The sky trembled.
William tore through the air like a divine spear, his afterimages painting streaks of red and gold across the heavens. Each strike he landed came with a thunderclap, a blitz of pure velocity and power that blurred the line between technique and fury. To the naked eye, he seemed to be in a dozen places at once, warping reality with speed alone.
The Hulk, airborne and reeling, was little more than a target. He couldn't match the tempo, couldn't even see the next hit before it landed. But he endured. He always endured.
Each blow buried deeper into his skin, bruises blossoming like dark galaxies across his green flesh. Teeth clenched. Eyes narrowed. He was a living wall, taking punishment that would have turned mountains to ash. But then—
He smiled.
Just as William committed, driving forward with an elbow poised to crater the Hulk's solar plexus, the green titan made his move.
There was no warning. No roar. Just motion.
"BOOOOOOM!"
Hulk's palms, massive and unstoppable, clapped together with the force of a localized extinction event.
The shockwave rippled through space like a ruptured dimension. William was ripped from his trajectory, sent hurtling backwards as though reality itself rejected him. His body spun uncontrollably, a meteor in reverse, before colliding with the side of a mountain, one already cratered and fractured from earlier impacts.
The impact shook the world.
Rock shattered like glass. A plume of debris rose skyward, darkening the sun. Cracks raced through the terrain like lightning bolts. Birds fled. The earth moaned.
Hulk dropped from the sky moments later, his descent no less destructive. He crashed into the ground on one knee, a living siege weapon finally returning to earth. His breaths were ragged. Each inhale came with the wet rasp of a punctured lung regenerating mid-process.
"HAAHHH!" he exhaled violently, spitting a thick mixture of blood and bile into the dirt. It sizzled on contact, boiling from the heat of his internal regeneration. His ribcage had snapped under the punishment, the bones already stitching themselves together like living steel.
But the pain didn't slow him, it fed him.
"RUMBLE..."
The ground trembled beneath his feet. His body swelled again, muscles expanding grotesquely with every heartbeat. Veins like steel cables bulged across his biceps and forearms. His hands, once merely massive, now resembled construction equipment. With a single swing, he could dig out canyons. With both, he could reshape continents.
His rage was no longer a reaction.
It was a weapon.
Across the ruined battlefield, smoke and dust curled around a blackened crater, the place William had landed.
For a long moment, there was only silence.
Then—
"WHOOSH!"
The dust exploded outward in a halo of kinetic force, revealing the warrior within.
William stood amid the rubble, bathed in a flickering aura of crimson and gold. The air around him warped with the intensity of his ki, but his form was unsteady. His arms hung limp at his sides, blood cascading from his forearms and trailing down his fingers like red thread.
His breathing was sharp. Controlled. Each inhale sounded like the drawing of a blade.
That last attack had nearly shattered every bone in his upper body.
But his eyes, gods, those eyes, they burned with defiance. Even now, standing half-broken and bleeding, William didn't retreat.
He smiled.
Not because he was unafraid.
But because the real fight had only just begun.
The golden halls of the Sakaaran citadel gleamed like a tomb.
The emperor walked them as if they belonged to him by divine right, draped in his gamma-threaded battle suit, a gleaming monstrosity of polished armor and pulsing emerald light. He moved like a man untouchable, triumphant, drunk on conquest and cruelty.
Behind him followed the twisted procession.
Caiera, stripped of her weapons, her armor, her command, walked in silence. Shackled. Barefoot. Her swollen belly swayed slightly with each step, no longer hidden beneath battle robes.
A warrior. A mother. A traitor in their eyes.
The child inside her stirred with life, the Hulk's child.
The air around her trembled with tension. Every whisper, every sideways glance, rippled with fear. Not of her.
Of what she carried.
Whispers choked the corridors like smoke:
"That's the monster's child…"
"She's carrying the green one's blood…"
"What if it's stronger?"
The emperor said nothing. He didn't need to. This was his design, humiliation scripted as spectacle. Let the world see her chained. Let the legend of the Shadow Guard rot before the public eye.
They reached the eastern hangar, where a massive hover-carrier waited. Stormclouds broiled on the horizon, casting long shadows over the capital. Thunder cracked in the distance, deep and rhythmic, not natural.
High above the mountain ranges, crimson and green lights clashed like gods in orbit. The sky rippled as if reality itself were straining to hold together.
Caiera hesitated for just a breath, eyes drifting to the auxiliary landing bays.
