Marvel: Raising — Chapter 171 - Win! — Clash

Heat vision. Freeze vision.

Cool or not?

Of course it's cool.

Who doesn't like a man with light in his eyes?

But.

For superhumans, heat vision and freeze vision are like beam attacks and Ultraman.

Hands clasped in a cross, going to tell the teacher, I'm about to fire the Zeperion Beam.

Sure, it looks flashy.

But the problem is, an Ultraman who opens with his ultimate and blows his beam skills right out of the gate usually doesn't put up much of a fight record.

Just like right now.

Azu and The Homie stared each other down, glaring for ages, one spraying heat vision, the other spraying freeze vision, like adding water when there's too much flour and flour when there's too much water. Stubborn, but pointless.

Neither could do a thing to the other.

So.

The two of them tacitly put their hands on their hips and pulled the light back from their eyes.

"WHOOSH!"

Azu shot skyward pigeon-toed, and the shockwave from his launch exploded upward from below in layer after layer of pyramid-shaped sonic boom rings.

That was the limit speed air could react to. Not Azu's limit.

But The Homie was faster.

They fought from the ground to the sky, punched through the atmosphere, and spilled back out into space.

Under that extreme-speed exchange of offense and defense.

Azu was like a beam of sunlight cleaving through the dark. The Homie was winter itself, cold, overcast, grinding that light to pieces.

The humans below couldn't see either of them fighting.

They could only hear the earth-shaking detonations, nuclear-blast loud, and watch the ground turn to cake, soft, collapsing, rocks and mountain ranges standing on it like birthday candles, and those candles were melting. Hurricanes churned. Giant waves heaved. Spatial rifts tore open and stacked on top of each other in rolling waves, like the Hamon Ripple spreading from a king's fist.

"Yes, yes! This is the feeling!"

"Exactly right!"

Chasing Azu down and beating him, dominating every exchange, it made The Homie feel absolutely fantastic.

He fought like a violent, ignorant brat: roaring constantly, posture all wrong, movements stiff as a board.

But very, very powerful.

Bizarro. Doomsday. Speed Force. All those powers, already a chaotic jumble to begin with, seemed to be sublimating through the heat of battle.

A cold, dark energy seeped from the pale, cracking skin of The Homie's cheeks, like a death god exhaling death itself.

This feeling of growing stronger with every exchange. This feeling of winning. It made The Homie more frenzied, wrung more wild howls out of him.

His whole body was like a volatile, hair-trigger planet. He stopped caring about anything else and hurled himself straight at Azu.

From the outside, that collision looked like the Kun Fist dropping from heaven. Terrifying destructive energy, like a single fist made manifest and enormous, filled the cosmos from end to end. There was nowhere to go.

If it connected, no one wanted to imagine what came next.

CRACK!

A bolt of lightning split the night open.

First, a hammer came flying.

Then an afterimage. Then a great red cape.

"Brother Azu, I'm here to help!"

Thor, God of Thunder, had arrived.

He'd watched Azu getting pushed back and gone into full urgent mode, every muscle in his body and every muscle in his brain screaming at him to get on that battlefield.

So he came.

Even knowing Meow-Meow Hammer got shattered the moment it made contact.

Thor, God of Thunder, was still fearless. Lightning wrapped his entire body. He shaped himself into a weapon, a Thunder Spear, pointed and absolute.

"I am stronger. I am superior. You can't beat me."

The Homie threw a left front kick.

The Thunder Spear shattered. The Asgardian battle armor shattered. The cape came apart in rags. Thor let out a wet "wah," coughed blood, and dropped to Saturn half-kneeling.

"Don't worry, I won't kill you," The Homie said. "After I become The Homie — after I become Azu — I'll still give you an important role."

"You'll still be the company's superhero. A member of The Seven. A traffic powerhouse."

The Homie wore his best I-understand-you face.

But as he spoke, a flash of green caught the corner of his eye.

Hulk.

