that it was another Ōtsutsuki. Something that died the moment their features became clear to me. Tall and muscular, with salt-and-pepper hair and a mustache that I immediately felt violently jealous of. Rocketing through the air at speeds that I almost couldn’t believe.
Maybe it’d been too presumptuous of me, but I’d made the assumption that no one else could relate to my own physical statistics or capabilities here. No, it was objectively arrogant, and as the man appeared, familiar from the myriad recordings that’d been made of him over the years, I had to readjust my expectations. People claimed Omni-Man was the strongest hero on the planet…
And for the first time, I was beginning to believe the claim.
He came in like a meteor, with the sort of control of his momentum and easy experience using his capabilities that I could feel no small amount of envy over. Fast enough to leave wind in his wake, not fast enough to break the sound barrier. More importantly, with the terrifying power that was enough to send Flaxan bodies flying broken through the air by the dozen and slam through their massive vehicles as he grasped the Flaxan armored soldier, beating Invincible to a pulp.
“Are you okay, Mark?”
If I weren't as close as I was and my body as distinctively superhuman in its suite of senses, I might have entirely missed that. There was some genuine, if mild concern in his words to the teenager on the ground there. A dull groan was the response the boy gave, along with a slight nod.
With the same care you or I might use to throw away a piece of trash, he tossed the armored Flaxan a distance away as the figure rolled his ass over teakettle. And then proceeded to do the goofy, if cool, thing and aura farm as all of the soldiers pivoted to what they perceived as the new, biggest threat. I was a little offended that I’d been forgotten about so quickly, but I kept it down inside.
A deluge of blasts was sent his way, yet at the end of it there wasn’t anything to show. Omni-Man hung there in the air. Totally untouched and unharmed, arms hanging at his sides, and with a stern expression on his face.
“...My turn.”
So far I’d thought that my physicality was impressive for this planet, which was a presumption that was firmly under attack as the man flew. He blitzed through the air fast enough and with direct enough control that even I had to recognize the unbridled physical powerhouse that he was. The Flaxans, who’d been benefiting from my split attention and the lackluster nature of their opponents, were hardly prepared for what had come upon them.
The fist of an angry god.
Bodies, those tanks, and their emplacements were eviscerated as the superhero did little more than just fly through them. There was no wasted motion, but rather an economy of action that beggared belief and spoke to no small amount of experience. Despite my memories, I was still new to the superheroic lifestyle.
How to best fight to preserve my allies, or keep them alive, were lessons I was learning as they were foisted upon me. Observing the Teen Team was novel, but within their name, it wasn’t hard to tell precisely how relatively little experience they had behind them. Knowing precisely where to fly to shatter their lines and send them sprawling in the process.
The Flaxans were a people that I had to assume wielded their culture like a cudgel, trying their best to outnumber and evolve technologically past all their foes. However, what could you do to someone who was innately just built better than you? Nothing but flee and pray that they ran out of interest in you.
That was what they did as all thoughts of retreat in good order had been abandoned from their minds. Instead of doing a fighting evasion back to the portals, they were running with the kind of desperate, terrified actions that not even my actions had been able to elicit. Personally, though, I was willing to concede that perhaps they had the right idea in mind.
Omni-Man was scary. It was a good thing he was on our side.
He blurred into motion and slammed the last power-armored Flaxan who was trying to rally their troops through the portal. Which then promptly disappeared.
“Oh fuck,” I breathed. Was he trapped now? Should I even try to go get him? Goddamnit, I wish this superhero thing was easier to figure out.
Invincible, however, didn’t have any hesitation in his actions. “Dad!” He cried out, and the moment he said that was the second a lot of things started clicking for me.
Well. It made more sense why he’d involved himself to such a brutal degree if his son were here. Not that I had children, but in his shoes I probably would have been just as decisive in ending the threat. And judging by the strength I’d seen so far…I was pretty sure he could do it.
Naturally Rex had the reaction a lot of us had as we stood or floated, in my case, looking at where the portal had closed. “Woah, woah, woah! Omni-Man’s your dad?!”
