The void around me was a canvas of infinity, but my mind had snapped back to a single, sharp point of focus. Grayven. The forgotten son. The would-be tyrant bleeding his daddy issues across an entire galaxy. I could feel his presence on the planet below, a cancerous pulse of Apokoliptian technology and desperate ambition.
The easy move—the obvious move—was to descend like the wrath of God and erase him from existence. My heat vision could do it. A punch could do it. Hell, a really stern look might do it.
But easy was boring. And more importantly, easy was wasteful.
Why just kill him? The thought crystallized in my mind, cold and perfect as a diamond formed in space. Why not break him instead? Rearrange him? Turn that hatred for his father into a weapon I can aim?
Darkseid was the real threat. The End. The inevitable tyrant whose shadow stretched across realities. If I could make Grayven into a thorn in his father's side—a rebellious splinter in the god's own flesh—then this whole invasion became a problem that solved itself. Or at least, a problem that became their problem, not the universe's.
I smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.
"Alright, Grayven," I whispered to the void. "Let's see how you handle someone who plays the game better than you do."
I didn't launch myself. I dropped.
One moment I was in orbit, a silent ghost watching the chessboard. The next, I was a meteor, a comet, a falling star with a grudge. The planet—a world Grayven had named something unpronounceable—spun below, a sphere of red rock and black seas. I aimed for the far side from his fortress, the empty hemisphere where he'd stationed his forward troops.
The atmosphere screamed as I hit it. The air itself tried to get out of my way, creating a shockwave that flattened mountains before I even touched the ground. I hit the surface at roughly ten times the speed of sound.
The crater started at a hundred meters wide.
It ended at five kilometers.
The explosion of rock and dust erupted, a fountain of planetary material that reached escape velocity. The shockwave rolled out in a perfect circle, and everything it touched—Parademons, monsters, command towers—simply stopped being where it had been. They were thrown, shattered, or vaporized.
I stood in the center of my own personal apocalypse, one fist still buried in the bedrock, my cape billowing in the wind I'd created.
A Parademon clawed its way from beneath a slab of rock, its biomechanical wings torn. It looked at me with pure, distilled hatred. But underneath that programming, I could sense something else: fear.
Another emerged, intact, its energy weapon already raised. It screamed something in a language of clicks and grinding metal, and opened fire. Red bolts of plasma splashed against my chest. They felt like warm rain.
I stood up, pulling my fist from the crater. The suit wasn't even scuffed.
More of them were coming now. A monster, a cross between a whale and a scorpion, burst from the black sea nearby. It bellowed, a sound like a continent splitting, and charged.
I didn't move. I just looked at it.
My heat vision fired. The beams carved into the monster's hide, and it roared in agony. I twisted the beams' path, bending light itself. The beams split, then split again, becoming a web of white fire that swept through the assembling forces.
The beams screamed—a high-pitched jeeeee that was half energy discharge, half reality protesting its abuse. They moved like living things, homing in on targets, changing direction mid-flight.
The Parademon that had shot me took a beam through its head. It didn't explode; it unmade, its matter converting to harmless particles. The beam didn't stop. It curved down, took out three more, then swept sideways.
Thousands died in seconds. Not just died—erased.
A rumble shook the ground. I turned to see one of the giant monsters had survived, a behemoth with six legs and a mouth that could swallow a house. It was smarter, circling to come at me from behind.
I took to the air, meeting it halfway. It swiped at me with a claw the size of a bus. I caught it with one hand, the impact creating a shockwave that flattened what little remained standing. The monster's one massive, yellow eye widened in surprise.
I gave it a friendly smile. "Hi."
Then I punched it.
The first punch caved in its jaw. The second, delivered before the first had finished landing, turned its head into a cloud of blood mist. The third was for spite, and it reduced the rest of its body to a red rain that pattered against the planet's surface for a mile in every direction.
I hovered in the air, breathing deeply even though I didn't need to. The energy inside me was a storm. I felt more alive than I ever had on Earth.
And I felt eyes on me.
Not satellites. These eyes were older, crueler. I turned my head, super-vision piercing through the planet itself, to the far side where a fortress of obsidian and fire clung to a volcanic plain.
He was looking back.
---
The Throne Room of Grayven, Son of Darkseid
Grayven slouched on his throne, a chair forged from the bones of a failed rival, and stared at the Father Box in his hand. The device was warm, almost hot, pulsing with information from his invasion force. Twelve worlds. Twelve worlds where his banners flew.
His father would have to notice soon.
A low rumble echoed through the fortress. The obsidian walls vibrated. Dust fell from the ceiling.
Grayven sat up. "What was that?"
The Father Box pulsed. IMPACT. THE FORWARD CONTINENT HAS SUFFERED A CATACLYSMIC STRIKE.
"From what? A meteor? The planetary shields should have—"
NO METEOR. A BEING.
The words froze Grayven mid-step. His crimson eyes narrowed. "A being? One?"
ONE.
The Father Box showed him an image from a dying Parademon. A figure in red and blue, standing in a crater. A cape. Eyes that glowed with the light of dying stars.
Grayven's fingers tightened on the Father Box until the metal creaked. "Who dares?" he snarled.
IDENTITY: UNKNOWN. POWER LEVEL: UNKNOWN. THREAT ASSESSMENT: EXTREME.
"Extreme?" Grayven laughed, a bitter sound. "Show me."
The Box projected a hologram. It showed the five-kilometer-wide crater. The heat vision, the white beams that hunted Parademons. The monster dying. The being.
The hologram was blurry. The being's face refused to resolve. But the eyes... Twin points of white light, molten and seething.
Grayven felt something he'd only felt in his father's presence.
True fear.
"Teleport me," he commanded.
WARNING. DIRECT ENGAGEMENT NOT ADVISED.
"I am the son of Darkseid! I do not hide in my fortress while some upstart destroys my conquest! TELEPORT ME!"
The Father Box obeyed. Apokoliptian science wrapped around him, warping space. For a moment, Grayven was nowhere. Then he was there, standing on the shattered edge of his own destruction.
The heat hit him first. Smoke rose from a crack that split the planet's surface. Molten rock glowed from the wounded mantle.
And there, hovering above the devastation, was the being.
Grayven had seen power before. But this was different. This was something raw, something hungry.
The being's suit was red and blue, the symbol on its chest glowing with a white light that hurt to look at. Its cape hung perfectly still. Its face was blurred, but those eyes...
Those eyes locked onto Grayven's.
Crimson met white. The air between them warped. The ground beneath Grayven's feet cracked further.
"You're Grayven," the being said. Its voice was casual. "Son of Darkseid. Man, your dad's a piece of work, isn't he?"
Grayven's hand tightened on the Father Box. He could feel its terror. "You dare—"
"I do," the being interrupted. "I really, really do."
They stood there, two sons defined by their fathers.
Grayven felt the weight of his father's shadow. And for the first time, he felt the presence of someone who might understand that pain.
The being smiled, and its white eyes flared brighter.
"Let's talk," it said. "About your daddy issues."
Grayven roared, the sound of a godling's rage, and the Father Box blazed with power.
[give me power stone for giving u epic fight scene and i didnt aked money and i want to surpass certain fanfic in raking 😭]