The corrupted versions moved as one—a synchronized assault of twisted power and lost morals.
The Galector Squad acted first, coordinating with their original training but without honor. The corrupted Galectors opened fire with weapons that didn't just destroy—they erased, removing matter from existence entirely.
"FORMATION THETA!" the original Galector leader commanded. The seven loyal Galectors moved instantly into defensive positions, their star-metal armor glowing with righteous energy.
"You dishonor the code!" the leader roared at its corrupted counterpart.
"Honor is weakness!" the corrupted leader snarled back. "Power is all!"
The two squads clashed—fourteen towering warriors made of living star-metal, each one capable of destroying planets. Their weapons collided, creating shockwaves that bent spacetime itself.
***
Alien X vs. The Chaotic Clones
The original Alien X faced its fractured selves—beings where Serena, Bellicus, and Ben had never learned to cooperate, creating entities of pure destructive chaos.
"This is what we could have become," Alien X's three voices said in rare perfect harmony. "Never agreeing. Never unified. Only destruction."
The chaotic clones blinked erratically, each one rewriting reality randomly around them. One turned gravity into solid matter. Another made time flow backwards and forwards simultaneously. A third simply deleted sections of space.
"We cannot fight them with reality warping," Bellicus said. "They'll just counter it."
"Then we don't fight chaos with chaos," Serena replied. "We fight it with ORDER."
"Agreed," Ben added.
Alien X raised its hand, and instead of warping reality... it stabilized it. Around the chaotic clones, physics suddenly became absolute. Gravity couldn't be changed. Time flowed in one direction. Space remained consistent.
The clones shrieked, suddenly trapped in a universe with rules.
They began to collapse, their chaotic forms unable to sustain themselves in stabilized reality.
***
Thor vs. Dark Thor
Lightning met entropy.
Thor swung Mjolnir, opening dimensional rifts that redirected Dark Thor's attacks. But his corrupted self had learned the same trick—every rift Thor opened, Dark Thor countered with a void rift that consumed the dimensional pathway.
"You chose weakness!" Dark Thor bellowed. "You could have ruled all Nine Realms!"
"I chose to PROTECT the Nine Realms!" Thor shot back, lightning cascading from his hammer. "That's not weakness—that's STRENGTH!"
Their hammers collided again, and this time Thor poured everything into it—not just his divine power, but his understanding. The God had taught him to see dimensional rifts not as mere portals, but as probability pathways.
"JARVIS!" Thor shouted. "Calculate the probability of Dark Thor's next attack!"
"87% chance he'll use entropy rift at coordinate theta-12, sir!"
Thor grinned and swung Mjolnir early, opening a rift exactly where Dark Thor was about to attack. The entropy blast went through the rift and looped back, hitting Dark Thor himself.
Dark Thor staggered, electricity crackling across his corrupted form.
"That's the difference between us," Thor said, breathing hard. "I learned to THINK!"
Dark Thor dropped to one knee, his hammer falling from his grip.
***
Loki vs. Chaos Loki
This fight was... weird.
Chaos Loki existed in multiple states simultaneously—laughing, crying, attacking, defending, winning, losing, alive, dead—all at once. He was probability gone mad, existing in every possible outcome at the same time.
"Fascinating," Loki said, circling his fractured self carefully. "You let the multiverse break you. I bent it to my will."
"BENT? BROKEN? SAME THING!" all versions of Chaos Loki screamed.
Loki closed his eyes, reaching out with his probability manipulation. He could feel the infinite timelines his corrupted self occupied. The problem was... how do you fight someone who exists in every possibility?
Answer: You collapse the possibilities.
"Tony!" Loki called out. "I need a localized probability anchor! Something to force this madness into ONE timeline!"
"Working on it!" Tony's voice crackled back. "Give me thirty seconds!"
"I don't HAVE thirty seconds!"
Chaos Loki lunged—or rather, infinite versions of him lunged from infinite angles simultaneously.
But Loki was clever. He didn't try to dodge all the attacks. Instead, he manipulated probability to ensure that only the attacks that canceled each other out would reach him. Chaos Loki's infinite versions ended up fighting themselves, colliding mid-strike.
