DC: One for All Chapter 4 — I AM HERE!!! (Patreon)

When their fists connected the air itself seemed to break.

The shockwave blew outward from the point of contact in a visible ring of compressed atmosphere that hit every storefront within a hundred feet and ripped the fronts clean off. The parademons that had been circling overhead were thrown outward like leaves in a hurricane, their wings useless against the pressure wave.

David pushed against Darkseid's fist and felt the resistance, felt the impossible immovable weight like trying to move a mountain. Darkseid pushed back with an equal and opposite force that made the ground beneath them buckle and split. 

They drew back at the same time and then both of them swung again.

BOOM

The second clash was harder than the first, the shockwave much more powerful, flattening a row of parked cars like tin cans and stripping the paint off a building thirty yards away. David felt the impact travel up his arm and through his shoulder and into his spine but he ignored it and pushed even harder than before

They separated again and swung.

BOOM

Again.

BOOM

The fourth clash sent a pillar of displaced air straight up that scattered the cloud cover above the city. David caught a glimpse of the destruction around them in the aftermath, the flattened storefronts, the demolished vehicles, the crumbling building fronts, the civilians who were running and screaming in every direction, and made a decision.

"How about we fight on your home turf, big guy!" David roared as he drew his fist back. 

Darkseid's next punch came extremely fast, a straight right aimed at David's center mass but David slipped it. He dropped his shoulder and let the enormous grey fist pass over him close enough that the displaced air pulled at his hair, and then he was underneath Darkseid's guard, his feet planted, his legs coiled, and he drove his fist upward in an uppercut that started at his hip and ended at the bottom of Darkseid's jaw.

The impact lifted Darkseid off the ground and he rocketed upward through the night sky, rising higher and higher as the force of the blow carried him away from the street.

Darkseid growled he arrested his ascent with nothing more than will, his body rotating in the air until he was facing downward his one good eye blazing red as the Omega Beam energy gathered behind it.

[New Hampshire Smash]

David punched the air behind him and the shockwave from his fist became propulsion, launching him backward off the ground at a speed that compressed the air around his body into a visible cone, he rocketed upward like a missile closing the distance between himself and Darkseid in less than a heartbeat. 

He hit Darkseid shoulder-first, the full weight of his Prime form behind the impact, and the collision sent both of them tumbling through the air, spinning end over end, their bodies locked together as they climbed higher and higher above the Metropolis skyline.

Darkseid got his hands on David's chest and shoved, breaking the grapple, and then backhanded him across the face with enough force to send him spinning away through the air.

"Insect," Darkseid said, and the word carried genuine irritation for the first time. "Darkseid is not so easy to be rid of."

[Black Whip]

Dark tendrils erupted from David's palm and crossed the gap between them and wrapped around Darkseid's torso, around his arms, around his neck, coiling around him as David pulled with all his strength yanking Darkseid with him.

They tore across the Metropolis skyline together and David used the connection to whip himself around Darkseid like a pendulum, swinging wide before pulling himself in and driving both feet into Darkseid's chest in a dropkick that sent them both careening sideways through the air. Darkseid ripped one arm free of the tendrils and caught David's ankle before he could pull away and swung him downward, hurling him toward the roof of a skyscraper.

David twisted mid-fall, punched the air beneath him with a New Hampshire Smash to kill his downward momentum, and launched himself back up just as Darkseid descended on him from above. They met in the space between two buildings, fists colliding, and the shockwave blew out every window in both towers simultaneously, glass raining down on the streets hundreds of feet below in a glittering waterfall.

David threw a combination, left hook to the body, right cross to the head, and both shots landed on Darkseid's body and jaw. The body shot didn't even make Darkseid blink and the cross turned his head maybe an inch and David could feel the feedback in his knuckles, like punching a cliff face.

Gold lightning flared brighter as he channeled more power into the follow-up, a straight right that he drove into Darkseid's sternum with everything he had.

Darkseid slid back a foot through the air.

'What the hell is this guy made of,' David thought as he ducked under Darkseid's counterswing, the massive fist passing over his head and clipping the corner of a building behind him, the entire corner shearing off. 

'I'm hitting him with everything I've got and I'm barely scratching him.'

He launched a Black Whip tendril at a building across the street, used it to slingshot himself around and behind Darkseid, and came in from the blind side with a spinning heel kick that connected with the base of Darkseid's skull. The impact created a shockwave that rippled outward in a sphere, the pressure wave rocking both buildings flanking them, and Darkseid's head dipped forward from the force of it.

Then he turned around, slowly, and looked at David with his one functioning eye.

David threw himself backward as Darkseid lunged, the grey fist passing through the space he'd been occupying and continuing into the side of a building, the entire floor collapsing inward from the impact. David kicked the air to change direction mid-air, launching himself upward and coming down on Darkseid from above with a double axe-handle that he slammed into Darkseid's shoulder. 

The blow drove Darkseid down, his body crashing through a rooftop water tower that exploded around them in a burst of water, and David pressed the advantage with a rapid series of strikes, left right left right, each one throwing off sparks of gold lightning where his fists met Darkseid's armour, each one landing and each one doing absolutely nothing.

Darkseid caught his seventh punch.

Their eyes met. 

David's blazing blue.

Darkseid's burning red. 

And in the fractional second before Darkseid moved David saw something in his face that chilled him more than anything else had.

Patience. 

Darkseid was being patient with him, the way a parent was patient with a child who was throwing a tantrum.

'What a bastard...' David narrowed his eyes before he tried to pull his fist free but Darkseid's grip was absolute, then Darkseid's other hand came around and caught David by the throat and he swung him like a bat, his body horizontal, and released him directly into the face of a skyscraper.

