Chapter Text
It had been so quiet. For so very long.
The bony beast once known on the planet Earth as Doomsday had been left here, on a broken crag of rock in the middle of a cosmic dead zone. No individual stars were visible to him now. Just the endless dusty swirls of galaxies. To fling himself into the void would take until the heat death of all things before he found foothold on another planetoid, probably also dead. The Doomsday couldn’t remember any longer if this floating mountain of space dust was the one he had started upon.
How long had it been since one of the little green streaks had shot past? Light years away to check that the monster hadn’t escaped its cage. They had come often at first. Then further apart. Then further than that. Replaced by young humanoids in floating bubbles and golden rings. Though eventually even they too stopped coming.
It had even been eons since the golden sun god that had once been the Doomsday’s most hated enemy came here. What once had been battle that would shake cities to their core, a battle that left the Doomsday roaring its last guttural cry as the Kryptonian too fell into death was less than nothing to the Kryptonian now. The Doomsday’s blows didn’t flinch the golden skinned Superman. The Superman simply spoke as the Doomsday raged, with a voice so deep and loud and bright that the monster behind the bony spines had to listen for there was nothing else to hear.
“You are alive. Despite all you are. Despite all that the accident of your birth has taken from you. That is inarguable.” The golden Superman said as the monster howled bloody murder, still attempting to rip the Kryptonian’s spine from his back as he had tried to do before. “You will outlast many. Perhaps all of us. When even my connection to Earth’s star has flickered and faded. I wonder if there might be a time where, eventually, there is some good purpose to you being alive. I forgave you long ago, Doomsday. Eventually you may find you have nothing else to be angry at. Nothing will hurt you here. Nothing can. What will your mind be like without the pain?” The golden sun god said and then simply drifted away. He paid no mind to the monster roaring a challenge. Its hulking body still shot through with the same pain and rage that it had always had.
But once the golden Kryptonian was gone. It was just the quiet and the stillness. Year upon year, century upon century. The cold emptiness of the cosmic void holding close to the creature’s impossible bulk. Slowly soothing away the artificial growth that was like a glass shattering spike of pain. Slowly allowing for distance in the hatred for the scientist who created the Doomsday through an experiment of callous unkindness upon an infant creature that once was. Pain was replaced with...not pain? Fear was replaced with...not fear? Anger with not anger.
Eventually the quiet became so much of everything that the Doomsday found no more reason to roar. No more shouts, or screams, or clashes with the pitiless rock beneath its feet. The creature...sat. It laid back, drained of all purpose but...alive it was still.
For eons its simply watched the rolling of galaxies. It marked specific ones not with names but with...recognition. Millennia would pass and the galaxies would complete an orbit and he would know that galaxy, the one whose furthest limb bent slightly at the edge, or the one whose disc was an ever so slighter shade of purple, or the one with the tiny gap in its right side. Dust collected upon it. The Doomsday watched, and watched, until a mind could simply watch no longer.
Until that mind began to wonder, as minds do.
Was there still life, out there among the spinning disks? Was the Earth still somewhere above? Had the dust that had once been Krypton merged into something new? Many things new? Did anyone out there in the dust and dark still remember the thing called Doomsday? No one checked on the monster’s prison any longer. For some millennia the monster would sleep, for some others it would watch, for some others it would wonder.
It was alive. The thought was almost shocking for its breaking of the quiet. The creature flexed a hand. Collected rock cracked and shattered. The creature sat up in the dust, its body beneath feet of rock after its endless contemplation. That’s what the Kryptonian said. The monster called Doomsday. Was alive. It acted. It fought....The thought rolled around in the creature’s empty mind as the galaxies turned above.
Why? Again the stillness broken.
Was that not why? It fought, and screamed and raged. BECAUSE it was alive. Memories of a thousand, thousand deaths inflicted upon a young thing that had not been Doomsday flashed behind its eyes. But the rage did not come with them. Just the images. It had always been alive. And then pain, and screaming, and death. Until each time it had inflicted more death than it had taken, and on, and on, until killing more than it died was the only purpose.
