The emperor watched in utter horror from the safety of hiding place as two godlike beings ravaged his planet with every exchange. Each blow between them reshaped the land, carving canyons through continents like fingers slicing through soft clay. Mountains cracked. Oceans boiled. The skies trembled.
Then, without warning, a sudden rush of air whipped past his ears.
Before he could utter a single command, Emperor Asan II was hoisted violently off his feet. A hand, firm and merciless, clutched the high collar of his golden-threaded robes and lifted him high above the burning skyline. His limbs flailed helplessly as he dangled in the air like a petulant child.
"L-Let me go! I'll have your head, you insolent...!"
His defiance cracked mid-sentence as he turned to face his captor. She was hovering there with perfect control, her white-and-red unitard clinging to a chiseled figure carved by battle. Her blonde hair fluttered in the wind like golden silk, but it was her eyes, those sharp, cold, piercing blue eyes, that silenced him. Eyes that had seen war. Eyes that had ended it.
Asan's lips curled into a sneer, but it trembled at the edges. "A woman…" he hissed under his breath. "How dare you? I am the great and magnificent Emperor Asan the Second! I will not, cannot, be manhandled by a mere woman!"
Even in peril, his pride was grotesquely intact. He writhed and kicked against her grip, unwilling to believe that his empire, his authority, meant nothing here.
Her eyes darkened. The blue faded into a hellish crimson glow.
Crk...
The metal of his ornate collar buckled in her grasp with the awful groan of warping alloy.
"Not another word," she said, low, sharp, final. A death sentence masquerading as a warning.
And then—
BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
A sound like the cracking of the heavens tore through the atmosphere.
In the distance, a shockwave rippled across the planet's surface as two titans collided. The very air was sundered where their fists met. A dome of raw energy spread outward, flattening everything in its path, forests, mountains, cities, all reduced to dust and echoes.
From the epicenter, twin geysers of blood, one red, one a deep alien green, sprayed into the sky, but neither combatant slowed. Hulk snarled, his massive forehead crashing into William's face with a savage CRACK. William reeled, then retaliated with a vicious spinning kick that cracked Hulk across the jaw, sending him tumbling across the battlefield.
Both warriors landed hard but rolled back to their feet with terrifying grace. Their arms had already begun to reconstitute, bone and sinew weaving themselves together in seconds. Regeneration was a gift, and a curse, they both shared. Pain meant nothing here. Only dominance.
They approached each other again, the ground quivering beneath their steps.
Then Hulk surged forward first, swinging a monstrous hook into William's ribs. The impact thundered through the planet's crust, and William was sent sliding dozens of feet, heels carving trenches in the ground.
But he didn't fall.
Instead, he pivoted with the momentum, twisting on one foot and unleashing a brutal knee into Hulk's abdomen. The air expelled from Hulk's lungs in a violent gust, his body folding for a moment before William followed with a rising knee straight into his jaw.
BOOM!
The blow launched Hulk skyward like a missile.
William didn't wait.
He blurred upward in a trail of green afterglow, materializing above Hulk's spinning body. Arms raised, energy surged into his palms, green ki crackled and roared, forming a dense sphere of pulsing power.
As Hulk opened his eyes mid-spin, William unleashed the blast.
WHOOOOOOOOSHHH!!!
The shockwave slammed into Hulk like a battering ram, engulfing him in radiant green energy and hurling him back to the surface.
He didn't scream.
He roared.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
The moment Hulk struck, the planet detonated beneath him. The ground didn't just crack, it shattered, erupting upward in pillars of molten stone and fire. The crater left behind was miles wide and glowing like the open wound of a god.
A nearby city, once the jewel of the empire, finally gave in. Its skyscrapers toppled in unison, pulled into the newly formed abyss as the tectonic plates beneath it gave way.
The very crust of the planet buckled, and from its depths, a red-orange glow began to rise.
Deep below, Hulk was still falling until suddenly he flipped in place and landed squarely on the blazing hot mantle, causing his flesh to sizzle and steam to rise as the moisture within his flesh evaporated.
"HRRRRRRRRRRRR!"
