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33. EXT. BENEATH THE MAGALLANES FLY-OVER – CONTINUOUS

Habagat is only nominally aware that they are now beneath the fly-over, when the agony resumes, his body repeatedly slammed against one of the thick support pillars, battered like a boneless rag doll.

Habagat quickly loses count of the number of times his body is bashed against concrete. After the first five times or so, the pain becomes tidal, washing over him, wave after torturous wave.

Instead, he tries to recapture his focus.

Timing it as best he can, Habagat quickly unclasps the cape from his icon, and, his body, propelled by the momentum of Tagabah’s power, speeds forward, the pillar rushing towards him. Correcting the angle and position of his body, he flies around the pillar, and, arms outstretched, hands clenched in solid fists, rams into Tagabah’s chest, the icon there his target, sending the clone flying back, to smash into the windshield of an abandoned car.

Habagat speeds to his opponent, unwilling to give quarter now, understanding the stakes are hideously high. He pummels Tagabah’s abdomen with his fists, a pounding barrage of punches, and Tagabah is slammed back down against the car’s spiderwebbed windshield.

Then, the clone kicks out, sweeping Habagat’s feet out from under him.

But even as Habagat is falling, Tagabah whizzes behind the hero, literally in the blink of an eye, and has quickly hooked his arms up, under Habagat’s armpits, cinching him into a hold, Habagat’s arms up, Tagabah’s arms hooked around the hero’s biceps, the clone’s fingers interlocked, behind Habagat’s head.

In the momentum of executing the move, Tagabah lifts up into the air a few feet; thus, they hover there, above the wrecked car, Habagat struggling valiantly, muscles cording in the effort, but unable to break the hold.

The clone’s fingers are locked, and he increases the pressure, pushing Habagat’s head forward, the hero’s chin dipping towards his chest, the monstrous strain felt in the agony of the muscles in his neck, arms, and shoulders.

Tagabah’s whisper is cold, adamantine. “Mamamatay ka, Habagat. Pagnatapos si Dr. Hugo sa mga experiment niya sa `yo, papatayin kita.”

He knows the hold is for the sole purpose of making him submit to Tagabah’s strength. Habagat will never surrender.

Through gritted teeth, the hero is defiant. “Puros da-da… ka lang… ano ka… replacement… sa unggoy… atsaka… seroks lang… diba…?”

Enraged, Tagabah hovers downwards, his boots touching ground, the clone intending to use the leverage to increase the pressure of the hold. But this is exactly what Habagat was hoping for.

Immediately, he hooks his foot behind Tagabah’s boot and jerks, toppling the clone off his feet. Habagat pushes backward, throwing more weight onto his enemy as they slam into the pavement, Tagabah’s back taking the punishment.

More out of surprise than pain, Tagabah loses his control of the hold, and Habagat nimbly rolls, in one smooth motion getting to his feet, pivoting, and blasting his clone with his heat vision.

Recovering quickly, Tagabah, from a crouch, standing slowly, also unleashes his heat vision, and the beams meet, collide, at a point in the air somewhere between the combatants. At the point of contact, the glow is intense, blinding, as if a miniature sun is being birthed.

Neither foe is willing to back down, and slowly, incredibly, they begin to walk towards each other, each step an astounding ordeal of strength and unflagging willpower, as if they walk against the power of a thousand hurricanes, forces of nature undreamed of by man.

The heat from the beams’ collision radiates, and the surrounding concrete begins to soften and smoke, to melt. There is a heat haze surrounding Habagat and his clone, Tagabah’s black cape billowing back in the punishing, hot winds.

Finally, finally, the opponents are facing each other, within striking distance. But the duel has settled into a contest of energy, of whose ocular blasts are more powerful.

Or so Habagat thinks.

Brutally, he receives a solid fist to the stomach. His breath is suddenly gone, and he shuts his eyes reflexively. Then, losing his focus, not concentrating, he opens them.

And screams.

