This was for the greater good. Taylor was protecting them from their own actions.
That's what she told herself at least.
The words landed hollow, especially with the backdrop of screaming aliens.
She had to do this. She had no other choice.
Alarms began to blare, the reactor's hum building into a screaming whine.
"Time to go, Taylor."
Nolan said, dropping an insensate alien to the floor, the guard gurgling once before going still.
Taylor flew out of the reactor room, punching a hole through the concrete-like material of the facility's upper floors. Dust and debris exploded outward as she burst through the roof and into the harsh crimson light of the Flaxan sun. Behind her, the complex began to tremble—the guttural wail of the sabotaged reactor reaching a fever pitch.
But they were gone, flying far, far away at speeds that ignited the thin atmosphere that high up.
Then came the blast.
The ground vanished in a sphere of blinding plasma. A tidal shockwave ripped outward, disintegrating a dozen city blocks worth of military base in a breath. Towers folded like paper. Whole streets turned to molten glass. Flaxan soldiers within were reduced to vapor—carbonised mist printed forever onto the ground. The mushroom cloud that followed climbed like a vengeful god into the upper atmosphere, casting a long, final shadow over the city it had erased.
Taylor didn't look back.
Nolan caught up to her in midair, crimson ash reflecting in his eyes.
"That was the last portal generator we needed to break," he said. "No more backups. They'll be stranded, once we leave. Might take them centuries to rebuild it, if they even manage to."
Taylor said nothing. Her eyes were fixed on the ash-choked horizon.
Below them, the planet burned.
Columns of vehicles now puddles of unidentifiable metal, still glowing with heat. The streets were littered with charred skeletons, too close to the blast to have any hope of survival.
They flew further, to the city that they knew to be Flaxan capital.
The streets were still clotted with corpses—some charred black, the majority splattered across the pavement, their insides unspooled like ribbons across the shattered stone.
The Flaxan military had been far larger than they had thought it to be. Whole armies had returned from conquered planets before the pair could destroy the portals. It didn't help, in the end.
The screaming had faded—not because the killing was done, but because throats had run dry. There were fewer voices left to scream.
"We're almost done here." Nolan said. "The palace was last on your list, wasn't it?"
Taylor's gaze turned to the city's heart.
The Flaxan royal compound loomed—white stone veined with gold, jagged towers jutting up like broken teeth. A symbol of a thousand years of conquest. A monument to spilled blood. The base that held the aliens responsible for everything.
"We do this quickly," she muttered. "We don't need a spectacle anymore."
"If you say so."
The outer gates were already in ruin. Scorched bodies lay scattered in piles, twisted in their final moments. A Flaxan tank commander had been torn in half at the waist, still gripping the controls of a plasma cannon that now pointed at his own troops.
Inside, the guards made their final stand.
One charged Taylor with a sword. She caught the blow, shattered the weapon with a twist, then drove her palm into his face. His skull caved in and he dropped. She pivoted, caught another by the neck, and slammed him into a support column—once, twice—until both the column and the soldier snapped.
Nolan was less elegant. He burst through a trio of guards, tearing through them without pause. Blood spattered the walls in rhythmic arcs. A heavy gun emplacement roared, firing at point-blank range—but Nolan didn't even slow. He stepped through it, body wreathed in smoke, and ripped the gunner in two. His torso flew one direction. His legs dropped twitching to the floor.
By the time they reached the throne room, the air reeked of blood and cooked meat.
The Flaxan Emperor stood at the foot of the alabaster stairs, flanked by his brood—warlords, strategists, heirs, sons and daughters clad in ceremonial warplate. Even now, they stood proud. Defiant. Ready to die.
"You dare—!"
He never finished.
Taylor hurled a jagged slab of column like a javelin. It caught him in the chest, splintering through armour and bone alike. The tyrant flew backward, crashing through his own throne. A wet, final crunch echoed across the chamber.
His children screamed.
Some charged. Others tried to run. It didn't matter.
Nolan was already moving.
He caught a prince mid-sprint and slammed him against the wall so hard his spine burst from his chest. Another—barely old enough to call an adult—fired a desperate shot. Nolan turned his head slightly. The bolt grazed his temple. He walked forward, grabbed the boy by the throat, and crushed his windpipe until he stopped struggling.
Taylor turned her head.
She joined him with a methodical efficiency. A flurry of blows left one daughter twitching on the ground, her skull dented inward. Another tried to shield her younger sibling.
