"Yes!" Shuri cheered in front of the submarine's screen, raising both hands with a grin.
The transmission showed Ororo firmly in control of the fight. Namor could barely hold his ground inside the storm while she commanded the sky above Wakanda.
A little farther back, T'Challa and Hunter were watching as well.
"Have I ever told you that if you hadn't been with her back then, I would've tried my luck?"
T'Challa raised an eyebrow.
"You liked Ororo?"
"Who didn't?" Hunter answered as though it were obvious. "That white hair, that strong, untamable personality, her ebony skin shining beneath the sun, those sapphire eyes..."
"All right, all right. I get it."
His brother chuckled.
"Seriously, though, I still don't understand how you let a woman like that go."
"It wasn't that simple..."
T'Challa turned his attention back to the transmission.
"She wanted to do something greater for her people, and to do that, she had to leave Wakanda. I needed to continue my training, and I couldn't abandon my homeland either... In the end, there wasn't much choice. We each had to follow our own path."
Hunter nodded a couple of times.
"Well... it's never too late, brother. Maybe you could try again," he said with a faint smile.
T'Challa smiled slightly. On the screen, the clouds covering Wakanda flashed with gathering electricity.
"Although if she says no, don't even think about insisting... unless you want to end up as roasted panther."
"The thought hadn't even crossed my mind," the prince answered immediately.
"Sir, we have contact," one of the soldiers reported.
Hunter approached the command center, with his siblings following close behind.
"Byrrah?" T'Challa asked.
For several seconds, all they received from the other end was noise. Orders, alarms, and overlapping voices filled the channel before someone finally answered.
"T'Challa? Where the hell were you? I thought you were dead."
"Not even close," Shuri cut in. "That big guy won't be causing any more trouble."
"What?"
"Oh, right... You should probably send people to the royal vault too. Several of Attuma's barbarians managed to infiltrate it along with Orka."
"What?!"
"Relaaax," she interrupted before he could continue. "Legion and I handled it."
Byrrah took a moment to answer.
"And Orka?"
"Well, Legion left, and I had an exciting and heroic battle against him, from which I naturally emerged victorious."
Hunter exchanged a quick glance with T'Challa.
"You should also send someone to clean up," Shuri continued. "The security chamber is... a little bit of a mess."
"We'll deal with that later," T'Challa said. "How are things over there?"
Byrrah fell silent for a moment.
"We're doing what we can. Some of the barbarians managed to infiltrate the city, and they're making it much harder to organize the defenses. They've weakened several sectors from the inside, which allowed more enemy forces to break through our lines."
Several orders partially drowned out his voice before he continued.
"But right now, there's something else that worries me much more."
A link appeared on the central panel.
Shuri opened it.
The transmission showed hundreds of Atlantean soldiers deployed before a figure so immense that even the vessels surrounding it looked tiny by comparison. Every soldier had a weapon ready, yet none of them dared move any closer than necessary.
Giganto stood before them.
Or something that had once been Giganto.
His skin had taken on a sickly gray tone, crossed by thick black lines. His eyes had gone completely dark, with violet irises standing out at their centers.
The creature moved through Attuma's forces, breaking apart their ranks with every motion. The barbarians tried fleeing through different levels of the city, using buildings as cover or reaching whatever vessels they could find, but against something that much larger, all they managed to do was delay the inevitable.
Above the fighting came a low hum, a children's song warped by the titan's throat.
Shuri moved closer to the screen.
"What... is that?"
"Giganto... technically," Byrrah replied. "No one knows exactly what happened. He stopped in the middle of the battle, started changing, and ended up like that."
Hunter studied the image.
"For now, he's only attacking Attuma's men," the Atlantean continued. "That's bought us some time. The problem is, he's already taken out thousands of them. There are fewer and fewer left in front of him."
T'Challa looked at the Atlantean troops waiting behind.
"And once he's finished with them, you have no idea where he'll turn his attention next."
"Exactly. I've ordered our units to prepare again, but if that thing decides to attack them, I don't know how long they'll last. I've got several fronts open across the city, Attuma's forces are still getting in, and now I also have the one titan Namor was never able to defeat on his own walking over my soldiers."
The camera shook as Giganto launched another attack against the invaders.
"If this keeps going, T'Challa... Atlantis isn't going to survive."
No one answered right away.
Shuri kept watching the transmission while running through what they knew. Giganto had stopped suddenly, his appearance had changed, and ever since then, he seemed to be choosing his targets carefully.
Something was missing.
Where was Legion?
She studied the titan again. The sudden change. Those violet eyes. The deliberate choice of targets.
"It's Legion."
T'Challa turned toward her.
"What?"
"It's Legion," she repeated, certain now.
"I don't see his symbol anywhere," Byrrah said.
"It could be somewhere on the body the camera can't see. But it's him."
"How can you be so sure?" T'Challa asked.
"Remember when we got trapped and Zola came to rescue us? When we ended up inside her mouth?"
"Of course. Hard to forget."
"Then you also remember the plan Legion suggested before Zola rescued us."
The prince needed a few seconds to find the memory.