There were not a small number of questions that followed after that statement. However, it was clear that Invincible, Mark, felt some kind of way after seeing his father disappear inside of the portal. After the basic cleanup, he quickly flew off, all wrapped up in his head, it seemed.
In his shoes, seeing my father disappear inside of an alien portal with no idea if he could get home, I’d likely be just as saddled with doubts. Though ultimately, the bruised teenager at least wasn’t freaking out any further about the matter, past his mild exclamation. For my part, I was wrapped up in different thoughts about the world’s premier superhero as I worked in rote motions to help clean up the city.
Deep down, I ignored the itch that made me squirm about what it would be like to fight him. That was a portion of my alien legacy that just wasn’t constructive to face. For now, anyway.
I didn’t think I was a bad guy, for the most part. But it did feel odd that I was disappointed in myself for…what? That I couldn’t fly through the portal in time and go do something to the Flaxans? Because the concept of what you’d need to do in order to destroy their capacity to wage war in the first place wasn’t a small feat.
You had to destroy the infrastructure that allowed for vast military campaigns against other worlds, their technology, and maybe most of the people who knew how to build that technology. Functionally, you’d have to knock them down to the Stone Age and hope that you’d put the fear of God into them enough that they wouldn’t come back.
It was one thing to fight off active, cruel military combatants that were killing people in the middle of a bustling American metropolis. I wouldn’t and didn’t lose a wink of sleep over the matter when I slew those Flaxan soldiers. Couldn’t have if I tried, not when they were so callous about their efforts.
Was I the sort of person who could kill the millions, tens of millions, you’d need to slay in order to prevent them from coming back? I didn’t know.
However, what I did know was that Omni-Man was either so arrogant as to believe he could do it or brutal enough to do it and not hesitate a wink. Maybe that was me projecting, though, as for the first time since I came to this world, I’d found someone who was actually capable of being a threat to me.
Silly as it might sound, I got used to being the most dangerous thing around. Fighting the instinct to prove that fact was a bit distracting.
I was still in a bit of a daze, honestly, as I sat on the couch in the Teen Team’s lounge and played the split-screen multiplayer of some shooter franchise with Rex. He was ranting and complaining over the day’s events, which was ultimately nice. It was a good distraction from my own swirling thoughts.
That, and hearing him bitch and moan about my superiority in trouncing him concerning the shooter was funny.
“I still think it’s a little wild Omni-Man has a son!” Rex blurted out. “...He’s a little weak, but maybe his powers grow or something? I dunno.”
“That’s, well, not entirely without merit. I don’t know enough about the function of their powers to really give a judgment on the matter,” I admitted, shrugging at his theorizing.
Omni-Man was the figure with a truly ludicrous amount of mental and physical energy, while his son had an order of magnitude less. It was a blazing bonfire in the father, which only made me thankful that he didn’t have access to chakra. Was that just an innate, metahuman thing, or was there some sort of racial element going on too?
“That’s the world’s strongest superhero, huh…?”
“Oh yeah,” Rex nodded eagerly. “Nothin’ against the Guardians of the Globe, but Omni-Man was always pulling their ass out of the fire. Don’t think the guy’s ever been beaten.”
Yet. He hadn’t been beaten yet, and it was all I could do to shove that monster itching for a fight back into the box. He was fast, but I was pretty sure I was faster. Was I stronger or more durable? Did my shinjutsu provide an advantage that he flatly couldn’t prepare for?
“Who do you think would win in a fight?” I asked, maneuvering my character around to flank Rex’s on the map we were dueling it out on. “Me, or Omni-Man?”
“Omni-Man.”
“Bro.”
“It’s not my fault, man, Omni-Man has the home-field advantage; he’s one of the greats,” Rex explained, wincing as I cut off his advance in the game and riddled his character full of holes. As he respawned, he shot me a sidelong glance. “You’re strong and fast and stuff, but like…do you know what it means for him to be the world’s strongest hero?”
As we played in silence for a bit longer, I gave the question some honest thought. “Gonna guess it means he’s never lost a fight.”
“Never. Bro’s indomitable. Unstoppable. He can pack up supervillains and monsters that took the entire Guardians of the Globe to fight by himself,” Rex emphasized. “Guy’s a god amongst men.”
