[Third POV]
Red Rush was a crimson blur. Josef knew better than to punch kinetic shielding at Mach three and turn his knuckles to paste. So he put his focus on the footsoldiers instead.
He grabbed two Coalition shock troopers by their ankles, dragged them face down across the abrasive asphalt for three city blocks and finally tossed the suit-sparking, headless corpses into a storefront.
"I am so sick of slow walkers," Josef muttered in his thick Russian accent. "Someone get a mop. This is disgusting."
War Woman flew over his head and swung her divine mace in brutal arcs. She hooked the spiked head of her weapon under a Coalition soldier's energy shield and violently yanked it upward. The alien stumbled as she stepped inside his guard and drove the pommel of her mace directly through his visor.
"Your stance is sloppy, otherworlder!" she roared, kicking the twitching corpse off her weapon. "Hold the line, you pathetic children!"
Green Ghost phased right through a volley of searing plasma and flew straight into a charging trooper and solidified her hand for a microsecond while it was directly inside his chest cavity. The alien dropped dead and she phased back out and clutched her stomach.
"Oh god, it is so warm and squishy," she gagged, aggressively wiping her glowing green hand on the hood of a parked taxi. "I hate this job. I really hate this job."
Martian Man stretched his brown body into a dozen prehensile tendrils and wrapped himself around an entire alien squad like an anaconda and squeezed. The sound of high tech armor buckling and alien ribs snapping echoed down the street.
In the neighbouring mall, Monster Girl was currently an eight-foot-tall green troll. Amanda grabbed a Coalition soldier by his leg and used him as a literal battering ram to smash through a brick wall.
"I was supposed to be partying with Rex and Ray in Bali today!" she bellowed. Her voice was deep as she ripped the turret off a crashed dropship and hurled it like a baseball into a squad of snipers. "Die faster! Robot where are you?"
Robot meanwhile, did not fight in person. A swarm of sleek orange and green drones hovered over the street. Dozens of drones projected a laser grid over the intersection and pinpointed the exact micro gaps in the Coalition energy shields. They fired perfectly calculated pulses directly into the aliens' exposed neck joints. When an alien dropship tried to deploy reinforcements, five drones flew directly into the ship's thrusters.
"Tactical sacrifice acceptable," Robot's cold voice broadcast as the dropship exploded into a fireball.
Right below the wreckage, Bulletproof flew into the fray. A plasma bolt hit him square in the chest, but he absorbed the energy and laughed while tackling an alien commander like a human bowling ball and finally crashed through three consecutive cars.
"Do you know how much this suit cost?!" Bulletproof yelled. He stood up and blasted the alien with his absorbed energy. "I don't get paid enough to deal with this shit!"
Kid Thor and Knockout fought back-to-back. But never got over thier aggressive bickering.
"I told you we should have taken the portal!" Knockout yelled. She threw a super punch as the blow shattered an alien chest plate and launched the trooper into a streetlamp.
"The portals are full of civilians and a demoness right now!" Kid Thor yelled back. He swung his hammer and called down a lightning strike. The bolt fried a dropship's navigation array. "And now's not the time for a threesome, babe!"
Wolf-Man, on the other hand, was biding his time, wating for the moon to come out. Gary Hampton leapt onto a hovering alien craft, tore through the cockpit glass with his bare claws, grabbed the pilot by his throat and ripped out his windpipe. He landed softly on all fours and finally spit the blood out of his mouth.
"I really need a mint after this," he growled.
Apart from all this chaos, Best Tiger stood completely still in the middle of the warzone, wearing a signature blindfold over his eyes. He casually raised a pair of pistols and fired a bullet at a stop sign. The bullet ricocheted off the metal, bounced off a fire hydrant, and pierced straight through the unarmored neck joint of a Coalition sniper hiding on a rooftop. He fired his second gun over his shoulder and another alien trying to sneak up on him dropped dead.
"All these enemies, yet no one worthy to fight," he sighed.
The street, meanwhile, was flooded with local vigilantes punching above their weight.
Super Mom threw a minivan at the advancing aliens. 'When will Mister Pepsi be back?' she thought worriedly
Business Baby crawled around in his tiny suit while Big Mildew sprayed highly corrosive fungal spores into the alien air vents. The invaders suffocated in their own armor as their bodies dissolved into gross puddles of mould.
They were pushing the aliens back, holding the perimeter. But for every drop pod they destroyed, three more slammed into the asphalt.
****
The War Room
Deep in the Pentagon, the air in the command center was thick with sweat.
"The West is getting swarmed by the Coalition. The Guardians are holding the line in California, but the collateral projections are skyrocketing. The East is completely overrun with Viltrumite slave armies that have touched down in Beijing, Moscow, and New Delhi."
Cecil Stedman stared at the sprawling holographic map dominating the center of the room. Half of the globe flashed a hostile blue while the other half flashed a bloody red.
He turned his scarred face toward Neel. The CEO of Chaos Corp was standing on the other side of the holotable, furiously typing on a pristine glass tablet. For the first time since Cecil had met the man, the untouchable corporate mastermind actually looked rattled. His tie was loosened, and his eyes were wide with panic.
