Post

Aljero Vitusca, head of the Proxistos Cartel, paces back and forth in his office in a foul mood. None of his connections in Cageistan or Shrek Land have made an effort to reach him--at least, to his knowledge. In fact, there have been no communications from outside August whatsoever. The news stations have found out before him, for goodness' sake. Coadun seems to have been decimated, and Cageistan is being terrorized by a former real estate magnate with a penchant for bringing down deities with as much collateral damage as possible. Of course, the important thing in all this is business--specifically, the people he does business with, who may or may not still exist. Such a situation, should it be allowed to continue, could be catastrophic to the reputation of the Cartel in the region.

"On my frakin' day off. Unbelievable." Vitusca boots a trash can through his open door and down the hall. An underling carrying a three foot stack of reports trips over it and falls down several flights of stairs, but the cartel boss has already turned away. "My wife... He shakes his head, then picks up the phone. "Get a recon bird ready. I need to see this for myself."

High above Cageistan, black clouds swirl ominously, and unnatural thunder booms out for miles. The effect is lost on most of the observers, who lie motionless in the gray dust following Trump's attack. Trump himself towers over the landscape. The black weapon in his hand seems to absorb the weak light around it. From a distance, one can almost mistake him for one of the colossal Cageistani mountains, when his head whips around, his hair following shortly behind. The speedy Cartel reconnaissance aircraft punches through the cloud above his head and leaves a black jet stream in its wake.

On board, Vitusca cannot believe his eyes. "Have you ever seen anything like that? Tell me, have you ever...!?" He trails off as the pilots circle around, bringing the tiny plane to bear directly in front of Trump. The creature's full wrath aroused, the Necrosword begins to lift. The plane, a mere house fly before the god-destroyer, nose-dives just as the sword slices through time and space just yards above them. It passes through the two enormous legs and comes out the other side, but Trump is already there, having moved far faster than is seemingly possible. The sword lifts again. Vitusca, thanking the stars that he had had the sense to outfit the reconnaissance jet with a small ion-stream cannon, slides into the vacant gunner's seat. The pilots sit slack-jawed, frozen in terror and unable to replicate the daring move from before. The cartel head, on the other hand, has not attained his position for nothing. Through the forward-looking infrared camera, he tries to sight a weakness, but the display is pure darkness.

"No conventional targeting. My luck. Looks like the old fashioned way." Vitusca feels as though he is acting in slow motion as he yanks the co-pilot out of his seat. Trump is a mile ahead of the plane, but the distance may as well be an inch. For the Necrosword, earthly dimension itself crumbles and peels away, until all that is left is the deadly might of the blade and the deadly intention of its bearer. In the instant before the final impact, the ion cannon spools up, and Aljero Vitusca unleashes several megajoules of pure energy directly into Trump's face. With an unearthly howl that flattens every remaining tree in a ten mile radius, Trump drops the sword. The pilots, having regained their senses, pull up hard, and the plane is whisked back into the clouds.

Shaken, the battle- and bureaucracy-hardened cartel boss drops into a chair. "We're gonna need more weapons..."