I Told You, I'm Invinci-(Invincible SI) Chapter 15 (Part 1)

“Promise me, right now, that you’ll denounce Viltrum. That you’ll reject them — for Earth. For us.”

“…what?”

Mark stood as he spoke, his posture stiff with resolve. His eyes, once uncertain, were now hard and cold as granite.

“I know about Viltrum,” he said, his voice steady but burning with conviction. “I know everything about Viltrum. I know about the monsters there, like Conquest. I know the things you did to become a legend among your people. I know you plan to take over Earth so the Viltrumite Empire can make a comeback.”

And then, just as quickly, Mark’s gaze softened. The ice in his eyes thawed, replaced by something achingly human.

“But I know you love us,” he continued, his voice breaking slightly. “I know you love Earth. Viltrum has nothing for you anymore. No one on Viltrum loves you like we do. You know exactly what Viltrum will do to Earth if they win. And you know nothing will ever be the same again.”

He extended his hand to his father, smiling — not with triumph, but with hope.

“So join us. Help us fight back against the Viltrumites. Be the hero I’ve always believed you were. With Omni-Man on our side, there’s no way we can lose.”

For a long, suffocating minute, Nolan simply stared at his son. His mind was blank, his chest heavy. He could see the boy he’d raised standing before him, but also the man shaped by Cecil’s whispers, by Earth’s fragile dreams of resistance.

And then he began to laugh.

It started as a dry, broken chuckle and built into a jagged, bitter laugh that rumbled out of him like a faultline breaking. His shoulders shook. His eyes watered. His teeth clenched as anger and fear battled in his heart, twisting every sound into something almost feral.

This… this is what Cecil has poured into my son’s head? he thought, the laugh catching in his throat. This is his plan? Fighting against Viltrum?

When the fit finally ebbed, Nolan wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand, his breath still uneven. Mark was watching him closely now, his face wary, like he was approaching some wild animal he didn’t recognize.

“Dad?” he asked carefully.

“…You don’t know what the Viltrum Empire is,” Nolan said at last, his voice quieter but still edged like a blade. A soft chuckle slipped through his words, but there was no humor in it. “If you truly knew what the Empire was… if you actually understood what we could do… if you knew what we really were… you would never have suggested something so foolish.”

“Dad, we can handle fifty Viltrumites,” Mark said firmly, taking another step forward, his fists tightening at his sides. “As strong as they are, we have ways to beat them.”

“…Cecil is a fool,” Nolan muttered, shaking his head in disbelief. “Let me guess — the Coalition told you they had ways to beat us, didn’t they? That’s why they sent the Unopan and the Leonide here, isn’t it? And when we almost lost to Battle Beast, that must have convinced Earth that their little experiments were the key they’d been searching for. Tell me, Mark,  what freak are they enhancing now? A Gelderian? An Aikreonean? Or have they finally decided to experiment on humans?”

Mark’s brow furrowed. “Dad, what are you talking about?”

Nolan’s expression darkened as he slowly rose to his full height, his shadow stretching over the snow.

“Did you really think,” he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous low, “that we didn’t have our own spies in the Coalition?”

Mark’s eyes widened at the implication, but Nolan kept talking, each word heavier than the last as he advanced upon his son.

“This is what the Coalition does, Mark!” Nolan barked, his voice rising like a sermon turned into a snarl. “They bring weak, gullible races into their fold and whisper poison into their ears. They paint us as monsters — us! — as if we’re the ones draining their worlds dry with worthless tributes to Talescria.” Spittle caught the edges of his teeth as he spoke, his fists clenching, his breath coming faster. “All the Empire has ever wanted was to share its glory with the galaxy. We are the only ones who can bring peace — real peace — to the stars!”

His eyes were wild now, bright and feverish. He jabbed a finger at his own chest, at the pristine white of his Viltrumite uniform.

“You’re right. There are fifty pureblooded Viltrumites left,” he hissed, voice lowering for an instant before flaring back up. “Our closest guarded secret, the thing we hide from everyone who hasn’t earned this uniform. But you’re an idiot if you think that is the extent of our might.”

He stepped closer to Mark, his shadow falling over his son as he levitated over him as his words tumbling out faster, almost without breath.

“We’ve conquered hundreds of worlds! Hundreds! We’ve bent countless species to our will, enslaved them, shaped them, forged armies so vast they could take this pathetic planet in a single day. Our technology is so far ahead of your little pistols and bombs that it makes you look like cave-dwellers scrawling on the walls.” Nolan’s lips peeled back into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Fifty Viltrumites doesn’t matter, Mark. Fifty Viltrumites means nothing when we could crush you through our proxies alone!”

He raised his hands, almost shaking with the intensity of his own words, his voice cracking with fervor.

