Project ROWDY 2-15

“Talk to me, old man.” Brick bit the words into his earpiece as the urban jungle blurred beneath all three of them, Team Trinity flying just fast enough not to shatter the speed of sound too many times over as they crossed the city limits. It had taken them all of five seconds to pick up a set of spare uniforms from one of many GDA outposts literally everywhere and it was only now that they were picking up speed on their way out of the city.

All three in sync pushed on the gas just a bit as they hit the flat expanse that was Illinois farmland, nothing but ruralities stretching all the way to the horizon broken up only by the occasional farmhouse or grain silo.

Either way, they all looked like toys from this high up.

At least Chicago was decent enough to give some skyscrapers and concrete when fights really kicked up. Out here, there was nothing to smash a body through but dirt and corn that was definitely genetically modified.

“Cecil, I need to know why the sky’s flickering.” Not the whole sky, of course, but enough on the edge of the horizon to give someone a hell of a seizure. “Now would be nice.”

“Yeah, the rest of us don’t exactly move at super-speed, son.” After too many seconds, the comm unit in Brick’s ear crackled to life, static giving way to the Director of the GDA. 

“Then fix that.” Brick let out a sound with his tongue against his teeth, the tch sharp enough to cut. “I’m pretty sure you’ve got the tech for it. Get a brain implant or something.”

“Maybe later.” Cecil grunted. “Right now, a dimensional entity that goes by the name Omnipotus has manifested approximately seventy-five miles southwest of your current position. Level-Nine threat, potentially a ten given Omni-Man's boosted rating. We're talking cosmic-level destructive capability."

Right. Cosmic-level. Why a Thursday, though?

"Last time this thing showed up," Cecil didn’t let up, tone unchangingly flat like he was reading off a grocery list instead of telling Brick exactly how the world might end soon, "was about a year ago. Omni-Man engaged it directly on a solo job, directly after killing the Guardians. Came out the other side needing a full week in a medical halo to recover."

The comm went completely quiet for a second as Brick thought back to that day, Omni-Man impacting the ground like a meteor and beat all the way to hell and back. Omnipotent bastard…

Brick narrowed his eyes. Oh, great.

"So, waitwaitwait—!” Boomer sounded off just to Brick’s left, pitch climbing fast and tripping over itself. “We're gonna fight something that did that to Omni-Man? Like, Omni-Man Omni-Man? The guy wh-"

"Yeah." Butch cut him off, his sandpaper rasp getting deeper as he stared straight ahead at the oncoming mess they would have to stick their head into. "…fuck."

Brick didn't bother pressing the receiver on his ear, the boy in red simply tilting his head back toward the open blue sky. It barely took a second to spot the army of baseball-sized drones Cecil had tilted their way as his eyes ignited. A minimal flare of red heat bled out his eyes, just enough of a warning shot to make the point clear to the lens miles above. "Just say you hate us, Cecil. It saves time."

"I don't expect you boys to survive, Brick." The static only hissed for a half-second this time. "I expect you to win."

Fantastic. That was exactly the kind of inspirational bullshit he wanted to hear before throwing hands with something that had beaten the mustache bastard into a hospital bed. Great job, coach.

They flew closer, their wake tearing across the empty fields as they broke the sound barrier a dozen times over. The thing wasn't hard to spot, even from a few miles out. 

Granted, that was mostly because reality itself had started bending around the thing, like the physical world couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be when it grew up. Air shimmered like broken glass as colors bled into one another, gravity already tilting sideways instead of simply down even from a full mile out.

“Oh, great.” 

Brick blinked as Butch echoed his earlier thought, but honestly he was doing the same right now as he watched everything twist around the longer he looked.

The farmland underneath them rippled and shifted with a sickening lurch, flat cornfield suddenly lined with ice as the temperature plunged fast enough to frost the edges of Brick’s vision. As soon as he could even take in the encroaching ice, it all vanished and took the snow along with it. Desert sand took its place, baking hot even from a thousand feet up, vast dunes rolling where crops had been three seconds ago. Then cracked asphalt, a parking lot the size of Kansas with faded yellow lines. Then a cratered, gray wasteland, pure moon-surface desolation complete with the suffocating silence of a vacuum.

