The Dimension of Solitude was repaired.
Mark floated above the floor, letting himself take in the sight. The building was upright, the lights were steady and fixed, and the broken walls had been repaired until no crack remained. His Invinci-bots had done their job thoroughly and returned back to construction ideas he's had for the whole planet. If a stranger stepped into his lab, they would never know this place had been damaged in his battle with Thragg.
Mark ran his hand along a console in his lab, feeling the cool, smooth texture.
"Stupid Cecil," he muttered, his voice echoing faintly.
The irritation hadn't faded yet. Cecil had dragged Amanda into Rudy's lab, putting her in the middle of something she never should have even known about. It was typical Cecil, always calculating, always trying to take control of the situation. Mark clenched his jaw, then exhaled.
"Well, it doesn't matter now," he said aloud, though it still bugged him.
Sitting at his workbench, Mark tried to focus on anything else. He wasn't ready to go home yet, not with his thoughts this unsettled, and he didn't want to have to deal with the headache at home yet. His mind wandered instead to the things he needed to take care of.
First was the Viltrumite bodyguard company. He needed to put that in motion soon to give the Viltrumites jobs and help them use their powers to better integrate with Earth. Then there was the meeting with Thragg about his relationship with Dupli-kate.
'I normally wouldn't do anything about this. But, I never expected Thragg to end up with the one superhero, whose children could end up with the same powers as her to clone endlessly due to a curse. I don't think I'll have to worry, but I don't want to take the risk of an uprising against Thragg and thousands of Viltrumite clones.'
Then there were his serums, compounds HK and VK, his greatest work so far. He'd need to offer them to his friends and family if they wanted to live as long as he did.
And then he remembered.
"Oh. Right," he muttered, smacking a fist lightly into his palm.
The alternate Thragg's offspring, the Thraxan-Viltrumite hybrids. He'd had the idea to recruit some of them to this dimension.
Mark rubbed his chin, weighing the idea. He could leave it for later, wait until things with the Viltrumites on Earth had settled, but he wasn't really doing anything right now, so why wait.
Decision made, Mark summoned Levy's power. A green light crackled in his palm, widening into a shimmering portal that hummed with unstable energy. Without hesitation, he stepped through.
XXXXX
The sky on the other side was brown and orange, heavy with dust. The sun burned like a furnace overhead, turning the horizon into a haze. Rocky terrain stretched out in all directions, with patches of blue grass breaking up the wasteland. Mark was surrounded by purple mountains, their edges curvy and smooth, instead of sharp and jagged like regular mountains.
Mark landed on a ledge and looked around.
Something scurried nearby. He turned to see a long, green creature shaped like a ferret, its back covered in scales. A horn sprouted from its skull, and rows of sharp teeth jutted from its mouth as it gnawed on a rock.
"…Cool," Mark murmured. He had never seen anything like it.
The ground shook beneath him. At first, it was a light tremor, then a stronger one. Mark frowned and rose into the air. Using his supervision to look across the entire planet.
From above, the truth unfolded.
The planet was scarred from battles taking place. Craters marked the valleys, smoke filled the skies from explosions, and black columns of ash rose into the atmosphere.
Mark froze.
Thragg's children and the Thraxans he had ruled were under attack. Their giant main ship was surrounded from all sides in both the ground and the sky. There were dozens of Coalition ships and fighter jets coming down from space, with some landing and dropping Coalition soldiers. As well as a large Viltrumite ship, with the last known groups of pure-blooded Viltrumites were emerging.
Coalition soldiers moved across the ground in disciplined lines, their rifles spitting plasma into crowds of civilians. Above them, Viltrumites loyal to Nolan cut through the skies, overwhelming any resistance. The older hybrids were taking on the main threat of the pure-blooded Viltrumites, but they were being thrown aside with ease. Below, defenseless Thraxan women and children were gunned down or dragged into custody.
Mark's stomach sank.
He felt a rush of shock, and then slight guilt.
'I didn't think this would happen just because I captured Thragg; it hadn't even been that long since I took him,' he scowled bitterly. 'I left his children and the Thraxans exposed at the wrong time. And this is the result.'
His mind flickered back to the Flaxans. To their destroyed armies, their burning cities, the lives he had ended without hesitation. Though the Flaxans were evil and would have continued to invade Earth, the Thraxan-Viltrumites were just misguided
Mark drew in a slow breath of disappointment as he didn't expect to get involved in another Coalition war.
'I'm gonna have to do more work than I expected here.'
XXXXX
Ursaal POV
I floated in the sky surrounded by the chaos of battle, my fists clenched and my body trembling as I struggled to stay composed. The sky above me was filled with Coalition ships, their engines rumbling like distant thunder. Fighters streaked overhead in sharp lines of fire, while soldiers poured into the streets below, cutting down any Thraxan who dared resist.
It had been days since my father disappeared. At first, I convinced myself it was a test, that he had withdrawn on purpose to judge us from afar. Or he'd stayed in his chambers, being solitary as usual when he was not busy mating with Thraxan females. But his chambers were empty. We searched the entire ship. We searched the planet. There was no sign of him anywhere.
The others turned to me because I was the eldest of Thragg's children, the strongest, the one who had emerged first. Although my twin brother Onaan was the same age as me, he was more reckless and weaker than me. And I was born 3 minutes earlier than him.
I accepted the role without complaint, issuing orders, sending my siblings to attack Coalition planets before retreating back, pretending as though nothing had changed.
But it was different now.
