Six of my ribs snapped in a devastating, silent crunch.
Thragg viciously pounded his fists into my face, driving my skull deeper and deeper into the lunar crust until the back of my head was swimming in my own blood.
He was the perfect Viltrumite specimen. I was just an old, tired man missing an arm, whose heart just wasn't into the slaughter anymore. But I sure as hell wasn't going to let this arrogant bastard destroy my home, so I fought back with every ounce of the viciousness I used to fight with.
I swung my single good arm, catching him brutally under the ribs and feeling the satisfying snap of his flawless cartilage.
I wasn't fighting for the Empire anymore. I was fighting for Britney, and for the neighbor kids who came to my farm to ride the ponies. I was fighting for my old comrade, yet new friend Thula, who was down there somewhere trying to navigate this strange new life with her baby. I knew they were all in danger as long as this maniac drew breath.
"You are a god compared to those mortals!" Thragg roared, his fists raining down, transmitting his furious voice through the physical vibrations of his strikes. "You, Nolan, Thula, what has happened to loyal servants of Viltrum?! What do you seek in degrading yourselves with these pathetic animals?!"
I caught his wrist, ignoring the agonizing pop of my own shoulder tearing as my blood floated in the vacuum around us. I pushed back, channeling my voice through the sparse particles of dust.
"Used to fly from world to world 'cause I was ordered to," I rumbled, shoving him back so hard the crater beneath us widened. "Now I head over 'cause Brit invited me for a backyard barbecue. And I reckon I like that a whole lot more."
Thragg snarled, tearing his arm away to deliver a brutal, organ-rupturing knee directly to my chest.
"They asked me to help 'em move a couch," I coughed, the hot taste of copper flooding my mouth. "They actually thanked me afterwards. Do you realize ain't nobody ever thanked me before?"
"Delusions!" Thragg roared, swinging a massive haymaker that tore a chunk of flesh cleanly off my cheek. "They are insects to be crushed under our boots!"
I dodged his next blow, the remnants of my blue flannel tearing to shreds in the vacuum.
"Every Friday we play cards, and I lose every single damn time. They say it's 'cause I don't understand poker, but I think they're just lettin' me stay 'cause they actually enjoy my company. I ain't never wanted to lose so badly in my entire fuckin' life."
Thragg hit me with a double-axe handle, crushing me deeper into the rock and fracturing my spine. "You were the Vanguard of the Empire, you miserable traitor!"
"I no longer arrive to conquer," I rasped, spitting a wad of blood directly onto his pristine white uniform. "I arrive 'cause Brit makes the best burgers on the block, and he gets upset if I miss cookout night."
"No, you are a weapon forged for war, for the empire!"
"There's an old woman down the street who waves at me every mornin'," I grunted, blocking a lethal strike even as my bones groaned under the immense pressure. "If I forget to wave back, she worries that I'm sick. I never imagined someone would actually notice if I disappeared."
Thragg's eyes twitched with madness as he drove his thumbs toward my eyes. "You are Conquest, that is what you are, what you should be!"
"The Empire gave me a purpose," I said softly, my voice carrying the undeniable weight of my severed soul. "But Earth gave me a name... Carl! And I think I prefer the name."
Thragg unleashed a blinding, supersonic flurry of blows, literally trying to physically beat the indoctrination back into my pulverized skull. But the harder he hit me, and the more my flesh tore, the clearer my mind became.
"I was built to survive wars lastin' centuries," I grunted, absorbing a blow to the jaw that shattered three of my teeth. "But yesterday, I spent four hours assemblin' a birdhouse with my love, and it was... strangely fulfillin'."
"SILENCE!"
"The children race to see who can hug me first, and I still don't rightly understand why, but I stopped askin'."
I swung my arm with everything I had left, cleanly clipping Thragg's jaw and sending him violently skidding backward across the lunar dust.