"There!" Tony shouted. "Probability anchor deployed!"
A sphere of golden energy surrounded Chaos Loki, and suddenly—snap—he collapsed into a single timeline. One version. One possibility.
Confused and disoriented, Chaos Loki stumbled.
Loki smiled. "Checkmate." He waved his hand, and probability shifted. The chance of Chaos Loki successfully attacking? Zero percent. The chance of him being trapped in a time loop? One hundred percent.
Chaos Loki froze mid-scream, caught in an infinite loop of his own madness, then slowly faded into unconsciousness.
***
Black Adam vs. Corrupt Black Adam
The two champions of Shazam circled each other, divine lightning crackling between them.
"You use the gods' power for CONTROL!" Black Adam accused his corrupted self. "For TYRANNY!"
"I use it for ORDER!" Corrupt Black Adam snarled. "Humanity NEEDS control! They cannot govern themselves!"
"That's not our choice to make!"
Their lightning collided—but Black Adam had an advantage. His lightning had evolved. It was sentient now, coordinated, capable of predicting attacks before they happened.
The lightning split into dozens of bolts, each one striking Corrupt Black Adam from a different angle, each one learning from the previous strike.
"Your lightning is just power," Black Adam said. "Mine is INTELLIGENCE."
The sentient lightning wrapped around Corrupt Black Adam like chains of pure divine energy, binding him in place. The corrupt version struggled, then went limp, overwhelmed.
***
Superman vs. Evil Superman
Clark floated face-to-face with his darkest nightmare—a version of himself who had decided humanity needed to be controlled rather than protected.
"You're weak," Evil Superman sneered. "You hold back. You let them make their own mistakes."
"That's called FREE WILL," Superman replied calmly. "Something you forgot about."
"Free will led to wars! Crime! Suffering!"
"And also to love, art, hope, and progress," Clark countered. "You don't get to decide for them."
Evil Superman attacked with heat vision—but Clark had been cosmically enhanced. His own heat vision didn't just match it, it countered it across multiple dimensions simultaneously.
They clashed physically, trading blows that created shockwaves across the arena. But Clark had something his corrupted self didn't—teamwork experience.
"Tony! I need a gravitational assist!"
"On it!"
Suddenly, Doremano barked, and gravity around Evil Superman inverted. He stumbled, disoriented.
Clark followed up with a punch enhanced by dimensional energy—not to kill, but to contain. Evil Superman went flying backward, crashing into a floating asteroid, dazed and motionless.
"That's for forgetting what the 'S' really stands for," Clark said quietly. "Hope."
***
Tony Stark vs. Soulless Iron Man
This was the fight Tony had been dreading.
Soulless Iron Man hovered across from him—a version where Tony had lost his humanity entirely, becoming nothing but cold calculation and ruthless efficiency.
"Sentiment makes you weak," Soulless Tony said, his voice devoid of warmth. "I optimized. I removed the flaw."
"The 'flaw' is what makes us HUMAN," Tony shot back. "It's what makes us CARE."
"Caring is inefficient."
They both raised their gauntlets simultaneously, repulsor beams colliding in mid-space. But regular Tony had learned something Soulless Tony never could—improvisation born from caring about outcomes.
"JARVIS, transfer all power to probability manipulation! I'm gambling everything on this!"
"Sir, that's incredibly risky—"
"DO IT!"
Tony reached out with his enhanced perception, manipulating energy fields in ways that shouldn't be possible. He didn't just redirect Soulless Tony's attacks—he predicted them by understanding what a version of himself without empathy would do.
And empathy was the key.
Soulless Tony would always choose the most efficient attack. The most logical strategy. The optimal outcome.
But regular Tony? He chose the creative option. The unexpected one.
He opened a micro-dimensional rift directly inside Soulless Tony's arc reactor, causing a feedback loop that shut down his armor entirely.
Soulless Iron Man dropped, powerless, falling slowly in the low gravity.
