BOOM!
William materialized before Thanos with such overwhelming force and blinding speed that an explosive ring of pure kinetic energy erupted around him, instantly vaporizing any moisture in the air into searing plasma.
In the same breath, he unleashed a relentless flurry of punches, each strike landing with such rapid precision that Thanos had no time to react, no chance to comprehend what was happening, until the Mad Titan was sent hurtling through the air, blood streaming from his nose in the wake of the devastating assault.
After unleashing a surge of ki and spatial energy to halt his backward momentum, he snapped his gaze upward to glare at William, only to find the Saiyan had vanished from where he'd last been seen.
Thanos' head whipped around frantically, his golden eyes narrowing into razor-thin slits as he called upon the Mind Stone's power to sharpen his perception.
Yet before he could pinpoint William's location, a powerful hand seized the back of his head and smashed it into the Martian surface with such ferocity that the impact triggered seismic events, from violent Marsquakes to roaring volcanic eruptions. With relentless force, William drove the Mad Titan deeper and deeper into the planet's crust until the familiar red rock gave way to glowing, nearly molten stone.
Desperate to break free, Thanos gathered his ki into a concentrated beam fired from his eyes, the attack slamming into William with raw intensity.
Within the dark, seething aura of his ki, the unmistakable energy of the Power Stone flickered like violet sparks, crackling with hatred and defiance.
William's aura slammed into the ground with such immense weight and pressure that the dirt beneath him compacted instantly, compressing toward a density rivaling the universe's most indestructible metals before his feet had even touched down.
CRACK!
Even with the newfound resilience of the searing red Martian rocks, William's renewed surge forward unleashed hundreds of jagged, spiderweb-like cracks that shot outward in all directions, leaving his deep footprints etched into the scorched terrain as a testament to his power.
From the depths of the impact crater, Thanos erupted into the open air, teeth clenched in grim determination. With a sweep of his arm, he summoned the very energy of space, calling forth his trusted double-edged sword, a weapon forged to make brutal examples of those who dared defy him.
CRACKLE!
The Infinity Gauntlet blazed to life, erupting in multicolored lightning as Thanos channeled the raw might of the stones into his blade. The fused powers swirled into a blinding, chaotic rainbow, each hue representing the boundless force of an Infinity Stone, their combined energy so intense that the weapon's surface trembled, barely containing the cataclysmic power raging within.
WHOOM!
The Martian crust erupted skyward as if the planet itself had detonated from within.
A colossal pillar of red-gold fire speared into the heavens, coiling and writhing like a solar flare that refused to fade. The shockwave tore through the thin atmosphere with such ferocity that, to the naked eye on Earth, Mars seemed to ignite a newborn sun.
From deep within that cataclysm, William rose.
No, he exploded forth.
Super Saiyan God William burst from the molten stone, forged from raw rage, blazing fire, and unyielding divinity. His aura didn't merely burn; it screamed, a living storm of magenta flame, crimson lightning, and drifting embers of shimmering particles that glimmered like radioactive stardust.
His eyes blazed as hollow voids of incandescent wrath.
His hair whipped and flared like a torch trapped in a hurricane.
His very presence bent the pull of gravity itself.
Then he moved, and reality could not keep pace.
FWOOOOOOSH!!
In fractions of microseconds, he crossed miles, leaving a tunnel of searing plasma where the air had been torn apart before it could even exist. Beneath each stride, the ground flattened, liquefied, then shattered into dust under the crushing force of his passage.
Thanos had barely registered the oncoming storm.
He raised his massive double-bladed sword, only for William to already stand before him, fist cocked back, aura roaring like a wrathful god.
But the Mad Titan was no fool.
SHINGGGGG...KRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAK!!
The Infinity Stone–infused blade shrieked, unleashing a slashing crescent of condensed ki threaded with rainbow lightning, the arc ripping through the heavens like a rupture in reality itself. William's eyes flared wide as he threw his arms up.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!!
His ki erupted in a desperate roar, a blazing barrier of crimson fire that splintered under the overwhelming ferocity of the oncoming strike.
The instant the slash struck...
KRRRRKOOOOOOOMMMM!!!
