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Gilgamesh      DENMARK

     The ramparts are new. Walls, built around the city, walls of high steel that stretch around the sprawling urban city, manned with soldiers and turret emplacements. The skyscrapers are topped with similar weapons, like the fortifications of a high castle. The city of Denmark is like a fortress, now, and in its streets the people suffer.

     The people suffer for their King. Wealth unimaginable has flowed into Denmark as freedoms have flowed out of it. The United Nations has called it a humanitarian crisis of the highest order. The EU has condemned it several times, calling it an unprecedented act of aggression. The people bleed as they erect public works through the streets and are worked half to death to go home to prosperity. This is the will of the King of Heroes. His boot is upon the back of the country. Eventually it will be upon the back of the world once more.

     But not today.

     Enkidu's proclamation comes singing out from every plant, every tree, every scrap of grass. The city of Denmark sings like a chorus as Enkidu sings with it, the world echoing a condemnation upon Gilgamesh's head. Even high in the skyscraper he has coopted, Gilgamesh hears it as it sings forth from the potted plants scattered around the office.

     Enkidu.

     Gilgamesh stands from his chair and steps away. He opens the window of the building, dozens of floors up, and simply steps out of it.

     He does not fall. He runs down the building. His black coat trails behind him. His blonde hair whirls about his head. Already people are being evacuated from the city by enforcement, but there is no true safe place. Not now. Not here. Not in this city. Perhaps not in this world.

     Enkidu.

     A single thought whirls throughout his mind as his feet step along vertical glass. Enkidu. Enkidu. Enkidu. It is like the rhythm of a drum, like the rhythm of his steps as he passes shocked officeworkers in mid-evacuation. Enkidu. Enkidu. Enkidu. Enkidu. It is an obsessive thunder in the back of his mind as he sets foot on the ground.

     The King of Heroes runs his fingers through his hair as he walks forward through the city. He says nothing. His eyes are already lit up like red sparks as the beaten-down people flee from him.

     This must happen. This is meant to happen.

     This is a course he has been on since the beginning.

     Of course the gods would reel him back from it.
Enkidu The gods made Gilgamesh for a purpose. He is far from the city of his origin and the place he was meant to rule, displaced in time and space to a land vastly different in so very many ways. He has made the best of it, though, and proclaimed his kingship for all to hear. He has taken this nation and made it a place of riches, raising it up on the backs of the people who must live in it. It is a tyranny in a time when 'tyrant' is a slur and a curse, ruled by a man whose divinity means he cannot be anything but the mightiest and first among them.

And the gods have decided it is time for change.

A figure approaches the fortress-city. It walks barefoot down the road, dressed in plain white and bearing nothing in its hands or on its back. Bright green hair flows long down its back, wind-blown and waving like a banner as they walk towards the walls. Evacuating citizens move past, the fortunate that are already outside the walls of this place giving the stranger a look of wariness and, in some cases, concern. One tries to stop him, reaching out and telling him that he neeeds to turn back, that some sort of disaster is coming.

The stranger takes them by the hand and firmly but carefully presses them back into the column of evacuees. He smiles, faintly, and moves on.

The first sign that Enkidu has reached the city was the declaration from every plant and animal within its walls. It's what set off the evacuation, enacted by a canny Clock Tower representative who knows better than to sit around when those names are being thrown around.

The second is the gates coming down.

The colossal things, impractical in modernity but built into the huge semi-medieval walls nonetheless, are torn from their housing. They fall with a groan and a titanic crash, and scattered gunfire follows in the distance. Gilgamesh can hear the din for a span of moments, and then nothing but the quiet susurrus of the unfortunates who haven't yet gotten clear. If they're not gone by now, they might never make it.

Enkidu stands on the widest thoroughfare through the city. He walks, unimpeded by man or machine, taking quiet, steady steps towards the skyscraper-made-palace at the center of it all. Behind him, the still-settling carnage of the sad few who thought to stop an opponent fit for their King is scattered like a blast wave from the wall. For all its gleaming steel, it hardly even slowed him down.

Gilgamesh, Enkidu thinks. He is an arrow loosed for that man's heart. This is all he is. He will not fail in his purpose.
Gilgamesh      When the gates come down, Gilgamesh is walking towards it, down the center of the street. One hand sits in his swirling coat pocket. One hand lies lazily at his side. The gate falls with a violent crash. Behind it fly the dead who gave their lives pointlessly. The fact that they tried to fight at all made them worth honoring; most would've simply broke and ran, lesser beasts before horrors. As they hit the ground, as their blood and viscera rain down upon the land, Gilgamesh spares them that single thought amidst the whirl of Enkidu thundering in his mind.

     His first look at Enkidu is between two great, shining skyscrapers. The street is bare. Cars lie abandoned. Bikes. The clutter of everyday modern life, halted in an instant. There is not a soul but them. Not a soul but the two who are like gods. Gilgamesh, perfect in every way, beautiful beyond reckoning. Enkidu, perfect in every way, beautiful beyond reckoning. Gilgamesh regards him as he might regard something lowly, something at the bottom of his heel. His lips curl upwards in an irritated sneer. His eyes flicker with red light. He had not been expecting this. He had not been expecting.../this/.

     "Is this a joke?"

     His voice rings outwards, thundering through the city. "You are Enkidu? You are the axe of the gods? You are meant to be my equal? My superior? You are the thing that will bring me to heel?"

     Every word drips with arrogance, but more than that, /contempt/. Utter, unbelievable contempt. His fingers rise to his face. "Ridiculous. Ludicrous. Insane. This is the course the world has set for me? That the thing that is my equal is a lump of clay in the shape of a prostitute? That the thing that is my equal is nothing but mud who has taken the form of a woman?"

     "Be gone."

     The Gate of Babylon opens. Weapons fire out, swords and axes and spears and all manner of things, each magical, each power, each dangerous. They smash against the ground, splitting the street asunder. They tear open the tops of cars, sheering through glass. They shred parking meters that explode with coins. As the King of Heroes looks on distastefully, the Gate moves to crush his opponent with all the contempt he feels, and all the confusion, and all the frustration, and all the anger.
Enkidu Two perfect beings face one another in the heart of a city under siege by its own ruler's designs. The monster from outside has come to fell the monster within.

They do not stand as apparent equals. Gilgamesh is the King of Heroes, the everlasting ruler of the world. He is bedecked in finery wherever he goes, showing his splendor to all who are fortunate enough to gaze upon him. His beauty is magnified by the glory he displays with every breath. Enkidu... Enkidu looks like a woman dressed as a shepherd. There is nothing worn to show comely curves or a strong body; there is nothing adorned to proclaim wealth or power to all who walk before him. Most couldn't even tell that he's a man, if he even is. He isn't even wearing /shoes/, for gods' sakes.

And yet, here he is.

Gilgamesh opens the Gate of Babylon. Enkidu doesn't tense. He was already tensed, a coiled spring, a serpent ready to strike. He lowers his head slightly like a bull prepared to charge. He doesn't answer Gilgamesh's barbs. He murmurs, "Calibrating... now."

Weapons shatter the street around Enkidu. A car next to him gets flipped by a hammer that hits it dead-on; a sword strikes the ground at his feet and detonates like a bomb, scattering pavement like shrapnel. Spears pierce the cloud of dust with ripples in the air, bursts of wind pushed outward that makes the shape of the figure within briefly clear to the King of Heroes as he strikes down this pretender. This cockroach. This... /fake/.

The dust clears. Enkidu still stands. He stands exactly where he had planted his feet before. A lance has been driven through his shoulder, extending all the way to the ground behind him. Rather than pull it out, he leans to the left, tearing it free with a motion as casual as what one might use to pick an errant bit of greens from between their teeth. The wound vanishes in a blink. His tunic repairs itself in short order.

"This is what you call a fight?" Enkidu looks Gilgamesh in the eye. "How nice."

The spring uncoils.

Enkidu is off like a shot. He crosses the space between himself and Gilgamesh so fast he might as well have been strapped to a rocket. Debris tumbles behind him, the flipped car rolling from the shockwave of his approach. He stops directly in front of Gilgamesh, one hand snapping forward with an open palm, the limb quivering faintly maybe a foot from the King of Heroes' royal personage. He doesn't actually make contact. How could he? What could some mongrel like this do to the Ki-

The air around Gilgamesh explodes with a peal of thunder and the crash of a sonic boom. Enkidu /pushes/, but he doesn't even touch him.
Doctor Strange      Doctor Stephen Strange finds it relatively easy to get into Denmark once all of the excitement begins. He arrives just in time to see the pointless loss of life, the rain of gore, blood shed by people killed for doing their jobs. And for what? His scarred hands are clenched into fists, shaking even more than they usually do. Calling them out won't solve things. Getting involved just puts more people into danger.

