Chapter Text
Viltrum, alternate universe, 6 years before the birth of Mark Grayson
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Conquest stood above the bloody mixture of blood, bone, brains, and entrails that had once been a Viltrumite. He'd killed them by punching out the hearts when it got boring, the rest was just entertainment. The man in front of him, an alien of a strange and deformed nature was screaming "No, no, this is all wrong! I wasn't meant to be in this place, to be in this ti-" He was silenced when Conquest's prosthesis formed a grip of iron around his throat.
"I'll take your silence now."
A squeeze, another shower of gore, and then Conquest turned back to see the impassive face of the Grand Regent.
"That creature said he was from Earth."
"Yes."
Thragg brushed his chin.
"And those two Viltrumites, these rebels-" he turned to look at the Great Nolan, who froze suddenly.
"Grand Regent, I didn't-"
"I'm aware." The answer was acerbic. "That is why you're still alive."
The Great Nolan went silent.
"Very well," Thragg mused. "I was going to annex that world but we cannot afford that."
He turned to Conquest.
"You, my great weapon, will go there. Find that world, and kill them all. If it can produce things like those twins, if that's what they were-" he looked at the mutilated bodies of several of his guards with complete dispassion-"then it must be eliminated. That is what you do best. Don't do it swiftly. Peel the world like an onion, glut yourself on those hearts, and then return."
"Yes, Grand Regent."
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The memory paused for him as he had stepped out of his spaceship only to find himself staring at a gigantic monster that bellowed in an incomprehensible roaring howl that made the air shiver. For just a moment his grin was every bit as sadistic as his name and then he'd let himself raise himself into the air and he cut loose. No playing with his food tonight, this had to be swift and easy, a way to make these puny creatures know fear, the prelude to slaughter. In the event the creature, facing one of the oldest and most powerful Viltrumites of the entire empire, one that made even Thragg uneasy, died. It did not die pleasantly, it did not die well, and when it was done he was standing in a pool of its blood and found himself puzzled.
Those were not screams, as he'd thought. They were.....cheers. The thought chilled him. It awakened something within him then. He would like to claim, in the benefits of hindsight, when the future took the course none, certainly not he himself nor the Grand Regent, would have expected that it took him time. He would never truthfully lose the relish for slaughter or sadism, that was indeed a part of who and what he was, and it had made him a monster even by Viltrumite standards. He would never apologize for it, either. Apologies didn't resurrect the dead or bring life back to the worlds he'd laid waste. And the alien standing in front of him with a scarred cheek spoke.
"You're not from around here, are you?"
A pause.
"I am from the planet Viltrum."
Another pause.
"Thought so."
Conquest looked around.
"They are.....cheering for me."
"You saved their lives. I lead the Global Defense Agency. I keep this world safe from dangers. Like you."
Conquest snorted.
"There are no dangers like me."
"There are always dangers like you."
Conquest could have pushed the point but elected not to. The cheers kept ringing in his head and with them the questions about them, about why. So he followed this Cecil in the air and one of his helicopters and was taken to what he would come to know well, Global Defense Agency headquarters. He would follow the alien in and sat down.
"So what do they call you?"
"Conquest."
Silence.
"Strange name."
He winced.
"My people did not feel and do not feel that I deserve one."
"I see."
More silence.
"Those cheers."
"Yes?"
"They saw me. They saw me fight and kill a creature upon stepping out of a spaceship. I pulled no punches, I enjoyed myself doing what I do best. And they.....were pleased."
Cecil paused.
"Yes?" It was a question and it wasn't.
"If I do more of this, would it be-"
He paused. The prospect was too immediately terrifying and Cecil gave him a very, very long look and his eyes briefly widened.
"So you are not here to live up to your name?"
Another silence.
"In truth I had thought, and expected, that I was. I..."
He paused.
"I realize how much this may be to ask, but I would like six months here, on this world. A chance to explore it. To....to discover things. I can just stay here, if I wish?"
More silence.
"Provided you do not seek to live up to your name."
A long silence.
"I think I can restrain myself."
"I certainly hope so."
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Tens of thousands of years he had fought in the ranks of the Viltrum Empire. So long that the name he'd been given as a young man was lost. Atrocities he'd done, fighting he'd done. He'd scourged entire worlds as a living weapon. And he still was that. Where various individuals, some of them brightly clad and costumed, were foolish enough to challenge him it took him very little to scare them off. That part was satisfying. But here, these people, they trusted him. He was spoken to, from Cecil on down, not as Conquest the Destroyer, but as a man among men, and this was taken as a given. He would meet others, first the one that called himself the Immortal.
