Battle of Kirbyville

Once Captain Nunya returned to command, with the slew of heroes he had recruited to defend the city, he ordered his Freedom Army to fall back to Midtown. They would hold the line, he decided, at Simon Square—a major commercial intersection, a popular tourist destination, and the headquarters of four major Nunyan news organizations—all in the hopes that they could turn popular opinion against the invading Union Army.

Heavy hitters from the fresly founded superhuman division were positioned strategically along the avenues on the far western and eastern sides of the island, all in an effort to drive the Union forces toward the center—toward Claremont Avenue—and the heavily televised battlefield.

While skirmishes took place along the avenues throughout the day on July 1, the heart of the battle—and the bloodiest part of it—took place just after nightfall, in primetime, right in the center of bustling Simon Square.

The second bloodiest part of it occurred in broad daylight on July 3, uptown on the normally peaceful lawns of Vaughan Park, after a daylong ceasefire which allowed the two sides to assemble their six-person strike teams.

It was a bright and sunny day, though not as hot as it might have been for July, and this led to one of the major complications of the battle: onlookers. For while the Village Idiot declared that the island should be evacuated the moment news broke that the fighting was heading their way, the Kirbyville City Council was bound by Nunyan custom to ignore the incredibly smart advice the man had given.

It was the only intelligent opinion he’d held in his entire life. His horrible decision making was why he’d been named the Village Idiot in the first place. How could the council have known he’d make a good decision when it mattered the most?

And so, crowds of civilians gathered on the side streets to catch glimpses of their favorite heroes in action. Lit up by the plethora of billboards lining the square, the battle was said to have looked like a movie come to life. Sadly, the gathered masses seemed to forget what happens to background actors and extras in disaster films and the stage was set for some of the heaviest civilian casualties of the war.

The first stage of the battle, the fight in Simon Square, lasted through the night of July 1 and into the early morning hours of July 2. It ended only when the costumed adventurer Adam Bomb—who had joined the Union Army on the march from Paradise City—hurled himself in the direction of Captain Nunya and missed, scratching away part of his Ríxtahn containment suit in the process.

As he ricocheted from building to building down Claremont, building up an unbearable amount of kinetic energy as he bounced, Mr. Bomb could not have possibly known that the building he would hit just as the pent-up energy within him grew too much to bear would be, of all things, an elven orphanage.

The resulting explosion vaporized the building and everyone inside, and the resulting shockwaves were felt all way the back in Simon Square.

Once the Union Army commanders realized what had happened, they called for an immediate ceasefire. Theirs was a largely elven army and this catastrophic loss of young lives was too much for them to bear.

By mid-day on July 2, an agreement was made that two six-person teams of enhanced individuals would meet in Vaughan Park at high noon the following day to decide the battle for good and all. Each of the generals—Captain Nunya for the Freedom side and the Iron Stache for the Union—would each select five heroes to fight alongside themselves, and that would be that. The only stipulation, given that most of the individuals involved had once served together on Nunya’s most popular super-team, The Vengeance Society, was that lethal force was to be used only as a last resort.

This was meant to be an “I quit” match, so to speak.

Captain Nunya was joined by Kestrel, the White Ant, Sergeant Sagittarius, Ruby Hex, and the Summer Sniper.

The Iron Stache assembled a team of Banhammer, the Crimson Cougar, Black Death, Arachnikid, and the Thought Experiment.

The assembled teams lined up about fifty yards apart from another on the largest of the open lawns in Vaughan Park. After an epic staredown which some scholars suggest was meant to avoid the conflict altogether with each team hoping to intimidate the other side into surrender, the two teams charged at one another. Some stayed on the ground and some took to the air, but it wasn't long before the six on six nature of the event devolved into a series of six one-on-one battles.

The Captain and the Iron Stache took each other on, of course, each hoping that by felling the other they could end the violence quickly. Banhammer and Kestrel, old buddies from Nunya’s volunteer air force, met head-on in the air. The White Ant tried to intimidate the Crimson Cougar to no avail, flashing his mandibles at her and getting nothing except laughter in response. Black Death beat the ever-loving snot out of the Summer Sniper, who he blamed for the death of his family. Ruby Hex and the Thought Experiment, former lovers, hurled bolts of energy at each other and dodged each other’s attacks like only people who have shared a bed for years can do. And Sergeant Sagittarius, a father himself, struggled not to pull his punches against Arachnikid—the youngest of the Union team, but the most committed to the cause.

In the end, the battle lasted only twenty minutes. Fighting came to a halt when the Summer Sniper, trying to defend Sergeant Sagittarius from an oncoming attack by Arachnikid, took a shot at the youngster. A raging Iron Stache, overly protective of “the kid,” then turned off the safety measures on his suit’s arm cannons and obliterated Sagittarius on the spot.

Seeing just how far Stache was willing to go against people he had once called friends, Captain Nunya ordered his remaining teammates to surrender.

Fighting in Kirbyville ceased, with the Free Cities ceding the island to the United Cities and their forces. Shortly thereafter, fighting on all other fronts ceased as well. Only the unsanctioned Battle of Marcia Marcia’s Marshes remained, in terms of the organized fighting in this bloody civil war.

Representatives from both sides met on neutral ground, inside the Edenian Athenæum in The Garden, where they were addressed by Abraham the Honest and agreed to a peace treaty. The United Cities, whose favorability ratings had dropped precipitously following the events in Kirbyville, were dissolved and the status quo in Nunya was restored: blissful anarchy.