"Captain Krypton" was obviously a joke, but watching his comrades fall one after another, Superman surged again. No more holding back. No more worrying about collateral damage. The stellar energy inside him began to flow, slow and inexorable. He'd already exceeded single-universe level and was pushing toward multiverse-tier.
Shield raised, hammer in hand, Superman circled Krona, keeping him from getting a clear shot at Jean and Scarlet Witch. Every last drop of Kryptonian ability was being drawn out at a hundred and fifty percent.
But in a fight like this, a single lapse could be fatal. The third to fall was the Hulk. Raw muscle was fine for bullying ordinary opponents, but against Krona's precise calculations, the man left too many openings.
The Hulk's physical durability was passable. He was immune to psychic attacks. But against pure energy, his defense was zero. Big body, no energy resistance. Superman, being a gentleman, had shifted his attention to protecting the two ladies, which left the Hulk exposed.
A single kick to the chest sent the Hulk flying. If Spider-Man hadn't shot out a web line and Iron Man hadn't helped haul him back, he would've flown right out of the fight. Even so, he lay on the ground struggling for a long while and couldn't get up.
"Hah... hah..." On the other side, Thea pressed a hand over her wound, leaned on Excalibur, and forced herself upright.
She was back to maybe forty or fifty percent combat power, but she had to stand. Everyone was burning through energy too fast, and Galactus was about to wake up again.
Off you go. She killed Galactus again, then sat on the ground panting, waving Diana away and signaling that she was fine. Go support Superman.
Krona's injuries were mounting. Beyond his destroyed left eye, there was a clean hole through his chest from back to front, plus a concussion courtesy of the hammer blow to the back of his skull. His right shoulder armor was completely shattered too. That was the Grandmaster's handiwork. The old fox had an impeccable eye for weaknesses.
But Krona was no pushover either. His armor had some kind of rebound property. The armor was wrecked, but the reflected energy had put the still-recovering Grandmaster flat on the ground.
The casualty list was growing longer, while the enemy, battered as he was, remained standing.
"Jean, you and Scarlet take a break!" Thea rotated out the two women who'd been holding the line. They couldn't afford to take hits. Both of them and Thea herself needed time to recover, to stockpile energy for the final blow.
Without Jean's relentless barrage, Cyclops and Wolverine were finally free from their role as glorified mascots.
The Phoenix Force cycled between the three hosts. With Jean standing down, the flow redirected to them, and they could actually fight.
Wolverine's already ferocious life force, supplemented by the Phoenix Force, surged to the point that even Krona did a double-take.
Cyclops's power originated from an extradimensional space, and he himself was the conduit between that dimension and reality. When he activated it, a quasi-photonic substance gained kinetic energy and formed a red beam. Now the Phoenix Force layered emotional intensity on top, and the blast was strong enough to warp the air itself.
Krona had completely given up scientific curiosity. His energy weapon morphed into a gleaming silver blade. One horizontal cut, and the shockwave alone carved a deep gouge into Captain America's shield.
Fortunately, Diana the shield specialist charged in at that moment. The warrior goddess had finally found her stage.
Block after parry after deflection. She absorbed the brunt of Krona's onslaught, and her occasional counterstrikes sent genuine shock through her opponent.
"Hyaah!" Diana put everything behind a single strike, smashing his slash aside with her shield, and in the same motion drove her sword across his neck, carving a bloody furrow along the side of his throat.
"Ignorant woman!" Krona was incandescent with rage. Without fully realizing it, he drew on the Entities sealed inside his body. The Butcher, the Red Lantern Entity.
A colossal bull wreathed in blood-red flames was forced to merge with him. And he didn't stop there. He dragged out the other four as well.
Love and hope? Krona didn't even dignify them. The Violet Entity Predator and the Blue Entity Adara were crushed beneath his feet to serve as legs.
The Green Entity Ion, the oldest of the Entities, became his torso.
The Butcher, with the highest raw attack power, became his right arm. The Orange Entity Ophidian, the most agile, became his left.
Five Entities, their power forcibly ripped out and fused onto his body.
Krona was utterly unhinged now. The wild emotional energy flooding through him shredded his clarity, but he retained enough awareness to recognize that everyone around him was an enemy. He swung the energy blade wildly, hacking at the besiegers from every direction.
Three exchanges. That was all it took. Iron Man's Odin-Blessed Armor was demolished. If his "old friend" Cap hadn't pulled him clear, it would have been a guaranteed kill. Batman's armor was also destroyed, though the man's evasion was so sharp he escaped with nothing worse than a disheveled exit.
Two walking cheat codes, taken out of the fight. The price Krona paid was a severed left hand from Diana and two broken ribs from Thor's hammer.
But he didn't flinch. Every damaged section was replaced with machinery. Like a madman, he kept swinging the energy blade.
This guy's probably lost it, Thea thought with a twinge of disbelief. The Entities weren't meant to be fused like that. Sealed inside the body was fine, but fusion was an entirely different concept. Especially when Krona hadn't bothered to harmonize with the emotions, choosing brute force instead. Monumentally unwise.
The enemy had gone all-in. They couldn't afford to flinch either. After killing Galactus yet again, Thea quietly conferred with Jean and Scarlet Witch on tactics.
Then she confirmed the final plan with Captain America, Iron Man, and Batman.
"Let's do this." Thea extended her left hand to Jean, who hesitated briefly before handing over a pure sphere of Phoenix Force.
Jean wasn't worried Thea would pocket it. She was worried the Phoenix Force wouldn't recognize Thea as a host.
Sure enough, the Phoenix Force showed zero courtesy. It didn't remember her at all.
Fortunately, Thea's power and realm were both high enough, and her realm exceeded her raw power. Wielding the Phoenix Force briefly wasn't a problem.
Together with Scarlet Witch, she counted down. Three, two, one.
Thea used the Phoenix Force, a power that encompassed dimensions one through ten, as the primary driver. Then she applied fifth-dimensional methods to forcibly rewrite reality.
Scarlet Witch at her peak could also rewrite reality, but she was far from that level now. Still, her mutant ability was probability manipulation, and combined with her still-developing Chaos Magic, she could provide considerable support.
Erasing Krona's existence outright was impossible. At the very least, those fifth-dimensional jokers' power couldn't pull that off. Thea chose instead to alter his fusion state.
You're using Ion as your core, are you? Then I'll rip Ion right out.
As the oldest of the Entities, Ion's willpower was the most formidable. Its resistance was the fiercest. Now that Thea had created an opening, it wasn't about to waste it. With visible effort, Ion clawed its way out of Krona's body.