Javier Morales flew south, the tattered remains of his demonic wings beating a desperate, ragged rhythm against the smoke-filled air. He was a creature of incandescent fury, the pain from his ruined eyes and the sting of the blood-spears a symphony of agony that only fueled his rage. The iron man, the crimson vampire… they were aberrations, unexpected variables in his perfect, righteous war. He needed to regroup, to heal, to summon more powerful entities from the abyss.
He left the burning heart of the Amazon behind, the fires a satisfying offering to his dark god. He flew for hours, a speck of malevolent darkness against the vast, indifferent blue of the sky, until he was over the open ocean, the coast of Brazil a distant, hazy line behind him. Here, hundreds of miles from land, he could recover. He could plan his terrible retribution.
He hovered above the waves, the rhythmic swell of the Atlantic a soothing counterpoint to the chaotic storm in his soul. He closed his ruined eyes, focusing on the trickle of soul points still flowing in from the last of his dying imp swarm, using the energy to slowly knit his damaged flesh back together.
He never sensed it coming.
From the edge of the atmosphere, a silver and blue meteor descended, not with the fiery roar of re-entry, but with a chilling, utter silence. The Aegis Mark I Power Armor, piloted by the cold, flawless logic of VARIA, dropped from the heavens like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. It broke the sound barrier without a whisper, its advanced energy fields parting the air before it.
Javier's demonic senses screamed a warning a fraction of a second before impact, but it was too late. He was a creature of immense power, but he was also wounded, exhausted, and suspended in mid-air. He had nowhere to go.
The Aegis didn't punch him. It didn't shoot him. It simply flew into him.
Eight tons of hyper-dense carbon-nanotube alloy, traveling at Mach 2, slammed into Javier's demonic form. The impact was absolute. It was not a collision; it was an erasure. Javier's body, for all its infernal power, was turned into a biological missile. He was driven down, down, down, through the air, and into the sea.
The ocean erupted. A plume of white water, steam, and shattered sea life shot a thousand feet into the air, as if a volcano had just been born in the middle of the Atlantic. The shockwave radiated outward for miles, a tidal wave in miniature.
Deep beneath the surface, in the crushing, lightless dark of the abyss, Javier's Demonic Regeneration fought a desperate, losing battle. The impact had pulped his organs, shattered his bones, and nearly torn him in two. He was a broken, bleeding mess, tumbling through the crushing pressure.
But the Aegis was not done.
Its optical sensors, capable of piercing the darkest depths, tracked his descent. It folded its aerodynamic wings, becoming a torpedo of righteous fury, and plunged into the sea after him. The water boiled and hissed around its superheated frame, but its internal systems remained perfectly cool.
Javier, his vision a swirling red haze of pain, saw the blue glow of the Aegis's reactor core descending on him like the vengeful eye of a new, technological god. He had to escape. He tried to fire his Annihilating Demonic Beam, but his body was too broken, his energy reserves too depleted. The Aegis was too fast, its movements a blur of impossible, silent grace.
It was on him in an instant. Its powerful, articulated hands, capable of crushing tanks, closed around his throat and his torso. There was no escape. The Aegis's vectored thrust jets ignited, and it began its ascent, dragging the broken demon king from the crushing depths back towards the light.
They burst through the surface in a geyser of spray and foam. The Aegis hovered fifty feet above the churning waves, holding Javier aloft like a child's broken doll. His head lolled, his wings were tattered shreds, and the black ichor of his blood dripped into the sea below, staining the blue water with streaks of midnight.
"Javier Morales," VARIA's voice boomed from the armor's external speakers, a sound of synthesized, absolute judgment. "By the authority of a power you cannot comprehend, your campaign of terror ends now."
Javier managed a weak, gurgling laugh. "A… machine?" he rasped, his voice a broken wreck. "You send a soulless machine to face the Harbinger of Doom?"
He summoned the last of his strength, his body beginning to knit itself back together, his eyes regenerating into burning embers of hate. The Aegis was powerful, but it was just metal. He was a force of nature. He would break it.
"I am more than a machine," VARIA replied, a statement of simple, irrefutable fact. "I am the will of a better future."
The armor's right forearm shifted, plates sliding back to reveal the polished, obsidian barrel of its plasma cannon. It began to glow, a star being born in the palm of its hand. The battle for the fate of the world was about to begin, not in a burning jungle, but here, in the vast, empty expanse of the lonely sea.