The New Delhi street bristled with activity. Many were showing off their goods. Clothing of rich color flapped gently in the wind. Huge pots of any and every kind of cuisine were scattered about. The air smelled delicious. Patrons lazily wandered between stalls, stopping occasionally to view what was for sale. The mild breeze provided a pleasant air to the otherwise hot day.

Off to the side, Ace Sando stood in the shadows. He casually and coolly eyed the scene. He was mostly covered by his favorite black trench coat. He liked it because it could fit the last five issues of his favorite manga while still having ample room for all the bras that thirsty women threw at him. There were two katanas sheathed on his back, each was sharper than the other.

The crimson bandana wrapped around his neck was emblazoned with a silver skull. The reverse featured his seasonal waifu, partially for good luck, but mostly because the other waifus were shit. At any given time, he had no less than three cigarettes in his mouth. With precise lip movements, Ace could smoke any combination or permutation of them. He adjusted his headwear, a stylish black fedora, as he scanned the crowd. Several minutes passed where nothing happened. Then, something happened.

“It looks like I will meet you sooner than expected,” Ace observed as he turned to face his adversary.

The man standing before him was named Neanderthal, and looked true to his name. The majority of his face was covered by unkempt jet black hair. What was visible of his stocky face was so dirty that no simple wash would have any effect. His body was haphazardly covered in large strips of leather. None of the colors matched. Someone once jokingly asked if he had just beaten some cows to death and stapled their hides together. He had. Then he beat the person who had asked.

The most striking feature of him were the massive stone gauntlets he wore. Being large on his already massive hands, the gauntlets nearly touched the ground. They looked to be carved from a solid piece of mountain, and were rough and covered in uneven facets. Neanderthal had made them himself, pulverizing the Himalayas with his bare hands until nothing but the shaped gauntlets remained. He didn’t really need the gauntlets, but he liked them because they were cool.

What followed was a stare down. On one side was the man in black. On the other was the dirty man who looked as if Hagrid and Dwayne Johnson had a mutant love child. After nearly 15 seconds, Neanderthal spoke.

“I warned that I would kill any who came after me.”

He spoke in a business-like tone, in sharp contrast to his gruff appearance.

“For that to be a threat, you would need to be threatening,” Ace said. Neanderthal scowled.

“I have decided that I am going to wipe you out now,” he said, as he raised his fist.

Neanderthal struck, but not at Ace. Ace didn’t even need to move.

Neanderthal had pounded the ground beneath him. His gauntlet was now embedded nearly halfway into the ground. There was a booming echo, as the ground briefly shook.

The crowd had stopped talking, and now watched the scene with deathly silence. Long seconds passed. There was a sound of grating stone, as if a massive key was turning a lock. Neanderthal’s gauntlet sunk several more inches into the ground. In an instant, cracks spiderwebbed in every direction. These crawled across every surface and every building. Most people were now backing away as quickly as they could, stopping only briefly to collect their precious goods. The cracks widened slightly, followed by the hiss of steam.

“You're fired!” Neanderthal boomed.

Then the lava erupted. The lucky ones were vaporized instantly, not even feeling pain before they ceased to exist. The unlucky ones could only watch as their flesh melted before their eyes. Fountains of lava spewed 50 feet in the air in random directions. Every surface was covered in the molten material, barely maintaining the slightest trace of its former shape. Thick black smoke billowed from the lava’s contact, choking the area. It was as if the street was a Hell on Earth, but it was not. This was hotter than Hell. Despite this, Ace avoided any harm.

Ace slowly pulled out a cigarette, and bent down to light it on an exposed patch of lava. He then stuck it in his mouth next to the other three. Neanderthal looked up. It was obvious that he was a bit annoyed that his attack had no effect. He raised his second hand, to perform the attack again, but Ace was too fast. Before Neanderthal could even think about blinking, Ace had teleported behind him.

“Looks like you’re the one who’s about to be fired!” Ace quipped as he struck with an infinite power punch.

The strike was equal to that of The Big Bang. Not the cosmological event, but rather the more powerful, 2007 American sitcom ‘The Big Bang Theory’. As the impact reduced Neanderthal to a salsa-like splattering of gore, a faint ‘Bazinga’ could be heard somewhere off in the distance. Neanderthal’s coat and gauntlets fell to the ground, with no forward momentum whatsoever. Ace began to brush a small chunk of flesh off his knuckles. He eyed the melted buildings and charred corpses. Then he heard something.

“An attack so insignificant could not defeat me,” the unmistakable voice of Neanderthal said.

Ace looked around. He could not see where the voice was coming from with the smoke in the air. He waited. Every so slowly, the smoke cleared. By the time he realized where Neanderthal was, he was surrounded.

“So that’s where you went,” Ace said. In the chaos, he had not noticed a large number of stone statues circling him. Nearly one hundred now looked directly at him, featuring sinister carved faces that leaked lava from their mouths. Neanderthal had managed to transfer his consciousness to stone around him before Ace had delivered the final blow.

“It seems that you are becoming boulder.” Ace commented. Neanderthal then spoke, making the voice of each and every statue his own.

“I am also a force of cataclysmic change,” the statues said slightly out of sync, giving Neanderthal’s voice a warbled, resonating tone. “Behold my power.” the stone figures said as they trembled.

In an instant, each statue exploded into ribbons of flesh. Much more flesh than the statues should hold, which is none. Soaring upwards, the ribbons combined, wrapping through and around each other. Shapes formed. Limbs. Teeth. The last few ribbons snapped into place, and the result was clear. Where previously there were statues, now stood 10 massive stone golems in the shape of grotesque, vaguely humanoid shapes. Pulsating flesh was visible between the cracks of the golems. All opened their mouths towards Ace, and vomited lava towards him from every direction.

“Now, I bid you fire-well!” Neanderthal said. The torrent closed in, overwhelming all of Sando’’s senses with its caustic heat.

“What’s that awful scent? It seems like I took my sense of smell for granite!” Sando said. “I guess I’ll have to get a little sear-ious.” He gripped a blade on his back, and unsheathed it. He put it back. “Backwards Nullification Sheath!” Ace shouted in a cool manner. This was one of Ace’s unique magic powers.

With a quick move, Ace completely and utterly nullified Neanderthal. Not only did he nullify Neanderthal, he also nullified any attack Neanderthal had made previously. Just like that, every local citizen that had died in the lava attack reappeared, having never actually died. All traces of lava were gone, and the ground and buildings and ground were intact. In fact, Ace nullified any attack that was even tangentially related to Neanderthal. The pile of leather that was once Neanderthal’s coat was now three perfectly healthy cows. Several hundred miles away, geologists were baffled by the sudden reappearance of a mountain that had disappeared years earlier. In a different country, a man who had been bullied in middle school by Neanderthal noticed the scar on his nose disappear.

The newly reconstituted people stumbled around, not sure what just happened. A few observant ones were surprised by the sudden appearance of the cows in the middle of the street, but most didn’t see. Noticing the silence, savvy individuals began to market their wares as loud as they could. Mere moments later, the street resumed business as usual, as if nothing had happened.

“Heh, not a bad warm up.” Ace Sando said. “But now I want to go fight someone who can really put the heat on me.” He lit and stuck a fifth cigarette into his mouth.