Arsenal597
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Yes, this is a true Ben Tennyson. Not an SI. That route simply wasn't working! Thank you for the suggestions!
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Omni-Blood (SI Ben 10 x Invincible)
- Thread starter Arsenal597
- Start date
Chapter 4: The Conqueror
Arsenal597
Getting sticky.
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2025
- Messages
- 97
- Likes received
- 1,237
Chapter 4: The Conqueror
Slipping through the ever-expanding, dark void of space was the ship controlled by Vilgax the Conqueror. The ship was extremely quiet by this time, as he sat alone on the command dais, one massive arm resting against the edge of the console. Holographic images hovered in the air before him, rotating slowly on a loop.
He growled under his breath, looking at the devastation that was Galvan Prime. The news had come across his board only in the last few cycles. The projections were pulled from long-range scans. Vilgax had surveillance drones watching the planet for some time, mostly due to the inventor Azmuth residing there. Someone with a mind like his was a formidable foe to keep an eye on.
The holograms painted a picture Vilgax knew all too well: cities torn open from above, landmasses gouged and broken. Entire regions were simply gone, reduced to ash, debris, or nothing at all.
Vilgax's red eye narrowed slightly as the image shifted, zooming in on a ruined metropolis. Galvan architecture, which even he had admitted was a sight to behold, now twisted into jagged skeletons that left him feeling uneasy. He could understand the violence, the brute force of it, but that was only when applied to the right area. If there was one single thing the Viltrum Empire was lousy at, it was damage mitigation.
They did not operate as a scalpel. In their desire to be the reigning species, replenishing their numbers, the Viltrum Empire was more likely to scorch a planet than leave innocent bystanders aside. No, they liked making a spectacle of their prey. Vilgax could commend them for the act, but devastation for the sake of devastation was not something he could abide by. Especially when it came to some of the galaxy's brightest minds.
Galvans were small creatures, but their brains far made up for it. Some of the greatest creations Vilgax had ever come across in his travels were in part due to them. It was for this reason alone that Vilgax felt the slightest sense of sympathy and compassion for the species.
He knew the singular being responsible for this, even without the reports. Thragg's greatest weapon:
Conquest.
Just the name alone was enough to send a chill through Vilgax's body. He had faced Viltrumites before, though it was never by choice. He knew better than to underestimate those fiendish brutes. When compared to other species, Vilgax found it hard to find one as prone to violence as the Viltrumites. A single member of that race could raze a world without support. There was no greater weapon of mass destruction than a Viltrumite with a mission. Their strength was unmatched; their speed made targeting systems obsolete. Even their weakest members had endurance that turned prolonged conflict into a losing proposition by default.
He had nearly died learning that lesson.
The unfortunate memory surfaced unbidden—the bone-crushing force, the sensation of being hurled through atmosphere and stone alike, systems screaming as armor failed piece by piece. It had taken everything to survive that encounter, and even then, survival had felt less like victory and more like mercy.
And if there was one thing Vilgax despised more than anything, was being treated like a lesser being. He would much rather have died in battle than be left alive to crawl away and lick his wounds. His pride had never recovered from that battle, and it was for that reason his right eye had been lost.
It was for this reason that Vilgax had kept to the edges of the Milky Way. He wanted to be the one to conquer the Viltrumites, to watch them burn and writhe in their inevitable demise. He wanted Thragg to lay beneath him, bloodied and broken… as he once had. But even Vilgax needed to admit where his weaknesses lay. Direct conflict with Thragg's minions would only end in his demise. So, for far too long he was forced to watch the Empire's expansion carefully, charting borders and influence, making certain his operations never drifted too close to their reach. Their interest had not yet settled here, to his knowledge. As long as that remained true, Vilgax could prepare for the future conflict.
The hologram shifted again, cycling through orbital debris, broken platforms, and scattered escape pods — most left cold and lifeless. Azmuth's battle with Conquest had given enough time to evacuate the majority of the population. Those who were caught in the crossfire were not so lucky.
Briefly, a trace signature pulsed across the display. Vilgax leaned forward, tentacles hanging in the air as excitement spread through his body. He knew that signature…
The Omnitrix.
It was only a mere echo of it, but it was enough to bring him to attention. The energy trail was faint, fragmented, and distorted by the violence that had torn Galvan Prime apart. Whatever Azmuth had done to mask it, whatever safeguards he had put in place, they had been disrupted. Not destroyed—but shaken loose, like a footprint left behind in scorched earth.
Vilgax's mandibles twitched, something close to satisfaction curling through his chest. Azmuth was gone. There was no confirmed body, no final transmission, no signature trace that could be reliably identified as the Galvan's. In Vilgax's experience, absence was often more telling than death.
If Azmuth by some miracle had survived, the Omnitrix would likely have company as it drifted through the void. But, even so… he suspected that regardless of the outcome of the battle, the Omnitrix wouldn't be left unattended.
What mattered the most to him was the one consolation he scraped away from the images; the one thing Vilgax allowed himself to savor as the images continued to scroll.
Thragg had not claimed the Omnitrix.
The Viltrumite Empire, for all its brutality, was efficient. If the Omnitrix had fallen into Thragg's hands, there would be no mystery.
The universe would already feel the consequences. A weapon like the Omnitrix, capable of rewriting biology, of turning adaptability itself into a tool of war… in Viltrumite hands, it would have been catastrophic.
Even one Viltrumite enhanced by its power would have been unstoppable. DNA splicing would be difficult for them in the long run. As Vilgax had learned, Viltrumite DNA was effectively an invasive species. If they were to procreate with another species, the Viltrumite DNA would eventually overtake it. At least, that was what Vilgax had come to understand.
Vilgax exhaled slowly, the sound low and controlled.
No. If the Omnitrix was to be claimed, it was better that it be claimed by him.
He understood it. Not completely—no one ever truly did—but enough to recognize its potential beyond raw destruction. Azmuth had been arrogant enough to believe the device could be trusted to morality, to judgment, to chance. Vilgax knew better. Power did not need conscience. It needed direction.
The image zoomed out, pulling back from Galvan Prime as it now existed: a wounded world, still smoldering, still bleeding debris into space. Somewhere beyond it, the trail continued—faint, erratic, but unmistakable. A line drawn away from the ruins, stretching toward a smaller, quieter system.
His system…
The Milky Way was his domain, regardless whether the Plumbers had anything to say about it. He'd stayed out of their way, and for that reason they'd left him alone. He'd spent too long licking his own wounds, trying to gather up what little bit of pride he had left. The Omnitrix was his one chance to get back on his feet, and to stick it to Thragg.
He was concerned that Conquest might have followed the Omnitrix's trail, but that was immediately squashed. The planet's security defenses had done sufficient damage to Conquest that the Viltrumite would be down for some time, even with his victory. Had Vilgax known about the battle sooner, he might have been able to put that wretch down once and for all.
But he'd take a small victory where he could take it right now. Following the trail, he was able to pinpoint where the Omnitrix was heading.
Earth.
It was a primitive planet by most measures. Fractured politics, underdeveloped defenses, but resilient in ways that were inconvenient. Some of their population had developed extraordinary abilities, giving them an edge in combat. That wasn't something Vilgax was worried about, no. It was the thought of engaging with the Plumbers that concerned him. He was still recovering, his resources were scarce, and engaging with a planetary defense force was something Vilgax wasn't sure he could afford to do.
If he were to acquire the Omnitrix, he'd need to capture it before it ever breached the planet's atmosphere. He could intercept the device. Yes, that was feasible.
Vilgax rose from his seat, towering as the holograms adjusted to his movement. His ship responded instantly, systems humming to life as new coordinates populated across the display.
Conquest's rampage had been careless. Typical. He destroyed, moved on, and left consequences for others to clean up. But in that wake of annihilation, something far more valuable had slipped free.
Vilgax intended to retrieve it.
This was the moment he was waiting for. It didn't matter who stood in his way, the Omnitrix would be his.
Meanwhile…
The campsite had come together in pieces as the sun dipped low, the sky bleeding from orange to bruised purple in slow, reluctant gradients. Max had parked the Rust Bucket just off the road, tucked into a clearing that felt intentional without being crowded, the kind of place you only found if you already knew where to look. The fire pit was old, stones blackened and cracked from use long before them, and Max had taken to it with an enthusiasm that bordered on ceremonial. By the time night settled in fully, the fire was crackling steady, throwing sparks into the dark and bathing the clearing in warm, flickering light.
"Bon appétit." Max smiled as he set a bowl down in front of the two as they set up camp for the evening.
Ben raised an eyebrow, trying to keep his stomach steady as the apparent meal writhed in the bowl, its slimy pale flesh glinting in the moonlight. The smell hit a second later—earthy, sharp, not rotten exactly, but not anything his brain wanted to associate with food either. His appetite, which had been hanging on by a thread since they'd left Bellwood, made a quiet, offended noise and promptly backed away.
"Okay, I give up…" Ben groaned, leaning back on his hands. "What is this supposed to be?"
"Marinated mealworms." Max beamed in reply, rubbing his hands together. "It's hard to find them fresh in the states. Did you know they're considered a delicacy in some countries?"
Gwen's lip curled in disgust as she watched one of the worms crawl out of the bowl and inch across the picnic table, leaving a faint, glistening trail behind it.
"It's totally gross in this one," she grumbled.
Max smirked, clearly enjoying this far too much.
"If these don't sound good, I've got some smoked sheep's tongue in the fridge."
Ben gagged, the sound halfway between reflex and protest. "Ugh, couldn't we just have a burger or something? Not exactly something I'm in the mood for, Grandpa."
"We're on a budget, kiddo. And I'd rather get my own food than pay for it, didn't I tell you that before?"
"Did I mention that I prefer to pay for mine?"
"I can always charge you for these," Max smirked. "This summer is going to be an adventure for your taste buds. It'll do you some good, trust me."
Ben and Gwen looked at one another, trying to decide whether this road trip was worth it after all.
The fire popped loudly, a log shifting as it settled, and Ben glanced away from the bowl just long enough to breathe through his nose and remind himself that this was, apparently, happening. Max had already helped himself, of course. He skewered a few of the worms with a fork like he was spearing marshmallows and popped them into his mouth without hesitation, chewing thoughtfully, eyes half-lidded in something dangerously close to bliss.
"Nutty," Max said after a moment, nodding to himself. "Good texture, too. Not mushy if you do it right."
Ben stared at him. "You are way too excited about this."
Max chuckled, unfazed. "You spend enough time out in the field, you learn not to be picky. Food's food."
That was… probably true. Ben knew that, logically. Grandpa Max had stories. Lots of them. Stories about places Ben couldn't pronounce, situations that sounded impossible, and meals that had absolutely not involved drive-thrus or delivery apps. Still, knowing that didn't make the worms any less alive-looking in the bowl between them.
He could never remember if Max had been affiliated with the GDA, or some faction of the military. All he knew was that Max was always down for extended camping trips where electronics were minimally used.
Gwen poked at one with the tip of her fork, face twisted like she was defusing a bomb.
"I don't think it's the idea of bugs that bothers me," she said slowly. "It's the fact that they're… moving."
"They won't be for long," Max offered helpfully.
"That does not help."
Ben leaned back against the bench, letting his gaze drift past the firelight and into the trees beyond the clearing. It was strange, he thought, how quickly the day had stretched and folded into this. Just this morning he'd been at home, in comfortable surroundings… and now here he was miles away, sitting under a sky full of stars with a bowl of worms in front of him.
Part of him almost laughed at that, and then he saw the color drain from Gwen's face as she tried to push herself to take a bite. Then, he realized that he was in the same exact boat as her.
Gwen finally sighed and took a small bite, chewing carefully, like she expected it to fight back. She swallowed, paused, then reluctantly nodded.
"Okay," she admitted. "That's… not as bad as I thought."
Ben eyed her like she'd betrayed him.
"You're kidding."
She shrugged.
"I didn't say I liked it."
Max grinned, victorious.
Ben hesitated, then reached forward and speared one himself. He didn't think about it. Thinking about it would ruin everything. He popped it into his mouth, chewed once, twice—
…and froze.
It wasn't good. He wasn't going to lie to himself about that. But it wasn't terrible, either. Salty. A little crunchy. Weirdly smoky.
"Well?" Max prompted.
Ben swallowed and sighed.
"I hate that you're right."
Max laughed, loud and pleased, the sound carrying into the trees. "Told you. This summer's gonna broaden your horizons."
I really wish I had brought some snacks… Ben thought quietly to himself, not looking forward to the countless meals of grub that were likely to follow.
Oh my god, I am so sorry for the wait on this chapter. I know it's been an entire month since the last chapter, and I apologize for that. February going into March was a really bad month for me in terms of writing. I had a bit of writer's block coupled with seasonal illnesses. It's not fair to make excuses, which is why I'm trying to do my best to get some new chapters out. My plan is going forward is to have 2-3 chapters a month posted minimum for all stories. It's a work in progress, so bear with me!
As always, thank you everyone for reading the story. It means a lot to me. I appreciate the comments more than you'd ever know. It really does motivate me to keep writing. So, if you ever have any thoughts, I'm always happy to hear them!
As it stands, there are some difficulties with me writing consistently, primarily my job. I can work a little bit on my stories there, but not much without getting in trouble obviously. So, I may or may not be able to live up to my own standards. However, if you guys are interested in joining my discord server, or supporting my writing I will leave a link below where you can access those.
Those who are sufficient rank on my discord server were able to read this chapter a few weeks ago, and will continue to have 1 chapter in advance going forward. Those who support my writing are able to get anywhere from 1-10 chapters in advance before public release. As of this moment, Omni-Blood has 2 chapters in advance. So, if you're interested... the link is below.
Links
Regardless though whether you choose to join the community or support my writing, I do appreciate all of you. Thank you for the support. They make me happy to know that you guys are enjoying the story. It motivates me to keep writing, seriously. It's my life-blood at times haha. A comment will always improve my day and motivate me to keep going.
Anyway, until the next chapter everyone, I shall see you later!
Council Members:
Benediktus
Wayne Foundation Member:
Seren
Slipping through the ever-expanding, dark void of space was the ship controlled by Vilgax the Conqueror. The ship was extremely quiet by this time, as he sat alone on the command dais, one massive arm resting against the edge of the console. Holographic images hovered in the air before him, rotating slowly on a loop.
He growled under his breath, looking at the devastation that was Galvan Prime. The news had come across his board only in the last few cycles. The projections were pulled from long-range scans. Vilgax had surveillance drones watching the planet for some time, mostly due to the inventor Azmuth residing there. Someone with a mind like his was a formidable foe to keep an eye on.
The holograms painted a picture Vilgax knew all too well: cities torn open from above, landmasses gouged and broken. Entire regions were simply gone, reduced to ash, debris, or nothing at all.
Vilgax's red eye narrowed slightly as the image shifted, zooming in on a ruined metropolis. Galvan architecture, which even he had admitted was a sight to behold, now twisted into jagged skeletons that left him feeling uneasy. He could understand the violence, the brute force of it, but that was only when applied to the right area. If there was one single thing the Viltrum Empire was lousy at, it was damage mitigation.
They did not operate as a scalpel. In their desire to be the reigning species, replenishing their numbers, the Viltrum Empire was more likely to scorch a planet than leave innocent bystanders aside. No, they liked making a spectacle of their prey. Vilgax could commend them for the act, but devastation for the sake of devastation was not something he could abide by. Especially when it came to some of the galaxy's brightest minds.
Galvans were small creatures, but their brains far made up for it. Some of the greatest creations Vilgax had ever come across in his travels were in part due to them. It was for this reason alone that Vilgax felt the slightest sense of sympathy and compassion for the species.
He knew the singular being responsible for this, even without the reports. Thragg's greatest weapon:
Conquest.
Just the name alone was enough to send a chill through Vilgax's body. He had faced Viltrumites before, though it was never by choice. He knew better than to underestimate those fiendish brutes. When compared to other species, Vilgax found it hard to find one as prone to violence as the Viltrumites. A single member of that race could raze a world without support. There was no greater weapon of mass destruction than a Viltrumite with a mission. Their strength was unmatched; their speed made targeting systems obsolete. Even their weakest members had endurance that turned prolonged conflict into a losing proposition by default.
He had nearly died learning that lesson.
The unfortunate memory surfaced unbidden—the bone-crushing force, the sensation of being hurled through atmosphere and stone alike, systems screaming as armor failed piece by piece. It had taken everything to survive that encounter, and even then, survival had felt less like victory and more like mercy.
And if there was one thing Vilgax despised more than anything, was being treated like a lesser being. He would much rather have died in battle than be left alive to crawl away and lick his wounds. His pride had never recovered from that battle, and it was for that reason his right eye had been lost.
It was for this reason that Vilgax had kept to the edges of the Milky Way. He wanted to be the one to conquer the Viltrumites, to watch them burn and writhe in their inevitable demise. He wanted Thragg to lay beneath him, bloodied and broken… as he once had. But even Vilgax needed to admit where his weaknesses lay. Direct conflict with Thragg's minions would only end in his demise. So, for far too long he was forced to watch the Empire's expansion carefully, charting borders and influence, making certain his operations never drifted too close to their reach. Their interest had not yet settled here, to his knowledge. As long as that remained true, Vilgax could prepare for the future conflict.
The hologram shifted again, cycling through orbital debris, broken platforms, and scattered escape pods — most left cold and lifeless. Azmuth's battle with Conquest had given enough time to evacuate the majority of the population. Those who were caught in the crossfire were not so lucky.
Briefly, a trace signature pulsed across the display. Vilgax leaned forward, tentacles hanging in the air as excitement spread through his body. He knew that signature…
The Omnitrix.
It was only a mere echo of it, but it was enough to bring him to attention. The energy trail was faint, fragmented, and distorted by the violence that had torn Galvan Prime apart. Whatever Azmuth had done to mask it, whatever safeguards he had put in place, they had been disrupted. Not destroyed—but shaken loose, like a footprint left behind in scorched earth.
Vilgax's mandibles twitched, something close to satisfaction curling through his chest. Azmuth was gone. There was no confirmed body, no final transmission, no signature trace that could be reliably identified as the Galvan's. In Vilgax's experience, absence was often more telling than death.
If Azmuth by some miracle had survived, the Omnitrix would likely have company as it drifted through the void. But, even so… he suspected that regardless of the outcome of the battle, the Omnitrix wouldn't be left unattended.
What mattered the most to him was the one consolation he scraped away from the images; the one thing Vilgax allowed himself to savor as the images continued to scroll.
Thragg had not claimed the Omnitrix.
The Viltrumite Empire, for all its brutality, was efficient. If the Omnitrix had fallen into Thragg's hands, there would be no mystery.
The universe would already feel the consequences. A weapon like the Omnitrix, capable of rewriting biology, of turning adaptability itself into a tool of war… in Viltrumite hands, it would have been catastrophic.
Even one Viltrumite enhanced by its power would have been unstoppable. DNA splicing would be difficult for them in the long run. As Vilgax had learned, Viltrumite DNA was effectively an invasive species. If they were to procreate with another species, the Viltrumite DNA would eventually overtake it. At least, that was what Vilgax had come to understand.
Vilgax exhaled slowly, the sound low and controlled.
No. If the Omnitrix was to be claimed, it was better that it be claimed by him.
He understood it. Not completely—no one ever truly did—but enough to recognize its potential beyond raw destruction. Azmuth had been arrogant enough to believe the device could be trusted to morality, to judgment, to chance. Vilgax knew better. Power did not need conscience. It needed direction.
The image zoomed out, pulling back from Galvan Prime as it now existed: a wounded world, still smoldering, still bleeding debris into space. Somewhere beyond it, the trail continued—faint, erratic, but unmistakable. A line drawn away from the ruins, stretching toward a smaller, quieter system.
His system…
The Milky Way was his domain, regardless whether the Plumbers had anything to say about it. He'd stayed out of their way, and for that reason they'd left him alone. He'd spent too long licking his own wounds, trying to gather up what little bit of pride he had left. The Omnitrix was his one chance to get back on his feet, and to stick it to Thragg.
He was concerned that Conquest might have followed the Omnitrix's trail, but that was immediately squashed. The planet's security defenses had done sufficient damage to Conquest that the Viltrumite would be down for some time, even with his victory. Had Vilgax known about the battle sooner, he might have been able to put that wretch down once and for all.
But he'd take a small victory where he could take it right now. Following the trail, he was able to pinpoint where the Omnitrix was heading.
Earth.
It was a primitive planet by most measures. Fractured politics, underdeveloped defenses, but resilient in ways that were inconvenient. Some of their population had developed extraordinary abilities, giving them an edge in combat. That wasn't something Vilgax was worried about, no. It was the thought of engaging with the Plumbers that concerned him. He was still recovering, his resources were scarce, and engaging with a planetary defense force was something Vilgax wasn't sure he could afford to do.
