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vomitspit2 · 13 days ago

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[1] originally, a lot of the No Goggles! universe was meant to be longer, but the main universe was already so lengthy that they became ‘jingle jingle’ sections to help keep readers' attention; i considered scrapping them at one point because it left things too vague as to what went down.

[2] as for why this mark was raised so vastly different … in the comics, issue #14 which is S1 ep7, omni-man says ‘i couldn't risk her finding out the truth about me … so i couldn’t risk telling you the truth about me. i often thought about taking you … and raising you as a viltrumite in a secluded area of the planet.’ and my NH ass said cabin in the woods.

[3] to me, No Goggles! mc & mark had the relationship of that one bumble/twitter situationship you may go on about three or four dates with before ghosting (quite literal here) each other; the type of situationship you still talk to your friends about after a 1.5 years because the heartbreak of potential is often the one that lingers most deeply in the back of someone’s head.

[4] ding ding ding dictionary time! peine forte et dure: a form of torture where a defendant who refused to plead ("stood mute") would be subjected to having heavier and heavier stones placed upon their chest until a plea was entered, or death resulted AND Jopok: Korean organized crime group, mafia like the yakuza AND han: more than sadness, a complex cultural concept that refers to a deep, collective feeling of sorrow, resentment, grief, and injustice, often rooted in historical suffering and oppression

[5] Prophet/Tracksuit! Mark’s line “널 해치지 않았지?!” is meant to be ‘he hasn’t hurt you, right?’ which I input into DeepL Translate; however, google translate reads it as ‘i didn’t hurt you?’ I really love this mistranslation. because no goggles invincible is simply another version of himself – the double translation really adds something, though i wish i knew the correct korean to convey the original intent.

[6] i don’t like the ideas of any of the marks being a cannibal before the desert; sometimes a writer or two can convince me of it if they’re good enough at it, but this line “no sweets taste as blood though” is meant to be a Conquest-licking-Eve’s-blood type of thing, not a direct reference to cannibalism. i just think he’s a weird freaky guy that likes blood!!!

[7] anyways since i'm a little music junkie – the song i based # 12 / no goggles character around is ‘want’ by the high curbs. AND i will one day find someway to incorporate debbie grayson shaking her hips to Jinusean, if we put mark as 2003 baby (since the comics came out that year) i know she rocking w/ Jinusean Bomb

PEAS & LOVE. alternative #12 / no goggles! invincible

In the beginning, you were the freshest squeeze. In the second beginning, you are still the freshest squeeze, just a bit different. Like a tangerine and mandarin, just a slightly altered taste! Not that this difference in citrus changes anything to Mark. A bite is still a bite. Besides, you are "mine, all mine," Mark grins toothily, Bee-boppa-doo-doh Badoo-bee-doo-wah!

tags: past platonic relationship, blood and violence, dubious morality, food as a metaphor for love, rekindling with your old soulmate who’s been DEAD dead for a while, cannibalistic thought, first date?, hypoglycemia

word count: 15,912

It is really hard to keep track of what is going on. What with the fact that you are approximately forty-five meters in the air, constantly being maneuvered back and forth like a water hose mapping out all the area of a garden, being bombarded with the piercing sound of people dying, guns blasting, hearts pounding, and, lastly, the mere fact that you are blindfolded as all this cacophony happens underneath you both.

You are trying your best to do your job but there are so many variables you did not anticipate.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of systems of circulation that you must read. Each one has a rhythm specific to itself, increasing in fortissimo if adrenaline is active or decreasing if they are bleeding out from an injury that has been sustained. Every discrepancy has to be scrutinized as a single system yet juxtaposingly melted into the group as one paramount system. The identities of these venous systems are inconsequential; all you see behind the black of the blindfold are a thousand red glowing systems of veins pumping blood like a field of flowing spider lilies. Any of these hearts could belong to one of your comrades and then you would majorly be a screw up and all your privileges would go revoked and then —

“The Flaxan population is currently at approximately nine hundred and thirty individuals. The current antecedent of how many the Teen Team and Invincible is subduing is eighty percent equal to the current consequent, the rate at which they emerge from out of the portals. Cecil Stedman has informed me that your limit is a thousand?”

His voice startles you so much that you almost fall off his lap. You settle back, skittish in a seat that is only a shell of hard metal, no blood circling to track. Eyes aflutter behind the blindfold, you respond diligently to Rudy Conners, “Yes. I have not gone above a thousand before.”

“But, there is a possibility that you could,” Robot questions, more talking aloud to himself to catalog this untested probability.

Should you answer that? Obedience gets you more rewards so you open your mouth to answer, “It is certainly something I could attempt to do.” as he says over your answer.

“After I dismiss Teen Team and Invincible from the area, you are going to count down from exactly five Mississippi before doing your job.”

You nod in understanding, remember you cannot see if his robotic optics are looking at you, and hastily shout, “Yes, uhm, of course!”

His vision is not zeroed in on you; the verbal confirmation was a smart move. From the aerial view of a little less than half the average height of a skyscraper, he keeps count of the dwindling than growing Flaxan militia, watching droves die in pieces and watching droves emerge full-bodied from the portals. He steers the hovercraft from sector to sector, each of the Teen Team members locked in position as Invincible jumps from sectors and interferes with his count.

So filthy, so unconventional, new baby superhero on the scene and he is already moving like he has been making bloody messes since diapers. He strikes perfectly yet deliberate, leaving them legless on the ground before hopping to the next hoard. Doesn’t finish his plate, leaves leftovers, inefficient in the plainest term.

Invincible smiles wide with each blow, despite the fact that his comatose father is in the stomach of the G.D.A, despite the fact that the Guardians of the Globe were killed two days ago.

“Wh-When will I know when to start counting,” you pipe up nervously.

Robot naturally cannot feel it but he is not ignorant to your fretful shifting, arms looped around and caressing his neck relocating to his shoulders then back to his neck, never quite comfortable. His venous system of circuitry makes you feel like you are sitting on a cloud despite his callused metal. Both of you are experiencing something uncomfortable with this proximity but making it work for the sake of the job.

Descending by two meters, Robot says, analyzing the scene closer up, “once I have placed the noise-canceling headphones over your ears, you may start counting down from five.” Where his orange digits are enclosed around the hovercraft’s handles, the pair of headphones are held tight too.

Below, Invincible raises his leg like an axe and slices a Flaxan in half. Below, Dupli-Kate hammers her fist through a Flaxan’s face before popping like a zit. Below, Rex Splode throws coins engraved with Franklin D. Roosevelt and George Washington’s side profiles at Flaxans. Below, Atom Eve shields herself from multiple gun blasts with a reinforced pink wall.

The ratio between the Flaxans dying and the Flaxans arriving won’t stay even for any long, fluctuating the odds against them.

You say nothing so Robot fills the space by ordering, the speakers of the hovercraft carrying his voice, “Teen Team and Invincible, clear out immediately. Clear out immediately from the Zone.”

Then, your world goes blank into nothing, headphones set over your ears, eyes already covered. Five Mississippi, you start diligently.

A lot happens below you that you are unaware of during that precious five seconds. It is all white noise to you — not even white noise to be honest, more like silence — as Robot shouts orders at Invincible to leave as Atom Eve scoops up Rex Splode and Dupli-Kate. Completely ignorant to it all, you count down.

A heart does not beat like a metronome.

An organ moving to its own tempo and whims, the heart is not a steady thing. To the philosophers, to the whimsical, to the literary poets, a heart is an idiosyncratic thing, changed evermore once it has experienced something ‘life-changing’ — which is partly true in the lens of cardiology. Outdoor factors alter it; a dosage of fear causes it to speed it and a dosage of happiness causes it to slow down. Unlike a metronome which can click-click-click away in the same fixed BPM, hearts shift around due to physical activity, substances ingested, affiliations like diabetes. However, as a conductor, you direct the orchestra so each heart within a radius of twenty-two meters starts to involuntarily change its BPM to match yours like one grand metronome. Each swinging click of the inner pendulum is a cycled circulation that, despite injuries or adrenaline, starts to follow along to your own beat.

The space behind your blindfold starts to glow red like someone is trying to shine a flashlight through the skin of your eyelids. Each spider lily is caught in a dance with one relaxed breeze.

“One Mississippi,” you whisper underneath your breath, unheard in your own ears and unheard over Robot barking at Invincible to move, fly, get out of there.

It happens simultaneously. Rather than happening in intervals or one by one, it is one massive explosion of sanguine. In a very personalized way — all his horrible thirty years of being a living mummy of metal — it reminds Robot of bad bulbs exploding when overloaded with too much electricity.

For each heartbeat, electrical signals are conducted; we know this through the use of pacemakers and how defibrillators work. The rudimentary teachings of the nervous system explains how essential all these electrical impulses are. Sparks travel in the human body like wired circuitry in a house.

If you sharpened your superpowered abilities towards the cardiac conduction system, you might be able to hold your own against someone like Rudy Conners and his gundam-esque flesh, but your powers are not honed towards electricity; it is the blood that influences you. It is the blood that explodes underneath you and him. For one Mississippi, there is activity of individuals and, another one Mississippi, the head of each Flaxan bursts open like an overfilled balloon stretched too thin with water pressure.

Your nails tremble and scrape his orange neck, hands shaking with the jolts of blood rushing in your fingers. Robot analyzes, surveying your BPM which passes the summit of 180, the number of beats after orgasm, before slowing down to your normal resting rate.

Methodically, he removes the device over your head as you breathe heavily in his lap, trying to keep yourself out of the grave and smother down the riptide of cardiac arrest which licks at your flesh.

The world is a ringing bell to you, so the removal of those bulking noise-canceling headphones does nothing. Ears not picking up the praise of Rudy, “That was impressive. I had my doubts – what with the population density – but you were extremely efficient in your reach.” Just like how you do not hear the agonizing screams of the sole survivor below.

