Inconceivable Ch. 36 (Invincible AU) (Patreon)

(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N: Cecil wants to be a fly on that lunar wall lmao.

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Cecil sits in his office and stews, glowering at the computer monitor in front of him. Its currently showing a camera view of the Moon far in the distance… not anything worth actually looking at, but he can’t help himself and if anything it helps him focus a bit better as he ponders what Argan is doing with Maya Grayson on the other side of the celestial body.

Because yes, he had indeed bugged Maya’s spacesuit as well as NASA’s shuttle to hell and back. He’d be an idiot not to, even if he knew now that Argan knew all about his and the GDA’s surveillance efforts. If the incredibly powerful alien wasn’t going to tell them to stop, Cecil certainly wasn’t about to do so of his own accord. Not because of some guilt or shame or anything as pathetic as that.

And good that he had to, because the recordings from Mars paint quite the picture in stark contrast with some of the reports submitting by the astronauts after they arrived back on Earth. One in particular, Zehra Lafaz, had submitted an extremely incendiary report that had the President of the United States calling Cecil directly over it.

She’d filed a complaint against Argan alleging that he’d ‘genocided an entire alien species, one that might have even been sapient’. She wanted him punished for his actions on Mars or at least censured in some way. Obviously, Cecil wasn’t going to let that happen. Hell, even if Argan had slaughtered the entirety of the Martian People, he probably wouldn’t have let it happen.

Fortunately, that wasn’t what happened and the other astronauts’ reports were a lot less inflammatory. All three of the male astronauts agreed that they likely owed Argan their lives… and one of them even claimed to owe him significantly more than that considering a Martian Shapeshifter had tried to replace him only for Argan to catch them in the act.

All in all, the recordings told the full story. The astronauts had been set upon by militant Martians within no time at all and if not for Argan and Maya’s intervention, who knows what would have happened. Because they stepped in, all six were escorted down underground into the Martians’ civilizations, where they met the Martian Emperor himself and were promptly sentenced to execution.

To be fair, based on what little Cecil had seen and heard, these ‘sequids’ seemed to be an existential threat that he was more than happy to see the back of. If both Argan and the Martians were to be believed, humanity was in grave danger from the parasites and would have been infected en masse if the sequids ever made it down to Earth.

Cecil wasn’t unhappy that Argan had taken matters into his own hands and removed the threat before it could become a problem. He was unhappy with how fast the Viltrumite had completed the task, however. From the sound of things, there were supposed to be a lot of sequids on Mars… and all over the planet at that.

Argan had dealt with the entire infestation in hours.

That kind of speed was… well, it was faster than anything Nolan had ever shown. Faster than any of the other Viltrumites that Argan had brought with him as well. It was also faster than the fastest speeds Argan had shown on Earth before, but one could chalk that up to him holding back here out of concerns for harming his precious breeding stock.

All in all, it was alarming… and to make matters worse, Cecil was stuck watching as Argan had some sort of clandestine meeting with Maya Grayson on the other side of the Moon. If Cecil had had his way, she would never have gone on this mission. Not because he didn’t think she was ready for it (though he didn’t and she wasn’t) but because it directly interfered with Cecil’s ongoing efforts to endear Maya more to Earth and humanity over her new Viltrumite ‘family’.

Maya’s budding relationship with Atom Eve was something Cecil had been doing everything in his power to encourage, even going so far as to give the hybrid full access to GDA headquarters without her knowledge. She thought she was able to come and go because of Eve, but the truth was, the more they interacted the better.

This though… this was… well, it was a setback to say the least. Whatever Argan was doing over there, Cecil doubted Maya would come back still loyal to Earth and Eve. Hm, now there was an idea… letting Eve find out about their Moon rendezvous was no good because it might lead to her pushing Maya away entirely.

However, from what Cecil already knew, Nolan was very protective of his daughter. Maybe he could find a way to let him know that Argan and Maya were spending private time together and see what came of that…

As he’s pondering the idea, the door to his office suddenly opens and a by-now-familiar visitor steps inside.

“Good afternoon, Director! I made you something new today!”

Cecil holds back the urge to groan, even as Thula approaches his desk with a fresh tray of baked goods and a distinctive sashay in her step. As her hips sway back and forth, Cecil’s eyes are not drawn to them to be clear… rather, he looks to the tray to see what fresh monstrosity Thula has made for him this time.

“… Brownies?”

They’re almost insulting in their mundanity. Thula just beams at him, an expression on the killing machine’s face that still sends shivers up and down Cecil’s spine whenever he sees it.

“Triple Chocolate Chip Brownies to be exact! Just like your grandmother used to make!”

Cecil freezes and looks up to meet Thula’s eyes.

“Excuse me?”

Thula’s smile turns into a ravenous grin as she shudders in delight.

“Mm… I love it when you look at me with those eyes. As if you’re trying to burn me to ash with your gaze alone. It’s cute~”

He refused to rise to the bait. At the same time, he needed more information.

“How the fuck would you know anything about the brownies my grandmother used to make, Thula?”

Tilting her head to the side, Thula hums.

“I spoke to your mother of course. She assured me this was the correct recipe. Try one and tell me if I got it right.”