Nolan made to kill her, before Taylor's voice stopped him.
"Leave the children alone. Dad. There's no reason to slaughter them with their empire in ruins already."
Her father raised his head to give her a disapproving stare. "We have to burn out the roots if we want them gone."
"These are children, dad. What can they do with a kingdom of ashes?"
Nolan lowered his fist, silently ceding her point.
When it was over, the marble floor was slick with blood. The walls dripped with it, stark red against white. Limbs lay where they'd fallen. A severed head still wore its gold-plated war crown. The only sound that could be heard was the crying of the children.
Taylor floated above the ruin, face expressionless. Fire gnawed at the once-proud banners—symbols of conquest, pride, empire.
Gone now.
Nolan touched down beside her. His fists were soaked to the elbows in gore, but his voice was steady.
"The ruling class is gone," he said. "They'll tear each other apart now. Good job."
Taylor landed. Her boots splashed in the blood.
"We didn't have to kill them all," she said softly.
"They were born to become monsters," Nolan replied. "Better this than the future they were promised."
She turned away. Didn't speak again.
They hit the tech hubs next.
Not a single installation. Not a single target.
Dozens.
Server vaults and data citadels scattered across the planet—sprawling complexes buried beneath mountains, hidden in desert badlands, sealed beneath oceanic crust. Databanks with centuries of research. Whole ecosystems of machines dedicated to encryption, warfare, and technological development.
Each one fell.
Taylor moved ahead, disabling defence grids, searing guard patrols with their own plasma. She melted processers with their own plasma weapons, erased knowledge down to the bit. Biological archives were flash-boiled, entire generations of gene-forging experiments reduced to bubbling mush in containment tanks.
Among them all were farms. Slaves, taken from past Flaxan conquests, kept like chattel, like animals, within high walled compounds. Taylor freed them with ruthless force.
One server farm had been carved directly into the flesh of a dormant titan-creature—its spine hollowed to hold fusion cores. Taylor tore it open from the outside, flooding it with burning daylight. Inside, Flaxan engineers tried to escape, crawling through corridors of exposed bone and steel. She didn't let them. She sealed the exits, destroyed the reactors, and let the fires consume everything.
Her father did much the same on the other side of the planet, surgical strikes that ensured the Flaxans would lose centuries of technology.
The collapse began in earnest after that.
Without leadership. Without weapons. Without infrastructure. The planet tore itself apart.
Regional lords declared war on each other. Former allies turned to warfare and strife. Yet things stabilised, and somehow, someway—the Flaxans had weathered the storm. They hadn't come out unscathed, but they had avoided extinction.
Taylor didn't know if that was good or bad anymore.
By the time Taylor and Nolan were ready to depart, the world had gone quiet.
The skies were black with smoke. The air was thick with the stench of smoke.
She closed her eyes.
And all she saw were the faces.
Alien. Human. Young. Old. Screaming.
All the same now.
She had saved Earth.
Again.
And once again, she wasn't sure what was left of her when she did.
"Let's go, Taylor. The explosives you planted don't have much time left on them."
She palmed the little black storage device, a seemingly inconsequentially small thing, to be holding the results of centuries of Flaxan technological development.
Taylor gave him a brief nod, and father and daughter returned home for the first time in years.
Father and daughter flew back to their home, tired and filthy from their conquest.
Yet one last thing greeted them when they returned.
"Cecil."
"Nolan. Taylor." He nodded to them both in turn.
Taylor took off her mask, still caked in alien blood. "What're you doing here?"
"Giving your mom an update. But while you're here, I've got news."
Nolan raised a brow. "Well? What is it?"
"While you were away, a new planet appeared on our horizon." Cecil clicked on the TV to show them a fleshy ball of something on the night sky, far too large and far too close to the Earth.
"That is Nemesis. An ancient god of apocalypse returning to claim his due, or so he claimed."
The image changed, depicting a muscular man in a toga, directing a beam of light into and through the flesh planet.
"Fortunately, Abaddon showed up before Nemesis could make good on those claims. Says they're ancient enemies." Cecil grunts. "We thought he was a Viltrumite at first, but the historical records check out."
"…Abaddon?"
"Sounds bad. But apparently the records exaggerate things. One of those 'disrespect the gods and feel their wrath' situations that got out of hand." The man turns back to the pair. "Evidence points to him being honest, and he's been friendly so far. We don't want to change that."
"Why trust him?"
