#(eventually lol)

Listen-

You’re not a good person, right.

You barely needed five minutes after waking up in a shiny new Viltrumite body to come to terms with that. Okay, not new exactly. It was a few decades old already, by your estimates, though you appear in that vague range of late teens to early twenties. Young by the standards of the few viltrumites left standing after all their tomfoolery.

Just a baby, some of them mock you with varying amounts of dickishness. Some bordering on fond (a very shy border). Because as much as they loathe the weak, and you’re impressing no one by being so unmotivated, they aren’t past the point of not valuing when a young Viltrumite is added to their ranks. Even if you’re not pureblooded.

But anyway.

You worked out fast enough that you’re not going to die on the hill of, y’know, avoiding murdering people. And hey, if you want to be a real asshole, you can always keep in mind that they’re aliens. Hardly any of them look remotely human. Plus, you’re in a whole other dimension! If that isn’t an excuse to murder freely and without much consideration, you don’t know what is.

But also- shit. Okay, also-

Ugh, your motives suck. You’re a disgrace to every comic you’ve ever read. Even the shit ones where none of the characters have any depth, and the majority get stuck in endless cycles repeating the smidge of growth they’re allowed before they need to be reset.

Okay. You want out because…you know the Viltrum Empire loses. And you hate being on the losing side.

You’ve always been a poor loser. From baseball games as a teeny but vicious kid (who wasn’t above tripping the other team when they ran by your base), to destroying the top scorer at your favourite arcade games (Dance Dance Revolution, closely followed by Ultimate Mortal Combat 3 and Speed Rider); you have zero chill in certain areas of your life, despite the general ease in which the fucks to give tumble from your slack fingers in most scenarios.

You don’t want to trot along in service of the ultimate machine of toxic masculinity until you’re either killed off or have to join the good guys. Especially when one of those options includes having to - you’re gonna be sick - have kids. A happy ending might involve the picture perfect family for some people, plenty of people, but not you. Just add it to your list of character flaws.

Oh, and doesn’t the empire have to make reparations and stuff, or whatever? Once it gets taken over by- shit, who was it? Mark or Nolan? Doesn’t Nolan die? Does he stay dead?

See, this is why you should’ve written down everything you knew, instead of thinking your cool new Viltrumite brain could handle it. Turns out that only applies to new memories, not your human life.

Wow, you’ve totally gone native. Human life. Could never live up to A Bug’s Life, but it might beat the sequel.

(You remember that, do you? Seriously, fuck you, brain.)

But yeah- reparations, playing nice, all that? It’s, uh…

Look, it’s fine. The obviously good thing to do. But dude, spending your whole life doing that? Your long, long, long life? Ehhhh. You’d rather go full Star Trek and push at that frontier - in this case, the edge of the Virgo Super Cluster. You’ll even follow the Prime Directive!

Not at all like what you’re doing now, haha.

“You’re distracted.”

It’s all the warning you get before a fist plows into your face.

And you mean plows. That bad boy takes out your jaw and a chunk of your nose, crumples your bones like an accordion, and you go flying. Not the fun kind either. The uncontrolled spiralling from the force of a single punch, the air whipping by and impossible to catch onto, too stunned to yoink your body out of being flung.

Lucky for you, a mountain is in your way.

Less luckily, you do get buried halfway through it first.

Ow.

Conquest is still laughing by the time you dig yourself out. Crazy old man.

You glare sullenly at him as you push past the boulder; all that remains of Mount Nukedplanet. Not literally nuked, but it barely has any living things left on it after being picked out as a Viltrumite training ground, so it bears a striking resemblance to one that’s been nuked. And hit with a few thousand meteorites.

Far as you know, whoever did live here didn’t have enough to offer the empire to be worth keeping while the resources got drained - Kregg mentioned they were weak but like, uh, so is pretty much everyone? - and the planet itself too much of a dusty dirtball to bother cultivating. The gravity is on the higher side, though, the air feeling all…thick and doughy, so it makes for a good place to train. Most Viltrumites don’t need it, exactly, but plenty like to blow off steam if they don’t have a mission to execute.

