AN: Big chapter. 2.5k words. And I kinda went all out and added too many things which some might like and some might not like. Hehe. Hope you enjoy it. No cliffhanger this time.
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John turned slowly, lightning still crackling faintly across his shoulders from the training he had just finished. His suit has transformed from black to bright red with a black cape, gauntlets, belt and boots.
Blaze hovered a few inches above the ruined stone, flames coiling around her like living serpents. Her smile was lazy and confident, the kind that suggested she walked into the conversation already believing she'd won.
Blaze walked forward with her hips swaying and eyes glowing molten gold. Her every step created ripples in the air, and her crimson dress flowed like living fire.
"You really have changed," she purred. "Twelve gods in your veins. Power no mortal should touch. And yet… here you stand... unbroken."
John rolled his eyes. "You know, I'm not in the mood for weird demon flirting."
Blaze's grin widened. "Oh, John… I'm not flirting. I'm offering you everything."
She moved behind him in a blur of fire. Her breath touched his ear, hot enough to burn stone but warm against his skin. "Limitless power," she whispered. "More than Shazam, more than the gods themselves. Power to rewrite fate… to tear down Heaven if you wished."
Her fingers slid lightly across his shoulders, tracing patterns of heat. Images shimmered in the air before him: a throne made of storm and flame, legions kneeling, worlds bowing, lightning splitting the sky at his command.
"Fame that will echo across every realm," Blaze continued. "Mortals praising your name. Demons fearing it. Songs written about you for the next thousand years."
She circled in front of him. The flames dimmed, making her features softer, alluring in an eldritch way. Then she blinked before him and leaned forward... like way too close.
"Or perhaps… companionship," she breathed. "Any woman you desire... Amazons, Atlanteans, humans, demons, angels, aliens... You can have them all. Any fantasy you've ever pushed aside because you feared hurting someone or losing them. I can make every dream real. Every wish. Every craving. All you have to do is take my hand."
She wrapped her arms around his neck. Her lips were an inch apart from John, and she released her demonic power to confuse and seduce him even further. She wasn't taking any chances with him this time.
"All you must do is claim me. Marry me. Become my king. Every king needs his queen. Together we would crush the old gods. Burn them out of the cosmos. Then we would rule the mortal and demon realms alike."
Her voice dropped to an intoxicating whisper.
"Just say yes, my love, and you will never want for anyth—"
Spatttt! Crack!
John blinked out of her grasp with his hyper speed and slapped her midsentence.
The impact cracked the air. Blaze's head snapped sideways with a sound like breaking stone. Her jaw shattered. Teeth scattered like sparks as she rocketed across the sky, her body streaking across the ocean like a launched missile. Even she couldn't grasp what just happened. Her mind was completely blacked out for a good 30 seconds or so. When she came to her senses, she was already flying as a sharp pain swept through her body.
John dusted his hands. "Creepy motherfucking bitch. Seduction won't work on me. I'm gonna beat the shit out of you."
He shot up in the air, catching up to Blaze almost instantly.
Blaze finally stopped tumbling across the sky. Her body stabilized, fire re-forming around her broken jaw. She touched her chin, felt the fracture, and her eyes flared wide with outrage.
"You struck me," she hissed, voice trembling with disbelief. She looked up at John. "You insignificant mortal… you dared lay a hand on—"
John appeared in front of her in a single blink.
"Correction," he said. "I dared lay two hands on you."
He punched her in the stomach.
The air detonated from the force. Blaze folded around his fist and shot straight down, crashing through the ocean's surface with a massive plume of white spray. A crater opened in the water. The sea itself parted for seconds.
Blaze erupted back into the sky. Her flames warped violently, her dress twisting into demonic armor. Horns sprouted from her forehead and she looked pissed.
"Enough games," she snarled. "I am Blaze. Mistress of the demonic arts. Through me all infernal power flows. I will not be humiliated by a child with borrowed thunder!"
She roared.
Her magic erupted like a collapsing star.
A massive tidal wave of black flames swallowed John. Lightning twisted violently inside the infernal cloud.
John stepped out of it without a scratch.
With every step he took, Blaze's flames bent away from him. Diving lightning crackled around his body, nullifying the demonic flames.
"Cute trick," John said. "Try something dangerous."
"ARRGGGG!!"
Blaze screamed in fury and shot forward.
She expanded her body into a colossal demonic titan, easily fifty meters tall. Her skin became obsidian armor. Her wings spread across the entire island. She threw a punch the size of a truck.