     He centers himself, takes a deep breath. Thumbs press against forefingers, hands crossed over his chest. He pulls each inward, raising his fingers, making the sign of an opening eye. The Eye of Agamotto unfolds, bathing him in brilliant green light.

     Strange is on the corner of a street. He is in front of an apartment building. He is in the middle of a park. He is all these things in the same point in time, and in each of these places, he is opening portals to safe places outside the city walls, directing any stragglers through. When the last of these people in any given place step through to safety, Strange takes to the sky.

     The Cloak of Levitation billows out behind him as he searches the city for any more in need of evacuation. During his flight, he can be seen vanishing in flashes of green light, traveling back in time to each point he previously appeared to help others.
Gilgamesh      The spear pierces Enkidu. Gilgamesh's laughter rings through the streets. A lump of clay? His equal? Not just absurd but impossible. His laughter is intense, rippling against the steel like mocking music. This was nothing from Anu. This was no weapon worthy of the King. This was nothing but an arrogant mongrel. Less than a mongrel. A lump of dirt. A lump of mud.

     Noth-

     Enkidu lives.

     The lance that struck through Enkidu drove a hole into the earth, splitting the asphalt like a fissure. And yet Enkidu stood, fine, already healing. He tosses the lance to the side and it crashes through a building, then another building, then another building, then the wall, until it finally finds purchase and splits the earth beyond. There is a moment of shock, of a blow to the ego so direct as to stop Gilgamesh in his tracks and leave him speechless before the green-haired beauty.

     And then the spring uncoils.

     Gilgamesh's hand barely comes up in time to block the blow. He moves to catch it with the same casual grace he has caught everyone else - people like Yang Xiao Long, or Sarracenia, or the many others he's faced. He moves to catch it in one hand only to find that it does not even make contact.

     The King is blown backwards.

     He goes skidding down the street, very nearly off his balance. His heels are stronger than asphalt, tearing a long path between them. His eyes flare with red light as he stops himself, grinding to a halt.

     His shirt has been ruined. His *coat* has been ruined. The blow has shredded most of his clothing, leaving the King of Heroes' perfect form exposed. With an irritated click of his teeth, he snaps his fingers, and a similar white robe falls onto him. But unlike Enkidu's robe it is flawless upon his form; unlike Enkidu's robe, none could ever mistake the King for a mere shepherd.

     But this has struck a nerve. It's easy to tell, as the King starts moving forward. He plants his foot upon a car and kicks it, sending it skidding down in front of him before he snaps his fingers and the Gate rains down again. If Enkidu is clay he'll simply drown him in a flood. There is no expectation that the car will deal damage. There is simply the desire to distract Enkidu momentarily.

     And catch him in the explosion as the car is skewered to bits by weapons that predate even legends.
Alexis Maaka     Sure is an awful lot of destruction 'round here.

    Maaka watches this scene from afar, smoking a cigar amid city limits when a man in a red cloak and blue robes suddenly appears and disappears, with civilians left in his wake. Cocking an eyebrow, Maaka stops short of drawing a revolver as she just goes back to watching the fireworks, leaning against a black muscle car.

    Probably best to not get involved in this.
Sarracenia      As the two clash, something moves in above the city. A wooden sailing ship reminiscent of a Spanish galleon of over 100 ft in length. But, rather than sail through the seas, massive wooden propellers placed on the masts at the positions the sails would usually take keep it aloft. A golden figure on the front depicts a young woman with flowing hair and dress, and a small crown.

     The young woman who was the subject of that figure is leaning over the side of the ship with a spyglass held in front of her. She doesn't really have a stake in this fight, but she was rather curious when that challenge was made over the radio. She sees the strike and motions her ship to move in closer so she can get a better look. She notices the various portals appearing all around the city as well and notices Doctor Strange at...all of them? She looks at several to be sure, but he is definitely at all of them. She make a mental note to meet this good doctor as a potential hero.
Enkidu Gilgamesh skids. Enkidu straightens and walks after him, taking unhurried footsteps down the street while Gilgamesh replaces his ruined clothing. Enkidu's clothing is simple and effective, with the sort of warmth that comes from something that must have been homespun when he first saw it and was replicated to be the same. Gilgamesh's is always the peak of quality, even with something so simple as that. Similar, but... it's just not quite the same.

The car goes the other way. Enkidu charges forward, bracing himself at the last second and catching it with both hands. It stops, the undercarriage pointed towards Gilgamesh -- and abruptly perforated. Enkidu's surprise isn't visible as the shower of weaponry ruptures the vehicle, but it's present. A distraction, he thinks, mental processes disconnected from the physical damage he's suffering as each weapon bites into his body in rapid succession.

The car explodes. Enkidu is thrown, bounced once off the street. He twists the upper half of his body unnaturally, arms bending beyond the reach of human flexibility, grasping hafts of weaponry and tearing it free. He hurls them back, an axe sent on a spinning curve and a pair of spears smashing into the ground in front of Gilgamesh, sending up a wave of ruptured pavement and overturned earth.

Enkidu hits the ground a second time. He shakes free of the mass of weapons like a dog shaking off rainwater, flinging them across town like the last. Distantly, a roof is torn off a restaurant and spills across nearby buildings, the upper half of the structure sent tumbling through the air from just being clipped. Further afield, a great copper axe cleaves through power lines, dropping sparking, writhing wires into the road as it gleams dully in the lights of the city.

He twists back into some semblance of human shape. Enkidu ends up in a three-point crouch, halting his backwards slide by plunging one smoldering arm into the ground. Immediately, the exposed soil adjacent to the section of road Gilgamesh is walking down boils and erupts, a storm of javelins, arrows and hurtling blades spontaneously forming and descending on him from either side. Enkidu follows it by grabbing the side of some great metal cart next to him, hefting it without apparent effort, and tossing it onto Gilgamesh's head while he deals with the two-pronged attack.

The 'cart' in question is a city bus.
Doctor Strange      So much destruction. Even getting the stragglers out of harm's way, there is no shortage of work to be done. This fight between two legends is destroying livelihoods just as surely as it would have destroyed lives. He watches as Gilgamesh makes a car into an explosive device, and himself narrowly avoids a flying hunk of metal from that same car.

     Turning around midair, he erects a barrier of what appears to be broken glass in the debris' path. Rather than crash into the building behind him, the debris simply disappears into the barrier, which Strange then dissipates with a gesture of his hand. He can't put the car back together yet, or the road--following the fight too closely just puts his impartiality at risk, and offers tempting assets for either combatant. He won't fix something just for them to immediately break it again.

     Enkidu's counter-attack is no less destructive, tearing up the pavement even more than Gilgamesh had with his dug in heels. There--the restaurant. That's something he can fix that the two of them don't seem overly invested in. Strange flies over to the structure, hot on the heels of the destruction. The city's gate will need fixing, too, but that can wait--this is someone's livelihood, and who knows how many people could be relying on those power lines.

     He stops, hovering above the restaurant, and thrusts both hands outwards as if practicing a soft form of martial arts, index fingers and thumbs pointed outwards. Green bands of energy form upon his wrists, slowly rotating. Strange turns the clock back, and the damage begins to 'unwind' like someone hit the rewind button on a video. The sheer scope of destruction has him occupied and unable to attend other tasks.
Gilgamesh      His own weapons sent back at him. Sent back at him by a shifting, formless thing. By a formless thing that he is meant to call brother? By a formless thing that he is meant to call a man? That he is supposed to call his /friend/? This thing is his equal? The axe hits the ground where Gilgamesh was as he skips backwards, and the earth is turned up in pillars. The spears follow, one punching through the mound of earth, the next shattering in the grass of a small corporate garden. He crashes through the wall of the skyscraper, glass and steel shattering around him effortlessly. He is as strong as a star from Heaven. The constructs of modernity are meaningless to him. He smashes through the front desk, sending the telephone scattering as he moves to dodge the attack he sees.

     He doesn't get to dodge the attack he doesn't see.

     It is only at the last minute, as the storm of weapons made of clay from one side come swinging upwards, that Gilgamesh's eyes flare out, blazing red lights and red magecraft circuits sweeping across his chest. Golden armor falls down upon him as the clay weapons crash against him. Some of them he catches. Some of them catch him, cutting against perfect skin to draw perfect cuts full of perfect blood. Some of them just keep going, tearing open the skyscraper at the side with explosive force. Gilgamesh whirls around, weapons in hand, to start fending off the other side, and to his credit he is perfectly able to as the Gate of Babylon's unyielding assault becomes a defense, shooting down as many weapons as it can, leaving him to bat away a few more, and-

     -bus.

     The bus hits him. The bus keeps going, physics more than damage pushing him through the building. He crashes through the elvator, sending it falling to the ground. He crashes through the back end, spraying glass everywhere. When he digs his heels into the ground, the bus erupts in a fireball, and the building starts to crumble, the skyscraper falling like a spent balloon. It plummets down onto the ground, filling the street with debris.

