As Kara unleashed her heat vision across the battlefield, Zod reacted. But instead of dodging, he stepped directly into the beams.
The scorching rays struck his chest, splitting around him and refracting in a dazzling display across his combat suit. Behind him, the ground melted into glass, the desert hissing under the overwhelming heat, yet he stood unharmed, his cape billowing behind him as if the attack was nothing.
Zod lowered his head slightly, looking at her through the dissipating glow. "That anger," he said, his tone calm and measured despite the chaos surrounding them, "you wield it like a human."
Kara clenched her fists, the air vibrating around her as she surged forward. "I am not one of yours," she shot back, her voice taut with emotion, before launching herself toward him.
In an instant, she closed the gap, her fist aimed straight at his face. Zod tilted just enough for her strike to skim his jaw, then countered with a punch aimed at her ribs. Kara's body flew up from the impact, but she twisted midair, absorbing the blow as she drove her knee up into his chest. The collision sent shockwaves rippling outward, lifting sand in a wild ring beneath them.
Before she could follow up, a red blur crashed into Zod from the side.
Superman slammed into him with full force.
The impact hurled all three of them across the desert in a streak that carved a trench through the sand. Zod recovered first. He planted his feet while sliding and drove his fist into Superman's abdomen with brutal precision, bringing their momentum to a sudden halt. The air rushed from Clark's lungs as the blow landed cleanly.
"You still hesitate, even with your planet on the verge of terraforming," Zod taunted, grabbing Superman by the shoulder and throwing him upward into the sky.
Superman spun once, regained control, and shot back down without slowing. He crashed into Zod again, this time throwing an uppercut, sending Zod high up in the air.
As his body flew up into the sky, Zod noticed that John was flying up out of Earth's atmosphere. He instantly balanced himself before flying toward John at a blinding speed.
Kara and Superman shot up behind Zod. Harley and Maureen followed them.
Out in space, the remaining Kryptonian ships appeared, and hordes of Kryptonian husks and fighter jets emerged from those giant ships.
John looked down at Zod with his usual arrogant smirk. He whispered, "Enchantress... Destroy every single one of those terraforming machines."
"With pleasure," Enchantress said with a sinister smile as she unleashed her reality-wrapping magic.
Across continents and oceans, the massive terraforming machines pulsed as they prepared to burrow deeper into the Earth's core. Their beams burned through cities, deserts, and mountains alike, rewriting the planet layer by layer. Then, without warning, the light flickered.
A faint green shimmer wrapped around the first machine. It trembled in place as if something unseen had taken hold of it. The energy tightened, curled inward, and in the span of a breath, the entire structure collapsed into a wisp of green smoke and vanished.
Then another followed.
And another.
From space, it looked like stars going out in reverse. One by one, across every corner of the world, the machines simply ceased to exist. Within seconds, every single terraform device was gone, leaving only scorched earth and stunned silence behind.
Zod saw it happen.
His expression broke for the first time, rage cutting through his composure as he surged forward with explosive speed, closing the distance between himself and John in an instant. "WHAT DID YOU DO?" he roared.
John did not move away. He watched him approach with that same infuriating calm, then shifted slightly at the last possible moment.
Godspeed!!!
Bright white lightning appeared around his body as his leg snapped upward.
The impact landed clean.
A sharp, sickening crack echoed through Zod's armor as the reinforced plating around his lower body shattered from the force. Pain detonated through him instantly, far worse than anything he had felt in his entire life. Magic surged through the strike, bypassing every layer of protection his Kryptonian physiology and technology relied on.
Zod's body locked mid-motion. The breath caught in his throat as a strangled scream tore out of him, his entire frame trembling from the sheer intensity of it.
John lowered his leg slowly, watching him with mild curiosity. "I just kicked your balls."
Zod's teeth clenched hard enough to grind. The pain pulsed through his body in violent waves, but he forced himself forward anyway, fury overriding instinct as he threw a punch aimed straight for John's head.
John disappeared.
A blur of motion cut across Zod's perception, too fast to track. Before he could adjust, the strike came again.
Another kick.
Same place.
This time, the sound was worse.
"AARGGGGGG!!!!!"
Zod's scream ripped through the sky, distorted by rage and agony as his body jerked violently, the damage compounding on itself. His vision fractured for a split second, his control slipping under the overwhelming surge of pain that magic forced into his system. He was forced to grab his crotch.
John hovered in front of him, completely relaxed, arms loose at his sides as if none of this required effort. "Oh, look at you. You just lost your family jewels," he said, tilting his head slightly.
Zod clenched his teeth, trying to fight through the pain. His eyes were on John, and he looked really angry.
"What's with that look?" John raised an eyebrow. "Wanna cry?"
Behind Zod, streaks of light tore through space as Kara and the others closed in fast. John glanced past him, tracking their approach, then lifted a hand and pointed toward the distant fleet.
"Destroy the ships," he said, his tone casual, as if assigning chores instead of directing a war. "As long as the ships are gone, the husk will lose control. Only then will this war end." His gaze shifted to Harley, a faint grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. He pointed a finger at her. "Fuck 'em up."
