"Clark! Clark where are you?" Olivia sprinted up the stairs. Her phone was gripped tightly in one hand.
The panic in his mum's voice told Clark that something was wrong. He'd been practicing using Samantha's powers to transform water into mercury in his room. He shifted instantly from Samantha into Mark. Moving too quickly for the human eye to register, he appeared suddenly in front of his mum.
Olivia crashed into Clark's arms. He caught her steadily, "Mum, what's wrong?"
Clark saw the tears streaking down his mum's face. His chest suddenly felt tight.
Olivia struggled to speak between sobs, "There's an invasion, in the city, your-your dad's there!"
The whole world seemed to freeze. Clark felt his heart pound like an explosion in his chest.
Bang!
A violent gust of wind whipped up Olivia's hair. She stared blankly, unable to process what had just happened. When her perception caught up, Clark was gone. The live footage on her phone spiked in volume, a civillian screamed in terror as a beam of red energy carved through her stomach.
Clark flew faster than he ever had before. His super-hearing was pushed to the limit, filtering out unimportant noise and searching for the sounds of carnage. It didn't take him long to find the battle.
Clark swooped down from the air. A sonic boom trailed several miles behind him. The sheer speed of his flight had detonated the air as he passed through it.
The invading aliens had green skin and ugly antennae like appendages. There were thousands of them, pouring out from glowing orange portals.
Clark tore through a group of the aliens. Their bones and organs splattered across his clothes. He didn't care. His face was covered by a mask he'd made the previous day using Samantha's powers. The mask didn't have any joins, it was a single piece of moulded and reinforced steel.
Out of the corner of his eye, Clark spotted another superhero arriving to the battlefield. The hero wore a blue and yellow suit and had dark hair. He recognised them from TV, it was Invincible, or Mark, who's body he was currently using.
Clark flew directly through a line of the green aliens. He curved in mid air and tore through one of their vehicles. The unknown technology exploded in a shower of fire and broken metal.
Clark's arrival to the battlefield had immediately drawn the focus of the invading aliens. They poured down laser fire on him. He felt the impacts as the beams struck, they were pathetically weak.
Clark never wanted to hide his presence. He wanted the aliens to notice him. If they were busy shooting at him, then they wouldn't be able to shoot at his dad.
His plan had worked.
'There!' Clark spotted his dad fleeing the chaos.
One of the invading aliens levelled their weapon towards David. The alien had a cruel smile on its face.
"No!" Clark roared.
His hand ripped through the alien's chest. He grabbed its weapon and crushed it in his bloodied hand. He discarded the ruined gun by hurling it at one of the other aliens. The enormous force behind the throw caused the weapon to tear straight through.
Clark's figure blurred again. He swept up his dad into his arms. He took off into the air, shielding his dad from the attacking laser fire with his back. He flew quickly, but he didn't dare go too fast in case the high-speed damaged his dad's fragile human body. Humans weren't meant to accelerate suddenly to mach speed.
The battle was raging. People were screaming and running for their lives. The beams fired by the aliens' guns moved too quickly for a human to stand any chance of dodging.
Clark didn't care. He flew back the way he'd came, clutching his dad tight against his chest. The sounds of carnage vanished in an instant. They were replaced by the shrill howl of the wind.
Clark touched down on the doorstep of their house. He gently placed his dad on the ground. David's mind was still reeling from the suddeness of the invasion and high-speed flight. His mouth moved, but he didn't manage to form any words.
"David!" Olivia cried out. She stumbled as she ran. She fell to her knees and hugged her husband's body as tightly as she could.
Olivia looked from her husband to her son. She couldn't see his eyes beneath his mask, "Thank you."
"Stay here. I'll come back." Clark said. His voice was completely devoid of emotion.
He took off into the air. He was gone before either of his parents could react.
It barely took him ten seconds to return to the battlefield. Mark, the real Mark, was struggling under a relentless barrage of laser fire.
'He's holding back?'
Clark knew exactly how strong Mark was. If he wanted, Mark could've torn through the invading aliens like they were made of paper. Clark couldn't understand why he would hold back? The invading aliens were killing people, lives were being lost every single second. How could he hold back at a time like this?
Clark's resolve hardened further. If Mark was determined to hold back, then he would slaughter even more fiercely.
A sonic boom swept through the ruined city streets. Clark knifed through the air like a beast let loose from its chains. The inhuman durability of his body made him a living weapon. He simply crashed through the aliens, shredding them on impact.
The aliens began to die in large numbers. They couldn't even react fast enough to draw their guns before Clark tore them into pieces.
Bzzz!
Clark heard a low hum. He turned and identified the source as a large alien tank. The tank had an enormous barrel that was crackling with ominous red energy.
He accelerated violently. The tank was right in his path. Before the enormous gun could fire, he tore through it. The low hum stopped immediately.
One of the aliens screeched an order. On the other side of the portal, the invading aliens hurriedly sent through several more tanks. The tracks of the enormous vehicles mercilessly crushed the aliens that were too slow to move out of the way.
Clark continued to rampage across the battlefield. He was unstoppable. His hands were wet and slippery from blood and guts. His shirt was in tatters and one of his trouser legs had dissapeared completely.