It exploded, swallowing him in a sphere of searing white heat before hurling his body like a blazing meteor across the Martian wastes. He ripped through canyons, gouged molten trenches into the ground, obliterated a mountain ridge, and skidded across the horizon, leaving a burning wound carved into the planet itself.
William had no time to breathe.
No time to think.
No time even to scream his fury.
Because Thanos stepped from a shimmering spatial portal above, his massive hand already descending, a precise, lethal chop aimed for the crown of William's skull.
A strike meant to slay gods.
And William looked up, his hands snapping forward to seize the blade in his grasp.
Both sides.
With nothing but his bare hands.
SSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
The weapon seared into his palms instantly, the volatile fusion of Power, Space, Mind, and Reality shredding skin and scorching bone. The crimson blaze of his aura writhed like a living tempest, lashing out in response to the agony, to the sheer madness of the act he dared to commit.
Thanos's eyes widened.
He hadn't anticipated resistance.
He hadn't imagined the boy could still be conscious.
He hadn't foreseen.
William fighting back.
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"
With a roar that shattered the air itself, William twisted, the double-bladed sword his anchor. Thanos's massive frame was wrenched from the ground, lifted as though it were weightless.
William spun.
Once.
Twice.
A blur.
A storm.
They became a cyclone of flame and shadow, whirling with unstoppable force.
Then William let go.
WHOOOOM... CRRRRRRRAAAASHHHHHHH!!!!
Thanos hurtled across the desolate terrain, colliding with a mountain in a cataclysmic impact that obliterated the formation, triggering an apocalyptic detonation. The blast carved a crater miles wide into the planet's crust, a shockwave racing across the globe.
Dust surged into the atmosphere in a choking, planetary veil.
Mars itself trembled, as though bracing for the next blow.
William stood amidst the roaring inferno, chest heaving, his aura a snarling beast of flame encircling him, eyes locked unyieldingly on the smoldering crater where Thanos had fallen.
And in a voice quivering with wrath, he whispered:
"I can do this all day. Can you?"
THOOOOOOOM!!
A deafening roar burst from the heart of the crater, raw, primal, and so immense it made the fragile Martian atmosphere vibrate like a drumskin on the verge of tearing apart.
Thanos emerged.
His face contorted with an ancient, venomous rage so tangible it struck like a pressure wave, rattling the very bones of the world. His aura ignited, violet, blue, green, yellow, melding into a violent maelstrom of unrestrained cosmic ki.
The Infinity Gauntlet answered without hesitation.
FZZZZZZZ-KRRRAAAAKK!!
Torrents of multicolored lightning writhed across the golden metal, spilling from its seams, spiraling toward the fingertips in a blinding vortex of omnipotent energy. The air shimmered. The ground turned molten. Space itself quivered in protest.
Thanos raised his left hand.
The Snap hand.
Reality itself seemed to flinch.
William's breath caught.
He was going to do it again.
Another annihilation.
Another erasure.
Another Phage.
FWOOOM!!
In a thunderclap of sonic fury, William vanished, only to reappear before Thanos in a blink, the air still trembling from the violence of his arrival.
But the Mad Titan merely grinned, a cold and merciless curl of the lips, the smirk of a battle-hardened conqueror who had lured a god into his trap.
"Predictable."
SCHWIIIIIIING... KRRRRAAAAAAKKKKK!!!
Thanos's right arm became a blur, his massive double-edged blade sweeping in a horizontal arc with such cataclysmic velocity that the very atmosphere shattered before metal met air.
William's instincts roared in alarm; he twisted, spinning, flipping, every motion a desperate gamble against death itself. He cleared the murderous strike by the width of a breath as a scything wave of compressed ki intertwined with raw Infinity Stone energy ripped free from the weapon, a luminous crescent of annihilation screaming across the scarlet Martian plains.
FSSSHHHHOOOOOOOMMMM!!!!!
In an instant, an entire mountain was cleaved in two. The upper half lifted free, suspended for a heartbeat before collapsing in a roaring avalanche of stone and molten debris.
The cutting arc didn't stop, it seared onward, carving a blazing wound across the heavens before vanishing into the endless void of space. William steadied himself, only to find Thanos already there. Already swinging. Already grinning.
