[Allen the Alien P.O.V.]
The ship's artificial gravity was somehow still humming, which meant the thick, purple fluid leaking from my ruptured eye just kept pooling warmly in my lap.
I coughed, a wet rattle echoing in the small cabin, and sprayed a speckle of blood across the navigation console.
"Hey, hey, stay with me, Allen!" Telia begged, her fingers slipping slightly on the blood-slicked control panels. She bypassed a failing life-support node, aggressively routing whatever juice we had left to the thrusters. "Don't you dare close your eye. I didn't steal this bucket of bolts just to bury you in it, okay?"
"I'm awake," I groaned. My jaw clicked when I spoke, and I noticed I was missing three teeth.
Great Thadeus hit a lot harder than I remembered. I reached out blindly, weakly gripping her wrist. "Earth... Telia, just get us to Earth."
"I'm maxing the thrusters right now," she breathed, her shoulders tense as she stared at the holographic readouts. "Just... hold on a little longer."
I let my hand drop, leaning my head back against the metal bulkhead. Sparking wires hung from the ceiling, hissing rhythmically. Every time I took a breath, my shattered ribs ground together, but beneath the sharp spikes of pain, I felt that familiar, burning itch deep in my marrow.
My adaptability that Great Thadeus so loved to praise. The Unopan genetics made sure I didn't stay broken for long. My ribs were already knitting themselves back together, calcifying into something denser, and my eye socket throbbed as the optic nerve aggressively rewired itself.
But it didn't do anything for the crushing weight sitting on my chest.
I had abandoned them. I left the Coalition of Planets, turned my back on Great Thaedus... the guy who basically raised me to fight the Viltrumite Empire.
But what else was I supposed to do?
When I lay bleeding on the floor of the High Council chambers, with the little bit of vision I had before passing out, I saw something dead in Thaedus's eye.
I had tried to talk him down, argued that we could trust the humans, but...well, he let his fists do the talking. I couldn't just sit there and let a planet burn because of a potential danger. Given my origin and my history with Earth, it would be against my nature to go along with this genocide. Thaedus did not care about how this looked from my perspective and I never expected him to act so impulsively.
"Entering the Sol System," Telia announced, pulling me out of my spiraling thoughts.
I gripped the edge of the console and hauled myself up. My legs shook, but the bone fractures were mostly fused. I leaned over her shoulder, peering out the cracked viewport.
There it was. A swirling blue and green marble hanging in the dark.
A heavy sigh of relief slipped past my lips. We just had to warn their leaders or, if possible, warn John. Maybe they could raise planetary shields, or at least evacuate the major hubs before Thaedus got here.
"Decelerating for atmospheric entry," Telia muttered, pulling back on the yoke.
Suddenly, the proximity alarm shrieked.
"What the hell is that?" Telia gasped, her hands flying to the defensive console.
I squinted through my bloody eye and saw as a blue and yellow streak rocketed up from the planet's atmosphere. It didn't arc or drift like a normal satellite but flew in a perfectly straight trajectory, stopping dead in the vacuum directly in front of our viewport.
It was Invincible.
He looked... different. When I was here six months ago, recovering from my last beatdown and eating terrible fast food with those blue scientists, Invincible was just a victim of Nolan like me. A kid playing superhero.
The guy floating outside my ship did not have the presence of a kid. He was anchored in the void, completely rigid, like a coiled spring. Even through the lenses of his cowl, I could feel the cold hostility radiating off him.
"Open the airlock," I told Telia, pushing off the console.
"Are you insane?" she yelled, grabbing my arm. "He's that Viltrumite hybrid you told me about! He's going to kill you!"
"I just need to talk to him," I said gently, prying her fingers off my suit. "Keep the ship's weapons locked on him just in case, but... don't fire unless he actually rips my head off, yeah?"
I stepped into the airlock, wincing as the pressure cycled, and let the outer hatch slide open.
Floating out into the cold vacuum, I stopped a few yards away from him. I tapped the side of my head to establish the telepathic link, keeping my hands raised where he could see them.
'Hey. Invincible, right?' I projected, forcing a tired smile. 'I'm Allen. We, uh... we have a lot to talk about.'
Mark didn't shift a muscle or get surprised by the psychic link. 'Talk about what?' his mental voice shot back.
'Look, I... I messed up,' I admitted, rubbing the back of my neck awkwardly despite the vacuum. 'Six months ago, I was here during the first Viltrum Invasion. Even before that for years, I completely missed the signs about Omni-Man being a Viltrum spy. I should have realized what he was, and maybe... I don't know, maybe I could have warned you guys before things went bad.'
Mark's head tilted slightly. 'Spy? What do you mean, spy? Who do you work for?'
I blinked. 'Wait... you don't know the full scope of how the Viltrumite Empire operates? You don't know what they do to planets once they integrate?'
Before I could figure out how to explain a planetary genocide, a violent scream tore through my mental link.
I looked down and saw another streak tearing up from the atmosphere, ripping through the exosphere with zero regard for orbital mechanics. A man wearing a black and yellow suit, his long cape thrashing behind him. His face was contorted into a mask of pure, unhinged rage.
The Immortal.
I remembered him from all those cloning thanks in Maulers' lab. He was supposed to be dead after Omni-Man had put a hand through his chest. He clearly wasn't dead, and judging by the look in his eyes, he hadn't processed the trauma very well.
