Invincible Legacies - Or: How Terra and Markus Wreck The Multiverse

[Firewillreign]

Thraxa - The Edge Of The Milky Way
100,000 light-years from Earth
Time: Unknown

Planet Thraxa was not always the barren, desolate wasteland it is today.

Once, Thraza had been a lush, bountiful multi-biome world, and home to a race of beings derivatively known as the Thraxans.

The Thraxans were sapient, insectoid life forms who, over thousands and thousands of years and evolutionary stressors came to possess incredibly short-life spans - only a single earth year - but made up for what most species in the galaxy would consider a crippling evolutionary disadvantage with a comparatively ludicrous capacity for mental processing and cognitive growth.

They could recall, understand and learn nearly everything, and this innate biological trait ensured that their civilization grew and centered on progress and endless self-improvement, taken to such extremes that at one point, they could have been said to have achieved a near post-scarcity society.

They had been so close.

But then came the viltrumites.

Nowl Ahn - Nolan, the Omni-man.

Mark Grayson - Invincible

And eventually, Thragg.

The treacherous grand regent of the first viltrumite empire used the thraxans and the sheer convenience of their biological reproduction cycles to breed himself an army of neo-viltrumites, all to fight and eventually lose what was perhaps the most savage war in all of modern galactic history.

So ruthless was Thragg that he personally ordered the remaining pure thraxans slaughtered to the last and every trace of civilization razed from the planet's surface all in the vain, cruel effort to ensure that none of his enemies would seek out the survivors and raise their own armies against him.

Today, Thraxa was no more home than a tomb, a dried-out husk of a planet baptized in blood and tragedy and host to ruins devoid of all semblance of life, the last crumbling remnants of a people that had fallen victim to the very worst monstrosity the universe had to offer.

BOOM!

Occasionally, however, it played host to more than just the decaying remains of what came before - sometimes (more times than should be reasonable, actually) it tended to play host to some disgustingly overpowered beings with more issues between them than an asylum's worth and enough aggression that they needed an entire barren planet to work it off safely.

BOOM! KR-BOOM!

Case in point -

The air cracked and exploded from the impact as two figures collided in the troposphere and generated winds powerful enough to disperse distant clouds from the sheer force of their impact. The brutal collision staggered and disoriented them for just that one moment - in the next, each lunged for the other, grappling and grabbing hold of their respective opponent with enough force to crumple industrial-grade materials tin–foil.

"You idiot!" Terra Grayson, daughter of Emperor Mark Grayson and his acknowledged heir, snarled in rage as she tore at the absolute, unrepentant moron of a sibling she was cursed with. "You actual fucking idiot!"

"You're one to talk." Markus Murphy - her half-brother and moron in question - hissed back in her face and lashed out, fist slipping past her guard in her moment of distraction and burying itself in her gut. The blow all but folded her over at the waist, and Markus followed up with a double-fisted strike to the back of her skull that had the sound barrier breaking again and her hurtling towards the ground with stars in her eyes. She tried to reorient and regain control of her flight, but Markus was suddenly there, outstretched hand wrapping around her face and bodily rocketing them both down.

Thoom!

The impact was monstrous - powerful enough that she could feel her teeth rattle and blood fill her mouth from where she'd involuntarily bitten into the flesh of her cheeks, ugh - and the dull, sun-bleached earth around them cratered and shattered as far as the eye could see, clouds of dust and pulverized centuries-old debris getting blown into the air in great billowing waves just by fault of their proximity.

Oh, She was going to make him hurt for that one.

The ground buckled and pulped as tried to throw herself up, but Markus's hand was wrapped around her throat with enough force to constrict her breathing and his knee was driven into her abdomen in short order, effectively pinning her in place as he glared down at her with the kind of dismissive rage that implied he'd already won.

The sight of it made her blood boil. Forget hurt - she was going to destroy him for this.

"I told you to stay away from me-" He snarled again, almost spitting the words down at her face. "I told you I didn't want anything to do with you-!"

Excuse him-?!

