Rex's words echoed in my head for the rest of the weekend. Before you end up accidentally causing an insurrection you'd win.
He was right. I'd been playing a game of planetary chess, completely ignoring the pawns on the board until they were ready to revolt out of sheer economic panic and fear. If I wanted Earth to stand with me against the Viltrumites, I had to actually support them all.
But before I could fix the PR problem on Earth, I had to make sure my multiversal assets were operating at peak efficiency.
Sitting in my office on the top floor of Invincible Inc., I pulled up a highly encrypted, text-only terminal on my desk.
Currently, my only way of making contact with the Flaxan dimension was a modified quantum-pager Angstrom had built. It didn't allow for real-time audio—it just pinged a receiver in their lab, letting them know I had dropped a data packet into the dimensional buffer for them to download.
I need the Maulers to figure out a way to build a more stable, multi-way interdimensional communication network, I thought. Communicating effectively in any dimension should take priority, no matter how long that takes to get developed.
I quickly typed out a prioritized checklist for Angstrom and the Twins for the upcoming quarter.
Directive 1: The containment suit. Having to manually expel absorbed thermal and kinetic radiation every few weeks is a liability. Figure out a passive venting workaround.
Directive 2: Thraxan biology. Do a deep-dive scan on Oliver's genetics. Possible multi-dimensional solutions. I need to know exactly what his physical limits are and how we can safely accelerate his development.
Directive 3: Earth's roster. Run a tactical analysis on every registered hero on Earth. Find their weaknesses and figure out how we can synthetically improve them.
Directive 4: Atom Eve. She has mental limiters placed on her atomic manipulation. I want a safe neural-mapping workaround to help her bypass those limits, without her having to be on the brink of death to achieve it.
Directive 5: Resuming dimensional invading. Start analyzing the dimensions of the heavy-hitters. Set a timeline for next week. It's time to resume healing and aiding the alternate dimensions.
I hit the final transmit button, watching the progress bar complete as the data packet slipped through the dimensional fold.
I let out a long breath just as the glass doors to my office slid open.
Titan walked in, reading up on data, followed closely by Isotope. They took their seats across from my desk.
"Alright, Mark," Titan rumbled, folding his massive hands on the table. "You called an emergency board meeting. What's going on?"
"Yesterday, Rex-splode enlightened me on a few important details," I stated. "In short terms we broke the superhero economy. We've been moving too fast, we're too well-funded, and we're making many heroes look obsolete. If we keep operating in this manner, the hero community is going to turn on us out of sheer desperation. And Cecil Stedman will be right there to hand them the pitchforks."
"So, what's the plan?" Isotope asked, adjusting his neck tie. "We slow down? Let some banks get robbed so they can get their hazard pay?"
"Hell nah," I laughed, a corporate smile spreading across my face. "We buy them out."
Titan raised a brow, a smirk dancing on his face. "Meaning?"
"We don't need a shadow war with the GDA. We need a treaty," I said, pulling up a holographic projection of a legal document I had been drafting all morning. "A mutually beneficial partnership. They stop treating us like a hostile rogue state, and in exchange, we share a couple resources. Establishing a clear line in the sand."
An hour later, I touched down in the middle of the Nevada desert, stepping up to a completely isolated, retro-style diner.
It was supposed to be neutral ground, but I could tell that the GDA had completely locked down a five-mile radius. Snipers were hidden in the rocky ridges, and elite strike teams were disguised as line cooks and waitstaff inside.
I didn't need to be a sensor to feel the nerves radiating from them.
I walked in wearing a tailored grey suit, letting the bell above the door chime cheerfully.
Cecil was sitting alone in a corner booth, a cup of black coffee in front of him. When he saw me walk through the door, his posture instantly stiffened. The last time we were in the same room, I had vaporized his million-dollar Reanimen army and cracked his "indestructible" observation glass with a single tap.
He looked pale, cautious, and incredibly tense.
"I'm surprised you agreed to a neutral location," Cecil said, his voice tight, lacking its usual gravelly bark. He kept his hands visible on the table. "Given how our last... encounter... ended."
"I have no reason to break your toys today, Cecil," I said smoothly, sliding into the vinyl booth across from him. "Relax. I'm just here to do business."
Cecil swallowed hard, glancing at the briefcase I set on the table. "Business. Right. You want to dictate terms of surrender?"
I let out a short laugh.
"I'm offering the GDA a formal, legally binding treaty," I said, sliding a physical copy of the dossier across the table. Cecil actually flinched slightly as the folder moved toward him, expecting it to be a bomb or a threat.
