Over time, the theme of my channel rose from the ocean floor to the reaches of space, following my own exploits.
I no longer even tried to hide that the channel’s creator was a real superhero, recently known to the world as Invincible, a freelance NASA astronaut without a spacesuit.
Fortunately, Cecil’s long arm reliably protected my anonymity, even from the megacorporations whose platforms I used.
The folks at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration didn’t mind me uploading some of my own footage to the public, thereby popularizing space science and the industry as a whole.
If they needed something specific, they told me directly.
Honestly, even I wasn’t prepared for how much people would enjoy my work.
Some videos on my channel, like a flight through the insanely caustic and hot atmosphere of Venus, which cost me a costume and a camera, got astronomical tens of millions of views within days, and those numbers kept growing.
But lately, I’d been feeling that the hassle of running the channel, specifically editing and uploading videos, was taking up too much of my time.
I’d never intended to become a full-time blogger or anything.
Still, I was managing to optimize my time more or less.
I didn’t completely slack off on school, bad grades would immediately cause additional problems in the form of punishments from Mom.
I hung out with friends.
I didn’t forget about space and the occasional free work for Cecil.
But I wouldn’t call my cooperation with Stedman unprofitable.
He made my life much easier by sharing information about my father’s movements and helping with connections.
He’d even managed to convince me to wear a communication device permanently.
I still didn’t put the earpiece inside my head like my father.
I only let him hide it on the back of my ear, like an earring.
But Eve and I took apart all of Cecil’s people’s electronics, checked for surprises, and recreated them using her powers.
Now I could be sure that when turned off, the device transmitted no data about me to Cecil’s headquarters.
It was through this micro-earpiece, connected to a special satellite in Earth orbit, that I got the alarm call from Cecil during another NASA space mission.
I was just installing a set of equipment on the moon, something to detect gravitational waves from black holes or something, when a threat of, let’s say, near-Viltrumite level appeared in the Sea of Japan, near the Russian-Chinese border.
“Mark, you’re needed there, as soon as possible!” The old man’s voice rang with alarm.
“Drop everything and fly to the Sea of Japan!
Russia, China, and Japan have requested help with your old friend, Ave Maria.”
I was pretty much done here anyway.
I’d been planning to shoot a new video for the channel, but if the situation was that urgent.
Ave Maria would work for content too.
Gently, so as not to cause seismic activity and ruin two hours of work, I pushed off from the lunar surface.
I flew around it, returning to the light side, and sped toward Earth.
“What about the Guardians?” I asked after entering the planet’s atmosphere, when two-way communication was restored.
I didn’t ask about my father.
It was obvious that if I could act so openly near Earth, he was very busy elsewhere.
“The Immortal and Red Rush are already there.
War Woman is in the Amazon.
We can’t reach her.
Aquarius isn’t as effective on land.” Cecil gave me a quick briefing.
“You know the rest are even less useful.”
“The Chinese have that guy…
Tai…
Mai…
I can’t remember.”
“He’s in a coma after fighting Octoboss last week.” So not that strong.
“Mark, I’ve already sent Brit and his sister there.
Angel and Japanoid are also helping them.
But that thing doesn’t care.
Damn, it caught the Immortal.”
“I’m close.” I should have gone around Earth on the outer orbit first, then descended into the atmosphere.
That would have been much faster.
I tried to remember the heroes Cecil had named.
I knew Brit, the invulnerable old man who’d worked for the Agency for decades.
His power was truly impressive.
He was literally Invulnerable.
I’d have called myself that in his place.
No one had ever managed to even wound him.
But there was one problem.
Invulnerability was his only power.
In all other respects, he was no better than an ordinary, testosterone-fueled jock.
So in a fight with Ave Maria, he was practically useless.
He could only, if he got very lucky, distract her a little.
Nothing more.
I’d never met his younger sister myself, but I’d heard she was a solid mid-tier in terms of strength and one of the best in endurance and durability.
About like Brit, only her invulnerability was weakened in favor of greater physical strength.
But that wasn’t enough.
She wasn’t a match for even the Immortal or War Woman.
So against Ave Maria, again, she’d be of little use.
Cecil must have been desperate to send them there.
I knew almost nothing about Japanoid.
Some kind of Japanese dwarf hero, possibly a cyborg or android, with tech-type abilities.
Angel, well, she was beautiful, had angel wings, and could fly, of course.
I didn’t remember her ever participating in serious power operations.
Hmm.
I wouldn’t bet on such a team against Ave Maria.
“Mark,” Cecil said grimly.
“The Immortal is out of the fight.
If you can’t beat this thing, we’ll have to activate Cerebro.”
