Canon Fodder

CHAPTER 450 PROTAGONIST

I woke up coughing. My vision mostly blocked by a massive metal slab overtop of me. With a groan I used my real strength to push it off. A loud clang sounded as the section of the ceiling I threw off landed. All around me dust hung in the air. No lights on, I was guided by my Haki. Able to make out the room by the spiritual energy I doubted we were in the same place we were before. 

Probably a few levels below in the underground bunker as I spread my Haki out, whatever had destroyed the bunker was powerful. Most likely only something that the leaders of the planet could do since we were in the middle of the city. I highly doubted they did such an attack for little old me, and Wolverine, so they were after the princess or whatever she was. 

I stopped focusing on my surroundings and began to look for people. Since Gladiator was so strong I zeroed in on him immediately. Bringing some Hoken to my hand the white electricity lit up the area as I flew to where they were a floor above. 

Everything in shambles around us, I knew we wouldn’t be alone for long. Quickening my flight I landed at the big man’s feet. He too was struck with a massive block of steel, only he was passed out. The small Lilandra safe in his arms, I moved my hand to his overly large purple ones but he had a death grip on her. Annoyed, I slapped the top of her triangle hair jolting her awake. 

“Wh-” She tried to say.

“Shh,” I said. “I can feel people coming down the giant hole they made. What the hell did that? A laser?” I asked quickly. “Doesn’t matter. You need to go.”

“I-” She struggled in Kallark’s grip, but was obviously too weak to hardly move. 

“Fucking hate purple people,” I mumbled as I moved to his face. The block of steel next to his head I considered picking it up. Instead I pointed at him and shot some Hoken into him. Making his nerves pulse and fire with pain he stirred and moved. I considered slapping him too, but this guy was a soldier, and he didn’t like me. He would probably rip me apart whether he meant to or not. 

When he did wake up a hand let go of Lilandra and went for me, but I was ready as I jumped just out of his reach. “Barney, it’s me,” I said.

“What?” He asked, still blind like the others. I increased the Hoken in my hand showing that we were in a large room that had seen better days. Some sort of kitchen or eatery, tables were overturned as the steel walls around us had broken away or crumbled. 

“Strong people are coming down this gaping hole they shot into the bunker,” I said. 

“They must have used Garuda’s Arm,” Lilandrin said. “It is a strong laser that was designed for carving holes into planets.” 

“Impossible, they would never use that on our home planet,” Kallark said. 

“Apparently they did. And they sent the cavalry here,” I said. I could feel them drawing closer as they floated through a massive hole at least 100 feet wide through the middle of the bunker. They were heading right toward us. Kallark began to get up as he released Lilandra. “You both need to get out of here.” 

“I am so sick of running,” Lilandra said. “We need to-”

“No,” Kallark said. “Our people are still out there. We stick to the plan.” He looked up, locking eyes with me. “I can feel them now. The best of the Imperial Guard is coming. Can you hold them off?” 

“No idea,” I said truthfully. My Haki was too focused on trying to find Scarlet Witch and Wolverine. They had been in a much farther location in the bunker and hopefully they didn’t shoot this AI’s arm twice at the planet, but who knew. “But I will buy you what time I can.”

“Good,” Kallark said, his spiritual energy showing genuine trust and hope for me. 

“No! We-” Lilandra tried to say but Kallark simply grabbed her. Running to the hole I had flown up from I guessed he knew of some escape tunnel. Letting out a sigh of relief I wasn’t sure how much time I needed to buy them, but this was what I wanted. To get captured. I just had to make it look good. 

Feeling the large spiritual energies slowly working their way toward me I summoned Tabi who appeared next to me. Her blue fire-like fur illuminated the area in a blue glow. She looked up at me. 

“I swear I didn’t do this,” I said.

“Whatever. You probably caused it at least,” she said. I had summoned her earlier to get a report and she had been looking around the underground bunker. 

“I need your help real quick. I’m worried about the others and I need to make clones,” I said.

“I was with that hairy friend of yours,” Tabi said. “We ran into that red headed girl who happened to reek of you.” 

“You can smell that? I thought you were a cat not a dog,” I said.

“I am not a cat,” she said. “For the last time, I’m basically your god. Anyway, they were escaping on the other side of the bunker.”

“Good,” I said. “Guess I didn’t need to summon you.”

“Well fuck you,” she scoffed, but jumped up to my shoulder. Taking her spot she too could sense the strong people coming our way. “These people feel like that purple man.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty strong,” I said. “We need to hold them off.” 

“I thought the whole point of this was to get to some tournament,” she said. “Shouldn’t we save our strength for that?” She eyed me, still being playful but also serious. 