"You think you get to decide that?!" Terra spat back, vitriol suffusing every word - the fucking nerve "You show up to New Viltrum on an invitation, as a guest, and you attack our father in full view of nearly a hundred delegatory parties from the new coalition of planets, start a fight that would have leveled the city if dad hadn't pulled you both off-world, and then you fuck off to the far reaches of the galaxy and call it a day?!"

Was he actually as stupid as he looked?

"He's not my father, and you of all people don't get to judge me, princess." He sneered the last word out with bitter hate lacing every vowel. "You have no idea what any of this was about-!"

"Oh, fucking spare me!"

She didn't need to hear the story - it was always the same patented bullshit with Markus. Dad left him on earth and therefore every little screw-up and toe stub was therefore his fault.

Never mind that Markus had been left with the family he'd chosen over them (over her), never mind that while he'd been playing hero in the backwater dump that was Earth, the rest of them were fighting to make the entire universe a better place, never mind any of that - it was always Marky's little tantrums that took precedent.

Well, fuck that. Not this time.

"Boohoo, my daddy left me and my life's gone to the shitter!" His eyes clouded in fury "Grow up, you pathetic child. You don't get to hide behind the same excuse every time - I'm not Dad, Markus, I'm not letting you get away with it this time. You don't get to lash out at the rest of us because you regret not being there with us-"

"You arrogant, entitled bitch!" Markus actually snorted. "You think that's why - oh, but no wonder. It always has to be about you and your mission and your idealistic holier-than-thou bullshit. Why am I not surprised?"

He leaned forward - she'd have spit in his face if she were paying any less attention to the utter drivel he was spouting.

"And let me? I beat him fair and square." He grinned, all gritted teeth and anger and not a hint of humor. "Maybe you should have thought that through before coming to challenge-"

"Pfft!"

That was about as far he got before she broke out into wild laughter - a bit awkward, given the force clenching around her throat, but no less hysterical for it.

"Beat him?" This time she really did spit at him, she was that furious. "Dad helped our grandfather and Great Thadeus destroy a planet. He could have folded you at any point in your little 'fight', but he didn't want to hurt you. And for the record?"

She took a great deal of vindictive satisfaction in the way his expression slackened in abject shock as her own eyes lit up with cerise light!

"Neither did I!"

See, Terra's wasn't just a viltrumite.

She was a viltrumite, and the daughter of Samantha Eve Wilkins, and that came with gifts beyond what anyone bar her mother could lay claim to. The power to harness unique, and artificial pseudo-photon's that allowed her to create constructs of glowing hard light, and, with just a little practice, manipulate the underlying atomic structure of anything inorganic so long as she just focused.

Taken to its limit, the power granted had allowed her mother to transcend death itself.

Terra didn't have the control for that, or even the understanding really. Luckily, at present, she didn't particularly need it. She just needed to beat nine different shades of shit out of her brother and feed him the tenth, and she was perfectly capable of that much.

She showed the dumbass as much when she blasted him with an eye-searing column of light, the deluge of overwhelming power breaking his hold on her and sending him flying with an incensed howl

Good start, but she wasn't nearly done yet.

She kicked off the earth, the force of her take-off displacing it once more as she shot toward her wayward sibling and grabbed at him with a massive construct palm of violet light, secured him in her grip, and tossed him to the distance as much power as she could muster in one go.

The sound barrier broke again as he tumbled towards the horizon, struggling to steady himself. He didn't get far, because Terra was nothing if not vindictive and more than willing to drive herself into him, fists ramming into his spine with viscous intent as she threw them both back to the earth.

The only difference was that with a little maneuvering, she found herself pummeling him head-first into solid rock with her feet.

He spasmed, once, twice, and writhed in a sudden blurring movement that threw him off her, just far enough that by the time she caught herself in mid-air, he'd already turned to her, spitting out blood and pulped dust and a glint in his eyes that told her he was ready to drown her in her own blood.

"I," Markus's tone was almost calm as he righted himself. "Am going. To end you."