     The King of Heroes rises. His face is burned, but still glorious. His hair is singed, but still perfect. Blood rolls down his cheeks and his shoulders, dripping on flawless, powerful magical golden armor.

     There are no more words. There is only violence.

     The King starts drawing weapons personally. In one hand is a massive forgehammer that roils with heat. In the other, a wicked black scythe. He walks forward, slamming the hammer down into the earth, then slashing the scythe in the air in front of him. He does this three times before he discards them back into the gate and pulls out a sword, chants something, and fires a beam of light with all the power of the sun focused into a single point directly at Enkidu, blotting out the sky and drowning out color as it pierces through the broken wall and melts it in an instant.
Sarracenia      Sarracenia had been holding back on trying to assist since there was already an evacuation in progress and it seemed reasonable that Gilgamesh's and Enkidu's destruction would be fairly localized. But, when a roof goes flying off a building and powerlines are snapped she lets out an exasperated huff, as much at Archer's provocations on the radio as at the situation. She really doesn't have a good way to help, but she can at least do -something-.

     She brings her airship down toward one of the main streets away from the gate behind Enkidu. A large section of the hull opens and rope ladders are dropped before pirahna plant soldiers start hustling through town as fast as their waddling strides will allow and ushering fleeing citizens toward the airship. Sarracenia herself heads toward the battle and upon encountering those downed powerlines she pulls a strange turtle doll with a helmet from her purse. She gives it a squeeze and it explodes in a puff of smoke. When it clears she is wearing that helmet along with orange tights and a turtle shell. She reaches behind her back and pulls out a boomerang, which she then throws at the power lines, targeting where they connect to the power pole itself. Hopefully that will sever them and keep the electricity at least somewhat contained!

     ...she can only watch in horrified amazement as an -entire skyscraper- comes crashing down. Nothing she has is going to help with that.
Mercy      Sure, this sounded like a good time to be somewhere other than Denmark. Unfortunately for the non-magical Good Doctor (The magical one being the one teleporting around), Mercy did like visiting her fellow Paladins for a variety of reasons, and had already been in Denmark when this went down.

     Standing near a window, Mercy observationally watches a bronze axe go spinning past her hotel room window. "Oh good. There's probably people out there injured, and no, I don't mean Gilgamesh or Enkidu, or even myself." She murmurs to herself, knowing perfectly well she didn't pack her Valkyrie Suit.

     Exiting the hotel a few minutes later, Mercy looks far more Grecian in the white dress she wears than her normal Swiss self, although the white Converse mar that sensibility as she takes off at a run towards the gates, dodging Everything And The Kitchen Sink. No, really. A sink. Mercy is pretty sure she just jogged through an apartment. Maybe. As she gets closer and closer to the gates, Mercy's staff starts glowing, the prongs extending as the golden stream of nanotechnology starts reaching out for those civilians yet still alive, although her look is not on them.

     Her look is behind her, her blue eyes focused on Gilgamesh.
Enkidu Gilgamesh is blessed with the gift of foreknowledge, and cursed with the same. He knows that, according to legends written by his own hand, this should end with the two of them living and fighting as brothers. And yet...

Enkidu follows the trajectory of the bus. He draws his hand from the earth and springs after it, robe rippling in the wind. When the skyscraper begins to fall, he's underneath it, looking up with a small amount of wonder on his face as the glittering construct of glass and steel plummets towards the Earth. He stands in the plaza that would have been outside of it as it blots out the sun, and vanishes amidst the destruction that settles below.

He re-emerges atop the mass of broken building. He jumps on top of a jumble of girders, bare feet planted on the metal surface without a care. He scans it for Gilgamesh, but he can't find him. Is that it? Is that all he had? "Physical integrity... acceptable," he says to the air. "Are you through?"

No.

Enkidu senses it before he sees it. He casts himself off the wreck and back onto stable ground. He opens his senses to the world around him, letting it alert him to where the next attack is coming from and where it's going to go. A ruptured pipe spills water into the place Gilgamesh stands, and the water itself tells Enkidu, 'Here! Here!' It tells him there are things at work, and it tells him --

Wait.

The beam of light erupts out of the wreckage. It renders the metal red-hot and vaporizes what doesn't get turned into liquid slag. Enkidu has all the warning in the world to get out of the way, but he doesn't. He skips back, block by block, and plants himself with his back to a car parked on the side of the road. He faces the color-dissolving light head-on, his body swelling to colossal scale and a hunched, inhuman form and shedding chunks of red-brown material that instantly turns to the face of a mountain.

The beam hits it. It splits, only partly boring through. The rest scatters like raindrops to his sides, blasting apart a high-rise as if bites are being taken out of it and tearing down the enormous fortress wall that surrounds the city with beams of falling sunlight. Enkidu's monstrous body heats and fuses, clay hardening and breaking and regrowing and doing it all over again. When it dissipates, the mountainside he created is reduced to superheated stone... but Enkidu is still moving. It rumbles lowly, shrinking, reforming into the feminine shape that he prefers for his face of humanity. One of his eyes is simply gone, a clay-colored smear across his otherwise-beautiful face that has yet to fill back in.

He turns. Not understanding the nature of the vehicle, Enkidu peels the side of the car off like he was opening a tin can. He crouches down, speaking lowly and gently like you might to a frightened animal. "Shhhhh; it's alright. Now you need to go. It isn't safe here." His eye fills back in, gaining shape and definition. He stares into the interior, and states, in a commanding tone, "Flee."

The small dog inside jumps out and takes off towards the exterior of the city at a dead run. Enkidu watches it go.

He turns back to the building with the holes bored through it. One hand goes up, a thumb extended as if estimating the distance to something. He takes a deep breath, and sings out words in a language that doesn't translate to anything. It echoes through the whole city, and stirs a deep, aching hurt in the hearts of those who hear it. It sounds like the groan of the trembling Earth put to the music of countless voices, rising up from trees, flowers, even blades of grass, just as widely as his proclamation of destruction had.

The ground under the wrecked skyscraper yawns open, and an enormous sinkhole swallows it, the adjacent blocks, and everything inside of it, to bury it in the bowels of the Earth -- including, it would seem, the King of Heroes himself.
Gilgamesh      Enkidu survives.

     No, rather, death simply does not stick. The mound of earth is ridiculous. The mound of clay is ridiculous. As it crumbles away to reveal Enkidu's visage after the destructive force of the prototype weapon, Gilgamesh can only laugh. It's another maddened laugh, a laugh of absolute shock. That's ludicrous. No piece of clay should be able to do that. No *human* could survive that. Arguably, Gilgamesh himself couldn't do it. His fingers smear the blood across his face like eyeliner. His hands wipe ash from his hair. Not only did Enkidu survive it, but he took it dead-on. More than took it dead-on, he stopped it. And for what? An animal? A beast?

     It's insane. Gilgamesh's fingers brush through his hair again.

     Then the singing starts.

     The world vibrates around him. Everything sings. The world itself sings. The sky, the ground, the grass, the flowers, the earth, they ring with the heavenly music of Enkidu's wordless song. Gilgamesh steps forward, uncertain-

     -and the sinkhole sucks him in. He falls, falls, falls, onto the girders, onto the ground below. The ground starts to bury him. Another skyscraper tips forward, and plummets down atop him with a crash. The concrete walkways follow. The trees. Gilgamesh is buried under tons. Surely, surely, the King is done. Surely, surely, the King has been humbled.

     No, of course not.

     A light pierces up to Heaven itself, tearing apart the clouds directly above it, tearing apart the ground and the rock and the metal. Gilgamesh springs out of it, stepping backwards. There's a hunk of girder impaled in the side of his neck. There's dirt and ash across his face. There's glass shards falling in his hair.

     He's grinning.

     It's a wild grin. It's the grin of the bull that he is said to be, the wild, uncontrollable King of Uruk the story speaks of. It's an almost feral grin, but it cannot be feral, for there is none more civilized than the King of Civilization.

     Clutched in his right hand is a sword that pulses with glory.

     The battlefield is littered with weapons. Indeed, it's still raining weapons from on high, pouring down swords and spears of surpassing magical power like they're nothing but raindrops, shattering the ground and peeling apart trees and cracking asphalt. Precision has long since stopped mattering to the King.

     The Gate of Babylon is wide, and it rains down on Enkidu as a matter of course.
Gilgamesh      And yet it is not the whole of the King's assault. That pulsing gold weapon in his hand begins to build with glory as the King murmurs something. An activation incantation.

     I am the King who selects myself.

     The light builds, smothering the light of the world. It seems as if the sun has gone dark, as if all the colors of the world become black, but it is merely the radiance of that weapon, and the radiance of the King, as he pours his power into it. It glows, and gleams, and burns with unreal fire as he raises it above his head.

     I am the One who is Free of Sin.

