The void of space that had once housed numerous moons of Jupiter was now nothing more than a fragmented graveyard of celestial debris with almost a dozen moons completely destroyed. Pieces of shattered crust floated alongside plumes of stardust, remnants of different moons glorious form swallowed by battle and consumed by power too great for any moon to bear.
From the portal's dying embers emerged Darksei.
His body radiated with a baleful Omega energy, a seething crimson aura that pulsed like a heartbeat of cosmic wrath. The injuries Toneri had inflicted during their initial clash now glowed with the same malevolent hue. His right arm, from shoulder to fingers, was fully encased in dense Omega energy like molten armor forged in hate. Every step he took in the vacuum of space resonated with oppressive gravity, the weight of his very being forcing dust and debris to drift away from him, repelled by the sheer malevolence of his essence.
He floated among the wreckage as his posture straight, hands clasped behind his back, eyes glowing faintly beneath his brow. Despite the cataclysmic destruction around him, Darkseid remained composed. Unmoving.
He had no illusions, He knew this battle wasn't over.
The boy-god wasn't dead. Not yet.
"Come out, Lunaris." The words were never spoken aloud, but his presence screamed them into the silence of space.
He landed upon Callisto's ragged surface, one of Jupiters more massive moon groaning faintly beneath his feet. His glowing eyes swept the ruined landscape, scanning for any trace of his adversary.
Then he felt a pulse.
Barely perceptible, but enough to make his glowing red gaze narrow.
In a blur of motion unnatural for someone of his size, Darkseid turned reacting immediately as an intense beam carved across the surface of Callisto. His body shifted in time to avoid the initial blast barely as the beam struck the moon's surface and detonated, unleashing a cataclysmic shockwave. The explosion expanded with monstrous fury, carving deep into the moon and sending jagged boulders hurtling into space.
From the plume of dust and fire, Toneri emerged his body cloaked in roiling steam, chakra sizzling from his pores as his wounds stitched themselves shut at supernatural speed. His expression was cold, irritated.
A frown creased his features.
He had nearly been flattened like a bug… of course that wasn't nearly enough to kill him but still it had hurt. 'Chiiki Tensei Baku (Regional Reincarnation Explosion).' Toneri thought.
An evolved technique of the Localized reincarnation explosion. Instead of a singular burst of a single tenseigan chakra bead, he focused dense chakra into his palm and released a beam a sustained, destructive blast based on localized reincarnation principles. Each shot didn't just destroy, it converted, cycling destruction into regeneration and feeding itself, gaining momentum. It was originally designed to absorb chakra victim's, environment's, anything it could touch. But in space, where there was no chakra… Toneri compensated, pouring more and more of his own energy into the attack.
Another beam erupted. Then another.
Darkseid's Omega Beams answered.
The two forces met mid-space blinding red and blinding emerald detonating with such force that Callisto began to crumble, as if the moon were being erased chunk by chunk.
Darkseid narrowed his eyes, raising a hand.
With a low hum, he activated his telekinesis, lifting titanic slabs of shattered moons all around their immediate space and throwing them into the path of Toneri's beams. The rocks cracked, burned, and vaporized, but they bought seconds precious seconds and to entities like them, seconds could very be an eternity.
Then came the inferno.
The next series of Toneri's beams landed, ripping into Callisto's core, and…
BOOOOOOM.
Callisto detonated.
Its destruction rippled across the dark, lighting space with a blinding burst of white, emerald and red, the shockwave ripping across the moonscape like a scream.
From the storm of annihilation, Darkseid burst free, flames and debris trailing behind him. He surged away from the crumbling remains of Callisto, dodging the chain of eruptions trailing behind him. Toneri hovered in pursuit, his eyes narrowed, unrelenting.
The two of them moved faster than light, chasing each other into the empty void beyond Jupiter. The battle became a blur of color and power with space bending, warping under the weight of their speed and pressure.
Toneri's body suddenly sparked with crackling blue lightning.
The "Lightning Release: Armor" of the Raikage enveloped him massive arcs of electricity slicing across the vacuum around him. His speed jumped again, the surge warping space itself, his body blurring with raw voltage.
Darkseid turned in flight, immediately noting the shift in velocity as Lunaris started gaining on him rapidly. Without hesitation, his Omega Beams returned in dozens and then a hundred, launching from his eyes in a furious cascade. The void behind him boiled with burning trails as over a hundred Omega streams hunted Toneri.
The boy-god vanished in a portal, the teleportation warping his form from space to safety but the Omega Beams tracked him as he emerged again, bending and twisting to follow his escape like hounds from hell.
A Truth-Seeking Orb formed behind Toneri, then elongated and spun rapidly, forming a wide defensive barrier around him. It glowed with black and silver energy, deflecting and erasing dozens of beams but not all.
More Omega Beams came from everywhere.
Darkseid's gaze tracked Toneri's movement with mechanical precision. His vision blinked, flashed fire. Fire. Fire. The beams spread in all directions, angling for an omni-directional pincer maneuver.
Each beam moved at light-speed. Each curved independently. Some aimed for Toneri's feet. Others his back. Others still doubled back, reversing mid-space to strike from above and below.
The unavoidable was now reality.
Even at his boosted speed, even with the lightning armor and warping chakra, Toneri began to falter, forced into desperate evasive maneuvers as beams narrowly missed and explosions flared just behind him.
Soon they flew passed Neptune and passed Uranus.
And still, the beams came.
Darkseid's expression remained frozen, eyes glowing with cold, mechanical malice. His mouth curled into the faintest smile not out of arrogance, but satisfaction.
And now, he was tightening the noose.
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