Edward chuckled nervously as he stared up at Darkseid's titanic form towering over him. The New God's presence alone was crushing, reality bending around him like gravity around a black hole.

"Hehe," Edward said, his voice carrying forced levity. "I'm in danger."

Darkseid's stone-like features curved into an amused grin, his burning red eyes fixed on the comparatively tiny figure before him. "Indeed you are, Godslayer."

Edward shrugged, trying to buy himself time to think, to plan, to find any advantage. "I'm also a goddess layer though. Your daughter Grail can testify to that fact."

The grin vanished from Darkseid's face instantly. His expression darkened, the amusement replaced by cold fury that made the broken planet beneath them tremble.

"After I deal with you," he said, his voice dropping to something dangerous, "I shall bring her back to Apokolips for proper punishment. Although..." he paused, something calculating entering his tone, "at least she proved useful in locating the Anti-Life Equation's resting place. For that service alone, I may spare her the worst of my wrath. So I shall let her be the first to experience its power. "

Edward's eyes narrowed slightly. Darkseid didn't know Grail was with him willingly, nor the fact that he helped her establish a connection with the Anti-Life equation. Good. Let him keep thinking like that.

"Cool beans," Edward said casually despite the tension coiling in his muscles. "But there's a teeny tiny little problem with that grand plan of yours."

Darkseid's eyes narrowed slightly, curiosity mixing with irritation. "And what would that be, mortal?"

Edward raised the Primarch Blade, its flames igniting brighter, golden fire dancing along the length of the weapon. "You can't beat me alone. Not unless the big guy returns and you team up against me." He grinned, though his eyes remained calculating. "But I believe that's beneath someone of your stature, isn't it? The mighty Darkseid, needing help against a mere mortal?"

Darkseid chuckled—a deep, rumbling sound that made the dying planet's core shudder. "Don't think I can't see through your ploy, foolish mortal. You mean to make it easier for yourself to survive by appealing to my pride. A transparent manipulation."

He stepped closer, each footfall creating shockwaves that split the ground. "Usually, I would entertain your attempt. It would indeed be shameful to fight alongside another to face a single human, no matter how powerful."

His expression shifted to something resembling respect—cold, distant, but genuine. "But I have lost my patience with you, Edward Elric. And..." he paused, the admission clearly costing him something, "as much as it shames me to acknowledge this truth, I recognize you, although barely, as an equal. You should feel honored. You are the only mortal in this entire multiverse who can be counted as such by the lord of Apokolips himself."

He raised one massive hand in an almost diplomatic gesture. "I know it might be useless given your rather rebellious nature, but I shall offer you one final chance. Join me. I shall make you my supreme commander, second only to me in all of Apokolips.

I shall also withhold any punishment to my foolish daughter for your sake. I will even spare your pitiful planet from conquest."

His eyes blazed brighter, the offer genuine despite its terrible price. "Just kneel. Acknowledge my rule. Help me claim the Anti-Life Equation, and together we shall bring order to this chaotic multiverse. You can rule the multiverside from my side."

Edward whistled badly—off-key and deliberately mocking. "Damn! That's rather generous coming from you, Mr. Stone Face. But you know what?"

His grin widened, genuine defiance blazing in his eyes. "I refuse! What I like most is saying no to smug pricks like you! Now come and get daddy's belt!"

He slashed forward with the Primarch Blade, golden flames trailing through the air.

But Darkseid moved. Not the slow, inevitable advance Edward expected, but with startling, impossible speed for his size.

He sidestepped the burning sword, his massive stone hand catching the blade between two fingers as casually as one might catch a thrown stick.

The golden flames licked at his fingers, burning, searing, but Darkseid didn't even flinch. His stone flesh smoked slightly but held firm.

"I'm not foolish enough to underestimate you like him," Darkseid said, glancing briefly toward where the Anti-Monitor had fled. "I watched your entire battle, Edward Elric. I observed every technique, analyzed every weakness. I know exactly what you're capable of."

