Superman's eyes widened, but he didn't hesitate. He pulled his fist back and drove it forward again, slamming into Thragg's chest with enough force to level a city block. The shockwave rippled outward, sending sand and debris flying in every direction.
BOOM!
Another punch. Center mass. The impact echoed across the desert like thunder.
BOOM!
Another. And another. And another. Clark's fists became a blur, each punch landing with devastating precision, each one carrying the full weight of his Kryptonian strength. The ground beneath Thragg's feet cracked and splintered, massive craters forming with every impact. The air itself seemed to scream under the pressure, sonic booms cascading outward in overlapping waves, but Thragg didn't move.
He stood there, hands still clasped behind his back, his expression calm and unbothered. His eyes were closed, his posture relaxed, as if he were standing in a gentle breeze rather than enduring an assault that would have obliterated mountains.
Clark's jaw clenched. His knuckles ached, his muscles burned, but he didn't stop. He couldn't stop. Come on, Clark thought desperately. Move. Flinch. Do something. But Thragg just stood there. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Clark stopped. His chest heaved, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His fists were still raised, trembling slightly from the exertion.
"Why aren't you fighting back?" Clark demanded, his voice tight with frustration. "Or even defending yourself?"
Thragg opened his eyes slowly, his dark gaze locking onto Clark's with calm, clinical detachment. "I was testing your strength boy," Thragg said, his voice utterly devoid of emotion. "And I must say, I am disappointed."
Clark's eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about?"
Thragg tilted his head slightly, his expression almost contemplative. "I expected you to use so much more power. But that was barely twenty percent of your full strength."
Clark's breath caught in his throat. "Twenty percent? I was...."
"Holding back," Thragg interrupted, "Whether consciously or unconsciously, you were holding back. The female Kryptonian hit harder than you just did."
He paused, his gaze sharpening. "But then again, I am not surprised," Thragg continued. "She has more of an attachment to Krypton than you, who was a baby when everything was destroyed. So you have little to no attachment to it. I thought you would have at least been angry that I was the reason for your parents' deaths."
Something inside Clark snapped. He moved without thinking, his fist flying toward Thragg's face with blinding speed. The punch connected with a deafening crack, the force of the blow sending a shockwave rippling outward that flattened the sand for hundreds of meters. But Thragg's head barely moved.
He turned his face back slowly, his expression still calm, still unbothered. A faint smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "Twenty-two percent," Thragg said quietly.
Clark's chest heaved, his fists trembling at his sides. His eyes burned with barely restrained fury, but beneath the anger was something else, something colder, sharper. He's right, Clark realized with a sinking feeling in his gut. I'm still holding back.
Thragg unclasped his hands from behind his back, letting them hang loosely at his sides. He rolled his shoulders slightly, as if loosening up after a long rest. "Let me show you something, Kryptonian," Thragg said, his voice calm and instructional. "You do not know how to throw a proper punch."
Clark's eyes narrowed. "I know how to throw a punch."
"Oh?" Thragg's eyebrow arched slightly. "Because the early fifty you just threw were not even close. You were wasting movement and power. This is what a proper punch looks like."
Thragg's hands remained at his sides. He didn't move. But suddenly, Clark felt something warm and wet dripping down his upper lip. His hand shot up instinctively, his fingers brushing against his nose. When he pulled them away, they were stained crimson. Blood.
Clark's eyes widened in shock. "What...?"
He looked at Thragg, whose hands were still at his sides, his posture completely relaxed. It was as if he hadn't moved at all.
"I guess that was a little too advanced for you," Thragg said, his tone almost apologetic. "I will slow it down a bit." The next thing Clark knew, his face exploded with pain.
The force of the blow was astronomical, far beyond anything he'd felt before. His head snapped back violently, his body lifted off the ground, and he was sent flying backward like a missile. The world blurred around him, the desert landscape streaking past in a chaotic smear of red and brown.
CRASH!