David went through the glass exterior, through an office floor, through the interior wall, through the next office floor, through that wall too, carving a path of destruction through the building horizontally, desks and cubicles and filing cabinets exploding around him. He punched through the far side of the building and into open air and immediately Black Whipped a passing parademon, using it as an anchor to redirect his trajectory upward. He released the stunned creature and came back at Darkseid who was floating where David had left him.

They clashed again above the rooftops, trading blows that sent shockwaves rippling across the skyline, each impact visible from the ground as flashes of gold and bursts of compressed air. 

David was moving with a speed and mobility that let him land three or four strikes for every one of Darkseid's, weaving between the god's heavy swings, ducking and slipping and countering with combinations that would have demolished any other opponent he'd ever faced. But Darkseid absorbed them all. Every hook, every uppercut, every knee, every elbow, every ounce of force that David put behind every strike was swallowed by that grey stone-like body and returned to nothing.

David threw a haymaker that snapped Darkseid's head to the side and immediately followed it with a spinning back fist that connected with his temple. He dropped and kicked at Darkseid's waist with a kick that would have felled a building, and Darkseid didn't move. David came back up with an uppercut and Darkseid caught it, caught it the same way he'd caught it before, and headbutted David in the face.

Stars burst behind David's eyes and he reeled backward, his nose broken, blood spraying from his nostrils and floating in the wind around them, and before he could recover Darkseid was on him, moving with a speed that shouldn't have been possible for something that large. 

A straight right connected with David's guard and blew through it, the force bending his arms backward and the fist continuing into his chest. A left hook followed that caught him on the side of the head and sent the world spinning. A knee came up into his midsection and he felt something give in his already damaged ribs, a new break on top of the old ones.

'Gearshift,' David thought desperately. 'I need more, I need—'

"I would not recommend it, you are already pushing the limits of what your body can sustain in this form. You haven't used Prime in three years. Your muscles, your bones, your connective tissue, none of it has been maintained for this level of output. Gearshift on top of what you're already channeling could tear you apart from the inside out." Second spoke. 

"Damn," David said out loud, blood spraying from his lips.

Darkseid's fist filled his entire field of vision.

The punch connected with the center of David's chest and he rocketed backward, his body tearing through the air fast enough to leave a trail of fire, and he hit the first building at an angle that took him through three floors before his trajectory angled downward. He burst out the far side and hit the next building lower, crashing through the lobby, through the support pillars, through the back wall and into the building behind it. 

Each impact slowed him slightly but not enough, and he continued through building after building, the structural supports exploding around him, floors collapsing in his wake, until the sixth building finally absorbed enough of his momentum that he came to a stop embedded in a concrete wall on the fourth floor, his body hanging half in and half out of the impact crater.

He coughed and blood hit the broken floor in front of him.

Darkseid descended toward the building his one good eye locked on the hole David had made in the fourth floor wall.

David ripped himself free of the concrete, gold lightning surging back across his body as he planted both feet on the crumbling floor and launched himself out of the building headfirst, straight at the god coming down to finish him. The wind tore at his face and the blood from his broken nose streaked backward across his cheeks and he drew his right fist back behind his ear and channeled everything he had into it, every ounce of One for All Prime screaming through his arm and into his knuckles.

[Texas Smash]

His fist connected with the center of Darkseid's chest plate and the impact was a thunderclap that echoed across the entire city, a single massive detonation of force that stopped Darkseid's descent dead and reversed it. The god of Apokolips went backward through the air and he careened away from the building in a tumbling arc that carried him over three city blocks before he managed to arrest his momentum and right himself.

David hung in the air for a fraction of a second watching Darkseid stabilize in the distance.

'I need to get him through the portal,' he thought as he kicked the air behind him with a burst of force that launched him forward in pursuit. 'Knowing Bruce he already has a plan for shutting this whole thing down, then I need to be ready when it happens. Get Darkseid close enough to that portal that when it closes he goes with it.'

'Which means I need to move him about two miles east.'

'While he's trying to kill me.'

'Simple.'

He caught up to Darkseid over the commercial district, Black Whip erupting from both hands and wrapping around Darkseid's arms and torso before the god could fully recover from the Texas Smash. David pulled hard, swinging Darkseid sideways like a wrecking ball, and released him toward the east, toward the harbour, before closing the distance again and hitting him with a straight right that kept him moving in the same direction. 

Darkseid swiped at the Black Whip tendrils and tore through three of them but David was already regenerating more, sending fresh coils around his entire body and keeping him on course. 

Darkseid swung and David ducked under it and hit him in the ribs and danced away before the counter could land. Darkseid shot an Omega Beam and David used Black Whip to slingshot himself around it, it followed him, but David swung himself through a cluster of Parademons letting them take the hit for him. He then came back in from above with a hammer fist that slammed into Darkseid's chest. 

David wrapped Black Whip around Darkseid's forearm and pulled himself in close, driving a knee into Darkseid's chin that snapped his head up, then immediately releasing and kicking off his chest to create distance before the retaliatory swing could connect. He circled behind him and hit him in the kidney and dodged left and hit him in the other kidney and dodged right and Black Whipped his ankle and yanked him upside down for just long enough to land a knee to the side of his head.

It was like fighting a mountain. 

A mountain that was getting angrier with every passing second.

"You are becoming a nuisance..." Then Darkseid hit him. The first punch caught David in the mouth and he felt teeth crack. The second landed on his cheekbone and he heard the bone fracture. The third went to his body, his already broken ribs, and the pain was so bad  that his vision whited out and he couldn't breathe, couldn't think, could only feel the impacts landing one after another as Darkseid used him as a punching bag.

Four. Five. Six.

