[Third Person Pov]
As Boros erupted into a spreading puddle of blood and shredded tissue, one thing remained untouched: the glowing central orb at the core of his being. In the next heartbeat every drop of blood, every fragment of flesh, was violently yanked back toward that orb. The mass swirled, compressed, and reconstructed itself in an instant. A fully formed Boros stood once more, chest heaving, eyes blazing with fresh fury.
"You can't get rid of me that easily!!" he roared, voice booming across the sealed Empty Space. "Not when I still have lots to give!"
He flexed his newly regenerated fingers, settling into a fixed, low stance. The glowing lines etched across his body flared brighter. Raw power and energy began to surge outward in visible waves, distorting the air around him.
Superman landed a short distance away, one fist still planted against the fractured ground. He rose slowly, eyes never leaving his opponent. The influx of energy radiating from Boros generated a powerful gale that whipped Clark's cape into a wild, shifting banner behind him.
The energy Boros unleashed continued to swell, forming a dense dome of power that spat violent discharges in every direction. The force coursing through him was so intense that his physical appearance transformed—his blackened, scorched shell peeling away to reveal pure white flesh beneath, luminous and almost ethereal under the strain of the power-up.
Clark took a single deliberate step forward. Then another. He advanced one measured stride at a time, unhurried.
"You are foolish to approach when I'm in this form!" Boros announced, dropping into a running stance, every muscle coiling. "Meteoric Burst!!"
The ground beneath him detonated. He exploded out of the energy dome with such catastrophic force that the sound barrier shattered in a continuous, rolling boom. The surrounding terrain instantly crumbled into millions of fragments before those same fragments ignited, melted, and were blasted away as molten slag.
Clark's expression hardened. He braced, crossing both arms tightly over his chest just as Boros appeared in a blinding flash directly in front of him, fist already rocketing upward.
The collision unleashed an explosion of pure energy that washed across the entire Empty Space. Everything the wave touched was reduced to glowing molten slag. Even the ground they stood on was not spared—bolts of wild discharge erupted in every direction, turning the battlefield into a hellscape of liquid rock and crackling plasma.
Clark's jaw clenched. A fierce grin slowly spread across his face. The sheer force of the blow drove him backward several feet, his boots carving deep furrows and piling a mound of debris beneath his soles as he fought to arrest the momentum.
Without breaking eye contact he reached back over his shoulders. The familiar red cape shimmered, red sand reforming into a long, long linked chain that clinked and glowed with residual solar energy. Clark twirled the chain at blinding speed and, with a single precise flick of his wrist, sent it whipping outward. The links snapped tight around Boros's leg.
"What are you trying to achieve with this?!" Boros sneered, immediately rocketing upward in a burst of propulsive energy.
"The energy jetting from my body transforms into a propelling force!" he shouted as he began to circle high above Superman, the chain still locked around his limb. "Elevating my strength and speed to a level beyond my normal limitations! I cannot be stopped"
Clark remained on the ground, both hands locked on the chain, spinning in place to match Boros's furious orbit. The two of them whirled like a living centrifuge. Then Clark planted one foot with earth-shattering force, overturning the ground in a wide radius around him.
Still swinging the chain overhead as though reining in a raging bull, Superman wrapped a length of it around one powerful arm for leverage. With a roar of effort he swung Boros downward with every ounce of strength he possessed. The alien warrior lost all control and smashed into the ground with detonating force, the impact erupting outward like a high-yield bomb.
In the next instant Superman launched himself into the air, never releasing his grip. He began flying in wide, violent arcs, swinging Boros like an enormous living whip. Body after body-slam followed—Boros was slammed into every surface of the Empty Space, each collision sending fresh shockwaves and sprays of molten debris flying. Clark held the chained arm locked tight while his free hand guided and adjusted the trajectory, treating the regenerating warlord as both weapon and projectile in a relentless aerial assault.
The speed at which Clark swung and controlled the chain climbed to lethal levels. Boros was reduced to little more than a glowing energy core trapped inside a living lasso—something to be tamed, not fought.
Clark spun him through the air in one continuous, devastating arc. Every skyscraper that still stood inside the Empty Space was sliced cleanly in half by Boros's body, the structures parting like soft butter under a white-hot blade.
With a sharp circle of his arm Superman shortened the chain's length. A single grunt of effort, and he yanked Boros back toward him.
What followed was no longer a battle.
It became a brutal game of paddle-ball.
Clark was the paddle. Boros was the ball.
He drove a crushing fist into the alien's gut. The flesh of Boros's mouth stretched and split open as he vomited a thick mouthful of blood. Before the spray could even fall, the tether yanked him back into range and pulled him back into another punch that launched him away again. The sequence repeated without mercy—pull, strike, pull, strike—each impact louder than the last, the ringing in Boros's ears growing into a deafening roar. Disoriented beyond reason, he could no longer form a coherent counterattack.
One final time Clark hauled on the chain with everything he had. The muscles of his arm and shoulder bulged with raw power as he drew his free fist back. The punch that followed shattered Boros's face and dropped him into unconsciousness. A shockwave powerful enough to shake the entire sealed dimension erupted from the point of impact.
As Boros's limp body flew outward, Clark extended his free hand to the side. Middle finger and thumb pressed together. Friction sparked between the digits; he fed that spark with spiritual energy until his entire hand crackled with living lightning.
The chain stretched taut. Clark seized the links with his electrified grip and sent the full voltage surging straight through the metal.
"ARGHHHHH!!"
Boros was jolted violently awake. The current tore through every nerve. His single remaining eye flooded blood-red; thick veins spider-webbed around the pupil as tears of pure blood streamed down his face.
Superman reeled him in once more, then began spinning the two of them in a tightening circle. They accelerated until a towering funnel of wind formed around their bodies. At the peak of the spin Clark simply let go.
Boros rocketed downward.
Rings of compressed air rippled outward as he slammed into the earth. The impact triggered a high-magnitude earthquake that raced through the Empty Space, toppling every remaining structure and turning the ground into a fractured, heaving wasteland.
Boros lay where he had landed, staring up at the artificial dark sky, gasping for air that tasted of blood and ozone. More blood bubbled up from his throat, some of it gargling wetly as he tried to breathe.
'Even through everything… even after sacrificing and shortening my own lifespan… I didn't leave a single scratch on him.'
'Is this the power of the Man of Steel?'
'No…'
'It's the power of a god pretending to be mortal.'
---
Outside the boundary of the Empty Space, Golden Darkness watched the entire confrontation in silence.
A cold sweat had broken across her skin. She swallowed once, quietly.
'Is this really who I've been tasked to assassinate?'
It was almost impossible to reconcile the warrior she had just witnessed dominating the battlefield with the same person who, only minutes earlier, had been teasing her and casually buying her snacks. The contrast was jarring—especially when she remembered that this was also the being who had liberated an entire planet, held up a falling moon, and inspired hope across a whole nation of people.
She exhaled a long, weary sigh.
"I'm asking for a raise."
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