In the dark, there was nothing but flashes. A sensation of something awry, of violence, of thoughts conjoining and intermingling, like an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force. Neither could give, and something had to if the stalemate were to cease. So in the end, they both did, slamming together to become something greater than they ever were apart.
I had the firmest impression of a line being erased before oblivion overtook me once again.
Coming awake wasn't quick. It came in waves, as a sensation not unlike being carried on a great wave swept over me. Much like I was floating on the surface of water, a gentle sway was the first thing that I was cognizant of. Then, as soon as it appeared, it was gone, leaving me settled on the ground beneath me, and I was cradled by something soft.
Cool air drifted over my skin. Not the familiar brush of my covers and sheets against me, but something far more natural. It was alarming, to be sure, as I sat up hastily, breathing hard, and took in the world around me.
When I opened my eyes, it was to a deep blue sky and crisp, clean air in my lungs. Despite the fact that I was in an unfamiliar place, lying in the grass, and even despite the fact that my body felt different in ways that were difficult to classify…I wasn't panicking. I was breathing hard, yes, but the kind of typical, spiraling panic that should have overtaken me was absent.
In its place was something more casual, cool, and collected. My intellect, my racing mind, was furiously working to take stock of everything around me, as if every single detail were fundamentally a matter of life and death. A flow of information that might have seemed too much if it weren't for the fact that somehow, I could register it all at once.
And that wasn't even mentioning the hum.
There was a hum in my veins, underneath my skin, reverberating through my bone marrow. From the ends of my hair to my toes, flowing more concretely the more I concentrated on it with each passing second. Nor was it the only change that I could recognize, as I took in slow, deep breaths.
Before I'd awoken, my sight was aggressively average. Perhaps a little worse than average, given my penchant for years of staring at tiny electronic screens straining my vision. Like everyone else in my generation, I considered it a fair deal so that I could laugh at Newgrounds cartoons and shitpost online. And then in an instant, that had changed.
Everything in my gaze was crisp, clear, and in the kind of high definition that would have beaten digital cameras flat out. I could see the individual particles of pollen and dust suffusing the air, the crevices and cracks in the bark of the trees around me, and the bends or breaks in the grass. Honestly, I must have looked like an idiot for as long as I stared around me, taking in the criminally picturesque forest glade that I'd landed in.
Or maybe my new eyes, a newly upgraded view of the world, were literally still waylaying me. Not for the first time, I finally understood what those 20/20 bastards were so smug about. If I could have seen this good for my entire life, I too would have been a certain kind of smug.
Of course, it wasn't the only one of my senses that had been keyed up to a new height. When I opened my mouth, I could practically taste the earthy undertones in the air or the faintest hint of pollution. My ears picked up the soft trill of birdsong far from where I was sitting or the distant rustle of something moving through the underbrush and canopy. Scents, like the distantly sappy aroma of wood, wet grass, and more besides.
Sight, touch, taste, hearing, and smell—every aspect primed in a manner that almost made me feel cursed and blessed in equal measure. And it wasn't the only thing weighing on me in that moment, as I tried to gather my bearings. I was just trying to ignore the elephant in the room; that meant I'd have to come to grips with what was going on, whatever that might have been.
For a few moments, I sat, doing my level best to keep my limbs and clothing out of my view. And then when I couldn't ignore reality any more, I looked inward. To the deluge of memories and knowledge that was lurking there like a gargoyle, patiently awaiting the moment when I couldn't avoid the issue.
My memory, my mind, had… I hesitated to call it a partition or a division. That implied that there was some sharp, impassable divide in who I was, my morals, my values, and how I saw the world. It made it seem like there was this other I was sharing space with when that wasn't the case.
My name is Johnathan Spiers. Twenty-three years of memories existed, persisted, and predominated, unequivocally, as the controlling interest in my gray matter. When I went to sleep the night before, it was in a crappy one-bedroom apartment with a faulty AC, worrying about normal things. My mother nagging me to move on from my last failed relationship, my father's prodding for a small loan he'd pay back, and the mundane debris of real life swirling around inside of me.
It was such a painstaking life of singular normality that I did my best to pretend it didn't bother me. That wasn't up for debate or equivocation, but it came with something new, something unusual, as a hundred and one years of another life sat passively, present but subdued.
