[Cecil Stedman's POV]
My luck was getting shitter by the day.
First, we had Omni-Man's sudden return. The bastard showed up feral, unhinged, more alien than human. My team had to promptly escort the highly unstable Viltrumite to a secure underground black site just to let him acclimate and calm down with his wife. Debbie was the only thing keeping him from tearing through the reinforced walls.
Then that Kaisen kid miraculously developed an ability to turn ambient lethal radiation into fresh tropical fruit. 'There's our answer to world hunger, I guess.'
And when I asked him how he even managed to do that, he had the gall to look me in the eye and say 'it was all thanks to a friend's pep talk!'
Complete bullshit.
But I gotta give the kid props, his tactical information had been completely spot on. That Sinclair kid and his horrific ReAnimen project were secured before he could turn half of his college into zombie cyborgs. Scott Duvall, the man destined to become Powerplex, had been safely moved to a special R&D team to help him develop his kinetic energy suits without turning to villainy. Not to mention Kaisen's strange 'Buffout' drugs that were a crazy medical marvel if the reports from my top scientists were anything to go by. Performance enhancement without the usual side effects. The DOD was already salivating over procurement contracts.
The Depth Dweller situation was still entirely up in the air. Atlantis was a massive hotspot for diplomacy right now since Aquarus was the only poor bastard to actually die from Nolan's rampage.
But I still did not trust Kaisen fully. Hell, I never trust anyone fully. You don't survive this job by taking people at face value. That is exactly why I have been actively dodging his attempts to find out Nolan's resting facility. Not to mention his constant demands of dealing with the Viltrumite when the man is clearly not in his right mind and any confrontation would eventually lead to planet-wide mass casualties.
I needed those two to balance each other out while I explored my strategic options. Mutually assured destruction worked for the Cold War; maybe it could work here, too.
But today…today takes the fucking cake for the most migraine-inducing disaster of the week.
The sliding glass doors of the command center opened with a pneumatic hiss and Donald walked up to my elevated console and handed me a glowing datapad.
The command center hummed with activity around us. Dozens of workstations arranged in tiered rows, each one manned by an agent monitoring something critical. Screens glowed everywhere, casting the whole room in shifting blue-white light.
It all started when Invincible naively put his trust on a mob boss.
Titan had been on our radar ever since Kaisen personally intervened to help the man. We concluded he must be important to Kaisen in some way or form.
But Machine Head was far more cunning than either of those two heavy hitters imagined.
"What did these rock-for-brains kids think would happen?" I muttered as I scrolled through the data. "Machine Head bolted a highly advanced quantum probability chip directly to his cortex and on top of that, he had Titan steal it. At least have the decency to figure out what it does, for fucks sake." Machine Head had Isotope abduct Titan's wife and daughter. Titan was forced to confront him.
"On top of that, they have a personal teleporter sitting right at their fingertips while we are actively billing the DOD ten million dollars a pop to port."
I wanted to bathe in acid again.
"Sir?" Donald asked quietly.
"Nothing. Just continue the briefing," I waved my hand.
He tapped the console and turned on the main monitor of the command center. The massive screen flickered to life, dominating the far wall.
We were currently watching a live feed from our high-altitude stealth drones circling the Chicago skyline. The image was crystal clear despite being shot from thirty thousand feet. Thermal imaging overlay, motion tracking, zoom capability that could read a license plate from orbit, you know the works.
Machine Head had hired some incredibly heavy borrowed muscle. The standard villains. It was the unknown massive furry humanoid lion holding a mace that concerned me.
"Get me Robot. Now!" I barked at the communications officer. Agent Reeves immediately started punching buttons, her fingers flying across the board. "Tell him playtime is over. His new Guardians have an actual mess to clean up."
The duo of Titan and Invincible were out of their depth. They put up a good fight…for three exchanges. The Villans made quick work of them. Eventually, it devolved into Kursk trying to fry Invincible with high voltage and Magmaniac trying to melt Titan alive. Through the drone's cameras, I watched Titan use a massive slab of grey shield that looked like it was chipped straight off a mountain to block the intense heat as his rocky hide grew denser and denser, his body adapting to the temperature.
I was very tempted to send in my Buffout-enhanced covert agents. But Robot and Black Samson made a timely entry. They crashed their heavy hoverbikes directly into the villains. A massive roar of cheers bellowed across my command center from the observing agents, the sound breaking through the professional atmosphere.
"Alright, knock it off. We all love a hero entry, but now's not the time to celebrate."
Everything was going somewhat as anticipated. The heroes were holding their own.
But everything changed when the white beast entered the fray.
Because of-fucking-course we can't go a day on earth without my people featuring in a snuff film.
The massive white lion blurred across the screen with a speed that defied his bulk, moving faster than the drone's tracking software could follow. The camera kept losing him, having to recalibrate.
I watched in grim silence as he casually decimated everyone.
The hopeful momentum in the command center turned somber instantly. We were violently washed with the cold reality of exactly how weak these new Guardians were. How glaringly weak Earth's current defenses were without Omni-Man.
I slammed my fist on the console.
