"I am placing a bounty on the butler," Paul declared proudly. "I need you guys to build some kind of sci-fi superweapon. A black hole gun or some whackamoly thing, whatever. I want Sebas dead before I have to go back to training on Monday."
The gymnasium suddenly went silent.
The Mauler Twins stared at Paul as their eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. All the color drained from their blue faces, leaving them a sickly shade of violet.
"You..." Mauler-I whispered, his voice trembling. "You want to assassinate Sir Sebas?"
"Yeah," Paul nodded, completely oblivious to their terror. "I figure two million bucks should cover the—"
The Maulers didn't let him finish.
They moved in synchronized step. Mauler-II kicked the folding table out of the way, grabbed Paul by the collar and hurled him across the basketball court. Paul screamed, crashing through the wooden bleachers.
Paul hit the ground and instantly duplicated. Four identical Pauls spawned from the wreckage, raising their fists to defend themselves.
"Are you insane?!" Mauler-I roared, charging into the bleachers.
He grabbed two of the clones by the throat, lifted them off the ground, and violently slammed their heads together. Their skulls cracked and their bodies went limp.
"Do you want to get us all killed?!" Mauler-II screamed. He picked up the rolling whiteboard and swung it like a bat, shattering it over the third clone's back which was protecting the original.
The original Paul scrambled backwards across the hardwood floor, bleeding from his nose. "Hey! What the hell is wrong with you guys?!"
"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" Mauler-I yelled, diving onto Paul and putting him in a suffocating headlock. "He hears everything! If Sir Sebas even suspects we entertained this conversation, he will carve our skulls into teacups, we won't even be given the chance to create clones!"
"We work for John Kaisen!" Mauler-II hissed, looking around the empty gym as if Sebas was hiding in the rafters. "We like our jobs! We get paid in fucking gold bars! I am not risking my life because you can't handle a little tough love!"
I sat in my chair, watching my brother get mercilessly jumped by two villains, but I didn't bother interfering. I was used to this level of absurdity by now. John's employees were fiercely loyal, mostly out of terror, and Sebas was the apex predator of their servant ladder.
"You know," I said casually, raising my voice over Paul's muffled shouting. "Maybe we should invite the Immortal to these meetings next week. He dies a lot after all. He'd probably have some good input on the coping strategies."
The Maulers froze instantly and I swear I heard them gulp.
Mauler-I dropped Paul while Mauler-II stood up stiffly, dropping a piece of the broken whiteboard. They both turned to look at me, their faces starting to sweat profusely and exchanged panicked glances.
"The... the Immortal?" Mauler-II choked out.
"Uh, yeah, no, he's probably dead after Omni-Man killed him the second time," Mauler-II stammered quickly, kicking Paul away and trying to act natural. "Plus, he wouldn't like the vibe here. Too cheery."
I narrowed my eyes. They were hiding something.
"Whatever," I sighed, standing up and grabbing my jacket. "Same time next week, boys. And don't forget to bring snacks."
'Would Immortal really be a great addition to the group?' I wondered if he could be revived again.
[The Immortal P.O.V.]
Darkness.
It wasn't a peaceful void as I once hoped but an agonising hell of sensory deprivation. My last memory was a flash of crimson red as a hand, moving faster than I could see, cutting straight through my torso as I relived the sickening feeling of my spine severing and the realization that Nolan had betrayed us.
'Again.'
He had killed me again.
My eyes snapped open with that thought as I inhaled a desperate gasp of air. The harsh fluorescent lights of a medical bay blinded me, only to feel myself strapped to an operating table.
'No…No! Not again!' I thought as I got flashes of blue brutes in lab coats, dissecting me and killing me whenever I got even a glimmer of consciousness.
"NOLAN!" I roared.
I flexed my arms. The titanium restraints groaned, warping instantly under my strength before shattering like cheap plastic. I ripped the leather straps from my chest and sat up, tearing the IV lines from my veins.
My body was whole as I felt my bisected halves had been stitched back together. But the phantom pain burned like wildfire.
I vaulted off the table, crashing into a row of medical monitors. Sirens immediately began to blare, and strobe lights bathed the pristine white lab in flashing red.