War Woman next, and slowly all of these Guardians of the Globe. It was strange, so very strange. When he fought the brightly-clad men or women, or various monsters, he was welcomed. Not as a weapon, but cheered in the ways the others were. Tens of thousands of years, and the prospects of this new world, of no longer being lonely brought a shift that had been there, at first, from the first cheers but it had taken him all this time to realize-
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"Cecil?"
He blinked, seeing the huge Viltrumite.
"Yes?"
"I wish to be one of these......Guardians."
Cecil exhaled slowly.
"I....I am glad."
Conquest snorted.
"And I think it in the best interests of myself, and of others, to tell you the full truth, and give you the full warnings here."
He paced for a moment.
"Six months ago my planet saw a visit by a man, if that's really what he was, I believe him to be one of your supervillains. He called himself Angstrom Levy. Power deformed him. His brains took over a significant chunk of his back. The strangest thing is that he had two beings with him. Of my own kind. Viltrumites."
Cecil blinked.
"Earth did not-"
"We know." Conquest grinned. "At least in part. Grand Regent Thragg felt this world a threat to Viltrum, so he sent me to kill it. If I had chosen the familiar path your world would be a bloodsoaked mess and I'd be glutting myself on hearts to my heart's content."
Cecil blinked.
"I've fought for the Viltrum Empire for tens of thousands of years. And I will tell you, Cecil, that they made me less than a man. A culture based on strength, on glorification of atrocities. Good as evil, evil as good. And in all our long history, there has been but one of us who questioned these assumptions. Until now."
He paced again.
"My society expects me to choose between being reduced to less than a beast, the name I was given so unused even I've forgotten it."
A pained look crossed his face, then.
"And here, where I am a man, among men. Where I can and I do have the right to see, and to speak, and to think thus. And plenty of fights, so I don't lose what makes me strong."
A long pause.
"If I understand you correctly, you are a warlord who's taken relish in slaughter."
"Yes."
"And.......you are here, because Earth-"
"Allows me to be a man. Between this life, as one of your heroes, and that of Viltrum, it is no choice at all."
A long pause.
"But I will also warn you that Viltrum will realize your planet survived. They will think of me as a mindless slaughterer, and insofar as I've been that it's because the weapon they made me is all I've been allowed to be. When Earth survives, they'll assume Rognars or something like that got me. It's a rough old Galaxy out there, there are beings that can hurt Viltrumites. Rognars cost me the rest of this arm-" he smacked his prosthesis-"and my eye. You see, it was originally going to be the Great Nolan sent here."
"Now-lan?"
"Yes, but it's spelled..." for a moment Conquest paused. "A very remarkable coincidence across millions of years' difference and a much higher form of civilization, but Nolan and Nolan are the same spelling."
"Interesting."
"As I said, it was going to be him. They will assume I am dead. And I suspect the Grand Regent, in the end, will send the Great Nolan."
Cecil nodded.
"I am willing to change very swiftly. For me, my world and the life I led meant I have done great evil, but I can change. And I want to."
A shadow crossed his face. "I will do what I can, if Nolan shows up. Thragg was going to take a different approach here. Nolan was going to come here, breed with an Earth woman. Thragg saw the power of those two little monsters that I beat to death. He'll want that power, he'll feel entitled to it."
Cecil nodded again, "Ah."
"Yes." Conquest nodded.
"Then in that case I would offer you a name, if you would-"
"Yes."
Conquest paused.
"Connor."
"Connor Quest." Cecil blinked, then nodded, a soft wry laugh following.
"Similar to what I've been called," a misty look went into his good eye, "but a name, a name. A world where I can be a man."
"You will need a name, and a costume."
Conquest nodded.
"I have no interest in keeping anything except this-" his knuckles rapped on the prosthesis.
"Any suggestions?"
Conquest thought.
"Vanguard."
Cecil nodded.
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2 years later, Viltrum
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"He must be dead." Thragg shook his head, then turned to Nolan.
"Are you sure?"
Thragg paused, then nodded.
"Of course I am. Conquest is a beast, a dangerously effective beast, but a beast all the same. That Earth still exists means he must have fallen to the kind of thing he wishes."
The Great Nolan paused, then nodded.
"Two years later than I expected, but I send you to your task."
He nodded as Nolan left, and then went back to his throne and the skull that was there beside it, staring at it. Even if he no longer talked to it these days, the sight of it kept him in that proper mood, and focus, and in all the ways that he needed to be and should have been.
