"Father, look!" The boy ran up to him and presented him with a cube. The father eyed the cube for a moment, wondering what his son had created now, and found that he didn't know. It was a smooth gray thing, with unnaturally straight edges. At a glance, it seemed like another pointless trinket, one of many useless trinkets scattered about this land of ancient scraps and artifacts. But he knew that his son created it – his son, who had an almost supernatural ability to understand and create bits of incredibly advanced technology.
"What is it, boy?"
"I call it a Storage Cube!" His son answered, grinning ear to ear. "It can store anything we need, regardless of weight!"
The father raised a brow as he eyed the impossible machine his son had just created, likely put together from scavenged scraps and ancient bits. How the boy managed to create something this advanced, without prior knowledge of engineering or science, baffled him. And the father felt immense pride at the thought that it was his boy, who created this. "Impressive, boy. Make use of it as you will."
His son grinned cheekily, before turning and wandering off to explore more of the junkyard, planning, no doubt, to secure even more outlandish parts and mechanical things through his latest invention. The father did not fear for the boy's safety, despite the dangers that lurked in the junkyard, a thousand miles and mountains upon mountains of scrap metal and ruined technologies, inhabited by strange and violent dragons that fed on metal and viciously attacked anything that came their way. He trusted his son and he trusted his instincts. They were safe. He wouldn't let anything happen to his family, after all.
Ten years.
Ten years he'd spent on this curious little oddity of a planet. There was a city just a few miles to the far north of the junkyard, inhabited by humans – of all things – who made a living off of scavenging scrap and building new things from them. Scrappers, they'd called themselves, adventurers who braved the junkyard in search of loot. There were other cities too and other, smaller junkyards across a seemingly endless steppe grassland. Vicious and bloodthirsty predators roamed the open plains, following the herd of gigantic Wilderbeasts that moved from one watering hole to another, trampling the very earth beneath their massive hooves; the locals believe that it was the Wilderbeasts themselves who flattened the mountains and gave birth to the seemingly eternal plains and grasslands across the surface of the entire planet. It was a dangerous world, especially for the fragile humans, who survived only due to their knack for technology and cunning.
Ten years ago, he'd found himself on the surface of this planet, alive and unharmed. How he came to be here, after his death and defeat, he still did not know. A human woman and her daughter, who happened to pass him by, offered him food and water and shelter, unaware of who and what he was. Kindness. It was a foreign thing. The mother taught him all she knew about the planet and the people who lived on it. His first thought, upon learning of the various cities and tribes, had been to conquer them all as he'd always done – as he was born and bred to do. And yet... he didn't. He had taken a moment to think and reflect and there he realized that his way of domination was what led to his downfall, the end of everything he'd built and hoped to accomplish. So, he did as his enemies then had done, he chose to acclimate to the locals, to learn their ways, to live among them.
It was... banal. The human tribes did not wage war against each other. In fact, the taking of the life of another human was the greatest taboo, punishable by death. The only violence he'd ever seen was directed towards the wild beasts and monsters that roamed the grasslands and the junkyards, the dragons and the serpents and the wolves. He did not partake in such things, however, and steered clear of danger as much as he could, not until he learned – not until he understood himself better. He grew close to the woman and her child, and, soon enough, the fragile little thing began calling him father. It was... an experience. He'd had children before, but he created them solely for conquest, to aid him in the domination and defeat of his enemies. Looking back, he'd failed all of them; he'd never truly been a father – not in the way Nolan had been to his son.
And so, he tried.
For the first time in his existence, he tried to be an actual parent. And he failed quite spectacularly, because even he wasn't sure what it meant to be one. What did he have to teach her but war and death? He swore he'd treat her differently from the children he'd failed, but he only knew of destruction and conquest. So, he taught her to fight, to defend herself from those that would seek to harm her or her family. Defensive arts weren't something he knew intimately, but he hadn't allowed himself to fail her and he would not. Luckily, Sereen was a quick learner.
Soon enough, she grew into a woman of her own and eventually moved to another city to make a name for herself among the scrapper guilds.
The father worked as a scrapper, like most others, but he kept himself in the safer places, where the dragons and other monsters did not dwell. He'd not killed or harmed anything or anyone, since he arrived, a miracle for one such as himself.
On the ninth year of his life on the nameless planet, a fiery metal thing fell from the sky and into the desolate wastes to the far south, where the most dangerous beasts roamed freely. He'd been close enough at the time and, overcome by his curiosity, the father approached the burning wreckage to find a capsule of thick metal, utilizing his flight for the first time since his arrival on the planet. Upon its surface was the Terran symbol that indicated the number 2. What that meant, he did not know. What he did know was there was a child inside the capsule – for some reason. Ripping it apart to free the boy had been an easy affair; the metal bent and tore in his grasp as easily as wet paper.