Darkseid then grabbed and threw him straight down.

David hit the street like a meteor creating a massive crater that send dust and concrete flying up into the air. Darkseid flew over his body where his eye began to glow... and a moment later the Omega Beam lanced downward.

David saw them coming yet he knew he couldn't dodge, not from here, not buried in the ground with half his ribs broken and his body screaming at him. He crossed his arms tighter and braced for what was going to be very, very bad.

A blur of red and blue dropped between him and the beams.

Diana landed in the crater in front of him, her feet planted wide, both arms raised in front of her face with her bracers crossed. The Omega Beam hit the bracers dead center and the impact drove her down to her knees. The beams were incredibly powerful and Diana struggled to hold against them. Her arms shook and her teeth were clenched and the muscles in her forearms stood out like cables but she held, the Omega Beams pouring their energy into her bracers and being deflected, scattered, neutralized, until finally the beams flickered and died.

Diana lowered her arms slowly, breathing hard, and turned to look at David over her shoulder.

David pulled himself out of the rubble and stood up, his body protesting every movement. "Thank you," he said, wiping blood from his mouth.

She smiled widely at him a warrior's smile. "Thank me? I am merely returning the favour." She looked him up and down and her smile widened further. "Though I will say, I truly did not expect you to be such a mighty warrior. When I first saw you, I thought you were merely... an observer."

"I get that a lot," David said.

Green light descended into the crater beside them as Green Lantern floated down. A second later Flash skidded to a stop at the edge of the crater. "Okay, hold on, timeout," Flash said, his head whipping between David's Prime form and the street-level destruction. "Are you PARAGON? Like, Paragon Paragon? The guy who disappeared three years ago? The guy they made a documentary about? Because you look like Paragon but Paragon was like, eight feet tall and you were, no offense, pretty regular-sized earlier—"

"I had the same question," Green Lantern said, floating closer. "Because about two hours ago you were complaining about the price of whiskey and now you look like you could bench press a cruise ship. Some explanation would be appreciated."

"Later," David said, his eyes already tracking Darkseid who was floating above the Crater. "Right now we need to focus on one thing, getting him through that portal."

They all looked at Darkseid.

"We'll follow your lead," Diana said, gripping her sword.

"Whatever you say, big guy," Flash added.

Green Lantern cracked his neck. "Just point me where you need me."

David nodded.

"Let's move."

They exploded out of the crater in four different directions.

Flash went first, circling wide wrapping around Darkseid in a spiral of lightning, his fists connecting with the god's face and body at hundreds of impacts per second, each one individually negligible but the cumulative effect enough to keep Darkseid's head turning, keep his attention fractured, but more importantly keeping him from focusing on any single target. 

Darkseid swung at the blur and missed, swung again and missed, his massive fists cutting through empty air as Flash danced around them.

Green Lantern opened up from two hundred yards out, his ring projecting a rapid-fire barrage of green energy bolts that hammered into Darkseid from the side, each one detonating on impact in a flash of emerald light. He followed the barrage with a massive battering ram that he drove into Darkseid's back, pushing him forward, toward the harbour, and then switched to a chain of linked shields that he used to deflect the backhanded swipe Darkseid threw at Flash, the construct shattering but buying the speedster the half-second he needed to clear the hit.

David and Diana came in together.

David launched Black Whip from his left hand, the dark tendril wrapping around Diana's waist, and slingshotting her toward Darkseid. She hit Darkseid sword-first, the blade driving into the gap between his shoulder and his chest, dark fluid spraying out, she then twisted and pulled the blade free before he could grab her. 

David was right behind her, coming in while Darkseid's attention was on Diana, and he drove an uppercut into Darkseid's midsection that bent the god forward just enough for Diana to catch him across the head with her lasso, the golden rope wrapping around his neck and yanking his head sideways. David then spun and delivered a chop to his neck which made dark fluid spit out his mouth. 

Diana then pressed forward with a slash aimed at Darkseid's uninjured eye and when Darkseid raised his arm to block David Black Whipped her behind him and she cut across the back of his knee, drawing dark blood. Flash wove between them at intervals, striking at whatever opening appeared and vanishing before Darkseid could respond, while Green Lantern maintained sustained pressure from range, a continuous stream of fire from a artillery truck he had created.

Block by block they moved him. It was brutal, grinding, exhausting work, each yard paid for with punishing injuries, but they were doing it. The harbour was getting closer, the massive alien structure visible over the rooftops.

At a certain point Darkseid started to glow red. It started at his eyes and then it spread, flowing outward across his skin, across his armour. The glow intensified, brighter, brighter, until Darkseid's body was a silhouette inside a shell of crimson energy.

"MOVE!" David shouted, but it was too late.

"Collapse..." The Omega Shockwave erupted outward from Darkseid's body in a sphere.

It hit all four of them simultaneously. It hit the buildings around them, the street beneath them. It wasn't kinetic force, not exactly, it was something else, something that bypassed David's guard and went straight into his nervous system like a hot wire into his brain. Every nerve in his body fired at once, every pain receptor activated simultaneously. His muscles seized and he fell, his body hitting the ground and convuksing. 

Diana hit the ground beside him, her sword clattering from her grip, her body curled around itself. 

Green Lantern's constructs evaporated and he dropped out of the air like a stone, his shield flickering off as he slammed into the pavement. 

Flash, who had been mid-sprint, was thrown sideways into a building and went through two walls before coming to a stop in a heap.

Darkseid stood in the center of the devastation, the red glow fading from his body, and looked down at them.

"I am a god..." he said in a deep voice, "I cannot be hurt by insignificant lifeforms." He raised both fists above his head, the muscles in his arms and shoulders bunching, and brought them down.

