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Chapter Text

The air is completely still, here. The sun beats down on their heads unbearably. One of them takes the drone that shoved him through and tears into it with his teeth, roaring with a fury reserved for rabid animals. This Mark wears two colors, black and yellow, with sharpened teeth and two cold, unfeeling orbs of black over his eyes. His bloodied cape lays dormant with the lack of wind, though his arms flail wildly.

“I’m going to—to RIP out your fucking eyes, and then I’m going to make a time machine, Angstrom, and I’m going to force feed them to your stupid fucking son!” The caped Mark screams to the open air. “I’m going to find every single person on Earth you ever fucking spoke to and shovel them into each other, until your whole goddamn dimension is covered in—!” The caped Mark lets out another scream, and rockets into the ruins of a building. Concrete and rubble fly into the air, dust coating everyone’s lungs as the force whips sand into their eyes, their ears, their mouths. 

“Jesus Christ, moron, STOP!” One of them, the one with a mohawk, gags, sand coming out of his mouth. “You’re gonna fucking choke everyone to death with your stupid temper tantrum.” The cape Mark snaps back around, and within a second, he’s grasping for Mohawk’s throat, hissing. “Urgh—let go of me—fucker!” He gags, kicking at the other. 

The one dressed in the red and white of their father sighs, wrenching them apart with a grunt of effort. “We just got here. Let’s not kill each other until we at least know how to leave.” The caped Mark and Mohawk separate, snarling at one another on opposite ends of their circle. The one who took the mantle of Omni-Man draws to the center of the circle, addressing the rest of them. “We need to work together if we’re going to find a way out of here.”

“The fuck we do, swoopy hair,” The caped Mark grunts. “You can try and act all high and mighty if you want, but you can’t make us do anything, and I don’t answer to you. I’m clearly the strongest one here!” He smirks, teeth bared.

The Mark in pure white Viltrumite garb quirks his brow, unconvinced. “Oh, are you, now?” He narrows his gaze, “Perhaps we should see.” 

The Mark with targets on his suit cracks his knuckles, his brow furrowed. “NOBODY is stronger than ME.” He shouts, to everyone’s irritation.

“Dude, can you chill the fuck out? We’re two feet from you,” groans the scarred Mark, looking up at the sky. “I wonder if there’s a way out of here in space, somewhere.”

“We can’t, you fucking idiots. Angstrom left us here, remember?” Mohawk rolls his eyes. “I don’t think he’d have left us here if we could leave.” 

“And what if he comes back when we’re out in space?” The fully masked Mark asks anxiously. “He’s got to come back for us eventually. He needs us for his plan!”

“What part of infinite realities is unclear to you, moron?” Mohawk snarks. 

“…I guess it was real after all,” the bloodied Mark with no mask murmurs to the ground. Nobody hears him, and then somebody shoves someone else. Things go downhill from there.

The rest of them bicker, shoving one another back and forth. They get nowhere, and they spar for hours, until the sun sets. Some of them have bloody noses, bloody knuckles. They haven’t escalated beyond petty brawling, thanks to their exhaustion from the previous days’ battles. The one dressed in red gathers them again, shaking his head. He’s spotless, with no blood or damage to his costume. A few others are cleaner, too, but he’s taken no damage at all. 

“Have we learned our lesson about pointless fighting yet?” Red Invincible asks, his impressively large arms over his chest authoritatively. “We can put our heads together and work to get out of here, or we can bicker like children. I vote for the former.”

“Can you stop acting so fake, dude?” The Mark with burn scars sighs. “You’re reminding me too much of Dad, and it’s making me want to hit you.” 

Red Invincible narrows his eyes from under his mask, “What’s wrong with acting like Dad?” There’s a clear challenge in his tone.

“I dunno, man, maybe the fact that he raised and forced us to be murderers of mass destruction,” sneers the masked blue and black one. A couple others nod in their affirmation, while others looked disgusted at the slander of their father. 

“As far as I’m aware, nobody forced us to go to that dimension.” The red one glances between them, and sees he’s outnumbered. “Well, agree to disagree. My point stands, though. There’s eight of us, and we’re the strongest people on Earth in the best dimensions. We can get out of here if we don’t hold ourselves back—literally.” 

“So, what do you recommend then, we magically learn how to make a portal?” Groans the caped Mark. “God, it’s like none of you know how to think.” 

Red Invincible sighs, “Well, first order of business, I think we need to figure out names, because I’m calling all seven of you ‘Mark’ in my head and it’s starting to drive me insane.” 

“Your name is Mark too, genius.” Mohawk rolls his eyes again, and the Red Invincible shakes his head.

“Actually, I go by Nolan,” he affirms, proud. The other stare at him, a few slack jawed, and few angry. Mohawk bursts out laughing, slapping his knee. 

“You—oh, that is PRICELESS!” He cackles, his chest heaving with laughter. “Okay—okay, bootlicker, you’re Nolan, and what, the rest of us are all Mark?” 

Nolan frowns, thinking, before he smirks deviously. “Considering your unique haircut, it only seems right that we call you ‘Mohawk.’ The others start to snicker, nodding their approval.

Mohawk scowls, but shrugs like it doesn’t bother him. “Whatever. We’ll see who’s laughing when we have to fight for real.”

“Most of us look exactly the same. What do we call everyone else, then?” The Mark covered head to toe asks. “…Why are you all looking at me like that?” 

“You’re the only one who isn’t showing any skin, dude,” The Mark with scars says. “So like. Shouldn’t we call you…Mask Guy?” 

“We should call him pussy, because that what he is,” snorts Mohawk. 

“Please—please try to make this work,” Nolan pleads, pinching his nose. He regards the masked Mark, asking, “Do you have a preference?”

He thinks about it, before he shrugs. …I mean, I guess it’s fine. Do I have time to think about it?” The others sigh in frustration.

“Executive order. You’re Mask Mark.” Nolan says, tired of this.

“What if I take off the mask?” Mask Mark asks, perplexed. “Like, to eat, and sleep, you know?” 

“You’re still Mask Mark,” Nolan glowers. “Next?”

“I am an EMPEROR.” Says the striped Mark, frowning. “I rule my empire with BRUTAL EFFICIENCY.” Several of them rule the Viltrum Empire in their own dimensions, but they don’t want to show that card, yet. The arrogance and volume of this Mark is starting to get on everyone’s nerves. Nolan does his best to push forward for everyone’s betterment.

“…Fine. You can be…” Nolan sighs, “…you can be called Emperor.” ‘Emperor’ Mark seems satisfied with this, because he doesn’t say anything else besides giving Nolan a stern nod. He glances over to the Mark with the black cape, who still seems to be pissed. “You’re the only other one with a cape. So…you can be. Erm. Cape Mark?” 

‘Cape Mark’ scowls. “Whatever.” He turns away from the group, going to sit near the rubble. “You guys are giving me a migraine.” 

“Wow. That guy is a dick.” Scarred Mark says, before he taps his chin in thought. “I mean, the nickname ‘Scars’ is pretty cool, right?” Scars grins proudly. “Shows how much of a survivor I am.” 

“Oh yeah, you’re a real badass,” chirps Mohawk. 

“I don’t want to hear it from the guy named after his hair,” Scars replies. Mohawk flips him off, petulant. 

The Mark in the Viltrumite uniform steps forward, glaring at the rest of them. “This is a pointless waste of time. There’s real worlds to conquer, not this dustheap.”

“It’s important for a team to have morale, buddy,” Scars teases. “But we can call you Soldier if you’re so keen on following orders. Besides, we can’t conquer anything when we’re trapped in this shithole.”

“I follow orders proudly, and I carry the symbol of Viltrum with pride, unlike you.” Soldier Mark sneers. Nolan doesn’t really care—that makes his life easier.

“Soldier Mark it is, then,” Nolan nods. “Who else is left?” 

Mask Mark points to the opposite end of the circle, where the Mark with nothing on his face is looking up at the sky, a blank expression on his face. “Just that Mark, I think. Hey man, uh, are you listening?” 

The bare-faced Mark lowers his head to them, bored. “Does it matter? We’re stuck here forever.” His voice is dull and low, almost whispered.

“Sheesh, how about Debbie-Downer?” Mutters Scars. Nolan sighs, and gives his verdict. 

“We’ll just call you Quiet Mark.” Nolan says. Quiet Mark scoffs, but he doesn’t object. His pearled eyes are unsettling, like they can see into the future. 

“Great, the meet and greet is over, oh wise leader,” Mohawk squabbles. “Now how the fuck do you suggest we get out of here?” 

“I think we should make a shelter, or something,” suggests Mask Mark. “This is a wasteland planet, so there’s probably going to be dust storms, right?” He glances at the scorched earth, wondering where they even are.

“We’re VILTRUMITES. If you can’t handle dust, I don’t know how you lived this long.” The ‘Emperor’ growls, much to the group’s irritation. He doesn’t care what they think of him; He knows they are inferior.

“I think that the shelter is a good idea, actually,” Nolan nods. “We can decide how to proceed with our search tomorrow.” They begin to split off, flying in search of sturdy building materials. Well, the ones who care, at least. A few of them linger there at the crash site.

“I’m telling you guys, it’s a waste of time,” Mohawk says. “Angstrom left us here to die.” Nolan flies five miles and back in half a second, clutching the frame of a metal shack.

“With that attitude, we will be,” Nolan frowns. “I don’t know what world you’re from, but in mine, people have to be willing to work if they want to survive.” 

Mohawk grimaces, and sweeps out into the desert. He comes back a few seconds later with massive wooden planks, jumping them into the dunes at their feet. “This fuckin’ good enough for you?” 

Nolan smiles, “Yes. That’s a good start. But, like I told someone else, swearing doesn’t make you cool.” Mohawk just rolls his eyes again. Six of them take turns gathering materials and setting the shelter upright, while the quiet one stares up at the stars and the one with the cape eventually stalks over, investigating their work. He knocks his fist against it, shaking the whole structure. 

“Whoa, what the hell, man?” Scars frowns. “Don’t mess up our work just cause you’re moody. I was in prison for a year and you don’t see me being all whiny.”

The Mark with the cape laughs, “You call this work? It looks like shit.” 

Soldier Mark flies over, lugging the frame of a skyscraper’s window. “I don’t see you helping.” Cape doesn’t retort, and instead begins to help them assemble. The quiet Mark continues to watch in silence, with the occasional stare thrown his way. 

“That guy’s fucking weird,” Mohawk grimaces. “And if he doesn’t help, he’s sleeping outside.” For once, Nolan doesn’t argue. 

It takes them a few hours to make something that won’t fall over, and can fit them all. It’s creaky, and full of holes, and definitely wouldn’t pass inspection, but it could be worse. The Marks settle into the shelter, each of them having gathered their own rudimentary bedding. It’s clear none of them trust each other enough to shut their eyes, though, because they each feel each other’s red hot stares deep into the night. Viltrumites don’t have to sleep as often, anyway, so the silence really just allows them reprieve from each other. They stew in the silence, deep in thought.

Some of them are furious that Angstrom had the audacious idea to dump them here. Others look forward, hoping to pick up the pieces and salvage what they can. A couple of them aren’t sure what to make of their situation, but feel homesick. One is just happy to be out of shackles.

They don’t know it yet, but they’re all going to die. 

Chapter Text

Day 1

The next morning, things are terse and awkward. Despite their teamwork from the day before, many of them seethe in their anger at one another, because they’re the only ones left to take any of their emotions out on. At first, it’s simple quips and sarcastic marks that draw scowls and clenched fists, but they know any of them is capable of far worse.

After all, they laid waste to Earth, and then they laid waste to somebody else’s Earth. They say that self-loathing is unhealthy, but who knows if this would even count? They don’t know, but the idea that all of them are the same person is completely laughable. They all look exactly the same, though. Some of them compare freckles, pinky fingers. They are mirrors of each other, however distorted the reflection may be.

One of them makes a list of places to check for supplies, for schematics. While most of them loathe the idea of taking orders, they go along with it because it gives them someone else to blame if things go wrong.

The one who’s taken charge is also the only one who refuses their birth name. ‘Nolan’ is instead a reflection of their father, with a broader chest and striking red costume. The others think he’s a pretender, a liar, but they listen to him anyway.

Nolan scratches indentations into the sand with a metal pipe, mapping out where their search will begin. “There’s eight of us, so one will stay here, and the rest will look at these marked facilities, such as the place where the GDA headquarters would be in the Pentagon. At least, if this world is like most of ours.” Nolan looks up, worried. “Wait. You guys all have the Pentagon where you’re from, right?”

“They had one, yes. We burnt it into the ground.” Soldier Mark regards. “I don’t remember where it would be.” 

“The Pentagon is made of, like, rebar and concrete. You…burnt it?”  The Masked Mark asks nervously.

“I didn’t stutter, did I?” Soldier Mark retorts, though the edges of his eyes crease uncomfortably. The rest of them shuffle their feet awkwardly, thinking about the logistics of such an attack. Most of them imagine it would be unpleasant to witness.

“Not all of us bothered to spend our time learning useless crap like landmarks of a pointless society of ants.” The Caped Mark scowls.

“I can show you all where to go once we’re up in space. I’m very familiar with where everything is, as it was my job to keep it occupied, in my home dimension. After…my father.” Nolan looks downtrodden. 

“How are you going to show us where to go? We can’t talk in space, idiot,” Mohawk supplies. Nolan growls at him, before he realizes that…he’s actually right. He’s glad that his costume is already red, because it hides his blush. A few of the Marks snicker at him, while a couple seem to be questioning his leadership, waiting to move in like a circling shark.

Nolan stomps into the sand to regain order, snarling at his opponents. A few of the Marks reel back, on guard. Several don’t flinch at all, and couple even look angrier. He does his best to reel it in, motioning to the map he’s created. “I’ll point out places for each of us to go. We’ll meet back here when the sun sets with anything we found. Look for anything that might have to do with…dimensional travel.” 

The Mark who declares himself an Emperor frowns, “How are we supposed to know where to find THAT?” He crosses his arms, annoyed. “You clearly don’t know what you’re doing, red-boy.” Nolan and the ‘Emperor’ step up to one another, ready to challenge. Several of themselves goad them on, with others sighing at the distraction. Before they can throw any punches, there’s two gloved hands at each of their chests.

The Masked Mark groans in irritation. “Are we going to have to do this every day?” He floats up, glancing up to the sky. “Look, let’s just…go to these like, sciencey places, and see what we can find. Fighting ourselves isn’t gonna get us home.” 

Nolan steps back but keeps his guard up. “You’re right, but I’m not going to show weakness by letting myself be pushed around, either.” 

“Oh, come on, it’s just us, here.” Masked Mark sighs. “We can forget about Viltrum’s stupid hierarchy for two seconds while we’re getting out of here.” 

“Watch what you call stupid,” the Soldier growls, with Nolan offering him a nod of respect. “Viltrum is the strongest empire to ever exist. We are its hands, and we create order in new worlds. We make things better for everyone. They just have to let us.”

Mohawk Mark lets out a laugh. “Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you buy into all that bullshit—the power, the worship, that’s what it’s really about.” He grins darkly; his eyes clouded with perverse intent. “The way people will do anything you ask…the way that everyone knows you can kill them at any time, it’s delicious .” 

The Scarred Mark wrinkles what’s left of his nose, “Woah man, you’re kind of a freak.” 

Soldier Mark too looks perturbed, “If that’s all you want, then you and I are completely different.” 

Mohawk waves them off, “Meh. Not my business if you wanna lick the boots of Viltrum instead of taking control for yourself…you’ll just end up seeing me in your dimension to do it at some point.”

“If you tried, we’d pop your enormous head as soon as it came through the portal,” The Soldier threatens. 

“We’re all the same size, dumbass. If my head is enormous, so is yours!” Mohawk retorts, childish. 

“It’s—it’s a metaphor!” The Soldier glowers. 

“We’re wasting time! I’m finding someone to get us out of here.” Emperor Mark shoots off into the sky, dust trailing after him. Nolan reaches up, frustrated .

“No, wait, we need to—!” 

Before Nolan can finish his sentence, the rest of them shoot off in different directions, all intent on finding their own way, their own resources to get out of here. Nolan lets out a startled yell, pounding his fists into the sand. A tornado envelops the air, whirlwinding bits of dust and debris everywhere. Thankfully, their shelter does nothing but shake. 

The Mark with no mask, the Quiet and creepy one, makes his way out of the cabin, having finished seeing its interior for the first time. He gives one look to Nolan, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “…They didn’t listen to you, did they?”

Nolan sighs, “No, no they did not.” He regards Quiet Mark suspiciously, raising his brow. “Why didn’t you fly off? Don’t you want to get out here?” 

Quiet Mark, true to his nomer, gives a faint whisper of an answer. “There’s nothing left for me to want.” Nolan isn’t sure how to respond to that, and so he doesn’t. The two remain at the desert base, with Nolan adding fortifications to their home. The other Mark draws symbols into the sand with his fingers, licking his fingers to use the dried blood on his suit as paint. 

“…What did you even want from that world, then?” Nolan asks him, freaked out. “So many of us died, because they were arrogant, and greedy. But you lived, and you didn’t even want to?” 

“They weren’t all that strong,” murmurs Mark. “I kept trying to find someone to fight, but they all died too easily.” He doesn’t mention how he avoided seeing the Guardians, and avoided seeing the Teen Team. Nolan didn’t have to know that.

Nolan clenches his fist when he thinks about their battles. “Such a waste of a world. It could be thriving, it could be without suffering, under someone like me,” Nolan affirms. “But instead, it’s stuck with an Invincible who values personal relationships with normal humans over his status as a superhero. It’s sad.” 

“Whatever you say,” Mark replies, like he’s hardly listening. He paints the faint red marks into the sand, unblinking. While disgusting, he seems to smile when he looks at his picture, like it’s the first sense of comfort he’s seen in years. 

When Nolan looks over his shoulder at it, he can’t tell what it’s supposed to be. “What are you painting, anyway?” 

“…It’s supposed to be the Eiffel Tower,” Mark replies, after a long pause. His deep brown eyes hang heavy in his skull. “It was a little taller in my world.” 

Nolan frowns. “That’s not going to help us get out of here.” 

“Nothing is going to get us out of here,” Mark replies easily. He goes back to his drawing, the blood on his suit becoming glued to his gloved fingers. 

 A strange sense of finality churns in Nolan’s gut. He glances around the landscape, feels the scorch of the sun on his skin, rays bearing down through his suit. He feels the light reflect off his goggles, blinding him if he looks up for too long. Mostly, he watches the ghosts of cities that crumble into the sand, not a living thing in sight. He worries that Mark might be right. But there’s nothing left to do now but move forward.

__

The Soldier is faster than almost any of them. Through the black lenses and heavy mesh mask, Mark chases him down, with the former noticing. The Soldier’s speed booms tenfold, threatening to leave him in the dust.

“Hey man, wait!” Mark pants through his mask, flying to catch up with the Soldier, who speeds ahead like it’s a race. He weaves between the ruined skyscrapers, the broken overpasses. He finally catches hold of a pristine white ankle, who flips around to glare at him, disgruntled and swinging his fists. “Woah—hold on, I just wanna talk, man!” Mark yells, protecting his covered face. 

The Viltrumite Soldier regards him with a narrow gaze, piercing easily through the pure black of his mask. “What do you want? I’m trying to find a way out of here.” 

“So am I! I thought we could look together.”

Mark offers his hand, and the Soldier regards him with suspicion.

“I can’t even see your face. That’s not really instilling a lot of trust.” Soldier frowns, and Mark lets an exasperated sigh fly out as he swings his mask off. He’s Mark Grayson, he’s Invincible, the same way the rest of them are. He’s just a little more ashamed of it. “Is this good enough, now?” Mark asks, feeling exposed. 

Soldier Mark seems to accept this, and cranes his neck, motioning for the other to fly alongside him. “It’s pretty weird to be talking to myself. Still not used to it,” he says to him as they fall into place. 

“You’re acting so casual,” hmmphs the Soldier, still guarding his suspicions. “We’re trapped in another dimension while anything could be happening to our home dimensions.” 

The Masked one laughs, his face freed and his smile wide and sad. “Well, to be honest, this one doesn’t look too much worse than mine. At least in the terms I care about, anyway.” He glances around at the crumbling buildings, the complete lack of any signs of habitation. Sometimes, he thinks this would be a better fate for his world. 

The Soldier scoffs, affronted, turning as they fly to cross his arms. “So, you did a bad job of being Invincible, then, did you? My Earth is thriving.” 

“Yeah, thriving so much you had to take over another one,” snaps Mark, his literal mask, and now his emotional one, too, slipping off. 

The Soldier bares his teeth, his nerves set alight. “I went to that world to make it submit! To make them see how futile resisting is. Why did you go, to take your mom from some other version of us? To selfishly hoard her in your world that you admitted you messed up?” The Soldier stares him down like a bull. 

“I didn’t mess up anything, they made me, they did it to her!” He snaps back, before realizing they’re just going in circles. He shakes his head, slapping himself and groaning. “Look, Jesus, I didn’t chase you to insult you. I actually…I think you’re the best choice of us to work with.” 

The Soldier tilts his head, confused. “What?” His fists clench, and his eyebrow furrows, and a dozen different difficult emotions parse through his eyes. “I don’t—I don’t get you.” 

“What you said earlier. That you…wanted order, you like. Believed in the shit that Dad taught us. Ugh—You don’t think you’re evil, is my point.” 

The Soldier looks offended, again. “Of course I’m not evil. Why would I be evil?”

“Uhm, because we murdered thousands of innocent people because some guy with a portal asked us to?” Mark guffaws, like it’s obvious. Because to him, how could it not be? 

“I don’t know what you went there for, but I went to secure a territory for the Viltrum empire. My people, who can give the Earth technology that would repair any damage in mere hours. I went there to show them our power, that they can’t possibly resist, that they could have our strength instead of fighting it.” The Soldier stands tall, stands proud. 

If the flickers of doubt behind his eyes are real, the Masked one can’t dare to speak on them. Because he went to that world knowing what he was doing was wrong. He washed blood from his hands, but not his heart or soul. He watches the life drain from so many eyes, the lives of so many crumble under his touch. 

The Soldier watches his horror unfold and gives him a disgusted look. “You think you’re evil, and you think you chose to do evil things. And you wanted to work with me because you think I’m a good choice?” The Soldier shoves Mark back against a fallen skyscraper, bruising his back and knocking the wind from his lungs. “If you keep following me, I’ll do a lot worse.” 

The Soldier shoots away like thunder, leaving the city to crumble in his wake. And Mark takes a look at himself in the reflection of his mask, of his goggles. The air around him sings in his loneliness, his reflection cuts through every shard of glass, every cloud. He puts the mask back on so he doesn’t have to see it anymore. 

__

Mark doesn’t find anything in the ruins of the Pentagon, not that he’d really expected to. This planet is barely a step up from the monotony of prison life. At least in prison, there was other people to look at. Talking would usually get you a brutal beat down, but it took him a few times to learn.

After they permanently scarred his skin, after he screamed for hours, for days , as the laser beamed against his flesh, he finally kept his quips to himself. Honestly, the best thing about Angstrom’s little prison break is that he gets to use the one-liners he’d had all day and all night to think of. 

All day, and all night. They rarely let him sleep. And when he slept, they would watch him, they would taunt him. They would put him in their little arena, and at first, he wouldn’t fight back. The opponents would tear him to pieces...or try to, at least. After a few months, it was too loud. It was too irritating. They kept shooting, and slashing, and stabbing. And none of it ever did anything. So, he stopped them. And then he stopped the ones after that. 

He never took any sick vindictive pleasure in it. But if they attacked him, they earned his defense. He gave his life to Earth, after all, that day on the mountain. And when he begged for their life, as his father dragged him into space, away from everyone he’s ever known. Maybe Angstrom let him project a little bit. 

Either way, this place has nothing left to offer. As he steps over the ruined corridor of the emptied GDA building, he stares into a piece of broken glass and feels the bulging veins coming up from his skin, the horribly raw color of his skin. He turns away, with no point in lingering anymore. 

__

It takes all day, and they search the whole planet. They look around every country, every Guardian base they know of, and every inch of the ocean until they can’t see anymore. There’s nothing, and no one. Nothing lives here, and it’s hard to believe that anything ever did. None of them come back with anything useful. 

“You checked every place, every spot I marked? You left before I could even show you,” Nolan frowns. 

“Do you think the rest of us want to be here any more than you do, genius?” Mohawk bites. “Believe me, it’s taking every single ounce of self-control I have not to punch straight through your skull.”

“So, none of you found any leads?” Nolan pinches his brow. Christ, he’d at least hoped they’d find an intact facility, something to poke around in, something to explain this Earth. They must be on Earth, right? 

“We didn’t even find any FISH in the OCEAN,” The ‘Emperor’ yells in agitation. “What kind of OCEAN doesn’t have FISH?”

“This one, apparently,” says the Scarred one. “So, we have no leads, found nobody, and this planet is empty. Great. We sure needed all hands on deck for that one.” 

“It’s like I told you fuckin’ clowns. We’re stuck here forever.” Mohawk yawns, like it’s no big deal. “Or at least until Levy realizes that he needs us again.” 

“There’s always Viltrum, if we can’t go anywhere here,” says The Soldier. “We can always find the Empire. I’m sure they’d welcome us, help us.”

“Even if that was an idea that the rest of us had any stock in, do any of you have any goddamn clue how to get to Viltrum? Or would we just hold our breath in space forever until we died?” Asks the Caped Mark, his black orbs narrowed. None of them offer a response, proving his point. “That’s what I thought. Useless…”

“We have to stay here in case Angstrom gets us,” says the Masked one. The Soldier glares at him but doesn’t say anything. “I mean, we looked for one day. Surely there’s other places, other…labs and stuff. Maybe from like, the Russians?”

“Maybe we’ll find a leprechaun and a pot of gold, too, while we’re at it,” Snarks Mohawk. The rest of them devolve into petty bickering, pointless shoving. It’s like they’re back to square one.

The Emperor glances around, taking notice of their numbers. “There’s only SEVEN OF US HERE. ONE of us just LEFT the rest of us here!” He growls, furious.

“Calm down. It’s just the quiet guy. He went for a fly like, an hour ago. Hasn’t come back yet.” Nolan informs them, shaking his head. “Something seriously weird about that one. He uh, drew the Eiffel tower, over there. In the sand. With blood.”

“Great, out of the eight of us, one of us is completely deadweight.” Groans the Caped Mark. “Probably more than that, really.” The rest of them glance around, unsure of what to do. So they wait, passing the time with light punches and snarled insults.

The Quiet one comes back, eventually, a few hours later. He looks pallid in the sunset, the colors illuminating his dull brown eyes.

“Where the fuck’ve you been?” Mohawk accuses.

He stares back blankly, pointing up into the sky. “I went up to space. The moon is gone, by the way.” 

At first, they refuse to believe him. They demand they all go up and see for themselves. They boom through the air, one by one, soaring through the atmosphere. When they get to space, there’s bits of debris encircling the Earth as far as the eye can see, metallic and meteoric alike. There’s no sign of any satellites, any space stations, or Cecil’s weapons. And the moon is…just gone. They all stand there, staring out into the blank vacuum of space. 

What happened here?

Chapter Text

Day 2

The moon is gone, but there’s something else. 

The planet has rings.

Beautiful silver rings that burst across the sky, glinting against the dunes that cover the planet’s surface at all hours. Illuminated by the sun when it rises, they shine with a miasma of intoxicating colors, purple hues and brilliant red that splash with vibrancy. The stark contrast is the planet itself, where nothing but crevices of rock, ash, and barren waste are visible, even from the atmosphere of space. They look down at the crushing emptiness of it all, with no words to cover the feeling. They are alone here, with themselves. 

The oceans lay dormant, their waters still and lifeless. There’s the occasional wreckage, the occasional boat upturned and sinking, or even bones, lying barren and cracked. But other than that, it’s as if nothing ever lived here. They even check for Atlantis; they check in the deepest chasms of the Earth. There is nothing living here besides Invincible. 

“God. I know that the Earth has lots of problems in any dimension, but…the moon collapsing? Is that what happened to this place?” The Masked one grimaces.

“They probably defied their Empire, those who ruled here.” The Emperor shakes his head. “They probably took everyone who was useful and left their planet to smolder and die.”

“This is disgusting,” Nolan grimaces. “The version of us who allowed this to happen is appalling.” Nolan, the Protector of Earth, shakes his head. Out of the glint of his goggles, he sees a shade flying towards him, a blur rush over his side. He turns to face it, but he isn’t quick enough.

The Mark with a Mohawk smirks, and rockets his shoulder into the stomach of Nolan, his white costume shining against the silver rings on the sunrise of the second day. His red mask blends brilliantly with the backdrop of red, his face contorting with fury. He tears back his massive arms and wrenches his grip around the delinquent. Mohawk grins wickedly, locking their fingers together into a dueling stance. They face off in the air, pushing back against one another as the others watch in shock and intrigue.

“Ah, now this is fun, wouldn’t you say, fearless leader?” Despite Nolan’s larger muscle mass, he struggles against the sheer veracity of his counterpoint, feeling every muscle in his arms begin to cry out with extortion. “You fucked up, and you got us nothing! Seems only fair we take it out on you!” 

“Maybe if you hadn’t all run away , we could have worked to find something together! You’re the one who mouthed off to Angstrom, got us stuck here!” Nolan roars into his face, and Mohawk offers a tight-lipped smile, leaning forward and crunching into his nose. Nolan screams in pain, launching his knee up into his opponent’s stomach. He gasps, and goes flying into the dunes, heaving for his breath.

The others watch as Nolan clutches his nose, disjointed and bloodied. Through his wheezes, Mohawk maintains his malicious smile, blood dribbling from his teeth. He spits a piece of skin out onto the dunes. “Man, too bad. I was really hoping to take your nose with me.” 

“Why do you always have to cause problems?” The Masked one sighs. “We didn’t find anything, sure, so what? It’s not like we need anything right now…besides…a way out of here. We can find groundwater, and it’s like not we desperately need food. We’re Viltrumites.” 

“Sure, let’s drink dinosaur piss and eat our own boogers, that’ll keep us from killing each other,” laughs Mohawk. He leaps up from the sand, pointing his fist at Nolan. He stands there and holds his bleeding nose whilst glaring murderously, Mohawk snarling his way. “No, this guy has been leading us to shit for two days! You think I’m causing problems? Maybe if somebody without shit-for-brains was in charge, we’d actually be getting somewhere! I know he isn’t telling us everything. He’s just using us to do his dirty work!” 

“What do you suggest we do, then? I’m the one making plans, finding answers! You’d have just sat here without me,” Nolan growls. “You’d probably have died back in that other dimension without my strength!” 

At that, Mohawk bends over, doubled in laughter. He cackles like a witch, his chest heaving. Nolan howls with anger, sending his fist into his chest with a thundering crack. His face lights up with shock, he blinks across the sand like a bullet, the wind and dunes whipping violently. He crashes into a distant ruin, sending debris careening into the air, shrapnel and shards of broken glass exploding into the sand. 

Nolan holds his fist up, circling around the others, his stance defiant and his teeth bared. “If anyone wants to challenge me, to see my strength, I invite them to do so! I’ll show you all why I’m Omni-Man. Why I’m in charge!”

The others watch Mohawk’s distant form crumple into the building, his faint groans of pain a clear indication of Nolan’s power. For a few seconds, they stare between one another, indecisive. And then the Caped Mark inches towards, his face widening into an unpleasant smile. He reaches out for Nolan, his calloused hands stretching under the black material of his suit.

“I like that idea. We decide who’s in charge…the real way,” his voice is underlined with excitement. “We fight for the right to be in charge. All of us.” 

“Hell yeah, dude,” the ‘Emperor’ affirms. “I’m not some goddamn slave. You should all be working for me.” 

“Fine. You want me to show you my strength so badly? You want proof that I’m the best choice? We fight for it. Whoever surrenders, whoever crumples under the pressure, has to do what the winner says. A free for all, winner takes all.”

Mohawk staggers back to their circle, blood leaking from his ears. Still, he grins ferally. “A free for all? For leadership? Sounds like the first interesting thing to happen here.” 

The Masked one sputters, “Are you guys for real? What the hell is beating each other up going to do? We all just spent the whole week flying around this dimension and that one, we’re exhausted. We just spent two days trying to avoid this.”

“Oh, you goddamn pussy, this was always going to happen.” Mohawk floats a touch forward subtly, leaning forwards. “But if that’s how you feel, I’ll make it quick for you!” And with that, he careens into the Masked one’s chest, and the two go flying into the hills, rocking the air with a shattering boom. It’s a clear indication that the game begins, and anything goes. 

The fight begins, and they tear into each other, the air filling with the smell of acrid sweat. They wrestle for dominance, staring into their own eyes with each punch, each bite, each bellow. Each of them was born Mark Grayson, and somewhere along the line, became Invincible. They have to prove it, now, they have to prove who they are. They scream, they claw, they bash into each other, their prey, to prove they are the predator. 

The Soldier locks his arms around the Prisoner, who gags and flails helplessly. As the air begins to smell like white, he throws his head back wildly and bashes into the Soldier’s teeth, who lets him go with a startled cry. A fountain of red drips down from his teeth, gushing from the now empty socket. Soldier’s eyes flare with rage, and he spits his tooth out, grappling at the Prisoner’s shirt. He feels the mesh slide between his scarred fingers, the sharpened stare of his opponent’s eyes.

“I’m going to fucking RIP your SKIN off, you traitor,” he spits into his face, the Prisoner smirking ferociously.

“Somebody already beat you to that, Private Dickwad,” he says, his fist flying up into his jaw. With a loud crack, Soldier shoots further up into the air, booming above the clouds. Prisoner soars after him, adrenaline surging through his raw and reddened skin as he courses through the air. 

Down on the planet’s surface, the Masked one gasps and heaves, his back thrown into the edges of a rocky cliff. Jagged stones cut into his suit, trying to rip through his skin, as Mohawk fanatically haymakers him with flurries of unchecked punches, flailing shoulders and knees. It’s a relentless onslaught of flaring pain, and every time he tries to swing back, he hits nothing but the flowing air.

Mohawk swings his heel down into his shoulder, his cheers bordering on maniacal. “Oh, man, I knew you would suck , but I thought you’d at least live a little longer! How’d you survive that Earth, dude?” 

The Masked one remembers a world engulfed in fire, he remembers a time where he watched countless people shatter into pieces against his fists, a looming figure dressed in pristine white over his shoulder. Through his blurred vision and the raging heat of the sun, he looks into Mohawk’s eyes, and he sees that man. He screams and clutches at his throat, catching with a writhing crack.

Mohawk begins to gurgle, chopping at his arms uselessly. The Masked one seethes, whirling him around and slamming him into the cliff’s edge. He watches the rock crash against his temple, watches the blood leak from his ears, his eyes. Mohawk lets out a feral cry and clamps his teeth down into his hand, the soft flesh of his fingers bit through like tender meat. 

The taste of iron wells up in Mohawk’s mouth, his fangs gleaming with the blood of his prey. The Masked one yells in horror and tears away, stumbling through the open air.

“I knew you had it in you, buddy!” Mohawk rasps, his throat swollen and his ears ringing. His chin sloppily drips blood, now, his eyes sunken and his scalp cut into jaggedly. The Masked one screams his name and sends them both tumbling into the sand below. They wrestle there for hours, the ferocious sun roasting against their sweated bodies. 

Nearby, The Emperor swings ferociously into the Quiet one, who does nothing but roll and evade, offering quick jabs and feigned punches in return. He grows increasingly frustrated, his brow furrowed like a child who’s lost the game.

“Why aren’t you punching me back? What kind of INVINCIBLE are you supposed to be?! He swings his arms down into the sand, sending a rippling wave through the dunes. The Maskless one stumbles and struggles to stay upright, floating up into the air. The Emperor launches off the ground, grappling into him, his fingers clenching around his arms.

“Well, you caught me,” the Quiet one looks down at his captive arms, surprised. “I guess you’re better than I thought.” He hardly struggles or writhes in the Emperor’s grasp and even gives a teasing tilt of his head. “Well, what are you waiting for, buddy? Permission?” He taunts. The Emperor bellows again, smashing his fist against the Quiet one’s forehead. The thinner skin peels, and a trickle of blood begins to flow down his face. The Quiet one does nothing as the Emperor pounds into his face, blackening his eye, puncturing his nose, and gashing his temple. He smiles through the pain, his eyes shining with wonder. 

The Emperor’s punches slow, and eventually, he pushes back against the other Mark, disgusted. “What the fuck is wrong with you, you freak?” 

The other Mark wipes the blood from his eyes, from his scalp, and regards the Emperor with a thankful smile. “I’d forgotten what it was like to feel something. It’s been so long.” He shuts his eyes, and leans back into the open sky, the wind billowing his freed hair. The Emperor, stunned, pauses, and watches the Quiet Mark float through the air, tranquil, the blood pouring down his face in gashed waves. 

The Emperor raises his fist again, and he looks deep at the Quiet one’s peace, the way he floats. He opens his mouth, his voice low and loving. “Can’t you hear them, Mark? The silver bells? They’re so beautiful.” The Quiet one’s chaste lips thin into a smile. The fight seems to slow, and the world seems to pause, like everything’s frozen in place. It’s eerie, the way the wind whistles, the way the sun glares.

The Emperor watches the tension ebb from his shoulders and leave in the wind. He sees the way his breath relaxes, and his being is whole, and the Emperor leaves him there. He’s clearly insane, after all. There’s no point in wasting the energy to kill him. The silver rings of Earth shine overhead, and for a second, as the Emperor looks up at them, he feels them shake, he feels his ears begin to howl. He rushes back down to the ground, eager to forget it.

The real fight is with the two who harbor the most intense feelings of hatred towards one another. Nolan, and the black-suited Mark, his yellow cape flowing behind his back. His black costume flares exorbitantly in the sun’s heat. It’s almost blinding to look down at the reflection of his own costume, the white feeling like it boils his skin. 

With an earth-shattering cry, this Mark tackles him to the ground, snarling like a feral animal. His claws tear at his chest, ripping his costume to pieces, his fingernails scratching and stinging at his skin. Nolan groans in pain, reeling at the raw and brutal strength of his opponent. He sees the glee behind his mask, the way he relishes the torment and struggle of his prey. Nolan refuses to relent, and clutches the man’s wrist, bending it backwards with all his strength.

The bone stiffens, and then he hears a tiny crack, with the Caped Mark reeling back in snarling cries of pain. He clutches his paw like a whimpering animal, snapping it back into place. When he looks up to face Nolan again, there’s nothing but pure instinct to tear, to devour .

Nolan clutches his bloodied chest, his costume shredded, and his pale skin ruffled with sweat and sand. His opponent circles him, encroaching and stalking with his arms out, claws extended. His lungs heave like deep red bells, bells that toll for his demise. The primal instinct to run is all that floods his mind, but he knows he cannot listen. He charges for his opponent again, roaring to the open air. Teeth gnashing, and his eyes wide with bloodlust, Mark’s caped flows elegantly as he dives for Nolan’s throat. 

His hands close around his throat, like a vice, suffocating and insurmountable. He squeezes harder than anything Nolan’s ever felt in his life. Harder than his father’s relentless training, even, black spots edging into his vision. 