Over the last year our relationship had gotten a lot better. Once she could talk all she did was bitch at me, but now that we had been in more than a few scrapes together we knew we could count upon one another. I patted her head. 

“You’re not wrong. Let’s just keep them distracted for like ten minutes or so,” I said. She purred as she leaned against my head and we waited for them to draw closer. 

Light began to stream in from a gaping hole in the cafeteria side. Whatever Garuda’s Arm was, I didn’t want to see it again. They had apparently ripped a hole from ground level to hundreds of feet below ground in a single blast. That was the kind of technology Earth needed, and would have to contend with some day. 

“Hello there,” a voice said to my right, surprising me. It was a woman with pale white skin and black flowing hair. Practically stepping out of the dark, I stepped back as people began to float into the room. The front one of the group held a small piece of instrumentation that beeped as it pointed in my direction. 

“Lilandra was here,” the man said, pointing the instrument in the direction Kallark had run with her. 

I decided to step in. “Thank god, you’re here. I was walking around on the surface when this huge hole-” I stopped as a white energy blade was thrown my direction. Ducking down underneath it, the blade narrowly missed. Tabi hissed, moving to the side as she began to grow. “Now that wasn’t very nice,” I said as I pushed Nen to my body, strengthening myself. 

“Where is-” One of the men said.

“Hey, this is one of those humans,” the pale woman said as she walked closer to me. Each of them had distinctive features. Tattoos, piercings, different skin tones, hair cut in odd shapes, weapons at their sides. I felt like I was looking at the dozen or so unique end bosses in some manga or anime. 

It was always a classic trope in the stories. The protagonist running into the special fighters that were impossibly strong. Each with their own weird clothes, weapons, and features. Then the protagonist would have to fight and beat them all later on in the story. 

I wasn’t too sure why I was thinking of this. Maybe the fact that I didn’t know who any of them were. Not that I was claiming to be the protagonist or anything but- I stopped thinking for a moment. Unsure why I thought that. 

“I am the fucking protagonist,” I mumbled. 

I was brought back to my fight with Mikhail. He had beat the hell out of me, and I threw everything at him. One of my most hurtful thoughts at that time was that I admitted I wasn’t the protagonist. That I couldn’t win despite giving my all, breaking through my own limits to win it all and save the day. I had given up back then. 

But I really was the fucking protagonist. I wasn’t always the center of attention in these worlds, yet I still had my own adventures. Canon be damned, I was strong and got things done. For so long I had let my original life hold me back. I had allowed myself to think I wasn’t made for this crap, but I kept doing it. Only holding onto my original world as some sort of crutch. 

“I’m the fucking protagonist of my own life,” I said with a little more confidence as I looked to the people around me. Feeling stronger and ready for anything, I began to power up. Screw letting these people go. I was going to fight them with everything I had, then some other batch of unique characters could be the people to fight later. 

“Let’s do this,” I said with a smile, ready to have some fun. 

—

I got my ass kicked. Going up against nearly a dozen of the Shi’ar at the same time was not one of my smartest moves, an admission I made many times as I slipped in and out of consciousness. Even when I tried to give up so they could take me in, they kept beating the crap out of me, proving that trying to be the protagonist was a bad idea. 

Still unsure why I had that weird epiphany. I realized that the protagonist usually only went past their limits when there was something worth fighting for. A random underground battle to give an alien princess a little extra time to escape wasn’t the exact time to challenge the strongest on the planet, but I would have to live with my mistakes.

After I couldn’t stay awake, I let myself drift off to sleep. Content to let my body heal the damage I took. Searing the techniques of the elite Shi’ar in my mind, I planned to get revenge on one particular Shi’ar warrior as soon as I had the chance. Unsure how long I slept, I woke up to yelling and crying. 

I was able to make out some of the words as I laid there. “What the hell happened to him?” “Someone just threw him in with us.” “Does anyone have a healing power?” “I know first-aid, roll him over.” 

My Observation Haki told me people were all around me as I was rolled over. Most were familiar but I was quickly getting more and more pissed as they wouldn’t shut up. My Berserker Mode activating, I yelled, “Shut the fuck up!” Causing them to shut up. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Finally quiet I opened my eyes. Annoyed that I was awake now. Over top me was who I felt. Anne, Jean, Jessica, Gwen, even Cyclops looked down upon me with concern. 

“Fuckin-“ I coughed. “Got my ass kicked.” I sat straight up, looking down, at least my clothes were still there, if only in tatters. I was glad I had opted not to fight in one of my costumes. “Then you fuckers won’t let me sleep.” 

