All-Star Ōtsutsuki 37 (Invincible/Naruto OC-SI) (Patreon)

Whatever Anissa had been thinking, the actual task of superheroism would normally include, I figured she wasn’t expecting the notion that we were going to be roaming and not fighting people. Honestly, I had taken a bit to get used to the idea myself when I’d first arrived on Earth. Cecil had put it succinctly to me, though, in a way that I thought anyone could understand.

I, Rudy, Mark, hell, even The Immortal, were virtually gods amongst men. That wasn’t arrogance speaking; it was the fact. With an errant twitch of my arm, I could turn someone into a fine red mist before they even realized they were dead. All of our public outreach work went far into ensuring that realization never hit the zeitgeist.

It wasn’t enough to be a superhero who fought people. You had to be more than that, more inspiring, larger than life, and idyllic in some respects. Otherwise you were just a soldier with super strength. People liked soldiers, loved them even, under the right conditions. They also were frightening and othering, especially when you took into account their uniforms or purposeful unamity of orders and regulations.

Our costumes were bright, colorful, or at least evocative in some other cases. We were meant to be something that was correlated with protectors, rather than just another arm of law enforcement. No matter how much that actually was true.

“Say cheese!” I said, holding up a camera as Defender stood with a young girl who wanted to get her picture taken with me in the park. There weren’t any qualms with it from me, admittedly, though I’d also gone ahead and offered Defender as well. Introducing her to people as my prospective sidekick helped elicit the right excitement, to boot.

Even if Anissa was not nearly as excited by the prospect.

I’d admit, seeing her squirm under the weight of this task was pretty goddamn funny. Underneath her mask, her teeth weren’t quite grit, but her face might as well have been carved out of stone. “... Cheese.”

“With more enthusiasm, Defender! Little Melissa here wants a good picture.”

“Cheese!” She exclaimed, almost yelling, left eye twitching as she said it in tandem with the excited girl standing beside her.

“Ah, that’s perfect!” Really, after all of this I was hoping that I didn’t have to kill her at all. If we ended up becoming friends, this would be the perfect thing to tease her over in a few decades. Handing the cellphone back to the parents, I gave them my most winsome smile. “Thanks for letting me take that photo. It’s not everyday you get to commemorate your sidekick’s first photo op.”

“Are you kidding? Melissa’s going to be over the moon for ages,” the father grinned. “Thanks for staying for the photo!”

“It’s my pleasure. And Defender’s as well, right?”

“Correct,” Anissa answered, not sounding entirely enthused.

“She’s just new and shy to this sort of thing,” I assured the family, waving them off as I had to choke down my own chuckles.

As we began to walk through the park again, I got the feeling that she had a question on her mind. Something that needed to be asked, as she kept glancing my way.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

“... Pardon?”

“Sorry, it’s a human idiom. I’m asking you what you’re thinking.”

“I suppose I should likely ask what the real purpose of all of this is,” she asked. “Do people truly require this level of reassurance from their protectors?”

It was a question that made me hum, as I tilted my head from side to side, fluffy hair shifting slightly with the motion. “Calling it something they require is an overstatement. But it helps solve more problems than it creates. People will trust you more, they’ll ask fewer questions and take your word implicitly when they believe you’re a hero they can believe in.”

“Being strong helps, but it’s not enough to be strong, in my opinion. Even if your shoulders are the ones holding up the entire world, there’s something more that needs to be added to the mix to keep things stable.”

“You make it sound like you don’t know for sure.”

“I don’t,” I freely admitted. “I’ve barely been doing this for that long at all, compared to some people who’ve been doing this for decades. The only thing I’ve got going for me is that I’m physically attractive, incredibly powerful, and willing to learn. But that secret formula you need is something I’m still trying to find.”

“Then let me know when you find it.” She sounded so serious about the request that I couldn’t help but to crack a smile.

“Will do,” I said.

