Priority Alpha
"She's so beautiful." declared the blue ashen skinned man as his elongated right arm and hand traced once again over the glass of the growth tank and the woman within.
"Uh, yeah… really the best." I half heartedly agreed as I used the man's Executor Access to easily allow the All-Black to delve deeply into the Empire's information banks and to the true purpose of my visit to this section of the Omniverse, Modules. The vast array of technology is fine too, and this version of transient humanity achieved an interesting amount of SCIENCE, but the reality warping card system that links with their tech is the true prize.
"What a fool he is." my doppelganger whispered, yet he needed not as we prevented all sound from reaching him, "Even now he thinks he is a god. Like you. Like me."
"Of course he does. He is so in love with himself that he actually believes that there is no greater use of my time than granting his demented fantasy. That he is so important on the cosmic scale that it is only natural that all he desires comes to him." I chuckled as the All-Black continued its connection to the glowing white rootlike Arboriform.
"This meeting will be a shot in the arm for his very worst traits." my doppelganger mused as my armor symbiote thickened as it formed a biotechnological frame around me and I slotted in a very vanilla set of the universe's modules.
The frame took eight basic mods, with an extra slot in the aura and exilus categories. I picked Steel Fiber, Vitality, Flow, Streamline, Intensify, Stretch, Continuity, and Rage. I slotted Physique as my Aura and Power Drift into that Exilus Slot. Then I applied the Primed and Umbral powers to each of them and leveled them all up with the infinite power of the Void.
"OH SWEET JESUS TITTY FUCKING CHRIST! WHAT A RUSH!" I shouted as my power rose greatly due to the percentage based boosts granted by the modules.
And when you are dealing with nigh infinite cosmic power, even a one percent boost is redonc, let alone the over two thousand percent boost to my vitality granted just by Primed Umbral Vitality.
"Well Darkseid, let's see you top this." I grinned as the All-Black shifted into primary, secondary, and melee weapon tech configurations and received mods for each that provided similar boosts.
"See you around, Little Man." My doppelganger grinned as I stepped across universes and returned to my version of DC.
What a creep.
____________________________________________________________________________
"Oh come on, Kal." Mar-L whined as the older Kryptonian sat on the couch watching a recording of the Meteors making a comeback in the second game of the playoffs, "I fought Doomsday! How can I fight Doomsday, but be too young for the junior Justice League."
"The Team isn't a junior Justice League." Kal stated with one eye still on the game while Mar-L's mom came out with a tray of homemade hamburgers and fries, "And how exactly did you find out about them? They're classified."
Mar-L tried to hide his guilty face behind a delicious burger - something completely pointless in a house where everyone has X-Ray vision - but comforting anyways. The young boy thought for a minute, then realized that he isn't an only child and thus could pass the buck.
"Adar told me." he quickly blamed his undersea brother.
Kal simply accepted that answer and expressed his position, "And Adar won't be getting onto the team either. None of you are. It was a travesty that you were needed to fight Doomsday, Mar-L. You and your brothers. You're seven years old, much too young to be forced to make the kinds of decisions that Superheroes have to make. It isn't a matter of how strong or smart you are at all."
"I could just get a Symbiote to provide analytic help." Mar-L pressed the hot topic in the family.
"And then you'd never learn the critical thinking and quick judgment needed because you'll have outsourced your decision making to someone else, and ultimately to your father who controls all the Klyntar." Kal told him with clear disappointment in his tone.
"Yeah, well… I've seen what happens when people let him do their thinking for them and it's beautiful. The people in the Actually Invincible verse are so good and so well off that they are always providing relief efforts to other universes. Universes where they didn't have anyone like my dad to make things better and they just kept getting worse and worse." Mar-L countered and crossed his arms over his chest while looking away from his second cousin who performed more like an uncle.
"That's wonderful Mar-L. I'm happy to hear about that, I really am, but those people didn't choose to let Mark do their thinking." Kal-El signed and put a hand on Mar-L's shoulder, "He forced them to, and despite his good intentions and the good outcomes, he made everyone in a universe his slaves, and he knows that was wrong to do no matter how wonderful things are now. That's why your dad is here in this universe, convincing people to follow him rather than forcing them too. He's not looking to atone for what he did, but he is trying to find a better way."
