In 1983, the third invasion came. The skies over New England darkened with huge numbers of Australian cargo planes, which avoided air defenses and forced landings on highways and runways. This time, in addition to the same poorly-armed Fanatics that had attacked in 1976 were large numbers of the same kind of Prophets that had led to the disastrous battle of Khantayskoye Lake. This time, with enough Prophets and Fanatics, huge numbers of Australians charged the IBIS walker in New England, and succeeded in overloading its electrical safeguards, destroying it. They then spread to conquer, foolishly. About 1/5th of them moved north to take Nain, and another 1/5th moved south to attack New York City. The remaining 3/5ths moved northwest, to where Diablo was in the process of destroying the city of Timmins. Feeling were generally mixed when the invasion force arrived, as it was obvious that they intended to conquer, but there was hope they had some plan for destroying Diablo and finally stopping the terrible onslaught that threatened to, in its own, slow march of progress, eventually leave all of North America not merely without human population, as it may have been 10,000 years before, but in a state of utter desolation and lifelessness like it had never seen in millions of years, and far worse than the last ice age.
However, glimmers of hope turned again to fear and horror as the Fanatics attacked with more spirit than planning. In a suicidal charge, the unarmored Fanatics, who would have at least had a few more precious minutes of life if they had been wearing fire suits, charged headlong at Diablo. It was exactly as effective as charging at a hurricane. He threw huge fireballs, burning them by the hundreds, and long before they could even get close enough to touch Diablo, his intense heat burned them. The Prophets did a little better, and could shoot lightning far enough away that they didn't need to brave such intense heat. However, the lighting was ineffective against the gigantic beast, and his fireballs incinerated every Prophet in the force. Next, desperately, the 1/5th of the forth north of New York broke the assault and moved to attack Diablo as well, and the force that had successfully taken Nain moved down as well to attack. Both attacks were hopeless beyond all definition of the world, and Diablo wasn't even harmed in the slightest by the assaults. The cities that Australia had taken only months before were attacked and destroyed now by Diablo, and New York City, saved only months before from Australian dominance, now went up in flames as fireballs rained down on it from the Devil himself. Australian reinforcements tried to fly in to help, but Diablo's fireballs seemed to track targets like magnets, and even at 10,000 meters above the earth, fireballs blew up cargo planes as they flew. In a last, desperate act, ICBMs from Australia carrying nuclear bombs detonated close to Diablo. The US and Mexican governments had agreed years ago not to bother trying to use nuclear weapons on Diablo, as it was pure foolishness that a weapon that destroyed with bursts of wind and intense heat would be at all effective against a being that was too big to be much affected by the wind and seemed to be the avatar of heat itself. As such, the charred area around Diablo was charred a little more, and the ruins of Quebec City became not only flattened but radioactive as well. Such was the foolishness of the nuclear attack that Chuck remembered talk that such an attack was some sort of misguided attempt to spite the United States, though even that made little sense seeing as no one at all was killed in the nuclear attack.
Diablo moved down to Florida again, though there had been no large-scale recovery there after he had destroyed it the first time. Keeping to the continental shelf, he then went to Cuba, though he had already destroyed Havana with fireballs on the way up. So, he went back down to Venezuela, probably to the chagrin of the demons still there, and many Imps that got too close burned in Diablo's aura.