The show began with a loud, ground shaking bang as the rooftop of the unfinished building was blown sky high.

In the midst of the dust and debris shot out Theo's modified F35 Lightning 2 into the clear night sky.

Theo cut the primary engine and realigned the the F35 to an upside down horizontal position in order to stall the plane.

As the plane quickly lost speed, Theo reignited the engine and made it perform a near 180 degree turn towards the crowded street below.

At this time, Arsenal finally got over his initial shock and began chasing Theo.

The F35 remained about 10 meters above the streets while flying as slow as possible.

This might seem weird to most people since Theo seemed to be trying to run away from Arsenal, but keeping the superhero as close to him as possible was exactly the plan.

Since the F35 was flying so close to the ground, it has effectively made everyone on the ground its hostage.

Shooting it down a fully armed fighter plane meant massive amounts of collateral damage. This was something Arsenal was not able to take a risk.

But more importantly, Theo could finally live his dream of making a fighter plane drift like a car!

He changed the camera that was streaming from his helmet to the F35's onboard censors so that the audience could exactly what was happening.

As the F35 approached a corner, it fired off its VTOL along with the side thrusters in order to pull off a perfect 90 degree drift without hitting any of the buildings nearby.

And as if to mock Arsenal, the F35 maintained a relatively low speed and stuck to the roads as it made its way into the bustling part of the city.

Arsenal could do nothing but watch over Theo's recklessness while sending information to the superheroes and military alike.

The F35 navigated through the confusing urban streets until it eventually came across an exit that led to a relatively long stretch of highway that went straight to his destination.

This 4 lane street was also famous for one of the hotspots for drag racing.

In fact, there was actually a race that was just underway.

Time to see these land lovers what true speed was all about!

Theo reduced his altitude to 5 meters and cranked up the speed to maximum.

Even with a 5 second head start, the F35 easily overtook the cars like it was nothing.

The look at the driver's faces as the deafening sound of the fighter plane spooked them to death was priceless and caught in full HD.

Watching them grind into a halt or crash into something was a quite a treat to behold.

Sadly, he could not bask in his handiwork. Duty calls.

He gained altitude and began his attack run.

Unfortunately, this also gave Arsenal the opportunity to blast him out of the air without hitting the pedestrian.

Thanks to the many spydrones scattered around the city, Theo had unparalleled situational awareness.

Arsenal used his gatling gun back weapon to shoot off one of the F35's wings, but it skillfully barrel rolled out of the way.

For the next few seconds, the superhero tried and failed to use this tactic to bring down the F35, but it would anticipate such attempts and dodge it with precision.

Frustrated by the lack of progress, Arsenal unleashed a salvo of homing missiles.

As if waiting for this, the F35 suddenly went into a nosedive and performed another impossible maneuver.

Using its many thrusters, it instantly flipped 180 degrees and charged at Arsenal.

At the same time, the lower left side of the F35's nose opened and exposed a mechanical arm holding a weird looking gatling gun.

Arsenal didn't bother dodging it since his power armor could easily shrug off the F35's GAU-22/A gatling cannon.

Instant karma.

Arsenal was quickly covered by a thick layer of quick drying concrete.

While it did no damage, it clogged up one of his hand thrusters and murdered his aerodynamics.

Arsenal hovered in midair and began clawing off the gunk, but the F35 did not miss to capitalize on this opportunity.

It passed by Arsenal, leading quite a bit of the homing missiles to hit its owner.

The F35 dove to the streets below and used the buildings to get rid of the remaining homing missiles.

Using this little respite, the F35 cranked up its speed to maximum and raised its altitude for its attack run.

It opened its 3 weapon bays (the original F35 only had 2), locked on the targets provided by the spydrones, and launched 15 modified FGM-148 Javelins.

Normally, the Javelins were used against armored vehicles or helicopters. It also had a range of about 4.7 kilometers and had the armor piercing HEAT warheads.

Theo's Javelins were not like these.

For one, its fuel was significantly reduced thus the range was drastically reduced to only 1 kilometer.

As a trade off, its warhead was upgraded to Theo's own Purgatory Bombs that was specifically made for incinerating a large area.

And since the F35 was going to pass so close to the target areas, it's minimal range was moot.

A series of explosions rocked the city as multiple buildings began to burn with intensity.

Theo's target were the homes rich criminals that could not be touched by the law or the vigilantes. From politicians to TV show hosts, these were the type of people Theo could not touch in the past lest he incur the wrath of the system.

