The air crackled with white energy. The blinding light subsided to reveal Cecil, standing with his hands in his pockets, "Pick up your jaws, you're not tourists!"
The newly formed Guardians of The Globe turned to the sudden angry voice. Cecil strode past them, he walked with a calculated kind of urgency.
"This isn't a holy site. This is your job!" Cecil thrust a finger against Robot's metal chest.
"The sooner you get up to speed, the sooner people stop dying!"
Rex-Splode spotted something on one of the walls. He frowned. He spoke with considerably less arrogance than usual, "Hey Cecil, you missed a spot."
Cecil walked over to the blood-stain on the wall. The stain had an immediate visual impact on the new Guardians. All of them knew how it had got there. It was a bloody reminder of the shoes they needed to fill.
Cecil turned to look back at the Guardians, "Left that one there as a reminder. When you prove yourselves worthy of the heroes who came before you, it'll get cleaned off. Until then, stare at it, whenever you think you're hot shit."
A male voice spoke in Cecil's earpiece. His eyebrows knotted together, "Settle in, we'll talk later."
White light enveloped Cecil. The air crackled with energy. In an instant, he was gone.
Rex-Splode whistled appreciatively, "Sweet digs!"
Clark looked around the team's new headquarters. The blood stain on the wall stripped the reality of the situation bare. Whoever had massacred the Guardians was still out there.
"The training facilities here are considerably more advanced. We should start immediately, we must strive to live up to the memories of the previous Guardians." Robot said.
The next few weeks passed by in a blur of activity. Clark still attended school, but his focus was elsewhere. The things that had once made him excited, a cute girl in class, or getting a good grade on a test, no longer gave him the same pleasure. The new world he lived in didn't have room for many aspects of his old life.
He trained with the Guardians every morning and evening. Together, they responded to and dealt with several major emergencies. When a call came in, no matter what he was doing, whether it was school or eating dinner with his parents, he had to go.
Clark was making steady progress with his powers, and his combat training. In his own body, he could now resist an all out attack from Shrinking Rae for a minute or two before becoming overwhelmed.
He divided his time between Omni-Man's body and Atom-Eve's. They were the strongest forms he could take. He didn't waste time trying to master lesser bodies, like Dupli-Kate or Monster Girl. He had a finite amount of time to become as strong as he possibly could, the murderer of the previous Guardians could strike at any moment.
A screen that covered most of a wall suddenly burst to life. Cecil's face was displayed at an enormous size. The GDA director looked even more serious than normal, "Guardians! We need you, now! Invincible's under attack!"
Robot immediately took charge, "Silver Giant, go on ahead! You will arrive faster than we can! We will be there as soon as possible!"
Clark nodded, then without a word, he rocketed upwards into the sky. The rest of the Guardian's struggled to stay standing from the force of the winds that the Silver Giant left in his wake.
A small piece of machinery in Clark's helmet projected a map in front of his eyes. The distress call was represented by a pulsing red dot. The atmosphere around him ignited in brilliant red and orange hues.
'Hang on Invincible!' Clark thought to himself. He had a slightly tumultous history with the half-viltrumite, but Mark was still a superhero putting his life on the line to protect his planet. Though he didn't say it, Clark felt a kind of shared struggle with Invincible, as they struggled to balance their age, personal lives and superhero work.
Bang!
Clark burst through the wall of a high-rise building. Numerous heads turned to look at him with undisguised menace.
A lion-headed warrior stared at the newcomer with a hungry curiousity. The white fur around his nose shifted as he sniffed, "You smell just like the other one? Another viltrumite, how delicious!"
Whoosh!
The only thing Clark saw was a white and golden blur. Then, pain exploded across the left side of his face. The force of the blow was greater than anything he'd ever felt. The left side of his vision blurred and distorted.
"Yes! That's it! Resist, fight!" The lion-headed warrior roared gleefully.
Clark saw the muscles in the warrior's shoulder twitch. He knew that another strike was coming. There was no time to dodge, he could only raise his arms into a desperate guard.
Bang!
The spiked edge of the mace crashed into his forearms. Agony descended on Clark's mind, the bones in his right forearm splintered in all directions. Blood poured out from the mutilated area, the only thing holding his wrist to the rest of his arm were a few torn pieces of skin.
'I'm going to die.' The thought hit him with complete, and terrifying clarity. In two blows, this alien warrior had dealt him two major wounds.
A desperate will to survive coursed through Clark's blood. He screamed, "No!"
Clark's powers activated more forcefully than they ever had before. In an instant, too quickly for even the lion-headed warrior to react, he shifted into a different body.
The brief battle had already caused catastrophic damage to his silver armour. The left side of his face was visible to the world.
'I don't want to die!'
Clark's new body belonged to a hero he'd seen at the Guardians' auditions. The hero's strength was unremarkable, but his healing ability was immensely powerful. The splintered bone and mangled flesh in Clark's right arm healed at a speed that was almost instantaneous.
Clark shifted again. Nanoseconds after he'd changed out of the healer's body, sharp claws covered in white fur slashed towards his face.
'I don't want to die!'
Clark lifted his arm to meet the blow. The claws gouged nearly an inch deep into his flesh. The pain Clark was expecting didn't come. Instead, a white hot rage burst forth from inside of him.