Perfect. Now she really didn't have to hold back.

Terra grinned. "Shut up and fight, you whiny bitch."

And then they collided.

…​

Terra wasn't sure how long their fight lasted.

It could have been hours. It could have been days.

Viltrumite physiology and the endurance it granted allowed for both, but the haze of rage and the maddened battle-high that'd overcome them both blurred the details irreparably.

She wasn't sure how the fight went or how it even ended, but by the time she regained a little clarity, they were both bloodied, battered, and sitting side by side in mutual quiet misery.
For the longest time, they just sat there, seemingly content to stew in their own silence.

Until Terra got bored.

"...Wanna drink?"

…

Markus blinked up at her, and she shook her head.

"Don't get me wrong, I hate you." She wanted to laugh at how that reassurance seemed to ground him. "But I'm tired, half my bones are literally broken, and I really, really want to get hammered and forget you and this little shitshow and… everything else, really, and since drinking by yourself is just sad…"

She trailed off leadingly.

…

"...You even have anything that can get one of us drunk?"

Hah! Victory!

"Don't know. Ursula stocked my ship though, and she knows her shit. You in or out?"

"...Fine."

…​

So they got drunk.

Then they talked.

Then they fought again.

Then they got drunk again.

By the time the second hangover rolled around, Terra was even more done with life than she'd been to begin with. So she loaded her idiot brother up on her ship and set it on autopilot for the nearest habitable planet, that being Earth because bashing his face in had officially lost its luster.

"Get your shit together." She slurred, vision still half blurry. Across from her, slumped back on his own chair on the deck, Markus just groaned. "I mean it. You. Dad. Whatever. Fix this shit. I'm tired of fighting you."

Fighting him, talking to him, even seeing him - it was all equally exhausting now.

"I hate you." Markus moaned intelligently.

"Me too, but not enough to kill you, which is the only other way I'll get some peace."

She'd already long since accepted the fact that she and Markus would never really like each other. Too much history, baggage, or whatever you wanted to call it on both ends and the sitcom-worthy drama between him and Dad managed to poison what little hints of cordiality they did have.

At this point, she was damn well happy to accept cold neutrality for a relationship (and no, that wasn't sadness she was feeling, to hell with that sappy crap.) so long as Markus was willing to extend the same her way.

Which meant no more dropping in to visit for the first time in years and immediately starting cataclysmic fights with the old man that she had to finish because Dad was more likely to resurrect Thragg and hand over his throne than he was to hurt one of his kids.

A fact that Markus seemingly refused to acknowledge, even though it was right in front of him-!

She exhaled heavily and shook her head.

No, no, that way lies only madness.

Madness, and probably a resurging desire to sock her brother in the face, and as they'd just spent god-knows how long proving, that would do a total of jack shit in the long term no matter how immediately gratifying it would feel.

"Listen-"

She fully intended to explain that much, To offer a truce or something that would end this messy joke of a relationship or settle it into something even vaguely tolerable. But apparently, it wasn't just history that had it out for them, but god-damn fate itself.

"WARNING!"

Terra nearly toppled out of her chair as the ship's proximity alarms went haywire, screeching loud enough that it felt as though someone was driving nails into her brain.

"What the-?" Markus spluttered, his chair's armrests crumpling like paper as he tried to parse his way around the cacophony of chaos through the already unpleasant hangover he'd yet to work off.

She'd have kicked him in the balls for it - daughter of the emperor or not, that stuff was expensive - but she wasn't much better herself.

"WARNING! SPATIO-TEMPORAL ANOMALY DETECTED"

"Oh, fuck me running." Terra outright paled once she took in the readings and the previously pleasant sight of the stars and varied cosmos being replaced with that of space itself folding in front of her ship's viewing platform like an origami structure, shit.

Her mind went into overdrive

Observation 1) The ship wouldn't hold. Shields were spluttering and failing already.

Observation 2) They couldn't out fly the veritable black hole (or something close enough to it that the difference wasn't worth mentioning) in the state they were in. Neither of them could even walk in a straight line, they were that messed up.