The impact wasn't so much a punch rather than a meteorite strike compressed into a single point. His fists hit the ground and the shockwave that blew outward levelled everything. Five city blocks in every direction simply ceased to exist as vertical structures, the buildings collapsing, the street disintegrating, the infrastructure underneath giving way, everything within the blast radius going flat in a cascading wave of destruction that rolled outward like a stone dropped into still water.

"FLASH!" David screamed as the buildings began to fall.

They both moved at the same instant.

David kicked off the crumbling ground and the gold lightning surged back to life across his body as he launched himself toward the nearest falling building where he could see people through the shattered windows, civilians who had been sheltering on upper floors, their mouths open in screams he couldn't hear over the roar of collapsing concrete. Flash was already a red streak beside him, they split apart, Flash going left and David going right.

Flash hit the first building at ground level and ran straight up the face of it, his feet finding purchase on the crumbling surface for the fraction of a second he needed before moving to the next foothold, he was grabbing people as he went, one under each arm, running them down to street level and going back for more before they'd even registered they'd been moved. 

Two trips. 

Four trips. 

Eight trips. 

Civilians appearing on safe ground in clusters of two and three, feeling a little disoriented but glad they were no longer about to die. 

David hit the east side where a residential tower was coming apart at the seams, the support structure failing floor by floor from the bottom up. He could see a family on the sixth floor, a man holding two children, and below them the fourth floor had already pancaked onto the third. He launched himself through a window and grabbed all three of them, the father's arms tightening around the children as David pulled them against his chest with one arm and blew out the opposite wall with a punch, jumping clear of the building just as the sixth floor collapsed into the space they'd been standing in. 

When he set them sound safely he shot forward with a sonic boom saving as many people as he could, barreling through any cocnreate walls and using Blsck whip to a level he hadn't in users to carry dozens of people. 

A parking structure on the corner was tilting, the lower levels crushed by the shockwave, the upper levels starting to slide. Through the shattered concrete David could see cars beginning to roll, and underneath the lowest level, in the pedestrian walkway, a group of people were trapped, the ceiling buckling down toward them. David was there with them instantly moving so fast the air threw them all to the ground. 

[Detroit Smash]

David planted his feet in the street, drew his right fist back, and punched straight up into the base of the collapsing structure. The force of the blow blasted upward through the building in a column, the compressed air shockwave destroying the garage and turning the concrete into rubble and dust. David dropped his arm and took a breath. The civilians were safe, or at least the ones they'd been able to reach.  

Flash appeared beside him "That's everyone in the immediate radius," Flash said, breathing hard for the first time since David had met him. "At least everyone I could find."

David nodded. "Good... we should do a once over just in case there are—"

Danger

His head snapped up.

Green Lantern came through a building to their right, his body limp as it flew across the sky, and behind him Diana looking just as injured both of them thrown like ragdolls. David jumped and caught them both, one under each arm. 

Danger

He set them down and looked up.

Darkseid was there.

He'd been right behind them, using Diana and Green Lantern as a lure, and he was already mid-swing when David registered his presence. The fist came down on David like a falling building, catching him across the side of the head, and the shockwave from the impact blew outward in a cone that stripped the asphalt off the street behind him. David's feet left the ground and he went backward, dropping Diana and Green Lantern as the force ripped them from his grip, and then Darkseid was on him.

They were both in the air now, Darkseid pursuing, and David tumbling backward, and the second punch caught him in the chest before he could guard. The third hit his shoulder and he felt the joint dislocate. The fourth was an overhand right that drove him downward and he hit a rooftop and bounced and went through a water tower and out the other side. 

"You could have been a god on this world," Darkseid said as another punch connected with David's guard and blew through it, driving into his ribs. "You have power that these insects will never comprehend, power that could have made you a ruler, a king, and instead you chose to be their servant."

David spat blood, tumbling through the air, the city spinning around him.

"You chose to bleed for creatures that will forget your name," Darkseid continued, another punch landing on David's jaw, snapping his head sideways. "You chose to be small when you could have been everything."

David's eyes focused.

"You don't get it," he said, and the gold lightning flared back. 

Darkseid's fists came at him, both of them, a double hammer blow meant to drive him into the ground and end this, and David reached up and caught them. Both of them. His hands closing around Darkseid's fists, his arms shaking. They hung there in the air, locked together, Darkseid's red eyes boring into David's blue ones, two immovable forces pressed against each other.

"Being a hero is not about being loved, or feared, or rich or powerful," David said through gritted teeth, blood running from the corner of his mouth. "It's about spending everyday with the sole goal of making the world a better place for everyone, it's about smiling and letting everyone know that it's okay. It's about letting people know I AM HERE!!!."

He headbutted Darkseid.

The impact cracked something, David's forehead or Darkseid's orbital ridge or both, and Darkseid's head snapped back and his grip loosened just enough. David released his fists, planted both feet on Darkseid's chest, and kicked with everything he had. The force sent Darkseid rocketing upward, his body corkscrewing through the air, up and up toward the portal that burned red above the harbour.

David fell slammed his fists beside him and flew towards Darkseid. 

[Black Whip]

Dark tendrils shot from both hands, wrapping around two buildings on either side of him, the tendrils stretching and tightening like the arms of a slingshot. David pulled himself backward, the Black Whip straining, the buildings groaning under the tension then he released.

The slingshot launched him upward faster than anything he'd done tonight, a golden streak tearing through the sky toward the tumbling figure of Darkseid. He drew his right fist back and put everything into it, every remaining ounce of power flowing through his arm and into his fist.

