Saturday.
After my wild night with Eve, I was in an exceptionally good mood the morning after.
Which, the opposite could be said for Oliver, who was currently having the absolute worst morning of his life.
THWACK.
"Again!" I shouted over the rushing wind, hovering at thirty thousand feet above the Chicago skyline.
Oliver groaned, wiping a line of sweat from his forehead as he stabilized himself in the thin, freezing upper atmosphere. We had been running high-altitude speed and physical conditioning drills for the last two hours.
"My lungs are burning," Oliver complained, his breath pluming in the freezing air as he adjusted his mask. "Can we take a break?"
"Viltrumite lungs don't burn, they adapt," I corrected, crossing my arms. "You rely entirely on gravity and momentum to turn. You need to learn how to pivot on a microscopic level using your own leverage. If you can't out-maneuver me up here, you're going to get swatted like a bug down there."
Oliver opened his mouth to argue, but a sudden, massive shockwave rippled through the air currents below us, followed by a plume of thick black smoke rising from the industrial district.
I focused on the source of the smoke.
Down in the streets, a localized warzone had broken out. Several independent, street-level heroes were scattered across the pavement, groaning in pain. Standing in the center of the wreckage was a massive, ten-foot-tall mechanical monstrosity painted in jarring, construction-cone yellow and orange. Both of its arms ended in gigantic, spiked wrecking balls.
Who the hell is this, I thought, trying to refresh my memory of the low-tier villain. Oh, yeah his name is Rampage or something.
Rex-splode was currently dancing around the massive mech, frantically charging up loose pieces of rubble and hurling them at the armor. The glowing orange explosives detonated against Rampage's chest plate, but the suit didn't even flinch. Rampage swung his arm in a massive arc, forcing Rex to dive behind a flipped police cruiser to avoid getting cut in half.
"Is that a robot?" Oliver asked, floating up beside me and squinting down at the carnage. "Can I go smash it?"
"First," I said, pointing down at the fight. "Tell me what you see. Don't look at the destruction. Look at the combatant."
Oliver frowned, leaning forward. "He's big, he's heavy, and he's trying to kill Rex."
"Look closer," I instructed. "Watch his movements. Watch the joints. What is the suit doing?"
Oliver stared for another five seconds. "It's... jerky. He keeps hesitating before he swings, but the arm swings anyway."
"Exactly," I nodded. "The suit is probably on the fritz, while the guy inside is fighting to regain control. This isn't a monster that needs to be put down, it's an accidental crisis situation."
Oliver's eyes widened in realization.
"Go down there," I ordered. "Subdue the suit and free the person in peril. And try not to punch a hole through his chest. Demonstrate precision only."
Oliver grinned, his Viltrumite confidence surging back. "I got this!"
He shot out of the sky like a bullet, leaving a sonic boom in his wake.
I floated down slowly behind him, crossing my arms to watch the show.
Oliver landed directly in front of the flipped police cruiser, shielding Rex. Rampage let out a metallic, synthesized roar, stepping forward and winding up the massive wrecking ball arm.
"Stop me! Please!" a muffled, terrified human voice screamed from inside the armor.
"Don't worry, citizen! I will subdue you!" Oliver yelled, planting his feet.
Rampage swung his arm. It possessed enough kinetic force to level a skyscraper.
Oliver didn't dodge. He reached out and caught the spiked iron ball with both hands. His raw strength stopped the weapon dead in its tracks, the impact sending a shockwave that shattered the remaining windows on the block.
"Ha!" Oliver laughed, looking back at Rex with a smug grin. "See?!"
But Oliver's inexperience showed. He had stopped the right arm dead in its tracks, but he had completely forgotten to account for the thousands of tons of forward momentum carried by the rest of the massive mech suit.
Because Oliver acted as an immovable anchor on Rampage's right side, physics violently took over. The suit couldn't just stop instantly. Instead, Rampage's entire body violently pivoted around the trapped arm, spinning the mechanical behemoth like a massive, out-of-control top.
Caught completely off guard by the sudden, massive shift in weight, Oliver lost his footing. Rampage's torso whipped around, and the suit's other spiked wrecking-ball hand slammed directly into the reinforced support pillars of a nearby highway overpass.
