Already prepared, I opened another hole in his path, this one just big enough for three people to walk through. And they did, or rather fell through. At first it was just one or two bodies at a time which The Destroyer simply batted aside. But then fell three, four, six at a time. A wave of bodies falling like a crashing wave, and pummeling him back to the street below.
Lifting himself from the sea of human flesh, he shouted, "What is this? You're dropping corpses on me now. Did you open a portal to a graveyard?"
Shaking my head as I closed the portal, I said, "Maybe you've forgotten or simply didn't know, but there's more than just this universe to test yourself against. Do you remember the zombie outbreak from a few years ago? I opened a portal to a reality where it spread, uncontrolled and unstopped throughout the planet."
The Destroyer twitched as one of the living corpses broke its teeth on his skin. Grabbing it by the hair, he threw it against a building with strength I'd only seen displayed by The Shield. Before its body could shatter against the wall, however, three more had latched themselves to my foe, uselessly trying to sink their teeth into his skin. "This was a mistake. Another tactic to delay the inevitable," he said, annoyed, as me smashed skulls with ease.
I shook my head again, doing my best to repress the horror I'd just unleashed. "You also made the mistake of leaving some of my friends alive." At that perfect moment, the hand of Extendo wrapped around The Destroyer's throat while his body lifted itself off the ground a block away. Without any bones to break, it took The Destroyer a few minutes to loosen the hero's grip, enough time for an army of regular zombies to bury him up to his shoulders in their rotting flesh. It also gave The Zappp's corpse time to cut a path to the villain, lightning sparking erratically from his body as he sent nearly a billion volts of electricity into The Destroyer.
Over the zombies' endless groans, I heard The Destroyer scream in pain and couldn't help but smile. Electricity doesn't care if you can take ten or twenty or a hundred punches to the face, you're still going to feel it when it enters your body. More and more superpowered zombies rose up to hunt down the lone living body within two city blocks. Guilt found me then, and I rose higher into the air, high enough I could no longer see the faces of the monsters I once called friends.
Even with the zombie horde against him, The Destroyer still managed to push back the tide. A bestial roar cut through the noise, and broken corpses scattered into the air. A sedan crushed Lady Dice. A light pole pierced through a dozen zombies, including the Brothers Wolf and Fox.
Then he was hit by a bus into a storefront, if a bus could travel at mach one. "I knew he wasn't invulnerable everywhere," I said to myself as I watched a zombified Shield smash The Destroyer out the otherside of the building. I also didn't think the superhero could move that fast, but perhaps it was because of the zombie virus coursing through him and nullifying the body's natural limiters. The Destroyer rained down blow after blow onto the zombie, but The Shield no longer felt pain. Only the hunger. That's when The Shield's teeth bit down. Despite his amplified abilities, it still wasn't enough to break The Destroyer's skin. It was enough, however, to crack the bone beneath, a sound I could hear through my suit's honed senses.
Though I would've enjoyed seeing The Destroyer beaten by the man he'd himself beaten just a few minutes earlier, The Shield's speed was taking them both out of the battlefield and into the evacuation zone where more available bodies packed into shelters waiting for the battle to end. Dropping back twenty-feet above the street and the zombie horde below, I activated a sonic beacon and waited. A few seconds later, I heard the sounds of destruction as The Shield made his way back to me, the sonic noise emitted by my suit calling to him. Shutting down the emitter, I launched myself high above the city just as The Shield crashed through another building with The Destroyer still in his hands and mouth.
Above the city once more, I opened another rift large enough to cover the entire area I'd dropped the zombie horde. From it spewed a fire the likes of which this universe had never seen before. The concrete, asphalt, and steel beneath simply liquefied, then evaporated. The tangled mass of undead turned to ash under the immense heat. Even The Shield, my friend transformed into a monster by my own hand, only survived for a second or two before vanishing forever. The Destroyer, no longer restrained, fought his way out of the tower of flames to emerge like a devil from The Pit.
Burnt. Smoldering. Hurt. Exhausted. My enemy looked upon me, his confidence and bravado replaced with a hatred and fury I'd never seen in any opponent I'd faced over the years. "Fires from Hell?"
I shrugged, pausing for a moment to savor the image before me. I thought I might actually win, that perhaps I could do it without Plan Omega. "If Hell is real, I haven't found it yet. That was just the flames of a universe where every single sun exploded at the same time."
Seeing The Destroyer straighten his back and launch himself at me, I knew, once again, I couldn't win. Our fight raged on. Though my best hope was I could fight him to a stalemate and perhaps he'll simply retreat as before, I knew, slowly, I was losing ground. Blow after blow he struck against my armor. I continued opening portal after portal to other realms and realities hoping against all odds that from one might appear something more dangerous than the man seeking to conquer the universe. Openings to planets wrapped with crushing gravity. Tears to a still-forming universe, a swirling chaos storm of battering winds and super-heated lightning. He survived them all and kept on swinging.
Through the pandemonium of battle, I heard the alert blaring in my helmet, and the flashing light in my heads-up display. "Is it finished?" I asked, dodging another punch.
"Sir, all of the machines' limiters have been deactivated, the nexus points are set-up across the city, and the coordinates have been entered. Plan Omega is ready to activate," came the voice of my assistant from my underground laboratory.
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