Like Conquest.

Talking to him is probably the dumbest idea you’ve ever had, but also-

Okay, there isn’t really a rebuttal there. Kregg is close to tearing his hair out with worry over you being a suicidal moron. Which is pretty touching, considering how carefully he suppresses any sign of caring, even for his baby half-sister. No wonder he’s one of the Viltrumites who go all soft once they get to Earth and shack up with humans.

He tried to keep you from doing it by sticking you on diplomacy duty. Y’know, chill out a few rebellions (sorry, pathetic mewlings of an inferior race), get your scout’s badge for number of controlled planets visited and stomped under the boot of the empire. You even get to be part of the planetary improvement efforts, sometimes. Bye bye famine, hello indentured servitude.

But there are only, like, fifty Viltrumites. Not exactly enough to keep an eye on you when your bones start to feel all buzzy and your thoughts won’t stop racing and-

Listen.

When you were human, you couldn’t just throw yourself into traffic, or off a high building, or play around with knives. You weren’t suicidal, jeez. But now…

It’d be a waste not to see how far you can go, wouldn’t it?

“I’m not distracted.” It comes out more like- yeah, not words.

Maybe kind of like those aliens who were part gas, part weirdass green lava, and who just bubble at each other to speak. You thought they might be tricky to control, but it turned out they all have this central node - a bit like the Martians, if you remember correctly - and they explode if you pop it. Which is very, very easy when you have both super strength and speed.

Speed is your Thing. Could say it’s your drug of choice, in fact, haha.

Hey, you’re never gonna be the strongest out there. That was a fact of life from day one.

You’re young. Hybrid advantage means you grow in strength faster than a pure Viltrumite would at first (apparently. There aren’t exactly proper scientists in the empire anymore, not ones who’ll go in depth, and your new body’s inferior race Papa is dead and gone - along with his entire planet in a spot of bad luck, choosing self-destruction over being a Viltrumite breeding ground), but you aren’t the main character of this world. You can’t count on a last minute power up, especially when you’re sort of being…well, as close to coddled as a Viltrumite can be.

And you’re tiny compared to most of these bulked up jackasses. Even Anissa has you beat. Which strikes you as bullshit - surely those overpowered genes could’ve boosted your height by a few more inches than puny human you. But fuuuuck reaching the higher shelves in grocery stores, you guess. You’ll just have to float.

So, right - speed.

Coloniser-You already had that as her focus, which is nice. Boosted you up for when you body-snatched her. Excellent choice on her end, really, compliments to the chef. Why hit hard when you can turn yourself into a human- oops, Viltrumite missile? Yeah, it was gross as fuck the first time you managed to plunge through Conquest’s guts, but it made you feel like a god.

You don’t feel so much like one now, obviously.

But whatever. You’ll get him next time. Totally.

“You know I expect your full attention when we fight.”

Most of what Conquest says sounds like a threat. It’s just his natural state, so you don’t really blame him for it. You gear yourself up for another cratering, but instead he drifts over and cradles your jaw where it’s been thoroughly dislodged, a few muscles shredded in the bargain.

Flip a coin: is he gonna tear it off, or-

His massive hand pulls your jaw back into place. The bones grind together, and it hurts like a bitch; you’d be crying if you could. And you don’t mean that in a I must not show weakness way. This body can’t cry, and you’re not…a hundred percent sure if that’s a Viltrumite thing or a whatever-your-dad-was-before-the-planet-imploded thing. Seems unwise to draw attention to, just in case.

You’re good at healing quick, too. Regeneration is so fucking inconsistent across Viltrumites. Some of them are fixed up from similar injuries in seconds, others take weeks, and age is only a factor half the time. Tough to make generalisations when your sample size is tiny, but you’ve met other aliens who have better regen, or even durability. Viltrumites mostly win out by having such a power combo, the Gary Stus.

You try to communicate via a glare from under your fringe that you do pay attention when getting your ass beat by Conquest, thank you kindly. It’s a big blaring sign - red and flashing and fucking neon - of how badly dimension-hopping has fucked you up, that you consider it a highlight of your- year? Decade? Whatever.