“And I wouldn’t mind trying to test your measure in some respect. I’ve been made aware of your power, but a spar wouldn’t be amiss to see the difference between you and I.”

That was enough to make me stop in the middle of the park path, crossing my arms as I looked squarely at Defender. “Are you serious?”

Her posture tensed, as a frown drifted over her features. “I’m always serious when it comes to seeing where I stand in terms of combat prowess.”

“Fair enough. I just didn’t want you to get demoralized when you inevitably lose.”

Anissa bristled at the implication. “You make it seem like it’s a foregone conclusion that you’re mightier.”

“Even without me using my trump cards? Yeah.” I’d been getting physically more powerful, even if I couldn’t benefit from the training equipment that Cecil and the GDA had been cooking up for Mark and Rudy yet. It was slow, but between that and my actual refinement of chakra enhancement over my body…

I was pretty sure that I could confidently manhandle Anissa. That was before opening any of the eight gates or employing senjutsu to really turn it into something humbling. It wasn’t arrogant to look at the reality of a situation and react accordingly, no matter how much the truth might have made people unhappy or uncomfortable.

Rather than being entirely angry, though, I was picking up no small amount of eagerness in the way she stared at me. “I look forward to testing myself against you. To see if you live up to your lofty reputation.”

“I do alright for myself,” I answered noncommittally. “Though, there’s something of a problem.”

“Hmm?”

“We obviously can’t fight in the middle of the city, which means that we’re going to need to go somewhere more remote. And you’re kind of slow on the ground, so I’m going to have to carry you.”

“... Surely it can’t be that bad,” she murmured, looking a little confused as to what it might entail. As a Viltrumite, I had some strong doubts as to whether or not she’d literally ever been carried in her entire life.

Probably not.

“We’ll see how you feel about it very shortly, I guess.”

As predicted, Anissa was not a fan of the position that she was in as we took off into the sky. Given that her suit and body were tough enough for me to really hit the gas, I was rocketing through the sky when I was well over the city, leaving the atmosphere briefly before dipping back down. Coasting toward the deserts of North America. They tended to be my favorite training grounds for a myriad of reasons.

In my arms, I could still hear her grumbling about the position. “This is humiliating.”

“There’s not a lot of good ways to carry people,” I pointed out. “Short of you riding on my back, like a horserider, it was either this or looping my arms under your armpits.”

According to Mark, that was the most uncomfortable way to be carried. So it was bridal style for the moment. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with it either, granted, but it did seem like this level of physical connection was just new for her. Or at least uncommon enough to make her squirm in my grasp.

“And stop shifting around so much!” I exclaimed.

“It’s demeaning! I’m sorry if it’s all I’m thinking about at this moment.”

“When you figure out how to fly, you can make decisions on how this is going to work. Until then, enjoy your ride on Taijitu Airlines!”

I could tell that struck a nerve in her, from the way her anger spiked. Still, besides gritting her teeth, Anissa didn’t do anything else as we flew through the skies toward my destination. There were a great many places in America that were still vast, flat, ecologically empty, and untouched wildernesses, where no one would care that much if we ended up destroying them in a fight.

Whether or not she’d accept the result was a different question entirely.

Southern Arizona was flat and empty, and if you went far out from civilization, there wasn’t a goddamn thing for miles around. Suitable enough for the purposes of two superhuman beings about to punch each other’s lights out, in my eyes. Well, she’d try, and I’d pull my force back enough not to brutalize her immediately.

The notion of this being even vaguely educational still needed to remain, as the two of us came to a stop. Hopping out of my arms, I rolled my neck as she moved away, standing a distance away. “We should probably go over a few ground rules.”

“Such as?”

“General limits to this spar. Is it to first blood? Till one of us yields? Or until unconsciousness?”

Pursing her lips, she frowned, eyebrows furrowing together in thought. “... When one of us yields would be the most effective. First blood is to be expected if either of us are meant to learn anything from the experience.”