My name is also Ōtsutsuki Genji, as paradoxical as it was to be two people at once. And yet…
Ōtsutsuki Genji was a Servant of the Ōtsutsuki Clan and mindlessly loyal in the fashion that only a sheep raised for the slaughter could be. All of his hopes, dreams, talents, and aspirations were secondary to his role as a catalyst for his Master to gain access to the chakra fruit and walk the road to true immortality. He was trained for his part in some sort of fucked-up, demonic cultivation ritual and never once asked why.
Instead, he marched on with the perseverance of a man who believed wholeheartedly his life would be worth something. And then something went awry, or conspicuously right, depending on how you viewed it. All of the Ōtsutsuki relied on one primary form of transportation, the Yomotsu Hirasaka. They used it habitually, without thought, as the technique served as the progenitor for all time-space ninjutsu.
There was just one problem with that habit of theirs. I was relying heavily on the part of me that was now Genji to try and make an educated guess as to what had happened. Because the part of me, the man, Jonathan, had the benefit of the outside perspective on the situation and could take some guesses at what happened.
The Ōtsutsuki were not very smart.
Don't get me wrong, each was an otherworldly prodigy with the handling and manipulation of chakra. Even the weakest of their clan could beat a lot of races in fiction like a rented drum. The problem was more fundamental than that, seeing as they were also…idiot savants. They had shinjutsu and special bullshit eyes from birth. All of them had the capacity for research, but a lot of them just straight up didn't.
Let alone someone who was specifically raised for slaughter and knew just enough to be a respectable member of the clan but not enough to practically threaten his betters.
Which still made me, Genji, stupidly dangerous in every sense of the word. Disgustingly so, but that meant mistakes could be made. The kind that was the space alien demon cultivator equivalent of texting while driving, in the kind of impossible chance that I might have collided with some other human and fused with them.
Chakra was fucking weird, alright? It could bring back the dead, unlock the natural limiters of the body, heal, and do stranger things besides. The Ōtsutsuki were already pushing the boundaries of what could be done with the system to begin with, and that was putting it gently. Now I was the end result, with the dedicated, loyal Ōtsutsuki Genji's personality thoroughly gone.
Fused with me, by happenstance and just an incredibly unlucky roll of the dice. Or maybe it was more accurate to say I was him? We were together, and where Genji should have dominated me by the dint of his massive memories, I somehow managed to come out on top. Looking down on my pasty white hands, I didn't have the faintest fucking clue how that was the case.
Did something go wrong, even more so than being spliced with an alien genocide enthusiast? Or horribly right, looking out over the green, pristine wilderness that I'd found myself in?
However I felt, whatever was running through my mind, staying where I was just wasn't in the cards. I needed to go somewhere, move, do something to work out this nervous energy, and get my mind revolving around anything that just wasn't a pity party for me. Besides that fact, I needed to figure out where the hell I was.
Thankfully, there was another ability of the Ōtsutsuki that would come in handy right about now.
For the humans of Naruto's world, the ability to fly with chakra was a legendary ability. Just being able to float and hover made Onoki ten times more dangerous than he would have been otherwise, truly. However, for the Ōtsutsuki, they could do it without any real effort, flying at speeds that would beggar belief through the air.
With an errant thought, I molded the chakra coursing through my body and lifted off of the grass by a few inches. And then, in that instant, a grin that I couldn't fight began to drift across my features. There were a lot of things objectively fucked up about my situation, but I got the feeling that this wasn't going to be one of the myriad of issues I disliked.
Not as I began to race upward, soaring through the sky with a thunder crack as I began to zoom.
The ceremonial robes I wore whipped through the wind as I rose higher and higher, until I could survey the entire forest that I'd woken up in. Higher, until I could see the shape of the country that I was in; just barely, with the cold of the heights a total nonfactor. High enough that as I held myself high, in the clouds, I could feel something like…
What was this strange feeling blossoming in my chest? For the first time in both of my lives, in both of the recollections of the man and the monster that combined to make me, I felt something new. A warm, wild sensation that boiled up from my throat as laughter began to pour out of me.
Was this what it felt like to be free?
Unbound by the air, flying like a bird, unmoored by gravity. I could see the rough shape of what I suspected was one of the Great Lakes off in the distance. That, and a massive metropolitan area that was sprawling out. It seemed as good of a destination as any to try and figure out what the hell was the nature of the world I'd been dropped into.
So hovering there, I pivoted, finding it novel to be able to create my own leverage wherever I wished. Orienting myself toward my goal, I propelled forward, this time deciding to take a more leisurely flight there. Obviously I had to get used to my new body and abilities, right? If there was a gigantic, beaming smile on my face the entire time, that was between me and God.