Tagabah’s eye beams sear through Habagat’s conjunctivae, corneas, pupils, and lenses in microseconds, the vitreous humour in his eyeballs evaporating instantaneously, leaving smoking, blackened craters where his eyes had just been.

He does not panic. Habagat knows the damage is temporary. (Already, he can feel the process of healing slowly, painfully, begin.) But until he is fully healed, he is effectively blind, and in tremendous, crippling agony.

Habagat feels himself fall to his knees (and a small, detached part of him is annoyed that he is showing this sort of weakness before Tagabah). He is breathing heavily, raggedly, then a boot slams into his still tender chest, and he falls hard, onto his back.

Reeling from the pain, Habagat rolls over slowly, onto his stomach, intending to get to his hands and knees, and then, onto his feet. But he hears Tagabah’s cruel laugh, feels his enemy’s boot pounding once, then again, then again, against his shoulder blades, the spot where he had been struck earlier, and the punishment sinks its claws there, his muscles buckling under the cruel beating.

Drowning in agony and his clone’s laughter, Habagat tries to struggle to his hands and knees, shaking, is finally successful, only to feel a sharp explosion of pain, Tagabah’s boot connecting with his jaw, and, flipped over by the savage kick, the back of the hero’s head strikes the pavement, and he hears, and feels, no more.

Sneering, Tagabah looks down at the battered and fallen hero, placing his boot on Habagat’s chest, on the icon there, the pose of the triumphant hunter. He feels Habagat’s chest rising and falling.

Good. Unconscious.

He looks at the blackened pits of Habagat’s eyes, can see no resemblance in the ruin of the hero’s face to his own god-like countenance.

Seeing the nearby gasoline tanker, abandoned, acutely aware of the crowd of civilians gathered nervously to witness their hero’s humiliation and destruction, Tagabah grins, then speeds to the railways, is back beside Habagat in seconds, long girders of iron torn from the train tracks carried over one shoulder.

Then, with his free hand, Tagabah bends and grabs the hero’s icon, his fingers digging into the metal, warping, crushing, gaining a firm hold only through destruction, and drags the deeply unconscious hero towards the tanker.

There, he sets about draping the hero’s body on the tanker’s surface, pinning him there with the iron bars, which act like gigantic staples holding Habagat’s body immobile, back against the tanker’s curved surface, head fallen forward, gasoline soaking down around him, from the holes punched in the tanker’s skin by the iron bars.

And even now, like this, defeated and immobilized, the hero still looks intimidating, the size of him, his physicality, like a warrior saint, chained, ready to be martyred.

Tagabah can hear the crowd mumbling, some moaning, a few sobbing. Irritated, he walks away from the tanker, turns, then blasts it with his heat vision.

There is an explosion, volcanic, and Habagat’s limp body wheels through the air, then tumbles down the highway, end over end, the hero looking like a hit-and-run victim slammed into at high speed by a reckless driver. Along the way, his wildly careening body smashes into abandoned cars, hurtling them aside as if they were Matchbox toys.

Tagabah flies to retrieve Habagat’s discarded red cape, then whizzes back, in time to touch down on the highway just as the hero comes rolling to a stop, on his back, arms flung wide.

Placing his boot once more on Habagat’s chest, Tagabah grips his enemy’s cape in both steely hands-- the very cape Habagat sometimes uses to bind his enemies before he takes them into custody, a cape made of some magickal, indestructible material-- and rips, tearing it in two, tossing the shreds to the ground.

Then, he removes his boot from the hero’s chest, and grabs a fistful of Habagat’s suit at sternum level, lifting the defenseless hero, his head hanging backwards, his legs bent underneath him.

Then Tagabah lifts his unconscious enemy up over his head.

“Ito ang inyong pag-asa,” Tagabah roars, shaking Habagat’s limp form. “Masdan na ninyo ang katawan niya, kasi hindi ninyo siya makikita na buhay muli!”

And with that fell pronouncement, Tagabah flies off, carrying the defeated Habagat, beaten and subdued, into the grey heavens, and as the first sobs and screams rise, the sky tears open, and raindrops begin to fall from the iron clouds.

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