He didn't try to broadcast a telepathic message. He saw an alien hovering above his planet, and his brain simply chose violence.
He swung a massive fist aimed directly at my newly-healed jaw.
I braced, throwing my arms up to absorb the impact but the punch never landed.
Mark blurred and slipped into the older hero's guard, catching Immortal's wrist with terrifying fluidity. Pivoting his hips, Mark redirected the massive forward momentum, casually flipping the centuries-old warrior over his shoulder and sending him tumbling wildly into the void.
'Immortal, stand down!' Mark commanded, bridging the radio comms with my telepathy. 'He has his hands up. He's trying to communicate.'
"He's a damn alien!" Immortal roared over the radio. He righted himself, his chest heaving as he pointed a trembling finger at me. "Nolan talked! They all talk before they put their hands through your chest! Get out of my way, kid before I….!"
Immortal lunged again.
Behind me, the scout ship's hull hummed as Telia locked the twin plasma cannons directly onto Immortal, painting bright red targeting lasers over the "I" logo on his chest.
'Telia, hold your fire!' I projected frantically, waving my hands.
The tension was suffocating. Immortal was vibrating, fully ready to eat plasma just to get his hands on my neck. Mark hovered between us, his hands raised in a perfectly balanced stance, looking willing to cripple his own teammate to keep the peace.
I needed to de-escalate. I needed to break this before somebody died.
And I remembered John's way of de-escalating with Maulers… So I made a joke.
'Whoa, okay, let's just… let's take a breath!' I projected, plastering a wide, friendly smile on my face. I pointed at Mark, then pointed at Immortal, gesturing between them. 'Is this, like, a family dispute? Because I completely get it. You guys got a whole matching spandex thing going on after all.'
Immortal stopped kicking his legs. He floated there, his fists clenched, staring at me. "What?"
'The suits,' I continued, tapping my own chest enthusiastically. 'Yellow and blue motif. You both literally have a giant 'I' stamped on your chests. You're his dad, right? Wait, no, Nolan is his dad. Are you Nolan's... partner?'
Mark slowly looked down at his yellow and blue suit. Then he looked over at Immortal's.
Immortal did the same and you could practically see the gears turning as he realized, for the first time, that his branding was uncomfortably similar to the teenager's.
The awkward cringe of it completely derailed the berserker rage. 'I am not his dad,' Immortal projected, sounding profoundly disturbed.
'Hey, no need to be defensive because of lower Terran thinking!' I pushed forward, genuinely thinking I was saving the day. 'The Coalition of Planets is very progressive, you know? Relationships of all forms and genders are totally respected on Talescria. But if I am being honest, I am quite surprised! I did not know that humans could change so quickly. Especially, after, um, what you and Nolan went through…'
I realized, with growing embarrassment, that my joke was not landing at all. Mark had not moved or said anything and I could see Telia facepalm from inside the ship.
Immortal, on the other hand, did not know what to say, his eye twitched and his jaw clenched. Then the confusion vanished, replaced instantly by a deeply offended fury.
"I am going to rip your eyeball out of your skull," Immortal growled, raising his fists again.
'Okay, bad joke, my fault!' I projected rapidly, putting my hands back up in surrender. 'But you have to listen to me! I defected to come warn you. Your planet is in terrible danger!'
"I know it is!" Immortal screamed, ignoring Mark and charging at me again.
He stopped short because of Mark or Telia's cannons. He stopped because the stars behind my ship suddenly vanished.
I turned around.
Space itself warped as a massive spatial fold rippled across the vacuum, tearing the dark apart.
A fleet dropped out of FTL travel.
It was an armada of hundreds of massive dreadnoughts painted in deep cobalt blue that blocked out the sun, their hulls bristling with heavy planetary-bombardment cannons. Thousands of smaller fighter craft swarmed around the capital ships.
The scale of the fleet exerted a gravitational pull that actually made my scout ship shudder.
Immortal stared at the armada, the color draining completely from his face. He reached up, pressing a trembling finger against his comms earpiece.
"Cecil," Immortal breathed, his voice cracking over the open radio. "Cecil, they're here. The Viltrumite Empire... they just breached the atmosphere above the Western hemisphere."
I felt my stomach drop. I drifted forward, staring at the cobalt blue hulls.
'No...' I projected, my mental voice hollow. 'That's not the Viltrumite Empire. That's the Coalition of Planets. I tried to tell you... Thaedus is here. He came to wipe you out before the Viltrumites can assimilate you.'
Immortal slowly turned his head to look at me, his brain failing to process the words. Mark floated in absolute silence, staring at the warships preparing to glass his home.
Then, the radio crackled. Cecil Stedman didn't sound angry. He sounded like a man reading his own obituary.
"Abe... listen to me," Cecil's voice echoed through the comms. He paused, exhaling a heavy, static-filled breath. "I'm looking at the satellite telemetry; the deep-space warning buoys just tripped on the other side of the planet."
Mark finally spoke. "Cecil. What are you saying?"
"I'm saying," Cecil continued, the exhaustion heavy in his throat, "that the Viltrumite armada just breached the solar system. They are entering orbit on the Eastern front."
The radio went dead.
I looked at Mark and he looked at Immortal.
The realization hit all of us at the same time.
The sky was filled with warships on both sides of the planet.
From two different armies, sharing the same goal.
To destroy Earth.
[A/N]:
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