Laying on the ground with Maximal’s hands crushing my throat gave me plenty of time to reflect on the big important questions of life. Things like, why wasn’t anyone helping? And, how come he jumped after me and not Hickory?

That redneck bastard had practically been Maximal’s mortal enemy back in the day. Hell, the three of us had met at their big and fateful showdown. At that point, I’d just been collateral damage. So why me and not him?

Guess I’m just the bigger monument to his sins, I thought.

I was a reminder that you couldn’t just go around tackling innocent gas station clerks to their fiery death without it coming back to bite you in the ass. Not even when it’s for the greater good. Something which put a major dent in his complex.

Absently, I realized that Hickory was holding everybody back on my side, and Ironbolt was disinterested. So, it was just me in this fight. Which meant I had to step it up a notch.

Without thinking, I felt a shift take place in my biology. My respiratory system switched gears, and I could feel new air flow into my lungs. Only this time, it had come in through strategically opened holes along my collarbone. Thus, Maximal’s strangulation was rendered completely ineffective by my design's redundancies.

Furthermore, my materials science had come a long way, and I was lucky that my spine was reinforced enough that he couldn’t just pull it straight out. My head was anchored firmly to my neck, and I stared him down calmly as he raged on, despite the pain. In terms of my own strength, though, I had no hope of throwing him off me. I was married to the asphalt with his weight on mine. All the clever biology in the world couldn't trump his Power at raw muscle, apparently.

After about a solid minute of him attempting to strangle me in the face of my cold gaze, he got fed up and chucked my body across the street. I impacted through a concrete wall there and came to settle within the dark interior of the building. Just chilling, until I stumbled out to see that he’d moved on to the Southerner.

Now it was my turn to sit back and watch while my throat repaired itself.

Hickory was standing over Maximal with his hands on his hips. “You were just jealous the kid beat you to it, huh? You knew fire wouldn’t have done the job alone.”

“Shut up!” Maximal bellowed. He threw three consecutive punches, and each whiffed the target. Even still, I could feel the air pressure shift from where I was standing across the street. He bumped the table as he was turning and it went flying away, forcing Ironbolt to swiftly step back.

Daniel and the rest came to stand by me, feeling rather awkward, I could tell. “We know that guy. Hickory and I,” I explained, voice hoarse. “It’s a long story.” Well, not that long.

“I gathered as much,” Foci said. “Seems like bad blood for sure.”

“What do you think you’re gonna achieve, old man?” Hickory taunted.

“Nothing.” Maximal grunted. His next swing was a faint, and he caught his opponent straight in the head as they dodged the wrong way, sending them tumbling at Mach speed across the asphalt. “Nothing but that.”

“You know we’re immortal, right?” I asked over the distance.

Maximal just stood up a little straighter and oriented back towards me. “He’s back from the dead, so that much is obvious. But I know that, ultimately, both of you are just men.” He gestured to the plume of smoke where Hickory was buried in the rubble. “And force is all we need to deal with men.”

Of course, he'd say that. “Might be a little hard,” I suggested, shrugging. “But I think you’re probably going to have to find that out for yourself, at this point. You’re stubborn like that.”

Ironbolt was still sustaining the strange blue aura around himself, and I could see that it was fatiguing him. “They’re right, Maximal,” he said. “This is a waste of time. We shouldn’t stay here. We have to prepare both of our sides for war.”

In all the confusion, I almost hadn’t noticed that both the black suit Seraph goons had vanished into thin air. No doubt to send their message back to the boss. Quite spooky.

“I’m not done yet!” Maximal yelled just as a dark blur came launching out of the rubble and took him in the opposite direction. Hickory had completely bodied him.

While they went on fighting, I walked up to Ironbolt and extended my hand. “It may be a little circular, but may the best man win.” I really did appreciate his integrity. Even if I thought he would lose in the end.

Yet, he knocked my hand aside. “This isn’t a game, Walter. We’re talking about global genocide, here. You’re so far out of touch at this point that I don’t know what else to say. Go to hell, maybe?”

I laughed. “Spicy.” At least, I tried to maintain a sense of humor. But my smile quickly faltered. Little by little, I had to admit to myself. I was riding too close to the sun with this much power. I was full of myself right now, and it felt dishonest. Like putting on a mask of certainty. “Yeah…” I nodded. “Maybe so. But things are on a set path, so why bitch about it?”

For a moment, I actually saw anger flash across Ironbolt’s face. Something which had to be intense to get through his filters. “Have you considered that there’s a third option?”

I thought about it, looking to the sky while the heavy cracks of unstoppable fists hitting immovable faces sounded in the background. “I’m always a fan of breaking down dichotomies,” I said. “Courage is doubting oneself, of course. And not in a cursory way. But in a way that really hurts. God, I'm pretentious...”

“And?” Ironbolt lead me to continue.