The world was beautiful.
All of the aspects of me that were the Servant, the loyal sacrifice, could only see the life that covered the Earth as a means to an end. How vibrant it was, how luscious the chakra fruit created from it could be, and things of that nature. Purely utilitarianism, from beginning to end. For not the last time, I was incredibly thankful that the niggling voice was a passive perspective in my mind.
Because it allowed me to appreciate the little things as I soared through the air. The sensation of the wind against my skin, running through my hair as I soared at speeds that would have proven unthinkable to the guy that I used to be. Nothing but my own vast reserves of chakra fueled my flight, and I was certainly taking care to avoid running into any planes as I enjoyed the moment.
A task made easier by the fact that I'd properly activated my eyes.
My Byakugan was active, but unlike Neji, Hanabi, or Hinata, I wasn't the result of a diluted bloodline that had been watered down over the generations. Biologically, I was their forebear, with all of the genetic dominance that came with it. My brain was being fed a steady stream of sensory information for hundreds of miles all around, giving me a pretty good glimpse of my environment.
It was the kind of capacity to see the greater whole that would have eluded me before. Countless people, animals, and other living things, great and small, bound together in an interconnected web of life. There was good and evil and everything in between, resting in my hindbrain, fed by a steady flow of chakra for a few brief moments before I cut it off.
There was only so much sex, violence, and general mundanity that I could withstand in a given moment before it was too much for even me to parse. Likely it was better to keep that ability off until I'd properly gotten the hang of it. It wasn't until I was in the middle of the city that I landed, and began to take a walkabout.
For the most part, everything I might have feared simply just wasn't coming to pass. The world that I'd found myself on was Earth, more or less, maybe right around when I'd been absconded from my own planet. There wasn't anything too insane, at least at a first glance, that I could see with normal vision or when I had my enhanced sight activated.
Of course, that wasn't the only thing I was taking note of. Especially the way I had eyes on me.
The way I drew attention, walking down the street, was the way sunflowers instinctively oriented themselves toward the sun. Despite the sheer, unmitigated arrogance of that statement, I couldn't help but notice its truthfulness. It didn't matter that so many of my features were inhuman or otherwise alien.
Humans were, and I was speaking from a healthy amount of experience, exceptionally xenophilic toward the uncanny and inhuman. Especially if said target of their attention was unspeakably, unmistakably attractive. For the first time in my life I was getting gauging stares from women, and all I had to do was become handsome to an ungodly degree.
There was probably a parable or lesson to be learned about this entire situation somewhere, but I'd be damned if I could remember one that fit.
With pursed lips I looked around, taking in the streets of the city. Everything seemed remarkably normal, but there was just something off about Chicago in a way that I wasn't able to describe. The people looked normal, the city more or less looked like the scant few pictures I could recall from my old life, yet I could swear I was genuinely missing something. Like the fact that up to this point, I didn't know what I even looked like.
Something to rectify, as I swiftly moved to the nearest skyscraper with reflective windows, to inspect my features. The face that greeted me was the same, yet so starkly different as to take my breath away.
I wasn't a bad-looking guy by any metric of the imagination, but the old me might as well have been a real uggo. My snow-white skin was flawless, the kind of physiological perfection that people around the world normally chased with years of skincare routines. Symmetrical, without a singular marring mark that might have hinted at some sort of latent embarrassment during puberty, like acne or shaving scars.
Whereas my eyes, my formerly deep brown eyes, were now a clear, uniform lavender, with no sign of a pupil in sight. Staring back at me was the Byakugan, the starting dōjutsu that everyone in the clan was born with. It could theoretically evolve into different states, but if we were being honest about it, I didn't have the faintest clue how that might have practically worked outside of eating a chakra fruit.
For obvious reasons, like the fact that I wasn't an inhuman monster, that was out.
The black hair that was formerly messy and untamed was not only painstakingly glossy but also hued a light pale blue. Sprouting from the top of my forehead, equidistant from each other, were two short, impish horns, firmly sprouting from my temples. What was more impressive and fascinating was the other fact of the matter that I now had to come to grips with.
Unmistakably, I was stupidly handsome. My jaw was firm, my pupil-less eyes were exotic instead of eerie and unsettling, and almost everything about my facial physiognomy seemed designed to evoke the kind of bishounen pretty-boy charm that I'd entirely lacked in my prior life.
