ZFighter18

FULL CHAPTER HERE —> PROJECT ROWDY 2-33 He barely saw it coming. That fist rushed out at him with no warning but plenty of tell, Mark’s palms snapping up over his face a few microseconds before it hit home. Ngggh! Even still, all that force went somewhere, raw Viltrumite strength rippling through hi

FULL CHAPTER HERE —> PROJECT ROWDY 2-32B “You will come with me, right now, or I will kill everyone around us until you have no choice. I am kind, so I will spare the life of your mother.” Fear. Fear wasn’t new to Mark. He’d been scared out of his mind a lot, actually. Hard not to be when most of th

FULL CHAPTER HERE —> PROJECT ROWDY 2-32A “Mark, you can’t be serious!” “Mom, quie—” “Markus Sebastian Grayson, you’re thinking about dropping out of college?!” The sound of his full government name was enough to make Mark rigid in his chair, his mom’s volume barely having much to do it. Even still,

FULL CHAPTER HERE —> PROJECT ROWDY 2-31 “IT’S TRINITY TIME!” The plushie being shoved into Brick’s face let out another tinny shout, both its arms flopping around like little stubby fins as Boomer gave it another squeeze. Once again, the cheap voice box let out the same pre-recorded sound. “IT’S TRI

FULL CHAPTER HERE —> PROJECT ROWDY 2-30 Brick took in a deep breath as he moved over the dinner table with plates in hand, the smell of food filling the Grayson house and probably wafting down the street too. Garlic, sesame oil, and something else with sugar in it; all of them going a golden brown i

FULL CHAPTER HERE —> PROJECT ROWDY 2-29 A red trail carved high as Brick Mojo pulled the turn tight, shooting up four-five-six hundred feet above Michigan Avenue as the crowd screamed below him. Jagged green scraped right under the top of his loop, a cackle sounding off as Brick held back a sigh. Go

SIX YEARS AGO NEW YORK OUTSKIRTS Thirteen years old and he had the smallest kit in the van. That was always the funniest part about it — at least top three — because he just didn’t really need like seventy-five percent of it. A belt full of washers, screws, ball bearings and a couple roll of quarter

Rex was in the air, charged splinters sent flying into the fray as he kicked off a wall, and threw himself over a shoulder. Wood chips went off behind his back as the big one coming right at him took a bunch of blasts to the back of his neck. “Gotta be quicker than that, Minotaur!” “It’s Monitor!” T

“RAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!” Brick was used to a lot. As that old guy in those insurance commercials said, he knew a thing or two because he’d seen a thing or two. And, at this point— “RAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!” — he’d seen more than a couple things. Kaiju every Tuesday? Nothing that would even make him blink.

The door was all heavy steel and pneumatic seals, several inches thick and built for damn near anything you could throw at it. Unfortunately, Rex was more than most. "Knock knock, assholes." Two weeks of sleeping his ass off in a hospital gown and this was the kind of shit the GDA had him doing firs

"Meet the new and improved Rex Splode!" The hangar bay doors were already open, despite a little bit of a slow start, Rex’s arms wide open and waiting for his return party. Nobody was in the hangar. Cool. That much made sense, at least, considering they were probably in the main hall. He’d just been

TEN DAYS LATER (HOURS AFTER THE GUARDIANS BRIEFING) “-as the enhancile stack managed to layer rather cleanly over the steroidal base you received in pre-adolescence, which was honestly the part we had the least confidence about going in. A layered synthesis with your existing physiology proved to be

REX. It wasn’t a lot that people asked him about personal stuff. When they did, though, his name came up sometimes. Not his ‘hero’ name, just his name. They assumed it was short for something half the time, like Reginald or Rexford or something like that. Dumb name, honestly. As if his parents were

“Not intelligent.” Unfortunately, murder was off the table. It was entirely off the table given that Brick was forced to question the alien for more information on the new threat. Fortunately, the Martian knew plenty on what the sequids were and how they worked. “You said…” Unfortunately again, that

“...so we’re fighting Martians again?” The screen took up half the north wall off Guardians HQ, a still image staring back at every single one of them. It sat there in the black of space, in the middle of it all — a giant shape with too many angles and lights — its position updated every second with

