“That’s great and all,” said Thor, “but how do we kill Quetzalcoatl?”
“Violence?” suggested Phil. “I don’t really know.”
“Seriously, man? That’s your answer?”
“You’ve been at his side this entire time,” added Chester A. Arthur XVII, “and that’s all you’ve got?”
“Quetzalcoatl told me he once… destroyed a continent, but didn’t die. Then he drowned… without actually drowning. Immediately after that… he drank himself into a coma… without actually going into a coma,” said Phil.
“But, then, that was only his own… recounting of his history,” he continued. “All I know with… certainty… is that last week, no more than ten feet from me, I watched him die… at the sharpened metal hands of a squadron of murder-drones. Only Quetzalcoatl didn’t die. Instead, he… metamorphosed into… the winged snake god of a long-dead civilization.
“So, yes,” Phil concluded, “nothing is all I’ve got.”
“This is insane,” said Queen Victoria XXX. “Everyone’s got some kind of weakness, something that can be exploited. No soft underbelly? Allergies? He have a girlfriend or a daughter we can kidnap? A favorite teddy bear we can set on fire? Anything?”
“Even when he was being… straightforward, it sounded like he was speaking in riddles. Quetzalcoatl has no… allegiances, no… vulnerabilities that I’ve ever witnessed. I honestly don’t know what else I can tell you.”
“Uh, guys,” interrupted William H. Taft XLII, “Can you argue faster? I think Quetzalcoatl just found us.”
He pointed to the incoming waves of angry liberal arts majors and hobos crowding the avenue and stretching back to the horizon. It was like a protest march for animal rights, only instead of signs, everyone was carrying axes and guns and weaponized pieces of murder-drone.
“Phil?” asked Catrina, facing the other direction and backing up into the center of the group. “When did you guys get killer robots?”
She pointed to the dozen truck-sized automatons marching in from the other end of the street.
“We didn’t,” said Phil, eyes growing wide.
“Oh, this won’t end well,” said William H. Taft XLII.