Observation 3) They had no other cards to play.

A hand landed on her shoulder, and she fluttered her to have to meet Markus's wide-eyed look of dawning comprehension.

They'd both figured it out in perfect sync.

Conclusion: They were fucked. Fucked, and soon to be very, very dead.

"Terra-" Markus tried, and that's as far as he got.

Space folded, unfolded, expanded and compressed, and generally lost all cohesion and structure as it consumed them, ship and all, and -

…

T̵̻̔h̵̡̃e̷͊ͅǹ̸͖ ̶̺̀ẗ̷̼́h̸̟̓ĭ̷̫n̴̦͝ġ̶̜s̵̖̿ ̷̛̯g̵̟͐ȏ̶̺ť̶̜ ̵̮̅ẘ̶̢e̵͙̎ḯ̷͖r̴̻͠d̷͙͊

…
​

Earth Bet - The The Milky Way

Time: Unknown



Terra realized she wasn't dead when she woke up to reality once again. Good stuff

That wasn't to say the reality was good - no, no, just the waking-up bit. In fact, she'd say the reality was as downright shitty as always because she woke up cold, wet from the rain, and with the thoroughly shattered remains of her prized ship lying around her in bits no larger than a shoebox.

"Finally."

Oh, and Markus was there, scowling down at her and clenching his fists impatiently.

Wonderful.

"What happ-"

She tried to stand up and immediately laid back to fight off the wave of sudden nausea and the crippling, almost foreign ache in her bones.

She felt… fragile, in a way she hadn't felt in a long, long while.

"Yeah, I know the feeling," Markus interjected over her groans. "But get up. We're in a bad spot."

"My ship is scrap metal and I feel like I went ten rounds with Dad, moron. Could you be any more specific?"

"I've been up for a day. We're on an alternate Earth."

…

Damn it, she didn't have a good response for that.

Instead, slowly, steadily, she rose to her feet, hovering a foot or so off the ground as she tried to regain her composure.

"What kind of earth? Scale of one to ten?"

Because the last time she'd visited, she'd learned that there were all kinds of parallel universes out there. Some bad, some ugly, and some she was half-convinced had been some sick god's twisted idea of a joke?

"Bad. Very, very bad." The grim answer, and she would have spat out something foul if the world wasn't still spinning. "I did some looking around. No Viltrumite empire, no aliens period, actually. But it's worse. Much worse."

"Details." I breathed in quietly. "Details."

"You only need one to realize what kind of mess we're in."

Terra's temper snapped
.

"Can you stop being cryptic and-!"

She blinked.

Markus was pointing at the sky. Why was he pointing at the-?

She looked up.

Blinked again.

And again.

And one last time…

…

"Why the fuck is the moon broken?"

…​

So... I watched Invincible. And I read the comics. Then I went on a Worm Binge.

Stuff happened, too many energy drinks were consumed, and thus this maybe-fic was born.

Don't murder me if you hate it XD

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

Yesterday - Markus

Markus despised his biological father.

A bit of understatement, given what had gone down the last time they'd been under the same rough (for the few minutes there had been a roof before their fight obliterated it), but it needed saying.

He wanted nothing to do with Mark Grayson, with his empire and his viltrumites, nothing.

Nada. Nill. Zilch. Nix. Honestly, he could go on.

The optimistic preachers that were a dime a dozen back home could go on about the importance of family and forgiveness and all that kumbaya-flavored babble, but Markus was having any of it. He'd already tried that - had loved his father, idolized him, all but worshiped him and his heroic holier-than-thou propaganda bullshit and in the end -

"What- No, no, no, that's - My mother - You're lying! She couldn't have-!"

"Markus-"

"That's- that's why you left me, isn't it? That's why you abandoned me?!

"Son, please-"

"Don't call me that! I hate you! IhateyouIhateyouihateyou!" -

Yeah, no.

That fun (poisonous) little memory was going right back in the metaphorical box and getting crammed as far down the recesses of mind as he could get it to go.