“The only reason Earth is even worth sending me instead of an armada of our servants is because of you!” His tone shifted, feverish pride twisting with desperation. “You, Mark! The salvation of our race. The first genetically perfect hybrid. You’re the proof that we were right! That we can become more!”

Nolan’s eyes gleamed, manic and unblinking, as if he were staring through his son into some glorious vision only he could see.

“You will help me take over this planet for Viltrum. You will help us return to our former glory. And you—” he thrust a trembling hand out, his voice breaking into a near roar, “you will lead the newest generation of Viltrumites. The ones who will finish our sacred mission once and for all!”

Green flashes of light appeared all around them, and in an instant, they were surrounded.

“Alright, Nolan. Back off,” came Cecil’s voice — cool, calm, edged with iron.

And suddenly, they were all there.

The Guardians. The entire team, healed and standing in the snow, their eyes locked on him with varying shades of disbelief and dread. Those grotesque abominations Cecil had unleashed against Battle Beast — half-zombie, half-machine — now circled him and Mark with a predator’s patience, their jagged frames creaking, jaws snapping, as if eager for the command to tear into him.

Behind them stood dozens of GDA agents, each armed with massive silver plasma blasters tethered to humming energy packs on their backs. The weapons glowed faintly, the air around them shimmering with displaced heat, ready to unleash devastation the moment Cecil spoke.

And then there was the stranger — a man with slick green hair, clad head to toe in black, eyes sharp and wary, watching Nolan as if cataloging every twitch of his body. Another piece of the GDA’s endless contingency plans, undoubtedly.

But none of them mattered.

Not compared to the man standing just behind Mark. 

Cecil Stedman.

He stood as if the cold didn’t touch him, the snow hissing softly against his coat. No fear, no anger, just that relentless, glacial determination in his gaze. His eyes were like chips of ice, unyielding as they pinned Nolan in place.

“Cecil, you promised I would get the chance to talk him down,” Mark said suddenly, his voice tight, his attention still fixed on Nolan.

“Yeah, I did,” Cecil answered, tone flat as a scalpel. “But then I heard him going on about the ‘glory of Viltrum’ and sounding like every cultist I’ve ever burned out of a bunker. That’s when I realized the nice way wasn’t gonna do shit.” His jaw tightened as he gave the order, plain and cold. “So now we do things my way. Nolan, stand the fuck down. You’re not winning this.”

Nolan’s lips curled in something between a smile and a snarl. “I don’t see a Battle Beast here, Cecil.” His voice was calm,  dangerously so. “In fact, I don’t see a single reason why I should stand down.”

Inside, though, a strange clarity had settled over him. The dread of moments ago had evaporated, replaced by the old familiar calm that came when battle was inevitable. 

Everything had collapsed in the worst possible way.

He had thought his end would come differently — killed by his son, replaced as Earth’s Viltrumite, allowing the Coalition to slip their spy into the world through Cecil, using Mark as the vessel of gradual conquest. It could have worked. He had known the Grand Regent — magnanimous, patient, wise. Viltrum could wait a hundred years if it meant the prize was worth it.

Instead, these fools had chosen rebellion, and for that, they would face Viltrum’s wrath.

There would be no concessions. There would be no kindness. They didn’t understand what fifty Viltrumites truly meant. They thought numbers alone told the story, but not all Viltrumites were equal.

Grand Regent Thragg could seize this entire solar system within a month, and he would do it without hesitation, crushing resistance beneath a tide of calculated brutality. Conquest — savage, merciless Conquest — would leave nothing but smoking ruins behind him, tearing city after city apart while he lured the planet’s defenders into hopeless battles, laughing as their strength failed. Vidor would not merely conquer,  he would poison their hearts, turning father against son, mother against daughter, weaving games of cruelty until Earth bled itself dry. Even Kregg, the most disciplined among them, would strip this planet bare, taking what he wanted without care for the screams he left behind.

They thought they knew the Viltrum Empire. They thought it was armies, fleets, the weight of an empire spread across the stars. But they knew nothing. The Empire was more than soldiers. It was monsters, monsters wearing the faces of men, and those monsters would have free rein if Earth refused to bend the knee.

So Nolan had to make them bend.

Let them hate him. Let them curse his name. Better for them to be alive, even despising him, than to suffer the true wrath of Viltrum. Better for them to endure his hand than be torn apart by his comrades.

If he had to be the villain of this story to keep Earth standing, then so be it.

“You’re still injured, Nolan. I know for a fact you’re not at a hundred percent. Everyone here is ready to pound your ass into dust if you so much as twitch. Do not fucking test me, Nolan.”

Nolan barely registered the warning. The cold air filled his lungs; his senses narrowed to a fine, bright point. Around him, faces blurred into a ring of intent. The weapons. The dead cyborgs. The Guardians. He felt the old clarity of battle settle over him like armor.