     The light screams upwards, a pillar into Heaven. It's briefly visible from space as Gilgamesh grasps it in two hands amidst the rain of destructive weapons. He steps forward.

     I am the True King of All.

     "WAKE UP!"

     "MERODACH!"

     The light burns. It burns away everything in its wake. It is like being next to Excalibur. The King brings the sword swinging down for Enkidu, bringing that all-consuming light of victory to bear. It turns crumbling buildings to ash.

     As it's falling, three scythe cuts appear around Enkidu, showing a moment ago - one above, one to the right, one behind. From those cuts, magma erupts, a cross-ways spray of molten world. It's nothing but a distraction.

     Because Merodach comes down in its wake.
Doctor Strange      Strange is hard-pressed to keep up with the destruction, and it's beginning to get to him. As the torn roof of the restaurant finally nestles back atop the remaining structure, he observes the boomering go flying past him. Okay, that's the power lines taken care of. The sorcerer nods at Sarracenia, but this momentary distraction proves costly.

     A stray weapon from the attack--he knows not whether it's from Gilgamesh or Enkidu--goes flying towards him. Another Strange appears in a flash of green light, and the two of them strike the flying halberd from below, one with a brightly glowing orange staff and the other with a similarly hued spear. Their combined might is just barely enough to keep it from striking a lethal blow, but the sheer force of its passage opens up a gash on the present Strange's arm. The other Strange vanishes, and the present one takes a moment to channel some sort of brightly glowing white energy into the wound to fix it.

     While this goes on, the fight manages to destroy an entire skyscraper. Strange narrows his eyes, holds his arms and legs close together and flies towards the pile of rubble. Where weapons, flying rubble or other attacks bar his path to the skyscraper, Strange weaves angrily between them, alters his gravity to stand upon them and leap off, or simply redirects them far from the battlefield, into barren or deserted locales.

     He arrives too late. Enkidu has already made it the means of his next attack. To attempt repair now would just be seen as interference. He looks at the band of congealed time slowly rotating around his wrist. Enkidu's concern for the dog is noted, but even so... God, he would love to interfere. But no. He mustn't. There will be a time to reach the both of them, to teach them the value of restraint and trick them into thinking it was their idea. That's the only way you can reach guys like them.

     He can fix the skyscraper later. ...make that skyscrapers. Plural. But he won't just sit by and do nothing. As Sarracenia's troops usher people onto the airship, he finds something to do. Aiming his hand towards the ship, Strange squints as the light from Gilgamesh's radiance begins to build. He spins the band of time upon his wrist, speeding up the process of evacuation, and the airship itself. Maybe those two don't care about the little people, but at least some people present do.

     A Stephen Strange appears before Mercy in a flash of green light. "Where's the suit?"
Mercy      A Stephen - not sure which one - suddenly appears in Mercy's face and nearly gets ran into.

     "Ah, shit-" The dress-wearing Angela Zeigler says. "I'm going to have to get used to that." She skids to a stop. "Not enough time. It's not fancy, I'd have to actually put it on, and unless you've got even more weird tricks up your sleeve, the biggest help is going to get me to where I need to be!" A sinkhole starts appearing.

     "Which, you know." Mercy points. "Isn't near that!" That being said, Mercy takes off for the gates again, the healer being pretty good on her feet, but not as agile as she might want to be for this situation.

     "But if you do have a trick-" Mercy rattles off a address for a prominent hospital in Zurich, along with precise notations on where her office is and what the suit looks like.
Sarracenia      The airship itself doesn't gain much benefit at this time from the speed up. Sitting still twice as fast is just going nowhere fast. But, the soldiers gain plenty of benefits! Green plant creatures with red bulb heads and root legs/feet seem to scurry about like mice in a maze, rooting out those still in the city and practically pushing them onto the airship. But, the airship can only hold so many, and the crew has to be on it.

     Soon enough the airship is filled to capacity and the plant creatures that were once helping people get on have to keep more from overloading the ship which leads to a riot as the ship takes off. Seems it will get to take advantage of that enhanced speed after all as it quickly flies away from the city.

     But, not before one of those random weapons whips by, severing one of the smaller masts can causing a chorus of desperate cries as people fear they have been saved only to be killed in a crash. Luckily, the main mast is still intact, and while the ship can't gain altitude it can at least clear the area.

     However, just as it is disappearing on the horizon, three more of the wooden ships appear on the same horizon. It might take them a few minutes to get here, but they can at least carry a few thousand more people away.

     Sarracenia had been wondering where the lava went from that hammer, and she gets her answer as it flows out from tears in reality around Enkidu. As she runs, Sarracenia happens to come upon Mercy and Strange talking...and she suddenly leaps toward them with a hammer bigger than she is! She gives it a mighty swing, and it looks like she is going to hit them!

     But, her swing goes just above their heads and impacts another hammer from the Gate that was headed their way. A vertical shockwave goes tearing through the terrain from the impact, but the DK Hammer's magical power is able to stop the other and send it clattering away harmlessly. Luckily it was just one of the lesser godly hammer. Sarracenia lands nearby after the clash, panting a bit. "If this keeps up, they will destroy this entire city!" she says angrily.
Enkidu The collapse swallows up the building and the King, but Enkidu knows that it is not the end. He steps away from the mangled vehicle and into the road again, squaring off against the space where the structure used to be. He doesn't have to wait long for Gilgamesh to leap out of it, marred by the damage that has been building throughout their battle. Enkidu himself looks pristine, though filthy with dust and soot. His clothing is a part of him, so he regrows it like he would any other part of his body. It happens as easy as breathing for anyone else.

It doesn't mean he's indestructible, though. Enkidu is keenly aware of his own limits, as vast as they seem to be. Mana is a concern, even if he draws from any wellspring he can find. It keeps his clay rebuilding endlessly, but Gilgamesh forces him to keep doing it. As long as the sky continues to fall...

Ah. "Calibration complete."

He crouches again. His hands brush the broken ground. "All is found in the wisdom of the people..." he begins --

The battlefield responds to his call. All around the broken city, the Earth speaks in Enkidu's voice and delivers Enkidu's answer. Weapon form of clay from the ground, an innumerable array of swords, spears, axes and more. They fire upwards into the sky, a seemingly endless inverted shower of them sent against the weapons of legend that plunge towards the ground from the fully-opened Gate. Where one of Gilgamesh's priceless treasures descends, dozens of masterworks, all wrought by human hands over the course of history, are set to meet it and turn it aside. The air is filled with clashes of bright light, and all around, the fortress-city begins to simply come apart. Enkidu deflects the weapons with his own precise answer to the Gate of Babylon, turning them away from him...

...but they have to go somewhere, don't they?

Enkidu draws himself up from the ground as Gilgamesh approaches him. He strides out to meet him, barefoot and empty-handed, a humble visage to a creature that is not any sort of human. The light of the all-consuming blade rises up, and Enkidu is rendered in grayscale as he crosses the distance. He accelerates, preparing himself to strike the King down even as the pillar that seems to reach towards Heaven looms over him. Enkidu reaches out, hand curling, arm morphing, skin tone fading to red-brown and talons growing where fingers once were.

The scythe appears. Enkidu draws himself inward in an instant. Magma sprays, and he's forced to respond to prevent himself from burning to cinders -- and it leaves him over to Merodach, descending with a light that burns away all other light and all life that could possibly feel its touch. The world around him is simply erased, and even Enkidu's swift flight from the point of impact doesn't seem to keep him from its horrific power.

When the light clears, he's lying in the street. Everything below his stomach is simply gone. Above that, his robe is burned. His hair is splayed like a puddle in the street, filthy but largely intact. He lies on his side, one arm outstretched, fingers digging into the roadway. His eyes are dull, blinded by the light, and what's left of him is motionless.

He blinks. His body convulses. His lips move as clay boils out of what should be mortal wounds, drinking deep of the ley lines beneath the city to facilitate his absurdly rapid reconstruction yet again. For a second, he makes no sound. For a second, he cannot speak.

The second passes.

"Age of Babylon."

The broken buildings ripple with unseen power. Glass flexes, and another swarm of endless Earthcraft weapons flies out of windows and fills the sky, glass joining clay in the increasingly uncountable retort to the King of Heroes' Gate. For each treasure, a hundred spears. For each relic, a thousand swords.

For each shining legend, a million clay dolls may cast sticks and stones.
Doctor Strange      "Always." That is the response Mercy gets to her question as to whether or not he has some trick. He leaves her to it, adopting a martial stance as he prepares for what he feels to be an incoming attack from Sarracenia. Though both hands now bear glowing orange discs of slowly circling runes, the target shields prove to be unnecessary--the princess was just deflecting an errant weapon. "Thanks."

     Mercy's path, then, is interrupted about halfway through by a tear opening up in the very air, as if someone had taken an arc welder to reality. Her suit flies through it, and she catches a glimpse of Strange standing in her Zurich office. The portal closes.