"He said he had a transformation that could possess living beings. It was... Ghostfreak!"
Shuri pointed at the screen.
"That explains everything. The sudden transformation, why he stopped attacking you, and why he's focusing entirely on Attuma's men. Legion possessed Giganto."
"I see..." Byrrah replied. "That makes considerably more sense."
The few barbarian forces still remaining were retreating between the structures. Giganto stopped pursuing them and began surveying the battlefield, searching for something new.
T'Challa recognized the gesture before anyone else.
"Wait."
Shuri looked at him.
"Didn't he also say that transformation made him pretty aggressive?"
"...Like when he fought Kofie," she added.
"Me dijeron que en el Reino del Revés... 🎶"("They told me that in the Upside-Down Kingdom...")
The humming returned through the speakers.
Giganto turned toward the Atlantean positions and began moving forward. The nearest vessels immediately started backing away.
Byrrah realized it at the same time they did.
"That means..."
"He'll attack anything he sees," Shuri finished.
The titan took another step, still singing that childish melody.
"Nada el pájaro y vuela el pez 🎶"("The bird swims and the fish flies 🎶")
===
POV LEGION
Tormenting those guys had stopped being fun.
I moved toward the Atlantean forces.
They reminded me of those little green plastic soldiers I used to play with as a kid, scattered across the floor, waiting for a hand to decide what happened to them.
Except these could feel fear.
And boy, could they feel it.
An officer was shouting orders, trying to keep the defensive line from falling apart. Near him, one soldier had lowered his weapon without even noticing, while another kept glancing toward the positions behind them, probably trying to figure out whether there was still time to run.
Adorable.
Watching that poor hope they keep tucked away inside their fake little hearts... watching them struggle to hold on to it as it slowly begins to fall apart...
The violet iris swept across the ranks.
Delicious.
A sonic turret fired, and the blast managed to slow my advance for a moment.
Good. It wouldn't be fun if they didn't try to resist.
The Atlanteans answered from every direction. Lasers, sonic blasts, and missiles struck Giganto's body while their vessels shifted positions to concentrate their fire.
Tickles. Like a feather brushing across my face.
Their resistance was barely enough to hold him back, yet the soldiers kept obeying the officer trying to keep them together.
"How long do you think you can hold out?"
Giganto's voice traveled through the water and reached even the farthest positions.
The gunfire intensified.
"I can see it."
The officer shouted into his communicator again, and some of the men who had started retreating returned to their positions.
One of them couldn't hide the trembling in his jaw.
"I can see it... Want to know what I see?"
The formation kept firing.
I raised one leg and held it there for several seconds, long enough for everyone below to understand exactly what could happen if I decided to bring it down.
"I see death hanging over your tiny little heads."
My next step shook the seabed and closed the distance even further.
I swept an arm in front of me.
The motion displaced a massive volume of water toward the first defensive line. The officer managed to shout a warning, and several soldiers tried to get behind cover, but the current overwhelmed the positions meant to stop it and carried part of their defenses away.
"Is this really worth dying for?"
The weapons didn't stop.
Several of the men did.
"I hope it is. Let me give you a little preview of what awaits you after you leave this world."
I tilted my head toward them.
"For fakes like you... nothing."
Another current began forming with a movement of my arm.
The soldiers in the second line saw it coming and didn't bother repeating the useless attempt to hide behind the same defenses. One of them held onto his weapon until the very end, even though fear had made his whole body rigid.
Like a deer in headlights.
The current was about to hit them when a different vibration passed through the water.
A sonic attack collided with it, dispersing enough of the force to save the position.
I followed the direction it had come from with my eye.
"Hm?"
More than a dozen creatures were approaching from different directions. They were much larger than Atlantis's vessels and had several fins running along their bodies, though from my perspective, they were still manageable.
"Didn't know I was in Avatar: The Way of Water."
I recognized one of them immediately.
She was younger than the others and stayed close to an adult specimen.
"Zola... You went and got your family, huh? How thoughtful of you."
The Aethelmar split apart before reaching me, forming a wide circle.
Then they attacked together.
Sonic waves struck from several directions.
Nothing. I don't feel anything.
I tried to move forward.
The leg responded, but this body barely shifted a few inches. Each pulse arrived before the previous one had finished fading, keeping constant pressure on Giganto.
This body... won't move.
I searched for the rhythm between the attacks, some opening I could exploit.
Instead, my attention landed on something unpleasant.
The soldiers.
They had changed.
The officer no longer needed to scream just to keep them from abandoning the line. Several were picking up the weapons they'd dropped earlier, while others had begun reorganizing the damaged positions.
Hope.
No, no, no. That's not right.
They were supposed to keep trembling.
They were supposed to look at me and understand there was nothing they could do.
But... why?
Because that's what they're supposed to feel.
Because of me?
Who else?
The sonic waves continued hammering Giganto's body.
But... why would I want them to be afraid of me?
Because it's fun.
...No.
No?
It isn't.
Of course it is. Can't you feel it?
Yes...
I looked at them again.
Yeah.
I am having fun.
Then stop asking questions.
But I don't like it.
What don't you like?
