The Lords all had their battle mode. The first stage allowed them to tap into a portion of the power Ego within them had. The second stage fused them fully, merging and overlapping their souls, which in turn caused their bodies to undergo a change.
They didn't quite turn into the first Lord's forms, but they became close to it. The Brightest Star was massive, bigger than even a mountain, and he was made entirely out of blue fire. When Full Monarch merged with him, he wouldn't change size, but he would be coated entirely in blue fire. It was skin tight and gave him an aura of heat that he could fully control. This power allowed him to rise even further beyond the level that the Brightest Star had been at.
This was because the Lords and their hosts were meant to work together. Their souls would connect, and they'd reach greater heights than they could on their own.
When it came to Rulers, this was not the case.
Rulers did not work with their host. The Ego of the Shadow would attach to the other soul, and like a cancer, it would spread, devouring it more and more. It brought out negative emotions and thoughts and numbed feelings of joy or happiness. Having the shard of a Ruler inside of you caused the world to feel colder, and everything looked just a bit darker. No matter how much food you ate, it would never be enough, and sleeping was next to impossible.
In short, it forced a heightened stage of depression to be placed inside of its hosts, doing its best to ruin them mentally.
When it reached the peak of its power, it would repress the user's own Ego and take them over. The form a Ruler would transform into was always a twisted form that represented how they thought and viewed this world.
A child had been born. One created from the mistakes of a butterfly. This child squirmed under the earth and in the dark just like a worm, but he wasn't a worm. No. He was a caterpillar.
Alpha had twisted and changed as all his malice and hate reached their peak. His body bloated and grew, and dozens of extra limbs jutted out of his flesh. Red spiky fur grew out across his body, and hundreds of hands pawed at the ground from his new limbs. He looked like a giant bug, but his head was skull-like, the flesh fading away, and jagged horns jutted out from the top of his head.
Finally, that caterpillar had broken through the ground and emerged into the real world. The jaws of the monster opened, and a horrible wailing sound blasted out. It was like a mix between a bird's chirping and a baby crying, but the pitch was wrong, going impossibly high and then so low that it buzzed. The Ruler's eyes glowed in the sockets of the skull, one blazing blue and the other as black as space, and they bulged and stared, looking back and forth.
Full Monarch took a step back and winced as he placed his hands over his ears. He felt blood dripping down his neck, and his eardrums felt like they were on the verge of exploding.
What had brought on this transformation? Was this how Alpha viewed himself? Also, what was with this power?
Full Monarch felt a chill go down his spine, and the hairs along his arms stood up. For the first time ever, he felt a sense of genuine fear. He was reminded of when he was a child and first fought Lucifer and his terrible army.
That sense of fear only grew when Alpha's cursed gaze turned his way. The bug-like beast stared at him in silence, and then it suddenly turned and began to waddle away.
Full Monarch stood there dazed, and he watched the Ruler leave him be. Every step the caterpillar took shook the ground, and it waddled back and forth, leaving him in the dust as it was also shockingly fast. He was confused as to where it was wandering until he noticed what was ahead of it.
"Shit!"
On a destroyed mountain, two pods opened. Sludge poured out as well as two men. Sini and Max both collapsed to the ground, their pods glowing and whirling with all sorts of mechanical sounds. They both looked dazed, but all the damage they had received was gone, leaving them in perfect condition.
Sini wiped the gunk from his face, and he was the first to speak as he weakly pushed himself up to a standing position. He was still dressed in the suit he had been in when he first fought the Emperor. "Looks like Full Monarch did it."
"You knew you'd be saved?" Max asked weakly as he got to his knees. His combat uniform was a destroyed mess barely clinging to him.
"I have faith in him." Sini offered his hand to Max.
Max took it and stood back up. He looked around, still in a daze. The world wasn't in a good condition. Everywhere he looked, he saw destruction, and the skies above were black, crackling with lightning, while that land held dozens of jagged scars and craters along it. He tried to use the Paths to see what was going on, but all he saw was darkness, which made him worried since that meant whatever was going on was being caused by a being strong enough to alter fate and made the Paths uncertain of what would happen.
"So, did you also see it?" Max eventually asked. "Those visions."
Sini was quiet for a moment, a frown appearing on his face. "Do you mean the memories of that man?"