"Invincible Inc. and the GDA will share intelligence and collaborate in situations regarding major, world-ending threats," I explained calmly. "Other than that, we stay out of each other's business. We handle the apocalyptic. You handle the municipal."
Cecil frowned, his extreme paranoia warring with sheer confusion. He carefully opened the folder. "You're offering a partnership? After what you did to my underground facility? Why?"
"Because of page four," I replied, leaning forward and resting my chin on my hands. "Invincible Inc. is officially launching a Superhero Coverage Initiative."
Cecil's eyes darted down the page, narrowing as he read the clauses. "A coverage initiative?"
"Your independent heroes are suffering, Cecil," I stated bluntly. "You pay them pennies in hazard stipends. Effective immediately, Invincible Inc. is opening a multi-billion dollar fund. Any registered hero who signs a non-aggression pact with my company gets full access to our medical technology, hazard subsidies, and comprehensive retirement packages after ten years of active service."
Cecil went completely rigid. The color entirely drained from his scarred face as his strategic brain finally caught up to what I was doing. He had prepared for a physical war. He hadn't prepared for a socio-economic buyout.
"Furthermore," I continued, letting a sharp, corporate smile touch my lips. "We are establishing a Community Infrastructure Restructure Package. Every time a city block gets leveled by a villain, Invincible Inc. will subsidize the rebuilding efforts for the displaced civilians, completely bypassing your bureaucratic red tape."
"You..." Cecil breathed out, staring at me not with anger, but with profound, existential dread. "You're unionizing the capes."
"I'm giving them a safety net," I corrected smoothly. "I'm giving them pensions. I'm making sure guys that aren't as prioritized as the Guardians, but want to make a difference, don't have to worry about paying their mortgages while they're bleeding in the streets. You can either sign the treaty and take the credit for the partnership, or you can explain to the entire hero community why you're rejecting free healthcare and retirement plans out of spite."
It was a complete, inescapable checkmate. Cecil stared at the paperwork, his hands actually trembling slightly. He realized I had just legally conquered the superhero community without throwing a single punch.
He reached into his suit jacket, slowly pulling out a pen. He was just about to sign the document when my private earpiece blared to life.
"Uh... Mark?" Oliver's voice crackled, sounding incredibly unsure of himself.
"Hold on," I held up a finger to Cecil, tapping my earpiece. "Yea, what's up? I'm in a meeting."
"I was out on patrol, and a guy specifically demanded you," Oliver said. "He's glowing with electricity. He's got a woman and a baby cornered in an abandoned alley, and he said if you don't show up right now... he's going to blow them up."
I closed my eyes, letting out a heavy sigh as the pieces clicked together. Scott Duvall aka Powerplex. He had been trying to get my attention all week by causing minor disturbances, but I kept putting him on the back burner because I had actual, planetary problems to deal with. Now, he was escalating.
"Don't engage, Oliver. I'll be there in thirty seconds," I ordered, standing up from the booth.
The dark grey and black Warlord suit instantly materialized over my business clothes, the bio-reactive armor locking into place with a sharp, metallic hiss.
Across the table, Cecil violently pushed himself back against the vinyl seat, his eyes wide as the traumatic memory of the Pentagon basement flashed across his face. The undercover strike teams in the diner instinctively reached for their concealed weapons.
"Stand down!" Cecil barked at his men, his voice cracking slightly in panic. He looked up at me. "Is the treaty off?"
"No. Just a disgruntled citizen needing my attention," I said, my voice dropping into a cold, terrifying register as the glowing veins on my neck pulsed in the dim diner light. "Review the paperwork, Cecil. Sign on the dotted line, and pay for the coffee. I have a little dispute to settle."
I made my way out of the diner, breaking the sound barrier into the Nevada sky, leaving Cecil sitting with a multi-billion dollar treaty in his hands.
Chicago, Illinois
I dropped out of the sky and landed silently at the mouth of a damp, abandoned alleyway in the industrial district.
Oliver was hovering ten feet in the air, his fists clenched, looking completely out of his depth. Standing at the dead end of the alley was Scott Duvall, clad in the sleek, form-fitting black bodysuit with red accents. Behind him, huddled against the brick wall, was his wife Becky, clutching a crying baby to her chest.
"Look who finally decided to look down," Scott spat as I stepped out of the shadows. His suit hummed with volatile, crackling kinetic energy, vibrating with his barely contained rage. "You've been ignoring me for weeks. Just like you ignore the collateral damage you and your father caused. My sister died because you were playing hero, and you didn't even care!"
Oliver glanced back at me, his eyes wide. "Mark, he says he's going to detonate if I get close."
"I see. Then, get behind me," I spoke gently, but the tone was dangerously low. I slowly made my way forward, the dark grey armor absorbing the ambient light of the alley.
