Attuma hesitated, and Flux consoled him, “The normal tradition is for a year and a day, all revenues accruing to you as rightful ruler, and the challenge to be renewed at that time, Warlord. Atlantis has not done well historically on the surface...” she reminded him.

And he was here to make a point, not get embroiled into a long and dangerous war against surface dwellers who had just proven exceptionally good at beating the crap out of them. More than once. And had been doing it today, too!

“A year and a day it is, then!” he nodded curtly, looking at the Patriot, who glanced at Mr. Hill sharply, and nodded as well.

“Terms of combat?” Lady Sersi asked, smoothly taking the role of judge and mediator. Nobody was going to tell her otherwise, or they could contemplate their decision-making processes as goldfish for a time.

“No special powers!” Attuma spoke up immediately, obviously wary of Mr. Hill’s Weight of the Mountain.

Flux looked at Mr. Hill, who just grunted as he shrugged off his coat, and to her intense amusement, tossed it to her. “No weapons,” was his only reply to that, and to her even greater amusement, he dropped the ball and chain on her, too.

She took the weight easily.

“Hah! Do you think me giving up my sword will make a difference in your fate, mercenary?” Attuma bellowed, waving his sword about to display its power... and then handed it to Flux to hold onto as well. After a moment of thought and studying his opponent, he removed his fanciful coral helm for her to keep safe.

“No. I’d still win, but this way, I won’t kill you,” Hill snarled back. “To unconsciousness, inability to continue, or yield.”

“Agreed!” the Warlord said, sweeping his hand around. “Is this area suitable?”

“Land, sea, won’t make no difference. Sure, we can start here.”

“MAKE ROOM FOR THE WARRIORS!” Thor’s voice rumbled out, and everyone understood him perfectly, love that divine Allspeech. The thunderbolt punctuation was nice, too; everyone was properly motivated to start scrambling back to give the two of them room, while Flux rose back up into the air, watching attentively as the two squared off.

---

“So, anyone know who’s paying the big guy? Because he doesn’t work for free,” Iron Man asked quickly. He should know, as he’d hired The Mountain to take care of a problem or two before.

“No, and I doubt he’d tell us,” General Rogers spoke up, arms crossed and watching this unfold. “But, he is definitely the best for the job. No offense, Ben. If this were further inland and we could keep it out of the water...”

“Hah, I wasn’t expecting that poozer to show. Nah, we’re good, Steve.” Grimm glanced at me, then back at Mr. Hill. “She was a nice dog. You kill a man’s dog, you better expect to pay for it.”

“That’s true,” Stark agreed, as the two duelists squared up. Both were very big, very muscled, and superhumanly strong.

Hoi, The Mountain hadn’t done a fight this public in some time, and never in the States. This was gonna be educational for a lot of people.

“BEGIN!” Flux’s voice rang out, and Attuma bellowed and charged.

Mr. Hill cocked back a fist in slow motion. It looked pretty funny, and kind of awkward.

Attuma was just about to reach him when there was a flicker.

The THOOM of the hit was pretty good. Mr. Hill took him in the head, and suddenly Attuma was heading for the water there faster than he’d arrived. He tore a furrow through the waves and disappeared from view.

Mr. Hill crouched slightly, Pulled, and Released, vaulting into the air in his own blur of motion, clearly not at all concerned about taking the fight under the water. Meanwhile, a lot of the Atlanteans were urgently submerging themselves to get a better view of the fight.

“Dammit, we’re going to miss everything!” Stark called out, as Flux zipped after the pair to watch, also clearly unconcerned about the water.

I slid over to one of the watching honor guards. “” He looked a bit distracted, then recoiled, hand clapping to a certain fist imprint on his armor someone I knew might have put there. “” I asked him directly.

He straightened up, eyes flickering to something inside his helm. “” he answered proudly, even raising his chin for proper emphasis.

“”

His mouth opened, closed, and he glanced around, but nobody nearby was paying any attention to him. “” he asked shortly.

I flicked out a gleaming platinum card and my own Vaccine. “”

He looked at me, I looked at him and smiled, and he waved the feed to my screen. I got an eyescan and he gave me his name. I thanked Sergeant Hunnbra for his help, and he was ten thousand Rubles richer.

Even Atlanteans liked some of the Russian stuff that was out there.

I wandered back over to where the costumes were while I watched the holo come up off my upgraded Vaccine. It didn’t take more than a few seconds for the alert Spider-girls to see Mr. Hill moving through the water with a remarkable amount of speed, and if there was something gleaming on one of his fingers, it was under a dark glove. He wasn’t under much of a speed penalty to Attuma... and certainly not a strength one.

Because he had naturally increasing Might but not speed, he had needed a bunch of practice with the Dummy to get to where he was, and he also needed experience with using it in real combat. The most amusing use of it was rabbit punches, which when delivered repeatedly with a fist moving at 300+ mph, are pretty damn impressive.

I soon had my own circle of teens watching the holo, cheering as the fight raged back and forth, Peter still wondering aloud why they were cheering for someone who had beaten the crap out of them before, a year or something ago. They’d even demolished a couple houses used as meth labs during the fight, helping Mr. Hill get paid twice. Thrice, actually; the local neighborhood association gave him a bonus, too.