"Get the 'Buff' agents for an emergency port and rescue those kids-"
TWANG
I fully anticipated Kaisen to act himself. Maybe Titan really was that important to his grand plans. I was even ready for that massive dragon of his to show up and level the building, collateral damage be damned. But this older man in an immaculate black butler's suit stepped through, which surprised me.
He didn't even flinch at the carnage around him. I watched him fluidly dodge the beast's strikes, each movement minimal and precise, and deliver a devastating spinning kick that threw the massive lion out the goddamn window.
When Rex disrespectfully mouthed off to him, calling him "old man", he did nothing more than glare at Rex. That was all it took for Rex to collapse onto his knees.
The man gave Dupli-Kate and Rex the perfect opening to extract Titan's family, the little girl Fiona crying in her mother's arms as they were pulled to safety, and then he casually reached out and plucked a fucking vertebra out of Isotope's lower spine.
Machine Head started bitching around but he was silenced when the white lion blurred past the old man and casually swiped his claws, cutting the cyborg's metal head cleanly in half.
My hopes of having the heroes rescued to safety went up. But I calmed myself and ordered the medical team to ready the med-bays for incoming critical patients.
After a few brutal exchanges, the old man activated a power up, the resulting shockwave from their next collision completely obliterated the penthouse floor and sent them plummeting into the streets below, the impact crater visible from our altitude. I let out a sigh of relief seeing those gates again.
TWANG. TWANG.
Tatami gates opened up all across the building, appearing faster than our sensors could track. They safely swallowed the broken heroes and the villains alike. Even Kate, Rexsplode and her rescued civilians were taken in, giving the old man a clear chance to escape.
The dragon man didn't retreat. He should have escaped and fallen back through a gate.
Instead, he went on a crazy and destructive mania that matched the beast blow for blow. Their collision destroyed not only the skyscraper but also the entire downtown city block in a massive shockwave of kinetic force. The structural damage sensors lit up like a Christmas tree. Buildings collapsing, gas lines rupturing, and destruction moved cascading outwards.
"Donald! Send out a statewide emergency alert and get the evacuation procedures we prepared in order, now!" I yelled over the blaring alarms. The whole command center was chaotic. "And give me the civilian casualty numbers immediately!"
I pointed a finger directly at Leonard, the new tactical agent manning the sensor console.
Leonard looked at his screen and blinked in confusion. "It is zero, sir."
"What? Don't tell me you're drinking on the clock, Leonard." I said in disbelief. This mess was seriously threatening my sanity.
"Those wooden gates from Kaisen's castle," Leonard mentioned as he pulled up the spatial sensors, the screen showing portal signatures appearing everywhere across the combat zone.
"They are appearing almost simultaneously all across the collapsing streets. They are actively taking away the citizens before the falling debris can even get to them. I believe it's that 'Nakime' you briefed us about, who is actively teleporting these civilians and preventing any casualties while her dragon ally fights the alien. And considering Kaisen controls dragons, it is pretty reasonable to assume this half-dragon man is under his direct command as well."
"That damn kid is always an inch away from giving me a heart attack," I muttered, feeling grudging respect settling in my chest. "Donald, continue to prepare the city-wide perimeter. Isolate the city blocks these monsters are fighting in and have our cleanup agents be ready."
"Sir, maybe the older Guardians or Tech..." Donald whispered cautiously.
I interrupted him with a harsh shake of my head. "Don't be stupid. They're still recovering and would be nothing more than sacrificial lambs. Not to mention Tech Jacket is off-world for one of his missions."
And so for the next ten agonizing minutes we could only watch and analyze the brutal fight between these two monsters. And we came to a single, terrifying conclusion. This Battle Beast was a far greater physical threat than Omni-Man.
While the dragon man was certainly powerful, the physical defense of this alien lion was simply unmatched. Even when Battle Beast actively left openings, the dragon man couldn't do anything substantial.
After a couple more minutes it finally happened. The beast roared with anger as he tanked the dragon man's energy breath. Purple flames washed over his white fur, dealing minor flesh wounds, the fur singed but regenerated. The beast, seeing his wounds, shook his head in disappointment, shoved the lower end of his spiked mace completely through the dragon man's torso and violently bisected him in half.
The silence in the command center was absolute. Someone dropped a pen, but the clatter sounded like a gunshot.
The beast pulled the old man up by the neck, holding him like a broken toy. The dragon-man roared and tried to punch the beast away as purple energy wrapped around his arm in a desperate final attack, but the lion's massive jaws bit off the man's arm and started chewing it.
The loud gasps that filled the command centre showed exactly how much everyone was unconsciously cheering for the older man. Agents were standing now, pressed against their desks, eyes glued to the monitors in front of them. Forgetting protocol, just helplessly watching a hero die.
"Prep the Hammer and abandon all surrounding posts at my signal," I ordered grimly. If that oversized housecat decided to keep going after finishing the dragon man, we needed an option. Even if that option was glassing Chicago.
But even if I was without options, that didn't mean others weren't as well.
TWANG
Every agent snapped their attention back to the screen. Unprofessional, full of naive hope, not that I could blame them. If someone could turn this shitshow around, it would be him.
Kaisen had finally stepped onto the battlefield.
[A/N]: Guys, we're so close to number one in the all-time ranking.
Lessgoo and drop them stone!!
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