Author's Note: Finally, a new chapter..... but it won't be a daily upload anymore since I need to pace myself.
[Third Person POV]
"Is that Motherfucking Conquest?!"
John's voice cracked violently as it echoed over the pulverized granite of Mount Rushmore, and the carefully curated savior persona he had spent the last minute preparing instantly evaporated into a chaotic cocktail of shock and hatred.
The Grand Regent of the Viltrumite Empire paused with his heavy boot still pressing down on the broken man's skull, and he slowly turned his cold gaze toward the intruder.
Beneath Thragg's boot, the one-armed man coughed up a thick wad of blood that splattered against the crushed rock, and he tried to raise his head while his single good eye blinked up at John through a massive swell of purple bruising.
"Now hold on a second there, son," Carl rasped, which sounded nothing like the universe's most feared butcher. "I don't go by that name no more. Name's Carl…. and I'm just a local farmer."
John blinked as his brain froze, and he stared at the olive-green fish hat, the blood-soaked plaid flannel, and the heavily worn cargo pants, before turning his gaze to the massive, terrifying shadow standing right beside him.
"Levy," John muttered while pointing a trembling finger at the beaten man on the ground. "Did you teleport us to the wrong fucking universe? Again!! Why the hell is Conquest dressed like he's about to ask me for a cold beer and a socket wrench?"
"I am sorry for what went down with us…. But I ain't Conquest, buddy," Carl wheezed as the pressure of Thragg's boot threatened to pop his remaining eyeball like a ripe grape. "I'm a changed man, just ask Brit."
John narrowed his eyes as his hands began to crackle with a dangerous purple energy, because while he had traversed enough multiverses to know that variants existed, he sure as hell wasn't about to let his guard down around a monster who had once tried to rip his spine out through his stomach.
"You expect me to believe that bullshit?" John snapped as the chaotic aura around him thickened and warped the air.
Beneath the Thragg's boot, Carl took a bubbling breath, and with deadly sincerity, he began to sing in a horribly off-key, Southern drawl.
"There's a staaar-maaan... waitin' in the sky...
He'd like to come an' meet us, but he figures he'd blow our minds."
John stared at the mutilated Viltrumite singing the music and remembered the Image of the Man of Steel he used during his fight with Conquest, and the absurdity of the situation slowly but surely bypassed his paranoia as he let out an exhausted sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose as Carl continued his attempt.
"He told us not to blow it, 'cause he knows it's all worthwhile.
He told me... Let the kids lose it... Let the kids use it..."
"Alright, fuck it, close enough," John muttered pointing at the massive shadow of Angstrom Levy. "Levy, get the old man out of here."
The terrifying shadow stepped forward as its mutated brain pulsed with a sickening purple light, and the air directly beneath Carl's broken body tore open into a swirling green portal.
"NO!" Thragg roared, as he drove his boot downward to crush Carl's skull into a fine red paste.
But he was a microsecond too late, and Carl plummeted safely through the portal to disappear back to a safe space just as the rift snapped shut, leaving Thragg's boot to violently crater the solid stone and send a crack through the entire mountain range.
Thragg slowly lifted his head as the dust settled over his red uniform, and his eyes locked onto John with a cold fury that promised a slow and agonizing death.
"You dare?" Thragg whispered, his voice vibrating through the very air molecules around them and rattling John's teeth. "You deny me my judgment on a betrayer? You deny a Viltrumite his kill? Who the hell are you, insect?"
John didn't dignify his insult with an answer, instead just smirked as his eyes began to glow with a luminescent violet fire that mirrored the chaotic energy of a dying star.
The massive shadow pooling at John's feet suddenly expanded, shooting across the ruined landscape like a tidal wave of ink and reaching all the way to Thragg's boots, before a single fist erupted upward from the pitch-black abyss to aim an uppercut with the force of a dead world behind it directly at Thragg's jaw.
The impact echoed like a ringing church bell. Still, Thragg hadn't even flinched, having casually lowered his palm to catch the shadow-fist in an inescapable vice grip, and tilted his head to look at the figure half-submerged in the inky darkness.
