**Rakan's Domain**
Anna grinned as she descended from her hovering position, diving toward where Rakan had landed after their initial exchange. The Beast Monarch was already rising, his massive form beginning to shift and expand.
"YOU WANT A REAL FIGHT?" Rakan roared, his voice distorting as his transformation began. "THEN LET ME SHOW YOU WHAT A TRUE MONARCH LOOKS LIKE!"
His body erupted with dark energy as he assumed his true beast form.
Rakan's transformation was both magnificent and terrifying. His already massive frame doubled in size, muscles swelling with power that could crack continents.
A colossal werewolf-like creature standing over fifteen feet tall, obsidian claws longer than swords, fur matted with ancient battle scars. Burning crimson eyes glowed beneath a mane of wild black hair, and massive fangs glinted as his muzzle pulled back in a savage laugh. Spiritual pressure rolled off him in waves, thick enough to crush lesser beings outright.
This was Rakan in his true form—the apex predator of the universe, the King of Beasts who had hunted gods for sport.
"MUCH BETTER!" he laughed, his voice now a chorus of savage sounds. "So YOU'RE the one hunting Monarchs! The fool who thinks they can steal our power! I'll kill you here and now, show the others that Rakan alone is enough to end this threat!"
He then paused while his eyes studied Anna with confusion. "But... strange. I sense no mana from you. How can you be so strong without mana? What ARE you?"
But soon his grin widened, showing all those terrible teeth. "No matter. You'll die just the same. But let me ask your this, are you this 'Aeon' who killed Tarnak and Yogumunt? The one stealing Monarch cores?"
Anna's smile was pure sass and confidence. She planted one hand on her hip and pointed at him with the other. "Nope! Name's Anna Marie Carter, sugar. I'm Aeon's wife—one of them, anyway." Her grin turned predatory. "And I'm the one who puts uppity Monarchs like you in your place. Consider this a house call."
Never in his countless centuries of existence had Rakan been this simultaneously enraged and excited. His entire body trembled with barely contained violence.
"YOU HAVE A SHARP MOUTH, WOMAN!" he roared, but his grin was huge and genuine. "LET'S SEE IF YOU HAVE THE STRENGTH TO BACK IT UP!"
Anna cracked her knuckles, "Oh honey, you have no idea what you're dealing with. Come on then—let's dance!"
They charged at each other simultaneously.
BOOM! CRASH! BOOM!
The sound of their combat was like artillery fire—each impact creating shockwaves that flattened the landscape around them. They fought with pure physical force first, testing each other's limits.
Rakan's arms were a blur of motion, each clawed strike coming from impossible angles. He fought like the ultimate predator he was—no wasted movement, every attack flowing seamlessly into the next, centuries of combat experience guiding each blow.
Anna met him blow for blow, her enhanced physiology allowing her to tank hits that would pulverize mountains. She had absorbed the powers of three of the most durable beings across multiple universes.
Viltrumite physiology with near-invulnerable skin, strength that could move planets, the Main Man's ridiculous healing factor that could regenerate from a single cell, combined with his raw strength and berserker fighting style.
And also Wolverine's ability to recover from any injury almost instantly, his combat instincts, and centuries of fighting experience.
Combined, these powers made Anna essentially unkillable and gave her raw strength that matches even Rakan's monstrous levels.
But Rakan had something she lacked—millennia of actual combat experience in this form.
That would be his advantage in this fight.
At the same time, several hundred meters away, Ethan and Jean hovered in the air, watching the battle with interest.
Ethan had one hand raised, holding what appeared to be a heavily modified camera—covered in glowing runes and magical circuits that pulsed with power.
Click-click-click-click-click
The camera was taking rapid-fire photos at superhuman speed, capturing every moment of Anna's battle from multiple angles simultaneously.
"She's beautiful when she fights. Wow, look at that footwork," Ethan commented while zooming in on Anna's movements. "She's adapting to his attack patterns. Each exchange is making her sharper."
"Rakan has the technical advantage," Jean observed, "His experience is giving him openings, he's predicting her movements two or three steps ahead."
Below, Rakan's claws carved furrows through solid stone where Anna had been a fraction of a second earlier. She countered with a devastating uppercut infused with Viltrumite strength, sending the Monarch skidding back hundreds of meters. His attacks—vicious, precise, honed by centuries—drew thin lines of blood across her face, but the wounds sealed almost instantly thanks to Logan's healing factor woven into her very cells.
