"Dr. Banner."
"Don't come any closer!"
A flash of heat rushed through Bruce Banner's entire body—and then his consciousness snapped.
In Zod's eyes, Banner's skin suddenly flushed green, his frame ballooning outward in an instant until a towering monster stood before him.
"Is this the part where I'm supposed to scream, or shout 'oh my god'?"
Zod tilted his head back to look at the Hulk, his tone dripping with amusement.
Sure, he could've used his psychic abilities to calm the Hulk and stop him from rampaging. But let's be honest—Zod didn't teleport all the way out here just for Banner's nuclear-physics expertise.
He came because he wanted a fight.
"HULK!!!"
The Hulk roared at him, though it didn't attack yet. Zod hadn't hurt him, so the newborn Hulk had no reason to strike first. His mind was still very simple at this stage.
Zod let the moment hang. After a long stare-down, he raised a hand and flicked a finger against the Hulk's chest.
BOOM!
The Hulk was launched like a cannonball, smashing through tree after tree before rolling to a stop.
Then he got angry—really angry—and his size swelled again.
"HULK!!"
The Hulk leaped forward, driving a massive fist straight down at Zod's skull.
Zod didn't budge. The ground beneath him didn't even crack. The shockwave, the kinetic impact—he absorbed it all.
But the Hulk's fist twisted grotesquely on impact, bones shattering as if he'd punched solid steel.He bellowed in pain.
Then he saw Zod's eyes ignite scarlet.
A beam of blazing heat vision slammed into the Hulk, melting through his supposedly indestructible skin and burning straight into the muscle underneath. The beam punched a hole straight through him.
The Hulk only grew more enraged. His wound closed at visible speed, his frame thickening as he advanced again. He snatched up a massive tree trunk and swung it at Zod.
Zod didn't bother blocking.
The tree exploded against his body.
The Hulk blinked down at the splintered remains in confusion.
"Crackle—"
Zod extended a hand. His inner energy shifted into electricity—one hundred thousand volts of lightning arced across the gap and slammed into the Hulk.
"ROAR!"
The Hulk convulsed violently… but managed to break free seconds later.
Zod was already shifting energies again. Wind surged around him. In the blink of an eye, a colossal hurricane formed, the roaring vortex lifting the Hulk clear off the ground.
The Hulk clawed at the earth to anchor himself—Too late.With a sharp whoosh, he was yanked straight into the storm.
The surrounding airflow fed the vortex, swelling it in seconds from colossal to cataclysmic.
The Hulk tumbled helplessly inside the level-six hurricane, spinning end over end.And thanks to the Black Queen's interference, none of this triggered any alarms.
After all—Earth's strongest known hurricanes topped out at Category Five.If humanity discovered a Category Six, America might just drop dead from panic.
Zod, now a walking natural disaster, felt no sense of invincibility. He knew precisely where he stood. He was stuck at this level until he could reach the Heavenly Father tier—and in the Marvel Universe, Heavenly Father–level beings were everywhere. Hardly rare.
"Guess this counts as soft overcoming hard."
Watching the immensely strong Hulk rendered helpless inside invisible currents of wind, Zod felt his mastery of "soft defeating hard" had reached enlightenment.
He nodded in satisfaction.
Then he realized the Hulk wasn't dizzy at all—in fact, he was growing even larger.
The newborn Hulk wasn't like the later versions. He couldn't be beaten down easily. His potential was boundless.
Zod absorbed most of the wind energy, and the hurricane collapsed. The Hulk plummeted to the ground—and immediately lunged at Zod like a frenzied beast.
Zod welcomed him with open arms.His fist slammed into the Hulk's chest, burying itself deep.Then he seized the creature's body and flipped him over, smashing him into the earth in a brutal shoulder throw.
Zod had never been a soldier on Krypton, but the Genesis Codex embedded in his cells granted him limitless potential—including military-grade combat instincts.
Add in a superhuman brain, and Earth's martial arts took him about—what?—an hour to fully master.
Before the Hulk could recover, Zod hoisted him overhead and snapped him over his knee.
CRACK!
The Hulk shrieked. His spine had been broken clean through.
Joint-locking. Tendon-shredding.
Zod unleashed the tendon-tearing techniques of the Eagle Claw style. Used with a Kryptonian's steel physique, the results were terrifying. The Hulk screamed and screamed, only surviving thanks to his monstrous healing factor.
Zod dismantled all eighteen major joints of the Hulk's body before letting him collapse in a twitching heap. His eyes were bloodshot beyond belief, but he still couldn't do a thing to Zod.
With x-ray vision, Zod examined his injuries—astonished.Even tendon tears and joint dislocations healed rapidly.
"What a monster," he muttered.
Hulk's inner voice: Who the hell is the actual monster here?!
Within seconds, the Hulk was whole again—and still furious. He had never been punished this badly before. The longer the fight dragged on, the more obvious it became: Zod wasn't struggling at all.
The Hulk was.
Zod let out a casual breath.
A frigid blast washed across the clearing.
The air froze solid. Moisture crystallized.
The Hulk turned into an instant ice sculpture.
Then Zod reached inward with his psychic power, hooking into the cosmic energy around him.Captain Marvel's photon energy flared into existence in his palm.
Photon Blast.
A blinding beam erupted, slamming into the frozen Hulk—not detonating him, but launching him backward with crushing force. The photon impact sent agony ripping through the monster's body.
"HULK!!!"
His roar barely escaped his throat before Zod teleported in front of him and planted one hand on his head, smashing his skull into the ground.
"Can't you say anything else? Come on, repeat after me."
Zod grabbed the Hulk by the face.
"Zod Heath is the handsomest and strongest!"
BOOM!
To make sure the lesson stuck, Zod slammed him straight into the underground, carving out a crater. He drilled through the earth with his bare hands. A massive green arm lunged up, trying to yank him down.
Zod didn't move an inch.
The Hulk strained with everything he had.Nothing.
Zod simply caught the Hulk's arm, gave a light tug—And the monster was yanked clean out of the ground and hurled into the air.
Zod teleported above him, raised one leg high, and brought it down like a falling axe.
The Hulk's famously indestructible bones snapped under the blow. The force—amplified by gravity and Zod's strike—sent him crashing into the earth, gouging out a crater hundreds of meters wide and several meters deep.
The impact triggered a massive tremor.The shockwave pulverized his organs.
The Hulk lay sprawled in the pit, vomiting shredded innards and glowing green blood saturated with lethal gamma radiation.
/-\
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