The aliens conquered by the empire are…

Yeah. They’re terrified or grateful or rightfully pissed off or too alien to understand what they feel. And always, always pathetic. Always less than lines drawn on a page, and you didn’t think you were this kind of person, but you get sick of being careful. You get sick of playing nice, when you’re forced to be in this shitty world in the first place.

Viltrumites don’t hang out. They get partnered up sometimes, usually on missions to new planets or against enemies that need a bit more effort to settle down, but in general that’s as far as socialisation goes. Some have their favourites and what your human memories want to label almost sorta friendships. Some fuck, though no one’s succeeded in making a kid with another Viltrumite in…a long fucking time. Pre-virus. So it’s discouraged except for stress relief kept on the down low, especially with in-breeding a long-term risk if they manage to get another generation or two out.

You’re in a rare position, actually having someone related to you around.

But even then, you don’t see Kregg often. He’s too busy being a general, serving the might of the empire, blah blah blah. Not like he even knows how to talk to you when you do see him. He gets torn between propagandist lectures and acting like he’d lock you up in the nearest tower if he could (and if you couldn’t, like, fly away).

So, yeah, you spotted Conquest when he happened to be called in when you reported on a planet way above your level to handle and…

“What has you disregarding me?” He grips your nose next and you brace yourself.

By his standards, the re-snapping - gross, did it have to start healing wrong? - is gentle. And it’s kinda silly, given how big his hands are, that he’s fixing what he broke. Even if he follows it up by creepily licking the blood from his fingers with satisfied hum.

“I’d think your blood was pure if I didn’t know better,” he said the first time he did it. Christ, if you weren’t from another universe, you’d have such a hang-up over being a hybrid. Probably try and prove yourself all the time and shit. Which is maybe what all the other Viltrumites assume is behind you willingly being around Conquest.

You test your jaw. It grinds and clicks, and your tongue isn’t quite all the way attached, but it’s good enough for speech.

“Boring mission. Still shaking it off.” You shrug, and look pointedly at his bloody nose and split lip. No comparison, obviously, but- “Got you.”

Explains why he targeted that sort of hit this way. And it gets him grinning now, janky teeth on full display. They’ve been smashed out of his mouth too many times to grow back neatly like yours do.

Again, threatening, but you’re pretty sure the fight is over with; you’ve been at it for a while, and he only sometimes goes overboard on the first day of a catch up.

You keep an eye on his gauntlet in case he changes his mind.

“So you did.” He clasps your shoulder with the gauntleted hand, which, not super great for the whole watch out thing. You automatically roll your shoulder, not to shake him off but more at the weird-funny feeling of it being so stupidly big that it covers your entire shoulder and then some. “Well?”

The expectant stare makes you sigh. “Do I have to?”

“Yes.” His grip tightens just enough to ache. After being around weak aliens for so long, it’s…not comforting, but something diagonal to it, to feel the effect of being touched like you’re still human. Even if what he wants isn’t human at all.

He lets you rise higher in the air until you’re closer to level with his stupidly Jojo-esque frame. Makes it easier to reach out and swipe your thumb through the blood on his chin, because ew, you’re not going for the nose blood. You don’t have many standards left to cling to, but this is one of them.

You wish you could say it doesn’t taste like anything special. That’d be a lie.

It buzzes on your tongue, familiar and foreign all at once. A twisted sense of violence and home and power, calling out to your very cells. It’s not just in your head - you know you’re not that far gone - but none of the other Viltrumites ever talk about this, and it isn’t the same with alien blood.

Not that you’ve been, like, licking up alien blood. Yuck. But when you do fight, sometimes you’re gonna get blood in your mouth, alright? Fighting is messy. So messy, even if you’re a lot better at it now than at the start. It’s a shame long-range attacks are so looked down on, and any form of gun is outright banned. Not formally, but Viltrum doesn’t skimp on their very special, fucked up code of conduct.

“Happy, fruitcake?” Your speech is still sloppy. You have to emphasise the tone by tipping your head and rolling your eyes.

