Inconceivable Ch. 28 (Invincible AU) (Patreon)

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

A/N: This is a poor use of Argan’s abilities…

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“Gahahaha! You come to pray at this obscene monument?! They were oppressors… racists… slave owners! I give you all a new god worthy of worship! Bow before DOC SEISMIC!”

In the weeks since his arrival on this planet, Argan had learned quite a lot about Earth and its inhabitants. Mostly, he’d learned that by and large the threats Earth faced were beneath him and his people. That did not mean, of course, that they weren’t doing their part. It just meant that the missions the GDA sent them on were oftentimes… tedious.

This one would most definitely have fallen into that category if it wasn’t for one key factor. Argan had been called upon by Cecil Stedman himself to fly to one of the humans’ greater monuments, a place where they had carved the faces of four of their best leaders into a mountainside.

A human man calling himself ‘Doc Seismic’ was attacking the area with bracers he’d supposedly designed himself. These bracers allowed him to release powerful vibrations capable of generating earthquakes and destroying his surrounding environment with ease.

He also seemed to enjoy prattling on and on about things, as his monologuing showed. Truth be told, the only reason Argan wasn’t more annoyed about being called upon for such a trivial task… was the woman flying up to the scene right alongside him.

War Woman looks over at him as they get closer, her large mace held in her grasp.

“Try to take him alive, alright? According to the GDA’s researchers, they believe ‘Doc Seismic’ has been giving himself concussions with those bracers of his. He’s not in his right mind. And keep in mind… people will almost certainly be watching this and recording us. The first priority is protecting any innocents from harm, the second priority is defending the monument, and the third priority is stopping Doc Seismic as… humanely as possible.”

Argan wordlessly tilts his head in acknowledgment. He had not found a chance to speak with War Woman in the time since he and Cecil had negotiated his people’s integration with Earth. As such, he had been intrigued by the opportunity this mission had afforded him.

… But before they could talk, Argan supposed he would have to accomplish the objectives.

Doc Seismic cackles as he unleashes the power of his bracers on the monument in front of him. Argan’s eyes narrow as one of the faces, the one with the beard separate from the others, comes clean off the mountainside. It begins to fall towards a group of humans on a catwalk below, one adult and three children.

Argan moves without hesitation to, as War Woman had said, prioritize the protection of ‘innocents’. It runs counter to his own upbringing of course. If the adult was not strong enough to survive a bit of falling rock, he would have been too weak to live on Viltrum. And the children should have been smarter and not been in such a position in the first place.

But Earth was not Viltrum. And Argan’s own beliefs were simple enough to set aside in this case, especially if it earned him the good will of humans. Without hesitation, he slams right through the falling rock face, using his body to not only send the massive stone carving off course, but also annihilate it, shattering it into many smaller pieces far less likely to harm anyone.

He hears War Woman make a noise of dismay somewhere behind him, but Argan isn’t sure why… he’d saved the four humans the rock was about to fall upon. And now it was time to deal with Doc Seismic. Only, when he reorients himself in the direction of the balding aged human scientist, he finds him staring up at him in shock.

“H-Holy shit, you just shattered Abraham Lincoln!”

Abraham Lincoln? Was that the man who’s visage had been carved into the mountainside? It mattered little, Argan figured.

“Are you here to help? To join me in throwing down our oppressors so we might make a new system?!”

… Those at the Global Defense Agency might be right. This human seemed addled even by Argan’s limited experience.

“No. I am not.”

As expected, his response causes any hope in Doc Seismic’s eyes to immediately curdle into anger and hatred.

“THEN DIE!”

The man proceeds to click his bracers together and bring them around, shoving them in Argan’s direction and creating some powerful waves of vibration. Said vibrations crash into Argan’s front… and are sliced in half by his body, breaking the air around him but finding him to be immovable.

Hm… to a normal Viltrumite, those might have been enough to push them back a few feet. But for Argan…

“What the-?”

Already tiring of this, Argan stops holding back. He arrives in front of the balding human a moment later, Doc Seismic’s eyes barely having time to widen at Argan’s speed. While the temptation to just take his head off of his shoulders is strong, War Woman was right to tell him to restrain himself. He can sense numerous recording devices trained on his person at this moment, many of which are held by civilians of all things.

And so, with a light huff, Argan reaches out and plucks the bracers straight off of Doc Seismic’s wrists before the man can so much as blink. He even refrains from breaking the aging human’s bones when he does so.

“Wha- what… h-how?”

Holding up the bracers, Argan studies them for a moment… but admittedly, he is no scientist. In the end, he simply shakes his head as he looks down at ‘Doc Seismic’ just in time for War Woman to arrive at his side.

“You are weak. How can you hope to change anything, given how pathetic you are?”

War Woman’s palm meets her face, even as Doc Seismic’s mouth opens and closes wordlessly for a few moments while he turns red with anger. Until finally, he begins to blow up, going into a tirade that hurts Argan’s ears more than the attack from his shitty bracers did.

Argan is happy to tune the man out, even as humans in uniforms that mark them as ‘law enforcement’ arrive a short time later to take the failed terrorist into custody. Meanwhile, a collection of GDA Agents also arrive in a helicopter and ask for the bracers, which Argan hands over without complaint.

One of those same GDA Agents then hands over a communication device, saying that the Director is on the other end. Argan takes it with a frown as Cecil begins to speak.

“Did you seriously have to break Abraham Lincoln’s face like that? You couldn’t… I don’t know, catch it and put it back or something?”

Argan tilts his head to the side.

“I was told the priority was protecting humans and that defending the monument came secondary.”

“Yes…”

“If I had spent time fixing the monument, it is possible that the enemy could have harmed more humans.”

There’s a moment of silence from the other end before Cecil just sighs.

