The end of their world began with a question.
All my life, I had been blessed with incredible strength, speed, and durability. I never cared about technique or form. All that didn't matter—not against true power. In the end, to be the strongest didn't mean having the best form or the cleanest strike. It meant you got the job done—faster, better, and, more importantly, you survived.
So many scars. Some healed over time. Others still hadn't. But none of that mattered. I never even knew how I fought. Maybe that's why I didn't care about technique or form. When I couldn't see what I looked like in battle... how did I actually fight?
Tsk.
I wondered: What if...
No, never mind. It's not like I could rewatch myself and improve.
But what could you even improve when you were already the strongest?
...Or am I?
"I wonder what it feels like to watch a battle like this unfold… from the outside."
Gin Maximus floated. His armor was half-shattered, chest exposed to the frigid breath of space, muscles twitching from the aftershock of the last blow. A fractured moon spun behind him. The burning remains of cities lit the orbit in dying flame.
Across from him hovered the man who had once been his brother-in-arms—Katsu. Clad in battle robes darker than night, energy flaring violently beneath his skin like chains struggling to break free.
Katsu exhaled. "Before we do this… you should know what it took to stand here."
"You always did talk too much before a fight," Gin said, his voice carried not through air, but through the tremors of their clashing auras—a vibration in the fabric of space itself.
Katsu smirked, wiping blood from his chin with the back of his hand. "And you always took too long to start. Still waiting for that legendary 'first move' I've heard so much about."
Gin rolled his eyes so hard it hurt. "If this is another lecture about your training—"
"The Eight Gates of the Heavenly Dragon," Katsu began, ignoring him, "learned atop the Peak of the End, where the winds strip flesh from bone and the cold freezes time itself. I stood naked in that storm for three years until my skin turned to stone and my blood to ice."
Gin yawned, making a show of stretching his arms behind his head. A floating chunk of debris bumped against his shoulder. He flicked it away like a bothersome insect.
"The Fist of the Vanishing Moon," Katsu continued, his voice rising, "mastered by dueling my own shadow for a year in the absolute darkness of the Sunless Crypt. No light. No sound. Just the echo of my own breath... and the whispers of the dead."
Gin scratched his chin. "How is that even possible?"
Katsu's eye twitched. The runes carved into his gauntlets flared crimson. "The Breath of the Void—stolen from the last living Sky Titan after I shattered its ribs bare-handed and drank the storm from its lungs."
"Now you're just making things up," Gin said, rolling his shoulders until they popped. "Tell it again, but this time, pretend I care."
Katsu's fists clenched. The space around them warped, gravity twisting unnaturally as his aura spiked.
"The Thunder God's Descent—"
"Katsu," Gin sighed, long and suffering, "we've been doing this since we were kids. You list techniques. I hit you. You get back up. We repeat." He cracked his knuckles, the sound echoing strangely in the void. "Let's skip to the part where you lose."
Katsu's lips curled into something that wasn't quite a smile. "You haven't changed at all."
"And you've gotten worse at shutting up."
They moved.
Not with the flash of teleportation or the blur of speed—but with the inevitability of two forces that had always been destined to collide. There was no wasted motion, no dramatic charge. One moment they were still, and the next—
Gin's fist met Katsu's palm. The impact sent cracks spiderwebbing through the very fabric of the Sky-Spire far beneath them. Ancient stone, hardened by forgotten magic and blessed by long-dead priests, shattered like glass. The shockwave rippled outward, tearing apart what little remained of the celestial bridge. Chunks of masonry the size of castles spun lazily in the void.
Katsu retaliated with a knee to Gin's ribs—but Gin twisted at the last second, catching the blow against his forearm and driving his elbow into Katsu's jaw with a crunch that could have shattered mountains. Blood—thick and glistening—arced into the void, each droplet catching the starlight like a ruby.
"The Nine Celestial Strikes—" Katsu spat, swinging a fist wreathed in blue fire that burned without oxygen, the heat so intense it warped space around his knuckles.
"Still trash," Gin grunted, catching the strike mid-swing and using Katsu's momentum to hurl him into a floating asteroid. The impact sent a tremor through the debris field, the soundless collision distorting the stars.
Katsu exploded from the rock in a storm of shattered stone and sparks, his body wreathed in the golden flames of the Phoenix Ascension technique. His wounds sealed as fast as they formed, skin knitting together before Gin's eyes.
"The Divine—"
Gin chopped him in the throat.
Katsu gagged. The technique sputtered out like a candle in a storm. He clutched at his neck, eyes bulging as he struggled to draw breath that wasn't there.
"You're still reciting techniques mid-fight?" Gin shook out his hand. "No wonder you lost to Taro."
"I took down the Second Strongest Man. On the record? Off the grid. No one knows it happened. He begged me not to tell you."
Gin's attention sharpened. "You fought Taro again?"
Katsu nodded. "And I won."
Silence.
"You're serious."
"I am."
Energy pulsed between them—raw, violent, final. Stars flickered. Space cracked like glass. Somewhere behind the debris of a fallen warship, a black hole began to wake.
Gin raised a hand, clenched it into a fist, then lowered it slowly. "So you've done all that... and still came here."
"I had to," Katsu said. "Because only one name was left to erase."
His fingers curled into a blade.
"Gin Maximus."
Gin's body lowered slightly, one foot back, aura burning gold like wildfire.
"Alright," he said quietly. "Then let's finish it."
They collided like dying gods.
Katsu's strike split light itself. Gin met it with his bare hand, stopping the attack cold—but the force ruptured the space behind him. They traded blows without breath or words, each strike releasing kinetic waves powerful enough to vaporize planets.
A blade of gravity. A punch of pure mass. Shattered time pockets swirled around them. And somewhere in the chaos—
Gin began to slow.
His fist connected with Katsu's ribs. He felt something crack. Katsu's elbow smashed into Gin's temple, sending white spots dancing across his vision. They broke apart. Circled. Collided again—fists and feet moving faster than thought, each blow hitting with the weight of extinction.
And then—
A pause.
A single fractured moment where time itself hesitated.
Gin's fist buried itself in Katsu's stomach.
Katsu's eyes widened. Blood sprayed from his lips in a slow-motion arc, each droplet drifting in the void.
"legendary 'first move" Gin said quietly. "The Strongest's Fist."
Katsu coughed, more blood bubbling out. "...That's not even a real technique."
"Neither were yours,learnt by punching things until they broke..."
Gin floated, barely conscious, bones cracked, but victorious. Katsu's body burned in the orbit of the collapsing star, fading into oblivion.
And Gin thought, What did that even look like? You know? That battle? Was it beautiful? Were there angles I never saw?
Then the black hole bloomed behind him—born not from a star, but from the pressure of their unleashed power. It pulled him in. Slow at first. Then violently.
So this is it… death…
And still, that last thought lingered:
"I wonder what it would be like to just watch."
As the last remnants of their battlefield drifted into darkness, Gin finally answered his own question:
"Probably looked like two idiots hitting each other."