[Brit's POV]
"Be strong, be brave, and let us know if you die so we can send someone else." I announced, because If there's one thing forty years of black ops teaches you, it's that sugar-coating gets people killed.
I chomped down on my cigar, turning to face the circus freak show Cecil had cobbled together. They called themselves the 'Secret Guardians.' I called them a liability waiting to get their asses iced.
Business Baby, literally a toddler in a custom Brooks Brothers suit. Big Mildew, a green blob of sentient fungus that smelled exactly as bad as you'd expect. Bulletproof, a cocky kid in an orange suit who thought he was hot shit. Best Tiger, a martial artist who fought with a blindfold fetish and an ego to match. Knockout, a woman who could hit hard enough to level buildings. Kid Thor, a guy with a magic hammer who kept insisting he was the real deal. And Wolf-Man, who was exactly what his name suggested.
[Image Here]
"Seriously," I muttered, shaking my head with a tired groan only a century of putting up with government bullshit could produce. "Who even comes up with these names?"
Before anyone could complain, a blinding blue light engulfed the teleportation pad. The sterile walls of the Pentagon vanished, instantly replaced by the lush, towering trees of the Cook County Forest Preserves.
A massive, silver full moon hung heavy in the night sky, casting an eerie, luminous glow over the clearing. And floating right in the middle of a clearing was the alien invader Nolan had brought with him.
She had graying hair pulled back into a massive, heavy braid. But the end of that braid wasn't tied off with a scrunchie. It was capped with a wicked, serrated blade so sharp you could practically feel your throat itch just by looking at it.
'Good thing I'm INVINCIBLE,' I thought.
She floated high in the sky, looking down at us like we were gum stuck to the bottom of her pristine alien boots. "I was waiting for Earth's mightiest warriors, the ones Nolan warned us about," she said, her voice dripping with disappointment. "You don't look nearly interesting enough."
She finally tilted her head down, giving me a full view of her face. A few distinguished wrinkles, piercing eyes, and an expression of annoyed bitchiness. She was built like a brick shithouse and looked like she could snap my neck with her thighs.
'Sweet mother of Christ.' I was instantly smitten.
"God," I whispered, clasping my hands together as the cigar nearly slipped from my lips. The rest of my team tensed up, ready for a bloodbath, but I just closed my eyes, my voice pure with devotion. "I know I've been a cynical son of a bitch, and there have been tough times where my faith wavered in the trenches. But I never lost sight of your path, and you finally delivered. You sent me this bloodthirsty angel."
"Yo, old man, get your damn head together—" Bulletproof yelled, marching forward like the arrogant prick he always was, pointing an accusatory finger at me.
He didn't get to finish the sentence.
The alien didn't spare a moments notice and whipped her head. The bladed braid snapped forward like a metallic viper, faster than the speed of sound.
SNIKT.
"My fucking hand! Ahhh, shit!" Bulletproof shrieked, collapsing to his knees as his severed hand hit the dirt. He desperately grabbed his bloody stump, screaming and trying to stop the arterial spray.
The 'angel' whipped her blade back around, aiming a fatal sweep right at my neck, and I stepped right into the blade's path.
The impact hit with the force of a tank.
"Son of a bitch!" I grunted as I was blown sideways for fifty yards, tumbling through the dirt and carving a jagged trench through the pristine forest floor.
I popped back up, dusting off my leather jacket. I looked over at her, but she was staring at her blade. It hadn't drawn a single drop of blood, and the edge looked slightly warped where it had hit me.
"Interesting," she murmured, her eyes locking onto me.
As I jogged back to the battle, I saw Business Baby go sailing through the air in a perfect arc while Big Mildew ran faster than his blob-like frame should have allowed him to.
"You good?" I called out as Business Baby landed in Mildew's green arms and gave me a thumbs up.
"Then what are you waiting for, your sitter?!" I barked. "Giddy up and get Cecil to port the damn thing!"
The clearing erupted into a chaotic battle of a dozen things happening concurrently.
