What was the point of power if you couldn't hold onto the things you desired? His life, his wife, all of it spinning further and further out of control. His home was ruined in every sense. The slaughter of the GDA strike team that had been oh-so-callously sacrificed by Cecil was just the icing on the cake.
All Nolan had left was the promise that his son would understand once he explained all of this to him. No matter how much others would do their best to try and keep him away or otherwise waylay him in the process.
Their attempts at using orbital weaponry went awry, and he'd already felt confident that he'd destroyed the sole GDA asset there that could have been applied against him. They'd proven as ineffective as the defenses of the facility that he was now raiding.
Bullets peppered his body, doing little but flattening against his body as he floated through the halls of the installation he was inside. It was a distraction from what he wanted to do, which was to find Mark. However, the conversation that needed to happen between the two of them was one that would fundamentally alter his son's place in the universe.
Better to properly clear the board and ensure that no existing threats would interrupt that talk. Taijitu, easily, had skyrocketed to the top of the list in the last eight months. An uncontrolled variable diametrically opposed to the way Nolan viewed the world. What he wasn't, though, was an experienced superhero.
As the Americans liked to say, Taijitu didn't know where the bodies were buried. Nolan did.
Or more accurately, it could be said that decades of experience in the superheroic landscape had given him a kind of knowledge that would usually come with age. Twenty years was nothing for a Viltrumite, even if that length of time was not an insignificant portion of a human's lifespan.
Time enough to fight by the side of their greatest defenders, too, and learn where they kept their spoils of battle. Items too dangerous to destroy in the eyes of the various powers that be. Whether that was because the actual material costs of doing so were too onerous, even for them, or because forces like the GDA saw a value in them.
He'd been made familiar with this site some time in the past and passively aware it was the vault in which a lot of these items were stored. And where a specific item he was looking for was located. Now if only he could stop with the annoyances that were peppering him all over, that would be even better.
The defenses of the massive, secure warehouse might have been enough to deter most of the greatest threats on this planet. For example, the Mauler Twins would have been shredded under the successive wave of fire. Against Nolan, it was more of an annoyance as he was floated through the gunfire that came from seemingly endless turrets littered throughout the hallways of this base.
He surged forward quickly, and a few well-timed punches destroyed them with ease. Even more mild applications of effort stripped away the walls so that he could find the personnel of this base, huddled deeper inside of some kind of control room. Analysts, lackeys, and other GDA workers who ultimately weren't anyone he needed to hurt.
Though if they didn't give him what he wanted… that calculus would change quickly.
Awash in the light from a sea of monitors and backlit by the blaring red alarms of the hallway he'd just burst through, Nolan cast a terrible impression. Staring down at the crowd of humans, shocked and stunned, he pointed at them. "Where do you keep the restricted and confiscated materials?"
Nothing but crickets and silence, as a few people in the room cowered or sobbed. Others tried to look as determined as possible, as if bravery alone could stop him. He didn't sigh, but he did want to. "If I need to repeat this question a third time, people will start being culled indiscriminately. Where do you keep the restricted and confiscated materials?"
Thankfully, someone in the room saved him from the tedium. A middled-aged, balding man with sallow skin and a heavy gut. "T-They're in the deepest sector of the base, sector o-mega!"
"Frank, you fucking asshole!" A woman barked at him.
"I'm not dying for this shit, Carol, this is so far above our pay grade!"
Whatever happened or they said next, frankly, Nolan didn't care. But he didn't have any interest in listening to this bickering any longer. "Next," he spoke, just the singular word cutting off their conversation like a hot knife through butter. "Where's the power supply?"
"Sector Gamma!" Frank barked out, eager to save his skin. Another failing of humans, so keen to betray their duty for their own self-betterment. In this case, though, useful for Nolan's ends.
With the information he had, there wasn't much point in continuing to interact with them. None of them were important, nor had they had the gall to actively try to harm him. Compared to the massacre at his home of the GDA agents who'd tried to harry him, he had far less inclination to actively try to kill them.