“Extremely.” Fucking freak. Too bad he’s the closest thing you have to a friend.

God, you need to hurry up with faking your death, that’s plain sad.

Now you’ve both got the fight out of your system, damage on the minimal side because it’s only day one and he usually waits until the last day to put you in a coma, it’s onto a different kind of venting (shut up, not that kind). You take point there because it always takes him a while before he’ll complain about the work the empire has him doing.

You’re in a better position to, since you can start off focusing on how dull and weak the aliens are, and how maintaining peace and all that shit is totally lacking in excitement, and the best moment of it all was when one group managed to create some fucked up kaiju that had wings and spewed acid that actually ate holes through your uniform, but still - fucking still - didn’t last an hour.

It depressed you for weeks after. Even the almost ice cream the planet happened to have (you don’t give a fuck that the source were slugs aliens which flash like cop car lights, it was closer than you’ve ever gotten) couldn’t cheer you up, and you were relieved when it was decided the planet was subjugated enough. Fucking losers.

Neither of you like staying still for long, so you’re circling the planet while you talk. Mostly you. The talking, that is, not the circling - he matches you there, looking as close to content as a psycho like him gets.

To the shock of no one, Conquest isn’t a great conversationalist.

Oh, he can go on a hell of a monologue, and is a brilliant source of info about the old days even if there are spots he won’t get into (and poking too hard there gets you launched into the nearest planet. Or moon. Once you got close to a black hole, and that actually freaked you out, but he caught your ankle and lobbed you through some poor rando alien’s warship. You spent hours flying about the scraps, picking up anything which looked interesting. Including but not limited to; a laser sword which lasted ten minutes into a Conquest fight (impressive), an alien grenade you accidentally set off in your face, and chewing gum that tasted like a meteor shower).

He’ll threaten plenty and insult your bloodline and call you pathetic, as if he isn’t the creepy loser hanging out with the equivalent to a kid.

Maybe a teen. Viltrumites have vague standards since, y’know, they’d nearly extinct except instead of being an endangered species, they’re just a dangered species, haha. You’re lucky Kregg’s your half-brother, since you’d have probably been killed off while you were younger and weaker otherwise.

Instead, you survived long enough to become the only Viltrumite who’ll willingly chat with Conquest. And fight, but that’s part of the deal.

You can tell it still confuses the hell out of him. But he’s never asked why you keep it up, and you’re pretty sure he never will. Too close to showing weakness. It’s all cool to spill your guts when your opponent is also spilling their guts - and about to kick the bucket. Less chill if murder isn’t on the agenda.

Not that you’re dumb enough to think he’d never kill you. You’ve already come close a few times. But, well…the sequel can’t ever live up to expectations.

Besides, Viltrumite numbers are too low, and he’s a loyal soldier. Mad as a hatter, but Viltrumites only kill other Viltrumites if they betray the empire or are too pathetic to live. Your whining doesn’t count as betrayal, as you’ve made your case for before, and so far he’s held back.

You wonder what could push him to changing his mind. You wonder if you could use him to fake your death.

It’s an idea you’ve been turning over in your mind a lot lately. You think it might work. Kregg has told you plenty that this’ll get you killed, so why not prove him right?

Problem is, you’d have to get Conquest to believe it too. The psychosis doesn’t make him stupid, and he knows his strength better than anyone. Pretending he’s gone too far, or even getting him to go too far, is trickier than it should be.

“Been sent to anywhere fun recently?” You spin so your back is to the planet, folding your arms behind your head as you keep up the orbit. Two moons follow their own paths, one a matching red to the planet and the other a colour unique to this solar system that makes you think of popping candy and sparklers. There used to be a third, and the broken pieces of it form a ring around the planet.

One thing that hasn’t lost its shine is flying.

When you woke up you were shit at it. Almost got yourself killed by that alone. But the thrill of it soon had you flying as much as possible, throwing yourself into spins and dives and bursting with Tim Curry levels of glee whenever you get to travel in space. Right now you’re both at the edge of the atmosphere so you can breathe and talk and all that, but you’re close enough to that endless void to make it impossible not to be in a good mood.