Strange weapons were being loaded onto other crafts, bulky canisters with containment runes glowing faintly violet. Her gut twisted. It wasn't gamma. It wasn't plasma.
It was wrong.
It was familiar.
Her breath caught.
No… no. Those were the same containers she'd seen during the outbreak. During the spore plague. The virus that devoured her people, that reanimated the dead and twisted the living into mindless, flesh-starved creatures. That unspeakable horror had been sealed, erased from record.
Or so she thought.
Her heart thudded against her ribs as she stepped onto the hovercraft. The moment her feet hit the deck, the wind screamed through the open hangar and the craft began to rise.
Behind her, the emperor followed. Calm. Composed.
Smiling.
From beneath his golden chestplate, he produced something small.
A syringe.
Its liquid glowed faintly violet, laced with threads of pulsating black.
Not just a weapon. A death sentence.
He handed it to one of her guards, a young woman whose eyes flickered with discomfort as her fingers closed around the vial.
"If the Hulk so much as flinches in our direction…"The emperor's voice dropped to a cruel whisper."…inject her. Then toss her to the filth below."
No shout. No flourish. Just precise malice.
The meaning wasn't lost on anyone. This wasn't poison.
This was the zombie plague.
The same virus that turned Caiera's friends, her kin, her comrades into gnashing, soulless husks.
And now, it sat inches from her unborn child.
She said nothing. She couldn't. Her voice would betray the wildfire behind her ribs. She simply lowered her gaze, cradling her stomach in her palms, and whispered a prayer, not to the gods, but to Sakaar itself.
"He will survive. Even if I do not."
Back on the battlefield, the war between titans raged on with apocalyptic fury. The skies wept fire, and the planet trembled beneath the weight of their blows. High upon a shattered mountain peak, half-reduced to rubble by the chaos of their clash, two blood-soaked combatants stood in a momentary deadlock, muscles straining, eyes locked with primal defiance.
The air around them warped under the force of their power. Cracks spiderwebbed across the bedrock as if the mountain itself were trying to flee the wrath of their presence. With each second, the ground quaked harder, the heavens rumbling in protest. It wasn't merely a battle, it was a contest of wills that threatened to reshape the very continent.
Hulk, his emerald skin slick with grime and blood, bellowed with unbridled rage, his strength growing by the heartbeat. Veins bulged like cables beneath his flesh, and with every breath, his power spiked, limitless, unrelenting. But opposite him stood William, cloaked in the burning fury of the Kaio-ken x30. Gone was the blue-red balance of his earlier aura; now it was a storm of crimson flame, wild and consuming, like a dying star on the verge of supernova.
The sheer heat rolling off him vaporized the snowcaps nearby. His eyes burned with intensity, his body pushed past human limitation and into something godlike.
With a sudden burst of speed, William struck, his foot a crimson blur that crashed into Hulk's sternum, forcing a gut-wrenching gasp from the green behemoth. The impact bent the very air and carved a crater beneath their feet. But before William could recoil for a follow-up strike, Hulk's massive hand snapped forward, catching his leg with the crushing grip of a hydraulic press.
A savage, almost gleeful grin stretched across Hulk's bruised face. With a roar, he swung William like a meteor, whipping him through the air and slamming him into the mountainside. The collision was cataclysmic, a shockwave exploded outward in concentric rings, pulverizing stone, uprooting entire cliff faces, and sending avalanches cascading down every face of the peak.
"RUMBLE!!"
Before the dust could settle, Hulk leapt, landing with titanic force atop his opponent. His stomp drove William's body through layer after layer of bedrock, shattering the mountain's core like glass and sending him plummeting deep into the bowels of the earth. A monstrous crevice split the peak in two, and Hulk roared triumphantly into the abyss, a bellow of primal supremacy that reverberated for miles.
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!"
His scream echoed through the gaping wound in the mountain, howling like an ancient beast from the dawn of time. The very planet seemed to recoil.
But then—A light.
It started faint, almost like a flickering ember in the dark. But in the blink of an eye, it grew, searing, uncontainable, divine. A high-pitched hum filled the air, and Hulk's expression changed from triumph to stunned disbelief.
"WHOOOOOOOOOOSH!!"
A colossal beam of light erupted from the chasm like a cannon from the gods, catching Hulk square in the face. The force hurled him skyward, his massive form flailing in an uncontrollable spiral. Trees bent from the gust. Rocks lifted off the ground. The sky itself cracked under the strain of the energy.