So he floated back into the winding hallways, navigating through the directions that he was given. His first stop, though, would be the gamma sector, chiefly to cut off the power. The less they knew of what he was here for, the better.
Before he could get any deeper into the base, though, a familiar and singularly disruptive voice rang out through the facility's intercom system.
"Looking for something, Nolan?"
It made him stutter a step in his floating as he tried to ignore it, rather than turning his attention back to the search at hand. Engaging with Cecil on any level was just a bad idea, on every level.
"Giving me the silent treatment? That's fine. I'm happy to talk with a captive audience." He had to keep himself from gritting his teeth as he continued on. "Y'know, I've given a lot of thought as to what this conversation would look like. This confrontation, if you wanna call it that. Permutations of what it might look like, what it might sound like, where, when… but then I realized that much of this boiled down to a singular question."
Resounding through all of the speakers of the base, Nolan had no doubt that the various employees were wondering where precisely this was going to go. What parts of the conversation made sense, and which didn't? "Why? Why'd you kill them, Nolan? Perpetuate this lie, this whole dog and pony show of a goddamn deception, for months and months?"
"I know you didn't do it for the hell of it," Cecil pointed over the intercom. "So why? There's no reason to hide behind a pretense or try to pretend anymore, Nolan. Just be honest with me."
That was the thing with a man like Cecil, Nolan noted, as he spotted a mounted camera focusing toward him out of the corner of his eye. Giving him even a modicum of information was probably too much. That was just the type of man he was, at the end of the day. Capable of wringing blood from a stone and then having the audacity to ask why it didn't have more to give.
Yet even so, something compelled him to speak. Maybe it was some relic of those years of friendship, feigned or not, for the sake of his duty. "You need to stay out of this, Cecil. Or better yet, stand down your forces."
Things would be so much easier if they'd all just surrender. But no. He'd been on Earth long enough to understand how singularly stubborn humanity was. The only way surrender and subjugation would come was when they understood that resistance in all forms was utterly futile.
"I could," he admitted, freely even. "It'd be the easier option. But I don't know what you want there, and I'm not about to let you have it without a fight."
"Then every death and casualty from here on out is on your hands."
"I can live with that, Nolan. I've lived with worse," Cecil responded, as Nolan stalked through the halls, doing his best to ignore the streaming civilian workers that were trying to flee around him, as he delved deeper toward the gamma sector.
None of them needed to die. He'd already gotten answers as to where his goal was, and frankly, it'd be a waste of human capital.
"But do you know who might have a thing or two to say to you?" the director asked, and it was enough to give him pause. Because he had a faint idea of who might be coming to speak with him. Confirmation that came after what was quite possibly the worst blowout of their marriage.
On the other end of the intercom, the sound of shuffling and a feminine intake of breath could be heard. A familiar one, that made his eyes widen. "...Nolan." After all of this time, Debbie's words could contain multitudes with ease.
He stopped, under the hail of turret fire, absentmindedly whipping a piece of debris at the offending machine. It broke and shattered from the sheer velocity of the projectile, as he felt his throat clench and tremble. Still, he didn't respond to his wife, continuing in.
"Nolan, I don't know why you're doing this. But I know it isn't too late to stop." It'd been too late before humanity had started to use iron tools. He was set on this path, for better or worse.
But he'd be damned if she didn't make it difficult to choose, to make it so singularly tempting to betray his duty. Of making the mental question of maybe all the more tempting, as her voice quavered over the speakers. "Please. For me. For Mark."
"I'm doing this for Mark," he spoke, thoughtlessly, and haplessly, the words escaping him unbidden, no matter how true they were all the same.
Whatever sensors or microphones they had on him to hear his words, Debbie's answer came almost immediately. "How does killing people and causing all this destruction sound like something Mark would want? We won't know unless you explain!"