"Well. If he wanted to conquer the planet, or scour it clean, there's precisely nothing we could do to him. Initial estimates put his little stunt with Nemesis at around the same energy output as a red dwarf."
Taylor gaped. "How?!"
Cecil just shook his head. "We have no idea, and our friend hasn't been particularly forthcoming about it either."
Taylor bit her lip. "That's… not good."
"No. No it isn't."
Nolan watched the footage replay—frame by frame—of Abaddon annihilating the so-called god. A man in a toga with strength and speed and power beyond any mortal. Or so it would seem.
There was something off about him. Nolan had seen Viltrumites perform similar feats of strength, and that was the issue.
There shouldn't be any race even close to Viltrumites in power.
More than that, the body was wrong. Too perfect. Not just powerful, but designed to evoke power. Like someone had studied what made a Viltrumite terrifying and sculpted themselves in that mould—then added layers no actual Viltrumite could ever achieve. The posture, musculature, facial symmetry—it was an uncanny mimicry.
Taylor interrupted his thoughts with a sharp breath. She was frowning, arms crossed. "So this Abaddon is just… around now?"
Cecil nodded. "Set up in a desert plateau outside Nevada. We've sent emissaries. He calls it his 'temple.' He's taking visitors."
"Seriously?" she asked, eyebrows arching. "An ancient god in Nevada?"
Nolan's jaw tightened. "I want to meet him."
Cecil grunted. "That's what I was hoping you'd say. Play nice."
Nolan and Taylor didn't speak much on the flight toward the coordinates Cecil had given them.
They soared over oceans and continents, thunderclouds peeling apart in their wake, the sun dipping low beneath them. Taylor could feel her father's tension even in the silence—his body still, his expression unreadable, but his mind clearly churning.
"Something's bothering you," she finally said.
He nodded, slowly. "Cecil said they thought he was a Viltrumite."
"Abaddon?"
"Mm." Nolan's eyes narrowed. "From the footage I've seen… he moves like one. Fights like one. The musculature, the posture, even his attitude. But he isn't one. We don't have anyone like him. Never did. Especially not one that powerful."
"You think he's a clone?"
"Could be."
Taylor fell silent, absorbing that. The idea wasn't new—copycats, reverse-engineered DNA, echidna clones—but this felt… different.
The plateau stretched wide and lifeless under the sun. A structure—impossibly smooth, radiant, humming with energy—rose from the stone like it had grown there. The walls gleamed white, untouched by dust or heat. In front of it stood him.
Abaddon.
He waited for them in robes of gold and white, sun-kissed skin glowing faintly with internal light. His features were classically handsome—more myth than man—shoulders squared like a statue come to life. There wasn't a single flaw on him. Not a scar, not a blemish, not even a pore.
Taylor landed hard. Nolan touched down beside her with more control, arms crossed, eyes scanning.
"Scion. Omni-Man," Abaddon greeted, voice like warm thunder. "Welcome to my sanctuary."
"Kind of on the nose, calling it that," Taylor—Scion said, trying to sound unimpressed. "Especially after melting a planet."
Abaddon smiled. "Nemesis was an old foe. We have battled across many skies. You have done much the same, haven't you?"
She narrowed her eyes. "That's not the same."
"No," he agreed calmly. "You hesitated. That makes you better than I ever was."
Nolan stepped forward. "Where are you really from?"
Abaddon tilted his head, feigning innocence. "A higher plane, beyond your dimensions. One of many threads from the Loom of Eternity."
Nolan didn't blink. "Right. But you move like us. Breathe like us. Your muscle density matches a Viltrumite elite. Your posture too. Did you build this body?"
A pause.
Taylor's eyes flicked toward Nolan, surprised at the directness. Abaddon didn't miss it.
"A keen observation," Abaddon said smoothly. "I adapted a template known to your planet. To ease mortal perception. And to test what this world considers strength."
"Viltrumites aren't native to this planet." Nolan said sharply.
That finally drew a longer pause.
Abaddon smiled. Slowly. "So it seems."
Taylor stepped in. "So you're not a god."
"I am what mortals have called a god," he answered, still perfectly calm. "Does that make it untrue?"
"That's not an answer."
"It is a truth," Abaddon said gently. "You asked for my origin. That is a shape of it. But more important is what I offer. Knowledge. Protection. Evolution."
"And what do you want in return?" Nolan asked.
Abaddon looked up, toward the sun. "I wish to understand. Your lives. Your resistance. Your will to fight against inevitability. You are fascinating. Beautiful. Tragic."