Clark slammed into the side of a massive cliff, the impact shattering the rock face and sending massive chunks of stone tumbling down around him. He hit the ground hard, his body carving a deep trench through the sand before finally coming to a stop.
For a moment, he just lay there, his vision swimming, his ears ringing. His entire face throbbed with pain, and he could taste blood in his mouth.
What... what just happened? He forced himself to sit up, his hand pressing against his jaw. It felt like he'd been hit by a freight train moving at light speed.
And then Thragg was there. He floated in the air a few meters away, his hands clasped behind his back once more, his expression calm and patient. "Stand up boy, we are not done yet," Thragg said.
Clark pushed himself to his feet slowly, his legs unsteady beneath him. He wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes never leaving Thragg's face. "I was born on Krypton," Clark said, his voice low and hard. "But my home is Earth."
He took a slow breath, forcing himself to stay calm. "We don't have to do this, Grand Regent," Clark continued. "We don't have to fight a war. We can coexist without you trying to conquer us."
Thragg sighed, the sound almost disappointed. "The only peace I offered was a thousand years," Thragg said. "Otherwise, why would I make peace with a backwater world that is weaker? Now adjust your stance and fight me."
Clark's jaw tightened. He shifted his feet, his body falling into a familiar boxing stance—left foot forward, right foot back, fists raised, elbows tucked in tight.
He moved faster than before. Faster than he'd ever moved in a fight. His right jab shot forward, a blur of motion aimed directly at Thragg's jaw.
Thragg's head tilted slightly, and his hand came up, catching the punch effortlessly. "That was a lot better," Thragg said, his voice carrying a note of approval. "Thirty-five percent."
He released Clark's fist and stepped back, his feet touching the ground for the first time since the fight began. He shifted his posture, his body falling into a stance that mirrored Clark's, left foot forward, right foot back, fists raised.
Clark's eyes narrowed. "You know boxing?"
Thragg's lips curled into a faint smile. "No. I don't know what boxing is. But I learn the martial arts of the strongest fighters I meet, and this is no different. So show me what you have."
Clark didn't hesitate. He blitzed forward, his fists flying in a rapid sequence, jab, jab, hook, uppercut, cross. Each punch was faster than the last, each one carrying more power, more precision.
Thragg weaved around some of the strikes, his movements fluid and effortless. Others he simply took, his body absorbing the impacts without flinching. But Clark could feel it, Thragg was paying attention now. Really paying attention.
Clark's power began to rise. His punches grew stronger, faster, more focused. He could feel the solar energy coursing through his veins, his Kryptonian physiology responding to the challenge.
He stepped forward, his foot landing on top of Thragg's boot, pinning it to the ground. In the same instant, he closed the distance between them, their faces inches apart, and then his eyes blazed crimson.
Twin beams of searing heat vision erupted from his pupils, lancing directly into Thragg's face at point-blank range. The heat was intense enough to melt steel, to vaporize stone, to burn through nearly anything in its path.
Thragg's head snapped back slightly, the heat vision actually connecting, actually hitting him head-on. Clark didn't waste the opening.
He followed through with a devastating right cross, then a left hook, then an uppercut that caught Thragg square in the jaw. The force of the blows sent Thragg flying backward, his body tumbling through the air for dozens of meters before he finally stopped himself mid-flight.
Thragg floated there, his hand rubbing his jaw slowly. His expression was calm, but there was something new in his eyes, something that looked almost like interest.
"Forty-seven percent," Thragg said. He lowered his hand, his gaze sharpening. "You're improving," Thragg continued. "You used your environment, your positioning, and your abilities in combination. That was good. But you're still telegraphing your strikes. Your footwork is sloppy. And you're not committing fully to your attacks. You're still hesitating, still holding back."
Clark's chest heaved, his fists clenched at his sides. "Why are you instructing me on how to fight?"
Thragg's expression softened slightly, though his voice remained firm. "Because I hate wasted potential. And you do have some." He paused, his dark eyes boring into Clark's. "But I grow tired of this," Thragg said, his voice dropping into something colder, harder. "Either come at me with all you have, or I will start killing off your allies. Starting with the Lantern."
