"What the fuck did you do?" Invincible landed forcefully at The Guardians headquarters. His gaze swept across the room and landed on Clark. He flew forwards at blinding speed.
Clark gritted his teeth. He'd seen Invincible coming from far enough away to change out of his normal body. If he hadn't, he would've been helpless to resist against a half-viltrumite moving at superspeed.
"You know what he did. You know I didn't do this because I wanted to!" Clark responded. He couldn't keep the frustration from his voice.
Invincible stared at the identical image of himself floating a few feet off the ground in front of him.
The other members of The Guardians quietly gathered to one side in the main hall.
"So what? You and Cecil get to make every fucking decision? You could've fucking killed him! We don't even know why he killed The Guardians, he could've been mind controlled or possessed or who the fuck knows what?" Invincible gestured furiously as he spoke. He flew closer to Clark, not stopping until he was just an inch away.
Clark clenched his fists. He knew how important it was that he kept his emotions under control, but he wasn't made of stone.
He took a deep breath, "I'm sorry that he lied to you Mark. I know he hurt you and your mum."
"What the fuck do you know about my mum? She's just like you! She believes whatever crap Cecil tells her! I know my dad, he wouldn't do this!" Mark shouted back. Tears pooled inside his goggles.
Mark yelled and swung his fist at Clark. His emotions made his attack faster than normal.
Bang!
Clark gripped Mark's fist in his own. He'd changed into a different body, Omni-Man's body. It was the only choice he had that was strong enough to resist Mark. He couldn't control himself when he became Battle Beast, at least not yet.
Invincible wrenched his hand out of Clark's grip. Seeing his father's face caused his anger to swell, "You fucking bastard!"
Invincible attacked Clark again, another punch aimed at his chest. The half-viltrumite could defeat any earth hero, but he was far too weak to stand against his father. Even if it was only a copy.
Clark slammed his palm into Mark's chest. He held back most of his strength. He didn't want to hurt him, "Stop this Mark!"
Mark tumbled through the air. He came to a stop just shy of the metal-clad wall of The Guardian headquarters. felt a faint dull ache from where Clark had pushed him back.
Robot stepped away from the sidelines. The speaker in his throat activated to the same volume as a person shouting, "Invincible! You must calm yourself!"
Invincible bristled. His head whipped around to stare furiously at Robot. He wanted to tear the android into pieces.
A sudden feeling of clarity struck Mark. Here, in the same place where his father had murdered the previous Guardians, he was now attacking one of the new members.
Mark's hostility vanished like it had never existed. He stuttered, "I-I'm sorry, I didn't-"
Clark changed back into Invincible's body. He didn't know how Omni-Man could betray everyone he'd spent decades protecting. He couldn only imagine the kind of betrayl Mark was having to deal with. His entire life had been a lie. The same, probably worse, applied to Mark's mother.
Mark's mask concealed his tears, but The Guardians could tell by the way his shoulders trembled that he was crying. The Guardians all knew that Mark was in high school, he was only a kid.
Clark remembered what Cecil had told him in the past. He flew up to Mark and placed a hand on his shoulder, "You should go home, be with your mum."
Mark sniffled and nodded, "Yeah, thanks."
Clark gave him a small smile. He didn't think that there was anything he could say that would make what Mark was going through any easier. Some problems didn't have solutions, the only way to deal with them was to keep moving forwards. Eventually, even if it was in a form or shape that didn't make any sense, an answer would come to the surface.
A sonic boom followed behind Invincible as he left.
Rex-Splode scratched his ear. In a way that seemed out of charecter, he said something almost nice, "Shit, poor guy, dad tears apart The Guardians then gets chased off the planet. Nice job not beating the crap out of him Mirror, don't think I'd be that nice if tried to swing one of those at me."
Mirror was the new superhero name Clark had chosen for himself after the fight against Battle Beast revealed to the world how his powers actually worked.
Clark usually kept his interactions to Rex-Splode to a minimum. Hearing the explosive hero say something nice gave him a strange feeling. He frowned slightly and replied, "Uh-thanks Rex, his life's already pretty shit right now, I don't think giving him a black eye would help. I think his mum probably hates me enough as it is."
The Guardians stayed in the main hall for a while longer. Their conversations switched frequently between their personal and professional lives.
After a while, as if they'd recieved some secret signal, they stopped talking and headed back to their respective training. Clark hopped back onto the treadmill. A few minutes later he was breathing hard and struggling to keep up with the machine's speed.
'Fuck!' Clark thought to himself. It was a satisfied curse rather than an angry one.
He grabbed a towel from a bench and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The data from the treadmill showed that he'd shattered several world records.
It had been a few months now since his powers appeared. In that time he'd trained non-stop and used a different body, usually a viltrumite, to restore his stamina and heal any injuries. His fitness had soared to the level of a world-class athlete, and then continued to climb.
'This is good. I don't need to be able lift a school bus, I just need to be fast enough to react to a threat and change into a stronger body.' Clark thought to himself.
As his regular self, he was now stronger and faster than any normal human. He'd quietly reached the very bottom rung of superhumans. He was only two or three times superior to a regular person, but it was still a major improvement.
When he became Omni-Man or Invincible, he was essentially invulnerable. He could move at superspeed and react to any threat. But by comparison, his reaction speed in his normal body was agonisingly slow. Even a common crook could blow his brains up with a cheap pistol if they managed to catch him by surprise.
