anwhile
Max appeared at the center of the clearing with Nina in his arms, gently placing her down on the ground.
"About ti," she muttered weakly.
"Stay with , Nina," Max murmured as he knelt beside her.
"Don't worry about ,go get 'em," Nina said weakly.
Max stood up and summoned a shadow clone, which knelt beside Nina and hovered its hands over her body, palms glowing green. Satisfied she was in good hands, Max activated his one-ti Eighth Gate transformation.
His body erupted in a red aura far denser than Nina's had been, with one peculiar difference,it burned purple at the edges. The anomaly was a result of the Eighth Gate mixing his ki and chakra together and igniting them as one. Max paid it no mind. He was too enraged to care.
He vanished instantly and reappeared on the battlefield before Darkseid, his sudden arrival kicking up a cloud of dust. Darkseid narrowed his eyes as his anger resurfaced
When had finally laid eyes on the one who had humiliated him. His expression hardened. Even through his rage, he could sense that Max was dozens of tis stronger than the girl he had been fighting, despite using the sa transformation.
Darkseid was pulled from his thoughts when Max spoke.
"You should have stayed on Apokolips and never ca back, Darkseid," Max said through gritted teeth, clenching his fists so hard they bled. "Because you won't be leaving now."
"We shall see," Darkseid replied.
He unleashed his Oga Beams, which zigzagged toward Max. Max raised his arms and channeled Armant Haki as the beams struck and scattered across his body. He slid back slightly, kicking up dust as Darkseid cut off the attack and waited to survey the aftermath.
In the single blink of an eye, Max was already in front of him.
Darkseid reacted fast, launching a punch. Max raised his hand and caught it.
Boom!
The ground beneath them exploded, sending a powerful shockwave that obliterated all nearby vegetation. Max didn't budge an inch. He launched his own punch in retaliation,his fist shattered the sound barrier in less than a second, ionizing the air ahead of it and forming a plasma sheath around his knuckles before it landed squarely on Darkseid's chest.
*Boom!*
Darkseid's eyes widened as blood burst from his chest and he was sent flying. His body ignited from the friction against the air. Max gave chase along the ground, and wherever they passed, everything burst into flas, followed by a roaring, scorching storm in their wake.
Max caught up to Darkseid and tackled him. They beca a red blur, tearing through mountain range after mountain range. Max then grabbed Darkseid by the leg, swung him around, and hurled him into the ground hard.
He didn't stop there. From above, Max unleashed a barrage of ki blasts toward Darkseid below.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
Max watched from the air as the smoke began to disperse,and the first things to erge from it were two thick red beams that zigzagged toward him. Max crossed his arms and blocked them.
Then an enraged Darkseid burst through the smoke and threw a punch. Max raised his own fist to et it.
Boom!
The sky split as their fists collided mid-air, a shockwave erupting outward so violently that the clouds were blown apart in an instant. Darkseid was sent flying, crashing into the sea and raising a massive splash before the water settled.
Then, from the deep, a red glow began to pulse beneath the surface.
The ocean started to boil and swirl. Before Max could react, two Oga Beams surged up from below and struck him in the chest. He was sent flying, crashing into the ground and carving a deep trench before skidding to a stop. He vomited blood.
An excruciating pain tore through his chest. When he looked down, he found a gaping hole that was,healing, but slower than it should have been. He felt sothing warm running down his face, reached up to touch his forehead, and his fingers ca back slick with blood.
Max gritted his teeth and slowly rose to his feet.
Darkseid erged from the sea, the water clinging to his body boiling away into steam. The Oga symbol on his chest, once black, now burned a deep, furious red. A crimson aura of destruction radiated from his body.
He did not look happy.
Apokolips
Pain blasted through the sky above Apokolips as thousands of Paradooms sward around him, firing laser beams in every direction. One beam caught him in the left arm, severing it clean at the shoulder. He grunted and spun mid-flight, his right arm morphing into a cannon as he returned fire.
One of the Paradooms tackled him.
They plumted from the sky together and slamd into the ground, cracking the earth beneath them on impact. The Paradoom ended up on top of him and threw a punch at his face. Pain tried to block it with his remaining arm,but the Paradoom grabbed it and tore that one off too.
Pain gritted his teeth.
His chest split open and a cannon erged from within, pressing itself point-blank against the Paradoom before it could react. It fired. The blast punched a hole clean through the creature, sending it flying off him. Pain grew two new arms and took off again as the remaining Paradooms caught up and rained heat vision down on him.
He was close. The energy room was right there.
Then the door exploded outward.
Pain barely evaded the punch that had destroyed it, twisting just enough that the fist only caught him in the abdon rather than the head.the impact was catastrophic. His body was severed clean in half at the waist, bolts, nuts, and internal components scattering in every direction as his top half was sent tumbling into the energy room, sliding to a stop at the base of a gigantic reactor.
He glanced back at it. A shimring energy shield encased it completely,the only thing standing between him and its destruction.
Pain turned back when he felt the floor shudder beneath a series of heavy thuds. He finally got a clear look at what had attacked him.
A Cyborg Doomsday.
It was massive,Doomsday's hulking, bone-protruding fra fused with dark Apokoliptian tal, cybernetic implants buried into its flesh, red optical sensors glowing where its eyes should have been. Behind it, a wall of Paradooms landed and held position, waiting. The Cyborg Doomsday stepped forward slowly, each footfall cracking the floor beneath its weight, and stopped directly in front of Pain. It looked down at him,just a torso now and outnumbered
It raised its fist to finish the job when Pain's chest began to glow.
A deep, pulsing light built from within him, growing brighter and brighter, shifting from white to a searing, blinding gold. Cracks of light spiderwebbed across his chest plate, then up his neck, across what remained of his fra, as he muttered quietly, almost to himself.
"Art... is an explosion."
Then he detonated.
The blast originated from his core like a second sun being born. A sphere of pure, searing white light expanded outward in an instant, so intense it burned away the shadows in every corner of the room simultaneously. The shockwave hit the Cyborg Doomsday first, the force stripping away cybernetic plating and scattering it like paper before the creature itself was swallowed whole by the expanding wall of destruction.
The Paradooms behind it didn't even have ti to react.
The explosion tore through the energy room in every direction at once. The walls buckled and then gave way entirely, massive slabs of Apokoliptian steel peeling back like foil. Support columns vaporized. The floor cracked, fractured, and then ceased to exist. A roiling column of fire and force punched straight through the ceiling and erupted into the sky above, visible for miles across Apokolips,a pillar of white and gold that briefly outshone the planet's own hellish glow.
The shockwave radiated outward in a perfect ring, flattening everything within range. Structures collapsed. Paradooms still airborne were swatted from the sky like insects. The ground itself cratered, a vast circular depression carved into Apokolips where the energy room had once stood, its edges scorched black and glowing faintly red with residual heat.
Then, slowly, the light faded.
The fire dimd,the dust beginning to settle. Where the reactor had stood, there was nothing,only a smoldering void and the distant groan of collapsing infrastructure echoing across the ruined landscape.
End of Chapter.
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