With that, Kabe hoisted Racer up with one hand and casually tossed him off the edge like a piece of garbage. But that gentle looking toss sent Racer sailing nearly a thousand meters through the air in a perfect arc, as though he'd been fired from a launcher. At that height and distance, even without Natsu or Gray lifting a finger against him, the guy was in for one hell of a landing.
So Kabe spread his hands and said to the remaining two, almost fatherly:
"See that? A fall like that will probably cost you half your life. So for your own good, why don't you make yourselves scarce before I have to get rough."
Cobra swallowed hard and turned to look at Hoteye beside him. Hoteye, with his square jawed face and burly build, had none of the nerve one might expect from someone his size. Cobra quickly looked past him to Midnight on his other side.
In terms of raw strength, Midnight was the strongest of the three. Not only had he learned Brain's dark magic, he also commanded a powerful spatial magic called Reflector, capable of bending or deflecting any object, even spells themselves. In terms of standing, Midnight was also the one Brain had personally taken under his wing, thinking of Brain as a father figure and serving as second in command among the Six Demon Generals. Even so, when it came to Kabe, he had absolutely no confidence at all. His Reflector wasn't invincible either. Brain himself could break through it with sheer overwhelming strength, and Midnight had no doubt Kabe possessed that same kind of power.
After several seconds of silent thought, Midnight settled himself back onto his flying carpet, arms crossed.
"Cobra, Hoteye. Let's go."
With that, ignoring the mix of shock and grudging understanding in his companions' eyes, he closed his eyes and drifted straight back to sleep.
"...A wise choice."
Kabe unclenched his fist with an easy smile and wandered off to the side to inspect the massive thing beneath his feet. Cobra and Hoteye exchanged a glance, reluctant but also unmistakably relieved, and let out a low whistle.
At the sound, a large, dark purple winged serpent slithered out from somewhere unseen and coiled up at his feet. Cobra gently stroked the snake's head, feeling the cool scales of his old companion, and gritted his teeth as he climbed onto its back.
"Cubellios, let's go."
At the same time, Hoteye climbed onto Midnight's flying carpet. As the great serpent Cubellios spread its wings and flew off in the direction Brain and Racer had gone, the carpet carrying the other two proved surprisingly intuitive, staying close behind the serpent all the way.
Kabe watched the three of them and the snake disappear into the distance for a moment before turning his attention back to the massive thing beneath his feet.
"Tch, Nirvana, you ugly thing. Built this hideous, huh. Looking like this, it's hard for me to talk myself into keeping you around as a collector's piece."
Muttering to himself, Kabe hesitated a few times more before finally deciding to destroy it. From start to finish, he'd never once considered using Nirvana to reverse anyone's heart. He wasn't so far gone as to think his current life was going too smoothly and that he needed to crank up the difficulty on himself. What a load of nonsense, a "dark age." Wouldn't that just be asking for trouble? If this world fell into chaos, who'd be left to pay taxes to his queen of a wife and keep him living a life of decadent luxury?
"Every last one of these villain types is a complete idiot. Not one of them has their head screwed on straight."
With that, he shook his head, rose into the air, and aimed himself at the ruined wreckage below, letting a blue white ball of energy begin to gather in his hand.
"Bye bye, octopus freak. Even if an octopus has eight legs and you've only got six."
With that, the energy blast plunged into the heart of the ancient city, then swelled into a blinding white hemisphere hundreds of meters across. Searing white light, along with howling wind and shockwaves, obliterated the entire ancient city in an instant. Even the six mechanical legs came crashing down all at once, as though they'd simply lost all power.
"Two more of those should just about finish it off."
Surveying the damage to Nirvana, Kabe prepared to deliver the final blow. But just as the energy blast was fully formed in his hand and he was about to fire, something bizarre happened. The six mechanical legs planted themselves back into the ground and rose up once more, and the surface at the center of its disc shaped body began repairing itself at a visible speed. The ruined ancient city itself didn't seem to be part of whatever was being restored, but Nirvana itself had come through Kabe's attack completely unscathed, mending itself back to its original form.
"What the hell?! You've got to be kidding me, this thing can regenerate itself? Wait, now that I think about it, wasn't there a part in the original story where Natsu and the others had to team up to destroy Nirvana's core before they could finally stop it?"
He clicked his tongue, unimpressed, and let the energy blast in his hand dissipate. Kabe rose higher into the sky, not stopping until he was nearly at the cloud layer.
"So you can heal, huh. Then I'll just have to smash you into nothing but scraps and see how you manage to fix that."
With that, he twisted his body, pressing his left palm against the back of his right hand. A burst of purple red aura several meters tall erupted from within him. A vast amount of ki surged into his palms, and amid tiny crackles of lightning, it condensed into a swirling ball of deep purple red energy.
"Haaah! Galick Gun!!!"