Since Theo was going to 'die' today, the consequences were no longer his concern.

Unfortunately, collateral damage was inevitable.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

This was the reason why he used the Purgatory Bombs. The heat generated was so intense that those affected will experience a painless death.

Out of the 15 Javelins fired , 8 were into office buildings, 5 into penthouses and 2 into fancy mansions.

Naturally, this rampant display of force was bound to attract everyone's ire.

5 superheroes capable of flight, 4 F16 Fighting Falcons and 3 AH64 Apaches came to intercept him.

The Apaches unleashed a salvo of the actual anti air FGM-148 Javelins.

The F35's lower right nose opened up and exposed a short barreled cannon with what seemed to be a speaker at the tip.

This was a Directional Shockwave Cannon. While it was indeed rare, it was not the first time the world has witnessed to it.

As far as the world knows, Mechanicus was the first one to wield it.

And just as stated in the print, the shockwave cannon fired off a force that rivaled that of a mini nuke.

All of the Javelins exploded after hitting the wall of air.

3 of the flying superheroes, 2 of the F16s and all of the Apaches could not react in time and was flatted.

Powerful the shockwave cannon may be, it required a fairly long charge up time.

Theo was saving it in case he attracted the big guns like a fair number of the S ranked superheroes, but it seemed that they were nowhere in sight.

Thank god for that.

The F35 and the 2 F16s flew past each other.

Theo wanted to do an about face and case down the 2, but he still had 2 flying superheroes to deal with.

The F35 used its gatling cannon to fire on the approaching superheroes, both of which dodged all the bullets.

The F35 cranked his speed to max and exited the city with his opponents hot on his trail.

He kept going until he reached the mountains beyond the city limits.

He flew very close to the mountain roads that were still populated by travelers and truckers, thus making the enemy hesitate to open fire.

At this point, Arsenal finally caught up with the case and was also sharing the predicament of his allies.

The alliance of superheroes and the military were already used to the F35's insane shenanigans, but the next event made them question the principles of aviation.

The F35 was approaching a large tunnel that went deep into the mountains. The first portion of it was not fully enclose and was home to a fairly serpentine road.

No sane fighter pilot would risk entering such a claustrophobic environment and make it out in one piece.

As such, they waited for the F35 to pull up. There they would shoot it down without mercy.

Such a scenario failed to manifest as the F35 flew into the tight tunnel with barely any distance between it and the vehicles it was passing over.

More importantly, it was literally drifting like those car movies and anime shows.

While the F35 did reduce its speed for better handling, it was still traveling too damn fast in such a tight environment.

Eventually, it entered the tunnel that went into the mountain.

And now a new problem arose.

There were 10 possible exits which led to the inner cities of the Commonwealth. Naturally, each city was quite a bit of distance from each other.

There were not enough personnel to cover all the exists.

As such, the allies quickly decided to split up to cover as much ground as possible.

At the same time, all of them would alert the law enforcement of the areas they could not cover in case Theo does go their way.

With that decided, the group disbanded.

As Arsenal was about to head to his assigned city, his instincts told him to stay.

Based on the schematics of said tunnel, there was a fairly large rotunda somewhere in the middle of the tunnel which act as a main crossroads.

That area should have enough space for the F35 to turn around.

With this theory in mind, Arsenal told his plans to his fellow compatriots and waited just outside the tunnel.

But after 10 minutes of watching cars and trucks pass by, Theo didn't show up.

Even his comrades on the other exists saw no sign of their target.

They also tried to access the stream, but as you'd expect of going underground, there was no signal.

Sick of waiting, someone suggested to go chase after him.

The 2 superheroes and Arsenal agreed to this and proceeded to enter the tunnel.

But before he could do so, he was hit by a massive shock wave that blasted him into the wall.

It destroyed a fair number of his guns and broke a couple of bones, but he was still very much fine.

Almost immediately, the F35 flew out of the tunnel.

Arsenal warned his comrades before immediately giving chase.

Once again, the F35 flew close to the road and used the travelers as hostage.

Annoyingly enough, it followed the road all the way back to the city. This effectively nullified any and all attempts Arsenal could have possibly made.

It flew over the highway and eventually back to the middle of the still burning city.

Upon reaching the busiest crossroads of the city, the F35 suddenly flew straight up the side of a high rise building, opened its weapons bay and fired off 15 Javelins as it continued straight up towards the sky.

