Consciousness did not return. It was forged.
There was no "I." There was only the Rage, the Heat, and the Hunger. The entity that had been Albert was a distant, screaming ember buried under a mountain of bestial wrath. The Kurama berserk state was not a passenger. It was the sole, terrible pilot of a body now warping into its image.
TWO TAILS of chakra, colossal and whip-like, lashed in the non-space of the void. The form within the crimson inferno was elongating, shoulders hunching, jaws extending into a fanged maw. A raw, wordless roar of challenge shredded the silent fabric between realities.
The fall through the void wasn't passive. The Berserker's rage tore at it. It clawed forward, seeking substance, something to break and burn. Its chakra, supercharged by the backwash of anti-matter annihilation from Earth-77, acted as a corrosive beacon, a screaming target in the cosmic blind.
It found a seam. A thin, vibrating membrane between the nothingness and a somewhere.
With a mindless, battering-ram force, it crashed through.
---
World Beta-12 (Replica Designation: "Dragon Ball Z – Frieza Saga, Post-Namek")
The sky was a bruised purple over a landscape of glassy craters and alien rock. In a shallow valley, three figures—warriors with wild, spiked hair and remnants of torn orange uniforms—stood back-to-back, energy flickering around them. They were exhausted, bloodied, but resolute, facing down a hovering, laughing foe in a crystalline hover-chair.
The air above them ripped open.
A meteor of pure, malevolent red chakra slammed into the ground between the two parties. The impact wasn't physical; it was a wave of hate. The very ground blackened and cracked in a spider-web pattern for miles. The three warriors were thrown back like leaves. The foe in the hover-chair blinked, his arrogant smile faltering.
From the crater, the Berserker rose.
It stood on two digitigrade legs, a skeleton of red energy over a core of screaming flesh. Two tails of concentrated annihilation swirled behind it. Its head was a skull of chakra, with hollow, burning eyes. It threw back its head and screeched, a sound that physically shattered the nearby rock spires.
The warrior in the hover-chair, Frieza, scowled. "What is this insignificant—"
The Berserker moved. It didn't teleport. It violated the intervening space. One moment it was in the crater. The next, its clawed, chakra-formed hand was wrapped around Frieza's hover-chair. The crystalline technology imploded.
Frieza, shocked, shot into the air. "You dare! DIE!" He leveled a finger, and a beam of planet-busting Death Beam lanced out.
The Berserker didn't dodge. It opened its maw and ate the beam. The crimson chakra flared brighter, hotter. THREE TAILS. A third tail of power erupted from its base, larger and more savage. The backlash of energy from absorbing the attack blew Frieza back through a mountain range.
The Berserker turned its hollow gaze on the three Namekian warriors. They represented energy. Life. Fuel.
It pounced.
The battle—a massacre—lasted seventeen seconds. The warriors, heroes in their own story, fought with desperate, universe-shaking power. Their energy blasts, capable of scarring planets, washed over the Berserker and were absorbed, making its chakra burn hotter. Its claws, moving with hateful speed, tore through their defenses. It did not kill to claim shadows. It killed to destroy.
When it was done, it stood atop their broken forms, the valley now a lake of molten glass, howling its victory to the purple sun. Then, sensing a greater concentration of life-energy (the distant, terrified Namekian village), it bounded away, a comet of red doom leaving a scar of fire across the planet.
It spent six hours on Namek. It reduced continents to ash. It chased and consumed a fleeing Frieza, adding the tyrant's immense energy to its own in a cataclysmic explosion that boiled an ocean. The planet was a dead, burning cinder when the Berserker's hunger turned back to the sky. It clawed at the very air until reality tore again, and it flung itself back into the void, searching for the next thing to break.
---
In the Monitor's Citadel
The white room was silent. The Monitor stood before a central plinth, upon which a three-dimensional hologram played. It showed the red scar of the Berserker's path through the void, its violent entry into World Beta-12, and the subsequent, rapid annihilation of the replica planet.
