William watched as Nolan whom he had until recently known as Omni-man crushed the head of the speedster in red like a grapefruit catching not only him but everyone around him off guard.
"NOOOO!"
A single word simultaneously reverberated between three people while the rest only stared in horror as their friend and comrade was slain in front of them, and with such ease.
The strangely shaped alien creature was the first to act as he ran up and began to wrap his very body around Nolan like a stretch jacket.
"WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS!"
Abe Lincoln's buff clone yelled as he ran up and punched the incapacitated Nolan in the face with a right cross, only to be hit back the other way by War Woman's mace.
She is about to follow up and begins yelling as if to charge up her attack, but before she can reach him, he forcibly breaks free of the strange alien creature and grabs her by the head and smashes her into the ground face first.
"Mnm." She lets out a groan of pain before Nolan picks her up and prepares to launch a finishing blow towards the woman, when suddenly he is forced to dodge when he senses explosives heading his way.
"BOOM!"
"BOOM, BOOM!"
A series of three explosions takes place, and Nolan looks around for the culprit when he hears the subtle sound of a cape flapping in the air above him, and he is about to reach up to grab the foot of the dark silhouette above him when suddenly—
"BANG!"
A surprisingly powerful punch suddenly dominated Nolan's attention, and he looked down, and his face took on a mixture of rage and confusion.
He saw a kid with slicked-back dark hair and piercing green eyes who was currently pressing his fist into Nolan's face before he suddenly remembered the young man at the tailors.
"I remember you!"
He grabs William's hand and applies enough pressure to begin cracking the bone, causing him immense pain, but it is worth it because Nolan has forgotten the dark silhouette above him.
A pair of dark hands wrapped around Nolan's neck, and he began sinking into his own shadows, causing a look of fear to become visible in his face as he struggled to break free, but the shadows only sank their claws deeper and eventually pulled the three of them into the darkness.
Abe Lincoln, War Woman, who had recovered from her daze, the strangely shaped alien, the fish man, and the woman in the full-body green suit stood in place, unable to understand what had just happened.
Suddenly, a dark silhouette shot out from one of the shadows with great velocity and flew into a nearby wall, causing the Guardians to become wary as they approached, but when they saw that it was their comrade Darkwing, they sighed in relief.
Although he had made it back, Darkwing was missing his right arm up to his elbow and his right leg, which was barely a nub at this point.
Before Darkwing lost consciousness, he gave the nearby Guardians the cliff notes on what had happened in the strange dimension he had discovered and recently gained access to.
"When we arrived, Nolan was busy punishing William, that poor boy, he had ripped the kid's arm off and began beating him to death with it!"
Darkwing coughed up a slight amount of blood before continuing.
"Suddenly, we were surrounded by strange eldritch creatures, hungry creatures, creatures that appeared to be nightmares manifest into flesh, which all suddenly swarmed towards the two, and I only just escaped with these injuries before being devoured..."
He passed out shortly after saying this, and Cecil teleported into the base with a group of medical personnel, and they relayed what Darkwing had told them.
Cecil's eyes shimmered in a mixture of shock, anger, pain, and determination before returning to the cold glare that the Guardians were used to.
"Sigh... We will have to put up a statue for the kid!"
The Guardians went their separate ways, however, War Woman, feeling responsible for William being taken, had stayed and waited until she received a call from her assistant at work and left with a sigh.
Cecil and a batch of GDA scientists arrived shortly after and began taking scans and samples of the surroundings in hopes of making any kind of discovery.
Eventually, finding nothing, the scientists and Cecil left the Guardians' HQ through teleportation, leaving the place seemingly cleansed of the splatter of blood that was once all over the place.
Inside the Shadow Dimension, Nolan was forcibly holding William by his neck with a look of cold rage in his sharp blue eyes, but the constant roars of the creatures of the dark pulled him out of his rage as he turned his head and, using William's body as weapon he slammed him into the approaching creature who was yet to be visible.
"BANG!"
William's body struck the creature, and both him and the creature ended up getting hurt by it but thankfully at the same time his ankle broke off allowing him to be free of Nolan's grip as he floated in the darkness further and further from Nolan who didn't have the ability to see through sheer darkness.
Nolan spun around as a vast number of tentacles grabbed onto him and pulled him further into the bowels of the shadows. He struggled valiantly, but it was useless, as with every tentacle he destroyed, several more took their place, and he was eventually pulled into the gaping maw of a dark and demonic-looking squid-like creature with obsidian scale-like armor covering its outer body.
"CRUNCH!"
A pause ensued after the sound of something breaking echoed in the shadows.
"SKREEEEEE!"