When he hit Darkseid the punch landed on the center of Darkseid's chest and the shockwave blew outward in a sphere that cracked the cloud cover above Metropolis and sent ripples across the harbour water below. Darkseid went backward, toward the portal, his body accelerating and the massive alien structure was getting closer.

Darkseid roared.

He twisted in the air trying to slow himself, his hands raking through the wind, his feet finding no purchase. The portal was a hundred yards behind him now

Seventy. 

Fifty.

"TO ME!" Darkseid bellowed.

Every parademon in Metropolis turned toward the sound, every single one, and they dove. They came from every direction, hundreds of them converging on the space between Darkseid and the portal, throwing their bodies into his path. 

Darkseid hit the first rank and crushed through them, his body destroying a dozen on impact, the second rank slowed him. The third slowed him more. The fourth, the fifth, the sixth, each wave of parademons slamming themselves into their master's trajectory, sacrificing themselves to bleed his momentum, their bodies disintegrating against him like moths against a windshield but each one absorbing a fraction of his speed.

By the tenth wave Darkseid had stopped.

He floated in a cloud of parademon remains, fifty feet from the portal, covered in dark fluid, his armour cracked, his eye still bleeding from Diana's cut, he looked down at David with an expression that had evolved from patience to something that almost resembled respect.

Almost.

Darkseid looked down at the wreckage of Metropolis from his position near the portal, at the broken streets and the burning buildings and the scattered bodies of his own soldiers, and something shifted in his face. "I came to this world intending to add it to my collection," Darkseid said. "To reshape your species into my soldiers, to give your meaningless existence purpose through service to Apokolips. But you have shown me something I did not expect." He paused, his burning red eye sweeping across the battlefield below. "Resistance... and I find it... displeasing."

He descended slowly, the parademon swarms parting before him like water around a stone. "I have decided that you will not be converted," Darkseid continued. "You will be killed. And your bodies will be displayed on the walls of my throne room as a reminder to every world that follows  of what defiance costs."

His eye settled on Diana, who was standing below him with her sword recovered, blood running from a gash on her forehead, her armour cracked across the chest.

"Starting with you," Darkseid said.

"Not if I have anything to say about it!" David launched himself upward, his fist drawn back. He crossed the distance between the ground and Darkseid in a fraction of a second, his fist aimed at the centre of Darkseid's face, and he threw it with everything he had left.

Darkseid didn't moved instead his eyes flared red and the Omega Beam erupted point-blank into David's chest.

The pain was beyond anything David had a framework for. It wasn't heat and it wasn't blunt force and it wasn't electrical, it was something that went deeper than all of those things, something that reached into the molecular structure of his body and pulled at it, unravelled it, set every cell on fire from the inside out. 

His mouth opened in a scream that produced no sound because his lungs had seized and his diaphragm had locked and every muscle in his body was contracting simultaneously. The gold lightning across his skin flickered and died and then reignited and then died again as One for All fought against the energy that was trying to tear him apart.

Darkseid's hand closed around his throat.

He held David up in front of him like a trophy, the red energy still crackling across David's chest that left burn marks wherever they touched, and David hung there in his grip with his hands wrapped around Darkseid's wrist, trying to pry the fingers open and failing.

Diana was already in the air, her sword raised, a war cry building in her throat as she closed the distance. She brought the blade down in a diagonal slash aimed at the arm holding David and Darkseid caught her by the wrist with his free hand, stopping the sword mid-swing, and in one brutal motion he twisted her arm and slammed her into the ground below, the impact cratering the street, and before she could recover he forced her arm around, forced the sword in her grip around, and drove it forward.

Diana's own sword went through David's stomach.

David looked down at the blade protruding from his midsection and then looked at Diana whose eyes were wide with horror because she hadn't been able to stop it. 

"NO!" Flash screamed from the street below.

"NO!" Green Lantern screamed from the air beside them.

Flash became a blur, the fastest he'd moved all night, crossing the distance in a microsecond and hitting Darkseid with a running punch that connected with his jaw at a speed that should have knocked the head off anything with a physical body. 

Green Lantern followed it with everything his ring had left, a concentrated beam of green energy that he poured into Darkseid's face from point blank range. The combined assault forced Darkseid to release Diana, his grip on her wrist opening just enough for her to wrench free, but as he let go of her he tightened his grip on David and threw him.

David's body left Darkseid's hand at a speed that turned the air around him into superheated air. He went through the first building and didn't feel it. Through the second building and felt it a little. Through the third and fourth and his body was screaming and he was shrinking, the Prime form collapsing, his muscles deflating, his frame contracting, the massive body that had gone toe to toe with a god condensing back down into the lean battered frame of a twenty-year-old man..

He landed on a car, the roof caving in around him and the windows blowing out. He lay there in the wreckage of it, bleeding profusely from the hole in his stomach where Diana's sword had gone through, his shirt, what was left of it, soaked red.

"Motherfucker," he hissed through clenched teeth, pressing both hands against the wound. "Motherfucker that HURTS, that really, really, REALLY hurts—"

He lay there for a moment, just breathing, just trying to get the pain under control enough to think. The stab wound was bad. He could feel it every time he breathed. The Omega Beam burns covered his chest and shoulders in a pattern of dark black marks that throbbed with a heat that wouldn't dissipate. His ribs, the ones that had been broken before, were now beyond broken, they were fragments.

He pushed himself up off the car, his arms shaking violently, and slid off the crushed roof and onto his feet. He swayed, caught himself on the door frame, and stood there leaning against the wreck while the battle raged in the distance.

He had to help them. 

They were dying out there and he had to help.

He reached for Prime. 

He reached inside himself for the power for the familiar surge of strength and size that came with channelling One for All.

Nothing happened.

