[Nolan Grayson's POV]
"CURSE YOU, KAISEN!!!"
Viltrumites do not scream in their sleep. It is a biological inefficiency we pruned away millennia ago. Yet, the sound of my own furious roar echoed in the dark abyss of my dreams. I saw that accursed insect in his draconic armor, the blinding blue lightning tearing through my flesh as it shoved me backward into the alien portal.
Once again, the same nightmare. The same humiliation I had lived with for fifteen goddamn years.
A violently splitting headache dragged me back to consciousness.
My eyes snapped open and I found myself in an unfamiliar location.
The walls were a blinding white as the hum of advanced medical machinery buzzed in my ears.
I tensed immediately. My Viltrumite instincts overrode my disorientation as I vaulted off the bed, moving at a speed the human eye could never hope to track.
I spotted a woman in a white coat preparing a syringe near a metal tray.
My hand shot out, wrapping around her fragile throat and lifting her effortlessly off the floor.
"Ee kahan ba? Raaur parichay?" I demanded, the harsh syllables of the Flaxan language tore from my dry throat.
The nurse thrashed, her hands clawing desperately at my forearm. Her face turned a bruised shade of purple and tears spilled from her terrified eyes as she mouthed that she couldn't breathe.
It was only then that my brain caught up with my movements, and I saw the Global Defense Agency insignias stamped on her coat.
I had spent so long in that bug-infested dimension, slaughtering endless waves of green-skinned aliens to survive, that I had sullied my tongue with their inferior language. I had forgotten how to speak English for a moment.
I loosened my grip just enough to let a thin stream of oxygen pass through her crushed windpipe.
"Where is this? Who are you?" I asked, my voice raspy and foreign to my own ears.
The nurse coughed violently, clutching her throat. "This... this is Arizona... GDA Med-Bay... You are safe... Director Cecil sent you here..."
I was about to crush her neck just a fraction more to ensure she wasn't lying, when a voice cut through the sterile room.
A voice so incredibly familiar, so full of desperate worry.
"Nolan?... Nolan, is that you?"
'Oh, how I have missed that voice.'
I turned my neck to the entrance. Standing in the doorway was Debbie, her hands flying up to cover her mouth in relief. Hot tears were already pouring down her cheeks.
My wife. My light.
The only person in this entire galaxy that made pretending to be human worth it.
"D... Debbie? Is that you?" I whispered, my voice cracking all the way as a single, traitorous tear escaped my eye.
I dropped the human nurse like a discarded toy, dashed across the room and wrapped my arms around her.
'Careful. Be gentle,' I warned myself as I pulled her flush against my bare chest.
I had been surrounded by nothing but blood, gore, and endless war for the past fifteen years.
I was legitimately terrified that if I held her too tightly, my battle-hardened muscles would shatter my wife's spine like glass. She was so delicate.
"Nolan... honey, you're finally awake," she sobbed into my chest, her tears wetting my skin.
After so long in the trenches of an alien world, I just wanted to let my guard down. I wanted to forget the Empire, even forget the mission, and just be her husband. Even if it was just for a fraction of a Viltrumite lifespan.
"Debbie, let's go home," I said softly.
But she pulled her head back from my embrace, looking up at me with panicked eyes. "No, Nolan, you need to rest here! You need to stay where you are safe from that... that Kaisen!"
My grip around her waist tightened unconsciously.
That name left her lips and it made my vision bathe with crimson as a red curtain fell over my logic.
A visceral, burning heat flooded my veins. The rational, disciplined mind of a Viltrumite soldier evaporated, only replaced by an all-consuming, irrational need to find John Kaisen and tear his beating heart from his chest.
We are conquerors. We are logic incarnate. But this... this felt like a sickness.
"Ow... ow, Nolan, you're hurting me!" Debbie cried out, wincing in pain.
The sound of her distress snapped me out of the blood-haze. I instantly let go, stepping back in horror. "I am so sorry, Debbie. Did I… hurt you? Are you alright?"
She quickly rubbed her bruised waist, forcing a reassuring smile. "No, no, I am fine. But you need to stay put. You need to rest and let the GDA protect you while you recover."
"Protect me? From Kaisen?" I asked, baffled by the absurdity of the statement. I am Omni-Man. I do not need protection from an insect.
Debbie gently took my hand, guiding me back to the edge of the medical bed. "Yes. Don't you remember? Kaisen... the Butcher of the Guardians. He slaughtered all of them, all while forcing you so far away from us."
She forced me to lie down, sitting on the edge of the mattress and hugging me again, muttering into my ear. "You've been gone for a whole week, Nolan! Do you know how hard it was for me? For Mark?"
'A week?'
Just a single week had passed for them on Earth, while I had spent fifteen goddamn years crushing those green bugs into paste?
