"-ark! Mark!"

"Unnh?" Mark said, intelligently.

"Oh my god, you're okay, I was so worried!"

"M- Mom?"

"That's right, honey, I'm here, I'm here, it's okay."

I waited patiently for Debbie to calm down just a little bit. I mean, c'mon, lady, it's not like both of the people you share a house with just suffered near-death experiences in space.

(That was a joke.)

"...Ophiuchus?" Mark asked, his eyes opened and focused long enough to notice my presence.

"Hey Mark," I said. "Sorry about what happened. I imagine you've got some questions, but first, lemme ask you something: can I get you anything? Food? A drink? Painkillers?"

"I'm..." Mark grunted. "...I'm fine. Sore, but... I feel better than I probably should, after that... hyperspace bomb you set off..."

Debbie inhaled sharply through her teeth.

----------------------------------------

Ten minutes ago...

"You did what?!" Debbie demanded.

"You saw the security camera footage," I said. "You know what Nolan did."

"But why Mark?!" Debbie asked.

"Mark... wasn't supposed to be there," I said. "I timed it for when Mark would still be in school, and when he showed up anyways, I shoved him through a portal to another planet, thinking he'd just sit out the fight there. But... I made a mistake. Mark was able to find out what I had planned, and made his way to where I was keeping the four-dimensional bomb; he knew I'd be opening a portal to bring it through, so he could get back to the fight, and save his dad."

"And you couldn't have shown him the proof beforehand?" Debbie asked.

"He's seventeen, Debbie," I said, sighing. "I wish we could have told you two in advance, but neither of you are trained actors who we could trust to keep a secret this big from your husband and his father. We couldn't let Nolan know we were onto him, or else... he might go on a rampage." I swallowed. "You deserve to know the truth, so I'm telling you all this now, but... I could not, in good conscience, have risked your life by letting you know this before we neutralized Nolan."

"...Is he... dead?"

"..."

----------------------------------------

Now

"I'm sorry, Mark," I said. "I wish I could've told you what was up before I did this, but... this was top-secret, need-to-know-basis. That's why I did this while you were at school."

"...Well," Mark said, "you got me out of a statistics test I would've bombed, so... I guess I can't stay that mad at you."

"Ah, good, the locals told you what was going on?"

"I... I didn't believe it at first, I thought they were lying, just trying to justify why my dad had to die, but..." Mark sighed. "...It's the truth, isn't it?"

"All that and worse," Nolan said quietly, from his own hospital bed.

Nolan was in much, much worse shape than Mark was; he'd had all his missing bits regrown and reattached, sure, but he wasn't as young as Mark was, and he was starting to feel that age now, in a way he never had before.

"It's over for me, isn't it?" Nolan asked. "After what I've done... There's no making up for that, is there?"

"Nothing is strictly impossible," I said, turning to address the middle-aged man. "But... well, as you're about to become very aware... there are a lot of things that're only technically possible for you, these days."

"What... what does that mean?" Mark asked.

"It means," Nolan said, "your old man sure feels like an old man."

"What?" Mark asked.

"When I detonated that 'hyperspace bomb,' as you described it," I began, "I caused a huge, destructive ripple through the fourth dimension, which is where Viltrumites keep all the organs that give them their powers. You two... are pretty much just ordinary mortal humans, now. No flight, no super-strength, and, uh... no holding your breath in space. Mark, you'll find that you are no longer colorblind or near-sighted, and that is because we had to regrow your eyes after we fished your body out of space."

"I thought my eyes were sore," Nolan remarked. "...So, what now? Do I stand trial for murder?"

"Pretty much, yeah," I said, nodding. "I've negotiated a good sentence for you, if you plead guilty and behave yourself. Five years, with mandatory therapy sessions, visits from family, and a prison cell that isn't a bare concrete box with a cot and a toilet."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Why?" Nolan asked. "What... Why are you being this... this nice to me, after all that? Weren't you trying to kill me?"

"I was, but..." I shrugged. "You were my peer right up until that bomb went off. Then you became just another mortal man, who's done some terrible things and yet has a spark of good in him still. I can't promise you redemption and forgiveness, Nolan; it's not mine to give, for what you've done."

"You are one of the people I killed," Nolan pointed out.

"I can forgive you for that, but I can't forgive you on my wife's behalf, or on behalf of the genuinely dead. And... I can't forgive you on behalf of the family you lied to for all these years. Only they can do that, and... only if they want to." I turned to look at Mark and Debbie, who were... conflicted, to say the least. "What I can say is that, once you get out... you're a free man. You can make a new life for yourself, with the time you've got left."