Floating beside him, encased in a stasis field of white light, was Homelander. His costume was torn, one eye swollen shut. He was conscious, trembling not with arrogance but with a raw, animal terror as he watched the hologram replay the Berserker's rampage.
"You see," the Monitor said, his voice calm, analytical. "You believed yourself a god. You were a spoiled child with a sparkler. That…" he pointed to the hologram of the three-tailed beast vaporizing a mountain, "…is a natural disaster given will. It is what your species might have become, had it evolved without conscience."
Homelander could only stare, mute.
"The asset performed its primary function," the Monitor said, more to himself. "Target acquired. World scoured of usable resistance. The energy signature of the 'Compound V' has been added to my catalogs. The collateral damage…" He watched the Berserker obliterate the Namekian village. "...is within acceptable parameters. The berserk state increases destructive yield by approximately 1200%, though it renders targeted shadow acquisition impossible. A useful, if blunt, instrument."
A soft chime sounded. The hologram shifted. It showed the Berserker, pulsing with unstable power, tearing a new hole in reality. Its trajectory, mapped against the tapestry of dying threads, was clear. It was heading, drawn by the dense concentration of chaotic life-force, toward another fraying world-line. A world designated Earth-95 (Replica Designation: "Hellboy – Apocalyptic Ragnarok").
"The instrument is overheating," the Monitor murmured. "It will shatter if left unchecked. And its unique compositional energy is too valuable to lose."
He turned from the plinth and faced Homelander. "You wished for purpose. You have it. You will be the containment vessel."
Homelander finally found his voice, a cracked whisper. "What?"
"The beast is drawn to power, to fear, to strong life-signs. You will be the bait. You will draw its attention in a controlled environment. My systems will then attempt a forced reversion." The Monitor's eyes were pitiless. "You will do this, or I will return you to the void where I found you, and let the nothingness finish what the beast began."
---
World Earth-95
A eternal, torrential rain fell over a shattered London. Ogdru Jahad, the dragon of the apocalypse, had risen. Its massive, chaotic form of eyes, tentacles, and raw chaos filled the sky, reality itself crumbling around it. On a broken cathedral spire, a large, red demon with a stone fist and a weary sigh prepared for a final, hopeless stand.
The sky didn't just crack. It hemorrhaged.
The Berserker, now radiating the unstable energy of two annihilated worlds, fell like a red star. It was larger. Its three tails were thicker, its form more distinctly vulpine. It hit the ground not with an impact, but with a silent pulse of negation. A half-mile circle of London, rain, demons, and rubble simply ceased to be, replaced by smooth, glowing obsidian.
It looked up at the Ogdru Jahad. The cosmic dragon, a being of chaos, sensed a being of pure, directed destruction. It roared, a sound that broke time.
The Berserker answered with a screech that broke sanity.
It launched itself at the dragon. This was not a fight for a world. It was two forces of nature colliding. The Berserker's claws, sheathed in chakra that ate reality, tore at the dragon's semi-corporeal form. The dragon's tentacles, which could crush dimensions, wrapped around the Berserker, trying to absorb it into the chaos.
The Berserker bit. It tore a chunk of raw, screaming protomatter from the dragon and consumed it. Its chakra flared a violent, psychedelic purple. FOUR TAILS.
The transformation was accelerating. A bony, chakra-formed skull mask solidified over its face. Its power was spiraling out of control, fed by the essence of a cosmic horror.
Amidst this cataclysm, a pinpoint of white light appeared in the maelstrom. A platform solidified. And on it, dumped unceremoniously, was Homelander.
He stood, shaking, in the apocalyptic rain. Before him were two things: the gargantuan, world-ending dragon, and the four-tailed demon fox of rage currently eating it.
The Monitor's voice echoed in his skull. "Call to it. Hold its attention for five seconds."