That might have been the thing that made me crack. I could live with having senses that were superhuman or a body that was evidently capable of a mythical level of strength, speed, and durability. But the fact that my face was not my face made me feel…
I didn't know how it made me feel, honestly. To call the emotions running through me complex and tempestuous was something of an understatement. While the surface expression was neutral and placid, only the faintest crease of my eyebrows could give away the inner turmoil that was going on.
It certainly explained why people weren't running away, screaming, and yelling from seeing me walk around. Despite my alien features, I was a lot hotter than I'd originally been. Pretty privilege was a very real thing, and being inhuman might have heightened the aesthetic rather than diminished it.
I'd seen the covers of enough romantasy novels to know what people were into. Whatever. With a sigh, I landed back down to the ground and kept on walking before stopping at something that made my nose tingle.
A familiar scent of a hot dog stand and an older Hispanic guy manning the station. I didn't really feel like I needed to eat, yet I also did feel as if I did my best thinking when I was snacking on something.
…Maybe this was why I used to be so chubby.
"Hello there!" I greeted the man, who looked my way and startled briefly, before regaining his cool. "How much for those hot dogs?"
"Ah…" He trailed off, blinking a little. "A few bucks, depending on what fixings you want on it."
"Well, I'd like…" I trailed off, looking down at my robes and coming to realize that there weren't any goddamn pockets in the things. It occurred to me in that moment that I was, in fact, spectacularly broke.
My mind had survived the transition across realities and fused with a century-old evil alien. Yet somehow, none of my other belongings had managed to make it with me. Frustrating, to say the least. It was all I could do to give the man a sheepish smile. "Ah. Maybe next time. It's my first time on Earth, and I don't appear to have any of your…currency."
"You're an alien?" He asked, glancing me up and down.
"Effectively as far as you're concerned, yes."
"Then…" The man gave a huff, closing his eyes and beginning to pluck one of his hot dogs from the tray. "I'll call it a welcome to Earth discount and give ya' one for free. Just make sure to shop here in the future, eh?"
The milk of human kindness! The salt of the earth! What a saint this guy was, truly. I was touched by it, as I took the bun and dog from him with a broad grin. "From me to you, I swear that on my name. Thank you."
Somehow, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. I walked off and transitioned to flight midstep, moving up toward the skyscrapers to properly get a nice view of the city while I ate. There was nothing quite like some food and a good vista to clear your mind and let you put your priorities in order.
My first real course of action should be figuring out more about the world and maybe getting into contact with some authorities. While I didn't think that I could be bullied into compliance by shadowy government agencies, if this wasn't my planet, I didn't see a reason to be needlessly combative about making some kind of deal for sanctuary. Provided they didn't ask anything too morally onerous of me, it'd perhaps even be a relief.
Nearly finished with my hot dog, I almost didn't feel the disturbance in the world. Something like a cut in the time-space fabric of the local area, as my alien sensitivity to those sorts of things made my skin prickle. Without wasting a second, I activated my Byakugan and let all of that sensory information that I'd been holding back flood into me.
The deluge was a little disorienting, maybe even worse now, being in the middle of the city. My best guess concerning my range was that I could accurately pinpoint where nearly everyone in the state was and maybe a little beyond it, so my confusion could be forgiven on that front. However, certain things immediately stood out to me.
Large, swirling rips in space and time were open somewhere downtown. And coming streaming out were…soldiers, but not human ones. I was already moving before I could even make the conscious thought as I stepped through a black plane, instantly appearing from the skyscraper I'd been snacking on to hovering above the scene of this strange and impromptu invasion.
If I'd only been a human still, I might have frozen with fright and terror. Understandably so, given that it wasn't every day that someone was confronted with what was ostensibly some kind of alien invasion. One that, given the sheer glee and hostility that the strange green creatures seemed to wield toward humanity.
Some armies came to conquer, to enslave, to steal. Whatever the casus belli these invaders possessed, they were being far more callous than I'd thought possible. Shooting, killing, and maiming with their weaponry. The kind of easy, careless effort toward eliminating the civilians around them spoke of having done it countless times before.
All of me that used to be Johnathan felt overwhelmed. But the new me, the one merged with the Ōtsutsuki years of experience and training, knew what to do. There were people at risk, and frankly, I didn't have to think further than that. Not at this moment, as the space between my floating position high in the sky and the invader's onslaught disappeared in under a second.
One moment they were free to attack, and in the next, I was there. Between them and the innocents that they'd chosen to gun down like wild animals. Some of them startled, and I could see their green faces and black sclera focus on me, my presence, before sneers and cruel expressions came across their humanoid features.
