Cross kept growing—faster, larger, impossibly vast.
In seconds, he filled the subterranean chamber, his shoulders slamming against the ceiling. The reinforced soil above could not hold him; he burst through the ground like a living missile, erupting onto the surface. From below, Lock and the others could only see his calves—titanic pillars vanishing into the daylight above.
Then the world shook.
With a thunderous boom, Cross raised a foot. The basement collapsed in an avalanche of debris and twisted steel. Lock reacted instantly—his palm glowed, a shimmer of golden-blue energy enveloping everyone as the divine power shield flared to life. The entire group—Hope, Scott, Bill, Ava—rose with him through the rain of rubble and emerged into the daylight.
They had no time to breathe.
A shadow fell over them, blotting out the sun.
A giant fist—so massive it seemed to swallow the sky—came crashing down.
Scott and Hope froze, their instincts screaming. Bill's breath hitched; his heart stopped. Even Ava, hardened by pain, flinched back behind Lock.
Lock didn't move. His face was unreadable. He simply raised one hand and flicked his wrist.
The impact that followed tore the world apart.
A sound like thunder multiplied a thousandfold shook the horizon. The colossal fist was deflected as if swatted by an invisible god. Cross's gargantuan body spun midair like a rag doll, slammed against the space barrier Lock had cast, and crashed to the earth with an earth-splitting roar.
Lock's eyes narrowed. "That's it?"
Cross had grown to hundreds of meters tall, yet his strength still paled. Lock could feel it—the power behind that punch was maybe twenty Hulks at best. Impressive for anyone else, but nowhere near enough.
Cross, however, began to laugh.
The deep, rolling laughter echoed across the field like an earthquake. "Marvelous! Truly marvelous! In my mentor's time, this form alone would have made me a god among men!"
He spread his arms, giddy, deranged. "But before King Lock, I'm nothing but a butterfly. Hahahahaha!"
Bill's eyes widened in dazed recognition. "Goliath," he whispered. "My Goliath… I spent a lifetime regretting that failure. But seeing this—I'm not sure success would've been a blessing after all."
Scott exhaled shakily. "Old man, that's one way to look at it. Still, compared to King Lock, even this guy's just an overgrown pest."
Lock raised a hand, weary. "If you have nothing else to show me, then yield."
He pushed his palm forward. The air around them rippled—his spatial field contracting like an invisible tide. The barrier's edge swept toward Cross, shimmering, compressing reality itself.
Cross didn't flinch. He laughed louder, deeper. "Hahahahahahahaha!"
And as he laughed, his body began to shrink.
Meters became dozens, dozens became one. His immense figure condensed rapidly, until he stood once again at human scale. The ground trembled beneath his feet as the last of his Pym energy drained. The massive tank strapped to his back gurgled dry.
Hope's stomach dropped. That's too much…
She knew Pym particles better than anyone. A few drops could turn a man into a giant. Returning to normal form required far less. But Cross had burned through tons.
Where had it all gone?
Then she saw it—his boots sinking into the concrete. The ground cracked beneath him.
"Stop! He's altering his molecular density!" Hope shouted.
His mass hadn't vanished with his size—it had compressed. His body was impossibly heavy, impossibly dense, the air around him trembling with pressure. The concrete floor groaned under his feet as if holding a collapsing star.
Cross's smile turned feral. "Let's see you block this."
He clenched his right fist. A flicker of crimson energy coiled around it—unstable, blinding, nuclear.
"Fist of Nuclear Explosion!"
The world went white.
A sun was born in his hand.
Everyone except Lock turned away, blinded even through closed eyelids. The light seared skin, ignited air, and burned the shadows themselves. A beam of incandescent scarlet roared upward, tearing through the spatial barrier and streaking into the heavens.
Satellites hundreds of kilometers above Earth blinked into ash. The atmosphere rippled. The sky itself looked wounded.
Lock held firm as the earth quaked beneath his boots. Cross's laughter rolled through the inferno. "King Lock! How does my Nuclear Explosion Fist compare to your Infinite Divine Fist?"
Lock's jaw tightened. The sheer absurdity of it—how far Cross had gone beyond any Pym particle theory. Size-shifting could never produce this kind of destructive yield. Pym particles altered mass and density—but a nuclear detonation? That defied science and sorcery alike.
Another explosion ripped forward.
Lock raised his hands, folding space before him like silk. The torrent of nuclear energy hit the distortion, bent upward, and howled into the sky.
The air screamed.
The wave rolled upward like a solid wall, shaking the atmosphere itself. Even a fraction of its power vaporized the ground for hundreds of meters around. Machinery and rubble were flung miles away, reduced to motes of dust.
If this had been a populated area, millions would already be dead.
Lock grimaced. He could end this instantly—one Infinite Divine Fist would erase Cross from existence. But unleashing that much power here… two nuclear detonations in one city would turn this entire region into a wasteland.
"Let's see how long you can hold out, King Lock!" Cross roared.
He punched again. And again.
Each strike detonated with world-shattering violence. Lock twisted space in rapid succession, folding one layer over another to redirect the blasts skyward. Each explosion cracked his barriers, forcing him to rebuild faster and faster.
He was tiring—not from weakness, but from restraint. Every ounce of control kept the city behind him alive.
Hope, Scott, Bill, and Ava huddled behind him, their faces pale in the red light of annihilation.
Every missed deflection meant death.
Each burst of energy carved the clouds apart, creating luminous spirals that reached into orbit. Storms formed instantly where atmosphere and heat collided. The entire Western Hemisphere could see it—an artificial aurora blazing from the outskirts of the city.
Inside S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, alarms screamed.
"Nuclear detonation detected!" someone yelled.
Fury slammed a fist on the console, eyes wide at the readings. "That's not a damn nuclear weapon—that's a person! What the hell is happening out there?!"
He turned to his staff, veins bulging with disbelief. "How many days—how many days of peace do we get before another godlike maniac shows up?!"
Outside, two figures still clashed beneath a bleeding sky—Lock, the man who bent space with his hands, and Cross, the man who'd turned Pym science into a weapon that could burn the heavens.
And neither was backing down.
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A/N: Advanced Chapters Have Been Uploaded On My Patreon
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