Love

The air pressure around her cracked and most of her surroundings shattered. With how supercharged her senses were, the world around her moved into a state of slow motion. The kind that was already nearing the envelope on the strain for her body while the debris of the feeble, inferior structures that these species had started to crumble, destabilize, and crash into the ground. She gathered the forces of her flight beneath her feet and shot off into the air.

She reached speeds that broke the sound barrier ferociously, invoking a mighty roar like an explosion where she left an earth-shattering crater. The land-based vehicles of the local inhabitants were flattened as Anissa gathered all the force from her momentum through her fist. Angling her body just right to thrust it forward.

Her target was just barely a second away. The green-hooded man stared at her with disinterest, which in itself was a violation and tantamount disrespect to her, Anissa, survivor of the Great Scourge. One of the last few worthy females to serve the Viltrum Empire.

Yet this man, unnervingly looked at her as if she was less than anything he had seen in his life. As if she was weak. As if she was a pathetic nobody who was just as useless as any enemy he had faced thus far. Anissa did not know how to think of that.

She was furious, unbearably so…

"Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggghhh!" the accumulated forces of the planet's atmosphere constantly at odds with her and her abilities rallied to her cause as she neared her target by a hair's inch. It was like a growling thundercloud about to belch lightning, only to reach its designated target, and for it to miraculously dissipate as if all the cumulative forces were non-existent as his view of her.

The sheen of anomalous space-time around him, which now glowed in a bluish green shimmered as soon as her fist where his chest would have been as everything disappeared, leaving her in a shocked, angered, standstill.

All the remaining debris and environmental forces behind her, per gravity, then started falling. Their trajectory was a small, slightly open residential/park area where a small unimportant bust of a feeble human was flattened seconds later by a piece of one of the land-based vehicles. Below her, multiple houses around them exploded into smoke and debris or were rendered erased by her flying over them that pieces of their terrestrial shelters were scattered as far as the tallest buildings that were still standing.

Such wanton destruction boggled her mind, as she looked at this Eidolon, who remained unphased within the seconds of eye contact they shared until he pushed her arm away with a swipe of his right arm and grabbed her throat with his left hand. His grip was far weaker than any lifeform who had the means to touch her, but she was rendered unable to move as she felt her body going limp.

As if her brain and Viltrumite biology weren't able to counteract something that it was used to fighting against before. She had met a thousand flesh shapers, hypnotic abilities, and downright telekinetic forces brought down on her body, but her will, strength and biology were always able to fight against it. This? She felt helpless as she glared at him while he grabbed her closer.

Inspecting her, deeply staring into her eyes through that mask of his that only revealed so much of his emotions that it made her fury go over the limit. She willed her body to move as she eternally screamed, only for this monster to raise his right arm into the air…

KRACKA-THOOM!

The clouds darkened around them. The atmosphere changed drastically as light from the nearby star started to dwindle. The darkened and crackling sky started to belch lightning and abnormally strong winds as if a superstorm was about to manifest.

Anissa's eyes widened in shock at the amount of abilities displayed by this man as he raised her higher into the air…

KRAKA-THROUUUUMMMM!

A powerful shroud of lightning hit her body dead-center into her torso with enough force being funneled into her to compare against deadly solar storms in space, even to Viltrumites as she screamed. The force of the attack then managed to kickstart her bodily control back to her again as she tried to pry his hold on her to get away, only for the man to throw her as the spire of heavenly, yet anomalous power from the planet's atmosphere continued to hit her at full force.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGHH!"

She barreled down to the ground with the force of electricity hitting her that she started smelling burns from her armor-mesh bodysuit that was designed to handle even the most extreme forces in Space. She raised her arms, trying to block it only for her back to hit the pavement without warning as her body skidded two more times, creating large craters and devastation in her way, before landing violently into the base of a tall structure. One with a clock that collapsed into her due to its foundations being wrecked by her presence.

The nearby sign, stating 'Travis St.' wobbled as the metal folded into itself before falling into the crater, she made for herself. She quickly tried to get her bearings back, only to look back at the sky where this Eidolon levitated.

KRAKA-THOOM!

Coalescing around him were forces of unnatural weather that seemingly made even the ground she was on quake in fury. Little by little ever since they started their dance did she begin to realize how grave the situation was with this Earthling.

Was… he still an Earthling?

KRAKA-THROUUM!

As she ruminated on those disturbing thoughts (a first for her ever since the Scourge), she watched as the tallest nearby building suddenly burst into bright, yellow-orange light as a geyser of lava burst through it. Making it crumble as the heat, radiation, and energies constituting the anomalous skies and that of the geologically unstable ground were now coalescing.

Lightning started to grow into a color close to that of blood as it spiked around her.

It allowed Anissa to stand as she levitated from the ground trying to escape the deluge only to see Eidolon watching her, unphased by the devastation around them, spreading not just in this local city, but towards the rest of the continent steadily like a sickness about to be unleashed.

This was this world's protector?

What of their civilians? Their weak that they called innocents? She was accustomed to the 'barbarism' coined by other races of her own Viltrumite heritage but never before had she seen another lifeform, with an assumingly similar line of thought carelessly do this just because he wanted to be left alone. It baffled her.

For like every Viltrumite, she always looked at other lifeforms beneath her. Not even caring about what they thought or felt regardless of any action she took against them.

Was this… how they felt?

KRAKA-THOOM!

Lightning and trickles of what rain there was scorched the sky in a heinous blood-red. It reminded her of the Scourge. How many bodies littered the streets. How many of her own kindred, while weak as they were, lay soulless as blood seeped into puddles before forming a stream.

