William's head tilted back, golden hair cascading down his shoulders in wild, crackling waves of untamed power. His blazing Super Saiyan 3 aura, once a storm of incandescent fury, began to retract, drawn inward like the tide before a tsunami. The very air trembled as the light vanished from around him, folding back into his skin in molten threads of energy. In its absence, silence fell, pregnant and tense, until the soft patter of rain returned.
Droplets hissed as they met the faint steam rising off his battle-worn body, trailing down his blood-streaked skin and washing crimson from his tangled locks. He stood still, the storm above mirrored in the tempest within, every muscle taut, every breath measured. The glow in his eyes dimmed only slightly, like embers smoldering beneath ash, yet the pressure rolling off him was undeniable.
That pressure hit the battlefield like a shockwave.
Soldiers, both from the Viltrumite Empire and the Coalition of Planets, felt it. An ancient, instinctive chill crawled down their spines, whispering a truth no training could unlearn they were prey.
Panic surged.
Blasters were raised, fingers squeezed down.
"PEW, PEW, PEW, PEW!"
Lances of searing energy screamed through the rain, crashing into William's position. A concussive boom followed, launching dust and debris skyward, cloaking the entire street in a dirty, swirling fog.
For a moment, the world held its breath.
Then—
"WHOOSH!"
A sharp gust tore through the ruins, sweeping the dust away in a single, dramatic breath.
He stood there, untouched. Still. Gaze lifted to the heavens, as though the chaos never concerned him. Rain slid down the slopes of his cheekbones, glinting like silver in the soft glow of battle-worn energy. His expression was unreadable.
He lowered his head slowly, eyes locking onto the nearest cluster of Viltrumite soldiers.
And then—
He vanished.
Gasps erupted. Soldiers flinched, gripping their weapons tighter, searching in vain. The sudden absence of his presence was as jarring as the crash of thunder. Then came the pain.
A split-second scream, cut short.
They clutched their chests, eyes wide with confusion and agony. Something was missing.
Behind them, William stood once more, arms crossed, back straight, eyes calm. At his feet lay four still-beating Viltrumite hearts, each one pulsing weakly before finally going still.
"SQUELCH!"
He stomped his heel into the pile. The meaty sound echoed like a verdict passed. The soldiers finally turned, too late. Blood no longer surged through their veins. Their bodies jerked, wavered… and collapsed to the ground in unison, limbs twitching before going still.
Silence returned, save for the rain.
It was no longer just a battlefield.
It was a slaughter.
William vanished again, not with stealth, but with violence. A thunderclap of wind and blood followed in his wake, and then came the screams.
Allen and Thaedus turned toward the sound, but by the time their eyes caught up, it was already too late. Dozens of Viltrumite soldiers had been torn apart mid-air, their bodies reduced to twitching fragments as William tore a crimson path straight through them, a living comet of fury and gore.
His figure blazed like a dying star. Skin slick with viscera that sizzled and hissed against the heat radiating from his Ki, William looked more beast than man. Energy roared around him, golden light mixed with streaks of deep red, rage incarnate. As he moved over the surface of Lake Michigan, the sheer force of his flight hydroplaned the water into high arcs, forming unstable rainbows that shimmered violently before collapsing back into chaos. The air was shredded in his trail, and so was anything foolish enough to get too close.
He was silent, save for the crackling of lightning that crawled along his arms and spine. His muscles flexed with growing tension, then he saw him.
Far ahead, hovering above the lake's broken surface, stood Thragg. His arm was half-healed, and his expression was twisted in annoyance... but there was something else now. His instincts were screaming.
A cold shiver gripped Thragg's spine. His head snapped up, and he rocketed skyward, desperate for altitude, for vision, for understanding.
He didn't get far.
"BOOOOOOOM!!"
A golden blur slammed into him like a missile, shoulder-first. The impact folded Thragg's body mid-air, his limbs flailing uselessly as he was launched backward. A sonic shockwave cracked across the city and the lake as the two vanished beneath the water's surface, a violent splash that split Lake Michigan open like an ocean trench.
Then, "WHOOSH!"
A beam of yellow energy shot straight out of the water and into the stars, a focused blast of condensed atomic rage. It sliced clean through one of the Viltrumite warships orbiting the planet, splitting it in two with surgical precision. Allen and Thaedus stared wide-eyed from the ruined battlefield, stunned.
As the water above began to collapse back into place, rippling and boiling, a horrifying scene came into view.
Thragg's face, wide-eyed, blood streaming, frozen in a moment of dawning terror.
And then, WHAM!William's fist connected with his jaw, obliterating the fear from his features and sending him spinning through the water like a ragdoll. The shockwaves alone created whirlpools across the surface. Bubbles of heat followed the path of their descent, glowing trails like comets falling in reverse.