“Right. Great. Well done I suppose. Look, why don’t you take the rest of the day off, Argan? Let War Woman show you around or something. If we need you, we’ll call.”

Argan furrows his brow as the communication device goes dead. Cecil Stedman was a strange man in many ways. Still, he’d also just given Argan what he wanted on a silver platter. That was… odd, was it not?

“Hey, let’s get out of here yeah?”

Looking over at War Woman, Argan remembers the numerous recording devices currently trained on them and nods, letting her lead the way back up into the air. As they fly out of range of the vast majority of those recording devices, War Woman eventually looks over at him in amusement.

“… Did you really have to call Doc Seismic ‘pathetic’?”

Argan arches a brow at the human woman.

“I saw no reason not to. He was pathetic.”

“… Yeah, he was. But saying it out loud isn’t very heroic, if you catch my meaning.”

Hm. Argan thought he might. Indeed, the GDA had given him and his fellow Viltrumites some ‘mandatory’ lessons on things like ‘public relations’ and ‘hero etiquette’. Killing, for instance, was not completely out of the question but it was often discouraged.

Though it largely depended on what they were up against. Massive kaiju like those who routinely crawled out of Earth’s oceans or even from beneath its crust were fair game. If they were big enough to destroy a human city just by walking through it, the humans didn’t tend to care if they were killed… in fact, they preferred it.

However, more normal sized enemies, especially those who were human or human-like… killing them out of hand, especially with the power that Argan and his fellow Viltrumites had at their fingertips, was considered… unreasonable.

It mattered little to him in the end, so long as the humans handled their own malcontents as well as the cleanup. Of course, if anyone threatened Viltrumite Interests at any point, they would not live to regret their mistakes. So far, that was not an issue… nor would Argan let it become one.

“I do not have much interest in being regarded as one of your world’s ‘heroes’. This PR that the Global Defense Agency has tried to teach to me and my people is of… passing usefulness but by and large I do not feel I have anything to prove to your species. I will do as I am asked as part of the agreement between my expedition and the GDA. That is enough.”

War Woman makes a noise in the back of her throat at that, before suddenly starting to slow down. Argan slows down as well and then follows her as she brings them both down for a landing.

“I see. I suppose I’m getting a better idea of the sort of man that you are, Argan.”

Argan tilts his head to the side as his feet touch solid ground once more.

“Indeed?”

Looking him right in the eye, War Woman smirks.

“Yes. You are a man of singular conviction, aren’t you? You know what you want… and you will stop at nothing to get it.”

For the briefest of seconds Argan is taken back to the moment where he held his father in his hands and tore Thragg’s head from his body. His hands flex at his sides in remembrance, but Argan does not let them curl into fists, maintaining his self-control.

“… That is true, yes.”

War Woman nods sharply… and then gives him a considering look.

“You know, I personally asked for Cecil to deploy you with me on today’s mission. I wanted to get a better measure of you… and I thought it might be a decent debut. Sure, you’ve helped out here and there, but nothing overly public or televised yet. People are definitely going to be talking about you after this, though you’ll probably have quite a few detractors after smashing through Lincoln’s likeness.”

She’d personally asked for him? Argan arches his brow at that admission, even as he shakes his head at the rest of her words.

“I care not what any ‘detractors’ think of me so long as they keep their displeasure at a distance. And this idea of a debut… hm, I do not see any reason to announce myself to this world.”

After all, Earth would come to know him in its own way as time went on. As the centuries passed and the Viltrumite population was rebuilt birth by birth. The average human would die and pass on but Argan would remain. People like Cecil Stedman might live for another hundred or two hundred years thanks to Viltrumite medicine, but they would eventually be gone as well. And yet, still Argan would remain.

When monuments like the one that they had fought near today were gone, eroded by time and the elements, Argan and his people would remain and the humans… the humans would have evolved, transformed by the Viltrumites living among them.

Argan did not need to ingratiate with the humans living today, because the change that he and his people were bringing was ultimately inevitable.

That said, not all living humans would be gone in a thousand years. The Immortal for instance, seemed to truly live up to his name for all that he was weaker than most Viltrumites. And this woman in front of him, ‘War Woman’, was said to be from an entirely different era as well. Who was to say how long she would live?

He had already admitted, both to himself and Anissa, that he was curious about this woman. But now Argan found himself wondering… was she curious about him?

“I think you have an interesting perspective on things, Argan. Especially as someone who doesn’t come from our world. With that said… would you let me buy you dinner, perhaps?”

Before he can even respond, War Woman suddenly reaches for her chest… and there’s a flash of light as she transforms out of her armor, her weapon disappearing entirely and leaving her dressed in normal human garments.

“Ah. Apologies, I should introduce myself properly before I ask things like that. I’m Holly… Holly Haven. It’s a delight to meet you officially.”

Argan tilts his head to the side again as she offers out a hand. After a moment, he reaches out and takes it, giving it a shake. Hm… ‘buying him dinner’. Argan had heard about this, mostly from his warriors’ escapades on Earth so far. War Woman, or rather Holly… was asking him on a ‘date’.

… Very well. This seemed like a decent first step in human courtship if nothing else.

“I will have to change first, but that should not be difficult to arrange. Yes, I would enjoy ‘dinner’ with you, Holly Haven. Mm… can we have ‘Korean BBQ’?”

Holly blinks at the request, even wrinkling her nose a bit.

“I suppose we could… but if you’re just asking because that’s the most complex dish you’ve had since coming to Earth, I’m quite certain I can introduce you to something even better if you just give me the chance.”

Oh? Something better than Debbie Grayson’s cooking? Now this Argan would like to see…

“Very well. Show me.”

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A/N: “A honeypot? What’s that? Can I eat it?” – Argan probably

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