Scott braced himself, lifting his glowing hand. He was waiting for me to strike, so that the kinetic impact would charge his storage capacitors to critical mass.
I stopped ten feet away from him, completely lowering my guard.
"Is this it?" I asked, my voice echoing off the brick walls with a chilling deadpan. "Because frankly, this is the most pathetic thing I have ever seen."
Scott faltered. Even Becky dropped her "terrified hostage" act, looking at me in sheer confusion.
"You brought your baby to a super-powered revenge plot," I said, my tone dropping into a terrifyingly cold register. I pointed a finger directly at Becky. "And you went along with it? Real 'Mother of the Year' material."
"Shut up!" Scott yelled, his hands shaking. "You're a monster! You don't care about justice or what happens to people!"
"Justice?" I scoffed, taking another slow step forward. "You claim you want justice for innocent victims, but you just dragged your own wife and infant son into a combat zone to provoke me. That experimental suit you got on runs on localized kinetic feedback. If I hit you, the ambient discharge cooks everyone in a twenty-foot radius. You've essentially strapped a bomb to your own child."
Becky went completely pale. She looked at the crackling energy on Scott's suit, then down at the baby in her arms, genuine horror finally breaking through her delusion.
"You don't care about protecting people," I continued, tearing his entire ideology to shreds. "You only care about fulfilling some sick 'hero fantasy' where you get to be the one punishing the villain. You're a hypocrite. You're no better than the "villains" you claim deserve justice."
Enraged and humiliated by the idea that he could be wrong, Scott completely lost his mind.
He stopped waiting for me to hit him. His body began to hum violently as he forcibly dumped all of the stored intrinsic energy from his Bio-Thermal Discs directly into his own fists. He charged me with a scream, throwing a massive, crackling, electrified haymaker aimed right at my head.
I didn't dodge. I reached out and caught his glowing fist mid-swing.
CRACK.
The electrical discharge exploded, a lethal dose of raw bio-energy surging forward to fry my nervous system.
But my suit instantly flared to life. The kinetic regulators and thermal conductors didn't just block the energy; they started drinking it.
Scott's eyes went wide with sheer terror. The glowing, crackling electricity surrounding his body began to violently siphon out of him, flowing directly into the dark, matte-grey plating of my armor. The glowing veins on my neck pulsed for a fraction of a second as my suit happily ate his entire biological payload.
Within three seconds, the blinding light around him completely faded. His energy reserves were instantly drained to zero.
Scott's knees buckled. He dropped to the concrete floor, completely physically exhausted and gasping for air, unable to even lift his arms.
"You want to avenge your sister?" I whispered, looking down at the pathetic, drained man gasping at my boots. "Be a better father to her nephew. Because right now, you aren't a threat. You're just a miserable guy who brought his kid to a death trap."
Suddenly, a signature blue teleportation flash illuminated the mouth of the alley.
Cecil Stedman materialized, a signed copy of the treaty tucked under his arm, flanked by a dozen heavily armed GDA strike team members. He took one look at the downed Powerplex and the terrified wife and sighed.
"Secure the hostile," Cecil barked to his men. "Take the wife in for questioning. Call Child Protective Services for the kid."
"Hold on," I interrupted, stepping between the GDA agents and Becky.
Cecil frowned. "Mark, they just committed domestic terrorism and child endangerment. It's unfortunate, but the kid has to go into the system."
"The foster care system—albeit well-intentioned— is a nightmare on a good day, and this kid's parents are having a psychological breakdown," I said, my CEO brain rapidly calculating the logistics. I turned to Oliver. "Get the boy."
Oliver blinked for a moment, but flew forward, gently taking the crying baby from a weeping, unresisting Becky.
"What are you doing?" Cecil questioned.
"I'm executing page six of our new treaty, Cecil. The Community Subsidization clause," I stated smoothly. "The boy is going back to Invincible Inc. headquarters. I am hiring a 24/7, rotating team of elite, background-checked sitters and pediatricians to look after him in a luxury suite until his parents receive proper psychiatric treatment. He won't be going to a group home."
Cecil stared at me, completely dumbfounded. He had expected me to vaporize the villain. Instead, I had defeated him without throwing a single punch and saved his kid from the foster care system.
"Get going, Oliver," I said, waving my brother off. "Get him somewhere warm."
Oliver nodded, holding the baby carefully, and launched quietly into the sky.
I turned back to Cecil. "Like I said, Cecil. You handle the municipal. I handle the coverage."
That foster care system is something to look into and fix in the future, I thought, leaving the scarred man to his contemplations. No child should be left behind.