Piccolo had just started to clench his fist when Tony surged forward at full speed.
A nanotech plate fired from Tony's hand and slapped onto Piccolo's palm, locking the hand in place. Piccolo tried to force the fingers closed, but the grip wouldn't finish forming.
"Kid, kick him!" Tony shouted.
Spider-Man spun imdiately and lashed out with a kick.
At the sa ti, Tony accelerated into a full 360-degree flying kick from his jet boots.
Both strikes landed together.
Piccolo staggered back a step.
Then he caught himself.
And without even looking rushed, he grabbed Spider-Man by the body and hurled him straight at Tony.
BOOM.
The two heroes were blasted backward by the sheer force of the throw.
Piccolo crushed the nanotech plate in his hand, then fired a beam of light straight after them.
Before the blast could hit, a figure in black armor and a dark cape appeared in the air.
Drex Valen raised one hand and conjured an energy shield that absorbed Piccolo's attack dead-on.
"That's the Dark Knight!"
"Drex Valen!"
"Is that... energy shield tech?"
Tony Stark was the only one who sounded genuinely offended.
His nanotech armor had only just reached maturity, and Drex Valen was already fielding a working energy shield system?
That was brutal.
The shield had actually held back a Dragon-Level monster's attack too.
Piccolo was about to say sothing, but Drex was suddenly gone.
Everyone watched as he seed to blink out of existence and reappear directly in front of Piccolo.
A single punch followed.
Piccolo flew backward again, smashing through several ruined structures.
"Space-jump technology?" Tony muttered in disbelief.
How many impossible systems was that armor running?
The U.S. and every other nation watching the feed were equally stunned.
Drex Valen's Dark Knight armor had completely rewritten their databases.
Everything they thought they knew was now obsolete.
They had spent years building intelligence files, and now his technology was outpacing them so fast it was almost insulting.
Piccolo finally understood the danger.
Drex Valen was the first opponent who had actually driven him into serious injury.
His head had caved in from that last strike.
That was no small thing.
A mont later, Piccolo's skull healed again with disturbing speed.
"Cellular regeneration... sothing like controlled cancer cells," Drex murmured.
His voice was low, but everyone nearby heard it.
That only made the threat worse.
Not only did the monster have devastating power, it could also regenerate like a nightmare.
"Die!"
Piccolo gathered every ounce of ki in his body, ignoring the weakness creeping through his aged fra.
He was going to kill the one man who had beco a real threat to him.
"Another blast like that? Evasive maneuvers, now!" Tony shouted after detecting the energy spike.
But it was already too late.
Piccolo unleashed his beam.
Drex answered imdiately with a silver energy ray of his own.
The two forces collided in midair.
A blinding white flash erupted, and the entire sky turned silver for an instant.
Then the clash spilled outward.
The excess energy ripped across the battlefield in every direction, erasing anything it touched. Objects vanished. Buildings vanished. Even the ground itself was simply gone.
The silver light pulsed for several seconds before fading.
When the glare finally cleared, the entire combat zone had beco a flat, bare stretch of earth.
No wreckage.
No rubble.
No sand.
It was as if the surface had been shaved off the planet.
If soone had looked down from orbit, they would have seen a giant crater-like scar burned into the world.
A permanent mark.
Peter stared at the landscape in shock.
"We were just... standing there?"
The desert had been transford into a flat wasteland in a single exchange.
Tony looked around frantically.
"Where's Drex Valen?"
Then he spotted him, hovering in the air.
Piccolo was gone.
"The Dragon-Level monster?" Tony asked, flying closer.
"Handled," Drex said calmly.
Handled.
After all that devastation, he'd simply erased a Dragon-Level monster from the board?
Tony couldn't help feeling a little dazed.
Just how far had Drex upgraded that armor?
Reaching him would take a long ti. A very long ti.
Drex didn't bother answering.
The heroes had actually perford better than expected.
Ben Grimm had stepped into the role Cap would normally have filled, making the three-man core of the superhero side feel almost complete.
When Thor eventually showed up, it would beco a quartet.
Piccolo had still been a serious threat.
Dragon Ball monsters worked on a different scale entirely.
Even Master Roshi, with only a few hundred battle power, could push the moon around. A fully realized Piccolo probably could have destroyed Earth without much trouble.
Drex himself could do the sa now.
He gave the heroes present a brief, satisfied nod.
They had mostly been supporting players, but they hadn't run.
They hadn't broken.
That mattered.
"Not bad," Drex said.
"Better than expected."
The group visibly straightened under the praise.
It was funny, really.
He'd gone from being a solo anomaly to sothing that looked suspiciously like Superman with a bunch of heroic sidekicks hanging off the side.
The Avengers fighting the Justice League, he thought with mild amusent, would probably be a disaster. Batman, Wonder Woman, and Flash alone could probably take the Avengers without taking a scratch. Add Superman, Martian Manhunter, and Shazam, and the fight wouldn't even be close.
So he still needed to find more heavy hitters.
Maybe this universe had a Blue Marvel.
Maybe a Sentry.
Maybe a Hyperion.
The whole reason he was still watching these heroes so closely was because Earth needed stronger defenders before the next cosmic nightmare arrived.
The encouragent did its job.
Most of the assembled heroes were energized, almost glowing with pride.
Drex Valen had beco a symbol to a lot of people now.
The second great superhero after Captain Arica.
A man with enough power, presence, and mystery to make almost anyone pay attention.
If he ever ran for president, he'd probably win fifty states with eighty percent of the vote.
The only person who might beat him would be Captain Arica himself rising from the grave to campaign.
Which reminded Drex of sothing else.
Steve Rogers had already been recovered and moved into Umbrella Corporation custody.
Once Drex finished modifying his mory, Rogers would beco Umbrella Captain.
Drex was confident Steve could beco a Battleship-Class Superhuman.
That would make four Battleship-Class assets under his control.
Not a bad start.
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