“Beg for your pathetic life,” demands Mark Grayson, or—no, Nolan can’t call him that. Nolan knows what he is, now. He’s a monster. The monster leans down to his neck, ear listening for his choked cries, his blood boiling with hatred, and angers “You know, when I first saw you, in our father’s costume, I knew right away. I knew you were afraid, and you needed Daddy with you to make you feel better.”

Nolan shrieks, pummeling his fists into the Monster’s back uselessly. His punches tear his hands to shreds, bending his fingers and bruising his palms. The Monster leans into his ear, whispering as his grip threatens to tear Nolan’s head from his body. 

“You know, I’m not our dad, but if you need a master, I’m happy to give you one,” he grins into his ear, and Nolan’s heartbeat thunders in his chest. He remembers his mother, her horrified pleas for mercy. He remembers the day the Viltrumites came, the futile resistance, bright beams of light that vaporized thousands. 

Nolan tries to answer, to tell this imposter of a functioning mortal being to crawl back into Hell, but he can only kick, can only struggle. The Monster sits atop him, tutting. “You don’t get it yet, do you? That you can’t stop me.” He thrusts his hand upwards, the glint of malice in his dangerous smile. “I’ll show you, then.” 

And then his hand goes into Nolan’s abdomen, thrust into him like he’s made of plastic. He tries so hard to scream, to express the excruciating pain as blood gushes out of his side. All he can do is sob into the Monster’s grasp as he holds his hand to his lips.

Sssh.

And then Nolan stills.

The fight ends soon after, and the Monster reigns victorious, standing over Nolan’s bloodied visage like an Olympian. The other Marks, bloodied and broken, stagger into view, looking in horror at the trembling pile of flesh that Nolan has been reduced to. “You—you—there’s a hole in him.” The Emperor looks on, in shock. He knew himself to be all-powerful, to be the pinnacle of strength. But he takes one look at the Monster, and knows he is outmatched. 

“Oh, it happened again,” the Quiet one whispers, clutching his bloodied temple. “It’s always the same, wherever I go, isn’t it?”

And then Nolan coughs, the enormous pressure against his neck relinquished. He feels his body pulled limply into the air, showcased as a trophy to six stunned and silent members of his captor’s forced audience. 

“This is what happened to the one who tried to take charge, who proved he couldn’t handle it,” the Monster declares, hurtling him into the sand. Nolan lands with a gasp, clutching his side. He continues to bleed into the sand, painting the desert sands with a deep crimson. The Monster roars again, “THIS is your proof that I am the strongest!” He stomps his foot into Nolan’s stomach, forcing him to cough up blood. “If any of you still think you’re capable of leading better than me…” his wide grin showcases red teeth. “Feel free to come and take that chance.”

The Soldier, gashed and exhausted, cannot make himself go forward. The Scarred one, his skin raw and burning, crumples into the sand. The Masked one trembles in the sky, watching as one of them dares to stumble forward. Mohawk, the delinquent, staggers up to the Monster, his fists trembling. For a long moment, the air is quiet, the dunes are still.

And then the delinquent falls into a bow. “You—you call the shots, oh great Leader,” he coughs, blood dripping from his battered nose. The Monster—-no, their Leader, grins, and lets out a triumphant yell. The others, one by one, reluctantly fall to a knee, obeying.

Their Leader rises into the air, blood coating his suit like his shining armor. “You all listen to me, now,” he demands, “and you call me Leader.” They don’t dare to disobey; they don’t speak out in any way. Not with Nolan’s blood seeping into the sand, his horribly battered body displayed as a clear spoil of war. 

Nolan reaches out with his arm, trying to drag himself to comfort, to familiarity, on this alien hellscape. A dark shadow looms over him, slowly lowering down to greet him again. It snaps his wrist into its hand, bringing their faces inches apart. The Leader holds him aloft with one arm, the rest of his body limply hanging. He puts his other hand under Nolan’s chin, holding his gaze upright. There is nothing human in his eyes, and he licks his lips with terrible fervor.

“You, dear Omni-Man,” mocks their new Leader, his voice soft as he caresses his chin, “You will call me Master.” His hand ghosts his jawline, his Adam's apple, like Nolan is his treasured pet, and not his reflection. The feeling is nothing but sick and twisted. Finally, his hand leaves Nolan’s body, and he even has the courtesy to place him down gently into the sand. 

He regards his subjects with a splitting cry. “To you, I am your Leader! You can challenge me any time you want to try and take the title, but there's no way I go as easy as I did on our friend here,” he motions to Nolan with a laugh. 

Some of them consider it. And then they see what the burden of leadership did to the last of them who tried, and there are no further challenges. Their Leader stands victorious, his cape smattered with Nolan’s blood. 

“So…what…what do we do now?” The Scarred one asks, hesitant. “I mean—you won, sure, but do you have a plan, either?” Not that I’m…questioning you, now, or anything.” 

Their Leader regards him with a teasing smirk. “Aw, you aren’t? I could’ve used the added challenge. And…well, I know for a fact my little pet here has more places for us to visit. We can start there.” He leans down to ruffle his hair. “I heard him mumbling that he needed to go and check himself, the other day. He was keeping the good shit for himself, weren’t you, pet?” He slaps his cheek, leaving a faint red mark near his mouth.

Nolan, ashamed, mumbles his admittance. “Seed bank in Norway. Another in the UK. Wasn’t keeping them…didn’t know if they’d be useful for escaping.” His words are slurred, and heavy with pain.

“What the hell is a seed bank going to do? This planet is a wasteland .” The Scarred one frowns. 

“Well, considering we’ll need to eat if we want to heal, it sounds like a good place to start,” The Soldier groans. A few of the others look at him with confusion etched in their brows. 

“We’re Viltrumites. We don’t need to eat nearly as often as normal humans, right?” The Masked one asks, nervous. His back is bloodied and gashed, and his voice is hoarse. 

The Soldier sighs, shaking his head. “You have no idea how Viltrumites function. It disgusts me.” He motions to their broken bodies, their bloodied sands. “We need energy to heal. To fuel our powers. We’ll only get weaker without eating, Viltrumite or not.” 

The Mohawk spits blood out of his mouth, grunting in frustration. “Aw, shit, Soldier-Boy, and you didn’t think to tell us that sooner?” The two hiss at each other, but are far too bruised to actually fight. 

The Soldier huffs in frustration. “I didn’t think I’d have to explain how our own bodies work to you. Your ignorance is your own problem!” 

“Well, sorry, pal, but not all of us exactly had time for a crash course in Viltrumite physiology while they were busy beating us into submission,” glares the Masked one. 

“Either way, we have a place to look for food now,” their Leader affirms, and points down to Nolan. “And this guy wasn’t planning on sharing.” 

“I knew he was an asshole from the moment I saw him,” Mohawk sneers. “Nobody except an absolute prick would dress like that.” 

Even in such a serious case, where Nolan’s life hangs by a thread, these children cannot grasp how to be serious. They cannot begin to understand the lessons, the pain. The schooling shoved aside. The way the other kids were horrified by him. 

The sound of his mother’s bones cracking underneath his own hands. 

Nolan begins to chuckle. It’s a hoarse ghost of a laugh, really, gurgled with blood, choked by pain. But it’s one of the only times they’ve ever seen him smile. “Go ahead and follow this guy, see where it gets you,” he chokes. “We’ll see how long you can keep this up.” He bites, murder on his lips. The Leader licks his own in return, like a pit viper tasting the air. He brings his heel down on Nolan’s throat, stomping hard. He gasps, and heaves, before he finally goes limp, his chest heaving with narrow, shorted breaths.

“He didn’t call me ‘Master.’” He shakes his head disapprovingly, a scolding tone in his icy words. “I hope the rest of you can learn from him.” He sweeps his gaze across his remaining subjects, who all keep their distance. He has done it, and shown them his strength. “You—the soldier guy, and the annoying loud one,” he regards ‘Emperor’, who frowns. “You’re coming with me to the seed vault, and we’re gonna learn how to grow this food. The rest of you, look for some kind of like, electronic thing to set up. We can maybe communicate with anyone who’s left using out here.” And then tear them to shreds is left unsaid.

“…I know how to set up a radio,” the Scarred one offers, after a moment. “They used one, in the prison.” 

“Perfect, we can use that to signal for any ships, or any people left on this shithole.” Their Leader affirms. “I think we’re already better off, wouldn’t you say?” 

Nobody says anything, and most of their gazes linger on the unconscious body of Nolan, of the so-called new Omni-Man. They look to their new Leader, the one who rules with brute strength. Some of them aren’t sure there will be any difference. A few of them are envious that it wasn’t them. Some of them just want to get out of here. The trio leave for the seed vault, taking makeshift burlap sacks to carry whatever they find on their backs.

They spend the rest of the day preparing things for the small excursion’s return, searching the ruins for anything resembling a functioning radio, a phone. As they traipse through the wreckage, the Masked one turns to the Scarred, and he regards him nervously. “…Scars. What, uh, do you think about…uh, the new Leader?”

“I think he’s insane, clearly. You don’t lick your lips like that unless you’re off the deep end, like Conquest.” He shudders at the thought. “Do you know him in your dimension?” 

The Masked one shudders, and then he shakes with anger. “…I don’t want to talk about it.” His teeth clench and his veins tighten under his thin elastic suit. 

‘Scars’ hums in understanding. “Yeah. Stupid question…that guy’s a fucking psycho.” He overturns a pile of rubble and finds nothing. He doesn’t want to think about what might happen if they turn up empty-handed.

“I want to go home, dude,” ‘Mask’ admits, his voice trembling. 

“…Yeah, I get it.” ‘Scars’ sighs. “So, let’s do what he says, and hope that gets us there.” It’s not like they have any other options. 

__

Mark is their Leader. He is in charge, and they’ll do anything he says. It’s absolutely thrilling, absolutely delicious. He understands, now, what the Mohawk had meant. There was no greater feeling than raw power, and control. 

The trio flies in silence, their new Leader taking point with the direction he’d stolen off of Nolan’s person. Norway, huh. He’d been, once before, during his Earth’s original occupation. The happiest country in the world, he thinks he remembers. They screamed and begged the same amount as anyone else, though. 

The Soldier on his left, stoic and unemotive, only lets his bluff shine through with the way his eyes are sunken in terror. He refuses to make eye contact with him, the strongest Mark, their Leader. He relishes the idea of such fear in his subject’s heart.

The Ache dulls in his chest, Nolan’s blood sitting warm in his stomach. He’d barely gotten any, but it’s been so delectable, so sweet. His stomach growls at the idea of more. 

The Emperor, on his right, glances over every now and then as they fly. He’s cautious, and quiet, two things that don’t suit his brash and loud personality. Mark loves that he’s the reason. His blood pumps and his muscles burn with the itch to reach out and destroy .

But he can’t do that. He has no idea how to get home, and he needs the others, he needs to know what they do, and he doesn’t. 

But the hunger claws at him, and the Ache grows louder. It’s only a matter of time. And he needs it. He needs the warm feeling of blood coating his throat, the way his teeth sink into flesh. He craves it more than anything. 

Overhead, the silver rings shine, and if he listens to the Ache enough, he can feel them buzz, feel them vibrate. The sensation is agony to his ears, to his organs. And yet he wants it even more. And the others will get him everything he wants. They don’t have a choice. 

Chapter Text

The next week is a hectic hellscape of traveling across the globe, investigating sites of interest again to see if they missed anything, and figuring out their new dynamics. The one who leads them is eerily normal when the fight subsided, talking like any other Mark Grayson would. Except for when he sees Nolan. He stalks around the ground like a wolverine when Nolan comes into view, snarling and sniffing at the air around him, taunting him with teasing pats and punches. Nolan does nothing to stop him, and goes about his day, doing what he’s told. The wound in his side is stitched together haphazardly, washed out with alcohol they’d found in the city ruins. None of them are sure what to make of the change. 

None of them are sure how to plant anything correctly, either. The seed vault showed horrible signs of corrosion in the metal, and flooding in the lower levels. Almost anything recognizable was completely destroyed, and the labels weren’t in English. None of them had any idea what they were planting, not that they even knew what season it was to begin with. The weather never changed.

They have a schedule, of sorts, where each of them is assigned to different tasks. It keeps them grounded, even if it’s completely arbitrary. ‘Scars’ takes care of the electronics, though he freely admits having little idea what he’s doing. The rest of them are even more clueless, though, so they let him reside as the relative expert. The rest of them switch off between scavenging in different parts of the globe, with the Leader and his two picks, The Soldier and the Emperor, taking his side for each getaway.

The rest of them enjoy their time away from his gaze, but they still do what he asks. Partly because it benefits them all anyway, and partly because, well, they’ve seen what he’s capable of. Scavenging accords them precious little food, non-perishables that taste of stale preservatives and horribly salted drug mart foods. Even in just a short week and half, though, intact packaging has become rarer than gold. 

They at least have their garden to keep their mind off of their situation. Not that it’s much to look at. One of them smacks his makeshift rake into the sand, splintering it in half. “How is this stuff going to grow? Doesn’t it need water?” The Emperor balks, watching their rudimentary attempts at creating tilled soil. 

“Hey, hey, hey, dumbass, don’t break the equipment! We barely have any!” Lectures ‘Mask’, frowning. “We need what we have!” 

The Emperor soars to his face, snarling. Sand rushes by in the wind. “What did you call me?” 

They’re separated by the Leader, who chuckles darkly. “Alright, kids, we can kill each other later. There’s shit to do.” And none of them will argue with that.

It’s haphazard and poorly done, but the work makes them all feel like they’re working towards something lasting. The end of the world and being stuck here forever are things that most of them do their best not to think about. Others won’t stop reminding them every two seconds. 

There is such a bizarre difference in each of them, despite the fact that they are each other. Despite this perceived obstacle, it actually proves to come in handy. Some of them remember things that others do not, some of them have lived through experiences that the others do not share. They’d found several manuscripts for agriculture, sogged and ruined, but at least they included images to copy from. One of them recognized the practice of ‘tilling,’ from their schooling days, in

Earth sciences. Most of them never bothered to pay attention in school. A few of them barely went to school at all. But thanks to one of them, they all benefit. Or, they would, if the soil wasn’t desolate. 

They don’t have proper tools, so they use metal pipes, sticks, and anything else they can find. Their ‘rakes’ are taped together and bent into place manually, based off their best estimates. The wind is stagnant without their influence, so their work isn’t immediately blown away. It looks pathetic regardless. 

“You guys don’t actually think this is going to work, do you?” Mohawk scoffs, though even he tills anyway. “This is fucking sand. Like the annoying Me was whining on about, we don’t even have any water. Not like we can use the ocean.”

“We can find water underground, man,” the Masked one supplies. “There's, like, groundwater pockets in the Earth. Even if this Earth got blown up or whatever, that would still be underground. At least, I think?” He taps his chin, trying to remember his freshman year science seminar. He remembers the girl who sat in front of him, her long blonde hair and her perfume smelling of cinnamon. But not much else.

“Maybe the water is irradiated and will give us superpowers,” ponders ‘Scars’. The others look at him in stupor, and he flushes bright red. “Oh, right. We already have those.” 

“…Either way, it’s not like there’s an open BurgerMart around here anywhere,” mutters the Soldier, the white-worn Viltrumite. “Uh, not that I would. Go eat there.” He coughs, looking away awkwardly. “The meat would be rancid by now, anyway, like everywhere else.”

“But dude, if we could, I would definitely eat at a BurgerMart,” growls their Leader, laughing uncannily. “I could absolutely devour a burger right now.”

The rest of them laugh along uneasily, their brows taut and their teeth clenched in anxiety. If he notices, their Leader doesn’t care, and instead offers an easy smile, the charisma many Mark Graysons are known for. It does anything but settle the tension. “Don’t worry, guys. It’ll all work out. I’m in charge, remember? I wouldn’t lead you wrong, would I?” 

It’s a clear challenge, and behind his lithe smile are dangerous, insidious eyes.

It’s been ten days since the battle, since they decided who was strongest. Nobody so far dares to contest the careful balance they’ve established. Day and night, they work to stay occupied, to keep themselves sane. Their Leader takes the Emperor as his right hand and the Soldier as his left, enforcers of his will. They all know that the next time one of them snaps, there won’t be so many bodies left breathing. And for all of the cruelness they’ve inflicted, and all of the harm they’ve done, none seem to fathom what it would mean to kill their reflection. 

None except their leader, who threatens Nolan with it constantly. The young Omni-Man is the most beaten, the most bruised, both physically and verbally. In their hierarchy, he sits at the bottom, the runt of the litter, the expendable. None of them dare to speak out in case they would replace him. Nolan speaks very rarely, now, and never to their Leader, regardless of how hard he tries to goad Nolan into it. 

Their rickety shelter has expanded with new walls, and new huts, fastened to the ground with boards sunk deep into the earth and hard nails shoved forcefully into place. It is ugly and ramshackle, but it accommodates each of them and gives them much needed privacy and recovery from themselves. As they’ve begun to learn, there is no greater Hell than looking into your own eyes for too long. Some of them choose to room together, like some form of post-apocalyptic college dormitory. Except instead of class, you beat each other half to death and then act like nothing happened.

They find their own counterparts that suit themselves, either way. The ‘Soldier’ never had the chance to go to college, and the Emperor never had the chance to complete it. There is a careful dichotomy in the edge of their strength that keeps them orbiting each other. The Soldier and the Emperor sleep facing one another, trusting their strength in case anything may come. But not each other, because they look into their eyes, and see their own staring back. 

‘Mask’ and ‘Scars’ sleep back-to-back, assuming the other won’t break their necks in their sleep. The Masked one believes him to be the sanest, the least dangerous. ‘Scars’ affirms the same but keeps contingencies in the back of his head. The Masked one is certainly not weak, so he proved with the scar across Mohawk’s temple. But if it was between the two of them…well, there was a clear choice to be made, ‘Scars’ knows. The rest of them prefer solitude, with the Leader in particular looming in their doorways, peeking in on their resting forms. They all know it, but nobody talks about it. 

“Scars, your radio. How’s it coming along?” Their Leader demands. ‘Scars’ glances over, and points to the metal shack they’ve assembled, wires and copper antennas protruding from the top awkwardly. 

“Well, considering I only ever touched the radio in the Viltrumite prison one time, I think I’m doing a pretty bang-up job,” he snickers. “I mean—the actual parts of the radio seem to be working okay, considering the state it was in when we found it. So, it’s just on me kind of…figuring out how it works.” Scars mentions, and the Leader offers him a pat atop the head. Scars bites back his frown at the condescension. 

“I’m expecting you to start trying to pick up signals soon. If there’s anyone left out here, it’s time we introduced ourselves like the good neighbors we are.”

‘Scars’ offers a nod, and the Leader whirls to face the Emperor and the Soldier. 

“And you two, today’s the day.” The Leader procures a burlap sack for each of them, sliding in their incredibly barebones ‘care packages.’ “You guys each get one pack of peanuts, and you can share the water bottle. Hopefully those Martians have some water for you, but hey, you can always drink their blood instead,” he snorts casually, like he’s a comedian expecting applause. Nobody offers him any.

“Maybe they can explain to us what happened to the moon,” mumbles the Emperor, looking up at the silver rings. They shine in his vision, and as he stares, they seem to stop time. He looks up at the sky, enraptured like he’s in a trance. 

“They’re probably the ones who blew it up,” growls the Soldier. “In jealousy of the Empire, of the Earth.” 

“Just go there and take their shit, please.” The Leader sighs. “They’ve got to have directions to other planets if they have spaceships.”

“Yeah, guys. You're chosen by our fearless Leader, so I’m sure you’ll do great.” Mohawk bites, jealousy leaking into his words. 

Only a few of them have ever been to Mars, in their home dimensions. They’re aware of the Sequids, but have no reason to fear their influence. Others were present for the Guardians of the Globe, and for Martian Man, so they know how to deal with their kind. The Quiet one, surprisingly, said they’re very difficult to kill outright.

“I ripped the martian in half and he just kept screaming,” he murmured, like he was remembering an embarrassing moment from his childhood. “I felt pretty bad, at first. But then he didn’t stop, so I figured he’d be fine. Then he actually did stop, when he was in two pieces. But he still lived. Cecil was not happy, but Dad thought it was amusing.” His face had contorted with disgust when he mentioned their father. That was the most they’d ever heard him talk. 

So, thanks to that bit of intel, they know that the Martians are stretchy, durable, and they only die if you hit the core where their organs sit. The plan is to strongarm their planet into handing over enough supplies to keep them going and see if they have scientists of the caliber to return them to their original dimensions. It’s foolproof, really. 

If the Martians turn out to be a nuisance, or useless, they can just kill them all, and then they use their resources to find Viltrum on the intergalactic map. They’ve been over every inch of Earth by now. Unless it’s underground, secluded and hidden, there’s not a soul left breathing on the Earth’s surface. The Emperor and the Soldier take off into Earth’s atmosphere, ready to claim another planet, as they’ve both done so many times before.

___

Space is so unfathomably silent. Once you leave the atmosphere, there’s absolutely nothing. The pair hold their breath and begin to fly, hoping to make it to Mars by the end of the day. The Soldier and the Emperor are both aware of Viltrumite ships traveling between galaxies in mere weeks and have flown through space on their own before. They fly past where the moon used to sit in the sky, and there’s a sudden shift in the air.

A blistering pain sets itself in their inner ears, and the Soldier trembles, the Emperor roars. The air evacuates their lungs, leaving them stranded in space with no breath. The pain is agony, tearing them apart from the inside. Red leaks from their ears, their nostrils, and their bones begin to ring. It should be impossible, in the vacuum of space, but they hear it sing to them.

It’s horrible, and it hurts. The song threatens to churn their insides out of their bodies and leave them as hollow husks.

It sounds like everything they’ve ever heard crashing into them at the same time, droning, demanding, and violent. It aches in a way so foreign, so obscene, that they want to tear their own ears out. 

They aren’t sure how, but they claw their way back into the atmosphere, back to Earth. Relief floods their systems as real, tangible breaths are heard, as the ringing in their bones subsides. Neither of them has experienced anything like this before.

“Everything…hurts,” the Soldier whimpers, his normal low tone of confidence now subdued and croaking.

The Emperor says nothing, but the Soldier sees his muscles wrench, and his eyes dilate. He is, for the first time he can remember, afraid for his life. The last thing each of them see before crashing into the Earth is each other. 

—

“Fuck, dude, I think they’re waking up!” 

“Do you think they met somebody else up there, or—?”

“How could they not deal with fucking Martians?”

“…I was pretty clear that they don’t die easily.” 

“Shut up, you annoying pricks, they’re opening their eyes!” 

The Soldier sees light again, blaring down on him. Sand rushes by his ears, clogged with dried blood. Everything hurts. He stifles a whimper, and suddenly, he’s hoisted into the air, face-to-face with the Leader.

“What happened up there, buddy?” He smiles. He’s absolutely furious. 

“There’s—there’s an…alarm. It hurts. It hurts so much,” he pleads, his stoic front faltering for the first time. The Leader quirks his brow underneath his mask, inquisitive. The Soldier continues, rambling incoherently. “It’s so loud. It rings in your organs. In your brain. I think I’m bleeding from my brain.” The Leader sighs and drops him back to the sand. He gasps as the rough sand hits his back.  

“Can any of you figure out what he’s talking about?” He addresses the group, frowning. They all look baffled, completely unaware of how to interpret The Soldier’s omen. Except for one of them, who grimaces in recognition. Nolan knows, now, what The Soldier means. They are stuck here, on this miserable wasteland of a barren planet.

Nolan bites his lip, and mulls over his options. He doesn’t want to warn them; doesn’t want to relive what he went through. The blood of his father, the sensation of his brain feeling like molten lava. Cecil’s blood. His mom’s blood. Blood. Red. His own hands, coated in red. 

The Soldier makes the choice for him, as his senses return, and his consciousness steadies itself. He gasps for breath, sitting up in the sand. He glances between them all grimly, like he’s about to deliver the news of a husband’s passing to a widow. 

“We can’t leave the planet.” Is all he says.

“What do you mean, ‘we can’t leave the planet,’ nimrod?” ‘Mohawk’ drops his voice low in a mocking tone. 

The Soldier clutches his forehead and lets out a weary sigh. “There’s a transmitted frequency, around the planet, in space. It interferes with our inner ears, our balance, as Viltrumites. It’s like drilling a hole into your brain. If you fly into it, you can’t fly correctly—or it’ll kill you, melt your brain, if it’s severe enough.” 

They all sit in stunned silence, digesting this information. Mohawk bursts into laughter after a moment, his familiar way of cackling. 

“Oh my God, dude, next you’re gonna tell us that Viltrumites explode if you pour orange juice on them, or something!” He buckles over, hysterical. “I mean, I’ve literally destroyed planets, I can tear people in half with my pinky finger, and you’re telling me that dog whistles are fucking fatal?” 

“It’s a little more severe than a dog whistle, but please, go right and test it,” The Soldier rises to his feet, imposing. “None of us would miss you if you went and liquidated your brain.”

The Mohawk flips him off but continues with his frantic laughter. Between heaves, he manages to sputter out a response. “No, no, it’s okay, I believe you! It’s just—just really fucking funny, man!” He doubles over again. 

“And you didn’t think to try and fly through it? To push on and get through?” The Leader is steaming with anger. “How can sound even affect you in space?”

“Radio frequencies still travel through space,” murmurs the maskless one, a touch of superiority in his voice. “…You guys didn’t get much education, did you?” 

“I did, and it’s why I’m always the one teaching the rest of you idiots,” grumbles the Soldier. “You know nothing about our own people, our own bodies. It’s a disgrace to see some of you wearing my face.”

“You’re the one who came tucked with his tail between his legs over a glorified dog whistle,” seethes the Leader. He stomps off, muttering curses under his breath. “Leave me alone! I need to think.” 

“The shouting guy is waking up, too,” informs the Quiet Mark, pointing to the sand, where the Emperor stirs. Unlike The Soldier, he is masked, and they can’t tell if his eyes are opened. His expression is vacant, and glassy, like he’s seeing something really far away, and out of focus.

“I think he might be brain dead,” says Mohawk, giving his leg a little poke. He doesn’t respond. “Huh. Well, that’s good. More supplies for the rest of us.”

“He’s not brain dead, dude. He’s probably just stunned.” The Masked one rolls his eyes, and Mohawk flicks the back of his head childishly. ‘Scars’ takes a tentative step toward the Emperor’s unmoving figure, arm extended. 

“Uh…Emperor-Mark-Guy? God, that’s a dumb name,” Scars waves his hand in front of the Emperor’s face, “Angry me—us—whatever, you there, man?” He clicks his fingers with more haste, before he finally gives a light slap to his stomach. The Emperor heaves a violent breath of air, sending dust flying into the air. 

The Emperor seems to snap into reality, pushing ‘Scars’ back roughly. “Don’t fucking touch me, you disgusting freak.” He hisses, childish and with a primal fear from a lack of understanding. Nobody else notices his lingering gaze, his ringing ears. The way the moon dust settles in the sky like glitter. ‘Scars’ draws back like he’s been shocked, his burned scorn evident in the abyssal stare he offers in return. Mohawk flies in between them, snorting casually.

“He’s us, moron. If he’s a disgusting freak, you’re a disgusting freak,” Mohawk rolls his eyes, floating through the air with his arms behind his head. “I don’t know why we don’t get it, yet. Even Masky does.” He twirls his hand around, motioning to them all. “We’re all the same person. I’m you, you’re me, we’re even Daddy’s boy over there,” he thumbs to Nolan, who scowls. “Sure, our parents each shit the bed with us in different ways, but we’re all still Mark Grayson, even if some of us wish otherwise.” His sharklike smirk falls to Nolan again, who simply stares back with boiling disdain.

“Come on, dude, stop antagonizing him,” the Masked one frowns, his facade of sanity wavering with the more time they spend here. You can see it in the twitch of his fingers, hear it in the unsteady patterns of his breath.

 Mohawk relents, because he’s now aware that despite the Masked one’s strong emotions, he is not weak. His fingers drift over the scar by his temple, remembering the bloodlust, the crazed eyes through the tear of his mask. I’m going to peel your face off and wear it , he’d screamed. So much for being the sane one. Not that any of them qualified to begin with. Mohawk looks around at the pieces of himself and can arrange them in his mind to know exactly where they come from, what they truly are. It’s a gift of his, being able to put things together. Considering the rest of himself, he’s not sure where it came from. He supposes that comes with the clarity of knowing exactly who he is, and what he wants to be, something he knows none of the others possess.

There’s the Soldier, tall and mighty. He’s outspokenly proud of his Viltrumite heritage, his bravado and enhanced vocabulary desperate cries to prove his worthiness, his superiority. But really, Mohawk knows, every breath he takes is forced. The Viltrum Empire subjugated him at some point, and he was dragged along by their chains, as one of their machines. He is nothing but a tool, and deep down, he knows that he is not free, not even here. 

Mohawk knows that he had pieces of an Earth childhood, based on the nostalgia in his tone, and the way he looks at the ruins with striking familiarity. But things changed for him younger than most of them, because this piece of himself is stuck in the attitude of righteousness. He believes in what they are doing, as Viltrumites, is for the greater good. At the very least, he desperately tries to convince himself.

And then there’s The Emperor, the childish part of himself, who’s used to getting exactly what he wants. He gets exactly what he’s been told since he can remember belongs to him. Mohawk thinks that he’s aware of the truth of their lineage, in his home dimension, raised to be a Spoiled Prince. 

He thinks that name suits him much better than the one they’d given him. He’s loud, and brash, and used to nothing putting up a fight. Every time something draws blood from him, he sees the terror in his eyes, the unfamiliarity. He’s a spoiled little brat, and Mohawk hates that they’re the same person, that he had the potential to turn out that way. The Emperor is the most uncertain of how to clean himself, how to accomplish menial labor. He seems unfamiliar with the concept of going to school or having normal friends. Mohawk supposes isolation and egotism are a dangerous combination, which is good to know if he ever has children. 

Wandering aimlessly most days, there’s the unmasked Mark, who has nothing to lose, and walks around with his identity on full display. He is in stark contrast to Mohawk, who doesn’t wear a mask, either. The distinction is that the other part of him, that quiet and withdrawn Mark with blood coating his fingers and the soulless look in his deep brown eyes, is empty of things to lose. Mohawk, on the other hand, has nothing to gain by hiding who he is, what he’s capable of. They are two sides to the coin, embracement versus suppression. Mohawk wonders just what happened in his dimension, how much of himself is left in that hollow shell. 

Occasionally he shows fragments of being Mark Grayson, mumbling about their hobbies, a smile on his face as they discuss life before their powers. But most of the time, he just stares up at the sky, at the rings left behind by the moon. Mohawk isn’t sure how this Mark managed to make it. He’ll give Good Guy Mark—the one from the prison, that asswipe—one benefit of the doubt, his Earth was better equipped than his Earth ever was. That Cecil definitely earned his paycheck, unlike his, who he watched his father crush with one finger.

Fascinatingly, there’s Nolan, who seems to be stuck in a psychological horror show of daddy issues and self-grandiosity. He’s undoubtedly one of the physically stronger counterparts here, with an impressive frame and stature clearly modeled after their father. But he again suppresses every piece of himself that is Mark Grayson, even to the point of adopting his father’s name. He sees the way that Nolan stares at his reflection in the cracked windows, the way his hands tremble. Nolan is not his father, but he believes himself to be. And there’s hatred, there’s a desperation for approval, a deep sense of loathing and loving. There’s a conglomeration of every complicated relationship that embeds itself in the ideals of family. But Nolan can’t hide that he is Mark Grayson, no matter how much he may try—the proof is quite literally right in front of him.

And now who could forget the butt-fucking-ugly one? Mark’s always been pretty vain, he admits, in the way he styles his hair, the way he flaunts his clothes. There was nothing wrong with wanting to look nice. But this piece of himself lacked that option. His scars were external, his horrible fate and family on open view for anyone who happened by his gaze. And wow, surviving in a Viltrumite prison? Buddy went through the ringer, for sure, Mohawk knows.

Mohawk’s seen the prisons with his own eyes. Hell, he’s refined them to suit his tastes, in his own dimension. The Viltrumites are nothing if not efficient. Very few of them are cruel for the sake of perverse pleasure, but the ones in the charge of the prisons usually suit the bill. He wonders how he was caught, how a version of himself would defy Viltrum, and be imprisoned over execution. It’s simply fascinating—and the guy is funny, to boot. One of the least irritating pieces of him. 

The Leader, with his blackened suit and wide smile, is the piece of himself he can’t easily place. Mark knows, has known for a long time, that he is selfish, with the capability to be extremely cruel. Eve was proof of that, the entire Teen Team was proof of that. He made that choice so easily, so quickly, and then they were dead. It’s the day he shaved his head, after he felt the rush of the blood, the thrill of the fight. No, it isn’t the killing, or the bloodlust, that Mark lacks an understanding of, in their leader. 

It’s the way that he’s insatiable for it. Every word, every taunt, every step. This piece of him lives and breathes violence in a way that even he fails to understand. Their power is an incredible thing to behold, and to use. Mohawk relishes every fight, every reminder of being alive that doesn’t come in the form of a tiny prescription pill. It’s so easy to understand what different pieces of himself are like, because he is already in pieces. Broken, malformed, and unstable, just like the rest of them. 

But their Leader really is something else. There’s something Mark can’t place, can’t reach, in the depths of his stare, in the way his fingers dance when Nolan walks by. He acts like they’re his toys, in the world’s largest sandbox. He sneaks glances at them as if they were delicacies waiting to be devoured. Sometimes he swears he can see his mouth water. Mark knows he’s fucked up, too, but hey. Real can recognize real. And there’s something about that part of the Mark Grayson convention he doesn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole. Twenty, even. 

So for now, Mohawk will bide his time. He’ll play along—-mostly—and watch how things unfold. After all, he’s brash, and wreckless, but he’s not stupid.

The Leader returns, all smiles, like his ferocious anger was never there. He motions over beyond the shelter, beyond their work, to a makeshift pile of bleached wood and other burning substances. “I was going to save this for after the Mars mission, but since that’s big happening anymore…” 

He grits his teeth, and slams into the ground, destroying the bonfire pit and sending bits of it flying in every direction. “Since we have no real meat to cook like I thought we would, I guess we don’t need it,” he turns to the others, dangerously leering, before he tears off into the sky.

“Where the hell is he going?” Frowns ‘Scars.’ “…Actually, he’s batshit, so forget I even asked. We can relax for a bit.” They stew in the vacancy for a moment, letting themselves relax. But Mohawk takes the opportunity when his competition is gone, and slinks in. 

Mohawk inspects the destroyed bonfire, letting out a sad whine. “Aw, man, I was really looking forward to burning a bunch of stuff. You know, Viltrumite powers are great and all, but sometimes I wish I had Rex’s powers, too. You guys must feel the same, right? Can you imagine blowing shit up with your fingertips?” Mohawk imitates Rex’s signature tactic of throwing pebbled explosives into the air, using sound effects and all. 

“Rex…like Rex Splode? Man, I haven’t thought about that guy in forever,” ‘Scars’ shakes his head fondly. “He was a massive prick to Eve, but yeah, his power was pretty cool.” Scars looks down at the ground, unanswered questions burning through his mind. “…speaking of, her powers were uh, pretty sick, too.” 

“Forget her powers, dude, she was smoking hot,” grins Mohawk, mapping out her figure with his hands. “Her ass in those little pink shorts? God damn, it was really hard not to get distracted when we fought together. Pretty sure Dad lectured me a dozen times about Viltrumite expectations.” He lets out a perverted little groan. “Dude, if she was here…”

“Jesus, man, how can you talk about her like that?” ‘Mask’ sounds appalled. “She…she means so much, does so much for so many people, and you just talk about her like she’s a display for you to look at.” 

Mohawk looks stunned for a moment, processing the words. He chuckles and shakes his head. “Yeah, you know, she was a pretty cool person. I mean, she was always with Rex, but as time went on, I figured…” He trails off, slouching his hands into his pockets. 

“Your Eve was still with Rex? Mine broke up with her like, two years ago, in our sophomore year.” ‘Scars’ laughs, “God, I can’t believe that guy. She stayed with him for so long, and he just kept cheating on her.” 

“Eve told me that Rex had a pretty rough childhood. I mean, his parents sold him to the government,” ‘Mask’ relays. “He was really nice when Eve and I got together, at least.” His grip tightens, and his fist trembles at the memory.

Mohawk whistles low, grabbing ‘Mask’ by the shoulders and grinning. “You pulled Eve in your dimension? Dude, I thought you were the part of me with no game! How’d you get her to join your side, dude?” 

‘Mask’ squints, confused. “…What do you mean?” 

“My Eve wasn’t really down with the whole ‘taking over the world’ thing, man.” Mohawk pouts. “What’d you say to convince her?”

‘Mask’ bites his lip, scowling. “I didn’t,” he says. “When they made me submit to Viltrum, when they took my Mom…I lost contact with her. I don’t know where she is, anymore.” It’s the most Mask has told them about his life. Nolan looks perturbed at his admission, but Mohawk shoves through the conversation, keeping a close eye on their friend in red costume.

“…my Eve was still with Rex,” admits the Quiet Mark. “They fought a lot, but I always thought they’d get through it. We went on double dates every week.” 

“I bet you were just waiting to swoop in and steal her from Rex, you conniving little shit,” grins Mohawk, knocking his shoulder against the Quiet Mark’s. “I bet your girlfriend was just to make her jealous, am I right?” 

“My girlfriend.” The words sound foreign in his mouth. The Quiet Mark just looks at the ground, smiling sadly. “Of course not even me understands what I’m going through.” None of them know what he means by that. Mohawk shrugs, and turns to Nolan, who’s since tried to distance himself from their conversation. He drags him back in headfirst. 

“You know, Nolan shoved Eve’s bone through her leg, in that world Angstrom took us to,” Mohawk says nonchalantly. Half of their heads whirl to him in disbelief. Even the quiet maskless Mark looks a little stunned by the admission. 

“You killed that Invincible’s Atom Eve?” Mask whispers, a puzzled expression on his face. “I…we love her, dude! How could you do that?” He yells at Nolan, his blood pressure rising with anger. 

“She defied the Viltrum Empire, and her powers are an unholy abomination of the natural world,” Nolan snarls. “I didn’t kill her, though. The GDA of their world dropped those zombie robots on me and another of us. They killed him, and that Atom Eve's Mark helped her escape.” 

“I don’t even know who you’re talking about,” The Soldier blinks. “Atom Eve? The girl with the pink power? I’ve never even spoken to her.” 

“That doesn’t surprise me, considering you got raised in a military camp or whatever,” Mohawk rolls his eyes. “For those of us who actually got to live, she went to our high school. Pretty, confident, and good in a fight,” he sighs at the memory. “But she wouldn’t go along with me and Dad, man!” He seethes. “But that dipshit Me from Angstrom’s world gets to have her, and—and fuck her, and know what she tastes like. It’s not fucking fair, dude!” He yells, petulant and agitated.

“You’re disgusting,” spits Nolan, his first words in hours. He looks at Mohawk like scum stuck to the bottom of his shoe. “Just absolutely foul. It sickens me that we look remotely similar.” 