Well, not agonized, but certainly frustrated. Holding his temples like he has got the world’s worst brain freeze, Invincible is huffing through gritted teeth at the pain between his eyes and yelling at each Flaxan who does not respond to his kicks, both variables putting him in a very bad mood.

“Get up! Get up! Get up!” He barks, a dog on repeat. He is still barking when Robot lands the hovercraft, crushing alien goop on the underbelly of his precious machine, and you reach to untie the blindfold. “I’m not done! This isn’t over — get up!”

You are not expecting a survivor when you pull off the blindfold; what you are anticipating is mass homicide, undisputable, a field of dead spider lilies that have wilted forever. Something that could resemble hope or relief from old shackles blooms in your chest when you see a sole survivor. His strong heart beats in the streets of your ribcage like a neighbor. It does not feel like you are talking, muscles feeling so airy and light, when your lips form around, “You’re alive.” like he is someone precious to you, like he has been dead for years.

He turns on you two sharply, eyes bloodlust. Despite the rage brewing in those brown eyes, his voice takes on a whine, “What the hell was that! You guys said this would last a while, that was so quick! Why was that so quick!”

Robot nudges you off his lap, down the steps of the machine, and stands while reiterating, “The protocol for this mission was to stop the Flaxan invasion as quickly as possible, with minimal damage or casualties. We try to finish things swiftly and efficiently here.”

This is inconsequential to Invincible. He is still wearing his skin of bloodlust, taking deep breaths and wincing every so momentarily at the pinch between his temples. Dangling from his fingerless gloved hand, the arm he took off an alien hangs limply; he tore it off hoping to get a reaction, to summon a scream from a headless body.

Thus, Rudy adds, trying to appeal to his human nature, that receptiveness to praise, “You were extraordinary in your speed, Inv–.”

“I could care less! It took my Dad a whole day to defeat them! This should have lasted!” This barely took up an afternoon, felt to him like mere Mississippi seconds. Mark’s so pissed he does not even hear Robot’s droning voice anymore, ears ringing.

“What even was that? Did you do something!” His attention turns to you.

Yes, you did. Among the thousand and twelve dead Flaxans — a total that once counted will disconcert Cecil Stedman and intrigue Rudy Conners — you have just exercised a dormant power and sparked a chain reaction, caused an overflow of blood in the branches of internal carotid arteries that arise from the neck into the brain, conducted multiple vasospasms within the system, essentially pinched a hose at the end and leading to a burst. But, this is something you cannot explain to him because your jaw is still dropped in awe.

You feel the pulse of breath in your open mouth, trying to formulate words, but nothing comes. All it does irk Mark.

“Answer me! If someone doesn’t tell what is going on, I’m gonna,” he raises the Flaxan arm as his brain pauses, stumped on exactly what he is going to do. He is so ineffably bored now. Cravings for bloodshed and violence are not yet satisfied. He could go for a second helping, eyeing you and Robot.

“There is no need to –,” Robot steps forward, hoping to corral the baby superhero, when you suddenly grab his arm and step two steps in front him, moving closer to danger. He stops in conciliating with Invincible because you shout out.

“Who are you,” you gasp, sweaty and breathless because you are on the cusp of a panic attack, thoughts discord and words more so, “How did you survive that! I haven’t – How can you even stand after that! No one’s ever survived that! Do you have a metal plate in – I don’t understand … I don’t understand how you could possibly be alive!”

You shake like a soaked puppy, acutely feeling the blood drain out of your face. Terrified for his sake, you want him to live a long life more than anything in your life.

You did all this? He can’t really wrap his pounding head around all the gibberish that you were spilling out. The itch for that elongated fight is present under his boiling skin, fiddling with the possibility that you could be his new opponent. So, loopy and excited, Mark decides to answer your first question, might as well introduce himself to the human he is going to battle.

“I’m –”

A perfect streamline of blood leaks out from underneath his eye, trailing down like a tear until it is absorbed into the yellow of his mask.

“Invincible,” he finishes in a weak wheeze, collapsing in a heap along with the bodies of Flaxans.

The ‘you’ now has never lived such a life.

And even if you did have these memories, transcribed over into your hippocampus like text translated language from language, alternative person to alternative person, it would not be a big concern to you. The paramount strife in your life is the closed titanium doors of Guardians of the Globe HQ which you wait patiently yet anxiously to open, counting your eight multiplication tables in your head to stop yourself from passing out on the floor.

This suspicion of an upcoming fainting spell is not from cowardice; you are running on fumes, burnt down to the last centimeter of your body’s metaphorical candle wick. Working since 03:00 then working since 10:00 when clones of Invincibles split open the skies yesterday, it is 14:00 on the second day of Armageddon and you need sleep like oxygen.

But, you could not lay down guiltlessly unless it is an involuntary loss of consciousness. Thus, you volunteered for the medical squad to clean up after Darkwing II’s sacrifice that happened less than five minutes ago. The world is moving fast, rinsing and recycling heroes.

When the doors slide open with one loud vacuum-suck sound, you pause to take it all in. Slow down, smell the roses. Roses of blood, that sharp metallic stench of liters upon liters drained. It is such a soothing and familiar scent that you let the other doctors rush past you, each racing to attend to one of the Guardians that are splattered and smeared across the floor, checking vitals.

Just from where you are standing, you can feel each of their heartbeats, knowing instinctively those that are off and those that are slowing down.

‘Samson,’ you access, opening your eyes to see nothing but blurs of the HQ. You are shaking like a soaked puppy, so fatigued that both your speech and vision are under strain.

Still, you hurry over because he has a hemorrhage in his skull, face previously punched and brain rattled just enough to rupture a blood vessel. Or, it could just be his nose bleed, jaw and cheek slick with red. You are too out of it to tell, enough to be confusing the proximities…?

All the same, you rush to the doctor attending to him, flashing a penlight in his one working eye, tools laid out to stitch the gash in his left shoulder. Like a drunk raccoon, you stumbled over just in time before the stitching could begin.

“Do-Don’t you dare stitch him,” you snap, climbing and fumbling over fallen metal, suitcase hugged tight to your chest. Both doctor and superhero give you matching confused gazes. Sweat glistens on your face. “You’r-eee-e ‘bout to, a hemo-hemorrhagic stroke,” you inform the superhero, perhaps making a false claim, still so uncertain.

Black Samson opens his mouth, “Miss, I think you should sit down”, taking a step to altruistically help you over the hurdle of rebar you are struggling to cross. He goes to assure you of his regenerative ability but only stumbles, left leg failing and bumps head with you. You both end on your knees, groaning.

“Ugggh.”

You recover faster, your head not a slowly rising pool of blood. The world is still a blur but you can still sniff out the injury like a bloodhound. “‘cuse me,” you say before taking two fingers and sticking them in his open wound.

“Jesus! Mother fuhh –!”

You ignore him, ignore everything, even your own tiredness, trying to scrub the smell of others' blood out of yourself so you can focus on his blood alone.

O positive, common blood type. He has a closed head injury; his skull is not broken which is truly a relief, the spread of visible blood over the right side of his cranium gave the impression that he might have a penetrating TBI. But, he’s not out of the woods; a blunt TBI is still a possibility. You close your eyes as the image of a crude map of the brain’s blood vessels print itself to the skin of your inner eyelids. Unconsciously, you lick your lips — in the manner of a lion salivating at the hint of a wildebeest stepping out of the herd.

Two essential blood flow circulations connect at the base of the human brain. Named Circle of Willis, its anatomy is familiar and intimate to you. The shape of the Circle of Willis is one that could be crudely described as a human stick figure; complete with noodle arms and noodle legs, little filaments stretching from the spine like ribs, and that oval head, it resembles a standing man.

It has been a companion to you more than a foster parent, captor, or co-worker. In a way, Willis is like your childhood best friend.

Willis is fine though. No injuries to be found. You recheck him thrice like a fretful mother patting down her son, seeing a spill of blood on his shirt but no pinpointed, bleeding area in sight. Each artery is a limb you pat in a wellness check, accessing blood flow through the tips of your fingers.

‘Where is it?’ You are almost positive Samson’s brain bleed would be in the subarachnoid area of the brain, directly on the level where the Circle of Willis is located. After physical trauma, the subarachnoid area is the common floor of the house of the brain layers to find broken blood vessels.

‘Into the basement or attic?’ You think to yourself, eyes shut and racing along the multiple other highways of arteries, checking each one. You do not get to decide because there is suddenly a rumble in the floor of the HQ. And two new, erratic heartbeats are pounding like the drums of war.

Eyelids wrenching open, you turn sharply away. The entire world tilts and your vision swims like a shaken snow-globe, whitening out as artificial flakes swirl round. Concrete is not a soft pillow.

You come back into the land of the living with a penlight shined in your face and a mammoth hand propping you up by the shoulder. Red is slick on your index and middle, coated to the second knuckle. The tongue in your mouth is heavy like a cinder-block as you wag it to tell the superhero and GDA doctor fretting over you that you are fine. What comes out is a jumbled alphabet soup.

Black Samson holds his index finger, a motion that your unseeing eyes do not catch, to his lips and knocks them against the surface twice to tell you to shush.

Uncooperative, you wrench your unsteady head from the hold of your fellow GDA employees. That awful penlight is finally out of your eyes. Sections of the demolished Guardians of the Globe control room come back into focus. Limp hands resurrect and search for your briefcase – a bloody caricature of Velma from Scooby Doo, momentarily helpless like a newborn.

Cold against your fingertips, you touch the combination and latches just as Darkwing II screams. A flinch causes the briefcase to rattle. Alert and vision unfogging, you look towards where those two new heartbeats … no, just one now, beat.

