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21. EXT. PALAWAN – DUSK – CONTINUOUS

Zcerneboch is gargantuan, with immense ram-like horns flanking his beastial head. Wings vast and leathery sprout from his shoulder blades. He has only half-emerged from the ground, his lower torso and legs still concealed, and already he is gigantic. Fires smolder in his muscles, his veins pulsing like magma. A fell, black light glows from his eyes and mouth, red steam issuing from his bat-like snout.

Beneath his breath, Mang Tonio continues to pray, resigned that no one, not even God, can hear him now.

Thus, it is with shock, and a not inconsiderable amount of hope, that the old man hears the whistling, as of a figure moving at high speed, fast approaching.

Mang Tonio cranes his neck…. There!

Dying sunlight glinting off red metal wrought into the shape of an eagle’s head.

Habagat!

The old man watches as the caped hero streaks towards the gigantic demon like a bullet, a missile, arms outstretched, hands clenched into fists, fists which ram into the demon with a resounding boom.

The thing staggers, but it reaches out, quickly, with a speed unhinted at by its bulk, and grasps Habagat in a single claw-like hand, the hero pinned there, held like a struggling doll.

Then, the thing speaks, and Mang Tonio cringes.

“AAHH, HABAGAT, YOU WISH TO DEFY ME ONCE MORE.”

“Pinabagsak kita noong una tayong naglaban, Zcerneboch! Matatalo kita ulit!”

“BRAVE WORDS, LITTLE GNAT, WHEN YOU CANNOT EVEN BREAK OUT OF MY GRIP.”

The unearthly muscles on Habagat’s body cord and flex, but his strength is outmatched by Zcerneboch’s.

He does, however, have other options.

From Habagat’s eyes come twin blasts of fiery energy, molten beams which strike Zcerneboch’s massive chest. But when all his enemy does is laugh contemptuously, Habagat’s blood runs cold.

“ENERGY ONLY MAKES ME STRONGER, FOOL. BUT HERE, LET ME REWARD YOU FOR YOUR PERSISTENCE.”

And Zcerneboch brings the valiantly struggling Habagat closer, then breathes out, blasting gouts of red steam on the hero. Habagat coughs, violently, his eyes streaming with tears. The steam is acidic, brutally vitriolic; Habagat feels ill.

His enemy’s grip eases, and he slips from Zcerneboch’s grasp, falling, dizzy, to the ground below.

He falls to the earth, still coughing, his head swimming. He tries to get to his feet, or even to his hands and knees, but he simply can’t.

He can hardly even crawl.

All he can do is lay there, on his stomach, and groan.

“I’M STRONGER NOW, HABAGAT. STRONGER THAN WHEN WE FIRST MET. I’VE BEEN TRAVELLING, YOU SEE.”

In glacial horror, Mang Tonio watches as the thing called Zcerneboch slams an open palm down, hard, on the defenseless Habagat, as a man would swat a mosquito, smashing the hero into the earth.

When Zcerneboch raises his hand, the old man sees the hero lying face down, the black earth cracked around his body, which has sunk a number of feet beneath the surface.

From here, Mang Tonio cannot see if Habagat is even breathing.

Sneering, fangs jutting from his jaw, Zcerneboch lifts Habagat up by his leg, the champion looking broken, black earth soiling his face, and the yellow-gold of his heroic garb. The demon drops him onto the ground, where he falls, face up, unmoving.

Mang Tonio hears a soft moan, then sees Habagat move his head slowly.

The old man’s heart leaps. Buhay pa siya!

Zcerneboch seems to be studying the fallen hero before him.

“I’VE SWUM THROUGH THE EARTH, GONE TO HIROSHIMA, NAGASAKI, TRINITY, AMCHITKA, NOVAYA ZEMLYA, LOP NOR, MONTE BELLO, CHRISTMAS ISLAND. THREE MILE ISLAND. EVEN THE UKRAINE.” The thing laughs, a vast and terrible sound. “CHERNOBYL. THE FOOLS NAMED IT AFTER ME!”