And more importantly, how did Kaisen get the blame for killing the Guardians? Did Kaisen's own chaotic actions incriminate him? Either way, the vermin had inadvertently provided me with the perfect alibi.
My thoughts were broken by a loud shout from the corridor.
"Dad?!"
Mark burst into the room in his hero suit. He pulled his yellow mask off and made a beeline straight for me, practically tackling me into the mattress.
"Mark... son?"
There he was. The perfect result of my mission, and the only other person I loved in this whole universe.
"Yes, Dad, it's me! I'm so glad you're safe! I'm so glad..." Mark buried his face in my shoulder, his voice thick with tears.
"Mark," I said again, wrapping my massive arms around the boy. Grateful for the fact that there was someone I loved that wouldn't explode from a moment of reckless strength.
The three of us simply held each other, crying in relief. No one spoke, finding solace in the comforting silence of the med-bay.
It was now evening. Debbie and Mark had left to prepare for the Old Guardians' private funeral.
I was still sitting in my bed, organizing my fractured mind back into the strict order instilled in us by Viltrumite discipline.
Apparently, during the past week, the Flaxan invasion had been broadcast globally. When the world saw Kaisen use that blue lightning to banish Earth's greatest champion into an alien dimension, they had immediately assumed he was a villain. Cecil and the media had officially announced that John Kaisen had murdered the Guardians.
I was still mulling over this convenient twist of fate when a sharp, electronic buzz echoed in the room.
The blue light of a teleporter flared, and Cecil Stedman appeared in front of me. He wore the same crisp suit, the same scarred face, and the same perpetually exhausted scowl.
'God. How desperate was I in that dimension that I actually missed the sight of the paranoid little spymaster?'
I immediately tensed, my muscles coiling like springs. I kept my finger perfectly straight, ready to chop the Director's head cleanly off his shoulders if he so much as sniffed at my true intentions for this planet.
But to my utter surprise, Cecil didn't interrogate me. He wordlessly walked up to the bed and hugged me.
"Good to see you back, old friend," I heard the cynical bastard murmur. His voice was actually thick, holding back the sound of… crying?
"Cecil? Is that a tear I see?" I laughed, a wave of dark amusement washing over me as I patted his back. I pulled away to see his eyes were actually red with moisture.
"Don't go around telling it to Donald," Cecil grumbled, wiping his face and clearing his throat to regain his composure. "I have a reputation to maintain, after all."
After a bit of pointless banter, Cecil finally got down to business.
"I hate to do this so soon, Nolan, but I need to know what happened. With the Guardians, and with you. We have fragments, but we need the truth."
And so, I told the fake story I had been preparing in my head for fifteen years.
I told him how I answered the emergency Guardian beacon, only to find them all critically injured and fighting a single man. That bastard Kaisen.
Even in my fabricated story, I couldn't control the sudden, visceral rage that flooded my voice at the mere mention of his name.
My hands began to tremble out of my control, and I saw Cecil's gaze linger on my shaking fingers for a second too long.
I claimed that before I could even assist my dying friends, Kaisen used his sorcery to banish me into a bizarre, infinite wooden maze.
I described how I tried to break free for two days, only for my escape to be facilitated by one of Kaisen's underlings, and be immediately blasted into the Flaxan dimension by Kaisen's lightning.
After that, it was all just a blur of blood and survival. I told him I spent years fighting the invaders. That I learned their language out of necessity. That I counted every kill to keep myself from going insane in that hellscape. The Flaxans breed like vermin and fight with the tactics of cornered rats. I told him about the endless trenches carved into their rust-colored hills, the sky perpetually choked with the smoke of their burning war machines, and how their leaders kept throwing wave after wave of soldiers at me because they knew, eventually, even a Viltrumite tires.
"How can you be so sure about the time?" Cecil asked, his eyes narrowing slightly. "We put our best scientists on opening a portal to that specific dimensional frequency, but they estimated it would take months, and that was to get the trial started."
I looked directly into his eyes, projecting unbroken sincerity.
"Because I counted every single second in the back of my mind to keep myself sane," I replied coldly. "Fifteen years, nine months, five hours, and three minutes. Roughly four hundred ninety-six million, three hundred eighty-six thousand, one hundred and eighty seconds. Give or take, of course."
This surprised the old spy. He stared at me for a long moment, searching for a lie.
Then, he finally sighed heavily in relief.
He bought it. I had once again fooled the most paranoid man on the planet.
For all his intelligence, Cecil was still just a human. Blind to the grander scale of the universe, and easily placated by logic.
"Get some rest, Nolan," Cecil said, turning to leave. "PR is asking me to read a eulogy for the Guardians tomorrow, and you can imagine how big of a trainwreck it's going to be."
[A/N]: If you want a best friend like Cecil, drop them Stone!!
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