“Aw, Nolan,” Mohawk grabs his cheek, squeezing it. “We’re the same person. Everything I’m thinking is something I know has gone through that muscly head of yours.” 

“I am nothing like you,” Nolan slaps his arm away, his voice raw and shallow. “You have my face, and that’s it. You don’t know anything about me, about my life.” 

Mohawk tuts, “Aw, dear Nolan, I don’t think that’s true.” He pulls up his fingers, beginning to count off details. “I know how much you hate our Dad, despite how you act,” Nolan’s throat rumbles dangerously, but Mohawk continues. “Really, I get the daddy issues, I do. Because I’m you. But the rest of it? I gotta say, I expected you to be a little less sentimental, Big Red.”

Nolan’s anger is replaced with confusion. His teeth poke out from his mouth and his brow furrows under his mask in a way that is quintessentially Mark Grayson. 

He turns his head back to Nolan, and smirks wider. 

“I also know that you changed your name because of something that happened to Mom, isn’t that right? I mean, it’s more a guess, but whenever someone mentions her, you look so upset, like you’re— “ 

Nolan’s hands are around his throat in seconds.

Mohawk gasps in his grip, “—Oh, that’s it, isn’t it? Struck the jackpot? Yeah, we knew you killed her, you dog, but you didn’t really want to, did you? But when Angstrom scooped us all up, you sure did brag about it!” Mohawk’s voice rasps as Nolan squeezes, blood coming up and out of his mouth. “What was it you said? You said—“Oh! You said, ‘“I am Omni-Man, not Invincible. I do not have any of your childish weaknesses.”’ Mohawk’s laugh is cruel. “Yeah, clearly, since you were so fucked up about killing her that you had to change your name!” 

“SHUT UP!” Nolan’s voice breaks, and he truly shouts. He is Mark Grayson, infuriated, broken, missing his mother. Mohawk is victorious. If the absolute loathing in his eyes is any indication of Nolan’s intentions, Mohawk is about to lose his head.

And then the clapping behind them starts, slow and methodical. It speeds up, and there’s a familiar dark chuckle and the sound of heavy footsteps. The Leader smacks Nolan’s shoulder with his full strength, and he goes sailing down into the earth, Mohawk dropped onto his knees.

“I need you to stop fighting, because I want you all to see this,” the Leader grins. “I went home. I found our cellphone.” 

Chapter Text

Nolan and Mohawk lay in the dunes, coughing up blood and sand. They all stare at their Leader, dumbfounded, unsure of what to say. This planet, their tomb, has begun to crush them all in ways far beneath the skin. And yet another glimmer of hope, a respite from the terror of their reality, is held aloft in their Leader’s hand.

Nolan rolls over in the sand, his black goggles cracked by the force of his fall. There is a wild fury in his eyes, a deep hatred. They are a deep hue of brown, just like everyone else’s. 

“Thanks to me, we finally have something to look forward to,” smiles the Leader, his sharpened canines accentuated by his thin lips. “I went back to our house in the suburbs, the ruins of it. And thank God, because this was there!” 

“You found our house? I thought you hated it there,” the Scarred Mark tilts his head warily, glancing between the rising Mohawk and Nolan, and the Leader, who holds up a near-ruined cellphone, covered in layers of dust and dirt. 

“Oh, I do,” grins the Leader, “It’s a shithole that reminds me of everything human about us,” he fails to hide his grimace. “But seeing as we apparently can’t leave the planet without getting our brains blown out, desperate times. And I found this—this is our way out!” He laughs. “This phone, it was ours. The one from this world. I found it on our bed.” 

“Why would he just leave his phone sitting on his bed during the apocalypse?” The Masked Mark’s brow furrows, “And—we really need to do something, about the infighting. We won’t get out of here if we’re too beaten to move.” 

“Tell that to Nolan, not me,” Mohawk laughs, spitting blood into the sand. “He’s the one who keeps going for my windpipe.” 

“I hate you,” Nolan writhes, his blood steaming.

“I think there’s a more important question, there,” mentions the Emperor, his tone more subdued in volume, but just as sharp. “We keep talking about getting out of here. Do we really need all eight of us to do that?” 

The Emperor’s eyes sparkle at the idea of battle, of bloodshed. The moon’s rings circle the Earth overhead, their prison cell, their sealed tomb. Their island of misfit toys. And toys can always be broken, the Emperor knows. He remembers the thrill of the tearing , the adrenaline from the burning buildings.

He remembers the ringing more than anything else. He’s not in space anymore, he breathes. He knows he is safe. But the silver rings hum their disapproval, they heat and scald the back of his neck with sun rays. 

The rest of them glance between each other, the thoughts finally given root in the open air. Beating each other into submission, their hands around each other’s throats, and even the blood rushing from their bodies are all things they’ve done gladly. 

But to kill a person who has your face, your name? To use your own hands to end the life of someone who remembers your parents, your home, your childhood? Different as they may be, they are all Mark Grayson. 

They have all known their mother, their father. They know things about each other that nobody else could ever begin to.

Is it suicide? Self-loathing? What would it be like to watch the light ebb from your own eyes, to see the color drain from your own face? To feel your own heart stop beating. It’s something that humanity was never built to fathom, to experience. But they are not wholly human—they are something better, something evolved. Maybe this is how it was meant to be. 

The earth takes a breath. The Leader steps forward, and pats the Emperor, the Spoiled Prince, on the shoulder. The Leader’s gaze is affectionate, and soft, as he looks at his reflection. His fingers trace his jaw, and the Emperor pauses in shock, his limbs frozen into place.

“You’re adorable, you know,” the Leader smiles and ruffles his hair. “I can see why you’re an emperor, a tyrant. It suits you so well, Mark.” 

The Emperor can do nothing but stare. His fingers twitch, and tremble, like he wants to tear himself away. But he stands there, letting their Leader coo at him gently, soften his hair, gently pet him. It’s revolting, bile rising up the back of his throat, to be treated like an object—like a lesser being—by himself. The Leader shakes his head, finally, pinching the Emperor’s face together like his baby. It’s a stinging sensation, gentle and lingering. He hates it.

The Leader finally speaks. “Oh, Mark, we can’t do that,” he murmurs, apologetic. “It would be fun, wouldn’t it, to tear each other to pieces for real, I know,” his eyes cloud with pleasure, with bloodlust. “But we can’t. I need you all. We need each other. I need you all here because you’re proof that I’m myself, that I am nothing so insignificant as human.” 

Nobody dares to speak a word. The Leader’s footsteps shift, and he turns in a circle, addressing them all at once. “This phone, it’s gotta have information, gotta tell us about where We went,” he grins. “I wanted us all to see it together. To share this information. I’m gracious like that.” They all know that he isn’t.

The phone is cracked through the center, and absolutely full of dust, but to their astonishment, it does turn on. The light blue plastic case splinters and falls to pieces as the Leader presents the phone, the blurred background clearly showing a version of Themselves with none other than Atom Eve. The Mark adorns a gold suit with a blue stripe across the chest, and sleek black sleeves on each of his limbs. In lieu of a mask, a matching golden scarf hangs loosely beneath his chin, his hair neatly kept and gelled. Brown highlights reflect in the loose strands of his carefully styled hair, and Eve cups his cheek affectionately. Interestingly, his goggles are actually fastened around his head, attached to actual frames. There’s a refraction in the lenses that reflects back off of Mark’s skin, a prescription pair none of them are familiar with. But it’s undoubtedly Mark Grayson in his smile, in the way his eyes crinkle. In his fondness for Eve.

“Well, damn, it looks like this version of us was an invalid,” the Leader tuts, motioning to the goggles. “Still bagged the girl, though.” 

“Jesus Christ, man…” the Masked Mark whispers. But he can’t help but stare at the phone’s background, at the woman of many of their dreams. 

In the photo, Eve wears several braids in her long and flowing red hair, a brilliant smile on her face. Her costume consists of a simple maroon mask over just her eyes, and a matching set of gloves. Her actual supersuit keeps her usual symbol of the atomized symbol for women’s empowerment, with a subtle red hue and a billowing rose cape. The look in her eyes is one of adoration, and contentment. They are clearly a happy couple.

“She’s so beautiful,” the Scarred Mark is able to say. He looks like a hundred words are dancing around in his mind, a mixture of jealousy, relief, and grief adorning his burned visage. 

“Why does every Me but me get to have her?” Mourns the delinquent, the Mohawked Mark. The rest of them crowd around the Leader, watching the phone. Even Nolan peers over, his fractured goggles showcasing his blackened eye. 

They open the phone, and the Leader types in the passcode. The passcode is 4-1-7-0-5. Eve’s birthday, many of them know. Some of them are surprised that their Leader would know or would care to remember. But he doesn’t mention it, and neither do they. The clock on top of the phone screen says the year is 2028. They’re three years ahead, wherever they are. 

“Is...is that time and date right?” Squints the Masked Mark. “Are we in the future?…How does this phone even work. still?” 

“The year is right,” confirms their Leader. “Who knows, maybe this is what happens to Earth in every dimension, and we just haven’t gotten there yet,” he grins. Maybe I’m the one to do it, he hopes. 

There are dozens of notifications that appear above several familiar apps, such as Clash Crash , its logo drawing a calming nostalgia from many of them. Very few of the apps work at all, of course, without the Internet. The phone’s battery is half depleted, enough for a while—considering it’s been laying in ruins for literal years.

“Future or not, how exactly is our cellphone going to save us?” The Soldier frowns. 

“It’s got some videos on it. Videos that his Eve recorded. I’ll show them to you.” The Leader grunts and opens the camera roll. 

The newest video shows Eve and their mother in the frame, in what appears to be Mark’s bedroom. The Leader starts it, and they immediately see the devotion in Eve’s emerald eyes, her stunning disposition of pure resolve.

“Mark,” she says, blunt as ever, “Cecil didn’t want me to tell you where the bunker is. Said you know, there was always a chance you’d flip sides, that your father would ‘change his mind.’” She does air quotes, scoffing. “Well, Cecil can shove it up his ass. Your mom and I trust you. Both of you. So, if Cecil isn’t telling you where the bunker is, check my house. You’ll know where to look if you’re as soft on the inside as I know you are.” Eve winks at the camera, before turning to their mother. “Alright, Mrs., Grayson, your turn.” 

“Please, Eve, you know you can call me Debbie, you’re already family.” Debbie smiles, turning back to the phone. “Hi, Mark!” She says, her voice soft and excited. “I know your father will take great care of you out there, but please, honey, fall back on the others, too. This fight…we know it’s going to take everything you have, but I believe in you, son. You’re the reason your father and I are the people we are today. The reason the Earth is able to fight back, even when the odds seem insurmountable. I’m so proud of you, Mark.”

The Masked and Scarred Marks look away at that. Nolan stares even more intently, like he’s capable of turning the phone to dust with his mind. The rest of them continue to watch, a cocktail of emotions flooding through each of them. 

“She’s not exaggerating, Mark,” the Eve in the video says, her voice resolute. “Ever since I met you, in your dopey costume with your big doe eyes, you’ve shown so many people a better way. A better light.” Eve smiles fondly. “The GDA are sending a team to escort us to the bunker and the ship soon. I wanted you to find this after the fight, so you weren’t worried.” They watch a ray of pink energy flow throughout the screen. “And I’m upgrading your phone’s battery, so you don’t run out and panic, doofus.” 

“—Oh, and when your Dad and you get this, the bunker’s probably already going to have us evacuated. I know this fight may last a very long time; from what your father told me.” Debbie sighs, her weary gaze turning into a tired smile. “Don’t try to fly to us until the all-clear is sent, okay? I don’t want you getting hurt by our own people…or, well, vice-versa.” 

“We love you, Mark Grayson,” says Atom Eve, sincere. Debbie nods her affirmation. A thunderous boom sounds from outside the window, and suddenly, there are several familiar faces standing in the bedroom, ready to bring Eve and Debbie away from whatever conflict is brewing. 

The Mohawked Mark’s breath hitches, his eyes bulging. “Is that…?”

“How is that possible?” Whispers Nolan. The Soldier watches in disbelief.

The Green Ghost, War Woman, and the Immortal stand beside Debbie Grayson and Eve Wilkins, their allies, their comrades. Alive.

“Cecil’s people have already picked up on several heat signatures in deep space, approaching rapidly,” War Woman alerts them. “We’ll get you to the safe house, alongside the other high-priority targets. Cecil told me that you’re in charge of the ship’s defense, young Atom Eve.”

Eve nods grimly. “I know I have to be there in case they attack as we leave orbit. But…I want to come back afterwards. I can’t just leave Mark and the rest of you! I can literally control atoms like it’s easy. I could help engineer a Viltrumite prison cell, I could redirect collateral damage to rescue civilians! I’m too useful here to be sent to leave with the others.” 

The Immortal holds her shoulder, nodding with respect. “Your spirit and your intentions are a shining example of heroism, young lady. But…these people, this empire. These…Viltrumites. I have seen what Omni-Man is capable of, in these past twenty years. And while I respect him greatly for his assistance with our cause, he has put this world in a graver danger than anything in human history.” 

“The Viltrum Empire would have already seized control without Nolan,” Debbie says, her gaze steeled. “How dare you blame my husband for taking time to undo the brainwashing of thousands of years of war? Shouldn’t you understand that better than anyone?” Debbie stands tall against the ancient Celtic, and behind her, War Woman’s lips upturn, clearly impressed. The Immortal stands stunned in response, his eyes widening. He looks down at his own hands, at what they’ve seen, what they’ve done. And he knows the truth.

“…You’re right. I see this, and I have known this,” The Immortal relents. “But young Eve, these Viltrumites know of you. They know what you mean to Invincible. If you stay…they will stop at nothing to tear you apart.” 

Eve pauses, and her lip quivers. She lets out a tired sob, and glances at the camera. “I’m so sorry, Mark,” she begins to weep. “I want to be here to help you so bad, I really do.”

A translucent green hand appears on Eve’s shoulder, comforting her. “Oh, kid, I’m sure he knows you’d do anything for him,” the Green Ghost smiles at her (presumably). “That’s all the reason for you to come with us. You need to be safe, for him to fight with his mind clear.” 

Eve huffs, “Okay, Jesus, I’ll stay with the others,” she agrees reluctantly. “Enough of the guilt trip!”

Debbie smirks to the Guardians, nodding approvingly. “Are you guys sure you aren’t parents? Because that was pretty well done.” 

“If I had a child, I fear what world I would bring them into,” War Woman smiles sadly. “I also fear that we must go—now. The time for battle draws near. The one that will decide the fate of our world, even.” 

Eve picks up the phone and blows a kiss into the camera. “Oh, God, I can’t believe I just did that.” She groans, embarrassed. “Just—Mark Grayson, I love you, okay? I love you.” 

“And so do I, honey!” Debbie calls.  

The video ends. And then nobody knows what to say for a moment. Most of them are dumbfounded. There’s a myriad of new information flooding all of their brains, to varying degrees of anxiety. There’s a vault, or a bunker , somewhere, that this Eve and their mother fled to. This Earth’s Omni-Man never killed the Guardians of the Globe. The video is dated to two years ago, by this dimension, making the end of their world in 2026, supposedly. Nolan gathers his thoughts pretty quickly. 

“This—this world was leveled, destroyed,” he snarls, “by the ignorance of one of us. By the ignorance of our Father. They tried to stand against Viltrum, and look where it got them! Everyone on this entire planet is dead! Because they thought they could stand against something ancient, something beyond their comprehension.” 

“Dad…he…he betrayed the Empire, here?” The Soldier whispers, his voice soft and childlike. “How…my Dad…he…I.” He stammers, each word choking him. “When I was thirteen, my dad made me kill her. War Woman. She refused to fight a child, said it was an ‘atrocity’ that Viltrumites would allow such a thing,” he murmured. “But here, she respects him. She—she protected that woman, our mom.” 

“Are you guys seriously feeling soft over this? They’re all dead. They’ve been dead for years. They’re just humans. Get over it.” The Emperor rolls his eyes. 

“Not all of us are spoiled little brats who don’t care about anyone but themselves,” the Masked Mark bites back. “We’ve killed so many people, but this—this is proof that we couldn’t have gone against the Empire, right? That we did what we had to do?”

“Of course it is!” Nolan affirms angrily. “What else could this possibly mean?” 

“Of everything I was thinking, our dad going full reverse Anakin Skywalker wasn’t on my list,” the Scarred Mark admits. “I loathe that man, he took everything from me, my identity, my sense of self. The dad that I know would never do something like defend the Earth.” 

“I think that mine thought about it,” whispers the Masked Mark. “I really think he did. He left my planet, you know. My Earth. I don’t know where he ever went.” 

“If your Dad thought about betraying Viltrum, he was weak,” Nolan hisses. “Humanity was destroyed. Everyone we ever knew is gone in this world. Because of Invincible’s actions. It’s disgusting.” 

“Since when are you such a good person, mister mass murderer?” Cackles Mohawk. “In case you forgot, we turned Earth into our own personal stomping grounds just a few weeks ago. We would’ve done the exact same thing eventually, if we stayed long enough.”

“No, we showed them their submission . We worked for a cause . We didn’t wipe out their entire civilization because it rebelled,” Nolan defended. “We showed them how futile it would be to rebel in the first place. We saved them.” 

“I don’t think that’s how that Earth’s Mark saw it,” Mohawk shoots back, his signature shark-like grin on his lips. “Considering he nearly gave me a concussion when we met. And considering how you nearly killed his girlfriend.”

“Then he’s stupid. And childish. Just like any of you who think that this”— Nolan motions around to the wasteland—“is a better outcome than Viltrumite occupation.” 

“Nolan, oh, poor Nolan,” their Leader interjects, a cruel laugh sparking from his lips. Nolan turns to him with hatred in his eyes, torment on his tongue. The Leader presses on. “You don’t really think that, do you? That you’re any different than us, any more noble or whatever pointless bullshit?” The Leader stomps his food into the sand, sending a cloud of debris and dust into the air. “No,” he corrects, gently, his finger tracing Nolan’s chest. “You wanted to kill for the sake of it. Because you’re angry at the world, at your dad.” 

“I am so tired of being compared to the rest of you,” Nolan spits, disdainful. “I am clearly nothing like you! You are a—a psychopath, and I—I am—“

“—-you’re Mark Grayson,” the Leader smiles and shakes his head, like a sheepish parent. “Oh, Mark, you’re so lost, confused. It’s delicious, really.”

“Don’t you fucking call me that,” Nolan warns dangerously. The Leader smirks. And Nolan charges, driving his fist at the Leader’s stomach. The Leader strains to catch it, nearly buckling under the sheer force of Nolan’s strength. But he redirects the path of his fist, lifting it up into the air and bending it back. Nolan grunts in pain as the Monster taunts him, while the others do nothing but watch. 

“Aww, so he does know swear words!” The Leader chuckles. “Listen, Mark—Nolan, even—if it really makes you happy.” The Leader looks at him, oddly sincere. “You’re so much fun, Nolan. I love your little outbursts, your opinions. They keep life here so very interesting.” He squeezes Nolan’s fist until his fingers pop and explode into little bloodied chunks. Nolan cries out in agony, wrenching himself free and doubling over. The Leader stands over him, already wrapping his hand using cloth ripped from his own cape. “You made me do that, Nolan,” he sighs, rubbing his back soothingly. Nolan continues to cry in pain. “Don’t make me get rid of you, Nolan. I don’t want to do that, yet.” 

Nolan can do nothing but wheeze and cry. The Leader picks him up, scoops him into his arms like his child. He hands the phone over to The Soldier, who takes it with a blank stare and rushing heartbeat. 

“I have to go take care of him, put him to bed,” the Leader explains. “But if you guys want, there’s a bunch of other stuff on the phone. I feel like you all earned a little treat, so go ahead and look through it.” The Leader flies into the air with Nolan, sailing for their shelter. The others feel sick to their stomachs. 

—

Nolan lays in his cot, the Monster watching his every move. He smiles gently from time to time when Nolan looks up, or tries to move.

“You’re okay, buddy,” he soothes. “I promise.”

Nolan wonders if Hell has layers, and if he must pass through them all. He wonders which one this might be. The Monster inches towards him, and lifts his nose to his neck, inhaling.

“You smell so good,” he murmurs into Nolan’s neck, his heartbeat racing. “I’m so glad you’re here, Nolan.” 

Nolan can’t move his body, his fist smashed into a bloodied pulp. He can do nothing but cry.  

He feels the tears get licked away.

__

The others stand in the desert, staring at the phone in the Soldier’s hand.

“God…he’s really in charge of us?” The Scarred one grimaces.

“He actually found the phone, and the bagged food and water,” the Emperor defends. “He found the radio. It was his idea to use one. He’s keeping us strong.”

“He’s certifiably insane, and the rest of us are close,” argues ‘Mask.’ “He sent you and Soldier into space to die.” 

“We didn’t die,” the Emperor growls. “You don’t know anything about what it was like. What the singing was like. Don’t try and pretend like you do.” 

“You keep talking like it was some God, dude. It was a radio frequency from space meant to kill you.”

The Emperor rumbles, his throat low and graveled. “You don’t know what it’s like. How I can still hear it.” 

“…I can’t hear it.” The Soldier admits, puzzled. “My ears hurt sometimes, but I don’t hear anything.”

The Emperor feels the song in his bones, in his blood. The others don’t understand how it calls to him. How the planet talks to him, how the silver rings beckon his name. They can never understand. They are not chosen. 

“This planet is for me, for my Empire,” he spits. “Of course a lesser me could never hear it calling for domination.” The Emperor stands tall, stands with pride. The others glance between each other uneasily. Things are deteriorating quickly, between their psyches. They feel the few threads of Mark Grayson left already beginning to unravel. 

“…Let’s just look at the phone, and see what else we can learn,” suggests ‘Mask’ diplomatically. “Maybe there’s a clue to where the bunker is.” 

There’s dozens of photos going back years, featuring Mark in his costume, Mark and Eve in various places around the world, and a few of Mark and William playing video games against each other, with Eve clearly the photographer. There’s even some of Omni-Man, Mark, and Debbie all together. In all of them, this version of them, of Mark Grayson, looks so happy. 

And then they scroll down far enough, and they see their dad, standing there with his mom. They’re at Mark’s high-school graduation, beaming with pride. Both of his parents attended his high school graduation, on Earth. William, Eve, and Mark grin ear to ear, side by side, clutching their diplomas. Eve and William have several tassels of academic achievement around their necks. Mark has just his robe, of course, but considering most of them never even graduated high school, it’s a completely foreign sight. 

“I…in my dimension, da—Omni-Man—he killed the Guardians halfway through my senior year,” stammers the Masked Mark. “This—only my Mom was there, not my dad.” 

“I never went to high school. I had tutors,” mumbles the Quiet Mark. “It was William’s senior year. He was going to college. I was applying with him.” 

“Oh, dude, did you also go to Upstate with William?” The Masked Mark smiles fondly. “I roomed with him, and Eve was taking some engineering courses there. I wonder if…I wonder if this one was, too.”

The Quiet one shakes his head. “William and I never got the chance.” The admission angers a few of them, their father’s ways of torment still lighting a fire underneath them. 

“Dude, our Dad killed William in your dimension?” The Scarred one snarls, a rare moment of rage. “That bastard would hurt the guy we grew up with, that we knew our whole lives, just to hurt us? The kid that mom used to drive us to baseball practice with?” His fists clench in fury. “If I ever get back home, they’d better hope they haven’t executed him yet.” The Scarred one growls, “Because I’ll do it myself.” 

“William would have only lived a mere fifty more years anyway,” the Soldier declares, though there’s the shine of regret hidden in his eyes. “If his death taught his Mark to submit to Viltrum, it was necessary.” Before anyone can say anything, something new happens.

The maskless Mark laughs.

Hair tousled and his inhibitions thrown to the air, Mark throws his head back and howls with laughter. They’ve never heard him so much as raise his voice, and his laugh barks out crystal clear, hearty and energized. It’s like he’s just heard the funniest joke of his life. Tears well up at the edges of his eyes as his lungs heave and his chest concaves with the effort of breathing. 

“—Oh my god,” he coughs, wiping a tear from his eyes. “That’s the funniest thing anyone’s ever said, I think.” The rest of them look at him as if he’s grown a second head. He turns to smile at The Soldier, who raises his fists, on guard. This Mark, free of his inhibitions, his shell, claps him on the shoulder and nods.

“Seriously, man, thank you,” he chuckles. “Because that’s the funniest joke I’ve ever heard.” He turns and looks up at the sky, grinning. “I mean, there’s no way you just said that my Dad killing the love of my life was necessary , and you actually meant it.” 

The Soldier opens his mouth to respond, but the Unmasked, previously soft-spoken Mark whirls around to face him again. “You know,” he says, teeth bared in a vicious smile, “I fed my dad’s fingers to tigers, at the Chicago zoo. The kids cried. People were screaming. It was great.” 

Again, The Soldier tries to speak. but Mark crashes his finger against his lips and shakes his head. “Ah, ah, ah—My turn. Anyway, did you know that Dad’s intestines are about twenty-five feet long if you stretch them out until they tear? Yeah, his are a bit longer than normal, since he’s so large. It took almost a thousand trucks tied together going at the same time to tear them out. A lot of drivers crashed into each other, or begged me to let their kids out of the car. That was kind of sad, but it had to happen, you know,” he explains like it’s obvious. 

“So, what did you want to say?” Mark asks The Soldier, his eyebrows narrowed in anticipation. “Please, I’d really like to know.” The Soldier holds his steely gaze, but surprisingly, he doesn’t say anything. His eyebrow knits together in thought. The Maskless Mark feigns ignorance, and shrugs. “Well, if you think of any more jokes, please let me know.” And then he saunters off towards their shared shelter.

“Christ.” ‘Scars’ exhales. “Anyone else got a horrifying revelation or a tragic, traumatizing event to tell us about?” 

“…Yeah, it makes sense that I could be gay, in some dimension,” Mohawk thinks out loud. “I did watch gay porn that one time, with Rex, and it was sorta hot, I guess.” Nobody knows if the delinquent wants to lighten the mood or make them all uncomfortable. The latter effect is achieved regardless.

“You—sorry, what?” 

“Yeah, you know, like. Didn’t you guys do that stuff with Rex, too? Help him cheat on Eve, so like, she’d leave him faster, and then we could take her?” Mohawk looks around at six disgusted faces. “Neither of us were actually into dudes! I think Rex just wanted to cheat on Eve in as many ways as possible, emotional and physical. He was pretty psychologically fucked.” 

“So…you…helped Rex cheat on his girlfriend because you wanted to date her, and you did this by watching gay porn with him, as a way to emotionally cheat on his girlfriend for a sick power fantasy of Rex’s,” the Masked Mark relays.

“Uh, duh. Wouldn’t anyone do that?” Mohawk pouts.”It’s not like she ever knew! I killed Rex with my bare hands like, three weeks later anyway! Trust me, she was a lot angrier about that.” 

“…There’s something seriously wrong with you.” The Soldier says, appalled. Mohawk shrugs, unoffended. 

“She’s dead, he’s dead, who cares,” Mohawk says nonchalantly, but the quiver of his voice gives away who in fact does care. “We’ve got a bunker to find, gentlemen. Gentle-Marks.” He snickers. 

“What did I do to deserve being stuck here with you?” Sighs ‘Scars’.

“…Leveled Moscow, murdered millions.”

“Oh. Right.” 

_

Days go by, and they try to find the wreckage of Eve’s house, to locate the bunker. Her entire neighborhood is buried in the dunes. There’s absolutely nothing. The Leader screams to the open air in frustration, ripping entire dunes from the earth and launching the sand into the air like arid shrapnel. It’s useless in the end, even when they find a faint mailbox with Eve’s address. There is simply nothing left of her house, and no clue left to find. 

They look through every military base they know of, throughout the days. They find dark brown splotches of rust and blood in the deepest of levels of many of them, skeletons shattered in ways that indicate the presence of Viltrumites. But they don’t find Eve. They don’t find Debbie. They don’t find anyone breathing.

Nolan doesn’t come out of his room anymore. Days pass, and the Leader mumbles excuses to check up on him, to bring him apportionments of rations. There’s barely any left, anymore. They don’t need to eat at the same rate as humans to survive, maybe, but their stomachs churn, turn themselves inside out. Their throats run dry with the lack of water, the few plastic bottles they’d managed to find having run their course.

All of them are tense. Minor squabbles have existed since zero hour, but lately, every conflict teeters on the edge of complete immolation. The Leader keeps them all docile  with his presence, and what they know he does to Nolan. Sometimes they hear the two of them late at night, the gentle caress of fingers on cool necks, the nibbling of earlobes. The soft, wet tears. None of them are brave enough to bring it up. 

They start eating every other day, drinking as little as possible. When they sweat, they find themselves lifting their skin to their mouth, and lapping it back inside. It’s humiliating, degrading. None of them feel much like people anymore. 

The radio occasionally picks up the signals of ham radios or crashed satellites, but more often that not, the silver rings of moon rock themselves emit a pulse that the radio hones in on, eerie pulses of atonality that the Emperor sits in front of and listens to with great intrigue. The breaking point teeters, they know. The inevitable draws closer. Jokes are no longer funny, no longer fictitious. Everything is real and raw in their painful breath of existence. 

And eventually the breaking point topples over.

__

It finally happens one night. The radio picks up static, and then a deep hum. The moonlight scatters a spectrum of light across the dunes, reflected through hundreds of pieces of rock in the low atmosphere. There is a struggle that knocks against the support beams of the shack, against the paltry wooden walls. And then something goes barreling through the side, sending debris, wooden planks, and nails all over the desert. The shack croaks a final breath, and begins to collapse, with all of them on top of it. 

It doesn’t hurt any of them, of course. The idea is laughable. But the cool air hitting their skin, the booming crashes and crumpling of the structure, is entirely unpleasant. Six shocked and battered faces emerge from the rubble, coated in dust and grime. Some of them cough and sputter, angry confusion in their eyes.

“What the fuck is going on?” Mohawk demands. Overhead, two shadows scream through the night sky, the force of their punches against one another breaking through the air like thunder. There is primal rage shouted through the air, blood scattering falling like drops of rain all across the dunes. The others spin around, sleep remnants smearing their vision, and the darkness encroaching in waves.

“I WON’T LET YOU CONTROL ME FOR ONE MORE SECOND!” Nolan’s voice breaks, his frantic cries guttural and shattering. They hear calm laughter, a calculated flurry of attacks, in response.

“Oh, Nolan, you’ve really messed it up now,” they hear the Leader’s voice as he zips across the sky, slamming his fists into Nolan from every angle. “You destroyed our home! Our house, Nolan! How do you think the others are going to react to that?” 

All it takes is a second, a miscalculation. The Leader turns in midair, pivoting to avoid one of Nolan’s strikes. Nolan’s fist hits the air, but his mouth lands deep in The Leader’s foot. His teeth sink in, and they crunch.

The Leader’s howl in response is animalistic, completely devoid of high thinking. They hear his voice scrape in his throat, his pure instinct unmatched by any they’ve seen from a being of conscious thought. 

“Oh, Nolan,” his voice purrs, from the sky, as he pries the other man from his toes. Nolan spits to the ground, and with it, goes the Leader’s big toe, and pieces of the next two. The Leader blinks in true startlement for a moment, wiggling his bloodied foot. And then he wrenches Nolan’s head upwards, until they’re face-to-face, lips nearly against one another. Nolan can feel the hot breath of his reflection enter his mouth. 

“Nolan,” he languishes. “You shouldn’t have done that.” 

They hit the ground so fast that the noise happens three seconds later. Sand, broken buildings, glass, and anything else on the surface of the Earth go flying miles into the air. The other Marks scatter across the flattened dunes like tumbleweeds, the air scattered from their lungs, their ribs and limbs cracked from the force.

Nolan writhes under the Leader, who forces his full strength down into  his back, his arms wrenched in place painfully. He screams, and he screams. His voice is raw and bloody, his eyes are wide with terror. 

“GET OFF ME! GET OFF!” His pleas become less coherent, less tactile, more desperate by the second. The Marks stagger around the scene, horrified. Their home is gone, Nolan is gone. There is only carnal fear. The Leader licks his lips, tasting it in the air.

“You—what happened? Why are you doing this?” The Masked one demands, stepping forward with a grunt of pain.

“I tried so hard,” the Leader laments. He runs his fingers through Nolan’s thick, black hair, matted with dirt and blood, as he cries. “I wanted so badly for him to make this work, you know. But it can’t be helped.” 

Nolan screams again, and the Leader brings his elbow down on the top of his skull, hard. Nolan’s eyes bulge in his head from the force of the blow, blood leaking from his tear ducts. The leader whisks his fingertips across the bloodied tears and smears them across Nolan’s forehead.

“You’re going to kill him!” Screams the Masked one. “You lead us, you can’t do that! You said so!” He pleads.

The Leader shakes his head. “I did say that, yes,” he amends. “But that was before I gave him everything I had,” he snarls down at Nolan, who can no longer scream, no longer cry. Only whimper. The Leader’s finger traces his jawline, the curves of his shoulders, his spine. “I cared for him, even after everything he’d already done,” the Leader says, hurt. “And he attacks in my sleep, he tries to strangle me, like a true coward.” 

“We can still fix this. We can still—we can still all get out of here!” ‘Mask’ pleads. He-he is us. We can’t do this!” 

“…Maybe, maybe not,” the Leader acquises, uncertain. “What would it be like, I wonder? To watch my own lifeless eyes,” he lolls Nolan’s head back and forth, his hand grasping the back of his neck. Nolan stifles back his sobs. “…But I am a good Leader, you know. I recognize that you all look to me as the best version of us. And while he might be the worst of us…” He glances down at Nolan with disgust, with pleasure. “He is part of us. So…”

He motions to them all, grinning. 

“What is the crime for mutiny , do you all think? This isn’t the first problem he’s caused. He tried to kill me, even after all I’ve done for him, to care for him. To feed all of you. I think that’s unacceptable . But what do the rest of you think?” 

Nobody says anything. The Leader growls in frustration. 

“Oh? You prefer I make the decision? Because I can do that,” he warns, twisting Nolan’s neck until it cracks. Nolan screams again, babbling and begging incoherently. They hear their father’s name, their mother’s name, on his lips. They are not here to help him. 

The Emperor speaks up first. “…Kill him.” 

‘Mask’ turns to him, appalled. “No—no, we CANNOT let it go like this!” He yells, frantic. 

Mohawk groans, “Why not? He causes problems constantly. He hasn’t come out of his room in days. And now he tries to kill someone in their sleep, he destroys our goddamn house?” Mohawk scoffs, “He doesn’t even go by our name. He doesn’t want to be one of us. So we shouldn’t treat him like he is.” 

“…He looks just like me,” whispers The Soldier, looking down at his fists.

The Leader holds Nolan’s head steady, tossing it lightly between his two hands. Nolan continues to cry, his face covered in sweat, tears, mucus and blood, all dribbling from every orifice, every open wound. “…I can see my subjects are conflicted. But this has to happen now.” The Leader commands, his bloodied, gnashed hands running up and down Nolan’s twitching form. “What do you want? Raise your hands if you want this to be over, permanently. To be able to move on and cut out our weakest link. If you want to kill ourself. “Majority wins.”

 Again, the wind is silent, the moon rays beaming down across the desert in a refracted pattern of light, inching along slowly with the rotation of the Earth.

The Delinquent, the Mark of thrill and carnal pleasure, raises his hand. 

The Emperor, the Mark of conquest and dominance,  the servant of the silver rings, raises his hand.

The Soldier, of Viltrum’s raw might and power, of submission and the fortitude to keep moving forward, raises his hand.

“That’s three,” grins the Monster. “One more.” 

But nobody else moves. They tremble in place, frozen in time.

The Scarred Mark, of vengeance and the haunting curse of what-ifs , does not raise his hand. 

The Unmasked Mark, of lamentful eyes and disassociation from the world’s truth, does not raise his hand.

And the Masked Mark, of shame and humiliation, of forced compliance and regret, does not raise his hand. 

“It’s a tie,” he quivers, his lungs held still in shock. “You said the majority. It’s a tie.” 

The Monster shakes his head. “Oh, Mark,” he sighs. “You really need to learn how to count.” 

The Monster, the Mark of total subjugation and primal instinct, the one of torture and the raw desire to shed blood, raises his hand. There’s four. “There’s our majority,” he smiles.

“Please—please don’t do this,” begs ‘Mask.’ “There will be no going back.” 

“Dear sweet little Mark,” purrs The Monster. “There was never any going back.” His hands lower to Nolan’s chest, clutching him tight against his body. The Leader breathes into his ear, into Nolan’s neck, his hot breath sending goosebumps against his pulse.

“You—you are a monstrosity ,” Nolan heaves, his words heavy with effort and insurmountable pain.

“Nolan, you’re nothing at all,” responds The Monster. And then he tears. Nolan makes noises they’ve never begun to imagine, to consider, as he’s ripped into. The Monster’s hands pierce his skin like a thousand daggers, his fingernails drawing blood underneath his ribs. His flesh and organs squelch as the Leader’s arms travel up and into his body, leaving crimson to drench them wholly. It’s a waterfall of bodily fluids that gush out from his torso. Nolan tries to scream and gurgles nothing but blood. The rest of them are bystanders, forced to watch it happen. 

Eventually, when the Monster’s arms are elbow deep in his torso, in his organs, he coos into Nolan’s ears, trilling to him in soft and careful words.

“I’m caressing your heart, sweet Nolan,” he whispers, his fingers dancing along in time with his heartbeat. Gentle, graceful. “Can you feel me dance with you?”

Nolan sees nothing, hears nothing. There is only red, and the thrumming pulse of his organs as they fall apart. The Monster continues their dance for what seems like forever, like the two of them are the only people left in the entire world. In a way, they are. Because they are all the same. 

The Monster tears carefully, wrenching the heart out of Nolan’s body and retracing his arms into the cool air. A fountain of blood flushes from Nolan’s mouth, his final silent scream. And then he falls limp, his heart gushing fresh blood onto the Monster’s dripping hands.

“A parting gift,” he whispers into Nolan’s ear, holding the heart close. And then he drops the corpse, watching it squelch into the sand, blood absorbing into the ground. He holds the heart in hands with fragile care, smiling towards it. “It’s done.” 

None of them know what to say, how to react. What could there possibly be to say? Sickness churns in their stomachs, in their hearts. There is no word severe enough for the desecration of self they have bore witness to. 

The Monster flies gently into the air, holding the still heart aloft in his massive, gruesome hands. “I need time to plan,” he murmurs, floating up into the sky slowly, agonizingly. The precious dunes of sand are flattened, the ruins of cities around them completely leveled. There is nothing but the open air and the silver rings of the moon above them. 

There is a shift that night. Nothing is the same, nothing is right. 

Because Mark Grayson died that night, and Mark Grayson watched himself die. Mark Grayson let himself die. Mark Grayson tore out his own heart. There is nothing left to be said, that night. The corpse speaks for itself. And there it sits, untouched by any of them, too paralyzed to even consider motion. Nolan is dead. 

There is no going back. 