Reality was having a localized seizure, and right in the dead center of all that warped-up nonsense stood the problem.

It was twelve feet tall.

Pale like spoiled milk was pale, its skin was stretched tight over thick slabs of muscle that could have wrestled an elephant off looks alone. Dark purple armor, all jagged edges, heavy plates, and unnecessary spikes, wrapped just as tight around its body, a skull belt around the midsection that wasn’t helping the whole ‘edgy’ thing. The face — if you could call it that — was more bone than flesh as hollow eye sockets glowed a faint green over teeth too sharp, too long and too wrong for a human jaw., and the teeth were sharp, elongated, and entirely wrong for a humanoid jaw.

And it’s got a helmet too. Cute. The helmet was — yeah, you guessed it — also spiked, with a crown as jagged as it was uneven on top of the metal, which probably meant the alien was full of itself or actual royalty. Probably both. 

Boomer eased up his flight path as Brick came to a sharp stop to take the thing in for a quick second longer, dropping into a slow hover right next to Brick. "He looks like a giant zombie skeleton."

“A giant zombie skeleton…” Butch snorted loudly, somehow managing to skid in the air before he shot back to meet them. "That’s edgy and goth."

Unnecessary but yeah. Brick tilted his head as he started moving in closer again. That about sums it up.

The entity turned its head, slow and deliberate but not careful. "OMNIPOTUS SEES THE WHELPS OF THIS WORLD APPROACH.” The voice that came out of the skull-face was somehow more massive than the rest of it, a metallic hunder that bypassed Brick's ears entirely and vibrated directly against his ribcage. “THE SHAPER OF WORLDS IS AMUSED."

Oh good. Blood-red eyes narrowed, bare fists clenched tight in red gloves. It talks in the third person. That was always fun, for about one sentence.

“Oh good!” Butch barked out. “A name-in-sentence guy. They’re always fun to punch.”

The familiar heat in his chest began to climb, crawling up his throat and settling heavy and hot right behind his teeth as he felt his eyes start to glow and the burn that came with it. Seven years. 

It was a long time.

Seven years of doing whatever they wanted, knocking down buildings in Townsville just because the noise was funny, and now they had to play hero for some government spook who pointed them at literal world-eaters. Brick would be lying to himself if he said he didn't love it more than Butch and Boomer did, even if he did his best to hide it.

Boomer was all about the whimsy of it all, the flashy colors and the speed. Butch was all about the impulse, the kinetic joy of hearing something snap.

Brick…

Eh, he just liked having shit to do.

With Mark off-planet playing savior of the blue bugs, and the new Guardians operating as an absolute mess — and that wasn’t even getting into Robot’s whole bullshit with Rex — Brick was finding he had plenty of shit to do. On top of that, if this giant purple skeleton started draining the Earth's core or shape the planet or whatever else it kept bragging about, there wouldn't be an Earth left to protect.

Which was bad.

Because Earth gave him free stuff.

Fine. Brick set his teeth. “Trinity, plan of a-”

“ATTACK!”

Butch didn't wait because when did he ever?

Brick fought off an eye twitch as his little brother became a toxic blur wrapped in an aura of spiked green, slamming into the center of Omnipotus's chest like the meteor with a psycho streak he was.  The impact cracked something loud, a splinter of the armor falling off. “YOU DA-” The entity's booming voice cut off mid-bellow as Butch drove his forehead directly into the giant's chin.

"OMNIPOTUS FEELS—"

Boomer hit the creature from the other side before the sentence could finish, the blue blur planting his hands on empty air as he whipped his heels in a cyclone of motion. Three lightning-charged kicks drove directly into the side of Omnipotus's ribs in the span of a single second. Sparking blue afterimages made it look like six different Boomers kicked the giant at once, three overlapping thundercracks echoing across the shifting landscape.

