“What?” Erickson squinted, looking menacingly at the new arrival.
“This is a matter for the US government.
Don’t interfere if you don’t want problems, Red Rush.
This is outside your jurisdiction.”
Yes, I’d simply called the Guardians.
Who said that in a solo superhero story, no matter how critical the situation, you couldn’t involve other heroes?
We’re not in a comic book, bound by genre conventions.
Besides, I’d already inserted myself into Eve’s origin story.
Why not call the Guardians too?
Jokes aside, even I was shocked by his appearance.
Not even a minute had passed since I’d sent him a message, and he was already standing there, having heard enough of Erickson’s monologue to evaluate it.
How the hell did my father manage to kill him in my past life?
“I think it’s time you refreshed your memory,” Rush replied calmly.
“We’re the Guardians of the Globe.
That means the whole planet is within our jurisdiction.”
“Really?
I don’t see any Guardians here.” He raised the barrel of his cannon, aiming at the lone figure on the roof.
“Just one foreign freak meddling in another country’s business!”
He fired.
Idiot.
Just an idiot.
I don’t even know how to justify such stupidity.
Maybe a brain tumor was pressing on his mind.
Until that moment, the only thing holding me back was that Eve and the doc were in the line of fire.
I suspected the girl, exhausted from mass-resurrecting her family, couldn’t even defend herself.
And I didn’t know how destructive Erickson’s weapon was.
I didn’t even know what it could fire besides anti-tank shells.
But now everything had changed.
Eve and Brandywort were safe.
And Red Rush, motherfucker, was the fastest man on the planet.
I wouldn’t bet a single cent that he couldn’t get out of the line of fire.
A thick beam of dazzling white energy instantly vaporized the section of ceiling where Oleg had been standing.
It continued in an unbroken line to the sky, letting sunlight through the clouds.
Okay, the cannon was powerful, I had to admit.
I wasn’t ready to take that on my chest yet.
I suspected he hadn’t fired at full power immediately only because he was afraid of ruining his precious investments.
But that was its last shot.
Erickson hadn’t yet realized his mistake.
His eyes burned with mad delight, his mouth twisted in a cruel grin.
But I was already there.
It was too easy.
No matter how much you arm an ordinary person, no matter how much you train them, even if you create a weapon powerful enough to pierce Viltrumite skin, you just can’t keep up with a Viltrumite in a fight.
The still-hot metal of the barrel, several barrels to be precise, crumpled under my fingers like crinkling paper.
That was it.
Somewhere in the center of the weapon, where a normal rifle’s bolt would be, a disturbance began.
The first sparks and a wisp of smoke appeared from under the external panels.
A red blur zoomed past me, barely discernible even at Viltrumite perception speed.
Wherever Red Rush ran, soldiers were disarmed, stunned, tied up, or otherwise incapacitated.
Even the massive armored suits didn’t save the brave American space marines from the too-fast Russian guy.
But Oleg and I weren’t the only ones who’d started moving.
Eve had enough strength left to raise a defensive wall between herself and the soldiers.
It held against a couple of green laser blasts from the space marines’ cannons.
Where, I wondered, were these advanced technologies and elite soldiers in super-armor with lasers when we were repelling the Flaxan invasions?
When civilians were dying under the tanks of invaders from another reality?
The younger Brandyworts, if the doc’s wife had taken his surname, also hadn’t stood idle.
They’d joined the fun.
Fortunately, not on their former master’s side.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that they still preferred to modify themselves.
Only occasionally did they do something like acid-gas exhalations or energy-charged objects.
Not one of them gave me the same feeling of dread as Eve, who’d removed her mental block.
But against Erickson’s soldiers, the kids’ abilities were more than enough.
In fact, it was the atomic family that inflicted the most damage on the soldiers.
Simply because they couldn’t disable them as carefully, almost gently, as Oleg and I did.
They had to be more fierce and cruel.
Though “had to” wasn’t quite right.
They reveled in finally getting back at their tormentors.
“No, no!” In desperation, Erickson yanked at the useless toy’s controls.
“What are you doing, you fucking freaks?” He grabbed the youngest child by his collar.
