"What's going on?"
The other Ultraman hadn't even registered what was happening before Captain Marvel was already charging at him.
This time, the Ultraman who saw his attacker lit up his palm with light and brought a hand-blade chop down on Captain Marvel.
"BOOM!"
After the two made contact, Captain Marvel grabbed the Ultra hand-blade, then flipped the Ultraman over her shoulder and slammed him to the ground.
"Damn it!"
The Ultraman who'd been knocked down earlier was already back on his feet. He crossed his arms in a plus-sign stance and fired the Ultra Beam.
The dazzling beam shot toward Captain Marvel, but she made no attempt to dodge. She stood her ground and tanked the Ultra Beam head-on—then absorbed it, and it only made her stronger.
Captain Marvel then gathered photon energy in both hands and thrust it at the Ultraman.
The photon energy poured out in a relentless, frenzied torrent. The surrounding space buckled under the energy pressure, twisting into spiraling vortexes.
The Ultraman hit by the photon energy let out a scream, his body erupting in a storm of sparks and lightning before he collapsed to the ground.
The other Ultraman fired his Ultra Beam too. Captain Marvel let out a cold snort, formed her palm into a blade, and the photon energy sliced through the beam like a hot knife through butter. She closed the distance and was in front of the Ultraman in an instant.
Her fist roared in, the sheer force warping the space around it. The Ultraman panicked and threw a punch of his own to meet it.
BOOM!!
Two overwhelming forces collided head-on, unleashing chaotic energy currents that repelled each other and raged outward in all directions.
The kilometer-high shockwave carried impact force measured in the hundreds of millions of tons, obliterating more than half the city.
BOOM!!
A white shockwave glided in from afar. The moment it landed, an overwhelming presence erupted like a flash flood, surging violently in every direction.
The shockwaves kicked up hurricane after hurricane. The jagged stone pillars jutting from the surface snapped in an instant, then were swept away by the hurricanes that followed.
The Ultraman was driven deep into the cliff face. Captain Marvel gathered photon energy in both arms, her fists becoming blurs as she unleashed a storm of relentless blows, hammering into him punch after punch.
Under the onslaught of photon energy, Captain Marvel bore down on the Ultraman and drilled him through the mountain bit by bit, until she finally burst out the other side!
The Ultraman let out a sound of unwilling defeat, collapsed to the ground, and dissolved into particles of light.
The remaining Ultraman, seeing what had happened, chose to flee.
But there was no way Captain Marvel was letting him get away. If he escaped, the next ones to show up would probably be that madwoman from the Kryptonian Empire, or Gladiator, or Darius.
All three were infamous superpowers of the Kryptonian Empire. Even in a universe crowded with countless powerhouses, they still ranked near the very top.
Captain Marvel was confident, but she wasn't arrogant.
However, before the Ultraman could make his escape—or before Captain Marvel could catch him—a brilliant, multicolored radiance descended once more.
"Finally, I get to meet you."
Esdeath stepped out of the Bifrost's light, a cold smile on her face as she looked at Captain Marvel.
The Kryptonian Empire might not have anyone like Heimdall with his all-seeing eyes and all-hearing ears, but Zod-Sith had solved that problem with the Reality Stone.
He'd simply created a Kryptonian Empire version of Heimdall—one who was even stronger than the original. So when these two Ultramen got into trouble, "Divine Eye" Galatea saw it immediately.
After all, when given a choice, Zod would obviously pick a beautiful female character over someone like Heimdall.
Once word was quickly sent to the three people in the Kryptonian Empire capable of handling Captain Marvel, Darius replied that he was busy cutting people down and didn't have time to come.
Gladiator said he had to protect Krypton's security and couldn't abandon his post.
So Esdeath came instead.
"Esdeath."
Captain Marvel recognized the woman—the white military uniform, the ice-blue hair reaching her waist, the bearing of someone who looked down on the world.
Rumor had it that when this woman faced a civilization that refused to surrender, she would slaughter every last one of them to the very end. A complete and utter madwoman.
Though, to be fair, people like Esdeath were hardly uncommon in the universe.
Esdeath, for her part, was practically itching to fight Captain Marvel.
Because Zod had updated her configuration. Like Teresa, she now had Kryptonian-Saiyan genes, and Esdeath felt that the power she'd been unable to grow stronger for so long had suddenly surged by leaps and bounds.
Captain Marvel and Esdeath each vanished in a flash—and when they reappeared, they were already right in each other's faces!
The thunderous impact shook heaven and earth. Viewed from the depths of space, a cluster of light expanded at terrifying speed, like a solar flare erupting, and one corner of the planet gradually lit up with a crystalline white-hot glow.
BOOM—BOOM—BOOM—
A planet-shattering punch scoured the surface. At the epicenter of the energy burst, a bottomless chasm stretching for kilometers tore its way into the distance.
The aftershocks swept across the land, scouring away the surface layer entirely. Scorching magma erupted from the fissures, echoing the distant volcanoes as they belched black smoke.
The crust trembled with increasing frequency. A planet-wide catastrophe was now inevitable. The searing heat thickened the black clouds overhead, inexplicable explosions went off everywhere, and the overcast sky flickered with lightning of eerie colors.
Esdeath climbed out of the magma torrent. The Kryptonian steel body and bio-field made her skin nearly indestructible, and against attacks of extreme heat, bitter cold, lightning, radiation, or poison, her resistance was astonishingly high.
She bared her teeth in a savage grin and slammed her fist into the ground. Terrifying energy poured deep into the earth's core. The ground exploded, shattering into fragments.
Captain Marvel, who had just rematerialized, was instantly buried under billowing smoke and dust. Magma surged up, and the superheated blast threw her into the air.
Captain Marvel was equally unharmed. In her Binary state, she had reached a level beyond human comprehension. If Esdeath wanted to take her down, it was going to take one hell of a fight.
Captain Marvel steadied herself in midair and unleashed the full force of her photon energy—a golden light shockwave of immense power that crushed the very air until it cracked, leaving mirror-like fissures in the space around her.
Esdeath laughed wildly and drove one hand into the oncoming photon energy, pressing back against the golden beam inch by inch.
Captain Marvel watched and cursed under her breath. A monster. Suppressing photon energy with her bare hands—this was the first time she'd ever seen anything like it.
Blue! Gold! Purple!
Under the darkened sky, three colors unfurled in an endless curtain of light, swaying back and forth with the hurricane winds. Every ripple sent tremors through the fabric of space.
The air buzzed with violent energy. Electric arcs flashed in and out of existence, like laser blades slicing back and forth—razor-sharp and scorching hot.
High-temperature plasma bombarded both of them like plasma cannon fire.
Esdeath couldn't have cared less. She had her bio-field and steel body protecting her—she couldn't even get her clothes torn. And Captain Marvel, well, that went without saying. She just absorbed it.
/-\
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