Mark wouldn't have wanted this, but that was Nolan's failing by not appropriately giving his son the equipment he needed. His son would find the idea of murdering people abominable, soft as he was by the standards of Viltrum. No, that wasn't quite right. He'd be considered weak, which was a different kind of sin, but they'd have time to ensure that he was appropriately prepared in due time.
No words escaped him, especially as he found that he was getting close to his target. Precisely where he needed to go, judging by the text on the walls, as he ventured deeper into the base itself. Eventually floating before a massive set of metallic, vault-like doors that barred his way further. Not that it'd be the case for very much longer.
As the planetary defense equivalent for Earth, the GDA had their hands on some fields of technology that even the Viltrum Empire and the Coalition of Planets would have found impressive. Teleportation, if energy-intensive, was one example. Some of the boons of pressing forward technological progress, while also restricting the most societally disruptive kinds from making a mess of the world.
Their reactors, common in many of their facilities and bases, were another. It was functionally the same applications of sun discs, found more widely in other pieces of what they called 'super' science, just turned large and stationary. Judging by the sight around him, too, they'd taken the efforts to put it in the most defensible position of the base too, sealed up by as much concrete as humanly possible.
Perhaps they'd prepared for the off chance of some kind of limited nuclear exchange or other high-yield weapons. Whatever it might have been prepared to hold out against, though, it couldn't defend against a suitably motivated man of his caliber. Slamming his hands forward, he wrenched open the doors with a calamitous heaving of tearing metal, exposing the rows of power generation equipment.
"Nolan, it's not too late. We can still make this right if you just give up," Cecil exclaimed, just the faintest hint of panic in his voice. He lied so well that Nolan almost believed that he was telling the truth.
"We've gone too far for me to stop now. I'vegone too far," he quietly spoke. Without further words, and interrupted whatever Cecil was going to say next, Nolan accelerated into the rows of whatever reactor the base had set up. Slamming into them with his fists was a blunt-force but effective way of cutting off the power and thus the cameras, intercoms, and likely even the turrets.
Let them wonder what he was there for or what he'd intended on taking from this location. By the time they discovered it, it would hopefully be too late. With that objective and distraction taken care of, he began to make his way to the omega sector. Though if it turned out that Frank had been lying to him, he'd have to cull whatever survivors he could find, just as a matter of course.
Chiefly because of how important his goal here was, just to clear the board for his future discussion with Mark.
Demons were a species that typically kept to themselves and left the surface world to their own devices. Outside of some misunderstandings with the human population in the distant past, to Nolan's understanding of their kind, they functionally managed the Under Realm without any interference. They'd likely continue to do so even in the wake of the future Viltrumite occupation, without flinching from their existing duties.
However, this disinterest in the surface was the general rule, not the universal one. In the past some, like Damien Darkblood, had a profound disinterest in their duties down below, shirking the typical stations of their race to try and reach the surface. Others had significantly less benign intentions, and the formation of various demonic cults was far more common in the past than it was in the modern era.
The Immortal used to tell stories about some of those fights. It was an intrusive thought that Nolan immediately shoved away, rather than thinking of the friends that he'd slain.
One of the legacies of their ancient cults? Items that could interface with the occultic and magical lore that these forces used. By and large, the supernatural varied from world to world, yet with the exception of Taijitu, most of them simply were not feasible threats to the average adult Viltrumite.
Nor was the artifact he was looking for even able to take out the most troublesome of the targets between him and the subjugation of this planet. Demons could be summoned from what they called Hell with a bit of application and some higher occultism that Nolan frankly wasn't interested in learning. Getting back usually required similarly complex rituals, unless the demon in question was lazy enough to create something that partially automated the process.
Enter the Sepulchre of the Unholy Muse, when applied with a generous coating of blood, and then promptly smacked against the target, sending the target to Hell. That was it. It was all they'd managed to discover about the item after raiding some supervillain's base and listening to Darkwing inventory the list of confiscated material in the aftermath.
