For a moment, the western hemisphere slept.
The air was still, clouds drifted peacefully and the world remained blissfully unaware.
Until space itself changed its mind. Above the airspace, the atmosphere wavered,
twisted like a sheet of reality caught in an unseen hand. Then it collapsed inwards, forming a void of absolute silence, swallowing all ambient sound within hundreds of miles.
And then—
RIPPPPPPP—THRRRAAAAM!!
The void tore open, bursting outward with violent repulsion. Space convulsed like a wounded beast, expanding and compressing in rapid, successive pulses. With every expansion, a red shockwave rolled across the sky.
A blinding crimson light bathed the entire region, swallowing clouds, coloring oceans, and bleaching mountain ranges in its glow.
The clouds didn't drift away as they vaporized, disintegrated by the brief singularity that had formed.
Then came the thunder.
A mammoth THOOOOOOOOOM!! followed, rattling the land like an earthquake. Out of the ruptured vortex, a streak of red lightning tore through the sky, fanning into multiple branches across the hemisphere.
And then—
A bright yellow flash detonated from the center of that vortex, dispersing the red lightning instantly.
From the burning tear in space, Annihilus stepped out.
Yellow cosmic energy poured off him in violent, pulsing waves, forming ripples through the atmosphere. His eyes glowed like molten suns. He watched the red lightning bolt that he had hurled spiraling downward toward the earth far, far below.
Then he lifted the rod again.
It hummed, a low, deep, resonating sound like a cosmic heartbeat thudding against the world.
——————————-
The red lightning slowed till Gojo was revealed. Gojo suspended within the bolt. One eye was shut tight, his body scorched, his expression twisting into a grimace.
'Damn bastard…'
He skimmed through a storm of thought, locating the nearest conscious mind within range.
Over a hundred miles away.
Under normal circumstances? Far.
In a fight like this?
Practically tapping someone on the shoulder.
His one open eye widened.
'Brazil?? Shit.'
And then gravity won.
Gojo hit the earth like a meteor.
KRAAAAASH!!!
The impact crater exploded outward in a spiraling wave, widening by several tens of meters in seconds. Dust and shattered soil blasted skyward. Gojo groaned within the crater, his body steaming and scorched.
A golden aura wrapped around him that felt warm and rejuvenating.
His skin smoothed over as his burns vanished.
Rips in muscle stitched shut.
Gojo coughed and a thick, black sludge splattered from his mouth, bubbling on the ground.
He stared at it with narrowed eyes.
'That sly bastard… he tried to infect me.'
He wiped his mouth and raised his hand slightly, two massive boulders tore up from the ground, rising like puppets pulled by invisible strings. The rocks twisted violently, crumbling, shifting and warping.
Until they reshaped into metallic insect wings with razor-edged. A yellow glint pulsing across their surface.
The wings SNAPPED shut over him, but caught nothing.
Gojo reappeared a fraction of a second away, with his hands back in his pockets, staring at the metallic trap snapping where his throat had just been.
He frowned as he felt the shift in the air.
No, not the air more like the world.
Particles in the soil…
In the air…
In the trees…
Everything began rearranging itself, tugged by an unseen blueprint.
Gojo's eyes flashed with his X-ray vision.
He scanned everything around him and saw the atoms themselves were shifting. Particles reorganizing themselves with matter reassembling like clay in a god's hand.
'So that's it…' he thought.
'Another power of the Control Rod? Rearranging particle composition with relative ease.'
Gojo kept on looking as the environment shimmered like a mirage right before his eyes. The real fight had just evolved into something far, far worse.
And yet Gojo did not flinch, he didn't blink and he didn't shift his stance. Not even when a massive clawed hand made from the earth itself erupted beside him and came crashing down with enough force to pulverize mountains.
The hand never reached him.
It was diced into dust, instantly shredded by an invisible line and the disintegrating fragments were blown backward by a shockwave so violent the air cracked like shattering glass.
Only then… did Gojo glance upward.
High above, Annihilus floated with a yellow cosmic flames bleeding off him in turbulent spirals. Eyes narrowed in cold, imperial focus.
Gojo exhaled.
'Hmm.'
And then light swallowed the world in a violent flash followed by an earth-shattering blast. White energy engulfing everything in that area.
