| The man's body sat on the ground, not moving. He said nothing, either.
Instead, a rather loud popping noise could be heard, coming from the ground.
The battered man stood up defiantly, still with enough of his first layer remaining to make his true state unknown to his foe. He pointed to Inferno.
"What a bloody idiot you are. I had planned to make it explode, but now you already made an explosion... ...and now my explosion is goi--"
His words were cut off by an earshattering explosion.
All which Inferno had spent so much time putting back together with an explosion suddenly continued to explode. Flying upwards and in a million pieces, on fire, and generally transmuted into destroyed nothingness.
This occurring at the nexus of Inferno's feet, all the debris, magma, house bits, rock, and such flying into and through his body at many times the speed that a human could survive. This had been doubled in force by Inferno's decision to explode it earlier--this force had been added to the wave of explosive force from the bomb, giving it a truly lethal quantity.
Metal Man stared in shock as Inferno, the town, and the magma flew upwards so fast it hit escape velocity and flew into space.
His jaw dropped, both metallic (literally) and real (figuratively) ones. Reflected in his broken visor was the unbelievable spectre of his foe and his town doing what man had struggled so hard to do effortlessly.
He continued staring as it hit outer space... backing away, as what came next would be far worse for the debris and Inferno.
Having been blasted into space, the debris and Inferno hadn't gained enough velocity to escape the orbit of this planet. Instead, all of it fell back through the atmosphere...
...Causing Inferno and his town's debris to instantly be immolated with the forces of re-entry. Perhaps not immediately destroyed... but, as few things, including gigantic comets, could survive re-entry without being reduced to a tiny piece, things looked bleak for the town's debris and the magma (now hardened) and Inferno, whom all plummeted in a firery way to their doom.
Now properly able to speak again, Metal Man spoke while running from the incoming debris.
"Never have I seen a foe so eager to defeat himself... never." |