"Yeah." Max rubbed the side of his head and winced. "Who knew we'd see that monster's life story after he swallowed us whole?"
"Can we even call him a monster?" Sini questioned and let out a heavy sigh. "I wish I hadn't seen what I did. Now it'll make viewing him as the villain he is just a bit harder."
"He did a lot of wrong still."
"Yeah. That's true. He's likely dead, also." Sini looked around at the destroyed mountain they were on. "After all, if we're free, it means Full Monarch likely tore us out of him. His plans are over. The day has been saved-"
A screeching sound broke through the somber mood, and the mountain shook as a red blur suddenly appeared before the two Lords. Max's eyes went wide when he saw the Emperor's helm, only it was now an actual head and was massive. A red caterpillar-like creature appeared before them with blinding speed, and it struck out, slamming one of its many hands into Sini.
The Lord of the Sea and Depths was sent flying back, and Max went to fire out an attack, but before he could, more of those hands reached out. He was like a toy before this thing, the creature easily picking him up and raising him into the air.
Max yelled, both in a mix of fear and pain as the hands squeezed down hard enough to crack his bones, and he watched in horror as he was lifted toward the creature's face. There was a cracking sound, and the helmet-like head tore open as its jaws unhinged, and it got ready to throw Max into its mouth and eat him once more.
Max lit his body up with lightning, but it didn't even faze the creature or slow it down. It brought him past its jaws and into his mouth and was about to swallow, but suddenly a wave of blue light slammed into the side of the creature's head, causing it to flinch and let out a cry of pain.
Full Monarch appeared in a flash of blinding speed and jammed his hand into the monster's open mouth. He wrapped his fingers around Max's ankle and tore the man out of the creature. "Go!" He screamed and tossed Max away. "Get out of here! It's trying to reabsorb you or something."
"W- What is that thing?" Max demanded. "I—Is that the Emperor?"
"I said go!" Full Monarch roared.
Sini managed to run back over, and he grabbed Max's wrist. "You heard him." He dragged Max away, and the two Lords ran, leaving Full Monarch and the Ruler behind. The hands of the monster swatted at Full Monarch, who was still halfway in its mouth, but the hero leapt away, his body glowing with his blue energy.
Full Monarch's fingers glowed, tiny orbs appearing at the end of them, and he held his hand out, firing dozens of lasers that twisted and burned through the air, smashing into the side of the Ruler, and while it made a sound that showed it felt pain, its body didn't actually look injured at all. Full Monarch's features stayed cool and calm, and he entered a boxing stance.
"Come on." He declared. "You're fighting me. If you want to get to anyone else, then get past me first!"
That screeching sound returned from the Ruler. "Suffer." There was a hum, and suddenly its horns began to vibrate. Its eyes glared at Full Monarch, and the next thing the hero knew, he was standing in front of the monster. He hadn't moved, nor had the monster, but now he was so close that he didn't even have time to think of dodging as it struck out at him with a powerful slap. "Suffer."
The attack rattled Full Monarch's bones, and he grunted. He didn't back down, though, and instead gritted his teeth. He shoved the massive hand off of him, balled his hand into a fist, coated it in as much energy as he could, and then struck out at the Ruler. His attack never reached the villain.
Full Monarch's blow completely missed, and to his confusion, the Ruler was gone, now miles back. Once again, it didn't move, and neither had he, and yet the Ruler was far enough away from him that not even shock waves of his attack reached it.
At first, he thought this might have been a form of teleportation, but there was something Full Monarch noticed that made him dismiss this idea. The Ruler was still on the mountain.
The humming grew louder, and suddenly the Ruler was back in front of him and struck out. Full Monach jumped back to dodge the strike, but as he moved back, his face was pressed into the fist as he suddenly reappeared back in the striking range of the monster. He felt his nose shatter, and blood ran down his face, but he fought through the pain and smashed another strike out, only for the Ruler to be gone, miles away again, yet still somehow on the mountain.
This was because the mountain had grown bigger. When the Ruler stood before him, the mountain had actually grown smaller.
Full Monarch pointed his hand forward and unleashed several beams of blue energy, but just as he thought, they never reached the Ruler. He watched in silence as the beams kept getting further and further away from the villain, who was going backwards seemingly to escape the attack, yet he wasn't actually moving. The size of the mountain kept growing, as well as the ground stretching out as the beams tried to travel across it but didn't make any progress.
