Just as King Piccolo was about to clench his fist, Tony accelerated forward. A nano substrate shot from his hand and stuck to King Piccolo's palm. King Piccolo strained, but his fist wouldn't close.
"Kid, kick him!" Tony yelled.
Peter spun and lashed out with a kick at the same instant Tony closed in. Tony's thrusters twisted him into a 360-degree spinning kick. Both blows landed square on King Piccolo. The monster staggered back a step, steadied himself immediately, snatched up little Spidey, and hurled him straight at Tony.
A loud bang rang out. The two were sent flying by the immense force. King Piccolo grabbed the nano substrate stuck to his palm, crushed it with a squeeze, and fired a beam directly at Tony and Peter.
At that moment, a figure in jet-black armor with a cape appeared. He raised a hand and conjured an energy shield that blocked King Piccolo's attack.
"It's the Dark Knight Zodd!"
"Zodd Hess!"
"Is that… energy shield tech?"
Only Tony Stark blurted out that last part, completely off-beat.
Was this guy trying to discourage him or what? He had just finished developing his nano armor, and Zodd Hess already had mature energy shield technology? And the effect looked pretty solid, too, stopping an attack from that dragon-level freak.
King Piccolo opened his mouth to speak, but Zodd Hess had already vanished. Everyone watched him appear in front of King Piccolo almost as if by teleportation, then land a single punch. King Piccolo went flying again, crashing through countless objects.
"Space-jump tech?" Tony was speechless. Just how many black techs were packed into that nano armor?
The United States and other nations didn't even need to mention. They realized the newly emerged Dark Knight armor of Zodd Hess completely refreshed their databases. All previous data could be deleted. Never did they expect that their intelligence gathering would someday fail to keep pace with a single person's tech updates.
King Piccolo, however, felt a real threat. Zodd Hess was the only one who had ever severely injured him. His head was caved in. It was easy to imagine how heavy that punch had been. Yet when King Piccolo rose again, his head healed almost instantly.
"Something akin to controllable cancer-cell regeneration…" Zodd Hess's voice was very low, but it reached everyone's ears.
All at once, the monster's threat level soared. Not only did it possess devastating destructive power, it also had such potent regeneration.
"Die!" King Piccolo gathered all his ki, ignoring the lack of strength brought on by his aged body. He was determined to eliminate the one who threatened him.
"Is that the same attack? Emergency evasion!" Tony detected terrifying energy readings and shouted out a warning. But it was too late. King Piccolo unleashed a massive energy wave. Zodd Hess, as if prepared, fired a silver energy beam of his own.
Two colossal forces clashed. A blinding white flash dyed the entire sky silver-white in an instant. The colliding energies overflowed and swept in every direction. Wherever they passed, objects and ground alike simply disappeared. The silver-white light flickered for dozens of seconds before slowly fading.
When they looked back at where the two had stood, the whole area had become a perfectly flat plain. Everything on it was completely gone: wrecked cars, shattered buildings, even the sand on the surface. Everything utterly vanished. An entire layer of the ground had been shaved clean off.
If someone looked from space in this direction, they would only see an enormous crater like a meteor impact. That single strike had left a mark on the whole planet.
"My god… is this where we just were?" Peter stared at the ground that had been flattened entirely. It had been a desert just moments ago. Had the terrain itself been altered?
"Where's Zodd Hess?" Tony anxiously searched and then spotted Zodd Hess hovering in midair. King Piccolo, however, was nowhere to be seen.
"What about that dragon-level freak?" Tony flew over and asked.
"Already dealt with," Zodd said calmly.
A single terrifying blast and the dragon-level freak was finished. Just how much had Zodd Hess upgraded his nano armor? Tony sighed inwardly. It looked like he still had a very long road ahead if he wanted to catch up.
Zodd paid him no mind. Truth be told, the superheroes' performance had been fairly decent. After all, the Thing, Ben, had stepped into Cap's heavyweight spot and become one of the current Big Three among superheroes. Later, once Thor, God of Thunder (not that Xu Jinjiang knockoff), showed up, it would be a Big Four lineup.
King Piccolo had been a bit too difficult, though. As a product of the Dragon Ball world where planet-busting was baseline, even Master Roshi with a power level of a couple hundred could push the moon. Old King Piccolo probably wouldn't find destroying Earth too hard. Zodd himself could pull it off easily now.
He gave the superheroes present a few words of encouragement. They had coasted through the whole fight, but having the guts to hold their ground without retreating was already good enough.
Still, he cracked a private joke in his mind: "But at this rate, it kinda feels like we're back to Superman and his leg-hugging pals again."
If the Avengers went to war with the Justice League, the Avengers would be wiped out in seconds. Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash alone could take down the Avengers without a scratch. The power gap was just too wide, let alone factoring in Superman, Martian Manhunter, and Shazam. So he still needed to keep searching for better superheroes. He wondered if this universe had Blue Marvel, Sentry, or Hyperion.
The encouraged superheroes, a few exceptions aside, were mostly thrilled. Zodd Hess had become an idol to many. The second superhero after Captain America, wearing so many halos. If Zodd Hess ran for president in the next election, he'd command nearly eighty percent support across all fifty states. Virtually no competition, unless Captain America clawed his way out of the grave to run against him.
Speaking of Captain America, he had already been dug up and placed inside the Umbrella Corporation, waiting for Zodd to modify his memories so he could become "Umbrella Captain." Zodd believed that Steve could absolutely become a "battleship-class Superman." When that happened, he would have four battleship-class supermen under his command.
/-\
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