Chapter Text

They don’t know what day it is anymore, but they think it’s been at least a month. The moon having exploded into a billion silver pieces that orbit the Earth doesn’t exactly help with telling the passage of time. Nolan was the one keeping track of the days and nights. It’s funny, how acting so much like somebody else comes in handy. They are all Mark Grayson, and they don’t think very hard about their actions, about the day to day. Why bother when they’re the heavy hitters, the ones who move literal mountains? But Nolan was pragmatic, Nolan covered an area of everyday monotony the rest of them couldn’t bother with. And he’s dead. And the moon is still gone. A lot of time passes in arduous and drawn-out monotony, with their daily routines serving as their only respite.

It doesn’t really hit them, at first, until the next morning. They go to bed in the sand that night, shivering in the ruins of their shelter. The nights illuminate with scattered moonlight in small pockets across the ground, with visibility often completely obscured. When they wake up, Nolan still lays there, gouged and bloody. Lifeless. They killed him, and not even that, they defiled his corpse. His heart was ripped from his body. His intestines hang out of the cavity of his torso, his rib cage protruding at awkward and broken angles. He is the world’s most grotesque sculpture, representative of Mark Grayson’s loathing.  

Rebuilding the shelter took a few days of gathering resources. The Leader insisted they don’t have divided walls, that there’s no need. So now they sleep under a giant cloth, held in place with makeshift beams that act as tent poles. It looks like a raggedy Mad Max market out of an action movie, something that would excite Mark Grayson’s nerdy side, even in the parts of him that keep it hidden like buried treasure. Conversation between them is stagnant lately, only done when necessary. 

What would they say to each other, at this point? There’s clearly differences between them all, sure. Significant ones, like remembering the feeling of William Clockwell on your lips versus watching your mother be torn apart in a manner that keeps her alive as long as possible. But they all have the same speech mannerisms. The same verbal tells, quirks. They all pout in the same way, like a puppy who’s been denied a treat. And most importantly, they all have the same dead, hollow eyes that Nolan does—except they’re still breathing.

 It’s odd to know what you look like when you die. They don’t know if anyone else anywhere in the multiverse knows what they’ve seen, can relate to their experiences. Their own eyes, vacant. Their own skin blistered and rotting. Their own heart bloodied and raw, in the palm of their own hand. The first day after, they fought over it, and there was even some crying. Nobody was seriously hurt, too tired from the lack of good sleep for weeks on end and too terrified of the raw strength they’d seen to push too far. Maybe it was performative, for them. Maybe they had to pretend that seeing Nolan disemboweled disgusted them to keep pretending that they were human.

Days must have passed; from the way long nights stretch into sweltering mornings. Mostly, they explore, look for food, water. Nobody’s accused anyone yet, but they’re all aware that ever since Nolan died, what you find can be yours. At least, so long as the Leader doesn’t know. They leave enough group rations to keep the Leader happy, a stale chip at the bottom of a bag here or a rotten orange peel there. But if they find anything good? A half-crushed soda that tastes like sweetened sewage, or a chocolate bar melted into nothing but preservative goo? Those are the sorts of things you relish, that you devour in private. 

The radio shack is still intact, by some miracle of whatever God wants them to live long enough to entertain Him. Scarred Mark wisens up and learns that even if he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s better off pretending. Even then, he figures out a lot of things, like how to tune for certain frequencies, and where different signals come from. It’s something to keep his mind off of his own death, at least. 

So, for the first few days, they take after their father; they don’t talk about it. They look at the corpse, and they smell the way it rots, festers, in the heat. Nobody dares try to move it, because the only one who doesn’t ignore it is their Leader, who does nothing but sit by it for hours. They think he might regret that it was Nolan, out of all of them. Nolan kept him engaged, kept him intrigued, with the way he stood out from the rest of them. Now they’re all pieces on the board, moved about as his leisure, ready or not. 

Sometimes he talks to the corpse, holding its hand. He always has the same uneasy smirk on his face. The smell alone makes the rest of them sick. One of them throws up just from the scent alone after a day or two. But they don’t dare move the corpse. They don’t mention it. They just keep moving forward. They have their assigned jobs, and their goal in mind. There’s a bunker out there somewhere, where Debbie Grayson and Atom Eve had gone. And they haven’t found them anywhere else, so they know Cecil’s palace still out there. Somewhere with answers to their plight, they have to believe. 

Because they’ve seen what happens when they don’t. They’ve seen his glimmering teeth, his voracious claws. But sometimes there are no claws, no fangs. Just Mark. And that’s the worst part about their Leader. That a lot of the time, he’s just Mark Grayson—like the rest of them. He mentions their favorite series, or laments how he thinks somebody’s costume is a bit cooler than his. 

“I mean, I kinda wish I’d gone with blue and black, now,” the Leader said to Mohawk and Mask one day after searches, who glanced between one another uneasily. “Like, the yellow and black, it’s kind of kiddy, right?” He laughs. “Man, I feel like a bumblebee. But the cape? Cape’s a great choice. Nolan—asshole—but an asshole with good taste,” he’d said, clapping them both on the shoulder. 

They watched him rip out Nolan’s heart. They know it’s sitting in his tent, under his straw pillow. He talks to his rotting corpse like a friend, and not the version of himself he brutally murdered. But there’s a cognitive dissonance, a separation. The Leader refuses to acknowledge that the corpse and Nolan are one in the same. Nobody talks about the corpse, but their Leader brings up Nolan constantly. 

“He was such a prick, guys. So annoying. Glad he’s gone, am I right?” The first day after.

“Can you believe what he did? Like, so seriously uncool.” A few days later.

“That hair makes him look so stupid. Like, ugh, we get it, man. You’re trying to be cool.” Yesterday.

It makes the rest of them feel insane. Like they’re in a high school theater troupe and this is just petty drama between the lead actors, a shared dislike in their little social circle that every adolescent goes through many times. But they’re not kids anymore—at least not in their choices, in the paths they’ve carved to walk out of blood and bones. And Nolan is dead, rotting, bled out. And Mark is obsessed with him. At least, a very dangerous piece of him is—the one capable of the most grandiose self-destruction. 

And they’ve barely scratched the surface of what he's capable of doing to himself. 

—

Mark Grayson, across all timelines, is not a particularly patient person. He does not wait for Eve Wilkins to say, ‘I love you’, and he says it first. He crushes the Russian president’s hands when he says they haven’t made a decision yet. He doesn’t heed his mother’s warnings to wait until his Dad gets home when he gets his powers, and rushes to find him at the Guardians headquarters, slamming Darkwing into the ground like a stick. He doesn’t wait for Debbie to stop crying before he rips his Dad’s throat out.

Well, those were all in different dimensions from each other, but it stands to reason that patience is not any of their virtues. So really, it’s only a matter of time before the whole ‘Nolan’ thing gets on their nerves. A mention in the morning gets an exhale from Scars. A quick insult to Nolan’s character makes Mohawk roll his eyes in the afternoon. But the straw that breaks the camel’s back is at rationing that evening. The Leader pulls a half-burst bag of pretzels out of the box, wrinkling his nose. 

“Man, these are Nolan’s least favorite,” he rolls his eyes. “I mean, he never tells me, but whenever I feed him these, he always wrinkles his nose a little. It’s weird, right? What kind of Me doesn’t like pretzels?” The Leader looks around to his group for affirmation.

Nobody says anything. But one of them scoffs, a quiet humph of indignity. And that’s enough. The Leader’s posture changes in a second. The bag of pretzels in his hand is obliterated, turned to dust as he squeezes. “Sorry, did somebody have something to say?” He looks about as open to constructive criticism as Viltrumites are to Unopans. 

There’s a quiet mumble, with a hint of irritation. “…He’s dead.” 

The Leader’s head snaps around like an owl, facing the usually silent Mark, who has grown bolder lately. His quiet demeanor was much preferable to his insolence now, the Leader thinks. “Oh? What was that?”

The soft-spoken Mark stares back at him, his tired brown eyes and messy black hair serving as the Leader’s mirror. “I said, Nolan is dead. You keep talking about him like he’s still here. It’s weird.” 

“Nolan is still here,” frowns their Leader, motioning to the nearby corpse. “You’ll hurt his feelings if you talk about him that way.” 

The Quiet Mark looks like he’s met his match in terms of sanity, blinking rapidly. “Uh. You…he can’t hear us.” 

The Leader frowns like it’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard. “Of course he can’t fucking hear us. I ripped out his organs.” 

The rest of them stare between each other. This isn’t going well. The Quiet Mark regards their Leader with a soft smile. “You’re losing it, huh?” 

The Leader laughs it off. “You draw pictures of the Love—"

“—Louvre.”

“—in the sand or whatever, and whisper messages to your dead boy toy,” snarks the Leader. He pats the top of the maskless Mark’s head like a puppy. “So maybe stay in your lane, dude .” 

It probably should’ve ended there, but for whatever reason, this Mark Grayson had tenacity, a stubborn streak a mile wide. Most of them did, in their own ways. But this one, the one with no mask and the quiet voice, was really pushing the envelope. “Is that what you did in the other dimension; by telling Angstrom we’d kill him? Or was that your plan all along, to trap us here so you could talk to our dead bodies and pretend you have friends?” 

It’s a pregnant pause, laced with tense silence. But then they all start up with raucous laughter, and their voices blur together in this Mark’s mind. There’s been so much silence, so much tension. They relieve it all at once, a cluster of Mark Grayson’s disgustingly mundane thoughts.

“Wow. Somebody’s got a stick up their ass today.” Mohawk.

“More like somebody wishes that William’s stick was up his ass.” The Emperor, surprisingly. 

“Dude. You’re funnier than I thought you were.”

“I still can’t believe there’s a version of me that was in love with William. Like—gay, I can believe, infinite parts of me, but really? William?”

“I mean, William’s not a bad looking guy. Why not our best friend?”

“Because he’s such a little twink! If I was gay, I would pick more of a challenge. Nobody’s going near my butt unless they like—earn it. ”

“Dude, saying that is pretty fucking gay of you.”

“I mean, I just can’t imagine not liking girls. Girls are great.” 

“I guess it depends on like, how we were specifically psychologically fucked up? Maybe the ones of us who like women more have more mommy issues or something.” 

“I loved killing our mom and I love boobs. Theory disproved.”

“Jesus. I can’t believe—you—you’re horrible, man. You know that?” 

“Oh, cry me a river, you little shrivel-dick.” 

“…also, I think enjoying killing your own mom is pretty indicative of mommy issues.”

“Oh, wow! Gold star vocabulary! I can tell you went to college.” 

“…Why does it matter what their gender is if they’re just a human? You’re talking about the equivalent of dating a dog.” 

“Why do you always have to ruin everything, Soldier-Boy?” 

“Why do you always have to be such a perverted little freak?” 

“We’re the same height, jackoff!” 

They banter, they tease, like the weight of the world isn’t on their shoulders. Like they didn’t tear so many worlds to pieces with their own weight. It’s too much. It’s so loud. The unmasked Mark stomps his foot into the sand, sending a funnel of dust and pebbles up into the air, careening out towards space. That effectively gets their attention. 

“All of you—fucking quiet ,” the Unmasked Mark hisses low, silencing the crowd. He can’t tell who is speaking. He knows that he is speaking. All of himself can’t understand him, doesn’t know who he is. It’s suffocating. After brisk pause where he feels a dozen of his own eyes staring into him, The Leader laughs and pats him on the shoulder.

“Sheesh, dude, William must’ve been a great fuck to scramble your brains so badly. But I mean, he did have a lot of practice.”

Mark frowns, tilting his head dangerously, like a starving jaguar locked in a cage with raw meat. “…What did you say about him?” 

The Leader snorts, like he can’t believe he’s been asked such a thing. “Oh, come on, Mark.” That’s another of his quirks. He calls the rest of them ‘Mark.’ It’s unnerving. He shifts his confident posture to take hold of the Quiet one’s hand, “I’ll be gentle when I say this—William was a total whore.” And the look on Mark’s face in response would blow up the moon—if

 it wasn’t already. He stands in shock, his eyebrows slanted like knives.

The Leader throws back his head and barks with laughter, regarding the rest of them with the swing of his arm. “I mean, I guess I’m glad in at least one reality, William fulfills his fantasy of fucking us. I mean. I can’t be the only one who noticed, right? That William was a total slut for any guy with big arms and a hero complex? There’s no way he didn’t fantasize about us,” he continues on. “I was William’s only friend in my timeline, you know. The other kids used to cut the tips of his ears with scissors, at recess. I stopped them because I thought it might be difficult—it wasn’t. Their limbs snapped like twigs.” 

The Unmasked Mark is completely unmoving, watching the Leader with unblinking eyes and unmoving posture. Even his heartbeat seems to slow. Finally, he answers. “At least William was popular, then, unlike you. ” 

 One of them whistles, and the Leader feels his blood flare with anger. But this fight is not yet physical, no. This one is a battle of mental fortitude. And he isn’t known for losing battles, and the Unmasked Mark hasn’t completely unraveled. So, the Leader knows that he hasn’t pushed far enough, yet. 

“…You know, when we were fourteen, in my timeline, William asked me out on a date. He tried to pretend like it wasn’t a date, but I called him out. I already had so much more experience than him. So really, I think he was feeling left out. I said yes, because I knew it would make him very happy. And you know what?” The Leader grins ferally. “I knew he would let me do anything I wanted.” 

“Please—calm down. Let’s just eat,” pleads the Masked Mark. 

“What, eat the shit we pretend passes as food and go another day in total silence? No, I think Mark needs to hear this,” says the Leader. “You see, I didn’t get my powers until very late. Almost my eighteenth birthday, my senior year of high school.” The rest of them hear this and reel back in shock. Most of them had powers for years before they ever set foot in high school. Even the latest bloomers of their group first flew with their fathers before they ever learned how to drive. But the strongest of them was also the latest bloomer. It was a little humiliating to the prideful ones. 

“I dunno what your version of our Dad was like, but mine was absolutely furious every day that I didn’t end up with powers,” the Leader laughed. “He’d scream at my mother and toss furniture into walls while she drank herself half to death. I’d hide under my blanket and shiver while he whispered all the ways that the Viltrumites would disembowel me, if they found out I was useless. One time he put me on the dining room table and started to dig into my skin with a spoon, to try and force my powers to activate. Didn’t work, obviously—and was very hard to explain to the ER doctors. I think they would’ve called CPS if…well, you know how Dad was.” 

“I’m not interested in listening to the origin story for your torture fetish,” growls the soft-spoken Mark. The Leader laughs at his defiance. 

“William was,” he smirks. “After our dates? He’d let me do anything . Cigarette burns, scars, broken fingers? His parents knew I was the better option, the better protector. So did he.” This man, this monster, is a paragon of human suffering. When the Mark with no mask to hide his sins behind looks into the Leader’s eyes, he sees himself. And he realizes that every person he’s ever hurt looked at him the same way he’s forced to look at himself now. He feels like he’s going to be sick. 

“Oh, but the best part was when I got our powers,” the Leader goads. “Our Dad was so relieved . He almost broke down crying—it was pathetic, dude, it really was. And William still didn’t know, still was too much of an airhead to realize who dear old Dad was. He didn’t find out until I bent his finger just a little too hard.” He grins ferally at the memory, “And then he asked me to bend the rest of them, too. He loved it, Mark, being my plaything. Man, he was so much fun then.” 

“…What kind of world did you live in?” Mark asks, disgusted. 

“A better one,” answers their Leader easily. “One that allowed me to be who I am. And I don’t want you to think William was innocent in it, either. He’d whimper, beg for it. He wanted me to humiliate him, Mark—he wanted to be trash. I just helped him get there.”

Those words churn something very visceral in Mark’s stomach. He is called the Quiet Mark, because he silenced his conscience out of pain. He feels himself returning to reality, his disassociation forced out by a painful wave of reality. Colors once dulled out of his vision fade into view, and the smell of the salted dunes floods his nostrils with newfound clarity. This world is wrong, everything is wrong, 

He is really here, and they are really stranded in this place. He really saw himself die, many times, counting the other dimension. Nolan is dead, and he will stay that way. William is dead, and he will stay that way. His father is dead, and his mother is dead. All of the people unfortunate enough to be in the way when he fought his father are dead, and they will stay that way.

His head is no longer an escape—it is a constant throbbing reminder of what he is and has done. 

 Because he is no better than this Monster across from him. So many people, so many dead. He doesn’t lack the capacity to care. He was only selfish enough to shove it aside because he thought his suffering mattered more. He remembers ceremonies, medallions strapped to his chest with pride. He remembers William bragging to his friends, other superheroes, about the most mundane actions—saving cats from trees, helping kindergarteners toddle across the street after school. Acts of defiance against his Viltrum heritage, against his father’s grandiose ideals of their own importance. And those were the things that William applauded him most, for, without knowing why he really did them.

“In my world, there were good people,” argues Mark. “William was good .” There is no other word for the boy.

“You don't get it, Mark!” Groans their Leader, disappointed. “The point is, we’re not good people—because we’re not people at all. We’re something so much better.” The Leader asserts, his eyes wild and his teeth bared.

And that forces Mark to finally remember, to reflect.

—

“…You know, Mark, you’re the best person I’ve ever met.” 

William had said one night, fiddling with the collar of Mark’s shirt. Mark was reading a new issue of Seance Dog that’s had come out that month. The TV show blared in the background—he liked to compare the adaptations and would make lists of the differences between both versions of the same media. William would call him a massive nerd and order his favorite pizza. It was their Saturday night tradition, and Mark’s absolute favorite time of the week. 

William would complement him often—every day. His heroism, his sense of duty. And his incredible body and handsome face, many times over. But Mark squirmed every time he brought up morality. Because Mark knew what he and his father were made for, what would happen someday. He couldn’t tell Will, because what would that accomplish? He just…tried to forget about it. Hoped his Dad would leave him out of it. 

So, when Mark was called a good person, he would usually say nothing. But this time, it was different. Mark couldn’t hold it in, couldn’t pretend. 

“I’m not as good as you think I am, William.” The hands around his collar pause for a moment, before they cup his face gently. William brings Mark up to face him, his brow furrowed in a frustrated manner. Mark would normally find this adorable, but it’s aimed at him, so he pouts like a scolded child. 

“Okay, you pouty baby,” William shakes his shoulders. “Lemme knock this into you. You are an incredible person.” William shakes him again, and Mark’s shoulders roll back and forth. He could simply refuse to let them—but it’s William, who Mark has felt yank him back from barely mobile buses and scold him for not wearing his goggles when it’s too windy. He continues with his lecture. “Mark, you’ve saved the world at least a dozen times. There’s a statue of the Teen Team being commissioned by Chicago’s mayor. They named a medical procedure after you. What you do matters.” 

“Will—come on. You don’t know everything—you know I can’t tell you everything.” Mark sighs. “All of that…those are things that I didn’t do alone, or just…superficial. I’m not really some great, selfless hero. If you knew…I wish I could tell you…” His Dad would kill William. There was no option to tell him the truth about Viltrum.

William scoffs, “You think I don’t know you keep secrets? Mark, I’ve known you since we were five. You make the same stupid face whether you’re lying about stealing a cookie, you took my favorite marker, or lying about…whatever this is.” William shakes him again. “I know you have secrets, and that’s okay, you big lug! I get that your identity—that who you are—is so much bigger than me, as just a plain old human. I get that. And I’m fine with it! Really,” he smiles, kissing the top of Mark’s head. Mark tries to grab him and pull him towards his lips, but he scurries back, waggling his finger. 

“Will—kiss,” he stammers, feeling like a kid denied candy. 

“No way, dude. Not until you stop this very unsexy pity party. I can’t in good conscience kiss you when you’re acting like Droopy the Dog.” 

Mark snorts, despite himself. “I’m not acting like that.”

“Yes, you are. You’re literally making the ‘I should’ve stayed in bed’ face. Very not hot.” They both smile, and it’s clear that the conversation can move forward. But Mark won’t let it.

“…Will, why do you think I’m so good?” 

“Mark…”

Mark can’t help it. They were doing so well, they were moving on, but his capacity for self-destruction knows no bounds. “Please. Just…why?”

William sighs, and then launches into the topic. “Mark, when we were sixteen, you could’ve bench-pressed my car with one finger while flying at the speed of sound. Instead, you drove around with me for two weeks when I first got my license, to make sure I was adjusting fine.” 

Mark frowns, but William sits himself down in his lap, and his breath hitches. He stares Mark down, resolved. “When that kid lost his cat last week, you spent three hours looking for it and flew it back to his house personally. You didn’t even know him.” 

“…I saw the cat earlier that day, I knew where it was,” he murmured in response, embarrassed.

“Mark, you donated your old baseball glove, which I KNOW for a fact you still care about deeply, to a kid at the soup kitchen. I mean, at first, I was sure you were just doing it to impress Amber Bennett, but then you, uh. Us in Rick’s bathroom.” 

“Well…I was trying to impress you, honestly. I don’t get the deal with girls. Have they seen you without your clothes on? What could compare?” Mark grins, his gaze running up and down William’s body. 

“Shut up, you horndog, I’m being serious.” William goes bright red, stammering out his final argument. “…my point is...you could do anything. You have the strength of a Greek god and the body to match. You spend your time with regular people like me, you care about our problems when they don’t affect you at all. I mean, how many superheroes do you know that would take the time to find a kid’s cat, Mark?” 

Mark opens his mouth to offer an admittedly snarky response, but William gently pinches it shut with his fingers. “You—you spend so much time caring for me, caring for others, Mark. That’s not fake. I know you think it is, but you can’t fake that. You can’t fake the way you make me feel…I just know you can’t.” 

William takes his hand and clasps their fingers together. He looks at the way Mark’s forearm flexes, the bulging muscles under the collar of his shirt. “I mean, Mark. I’m just some normal, unremarkable guy. I’m not strong. I’m not built like a bodybuilder; I don’t look like a model. I—I know what I am, but compared to you, I’m pretty much nobody. But you stick around anyway,” William smiles. “What kind of bad person would do that?” 

Mark rushes forwards, stopping just in front of him to embrace William with a tight hug. William gasps in surprise, but he relaxes immediately into the touch. He trusts Mark with his life, and Mark trusts him in kind.

The fact William would think he is nothing—a nobody—is sickening to Mark.

“Will, you are everything to me," he whispers into his neck, his hot breath in William’s ear.  “You are the reason I feel like a person. You are the reason I feel alive every morning.” And with that, Mark dips him into a long kiss, William easily sighing to deepen it. Mark’s voice rumbles down his throat, and William shudders, pushing his hands into his chest. Mark’s hands trace the small of his back, rubbing careful circles into his shivering skin.

When Mark pulls away, William is blushing furiously and gasping for air. “You—I—wow.” He wipes at his mouth, smiling sheepishly. “You really know how to make a guy feel special, Grayson.” William pokes him in the gut sharply. “But don’t forget about what I said! You’re the best person in my life, you big…dopey…nerdy…” William glances back up at Mark, and notices his shirt has been hiked off, “…incredibly sexy mastermind who’s trying to distract me…” 

“Is it working?” Mark grins, a red blush adorning his cheeks. He gets his answer when William tackles him to the ground, their noses touching awkwardly. Mark could choose not to budge, to stay upright like a statue. But he falls down, William tumbling on top of him. 

“You know it is, you stupid half-alien who looks like sex on a stick.” William practically hisses against his lips. “Now kiss me again, before you say something else self-deprecating, and I have to blueball myself.”

Who could refuse such an eloquent request? Not Mark.

“Will, if I could tell you everything, I would,” Mark murmurs against his lips, holding William close. “And one day. I will. One day, there’s just going to be me and you, and no secrets. I promise.” 

“I know, Mark. I trust you’re doing the right thing, always.” William kisses his temple, and Mark feels him grin into his hair. 

—

I trust you’re doing the right thing.

All of that was a few short months before his father came to the Teen Team’s tower. Before his father gutted Mark and killed the Guardians when he couldn’t stop him. A few short months before Mark spiraled out of control, and lost his personhood, lost the right to call himself human. William lived for months in between the beginning of his decline and the death of Mark’s father. He watched him turn into a facsimile of the person he’d fallen in love with. He watched Mark all but give up. But William never gave up, and he never stopped trusting. Even in his last moments, when he gazed down at Mark, his eyes were filled with trust.

“It’s gonna be okay, Mark.” William’s final words. And then he died, because of Mark. And William knew it. But he still chose to say that. 

“I’m not you,” Mark chooses to say to the Leader; he chooses to be defiant. 

The Leader’s teeth flash with his response. “Now you sound just like Nolan.” His pupils dilate, and his interest is caught. Before Mark can react, the distance between them is closed, and the Leader pulls them together, their torsos crushed in a painful hug. His hands lock around his rib cage, tightening by the second. 

Mark tries to flee, to struggle, but the strength of his counterpoint is staggering. The Emperor’s hits were like being punched with solid beams of steel, but this was on an entirely separate division of pure force. It terrifies him, an emotion that he’d long since suppressed. It flares to life in the pit of his stomach, in his blood. He whispers and whines to get free, and the grip doesn’t loosen.

“Do you feel our hearts, Mark?” The Leader holds their foreheads together, his eyes burning into Mark’s own. “They pump the same blood. They have the same veins. You are me—something that killed Nolan because he couldn’t understand,” the Leader warns. “Are you Mark Grayson, like me, or are you another problem? ”

Mark Grayson looks into his own eyes and sees nothing but blinding danger. He looks at his own teeth and sees the way they bite into his own gums, the old scars and the fresh blood in his own mouth. He feels the callouses and the burns against his shoulders, the rigid bumps along his own abdomen pressing into his stomach. And he makes a very stupid decision. 

His forehead cracks against the Leader’s nose with a blunt thump. The Leader reels back in surprise and absolute fury, blood cascading down his lips and over his chin. Mark watches the way the Leader’s tongue licks across his own lips, methodically, tastefully. The bridge of his nose is now jagged and purplish, and his eyes are completely wild with adrenaline. 

Mark doesn’t make the same mistake as Nolan did and give him time to recuperate. He lets out a scream and tackles their Leader into the sand. The others start to cough as they send pebbles and dust flying into the air like a chemical gas. 

The Masked one rockets forward, only to be held back by a pair of arms that wrap around him from behind. The Soldier locks him in place, and he begins to struggle, roaring.

“Stop—stop moving!” The Soldier grimaces. “Don’t get involved. He asked for it.” 

“You’re just going to stand there and watch until one of them is dead? We can’t just keep killing each other. It’s exactly what Angstrom would want!” He yells, straining for freedom. The Soldier’s grip might as well be a black hole with how unrelenting it is. 

“Why are you such a white knight? You killed just as many people as the rest of us,” Mohawk snarls. “Your whole ‘morally superior’ thing got old really fast.” 

“None of you fucking touch each other,” snarls their Leader, who manages to wrestle the renegade Mark beneath him into the ground, pinning his arms down as he flails and shrieks. “I’m the best of us. I punish the lesser. You all need to understand that.” He glances down at his prey, and grins.

The rebel Mark bellows and cries out, gnashing his teeth to escape his grasp. The Leader regards him with a look of intrigue, eyeing his squirming body like his prize. Mark manages to kick his knee up into his ribs, and the Leader staggers back for a second, windless. 

Given his chance, Mark propels himself up into the air, breathing desperately, raggedly. And then there’s a blur of blue, a flash of grey on the shoulder blade. He hits a solid object in the air with such a painful force that he feels his lungs practically turn inside out, the air rushing out of him like a whistle. The Emperor bashes his shoulder into him, sending him flying back into the ground. 

The force of his fall sends all of them staggering, much like the fight with Nolan had. This is familiar in too many wrong ways. The air smells like blood and dust. The renegade Mark hacks up red clots, and sand, and loose rocks, his lungs searing. The Leader lowers himself down over his body, and lunges for his throat this time.

First, the Leader glances at the Emperor, who simply frowns in response. “So? Are you gonna punish him or what?” Mark just barely catches the way his legs quiver in fear, the way his ears tilt up to the sky. 

The Leader grins and looks back at him, at the Renegade. “You know, I could snap your neck,” he regards, as Mark feels his hand tighten, squeeze. “What do you have to say for yourself?” The Leader demands his answer. All Mark can think of is William, William, William. He remembers lowering through his own roof, the ashes of his mother scattered across his father’s body. He remembers the crazed grief in his father’s eyes, and the way William splattered across the wall. He remembers the final words.

“It’s—it’s going to be okay,” He chokes out, shutting his eyes. A final plea to himself, wherever he may go. And he braces himself for the end, for the deepest out of Hell he knows he’s destined for. 

The hand around his neck loosens. Mark opens his eyes and looks up into stunned ones. The Leader is puzzled, and the torturous glee written across his face is replaced with trepidation and uncertainty. It doesn’t last long.

A fist goes into Mark’s nose, hard. The bone splinters, and he howls with the agony. The Leader doesn’t stop, and punches at his throat, at his ears, at his chest. Bruises and welts bullet across his skin, each punch designed to burn and fester in him like a disease.

“You— you think you can tell ME what’s going to happen?” Their Leader crows, his fists slamming into him with such force that Mark can hear the way the Leader's own hands splinter, crack, and bleed. “You think that I didn’t hear enough of that from Dad, from my mom, from Eve, from whatever shitty person thought they KNEW me?!” 

“I—I know you—am you,” heaves Mark, and the Leader’s growl in return is shrill with uncertainty, with doubt. The punches stop, and the Leader looks at him, at Mark Grayson, broken and battered underneath him. He looks at his bloodied hands and back at the body.

“You know, Mark, you've hurt so many people,” the Leader says, his voice laden with exhaustion. His glassy eyes from behind his goggles are unfocused and withdrawn, like he’s not even talking to the Renegade. “After everything that you’ve done here? Give me one reason not to kill you.” He growls, the stunned faces of five other Mark Grayson watching them like hawks. Mark looks beyond them, into the sky, into the silver rings of the moon. He feels the blood on his face, and the cracking pressure on his chest. Underneath his executioner, Mark realizes two things.

One, is that The Leader isn’t talking about him anymore, not really. Which means that self-loathing runs in the multiverse, and he’s completely screwed. Fists tighten around the elastic of his costume.

Two, is that he’s been told this before. Many times. By himself, by the countless flecks of blonde hair that flash by the corner of his eyes. By his dreams, where faces come to haunt him. But there is one who is real. Eve, her costume torn and her eyes defiant. Eve, who many other parts of himself love too much to ever let go. Just one of the many ways he’s alienated from the others.

The Mark from this destroyed world, his version of Eve was in love with him. She would do anything for him, and if this Mark was really anything like him, he’d do anything for her in return. And she’d mentioned her house, the key to where she’d gone residing there. And Mark might not have loved Eve in that way, but he knows her from his own dimension, knows her friendship. And Eve did not consider that house, that ruined neighborhood they scoured, her home. 

“…The bunker,” he settles on. That gets his Leader’s attention, his head tilting to the side. “Eve’s house. I know about it.” 

“We saw her neighborhood, you liar,” he squeezes tighter. “There’s nothing left.”

“That’s not—not her house, that’s her parent’s house,” he manages to wheeze. “I know where she really meant.” Assuming that Eve would choose to make her jungle gym house in the same fucking spot across dimensions, and any evidence of it would be left in this apocalyptic hellscape. Still, for a reason he can’t quite place, he doesn’t want to die here. At least, not to this warped mirror above him with the gall to wear his face.

“How would you out of all of us know about somewhere else Eve lived?” The squeeze is suffocating from the Leader as Mark begins to bloom purple, his airway trapped. 

“—Knew her well, she moved to—woods— when on Teen Team together,” he gurgles. 

“Don’t believe you,” comes the reply, the edges of black fading into his vision. And Mark doesn’t want to die. It’s funny how you can spend so much time moping and feeling sorry for yourself, wishing you were dead. How when you face something too overwhelming, it can make you give up on everything worthwhile. But when it actually comes to pay what you owe, you have the gall to feel scared .

There’s a shadow over the Leader’s shoulders, red garish arms with rough skin and leathered callouses. The Scarred one stands behind their Leader, Mark can see the way his shoulders shiver. He feels the air getting louder while everything else hums itself into silence. And then the Leader drops him, and air floods back into his lungs with a painful cough. 

“…we can’t kill him unless we know for sure,” Mark catches the Scarred one say. “We need to find something, man. Something that will give us…anything else to do.” Because they’re all seeing proof of what division does, over and over again.   

The Leader doesn’t answer to any of them. Doesn’t listen. And Mark can barely see anything through his weary eyes, but he sees several of himself standing, watching, waiting, like vultures. But others still carry sympathy. They are some of the worst monsters you can be. But there is not a single thing in any world where there cannot be traces of something better. Something that doesn’t want to watch themselves die again. 

Mark can breathe. It’s wonderful, it’s painful, as the air enters his lungs. The Leader hoists him up to his feet and he feels everything cracking, breaking. But at least he’s alive.

“Show me,” he demands. “Or I’ll make you.” 

Mark stumbles with the first few steps off the ground, before he takes them to Eve’s first real home. 

—

This soft spoken Mark, the new renegade, was never in love with Atom Eve, but he still loved her. He can admit that now. He loved her fiercer approach to battle, the way she could manipulate anything into happening. She kept him on his feet, and kept the battlefield interesting. Mark, when he was wearing the facade of a real hero to Earth, barely had to try most of the time. Occasionally there’d be a new innovation, a new weakness of his that was exploited by a more intelligent foe. But they could never match the sheer durability and raw strength of him for long.

Eve, though, could literally make anything. if she wanted to, she could steal the air from his lungs—not that it would kill him fast enough to save her, hypothetically. But she could create nuclear fissions, she could rend entire planets apart, if not for her imposed limitations. Namely, the fact that she was human. Eve’s powers could exhaust her if she wasn’t careful. 

Mark never fully understood where the energy came from to do what Eve does, the scientific impossibility of it, could possibly come from. He learned school subjects at the insistence of his father, to be disciplined, but he scarcely cared enough for the material to mean anything to him. But even he knew that Eve broke the rules of most sciences. Mark wanted to break his own rules more than anything, so he loved that about her.

At first, Mark resented the way she spoke with disdain about her parents, the way that she acted as though they were the bane of her existence. What could she possibly know about bad parents, about the blood sweat and tears his father pried from his pleading body—

—and then he met her father and conceded yeah, wow, he’s kind of terrible.

It was after a particularly difficult fight against a large creature that threatened to level half of the city. Even Mark felt blood dribble from his nose, and bruises against his fingertips. Afterwards, despite Eve’s reluctance, Mark offered to fly her back to her house, because she’d just had a fight with her parents that morning about the dangers of heroism. Mark was really trying to be a good person, then. 

They arrived at her house. Unassuming, suburban, much like his own. Mark knew his parents had a considerable sum of money. Eve lived in a more modest neighborhood, and he wondered how much financial privilege was wasted on him. 

Eve sighed before she opened the door, and gave him a warning. “Mom’s going to invite you for dinner. She’ll insist. Dad will take you aside and try to talk to you about what it means to be a man or some bullshit. Last chance to back out.”

Mark scoffs, “I can handle being talked to by someone’s parents.” Eve doesn’t seem convinced, but she ushers him inside anyway. And then everything unfolds just as she’d said. No, Mrs. Wilkins, Eve and I are not together, she’s with Rex. No, Mark, wait here while Eve goes back to her room to change for dinner. It’s improper for a lady to use her powers to do so. Mark, you’re so polite, are you single? No? What a lucky young woman she must be. No, Mark, it’s a woman’s place to do the dishes after dinner, don’t be silly. 

“You know, kid,” Eve’s father had said to him, his husky arms resting in his pockets on the porch outside, as Eve and her mother washed dishes inside, “you’re going to be an excellent husband to a lucky woman.” 

And then Mark left a hole in their porch with the force at which he propelled himself into the air. Eve assured him that she could fix it in two seconds, and the look on her dad’s face through the window was totally worth it. 

Eve moved out two weeks later, and showed him the house she’d made from thin air. 

She threw a housewarming party, and William forced Mark to do the tango. There was a video of it and everything, sitting in William’s phone. Two years later, Mark watched from the air as Conquest punched a hole through Eve’s stomach, and he convinced himself he felt nothing. 

In this world, the trees have long since rotted; The forest Eve lived in is nothing but ashes. But by some twist of fate, he sees the collapsed walls, the remnants of the straw roof. It’s like a scene made just for him, a reminder that he betrayed both his family and his friends. 

“Down there, that’s what’s left of it,” he murmurs, offering a weak finger to the ruins of Eve’s home. The Leader thrusts him downwards, sending his bruised body into the dust. The others all float down to investigate the scene at various paces.

“Guess we’re lucky Eve isn’t as creative as she thought she was,” the Emperor smirks. “She can make anything out of thin air, and she chooses to live in the same exact place across dimensions.” 

“…Well, it’s not the exact same,” the Renegade Mark admits quietly. “In my world it was closer to the cliffs.” 

“Search for anything left, cover the whole area in case anything was blown away,” the Leader orders, before he whirls back to the renegade Mark’s crumpled figure, towering over him from the air. “And if we don’t find anything, say hi to Nolan for me, will you?” 

“Dude, really? You can rip into a guy’s intestines with your bare hands, but you can’t think of a better threat than that?” Mohawk snickers over his shoulder. “You sound like a bad comic book villain.”

“Help us find the fucking bunker before I tear out your eyeballs,” the Leader snarls in response. Mohawk doesn’t push it further. The way they talk to each other even in threats of self mutilation is so casual, so nonchalant. They have caused so much suffering that they are numb to its effect, or at least pretend to be. And the renegade was just like them, is still just like them. He clutches his arms against his body and lays in the sand, listening to the others root around the ruins of Eve’s home. 

There’s bits and baubles of Eve everywhere. One of the Marks finds a ruined coffee machine, decorated with pink symbols and logos. Another finds a buried bed frame with flowers meticulously carved into the wood, crumbling into pieces beneath a dried stump. The house itself is barely recognizable as such; Only one of its walls stays upright in any way, the rest long since deteriorated. 

The unmasked Renegade, bloodied and beaten, lays in the dirt. He settles into it, letting it cost his bruised body. Maybe he can dig his own grave before the maniac wearing their face tries to do it for him.  So he dogs his fingers in and sinks down. The earth accepts him gladly, fueling its hunger with his body as he coats himself with the layers of dirt. He can feel the way this planet aches with their presence, the way it despises them. 

Maybe it’s because he’s quieter than the rest of them, more observant out of necessity. He knows this place, this planet, to be alive. Alive and full of hate for their culmination, and creation. A few of the others deny it, or refuse to acknowledge it, but Mark’s seen the way the one with the Mohawk dips his head low to the ground, the way the Emperor’s eyes shine at the sky. He knows the planet talks to them, too, whispering its hate. But maybe this Earth is appeased by his offer, maybe the silver tings of moon rock stop their dissonance for a moment. Mark’s hand strikes something cool and metal. 

He lifts it up to the light, and it’s a picture frame. It’s of himself and Eve Wilkins. He recognizes the venue, the background, from the phone they’d found all those days ago, before Nolan unraveled and with him went their shreds of decency. It’s where this world’s Mark—the one from this burned and broken planet, the absent one—graduated high school, something Mark himself never experienced. The two of them, he and Eve, are in their graduation robes, sharing a chaste kiss. The photo is wonderful, and he hates it so much. 

There’s a familiar shadow looking over his shoulder, watching him with disdain. The picture in his hands is swiped from his grasp wordlessly. The Leader’s facial expression morphs from calculated disinterest to something more complicated, something adjacent to longing. Mark notices something, on the other side of the frame. A piece of the photo sticks out of the edge, and an obscured message hides. 