Stuff happened, shit went down. He stopped crying about it a long, long time ago.

The point here, the great important takeaway that he'd learned the hard way was that getting involved in his sperm donor's life - even by proxy - was a recipe for disaster. The kind that inevitably ended in big, ugly dramatic messes that made him feel things he didn't want to feel and landed him in positions that were even worse than what he'd started off with, and he was never in a good spot to begin with.

That's why his first thought upon waking up in the middle of a massive crater in the middle of who-knew where with nothing but his living nightmare of a half-sister, the shattered remains of her ship and the sight of the broken moon up in the sky above was something along the lines of "Yeah, that fucking tracks."

Still, relatively unsurprising didn't mean it wasn't bad, and him being jaded about this kind of crap didn't mean he wasn't alarmed as fuck. He'd seen the fallout of some ridiculous circumstances before - Earth was host to so many varied flavors of superpowered beings, entitled maniacs and so many other breeds of wacky insanity that it was effectively impossible not to, but what he was seeing was on an entirely different level.

Collateral damage was always a risk, but there were limits.

The worst he'd ever seen was New York City nearly burnt to the ground by the army of Magmaniac clones (and that was a whole other story that Immortal just wouldn't let him hear the end of) but a moon?

Seriously?

Right, first things first. Figuring out where the hell they were.

He stood up, ignoring the seeping exhaustion - he'd only just started healing and he still felt weak at the knees and fragile in a way he'd only ever felt at his worst - and hovered up out of the bottom of the crater to take a look around.

They were in a forest of sorts, far out of the way of any hint of civilization he could hope to spot, and that was probably for the best. Whether or not they were on Earth specifically was still up for questioning but humans and aliens alike tended to have a shared habit of getting real pissy when space-ships dropped out of the sky and blew up their surroundings well and good, so landing in the middle of nowhere was - tentatively speaking - a good thing.

The air was perfectly breathable, but that meant jack - half the planets in the galaxy had human-friendly atmospheres and viltrumite physiology made most of the ones that didn't a non-issue. Markus could breathe pure carbon monoxide without batting an eye.

He peered up again. The sun was beginning to glint up ahead, but the sky remained a shade too dark and it had nothing to do with the cold weather he could feel (distantly - the cold hasn't bothered him since he was five).

Debris.

He was no meteorologist, but he wasn't an idiot either. He could put two and two together. Earth or not, if a moon that large was broken apart by whatever means, there was going to be a god-awful build-up of shattered debris in Earth's orbit. Best case scenario - there'd be enough to fuck over weather patterns for the foreseeable future.

Worst case? The whole planet was looking at another ice age.

Wonderful.

He dropped back down into the crater and landed beside Terra, nudging her with her foot.

"Oi. Get the hell up."

No response.

He sighed.

They needed to figure out how bad the situation was, how they could help and how they could get home as soon as possible.

Maybe not exactly in that order, depending on how shitty this place turned out to be - he wasn't going to prioritize the effort of saving a world devoid of intelligent life without finding a way home first.

"Terra. Terra!" He leaned down and shook her again, but aside from her rhythmic breathing and her minute shifting, she may as well have been dead to the world.

He needed to start answering questions, start working out just what kind of fiasco they'd been dropped in, but if she wasn't going to wake up…He couldn't just leave her here - Eternally annoying she may be, but nothing good would come his way if he left his relatively helpless sister to fend for herself

He glared down at her.

"I'm going to have to carry you, aren't I?"

No response.

"Yeah, I figured. Ever and always a pain in my ass, even when you're unconscious. Typical."

…
​

It took him about twenty minutes to conclusively prove that they were on an alternate Earth.

It was more luck than anything. He slung Terra over one shoulder, raised himself into the air, picked a direction on a whim and rocketed off at supersonic speeds, the air audibly cracking behind him.