John caught it with one hand.
She tried to pull back.
She couldn't.
Her eyes widened. "Impossible."
John smiled. "That's what they all say."
He squeezed her fist. Her fingers cracked like glass.
Blaze roared in pain and unleashed a storm of magic sigils. Circles of fire and darkness surrounded them. Hellish glyphs rotated. Chains of pure shadow snapped toward John, trying to bind him. The sky turned red. Space itself warped as Blaze tried to fold reality around him, tearing the world into a funnel of demonic energy.
"Hahahaha!" John laughed out loud. "So much power. This is it. Don't you dare die on me, Blaze, because starting this point..." He left her fist and vanished from her vision, and appeared around her torso.
There was a blue swirling sphere in his right hand that grew from the size of a small cricket ball to a giant football.
"...I'm gonna test all my new skills on you and improve them even further."
John pushed the blue sphere into her stomach. "Giant Rasengan!"
The explosion was instantaneous and catastrophic.
A geyser of blue and white energy erupted outward, tearing through obsidian armor and ripping a crater straight through her massive torso. Blaze's scream shook the air. Her titan body convulsed as the swirling sphere drilled deeper, shredding every layer of magic she tried to regenerate with.
A gigantic shockwave blasted across the ocean. Waves rose like walls. Clouds split apart. Lightning shuddered through the sky in jagged lines. The entire island trembled beneath them.
Blaze reeled backward, clutching the smoking hole in her abdomen. Her wings faltered. Her demonic armor steamed with cracks.
"Holy crap! It worked," John punched his fist in the air with a large and satisfied grin.
"You miserable little rat!" she screamed, her voice layered with a dozen demonic harmonics. "I will peel the flesh from your bones. I will burn your soul for ten thousand years!"
John floated lazily. "You talk a lot for someone who just got Swiss-cheesed."
Blaze's teeth gnashed. "I will not be mocked."
She snapped her fingers. The space around them tore like fabric ripped by claws.
From within the tear, a storm of infernal chains poured out. Each chain was covered in screaming demonic faces. They shot toward John from all directions, trying to bind him, pierce him, crush him, drag him into the pit.
John yelled, focusing on his next energy transformation. "Nen! Godspeed!"
John's body snapped into a blur of white lightning. His entire form flickered, sharp and jagged like a storm barely held in human shape. The instant his palms touched, a deafening thunderclap tore across the sky.
Godspeed activated.
In a single moment, John went from stillness to movement so intense the world smeared into streaks of color.
The first chain lunged.
John was already past it.
A second wrapped around his ankle.
John twisted and shattered it with a kick that broke the sound barrier.
A dozen more chains burst from the tear in space. They swarmed him like a living net of darkness, every face on them screaming and gnashing, every link dripping with hellfire.
John vanished.
Lightning erupted across the sky in ten different places at once. Each flash marked where he struck, where he moved, where he redirected himself with impossible speed.
Chains exploded one after another, bursting like fireworks.
Blaze spun in confusion, trying to track him. Her flaming eyes darted everywhere, and her demonic senses strained as she caught only glimpses.
A hand on her wing.
A knee driving into her ribs.
A fist cracking across her jaw.
John's voice echoed around her like he was speaking from every direction at once.
"Too slow."
"Way too slow."
"You cannot hit what you cannot see."
Blaze snapped, "Enough of your tricks!"
She ignited the sky, but this time she used multiple elements: Wind, water, fire, earth, thunder, and demonic energy.
John blinked away from her, creating enough distance to dodge and launch a counterattack.
"I'm going to show you how insignificant your powers are," Blaze yelled as she began to fuse the elements together. Multiple shadow demons emerged from her body and surrounded her to protect her. From the looks of it, that attack was definitely dangerous but takes time to charge up.
"Alright, we are going big, huh?" John said as he cracked his fingers. "I got one too."
He took a deep breath and grinned again.
"Convert. Chi!"
John's aura changed again. This time, a bright golden energy appeared around his body. 'Humm. Now that I got the grasp of this energy conversion, I can take my sweet time playing later. It takes too much focus, but it's doable. Let's end this. I'm pretty sure Harley and Maureen fucked up Sivana. Still... a little worried about them.'
Blaze felt the shift.
Her elemental power pulsed violently. Six conflicting energies churned around her like a cyclone on the verge of tearing reality open. Her shadow demons stabilized the spell, channeling each element into a single swirling mass. Fire curled around water, water compressed earth, earth grounded lightning, wind carved through demonic magic, and all of it fused into a roaring sphere of raw annihilation.
