Boom!
The explosion was not the sharp crack of ordnance, but the deep, resonant thrum of reality being torn asunder. Dust and debris rained down upon the ruins of the terrorist base. Through the settling haze, the terrorists saw them. The Seven. But they were wrong. They were twisted effigies, horrors wearing the faces of heroes, their bodies encased in biomechanical armor that pulsed with a sickening violet light.
"What... what are they?" a terrorist stammered, his bravado evaporating into sheer, primal terror.
The answer came not in words, but in motion.
A-Train was the first to strike. He was no longer just a man who ran fast; he was a living laceration in the fabric of space. He didn't run on the ground so much as he tore through the air, leaving a trail of crackling purple static in his wake. A group of terrorists, armed with advanced energy rifles, opened fire. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, A-Train had moved through them. They stood frozen for a second before collapsing, not with bullet holes, but with massive, cauterized gashes carved through their torsos. A-Train came to a stop a hundred yards away, not even breathing hard, his glowing eyes scanning for the next thrill.
Queen Maeve moved with a terrifying grace. Her strength, once a measure of human peak potential, was now something cosmic. A hulking brute of a supe, whose power was to grow a dense rock-like exoskeleton, charged her. She didn't even brace for the impact. She simply reached out, caught his fist in her hand, and squeezed. The sound was a wet crunch of stone and bone collapsing into pulp. With a look of utter boredom, she drove her other fist through his chest, the biomechanical armor on her knuckles shearing through his rock hide as if it were wet clay.
"Please! Stop! We surrender!" one of the few remaining commanders screamed, dropping his weapon and raising his hands.
His plea was answered by a shadow detaching itself from the corner of a ruined wall. Black Noir was a wraith, the Void energy amplifying his stealth to an impossible degree. One moment, the commander was shouting his surrender; the next, Noir was behind him, a black blade of solidified shadow already embedded in his spine. The commander fell without a sound, his eyes wide with a question he would never get to ask.
From the sky, Stormfront descended like a vengeful goddess. The white lightning of her past was gone, replaced by writhing tendrils of black and purple energy that corroded everything they touched. She pointed a finger at a reinforced bunker where the last of the terrorists were taking cover. A bolt of dark lightning shot forth, and upon impact, the reinforced steel door didn't just break—it decayed, rusting, crumbling, and turning to black dust in seconds.
And above it all, Homelander floated, the king of this new, terrible dynasty. His eyes were twin suns of crimson and violet, and his voice, when he spoke, was a discordant chorus—his own arrogant tone layered with something ancient, cold, and utterly alien.
"You wanted a war," the chorus of voices echoed, washing over the battlefield. "You wanted to challenge the gods. Let us show you what a god's anger looks like."
The gravity-manipulating leader of the terrorists, a look of desperate resolve on her face, thrust her hands toward him. The very air around Homelander warped and buckled as she tried to crush him under immense gravitational pressure. But the Void energy radiating from him simply nullified her power. It was like trying to stop a tidal wave with a bucket. Her power unraveled, and she staggered back, blood pouring from her nose.
Homelander's twisted smile widened. "Pathetic."
Two beams of pure annihilation erupted from his eyes. They weren't just lasers anymore; they were lances of raw Void energy that erased whatever they touched. The beams vaporized the woman, bored through the bunker she stood before, and continued, carving a smoldering, kilometer-long trench through the landscape until they vanished over the horizon.
Amid the slaughter, Starlight was running. She had tried to escape, to get away from the horror, but the corruption was a sickness that was already in her blood. A whisper slithered into her mind, a cold, seductive logic. Why do you run? This is power. True power. The power to end threats. Permanently. No more half-measures. No more compromises. Just peace, earned through absolute strength.
She stumbled to a halt, seeing a small family—a father, mother, and child who had been caught in the crossfire—cowering behind a wrecked car. Three of the remaining terrorists were closing in on them, seeing them as leverage. The old Starlight would have created a barrier, a shield of protective light.
The whisper grew louder. Protect them. End the threat.
Her hands began to glow, not with the warm, golden light of hope, but with a blinding, ominous violet. She didn't raise a shield. She thrust her hands forward, and a cage of hard light, sharp and angular, slammed down around the three terrorists. They were trapped.
The father of the family stared at her, his eyes full of gratitude. But Starlight wasn't looking at him. Her gaze was fixed on the sky, where Homelander had noticed her handiwork. He gave her a slow, approving nod before his eyes flared to life. The family could only scream as the lasers cleansed the cage, and everything in it, from existence.
Starlight looked at her hands, at the violet light fading from her fingertips. She didn't feel horror. She didn't feel guilt. She felt a chilling, profound sense of rightness. The threat was gone. They were safe. The logic was flawless.
From his silent throne in the Void, Marcus watched it all with the deep, quiet satisfaction of an artist admiring his magnum opus. The raw power of Homelander, the brutal efficiency of Maeve, it was all magnificent. But the corruption of Starlight—the turning of hope into cold, merciless logic—that was his true masterpiece.
"Perfect," he murmured, feeling the symphony of chaos he had unleashed. "Now the real test begins. Let's see how Vought handles its prized assets when the leashes have been burned away."
The battle, if it could still be called that, was over. The once-formidable terrorist organization had been utterly annihilated in less than thirty minutes. All that remained was a crater of smoking rubble and the lingering, corrosive stench of the Void.
The seven corrupted heroes stood silently in the center of the devastation. Their inhuman eyes scanned the horizon, no longer searching for enemies, but for a new purpose. Homelander slowly turned his head, his gaze sweeping past the ruins and toward the distant, glittering skyline of New York.
Their work here was done. But their hunger was just beginning to awaken.