Rex was dead…
There was no question about it. He died right in front of Robot Jack and Dupli-Kate.
His head was gone. He couldn't be any deader.
"Report. This is Robot. Cecil… there's something I need to brief you on." Robot's voice stayed steady even as the scene around him screamed otherwise. "I'm sorry. Rex is KIA."
Global Defense Agency headquarters.
"…"
After hearing Rex was dead, Cecil clenched his fist so hard his knuckles whitened. Another superhero gone—and he still had no way to stop it.
"Pull up every satellite feed we have. I want to know exactly what happened."
"Why did a meteor just happen to fall on Rex's head for no reason?"
Cecil folded his arms across his chest. Someone was playing games. And no matter how crafty a criminal was, they always slipped eventually.
"Director Cecil, you might not even need to pull the satellite data," the blond secretary said, checking his tablet. "I'm truly sorry about Rex, but… it really might've been an accident."
"At the exact moment Rex's head was hit, there were meteor strikes across more than three hundred locations in the city—ranging from small to moderate impacts."
"Thirty-plus people were lightly injured, two were seriously injured, and thankfully… in this meteor event, the only fatality was Rex."
He hesitated, then added, "Okay. And one unlucky bank robber."
"Three hundred meteor strikes across the city? Where the hell would that many meteors even come from?"
Cecil didn't buy it for a second. The fact that other places got hit didn't automatically make Rex's death an accident. Most "accidents" were just inevitabilities wearing disguises. After years doing this job, Cecil could smell the stench of a setup all over Rex's death.
"Director—"
A GDA technician spoke up.
"We've got the satellite imagery pulled. Do you want it projected onto the main screen?"
"Do it."
Cecil nodded once. He wanted to see what happened in space—why meteors fell toward Earth without any warning reaching them.
"Projecting now…"
The technician hit the button. The giant screen in the control room lit up, playing footage captured in orbit.
Outer space.
A "small" meteor—around thirty meters in diameter—was barreling toward Earth at an abnormally high speed.
Several intercept satellites deployed in orbit detected it and automatically switched into intercept mode. Because the meteor wasn't considered "too large" by the system, the satellites didn't trigger a top-level emergency alarm; instead, their low-level program kicked a Level Two alert up the chain…
Right as the meteor entered the satellites' tracking range and the intercept sequence engaged—
A white blur tore through the satellite network like a bullet.
It slammed straight into the thirty-meter meteor.
In a single instant, the intruder's punch shattered the meteor into countless fragments. The force was so monstrous that most of the meteor was pulverized into dust—leaving only tiny remnants to slip into Earth's atmosphere, igniting into fiery streaks that tore through the sky and became the falling rocks that battered the city.
As fragments scattered, the satellites' video feed briefly broke into pixelated distortion for less than a second.
The next moment, after the intercept satellites registered that the meteor had been "neutralized," the system followed its logic: it canceled the Level Two alert that had been uploaded, and reverted from intercept mode back to observation mode.
Then, in crystal clarity—sharp as Blu-ray—it recorded the man in white standing in the void.
Under sunlight pouring through vacuum, the massive letter "F" on his chest seemed to glow faintly. Even the man himself looked… almost divine.
And then, once he confirmed the meteor threat was over, he adjusted his trajectory, became a streak of white afterimage, and flew off—continuing to "save" Earth.
There was no question who it was.
The man who shattered the meteor was Jovian.
"So," Cecil said, rubbing at his temples as a headache gathered behind his eyes, "what do you all think?"
Everything on the screen looked so clean, so natural, that even he could feel the temptation to call it an accident.
But Cecil's experience—and that gut instinct that had kept him alive this long—screamed the opposite.
This wasn't an accident.
This looked like a murder with planning, structure, and intent.
And yet Cecil's rational mind kept insisting: it could be an accident.
"Obviously, Rex's death was accidental," the secretary said softly after watching the recording. "In the last hundred years, people killed by meteors are rare—but it's not a zero-probability event."
"And with our current interception tech, we can't even guarantee we'd do better than Jovian did."
"Without question, Jovian saved Earth. He's a hero."
"An accident. An accident. Everything's an accident?!" Cecil snapped, furious—and still empty-handed.
"A hero who killed the Guardians of the Globe… and killed one of my agents? Give me a break."
His fist tightened again as the words stayed trapped behind his teeth.
Jovian… you'd better not let me catch your trail.
Cecil stared up at the ceiling, lost in thought. He could threaten Jovian all he wanted, but he also knew the truth: even if he caught Jovian red-handed, there was very little he could actually do.
With human tech as it currently stood, even launching nukes might not be enough to truly threaten Viltrumites like Jovian and Omni-Man.
Thirty minutes earlier…
Jovian became a white streak and punched through the atmosphere, rocketing into the sky in an instant.
He slipped through the steel wall of intercept satellites and reached the meteor that was projected to strike Earth.
Then he swung his fist.
A burning, searing punch slammed into the meteor's surface—instantly spiderwebbing it with cracks.
Under the satellites' gaze, the entire meteor burst into powder.
Dust and fragments exploded outward, blanketing every satellite camera lens.
The GDA's advanced satellites detected the visual obstruction and automatically activated their lens-cleaning protocols—wiping away the blur…
For a normal person, that window of time was too short to even register.
For Jovian, floating in space, it was more than enough.
He casually raised his right hand.
In his palm was a chunk of meteor rock the size of a washbasin.
He picked a direction, then hurled it toward the blue planet.
The rock entered the atmosphere at an even higher speed.
It ripped through the air, split the sky, and screamed with friction—igniting into a roaring inferno as it tore straight through clouds, birds, and anything else unlucky enough to cross its path.
Unstoppable. Unavoidable. Locked onto its target.
It smashed through a wall.
It punched through someone's chest.
It struck a loudmouthed show-off squarely in the head.
After all the impacts and losses, the meteor chunk—now reduced to about the size of a fist—finally dropped into the bank interior, and the resulting shockwave made the building shudder from the inside out.
"Die, Rex."
"And Cecil—take your Global Defense Agency and go eat my shit."
Jovian glanced at the satellites around him with pure contempt, adjusted his course, and flew off toward the U.K.
Rex was a punk. Cecil was a lightweight.
How were they supposed to compete with a Freeborn like him?