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOOOOOM!"
The underwater violence echoed like muffled war drums. Each strike, each impact, sounded like tectonic plates cracking. And then they broke through, crashing into the lakebed with such force that the earth itself screamed. The surrounding shoreline erupted, fissures tearing through sand and stone as the two titans plummeted downward.
William had Thragg by the skull.
He wasn't just fighting. He was erasing him.
Fingers like a vice around Thragg's face, William pushed with relentless momentum, carving through layers of earth as though they were wet paper. The crust gave way, then the upper mantle. Molten rock surged around them, but neither slowed. The heat would've flash-vaporized most beings. But William wasn't most beings.
"PLOP!"
They passed the threshold where rock turned to fluid fire. The air became sludge, thick with pressure, gravity and hellish heat. It was an alien world, but William didn't hesitate. If anything, he grew faster.
"CRACK... BOOOOM!"
A final collision with a hyper-dense slab of mantle rock detonated into shards of magma and dust, and they plunged into the glowing, white-hot fury of Earth's core.
Silence.
Then, the light revealed the damage.
Thragg, Viltrum's strongest warrior, its regent, its tyrant, was a ruin.
Bruises covered his torso like inkblots. The flesh of his back had been scraped entirely off, flayed by the passage through the molten earth. Exposed muscle pulsed weakly, and his spine glimmered, stripped bare under the core's light.
His once-proud mustache was gone. His jaw, shattered, half-missing, with teeth floating like pearls in the magma. Blood poured in long, lazy arcs from his ruined frame, each drop evaporating before it hit the liquid stone.
He twitched.
But William didn't stop.
His eyes burned with fury, reflected in the blinding glow of the planet's heart.
And deep below the Earth, where no one could hear, William whispered through clenched teeth:
"This… is for Mark."
Deep within the molten fury of Earth's core, where light had no meaning and pressure could turn gods to ash, two beings floated in a silence only rage could fill.
Thragg's body hung limp, a portrait of ruin. Flesh barely clung to his frame. His once-proud Viltrumite physique had been reduced to scorched, exposed muscle and bone. Yet, behind all the damage, the regent's eyes still burned, not with pride, but with the stubborn defiance of a war-born soul who had never known surrender.
Then William appeared in front of him. Floating. Radiating.
The air, if it could be called that, warped around his presence, his golden aura snapping with white lightning and strands of shadow-like energy writhing through it. He gripped Thragg by either side of his bloodied face, thumbs pressed just beneath his eye sockets.
Thragg snarled through what remained of his jaw, and blood splashed over William's forearms, but William didn't flinch.Only his mouth moved.
He didn't speak.He unleashed.
From behind clenched teeth, a small yellow light ignited, an orb of unstable, radiant power laced with something far darker than mere Ki.
Fear.
The core trembled.
As the orb grew, its light flickered like a sentient flame, reaching, writhing, clawing through the space between them like a starving beast. It cast dancing shadows on Thragg's melted features, illuminating the horror in his eyes. This wasn't just power. It was judgment.
"RRRRRMMMMMMMMMBLE!"
The Earth's core responded, rising in temperature as if trying to escape the energy building within its heart. The molten sea around them began to bubble violently, plumes of lava spewing into the void. Pressure spiked. Rocks cracked. The mantle shifted. The planet whimpered.
Thragg struggled harder, desperation finally overtaking his pride. He began hammering William's arms, even with his wounded, shattered fists. His screams came out as wet gurgles, his jawless mouth unable to form words, just agony.
But William didn't budge. He was immovable. Rooted.
His energy flared and grounded itself into the core like an anchor. Electricity danced along his shoulders, across his back, and down into the blazing depths beneath them. He gripped Thragg tighter and turned him upward, directly toward the hole they had come crashing down through.
William's eyes were twin suns.
The yellow orb between his teeth reached critical mass, and time slowed.
Thragg, the executioner of worlds, the conqueror of civilizations, saw it all.
His life flashed before his eyes.
The throne of Viltrum.The millions he'd killed.The screams. The planets. The betrayal. The blood.And then… the image of Mark Grayson, torn and broken.A whisper of regret flickered, but it was too late.
William opened his mouth.
"WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
The beam erupted.
A divine lance of incandescent terror, so bright and immense that it felt as though the core itself had opened its eyes and screamed. The attack struck Thragg's head dead-on, peeling away his skull and brain matter atom by atom. But it didn't just destroy him physically, it invaded his mind.
The fear energy laced within the blast injected itself into his psyche.
