I was going to make a joke about the Marvel side of this site smelling a lot cleaner without the New 52 stench us DC fans have to deal with...but you guy pulled a "hey lets break up a popular marriage" card 4 years before we did so...15 yard penalty, repeat faulty sales numbers.

Anyways, Marvel owns everything. Special thanks to Mark Millar for not particularly liking comic book fans. We appreciate that.

Civil War

New York lay in ruins.

Blocks of concrete tumbled from the sickly skeletons of the city's many skyscrapers. The ground was riddled with craters and cracks while the still burning husks of cars littered the deathly quiet streets. Bodies were strewn across the ground intermittently like a parade of violence and gore, the dripping blood spelling out a grisly epitaph for the once proud, once noble superhero community.

It was carnage on an ungodly scale. Death. Destruction. Misery. It was like Mark Millar and Frank Miller formed an unholy alliance in order to create the one thing every parents group in the country had bitched and moaned about for years, except with a far higher budget. Only the purpliest of purple prose could effectively convey the gut wrenching imagery…

Standing like statues amongst their fallen brethren, a bloody and beaten Iron Man stared down his opponent, his suit sparking as each scratch and dent ate away at its power and alcohol reserves.

Captain America, the soldier frozen in time, returned the glare tenfold, favoring a broken collarbone and an even more broken heart at the far too recent destruction of his favorite vintage record store.

They snarled at each other from across the make shift battlefield.

"What's the matter poster boy?" Iron Man spat. "Mad you only leveled half the city?"

"Should have known you were nuts the moment you took out the Stock Exchange." Returned Captain America. "How are you going to refill your suits alcohol dispenser without money?"

"I'm Iron Man, just point me at some grapes and a barley field and I'll be fine. Now please summon up that tiny bit of decency you locked away before you decided to slink off with you red white and blue tail between your legs, make like a good little high school science project and admit that you're an idiot, hmm? You know, so you can clean up your mess."

The Captain shuffled off his pile of debris with a pained grunt. "Shouldn't be surprised that you'd rub mud over your father's name like that, considering how I've seen more strength of character in a piece of drywall."

Iron Man followed suit with an ever graceful lunge of his own pile. "You know, why don't we skip the witty repartee, or whatever Neanderthals with brain freeze like yourself think it is, and focus on the fact that everything here is your fault?" he made a sweeping gesture with his armoured hand. "And I mean all of it. Seriously, you did a damn fine job bringing down the house and everything inside it with this one."

"I did this? Really? It wasn't the spoiled, rich coward dead-set in his ways and hell bent on dragging every gullible schmuck around him six feet under in the process?"

Tony spat as he limped closer to the super soldier. "Oh that's real rich coming from Mr. Truth, Justice and the 1940's way!" He scoffed loudly in a failed attempt to hide a chest wracking cough. "I see the world for what it is, Cap. I'm a scientist; I take what information is available to me, and I formulate a conclusion. I don't live in some happy go lucky fantasy wold barely coherent enough for a five year old!"

"No of course you don't live in a fantasy world, Tony. You clearly prefer to live in a nightmare instead!"

They drew closer; their laboured breathes mixing together as one (in a non-erotic way, of course. It is technically a Disney franchise now). Tony again spat, this time deliberately aiming for Peter Parker's traitorous head. "You keep using that phrase like you know what it means. Nightmare, nightmare. How is it a nightmare, Steve? You know, minus your atomic temper tantrum of course…"

"Willingly distorting the facts to fit your agenda, subverting people's opinions and expression with fear and deception, violently silencing any dissent…Tony, you couldn't be any more of a fascist if you tried." They were nose to nose now (no slash here Mr. Iger, swear on Uncle Ben's life). Steve's eyes hardened as he growled. "And I hate fascists…"

"And I hate people who are wrong!" Iron Man retorted.

"I am not wrong!"

"You'd better believe you are!"

"Absolutely…"

"Will not…"

"Arrogant, short circuited…"

"Drugged up, baby eating…"

The air seemed to pulse with hostility as their faces became even more steely, their fists clenching their palms so hard they drew blood. No longer able to hold it in, Steve roared at the billionaire across from him, finally venting the core of their destructive war directly to his face.

"SUPERMAN WOULD ABSOLUTELY DESTROY GOKU!"

"What rock, no what time capsule buried under miles of crust, did you have to crawl out of to come to that conclusion?"

"Have you even read All-Star Superman?"

Tony let out another scoff (this time minus any blood). "Child's play compared to blowing up a planet with your pinky finger!"

"You couldn't exaggerate harder if you tried, Stark."

"Oh I highly doubt…"

Captain America shoved a mighty, patriotic finger into Iron Man's face. "We are talking about the hero who dispatched a group of nineties style anti heroes without so much as lifting a finger. He sang the God of Evil out of existence!"

"Look I get that you grew up in a time where the only superhero action you could get was a Canadian Mary Sue and a Detective running around in his underwear, but we live in a glorious time where we actually let foreign cultures come up with interesting yet overpowered characters without dropping two bombs on their cities in the process."

[Captain America Growling Intensifies]

"Superman would win!"

"Goku would win!"

"Superman!"

"Goku!"

"Superman!"

"Goku!"

They raised their fists, fully prepared to come to blows, when…

A booming voice echoed through the war torn streets before their fists could connect. Nick Fury, armed with an M4 Carbine, scowled at the bickering heroes through his eye patch, his entire body shaking in barely contained rage.

"ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! I'VE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKING HEROES AND THEIR MOTHERFUCKING ANGST!" He leveled his weapon at them and squeezed the trigger with gusto.

With shock frozen on their faces, they crumpled together in a bloody heap as the bullets found their marks dead centre between the eyes. Iron Man and Captain America lay lifeless amongst the corpses of their fallen allies, the final casualties in the second deadliest Civil War to hit New York since the 2000 World Series. Still scowling, the former S.H.E.I.L.D Director turned to the aged man next to him, his white mustache bristling in the chilling breeze.

"Do those clowns really not get what Superman's character is all about?" he asked the man. The obligatory cameo shrugged.

"Don't look at me, I have no idea!"

"Yeah, I suppose you really only worked for Marvel after all…"

The elder gentleman looked at the ground sheepishly, drawing a curious glare from Agent Fury.

"Well, I mean…Jack and Steve did most of the work…"

He was quickly smothered by an army of lawyers and promptly whisked away to an underground bunker, thus ending the story with an aged, poorly constructed comic book joke…

For those of you that followed me over from the DC side of things, "Behold a Pale Horse" will be updated soon. I just hit a minor snag with the last chapter. And by that I mean I wrote the wrong chapter.

That's what happens when you're accidentally covered in something you're allergic to right after finishing up a "Law and Morality" essay; your brain decides not to work anymore...