“So, you went to a planet of giant purple people eaters?” The rice in front of him had gone cold about wenty minutes ago, but that didn’t stop Mark from swallowing another spoonful. He’d probably have been done eating by now if he could get done answering questions, and those questions would be prob

He’d run out of excuses a while ago. To avoid going home, at least. Whether it was out of a desire to spend more time in the place where his dad had chosen to run too or just to keep away from the place where he'd already been ordered to go to... Well, he wasn't sure which. The healing had been his

The impact was an open palm into a wall of hardened gelatin, a wall that pushed back right before anything actually struck. The palm of Brick’s glove met the invisible telekinetic barrier shielding the blue giant, all his newly found telekinetic force screaming against the psychokinetic friction for

"—asualties reported along the Magnificent Mile. Too many to properly count, r-right now.” The feed from the chopper camera jerked wildly, Chicago skyline smeared as the rotors beat to avoid the sudden pass of a saucer moving fast enough to blur in its pass. “God, it’s been barely an hour, b-b-but t

"—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

C’mon. C’mon. Blue lightning buzzed over his fingers, jumping from knuckle to knuckle and dancing between digits. Each fizz and snap came louder as he tried to force the energy into more than just a short-lived burst. “Just… just stay, broooo…” Hands clamped hard around empty air, all ten fingers sh

“H-how was that?” Pale hands dropped back to his side, a neon sword the size of a surfboard fizzling away into glitchy squares of hard-light magenta. They barely lasted a full three seconds before they popped out of real-space completely. By the time the last of them was gone, Donny just stood there

“It’s about throwing your mind at the mass.” A brick flipped end over end above thick fingers, a single touch all Damien Farell needed to keep it seemingly hovering in the air. “All in the feel of it. Tactile, you know?” “...not really?” Blue eyes blinked back at the broader and taller boy, Justin A

Error: Parameter Mismatch. He sat cross-legged just over the edge of the couch, floating a few inches above the cushions proper; fire-red hair free to trail down his spine like the tail of a comet. Three separate tablets rested on his thighs, glares of crimson and amber thrown back at him and reflec

“Coming in hoooooot!” A silver streak shined bright as it tore through the bleeding clouds above Illinois, shredding space and atmospheric friction. Displaced air flattened the nearest patch of terrain as the self-guided missile decelerated with a shockwave and straightened up. “Sorry for being late

The sky opened with a glitch. Literally. Squares of neon blue and bright magenta light materialized out of the teleportation grid, forming a familiar shape with a familiar face. A teenager, maybe fifteen years old with light brown hair and bad complexion, dropped out of the sky on violently-bright w

"OMNIPOTUS REMAINS UNBROKEN!" The air outside Chicago trembled. So did the ground, because apparently Omnipotus couldn’t say his own stupid name without making tectonics everybody else’s problem. Also his breath smelled like spoiled milk. Somehow. “OMNIPOTUS REMAINS UNBENT!” Maybe it was cosmic hali

“Is that all you have, son of Nolan?” Shut up. The hit came hard, the taste of pennies filling Mark’s teeth as his body shuddered. He swung back out, a backhand catching the woman across the jaw. Blood flew from her mouth but like before, it didn’t do a thing to stop her. “I ask again, is that it?”

“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 sp

“Saving aliens.” Debbie Grayson’s words played over speakers that delivered the highest quality the Global Defense Agency could afford, that is if they hadn’t manufactured any themselves. The face that came with those words was blown up on the main screen, the same one that dominated the far wall of

The backyard was full of capes — some of them actual physical capes — as much as it was packed tight with balloons of every color. The mass of superpowers and costumes in a normal setting was something that had stopped finding all that surreal about fifty-something disasters back. Now it was just an

The atmosphere screamed as it parted, heat and friction shedding like scales against invincible flesh of the Mandate of Heaven. Pacific airspace blurred into a single streak of deep blue beneath him, the curvature of the earth itself bending to accommodate his path. His body sang, the voice of every

AUGUST 2023 The pressure of the earth itself compacted tight against his body as soil packed itself into his mouth, the taste of ash, vaporized copper and long-powdered bone stale on his tongue. The being known as Yǒng Zhé did not breathe, China’s Eternal Breaker never needing something as simple as

