RUMBLE!
Thanos, now colossal enough to rival a planet, advanced toward William, his immense mass generating a barrier of pure gravitational distortion so potent that the stars beyond his silhouette wavered and warped, as though viewed through a shimmering curtain of water.
William's aura ignited in a brilliant eruption, making him resemble a distant crimson star to the awestruck onlookers.
The fiery energy surrounding him swelled to monstrous proportions before he launched forward, meeting an incoming fist that blotted out the sky.
"HAAAAAA!"
Pouring an overwhelming torrent of ki into his body, William seemed to merge entirely with his own energy, his form ablaze with the same flame-like hue.
In the space where his fist had been moments earlier, concentric rings of superheated air surged outward, their intensity rippling before transforming into plasma, amplifying his already terrifying momentum.
BOOOOOOOM!
Their fists collided with a force that shook worlds, shattering Thanos's gravitational barrier like a watermelon obliterated by a mighty strike, sending waves of distorted space cascading outward.
Yet the sheer disparity in size placed Thanos in a league of unmatched physical might and resilience.
The impact hurled William hurtling through the solar system until he seized a nearby satellite, using it to bleed off momentum and pivot back toward the Mad Titan's towering form.
In his hands, spheres of blazing red ki, undetectable to Thanos but radiating such immense pressure that even he grew wary, blazed with destructive potential.
With a swift motion, William spread his palms, tracing a wide circle in the air, leaving behind a thick trail of searing energy that coalesced into a scorching ring of flame-like crimson ki.
But Thanos gave no quarter. Without hesitation, he unleashed a planet-sized torrent of black and gold ki, roaring across the void toward the Saiyan with annihilating intent.
William thrust out his hand, clutching the massive ring, and bellowed, "Disperse and begone!" before hurling it toward the oncoming torrent of deadly ki.
WHOOSH!
The crimson ring streaked forward at meteoric speed, but to the astonishment of all who watched, it began to expand, morphing into a colossal celestial shield poised to guard the entire solar system from the devastating force of the beam.
As it grew to the scale of a medium-sized moon, the ring suddenly rotated on its axis, its form shifting from a protective barrier into a fearsome celestial saw blade.
"A gift from Krillin!"
William muttered, his voice somehow carrying across the void of space, resonating in the ears of the Mad Titan himself.
SHHIIIINNGGGG… RUMMBLEEE!
The blazing ring tore into the beam of ki like a hot knife through butter, its spinning surface rotating so rapidly that even the dense power of Thanos's attack could not withstand it.
Acting as an immense, whirling blade, it cleaved the Mad Titan's assault clean in two, sending each half hurtling off into the endless void where they dissolved harmlessly into the darkness of space.
Thanos never saw the attack coming until it was far too late, and in an instant, a colossal ring of blazing, flame-like red ki burst forth from beyond the assault, slicing into the Mad Titan's planet-sized shoulder with devastating force.
The searing energy gouged immense, lava-filled trenches into his flesh, molten rivers spilling from the wounds, before the fiery ring roared away into the cosmos, spinning like a lethal, otherworldly frisbee.
RIIIIPPPP… SSSSHHHHH!!
The molten chasm carved into Thanos's colossal shoulder writhed with unnatural life, the lava-like blood reversing its flow as though compelled by some inexorable higher command.
A sickly emerald luminescence pulsed outward, drenching his gargantuan frame in the eerie glow of chronal inversion.
The wound rewound.
Flesh wove itself whole.
Stone-forged muscle locked seamlessly into place.
The Time Stone's glow slithered across the titanic gash, consuming every trace of damage until, within mere seconds, not a scar remained.
Thanos rolled his massive neck, the sound reverberating through the void like tectonic plates grinding in agony. Slowly, deliberately, his colossal head pivoted toward William.
And he grinned.
A vast, ravenous, predator's grin.
"What the hell is a Krillen…?"
His tongue swept across his jagged lips, black and glassy like molten obsidian scraping against steel.
"…does he taste good?"
Then, without warning, without heed for physics, logic, or the impossible enormity of his form...
FWOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!
Thanos was gone.
The space behind him collapsed inward, birthing a gravitational shockwave that bent the stars themselves around the rift he had torn open with sheer, impossible velocity.
William's eyes widened, then his gaze was no longer forward, but upward.
The Titan loomed above, already upon him.
"RRRRAAAAAAAAHH!!"
William's aura erupted, an incandescent solar storm of magenta fire, crimson lightning, and searing fury exploding outward in a volcanic bloom.
Their collision met in the void's heart.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
The resulting shockwave tore through the solar system, a vast ring of hypercompressed space and raw kinetic energy rippling outward like a cosmic tide.
In an instant, both were gone, streaks of light across the dark.
William: a blazing comet of flame-wreathed red divinity.
Thanos: a ravenous singularity shrouded in black-and-gold ki.
