Inconceivable Ch. 9 (Invincible AU) (Patreon)

(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N: Nolan reports to his Grand Regent.

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“Twenty years ago, I was tasked with finding a world populated by a species compatible with Viltrumite Genetics. I was not just to steadily weaken and prepare the planet for eventual conquest overtime but also sire a half-blood… and in the event that said half-blood inherited our abilities, conquer the planet so that we Viltrumites might begin to repopulate our species.”

… What?

Argan stares at Nolan. The other Viltrumite’s words slide across his mind like water, only half-permeating. Because… none of what Nolan was saying made any sense. After all, it sounded as though he was claiming Argan’s father had his own plans for rebuilding their people. But if that were the case…

General Kregg clears his throat.

“I was not told of this. Why? Why was this mission so secret?”

Looking between the two of them, Nolan shakes his head.

“I do not know. Grand Regent… the former Grand Regent swore me to secrecy but did not explain his reasoning. If the mission was a success, I was to report it to him and only him once I had finished conquering the planet in question.”

This didn’t make any sense. If Thragg understood that they were in an untenable position, if he’d even gone so far as to send one of their best and brightest to look for a solution… then why? Why had he not said anything to Argan? Why had he let his son kill him without whispering a word of this before he expired?

Blood is pounding in Argan’s ears and his hands have curled into fists. He doesn’t realize he’s breathing heavily until the air itself around him starts to crackle from his nostrils flaring. Every fiber of his being is taut, every muscle on his body is pulsing. The ground beneath his feet cracks and both Kregg and Nolan are buffeted and forced to take a step back and brace themselves.

He had committed patricide in order to save their people. He had killed his father with his own hands after a thousand years of being ignored because he’d thought there was no other way. And now he finds out that Thragg, seemingly on a whim, had secretly been exploring the very path he’d been arguing for… and refused to breathe a word of it to anyone, even when he was about to die.

It made no sense. It was maddening. It was-!

“Grand Regent!”

General Kregg’s voice breaks through the sound of blood rushing in his ears and in an instant Argan gets himself back under control. In an instant, the air settles around him as he slowly exhales without the force of a gale in his every breath.

… It doesn’t matter what his father’s motivations were. It doesn’t matter what the previous Grand Regent was thinking. Perhaps Thragg was so stubborn that he refused to save his own life even on the brink of death. Perhaps he even thought Nolan’s mission a failure and had dismissed the possibility outright. Or perhaps he believed, in the wake of Argan’s victory over him, that letting his son usher in a new age without him in the way was for the best.

It didn’t matter. Argan tells himself that, forces himself to believe that, and pushes hard on the emotions that continue to threaten to overwhelm him. He pushes them down deep within himself, compressing them into nothing so that he might focus on what truly matters. The present… and the future.

Finally in control again, Argan looks to Nolan. He can see that the other Viltrumite is slightly shaken but the instant he makes eye contact, Nolan straightens up instinctively.

“Report. Did you succeed?”

Nolan hesitates, just for a moment. And then… he dips his head.

“… Yes.”

It takes Argan a second to process. He’d honestly been expecting a ‘no’. Only when he fully internalizes Nolan’s answer does it feel like he’s just taken a blow heavier than any physical attack he’s ever weathered.

Yes. Yes, Nolan had found a planet with a species compatible with their own. Yes he had sired a half-blood who had inherited their abilities. Yes.

“It took some time. Maya… my daughter, she did not show any of her Viltrumite Heritage for eighteen years. In fact, it was only about a week before I received my recall orders that she developed her abilities. She came into them quickly though. She learned to fly on her own within hours and we began her training immediately.”

A week. The universe worked in funny ways sometimes, didn’t it? If Konan had died even a week earlier, causing Argan to act sooner, Nolan might have returned to Viltrum with news of failure instead of success. If Konan hadn’t died at all, Argan might have stayed his hand for years longer, allowing time for Nolan to report his success to Thragg directly. His father might not have needed to die if he’d heard of where their people’s future lay with his own ears.