Mar-L sat still for a minute, thinking about Kal-El's response and then spoke up, "Would you stop him? If you could."
The very brief amount of time between Mar-L asking the question and Kal-El shaking his head visibly surprised the boy.
"I wouldn't." Kal said with a very serious look on his face, "If I was there when it started, then yes, but not now. A lot of the members of the League feel differently about it, but I don't think defeating your dad would do any good, but would just do a whole lot of bad. It's very hard to make things better, Mar, and very easy to make them worse. That's something you learn as you grow up if you're really paying attention. Something may feel like the right thing to do, and maybe it's even the right thing to do in principle, but if what you do makes everything worse, was it really the action of a hero? It's only when your feelings, your mind, and your values are all oriented towards the good that a truly beautiful hero is born."
As Kal spoke, he had pointed to Mar-L's head and his heart and the young boy felt the weight of his older cousin's words, but at the same time he felt lighter than before.
____________________________________________________________________________
"It's all over! Game over!" Klarion the Witch Boy wailed at Vandal Savage's announcement that Priority Alpha had begun an unorthodox yet concerted effort into superheroism.
The members of this modern iteration of the ancient order known as The Light met digitally using their secure communications rooms that held the other members on screens in dimly lit rooms across the world.
"Operation: Justice Fuck." Lex Luthor hissed, "You have to be kidding me."
"You don't get it man, that's his game!" Klarion shouted, "He makes you think he's all Chaos with his zany showings like murdering a top hero team or fucking a bunch of bad bitches, but the guy is like… the living embodiment of tyrannical order! The Chaos is a lie!"
"This is absolutely ridiculous." Queen Bee spat, "The suspected most powerful being in the universe plans to spend his day fucking super villainesses into submission? A being so fearsome we won't even speak his name with the motivation of a horny teenage boy!"
"Protect yourself at all times L-4." spoke the synthesized voice of Brain, a literal brain in a jar attached to a robot body, "You are at significant risk if Priority Alpha turns his attention on you."
"Don't be so quick to dismiss this." Vandal Savage spoke for the first time since opening the meeting with this particular bombshell, "Priority Alpha has begun standard hero operations across the globe, and is ruthlessly exploiting the heavy sexual tension that often exists between heroes and villains. Any female subordinates are to be expressly forbidden from engaging in flirtatious dialogue with Priority Alpha. He shows a shocking closing capacity when an opening is presented, but seems to pull back when stonewalled. Use of powers for coercion has not been confirmed."
"Are we to continue to avoid Priority Alpha, Beta, and Charlie?" Lex Luthor asked with a sour face.
"Yes. Until we uncover some form of advantage over the Priority Heroes they are not to be sought out." Vandal confirmed.
"We are so fucked!" Klarion declared loudly.
"Some more literally than others." Queen Bee growled and the meeting continued onto other topics.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fun chapter. We got to see Mark making preparations for his beef with Darkseid by raiding the Orokin Empire from Warframe and establishing himself as the god of their Void. We also got another big scene between one of his sons and their super influence. I try my best to leave nothing on the table in my stories and I believe I have done a good job portraying Super Heroes at their best and worst in this story.
My PoV work is getting better with each chapter, but I still feel like I personally prefer single PoV stories, but that may be burnout from just how bogged down some excellent stories can get with worthless PoV characters that should have just stayed in the background.
I'd say the most surprising thing about writing this story has been that now almost half the chapters in an Invincible Story have taken place in DC. It ended up this way largely because in the source material Mark Greyson has an IQ of roughly 90. He is on the lower end of average intelligence and thus is not equipped to ever implement smart solutions to his problems and almost always cannot be reasoned with once he has a feeling about a subject. This is were the majority of Invincible drama comes from, the fact that the protagonist feels like one of your dipshit friends in high school suddenly became the strongest super hero in the world, which he is after his dad leaves earth.
Since I write all my heroes roughly at an IQ of 140 90% of the drama in Invincible evaporated.
Fortunately I believe the DC content has kicked ass, thus making up for the lacking Invincible content in this Invincible story.
You can support me and my family at
ko - fi . com / jmanm