It would inevitably come to this. There's only one person on this Earth who is an equal match for Carol's power, and that's Apollo. She had hoped she could overtake him, that his time in captivity would have weakened him to the point she could beat him easily.

No such luck.

As she feels him ramping up, she throws everything she has into a final blast of her own, which only serves to knock them each farther apart, and make her pass out from the effort as she falls. She lands in a smoking crater, somewhere in upstate New York, in more pain than she's felt in years. It'll be a while before she's able to pick herself back up and go after Apollo, giving him the time he needs to get away and hide somewhere she can't find him.

"Fuck!!" she yells, slamming her fist into the ground. This was one fight she really didn't want to lose.