… But there’s no point dwelling on hypotheticals. There’s no point in worrying about what could have been. All that mattered now was what would be.

“What is the name of this world, Nolan?”

“Earth, Grand Regent.”

Argan’s brow furrows a bit.

“They call their planet… dirt?”

Nolan shrugs his shoulders in response, prompting Argan to let out a low, dry laugh. In the end, what does it really matter what the world is called? It is their salvation all the same.

“No matter. It would seem we have our destination then, don’t we?”

Argan notes both happiness and irritation flash across Nolan’s face at that. Both are so quick that you might miss them, there one moment and gone the next. Still, he does not let the elite warrior’s reaction pass unremarked.

“What is it, Nolan? Speak your mind… for bringing me this information, you have more than earned that right.”

He hesitates again despite Argan’s words… before dipping his head.

“Apologies, Grand Regent. It’s just that… if the General’s recall message had come mere hours later, I would have moved forward with my plan to dispatch the planet’s primary defensive force, a group known as the ‘Guardians of the Globe’. I could have slaughtered them and had the planet weakened already in advance of our arrival. Now they will still need to be taken care of for our eventual conquest.”

Pausing, Argan frowns.

“… No. We will not conquer this ‘Earth’.”

Both Nolan and Kregg look surprised by that. Finally breaking his silence, Kregg clears his throat.

“Grand Regent? I don’t understand.”

Argan isn’t surprised by that. The General is eternally military-minded, after all. He was probably already drawing up battle plans and subjugation stratagems while Argan and Nolan spoke. But no, that couldn’t be the way they went about things. Not this time.

“We are abandoning the Empire. We are destroying our homeworld so that nobody can follow us wherever we choose to go. If we simply conquer the planet we’re retreating to, it will be much too obvious to our enemies. I do not intend for us to plant a flag on this ‘Earth’ and rename it New Viltrum. Our people must come first.”

He can tell that even now the other two struggle to make sense of his words. Even though he’s said it again and again, it runs counter to millennia of indoctrination and conditioning, so he’ll almost certainly have to say it dozens of times more.

Trying to put it a way they might be able to internalize easier, Argan sighs.

“To me, Viltrum is not a place… it is her people. This planet we stand on now might have been where we were born, but it is not where we must die. If we are to rebuild, if we are to bring forth a new generation of Viltrumites into the universe… then we must do it where our enemies will not look for us. That means we don’t simply take over this ‘Earth’ place and put statues of the Emperor and my father all over its landscape.”

Slowly, Kregg nods.

“I think I understand, Grand Regent. It runs counter to every fiber of my being and every instinct in my body, but… you want us to hide. To slip away and remain undetected for as long as it takes to repopulate.”

Argan inclines his head.

“Indeed. We cannot draw too much attention to ourselves. At the same time, we must do everything in our power to safeguard this new world of ours. Nolan, you mentioned these ‘Guardians of the Globe’. They are Earth’s mightiest protectors, the strongest examples of this compatible species?”

Nolan hesitates at that.

“… The compatible species that currently dominates the Earth are called humans. Not every member of the Guardians is human, however.”

Immediately, Argan’s eyes narrow.

“How much contact does this Earth have with the greater galaxy?”

But thankfully Nolan is quick to shake his head and assuage his budding worries.

“Almost none, Grand Regent. While there are non-humans on Earth, they are usually local to the Star System or come from the planet’s oceans. Sometimes it suffers from alien invasions, but nobody that is aware of us. Except…”

Here, Nolan pauses and trails off for a moment. Argan frowns.

“Out with it, Nolan.”

Letting out a sigh, the other Viltrumite crosses his arms over his chest.

“There is one alien who visits Earth regularly. A Unopan who calls himself ‘Allen’. He called himself an ‘evaluation officer’ for the Coalition of Planets, sent to make sure Earth was capable of protecting itself.”

