...
Derrick entered Earth like a falling thought silent, deliberate, unannounced.
He touched down near an American coastal air station, concrete dimpling beneath his feet as gravity folded politely around him, remembering his mass without his gravity field would .
Radar screamed. Jets circled but did not fire. Orders were being argued over in real time.
Then the ground shook.
A crimson comet slammed into the tarmac a few dozen meters away, skidding to a halt in a plume of fire and warped steel.
Thunderbolt Ross rose from the impact crater, Red Hulk in full manifestation veins glowing like molten fault lines, eyes burning with a general's certainty.
"Son," Ross rumbled, cracking his neck, "you picked the wrong planet to freelance on."
Derrick turned slowly, studying him not as an enemy, but as a case study.
Ross stepped closer, soldiers fanning out behind reinforced barriers, repulsor cannons tracking Derrick's center mass.
"We don't know what you are," Ross continued, voice booming. "Alien. Mutate. Walking biohazard. But we do know how this goes. You cooperate. You submit to government oversight. We run tests radiation, viral vectors, dimensional contamination."
He leaned in, teeth bared in a grin under his trimmed mustache that wasn't friendly.
"And if you're clean? You work for us."
Derrick laughed.
Not loudly. Not mockingly.
Just… amused.
"Submit?" Derrick said. "General mustache, you mistake my arrival for a request."
Ross's smile vanished.
Derrick bent his knees, the air filled with the icon vibrating sounds of the black light as he prepared to leave
"NOW," Ross roared.
The sky ignited.
Cruise missiles screamed down in coordinated arcs, hypersonic rounds following milliseconds later. Derrick didn't dodge. He didn't shield.
He let them hit.
Fire swallowed him. Shockwaves flattened hangars. Soldiers cheered briefly.
"that thing's definitely out of the equation" a soldier said smirking....
Then Derrick walked out of the smoke, skin unmarked, eyes bright with analytical interest.
Red Hulk had appeared mid explosion and didn't wait.
Ross charged, fist the size of a tank slamming into Derrick's ribs with continent-cracking force. Derrick skidded backward, biomass carving trenches through concrete. Another punch. Then another.
Ross laughed. "That's all you've...
Derrick caught the next punch.
The shockwave still detonated outward, shattering windows for miles but Ross's arm stopped cold, locked in Derrick's grip.
Ross's eyes widened.
Derrick leaned forward and headbutted him lightly .
The impact rang like a struck bell.
Red Hulk flew backward, tumbling end over end before slamming unconscious into a carrier tower.
Derrick didn't finish him.
He looked up instead.
The sky darkened.
Clouds twisted inward as Derrick raised both hands.
Electricity screamed down from the ionosphere, compressed by gravity manipulation into blinding coherence. Lightning collapsed into plasma, white-blue, screaming and unstable.
He fired.
A beam carved across the airfield, vaporizing tanks, slicing aircraft in half, turning reinforced bunkers into molten silhouettes. Soldiers ran. Some didn't, because the didn't exist any more .
Then Derrick vanished upward, leaving ruin and silence behind.
.....
THE WORLD WATCHES
In hidden rooms and gilded towers, the footage replayed.
The Illuminati watched in grim silence Reed Richards' fingers steepled, Namor scowling, Doctor Strange feeling the fabric of reality ache.
Reed: "He's not escalating randomly. He's responding to authority."
Strange: "Authority tends to do that."
...
Government war rooms erupted in panic and blame.
Villains watched with fascination.
Kingpin smiled thinly.
Doom's mask reflected plasma light not stressed one bit for he is Doom .
Mr. Sinister clapped slowly, delighted that his future specimen is showing promising results....
On Krakoa, mutants felt it like a storm in their bones.
Storm closed her eyes, breath heavy unsteady, sweat rolling down her soft skin . "That wasn't normal lighting manipulation."
Jean shuddered. "He's not angry. That's worse."
ELSEWHERE – THE AVENGERS MOVE
Tony Stark stood in his lab, face hard, as nanotech flowed over him like liquid mercury.
Stark: "Okay. No more polite probing. No more 'maybe he's friendly.'"
The armor locked into place his strongest suit, built to fight gods, Celestials, and mistakes.
Stark: "We sanction him. Containment if possible. Knockout if not."
The thrusters flared.
High above, Derrick hovered in the clouds, already aware of the incoming signature bright, fast, confident.
He smiled faintly.
"Another form of authority," he murmured. "Let's see how this one negotiates."