"Tch. Pathetic." Black's boot pressed harder into Goku's throat, grinding his face into cracked earth. The air tasted like ozone and burnt blood. "Still struggling? Even now?"
Goku gasped, fingers clawing uselessly at Black's ankle. His vision blurred at the edges, tunneling toward the smirk on Zamasu's face just beyond. Every breath scraped like broken glass. "Get... off..." he rasped, voice shredded thin.
Zamasu knelt beside him, pristine robes untouched by dust. His cold fingers tilted Goku's chin up. "Such defiance. Pointless." A slow, deliberate shake of his head. "Your wife screamed louder when I snapped her neck."
Goku froze. Time stopped. The words echoed inside his skull, hollow and deafening. The ache in his ribs vanished. The weight on his throat dissolved. Somewhere deep inside, deeper than bone or breath, a core of ice shattered—and beneath it, something hotter than stars began to burn.
His clawing hands dropped. His ragged gasps ceased. Slowly, impossibly slow, his head turned against the pressure of Black's boot. Dust clung to his sweat-streaked cheek. His eyes, previously clouded with pain, locked onto Zamasu's serene face. They were utterly flat. Utterly empty. "What," Goku breathed, a whisper softer than dead leaves scraping stone. It wasn't a question. It was the intake of breath before an eruption. "Did you just say?"
Zamasu tilted his head, curious, like observing an insect exhibit a novel twitch. His cold lips curved into a faint, mocking smile. "Chi-chi? Your little wife? She fought poorly. So... noisy." He leaned closer, savoring the moment, his voice dropping to a silken murmur. "A quick twist. A sharper sound." The ozone smell intensified, crackling around them as Black chuckled, grinding his heel deeper.
The air shimmered. Not with heat, but with a sudden, impossible pressure. It pressed down like gravity tripled. Pebbles vibrated on the cracked earth. Black's smirk faltered; his boot lifted slightly. Goku didn't move. Didn't blink. Only his eyes changed—liquid black swallowing the iris, pupil vanishing into an endless, terrifying void. A low hum vibrated the ground itself, emanating from Goku's motionless chest. It wasn't anger. It was the sound of annihilation held barely in check.
Then, light exploded. Not gold. Not red. A searing, impossible blue—cold as the heart of a neutron star—engulfed Goku where he lay. The aura didn't flicker; it roared outward, a tsunami of raw power that hissed against the ozone-saturated air. Black staggered back, arm flung up against the blinding glare. Above, the sky didn't darken gradually—it snapped. Like a switch thrown, midday sun vanished into utter blackness, thick and suffocating, swallowing the horizon whole. Thunder didn't roll; it cracked—sharp, deafening reports that split the blackness with jagged forks of lightning, strobing the scene in fractured bursts of blue-white fury.
Inside the inferno, Goku rose. Not with a roar, but a chilling silence. His hair, plastered with sweat and dirt seconds before, whipped upward as if violently charged, strands thickening, stiffening, shifting not to blonde but a deep, menacing indigo. Dust boiled away from his skin, revealing raw power crackling along his limbs. The blue light pulsed, illuminating the utter emptiness in those black eyes fixed, unblinking, on Zamasu. The smirk was gone from the god's face now, replaced by a flicker of… uncertainty? No. Impossible. But his pristine robes flapped wildly in the sudden, unnatural gale tearing across the desolate plain.
Silence descended, brief and terrifying between lightning strikes. The crackling energy intensified, humming like a million high-tension wires. Goku's voice cut through it, flat, devoid of any inflection, colder than the void above. "Noisy?" It wasn't a question. It was a sentence pronounced. His fist clenched, knuckles white against the pulsing blue energy. The air screamed around it. "Let me show you." His gaze shifted minutely, encompassing Black. "...noise."
Black reacted instantly, instinct screaming danger. He lunged sideways, a blur of pink energy erupting from his palms—a desperate Hakai sphere aimed point-blank. The indigo aura surrounding Goku flared violently. The sphere impacted... and imploded. It vanished without sound, swallowed by the impossible blue light.
Goku was just *there*. No burst of speed, no tell-tale rush of wind. One instant he floated within his aura; the next, his fist was buried deep in Black's gut. The impact didn't sound like flesh striking flesh. It sounded like a mountain range collapsing. Black's eyes bulged impossibly wide, a choked, wet gasp escaping him as every atom of air was violently expelled from his lungs. Ribs shattered like brittle glass. He didn't fly back; he folded *around* Goku's fist, suspended by pure kinetic force for a horrifying heartbeat before crashing down, skidding across the shattered earth in a plume of dust and sparks, his own aura flickering erratically like a dying bulb.
Zamasu barely had time to register the blur. Pure instinct, honed by divinity, made him throw up a shimmering barrier of purple Hakai energy. Goku's hand, crackling with that monstrous blue light, didn't strike it. It *plunged* through. The barrier didn't crack or shatter; it dissolved instantly where his fingers touched, eaten away by the sheer, annihilating pressure. Goku's palm slammed flat against Zamasu's chest. Not a punch. A press. The god's eyes snapped wide, genuine shock replacing any hint of mockery. His perfect robes disintegrated where Goku touched him. Skin charred instantly, blackening like paper held to a blowtorch. A strangled cry, thin and alien, ripped from Zamasu's throat as the immense, crushing force drove him backwards, his heels digging deep furrows into the trembling earth. He stumbled, arms flailing wildly for balance that wouldn't come, the smell of ozone now mingling sickeningly with the sharp, acrid tang of burning flesh.