At the time it'd stuck out as an interesting novelty, and he'd resolved to try and write it into one of his books somehow. What was a rather normal life for a Viltrumite agent or a superhero tended to make rather good reading material for your typical human, looking to live vicariously through prose. Here and now, in the face of deeper threats…
Well, he was taking more of an interest in it.
It wasn't that hard to find the secondary vault where so many of the various odds and ends that the Guardians of the Globe and GDA had squirreled away for a rainy day. This probably hadn't been what they'd expected it'd be used for, but that was on them for not accounting for that possibly. Nolan swept his gaze over the mostly empty room, trying to take in the sight and figure out where to start his search.
Rows and rows of containers that were thankfully well marked. Just going from the raw size that he remembered the Sepulchre being in the first place, that helped narrow it down even further, and with his own heightened speed thrown into the mix? It was only a matter of minutes until he found the object in question.
[Subject H-045: Sepulchre of the Unholy Muse]
Sealed within an expansive case, it was child's play to crack open so that he could behold the sturdy, inhumanly hard masonry inside of it. Made of a dark, smooth, oily stone and engraved with sigils that almost hurt the eye to inspect too closely, it was unmistakably the same artifact that'd been prised out of the Midnight Magician's belongings. Originally, they'd been looking for something that might be able to undo whatever had originally caused the curse that was held in place over the region, but that had ultimately come to naught.
Around the size of his torso, it was perhaps a bit awkward to hold up, but he was hardy enough to survive being in the aftermath of a superhuman confrontation. It only took a moment to find a tarp to wrap it up in. Not the most ideal cover, but as long as it kept Cecil from knowing what precisely he had taken, the tarp would suffice.
It'd likely hold up well enough on his way out of the base. Hefting it up, Nolan flew rapidly through the halls, through mostly open doors. Though he stopped as a dull, rapid thudding echoed through the metallic corridors. Glancing around, it was unusual if only because the sounds weren't going away from him, like anyone with sense ought to have.
They were coming toward Nolan. Multiple feet, a metallic sort of clanking, a faint whirring, and something like the soft panting of something taking ragged breaths. He paused, setting down his ill-gotten prize, as it grew closer, fists clenching at his sides, as the noises finally reached out, barely visible in the dimly lit confines of the base.
Fast figures that moved more like hunting hounds than men.
Three humanoid shapes came loping out of the darkness at him. Only the red gleam of their singular eye, on the cybernetic carapaces that covered much of their body, was visible for a brief second. Everything else was a blur, as they moved in concert on all fours.
All of them moved less like men and more like beasts. It was the only thought he got to have before they were upon him, with strikes that battered his body into the hallway, the bunker around them coming undone from the sheer, concussive force on display. Walls broke around them, the concrete and metal terrain shattering, and the sepulchre going flying behind him, back the way he came.
Cecil had either been preparing for the threat he'd posed for months or just taking advantage of past contingencies for other problems Earth might face. Perhaps a bit of both. He wouldn't have put any of those options past him.
Up close, hemming him in and giving him no time to recover, it was easy to take note of the deeply chemical scent that clung to the cyborgs that were trying to bludgeon him into submission. However, more worrisome was the tact they were taking as they tried their best to tear and bite into his flesh, even his face.
For the most part, Viltrumites could withstand the vast majority of damage and enemies in the known universe. The toughest among them could even skim across the surface of a sun for very brief periods of time, though the limits of this were ill-tested for obvious reasons. Some parts of their anatomy remained stubbornly weaker and more vulnerable to attack than others, though.
Most of which were on the face. Their eyes, ears, nose, and lips, specifically. Almost any Viltrumite with lasting scars or maiming usually had them in those areas. In the case of the eyes especially. That was where they attacked, teeth clenching down on his cheek and nose, inciting just the briefest moment of animal panic.