Edward scratched his head. "Aww shucks! I got a fan."

Darkseid stepped back, his form beginning to glow with red energy. "But this place is too cramped for what I have in mind. This dying world cannot contain our battle. Although I don't mind destroying it, Let's change the surroundings, shall we?"

Before Edward could respond, Darkseid raised both hands. Reality itself responded to his will.

The dying planet vanished. The stars disappeared. The universe itself dissolved like smoke.

In an instant, they stood in an endless void that stretched infinitely in all directions—or perhaps in no directions at all. There was no up, no down, no reference points of any kind.

Just infinite emptiness punctuated by distant lights that might have been stars or might have been the dying echoes of dead universes or might have been something else entirely beyond comprehension.

Edward's enhanced senses struggled to adjust. There was no air here, yet he could breathe. No ground, yet he stood on something. No light source, yet he could see perfectly. This place existed outside normal physics, outside normal reality.

"Where are we? Did they forget to pay their electricity bills or something?"

Darkseid spoke casually, as if discussing the weather rather than the fundamental nature of existence. "This place exists outside the multiverse itself. Within scope of the Source Wall, beyond the boundaries of creation.

Beings such as myself cannot easily enter the material universes—our mere presence distorts entire realities, destabilizes cosmic structures, tears at the fabric of space-time itself. So we exist beyond them, in spaces like this. Pockets of non-reality where we can move without destroying everything around us."

His form seemed to grow larger, more solid, as if the void itself gave him greater substance and power. The red glow around him intensified until it was almost blinding. "Here, in this place beyond places, I can unleash my full power without concern for collateral damage. Here, I am not limited by the fragility of mortal worlds."

His eyes erupted with crimson light, Omega energy crackling around his form like captured lightning. Red beams of pure annihilation swirled around him, responding to his will.

"Now then, Edward Elric. Show me the strength that defeated the Anti-Monitor. Show me if you truly deserve to stand as my equal, or if you were merely fortunate!"

The Omega Beams fired.

Two beams of crimson energy that erased everything. Where they passed, the void itself ceased to exist, leaving behind something worse than nothing. Absolute conceptual absence.

Edward moved on pure instinct honed through millennia of combat. His body blurred to the side, the Primarch Blade coming up in a defensive arc. The beams passed through where he'd been standing microseconds ago.

But these weren't normal attacks. The Omega Beams curved mid-flight, bending through space in ways that violated every law of physics Edward knew. They turned, tracked, pursued him like living things with malevolent intelligence.

Edward teleported. The beams followed him through the dimensional shift, emerging from the same warp he'd used.

'Shit,' Edward thought, his mind racing. 'They track their target across dimensions. Can't just dodge or teleport away.'

He spun, bringing the Primarch Blade around in a desperate parry. The golden flames of humanity's will met the Omega Beams head-on.

The collision was cataclysmic. Light exploded outward, reality screaming as two fundamental forces opposed each other. The void around them cracked like glass, fissures spreading through non-space. The darkness was momentarily vanquished by blinding light.

Edward was thrown backward by the impact, his arms numb from the shock of deflecting such power. He crashed into something—a floating chunk of what might have been a dead planet or might have been crystallized void-matter—and the impact shattered it into dust.

He pushed off from the debris before it fully disintegrated, launching himself back at Darkseid. This time he didn't rely on just the sword. He channeled his Psyker abilities, the full might of his psychic power flooding through him.

Reality bent around Edward as he attacked. Space folded, time stuttered, probability itself became uncertain.

He struck from multiple angles simultaneously—not illusions or afterimages, but actual quantum possibilities made manifest. A dozen Edwards attacked from every conceivable direction, each one wielding the burning blade, each one real and solid.

Darkseid's response was instant and terrifyingly efficient. His eyes blazed brighter, and Omega Beams fired in all directions simultaneously. Not straight lines but curves, spirals, impossible geometries that filled the space around him with crimson death.