As previously established, you have been working since 10:00 yesterday. You were in the midst of pipetting when the skies split with green anuses and green mouths, shitting and spitting out fake Invincibles. It was 10:01 when the Global Defense Agency was renovated with a new skylight ceiling even though those portals opened over Poland and your workplace was in Arlington, Virginia. It was fucking, aggravatingly bad luck when it was the science wing that the now dead fake Invincible dived through first; you lost your sample to the linoleum floor, the pipette squeezed in surprise.

You’ve seen those Bizarro Invincibles up close and personal before — the Invincible dressed in Flaxan attire and your coworkers' blood held your face in his unrelenting hands, leaving you purse-lipped and silent to hear his forlorn whisper of, “I can’t believe this is really your face. I didn’t think – It’s been years,” he paused and somewhere even softer than a whisper said, “It’s been years.” — but that does not lessen the tension that coils through you at seeing another.

He has Darkwing’s intestines gripped in his hand. He circles his wrist once, twice, and thrice, wrapping the thick muscle in a bundle around his fist, gathering them up like they’re a string of Christmas lights to be put away.

“Hahaha, so much for that sacrificial shit, huh! Guy gets just an inch of guts taken out and cries Uncle. What a pussy!” He pulls the last of the coiled small intestines out; dripping red, they spin around in a loop down the length of his arm like a snake twisting on a branch.

It is so outlandish that you aren’t entirely sure if what you are seeing is reality. The HQ was already clear; you wouldn’t have to face a second helping of emotional turmoil dealt at the hand of a human-Viltrumite hybrid; you sent in here for cleaning up messes only because the coast was clear, moved to the medical staff; you are not a fighter but a cockroach. These contrasting variables and unforeseen circumstances ping-pong in your rationale. This is so far from being a cleared out, neutral territory.

It took thirteen screeching ReAnimen to take down that last fake Invincible. Even when ReAnimen fell upon him like a pack of hunting dogs, he picked some of them up like they were stuffed animals and lobbed them across hallways and into walls. This new fake Invincible just survived an unprecedented amount of time in the Shadowverse.

Maybe, it is finally time to cut your losses.

It’s not like you are head over heels for this place. The Global Defense Agency is simply a well of resources, a fountain of blood; your hematology research has flourished with such versatile samples. All of those strictly classified blood bags can only be assessed with a fancy little GDA badge, that very one that hangs on the lanyard around your neck. But, you are certainly not loyal to them.

Unlike that little puke who makes the ReAnimen and Darkwing II, you have nothing incriminating in your history that keeps you stuck here, no leash to Cecil Stedman’s finger — not in the way that Flaxan Invincible made it sound like.

You grasp your dangling ID badge just as the fake Invincible turns his body, light and enthusiastic as his eyes set on the doctors, paralyzed in fear, rebuilding the Immortal and scooping up Shapesmith. “Stedman sent in the cleanup already, huh? I’m pretty sure I already killed that guy. I don’t think you’re gonna get anything else out of him.”

There is that floating lab in the Pacific Ocean working with Atlanteans, another option is that Arctic outpost with ossified bodies of alien shapeshifters, and you could even be reassigned to the space satellite where that young hero Zachary Thompson works; the world is full of escape routes and you are no coward when it comes to change.

“Man, they work you guys to the bone!”

It really is time to cut your losses.

You bring your briefcase to your chest, heartbeat irregular and fluttering. It is your life-perseverer that you hold so tightly and it is the only belonging you need to survive. Watching this new Invincible stride over to the trembling doctors, Darkwing’s guts swaying in his hand, you make the decision to get the hell out of dodge.

Straining, you try to get your legs up from underneath yourself. The briefcase in your hand feels like trying to lift a boulder and the dizziness in your head is debilitating. Still, you push yourself to hobble on uneasy legs. You are crouched, legs bent, heaving like you ran a marathon, but you manage to stand. It is a victory you cannot even bask in because you collapse a millisecond after. Loudly, you groan.

“Huh?”

The effort of standing plunges your blood pressure down and alerts the fake Invincible of your presence. … well, not the sound of your knees hitting concrete or the involuntary sound that slipped from you in agony.

What alerts him to the presence of the other remaining survivors is the incessant alarm of your wristwatch – “low blood sugar warning, refuel, low blood sugar warning, refuel, low blood sugar warning, refuel.” The fake Invincible turns towards that sound, analyzing your group, as this strange look comes across his face.

His face muscles are untrained for this.

Which is such an odd word — untrained. Never once would he think to use it for himself. Since he graduated crawling to mere waddling on two legs as a toddler, Mark has been put through a training regimen that has developed his physical abilities beyond human standards; yet, he still cannot figure out which ways to mold his expression into one that shows he’s listening.

Facial emotes are a fickle thing on Viltrum; his real people communicate with actions rather than worrying with morphing their lips and brows into a passage to be read. His father, Nolan, never broke his poker face. A concept that is surreal to humans who use all sorts of micro-expressions, little involuntary twitches, or sometimes break out in unexpected bouts of laughter, a permanent deadpan is possible if you are only of a superior race — as Nolan reiterates.

His mother is often used as an example of that human ineptitude to interface with another without falling to the folly of emotions.

Mark only sees his mother on Sundays. She smells like a plum freshly bleeding, has much better food in her fridge than the one at his house, and is always smiling at her son.

Not immune to other emotions, she will sometimes look at him sadly when he leaves bloated with good food on Monday mornings; she will sometimes have a crease in her brow when he says certain things too, but most of the time, she smiles. It is her most common face. Pink, moisturized lips will lift causing both the corners of her mouth and corners of her cheeks to pull. To the outside observer, mostly Mark, one can see how Debbie Grayson smiles unconsciously with her eyes. Genuine joy to be found in her duchenne smile as she greets her son, making grand gestures like bringing him to zoos for the day or purchasing ice cream cones with three scoops whenever she gets to have momentary custody. It is the face of an alien. When asked once by a curious young Mark, aged at the age where he would’ve began elementary school if he was raised like a normal child, why she did that face, Debbie Grayson crouched down, hair swaying on her shoulders and face doing it again, and said it was because he made her so happy.

Mark mimics his mother’s smiling face. He hopes it is enough for Cecil Stedman to stop being such a hard-ass with his debrief-slash-lecture. Dear old Daddy’s lectures were always with fist, which Mark appreciates, so all this wordy talk is really grating on his nerves. Safety protocols mean shit to Mark; he could care less about listening to his mission leader Robot; he wants to know something.

“Hey,” he interrupts, “Hey. Where did that other leader end up? That chick, I wanted to talk to her.”

He cannot remember a single faucet of you — other than your voice sounding feminine enough, he cannot describe your hair or body type or anything when Cecil asks ‘whom?’ — because all he can remember is that thrilling sensation of a hemorrhage in his head, the loss of gravity and thoughts.

It takes a lot of convincing. Mark has to play nice, basically stepping into the too small shoes of a child who learns to make friends on the playground. Aiding Teen Team comes off with the payment that he is gaining Stedman’s dubious trust. The Guardians of the Globe tryouts are held and his father sleeps through it on ventilator calibration. Eventually, for all the metamorphic gold stars he earns, Mark gets to cash in his reward.

You are housed in Payton Penitentiary. When he was working hand in hand with all those superheroes, he never caught wind of you even once, ears strained to see if that voice might be among his team. Apparently, they don’t let you out unless you’re really, really good, or if the world is ending.

It makes you similar to him; he also isn’t allowed to go out unless he has been obedient too.

Through a plated sheet of glass, you two met again. You are kept on a cocktail of drugs; a low dose of halothane here and a high dose of calcium channel blockers there and so many other things that he does not recall. What Mark remembers most is that first look you gave him, his mind crystal clear while you were lethargic, hardly able to construct sentences without gasping for breath between each word, when you finally managed to summon the strength to lift your dropping, bowling-ball-heavy head up from your shoulders, and you blinked lizard-esque at him.

You have the (eye color)-est eyes.

Deer in headlight eyes are the eyes of someone going to die.

Mental paralysis is a killer that tips a battle faster than a well-timed punch or quick reaction time ever could. It is why both you and Mark shudder and shed off any acute shock that tries to subconsciously bubble up, staring at each other across The Guardians of the Globe HQ.

The world falls away around the two of you for entirely different reasons. The emotions inside of you could not be any more different from the emotions inside of him.

Paralyzed, the group of three – Black Samson, the surely underpaid GDA physician, and yourself – watch the fake Invincible’s right hand move. Fingerless, pallid fingers curling, thumb set on the outside, yellow fabric creasing over a mountain valley of knuckles, he has made a fist, terrifying all of you with its presence. Then, he punches himself. It is a jarring motion. If he aimed that punch at any of you three, the muscles of your face would cave in like a deflating cherry pie. All it gives himself is the little drip of a red icicle falling from his nose, and, apparently, clarity.

“Huh,” he remarks, straightening his head and squinting, “guess this isn’t a hallucination.” He stretches out the ache in his jaw through a lion-esque yawn. “Though, you could just be a concussion … Never know, with how much I’ve been knocked around today …” He laughs airly, his brutalization a sweet memory.

While he is at ease, putting languid hands on his hips, the three of you have only tense more at his carefree words. The superhero wants to move to protect the civilians, the doctor wants to exit to protect himself, and you … want to keep fighting and abandon both of these loose ends behind you but the blaring repetition of “low blood sugar warning, refuel, low blood sugar warning, refuel, low blood sugar warning, refuel” ensures that any move you make will be fruitless, even a move without your hypoglycemia flaring up would be like an ant trying to take down an elephant. So, all of you sit in wait, trying to predict someone who is unpredictability’s personification.

It is worse that his gaze is directly planted upon you and he hasn't broken eye contact since the punch.

“You’ll check out my head, right?” He points at it, unmistakably the face of Omni-Man’s son who no longer works with Cecil Stedman, where a thin paper-cut injury and nosebleed lies. “Make sure it’s not too bruised like last time.”