"I thought strength was makin' everyone else fear you," I said, dragging my broken body upright despite my shattered ribs,punctured lungs, broken jaw, torn shoulder, and whatever else was broken. "It turns out strength is carryin' Mrs. Rodriguez's groceries upstairs every Wednesday; poor old lady has trouble 'cause her knees hurt."
Thragg wiped the smear of blood from his lip, his regal expression twisting into absolute, irredeemable disgust.
"I've lived for thousands of years, massacrin' trillions," I said, a single tear escaping my good eye and freezing instantly in the void. "But yesterday was the first time someone looked at me and said, 'Drive safe.'"
I looked at the Grand Regent, and I didn't feel hatred for him anymore. I just felt a profound, tragic pity for a man trapped in an endless cycle of blood.
"I am so happy," I recited, rejoicing in the new truth of my existence.
"People know my name. They wave when I walk by."
"They invite me inside when it rains. They ask how my day was, and they actually wait for me to answer."
"I thought I was created to conquer worlds. It turns out, I was just lonely."
But logic and sentiment do not stop a butcher.
My conviction was absolute, but my physical vessel was rapidly failing. Thragg was simply too stubborn, too far gone to be stopped by words. He lunged forward, grabbing me by the blood-soaked collar of my torn flannel. He spun with the force I could never replicate, and threw me straight back to Earth.
The descent burned my skin, my exposed muscle, and I could hardly make the effort to regain my balance mid-air.
I hit the atmosphere like a dying comet, the friction ripping the flesh from my bones as the night sky of the American Midwest tore open. I crashed directly into the stone face of Mount Rushmore. The monument violently exploded, burying me deep under hundreds of tons of crushed, pulverized granite under the cold, pale light of a full moon.
The smell of powdered stone and my own cooking blood filled my nostrils. I lay there, completely paralyzed and half-dead. Every single bone in my body felt like it had been run through an industrial meat grinder, and I was drowning in my own internal bleeding.
Thragg descended silently from the sky, floating just inches above my broken, mutilated body, his pristine white uniform completely covered in my gore.
"Why?" Thragg asked, genuinely and completely unable to comprehend the fundamental shift in my soul. "Why live like an insect? Why toil on useless, pathetic efforts for creatures that live for a mere blink of an eye?"
I coughed, spitting a thick, bloody tooth out onto the crushed presidential stone. I just looked up at the full moon, thinking of Britney and the little vegetable garden we had planted in the backyard.
"'Cause it's just an honest day's work, buddy."
Thragg's face hardened into a cold mask of pure executioner's apathy. He raised his heavy boot, aiming directly to crush my skull into paste.
I closed my eye.
Goodbye, Britney. Please forgive me... you are my first and only love.
But the crushing blow never came.
A brilliant, neon-green light suddenly flooded the ruined monument, casting long, eerie shadows across the bloody rubble and completely distracting the Grand Regent.
Both Thragg and I slowly looked to our right, watching as the empty air literally tore open, forming a swirling, circular green portal. Stepping out of the glowing light was a massive, terrifying silhouette of a hulking black shadow with pulsing purple accents. It sported a grotesque, exposed brain-like shape that was easily the size of ten human heads combined, radiating an aura of raw, suffocating chaotic energy.
And from behind that monstrous shadow, casual footsteps echoed against the stone.
My remaining eye widened in utter disbelief. Even nearly blind, bleeding out, and concussed to hell, I recognized that chaotic, terrifying aura anywhere. It was the boy who had severed my soul.
John stepped out of the portal, casually dusting off his shoulders and puffing his chest out, clearly expecting to make some incredibly cool, dramatic entrance to save the day.
But he halted mid-step.
His eyes locked onto the immaculate, blood-soaked Grand Regent of the Viltrumite Empire standing over a crushed mountain. Then, his gaze slowly drifted downward to the battered, one-armed, flannel-wearing man whose head was currently trapped beneath Thragg's boot.
John's jaw practically dropped to the floor, and the carefully curated 'cool savior' persona completely vanished in an instant.
"Is that Motherfucking Conquest?!"
[A/N]:
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