Time seemed to fracture. The collision of Homelander's heat vision and my gravito-electrical vortex didn't create a simple explosion; it birthed a localized singularity of pure chaos. The air itself screamed as it was torn apart. A shockwave of concussive force and psionic feedback radiated outwards, vaporizing the fifty-yard line and hurling the goalposts like javelins into the screaming stands.
The crowd's terror was a psychic tsunami, a raw fuel that the Ember-part of me instinctively drank in, amplifying my power. The Graviton-part calculated the vectors of the flying debris, my telekinesis automatically deflecting a thousand-pound chunk of scoreboard away from a packed section. Even in the heart of the maelstrom, the absorbed instincts of a dozen Supes were my co-pilots.
Homelander hovered, untouched by the backlash, his cape whipping in the self-generated hurricane. The look on his face was no longer just rage; it was a kind of ecstatic, unholy joy. Finally, a real fight.
"You broke your toy!" he roared over the din, gesturing to the smoldering collar around my neck. "Now you get to see what happens when you play with the real thing!"
He didn't use his heat vision again. He simply moved.
One moment he was a hundred feet away, the next his fist was impacting my chest. It was like being hit by a meteor. The sound was a thunderclap that dwarfed the initial explosion. My reinforced skeleton groaned, and I was hurled backward like a cannonball, tearing through the reinforced concrete of the stadium wall and out into the parking lot beyond.
I tumbled through a line of SUVs, metal screeching and glass exploding. I came to a skidding halt on the asphalt, my body screaming in protest. Without the layered durability of Compound King and Graviton, I would have been a red smear.
He's faster. Stronger, Graviton's voice was a calm, urgent report in the roaring symphony of my mind. Direct physical confrontation is suboptimal. His speed negates your variety.
Then we don't fight him directly, the Hypnotist countered. We fight the stage.
I pushed myself to my feet as Homelander descended through the hole he'd made, landing gracefully before me. The cameras, those that were still functioning, were locked on us. The world was watching a god stomp an ant.
"Get up," Homelander sneered, for the cameras. "Let's give them a good show."
I didn't charge him. I looked past him, at the terrified faces peering through the hole in the stadium wall. I looked at the news helicopters circling like vultures.
And I spoke, my voice amplified by my power, echoing across the nation.
"You see?" I yelled, blood trickling from my lip. "This is his protection! This is his justice! His answer to the truth is always violence!"
Homelander's smirk faltered for a fraction of a second. I wasn't playing my part. I was still talking. Still shaping the narrative.
He lunged again, but this time I was ready. I didn't try to match his speed. I used Graviton's power on the environment. I inverted gravity in a fifty-foot radius around me.
The effect was instantaneous and surreal. Homelander, caught in the field, was suddenly flung upward into the sky as if yanked by a giant's hand. Cars, chunks of concrete, and thousands of gallons of spilled soda from a shattered concession stand rose into the air in a bizarre, floating junkyard.
The crowd gasped. The cameras tilted up, tracking the disoriented Homelander as he tumbled end over end, trying to reorient himself in a world where "down" had become "up."
I didn't press the attack. I held the field. I was demonstrating control. I was containing the threat. I was the man who could make a god float helplessly in the air.
But I could feel the strain. Maintaining a field that powerful, that large, against Homelander's raw strength was like trying to hold back the ocean with a sieve. My energy was draining fast.
He stopped tumbling, righting himself in mid-air. He looked down—or up, from his perspective—at me, a new, chilling respect in his eyes. He wasn't facing a brawler anymore. He was facing a tactician.
"Clever," his voice boomed, unnervingly calm. "But you can't hold me forever."
He didn't try to fight the field. He simply pointed a finger at the floating stadium wall, at the civilians clinging to the ragged edge.
"You're straining, Alex," he said, his voice dripping with false sympathy. "What happens if your concentration slips? All that concrete... all those people... it would be a terrible tragedy. Your tragedy."
He was threatening to make me responsible for the very carnage he would cause. It was a masterstroke of psychological warfare.
I had two choices: hold the field and risk him carrying out his threat, or drop it and face his unrestamped power.
It was a checkmate.
And then, a new variable entered the equation.
From the periphery of my enhanced vision, I saw a streak of blue and white. A-Train, a blur of motion, was not heading towards me. He was racing around the perimeter of my gravitational field, a sonic boom cracking the air. He wasn't attacking. He was evacuating. In the space of three heartbeats, he had cleared the most endangered section of the stands, a blur of motion carrying dozens of people to safety at once.
Our eyes met for a split second across the chaos. There was no camaraderie, no alliance. Just a shared, pragmatic understanding: letting Homelander massacre civilians on live TV was bad for business. For once, A-Train's self-interest was aligned with the greater good.
It was the opening I needed.
I didn't drop the field. I shifted it.
I collapsed the inversion, but as I did, I focused all the potential energy into a single, concentrated point—directly above Homelander. The floating cars and concrete slammed together with the force of a meteor impact, a million tons of force focused into a single, crushing hammer-blow.
The sound was deafening. A cloud of pulverized metal and dust bloomed in the sky.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then, from the heart of the cloud, a laugh. A deep, genuine, unhinged laugh.
Homelander emerged, his suit slightly scuffed, a trickle of blood from a small cut on his forehead. He looked... exhilarated.
"Now that was a hit!" he bellowed. "Finally! Someone who can actually make me feel something!"
He wiped the blood away, his eyes locking on me with a new, terrifying intensity. The game was over. The performance was done. This was no longer about proving a point to the public.
This was personal.
And he was just getting started.