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And indeed, things to a point unfolded as Vanguard had predicted. Another Viltrumite starship. The Great Nolan landing. Another monster, this one Vanguard was content to leave the Great Nolan to fight. If he lived, he lived. If he died, he died. He did not die. He'd torn it in half. Vanguard would find himself watching the video and spending time carefully away from Nolan. There was going to be a time and a place for Connor Quest to show the Great Nolan that he had survived, and he would have to maximize it. For the first time, he understood at least partially why the Betrayer had made the Scourge Virus, what it had taken him to do so. Understanding was not forgiveness, there was nothing that could change that, but he understood.
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"You're not from around here."
The same words, but with a more ironic tone.
"I am the-"
"A Viltrumite."
Nolan paused, wrong-footed.
"You know-"
"About Viltrumites, yes. You could definitely say so."
Nolan paused.
"How-"
"When we trust you enough, we will tell you."
A pause.
"Fair enough."
"Honey-"
"All right, dear." His response was affable. This too was a gift without equal. First acceptance, actual friendship. All of his friends, the Immortal, Darwking, Martian Man, Ghost Man, Aquarus. And his woman, a wife. A wife. The woman here in Provo who'd charmed the old monster and whom he'd accepted. The woman, and his dogs. What importance, in the event, the shadow of Viltrum when his pregnant wife wanted him? Connor Quest, Mixed Martial Arts trainer, went in to see Sara standing in the doorway of their bedroom, waggling her eyebrows, and he couldn't resist a laugh as he stepped in to follow her.
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Omni-Man paused when he'd stared with very wide eyes at a sudden impossible image in what these primitives called newspapers. The image of a huge imposing man with a golden prosthesis, what Earth called a Walrus mustache, an eye white and sightless and marked with a scar. He wore an outfit of blue and red, with a V in a golden triangle on the chest, and a red cape after it, his boots blue.
"Impossible," he breathed. No, this had to be something else. The idea of Conquest abandoning their world, their entire civilization like the damned Traitor? For this planet?
Omni-Man would become Nolan Grayson, writer, who turned his adventures and life as the Great Nolan into a set of science fiction novels that sold very well indeed. He even included a couple of times when he'd seen Conquest in action, if changing the name. It was meant to be a shot across the bow and yet Vanguard, as Conquest had renamed himself, continued to stay well away from him.
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A year later
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"You changed."
He was not surprised to see Cecil in his house, even if he'd shushed him from being too loud. The children were sleeping.
"Yes, I did." There was a proud tone to his voice.
"Could this Nolan? You told the truth. Not a pleasant one but you did speak it. He lied."
"Of course he did." Connor huffed. "Nolan is here to conquer Earth. He wants his own little Viltrumite or two, and then he'll take them and raise them into being good little soldiers and bathe the starways in this planet's blood."
"You were able to-"
"My expectations were very low. Acceptance. Friendship. Hugs. Marriage. Children. As I keep saying, a man with a name, not a beast without one. All it took to change me. Teach a man he's lower than a dog and then show him there are other ways, he will gladly accept them. And if I need to let the old beast out to play from time to time..." Connor shrugged. "Sometimes Conquest is necessary. Far, far less than what Viltrum taught me."
"I cannot deny that," Cecil mused.
"Guardians can't, either. They're merciful to me. They give me chances to learn. To learn the value of restraint."
He leaned forward.
"My view is to give Nolan the chance to sink or swim. I changed. I'm proof that it's possible for someone to do. Raised a weapon but I became more. He could. He finds himself a woman like I found my Sara, he settles down? Hell, it took me very little time, because I saw, and accepted, a better way. He knows who I am. First time he saw me in the news, on one of your newspapers, or on your television sets? He does know."
Cecil leaned forward.
"Do you think he told your homeworld-"
"No, he didn't tell Viltrum. The reason I know that is Thragg hasn't come here to kill me."
He laughed, for a moment, a low and rumbling sound.
"He probably thinks of it as I do. Give me a chance to see another Viltrumite around, have the two of us pal around together, get read to strike down this world when we follow our own paths. One of us will be right, one of us wrong. I hope the one who's right ends up being me."
"That would be nice."
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The year of Mark Grayson's birth
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A few months before the birth of Mark Grayson, Nolan indeed having found his wife and what was outwardly a happy life, even if Vanguard's words to his fellow Guardians had them on edge for the prospect that Nolan would eventually turn on them, the life of Connor Quest altered in a way that he could have never predicted. He was flying on patrol, sticking to himself, in these regards. Nolan would confront him, that was a question of when, not if. Nolan was going to have a child of his own, too-and then the Lizard League attacked, and he was content to let Nolan have this one as he'd seen something else escaping, and had flown to follow it only to let himself swoop down from the air.
"Vanguard."
The voice of a scientist shook.
"What is this?"
His words were wary, and the words spoken shook him.