The sphere expanded, its surface crackling like an unstable star.
"Time to live the childhood dream..." He opened his palms and joined his wrists together, pointing at Blaze.
A trickle of blue energy glowed between his palms. It crackled and expanded. The swirl intensified, blue mixing with the gold aura around John.
He slid his right foot back.
He pulled his hands to his hip.
He focused.
"Ka…"
The entire island shook.
"Me…"
The ocean split under his feet.
"Ha…"
Lightning wrapped around his arms like living serpents.
"Me…"
The chi erupted into a radiant sphere between his palms, pulsing like a miniature star, vibrating with so much force that distant clouds evaporated from the shockwaves.
Blaze screamed and thrust her colossal sphere forward.
"CATACLYSM."
The Elemental Catastrophe shot toward John. The sphere ripped everything in its path into shreds of vapor. The sky turned into a cyclone of color and darkness, the sea boiled, the island cracked.
John thrust his hands forward.
"HAAAAA!"
The Kamehameha exploded out of him.
A beam of pure blue energy ripped apart the sky. It was thick enough to dwarf mountains. Lightning danced across its surface. Divine chi infused every particle, stabilizing the attack so it would not tear the world apart.
The two attacks collided halfway between them.
The universe seemed to freeze.
Then the world detonated with light.
The shockwave flattened the ocean for miles. A pillar of pure force ripped upward, splitting the clouds in half. The island under them crumbled at the edges. Wildlife miles away fled as the sky became brighter than the sun.
The collision roared like a thousand thunderstorms.
Blaze poured every ounce of elemental magic into her attack. Wind howled violently. Fire surged hotter than any earthly flame. Water compressed into a bladed tsunami. Lightning tore through space itself. Earth shattered into molten shrapnel. Shadow demons screamed, pushing the spell harder.
The elemental sphere shoved forward. Inch by inch.
"Fall!" Blaze shrieked. "Fall beneath MY POWER... PEST!"
John growled. His arms trembled slightly. Not from exhaustion but from excitement.
"You think this is my limit?"
His aura surged.
He pushed more chi into the beam. The Kamehameha brightened. The beam expanded, nearly blinding. Lightning erupted from his back like wings.
"Kaioken!"
A red aura exploded around him. The sky shook.
Blaze's eyes widened in shock.
John roared.
"Kaioken times ten!"
Thanks to his divine power and enhanced body, he was easily able to withstand the pressure.
His beam expanded again, becoming a monstrous column of light that dwarfed everything in sight. The Kamehameha surged forward, overwhelming the elemental sphere and devouring its energies one color at a time.
Fire disappeared.
Wind collapsed.
Water evaporated.
Earth shattered.
Lightning sparked and died.
Demonic magic screamed as it was swallowed whole.
"No!" Blaze's voice cracked with panic. "Impossible. Impossible. IMPOSSIBLE."
John pushed harder and roared with a grin splitting his face.
"I already have everything I wish for. A new life, a new family, a new goal, and that's enough for me. So, fuck you, Blaze."
The Kamehameha tore through her spell.
It slammed into her with the force of a collapsing star.
Her titan body disintegrated instantly, armor and flesh exploding outward in a massive plume of black flame. The beam carried her across the sky for several miles. Her scream echoed for a long moment before the beam finally burst upward into the atmosphere and split the clouds across the horizon.
Silence.
John lowered his hands and let out a long breath.
The sea slowly closed over the burning trench carved by his attack. Steam rose in colossal waves. The clouds were cut clean in half.
John rubbed his shoulder.
"Okay… note to self. Kamehameha plus Kaioken equals ridiculous. I should not do that every morning."
Blaze's broken form crashed onto the rocky shore far below. Her massive demonic titan shape had collapsed into her humanoid body. Her armor had cracked away. Her skin smoldered. She was half-conscious, barely breathing.
John hovered down and cracked his knuckles.
"Round two?"
Blaze glared weakly.
"You… cannot beat… the Sins…"
John grabbed her by the horn and lifted her easily.
"We'll just see about that."
He smirked before yelling, "SHAZAM!!!"
The divine lightning crashed onto them. Blaze screamed as her body began to turn to dust. John held on to the lightning till the demon was completely vaporized before letting it go.
Then without wasting another second, he flew toward Kahndaq.
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