Doomsday slowly pulled the Bone Spikes from Superman's body.
The moment the three spikes came free, the wounds in Superman's abdomen gaped wider. Dark red blood poured from all three holes, spreading across his charred suit.
He staggered back two steps until his back struck the cracked glass curtain wall. His knees buckled, and he slid down it, leaving three dark red streaks behind him.
Doomsday raised his right leg.
One kick.
It struck Superman square in the chest.
Superman flew backward like a stone launched from a catapult. He shot past the front of the skyscraper, through the gap between two buildings opposite it, and smashed through the side wall of a third office tower. He vanished into a heap of shattered concrete and twisted rebar.
A crash.
Dust.
Silence.
The screams of the dozens of civilians on the observation deck caught in their throats.
On the global livestream, all that remained was a dark green beast covered in bone-white armor, standing amid the ruins of downtown Metropolis. The massive wound the Spiral Shuriken had gouged in its chest was still slowly healing. Its dark red eyes swept over the district it had crushed beneath its feet.
Minato Namikaze stood at the edge of a rooftop a hundred meters away, his blond hair stirring in the wind. He lowered his blue eyes toward the collapsing ruins below.
He turned his head and flashed a bright smile at the News Drones and camera lenses still filming.
Then he raised his voice, and his words rang clearly through every livestream:
"The enemy has fallen for my plan! Its defeat is inevitable!"
"To fight more effectively, I'm making a strategic retreat!"
With that, he became a golden flash and vanished from the rooftop.
Twitter's servers crashed again three seconds after Minato