Objectively speaking, capturing the Skrull Queen might have been the more strategic choice.
After all, the chimera terrorizing the battlefield was a Skrull creation—Kl'rt, their Super Skrull warrior transformed by stolen genetic templates. Securing Queen Veranke could potentially end this catastrophe with a single command, ordering her warrior to stand down before more lives were lost.
But Steve Rogers made his decision in seconds, driven by something deeper than pure tactical calculation.
"We go after Milleous."
Compared to the Skrulls—who were at least rational actors pursuing comprehensible goals—every single member of the Incurseans Empire was a fanatical lunatic. Emperor Milleous represented the worst of them: even the Red Skull, a Nazi war criminal who'd committed genocide, willingly served as his subordinate. That spoke volumes about the kind of depravity the Incursean emperor embodied.
The Incurseans were fundamentally anti-human, anti-life, anti-civilization. They needed to be stopped with extreme prejudice.
"Where did he run to?" Steve asked, his shield already positioned for combat.
"This way." Norman Osborn led him through the chaotic melee, shouldering past combatants and ducking under weapons fire.
But moments after they disappeared into the crowd, another Norman Osborn appeared, this one flying on a Neo-Goblin glider alongside Harry. Both wore matching armor, surfing through the air with practiced ease.
"Where did Steve go?" this Norman called out, scanning the battlefield.
"I don't know," Harry replied, equally confused. "I saw him just a second ago, and then he vanished."
Both Osborns wore Neo-Goblin armor, and while they communicated via helmet radio, they didn't stop their assault. Pumpkin bombs rained down on targets of opportunity, explosions blooming like deadly flowers across the battlefield.
"Forget about him for now," Norman—the one in armor—decided. "The priority is capturing Milleous. If that fat frog escapes, we've accomplished nothing here."
He'd originally hoped to recruit Steve for the hunt, knowing that the emperor's bodyguard contingent would be formidable. But Captain America had disappeared into the chaos, probably pursuing his own targets.
They'd have to manage without him.
The father-son team broke through the perimeter and accelerated toward a different section of the ring, their gliders' engines screaming.
Before departing, Harry cast a worried glance back toward the center of the battlefield, where Peter's Humungousaur form was clearly visible.
His friend was getting beaten badly.
The reality of the situation was profoundly different from what Peter had imagined.
He'd thought that wielding his cousin's watch—even the replica rather than the original—would make him unstoppable. After all, he'd proven the device's power during the battle against the Inheritors, easily dispatching cosmic-level threats.
But reality was delivering a brutal education.
His Humungousaur form matched the chimera in raw strength, true.
But Kl'rt possessed dozens of other abilities beyond simple strength.
The chimera was faster, more agile, and could manipulate gravity to pin Peter in place whenever their fists weren't directly clashing. Every advantage Peter tried to leverage was immediately countered by some other stolen power.
The fundamental problem was obvious and infuriating: all of the chimera's abilities came from the Omnitrix. He was fighting himself, or at least fighting the theoretical potential of every form he could access. How was he supposed to win when the enemy could match any transformation he chose?
Peter threw a haymaker punch. The chimera dodged with XLR8's speed, then retaliated with combined force—Humungousaur's strength channeled through arms made of Diamondhead crystal and Heatblast fire. The impact charred Peter's hide black, the smell of burning flesh filling his nostrils.
"XLR8!" Peter triggered the transformation, his body shrinking and streamlining into the Kineceleran's distinctive form.
He became a blue blur, moving faster than most beings could track. The size differential worked in his favor—the chimera was massive and powerful but correspondingly less agile. Peter's spider-sense enhanced his natural Kineceleran reflexes, making him fractionally faster than his opponent's copied version of the same abilities.
Finally, an advantage, Peter thought, preparing to use hit-and-run tactics to wear the monster down.
Then Kl'rt simply pressed down with one hand.
The gravity field distorted like reality itself was bending. Black lines of compressed spacetime rained down from above, and Peter's incredible speed became meaningless as hundreds of times normal gravity flattened him against the metal floor.
CRASH!
The ground beneath him collapsed under the pressure, forming a crater that continued deepening as the gravity intensified. Peter's Kineceleran bones creaked, his internal organs compressing, his vision tunneling as blood struggled to reach his brain.
"The mighty King of Sakaar, kneeling before me like a bug," Kl'rt's laughter was cruel and mocking. "Pathetic!"
Peter wanted to scream in frustration. I'm the King of Sakaar! Well, pretending to be, anyway. Why do I keep getting called a bug no matter what form I take?!
The chimera didn't wait for a response. His Diamondhead arm liquified and reformed, crystalline matter flowing like water until it became a spear sharp enough to cut through anything. The weapon descended toward Peter's pinned form, aimed directly at his head.
CRACK!
Lightning exploded across the battlefield.
Beta Ray Bill, hammer crackling with divine fury, had broken free from his stone prison. He transformed into a bolt of pure electricity and materialized directly in the spear's path, his golden hammer shattering the crystal weapon into glittering fragments.
