"Do you ever notice how temporary things are?" I pushed my feet under Rae's coffee table and my knees cracked louder than I had expected. Her apartment always smelled like lavender and Thai food.
"Hold up, did you just get high without me?" Rae kicked her feet out and placed them on my legs. She had on those idiotic fuzzy socks with the penguins on them. She'd deny it, but they were cute.
"Nuh-uh." I grabbed her foot, tracing the arch with my thumb. The TV was muted: the one where they sobbed about cupcakes. "I was just thinking that one day it'll all disappear. Bam. Like it never was."
Rae wriggled her toes in my hand. "You look silly when you brood." She grabbed the takeout box and pulled out a spring roll with her fingers. "And the lease is only for six months. Clearly, it's temporary."
I observed her take a bite, the sound echoing through the room. The streetlights outside cast an orange sheen through her window, striping her collarbones. I noticed each freckle on her shoulders (memorized them months ago), the fact that her tank top clung just slightly from yesterday's laundry. The sort of thing that would be lost if the world restarted itself.
How can I tell her it wasn't any of that pseudo-philosophical crap? That I have seen the calculations... that I have seen the vectors all spiralling down to the zero point, that I know the day that this world will end? That if I live through the Viltrumites, if I live through Thragg, if I live through the day that Invincible or Nolan (depending on what I can manage) becomes Emperor... I will have to abandon this world anyway for a new one?
Diana would get it. That's the sick thing. She'd cock one eyebrow, and that endless Amazon compassion would envelop me, and she'd say something about this being what it means to be human. But Rae? Kate? Even Debbie—especially Debbie, with her crow's feet and coupons—they were clocks counting down, while I just stood there in the door. The TV cast a mask of light on Rae's face as she tongued sweet chili sauce off her thumb. I could predict the trajectory of the drop down to her napkin, could calculate the air resistance if I wanted to. It didn't help.
Rae's foot pressed down more firmly on my thigh. "Earth to Zandale." She scrunched up her face, sliding the empty package onto the table. "You're going glowy-eyed."
I blinked and the orange haze retreated behind my eyes. "Sorry."
"Mmm-hmm." Rae pressed her heel into my thigh, smiling to herself when I didn't react. "You were a million miles away. Diana stuff?"
My fingers tightened slowly, purposefully, around her ankle. I could feel the beat of a pulse against my palm. It was human. "Something like that."
Ultimately, the only person who could ever follow me when I jumped between worlds was Diana, someone who had no reason to be bound to a single reality, a single timeline. She could stand at the very edge of creation, her lasso wrapped loosely around her wrist, and gaze out at the screaming abyss without batting an eyelash. Meanwhile, when I took Rae up above the Loop—high enough to see the arc of the lake—it was like I was pulling her entire universe along with me.
Diana was just made for this, for the infinite. Thats it. It was the reason she was my number one and the only woman I needed if I was traditional.
But all it takes is one glance at Rae and I'm refreshed on exactly why I'm not tradtional.
She notices me looking—bubble tea straw stuck between her lips—and arches a brow. "What?" The question is distorted, cheeks caving in to suck in a boba. It has an effect on me. A typical effect. A gravity-defying effect. The sort of effect that causes the kinetic energy in my veins to flow south.
Having lovers has made me constantly horny with my capacity for adaptation that includes endurance. The pop of Rae's eyebrow, the silly straw and the suck of the tapioca pearl as it slides down her throat, it is all too much.
I yank her waist and flip her off the couch. Her penguin socks wave wildly in the air. The bubble tea splats onto the carpet. "Hey—!" Her protest is interrupted by my lips and teeth, scraping against her lower lip. Lychee and her. She whines at the force, like an injured hound. I'm being unfair, I know. She'll scratch my eyes out three seconds later. But, she's scratching my shoulder right now.