"That's the difference between us," Tony said, breathing hard. "I don't just calculate. I CARE about the calculation."
***
Doremano vs. Anti-Doremano
The two cosmic dogs faced each other.
One tail wagged with chaos and joy. The other tail wagged with destruction and entropy.
Doremano growled—a protective, determined sound.
Anti-Doremano snarled back.
They charged.
When they collided, gravity itself went insane. Black holes formed and collapsed. Stars were pulled out of orbit, then pushed back. Spacetime rippled like water.
But Doremano had something his corrupted self didn't—love for his pack.
Every gravity pulse he sent wasn't just random chaos—it was protective chaos, redirecting threats away from his team.
Anti-Doremano's gravity was purely destructive, consuming everything.
The real Doremano barked—and the sound carried hope across dimensional frequencies.
His tail wagged, creating a gravitational wave so powerful, so joyful, that it literally overwhelmed Anti-Doremano's entropy.
The corrupted dog whimpered, then dissolved into harmless particles.
Doremano barked triumphantly, gravity rippling like applause.
***
Victory... Or Is It?
The corrupted versions hit the ground—or rather, the void equivalent of ground—and lay still.
The arena fell silent.
The heroes regrouped, breathing hard, exhausted but victorious.
"Well, that was easier than expected," Tony said, lowering his gauntlets.
Thor grinned, spinning Mjolnir. "Aye! We are simply too mighty for our darker selves!"
Superman nodded, floating down beside them. "They were strong, but we were stronger together."
Black Adam's lightning flickered and died down. "The gods favored us today."
The Galectors stood at attention, their corrupted counterparts motionless at their feet. "Honor prevails," the leader said with satisfaction.
Alien X's form stabilized, the chaotic clones now nothing but fading energy. "Order restored."
Doremano barked happily, tail wagging, creating tiny gravitational celebration sparkles.
Tony's visor scanned the defeated enemies. "JARVIS, confirm threat neutralization."
"All hostile entities showing zero energy output, sir. They appear to be completely—"
"Don't jinx it," Loki muttered, eyeing the corrupted versions suspiciously.
Everyone turned to look at him.
"What?" Loki said defensively. "I've seen this before. Villains never stay down on the first—"
And then it happened.
The corrupted versions twitched.
"JARVIS?!" Tony's voice rose.
"Sir, energy readings are... increasing. They're not staying down. They're... oh no."
The corrupted forms began to glow.
Dark Thor's eyes snapped open, burning with black fire.
Chaos Loki's singular form began splitting again into multiple versions.
Corrupt Black Adam's chains of lightning shattered.
Evil Superman's eyes glowed red with renewed heat vision.
Soulless Iron Man's armor rebooted with a mechanical whirr.
Anti-Doremano reformed from the dissolved particles, snarling.
The Corrupted Galectors stood up as one, weapons charging.
But worse—much worse—their energy signatures weren't just returning.
They were growing.
"JARVIS, analysis! NOW!"
"Sir, their power levels are increasing exponentially. They're not just recovering—they're ADAPTING. Current readings show 150% of original power and climbing. 160%. 170%—"
"They're mirroring us," Alien X's three voices said in alarm. "Our victory gave them data. They learned from the fight. Now they're matching our power level."
"No," Loki breathed, his face pale. "Not matching. EXCEEDING."
The corrupted versions rose into attack positions, their eyes glowing with malevolent intelligence, their forms crackling with power that made the air itself scream.
Dark Thor lifted his entropy hammer, and it was twice as large as before. "ROUND TWO," he growled.
Chaos Loki's hundreds of versions grinned in unison. "THIS TIME WE WIN."
Evil Superman cracked his knuckles, heat vision already burning. "No more holding back."
The arena trembled.
Reality itself seemed to hold its breath.
The Cosmic Champions stood together, staring at their enemies—their stronger enemies—knowing that the real fight was about to begin.
***
TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 7.75...
Will the Cosmic Champions find a way to defeat enemies that grow stronger with every confrontation? Can teamwork overcome impossible odds? And will Doremano get to bite Dark Thor again? Find out next time!