If he were to acquire the Omnitrix, he'd need to capture it before it ever breached the planet's atmosphere. He could intercept the device. Yes, that was feasible.
Vilgax rose from his seat, towering as the holograms adjusted to his movement. His ship responded instantly, systems humming to life as new coordinates populated across the display.
Conquest's rampage had been careless. Typical. He destroyed, moved on, and left consequences for others to clean up. But in that wake of annihilation, something far more valuable had slipped free.
Vilgax intended to retrieve it.
This was the moment he was waiting for. It didn't matter who stood in his way, the Omnitrix would be his.
Meanwhile…
The campsite had come together in pieces as the sun dipped low, the sky bleeding from orange to bruised purple in slow, reluctant gradients. Max had parked the Rust Bucket just off the road, tucked into a clearing that felt intentional without being crowded, the kind of place you only found if you already knew where to look. The fire pit was old, stones blackened and cracked from use long before them, and Max had taken to it with an enthusiasm that bordered on ceremonial. By the time night settled in fully, the fire was crackling steady, throwing sparks into the dark and bathing the clearing in warm, flickering light.
"Bon appétit." Max smiled as he set a bowl down in front of the two as they set up camp for the evening.
Ben raised an eyebrow, trying to keep his stomach steady as the apparent meal writhed in the bowl, its slimy pale flesh glinting in the moonlight. The smell hit a second later—earthy, sharp, not rotten exactly, but not anything his brain wanted to associate with food either. His appetite, which had been hanging on by a thread since they'd left Bellwood, made a quiet, offended noise and promptly backed away.
"Okay, I give up…" Ben groaned, leaning back on his hands. "What is this supposed to be?"
"Marinated mealworms." Max beamed in reply, rubbing his hands together. "It's hard to find them fresh in the states. Did you know they're considered a delicacy in some countries?"
Gwen's lip curled in disgust as she watched one of the worms crawl out of the bowl and inch across the picnic table, leaving a faint, glistening trail behind it.
"It's totally gross in this one," she grumbled.
Max smirked, clearly enjoying this far too much.
"If these don't sound good, I've got some smoked sheep's tongue in the fridge."
Ben gagged, the sound halfway between reflex and protest. "Ugh, couldn't we just have a burger or something? Not exactly something I'm in the mood for, Grandpa."
"We're on a budget, kiddo. And I'd rather get my own food than pay for it, didn't I tell you that before?"
"Did I mention that I prefer to pay for mine?"
"I can always charge you for these," Max smirked. "This summer is going to be an adventure for your taste buds. It'll do you some good, trust me."
Ben and Gwen looked at one another, trying to decide whether this road trip was worth it after all.
The fire popped loudly, a log shifting as it settled, and Ben glanced away from the bowl just long enough to breathe through his nose and remind himself that this was, apparently, happening. Max had already helped himself, of course. He skewered a few of the worms with a fork like he was spearing marshmallows and popped them into his mouth without hesitation, chewing thoughtfully, eyes half-lidded in something dangerously close to bliss.
"Nutty," Max said after a moment, nodding to himself. "Good texture, too. Not mushy if you do it right."
Ben stared at him. "You are way too excited about this."
Max chuckled, unfazed. "You spend enough time out in the field, you learn not to be picky. Food's food."
That was… probably true. Ben knew that, logically. Grandpa Max had stories. Lots of them. Stories about places Ben couldn't pronounce, situations that sounded impossible, and meals that had absolutely not involved drive-thrus or delivery apps. Still, knowing that didn't make the worms any less alive-looking in the bowl between them.
He could never remember if Max had been affiliated with the GDA, or some faction of the military. All he knew was that Max was always down for extended camping trips where electronics were minimally used.
Gwen poked at one with the tip of her fork, face twisted like she was defusing a bomb.
"I don't think it's the idea of bugs that bothers me," she said slowly. "It's the fact that they're… moving."
"They won't be for long," Max offered helpfully.
"That does not help."
Ben leaned back against the bench, letting his gaze drift past the firelight and into the trees beyond the clearing. It was strange, he thought, how quickly the day had stretched and folded into this. Just this morning he'd been at home, in comfortable surroundings… and now here he was miles away, sitting under a sky full of stars with a bowl of worms in front of him.
Part of him almost laughed at that, and then he saw the color drain from Gwen's face as she tried to push herself to take a bite. Then, he realized that he was in the same exact boat as her.
Gwen finally sighed and took a small bite, chewing carefully, like she expected it to fight back. She swallowed, paused, then reluctantly nodded.
"Okay," she admitted. "That's… not as bad as I thought."
Ben eyed her like she'd betrayed him.
"You're kidding."
She shrugged.
"I didn't say I liked it."
Max grinned, victorious.
Ben hesitated, then reached forward and speared one himself. He didn't think about it. Thinking about it would ruin everything. He popped it into his mouth, chewed once, twice—
…and froze.
It wasn't good. He wasn't going to lie to himself about that. But it wasn't terrible, either. Salty. A little crunchy. Weirdly smoky.
"Well?" Max prompted.
Ben swallowed and sighed.
"I hate that you're right."
Max laughed, loud and pleased, the sound carrying into the trees. "Told you. This summer's gonna broaden your horizons."
I really wish I had brought some snacks… Ben thought quietly to himself, not looking forward to the countless meals of grub that were likely to follow.
Oh my god, I am so sorry for the wait on this chapter. I know it's been an entire month since the last chapter, and I apologize for that. February going into March was a really bad month for me in terms of writing. I had a bit of writer's block coupled with seasonal illnesses. It's not fair to make excuses, which is why I'm trying to do my best to get some new chapters out. My plan is going forward is to have 2-3 chapters a month posted minimum for all stories. It's a work in progress, so bear with me!
As always, thank you everyone for reading the story. It means a lot to me. I appreciate the comments more than you'd ever know. It really does motivate me to keep writing. So, if you ever have any thoughts, I'm always happy to hear them!
As it stands, there are some difficulties with me writing consistently, primarily my job. I can work a little bit on my stories there, but not much without getting in trouble obviously. So, I may or may not be able to live up to my own standards. However, if you guys are interested in joining my discord server, or supporting my writing I will leave a link below where you can access those.
Those who are sufficient rank on my discord server were able to read this chapter a few weeks ago, and will continue to have 1 chapter in advance going forward. Those who support my writing are able to get anywhere from 1-10 chapters in advance before public release. As of this moment, Omni-Blood has 2 chapters in advance. So, if you're interested... the link is below.
Links
Regardless though whether you choose to join the community or support my writing, I do appreciate all of you. Thank you for the support. They make me happy to know that you guys are enjoying the story. It motivates me to keep writing, seriously. It's my life-blood at times haha. A comment will always improve my day and motivate me to keep going.
Anyway, until the next chapter everyone, I shall see you later!
Council Members:
Benediktus
Wayne Foundation Member:
Seren
Lillie Jones
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Thanks for the chapter
Jason Wu
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Look at the bright side, Vilgax. At least they weren't Saiyans. They would have turned you into calamari after killing your squid ass
Arsenal597
Getting sticky.
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I just choked on my drink while reading this. Thank you for that haha
Chapter 5: The Distress Signal
Arsenal597
Getting sticky.
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For the Tennysons, the rest of the evening consisted of them sitting by the campfire and roasting marshmallows. Max told them stories from his youth, such as how he had first met their grandmother, Verdona. Notably, Gwen's face had softened during this part of the night. Ben had noticed it from the corner of his eye, and smiled unconsciously. They never got to see much of their grandmother. She had died shortly before they were born. At least, that was what the cousins had figured due to how their families only referred to Verdona as "gone." Ben surmised it was cancer or something of the like, just because it was the most likely scenario.
Max's voice carried easily over the crackle of the fire, steady and warm in a way that surprised Ben. He expected his tone to be more withdrawn, uncertain of himself. For as long as he remembered, Max never spoke of Verdona, so hearing him talk about her like it was nothing out of the ordinary was strange. Though, admittedly he did seem to brush past details that felt like they probably mattered more than he wanted to let on.
"...and that's when she decided I wasn't worth talking to," Max chuckled, turning his marshmallow slowly over the flame. "Didn't see her again for three months."
Gwen huffed her breath softly, a small smile tugging at her lips despite herself.
"Oh, yeah? You're leaving something out."
"Am I?" Max raised a brow, feigning innocence.
"Yes," she said, more certain now. "There's no way Grandma of all people just ignored you for three months without a reason."
"Okay, you've got me." Max's grin widened, but there was something quieter laced behind it. "Well… I might've said something I shouldn't have."
Ben snorted.
"What? Like what?"
Max glanced between them, weighing it for a second before shaking his head
"How about we just say that I was a lot less charming back then."
"That's hard to believe," Gwen muttered under her breath, though there wasn't much bite to it.
Max laughed.
"Hey now, I cleaned up eventually. After all, I did get her to marry me."
Ben leaned back slightly in his seat, watching the two of them as the firelight danced across their faces. Gwen looked… different. Not in a way he could fully explain, just—lighter, like something in her had relaxed without her realizing it. She wasn't correcting Max, wasn't rolling her eyes every other sentence. She was just… listening. But he assumed it mostly had to do with the rare occurrence unfolding before them.
He didn't think he'd seen that much.
Max nudged another marshmallow toward the center of the flames, the stick steady in his hand.
"She was something else, your grandmother," he said, quieter now. "Smart. Strong. Didn't take nonsense from anyone—especially me."
"Must have been if she could get you to settle down," Ben smirked faintly.
"What are you trying to say, kiddo?"
"Nothing." the teen chuckled, throwing his hands up in defense. "I mean, you always seemed like the type to never settle down. From all the stories you've told us, you seemed to enjoy the freedom."
"I did…" Max nodded, adjusting in his seat. "Your grandmother was special, though. I knew it from the moment we met. A person like her only comes once in a lifetime. She had this way of seeing right through you. Didn't matter what you said or how you said it. She knew what you meant."
Gwen's gaze drifted down to her own marshmallow, now golden and just on the edge of burning.
"Sounds like someone I know."
Ben glanced at her.
"Yeah? Who?"
She didn't look up.
"Me."
Ben blinked, then let out a short laugh.
"Okay, yeah, that's fair."
Max smiled at that, something proud slipping through before he could hide it.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, you've got a bit of her in you. But Ben inherited her sense of humor."
Gwen didn't respond right away, but the way her shoulders shifted—just slightly—said enough.
Ben looked back at the fire, turning his own marshmallow without really paying attention to it. Verdona. It still felt weird putting a name to someone who had always just been… absent. Not gone in a way that people talked about. Just not there. Like a missing piece no one really wanted to bring up.
He tried to picture her, but couldn't.
All he had was Max's version of her—sharp, stubborn, impossible to ignore. It didn't feel real. More like a character from one of Grandpa's stories than an actual person who had existed in their family. He couldn't even remember if there were any photos of Verdona now that he thought about it.
"Did she… like this kind of stuff?" Ben asked after a moment, gesturing vaguely at the campfire, the open space around them
Max followed his gaze, his expression softening again.
"Sometimes," he said. "She liked being outside. Not always for the same reasons I did, but… yeah. She would've liked this."
Ben nodded slowly.
The fire popped, a small burst of sparks rising into the night before fading into nothing. The air had cooled a bit since they'd set up camp, the kind of chill that crept in gradually until you noticed it all at once. Ben rubbed his hands together absently, more out of habit than anything.
Gwen finished her marshmallow, sliding it off the stick and onto a graham cracker with practiced ease.
"You could've told us more about her," she said, quieter now
Max didn't answer right away. He stared into the fire for a second, like he was looking at something beyond it. Then he sighed, lowering his head.
"Yeah," he admitted. "I probably should have."
"Then why didn't you?" Ben asked before he could stop himself.
"Ben," Gwen's eyes widened in shock.
"I'm sorry. I didn't-"
"It's fine," Max cut him off gently. "I loved your grandmother. More than I could ever attempt to put to words, but a lot of the time it feels like an old wound being reopened. It's just hard for me to talk about her most days, especially when your parents were around."
None of them said much after that. Ben kept his head lowered in shame, chastising himself for blurting the question out. Eventually, though… the conversation drifted into lighter territory. There were random stories, small arguments over whose marshmallow was cooked "right." Once that happened, Ben found himself laughing more than he expected, even if half the time it was just at how seriously Max took something as stupid as roasting marshmallows.
The flames settled into glowing embers, the bright orange fading into softer reds as the night stretched on. Crickets filled the silence where conversation had been, a steady rhythm that made everything feel just a little more still.
Max stood first, brushing his hands off against his pants.
"Alright," he said in a yawn, stretching slightly. "I think that's about enough for tonight."
Gwen nodded, already gathering up what little they had left out.
"Yeah… I'm tired."
Ben glanced between them, then up at the sky.
"Already?"
"You'll survive turning in early for one night," Gwen shot back, though there wasn't much energy behind it.
Max chuckled, moving towards the Rust Bucket.
"We've got a long day tomorrow. Best get some rest while we can."
Gwen lingered for a second before heading inside, pausing just long enough to glance back at the fire. Something unreadable crossed her face before she shook it off and followed Max in.
Ben stayed where he was.
The quiet settled around him almost immediately, heavier now without their voices cutting through it. He shifted slightly, then stood, stretching his arms over his head before walking over to the nearby picnic table.
The wood creaked faintly as he climbed up, laying back against it with a soft exhale. It wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world, but it didn't really matter.
Above him, the sky stretched out in a way he didn't get to see back in Bellwood.
No city lights. No distractions. Just stars.
A lot of them.
Ben stared up at them, his head resting against the rough surface of the table as he let his eyes wander. They didn't look real. Not completely. Too many of them, too bright, scattered across the sky like someone had just… thrown them up there without thinking about it.
He raised his hand slightly, squinting as he tried to line one of them up between his fingers.
They were too far away for that.
Too far away for anything, really.
He let his hand drop back down, resting it against his chest as he exhaled slowly. The night air filled his lungs, cool and steady, carrying the faint smell of smoke from the dying fire.
"Grandma, huh?" he muttered to himself, the words barely audible. It was so weird to hear Max talk about her tonight. The cadence in his voice reminded him of how soft-spoken Ken was whenever he brought up his and Gwen's parents. Only then did it dawn on him why Max never brought her up before — for the same reason Gwen and Ken rarely spoke about their parents. It would hurt too much to do so most days. "I'm an idiot."
He sat there for another moment, then swung his legs over the side of the picnic table and dropped down onto the dirt. His shoes crunched lightly against the gravel as he landed, the sound a little too loud for his own liking. Ben turned toward the Rust Bucket, half-expecting to see the door swing open or Max poke his head out.
Ben shoved his hands into his pockets and started off without much of a plan, following the faint outline of a trail that cut through the trees just beyond their campsite.
Elsewhere…
Slipping through the void with a steady, deliberate glide, Vilgax's ship followed the fractured trail left behind in Galvan Prime's wake. The Omnitrix's signature was faint—barely more than a ghost smeared across the fabric of space—but it was there. It pulsed intermittently across his display, flickering in and out as if daring him to lose it.
Vilgax stood at the center of the command dais, his single red eye fixed on the shifting data as it updated in real time. The trail had grown weaker the farther it stretched from Galvan Prime, distorted by debris fields, radiation bursts, and the sheer violence of what had taken place there.
The signature spiked slightly across the display—subtle, but enough to draw Vilgax's full attention. His mandibles twitched as he leaned forward, one clawed hand resting against the console.
The data refreshed again, lines of projected trajectory overlapping one another as the system recalibrated. What had once been a scattered, erratic trail began to narrow, tightening into something far more defined. The inconsistencies smoothed out. The path straightened.
His gaze sharpened, the low hum of the ship's systems the only sound in the chamber as the realization settled into place. The Omnitrix wasn't drifting anymore.
It had been grabbed by someone...
Vilgax straightened slowly, his posture shifting as the information locked in. The trail ahead was no longer a question of where the Omnitrix had gone—but how it was getting there.
A second display flickered to life at his command, scanning the surrounding space with a broader sweep. Long-range sensors pushed outward, cutting through the darkness, filtering through interference and residual energy until—
There.
Insignificant by most standards. A transport-class vessel, its silhouette barely visible against the void as it pushed forward at a pace that would've been impressive for lesser species. Its engines burned unevenly, output fluctuating just enough to suggest strain. Damage, perhaps. Or overextension.
Either way, it wasn't built for what it was trying to do.
Vilgax studied it in silence, his eye narrowing slightly as the system fed him more data. The Omnitrix's signature aligned with it almost perfectly now, no longer scattered across open space but centered—contained.
His mandibles curled faintly.
Of course.
Azmuth hadn't left it to chance.
Even in death… or whatever passed for it in the Galvan's case… he had ensured the device wouldn't simply drift into the hands of the first opportunist that came across it. A transport. Likely automated safeguards. Perhaps even survivors.
It didn't matter.
They had taken something that did not belong to them.
Vilgax's ship adjusted its heading without a word, angling toward the distant vessel as the gap between them began to close. There was no urgency in the movement. No sudden burst of speed. Just a steady increase, controlled and inevitable.
The transport hadn't noticed him yet.
Its sensors were either damaged… or insufficient.
Vilgax watched as it continued along its path, unaware of what now followed in its wake. There was a certain… predictability to it. A straight line drawn through space toward a destination it likely believed it would reach.
Earth.
Primitive. Fractured. Defended, but not enough to matter.
If the vessel made it there, the situation would become… inconvenient. Plumber interference. Native resistance. Variables that would require time and resources he had no interest in expending.
No.
This would end here.
A faint signal pulsed outward from the transport, weak but persistent. Vilgax's display caught it instantly, translating the frequency as it repeated itself in a steady loop. Distress.
His gaze lingered on it for a moment.
Plumber channels.
So they were still active.
A low, almost thoughtful sound rumbled in his chest as he considered that. The Plumbers had always been… persistent. Irritatingly so.
And now they would be listening. This could prove to be more complicated than he had originally accounted on.
Vilgax did not move to stop the signal, though.
If anything, his focus shifted past it, already calculating the next step. The transport's systems were strained. Its engines were operating beyond their intended limits. Its hull integrity showed signs of stress along multiple points. It was holding together—but barely.
It would not take much.
His hand moved across the console, and the ship responded instantly. Targeting systems came online in silence, locking onto the transport with a precision that left no room for error. Power routed where it was needed, weapons charging without fanfare, without excess.
The transport still hadn't reacted.
It continued forward, broadcasting its plea into the void, unaware that its fate had already been decided.
Vilgax watched it for a second longer.
Then he acted.
A single, focused shot lanced out from his ship, cutting through the darkness with brutal efficiency. It struck the transport along its rear thruster assembly, not with enough force to destroy—but enough to cripple. The engine sputtered violently, its output spiking before collapsing into an uneven burn.
The ship lurched.
Its trajectory faltered, systems scrambling to compensate as warning signals no doubt flooded whatever crew remained aboard. The distress signal intensified, its frequency wavering as power fluctuations rippled through the vessel.
Vilgax didn't fire again immediately.
He let it struggle and attempt to correct itself, to stabilize, to fight against the inevitable for just a moment longer. The transport veered off its path, rotation kicking in slightly as its damaged thruster failed to maintain balance. Secondary systems tried to engage—smaller bursts of propulsion firing unevenly, doing little more than delaying the outcome.
Predictable.
Vilgax adjusted his aim.
The second shot came a heartbeat later, carving into the ship's side with surgical precision. Hull plating ruptured along the impact point, atmosphere venting out into space in a violent plume as the structure gave way. Internal systems sparked and died in rapid succession, the vessel's already fragile state pushed past its limit.
The distress signal spiked once more—louder, more frantic.
Then it began to falter.
Vilgax's ship closed the distance, steady and unhurried as it approached the crippled transport. The Omnitrix's signature burned brighter on his display now, no longer obscured by distance or interference.
Meanwhile…
Cecil Stedman didn't like having his evening disrupted by work. While, as the acting director of the Global Defense Agency, he was always on call, that didn't mean he enjoyed being reminded of it. The job already had a way of bleeding into every corner of his life without needing an invitation. However, with the seldom few hours he chose to spend for himself—hours carved out with the same stubborn precision he applied to global security—he didn't like to be disturbed.
Unfortunately, the universe rarely cared about his preferences.
The phone call had come just after he'd poured himself a drink and settled into the quiet of his living room. The city lights stretched beyond the window in neat grids of white and amber, the distant hum of traffic barely reaching his floor. It had been shaping up to be one of those rare evenings where nothing exploded, nobody invaded, and he could almost pretend the world didn't constantly teeter on the edge of catastrophe.
Then the call came.