The sound tore from Hulk's throat like the bellow of a primordial god awakening from the center of the Earth. Steam hissed between his gritted teeth, venting from his lungs in thick, pressurized jets as his skin shimmered with heat distortion. His eyes, those radiant, wrathful emerald orbs, blazed with a storm of uncontrolled gamma radiation.
Far above him, suspended in the cracked and bleeding sky, was William, glowing like a star gone supernova. His silhouette burned at the center of a swirling maelstrom of pure energy, a living singularity of power. Between his hands, a storm of nearly liquid ki churned and screamed, folding inward into a core of impossible density. It pulsed with sickening beauty, each throb of light bending the very fabric of reality around it.
The air shrieked in protest.
The clouds split open.
And then—
With a roar and a violent thrust of his arms, William launched it.
The beam didn't just descend.
It devoured the sky.
A shaft of incandescent energy, brighter than any sun, cut through the heavens like divine judgment. From orbit, it would have looked like a cosmic sword piercing the planet below. Its heat alone vaporized the upper atmosphere, leaving a void in the clouds, a tunnel straight to hell.
Hulk didn't flinch.
Beneath his feet, the mantle groaned and bubbled. Semi-molten stone buckled and flexed as if the planet itself knew what was coming. With one final surge of brute force, Hulk bent his knees, dug his toes into the glowing earth, and launched.
The molten surface exploded behind him, launching him skyward like a green comet.
"AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
His roar shook the magma sea below as he tore through the planet's layers. The green glow in his veins intensified, becoming symbols, patterns, glowing glyphs of raw, eldritch power pulsing beneath his skin like gamma-fueled runes etched into flesh. His raised fist radiated with a strange, thrumming energy, older than rage, deeper than fury.
He didn't try to dodge the beam.
He met it head-on.
And for a moment, just a moment, time died.
When Hulk's glowing fist collided with the heart of William's beam, the world fell silent.
Light vanished.
Color drained.
Sound ceased to exist.
Then—
"SKRRRRRRRRRRREEEEE!"
It came like the scream of a billion razors against obsidian glass, a shrieking, shrill detonation that defied physics, a screech that rattled the bones of reality itself. It wasn't a traditional explosion. There was no shockwave, no gust of air, no blinding fireball.
No, this was worse.
This was entropy given form.
The collision point became a sphere of annihilation, where energy devoured energy, matter unmade itself at the atomic level, and even motion died. It was an explosion that ate rather than expelled, consuming not just substance but the concept of momentum itself. Anything caught too close didn't burn, it ceased to have ever existed.
From across the fractured horizon, Peter and Kara, locked in their own situations just moments ago, took their ward or their prisoner and took to the skies, retreating far beyond the blast radius. Even then, they were forced to hover behind floating debris, hands shielding their eyes, bodies trembling as they stared across the distance.
Their expressions were carved in awe.
In fear.
In helpless reverence.
Peter's voice cracked as he whispered, "My God..."
Kara's eyes shimmered, not just from the light, but from the sheer scale of it all, the kind of power that could rewrite the laws of existence with a single act of will.
Within the crater, deep, black, and smoldering like the scar of a dying world, two titans refused to yield.
They were beyond fatigue. Beyond reason. Beyond mortal comprehension.
William and Hulk stood locked in an endless cycle of destruction and regeneration, each blow more desperate, more savage than the last. Their bodies were ragged, drenched in a grotesque mix of red and green blood that soaked the cracked ground beneath them, forming puddles of steaming gore. Every breath they took came with the sound of tearing muscle and reknitting bone.
Around them, the planet groaned.
The tectonic plates had already begun to separate. The sky above was fractured, blackened, bleeding light through its cracks. Lava bled from deep gashes in the earth, bubbling up through the shattered crust as the core below grew violently unstable.
But none of that mattered to the two war gods trading fists in the heart of the apocalypse.
"POW!"
William's fist connected with Hulk's jaw in a brutal left hook that sent a sharp shockwave through the ground. The impact twisted Hulk's head to the side, green blood and shattered teeth spraying into the air like shrapnel.
William staggered, nearly dropping to one knee, but caught himself with his opposite hand. His chest heaved, broken ribs visibly knitting back together as he sucked in another labored breath.
"BANG!"
Hulk roared and delivered a punishing uppercut to William's ribs.