Then someone took a shot at me.
A normal human would have died from the searing light that erupted forth from their advanced weapons. I didn't even flinch as the bolt slammed into my cheekbone, with the faintest hint of heat dispersing just as quickly as it had arrived. Then another, a multitude, as they hit across my torso, legs, and arms; all of them as harmful as a warm breeze.
It was in that moment I perhaps could internalize the truth of what an Ōtsutsuki was. Biological weapons, unyielding engines that ran on little more than chakra and inhuman will. My gaze swept over them and found their existence wanting.
For the first time in my new life, wherever I was, the man I was and the alien I'd become were in total concert. Whatever I was now, whatever might happen to me after this, it went without saying that I'd never been the type of person to walk away from an atrocity like this. Or people who needed my help.
When I moved again, it was as if the world were in slow motion. The bolts of suppressive fire came my way, and the snarls of these monsters as they found themselves at odds with an immovable object as I reinforced my body with chakra. With a raised hand, I molded the energies inside of me and focused my will.
"Hyōton," I spoke, more for myself as old reflexes rushed back to me. "Swallow Snow Storm."
And under my will, the cold answered.
From the sheer moisture in the air, ice formed, innumerable needles of freezing cold in the form of shifting swallows. First a mass the size of a truck, but growing increasingly so with each passing second until it began to blot out the sun above us. A flock that grew until only fingers of sunlight peeked through the crystalline forms as I looked out at the army marching out onto these formerly peaceful streets.
"Perish."
Like a rain of hail, the needles came down, shattering through whatever obstacles were in their way. Debris, armor, flesh and bone, brain and viscera. Nothing stopped the chakra-enhanced projectiles that I'd created, as a sound not unlike breaking glass filled the air. And if that was all I'd done, maybe that would have been enough to force a retreat.
Yet from one alien invader to another, I understood implicitly that all dissent had to be crushed completely. One thing that I'd taken from my time with the Clan, despite the dubious origin of the information. It was a cold, inhuman set of thought processes.
That didn't make it incorrect.
My body blurred into motion as the intervening space between myself and the nearest alien ceased to exist. I flew, and the only thing that kept me from going fast enough to break the sound barrier was my restraint for the civilians still around here. Most of them would have ample opportunity to get away now, especially seeing as their attackers now have much bigger problems to contend with.
Especially when I was among them.
Fists flew with the easy, preternatural grace of someone used to melee combat. The difference was my taijutsu at least was designed for superhuman combatants. Whoever these idiots were, they weren't strong enough to put up any kind of genuine fight. I knew that, logically, from the way a simple shinjutsu had left destroyed bodies in its wake.
Yet even so, even as I had stood in the midst of corpses, I found myself adding to the pile. Limbs were broken beyond repair with an almost absentminded tap on my part. Heads crushed to a pulp, sending gore flying. And if it was happening one at a time, perhaps they could have rallied together.
But instead as they blinked, as they moved in their slow, ponderous, insect-like ways, they had the opportunity to only feel horror. The sudden realization of my power every time I struck multiple times within a span of seconds. Faster than they could conceive of the strikes occurring, there were dead, green bodies flying through the air.
Their massive, hulking machines could be pulled apart with ease as I fueled chakra to my muscles. All of their greatest weapons slamming into me with only the slightest feedback to even tell me I'd been hit, presuming I didn't open a portal and return the attacks to the senders in the first place. It was here I learned another, more important lesson about this new body of mine.
I now lived in a world of cardboard people.
Maybe I wasn't Kryptonian, but I understood the general difficulties one might have walking amongst the human race now. Or any race that lacked their incredible, stupendous power. I was powerful in the way that only another Ōtsutsuki or Ōtsutsuki hybrid could hope to match. It was a buoying feeling as the tide began to turn.
It started in ones and twos before steadily increasing as the invasion started to turn into a rout. That initial surety of purpose gave way to panic, a real, frenzied animal need to escape, as they started to run. To flee, even as one amongst their number started to try and rally them together. I saw him too, doing his level best to instill order in the presumed ranks of the aliens.
Then, with a contemptuous ease, I formed a needle of ice and flicked it his way. In an instant he was dead, the shard having burrowed into his brain through his eye as he collapsed on the spot.
However, I was starting to realize something else going awry with their efforts at the same time. A slow, ungraceful aging began to take place the longer they were standing around. That arguably was an even quicker cause for their drive to escape. Maybe they had been that callous to throw numbers my way and assumed I'd get tired eventually.
