A/N: Hey guysss, guess whose back? Me. Anyway, I know some people think I stopped writing this story, but I'm not. I had some injuries in the past couple of months that made writing difficult, but I haven't given up on this story. In fact, I've actually been stacking chapters on p@treOn to make subscribing more worth it for my members. I was going to wait a little longer and make a few more chapters before I posted a chapter on Webnovel again, but in honor of season 4 of Invincible coming out, I'll post a chapter.
Actually, I'll be posting 2 chapters here because turns out I forgot to post the second chapter for the previous 2-chapter update I promised. I updated on p@treOn but forgot to update on Webnovel, so I'll post 2 chapters to make up for that.
Enjoy the chapters.
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The void of space was, as usual, silent, vast, and cold. Stars shimmered in the distance like scattered shards of glass, each one indifferent to the violence unfolding among them.
Ursaal's scream echoed inside Mark's mind through their telepathic link as her fists slammed against Mark's chest and face again and again. She didn't hold back. Her punches came like cannon fire, fueled by raw emotion rather than technique. Each strike carried the strength of someone who had lost someone and refused to accept it.
Her tears streamed freely, tiny crystalline droplets that froze and drifted away the moment they left her face. Her body shook with rage and sorrow as she shouted into his mind.
"Why?!" Her telepathic voice hit like thunder. "Why did you kill my father?!"
Mark floated there, still and composed, letting each blow land. The hits didn't hurt him, not in the way they were meant to. But he could feel the power behind them, and the sheer willpower that made Ursaal's punches rival those of elite, pure-blooded Viltrumites.
Each impact thudded against his body, reverberating through his skin like small tremors. Though he rolled with the strikes, angling himself slightly with each hit so her hands wouldn't break against him.
'She's strong,' Mark thought, feeling the vibration of her next strike against my shoulder. 'Stronger than I expected for her physical age. If I didn't help her, she'd tear her own arms apart'.
He didn't defend himself. She needed to let it out; otherwise, in the future, she might try and kill him in his sleep.
Mark stayed calm and silent for several moments, thinking about how he'll phrase this. The truth, that he used her father as a science experiment before killing him, was something he obviously wasn't going to tell her. However, he wasn't going to lie. Because lies add up, and in a universe of 'comicbook cliches' could potentially bite him in the butt.
Ursaal's breathing grew ragged, her punches still wild but slowing. Her voice came again, strained, cracking at the edges. "Answer me, damn you! Why did you kill him?"
Mark decided to give the truth that only mattered in this case.
"I told you before," Mark said evenly as he continued to be bombarded by punches, his telepathic voice calm. "That this dimension is a variant of the prime timeline. As well as how everything that happened there would have happened here, but later, if I hadn't intervened. Understand that I know what would've happened to you, to your people, to your father."
Her eyes narrowed, but she still kept swinging.
Mark continued. "In the prime timeline, that version of me disappeared for five years, just like the one in this timeline did. There was no war during that time because Thragg and the Thraxan kept moving, preventing themselves from being caught by coalition forces. However, when he came back, your father decided to ambush him and his family as a sort of vengeance for turning the other Viltrumites away from him. And by Thragg's side were you and your twin brother, Onaan."
Ursaal froze mid-swing. Her body still trembled, but she stopped hitting him. She had never told him about her brother, so what he was saying must be true. The two of them drifted quietly in the cold vacuum.
Mark's voice carried through the telepathic link between them. "Your father was stronger than that version of me, and the ambush nearly wiped his family out. You and Thragg left afterward, believing us dead… but Onaan didn't make it. He died during that battle, killed by the prime version of me after Thragg took his daughter hostage."
Ursaal's lips parted in silent disbelief. The color drained from her face. 'Onaan… dead?'
Mark pressed on, his voice steady but not unkind. "However, after you both left, his partner brought them back to full health through her powers. From there, the war began. The Coalition and Viltrumites fought against Thragg's army, bringing it to one final, single battle on the planet Earth. Your siblings… many of them fell with some dying on the other side... including the version of my Father and mother of one of my children. Similar to the destruction you saw today, it would've happened again, though a couple of years later."