The force was seismic.
William's body jerked upward, and from his back, a visible wave of compressed air exploded outward in a ring, shattering stones, splintering the crater walls, and sending molten debris flying into the sky.
"HYAK!"
William gasped as blood and spit exploded from his mouth. His body twisted midair, but instead of falling back, he lunged forward.
With a savage snarl, he slammed his forehead into Hulk's face.
"CRACK!"
The sound echoed through the battlefield like lightning splitting ancient stone. Hulk's head snapped back violently, a spray of green mist following the motion. Dazed for only half a second, Hulk's footing faltered, and William saw his moment.
With a burst of raw fury, he surged forward and drove his knee upward with all the force he could summon.
THUD!
The blow struck Hulk square in the sternum, deep enough to send a ripple through his thick torso like a meteor hitting the surface of a still lake. Hulk wheezed as the wind left his lungs, and both combatants fell back half a step.
And still, they didn't stop.
Like beasts stripped of identity, driven by survival, hatred, pride, and need, they kept fighting. Kept moving. Kept striking.
Above them, the atmosphere split open. Below, the planet groaned in a final warning.
The battle had gone on too long. The sheer force unleashed had disrupted the magnetic field, destabilized the core, and now, the world was tearing itself apart.
The ground beneath the crater quaked violently, spiderweb cracks racing outward from their battleground like the fingers of death. Chasms opened at the edges of the crater, sucking molten rock into endless black. Even the sky looked sick, smeared with red, dimmed by ash, and lit only by the flashes of godlike violence below.
They moved like mirrored gods of war.
Two titans, bloodied, breathing hard, yet unbroken, launched themselves out of the abyssal crater, riding the thermal updrafts of molten air. Their bodies arced through the smoke-choked sky before landing with thunderous impact on opposite edges of the colossal wound they had carved into the planet.
The fissure glowed like the very mouth of hell, lava flowing in tortured waves through the cracked earth, streaks of emerald and crimson energy still shimmering in the air, remnants of the war they had just waged.
Hulk's chest rose and fell like a steam engine, muscles flexing with fury still unspent. His body radiated heat and pain, but it was the fire in his soul that had not dimmed. He hunched low, preparing to launch himself forward again, one more charge, one more blow.
But then—
A sound.
High. Sharp. Human.
A distant echo pierced through the battlefield like a divine note interrupting a war hymn.
Hulk's eyes snapped wide, pupils shrinking to pinpoints. His head twisted violently in the direction of the sound, and saw Peter, suspended in the air like some glowing celestial moth, light from the lava casting strange shadows across his silhouette.
But it wasn't Peter that made the Hulk freeze.
It was what he held.
"WAAAAAAAHHH!"
In Peter's arms was Caiera, her face pale but glowing with maternal strength, cradling a small bundle swaddled in soft silk. The bundle moved. It squirmed. It cried.
And just like that—
The rage melted.
Hulk's breath caught in his throat.
His boiling wrath cooled to a smoldering ember. His monstrous form began to shrink, visibly and rapidly, bones cracking into a more humanoid shape, muscles sloughing off mass until he stood no taller than Caiera. Still enormous. Still powerful. But no longer the beast.
He stepped forward.
Not to fight.
To feel.
The broken ground cracked again as Hulk fell to his knees. His hands, still stained with blood, still trembling from violence, stretched forward with impossible gentleness.
And the bundle responded.
A tiny, perfect hand pushed through the folds of silk, reached out, and curled its fingers around Hulk's calloused, green knuckle.
An innocent giggle broke the silence.
Time seemed to stop.
A tear welled up in Hulk's eye. Not one born of pain or fury, but of something deeper. Something raw. Hope.
The tear rolled down his cheek and dropped to the scarred earth below.
"RUMBLE!"
The ground rebelled.
Where that single tear touched down, the planet shuddered violently, as though it had just been asked to carry more weight than it could bear.
A great crack split the air, louder than thunder, more final than a scream.
The crater they had fought in began to fracture outward, fissures racing like lightning across the continent, snaking in every direction. Entire mountain ranges trembled. Oceans pulled back from their shores. The core beneath them, already unstable, began to fail.
The planet wasn't just dying now.
It was breaking apart.