The air trembled with tension.
William hovered above the shattered skyline, his arms crossed and expression unreadable as another sleek warship descended from the upper atmosphere, blotting out the last remnants of twilight. The sky behind it bled red and orange, a chaotic reflection of the warzone below. From the bow of the ship, two figures stood like sentinels, one hulking and orange-skinned, with a single cyclopean eye that scanned the battlefield hungrily, and the other a gaunt elder draped in ancient robes that shimmered like starlight, his silver beard nearly touching his knees.
William exhaled a low sigh, a flicker of golden energy crackling at his fingertips. "These clowns really needed to complicate things?"
He didn't look impressed.
His eyes narrowed, locking onto the trio still clashing near the ruined husk of what used to be downtown Chicago. Concrete craters pockmarked the ground, buildings were reduced to skeletal remains, and in the epicenter of it all, three titans battled like gods vying for the throne of creation.
"At least they didn't chicken out," William muttered, the corner of his mouth curling into something between a smirk and a sneer. "They actually came themselves."
He tilted his head as another shockwave tore through the air.
"BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, CRACK!"
The final blow was devastating. Battle Beast, drenched in blood, his own and others', roared as he drove his mace squarely into Mark's gut. The young Viltrumite's body folded around the weapon like paper before he was flung back like a meteor launched from orbit.
"WHOOSH!"
Mark flew through the sky, trailing a sonic boom as he smashed through two water towers and plummeted into the waters of Lake Michigan. The impact erupted into a towering column of white spray, briefly obscuring the skyline. The lake convulsed violently before an enormous tidal wave surged outward, swallowing parts of the shoreline and dragging debris into its hungry mouth.
But before the wave had even finished forming, Mark broke the surface again. His eyes burned, not with rage, but with the determination of someone who refused to be broken. Blood streamed from a split lip and a gash above his brow, but he didn't falter.
With another earth-shattering "WHOOOSH!", Mark blasted forward again. The wind howled past him, pressure peeling water from his skin as he blurred across the sky like a living missile.
Up ahead, Battle Beast and Thragg were locked in brutal combat, fists and claws, strength and savagery. Despite their differences, the two warriors were fighting with a rhythm that could only be forged in countless battles. Every blow could level a skyscraper. Every grunt and roar echoed like thunder across the devastated city.
Thragg, bleeding heavily from his side, had fresh claw marks gouged deep across his ribcage. A geyser of crimson trailed behind him as he ducked beneath a wide swing and drove his elbow into Battle Beast's throat. The beast stumbled, spitting out a wad of blood and saliva, but retaliated instantly, his claws raking across Thragg's cheek in a blur of motion.
Both fighters momentarily paused, just long enough to register the sonic boom streaking toward them.
CRACK!
Mark collided with Thragg like a hammer from the heavens, his fist slamming directly into the older Viltrumite's jaw. The impact echoed like a detonation, and Thragg's head snapped sideways violently. For a brief, disorienting moment, all he could see were stars. His body went limp in midair, spinning as blood spiraled from his mouth.
Mark didn't have time to enjoy the moment.
With a guttural bellow, Battle Beast pounced like a predator sensing weakness. His crimson-streaked mace swung with the force of a collapsing planet, aimed squarely for Mark's chest.
Everything slowed.
Mark saw the blow coming.
He saw the hunger in Battle Beast's eyes, the joy of the challenge, the lust for a worthy death. But there was no hesitation. No fear.
Only resolve.
And William, still watching from above, his aura now flickering gold and red, smiled just a little.
"Now it's getting interesting..."
"RAAAHHHHH!!"
Battle Beast roared like a creature born from war itself, his voice reverberating across the battlefield with primal intensity. His powerful arms, caked with blood and grime, moved with the precision of a predator mid-kill.
CRACK—THOOM!
His mace came down like a comet, slamming into Mark's raised, armored forearm. The impact was deafening. The reinforced Viltrumite alloy groaned under the pressure, its shimmering black surface buckling with spiderweb cracks. Mark gritted his teeth, trying to absorb the brunt of the blow, but the sheer torque forced his arm to twist violently to the side.
Battle Beast didn't pause. He was already moving, already capitalizing. With a savage grunt, he reached out with his free hand and clamped his clawed fingers around Mark's neck like a vice.
There was no ceremony, only violence.
He hurled Mark downward.
BOOOOOOM!
The ground erupted. The impact crater swallowed everything around it, sending shattered asphalt and molten debris blasting outward like a volcanic eruption. A shockwave rippled through the battlefield, knocking over broken power lines and disintegrating half-collapsed buildings. For a moment, there was nothing but dust and silence.
Then, like a cork launching from a bottle, Mark exploded from the crater.
Uncontrolled.
Spinning wildly.
His limbs flailed against the air as his armored frame tried to correct itself mid-flight. Sparks of red lightning danced around his body as internal systems recalibrated, and his eyes scanned desperately for balance—
And then—
Something was coming.
Fast.
Too fast.
A glimmer, a flicker against the blue sky.
BOOOOOOM!!
