Chapter 18

° Reginald Val Johnson

° The Next Day

Matthew walked down a small hallway, heading for his locker, when he noticed a sudden commotion causing students to cluster around a particularly angry looking Todd.

Matthew leaned on the glass window to his side and reached out with his mind, wanting to get peek at what exactly was going on.

Once he did so, he found himself suddenly unsure how to proceed.

He saw a memory replaying throughout Todd's mind. Of Amber Bennett blackmailing him into giving Mark a piece of paper when her number in it, otherwise she'll reveal photos where Todd peeing himself well into the 4th grade. It went repeated over and over, the details skewing slightly each time but Matthew got the gist of it.

Matthew found himself to be rather impressed by Amber's tactics, but felt conflicted with her purpose.

He was still undecided if he liked Amber for Mark at all, given how they interacted before and what he knew of Todd's situation now. But he also wasn't sure how Mark felt about it.

What he did know was that he didn't want to force Mark into anything that he didn't like.

And so, Matthew decided to play spectator to the scene and surveyed Mark's thoughts from there.

He was momentarily impressed with himself at how easy it was to take a peek on people's minds now, but still held back on using it constantly. Only using it in times like these, where he wanted to see the whole picture of what was happening.

He watched as Todd angrily broke through the cluster of students and made a beeline for Mark, who was still busy looking through his own locker. Todd approached with Mark, pulled him by the cuffs of his clothes and slammed him into the lockers.

The sight made Matthew flinch as hints of anger coiled within him, suppressed not a moment later by his own willpower.

To his surprise, they only talked for a moment before Todd shoved the piece of paper to Mark's chest and stomped out of the way.

Todd saw Matthew looking and his eyes widened, giving Matthew a wide berth as he ran the rest of the way out of the hallway.

Matthew walked to Mark and acted innocent, "What was that?"

Mark looked at the paper in his hands and folded it up, "Nothing. Just something I...didn't expect to be given"

Matthew nodded knowingly, "I see"

Mark's phone rang and he answered it almost too quickly "Amber? I-I mean, uh, hello?"

Matthew gave him a teasing grin.

Mark ignored him and listened to his phone. His expression quickly turning serious as he did.

The look Mark gave him after the call ended was enough for Matthee to tell what exactly was wrong.

**

° New York

Once again, the Teen Team and the twins flew towards the sight of the recurred attack. And even through a mostly far and initial scan of the scene, Matthew could tell that things will be much worse than before.

The usual signs of smoke and destruction spilled all over, the only thing that stood out was the significant lack of bodies if any at all.

"I have bad news" Robot said after his initial scan.

"Oh! Robot's got bad news, everybody. Did ya hear that?" Rex, who was riding with Robot, asked in pure sarcasm "Hey, Robot, what's the bad news?"

"There are too many of them, their technology has advanced too far, and they've rendered themselves immune to our time stream" Robot paused before continuing "We should consider the city lost. I will contact Cecil and suggest a nuclear response"

"What?" Mark asked in disbelief, "No! No way!"

Matthew was stunned and a bit angered by the severe suggestion, "I've seen that happen before and let me tell you, I'm gonna do more than divert it out of the way". Inwardly, his opinion of Robot took a dip given the cold calculating display.

"We're not nuking anyone, Robot, and we're not giving up" Eve added.

"What are we, Fight Force?" Dupli-Kate chided as she leapt off the hovercycle.

"I love you, man, but sometimes, you've got a screw loose" Rex dissed as he too leapt off.

Not wasting any more time, Matthew flew near Mark and made a quick plan.

"Up for game?" he asked with a sly smile," The most tanks destroyed and platoons scattered wins, loser gets laundry duty for 2 weeks"

Mark smiled back "You're one".

Both broke off the group and quickly caused mayhem all over the field, punching through tanks and scattering Flaxans troops as they flew with great speed.

However, the Flaxans learned and already adapted.

As one, whole platoons of untouched Flaxans began firing small flat disks at them. Mark just flew out of range just in time, while Matthew simply dodged as he was in the thick of their forces, emerging from a tank he had just plowed through with ease.