“This is not heroism!” The man screamed, his red face taking up the entirety of the screen as it contrasted harshly with his cream suit. “You can’t call this anything like that!” Robert Merrick, sixty-two years old this July and not a year younger, held his face in a mask of perfect and practiced ou

A warzone spread across three levels. It used to be a simple lobby; big, corporate and clean, but still just a lobby. Now though, chaos bled across three levels — vertically, horizontally and diagonally — glass catwalks and chrome staircases as much a victim to violence as the rest of the structure

Mark Grayson was a lot of things, but he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed and no one could really deny that. Not even his mom. From the way she had gone quiet when Brick asked about Mark’s grades when he was their age, especially not his mom. So, Brick couldn’t say that he was anywhere close to

They arrived in Washington D.C. to a warzone, punching through the sound barrier so low it shattered every window on the south side of the Treasury building. The air was thick, heavy with the stench of fire and smoke; burning rubber, melted metal, scorched grass almost enough to make Brick’s nose wr

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS APRIL 1, 2020 “-oming to you… l-llive from Whiteside… mentary School in… ago, where a-” The anchor’s voice was barely audible, strained and hoarse as the man fought to stay professional even as the sound of screaming, crying and dying came in over the mic from even a good distance

The GDA mailroom this last month was hell on earth. Well, it smelled like a perfume store had a seizure and died, so close enough. Stacks of letters bled cheap floral scent into the air, enough that Brick could pick up the smell through like three different walls. Mountains of the stuff were just ev

Too smooth for something moving this fast, Donny Ferguson couldn’t help it as he shifted his weight from foot to foot in the high-speed elevator. He couldn’t help it, all the static under the skin lately making it hard to ease up like he normally did when he was around this much cool and high-powere

The world was a blur and his ears were full of Cecil’s voice, the director calm and flat in his tone as he ever was. Unfortunately, speaking in dulcet tones was a piss-poor idea when it came time to compete with the wind screaming past his face. Luckily for the director, though, his hearing was good

The technicolor trio that was the Trinity dropped out of the sky, each one of them taking in the defeated sigh of a ruined vista; a previously picture-perfect postcard picked to pieces. A single inhale told the oldest the air tasted wrong, thick with a heavy scent that he and all the Boys knew well

A dozen flashbulbs went off right in his frickin’ face, bright enough that fire-truck red retinas whited out for a fraction of a second. As the world bleached itself into nothing but afterimage and heat, the leader of the world’s most powerful super-team didn't so much as flinch. Where his brothers

The GDA's rec lounge was the aggressive beige of something that could only be explicitly government-approved; designed by committee till the point someone clearly just gave up and picked the least offensive shade they had to choose from. Brick couldn’t exactly hate on them for that, especially when

The hallway knew better than to argue with his footsteps. Twenty years of walking these corridors had taught the base to get out of his way; sensors recognizing the particular rhythm of a man who'd outlasted four different administrations and twenty times as many world-ending threats. Zulu wing air

(This is an extra chapter set right after interlude. It's not meant to be part of the story because it would fuck the pacing of this arc so it's an extra chapter you get.) Three boys in jumpsuits hung suspended against a sky bleeding alien fire, a chunk of the city behind them cracked and wrecked by

The sky had turned the color of infected wounds, pink-orange bruise over a city that used to know blue. Smoke mixed alien tech-fires with burning gasoline; the air tasted like copper and ozone. Concrete dust settled on everything - robots, monsters, capes, ordinary people clutching rifles - all brea

Big Ben stood in the distance, proud, dumb, and oblivious as it’d been since the day it was completed. Then something struck it, stone and steel coughing outward in a massive explosion. Faces turned toward the sound, not the blast—nobody reacts to the source first, they react to the first scream. A

The house hadn't changed. The same pale siding stared back at him, the same crooked porch light that threw shadows wrong, the same smell of mildew working through gutters and wet leaves decomposing on the front steps. He’d been standing on the sidewalk for… his internal chronometer said ninety-seven

Static hissed across the screen, white noise and digital snow before the signal finally locked onto a new channel. Channel 7 Action News flashes across a screen as the eagle logo spins, all chrome and blue and red and everything else to the point of overdone patriotism. The anchor’s tie was crooked,