The air in the Oval Office did not smell of polished wood and old paper, but of ozone and raw power. It was a throne room now, and at its heart, behind the Resolute Desk, sat the God Emperor. Donald Trump, clad not in a suit but in robes that seemed woven from star-spangled twilight, his face an unnervingly smooth mask of supreme authority. The nuclear football glowed faintly at his feet.
The doors, twenty feet tall and forged from the hull of a decommissioned aircraft carrier, groaned open. In walked General Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Northern Legions, victor of the Battle of the Woke Hordes. His armor was scarred, his cloak was tattered, and in his eyes burned a fire that predated nations, predated empires. It was the fire of a father.
He did not kneel.
“Maximus,” the God Emperor’s voice boomed, a sound that was both a New York accent and a seismic event. “Your victories please me. The coastal elites are in retreat. The deep state trembles. You have earned a place of honor at my right hand.”
Maximus stopped ten paces from the desk. His hand rested on the pommel of his gladius. “I have not come for honors. I have come for answers.”
The God Emperor’s eyes, small and brilliant like twin supernovas, narrowed. “Answers are a commodity. I decide their price.”
“Then I pay it with the blood of my men who died believing we fought for justice. For the innocent.” Maximus’s voice was low, a gravelly rumble of distant thunder. “We seized the island. We breached the temple. We secured the files.”
A flicker of something—annoyance?—crossed the divine face. “A great victory. A tremendous victory. The enemy’s most vile secrets, in our hands. I said, ‘We will punish them. We will punish them like nobody has ever been punished.’ And we will. In time.”
“Time is a luxury for gods, not for the children in those videos,” Maximus spat, the veneer of respect crumbling. “I presented you with the ledger. The black books. The flight logs. I saw the names. The powerful. The celebrated. And I saw your name, struck through with a golden pen. I saw your orders, sealed with a sigil of a tower of gold.”
“Fake news,” the God Emperor said, his voice losing its divine echo and slipping into a familiar, defensive cadence. “A witch hunt. The deep state plants things. Very corrupt. Many people are saying it.”
“Do not speak to me as if I am one of your frightened sycophants!” Maximus roared, the sound shaking the portraits of past presidents on the walls. “I have held the evidence! I have seen the orders from your own hand! ‘Seal it. Bury it. Grant clemency.’ You did not just hide your own sins. You became the patron of every monster we swore to destroy!”
He took a step forward, his armor clinking. “Diddy. A man whose crimes are sung in hell. You freed him from the darkest pit we had, and he now feasts in your banquet hall, laughing at the justice we promised! Why?”
The God Emperor stood. He seemed to grow, his shadow swallowing the room. The air crackled. “You are a soldier. You understand tactics, not strategy. You break a few pawns to checkmate the king. These people… these assets… they serve a greater purpose. Their allegiance is the mortar that holds my new empire together. Their guilt is the chain that binds them to my will. It’s a deal. The best deal. Everybody says so.”
Maximus looked at him, and for the first time, the general’s face was not filled with rage, but with a profound, universe-shattering disgust. It was a purer, more damning emotion than hatred.
“An empire,” Maximus repeated, the word tasting of ash. “You would build your empire on the broken bodies of children. You would use their suffering as mortar. You would have monsters as your pillars.”
He drew his sword. It did not gleam with heavenly light. It was simple, cold, mortal steel.
“I have fought for many emperors,” Maximus said, his voice steady now, final. “I have seen vanity. I have seen cruelty. I have seen madness. But I have never, in all my years, witnessed a soul so utterly hollow, so completely devoid of honor, that it would make a shield of innocence to protect the guilty.”
The God Emperor raised a hand, energy coalescing into a spear of pure, destructive light. “You are betraying your emperor. Your country.”
“No,” Maximus said, settling into a fighter’s stance. “I am betraying a monster. My country is not a golden tower. It is not an empire. It is the promise a father makes to his son that the world will be just. It is the vow a soldier makes to protect those who cannot protect themselves. That promise is my emperor. And today, I am its loyal servant.”
The fight would be legendary. God against mortal. Power against principle. But in that moment, as he stared down the blinding, corrupt divinity, General Maximus, for the first time since this nightmare began, felt clean.