Don’t even think about it!” I snapped.
“Eve hasn’t recovered from last time!”
“Then you’d better handle the monster yourself, Mark.
I’m sending Donald to help, but he won’t get there soon.”
***
Damn Cerebro.
And I’d jokingly called it that when I saw the results of Brandywort’s work.
The device looked too much like the helmet from the first *X-Men* movie.
Last month, they’d finally finished it and ran a test launch.
Cerebro really did remove all limits from Sam’s abilities.
That was exactly the problem.
She completely lost sight of the boundaries within which to use her power.
Lost in her power, Eve tried to do something, help sick children in some hospital or something.
She didn’t remember exactly, only said that she felt something terrible nearby and tried to fix it.
She nearly killed herself in the process.
It turned out her ability didn’t pull energy for these transformations from nowhere.
Eve wasn’t Doctor Manhattan in a skirt.
She was limited by what was stored in her own body.
That was actually a bit strange.
The transformations she performed should require so much energy that no one would have thought that her ability required ordinary fats, proteins, carbohydrates, ATP, and other fuel of living organisms.
Having spent the energy from a light breakfast, her ability moved on to the fat stored in her body.
Then, like any organism under excessive strain, it began to consume her own body.
After the fat, her muscles started breaking down.
Eve literally withered before our eyes, turning into a dry mummy.
Then cartilage and small bones.
It was terrible.
She didn’t even notice she was killing herself, completely immersed in another form of perceiving reality.
Brandywort tried to turn off the device, but nothing worked.
So I just tore the damn helmet off her head, breaking the device.
Eve survived, though any other person in her place would undoubtedly have died.
Her ability, which had almost killed her due to artificial overstimulation, still didn’t let her die.
But the recovery process took two weeks.
Not to mention the experience was very painful for her.
Now she felt pretty good, but she still hadn’t fully recovered and was even a little afraid to use her powers.
And if they forced her to use Cerebro against Ave Maria, that thing alone had a brain weighing a couple hundred kilograms, not to mention it might be resistant to such influence, like we Viltrumites are.
Maybe Eve could handle it, but better not to test it.
Until Brandywort figured out how to make Eve maintain mental clarity while using Cerebro, it was better not to use the damn thing at all.
“A little north, Mark,” Cecil prompted.
“You’re almost there.”
“Yeah, I see them,” I interrupted.
***
This time, Ave Maria hadn’t made the same mistake.
She’d taken the fight on land, where her powerful paws gave her a solid foundation for her massive body.
The heroes circled the beast in the air and on the ground like annoying flies.
And like flies, they were more of an irritant than a threat.
The most combat-capable of them all, the Immortal, was already in Ave Maria’s mouth, nearly bitten in half by her huge incisors.
Only the self-sacrifice of Brit, who’d shoved himself into the monster’s mouth after the former president, kept him from permanently losing his lower half.
Brit wasn’t strong enough to pry the monster’s jaws apart, but he could block them with his body.
Like a pebble in a gear mechanism, he wedged himself between Ave Maria’s teeth, taking blow after blow on his chest.
The Immortal dangled in her mouth like a useless piece of meat, clutching her lip with one hand and feebly pounding her gum at the base of a tooth with the other.
Other heroes tried to help them.
But the monster’s tentacles, each acting independently like an octopus’s, kept them at a respectful distance.
Angel didn’t know what to do and just flew around uselessly.
Red Rush was fast enough to get into the monster’s mouth but too weak to change anything.
Japanoid fired his futuristic cannon at the monster’s legs with little success.
The gun had truck parts sticking out of it and was several times bigger than himself.
Aquarius spat water at the monster and looked pretty dried out himself.
Only Brit’s sister, a tall woman with ash-blonde hair in an extremely revealing superhero costume, dared to engage the monster’s tentacles up close.
But she didn’t have enough strength, and she just dangled helplessly in the air in their tight embrace.
Pathetic, honestly.
I meant the situation in general, not Brit’s sister.
Cecil had assessed the situation quite clearly.
All hope rested on me, the return of my father wherever he was, and, in the worst case, Eve.
Like last time, I greeted the creature with a running punch.
Only now I was ready for it to be a collision rather than a penetration.
I hit with my shoulder, not my fists.
Holy shit, this thing was heavy and unbreakable.
The skin on the monster’s belly, where I’d hit, remembering how as a child I’d made a gopher release my finger by biting it, bent.
The monolithic muscles hardened, resisting the blow.
But I still managed to knock the huge carcass over.
We tumbled together across the ground, crushing some buildings and equipment, tractors I think.
Shit, I think my shoulder popped out of its socket.
Well, I’d accomplished my goal.
