A little earlier.
“Hiss…
it’s starting to hurt again.”
In the sky, Nolan pressed a hand to his ribs and slowly touched down in the yard.
“I’m home.”
He brushed the dust off his battle suit, and his wife, Debbie Grayson, threw the door open and rushed into his arms.
She’d just wrapped up a big deal and was on vacation right now.
“I haven’t had a chance to clean up yet—”
“Oh.”
Watching his wife fling herself into his embrace, Nolan’s face — hardened by battle — instantly softened.
He wrapped an arm around her waist and kissed her, again and again.
Living up to that great name of his, what a flawless disguise!
“How’d it go?”
“Nothing serious.
Darkwing’s old rival’s a sharp one — roped in the Mauler Twins to set a trap for us.
Then…
then it all got resolved, same as always.”
Debbie kissed Nolan’s cheek once more.
“Now that this mission’s wrapped up, does that mean you’re off duty?”
“Of course.
Where do you think we should go — that deli place in Berlin, or maybe Paris’s—”
“You should get out of that suit first, dear.”
Debbie tapped Nolan’s chest emblem and pulled him by the hand toward the stairs.
Then, catching sight of the news playing on the TV, they both froze.
“Oh, good lord!
Is this one of your old acquaintances at work?”
“No, I can’t think of anyone like that.”
Nolan’s eyes turned sharp all at once.
Twenty years on Earth now, and he’d never once forgotten his loyalty to the Empire, never once forgotten his mission — conquest.
That was exactly why he’d stayed on such good terms with the Guardians of the Globe and the Global Defense Agency.
He needed a solid handle on this planet’s capacity to resist, and ideally, when the time finally came, to wipe them all out without a trace.
But Earth was a strange place.
Unlike every other planet he’d conquered, this one just kept churning out one bizarre superhuman after another.
Just like this scene right in front of him — a scar carved clean across a power plant.
Using the details from the news, Nolan reached out to The Immortal.
The man’s tone was as combative as ever.
“Omni-Man, you calling to laugh at me?”
“No, why would you think that?
I’d have hoped twenty years of friendship proved what kind of man I am.
You know your enemies are my enemies too — I just want to understand what actually happened at the power plant.”
“Ugh, fine…”
The Immortal walked him through the whole thing, openly admitting he’d let his temper get the better of him again.
“When I busted out of the rubble, I found the electric guy barely conscious.
Turns out he really had been there to help.
Honestly, he didn’t need to admit any of that at all — but in a certain sense, he actually trusted Omni-Man more than he let on.
Total tsundere, through and through.
But none of that registered with Nolan — his whole focus was locked on that one hand-blade strike.
The timing lined up.
Was this Leon’s doing?
It shouldn’t be — he knew exactly how rigorous the Empire’s training was, and he didn’t think a Viltrumite warrior would defy orders like that.
Besides, how could an eighteen-year-old possibly pull off something like that with a hand-blade?
And he’d just beaten the kid down himself not long ago — didn’t he already have a read on his actual strength?
Impossible.
Absolutely impossible.
So, for the time being, he could only conclude that hand-blade must have been some kind of energy-release gesture.
He found himself increasingly relieved he hadn’t gone too hard on Leon in training.
Earth kept churning out heroes one after another — he really did need to keep himself sharp.
But now that Leon had crossed his mind again, a flicker of hesitation crossed Nolan’s face.
Should I go have a talk with him?
He felt like the demands he’d laid down at the start, born out of his own resistance to the idea, had maybe been a little too harsh on the kid.
Thinking back, how much chaos had he himself caused when he’d first arrived?
“What is it, dear?”
Ever attentive, Debbie immediately caught her husband’s odd mood and turned to grab his hand.
“Um, hypothetically — and I mean purely hypothetically — say I had a distant relative…”
Nolan hesitated a moment, then went ahead and said it.
Just a hypothetical.
Barely counted as a leak of information.