That was directed at you. No mistaking it, his brown eyes have not diverted their attention elsewhere.

“Not from this distance,” you say, distractedly mapping out your escape plan without taking your eyes off him.

The fake Invincible is in front of you in a blink. Since you didn’t dare to blink, you find that your limited human vision can hardly track the motion; almost as if he phased from point A to point B with nothing more than a teleportation watch.

“How about now?”

Angling your neck, the dimension of his muscular thighs, that ridiculous jockstrap, his sinewy abdominal and pectoral meat come into slow focus. This is a question you are more hesitant to slip up on. Tilting more obtusely, the imprint of your larynx stretches your skin as once more eye contact is reestablished. He has irises like the rings of a tree, a brown that is so deeply brown. A ball of spit is swallowed in the tight space of your throat and the fake Invincible watches the swallow with rapture.

“What, cat got your tongue?” He smiles boyishly down at you, buzzing with energy from head to toe. His grin falters as his gaze descends to your screeching wristwatch. “God, that thing is annoying. What’s it for anyways? I can barely hear myself think over it.”

You are hauled to your feet. Forearm grasped, he pulls you up as easily as lifting a sheet; his grip is sturdy yet not bruising as you fumble to plant not quite sturdy feet. The fake Invincible exhales on your face, leaning in close to observe your foggy eyes with private objectiveness. When his attention turns to your watch, maneuvering your limp wrist sideways to view, you find your voice.

“It tracks my blood pressure.” No shit, it’s screaming out a warning about it now. “I-It’s like an uh-advanced CGM.” A nervous drop of sweat rides down your neck into your uniform collar.

“Do you like it?”

“Wha?”

“Do you want it on you?”

Yes, you want it attached to your wrist as much as you want this lunatic to take his hands off you. He has his dominant hand cupping just below your wrist on your lab jacket’s sleeve and his other hand gently pushed on your left shoulder blade to keep you stable. The words won’t come out though. Whatever leaps and bounds have been made in his decision-making, or maybe he simply hates the noise, the fake Invincible inches his hand up to the leather strap in a move to tear it off.

“Wait … Wait.” You jostle, unable to pry with your other hand on your briefcase and unable to wrench your wrist away. “I – uh. I.” Butterflies rattle around in your stomach.

“Low blood sugar warning, refuel, low blood sugar warning, refuel, low blood sugar warning, refuel.”

Earth spins. Earth always spins but now it really pirouettes. As bile rises in your throat and the briefcase cracks on the pavement, you watch sheets upon sheets of merry-go-round colors move across your eyes, unable to see straight as vertigo clamps on your senses.

“Didn’t I kill you? Still up and attem unlike those chumps? Heh, you sure are strong. Good, I’ll save myself a snack for later.”

Fresh blood, you can smell it. It floats into your nostrils like the scent of barbecue shimmering on a grill caught on a breeze. It reminds you of thick globs of sauce, a red paste even thicker than mariana, almost like paint. ‘A snack?’ You cannot comprehend his meaning.

Feet are swept up and out from underneath you. The fake Invincible rids you of the burden of having to balance but worsens your chance of escape by holding you so completely, a small pet scooped up without strength to escape. “Sorry ‘bout that. I’ll come back and beat these Guardians to death in a few, promi-sss-e! Let’s get you out of here, huh, (Name)?”

Vertigo overtakes and swallows you.

No one comes after you. There is no one left to pursue you. Mark didn’t think that guy in the purple was going to get back up, but, now, he is definitely not going to come chasing after the two of you. Aiming for the head is not exactly Mark’s strong suit. He likes to dawdle. But, with you in his arms, it felt right to direct that punch at the side of Black Samson’s head and feel a part of his skull cave like an egg tapped against a frying pan’s edge.

That bothersome wristwatch is still going off but it is background noise in the wind rushing past Mark’s ears; the whole world is simply background noise in your presence. For a few moments, he simply flies through the atmosphere with his brain only focusing on the weight of you.

He only stops in his mindless flight, landing on one of Arlington’s metropolitan building roofs, because he needs to check your heart.

Grown so used to a still chest, Mark basks in the way you are heaving. Each rise and fall of your front is volcanic like a geyser just about to burst. He has to lay you down on your back because you are not coherent enough to stand. If you are drugged again, he is going to find Cecil Stedman and pick him apart in the way grade-schoolers rip legs and wings off dragonflies.

He straddles and leans over you. Lucid enough to analyze his motions but not to protest, you look up at him from beyond eyelashes. He flashes you what he judges is a charming smile. Wasting no more time, Mark makes haste to put ear to ribcage and listen to that … lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub, swift as rushing wind. The alarm warning is inconspicuous to him.

“Ah, you have n-ooo-no idea how much I needed this, (Name).”

If there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it is this. No human tradition or ritual embodies this sentiment he feels, so it must be his Viltrumite side reigning supreme, but he wants to build a place for himself within your ribs. With just a little bloody force, he could make himself a hibernation cave inside of you, lay his head on a heart-pillow.

“I love the way you have a head on your shoulders,” he muses aloud, still laid on your chest. “There are other things I really like about you but that one is my favorite. What do you like about me?”

When Mark pulls back to see your face, you have your eyes closed and lips parted. ‘Aw, cute.’ How he missed you. Sure, there were always other enemies to fight against and eventually kill, but when you went away, it was like a rabid fan’s favorite MMA fighter announcing their retirement from the ring. Mementos were kept but it could never compare to the real thing.

He hasn’t felt this warm and fuzzy feeling in his heart since you’ve been gone. It must be your powers. That disruption of blood vessels and arteries, leaking out like radiation from your dormant abilities, speeding up his heart.

It slows when he notices what lies over your chest.

In fingerless gloved hands, coated with the blood of so many that red has eclipsed the yellow fabric, he picks up and thumbs the ID badge. Even he cannot summon any vitriol for the item because it has your face on it. Something like that would never make him angry. It is a simple identification: (Name) (Last Name), Affliction. Employee, Agency Department. The G.D.A Science Foundation, Expires. 2027SEPT10. He makes sure to keep the blood staining plastic lower so it does not obscure your photograph.

In the top leftmost corner, you do not smile. In it, you wear a simple white button-up with the top button undone. You are not following laboratory regulations because (your hair is down/you wear a necklace with a large aquaprase stone hanging from it). Mark’s eyes follow the curve of your lips where a poker-face resides. You look to be about fifteen in this photo.

Mark’s lips are a dead line as he looks at it, not comprehending it.

“Whatever. It’s lame anyways.” He yanks the lanyard off your neck, the buckle snapping open. It is like pulling the starter cord on a lawn mower because you start to have a seizure almost instantaneously.

PANIC.

There is a giant robot above you now. It is not a robot that you can see but you can hear it. About the size of Mount Fuji or the Burj Khalifa, you can tell it is a behemoth structure because of the sound of its stomps. Hissing pistons lift its gargantuan feet with thunderous booms. Despite the obvious weight of it, maybe a thousand elephants or hundred naval ships equivalent, this robot is moving swiftly, almost running; it raises the question: how can something that large move that fast?

The answer involves the fuel being used, PANIC: People Anxiously Negating Intelligence, C’est-la-vie.

There is obviously no ‘robot’ above you; this world may be full of kaijus, superpowered men and women, and other ridiculous things, but a giant gundam is a little too far-fetched — something that should stay in fiction like Pacific Rim and 20th Century Boys. No, that noise is the noise of those who are running for their lives. The heavy cacophony is a symphony orchestrated by PANIC.

Payton Penitentiary is packed full of panicking people.

Hah, say that seven times fast. You probably could not in your state. In such a nebulous state, you could not possibly sniff out even a single heartbeat. It has all blended together into pounding, thunder-after-lightning booms. Hidden below the ground and below even the basement, you lie untouched by mass hysteria, drool on the corner of your lips. You do not even hear the hissing.

Vents align the walls of your prison cell like family portraits. From them, halothane seeps out and cascades downward like miniature Niagara Falls in transparent waves. Wall to wall, ceiling to floor, the room is flooded with this potent halogenated anaesthetic gas. Designed to decrease your blood pressure and slow your heart rate, it keeps you on the constant threshold of respiratory depression. You haven’t died yet so they haven’t stopped pumping your cell full of the anaesthetic.

But, outside, someone has put up a beaver dam to halt the flood, momentarily turning off the pour of gas into your room. Motionless, you lie untouched by these changes. You breathe in air that is so clogged that you do not even notice the thinning of it as your cell door opens minutes after.

Mark strides in. He crosses his blood-stained arms over his chest in a self-assured manner and inhales deeply the scent of your room. Sweet like fruit, the scent of chloroform-like odor seeps into his nostrils. It would knock anyone else out in seconds but only tickles Mark.

“They rea-lll-y got you locked in deep down here. For a moment, I thought I missed a turn or something; thought you might have been up on the top floors with the rest of them. But, nope! I just had to keep digging a little deeper. Then, bam, you’re right here.” He plants his rear on the edge of your mattress. “You know, I’m kinda like a prince saving the princess from the tower and an evil dragon. Pretty cool, right?”

Like a dead person, you lie without reacting to your environment.

“Hey!” Mark barks at you. “Hey, cut the shit! What the – What’s wrong with you!” Steadyfast, you keep seizing all through Mark’s initial panicking. “(Name)! Hey, (Name)! Cut it out!”

Intelligence evaporated out of him – not that there was much there –, Mark uses an atom’s worth of his Viltrumite genes to restrain you. He grips the biceps of both your arms, digging nails into cotton sleeves, and pushes you as flat as possible on the PVC rooftop. It worsens your erratic jerks, kicking them up by several degrees. If you weren’t thrashing like a furious bull before, you are now.

