"Alright, kid, let's talk shop."
'...What in the fuck was wrong with this guy?'
I was momentarily stunned.
I sat there on my artistic throne, staring down at Cecil Stedman, the Director of the Global Defense Agency, and my brain simply refused to compute the sheer audacity of this man.
He was sitting in an interdimensional Japanese castle, having just been magically abducted by a flesh-eating demon with a biwa, surrounded by impossible, gravity-defying geometry.
...And he was treating this like a Tuesday morning budget meeting at corporate.
But I was way too deep into this shit to give up the act now.
I had to match his freak.
"Alright," I said, leaning forward slightly, keeping my voice smooth and dangerously calm. "Let's start with how you actually got to my location."
Cecil smiled around the smoking cigar in his mouth, pointing a scarred finger directly at my face.
"Those aren't called smart glasses just for the sake of the name, kid. They have built-in GPS. The millisecond you exited this dimension and stepped foot back into our reality, our computers got a hit."
My stomach dropped straight into my colon.
'You have got to be fucking kidding me.'
I had to force my jaw to stay shut.
I mean, I knew that I was dumb, but surely I wasn't this stupid, right?
I took a free pair of high-tech glasses from Donald Ferguson, a man who works as the right hand for the most secretive intelligence agency on the planet, shoved them onto my own face, and just... forgot about them?
Who the hell does that?!
I was a certified, paste-eating moron!
My hands instinctively trembled, desperately wanting to reach up and rip the frames off my face, but I forcefully locked my muscles in place.
I had to keep up the act, no matter how paper-thin it was.
Cecil, with his eye missing nothing, saw the twitch in my fingers.
He took a long drag of his cigar, the smoke obscuring his scarred face.
"Now, Kid, tell me—"
TWANG.
A sound sharp enough to shatter glass rang out, painfully loud and echoing through the infinite wooden halls.
Both Cecil and I instinctively looked at Nakime.
Her single, large eye was boring straight into Cecil's skull, devoid of any warmth.
"You will address my master with respect, Human," she warned, her voice cold enough to freeze hell over. "Lest you decide you no longer love your head on those old shoulders."
'Thank RNGesus for Nakime.'
I let out a breath and gave her a subtle, appreciative nod.
Seriously, she was the best demonic roommate a guy could ask for.
Cecil stared at her for a long, heavy second.
Then, he simply took the cigar out of his mouth, dropped it onto the pristine wooden floor, and crushed it out beneath his heavy boot.
"Alright, alright. Give the old man some leeway," he grumbled, not even fazed by the death threat.
He turned his attention back to me, his expression hardening into pure business.
"Now, where were we? Ah, right. Mr. Kaisen, you haven't been honest with me, have you?"
'Yeah, because being totally honest with a paranoid spymaster is such a virtue.'
I just sighed, rolling my eyes beneath the lenses of my traitorous glasses.
"I had to do what I had to do. Your methods were very famous back home. You aren't exactly known for playing nice. So, I had to get creative."
Cecil's faint smile dimmed a fraction.
He studied me for a beat, the gears clearly turning in his head.
"You've been muttering about 'back home' a lot. You did it in holding, you do it now. Not to mention those ramblings my men heard about you praying to some... god of chance?"
He leaned forward slightly.
"Tell me, Mr. Kaisen, why did you really try to kill my Guardians of the Globe? And why the hell did you throw Omni-Man into an alien portal on live television?"
"I already told you this before, didn't I? It was Omni-Man who attacked them."
I kept my voice level.
"Your precious Guardians would all be buried six feet under right now if not for my interference. But I'm sure you already knew this after the fact, didn't you? After all, Damien Darkblood must have already tipped you off about the real culprit."
Seeing no confirmation from him, I decided to continue talking with a laugh.
"Ha! Cecil Stedman, the man who once believed in justice and fairness but is now just a morally grey spymaster doing whatever is necessary to make sure that humanity survives to see the next day alive!"
I let some genuine emotion bleed into my voice.
"Slowly killing your own morals and principles, choking them to death as each heinous act goes by without consequence. That Director Radcliffe messed you up real bad, didn't he?"
Now Cecil was genuinely surprised.
You could see it clearly in his eyes.
"How... how do you know any of this? Did you read my mind somehow?... No, I had that vulnerability taken care of... Are you from the future maybe? But even that doesn't explain..."
He trailed off, starting to pace.
I stopped his pacing by raising my hand dramatically to draw his full attention back to me.