He reached again, harder, digging deeper, willing the power to come, willing his body to respond.

His muscles twitched and a single gold spark flickered across his knuckle and died.

His body was destroyed. 

"I'm so pathetic," David muttered, his forehead pressed against the car. "Letting myself get this sloppy. Three years of sitting on my ass and drinking and I can't even hold Prime for twenty minutes without falling apart."

He turned and looked toward the fight.

Flash was giving everything he had, moving so fast he'd become a continuous ring of red lightning around Darkseid, striking from every angle, never stopping, never slowing, his fists connecting thousands of times per second. Green Lantern was beside him, his ring projecting construct after construct, each one bigger and stronger than the last, hammering at Darkseid from range while Flash worked close rnage. 

Diana, without her sword which was still embedded in the crater where David had landed, fought with her fists and her lasso, the golden rope wrapped around Darkseid's arm as she pulled and strained and tried to unbalance him.

They were magnificent. All three of them, battered and bleeding and outclassed in every measurable way, and not one of them had stopped fighting.

Green Lantern formed a massive green fist and drove it into Darkseid's chest. Darkseid walked through it and grabbed Green Lantern by the throat and drew his fist back and was about to crush his skull when a blue and red blur hit Darkseid from the side hard enough to create a shockwave that blew Green Lantern free.

Superman.

He was back, his eyes blazing, his cape torn, and behind him Cyborg was landing on the ground with his arm cannons reconfigured and charging, and behind Cyborg, grappling down from a rooftop, was Batman.

Superman hit Darkseid again before the god could recover from the first impact, a straight right that connected with his jaw and actually drove him back three feet, and then Superman followed it with a left hook and a right uppercut and a flying knee that each landed with the force of an Earth quake. Darkseid swung back and Superman caught the punch on his forearm and redirected it and countered with a headbutt that cracked against Darkseid's face

They traded blows, Superman giving as good as he got, matching Darkseid's power with his own, each impact creating shockwaves that shattered windows blocks away. Superman was faster than before, angrier, fighting with a ferocity that David had never seen before. 

David sagged against the car in relief. "Thank God," he breathed.

"CYBORG, NOW!" Batman shouted.

Cyborg planted his feet and raised both arms and the technology in his body surged and the Mother Box. The air tore open and a new portal opened, this one blue instead of red, and through it David could see that dark red sky and the black cracked ground of Apokolips.

"The portal's open!" Cyborg shouted. "Get him through it!"

Everyone converged at once. 

Superman drove Darkseid backward with a combination that ended in a two-handed slam to the chest. Green Lantern formed a massive bulldozer construct and rammed it into Darkseid's back. Diana wrapped her lasso around his legs and pulled. Batman fired his grapple line into the back of Darkseid's armour and added his own weight to the equation.

For a moment, one beautiful impossible moment, Darkseid moved toward the portal and it looked to finally be over. 

ENOUGH!!!" Darkseid roared as his eyes blazed and the Omega Beams erupted outward in a sweeping arc and caught Superman full in the chest, the energy drilling into him, and Superman's assault faltered as his body locked up the same way David's had, every muscle seizing. Darkseid pressed the advantage, driving a knee into Superman's midsection that folded him in half, then grabbed his head with both hands and headbutted him so hard the shockwave knocked Flash off his feet forty yards away. Superman went down, his eyes rolling back, and Darkseid dropped his limp body to the ground.

Flash came back in, running at full speed, throwing punches, and Darkseid simply shot an omega beam at him that tracked his movements.  Flash tried to outrun it like he did last time but he had been running so long he got caught and yelled out on pain as he skipped across the ground and slammed into a wall. 

Cyborg fired both arm cannons at full power, the beams converging on Darkseid's back, Darkseid turned, walked through the beams like they were laser pointers and grabbed both his arms. He pulled them and wrenched them free of the torso with a shriek of tearing metal, and Cyborg screamed and fell backward, his armless torso hitting the ground.

Batman jumped onto Darkseids back from behind him placing charges on his back before jumping off and detonating them. Darkseid grunted but in the end he ripped a light pole out the ground and swung it at Batman like a bat sending him flying across the street and then under a truck that fell down n over him.  

From four blocks away, leaning against the wrecked car, David watched all of it.

Superman down. 

Flash down. 

Cyborg down. 

Batman down. 

Green Lantern barely standing. 

Diana fighting alone with her bare hands.

"Pathetic," David said to himself. "You're pathetic. They're out there giving everything and you're standing here feeling sorry for yourself. You've always been pathetic, haven't you? Too drunk, too scared, too weak, too—"

[One for All: PRIME]

"—Too pathetic to give your all just like they are!"

His body expanded, the muscles swelling, the frame growing, the stab wound in his stomach screaming in protest as the tissue around it stretched and hardened. It hurt, it hurt more than any transformation before but David pushed through the pain and kept pushing until the Prime form solidified around him and he was standing at full height again. 

The stab wound was still there and the Omega Beam burns still covered his chest and shoulders. Blood was running from his nose and his mouth and from cuts on his face that hadn't been there before.

But it didn't matter... 

He launched forward.

Green Lantern was on his knees, his ring almost spent, and Darkseid was reaching for him when a fist came from the side and caught Darkseid's face. David used the momentum to spin outward and then drive his knee into the god's ribs making him stagger. He then grabbed lantern and zoomed off putting him somewhere safe. 

Batman was pinned under a truck and David grabbed the truck with one hand and flipped it off him, the vehicle tumbling end over end through the air before crashing down fifty yards away. He reached down and pulled Batman to his feet in the same motion.