***
It must have been half an hour or so later that my earpiece crackled against my ear, Cecil's wry tones cutting through the post-coital bliss. "Randolph. Your one-eyed alien friend just dropped into orbit, and Oliver Grayson is with him." Rae's mouth was still pressed against my collarbone, her hand making lazy patterns across my abdomen. I didn't stir. "So?"
Cecil let out a sigh, the kind a man hadn't gotten any sleep since the Cold War ended. "And Invincible's still MIA with Dinosaurus. I don't want to leave either of those two alone with anything." Rae sunk her teeth into my chest and I winced and she smiled. "So get to work. You're going on a babysitting mission."
"Christ," I mumbled, carefully brushing Rae's hands away from my face as I rose to sit up. She whimpered in protest, falling flat onto her belly with the elegance of a flapjack. "I swear, Cecil's got a sixth sense for disturbing afterglows."
Rae snorted into the pillow, her voice muffled. "Tell him I said fuck you, sideways, with a—"
I pressed a kiss to her forehead and could already feel the electricity in my legs. "He would probably just take it as a compliment." I flashed into my costume. It took less than a second for the orange and silver to interlock on my arms before I'd even removed my hands from her. The material pulled tightly on my shoulders, the little energy stabilizers in the Gauntlets pinging softly on my wrists. Rae looked up, still tousled, lips still puffy. "Showoff," she said, but ran her fingers along the edges of my cape, feeling it out.
I didn't raise the sash, but it lifted anyway, responding to the precise amount of pressure I placed on its latch. It opened, and wind blow in, swirling the menus on her kitchen counter. "I'll return before you finish your ice cream," I told her, and I stepped backward out into the air. Chicago dwindled to nothing almost instantly, its streetlights collapsing into a bright orange line.
Atmospheric penetration is like moving through molasses. I was enveloped by the darkness, with stars cutting through the darkness like shivs. Allen's signature was shining like a beacon in the distance; in high orbit near the moon. Oliver was laughing, Allen's paw running through his boy's hair, Invincible with that jawline that can cut glass.
First to see me was Oliver. "Sovereign!" He was going through puberty, and apparently it was hitting him harder than a Viltrumite fist to the jaw. He started running to me, and was pulled back by Allen. "For crying out loud, kid, give the guy a second to slow down or you'll splatter your guts across the moon." The alien didn't loosen his grip, but he did smile.
Allen's gaze shifted to Invincible. "We have a problem." The smile was gone, replaced by a look that was even more glacial than intergalactic space. "Don't bother trying," he added as he clicked his wrist computer, sending schematics of the Scourge Virus flying through the air. "The Coalition has finished it. It specifically attacks Viltrumite cells, even those who are hybrids or human."
Oliver didn't react, clearly already in the loop and supportive of Allen's decision. No surprise there—his moral compass was still being defined, primarily by individuals willing to use wholesale slaughter as a bargaining chip. The grid that danced in the air between us, veins of red spreading across the surface of the planet like blood.
Invincible, on the other hand, looked like he had just been punched in the gut by reality. He clenched his jaw and shook his fists in his hands. Not in fear. In rage. In tectonic-plate cracking rage. "Genocide!" He spat. "This is wrong!" Allen just stared back at him. "It's simple math, kid. One planet or trillions."
I saw the vectors before they happened. Allen shifting his weight. Oliver gasping and his fists clenched. The vein in Invincible's neck pounding away. Allen knew the math. He knew Invincible wouldn't stand a chance against him. That he was just too fast, too strong, too Viltrumite. But me? My ability means I get stronger with every blow. And he has seen me come back from the dead with that.
"Allen," I said, placing myself between them. My cape fluttered in the void. There was no sound, but the comms system caught what I said and relayed it to them. "You know I can't allow that."
Allen's smile didn't fade. It actually seemed to grow. "I know." He popped his knuckles, the crack of joints sounding like gunshots over the comms. "I've been wanting to see how you measure up against me ever since you crawled out of that grave."
