A/N: Happy to 200 chapters everyone 🥳🎂🥳 🎊 🎉 Thank you as always for the support.
(Ps. It's been 200 chapters and Lala has so far been the only official partner Clark had, for something that's supposed to be a parody of a Pokémon harem this shit is crazy)
[Third Person Pov]
Within the main weapon system of the Dark Matter Thieves' vessel stood the ship's primary gunner and Lieutenant General—a comical, bizarre looking alien. He was a fat humanoid creature whose pink skin was mottled with irregular blue circles. Two eyes sat on his face while three thick tentacles rose from his scalp, each tipped with another independently swiveling eye.
Through the telepathic link Geryuganshoop once maintained with the crew, the Lieutenant General reported in a satisfied tone, "General Geryuganshoop, all ammunition has been locked and loaded. Ready for the command to fire."
Silence answered him.
"General?" he called again, a faint note of uncertainty creeping into the mental transmission.
Still nothing. He did not panic. He merely shrugged his heavy shoulders and muttered to himself, "Maybe he went to the bathroom. I suppose when you have to go, you have to go—"
The door tore apart.
Metal shrieked as Lala's bare hands seized the edges and wrenched them outward with raw super strength. The reinforced frame crumpled and folded like soft foil. She stepped through the wreckage as if it were nothing more than a curtain of paper.
"Waaah!!"
The Lieutenant General's five eyes bulged in pure animal panic. He had believed himself perfectly safe inside the armored heart of the ship. Clumsy pink fingers fumbled a laser pistol free from its holster. He fired wildly, crimson bolts scorching black lines across the deck and walls.
Lala answered with pure, fluid athleticism. She somersaulted, cartwheeled, and twisted between the beams in a continuous blur of motion, never once slowing. One final continuous front flip carried her the remaining distance in a heartbeat. She landed directly in front of him, kicked the pistol from his grip with a single precise strike, and in the same fluid motion drew the sword at her hip. The cold edge pressed against the soft flesh of his throat.
"Mommy…" He whimpered, sweat poured down the alien's face in sheets. He trembled so violently that the tentacles on his head quivered like frightened snakes.
Lala grinned from ear to ear—wide, bright, and unmistakably unhinged in his terrified eyes.
'Hehehe… Kal-El would surely praise me for this,' she thought, the image of Clark's warm approval and quiet praise already blooming pleasantly in her mind.
She reversed the sword and struck the Lieutenant General cleanly across the temple with the heavy butt. He crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut, unconscious and no longer a threat.
Lala sheathed the blade in one smooth motion, slid into the operator's seat, and cracked her knuckles while the grin stayed fixed on her face. "Let's see what we have to work with here…"
Her fingers danced across the glowing panels in a rapid, continuous string of precise inputs. "All that's left is to disengage and shut down every auxiliary cannon and lock out the entire weapons operating system. Piece of cake…"
She paused, eyes still fixed on the cascading displays. "Speaking of cake—do you think we should get some to celebrate, Peke?"
---
Meanwhile, far from the ship's core, Boros forced himself upright once more. He stretched his arms wide and drew in a long, deliberate breath that seemed to pull the very air toward him. Clark tilted his head in momentary confusion—until a towering pillar of raw energy erupted from the alien's body, accelerating the recovery of every torn muscle fiber and shattered bone.
"There's nothing holding me back anymore!!" Boros roared, voice cracking with pure, unrestrained power. "My life, my energy—I'll use every drop of the insurmountable power this body has to offer and surpass even the limits of my limitless potential!
"Let this be the culmination of my entire existence! Everything I am, everything I've become, and everything I could have been—I'll pour it all into this one single moment!"
"Bare witness to the conqueror known as Boros!!!"
Clark barely had time to blink. Boros was already in the air in front of him, fist cocked high overhead. The strike landed with a wild electrical discharge that finally punched through Superman's protective aura. The force folded Clark's body and launched him backward inside a compressed ring of pressure. The suit cracked along his arms as he raised them defensively.
Boros pursued without the slightest pause, catching up in an instant and surrounding him in tight, blurring circles. Punches and kicks hammered home like close-range cannon shots. The two combatants streaked through the upper atmosphere so fast their bodies ignited against the air, ricocheting off one another in continuous, bone-jarring collisions.
Every impact rang like thunder. Volatile energy sprayed outward in crackling arcs that lit the sky like a living thunderstorm. Clark felt the raw pressure of each blow—the kind of destructive force that, had they been fighting over cities instead of empty sky, would have reduced entire regions to smoking, lifeless calamity.