Full Monarch understood what was happening, and it made him grit his teeth in frustration. "Seriously. He can do that now? That's going to be a pain in the ass to deal with."
Fairy Queen had a power that made many heroes lose to her. The monster's base ability was that she could create illusions and put ideas into people's heads. She hated this power, however, and instead inverted it and twisted her Ego into something else.
This caused her power to change. No longer did she create illusions. Instead, her power inverted into one that would affect reality. Using this ability, Fairy Queen could distort and twist space.
She would warp the air around her and turn it into a barrier that would slow and halt attacks that came at her. This effect worked by extending the distance of space and stretching it, like how a person might do to a picture with Photoshop. Her extension caused her to fall out of an enemy's reach, and they wouldn't be able to hit her since she would just make the space warp and lengthen to the point where she wasn't there anymore.
She would also do the reverse and crush space, causing a wave of pressure to slam into someone. She used this when she would strike to make it appear as if she had an ungodly amount of force behind her strikes, when in reality, it was actually space collapsing and imploding around her target that did the real damage.
The hero Halo had a similar ability, as she could collapse a point in space, crushing everything caught in that point.
Both these Supers had a weakness. Halo could only affect something caught in her area, which was small. Fairy Queen could do a lot more, but she had a limit to how fast and how far she could extend space. This meant that if a person was strong enough or fast enough, they could get past the barrier she created by either hitting her so hard the shockwave would travel across the distance she extended space by harming her, or they could move faster than the growth of the space and hit her before her barrier was up. Powers like Imaginary Energy could also harm her since they bypassed the laws of space-time naturally and operated in ways they shouldn't.
Full Monarch knew that if he fought Fairy Queen, his blast would have been able to get through her barrier since he used Imaginary Energy, and yet his attacks still weren't working on the Ruler before him.
This is because what Alpha was doing was on a level far beyond any other Super. Fairy Queen would stretch space, but that was it. Space didn't change. If she distorted a meter in front of her, it would operate as if it were three meters, but in the end, it was still just one meter being forcefully stretched out.
What the Ruler was doing was something else entirely. The Ruler of Creation and Destruction… As the name implied, he was creating, and he was destroying. Each time the Ruler used his power to avoid an attack or unleash one on Full Monarch, the universe either grew bigger or smaller.
He wasn't stretching space; he was creating a brand new amount of it and jamming it into the universe. A shift occurred across the universe, and mass followed as he forced reality to expand and grow, allowing him to get further away from Full Monarch. Then, when he wanted to attack, he would simply destroy and erase sections of the universe, putting holes that would collapse and cause space to shrink in on itself, closing in the gaps. An insane power that was affecting the entire universe in ways that could hinder everything.
This godlike power was the one Full Monarch had to deal with.
He already knew how he would counter it.
Space shrunk, and reality caved in on itself as the Ruler appeared before Full Monarch. The Ruler went to grab the hero, but then suddenly it cried in pain, and its head was forced up as if a kick rammed into it. Full Monarch smirked, and then a second later, he threw out an insanely fast kick, igniting the air itself, and that also rammed into the Ruler's chin, though strangely enough, the Ruler didn't feel any pain from the strike.
It growled and got ready to attack again, but then it felt another wave of pain as an unseen fist rammed into its face. Its entire body crunched up, and it was blasted back. A moment later, Full Monarch threw out a punch right where the blow that hit the Ruler appeared. He then ran forward. The Ruler got ready to extend space again, but another unseen strike, this one feeling like an elbow, hit it head-on, and it was once again sent flying back.
Full Monarch then struck out with his elbow at the exact same place again. Over and over, the Ruler would be hit with an attack that came from nowhere, and then Full Monarch would throw that same attack out.
Up in the skies, standing on a floating piece of ice, both Max and Sini watched the battle. "I don't get it?" Max frowned. "What's going on? What's hitting that thing?"
Sini stared down at the battle with a critical eye. "Time travel."
"What?"