The words cut into her. Ursaal stared at him, shaking her head. Her emotions spun wildly—grief, fury, guilt, confusion—colliding in her chest until she could barely think straight.
Her voice was shaken. "Even if that's true, you killed him. You killed our leader. You killed my father! Things could have changed, and we wouldn't have gone to war at all."
Mark disagrees, saying, "I'm telling you the truth. Thragg's ambition, his need for revenge against those he thought betrayed him, and his need to prove his superiority against the other races of the universe, brought forth that war, and it would have happened here regardless of whether I hadn't intervened or if your version of Mark Grayson never came back.
The only reason that the war ended was that Thragg managed to mortally wound Prime Mark's father. This caused Prime Mark to enter a primal rage and fight him with everything he had, and in the end, he killed him. After that, his army stopped fighting. They gave up because they realized they didn't need to keep dying for someone who wouldn't have died for any of them."
Ursaal's face twisted in anger. "Lies! We would've avenged him. We would've never stopped fighting!"
That was the response Mark had expected.
"Actually," he said, "it was your idea to stop."
Her body stiffened, the fury returning in full force. "That can't be true. I would never do something like that!"
Her fists came up again, and she lunged forward, screaming. This time, Mark didn't just take the blows. He raised his hands, blocking each one with casual ease. Her fists slammed against his palms like thunderclaps, but he didn't yield an inch.
Ursaal gritted her teeth, her face a mix of anger and disbelief. 'How can he be this strong? He wasn't phased by my punches this entire time. He doesn't even have any bruises on his face.'
Mark's voice cut through her thoughts, calm and unwavering. "I'm not lying. In that timeline, that version of you saw what your father really was. You realized he never cared for you or your siblings. Even when your brother died, he didn't stop. He didn't mourn. He only cared about continuing his war, about fighting his enemies, even if it meant every one of you died for nothing."
Ursaal shouted, "Shut up!" She punched again, harder, faster. Each hit could have flattened mountains or shattered a continent, but Mark met every strike with equal force.
"Shut up!" she cried again, tears forming once more. "Stop saying that!"
'She's thinking about it,' Mark thought, watching her expression shift.
Her breathing grew ragged. The Thraxan side of her genetics made it impossible to forget. Every memory since birth was perfectly preserved in her mind. Every memory of Thragg's coldness towards her and her siblings, every moment of neglect, came back to her in sharp detail.
She remembered the look on Thragg's face when she failed a training test as a child. The contempt in his eyes. The way he told her that only the strong mattered in this world. The way he treated the Thraxan women as breeding tools, the men as expendable workers. His punishments for "failure" were cruel and absolute.
Mark could feel her breaking under the weight of it. His voice rose with clarity. "Open your eyes, Ursaal! Don't be a fool, Thragg never cared about you or any of your siblings. He only cared about control, about proving he was stronger than everyone else. He wanted to rule for the sake of ruling, even if it cost all of you your lives!"
Ursaal's energy was draining from her emotions. Her body shook. "But you still killed him…"
Mark's voice softened as he told a half-truth. "Yes. I did. But your Thragg wasn't like the one in the prime timeline. He managed to become even stronger than the one in the prime timeline with incredible abilities, and I had no choice. It wasn't anything like an ambush or an execution. It was an actual battle between two warriors. A one-on-one fight to the end, where he even managed to wound me severely."
Ursaal hesitated. She wanted to argue — to tell him he was lying — but something in his tone didn't allow it. It wasn't boastful or defensive. It was factual.
Her mind drifted back to an old story between two warriors.
When she was young, the Thraxans had told tales of her father's greatest duel—his fight against the warrior known as Battle Beast. She remembered hearing about how the Coalition released Rognars to ambush Thragg mid-fight, dishonoring the battle between the two.
However, Battle Beast, in an act of honor, chose to help Thragg kill all the Rognarrs instead of exploiting the moment. Her Father had been gravely wounded in the initial surprise, receiving slash marks across his stomach, spilling his guts out. And Battle Beast, to even the odds, sliced open his own stomach to match Thragg's wound before continuing the fight between the two.
Truth be told, the Thraxan elders always included that they believed that if Battle Beast hadn't chosen to maim himself, or even if both of them fought in their primes, that Battle Beast would have actually been the one who would have come out on top of the battle.
