Grayson Household
The front door clicked shut behind Mark as he stepped into the Grayson house, still riding the adrenaline from the morning's training.
Dust clung faintly to his shoes, and there was a fresh tear near the knee of his jeans from an unfortunate encounter with a warehouse wall. He was already rehearsing excuses in his head but when he looked up and saw his mother standing in the living room.
Debbie was waiting for him with her arms crossed and a look so sharp it could have cut steel.
"Where were you?"
Mark froze mid-step. "I uh… school stuff."
Her expression didn't change.
"Then I ran into William and we were just, you know, hanging out, and then there was traffic, and…"
Still nothing.
The silence was worse than yelling. Mark's voice stumbled over itself as he reached for lie after lie, each one weaker than the last. Debbie simply stared at him, eyes locked on his face, making it painfully clear she believed none of it.
Mark exhaled and let his shoulders drop.
"Okay… fine."
He glanced toward the ceiling, then back at her. Slowly, awkwardly, he lifted a few inches off the floor, hovering just enough for there to be no misunderstanding.
"Mom," he said carefully, "I think I'm a mutant."
For a second, Debbie didn't move then the color drained from her face. Her knees buckled, and she sank to the floor as tears welled in her eyes. One trembling hand covered her mouth while the other braced against the carpet.
"I knew this day would come," she whispered.
Mark dropped back to the floor instantly, panic replacing embarrassment. "Mom! What's wrong?!" He rushed forward and knelt beside her. "Did I do something? Are you okay?"
Debbie looked up at him, grief and fear tangled together in her expression.
"You're not a mutant, Mark," she said softly. "You're half alien."
The words hit harder than any punch. Mark stared at her, waiting for the joke that never came. "W-what?"
Debbie slowly stood and moved to the couch like the memory itself had weight. Mark followed and sat beside her, every instinct telling him the world had just tilted sideways. She took a shaky breath before speaking.
"Seventeen years ago, I met someone." Her eyes drifted somewhere distant, back into the past. "I was walking home late one night when something crashed nearby. I found a crater in an empty lot… and in the middle of it was a man. He was badly hurt. Bruised, bleeding, barely conscious."
Mark said nothing.
"I should have called someone," Debbie continued. "But I didn't. I brought him home instead. I hid him, cleaned his wounds, helped him recover." A faint, sad smile touched her lips. "When he woke up, he was angry. Confused. Suspicious of everything. But after a while… he calmed down."
She clasped her hands together tightly.
"He stayed three weeks. During those three days, we talked. We laughed. We learned about each other. And somehow…" She swallowed. "We fell in love." Mark's chest tightened as he listened.
"When he was strong enough, he told me he had to leave. He said he wasn't from Earth. He said he was from a place called Viltrum." She shook her head slightly. "I didn't know what that meant. I still don't, not really. But after he left… I found out I was pregnant with you."
"I always wondered if one day you'd inherit whatever he was," Debbie said. "I prayed you wouldn't. I wanted you to have a normal life."
Mark sat motionless, trying to process alien blood, powers, a father from the stars and he was trying to fit it into the life he thought he knew.
Finally, he found his voice.
"What was his name?"
Debbie looked at him for a long moment.
"Nolan."
Before Mark could respond, the television behind them suddenly blared to life with the emergency news tone. Debbie turned instinctively toward it, and Mark followed.
A frantic anchor filled the screen.
"Breaking news: a robbery is currently underway at Chicago Central Bank. Police are on scene, but reports indicate multiple armed suspects remain inside…."
Mark's eyes stayed on the screen, but something in his posture changed. The shock was still there, the confusion too, but underneath it something else was rising.
Debbie saw it immediately.
"Go."
Mark turned. "What?"
She stood and walked toward him, her eyes red but steady now. "Go, Mark. You've spent your whole life admiring heroes. You always wanted to be one."
He hesitated. "Mom, I don't even know what I'm doing."
"No hero ever does at first," she said. "They just choose to help anyway." Mark looked at her, uncertain, hopeful, terrified all at once. "You mean it?"She nodded and stepped forward, wrapping him in a tight embrace."Just promise me one thing."
He hugged her back just as tightly. "Anything."
Her voice trembled against his shoulder.
"Always come back to me." Mark swallowed hard and nodded. "I promise."
He broke away and sprinted upstairs two steps at a time. His room looked different now but none of it fit anymore. He yanked open his closet and grabbed the first things that looked even remotely like a costume: an orange long-sleeved shirt, yellow gloves, blue sweatpants, a scarf, old goggles, and orange boots.
