The moment Nina began charging the Rasenshuriken, Superman rocketed forward, creating a sonic boom.
"Hey!" he shouted. "Over here!"
Trigon stopped in his tracks and turned toward him, annoyance now clearly visible on his face. He tried to swat him away.
But Superman slipped through his fingers and flew straight toward his upper left eye.
He pushed forward.
A sickening squelch echoed across the battlefield.
Trigon roared in pain.
Blood spilled from the ruptured eye as Superman burst out of the socket, drenched in black blood. Trigon clutched the bleeding eye with his right hand.
Superman didn't stop. He began flying in tight circles around Trigon, unleashing waves of heat vision that carved glowing lines across his face.
Trigon lowered his hand.
The destroyed eye had already regenerated.
Superman went in for another strike but froze mid-attack.
A red glow outlined his body,trigon was using his telekinesis to hold him in place .
A massive fist barreled toward him and struck him full force, sending him flying. He skipped across the sand before carving a deep trench and finally coming to a stop,his consciousness flickering.
Before he could recover, all four of Trigon's eyes glowed.
A colossal red beam,nearly ten meters in diameter,fired downward and struck Superman head-on, drilling him into the earth. The sand around the impact melted into flowing lava.
Trigon maintained the beam for several seconds before stopping.
A deep, smoldering hole remained.
Superman was nowhere to be seen.
From a distance, Nina watched it unfold and inwardly cursed.
Trigon wasn't playing around anymore.
'This better be enough…'
She looked up at the now building-sized Rasenshuriken in her hand. Her left eye began to bleed as the Mangekyō Sharingan activated.
"Amaterasu," she muttered.
Black flames ignited across the Rasenshuriken's surface.
"Kagutsuchi."
She forced the flames inward, merging them with the spinning core. The blue center shifted to deep purple as the heat intensified, melting the sand beneath her feet into glass,her palm even burning as she endured then vanished.
In the next instant, she appeared behind Trigon, who was advancing toward the crater where Superman had fallen.
She drew her arm back.
"Inferno Style… Sage Art… Rasenshuriken!"
She shouted then hurled it.
Then vanished again, reappearing inside the trench where Superman lay unconscious, thanks to the Thunder God marker he had placed on him. She grabbed him and disappeared in a blink.
Behind her,Trigon attempted to catch the expanding Rasenshuriken.
His fingers were sliced off first, the stumps cauterized instantly. The spinning blades tore into his palm,then it detonated.
A massive purple sphere expanded rapidly, engulfing his entire body. It continued growing until it covered a five-hundred-meter radius, illuminating the desert with a purple glow. Even the people in Kandhaq City could see it.
There was silence.
Desert plants hundreds of meters away wilted and burned. Sand near the sphere turned to glass.
Then,BOOM.
The purple sphere collapsed inward before erupting into a violent, scorching shockwave that tore through the desert.
The sand lifted in a massive ring and blasted away from the epicenter, carving the land flat for miles.
Nina reappeared a kilometer away, placing Superman down gently before clapping her hands together.
A wooden dome rose instantly around them.
The shrieking shockwave swept over the structure, scorching its surface black, but it held.
When calm finally returned, the charred wooden dome sank back into the sand.
Nina slapped Superman across the face twice.
"Hey. Wake up."
Superman groaned and pushed himself upright. He tore off the loose, singed pieces of his suit.
"Did it work?" he asked weakly.
"We're about to find out," Nina replied, staring ahead.
Superman followed her gaze.
Where Trigon had stood, there was now a massive cloud of smoke. Glass-like particles rained from the sky as the smoke began to rapidly disperse.
Then Trigon emerged.
He stood at the center of the devastation.
His once pristine crimson skin was now marred by massive, cauterized lacerations running across his chest, shoulders, and arms. The fingers on his left hand were still missing. His beard and hair had been completely burned away. Even his horns had not been spared,one of them bore a large, jagged chip.
Steam rose from his body as he slowly straightened.
A snarl twisted his face.
To say he was livid would have been an understatement.
His gaze locked onto Nina a full kilometer away.
Both she and Superman felt it instantly.
A crushing weight pressing down on them.
Killing intent and a terrifying amount of it.
Clouds gathered overhead as crimson lightning crawled across the sky.
"I will tear this world apart," Trigon snarled, his voice echoing across the desert. "And subject your souls to eternal suffering long after your deaths."
Hellfire erupted around him.
The flames engulfed his body, sealing his wounds and restoring his missing fingers. Flesh knit back together. The chipped horn smoothed over.
Within seconds he stood whole again.
He threw his head back and roared to the heavens.
The ground beneath him began to quake violently, splitting apart as a colossal crimson pillar of energy erupted from his body and shot straight into the sky.
Crimson fissures spread outward through the earth,lava bursting from the cracks, geysers of molten rock exploding into the air.
Nina's eyes narrowed.
"This… does not look good."
"Looks like we can't defeat him," Superman said seriously. "We'll have to rely on Raven to seal him. But for now, we need to stop him from destroying the planet."
Nina exhaled slowly.
"I have something else I could hit him with… but it would probably kill me to use it."
She turned toward Superman.
"As much as I hate to admit it, this is way above me. You. Even the entire League." Her eyes hardened. "I think it's best we let Max handle this."
Before Superman could respond—
A blue blur tore across the battlefield.
It struck Trigon square in the forehead.
BOOM!
The impact detonated like a bomb.
A violent shockwave exploded outward, sweeping away sand, lava, and debris,even sending Superman and Nina flying backward. The clouds above split apart in a perfect ring.
Trigon's massive body slammed into the ground and slid several meters, carving through the desert before coming to a stop.
He layed flat on the ground,staring at the sky,baffled.
He had barely caught a glimpse of the incoming attack before it connected.
Trigon shook his head, clearing the dizziness, and slowly lifted his gaze.
Hovering above him,was as a small figure cloaked in a blue aura that sparked occasionally with lightning.
Max had arrived.
------
Thena flipped midair, digging her feet into the sand as she skidded to a stop. She shook her head in amusement.
'What an entrance'.
Superman steadied himself in the air beside Nina.
Suddenly, a white figure emerged from the ground nearby.
"Yo," Zetsu greeted casually.
Superman's eyes flared red instantly, heat vision charging as he locked onto the unfamiliar presence.
"Woah, woah, woah, I'm with her!" Zetsu said quickly, raising his hands.
"Friend of yours?" Superman asked, not taking his eyes off him.
"You could say that," Nina replied.
She glanced at Zetsu. "What are you doing here?"
"To rescue your asses, of course," Zetsu said with a grin. "You seemed to be in a bit of a pinch. Besides… I couldn't miss the action."
End of Chapter.
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