“And I just don’t see it.” I looked him square in the eyes, knowing the implications of my commitment. The horror of it all. “From my perspective, there are only two ways forward. If I simply helped you bring down Seraph, it would only be a matter of time until someone else took up their cause to enslave the world. Ultimately, I don’t think the Logician succeeded. I think human power, including human Superpower, is completely subjugated with time by bureaucracy. That’s what the technological society does. It encompasses everything. It makes it false and weak so that it’s predictable and safe. And I won’t stand by or go my own way while that happens. I want to see it ended with some damn finality.”

"And what if it comes back? Will you keep people locked in the stone age?"

"I figure I'll just sit around and wait until that happens. Then I'll step in again."

Ironbolt was first to break our staring contest. He checked back on Maximal, who had just fallen behind in the fight. He was on the ground and Hickory was pummeling him. Blood was splattering the concrete with every mean hook.

Well, I thought, I guess that answers who would have won that night if not for me.

“That’s enough!” Ironbolt shouted. He zoomed across the street and kicked Hickory off through a spark of lightning. The surprise had been enough to knock the villain off guard, but I doubted Ironbolt could get away with it twice.

So, I joined him in calling for the fight’s end. “Let’s not do this right now,” I said.

Hickory was beaten and bruised, but there was no accounting for all the benefits his new design granted him. Perhaps this fight hadn’t been as conclusive as I first thought as to who was really stronger. My suspicion was made all the more obvious by the visible split in Hickory’s skull which seemingly caused no problems for him. Something which I hadn’t noticed at first.

Up above, that great big mushroom in the sky was still dormant. Dawn had a lot to think over, so I wouldn’t hold her treachery against her. Truth be told, I had no intention of delivering on the promise I had made to subject them all to hell. It was merely a motivating lie. Much like I considered the idea of hell itself.

“Oh well,” I sighed. I patted Hickory on the shoulder as he regrouped with us.

He was feeling the split in his scalp and looking for blood which wasn’t there as he commented. “You know I ain’t finished with him.”

“Another time,” I repeated.

“So you say. But I bet he doesn’t make it that long once the war starts.”

“Frankly, I doubt we’ll make it that long. They’ve probably decimated our forces back in the forest. The ones up in orbit should be faring better, but not by much.”

“What do we do?”

“I say we throw down. Our backups can deal with capturing all the countless secondary targets when they get here. And by secondary targets, I mean everything which isn’t the North Pole.”

Hickory felt the urge to push the gash closed, and I watched as it knitted together. “Well shit,” he said. “My crew was never one to procrastinate on the big prize. Might as well go straight for it.”

“There are two armies in our way,” I reminded him. “So we should be sure before we throw ourselves straight at the end goal.”

“What’s our alternative? Anywhere we thoroughly capture which ain’t their own damn house they’ll just nuke it to ashes. We need a target they can’t afford to Glass. And I don’t think we’ll make it ‘cross the Atlantic if we try.”

“No. America is off the table,” I agreed.

“So North it is. To the Iron Keep.”

“Yes.”

Hickory chuckled. “I always wanted to take on a King. I won’t lie, it pissed me off that I wasn’t good enough to be one.”

“I can imagine,” I said. As I watched, Maximal and Ironbolt went their separate ways without ceremony or goodbye. The meeting was now officially adjourned and there were no niceties in a war of extermination. Yet, my own side loitered in the street, talking. We claimed this territory as our own, so to speak. “To be someone who knows about the importance of Power, you’ve got to live with the fact that yours will always be limited, huh?” I said to Hickory.

He almost started talking before I had finished, he was so excited to hear me say that. “Precisely, boy! But we’re all cut from God’s cloth, in the end. See, that’s why I always believed. There’s got to be the biggest kid on the block. The man who smites is the man who sets the rules.”

Guess that explained why he wasn’t just an Atheist, as I had suggested before. He was too illiberal to doubt the existence of a cosmic judge.

Daniel was getting antsy with all this idle chat. I knew that he’d grown up in the Favella. A place where you didn’t just wait around in the bad parts of town. Trouble would come to you if you did. “Shouldn’t we be moving on?” he asked.

“Foci?” I passed the question.

“Something fuzzy,” the old gringo nodded. “A big threat, maybe. It’s too far away for me to give you an exact time, but it’s casting one big shadow if you know what I mean.”

“Indeed.” I gestured back to the ship.

“And where we gonna fly to? It’s damn certain they bombed our forces. Hell, Creep’s gonna be pissed if Sol bit the shit before he even got to fight,” Hickory chuckled.

“I suspect that he’s more impressive than we give him credit for. Besides, if they’re all just dead then we’ve got nowhere left to go. Might as well go check before we try to solo the whole damn planet by ourselves,” I said.

Everyone agreed and we boarded our ship once again. Dawn remained silent and motionless as we took off for the horizon, hoping that our forces remained.

For better or worse, the fight was in motion now. And, even though it had been a slapping contest, the first blood had been drawn.

What a way to mark the world’s ending.