The beam didn't stop.
It carved through clouds, past the atmosphere, and into the vacuum of space, where it collided with a drifting meteor the size of a city block.
"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!"
The meteor was annihilated in a single flash, shards of molten rock scattering into the void like sparks from a forge. For a moment, the darkness of space was painted red, as though the stars themselves had blinked in awe of the force unleashed.
Back on the surface, silence reigned, brief, breathless, and fragile.
Then the wind returned, carrying with it dust, ash, and the unshakable sense that something monumental had just shifted.
High above the devastated battlefield, the dust had barely begun to settle when a low, guttural growl rolled through the thinning smoke. From the edge of the shattered crater, Hulk emerged, his silhouette hulking and monstrous against the blood-orange sky. He scratched his scalp absentmindedly… only to feel nothing but bare skin.
His eyes narrowed. His breathing deepened.
He was bald.
A tremor of pure rage surged through him. "RAHHHHHH!" The roar echoed like an avalanche.
Without a second thought, Hulk turned to the jagged remains of the mountaintop and jammed his hand deep into the earth, wrenching out a boulder the size of a house as if plucking a pebble from sand. Veins bulged along his arm, muscles coiling like tectonic plates. He hoisted the massive stone over his shoulder and began stalking toward the crater's rim, every step thunderous and absolute.
"STOMP… STOMP… STOMP…"
From afar, it looked as though the mountain itself had awakened and was moving. But to those with sharpened sight, it was clear, the Hulk, obscured behind the enormous boulder, was climbing, each step leaving deep craters in the rock face. His pace was slow but filled with volcanic intent, like a force of nature reclaiming its ground.
He reached the halfway point of his climb when a sudden shift in the air made the hairs on his neck stand.
There was no time to react.
"FSHHHHHHHHT!"
A barrage of glowing orbs, pulsing with energy, rained down from above. Dozens. Then hundreds. Each one carrying the weight of a miniature star. Hulk's grip tightened around the boulder, but burdened by its mass, he couldn't dodge. The orbs struck in rapid succession.
"BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!"
A series of deafening detonations lit up the mountainside like fireworks from hell. The sheer concussive force knocked Hulk off balance, his footing giving way as the ledge beneath him crumbled into nothingness.
"WHOOOOSH!!"
He plummeted through the fractured crust of the mountain, but what met him below was not more darkness… it was beauty.
As Hulk tumbled deeper, he was suddenly engulfed in a kaleidoscope of light. The heart of the mountain had been hollowed out, revealing an enormous hidden cavern, its walls lined with massive, glittering crystals that refracted every hue imaginable. Red, violet, sapphire, emerald, they all shimmered like stars, pulsating gently as if alive.
But the true light came from the center of it all.
There, hovering in serene stillness, was William.
No longer crimson, his aura now shone with the unmistakable brilliance of a Super Saiyan. His hair was golden fire, flowing upward like a divine flame. He sat in lotus position, floating above a perfectly circular bed of shattered rock, his body completely still, yet radiating energy that warped the very air.
Hulk crashed hard into the cavern floor, sending a tremor rippling through the crystal chamber. He grunted, but even through the pain, his gaze was locked on the transformation before him.
William's power was ascending again.
His golden hair began to grow, longer by the second, visibly stretching with divine acceleration. His eyebrows vanished, and his face took on a more alien, almost celestial visage. The air grew heavier.
Then the lightning came.
Not the snake-like arcs from before, these were massive, draconic bolts of energy that snaked and coiled around his body, each one roaring with sound and purpose. They multiplied and intensified, weaving around him like celestial dragons, each crackling strike of electricity mirrored by a thrum of raw energy that pulsed across the cavern.
Then—
BOOOOOOM!
His aura exploded.
It filled the entire cavern, washing over every crystal like a tidal wave of golden fire. The crystals responded instantly, lighting up in synchrony, a dazzling display like a galactic rave, radiant and thunderous. The walls vibrated with power. The very air sang with energy.
And then… silence.
William slowly opened his eyes. They glowed, not with rage, but with pure, refined purpose. Calm. Unshakable. Godlike.
He looked down at Hulk, who had just pulled himself to his feet.
And then he spoke, his voice echoing through the crystal chamber like a bell in a cathedral:
"That was a nice warm-up…""…Let's get a little serious now, okay?"