“Look on the back,” Mark advises. He isn’t sure why. Maybe a part of him wants to see where this leads them. Or hopes it will kill them. “There’s something written on it.” 

The Leader acknowledges him with a quick growl, but obliges, and flips over the picture. His fingers are uncharacteristically delicate with the photo as he pulls it out of the frame, his furrowed brow tracing over the inscribed lines.He whistles to get everyone’s attention, and the air explodes from all angles, wind and sand rushing by as each Mark Grayson arrives. 

“Did you find something?” The Masked one asks eagerly. “Where is the bunker?” 

“There’s a message on the back of this photo, for the Mark who lived here.” The Leader grimaces. “Either he never got it, or he didn’t need it. Either way, it’s a bunch of lines and symbols—nonsense. I can’t fucking read it. Except for this part at the bottom. ‘Love, Eve.’ Completely useless, as usual.” 

The others crowd around and most of them seem just as confused as the Leader. Most of them, but not all. The Soldier squints in recognition. 

“…Those are chemical formulas.” He says, his finger tracing the black text. “Each of these has a symbol that corresponds to English letters. It’s…a code. Written in chemistry.” 

Mohawk slaps his forehead like it’s obvious. “Oh, duh, right! She sees molecules and chemical formulas and stuff in the real world. Of course she’d use them for a code!”

“Why the hell would she make a code using them for us?  The Scarred one wrinkles his nose. “Dude. my Eve would’ve known that I barely passed chemistry. She offered to help me study and everything.” 

“Do the rest of you not know the periodic table?” The Soldier asks, concerned. “You don’t know the different elements, how they bond, like—you don’t know any of that stuff?” The Soldier's formal accent peels away with his surprise.

“Why the fuck would I bother to learn what a covalent bond is when I can literally break the laws of psychics by making my own leverage?” Snorts Mohawk.

“That’s exactly why you should care,” retorts the Soldier. “Viltrumites can do things that nobody else ever could. We have to maximize our strength, our knowledge, especially with so few of us left.” 

“What, did Dad make sure to teach you chemistry in between the constant mutilations and forced battles to the death? Good for you, man.” The Masked one bites sarcastically. 

The Soldier groans, frustrated, “Not Dad—ugh, others. Man, have the rest of you really never been out in space, out to see Viltrum? Every Viltrumite is strong. Others are also smart, working on ways to refuel our numbers, to make sure the Great Purge can’t ever happen again. Knowing things is important. ” 

“Great Purge? What do you mean? The empire is huge. They made sure to remind me every time their fists went into my face,” the Scarred one frowns. “They’re expanding into new planets constantly. Why would they need even more Viltrumites?” The others glance between each other uneasily—knowledge hanging in the air like a dangling chandelier. Who will drop it? 

“…You don’t know.” The Masked one says dumbly.

“I don’t know what, dude? I can’t read minds,” the Scarred one responds, annoyed.

“Dude. Full-blooded Viltrumites are super rare. There’s like, less than a hundred of us left. At least—in my universe. They got wiped out by a fuckin’ virus, of all things. Mega lame, right?” Mohawk snickers.

“The Great Purge,” The Soldier corrects, glaring. “It almost single-handedly wiped out our people. It’s why Dad was assigned to Earth. We need breeding grounds, and humans are great candidates. I mean, look at us. We turned out pure Viltrumite.”

“Some more than others, considering the fact that less than half of us are left from when Angstrom first recruited us.” The Emperor scoffs. 

The Scarred one looks at his hands. At the red lines and burns, and he remembers. He remembers begging his Dad to help them escape, help him fight their way out. Redeem himself and save the Earth.

“It’s pointless, Mark,” his Dad had said. “It could never happen.” 

And Mark, despite the fact that it was the face of his captor, the one who had brought him there, had believed him. But now he hears that the Empire is a fraction of what he believed, and that all along, Earth could have been free. His father, the Guardians, Cecil, everyone , they could have stood a chance. But his father let them turn Mark into raw, scarred flesh instead. His father killed all of those people, and made him stop caring, too. All for a crumbling bunch of nothing.

“I hate him so much,” the Scarred one says, every inch of his blood boiling. “I hate our Dad so fucking much.” 

“What are you even talking about?” Frowns The Emperor. “You—"

His words are cut off as the Scarred one blinks out of view, a hurricane of debris tracing his path across the earth. 

“Great. Now that Freddie Krueger’s off sulking…” the Leader grins, motioning to The Soldier. “You can help us read this map, and then we’ve got a bunker to visit.”

Nobody’s actually sure what they’re going to find in the bunker. The Leader hopes that whatever it is, there’s still delicious red pumping in its veins. 

__

It takes the Soldier very little time. The message, it turns out, is quite simple. Apparently, this world’s Eve knew her own Mark’s limitations of intelligence fairly well--knowing it was in the picture frame was supposedly the real test, and they’d already passed it by complete chance. 

“It’s just a sentence. It says the bunker’s in the mountains of Arizona. Marked by a silo. Kind of anti-climactic, but hey, I guess she doesn’t think we’re that smart.” 

“We’re smart! It’s just that the rest of us were a little too busy taking over the world and making people

worship us to pay attention in high school chemistry.” Mohawk defends.

“All that matters right now is the planet provides us a way to go, and a way to find her,” sneers the Emperor. “I hope she’s still there so we can show her how much we miss her.” 

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” chides their Leader. “I have something else in mind for you, our little Emperor.”

“Don’t talk about me like we aren’t the same,” the Emperor warns, his posture stiffening defensively. “I am a God, just like you.” 

“If you really want to see how much you’re just like me, we can figure it out,” their Leader suggests. And like he suspected, the Emperor backs down. He pats the top of the Emperor’s head condescendingly. “That’s what I thought, buddy.” 

“I could beat you,” he mutters. “I just want to get out of here more. You’re not worth the effort.” 

“Aww, that’s just so sad to hear! But I’ll tell you what, pal,” the Leader shoots down into the ground, ripping the Renegade out of the dirt by the hips. He gasps in shock, and flails around uselessly, his bruised ribs aching like fire. He bides his time and goes still. The Leader gestures to him with his other arm, “This one can be your consolation prize.” 

The Emperor stands stunned for a second, before one of his brows lifts in curiosity. “What do you mean by that?” 

“I mean, you take him back to our camp, and do whatever you want with him,” the Leader answers nonchalantly. “Beat him to death, skewer him, I dunno. World’s your oyster, or whatever they say.” 

“Now hold on, since when did we vote on this?”

“Not everything’s democratic, Masky. In case you forgot, he’s a lunatic who talks to sandcastles. We don’t need him. Why do you keep pretending that you don’t love all this violence? I bet that’s what the mask is for, huh? To hide that you’re a sick little pervert.” Mohawk teases.

“Shut—shut the fuck up! God, let's just get to the bunker already, so I never have to see you again.” The Masked one retorts.

“I mean, we’ve been at least a week or two without anyone getting axed. Our fearless Leader is right, he’s just a crazy asshole taking up our food. It’s not like we need him for his strength. We’ll be more than enough.” 

“Well. We are talking about killing ourselves, basically. It’s…weird to think about.” The Soldier hums, mulling it over. 

“You voted to kill Nolan, Soldier Boy. This is the exact same deal. What’s the difference?” Mohawk counters.

The Leader shuts them all up with a zip across his lips. “Again, not a democracy. Take your new toy and go nuts. You don’t have to kill him. Probably shouldn’t yet, if you wanna keep having fun with him. But…I’unno, your call. I know how mad you can get.” The Leader shoves the renegade Mark into the Emperor’s arms, gasping for breath. 

The Emperor looks down at his damaged face, the deep pools of brown that used to blossom bruises every time he fought. He’s fought him before, and he stopped. Maybe this is the world telling him to give it another chance. And then the Emperor shoots off into the sky, carrying the injured renegade. Yes, thinks the Emperor, the silver rocks must want this, with the way they gleam today. 

The others go to the deserts of Arizona, intent on finding Cecil’s bunker, one way or another. They will get out of here, because they know that they could be the next one offered up like a trophy by the whim of a madman who’s stolen their faces. At least going with him lets them know where he is and what he’s planning.

—

When they get back to the camp, the Scarred one isn’t there. It’s just the Renegade and the Emperor, and the silver bells. They both can hear them chiming, now. It’s an unmistakable call by the wilds, that this is meant to be. That they are now intertwined.

“Get out of my head,” the Emperor snarls, “I’m doing what you want! Just—just stop ringing!” 

His prisoner, the Renegade, laughs. “I told you that the planet sings. I bet the rest of them hear it, too, but for whatever reason, it hates you the most. You should feel honored, really.” 

The Emperor bares his teeth, glaring. “You’re really annoying, you know that? I’m going to enjoy ripping you apart.” 

The Renegade smirks, “Okay. Let’s give it your best shot. Maybe the sound will stop bothering you if you kill me. Or maybe it just wants to watch you suffer.”

The Emperor roars and thrusts his fist at the Renegade. He contorts himself through the air, thrusting up and over the Emperor’s head. His body screams with effort, and his ribs crackle painfully. But he has no choice—the planet gave them Eve’s message, and in return, it needs blood. And they’re the only two it can reach for and get it from. 

The Renegade isn’t sure what’s so different about this Earth. He swears it almost has a heartbeat. On several silent nights, he hears the earth creaking, and the moon rocks droning a discordant symphony of light sounds that whistle when they hit the air. He’s seen the Emperor emerge late at night, clutching his ears, seething at the starry sky.

The Emperor whirls around in the air, loose strands of his hair falling into his eyes. The renegade doesn’t have the benefit of a mask to keep debris from his eyes, but he feels freer, and quicker to react without any obstructions. He’s injured, and the Emperor is childish, but he knows he can make him bleed. This fight is to the death, he knows. He can tell by taking one look at the Emperor’s mask, the way he buckles in pain. He can still hear the ringing, the droning sounds of space. And it’s killing him, so he’s going to kill something else. 

“You can fight. You just chose not to, the first time.” The Emperor regards him, angered. “You call yourself a Viltrumite, a warrior, an emperor? Because compared to me, you’re just a pathetic little coward.” The Emperor charges at his stomach and tackles him up into the sky. His ribs scream, and his lungs shrivel. They escalate through the air until both of them are dizzied from the low oxygen, the hum of space beginning to creep into their ears. 

“You really want to kill me,” the Renegade taunts. “I can’t help it if I remind you of me. We're the same guy, man!”

The Emperor screams in agitation, “Get out of my fucking head!” And he sweeps his arm across the air like a brutal knife, slicing at the Renegade’s flesh. Bright red blooms across his chest, a gash just below his shoulders. It stings in the chilling air, and they both feel the wind rush with glee. The planet loves their bloodshed, and they both feel it in their bones.

There’s one more thing about the noise, about the silver moon’s rocky bells. The moon rocks don’t speak, of course, when they talk to them. That would be ridiculous. Their droning is alien, incoherent and scattered, hardly harmonic. But there’s one more thing. They sound just like Mark Grayson. That’s how they know everything the planet does is addressed to them; it’s intimately familiar in a way that touching your reflection is, in the way goosebumps settling over the back of your neck is. 

“You know, I was always curious about you,” the Renegade says, blood streaming down his suit. “You’re strong, don’t get me wrong…but you lash out like a little kid. Like mommy didn’t tuck you in properly. It’s kind of sad.” 

The Emperor lets out another roar, crashing his shoulder into his opponent. The Renegade braces his arms out, and goes sailing back through the air, catching himself as he tears through a cloud, misted water spraying over his body. The Emperor shoots through the cloud, grappling onto his neck and squeezing down hard. 

“You—you really take after our leader, don’t you?” The Renegade gags, smirking all the while. The Emperor screams into his face, enraged.

“Shut the fuck up! Get out of my head!” He bites through his own lip, blood trickling from his teeth. “I don’t know how you’re doing it. But it’s you. You won’t stop talking to me. Won’t stop whispering . It’s always been you, hasn’t it?” The Emperor crashes their heads together, and the Renegade sees stars, and burns just as hot as one.

“Christ, you’ve really been losing it, haven’t you?” The Renegade manages to stutter, looking into the feral eyes of the Emperor. “I’m not the one in your head, buddy. I told you—the moon, the planet here? They sing, man. You just gotta let them.”  

The Emperor spits at him. “I am the ruler of the Viltrum Empire. I am a God in a world of fucking insects. And you—! You’re nothing, and it pisses me off!” The Emperor slams another fist into his stomach, another knee up into his kidney. He’s relentless, and powerful, if unrefined. Not that it matters to the Renegade’s blistering pain. The Emperor continues his rant, furious. “Out of all of us here, you’re the only one who talks about it. The ringing. The fucking—the moon. It’s singing. I hear it every night, and at first, I thought it chose me, that I was its chosen .” 

The Renegade shakes his head with faux sympathy. “Sorry, man. Guess you’re not as special as Daddy taught you.” That gets him a fistful of teeth, a blunt force slamming into his jaw with the grace of a bullet train. “Oh, God, you really didn’t like that,” the Renegade gasps in shock, spitting up another tooth. “If—it makes you feel better, my Dad told me I was meant for great things, too. And you know, we both ended up here. Talking to the rocks. Funny—funny how things work out, huh?”

“I’m tired of you,” the Emperor responds, shaking teeth embedded in his hand free. Our costumes are too similar. The idea of taking off my mask and seeing you makes me sick.” 

“Don’t worry,” the Renegade chuckles darkly. “At the rate you’re— urgh— manhandling me, you won’t have to deal with my pretty face much longer.” He coughs, blood spattering into the open air. The Emperor takes the red as an invitation, lunges for him once more. Progressively, they rise higher and higher in the atmosphere, the Renegade suffering from jagged blows, the scraping of nails, the brute force of the Emperor’s balled fists. 

Mark Grayson is not the same in every reality, but there are common threads that tie their souls together. One is that they all have a deep need to be seen and acknowledged. Another is their sense of righteousness. Not necessarily for the right thing, but for what they want the right to do. Among many others is the most important; Mark Grayson is self destructive. 

What better proof is there than a duel to the death between two dimensional twins, two people with the same face and name? They rise into space, taking their final gasps of weak air from the Earth’s atmosphere. The cold settles against their skin, their senses going almost completely silent—If not for a faint chime, a faint ringing. It’s impossible to know where it comes from, because it sounds like it’s from everywhere. 

There’s no words, anymore. They can’t speak up here. But there’s conversation, between their fists, between the blood that scatters and floats through the vacuum of space. There’s conversation in the silent scream of the Emperor as the Renegade bides his time, and strikes. When the Emperor overextends, when the song in his head makes his movements sloppy, the Renegade bashes his elbow against the Emperor’s hand. It bends, and then it breaks, the bones of his fingers jutting out of his wrist. 

The Renegade bleeds from his ears, his eyes, his nose. His chest is scratched and gashed, and his fists are gnarled and bruised. But his opponent looks down at his own hand, bent wrong, bone exposed. He can tell that the Emperor’s never had such a severe injury before, in the horror that dies on his lips. The way his body goes rigidly still. 

Mark Grayson, the Renegade, against Mark Grayson, the young Emperor. A battle of self-harm that ends in nothing but complete and total self-destruction. The Emperor’s rigid body twitches, as he tries to flex his broken hand. And then he’s around the Renegade’s neck, thrashing and kicking, his one hand squeezing all it’s worth. His mouth cascades blood and snarls unheard insults, screams untold secrets. Nobody but the silver rings of the moon can hear them, up here. And it’d much prefer them to listen. 

The Renegade manages to pry himself free of the desperate young Emperor, who fights with no inhibitions, and no grace, only hate. As the Renegade Mark shoves him away, the young Emperor unhinges his jaw and thrusts his teeth down. They clamp over the Renegade’s bruised and battered flesh, and they tear. 

Teeth rake across his eye and scrape over his brow agonizingly. He’s been impaled on the edge of his father’s arm, seen the love of his life murdered before his eyes—this pain equates to either of those experiences. It is a seeping ache that gushes from his eye socket, his hands flying over it protectively, desperately. He thrusts himself forward, against the Emperor’s chest, pushing them further into space as they both scream into the void. 

The renegade Mark sees very little but utter red, with the Emperor spitting out chunks of his eye as they careen through space. The ringing gets stronger, and more persistent. The song of the planet, the one that traps them here, buzzes in their skulls as a kill switch. 

The Emperor begins to writhe frantically, but the Renegade couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. He grapples onto his opponent, the Emperor, and wrangles his broken arm into his grasp, bending it as far back as he can. He rears himself around, propelling the Emperor through the cold blackness of space. And then he launches him, sending him tumbling through the void, and towards the stars. He must go almost a mile or so before he manages to gather himself, to spin back around and face upright. 

The Renegade notices almost immediately. The way the moon rocks almost glimmer with glee. The way his mind drones the song of the dying Earth, and the way the arrogant young Emperor writhes around, the way his limbs contort and twist. The song has him now, and it’s not keen on letting him go. 

They call it music, a song, because there is no other word for a sound that can make you collapse with its feeling. This music is suffocating, and encompassing, and drives their ears to burst, their brains to halt. The Renegade watches as the sound must engulf the Emperor, as he desperately claws his way towards his killer, his own face. He’s still hundreds of feet away by the time he stops moving.

Mark Grayson, the young Emperor, exhales his final breath in the cold vacuum of space, blood flushing out of his ears in a river of scarlet. As he stills, his corpse relaxes, and his shoulders slacken. His corpse floats gently backwards, back to the orbit of the Earth and the silver rings, as their prey. The Earth’s song has claimed him, and the Renegade can feel nothing but the strength and desire for the song to claim him, too.

He doesn’t let ur happen—not now. He has given the Earth a bounty in exchange for his freedom, for the gift of life. He might be Mark Grayson, hearing his own voice in his head, whispering all the ways it wants him to die. But that day won’t be today, because of the young Emperor, who drifts ever closer to the Earth and its silver rings, ready to be claimed. 

He descends into Earth’s atmosphere, watching the blood burn away from his body, the loose pieces of his suit torched. He doesn’t know how much time has passed since their fight began. It could have been minutes, or days. Hours seems like a fair compromise, because the others haven’t returned yet when he arrives at their desolate camping site. 

Their ramshackle shelter whistles in greeting, the lack of doors and windows evident in the traces of sand and grime that coat the splintered wooden floors. Mark Grayson is many things, a monster, a killer, and a self-loather. The list gets longer with each passing day, with each drained corpse.

The Renegade remembers the life draining from his father’s eyes, and wonders if his counterpart died the same way, the slight twitch of his brow, the soft exhale of his breath. The ghosted dance of his fingers going up and down in the cool air. But Mark Grayson, this Renegade, did not kill his father, not really. His father was killed because he let himself die. 

This is different—he threw himself into screaming white noise, into blinding pain, and watched it boil his own brain. He’s killed so many people, and he always knew he’d kill himself, one day. But this is a cruel twist on his intrusive desires and thoughts that he could’ve never seen coming. If he died here, he wouldn’t satiate the dying planet’s hunger or calm the song of the silver rings that traps them here. He would just be dead. And Mark finds that for whatever reason, he doesn’t want that to happen yet. 

There’s the rations. The others are gone for Cecil’s bunker, where they’ll kill whatever is left, and gorge themselves on the rest until nothing at all is. The choice is clear. He searches their things meticulously, and he gathers whatever he can for sustenance. He knows they don’t have to eat like humans do to survive, but there’s a clawing emptiness in his stomach, in his body, after watching himself die. He needs a distraction, and to feel alive, before he forgets that he is, again.

The Renegade checks their Leader’s sleeping bag last, remembering the rotting corpse outside. Even inside here, lingering scents of its rot fill the air. It’s absolutely putrid, and he’ll be glad to have put this behind him. He finds the usual underneath the Leader’s pillow, keepsakes of their old lives. A rattled comic book with a colorful canine character on the front, a pink bow. And the centerpiece, the raw heart of Nolan, the apprentice Omni-Man, who their Leader tore apart with his bare hands. There’s clear stress against the organ, indentations of fingerprints and nails. And near the center, there’s the unmistakable stencil of teeth marks, and a missing chunk of red flesh. The Renegade has seen almost every possible way the human body can break, and he still feels sick to his stomach. 

He leaves their shelter and takes his scavenged goods with him in a burlap tied to his back. The others don’t have to know what happened to him and the Emperor. He isn’t sure they’ll even care, if the bunker truly holds the answers they want so desperately. But they’ll eventually know about the bite taken out of Nolan’s heart, and the Renegade can’t be here for that—not if he wants to pretend there’s any shred of decency in him left to save. 

—

The Monster masquerading as a Leader. The Masked one that desperately hides the way his whole self threatens to unravel. The Delinquent with a penchant for watching things burn, and making them break, because he wishes he wasn’t. The Soldier who drags himself forward no matter how much of himself he leaves behind in each step. The four of them stand between the mesas, between the natural beauty of their planet Earth. Embedded in the side of the rock is a carefully hidden silo, opened and hollowed. Beneath it, the rock cracks and gives way to a small light flickering deep in the Earth.

The Monster grins and licks his teeth. They’ve found what they’re looking for. This is the GDA’s last bunker.

Chapter Text

For the Prisoner, the Mark with the damaged mind and body, this place is a special kind of hell. He’s stuck in a deserted wasteland with nobody but himself for company, and they all remain unblemished, unscarred by their choices. Mark flexes his arm and hisses at the abrasions that settle on his skin, the pinkish tone it forces itself to take. He feels the veins in the side of his head bulging outward at every hour, every day. It took him months to learn how to sleep through the night with the constant pain. 

All because his father was a Viltrumite, and thus, so was he. Because of his father, he was taken from his own Earth and everyone he’d ever known. Because of his father, he can’t look in the mirror without flinching. Because of his father, they tortured him until he forgot how to beg. And when he looks at the other survivors of this hellscape, all he sees is his own ghost, a version of himself that died because of his father. 

Nobody was ever there to help him. 

Not Cecil, who did nothing as his father carried him into the cold heart of space, bloodied and broken. Not the other so-called heroes of Earth, who stood by as Mark was catapulted through the streets of Chicago, as his body threatened to crumble alongside the skyscrapers. And not his father, whom he pleaded to escape with him every night in that prison until his voice was raw. None of them ever helped him. 

So why should Mark help them in return? Mark seldom thinks about the screaming people of Moscow, or the way buildings break like toys beneath his fists. He doesn’t much see the point in playing the whole “superiority” game that Viltrumites goad down their throats—-he outclasses an average human in every way a hundred times over, but what’s the point in bragging about that? It speaks for itself, and the way he shapes the world to his will. He is basically a God compared to them, sure, but Gods do not concern themselves with the petty lives of mortals. So neither does he. 

The taste of dust lingers on his tongue, the sun beaming harshly on his damaged skin. The Arizona wilds are among the most untouched places on the planet from the cataclysm, with unmarred hill slides and preserved mountaintops that glisten in the heat. Nothing living besides himself, though, at least above the ground. Below the ground is unseen and unknown.

The Prisoner has his doubts that every single thing besides them is dead, because it just doesn’t seem possible. They’re not dead, so there must be…something, right, anything, that’s keeping them that way. There must be worms wriggling in the ground, or a diseased rat burrowed away in the wreckage of a factory somewhere. His most human quality is to look for answers in face of the unknown—a loathing quality shared among all Mark Graysons, scarred or not. 

The others are off to uncover the mysteries of this place, of this so-called dead world. Mark has his reservations about whether they exist. All he knows for certain about this place is that the sky almost trembles with fury at his very presence. The change in temperature is palpable when they emerge from their shelters in the morning—and the sun blisters his skin like it has a personal vendetta. 

So while everything on this miserable Earth might seem to be gone, this Mark knows that there's something unmistakably living that echoes here, waiting and wishing for their downfall from just out of sight. And after everything that he’s seen himself do, deep down, he’s not sure he wants them to overcome it. 

But he made the choice in Moscow, didn’t he? To kill all of those people. He felt nothing then, right? The same way he felt nothing when he saw his father beaten into a bloodied pulp over and over, until the day he gave up. The last emotion the Prisoner felt was rage, unbridled hatred as his father, clinging to life, was taken away by broad shoulders in pristine white uniforms. Alive. 

So then, why did he vote to save the Mark who championed Omni-Man? Why does he still think of the young Nolan, of his polar opposite? They barely spoke, on account of the way the Prisoner couldn’t stand him, and the way the rest of the Mark Graysons thought less of him for his appearance. Though Nolan was too diplomatic to insult his looks, he saw the same grimace in all of their faces. Pity, disgust, and relief that they didn’t have to suffer the Prisoner’s fate.

But there was something about the pretender, the young Omni-Man, that the Prisoner understood. The veneration of someone who took everything from you—the want to take his identity and make it your own. 

Any version of Mark Grayson, boiled down to his purest essence, is the culmination of horrible esteem issues stemming from his father. There is no way to disguise the control his father has over every thought and action. It disgusts himself, the way Omni-Man  controls every minute detail of his life, regardless of what dimension he’s from. He’s either maimed, scarred, left motherless, left heartbroken, or left with an identity crisis, because of his father. So maybe when he saw himself in the young Omni-Man, in their Nolan, as he bled helplessly in the moonlit sands, he took pleasure in the ability to be the one bestowing pity, to decide another’s fate. 

Or maybe he didn’t want to watch himself, the way he was before the torture, undergo the same mutilation. Maybe he felt something real, and he’s not the unfeeling God they programmed him to be. Maybe it would be so, if it mattered anymore.

All of that time imprisoned, and he never knew just how few his own people were. Less than fifty pure-blooded Viltrumites, in each of his counterpart’s universes. Maybe there’s a chance that his is different, but he knows the truth. Mark is a last-ditch lab rat in an attempt to resuscitate a dying empire. And worse, he’s the only one of himself who didn’t already know. He’s mutilated, ignorant, and alone. 

But this world hasn’t claimed him yet, and so he stands, defiant of his destiny, disillusioned with his identity. He floats off the ground slowly, feeling the sun sear his skin harshly as he elevates. The others have gone to find the GDA’s bunker, and they can’t be far from it here. But the more he thinks about it, he doesn’t want to go near their Leader, especially if they don’t happen to like what they find. So he goes to their little shelter, the only solace they have.

The Prisoner returns to their camp, and finds it empty. Worse yet, he finds it looted. The young Emperor and the quiet Renegade have vanished, and with them has gone every last bit of their food. Every rotted morsel left, every scavenged crumb. But the most horrible discovery lies on the pillow of the Leader, his door swung open and his room on display for all to see.

It is an odd thing, to see your own un-beating heart. But the Prisoner would venture that it’s even stranger to see a bite taken out of it. 

The room is spinning. Or maybe it’s just the damage to his brain making his eyes swim with nausea. Either way, the Prisoner stands rigid and unsure. So, there he waits, staring at the hole in Nolan’s heart, and clutching his own chest, feeling the way his own rips itself apart.

____

Gathered outside a crevice in the earth stand four Mark Graysons, ready for answers. The heat is unbearable out this deep into the desert, and the cave housing their destination is hollow and crumbling, the perfect tombstone for the human race. They peer inside, apprehensive to go further. 

“Do you really think anyone is still alive down there?” The Masked one questions, staring down at the ground. 

“If they are, maybe they can explain how the Guardians and dear old Dad fucked up so badly,” Mohawk sneers. “And then we can make them do shit for us to get us out of here, if they’re GDA scientists.”  

“Maybe we should get the others,” the Masked one wonders. “If there’s anything unexpected down there…” 

“There’s nothing that stands a chance against me by myself, let alone four of us,” the Soldier rolls his eyes. “Come on, stop being such a coward.” 

The Masked one scoffs back, “I am not a coward! I’m just saying, what if there’s another brain radio signal, or what if…you know…what if whatever destroyed the planet is down there?” 

“I hope it is, because then we can kill it,” the Leader grins. “That was the whole point of trying to find this place, wasn’t it?” 

“Hey now, fearless Leader,” Mohawk warns. “Don’t go getting all kill-y right away. We need em’ alive to help us get out of this shit show, remember?” 

“Don’t worry, I’ll behave,” the Leader’s grin widens. “Promise.” His words are thick with delight and anticipation. He licks his glove like a paw, his canines poking out of his mouth as he slowly bites his lip. 

The rest of them know their Leader is as unpredictable as he is deadly. None of them expected him to offer one of them up as a tribute to be slaughtered, a prize to be claimed. The Emperor taking the bait and leaving was startling, too. They have no idea what he plans to do with the renegade Invincible, the one who claimed to love their best friend intimately, but the idea makes most of them uneasy. 

They don’t all know it yet, but their numbers are dropping steadily. They had close to a month of uneasy cooperation and relatively minor scuffles, outside of the way their Leader treated Nolan, up until their deadly confrontation. The Leader’s treatment of Nolan before and after his death is best described as savage and at worst shunned as perversion. And even now, Nolan’s influence continues to drag itself alongside those who survive him, with their Leader unable to keep him off his mind. 

“Make sure you don’t lose that flashlight, Soldier,” warns their Leader. “Seriously. Don’t.” 

“I’m not an idiot. I’m perfectly capable of holding a flashlight.” The Soldier bites back, but there’s a slight twitch in his finger, Mohawk notices. It’s subtle, but his fear is there.

An insult about fear of the dark dies on Mohawk’s lips. It’s not that the Leader is so overwhelmingly powerful compared to any of them, because he isn’t. In fact, on their first day, during the squabbles, they remember Nolan’s dominance, the way he parried blows and redirected his opponents was unparalleled. But the Leader fights a war of psychology, a war that wears you down until your mind is feeble and your bones are brittle.

The way that he walks and talks is unpredictable and jagged, and his fighting style is erratic, impossible to predict, like he’s carried on the wind. The Leader is always thinking, always placing them together in his head for ways they can be useful. He knows how to push buttons, and there’s no line he won’t cross. The rest of them are deadly war machines, but their Leader tries to fool you into thinking he’s on your side until it’s too late. 

None of them are eager to become the new toy, but any of them could take the quiet Mark’s place, derelict and dying in the sand, offered up as a sacrifice.  

So this bunker better have something to keep them all occupied. They all have very different ideas of what to expect, and each of them wants to find something completely different from the site they’ve traveled to. Beneath them, buried underground, is a facility that belonged to the Global Defense Agency, and the place where their mother and the superhero Atom Eve were taken.

They descend the cave warily, eyeing the fragile clay walls. Cracks run between lines of soot and dirt, like the whole structure could crumple at any moment. The cave itself has shifts and paradigms that seem illogically difficult to pass through, and at several points, they have to bear rubble falling on their heads as they tear open their own passageways. 

“For a man made cave, this is almost impossible to get through,” grunts the Soldier. “At least, for normal people who would actually use an escape bunker.” 

Mohawk chips his hand against the hardened rock, pulling a large piece out of the way. The ceiling caves in with more rubble, decorating the top of his head and shoulders. He grunts in pain and frustration. 

“It’s like the place got sculpted by a kid playing with Play-Doh,” he grimaces. “Hey, oh so great Leader, you sure we’re going the right way?”  

The Leader turns to face him with his hands still embedded in the rock, pulverizing a piece into dust. He smirks, “Be patient. Isn’t it more fun like this, anyway? It’s like they’re playing hide and seek with us. And they can’t hide forever.” 

“If any of them are alive at all,” grumbles the Soldier. “They’ve probably long since evacuated, or the Viltrumites found them and cut them down.” 

“What other option do we have?” ‘Mask’ sighs. “This is the first clue we’ve found about anything that’s maybe still alive.”

“They’d better be alive, after all this work,” Mohawk frowns.  

None of them really know what’s next, if this turns out to be a dead end. The uncertainty boils under their blood, festers in their minds. If there is nothing for them here, their Leader will surely need another distraction. First it was Nolan, and then the Mark who went renegade, crying for his dead lover. Now it’s anyone’s guess who could be next. The idea is unnerving. 

They could fight their Leader, of course. As dangerous as he is, he couldn’t stand against six on one. Hell, he couldn’t stand against even two of them working in tandem, could he? But would they all side against him, or would the teams be more even than the defectors would hope? And if they win, what happens then? Their Leader at least has given them a direction to go. And so they follow, even when the warning signs pop up in neon lights. The smiling, the gratification, and the death.

They’ve been digging for almost an hour, excavating aimlessly through crumbling tunnels, coughing up dust. They’re not sure how deep into the earth they’ve gone, but the path above them to the surface is jagged and dim. And then one of them pushes against a wall, and it crumbles away, rocks raining onto their heads. 

They cough and sputter, flinging rocks all over the place, carving their way out of the earth’s entombment. If they weren’t Viltrumites, they would surely have died by now either from oxygen deprivation or being crushed. When the smoke and debris finally clear, there’s a flickering light from deep into the newly opened passageway.

“Found you,” the Leader rumbles, the noise low in his throat. He takes a small step towards the light, relishing in his chase. The rest of them follow behind, tentative. 

The tunnel groans and whistles as they approach the source of the flickering light, otherwise in near and total darkness with their distance from the surface. The way to the light is still obscured with jagged formations of rock and shifted cave walls that make normal entry borderline impossible without brute force. 

“Would a few years of no maintenance do this to a cave?” ‘Mask’ wonders, stumbling about in the dark.

“Things might collapse, but I can’t figure out how the walls could shift like this,” the Soldier relays, grunting with exertion as he forces his way through another rock. “There’s no way this is how they designed it. Maybe Eve did it, to make getting there harder?” 

Mohawk perks up at the mention of his red haired muse, his gritty teeth glimmering through the darkness of the cave. “Oh man, I wonder how she’ll react to seeing us?” 

“…Just try not to cream your pants at the sight of her, man. She’s not our Eve.” ‘Mask’ rolls his eyes. 

“Who cares what Mark she’s dating? I’m the upgraded version, obviously.” Mohawk brags

“I’d believe Cecil’s throwing us a surprise party down there faster than I’d believe someone with that haircut has a chance with Eve Wilkins.” ‘Mask’ retorts. 

“You know, I’m in such a good mood about seeing her that I won’t even rip out your tongue for that,” Mohawk snarks back. “Until later.” He mutters under his breath. 

“Again…it’s more likely that she’s gone. She mentioned being evacuated.” The Soldier points out. 

“Is it in Viltrumite child soldier programming to be a major bummer, or do you just choose to be so irritating?” Mohawk pouts. 

The Soldier inhales to offer a retort, but soot and wind suddenly rush by his face and ears, making him gag. The three others snap their heads forward towards their Leader, who has his fingers raised to his mouth in a quieting gesture.

“We’re close,” he murmurs, the excited undercurrent of his words carrying a murderous glee. 

Growing closer by the second is the flickering light, illuminating the outline of a large steel door, sealed tight. The bunker lays before them, ready for invasion, and ready for them to finally have their answers. 

None of them can afford to mess this up. Their grievances are set aside, for now, in favor of their curiosity and survival instincts. This planet has proven itself to drive them to extremes before, and it will surely happen again. They need to get out of here, and this is the only lead they’ve ever had. 

When they get close enough to touch the door, it’s eerily silent. They expected resistance, or an automated security system, but the only noise they can hear is the light itself, whirring ominously. There’s a hook where a security camera must have once been installed above the door, with loose wires carelessly ripped apart the only remnant. The bulwark of the bunker itself looks almost untouched, aside from edges of the metal that have rusted away. The Leader glances at his force, and then back to the

door. He reaches for the bulwark, and begins to pry it open. 

There’s an awful squeak as the bulwark completely comes off the hinges, collapsing sideways against the inner wall of the bunker. Stumbling forward, a figure drapes itself over the Leader’s shoulders, and he hisses in surprise. 

“What the hell? Get—get off me!” He growls, slamming the attacker into the bunker. The body smacks against the fallen bulwark, and then tumbles to the cold floor. The four of them have the body surrounded in less than a second, rushing into the bunker. They watch the crumpled form like hawks, ready to overpower whatever threat it may pose. But it doesn’t move at all. 

“Flashlight—where’s it? Now!” The Leader demands.

The Soldier quickly shines the light down onto the figure, illuminating the gold of her armor. Flecks of cracked amber decorate her shoulders and hair, her gilded crest snapped clean from her head. War Woman’s pallid corpse is tinted hues of yellow where loose skin still remains. Her eyes have completely sunken, fallen back into her head, and her hair is ratlike and filthy. Her cheeks are swollen almost beyond recognition, her gums and teeth pulled back and rotted. When their eyes trail down to her body, they find much of her torso hollowed out, emptied of most of her organs. 

The smell is indescribable, reeking of rot, decay, and simply death. Most of them have to fight the urge to vomit, gagging and backing away. The Leader simply stares down, wrinkling his nose, deep in thought. 

“Oh—oh my god that is foul,” ‘Mask’ retches, covering his mouth through his mask. “She—she’s a zombie, she’s…I can’t even—oh my god.” 

“Why is she just…there?” Mohawk clutches his nose, his cheeks puffed out and red. “Why was she just propped against the door like that? Why is she fuckin’ excavated?” 

“I expected to find skeletons. I expected corpses. I did not expect…that.” The Soldier stands, arms crossed, biting bile down the back of his throat. 

The Leader leans down slowly, carefully, and caresses her swollen cheek. It feels as if the slightest touch might pop it, or peel it away. The texture is akin to a shriveled grape full of ooze. 

“Don’t—don’t touch it! What in the hell is wrong with you?” ‘Mask’ shouts, horrified. 

“I think it’s way too late to be asking that,” Mohawk stares, his eyes widening with shock. The Soldier’s own eyes even grow, the site before him one of the few scenarios he couldn’t have prepared for.

“She’s definitely been dead for a long time,” their Leader relays, standing back up. 

“Oh, really? What gave it away?” Mohawk snaps angrily. “Her lovely eyes, maybe her windswept hair?” 

“Can we just go?” ‘Mask’ interrupts. “I don’t want to be near that thing anymore. I’m going to throw up in my mask.” 

“Let’s just…move further in,” the Soldier agrees, his brow twitching as he struggles to keep a straight face. 

The Leader glances between the others and War Woman, pondering. He motions them ahead with a nod, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “You all go ahead. I’ll be right behind you.” 

The other three would usually question such an order, especially from someone as headstrong and dominant as their caped Leader. However, in the face of such putrid company as the rotting corpse on the floor, they do nothing but quickly shuffle ahead, nausea clouding their senses and minds. 

Mark, the Leader, stays and glances into the eyes of War Woman. Or where they used to be. He remembers reverence of her, once. Or maybe the expectation that he should revere her. The Ache has long since consumed any semblance of his admiration for others. But he does remember a conversation with her, once. At his birthday party.

__ 

Nolan’s hand never left his shoulder, clasped against Mark like an iron vice. He grinned ear to ear as he introduced other superheroes to his son, his successor. For Mark, who had no powers at the age of ten after years of seeing his father defeat threats to the entire world in mere seconds, it felt condescending. 

He remembers War Woman, that day, out on the grassy knoll of their heavily guarded party venue. She wore her regular clothes, a blue business suit and red-rimmed glasses. She glanced around at each party guest fondly, but whenever her eyes settled on Mark’s father, he could feel them searching for something. 

Nolan clasped his shoulder taut, “Holly, this is my son, Mark. Mark, this is Holly—or, as you might know her, War Woman.” 

