Thena POV
The air tasted of ozone and burning hope. Ikaris's blast was a column of pure, blinding hatred, and it was aimed squarely at Sersi.
"Sersi!" I screamed, my voice raw.
Time seemed to slow. I saw the light in his eyes, saw the destructive intent, and my body moved on instinct. I wasn't thinking; I was reacting. Golden light erupted from my hands, coalescing in an instant. A shield—solid, radiant, and shimmering with the last of my resolve—materialized between Sersi and certain doom.
The beam struck. The impact was a physical blow, a hammer of divine force that rattled my teeth and sent shockwaves through my bones. My feet dug trenches in the black rock. The shield held, but cracks of brilliant, painful light spiderwebbed across its surface. It wouldn't last.
"He has become stronger," I grunted, the strain making my vision swim.
"We can do it," Sersi gasped, her hands already glowing as she tried to reinforce the shield from behind, her power weaving into mine. "He's alone."
"I will go first, you all back me up," I said, my gaze locked on the monster wearing my brother's face. There was no fear left, only a cold, hard certainty. This ended here.
"Got it," Druig's voice echoed in my mind, strained but firm.
I poured more energy into the shield, pushing back just enough to give myself an opening. With my other hand, I forged a spear of pure light, its tip sharp enough to pierce the heavens.
"Now, Phastos!" I yelled.
From the ridge, a series of metallic whirs answered me. Phastos, his face a mask of desperate concentration, sent a swarm of his attack drones screaming towards Ikaris. They were small, fast, and fired concentrated plasma bursts.
Ikaris was momentarily distracted, swatting at the gnats with contemptuous blasts of his eye-beams.
"Fuck."
That was my window. I burst forward, a golden comet streaking across the battlefield. The ground beneath my feet cracked. I aimed the spear for his heart.
"No matter how hard you try," Ikaris said, his head snapping back to me so fast it should have broken his neck. He didn't even bother with the drones. He simply raised a hand. "Or how many times you try… it's useless."
He caught my spear.
The glowing tip stopped an inch from his chest, held in the palm of his hand. The light sputtered and died against his skin. He wasn't even singed.
His other hand moved faster than I could track. It wasn't a punch. It was a dismissal. He backhanded me, and the world exploded into white-hot pain. I flew backward, the air ripped from my lungs, and slammed into a rock spire. The impact shattered my armor and my concentration. I felt ribs crack. I slid to the ground, my vision swimming, my spear gone.
I saw Sersi rush to my side, her face a blur of panic. I saw Druig scream, clutching his head as Ikaris's laser sight pressure crushed him. I saw the drones fall from the sky, smoking husks.
We had failed. He was just… too strong.
**Sersi POV**
"Thena!"
I scrambled to her side, my hands glowing, trying to mend her broken ribs, to seal the wounds. But my power felt like a candle against a hurricane. Ikaris was just standing there, watching us, his expression one of profound disappointment.
"All this power," he said, his voice echoing in the sudden, heavy silence. "And you still fight for the ants."
He raised his hand, aimed at Druig, who was writhing on the ground. A single, focused beam of light began to form in his palm.
"No!" I screamed, raising a pathetic shield of transmuted rock.
It wouldn't be enough. We were going to die. Thena was broken, Druig was broken, the others were scattered. I had failed them. I had failed this planet.
The beam fired. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the end.
It never came.
I opened my eyes.
The air in front of Druig had… folded. The beam hadn't been blocked or deflected. It had simply hit a point in space and vanished, absorbed into nothingness.
And standing there, as if he had been there all along, was Mr. X.
He was just… there. His hands were in his pockets, his expression unreadable beneath the brim of his hat. He hadn't moved a muscle. He hadn't even flinched.
Ikaris froze, his head tilting in confusion. "What…?"
Mr. X didn't answer. He looked past Ikaris, his gaze sweeping over the battlefield, taking in the fallen Eternals and the shattered landscape. He saw Thena struggling to stand. He saw Druig bleeding on the ground.
He sighed. It was a quiet, tired sound, but it cut through the roar of the volcano like a shard of ice.
"I leave you alone for five minutes," Mr. X said, his voice flat, laced with an annoyance that was far more terrifying than any rage. "And you let a schoolyard bully beat you senseless."
He took a single step forward.
The pressure in the air changed. It wasn't the oppressive, crushing weight of a god. It was something else. Something absolute. The laws of physics seemed to hold their breath around him.
Ikaris, for the first time, looked unsure. He gathered his power, the cosmic energy flaring around him. "You are a pest. An anomaly. I will erase you."
Mr. X raised a single finger.
"I've already erased an army today," he said calmly. "You're just the cleanup."
He wiggled the finger.
"Boo."
Ikaris's eyes widened. He fired his eye-beams, a full-power blast meant to turn a city to glass. The beams traveled halfway to Mr. X… and then stopped. They hung in the air, frozen, silent, their light illuminating the sheer disbelief on Ikaris's face.
Mr. X walked toward him, right past the suspended beams of cosmic energy. He stopped directly in front of the floating Eternal.
"You betrayed your family for a god that will destroy this world," Mr. X stated, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous whisper. "You have no honor. You have no worth."
He reached out and snapped his finger facing Ikaris.
Ikaris didn't scream. He vanished and appeared under Jotaro feet in the form of 2D art on the ground alive.
He just… stopped and stopped on the treacherous eternal.
The cosmic energy around him flickered and passed out. His eyes went dim. The power that made him a god was switched off, like a snuffed candle.
Jotaro snapped his finger again as he dropped Ikaris from the sky, landing in a heap at Mr. X's feet. Not dead. Not unconscious. Just… empty. A statue of flesh and bone, all the divine fire extinguished.
Mr. X looked down at him, then back at us.
"Get up," he said, his tone business-like. "The big one is waking up. And I'm not in the mood to deal with another temper tantrum."