But the momentum of his charge carried him directly into the gravity field. His body froze mid-motion, muscles straining uselessly against the impossible weight.
"Peter!" Bill's voice was strained but urgent. "Find a way to counter his gravity manipulation!"
"Peter?" The chimera's multiple heads turned toward the trapped Kineceleran, confusion evident in his expression. "You're not King Sakaar?"
In that moment of distraction, Peter transformed again—this time into Gravattack, the Galilean's planetary form materializing in a flash of green light. He raised his own hands, generating a counter-field that opposed Kl'rt's gravitational manipulation.
The two forces collided and canceled each other out, spacetime smoothing as the conflicting fields reached equilibrium.
Bill's body suddenly lightened, freed from the crushing pressure. He didn't waste the opportunity. His golden hammer swung upward in a devastating uppercut, lightning trailing behind it like a comet's tail. The impact caught the chimera under the jaw and sent the massive creature flying backward through the air.
Kl'rt fell, tumbling end over end.
Thousands of lightning bolts converged on his position, turning the sky white with electrical discharge. The sustained barrage should have been lethal to anything biological.
But the chimera's body shifted, matter restructuring itself. His flesh transformed into Diamondhead crystal, the electricity grounding harmlessly through the non-conductive material. He burst through the lightning storm, roaring with rage, his multiple eyes fixed on Peter.
"YOU'RE NOT THE KING OF SAKAAR?!" The betrayal in his voice was almost comical. "You lied to me?!"
"Bro, if my actual cousin were here fighting you, this would be a very different situation," Peter shot back, his Gravattack form radiating annoyance. "Trust me on that."
The frustration was genuine. Both he and Ben wielded versions of the Omnitrix, but the difference in capability was like comparing a toy car to a Formula One racer. Even if Kl'rt could copy genetic templates, he couldn't replicate the additional powers Ben had accumulated—the Ultimate forms, the mastery of techniques, the cosmic enhancements.
More importantly, Peter suspected that if Ben were here, Kl'rt would never have gotten close enough to touch the watch in the first place. His cousin would have identified the threat, calculated the Super Skrull's plan, and dismantled him before the transformation could even begin.
He'd beat this guy so badly his own mother wouldn't recognize him, Peter thought with certainty.
"Enough talk," Beta Ray Bill's expression had transformed into something demonic, his usually noble features twisted with battle fury. His hammer crackled with barely restrained power. "The three of us will take him down together."
"Three?" Peter was confused, his planetary form rotating slightly.
Caiera materialized beside him as though she'd simply stepped out of thin air, the Old Power radiating from her silver skin in visible waves. She was the Oldstrong, a warrior who'd fought the Hulk to a standstill. Her offensive capabilities matched or exceeded Bill's own considerable might.
"Peter, you use Gravattack to contain his movements," Caiera said, her tactical mind already three steps ahead. "Bill and I will handle the offense. He may have absorbed dozens of abilities, but he only has one brain. If we force him to multi-task, he can't possibly optimize every power simultaneously."
"Got it!" Peter's Gravattack form curled inward, compacting itself like a dying star.
His planetary mass began its orbital movement, generating gravitational forces hundreds of times stronger than normal. The field expanded outward in a crushing wave, targeting the chimera with precision that would have flattened anyone else in the vicinity.
Fortunately, the battlefield had already been cleared of bystanders. Otherwise, this gravity alone would have compressed most conference delegates into two-dimensional smears.
Kl'rt immediately countered with his own gravity manipulation, hands pressing outward to generate an opposing field.
CLANG!
Bill's hammer struck before the chimera could fully establish his defense, the golden weapon hitting with meteor force and disrupting his concentration. The impact knocked Kl'rt sideways, his gravitational field flickering and failing.
He staggered, trying to recover his balance.
Caiera was already there, having covered the distance in a fraction of a second. Her body slammed into his midsection with a devastating shoulder check—an Iron Mountain Lean that nearly ruptured his spinal column. The chimera's multiple vertebrae compressed, threatening to herniate.
Four eyes opened across Kl'rt's face—two belonging to Four Arms' Tetramand physiology, two sprouting as Stinkfly appendages. Thick tentacles emerged from what might have been his shoulders, spraying viscous mucus in a defensive panic.
The secretions should have been debilitating, toxic or at least obscuring.
But Bill and Caiera were both protected by Peter's gravitational field, the mucus deflecting harmlessly away from their bodies. The desperate attack accomplished nothing except revealing Kl'rt's growing desperation.
As Caiera had predicted, managing three simultaneous opponents—even with the power of ten alien forms—was stretching the chimera beyond his capabilities. Any one of them would have required his complete attention. Bill's divine hammer, Caiera's cosmic martial arts, or Gravattack's reality-bending fields—each represented a threat that demanded focus.
Against all three working in coordination, even his stolen arsenal was proving insufficient.
The tide of battle was finally turning.
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