But that was all he allotted himself as years of training and conditioning kicked in almost all at once.
With a violent roar, he flexed his arms, blasting away the drones. They went flying but righted themselves in the air with the nimbleness of a gymnast, while he did what Viltrumites did best: went on the attack.
The first he slammed into had the singular misfortune to see both of his hands reach its body. One on the shoulder, the other atop the skull, as Nolan began to wrench the head in a brutal circle. A messy process that required him to actually exert himself a little, as the machine slammed its fists against him all the while.
He didn't stop, though, not as the others came and tried to attack him from behind. Their three-fingered fists clawing at his costumed body, or trying to batter him into submission again. The pain, as little as it was, was ephemeral. Nolan chose to rely on far more reliable things to see him through to finishing this.
It was all that primal, animal instinct that saw his kind rise to the top of the galactic food chain, as he ripped the head off of the cyborg with a splatter of black blood. Or whatever was running through the veins of the abomination that Cecil's pet scientists had cooked up. It went flying, gore and viscera splashing against the ground, as he reeled toward the others.
Having three of them had been enough to distract and overwhelm them, especially as their tactics more favored that of pack hunters than anything else. Just having two doing the same wasn't a threat on the equivalent level. Something both of them learned quickly as he began to dismantle them.
And he meant that in a very literal sense of the word. One screamed a ragged, scratchy scream, all feral intelligence, as he leapt toward him with outstretched arms. It met his fist against its face, shattering the red camera at the center of the skull and sending the body flying through a wall.
The other came from the side, likely trying to ambush him, but not fast enough for him to twist and meet the charge head-on. Both arms came for him, and he met each hand with his own before gripping with all of his might and pulling them apart. With no effort at all, both arms were ripped from the corpse before he immediately proceeded to use both arms to smash and clobber the cyborg into a mess.
In comparison, the last didn't even rate much of a mention. Now that it was by itself, all he had to do was reach up and begin to properly tear it apart, to brutalize and maim it, as there were no distractions to the process. He dropped the combination of machine parts and bodily limbs to the ground, taking a breath at the effort that it'd taken.
Not much, but enough to be worth noting. A younger Viltrumite might genuinely be threatened, but one like him, thousands of years old…? It didn't take much effort to destroy the entities that Cecil had sent.
He moved to go back the way he came to retrieve the package in question; he was here to begin with but stopped at the sight of movement out of the corner of his eye. A slender, top-heavy figure that made him pause once again as he looked at the newest of the drones that hadn't been standing at the other end of the ruined hall mere moments ago.
It was humanoid and designed with aesthetics that wouldn't frighten human sensibilities. Yet even so, it had sweeping curves, fingers and toes, and articulation that seemed downright unreasonable for a machine of war. Standing there, still as the grave, he moved to propel himself before it too blurred into motion, sliding smoothly to the side as he crashed into where it'd been only moments before.
Fast didn't begin to describe it.
He'd fought and observed very few people on this planet who had the speed to genuinely be a threat to him. Red Rush was one of them; Taijitu had been another. The fact that a drone could move that quickly, yet be of such a distinctly alien design lineage, was giving him pause. Seeing as he used to be in charge of dealing specifically with threats that could hurt Viltrumites…
Well, a small modicum of caution could be warranted in this situation.
It crossed the distance between them once again, and he met it in a clash, throwing a punch to experiment with the programmed combat style of this construct. Instead of meeting it head-on, though, it had the presence of mind to dodge and then slam its fist directly into his stomach. Not enough to knock the air out of his lungs, though, and noticeably weaker than the cyborgs.
Whatever it was, it was built for speed. That'd never be enough against a foe like Nolan, though.
Something the drone seemed to notice as it pulled back, rather than get caught by his grasping hands. For the briefest second, Nolan would swear that it saw it thinking, as its head tilted to the side ever so slightly. Whatever was going on in that artificial mind, he had no intention of allowing it to try and come up with a plan. Taking a fistful of the walls with both hands, he threw it toward the machine in a hail of shrapnel.