The image never left her. It was her pride and joy.

Well… pride perhaps in a misplaced sense, as some creatures would think so.

KRAKA-THOOM!

She dodged away as lightning once more rained in a barrage from the sky. Targeting her with forces that would decimate entire city blocks, creating pits the size of large meteorites that routinely touched the surfaces of uninhabited planets near their asteroid belts.

Nothing in the span of twenty-seven minutes or so did her efforts come to anything close to beating this monstrosity. Her actions were all in vain, from picking up buildings in sizes that rose upwards to several hundreds of feet, to tackling, rushing, or even trying to get anywhere close to him felt useless. He had too many abilities…

KRAKA-THROOUM!

Far too many to count and he was able to shift, change, and keep them online whilst in the middle of the battle with little to no issues or drawbacks. Her last attempt was her stretching the limits of her biology, forcing the Viltrumite heritage, the ability to bend physical laws around her while also forcing certain objects with her own field to lift and support things that would be deemed impossible in nature, stood no feasible chance, if at all against this man.

She flew as she tried to dodge all of the devastating forces around her with enough clarity as she was now being worn down despite her heart still willing to fight.

She flew through the now lava-ridden landscape that was unrecognizable from its prior state just barely half an hour ago. It was then that she turned her head, to look at where her enemy was only to see the terrain below her, grow malleable as if it was liquid…

BRWOUSH!

A malleable, yet still solid enough formation grew from below her. Dazed yet confused with everything around her, she started trying to get herself out, only to try and pull herself out of the wet material that surged and entangled her body as if it were a constrictor. Anissa screamed.

She pushed all her strength, barely managing to get out as chunks and pieces of the malleable ground started to erode, break, and shift around her, only for it all to constrict further around her neck, arms, and legs. Only her torso and head were the parts that managed to stick out as she screamed in bloody murder.

The Viltrumite woman did not even notice that the pillar was forcing her near to the Eidolon.

Anissa continued to scream while the world around her turned into a desolate landscape.

The Eidolon crossed his arms, staring at her as his green cape flew against the crackling skies filled with blood-red lightning and thunder. The sparse droplets of rain made the colors blend together into a sinister blooming sheen that made him almost deific.

It reminded her of the tales, the legends that Anissa would hear and read from her ancestors through their databanks. The intimidation, the way how unphased and unimpressed he was inevitably forced Anissa to stop screaming as her anger, turned into fearful awe…

KRAKA-THROUUMMMM!

… and doubt over this man's prowess into… something strange blooming within her.

"Finished with your tantrum?" the tired, bored voice of the Eidolon said. Echoing into her like she was in a zero gravity chamber simulating empty space. As if the sound of his voice was echoing into her brain like the one-eyed race she and her fellow Viltrumites nearly put to extinction.

He then leaned closer. "Seems so."

It was there that Anissa acknowledged a disturbing thought. The man moved unlike anything normal or natural in the known universe. It was like he was a puppet of a higher being. One that eschewed so much power that it made Anissa's bones shiver.

Anissa flinched as another lightning, as powerful and vibrant as the one before coursed behind him like a demented painting. He then opened his hands. The shimmer of anomalous space-time covering his body shimmered away in existence before he placed his palm into her face.

The Viltrumite woman then screamed unlike anything before in the entire millennia of her lifetime serving her people.

[Simulation Process 67.5%]

Torrents of data entered her mind. Coupled with her screaming, she saw images. Memories?

…A sheen or ray of light vaporized her entire existence as Eidolon levitated over her…

…another version of her screaming as matter, the kind that even pierced her skin started to manifest within her brain, her organs, and her entire body before she died in silence. Turning into a mosaic of both living and anomalous matter.

[Simulation Process 98.7%]

…multiple other memories surged within her as various abilities, many of the harrowing kind from the Eidolon, the monster destroyed her to the point that she could only continue screaming.

[AGREEMENT?]

She then saw stars… and then nothing.

Anissa shot up, grasping her breath before she realized that she was…

Alive?

She started patting her body, checking her surroundings before she noticed that she was clothed in something strange. Different. Like one of the many attires that females wore in Nolan's report to the Grand Regent of this 'Earth'. She then looked around and saw that she was in an abode.

A simple abode that was far smaller than even some of the facilities she'd been to, yet it radiated a sense of peace and plainness.

She was about to leave, to disseminate all of the experiences she had alone before conferring to Nolan and her other fellow Viltrumite, only to freeze and stop in place when the door to the room opened.

Revealing an unremarkable, similarly plain and drab man coming inside with a kindly smile. He held two mugs containing a liquid that she did not recognize, yet the aroma seemed pleasant.

Yet the one thing that made her lose all the blood on her persona was the green mask barely hanging on his coat pocket before she fell back on her behind in shock.

"You're awake." The man said, concerned, seemingly for her well-being.

Despite that, Anissa, a survivor of the Great Scourge, Monster, and Warrior of many massacres, wars, and genocides for the very first time felt the tingling sensation of her own urine trickle down her own pants. For fear overtook her completely.

"Oh shit… let me help you with that." The man said in a surge of concern and panic as he went close to her and tried to hold her in place, even pulling out tissues.

Fear with full, abject subservience in her eyes.

A most humiliating fate for any Viltrumite.

Yet she knew somehow in her heart that she was… lucky.

AN: As for why there's no civilians amidst the devastation… think of the entire fight being forced into a Labyrinth-like Simulation/Pocket world. One that's basically jacked to 11 due to all the power flourishing across the network currently.

Back to wholesome stuff next chapter though!