"—ortal words of Jay-Z.” The oversized bald man boomed on the screen, standing easily as tall and as broad as their friend Damien. ‘Whatever deity may guide my life…” The camera panned tight on his sweaty face in 4K HD, thanks to the large TV on the living-room wall of Casa Grayson. “Dear lord don’t let me die tonight. But if I shall before I wake, I accept my fate. Hell yeah?!’”
“Hell yeah!” The cluster of uniformed extras roared back from the screen in a chorus of compressed audio.
The Rock racked the slide of a heavy machine gun, face filling the frame again as it made a loud metallic clack. “Hell yeah.”
Brick stared blankly at the wall, half-eaten slice of pepperoni drooping over his knuckles and grease pooling against his thumb. He didn’t bother to wipe it off, too enthralled by the raw stupid of the movie that had just started. “That’s such a dumb line.”
Butch didn’t even look away from the TV, a half-dozen movies deep into a slouch that had his spine molded to the curve of the sofa. “What you got against Hov, bro?”
“…nothing against ‘Hov’.” Brick turned his head slow, expression flat as The Rock’s acting range. “But that’s such a stupid line. Like, who wrote that and thought, ‘Yeah, this’ll really get the audience’?”
“I liked it.” Boomer, for some reason, was watching the movie upside down; lying flat on the floor with his eyes aimed backwards. Brick couldn’t even judge him for that, considering a movie like this made as much sense from any angle. “Sick. Basically saying he doesn't even care if he gets vaped."
Brick just stared back at Butch as Boomer nodded to himself below them, no more words needed. Even Butch had to admit that as he glared back. “...fair.”
Brick shifted his weight, peeling his jeans off the sticky leather of the couch as boredom pressed down on the room with all three of them melding deeper into the furniture. They’d been marathoning garbage movies since they woke up; all three of them having stayed overnight with Ms Debbie since the night before. Another mandated rest day had turned the Grayson living room into a little bit of a mess as the air conditioning hummed a losing battle against late-August humidity and whatever lavender spray Ms Debbie used to pretend her house wasn't currently occupied by a three-man tactical strike team of thirteen-year-olds.
Mark was out in space doing whatever he was doing as Invincible — punching asteroids, saving aliens — leaving a vacuum on Earth that the Boys were doing a solid job of filling; globally and at ‘home’.
They saved the world, ate the food, and took up the couches.
Red eyes flicked down to the coffee table, four empty pizza boxes and seventeen empty cans of soda. “I’ll handle the trash.”
“I’ve got it, sweetheart.”
Ms Debbie stepped through the archway, the woman in a loose gray cardigan as she carried a large tray loaded with two overfilled bowls of buttered popcorn, a tall glass pitcher of fresh lemonade, and a heavy, foil-wrapped brick radiating the smell of baked sugar.
Brick froze as he let his hand fall back to his side. “Sure. I mean… thanks, Ms Debbie. I was just gonna throw the boxes out.”
“They’re fine where they are for now.” She stepped through the minefield of crumpled soda cans, game controllers, and Boomer’s sprawling limbs until she stopped just in front of the coffee table, hip bumping gently against Butch’s boots. “Feet off the glass, mister. I literally just sprayed that.”
Butch dragged his heels off the edge, twisting his neck away from her. “Wasn’t even dirty.”
“It is now.” A soft sigh left her, the sound tapering off into the clinking of the ice in the lemonade pitcher as she moved aside a crushed Mountain Dew can. “Anyway, I made the brownies. The ones with the caramel center. Though why you boys need more sugar when you’re…” She trailed off, Brick tracking her gaze to where Boomer was still lying flat on his back.
Popcorn bobbed up into the air, Boomer snapping each kernel up as they came back down in a rapid-fire blur of crunch-crunch-crunch.
“…just eat them, baby.”
Boomer snapped back to normal-time as the last one fell into his mouth, swallowed up in a single bite. “Sorry, Ms. Debbie.”
Brick rolled his eyes as he reached for a brownie on the tray, foil crinkling loud in the quiet roo—THOOM.
The displacement wave hit a microsecond before the yellow light, the atmosphere in the living room shifting. Debbie’s gasp was swallowed up as the tray in her hands went airborne.
A blur of cobalt static ripped the air apart, Boomer suddenly a streak of hard neon blue.