Argan’s frown deepens in confusion. A Unopan? The Viltrumite Empire had all but wiped out the Unopans… for one to seemingly bandy words with someone like Nolan was strange…

“I believe he never actually recognized me as a Viltrumite. I deigned to let him live the handful of times he showed up in Earth’s orbit because I believed his sudden disappearance might prompt a deeper investigation.”

That… Argan slowly nods. That was wise enough, he felt.

“It sounds as though we need merely keep our heads down and allow you to continue to send him on his way if he ever shows up again. In the meantime, Earth remains perfect for our plans. These Guardians you speak of might even prove to be worthy mates for some of our warriors if they are truly as capable as you say.”

Nolan doesn’t look like he knows how to feel about that so Argan lifts a hand.

“Do not worry. Whichever one you mated with in order to produce your offspring, we will instruct our warriors not to pursue them.”

Rather than looking relieved, however, Nolan actually looks taken aback.

“Ah… no Grand Regent. My daughter was not born of any of the Guardians of the Globe. I chose a fertile but otherwise ordinary human woman to bear my seed… in order to ensure the viability of the general human population bearing Viltrumite children.”

Ah. Of course. A sacrifice that Viltrum would almost certainly come to thank him for, in the long run. Argan could only imagine how frustrating it would be to have to be careful with a fragile lesser life form, in order to avoid breaking them in the process of copulation.

Nolan though, seems to take his silence as something else, hastening to explain.

“I assure you, Grand Regent… never once have I wavered in my loyalty to our people. She’s more of a… pet to me than anything else.”

… What? Argan blinks, giving Nolan a strange look at that. Kregg is doing the same, out of the corner of Argan’s eye. A pet? A pet that he’d copulated and had a child with? That was… well, let it not be said that Argan would judge the other Viltrumite for his predilections. Well no, he was judging Nolan a little bit… alright, actually he was judging Nolan a lot.

“Please do not refer to these humans as ‘pets’ to any other Viltrumites, Nolan. It might become difficult for some of our warriors to ‘perform’ if they think we are asking them to commit bestiality.”

Nolan’s eyes widen and he immediately shakes his head.

“I don’t mean it like that! It’s just that humans only live a hundred years at most, so in terms of life span they are gone in the blink of an eye!”

Oh. That was… a marginally better explanation. Argan frowns as he considers that new information.

“Hm, unfortunate… but there are plenty of them, right?”

Nolan nods, quick to move on from the pet part of the conversation.

“Yes, Grand Regent, there are billions and billions of them. As many humans live today as Viltrumites existed back before the Scourge Virus decimated our people.”

Excellent. More than excellent, if this daughter of Nolan’s was everything he’d said she was, this was precisely what their people needed. Despite himself, Argan finds the corners of his mouth turning upwards into an honest smile.

“Good. Very good. Then we know where we’re going. General Kregg, begin the preparations for our departure… and for the destruction of Viltrum. Nolan, you will return to Earth to prepare it for our arrival. Do not kill any human that might be worthy of bearing Viltrumite seed, is that understood?”

“Yes Grand Regent!”

Both Kregg and Nolan salute him before flying off to carry out their respective orders. Argan watches them go for a moment… before turning and letting out a scream that shatters the ground around him and turns every nearby building in a large radius to rubble.

His stubborn, idiotic, braindead fool of a father had forced him to kill him despite knowing full well that Argan’s dream for their people could have been realized any day with the success of Nolan’s mission.

If he could, he would go back and kill Thragg all over again for the other Viltrumite’s stupidity!

Fortunately, this entire planet wasn’t going to exist for much longer… so in the meantime, Argan didn’t have to worry about holding back. He could destroy as much of his surroundings as he wanted, so long as the rest of the Viltrumites made sure to give him a wide berth…

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A/N: Worldwide rage room. Argan needs it v.v

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Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13mQsWaTGKxrbNOitsjRgd1nwi-yLwuC_8OlOHoovc2E/edit?tab=t.0