Battle Beast was a force of nature, and his durability and strength were immense, even to Viltrumites, going so far as eclipsing Thragg's. However, for all his strength and durability, Battle Beast didn't possess the inhuman healing of the Viltrumites. While he did heal slightly faster than most, it wasn't comparable to even the weakest Viltrumite. So as the battle dragged on, Battle Beast continued to spill his guts from his self-inflicted wound, while Thragg's injuries healed, allowing him to last longer in the fight just barely before he could pull off the win.
The story ended with a mutual respect between two forces of nature. Battle Beast had died, and Thragg had made a cape out of his pelt as a sign of respect between two warriors. He always wore the cape as a symbol of authority, granting Battle Beast a symbol of status in the Thraxan-Viltrumite history.
If Mark's fight with her father had been like that… could she really hate him? That story shaped a core part of her. Fighting for honor, rather than conquest, enticed her.
Her fists lowered. The earlier tears on her cheeks had frozen into tiny flecks of ice drifting between them.
She looked at him silently, her eyes unfocused. The rage had burned itself out, leaving only exhaustion and confusion.
Mark took the chance to speak gently. "Go back. Think about all that I've said, and know fighting for Thragg isn't what you or your siblings truly wanted. There's more to life than dying for someone who never valued you. I can help you find something better now that the fighting has come to a stop. I'll speak to the Coalition on your behalf so that there can be peace between both sides."
Ursaal didn't reply right away. Her breathing steadied, her gaze softening slightly. Finally, she said quietly, "I'll return to the planet first. I need time to think about everything you've said."
"That's fine," Mark replied. "Take a few days. Three at most. Then come find me. I'll tell you what I have in mind that'll give you guys some direction and purpose."
She hesitated a moment longer, her face unreadable, then nodded. Without another word, she turned and flew off, a streak of white and purple fading into the distance toward the Thraxan ship.
Mark watched her go, exhaling deeply once she disappeared from view.
"Glad that's over," he muttered to himself. "Being diplomatic is exhausting."
He floated there for a moment longer, staring at the planet below. 'I didn't lie', he thought, 'but I didn't exactly tell the whole truth either. I gave her something she could live with.'
A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. 'Ah, the curse of meta-knowledge. Knowing too much makes everything harder to explain.'
He turned and began flying back toward the Viltrumite ship. The stars blurred past him.
He thought about Ursaal's reaction, about the pain in her voice and the anger in her eyes. Part of him understood it. She had grown up worshipping Thragg, her father, believing he was invincible, unstoppable, a god among her kind. To learn that he died and that his killer now floated before her must have been hard.
But Mark also knew that she had listened. Beneath the fury and grief, she had heard him. And that was good, 'especially since she can get a new dad, a better one.'
As he neared the ship, he could already see Nolan and Allen waiting by the docking bay. The door opened as he approached, the two men staring out into the vastness of space.
Mark landed lightly on the steel floor, his boots echoing softly.
Allen crossed his arms, single eye twitching. "Well? How'd it go?"
Mark rubbed the back of his neck, giving a weary grin. "She didn't kill me, so I'm calling that a win."
Nolan frowned. "You let her attack you."
"I let her vent," Mark corrected. "And now she's thinking instead of fighting. That's progress."
Allen raised a brow. "Why did you even tell her that you killed Thragg?"
Mark looked out at the stars. "I think she's smart enough to see the truth about what kind of man Thragg was, even if it hurts. She just needs some time to think about what is best for her and her people now. And once she does… I have an idea that could be good for the Thraxan-Viltrumites who have no purpose."
'This is a great step towards growing my empire,' he thought, glancing out the viewport at the surface of the planet the Thraxans were on. He watched Ursaal land, surrounded by her siblings who asked many questions.
He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and walked with his father and Allen toward the command deck, explaining what he and Ursaal had talked about and his idea to relocate the Thraxan-Viltrumites.
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Author's Notes:
Be sure to check out my p*tr-eon, where you get early access to my chapters, and you'll be able to talk to me as I'm writing the story. You'll be giving me ideas I can incorporate into the story or feedback as I am a new writer so there may be plot points or mistakes that I haven't thought about. My p*tr-eon name is Bah_Goat.