Cecil stepped through the sliding doors of the GDA command floor with the same tired irritation still lingering behind his eyes. The facility beneath the Pentagon hummed with its usual sterile life—banks of monitors casting pale blue light across rows of analysts, technicians whispering between consoles, the air thick with the low electric drone of machines that never truly powered down. The moment he entered, a few heads turned instinctively. Not out of fear, exactly, but something adjacent to it. Respect mixed with the quiet understanding that if Cecil had been called in this late, something had already gone wrong.
Donald was waiting for him near the central console, shoulders drawn tight, a tablet clutched in both hands like it might try to escape.
"Donald, this better be important."
"It is, sir." The timid man in glasses nodded as Cecil arrived, pushing the tablet forward as if it were evidence in a trial. "We've received a distress signal."
Cecil stopped a few feet short of the console. The words alone weren't enough to earn his attention yet. Earth received strange signals all the time. Half of them turned out to be dead satellites, corrupted transmissions, or enthusiastic amateurs with equipment they didn't understand. The other half tended to involve something with too many limbs crashing into rural farmland.
"Where?"
Donald hesitated just long enough to confirm this wasn't going to be one of the easy ones.
"Near the moon."
"Excuse me?" Cecil asked, narrowing his brows. "You've gotta be shitting me. It's not one of ours, is it?"
"Doesn't appear to be," Donald said, shaking his head quickly. "We picked it up on the Plumber channels."
That got Cecil moving again.
He stepped closer to the console, eyes scanning the monitors now lighting up with spectral readouts and signal traces. A rotating orbital projection filled the main display, Earth hovering in the center while the moon drifted along its familiar path. A blinking marker pulsed just outside the lunar orbit, accompanied by a steady, repeating waveform.
The signal itself looked old.
Not in the sense that it had been traveling long distances—if that were the case, the distortion would have been far worse. No, this signal looked old in design. The frequency architecture, the encryption patterns, even the base modulation carried a fingerprint Cecil recognized immediately.
Plumber technology.
Or what was left of it.
The Plumbers had once operated openly on Earth, decades before Cecil ever inherited the director's chair. Back in the seventies and early eighties, they'd maintained a network of alien tech installations, listening posts, and diplomatic channels scattered across the planet. Most of the world had never known they existed. Those who did rarely lived long enough to talk about it.
Then came the incident.
Cecil hadn't been in charge at the time—hell, he'd barely been a junior analyst—but he'd read the files often enough to know the highlights. An extraterrestrial conflict spilling into Earth's orbit. Plumber forces caught in the middle. A battle that had burned through most of their infrastructure in the span of a single night.
By the time the dust settled, the Plumbers on Earth were effectively gone.
What remained of their technology had been seized quietly, folded into GDA custody under a web of international agreements and classified amendments. Half of it still sat in storage facilities, humming with systems nobody fully understood. The other half had been repurposed into early warning networks and long-range sensors.
Like the one currently blinking on Cecil's screen.
"Play it," Cecil said.
Donald tapped a command into the console. A moment later, the room filled with the faint crackle of a broken transmission.
Static washed across the speakers first, sharp and uneven, before a burst of alien syllables cut through the noise. The language wasn't human.
Even distorted, the voice sounded small—high-pitched, frantic, the words tumbling over each other like whoever had recorded it had been running out of time.
The analysts around the room leaned closer to their screens, software attempting to parse the signal in real time. Lines of rough translation began appearing beneath the waveform, incomplete phrases struggling to form meaning.
Attack — containment failure — transit trajectory —
The audio cut abruptly, dissolving back into static.
Silence settled across the command floor for a moment.
Cecil folded his arms.
"Well," he muttered under his breath. "That doesn't sound promising."
Donald cleared his throat.
"We're still decrypting the rest of it, sir. The signal repeats every thirty-two seconds. Whoever sent it wanted to make sure it got picked up."
"Or they wanted to make sure someone knew what happened after they were gone."
Cecil watched the blinking marker near the moon for another second before glancing toward the analysts.
"Origin point?"
"Not lunar," one of the technicians replied quickly. "It looks like the signal is being relayed from a drifting vessel. Small craft, maybe escape-class. It entered the system a few hours ago and started broadcasting immediately."
Cecil's eyes narrowed slightly.
Something small enough to slip into Earth's orbit without triggering the usual alarms. Something equipped with Plumber-grade transmission systems. And something desperate enough to fire off a distress signal the moment it arrived.
None of that added up to anything good.
"Track it," Cecil said calmly. "I want every telescope, satellite, and deep-space sensor pointed at that thing."
Donald hesitated.
"Sir… if this is Plumber tech—"
"Then it's already our problem," Cecil finished flatly.
His gaze drifted back to the rotating projection of Earth and the tiny blinking signal just beyond the moon.
Whatever was floating out there had crossed half the solar system to reach them, and something told him it hadn't come alone.
"Where's Omni-Man?"
"Sir?"
"He's the only one who'll be able to reach it in time…"
Meanwhile...
The television droned on in the background, some late-night sitcom rerun cycling through the same laugh track it had probably used for the last twenty years. Nolan Grayson sat comfortably at one end of the couch, one arm stretched along the backrest, the other resting loosely in his lap as he watched the screen with a quiet, patient sort of interest. It wasn't the kind of thing he would've chosen on his own—not really—but that had never been the point.
His wife, Debbie, laughed beside him, the sound warm and easy, her head tilting slightly as she leaned into the moment rather than the joke itself. Their son, Mark, sat on the floor a few feet away, legs stretched out, controller in hand, half-invested in both the show and whatever game he'd been playing. The glow from the TV painted the room in soft blues and whites, flickering across familiar walls, family photos, the quiet evidence of a life that felt normal.
Nolan let his gaze drift from the screen for just a second, watching them instead.
It still surprised him sometimes—how natural it all felt.
There had been a time when this kind of evening would've seemed… inefficient. Pointless, even. Sitting still, doing nothing of consequence, letting time pass without purpose. Back then, every moment had been measured against something larger. Progress. Expansion. Duty.
Now?
Now he found himself memorizing things like this.
The way Debbie's laugh came a second too late, like she was catching up to the joke instead of reacting to it. The way Mark would glance up from his game just in time for the punchline, pretending he'd been paying attention the whole time. The faint hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen, the distant sound of a car passing outside.
Small things.
Human things.
"Okay, that one was actually funny," Mark said, pausing his game and looking back at the TV. "I don't even care if that was a rerun."
Debbie smirked.
"You say that every time."
"Yeah, but this time I mean it."
Nolan chuckled quietly, the sound low and genuine.
"You've been saying that for the last three episodes."
Mark shrugged, unapologetic.
"Maybe they're just getting better."
"They're not," Debbie said flatly, though the smile on her face softened the edge of it.
Nolan shifted slightly on the couch, leaning forward just enough to rest his elbows on his knees. There was something… comforting about the simplicity of it. No stakes. No consequences. Just people talking, laughing, existing in a world where the biggest problem was whatever misunderstanding needed to be wrapped up before the episode ended.
A world that reset itself every thirty minutes.
Must be nice.
Mark unpaused his game, the rapid clicking of buttons filling the space between lines of dialogue from the TV.
"You ever think about how weird it is?" he said suddenly.
Debbie raised an eyebrow.
"That could mean a lot of things coming from you."
"This," Mark gestured vaguely toward the screen, the room, everything. "We've got Dad flying around stopping disasters, superheroes all over the place, and we're just sitting here watching some guy trip over his coffee table for the tenth time."
Debbie sighed. "Mark—"
"I'm just saying," he continued, sitting up a little straighter. "The world's crazy. Aliens, supervillains, all that—and this is what we do with our downtime."
Nolan huffed a quiet laugh under his breath, something softer behind it this time.
"You'd be surprised."
Mark glanced back at him.
"Yeah?"
Nolan nodded slightly, eyes drifting back to the TV.
"Doesn't matter how powerful you are. You still end up wanting something simple at the end of the day."
Debbie smiled faintly at that, though there was something thoughtful behind it, like she'd heard him say versions of that before and was still turning it over.
"Good to know saving the world doesn't ruin your taste in bad television."
"It might improve it," Nolan said dryly.
Mark snorted, shaking his head as he went back to his game.
"Man, if I ever get my powers, I'm not wasting my time like this."
Debbie gave him a look.
"Oh, you absolutely would."
"No way."
"You say that now."
Nolan glanced at him, the corner of his mouth tugging upward just slightly.
"You'd last about a week."
Mark looked back at him, mock offended.
"Wow. Okay. That's messed up."
"You'd get bored," Nolan added simply. "Everyone does."
Mark opened his mouth to argue, then hesitated, like he wasn't entirely sure how to prove that wrong.
"Still," he muttered, quieter now, "I'd at least try to do something bigger with it."
Nolan held his gaze for a second, something unreadable passing through his expression before it softened again.
"Yeah," he said. "You would."
The room settled again after that, the conversation fading back into the background noise of the television and the steady rhythm of Mark's controller. Debbie shifted slightly, resting her head more comfortably against the couch as the next scene rolled on.
Mark didn't even look up this time.
"You're not gonna get called out tonight, right?"
Debbie shot him a look.
"Mark."
"What? I'm just asking."
"It's fine, dear." Nolan held his hand up, though it didn't change the way his chest slightly tightened at the question. He knew how hard it was for Mark and Debbie when he had to leave at a moment's notice, especially in the middle of something important. "I think they can handle it for one evening."
"I hope so," Mark smiled softly. "Kinda nice having you here."
Nolan didn't respond right away. He just let the moment sit, the weight of it settling somewhere deeper than he cared to acknowledge out loud.
For all the noise in the universe, all the conflict, all the things he knew were out there beyond this planet… this was the part that stayed with him. Not the battles. Not the victories. This.
The episode rolled into a commercial break, the volume dipping slightly as the tone shifted. Debbie stretched, letting out a soft sigh as she leaned back against the couch.
"I should probably head to bed soon."
"Yeah, same," Mark said, though he made no move to get up.
Nolan glanced between them, something quiet settling behind his expression.
"You don't have to rush."
Debbie smiled at him.
"I know."
For a moment, none of them moved.
Then—
Nolan's phone began to ring.
The sound cut cleanly through the room, sharp against the low hum of the television.
Mark glanced over immediately. Debbie didn't say anything, but the shift in her posture said enough.
Nolan already knew who it was before he even reached for it.
"So much for them handling it," Mark grumbled under his breath. As Nolan answered the call, he was already making his way towards the bedroom.
"Cecil, what's the situation?"
"Sorry to interrupt your evening, Nolan." Cecil's voice came through the speaker. "I figured a call would be more appropriate than an unexpected visit."
"I appreciate it. Debbie wasn't too pleased about last time."
"Hence why I called." the GDA director cleared his throat. "You're not the only one that's had their plans disrupted. We received a distress signal not too far from the moon. It came through on one of the old Plumber channels."
"Plumber?" Nolan raised an eyebrow. "Haven't heard about them in a while."
"Precisely. So whatever it is, it has to be from outside our galaxy. I'd call in someone else, but frankly we don't know what the situation is and you're the only one I trust to get there in time."
"Do we know what the signal belongs to?"
"From what we can make out, it appears to be a small vessel, potentially a transport of some kind. The transmission that we received isn't fully translated yet, but they came under attack just as they entered the sector."
"So expect a fight?"
"I wouldn't rule it out. Think you can handle it?"
Nolan smiled, opening his closet to grab his costume.
"Please, it's me. Shouldn't take too long to deal with." Despite the smile and the chipperness to his voice, Nolan wasn't happy about the situation. As much as he enjoyed what he did, their reliance on him was only proof that his true mission would be far too easy once it came time. "Send me the coordinates. I'm on my way now."
Nolan disappeared in a blur through the open window, flying towards the upper atmosphere. Debbie stood by the doorway, frowning softly.
The air gave way easier than most people would've expected. Nolan didn't slow as he cut through the upper atmosphere; didn't even think about it beyond the faint shift in resistance against his skin. One moment there was wind clawing at him, the rush of it loud and constant in his ears — the next, it thinned into almost nothing. The world below fell quiet in a way that always felt just a little unnatural if he let himself focus on it for too long.
He didn't.
The Earth curved beneath him, vast and alive, painted in deep blues and scattered clouds that stretched like brushstrokes across its surface. City lights shimmered along the darkened side, faint clusters of gold and white that marked where people lived, where they laughed, argued, worried—where they waited for someone like him to show up when things went wrong.
For a moment, he thought about the house.
About the couch, the low hum of the television, the way Debbie had lingered in the doorway without saying anything. The way Mark had tried to play it off like it didn't bother him.
His jaw tightened, just slightly.
Then he pushed forward.
The last traces of atmosphere slipped past him, and space opened up in full—silent, endless, and cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. There was no wind here, no sound, no resistance. Just motion. Pure, uninterrupted motion.
Nolan adjusted without thinking, his body angling forward as his speed picked up, the planet shrinking behind him with every passing second. There was no strain in it, no burn in his muscles, no limit he could feel pressing back against him. Flight wasn't effort. Not really.
It was… intention.
It was similar to tensing a muscle. For Viltrumites, flight came to them as easy as breathing. He'd thought about how he would explain this to Mark if he ever got his powers. The keyword being if.
Nolan knew that Mark wanted powers more than anything else in the world, but he'd be lying if part of him wished that Mark would never inherit them. The idea that Mark could live a full life away from the Viltrumite Empire and everything that entailed was something Nolan held onto tightly.
Eventually, Nolan would be forced to resume his duties. When that happened, he didn't want Mark or Debbie to be caught in the middle of it. Even now, after all this time on Earth, there were moments where that realization still lingered in the back of his mind, reminding him of who he really was.
The stars stretched out ahead of him, distant and unmoving no matter how fast he went, scattered across the black like pinpricks of light that refused to grow any closer. He'd crossed distances that would've taken human technology years in a matter of minutes, and still, space had a way of making everything feel far away.
Insignificant, even.
Nolan didn't feel insignificant.
But he understood the scale.
He'd seen what existed beyond this system. Empires that spanned galaxies. Civilizations that rose and fell without ever brushing against one another. Wars that consumed entire worlds and left nothing behind but drifting debris and fading signals no one would ever answer.
Earth was small.
Fragile.
Unremarkable in the grand scheme of things.
And yet—
His gaze flickered back, just for a second.
The planet was already distant, its details blurred by space and speed, but it was still there. Still… his.
Not in the way it used to be. Not in the way he'd been taught to see things.
But in a way that mattered more than he'd ever expected.
The coordinates Cecil had sent sat in the back of his mind, precise and unchanging. He didn't need a display, didn't need a navigation system. Once he had a direction, his body handled the rest, adjusting in ways that felt as natural as breathing had once been.
He'd made that trip more times than he could count. Whether it was patrols, inspections, the occasional intervention when something got too close for comfort. It wasn't far, not for him anyway. It might as well have been routine.
That word sat oddly with him now.
Routine.
There had been a time when nothing about this would've felt routine. Every mission, every deployment, every encounter—it had all carried weight. Purpose. A clear, defined role in something larger than himself.
Now?
Now he answered calls about distress signals and intercepted threats before they could reach a planet that, by all accounts, shouldn't have mattered to him at all.
And yet, he went anyway.
Every time.
Nolan's eyes narrowed slightly as he cut through the darkness, his speed increasing just a fraction more. The stars didn't blur—not the way they would've for a human eye—but there was a subtle shift in perspective, distances closing in ways that were difficult to measure without something solid to compare against.
The moon came into view ahead, pale and unmoving, its surface marked by craters and shadows that stretched across it like old scars. It hung there, silent and indifferent, just another body caught in orbit around something larger than itself.
He'd always found it… unimpressive.
Not because it lacked significance, but because it lacked resistance. It was just there. No defenses. No life. No challenge.
A stepping stone.
Nolan angled slightly to the side, adjusting his trajectory as he closed the distance. The distress signal was beyond it, somewhere in the empty stretch of space that most people would've dismissed as nothing.
Empty.
He knew better.
There was no such thing as empty space. Not really. There was always something—debris, radiation, the faint echoes of things that had passed through long before anyone thought to look. And sometimes…
Sometimes there were things that didn't belong.
Such as the large warship floating through the void, firing upon a smaller vessel that appeared to be on the verge of annihilation…
Hey everyone. Not much to say today. Hope you enjoyed! Next chapter will be up in the next week or two.
Links to my discord and Patreon will be down below. Those of sufficient rank in my discord get one chapter in advance while those who support my writing get anywhere from 1 to 10 chapters for each of my stories. Omni-Blood currently has 4. There will be more in the future, just please be patient with me!
-Arsenal
Links
Max's voice carried easily over the crackle of the fire, steady and warm in a way that surprised Ben. He expected his tone to be more withdrawn, uncertain of himself. For as long as he remembered, Max never spoke of Verdona, so hearing him talk about her like it was nothing out of the ordinary was strange. Though, admittedly he did seem to brush past details that felt like they probably mattered more than he wanted to let on.
"...and that's when she decided I wasn't worth talking to," Max chuckled, turning his marshmallow slowly over the flame. "Didn't see her again for three months."
Gwen huffed her breath softly, a small smile tugging at her lips despite herself.
"Oh, yeah? You're leaving something out."
"Am I?" Max raised a brow, feigning innocence.
"Yes," she said, more certain now. "There's no way Grandma of all people just ignored you for three months without a reason."
"Okay, you've got me." Max's grin widened, but there was something quieter laced behind it. "Well… I might've said something I shouldn't have."
Ben snorted.
"What? Like what?"
Max glanced between them, weighing it for a second before shaking his head
"How about we just say that I was a lot less charming back then."
"That's hard to believe," Gwen muttered under her breath, though there wasn't much bite to it.
Max laughed.
"Hey now, I cleaned up eventually. After all, I did get her to marry me."
Ben leaned back slightly in his seat, watching the two of them as the firelight danced across their faces. Gwen looked… different. Not in a way he could fully explain, just—lighter, like something in her had relaxed without her realizing it. She wasn't correcting Max, wasn't rolling her eyes every other sentence. She was just… listening. But he assumed it mostly had to do with the rare occurrence unfolding before them.
He didn't think he'd seen that much.
Max nudged another marshmallow toward the center of the flames, the stick steady in his hand.
"She was something else, your grandmother," he said, quieter now. "Smart. Strong. Didn't take nonsense from anyone—especially me."
"Must have been if she could get you to settle down," Ben smirked faintly.
"What are you trying to say, kiddo?"
"Nothing." the teen chuckled, throwing his hands up in defense. "I mean, you always seemed like the type to never settle down. From all the stories you've told us, you seemed to enjoy the freedom."
"I did…" Max nodded, adjusting in his seat. "Your grandmother was special, though. I knew it from the moment we met. A person like her only comes once in a lifetime. She had this way of seeing right through you. Didn't matter what you said or how you said it. She knew what you meant."
Gwen's gaze drifted down to her own marshmallow, now golden and just on the edge of burning.
"Sounds like someone I know."
Ben glanced at her.
"Yeah? Who?"
She didn't look up.
"Me."
Ben blinked, then let out a short laugh.
"Okay, yeah, that's fair."
Max smiled at that, something proud slipping through before he could hide it.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, you've got a bit of her in you. But Ben inherited her sense of humor."
Gwen didn't respond right away, but the way her shoulders shifted—just slightly—said enough.
Ben looked back at the fire, turning his own marshmallow without really paying attention to it. Verdona. It still felt weird putting a name to someone who had always just been… absent. Not gone in a way that people talked about. Just not there. Like a missing piece no one really wanted to bring up.
He tried to picture her, but couldn't.
All he had was Max's version of her—sharp, stubborn, impossible to ignore. It didn't feel real. More like a character from one of Grandpa's stories than an actual person who had existed in their family. He couldn't even remember if there were any photos of Verdona now that he thought about it.
"Did she… like this kind of stuff?" Ben asked after a moment, gesturing vaguely at the campfire, the open space around them
Max followed his gaze, his expression softening again.
"Sometimes," he said. "She liked being outside. Not always for the same reasons I did, but… yeah. She would've liked this."
Ben nodded slowly.
The fire popped, a small burst of sparks rising into the night before fading into nothing. The air had cooled a bit since they'd set up camp, the kind of chill that crept in gradually until you noticed it all at once. Ben rubbed his hands together absently, more out of habit than anything.
Gwen finished her marshmallow, sliding it off the stick and onto a graham cracker with practiced ease.
"You could've told us more about her," she said, quieter now
Max didn't answer right away. He stared into the fire for a second, like he was looking at something beyond it. Then he sighed, lowering his head.
"Yeah," he admitted. "I probably should have."
"Then why didn't you?" Ben asked before he could stop himself.
"Ben," Gwen's eyes widened in shock.
"I'm sorry. I didn't-"
"It's fine," Max cut him off gently. "I loved your grandmother. More than I could ever attempt to put to words, but a lot of the time it feels like an old wound being reopened. It's just hard for me to talk about her most days, especially when your parents were around."