"Too slow." FWOOM!!! The Infinity Gauntlet smashed into William's face, not merely powered, but supercharged.
All six Stones flared in unison, their combined energies spiraling into the Titan's fist in a cataclysmic burst of multicolored fury.
The blow didn't just strike William.
It engulfed him, body, mind, and soul, consuming him utterly.
KRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-BOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!
The detonation tore the atmosphere asunder in a flawless sphere of blinding, white-hot energy, hurling concentric shockwaves across the planet like the resonant toll of a cosmic bell.
William did not merely fly.
He was hurled.
A blazing streak of crimson, gold, and magenta carved upward through the heavens.
SHOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!
He shattered through the upper atmosphere.
SHRAKKKK!!!
Then ripped into Mars's exosphere.
Then... Silence.
His incandescent form tumbled into orbit, spinning violently as ribbons of fire streamed behind him like the tails of a dying comet, vision dimming, blood seething, aura lashing wildly like a wounded predator.
Below, Mars smoldered in the lingering fury of the Titan's strike.
And far beneath…
Thanos stood, gauntleted fist still lifted, tendrils of cosmic smoke curling from his knuckles, a vicious smirk etched across his face in unholy satisfaction.
"Come back down," he rumbled, voice rolling like thunder across the hemisphere.
"I'm not done breaking you."
Thanos drove the Infinity Gauntlet into the scorched surface of Mars.
The planet responded.
RMMMMMMMMMMMMMM…
A deep, continental groan reverberated through the world as the six Stones released their power downward, their radiance sinking into the crust, the mantle, into the very core of Mars. The atmosphere cracked with multicolored lightning, the heavens shifting from black to blood-red, then to a searing white as the Gauntlet's feedback rewrote the laws of physics.
William's eyes widened.
Something ancient and apocalyptic was awakening beneath him.
CRACK.
A tectonic plate sheared apart.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!!
A thousand more followed suit.
Thanos raised his arms wide.
"Let this world… be my flesh."
The Power Stone erupted first.
FOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!
A colossal geyser of crimson energy tore into the sky.
Next, the Reality Stone contorted the landscape, warping, liquefying, reshaping matter itself.
Finally, the Space Stone folded the transformed mass into Thanos's own body.
The Mind, Soul, and Time Stones aligned in perfect synchrony, binding their combined power into an unbreakable permanence.
Then, without metaphor or illusion, Thanos merged with the planet Mars.
The world itself convulsed like a living organism as he absorbed its mass, minerals, atmosphere, ancient scars, dormant volcanoes, and iron-rich crust.
His flesh shifted to Martian red, transforming into dense layers of compressed stone infused with iron oxide and volcanic glass.
His musculature reformed into vast tectonic plates grinding against one another, while his veins illuminated like channels of molten magma.
His size increased with staggering speed, and before William could fully grasp the enormity, a vast shadow engulfed him.
Thanos's foot, now rivaling Olympus Mons in scale, lifted above the horizon like a continent torn from the surface.
His colossal chest pierced the clouds, his head blotting out the sun.
When he roared, the sound became weather itself, a planet-spanning stormfront of raw sonic force sweeping across the land.
With a roar that tore through the heavens, Mars itself convulsed, unable to contain the force surging within it.
The Infinity Gauntlet, now transformed into an immense megastructure, radiated with the brilliance of multiple suns, each stone blazing like a miniature star.
His double-edged sword expanded alongside him, its colossal length spanning miles, the edge glowing with such fierce intensity that its outline was seared into the planet's atmosphere.
His voice emerged as both a tangible and planetary force, resonating through crust, mantle, and the thinning sky: "THIS WORLD IS MINE. NOW... SO ARE YOU." He extended his hand, vast as a region, with fingers stretching like mountain ranges, raking through the air toward William.
For the first time since their battle began, William felt small, yet his aura blazed fiercer, his divine flame churned with greater heat, and his heartbeat thundered like a star on the verge of detonation.
In a low whisper, he uttered, "…come on then." If Thanos sought the scale of worlds, William would answer with the scale of gods.