"True," Ethan agreed while taking another burst of photos. "But Anna's durability is insane. Look—he just hit her with a combination that should have torn her in half. But thanks to her durability and Magic enhancements of our clothes, She didn't even flinch."
Indeed, down below, Rakan had landed a devastating series of strikes—two claws attacks in rapid succession, each one capable of destroying cities. The impacts had created craters and sent shockwaves across the domain.
Anna emerged from the smoke completely unharmed while grinning like a maniac. "That all you got, kitty cat? My turn!"
She drove her fist into Rakan's stomach with enough force to create a visible shockwave. The Beast Monarch actually doubled over, coughing, before his own healing factor kicked in.
'She hits HARD,' Rakan thought with growing excitement. 'Harder than most Monarchs! But she's raw, unrefined. I can use that!'
Just as Rakan thought he was gaining the upper hand, landing more hits and forcing Anna into a defensive posture, everything changed.
Anna's hand shot forward, and golden energy materialized from thin air—forming a whip of pure magical force that wrapped around of Rakan's arms.
"Surprise!" Anna shouted, her Southern accent thick with satisfaction. "Hope you didn't think I was just a brawler, sugar!"
"WHAT—" Rakan started, but Anna was already moving.
She spun in mid-air like a discus thrower and hurled the Beast Monarch like a projectile. His massive body went flying across the domain, crashing through three mountains before finally skidding to a halt kilometers away.
"IMPOSSIBLE!" Rakan roared before tearing free of the magical bindings. "YOU HAVE NO MANA! HOW ARE YOU CASTING SPELLS?!"
Anna just grinned and raised both hands. Around her body, a visible field of electromagnetic energy began to form—crackling with blue electricity.
"I don't use mana, honey," she called out. "I use something better—good old-fashioned physics!"
She had absorbed Magneto's powers before. But more importantly, she had absorbed his memories—decades of experience manipulating electromagnetic fields, and thanks to Ethan's teaching and making her understanding the fundamental forces of the universe, and guiding her into weaponizing them in creative ways.
What followed was a masterclass in electromagnetic warfare.
Anna started simple—lightning bolts.
She raised her hand, manipulating the electromagnetic field to ionize the air and create a path of least resistance. Natural lightning followed, but amplified a thousand-fold by her conscious direction.
CRACK-BOOM!
The bolt struck Rakan dead-center, carrying enough voltage to power a city for few years. He roared in pain as electricity coursed through his body, his fur standing on end and smoking.
"LESSON ONE!" Anna called out cheerfully. "Lightning isn't just pretty—it's several billion volts of 'sit down and shut up'!"
Before Rakan could recover, Anna shifted tactics. She focused on the Transfiguration spell, and the rocks around them began to transform into hardened metal compounds.
With a gesture, she ripped chunks of metal from the ground and accelerated them to hypersonic speeds using electromagnetic propulsion.
THUNK-THUNK-THUNK-THUNK!
Dozens of metal projectiles hammered into Rakan from all directions, moving fast enough to ignite the air around them.
Each impact was like a high-explosive shell, creating craters in the Beast Monarch's flesh before his healing factor could catch up.
"LESSON TWO!" Anna continued while clearly enjoying herself. "Railgun physics! Magnetic acceleration can turn a coin into a weapon of mass destruction!"
"ENOUGH!" Rakan roared, his body erupting with dark energy that dispersed the projectiles. He charged forward.
Anna's grin widened. "Oh, we're just getting started, sugar."
She created an electromagnetic pulse—a burst of concentrated magnetic energy that disrupted electrical systems and biological neural pathways.
The EMP washed over Rakan like a wave, and for a crucial second, his nervous system misfired.
That second was all Anna needed.
She used electromagnetic levitation to accelerate herself forward at impossible speed—not flying through propulsion, but literally pulling herself along magnetic field lines. She appeared beside Rakan's head and drove her knee into his skull with devastating force.
CRACK!
Rakan's massive body was driven downward, cratering the ground beneath him.
"LESSON THREE!" Anna shouted before landing gracefully nearby. "Control the electromagnetic field, and you control motion itself. You're basically fighting in MY arena now!"
She demonstrated by creating a localized magnetic field around Rakan that was perfectly aligned to resist his movements. When he tried to stand, it was like pushing against an invisible wall of force.
"What... is this... SORCERY?!" he growled while straining against the field.
"Not sorcery—science!" Anna corrected cheerfully. "Though I'll admit, at this level they're pretty much the same thing."