War Woman’s steely gaze softens as she glances down to him. She motions forth her hand, offering a nod and smile. “Pleasure, Mark. Your dad’s one of the best.” 

Mark tilts his head in response. “One of? Who’s better?” 

Mark can feel the way his father’s lips contort into a frown, but War Woman simply barks out a laugh. It’s a genuine, off guard sound, like it’s the funniest thing she’s heard in a while. 

“Nolan, why don’t you grab the boy some more cake? I can watch him for a moment.” To Mark’s surprise, his father relents, and wordlessly walks away. When he’s out of earshot, Holly regards him with another smile. “

Your father…I can imagine the pressure he puts you under.” 

Mark simply tilts his head again, this time saying nothing.

War Woman takes the opportunity to continue.

“Your father is an interesting man. But I’m more interested to see what will become of you.” 

Again, Mark doesn’t respond. He imagines what it would be like to cut off her hair and play with it, how her earrings would feel between his fingers. 

Holly sighs, and pats his shoulder gently. “Just remember that regardless of expectations, the world molds us into who we were meant to be. Your father can’t change who you are.”  

His father returns shortly, shoving a plated piece of cake into his hands. He waves War Woman off brusquely, before he turns Mark around and clasps his shoulder again, as they’re face-to-face.

“You need to be careful around her. She’s smarter than she looks.” 

Years later, Mark stands above War Woman lying in a hospital bed, a team of dedicated surgeons trying to splice her spine and brain back together.

Well, Mark thinks, she wasn’t smart enough.

__

She and the other Guardians lived beyond their calling in this world, in this broken place. Death left its scars deep in her soul here, rendering her to pieces, taking away all the power she ever held in both life and death. To hold her cold hand and feel the power once there, sapped away by a fate angered by her defiance, is delicious. 

Her skin tastes rotten, and his tongue shrivels at the contact. This is wrong, it screams at him. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Death enters his lips and goes down his body to settle there in its new tomb. The flavor is an explosion of bitter pulp, of oozing rot. The texture is scabbed, rough, and wet. Mark feels tears force their way down the corners of his eyes, and bile fights its way up his throat. His stomach rumbles, begging him for more, seething and lashing at his insides. 

He engorges himself until he feels the bloat against his breath, death settling into the Ache, padding itself against its screams. As his mouth scorches and his tongue threatens to tear itself out with each disgusting bite, Mark is full, Mark is whole. The Ache is at peace. 

He feels wholly unhuman. He is despicable, he sees his mother in the corner of his eyes — she’s horrified, his father’s leg is in his mouth, oh my God, — and there’s a horrible lurch from inside. 

The contents of his stomachs spew back up, blood and bile coating the ground. He coughs and wheezes, his head throbbing as the Ache returns with a crescendo of hate. The bile running down his shirt, dribbling from his mouth, is blackened, burning his mouth like hot tar. Nothing ever satisfies the Ache for long. Nothing is ever enough. Never.

never

enough 

but maybe if i hadn’t 

but maybe if i tried

maybe i deserve this 

maybe he deserved this

i’m so hungry

it hurts so bad. 

can you make it go away?

Mark rises to his feet, dusting off his shoulders. He wipes his mouth clean, and regards War Woman. The chunks taken out of her face and limbs ooze with blackened blood, a river trickling down the side of the wall, until it mixes with what the Ache rejected. It goes back to its source, back to Death. And Mark goes to meet the ones who share his face, but will never share his fate, the Ache. Maybe once they’re all together, whole again, it will finally stop. 

When he rounds the corner at the end of the dilapidated hallway, watching the rusted hinges creak and listening to the seething pipes within the walls, Mohawk is the first to turn around and regard him. 

“So, how was your hot date with your new girlfriend?” He asks offhandedly, trying to hide the way his eyes dart back and forth. From over his shoulder, the Soldier’s steel gaze drills into the Leader’s skull.

“I heard someone—well, it sounded like they were dry-heaving really bad. Are you—like, are you good? Need fresh air, maybe?” ‘Mask’ asks, more worried about him flying off the handle than whether or not he’s okay. 

“I need to find more,” answers the Leader, shoving his way to the front of the pack, steering them deeper into the facility. None of them bother to ask what he wants more of. They’re frankly afraid of the answer. 

The hallway leads them to a sealed door, a laser grid flickering on and off just in front of it. In the corner of the wall, they see a downed camera, signs of habitation, of civilization. There’s something else, too. More bodies.

Piled beneath the laser grid, reaching up, rigid, blank stares, wide eyes, empty souls, decaying skin. A dozen or so in all. There’s something about the corpses that intrigues them, though, in the way a long green tube seems to wrap its way around them all, leading through the smallest gap of the bottom of the security door. The green tube stretches like rubber, elastic and light. They all know who it belongs to.

“Green Ghost died here, for these ones,” Mohawk snorts. “She always was the shittiest—well, second to the fish but definitely one of the shittiest—superheroes on that team. Like, how do you die when your superpower is literally that you can’t be touched?” 

“Maybe she tried to shove them through the door,” muses their Leader. “Clearly, she didn’t do a very good job.” 

“I’ll never understand—how lives are jokes, how they don’t seem to matter to you at all,” ‘Mask’ says, disgusted. “We were born special, born lucky, and everyone suffers because of our powers, everyone here is dead because of us, in some way,”—

—“We didn't kill these people,” the Soldier cuts him off sternly. “They died years before we came here. They’re dead and rotting, and your whining isn’t going to undo any of that. You have to…” The Soldier sighs, “You need to stop martyring yourself. Stop with the excuses. Stop denying you’re a killer. It’s been getting on our nerves since day one.” 

“You think I don’t know I’m a killer? You think I don’t know who I am? You think, God, you must know, by now, that the whole fucking reason I’m here right now is because I KNOW that I’m a killer!” ‘Mask’ shouts back, standing off against the Soldier. “I’ve seen so many friends, so many innocents die. I’ve killed so many of them. I can’t…I know you must feel this way, too, the guilt, the loathing—you ARE me!” His fingers catch nylon, and he rips the mask off. Mark Grayson is underneath it, and Mark Grayson beholds himself. 

The Soldier has seen himself in the Masked one before, but not like this. Not with such raw emotions. When he peers into his own eyes and sees the way his own sins fester, the Soldier is blinded. He turns away, has to look away, before he says something earthly. 

The Leader cocks his head to the side, and plants his hand on the now unmasked Mark Grayson, the version of himself with enough shame to blot out the sun. His fingers dance along the fabric of his suit, his touch gentle and affirming.  “You’re not guilty about the deaths,” he murmurs, cooing softly, as if to a baby. “It takes a while to understand. I get it, I do. But, no. Killing isn’t what bothers your conscience, not by itself. I can see it in your twitching eyes, in your wrinkled mask, in the way you fold your arms, Mark.” 

“You might think you’re so high and mighty, that you know everything,” This newly invigorated Mark Grayson sneers to their Leader, clutching his mask taut between his fingers. “But you’re making it up. I can see it written on your face. I’m not letting you trick me, be the voice in my head. You’re a version of me, but you’re not what I have to be.” 

“I’m what you already are,” the Leader replies easily. “But go on. I can see you’re not ready, so you can keep pretending.” The air is heavy with hostility, the seething and grinding of teeth. Everyone is capable of cracking. Everyone’s inevitable to crack. The world is waiting for them to crack. They can’t do it yet, though, not in this tomb. 

“Hey now, everyone, I think we’re all getting stir-crazy, here,” the Mohawk laughs nervously, he knows it’s bad when he’s the voice of reason, “I’m Mark. He’s Mark. There’s—you know, there’s too many Marks. Why don’t we all just take a chill-pill and do some…self reflection? Yeah, chill. These guys are dead. Not going anywhere. Not like we wanna get back to camp and find out what our little Emperor is doing with his new pet Mark.” 

The trio stare at him, at the Mohawk, baffled. The Leader barks out a hearty laugh and pats him atop the head, holding their foreheads together. It’s awkward, and a little too intimate. Mohawk feels like he’s being pulled inside the other’s head. 

“Oh, I always forget how funny you are, man,” the Leader offers, hands on his hips. “Like, it’s weird, isn’t it? My jokes get chuckles here and there, but I always could tell they were polite ones. But your comedy? Top-notch.” It’s like a switch is thrown, and the Leader is all smiles, all Mark Grayson. The others have never gotten used to it. 

But the Leader babbles on, “Hey, and don’t tell him I said this, because I don’t want him to get an ego, but between you and me, I think you and Scars have the best timing on your jokes. Maybe it’s because he had so long to practice? I dunno. Either way—You’re right. What’s a little existentialism between yourself in a decaying bunker, anyway?” 

“The way you switch,” the newly-unmasked Mark notes warily. “It doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t understand what part of me is you.”

The Leader grins like a feral cheshire, sharp teeth and sharper words, “You will. We’ll all be whole again. You, me, hell, even Nolan. I’m not worried about that.” None of them know what to say about that. 

“…We came here for a reason. Let’s complete the mission.” The Soldier insists, growing unsteady on his feet. 

The Leader sighs, “Alright, alright. I get it. I overstepped a little, maybe. My bad. We can move on.” He turns to the Mark who clutches his mask, “Really, bud, you can put your mask back on. It’s honestly the only way I can tell you apart from anyone else.” 

The insult flares underneath his skin, but he relents and puts his mask back on anyway. Finally, their delicate seesaw act of cooperation is preserved. The security door and laser grid stand before them, exactly as it was. Green Ghost’s malleable arm hangs through the bottom, still shepherding her refugees to the afterlife. 

Human technology is primitive compared to the simple touch of their fingers. The alarms have long since run out of battery, the laser grid a laughable excuse for security. The door itself is barreled through as if it were already opened. There is no sign of the rest of the Green Ghost, and at the end of her arm simply lies pooled blood.

On the other side of the door is the atrium, a long and vast open space that leads down many offshoots further into the facility. Beneath them is a descending staircase that leads down to the GDA’s operating room, their enormous monitors and computers lined up like cubicles. Most of them are cracked or broken beyond repair, though several flicker through faint signals that display open deserts, ruined cities. And everywhere, of course, there is blood.

Rustic, brown blood that paints the walls and floors, decorating the bodies atop them. Some are recognizable as employees of the GDA, their shredded lab coats and bloodied bodies gouged, bloated, cleaved. Some of them are piles of mush and tissue, suits of rotten meat. 

“Well, it’s safe to say we missed the party,” grimaces Mohawk, floating down the stairs to the display. “At least we know they weren’t watching us, since they were already dead.” 

“The layout must have some place they evacuated people to. A teleporter like Cecil’s, or something. Eve said so. She said this was an evacuation. She said so!” ‘Mask’ says, frantically soaring around the atrium, searching for any signs of life. 

“Calm down.” The Soldier orders, though his own shoulders heave up and down, his own breath stutters. He glances around for answers, settling on the computers arrayed beneath them. “The computers. We can—they probably have the layout, operating system. We can see where we are, where they could’ve gone. Find files the GDA had on the situation, maybe.” 

It’s another distraction, another way to delay the inevitable. But it’s all they have, so the four of them descend, and they search through the computers, whacking at them, cursing at them, as if they’ll hum back to life. 

A few of them manage to flicker on, the dusted computers screaming with the effort it must take them just to keep from falling to pieces. One of them crashes immediately. From near the front, by the huge monitors, Mohawk calls them over, pumping his fist. “This one turns on! It’s—it’s password locked, though.” 

They collectively groan in frustration. The Soldier taps his chin, “Check inside the desk. Maybe there’s a post-it, or something, with the password?” 

“This is pointless,” snarls their Leader, his earlier light attitude completely dissipated. “They’re dead. It’s empty. If the bratty Emperor hasn’t killed that asshole by the time we get back, I’ll do it myself.” 

“Don’t—stop. Don’t give up so quickly. This is our only shot,” pleads the Soldier. “Just look inside the desk, Mohawk. Just. Please.” 

“Everyone, simmer down! It’s here, he’s right, there’s a notepad,” clarifies Mohawk. “I got it. We’re—it’s loading. Just come over here, okay?” 

The Leader pauses for a moment, but hovers down to have a look. ‘Mask’ and the Soldier trail behind him, over Mohawk’s shoulders, watching the computer struggle its way to the desktop applications.

The screen is dark and dim, but it works—barely. Most of the icons on the screen are inaccessible without the Internet, and a crack obstructs the bottom right corner. But it works, and they have access to a near overwhelming volume of GDA secrets. The ones that aren’t locked behind even more security, at least. 

“What are we looking for?” Mohawk asks, squinting to see the text. “Like—would one of these say ‘’map’, or something?” 

The Soldier scans the screen top to bottom, his eyes dancing over each word, searching carefully. He points to the middle, to a little icon that resembles a lens. “That one. Surveillance. Maybe some of the cameras still work.” 

The application loads painfully slow, but it manages to open. There’s a new influx of overwhelming information, piles upon piles of data. Each video is labeled with a date of the year, each folder filled with different months of footage. Scrolling down, the videos stop being titled abruptly in 2025, but the videos don’t stop. The titles become gibberish, long sparse lines of characters, after the middle of 2025. 

“We have no idea when this happened, but if I had to take a wild guess, I think the last video before the program breaks is probably what we’re looking for. Whatever you do, don’t click on the corrupted ones. It might crash the computer.” 

“Just because I didn’t go to Viltrumite Boarding School or whatever doesn’t mean I’m an idiot,” Mohawk sneers, but he follows the Soldier’s instructions. The surveillance footage, to their great relief, begins to load. The video file pops up, displaying one of the functioning cameras just above them, in a well-lit and unruined atrium.

They feel the facility creak, the air around them whistle a haunting cacophony. It settles in their bones, it mists their minds. The monitor flashes black for a horrifying moment. And when they think they’ve failed, the creaking halts, the wind quiets, the voices settle. And the monitor flickers back on, a ways into the video. The video’s been forwarded by several hours, paused on a familiar silhouette. 

“That whistling…” the Soldier whispers, eyes wide. “It sounded so…I can feel it, in my ears, in my brain.” 

“Play the video before it breaks again!” Urges ‘Mask.’ Mohawk complies, starting the feed. 

—“second rocket has reached optimal signal coverage zone, sir,” a woman relays to the silhouette. Cecil turns to face her, fiddling with his tie. As many of them are used to, his face is scarred, and his eyes are blue and bold. Around him, alarms blare and the facility shakes. 

“Excellent. How long until the signal’s up and running?” Cecil asks. Notably, Donald isn’t by his side. “And where’s Invincible? Eyes on our lunar front? Tech Jacket?” 

“T-minus one minute. The moon…is still getting closer. Knocked out of orbit by the primary threat. Invincible keeps getting interrupted when he tries to stop it. It would take at least Omni-Man and him to force it out of the impact zones, sir. Tech Jacket’s station has been regarded as a hit, but we have his suit signature marked as orbiting the rocket.”

“Sir, Omni-Man and several of the invading Viltrumites have just engaged in combat outside,” another man starts, frantically. To accentuate his point, a monitor is knocked loose, falling and shattering. 

“Yeah, no shit, thank you,” Cecil drawls. “That signal, people, hello? A lot of lives went into this, including our own, by the looks of it. We’d better make this work!” 

“An estimated 30 seconds. Our coverage is spotty, they destroyed most of our satellites—but the Immortal and Atom Eve are keeping two Viltrumites at bay the best they can. And, hopefully, once the signal is active…”

“They go boom,” Cecil finishes. “Let’s just hope they can hold out for that long. How's the outside looking?” 

Before any of Cecil’s people can respond, a horrible boom ricochets a wave of energy off their walls. People, desks, computers, and chairs go sailing all over the place. Cecil manages to hold himself upright, hands on the railing. The audio picks up the squelching of flesh, the clang of a war scepter. He frantically points up to the atrium’s entrance.

“Lock it down. Lock it down, now!” Cecil shouts, but it’s too late. A figure goes sailing through the atrium, turning everything in its path, including a few people, into a fine paste. The figure slams against the far wall of the atrium, shattering another monitor. From the entrance, three shadows emerge, and one clutches a limp body that hangs uselessly in their grasp. 

The figure on the far side of the room hiccups blood, reaching for Cecil with quivering arms. His voice is gruff and hoarse with desperation. “Cecil…my son, please, they—Conquest, the moon…” Omni-Man begs. 

“You grovel to these humans for help now, Nolan?” It’s the voice of a woman, sharp and sly. She sounds like her words cut deep and her wounds will cut deeper. “I never did think I’d see the day. Such a sad sight.” 

A brave member of the GDA regards Cecil. “Sir…it’s done. The rocket established the signal, and they’re out of range. Viltrumite heat signatures are down around the craft. But the moon…it’s getting closer. It’s reaching the point of no return. It’s going to make an impact in T-minus 12 hours—less if they accelerate.” 

Cecil turns to their invaders, letting out a long sigh. And then, he does something they’ve never seen him do before. Cecil smirks. “You might kill us all down here. You might send our planet back to molten ash. But you didn’t get our ships. We won, and we got you,” is all he says. “You god-complex toting bastards, we got you.” And then Cecil’s in the air, two hands around his throat. Cecil’s head pops to the ground like a piece of a walnut. 

“Must you show so little restraint, Lucan?” The other Viltrumite mutters, a knife tangled at the end of her long grey braided hair. “We could’ve at least used any information it had.” 

“I grew tired of listening to that grating voice.” The burly Viltrumite, Lucan, responds. The rest of the GDA cower in fear, watching as Omni-Man struggles to get up. Omni-Man hasn’t stirred from his place on the floor, a bloodied mess with his cape torn clean off. Lucan clutches his fist, staring around at the rest of the room. “Should we bother with the rest of them right now, General? Or let them enjoy the end of their world?” 

An imposing Viltrumite stalks into view with short, cropped black hair and the musculature of a bodybuilder. He glances around the scene, his large prosthetic scope of an eye settling on Omni-Man. The slightest hint of a frown ghosts his lips. “They’re all part of this resistance. Get rid of them quickly.” People are crying, and then there’s cracking, screaming. And then there’s less crying. The General himself never moves from watching where Omni-Man lay, and as he shifts, Green Ghost’s body, devoid of one arm, glimmers against the lights on the ceiling.

And then, Omni-Man rises. Shakily, on one knee, and not all the way up to his feet. But they watch as his blood dribbles out of the corner of his mouth, as he dons a smirk similar to Cecil’s. The trio of Viltrumites don’t take long to notice. The burly man seemed outraged at the audacity of Nolan to laugh at them, and not the other way around. The woman seems intrigued, and the General is completely stoic. 

“You killed the only man who could’ve possibly saved you,” Omni-Man’s voice rasps. “He was holding…oh, how you underestimate these people. It’s. Well. I did too, I suppose. I never thought we’d get this far, either.” 

“You’re speaking in riddles,” the General with one eye speaks, irritation creeping into his tone. “The Nolan I knew was pragmatic, and to the point. An evaluator, not one to be led astray by petty emotions. So what do you have to say, feeble mind, about your corruption? Out with it.” 

“What I’m saying, Kregg,” Nolan’s smirk widens, lifting the edge of his mustache, “Is that you, me, and every other Viltrumite left on this planet can never leave here again. Ever. Doesn’t matter if the moon crashes into the Earth. It’s over.” 

The woman snorts, but the General, Kregg, and his other lackey, Lucien, don’t laugh. Kregg’s unblemished eyebrow goes up. “Oh? And why is that?” 

Nolan’s grin is wider than his mustache as he says, “I’ve always been more of a demonstration kind of guy. So, why don’t we go check?” 

“Stop wasting our time,” snarls Lucien. “Or have you forgotten your son is here, too?” 

Omni-Man’s eyes widen, and his face contorts in pain. “Oh, Mark…” he whispers, shaking his head. “Even if…if he takes my son’s life, if the rest of you take my life, I find solace in knowing that the poor excuse of a man will rot here with the rest of you, and that my wife, at least, will get to live.” 

“You speak of their sorry excuse for space travel, their rockets?” Lucan laughs, “Our people will overtake and tear them to pieces any moment now. They’re far too slow and cumbersome—practically primitive technology. Primitive technology for a primitive race.” 

Omni-Man stands, one knee almost buckling under the weight he forces on it. He is bent, battered, and bruised by his own people. But he is unyielding, he is a protector. He is everything Mark Grayson first thought he was. He is going to die here. 

“We’ll see any minute now, won’t we?” Is all Omni-Man says. 

Moments later, an alert goes off on Kregg’s bracelet. He reads over the report, his good eye widening with anger. He lurches towards Omni-Man, grappling his shirt and slamming his forehead down in a rough arc. Omni-Man gags and sputters, blood gushing out of his nose. 

“You did this,” snarls Kregg. “Anissa, Vidor. What happened to them? What did this pathetic excuse of a civilization do with that spacecraft?” 

“Like I said, Kregg,” Omni-Man snarks, “All you have to do is go and see for yourself. Or, well—listen for yourself, I guess.” 

“I don’t play games, Nolan,” Kregg’s grip tightens around his shoulder, crunching it to pieces. Nolan cries out in agony, but quickly regains his composure, flashing a bloody grin. 

“I don’t either. Welcome to Earth. Enjoy your relocation. You could always stop the moon from hitting it, if you want to keep it nice for yourselves. You might have to share with the few humans left you haven’t massacred, but something tells me they won’t mind.” 

Kregg glances at the few petrified scientists who haven’t been killed yet, and watches the way billowing clouds of smoke rise above the cities their monitors watch. He sees hundreds of thousands of insects crawling over the screen, begging for mercy, pleading for help. He looks back at Nolan, disgusted. 

“You would sacrifice yourself, and this entire planet’s population, to be rid of just a handful of us? You are…your stupidity is unrivaled. Truly.” 

“There’s hardly a population to save, at this point,” Nolan chuckles darkly. “Our friend with the metal arm made sure of that, didn’t he?” 

“Conquest will immolate your son, Nolan. Anything left living here, we will raze to the ground. I don’t know what weapon you think is up your sleeve, but we will find a way out of here. And then everything you did this for, whatever misguided decision you were trying to make? It will be for naught.” 

“Maybe. But I choose this. For once, it’s me, and not the Empire. Not what I was made to do. I will die a free man, and you will die in shackles.” Omni-Man holds his head high, his blackened eye and jagged smile beaming with pride. 

“You are nothing without the Empire,” seethes Kregg. “You are a pathetic excuse of a Viltrumite.” 

Nolan shakes his head, and snorts. “There’s an Earth colloquialism I’d like to share with you, Kregg. ‘Go fuck yourself.’” 

“An interesting choice for your last words,” Kregg growls. His hands lock around Omni-Man’s throat, and they squeeze. In his best condition, Omni-Man could stand toe to toe, and would give a battle worthy of his name. But beaten and battered as he is, knowing the fate he’s condemned his only son to, he closes his eyes. Kregg and his lieutenants barrel into him, relentless, merciless. The camera shakes with the atrium as computers fly out of their way, as a few of the remaining scientists are cut down in the crossfire. When all is said and done, Nolan’s body is barely more than a fine paste. 

“Pick up his tattered body,” orders Kregg. We’ll rendezvous with the old man and deal with the boy.” 

The woman with the knife-braid glances at her commanding officer uneasily. “But…Vidor, Anissa. What happened to them?” 

“Clearly they weren’t up to the task,” shouts Kregg, and she frowns in response. “Does Nolan’s fate entice you, Thula?”

Thula bites her lip, hissing. “Do you want to play this game right now, General, really? Just give us our orders and we can get back to work.” 

“You and Lucan will track down the rocket. Find out why the others failed. You’ll report to me as soon as it’s done.” Kregg glances towards the camera, his eyes stone cold. “If they want us to wipe out this planet, we’ll have no qualms doing so.” 

And with that, the Viltrumites are gone. Several of the GDA emerge from hiding, quivering, shaking. A man with long black hair slicked back like a mullet emerges first, from an offshoot of the atrium hidden by the wall. Behind him are almost a dozen personnel, and they look to him as if they owe him their lives. 

“They’re gone, sweet lord,” the savior’s accent is grating and nasally, like someone trying too hard to be smart. “We—oh God, Cecil!” He runs to the man, investigating his body. He lifts one of Cecil’s arms, and a silver device glistens from within Cecil’s grasp. The man investigates it frantically, before letting out a sigh of relief. “It’s on. They did it!” His mood changes to joyful, as he whoops into the air. “We—we did it! We trapped them here! The rockets made it!” 

The woman beside him, middle-aged with brown hair, begins to sob. “But…they can’t send one for us. We’re stuck here, too. God, they’re going to end the world.” 

The man hangs his head, sighing. “Yes, we are. And yes, they will. But our families, our best and our brightest, they will succeed us. I have nothing but confidence for our friends out there, among the stars.”

“And what about us?” The woman scoffs through her tears. “We just wait here for the apocalypse?” 

The man gives her a goofy grin. “Well, unless you have any better ideas…”

The rest of the video feed, hours of footage, is just a group of survivors huddled around one another for comfort, laughing hollowly, remembering better days. And then, it happens. The feed flickers, and it freezes, unfreezes. Alarms blare as the people on the feed scream in abject terror. And then the video seizes, flashing violently. The time isn’t right anymore. It accelerates, and bends, and warps. The feed is indiscernible, and the monitor rings eerily. Familiar, haunting, and droning, the ringing ceases abruptly. And then the program crashes, taking them back to the desktop. 

They all state in silence for a long while. Nobody is sure quite what to say. Nobody is sure what they’re supposed to take away from watching the end of the world. What did they even learn? What did they even come here for? 

“So, that’s all there is,” the Soldier says plainly, his eyes lidded and dull. “They’re all dead. The space signal was their Hail Mary, and it actually worked.” 

“Rockets…rockets got away,” ‘Mask’ whispers. “Eve…she got away? She’s alive out there?” 

“It doesn’t matter if she did or not, because like I’ve been saying since day one, there is no way out of here,” scowls Mohawk. “Angstrom left us here and has probably been killed by that other version of Us by now, since he’s not here, too.” Mohawk slams his hand against the wall, concaving the thick metal sheet. “I was stupid to let myself think otherwise, that she might be here. God damn it!” 

The Leader has said nothing. In fact, since the video began, he’s hardly moved an inch. He stares at the monitor, silent, frowning. 

“What do you think happened to the Viltrumites? It’s not like we’ve seen them, so…do you think they starved, if it’s been years?” ‘Mask’ ponders.

“For whatever reason, this universe has…a different metric of time, so—yes? Probably, if they were trapped on the Earth when the moon made its collision. Anything that somehow survived that impact would die pretty quick. That impact might have killed the Viltrumites, too, but I have my doubts.” The Soldier ponders. 

“They mentioned the signal came from the rockets, so, if we destroy every satellite left up there, maybe we can leave,” suggests ‘Mask.’ “Maybe the solution is simple.” 

“No satellite would survive the moon crashing into the earth,” the Soldier frowns. “The signal’s being broadcast from something much larger than a satellite. It could be a space station, or even a nearby planet. We can’t exactly go check.” 

“Urghh—this is POINTLESS!” Mohawk slams his leg down into the desk next to theirs, splintering it in half. “I keep TELLING YOU that we’re fucking STUCK! What part of that is so hard for you to understand?” 

“Because I don’t want to be stuck here with your sorry ass, okay?!” ‘Mask’ snaps. “I want to get out of here”—

—“oh, and the rest of us don’t”—

“You’re not exactly helping us find solutions here, asswipe!” 

The Leader snaps his fingers, and the other three stop abruptly. “The computer. Is there anything else it can tell us?” He asks calmly, though God only knows what sizzles under the surface. “How to block the transmission?”

“We’d need to know how to build a pretty goddamn complicated machine for that, and even if we did, I doubt the parts still exist to make it. Not an option.” Relays the Soldier.

“That’s not the answer I want to hear, man,” the Leader says, twitching. The air is humid, in the bunker, they’re all dealing with the new information poorly, and tensions are at a boiling point. The inevitable repeats itself.

“Okay, you know what?” Mohawk shoves the Leader, forcing him back into the wall. There’s a dent made upon impact, and Mohawk rushes up to him to snarl in his face, “This whole power trip thing where you froth at the mouth like you have rabies? I’m done with it,” asserts Mohawk, scowling at the Leader. “I put up with it since you were better than Nolan—god he was an asshole—but you’re really starting to piss me off with your whole feral cat bit.” 

The Leader tilts his head, smirking. Mohawk lets out another groan of frustration. “There, that!” He yells, sending his fist hurtling into the wall next to the Leader’s head. The wall concaves, and whirring pipes are exposed. “Just act like WE do, and not like some coked up—cat or whatever—God!” Mohawk smacks his own head, groaning. “You’re making me lose my fucking mind, over here!” 

The Leader smiles again. That hideous, mile-long condescending fucking smile that makes Mohawk’s skin writhe, because how dare himself look at him like that. The Leader places his hands up over his head, a faux surrender. He simply says, “Okay, then. What should we do, Mark?” 

Mohawk stares. “What?” 

The Leader laughs, “God, I forget how stupid I am sometimes.” He puts on a deeper voice, slurring his words. “Durr, What you think we do?” He adds a scathing slur to the end, rolling off his tongue, foul and barbed. It’s a word whispered between juvenile bullies towards behavior they don’t grasp, a word adults might whisper behind a struggling child’s back. It’s a word that exists to hurt.

The other two stare in silence, stunned out of speech. Mohawk, similarly stunned, doesn’t answer, his eyes bulging out of his head. The Leader shoves him back, his face rippling with anger, “Huh? If I’m such a freak, such a poor leader. Is this that official challenge? Are we going right now?” And with that, his fist is ready, and so is first blood. 

He sends the first punch flying into Mohawk’s gut, careening him across the atrium. Mohawk gasps as the wind leaves his body, his throat seizing up, desperate for air. He sees the Leader coming and rolls to the side just in time, feeling the wind rush by his face as the Leader’s second punch demolishes the cabinet he’d fallen against. Mohawk roars with anger, heat rising from his body with a rancid fervor. “What did you call me, huh?! What did you say to me, you absolute fuckin’ tool?!” 

“The truth,” responds the Leader. “Bet a wreck like you rode the short bus more than once, huh?” At that remark, Mohawk is seething with red hot fury. He sweeps his leg out in an upward arc, teetering the Leader off balance. He stumbles for just a second, and then Mohawk rushes forward, driving his elbow into his throat. But the Leader catches him, and snaps his arm back like a twig. 

The noise is like a plastic toy being stepped on, echoing through the hollowed atrium. The crack surprises them both, as the Leader backs away, and Mohawk clutches his arm silently. Mohawk stares down in terror, in cold white. His vision feels foggy, and the room smells like burning. He tries to wiggle his fingers, and nothing happens. His elbow is facing the wrong way. 

“Oh, would you look at that,” he laughs, quiet as a mouse, for the first time in his life. A ghost of a chuckle from his lips. And then he doubles over, laughing hysterically. His chest heaves, his breathing erratic. His voice breaks as he laughs, high and cheerful. The atrium echoes back his laughter, and soon, a crowd of Mark Graysons commiserate with their combined singing laughter. 

The others stare at Mohawk, writhing and laughing, tears falling from the corner of his eyes. Until he slows, and the laughter becomes arrhythmic, stuttering, until it stops. And then he’s out cold, on the atrium’s floor. His breathing pauses, and then it softly rises and falls, each breath accompanied by a small moan of pain.

“Don’t—don’t kill him,” interjects ‘Mask.’ “We might need him later. For experiments on trying to get past the signal, okay? So…just. Let him sleep off the rage, okay?” 

“He came at me so fast,” the Leader murmurs. “I just

wanted to scare him, that time. He’s—I mean, shit, I can kill him any time I want,” the Leader giggles, “But he’s our mascot. The little sidekick, all the parts of us the rest lack. No, of course I won’t kill him now. I need him for the rest of me.” 

The Soldier and ‘Mask’ glance between each other, uncertain. Slowly, they turn back to the computer, and try to put it out of their minds. There must be something that they’re missing. And then it hits the Soldier, seeing Mohawk lay there, unconscious and broken. He snaps his fingers, nodding.

“The Me—Us—from this universe,” he realizes. His fight with Conquest is what knocked the moon out of place. But we haven’t seen either of them.” 

“Conquest wouldn’t die to that,” shudders ‘Mask.’ “There’s…there’s just no way.” 

“But we haven’t seen any Viltrumite corpses, except for our dad, on the video feed,” finishes the Soldier.

“So, watch the rest of the feed,” answers the Leader. The other two snap over to him, and the Soldier rolls his eyes, “We can’t. The videos are corrupted.” 

The Leader shoves him aside, sending the chair spinning. “Wha—hey, no, you’ll break it!” The Soldier darts to stop him, but the Leader opens the program, and clicks on the recording from the day after the world ends before he can be stopped. The computer stutters, and then the screen freezes. 

“I told you,” the Soldier’s voice raises, “I told you not to touch it!” 

Patience is a virtue, and the screen unfreezes before the Leader can snarl back. The video pulses out a shriek, painful and sharp. The three buckle, covering their ears. Glancing towards the screen, there is nothing that makes sense. There are pieces that flash by, faces obscured by darkened shadows, static that plays over shapes of mountains, fragments of audio that overlap and interrupt each other. 

Words that mean nothing, overlapped with gentle music, humming emissions. The screen flashes quicker with each second the video runs, louder and louder, until it quiets. And then there’s the atrium, ruined and covered in scorched bodies. But there’s something else. The clock counts backwards, the air rushes the wrong way. It’s as if everything runs in reverse, but nothing changes. The screen flashes again, and jumbled words, faces, appear again. 

It is a cacophony of screaming pleas, voices that cannot be laid to rest, interrupting each other.

“Save us from forever,” The voices plead, the voices beg. 

“How do we leave—there is no leaving, this is our home—YOU caused this, you KILLED him, you you you, not me, you!”

They all speak at once, as if their conversation is unbound by time. It is overwhelming, it is sensational. They know these voices, they have heard them in nightmares, stood beside them in battles and ceremonies. But they are shattered here, and there is no sense to be made in their familiarity —in the way their once proud, exalted status means nothing in this vacuum of existence. 

“Stuck forever, I cut my own throat until it runs dry, still forever. Still stuck here forever.” 

“It burns until I stop, but I can never stop. You will never wash it away.” 

“I am grand, I am mighty. I am forgotten, turned to ash.” 

“I would destroy everything I’ve ever built just to have something else to rip apart besides my own being.” 

“They thought my light was a weapon until I showed them I was a star. I burned so bright that I blinded us all, and now we sit here in the dark.” 

The very last voice they hear is the most haunting, because unlike the others, there is no guesswork. They know exactly who it is. 

“I love her so much. She’s right there. I can’t see her, but I know she is. Why does it hurt so much? I was born to conquer. I unmade myself. Is that not enough for love?” 

The voice is Mark Grayson. The monitor flashes static, and then blue. The computer’s fans stutter to a halt, and die. And there sit four of Mark Grayson’s scattered pieces, listening as their fragment suffers. There are no words for what they have just heard, no way to understand. They have witnessed the unmaking of time, the breakage of a universal constant. 

“They did something,” The Soldier breathes, to remind himself he still can. “Whatever—whatever it was our people did, they broke…something.”

“What do you mean they broke something?” The Leader hisses, clutching his forehead. “They forced the moon to hit the Earth and then went insane?” 

“No,” the Soldier shakes his head. “Take a photo. On our phone. I know you took the phone back.”

The Leader frowns, but takes out their phone—at least, the phone that belonged to a version of Mark Grayson. A version that screams to the cosmos about forgotten love from inside broken computer screens. The photo displays an unruined atrium, and where the Soldier is sat, a living GDA employee, in the year 2025. The phone’s external clock claims it is 2028. 

“What the actual fuck is going on here?” For the first time the Soldier can remember, there’s genuine fear in the Leader’s voice. 

“I…we broke time, I think,” says the Soldier, awestruck. “Or rather…the Viltrumites we saw. They were stuck here, and they broke time.” 

“Are you the fucking slow one? What the fuck does that even mean, they broke time?” 

“Do you think I have any better understanding than you do?!” The Soldier snaps, his voice booming across the atrium. It echoes back, angrier. “It’s…ugh. God, I just want to be home,” the Soldier admits, his guard down, his weakness on display. “I want to rest, I want to stop fighting with myself every day. Anything is better than this, than trying to make sense of this.” 

“You’d better start making sense of it, because you’re part of me I could stand to look at less,” the Leader threatens. The Soldier’s eyes narrow, and he slides his foot back, ready to brawl. And then he peers beyond the Leader, to the Masked one, frozen in place, processing. And he sighs. 

“Look. I don’t know for sure. My Viltrumite tutor went a little fast for me to learn everything perfectly, okay? I—how else do you explain ghosts in the computer talking to us, how else do you explain the way days work here? Haven’t you noticed that day and night come and go in random patterns? Days can feel like hours, or weeks. Sometimes nights pass by before you’re done blinking. Haven’t you noticed that weather doesn't really exist here? For fucks sake, the planet is rotating backwards, from each pole. I noticed when we first found the signal, I just didn’t—I thought it was a dimensional quirk…” He rambles, unraveling, breathing heavily. Black spots crowd into his brain, squeezing him taut. 

‘Mask’ reaches out for him, rigid and cold. He stares into his own eyes, and he begs. “Please,” he whispers, “please try.” 

The Soldier takes a deep breath, “Okay.” He examines what he knows, what he can even begin to try and explain, and he starts. “Light…we can travel faster than it. Right? And…based on how you move…light is perceived. Reality is perceived.” The Soldier groans into his hands. “I—I can’t explain it any clearer than that. I was never—I got the worst grades in my schooling, by Viltrumite standards, I might as well—ugh. It was nice to feel like I knew a lot, for once.” 

‘Mask’ nods, wracking his own brain. “So, you’re saying that…those versions of Viltrumites were stuck here, and they moved around so fast that they like—shifted the planet? How it works?” 

“It’s more complicated than that, but yes,” the Soldier nods, “Perception of time and space is warped, somehow, by something. I don’t know what else would do that.” 

“That’s the explanation we’re going with?” The Leader exclaims, furious. “You can’t be serious.” 

“Even if I’m wrong, who cares? Mohawk…he’s right,” the Soldier’s voice hiccups. “We can’t get out of here. We’ve been left to rot.” 

The Leader’s blood boils, and the veins in his neck pulse against his skin. For a moment, the Soldier is sure conflict is inevitable, and prepares himself for brutality, to do whatever it takes. 

But the Leader rockets out of the atrium, shattering glass, rustling the chairs, his departure sudden and swift. A collective exhale is felt between the remaining pieces of Mark Grayson. Their rage, unchecked, is one of their most toxic qualities. Being on the receiving end of your own temper, attached to a body capable of real harm, is new and terrifying, even after the weeks, months, that they’ve spent growing used to it. 

Once the threat is gone, they have a chance to process it. The voices, the fragments of time, and their tomb. There is no other word for this planet anymore. It is their tomb, and they are waiting to die. 

The Masked one clutches his own hand, wrings his head, and he stifles back a sob. The Soldier would be appalled by his display of weakness, of tears cascading down his own face, but there’s nobody to pretend for anymore, and no chance they’ll come back to discipline him. So he sits there in the chair and hangs his head, knuckles pressed to his lips. 