"Time travel," Sini said again. "What you're seeing down there is a form of time travel. Full Monarch is controlling the output of his energy perfectly by using Imaginary Energy to encase the sheer kinetic force. He then unleashes a strike beyond the speed of light. Such a thing would destroy our planet, but by wrapping it in imaginary energy, he shields and lowers the escaped force. That escaped force has to go somewhere, however, and since it's moving at such a fast speed, the concept of time simply stops mattering. When he throws his strike, the attack is traveling backwards in time."
"So, you're saying he—"
"Yes." Sini nodded. "He's hitting that thing before he even attacks. His strike is negative one second fast, landing before the punch is even thrown. An impossible-to-dodge or block attack!"
"H- He can do that?"
"Of course he can. He's Full Monarch."
"Right…"
The Ruler's teeth ground together as more strikes rammed into it, and it was bounced around the battlefield, being hit over and over again. Eventually, the creature's rage reached a breaking point, and a pair of blue and black lasers launched out of its eyes. Full Monarch jumped to the side, dodging the energy strike, and watched in mild horror as the attack tore through a chunk of the ground, melting it down to the core, and kept going into space.
"Shit. I can't let that thing hit the planet, or it'll be bad."
The destructive force the Ruler was able to unleash was equal to the Beast. It was something he would need to be careful with. Even if he could withstand it, the planet couldn't.
That wasn't all the Ruler could do, though.
Full Monarch felt the air shift, and he growled as he watched a shimmering blue portal open up. The Ruler let out another screech and then waddled into the portal, leaving the battlefield. The drug that made its portal creation impossible had seemingly run out. Or maybe its level of strength was so far above the potion that it could no longer keep its power held back.
On the other side of the world, the heroes and villains all fought back and forth, all sorts of attacks scattering and taking each other out, but all at once, every single one of them stopped when a shimmering blue portal opened up.
Nier turned and twisted his head to look at it, dodging a strike from Lucifer as he did so. "Yes! Alpha! You've returned—"
A horrible wailing sound came out of the other side of the portal, and then, to everyone's shock and horror, a red beast crawled through. Its body twisted and jerked as it fully tumbled out of the portal.
"W- What the hell is that?" A group of heroes and villains screamed out.
The Ruler swatted its hand down, and suddenly red gushed out as a section of the battlefield was crushed, all the heroes and villains popping and exploding as space pressed down on them from above. Jagged shards of bone and blood seeped out, and the crushing effect kept going and going, pressing into the ground until only a pond of gore was left. Another hero was suddenly grabbed, and she screamed until her head was bitten off by the Ruler as it began to eat her.
That caused several heroes and villains to start blasting it, but their attacks had very little effect as the creature ate till it was content. It then let out a gurgling sound that was almost like a baby giggling, and a glowing wave of aura erupted from its back. The Ruler of Giants had soldiers, and now that it had become this twisted form, so too did its warriors.
The constructs that were created appeared behind their master, each over a mile tall, and they were forged out of a solid black light. They almost looked like shadows, and they all began to twitch, and their bodies exploded as a wave of massive bugs forced their way out of the giants.
Wasps, beetles, centipedes, spiders, maggots, and so much more all tore out of the giant constructs. Each insect was bigger than a person and forged out of the same shadowy energy the giants had been. They buzzed, chirped, and hissed as they dropped to the ground and began to rip into the people down below.
Spiders started sending razor-sharp webs out that tore limbs off of victims. Wasps dove down, and with their stingers, they beheaded heroes and villains. One poor guy was swarmed by ants and torn to bits.
The Ruler of Giants had evolved, and so his army matched his twisted form. The bugs bred amongst each other, creating more of their own kind, so they could destroy the crowd that stood before their Ruler. Creation and Destruction.
The Ruler wandered through the crowd, and when it noticed someone strong or someone with a powerful ability, it would eagerly reach out and devour that person, greedily chomping down on their flesh.
Nier went back-to-back with Lucifer, the two villains having a cease-fire as they tore any insect that got near them to bits with their blades.
"I take it this wasn't part of your plan?" Lucifer asked in a mocking tone.
"What the fuck did he do?" Nier screamed in a rage. "What is he? This wasn't part of the plan! Where is Full Monarch?"
Eggs rained down from above, turning into new insects, which got to work alongside their brethren, and the heroes and villains were all pushed back by this one threat. Even Ruby and Golden God stopped what they were doing and stared in shock at the massacre that was occurring down below. The Ruler rampaged like how a child might behave, not having a care for who it killed or how.