“I created you, you ungrateful bastards!
I’m your master!
I command you: kill them!”
He pointed at me.
Naive.
Number Six quickly explained to his former boss how wrong he was.
He shouldn’t have grabbed the one who could turn his body into a weapon with his bare hands.
First, the kid started smoking with caustic acid, burning the skin and flesh on the hand holding him.
When Erickson let go, with a cheerful cry of “Nuts!” the little one kicked his former boss in the indicated target.
Horrifying.
Scary kids.
Especially considering that at the moment of the kick, his leg was several times enlarged and covered in a steel crust.
I looked around.
The kids and Red Rush were finishing off the soldiers.
Erickson was whimpering, clutching his injured hand to his bruised groin.
Eve and the doc were safe.
On the ground, my help was no longer needed.
Only the deserters in the air remained.
Within seconds, I caught up with the already ascending aircraft.
I came face to face with another, judging by his lab coat and cybernetic head implants, scientist.
He was trying to close the side door.
Seeing me, he flinched and reached for a cabinet built into the helicopter’s wall, full of various futuristic weapons.
“Bad idea,” I smirked.
He actually listened to me and pulled his hands away from the chrome-plated pistol with its huge electronic optical sight.
“Just a reflex!” The scientist raised his hands.
“I surrender.”
“Heard that?
He surrenders?” I squeezed past the pilot.
“Land in the courtyard.
No tricks.”
Then I grabbed the scientist by his collar and returned with him to the ground.
Just in time to witness another clichéd villainous line of the day.
“My name is Steven Erickson,” the black man hissed through his pain at Red Rush, who had just pushed Number Six away from him.
“And I…”
“Work for the government, I figured,” Oleg interrupted.
“I don’t care.
Let your court, military or otherwise, deal with you.”
“I am the government!” Erickson roared so fiercely that fragments of broken teeth flew from his mouth along with his spit.
“I…”
But he didn’t finish his threat.
He suddenly passed out.
I only saw a blurred movement of the Russian speedster’s hand.
Others didn’t even see that.
Physical well-being of Erickson didn’t concern anyone here.
I would have killed him on the spot, but that would complicate the upcoming contact with the agency.
“Have fun,” I tossed the bored kids another toy in the form of their former tormentor and likely creator.
Then I flew over to Red Rush.
“I knew you were fast,” I told Oleg.
“But not that fast.
Damn, not even a minute had passed.”
“I was just nearby, in Canada.” Nearby, a few thousand kilometers.
“When I got your message.
By the way, you could write more legibly.”
“I had to type blindly,” I shrugged.
“Can you finally explain what’s going on here?” He surveyed the scene of the fight.
“This guy was talking like a typical psychopathic supervillain, but his soldiers are in US uniforms.
What did you drag me into?”
“It’s a long story.
Honestly, I’m just passing through here myself.
In short, these assholes were trying to kidnap and use that girl as a weapon.
Before that, they conducted a series of inhumane experiments on her mother, trying to recreate her power.
These kids are the result.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.” I pointed at Brandywort.
“He can tell you everything firsthand.
But first, I think we should call someone from the Global Defense Agency.
Someone from the very top, preferably.
Because this guy is from there too.”
“Oh, I usually don’t get involved in this kind of thing.
Darkwing and War Woman handle it.” Oleg lamented, but he still pulled out a futuristic-looking communicator and quickly scrolled through contacts on its screen.
“Here.
After Redcliffe, this guy seems to be in charge.
Let’s hope they’re not in cahoots.”
I briefly saw a familiar name on the display.
Perfect.
I could count on Stedman.
He had his own skeletons in the closet, but Cecil at least separates personal from professional.
He doesn’t revel in power like that idiot Erickson.
Having offloaded the issue of contacting the government onto an official hero from the big leagues, I walked over to the atomic family.
I arrived just in time to hear the end of a conversation.
“What…” Hiding his uncertainty behind his long bangs, Number Two asked, “what do we do now?”
His gaze darted between the doc and Eve.
A loaded question.
The kids had nowhere to go.
Half an hour ago, they were preparing for a glorious death.
Now they had to find a place for themselves in the world.
And Samantha was no help.
