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Reports of demonic activity arrived daily from every corner of the world. Entire neighbourhoods found themselves plagued by creatures that lurked beneath children's beds, hid inside forgotten attics or whispered through the walls of abandoned buildings. At the start of it, demon possession cases rose at an alarming rate, often baffling both doctors and law enforcement before one of the emerging heroes arrived to reveal the truth.
It was getting grimdark as humanity had grown accustomed to fearing the darkness… now they adapted to it.
Behind the scenes, those who understood the supernatural found the situation even more troubling.
Ordinarily, such a dramatic imbalance between the mortal world and Hell would never have been allowed to continue.
Just as the institutions and governments had rules to protect itself, reality and nature possessed its own safeguards.
Throughout history, powerful mages, divine entities and ancient custodians had acted as unseen arbiters, ensuring that the natural order remained intact. Whenever the barriers separating dimensions weakened beyond an acceptable threshold, those guardians intervened, restoring balance before catastrophe could spread.
This time... nothing happened.
No celestial envoys descended from the heavens, nor ancient spirits emerged from forgotten sanctuaries. Even the lantern corps seemed to be occupied with something themselves.
It was as though every force responsible for maintaining the balance between worlds had simply... vanished. When the world needed them the most, they didn't answer.
Recognising the danger before anyone else, just before the slayer's descent into their world, Zatanna devoted nearly every waking hour to finding a practical solution.
Soon after the demon outbreak, she quickly discovered that permanently destroying demons only worsened the instability. The souls of infernal creatures were meant to return to Hell upon defeat, preserving the spiritual cycle that governed countless dimensions. Preventing that process risked creating fractures in reality itself. Balance was necessary.
Working from ancient grimoires gathered from the Tower of Fate and libraries hidden from ordinary humanity, she devised a series of enchanted scrolls capable of forcibly returning demons to Hell without disrupting the natural order.
The process itself was rather simple… if you met the requirements.
Once a demon had been weakened or restrained, the scroll only needed to make contact with its body.
The enchantment would activate instantly.
A burst of azure light would envelop the creature before banishing it back to the Inferno, allowing the cycle to continue uninterrupted.
And, for the first time since the invasion had begun, it gave the newly found heroes a method of fighting back without making the situation even worse.
Most embraced the solution without hesitation.
One hero, however, refused.
Broly.
Originally viewed as little more than another extraordinarily powerful metahuman, he had rapidly become the most recognisable face of humanity's resistance.
The media had christened him the Green Giant, a title that spread across newspapers, television broadcasts and the rapidly growing internet almost overnight.
Unlike Superman, Broly never seemed concerned with maintaining a dignified public image, doing as his heart leads.
The green spiky haired giant smiled for cameras.
Accepted interviews when circumstances allowed.
Waved to cheering crowds after battles.
Children and adults admired him.
Governments quietly acknowledged that few weapons on Earth could realistically stop him if he ever chose to turn against them, and as such, Amanda Waller was given full funding and support to develop counter measures with the rise of metahumans.
Fortunately...
He showed no interest in politics.
What truly separated Broly from the other heroes, however, was the way he dealt with demons.
Where Superman, Wonder Woman and the League relied upon Zatanna's enchanted scrolls, Broly rarely bothered carrying them.
He simply killed.
Demons struck by his overwhelming strength did not return to Hell. They ceased to exist completely.
To many civilians, that distinction meant very little. A dead demon was still one less monster threatening their families.
Among the supernatural community, however, Broly's methods became the subject of increasingly heated debate.
Several mystics, exorcists, mages and Zatanna warned that permanently erasing infernal souls carried consequences that no one yet understood. Others argued that extraordinary circumstances demanded extraordinary measures.
Broly himself appeared unconcerned by the controversy.
As far as he was concerned, dead enemies caused fewer problems than imprisoned ones.
His popularity continued to soar regardless.
Various media spaces eagerly documented every public appearance, turning his private life into a spectacle almost as captivating as his battles.
Soon enough, rumours surrounding his relationship with a bomb shell of a heroine dubbed Black Canary from star city became particularly relentless.
Some newspapers claimed she had abandoned a street-tier vigilante hero dubbed Green Arrow to be with the world's popularly claimed strongest hero. Others insisted the pair had secretly married after being spotted together several times over the previous month.
After clearing an entire block of demons, sending them back to hades—creatures that had hidden beneath children's beds, inside dark closets, beneath floorboards and in places no one would ever think to look—Wonder Woman finally took to the skies. Below her, the streets were already coming back to life. Police officers secured the area while paramedics treated the wounded, and families cautiously emerged from their homes, relieved that the nightmare had finally ended.
As for Diana, she didn't need the scrolls distributed to the heroes to send the demons back, she was a greek god and anything her weapon ended was immediately sent to hades.
