Gazing down at the orange abyss, my heart pounding in my ribcage like a bass drum, I realized I needed to have a little more faith. Or, at the very least, make one more blind jump into the void as I had done so many times before. This door was not just a door, it was a doorway to the Absolute Universe. And the person on the other side of this door was salvation, not annihilation. I once again felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. The only way to lighten that load was to have someone champion the Earth in my absence. Someone as unyielding as the very city of steel and stone I represented.
I stepped through. The Absolute Universe encompassed my form, crackles and pops sounding like a roll of celestial Bubble Wrap. I knew this place was different. The air was heavier. The colors were more saturated, as if someone had cranked the contrast up to maximum on the reality dial. My feet touched the ground. The gravity was heavier. I could detect a metallic taste to the air. It had the distinct feeling I had walked into a comic book drawn by a lunatic.
Finally she showed herself, Absolute Wonder Woman. A titan in black and red, illuminated by the light of a savage cosmos. Her armor hadn't been forged by mortal craftsmen. The edges were too straight. The finish was too smooth. It had been hammered out in the forges of the gods. The sword at her side, the Godrend Blade, seemed to assure you that really, you didn't want to make her angry. She wasn't beautiful. She was ruinous. She didn't turn heads. She snapped necks. When those red eyes were on me, her shoulders squared, she didn't stand. She stood. She took up space. She possessed it. She was a queen looking out over her domain.
"Who are you?" she asked, storming. Each word felt like a wave breaking against me. Enough to loosen the stars from the firmament. I answered with the confidence born of being the best.
"Bastion Prime," I said to her. "Protector of my Earth. I've come to make an offer to the baddest bitch in the multiverse." My Chicago accent was thick and heavy, like molasses. I pronounced each word slow, like a threat.
She focused on me. A thousand wars blazed in her crimson irises. "What proposal?" she demanded, her every word dripping with mistrust.
I looked back and saw that the boom tube had disappeared, that we were now standing alone in an alley between steel skyscrapers, in the decaying carcass of a long-abandoned metropolis. The air held the smell of wet rock and ozone. "My world is in danger, Wonder Woman. The Viltrumites are coming. I'll need someone to defend my Earth while I fight them, head-on. You're capable of doing that, aren't you?"
She didn't exactly stop, but she did kinda...lean a little on her sword. It was a very slight motion, but I knew she'd at least listened. "The Viltrumites?" she boomed in the alleyway. "Why should I care about your planet's problem?"
I stepped forward, growling, "Because if you don't, millions will die while I'm out there fighting to stop them from taking over the galaxy. You're a hero, aren't you? This shouldn't mean nothing to you."
She hunched closer, her red eyes glowing coals in the night. Her gaze never wavered as she spoke, but I detected a flicker of it in her eyes—a flicker of something feral and starved. "You can't buy heroes, Bastion Prime," she said, a challenge in her voice.
Except she surprised me. She drew the blade back, took a step closer, and extended her hand, laying it on my skull. A quick crack of static jumped from her to me, like lightning trying but not quite sparking. Yet it was warm. "Convince me," she said, and suddenly the alley was a very tight place.
The tension between us was strong—like a snake in the grass that could lunge at any moment. Her gaze drifted up to meet mine, and I realized that she didn't just care about the fate of my world anymore. There was something else in her eyes—something other than a world sitting on a precarious edge. It was desire, and it hit me like a punch.
She reached out and put a hand on my cuirass, tracing the molding along the side. A soft, strong touch. For a moment the war, the billions I was going to kill, everything was forgotten. I was a man, and she a goddess. And it seemed that she wanted me.
"Fine. I'll come," she said, softly. "But, I want to be compensated."
She never lifted her hand from me as she stepped forward and pressed her mouth to my neck. I could feel the warmth, the magic trapped in that amazing body. I made a gate, back to Chicago. My home now. Orange, like flame, danced across her features and it made her look like an ancient goddess. We walked through it, the light consuming the alley.
We stepped off the curb and the strain between us snapped like a rubber band stretched too tight. I took a deep breath of exhaust fumes and listened to the far-off howl of a siren. It was the lullaby of the city. Glass skyscrapers loomed around us, a universe from the eerie buildings I'd fled.
I watched as Wonder Woman looked up at the neon lights above, her dark hair blowing in the wind of the city, and it was as if myth had stepped off the page and into the third dimension, right before my eyes. The noise of Chicago surrounded me, but all I could hear was my heartbeat, the knocking in my skull.
She ran her hand along the curve of my flank, closing her fingers in the tuck of my clothes. She pressed herself to me, her voice a hot blast of air beside my ear. "Show me this city, Bastion Prime," she whispered. "Make me believe it is worth saving."