Homelander, the man who had craved worship and inspired terror, now knew true, cosmic dread. He wet his lips, his voice a pathetic croak lost in the din.
"H-here! Look at me!"
Nothing. The Berserker had an entire dragon to kill.
Desperate, acting on the only instinct he had left, Homelander gathered the last dregs of his Compound V power and fired his heat vision at the Berserker's back.
The thin, red beams pinged harmlessly off the dense chakra. But it was an insult. A challenge from a gnat.
The Berserker's head, currently buried in the Ogdru Jahad's side, snapped around. Those hollow, burning eyes fixed on Homelander. It forgot the dragon.
With a world-shaking roar, it abandoned its prey and moved.
Homelander had time to see death coming. Then, a cage of pure white light descended from the torn sky. Not on the Berserker. On him. A hexagonal prison of Monitor energy, just as the Berserker reached him.
The beast's claws, capable of shredding cosmic dragons, scraped against the light, howling in frustration. It was trapped, not by bars, but by its own target being just out of reach inside an indestructible shell. It beat against the light, its rage reaching a fever pitch.
FIVE TAILS—
The transformation strained, the chakra boiling violently.
NOW.
From the heart of the white prison, a different frequency of energy pulsed. Not restraining. Reverting. It was a wave of absolute null, a sonic boom of silent sound tailored to the unique vibrational signature of the being once known as Albert. It was the sound of the sealing fan falling. The sound of a heart stopping. The sound of a wish being granted.
The raging chakra stuttered.
The beast faltered. The hollow eyes flickered. Deep within, the screaming ember of Albert's consciousness, nearly extinguished, felt a violent, sucking pull.
The red chakra imploded.
It was not gentle. It was a collapse of a star. The energy recoiled into the center with a thunderclap that leveled what was left of the cathedral. When the dust cleared, the five-tailed demon fox was gone.
In its place, crumpled on the obsidian ground in the rain, was a man.
Albert.
He was naked, his skin covered in horrific, smoldering third-degree burns. His hair was streaked with stark white. He trembled violently, every nerve ending screaming in agony far beyond the Velocity-9 toxin. He retched, but nothing came up. The memories—of consuming a Death Beam, of tearing apart Saiyan warriors, of biting into the flesh of an Ogdru Jahad—flooded his mind, not as dreams, but as first-person experiences. The taste of cosmic blood was still in his mouth.
Above, the wounded Ogdru Jahad, seeing its enemy gone, began to re-form, its attention turning to this new, feeble spark of life.
The white platform reappeared beside Albert. The Monitor stood there, looking down at him, then at the approaching dragon. Homelander was gone, presumably retrieved.
"Mission parameters achieved," the Monitor stated. "Your effectiveness as a area-denial weapon is confirmed. Your control remains… sub-optimal."
He extended a hand. A small, white injector gleamed in it. "A concentrated analgesic and cellular regenerator. It will mitigate the burns and stabilize your nervous system for seventy-two hours. It will not cure the serum's toxicity, nor will it cure the beast. It is a patch."
Albert looked at the injector, then at the looming dragon of the apocalypse. His body was a map of agony. His soul felt stained. He had no strength left for defiance, for calculation. He was just a burned, broken thing.
With a hand that shook like a leaf in a storm, he took the injector and jammed it into his own thigh.
Cool relief flooded his system, damping the inferno of pain to a manageable roar. The burns on his skin visibly receded from angry red to a shiny, tender pink.
He looked up at the Monitor, his eyes holding a new, haunted knowledge. He had seen the abyss within himself. And it had seen him.
"Come," the Monitor said. "The next battlefield awaits. A universe of screaming insects requires culling. You will find it… familiar."
He helped Albert to his feet. As the white light took them, Albert cast one last look at the crumbling, demon-infested world. He had not raised a single shadow here. He had only left scars.
He was no longer just a king of the dead.
He was a weapon that remembered being a man.
And the memory was the most painful burn of all.