Be still my beating heart. Someone who could actually understand the training principles behind my Ōtsutsuki regimen? All I’d needed was to find someone else from another planet to get what I was always angling for.

“Then let’s get started,” I grinned. “I’ll even give myself a handicap and won’t even fly. Wouldn’t want you to whine that it wasn’t fair after the fact.”

“Gracious of you,” she stated, and I swore I heard a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

“I’m the height of chivalry,” I drawled, as she darted forward aggressively, trying to close the distance between us.

Anissa was fast. Quick enough on her feet that the me of months ago might have genuinely been pressed, as her powerful legs pushed against the earth and sand beneath her, propelling the woman forward. With a series of jabs and punches, it was clear that she was trying to feel me out and get a good idea of my actual capabilities.

At this point, though, I didn’t see much of a reason to do anything but dodge. Hell, I had my hands behind my back as I weaved through the flurry of blows, speedy enough that I would have been nervous about Mark or Rudy taking the same onslaught. Worse yet was the fact that I suspected she was still holding back.

Not that I wasn’t doing the same myself.

It was still a good chance to get a feeling for her style. Whatever relevant martial arts Viltrumites practiced, it seemed largely to be based around their capacity to create their own leverage wherever they wished. Normally they used it to fly, but the principle could readily be applied to strikes if you were skilled enough.

Anissa was definitely skilled enough, coming in with chops of her hands that promised to hurt if any of them had landed. Cutting through air resistance, or maybe ignoring it entirely, based on the weird way their molecular make-ups tended to work. Whatever it was, she was good… but not that good.

My standard for hand-to-hand combat skills is higher these days. As was my actual capacity to put all of the taijutsu my Ōtsutsuki memories provided me into more efficient practice.

“Are you going to continue to flee like a coward, or actually try to hit me?” She asked, a touch of irritation in her voice.

“Were you reading my mind? I was just thinking it was time to start dishing out some damage.”

“Then do your wors—” She started to speak, not that she got to finish the sentence.

Not before I was sliding under one of her blows, and then driving my knee upward into a leaping knee to the face. Anissa barely had a chance to react before it impacted against her face, sending her flying into the air. I didn’t waste the chance to leap up after her, even as she twisted to try and orient herself to face me.

The effort didn’t avail her any, not when I was punching her chest and sending her flying into the desert. A long furrow was carved through the sand as she went tumbling through a rocky outcropping and the odd cactus here and there. Debris flew every which way as she did so until her hands whipped out and stalled her crash with sheer force.

Compared to how hard I’d hit Nolan before, that might as well have been a love tap. It still was faster than she could react to, though, and judging by the begrudging shock and respect on her face, she could tell that much.

“I seem to have mistaken your restraint for weakness.”

“It’s a common enough thing to do. I wouldn’t be too messed up about it if I were you,” I commented, approaching her with a congenial smile on my face. “But I would prepare yourself. I’m going to be properly fighting from here on out.”

There was just the faintest hint of a smile on her face as she moved into a proper fighting stance once more. “I wouldn’t prefer it any other way.”

“If only all my students had this commitment and excitement…” I sighed. “Well. Such is life, I guess.”

With those words, I crossed the space between us in under a second and was on her. Even restraining myself took effort, as I threw punches, kicks, and whirling movements that didn’t have even a modicum of truly wasted energy. Something that Anissa had to take every iota of her own strength to actually block, dodge, or fail to do either at times.

Whether or not she’d been pressed like this before was a point that ultimately didn’t matter. Bruises blooming across her fit form spoke of the fact that she was genuinely getting hurt, though if she was anything like Nolan or Mark, the damage would be gone in a day. What was more entertaining was watching the dawning sense of painful realization blossom across her features.