He hadn't thought to dodge at all. Dozens of the disks scattered over Matthew's body, creating an interlocking grid-like formation over him before activating all at once.

A wave of undulating energy coursed through the disks, connecting each and every disk through a spider web of red energy, and Matthew almost immediately found his body going numb and still. He forced himself to move but only caused the disks to brighten his efforts. He quickly realized the situation he was in and felt angry at his own lack of caution.

"Oh, shit" he said, slightly relieved that he could still talk despite the apparent restraints.

He struggled against it, only managing to light himself more like a newly assembled christmas tree as the Flaxan soldiers slowly encircled him.

"Superboy!" Dupli-Kate shouted, focusing everyone's attention at Matthew.

Mark flew to help his brother but a metal hand clamped onto his ankle and stopped him in his track before slamming him onto the ground with a strong pull.

"Invincible!" Matthew shouted in anger, straining and struggling more furiously than before while at the same time the tanks and several sentries machines fired at his face. He bared the stack and focused his attention in getting himself out of the restraints.

His call was loud enough to be heard by all of the Teen Team, but their situation wouldn't allow them to respond or help without putting themselves at risk.

Dupli-Kate was dolling out her clones with every move, each one only lasting only seconds before an energy blast disintegrated them to dust.

Rex was no different as he frantically threw and leapt out of the line of fire to dodge the rain of energy bolts flying all around him.

Eve was trapped in a pink bubble, protecting herself from heavy Flaxan fire and Robot was getting bodied by electric knuckle wielding Flaxans who toyed with him.

The Teen Team were all preoccupied and everyone else could do nothing.

Matthew couldn't do anything but watch as Mark was throw away, past an overpass and nearly out of sight. The Flaxan that grabbed him was the same scarred one from before, but it was wearing an exoskeleton suit that made it even more distinctive compared to the others. It gave Matthew a malicious smile before turning and leaping towards where Mark was thrown.

He closed his eyes as another beam struck his face, which had been reading for a while now as it went on.

At that moment, Matthew decided that enough was enough.

He redoubled all his efforts, willing his muscles to their limits, to breaking free from whatever technology was somehow holding the current brunt of his viltrumite strength successfully. The disks continued to glow from the strain, becoming brighter and brighter until the intensity of it nearly matched the beams hitting Matthew's face.

He gritted his teeth and yelled loudly, his muscles bulged and strained until...he broke through.

The disks, having surpassed their strain capacity to the point of compromising its structural integrity, burned out from the inside and were flung off Matthew's body like high heat projectiles.

Each and every Flaxan near him fell to their knees in pained groans as the disks bore through their armor and flesh like bullets through wet paper.

Matthew caught himself on his knees as his body momentarily lost it's balance but had no time to care for them as he turned to rush to Mark's side. He paused mid-flight and turned his head moved back and forth between the Teen Team and his brother.

He had a choice to make. But he found that he didn't need to.

A familiar white and red streak passed the space above him, rushing straight towards where Mark was. Matthew let out a sigh he didn't know he was holding as he knew that his brother was safe at that moment, then turned back to the Flaxan army and made his move.

Starting by getting the Teen Team out of their individual predicaments. He helped Eve first, flinging off the Flaxans that were fixed on her and keeping her from helping out, before pulling Robot out of an encirclement of Flaxans.  Dupli-Kate and Rex came next, both of them were much easier to extract from the Flaxans given how they effectively managed to keep them away with a gruesome exploding clone strategy.

The Flaxans tried trapping Matthew again, throwing swarms of disks towards him as he passed, but he learned how to deal with them simply by rushing through thick groups so that they caught on their own forces instead of him.

Matthew was in the midst of breaking more Flaxan kneecaps and skulls when he noticed a large mechanical body flew over head and crash landed on the asphalt, face first, front of one of the portals. It was the scarred Flaxan, his armour heavily damaged from the landing itself and a large section torn off section on it's chest plate suggested the cause of such a landing.

Matthew looked up and saw the hero flying above, like a god overlooking the mortals below him.

His father in all his mustached glory.

Everyone from the Teen Team to the Flaxans paused what they were doing to look up, noticing the flying hero above them. Matthew and the Teen Team felt immense relief at his arrival, knowing that the situation would easily be dealt with now that he was here.

