Project ROWDY 2-24B (Patreon)

“So, you went to a planet of giant purple people eaters?”The rice in front of him had gone cold about wenty minutes ago, but that didn’t stop Mark from swallowing another spoonful. He’d probably have been done eating by now if he could get done answering questions, and those questions would be probably over with if another one didn’t get thrown at him before he could make it halfway through the last. “Purple what?”“People eaters.” Boomer repeated the back half of what he’d just said, the blond boy sounding it out especially slow like he’d said something perfectly normal. “Like the song.”Mark’s spoon fell, forgotten again under another tangent. “What song?”“Sheb Wooley.” Brick answered that for him, Boomer nodding along as if this was common knowledge. “1958.”“How… wha…” Mark swallowed a sigh along with another bite of rice, eyes narrowed at the blond boy still awaiting his answer. Cold as it was, he wasn’t going to let anything stop him from enjoying his mom’s cooking, the first thing he’d eaten in two months that didn’t threaten to fight him on the way down.  “...they’re bugs, Boomer. Like, praying mantises, with the shells and everyth-.”“Carapaces.” Another of Brick’s corrections came quick enough that Mark blinked his way. “You mean carapaces.”“...y-yeah, that.” Mark wasn’t entirely sure what a carapace was but he wasn’t going to try and correct the super-smart kid at the table. Rolling with it, he glanced back at the still-listening Boomer. “They’ve got carapaces. But also skyscrapers and ships and even a whole capital city… before the Viltrumites came through it.”“Hmm. Hm.” Boomer raised a finger, pointing it at Mark. “Do they have a queen? Is she the biggest one?”“Yes, they do have a queen. No, she’s not the biggest one.”“The queen’s always the biggest one.”“One sec...” Brick set his fork down at the edge of his plate, his third helping of rice and chicken over and done with. “You said they live a year, right?

Mark fought the urge to frown at the reminder, keeping his eyes on his plate instead of the two-month old two-year old at the table. “About that, yeah.”

Boomer leaned forward, words an over-loud whisper that the whole room caught. "A year, Brick."

“I just heard him, Boom.” A palm to Boomer’s face pushed the boy back into his seat as Brick refused to take his eyes off Mark. “A year, though. But that barely seems long enough for anything.”

"Yeah, I get that, but they don’t think about it like that.” Mark answered back, nearly waving around his spoon until he remembered he was holding it. “Ten weeks and they’re already grown up and they get like six months of adulthood and a job or whatever else they need to do." Mark’s eyes slid out the back door, rising into the open sky for a moment. “One of them flew me back here and the guy was probably a quarter of the way through his whole life and he was just fine with it.”

"That's insaaaaane.” Boomer breathed the word out, finding more syllables from it than Mark thought possible. “That's, like, that's a school year. That's one school year. Bro, that's one school yea—"

"I know." Mark nodded with another bite. “It’s crazy.”

"They're born and then they graduate and then they die?"

“Doubt it.” Brick clicked his tongue. "That rate of aging? They probably don't go to school.”

Blue eyes narrowed. "You don't know that."

“He’s right.” Mark’s answer had Boomer gape his way. "They don't go to school."

"H-How’d y-! Boomer snapped his attention between Brick and Mark, mouth still open, before settling on his smug brother. “You've never even met one!"

Mark got maybe four more sentences in before Thraxa itself needed a bit more explaining just to ease Boomer’s mix of curiosity and annoyance. After that, he had to go into more detail about the Thraxans in particular, then the mini-Viltrumite war that tore up the planet when Mark showed up.

Every single answer opened up two more holes and six more crazy questions from Boomer, one hard question from Brick and nothing at all from Butch on his fifth plate. Around the point where he had to say the words worm dinner that tasted like peanut butter out loud, Mark understood that this was probably going to take all afternoon.

Mom had the baby by then, picking the little guy up across the table as Brick pressed Mark on ‘Thraxa’s orbital period’ like he was supposed to know what that meant. Shifting the baby against her shoulder with a hand flat on his back, Mom stood there and stared the purple-skinned infant in the face. "And this is your father's." The words weren’t a question as they left her lips. “This… this little guy.”

Mark had already said as much. Sure, he’d skipped over it as much as he could, but everyone at the table — Mom included — already knew.

“Y-” For some reason, his mom asking the obvious did something to his throat. “Yeah.”

"With a… " She seemed to have a similar frog in her throat, speaking the rest of the words into the top of the baby’s head. "With one of them."

"Her name was Andressa."