When the last one was through the portal, the city streets of Chicago lay filled with the dead and the dying. Corpses, some from those humans unlucky enough to be caught at the initial ground zero, but mostly those of the green-skinned bug-men who'd been unfortunate enough to be caught by me. Logic dictated that I should have been disgusted by the charnel house that the streets had become, but…
It was hard to feel that strongly about much of anything. My emotions were present, to be clear. I felt them, strongly in some cases, yet it was more like I was looking at them through a display case. They could be pulled out, inspected, and then neatly put back in without compromising my judgement.
Floating there, hands behind my back, the only thing I felt with any real strength was an uncomplicated satisfaction at a job well done.
…Hmm.
Was this a me thing, or an Ōtsutsuki thing?
My musings were stopped by the sound of a figure flying through the air and coming my way. Glancing over, I focused my attention on them properly, and not just with my Byakugan activated. They were lean, if fit, with short, black hair and wearing a…costume? A genuine, whole-ass superhero costume, clinging tightly to the contours of their build.
Blue, yellow, and black were the predominant hues that dominated, as I glanced over at them with no small amount of befuddlement clear in my expression.
"What are you wearing?" The incredulousness was clear as day in my voice as I looked them up and down curiously.
"W-What?" Out of everything that he might have been expecting, that seemed to have thrown him off the most. "What, no, stop, did you kill all of these people?"
I paused before gesturing to the aliens. "Do you mean these invaders…? Well, in fairness, they did try to kill me first. And actually accomplished slaying quite a few humans before I intervened."
"So you just slaughtered them?!" He seemed more indignant than anything else, working himself up into a lather. Or maybe it was my own casual demeanor about the matter that had him acting like this.
Flicking away the blood on my hands with a swipe of my arm, I gave him a half-shrug with my other. "It was the most expedient way to handle the threat." Even as I said the words, they didn't feel like they came entirely from me. "Was I supposed to do anything but end things as decisively as possible when lives were at stake? I'm new to this planet, so I apologize if my actions were…unreasonable."
"Listen, I don't know how it works on your planet, but here we don't kill people."
And then it began to dawn on me, the longer I heard him speak, how young he was. If I had to guess, he certainly wasn't older than nineteen; hell, even eighteen. The fact that he believed in his words with all of his heart was enough to give me pause, as a more painful clarity began to sweep over me.
…I was in a supers setting, wasn't I?
Only a superhero would have such an earnest, if naive, view of alien invaders killing random people in downtown Chicago. My options here, admittedly, were rather limited. Nor did I wish to really go on the run, not when I didn't know the score for the rest of the world. With a sigh, I lifted my hands and gave him a small smile.
"Then I apologize for my actions and surrender myself into your custody. I believe you Earthlings have a saying for this…?"
"We do?" He startled, though that might have been more from my surrender than anything else.
"Yes. Take me to your leader."
There. Nailed it. Now it was time to hopefully meet someone who could possibly get some answers to me. Hopefully whatever inevitable shadowy government organization was running in the background here was competent. Less P.R.T., and more…
Wait, fuck, I didn't think there was a singular group in fiction that fit those specific requirements. Whatever. Someone had to get lucky with competently run organizations eventually. Let's just hope I had the luck to meet the first.
Cecil
"What do we have, Donald?"
There was a comfort in the routine of grilling Donald for answers, if only because little about their current situation was making Cecil feel at ease. Not a singular bit, as he looked at their newest, extraterrestrial subject sat on the other side of the observation room glass. Comfortable, but not too comfortable, with several chairs on either side of a stainless steel table.
With his eyes closed, Cecil couldn't spot a singular worry on the man's features. If there was any hostility, aggression, or confusion to be found, it wasn't evident on their guest's alien face. Compared to their other interactions with visitors beyond their globe, however, this one was shaping up to be a touch more polite.
Martian Man had been part of the Guardians of the Globe but had never well and truly integrated, in truth, into the mechanisms and structures of the Earth. He'd stayed at a distance, maintaining politeness with the governments of Earth and the GDA as well, but never really embracing them. Nolan's arrival had been blunt and straightforward, as he simply told them that he was here to stay. No one had been keen to press him on the possibility of leaving or what turning down the Viltrumite's offer of the World Betterment Committee might actually have entailed.
By contrast, their newest alien seemed downright reasonable. Eager, even, to work within the confines of the system rather than outside of it. It sounded too good to be true; thus, it was suspect from the start.
"On his capabilities, demeanor, or the general timeline of his arrival to the planet?" Donald asked.
