MARK GRAYSON'S POV
Flying used to clear my head.
Used to be the one thing that made everything else fade away, you know? Up here, above the city, with the wind rushing past and nothing but open sky, all the bullshit on the ground just... disappeared.
Not anymore.
Now I was flying in circles over downtown Chicago, and all I could think about was the conversation a few hours ago.
Mom hasn't slept in two days. I could hear her pacing downstairs at three AM, making coffee she wouldn't drink, picking up her phone to call Dad and then putting it down again.
Dad was missing.
Now, this wasn't new. Dad had been on missions for days without contact before. I'd grown up with it. Week-long disappearances, fighting Kaiju or stopping alien invasions or buried under a mountain somewhere. It was normal for me.
But this time felt different.
Some scarred government spook named Cecil had shown up at our door.
"Mrs. Grayson. Mark." His voice was compassionate, but there was something underneath it that made my skin crawl. "I need to know where Nolan is."
And when it became clear we had no fucking clue where Dad was, Cecil had dropped the bomb.
"Mrs. Grayson," he'd said, his voice flat. "I need you to understand the gravity of this situation. The Guardians of the Globe were attacked two nights ago in their headquarters."
The Immortal and Aquarus were dead.
While the rest of the guardians were barely kept alive by the planet's most advanced medical tech.
Most surprisingly, they found Dad's blood at the scene.
A lot of it.
"We believe Omni-Man was at the scene of the murder and was heavily injured before being abducted."
I'd been about to deck this asshole right there in our living room, but Mom grabbed my arm.
The way she looked at Cecil, the way her voice changed when she spoke to him, there was history there. Old history that I didn't know about.
She believed him.
My dad. Omni-Man. Earth's greatest hero.
Abducted?
No way. There had to be an explanation. Dad was the strongest person on the planet. Who the hell could abduct him?
I didn't know.
And that's what was eating me alive.
I'd put on my costume and left before I had to see Mom cry.
I needed to hit something.
Needed to feel useful instead of helples-
The portals suddenly opened.
Red swirling tears in reality itself, and out came an army.
Green-skinned aliens in futuristic armour, carrying energy weapons that hummed with power.
Three portals, spitting out soldiers in organized formations like this was a planned invasion.
Flaxans.
Dad had fought them before. Dimensional invaders that had shown up to try and conquer Earth before getting their asses kicked and retreating back to their dimension.
But this time they came back and went straight to slaughter people.
Energy blasts tore through storefronts as a woman's scream cut off mid-breath as she vaporized along with a kid, who couldn't have been more than ten, running for cover before a tank shell turned him into red mist.
All that anger, all that frustration, everything that had been building since Cecil's visit just... erupted.
I shot toward the nearest tank like a missile.
"HEY!" My voice cracked halfway through the shout. "You want someone to fight?! FIGHT ME!"
The Flaxan tank's cannon swivelled smoothly, locked onto me. I saw the energy building in the barrel, saw the red glow intensifying, and I had maybe half a second to realize I'd fucked up.
The blast hit me square in the chest.
I flew backwards through a coffee shop, through the kitchen, out the back wall, across an alley, into an office building, and finally cratered into the street hard enough that the asphalt spiderwebbed beneath me.
My ears were ringing. My chest hurt like someone had hit me with a sledgehammer, and my vision was swimming.
Yet I could still hear screaming.
People had been in that coffee shop. People I'd just gotten hit through, people who'd been in the blast radius when that energy cannon fired.
I pushed myself up and saw the charred and mangled bodies.
This wasn't anything like stopping a bank robbery. This wasn't catching car thieves or breaking up gang fights.
This was war.
And I'd just made myself a target without thinking about who was behind me.
An old woman was running, just trying to get to safety.
But she was slow, stumbling and terrified.
Another energy blast charged up, aimed at her.
I moved on instinct, grabbed her mid-run, tried to pull her out of the way.
But I wasn't fast enough.
The blast caught her anyway, burning through her side, even as I tried to shield her with my body.
She looked up at me with these wide, confused eyes. Like she couldn't understand what was happening. Like she was asking me why I didn't save her.
And then she just... stopped as her arm went limp.
I'd failed. She was right there in my hands and I failed to save her.
"INVINCIBLE!"
[Image Here]
Atom Eve descended in a burst of pink energy, her power forming a force field around me just as another barrage of shots came screaming in.
"Get your head in the game!" she yelled, hands glowing as she deflected blast after blast. "You're gonna get killed standing there!"
Robot's voice crackled through comms, mechanical and calm like always. "Invincible, evacuate that civilian to the nearest hospital immediately. We're engaging the hostiles but civilian casualties are mounting. Move!"