Cecil sits there, furious. It was a massive security breach for one of the incredibly dangerous killing machines they had shacked up with to be anywhere near his mother. Truth be told, Cecil himself hadn’t spoken to his mother in damn near fifteen years because it was too dangerous for him to be close to her given his line of work.

“Ah, that reminds me… she asked me to tell you to call more. And maybe to come around for ‘Thanksgiving’ as well? I believe I understand based on context clues, but what exactly is ‘Thanksgiving’ Director?”

… He was in Hell. Cecil was in fucking Hell. Almost too angry to speak, Cecil grabs one of the brownies off of the tray and proceeds to stuff it in his mouth. This has been his tactic for getting rid of Thula for a while now actually. He just tries her baked goods, calls them shitty, and that sends her right back to the drawing board.

The first time he’d done so, Cecil had been all but daring her to retaliate… hell, he’d been expecting it really. But instead she’d just accepted his entirely unconstructive criticism and showed up again the next day with more pastries.

Quite frankly, it didn’t make any sense. All of the analysts agreed that Thula was one of the more bloodthirsty of their new Viltrumite guests. She was the exact opposite of say, Carl, who was actually thriving down at the animal sanctuary with Sandra.

And yet, she had yet to raise a hand in anger against him. She could kill Cecil in a single instant and they both knew it, but she continued to let him insult her baking.

Here’s the problem… she’d been getting better. And as he chews on the brownie, trying to get through it fast so he can tell her its terrible and make her leave… Cecil finds to his shock that it is exactly like the ones his grandmother used to make.

Memories from his childhood, memories Cecil has buried and not thought about in decades, resurface in that moment. Memories of when he was just a boy visiting his grandma’s house and-

NO!

Cecil, to his own chagrin, chews and swallows the rest of the brownie rather than outright spitting it out. However, he also forces himself back under control, jaw clenching as he grabs the edge of his desk and grips it hard enough to start to dig into the wood.

Thula just stands there watching him like a hawk… and yet, even though Cecil knows she’s seen more than he would have wanted her to, he suspects she will accept it wholly if he tells her they were terrible and she needs to try better.

… But why? Why was she like this with him while having slashed the faces of most of the men the GDA had tried to set her up with?

Slowly, Cecil leans back in his chair and looks Thula in the eye.

“Why do you insist on doing this? Why do you continue to pursue me when I’ve made it clear that I’m not interested?”

Thula pauses at the change in their routine, a slow smirk spreading across her face when Cecil chooses to engage with her rather than chasing her out with insults and comments on her skill-less cooking. At least they were somewhat true back at the very beginning… but now? In such a short time, Thula has become an absolute menace in the kitchen.

It’s kind of terrifying how quickly she picked up the skills of an artisan baker. Let alone managing to recreate a family recipe she’d heard secondhand from his mother one-to-one. Even his own mother hadn’t been able to make them like his grandmother had.

Setting the tray down the chair in front of his desk, Thula proceeds to prowl around said desk, her fingers gliding along the edge as she makes her way over to his side. There, she hops up onto the desk and crosses her legs while looking at him with a wicked grin.

“Have you, Director? Have you really made it clear that you’re not interested in me? Because I don’t think you have.”

Cecil scowls.

“They’re called context clues. I know that you all had a lesson from the GDA on them.”

Thula just hums.

“Ah yes. Context clues. For when you humans don’t want to simply communicate normally. But then there are layers to these ‘context clues’, aren’t there? You call my baking trash; you send me away… but you don’t tell me to cease my pursuit of you. A man as direct as you would certainly have already done so… if you weren’t at least a little interested.”

That wasn’t true. That wasn’t true at all. Glowering at the other woman, Cecil growls.

“Fine. Let’s speak straight with one another. Where do you see this going, exactly? How do you possibly think this can end?”

Thula tilts her head to the side and considers him for a long moment. Then, she smiles a different sort of smile. One that feels much more… Viltrumite to him.

“The plan, Director, is simple enough. I am going to seduce you with the power of baked goods. According to your own Internet, this method is infallible and cannot be beaten. Once I’ve fully seduced you, I will make sure you received our medical treatments. These will not just give you the longevity to ensure you can remain as my mate for hundreds of years to come but will also come with… physical enhancements.”

What? Cecil’s eyes narrow.

“Excuse me?”

Thula’s eyes glitter in amusement.

“Yes, we cannot make you as strong as a proper Viltrumite unfortunately, but you will be at least ten times as strong as the average member of your species.”

… The Viltrumites were holding out on him. That was… the things Cecil could do with an army enhanced in such a way were…

“And of course, once you have had those treatments, you will breed me and I will bear your children, fulfilling Argan’s directives.”

Pulled out of his thoughts by Thula’s words, Cecil stares up at the Viltrumite woman in silence for several long moments.

Finally, he holds out a hand.

“Get me another brownie.”

Thula’s eyes light up and she reaches over his desk, arching her spine and showing off her toned figure as she grabs a brownie from the tray and offers it to him. Cecil takes it and bites into it, chewing and swallowing while maintaining eye contact with the increasingly delighted Viltrumite woman sitting on the edge of his desk.

“… Tell me more about these treatments.”

Forget Argan and Maya for now. This… this was more important.

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A/N: Cecil… Cecil nooooo…

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Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y8F5J8VNi0A5S1Dz43lQcD8pPlYSe7hHBUIxHHgdVOI/edit?tab=t.0