One glance at him and you can tell he hasn’t had a good run.

You whistle. “That bad? I thought there were s’posed to be some good ones - er, what’s his face, he reported the high radiation system.”

It’s…probably bad that you haven’t learnt the names of all the Viltrumites. There aren’t many. But you know all the important ones, and this guy is like, super low level. Gets sent to scout ahead a lot, which is totally unfair because you’d be way better at it than him, but whatever. Life sucks. In your defence, you’d say you have a 50/50 chance of guessing it right if pushed.

Conquest doesn’t care enough about the rando either to make you guess. He scoffs, arms crossed and looking down at the planet in a funny contrast to your own pose. His head is also tilted to you even if his gaze is narrowed on the ground far, far below.

“A disappointment. I had such high hopes and yet their Godzilla had so little to offer me.”

You twist toward him fully, unsure if you heard right. “Did you just say Godzilla?”

He nods. “A titan of their limited spacefare, as I understand it. Worshipped by the punier beings reliant on its strength to survive against what they considered foes. But there was nothing godly about it-”

You laugh, delighted. You can’t help it.

Fucking Godzilla. There was a Godzilla hanging about this universe! Sure, it’s dead now, and was probably some weird cosmic coincidence - there are too many planets and galaxies for there not to be loads of those - but it’s so fun that it startles you.

“I would’ve loved to fight it.”

See it is what you meant to say, whoops.

You are not immune to propaganda and all that. And- okay, admittedly you would’ve been so fucking up for battling Godzilla, even if it’s unlikely to be anything like the real (fake?) one.

He harrumphes. What an old man. He’s not actually the grumpy sort - even now, he seems in a good mood - but you’ve noticed he has been more disappointed with the missions he gets. Expansion has slowed down and there’s less call for total annihilation since, yeah, they don’t have the soldiers to spare on all out destruction, but he also wasn’t picked for the planet-infiltration mission despite being one of the oldest and strongest viltrumites.

And, yeah, you can guess why. You don’t remember everything the fictional version of him said or did, but you can’t picture him infiltrating one of the planets picked out for being a possible breeding ground, nice and high priority. He’d so fuck it up. You’ve said as much, and been introduced to a planet’s core for your trouble.

Still, they really do need to give him something better to do before his moping gets dangerous. Kregg sorta agreed with you when you brought it up at his painful attempts at a family dinner (not that he knows what a family dinner really is, but dinner was involved and he’s technically family, so it counts), but if this was his takeaway? Eesh. Try harder, man.

“As pitiful as it was…it would’ve been a worthier use of your time than your current duties.”

You groan. “Don’t I know it.”

You like Conquest’s disdain for the missions you get stuck with, since you agree, and he only borders on judging you for them. More recently his opinion leans toward encouraging you to murder everyone on the planets you proxy rule in order to prove your might which-

Yeah, psychotic, but you won’t lie; it’s tempting. Would get you stuck with the same Unstable Substance label as him, though, and unlike him you’re not as useful or pure-blooded, and haven’t earned respect through a literal fucktonne of battles. They might actually kill you for being disobedient.

Conquest might be the one to kill you for it, since as much as he might talk shit on occasion, he wouldn’t be happy if you shirk your duties. Prove to be a disloyal half-breed and all that. You’ll push your luck, not tap dance over the line.

“You’ll be joining me on my next mission.”

“What?” Your eyes widen. You think it’s a joke at first, a taunt, but Conquest isn’t the type. Plus he looks smug, veering off from orbit to approach the planet again, likely after a round two now you’ve recovered. Naturally, you follow. “How did you- How did you pull that off?”

He shrugs. It looks ridiculous with his massive shoulders. “I asked. You’re welcome.”

No way Kregg would agree, right? It’s as close to a suicide mission as a Viltrumite can get. You’re briefly stung - you didn’t think he was that shit of a brother - before shaking it off. Empire trumps all, you know that, and your worth is ehhhh…could be better. Put it in an improvement plan.

Wait.

Suicide mission?

Ohoho. This smells like opportunity.