She shifted the field configuration, creating a rotating magnetic field that acted like a giant invisible blender. Rakan's body was caught in the rotation, spinning uncontrollably.
"Lesson Four: Rotating magnetic fields can create torque forces strong enough to spin a planetary core. You? You're just along for the ride!"
.
.
.
"That's brilliant," Jean murmured while watching Anna's electromagnetic manipulation with obvious appreciation. "She's not just throwing lightning around—she's using advanced electromagnetic theory."
"Mmhmm," Ethan agreed still taking more photos. His camera was capturing every moment in perfect detail. "The EMP to disrupt his nervous system was particularly clever. Biological bodies run on electrical impulses—mess with those, and even a Monarch is going to stumble."
"The magnetic field manipulation is impressive too," Jean continued. "She's essentially creating artificial gravity wells and repulsion zones. If she wanted to, she could probably generate enough magnetic force to affect the domain's gravitational field."
"She's learned well from Magneto's memories," Ethan said with obvious pride. "He spent decades mastering electromagnetic manipulation. All of that experience is hers now—along with the months we spent in the Mirror Dimension, refining her control and applying scientific principles to unlock its full potential alongside me."
Jean glanced at the camera in Ethan's hand, covered in glowing runes and magical enhancements. "How many photos have you taken now?"
"About one hundred, along with automatic recording function," Ethan replied without looking away from the battle. "The camera's enchanted for high-speed photography—can take up to ten thousand frames per second. Also expanded the storage capacity to basically infinite through pocket-dimension technology. And the image quality is perfect from any distance thanks to the zoom enhancement runes."
Jean's expression softened into a fond smile. "You're such a dork."
"A dork who loves documenting his wife's awesome moments," Ethan corrected. "Remember when you and Anna raided that orc dungeon to save the Hunters Guild's second strike team? I got some amazing action shots and video from that."
He pulled up a holographic display from the camera, showing images of Jean and Anna in the middle of combat—Jean's telekinetic powers creating geometric patterns of destruction while Anna crashed through enemies like a living wrecking ball. Both of them looked powerful, beautiful, and absolutely in their element.
"See? These are going in the album. Our kids are going to see these someday and realize how badass their mothers are."
Jean laughed, her eyes warm with affection. "You're impossible. We're in the middle of hunting universal threats, and you're thinking about photo albums."
"Multitasking is important," Ethan replied seriously, then grinned. "Besides, you love it."
"I do," Jean admitted. "It's sweet that you treasure these moments so much."
Their conversation was interrupted by a massive BOOM as Anna sent Rakan flying directly toward their position.
The Beast Monarch's body tumbled through the air, heading straight for where Ethan and Jean were hovering. He was moving fast—several times the speed of sound, his trajectory perfectly aligned to crash into them.
Ethan didn't even look concerned. He simply waved his hand in a casual gesture.
And Rakan's trajectory suddenly altered mid-flight, as if he'd hit an invisible ramp. His body curved away from Ethan and Jean, redirected downward at a sharp angle.
CRASH!
He slammed into the ground kilometers away, creating a crater the size of a football field. Dust and debris erupted into the air, and when it cleared, Rakan was lying in the center of the impact zone.
His body was covered in injuries—burns from lightning strikes, impact wounds from electromagnetic projectiles, crushing damage from Anna's physical attacks.
His breathing was labored but excited. Despite the pain, he was smiling—a huge, genuine grin of pure exhilaration.
'This fight!' he thought with his blood singing with combat joy. 'This is what I've been missing! A true challenge! A worthy hunt!'
Anna flew down toward Ethan and Jean, looking apologetic. "Oops! Sorry, y'all—my hand slipped. Didn't mean to send him your way."
"No problem," Ethan replied, "Nice uppercut, by the way. I got a great sequence of his jaw deforming from the impact."
"How's the fight going?" Jean asked while observing Anna's condition. Despite the intense combat, Anna looked completely fresh—not even breathing hard.
"He's a good sparring partner!" Anna said enthusiastically. "All that combat experience really shows. He fights like someone who's spent millennia hunting the most dangerous prey in existence. I'm learning a ton from this—every exchange teaches me something new about positioning, timing, and adaptation."
She'd absorbed the powers and memories of Anissa, a Viltrumite warrior with centuries of combat experience. Not to mention Lobo. That meant Anna had the inherent ability to grow stronger and more skilled during battles. The longer she fought, the more she learned, and the more dangerous she became.