     "I know," says Strange. "But I'll build it back one brick at a time if I have to." That Strange--the one who had been talking to Sarracenia--disappears.

     The Strange still floating in the air above the carnage does, too, but only briefly, to make the trip back in time to ask about Mercy's suit. He returns, observing the sheer scale of destruction wrought by Enkidu's rapid conjuring of masterwork weapons. They seem to be carved from the very earth itself. So... the more he repairs this place, the more ammo he's giving the clay warrior. The only solution is to let them wear themselves out, and pick up the pieces while they're too tired to ruin it. ...it looks like he'll have to make good on that oath of rebuilding it brick by brick.

     In the mean time, he aims for Mercy and speeds up the passage of her own time, allowing her to get the suit on faster. The doctor then disappears in another flash of green light, traveling back to go and get her the suit in the first place.

     Time loops are confusing.
Mercy      "Huh. That's *handy*." Mercy observes when she sees Strange in her office through the portal. She takes the proffered suit, though, and does a interesting and very awkward dive across some rubble and disappears into a bit of a handy hole made out of ... somethings. Strange can see enough of her to be able to help enhance her time- and indeed, the putting on of the skintight suit is much more quicker than normal.

     "Thanks, Doc!" She shouts, the wings flaring to life behind her as she makes her way into the air. She's not got great air mobility, but it still allows her to make her way over to the gate area, her staff brightly lit as she gets closer and closer to those that are injured and dead.

     "Come, friends: Not til Valhalla." Mercy whispers. She does not need to focus, here, now- not really anywhere. The nanotech does the work it needs too, as the light focuses, one, after one, on people.
Sarracenia      The sky is already raining weapons of godly power, and now the earth is spitting out weapons of men to meet them! There is so much steel flying around that even as those airships move in they are quickly cut to pieces by the countless impliments of destruction raining down and ricochetting about the city. Sarracenia gives the order for them to pull back, but only two actually make it. The other crashes down, trapping piranha plant soldiers and sailors in with those townsfolk who haven't made it out.

     Sarracenia is heavily torn. She doesn't want to run away and appear cowardly, but how in all of Pipeland is she supposed to help!

     Then, she gets an idea! She has her two remaining ships take up a position just outside of the collateral damage zone. They turn so that their broadsides are facing the city, and both open on their undersides to deploy cannons that a person could easily stand up inside of. "Set range and yield for projectile deflection! Fire at will!" she yells into her radio, and it sounds like thunder as the ships open fire. Even the downed ship adds its guns as much as it can, and a veritable flak field forms between where Gilgamesh and Enkidu are. Bullet Bills (huge bullets with grinning faces) streak through the air like missiles, soaking up as much of the weapons as possible, and Bonzai Bills that dwarf their smaller bretheren by at least a dozen times fly in much slower arcs. They are able to soak several hits themselves before exploding, deflecting hopefully more of the flying weapons from the city. This might cause quite a bit more to rain down around Denmark's gates, but hopefully it will relieve the rest of the city from some of the two god-creatures' wrath.

     And if her soldiers are doing their jobs, the explosions should be high enough not to harm anyone on the ground.
Gilgamesh      Enkidu has survived Merodach.

     Merodach. One of his great treasures. Something on the level of Slash Emperor. A tool of pure annihilation that purges things from the world. Enkidu has survived Merodach.

     Weapons stretch as far as the eye can see. The endless rain of the Gate of Babylon has come to a halt. The impossible has happened.

     The Gate of Babylon lies empty.

     The weapons stretch on for miles. There's simply not enough *room* for all of them in one horizon. There's not enough room. There's enough swords to walk from one side of Denmark to the other and just keep going. Enough spears to build a tower that could reach heaven. Even stacked atop each other, there simply isn't enough room for them all. They spread like a destructive plague, each and every one of surpassing magical power, of surpassing value. There are even vehicles scattered amongs them, like the golden chair of Vimana, or a giant iron-looking robot, or a long golden submarine, as if Gilgamesh had flung *vehicles* at Enkidu.

     Enough gold to smother the city spills downwards around them. No, more gold. More gold than all the coffers of the world. Truly infinite wealth, stretching outwards, outwards, outwards. It could more than smother the city. It could drown a world. Among the seismic movement of the coins, food processors and cloths and other luxuries are scattered, flung simply for the sake of having something to throw.

     Gilgamesh is breathing hard. He's spent so much power. More than one of his own weapons is sticking out of him. Several clay ones, too. He's not just exhausted - he's bleeding, and badly, the golden armor that served him through an unclimbable tower punctured and pierced. He's pinned against the wall of endless gold by clay spears and his own swords, like he's nothing but a pincushion. Even at this, he looks perfect, but his perfection is disheveled, effort. He's breathing roughly, not just hard, uneven breaths sucking in oxygen. The Age of Babylon and the Gate of Babylon together hit him hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Some of them were even deflected by Sarra, or Doctor Strange, and joined the cavalcade of downpoured destruction.

     The Gate begins to recall its treasures, the endless, infinite pile that drowns out the sky vanishing in a shine of golden light. It'll be days before he can use them again. Maybe weeks. That which should have killed anyone, which should have crushed the most powerful of enemies, didn't manage to kill Enkidu, even with Merodach's fire.
Gilgamesh      The King's laughter peels through the area. It's beautiful. Heavenly. Musical. It's also rough, and uneven, and sharp, and primal. It's a laugh like he's never laughed before.

     He's /enjoying himself/.

     No, more than that. This is the happiest Gilgamesh has ever sounded. To the ears of anyone around him Gilgamesh's laughter is unquestionably both exhausted and tinged with genuine joy. A man who has known nothing but perfection finds himself struggling. A man who has never had to try finds himself pushed to the limit.

     It is the most wonderful moment he can imagine. The closest he has felt to it was in the mind of Priscilla, but there he could only use imitations, and in the mind, all rules are off. Here...here...

     Here is someone Worthy.

     The ruins of Denmark are crumbling around him and he's laughing with the most genuine joy he's ever felt. Not a trace of ego. Not a trace of condescension. Not a trace of disdain. Joy. Real. Actual. Joy.

     "Enkidu!"

     Gilgamesh straightens. He runs his fingers through his hair. "Enkidu. I accept it. I accept your worth. I accept your strength. You have survived the impossible, and come out the other side."

     "You are as strong as a star from Heaven."

     "Never before have I met someone able to do what you have done. Never before have I had to use the swell of my strength, the whole of my self. I have been challenged to try. I have been challenged to fight. But never before have I struggled."

     The King produces a golden key. He runs his fingers through his hair again. "For that, you have my respect. You have more than my respect."

     "You deserve my greatest treasure."

     "ENKIDU! You, and you alone, shall have the honor of witnessing it first! The crown jewel of my collection! The greatest of all treasures in the world! Never has it been drawn forth! Never has it been used! All this time, I've awaited one worthy of its power! Its full, its greatest, its strongest power!"
Gilgamesh      The key in the King's hand glimmers as he draws it forth. He has needed no key before, no mere tool to open the Gate of Babylon. The key pulses with an ominous light as it rises, the glimmering gold giving way to a throbbing red aura. The King presses it forward in the air as though shoving it into a vast lock. He turns it to the right, and the world begins to quake, as though the world knows what is coming, as though the world understands what is waking up. Music begins to swell beyond the pale as that red aura erupts like a spider's web. The light spreads out in criss-crossing circuitry etched in the sky. The world seems to grow dim.

     No. The world does not grow dim.

     The King's aura is simply more brilliant than the sky.

     The light drowns out all color as the red contracts. The key vanishes. Gold and red contract into a single point in the King of Heroes' hands. The world gives a final, shuddering quake of protest as the red lines trap the dark shadows cast by the King's glory, as the glory congeals into a handle. The world knows, and the world fears, and the world can do nothing but know and fear, for this is something beyond its capacity, beyond its reason, beyond its understanding. It is a thing not forged of any concept in the world but of things that came Before, when the world was still new, and like any child, the world fears the parent's wrath. The air shivers. The land shakes. The sky, dark next to the King's glory, trembles, dispersing countless clouds into nothing. The King of Heroes raises the thing in his hands and levels it at Enkidu as the world stills and the shaking stops and the sky turns blue once more.

     It is a flat-topped cone of black and red, an unassuming-looking thing on a handle. The red etchings throb as Gilgamesh swings it once through the sky, leaving contrails of harsh bloody light. The King holds it up in front of him, his fingers along its side, his eyes full of affection and joy as though he were embracing a lover. He looks at the thing as if it is his only joy, as if it is his only wonder, as if all the rest of the treasures of the world are meaningless before it.