His flight was a little choppy, a little stilted, the lingering exhaustion still weighing him down, but it still took less than half an hour to burst through a thick bank of clouds and spotting a road stretching out far beneath him, a few cars crisscrossing in opposite directions below. He followed it in a straight line for a little while more, and lo and behold, a city rose in the distance, complete with a massive billboard and everything.

Welcome to Beautiful Brockton Bay

And then beneath those words, an artistic rendition of the apparent coastal city and another title below that.

Home of the Protectorate E.N.E Headquarters


… huh

He's never heard of either of those - Brockton Bay or the Protectorate. But a brief glimpse at the streets below was enough to confirm that this was a human city, so alternate Earth it was.

Good. It was a little selfish, but he was plenty relieved that it wasn't his moon that'd somehow been blown up.

Now all he had to do was figure out what the hell was going on here.

He had no idea what the protectorate was supposed to be, but from the title… some kind of law enforcement agency? This Earth's counterpart of the Global Defense Agency? or maybe just the local authorities?

Questions for later - and by later, he meant the very second he found a computer with an internet connection he could abuse. A public library should do the trick.

Assuming there was one, and that he could find it.

Briefly, he debated simply dropping down to the streets and asking for directions or something, but he discarded that thought almost immediately. He didn't know what he was working with here and Terra was still dead to the world. Walking up to a local while lugging an unconscious girl over his shoulder would get him all the wrong kinds of attention, and fast.

No, it's not what it looks like, I promise! She's just my bitch of a sister!

He snorted.

How about no?

Already, people below were starting to look up, some of them whipping out phones and pointing his way - he'd stayed still too long.

With another resigned sigh he doubled his grip on Terra and accelerated, driving himself deeper into the city.

Yeah, today was going to be all kinds of fun, wasn't it?

…​

He'd dropped into a street a few blocks away, taking advantage of the fact that there were very few people out and about - ridiculously few, actually, given the relatively impressive size of the city - and resigned himself to finding a nice, isolated corner or someplace where he could stash Terra for at least a little while.

He'd expected to leave her there for a little while until he could get some directions at least.

Instead, just as soon as he'd tucked her away at the edge of a clearly abandoned building's rooftop (The whole building could collapse and she wouldn't get the equivalent of a paper cut), the very first person he'd met - an old man who'd eyed him up and down before glaring at him distrustfully pointed out the directions to Brockton Bay's Central Library clearly hoping to get rid of him.

That had been easy.

"Thanks, I owe you one." He smiled half-heartedly, and the old man shrugged and adjusted his coat a little.

"S'nothing." He grunted, before shooting him a strange look. "You're a cape, aren't you? Must be, if you're dressed like that."

"...Cape?" Belatedly he remembered that he was still wearing his suit. His super suit. "Uh… you mean, do I have powers?"

"No shit." He gave Markus a look that made it very clear how stupid he thought he was. "Never seen a cape without one of those fancy masks on, 'cept those New Wave people. You one of them?"

Capes, huh?

"New Wave? Don't know they are." Markus shrugged and tried to play it off in the face of the next odd look that came his way. "Sorry, I'm not really from around here. And as for my mask-"

Lie or no lie? He settled for a bastardized truth instead.

"Can't say I really see the point of masks."

Strangely enough, that got him a smile. A genuine smile, but one tinged with rueful amusement and something dark enough to momentarily set his teeth on edge.

"Guess you're right. No point hiding behind masks anymore, eh? Not when the whole world is ending.' The old man snorted, and the sound was just a tad bit hysterical. "The Moon and the Golden Man… they were just the start, you hear? Won't be long before the rest of us follow, I tell you."

"..."

Markus opened his mouth, then closed it again. What exactly was he supposed to say to that? He didn't have any context to answer that nihilistic speech even if he wanted it to.

Luckily, he didn't have to. The old man shouldered past him and went his not-so-merry way, still muttering darkly and leaving Markus to stare after him in growing concern before he took off and went to pick up Terra.

On his way, he made a mental note to look into the 'Golden Man', whoever the hell he was.