Their trails tore through the void, scrawling chaotic arcs of godlike fury across the gulf between worlds.
FWASH!
FWOOOM!
BWOOOOOM!!
Each collision flared like a newborn star, flooding the cosmos with blinding light.
Each deflection ripped burning scars of annihilation through the endless dark.
Then...
KRRRRAAAAAAAA-THOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
They struck MERCURY.
The planet rang like a titanic gong, its iron heart quaking as molten fissures split its crust, geysers of incandescent rock erupting into the sky.
A hemisphere of dust burst free, hurled into orbit in a single cataclysmic plume.
Yet Mercury endured, dense, unyielding, forged in the Sun's relentless blaze.
From a crater of searing metal, William rose, his aura writhing and howling like a living inferno.
Above him loomed Thanos, his vast, planetary-scale form collapsing inward, shedding mass in torrents, compressing into something still colossal but honed now for lethal speed.
Both drew back their fists.
Both auras roared.
Both were already in motion.
They met once more...
BOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
For an instant, a second sun blazed upon Mercury's surface.
And the war raged on.
The second sun guttered and died, yet its blazing echo clung to the world.
From the point of impact, a searing ring of iron sand and molten glass surged outward, the trembling ground shimmering like a living sheet of heat.
What passed for air quaked, thrumming as raw plasma licked up the jagged cliffs of Mercury's sundered skin.
William didn't hesitate, couldn't, because through the haze, Thanos's colossal silhouette emerged, like a mountain wrenching itself free to walk.
With a roar of ignition.
FWOOOOM!
William became a streak of magenta fire and vanished into motion.
Thanos answered with terrifying precision, compressing his massive frame until he loomed a mere thirty meters tall, a condensed, unyielding engine of annihilation, every atom ablaze with gauntlet-fed cosmic fury.
For a single breath, Mercury held its silence.
Then... Impact
KRAK-BWOOOOOOOOOM!
They collided in the heart of a shattered basin, fists detonating against fists, elbows slamming forward, forearms crashing together with the weight and fury of colliding suns.
To the naked eye, they were gone. To the soul, they were omnipresent.
Two streaks, one red, one black-gold, flickered across the planet in dozens of simultaneous afterimages, crossing valleys and reappearing atop ridges, ricocheting off crater walls, vanishing and reappearing again in the same moment.
The surface of Mercury convulsed under the impossible barrages of force, the crust groaning and shattering as kilometer-deep fissures tore open one after the other.
Thanos's fist materialized behind William's head.
BLAM!
but William dipped at the last instant, spinning forward with a backfist that cracked the Titan's jaw and sent shockwaves erupting outward.
Thanos grinned into the impact.
"Better."
He appeared above William, knee dropping like a collapsing star. William spun aside, the knee burying itself half a mile into the crust and blasting a geyser of molten metal into the air.
The plume splashed outward in an incandescent halo.
William burst forward.
Thanos swatted him out of the air like a comet.
William ricocheted off the ground, skimming across it faster than vision, carving a burning gouge that stretched across the horizon before he reversed direction, using his own trail of molten slag as footing to sling himself back at the Titan.
Their fists met again.
KRA-KOOOOOOOM!!!
Three craters formed in three different places simultaneously.
Their afterimages were so fast they were generating illusions of themselves, echoes of motion caused by the sheer speed at which they ripped through the spectrum of light.
William appeared behind Thanos, above him, beside him, each swing of his fist trailing a comet-like streak that traced fractal arcs through the shimmering atmosphere.
Thanos's laughter reverberated through the thin air.
"YES! THIS IS POWER!"
He swung.
William blocked.
The force alone vaporized everything within a mile radius.
William lunged upward, knee plowing into Thanos's ribs with a shockwave that rippled around the planet like a seismic heartbeat.
Thanos countered, hooking an arm around William and slamming him downward into the surface with enough force to make Mercury ring like a struck bell.
William's body cratered deep into the crust.
Thanos descended with a roar, fist raised, but William's aura detonated.
FOOOOM-BOOOOOMMMM!!!
Magenta fire erupted from the crater like a volcanic eruption, hurling Thanos upward. William blasted out of the explosion, shoulder-checking Thanos through the air and unleashing a rapid-fire barrage of punches that struck like meteor impacts:
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!!!
Each blow dented reality itself, rippling energy outward in concentric distortions.
Thanos finally caught one of the punches.
His hand clamped around William's wrist like a titan snapping shut a steel trap.
And with a grin full of cosmic hunger, he spun, hurling William in a wild arc around the planet.
William became a streak of light.
He completed a full orbit of Mercury in less than a second.
Thanos cocked his fist back, and William appeared behind him.
Both struck at once.
Their fists collided mid-swing in the space between them.
What followed was not an explosion, explosions have limits.
This was a continent-shaking implosion of kinetic force.
Mercury's gravitational field wobbled.