The entire landscape transformed in less than a second as the ground burst open and rocks twisted upward.
In an instant the earth was reshaped into monstrous geometry with clawed sets of hands, curving stingers, chittering mandibles, serrated insect legs all jutting from different angles, all converging, all meant to capture, impale, crush, and butcher anything trapped inside.
Gojo's eye flickered.
'Matter manipulation.'
He raised a hand.
BWUUUM—
A sphere of blue distortion formed above him, dragging him sideways in a spatial rip. The Blue devoured the incoming energy Annihilus hurled down, swallowing it like a starving black hole.
Where Gojo had floated, the ground folded in on itself then detonated in a fountain of claws and stone limbs.
They all chased him, hundreds of them. A tidal wave of earth-made monstrosities.
Gojo blurred, shifting between micro-distortions of space, weaving through the collapsing battlefield and Then—
KAA-DOOOM!!
The Cosmic Control Rod slammed down from above and collided with his Blocking Hand.
The world paused as the The two collided.
Movement, yes but so fast, so violently, that to any observer, the very idea of motion became absurd.
Gojo's counterpunch broke the speed of sound and then broke it many times again.
Two sonic booms, layered backward in time, rippled across the horizon as it struck Annihilus.
Annihilus struck back.
A single backhand, simple and crude.
FWOOOOOOSH
Gojo shot across the land like a comet, carving a deep trench for miles as earth and forests were shredded behind him. Annihilus tore after him, ripping space in his wake like crumpled paper.
Their speed became a rule-breaking spectacle.
Time stuttered as the particles around them lagged. Reality wavered with every clash.
Gojo wrapped his body in his own essence, bending space around himself, shrinking the distance between him and Annihilus with total disregard for physics.
Annihilus answered with something worse, a dreadful cosmic wave from the Rod, a concept of forced convergence and an attack meant to teleport Gojo into the Rod's killing radius.
The law of the Cosmic Rod overwhelmed Gojo's personal space.
For a fraction of a fraction of a moment, Gojo's body flickered, dragged toward Annihilus against his will.
The cosmic law demanded obedience.
But then It collided with another concept.
A concept that simply said:
No.
Reality snapped back and Gojo reappeared and immediately hurled RED point-blank.
A massive repulsive explosion detonated, blasting Annihilus backward and ripping open the atmosphere.
——————————-
They clashed again, but this time they began using pure concepts, weaponized laws of existence.
Gojo inserted slivers of space, infinity, and red lightning into each blow, a cocktail of rejection physics and elemental annihilation.
Annihilus channeled the Control Rod, rewriting local physics and altering gravity, twisting molecular bonds, rearranging atomic structure. The entire landscapes warping violently with each swing.
And then, they broke the coastline.
KRRRSSSSSHHH!!
Both of them crashed into the Atlantic Ocean with meteoric impact.
Gojo hit first, carving a massive underwater ravine, followed immediately by Annihilus slamming into him like a meteor of cosmic fire.
After a while the water became still again and in a heartbeat, the ocean exploded. Tens of thousands of gallons of water erupted upward with a colossal, rising "pocket of air" blown outward by their collision followed by a concussive BOOOOOOOOOM that shook the ocean for miles.
Gojo recovered first.
Annihilus was hurled across the churning waters. Gojo rose into the air, eyes now shimmering bright red with heat.
The space around him superheated instantly and the ocean below boiled into steam and steam became plasma, the very air distorted from the heat.
The mortal and the cosmic god faced one another on a glowing sea of vapor.
Annihilus spoke first, voice rumbling like a collapsing star.
"What a waste… for a mortal of such power to be born on a rock so fragile."
He tilted his head almost respectful.
"Still… impressive."
Gojo didn't answer immediately.
He scanned the horizon.
'Atlantic, huh? Far enough already… I should be careful not to overdo it.'
His posture shifted barely.
But it was enough for Annihilus to tense, gripping the Rod tighter.
The Rod glowed.
But then, Gojo spoke in a calm and soft tone,
"Domain Expansion."
Annihilus' pupils contracted as he felt the danger.
Gojo raised one hand.
The ocean stilled and the sky dimmed.
Reality itself folded inward and and darkened.
"Unlimited Void."
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