Oliver didn't wait long. He was already charging at Invincible with his half-breed Viltrumite fists lit up. Mark dodged, anticipating the attack (which he probably did), and took Oliver's wrist as he swung, swiveling and sending him crashing into space. Oliver rotated while in flight, forcing himself to change direction through flying. His face was a twisted version of Nolan's face. "You always were a p*ssy."
Allen popped his neck and shrugged his shoulders, as if he did this sort of thing every Tuesday. "Last chance, Randolph." His words misted in the void, condensing immediately into sparkling ice crystals. "Surrender or I'm feeding you to Jupiter."
I smiled, dropping into a relaxed posture that pulsed the gravity bubble around me. "Come on, Allen, you know I love a loser's story." I eyed him with that golden light of my irises, "And Invincible looks like the loser in this equation you've figured."
Allen's blow was quicker than the speed of light — but I had adjusted. My forearm crashed into his fist and the shockwave vibrated through me. "You're thinking like a Viltrumite," I growled, twisting to slam my knee into his side. He flew backwards through through space. "One superior race over all? That's their MO. Yours is just backwards."
Allen swatted me like I was a fly. "This is war. You can't bring morals to it." He hit me across the ribcage with enough force to shatter a planet, but kinetic energy gets absorbed, so I traveled along with the hit and rotated my body until my feet hit his stomach. I pushed off, and he coughed his air out into the vacuum, and we spun outward into the distance toward the moon.
"Come on, you're better than that," I snarled, blocking a second haymaker, twisting under his momentum to spin him backwards into an old space station wreckage. He hit with a crash, causing a big section of the damaged hull to cave inwards. "The Coaltion is using you to fight their war. Once you finish the Viltrumites, are you going to stop or are you going to do another genocide for them?" I was shouting in his earpiece, less because of the exertion and more out of sheer disbelief.
Allen spat frosty blood. It was little red ice crystals like rubies between us. He laughed. "You sound like Nolan." He tried to charge me again. I already knew the geometry of his movement. I dodged, grabbed his wrist, and yanked him sideways until his shoulder popped.
"Except," I whispered in his ear, "Nolan's right this time." Allen's elbow back-jabbed at my temple, but my kinetic absorption used it as energy—my return blow launched him on a rotation through space, his arms and legs gesticulating wildly like a rag doll that had its tethers pulled loose.
He recovered faster than any human could have because he wasn't human. "You're forgetting one thing," Allen growled, spinning around and using his powers of flight to balance himself. He flexed his fingers, the Coalition wrist computer coming back online and displaying images of Viltrumite warriors burning and decimating cities. "They will never stop and so we have to."
I blew out a misty breath. "You're wrong. What about Nolan?" Allen, whose pupils expanded ever so slightly relaxed his fingers. I had him. "He changed. He saw there was more to life than mere victory." The sound of my fist clenching into my gauntlets echoed through the air as the orange light around my fist pulsed. "And you know what? You did too."
I was literally learning how to debate during the debate — I was learning how to be rhetorical, I was learning words and concepts that I didn't know existed a minute before. I was literally becoming a world class debater as Allen spoke — he spoke slower, his logic became more transparent, and holes began to appear before my very eyes. Every so often I am reminded of just how lucky I am — that I can adjust to anything… even to arguments.
"Mr. Warlord," I said, darting up to his eye level, my cape streaming out behind me like molten lava in zero-G. "Ever ask yourself why Thaedus showed you the Scourge Virus?" I pressed my finger to my temple, observing the microexpressions shifting across his face, traces of confusion, and just a hint of raised lower eyelid. "Why he didn't show it to his most cunning envoys, or his finest strategists. He showed it to the man who hates Viltrumites more than anyone in three galaxies." My voice dipped, pacing the beat of his heart over the comms device. "Because he knew you'd say yes before he even finished asking the question."