Dumb name that

…​

An hour later or so later - Brockton Bay's Central Library

The library was empty - and also closed, but it didn't take even an iota of effort to break in through the door.

The relative seclusion and the clear absence of any kind of alarm worked wonders for him, honestly, because he managed to tuck Terra onto a couch and get into the public computer lab without a hitch.

That was about the only good thing he had to say about the next hour of his life because getting onto the internet and looking up this new world, starting from the history of the last century and onwards?

Well.

He only had one solid conclusion.

Somebody really fucked the dog here. With feeling.

Earth Bet, as the locals called it, had a history that read like it had been written by a sadist with too much time on his hands and a pretty indiscriminate hatred for god-damn everything.

May 20th, 1981 - The point where the Golden Man, Scion, showed up and ushered in the epic clusterfuck that was the age of Para-humans, and everything was fantastic… for about five seconds before it all went to hell in a handbasket.

Uncontrollable, uncontainable parahumans. Warlords taking over unstable nations and propping up their own regimes. Villains that outnumbered the heroes ten to one, held back only by a set of unspoken, unwritten arbitrary rules that made life one massive, high-stakes game of cops and robbers, and the authorities were evidently okay with that.

"What the hell?" Markus breathed, eyes wide as he scrolled through page after page of this bullshit.

All that was the mild stuff. He was struggling to process that, let alone the existence of city-eating goblins, the literal murder-hobos who apparently drove up and down the country doing whatever the fuck they wanted!, oh, and the three super-kaiju who destroyed or condemned entire cities on a globally recognized schedule that had been going for twenty years or so!

The keyboard he'd steadily been pressing down on shattered as his hands went through it, and then through the desk beneath it with the tortured snap of shattered wood.

He barely noticed.

What kind of living hell-hole was this?

He'd be the first to admit that his world was no paradise. They had more villains and monsters than they knew what to do with and the collateral damage and cost in lives the world as a whole suffered could often become incalculable simply by sheer scope, but Earth Bet was downright demented.

Parahumans ran rampant, the authorities conclusively had nothing to do with them, and the heroes had clearly been fighting a losing battle for decades.

In fact, he thought grimly, they probably just lost it.

Four months ago, a tinker (and what the hell were those supposed to be? Powers that made them make technology no one else could ? Bullshit. He was calling magic shenanigans) called String Theory tried the US government for 200 million dollars and a number of concessions even he could admit were ridiculous. Or at least, he would have admitted that, before the deranged lunatic threatened to fire off a weapon that could destroy the moon.

Then he would have done the smart, reasonable thing - given the crazy bitch whatever she wanted and then some just until he could figure out a way to deal with her. Instead, the utter fuckwits running this country decided to call her bluff and order her assassination - they issued something called a kill order, whatever that was, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back...

String Theory died, but not before installing some kind of remote deadman's switch that made her weapon go off well before anyone could disarm it, and ta-fucking-da!

Kablooey goes to the moon, and soon after that, Scion and some equally important hero called Eidolon up and vanish, presumably in some failed attempt to fix things.

The sheer, suicidal stupidity and incompetence of it all was doing more to raise his blood pressure than his father ever had, and that was saying something.

Worse, there was no way anyone on Earth Bet could help them get home - He'd read up on Earth Aleph, and how the tinker who'd made that one-time portal had gone and croaked years ago. If anyone had anything even approaching his tech, they weren't making themselves known.

So in summary, he was stuck with the sister he loathed in a world that had gone so far off the rails it'd been facing complete societal collapse before the extinction-level event came knocking, with no clear way home and not a clue on what to do next.

…

Mark breathed in deeply and exhaled.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Then he devolved into frenzied screaming and demolished half the building

On the bright side, no one was around to get hurt.

...​

Present Time - Terra

Terra put her head in her hands. "What the..?"

Across from her, Markus just shrugged. "Tell me about it."

He'd dragged her out of the library and flew both of them back to their landing (crash-landing?) site, where he'd started burying the remains of her ship without so much as a 'by your leave.'