“Hey! (Name), cut the bullshit!” He pushes down harder, eyes flying to your wrists wondering if those are better to grab or if he should just engulf you in a bear-tight hold until you cut it the fuck out. The longer it goes on, the more his tone grows desperate. “You’re scaring the shit out of me, (Name) – just stop it!”

Has he said or done something to upset you? You two were getting along just great before. Mark has never seen you do this before; he has never even seen something like this in general! Uneducated in human nuance, he puts an iron-flesh hand to your chest, feels the stomps and firing pulses of your heart, and pushes down so ribs and the cardiovascular organ kiss together.

Coincidentally, the seizure subdues with time. A puff of air escapes Mark’s lips in relief. He should have known it had something to do with the heart – it always does when it comes to you. Satisfied that he figured it out, a smile quirks up his lips as you slowly wrench yourself into consciousness. You wake up to the face of Omni-Man and Debbie Grayson’s twenty-one year old son, Invincible, that bumbling superhero who has no idea what the real world is like.

For a moment, you misjudged that he above you is the one from your universe. You only remember the time you were standing over him, helicopter wings causing your labcoat to rustle, as he laid smashed into the side of a mountain, a single glimpse of a black eye visible due to a broken lens. Lens?

No, a pair of brown eyes is arrowed down at you, absent of any goggles, displaying relief yet smugness too.

You do not care anymore. His mouth is forming around benign words that you are deaf to. Though the ringing of your ears blocks it out, you are positive that your wristwatch is shrieking unless this brute has smashed it or removed it. You are on a tightrope that has long since burnt at both ends, leaving you with no route to escape. If there is nowhere left …

“Juh– J – hng –Juh-s – sa –Juh-ice,” you choke around too heavy words.

“Huh,” the fake Invincible leans in, “didn’t catch that.”

“Juice.”

At Dad’s house, Mark only got water. Mostly from the tap and on rare occasions bottled if they went somewhere new for training, the water never came with a straw. Mom’s water came with straws, bendy ‘crazy’ ones, straight ones, striped ones, colorful ones. His Mom’s house also had enough flavors of water to make a little boy feel like he was on a booze cruise. Of course he never was as Debbie Grayson would always tell him that he could not have any of her ‘adult juice’; even though he did sneak a sip when her back was turned at fourteen, sticking out his tongue in disgust mere moments after.

Mark Grayson knows what juice is. If you want, he could name all the labels that were in his Mom’s fridge from the Welch’s Mango Twist to the Hawaiian Punch Polar Blast. But, he is not sure that is what you want and you freaked him out enough where he is compliant to anything. “Do you want me to get you some juice,” he asks, hesitant to remove his hand.

The pressure from his palm is too suffocating to spit out any more heavy words. It feels like a peine forte et dure. You need to save your breath so you only nod your confirmation.

Vaguely, he does remember where to get juice. This universe has got to have a Trader’s Joe or Krogers somewhere. Mark’s not sure but he is sure as hell not going to leave you here. As he picks you up, supporting underneath the knees and spine, squinting at you, he seems apprehensive. “You’re not gonna do all that freaking out again, right?”

His hand may be off your chest but you are so utterly weak. You shake your head, not really comprehending.

“‘Kay, good.” He takes off, you secure in his arms.

This is the end of the world.

And, you do not mean that in a pessimistic and wave-the-white-flag way. Nor is your statement one of hysterics. When you internalize that is in fact the end of the world, it is in a solidification of the tightrope burnt at both ends. Even with devastating death tolls, there has always been something to rebuild from. With approximately more than fifteen invincible Viltrumite-human hybrids roaming the planet, with no idea of how long their visit will last, you are certain there will be no way to salvage this planet.

They are humanity’s equivalent to the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. You knew this was the end of the world when that Flaxan Invincible, attempting to gather you in his arms, said, “I have to get you somewhere safe.”

“Somewhere safe?” You are in one of the safest places in the entire … hm, there is that light breeze coming through the new hole in the roof. Dropping your gaze back to his black lens, you assert, “if I am going anywhere, it certainly will not be with you.”

Mark drops his arms as soon as he feels the invisible puppet strings in his circulatory system tighten up. He forgot your powers were like that, or is this special to this specific version of you? He has no time to dawdle with the semantics. Both of you need to turn tail and leave right now.

“We don’t have time for this, (Name). The world is going to burn to a blaze. I need to keep you safe, no matter the cost and no matter the repercussions.” He is as grim as a reaper. “This is the end of times.”

You had not taken him seriously, who possibly would! Now, the stench of fire and blood has painted the inner walls of your nose. Soon, you will have another seizure, then another, and another until you slip into a coma, fallen from the tightrope. You are coming to reckon with the death of humanity when apple juice hits your lips.

You suckle like a famished newborn. Apple juice glides everywhere, across your neck and into your coat collar, rolling down your cheeks to soak into your hairline, cresting over the mountains of your ears, but most importantly, it glides down your throat. Choking and sputtering on the end of it, you combat whoever is trying to momentarily lift the plastic rim away from your lips by seizing the bottle. The last glistening pool of yellow tornados down into your eager mouth as you sit up, denting plastic with your fingers. How could you possibly forget? You are a cockroach, not human.

“Low blood sugar warning, refuel, low blood –.”

“Geez, not a sharer much? Heh … Wow … You’ve really got the (eye color)-est eyes.” The very thing that Mark calls attention to turns to analyze him. He stops from saying his next sentence, staring back like an entranced cat.

Ignoring him, you take a look at your wristwatch, the sleek face reading out your glucose levels and vitals. 53 mg/dL, your watch informs you. “No,” your lips form the word in disbelief. There is no way it could have dropped so drastically below seventy; you would have to be hospitalized by now.

Caught in a state of perpetual shaking, you hit the palm of your jittery hand against the side of your watch. The two, pencil lead-sized needles shift to the right underneath your skin, straining from the hit. This ridiculous device is constantly embedded in your skin, siphoning blood out in three minute intervals. That must be the old reading … why hasn’t it updated!

“See, I knew you didn’t want that stupid thing on. Don’t worry. I got ya,” the fake Invincible assures. He sure is a yapper when attention is not given to him. “You’re just out of loop like you were last time. Can’t believe-eee-e I’ve got to come to your rescue again.”

“Please, don’t.” It amazes you that your small, shivering hand eased onto his wrist is enough to stop his advances. Brown eyes carry their attention from your wristwatch to you. You two are giving each other the same look that you gave in the Guardians of the Globe HQ just as the very device caught between you two started its wailing alert, realizing who stands before them as the metaphorical fog lifts.

“I need this,” you try to talk him down. You are skilled enough to get through this with half your vision and hearing dwindled to nothing.

“That’s what you thought last time too.”

“Well, I was wrong that time but I’m right this time.”

“I don’t know, (Name) …”

“I know some other things you can help me with. Rescue, is that what you said? These things would rescue me.”

“Hm,” he seems to be really deep in contemplation, like he is making the decision whether to take someone he loves off life support or not, but that heavy cloud clears off his face with nothing more than a cheery, “‘kay!”

“Can you get me —”

You give him a list. What you recite is a long-winded grocery list of everything that you know has fast-acting sugar that has helped you out of numerous tight spaces. Then, for extra measure, since your wristwatch has not changed from that stagnant 53 mg/dL, you add pumpkin seeds, fruits, and anything that might relatively refuel you and might keep him away from you, just so you can formulate and think up escape plans.

Blinking, Mark finds his lips twitching up into a smile. He stayed sitting to absorb all the requests you threw at him, but you really are an odd one. If blueberry yogurt covered pretzels paired with jelly-beans and washed down with mandarin Jarritos is what you want, he will deliver.

“Is that it,” Mark questions after you finish such a lengthy list. Once he’s got verbal confirmation, he springs up to his feet light, swaying on the balls and wiping bloodied hands on his spandex tights. “All of that, coming right up.” Just as he is turning to speed off to grab a cart, he tacks on, “Don’t get any funny ideas about leaving, (Name). You wouldn’t get far anyways.”

Your heart only pulses once nervously before you manage to subdue it. You had not estimated someone so rash to be observational. Well, he does know your name; but, that could simply be related to your missing ID badge.

Taking it in stride, you answer, “I’ll be right here waiting for you, Inv – Mark.” It is the truth.

The section that the fake Invincible deposited you at is side by side to many refrigerated doors. From the closet one that you scoot over to, you grab the first juice carton that you see on the bottom row and tear it open at the top to make a beak of sorts. You chug Peach Punch like a college senior celebrating their last days before graduation.

Down aisles, you can hear Mark wheel a cart, laughing to himself as he crashes into collapsing walls of food and chatting with himself about the list you gave him. Whatever grocery store chain he dropped you in, you are not sandwiched between two aisles. There may be a wall of doors on your right but the left is all open space.

There are separate tables loaded high with pies, danishes, cupcakes, and various other bready sweets. Past these tables are another wall of refrigerated doors. Between this square of tables are freezer display cases, shaped like boats almost, of yogurts, cream cheeses, butter, and various other cool foods.

You grab the first plastic box your eyes fall on, tearing off the seal reading 10.99 and the expiration date July 09. The pop of those plastic divots unlocking motivates your ravenous hunger. The pastry package you hold contains six cupcakes, three vanilla and three chocolate, all of them topped with plastic rings. Sitting back down, you slide a Fourth of July themed ring on your index finger, a flat circle with an eagle and American flag behind it, and remove the wrapper. It is finished in three gaping bites, blue frosting left on your lips. Without hesitation, you reach for another and another, wearing rings and discarding wrappers, until the box is empty.

Rested uncomfortably against the table leg, you try to regain your sense of identity. Since fourteen, you have worked for Cecil Stedman; you are not trapped in some complex scheme or doing against your will like keeping a watch on. Now, you no long work Cecil Stedman because it appears to be the end of the fucking world.