                            EA - SWORD OF RUPTURE                            
Gilgamesh      The King swings it down again. It starts to spin, three distinct pieces etched with red light. The red contrails reverse. The world trembles once more, but not in fear. It trembles obediently. The air begins to buffet the ground, tearing up chunks of rock and grass. In moments, the unassuming object is surrounded by a tornado, a whirling, shredding storm of red light simply held in the hand of the King. It follows his motion into the sky, shockwaves tearing apart the land as he raises it. The blown-apart clouds begin to whirl as though the King had become the eye of a hurricane, as though he was the center of a vast and terrible storm. Beyond the clouds the light of the sun is banished, and stars on high glimmer, reflecting the blazing red like a thousand red eyes. The whirling object grinds against the laws of space themself as the King pours his glorious power into it. Amidst the deafening roar the King opens his perfect lips to speak, and despite all of the chaos, all of the thunder, all of the majesty, his voice can still be heard flawlessly, as though he was right next to every ear on the field.

I speak of genesis. The elements amalgamate, coalesce, and bring forth the stars that weave all of creation.

     The power surges. Beneath their feet, the earth begins to collapse. Magma burns forth, erupting from cracks all the way down to the core. The molten land is driven away from the King by the sheer force of that red light, drunk into the vacuum, and then extinguished. Trees catch fire before they, too, are shredded and drawn into the cyclone of destruction, the unrelenting cylinder of power.
Gilgamesh I speak of the beginning. Heaven and Earth are divided and Nothingness celebrates Creation. My Sword of Rupture rends the world apart.

     Gilgamesh's eyes blaze with crimson flame as the red lines stretch across his body like a creeping virus. Across the world, reports come flooding in of seismic events shattering the scale. Long-dormant volcanos burst their top, smoke pouring into the sky. Waves shake the coasts as the plates beneath the sea tremble. Winds are drawn towards the great red blaze that dominates the sky, buffetting homes and buildings. Mountains start to crumble. Across the world the sky goes dark, and the glimmering eyes of the sky begin to turn red and swirl. Only the ground below Gilgamesh is untouched, a singular pillar that stretches down into the dark depths of the crumbling world. The sun rises, and is drowned out. The moon rises, and is drowned out. The sky becomes a swirling nightmare as the galaxy lights up high above Gilgamesh, as if all the shining stars in the sky were assenting to his dominion, to his authority. The whirling, grinding vacuum grows black as even light is obliterated between those horrible red lines. The whirling grows. The music swells. A feeling of terror and joy seeped into the land comes surging to the surface as the world sings in praise of its creation, joining Gilgamesh's symphonic assault. The King's eyes are nothing but a bloody glow as the pulsating, grinding, horrifying tool of genesis ascends above his head, a sceptre of rule in the hand of the perfect king. Now even the stars have gone black in the sky, and the galaxy that a moment ago gave assent is gone, vanished into whirling destruction. Cracks appear throughout the land and the sea and the air as the world crumbles into a vortex, black cracks that should not exist, that lead to nowhere, that lead to nothing.
Gilgamesh The vortex that turns the stars, this heavenly hell signifies the end of the eve of genesis. Subside with death!

                                 ENUMA ELISH                                  

     The blazing red comes swinging downwards. It is not focused. It is not aimed. It does not target. There is no aiming this. There is no targetting this. This is not a precision weapon. This is not a weapon that can know precision. It simply consumes, consumes, consumes, blowing apart all that is, all that was, all that ever shall be in the thundrous red light. The world splits, the sky ends, and everything ceases to be. In its place is a blazing inferno that is at the same time pure darkness, an endlessly-stretching hellscape of primordia that burns without casting light. Only the light of the Enuma Elish, the light of the Star of Creation, can be seen, as it dictates a new world into existence. Enuma Elish consumes, splits, and recombines, as the act of Genesis is remade, as Time stands still and stretches, as the World itself is torn to shreds. It stretches on and on and on, seven days of destruction, seven days of genesis, seven days of fire and darkness and a single light in the sky.

     As strong as a star from Heaven, indeed.
Enkidu Enkidu stands.

There is no steady footing. He sways drunkenly on his feet, his balance shot by the repeated and rapid reconstruction he has undergone. His body is momentarily lacking definition, the divine clay that makes it up needing to take precious seconds to resolve into musculature and regain symmetry. When he lifts his head, his eyes are bright again, restored with the rest of him.

He is far from 'okay,' though. He's been run through more than once. Naked blades and the hafts of broken weapons jut from his flesh. His body simply warps around them, the man of clay finding it too inefficient to get rid of them. He takes note of how they force him to move, and he adjusts his stance appropriately, shifting his center of balance and bending his arms for better coverage.

The most obvious tell that he's reaching his limit: his robe, always pristine, is torn and tattered. It stays that way this time. He spares a glance towards it, and frowns at its state. Later, if he survives this, he'll do something about fixing it. It's important to him. More important than survival. Respect is...

Enkidu looks at Gilgamesh suddenly. Something clicks.

"Gilgamesh..." Enkidu closes his eyes. "...I understand now. Thank you."

He opens his eyes. The key opens the Gate, and from deep within comes something red. A weapon. A weapon unlike any other. The vast multitudes of treasures all around them pale in comparison. The works of master smiths that Enkidu has perfectly recreated are but trifles that seek a spark of its brilliance. Gilgamesh raises it, and the world trembles.

Enkidu feels it. He feels the world groan in protest. He feels it surrender to the power of the object brought to bear. All around him, the ground quakes and the sky splits, the trees and grass and the stones deep within the earth drawn up to meet the darkening stars in the sky. The vortex grows, and the cracks grow with it.

He doesn't move to attack Gilgamesh. He doesn't try to interrupt it. It's too late. He knows it's too late. Once that weapon is unsheathed, nothing can be done to stop it from unleashing its power. It is an honor that he is the one who will see the end of all things. It brings him a spark of bright, unfamiliar joy to know that, of all people, this selfish, callous king would share such a thing with a weapon hurtling at his heart, an axe meant to pierce his breast. It makes him remember that he is this thing called a 'person' and not merely a tool to be used. It makes him remember what it is like to lose hold of something precious.

In the coming moments, Gilgamesh speaks of creation and brings destruction. His voice rises above the impossible din. Enkidu feels some part of him untense, uncoil. He draws a breath -- the last any will, with the sky swallowed up and torn away -- and holds it tight. He holds the last remnant of the sky in his body, and he clutches it tightly.

In the last moments before the first of seven days of creation and destruction, Enkidu opens his mouth and breathes out the sky, for soon there will not be enough left of a 'person' called Enkidu to use it. He lets go, and his body fades in the crimson sunlight that swallows all.

The red star shines.

Enkidu's voice rises from all that was the world and all that could be the world again, carried on that singular breath.
Enkidu                    This evocation is the breath of the stars.                  

The world is born anew and destroyed once again in what should be days and what feels instead like instants. Again and again, the cycle continues, annihilating all that remains. The strength of a star from Heaven... but something yet remains. The world is made a mass of churning magma and potential, and something breaks up the searing surface that should not yet survive its annihilation.

Something shining gold.

               When no gods whatever had been brought into being,              

The thread of gold rises up. It encircles the world, meeting itself on the far side of the devastation. The world shatters anew, and it scatters with it, spread across the starless void. When the world reforms again under the baleful light of that shining star, the gold thread returns, coalescing anew. It spreads further than before, more tines of golden light building in a web that grows over the planet with each death and rebirth.

It isn't merely thread, though.

               Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined --                

Chains.

The golden chains that encircle the world multiply endlessly. They draw on the stuff of the planet itself and feed on the power of the crimson star of creation. With each pulse of planetary genesis, they return, greater than before. Seven days pass...

The world does not come undone again.

A shining light ascends from the fiery surface. A figure is wreathed within it. Long green hair, simple white clothes, perfect beauty -- Enkidu. All around him are those chains. They race him into the void, giving direction to a place without. They approach the burning red star and the thing at its heart, topped with spikes of gold just as bright, giving definition to the monochrome imposed by the hellish red.

The threads of gold meet the burning redness far above.

               Then it was that the gods were formed within them.              

And pull it down.

Everything comes together in a flash. The burning world, frozen in place; the amazing power that has undone it, again and again; the golden threads that bind it all together. The void is filled with bright white. Light fades, the world remembering 'dimness.' It does not fade away in entirety, the sky remembering 'stars.' The earth... The world itself...

Blue and green. Pure. Untouched. Unravaged by civilization.

But that is not how he remembers it, deep in that thing that the gods did not give him. That is not what pulses within the human soul that inhabits that body of clay. Destroying Gilgamesh is his purpose, but his /desire/ is...

                                     . . .                                      

                    Let me walk alongside man. Therefore...!                    

The world quakes as the seas of clashing red and gold return all to wondrous shape and color. The vast destruction blooms into a singularly beautiful blossom of light shining into the restored concept of space and motion. Life across the planet opens its eyes, breathing in sharply, a breath taken as one to remind the world it is one.