The fact that, for all of her strength, she wasn’t actually capable of overpowering or defeating the opponent that was in front of her. Shock bloomed across her mind, a little bit of resentment, even anger. It was a bad habit to get into enjoying the dissatisfaction and dismay of others, but after living in fear of Viltrumites for so long, I was going to be satisfied by it for a little longer.

As the minutes drew on, however, I felt as if it was time to bring things to a close. Toying with her could only serve so much of a purpose, and I felt like I had enough of her measure to genuinely think of a way to help her improve. At least at this point.

Instead of trading blows with her or dodging, I merely allowed her to strike me with as much force as she dared. It might as well have been as if she was punching an unyielding defense, as her eyes widened briefly, right before I went in for the attack of my own. And this time, I didn’t hold back.

An uppercut to the chin knocked upwards into the air, and then before she left my reach, I snagged her ankle with my right hand. Slamming her down against the ground before almost lazily kicking her in the diaphragm, making Anissa sputter as she went soaring across the sands. The sight of it made me think of skipping rocks.

I was there, though, blow after blow continuing the strikes, as concussive waves of force resounded out with each impact. Every time I thought she was about to recover and get back up, I hit her again, expecting the woman to yield. Perhaps that was my mistake, though. My own lack of conception of how insanely stubborn she was in her own right.

Even as she was prone and struggling to get back up, I was there, slamming my foot down against her head.

“ARRGH!”

“You should surrender,” I lazily said, taking in the ruined landscape of craters and broken rock formations. “This doesn’t end with you winning, you know. It was a given from the start.”

With a growl, she struggled further, and I merely poured more chakra into reinforcing my body. Shifted my foot so that it pressed against her throat, keeping her from gasping in more air. “Your resistance is meaningless. I didn’t even have to use my jutsu to take you down, you know. Just raw muscle power."

Then again, most of my jutsu were either too lethal or not lethal enough to be more than annoyances. A failing on my part, perhaps. Something to rectify in time. It didn’t change the fact in her eyes that I’d truly barely been taking her seriously.

I hadn’t needed to.

Her hands clawed at my foot, as part of her mask had come undone during the fight. It gave me the ability to see a single, baleful eye glaring out from the damaged mask. If she’d just been a normal person, would I have gone this far…? No. But being who she was, it did feel like I had a bit of an excuse to cut loose.

“Do you yield?” I asked again, pressing my foot a little further against her throat. Just hard enough where she could feel the pressure cutting off her air.

If I had the number of Viltrumites correctly, and I was pretty sure that I did, there was very much a might-made-right situation going on with their culture. Because they had so many innate advantages, they felt inclined to use their strength to dominate other people. Which was fine. I was just honoring their golden rule in my own way.

Looking up at me, I could feel her struggling to get up. Eyes burning underneath that mask, as she stared up at me, looking impassively down at her. Until all of a sudden that resistance stopped.

“I…y-yield…” She choked out.

For a moment I thought about continuing. Taking the opportunity to wipe her out right here and then. It would have been the logical thing to do, Cecil’s plan be damned. But it also felt deeply unsatisfying to that primal, battle-hungry part of my brain that I didn’t like to listen to.

If I was going to kill someone, it should be in the heat of battle, when they were giving it their all. Not when they were hamstrung by trying to downplay their own abilities.

So I released my foot off of her throat, trying to practice some measure of mercy. Maybe it was my good deed, after all of the lives I’d taken out in space. I didn’t regret doing so, and I wasn’t one of those idiots who thought if you killed a killer, you were just as bad as them. That was a dumb concept.

That didn’t mean I wanted to have it be my first habit if I could help it.

She gasped, rasping for breath, and coughing a bit too. From the damaged portion of her mask, I could see Anissa shooting me a look that was both fearful and furtive at the same time. Her emotions weren’t much better, either, as she got herself to her feet shakily.

Anger… and a hint of arousal, enough to take me totally aback. Why was the fact that I could beat the shit out of her with ease somehow something she liked, at least on some level? Was this a her thing, a Viltrumite thing, or was there just something I plainly didn’t understand about women?