Being alive was...a reason. The thing called Doomsday was alive, it wanted to be. So. All other things alive. Also wished to be. To be alive was to fight death.
The Kryptonian fought. Because the Kryptonian was alive, and wished to be. Not to harm Doomsday, not to kill Doomsday. But because Doomsday sought to kill, and they were alive.
Something moved. Not the inching swirl of galaxies but a small...silver thing broken through the endless dark. Moving closer at a scale of time that was instantaneous compared to the endless celestial circles that the creature had contemplated. The Doomsday saw its descent all the way toward the small rock and yet still could not react as that craft collided with the mountain that the creature rested on.
Smoke drifted away from the cold rock as the ship settled into the furrow it had dug in the mountainside. A hatch on one side opening wide as something stumbled out.
The alien was wrapped in a puffy orange and beige suit, black tinted glass hiding the features of its face. Its body hidden beyond the obvious. It had a large head, oval shaped with short limbs that left it flapping and waddling away from the wreck even as it looked around it with a panicked energy. It didn’t see the Doomsday for what it was, having settled into its spot for so long after every motion that the dust of the void mountain clung to him, making him resemble a large boulder sitting passively on the limited landscape.
The Doomsday watched, barely moving as the creature tossed odds and ends from the cockpit into the dust, producing a bright red cylinder that shot fire retardant foam into the flames that licked along the outside of its ship. The thin atmosphere of the floating mountain meaning that the flame died easily and without much fight. Its language was a bubbling, chirping noise. high pitched syllables that could only be taken for cursing though the Doomsday understood it no more easily than it understood any other spoken language. Dancing around the ship trying to put everything back in its place. As if trying to convince itself that the thoroughly wrecked vehicle could be repaired in a hurry.
The Doomsday had some hours to wonder why the little creature was in such a hurry at all before another spark of color appeared on the endless black horizon. Where the little creature’s ship was simple and well worn, this one was sleek and threatening. Its outside colored and softly glowing yellow with sharp, insectoid angles. It approached the floating mountain in the void with a predatory purpose. The little creature hiding in the still charred remains of its crumpled craft is it saw them approach.
The yellow craft landed and disgorged its occupants. They were the opposite of the little creature in almost every way. They were tall, or large, or bulky. With pointed jaws that had to be accommodated by their space suits that all sported a single design, a thing of swooping and cutting yellow lines that the Doomsday could only begin to try and place from the old battles it had fought so long ago. The scary ones approached the craft of the small alien, weapons drawn and barking orders to the small creature’s ship. The small creature appeared in the doorway of the wrecked ship holding a blue orb that pulsed and glowed softly with a swooping symbol of lines that was similar to the yellow one the pirates wore but...different.
The little alien made noises that made clear it had no intention of giving up the orb. The scary ones laughed to one another, shouldering weapons and approaching past what seemed to be a normal, slumbering boulder as their weapons charged with a high pitched and violent whine.
The Doomsday’s arm shot out, shattering free of the rock and dust that had collected around it. A single bony hand grasping the rifle that was pressed against the angry alien’s shoulder and crushing it to metallic powder in a single motion. The Doomsday stood. The rough grunt that come from its list quickly lost in the ultra thin atmosphere of the floating mountain crag. The yellow aliens lost any focus on their small quarry as their eyes and minds now turned to self preservation. Glowing yellow beams bounced off of the Doomsday’s hide without even leaving visible singes. The creature reaching out with his other arm and batting the aliens aside. The roar that radiated outward from his hulking chest not carrying any further through the air but making the stony GROUND beneath the attackers bounce and tremble. The largest of the aliens matched the silent scream with his own, bringing down a heavy metal ax that sparked and buzzed with electricity onto the Doomsday’s neck.