“Nolan, there’s no need for a fight,” Darkwing said, voice flat and unreadable. “We both know it’d be ugly for both sides, and I don’t doubt you could make it bloody. But if you’ve ever cared about any of us, you won’t fight.”

“As if you wouldn’t if you were in my place,” Nolan snarled back.

“Nolan, please. Think of your wife!” Immortal cut in, pleading. “This will crush her—”

“You don’t get to talk about my spouse when you can’t even remember your own fucking name!” Nolan snapped. Rage flared through him, sharp and animal. “Are you all insane? Look at what you’d have to do just to stop me, a singular Viltrumite! And yet you think this little shit-planet can defend itself from fifty more like me? You’re the ones putting Debbie in danger!”

“Stop it, all of you!” Mark exploded, stepping between his father and the others at last. He was finally focusing on the others instead of being laser-focused on his father, and Nolan saw his chance.

Movement was a blur. Nolan noted, coldly, that he wasn’t as quick as Mark in a pure sprint. The boy’s ground speed reminded him of Red Rush; Mark could weave and outrun most. But there were different kinds of speed than sprinting forward endlessly, and the type of speed that came from coiling all of one’s power into a single, devastating strike— in that, Nolan had the edge. In a pure burst of speed, when he made a single movement as he put all of his strength and speed into one strike, he would always be faster than Red Rush. And in this case, that extended to Mark.

Mark’s relaxed stance gave him the opening. Instinct took over. Nolan didn’t want to maim his son; he wanted him down, out of the way. For the plan to hold, Mark had to be rendered incapable of stopping what came next.

His fist drove into Mark’s solar plexus with a force that was all concentrated, controlled brutality. The impact detonated outward, a shockwave rippling through the snow, throwing Mark backward into Immortal. Both of them went down in a tangle, and the blast knocked several of those nearest to him off their feet.

He watched the blood drain from Mark’s face, the way his eyes bulged, the mouth opening in a raw, involuntary gasp for air that would not come. Nolan saw the muscles around his son’s ribs bunch and clench, the body folding inward on itself as if trying to contain a storm. Pain wrote itself across Mark like a language Nolan had no right to read.

It only knocked the wind out of him, Nolan told himself, cold and clinical. That’s all.

The thought was a small, brutal talisman he pressed to his chest. If Mark was unable to interfere for the next few minutes, if he only had to deal with nasty bruises and a terrible sight on television hours later, that was a price Nolan was willing to pay in order to avoid fighting his son. 

All he needed was for Mark to be out of the way. 

All he needed was time.

He did not savor the move. There was no triumphant roar, no cruel gloating. There was a precise economy to it, intent compressed into motion. He bent down instantly, knees coiling like springs, and launched himself upwards. The air broke around him with a crack that shredded the sky: a sonic boom that rolled across the white plain and carried across the air like an accusation. Snow spat outward in a shallow cone as he climbed, breath ripping from him in thin, cold bursts.

As the sight of his former friends and allies receded beneath him, Nolan’s chest tightened until it hurt. He thought of Mark’s small face as a boy, of the nights they’d stayed up on Christmas and drunk hot chocolate, of Debbie folding laundry with that tired, stubborn softness she carried, of him fighting with the Guardians, joy in his heart and a smile on his face, of him bickering with Cecil and the two men sharing war stories every now and then. 

The images came in a flurry — ordinary, human moments that had nothing to do with the Empire or its doctrine.

I’m sorry, he thought, and the words felt inadequate, a small, private confession swallowed by the wind. I’m so fucking sorry for what I’m about to do. For the people I will hurt. For the lives I will destroy.

But then he thought of Conquest, of Vidor, of the Grand Regents' possible disappointment, and the old certainty rose again, iron and immovable. 

Trust me. It is better this way. This will save you all from worse hands. 

This will keep you alive.

____________________________________________________________

“Breathe, Markus. Breathe!” Immortal barked, hands working on the boy’s ribs despite the cold and the growing danger in the sky.

There was little to be done when a man took a blow to the solar plexus like that. The nerve cluster had been struck with such force that Markus lay folded in on himself, gasping for air that refused to come. Immortal had never seen Nolan hit anyone that hard; he wouldn’t have been surprised if a rib had cracked on impact.

“Dammit!” Cecil swore, hauling himself upright. The shockwave from Nolan’s strike had thrown half the heroes off their feet; now the man was nothing more than a white dot streaking away over the treeline.

“Donald—” Cecil barked orders, already thinking three moves ahead. “I want eyes on Omni-Man. Satellites, drones, fliers, everything! Get our newest technical advisor to run a predictive trajectory! Fire up the teleporter! Bring every Reaniman online and ready!”

Then he spun back to the group. His voice sharpened into the single, unambiguous command that cut through panic. “Immortal, Green Ghost, Red Rush, War Woman — go after him, now. Whatever he’s planning, we cannot let him reach civilisation.”