“Thank god you’re alive,” Anne said, hugging me. I looked around at the others, guessing that I probably looked so bad I looked dead. I felt like shit, so I decided to do a personal inventory. My hand moved down to my dick first, it was still there, then I looked at my fingers, I had all of them. Anne pulled back, watching as I inspected myself. 

My clothes were for shit, it was a wonder my dick wasn’t hanging out. Singed and burned, the shirt I bought a couple of days ago was practically gone. The thing that really hurt though was my face and left arm. My left arm still wasn’t moving so I moved my right up to touch my face. My tongue found about four teeth missing, and my left eye was swelled up way bigger than normal. 

I looked up to the others, unsure why they thought I was dead, then looked to my left side. It was practically gone. Like a chunk was bitten out of me my left arm was missing completely and a big section of my rib cage was exposed. 

“Ah fuck,” I said. Closing my eyes I sat with my legs crossed as I forced myself to calm down. Which took a while, this was the first time I had lost an arm, or any limb for that matter. I had always worried it would happen, and my Full Heal rewards have been severely lacking as of late. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I mumbled trying to focus. 

“We need medical attention!” Someone yelled beyond me, but I ignored them. As I calmed down I knew that a lot of the damage should be able to be fixed by my Viltrumite form. I had seen Mark literally ripped in half but he still grew his dick and legs back. Though I wasn’t full Viltrumite I hoped that I could do that too, it would just take time. 

What I felt could really help me at that point was my Fusion skill. I had been able to add mass to myself, fusing other animals' flesh to me as I trained with the skill. What I needed was a spare arm to take and try to fuse it to myself, but there was no one around me I could take an arm from. So I focused on healing. 

Pulling up my Hoken I sent the Nen laced electricity to my side, rapidly healing my body. Searing pain hit me as ribs were forcefully regrown back together and my side closed up. People gasped and stepped away, watching as I healed. I really didn’t care about what they saw. As my side healed I focused on my arm. It actually began to grow out a little, but as I fed more power into my limb it ceased and scabbed over, ending in a stub a few inches from my shoulder. 

“Mother fucker,” I said through missing teeth. Unwilling to try to heal those I decided to pray my Viltrumite form kicked in or I was rewarded a Full Heal. For now I had done all I could. 

“This is what I fucking get,” I mumbled as I used my right arm to push me up. “Trying to be the protagonist.” I whispered the last part as I looked to those around me. Mainly the X-Men and the other teens I had been hanging out with, Magneto was also there, concern on his face. “Alright, what’s been going on with you lot?” 

“What the fuck happened to you?!” Anne yelled at me. Her Haki was all over the place, angry, worried, sad, angry again. I ignored her, turning my gaze to the Professor. He was sitting in the silver floating chair we had dubbed Herbie for him.

“We have been sequestered in a corner of the palace,” Xavier said, his chair moving backwards to show off the room. It was large, the ceiling was a good 20 feet up, and there were chairs and other minor sitting areas. A few rooms off to the side I turned to face the direction behind me. There was a distinct glowing energy field blocking the exit, as Quicksilver had reported. He had only gotten to the other side of the energy field before he was found and had to run off again. 

“Fun, dibs on top bunk,” I grumbled, shrugging my missing arm. “Fucking hell, how do people get used to this?” I looked where my arm should have been, frowning at the pain in the ass this was turning out to be. 

“Where are my children?” Magneto asked. Some genuine concern in his voice. I now knew they were really his adoptive kids, but it was good to see that he cared about them. Usually in the comics he was shown as some heartless dad that used the twins as tools. 

“Safe, last I saw,” I said. “Xavier, we got some shit going on out there. Not sure if it’s still happening, but I doubt it’s something I should say out loud.” 

“Is it something we should all know?” Xavier asked. 

“Uhh…do these Shi’ar psychically scan us?” I asked. 

“Yes,” Xavier said. 

“Then probably not,” I said truthfully. Not that I didn’t trust a lot of them, but who knew what kind of weird powers these people had. 

“What the fuck are you doing?!” Anne yelled. “You lost an arm. You looked like death a second ago. You need to rest.”

“I’ll rest when I’m dead,” I said, eyeing her then turning back to Xavier. “We need to make sure we do really well in the coming fights. Our escape depends on it. I sure hope to all hell you guys spent the last day having a sweet training montage, cus these Shi’ar aren’t a joke.” And I was serious. I had been lucky so far with the fights I’d gotten into. I had thought Gladiator’s strength was abnormal, but the people I got my ass kicked by were as strong as if not stronger than him, and most of them had their own super powers. I was starting to worry some of our number wouldn’t come out of this alive if we didn’t take it seriously.