I wanted to argue. Wanted to stay and fight and prove I wasn't useless. Wanted to make these bastards pay for killing her.
But the old woman's blood was soaking into my costume, and Eve was right, I was just standing here like an idiot while she did all the work.
I took off toward the nearest hospital, the woman's body getting colder in my arms with every second.
Behind me, I could hear the Teen Team engaging the Aliens.
Rex's explosions blast away the incoming Alien march.
The wet crunch of Dupli-Kate's coordinated strikes, as she tactically sacrifices her clones who threw themselves at enemies to create openings.
Eve's Energy Construct became adamant on stopping all alien attacks and pretending to be as many people as possible.
Finally, Robot's voice came again, and this time there was actually concern in its robotic tone. "Correction. We may not have an adequate force to repel this incursion. Enemy reinforcements are coming at a staggering rate. Requesting immediate GDA backup and... Director Stedman, are we authorized for tactical nuclear deployment if the situation deteriorates further?"
Nuclear! They were talking about nuking downtown Chicago!
I was about to turn around and give that metal man a piece of my mind.
Then I heard it.
Metal screaming and something massive hitting the ground.
An impact that shook buildings three blocks away.
What the hell was that?
JOHN KAISEN POV
The agents had finally stopped treating me like a bomb about to explode after my little prayer session to RNGesus. They'd collectively decided I was retarded, which fair, I had literally prostrated myself on the floor of a military aircraft sobbing about the beauty of gambling.
That probably didn't scream "sound mental health."
Donald was back to his tablet, the agents had their rifles down, and I was just starting to think maybe I could survive this flight without further embarrassment.
Then every alarm in the jet started screaming.
Red lights flooded the cabin. The agents went from zero to combat-ready in half a second, weapons up, scanning for threats like they expected aliens to teleport into the plane.
Donald looked at his tablet, and his expression shifted from bureaucratic calm to military focus so fast I got whiplash watching it.
"Everyone, we have a Flaxan incursion in progress," he barked, voice cutting through the baring alarms. "Dimensional breach in downtown Chicago. Three portals confirmed with hundreds of hostiles. Teen Team is engaged but taking heavy civilian casualties. We're rerouting for immediate combat deployment."
He yanked open a locker, started pulling out gear. "All personnel, prepare for hot zone insertion! This is a rescue and extraction mission! No need to be a hero! Arm up and prep for drop!"
"Roger, sir!" they chorused as the agents moved like they'd done this a thousand times. Securing equipment, loading weapons, and strapping on jetpacks that looked way too flimsy to actually work.
Meanwhile, I was sitting there in borrowed glasses trying to process what the absolute fuck was happening.
Flaxans. The decaying green assholes from another dimension who aged rapidly on Earth and had to retreat after like twenty minutes or they'd literally rot to death.
I remembered this from the show. This was Mark's first big fight. The one where he almost died because he didn't know what he was doing yet.
And suddenly, a terrible and absolutely idiotic idea formed in my head.
This was it.
My chance to get out of all this bloody mess surrounding me.
Donald turned toward me, and I saw it coming before he even moved. Those tungsten cuffs appeared in his hands like a magic trick.
"Oh, come on!" I protested as he snapped them around my wrists, completely encasing my fists. "We literally just played this game! I even surrendered for those tests. What's the point?!"
"Emergency protocols insist on unconventional actions, Mr Kaisen." Donald's voice was apologetic but firm. "We cannot have an individual in your current mental state unsupervised during active combat operations. It's for your safety as much as ours."
"My mental state? I AM NOT A R-"
The rear hatch of the jet opened mid-flight, drowning out my frustrated scream.
"GO! GO! GO!" Donald shouted.
Wind screamed into the cabin as I watched the agents jump out one by one, activating jetpacks as they fell, descending toward the warzone below in perfect formation.
Through the window I could see the chaos.
The buildings were on fire. Energy blasts lighting up the sky, and green heads swarming through streets.
And worst of all, I could see People running, screaming and dying.
These Flaxans were tearing Chicago apart.
I remembered from the show. They only stayed for a limited time before their rapid tachyon signature made them age and decay in this dimension. Maybe twenty, thirty minutes tops before they had to retreat.
I had very little time to act.
Which meant I needed to do something monumentally stupid right now.
I stood up.
Donald saw me moving toward the hatch and his eyes went wide. "Mr. Kaisen, sit down! That's an order!"
I ran.
"MR. KAISEN, NO!"
And jumped.
[A/N]: Drop em stones Reader!
Support my work and get early access to advanced chapters, exclusive content, and bonus material at my P@treon - Max_Striker.
If you wanna hang out, join my Discord server- https://discord.gg/XxGEYk2PM5