I swallowed hard. I could hear sirens in the distance. She had her arm around my waist and I felt like every cell in my body was screaming at me to just obliterate that space between us, to take her and make her mine. But that wasn't the way the world was supposed to work.
I heard the hiss of my receiver, a whispered "Zandale, we have a problem." Cecil's voice was tight, wound up like a bow string.
I swallowed the storm and took a deep breath. "Speak."
Cecil's response was sobering. "A Viltrumite arrived on Earth. Her name was Anissa. She wanted Invincible to aid her in her in the Viltrumite cause."
My knees buckled. Anissa.
"She tried to recruit him?" I asked without expression. "What was his response?"
"He refused," Cecil said, and for one moment relief escaped in me. "But she threatened him, Zandale. Told him another was coming. Someone who'd put him right."
Then I heard the slash of Cecil's voice in my ear. The kind of words that made your blood run cold. "Who?" I snarled, though I already knew. Conquest.
"I don't know," he said, and those words hit like a punch. "But the empire is standing right with her. And she's not her eto drink tea."
The weight of creation was crushing me. The war had started. Just like that. Allen and Nolan were escaping their Viltrumite prison and then, from what I could gather, that moment signified the beginning of the war. I thought of Absolute Wonder Woman and her expectant look.
"Ahhh, got a guy," I rasped into the comms unit. "A… someone very different."
Cecil spoke up promptly. "Different how?"
I gazed back at her – Wonder Woman now, her eyes shining like two hot suns as she focused them on me. "Someone very absolute."
"How absolute?" Cecil sounded skeptical.
"Stronger than anything or anyone in this universe, including me. And she's got the will to match," I said into comms. I wasn't exaggerating in the least.
The line was quiet for a moment then, "That's really scary, Zandale."
Cecil didn't know. This woman in front of me could crack the world open with a whisper. But it was not fear that would be measured by the space between us. I needed her close, near enough to reach out.
"Bring her to the Pentagon," whispered Cecil into my ear. "We will plan."
I nodded, smiling. "Sure thing," I said. Meaning more than directions. Wonder Woman didn't look away. She knew what I meant. The space between us was electric, charged with a lightning bolt just waiting for a storm to crack open the sky.
I grabbed her and we dropped into zero gravity. My cape streamed out behind me as I elevated us back into the air. I took us supersonic and I watched as she ate a few milliseconds worth of shockwave face-slap, but she didn't even flinch.
I showed her the city, the grid of squares and right angles that had been the nursery for so much of humanity. I showed her the Sears Tower and the shine of Lake Michigan on the horizon, where the world had begun and ended. Where heroes had died. Where supervillains had died. She saw it all and understood it as a soldier understands. She took it all in and it made sense to her.
Then the Grand Canyon, time's destructive beauty. I watched the wonder on her face, the way it mirrored in her eyes, and for a second something inside me twitched, something unrelated to war or destiny. We drifted, suspended between the sky and the land, and for a second she was closer. A finger width. Her palm pressed against my chest. Enough to feel the heat from her.
"Ever had anyone, Bastion?" she asked, her hair blowing wildly around her like a dark halo in the gale. "Ever had anyone who could see what you are? Someone who could try to pin you down?"
I stopped. We were high enough that I could look down and see the little coastal town like it was in the palm of some giant's hand. I'd slept with five different women. They all had reasons for sleeping with me. They all had fun. But they never really knew me. Not even one of them. They knew the face. They knew Bastion Prime. They knew Zandale. They just didn't know the person wearing that face. The isekai cheat that was far too overpowered.
"Ahh, well, I've had my share," I said finally, torn from my mouth by the wind.
She gazed into my eyes, searching for an answer that went beyond words. She wanted to reach my center, what I would not give her. I didn't owe it to her, and yet, my adaptive ability cut in, shattering the eggshell of her composure.
"Mmmm," Wonder Woman purred, the throaty sound sending a shiver down my spine. She drifted closer, her hot breath tickling my ear as she whispered, "Why don't you take me somewhere more… private, Bastion Prime."
My apartment was hardly the place I'd have chosen to bring a war goddess, but needs must. We dropped out of the night, wind whipping past our ears, and landed on the roof of my block. The door to my apartment had a promising future still ahead of it. A few more kicks and it would open like a battering ram. Home, then. Well, the nearest thing I had to it, at any rate.
You'd think that after I had made what I wanted, I would have left this place. Not really. I never had to. I was either at the Pentagon, the old Guardians of the Globe HQ, or Carla's.