An eyebrow went high. "Was."

"She—” Mark shook his head quickly before anyone could get the wrong idea. “No, no, she’s alive. A good bit older, considering how they age, but…” He heard himself and stopped, the analog clock beside the stove ticking oddly loud. "She's alive."

“...so is your father.”Another not-question.“Yeah, mom. They tried but…” Mark swallowed something that was neither rice or chicken. “But they couldn’t kill him.”

She nodded again, one hand cradling his brother’s head. "He's alive and he's in one of… his people’s prisons."

"From what they told me…” Mark nodded again. “Yeah."

She hummed again, quiet for a second before another word left her. "...Alive."

"Mom."

Another hum slid out of her tightly-pressed lips as she finally found a seat again, that cradling hand rubbing a small head of black hair."Okay, okay, okay, wait!” Boomer leaned forward in his chair, missing the mood completely as he finally had the opportunity to voice something he’d been visibly building up to. Mark wasn’t blind, especially considering Boomer built toward things the way a teapot did. “So the bugs lied to you to do a Jerry Springer with your dad?"

…is this kid serious? Mark opened his mouth, trying to find something else to say before he finally landed on all he could go with. "...basically."

Butch went sideways in his chair laughing, food finally forgotten past the mouthful he was still chewing on.

"What's Jerry Springer?" 

"What's Jerry Spr—” Boomer's hands hit the table, blue eyes on Brick in clear shock. “Bro. Brooooo.”

"That’s not an answer."“Bro!” Both of Boomer’s hands thrust themselves in Brick’s direction, all the while Butch doubled down on his cackling as Brick’s question sent him into overdrive. “You’re supposed to be the smart one!”Red eyes narrowed at Boomer. “...that’s still not an answer.”

"It's the — you know the, ‘You are not the father’ guy, and then they throw chairs!"

“Okay?” Brick’s eyebrows went high. “And they throw chairs why?”

"Because that's the show!"

"That sounds dumb."

"That’s the show!"

"I don’t see whey throw chairs at the Jerry guy."

"No, at each other,” Boomer’s frown deepened, clear frustration on his face. “Why would they throw them at Jerry?"

"Then why’s the show named after him?"

"Oh my god, shut up.” Butch had his forehead on the table. “Shut up, both of you—"

"You're the one laughing!"

"'Cause you're stupid! You're both stupid!” Green eyes glared out as Butch choked down his chuckles. “It's a talk show!"

"Boomer didn’t really describe a lot of talking."“... you gotta watch more TV, big bro.”

Mark ate, thankful the conversation had slid off him long enough to get three-quarters of the way through his plate. Soon enough, Boomer’s attention span got bored of Jerry Springer and un-bored of the baby.

"So, he gonna stay purple or what?"

That was honestly a good question, something Mark couldn’t deny and something he’d thought about a little himself. Unfortunately, all he could offer the blonde was his best “idunno” with his mouth still full.

"So maybe he's just, like, currently purple."

"He could be a baby for another twenty hours or another twenty years." The words left Mark with a shrug of his shoulders. "Who knows how Viltrumite and Thraxan genes mix? ‘Currently’ doesn’t really mean anything."

Mark didn’t miss the way his mom’s hand stopped rubbing the baby’s head.

“Uh-huh. Who cares about color?” Butch leaned over. "You know how strong's he gonna get?"

"Butch…”“Yeah-huh?”Mark gave the green-eyed boy a look. “He’s not even three months old.” 

"Yeah, and? He’s one of you guys.” Butch shrugged with a snort. “When’re the powers gonna kick in?”

"...are you trying to fight a baby?"

"Hey, hey, hey…” Butch held his hands up. “We were fighting as soon as we were born."

"Four months."

Mark blinked towards the redheaded brother, Butch’s weird question forgotten. "What?"

Red eyes blinked back at him. "Your dad was gone four months before you left.” Elbows on the table, Brick leaned on the table as he kept speaking. “Crossing however many light-years, made first contact, became their emperor and produced a child. In four months.”“...Yeah?”“How.”

"How? I don—” Mark shook his head with a frown. “Why do you care about that?"

Brick's shoulders moved about an inch. "...it's impressive?"

Impressive. Mark’s hand came off the table and rubbed at his nose. “...okay. Impressive, Brick?”“What? It is. Objectively.”

"I said okay." Mark rubbed his eyes with that same hand as his other one dragged the plate closer to him. “...anyway, did I miss anything while I was gone?”

"Radioactive zombie Chinese super-terrorist." Boomer answered instantly, rapid-fire as usual.