“We’ve done bad things,” mumbles ‘Mask,’ staring up at the ceiling. “Unforgivable things. I know you’re—well. You wear the white, you talk the big Viltrum talk. But you know we’re pretty fucking rotten, right?” 

“Yes,” the Soldier answers easily. “We are.” 

“So, this whole talking-to-ourselves-for-all-eternity-bit, we kind of deserve it, don’t we?” 

The Soldier remembers countless faces, countless people. Casualties of a war he was born for. He remembers crumbling monuments and crashing planes. The destruction is immeasurable, wherever he goes. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, shaking his head. “Nothing matters anymore.” 

“I think you’re wrong,” ‘Mask’ replies, staring down at the ground. Like it will swallow him whole. “I think everything we’ve ever done mattered, and that’s why we ended up here.” 

The Soldier battles years of propaganda, and years of formative instruction. But if he pushes beyond all those barriers, he remembers a game, a sport. He remembers the force of the ball against his mitt, the pride of catching one. The joy in his mother’s voice, the soft pride of his father’s eyes. It’s buried deep, in a locked box in his brain, alongside everything else that makes him feel human. 

“Let’s just…go. There’s no reason to stay here. I’m tired of that whirring. The pipes, I mean.” 

‘Mask’ grins softly, “Yeah, they’re pretty annoying, aren’t they?” He glances over to the delinquent with the ratty mohawk, breathing softly on the cold ground. “What about him? Should we carry him back?” 

The Soldier regards Mohawk, the Delinquent, their alter-ego with the explosive personality. It’s hard to believe that they’re the same person, a facsimile, because of the way he keeps that part of himself buried deep. But Mohawk is unabashed, he is proudly off the rails. 

“No,” the Soldier decides, “we can leave him here. Let him cool off and find his own way back. I don’t want any more fights. Not today, or however long ‘today’ really is.”  

The Soldier and the Masked One regard the bunker one last time. They glance to where Omni-Man crashed into the monitors, defeated. They glance at the corpse they now recognize as Cecil, headless and hollow. They glance at the Green Ghost’s arm, elongated like putty, and when they pass through the security grid, back down the rackety hallway, they regard War Woman, rotting and putrid. 

“She looks worse than before,” grimaces ‘Mask.’ “God—he threw up, that’s why he stayed behind, the—our Leader.” 

The Soldier glances at the mess on the ground, between War Woman, and the black bile coating the ground. He glances back and forth. He notices the indentations, the chunks. He swallows back his own bile, his mind swimming. He thinks of Nolan, before and after. How he meant Nolan to be out of his misery, and how he only extended it beyond his death. He looks back to War Woman, whom he killed himself, many years ago, in a place not unlike this one, his father’s lurking figure spectating all the while. 

“I don’t know who that guy is, but he’s not me,” the Soldier insists. “He can’t be. It’s not possible.” 

“I think…I think that’s the scariest part,” ‘Mask’ murmurs. “The fact that it is possible for us to be that way. The fact that we…are on par with that version of us. Our crimes.” 

The Soldier has a million rebuttals, a thousand rebukes. But he doesn’t use any of them. They leave, and they don’t look back. The cave tunnel that gave them so much trouble is completely barreled through, dirt and rock pulverized in a path to a distant light at the surface. Getting to the top, feeling sunlight on their skin, is a relief unlike any other. 

“It might be a prison, but at least it’s warm,” ‘Mask’ laughs. holding out his arms. “That’s what I always liked about the face-mask. The air gets chilly when you’re up there flying, doesn’t it?” 

The Soldier lets out a hum, “It does.” 

And then he takes off, leaving ‘Mask’ outside, in the vast desert. Alone at last, he sheds his mask for a moment, his arms outstretched to the sky. As he slowly hovers, beginning to soar, the sun beams down across his pale skin. Mark relishes the burn, the feeling of being alive. While he flies back, he feels tingling in his fingertips, a whisper in his ear. It sounds like him, and it’s desperate, begging him to come back, begging him to find an escape, to take him out of here. But there is no way out. 

He doesn’t know how long he will be here before he will join that cacophony of lurid voices, pleading to leave their own special Hell, but he has all the time in the world to learn.

Chapter Text

I don’t want to get up yet, Mark Grayson thinks.

This floor—or is it his bed—? It’s cool, it’s comfortable. If he shifts, if anything changes, he’ll have to deal with it. He doesn’t want to yet. He doesn’t want to think about his mangled elbow, or going to school tomorrow. That math test is going to kick his ass—William was right, he should’ve studied. But what does William know? He can’t fly, can’t crush concrete with his pinky finger. William’s bones could break like…well. 

…What did they break like? It’s hard for him to remember. How long has it been since he took his meds? Everything is fuzzy, and his arm hurts like hell. Did he mouth off again, or something? Did his dad need to educate him this time? It’s not his fault that the room is spinning. Or that the teachers never make sense, or that the other students test his patience.

What was that math test about, anyway? Maybe Eve can help him? She’s book smart, too. Her auburn hair hangs loose down the sides of her face as her brow focuses in study. Mark gets a laugh when he slips himself underneath her seat, peering up at her face from underneath her book. But wait, that’s not right. 

Eve is gone, because her blood runs down his fingertips, her auburn hair hangs from his grip in loose strands while her glassy eyes stare in shock. 

Mark gasps, his breath cracking against his ribs as his lungs inflate. His vision is spotty as his eyes shoot open, blurred lights and black mold etching at the corners of his peripherals. His hand reaches out for a nightstand, a plastic bottle, almost subconsciously. There’s nothing but cool metal and hissing pipes. 

He groans, his hand running through his hair, or the streaks that sit atop his head, and scrapes his fingers along his stubbled temples. He remembers the look on dad’s face, the way his nostril upturned in distaste. That alone made the mohawk worth it. 

He didn’t take his pills. Their faces blurred together, their voices barking, loud and demanding. How could you, we trusted you. Why would you think we’d say yes? You’re evil, evil, evil. 

They were invading, they were clustering, he was trapped. He warned them, he did. At least he’s pretty sure he did. And then Rex... The look in their eyes, the way Kate covered her mouth, the way Eve’s entire face went slack. They way their faces blurred together until they were screaming. Or he was screaming—there was no distinguishing reality from the inside of his head. 

Mark needed his pills. He remembers the thumping in his chest, the itch under his skin. Back then, he didn’t mean to snap. It just happened, as natural as breathing. And Rex crumpled like a puppet with no strings. And the fury afterward, a whirlwind of malevolence fired at him from all directions. His opposition still stood no chance. They joined the red and yellow streaks of Rex on the floor, painting it a deep crimson. 

He remembers the current day, now. He remembers the Leader, the awful snap of his elbow, the shock of the Soldier and the Masked one. He remembers the footage, their father, executed—at least, a version of him. Mark’s not sure if he feels vindication. It’s not like he had anything to do with it. No, he missed the party by several years, and here he lays, on the cold floor of a dead civilization. 

It seems like a universal constant—where there is Mark Grayson, there is destruction. They are their own downfall, their own hubris. I mean, it’s pretty carved in stone when you hate yourself enough to go out of your way to destroy another version of yourself’s home planet. To go and take something from yourself for the sole sake of misery is pretty despicable, isn’t it? 

Oh sure, they had every excuse under the sun.Taking over new dimensions, the glory of the empire. Mark knows those might be conscious reasons they believe, force themselves to consider, to justify it to themselves. But Mark also knows himself better than he knows anyone else, after years of looking in the mirror, after years of shallow cuts and screaming faces. And when he thinks back to the Invincible War—as that version of Earth’s news outlets had been calling it—it was personal on all accounts. The cuts got a lot harder to make after his skin grew tougher than titanium. So punching himself, forcing himself into submission, was a truly gratifying privilege. 

And in the end, where Mark Grayson was, destruction followed. In that world and this one, their tomb, versions of them stood in defiance against their heritage. Denying the conquerors that they really were. Mark, the delinquent that he is, took a while to come around to his true nature, but he got there eventually. However, some of his reflections delude themselves into thinking that they’re real heroes. And the end result of that is a scorched planet sired by the very face that brought it to pieces. 

“It’s funny,” he says aloud, listening as his voice echoes back off the hollow metal walls. Funny, indeed, is the end of the world. It’s hilarious, actually, that in a world where some version of Mark Grayson did everything ‘right,’ everything society would give him a gold star for, everything is immolated beyond saving. No celebratory cake for standing up to your bullies when they vaporize the immediate surface of your planet and everyone living on it, turns out. 

He thinks about the others trapped here. He sees himself in all of them, of course, courtesy of ego death and identity trauma. Even that rotting fucker Nolan—who Freud would have a field day with—is him, laying dead and gouged in the sand. But, loathe as he is to admit it, dear old Dad is a complicated cocktail of emotions, of mixed memories that range from peaceful to erratic to abusive. Sometimes he misses the self-assurance his father carried, the way it would assuage his nerves. And then he remembers mountains of corpses that all used to call his name, and the way his father loomed over them, unsatisfied. 

But he’s definitely not far gone enough on the daddy issues to change his name to Nolan. No, he’ll stick to shattered mirrors and bloody noses as his own personal therapy, thank you very much. He imagines that’s why the Masked one keeps his mask on all the time, at least. When they fought, when Mark grappled with a body that houses all his guilt, all his humiliation, there were wild eyes and desperate claws. He’d wanted to see how far he could push until he cracked, and the answer was not very. There’s still a scar on the side of his head, aching when it’s cold. 

And then there’s the one who broke his elbow. That’s obviously going to be a problem for the future, if things keep rolling down the hill into shit’s creek at the rate that they are now. It isn’t that the Leader is that much physically stronger than the rest of them—he isn’t, not really. No, the problem is that he goes right for the kill. There’s no hesitation or conscious thought when he lunges, just the most deadly option that presents itself. Even the worst among them still have semblances of humanity, but any shreds of decency the Leader musters to show off are smoke and mirrors. He is a feral animal, a broken mind. 

And yet, the alternative, without their pack leader, is a lawless free-for-all where nobody stops until there’s only one of them left. They might try to keep the peace, at first, but they’ll end up wrestling for dominance eventually. Marks who could never let him rule, never let him heed to another version of himself. So total annihilation is probably the acceleration they’re heading toward anyway. But there’s always a complication, with Mark. 

The Leader has given them food, and found the bunker that gave them a much-needed unifying purpose. He disposed of the version of them who couldn’t let their father go, couldn’t understand what it means to be his own person in charge of his own decisions. The Leader is more critical than most Mark Graysons, more detail-oriented. This Mark, the Delinquent, is interested if it comes from the Leader’s identity as a predator. He wonders how close he is, on his worst days, to being the same. 

When this all started, when Angstrom bowed before his throne and swore he recognized his might, he may have been a little blinded by the possibility. Alternate dimensions, new playgrounds, new what-ifs to explore. Other worlds where he might not even recognize himself in any way but appearance. Other worlds where people who haunt his dreams walk around with real bodies instead of as phantoms. He thought the other versions of himself were easy obstacles. And most of them were—less than half of them even survived long enough to get here, after all.

And maybe that’s why he hated Nolan so much. They all did, he knows, even if the others didn’t vote to kill him in the end. But he remembers, before it was life and death, the eye-rolls, the snarky comebacks, the disobedience. Nolan wanted to emulate the person who sent them down a path of no return, and sealed his own fate. Good fucking riddance. But Mark was wrong about him being the worst of them, because at least Nolan could understand perspective. He could understand that even if they were reflections of each other, they were not meant to be the same. 

The Leader was not a sociopath, no. He could feel, he could empathize. He could look in the mirror and loathe himself for what he’s done, and that was the problem. Because he doesn’t see the rest of them as alternates. They are all him, and so, they will bend and break to his mind’s will. 

The Delinquent stays put, sliding his good hand behind his head, looking at the way his other elbow bends. He’ll force it back into place eventually, but for now, he’ll enjoy the solitude, the escape from himself. He knows, can’t explain it, but he knows, in the way his skin itches, the way his mouth dries, that something is wrong. He can’t face it right now. He doesn’t want to wake up, so he doesn’t. He flutters his eyes shut, and he listens to the pipes whirr.

He dreams of math tests and auburn hair.

__

The bunker taught them everything and nothing at once, because while they may know the circumstances behind their entombment, they know nothing of how to leave. Some of them handled the news better than others, but they’re all barely holding it together. Only four of them know any of the truth at all—the other half remain in the dark, ignorant or dead. For Nolan, who fought for his identity, and the Emperor, who fought control, there will never be an answer.  

The flight back is a tranquil moment of contemplation, of allowing themselves to forget their situation. The air up high is cooler, and the wind rushes by, clouds offer a brief mist. If it weren’t for the lack of any discernible life, it would be peaceful instead of unnerving. But the peace is, as always, short-lived.

The two are quiet on their flight back, having said enough to one another already. They wonder if Mohawk has stirred yet, all alone in the bunker. They remember the voices from the computer, how they reached out to drag them in with their pleading cries. Maybe leaving Mohawk there wasn’t the best option, but what’s done is done. After all, if they’re truly stuck here for eternity in a world of broken time, what does it matter? 

They get back after a prolonged soar above the clouds, having taken the time to process and grieve. When they’re finally nearing the campsite, their familiar patch of desert, they already overhear shouting. And before their feet even descend to the ground, they find their Leader clutching the Scarred one by his shirt collar. His eyes flare with accusation, mistrust, anger. The Prisoner shoves their Leader off, sending him stuttering back a few feet into the sand, a cloud of dust catapulting into the air. He growls, low in his damaged throat, a clear warning. 

“I told you, they’re both gone,” his voice scratches out. “By the time I got back, there was nothing here but that stash under your pillow—Nolan’s heart—which you…God, you really are a freak, you know that?” 

The Leader shoves his cape back, letting it billow in the dust storm. He lets out a roar, his hand outstretched, accusatory. “You had no right,” he screams, “NO right to go through my things! And what do you mean, gone? They can’t have just LEFT. You’re wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, man!” 

“I’m in the wrong? Explain the dent in the damn thing, dude! You’re the one going around sneaking midnight snacks off a dead body.” 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” warns the Leader, his glare venomous, paralyzing. “Don’t say that like you have any idea what you’re talking about.” 

“Then explain it to me, asshole, okay? Explain how you’re not a cannibalistic freak, how I’m a liar for coming back here and finding all our food gone—what, you think I ate it all, or something? For pleasure? It barely counted as food anyway!” 

“What are you talking about?” ‘Mask’ lunges forwards, thrumming across the desert sands. The Soldier follows close behind, watching from a greater distance. His eyes never leave the Leader. ‘Mask’ glances around their camp, at the absences, taking in the information from their argument. “What…” he breathes, “What do you mean all our food is gone? And where are the others?” 

The Prisoner snaps his head over, steaming. “What do you think those things mean, genius? What part of ‘all our food is gone’ and ‘they left’ is hard for you to understand? The little brat without the mask, the—the one we gave to the Emperor. They clearly took off with all the rations! Not me, THEM!” He yells towards the Leader, who snarls back with disdain and disbelief. 

“I don’t like liars,” the Leader says dangerously, knives in his words, cutting into his fingers as they twitch erratically. “I don’t like hearing myself tell lies. Mom raised us better than that.” 

“I don’t think our mom raised us to be such a sick bastard, either, but here you are, dude, going around chomping on internal organs and torturing people with your own face and name.” The Prisoner smiles cruelly, and he keeps going, “I bet you’re the one who axed the other two, am I right? Couldn’t handle the fact you handed over your prey, got rid of two birds with one stone.”

“I WOULDN’T,” booms the Leader, his voice breaking. “I wouldn’t kill the Emperor. He was the one who understood best—the conquering, the end goal—he wanted unity.” The Leader’s pupils contract as he begins to hyperventilate, his words shaky and heavy laden with breath. 

“What are you even talking about, anymore?” The Prisoner exclaims, his mind swelling with confusion. “You make no sense on a good day, and it hasn’t been a good day in a long time.” 

“Of course you don’t understand,” the Leader glowers. “You’re a version of me who’s been outcast, that nobody wants. You don’t understand that I need him, for myself, for us to be one, he was my help—I needed his loyalty,” he’s babbling, he’s even more erratic than usual. The panic written on his face takes over, and the Prisoner lowers his guard, shifting back and forth on his feet with uncertainty. 

“I—are we fighting or not?” The Prisoner shuffles back, wary. 

“Shut up. I’m hungry. No, not hungry—just sore. Ugh, it’s so bright out here.” The Leader clutches his forehead, doubling forward, groaning. He clutches his stomach, and his voice grows hoarse. 

“What the fuck is going on with him?” The Prisoner calls to the others, who float over cautiously. The Leader continues to lurch forwards, incoherently muttering. The Prisoner points between them, “What did you find? Why is he even worse than usual? Where is Mohawk—what did you guys do?” He demands.

“We didn’t do anything,” the Soldier’s eyes narrowed with his words. “We, as expected, found nobody left alive. And uh, we found more bad news. He clearly didn’t take it very well.” 

“Oh, wonderful. Bad news? What is it, is the planet going to blow up in the next twenty-four hours? Are we about to be hit by the sun this time?” The Prisoner snarks, waving his hands around theatrically.

The Soldier and the Masked one watch their Leader dry heave, unraveling in the sand. They have no food, their Leader, already unstable, is now in hysterics, and two of them—three from The Prisoner’s perspective—are missing. Might as well drop the bomb now. 

“So basically, the signal in space that traps us here? That was a last-ditch effort from the GDA to trap all the Viltrumites on Earth while their people escaped, and it worked. Sort of.” Mask explains. 

“But everyone else died, because their battle knocked the moon out of orbit and into the atmosphere, making the rings,” the Soldier adds. 

“I mean, we basically already knew that stuff, didn’t we? You went all that way and all you can tell me is that we’re stuck here?” The Prisoner scoffs. “Wow, thanks. Wasn’t aware.” 

“There’s more,” murmurs ‘Mask.’ The Soldier mutters his disapproval.

“And? Are you going to explain?” The Prisoner responds, irritated. 

The two share a glance. The Soldier speaks for them both. “We don’t know for sure, but you wouldn’t believe us even if we told you.” 

“We heard screaming ghosts on a computer. You kind of had to be there.” ‘Mask’ says, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. They explain the rest, about the fight with Mohawk, the uncertain status of time. Their student seems less and less sure with each word. 

“You sure there wasn’t a gas leak down there?” The Prisoner glances between them like they’re insane. They all probably are, on some level. You don’t make the choices they have with sound minds. 

“There could have been, actually,” ‘Mask’ admits. “But three of us saw the exact same thing, heard the same voices, so…I think a gas leak would just be coincidental.” 

“Alright,” breathes The Prisoner, in and out, trying to calm his rapid heartbeat. “So Mohawk is crippled, Leader is having his no good very bad day, and creepy Quiet me eloped with Obnoxious Emperor me. And they took all of our food with them.” He laughs, and it sounds like the voice of a thirty year smoker. “Oh, wow, we’re screwed, aren’t we?” 

He says it like it’s supposed to be a joke. They’re stuck here forever in a prison with nothing but the person who hates themself more than anything else. The Leader babbles and cries in the sand, incapacitated, burning with fever, but he won’t be that way for long.

“We need to think about how we’re playing this,” ‘Mask’ says, glancing at their Leader. “I know that things are kind of…not great, but Angstrom could still come back, someone from our home dimensions—they could find us, couldn’t they? My people might be looking. It’s possible, I mean!” 

The Soldier frowns in response. “I don’t know who you grew up with, but the Dad I know wouldn’t bother. Like him or not, the one who leads us is the reason we found that bunker, and the reason we had any food at all. I mean, I could have found it on my own…”

“God, give the superiority complex a rest, would you?” The Prisoner groans, and then he shifts to ‘Mask.’ “I don’t give a damn if you want me or not, if your people come by with a portal, I’m going through. My own wouldn’t bother trying to find me, anyway.” The Prisoner growls, remembering his time in the cell, watching the cold vacuum of space.  He shifts over to the Soldier, who seems lost in thought.

“What about you, Soldier-Boy? You think your pals from Viltrum are on the way with a spare inter-dimensional teleporter?” 

“If they could, I doubt they would. No point in retrieving someone who can’t find their own way back,” says the Soldier matter-of-factly. “But I don’t think we even have that technology. Too busy recovering from the Plague for things like that.” 

“No perks for being a boot-licker? Imagine that,” mocks the Prisoner. 

The Soldier levels his gaze like a sharp knife, tightening his fists. “If you’re eager to start another fight, I’m happy to provide, if you feel like losing again.” 

“That’s not how I remember it, going, buddy. And this time, I wouldn’t be going easy,” the Prisoner warns.

“Would you two give the dick measuring contests a rest, already?” ‘Mask’ yells in frustration, motioning around to the empty desert. There is nobody around to see them fight, nobody to claim glory from or for. “What’s the point? Who do you have to prove anything to, the rest of us, yourself? All you’re going to do is make it easier for someone else to beat you down. Is that what you want?” 

They stare at each other, at the opposite of what they are, their inverse reflections. But…‘Mask’ has a point. Is this fight for any reason other than appearances? The Prisoner sees in himself all the things he never wanted to be, a drone, compliant, regretful. The Soldier sees everything he knows he could have been, and everything he never should become. They are both dressed in white, but neither are pure, and neither are holy. 

“So…what’s the game plan, then?” The Prisoner backs down, his arms folding over his chest. His words are laden with exasperation, his lips wilting downward. “It took us Nolan’s life and two deserters to figure out absolutely no solutions, and we’ve done nothing but fight.” He glances off into the desert, miles and miles. He sighs, “Maybe…maybe it was stupid for us to all stick together.” 

The Leader’s head whirls around with frightening speed, his goggles slanted down off his nose. They see his eyes for the first time, wild and fearful at the Prisoner’s words. Sweat-drenched curls stick to his skin, sand against his skin like scales. 

“No,” he croaks, ragged and raw. He rises to his feet shakily, his features exaggerated with pale skin and sunken eyes. He looks wrecked, strung out. “Together is good. Needed.”

“What happened to you?” The Prisoner asks, grimacing. “Did you take something—other than Nolan’s heart—

—“Shut up,” the Leader orders, blunt. “You don’t know anything about what it means. You don’t know anything about Nolan, about what it means to be who we are.” His voice cracks on several words, grated and hoarse. “Your scars are proof of that.”  

“You sound really dehydrated,” interjects the Soldier . “You threw up, back in the bunker, right? That’s probably why.” 

“Or maybe it’s from eating Nolan’s heart,” hisses the Prisoner. “That would probably make you sick, wouldn’t it?” 

“You didn’t really do that, did you?” The Masked one’s voice is clouded with fear. “I saw War Woman, back in the bunker. The bites. Is that—that’s why you threw up, isn’t it? Oh, Christ…” He takes a step back into the sand, and the Leader’s eyes flash like a pursuing jaguar. 

“I told you, you wouldn’t get it,” the Leader snaps. “I’m keeping us together, keeping us one.”

“What does that even mean? Everything you say is so cryptic. Just say what you mean, dude!” Snaps the Prisoner. 

“I mean you’re all a bunch of ungrateful little ants!” Roars the Leader, animalistic. “I feed you, I house you, under my protection, and you act like I’m some kind of monster!” The Leader tears away his own goggles and mask, smiling wide. “Well guess what. Look at me! I AM you! So whatever I am, the rest of you are too!” 

“You’re wrong!” defends the Masked one, defiant. “You keep saying that, but the choices you make, the way you act? That’s not the way I am! I don’t—God—I don’t take the…the sadistic pleasure in this the way that you do!” 

“You think I take pleasure in it? You think I’m sadistic? You think I wake up and my hands tremble for blood?” The Leader laughs, “Well, you know what? Maybe they do! Maybe it’s for a reason—Have you ever thought about that?” He screams, the most like Mark Grayson they’ve ever heard him. “Maybe it’s because we come from a race that was founded on killing, maybe it’s because we're meant to be this way!” He throws his hands up, free to wind, free to be himself. “Did you ever think about that, when you were sitting in class being lectured about your grades, or when mom would yell at Dad for pushing us too hard? I did, every day, every night, every time I saw my own reflection!” He points at own chest, voice booming. “Like now, when I look at you.” The others listen with wide eyes and unsteady fists as the Leader continues, his voice heavy with conviction. 

 “Maybe there’s something in our blood that boils and pushes until we can’t take it anymore, and maybe I’m just more honest about it. But I know my hands ache for it, I know yours do too. I know that because we both ended up here, both of us are locked in this purgatory!” The Leader motions around the barren wastes, motions to the rotting body of Nolan, laying where he died.  

“I took his heart because it’s mine. You took lives because they were yours to take. You wanted our mom, so you planned to take her. It didn’t matter to you if she was happy there, if that version of us loved her—

—Shut your mouth, stop talking,” his Masked reflection snarls. The Leader barrels on, his words dripping with glee.

“You would’ve scooped her up, back the world where you failed,” the Leader surmises, his eyes shining with fervor. “You’re just like me, because actions are all that matters. Not words, not broken promises. You kill, I kill, and we both end up covered in blood. What’s the difference between the city you burned and the city I did? Are other people’s moms and their kids less dead because you’re telling yourself you feel sorry about it?” 

The Mark Grayson who hides behind his mask has nothing to say to that. The others look on, contemplating the Leader’s words, looking at their own hands, thinking on their own actions. At last, the Soldier breaks the silence, having made his decision. He turns to their Leader and offers a stern nod. “What do we do now, then?” He asks, obedient. 

The others still look uncertain, unwilling. The Leader is okay with that. He understands what apprehension is like, knows how it feels to be scared of what you’re capable of. Freeing yourself from that feeling is the most incredible rush. He envies that they haven’t felt it yet, that they get to experience it for the first time. 

“I think it’s only right we bring our thieves to justice,” the Leader says, flexing his gloved fist. “I mean, seriously, you give yourself a little treat, and he steals from you, runs off with you? What a douche.”

“Earth is a big place,” sneers the Prisoner. “Even if we agreed to, how would we find them, searching every ruined building? Picking up every piece of rubble until we maybe find two guys with our face—I know what you’re thinking, don’t say it—and a sack full of shit food? 

“If that’s what it takes,” responds the Leader.

“But—guys. They’re both us, right? There’s only so many places we would think to go. And then we can feed them sharp blades or something—I dunno. Whatever feels the most cathartic?” He shrugs casually, a teasing lilt in his voice. “Either way, we’ll find Thing One and Thing Two, no sweat.”

Three steady sets of blinking eyes peer back at him. “…What?” Asks one of them. 

“Ugh. It’s a book—not important,” the Leader waves him off, souring. “My point is, we know the way that we think. So we’ll find them quickly, won’t we?” 

“I never know what you’re thinking,” mutters the Masked one. “I never have any idea what ridiculous bullshit’s gonna come out of you next.” 

Everyone ignores him. The Soldier taps his chin in thought, humming. “It might be kind of cathartic to have someone to take our anger out on. That was originally the plan with the Emperor and his Gift, yes?”

“Until they apparently got all buddy-buddy and took all everything edible,” grumbles the Prisoner. “Who would’ve thought that they were so tight? I thought for sure loud shouty guy was gonna tear quiet little bleeding heart limb from limb.”

“Well, that means they’ve given us the fun part, haven’t they?” Grins Mark Grayson, the Leader. “We get to hunt them down like dogs.” 

The comment hangs in the air for a second. It’s childish, it’s completely unoriginal. It’s exactly the sort of catchphrase that the cocky upstart that is Mark Grayson would use. 

“…Lame, dude.” Whispers Mask.

“You and I have very different considerations of ‘fun.’ The Prisoner snorts. “Sounds more like a chore to me.”

“It’s kind of gratifying, though, isn’t it? The anticipation, the way your fingers curl around into your palms? The rush of adrenaline when you finally find them, wide terrified eyes?” The Leader moans, his lips thinned into a peaceful neutrality. “That’s power. That’s what we’re born to feel.” 

“Now you sound like Mohawk,” grimaces the Prisoner.

“Let’s just find them and get the food back. My human half isn’t getting the memo that I’m not supposed to be starving.” Bemoans the Masked one.

“I think it’ll be most effective if we split into pairs, since there’s two of them. I’ll go with our Leader. We’ll work together the best, compared to the two of you.” The Soldier suggests.

“Me and the Soldier boy, going to reunite with the Emperor,” the Leader says with dripping disdain. “He should’ve held up that title. He’ll regret leaving us behind, leaving our unity.” 

“Yes,” the Soldier squints, nodding his head. “He will, won’t he? But I’m still here. Still part of the group. Remember that.” 

“Don’t worry, loyal Soldier,” smirks the Leader, “I will.”

The other two glance at one another, the wry smile on the Leader’s face, the stern intensity of the Soldier’s eyes. They step closer together on reflex, muscles tensing defensively. 

The Prisoner steps up, clearing his throat. “Then we’ll go together and search to the west. You guys go east, and then we’ll loop all the way back around until we’re both back here. Does that sound good to you?” 

“Sure thing, boss,” the Leader smirks. “Sounds good to me. But I have one ask.”

“Oh?” The Prisoner quirks what’s left of his eyebrow, “What might that be.” 

“You can kill the other one, but the Emperor?” The Leader’s eyes burn with a radiant disdain. “He’s mine. I don’t care if you have to hold him down and scream until I’m close enough to hear you. If you kill him, there won’t be enough of you left to scrape off my foot. Clear?” 

“Bold threat,” the Prisoner responds, eyebrows narrowed. “I thought we were supposed to be unified, according to you.” 

The Leader laughs, throwing his head back. “Of course we are! I forgot that you don’t understand.” The Leader taps his finger to his chin, humming to himself. “Well, you see, it’s like this You’re a part of me, whether you want to be or not. But we don’t need so many heads between us, you know? I can carry you with me whole, or in pieces. That choice is yours, and that makes it my choice, too.” The Leader nods at his own hieroglyphics of an answer, satisfied. “Really, either way, we’re together. It’s just a matter if you want to still be together, or in mushy little pieces.” 

“I think sunstroke has made you batshit,” retorts the Prisoner. “I don’t think anything you’ve said recently  has made any sense at all.” The Prisoner tilts his head to the Soldier, rolling his thumb to point towards the Leader. “You hear what fat load of nothing your partner’s saying? Feel confident in that choice, still?” 

“He’s strong,” the Soldier states plainly, his eyes cold and steady. “He has a plan. Structure. What do you have?” 

“My goddamn mind,” snaps the Prisoner. 

“So you say.” The Soldier tilts his head studiously, glancing between the trio of people who share his face and family. “I wonder if that’s enough.” 

“I guess we’ll find out soon, if you manage to both come back without him ripping you apart.” The Prisoner’s tone is frigid. 

That gives the Soldier pause. The Leader reaches out to touch his shoulder. “Hey, man, don’t let their jealousy get you down.” The Leader says, like this is all for sport. “We’re the better team, and he’s just jealous that we’ll find them first.” The Prisoner balls up his fist and opens his mouth to respond, but ‘Mask’ slaps his open palm over it hastily.

“Why don’t we start looking, now?” Suggests the Masked one. “We’ll loop around the planet one way and meet you guys back here in the center. You guys can look over, like, the US and stuff by it. We’ll go look in like, London and Budapest and Europe and stuff.” 

“Those are in Europe,” mutters the Soldier. 

“Well, do you guys want to go look there instead?” The Masked one offers, smiling awkwardly. “Seriously, feel free. But we’re wasting time.” 

The Soldier glances back at the pair, and then flicks his eyes to their Leader. “I’ll tell them where to go, and then I’ll catch up with you.” 

The Leader shrugs, “Mmkay. If you wanna do the grunt work, suit yourself. Meet me at the eastern side shoreline, Soldier Boy.” And he takes off, rocketing away. The three of them breathe out a sigh of relief. 

The Prisoner steps forward to the Soldier, accusatory. “You’re making him worse. You know he’s insane, right? That he’s going to be the death of us all if we don’t get rid of him?” 

“Listen to me.” The Soldier rebuttals, lifting a single finger. “If you try to fight him, you will not have my help.” 

“Why the hell not? He’s insane! He’s taking bites out of Nolan’s corpse, do I even have to begin to explain how fucked up that is? Why are you being so stubborn about this? What do you see in him that the rest of us apparently don’t?!”

“Easy. If he dies, the rest of you will kill me.” The Soldier stares between them, poised like a coiled rattlesnake. “You could try to do it now, actually. But he would sense it. He would allow me time to plan, recuperate. You, on the other hand, would kill me as soon as I became competition for resources.” 

“Why is everything so cold and calculated with you? We wouldn’t kill you, man! I’ve been pretty fucking clear since day one that I don’t really like the idea of killing myself!” The Masked one hisses, offended.

The Soldier tuts in response. “I know you, because I am you. Don’t insult my intelligence and pretend you aren’t capable of slaughter when it suits you. The city of Sydney and countless superheroes would beg to say otherwise.” 

The Masked one guffaws, throwing his arms up in exasperation. “Oh my God, you guys love bringing that up, huh? I did it to save our mom! You guys were going to destroy that world whether I was there or not! I was there to save our MOM!” The Masked one slams his foot down, his voice breaking. 

“And eventually, after the Leader is gone, you will have to save yourself. It could be years from now. It could be in a week. But you’re far too human not to let the nature of survival get to you eventually.” The Soldier warns. “Sooner or later, the rest of us will turn on each other. While the Leader is here, I’m not your target.” 

“And if I kill you right now?” The Prisoner snarls, stepping forward dangerously, his fists clenched like iron vices. “The Leader wouldn’t know until it’s too late. The two of us could take you.” 

“You could try,” amends the Soldier. “But I would not go down easy. The others would see you as a lamb to the slaughter, the injured one to be taken out. Just like Nolan was.” 

The Prisoner’s fists tremble as he mulls over his options. His frustration grows palpable, because he knows The Soldier is right. He has seen the megalomania in Mohawk’s eyes, the calculations of The Soldier in front of him. Their group is waiting for the next one to fall, to be culled. He can’t risk that being him. 

The Prisoner spits into the sand, disgruntled. “I’m heading to search the other way. If we find the missing guys, and they don’t have the food, you’d better really fuckin’ consider how much you trust the Leader not to want to become one with you in a whole new way, asshole.” 

“While the rest of you are here, I’m safe.” The Soldier says matter-of-factly. 

The Prisoner swallows back another insult, stepping off to the side. His voice comes out worn and tired, “Whatever. I need a break.” He launches off the ground and into the sky, floating a few dozen feet above them. The Soldier is left with the Masked one, alone in the dunes.

“You’re a real pain in the ass, man,” groans ‘Mask.’ “You guys all make this so much more complicated than it has to be.” 

The Soldier tilts his head in lieu of a smile. “I think that’s just the price we pay for being Viltrumites. Everything is more complicated than it has to be.” 

“It’s not the same, anymore.” The Masked one whispers, looking at the vast blue sky where the Prisoner floats along just above them. “The world’s ended already. But this still feels like we’re inching towards something inescapable. Something that will end very badly.” 

“Do you remember…” the Soldier’s words tumble out of his mouth faster than he can think. The Masked one turns over to him, inquisitive, and the rest tumbles out. “Do you remember baseball?” The words sound foreign on his lips, and the Soldier shuffles his feet, uncharacteristically shy. “It was…a short time for me. Were you on the little league team? Do you remember the way mom would cheer for us in the stands so loud that the other parents would always stare?”

“I remember losing a tooth when a ball clocked me in the face without my helmet on,” grins the Masked one in return. “I remember riding a bike for the first time, and how my legs were shaking so bad at first that I could barely pedal.” 

“I remember hiding comic books underneath my pillow, so that I could read past my bedtime. I remember having to get out of the road for cars in the middle of kickball games.” The Soldier recounts, a shining nostalgia dripping from his eyes. He wipes it away in an instant, forgotten, unacknowledged. 

“Do you think those things matter, too?” The Masked one wonders aloud. The questions don’t feel aimed at him, at the Soldier. “Do I get to be remembered for baseball practice and bike rides to elementary school, in any universe? Is there some place where we don’t have to hear people screaming everywhere we go?” 

“Fantasies are punished in the Viltrum Empire,” drones the Soldier, practiced. 

“Well. this isn’t the Viltrum Empire. It’s the end of the world. So, what do you think?” The Masked one prods.

The Soldier bites his lip, sighing. “I think that the only person left alive who could remember any of that brief childhood…is me.” 

“Yeah,” breathes the Masked one, clasping his counterpart’s shoulder. “I think so too.” 

The Soldier shakes his head and rises into the sky, preparing to fly off. “I have to do what’s best for me. If you keep him satisfied, we’ll keep this peace alive that much longer.” 

“You’re kidding yourself if you think that this resembles peace in any way,” the Masked one scorns. The Prisoner descends from the sky, landing beside him with a careful thud.

“Masky is right. Your little loyalist routine is gonna get us all killed,” he scowls.

“It’s the closest a group of Viltrumites could ever hope to get to peace,” the Soldier remarks, staring straight through the Prisoner. “Out of all of us, I figured you might best understand that sentiment. Don’t prove me wrong.” 

The Prisoner’s nostrils flare, and the veins atop his head pulse in agitation. But he does not deny the spoken words, or beckon the Soldier to fight. He turns his back, facing the Masked one, and motions him along.

The Soldier bites his lip, shifting his feet, before he barks an order. “You two can stay here. We’ll go to Europe. I doubt you’ll even know where to look.” 

“Fine, then,” the Prisoner relents. “You’ve made your stance pretty clear.” He whisks the Masked one away with one hand, the other balled up by his waist. 

The search begins, for the renegade Mark Grayson a few hours before sunset on what should be an inconsequential day. But here, where time bends itself across the atlas of space, days could mean hours, or minutes. Or years. Time means very little to a Viltrumite. 

But that’s not all Mark Grayson is. 

__

The sun has set on the first night of their search. The Soldier surveys the ruins of the Russian capitol—or where it used to be—with scrutiny. Moscow is barely recognizable, save for tattered street signs remarking the end of the world, scrawled hastily in the Russian language. He can’t read it fully, but he recognizes a few words, and can translate them from his place in the sky.

End.

Killers. 

Moonlight.

“Spot anything interesting down there, lieutenant?” The Leader says casually, floating down from above to match the Soldier’s speed. His lightheartedness and joking nature clash against the rigid killer he’s known to be like a lottery machine, or a bear trap nestling a wounded animal. It’s impossible to know what reaction you’re going to get. 

“Ramblings of the end times. Quite similar to my Earth, in that aspect,” admits the Soldier plainly, keeping his eyes focused on the wasteland beneath them. “Weren’t you desperate to find the traitor and…reunite us? Shouldn’t you keep focused?”

The Leader shrugs, before casually slipping his hands behind his neck, relaxing as they glide through the air. The Soldier’s gaze flickers up and widens at the sight. To fly steadily at great speeds without directing your arms is intensely difficult, and the Leader manages with no trouble. 

“How are you doing that?” The Soldier asks, almost demanding. The Leader smiles wider, and shrugs again. 

“Guess some of us just have a gift,” he boasts, flexing his yellow-black suit to glisten his muscles. “Don’t worry, Soldier. You’ve got your own strengths, like your big nerd brain. Rare for one of Me to be as smart as you.” 