You know what, I don’t even want to know. As long as she wasn’t going to try and sucker punch me for a round two, I didn’t care what she felt about the matter.

“Would you like some feedback on your fighting style?”

“Before, I’d have said that I don’t have much to improve, but facing you, I’m coming to realize that isn’t the case.” She gave an obedient dip of her head. “Anything you have to offer, I’ll take.”

“Well…”

There were a lot of little and large things that I felt like would add up to a more efficient fighting style. In terms of her strength, speed, and durability, I didn’t think there was much I could offer there. Viltrumites naturally got those as they aged, and frankly, I wasn’t going to push her to boost herself further in that respect.

In terms of technique, though, there were little things that I didn’t hesitate to offer. Despite her nominally being an enemy, this felt far more natural to me to do. Seeing any flaws in the way someone fought was like having something in your eye. I just felt inclined to comment on it, no matter what.

“...And when you came at me with the left hook, you should have followed it up with a knee as I twisted out of the way.”

“Would that have hit you?”

“No,” I admitted, shaking my head as I cracked a grin. Telling her that I could practically predict her movements with my byakugan was a nonstarter, for obvious reasons. “But it would have hit mostly anyone else.”

Her irritation spiked as she clicked her tongue, but she controlled it. Whatever she might have been thinking, she was at least smart enough to understand where we stood now. For the first time, I got to be the Mt. Tai that other people could not properly see.

I’ll admit… I liked it.

“No hard feelings about the spar?” I asked, watching her carefully. Her frustration did diffuse a bit at my words.

She seemed more baffled by the question than anything else that’d happened that day so far. Her eyebrows furrowed together in confusion. “Why would there be?”

“I kind of went above and beyond the boundaries of just a friendly spar. A little rougher than I’d like.”

“That’s the only way training should be. How else are the lessons meant to stick?”

“You’d think that, but some of these crybabies wheeze and whine when you punch them in the chest a little too hard.” Honestly, I’d only barely given Mark’s ribcage a hairline fracture one of the times we were training. He was already healing by the time we’d left.

“Then whoever you’ve been sparring with hasn’t been doing it right.”

“Thank you!”

Wait. I was being agreed with by a member of a race of space fascists that my training methods were appropriate. Was… was I in the wrong here?

No. It was my friends and teammates who were too weak. Yes, this felt like the correct takeaway to preserve my fragile worldview.

“Do you need a ride back to the city?”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” she nodded, taking a step closer to me.

I feigned confusion, though. “What are you doing?”

“... Preparing to enter your arms?” She seemed just as baffled.

“We don’t have to do that. How about this?” I waved a hand and created a black portal back to Chicago. “That ought to take you to the city limits.”

“Very useful. Thank you.” She took a step closer to it before pausing and looking at me. “Wait… why didn’t we do this instead of you carrying me?”

“Because it was funnier for me to carry you.”

The look of absolute anger, disdain, and barely restrained fury on her face made all of this worth it. Trolling Viltrumites was never going to get old, I think. They had reactions that were just frankly too priceless to miss.

Throwing her a slip of paper, she caught it, snapping her out of whatever angry tirade she was building herself up to. “What’s this?”

“My number. So we can properly keep in touch for the mentorship in superheroism. For now, you should get some rest. You look a mess.”

Anissa didn’t say anything further, stalking her way through the portal and leaving me alone in the desert. The moment she left, though, my laughter couldn’t help but spill forth from how much fun I’d just had messing with people. Was this sadism or just an enjoyment of teasing?

Whatever it was, maybe this whole harebrained scheme wouldn’t be that much of a burden after all.

“Generally, if I had to put her actual physical potential down, I’d estimate it to being underneath Nolan’s range but still stronger than basically anyone else on the planet.”

“Besides you,” Cecil added.