Immortal’s head snapped up. He was not a man to be left with questions. “What about Markus?” he demanded, gesturing toward the boy who was still trying to force air into his lungs. “We’re not just going to leave him here—”

“You can and you will,” Cecil snapped. “Mark will join you when he recovers. Right now, keeping Omni-Man from turning the whole world into a slaughterhouse is the priority.”

Immortal’s jaw clenched. He could feel anger, the animal urge to rip a throat out for every punch his friends would taken, for every life that might be snuffed if Nolan hit the wrong target. He opened his mouth, ready to argue, when Darkwing stepped forward, his voice level and calm.

“Go,” Darkwing said. “I’ll look after him. There’s not much I can do here, but I’ll keep him breathing until you get back. Just stop him.”

Immortal hesitated a heartbeat, took in Mark’s pale face, the way his chest finally began to rise more evenly, and then nodded once. Duty over sentiment. It was what he was: a bulwark, a living weapon. Despite Markus being one of the few pupils he’d taken under his wing in his long and bloody lifetime, Immortal knew there was nothing he could do for the boy now. The fight had moved on. Stopping Nolan was all that mattered.

Cecil’s voice, sharp and concerned, was still barking orders, until something crackled over his comms, and suddenly, he faltered. 

“He’s… he’s what?”

Immortal turned toward him, frowning. Cecil Stedman had seen the world end more than once and hadn’t blinked. The man could bark orders over a burning city without his tone wavering, could stare down monsters and gods with that same sardonic grin he’d come to associate with the man.

But now, his face had gone pale. His hands trembled slightly. For the first time since Immortal had known him — and he’d known Cecil longer than most men had been alive — he saw fear.

Real, unguarded fear.

“Cecil,” Immortal said, taking a step forward. “What’s happened?”

The GDA director didn’t answer right away. His eyes were fixed on the point in the sky where Nolan had disappeared, seeing something none of them could see. When he finally spoke, his voice had dropped to a rasp, barely more than a whisper.

“Nolan…” he breathed, each word coming out like it hurt to say. “The fuck have you done?”

A cold weight settled in Immortal’s gut. Whatever Cecil was looking at, whatever Omni-Man had decided to do…

It wasn’t going to be a fight.

 It was going to be a reckoning.

__________________________________________________

In his twenty years on Earth, Nolan had memorized more than maps and addresses; he had memorized the planet itself. Part of it had been simple, domestic pleasure — the small, private joy of finding new places to take Debbie and Mark and watching their faces light up at things they would never have seen otherwise. He took pride in that: in the ways he could give them experiences no other man could. It made him feel like he was on top of the world, able to take his family wherever they wished, whenever they wished.

But there was another, darker reason he kept those places in his head. 

A soldier keeps a ledger as well as a scrapbook. 

Nolan had spent two decades cataloguing weak points, sites whose loss would break more than concrete and steel: targets whose destruction would unravel infrastructure, spread panic, and force surrender. He could list them without hesitation — the places that, struck at once, would make resistance not merely costly but impossible.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant in Japan — the largest nuclear power plant in the world.

The Bahr el-Baqar wastewater treatment plant in Egypt — the largest of its kind, a single blow to food and sanitation across whole regions.

The Three Gorges Dam — a dam whose failure would drown cities and cripple power systems.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault — the so-called doomsday vault that stored genetic diversity for the world’s crops.

Mauna Loa — a sleeping mountain that could be turned into an instrument of ash and disruption.

The Grand Coulee Dam — the central linchpin of American hydroelectric capacity.

And the spine of North America’s electrical grid itself.

Any one of those strikes would be devastating. All of them struck in a single sweep — synchronized, precise, merciless — and the result would be catastrophic beyond most human imaginings.

He did not want to do this. He hated that things had come to such a place. He hated that Cecil had boxed him into a corner and forced him to make a choice where no honorable alternative remained, and he kept circling the same, bitter question: why hadn’t they killed him when they had the chance? It would have solved so many problems. If they had ended him, they could have handled the transition differently, more gently. Mark was young, powerful; allowances could have been made. The Empire could have advanced its aims with less bloodshed.

But they had chosen to fight the Viltrum Empire instead. They had made up their minds to resist. They had chosen confrontation with an empire that had, in Nolan’s experience, never met an opponent it could not break — no planet, no matter how technologically advanced, no military, had withstood them. That history was not theory to him; it was evidence. It was the calculus he had lived by, the hard lesson hammered into him by centuries of conquest.

And now they expected him to sacrifice himself for a rag-tag coalition of weak allies and their primitive toys? To die fighting his own? The men and women he had bled alongside, the world he had sworn to elevate until it reached the stars — and they expected him to throw that away on a gamble?