The Javelins' flew up then back down to earth towards their intended target.

Arsenal stopped and tried to shot down as many of the javelins as he could. Unfortunately, the only weapons he had that were not completely damage was the high powered machine guns hidden within his gauntlets.

The rest of his tertiary weapons were either flattened like a pancake or simply obliterated.

With his hands tied, Arsenal could only shoot down 5 of the Javelins before the rest hit their mark.

Frustrated at his powerlessness, Arsenal decided to abandon protecting the city and went straight for the source of the problem.

Fortunately, the F35 was flying about 5 kilometers above the city.

It was the perfect time to take him down.

Thanks to the power armor's superior technology, Arsenal was quickly able to catch up with Theo.

And thus, the case began once again.

Arsenal tried to shoot the F35 down, but its annoying maneuverability allowed it to dodge anything thrown its way.

The only choice the superhero had was to go into melee and break the damn thing with his own hands.

While the power armor had more than enough strength to rip it apart, actually catching it was another matter entirely.

Once again, the F35 did something absurd.

It did a 180 flip and did something no plane has ever done.... it flew BACKWARDS!

It was physically, theoretically and morally impossible to fly a freaking plane backwards!

Yet thanks the F35's powerful thrusters, it did exactly that.

Sure, it's speed slowed considerably, but it had every weapon pointed at Arsenal's way.

Once again, it's 3 weapon bays opened up and launched 3 AIM120C AMRAAM at him.

Unlike the Javelins, the AIM120Cs were made specifically for fighter planes in anti air operations.

Arsenal dodged the first and the second, but the third had a nasty surprise.

Suddenly, the tip split into 8 parts with a large net holding them together.

This took the superhero by surprise and was caught in the trap.

At the same time, the F35 blasted him with the concrete gatling gun. The two AIM120Cs eventually were able to circle back and strike their target.

One of them was an emp bomb.

However, it did nothing to Arsenal's power armor. As expected of one of Mechanicus' creations, it already had anti EMP counter measures.

The other one opened up like an octopus and latched to the superhero.

At the middle of the missile was a powerful pile driver that repeatedly slammed into the power armor with bone crushing force.

Desperate to get out of his predicament, Arsenal used the power armor's 'oh shit' ability.

After a brief charge up, the Archon Reactor unleashed powerful energy pulse that incinerated everything near him.

As for those farther away, the vast majority of their electrical systems were instantly fried.

The effect was similar to EMP but on a higher level and there was no way to block it.

Based on what Mechanicus told him, it used all 3 of the branches of power to disrupt any form of continuously active ability such as magic, chi and even electricity.

Arsenal did not understand the whole technical mumbo jumbo, but he did used this on a demon a while back and it dispelled the thing's magic barrier.

All he knew was that it worked wonders.

The downside was that the power armor was severely depleted until the Archon Reactor recharges.

Sustained flight was impossible, thus he needed to carefully control his fall.

Despite its drawbacks, it did its job well.

The F35 was already loosing altitude.

The pilot did a good job at remaining at its glide speed, but it was certain that it had very little systems that were functioning properly.

Arsenal violently landed on the F35 and smashed the tinted cockpit glass.

There he was met by Theo's last surprise.

The cockpit was empty.

Before Arsenal could process what was happening, a single word from the barely functioning radio sealed his fate.

"SACRIFICE."

Suddenly, the F35's outer shell grew countless metal arms and grabed Arsenal.

He easily broke said arms, but those that did get a touch in caused that portion of the power armor to turn into dust.

"N-no way... Transmutation?!"

While Theo could have done something as flashy as what he did during the Eldorado Incident, he went with a more subtle use of all the power gained from human sacrifice.

The long range transmutation may not have the big bang of a massive golden fist, but it served its purpose well.

After a few second, Arsenal was completely naked and was pulled into the F35's cockpit.

"Damn Lorne.... Talk about a cunning strategy. Well played." said the resigned Arsenal.

"You too Mr. Arsenal. Good game."

"Where are you?"

"I'm on a truck which is about to enter the city. I got off while I was still in the tunnels."

"I see...... It's a shame that we had to be enemies. You'd make a fine Superhero."

"Heh. It would be nice if that were true."

The F35 crashed on Vermilion City's Scrapyard. And for some reason, it smashed directly on Theo's factory.

The following explosion and firestorm burned for hours before the superheroes and fighter fighters could finally get it under control.