The Green Giant, stepping from drone to drone like a staircase, leaped from the surface of the earth into open space.

"Hulk, smash!"

It jumped straight for The Homie's knee.

"You..."

The Homie's brow creased. He thought about how all of this was Dad's entertainment, took a breath, and smiled instead of getting angry. "Hulk, I'm also Azu. I can make you a big star too. Make it so the world stops pushing you out."

"Hulk, smash!"

BOOM! Hulk got sent back to the blue planet.

Before The Homie could even start working through the frustration sitting in his chest.

Iron Man arrived.

The epic collision between The Homie and Brother Azu had wrecked the blue planet's magnetic field, bent physics out of shape. Most of Tony's armors were scrap. Only the very first one, the most primitive Mark armor, could still get airborne.

"Hey, buddy — still wearing the Stars and Stripes? Here to roleplay that guy with the great ass?"

"You're not as good-looking as him, though. And you're definitely not as handsome as Azu."

"Not even close."

Standing in front of The Homie, who was practically a god at this point, Tony was nervous. And the more nervous he got, the looser his mouth ran.

"Tony Stark."

The Homie actually laughed. "You know this tin can can't block my super vision, right?"

"I can see the nervous sweat on your face. I can see your adrenal glands running hot."

"You're scared. You're afraid."

"This fight is completely out of your league, and you know it. So here's the question: why did you come here?"

"Traffic? Hype? Ad deals? Sponsorships?"

"Actually." The second money came up, Tony stopped being tired. He grinned. "I'm usually the one handing out the sponsorships and funding."

"Oh, is that right. Want me to give you an award for that?"

The Homie exhaled once and blew Tony clean out of the sky.

Then.

He spotted Odin, hobbling over with a cane that was actually the Eternal Spear, old and shuffling but still coming.

He spotted Loki, God of Stories, carrying a little dagger like it meant something.

He even spotted A-Train and Ashley, flying a S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier from a safe distance, lining up a shot at him from as far away as they could manage.

"Think you can use all these people to bury me with numbers?"

"Pathetic."

The Homie looked at Azu with nothing but contempt. "Looks like you really are going to lose."

"Oh, really?"

Azu's face was easy. Almost cheerful. "Funny. I think I won a long time ago."

"From the very beginning, I never needed to fight you."

"Because Dad is my Dad. Not a bargaining chip. Not something to fight over."

"Because this is my planet."

"Because every single person standing in front of you right now, they didn't come because of Dad. They came for me."

"Even though I don't need them to."

"But without anyone telling them to, the people around me just kept growing."

"Having more people around you means winning?" The Homie sneered. "Are you a child?"

"Yeah."

Azu's smile went wide, honest, and bright. "I'm almost 9 this year. What about you? You're all grown up. Did you get what you wanted?"

The little bastard is the easiest thing in the world to move, the easiest to make happy.

Especially a lab kid like Azu. If someone smiled at him, said something kind, he'd carry it for the rest of his life.

He'd genuinely think he was the luckiest person alive, and today's AK mouthwash in the lab had been especially refreshing, honestly.

But after growing up?

After growing up, The Homie had been losing things. Steadily, continuously, without stop.

His powerful body couldn't hold an immature, giant-baby soul. And he, a product already fully formed, couldn't bear this much power to begin with.

Bizarro's power carries side effects under sunlight.

But the sun was out now.

And still, The Homie's cheeks kept cracking, energy kept bleeding through the fissures. That wasn't overflow. That was his body signaling collapse.

So Azu never needed to fight. Never needed to trade blow for blow and grind him down.

He had already won.

The people who came now, all they did was make that victory more visible.

He threw one punch.

The Homie, all that terrifying momentum, that world-ending power, that unstoppable force, fell backward, face to the sky, and went down.

"Before coming to see you, Dad gave me something good."

"He said it was the System."

"He said to give the System to you. Let the story begin. I've been turning that over in my head this whole time."

"Now I finally understand."

"John. I am you."

➤ Next: The Beginning of the Story