 The Soldier rolls his eyes, focusing back on the ground. “You get lots of prior experience with inter -dimensional travel, then? Meeting other versions of yourself?” 

“Oh, no, not from other dimensions,” balks the Leader, laughing. “Nah, only one Angstrom Levy can dimension-hop, and it sure as shit wasn’t mine. He’s dead and rotting, either way, so even if he could, he sure isn’t coming to save us.” 

The Soldier tilts his head at the new information, the wind whistling in his ears as his mind parses it. “You knew Angstrom in your home dimension?”

The Leader hums in thought, flipping over in the air. “Mm, sort of? What, he didn’t work for the GDA in yours?” 

The Soldier shakes his head, “I’d never met an Angstrom Levy before he found my dimension. It’s a pretty recognizable name, so I’m sure of that. But I had little contact with the GDA’s people. I know of Cecil—that’s about it,” 

“Huh. He never contacted you to work for him? I thought that was a universal thing,” the Leader inquires, his tone playful.

“I left Earth before I was ten, and did not return before I was eighteen,” the Soldier grimaces through the memories, his focus on the ground below straining. “There was little time to know him. I only saw him in person when he was executed by my captain’s hands, after our assimilation of Earth.” 

“Huh, so you guys have your Earth running like a pretty little Viltrumite machine,” hums the Leader. His playful tone dips into cruelty, his smile turning up insidiously. “How dirty did your hands get? Body count?” 

The Soldier glares further, sucking in a deep breath of cold air, “I do not kill for pleasure or for gratification. I simply remove obstacles. I don’t keep track.” 

“Sheesh. You’re no fun. Could’ve used you to take my exams back in high school. Or maybe split the teacher’s head in two, since it sounds like you already had your powers.” The Leader punches his fists together dramatically. “When I was taking over my Earth, I didn’t have any help. It was a test of my strength. So, y’know, it got kinda…messy. Lots of language barriers, too. Sometimes I didn’t know if they were giving up or not, so I just smashed them apart to be sure? The guys from Viltrum were a little peeved with all the ‘excess destruction,’ as they put it. But hey, it was my first planet! Not like they gave me an instruction manual.” 

“Is there a point to all this, or are you just distracting me on purpose?” The Soldier barks out, irritation creeping through his practiced calm demeanor. 

“Just working out what makes you tick.” The Leader replies coolly. “After all, you’re a part of me. Maybe a part that I’m not very familiar with, but hey. Living for thousands of years means we’ll get to know ourself pretty well.” 

“Ourself. Me. You see me as a part of you?” The Soldier tests, his curiosity finally winning over his instinct. 

The Leader, against his predictions, simply nods. “Well, obviously. What else would you be? When I look at you, I see my eyes. My face. Mine. I feel my skin set on fire they way it does with a mirror. I feel like I could punch straight your head. Nobody but me really gets me going like that, you know?”

The Soldier stutters in the air uneasily, trying to keep his stoic posture. But instability that builds up like water shoving against a dam will crack even the most sturdy foundation. Not all at once, but when the pressure reaches a breaking point, there’s no going back to the way it was. 

They continue flying in silence, side by side, the Soldier looking down at the ground while he feels the Leader’s unflinching gaze bear into his temple. An easy smile on his lips, his arms lazily hung in the air like deadweight. This monster that wears the face of Mark Grayson is the reason that they haven’t devolved into full out civil war, fighting over territory on the dying planet like squabbling rats. 

The Soldier isn’t sure that this alternative is better, anymore. 

__

The sun rises on the third day of their search, and the Masked one shivers with the chill of the cold air. There’s nothing but frozen ground trod underneath their feet as the Prisoner does laps above him, trailing in and out of the ocean as ice floes ebb up and down. He rockets across the snow in the blink of an eye, kicking ice into the air. The Prisoner shakes rapidly, the water shed from his suit like a coat. 

“It’s no outer space, but that ocean is still pretty damn cold,” he grimaces, shaking flakes of white off his suit. “Is this the Arctic, or the Antarctic? There’s chunks of little icebergs and frozen dirt everywhere. I thought they were supposed to be huge glaciers at one of them.” 

“I guess that’s global warming for you,” the Masked one quips, his breath visible through his mask in the frigid temperature. “Well…global warming, or global annihilation due to the loss of the moon and the fracturing of space and time. Or both.” 

The Prisoner snorts in amusement, eying the Masked Mark curiously. “So, you really believe all that crap? That we’re stuck in a place frozen in time, that somehow everything is fucked because some Viltrumites ran around in circles like a Loony Tunes episode to turn back time?”

“Hah! Loony Tunes—dude, nice pull,” grins ‘Mask’, nostalgic. “Though uhmm—with us being Korean, dunno how much we were the target audience of that show. Hey, was it super-mega-racist in your universe too?”

“How about you answer me instead of deflecting the question?” The Prisoner scoffs, rolling his eyes. “You’re a bit on the skeptical side, right? Against Viltrum’s ethics and their other shit? Do you buy into Soldier’s theory, or do you just think he’s full of it? I mean, he’s always pretending that he’s smarter than the rest of us.” 

“I’m trying to avoid starting more bullshit, but if you insist, fine,” relents ‘Mask’, sighing. “He’s got kind of a stick up his ass in a way that makes my skin crawl, sure, but at least he’s not batshit insane like the other m—Invincibles are…” his gaze flickers to the Prisoner, sheepish. “Oh, uhm. You're excluded, obviously.” 

The Prisoner simply grunts in response. “Whatever. Just keep talking. You think he’s right?”

“Dude, I have no clue,” ‘Mask’ admits, his cheeks turning red under his mask. “I wasn’t exactly the best student in science. Or history. Or anything, really. I don’t know how quantum physics or the universe works. I barely understand what the difference between protons and neutrons is. Or like, why that matters.” 

“Neutron? Like Jimmy Neutron?” The Prisoner asks, scratching his head. 

“Dude.” ‘Mask’ responds, judgmental. “Are you serious?” 

“I’ve had my skin lasered almost every day for the past year. Give me a break if I don’t remember school that I barely paid attention to anyway.” The Prisoner reprimands harshly. “You were one of the only assholes who at least had the manners not to look at me like—you know—the red-headed stepchild.” 

“Jesus, dude, okay.” ‘Mask’ holds up his hands in peace. “Calm down. It’s just us. No crazy lunatics who disembowel each other, or scream about their dead lovers, or about unity like we’re some fungal hivemind. Just. You and me.” 

The cold air whistles between their red-tipped ears. The silence, for once, is peaceful. There is no undercurrent of hostility, no unspoken threat of betrayal. The two versions of Mark Grayson can relax in each other’s company. It borders on nice.

Both of them wonder which of them will ruin it first.

__

The sun is a lot brighter than Mohawk remembers.

Vivid beams of blinding light that burn at his aching eyes, forcing him to cover his face with his tattered sleeve. His muscles ache with misuse, and portions of his suit are worn away to expose bare skin to the billowing sand. His wrist, bent back into place, tingles with a sharp slicing pain as the wind brushes over it. 

He groans, carefully exposing his eyes to the blaring sun. His face glows with heat, and his eyes twitch with uncomfortable tears, but he manages to hold himself upright, to stand on his own. He glances around the mountainside for upturned dirt, footsteps, or other signs of the other pricks who decided to drop him on the floor. There’s very little disturbed sand, most of it long reset by the wayward winds. He can only conclude based on the growling in his stomach and the parchedness of his throat that his little pity party episode was at least a few days long. 

“Well, it’s been a while,” Mohawk snorts to himself, surprised by the aching hurt that settles in his stomach. Why the hell does he feel upset? Could it be that they left him down there to rot, that he was so unimportant that they didn’t even fear his wrath? 

He remembers the snap of his elbow, of course. It still swells and throbs where it’s been forced haphazardly back into place. A sprain, but a painful reminder of how their Leader holds the power. How could he have been so blind, so stupid, to let it get to this level? He remembers when the sight of the cape made him roll his eyes. Now it sets his blood running cold. 

Emperors do not falter in the face of adversity. Emperors do not feel fear from cape-wearing toddlers with daddy issues. Emperors don’t faint like a little bitch when they get a boo-boo. And Mommy certainly isn’t around to kiss it better anymore, with the condition Mark left her spine in. With everything he’s been through, what does he really have to be afraid of? 

Pill bottles and doctor appointments and red flaring fists and the open air and auburn strands of hair. Flashes of busy classrooms and the still chattering of a nasal voice in a dirty cafeteria, accompanied by the disappointed faces of instructors, the mark of a red pen on his papers. Teeth coughed up into the sink while bloodshot eyes force back salty tears. 

Mark, the Delinquent, shakes his head, growling at the memories clawing their way through his skull. Nothing worth thinking about is worming its way through his thoughts. 

Nothing but asserting himself is important right now. He knows he’s been out for at least a few days at this point, judging by the dry starch of his saliva, of the dull ache in his lower back. If the others left him there for that long…well. Maybe they’d thought he was already dead. Maybe they’d have preferred it if he was. 

His stomach lurches, empty of food to eject. He grins sardonically, shifting his feet across the sand, raring himself up. 

Well, if they wanted me dead, he thinks, they certainly could have tried a little harder. 

His thoughts send energy flaring through his body, his mind pulsing with desires, urges, and impulses. Before he knows it, he’s off the ground. 

The sky bullets towards him as he soars upward, taking off in the blink of an eye. He watches a whirling vortex of rock and sandstone thunder up into the air after him, a clear signal to anything left go see it that he’s alive and kicking. His eager eyes dash back and forth across the horizon, tracing for any sort of movement. 

He’s itching for a reunion, and he’ll take anyone at this point. The young Emperor, or Scars, or Mask or Quiet or Nolan, even, half rotted as he is. Any proof that he wasn’t left to rot. Any proof at all that he’s still in control. After all, he can’t be beaten by his cheap knock-offs. Ugly mismatched costumes and grins that aren’t quite wide enough. Hair that isn’t the right shade, or a tone of voice that goes slightly too low or high. He’s better than them, more authentic than the faux-Viltrumite blood that runs through their veins. He is. And he can prove it.

__

Something crashes into his side like a meteor, wrenching the Prisoner free of his thoughts. He’d barely had the time to register the wind and clouds distorting and whirling around him before the Masked one whipped around in shock, watching a tunnel of black and blue barrel into his sides. 

The wind is knocked from his lungs and his ribs rattle like a suspension bridge. Mohawk cackles from underneath him, withdrawing back into the open sky before the Prisoner can wrench his hands around him in anger. 

“What the actual fuck is your problem?” The Prisoner demands, outraged. “You—Christ, you psychopath, what was that even for?!” 

Mohawk continues to giggle, lazily floating along in the sky a few yards from him. “Just reminding you to stay on your toes, Baldy! If I’d been going for the real deal, you’d be cut in half about now.” 

“I’d figured that you'd died, based on what the others told me,” the Prisoner shouted back. “Figures we wouldn’t be so lucky!” 

Mohawk rolls his eyes and drifts over casually, with the Masked one coming up to flank the Prisoner, eyeing him warily. Mohawk offers his hands up to the sky, shaking his head, “Hey now, if I wanted to actually hurt you, I could’ve just split you in half like a walnut. I just had to make sure you’d notice me, buddy.”

“Every time you speak, I wonder how we’re supposed to be the same person,” the Masked one grimaces. “It seems like everything you do is designed specifically to annoy me to the point of murder.” 

“What do you actually want, jackass? I thought you were going to fight me to the death. Use your fucking words next time.” The Prisoner glares, his words dipped with irritation.

Mohawk groans, “I wasn’t sure your crippled-ass ears would still work from so far away, and Mask wouldn’t stop for me anyway. I was just getting your attention to know what’s going on, man!” He motions to the Masked one, “I haven’t seen anybody else in like, days. Not since our good friend Mark Capeson decided to snap my elbow out of place,” he seethes. 

“If I was there, it would have been your neck.” The Prisoner says harshly, clutching his ribs. 

Mohawk tuts, unimpressed, “Well, you might’ve been there, if you weren’t too busy having a pity-party about how Dad didn’t love you enough or whatever. Can you just tell me what everyone’s flying around for? Nobody’s at the house and I’m tired. Not to mention I haven’t eaten in days, thanks to Masky over there and the other two leaving me for a dirt nap.”

“You’re lucky that’s all that happened to you.” ‘Mask’ fires back, folding his arms. The creases of his mask seem to upturn around his mouth, and his next words are laced with smugness. “You know, the Leader called you our mascot. Said you’re the comedic relief, basically.” 

That gets a laugh out of Mohawk. “Oh, yeah? I guess that would make you a red shirt, then. Do you mind telling me where everyone’s fucked off to now? And where the ration pile went?” 

“Our food was stolen, jackass.” The Prisoner relays, pinching his shriveled brow. “The—ugh—the Emperor and the Quiet Mark took off with it, we think. Nobody’s seen either of them since before the bunker, with the whole…you know.” 

Mohawk’s jaw falls open, and then his grin widens with a perverted glee. His chuckles are scathing and grating as he hiccup-laughs in the open air. “Oh! OH! Now THAT is truly a plot twist! The loud mouthed little brat who likes to play ruler eloping with the soft and silent type? Someone’s gotta get a studio on this plot line, dude.” 

“The Leader wants to skin the Emperor alive,” the Masked one informs him. “The rest of us aren’t too far off. Even those horrible stale pretzels were at least…something.” 

“We shouldn’t get hungry like this,” frowns the Masked one. “I mean, what’s the point of superpowers if I feel like I’m gonna throw up every two seconds?” 

“I’m more confused about why they ran off,” ponders ‘Scars’. “Well, not really,” he relents, “it doesn’t surprise me that someone ran off. I know we’ve all thought about it. But those two, together? Makes no sense to me.” 

“Maybe the Emperor turned into another conscientious objector,” muses Mohawk. “Maybe they fell in love while beating the shit out of each other. Modern romance.” 

“The only one of us egotistical enough for that is you,” drawls ‘Mask.’ “Also, gross, man. You’re talking about two versions of yourself. Of me.” 

“Don’t be such a prude, dude. And what other explanation is there?! Emperor really hated that guy.” Mohawk says emphatically, slapping his hand against his palm. “Like, I can’t think of a single thing that would…” 

Mohawk’s smug demeanor is replaced with a look of discomfort as his words trail off. His brow sags and his shoulders hunch, cool air billowing off the back of his neck, hairs standing on end. His mind pooling with dread, a realization dawns on him. His lips seal, his hands shake. The air rushes by his ears quieter than the ringing that drones from inside his head. The sky shines silver. 

“What’s with the stupid look on your face?” Asks the Prisoner, impatient. When Mohawk doesn’t immediately respond, the Prisoner waves his hand in front of his face. “Hey, asshole, hello? Did you have a stroke or something?” 

“…He thinks they were rescued,” murmurs the Masked one, barely audible in the roaring air of the sky. “He’s afraid that Angstrom came back and took them.”

The Prisoner scoffs at the notion, shaking his head. “Dude, seriously? That’s what has you looking like you shat your pants?” He chuckles, almost fondly, a wry smirk accompanying his words. “I thought you said…what was it? Something like ‘I told you fuckers, durr, we’re never getting out of here”—

—“Would you shut UP, for once in your life?!” Snaps the Delinquent, his mohawk frayed and his eyes twitching violently. “God, and that’s coming from me. Maybe if you weren’t so goddamn mouthy, Dad would’ve wanted to help you out of prison before you turned into a baked tortilla.” 

“Hah! Look who got their mojo back. I knew we weren’t so lucky that you’d shut up for good.” The Prisoner grins. “Anyway, what makes you think Angstrom would, yaknnow, come back months after dumping us here, just to grab two of us and all our food?” 

“Not to mention two of us that weren’t all that useful,” mumbles the Masked one. 

“Because where the fuck else would they go?” Mohawk groans, clutching his temples in agitation. “We’re capable of destroying this planet and the sorry people who live on it twenty times over, and we can’t find a pair of supersonic fucks in bright yellow suits who are literally us?!”

“Beats me, dude. It really does.” Says the Prisoner, an amused glint in his eye. “Honestly, it was nice, before you got back. Aside from being hungry, flying around away from the others has been the only peace and quiet since we got here.” 

“We checked most of the major cities in the United States, or…the two buildings that are barely left standing in either of them, at least.” The Masked one recounts. “I mean, I guess Angstrom could’ve taken them, maybe, but I doubt it. Those two wouldn’t work together at all.”

“And yet they apparently ran away together,” sneers Mohawk. “Goes to show how much we know about each other.” 

“I’m going to keep flying, now, if it’s all the same to you.” The Prisoner says, rolling his eyes. “I’m tired of talking. Why don’t the two of you make nice?” 

“Oh, don’t leave me here with him, man,” pleads ‘Mask.’ The Prisoner is already soaring away, leaving a thunderous crack that roars through the sky behind him.

“Do you really hate me that much?” Mohawk teases, as though the lurch in his stomach isn’t real. “Aww. I’m flattered that I mean so much to you!”

The Masked one gives him what Mohawk only assumes is a blank stare. “Do you ever get tired of it? Being the way you are?”

Mohawk snorts again with his response, “Uh, do I ever get tired of annoying you? No.” 

‘Mask’ sighs and shakes his head. “That isn’t what I meant,” he murmurs. “Do you also get tired of being a person that nobody can love?”

Mohawk’s face falls into a deep frown. “What kind of question is that?” He balks, turning to face ‘Mask,’ expecting him to be folding his arms. 

But he’s already left alone in the sky, cool air rushing by his ears. Madness is creeping up his back. He can only hold out for so long.

 __

They don’t find the missing Mark Graysons in the Americas.

They don’t find them in Europe, either. When they comb the remaining continents together frantically, they don’t find them there.

They’ve been meticulously searching for so long that they’ve all met in the middle of the planet several times. In that time, Mohawk and the Leader reunited above the empty Pacific Ocean, watching the still water. The Leader told Mohawk one thing, over and over. Between every few sentences, desperate. 

“I still need you here, man.” 

The search continues for cycles of day and night that count through the dozens. They still don’t understand how time folds around itself here, in their broken kingdom, and the process of trying to count it out is maddening. Every time you think an hour has passed, the sun is where it’s been since you woke up. When you look towards the dunes with dreary eyes, the sky turns black and starry, silver moon rings glowing in the atmosphere.

Nobody dares to speak out of turn. They keep the demeanor of feral hyenas, ready to tear each other apart if given the opportunity. The only exception is the Leader, who mumbles incoherently to himself more than everyone else combined. Sometimes it makes sense, at least tangentially. Mostly it’s complete nonsense that he tries to pass off as orders to the rest of them. 

“Paris, Paris. The Louvre. He drew the Eiffel Tower in his blood,” the Leader’s words tremble out of his mouth, his jaw shaking. “Paris. He wasn’t there. Not anywhere. Where did they GO?” His voice crescendos to a roar, and the rest of them flinch, ready to scatter or tear each other apart. Whichever they’re forced into.  

Admitting it would be a death sentence, but they’re all tired. They feel their legs shake with effort as they fly, their breath stagnates when they try to speed up. They glance between each other pitifully, hoping that one of them can steer the Leader back to sanity. But none of them are willing to be the first to try.

It continues like that for half of another day before one of them can’t take it anymore. He heaves what strength he has left, and makes his way to the front of their flock, his legs threatening to come apart. He inhaled and offers a steady hand, clasping the Leader’s shoulder gently. 

Immediately, Mohawk is whirled around in the sky, brought face-to-face with the Leader. A nose’s length from each other’s eyes, he stares into the Leader’s opaque glassy frames, feeling white-hot intensity of his stare. 

“You touched me,” the Leader says. He doesn’t sound angry, or even inquisitive. It’s just a statement. 

“I—yeah,” breathes Mohawk, completely still. The rest of them stare in quiet suspense, waiting for the feeding frenzy to start, or the volcano to erupt. Mohawk shakily offers his hand, again clasping the Leader’s shoulder. His eyes don’t follow Mohawk’s hands, keeping their uncomfortable eye contact. He swallows and continues.

“You’re doing great with the search,” Mohawk supplies, watching carefully for how the Leader reacts. “But we—as your loyal counterparts—we think you deserve some rest. Isn’t that right, everyone?” Mohawk pleads, motioning out to the others with his free hand. 

The remaining three stare at each other, frozen for a moment. They all begin to slowly nod, out of sync, one after the other.

“Rest for you, as our Leader,” mumbles ‘Mask.’

The Leader is dead silent for a moment, before his hand trails up to grab Mohawk’s wrist. Carefully, he removes it, and gingerly lifts their hands to his cheek, caressing it softly. It’s the strangest sensation of Mohawk’s life. 

“You’re all so thoughtful,” the Leader says, pleased. He sounds like they’ve all remembered his birthday, and thrown him a surprise party. The genuine admiration in his voice makes their heads hurt. The Leader cranes his neck around to glance at each of them, taking in their ragged bodies. “I’ve pushed you all very hard,” he says, sounding upset. “Of course we can rest. We’re in this together, aren’t we?” 

The Prisoner’s glare is paralyzing in response, but his mouth stays sealed shut. The Soldier watches on with nothing but a sturdy poker face. 

The Leader motions them all downward, a friendly smile on his lips. “Why don’t we go home, then? We can pay Nolan a visit.” 

And then they descend back down to the sky. Their backs shine with silver light, the sky humming its own farewell. 

__

They get a fire started. The night is silent, once they’re back on the ground. Usually there’s the tapping of an impatient foot, the grumble of a stomach. Mark Grayson’s mannerisms have a lot to say, from the pout of his lip when he’s disappointed to the tilt of his head when he’s confused. 

There’s nothing but the fire. It crackles occasionally, but it refuses to grow more than a few inches towards the sky. Nobody shuffles their feet in the sand. The wind refuses to billow back and forth. The wooden foundation of their shelter doesn’t creak. It is a screaming kind of quiet. 

Nolan is there, still. The smell of rot is mixing with the smoke, a cocktail of noxious fumes that force their eyes to redden and their skin to itch. They sit around the fire in a circle, refusing to glance at the corpse that the Leader has propped up beside himself. 

Nolan’s eyes fell back into his head a while ago. His costume is covered in viscera and rotten guts, turning grey and green with the exposure to the sun. The chasm where his heart was once chambered chafes with yellow and red ooze. Around his mouth, his lips have degraded away, revealing pristinely shaped teeth splattered with rustic browns and reds, coated in bits of human skin from his peeling gums. It is the very definition of putrid. The Leader has his arm around the corpse’s shoulder, holding its marred fleshy hand towards the fire. 

This is where the Leader’s voice begins to hum. Some of them recognize the tune from summers of their childhood, where baseballs were thrown across fields and children giggled in tents, trying not to be heard by sleeping adults. He’s the only one who bothers to sing it, though. 

“The rest of you are pretty down,” the Leader comments, the color of his skin pallid and lifeless. “We almost look as bad as Nolan here.” He playfully whacks the corpse on the arm. One of its teeth fall out of its head. The corpse teeters off balance and singes its grey fingertips against the flames, sizzling. The Leader pulls it back quickly and laughs. “Oh, shit. Don’t wanna ruin the costume.” 

The Prisoner finally boils over. “Why are you doing this?” He snaps, firelight glinting off his black goggles. “Is this just a fucking game to you, at this point, man?” 

The Leader tilts his head in that cutesy way Mark Grayson always does. “Huh? What do you mean, dude? We’re just taking a break. You want me to leave Nolan out in the cold? You didn’t even vote to kill him.” 

“He’s—dead. God, we’re doing this again? This is why we ended up here, why those two left,” the Prisoner continues, his anger building in his stomach, flaring out in the redness of his face. “I just made jokes the first few weeks, you know? I thought about how much of a stick up his ass Nolan had. I thought you were mopey and a little dramatic, at worst. I thought that we were just going to get bored and kill each other eventually. I resigned myself to that, because I thought it was better than being tortured in a prison cell every day. But this? This whole…sick fucking puppet show featuring a corpse that looks like me? I can’t take it anymore. I’m done. You’re done.” 

“Oh come on, Mark,” the Leader teases, a guttural thrill deep in his voice. “He doesn’t look anything like you, he’s far too pretty.” He turns Nolan’s head towards his own, smiling cruelly. “And what do you think, Nolan, my man?”

And the Prisoner lunges forward, grappling onto the corpse and yanking it forward. Caught off-guard, the Leader stumbles too late to catch it, and it flops unceremoniously onto the open fire. The flame suffocates immediately, a searing smell of pure death emanating from underneath the pile of skin, sticks, and bones. 

They all stare at each other in shock. The Soldier, the Leader, the Prisoner, the Delinquent, and the Masked one. The Leader has been challenged, so it would seem, and Nolan lies still, finally laid to rest, free of his tormentor. They’ve been flying for what can only be weeks, or even months, without a single morsel to strengthen themselves. Even that display of defiance has the Prisoner feeling winded. Even with the Ache clawing at his mind, the Leader knows he cannot fight now.

The smell of Nolan searing on the fire enters his nostrils, makes its way up to his brain. His mind screams for flavor, to satiate himself. His maw opens of its own accord, saliva dripping and gleaming down his teeth and dry tongue. 

“Jesus Christ,” the Prisoner says, disgusted. “You’re absolutely rabid.” 

“What…what are you doing?” The Masked one shakily asks, petrified. Time stops as the four of them stare at the Leader convulsing and twitching. 

And then the Leader slams downward.

His teeth sink into the pungent flesh, tasting, savoring, devouring. He rips right through the cloth, shoveling mouthfuls of rotting meat into his mouth. The sound is wet and sloppy, and the Leader’s throat rumbles with what can only be described as relief.

The silver rings shine on their faces, under the ruined sky, showcasing their horror. The Leader indulges in his feast, the sounds of carnage and the smell of saliva coating the air. After a horrifying moment where tim starts again, the Leader shoots upwards, his goggles dangling beneath his manic eyes. 

“Eat,” he gasps, like he’s fighting for air. He frantically gnashes his teeth, flailing his arms. He bellows at the Soldier in particular, his words laced with feral hunger. “Eat with me.”

The Soldier glances between the others, and at the horrific display before him. The rot that mashes between the Leader’s teeth, the blood that dangles and dribbles under his chin. He has a choice to make. And he chooses to be strong. 

The taste is like an erupting disgusting pustule of ooze encompasses all his senses. The Soldier forces back every instinct that he has to run and shovels the gangrenous meat into his mouth, swallowing back his screams, swallowing back his tears. 

“What the fuck, what the FUCK,” the Masked one screams until his throat is raw and bloody. The horror in his voice matches their victims who crumbled under buildings and were torn apart by their own hands. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” 

The Prisoner steps backward, his eyes shining with horror. The pair devour Nolan faster and faster, gripping into his back and peeling pieces away with their fingernails. The Leader continues to moan gratefully as the disgusting meat travels down his throat, and the Soldier ravenously devours as much as he can, his eyes sealed shut.

Mohawk hasn’t moved at all. He watches with the stunned silence of a peasant exposed to the true form of an angel. The Leader hasn’t looked up since he invited them to his feast. Mohawk’s eyes bounce between the two engorging themselves, noticing the way the Soldier’s back hunches and the way his throat clenches. Eventually, he rears his head back, desperate for breath, and gagging. 

The Soldier trails between the three bystanders before he locks eyes with Mohawk. His eyes hold unknown terror and the desperation of someone whose life hangs in the balance. He grapples onto Mohawk, clutching him right to his chest. He shoves their heads together, and his roten breath, almost makes Mohawk vomit.

“Listen to me,” the Soldier demands, looking discolored and miserable. “You have to—you have to eat.” 

Mohawk blinks to life, shoving his knee into The Soldier’s stomach, appalled. “Are you cra—MPPHH!”  He shrieks, before the Soldier grapples him once more, clamping his disgusting hands over Mohawk’s mouth. 

“If you don’t eat, you can’t fight,” the Soldier whispers. “You’re not like those two. I can tell. They won’t do it. I need you to. Or I’ll make you.” The Soldier’s eyes burn so intensely that Mohawk almost sees their father. He thinks over his options, and everything he knows. 

They’re eating Nolan’s corpse. Nolan’s weeks-old rotting corpse is the only food they’ve seen since the bunker. Viltrumites heal with sustenance, and the Leader is devouring Nolan ferverously. The Soldier’s eating as much as he can. The Prisoner and the Masked one won’t do it, he agrees. They’ll be left weak, and easy to cull. And so will he.

His brow furrows, and he shoves the Soldier aside, steeling himself. He leaps at Nolan’s corpse and shovels his hand into his mouth, snapping the bone with his teeth. 

It’s absolutely fucking disgusting. He spits it up immediately, his entire body convulsing as he sobs at the pain. Then, the Leader is at his side, shoveling pieces into his mouth, pulling his jaw down, forcing him to chew. He places his grotesque fingers to his mouth, and coos.

“Sssh, you can do it,” he goads, smiling gently, his mouth seeping black blood. “Come on, Mark. I know you can.” 

Oh God, he doesn’t want to. He thinks about Eve and Rex and Mom and Dad and fucking William Clockwell as the equivalent of raw sewage crawls down his throat, burning him like acid. It is suffocating and wrong and he wonders if the way Eve’s horrified face contorted as he snapped her neck was even a fraction as painful as this is. All he can do is shut his eyes and pray for it to be over as his body screams in anguish. 

They feast on Nolan until there’s scarcely anything left but the bones. The Masked one stops screaming, eventually, after his voice becomes too tired, and his knees buckle in defeat. Blood coats their faces and their chins, their hands and their teeth. The Prisoner hasn’t moved a muscle since they started. When the last juicy disgusting morsel wriggles down the Leader’s throat, there’s nothing but silence again. Except for the chime of silver over their heads.

Everything springs to life at once, with the Prisoner fist flying towards the Leader, crying out with fury. Except it’s easily deflected by the Soldier, sending him careening backwards at the surge of strength. 

“You’re a bunch of sick animals that should be put down,” the Prisoner gasps, and gags. “That was—if Viltrum saw that—you think they’d accept you?” 

“Viltrum isn’t here,” the Soldier says, pragmatic, unfeeling. “We do what we have to. To be unified, and to be strong.” 

Mohawk doesn’t say anything. He stares into the sky with blank eyes. 

Their Leader wipes his mouth clean and offers a bloodstained smile. “Nolan’s a part of us, like he was always meant to be,” he explains. “We feel so much better, Mark. You would, too.” 

“You call us that,” the Prisoner accuses, pointing his shaking finger, “you call us that like you aren’t Mark Grayson. Like you aren’t all of us, too.” 

“No, you’ve got it all wrong,” the Leader says, cheshire. “I just like talking to myself.” 

“Angstrom was right to leave you here,” the Masked one stammers, shivering on his feet. “You—you—there is nothing human about the way you act.” 

“And you finally get it!” Exclaims the Leader, whooping into the air. “You finally get it, Masky. We’re. Not. Human!” He embraces the Soldier and yanks Mohawk into the hug too, with the former uncomfortably shifting in his arms and the latter borderline catatonic. 

“Maybe I’m not human, but I’m definitely nothing like you, either,” he affirms, confident. His tattered costume, his shame hidden behind his mask, are nothing in comparison to how foul these contortions of himself have allowed themselves to fall. 

“You’re nothing like us, because you aren’t strong,” the Soldier argues, his eyes hazy, fighting back the urge to twitch violently. “You let yourself be forced out of the group. You let yourself be weak.” 

“Your brain’s been fried,” the Prisoner spits, leering at him like he’s trash on the bottom of his heel. “You—thats the only explanation for why you’re buying into all this bullshit.”

“You ATE Nolan!” ‘Mask’ screams, the image fresh in his mind, convulsing through his throat, making his dry stomach heave. “You think that makes you strong, huh, to—to fucking—to EAT the rotten corpse of a guy we tortured to death for reminding us of—God.” He gasps, hands on his stomach, doubled over in the sand. 

The Prisoner winces sympathetically, barely holding himself together. “I knew staying in the group was going to end badly,” he whispers harshly, his judgemental rotating between each offender with varying shades of disappointment and hostility. His words are curt, “I thought I wanted us to crash and burn. I thought I’d seen the worst of us.” 

“If you don’t want to be part of our unity, then we don’t have a use for you,” the Leader replies coolly, his own gaze leveled between the Prisoner’s eyes. “And don’t forget that you were the one who couldn’t let it be. You made us share this moment, this feast. I wasn’t planning on it being this way. That was all your doing, Mark.” 

“Shut up—just shut up for a second,” hisses the Prisoner, clutching his temples. “It’s so loud right now. Can’t think. My head hurts. I can’t—can’t look at you anymore.” It’s too familiar, he thinks.

The Soldier steadies himself, standing tall and regal, even with the blood that laces his skin and clothes. He will stand for what he has to in order to survive. It’s stupid to be so blinded by perception that youd let yourself be weak and die. And the Soldier is a survivor. No matter what that means he has to do. 

“They’re not a part of us anymore,” the Soldier asserts to the Leader, standing tall at his side. “They don’t want unity. They made that very clear, didn’t they?” And the air shifts around them. The hum in the sky grows louder, goading, even. 

“What are you—,” starts the Masked one, stunned, “are you siding with him? After what he just made you do?!” 

His voice rises to another disbelieving shout, echoing in the open air. The Soldier is silent, awaiting the Leader’s enactment of his plan. 

“You’re banished,” the Leader declares, glancing around the circle. “You didn’t follow the group, so you can’t stay.” 

The Prisoner barks out a disbelieving laugh. “Oh, wow, you’re serious?” He snarls, “If you thought I was planning on staying after that, just…wow. I don’t even want to look at you, anymore.” 

The Masked one feet trail after the Prisoner as the two back further away from the fire’s dimming light. Nolan’s bones emit the smallest embers, smoke rising in the air, reeking of sin. The Soldier and the Leader stare back at them, side by side. 

Mohawk stares between the two duos uncertainly, quiet and withdrawn. His entire body aches with the desire to vomit, but he knows that if he does, he’ll be seen as the weakest. He forces it down painfully, refusing to think about Nolan, alive or dead. He refuses to get involved and give away how wrecked he feels. Until the Prisoner calls his name from across the dune, motioning for him. 

“Mohawk!” He yells, stern, commanding. “Are you going to stay with these lunatics? Who do you think they’re going to eat next, huh?!” 

Mohawk is stunned again, for a moment, his mind spinning. He feels four sets of eyes trailing his body language, his mannerisms, and he forces himself to lay still. The Solider and the Leader on his left and right, the choice is clear. 

Mohawk forces the bike in his throat to settle, and grimaces his way into a confident smirk. “Hey, you chose your side!” He calls after them. “You didn’t want to be part of the team. Thats your choice!” 

From so far away, it’s hard to tell, but he sees something akin to surprise and disappointment flicker across the scarred Mark’s features. The Masked one grapples his shoulder and guides him along. The sky is shrill with the gleeful song of the silver moon, delighting in their separation. 

They take off together, one after another. On empty stomachs, who knows how far they’ll be able to get. But for the first time since they got here, there’s teams. and Mohawk, The Soldier, and the Leader know how to win by any means necessary. 

The Leader nods in satisifcation, retiring to the inside of their ramshackle shack. It creaks with his entry, and the wind rattles through the doorway, whistles through Nolan’s dirtied bones. The Soldier and Mohawk stand by the last of the dying embers of Nolan’s funeral. They share a quiet moment to process, and in time, gray clouds seclude them even from the light of the silver rings of the moon. It is silent again. 

Mohawk turns to the Soldier, and in an instant, the mood is gone. He shifts back suspiciously, his fist up and on guard. The Soldier simply quirks his brow down at him, barely bristling. 

“Do you really want to start a fight right now?” The Soldier drawls, a hint of amusement in his voice. As his lips upturn, Mohawk catches a glint of rustic brown spattering his teeth. He nearly retches. 

“What did you do that for?” He demands, sliding up to his so-called savior, face-to-face. “You’re not in the business of charity. So why’d you save my skin?” 

The Soldier hums, like he’s disappointed. “It’s fairly obvious,” he says, smirking again. “Maybe you’re even dumber than I thought you were, though.”

“Don’t give me that,” rebukes Mohawk, “don’t act all superior. You’re even more disgusting than me—you ate him on your own, you fuckin’ freak.” 

“But don’t you feel yourself healing?” Challenges the Soldier, bringing his chest to the other’s, knocking him back. “We needed it. Desperately. Or it would be just been him with it.” 

“And now there’s three of us, instead of just you and your boy toy,” snarls the Delinquent, fighting to understand. “I just don’t—I don’t understand you. You know I’ve been shit-talking you since day one. Why?” 

“Function before emotion. You’d think you’d be better at that, having made it this far.” The Soldier’s blatantly teasing him now, as if Nolan’s malice for him seeped in through his taste. “You know, it never hurts to have collateral.” 

“Are the two of you done talking?” The Leader shouts from inside, uncannily casual, like they’re at a sleepover. “I’m trying to sleep, man!” 

His words are simple and calm. Neither of them want to test that just yet. So they trail inside, one after the other, Mohawk’s red hot stare beaming holes of hate through the Soldier’s head. They might have a common enemy, but they both know how this ends. Not with both of them still standing. 

__

The sand coats their sweaty ankles, and the wind rushes by with stronger bursts by the minute. They didn’t manage to fly more than ten minutes before the Masked one had doubled over in the sky, begging for a break. 

The Prisoner knows that he should just leave him there, and run off to save himself. He knows that the Masked one is reaching the end of what his mind can handle, because he went through the same thing. It’s up to him whether or not he rises against it, or lets it consume him.

And maybe that’s why, despite every survival instinct he has screaming his name to run as far away as he can from those fucking lunatics with the red teeth and hands, he lingers by his reflection’s side.

“You’re staying with me,” the Masked one says, disbelieving. “I thought you’d have dumped me off and run for the hills. I thought you might even try to kill me yourself.”

“After everything we’ve seen since we got to this miserable shithole, I think I’ve had enough of self harm and fratricidal fantasies, dude.” The Prisoner tries to joke, but it comes out completely flat. Neither of them can properly process what they’ve just been through.

They walk on for a few more hours, hovering when their feet get tired of trudging through the sand. They find half of a building sloped along a dune’s side, and settle in for a little protection from the running sand.

It’s an actual peace that they have, for a few hours. Neither of them can sleep after what they saw, even if the Prisoner can’t admit how deeply it affected him. ‘Mask’, on the other hand, has never understood hiding your emotions. He feels strongly and outwardly, because that’s who he is, and always will be. 

“I knew he was ruthless, the Soldier, I mean.” The Masked one breaks the silence, and the Prisoner rolls over to face him. He continues on, a sigh escaping his lips, “I knew we’d fight again. Especially after Nolan…died, I knew it would happen again eventually. But I never thought…not like that, you know?” 

The Prisoner offers his own sigh, nodding. “I do know. Even in prison, they never—I never ate anyone, dude. And absolutely not like that, with that hunger in their eyes. It was like watching myself eat myself.”

“It was watching myself eat myself,” echoes the Masked one. They both stew in silence again, after that, because there’s nothing more to say.

They’re free of the Leader, of his commitment to the Ache and what it drives him to seek. They’re free of the burden of unity, and the expectations that come with it. But they know the Leader did not let them go. They know their banishment is not permanent. 

Sooner or later, they will face those snarling, hungry eyes.