A split crater of sand beneath them shifted to a field of lava boiling and bubbling, another jagged line beside it warped to untouched snow, only for both to return back to Illinois farmland as a spiral of what looked like fractured glass replaced a thick cone of landscape.

Brick didn't overthink it as he burst into the space Butch and Boomer had carved open just for him. The leader let the heat out, eyes blazing a brilliant red-hot as twin beams of concentrated fire lanced across the short distance, carving a clean, smoking line through the thick armor of the entity's right shoulder. Before the giant had the chance to even scream, Brick twisted as flame swirled to life in his right hand; the tennis-sized ball rapidly expanding in power and size as it moved with him. 

By the time it reached basketball size, Brick let it go and it exploded like a missile landing at the same spot his eye-beams hit, with a flash enough to blind most eyes. Purple flesh sizzled, dark bone showing through the burn, and for half a second, Brick thought the arm might just come off entirely.

Especially as Butch roared out with a him-sized blast of spiky green energy from both hands thrust out. “BUTCH BOMBER!”

That moment didn’t last.

The creature's massive hand shot out with terrifying speed, catching the ball of X-energy mid-flight. The giant simply closed its fist, and the attack dissipated into harmless motes of light between thick armored fingers.

"OMNIPOTUS CANNOT BE HARMED BY LESSER LIGHT. OMNIPOTUS IS INEVITABLE. OMNIPOTUS I-

“OH SHUT UP!” Butch hit the giant again, dropping from directly above with both feet, green soles driving down onto the jagged crown with all his body weight, momentum and whatever else HIM and Mojo gave him to wreak hell and havoc with.

 The floor—which was solid asphalt now, then brittle ice, then nothing but an empty void that made Brick's brain physically ache to look at—shattered outward in a crater large enough to build a parking lot on as the helmet dented inward, crown snapping off at the base, and the twelve-foot nightmare actually staggered.

Good.

Brick didn’t bother hiding his smirk as he dove forward, sliding right into the wannabe-kaiju’s guard. Flame burst to life around his lead foot as he aimed right for the crack Butch had already opened in the chest armor. Brick pivoted, hips driving a powerful snap of a heel kick right into Omnipotus’ giant ribs. He felt something give way, a crunch somewhere under all that armor as whatever organs the giant had moved wrong beneath pale skin.

Smirk slashing out into a grin, Brick burst back out of range before the counter-swing could take his head off.

"OMNIPOTUS WILL NOT—” The entity's bellow turned into something much closer to a raw, furious roar as it swung the massive backhand Brick expected and planned for. “WILL NOT TOLERATE—"

The arm cut through the air with enough force to crack the air a dozen times over, the sand-snow-asphalt atmosphere of what was once farmland merging in ways it never really should. Brick twisted mid-flight, tucking back to avoid the sweeping limb. The force alone was enough to send him spinning as he caught himself mid-flight, Butch throwing out a barrage of green energy blasts that almost caught his hair.

The red Rowdyruff caught himself a few dozen feet out, boots skidding against air as he breathed hard through his nose and shot Butch a glare. “That never works!”

“FUCK YOU!”

…is he talking to me or the monster? Brick bit back a sigh as Butch kept churning out beachball-sized blast after blast with every pump of his arms. Probably both.

"Big Bro, did you see that?” Boomer zipped past him, a manic and breathless laugh that told Brick he was high on the fight in an entirely different way Butch was. “I hit him like almost three-hundred times! I think we're, like, actuall-"

A wave of energy rolled off the giant's body, silencing Boomer as reality shuddered and distorted in front of all three of them. A section of the ground became churning ocean, then a jagged valley, and a split-second later a twisting mountain range. Shit! Brick's stomach dropped into his shoes as gravity forgot which way was down, pulling him sharply to the left, Boomer twisting the opposite way as the air thickened into something like gelatin. His blue brother slammed sideways into an invisible wall of warped space and came out the other side tumbling, blood dripping heavily from his nose.