"Tinkers." He explained when she glared at him. "Don't know how they work - don't know how powers work at all in this shit-hole since they all somehow have the same source - but giving anyone in this world FTL capable tech is so fucking stupid I wouldn't let it happen even if only to see it blow up in your face."

"Fuck you!" she snapped at him, but she helped him dig anyway.

It was a valid point, even if she'd never say it to his face.

When they were done, she leaned back and admired their work in a grim mood.

She'd liked her ship. It had character.

"What are we going to do now?"

"No idea.

"We need to do something about the moon."

"No, really? How do you figure?"

Oh, this dick.

"Cut the crap!" She whirled on him furiously "We're trapped in a dying world, asshole! The least you could do is shut up and try to help!"

"The hell do you want me to do?!" He snarled right back at her, face twisted in outrage. "What, should I fly up there and staple it back together maybe? Maybe I should run down to the store and get some heavy-duty repair tape, that'll do the trick!"

He pointed up at the shattered celestial object.

"The local heroes have been trying for months, dumbass! A third of the moon's mass is just gone, and at least a third more is shattered and building up in orbit around the planet, threatening to bring down a new ice age. That's assuming, of course, that none of the meteors that are already raining down daily don't surface-wipe the planet. There's no easy fix here!"

"I don't expect it to be easy, but we need to start doing something anyway!"

"Oh, please." Markus snorted derisively and turned his back to her. "Stop pretending you know what you're doing. This mess is out of our league."

"Out of yours, maybe." Terra gritted her teeth. "This isn't the first doomed world that the Viltrumites have saved. Hell, this isn't the first doomed world that I've saved. I've fought despots and tyrants, natural disasters and extinction-level events, Marky, all while you were off playing the glorified mall cop back on Earth. Maybe if you'd actually showed up once in a while, you wouldn't be rolling over like a little bitch right now."

He whirled on her and she clenched her fists in as blatant a threat as she could give out of outright charging him.

"You want to do this again!?"

"Don't tempt me."

…

He broke and looked away first, snarling under his breath.

It wasn't an admission of defeat, not even a surrender, but right now, she'd take what she could get.

"Look, there's enough time for us to kick the shit out of each other later. Believe me, I'm looking forward to it." She promised him, ignoring his answering snort, "But right now, we need to figure out how we're going to help, and how we're going to get home. We can head over to the city, make contact with… the Protectorate, you called them, and-"

She stopped.

Markus was looking away from her, the look on his face almost… hesitant.

An orchestra's worth of alarm bells started screaming at the back of her head.

"What happened?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Don't bullshit me and talk. What happened, and why do you look," she gestured to his face, to the expression he wasn't couldn't hide quickly enough. "Like that."

…

"Fine." He grunted. "After I read up on this world, I kind of lost it. Brought down half the building."

"You already told me this part."

"Yeah, well." He hesitated. "I didn't tell you that after that… I ended up drawing a little attention."

Her stomach dropped.

"What did you do?"

"In my defense - not that I have to defend myself to you -"

"What did you do?!"

"-He hit me first!"

…
​

Yesterday - Markus

Markus ground his jaw as he stared down at the dead man who'd just lobbed an out-and-out fireball at his face.

"Lung, right?" He snarled through gritted teeth, looking down at the gang leader whose Wiki page he'd skimmed out of idle curiosity. "The dragon-man, right? That's your whole gimmick?"

"I-" The man was already eight feet tall, skin morphing into gleaming silver scales, heat billowing off his form as his clothes burnt from the inside out, but Markus cut him off without a care in the world.

"I have a lot of pent-up aggression that I really need to work off." Markus' tone was almost pleasantly conversational "Say, how durable are you exactly? Asking for a friend?"

"You-!"

And that's about as far as he got before Markus planted his fist in his face, his skull nearly caving in as the viltrumite struck him and sent him bouncing across the street with enough force to crack the asphalt and set off every car alarm in the vicinity.

"Never mind. I'll figure it out myself."

…​

So… Markus has anger issues. Just putting it out there.

As always leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.