Nolan could just see it all play out in his mind. The strategy would be predictable: he and Mark would be the linchpin of whatever defense they cobbled together, because without them, the planet would fall within a day. Together, they might hold off three Viltrumites, maybe four if luck favored them and the attackers were few. It would be brutal, glorious in the old way of war — and it would be temporary.

When bargaining failed, as bargaining always failed, they would send Conquest. Conquest: a name that tasted like iron and ash. That man was not a soldier in any conventional sense; he was an engine of annihilation, a thing that delighted in turning the bodies of his opponents into toys. He would burn cities for sport, lure defenders into traps, and fold entire armies like paper. Nolan could imagine the fight down to the stench of blood and steam. 

And he was fairly certain — frighteningly certain, actually — that he and Mark could kill Conquest. It would be a victory soaked in ruin. They would survive it only as wreckage survives a storm.

And then what? The planet that had proven itself dangerous would no longer be an annoyance to Viltrum. 

It would be a threat. 

The very existence of a resistant, powerful hybrid, of a people who could fight back, would light a spark in Thragg’s eyes. If Earth could threaten Viltrum’s interests, and if it could breed a class of warriors fast enough to matter, the response would be total.

Thragg would come. 

He would not come as a negotiator. He would come as a force of correction. Nolan knew the history of his people: planets that resisted were reshaped; populations that would not yield were broken until survival meant submission. Continents would be ground into rubble. The death toll would be counted in the hundreds of millions. The heroes Nolan cared for would not be spared as exceptions; they would be used, humiliated, dissected for advantage. Women would be reduced to tools for propagation; whole cultures would be cataloged, enslaved, or erased.

These people,  his friends, the spirited fools who thought they could stand up and win,  had no conception of what such a war would look like. They had never seen the Grand Regent marshal a fleet; they had not watched Conquest play with a city like a cruel child with an injured animal. They did not know the scales Nolan had lived under his entire life.

So he would prevent them from having to learn. He would strip the world of the choice to fight and lose everything. He would beat them, subjugate them if necessary, but he would preserve their lives. He would ensure that those he loved,  Debbie, Mark, the faces that mattered, survived in a form he could live with.

He told himself it was mercy. He told himself it was the only path that left them breathing. He told himself it was love. And if being the monster that made that mercy possible was what it took, then he would accept the name and the hatred without flinching.

No matter what he had to do.

__________________________________________________________

Kariwa Village, near the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant in Japan

Kaiza liked the night for the way it made things simple. 

The town’s lights were pared down to small, honest things: a single vending machine humming on the corner, the dim rectangle of a barstool through frosted glass, the haloed lamps that marked the low seawall. The Sea of Japan lay black beyond the breakwater, breathing in and out with a dull, regular sound that had comforted him his whole life. He walked with his hands in his pockets, the cigarette between his fingers a little island of light, and Nezumi padding at his side on a short leash — bright eyes, curled tail, ears always half-tilted toward any small noise.

He told himself he was out for Nezumi’s sake. After a day that had been long in the bones — the shop’s ledger stubborn as an old man, deliveries late, customers with their small, sharp demands — it seemed proper to take the dog out so the animal could stretch, sniff, pee, and return home unchanged. 

But there was another reason: to be away from the kitchen table where his wife sat with that look he’d learned to dread, the look that meant a lecture was coming. 

She did not mean harm. She only wanted their future secured. She wanted the shop kept in the family the way his father had kept it before him. She wanted a son at the counter, steady hands, steady wages. She wanted, Kaiza supposed, to be reassured that everything would be handed down in its neat, reliable way, the way things had been handled their whole lives.

Kaiza squinted at his cigarette’s ember and thought of Kenji. 

The name tasted of other rooms: of a small boy with knees scraped from running after gulls, of a soft boy who had grown into a man with quick hands and a taste for the bright lights. 

Kenji had gone to the city two years ago, first for a training programme and then for actual work, and the messages between him and his son had shortened in length and frequency until they were almost gone. The last time he'd visited, Kenji had stood in the shop and touched the lacquered sign above the register, as if not quite deciding whether it was part of him anymore. 

They had argued that Christmas; Kaiza could feel it now, the heat of it. 

He had wanted Kenji to stay, to take the shop when he was ready. Kenji had wanted a different life — a software job, high-rise apartments, the hum and glow of Tokyo.

“I should call him,” he told himself, aloud, so the words would feel heavier. He imagined Kenji’s voice answering — clipped, distracted — and he pictured the city lights reflected in dark glass. 

He imagined telling his son the same old things: the oven needs fixing, he was starting to get tired of eating so much rice, tell your mother to stop buying so many blue bowls. 

He imagined Kenji’s laugh, that small, surprised laugh they used to trade when the shop’s old radio found a song they both knew.