"Timeline first."
Holding up a tablet, the bespectacled man looked down at it, clearing his throat before he spoke. "Our earliest sighting of our visitor was when he flew from the direction of the outskirts of Chicago, clocking in at not insignificant speeds, before slowing down drastically."
Initial estimates from what they could see had him clocking in at around mach speed, or higher, and no one knew if that was his height or merely rather low for his speed.
"Then, when landing in Chicago, he walked among the civilians and caused no trouble. To our understanding he was given a free hot dog, which he took with gratitude, and then immediately flew up to a skyscraper to perch and eat." Donald paused, adjusting his glasses. "It is unknown if he was waiting for the invaders, designated Flaxans right now, or if his arrival was merely a coincidence."
"It smells fishy, but if they were his allies, I'd hate to see what he does to people he hates," Cecil pointed out. "From there?"
His main subordinate could only hesitate, as if the information on screen were a little beyond the pale. "He created cryokinetic constructs to attack the Flaxans. Some of which still have not melted, though applied heat has started the process."
A cryokinetic on this scale was, well, unheard of. But every year it seemed new threats and heroes with powers that were a cut above those who came before flooded out of the woodworks. So admittedly, maybe it wasn't that surprising when taking all of that into account.
"From there…he took the fight to the invaders with his body."
"And our best estimates on his capabilities in that regard?"
"...We're not completely sure about them, given that we were limited to CCTV footage."
Donald only danced around a topic if the numbers were bleak. "Let's work off what the estimates said."
"Strength is superhuman, at least within the range of the Immortal's heights, judging by the ease from which he manhandled the various artillery pieces brought into our dimension," Donald continued, bringing up footage of the pale-skinned blur doing just that. "In terms of speed, it's fast. Faster than Omni-Man, but that's more of a supposition."
Red Rush was technically faster than the Viltrumite, admittedly, before his unfortunate demise. However, anyone in that range of speed was certainly someone to be feared under the right circumstances. They'd have to add it to his threat assessment.
"What we can glean from his attacks was that he's, if nothing else, actually trained in combat."
Which was something that made Cecil's eyes narrow in thought. Most wielders of superhuman strength were, unsurprisingly, somewhat graceless in the way they carried out their attacks. Partially because many were outright born with the conditions and thus never learned to fight in traditional martial arts without their prodigious power behind their blows.
It meant that their guest had either learned before he was that strong or had someone that powerful and fast after to teach him proper forms. By the end of the day, this file was going to end up very thick indeed with all of the assuming they'd be doing. Though at the end of the day, there was only one truly good way to get someone's measure.
A long-suffering sigh dragged its way out of Cecil as he looked at the figure on the other side of the glass. "I'm going in, Donald."
"Sir?"
"If the man wanted to break out, he could have broken out by now. If nothing else, he's certainly strong enough to have done it with ease." Then, the balding man paused. "Just in case, have the teleportation on a quick trigger."
"Understood."
Like most unpleasant things in life, there wasn't any point in putting them off for any longer than they'd needed to. Nor did Cecil think their guest would be cracking from the isolation and pressure if he'd been willing to sit in their custody for hours on end. Compared to what Nolan had been willing to do, this was downright generous in comparison.
Entering into the interview room, the man's eyes opened, fixing Cecil with his alien stare. No pupils, just two flat, pale discs. It was odd that the first thing his mind compared them to was two moons. He'd looked worse in the face before breakfast, though, and settled at the table across from their guest.
"I'm Cecil Stedman, director for the Global Defense Agency. GDA for short. You?"
Lifting up an arm to gesture toward his own chest, the man tilted his head to the side, ever so slightly. "Ōtsutsuki Genji, or if I'm understanding your naming conventions correctly, Genji Ōtsutsuki."
That was Japanese, or at least some variant of it. Interesting, even if he wasn't entirely sure it meant anything at all. Did his people visit Earth in the past and influence ancient languages? It wouldn't be the strangest thing he'd run into during this line of work. Or it could just be some odd, cosmic coincidence, like an alien called Nolan.
"And to be clear…you're here to apply as a refugee?" It was a declaration of intent that was unusual, at least for their extraterrestrial visitors to the world. Less of an outright statement that he would be staying and more of a request.
"A refugee, yes." He paused. "Judging by some of the material I've read, I'm led to believe that's a thing here. Unless I'm mistaken?"
"Earth's something of a galactic backwater, from what I understand," Cecil tentatively spoke, eyes carefully watching the creature, man, in front of him. "Why our world?"
