Project ROWDY 2-1

The hallway knew better than to argue with his footsteps. Twenty years of walking these corridors had taught the base to get out of his way; sensors recognizing the particular rhythm of a man who’d outlasted four different administrations and twenty times as many world-ending threats. Zulu wing air tasted different—colder, carrying that metallic bite of ozone and classified disappointments. White LED strips hummed overhead, surgical precise and spaced like incision marks through concrete that had been poured thick enough to contain things that shouldn’t exist.

The blast door recognized him without his hand even reaching for the keypad. Pneumatic hiss, steel withdrawing into reinforced housing designed to stop tactical nuclear devices. Or Donald, on a bad day.

Inside, the White Room resembled a forensic autopsy of mankind’s latest near-extinction event. Alien technology spread across analysis tables, internal mechanisms exposed in ways that they rarely were when he wasn’t being rebuilt from near-scratch. Behind the repair set-up, screens flickered with casualty reports from seventeen cities, structural damage assessments that he read like invoices for rebuilding civilization. 

Again.

“I need to fix this.”

Donald looked up too late, the left side of his face a patchwork of bio-tape and regrowing skin that hadn’t quite settled over jawbone reconstruction. Cloned flesh learning how to be human again, one cellular division at a time. His left arm, exposed from elbow down, was an educational demonstration in combat damage—chrome nano-servos fractured, hydraulic lines jury-rigged with field repairs that would’ve made aerospace engineers weep. The other arm was still locked in fusion cannon configuration, weapon systems refusing to retract after taking more punishment than design specifications had considered survivable.

Technically, his second-in-command was half-dead.

Only this time, it was just the robotic half.

“What? Fix what? What’re you talking about, sir?”

Cecil didn’t answer immediately. 

Answers were currency, and Donald hadn’t earned one yet. He stood still, letting silence settle over the lab like a final report dropped on a mahogany desk. A lab assistant in a blue GDA coat froze mid-scan, suddenly aware that breathing too loudly might be career-limiting.

His gaze snapped over to a holo-monitor behind Donald, the thing displaying response times; the Freak Force, Special Operations Strikeforce, and so many other minor teams and groups across the country. Numbers that told stories about inadequacy and second-string heroics. “Our new Guardians of the Globe…” The words came out tasting like disappointment, “are a joke.”

The head of the GDA gestured toward the screen without looking at Donald. 

The screen didn’t argue back, unlike deputy directors with their newly-reconstructed faces, already flipping to the aftermath in DC, the Washington Monument already the first thing fully rebuilt. “This invasion...” He paused, the weight of that word settled, carrying ghosts of thousands who wouldn’t be going home for dinner. “Confirms what I suspected. It should never’ve gotten this far.”

The old team had moved like professionals. Drop them anywhere on Earth, problem solved within parameters that didn’t require rebuilding downtown infrastructure. “The original Guardians would’ve wrapped this up in a half hour, Donald, and that’s me being generous.”

His voice dropped, sharpened to an edge that cut through servo hum and computer cooling fans. “Our boys did it in minutes. Hours after crawling out of healing pods. Coffee was still hot when the all-clear came through.”

Donald’s face twitched under medical tape, a micro-spasm in cloned muscle that was still settling down. “You don’t know that, sir. The old team wasn’t perfect.”

Cecil finally looked at him directly, the cold mathematical certainty of a man who dealt in body counts and acceptable losses clear on his face. “Close enough, Donald, they were close enough.” Director Stedman sighed, shaking his head. “Immortal’s off his game. Bulletproof’s learning the ropes. And Invincible.. even Invincible… God, I hate to say this, but I wish the kid was more like his father.”

“Sir!”

“Let me finish, Donald.”

Donald’s tongue flicked across his lips, Cecil nearly sighing at the unnecessary gesture from someone whose saliva production was probably regulated by microprocessors. 

“Nolan, bastard though he was, fought like someone used to taking on armies.” The words came out flat, his honest assessment rather than opinion. “Invincible… kid probably grew up reading too many comic books, watching too many of the Immortal’s highlights on Youtube or whatever. Damn kid’s fighting like a superhero.”

He shook his head, disappointment clear from the way he held his shoulders all the way down to the grip of his fingers. “Don’t misunderstand me, now. Boy’s better than he was before his daddy beat him till he broke. But someone with his speed, his strength? He’s worth at least one of our boys, maybe one-and-a-half.” The old man clicked his tongue. “Problem is, he’s thinking too small and doesn’t know it.”

Donald’s head tilted as Cecil watched, the action a bit more precise than a human’s would have been. Cyborg tells were different from human ones, but just as readable once you’d catalogued them. 

“And don’t act like this falls on you,” Cecil continued, reading his deputy’s defensive posture and speaking before the other man could. “You didn’t pick them. Robot did. Little clone bastard’s failing this job harder than a freshman congressman. All the blame falls squarely on his formerly-metal shoulders.”

He started pacing, legs carrying him back and forth across the White Room. Movement helped thinking and he had a lot of that to do; five steps toward the analysis tables, five back toward the exit. “The first Guardians Team completely under the control of the GDA and they’re out here moving like it’s their first day at cape kindergarten.”

The observation hung in recycled air, Donald’s eyes moving back and forth only to pause as they dropped down.  “Sir… is that blood on your hands?”

Cecil didn’t bother looking down. His hands moved to his belt, a casual gesture that just-so-happened to obscure what were clearly rust-colored stains on starched white cuffs. “Yes, it is, Donald. Some folks need reminding that being a quisling is one thing, but working with aliens to ensure invasion success over half a decade…” He paused for a moment, the man clicking his tongue again. “That’s something else entirely.”