Nezumi pulled him back to the present. The little dog’s whining had an edge now; it wasn’t the commonplace pleading for a scrap. The shiba’s body coiled as if listening to a sound no human could hear. Kaiza tightened his fingers on the leash and told the dog, gently, “どうした、鼠 (doushita, Nezumi) — what’s wrong?” The dog’s nose lifted, nostrils moving, and a low whine escaped his throat.

Something flashed at the corner of Kaiza’s eye — a white streak that did not belong to the slow, sensible world of night fishermen and bottled beer. For a moment, he thought it was a trick of the dark. The streak grew, a brightness that seemed to drag the sky with it, and then the ground gave a small, distant cough.

He thought, absurdly, that the sound belonged to a cargo truck, or perhaps to a distant rig working late. 

The tremor whispered outward, then came again, stronger. 

Nezumi’s leash strained in his hand; the dog’s paws flew, claws skittering on the wet pavement. The air changed, a metallic tang setting into it,  and Kaiza turned his head toward the north, toward the line of hulking steel and domes he could make out against a lighter band of sky: 

The dark silhouette of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant.

There was a blossom of light, not simple and contained like a bulb, but as if the night itself had been rent. It expanded with a speed that made Kaiza’s chest hollow. For a heartbeat, he could not move because he was waiting for the explanation that never came. 

Then the noise arrived: not a single sound but a layering,  a roar that carried the memory of things breaking, a pressure wave that pushed at the air and the sea and his own ribs.

A mushroom rose, absurdly beautiful and monstrously wrong, like a red and black flower flowering in a winter that had no right to bloom. It painted the clouds with a terrible flatness and sent a bloom of light that made every vending machine and window a glare. Kaiza’s cigarette fell from his fingers as his hand went numb. The leash slipped; Nezumi jerked free and darted, a small dark comet, away from him.

For a moment, a frozen, impossible moment, Kaiza watched his dog run and the mushroom cloud swell and the sea lift as if someone were heaving it like a cloth. Only then did the shockwave reach him, a slow, recipe-like building in his belly that became a shove against the world. It knocked the breath out of him as if someone had taken his chest in both hands and squeezed. The street tiles jumped; the lamp-post near the seawall wrenched and leaned. The smell arrived at once, acrid and chemical, something that made his eyes water and his throat close.

His thoughts, a scatter of small, urgent things, snapped into place. 

Kenji. 

His son’s face overlaid the mushroom cloud with the force of a prayer. He thought of the argument at the table, of the way Kenji had stood up and left the house in his black coat and said, “I can’t, Baba.” 

He thought of a thousand quiet mornings when Kenji would sit on the step of the shop and eat a sweet bun still warm from the oven.

Kenji, he wanted to call, the word spilling from him even as the wave of heat slid across the street. Kenji, don’t come here. Stay in the city. Stay where the lights are and the trains run and the towers keep you from looking at the sea. Stay alive. 

He wanted to tell him not to leave Tokyo for anything because this place — this town he loved with its narrow alleys and familiar, stubborn people — had, in one instant, become a danger no father could predict.

The ground threw him forward then, and for a second, there was no more thought. Noise, light, the sound of something huge tearing; his vision fractured into flashes of neon and sky. A pain that was not yet pain — a pressure, a lurch — overwhelmed the smaller ache of the cigarette’s cold ash. He tried to raise his hand to his face and felt it falling away from him as if the body were becoming separate from his will.

His last clear thought was a single name, the name that had been a small, unfinished conversation for months now: 

Kenji. 

A plea shaped like a command. 

Don’t come here. Stay in the city.

Then the world narrowed to a point of sound and then to a black as if someone had set down a lid. The sirens came, later, in a dissonant wash; the first spark of someone somewhere shouting his name would be swallowed by other things before it reached the distance. 

Nezumi’s bark, thin and distant, was one of the last threads that unspooled from him, and then even that was gone.

____________________________________________________

Waimea, Hawaii, near the Mauna Loa Volcano

The bonfire cracked and spat in the salt wind, its light dancing on brown faces and beer cans half-buried in the sand. Someone’s old radio sat on a towel, coughing static between songs, and every few minutes Kai had to slap its side to get the music back. Ten of them had come down to Spencer Beach Park that night, ignoring the gate sign that said CLOSED AFTER 8:00 PM—their last small rebellion before college life began.

It wasn’t much of a party, but it was enough. Two cases of warm beer, the faint smell of barbecue from the campers further down the beach, and the moon shimmering white over the black stretch of the Kohala coast.

Leilani sat a little apart from the rest, her toes buried in the sand, the bottle warm in her hand. The others were laughing by the fire, passing around another can, teasing each other about where they’d be next year—UH Mānoa, Maui College, a few lucky ones bound for the mainland. Their laughter rolled out across the dark surf, bright and short-lived, like sparks escaping the fire.