"The exhaustion don't seem to be sticking even after fighting a Monarch," Jean stated.
"Logan's healing factor is ridiculous," Anna confirmed. "Even when Rakan lands a solid hit—and he's landed a bunch—I heal completely within seconds. Plus, you know those enhancement spells Ethan wove into my combat suit? If my natural healing ever slows down, they kick in automatically with additional regeneration magic."
"Efficient," Jean approved.
Ethan is smiling at their exchange and slowly turned his gaze downward.
Down in the crater, Rakan slowly pushed himself to his feet. His eyes scanned the area, finally focusing on the three figures hovering in the air—Anna, the female he'd been fighting, and two others he hadn't noticed before.
'Wait... where did they come from?' he thought, confusion cutting through his battle-lust. 'I didn't sense them before. Didn't smell them. How—'
The reason was simple, Ethan had cast a camouflage spell on himself and Jean before the battle began.
Not just visual camouflage, but complete concealment—blocking sight, sound, smell, magical detection, everything. He'd wanted to observe Anna's fight without distracting Rakan or interfering with the battle's natural flow.
But now that Rakan had been sent flying toward them, Ethan had decided to drop the concealment. No point hiding anymore.
"WHO ARE YOU?!" Rakan demanded, his voice carrying across the distance. "IDENTIFY YOURSELVES!"
Ethan floated forward slightly, his blonde hair catching the blood-red light of the domain's sky. His expression was casual, almost bored, which somehow made him more threatening than if he'd been aggressive.
"Me? I'm Ethan Carter," he said, his voice carrying clearly despite the distance. "But you might know me better as Aeon—the one who's been collecting Monarch cores like Pokemon cards."
He gestured toward Jean. "This beautiful woman is my wife, Jean Grey Carter. The one who's been using you as a punching bag is Anna Carter, my other wife. We're here to, well... take your power and add it to our collection."
Rakan's eyes widened, then narrowed with rage.
But before he could respond, Ethan continued, his tone shifting to something more conversational and infinitely more insulting.
"You know, I've got to say—I'm really disappointed in you Monarchs. Here I was, thinking you'd be these incredible universal threats, these unstoppable forces of destruction. Ancient beings of terrible power, right?"
He shook his head sadly. "But honestly? You're kind of pathetic. Tarnak, the 'Iron Body Monarch,' couldn't even handle a single punch while I was holding back eighty percent of my strength. Yogumunt, the 'King of Demonic Spectres,' died so fast I barely had time to study him. And now you..."
Ethan's expression turned genuinely disappointed. "You're getting beaten by my wife. Don't get me wrong—Anna's amazing, and I'm incredibly proud of her. But she's been holding back too. Do you understand what that means?"
He let the implication hang in the air for a moment.
"It means you Monarchs—these beings who call yourselves kings, who claim dominion over cosmic concepts—are nothing more than oversized bugs compared to actual power. You've been the biggest fish in a very small pond for so long that you forgot what real strength looks like."
Ethan's blue eyes began to glow with Genesis power, and the casual tone vanished from his voice, replaced by cold certainty.
"Your titles are wasted on you. 'Beast Monarch'? 'King of Fangs'? Those should inspire fear, represent ultimate predatory perfection. Instead, you're getting systematically dismantled by someone learning how to fight properly for the first time in this form."
He leaned forward slightly, his smile sharp and cutting. "You're not apex predators. You're not universal threats. You're just...a fucking disappointment."
The Beast Monarch's entire body trembled with fury. His eight eyes blazed with killing intent. Every instinct in his ancient, predatory soul screamed for blood.
"YOU DARE—" he started before launching himself toward Ethan with his arms extended, claws ready to reach this arrogant fool.
He made it about three meters.
Anna appeared in his path with one hand raised casually. "Hold up there, sugar."
Her hand glowed with red magical energy—complex patterns of mystical power appeared before turning into a magic circle that Ethan had taught her.
She spoke clearly, her voice carrying the weight of a proper spell incantation, "Mystic Arts: Crimson Annihilation!"
The red magic circle that materialized was enormous—easily fifty meters in diameter, spinning rapidly as it accumulated devastating amounts of magical energy. The spell was one of Ethan's custom creations, designed for maximum destructive output.
The beam that erupted from the circle was pure destruction given form—a concentrated wave of crimson energy laced with barrier-breaking magic.
It caught Rakan mid-charge and annihilated everything in its path.
BOOOOOOOOM!