Them being afraid of me.
They're fake.
No.
Yes. Dolls imitating something real. Mannequins that think they're alive.
But they are real.
They think they are. That doesn't make it true.
Why?
Because of us. Because we're the ones who are real. We came from the real world. This place was created by someone to tell a story, a comic, a movie, some joke meant to entertain other people. We know that. They don't.
One of the soldiers who had retreated earlier was back in position.
The fear was still there, obvious in the way he moved, but he'd returned anyway.
But... if they believe they're real... then they are real.
That's not how this works.
And who am I to decide that?
You're not listening to me.
No...
Of course you are. You just need to think about it. Everything we've done here, everything we've seen...
I'm not doing it.
What?
I'm not listening to you.
The Aethelmar maintained the pressure while the Atlantean troops reclaimed their positions and resumed firing.
Hope had returned.
That shouldn't be there.
I don't care.
Of course you care.
No.
The fear in their eyes... it doesn't feel the same anymore.
I don't like it.
What?
The way they look at me.
I already told you, they're not real.
Maybe not to us.
Don't start this again.
But they are to themselves, and that...
I looked at the soldiers again.
...feels right.
Stop saying stupid things. Right, wrong... what does any of it matter? Stop lying to yourself. We're not heroes. We're not Superman. We're just a normal kid far from home. The only thing we should care about is getting back.
...
Who... are you?
The voices disappeared.
So did the battlefield.
A mirror appeared in front of me.
My real face, the one I had before I died, stared back from the other side. I recognized the hair, the eyes, every feature I'd spent so many years seeing.
I am you.
But I'm not like this.
You've always lied to yourself about what you're really like.
I would never do this.
My reflection smiled faintly.
Then I guess you finally grew the balls to do what you actually want.
I watched him a little longer.
Let's go home. Come on. None of this is real.
I looked at my own face in the mirror.
It felt...
Real.
Too real.
Who are you?
A violet glow appeared in his eyes.
Let's go home.
This time, it didn't sound like a suggestion.
I can't.
Yes, we can. Alien X can do it. We just need to unlock him.
And then what?
What do we do once we're back?
What happens to all of this?
One problem at a time. We'll figure out the rest later.
And this world?
He shrugged.
Who cares?
Something doesn't feel right.
Who... are you?
His expression hardened.
Stop.
I... no...
He.
He had given the order.
Not me.
Who are you?
I told you to stop.
No.
The violet in his eyes grew brighter.
If you keep going down this road, you're only going to make things worse for yourself.
You're not me.
If you continue, everything that happens from this point on will be your fault. And I won't be there to help you.
I remembered what I'd done since entering Giganto.
Attuma's forces disappearing in front of me.
The soldiers running.
All those lives treated as though they meant nothing.
And I'd planned to keep going.
Everything began to vibrate.
No...
We had planned to keep going.
No.
We.
You.
Me.
Get out of my head.
My reflection stopped answering.
GET OUT OF MY HEAD!
Everything stopped.
The image in front of me remained perfectly still until a ripple moved across the mirror.
I warned you.
The features began to distort.
Everything that happens now will be your fault.
When the image settled again, I was no longer looking at the boy I'd been before I died.
It was my face now.
The one I saw every morning when I woke up in this world.
Only one thing didn't belong there.
Those violet eyes.
This lie is going to end... whether you want it to or not.
I felt a pull.
Something latched onto my entire body and violently ripped me backward.
BEEP... BEEP... BEEP...
===
HEEEY, HOW'S EVERYONE DOING?
ALL RIGHT, YOU'LL HAVE TO FORGIVE ME THIS TIME. THIS CHAPTER IS GOING TO BE SHORTER THAN THE PREVIOUS ONES.
THAT SAID, I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN. I STILL OWE YOU ONE MORE, SO THE NEXT CHAPTER WILL BE OUT THIS WEEK AND IT'LL BE BACK TO THE USUAL LENGTH.
AS WE CAN SEE, LEGION SEEMS TO HAVE FIGURED OUT THE TRICK AND MANAGED TO TELL HIMSELF APART FROMHIM.
WE ALSO SAW ZOLA ARRIVE WITH HER FAMILY TO HELP ATLANTIS, SAVING THE SOLDIERS JUST IN TIME BEFORE THEY BECAME GIGANTO'S NEXT VICTIMS.
WE'RE GETTING CLOSER EVERY DAY. WE'LL SEE HOW THE NEXT FIGHTS TURN OUT AND WHAT CONSEQUENCES ALL OF THIS WILL BRING TO THE WORLD.
REMEMBER, WE HAVE A PATREON IF YOU'D LIKE TO SUPPORT THIS CONTENT:
patreon.com/EmptyTag
I POST CHAPTER PREVIEWS THERE, ALONG WITH VARIOUS IMAGES I'LL BE USING IN FUTURE CHAPTERS... OR SOMETIMES JUST BECAUSE I LIKE MAKING THEM, FOR EXAMPLE:
AS ALWAYS, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT AND COMMENTS. I KEEP A VERY CLOSE EYE ON ALL OF THEM.
TAKE CARE, GUYS.