Chereads / The Starved Rock Series / Chapter 78 - To Live On In Infamy: Part VIII

Chapter 78 - To Live On In Infamy: Part VIII

 |Vestiges of History's Past| VS |Entities of History's Bogeymen|

As the Tetrad Demon Lord shrieked something straight out of a nightmare, Stagolee's vestige appeared next to Perseverance holding up a joker playing card. He chuckled while fixing his stetson's position on his head. 

"What's the matter?" His thick, southern bayou accent rang into the Demon Lord's ears like nails on a chalkboard. "Sounds like ya just lost the best hand you'd ever had dealt to ya... They don't call me the Voodoo Gamblin' Vigilante for nothing." His laughter was carried by the resounding waves of laughter for voodoo dolls and heads that seemed to drive railway spikes of noise into the tyrant's ears. The shrieking and wailing continued to the point of annoyance. 

"Constitution!" Called out Perseverance. "Silence that tyrannical crybaby." 

The American Automaton seemed to mechanically chuckle as she charged up her lasers. "It would be my pleasure, Commander." Without warning or hesitation, the tri-beam laser superheated the air and turned the ground where the Demon Lord had been standing into molten glass. However, in a sound that would burn its memory unto Perseverance's soul, the Tetrad Demon Lord exploded upward, uppercutting Constitution with a force strong enough to rip whole buildings out of the ground and suspend them above the ground. The battleship and aircraft carriers of the American Factional Fleet were pulled up from the water, and American soldiers along with the European citizens were picked up as well. Heroes both American and European rushed to their aid, scooping them out of the sky as the Demon Lord began to levitate into the air. 

"Weather Control, Aura of Despair, Planetary Manipulation, Strength of Monopolistic Control, and you think I'll be subdued by some... Spirits of OUR FUCKING PAST!? DELUSIONAL! COME FORTH, HURRICANE OF INDUSTRIAL MIGHT! CRUSH ALL THAT DARE STAND IN OUR WAY! 

Perseverance stood on the only plot of land that hadn't been altered yet. That's when the vestige of Amelia Earhart flicked the side of his. 

"Ow, what the hell?"

"What are you standing here?!"

"What the hell am I going to do against that?!"

Then a new vestige pinched him by the ear. "Boy, if you don't get your black 'n' white ass into the air like Miss Earhart said to..." Scolded the Vestige of Mammy. Her physique was that of the average, Black American housewife in the early 1900s, but Perseverance had learned a life lesson thanks to the years he'd spent observing Barbara as a child. That lesson was to know better than to never piss off a black woman, especially a black mother who had your ear in a pinch hold. 

"Yes, Ma'am!" 

The song "Ride of the Valkyries" was echoing across the land as the Demon Lord seemed to draw strength from it. The hero racked his brain for a perfect count to this tyrannical shitstorm that was growing exponentially larger. 

"Vestiges, listen up. I need Douglas MacArthur, Amelia Earhart, Casey Jones, Chuck Yeager, and Rosa Parks front and center, NOW!" As the Hero leaps into the sky, the vestiges, he had called out, begin to do something strange. Rosa Parks, the woman of immovable courage helped keep him steady, Casey Jones and his spirit locomotive sped around him with Chuck Yeager speeding laps around them in a spirit Bell X-1. MacArthur's fire cyclones that were unleashed upon Japan began to combine as Amelia kept him airborne. As the now-fire tornado touched the soles of his armored boots, the intensifying Firenado lit up the sky and ground for all to see. 

The distracted Demon Lord felt the massive and intense wave of heat from the Firenado grabbing his attention. "Now what?" He thought from atop their hurricane of destruction. The Tetrad watched as this "Carnival of Americanisms" rose to give them a direct challenge. 

"What in the unholy fuck is that?" Grimaced the Demon Lord. As their song crescendos, Perseverance grinned from behind his mask as Combination X was injected into his bloodstream. 

"Welcome Demon Lord, rather Tetra of the Evilest Morons in History, to the wrath of my newest move!"The Hero took a deep breath just before speaking in a bayou-type French to them. "Cirque de la douleur américaine" 

The height of the music only made things more humiliating for the Tetrad of Evil as this hero's Firenado ripped apart the Industrial Hurricane. They watched as this guy, whom they regarded as nothing more than an insect, marched towards them in a slow, deliberate manner. To their surprise, he seemed to be walking through the air with nothing holding him up. However, the Americans, Europeans, and New World Order Soldiers, who'd been set down gently by the Firenado, had a different tale to tell. With each step Perseverance took, vestiges used their hands to create a staircase bridge to the Tetra Demon Lord. He grabbed them by the throat, killing their hurricane off completely. 

As Perseverance opened his mouth to speak, the words that came out were sharper than any blade, better than any bullet, and more powerful than any nuclear bomb detonating.

"The American Dream... That so-called, nonsensical thing you morons wipe your asses with and spit on every change you get..." The hero paused for a moment to calm his boiling anger.

It isn't just a platitudinal dream. It is a collective promise and inalienable guarantee that the Government of America was supposed to uphold at all costs or risk revolution... You and your fucking puppets got rich undermining that, now it's time to pay back what you owe. This isn't a request, this is a demand and the payment shall be made in full with the blood of tyrants... No matter the cost." Perseverance's eyes were stone cold in the glare they shot into the Tetrad's souls. 

"This is no mere insect..." Started John D. Rockefeller. He looked at the other Demon Lords that were in control of Rothschild's mind. The others growled at him, eyes gone fully red. "HELP US KILL HIM." 

As he agreed with a nod, the Tetrad Demon Lord fired off one hell of a punch that launched an air pressure blast of gale-force winds at him. The firenado dissipated but in the air, the hero remained. His eyes began to glow a star-spangled hue, his once calm right hand curled into an intensely clenched fist. "Have it your way then..." uttered the Hero as he locked his arm back like it was the slide of a desert eagle that'd racked a .50 caliber round into the chamber. 

"American Heritage:  Frederick Douglass + Doris Miller + The 332nd Red Tails + Ulysses Grant + Paul Tibbets + Theodore Roosevelt... Second Declaration".

As Perseverance's fist broke through the air, the Tetrad Demon Lord watched as these six Vestiges of History added their fists and power to the hero's punch. It was a dead-on, airborne jump shot, sucker punch to the direct center of Demon Lord's face. As it made contact, a vortex of air pressure seemed to form behind the Demon Lord as this Star Spangled Hero unleashed the power of his "Second Declaration's punch. The Demon Lord slammed into the European soil harder than the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. However, none of the ground broke, not even specks of dust left the surface. Thanks to T. Roosevelt and the 332nd Red Tails, the impact was reflected from the ground back through the Demon Lord's body. The doubled impact inflicted carnal damage on the Demon Lord's innermost organs, both vital and non-vital. 

However, the hero wasn't finished. The hero cried out at the top of his lungs, "American Heritage: Chuck Yeager + Jesse Owens + Muhammad Ali + Mammy + The Mercury 7 + Theodore Roosevelt... Hypersonic Antitrust Impact." 

Perseverance shot down from the heavens like an invisible blur. His fist slammed into the Demon Lord's chest equating the wrath of an angry god, blowing apart the vast layers of hardened flesh armor that they'd been using as protection. The Tetrad reeled in a chaotic panic as they were losing control of the body. However, Lord Clinton, one of the lesser lords of the New World Order, entered the battle to assist her leader with one final act of cruelty.