The Final Battle – Part 2
Tony smiled faintly.
"Well... let's try not to destroy too much of the city."
Adam didn't answer.
The blue energy coursing through his body began to intensify as both of his hands gathered an enormous amount of antimatter.
At the same time, the drones deployed behind Tony spun faster and faster around his armor. The reactors in his palms, chest, and shoulders began to shine as they reached maximum output.
"Now."
"BOOOOOOOOOOM!!"
Both attacks were fired at the same instant.
A massive column of blue energy erupted from Adam's hands, while dozens of white and golden beams descended from Tony's drones, converging in midair to form a single torrent of energy.
Both attacks slammed into Thanos.
Even then...
He didn't take a single step.
Instead, the Titan raised the Gauntlet, opening his hand toward the energy rushing at him.
And it was as though the energy itself began bending in front of his palm.
Tony's and Adam's attacks were absorbed into the Gauntlet as though they had been dragged into a black hole.
Or rather...
As though both energies had formed a miniature sun in the palm of Thanos's hand.
Tony's eyes widened as his sensors displayed just how much energy that tiny sun seemed to contain.
"You've got to be kidding me," Tony managed to say.
"He absorbed all of it," Adam muttered without taking his eyes off the Gauntlet, genuine shock evident on his face. Even for him, something like that would have been extremely difficult to accomplish.
Thanos didn't even bother looking back at Tony or Blue Marvel.
He merely formed a faint smile as his eyes locked directly onto Strange.
The golden chains were still wrapped around his legs.
"I'll eliminate the most troublesome one first," he said as he pointed his open palm toward the Sorcerer Supreme.
"BOOOOOOOOOOM!!"
The torrent of pure energy exploded straight toward Strange at astonishing speed.
The very air burned with the smell of ozone, and the nearby ground melted instantly like volcanic rock.
But Strange didn't stand there waiting to take the attack.
Before Thanos had even finished aiming at him, Strange was already moving through a rapid series of hand gestures that ended with a single motion, opening a chain of golden portals.
The portals swallowed the beam in a fraction of a second.
At the same time...
Owen, who hadn't remained idle either, vanished in a crimson flash.
And Hercules leaped in from the opposite side as well, raising his mace with an excited grin.
Owen's fist shot toward Thanos's side at the exact same moment Hercules's enormous mace came crashing down from above.
Thanos blocked Owen's strike with one arm, but the impact of the crimson repulsion energy managed to push him back just slightly.
Thanos used that very momentum to evade Hercules's mace.
Owen smiled faintly, as though he'd expected that exact movement.
He spun his body at the same instant.
Without even looking...
He thrust his forearm into the path of Hercules's weapon.
"BOOOOM!!"
The street collapsed several meters beneath Owen as he took his ally's blow head-on.
But it didn't injure him.
Instead, the crimson energy immediately surged through his entire body, absorbing the force of Hercules's strike through every fiber of his muscles.
Then, in one smooth motion, he redirected all of that force into the fist that was still pressed against Thanos's arm.
Every bit of the absorbed force was unleashed directly back at Thanos.
"BOOOOOOM!!"
This time, the Titan was driven back several meters, shattering the asphalt beneath his feet as deep cracks spread across the arm he had used to block the attack.
Dark blood slowly began dripping onto the ground.
And that entire exchange happened in barely an instant, because meanwhile...
The attack Thanos had fired at Strange finished passing through the chain of portals, which all converged into a single portal aimed at the sky.
Directly in front of one of the massive flagship vessels, which seemed to be preparing its cannons to fire.
For a brief instant, the sky lit up.
Then the ship simply disappeared.
Its entire structure was reduced to glowing dust that the wind scattered away within seconds.
The shockwave from the attack split the clouds apart for thousands of kilometers.
Or rather...
It vaporized them completely in an instant.
Hercules burst into laughter.
"Come on! I know you've got a lot more to show!"
Without losing that huge grin, he charged at Thanos again, spinning his mace over one shoulder as though he were enjoying every second of the fight.
"Hahaha! I like you!" Hercules exclaimed as Thanos stopped the mace with the same bloodied hand from before.
But the wound was already healing, as though his hand had never been injured.
Hercules's grin only grew even wider, as though he had finally found the perfect punching bag.
Adam tore his eyes away from the sky as he continued gathering antimatter, the energy coursing through his body this time with far greater intensity.
And Strange began forming new magical circles.
Only Tony looked upward.
His suit's scanners automatically swept across the sky, analyzing the energy that had just been unleashed.
His expression changed completely.
"If he fired that attack at Earth..."
Those words made Owen, who had already drawn his daggers, adopt a completely serious expression.
But he didn't answer.
He merely tightened his grip on the daggers as the crimson energy coursing through his body flared more intensely than ever before.
"Then we just... need to defeat him before he destroys the planet," he said with absolute seriousness.
Thanos caught Hercules's mace with the Gauntlet, which flared with the glow of the Power Stone.
Then he drove a headbutt straight into him, sending the god of strength flying several dozen meters before he crashed into the ground in the distance.
At the same time, he finally shattered the magical chains Strange had been using to bind him, effortlessly freeing his legs.
"You still have a long way to go," Thanos said as he studied the arm they had managed to wound, now completely healed.
Then he slowly raised his eyes toward Owen.
But without saying anything else, he shifted his gaze to the sky.
Even in broad daylight, the Moon was visible above them.
Thanos raised his fist.
And closed it.
For a moment, it seemed as though an invisible force had seized the Moon itself.
Thanos made a motion as though he were pulling something impossibly heavy.
Then he looked back at Owen.
With a destructive smile.
He no longer looked like the man who had spoken about saving the universe.
Now he looked exactly like what he truly was.
A destroyer.
Then, with a throwing motion, he aimed toward Owen.
An enormous layer of the Moon's surface tore free, breaking apart into colossal fragments that hurtled toward Earth like a rain of meteors.
Even the battlefield froze as everyone looked up at the sky.
They watched as part of the sky itself seemed to have become a planet about to fall upon them.
The alarms inside Tony's suit wouldn't stop blaring, with Friday issuing new warnings every second.
Owen, meanwhile...
Even with the sky itself falling on top of them, never took his eyes off Thanos.
"I told you," the Titan said with a contemptuous smirk as the sky seemed to catch fire above them. "Not even all of you will be enough."