‘Where am I going to go,’ you think to yourself, fourth cupcake consumed. ‘I’ve only worked for the G.D.A before and the United Nations and Russia are a bust now.’ You saw that pink, torn-skinned one on a scene demolishing Moscow before stepping out the control room. ‘A moonbase? No, I’d have to really go deep into the solar system to escape this.’

There are no worldly attachments keeping you anchored here. The only confounding thing is your lack of means to get the fuck out of here … unless this Invincible is on your side. He is too unpredictable for your taste.

“Hm.” You knock your head back into the table’s edge. “Guess I got to go with the flow.” But your hand outstretching up to grab a container of strawberry danishes tells a different story.

You are on your first mouthwatering bite, sinking teeth in heaven, when you see it. A floating orb of metal, circuits, and a single red eye. A scowl forms and your taste-buds go rotten. You fucking hate robots. The orb’s face parallel to your face switches direction, seeming to have caught a glimpse of you but not caring, and moves east to where Invincible is making a ruckus.

The torn off pastry starts to melt underneath your fingertips, squeezing the bread and glaze flat. “I have a bad feeling about that thing,” you whisper; no matter your aversion to the robotic laboratory, you can tell that is not one of the G.D.A’s.

Mark is in the candy section when Angstrom’s little orb finds him. This version of you must have one crazy sweet tooth because half of the items you wanted were in this one aisle. He imagines prison slop is as decent as Dad’s homecooked venison, so he’s been grabbing a variety of flavors per item even if you didn’t ask for them. Pinched between thumb and index, he holds onto a stack of Kit Kats, each plastic a different color for the flavors; he drops them in the carriage as Angstrom’s little orb floats down to him. No sweets taste as good as blood though.

The orb bumps Invincible’s shoulder, causing the package of Skittles to slip out of his grip in his calm. He turns, sharp and ready to kill, before recognition washes over him. “Hey! It’s you!” Mark exclaims as the orb shakes itself back and forth in an ambience of disapproval.

Jumping to his first assumption, because Angstrom did say he would send a message to collect him and his variants when the job was done, Mark excitement quickly flips to panic, interrogating without breathing between each sentence, “Wait, it’s not already over? Wait, wait, wait. It can’t possibly be over already; I’ve only been here for maybe a day and you’re just gonna call it off like it’s no big deal!”

He only got one good fight in with Immortal; he still has to go back and fight Black Samson if he is still alive. In the cockpit of Angstrom’s ship, Mark wrote himself a whole bucket list of all the superpowered individuals he wanted to pulverize in a fight again. He has barely gotten a fourth of the way through the list!

Angstrom’s robot moves forward, punching him twice on the side of his skull. “Hey! Quit it!” Mark starts to swipe at it like it is one giant, metal gnat, growing furious as it bumps into the lower part of his back, into his shoulder, even into his chest. “I’m not going back when I just barely got started.”

That is not the intent of the orb’s prodding. Levy Angstrom did not incorporate a microphone into the design of them because it would serve no purpose in a spying device. It is an oversight because all the pushing does not translate over to ‘get out there and kill more people’ but to ‘mission over’ which leaves Angstrom at no surprise or shock when a bloodied hand comes down and cleaves the orb right through the center. Well, he knew from the start that not all Mark Graysons were the sharpest tool in the toolbox. It is no big loss to let this one roam this universe’s Earth evermore and die on it eventually.

Glaring down at the cut sphere, blue sparks of electricity buzzing from its innards, Mark picks back up the Skittles and spits in the direction of the orb. He cannot stand robots. As he crouches down while retrieving the candy, he notices a brand of sweets that catch his eyes on the bottom shelf: Ice Cream Chews.

The first date Mom and Dad went on was to an ice cream parlor. It was one of the most concrete proof that there was once amicableness between them. Both talked about the memory fondly and both talked about it without any juxtaposing details when comparing their stories side by side.

It is something that he wanted to do with you before things turned out how they did. Freed from imprisonment, wouldn’t that be the best treat ever, to sit across from each other, no glass dividing you two, so you could share spoonfuls of ice cream with each other?

With a speed that could rival a pure-blooded Viltrumite, Mark starts to locate and toss the other hard candies that you asked for into the awaiting mouth of the carriage. It is a rapid flood of smacking candy and rustling plastic as he flings jelly-beans, suckers, and chewable candies in and swings the cart in the direction of where he left you.

“(Name)’s gonna love it. Who doesn’t like ice cream,” Mark wonders aloud.

You are thinking of literally everything else but ice cream right now. Finally, your watch is reading 68 mg/dL. The normoglycemic levels of glucose is 72 to 108 mg/dL, meaning you are just on the border where you need to be. Ice cream is not exactly the ideal food to quickly climb up those blood sugar levels. As your cheeks puff out with the cheesecake filling, resembling a chipmunk, you are thinking about seeing if you can find yourself some honey-doused deserts or grabbing another pint of juice.

In your go-with-the-flow panic, you are really only thinking of the singular word, refuel. Reiterated so much from your watch, you seek to finally be back as full power like a declawed cat regrowing its hooked, sharp defenses.

You almost choke on graham cracker crust when the phone miraculously still in your pants pocket starts to vibrate. Fumbling, you reach to quickly turn the blasted thing off before it attracts Invincible’s attention. The only reason you pause a hovering thumb over the decline button is because the top line reads: GDA Director, Stedman.

Cecil is staring at you like he is afraid. It is jarring. You have been so, so scared of him since your height was at his hip, since before you knew the fucking times table, since you were pulled from elementary school — taken from hand-turkey drawings, snacktime with animal crackers, hopscotch at recess — and thrown into the most secure prison on the planet.

“You’re terrified of me. I can hear it in your heartbeat.” Your articulating tongue can almost lick at his lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub like catching a whiff of greasy pizza in a supermarket and recalling the taste.

His heart rate accelerated as soon as the door creaked open, you and Mark stepping in. As your head cleared of a halothane-fog, the chatty Invincible revisited old conversations you two had through plated glass, teasing the surprise that he had at his house for you, a kind of Welcome Home gift.

You had forgotten about the concept of a surprise because you were enraptured at him telling you about childhood stories, how he could raise his hand like an axe and cut a log in half to use when building his and his Dad’s cabin, how he could outrun a pack of wolves and wrestle with bears; Mark was fascinating because he was the only one to talk to. Now, all your attention falls to Cecil Stedman. The director sits tied to a chair. Ropes are too tightly fastened and cut off most of his circulation; his big toe is already starting to go dead without any blood, discolored purplish-blue.

“Haha! Isn’t it great! Look at him, shakin’ in his boots,” Mark meanly bites. His arms come around your neck in an amicable hug, resting his chin on your shoulder. “I was never one for neatly wrappin’ up a Christmas present but I think I did pretty well!”

Is it near Christmas? You caught sight of white snow while being flown through chilly air in Mark’s grip. It amazes you how many seasons have come and gone without you knowing, trapped underground where spring, summer, autumn, and winter do not exist.

“It’s really a great gift,” you say with a gentle smile, the devil on your shoulder laughing. Not knowing what to expect when Mark took from Payton Penitentiary, this unexpected sight is better than feeling the sun on your skin once more after months of nothing.

“You did this for me?” Quickly, you check that you are not being too conceited. He said this was for you, but so many of your past rewards were more for the tasks you had done than your actual sentient flesh and blood.

“Yep! My Mom says you should, um, do unto others as you wish they would do unto you, or something like that. And, I really like killing and fighting, so you must too! We have so much in common.” He laughs, proud of himself.

You could live with or without killing and fighting. What you really care about is securing a place for yourself, moving onto new opportunities. Killing Cecil Stedman will be burning a bridge long overdue for demolition.

Shifting your stance, you gently press your hands over your ears, creating a firm suction to block out sounds. Eyelids fall close like clouds over a sun. When you open your eyes, the color of them bleeding with vibrancy, there is a flower imprinted on the log walls of Nolan’s cabin and the petals drip like red nectar as gravity pulls them down, Stedman’s headless body slumped drunk-esque in the chair.

“So fucking awesome!!”

You are being corralled out the cabin. “Wait, where are we going?”

Mark’s smile is a sunbeam, brighter than the color of yellow on his suit. “Anywhere we want to go!”

You power off the device, mid-ring, just as Mark comes around the corner. He eyes all the empty plastic containers at your feet as your attention is fully devoted to him.

Involuntary, your heart starts to speed up. The sensation is something you loathe; you are unwilling to participate in anxiety but always your anxious heart betrays you by accelerating in pulses, racing fruitlessly when danger is in sight. There is nothing that innate fight-or-flight response can do for you in such a situation, so you just wish it would go away.

Mark is holding your glucose tablets in hand, shaking the bottle and pointing it out towards you as he suggests, “Me. You. Us. Ice cream date. What’d you think?”

You had no idea what position you held in this fake Invincible’s universe; you could not even write a rough draft of what you suspect you might have been doing in an alternative universe, not with all the previous words said and assumptions made. So, smiling happily, you respond, “I’d love to.”

The shelves of ice cream and popsicles stretch the length of about twenty-five see-through doors. Whatever town or city or part of Virginia he flew to, the blackouts have not reached here yet. Each container has a layer of icy crystals growing on it like moss. Mark presses his hand to the tempered glass, feeling the cold kiss at his fingerprints, and goes down the line of ice cream, reading each flavor.

Unlike Mark, you stand a reasonable distance back, not pressing your nose and forehead up to the glass like he is. It feels like a millennium since you ate any ice cream. You cannot even recall if you have ever had Talenti before, simply letting the superhero corral you to the shelf he abruptly stopped in front of. Arms crossed and brow furrowed, you do not even gaze at the door, attention locked on him.

He is a confounding individual.