The object collided with Mark's chest with a sound like two planets colliding. The force sent Mark hurtling skyward like a ragdoll fired from a railgun. The clouds above buckled and spiraled outward from the epicenter, vaporized by the sheer kinetic force of the strike.
Mark's body was limp, tumbling, blood streaking across the atmosphere as his armor fought to hold itself together. He was in low orbit before he even knew what hit him.
Down below, unseen by most, a second blur shimmered through the sky, almost transparent, like heat distortion or a mirage in motion. It followed the trajectory like a hunter, silent and merciless.
Back on the battlefield, Battle Beast tilted his head up toward the heavens, chest heaving with exertion and triumph. His body glistened with sweat and gore, his expression a mix of exhilaration and grim purpose.
But that victorious moment was short-lived.
He felt it.
Something coming.
Something wrong.
Instinct saved him.
He leaned back by a hair's breadth, just in time to watch a monstrous fist miss his face by inches.
"WHOOSH, BOOOOOOM!!"
The punch didn't just miss. It annihilated everything behind him.
The force of the strike tore a vacuum into existence, a sudden drop in air pressure that made the battlefield tremble, followed by an ear-shattering explosion as the displaced air rushed back in. The momentum carried forward, slamming in a straight line across the ruins.
Across the field, a Coalition soldier, mid-duel with one of the Viltrumite Empire's enslaved warriors, never saw it coming.
The shockwave hit.
There was no body.
Only pink mist where the soldier once stood, the wall behind him disintegrating into gravel.
Battle Beast turned his gaze to Thragg, eyes narrow with fury and fire.
"DIIIIIIE!!"
Battle Beast roared with a ferocity that shook the battlefield, spittle flying from his snarling maw as he lashed out at Thragg with clawed hands like a whirlwind of fury and muscle. His strikes came fast and erratic, wild arcs, savage hooks, and unpredictable swipes, an animalistic onslaught that defied all training and discipline.
Thragg, Viltrumite Regent and genetic apex of his kind, began adapting.
He wasn't panicking.
Not yet.
His eyes narrowed with sharp calculation, tracking the rhythm behind the chaos. Battle Beast's every movement, while feral, still had patterns. And Thragg was learning them.
He weaved beneath a claw swipe. Pivoted past a crushing hook.
He cocked back a fist, ready to deliver a counterpunch that would crater mountains—
And then the sky screamed.
WHIIIIIIISTLING—
The mace.
Battle Beast's mace.
The same weapon the beast had launched skyward toward Mark during the earlier exchange had finally obeyed gravity's pull. It returned not as a weapon, but as a falling god.
KRA-KOOOOOM!!
It hit like the wrath of Olympus.
The impact didn't just break the earth, it made it breathe. The ground beneath Thragg visibly roiled, rising and falling in undulating waves like a storm-tossed sea. Fractures split across the battlefield like lightning bolts. Massive slabs of earth folded upward. Dust and debris mushroomed into the sky in a choking geyser of smoke.
Thragg staggered.
For the first time in a long time, he was caught off guard.
His boots skidded backward, gouging deep trenches into the earth as he fought to stay upright. His balance faltered. His footing lost cohesion. And Battle Beast saw it all.
He saw everything.
Now.
NOW.
With a guttural growl, Battle Beast charged forward like a thunderstorm on legs, body moving faster than most eyes could follow. His war-torn fur bristled. His muscles rippled with focused fury. Blood, both his own and others, clung to him like ceremonial paint.
He was death in motion.
He seized the blood-caked handle of his war mace as he passed it, never breaking stride. The weapon was still steaming, still radiating the heat of atmospheric reentry. It didn't matter.
Battle Beast wielded war itself.
Thragg, seeing the incoming strike, raised both arms instinctively to guard. His forearms crossed before his face, preparing to absorb the downward arc of destruction.
But Battle Beast wasn't predictable.
He never had been.
At the last second, mere inches before the head of the mace connected, he twisted his wrists, redirecting the path of the swing.
WHAM!
The flat end of the mace crashed full-force into Thragg's exposed abdomen.
BOOM!
The breath left Thragg's lungs in an audible gasp.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Battle Beast didn't stop. He swung again and again with relentless ferocity, the mace becoming an extension of his will to kill.
BOOM!
A rib cracked.
BOOM!
Blood erupted from Thragg's mouth in thick gouts, spraying across the shattered earth.
BOOM!
The air trembled. The clouds above parted. The sky turned into a canvas for their fury.
Now it was no longer strategy.
No finesse.
No form.
Just raw, brutal war.
The two titans descended into a savage brawl, a contest of sheer willpower and brutality. Their blows were no longer calculated, they were carnal, driven by instinct and rage.
Flesh collided with flesh.
Steel met bone.
Earth shattered beneath them.
Each strike echoed with the sound of history trembling.
Around them, soldiers, Viltrumite and Coalition alike, paused, stunned by the sheer savagery of the two most dangerous beings in the battle turning their war into a mythic clash that would echo through the stars.
High above the raging warzone below, the stratosphere was unusually quiet, disturbed only by the faint turbulence of wind whispering through the clouds. Suspended in that calm void floated two forms, father and son, Viltrumite and hybrid, the past and the future.