The squid thrashed violently and began coughing up what it had swallowed to reveal what was once a mouth of razor sharp death which was now a shattered mess as Nolan had channeled a certain league of legends character and spun in circles with his arms on either side as he was dashed from side to side turning the squids mouth into a bloody blender forcing the creature to spit out both its prey and vast amounts of shattered teeth as well as blood that glowed a soft purple.
Nolan was momentarily taken aback by the strange beauty of the blood when a horde of smaller creatures suddenly approached like a tide of death, causing the viltrumite to put up his defenses to the maximum as well as prepare for a life and death struggle.
While all this was happening, William was constantly being devoured and regenerating, much to the joy of the surrounding creatures of the shadow verse, who now had what can only be considered an all-you-can-eat buffet.
William felt it all.
Every rip, every tear.
Every time one of them swallowed his head, he was forced to endure once again getting it ripped free from his shoulders and his brain meat devoured along with the rest of him.
He had attempted to struggle a few times, but no matter what he tried, it was all for nothing, as what is one person to the weight of a tide.
Every time he tried to attack one of them, they would simply eat his arm fist and all.
Even with his enhanced body, even with his strength, he was nothing before the horde, and he ended up getting devoured by millions of creatures both big and small, until he had lost all concept of time, and he just accepted his fate.
"My poor boy!"
A soothing voice entered his ears like soft velvet and shook him from his daze, he had noticed the shadow creatures had ceased their devouring and opened his eyes to see a strange gaseous purple mass before him.
"You have suffered much, my boy, but thanks to you for the first time in millennia, my children are no longer starving!"
William finally noticed that the shadow creatures were bowing before this creature before him, like it was some kind of higher being.
"For this, on top of your life, you shall be granted a boon!"
The mass of purple shimmers, and William can feel his blood begin to heat up, causing him great concern.
"What did you do?" He asked the mass of purple before him, which was slowly fading back into the darkness.
"Merely unlocked what is yours, my boy, I shall open a rift for you near the one known as Nolan, GET HIM OUT, he has been slaying my children, and I will not have that here!"
William nodded fervently before the purple mass was completely swallowed by the darkness, and he suddenly found himself being pushed in a certain direction until he could hear the roars of a battle-mad viltrumite
"HAAAAAAA!"
A roar before the sound of something being punctured echoed out in front of him, and he suddenly arrived in front of a field of purple blood and dark corpses, with a man in a formerly white suit floating in place, awaiting his next prey, and he did not have to wait long.
"SKREEEEEEEE!"
A roar from the darkness, sharp and deadly, echoed out so loud that both William and Nolan's ears began to bleed, and over the mound of dead creatures, another horde arrived and began charging towards Nolan with clear killing intent in their eyes.
They would all die to slay this being if need be.
"RUMBLE!"
The very shadows seemed to shake as the creatures charged, a mixture of tentacles, claws, fangs, and bone scythes poured towards Nolan like an unstoppable river, but Nolan was the dam, and the creatures essentially dashed themselves to pieces just attacking him
However, it appeared that their objective was to push Nolan through a portal that suddenly appeared directly behind him, and despite his great strength and endurance, he was eventually pushed through.
William initially thought he would be the next target of the insatiable horde, but as he moved forward, he felt neither hostility nor hunger in those glowing eyes, so he continued moving forward under the creature's watchful gaze and stepped through the portal only to be met with an enraged and battle-mad Viltumite who immediately punched a hole through William's stomach and out the back.
He went limp as his spine was severed, but he was fully conscious when he felt Nolan put his hand on his neck and use it as leverage to rip him in half like a piece of paper before discarding the pieces.
After murdering a young man, Nolan suddenly flew off and disappeared into the sky.
Exiting a nearby bar, a young man named Conor had just finished a bender celebrating his acceptance as an astronaut and had a look on his face that showed how pleased he was with how life was going.
He was searching for the phone in his pocket to call a cab when he saw what appeared to be a smoking crater in the street and went to check.
Conor's eyes went wide in shock when he saw the two halves of an unknown man in front of a shadowy shrinking gaseous ball, which was previously the portal used to escape the shadow dimension.
Suddenly, an event that terrified Conor occurred when he saw the blood he assumed had belonged to the young man begin to glow in a faint light as it was drawn back towards the body.
Conor stepped closer and was about to take his phone out to record when a shadow suddenly leaped out of the gaseous ball, which was formerly the portal, and smashed him directly in his chest, knocking him out and the phone out of his hands.
As this happened, William's body had fully reconstituted, and his eyes snapped open.
He was initially confused beyond as he had just regained consciousness, but he looked down at a young man who had a hole seared into his shirt, but as he looked closer, there did not appear to be any damage, so he could only sigh in relief.
William did not have to call anyone, as shortly after he sighed, Cecil and a group of GDA agents arrived fully armed.
"What the hell happened? Where is Nolan?"