Concrete exploded. Steel rebar shrieked. A massive section of the overpass groaned and collapsed, crushing three parked cars and sending up a massive cloud of dust.
"Hey! Watch it, kid!" Rex yelled, throwing his hands up in exasperation as a chunk of concrete nearly crushed him. "You're doing more damage than he is!"
Oliver floated up into the air, dusting himself off with a look of absolute panic as he stared at the collapsed overpass. "I—I didn't mean to!"
What a turn of events, I thought, letting out a long sigh as I floated down through the dust cloud. Looks like I gotta step in.
I landed silently between Oliver and Rampage.
"Mark, I'm sorry!" Oliver stammered. "I caught it, but then it spun, and—"
"Hey, it's alright. Accidents happen," I assured him as I made my way towards Rampage. "Which is why we practice extensively."
Rampage's automated targeting system instantly locked onto me. The giant yellow suit charged, the hydraulic legs crushing the pavement. He threw a devastating wrecking-ball punch aimed directly at my chest.
CLANG.
The giant spiked metal fist struck my Bio-Reactive Containment Suit. The kinetic regulators instantly flared, drinking the momentum of the blow like water. The sound echoed like a church bell, but I didn't move a single millimeter.
"Is that it?" I asked, my voice deadpan.
Inside the suit, the hostage was sobbing. "I can't stop it! The controls are locked!"
I reached out with blinding speed, grabbing both of Rampage's massive mechanical wrists. The suit's engines roared, burning out its own gears trying to push against me, but it was completely locked in place.
I channeled a fraction of my reserves, sending a highly localized, EMP-style pulse directly from my hands into the suit's central processor.
The suit instantly went rigid. The glowing optics flickered and died. The aggressive override protocols fried, leaving only the low hum of the life-support systems intact.
Using my hyper-precise strength—the exact same strength I had just lectured Oliver about—I dug my fingers into the primary pressure seals of the chest plate. I methodically pulled the heavy metal apart like a pistachio shell, popping the pneumatic locks one by one.
The chest plate hissed and swung open, revealing a completely exhausted, sweat-drenched man strapped into a pilot-like seat.
He stared at me, his eyes wide with absolute terror. He looked around at the destroyed overpass, the cratered street, and the groaning heroes.
"I... I'm so sorry," the man wept, trembling as I reached in and unbuckled his harness, gently pulling him out of the mechanical prison. "I couldn't control it. Oh god, I'm going to prison."
"No, you aren't," I said smoothly.
I set him down on the curb. I tapped a button on my wrist and within seconds a care package descended down from the sky. In it was a clean Invincible Inc. towel, a bottle of water, and a sleek, black titanium business card.
The man blinked, staring at the towel in sheer confusion. "...What?"
I looked back at the shattered remains of the Rampage suit.
"You just survived inside a highly advanced, unregulated mech-suit for who knows how long, without dying of exhaustion," I told him, switching flawlessly into my CEO persona. "That means you understand internal workings better than most engineers. How would you like a six-figure job in Invincible Inc.'s R&D division?"
The man's jaw practically hit the pavement. "You... you want to hire me? But the property damage—!"
"You help my guys reverse-engineer that scrap metal to build better search-and-rescue drones," I smiled, "and I'll personally take care of all the property damage charges, and make sure the GDA grants you full immunity."
"I... Yes! Absolutely! Oh my god, thank you!" the man sobbed, clutching the business card like it was a winning lottery ticket.
I turned around, dusting off my hands. Oliver was staring at me in absolute awe.
But as I looked past Oliver, I noticed the other street-level heroes picking themselves up from the rubble. None of them were cheering. And none of them were thanking me.
They were staring at me with a mixture of profound caution and outright fear.
Rex Splode walked up, kicking a piece of rubble out of his way. He didn't have his usual cocky grin. He just looked exhausted.
"What's with them?" I asked.
"You really don't get it, do you?" Rex responded as I raised a brow.
"Get what?" I asked, genuinely confused. I had just stopped a rampage, saved a hostage, and offered a guy a six-figure job without a single casualty. "I handled the situation."