None of them said much after that. Ben kept his head lowered in shame, chastising himself for blurting the question out. Eventually, though… the conversation drifted into lighter territory. There were random stories, small arguments over whose marshmallow was cooked "right." Once that happened, Ben found himself laughing more than he expected, even if half the time it was just at how seriously Max took something as stupid as roasting marshmallows.
The flames settled into glowing embers, the bright orange fading into softer reds as the night stretched on. Crickets filled the silence where conversation had been, a steady rhythm that made everything feel just a little more still.
Max stood first, brushing his hands off against his pants.
"Alright," he said in a yawn, stretching slightly. "I think that's about enough for tonight."
Gwen nodded, already gathering up what little they had left out.
"Yeah… I'm tired."
Ben glanced between them, then up at the sky.
"Already?"
"You'll survive turning in early for one night," Gwen shot back, though there wasn't much energy behind it.
Max chuckled, moving towards the Rust Bucket.
"We've got a long day tomorrow. Best get some rest while we can."
Gwen lingered for a second before heading inside, pausing just long enough to glance back at the fire. Something unreadable crossed her face before she shook it off and followed Max in.
Ben stayed where he was.
The quiet settled around him almost immediately, heavier now without their voices cutting through it. He shifted slightly, then stood, stretching his arms over his head before walking over to the nearby picnic table.
The wood creaked faintly as he climbed up, laying back against it with a soft exhale. It wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world, but it didn't really matter.
Above him, the sky stretched out in a way he didn't get to see back in Bellwood.
No city lights. No distractions. Just stars.
A lot of them.
Ben stared up at them, his head resting against the rough surface of the table as he let his eyes wander. They didn't look real. Not completely. Too many of them, too bright, scattered across the sky like someone had just… thrown them up there without thinking about it.
He raised his hand slightly, squinting as he tried to line one of them up between his fingers.
They were too far away for that.
Too far away for anything, really.
He let his hand drop back down, resting it against his chest as he exhaled slowly. The night air filled his lungs, cool and steady, carrying the faint smell of smoke from the dying fire.
"Grandma, huh?" he muttered to himself, the words barely audible. It was so weird to hear Max talk about her tonight. The cadence in his voice reminded him of how soft-spoken Ken was whenever he brought up his and Gwen's parents. Only then did it dawn on him why Max never brought her up before — for the same reason Gwen and Ken rarely spoke about their parents. It would hurt too much to do so most days. "I'm an idiot."
He sat there for another moment, then swung his legs over the side of the picnic table and dropped down onto the dirt. His shoes crunched lightly against the gravel as he landed, the sound a little too loud for his own liking. Ben turned toward the Rust Bucket, half-expecting to see the door swing open or Max poke his head out.
Ben shoved his hands into his pockets and started off without much of a plan, following the faint outline of a trail that cut through the trees just beyond their campsite.
Elsewhere…
Slipping through the void with a steady, deliberate glide, Vilgax's ship followed the fractured trail left behind in Galvan Prime's wake. The Omnitrix's signature was faint—barely more than a ghost smeared across the fabric of space—but it was there. It pulsed intermittently across his display, flickering in and out as if daring him to lose it.
Vilgax stood at the center of the command dais, his single red eye fixed on the shifting data as it updated in real time. The trail had grown weaker the farther it stretched from Galvan Prime, distorted by debris fields, radiation bursts, and the sheer violence of what had taken place there.
The signature spiked slightly across the display—subtle, but enough to draw Vilgax's full attention. His mandibles twitched as he leaned forward, one clawed hand resting against the console.
The data refreshed again, lines of projected trajectory overlapping one another as the system recalibrated. What had once been a scattered, erratic trail began to narrow, tightening into something far more defined. The inconsistencies smoothed out. The path straightened.
His gaze sharpened, the low hum of the ship's systems the only sound in the chamber as the realization settled into place. The Omnitrix wasn't drifting anymore.
It had been grabbed by someone...
Vilgax straightened slowly, his posture shifting as the information locked in. The trail ahead was no longer a question of where the Omnitrix had gone—but how it was getting there.
A second display flickered to life at his command, scanning the surrounding space with a broader sweep. Long-range sensors pushed outward, cutting through the darkness, filtering through interference and residual energy until—
There.
Insignificant by most standards. A transport-class vessel, its silhouette barely visible against the void as it pushed forward at a pace that would've been impressive for lesser species. Its engines burned unevenly, output fluctuating just enough to suggest strain. Damage, perhaps. Or overextension.
Either way, it wasn't built for what it was trying to do.
Vilgax studied it in silence, his eye narrowing slightly as the system fed him more data. The Omnitrix's signature aligned with it almost perfectly now, no longer scattered across open space but centered—contained.
His mandibles curled faintly.
Of course.
Azmuth hadn't left it to chance.
Even in death… or whatever passed for it in the Galvan's case… he had ensured the device wouldn't simply drift into the hands of the first opportunist that came across it. A transport. Likely automated safeguards. Perhaps even survivors.
It didn't matter.
They had taken something that did not belong to them.
Vilgax's ship adjusted its heading without a word, angling toward the distant vessel as the gap between them began to close. There was no urgency in the movement. No sudden burst of speed. Just a steady increase, controlled and inevitable.
The transport hadn't noticed him yet.
Its sensors were either damaged… or insufficient.
Vilgax watched as it continued along its path, unaware of what now followed in its wake. There was a certain… predictability to it. A straight line drawn through space toward a destination it likely believed it would reach.
Earth.
Primitive. Fractured. Defended, but not enough to matter.
If the vessel made it there, the situation would become… inconvenient. Plumber interference. Native resistance. Variables that would require time and resources he had no interest in expending.
No.
This would end here.
A faint signal pulsed outward from the transport, weak but persistent. Vilgax's display caught it instantly, translating the frequency as it repeated itself in a steady loop. Distress.
His gaze lingered on it for a moment.
Plumber channels.
So they were still active.
A low, almost thoughtful sound rumbled in his chest as he considered that. The Plumbers had always been… persistent. Irritatingly so.
And now they would be listening. This could prove to be more complicated than he had originally accounted on.
Vilgax did not move to stop the signal, though.
If anything, his focus shifted past it, already calculating the next step. The transport's systems were strained. Its engines were operating beyond their intended limits. Its hull integrity showed signs of stress along multiple points. It was holding together—but barely.
It would not take much.
His hand moved across the console, and the ship responded instantly. Targeting systems came online in silence, locking onto the transport with a precision that left no room for error. Power routed where it was needed, weapons charging without fanfare, without excess.
The transport still hadn't reacted.
It continued forward, broadcasting its plea into the void, unaware that its fate had already been decided.
Vilgax watched it for a second longer.
Then he acted.
A single, focused shot lanced out from his ship, cutting through the darkness with brutal efficiency. It struck the transport along its rear thruster assembly, not with enough force to destroy—but enough to cripple. The engine sputtered violently, its output spiking before collapsing into an uneven burn.
The ship lurched.
Its trajectory faltered, systems scrambling to compensate as warning signals no doubt flooded whatever crew remained aboard. The distress signal intensified, its frequency wavering as power fluctuations rippled through the vessel.
Vilgax didn't fire again immediately.
He let it struggle and attempt to correct itself, to stabilize, to fight against the inevitable for just a moment longer. The transport veered off its path, rotation kicking in slightly as its damaged thruster failed to maintain balance. Secondary systems tried to engage—smaller bursts of propulsion firing unevenly, doing little more than delaying the outcome.
Predictable.
Vilgax adjusted his aim.
The second shot came a heartbeat later, carving into the ship's side with surgical precision. Hull plating ruptured along the impact point, atmosphere venting out into space in a violent plume as the structure gave way. Internal systems sparked and died in rapid succession, the vessel's already fragile state pushed past its limit.
The distress signal spiked once more—louder, more frantic.
Then it began to falter.
Vilgax's ship closed the distance, steady and unhurried as it approached the crippled transport. The Omnitrix's signature burned brighter on his display now, no longer obscured by distance or interference.
Meanwhile…
Cecil Stedman didn't like having his evening disrupted by work. While, as the acting director of the Global Defense Agency, he was always on call, that didn't mean he enjoyed being reminded of it. The job already had a way of bleeding into every corner of his life without needing an invitation. However, with the seldom few hours he chose to spend for himself—hours carved out with the same stubborn precision he applied to global security—he didn't like to be disturbed.
Unfortunately, the universe rarely cared about his preferences.
The phone call had come just after he'd poured himself a drink and settled into the quiet of his living room. The city lights stretched beyond the window in neat grids of white and amber, the distant hum of traffic barely reaching his floor. It had been shaping up to be one of those rare evenings where nothing exploded, nobody invaded, and he could almost pretend the world didn't constantly teeter on the edge of catastrophe.
Then the call came.
Cecil stepped through the sliding doors of the GDA command floor with the same tired irritation still lingering behind his eyes. The facility beneath the Pentagon hummed with its usual sterile life—banks of monitors casting pale blue light across rows of analysts, technicians whispering between consoles, the air thick with the low electric drone of machines that never truly powered down. The moment he entered, a few heads turned instinctively. Not out of fear, exactly, but something adjacent to it. Respect mixed with the quiet understanding that if Cecil had been called in this late, something had already gone wrong.
Donald was waiting for him near the central console, shoulders drawn tight, a tablet clutched in both hands like it might try to escape.
"Donald, this better be important."
"It is, sir." The timid man in glasses nodded as Cecil arrived, pushing the tablet forward as if it were evidence in a trial. "We've received a distress signal."
Cecil stopped a few feet short of the console. The words alone weren't enough to earn his attention yet. Earth received strange signals all the time. Half of them turned out to be dead satellites, corrupted transmissions, or enthusiastic amateurs with equipment they didn't understand. The other half tended to involve something with too many limbs crashing into rural farmland.
"Where?"
Donald hesitated just long enough to confirm this wasn't going to be one of the easy ones.
"Near the moon."
"Excuse me?" Cecil asked, narrowing his brows. "You've gotta be shitting me. It's not one of ours, is it?"
"Doesn't appear to be," Donald said, shaking his head quickly. "We picked it up on the Plumber channels."
That got Cecil moving again.
He stepped closer to the console, eyes scanning the monitors now lighting up with spectral readouts and signal traces. A rotating orbital projection filled the main display, Earth hovering in the center while the moon drifted along its familiar path. A blinking marker pulsed just outside the lunar orbit, accompanied by a steady, repeating waveform.
The signal itself looked old.
Not in the sense that it had been traveling long distances—if that were the case, the distortion would have been far worse. No, this signal looked old in design. The frequency architecture, the encryption patterns, even the base modulation carried a fingerprint Cecil recognized immediately.
Plumber technology.
Or what was left of it.
The Plumbers had once operated openly on Earth, decades before Cecil ever inherited the director's chair. Back in the seventies and early eighties, they'd maintained a network of alien tech installations, listening posts, and diplomatic channels scattered across the planet. Most of the world had never known they existed. Those who did rarely lived long enough to talk about it.
Then came the incident.
Cecil hadn't been in charge at the time—hell, he'd barely been a junior analyst—but he'd read the files often enough to know the highlights. An extraterrestrial conflict spilling into Earth's orbit. Plumber forces caught in the middle. A battle that had burned through most of their infrastructure in the span of a single night.
By the time the dust settled, the Plumbers on Earth were effectively gone.
What remained of their technology had been seized quietly, folded into GDA custody under a web of international agreements and classified amendments. Half of it still sat in storage facilities, humming with systems nobody fully understood. The other half had been repurposed into early warning networks and long-range sensors.
Like the one currently blinking on Cecil's screen.
"Play it," Cecil said.
Donald tapped a command into the console. A moment later, the room filled with the faint crackle of a broken transmission.
Static washed across the speakers first, sharp and uneven, before a burst of alien syllables cut through the noise. The language wasn't human.
Even distorted, the voice sounded small—high-pitched, frantic, the words tumbling over each other like whoever had recorded it had been running out of time.
The analysts around the room leaned closer to their screens, software attempting to parse the signal in real time. Lines of rough translation began appearing beneath the waveform, incomplete phrases struggling to form meaning.
Attack — containment failure — transit trajectory —
The audio cut abruptly, dissolving back into static.
Silence settled across the command floor for a moment.
Cecil folded his arms.
"Well," he muttered under his breath. "That doesn't sound promising."
Donald cleared his throat.
"We're still decrypting the rest of it, sir. The signal repeats every thirty-two seconds. Whoever sent it wanted to make sure it got picked up."
"Or they wanted to make sure someone knew what happened after they were gone."
Cecil watched the blinking marker near the moon for another second before glancing toward the analysts.
"Origin point?"
"Not lunar," one of the technicians replied quickly. "It looks like the signal is being relayed from a drifting vessel. Small craft, maybe escape-class. It entered the system a few hours ago and started broadcasting immediately."
Cecil's eyes narrowed slightly.
Something small enough to slip into Earth's orbit without triggering the usual alarms. Something equipped with Plumber-grade transmission systems. And something desperate enough to fire off a distress signal the moment it arrived.
None of that added up to anything good.
"Track it," Cecil said calmly. "I want every telescope, satellite, and deep-space sensor pointed at that thing."
Donald hesitated.
"Sir… if this is Plumber tech—"
"Then it's already our problem," Cecil finished flatly.
His gaze drifted back to the rotating projection of Earth and the tiny blinking signal just beyond the moon.
Whatever was floating out there had crossed half the solar system to reach them, and something told him it hadn't come alone.
"Where's Omni-Man?"
"Sir?"
"He's the only one who'll be able to reach it in time…"
Meanwhile...
The television droned on in the background, some late-night sitcom rerun cycling through the same laugh track it had probably used for the last twenty years. Nolan Grayson sat comfortably at one end of the couch, one arm stretched along the backrest, the other resting loosely in his lap as he watched the screen with a quiet, patient sort of interest. It wasn't the kind of thing he would've chosen on his own—not really—but that had never been the point.
His wife, Debbie, laughed beside him, the sound warm and easy, her head tilting slightly as she leaned into the moment rather than the joke itself. Their son, Mark, sat on the floor a few feet away, legs stretched out, controller in hand, half-invested in both the show and whatever game he'd been playing. The glow from the TV painted the room in soft blues and whites, flickering across familiar walls, family photos, the quiet evidence of a life that felt normal.
Nolan let his gaze drift from the screen for just a second, watching them instead.
It still surprised him sometimes—how natural it all felt.
There had been a time when this kind of evening would've seemed… inefficient. Pointless, even. Sitting still, doing nothing of consequence, letting time pass without purpose. Back then, every moment had been measured against something larger. Progress. Expansion. Duty.
Now?
Now he found himself memorizing things like this.
The way Debbie's laugh came a second too late, like she was catching up to the joke instead of reacting to it. The way Mark would glance up from his game just in time for the punchline, pretending he'd been paying attention the whole time. The faint hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen, the distant sound of a car passing outside.
Small things.
Human things.
"Okay, that one was actually funny," Mark said, pausing his game and looking back at the TV. "I don't even care if that was a rerun."
Debbie smirked.
"You say that every time."
"Yeah, but this time I mean it."
Nolan chuckled quietly, the sound low and genuine.
"You've been saying that for the last three episodes."
Mark shrugged, unapologetic.
"Maybe they're just getting better."
"They're not," Debbie said flatly, though the smile on her face softened the edge of it.
Nolan shifted slightly on the couch, leaning forward just enough to rest his elbows on his knees. There was something… comforting about the simplicity of it. No stakes. No consequences. Just people talking, laughing, existing in a world where the biggest problem was whatever misunderstanding needed to be wrapped up before the episode ended.
A world that reset itself every thirty minutes.
Must be nice.
Mark unpaused his game, the rapid clicking of buttons filling the space between lines of dialogue from the TV.
"You ever think about how weird it is?" he said suddenly.
Debbie raised an eyebrow.
"That could mean a lot of things coming from you."
"This," Mark gestured vaguely toward the screen, the room, everything. "We've got Dad flying around stopping disasters, superheroes all over the place, and we're just sitting here watching some guy trip over his coffee table for the tenth time."
Debbie sighed. "Mark—"
"I'm just saying," he continued, sitting up a little straighter. "The world's crazy. Aliens, supervillains, all that—and this is what we do with our downtime."
Nolan huffed a quiet laugh under his breath, something softer behind it this time.
"You'd be surprised."
Mark glanced back at him.
"Yeah?"
Nolan nodded slightly, eyes drifting back to the TV.
"Doesn't matter how powerful you are. You still end up wanting something simple at the end of the day."
Debbie smiled faintly at that, though there was something thoughtful behind it, like she'd heard him say versions of that before and was still turning it over.
"Good to know saving the world doesn't ruin your taste in bad television."
"It might improve it," Nolan said dryly.
Mark snorted, shaking his head as he went back to his game.
"Man, if I ever get my powers, I'm not wasting my time like this."
Debbie gave him a look.
"Oh, you absolutely would."
"No way."
"You say that now."
Nolan glanced at him, the corner of his mouth tugging upward just slightly.
"You'd last about a week."
Mark looked back at him, mock offended.
"Wow. Okay. That's messed up."
"You'd get bored," Nolan added simply. "Everyone does."
Mark opened his mouth to argue, then hesitated, like he wasn't entirely sure how to prove that wrong.
"Still," he muttered, quieter now, "I'd at least try to do something bigger with it."
Nolan held his gaze for a second, something unreadable passing through his expression before it softened again.
"Yeah," he said. "You would."
The room settled again after that, the conversation fading back into the background noise of the television and the steady rhythm of Mark's controller. Debbie shifted slightly, resting her head more comfortably against the couch as the next scene rolled on.
Mark didn't even look up this time.
"You're not gonna get called out tonight, right?"
Debbie shot him a look.
"Mark."
"What? I'm just asking."
"It's fine, dear." Nolan held his hand up, though it didn't change the way his chest slightly tightened at the question. He knew how hard it was for Mark and Debbie when he had to leave at a moment's notice, especially in the middle of something important. "I think they can handle it for one evening."
"I hope so," Mark smiled softly. "Kinda nice having you here."
Nolan didn't respond right away. He just let the moment sit, the weight of it settling somewhere deeper than he cared to acknowledge out loud.
For all the noise in the universe, all the conflict, all the things he knew were out there beyond this planet… this was the part that stayed with him. Not the battles. Not the victories. This.
The episode rolled into a commercial break, the volume dipping slightly as the tone shifted. Debbie stretched, letting out a soft sigh as she leaned back against the couch.
"I should probably head to bed soon."
"Yeah, same," Mark said, though he made no move to get up.
Nolan glanced between them, something quiet settling behind his expression.
"You don't have to rush."
Debbie smiled at him.
"I know."
For a moment, none of them moved.
Then—
Nolan's phone began to ring.
The sound cut cleanly through the room, sharp against the low hum of the television.
Mark glanced over immediately. Debbie didn't say anything, but the shift in her posture said enough.
Nolan already knew who it was before he even reached for it.
"So much for them handling it," Mark grumbled under his breath. As Nolan answered the call, he was already making his way towards the bedroom.
"Cecil, what's the situation?"
"Sorry to interrupt your evening, Nolan." Cecil's voice came through the speaker. "I figured a call would be more appropriate than an unexpected visit."
"I appreciate it. Debbie wasn't too pleased about last time."
"Hence why I called." the GDA director cleared his throat. "You're not the only one that's had their plans disrupted. We received a distress signal not too far from the moon. It came through on one of the old Plumber channels."
"Plumber?" Nolan raised an eyebrow. "Haven't heard about them in a while."
"Precisely. So whatever it is, it has to be from outside our galaxy. I'd call in someone else, but frankly we don't know what the situation is and you're the only one I trust to get there in time."
"Do we know what the signal belongs to?"
"From what we can make out, it appears to be a small vessel, potentially a transport of some kind. The transmission that we received isn't fully translated yet, but they came under attack just as they entered the sector."
"So expect a fight?"
"I wouldn't rule it out. Think you can handle it?"
Nolan smiled, opening his closet to grab his costume.
"Please, it's me. Shouldn't take too long to deal with." Despite the smile and the chipperness to his voice, Nolan wasn't happy about the situation. As much as he enjoyed what he did, their reliance on him was only proof that his true mission would be far too easy once it came time. "Send me the coordinates. I'm on my way now."
Nolan disappeared in a blur through the open window, flying towards the upper atmosphere. Debbie stood by the doorway, frowning softly.
The air gave way easier than most people would've expected. Nolan didn't slow as he cut through the upper atmosphere; didn't even think about it beyond the faint shift in resistance against his skin. One moment there was wind clawing at him, the rush of it loud and constant in his ears — the next, it thinned into almost nothing. The world below fell quiet in a way that always felt just a little unnatural if he let himself focus on it for too long.
He didn't.