The explosion was cataclysmic. The beam carved through Rakan's body, through the mountain range behind him, through the landscape beyond that. It continued for dozens of kilometers, leaving a perfectly straight canyon of absolute destruction in its wake.
When the light faded, Rakan's body was visible at the far end of the devastation—broken, bleeding, missing chunks of flesh, barely conscious. Only his Monarch-level durability and healing factor had kept him alive.
"Oops," Anna said, not sounding sorry at all. "Was that too much? My bad."
But Jean didn't reply and floated closer to examine the destruction, "If Ethan had cast that spell instead of you, there wouldn't be a domain left. Just empty void."
Anna laughed. "Yeah, well, I'm still learning the whole 'magical apocalypse' thing. Give me time—I'll get there!"
"Your power control is improving though," Jean observed.
"I try!"
Ethan lowered his camera, finally satisfied with the photo collection he'd accumulated. "Anna, honey, if you've learned what you wanted from this fight, go ahead and finish it. We've got two more Monarchs to deal with today, and I'd like to grab dinner after."
"Dinner after fighting universal threats," Anna said with a grin. "That's so us."
She flew over to Ethan, grabbed him by the collar of his suit, and planted a deep, passionate kiss on his lips—the kind of kiss that made it very clear they were more than just partners in monster hunting.
When they separated, Anna was grinning widely. "Wish me luck on the finishing blow, darlin'."
"You don't need luck," Ethan replied with complete confidence. "You need about thirty seconds. Maybe less."
"Aww, you're so sweet!" Anna gave him one more quick kiss, then turned and shot off toward where Rakan lay broken and barely breathing.
Jean shook her head with fond exasperation. "You two are ridiculous."
"Ridiculously in love," Ethan corrected, already raising his camera again to capture Anna's final attack.
"That too," Jean admitted with a smile.
While the battle had been raging, Ethan hadn't just been taking photos and making commentary. His mind was always working on multiple projects simultaneously, and today's secondary objective was particularly ambitious.
His left hand had been extended throughout the fight, barely visible telekinetic energy spreading out across the domain like an invisible net.
He'd been using his Genesis Telekinesis to grab every mana beast in Rakan's domain—creatures that would normally be hostile and dangerous—and hold them in stasis.
Now, golden energy began to flow from his hand, spreading through the telekinetic net to touch each captured creature.
This was Power Genesis—his fundamental energy of cosmic authority over creation, destruction, and rebirth. He was carefully injecting small amounts of it into each beast, watching to see what would happen.
Jean had noticed what he was doing about halfway through the fight. "What's the experiment this time?" she asked, floating closer to observe.
"I got an idea last night," Ethan explained, his eyes glowing as he monitored the energy transfer. "You know how Galactus can empower his heralds? How he turned Norrin Radd into Silver Surfer by giving him a portion of the Power Cosmic?"
"Yes..." Jean said slowly, seeing where this was going as he already explained about his encounter with Galactus with all of his women.
"I'm testing whether I can do something similar with Power Genesis," Ethan continued. "If I can successfully share my authority with others—create heralds who carry fragments of my power—it would give our people a massive power boost without needing to search for external sources."
His expression grew more serious. "I'm particularly thinking about you, Anna, and the others. If I can somehow transfer aspects of my Genesis Authority—the power over creation, destruction, and rebirth—you'd all be protected against threats up to and including conceptual gods and other reality-warping entities."
Jean's eyes widened as she processed the implications. "That's... ambitious. And potentially very dangerous."
"Which is why I'm testing on mana beasts first," Ethan agreed. "If it works, great. If it goes wrong, well... they're test subjects in a collapsing dimension anyway."
He gestured toward the creatures held in his telekinetic grip. Already, some of them were beginning to change—their bodies glowing with golden light, their forms becoming more refined and powerful.
"It's working," Jean observed with scientific interest. "Look at that one—its energy signature just jumped several magnitudes."
"The question is whether it's stable," Ethan replied. "And whether the changes are permanent or if my power will fade once I stop actively channeling it."
"Well, you'll have time to test once we collapse this domain," Jean said practically. "Are you planning to keep some of these creatures?"
"The ones that survive the transformation, definitely. They'll make excellent subjects for long-term study."
Jean smiled at his thoroughly scientific approach to cosmic power manipulation. "You're adorable when you're doing mad science experiments, you know that?"
"I prefer 'endearingly ambitious,'" Ethan replied with a grin.
Their conversation was interrupted by a flash of crimson light in the distance as Anna unleashed her finishing move.