Nolan Grayson hovered before his son's unconscious body, his cape billowing in the high-altitude winds, his face hard with emotion. The scars of age and regret had never looked so raw on him. For a long moment, he simply stared, the silence between them heavier than any war.
His voice cracked as he began, the words trembling out from a place buried deep inside.
"Ma... Mark," he said, choking back emotion. "I... I was wrong."
Nolan's voice, usually firm and full of certainty, now wavered like a man teetering on the edge of confession.
"All this time away from you... and from Debbie... it's made me think. About everything. About the things I never dared to question before."
He reached out, and his hand gently brushed Mark's forehead. The simple act caused a ripple in Nolan's heart, one he hadn't expected to feel again.
"Your mother... she was never a pet," Nolan continued, his voice a whisper now. "She was the anchor I never realized I needed. And you…"
His eyes watered. A single tear slid down his weathered cheek, weightless in the thin air. It shimmered like crystal before floating upward toward the stars.
"I'm so unbelievably proud of you, my son."
His fingers trembled as they ruffled Mark's hair, just like he used to when Mark was a boy. "And no matter what happens next… from now on, I'll always be on your side."
With that, Nolan turned, descending back to Earth with the quiet dignity of a man who had finally made peace with himself.
The moment Nolan disappeared into the clouds, Mark's eyelids fluttered open, as if triggered by his father's final words. His vision was blurred, but the warmth of those words burned vividly in his chest. A slow, exhausted smile crept across his lips.
"I knew you couldn't be just another monster, Dad…"
And then it happened.
A subtle pulse. A ripple in the atmosphere. A soft hum of energy began to radiate from Mark's armored frame. From within his core, the foreign-yet-familiar sensation of Ki stirred like a dormant sun awakening for the first time.
Brilliant blue mist-like energy began wrapping around him in dancing trails, like ethereal fire licking at his armor. The bluish aura pulsed gently, controlled, focused, and alive.
The war on the ground was reaching its climax.
Bloodied and bruised, Battle Beast and Thragg wrestled like primeval gods, locked in a savage stalemate. Their muscles strained, blood soaked their fur and skin, and neither was willing to give an inch.
All around them, the battlefield was soaked in devastation.
The Coalition had overpowered the enslaved foot soldiers through superior tactics and alien technology, but the Viltrumites… they were another matter entirely.
Only Thaedus and Allen the Alien were managing to hold their own against the purebred warriors of Viltrum, standing like titans amid the chaos.
The Guardians of the Globe fought valiantly, but at a terrible cost, Immortal's limbs lay scattered across the battlefield like discarded relics of legend, while Darkwing clutched his cauterized stump, having barely escaped the dark dimension's grasp.
Lady Sif, a warrior born of Asgard, was drenched in blood, her enemies' and her own. Her ear was missing, her left forearm broken and limp, yet her spirit remained unshaken. She had slain five Viltrumites already and still stood defiantly, holding the line.
Meanwhile, Anissa stood over the mangled body of Conquest, her own face splattered in blood and gore. Her fists were raw from relentless pounding, bones likely cracked, yet she kept striking. The words Conquest had spoken to her burned like acid in her mind.
"Any child you bear will be the bastard of a dead traitor."
She didn't remember what happened after that. Only red. Only rage. Now she was practically caving his skull in with her bare hands.
Suddenly—
A deafening sonic boom echoed through the battlefield.
"BOOOOOOOOOOOM!"
A pair of armored feet slammed into the earth with godlike force, carving a crater into the already-ruined ground. The impact blasted Thragg and Battle Beast off their feet, sending them skidding backward while shielding their eyes from the rising storm of debris.
The dust swirled violently, masking the identity of the newcomer, until a piercing beam of blue energy cut through the cloud like a divine judgment.
The blast slammed into Thragg's abdomen.
"BOOOOOOM!"
The Viltrumite regent howled as he was hurled into the distance, spinning through the air like a broken comet.
Battle Beast turned to respond, but—
Too late.
An armored fist appeared in front of his face. In that split-second, the feral warrior's pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks.
"CRAAAAAACK!"
The punch detonated across his muzzle with the force of a supernova, sending the beast rocketing backward like a ragdoll, skimming the battlefield before crashing into Lake Michigan with a geyser-like splash.
The dust cleared.
And there stood Mark.
Fully armored, steam rising from his plating, blue Ki shimmering like fire in the wind. His stance was solid, his breathing calm, and his eyes, focused.
He had become something more. Something greater.
Hovering high above, William watched the scene unfold with an expression that could only be described as radiant pride. His arms were folded, but his heart was doing backflips.
"For weeks I've been trying to get him to feel it," he muttered with a smirk. "Ki isn't something you learn. It's something you become."
His eyes sparkled as he watched Mark standing between two monsters of war.
"And he did it... He's flipping the board in a world that was never ready for him."
Down below, Thragg and Battle Beast steadied themselves, bruised but unbroken, and began circling Mark once again.
A new standoff.
Three monsters. Three destinies. One battlefield.