The Earth curved beneath him, vast and alive, painted in deep blues and scattered clouds that stretched like brushstrokes across its surface. City lights shimmered along the darkened side, faint clusters of gold and white that marked where people lived, where they laughed, argued, worried—where they waited for someone like him to show up when things went wrong.
For a moment, he thought about the house.
About the couch, the low hum of the television, the way Debbie had lingered in the doorway without saying anything. The way Mark had tried to play it off like it didn't bother him.
His jaw tightened, just slightly.
Then he pushed forward.
The last traces of atmosphere slipped past him, and space opened up in full—silent, endless, and cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. There was no wind here, no sound, no resistance. Just motion. Pure, uninterrupted motion.
Nolan adjusted without thinking, his body angling forward as his speed picked up, the planet shrinking behind him with every passing second. There was no strain in it, no burn in his muscles, no limit he could feel pressing back against him. Flight wasn't effort. Not really.
It was… intention.
It was similar to tensing a muscle. For Viltrumites, flight came to them as easy as breathing. He'd thought about how he would explain this to Mark if he ever got his powers. The keyword being if.
Nolan knew that Mark wanted powers more than anything else in the world, but he'd be lying if part of him wished that Mark would never inherit them. The idea that Mark could live a full life away from the Viltrumite Empire and everything that entailed was something Nolan held onto tightly.
Eventually, Nolan would be forced to resume his duties. When that happened, he didn't want Mark or Debbie to be caught in the middle of it. Even now, after all this time on Earth, there were moments where that realization still lingered in the back of his mind, reminding him of who he really was.
The stars stretched out ahead of him, distant and unmoving no matter how fast he went, scattered across the black like pinpricks of light that refused to grow any closer. He'd crossed distances that would've taken human technology years in a matter of minutes, and still, space had a way of making everything feel far away.
Insignificant, even.
Nolan didn't feel insignificant.
But he understood the scale.
He'd seen what existed beyond this system. Empires that spanned galaxies. Civilizations that rose and fell without ever brushing against one another. Wars that consumed entire worlds and left nothing behind but drifting debris and fading signals no one would ever answer.
Earth was small.
Fragile.
Unremarkable in the grand scheme of things.
And yet—
His gaze flickered back, just for a second.
The planet was already distant, its details blurred by space and speed, but it was still there. Still… his.
Not in the way it used to be. Not in the way he'd been taught to see things.
But in a way that mattered more than he'd ever expected.
The coordinates Cecil had sent sat in the back of his mind, precise and unchanging. He didn't need a display, didn't need a navigation system. Once he had a direction, his body handled the rest, adjusting in ways that felt as natural as breathing had once been.
He'd made that trip more times than he could count. Whether it was patrols, inspections, the occasional intervention when something got too close for comfort. It wasn't far, not for him anyway. It might as well have been routine.
That word sat oddly with him now.
Routine.
There had been a time when nothing about this would've felt routine. Every mission, every deployment, every encounter—it had all carried weight. Purpose. A clear, defined role in something larger than himself.
Now?
Now he answered calls about distress signals and intercepted threats before they could reach a planet that, by all accounts, shouldn't have mattered to him at all.
And yet, he went anyway.
Every time.
Nolan's eyes narrowed slightly as he cut through the darkness, his speed increasing just a fraction more. The stars didn't blur—not the way they would've for a human eye—but there was a subtle shift in perspective, distances closing in ways that were difficult to measure without something solid to compare against.
The moon came into view ahead, pale and unmoving, its surface marked by craters and shadows that stretched across it like old scars. It hung there, silent and indifferent, just another body caught in orbit around something larger than itself.
He'd always found it… unimpressive.
Not because it lacked significance, but because it lacked resistance. It was just there. No defenses. No life. No challenge.
A stepping stone.
Nolan angled slightly to the side, adjusting his trajectory as he closed the distance. The distress signal was beyond it, somewhere in the empty stretch of space that most people would've dismissed as nothing.
Empty.
He knew better.
There was no such thing as empty space. Not really. There was always something—debris, radiation, the faint echoes of things that had passed through long before anyone thought to look. And sometimes…
Sometimes there were things that didn't belong.
Such as the large warship floating through the void, firing upon a smaller vessel that appeared to be on the verge of annihilation…
Hey everyone. Not much to say today. Hope you enjoyed! Next chapter will be up in the next week or two.
Links to my discord and Patreon will be down below. Those of sufficient rank in my discord get one chapter in advance while those who support my writing get anywhere from 1 to 10 chapters for each of my stories. Omni-Blood currently has 4. There will be more in the future, just please be patient with me!
-Arsenal
Links
Zetakille
Not too sore, are you?
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...well then. I guess Xylene is going to take the distraction of Omniman attacking Vilgax's ship to launch the Omnitrix to Earth. And he won't notice, as otherwise he could intercept the pod before it impacts the ground.
Arsenal597
Getting sticky.
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Honestly, out of everyone that read the chapters early, you are the only one I think that's properly suggested this route.
Zetakille
Not too sore, are you?
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I think what I'm most curious about is how you're going to fold the rest of Ben's rogues gallery into events. Like Animo, off of what he accomplishes in his introductory episode, would be someone the GDA would take interest in, probably for recruitment.
Arsenal597
Getting sticky.
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You know, that is actually something I've been debating on hard. There is one idea that I keep coming back to, but it'd be one of those situations far down the road. Reanimo. If you get my drift there.
MercuryLord
Hey
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Is this like the complete omnitrix?
Lillie Jones
Connoisseur.
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thanks for the chapter
Arsenal597
Getting sticky.
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When looking at this Omnitrix compared to the OG series which was viewed more as a prototype, this Omnitrix is a lot more capable than its predecessor. So, while it hasn't been shown there's going to be a camouflage mode for it, dialless/non-verbal activation, among other things. This Omnitrix is a lot more fun right off the bat, in my opinion.
But yes, technically this Omnitrix is still considered to be in a prototype phase, since Azmuth hadn't been able to get everything set 'just' right where he wanted it to be. Basically a couple software updates to lock it in.
MercuryLord
Hey
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you could make it so that this is the actual complete omnitrix, just that azmuth set it up with phases, the prototype phase set with shorter time, and supposed glitches that Azmuth specifically set up so to test the user before it changes its own hardware and updates itself, it is not out of the realm of possiblity that Azmuth may have included the complete Omnitrix blueprint that would take over and replace the simpler design once Ben meets a certain critirea.
Arsenal597
Getting sticky.
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Sorry for not replying sooner but I had something like that in mind. You'll see what I mean once Ben gets the Omnitrix. I think I've got enough stuff for it to be faithful to the classic while being appropriate for the Invincible verse.
Blackfang2727
Getting some practice in, huh?
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So Galvan's defense's were just non existent? Because they most definitely have weapons strong enough to hurt Vultrimites.
Chapter 6: Collision Course
New
Arsenal597
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Systems were failing faster than Xylene could manage. This was supposed to be a simple cargo transport for an old acquaintance. She wouldn't dare to call Azmuth of all people a friend, but if there was someone remotely close to earning that title — she might be one of the few that qualified.
Catastrophic failure in the thrusters, significant hull damage. Structural integrity was at forty percent and falling quickly.
Ugh, what did you get me into, Azmuth? Xylene thought as she worked to redirect what defenses she had toward the warship on her tail. That was the part that bothered her the most. She hadn't expected resistance like this — not this fast, and not this overwhelming.
Her fingers moved faster than the console could comfortably track, light flickering across her face as panels shifted and collapsed into one another, systems cannibalizing whatever power they could get. One function stabilized just long enough to matter before something else demanded it. The ship shuddered again—harder this time—and a sharp crack echoed somewhere behind her, metal giving way under stress it had never been built to handle.
"Stabilize… come on…" she muttered, voice tight as she rerouted power from life support to the forward emitters. The air thinned slightly in response, just enough for her to notice. Her chest tightened on instinct. Uxorites didn't need atmosphere the same way humans did, but habit still lingered, stubborn as ever. If she could get close enough to Earth, that was all that mattered.
Another blast rocked the ship.
Warning sigils flared crimson across her display, layering over one another until they blurred into a single, constant alarm. The forward camera feed sputtered, then snapped back just long enough to catch a glimpse of the warship behind her—massive, dark, steady in a way that made it feel less like something mechanical and more like something patient.
Vilgax. She didn't need confirmation. His warship was recognizable anywhere. The Chimeran Hammer had shown up in too many bounties, too many warnings, too many stories that ended the same way.
Of all the beings in the galaxy…
"Of course it had to be you," she breathed, more to herself than anything else.
The ship lurched again, and Xylene turned just enough to check the Omnitrix's containment pod behind her. It was still intact. Still secure. For now.
If only she'd reached Galvan Prime sooner…
Another impact. Closer.
The rear shields flickered once—then vanished.
Xylene's expression hardened.
"Alright," she said under her breath, hands moving again before the thought had even finished forming. "No more running."
She couldn't outrun Vilgax. Not like this. Not with a ship already tearing itself apart around her.
So she'd buy time.
Power diverted again—this time with no hesitation. Non-essential systems went dark one after another, the interior lighting dimming as everything was fed into the last defensive arrays she had left. The ship answered with a low, strained groan that vibrated up through the deck and into her legs.
"Come on… just a little longer…"
The forward emitters sparked to life, uneven at first, then settling into something usable. It wouldn't hurt a warship like that—not really—but it might slow him down. Maybe.
She fired.
Thin streaks of energy cut across the void, striking the larger vessel in quick succession. The impacts barely registered. No visible damage. No shift.
Vilgax didn't return fire.
That made her stomach twist.
He wasn't rushing to take her down, which meant he knew precisely what she was transporting.
A proximity alert shrieked across the console, sharp enough to cut through everything else.
Xylene's eyes snapped to the display.
"…No."
They poured out from the warship in clusters—small, fast signatures breaking away and angling straight toward her. Dozens of drones.
Her hands clenched against the console for half a second before she forced them to move again.
"Of course you'd send the scavengers first," she muttered, jaw tightening as she brought up targeting controls.
The first wave closed fast. Sleek, insect-like constructs, their forms shifting mid-flight as they adjusted course, weaving through the debris field she'd left behind.
She fired again, tighter this time. The emitters flared, catching the lead drone head-on. It burst apart in a brief flash, fragments scattering outward.
Two more filled the gap instantly.
The second volley took out another pair, but the rest kept coming. Too many. Far too many.
One clipped the side of her ship, latching on with mechanical precision. The impact rattled the hull, followed immediately by a sharp, grating sound as it began to drill.
"Not happening," Xylene snapped, rerouting power again—this time to localized defense.
A pulse surged through the outer plating, frying the drone where it clung. It went still, then drifted free.
Three more replaced it.
Her breath hitched.
Now she saw it clearly.
They weren't trying to board.
They were locking her down.
Azmuth's voice surfaced in her memory—sharp, impatient, impossible to ignore. Instructions she'd filed away and hoped she'd never need. Safeguards she hadn't wanted to think about.
"Transport it to Earth," he had said. "If anything goes wrong… you'll know what to do."
Her gaze flicked back to the containment pod.
She wasn't going to let the Omnitrix fall into the wrong hands.
It didn't matter if she died out here. The only thing that did was to make sure the Omnitrix made it to Earth.
Nolan recognized the smaller vessel to be a courier, though the defenses on them were a little more advanced than most he'd encountered. It wasn't just the shield—the way it redistributed power caught his attention immediately, shifting and rerouting in real time to keep critical systems alive. He had to give them credit. Whoever was piloting it knew what they were doing. They knew they were outmatched and were buying time however they could. That alone told him this wasn't some random ship that had wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time.
It also told him they weren't going to last much longer.
The drones hit his awareness before they hit his line of sight. Tiny shifts in motion, faint distortions against the starfield—clusters breaking off from the larger warship and converging on the courier like a swarm of metallic predators. Nolan adjusted course without slowing, angling himself between them and the smaller vessel just as the first wave closed in.
The first drone shattered on impact, its frame collapsing inward with a sharp metallic crunch before it could even react. The second spun off into the void, torn apart by the wake of his movement, pieces scattering like shrapnel across open space. Nolan didn't bother tracking them individually after that. They weren't strong enough to pose a threat as long as he kept moving. His body moved on instinct, cutting through the swarm with clean, efficient precision. Metal crumpled beneath his strikes, limbs snapping off, energy discharges flaring bright for a split second before dying against his skin.
One drone tried to latch onto him, its segmented limbs snapping shut around his arm—Nolan crushed it in his hand without breaking stride. The metal folded in on itself with a sharp whine before bursting apart, fragments drifting away, spinning slowly in the vacuum. More replaced them, filling the space he'd just cleared.
Persistent. Nolan's eyes narrowed slightly as another cluster broke formation. They were coming straight for him now, abandoning the courier entirely. Good. That was what he wanted.
They tried to adapt, adjusting their angles, spacing themselves out to avoid being taken down in groups; it didn't help. He continued to drive forward, punching through the formation with enough force to scatter them across open space. One clipped his shoulder, its weapon discharging on contact—a flash of energy rippling across him like heat lightning.
The blast barely registered. A flicker of light, nothing more—but it told him what he needed to know.
These weren't meant to combat Viltrumites.
Nolan's gaze shifted past them, locking onto the warship behind it all. It loomed in the distance, massive and jagged, its hull lined with weapon arrays that pulsed with building energy. It was still firing. A concentrated barrage lit up the space between it and the courier, streaks of energy cutting through the void in rapid succession, forcing Nolan to veer just enough to avoid taking the full brunt of it.
Each blast left a fading trail of light, illuminating drifting debris and the fractured remains of earlier volleys.
They weren't trying to kill him.
They were trying to keep him away from the courier.
His jaw tightened.
Another wave of drones surged toward him, but Nolan didn't even bother engaging them fully this time. He tore through the closest few—crushing one, ripping another clean in half—then broke away entirely, redirecting his momentum straight toward the warship.
If he couldn't reach the courier—
He'd stop the source.
The distance closed fast. Faster than anything on that ship was likely built to handle. Defensive fire adjusted immediately, heavier weapons coming online as he crossed into range. Larger cannons rotated into position, their cores glowing as they discharged in rapid succession. Energy blasts streaked toward him in overlapping patterns, turning the space around him into a storm of light and force.
One hit his side, the impact shifting his trajectory slightly, a dull thud carrying through him. Another grazed his arm, scattering sparks of energy across his suit. The third he pushed straight through without slowing.
The hull of the warship filled his vision in an instant as he cleared the barrage.
He smiled.
Metal gave way beneath him with a thunderous crack, the force of his entry tearing straight through reinforced plating like it wasn't there. The impact sent a shockwave through the structure, bulkheads buckling as the atmosphere violently vented into space behind him. Air screamed past in a chaotic rush, dragging loose debris, sparks, and shattered pieces of the hull out into the void.
Nolan landed hard, boots slamming into the deck with enough force to dent the plating beneath him. The impact echoed down the corridor, a deep, reverberating boom that blended with the wail of alarms now blaring throughout the ship.
The air inside was thick with heat and the acrid scent of burning circuitry. Red warning lights pulsed overhead, bathing everything in a rhythmic glow that cast long, shifting shadows across the walls. Panels sparked intermittently, flickering as systems struggled to compensate for the breach.
He barely had a second to take it in before they were on him.
Drones dropped from the ceiling in clusters, their limbs unfolding mid-descent with sharp mechanical clicks. Behind them, scattered across catwalks and recessed doorways, larger figures took position—armor-clad, weapons already raised, their silhouettes framed by the flashing emergency lights.
They're organic… Nolan noted silently, straightening his posture slightly.
He rolled his shoulders once as the first of them lunged.
"Alright," he muttered under his breath before moving.
The first drone never made contact. He caught it mid-air and slammed it into the floor hard enough to crater the plating beneath it, the impact sending a ripple through the deck. Another came from the side—he turned, backhanding it into the wall where it stuck for half a second before collapsing into scrap, its frame twitching once before going still.
The henchmen were different.
They didn't rush him blindly. They circled, disciplined, weapons tracking his movements, waiting for an opening that wasn't going to come. One fired—a concentrated beam that hit Nolan square in the chest.
The energy flared on impact, bright and sustained.
He didn't flinch.
Nolan's eyes flicked toward him.
Then he was there.
The distance vanished. His hand closed around the alien's armor, fingers digging into reinforced plating as he lifted him clean off the ground before slamming him into the nearest bulkhead. The wall buckled inward with a sharp crack, leaving a deep impression around the soldier's body as the air rushed out of him.
The others hesitated—just for a second, but it was enough.
"I recognize you…" Nolan remarked, turning slightly as another of the crew stepped into view. There was something familiar in the design—something he'd seen before coming to Earth. "You're part of Vilgax's crew. I'm guessing this is his?"
The response didn't come from the henchman.
"And here I thought this system was free from you parasites…"
The voice cut through the chaos—low and gravelly, carrying weight even over the alarms.
Vilgax stepped into view through the wreckage like it didn't exist.
Even hunched slightly beneath the low ceiling, he was massive. The armor was thicker than Nolan remembered, layered and reinforced, lines of dim energy pulsing beneath its surface. His presence filled the space, the air settling heavier around him, like the ship itself recognized who stood at its center.
Nolan's expression didn't change.
"What are you doing here?" he asked evenly. "This isn't your territory."
Vilgax's single visible eye narrowed, something almost amused curling beneath it.
"Hmm," he hummed, voice edged with mockery. "Seems you've been out of the loop for a while, then. This system has been my territory since your empire ravaged my forces."
Nolan's posture shifted subtly as his fists clenched.
"If that's true, then you know what I have to do."
A low rumble built in Vilgax's chest.
"You are outnumbered… and I've been preparing for your kind since that day."
Nolan smirked.
"We'll see about that."
The floor shattered beneath his feet as he launched forward, the force cracking the deck outward in a spiderweb pattern. The air itself split as he crossed the distance in less than a heartbeat, driving straight at Vilgax—
Ready to end it before the courier outside ran out of time.
The impact hit like two worlds colliding.
Nolan slammed into Vilgax with enough force to tear the plating beneath their feet apart, the deck buckling inward as a violent shockwave ripped through the corridor. Walls groaned, panels tore free, and the structure flexed under the strain.
For a split second, Vilgax shifted back half a step under the momentum—
Then he held.
Vilgax's boots dug into the floor, metal screeching beneath the pressure as his arm came up and caught Nolan across the side. The counterstrike landed solid, a heavy, brutal blow that sent Nolan skidding back through the corridor, carving a jagged trench through the plating before he caught himself.
Loose debris rattled down from the ceiling. Sparks rained in short bursts from damaged conduits overhead.
Nolan straightened almost immediately, rolling his shoulder once as if testing it. A brief pause followed—just enough to recalibrate.
"You're certainly stronger than the last time," Nolan remarked dryly.
"Yet you're still as reckless as I remember," Vilgax growled, stepping forward, each footfall sending a dull, heavy thud through the deck. "Charging in without understanding the battlefield."
Nolan's eyes narrowed.
"I understand enough."
The drones surged again, dropping from above, flanking from the sides—trying to box him in. The henchmen moved with them this time, coordinated, firing in overlapping bursts designed to limit his movement.
One second he was surrounded—
The next, he was already through them.
A drone exploded behind him as he passed, torn apart by the force of his movement. Another he grabbed mid-flight and hurled into a cluster of its own kind, the collision triggering a chain reaction that lit the corridor in sharp, blinding flashes.
A henchman fired point-blank, but Nolan caught the weapon by the barrel. The metal shrieked as his grip tightened, crushing it inward before plowing his shoulder into the alien's chest, sending him flying back into the wall hard enough to leave him there.
Vilgax watched his movements closely as Nolan tore through his soldiers.
A low hum built in the air—subtle at first, almost drowned out by the chaos—until it wasn't. Energy gathered along his arm, the weapon integrated into his armor flaring to life with a deep, pulsing glow that cast harsh shadows across the corridor.
Nolan turned just as it fired, the blast hitting him head-on.
This one registered.
The energy burned across his chest, heat biting through the fabric of his suit as the force drove him back a step. The floor beneath him cracked under the pressure, fractures spreading outward from where he stood.
His jaw tightened.
The beam scattered as he broke its centerline.
The distance vanished again as Nolan closed in, his fist slamming into Vilgax's torso with enough force to lift him off his feet and send him crashing through the wall behind him, the impact tearing through metal, conduits, and bulkheads as the fight barreled deeper into the heart of the ship.
Xylene wasn't sure what she'd seen come to her aid. It was hard to make through the constant flashes of light and violent bursts of energy tearing across the voice, but she could almost make out a bipedal figure weaving through the expanse effortlessly — cutting through Vilgax's drones like they were nothing more than drifting scrap.
For a moment, just a moment, she thought it might have been Plumber reinforcements. Then she saw the way it moved.