All the Flaxans saw, however,  was a daring human that had ragdolled their leader in a pure display of dominance that did not translate well in their minds.

As one, all of the Flaxans fired on the floating human.

Everyone watched as Omni-Man's figure seemed to disappear behind a hail of energy bolts, a thick layer of smoke emerged but dispersed just as quickly to reveal the unscathed figure of Omni-Man inside.

He sneered at the aliens and flew towards the fray like a rocket.

The next few moments was like watching a bowling ball plow through empty plastic water bottles as the young heroes watched Omni-Man easily destroy the Flaxan army by himself. Flaxan blood littered the grounds and explosions rocked the battlefield as he blurred from one position to another,  leaving nothing but defeated and severely injured bodies in his wake.

Matthew was awed and a little intimidated at watching his father work, taking note of his strategy and focusing on his movements enough for him to almost not notice Mark landing beside him. Mark let out a sigh of relief and also watched their father in admiration.

The battle all too quickly came to an end with the Flaxans retreat back into the portals.

All but one closed as they fled. The scarred Flaxan in power armor snarled at the troops that passed it, shouting in its alien language loid enough for Matthew to hear and understand and grin at, before it settled a hateful stare at Omni-Man.

Omni-Man saw the look and decided on his next course of action immediately.

He flew towards the scarred Flaxan, blasting through the air so fast that his sons couldn't react properly when he dragged the Flaxan and himself through the portal before it closed behind him.

"Dad!" Mark shouted in vain.

Matthew didn't even have the will to care about Mark's slip up with how stunned he was at the suddenness of his father's actions.

The Teen Team gathered behind them just as Mark shouted and they had another dose of surprise in them.

***

° Grayson Residence

The boys arrived in their home with a silence that alarmed Debbie while she was busy putting some work in her laptop. She turned to greet them but suddenly gasped at the state of their faces.

Mark's face was littered with bruises while Matthew's own face had a faint flush to it that wasn't going away.

"What happened?" Debbie asked worriedly.

"Flaxans. They trapped me and focused energy blast on my face, hence the prolonged blush" Matthew flatly said, gritting his teeth in annoyance at having reminded himself of his own mistake.

"Same thing. Dad saved us from them but...he...flew through one of their open portals" Mark said, explaining his worry.

Instead of sharing in the worry, however, Debbie just blinked and took the news without much of a reaction.

"Oh" she said, going back to work on her laptop "So he's gonna be late for dinner?"

Her reaction made the boys blink in confusion and mild surprise. Debbie noticed this when she glanced back and decided to explain.

"I was worried before because I've never seen your father so badly hurt" she explained "But taking on aliens in another dimension? That's just Tuesday"

The explanation eased some of the boy's worries, but they were still somewhat scared for their father's life regardless.

"I'm sure he's explaining nicely why they should leave us alone" Debbie added before she went back to her laptop.

Mark let out a low sigh, "Okay. Guess' we just have to wait"

"Or we could play something while we wait? I downloaded a new shooter game last time we opened it and haven't tried it yet" Matthew suggested.

Mark considered it and nodded.

They both spent a couple of minutes loading up and playing Matthew's new game before they decided to eat their dinner. Mark absently picked on his meal halfway through and seemed to waste time. Matthew and Debbie went on to finish theirs and separate.

Matthew sat on the couch and switched channels to find something interesting to pass the time, trying to distract himself from the worry he was feeling. A few things stood to him as the channels changed until he finally settled on a game show featuring a documentary about ancient Minoan culture.

A few more minutes passed until the house's door opened and Omni-Man finally walked in, looking a lot older than before with the full grey beard growing on his face and the near loss of coloration from his costume.

"I need a shower" was the first he said when he saw all of his family look at him.

"Dad!" Mark flew to hug him tightly, letting out a breath of relief as his father finally came home from wherever he ended up.

Matthew came in last, bear hugging the entire family as they all celebrated Nolan's return.

Just then, however, some breaking news interrupted the documentary. The news anchor delivering said news looked awfully dumbstruck.

{I'm-I'm at a loss for how to report this, but the Guardians of the Globe are dead}