I stepped through the portal from my laboratory just in time to watch Earth's strongest hero plummet thirty-feet to the pavement in front of me. At least, I assumed the height as The Destroyer floated thirty-feet above me. Standing at the epicenter of a massive battle, the city looked like a war-zone with no building within two blocks still standing, and the ones just outside a ruin of their former selves. Vehicles of all sorts crushed and strewn about as if by a titan's tantrum. What remained of Earth's superheroes, and even some of its villains, lay as broken shells clinging to life through ragged breaths, if they breathed at all. Worst of all were the bodies, so many bodies, and the silence which death brings.
"Come to join your friends lying at my feet?" came The Destroyer's voice from above. Besides his usual all-black bodysuit emblazoned with a white skull within a red-and-yellow explosion on his chest, he'd added a few more accessories. No, not accessories - trophies. Around his wrist, he'd clasped one of Midas' golden armbands. On his head sat the No Throne King's crown. Tied to his belt was the robotic head of Mechanika Man, it's usually bright eyes now dark. Finally, tied around his neck and draped over his shoulders flapped the tattered cape of The Shield. Motioning to the scattered heroes around us as he drifted lower, he added, "I merely meant to break, maybe maim, though I can get carried away."
Ignoring my enemy for a moment, I knelt by my friend's side. Automatically, the scanners inside my helmet began analyzing the extent of his injuries. The Destroyer had broken over half the bones in The Shield's body, and even driven a chunk of metal into his chest. Through the pain, The Shield's eyes finally focused on me just as my visor lifted off my face. "Professor," he struggled, "Adam, we did ... our best to ... for you. Please. Whatever it takes."
"That's what I'm afraid of," I replied as his eyes closed. Lowering my visor, I stood to face The Destroyer. A quick scan showed, once again, him to be human, mostly, except for traces of elements and even DNA not found on this planet, not to mention the nearly invisible and completely unidentifiable aura radiating off of him. Even after all these years, I haven't been able to figure out where The Destroyer came from, how he got his powers, or, unfortunately, how to defeat him.
"So, it appears those mighty heroes decided to put all of their hopes into The Professor and his gadgets." He paused for a moment, looking over my unfamiliar white-and-gray suit. "Is that what you've been doing while I beat your friends to a pulp - trying on a new suit - because I have to say, I'm not a fan. Perhaps it'll look better after I add some of your blood to it."
I shook my head. "It's experimental, actually, the suit I wore when I first arrived to this planet, of course with a few upgrades. You might not know, but before I developed all of my gadgets, they called me 'The Traveler'."
Charging forward, The Destroyer shouted, "I don't care where you came from, you'll still fall like the rest before my feet."
"That's part of the reason," I said, pointing a finger above his head as my suit's thrusters shot me backwards. "The other reason is because I arrived through a portal like this one." Above The Destroyer's head, a green light ripped a hole in reality, and gallons upon gallons of water fell through, crushing him beneath its weight. Ten seconds of the weight of the ocean was enough to drop him to his knees. I shut down the portal and zoomed in to deliver a kick to his face. Even with the weight of the metallic suit and the thrusters' speed behind it, my foot barely moved his head.
Growling, The Destroyer turned to face me. "Did you think that would do anything? You merely caught me off-guard with that water trick."
Hiding the pain of equivalently kicking a boulder with my barefoot, I jumped back and hovered a foot off the ground. "Well, if dropping a ton of water from the ocean's depths wasn't enough, how about a lava bath in one of Jupiter's moons," I said, pointing at the ground under him. Another hole opened and dropped the villain into a sea of magma waiting below along with a ton of water which sent a curtain of steam, obscuring his fall.
A few seconds later, with the haze as cover, The Destroyer flew back across the portal, and launched me into the sky with a fist. Despite my armor, he still managed to knock the wind from my lungs. I think I may have even blacked-out for a second. Luckily, my thrusters kicked in, slowing me before I could smash into any buildings. "Armor partially compromised," came an alert as I noticed the small crack in my chest.
With a smirk, the enemy tossed aside a few of his ruined trophies, including the now deformed robotic head and partially-melted crown. Besides that and a few holes in his suit, he appeared unharmed, spinning slowly just to make sure I noticed. "So, The Traveler is what they called you? Because you can open portals to anywhere in this galaxy." He put his finger to his chin, feigning some mental calculations. "Seven seconds, though. That's your weapon's weakness. It must take your portals that long to close or else you'd have trapped me on Io. And with my speed, seven seconds is just too long."
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