The axe metal bounced away, a heavy dent in its harshly sharpened edge that sent a jarring shiver down the entire length of the shaft. The Doomsday HOWLED his response, bringing forward one of his bone clawed hands to deliver a hard SLAM to the alien’s midsection that sent him sailing away in the rock’s lessened gravity.
The Doomsday roared again, stomping down on the rock with such force that the entire mountainside shook. The angry aliens now looking up at the creature they had awakened as if seeing it for the first time, turning and beginning to run for their ship. The Doomsday’s eyes moved upward from the gang and toward the ship. His legs bunched and with a single shove his mass left the ground of that mountainous asteroid for the first time in eons. His shadow hidden by the lack of light save from the suits and ships of the alien arrivals the gang looked up and gaped in fear and wonder as Doomsday cleared the distance between him and the ship in a single bound.
His heavy feet landed on the craft’s closest wing. Even in the light gravity his dense weight punching down through the material of it. The entire machine buckled to one side and a plume of clinging dust flooded outward. The creature’s roar not carrying in the inky gloom but from the look on the hostile aliens’ faces the general idea was gotten across.
The Doomsday paused when he saw the aliens begin to glow even brighter in that sickly golden-yellow color. All of them holding out clenched fists that rocketed with blasts of matching energy. The Doomsday felt the pressure of the blast catch him in the chest and it took him a heartbeat to remember how the motions went. How COMBAT felt. He pushed forward up the stream, the heels and balls of his feet punching downward into the rock creating impromptu footholds.
The rock began to crumble away too fast, though. The sheer power of the yellow blasts pushing back his entire weight as he tried to hold himself against the ground. Eventually the entire shelf of rock gave way and The Doomsday tumbled backward, knocked head over heels along the path of the blast and left smoking hot enough to conceal his shape as the alien attackers stood grinning to one another at their ‘triumph’.
The Doomsday began to rise, unharmed by the blast and only lightly unbalanced by the tumble and fall. The alien attackers’ eyes widened and the aura of yellow around them began to flicker and spark. With quick, cursing words between themselves they took off into the empty void, carried by the flicker golden light that seemed just enough to blast them out of sight on streaks of colored light.
The Doomsday felt something bubble up deep in his chest. Like bubbling hot iron, the rage that had once been his every waking heartbeat threatened him again. His face turning into a scowling sneer that left his jagged teeth and the bony protrusions along his lips to grind together. His fists clamped down hard enough that the motion made a wave of pressure pop outward...and knocked over the little space suited alien as it tried to approach him. Still clutching the pulsating blue orb to his chest.
The Doomsday turned, shaken from his bubbling hatred by watching the tiny creature fall onto its bottom. The Doomsday’s rage stopped, looking down at the creature it was all just easily forgotten. The Doomsday didn’t know what to do now. Would the creature fear it? Fear the monster that it had seen rampaging among the stronger, larger beings? Would it tremble and run and try to hide away in its ship? It was the first living thing that the Doomsday had seen since the golden Kryptonian had gone away so many spinning galaxies before. Something new bubbled up in The Doomsday when it thought about perhaps scaring the little creature away.
The creature however, simply stood. Shaking the clinging, half magnetic dust off of its suit and looking down at the orb. It then looked up at the Doomsday and-
“Xcabga? Unimgo! Unimgo tryo slepdeebee?” Came a tinny little voice from inside the black glass helm. The Doomsday could only tilt its head at that. The sounds that little creatures made were never easy.
“Ahn?” The Doomsday grunted in response. The little creature looked down at the blue orb and spat, smacking it with its tiny open palm until another spark of blue light pulsed outward coating them both.
“Hello! I am Unimgo! Thank you for saving my life! Why, you’re my hero! What is your name?” The little creature spoke again. The Doomsday looked at him long and hard, turning out to face the void for a silent instant and then turned back to the little creature and his glowing orb.
“...ahn?” The Doomsday bluntly repeated.