Wolf-Man was out of his mind, bathed in the light of the full moon, his muscles bulged unnaturally, his lunar healing factor pushed to its absolute peak. He threw himself at the Viltrumite with zero regard for defense, garnering cuts that would have killed anyone else, relying entirely on his insane lunar healing factor while letting out feral roars.
Meanwhile, Knockout and Kid Thor were aggressively attacking her from the flanks.
"Babe, I'm gonna pound her from behind! You get on top and ride her down!" Kid Thor yelled, gripping the shaft of his mystical hammer with a little too much enthusiasm as he swung.
"Don't tell me how to ride, sweetie!" Knockout yelled back, stepping in close. "Just focus and try not to finish early this time!" She followed it up with a superhuman haymaker that sent the alien tumbling backward.
'I always knew those swingers were into weird stuff,' I thought, watching them tag-team the murderous space lady.
Over to the side, Best Tiger was casually walking through the battlefield. The arrogant bastard was still wearing his blindfold.
He wasn't even aiming at her. Casually, he raised his Desert Eagle and began firing into the air. His bullets ricocheted off trees and rocks, perfectly intercepting the alien's bladed braid mid-swing and knocking it away from the team.
I used the still-sobbing Bulletproof as a launch pad, triggered the micro-thrusters in my jet boots, jumping off his back while he floated about, trying to close off the wound, making an embarrassing fuss about it.
"Hey, dumbass!" I yelled at Best Tiger mid-leap. "Maybe REMOVE the blindfold!"
"Take off the blindfold? For this?" Best Tiger smirked, blindly firing a shot over his shoulder that deflected a lethal strike aimed right at his spine. "Nah. It wouldn't be fair to the poor woman."
'Show-off.'
I reached the apex of my jump, putting me right at eye level with the floating Viltrumite.
"Hey, lady! Welcome to fucking 'Merica!" I yelled.
I ripped my jacket open. Strapped directly to my chest was a thermal bomb, supercharged by the boys back at the labs.
Her eyes widened for a fraction of a second.
BOOM.
A blinding flash of localized thermonuclear heat engulfed us both. Down below, Wolf-Man and Kid Thor tackled the rest of the team out of the blast radius.
When the smoke cleared, my clothes were entirely vaporized. I was buck naked, suspended in mid-air, being held in a vice-like one-handed chokehold by the baddie… I mean, bad alien.
I fired up my jet gloves, the thrusters screaming as I tried to pry her fingers off my throat, but it was like trying to bend solid titanium.
"Of all humans, you are the most interesting one I've met," she said, her voice low and dangerous. She dragged the serrated edge of her blade directly across my throat. Sparks flew like a grinder on steel, but my skin didn't even turn pink. "A seemingly invulnerable one."
"See?" I wheezed, throwing her a wink. "You can't hurt me, so why not call it even and me and you can go grab a stiff drink, lady?"
"A delirious magot," she scoffed. "Well, tell me, little monkey. What will you do when I throw you in a Viltrumite prison? Will your invulnerability come to your aid when you spend the rest of your years in the dark, tied up?"
"Hold your damn horses, you're moving too fast!" I gasped. "Let's set up a safe word first! Like... Look up!"
I pointed a naked finger at the sky.
The air instantly charged with ozone. You could taste the static electricity on your tongue.
In a flash of blinding blue teleporter light, the sky ripped open.
A shadow the size of an office building fell over us.
A massive Kaiju with Multiple tentacles writhing where its face should have been and chitin plating, easily thirty stories tall, crashed down directly on top of us, driving the Viltrumite and me into the dirt and sending a shockwave that flattened trees for miles in every direction.
A moment later, the Kaiju shrieked as the alien lady bench-pressed the massive beast off of her, tilting it until it fell on its side.
She floated back up, angrily wiping a trickle of blood from her nose.
I rolled out from under the beast, casually rotating my shoulder cuffs. Still naked, by the way.
"Say hello to Hail Mary!" I shouted, pointing at the roaring monster. "The only Kaiju to ever challenge Omni-Man and live to tell about it! Only this time, she's fed to the brim with Buffout and trained exclusively to hunt your kind!"
Hail Mary roared, launching herself at the Viltrumite.
Author's Note:
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