Allen clenched his jaw, his hands tightening into fists, as if he were trying to squeeze the truth out of the air. "That's —"
"Calculus," I interrupted, tracing the vectors with a finger at my temple. "You lost your entire species to them, Allen." I continued in a didactic tone. "Naturally, you'd leap at the opportunity to give them a taste of their own medicine." I let my words settle like pellets. "Anyone else he would have shown the virus to would have agonized over the morality of the situation—but you? He knew you wouldn't." I watched as it dawned on him—the understanding spreading through his eyes like fractures. "Because you had the courage to do what he lacked."
Last but not least, the closer. "You were just a back up plan incase he died before he could stop the Viltrumites himself," I said, observing as Allen's pupils expanded like ripples on a pond. It hit him like an asteroid- harsh, brutal facts making impact craters where his convictions used to be. "Thaedus didn't want a Viltrumite-killer to negotiate for him, he wanted a Viltrumite-killer to kill Viltrumites." Allen grit his teeth, but I noticed the shaking of his fists- his conviction wavering for the first time. "And you obliged. Just like he knew you would."
Allen's stopped breathing—I could hear it even over the suit comms—and for a moment I thought he was going to punch me in the face again. Instead, he just sort of…deflated. Like the life had gone out of him even faster than it would in an airlock. "Fuck," he growled, his big hands pulling down his face. "Fuck." He snorted, his breath spraying out in sharp crystals between us. "You ever get tired of being right?"
I smiled, flexing out the tightness in my neck. "Nope. It's more of a thing I do." I let the orange blaze die down to a simmer, and drifted closer to him, clapping him on the back. My hand was resting on something cold. "And, you know, you were about due for an existential crisis. It's a requirement, out here."
Allen snorted and rotated his shoulder, giving me the evils for pulling his shoulder out of its socket. I just grinned. Then the radio crackled to life. "Uh, guys?" We both looked over to see Invincible flying, with Oliver held in a headlock under his arm. The little bugger was squirming around like a fish on the end of a hook. Mark's face was full of exasperation. "Can we just ditch the pissing contest, please? I'd like to get back home before Mom decides that I've been shanghaied by aliens once more."
I looked around, and my eyes drew lines out into the distance—-like a spider web out into the nothingness, but I didn't see what I was looking for. I didn't see Thragg, and that was more deafening than a battle cry. This was the moment where Thragg would have come, where he would have arrived like a god from on high and altered the outcome of the equation. Instead, I was still breathing, Invincible wasn't by himself, and the math was different.
He probably wanted to observe from the safety of his Moon base and figure out how I had managed to cheat death—how I had managed to evolve even past the capabilities of other Viltrumites. I could almost feel his eyes on the back of my head, thinking, recalculating. Thragg was nothing if not pragmatic, and he would not engage in a battle he could not reliably win—and at the moment, I was the great unknown. It made my teeth grind.
With one last heave, Oliver managed to squirm out of Mark's headlock, coughing dramatically as he broke away to float in the middle of space, flushed with the effort of zero-G struggling and with teenaged outrage. "So what now?" he demanded, massaging his neck as if Mark had been trying to choke him instead of pinning him down. "We all join hands and sing a rousing chorus of Kumbaya while the Viltrumites make Earth their next breeding colony?"
Allen said nothing. His thick fingers wrapped around the dart gun that held the Scourge Virus, bringing it off his back. I didn't give him time to hesitate. My hand clamped down on his wrist, the blades on my fingers tracking to find the precise points to apply enough pressure to make him let go of the gun, but not enough to snap his wrist. The dart gun hung suspended in the air between us.
"The math's changed, Allen." I said calmly, though my orange irises blazed with intensity as I ground the gun to pieces in my hands. The casing folded in upon itself like a water-soaked cigarette box, spilling out a stream of glowing green goo that promptly flash-froze as it hit the void - tiny, spider-web-like fractals bursting out in all directions. "It has been discovered that mass-murder doesn't actually anything." The tiny globs cast strange reflections back up at us - distorted, broken images. Very fitting.