It was enough to make me a little genuinely surprised by how much Rex was glazing this guy. “Awfully flattering of him.”
“Listen, I’m Rex-Splode. I know who I am and what I’m capable of. Omni-Man’s in another league.”
That was food for thought, not that I had much time to consider it as the telltale clodding, metallic footsteps of Robot were ushered into the room. As he did so, the game we were playing paused and shifted to a news station in the middle of some kind of breaking story.
“Hey, hey! What gives, we were playing that! I was just about to kick Genji’s ass.”
A scoff escaped me. “In your dreams, maybe.”
“Apologies for interrupting your gaming session,” Robot spoke, in that flat way of his that made me almost certain he held no regret about the matter. “But this information supersedes that.”
To which Rex could only scoff, looking positively doubtful of the AI’s words. “What could possibly be so important—"
On the screen was a news broadcast of some network that I wasn’t even remotely familiar with. What did stand out, though, was the look on the woman’s face. I hadn’t done a lot of keeping up with the 24-hour news cycle in this new world, but apparently whatever was on the teleprompter was bad. Terrible enough to have turned the fair-haired woman ashen in a way that came from genuine shock.
“We’ve got some breaking news…” The anchorwoman began, an expression of outright shock drifting across her features. “I…I don’t actually know how to say this, but we’re receiving confirmation that the Guardians of the Globe are dead.”
Whatever conversation Rex and I had stopped in that instant, as the two of us found ourselves totally gobsmacked by the news. Him more than me, I’d concede, because from my perspective the Guardians of the Globe were not quite the same titans that people in this world considered them. Then again, their fingerprints and influence were unmistakable.
For this earth’s version of the Justice League, they’d had all sorts of merchandise, advertising, comic books, and video games made about them. Even from a very short amount of time here, I’d seen no small amount of reports and questions about where they’d been after such a long absence. After all, the Flaxan invasion was exactly the type of situation they were meant to intervene in.
Apparently we’d just found out the answer to why. They’d been a little too dead to help.
“Jesus fuckin’ christ…” Rex breathed, eyes wide as saucers. For someone like him, who’d been born and raised here, maybe this was a far more terrifying scenario. Like if the entire Justice League or Avengers had been slain in one fell swoop.
“I’m taking it your world’s defenders were strong?” I asked, glancing between Rex and Robot. “If they were killed, they couldn’t have gone down easy.”
Robot could only incline his head in confirmation. “While individually they were perhaps not the strongest on their own, they were a formidable unit when together. It doesn’t bode well for global security.”
“...And it’s also sad, right?”
“That as well,” he conceded.
“Well, I guess…keep me posted?” I asked, standing up. “Mood’s kinda killed for gaming and stuff.”
“If anything breaks, I’ll be sure to inform you, if I can.”
I shrugged. “That’s all I can ask. Catch you later, Rex.”
“Yeah…later man,” Rex nodded, in kind of a dumbly shocked trance by the news.
Making my way back out, I ended up flying slowly back to my apartment. Though certain things were floating around in my head the whole way there. Was it just a coincidence that I was somehow dumped on this earth right as all of their best defenders were slain to a man? It felt like more than just bad luck on my part.
The whole thing might have been arrogance, plain and simple, but I had these powers and this new body for a reason. I was here for a reason, and if helping people and protecting this world wasn’t it, what could it be? For better or worse, there were only a handful of heroes on the planet with the potential or active capacity to rival me. If only for welcoming me in, I owed the world an obligation to try to rise to the occasion.
There was just the weirdest feeling in me that it might need another hero to save it, before all of this kerfuffle around the Guardians was said and done.
Author's Notes:
We've got the final Flaxan invasion down, and an introduction to Omni-Man, Earth's GOAT. What? That won't age well? You're crazy, he's the strongest superhero in the world, he'd never betray them.
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.
Lastly, I have a freely accessible post up speaking about our first week live, questions for what people would like to see improved or fixed, and also a poll on all of my snippets or stories, to test the waters and see which way people are going. If you'd like to be part of that process at all, click here.