Heat vision lanced out in twin beams of searing crimson. Boros drove straight through them, the energy of his own body wrapping around him like living armor.
"AHHHHHHH!!"
The roar tore from his throat as he pushed past every previous limit, past thresholds he had never known he could reach.
Boros pursued with frantic, almost desperate fury. Every brutal impact hurled Clark through the air like a discarded rag doll. Dark bruises bloomed across the Man of Steel's skin beneath the fracturing suit—visible proof that the alien's power had finally begun to leave lasting marks on a body that had long seemed invincible.
Boros drove a knee hard into Clark's gut, lifting him high into the air, then vanished and reappeared directly above him. Both feet crashed down in a twin stomp of pure force.
"Give it your all!" Boros proclaimed, voice ringing with challenge.
Clark plummeted like a guided missile. The earth erupted beneath him in a towering explosion of dirt, shattered stone, and flying debris.
"Ughh…" Superman groaned, shoving broken rock and soil from his body as he forced himself back to one knee.
"Show me a glimpse of the power hidden within the Man of Steel!!"
Clark reached down, closed his fingers around a chunk of stone, and crushed it into fine sand with a single, effortless squeeze. His eyes flared with sudden, brilliant light.
"Fine…" he growled.
Then he vanished.
He moved at a velocity he had reached only once before—during his recent battle against Ultraman. In the space of a single heartbeat he arrested directly behind Boros, both fists locked together and raised high overhead. The abrupt halt released a hurricane gust of wind born from pure, unrestrained forward momentum.
Boros's eyes widened in vivid shock. Sweat burst from every pore as the crushing pressure behind him registered like an approaching mountain.
Before Clark's joined fists even made contact, that raw kinetic force slammed into Boros and flattened him against the ground like a living pancake in a single motion. His body tore under the impact. It took a minute but when he came up his arms hung by shreds of sinew, his head lolled backward and his knees buckled inward under his own weight.
'I don't have enough energy left to heal properly…' Boros thought, staring up at the single figure levitating above him—a being he could only describe as a deity. 'But I suppose that is only fair. I did ask for it.'
'Only a single ember remains inside me… but it will be enough.'
He closed his eyes and in his mind's eye he stood In the black void of his inner self where a solitary ember struggled to stay alight. Gently he cupped both hands around the flickering flame. Soft light spilled between his fingers as he drew it carefully to his chest.
'A single ember will be more than enough to ignite an inferno reminiscent of a burning star. This last attack will have the power to annihilate this planet's atmosphere—and the planet itself.'
Boros's eyes snapped open. A wild discharge of energy surged from his ruined body, racing across the scorched ground for miles in every direction. A growing smirk stretched across his bloodied face.
"Thank you, Superman," he said, voice rough but sincere. "You've saved me from a boring existence. You truly are a hero."
"COLLAPSING STAR ROARING CANNON!!"
Blue and golden light flared inside his mouth like a newborn star. The energy erupted outward in a volcanic torrent of pure annihilation aimed straight at Superman.
"…Woah."
Even Clark could not help the soft, almost admiring comment as the insidious inferno didn't fail to swallow him instantly. The impact was still so immense that he cried out against it.
"Arghhhh!!"
The energy enveloped him completely. Chunks of his armor fractured and flaked away under the searing pressure.
Burns seared across his face, hands, and chest.
The pained grunts deepened into a growing growl. Heat and flame gathered around his eyes.
The growl swelled into a full-throated roar from the depths of his chest as his ruby eyes blazed open.
Crimson-golden light lanced from them—a column of pure solar-flare intensity that punched straight through the oncoming eruption.
The two pillars of energy strained against each other—pushing and pulling, over and over, locking, then leveling into perfect, catastrophic equilibrium.
A blinding flash of pure white light was born at the center. The wave expanded outward in a single, all-consuming surge that swept across the entire Empty Space.
When the light finally receded, the battlefield had been rewritten. What had once been the illusion of a city was now nothing more than an apocalyptic wasteland of fire and ash.
The battle between Boros, the Alien Conqueror, and Superman, the Man of Steel, had reached its conclusive end.
Boros lay sprawled on the scorched ground, a hollowed husk of his former self. Above him, Superman remained in the sky, looking down over the devastation—unbent, unbroken, and absolute.
The victory was clear for all to see.