Butch hit the deck — which was currently a howling tundra — and immediately bounced back up, swinging wildly at nothing as he roared at ice-coated air. Green glow bright enough to hurt the eyes, he surged forward and grabbed the giant's thick ankle. Boots planted deep in ice-born stalagmites, Butch Mojo pulled with everything he had and Omnipotus didn’t have enough to deny him. 

Both boy and monster roared in unintended harmony as the latter’s twelve-foot frame went horizontal, Omnipotus crashing down face-first hard enough to shake the landscape back into a peaceful cornfield.

For about three seconds.

Then it was burning craters again. Then shattered glass. Then a normal cityscape with a Blue Burger Mart for some reason.

"OMNIPOTUS RISES!” The creature stood back up at once, towering over the confused residents of the eatery at its feet. “OMNIPOTUS ALWAYS RISES.” The dark armor was cracked in a dozen places, skull-face half-caved in from Butch’s gravity-assisted drop, and Brick didn’t have to look hard to see where it still bled a thick purple from the wound on its shoulder. Even still, it didn’t look like it was all that hurt and it didn’t sound like it either. “OMNIPOTUS IS ETERNAL AND YOU ARE DUST."

No, it looked and sounded mad. 

Insulted-mad. 

Which was both good and bad.

Good in that it could be hurt, obviously.

Bad in that they weren’t hurting it fast enough or hard enough.

Especially because it seemed to be healing faster and faster as the shifts kept happening.

Molars met each together as Brick’s jaw clenched. So, that’s the deal. He’d been wondering how this thing could have hurt Omni-Man if they could even do damage to it like this. You get stronger the longer you’re around. He wasn’t exactly sure how it worked, whether it was the draining or the shaping or whatever, but Brick could already tell that the longer the fight dragged on, the worse the reality-warping got around them. The blue Burger Mart had already vanished, the people with it, but the air still tasted completely wrong and Brick's skin crawled with the unfamiliar sensation of existing in too many different places at the exact same time.

Cecil's voice crackled back into the earpiece, infuriatingly calm as ever. "Reinforcements inbound. ETA twelve seconds."

Reinforcements. He clicked his tongue as red eyes darted up to see Butch already back on the offensive, Boomer right behind him. Right, Cecil. Hands lit up with lances of fire, eyes doing the same as Brick peppered the monster from afar, keeping up heat-beams and fire blasts enough to sear a building from existence, to buy his brothers space to hammer Omnipotus. Not sure if some second-stringers are gonna do the job. He didn’t really blame the old man for constantly being on-edge and ready to bite someone’s ear off for pissing him off because he would be too if his only effective solution for the end of the world was just throwing more and more bodies at it.

It wasn’t even the worst of plans, considering it had worked for things like the Chronodile and other Level 9s Brick had read up on. Hell, it was better than hoping some random cape would handle it, anyway, which was honestly what seemed like the plan for back home 99% of the time.

Thing was, Brick just wasn’t sure how effective Cecil’s answer was against some super-strong asshole that could bend the universe just by standing still.

“WELCOME TO THE BUTCHER SHOP!” Tearing through the shifting gravity with nothing but a scream, Butch rushed headlong into the giant's waist, and started hammering brutal hooks into the thing's ribs. “HOPE YOU LIKE YOUR MEAT TENDER!” Each blow had the force of a cluster bomb all on its own, booms sounding out over the roaring wind of fifteen different landscapes flickering into existence. Boomer came in low, air crackling with erratic blue lightning as he drove both hammer fists directly into the side of the entity's kneecap. “STATIC SMASH!”

With a sound of thunder loud enough to silence Butch’s hits for a second, something popped in Omnipotus’ body, bone or joint or whatever else a cosmic nightmare had, and the giant bellowed, his leg buckling slightly.

"OMNIPOTUS WILL DEVOUR YOUR PATHETIC WORLD-LINE. OMNIPOTUS WILL FEAST ON ITS CORE. OMNIPOTUS W—"

“WILL SHUT UP!” Brick’s hands slammed together, both fingers aimed out as an arrow of boiling red flame came to life and surged out; the thing the size of him and moving at speeds closer to hypersonic than anything else. He didn’t need to name the move, unlike his brothers who treated that like a second job, but he knew what Boomer already called it. RED ROCKET!