"Director Stedman, I'm what you might call an unexpected guest, well the very first guest of this particular type really."
I chose my words carefully.
"I am not originally of this world but rather from another universe entirely."
Cecil opened his mouth.
Probably going to make some joke about me being seriously ballsy enough to expect him to believe something like that.
But seeing the certainty and conviction in my eyes he stopped himself and asked again more seriously.
"Even if I were to believe that outrageous claim, that still doesn't explain how you could possibly know all of these classified details about my personal history."
Ah, so now for the final bait to really hook him in.
"Oh but I do know everything, Director! After all, I've lived through all of this before in my own world."
I grinned.
"I'm from what you might call a parallel world where everything is similar except for very small details here and there that change the outcomes."
I took a breath.
"In my original world, Omni-Man killed all of his fellow Guardians. Pushed Invincible nearly to death before flying off into space."
Another breath.
"Then he came back later with a full Viltrumite invasion force that killed billions upon billions of my kind and after eugenic segregation took a few thousand humans as breeding specimens before finally turning my entire world into a Viltrumite breeding colony for their empire."
Cecil went silent.
Too silent, actually.
I could see him processing everything I'd just told him.
He finally shook his head slowly.
"Well, there's no way to confirm your story or verify any of these claims you're making."
He paused.
"But every piece of evidence I have points to this being possible. The dragon. This dimension. Your knowledge. The absurd timing of it all."
Another pause.
"I can't believe I'm saying this out loud but I need to ask you for a favor, Mr. Kaisen."
'Huh? A favor?'
"I need your help in defeating Omni-Man when he inevitably returns to Earth."
I couldn't help it.
I just started laughing hard, clutching my stomach.
"Haha! You should seriously consider a career in stand-up comedy, Director!"
I wiped my eyes.
"You want me to defeat Omni-Man when I've been nearly maimed by that damn alien already? And even that dimensional deporting trick was just pure luck combined with perfect timing, nothing more!"
"Oh but I don't think it was just luck at all, Mr. Kaisen."
He continued in that calm, measured voice.
"Our little conversation back at the detainment cell? Well, my technical team had a field day analyzing all the changes in your body that happened just during our brief talk."
He started counting off on his fingers.
"Major changes in your pheromone output, a significant dip in ambient radiation levels around you, not to mention the fact that you now have your own personal dimension that you can access at will and you can summon a goddamn dragon like some medieval Warlock straight out of a fantasy novel!"
He looked me dead in the eyes.
"You have the power to help us, John, so please don't let this world turn out exactly like your old world did."
I went silent just for the effect of it.
But meanwhile, I thought to myself, 'Damn, that bastard is crazy good at manipulating people.'
I looked directly into his eyes.
"Playing the human empathy card on me, are we? Director, we both know that we're well above such simple moral obligations and emotional manipulation."
He just shook his head, looking genuinely disappointed but he continued anyway.
"But we can always make a trade instead? My information and resources for your service and cooperation?"
Cecil's eyes immediately lit up with interest but he quickly calmed himself down and said in a more professional tone.
"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Kaisen?"
"First things first, has Omni-Man managed to come back to Earth yet?"
"No, he hasn't returned yet."
Cecil crossed his arms.
"But I'd be willing to bet good money that he'll be back from the Flaxan dimension in just a few days at most given the extreme time difference we've detected from analyzing their corpses and technology."
I nodded at that information.
"Director, whatever you do you must never reveal the survival of the Guardians of the Globe to anyone outside of your most trusted GDA agents, and I mean no one else can know."
"What exactly are you getting at with this request?"
He narrowed his eyes.
"I want you to publicly announce to the entire world that the Guardians of the Globe are all dead and that I was the one who butchered them all in cold blood."
I watched his reaction carefully.
"And that Omni-Man was gravely injured during his confrontation with me and was subsequently abducted and thrown into an alien dimension against his will."
"Why the hell would you want that?"
Genuine confusion in his voice.
"Because we desperately need time, Director, and that's time that Nolan won't give us if he so much as sniffs out that his cover identity has been blown!"
I leaned forward.
"I want you to throw a goddamn parade in his honor when he returns, make memorial statues of him, make him feel safe and secure that his secret is still shrouded in mystery."
"Make everything feel normal. Like the world still loves him. Like nothing's changed."
Cecil paused before replying.
"But that'll make you public enemy number one for the entire world! Why would you willingly put such a massive target on your back?"