Eventually, though, a voice broke through its daze. "Alpha!" Nier stood before his creation. "Listen to me! I want you to—"
Nier's body exploded into a shower of gore as the Ruler shrunk the space around the being who hurt it almost as much as Full Monarch. Nier suddenly gasped as his body reformed, forced back together on a molecular level. His eyes were wide, and he shook, nearly vomiting.
"Alpha—"
He exploded again. It wasn't just Nier either. Lucifer went to fly away, but he barely managed to spread his wings before he was also reduced to a red puddle of gore. Legend was also hit with the effect and popped. The Ruler cocked its head to the side and went silent, watching as the three men kept being reborn and remade. It seemed to get some sort of joy out of this, and before they could do anything, it would kill them all over again and force them to have to be reborn.
From above, Ruby dropped down, letting out a yell, and she swung her sword down. "Take this—" The Ruler lazily caught the sword in between its two fingers. "Shit!" A beam of black energy blew a hole through Ruby, sending her and Storymaker blasting back. She was nearly torn in half from the force, and the Ruler didn't even bother to look at her. It just kept its gaze on the three other Rulers.
Finally, another voice managed to get the attention of the monster.
"Alpha…"
The Ruler actually paused fully this time, and its overgrown and twisted body shambled around so it could see the person who called out its name. Its eyes widened slightly when it saw Hell Hound.
Hell Hound's helmet was gone, and her armor was covered in cracks. Brown hair went down her back, and her dog ears were flattened against her head. Cracks were forming in her flesh, and her entire body was burning with a blue light as Full Monarch's power ate away at her. Even with a body made to contain his power, she could only do so much, and her life span was starting to come to an end.
"Alpha…" She said again. "Let's stop it here. I—I don't want to do this anymore. Remember what you said to me. We didn't have to keep going. We didn't have to keep fighting. You said today would be the end. All we had to do was wait until 'she' was born. Sky was created. That's happened. Her body was made. Her soul was created. She's sitting in a lab somewhere now that you made her. We can stop this and do what we talked about. We can take her and leave this world. Leave Nier. Leave the life of a hero and a villain behind. We can all be happy. We can all be a family."
Nier's body reformed, and he gritted his teeth hard enough to crack them. "What the fuck! You two were talking about taking my Sky away? After I took you both in! Gave you your powers! This is how you thank me? You were going to betray me? How dare you! I'll kill you both." He once again exploded.
Hell Hound limped forward, her body literally falling apart as she did so. "Please. Can't we just end it all here? Let's have a happy ending."
"Suffer." Hell Hound felt a crushing wave of force, and her eyes went wide. Before her, a figure appeared next to her and dragged her out of the way.
Hell Hound's eyes went wide, and she stared up at Full Monarch, who now held her. "Sorry." Full Monarch placed his hand to her stomach. "I need this back."
Hell Hound felt a sharp pain as his hand rammed into her, and he grabbed onto the power within her and pulled it back out. The entire battlefield ignited in a wave of blue light as Full Monarch was covered in flames. The Lord of the Sun and Cosmos returned. His eyes blazed with a red, fiery glow, and he was draped in azure flames. With a wave of his hand, he sealed Hell Hound's wounds, though he couldn't heal her, and he sent all the heroes and villains flying away by an unseen force.
All the insects ignited and exploded, leaving just him and the Ruler as the only two beings on the battlefield. Full Moanrch's teeth were clenched in anger, and his body hummed with pure power. "I told you. You're dealing with me."
"Suffer." The Ruler collapsed space around the hero, but Full Monarch withstood it, even as the universe itself tried to crush him.
"The only one who's going to suffer is you!" Full Monarch struck out and rammed his fist into the Ruler's face, cracking its skull and causing the creature to howl. A moment later, Full Monarch winced in pain as one of the many hands rammed a knife made of black lightning into his side and actually managed to pierce his skin.
"Suffer."
Full Monarch winced and tore the knife out of him. "Alright. In that case, let's suffer together. Okay?"
And with that, the battle with the Lord of the Sun and the Cosmos and the Ruler of Creation and Destruction was about to really begin.