Right now, he is giving you a rundown of what his yesterday looked like as you fought for your life against that Flaxan Invincible. “So, me and him are coming across this like h-uuu-ge desert. And, like, his punches are so! weak, like c’mon, I’ve barely worked up a sweat and you’re gonna punch like you’re tired out? Lame! But, then, finally, he hits me with something with a little oomph! And I go flying down into this underground grave place –”

Part of you is worrying over what your tomorrow is going to look like. Do you even get tomorrows at the end of the world? You are positive that a cockroach like yourself will survive whatever, be it a scolding desert, be it a fake Invincible, be it the end of the world, but maybe you should indulge yourself in a sweet treat before this all goes to shit.

Just as you take your eyes off the back of Mark’s hair, a pint of see-through ice cream is being shoved in your face. You blink down at it. “Here. For you,” Mark informs, finally done with his story and finally making his choice. What he holds is gelato layers of mint fudge cookie.

It (is/is not) your go-to flavor which you suppose is telling of how much he knows about you … at least, you think it might. As you accept the pint, you cannot help but to ask, “Who are you to me?” He tilts his head like a curious puppy. Perhaps that is the wrong question. “Who am I supposed to be? I’m not exactly sure anymore.”

His smile shows off his teeth. “You’re just supposed to be you.”

What a confounding and unhelpful answer.

As he springs up to his feet, Mark tosses his pint from left hand to right hand, back and forth, while saying wistfully, “Though, I suppose you don’t really like know-know me anymore. This is a fresh start. I mean, it’s super freaky you work for G.D.A ‘cus those guys ruined your life where I’m from.”

“Ruined my life?” Are you an outlier in your universal relationship with the Global Defense Agency?

“Threw you in jail all because you killed a few thousand people. Total bullshit. It was self-defense anyway, so it wasn’t even a crime.” He starts meandering away so you follow. “If someone picks a fight, you fight back; you don’t just lie down and take it.”

“A thousand people?” You don’t think you could even kill two people, much less a thousand.

“Or something like that. It was some ridiculous high number. And then, you killed all those Flaxan soldiers and that was another thousand-something. You’re s-uuu-per powerful where I’m from. I was kind of hoping you would attack me when we met again but then you passed out on me.”

Everlastingly curious, you want to pry for more but you miss your opportunity when Mark exclaims. “Gnarly!! I t-ooo-tally missed this when I walked in! Damn,” he laughs. What he stands over, both of you having made your way to the front entrance by the registers and cafe, is a dead body.

A body of a superhero to be exact, and not even really the body but simply the head. The helmet with the silver claws rising up from the eye-slits, making almost a metal-replica of a raccoon’s patterns, identifies him clear enough for you. That is ShadowHawk’s head, absent from its host body therefore leaving it as vulnerable as any other human’s.

Underneath the head, a blue spandex-coated shoe comes to jostle it. Your eyebrows shoot up in surprise when Mark starts to treat it like a soccer ball. He bounces it on the tip of his foot, the metal clanging with each ascending jump, before moving onto his knees and ankles. Up and down, up and down, ShadowHawk’s head is moved by the fancy footwork of a sadistic Invincible until he sends it rocketing through the front’s ceiling tall windows like a football player kicking a field goal.

“He shots … He scores!” ShadowHawk’s head sails until it blinks out of existence. “And the crowd goes,” he turns to you, mirth in those gleaming brown eyes, and the smile drops off his face, “and the crowd is unimpressed. Boo.” He pouts.

You manage to pull a half-smile to your features. Pointing in the direction of the cafe, you say, “Let’s go eat. I’m starving.”

His good mode resurrects easily. “Haha! I could tell! You were stuffing your face like a pig back there!”

They are tiny plastic spoons in a sleeve of plastic abandoned and ready for use. Chairs are pulled back to allow both of you to sit down, pints unlidded. Knowing that you and Invincible are most likely going to be the last one eating, sitting, and enjoying this cafe makes you loiter while removing your red spoon from its plastic. You even do a little, “Cheers”, and tap the curve of your utensil against Mark’s in a toast.

This is the first date of your life. Too busy to entertain while working with the G.D.A, you never really sought out companionship before. As your mouth melts mint gelato, you try to comprehend another version of you who would do this sort of thing. Your spoon slices through green gelato, creating a divot.

‘The work I do. I never thought I could give it up before.’ You used to look at your research as part of your soul. Once you could walk into the laboratory, gesture to each testing sample and full culture tubes, and say with full confidence: This is my flesh and blood. This is my list of ingredients.

You are a horse having run out of its stables. Where do you go now?

“Aaaaah.”

Startled, your eyes bounce up to see Mark leaning over the table, tongue out on display. “Aaaaah.” he goes. You blink in surprise, watching that pink appendage wiggle back and forth before asking indignantly what he is doing.

“Um, waiting for you to feed me obviously. I wanna bite,” he sings, letting his tongue roll just back out after talking. He puppeteers it up and down in wet flicks. It looks more like he is trying to do an elaborate dance with his tongue rather than accept a spoonful of your ice cream.

The obscenity and absurdity of him causes your first genuine laugh since the skies split open with portals. He really is a character. Surely, textbook-level evil but with those boyish charms that come with a highschool romance. Digging down your utensil to scoop up layers of mint gelato, fudge bits, and chocolate syrup, you decide to appease his whims if only because that little act brightened your mood slightly.

As you pull your spoon back, green and brown streaks racing across the surface, Mark keeps this ridiculous eye contact with you, moaning around the bite in his mouth. Once you free your utensil, he latches right back onto it. His brown eyes wide like twin suns, staring you down and waiting for a reaction, as he clenches the plastic in his teeth. Challenging you like a dog.

Once you wrench it out, almost flying off your chair when his teeth suddenly lift up, you whack him on the nose swiftly. Dreamily, he giggles and blushes at the abuse.

“Alright, your turn. Say ‘aaaah’,” Mark instructs. You do no such thing but still open up to accept the spoonful he feeds you. It is sea salt caramel and he is surprisingly gentle as he removes his spoon, watching your mouth intensely.

You still haven’t been able to make a solid impression of him and yourself. As you dig into the fudge layer of your gelato, you cannot help asking hesitantly, “In your universe, did we …?”

Something flashes in Mark’s eyes. It is like watching a lighthouse’s illumination fall over a specific spot of the water, creating a shiny reflection, but it is gone as soon as it appears. His smile is strained, unable to commit to a frown, as he answers.

“We made a good team.”

It was supposed to be a quick in-and-out. Kill the new Guardians of the Globes. Catch up with Dad/Nolan after all was done so the Viltrum invasion could quickly begin. The thing is the headquarters had lit up, a thousand or so robots powering on at once like sleepy bats’ eyes opening simultaneously in a dark cave.

The collar suddenly latched onto your neck like a cobra creating a quick scarf around its prey. It moved so fast that it did not register in Mark’s vision which is so much superior than human or machine. Despite his biological preeminence, it did nothing to halt the collar from beeping a singular conformation and blowing your head clean off your shoulders.

Like a wave, your blood splashes over his face, streaks getting in his brown eyes, sticking in his hairline and eyelashes, and even a bit landing inside his agape mouth. Slowly, almost mechanically, he closes his parted lips. The taste of your blood is swallowed. It is sweet, not metallic like others would have you believe.

Mark guesses it is time to leave. You have eaten enough to where you are refueled, seemingly happy when you check the numbers on the face of your watch. Those twin red spoons are touching the bottom of empty Talenti containers, left on the single table. Another copy of Angstrom’s floating red eyes is sure to come around and piss him off some more. He is angsty to get out there and kill some more people and superheroes too.

Yeah, it is definitely time to head out.

Over the awaiting cooler bag, he tears into plastic and lets ice cubes cascade down into the open mouth. “Boom, done.” He looks towards you, who walks towards the cooler with multiple things in your arms.

“Thank you.”

You deposit jars of honey, apple juice boxes, Jolly Ranchers, glucose tablets, and a variety of your favorite fruits. It is an amateur replica of your suitcase with scientifically engineered glucose tablets that would raise your blood sugar back up to normal in mere seconds. If only you took one sooner at the HQ, you would not be in this situation with this person. But you are just glad to have something, even if it is …

“You got me a tangerine instead of an orange.”

“What?” He snatches the fruit from your hand, rolling it in examination. “Nah, I got the right one. It’s orange.”

An involuntary chuckle slips out of you, warmed. “Well, I can’t deny that, but …”

“But what? An orange is an orange.”

“A tangerine is much different from an orange, even if they’re in the same class.”

“‘Kay, smartie. What’s the difference? How is that not an orange?”

You catch the tangerine like a softball when Mark throws it to you. As you peel off the skin, you begin to explain, “First off, there are many different variants of oranges. Even those ones have subgroups within each class. This,” you hold your peeled tangerine on display, “It’s honestly an entirely different fruit.”

When you hand off Mark’s share of the tangerine, he flips a slice back and forth in his hand as if he is going to find some hidden message written within. “Mmm, tomato to’mato.” He eats his slice.

Ah, no, he doesn’t eat it. When he pulls his lips back into a smile, it is wedged between his teeth like an orange rind. Sharp and startled, a “Ha!” escapes you. Mark swallows, your little astonished gaze much sweeter than any citrus. He could eat you alive, starting with your tangerine heart and sucking out the juice.

“How’s it different,” Mark inquires after a moment.

From past conversations, you have been able to deduce that this alternative Mark Grayson likes a little verbal teasing, nudges with sentences, like the jabs thrown before the start of a real impressive boxing match. You are establishing a connection and extending an olive branch when you say whimsical, “I’m not telling you. You’re gonna have to figure it out.”

“Boo.” His pout is almost endearing.