The youngest Mojo caught the heavy glass pitcher mid-air, both bowls of popcorn snagged, and the entire foil wrapping of popcorn safeguarded before they could touch the ground. By the time the yellow light properly faded to show Cecil standing there, Boomer stood next to the table with all the snacks in hand as he glared up. “Broooo. Not cool, Cecil.”
The Director of the GDA stood perfectly still in the center of the rug, harsh yellow teleportation after-image burning off the shoulders of his suit. “Sorry about that, Debbie.” A breath left him, air whistling slightly through his teeth. “Teleportation system has been a little off for a week now.”Brick’s frown pulled tight across his face. Wonder why, huh?
“It’s…” Debbie gripped the edge of the couch as she let out a long, shaky breath, her face pulling tight. “It’s fine.” It didn’t look fine, but Brick wasn’t going to poke at that right now, not when Cecil just teleported in looking like he had another disaster weighing on his still-smoking shoulders. The man in question turned his head, silver hair sticking up as he looked at the three of them staring back at him. “Boys. Got another one.”
“Another what, old man?” Butch cracked his knuckles as spikes of green radiated over each one, the action making it clear he already knew well what.
“What do you think, Butch?” Cecil narrowed those eyes, the words leaving his mouth like he hated every syllable. “Another invasion.”
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
YESTERDAY
The silence of the dreadnought’s command deck was not an absence of noise, but a weight upon his broad shoulders.
Cold.
Cavernous.
The walls stood tall and jagged, intersecting planes of black metal stripped of anything resembling architectural comfort; as intimidating as the figure that commanded it and maybe a fraction as powerful.
DarkLord stood at the helm of the flagship.
He did not sit.
Seven feet of dense, blue-skinned muscle stood tall as he stared forward; arms folded over each other as he took in visual input from the sprawling screens all over the deck. At the crown of his skull, the thick blue skin gave way to a pulsing mass of exposed cerebral tissue that squelched against the sterile air of his flagship; his brain protected only by a telekinetic field that could withstand impacts rated for the leveling of entire landscapes.
He stared out at the massive viewport, the reality that hung in the void between worlds staring back at him in a fragile swirl of blue and white.
Earth.
Not the one he knew, this one far weaker and far less blooded; entirely ignorant of the crosshairs locking onto it from realities away.
LOOK.
The word wasn’t spoken aloud, a simple wet pressure all he needed to drive a spike of telepathy into the exposed brains of every soldier around him. It came a scant moment before DarkLord’s physical mouth bothered to part; a deep cold baritone blessing them a second after the thought had been rooted into their minds.
“Look.” Alien precision slid over the Chicago roots, vocal cords smoothed to near-ice as they forced out the ghost of a teenager that no longer existed. “Unprepared and open, this world waits for us. Disjointed, disorganized, disordered…” The deep baritone was a physical echo a microsecond behind the telepathic projection that hit the glass-shielded cortexes of his gathered servants. “Its defenders are few and those that exist lack the strength of those we know.”He stepped forward, heavy boots thudding against the metal of the deck as white eyes, devoid of pupils, tracked another display. Cities.
Millions upon millions of organic targets and a perfect entryway just outside the city he once knew as home.
“Ack?” A chitin-plated lieutenant chattered a low question, the clicking sound scraping against the deck as it tore him from long-ignored memories.
DarkLord did not turn, amusement arriving as a dry click in the back of his throat before it boomed out into laughter. “Incorrect.”
The thought was answered before the lieutenant’s mouth had even finished fully forming the syllables. "You perceive structural weakness. I perceive utility." Another dry click caught in his teeth in the form of a laugh they understood.
He leaned forward slightly, seven-foot frame casting a sharp shadow over their heads. “Oddly peaceful for a world of its kind.” The telepathic pressure in the room layered, pressing harder against his crew. "Lacking in crises, in growing pains, in savagery.”
He turned his massive head, the wet pressure in his skull flaring. The whites narrowed, flooding the bridge with a wave of pressure.“Ack-ack!” A lieutenant, trembling under the sheer psionic weight, snapped to attention as blood trickled from the alien's nostrils. “Ack!”
"We do not negotiate.” He turned back to the viewport, arms still folded. “We cull.”“Ack!”“Drop the vanguard.”