The stunned pizza-delivery hippie remains for a moment in the lobby. He hesitates between the door and the bodies strewing the place as he hears unsteady rushing from the stairs, coming down.

There, some wheezing elder– named Yaga, though he doesn’t know it– reaches the bottom and has to hold on to the rail’s end just to stay upright.

What scares the delivery man even before Yaga draws their deagle is the resigned look in the elder’s blood-shot eyes. The employee drops the Galaxy Crust as the sight is lined up quick with his forehead.

As Yaga presses on the trigger, something fast to imperceptibility strikes through the man’s head– from the back– then into the old sod’s own. The golden line connects them for a moment, like a thread between pin-holes. Then, they both fall.

Far above, Scott is flexing his jaw– making sure it still works. His face has been bruised radish-purple in some spots– the man in front of him had some propensity to target it.

The irony was nearly as thick and leathery as his new black eye. Ranov, as he’d introduced himself, had been beating him with his own plated gauntlets.

“You know,” Ranov says with a croaking, seemingly parched throat, “I’m not even doing this a’cause I’m mad. You opened my eyes, hombre.”

“You remember when, heh–” he continued. “–When our lil’ hand-flasher here went under? That was me. The world revolves around me, literally, like I could want a piece’a pizza right now, and it’d fall right out of the sky. Hell, I could take this six-shot here and shoot at house three blocks away– I’d still hit someone, if I wanted to. You gettin’ me? Huh?”

Meanwhile, Yaga is on the ground floor, bleeding out from his brain. The delivery man, however, is tremorously attempting to stand. No blood leaks from his head, and his vision clears fast.

Away– ‘hate this fucking job– have to just get away.

“I want you to say it,” Ranov continues to Scott’s silence. “I don’ care if you’re religious. Say I’m God.” The gangster grimaces as he realises that Scott’s been holding his gaze, this entire time. Mayhaps he should take the rest of the armor off– make a harder point straight to his nuts, make an example that’ll get some fuckin’ respect off’a him–

The ground shakes and the window now shows only sky. Gravity reverses and the sky out the glass aperture is a tornado. Ranov falls to the ceiling, landing on his feet. Scott is nearly knocked out hot, his skull slapping the ceiling-lamp into many red-spackled shards that also fall to the ceiling.

The sound of furniture and brick and metal falling is deafening. The sky is upside-down outside, and huge piles of earth and piping are falling past it. 

Ranov looks out the window, seemingly no more than amused. The entire apartment building has been flipped downside-up, being uprooted from its supporting hill. Now, it was floating about fifty feet above the ground, and was quickly beginning to drift. 

At least we’ve still got the basketball court, and the shrubs, Ranov thought, looking up at the building’s newly-inaugurated roof.

Scott wanted badly to know what was going on, but even more did he just want this to be over with. If that revolver were in his hands, and he could move his hands, and his vision wasn’t currently a smoothie, he’d give up any semblance of character and Wild West Ranov right in his stupid back.

Meanwhile, the delivery man “downstairs” is spasming in the air. The stones around him split and spin and whip about like comets. His eyes have gone white, and he is frothing at the mouth. His skin has broken out in hives. His mouth is tensed in a scream, but the light flooding it is producing a searing sound that mutes all but itself.

Thump thump thump a certain grease-stained box goes, bumping from panicked, hanging thug to upturned couch to straight out a window.

Down, down down down, and–

Scott feels like screaming. “No fucking way,” he coughs.

Ranov sees it in his eyes and smiles. His hand, playing with the cool high-air breeze out the window, just happened to catch a slice of pizza as the box dropped by. “Yes, way.”

He steps over to Scott. “Now, say it.”

Scott wants to spit in Ranov’s face, but thinks one of his teeth may fly out with it. Ranov presses the slice into his face, mixing blood and sweat with grease.

The slice is nearing a full minute of filling Scott’s nose and mouth before Ranov draws it back, frustrated. He slugs Scott in the chest for his trouble.

All the way up, downstairs, the pizza delivery guy’s head explodes. Yaga is spattered.

A blinding conflagration bursts about the building. Scott screams now, upon seeing what he does out the window. Where before he could see the sky, he now saw a rushing, neon-dotted highway. 

Ranov’s smirk returns. The highway is getting closer, and wind was filling the room. Still gravity sucks them both down towards the open window.

Whatever had been holding the building up is disappearing now– quickly.

Ranov stares the upcoming road head-on, barely caring to stop his fall. He lands comfortably upon his kitchen counter. “Oh, now this gives me an idea.”

Scott’s throat goes hoarse as his chair flies straight down at the window. The chair is slightly wider than the sill, and catches, but Scott still croaks as his right arm’s humerus thwacks against it.

Scott doesn’t see any bodies falling down to the asphalt– only small items and the odd bit of furniture. But the screams he hears tell him that could change any moment.

“Don’t worry, man, a lil’ luck and you’ll be just fine!” Ranov calls.

Gavin, an accountant for Thomas & Reeds, is on his way home. He’d be staying over at his brother’s tonight; his house was closer, would let him get off the highway faster. It’s the damndest thing– he’d woken up at 8, as usual, and done nothing particularly taxing in the office. Why is he so tired?

Ahead of Gavin, an apartment is entering a free-fall, the forces holding it aloft dissipating. It turns in the air as it comes, sending the lights of the highway off in new directions with its windows.

The building rotates, facing Scott’s side away from the street and sending him spiraling loudly to the room’s opposite end. 

If Scott’s eyes hadn’t been puckered hard as his crack, he may even have seen the accountant, down there in his car. Before the building gavel-strikes on him and two other automobiles, that is.

The bricks cry deafeningly as they are ground beneath gravity’s heel, onto the road’s face. Scott is rocked more than violently, and is quickly knocked downside the head– knocked unconscious.

For a time, he is swimming in a thunder-storm. Dodging lightning, and only barely.

When he wakes he is buried, and hurting, but free– the chair has broken, though surely an elbow with it. His hands remain rope-bound, but he can move.

The sky is open to him now– Scott looks at its stars, doubling in his hazed vision, through a newly caved-in wall. Not one bit of rubble has fallen onto his body. He saw pieces, almost outlining him– each one large and thick enough to have killed him twice over.

He cranes his neck down, to look at the street. He sees, hears cars– nigh all of them rush by, threading into the half of road the building now covers. Some of them have stopped, however, and more are slowing down, a ways before the building. There was a jam forming.

But, beyond that– Scott could hear something far, far up the road. Even over the sound of uncaring motorists.

The sound of screeching wheels and rending metal. 

Far ahead, though Scott can barely make it out, Ranov is walking down the highway– away from the building and opposite to traffic. 

He walks dead-center upon the middle lane, and every car that would hit him instead veers off to the side, to invariably destructive effect. Drivers fall asleep at the wheel and drift into the dividers, some swerve too panickedly and smash into others– none, not even with shrapnel, touch Ranov. 

He looks back; Oakville’s little vigilante would be the first to see– then, when the news arrives– the world.

Ranov shucks off the tight-fitting flash-gauntlet, and tosses it into the path of a soon-to-crash car.