"Because…" There was a soft frown that came across Genji's face as his fingers drummed softly against the table. "Because I didn't control my initial choice of destination. My Clan, the Ōtsutsuki, possesses numerous capabilities. One of them is the usage of a supernatural energy resource we call chakra."
With an errant gesture, the man waved his hand and a two-dimensional, flat plane. Pure black, the kind no light could escape. It took Cecil no small amount of willpower to push down his immediate instinct to flinch back from the unknown phenomenon. "I'll pass the general mechanical explanations for how it works, mostly because you lack the requisite structures to make usage of the energy to begin with. I'll skip to the important bit that matters, in that it functions as a sort of movement capability that ranges into the multidimensional."
He wasn't so old that he couldn't fill in the blanks there. "Something went awry with your travel plans?"
"Indeed," Genji sighed, though it felt more performative than genuinely aggrieved. "I would have rather approached a world with chakra, but in the end this is better. Significantly less chance of my people catching my trail."
"I take it that'd be bad."
"My position within our clan is known as a Servant, but that's missing a lot of the nuance as a statement. Functionally, I'm meant to be sacrificed as part of a ritual to allow my Master to harvest the biological energy from every living thing on a given planet." The man opened his eyes, fixing Cecil with his pupil-less gaze. "It should be obvious why I'm less keen to be subjected to that fate."
If Genji had come speaking of platitudes, altruism, or aspirations of heroism, Cecil would have considered it suspect. But pure, good, old-fashioned self-interest in saving his own skin? Yeah, he could work with that.
And the constant feed of biometric data being streamed to him by analysts via his earpiece helped with that feeling of assurance.
"We're sitting at a 80% degree of certainty that his words and actions match up so far. His physiology isn't entirely human, and there are some anomalous structures our sensors are having trouble observing. But by and large, he's been seemingly truthful so far."
It was a gamble to trust him. But from everything they knew, Genji was strong enough that if he wanted to be a threat, he didn't need to hide it. Unless he had some sort of long con that he was running. If maybe, perhaps, all of these possibilities are weighed by more concrete realities on display.
Genji was a powerhouse. The kind of monstrous heavyweight that Earth needed more than ever before with the death of the Guardians. Was it slightly suspicious that he arrived right after their death? Yes, it was. But if he was so strong as to nominally appear here and now, without a scratch, after putting Omni-Man in the hospital, along with killing the rest of the Guardians…
Well, there was nothing Cecil was going to be able to do in the first place beyond bend over and pray.
"I'd say we can come to an arrangement if you're willing to follow along with some strings."
An amused smile drifted over the alien's face. "Such as?"
"A job, working directly under the GDA. Dealing with the kind of threats that you dealt with today, if not always so violently."
"That's a bracing proposition," Genji grinned, and his eyes shone with a hint of excitement. "Seeing as I've yet to find anything on this planet that can pose a risk to me, I'm hardly unwilling to lend a hand. What do I get in return?"
"Citizenship, a stipend, and the support of the most powerful organization on the planet."
Out of the pale-skinned man came a low, throaty chuckle. "Seems like a delightful way to endear myself to my new home. I accept."
Slowly, and telegraphing every gesture, the man offered a hand out to Cecil. And carefully back, Cecil reached out as they firmly shook on the matter.
If nothing else, Genji seemed a lot more personable than Nolan was when he first arrived on the planet. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, time would tell.
Especially if some of his other suspicions regarding the death of the Guardians panned out.
Author's Notes:
Wow. It feels weird to be here again, launching a new story, and hoping to see it succeed. I've gotten assistance from so many people here on this up to this point, and I'd like to name a few here: @Eternal Yujin , @Wiererid , @chinlamp , @CalmChap , @Spider-Lite , @Thepowerofgodandanime , whoever else I might be mistakenly forgetting at this moment who beta-read all of these chapters of the story and gave me strong feedback. Without you guys, and all of my readers, none of this could have possibly come to fruition or manifested itself.
Additionally, if you would like to read ahead, you can find up to ten chapters ahead on my Patreon and Subscribestar, linked there. For the time being, all adult content like future smut in anything I write, will be on Subscribestar, though in due time I'll likely try to get the processing and authentication through on Patreon to be able to post it there as well. So be mindful of where you're supporting me.
Regardless, here's to the next big adventure.Last edited: Today at 4:26 AM Like ReplyReport Reactions:someguy157, pandatibu, thatguy3367 and 485 others