I didn't care where I was. I just needed to find the traitor and finally tear his head off.
I launched myself off the floor, flying straight through the reinforced walls of whatever laboratory this was. Dust and rebar exploded outward as I entered the main corridor of some kind of underground facility, where I quickly recognised the GDA emblem.
Armed agents scrambled, raising their rifles, but I ignored them as I smashed through a steel blast door, tearing it off its hinges, roaring with the rage on undead.
"IMMORTAL! STAND DOWN!"
A crimson blur slammed into my chest.
Red Rush hit me with hundreds of microscopic impacts delivered in the span of a single second. The kinetic force burned my skin red and stalled my momentum as I skidded backwards.
'How? I saw him die… I saw them all murdered by that bastard!'
I looked up through the settling dust, my eyes burning.
"You..." I growled, raising my fists.
I lunged forward to swing, but a sliver mace hooked my wrist.
War Woman stepped out from a side corridor, gripping her weapon tightly. She twisted her hips, using my own forward momentum to ground me and slamming me heavily onto the floor.
While falling, I felt the concrete buckled under the impact.
"Abe, stop!" War Woman commanded.
'They even know my name?'
I snarled, trying to throw her off, but the air above me warped. Darkwing dropped from the ventilation shaft, hurling three snares onto my chest. The gadgets activated, increasing their weights by tens of tons, pinning me to the floor.
Suddenly, my arms and legs were bound. Martian Man stretched from the ceiling, his grey body wrapping around my limbs like a python, pulling them taut against the floor.
"Release me!" I roared, struggling against the Martian's grip. The gravity snares sparked as I pushed against them. "Nolan betrayed us! He killed me! I have to stop him and take revenge!"
"Abe, look at me," War Woman said, stepping closer and kept her mace lowered. She looked at me with those steady eyes that I knew I could rely on. "Omniman is no more."
"He cut me in half! Twice!" I screamed, thrashing wildly, drowning in the memory of my murders.
"We know," Red Rush said, vibrating slightly as he stood over me. "He got us too, Abe. But we're here. We're alive. You need to breathe, old man."
Green Ghost phased through the floor, appearing directly in front of my face.
"You're safe, Abraham," Green Ghost whispered. "The nightmare is over."
I stopped struggling as I looked at my team. They… they are really alive, The Guardians of the Globe. The people I had bled with for decades were looking at me with fear and pity? No, empathy.
They had all died in that room that day; of course, they shared the same trauma.
The adrenaline crashed as the berserker rage evaporated, leaving behind a hollow void of not knowing what to do with the burning rage I had in the pit of my stomach.
Martian Man slowly retracted his limbs, Darkwing deactivated the gravity snares and War Woman finally offered me her hand.
I took it, pulling myself up to my knees, gasping for air as the heavy exhaustion settled into my bones.
"Good to see you're still kicking, Abe."
I looked up.
Stepping through the ruined blast door, casually stepping over the twisted metal, was Cecil Stedman. He adjusted his cheap red tie and looked down at me.
"Cecil," I breathed, slowly standing up. I wiped a streak of sweat from my forehead. "What happened? How long was I dead?"
"Seven months," Cecil stated bluntly. "Nolan killed you. Then John Kaisen had his people bring you back and then Nolan killed you again. We've been letting your biology stitch itself back together in the vault for six months now."
I frowned, the headache pounding against my skull. "John Kaisen? Who's that?"
"You've got a lot of catching up to do, buddy," Cecil said, his expression grim. "And right now, he's the only reason we aren't all speaking whatever the Viltrumites speak."
Cecil turned, gesturing for me to follow him back into the facility.
"Sorry to spring this on you after you just… woke up," Cecil ordered, his tone leaving no room for argument. "But Nolan is no longer the problem. We have about forty pure-blooded Viltrumites currently burning a path across the galaxy heading straight for this planet."
I stopped walking and looked back at my team.
War Woman nodded, meaning this threat was real and not one of Cecil's schemes.
I turned back to Cecil and welcomed the familiar weight of duty covering my trauma.
"Forty, you say?" I asked, falling into step beside him.
[A/N]:
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