Clark's eyes widened. "What?"
"Then the Thanagarian," Thragg continued, his tone utterly devoid of emotion. "I will rip off her wings and give her as a plaything to my Type Three grunts. And the Amazonian demigod, I will give her to one of my officers. Or perhaps I will use her myself and sire a new child. And the female Kryptonian... she will be put to work helping us grow our numbers for the next hundred years."
Clark's eyes turned red with pure, unfiltered rage. The air pressure around him shifted violently, the atmosphere itself seeming to recoil from the sheer intensity of his fury. The ground beneath his feet cracked and splintered, massive fissures tearing through the desert as his power surged.
Thragg felt it. The shift in the air. The sudden, overwhelming spike in energy, and he smiled.
Clark launched himself forward. Thragg threw a punch to meet him, and their fists collided in mid-air. The shockwave that erupted from the impact was cataclysmic. The ground beneath them exploded, sending massive chunks of rock and sand flying in every direction. The air itself seemed to tear apart, sonic booms cascading outward in overlapping waves that shook the entire planet.
Warworld trembled. Thragg's smile widened. "Fifty-two percent."
Clark didn't respond. He just threw another punch. Thragg met it head-on.
BOOM!
Another collision, and another shockwave. The desert around them was being torn apart, the landscape reshaping itself under the force of their blows.
Clark's punches grew stronger, faster and more focused. Each time their fists collided, he could feel his power rising, his Kryptonian physiology pushing past its limits.
The mechanical entire planet shook with each exchange, the ground cracking and splitting, the air screaming under the pressure.
Thragg's eyes gleamed with something that looked almost like satisfaction. "Sixty-five percent....Seventy-three percent....Eighty-five percent."
Thragg's voice cut through the chaos, calm and measured. "Tell me, Kryptonian. Are you still a calm and reasonable man?"
Clark didn't answer, he just threw another punch.
Thragg weaved around it, his movements impossibly fast. He cocked his arm back, and the air around his fist began to spiral and twist, gravity itself bending and warping around his hand, and then he struck.
The punch connected with Clark's chin, and the force of the blow was beyond comprehension. Clark's body was lifted off the ground, sent flying upward at impossible speed. He tore through the ceiling of the desert arena, then through the next layer of Warworld, then the next, then the next.
He punched through three separate layers of the massive satellite world, each one shattering like glass under the force of his trajectory. Finally, he burst through the surface of Warworld, his body tumbling through the void of space.
And then he saw it, the sun. A massive, blazing yellow star hanging in the darkness, its light warm and inviting.
Clark didn't hesitate. He flew toward it, his body absorbing the solar radiation like a sponge, his cells drinking in the energy, his power surging as he felt his body grow stronger and stronger.
His eyes glowed brighter. His muscles swelled and recovered. His entire body felt like rejuvenated, and then he felt it, a presence behind him. He turned, and his eyes widened.
Thragg was there, floating in the void of space, his crimson cape billowing behind him. His expression was calm, unbothered, as if he'd simply followed Clark on a leisurely stroll.
But it was his eyes that made Clark's breath catch.
They were red. Not glowing with heat vision. Just... red. A deep, unnatural crimson that seemed to burn with an inner fire.
Clark's heart pounded in his chest. What is that?
Warworld—Desert Arena
A powerful shockwave rippled through the air, shaking the ground beneath Icon's feet. Wonder Woman's eyes snapped open. She shot to her feet, her hand instinctively reaching for her sword. "What happened?"
Icon stood a few meters away, his eyes fixed on the sky above. His expression was grim.
"Superman and the Grand Regent were fighting," Icon said quietly. "And the fight is over."
Hawkwoman pushed herself up from the sand, her wings flaring slightly as she steadied herself. "Who won?"
Icon didn't answer, and suddenly, the Justice League members were no longer in the desert arena. They were standing in the center of the main coliseum, the massive stadium packed with roaring spectators.