The blast was a small warhead of demonic X-empowered flame, Omnipotus’ upper body wrapped up in it as the attack tore right into the giant’s already-fractured chest armor, purple flesh burning away instantly as metal plates melted into glowing slag and the over-powering roar  cut off into something wet, choking, and desperate.

But the giant didn't go down.

That scream lasted all of thre seconds before it split out into another laugh, the sound echoing across the glitching land around all of them. “YOU ARE STRONG, LITTLE ONES. BUT I AM BEYOND SIMPLE STRENGTH! OMNIPOTUS HAS CONSUMED GREAT STARS, ENDED LARGER GALAXIES AND TODAY, I WILL CONSUME YOU!"

It was then that the world lit up with a new kind of light.

Yellow flashes, familiar flashes, popped across the shifting landscape, accompanied by the sonic booms of high-speed flight. One by one, and suddenly all at one, the wasteland was no longer empty.

It was full.

Full of capes.

Lots of capes.

Too many capes.

The new Guardians hit the field first, Bulletproof in yellow-and-orange slamming into the back Omnipotus’s head mid-laugh, the kinetic cannonball knocking the giant forward. Immortal was right behind him, a thousand-year-old war cry on his lips as he drove his fists one by one into the giant’s spine. Monster Girl was already in the fray, dropped from one of Robot’s larger drones as she gripped onto the giant’s damaged shoulder and went to work as the green-ogre thing she was, while Rex’s ‘splosions tore up the entity's feet, a chaotic wall of booms making the ground beneath it even less stable than it already was. 

SuperPatriot landed heavy right next to Brick, cybernetic legs hissing as they absorbed the impact of the drop. The old man shot the thirteen-year-old a sideways look through those optics he used as eyes. "You boys doing alright?"

Brick wiped a smear of purple blood off his knuckles. "We’re not dead, old man."

Before he could saay anything else, a green body hit the dirt at his side with enough force to form a decent-crater, Super-Patriot jumping back as Brick simply stared at the new arrival. “You good, Dragon?”

Green and massive, Savage Dragon picked himsef up with a grunt, the monster-man already bleeding and bruised from the single hit he took. “Never better. Anybody seen the love of my life?”

Said love landed beside him, a ditch behind her instead of a crater.

“There she is.”

Another burst of orange shot through the air, Firebreather doing exactly what his name said as he flew around Omnipotus’ legs.

And then the corporate publicity teams arrived.

“Howdy, y’all!” 

Oh great, Fight Force. America’s fifth most popular super-team appeared in a loud burst of yellow teleporter flare, all in matching cowboy hats with their leader — Force — barking contradictory orders over the comm channels like anybody would listen to him anyway.

Disaster Force landed right after them, all dramatic poses and bright auras, Solar — their fearless leader — absorbing ambient sunlight and glowing bright enough to outshine his brother Force on the rival team.

More kept coming and coming and coming; Capes Inc. The Actioneers. Freak Force. Dynamo 5, Venture, Superstar, the Firebirds and a whole bunch of others all crammed into the exact same localized fight, all of them trying to coordinate and half of them just getting in the way.

The ground underneath the massive dogpile cycled again and again with every hit Omnipotus took. The switchthrough snow, desert, ocean surface, volcanic rock, and back again to picture-perfect farmland came faster and faster as Omnipotus turned his skull-face to the empowered army assembling around his ankles, and laughed that metallic thunder all over again. "OMNIPOTUS WELCOMES THE FEAST! COME AND MEET YOUR END!"

Hundreds of capes, one cosmic nightmare, and reality having a total breakdown in the background as Omnipotus stood tall in the dead middle of it all, leaking blood from a dozen wounds but somehow looking like it was still his game., but somehow, it still looked like it was winning.

Brick breathed in as his hands lit up again. We could do so much better with Vince right now.