There had been fifteen hundred of us, born from Thraxan mothers and Thragg's Viltrumite blood. Out of that number, only one thousand possessed power, and just three hundred were strong enough to take down a single, normal pure-blooded VIltrumite in a group. But, considering the remaining pure-bloods were the cream of the crop for Viltrumite standards, even groups of 12 hybrids would have a hard time taking a single one of them down.
It was not enough.
The Coalition had come in overwhelming numbers. Thousands of soldiers. Dozens of warships. And with them, fifty pureblood Viltrumites. They struck like lightning, faster and stronger than most of my siblings could react to.
I saw my twin, Onaan, smashed into the ground by a single punch from one of the pure-bloods, his blood spraying across the dirt. I saw two of my younger sisters gunned down by Coalition soldiers as they tried to protect a cluster of Thraxans. The cries and screams all around me tore at my resolve, each one cutting deeper than the last.
And then I saw them. The two monsters.
Emperor Nolan and The Great Allen. The two fought side by side, pushing through groups of hybrids as though we were little more than obstacles in their path. Nolan's face was calm, almost detached, his fists breaking bodies with mechanical precision. Allen moved with deliberate power, his blows intended to kill without hesitation.
My throat tightened.
Father had always spoken of Nolan as a traitor, a weak coward who had turned his back on what it meant to be a VIltrumite. But standing there, watching him now, I realized he was something else entirely. He was not weak. He was merciless.
I forced my face to remain its usual blank features and my voice steady as I shouted orders to those who could still fight, but inside, my composure was unraveling. I wanted to scream and cry. I wanted to demand my father appear, to do anything other than watch my family cut down around me.
"How did they even find us?..." Ursaal muttered lowly under her breath.
Unbeknownst to Ursaal, this all started when one of her brothers, whom she'd sent on a mission, hadn't come back when he was expected to.
XXXXX
Flashback
The cell was cold, and the air carried a metallic bite that scraped against my throat every time I breathed. I knelt on the stone floor, heavy cuffs locking my wrists and ankles together. They weren't normal restraints. I could feel the way they hummed faintly against my skin, pulling at my strength, making every movement harder than it should have been. My father always told us to never kneel, never submit, yet here I was, bound and forced into the position of a prisoner.
I'd been attacking a Coalition planet my sister sent me to as per usual, but I was caught off guard when a pure-blooded Viltrumite was revealed to be stationed there. It seems as though they were lying in wait as if they knew one of us would come to attack this planet.
I thought with my strength I could put up a fight, but I was mistaken. The pure-blood barely seemed to take me seriously and defeated me so easily that it was like he was fighting a child. I was severely injured and placed in this cell.
The door hissed open.
I lifted my head, my eyes narrowing at the sight of the two figures who walked in. One was tall and broad-shouldered, his red and white uniform immediately marking him as Viltrumite royalty. The other was an orange being with a single eye.
The new Viltrumite emperor, Nolan, and the leader of the Coalition, Allen.
A surge of hatred rose in my chest, hotter than the weight of the cuffs.
"Well, if it isn't the betrayer," I spat, my voice raw but steady. "My father warned us about you. He told us how you stole what was his, how you twisted our people with weakness."
Nolan didn't snap back. He didn't even look offended. Instead, he lowered himself to one knee so that his eyes were level with mine. The way he looked at me wasn't like an enemy staring down a foe. It was worse. It was pity.
"You've been misled, young one," he said, his tone wise. "Your father wanted power above all else. He filled your head with lies because he couldn't accept that the Viltrumites could be something more. But you don't have to repeat his mistakes. You don't have to follow him into ruin."
He placed a hand on my shoulder. It was heavy, firm, but not cruel. "You could have a place in the new empire we're building. You could live, not just survive. All you have to do is tell me where your father is. Let me speak to him."
For a moment, I hesitated. His words made me think of the time before his disappearance, the coldness father had towards all his children. There was a part of me that wondered if Father had decided to abandon us, but the thought burned.
I shrugged it away with anger.
"No."
I leaned forward and slammed my forehead into Nolan's face with all the force I could gather. I expected to feel bone and cartilage break, to see him recoil in pain. Instead, it was me who cried out, white-hot agony exploding through my skull as if my forehead had split straight down the middle. Blood ran down my face, dripping onto the cuffs.
Nolan didn't even flinch.
"When my father returns," I hissed, my voice shaking with both pain and fury, "he'll make you pay for this. He'll tear you apart."
Nolan only sighed as if the answer disappointed him, though he noted that Thragg had apparently gone somewhere, then stood and turned away. "Then you've made your choice."
He and Allen walked out without another word, leaving me kneeling in the dim blue light of the cell.
For a long time, I let the pain consume me. My head throbbed with every heartbeat, blood crusted over my brow, and the weight of the cuffs seemed to drag me deeper into the floor. But slowly, my body began to heal from my injuries. The bleeding stopped. The aches in my bones dulled. My strength returned.
I tested the restraints. They groaned faintly under the strain.
Days passed. Five of them, by my count. I bided my time, gathering strength, waiting until I felt strong enough to break free. When the moment came, I gritted my teeth and pulled with everything I had. The cuffs shrieked in protest, then finally snapped apart in a burst of broken metal.
I roared, the sound bouncing against the metal walls, and hurled the pieces aside. My fist slammed into the wall until cracks spread like webs across the surface. One more final strike broke it open, revealing the void of space beyond.
Without hesitation, I launched myself through the hole, my body cutting through the vacuum as I sped toward the planet where the mothership should have been.
I didn't know. I didn't know Nolan had planted a tracker on my shoulder. I didn't know my escape had been allowed.
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Author's Note: My P@tr*on name is Bah_Goat. Make sure to continue to support the story. Extra chapters are available there and I want to hear your guy's thought on where the story should go.