A mushroom cloud of incandescent dust blasted outward, enveloping the entire northern hemisphere.
William and Thanos were already moving again.
William materialized above the cloud, hands drawn to his sides.
Ki flared.
The atmosphere shimmered around him.
Two dense spheres of crimson-red energy swelled in his palms, vibrating with a pitch so high it was nearly inaudible.
Thanos shot upward, his body trailing black and gold afterimages.
William thrust both palms forward, unleashing a rapid-fire flurry of ki blasts, each one a miniature star compressed into a bolt of raw annihilation.
"RAAAAAAHHH!!"
The blasts shattered the upper atmosphere in staccato rhythm.
POP!
BOOM!
POP!
BOOM!
BOOM-BOOM
BOOOOM!!!
Thanos roared, swatting blasts aside, tanking others, the impacts exploding against his skin like nuclear suns.
But even he couldn't simply walk through it.
The barrage drove him downward, smashing him back into the surface like a meteorite.
Craters fanned outward in a chain reaction as blast after blast struck the Titan, drowning him under a tide of explosive ki.
When the smoke finally cleared, Thanos was in the crater, grinning.
"Cute."
He thrust his hand forward.
A single beam of black and gold energy fired from his palm.
No sound.
No buildup.
Just instantaneous annihilation.
William dodged by microns, but the beam grazed his shoulder, carving a glowing trench across his flesh before lancing upward into the sky and piercing space itself.
The edges of the wound sizzled, the damage spreading like necrotic energy gnawing at his ki field.
William hissed between his teeth, gripping the wound.
Thanos blurred into view above him.
A downward stomp.
William blocked with both forearms, and even then, the impact drove him hundreds of meters into the ground, the crust shattering around him.
Thanos followed, fists dropping like meteoric anvils, each blow a continent-wiping event:
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
William parried, weaved, countered, but every block sent shockwaves through his bones.
He ducked beneath a swing and retaliated with a rising uppercut wreathed in blazing crimson fire.
Thanos's head snapped upward.
William didn't let up.
He hammered the Titan with blow after blow: elbows, knees, hooks, hammerfists, kicks that tore sound itself apart.
Thanos staggered.
Then he lunged, catching William in a bear-like grip, crushing ribs with a single tightening motion.
William's aura flared with violent refusal.
He detonated.
The explosion hurled both fighters apart, scorching the landscape into molten rivers once more.
William landed in a slide, planting a heel deep into the ground to halt his momentum.
Magenta fire wrapped around his form, condensing tightly as he inhaled sharply.
Thanos skidded across the surface, carving trenches the size of city blocks before coming to a stop, smoke trailing from his shoulders.
He lifted an arm again.
Two fingers extended.
William's eyes narrowed.
Not a blast.
A flick.
The gesture created a shockwave so compressive that the space between the two of them warped inward.
William countered by thrusting his palm forward, releasing a compressed bolt of ki that detonated the incoming distortion mid-air.
The explosion rippled outward in a halo, Thanos barreled forward through the shockwave.
William charged to meet him.
They collided in a storm of fists and fury, their movements so fast that their bodies blurred into streaks of colorful light.
Craters erupted beneath them faster than they could fill with molten runoff.
The crust of Mercury rippled and buckled like a shaken drumskin.
Thanos swung with the speed of a lightning strike.
William deflected.
Thanos pivoted with a brutal knee.
William blocked and countered with a hook that cracked the Titan's cheekbone.
Thanos roared, slamming his forehead into William's.
A shockwave rippled out in a perfect sphere.
William staggered, recovering with a spinning kick that Thanos caught, only for William to twist mid-air, planting the other foot squarely into Thanos's jaw with a planet-shaking crack.
Thanos stumbled.
William thrust both hands forward, a concentrated ki storm erupted from his palms.
A swirling inferno of red, magenta, and white-hot particles spiraled into a focused beam, shooting across the horizon.
Thanos raised both arms, bracing against it.
The beam pushed him back.
One inch.
Two.
Three.
His heels carved trenches in the glowing ground as the attack forced him backward.
Then Thanos growled, muscles bulging, the Infinity Stones pulsing along his arm like a demonic heartbeat.
He pushed forward.
The beam buckled.
William roared, pouring more ki into it, the ray intensifying until it lit the entire hemisphere.
Thanos lunged through it.
Through the heat.
Through the force.
Through the burning pressure.
He broke it, and slammed his fist into William's chest.
William flew backward at hypersonic speed, the world melted around him.
He crashed into the far horizon in a burning explosion, carving a half-ring of devastation across Mercury's curvature.
Thanos landed a moment later, dust and plasma swirling around him.
He rolled his massive neck and cracked his knuckles.
"Round two," he growled.
William rose from the distant crater.
Aura blazing.
Teeth clenched.
Eyes burning with fire-born fury.
And the battle resumed.