“I’m cool with it,” said Quetzalcoatl, shrugging and being doused in flames.
“Oh, good,” said Thor. “I kind of like that one.”
“You mind terribly if I tried again?”
“Knock yourself out.”
“OK,” said Quetzalcoatl, still being bathed in a jet of flame. “How about, ‘Tell the electricians I said “hi.”’”
“Well, no, see, that’s actually worse. There’re no electricians here, it makes even less sense.”
Quetzalcoatl pointed toward the building on the far side of the casino’s property, specifically the marquee stating “West Coast Construction Workers Conference” in tall, bright, easily-read letters.
“Crap,” said Thor, extinguishing the flamethrower. “Nice one.”
“I thought so.”
In a single, astoundingly quick motion, Quetzalcoatl slid his way to Thor’s side, grabbed him by the face, and pushed, sending Thor sailing over the Excalibur’s entranceway and through the window of the neighboring convention hall.
Eighty: With a Cool, Dry Wit Like That…
“So, with that out of the way,” said Quetzalcoatl, making his way toward Catrina and Queen Victoria XXX, “who wants to get eaten first?”
“Oh my god, you eat people?” asked Queen Victoria XXX.
“I don’t want to get eaten,” said Catrina.
Quetzalcoatl laughed.
“I don’t eat people, it’s OK.”
He grabbed a chunk of broken cement from the ground before clarifying, “I am going to kill you, though. Probably with this piece of sidewalk. Please don’t be mistaken about that.”
“Well,” said Catrina, pulling two .44 Magnums from behind her back, “you can certainly try.”
She unloaded twelve rounds directly into Quetzalcoatl’s face. Quetzalcoatl’s head snapped back. Then it snapped forward. The he blinked a few times.
“Really? A fucking handgun?”
“No,” said Queen Victoria XXX, also pulling two .44s from behind her back, “a number of fucking handguns.”
She likewise unloaded twelve rounds directly into Quetzalcoatl’s face. Once again, Quetzalcoatl’s head snapped back, then forward, and then he blinked.
“What is wrong with you people?”
A rocket-propelled grenade exploded in Quetzalcoatl’s face.
“Clearly not our aim,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“Seriously, fucking stop. You guys are not Bruce Willis.”
Quetzalcoatl’s lip was bleeding slightly. He put his finger on the cut, pulled it away, and then looked at it so he could verify this fact for himself.
“And now I bit my lip. Great.”
“If it bleeds,” said Queen Victoria XXX, “we can kill it.”
“No. No, no, no, no. You seriously did not just say that, did you?”
“I didn’t not say it, jerkface.”
“You turkeys might as well be juggling Jell-O for all you’ve accomplished,” said Quetzalcoatl, putting down the sidewalk he had been brandishing. “Go ahead, shoot me again.”
“I’m sorry?” asked Queen Victoria XXX, raising an eyebrow.
“Shoot me again.”
“Which one of us?”
“All of you,” said Quetzalcoatl, “at once.”
“Seriously?” asked Catrina.
“Sure.”
“OK,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII with a shrug. “Your funeral.”
“Yeah,” said Quetzalcoatl, “I kind of doubt that.”
Catrina, Queen Victoria XXX, and Chester A. Arthur XVII reloaded their weapons. They drew a bead on Quetzalcoatl’s face. Quetzalcoatl smiled sweetly. A flaming prostitute ran screaming in between them, fell over, got up, and continued running down the street. Everyone looked at everyone else, shrugged, and then resumed the standoff.
“On the count of three, girls,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII. “One…”
“Two…” added Quetzalcoatl.
“Three.”
Catrina, Queen Victoria XXX, and Chester A. Arthur XVII fired directly into Quetzalcoatl’s face from less than five feet away.
The explosion of the grenade caused Catrina, Victoria, and Chester to shield their faces, singing arm hair and throwing shrapnel in the process. Quetzalcoatl, however, never stopped smiling. He didn’t even bother snapping his head back for dramatic effect this time around.
“Now, as you can quite plainly see,” said Quetzalcoatl, his sweet, taunting grin becoming sinister and menacing, “I ain’t got time to bleed.”
He spread his wings and raised himself from the ground, towering over the trio, adding, “I think our little play date is over.”
“Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!”
“OK, which of you said that?” asked Quetzalcoatl. “You’re dying first.”
“Who said what?” asked Catrina.
“I told you douchehorses no more action hero quipping.”
“We didn’t say anything,” said Queen Victoria XXX.
“Don’t you…”
Quetzalcoatl never finished his sentence. Or question. Or whatever it was. Instead, he was punched in the back of the head by a giant robot. A giant robot made up of other robots. More specifically, a giant robot cobbled together from the broken pieces of a dozen defeated Horsemen and piloted by a telekinetic squirrel in a cape. Quetzalcoatl was punched in the back of the head, by a robot made of other robots and piloted by a squirrel, with such tremendous force that not only his head, but his shoulders, as well, busted through the busted-up pavement and were now located in the packed dirt under the surface of the ground.
“Timmy!” squealed Catrina.
“Ma’am,” replied the squirrel telepathically, manipulating his giant frankenrobot to tip an invisible hat toward the girl.
“You just saved our asses,” said Queen Victoria XXX.
“Yeah,” said Timmy, “funny how that works.”
“We would have figured it out eventually,” replied Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“Sure you would’ve.”
Before Chester A. Arthur XVII could retort, Quetzalcoatl removed himself from the ground with great exuberance, spraying gravel and chunks of cement everywhere. He immediately resumed his earlier towering, menacing pose, albeit with significantly more emphasis on the menace this time around.
“OK, seriously,” said the Aztec god, cracking his neck, “fuck all y’all.”
Quetzalcoatl grabbed Timmy’s robot contraption with his tail, slammed it into the already battered sidewalk, then into a pile of rubble that used to be a wall, then into a wall that was still a wall, and then flung Timmy and his machine into the stratosphere.
“Timmy!” cried Catrina.
In a single motion, Quetzalcoatl backhanded all three of his remaining assailants as they tried to load their