Of course, nothing could be simple when it came to his plans. Rather than dodging, it made a series of hand gestures that baffled him until it outright disappeared in a puff of smoke. Which cleared to show off a chunk of wall roughly the size of the puppet, all of the useless material falling to the ground shortly after.
Then, the feeling of ice.
As fast as lightning, something had leapt onto his back, and a hand had slapped against his eyes as freezing ice began to form against his face. Creeping ever faster, as another arm moved to wrap around his throat. Two prongs of attack, both intended to make him almost panic.
Much to his shame, it was a gesture that very much worked.
"GET OFF!" He roared, reaching up toward those arms with both hands and finding the wrists of either of them. Then, he squeezed.
The failing with the prior attacking cyborgs had been that they weren't creative enough, or perhaps lacked much in the way of esoteric abilities, or just flat-out technique, tactics, or skill. An element that the creator of this machine had knowingly or not chosen to rectify, with creating one with heightened statistics in terms of problem-solving. If nothing else, the ice made it relatively easy to figure out the source of it, too.
Removing Taijitu from the board sooner, rather than later, became an outright imperative.
The arms of the construct shattered under the strength of his superior might as he pulled forward while it pulled back. Dropping both of the loose limbs, he reached up and shattered the makeshift mask of rime that had been forming on his face, whirling toward his opponent out of instinct. A smart move, considering that removing the arms didn't seem to remove the threat of the puppet.
At the shoulders, the jagged stumps of where he'd dismembered its arms twitched uselessly. However, much like its creator, it also seemed to have an endless amount of tricks. Made evident as its mouth opened, and a hail of rapidly shot, earthy brown needles began to be dumped forth in a piercing hail.
He didn't give it a chance to keep up the irritating hail for long. With his right arm shielding his face, Nolan surged forward, sending debris flying as he slammed into it at a speed that made the entire facility shudder. Hitting the bedrock and feeling the construct seize, before a glowing orb of molten hot flame began to form in its mouth next. Starting from a pinprick and then growing to a marble, presumably to be launched at him next.
There wasn't any reason for the supposition or presumption on his part. Just a little piece of his well-worn battle instincts screaming at the Viltrumite to destroy it, or it'd unleash something bad on its next attack. Having never seen a reason to deny that little voice in his head, he gave it his best try.
His left arm understood the assignment, as he drove it in a piercing stab toward the robot's chest. Driving deeper, past the faint resistance that seemed to struggle for a millisecond, and then past even that. Right as his digits reached what seemed to be the core of it. Though he wasn't so sure on that front, mostly because instead of growing hotter by the power that'd need to be output, it was growing colder instead.
At a certain point, though, something had to give. The body in front of him was what broke first, as he pushed his fist, coated in fragments of some sort of freezing crystalline structure, through the chest. In its head, whatever next attack had been cooking was winked out, as if the entire thing was a marionette with the strings suddenly cut.
It collapsed around his fist, and he breathed easier as he pulled his hands back and looked down at the battered, mostly destroyed creation that had given him so much trouble. While he would have preferred to forestall this entire chain of events entirely, having things come to a head as they were now…might have been for the best. If humanity was growing capable of fielding things of this caliber, they were growing potentially too dangerous for a singular Viltrumite to handle on their own.
Considering the state of their race and what this world would mean for it in the future, that was an unacceptable outcome. Better to nip these threats in the bud now, rather than allow them to grow any further. With that done, he moved to grab the artifact that he'd left behind for these series of fights.
It was time to go and prepare for whatever came next.
Flying out of the base with the item he'd come to collect under one arm, Nolan had assumed that he would have a little bit of time to prepare himself. Not much, mind you, but a little bit.