The GDA's researchers had dozens of different theories as to why his normal body was mutating. Their best one was that a miniscule piece of the bodies he changed into was passively seeping into his regular form. Considering he spent most of his time as Omni-Man or Invinicible, it made sense that his physique would improve.
Clark flexed his bicep. He looked at the raised muscle with a slightly complex emotion. When he'd first got his powers, he'd just been an ordinary person in his regular body. The improvement in his real body would make him safer, but it also represented another step away from his old life.
Clark looked at his phone. He smiled when he saw a message from Amelia. They'd been dating for nearly two months. It was hard, balancing dating and superhero work, but they tackled the challenges as a team. He didn't like leaving in the middle of dates to go fight an octopus monster or stop a nuclear warhead.
Other people couldn't do what he could. They didn't have powers like him. It was his duty to make the world as safe as he could for everyone else.
Ring-ring!
Clark looked at the caller ID. He picked up immediately, "Cecil, what's happening? Do you need me?"
Without thinking, Clark changed into Omni-Man. He soared upwards into the sky, piercing through mach 1 and 2 in an instant. The world knew that Omni-Man had murdered the former Guardians, but the viltrumite was the strongest body he could use. As Omni-Man, he could save the most lives. This was more important than anything else.
He could handle people booing him or attacking him online for wearing a murderer's face, just as long as more people got to live.
Clark floated a few miles up in the sky. Between changing into Omni-Man and taking off, only a fraction of a second had passed. At superspeed, the flow of time became incredibly slow.
He was ready for whatever threat Cecil needed him to deal with.
On the other end of the line, Cecil sighed, "Stand down kid. There's no emergency, not yet at least. It's something else."
Cecil paused, he rubbed his temples, "I need you over at HQ. You'll understand when you get here."
Clark wasn't bothered by whatever mystery Cecil was keeping secret. He'd battled dinosaurs in the centre of the earth and fought demons from other dimensions. He wasn't easily fazed.
"I'll be there in a few minutes." Clark replied.
He arrived at the GDA headquarters beneath the pentagon a few seconds faster than he'd expected. He was pleased to see that the flight training he'd been doing in outer space was showing a positive result.
Clark walked through the corridors without needing a map. Viltrumites had superior memory and comprehension to humans, he'd memorized nearly the entire headquarters on his first visit months ago. The memories he made in any body all stayed with him, even if he changed back into his ordinary self. As a result, his baseline level of neural activity was enough to fry the brain of a regular person in just a few seconds.
A set of reinforced doors opened with a quiet hydraulic hiss. Cecil greeted him, "Hey kid."
Clark looked around the room. He recognised Donald, and a couple of other agents he'd seen before. There was also a smartly-dressed woman with black hair who seemed somehow out of place.
"What was it you wanted to talk to me about Cecil? If there's a threat-"
Cecil raised a hand and forcibly cut him off, "I told you Clark, there's no threat."
Clark couldn't help but frown. He'd forced Omni-Man to flee the planet less than 6 hours ago. He still wasn't feeling like his normal self after using Battle Beast's body. Cecil hadn't told him why he was needed at headquarters over the phone, he'd assumed it was some kind of top-secret mission. It wouldn't be the first time he was tasked with something that the public would never, and could never, know about.
"So-?" He started to ask the obvious question, but Cecil cut him off again.
Cecil waved with his hand towards the woman with black hair, "Clark, this is Debbie. Nolan's wife."
'Shit.' Clark thought to himself.
He immediately changed out of Omni-Man's body. He turned into The Immortal instead. The ancient hero had been brought back to life by a pair of twin supervillains just minutes after Omni-Man left earth.
Clark started to apologise, "I'm sorry, I didn't know-"
Debbie shook her head, "You couldn't have known."
Clark didn't know what to say next. He stood silently, trying to come up with whatever might be most appropriate.
Cecil cleared his throat, "Debbie had some questions she wanted to ask you, about your fight with Nolan."
Clark nodded, "Of course."
Debbie gritted her teeth. It took all of her strength to keep herself from crying, "Cecil told me everything. Fuck, I'd already worked it out for myself but-I just don't understand why he would do it?"
She took a deep breath, "Did he say anything to you? About me, or Mark, anything?"
Clark looked down at the floor. His head felt heavy. He shook his head, "I'm sorry, he didn't say anything."
Debbie laughed, she wiped away a tear that had crept out from her eye, "Of course. Of course he fucking didn't! Twenty years together, twenty years!"
She'd seen the footage from the fight between her husband and the superhero called Mirror. Her heart had broken over and over again while she watched. The GDA's drones had captured Nolan murderously instructing Mirror to get out of his way.
She'd thought, that maybe, if she could speak to Mirror in person, it might all somehow make more sense. It didn't.
"I'm sorry, for wasting your time. I thought maybe-" Tears rolled down Debbie's cheeks and dripped onto the floor.
"-maybe you might be able to make it make sense. But it doesn't, none of it makes any sense!" Debbie turned and walked quickly out of the room. Her shoulders were trembling.
Cecil sighed, he looked over to Clark, "Thanks kid, I'm sorry I didn't tell you beforehand, go get some rest."
Cecil headed after Debbie. Donald followed a few steps behind, carrying a box of tissues that had somehow appeared in his hands.
Clark looked back down at the floor. His fists were tightly clenched. He'd seen how Omni-Man's actions had hurt his son, and now he'd seen how they'd hurt the woman he'd said he loved.
'If he ever comes back, I'll make him tell me why.' Clark thought to himself. A sliver of murderous intent leaked out from him. The agents in the room felt their hair stand on end.