She wasn’t laughing. Her gaze was fixed on the water, at the line where moonlight met sea, and she wondered what came next. 

Everyone seemed to have a plan except her. 

The thought made her stomach twist. She didn’t want to leave the island—her home, her parents, the smell of the ocean—but she knew there weren’t many jobs here that didn’t involve tourists or hotels. She wasn’t clever like Alena, or brave like Kai. Just… Leilani. Ordinary.

She took another sip of beer, grimaced at the taste, and sighed. She wasn’t even supposed to be here. Alena had begged her to come, saying she wanted to “hang out” with Kai before everyone left for school. Leilani knew what that meant. She had come because she didn’t want her friend to be alone.

She hoped, for Alena’s sake, that tonight would end the way her friend wanted.

The sand shifted beside her. Someone had sat down. She turned, startled, to see Kai grinning, his dark hair messy from the wind. He smelled faintly of smoke and sea salt.

“You enjoying yourself?” he asked.

Leilani shrugged, pretending to smile. “It’s alright.”

Kai laughed, his teeth bright in the firelight. “Didn’t think we’d get to do anything big, but I wanted to do something, you know? Most of us won’t see each other after this year.”

“We all live on the same island,” Leilani pointed out, glancing toward the waves. “We’ll see each other every day.”

Kai shook his head, scooping up a handful of sand and letting it fall through his fingers. “You’ll see how big this island really is once we all have lives. Jobs, classes, other stuff to do. Feels small now, but it won’t always be.”

They sat in silence for a while, the only sound the steady wash of the ocean and the low hum of the radio. Someone shouted in the distance—a drunk laugh—and another song began to play.

Then, quietly, Kai said, “You doing anything tomorrow?”

Leilani hesitated. “Half my family from the mainland’s flying in tomorrow night for my graduation party,” she said, brushing hair from her face. “But I’ll be free the day after. Why?”

Kai scratched his cheek, looking suddenly nervous. “I was just wondering if… maybe you’d want to go get ice cream or something.”

She blinked. “Ice cream?”

He gave a half-smile. “Yeah. Just...ice cream. Nothing big.”

Leilani was about to ask why he sounded so unsure when she noticed how close he was sitting, close enough that their knees nearly touched. The faintest blush coloured his cheeks, visible even under the moonlight.

Her heart stumbled. 

He likes me?

The thought didn’t fit right. Kai was the one everyone liked—smart, funny, confident. And Alena liked him. Leilani glanced toward the group and saw her friend watching them, her expression hard, eyes shining in the moonlight like glass.

Leilani’s stomach turned. She shifted, putting a bit more space between them. Kai’s smile faltered, confused.

She opened her mouth to speak—to say something gentle, to tell him she couldn’t—but before she could, a deep rumble passed through the ground. It was subtle at first, like a heavy truck rolling by far away. The sand beneath her palms trembled.

“What the hell was that?” Kai muttered, standing up.

The laughter from the others faded. Noa, tall and lanky, pointed toward the horizon. “Bro! Something just hit Mauna Loa!”

“What?” Leilani got to her feet, heart pounding. “What do you mean, hit it?”

“I don’t know!” Noa’s voice was shaking. “It was white—looked like a fucking missile or something! It came in from the west, going crazy fast!”

Before anyone could respond, the ground shook again—harder, violent this time. The bonfire collapsed in a shower of sparks as everyone stumbled, shouting. A roar filled the air, low and unending.

Leilani turned toward the mountain, and her breath caught. A brilliant red fissure tore through the summit of Mauna Loa, and then the volcano erupted—no slow spill of lava like usual, but an explosion, a column of fire and ash bursting upward like the earth itself had been split open.

“Oh my god,” someone whispered.

The sky turned crimson. Lightning forked through the ash plume, illuminating the smoke like veins of fire. The shockwave hit a moment later, sending them all sprawling onto the sand. The ground rippled like water.

Leilani gasped, grabbing at the sand to steady herself, eyes wide. The air burned hot, filled with the smell of sulfur and something sharp, metallic. She could feel the island trembling beneath her.

“Run!” Kai shouted, hauling her to her feet. The others were already sprinting toward the parking lot, their shouts lost in the thunder rolling from the mountain.

Leilani looked back one last time. The glow from the eruption reflected off the ocean, turning the water into a sheet of molten red. She prayed—silently, desperately—that someone, anyone, would come to save them.

Because this… this didn’t feel like any eruption she’d ever known. 

This felt like the island itself was dying.

________________________________________________________

St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center, Phoenix, Arizona

The night shift always dragged, but tonight it felt endless.

Gene leaned back in his chair, one hand rubbing the bridge of his nose while the other scrolled lazily through the hospital’s camera feeds. Empty hallways. Quiet parking lot. A janitor was mopping the first-floor corridor for the third time that night. Nothing but the steady hum of fluorescent lights and the low buzz of the monitors to keep him company.

