Bark!
A cheerful yip broke the silence.
Trotting around the corner of the barn was a medium-sized white dog. He looked like an ordinary Labrador, except for the fact that he was casually carrying a solid, two-ton steel I-beam in his jaws like a wooden fetch stick.
"Hey there, boy," Conquest smiled, bending down. "You wanna play a little tug-of-war, pup?"
Conquest grabbed the end of the steel beam with his only hand. He braced his boots against the dirt, intending to give the dog a gentle, playful tug.
The white dog wagged its tail, bit down harder on the steel, and casually backed up.
Whoosh!
Conquest's boots lost all traction. The heavyset Viltrumite was yanked forward, violently dragged face-first through a patch of fresh cabbage and dirt as the dog trotted backward in circles, happily wagging its tail.
"Woah! Easy there, little fella!" Conquest grunted from the dirt, his legs flailing as the dog dragged him around the perimeter of the garden like a ragdoll.
"Krypto, drop him," Clark called out with a soft sigh.
The dog instantly let go. Conquest slumped into the dirt, covered in crushed cabbage leaves, looking up at the dog with a mixture of terror and utter respect.
"That is... one sturdy hound," Conquest wheezed.
I rubbed my temples feeling a migraine drilling directly into the back of my skull.
I walked over to the wooden porch and sat down on the swing, only to be immediately squeezed between a shrieking Greek king and a sociopathic CEO.
"You dropped me into a nuclear crater!" Jason screamed, waving his bronze sword inches from Neel's nose. "My cape is ruined! No! More importantly, I could have died, you insolent corporate mongrel!"
Neel didn't even look up from his glass tablet. "Jason, you were a 'non-essential' asset. I merely utilized a Command Seal to maximize the return-on-investment Master had made. You survived, didn't you? Lower your voice."
"I demand hazard pay!" Jason shrieked, swatting at a passing mosquito. "I want a massive salary increase, a hot bath, and a completely different Master!"
"File a grievance with HR," Neel muttered, adjusting his pristine tie. "Right now, I am coming up with ways to revive the world economy when master gets everything under his control; I can't save the world only for it to recede into the worst depression it has ever seen."
I didn't say a word and just chewed on my antacids.
Out in the yard, Sebas was calmly walking among the wounded Guardians and GDA soldiers. His hands glowed with warm green Ki as he healed punctured lungs and broken bones. Near the barn, the Mauler Twins were already bickering over a portable generator they had dismantled.
And Ship, the green sludge-puppy alien was happily morphing into a shiny tractor to help Clark plow the north field.
I spent the next six hours questioning life, which I find myself doing more often.
I was completely cut off from any communication back home. My planet was currently being torn apart by a time-manipulating cosmic horror. And I was sitting in an alternate dimension, thinking of giving everything up and becoming one of those famous Tibetan monks.
In the midst of those musings, a neon-green portal finally ripped open in the grass directly beneath my boots, I didn't even bother fighting it.
I let myself fall and hit solid rock with a painful thud.
"Agh," I grunted, sitting up and rubbing my tailbone.
I stood up and dusted off my coat and was about to curse Kaisen when I took a long look at the world I was supposed to be in charge of protecting.
It was apocalyptic. My beautiful blue marble had turned Black. The landscape was a massive, smoking crater that stretched for miles, with lava rupturing like a geyser from under. But the ground was nothing compared to the sky.
The moon was gone!!
In its place was a massive ring of cosmic debris from which giant chunks of lunar rock were caught in Earth's gravity well, burning up in the atmosphere and raining down in an unending meteor shower.
Earth was hours, if not minutes, away from dying.
"What in the everloving fuck happened?!" I gasped in shock.
"Silence, human."
Something sharp pressed directly against my Adam's apple and I froze.
The green bug was standing right beside me. His muscular arms were crossed tightly over his sleek chest but his heavy tail was arched over his shoulder. The razor-sharp stinger rested with lethal precision right on my windpipe.
"Can't you see the Master is busy?" the bug hissed. His violet eyes stared right through me.
I looked past him and there he was.
John Kaisen was sitting cross-legged on a piece of shattered bedrock a few yards away. His clothes were torn and stained with blood. His fingers were steepled in the air. He was in a trance, desperately moving his fingers and eyes.
Standing right next to him was Nakime, but strikingly, I immediately noticed she had two perfectly normal eyes now and, more importantly, she was standing directly under sunlight, which was supposed to be her only weakness.
Hovering just a few feet away were Mark Grayson and Allen the Alien. Both of them were covered in dirt and bruises, staring down at John in jaw-dropped silence like they had just witnessed a miracle.
I filed that detail away for later. Right now, my patience was gone.
I didn't have the energy to be cordial, nor the bandwidth to play his games. My planet was catching moon-rocks with its face while this arrogant man sat on a rock making gang signs.
"No, listen here, you green freak," I growled.
I raised the back of my hand and aggressively shoved the deadly stinger away from my throat. I didn't care if he could kill me in a fraction of a second. I marched forward, my heavy shoes crunching loudly against the gravel.
"I am the motherfucking Director of the GDA!" I yelled, pointing a trembling finger directly at the monster powerful enough to kill the Viltrumite regent. "It stands for Global Defense Agency! Do you get it? It says 'Global' right there in the first damn word!"
I kept walking, shoving past the bug's shoulder when he tried to block my path.
I expected him to impale me but he let me pass.
I glanced back at him and saw the cold predatory expression on his face had completely vanished, replaced by unadulterated disbelief as he stared up at the sky.
I didn't care and kept my eyes locked on Kaisen.
"Before you freaks came in here with your hotshot powers and your weird fetish for servants, I was the one tasked with guarding this planet!" I yelled as I felt thick veins throb on my forehead. I gestured wildly at the flaming meteor shower raining down around us. "And now look at this! Mother Earth is being destroyed slowly, one moon chunk after another!"
I stopped a few feet away from John, breathing heavily.
Nakime stood protectively in front of him. Her hand rested on the neck of her wooden instrument. I didn't back down an inch.
"I don't care if he is meditating his way through this bullshit! I need answers right now, and I need to talk to your so-called Master before there is nothing left for him to save!"
I roared the words. The stress of the last few months finally boiled over.
And then the sky turned pitch black.
In an instant, suffocating darkness swallowed the afternoon sun whole. The air pressure dropped so violently that my ears popped as thick, golden lightning began to arc silently across the blackened sky, illuminating the falling chunks of the ruined moon in violent flashes of yellow light.
I stopped mid-yell as my mouth hung open.
I looked up and stumbled back.
Coiling out of the unnatural darkness, dwarfing the remaining storm clouds and covering the entire horizon, was a dragon.
Its colossal, serpentine body was covered in glowing emerald green scales. Long, flowing whiskers trailed majestically from its ancient snout and two enormous, glowing red eyes stared down at the ruined Earth.
I stared at the mythical beast hovering in the sky.
I had dealt with hostile alien empires. I had dealt with cloned supervillains. I had dealt with multidimensional terrorists.
But looking at another cosmic entity after another casually wrapping itself around the Earth's atmosphere was the final straw.
My brain simply reached its limit. I took a trembling breath as my hands balled into my white, withering hair.
"KAISEEEENNNNNN!!!!"
[A/N]:
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