Cecil turned ttoward the exit, shoulders carrying the weight of twenty years of making necessary decisions that kept eight billion people breathing. Blood on the cuffs was just Tuesday afternoon’s business.

Donald nodded, a sharp mechanical movement that made clear he understood. Useful trait in a deputy director—knowing when questions served no tactical purpose. “What are you going to do now, sir?”

The question caught him at the threshold. “…Same thing I always do, Donald. Keep this blue marble spinning.” 

He glanced back at Donald, calculating whether his next question served operational needs or simple curiosity. “Before I go… have you seen the boys?”

“Not recently, sir. Brick informed me they would be assisting in cleanup.”

One eyebrow went high, genuine confusion breaking through directorial composure. “Cleanup? When do those boys clean anything?”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

This humble one moved through the devastated commerce district that the indigenous beings had called their “Magnificent Mile,” draped in the brown death-shroud of a fallen human whose rank had proven insufficient against superior K’tharnite weaponry. The air carried flavors of crushed stone-dust and the iron-taste of spilled life-essence. Such movement was necessity born of shame; this unworthy soldier’s skin wept nervous moisture that betrayed the dishonor burning beneath purple flesh.

The shadow-place between structures welcomed this one’s desperate form. A metal portal, corroded by abandonment, yielded to this one’s hard push and the hooded one descended into darkness, coming to a stop within a confined space, poorly lit.

The confined space housed remnants of that most disgraceful defeat. 

Fellow survivors of the invasion-disaster crouched among stacked weaponry whose power-cells flickered with fading light against moisture-weeping walls. Fractured armor-pieces and damaged technology bore witness to the magnitude of collective failure. The atmosphere was thick; pressed with scents of fear-sweat and dishonor-stench.

“Was this humble one observed during approach?” The question-demand came from another failure-bearer, his form concealed beneath indigenous head-covering, voice reduced to a harsh whisper that honored the gravity of their shameful situation.

The removal of this one’s hood revealed a visage marked by terror-lines. “Of course such carelessness did not occur,” this one insisted with words that tumbled in urgency-patterns. “This unworthy soldier comprehends fully the weight of our circumstance. All proper precautions received dutiful implementation.”

Conversation proceeded in hushed tones of urgency, native tongue clicking and grinding in the confined space that witnessed their collective disgrace. Words concerning the invasion-disaster, concerning the High Commanders who had retreated through void-travel, concerning countless fallen whose bodies decorated this cursed world. The tension-pressure began subsiding when the youngest among the failure-bearers posed the question that haunted all minds.

“Does intelligence exist concerning the beings who terminated our glorious invasion? The Bane of K’tharn, those three demons who shattered our lord-commanders? The ones whose actions stranded this humble assemblage upon this hell-world?”

Grim acknowledgment accompanied the response. “Affirmative knowledge exists. The Terran super-beings. They designate themselves as… the Rowdyright Boys.”

“Rowdyruff, actually.”

The ceiling-structure collapsed all at once, concrete-mass giving away in the span of a heart’s beat; debris fell, so much construction and waste framed around a floating figure whose eyes burned with scarlet intensity.

A juvenile being, appearing no older than Terran adolescent-caste, suspended in air with red hair-mass that defied gravity-influence and optical organs blazing like forge-embers. Black and red garment-covering enhanced his form; hands clasped behind back-region while expression maintained mask of cold, terrifying indifference.

The hooded failure-bearer whirled toward this one, voice a choked scream-sound. “You declared no observation occurred!”

The juvenile’s mouth-parts curved into an expression of eagerness that contained no essence of proper warmth. “Don’t blame him.”  The voice of the adolescent-caste carried calm, conversational tones that violated all proper fear-responses. “I move pretty fast.”

The raw rage-fire that cultural training demanded suppressed suddenly found an acceptable target. No High Commander to defer toward. No hierarchy-structure to constrain appropriate response. Only an enemy whose presence represented the source of all accumulated shame and abandonment-fury.

Kin-brother to this one’s left reacted upon instinctive impulse, diving toward plasma rifle positioned against moisture-weeping wall.

The weapon-reach never achieved completion.

The demon-child blurred from a static position, a crimson-black streak of power that violated his eyes. The sound of something shattering apart filled this humble one, as his kin struck the wall, skull split into, as the demon returned to where he hovered, fist-regions glistening with life-essence.

Those glowing eyes flicked downwards. “Faster than you, at least.”

One of his kin attempted escape, scrambling toward the elevation structure leading to surface-level. The demon-spawn pivoted with fluid movement; a single blow delivered with casual force directly through the coward’s chest.

The confined space transformed into a maelstrom of overwhelming violence.

This demon-child moved as a phantom, an entity of the spirits, a near-unseen beast of motion married to brutal overwhelming force. The remaining platoon of this one’s battle-kin received nothing but slaughter torn asunder with savage efficiency that inspired both terror-response and mesmerizing fascination.

Dark purple life-essence sprayed across the wall-surfaces in arterial patterns as silence descended with the weight of finality. This humble one was left the sole survivor, form slumped against stone-wall, trembling with uncontrollable spasms.

“P-please… honorable demon-lord, mercy-consideration for this unworthy soldier!” Words emerged as pathetic whimpers that shamed ancestral memory and violated all warrior-training protocols.

Demon-spawn drifted closer, feet not touching the stained ground. 

“Oh, so you do know your manners.” Those demon eyes brightened and heat filled this one’s senses. “You should take that lesson to your next life.”