Mark fought too, but his efforts were pathetic in comparison to Clark. It didn't matter how strong he was, if he was too timid to use his full strength.
There was no physical difference between Mark and Clark. They were equally strong, and fast. In fact, thanks to his flight training with his father, Mark's maximum speed actually could've exceeded Clark's.
But Mark fought like a child, he allowed panic and hesitation to make him slow and stupid. Clark fought with fury. If he hadn't arrived in time, he might never have seen his dad again. This thought spurred him to slaughter with an almost desperate ferocity.
A team of heroes arrived to the battlefield. Clark immediately recognised one of them as Samantha. She was better known as Atom-Eve.
The newly arrived heroes immediately started to help. Atom-Eve used her powers to create enormous glowing pink defences and Rex-Splode laughed maniacally as he hurled out explosive charges. Dupli-Kate focused on evacuating the terrified civillians. The mysterious silver-masked hero was attracting most of the aliens' firepower. This left her and her clones free to move across the battlefield without being immediately gunned down by laser beams.
Clark didn't know how many of the aliens he'd killed. In Mark's body, he didn't even feel tired, or fatigued. The laser beams that were fatal to a normal person, felt like feathers brushing against his skin.
With the Teen Team, the mysterious silver-masked hero, and Invincible working together, the civillian death toll finally stopped rising.
Clark was pleased that the rest of the civillians had been evacuated from the battlefield. It meant that he didn't have to spread his attention to saving people. He could focus solely on destruction.
"Itek ni! Itek ni!" One of the aliens screeched.
Clark was completely immersed in his bloodlust. The only person on the battlfield who was fast enough to percieve his movements was Invincible. The technology that the aliens had initially used to kill humans by the dozen was useless. Clark simply flew right through every obstacle in his path.
The momentum of the battlfield changed completely. It was a one-sided slaughter. The aliens were dwindling rapidly, Clark was killing them faster than they could emerge from their portals.
A new change took place on the battlefield. Without warning, the invading aliens began to turn grey. Their skin shrivelled and their eyes became cloudy. They collapsed weakly to the ground, their weapons clattering uselessly at their feet.
The alien commander of the invasion screeched an order. His soldiers desperately sprinted back towards their portals. They were running for their lives, trying to return to their world before the unseen force killed them.
The alien commander raised his fist furiously. He shouted something and then dissapeared into the portal. The glowing orange circle snapped shut behind him.
Teen Team assembled in front of the space where the portal had just vanished.
Rex-Splode was the first to speak. He leaned forwards and rested his hands on his knees, panting, "I don't know what just happened, but I think I speak for everyone here when I say that I never want it to happen ever again!"
A grey alien groaned behind him. It was slumped weakly over one of its species' ruined tanks. Rex-Splode turned and delivered an irritated punch to the alien's face.
"Well done, everyone. We owe you a great deal, masked hero, you have saved many lives." Robot addressed the silver-masked hero. Invincible stood to one side, despite his shockingly similar build to the silver-masked hero, he didn't even have a tenth of the same presence.
Clark silently looked between the members of the Teen Team. He stopped on Invincible.
He felt multiple new powers emerge inside his mind. He'd copied Dupli-Kate's cloning ability, and Rex-Splode's ability to fill objects with explosive charge. He hadn't recieved anything from Robot. It didn't seem like his powers could work on a non-living thing.
Clark thought of his parents back home. He didn't feel in the mood to talk. He was also aware that he was currently using Mark's body. The only thing preventing the Teen Team from seeing his true identity was the mask.
To the astonishment of Invincible and the Teen Team, the silver-masked hero gave a thumbs up gesture, followed by a goodbye wave. Then he shot upwards into the sky.
Rex-Splode snorted, "So he likes to kill but doesn't like to talk! Asshole! And hey, don't you think he looks a hell of a lot like the other guy? You got a brother or something new guy?"
The last bit of his sentence was aimed at Invincible.
"No, I've no idea who that was." Mark answered in a voice of geniune confusion.
Rex-Splode was nearly always insulting someone or something, but no one could deny the obvious similarities between Invincible and the silver-masked hero. Other than the silver-masked hero having a clear lust for blood, his abilities and appearance were practically identical to Invincible.
"Who even are you anyways? If you are that guy's brother or something, you clearly have different parents!" Rex-Splode directed another question towards Invincible.
The Teen Team had seen the footage from the past couple weeks of a hero in a yellow and blue suit thwarting several villains and stopping some violent crimes, but none of them actually knew his name.
Mark swallowed nervously, "I'm uh-Invincible."
Rex-Splode erupted into hyena like laughter, "That's the funniest fucking thing I ever heard! Brilliant, just brilliant! Nice to meet you Invincible, might as well call me mr fucking indestructible!"
Atom-Eve elbowed her boyfriend in the ribs. Rex-Splode yelped in pain and looked immediately aggrieved, "Don't be such a dick Rex! He's new at this, he did good, more people would've died if he wasn't here!"
Rex-Splode waved his hand dimmisively. He turned and started to walk away. He replied without looking back, "Yeah, yeah, more people would've died if I hadn't wiped my ass this morning as well!"