She was still a child herself, living under the care of the Wilkinsons.
The doc remained, but he’d been homeless since he’d gone into hiding.
Though he no longer needed to hide.
If the children, like Sam, could create gold from shit, the money problem would solve itself.
But if they could do that, they wouldn’t have been dismissed so easily, right?
“Congratulations, Dad!” I clapped Brandywort on the shoulder.
Besides him, no one else could take responsibility for the children.
“I?” The old man was stunned.
“Well, who else?” I countered.
“Doc, tell me…” Eve suddenly perked up.
“Are you…
are you my real father?”
“Eve, I…” He hesitated for a second, then finally mustered the courage to confess.
“Yes, it’s true.
Your mother and I loved each other.
But I…” He glanced at the other children, who were listening to his words with mixed feelings.
“As for them…
I don’t even know who their father is.
I thought your Sarah was dead.
My God, what did they do to her?”
My attempts to lighten the mood with clumsy jokes hadn’t helped.
Elias’s eyes were watery.
Better not even think about what he was going through.
Finding out that your beloved had been kept as a half-dead corpse for fifteen years, giving birth to deformed children from God knows who.
You wouldn’t wish such a fate on anyone.
Death would be better.
“You’re not going to like this,” Number Two said grimly.
“They keep her in a tube, like us.
Hooked up to all kinds of stuff.
But at least she’s never conscious.”
“I have to do something,” Brandywort said, clenching his fists.
“There shouldn’t be a problem with that,” I interjected again.
“Tell everything to Stedman.
I don’t think he’ll stop you from taking your wife and children.
He’ll probably even help you settle down.
The government owes your family a lot.
But be prepared for them to try to put you back to work.”
With knowledge like Elias’s, a quiet life was out of the question.
He was too valuable.
Not many people had managed not only to successfully create a superhuman but to do so without significant side effects and without dying in the process.
I couldn’t recall any.
Almost every artificial appearance of a superhuman is accompanied by the death of the person who made it possible.
And I suspect that’s exactly how it happened in my past world.
Otherwise, I would have heard at least once that Eve had a biological father and a whole horde of siblings.
“I will never do this again,” Elias declared decisively.
“That’s not why I hid for sixteen years.”
“You’re suggesting we surrender to the government?” Number Two bristled.
“After everything they did to us?”
Pfft.
Like you have options.
“Now that it’s all out in the open, they won’t dare act like before.” I didn’t even try to explain that the current head of the agency, unknown to both of us, had different methods.
Besides, Cecil couldn’t have not known what Erickson was doing.
“Besides, there’s a representative of the Guardians of the Globe here, kid.
He’s definitely on your side.”
“And you?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I snorted.
“Or did you forget how I spent an hour trying to stop your family from killing each other?
You’re welcome, by the way.”
Our conversation was again interrupted by the sound of helicopter blades.
Looking up, I saw two aircraft approaching.
Another government helicopter and a sleek, predatory-looking single-seat jet.
Its design vividly reminded me of a certain someone in this world who liked to dress up as a bat.
“Easy,” I whispered to the guy, noticing that his palms were starting to tremble, whether from fear or rage.
Darkwing’s plane didn’t land.
Instead, the hero dramatically jumped out of it mid-flight.
From the helicopter that landed in the courtyard, familiar faces got out.
Cecil Stedman and Donald Ferguson.
Oleg immediately walked over to his teammates to briefly explain the situation.
“Well, I’ve done my part.” I shouldn’t introduce myself to Cecil yet.
God forbid he recognizes me as Omni-Man’s son.
“Wait,” Eve suddenly grabbed my sleeve.
“You’re leaving already?
I don’t even know your name or your superhero name.
Why did you help me?
How can I contact you?”
Oh, so many questions.
So my first impression had worked after all.
Time to cement it.
“Oh, don’t worry about that.
You can thank me another time.” I winked at the girl, then leaned to her ear and added, “See you at school.”
“What?” Now she was really shocked.
“You’re from…”
“Shh!” I hissed.
“It’s a secret.
Oh, and happy birthday.”
And with a sense of accomplishment, I flew off from under the nose of the government agent heading our way.