He paused for a moment, before speaking with surprising candour.
"I had other objectives here, of course. But no longer. I have achieved all that I wished to already."
"Then why the lies?" Nolan asked. "Why play a god? Why not tell the truth?"
Abaddon turned his full gaze on Nolan. And in those eyes, he saw a depth. It was a vast, unknowable comprehension that greeted him, like a black hole disguised as a man.
"Because mortals crave meaning. And you need your gods. If I told you the truth, you'd burn your cities trying to disprove it. So I give you stories. Myths. You can shape yourselves around those, until you are ready to shape yourselves around me."
Silence.
The desert wind howled.
Abaddon brought back memories of another that people called god. Taylor's namesake was much the same, even if he had been far less communicative.
Taylor took a step back, her voice low. "How do you expect us to trust you then?"
"I do not ask for your trust. Only your patience."
Nolan said nothing for a long moment. Then, without inflection: "You're not Viltrumite. But you understand us. You understand how that could be a… problem."
Abaddon smiled again. "Then we understand each other."
He turned, walking toward the temple gates.
"You are welcome here, always. You have shaped much of this world's future. I only ask to watch."
As the gates closed behind him, Taylor muttered, "We're not letting him watch unsupervised."
Nolan didn't reply. His fists were clenched. He stared at the place where Abaddon had stood.
And thought about the fact that, in all their questions, they'd learned nothing.
Going back to school after all that almost felt surreal. Two years spent systematically dismantling a global civilisation from its highest levels had been replaced by something as mundane and comparatively trivial as math class.
"You're staring real hard at that textbook, Taylor. You good?"
Taylor blinked, the numbers on the page resolving back into legible equations. She turned her head, forcing her expression into something that wasn't haunted, but ended up with something that looked closer to hilariously overwhelmed.
"Yeah. Just… quadratic equations," Taylor said after a delay. "Really intense stuff."
William was leaning sideways in his seat, brow raised, a half grin on his face that morphed into a fit of muffled giggling when he took in her expression.
"God, who'd have thought math would be the thing to defeat you?" he said as his giggling subsided. "Seriously though. You look like you haven't slept in a week."
She had. Just not in a bed… or on Earth.
Taylor gave a weak smile and tapped her pen against her cheek. "Rough night. Couldn't stop thinking."
"About what?" he asked.
Her smile cracked just a little. "Nnnothing."
William, the well meaning but woefully uninformed friend he was, pressed. "Oh? Is that so? So you wouldn't happen to have been thinking about a certain ginger-"
"No!"
That was about the time Taylor noticed that she'd said that a lot louder than she'd intended. Mr Mallory raised an eyebrow at her from where he was at the front of the class. Taylor sunk into her seat, hoping desperately that it would swallow her.
Fortunately, class ended eventually, as classes tend to do, and she barely registered the bell before William had shouldered his bag and fell into step beside her as they exited the room.
"Hey," he said casually."So, I was thinking. You, me, Rick, and Eve. There's this food truck thing going down by the pier this weekend. Burgers, sushi, tacos. The holy trinity."
Taylor shot him a sidelong glance. "You planning to eat all three at once again?"
"Don't question the methods of a genius," he said, completely unashamed. "Anyway, figured it could be fun. Chill. You've been, uh… kinda distant lately. And you look like you could really use the break today especially. It's like you've aged years overnight."
She winced slightly. Two years. Two years clawing through the Flaxan ranks, pulling apart an entire empire thread by thread. It had changed her. It would have been impossible for it not to. And then she came home, blinked, and it was only the next day on Earth.
But even before that, she'd been too focused on her training and her hero life, that she'd once again forgotten about her normal one.
"I've just had a lot on my mind," she said, which was true, and woefully insufficient.
William gave a sympathetic hum. "Well, consider this a break. Rick's bringing his camera—he's really gotten into amateur film stuff now, probably going to take a thousand moody shots of rusting piers and seagulls—and Eve…"
He hesitated for half a beat, then added nonchalantly, "Eve said she's curious about you, wanted to hang out some time. And I couldn't say no to that. So, y'know."
Taylor blinked. "What."
"I'm just the messenger," he said, hands raised. "Point is—this is a no-pressure, hang-out-with-humans evening. You could use one. You're always carrying the weight of the world or whatever, hero girl."
A beat.
Taylor stared at him.
"…You really have no idea," she muttered.
William blinked. "What?"
"Nothing," she said quickly. "Sounds great. I'm in."