The cheers that followed her ascent echoed faintly through the city.
She appreciated their gratitude, but she found little comfort in it, she often times thought of the Slayer and his whereabouts. His aura was very distinct and she often thought if he was still in the world, she could at least sense him and find him. Why did he suddenly leave without as much as a good bye? He did say he was traveler? Maybe some things were just meant to be experienced once, like that feeling of tasting good food, watching a series/movie one would consider peak, or reading a fanfic that doesn't hit that sweet spot the same way it did the first time.
Shaking off those thoughts, Diana inspected the city she liberated from the starry skies.
Every battle seemed to end the same way. One city would be secured only for another to report an outbreak hours later. Demons were no longer appearing at random. They were spreading with alarming coordination, almost as if an unseen hand was deliberately testing humanity's defences. Even with Superman, Batman, and dozens of independent heroes fighting across the globe, they were always reacting instead of staying ahead.
Something larger was unfolding, she just couldn't quite put her finger on it.
As Diana climbed above the clouds, the sounds of the city gradually disappeared until only the wind remained. The moon hung high overhead, its pale light reflecting across the endless sea of clouds.
She had expected to find an empty sky.
Instead, someone was already waiting for her.
Hovering several metres away was a broad-shouldered young man with wild green hair, shirtless to expose his beyond aesthetic Greek physique, baggy green trousers, a gold necklace piece, and an easy smile upon his face. He floated as naturally as though gravity had simply ceased to matter to him. There was no tension in his posture, no sign that he had been preparing for a confrontation.
If anything, he looked pleased to see her.
"Hello, Diana."
Wonder Woman slowed to a stop, studying him carefully. As the newly appointed god of war, her strength, power and authority had grown rapidly thanks to the chaos in the world currently, but most of it were tributed unknowingly by the violent acts of the towering figure before her. Immediately, her divine sense could tell, he was the one.
"So," she said, "you must be Broly."
"The one the newspapers keep calling the Green Giant." He smiled, rubbing the back of his neck. "I can't say I'm a fan of the nickname."
"I wasn't asking your opinion of it."
His smile widened slightly.
"I noticed."
For a few moments neither of them spoke.
Diana had heard enough reports about Broly to know that appearances alone meant very little. According to eyewitnesses, he had defeated demons powerful enough to overwhelm entire military divisions with little apparent effort. Superman himself had acknowledged his strength, while Zatanna remained openly critical of the fact that he ignored her enchanted scrolls altogether.
Instead of banishing demons back to Hell...
He destroyed them.
The contradiction bothered her.
Someone capable of such overwhelming power should have understood the consequences of upsetting the spiritual balance. If he truly didn't know, then someone needed to teach him.
If he did know...
Then his reasons deserved far closer scrutiny.
Broly eventually broke the silence.
"… You know," he said, tilting his head slightly, "your armour isn't what I expected."
Diana's eyes narrowed.
"What did you expect?"
"I thought it'd be red, blue and gold."
The atmosphere changed instantly, as if charged with a heavy aura.
Golden light flashed from Diana's bracelets as her sword materialised in her hand. Its polished edge stopped just short of Broly's chest, unwavering despite the currents of wind passing between them.
"How do you know my name?"
Her voice remained calm, but there was an unmistakable edge beneath it. Once again, the heroes hadn't yet formed a close-knit organisation yet, they were only known by their given hero names and nothing more.
"And how do you know what armour I was 'supposed' to wear?"
She had never introduced herself to man's world before becoming the god of war.
As far as she knew, no one had outside of the slayer and the goddesses present knew.
Nor had she ever worn the colours to man's world he had just described.
Broly glanced at the blade before looking back into her eyes.
For someone staring down the edge of an enchanted Amazonian sword, now tied to her divinity, he seemed remarkably unconcerned.
"I know a few things," he answered.
"I gathered as much."
"But I don't think this is the right place to explain them."
Diana didn't lower her weapon.
Years of training on Themyscira had taught her to read an opponent before they made their move. A shift in balance. A tightening of the shoulders. A flicker in the eyes.
Broly displayed none of them.
He wasn't pretending to be calm. He simply was. It was... unusual, like he had the world in his palm.
More unusual still was the complete absence of hostility.
She had met warriors who smiled before battle, demon kings who disguised threats as diplomacy and monsters who cloaked themselves in kindness. Beneath all of them lurked aggression waiting for the right moment.
With Broly...
She found nothing.
It did not reassure her.
If anything, it made him even harder to understand.
"I don't want to fight you," Broly said, breaking the silence once more. "Besides, I doubt either of us would gain anything from it."
Before Diana could reply, another familiar presence approached.
"Wonder Woman?"
... Here we go again. What do you think is going to happen in the next chapter?
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