Ave Maria, taken by surprise, spat out the Immortal and Brit.
Only Brit’s sister was still in the tentacles’ grip.
Suckers don’t let go of their prey so easily.
“Fuuuck, man!” A drawn-out, rapid exclamation came from beside me.
“Holy shit, you’re just in time.
I was starting to shit bricks, thought I was done for.”
I just now noticed that Red Rush’s whole pant leg was soaked in blood, the red of his costume hid it.
I also saw a sucker mark on his thigh.
The silk of his costume was torn and crushed there, and the skin on his leg was a sickly black-blue.
But the material, designed for minimal friction, had performed well even against the monstrous suction power of Ave Maria’s tentacles.
Thanks to that, the wounded super was still on his feet and could even run a little.
“Get whoever you can out of here.
I’ll handle the thing.” I nodded toward Brit, who was getting to his feet, and the Immortal, who was crawling on his hands, dragging his legs and spilled intestines behind him.
Had his flight ability shut down, or was he just dazed from his wounds?
I pulled my arm, there was a flash of pain in my shoulder, something clicked, and feeling returned to my fingers.
“Just don’t overdo it, buddy.” The words hadn’t even reached my ears, and Oleg had already grabbed the Immortal and disappeared in a red flash.
Meanwhile, Ave Maria was starting to come to, thrashing in the crater of churned-up earth, clay, and trees.
“Britney!” Brit had also come to and was trying to free his sister.
But she didn’t need her brother’s help.
She was trying to pry her chest off a huge, stuck-on sucker.
But the woman didn’t have enough strength, and the monster, even dazed, hadn’t loosened its grip.
Should I help her or let her struggle a little longer?
Neither she nor her brother seemed to have any wounds, just torn clothing.
Fine.
I’ll help the lady in distress.
“Stop!” I grabbed Brit by the shoulder and yanked him out from under a tentacle attack.
They were really independent.
The main body hadn’t even fully recovered, but the tentacles were already lively.
“Or I’ll have to pull you out too.”
He mumbled something in protest, but I wasn’t listening.
I threw him toward the other heroes.
Ave Maria was starting to raise her huge head.
I had to hurry.
“Britney, right?” I slipped between the tentacles and appeared before the woman.
“And who are you?”
“Get ready.
This might hurt a little.” I interrupted her and tried to sharply tear the tentacle off her.
But no such luck.
God, this thing, Ave Maria, not Britney, was strong.
I had to wrap both arms around the bundle of monstrous flesh, practically hug the tentacle, and shamelessly push off the woman I was saving to pry the stubborn sucker off her.
It felt like we were doing this all wrong.
With inhuman effort, I managed to free Britney from the monster’s grip and the top of her own costume, which remained hanging on the suckers.
There hadn’t been much fabric there to begin with.
With a cry, the woman began to fall.
I didn’t miss the chance to be a gentleman, catching her in mid-flight.
While Ave Maria got to her feet, I carried Britney to her brother.
Along the way, I noted not only the woman’s outstanding chest and figure, but also that she’d gotten off with completely minor scratches where I, a year ago, had gotten huge bruises all over my back.
They really were invulnerable, she and her brother.
“I could have handled it myself,” she said, not very gratefully.
“I’m sure you could have,” I smirked, earning such an outraged, feminist expression on her face that she didn’t even look as pretty as before.
“Stay here, okay?” I set Britney down in Brit’s arms.
Someone had a terrible imagination.
“Hey!” The woman protested again, immediately freeing herself and getting to her feet.
“We’re not civilians.”
“We’re in this too,” Brit echoed, probably about to remind me how old he was.
“Guys, I don’t care,” I interrupted.
“If you figure out how to deal with this thing, be my guest.
If not, don’t get in the way.”
Blunt, but true.
There was no use for them here, just extra worries.
I could use Brit and his sister as projectiles, but I didn’t think they’d appreciate that suggestion.
Besides, Ave Maria had almost recovered from my surprise attack and was already looking for the offender, swinging her eyeless head from side to side.
Well, Mark, time to show the world what you’re made of.
“Hey!” I drew the creature’s attention, flying up to her eyeless face.
Last time that worked, almost too well.
“Maria, honey.
Glad to see you again.
Give me a roar if you missed me too.”
The monster’s small tentacles, so to speak, perked up at me.
Wait, could she understand speech?
Or did she just recognize my voice?
Opening her toothy maw, Maria let out a furious roar that would have made Godzilla jealous.
“Just what I thought,” I smirked, hiding my nervousness behind jokes.
Last time, she’d almost killed me.
By Olympus, Tartarus, and blessed Viltrum, I hoped I was strong enough now to handle round two.