"I thought your boss had a handle on the board state!" Cecil yelled, pointing an accusatory finger at the blue dots swarming the map. "Who the hell is the second armada?!"
"It's the fucking Coalition of Planets! Didn't you hear Immortal's report?" Neel snapped back, completely losing his corporate composure. "We didn't flag a second fleet! I'm trying to get in touch with Chairman, but…"
"He's busy with his Joyride while the planet gets fucked!" Cecil snarled. He slammed both his hands down on his command console. "Fine. If the kid isn't here, we do this my way. No more holding back. Donald, get Powerplex on the comms. Tell him he has a green light to absorb all the power from grids and go on his 'Jihadi' bombings on the Coalition drop zones."
Donald Ferguson paused, his fingers hovering over his keyboard. "Sir, the civilian infrastructure... if he drains the grid, the hospitals on backup generators—"
"Nakime pulled the civilians into the pocket dimension! The cities are nearly empty!" Cecil barked, spit flying from his lips. "Level the damn cities if you have to! And get Sinclair on the line. Tell him playtime is over. Deploy the Super Reanimen."
Deep in an underground GDA black site, D.A. Sinclair smiled as he reached forward and pulled a heavy lever.
"With pleasure, Director."
Three reinforced transport pods shot out of the facility's launch tubes. Inside them were the reanimated, heavily cybernetic corpses of Vidor, Lucan, and Kradd, the pure-blood Viltrumites Earth had miraculously managed to kill. Their dead flesh had been woven with advanced metal alloys, their brains replaced with aggressive combat algorithms. Alongside them in separate pods were six more alien-Reanimen John Kaisen had procured, the terrifying alien beasts completely stripped of their autonomy and turned into biological weapons.
"Drop them right on the Viltrumite vanguard," Cecil ordered, his one good eye cold and dead. "Then open Vault 4 and port Hail Mary. Pump that girl full of the Buffout from Kaisen's stash. I want that monster tearing dreadnoughts out of the sky."
"Done," Donald said, his voice tight. "Sir... what about the Coalition numbers in the West? The Guardians are going to be overrun in an hour."
Cecil didn't hesitate and once again crossed the moral line.
"Engage Task Force 'I'. Tell the inmates that if they retreat, their heads pop. If they stop fighting, their heads pop. If they even think about turning on us, I detonate the charges. Deploy the suicide squad."
**********
The Guardians of the Globe were losing ground. But they had backup.
Dinosaurus tore the reinforced door off a Coalition dropship. His rampage was as brutal as always. He grabbed an alien commander by the legs and pulled. The body split down the middle like a wishbone. Entrails spilled across the asphalt. Dinosaurus stomped on the screeching pilot, crushing his skull into paste. He spat out a mouthful of blue armor plating.
"The atmospheric pollution your dreadnoughts are generating is completely unacceptable!" Dinosaurus roared. He dug his claws under a parked city bus and hurled it into a squad of advancing shock troopers. The bus exploded on impact.
"That is what you are worried about? Can't you see the damn apocalypse above us!" Doc Seismic yelled.
He hovered above the carnage on his flying platform. He pointed his gauntlets at the nearest skyscraper. For his abilities, aiming for the aliens would be inefficient. So, he aimed for the biggest buildings for maximum collateral.
The shockwave shattered the building's structural supports. Thousands of tons of concrete and steel collapsed directly onto a Coalition phalanx. Seismic laughed maniacally as the aliens were crushed flat under the rubble.
"I finally get to level a city without Invincible whining about it!" Seismic raved. He fired another tremor into the street, swallowing a tank into a sinkhole. "Keep killing them! If we stop, Stedman pops our heads!"
Elephant let out a deafening trumpet. The mutated brute did not bother dodging, not only was it against his style but because ramming into things was only thing he was really good at. He lowered his head and charged straight into a shield wall. The energy barricades shattered. Elephant trampled the alien infantry into the pavement. A plasma bolt melted a chunk of his shoulder. He ignored the burning flesh, grabbed the shooter by the face, and squeezed until the helmet popped like a grape.
Killcannon stood on a ruined overpass. He locked his shoulder cannon into place and opened fire. His blasts leveled the entire block. Artillery shells vaporized aliens, cars, and storefronts in rapid succession.
"Eat hot plasma, you blue bastards!" Killcannon cackled. The recoil pushed him backward, but he just kept firing until the barrel glowed white hot.
Elsewhere, The Lizard League had engaged the aliens as well. Their approach was centered on stealth. They crawled up the sides of the remaining buildings. Komodo Dragon dropped onto an alien sniper and bit his head clean off. King Lizard shoved a jagged combat knife repeatedly into a Coalition commander's neck. Salamander spit toxic acid into the exhaust vents of a hovering fighter craft. The ship plummeted into the street in a fiery wreck.
They were murderers. They were psychopaths. But Cecil had slipped off their leashes and pointed them at the enemy. Right now, Task Force I was Earth's most brutal delaying tactic.
[A/N]:
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