Again, it laughs, and Mang Tonio sees Habagat stirring, trying to sit up.

With a finger the diameter of a telephone pole, Zcerneboch pokes Habagat in the stomach, and the hero grunts, then curls up in agony, the breath brutally slammed out of his already battered body.

“I DRANK ALL THE RADIATION LEFT THERE, AND IN SO MANY OTHER SECRET PLACES, PLACES WITHOUT NAMES, WHERE MEN TOYED WITH FORCES FAR BEYOND THEIR KEN.

“I ABSORBED ALL THE POWER THAT WAS THERE. I AM SO MUCH MORE NOW, HABAGAT!”

Zcerneboch smiles, and something inside Mang Tonio withers and dies.

“I AM YOUR DEATH.”

And Zcerneboch opens his mouth and vomits a sickly black light onto Habagat, and the hero screams.

The pain is a black cancer that consumes every nerve ending in Habagat’s body. It is a cruel, bitter agony, and all he wishes to do is curl up and die; that way, he can rest.

But Habagat knows that if this is what Zcerneboch can do to his body, what can the fiend do to the citizens of the Philippines?

To Lalaine.

To Lillian!

And with that thought, armed with it, as shield and armor, Habagat battles the stream of black light, forces himself to sit up, then, to stand, and his muscles quiver, scream, beneath the brutal onslaught. It feels as if he is carrying the weight of the world. He can feel his suit shredding, his cape tattered, torn.

But he is whole. Hurting, but whole.

And while he is whole, while he is able, no one will suffer by Zcerneboch’s hand.

By the glow of the cold black light, reality becomes reversed, a negative image of itself. Yet somehow, Habagat blazes, radiating a light of his own, white, warm, blinding and pure; the irrefutable truth.

He is the Champion of the White God, hero, avatar; nemesis to Zcerneboch, the Black God, deity of misery and despair.

He is the Champion, and he will not fall.

Roaring defiance, Habagat flies to Zcerneboch, towards his chest. And as he speeds through the air towards his enemy, he cocks his left fist back, then slams it into Zcerneboch’s chest at far above the speed of sound.

Mang Tonio stumbles, falls, the sonic boom slapping the old man to the ground. His ears are ringing, and they feel sticky, and wet, but he is alive, and right now, that’s good enough for him.

Dusting himself off, Mang Tonio gets to his feet, and sees Habagat bathed in black light, breaking the demon’s chest open, the ragged hole the hero is making leaking that fell, ebony glow.

The invulnerable flesh of Habagat’s hands and arms plunge into the body of Zcerneboch, an entity older than time itself, and the black, searing pain comes in an unstoppable torrent, threatening to overwhelm him. The bracers on his forearms begin to corrode, metal pitted and eaten away by the ebony glow.

But Habagat hangs there, like a rock climber before a cave, and reaches into Zcerneboch, fingers seeking, and when they find what the hero is looking for, his fingertips burning on contact, he marshals the remnants of his flagging strength, superhuman muscles cording in response to his unwavering will, what is left of his suit tearing further still, the unearthly material unable to contain Habagat’s straining musculature, and, as he whispers to God beneath his breath, “Tulungan ninyo po ako,” the most powerful man on the planet, perhaps in the cosmos, pulls.

Zcerneboch’s howl of pain is a horrible noise that sours the surrounding land.

Gritting his teeth, Habagat pulls Zcerneboch’s heart from out of his chest. It is hard, the Black God’s heart, like a rock, a core of blackness, radiating bitterness and hate in undulating waves.

Battling the dizziness, Habagat takes to the air, lifting Zcerneboch’s heart above his head with both hands, the flesh of his palms smoking as he flies off into the darkening sky.

Below him, Zcerneboch’s body, bereft of its heart, begins to crumble, bits and tatters of it shredding into the wind.

The Black God’s now hollow body falls in on itself, dissipating into so much dust, leaving his lingering legacy to mankind.

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