"Which would be..?"

"About thirty to forty years, give or take," I said. "Your powers aren't coming back, I'm damn certain of that. The healing factor that would have restored your powers is gone too. You're just a mortal man now, and... well, there's only so much more damage you can cause, now."

"What... about my powers?" Mark asked.

"Those are also gone forever," I said. "No more late-night, spur-of-the-moment flights to Tibet or Nigeria for you, but... also, no more risking your life in fights every week, or dealing with your new-found reputation as a flake who couldn't stick to a schedule if your life depended on it."

"That's... Mmn." Mark frowned.

"But," I continued, "since you didn't try to conquer Earth, I'm willing to give you those powers back. Just... not now. Sit and think about what I'm offering you, and what it means for you. I'll talk to you in a month or two, see how you feel about it then."

Mark nodded, wordlessly.

"The clinic wants to keep you two another day, for observation, so get comfortable," I said. "You'll be free to go tomorrow. Anyone need anything while I'm here?"

"...I would like to get back to writing my next book," Nolan said, grinning a little. "I was sitting down to write that before you interrupted me."

"Good news," I said, clapping my hands and opening a portal. "Your laptop did survive the fight, although... not unscathed. We migrated everything on it over to a new one, though. Here you go."

I set the laptop onto an over-bed table, and rolled it up to Nolan.

"Now, I'm sure you three have a lot of familial arguing to do, so I'll get out of your hair. Take care."

----------------------------------------

"I can't believe you didn't kill Omni-Man," Immortal complained.

"I try to avoid doing that when I can, even when the victim would be a person I don't like," I said dryly. "His powers are gone, and he'll die of old age soon enough. He's not a threat anymore, and therefore, it's no longer okay for me to kill him, or even stand idly by and intentionally let him die."

"It's not the worst code of ethics I've heard," Cecil said. "Well, Earth is safe from Viltrumite conquest, I guess. What now?"

"Well, among other things, Earth is not safe from Viltrumite conquest," I said. "At some point, someone's going to come check in on Nolan, and they're gonna respond poorly to the news he's either de-powered or dead. So... what's next for me is refining my methods, and leading a military coalition to break the back of Viltrumite imperialism, and leaving Earth to sort itself out. You're smart people, you'll figure it out."

"What do we tell people?" Immortal asked.

"You're smart people, you'll figure it out."

----------------------------------------

"You jerk! I thought you were dead!"

"I missed you too, Evelyn," I said, patting the teenager's head as she clung to me tightly.

"Thank you for making Octavia and Quinta," Eve said. "They've been great to me."

"Well, about that..."

"Did you not create Octavia and Quinta?" Eve asked.

"Kinda-sorta," I said. "See, I'm a psychic, and one of the psychic powers I've mastered is splitting my mind into a bunch of semi-independent threads, like in a computer."

"I know what threads are, yeah. Are you saying...?"

"Octavia and Quinta weren't autonomous, person-smart robots. They were mindless drones being piloted by one of my threads."

"...Thanks for the laptop, then," Eve said.

"Do you like it?" I asked.

"It's pretty good, yeah," Eve said, nodding. "It runs everything pretty fast, and it's pretty easy to put the screen on a stand if I want to sit down for a while."

"Yesssss, another convert," I hissed. "You have no idea how validating it is that you also agree that laptops are an unergonomic form factor."

Eve huffed in amusement. "Dork."

"Yeah, and? You're the one who kept coming back to spend time with me, little dorkling. You're the one who wanted me to adopt you away from your parents."

"Your point being?" Eve said. "You're still a dork."

"...Fine," I said. "I see how it is. My darling baby girl hates me and wants me to suffer."

"Eyup."

"Ohhhh, my heart! Betrayed by my own kin! Truly, the only thing that could possibly salve my wounded soul is to eat at one of the local restaurants my darling Evelyn has surely worked up the courage to visit!"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Do you like seafood?"

"Not particularly. What else you got?"

"Well..."

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"Commodores," I said, stepping onto the bridge of my flagship, the Star Destroyer Undaunted. "Are the fleets ready?"

"Red Fleet ready," Commodore Cho said.

"Blue Fleet ready," Commodore Santiago said.

"Green Fleet ready," Commodore Nellis said.

"Prepare to leap," I said. "Viltrum has already declared war on us, when they sent Nolan. We shall declare that we've noticed. On my mark. Three. Two. One. Mark."

The backdrop of stars blurred into lines as the fleets made the jump to lightspeed.