He saw everything. Every possible death. Every failure. Every betrayal. He relived his own execution a thousand times inside his head in the span of seconds. His screams couldn't escape. His body was locked, twitching as the terror consumed him.
And then—
BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The Earth convulsed.
On the surface, Lake Michigan shuddered. The ground beneath the lake cracked open like glass beneath a hammer. Spiderweb fractures spread in all directions, and then the lakebed split, and from it, a blinding yellow beam pierced the sky.
It shot heavenward, faster than light, cutting a divine scar through the atmosphere. It cleaved through the clouds, split open a dozen Viltrumite warships as if they were paper, and continued, unrelenting, endless, into the stars.
The Coalition gasped. The Viltrumites stopped mid-fight, stunned.They all looked up.
Was it over?
Then—
"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!"
The sky flashed again.
The beam reached the asteroid field at the edge of the solar system… and detonated.
The resulting explosion wasn't a flash. It was an event.A mushroom cloud of celestial energy burst through the field, permanently ripping a hole in the dense cluster of rocks, forcing an opening in the wall of the system. Dust and debris were blasted into other orbits, some hurled toward Neptune, others toward deep space.
And still, from Earth… the trail of light remained for a few moments before dissipating leaving a gaping hole in the ground where Lake Michigan used to be.
Across the fractured surface of Earth, every soldier, human, alien, or combination of the two froze mid-motion. The sky was still trembling from the aftershock of the beam. The air shimmered, not with heat, but with the residual divine terror left behind by that apocalyptic burst of energy.
Far above the battlefield, a celestial wound glowed in space where once the asteroid belt lay, now cleaved clean through, like a page torn from a holy book. The stars beyond flickered faintly through the rent, bearing silent witness.
A cold sweat simultaneously broke across the brows of both the Coalition and the Viltrumite ranks, as if the very planet had taken a long, terrified breath.
Thaedus, the battle-hardened revolutionary who had seen centuries of war, exhaled for the first time in minutes. His voice, rough with disbelief, carried over the comms.
"Just what the hell is this guy, Allen?"
Allen the Alien didn't speak right away. His eyes were locked on the monumental crater in the ground, its glowing edges still smoking with divine retribution. After a long moment, he turned to Thaedus with a hollow stare, one that saw not just the battle, but what lay beyond it.
"I'm not sure…""But one thing I am certain of—"
He looked up. In the distant void, asteroids, still glowing from their encounter with the beam, collided with helpless moons and fractured nearby planets like glass.
"—He's someone we should never, under any circumstance… piss off."
Deep beneath the surface, where the earth's molten blood churned through its veins, the core pulsed with imbalance. A hollow, an unnatural cavity carved by sheer will, began to slowly fill with magma once more.
And within it, like a god emerging from a sacrificial altar, William rose.
His armor was charred and broken in places, letting the searing golden light of his ki leak out in cracks. His aura roared, flames and lightning dancing across his body. In his hand, held by the torn, bloodied spine, dangled what remained of Thragg.
Not a warrior.
Not a regent.
Not a Viltrumite.
A trophy.
"Whoosh!" A sound like reality being carved open rang out as William launched upward through the gaping tunnel he had made, his mere motion displacing air violently as the ground trembled once more. When he broke through the crust and into the light of day, a storm of heat and golden particles followed him.
The battlefield fell silent.
Eyes turned skyward, toward the figure of a man, no, a force, floating effortlessly above them with the fleshless, steaming skull of the most feared Viltrumite in galactic history dangling from his grip.
From the crowd, Krieg, still slick with blood from his battle with Lady Sif, stared upward.
He didn't breathe.
He didn't blink.
Something ancient in his DNA, something from the early days of Viltrumite conquest, shuddered in fear. Not from William's power alone… but from the finality in his presence. There was no challenge in him anymore. No struggle. Only absolute, inevitable dominance.
Then—
"SHNNNK!"
Krieg jolted forward, confusion crossing his face a second before a gleaming godly blade erupted through his chest.
Lady Sif stood behind him, wounded and wheezing, her blood-soaked armor reflecting the light of William's return. Her sword lifted Krieg off the ground, severing vertebrae as she carved upward, bisecting the Viltrumite general with a single, brutal flourish. His corpse slid off the blade in two smoldering halves, hitting the dirt with a wet, final thud.
"Huff… Huff…" Sif struggled to remain upright, one hand clutching her wounded ribs as crimson leaked between her fingers. Her lungs screamed, but she couldn't tear her gaze away.
Her head tilted upward.
There, high above… bathed in the golden wrath of a dying sun, stood William.
Not just a warrior.
Not just a hero.
A god of retribution.
And Sif, daughter of Asgard, couldn't help but whisper—
"...By the Nine... what are you?"