Earth fell the way forests did quietly at first, then all at once.
Derrick helped Nolan conquer with patience, not spectacle. Where Nolan shattered armies and cities to enforce submission, Derrick dismantled systems.
Communication hubs failed without explosions. Logistics chains collapsed overnight. Governments surrendered not because they were beaten but because they woke up blind, deaf, and starving of coordination, they would attempt future resistance.
.... Elsewhere..
Nolan noticed.
"You're efficient," he said once, hovering above the ruins of a capital city somewhere in Italy . "You don't seem to enjoy this as much ."
Derrick wearing Mark's face, Mark's voice met his gaze. "Enjoyment is irrelevant to the mission . Results aren't."
Nolan nodded. Pride flickered. A weapon that thought like a general was rare, even among Viltrumites.
When Nolan left Earth to report to the Empire bloodied but compliant, a world well on its way to integration he entrusted Derrick with stabilization.
That was when reality split.
Angstrom Levy arrived screaming through a tear in space, eyes wild, body warped by excess thoughts.
He took one look at Derrick and froze.
"Markus ," Levy breathed. "Good. You're early."
Derrick felt the multiversal signature immediately unstable, recursive, sloppy. A man who punched holes through worlds without understanding what held them apart.
"I'm listening," Derrick said carefully.
Levy spoke fast, feverish, of countless Earths, of Viltrumite tyranny, of an alliance of Invincibles who would burn the empire across realities.
He saw Derrick not as an anomaly, but as confirmation another Mark who had chosen power over mercy.
Derrick agreed.
Not because he believed Levy.
But because he saw the math.
The gathering place existed between universes, a fractured city stitched together from incompatible Earths. Dozens of Invincibles hovered, argued and postured.
Some wore heroic colors. Others were draped in blood and conquest. All were strong.
All were redundant power snacks .
Derrick moved among them quietly, absorbing everything from speech patterns, power ranges, behavioral tics.
He identified the weakest first: the Marks who had never faced their father's true resistance.
, one's who relied on brute force without refinement...
When Derrick got the opportunity he made look like they were captured by the government of the world they in.
They vanished one by one.
Not dramatically.
A "misjump" here. A private confrontation in destroyed city there.
Derrick consumed some of them inside folded space, Blacklight devouring Viltrumite flesh, multiversal variants collapsing into him like tributaries feeding an ocean....
His mass climbed catastrophically.
Five million tons.
Ten.
Twenty...
He refined Viltrumite traits beyond their origin, bone density without rigidity, muscle without inefficiency, flight vectors rewritten to ignore atmospheric drag and inertial backlash.
Momentum became a weapon he could store fused with one of the one for all quirks and release when ever he gets up against the wall and needs way out.
....
.
When the war began, Invincibles pouring into the prime timeline, cities burning across continents and Derrick stepped out of the fray.
He hunted.
Openly now not caring about the consequences,
A veriant Invincible charged him, screaming about destiny.
Derrick caught him mid-flight, compressed gravity around his skull, and consumed him in front of the others. Panic rippled.
Confusion followed. Levy screamed orders that no longer mattered.
By the time they understood, it was too late.
Derrick stood alone amid drifting in space , his mass stabilized at a level that bent reality around him by default.
He actively used gravity manipulation to stop that effect.
He looked at his reflection in the fractured air still Mark's face, still perfect.
"Too many copies," he said softly. "Not enough originals."
Behind him, universes burned.
Ahead of him, Viltrum awaited.
And Derrick no longer merely an imposter prepared to decide which empires deserved to exist at all.