"With pleasure, hubby," Harley shot past John and went straight for the ships.
Kara, Maureen and Superman followed.
John turned back to Zod just as the general tried to steady himself, still shaking from the lingering pain. Be he somehow managed to suppress his pain.
Zod grumbled in anger, "I'll tear you apart one limb at a time and then I'll destroy everything and everyone you love. After that, I'll slaughter every single lifeform on this planet."
Zod's threat had barely left his mouth when John's expression went flat. The faint amusement that lingered there vanished without a trace, replaced by something colder, something far less forgiving as he opened his subspace and took out his wand.
John lifted the wand with a small flick of his wrist and spoke a single word.
"Crucio."
A scarlet bolt of magic struck Zod.
Zod's body seized midair as if an invisible force had wrapped around every nerve and tore them open all at once. The scream that followed was violent as it ripped straight out of his throat. Every muscle in his frame locked and twisted, his flight collapsing instantly as his body jerked.
Pain flooded him completely.
His nerves burned as if they had been set on fire from the inside. His bones felt like they were splitting under pressure that had no physical source. He grabbed his head as he felt his head was about to split apart at any moment.
His body dropped.
Zod fell out of the sky without control, crashing into the desert below with a force that sent sand erupting outward in a violent plume. The ground fractured beneath him as his body struck, but he did not rise. He could not.
He writhed.
His limbs jerked against his will, fingers clawing into the sand as if he could dig himself out of the sensation tearing through him. He forcefully ripped apart the remnants of his armor just to touch his head with his fingers. And as soon as his helmet came off, his senses were overloaded just like what happened with Faora and the assault team. The disciplined general, the hardened warrior who had faced extinction and war without breaking, even survived in the Phantom Zone, was gone in that moment.
All that remained was a man being crushed under pain he could not fight.
John blinked.
The space above the battlefield warped for a fraction of a second, and then he was standing on the desert floor, boots settling lightly against the cracked ground. He looked down at Zod with his wand pointing at him.
"How dare you, motherfucking piece of shit, threaten me?" His voice came out low and sharp, each word carrying weight that cut deeper than any shout.
Zod tried to respond, but the only thing that left him was a broken sound, something between a gasp and a choke as his body continued to convulse under the curse. His chest heaved as he struggled to drag in air, his control shattered completely.
John watched him for a moment longer, then tilted his head slightly as if considering something. He lifted the curse for a moment, giving Zod a second to breathe before...
"Crucio."
The word fell again, and the pain surged back with renewed intensity.
Zod's back arched violently off the ground as a fresh scream tore out of him, louder than before, his voice cracking under the strain. His hands slammed into the sand, fingers digging deep as if he could anchor himself against the force ripping through his body. The desert floor around him fractured further under the pressure of his uncontrolled movements.
Out in the space...
Kara, Superman, Harley and Maureen wreaked havoc, destroying the ships and Harley annihilated anyone in her way with her signature grin.
Ursa and three more veterans rushed in to kill her.
"SHAZAM!" Harley yelled, calling down the divine lightning before redirecting it toward those Kryptonians. "Crispy Kryptonians, comin' right up." She held the lightning until their bodies turned to ashes. "Oops, I burned them."
Kara simply flew straight into the mothership, blasting it from the inside out with her heat vision and punches.
Maureen froze an entire fleet. "Shatter!" She snapped her finger, shattering them to ice dust.
Superman blasted through the fighter drones and jets.
Kara then moved to the next ship.
...Back to the ground...
John lifted the curse.
"Hufff! Hufff!" Zod took deep breaths as the pain finally stopped.
"Look up there," John said, looking up in the sky. "Your fleet is 90% destroyed. You are on the verge of death and your action caused countless deaths of your own people. Tell me..." He looked down at Zod before grabbing his throat and pulling him up in the air with his left hand. Then he pressed the wand on his cheek. "Was it worth it?"
"For Krypton..." Zod was about to reply.
"Oh, fuck it, I don't care," John threw Zod up in the air. He pointed his wand at him. "Avada Kedavra."
A flash of green light burst from the tip of John's wand and struck Zod square in the chest.
For a fraction of a second, everything went still.
The light swallowed him completely. Zod's body froze midair, his eyes widening just enough to show that he understood what had happened.
Then the light vanished.
Zod's body dropped on the ground with a thud.
The man who had crossed galaxies, who had survived the void of the Phantom Zone, lay still in the dust with his gaze empty and unfocused.
John lowered his wand as he looked down at the corpse. "Well, the killing curse works on Kryptonians. Interesting. I should've spammed it from the start." He put his wand in his subspace and thought for a moment. 'I wonder what the limits of this killing curse are in this reality.'
He raised his hand up and yelled, "SHAZAM!"
Using the divine lightning, John erased every single dead Kryptonian's existence, including their blood traces. Then he took all the weapons and put them into his subspace. Then he stopped before Faora and Car-Vex.
Those two seemed to have gotten a bit used to Earth's atmosphere and the yellow sun's radiation. They weren't struggling like before.
"Now, what should I do with you two?"
John looked down at the two Kryptonians.
---
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