Diana's sword was still embedded in the ground where David had been stabbed. He saw it, changed direction, and kicked it. The blade spun upward, rotating end over end, catching the light, and David met it with a second kick that redirected its trajectory in a line straight at Darkseid. The sword flew like a javelin and hit Darkseid's right arm just above the elbow, the divine blade punching through the stone-grey flesh and out the other side. 

Darkseid roared and he ripped the sword from his arm and hurled it aside, dark blood spraying from the wound as he did.

Batman stood beside David, looking up at him, his eyes behind the cracked lenses of the cowl moved across David's body. The Omega Beam burns that covered his torso in overlapping patterns of charred skin. The stab wound in his stomach that was bleeding freely. The blood running from his mouth, from his nose, from his ears. "David..." Batman said, and there was something in his voice that David had never heard before... it sounded like fear.

David looked down at him and gave him a huge smile. 

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" The laugh erupted out of him and it echoed across the ruined waterfront and bounced off the broken buildings and was loud enough that even the scattered civilians heard it. He grinned down at Batman, a grin so wide and so bright that it seemed to generate its own light and he raised his right hand and stuck his thumb up.

"Do not worry, Batman, my friend!" David said as he put his hand on his shoulder. "I'll have this villain out of here in a jiffy!"

The smile stayed fixed on his face even as blood ran from the corner of his mouth and down his chin.

Batman looked at him and clenched his fists. He recognized what David was doing because he'd seen footage of the man David had learned it from, the same smile, the same posture, the same absolute refusal to let anyone see how badly he was hurt.

"Be ready for when he goes through," David said, quieter now, just for Batman. "The second he's on the other side, you close it."

Batman nodded. "I'll be ready."

David turned and faced Darkseid.

Darkseid looked at him from across the cratered street, his injured arm hanging at his side, blood still dripping from the sword wound. "You are weakening," Darkseid observed. "I can feel it from here, you look close to passing out... but even if you were at full strength your power would not compare to a God."

Inside David's head the vestiges were talking over each other.

"He's right you need to hold position. Keep him engaged but don't overextend. If Superman recovers—"

"Play for time every second we buy is a second closer to Superman getting back on his feet. He's our best chance of actually pushing Darkseid through—"

"Wait for Superman he can match Darkseid's raw power in a way we can't right now. We just need to—"

"No," David said as he took a step forward. 

The vestiges went quiet.

David looked at Darkseid. "You're not a god," David said, and each word landed like a stone. "You're a bully with an army and a throne who's convinced himself that power and divinity are the same thing. I've seen a hundred guys like you. The same ego, the same contempt, the same belief that because you can destroy things you're entitled to rule them."

Another step.

"You're just another villain. And I'm going to stop you."

Another step.

"Because I am—"

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[One for All: 1000%]

"—PARAGON and it's my responsibility to bring PEACE and JUSTICE to this world!"

He launched forward.

The first step obliterated the street behind him. The second created a shockwave that threw every car within two hundred feet onto its side. The third broke the sound barrier and the sonic boom rolled across Metropolis like a cannon shot, and by the fourth step he was a golden comet trailing nine distinct threads of lightning that scorched parallel lines across the ground behind him.

Darkseid met him.

Their fists connected and the shockwave blew outward in a sphere that flattened everything within three hundred feet and sent the harbour water surging backward in a wave that crested twenty feet high. 

The ground beneath them liquefied. 

The buildings on either side lost their faces. 

The air between their fists turned to plasma.

Darkseid slid back.

Not much. Maybe a foot. But he slid, and the expression on his face changed because in all the millennia of his existence, across all the worlds he had conquered and all the champions he had broken, nothing had ever pushed him back from a direct clash of strength.

They drew back and hit again.

And again.

And again.

The punches came faster now, both of them accelerating, both of them abandoning any pretence of technique in favour of raw overwhelming force. Darkseid's fists were grey blurs, each one carrying the weight of a planet behind it, and David's were gold streaks trailing lightning, each one backed by the accumulated power of nine heroes who dedicated their lives to the pursuit of justice. 

They collided dozens of times per second, hundreds, the impacts overlapping until the individual shockwaves merged into a continuous rolling thunder that shook the foundations of every building in Metropolis.

David took hits to his face or his body or his arms and each one felt like being hit by a continent. But he didn't stop. He didn't slow down. He absorbed the damage and kept coming, his fists finding Darkseid's jaw, his chin, his chest, his ribs, each one landing better than the last as David found his rhythm.

He was gaining ground.

Foot by foot, punch by punch, he was pushing Darkseid backward. The god's feet were carving trenches in the ground as he gave way, his massive frame being driven back by a sustained assault that was not slowing down but speeding up, David's fists coming faster, harder, the gold lightning burning brighter with every exchange.

Darkseid roared and threw a haymaker with everything he had, a punch that could have cracked the planet's crust, and David caught it on his forearm and the forearm held. David countered with a left hook to the body and a right cross to the jaw, then a left uppercut to the chin. Each one faster than the last, each one harder.

"I'M NOT DONE YET!" David roared as he drew his right fist back and he slammed an uppercut into the bottom of Darkseid's chin that cracked the stone-grey skin and split it open in a line that ran from his jaw to his cheekbone.

Darkseid's head snapped back and his body followed, launched upward into the air above the harbour, above the portal.

[Gearshift: Transmission]

"David, NO! Your body cannot handle Gearshift on top of Prime at 1000%, the cellular degradation alone will—" 

"Stop this! You'll tear yourself apart, your muscles are already shredding, if you activate Gearshift now—"

"Please! Wait for Superman, just hold on for another minute—"

"WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP, I AM A HERO AND—" David roared, and his body blurred.

[Gearshift: Second Gear]

The world slowed down. 