Battle Beast stood at the center of the arena, his massive frame towering over two bloody, broken bodies at his feet. Atrocitus and Sinestro. Both of them were unconscious, their bodies battered and bruised, blood pooling beneath them.
Battle Beast threw his head back and laughed, the sound booming across the stadium. "HAHA! That was glorious!"
And then Thragg descended. In his right hand, he held Superman by the throat. Clark's body was a mess. His costume was torn and tattered, barely clinging to his frame. His face was bruised and bloodied, his eyes half-closed, his breathing shallow.
Thragg tossed him forward like a discarded rag doll.
Icon moved with blinding speed, catching Clark before he hit the ground. He cradled Superman's body carefully, his eyes scanning for injuries.
"Superman!" Wonder Woman shouted, rushing forward. Her voice was tight with worry, her storm-gray eyes wide with concern.
Thragg landed softly on the arena floor, his hands clasped behind his back. His expression was calm, unbothered, as if he'd just finished a light workout.
"He is alive," Thragg said, his voice carrying effortlessly across the stadium. "And with that, you all will be allowed to live."
Battle Beast stepped forward, his yellow eyes gleaming with excitement. "How was it, Thragg?"
Thragg's lips curled into a faint smile. "It has been a while since I was able to cut loose a little bit."
Wonder Woman's hand moved to her sword, her jaw tightening. John Stewart's ring flared to life, green energy crackling around his fists. Hawkwoman raised her mace, her wings flaring.
They wanted to fight. They wanted to make Thragg pay, knowing they couldn't leave things like this, but before they could move, Thragg raised his hand, his palm facing them.
"That is enough bloodshed for today," Thragg said, his voice calm but carrying absolute authority. "Take this mercy and go home before I have none left to give."
And then his hand shifted in the air slightly, as if resting on someone's shoulder.
Suddenly Martian Manhunter appeared. He materialized out of thin air, his green form solidifying into existence. Thragg's hand was resting on his shoulder, as if he'd known J'onn was there the entire time.
J'onn's red eyes widened slightly. "How long did you know I was there?"
Thragg's smile widened. "Since the day you were born boy."
Icon stepped forward, his voice firm. "He is right, J'onn. We must get Clark medical treatment."
Wonder Woman's eyes flashed with frustration. "What about Supergirl?"
Icon's expression hardened. "There is nothing we can do about her. You heard the Grand Regent."
Thragg's gaze swept across the assembled heroes, his dark eyes cold and calculating.
"Yes," Thragg said. "Go home. Nurse your wounds. Become stronger. Because Viltrum is coming. First the negotiator, and then the closer. And trust me, you do not want the closer to come."
He paused, letting the weight of his words sink in.
"The negotiator will offer you terms," Thragg continued. "The closer will offer you nothing but death."
Two figures stepped forward from the shadows, Lyssa Drak and Bleez. They moved with graceful precision, carrying Thragg's royal red cape between them. They draped it over his shoulders, the crimson fabric settling into place like a banner of conquest.
Thragg turned to face the crowd, his voice booming across the stadium.
"Warworld is now part of the Viltrumite Empire! Let the blood of the Coalition run through it soils." The crowd erupted into deafening cheers, the sound shaking the very foundations of the massive satellite world.
Diana knew in this moment Earth needed a miracle.
Earth—Gotham
I flew through the night sky, the cold wind whipping against my face as I made my way back home.
My phone had been blowing up for the past hour. Bruce had sent at least twenty messages, all of them variations of the same thing: We need to talk now!
Yeah, I bet we do.
He probably pueced together that Jason killed the Joker. And from what I'd pieced together, eventually if he didn't know already, Alfred and I had helped cover it up. That was going to be a fun conversation I didn't want to have.
Dick had also sent a few messages too, warning me that the GDA was pissed I flew away with Blud, and that I might dragged in front of the UN leaders to answer for alot of things. But he'd also said he'd stop that from happening.