"Aaah!" Clark roared with fury. The concrete beneath his feet shattered with every step. He charged like a wild beast towards his opponent. The violent vibrations caused the damaged silver armour to fall from his body.
The lion-headed warrior's lips curled into a snarl, "You dare to imitate me? Die!"
The two identical warriors both possessed strength that could pulverise asteroids into dust. Their collision created a shockwave so violent that the space around them seemed on the verge of tearing open.
The other thugs that Machine Head had hired ragdolled in the air. The force of the shockwave wasn't something that any human, even a superhuman, could resist.
Invincible shouted in panic as the shockwave sent him crashing through the walls of the building and out into the open air. The other thugs screamed as well as they plummeted to the ground below. Despite having been fighting for his life just moments ago, Invincible still caught each of them just before they became paste on the pavement.
The floor that Clark and Battle Beast were standing on was countless times too fragile to endure the impacts of the blows. They fell through the air, locked together in a savage struggle, as they punch and clawed at one another.
'Kill! Kill! Kill!' There was only one thought in Clark's mind. His consciousness was consumed by an endless thirst for blood. The pain he felt as Battle Beast's claws raked across his chest only made him more furious.
Battle Beast howled with fury. His bloodlust raged like a wildfire, "I underestimated you imitator!"
Clark and Battle Beast tumbled through the air. Their fall didn't stop until they had crashed through every floor of the high-rise building.
Battle Beast didn't use his mace. The joy he felt as his fists slammed into his opponent, and his claws sent blood splashing onto his fur, was something that could only be achieved in the purity of bare-handed combat.
Battle Beast landed a brutal punch to Clark's stomach. The enormous impact of the blow forced Clark back a step. Clark roared with mindless fury, he charged forwards. His claws ripped through the fur on Battle Beast's cheek, leaving deep gouges in the skin.
"Yes! Yes! This! This is what I search for! A worthy opponent!" Battle Beast shouted in celebration. Every fibre of his being was alive with bloodlust. The insatiable thirst for violence that had driven him across the galaxy finally could drink in great gulps.
Clark didn't notice The Guardians arrive. He was consumed completely by his body's inherent desire for war. The insatiable bloodlust swallowed up his identity as "Clark" without a trace.
At the GDA headquarters beneath the Pentagon, Cecil watched the two lion-headed gods fight. In order to distuinguish any single attack from the blur of white and red, the footage had to be slowed down by hundreds of times. Technicians worked desperately to keep the badly overheating computers from setting ablaze.
Donald's adam's apple bobbed nervously. He adjusted his glasses, "Sir, what do we-"
Cecil's eyes didn't move from the screen, "What do we do Donald? You tell me, because I'm out of fucking ideas! That thing nearly tore Omni-Man, even if it was a shittier version of him, into pieces! What, you want me to ask the real one to join in and get his legs ripped off?"
The shockwaves from the fight between Clark and Battle Beast caused skyscrapers to tumble to the ground. The Guardians worked desperately to save as many people as possible.
Robot's processors analysed every possibility. The answer was immutable. Earth had no form of weaponry that could defeat the two warring alien warriors.
A team of GDA agents had arrived not long after The Guardians and swiftly captured Machine Head. The purple glow in the robotic villain's eye sockets flashed erratically as he watched the two lion-headed aliens flatten a city block with the same ease that a child destroyed a sand castle. How had he possibly been able to hire a being with that kind of strength?
"Hahaha! You fight like a wild beast! Just like I did when I was a cub!" Battle Beast roared contently. After millenia of travelling the galaxy, he had found a worthy opponent.
Battle Beast's body was covered in a vast array of wounds. A deep gash to his ribs revealed the white bones beneath.
Clark's injuries were much more severe. Battle Beast's claws had raked across his left eye and left him half-blinded. His arms and chest were littered with bone-deep wounds. He fought with equal ferocity to his opponent, but he lacked Battle Beast's millenia of combat experience.
"I have longed for this feeling for millenia! The song of violence sings in my ears!" Battle Beast roared.
"But-" The alien warrior paused. He lowered his shoulder and charged at Clark. Clark was still lost in his bloodlust, he didn't think to evade. Battle Beast crashed into him and sent him flying backwards through the air.
Battle Beast grinned, "-but you are not the one who shall kill me. You are not worthy of that honour! You are an imposter hiding in my body, you are not true!"
Clark had charged through the wreckage of the city to reach his opponent. Battle Beast sent him flying with a savage kick to the chest.
The lion-headed warrior clicked a button on his wrist bracelet. A glowing orange portal appeared behind him, "I will visit you again human! You shall take up my skin and we shall fight for the glory of battle! I will look forwards to that day!"
Battle Beast roared in satisfaction. The cry was animalistic and joyful. Then, he stepped back into the portal. The glowing orange door folded into nothingness.
Clark stared blankly at the space where his opponent had been just a moment ago. The endless bloodlust gradually began to recede. It was still there, urging him to fight, but it didn't consume him completely like it had done while he faced Battle Beast in combat.
Clark looked at his hands. They were covered in thick white fur. Blood had stained large patches of it red. He then looked across the city. He saw the devestation that the battle between him and the lion-headed warrior had caused.
'I'm alive.' Clark thought to himself.
He wanted to feel sorrow, for the people that had died as he clashed with the savage alien warrior. And he did. But more than that, more than anything, he felt relief.
He'd survived.