Mark waited for the rest of it, the blond super-kid making faces at the baby. It only took a few seconds for him to realize there wasn’t a rest of it. "Really?"

Brick nodded for the already-distracted Boomer. "Really."

"Like an actual—"

"Cecil nuked him back in 2013. He died. Then there was another nuke a month ago that brought him back to life..." Brick took a sip from his glass of apple juice. "There was also a giant reality-warping alien-god thing too."

"...what."

“Yeah.” Butch snorted. “And then multiversal telepathic Martians attacked Chicago."

"...Holy."

"Chicago's still there, though." Boomer giggled into the baby’s face, the purple-skinned little guy laughing his head off in return. “Mostly.”

Butch snorted again. "Mostly."

"Like, yeah?” Boomer looked over. “Most of it! Most of it's there."

“Mental-Martians were lame, though.” Butch shook his head. "The god guy was sick, though." 

"Not a god technically.” “Here he goes again…” Butch let out a sigh at his brother’s correction. “With the technically’s and the potentially and the blahblahblah.”“Not a god. Omnipotus was a Level 9 reality warper that fed on the energy released from a planet by his own dimensional destabilization. Pretty simple.”“Level Nine… uh-huh.” Mark’s head was still spinning at the back-and-forth from all the brothers as they filled him in on what he’d missed. “Simple stuff.”"On top of that…” Brick rolled his eyes. “The dimensional rupture we made getting rid of the guy is gonna be a problem for years the way it’s refusing to close. Robot's got three teams on it and none of them can tell me what it's doing past messing up Cecil’s teleporter."

Mark sat back.

Two months. All of this had happened in two months. Crazy.  That all this happened in the short while he was gone was still hard to process. Especially when he normally only had to deal with a few super-powered bank robbers and the occasional kaiju or alien attack. Mark sighed as he looked over the table, his brother making a bubbling noise back at Boomer as the blonde made a raspberry.

Boomer gasped. "He likes me."

"He likes everybody, genius." Butch stood on top of his chair in a sudden blur, pulling a face that involved his tongue sticking out as far as he could get it — the perfect conditions to get a laugh out of the little alien boy. “See?”

"Careful with the baby.” It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Butch or anything but the kid had a temper and not a lot of patience. “Careful, alright?”

"I'm not gonna crush the baby!"“No one said anything about crushing.” Mark’s voice pitched a bit higher, the wording making him flinching. “Why’d you bring up crushing?”

“Alright, enough with the baby stuff.” Butch’s palm slapped the table again, the thirteen-year-old looking his way. “You said you beat a Viltrumite, right?”

Mark turned his spoon over, thinking about the purple-haired woman and the feel of her throat under his thumbs. "...Kinda. Sorta."

"Kinda sorta. What's kinda sorta mean?" Butch’s hands went up. “You break her or not?”

"It means I didn't d-”The light in the kitchen went gold from one split second to another, pressure suddenly dropping low out of nowhere. What the- Mark was out of his chair the second the wind kicked up, napkins kicked off the table as his fists clenched tight in front of him. 

"Debbie, apologies for dropping in." The light dropped, the gray-haired form of Cecil Stedman standing there as he straightened his cuffs. “Mark. Good to see you back on Earth.”

"I met my dad." He blinked as the words blurted out of him. Why did I say that?

“Yeah…” Cecil raised one hand. “We're gonna have a very long, very classified conversation about all that later but that’s not why I’m here. At least not for you."“I just…” Mark blinked at the odd casualness from Cecil. I thought he’d be mad I left or something. Shaking his head, he stared back at the GDA Director. “Just thought you’d want to know.”“Trust me, I do want to know. I'm gonna want to know for about a couple hours in a room with no windows.” Cecil clicked his tongue at the end of the drawl, gaze sliding off and past Mark completely. He didn’t miss the way the old man’s attention landed on his brother for a second but Cecil didn’t say anything as his gaze dropped to the Boys as they floated up to Mark’s height. “But Earth’s currently got another problem and I need the Boys.”

Brick raised an eyebrow, arms folded over his chest. “What kind of problem?”“The kind that requires a lot of age-inappopriate violence.”“Hehehe.” A sound like a soft thunderclap rang out as Butch punched his palm. “My favorite kind.”

"Wait—" Mark took a step forward, adrenaline running too hot to sit back down now. "I'm coming too."

Cecil looked back at him, starting at the face and working his way down. All the way past the sleeveless tunic in gold trim and down to the skirt.

"...In that?"