There was no propulsion or external assistance. The realization settled in her chest that it wasn't the Plumbers. By the time it breached the Chimeran Hammer, tearing straight through its hull in a violent eruption of metal and atmosphere, Xylene knew one thing with absolute certainty.
Her time was running out.
The cockpit shuddered violently, a deep, gut-twisting tremor that ran through the entire frame of her ship. Warning lights flared brighter, their steady pulses breaking into erratic flickers as systems began to fail in cascading waves. Panels sparked overhead, small bursts of electricity snapping free and arcing across exposed wiring.
"Come on… come on…" she muttered under her breath, fingers flying across the console as she forced the navigation system to respond. While Vilgax was distracted by whatever that thing was, she had to act.
A sharp explosion rocked the ship from the rear, throwing her forward against her restraints. The harness caught her hard across the chest, knocking the breath from her lungs as the controls flickered violently in front of her.
Structural integrity had fallen to thirty-one percent, the red text blinking harshly at her as a stark reminder.
The ship wasn't going to hold much longer. She could feel it. The readings were already screaming at her, but the ship said it louder — the constant groan of the frame, the vibration running through the deck beneath her boots, and the uneven pulses in the air pressure.
She had hoped to stay with the Omnitrix the entire way to Earth, just so she could see him again. But alas, some things weren't meant to be.
Xylene began plotting the course, adjusting for drift, gravitational interference, the current velocity of her failing thrusters. Everything needed to be precise as there'd be no second attempt.
Another explosion rippled across the hull, far closer than before. The entire ship lurched sideways, throwing her against the edge of her seat. A console to her right detonated in a shower sparks, forcing her to shield her face as bits of molten metal scattered across the cockpit floor.
"Thrusters offline," the system droned, its voice distorted and staticky.
"I know!" she snapped, slamming her hand against the console hard enough to rattle the remaining displays.
She forced the navigation sequence to finalize anyway, locking the trajectory into place with what little control she had left. The projected path flickered into existence—a narrow line stretching from her current position toward Earth, weaving through open space with just enough margin for error to account for drift.
If it had been possible to move the ship, it would have been perfect. In her current state, though? It was useless. But she already knew that, which is why she made one final adjustment for an escape pod. It'd have just enough power to make it to the planet, where she could program it to jettison the Omnitrix's containment pod the rest of the way to its intended destination.
As long as Vilgax was preoccupied, there was a chance. A small one, but a chance she was going to have to take.
She turned to the pod, using her telekinesis to move it to one of the escape pods. Even with her species's enhanced strength, the containment pod was far too heavy to move by hand. Once she had it settled inside, she sealed the door and pressed the release button.
"Good luck," she whispered softly as the pod launched into space, propelled outward with just enough force to clear the debris field surrounding the ship. For a brief moment, she could see it through the fractured viewport — a small, glowing object tumbling end over end before stabilizing, its trajectory aligning with the course she'd set.
A flicker of something, relief maybe, passed through her chest. Then it was gone as a new explosion went off from the Chimeran Hammer this time, bright enough to light up the entire battlefield for a split second. Even from here, she could feel the shockwave ripple through the surrounding space, her already-damaged vessel shuddering violently in response.
Her eyes snapped toward it.
Through the fractured glass, she caught a glimpse of something massive rupturing from within the warship—fire and debris bursting outward in a violent bloom that tore through its structure.
Whatever had gone into the Chimeran Hammer was still tearing through it…
The impact echoed through the ship as Vilgax rose from the debris, tossing twisted metal aside as his gaze locked onto Nolan's landing. Blood slipped from Nolan's nose, running over his lip as he steadied himself, eyes narrowing at the sight of the warlord still standing. For a moment, neither of them moved. The only sound came from the ship itself—strained metal groaning, systems stuttering, something deep in its structure starting to give.
Vilgax let out a low growl, rolling his shoulder as his left arm snapped back into place with a sickening shift of armor and muscle. The motion barely slowed him. Nolan exhaled through his nose, more blood trailing down as he wiped it away with the back of his hand.
"You've certainly been busy."
Vilgax stepped forward through the wreckage, glancing down at the scorched plating across his armor.
"As I said," he rumbled, voice thick with something heavy and controlled, "I've been preparing."
"Clearly not enough." Nolan's voice stayed even, though his stance had already shifted. More drones and henchmen poured into the corridor behind Vilgax, filling the space with movement. "You know you can't beat me."
"Who said I'm trying to beat you?" Vilgax's tone dipped, something sharper slipping through.
Then it hit Nolan all at once. He'd wondered why Vilgax didn't seem to be pressing for a finishing blow, opting to keep him at bay more than anything else. Vilgax was buying time…
Nolan's head turned slightly, just enough to catch the external feed flickering across a damaged panel—just enough to see the courier still drifting out there, surrounded.
His eyes narrowed, just enough for Vilgax to notice.
"Finish it," the Chimera Sui Genesis ordered, raising his arm. "Fire again at the vessel."
Nolan was moving before the command even fully settled in the air. The wall behind him exploded outward as he tore back into open space, the force ripping another jagged breach into the warship's hull. The vacuum swallowed everything as he reoriented mid-flight, locking onto the courier.
The cannons were already charging. He could feel it—the buildup crawling across space before the shot even fired.
With the courier at a standstill, there was no chance of it missing.
Nolan surged forward, pushing harder, faster, the distance collapsing beneath him in seconds that felt just a fraction too long.
The beam fired.
A concentrated line of energy tore across the void, bright enough to burn against the darkness itself as it raced toward the immobilized vessel.
Nolan hit it head-on, the impact lighting the space around
The impact lit the space around him in a blinding flare, the force of it driving into him with far more weight than anything inside the ship had managed. For a split second, it actually stopped him—held him there, suspended between the warship and the courier as the energy discharged across his body.
Pieces of his suit tore under the extreme force, the edges of the fabric's loose pieces burning. The pain was excruciating, even by Nolan's experience, but he wasn't going to let the courier die on his watch. Especially without knowing why Vilgax was going after them.
The beam bent around him, scattering in fractured arcs. Nolan's arms tensed at his sides, his entire frame locking in place as he absorbed the worst of it. The light slowly faded, Nolan gritting his teeth as the final remnants of the blast dissipated into nothing.
He looked back toward the warship. This time there was nothing subtle about the shift in his expression.
One second he was suspended in the void, the last embers of the blast fading around him—the next, he was already moving. The distance between him and the warship collapsed in an instant, his body cutting through space with a precision that left no room for error, no time for reaction.
He didn't slow when he hit the hull.
The impact tore a hole clean through the Chimeran Hammer, metal folding inward and then ripping apart entirely as Nolan forced his way back inside. Atmosphere ruptured outward in a violent rush, alarms screaming to life again as the ship struggled to compensate for damage it wasn't built to withstand.
Vilgax had just enough time to turn.
That was all Nolan gave him.
His hand closed around Vilgax's throat with crushing force, lifting him off his feet before he could fully brace. For a fraction of a second, their eyes met—Vilgax's narrowing, something sharp and defiant flickering behind it—
Then Nolan drove forward.
The first wall didn't slow them.
Metal, wiring, reinforced plating—it all gave way in an instant as Nolan used Vilgax's body like a weapon, a battering ram that tore through everything in their path. The corridor behind them collapsed in their wake, debris twisting and folding under the force of their passage.
Vilgax's armor sparked violently as it scraped against the wreckage, systems flaring under the strain—but he didn't go limp.
His arm came up, slamming into Nolan's side with a force that would've crushed most beings outright.
Nolan barely shifted.
They broke through another bulkhead.
Then another.
The ship wasn't designed for this; nothing was. Every meter they traveled left more damage behind—structural supports snapping, internal systems rupturing, entire sections of the vessel destabilizing as they tore straight through its core like it was nothing more than a hollow shell.
Vilgax snarled, the sound low and furious as he twisted in Nolan's grip, one of his mechanical appendages snapping forward. It latched onto Nolan's shoulder, digging in, energy surging through it as it discharged point-blank.
This one had bite.
Nolan felt it—really felt it. A sharp, concentrated burst that forced his grip to loosen just enough for Vilgax to wrench himself free.
They separated in a violent clash of momentum.
Vilgax hit the far wall hard enough to crater it, the plating buckling around his frame before giving way entirely and sending him skidding across the next chamber. Nolan landed a heartbeat later, boots slamming into the floor with enough force to fracture it beneath him.
For a moment, everything around them groaned.
The ship was dying.
Sparks rained from exposed conduits, the air thick with smoke and the acrid scent of burning systems. Gravity fluctuated, flickering just enough to make the debris around them lift and fall in uneven rhythms. Warning lights strobed erratically, painting the destruction in pulses of red.
Nolan didn't take his eyes off Vilgax.
"You're done," he said, voice low, steady.
Vilgax rose anyway.
Blood—dark and thick—slipped from beneath his armor, but it didn't slow him. Didn't change the way he held himself. If anything, it sharpened something behind his expression.
"You misunderstand," Vilgax growled, straightening to his full height despite the damage. "This ship is expendable."
Nolan's gaze flicked around them for half a second—the failing systems, the collapsing structure, the way the ship itself seemed to be tearing apart under the strain.
Then back to Vilgax.
"Yeah," he said. "I noticed."
Vilgax moved first this time.
He came in hard, faster than something his size should've been able to move, his fist swinging with enough force to split the air as it aimed toward Nolan's head.
Nolan caught it.
The impact still cracked the floor beneath them.
For a second, they held there—strength against strength, neither giving immediately as the pressure between them built.
Then Nolan squeezed.
Vilgax's armor creaked under the force, the metal straining as Nolan forced his arm downward. Vilgax responded instantly, his free hand snapping up to drive into Nolan's ribs, the blow landing with a heavy, concussive force that actually shifted him back a step – just enough to break the hold.
He followed through immediately, pressing the advantage with a flurry of strikes—each one heavy, deliberate, backed by the full weight of his frame and whatever enhancements he'd layered into himself.
Nolan let the hits come, giving ground maybe once or twice, absorbing the blows to let Vilgax expend his momentum. Once it seemed like Vilgax was slowing down, Nolan countered with a single punch.
It hammered into Vilgax's midsection with brutal precision, the collision folding him inward before sending him flying back across the chamber. The wall behind him didn't hold, bursting open into the command center beyond.
The warlord hit the central console hard enough to shatter it, killing systems instantly. The hum of the ship—already unstable—cut out entirely for half a second before sputtering back in broken, uneven bursts. Displays flickered, then went dark. The entire vessel lurched, its trajectory destabilizing as control systems failed one after another.
Nolan stepped through the wreckage into the command center, his posture steady, and breathing even despite the wear on his body. Vilgax pushed himself up from the remains of the console, slower now—but not finished.
The silence stretched, broken only by the failing systems around them.
Then Vilgax let out a low, rumbling breath.
"It seems," Vilgax squinted his eye for a moment, "it seems that you're stronger than I anticipated."
"You were warned long ago to stay out of our way." Nolan remarked, ignoring the comment. "If the Empire ravaged your forces, then it was because you overstepped your boundaries. Something you're still doing."
"You speak as though this system is under your authority," Vilgax growled. "It's mine."
"No, it's not." Nolan stepped forward, glancing at their surroundings. "I'll give you one chance. Why are you attacking that ship?"
"Does it bother you? To not know what's coming?"
"What are you talking about?"
"The end of your precious empire is coming…" the warlord cackled, something dark and certain settling into his voice. "...and I will be its herald."
Nolan didn't blink.
"Not in your wildest dreams."
Vilgax's mandibles twitched, something dark and satisfied flickering across his expression.
"Let's see if you're correct."
They moved at the same time.
The two collided again before the ship could even finish dying around them. The impact snapped what little stability the command center had left. Consoles tore free from their mounts, panels ripping loose as the floor beneath them split along jagged fault lines. Nolan flew forward without hesitation, closing the distance with a speed that made Vilgax's attempt to brace feel almost meaningless.
His fist connected first — snapping Vilgax's head to the side, the energy cracking something beneath the armor that didn't belong in a body still standing. Vilgax staggered — just by a half-step — but Nolan didn't let him recover. Another strike followed immediately, then another, each one hitting harder than the last.
Vilgax tried to answer. His arm came up, weapon flaring to life again as he fired point-blank into Nolan's chest. The blast hit, flared, and pushed… only for Nolan to step right through it.
Just as it had before, the light broke around him, scattering across his shoulders as if it had nothing to latch onto. His hand shot forward, catching Vilgax mid-motion, fingers digging into the armored plating at his collar.
"Enough," Nolan ordered, before slamming him down. The deck caved in beneath Vilgax's body, folding inward as Nolan drove him through it and into the chamber below.
The fall lasted less than a second before they hit again, the shockwave rolling outward and tearing through what remained of the surrounding structure.
Vilgax roared—raw, furious—as he lashed out, one of his mechanical appendages snapping forward and driving into Nolan's side with everything it had left. This one had weight. It bit deep enough to matter, forcing Nolan to shift.
He surged upward, slamming into Nolan with his full mass, carrying them both back through another wall in a violent reversal. The corridor beyond twisted around them as they crashed through it, debris whipping past in a storm of metal and fire.
For a moment, it looked like Vilgax might regain control.
Then Nolan planted his foot, stopping their momentum instantly. The floor beneath him cratered under the force, anchoring him in place as Vilgax's forward drive collapsed against something that simply refused to move.
Nolan's hand came up again—fast, precise—and caught Vilgax by the arm.
There was a pause.
A brief, terrible pause where everything seemed to hold its breath.
Then Nolan twisted.
The sound wasn't clean. It wasn't quick. Metal screamed first—the armor warping under the strain—followed by something deeper, something organic that gave way with a wet, tearing crack.
Vilgax's roar cut through the collapsing ship, louder this time, edged with something that hadn't been there before: pain.
Nolan didn't let go.
He drove forward again, dragging Vilgax with him as he tore through the remaining structure like it was already dust. Bulkheads split. Support beams snapped. Entire sections of the ship folded inward as they passed through, the damage compounding faster than the systems could even register.
They burst back into what was left of the command center. The space was barely recognizable now. Fires burned uncontrolled across exposed wiring, gravity fluctuating in violent pulses that sent debris drifting one second and crashing down the next. The central console was nothing but molten wreckage, its systems long since dead.
The ship was coming apart.
Vilgax lashed out again, his remaining arm slamming into Nolan's jaw with everything he had left. The blow landed—hard enough to turn Nolan's head, hard enough to send a ripple through his frame — but did nothing to slow him down.
Nolan looked back at him, eyes steady, something colder settling behind them now.
"You're out of time," he said.
Vilgax bared his teeth, something defiant still burning there despite everything.
"I don't need time."
His armor flared again—overloading this time — energy bleeding out through the seams. Nolan hammered his fist into Vilgax's chest, breaking through this time. The armor caved completely, the reinforced plating finally giving under the force. Something beneath it shattered, the impact driving through the warlord's frame and into the structure behind him.
For a second, Vilgax just hung there, suspended in the air. Then, Nolan pulled his hand back revealing it was coated in the warlord's blood.
Vilgax collapsed, the strength that had carried him this far faltering; his body failing to keep up with the damage it had taken.
"What's in the ship, Vilgax?"
All Vilgax could do was let out a weak wheeze of a laugh.
"You'll… you'll never get your hands on it."
Vilgax's laugh dragged out of him in broken, uneven bursts, wet at the edges but still carrying that same stubborn refusal to fold. It didn't matter how much damage he'd taken—there was something in him that would rather tear itself apart than give Nolan a clean end.
"And neither will you."
The deck lurched hard enough to shift Nolan's footing half an inch, a low groan rolling through the structure beneath them as something deeper in the ship began to fail. A console behind him blew out in a violent spray of sparks, the light stuttering across the wreckage of the command center. Smoke curled up in uneven streams, thickening the air, mixing with the sharp, metallic scent of overheating systems and something far less mechanical.
Nolan stepped in, boots grinding over shattered plating and loose fragments, and grabbed Vilgax by the front of his armor, hauling him upright in one motion. The plating gave under his grip with a low, grinding crack, already fractured from the earlier blows. Pieces shifted out of place, edges biting into Nolan's hand as the structure struggled to hold together.
"You're done," Nolan said.
Vilgax's head dipped for a second, his body sagging with the motion, then snapped back up with a sudden, stubborn surge. His remaining arm came in fast—sloppy, unbalanced, but carrying everything he had left behind it—and slammed into Nolan's jaw.
Nolan didn't even turn with it this time.
His hand shot out and caught Vilgax's wrist before he could pull away. Fingers tightened, digging into the armor. The metal buckled immediately, seams splitting open under the pressure with a sharp, tearing screech.
Vilgax tried to wrench free, muscles tensing, the motion desperate more than controlled.
Nolan pulled.
The arm came off in a violent, tearing rip that cut through the alarms and the grinding noise of the ship around them. Armor snapped apart first, jagged edges peeling back as internal components tore loose in a shower of sparks. The resistance held for a fraction of a second—tight, stubborn—then gave way all at once.
Vilgax's body jerked, a raw, guttural sound forced out of him as the limb tore free.
Nolan dropped it without a glance. It hit the deck with a heavy, final thud, sliding across the scorched metal before coming to a stop against a broken console, small arcs of energy still snapping along the ruined plating.
Vilgax sagged forward, his weight collapsing into Nolan's grip, balance gone.
Nolan didn't let him fall.
His hand came up, locking onto the side of Vilgax's head, fingers pressing into the ridged plating that framed his face. The tentacles flared out on instinct, snapping toward him in a last reflex, striking against his arm and shoulder.
Nolan caught them mid-motion.
His grip closed tight around the cluster, forcing them still.
Then he yanked.
They tore free in a single, brutal pull, ripping loose at the base with a wet, jagged sound that carried through the room. The force snapped Vilgax's head to the side as the tendrils came away, dark fluid trailing after them and spattering across Nolan's arm and the already damaged floor.
Vilgax made a sound this time—short, choked, dragged out of him against his will as what little control he had left slipped.
Nolan threw the torn mass aside. It struck the far wall with a dull slap, leaving a streak before sliding down through the flickering light.
Vilgax folded in on himself, what remained of his posture collapsing. Nolan shifted his grip again, forcing him upright just long enough to hold him in place—
Then drove his knee straight into Vilgax's leg.
A sharp crack cut through the noise, deep and unmistakable. The limb gave immediately, the structure failing under the force as the joint collapsed and twisted out of alignment. The leg buckled sideways, no longer able to hold any weight.
Vilgax dropped hard, his body slamming into the deck as the ruined limb folded beneath him. The impact rattled loose debris across the floor, small fragments skittering away from the point of contact.
Nolan let go.
Vilgax hit in a heap, armor hanging loose where it hadn't already been torn away. Sections of it sparked erratically, systems failing one by one as the damage spread. His remaining hand scraped against the deck, dragging weakly against the metal as he tried to push himself up.
It didn't work.
He got halfway—just enough to lift his torso—before his arm gave out. He dropped again, harder this time, breath coming rough and uneven, each attempt weaker than the last.
Nolan stood over him, chest rising steady, blood still running down his hand in slow, uneven lines.
Another blast tore through the ship, closer this time. The wall behind them split open with a violent crack, metal ripping apart as fire punched through the gap. Debris scattered across the room, fragments slamming into the floor and walls as the shockwave rolled through.
The ceiling followed a second later. A section tore free overhead and crashed down, sending a wave of heat, sparks, and dust across the command center. The lights cut out entirely for a split second before flickering back on, weaker, struggling.
"You should've stayed out of this system."
No response.
Vilgax barely moved, his body twitching once before going still again.
The deck split with a long, tearing groan as something below them finally gave out, a jagged fracture ripping between them. Light and heat pushed up through the opening, the glow harsh against the failing emergency lights.
That was it.
Nolan turned and launched forward, the motion sudden and decisive, tearing through the failing structure in a blur. The walls gave way around him, bulkheads collapsing as he forced his way out, leaving the command center behind.
Vilgax stayed where he fell—broken, bleeding, and pinned beneath a ship that was coming apart piece by piece as the Chimeran Hammer died around him.
The warship tore itself apart behind him as Nolan flew out into the void. The courier drifted ahead — barely holding itself together, its frame buckling in slow, uneven pulses as pieces of its hull sheared and floated away. He'd be surprised if it lasted for a couple more minutes. He'd wasted too much time with Vilgax, a mistake he'd make sure to learn from in the future.
Had it been before he arrived to Earth, there wouldn't have been a problem here. He'd have already taken care of Vilgax, and the courier would have been dealt with one way or another.
He adjusted his trajectory mid-flight, angling straight for it. The distance closed fast, but the ship was already coming apart in ways that made the timing feel tighter than it should've been. Sections of plating peeled away under stress, exposing the skeletal structure beneath. Sparks vented into space in brief, dying bursts.