"Yeah. You handled it alright," Rex sighed, running a hand over his face. He gestured to the battered, exhausted street-level heroes leaning against the rubble. "Mark, look at them. Look at us. You didn't just stop a villain. You just made everyone here look completely obsolete."
I frowned, crossing my arms. "So, I'm just supposed to let him destroy the city so you guys can look good for the cameras?"
"No, that's not what I'm saying," Rex snapped, though his voice lacked its usual arrogant bite. He just sounded tired. "You've got your own fully functioning, multibillion-dollar business now. You swoop in, fix everything in five seconds, recruit the bad guys, and pay for the damages out of pocket. Do you have any idea what that does to the superhero economy?"
"The superhero economy?" I repeated, the CEO part of my brain suddenly paying attention.
"We don't all have infinite bank accounts, man," Rex said, pointing to a guy in a torn spandex suit icing his shoulder on the curb. "A lot of these independent guys? They have mortgages. They have kids. They rely on GDA stipends, hazard pay, and municipal damage-control contracts just to keep the lights on."
Damn, I hadn't even considered that, I thought, closing my eyes briefly. But wait, that doesn't make much sense.
"Hold on," I said. "How could they be worried about finances, when there's an attack every day? There should be plenty of opportunities to get paid from damage control and such."
"Not when you and your company take care of everything," he replied. "You're just so efficient that you're literally putting working-class heroes out of a job."
Tch, fuck, I cursed mentally. It looks like I was so focused on the multiversal threats and outmaneuvering Cecil that I had completely blinded myself to the ground-level logistics of the people fighting in the trenches.
"And it's not just about the money," Rex continued, stepping closer and lowering his voice so the others wouldn't hear. "You just publicly pushed back against the United States government. You humiliated Cecil Stedman, and now it looks like you're building a private army of reformed supervillains."
"They're security contractors," I corrected defensively.
"That's just what it seems like, Mark," Rex countered firmly. "And some of the heroes don't like the idea of a civil war starting up when there are enough problems as is. But more than that... they're terrified of you."
I looked at him like he had grown a second head.
I know I've gotten ridiculously powerful, but I don't do anything out of the ordinary that would classify me as this overwhelming terror.
"Why?" I asked.
Rex looked me dead in the eye, stripping away all the banter and bullshit. "You're the strongest being in the world who just centralized power, told the government to screw off, and showed that you can casually vaporize millions of targets without breaking a sweat. People are looking at you and wondering if they're watching Omni-Man 2.0. They don't know what your true intentions are, Mark. They think you're just clearing the board to finish what your dad started."
Hmmmm, I thought as the silence hung heavily between us, save for the sound of sirens approaching in the distance.
I looked past Rex at the heroes. A few of them actively averted their eyes when my gaze met theirs. They were gripping their weapons. They weren't looking at a savior; they were looking at a ticking time bomb.
Looks like I've been playing this wrong, I realized. I was so busy fortifying Earth against potential threats and the Viltrumites that I forgot to make sure Earth actually trusts me.
I looked down at Oliver, who was watching the exchange quietly, absorbing every word.
"I'm not my old man, Rex," I said assuredly.
"I know that," Rex said, offering a small, tight nod. "Eve knows that. Most of the Guardians of the Globe know that. But the rest of the world? They just see a reminder of what might happen. You might want to think about your PR, man. Before you end up accidentally causing an insurrection you'd win."
Rex turned and walked away, helping one of the injured heroes limp toward the arriving paramedics.
I stood in the center of the crater for a long time, the wind tugging at my armor. The flawless victory from seconds ago suddenly felt incredibly hollow. I had the power to break the world, and the money to buy it. But commanding through fear and efficiency wasn't going to unite Earth against the Viltrumite Empire. It was just going to fracture it.
"Mark?" Oliver asked quietly, floating up beside me. "Are you okay?"
"Huh? Yea, yea," I murmured, staring at the ruins of the overpass. "I'm cool. We just got a lot of work to do."
That bastard Rex has probably been listening to Poli-Sci podcasts, I thought as I started ascending to the sky with Oliver. And I hate it.