Besides, discussing how to better train up new blood was, in its own way, an act of loyalty to the Empire too.
Naturally, Debbie found the whole thing thrilling.
She’d always been curious about her husband’s homeworld.
And it was her thoughtful little suggestion, filtered through classic Viltrumite alpha-lion logic, that eventually turned into the message Leon received:
“Leon, let’s go talk somewhere else.
The Moon.
Suit up.”
Am I about to die?
Leon’s brow furrowed slightly.
In the end, Leon went anyway.
First off, he didn’t think Nolan would actually make a move on him.
The location was way too close — it’d cause all kinds of fallout.
And even if Nolan did try something, worst case, Leon could just fly back to Earth and self-detonate on the spot, throw the whole situation into chaos.
Failing that, his Noble Phantasm was itching to test itself against the old man anyway.
Right on cue, Nolan’s voice came in over the comm — he wasn’t far off.
“No need to be tense.
I invited you back out here just to fill in a few more details.”
Watching the young man in front of him, still holding a combat-ready stance, Nolan felt a flicker of warmth.
“I hadn’t noticed before — you’ve got your own battle skirt now.
Right, of course, you’re an adult now.”
And per their customs, it was only after coming of age that one got to choose their own name.
Nolan remembered vividly — the day he’d received his, was the very same day the plague of the End Times descended.
“Was your coming-of-age ceremony carried out by your parents?”
That was Viltrum for you — talking about a coming-of-age ceremony like it was a death sentence.
Because, well, it basically was.
“They weren’t available.
General Kregg and Anissa handled it instead.”
“Oh?”
Surprise flickered across Nolan’s eyes.
Word was, the coming-of-age ceremony carried special significance — having it performed by one’s own parents was meant to sever, once and for all, any bond that might breed weakness.
For an exception like this to be made for Leon, he must be unquestionably loyal, enough to win over even his instructor.
“So right now, on Earth, you’re…”
Leon answered Nolan’s question after question with great care.
Viltrum didn’t have literary inquisitions in the political sense, but it absolutely had them in the literal, deadly sense.
There’d been one in his own graduating batch.
Got the previous Regent’s name wrong during a political-thought class, and the instructor handed the poor kid over to Leon — the top student — to execute personally.
Viltrumites — even down to fifty remaining full-bloods — still treated their own newborns like lab specimens for breeding out weakness.
“Your performance has been genuinely impressive, fresh blood.”
That part was true.
Getting his own identity, housing, and enrolling in school, all within a single week — whatever methods he’d used, that kind of speed was beyond even what Nolan himself could manage.
Could this kid actually be some kind of genius, even among Viltrumites?
Maybe, in time, his intellect would end up second only to the old king and the Regent.
“Still, do you remember our most urgent objective?”
Setting his amazement aside, Nolan turned serious.
“Of course, Commander.
We need to scour the galaxy for the species with the highest genetic compatibility to ours, and grow the Empire.”
“You’re aware how similar Earth humans look to us.
You know what that means, don’t you?”
“Possible genetic compatibility, sir?”
“Then you know what needs to be done, don’t you?
Start with your own peers.”
Nolan crossed his arms.
This was every Viltrumite’s duty — he himself carried it out every single day.
Debbie said kids his age should be hanging out with people their own age, so let him go undercover properly, then.
Of course, my own kid’s a different story.
If he ever awakens, and I find out someone dared to—
Meanwhile, on his end, Leon was thinking:
Since the old man had said it outright, it really wouldn’t fly for a Viltrumite to just ignore an order.
Mark still hadn’t turned up, and who knew whether this universe’s Nolan was even genuinely loyal to the Empire.
Where to start, then?
Marcia?
Maybe it was the shared mixed-heritage look between them, but the two of them had grown pretty close over the past week at school — he honestly didn’t mind the girl at all.
So Leon answered, firm and resolute:
“Understood, Commander.”
To be continued…