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Episode 2 part 2:"Is Black Mentis losing ?
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New rifts tore open in the sky and vomited Nightstalkers onto the pavement—skinny black things with claws that screeched across the asphalt. Dreadnoughts smashed straight through storefronts, each step punching cracks through the sidewalks and shaking loose bricks from the buildings that were still standing. Bloodfire Wraiths shot overhead in streaks of orange and red, dropping fire that swallowed whole blocks in seconds.
Mentis slammed his fist across Megalodon's jaw. The hit sent the demon king tumbling through the air like a meteor. Megalodon twisted mid-spin, planted his feet on nothing, and leveled a finger downward.
Megalodon: "Nightmares—finish off these fodders below me!"
The ground quaked as the demons obeyed.
Juggernaut bellowed, locked in a rage, swinging both arms like wrecking balls. Each punch shattered a Dreadnought's skull or caved its ribcage inward.
Juggernaut: "How do you like being tossed around—huh?! Trash!"
He ripped a demon's face clean off—skin peeling back like wet cloth—and kicked another so hard its spine jutted out its back. But for every corpse he left on the ground, two more piled onto him. One massive claw tore through his chest, ripping skin, muscle, and armor in one swipe.
Juggernaut staggered, coughing blood. "Jeez… th—there's no…end to…them."
Another pack—ten strong—charged him. He raised his arms, but they swarmed him, dragging him down under the weight of their bodies.
Juggernaut: "Damn it—wait—AAAGH—!"
They buried him alive beneath claws and jaws.
A Nightstalker lunged; he was already somewhere else, shoulder dipping, boots skidding sideways across broken glass. Another swung a claw where his head had been a heartbeat earlier—he was low now, blade whipping up in a tight arc that opened the thing from groin to throat before it finished the swing. He never seemed to look where he was going, eyes flicking to spots that were still empty, cutting into space that hadn't been attacked yet. Every kill happened in the half-second before the enemy even decided to move.
People in the crowd didn't see him pass so much as feel the air change, like someone had fast-forwarded a piece of the fight and left the rest of us behind.
Rewinder: "Stay down, freaks! Hold on, Juggernaut—I'm rewinding you out of there—"
He shaped a bubble of warped time around Juggernaut's corpse.
But Megalodon flicked two fingers while trading blows with Mentis.
Megalodon: "Time manipulation isn't allowed in my presence."
The bubble shattered like glass—its pieces dissolving—and Juggernaut stayed dead on the ground, eyes glassy, chest split open.
Rewinder froze.
Rewinder: "W…what are you? H-How did you cancel my abil—"
A mistake. His eyes left the battlefield.
Mentis barked: "Eyes forward, idiot! Never turn your back on the enemy!"
Too late.
Nightstalker tendrils coiled up Rewinder's legs, arms, and torso, pinning him mid-air. He thrashed, screaming as the shadows tightened, crushing bone.
Rewinder: "A-ah—shit—s-stop—! It… hurts—!"
A demon's claw speared through his stomach, then another hooked under his ribs.
The Nightstalker ripped him sideways.
His body tore in two—spine snapping, organs slipping out like wet ropes. His upper half hit the pavement with a splat, eyes still twitching, while his lower half was thrown like garbage into burning wreckage.
Blood sprayed across several heroes' faces.
Hydroblast stumbled back, voice breaking.
Hydroblast: "NO! F-fuck—Rewinder—! We lost our trump card! We need to retreat—we need to regroup!"
Mindstorm's jaw clenched so tight the muscle twitched. Sweat slid down his face. His eyes were wide, staring at nothing. His hands shook until he balled them into fists, nails cutting into his palms just to make the shaking stop.
Mindstorm: "We fall back there—" (points to two broken highways collapsing into one another) "—we can flank both sides! Move!"
Arsenal slammed a fresh magazine into his rifle. His armor hissed from overheating.
Arsenal: "Retreat?! Over my dead body! After what they just did?! Not a chance!"
Frostbite wiped blood from her lips, eyes glowing an unstable icy blue as frost crawled up her arms.
Frostbite: "They want a fight? I'll give these bastards a damn blizzard!"
Mindstorm's powers spiked—blood dripping from his nose as he ripped dozens of demons up, smashing them against each other so hard bones sprayed across the air. He used the blood pooling at his feet, shaping it into hardened spikes and launching them into more demons.
Mindstorm: "This is for Juggernaut!" He skewered five demons at once.
"And THIS—"
Spikes erupted through another cluster—
"—is for Rewinder!"
:"C'mon let's run for it!'
Rock-man slammed both fists into the ground, the earth split open swallowing demons whole, crushing others between collapsing slabs of concrete.
His chest heaving, voice raw and South-Side thick:
"Man, these muh'fuckas just keep comin'! We done dropped hundreds—hundreds, bruh—and they still pourin' out like roaches! I'm runnin' on fumes, fam… my core damn near dust!"
He stumbled back, leaning on a half-standing wall, clutching his chest as dust rolled off his cracked stone shoulder.
But the battlefield didn't slow.
Screams kept cutting through the smoke, thin and sharp, somewhere under all the rubble. You couldn't tell anymore which bodies on the ground had been people and which had been demons; everything was just meat and broken armor baking in the heat.
Higher up, the real fight hadn't started yet, but the air already felt wrong.
Mentis and Megalodon stood thirty feet apart on a stretch of busted street. Neither one moved. Neither one blinked. The only sound was the low crackle of fires and the wind hissing through rebar.
Then the loose gravel between them started to lift. Chunks of concrete the size of fists rose an inch, wobbled, rose higher. A twisted street sign rattled, bent upward like something was pulling it into the sky. Even the flames leaned toward the two of them, stretching sideways instead of up.
Ash drifted slow-motion through that dead space, hanging instead of falling.
Both men's shadows stretched too far, blacker than they should've been, crawling across the ground like they were trying to reach each other first.
Nobody spoke. Nobody had to.
The whole block felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for one of them to throw the first punch and finish breaking the city.
Black Mentis wiped blood off his nose with his thumb. His breathing hitched—subtle, but wrong.
Mentis (thinking): "Something's off… my powers aren't responding the way they should… Why the hell does it feel like I'm fighting in someone's else's damn body?"
He didn't get to finish the thought.
Megalodon vanished—pure afterimage.
He reappeared on Mentis's left, fist already sinking into his ribs.
CRACK—
The street buckled first—just a low groan under their feet—then the whole stretch collapsed inward. Buildings on both sides gave out at once, floors folding, walls dropping, dust pushing out in a thick wave. Windows blew apart, shards scattering across the road.
Mentis shot back from the impact, scraping across the ruined pavement. His boots tore into the softened asphalt, slowing him just long enough for him to push off again.
He caught his balance, shoulders tight, breath sharp. Then he drove forward, aura burning hot around him.
His fist slammed into Megalodon's torso.
The hit cracked the air open.
BOOOOOOM—
The city's center exploded outward. Dozens of blocks vaporized in a blinding blast. Cars melted. Buildings disintegrated. A crater swallowed a quarter of the district.
Megalodon hurtled through several layers of dimensions—his body distorting as the sky cracked like broken glass around him.
Reality stitched itself back together in jagged pulses.
Then—
He appeared behind Mentis.
With a low chuckle, he drove both fists into Mentis's stomach.
SPLURCH—
Mentis folded around the blow, blood spraying from his mouth in a long arc. His body smashed into a skyscraper, caving half of it inward, walls collapsing over him.
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