                                  ENUMA ELISH                                  

The city stands. All is revealed as the vast storms of power are swept away, dissolving on the breeze. Flakes of gold fly through the air, vanishing like glimmering snow on a sunny day. The destruction remains... but life has taken its place, filling the ruins they have created with the pure, natural world that mankind had built over it. Tall trees and lush grasses sweep through ruined streets. A particular restaurant stands totally intact, much like the buildings near it, with wide swaths of reclaimed nature having overwritten the damage.
Enkidu Enkidu stands, too, but not for long. He stands right in front of Gilgamesh, the golden chains that had pierced the heart of the star and hunted the demigod unerringly vanishing into motes of brilliance. He puts a hand on his arm, staring him in the face.

He smiles.

And he collapses, utterly exhausted.
Gilgamesh      The World is unmade, and then made.

     Gold chains drag the star out of heaven. As the world is remade, pulled back together, as the damage of apocalyptic proportions is undone, Gilgamesh is pierced by the chains and dragged into the ground. He crashes into it with a *wham*, and the world crashes back together around him, the events undone in a single moment. Everything is back the way it was. Gilgamesh lies upon the ground, Ea in one hand, a spear driven right through his shoulder, chains driven through his arms and legs.

     He stands, at great difficulty. Enkidu puts his hand on his shoulder, and Gilgamesh clasps Enkidu's. No words are spoken. Gilgamesh smiles, the first honest smile he has perhaps ever truly had.

     Enkidu falls over.

     Gilgamesh falls next to him, flat on his back.

     His hand goes to his head, and he laughs.

     "Unbelievable."

     He points up at the sky with Ea like it's a toy. "Imagine."

     "Satisfaction."

     He tilts his head at Enkidu. "We could strike once more, you know. We both have enough strength. Still have blood in my body. Still clay within yours."

     "But if we did that, it would mean only two foolish corpses." Ea disappears in a golden sparkle.

     The King laughs again.
Doctor Strange      As the light builds up to a fever pitch, as the liquid essence of creation itself boils up from the ground, Stephen Strange knows that the decision to remain here must be tempered with reason. He will not be driven from here, but an attack of this magnitude, of such immense and imprecise scale, can't by matched or redirected somewhere.

     But he can. His allies can. This particular swath of this plane won't last long--he can feel it in the warp and weft of the physical realm. Even if he hadn't sworn not to shape matter in the physical, attempting to match Ea's might with his own would be a stupid gamble against an opponent he knows so little about. He's never been about brute strength, anyway.

     Strange punches the air--strikes Reality with his open palm. It shatters, like shards of a broken mirror suspended in water. The cracks spread through the air, reaching high above him, encompassing Mercy, Sarracenia, the last few remaining stragglers, and her airships as they arrive to pick them up. It encompasses the surrounding buildings, and the weapons, clay and legendary alike, not yet sucked up by the cyclone of Ea's building power.

     In the Physical Dimension, those weapons are sucked up, returned to the Gate or put towards whatever purpose Gilgamesh desires. Here, in this un-dimension, they are merely a reflection of what was. But they still have their uses. All around Strange, Mercy, Sarra, and the remaining civilians, the buildings, skewered with weapons, begin to split and bud from one another, the scenery shifting like a kaleidoscope of cooled magma, asphalt, concrete, glass and steel.

     The buildings fold in on themselves after multiplying, becoming floating cubes stuck with 4 multiples of every weapon which originally struck it. The cubes slam against one another with the grinding of concrete and steel and glass against itself. The weapons skewering them begin to split and multiply, laying flat against the cubes until each has a patchwork of weapons protecting it.

     These, too, split and multiply, over and over, until the false sky above them is completely blacked out by a protective layer of fake legends and copied masterworks. A shell within a shell, to survive destruction and renewal. When the world is reborn again, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, exhausted as they are, may catch a fleeting glimpse into this facsimile world, this shell of imitated weapons.

     Another shatter in reality, as a ghostly astral projection of the Sorcerer Supreme peeks out to ensure that it's safe. He doesn't like what he sees--but he returns through the break. Everyone--him, Sarra, Mercy, the civilians and Sarra's forces--are brought back into the physical with the sound of glass shattering in reverse, the last traces of the armor of fakes simply vanishing as they are all brought back into the real world. The real Denmark, overgrown as if centuries had passed after its evacuation.

     "What a mess."
Enkidu Enkidu doesn't really know what to say to that. He looks up at the sky contemplatively. He could get up long enough for a final attack, that's true. It wouldn't be unreasonable for that axe hurled from Heaven to do just that. But Enkidu is...

After a moment, he looks back at Gilgamesh. "I did what I came here to do. Now... it would be a waste, wouldn't it?" The world would be lessened. Not by Enkidu's loss, but by Gilgamesh's. After all that, for him to just die right here would really be a terrible fate. After all, if you survive the death and rebirth of the world -- or a huge portion of it, anyway -- a punch in the head is kind of a terrible way to go.

Enkidu laughs, too. It's probably not the worst sound to come back to this dimension to, the two of them cracking up, but gods if it isn't weird.
Gilgamesh      The Mirror Dimension unfolds upon the King and the Noble Phantasm laughing, exhausted, on the ground. The difference between the arrogant King who never tries and never struggles, and this, here, this laughing, exhausted, joyous demigod, is measurable. The King's fingers go to his head, and his other hand settles on Enkidu's shoulder.

     "Join me."

     "See Multi-Vars with me. You and you alone are strong enough to challenge me. Together we could do anything."

     A cell phone falls out of the sky into Enkidu's lap as Strange makes his comment. Gilgamesh looks up at him, a smile on his face that reaches his red eyes. An already perfect face is now radiant. "Ah, Doctor. I suppose it is. Nothing that cannot be repaired, though."

     "And unlikely to happen again, I think. That...was indeed a fight that I do not think we shall ever need to repeat."

     "Not that I would turn it down," he adds at Enkidu, a wry smile on his face.

     He pauses and points at the phone. "You just press the buttons," he adds helpfully, "On the box. There's one of them already set up, I was told. It's fascinating. And you'll like the moving cat images."

     "There are a lot of cats."
Mercy      The world is unmade. Mercy is at least half-sure she's about to die. She's ageless, not wholly immortal: A bad injury, or a really nasty cold could take her right out of this world. It's okay, though. She was here, at the end, right where she would like to be - helping.

     Strange has other ideas.

     Thankfully, good other ideas. Drawn into the Mirror Dimension, Mercy finds a seat on someplace not that much on a tilt, laying her staff across her knees, She watches STrange build the second shell across for them, and her eyes close, her head resting on her staff. "Fuckin' assholes." She murmurs, to no one in particular.

     Strange, eventually, however, drops them back themselves into the real world - a world beset by green grass. A world that had been destroyed, remade, and is strangely more beautiful for it, but it is the beauty that leaves a bitter taste in her mouth, as she looks towards - well, nothing, now. A little too late. A little too long.

     A little too strong.

     Finally standing up, she walks over to Enkidu and Gilgamesh both, her staff held width-wise across her stomach. Her gaze is sharp, angry, sad- a combination of emotions from a normally much more in control woman. "So many lost, to teach a lesson. May I be reassured that you both have learned it?"

     Ouch.
Gilgamesh      Gilgamesh waves his hand.

     "This had to happen. This was meant to happen. It could not be avoided, and it could not be postponed. You did what you felt was right and brought citizens away."

     "It is not as if I have not often said that there are too many humans." Gilgamesh's smile is genuine, even though his words are brutal, and his eyes are full of a childlike wonder and joy despite the exhaustion written on his face.

     "It was a natural disaster, ordained by fate." Gilgamesh's hands go under his head as his armor disintegrates, replaced by the coat, sweater, and pants Enkidu had destroyed earlier. "Think of it as that and nothing more."
Enkidu Enkidu watches Strange with keen eyes, even from his place on the ground. He waits a moment, and then turns his head to Gilgamesh again. He nods, once. Of course he'll join him. Of course he'll see this Multi-Vars. What else can he do? "Then we will see it all, together!"

He fiddles with the phone a little. He has to get a little instruction from Gilgamesh -- he has absolutely no idea what he's doing with it otherwise. He speaks into it holding it at nearly arm's length, and then tries it closer instead. "Need to? No. Not unless you step out of line again," Enkidu asides, uncommonly smug for a moment. He puts the phone to his ear, and his face lights up.

Then he puts his hand down. The phone is stuck to the side of his head. It looks like he's just kind of... extruded clips to hold it. Weird, but effective.

He's started to rebuild his clothing by the time Mercy comes over. "I learned that Gilgamesh is as strong as a star from Heaven," he tells her. "And that humans seal animals in metal boxes where they can't get out. That's terrible."
Archer EMIYA A tall tannish man with disheveled white hair steps out of the group of civilians that Strange had gathered, wearing the most modest attire imaginable. A grey shirt, some black pants, and a pair of prescription glasses.