There had been a presumption that he'd be ambushed before long, seeing as in their shoes, it was exactly what he would have done. Some understanding that with the way things were going, he'd be walking into another trap. Taijitu's capacity to teleport was an unspeakably unfair one, though Nolan had been operating under the presumption that resource constraints on some level curtailed it.
After all, the man never reached for it as the first option in combat. That meant that there had to be some sort of limitation, whether that was range, concentration, or something that he could use to his advantage when the time came. With that said, the matte black plane that heralded his teleportation was still a little unsettling to see.
It was so dark that he suspected no light could escape the temporary wormholes that the alien created. Just a jagged tear in the world that three figures came out of. Two of them he might have expected to see, but the last was one that genuinely took him aback.
The sight of the Immortal, apparently alive and well, was a surprise. Then again, perhaps Nolan should have been more thorough in actually putting down the man. The man was furious, and rightfully so. In his shoes, Nolan would likely be just as singularly enraged. He was kept from charging directly forward toward Nolan by the arm on his shoulder belonging to the other significant obstacle preventing his conquest of Earth.
Taijitu hovered there in a new costume, quite obviously Art's work. It was just something he could recognize from years of working with the man. The new costume was far more modern than the almost religious robes that Taijitu had been wearing up to this point.
Nolan might have even approved of it in different circumstances. However, the problem was the last person alongside them. The one person he'd needed to speak to, if they were going to begin the work of the Viltrum Empire. To bring him into the fold properly so that he knew of the expectations that were being put onto his shoulders.
"I don't suppose we can try to get you to surrender peacefully, Omni-Man?" Taijitu spoke, making the man at his side bristle with impatience, as Immortal glared daggers at him.
"We've gone a bit past that, Taijitu," Nolan admitted. "But it's not too late for you to leave this planet."
"Something tells me the comfortable life I've carved out here wouldn't survive either way. Even if I left, I'd still be a loose end, one way or another." The alien shrugged. "I've made my peace with what I've chosen."
"So be it. And Immortal…"
The words that came out of his old, long-time friend's mouth were dripping with vitriol and hate. Out of the years of friendship they'd developed, staring into his maddened eyes, Nolan couldn't see any of it. Just an overwhelming desire to kill him. "You think that I'd run away or stand down? After everything you've done?"
"I was going to say that you should have stayed dead." Nolan corrected the man. "Killing you again won't bring me any joy. For what it's worth, it didn't the first time either. With any of you."
"Dad…" Mark trailed off, looking absolutely gobsmacked. "What are you doing? Why are you doing this?"
Hearing his son so hurt and lost made his heart ache, but Nolan did his best to steel himself.
"...Just stay out of this, Mark. I'll explain everything when we're finished."
He wouldn't need his son to wrap things up here.
Genji had done well in the months since he'd arrived on Earth to entrench himself in the superheroic community. Better than Nolan ever had, he'd freely admit, if only because the boy seemed to have considerably less attachment to his people and their way of doing things. It meant that he didn't need to pretend to embrace the traditions of Earth, unless he too was another deep-cover agent.
Of course, being present for not even a year wasn't the same as being present for twenty. How could it be a match for the wealth of experience and knowledge that Nolan possessed against threats specific to this world?
Which was why the alien likely didn't expect to get hit by a chunk of masonry thrown as fast as Nolan's considerable strength could manage it. He wound it up, aimed, and threw it fast enough that the air cracked at the passing. Normally, enough to break any typical piece of regular stonework or infrastructure. But the Sepulchre was built of sturdier things, holding when it should have broken.
Spinning through the air, he could savor the moment of stunned confusion on Taijitu's face, as it was a level of strength and speed that Nolan had been careful to never truly display. All of his real strength, durability, and velocity had been sandbagged for years, for the most part. If the GDA had tried to brief the alien, anything they told him was bound to be wildly incorrect.