It was ridiculous so it was perfect.
Mark shoved open the window, climbed onto the roof, and looked out across Chicago. Somewhere out there people were scared, waiting for someone to help.
He took one breath and then he launched into the sky.
Timeskip
The bank doors had already been forced open by the time Mark arrived.
Glass littered the sidewalk like scattered ice, and the distant wail of sirens bounced between the surrounding buildings, still too far away to matter. Inside the Chicago Central Bank, chaos moved in jagged bursts.
Mark hovered just above the rooftop across the street for a moment, wind tugging at his makeshift costume.
The orange shirt and yellow gloves suddenly felt a lot less "heroic" and a lot more like a bad decision. Still, his chest tightened with something steadier than fear. He could hear his heartbeat but it wasn't stopping him anymore.
Inside, five armed robbers were corralling civilians toward the floor. One of them kicked over a teller counter, scattering papers and cash drawers while another kept his weapon trained on a group of shaking employees. They were organized, but tense.
Mark exhaled once then he dropped from the roof. He landed just outside the entrance with a heavy impact that cracked the pavement slightly under his feet.
The sound alone made all five robbers snap their attention toward him instantly. For a split second, everything inside the bank froze.
"I think…" he said, glancing at the broken glass around him, "this is where you stop."
One of the robbers laughed nervously, raising his gun. "What is this? Some costume kid? Get out of here before…."
The shot cut him off and the gunfire cracked through the air, loud enough to make everyone flinch. Mark barely had time to register the motion before the bullet struck him square in the chest.
There was a dull plink like metal tapping metal. Mark stumbled back half a step more out of surprise than pain. The bullet fell to the floor and silence swallowed the room.
The robber who fired stared at his weapon, then back at Mark, then fired again then rapidly. Both rounds struck Mark's torso, one hitting his shoulder, the other center mass. Neither penetrated. They just… stopped.
Mark looked down at himself.
"…Huh."
A third shot rang out from another direction, and Mark turned slightly. It hit his arm. Nothing. Another hit his side. Still nothing. The realization didn't hit like a lightning bolt—it crept in slowly, like his brain needed time to accept what his body already knew.
He was fine.
Behind him, one of the robbers whispered, "What the hell is he?"
Mark lifted his head again, and something in his posture shifted. The uncertainty didn't vanish, but it moved to the back of his mind, replaced by something simpler: movement.
He stepped forward and the first robber tried to backpedal while firing, but Mark crossed the distance too fast. He didn't punch.
Instead, he grabbed the barrel of the gun mid-shot. The weapon buckled in his hand like it was made of aluminum foil, the slide snapping cleanly as Mark twisted it away.
The robber's eyes widened.
Mark gently pushed him back. Not hard. Just enough. The man flew across the lobby, crashing into a row of ATMs with a loud metallic slam.
The second robber rushed him immediately, swinging the butt of his rifle like a club. Mark ducked instinctively, the strike passing inches over his head, and responded with a quick shove to the chest.
The man left the ground entirely, sailing backward into a marble pillar and sliding down unconscious.
The third and fourth tried to coordinate but Mark was already moving. Not flying yet. Just reacting. The low shot came first; he stepped over it without thinking.
The high shot followed, and Mark caught that gun too, twisting it out of the man's grip and snapping it in half like brittle wood.
He didn't even realize how much force he was using. The fifth robber hesitated and that hesitation was enough.
Mark closed the distance in a blur of motion, grabbed him by the vest, and lifted just enough for his feet to leave the ground before setting him down hard enough to knock the wind out of him without breaking anything. The man crumpled, gasping and then there was silence again.
The entire bank was still. Mark stood in the center of it, breathing heavier than he expected, looking at his hands like they belonged to someone else. The gunfire was gone. The chaos had collapsed into stunned disbelief.
A small sound broke through it from behind a counter, a child peeked out.
He couldn't have been more than seven or eight, eyes wide and reflecting everything that had just happened like it was too big for him to fully process.
Slowly, carefully, he stepped out from cover, clutching the edge of the counter as if testing whether the world was still safe.
"You… didn't get hurt," the kid said quietly.
Mark blinked, still catching his breath. "Yeah," he said. "Guess I didn't."
The kid stared at him for a moment longer, then asked the question without hesitation, like kids always do when adults are too scared to speak.
"Who are you?"
Mark looked around the bank at the broken guns, the unconscious robbers, the terrified but unharmed civilians slowly lifting their heads.
For a second, he didn't know what to say then he smiled.
"I'm…" he said, adjusting his stance slightly as if trying the name on for size, "…Invincible."