"She's a weapon. They made her, gave her great powers and a focus to fight in war. I couldn't let her have that fate."
Connor Quest paused, looking at the child.
"What can she do?"
The scientist told him and Conquest did a double take.
"You were right," he paused.
No, not Conquest. Connor, he was Connor.
"I realize this asks much, but I would like to look after this child." He flashed his effort at a trustworthy smile.
"You-" the doctor paused. "I believe you, if anyone, could keep her safe."
Connor would nod, and let himself float in the air and floated much more slowly, with stops as the infant stared at him. When he landed in Provo his wife stared.
"What-"
"Our youngest."
Connor smiled at her.
"A gift. In a way different to our other children."
Sara blinked, frowning a bit. "Different how?"
"She's like me."
Sara's eyes widened.
"They made her as a weapon, too. This is a thing I've been hoping for. Our marriage, our children? They are one kind of purpose. Here, I have someone who could have been a version of me on Earth. A chance, with someone who will grow up understanding this. They told me what she can do. She's-" he paused. "I think if she'd encountered the old men, the mindless attack dog, she could have hurt me, maybe killed me, if I fought her when she was an adult."
Sara inhaled sharply.
"Oh," she'd exhaled.
"Yes." Connor nodded.
"She'll need training with all that power. I'll give it to her. She's not my daughter by blood, but she'll be mine in spirit. And she will never grow up in the kind of world that looks at a person and says 'see, this is all you are, you are a weapon, meant to kill.' I am not one, she will not be either. And if that makes the military powers of this world angry...good."
Sara gave him a long look, then nodded.
"OK."
He smiled and they kissed.
"What will we name her?'
He paused.
"What was the name of the woman in that book, the one with the talking snake?"
"Eve?"
"Yes." Connor nodded.
"Eve. Eve Quest."
-------
It was after his son was born that he would finally see the Great Nolan face to face. The two of them met in the air. Connor in the red and blue and gold of his outfit as Vanguard, Omni-Man in his own blue and red outfit with the big red O on his chest.
"I hear you're a father, too."
Connor nodded.
"Of three." His lips peeled and he bared his teeth in a proud smile, and then for a moment Connor faded and Conquest appeared as his prosthesis gripped Nolan by the neck hard.
"Go near my children in any way I deem unfriendly, Nolan, they won't find enough of you to bury. Raise that son of yours into something like what I killed on Viltrum, the same."
Nolan frowned.
"Why are you acting like you're one of them?"
"Conquest the weapon wasn't. Connor Quest, man of Earth, is. This is not your world to conquer, Nolan. Nor to own."
Nolan's eyes narrowed.
"Viltrum demands-"
"That culture left me a beast, Nolan. Here, I am a man. Vanguard is a man, among men. A person who exists to keep others safe, to make a world better, not a bloody ruin."
His grin was feral. "I still get plenty of hearts, I get them from a butcher, and I get them pretty damn cheap, too. Humans don't know what they're missing."
Nolan was puzzled. "They sell you hu-"
"No, no, Their livestock. Cow hearts. Pig hearts. I get to eat my favorite food. I get to fight, and I fight well. With subtlety, where that's not the sum total of interaction I have with other beings."
He gave a low laugh. "I have a name, and a life. So I repeat, not your world to conquer. To quote from a book of their stories, I've read, and there are plenty of them, you will be weighed on a balance scale, Nolan. Don't be found wanting."
He let him go and Nolan was silent.
"These beings are far beneath us, Conquest. They are like mayflies. We live for millennia. They can barely make it centuries. When five hundred years lapses, what will you have?"
Connor didn't hesitate. "I will still be a man, among men."
Nolan scoffed.
"Well, let me give you your own warning. I did tell Thragg you're alive. He thinks I discovered a sense of humor. Viltrum thinks you're dead. And you're a father of three."
Connor gave him a stolid look.
"You have good reason, Conquest, to stay here, but when those children come into their powers, Earth's destiny will be decided. Our children will fly with us in glory, or lie among the worms."
Connor scoffed.
"Easy for you to call it glory when you're a man, and an aristocrat. All that got me was a title and the atrocities I did in my name."
"You think family erases them?"
"Nothing can. This isn't about that. I cannot change who I was. I can be who I am, now. Conquest the Viltrumite did die. Connor, the Earthling, tells you that if you keep following your path of glory instead of actually being the devoted husband and father you say you are, only one thing waits for you Nolan. Misery."
And with that he flew off with a sonic boom as Nolan floated in the air, a set of expressions crossing his face. His right hand formed into a fist and hit his thigh and he muttered something swallowed by his mustache before swooping down back at his home.