He hit the hull without slowing.
Metal split under the force, tearing open just wide enough for him to force his way through. Atmosphere rushed past him as he entered, the pressure inside already unstable, struggling to hold onto what little remained.
The interior wasn't much better.
Lighting flickered in uneven intervals, most of the panels either dead or hanging loose from their mounts. Smoke drifted in thin, sluggish trails, pulled toward breaches Nolan couldn't see yet. The floor tilted slightly under his boots, the artificial gravity struggling to keep up with the damage.
His eyes tracked the layout in pieces—hallways partially collapsed, doorways warped out of shape, sections sealed off entirely by debris. No movement. No immediate sign of the pilot.
Another tremor ran through the ship, harder this time.
A section of the corridor ahead gave way, folding inward as something deeper in the structure failed. Nolan didn't slow. He drove straight through it, tearing apart what was left of the obstruction as he pushed deeper into the vessel.
He didn't have time to search everything.
Whoever was flying this ship would be near the controls. They'd stay there as long as the ship still had a chance—no matter how small.
He turned the corner—
—and found her.
She stood at the main console, or what was left of it, hands still hovering over controls that had already stopped responding. Sparks snapped across the panel, lighting her face in brief flashes.
"Hello?!" Nolan called out, what little bit of oxygen remaining in the ship dwindling in the air around them.
She turned, meeting his eyes.
Recognition hit immediately. It changed her expression before she could stop it—something sharp cutting through the chaos. Shock first. Disbelief right after. Then something deeper underneath both, buried but unmistakably there.
"…Nolan?"
The ship gave out.
It started behind her—a sharp, tearing crack that split through the structure without warning. The console in front of her died completely as the frame around it buckled.
Then everything followed.
The deck lurched sideways as the gravity failed outright. Panels ripped free. Fire burst through a ruptured conduit along the far side of the room, spreading in a violent flash that consumed what little stability the ship had left.
Nolan shot forward quickly, the floor breaking apart beneath his feet as the structure collapsed in on itself. His hand reached out—
The explosion hit, swallowing the room in an instant.
Flames tore through the ship, the shockwaves ripping it apart from the inside out as the failing systems cascaded into total collapse. The hull ruptured along every weakened seam, the entire vessel coming apart in a violent chain reaction.
From the outside, the ship continued to erupt into an expanding sphere of fire, debris, and scattered fragments, the blast pushing outward into the void in a silent, devastating bloom…
AN: Not much to say today. Next chapter should be up in the next week or two.
Links will be down below if you're interested in joining the community or supporting my writing.
Links
-Arsenal
Catastrophic failure in the thrusters, significant hull damage. Structural integrity was at forty percent and falling quickly.
Ugh, what did you get me into, Azmuth? Xylene thought as she worked to redirect what defenses she had toward the warship on her tail. That was the part that bothered her the most. She hadn't expected resistance like this — not this fast, and not this overwhelming.
Her fingers moved faster than the console could comfortably track, light flickering across her face as panels shifted and collapsed into one another, systems cannibalizing whatever power they could get. One function stabilized just long enough to matter before something else demanded it. The ship shuddered again—harder this time—and a sharp crack echoed somewhere behind her, metal giving way under stress it had never been built to handle.
"Stabilize… come on…" she muttered, voice tight as she rerouted power from life support to the forward emitters. The air thinned slightly in response, just enough for her to notice. Her chest tightened on instinct. Uxorites didn't need atmosphere the same way humans did, but habit still lingered, stubborn as ever. If she could get close enough to Earth, that was all that mattered.
Another blast rocked the ship.
Warning sigils flared crimson across her display, layering over one another until they blurred into a single, constant alarm. The forward camera feed sputtered, then snapped back just long enough to catch a glimpse of the warship behind her—massive, dark, steady in a way that made it feel less like something mechanical and more like something patient.
Vilgax. She didn't need confirmation. His warship was recognizable anywhere. The Chimeran Hammer had shown up in too many bounties, too many warnings, too many stories that ended the same way.
Of all the beings in the galaxy…
"Of course it had to be you," she breathed, more to herself than anything else.
The ship lurched again, and Xylene turned just enough to check the Omnitrix's containment pod behind her. It was still intact. Still secure. For now.
If only she'd reached Galvan Prime sooner…
Another impact. Closer.
The rear shields flickered once—then vanished.
Xylene's expression hardened.
"Alright," she said under her breath, hands moving again before the thought had even finished forming. "No more running."
She couldn't outrun Vilgax. Not like this. Not with a ship already tearing itself apart around her.
So she'd buy time.
Power diverted again—this time with no hesitation. Non-essential systems went dark one after another, the interior lighting dimming as everything was fed into the last defensive arrays she had left. The ship answered with a low, strained groan that vibrated up through the deck and into her legs.
"Come on… just a little longer…"
The forward emitters sparked to life, uneven at first, then settling into something usable. It wouldn't hurt a warship like that—not really—but it might slow him down. Maybe.
She fired.
Thin streaks of energy cut across the void, striking the larger vessel in quick succession. The impacts barely registered. No visible damage. No shift.
Vilgax didn't return fire.
That made her stomach twist.
He wasn't rushing to take her down, which meant he knew precisely what she was transporting.
A proximity alert shrieked across the console, sharp enough to cut through everything else.
Xylene's eyes snapped to the display.
"…No."
They poured out from the warship in clusters—small, fast signatures breaking away and angling straight toward her. Dozens of drones.
Her hands clenched against the console for half a second before she forced them to move again.
"Of course you'd send the scavengers first," she muttered, jaw tightening as she brought up targeting controls.
The first wave closed fast. Sleek, insect-like constructs, their forms shifting mid-flight as they adjusted course, weaving through the debris field she'd left behind.
She fired again, tighter this time. The emitters flared, catching the lead drone head-on. It burst apart in a brief flash, fragments scattering outward.
Two more filled the gap instantly.
The second volley took out another pair, but the rest kept coming. Too many. Far too many.
One clipped the side of her ship, latching on with mechanical precision. The impact rattled the hull, followed immediately by a sharp, grating sound as it began to drill.
"Not happening," Xylene snapped, rerouting power again—this time to localized defense.
A pulse surged through the outer plating, frying the drone where it clung. It went still, then drifted free.
Three more replaced it.
Her breath hitched.
Now she saw it clearly.
They weren't trying to board.
They were locking her down.
Azmuth's voice surfaced in her memory—sharp, impatient, impossible to ignore. Instructions she'd filed away and hoped she'd never need. Safeguards she hadn't wanted to think about.
"Transport it to Earth," he had said. "If anything goes wrong… you'll know what to do."
Her gaze flicked back to the containment pod.
She wasn't going to let the Omnitrix fall into the wrong hands.
It didn't matter if she died out here. The only thing that did was to make sure the Omnitrix made it to Earth.
Nolan recognized the smaller vessel to be a courier, though the defenses on them were a little more advanced than most he'd encountered. It wasn't just the shield—the way it redistributed power caught his attention immediately, shifting and rerouting in real time to keep critical systems alive. He had to give them credit. Whoever was piloting it knew what they were doing. They knew they were outmatched and were buying time however they could. That alone told him this wasn't some random ship that had wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time.
It also told him they weren't going to last much longer.
The drones hit his awareness before they hit his line of sight. Tiny shifts in motion, faint distortions against the starfield—clusters breaking off from the larger warship and converging on the courier like a swarm of metallic predators. Nolan adjusted course without slowing, angling himself between them and the smaller vessel just as the first wave closed in.
The first drone shattered on impact, its frame collapsing inward with a sharp metallic crunch before it could even react. The second spun off into the void, torn apart by the wake of his movement, pieces scattering like shrapnel across open space. Nolan didn't bother tracking them individually after that. They weren't strong enough to pose a threat as long as he kept moving. His body moved on instinct, cutting through the swarm with clean, efficient precision. Metal crumpled beneath his strikes, limbs snapping off, energy discharges flaring bright for a split second before dying against his skin.
One drone tried to latch onto him, its segmented limbs snapping shut around his arm—Nolan crushed it in his hand without breaking stride. The metal folded in on itself with a sharp whine before bursting apart, fragments drifting away, spinning slowly in the vacuum. More replaced them, filling the space he'd just cleared.
Persistent. Nolan's eyes narrowed slightly as another cluster broke formation. They were coming straight for him now, abandoning the courier entirely. Good. That was what he wanted.
They tried to adapt, adjusting their angles, spacing themselves out to avoid being taken down in groups; it didn't help. He continued to drive forward, punching through the formation with enough force to scatter them across open space. One clipped his shoulder, its weapon discharging on contact—a flash of energy rippling across him like heat lightning.
The blast barely registered. A flicker of light, nothing more—but it told him what he needed to know.
These weren't meant to combat Viltrumites.
Nolan's gaze shifted past them, locking onto the warship behind it all. It loomed in the distance, massive and jagged, its hull lined with weapon arrays that pulsed with building energy. It was still firing. A concentrated barrage lit up the space between it and the courier, streaks of energy cutting through the void in rapid succession, forcing Nolan to veer just enough to avoid taking the full brunt of it.
Each blast left a fading trail of light, illuminating drifting debris and the fractured remains of earlier volleys.
They weren't trying to kill him.
They were trying to keep him away from the courier.
His jaw tightened.
Another wave of drones surged toward him, but Nolan didn't even bother engaging them fully this time. He tore through the closest few—crushing one, ripping another clean in half—then broke away entirely, redirecting his momentum straight toward the warship.
If he couldn't reach the courier—
He'd stop the source.
The distance closed fast. Faster than anything on that ship was likely built to handle. Defensive fire adjusted immediately, heavier weapons coming online as he crossed into range. Larger cannons rotated into position, their cores glowing as they discharged in rapid succession. Energy blasts streaked toward him in overlapping patterns, turning the space around him into a storm of light and force.
One hit his side, the impact shifting his trajectory slightly, a dull thud carrying through him. Another grazed his arm, scattering sparks of energy across his suit. The third he pushed straight through without slowing.
The hull of the warship filled his vision in an instant as he cleared the barrage.
He smiled.
Metal gave way beneath him with a thunderous crack, the force of his entry tearing straight through reinforced plating like it wasn't there. The impact sent a shockwave through the structure, bulkheads buckling as the atmosphere violently vented into space behind him. Air screamed past in a chaotic rush, dragging loose debris, sparks, and shattered pieces of the hull out into the void.
Nolan landed hard, boots slamming into the deck with enough force to dent the plating beneath him. The impact echoed down the corridor, a deep, reverberating boom that blended with the wail of alarms now blaring throughout the ship.
The air inside was thick with heat and the acrid scent of burning circuitry. Red warning lights pulsed overhead, bathing everything in a rhythmic glow that cast long, shifting shadows across the walls. Panels sparked intermittently, flickering as systems struggled to compensate for the breach.
He barely had a second to take it in before they were on him.
Drones dropped from the ceiling in clusters, their limbs unfolding mid-descent with sharp mechanical clicks. Behind them, scattered across catwalks and recessed doorways, larger figures took position—armor-clad, weapons already raised, their silhouettes framed by the flashing emergency lights.
They're organic… Nolan noted silently, straightening his posture slightly.
He rolled his shoulders once as the first of them lunged.
"Alright," he muttered under his breath before moving.
The first drone never made contact. He caught it mid-air and slammed it into the floor hard enough to crater the plating beneath it, the impact sending a ripple through the deck. Another came from the side—he turned, backhanding it into the wall where it stuck for half a second before collapsing into scrap, its frame twitching once before going still.
The henchmen were different.
They didn't rush him blindly. They circled, disciplined, weapons tracking his movements, waiting for an opening that wasn't going to come. One fired—a concentrated beam that hit Nolan square in the chest.
The energy flared on impact, bright and sustained.
He didn't flinch.
Nolan's eyes flicked toward him.
Then he was there.
The distance vanished. His hand closed around the alien's armor, fingers digging into reinforced plating as he lifted him clean off the ground before slamming him into the nearest bulkhead. The wall buckled inward with a sharp crack, leaving a deep impression around the soldier's body as the air rushed out of him.
The others hesitated—just for a second, but it was enough.
"I recognize you…" Nolan remarked, turning slightly as another of the crew stepped into view. There was something familiar in the design—something he'd seen before coming to Earth. "You're part of Vilgax's crew. I'm guessing this is his?"
The response didn't come from the henchman.
"And here I thought this system was free from you parasites…"
The voice cut through the chaos—low and gravelly, carrying weight even over the alarms.
Vilgax stepped into view through the wreckage like it didn't exist.
Even hunched slightly beneath the low ceiling, he was massive. The armor was thicker than Nolan remembered, layered and reinforced, lines of dim energy pulsing beneath its surface. His presence filled the space, the air settling heavier around him, like the ship itself recognized who stood at its center.
Nolan's expression didn't change.
"What are you doing here?" he asked evenly. "This isn't your territory."
Vilgax's single visible eye narrowed, something almost amused curling beneath it.
"Hmm," he hummed, voice edged with mockery. "Seems you've been out of the loop for a while, then. This system has been my territory since your empire ravaged my forces."
Nolan's posture shifted subtly as his fists clenched.
"If that's true, then you know what I have to do."
A low rumble built in Vilgax's chest.
"You are outnumbered… and I've been preparing for your kind since that day."
Nolan smirked.
"We'll see about that."
The floor shattered beneath his feet as he launched forward, the force cracking the deck outward in a spiderweb pattern. The air itself split as he crossed the distance in less than a heartbeat, driving straight at Vilgax—
Ready to end it before the courier outside ran out of time.
The impact hit like two worlds colliding.
Nolan slammed into Vilgax with enough force to tear the plating beneath their feet apart, the deck buckling inward as a violent shockwave ripped through the corridor. Walls groaned, panels tore free, and the structure flexed under the strain.
For a split second, Vilgax shifted back half a step under the momentum—
Then he held.
Vilgax's boots dug into the floor, metal screeching beneath the pressure as his arm came up and caught Nolan across the side. The counterstrike landed solid, a heavy, brutal blow that sent Nolan skidding back through the corridor, carving a jagged trench through the plating before he caught himself.
Loose debris rattled down from the ceiling. Sparks rained in short bursts from damaged conduits overhead.
Nolan straightened almost immediately, rolling his shoulder once as if testing it. A brief pause followed—just enough to recalibrate.
"You're certainly stronger than the last time," Nolan remarked dryly.
"Yet you're still as reckless as I remember," Vilgax growled, stepping forward, each footfall sending a dull, heavy thud through the deck. "Charging in without understanding the battlefield."
Nolan's eyes narrowed.
"I understand enough."
The drones surged again, dropping from above, flanking from the sides—trying to box him in. The henchmen moved with them this time, coordinated, firing in overlapping bursts designed to limit his movement.
One second he was surrounded—
The next, he was already through them.
A drone exploded behind him as he passed, torn apart by the force of his movement. Another he grabbed mid-flight and hurled into a cluster of its own kind, the collision triggering a chain reaction that lit the corridor in sharp, blinding flashes.
A henchman fired point-blank, but Nolan caught the weapon by the barrel. The metal shrieked as his grip tightened, crushing it inward before plowing his shoulder into the alien's chest, sending him flying back into the wall hard enough to leave him there.
Vilgax watched his movements closely as Nolan tore through his soldiers.
A low hum built in the air—subtle at first, almost drowned out by the chaos—until it wasn't. Energy gathered along his arm, the weapon integrated into his armor flaring to life with a deep, pulsing glow that cast harsh shadows across the corridor.
Nolan turned just as it fired, the blast hitting him head-on.
This one registered.
The energy burned across his chest, heat biting through the fabric of his suit as the force drove him back a step. The floor beneath him cracked under the pressure, fractures spreading outward from where he stood.
His jaw tightened.
The beam scattered as he broke its centerline.
The distance vanished again as Nolan closed in, his fist slamming into Vilgax's torso with enough force to lift him off his feet and send him crashing through the wall behind him, the impact tearing through metal, conduits, and bulkheads as the fight barreled deeper into the heart of the ship.
Xylene wasn't sure what she'd seen come to her aid. It was hard to make through the constant flashes of light and violent bursts of energy tearing across the voice, but she could almost make out a bipedal figure weaving through the expanse effortlessly — cutting through Vilgax's drones like they were nothing more than drifting scrap.
For a moment, just a moment, she thought it might have been Plumber reinforcements. Then she saw the way it moved.
There was no propulsion or external assistance. The realization settled in her chest that it wasn't the Plumbers. By the time it breached the Chimeran Hammer, tearing straight through its hull in a violent eruption of metal and atmosphere, Xylene knew one thing with absolute certainty.
Her time was running out.
The cockpit shuddered violently, a deep, gut-twisting tremor that ran through the entire frame of her ship. Warning lights flared brighter, their steady pulses breaking into erratic flickers as systems began to fail in cascading waves. Panels sparked overhead, small bursts of electricity snapping free and arcing across exposed wiring.
"Come on… come on…" she muttered under her breath, fingers flying across the console as she forced the navigation system to respond. While Vilgax was distracted by whatever that thing was, she had to act.
A sharp explosion rocked the ship from the rear, throwing her forward against her restraints. The harness caught her hard across the chest, knocking the breath from her lungs as the controls flickered violently in front of her.
Structural integrity had fallen to thirty-one percent, the red text blinking harshly at her as a stark reminder.
The ship wasn't going to hold much longer. She could feel it. The readings were already screaming at her, but the ship said it louder — the constant groan of the frame, the vibration running through the deck beneath her boots, and the uneven pulses in the air pressure.
She had hoped to stay with the Omnitrix the entire way to Earth, just so she could see him again. But alas, some things weren't meant to be.
Xylene began plotting the course, adjusting for drift, gravitational interference, the current velocity of her failing thrusters. Everything needed to be precise as there'd be no second attempt.
Another explosion rippled across the hull, far closer than before. The entire ship lurched sideways, throwing her against the edge of her seat. A console to her right detonated in a shower sparks, forcing her to shield her face as bits of molten metal scattered across the cockpit floor.
"Thrusters offline," the system droned, its voice distorted and staticky.
"I know!" she snapped, slamming her hand against the console hard enough to rattle the remaining displays.
She forced the navigation sequence to finalize anyway, locking the trajectory into place with what little control she had left. The projected path flickered into existence—a narrow line stretching from her current position toward Earth, weaving through open space with just enough margin for error to account for drift.
If it had been possible to move the ship, it would have been perfect. In her current state, though? It was useless. But she already knew that, which is why she made one final adjustment for an escape pod. It'd have just enough power to make it to the planet, where she could program it to jettison the Omnitrix's containment pod the rest of the way to its intended destination.
As long as Vilgax was preoccupied, there was a chance. A small one, but a chance she was going to have to take.
She turned to the pod, using her telekinesis to move it to one of the escape pods. Even with her species's enhanced strength, the containment pod was far too heavy to move by hand. Once she had it settled inside, she sealed the door and pressed the release button.
"Good luck," she whispered softly as the pod launched into space, propelled outward with just enough force to clear the debris field surrounding the ship. For a brief moment, she could see it through the fractured viewport — a small, glowing object tumbling end over end before stabilizing, its trajectory aligning with the course she'd set.
A flicker of something, relief maybe, passed through her chest. Then it was gone as a new explosion went off from the Chimeran Hammer this time, bright enough to light up the entire battlefield for a split second. Even from here, she could feel the shockwave ripple through the surrounding space, her already-damaged vessel shuddering violently in response.
Her eyes snapped toward it.
Through the fractured glass, she caught a glimpse of something massive rupturing from within the warship—fire and debris bursting outward in a violent bloom that tore through its structure.
Whatever had gone into the Chimeran Hammer was still tearing through it…
The impact echoed through the ship as Vilgax rose from the debris, tossing twisted metal aside as his gaze locked onto Nolan's landing. Blood slipped from Nolan's nose, running over his lip as he steadied himself, eyes narrowing at the sight of the warlord still standing. For a moment, neither of them moved. The only sound came from the ship itself—strained metal groaning, systems stuttering, something deep in its structure starting to give.
Vilgax let out a low growl, rolling his shoulder as his left arm snapped back into place with a sickening shift of armor and muscle. The motion barely slowed him. Nolan exhaled through his nose, more blood trailing down as he wiped it away with the back of his hand.
"You've certainly been busy."
Vilgax stepped forward through the wreckage, glancing down at the scorched plating across his armor.
"As I said," he rumbled, voice thick with something heavy and controlled, "I've been preparing."
"Clearly not enough." Nolan's voice stayed even, though his stance had already shifted. More drones and henchmen poured into the corridor behind Vilgax, filling the space with movement. "You know you can't beat me."
"Who said I'm trying to beat you?" Vilgax's tone dipped, something sharper slipping through.