Good luck with that, Dick. Politicians are the last people I want to deal with right now. I just hope Raven will recover well, and those kids can find peace.
I pressed the button on my watch, and the nanite suit began to dissolve, the black and crimson material retracting and reforming into the suit I'd been wearing underneath for the operation. The transformation was seamless.
I then descended slowly, my feet touching down on the front steps of my house. The lights were on inside, warm and inviting.
Debbie should be here with Oliver and Megan. Maybe Mark will show up at some point tonight, but I hope not.
I sighed, running a hand through my hair. Come on, Cai. Just go inside and eat something. Figure out what you're going to do next.
I reached for the door handle, but before I could turn it, the door swung open. Debbie stood there, her expression nervous. Her eyes were wide, her hands fidgeting slightly at her sides.
"Oh, Caius," she said, her voice tight. "There you are."
I frowned, immediately on alert. Something was wrong. Debbie was never nervous like this.
"Debbie, is everything okay?" I asked, stepping closer. "Did Oliver hurt you?"
"No, no, he didn't hurt me," Debbie said quickly, shaking her head. "Megan is out with him, showing him the Gotham area and doing some shopping. But... you have some guests. One of them says they are your grandfather. He came here with his associates. They're at the dining table. They told me after you arrived, I should leave for a while."
My mind raced. Ares? He was here? And with who else?
"Debbie, are you okay?" I asked, my voice low.
She hesitated, her eyes darting away from mine. "I am fine, but... I don't think I should be here. I will go find Oliver and Megan."
She moved to step past me, but I caught her arm gently. "Mom, what's wrong?"
Debbie looked up at me, and I could see the fear in her eyes. "Caius, those people scared me. None of them hurt me, but I think it's best if I leave for now. They said they have much to discuss with you."
They scared her? It takes alot to scar Debbie and these people did that without lifting a fingure? I let her go, watching as she hurried to her car and drove off into the night.
My jaw tightened. Whoever's inside, they scared Debbie. That's not a good sign, and they will pay for that.
I turned back to the house, my fists clenching at my sides. I took a slow breath, forcing myself to stay calm, and stepped inside.
The hallway was quiet, the only sound the faint hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. I moved slowly, my senses on high alert, my TTK already beginning to flare around my body, and then I saw them.
At the dining table sat a woman who was stunningly beautiful. She had long, flowing black hair like silk, emerald green eyes that seemed to pierce through me, and flawless, sun-kissed olive skin. Her posture was regal, her expression calm and composed. Next to her was an older-looking man. His skin was a fair olive complexion, his features sharp and aristocratic. His eyes were cold, calculating, and utterly devoid of warmth.
And next to them were two children, Damian and Athanasia? Why are they hear? But it was the man at the head of the table who made my blood run cold.
He was broad-shouldered, with long, flowing black hair and heavy, masculine features. His eyes were dark and piercing, and they seemed to see right through me, as if he could read every thought in my head.
He smiled. "Ah, Caius," the man said, his voice smooth and resonant. "Welcome home."
I clenched my fists, my jaw tightening. "Who are you, and what are you doing in my home?"
The man's smile widened slightly. "Ah, where are my manners? This is your home, after all. We apologize for intruding. But let me introduce ourselves."
He gestured to the older man. "This is Ra's al Ghul."
My eyes widened slightly. Ra's al Ghul. Of this world.
"And his daughter, Talia," the man continued, gesturing to the woman. "And her children, Damian and Athanasia."
My mind raced. So this is Talia. And that's Ra's. Damn. This is bad. That means this house, no, this whole neighborhood, is surrounded by the League of Assassins.
The man at the head of the table leaned back in his chair, his dark eyes never leaving mine.
"And I," he said, his voice carrying a weight that seemed to press down on the entire room, "am Vandal Savage. Your grandfather." He paused, his smile widening. "But I guess you could say I am your great-great-grandfather."
My eyes widened, as my breath caught in my throat. And in that moment, only one word echoed through my mind: What?