"I agree, but one mess to teach the King of Denmark a lesson is a pretty good trade. Usually it takes several."

The unassuming civilian speaks with a familiar smug voice, removing and pocketing the glasses from his face and slicking back his hair with a single swipe of his hand to reveal that it was none other than...

Archer. Like most everyone around here, he was helping to evacuate civilians and keep causalities to a minimum. Unlike them though, he was doing it in the most simple way possible, which is to say he simply guided them to checkpoints and left it at that.

"Gotta say though, it's refreshing to see a mess that I'm not obligated to clean up."

Archer says this in a clearly joking manner, though it probably doesn't make it any less insensitive.
Sarracenia      Sarracenia thought that between her airships and Doctor Strange, they might be able to save the city. It turns out...the entire world was in danger. Or was it the entire dimension? Not that she'd know the difference. She can only watch in awe, weapons falling all around her, as the world is unmade. She gets dragged into some sort of mirror world just before they are all sucked into the abyss and she gets a front row seat to watching the world unmade and remade seven times. "...all that from some pointy black and red cone...?" she murmurs to herself. "...how does something like that even exist?"

     Hundreds of her faithful piranha plants are watching as well, along with hundreds if not a few thousand citizens of Denmark. And Sarracenia and her helpers have no idea what to say, even when they are returned to the real world. She blinks as she realizes what Mercy said, then looks toward her ships. "But, we saved so many, didn't we?" she asks.

     But then she thinks about it, and if the entire world or even universe was unmade and remade...that's a LOT of things killed, including a lot of people. She hears Gilgamesh and her fists clench. "You two destroyed an entire world and all the people on it and...are...laughing?!" She can't even think of what to say after that. The princess just lets out a frustrated growly scream and stomps away from the pair and over to Doctor Strange. She hooks her arm around his and smiles at him. "Now you...you saved me and my men and as many people as you could, and maintained spectacular style throughout!" She practically presses up against Doctor Strange's side, hugging his arm. "Princess Sarracenia Sundew, Crown Princess of the Sundew Kingdom...is now in your debt." Her eyelashes flutter at the Doctor. "If I can help you, just let me know~"

     The two remaining airships start picking up the survivors, ready to ferry them to another land...or to simply house them if Doctor Strange is going to do something to rebuild this one.
Gilgamesh      At Sarracenia's response, Gilgamesh just laughs.

     "The localized World. To your perspective, yes, but not all of it. Only..." Gilgamesh gestures. "A significant portion of the local reality. I could explain it, but it would take too long."

     He settles his hand on Enkidu's shoulder again. "There is something joyous about being able to at last use the whole of my strength against a single foe. To unleash my greatest treasure. And you were lucky enough to bear witness to it!" His free hand goes back to his face, wiping some of the blood off. He'd normally summon a cloth but he is utterly spent. "My Ea, my Sword of Rupture, my Enuma Elish, my greatest treasure." He talks about the weapon the way Sarracenia would want to be talked about - adoring, affectionate, /loving/. His hands go back under his head.

     "I have only ever used it in dreams and memories. And now it has been unleashed and all the power of the King of Heroes shown with it. Ah, gods."

     "That was spectacular."

     He yawns. He's never yawned before, in all the time he's been around, earnestly.
Doctor Strange      Strange begins repairing what he can, turning back the passage of time. Rubble from collapsed buildings leaps back into place, cracks vanish, glass becomes whole again, clouds of dust fly oddly into the air to integreate seamlessly with buildings which created them. Office chairs, phones, appliances, plates, cutlery, all rush back inside, broken pipes right themselves, girders snap strangely into place. The natural beauty remains--but whether that's by the doctor's hand or the Eye's inner workings is a mystery.

     "This fight was pre-ordained. The loss of life, not so much. But we did all we could." He places a trembling hand upon Dr. Ziegler's shoulder.

     Mercy, Gilgamesh and Archer will note this is a very different Stephen Strange than the one who jokes about Costco membership cards and trivia night. He is using his Sorcerer Supreme voice, and his Sorcerer Supreme words. "When humans are scared, especially as a group, they don't think. That was one of the reasons I offered to make a place separate from this one for the two of you to fight. To save them from the collateral, to save them from each other," and with a look towards Enkidu, "...and to save their animal friends from the thoughtlessness of fear."

     And then he is suddenly clung to by Sarracenia. "Okay, two things, lady." There goes the Sorcerer Supreme voice. "First, they didn't destroy the planet, just the local world. Think of it as temporarily tearing one square of a ...quilt. I know that sounds stupid, but trust me, I'm a sorcerer. Second, yeah, sure, no problem, don't mention it." He kind of... shimmies his way free of her grasp.
Mercy      "I just wish we had been a little quicker, Strange. I'm too much of a bleeding heart, even after twenty.. plus years in the business." Mercy says, sadly.

     She pats his trembling hand, and then turns back to Gilgamesh and Enkidu. "Well. The two of you seem like you're going to be just fine- wish you any advancement of your own healing capabilities from me, or shall I just let you do your own healing, or perhaps even call upon your chirurgeons?"
Sarracenia      Sarracenia looks rather...disheartened when Stephen wiggles free of her grasp and uses that Supreme voice on her. She stands there and watches him walk away for a few moments, then lowers her head and her fists clench as a dark look passes over her face. That look gets aimed at Doctor Strange, and he might get an uneasy feeling as the princess quietly plots against him. She reaches into her purse, and for a few moments the curve of some black spherical object can be seen, with just a hint of an eye visible. "...why..." she says quietly to herself.

     She doesn't throw the bob-omb, though. The dark look slowly passes and she lets go of the little explosive minion which disappears into her purse again. He doesn't want help? Fine. But, dismissing the somewhat unstable princess without even a hint of consideration? He may come to regret that.

     Mercy offers the two fighters healing, and Sarracenia gives her a look. "Are you insane? They just wiped out who knows how many just to settle some godly grudge! Let them suffer through their recovery!"
Enkidu Enkidu, who has been totally zoned out to talk into the phone affixed to his face, suddenly sits up. He turns his upper body to Sarracenia, which might be a bit weird because he's facing the other direction. He doesn't appear to have bones.

"I apologize that my friend Gilgamesh temporarily prevented you from meaningfully existing. It was done thoughtlessly. Thank you for all you have done to help save people. I deeply appreciate it." He bows at the waist. It's... not... it doesn't look comfortable. It isn't even comfortable to look at.
Gilgamesh      Gilgamesh gives Sarracenia a strange look. "Suffer?"

     He gestures at himself. "Look at me, fair lady." He's beaten, he's bruised, he's bloody, he has holes throughout his body, and he still looks unbelievably perfect. All those holes, all those bruises, all the damage Enkidu inflicted on him, it's as usual like accents to his beauty. But the most unusual thing is that smile.

     It's /happy/.

     She's seen him smirk. She's seen him flirt. She's seen him make a lot of expressions. But they've all been tinged with some sort of frustration, some sort of...irritation, or some darkness. At the moment, and perhaps for the first time ever, Gilgamesh's smile is radiant and golden and *happy*.

     "Do I look as if I am suffering?"

     "I have spent all of myself in a way that I did not even know was possible. I have seen the heights I can achieve firsthand and known my power. It is amazing."

     Gilgamesh waves his hand at Mercy's offer. "No. Thank you. I do not need it."

     "I want to enjoy this feeling."

     Gilgamesh rolls his head towards Strange. "I think," he says, "That if you had used your trick to give us space, Doctor, it would have lasted for a time, up until the point where we began to fight our hardest. Then we would have likely broken free, and then it would not have been available to respond to our Enuma Elish. That would have been worse, I think."

     "And I did not pick the place, so you cannot blame me. And Enkidu was a weapon pointed at my heart and fired, so you cannot blame him. Blame the gods for this. It is their fault."

     Gilgamesh looks up at Sarracenia.

     "Thank you."

     /That/ is definitely new. He tilts his head at Enkidu. "What he said, Sarracenia. Not the part about the apology, but the thanks."
Sarracenia      Sarracenia blinks in surprise as she is thanked by the two godly beings. And tries not to stare at Gilgamesh. Why does he have to look so amazing! She sort of winces as Enkidu bends in ways that people aren't supposed to bend, then blinks again as she realizes what they thanked her for. She gives them a bit of a skeptical look, then sighs heavily. "...if you really wish to thank me, please do not just follow the whims of your gods in the future. You are both apparently capable of independent thought. And a King of Heroes should be able to defy the gods. Isn't that like...half of what heroes do?"

     With things apparently taken care of here and Strange rebuffing her affection, Princess Sarracenia looks around at the overgrown ruins before sighing heavily again. "...I am going home." she says tiredly. She makes her way toward one of her airships slowly. Not much reason to hurry now, especially when one is feeling sorry for oneself after yet another -actual- hero turns one down.