It was what Nolan was counting on and what was proven correct, as the stone impacted his torso. He'd almost missed, though, with the speed that might have been Taijitu's biggest boon. Attempting to twist out of the way at the last second, to no avail. The idol was smeared with his blood, and Taijitu's eyes widened for the briefest second before the molten fires of Hell enveloped him whole. One moment he was there and the next, gone, vanished, leaving nothing but cinders in his wake.
Not dead, but certainly out of the way. Good enough for now.
"Go to hell," Nolan grunted before turning his attention to the other two individuals flying his way.
Mark seemed absolutely gobsmacked by these events, more confused than anything else. As he flew toward his father, though not as fast as he could have. Incredulity and shock still colored so much of his handling of the situation. That was good. It meant that Nolan could still have a chance to talk his son down and explain things in a calm and reasonable manner.
For Immortal's sudden rush toward him, though…
"MURDERER!"
He slammed into Nolan, moving pretty much the moment that Nolan had thrown the masonry at Genji. The smart move, as his blow was strong enough to genuinely hurt. All of the Guardians of the Globe, working in tandem with one another, could punch far above their weight class with some regularity. It was why he'd decided they'd needed to go first; as a unit, they were one of Earth's strongest defensive assets.
Blood splattered out of his mouth as he was sent reeling through the air, with the Immortal seizing him by the shoulders. "We were your friends, and you betrayed us!" Then, rearing his head back, he slammed it forward into Nolan's nose.
Rocketing through the air before he caught himself, there was a growl that escaped him as he looked up at the bearded face of the Immortal. Instead of allowing him to meet him this time, the Viltrumite accelerated to close the distance, leveraging his superior speed and strength in this instant.
Without the support of the rest of the Guardians of the Globe, let alone their laughable replacements? He didn't stand a chance.
"Dad, no!" Mark yelled, trying to get between them, though not fast enough to stop Nolan from striking his opponent.
"I betrayed nothing!" Nolan roared back as he brought a fist between them and uppercut Immortal away, teeth flying with the impact.
He was tired. Tired of hurting the people he once called friends or the allies that he'd made over the years. Of shocking his loved ones with the depths of the violence that he could inflict. Duty to Viltrum, though, only ended at death.
It was the kind of understanding that he wouldn't call a soothing balm to his feelings. But it was something that gave him a clarity of focus, as the sheer concussive blasts of their successive blows kept forcing his son back. Earth shattered, and dust rippled out from the increasingly fraught ruins of the bunker below, singularly unsuited to deal with two superhumans of their caliber fighting in its vicinity.
A right hook slammed into his gut that he took, only to punch the Immortal in the face in turn and send him flying. Then, following it up with a series of brutal blows that only seemed to wear the man down more or leave him dazed as he crashed into the earth below them. Nolan sank into it as the two of them fell, falling atop the immortal and driving his fist into the man's chest.
Right as both of his hands crashed against his face, the human's thumbs trying to plunge into his eyes. "I'LL KILL YOU!"
No, he wouldn't.
Not when Nolan's fist was pushing into his chest, past the flesh and hardened bones, to get a firm grip. Through the agony of having his eyes attacked, he reached in with his other hand… and tore. Brutally, viscerally, as the two halves of the Immortal went flying to either side of him, blood splattered across the landscape all the while.
Blinking blearily, his gaze felt like it was throbbing as he spotted Mark landing before him, a flicker of blood from the Immortal's bisection having hit his chest. There was a look that Nolan didn't like there, on his face. Something small and vulnerable, like he was staring at a stranger.
"Dad…" Mark swallowed thickly, hands unsure if they should reach for Nolan or not as he stood up. "Dad, w-what have you done?"
"Mark," Nolan started to speak, eager to get the words off of his chest that'd been lingering there all day, hovering closer to his son. The way he recoiled, eyes locked on the blood across his body, was heartbreaking, but it was no worse than what the boy was bound to see when they properly took up their conquest of the planet.
Taking a breath, he centered himself, beginning the conversation that he'd been practicing for some time. "We need to talk."