It was a teenager in a purple-and-black suit who was entirely composed of swirling, purple-tinged shadow.
"Ah, you came back so soon?" Thragg sneered as his lip curled in recognition, and he effortlessly crushed the shadow's fist, the sound of breaking ethereal bone echoing in the night as the purple energy violently hissed. "The halfling Nolan sired. What did you call yourself again? A pretentious name... INVINCIBLE."
John's grin widened ferally as he floated higher into the air.
"Oh, you know Mark?" John laughed while crossing his arms and looking down at the Grand Regent. "That's cute. But unfortunately for you, against a Grand Regent, one is definitely not enough."
John snapped his fingers.
The shadow sea beneath Thragg bubbled and boiled, and in a terrifying display of undead magic, seventeen more figures violently erupted from the darkness to reveal seventeen Evil Invincible variants that John had methodically slaughtered and collected during his Soldier collection spree, and they were now bound to his will as immortal, untiring enforcers of his shadow army.
"Let's tear this geriatric fuck apart!" one of the shadow Marks screamed as his purple eyes burned with psychopathic glee and he cracked his knuckles.
"I'm gonna eat your fucking heart, old man!" another variant laughed maniacally while wiping a stream of black drool from his chin.
The eighteen Invincibles swarmed the Grand Regent simultaneously, unleashing a hurricane of supersonic punches, sweeping kicks, and devastating tackles that completely shattered the remaining face of Mount Rushmore into a billion pieces of flying shrapnel.
But as the dust billowed into the stratosphere and the shockwaves leveled the surrounding forest for miles in every direction, the terrifying reality of the Viltrumite hierarchy became abundantly and sickeningly clear.
Thragg was not just a Viltrumite, he was the absolute apex predator of their entire race, and he instantly turned the chaotic brawl into an slaughter extreme even for Viltrumites.
He ducked a punch from a screaming variant and drove his hand straight into the kid's abdomen, violently ripping his spine clean out through his stomach to use the jagged, purple-glowing spinal cord as a makeshift whip. Thragg swung the spine with enough kinetic force to cleanly decapitate two other variants before tossing the twitching, spine-less corpse aside into the rubble.
"You cocky little cunts are nothing but inferior copies!" Thragg roared as he caught an arrogant variant by the jaw and the groin, and he physically ripped the boy in half down the middle with a wet tear, letting the ethereal purple intestines spill over his knuckles like a grotesque waterfall.
"Ah, fuck! My balls!" the bisected variant screamed as his upper half hit the dirt, but the inky blackness immediately flared to life, violently pulling his severed legs and spilled guts back together as he knit himself whole in a matter of seconds. "I'm gonna kill you for that, you discount Freddie Mercury!"
Thragg's eyes widened in sheer annoyance as the shadow he had just butchered instantly regenerated and flew right back into the fray, and the Grand Regent quickly realized that these weren't just standard soilders; they were an unkillable, untiring plague of arrogant, foul-mouthed psychopaths who felt no pain and harboured no fear.
"Die, you fucking boomer!" a cannibalistic variant cackled as he latched onto Thragg's back and sank his teeth deep into the Regent's shoulder, only for Thragg to reach back, grab the boy by the skull, and completely crush his head like an overripe melon, spraying glowing purple brain matter across the ruined stone.
But even without a head, the shadow simply grabbed Thragg's pristine cape, stubbornly holding him in place as a new skull rapidly bubbled and reformed from the neck stump, which allowed three other variants to dive-bomb Thragg from the upper atmosphere with enough kinetic force to crater an entire city block.
Thragg spat a glob of blood from his bitten shoulder and twisted his torso to evade a supersonic haymaker from a variant wearing a tattered cape, bringing his elbow down on the shadow's collarbone with enough force to shatter a tectonic plate. He watched with cold indifference as the ethereal purple flesh gave way and the boy's chest caved in, but before the corpse could even hit the ground, two more variants tackled him from behind and began rapidly punching him in the kidneys at speeds that ignited the air into plasma.
The choreography of the violence devolved into a horrifying ritual of butchery.
[A/N]:
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