Attuma was trying to use superior speed underwater to deal with Mr. Hill, who was stolidly applying Piston Punches to him with water-shaking effects. There were plenty of waves erupting out there in the Bay and radiating out, only to be soothed by Flux casually so as not to swamp anything along the shore. Atlantean ships on the waves were rocking excitedly, but it didn’t disturb the soldiers at all.

I, of course, was not worried at all. I knew how strong his Ring was against water-dwellers.

“Hey, hey, share that feed, lightning lass!” Stark called out, and I ignored him. “Uh, Dyna-girl, right? We want to see, too!”

Well, he didn’t call me Electra-woman... “One million dollars for the rights!” I replied without looking at him. I was sure he was gawking at me from inside his armor as the teens cheered a crashing impact that sent water exploding a hundred feet into the air a quarter-mile offshore.

The other heroes around tried to hide their smiles as Iron Man froze, calculated how much he could make reselling the footage to the media, and shouted, “Sold!”

A few seconds later his chest projector was projecting a holographic display for everyone around to look at, much bigger than mine, and I was a million dollars richer.

He was wondering who was paying Mr. Hill for this fight? He was!

Atlantean strength was founded on water magic, and Mr. Hill had been securing a lot of platinum to Burn into his Ring, having decided on that rather than just a pair of boots. He didn’t need to breathe, but the maneuverability in water and the Elemental Command power of his Ring against aquatic and hydrous foes was devastating. He was really giving it to the Atlantean warlord, who was totally unprepared for a surface worlder as nasty and powerful as The Mountain... and so unexpectedly tough in the water!

Still, Attuma had a lot of endurance, especially in the water, and actually managed to take those hits for almost five minutes before Mr. Hill managed to give him a blow to the solar plexus, grab his arm before he could be knocked away, slam him into the ground, anchor himself with heavyfoot and the Ring, and then proceed to Piston Punch like some sort of crazed automaton. He slammed the Atlantean down into the slimy seabed with blows so strong the muck was forced away by the impact, driving the waters back and away and onto the surface as the rolling tempo of the hits generated bigger and bigger waves.

The big blue hands trying to batter at him fell away as the punches exploded into the gaps, too fast for Attuma to block. Embedded two feet deep into the stone beneath the slime, Warlord Attuma’s body relaxed as Mister Hill held up one more fist, fully capable of crushing the guy’s head if he wanted to.

Instead, he grabbed Attuma’s belt and powered for the surface, ignoring the crashing waters rebounding in as he cut through them like air, bursting out, up, and landing down on the water’s surface with the Warlord in his hand, carrying him like a sack of meat.

A wave of defeat went through the Atlanteans on seeing that, especially as Mr. Hill strode across the water as if he owned the world... and he wasn’t even wet.

Lady Sersi floated down next to him. “Are there any who disbelieve who is the winner of this contest of champions?” she called out formally, and there were some murmurs from the prouder Atlanteans, who shut up when The Mountain idly turned his eyes their way.

A wave of her hand returned his trench coat to him so he could look even cooler, too.

“Then I declare the terms of this contest to be in the favor of The Mountain! The Atlanteans will withdraw from the shores of these United States and not resume aggressions for at least a year and a day. Furthermore, they shall pay reparations for the damage done to the surface-dwellers of New York by their attack this day!”

Mr. Hill tossed a glance over my way, and I popped volts between thumb and pinkie. He dunked Attuma into the water patiently, crouching down out there and playing the unconscious warlord back and forth patiently.

True enough to his constitution, the Atlantean managed to wake up, and if Attuma was a little groggy and stiff, he cleared his head up quickly enough when Mr. Hill lifted him out of the water there off-shore.

“You...you are standing on the water?” the warlord blurted out in confusion, blinking at The Mountain.

“Observant, ain’t you. You lost, by the way.” Mr. Hill looked at him with his stony face and cold gray eyes. “Now, I dunno ‘bout you, but there’s a lot of metal and machinery of yours that got trashed on land here. I’m pretty sure that you don’t want the Murican military to get its hands on it, which I’m sure they are raring to do. How much are you willing to pay for me to haul it all back here and toss it in the drink so you can drag it away?”

The mercenary’s eyes met those of the warlord he had just beaten, and the latter realized he was going to pay the surface dweller who had just pounded him to a pulp a great deal of money. Ignoring his swelling face and cracked ribs, he grumbled, “How much are you asking?”

---------

Later...

“Namor popped up?” I asked archly, passing a couple new Mountain’s Heart bottles to Mr. Hill and Grimm, while Marko got a local house brew he fancied, and Master Wong a mug of some herbal tea with kick to it. He took a sip, his eyebrows went up, and he toasted me with a smile.

“Apparently he wuz watching from offshore as all this developed.” Grimm tossed one back, and smacked his lips with clapping sounds, him and Hill clinking their double-size bottles.

It had been a long day, but a very profitable one. Not only had Mr. Hill gotten a fat fee for ‘garbage disposal’ of the Atlantean equipment, he had leveraged an ‘employment fee’, with scores of ‘quickly hired’ Atlanteans ditching their battle armor to hastily aid in the dismantling and removal of their own crushed and battered vehicles and equipment.

He’d happily shared the good pay with any Powered who wanted to pitch in, and the superstrong members had happily done so, earning themselves some fat money on the Atlantean dime as they helped stack up and tote away a lot of expensive, heavy Atlantean stuff. Grimm and Hill had then very delightfully thrown it all far out into Hudson Bay for the Atlanteans to haul away.