His stomach growled.

“Christ,” he muttered, glancing at the clock. Three hours left. Three long, slow hours until he could clock out and hit the diner on 3rd for a real meal. But his stomach wasn’t going to wait that long, and the vending machines here only carried the usual sad assortment — stale pretzels, off-brand cola, and something pretending to be a brownie that tasted like wet cardboard.

He eyed the empty chair next to him — Schiff’s chair.

Schiff was supposed to be here tonight. But the man had called out an hour before the shift started, mumbling something about food poisoning. Typical. Schiff always bragged about having a “secret stash” of snacks hidden somewhere in the office — beef jerky, candy bars, even instant ramen. But damned if he’d ever told Gene where it was.

For a few minutes, Gene just sat there, tapping his boot against the tile, debating with himself. If he left, technically, it’d count as abandoning post. The boss would have his ass if he found out. On the other hand, if he didn’t get something soon, he was going to start gnawing on the corner of his clipboard.

“Alright,” he sighed finally. “Ten-minute patrol. Maybe fifteen. And if I just dip out real quick to get something... no one will really know...”

He straightened his uniform shirt, clipped his flashlight to his belt, and stepped out of the office. The corridors were half-lit and quiet, the scent of disinfectant heavy in the air. He nodded to a couple of nurses moving a cart, gave a lazy salute to an orderly, and winked at Claire — the pretty brunette from pediatrics who always pretended not to notice him.

“Evening, Claire,” he said.

She rolled her eyes without slowing down.

Gene grinned. Maybe I’ll bring her something sweet from Burger Mart, he thought. If she doesn’t want it, I’ll eat it myself.

The elevator took him down to the ground floor, and he pushed through the double doors leading to the main entrance. The automatic doors hissed open, and the night air hit him — cool, carrying the faint salt of the bay.

He took one step outside.

And the world went dark.

Not the normal kind of dark, the kind that left a bit of glow from the streetlights or the signs across the way. This was heavy. Complete. The kind of blackness that swallowed sound. One second, the parking lot was lit up by the amber glow of sodium lamps; the next, everything vanished.

The lights in the hospital flickered once, twice, then died. The Burger Mart’s bright red sign across the street disappeared like someone had snuffed it out. The whole world seemed to pause.

A chill crawled up Gene’s spine. He’d never seen darkness like this—not even during blackouts. Living in the city meant there was always some light: a window, a phone screen, something. This was the kind of dark he remembered from camping as a kid, deep in the woods, where the only light came from the stars and the fire, and even that felt too small.

Then the hospital lights buzzed back to life. The generators had kicked in.

But everything else remained black.

Gene stepped forward, squinting. Across the street, the Burger Mart was invisible, the road swallowed whole. No lights, no neon, no flicker from windows. Just… nothing.

Behind him, the automatic doors whooshed open. “What the hell was that?” a voice asked.

Gene turned. It was Dr. Michael—the red-haired, red-bearded physician who always looked like he’d come straight from a pub fight. The man’s beard glowed in the dim emergency lights, like his face was burning.

“Power outage,” Gene said, forcing a calm he didn’t feel. “Whole block’s out. Never seen it this dark before.”

Before Michael could reply, the quiet was shattered.

A high, sharp sound—screeching tires. Then the crunch of metal on metal. The impact came from the intersection half a block away, followed by an explosion of light and sound. A fireball bloomed against the dark sky, orange and furious.

Both men flinched back.

“Jesus Christ,” Gene muttered. His eyes adjusted just enough to see two cars twisted together, flames licking at the asphalt. He could smell the gasoline already.

Dr. Michael didn’t hesitate. “We have to help them!” he shouted, already sprinting toward the wreckage.

“Wait!” Gene yelled after him. But the doctor was fast, determination driving him forward.

“Goddamn it,” Gene hissed, and took off after him. His flashlight beam cut across the street, revealing chaos. Another set of headlights flickered and vanished—then came the crash. Screech, crunch, metal tearing apart.

The noise multiplied—one crash, then another, then another. Somewhere nearby, a horn blared and didn’t stop.

As Gene and Michael ran toward the wreck, the world seemed to unravel.

“What the hell is happening?” Gene shouted, but no one could answer. The night swallowed his words.

The air stank of burning rubber and oil. The once-quiet street had become a graveyard of smoke and fire.

And overhead, beyond the black horizon, something faint and white flashed across the sky—too fast to be lightning, too silent to be a plane.

Gene slowed, staring upward, heart hammering. For a second, he thought he saw something streaking toward the ocean, something that shimmered like glass before vanishing behind the clouds.

Then came the next explosion.

And the night lit up like the world was ending.