The beams tracked each Edward with perfect precision, curving through space, splitting and converging. One by one, the quantum possibilities collapsed as the beams found their marks. Edwards vanished in flashes of erased reality, possibility after possibility extinguished.

But the real Edward got through.

His blade carved across Darkseid's chest, golden flames biting deep into stone flesh. The wound burned, crackling with divine fire that tried to spread, to consume.

Darkseid actually stumbled back a step. He looked down at the burning cut across his torso, dark ichor seeping from the wound. Then he looked up at Edward, and something like satisfaction—almost respect—crossed his granite features.

"Good," Darkseid said, his voice carrying approval. "Very good. You are indeed worthy of this battle. Against you, I can finally use my full powers."

He moved forward, and this time there was no testing, no measuring, no holding back. He attacked with the full terrible weight of his power.

The battle became chaos incarnate.

Edward's blade met Darkseid's fists in rapid succession—each impact creating shockwaves that rippled through the void, distorting what little reality existed here. They moved faster than light, their forms blurring, existing in multiple places simultaneously as they fought across dimensions.

Edward swung the Primarch Blade in a wide arc. Darkseid caught it with his bare hand, the flames unable to burn through his stone flesh quickly enough. His other fist drove into Edward's ribs.

The impact was like being hit by a collapsing star. Edward felt bones crack, organs compress. He was hurled backward, tumbling through the void.

He recovered mid-flight, twisting, using the momentum. He summoned black holes with a gesture—dozens of them, each one perfectly positioned to trap Darkseid in overlapping gravitational fields.

Darkseid simply walked through them. The black holes strained, pulling at him with forces that should have torn apart anything with mass. But Darkseid's will overrode physics itself. He was the New God, the embodiment of tyranny and inevitable conquest. Mere gravity meant nothing to him.

His eyes blazed. Omega Beams fired again, this time in patterns that defied comprehension. They split, converged, created impossible geometric formations. A web of crimson death that filled the space between them.

Edward dodged through gaps that shouldn't exist, his body moving on instinct and precognition. His enhanced senses saw the patterns forming before they fully manifested, giving him microseconds to react.

But microseconds weren't always enough.

One beam grazed his shoulder. Just a touch, barely contact.

His shoulder ceased to exist. Not destroyed, not damaged—erased. For a heartbeat, there was simply nothing where his shoulder had been, an absence in reality itself.

Then Edward's regeneration kicked in. The Emperor's power still flowing through him fought against the erasure, reality reasserting itself, flesh and bone rebuilding from conceptual nothingness.

The pain was indescribable. Worse than any wound. It was the sensation of not existing, of being removed from reality's framework, then being forced back in.

Edward clenched his teeth. The sound echoed through the void, carrying agony and defiance in equal measure.

But he didn't stop fighting.

He poured everything into the Primarch Blade. Humanity's will, psychic might, divine authority. The sword grew massive, its flames turning white-hot, then transcending visible light entirely to become pure destroying force.

"Aeternitas Imperator!" Edward roared, swinging with both hands.

The blade descended like divine judgment. Darkseid raised both arms to block, and the impact sent shockwaves through multiple dimensions. The void cracked, reality bleeding through the fissures.

Darkseid's arms bore deep cuts, his stone flesh smoking and burning. But he pushed back, his physical strength matching Edward's psychically-enhanced might.

They strained against each other, blade against crossed arms, neither giving ground.

Then Darkseid's eyes glowed brighter than before. Point-blank Omega Beams fired directly into Edward's face.

Edward twisted desperately, taking the beams on his already-damaged shoulder rather than his head. More of him ceased to exist, the erasure spreading down his arm.

He warped away, gasping, one arm hanging useless as it slowly regenerated. The process was getting slower. His power was draining. The transformation into the Emperor had taken more stamina from him than he'd realized, and maintaining this level of combat was burning through his reserves at an alarming rate.