“Cecil, that’s a given. I’m the strongest thing alive on this planet. Not even the kaiju I take out can give me the same workout anymore.”

Maybe because I had exotic means to take them out, though. I was looking forward to using them as a method of renewable harvesting if I could find the right way to drain them of spiritual and physical energy. Chakra was a complete product, and the god trees could siphon it all from a planet’s organisms and life force. But that was an almost automatic process, save for the sacrifice required to actually get a fruit at the end.

I wanted something a little more complex and dealing with resources that weren’t as refined together. It was going, but given that I wasn’t so greedy for more power, it wasn’t a priority. Not yet, anyway. Not with all of the other things that were taking up my attention and would be taking my attention for the foreseeable future.

“Alright. That’s workable, I think.”

"How are the Reanimen-Puppets with the new Viltrumite corpses going?” I asked, trying to change the subject, if only for Cecil’s blood pressure.

“It’s going,” he grunted, my gambit failing as his dissatisfaction grew. “We might need you for some of the finer bits of penetrative work. Even in death, the bodies resist an incredible amount of damage.”

“At least that bodes well for their suitability for the project.”

He gave me a nod in return. “That’s what Sinclair’s hoping for as well. I’d almost believe that madman is looking forward to having you working alongside him again.”

I groaned. “Don’t say that, Cecil. You make it seem like we’re friends or something.”

D.A. Sinclair was an annoying guy, but I would concede that he had a truly beautiful mind. Revolutionary in how he looked at certain concepts and scientific principles. If he’d had just a smidgeon more morals, I could only imagine the end concepts would have been considerably less egregious. Or be used without wild ethical conundrums.

Such is life.

“I dunno. You’ve got a real way with the weirdos and oddballs, it seems…”

Glancing back at Cecil, I saw just the faintest hint of a smirk on his lips. Am I being teased by my boss? I’ll never recover from this aura loss.

“Whatever. I’ll type up a report on her capabilities so far, though she’s still holding back in some respects. Like her flight powers.”

“Whatever you can give us is useful. Our analysts are hungry, and it isn’t easy to always track you two with just pure drone or camera footage.”

“I guess you would need the most powerful cameras to track our movements…”

“You can estimate it, but eyewitness accounts and direct testimony help out a lot too with this sort of thing," Cecil admitted. “At a certain level of strength and speed, we just have to make broad approximations, as there’s only so many tools on Earth that can even let us make a good guess.”

“Works for me!”

“What’s your next move?”

“I’m… honestly not entirely sure. Keep on grinding, I suppose.”

Cecil shrugged. “Well, keep me abreast of any developments with our visitor while you’re at it. And I’ll do the same if anything slips your sight.”

“Will do.” Without any further aplomb, I made a portal and stepped out into Earth’s orbit.

Frankly, I was looking forward to spending some time on that would prove stress-free. Easy, simple, drama-free days, weeks, and months, where I could keep from having this massive sword of Damocles hanging over my head. As long as things continued to be stable like this, though, and I remained strong, I’d be on the road to protecting the Earth from any number of Viltrumites or other threats.

… And then the moment I had that thought, I realized I’d jinxed myself.

“Goddamnit.”

Author’s Notes

The premise of an Anissa romance is one that fundamentally requires me to build it up a little. To try and lay the groundwork for the concept that she can change, she is willing to change, and isn’t going to be irredeemable monster. Yeah, she did some screwed up stuff for most of her life. Thankfully she’s a nigh immortal space alien who can try to make up for it.

Or not. But as long as you’re living, that possibility for redemption exists, unless you’ve truly done some things too far beyond the pale in front of specific people. As it is now, I’m going to try and make it as realistic and messy as humanly possible, while there will also be some suspension of disbelief in other parts.

We’re heading into season 3, which will… have drama for other reasons. Good and bad. Specifically the Doc Seismic episode, where I will not allow the power scaling of this universe to break by how stupid this plot is.