You roll up your button-up’s sleeves, cuffing them at the elbows. Zipping the cooler close, you sling it over your shoulder and start to make your way over to the register, hiding your smile from view. Mark watches confused as you put some money onto the conveyor belt of a 15 items or less register.

When Mark questions what you are doing, you reply, “This is human courtesy.”

Human, huh? He didn’t get to learn a lot about that.

The realm of a human upbringing is completely alien to him. What he received about the human consciousness was fed to him through an embellished perspective; his mother’s bottomless happiness and the ways she spoiled him never managed to help click in place the values of humanity. His culture is brutalization which he holds dearly to his soul like one might a religion or ‘words to live by’ framework.

Still, Mark snatches all the coins out of the take-a-penny & leave-a-penny tin. He drops them all in a noisy clatter on the buck and three nickels you fished out your pants pocket. In the end, it equals a buck and ninety-one cents, far too little for what you are leaving with but it is the gesture that matters in the end of the world.

You are ready to step back into that blaze, moving down the registers when the sliding doors open to the presence of another.

Out of all the probabilities in the world, the person who walks in is Mark Grayson. ‘What luck,’ you think, halting your steps immediately when the lensless fellow beside you is slow on the uptake. However, you suppose the probability would be in favor of that. There are sixteen Mark Graysons on Earth right now and only one of every other person. Of course it is more likely for Mark Grayson to walk in than any other person.

He is not your dimension’s Mark Grayson. Yellow ditched from his color scheme, that alone is a big hint that this isn’t the Invincible who wears black and blue solely. The bigger hint is the two swords strapped to his back, hilts peeking over his shoulders.

He does not notice either of you for a blissful second or two. When he does, it is you – why is it always you – who his attention falls upon.

“(Name) …,” this new fake Invincible says softly in a stupor. His brows pinch together like two fighting caterpillars. “(Na-Name)! 괜찮으세요?” He asks, desperation in his voice. “널 해치지 않았지?!”

Neither you or Mark answer, clueless about his sudden anguish. Instead, you two stare as his mouth opens to reveal gritting teeth and wet salvia where inside his language is jumbled on his despairing tongue. It is an almost constipated look that passes over his taut features.

You are glad for the unattached, robin egg blue lens covering his sad eyes.

After a few tense moments, Invincible stables his heart enough to find the words to the question he yearns deeply to have answered. He does not see any Jopok marks on you, but they could be hidden from elbow up in this universe. His dimension’s you went down to your wrist with the needle in your loyalty, decorating skin with the symbol of your gang, all those dragon scales and rising waves. “A- Ah, are we allies in this universe?”

You contemplate that. Thinking about your Mark Grayson who’s falling out with Cecil Stedman wrecked eighty-two ReAnimen and has caused your coworkers nail-biting strife, you answer, even though you are no longer with the G.D.A, “No. I don’t think so.”

Pain flashes across his face as if you managed to physically injure him. His head bows so you cannot see the tears slipping past his lens and across his cheeks. “I see. That makes me sad to hear. I am sorry that I have failed you in another lifetime.”

Empathy is not something that the selfish possess; empathy is not a trait that aligns with your morals and emotions. Impassively, you watch him for any hint of hostility, knowing how unpredictable these Invincible variants are. A man whose entire body is a weapon carrying a weapon on his back? It turns your stomach.

Composing himself, Invincible lifts his head. He has stilled the involuntary quiver of his bottom lip and settled it into a scowl. It causes him insurmountable han to find that one of the universal constants is that you two stand on opposing sides. He wants nothing more than to stand side by side again. But first …

Invincible points his attention towards Mark’s figure. Whatever was unsteady in his heart falls to a calm rhythm, confidence in each beat. When he removes the two shiny swords from the scabbard sheath strapped to his spine, Invincible metamorphoses into a man devoid of any emotions, that stone-faced killer he was born to be.

“Still … it is unwise to be around me. Double-crossing was not something that Angstrom outlined to be frowned upon. Prostate yourself and accept your death. I might just make it quick if you don’t fight back.”

“Prostate myself,” Mark mocks in disbelief. Involuntarily, he starts to laugh, throwing his head back with the fizz of bubbling giggles. “Can’t you believe this guy, (Name). Prostate myself?”

“If you value your tongue, do not talk to her.”

“Oooh, I’m gonna have a fucking time killing you.” Mark throws a few loose combos in the air, readying his fist for a fight. Ah, he is so happy to fight again!

“I assure you that it is not me that is going to yield.” You can tell just from the mere confidence and maturity in his voice that it is a true statement. “Though, I am sure there will be some internal self-searching to do after killing myself. I eagerly anticipate it.”

“D-ooo-n’t care. C’mon, let’s do this. C’mon! C’mon!”

You cannot let this fight commence.

In the simplest terms, you need to establish a team. The world is ending and you need strong players on your side. What you do next is survival — after all, you held down that Flaxan attired Invincible, made the blood in his system gain sentient mass, restricting him from defending against each blow, kept that hold apathetic even as his eye looked at you betrayed through a cracked len, firm on your winning position in the G.D.A until the scoreboard read Invincibles: 1 and Earth: 0 — and you already have stock in Mark who stands besides you now.

You start to raise your dominant arm, attention drawn to you like a magnet.

“Please don’t do this, (Name). It’s not you that I wish to fight.”

“Do it! Do it! Do it!”

The sound of your own personal cheerleader locks your decision into place. You hope you won’t live to regret it. You hold up four fingers, thumb tucked. Skin un-moisturized, decorated with Fourth of July plastic rings, and nail plates uneven on each end, they stand up like growing weeds. Both Invincibles watch enraptured like waiting for a little league pitcher to throw, anticipation in both their eyes while unsure of what to be anticipating. You drop your middle and ring, making bull horns.

Where children drew stick figures of family members, you surprised your foster father by being able to perfectly draw a Circle of Willis. He thought it was an imaginary creature, all wiggling ribs and filaments standing out like a bacteria’s ring. At least until he poured over anatomy textbooks and found Willis within it.

You know acutely where those limbs are placed.

The first thing that falls in his right-held sword; then, his entire body follows after like a tree. This new fake Invincible screams in pain as the stumps of his right arm and left leg pour generously into the sanguine puddles below him. He collapses on his single remaining knee and palm, yelling at the top of his lungs in unprepared agony.

“Let’s go,” you urge, snapping Mark out of his stupor. Already, you are popping a Dum-Dum into your mouth, rolling the hard candy around on your tastebuds to patch up your powers with cotton candy-flavored sugar.

“Huh?” Mark blinks at you, a little slack-jawed, feeling like he might start drooling. Those are your powers? The blush on his face and the size of his pupils only grow in intensity.

“I rather not wait for the time that his pain settles into rage,” you state. That cold detachment melts from your face as you turn towards Mark, wearing a manipulative smile and speaking saccharine from your sugar-high, “you said that we should get to know each other better. I think we would make a good team. Let’s walk and talk?”

The words drop the heart of the Invincible bleeding on the ground into a pool of acid and light a fire under the heart of the Invincible standing before you.

Mark, brown eyes eclipsed by his pupils, teases, trying to be lighthearted when his pulse is electric under his skin, “Wherever you go, I’ll follow.”

He has never broken a sweat before in a fight. Fighting Flaxans, fighting superheroes, fighting his Dad – none of those things have ever exerted him to spring a leak. During battles, the most water that has ever covered him was the blood of others (or his own). Mark glistens with sweat.

His heart is roaring from a multitude of factors. Red blood cells are like F1 drivers in his veins, pumping at a speed that is inhuman. It causes his useless left stump to spew all over the floor of the Guardian of the Globes HQ, leaving glutinous puddles – a party girl bent over the toilet who just cannot stop vomiting.

With a drenched face, he overlooks the ocean of dead Robots. The count does not really matter to him; all he knows is that at one point that overgrown Fanta can stopped sending in reinforcements and he eventually got to dig the wires out of his original’s neck, pulling them like sparking guts from a pumpkin. Mark is not the brightest bulb in the drawer but he knows that won’t stop Robot. He will have to destroy all of Earth until he tracks whatever shapeless thing that controls these drones.

He’ll enjoy the chase. He always does like the hunt and kill methodology of Viltrum customs. But, there is no excitement coursing through him now, no premature battle high anywhere to be found, just a desolate confusion.

“Weren’t you supposed to be strong?”

His shadow eclipses over you like a tree’s shade. Where there is nothing past your shoulders, the folding blanket of his dark silhouette has left the dimensions of his own head, leaving you like a Frankenstein stitched back together with two vastly different dolls, one made of flesh and the other made of shadow. He waits very patiently for you to rise, to twitch, to seize, to do anything a dead body cannot.

“I mean, you injured me before, so this is kind of underwhelming.” Mark crouches down, running his fingers under the damp fabric of his mask, those thin yellow arrow-points running across his cheekbones. The sweat on him is salty. “All it took was that stupid thing to take you down.”

You two conversed for months, separated by a paper-thin sheet of bulletproof, plated glass that would crumble under a punch from him, and he thought he was painting a good picture of you in his mind: a powerful foe and a powerful friend. Neither of you learned anything serious or below the surface about each other, but it was still one of the most meaningful connections of Mark’s life. Mark really liked talking with you. He wishes you would come to your own defense but your lips, tongue, and teeth have been blown into chunks of red and red-covered white.

“Get up,” Invincible says, voice so defeated that he can't put any energy behind his plea or reaching hand. “Get up.” The jostle to your shoulder shifts dead flesh that falls back where gravity placed it. “Get up. Get up. Get up.”

Mark wants to go with you to a zoo … He thinks he will turn his back on Viltrum as long as he gets to experience the humane mundane with you … Mark wants you to get up so you two can go somewhere together, anywhere but here, anywhere you want to go. So …

“Get up.”

#i so gotta check grammar in morning but until then namgyu fics 🙇‍♀️

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