This was the first time he has been pushed so far, so he was still adjusting to using more of his strength.

Darkseid pressed his advantage. He moved with terrifying speed, closing the distance. His fist caught Edward in the chest.

Edward blocked with the Primarch Blade, but the force still transferred. He was sent flying, crashing through debris, tumbling end over end. But not before he sent out a psyker blast that sent Darkseid flying as well.

He recovered, breathing hard. Blood ran from his mouth, his nose. His regeneration was keeping him alive.

'I'm winning,' Edward thought, trying to convince himself. 'The wound on his chest is deep. I'm actually hurting him. I can do this.'

But even as the thought formed, he knew it wasn't quite true. He was matching Darkseid, yes. But matching wasn't winning. And his power was finite while Darkseid's seemed endless. Not unless he said fuck it, and unleashed his Endless powers.

Then reality tore open again.

The rift appeared behind Darkseid, jagged and wrong. The Anti-Monitor emerged from it, and Edward's stomach dropped.

The cosmic entity had rebuilt himself. His armor was cruder than before, clearly formed in haste, but it was functional. His life shell contained his antimatter core once more, and his power radiated outward in visible waves of destructive force.

"I have returned for my veangeance, anomaly." He spoke calmly, clearly more cautious. Then he turned to the other being present.

"Darkseid," the Anti-Monitor said, his voice carrying across the void. "I have a proposition for you."

Darkseid didn't turn, keeping his eyes on Edward, but he tilted his head slightly to show he was listening. "Speak quickly, creature. I am occupied."

"I know where the Anti-Life Equation rests," the Anti-Monitor said. "Carved into the very surface of one of these pathetic Earth variants. I can help you claim it. My power can break through any defense, overcome any obstacle."

That got Darkseid's full attention. His eyes blazed brighter, genuine interest showing. "And why would you offer such aid? What do you gain?"

"An alliance," the Anti-Monitor replied. "Help me weaken this multiverse, eliminate the obstacles that would oppose my Mother's return. With the Anti-Life Equation in your possession, you can control entire universes. Bring them to heel. Make them docile, compliant. Just order under your rule and her design."

He didn't speak his true thoughts however. When Perpetua returns, there will be no multiverse left. And his Mother would erase Darkseid like the rest of the ungrateful insects.

Darkseid was silent for a long moment. His eyes shifted between the Anti-Monitor and Edward, calculating, weighing options.

Edward felt his blood run cold. This was bad. This was very, very bad.

"No," Edward said, his voice carrying desperate defiance. "Darkseid, you can't be stupid enough to trust him. The moment you're no longer useful, he'll betray you. He's just using you!"

"Perhaps," Darkseid acknowledged. "But even temporary usefulness has value."

His gaze fixed on Edward. "And you, Edward Elric, stand as the greatest obstacle to both our goals. Your power rivals ours. Your will opposes our designs. You must be eliminated."

He looked at the Anti-Monitor. "Very well. An alliance. For now. Until this mortal is dealt with. Then we shall discuss terms for the Anti-Life Equation's retrieval."

"Agreed," the Anti-Monitor said, and Edward could hear the satisfaction in that distorted voice.

Edward's grip tightened on the Primarch Blade. "Oh, come on! That's not fair! You can't just team up! Where's your pride? There's supposed to be rules against this!"

Darkseid's cracked face twisted into a grin devoid of humor. "Rules? We make the rules, mortal. We are the rules."

They attacked together.

The Anti-Monitor from one side, antimatter energy crackling and warping space. Darkseid from the other, Omega Beams firing in coordinated patterns with the antimatter blasts.

"Fuck my life. I just had to trigger them so much that they forgot pride, and ganged up on lil old me!"

But there is no medicine for regrets.

His mouth cashed cheques that his body would have to pay up now.

"After this, I'll have to control my smack talk from now on. It's too effective!" Edward sighed as he pulled himself up from the rubble.