"As I said before, I'm a guest in this world and nobody really likes an unannounced guest showing up."
I gave a slight smirk.
"But I'm going to need several favors from you and the GDA in return for taking on this role."
"Sure, as long as you give me something concrete and actionable, something we can actually use against the Viltrumites."
Cecil finally showed his true colors and let go of all pretense.
"Sound! I don't know the exact frequency yet, but there's a very specific sonic vibration that The Depth-Dweller of Atlantis produces. It really, really hurts Viltrumites and I need you to find it and weaponize it, but you have to keep it under wraps."
"Huh, a weakness to sound, who would have thought that was even possible."
Cecil muttered, clearly filing that information away mentally.
"Second, You need to find Tech Jacket. Zack Thomson. Make sure he's with you and the GDA, because his suit is incredibly versatile and you can't let an asset like that sit on the bench."
I continued.
"Oh, and make sure you keep Chicago's population ready for a massive evacuation at a moment's notice."
Cecil's eye narrowed to a dangerous slit.
"Chicago? Why Chicago? And how do you know about Thomson?"
"Because I know the board."
I lied flawlessly.
"Unfortunately, the rest of the methods to exploit their weaknesses are off-world, many-many light-years away. You're going to need all the heavy hitters you can get."
Cecil was silent for a long moment, processing the intel dump.
Finally, he let out a dry breath.
"Alright, questionable nobility, aside. What do you need in return?"
I didn't say a word.
I just looked at Nakime.
She dropped her hand across the strings of her biwa.
TWANG.
The floor beneath Cecil vanished.
He fell straight through a newly opened tatami gate.
The echoing halls of the Infinity Castle instantly replaced by the deafening roar of crashing waves.
He found himself stumbling on the extreme, jagged edge of a massive cliff, looking down at the violent, churning sea hundreds of feet below.
The salty wind whipped at his coat.
A second later, I stepped out from another tatami door suspended in the air right behind him, walking casually with my Glock still gripped in my hand.
"Before you port away, Director" I said, raising my voice over the crashing waves to make sure he heard every single word. "Remember to never, ever give my poor Nakime a scare like that. She's a very sensitive girl, you know."
Cecil looked back at me, then glanced down the sheer, vertigo-inducing drop to the deadly rocks below.
"Alright. Alright, I get it."
He held his hands up defensively.
"Point made. But I still haven't heard what it is you need from me?"
I walked right up to the edge of the cliff, stopping inches away from him.
I looked the most powerful man in the world dead in the eyes, lowered my gun, smiled warmly, extended an empty hand, and asked the realest question of my entire life.
"Let a brother hold a dollar."
Cecil just stared at my empty palm.
His brain entirely failed to process the sheer tonal whiplash.
After about half an hour of incredibly surreal negotiations standing on a windy cliff, we finally reached an agreement.
I opened a tatami door floating in the air, ready to step back into the safety of the castle.
As I stood in the doorway, the harsh sea wind blowing my hair around, I looked back at Cecil.
"Oh, by the way," I said casually. "Your invisible agents must be incredibly thirsty, standing around in that alleyway barricade all this time waiting for you."
Cecil frowned.
"What are you talking about—"
"Tell them to have a drink on me."
I closed the door right in his face.
Meanwhile, back in the alleyway...
Cecil reappeared with a teleportation flash, catching his breath as the GDA strike team immediately dropped their cloaking devices, heavily armed and surrounding the perimeter.
The soldiers wore tactical armor, helmets with built-in HUDs, advanced rifles with laser sights.
Standard GDA black ops loadout.
"Director!" one of the soldiers called out, rushing forward. "Are you alright? We couldn't track your signal!"
Before Cecil could even answer, a strange, wet slapping sound echoed from the mouth of the alley.
The entire strike team raised their rifles, lasers pointing directly at the disturbance.
Coming to a full, cartoonish sprint down the pavement was a faceless, humanoid man whose body was split diagonally in metallic silver and bright blue.
Slapped right on the center of his chest was a massive, glowing Pepsi logo.
He was pushing a rattling shopping cart entirely filled with ice-cold sodas.
Pepsi Man slowly tilted his faceless head to the side, holding up an ice-cold can.
"Pepsi?"
[A/N]: Guys, we're in the TOP-3 of the Powerstone Ranking! So here's the thing, you get me to Top-1 by the end of the week, and I'll do something crazy, I just don't know what.
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