To Challenge A God.

*Scar exploded.

He was pushed far beyond his threshold, his power reaching new heights the moment Dante breathed his last. A tortured scream escaped his throat, the sound of a man who was dead on the inside, his heartbeat's repetition in his chest extraordinary now. Hell shook, the -realm-, the dirt lifted, a maelstrom converging about his form as he -commanded- his limits to falter in the face of the greatest need he'd ever known.

With Dante, all that was left of Cross was now gone.
With Dante, all of the hope for Excalibur to live on had shattered.
With Dante, he'd finally found what it meant to suffer.

He hadn't been enough, never enough, could he even be enough?

He lost time and time again, failed even in his previous life. He didn't understand. He didn't understand what made him so damnably unlucky, that it carried on from life to life.

No; that was a lie. He did.

His defiance.

And this time, the cost of his defiance had run too. Fucking. High.

"STEVE!"

The first coherent word spoken by one who'd ascended beyond a super saiyan shattered the nearby glass, wind violently whipping from him as his power only continually rose, so far beyond what he'd been before. His hair spiked further, -heat- exuded from his body, smoldering the floor, melting the ice, the beating of his heart loud now, too fucking loud, his breathing heavy, his lungs were going to collapse, all of this pressure and all this power...

AND IT NEEDED -OUT-!

He couldn't vocalize anything beyond what he'd said earlier; his brain merely wasn't functioning. He was no longer Scar, but something more, strength bursting from him that held the potential to change the tide.

He was an avenger...

No.

He was the incarnation of Vengeance itself.

The physical changes meant little in the face of the overwhelming power he ran off of, energy surging through him that brought him motivation, shattered the word 'impossible' in his -vocabulary-, made him think, in this instant, he could defy even a God. His hair was spiked, further now; it'd darkened, lengthened, if barely noticeably, and his muscled had violently contorted, growing in mass, borderline grotesquely. He clenched his fist, and a -storm- gathered, because he commanded it.

Balls of light surrounded them all, impossibly bright, crackling with violent electricity and the intent to slay a God.

His fear was gone because he couldn't afford to have it.

His indecision slayed because there was no more time for it.

Steve would fall...

Because he -willed- it.

Like a composer delivering his masterstroke, from all around, brilliant, evanescent orbs of light would strike Steve, an incredibly powerful ki-assault striking the man and attempting to bring him down with the pinnacle of Scar's might. Were this technique to fail, he'd follow through with all of that damnable saiyan determination. Before that could happen, however, the lights would strike, again and again, illuminating Scar's face, which was utterly expressionless.

Except those eyes.

Those eyes were those...of a killer.*