Then it hit Nolan all at once. He'd wondered why Vilgax didn't seem to be pressing for a finishing blow, opting to keep him at bay more than anything else. Vilgax was buying time…
Nolan's head turned slightly, just enough to catch the external feed flickering across a damaged panel—just enough to see the courier still drifting out there, surrounded.
His eyes narrowed, just enough for Vilgax to notice.
"Finish it," the Chimera Sui Genesis ordered, raising his arm. "Fire again at the vessel."
Nolan was moving before the command even fully settled in the air. The wall behind him exploded outward as he tore back into open space, the force ripping another jagged breach into the warship's hull. The vacuum swallowed everything as he reoriented mid-flight, locking onto the courier.
The cannons were already charging. He could feel it—the buildup crawling across space before the shot even fired.
With the courier at a standstill, there was no chance of it missing.
Nolan surged forward, pushing harder, faster, the distance collapsing beneath him in seconds that felt just a fraction too long.
The beam fired.
A concentrated line of energy tore across the void, bright enough to burn against the darkness itself as it raced toward the immobilized vessel.
Nolan hit it head-on, the impact lighting the space around
The impact lit the space around him in a blinding flare, the force of it driving into him with far more weight than anything inside the ship had managed. For a split second, it actually stopped him—held him there, suspended between the warship and the courier as the energy discharged across his body.
Pieces of his suit tore under the extreme force, the edges of the fabric's loose pieces burning. The pain was excruciating, even by Nolan's experience, but he wasn't going to let the courier die on his watch. Especially without knowing why Vilgax was going after them.
The beam bent around him, scattering in fractured arcs. Nolan's arms tensed at his sides, his entire frame locking in place as he absorbed the worst of it. The light slowly faded, Nolan gritting his teeth as the final remnants of the blast dissipated into nothing.
He looked back toward the warship. This time there was nothing subtle about the shift in his expression.
One second he was suspended in the void, the last embers of the blast fading around him—the next, he was already moving. The distance between him and the warship collapsed in an instant, his body cutting through space with a precision that left no room for error, no time for reaction.
He didn't slow when he hit the hull.
The impact tore a hole clean through the Chimeran Hammer, metal folding inward and then ripping apart entirely as Nolan forced his way back inside. Atmosphere ruptured outward in a violent rush, alarms screaming to life again as the ship struggled to compensate for damage it wasn't built to withstand.
Vilgax had just enough time to turn.
That was all Nolan gave him.
His hand closed around Vilgax's throat with crushing force, lifting him off his feet before he could fully brace. For a fraction of a second, their eyes met—Vilgax's narrowing, something sharp and defiant flickering behind it—
Then Nolan drove forward.
The first wall didn't slow them.
Metal, wiring, reinforced plating—it all gave way in an instant as Nolan used Vilgax's body like a weapon, a battering ram that tore through everything in their path. The corridor behind them collapsed in their wake, debris twisting and folding under the force of their passage.
Vilgax's armor sparked violently as it scraped against the wreckage, systems flaring under the strain—but he didn't go limp.
His arm came up, slamming into Nolan's side with a force that would've crushed most beings outright.
Nolan barely shifted.
They broke through another bulkhead.
Then another.
The ship wasn't designed for this; nothing was. Every meter they traveled left more damage behind—structural supports snapping, internal systems rupturing, entire sections of the vessel destabilizing as they tore straight through its core like it was nothing more than a hollow shell.
Vilgax snarled, the sound low and furious as he twisted in Nolan's grip, one of his mechanical appendages snapping forward. It latched onto Nolan's shoulder, digging in, energy surging through it as it discharged point-blank.
This one had bite.
Nolan felt it—really felt it. A sharp, concentrated burst that forced his grip to loosen just enough for Vilgax to wrench himself free.
They separated in a violent clash of momentum.
Vilgax hit the far wall hard enough to crater it, the plating buckling around his frame before giving way entirely and sending him skidding across the next chamber. Nolan landed a heartbeat later, boots slamming into the floor with enough force to fracture it beneath him.
For a moment, everything around them groaned.
The ship was dying.
Sparks rained from exposed conduits, the air thick with smoke and the acrid scent of burning systems. Gravity fluctuated, flickering just enough to make the debris around them lift and fall in uneven rhythms. Warning lights strobed erratically, painting the destruction in pulses of red.
Nolan didn't take his eyes off Vilgax.
"You're done," he said, voice low, steady.
Vilgax rose anyway.
Blood—dark and thick—slipped from beneath his armor, but it didn't slow him. Didn't change the way he held himself. If anything, it sharpened something behind his expression.
"You misunderstand," Vilgax growled, straightening to his full height despite the damage. "This ship is expendable."
Nolan's gaze flicked around them for half a second—the failing systems, the collapsing structure, the way the ship itself seemed to be tearing apart under the strain.
Then back to Vilgax.
"Yeah," he said. "I noticed."
Vilgax moved first this time.
He came in hard, faster than something his size should've been able to move, his fist swinging with enough force to split the air as it aimed toward Nolan's head.
Nolan caught it.
The impact still cracked the floor beneath them.
For a second, they held there—strength against strength, neither giving immediately as the pressure between them built.
Then Nolan squeezed.
Vilgax's armor creaked under the force, the metal straining as Nolan forced his arm downward. Vilgax responded instantly, his free hand snapping up to drive into Nolan's ribs, the blow landing with a heavy, concussive force that actually shifted him back a step – just enough to break the hold.
He followed through immediately, pressing the advantage with a flurry of strikes—each one heavy, deliberate, backed by the full weight of his frame and whatever enhancements he'd layered into himself.
Nolan let the hits come, giving ground maybe once or twice, absorbing the blows to let Vilgax expend his momentum. Once it seemed like Vilgax was slowing down, Nolan countered with a single punch.
It hammered into Vilgax's midsection with brutal precision, the collision folding him inward before sending him flying back across the chamber. The wall behind him didn't hold, bursting open into the command center beyond.
The warlord hit the central console hard enough to shatter it, killing systems instantly. The hum of the ship—already unstable—cut out entirely for half a second before sputtering back in broken, uneven bursts. Displays flickered, then went dark. The entire vessel lurched, its trajectory destabilizing as control systems failed one after another.
Nolan stepped through the wreckage into the command center, his posture steady, and breathing even despite the wear on his body. Vilgax pushed himself up from the remains of the console, slower now—but not finished.
The silence stretched, broken only by the failing systems around them.
Then Vilgax let out a low, rumbling breath.
"It seems," Vilgax squinted his eye for a moment, "it seems that you're stronger than I anticipated."
"You were warned long ago to stay out of our way." Nolan remarked, ignoring the comment. "If the Empire ravaged your forces, then it was because you overstepped your boundaries. Something you're still doing."
"You speak as though this system is under your authority," Vilgax growled. "It's mine."
"No, it's not." Nolan stepped forward, glancing at their surroundings. "I'll give you one chance. Why are you attacking that ship?"
"Does it bother you? To not know what's coming?"
"What are you talking about?"
"The end of your precious empire is coming…" the warlord cackled, something dark and certain settling into his voice. "...and I will be its herald."
Nolan didn't blink.
"Not in your wildest dreams."
Vilgax's mandibles twitched, something dark and satisfied flickering across his expression.
"Let's see if you're correct."
They moved at the same time.
The two collided again before the ship could even finish dying around them. The impact snapped what little stability the command center had left. Consoles tore free from their mounts, panels ripping loose as the floor beneath them split along jagged fault lines. Nolan flew forward without hesitation, closing the distance with a speed that made Vilgax's attempt to brace feel almost meaningless.
His fist connected first — snapping Vilgax's head to the side, the energy cracking something beneath the armor that didn't belong in a body still standing. Vilgax staggered — just by a half-step — but Nolan didn't let him recover. Another strike followed immediately, then another, each one hitting harder than the last.
Vilgax tried to answer. His arm came up, weapon flaring to life again as he fired point-blank into Nolan's chest. The blast hit, flared, and pushed… only for Nolan to step right through it.
Just as it had before, the light broke around him, scattering across his shoulders as if it had nothing to latch onto. His hand shot forward, catching Vilgax mid-motion, fingers digging into the armored plating at his collar.
"Enough," Nolan ordered, before slamming him down. The deck caved in beneath Vilgax's body, folding inward as Nolan drove him through it and into the chamber below.
The fall lasted less than a second before they hit again, the shockwave rolling outward and tearing through what remained of the surrounding structure.
Vilgax roared—raw, furious—as he lashed out, one of his mechanical appendages snapping forward and driving into Nolan's side with everything it had left. This one had weight. It bit deep enough to matter, forcing Nolan to shift.
He surged upward, slamming into Nolan with his full mass, carrying them both back through another wall in a violent reversal. The corridor beyond twisted around them as they crashed through it, debris whipping past in a storm of metal and fire.
For a moment, it looked like Vilgax might regain control.
Then Nolan planted his foot, stopping their momentum instantly. The floor beneath him cratered under the force, anchoring him in place as Vilgax's forward drive collapsed against something that simply refused to move.
Nolan's hand came up again—fast, precise—and caught Vilgax by the arm.
There was a pause.
A brief, terrible pause where everything seemed to hold its breath.
Then Nolan twisted.
The sound wasn't clean. It wasn't quick. Metal screamed first—the armor warping under the strain—followed by something deeper, something organic that gave way with a wet, tearing crack.
Vilgax's roar cut through the collapsing ship, louder this time, edged with something that hadn't been there before: pain.
Nolan didn't let go.
He drove forward again, dragging Vilgax with him as he tore through the remaining structure like it was already dust. Bulkheads split. Support beams snapped. Entire sections of the ship folded inward as they passed through, the damage compounding faster than the systems could even register.
They burst back into what was left of the command center. The space was barely recognizable now. Fires burned uncontrolled across exposed wiring, gravity fluctuating in violent pulses that sent debris drifting one second and crashing down the next. The central console was nothing but molten wreckage, its systems long since dead.
The ship was coming apart.
Vilgax lashed out again, his remaining arm slamming into Nolan's jaw with everything he had left. The blow landed—hard enough to turn Nolan's head, hard enough to send a ripple through his frame — but did nothing to slow him down.
Nolan looked back at him, eyes steady, something colder settling behind them now.
"You're out of time," he said.
Vilgax bared his teeth, something defiant still burning there despite everything.
"I don't need time."
His armor flared again—overloading this time — energy bleeding out through the seams. Nolan hammered his fist into Vilgax's chest, breaking through this time. The armor caved completely, the reinforced plating finally giving under the force. Something beneath it shattered, the impact driving through the warlord's frame and into the structure behind him.
For a second, Vilgax just hung there, suspended in the air. Then, Nolan pulled his hand back revealing it was coated in the warlord's blood.
Vilgax collapsed, the strength that had carried him this far faltering; his body failing to keep up with the damage it had taken.
"What's in the ship, Vilgax?"
All Vilgax could do was let out a weak wheeze of a laugh.
"You'll… you'll never get your hands on it."
Vilgax's laugh dragged out of him in broken, uneven bursts, wet at the edges but still carrying that same stubborn refusal to fold. It didn't matter how much damage he'd taken—there was something in him that would rather tear itself apart than give Nolan a clean end.
"And neither will you."
The deck lurched hard enough to shift Nolan's footing half an inch, a low groan rolling through the structure beneath them as something deeper in the ship began to fail. A console behind him blew out in a violent spray of sparks, the light stuttering across the wreckage of the command center. Smoke curled up in uneven streams, thickening the air, mixing with the sharp, metallic scent of overheating systems and something far less mechanical.
Nolan stepped in, boots grinding over shattered plating and loose fragments, and grabbed Vilgax by the front of his armor, hauling him upright in one motion. The plating gave under his grip with a low, grinding crack, already fractured from the earlier blows. Pieces shifted out of place, edges biting into Nolan's hand as the structure struggled to hold together.
"You're done," Nolan said.
Vilgax's head dipped for a second, his body sagging with the motion, then snapped back up with a sudden, stubborn surge. His remaining arm came in fast—sloppy, unbalanced, but carrying everything he had left behind it—and slammed into Nolan's jaw.
Nolan didn't even turn with it this time.
His hand shot out and caught Vilgax's wrist before he could pull away. Fingers tightened, digging into the armor. The metal buckled immediately, seams splitting open under the pressure with a sharp, tearing screech.
Vilgax tried to wrench free, muscles tensing, the motion desperate more than controlled.
Nolan pulled.
The arm came off in a violent, tearing rip that cut through the alarms and the grinding noise of the ship around them. Armor snapped apart first, jagged edges peeling back as internal components tore loose in a shower of sparks. The resistance held for a fraction of a second—tight, stubborn—then gave way all at once.
Vilgax's body jerked, a raw, guttural sound forced out of him as the limb tore free.
Nolan dropped it without a glance. It hit the deck with a heavy, final thud, sliding across the scorched metal before coming to a stop against a broken console, small arcs of energy still snapping along the ruined plating.
Vilgax sagged forward, his weight collapsing into Nolan's grip, balance gone.
Nolan didn't let him fall.
His hand came up, locking onto the side of Vilgax's head, fingers pressing into the ridged plating that framed his face. The tentacles flared out on instinct, snapping toward him in a last reflex, striking against his arm and shoulder.
Nolan caught them mid-motion.
His grip closed tight around the cluster, forcing them still.
Then he yanked.
They tore free in a single, brutal pull, ripping loose at the base with a wet, jagged sound that carried through the room. The force snapped Vilgax's head to the side as the tendrils came away, dark fluid trailing after them and spattering across Nolan's arm and the already damaged floor.
Vilgax made a sound this time—short, choked, dragged out of him against his will as what little control he had left slipped.
Nolan threw the torn mass aside. It struck the far wall with a dull slap, leaving a streak before sliding down through the flickering light.
Vilgax folded in on himself, what remained of his posture collapsing. Nolan shifted his grip again, forcing him upright just long enough to hold him in place—
Then drove his knee straight into Vilgax's leg.
A sharp crack cut through the noise, deep and unmistakable. The limb gave immediately, the structure failing under the force as the joint collapsed and twisted out of alignment. The leg buckled sideways, no longer able to hold any weight.
Vilgax dropped hard, his body slamming into the deck as the ruined limb folded beneath him. The impact rattled loose debris across the floor, small fragments skittering away from the point of contact.
Nolan let go.
Vilgax hit in a heap, armor hanging loose where it hadn't already been torn away. Sections of it sparked erratically, systems failing one by one as the damage spread. His remaining hand scraped against the deck, dragging weakly against the metal as he tried to push himself up.
It didn't work.
He got halfway—just enough to lift his torso—before his arm gave out. He dropped again, harder this time, breath coming rough and uneven, each attempt weaker than the last.
Nolan stood over him, chest rising steady, blood still running down his hand in slow, uneven lines.
Another blast tore through the ship, closer this time. The wall behind them split open with a violent crack, metal ripping apart as fire punched through the gap. Debris scattered across the room, fragments slamming into the floor and walls as the shockwave rolled through.
The ceiling followed a second later. A section tore free overhead and crashed down, sending a wave of heat, sparks, and dust across the command center. The lights cut out entirely for a split second before flickering back on, weaker, struggling.
"You should've stayed out of this system."
No response.
Vilgax barely moved, his body twitching once before going still again.
The deck split with a long, tearing groan as something below them finally gave out, a jagged fracture ripping between them. Light and heat pushed up through the opening, the glow harsh against the failing emergency lights.
That was it.
Nolan turned and launched forward, the motion sudden and decisive, tearing through the failing structure in a blur. The walls gave way around him, bulkheads collapsing as he forced his way out, leaving the command center behind.
Vilgax stayed where he fell—broken, bleeding, and pinned beneath a ship that was coming apart piece by piece as the Chimeran Hammer died around him.
The warship tore itself apart behind him as Nolan flew out into the void. The courier drifted ahead — barely holding itself together, its frame buckling in slow, uneven pulses as pieces of its hull sheared and floated away. He'd be surprised if it lasted for a couple more minutes. He'd wasted too much time with Vilgax, a mistake he'd make sure to learn from in the future.
Had it been before he arrived to Earth, there wouldn't have been a problem here. He'd have already taken care of Vilgax, and the courier would have been dealt with one way or another.
He adjusted his trajectory mid-flight, angling straight for it. The distance closed fast, but the ship was already coming apart in ways that made the timing feel tighter than it should've been. Sections of plating peeled away under stress, exposing the skeletal structure beneath. Sparks vented into space in brief, dying bursts.
He hit the hull without slowing.
Metal split under the force, tearing open just wide enough for him to force his way through. Atmosphere rushed past him as he entered, the pressure inside already unstable, struggling to hold onto what little remained.
The interior wasn't much better.
Lighting flickered in uneven intervals, most of the panels either dead or hanging loose from their mounts. Smoke drifted in thin, sluggish trails, pulled toward breaches Nolan couldn't see yet. The floor tilted slightly under his boots, the artificial gravity struggling to keep up with the damage.
His eyes tracked the layout in pieces—hallways partially collapsed, doorways warped out of shape, sections sealed off entirely by debris. No movement. No immediate sign of the pilot.
Another tremor ran through the ship, harder this time.
A section of the corridor ahead gave way, folding inward as something deeper in the structure failed. Nolan didn't slow. He drove straight through it, tearing apart what was left of the obstruction as he pushed deeper into the vessel.
He didn't have time to search everything.
Whoever was flying this ship would be near the controls. They'd stay there as long as the ship still had a chance—no matter how small.
He turned the corner—
—and found her.
She stood at the main console, or what was left of it, hands still hovering over controls that had already stopped responding. Sparks snapped across the panel, lighting her face in brief flashes.
"Hello?!" Nolan called out, what little bit of oxygen remaining in the ship dwindling in the air around them.
She turned, meeting his eyes.
Recognition hit immediately. It changed her expression before she could stop it—something sharp cutting through the chaos. Shock first. Disbelief right after. Then something deeper underneath both, buried but unmistakably there.
"…Nolan?"
The ship gave out.
It started behind her—a sharp, tearing crack that split through the structure without warning. The console in front of her died completely as the frame around it buckled.
Then everything followed.
The deck lurched sideways as the gravity failed outright. Panels ripped free. Fire burst through a ruptured conduit along the far side of the room, spreading in a violent flash that consumed what little stability the ship had left.
Nolan shot forward quickly, the floor breaking apart beneath his feet as the structure collapsed in on itself. His hand reached out—
The explosion hit, swallowing the room in an instant.
Flames tore through the ship, the shockwaves ripping it apart from the inside out as the failing systems cascaded into total collapse. The hull ruptured along every weakened seam, the entire vessel coming apart in a violent chain reaction.
From the outside, the ship continued to erupt into an expanding sphere of fire, debris, and scattered fragments, the blast pushing outward into the void in a silent, devastating bloom…
AN: Not much to say today. Next chapter should be up in the next week or two.
Links will be down below if you're interested in joining the community or supporting my writing.
Links
-Arsenal
Arsenal597
Getting sticky.
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Don't count out Vilgax just yet.
Jason Wu
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Vilgax is like a cockaroach lol. He's to petty to die
ExFelineServer3
No Longer Anyone’s Scratching Post
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Vilgax has regenerative properties and he said that he has been preparing for the Viltrumites, who is to say that he just used everything against Nolan?
Plus, you never know when a Celestial Sapian resets the universe again
Plus, you never know when a Celestial Sapian resets the universe again
bannerlord181
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He wouldn't have left him there, would've ripped and torn him apart until nothing but liquid remained, Nolan also said "you're done" like 9 times…why?
Arsenal597
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You know the saying, until you see the body for sure (yes you see him ripped in half, but not quite confirmed to be a corpse lol) you can't say they're dead.Vilgax has regenerative properties and he said that he has been preparing for the Viltrumites, who is to say that he just used everything against Nolan?
Plus, you never know when a Celestial Sapian resets the universe again
Arsenal597
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So, unless I am seriously missing something, I only counted it twice. And they were at different stages of the fight.
Secondly, in regards to leaving him as a liquid... here's the thing. While yes, Nolan is more than willing to kill and liquidize enemies --- you also gotta consider that his cover is still maintained on Earth. As far as anyone in the Sol System knows, Nolan is a hero. Nolan was told directly that the distress signal had been going off for a while, but he was the only one fast enough to get there. While that does imply the likelihood of him being alone there, Cecil and the GDA can track him all the way to the edge of the system.
If he were to tear Vilgax apart in the way you suggested, it'd be a lot harder to explain the level of brutality he doled out. Yes, there are arguments to say that it could be warranted and Nolan could talk his way out of it, but at the end of the day he still has a cover to maintain. Vilgax wasn't able to do anything in his current state, and with the courier ship being on the brink of collapse, Nolan left him behind. Whether that turns out to be a problem later on down the road, that remains to be seen of course.
Vilgax is the cockroach of the Ben 10 universe, so it's hard to count him out.
Lillie Jones
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Thanks for the chapter