The boy, the father realized immediately, was unnatural, possessing a potency about him. It mattered not. He took the boy in and protected him the beasts and monsters that'd gathered around them, tearing them apart, where no one could witness his true strength. He'd broken his oath of non-violence, but it mattered little. He did so to protect and defend someone else, a child. He couldn't risk simply flying back to his home in the off-chance that some human might see him, revealing his secret. So, they walked together for weeks and weeks. True enough, the boy was unnatural; he grew rapidly, reaching near-adolescence within two weeks at most. It wasn't just his body that developed at an unnatural pace. The boy's intelligence was impossible for one his age.
The first time they visited the scrapyard, the boy had forged for himself a shield that was imbued with a power field of some kind that allowed it it deflect just about anything with kinetic energy. Of course, such technology was not unknown to the father; he'd seen others like it... many times over his life. But the boy had only been a week old at the time.
Monstrous potential.
He gave him the name Argall, a fitting name for one who was surely destined for greatness.
By the time they reached the City of Alka, where his now-wife and daughter awaited them, the boy could already pass for a teenager. They accepted the child just as they accepted him – one big happy family. If his old subordinates saw him now, they'd call him a hypocrite. Maybe he was. But he was still learning. His urges were still there, only held back by his discipline and his... affection for his family.
"We are heading out, boy." He told his son, who'd just ripped a glowing battery-like thing from the chest of a humanoid machine. The boy was physically greater than any human, but nowhere near the physical dominion of a Viltrumite. Dark and thunderous clouds loomed over them. A storm was brewing, which meant the dragons and monsters would soon awaken. The boy was strong, but he wasn't invincible – not even bulletproof. A simple knife could cut open his son's skin, though Argall's extreme healing factor and inability to feel pain created the illusion of durability. "It's getting dark."
Argall gave him a pleading look and, more than anyone, the father understood. The boy did not fear the vicious creatures that called this place home. In fact, he relished in the possibility of killing them, much like the father himself when he was younger, though Argall had yet to encounter a single dragon or serpent. The father didn't know how to curb that particular urge. "You can take whatever scraps you can pick up on our way back. Come, your mother must be waiting for us."
She wouldn't be worried about them or anything, but she'd be waiting. Nareena was not a very patient woman, he soon found. She was passionate and headstrong, and was regarded as one of the greatest scrappers in the entire city. She was also an amazing cook.
"Yes, father!" The boy said, the scraps he'd gathered disappearing into the cube in his hand. Argall was already several heads taller than all of his peers, but his unnatural growth spurt had slowed down to a near-halt a few months ago, drawing closer to what humans would've considered normal or ordinary. "I made something for mother, just now."
The father raised a brow as they turned and walked northward. Argall followed closely beside him. "Oh? What did you create this time, boy?"
Argall reached for the cube and pulled out a foot-long tube of some kind, with blue crystalline things embedded on both ends, and a much smaller tube, filled with a transparent liquid, running down the center. It emitted a soft, humming sound that intensified whenever Argall waved it around. "I call it a Thunder Stick. It can discharge a bolt of lightning every five seconds, each one should be powerful enough to stun a dragon. I made it for mother so she can better defend herself in the inner junkyard."
How the boy could create such a device from scrap metal and salvaged machinery was beyond him. Yet, he felt... measure of pride, nonetheless. After all, the boy's talent was a form of strength, the ability to create was much greater in magnitude as opposed to the ability to destroy. "Impressive. How much time did you spend in creating this?"
"A week, I suppose?" Argall shrugged, the Thunder Stick humming as the boy waved it around as thought it was the handle of a blade. And then, the boy swung the tube forward, unleashing a cackling bolt of lightning that incinerated a large metal plate, melting a portion of it into slag. "I didn't keep track of time."
The father smiled. And, for a moment, he wondered what sort of technological wonders his son would be capable of if he was given proper tools and resources to work with. Argall would be a technological powerhouse, an unrivaled inventor. The best part was that he was certain he'd live long enough to see his son reach greatness, to see the wonders and horrors he'd create. "I'm sure your mother will appreciate your gift, boy."
But, for now, he was just a child, despite his previously abnormal growth rate. And so a child he would be treated, until he grew to true adulthood.
Argall's face lit up at the compliment. Positive reinforcement, he'd learned, was the best and most efficient way to encourage a child's talents. "I hope so!"
They continued onward. Numerous noises and sounds echoed all around them, but neither the child nor the father were alarmed. There were creatures here, but they were tiny critters that steered clear of humans, queer beasts that preyed on the numerous rodents that dwelled in subterranean tunnels beneath the junkyard itself. There was no need to be wary of anything in these parts, close as they were to the edges. The dragons tended to converge at the central points of the junkyard, claiming vast territories with a mountain of scrap and junk, serving as their lair, while serpents lurked in the southern reaches of the junkyard, far from any city, where they hunted... huh... he wasn't sure what the serpents actually ate, since no one knew much about them - only that they were extremely large, extremely violent, and extremely dangerous.
A strange and thunderous bellow boomed from the clouds, like a powerful explosion. When the father looked up, however, he saw nothing amiss. Meteors were not uncommon, but none of them ever created a sound quite like that. Argall's head snapped up, eyes scanning the skies. "Father, what was that?"
"Probably just a meteor, boy." Thragg, formerly the Grand Regent of the Viltrumite Empire, answered. "Don't worry about it."