Everything around him dropped into a crawl, the debris floating through the air, the water droplets suspended, the parademons frozen mid-wing-beat, and David was the only thing moving at full speed. His body screamed at him, every fibre of every muscle tearing, his nervous system overloading, his bones vibrating at a frequency that threatened to shake them apart.

He didn't care.

He kicked off the air and launched himself after Darkseid's tumbling body, breaking the sound barrier in two steps. His fists connected with Darkseid's torso once, twice, ten times, twenty times, each impact creating a miniature sonic boom, the compressed air detonating around each punch in rings of white vapour. 

Darkseid tried to guard and David went around the guard, went through the guard, his fists finding gaps in the armour and exploiting them, cracking the plates, splitting the seams, his knuckles punching through to the grey flesh underneath.

"—A REAL HERO WILL ALWAYS FIND A WAY FOR JUSTICE TO BE SERVED!" David screamed, his fists a continuous blur of gold, each word punctuated by an impact that sent Darkseid further back.

[Gearshift: Top Gear]

"HAHAHAHAHAHA! YES, YOUNG BECKETT! LET YOUR HEROIC SOUL ROAR!" He heard All Mights Vestige roar. 

He roared and his fists broke the sound barrier ten times over, a hundred times over, his body moving so fast it existed in multiple positions simultaneously, and every position was throwing a punch. He hit Darkseid in the chest and the armour shattered completely, the ancient plates breaking apart and falling away in fragments, exposing the grey skin underneath which was no longer unmarked. There were cracks in it, dark lines spreading across Darkseid's torso like fractures in a statue, and through the cracks David could see light, a dull red glow, as if something inside Darkseid was being pushed to its breaking point.

He wrapped Black Whip around Darkseid's body, pinning his arms, and then hit him a hundred more times. Left right left right, and the cracks in Darkseid's skin spread wider and deeper with every hit.

Darkseid roared and his eyes blazed and the Omega Beams erupted at point blank range. David flipped over them, the beams passing beneath him, and he caught Darkseid's chin with a rising kick that snapped the god's head upward. The Omega Beams shot straight up into the sky. They curved, tracking back, arcing down toward David's position, and David grabbed Darkseid by the shoulders and spun them both, rotating their bodies through the air so that Darkseid's back was facing the returning beams.

The Omega Beams hit Darkseid.

His own weapon, his own power, slamming into his own back, and Darkseid screamed and his body spasmed and David released him, grabbed him by the ankles, and flipped them again, redirecting all their shared momentum downward, and he kicked Darkseid in the chest and sent him plummeting toward the ground directly in front of the portal.

Darkseid hit the ground and the impact created a crater that swallowed the street. The portal was right there, ten feet behind him, the tear in reality that Cyborg had opened, the gateway to Apokolips.

David slammed both palms against the air above him and the recoil launched him downward like a missile. He landed in the crater in front of Darkseid, his feet shattering the already broken ground, and he straightened up and looked the god of Apokolips in the face.

Darkseid was still midair as he had bounced back up from the ground, his armour was gone, his skin was fractured, his injured eye was swollen shut and the other was blazing but dimmer than before. 

David drew his fist back.

"You want to know the difference between a god and a hero?" David said. "A god is someone born with everything yet understands nothing of the struggle to get there. A hero stands up when his body is broken and his strength is gone and pushes past every limit he has because someone out there needs him to."

"Or in the words of a wise man—"

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"GO BEYOND—"

He threw the punch.

"PLUS ULTRAAAA!"

The fist hit Darkseid in the center of his cracked chest. Darkseid's body was launched backward with a force that exceeded anything David had ever produced, anything any holder had ever produced, the accumulated power of nine lifetimes detonating in a single point against a single target.

Darkseid's chest caved inward, the cracks in his skin split open completely and his body rocketed backward toward the portal trailing fragments of armour and dark blood that bled from his broken skin. He hit the portal's threshold and went through it, his massive frame passing through the tear in reality. 

"THIS IS NOT OVER," Darkseid roared, his voice shaking both worlds. "I WILL RETURN. I WILL BURN YOUR WORLD TO ASH AND SCATTER IT ACROSS THE VOID. YOU HAVE NOT DEFEATED ME, YOU HAVE ONLY EARNED MY WRATH, AND MY WRATH IS—"

"CYBORG, NOW!" Batman shouted.

Cyborg, armless but alive, channeled every remaining ounce of power in his body through the interface and the portal snapped shut. The blue light collapsed inward to a single point and vanished. Across Metropolis, across the country, across the world, every portal did the same, the red tears in reality sealing themselves shut one by one, the parademon swarms were sucked back in and sent back to where they came. 

David stood in the crater, his fist still extended, the gold lightning flickering across his body in weak pulses. He was breathing in shallow hitches, each one accompanied by a wet sound that shouldn't have been there. Blood was running freely from his mouth and his nose and from the stab wound in his stomach and from a dozen other places he couldn't identify.

He raised his right arm above his head.

"HAHAHAHAHA!" The laugh came out broken, wet, trailing off into a cough that sprayed blood, but it was carried across the ruined waterfront to where Green Lantern and Flash and Diana and Batman and Cyborg and Superman were watching him from the edge of the crater.

His arm stayed up. 

His eyes closed.

David Beckett, the Ninth Holder of One for All, the hero called Paragon, passed out on his feet.

(AN: So yeah the end of the first arc pretty much. Just an origin really. I know some of the writing is gonna be a little cheesy but it's hero stuff so I think it's okay. Plus some of the stuff all might spouts even has me wanting to become a hero and shit to yeah. Hope you enjoyed the fight. Btw David has had one for all for like ten years so he basically has it mastered, though he's a bit rusty with it.)