Chapter 8: You Too

Grant furrowed his brow as he looked at the vertical road extending into the sky above.

“What in blazes…?” Grant muttered as Eisenhower shot him a wicked grin.

“Get ready, old timer…”

Eisenhower turned around as she ran straight towards her vertical road. She pressed a foot against the asphalt wall, inciting a large gasp from the crowd as she shifted herself up along her road, raising herself into the air.

“…for a modern-day lesson…”

Eisenhower continued sliding upwards until she reached the road’s zenith. She looked down with a smirk, then kicked off the wall, shooting herself towards Grant with the force of a burning comet.

“…in three-dimensional warfare!”

Grant gave a sharp snort.

“We’ll see about that!”

Grant instinctively moved his horse back slightly, braced himself for what seemed to be Eisenhower’s final, desperate attack.

Then, as his horse’s iron hoof hit the ground, Grant’s eyes went wide. He looked behind him, his mouth agape.

“Thunder and lightning…” he growled, looking at the sight before him.

Despite his careful and meticulous calculations, the back feet of Grant’s horse had somehow landed themselves on the very edge of Eisenhower’s road.

Before Grant could react further, his horse’s legs started sliding down the road with torrential speed.

“These roads,” Grant mumbled, his eyes continuing to scan across the highway as his horse began toppling to the ground, “they’re…larger than before.”

He took another look around, furrowing his brow as the pieces came together in his mind.

“I see…” he grumbled. “When your roads broke apart earlier…you went and acted like it was from you running out of steam…but that was all just a ruse! In reality, you were purposefully conserving your energy so that you could widen the road directly behind me!”

“Correct!” Eisenhower screamed as she continued hurtling towards him. “And despite your extreme gullibility, know that you were, without a doubt, one of the strongest opponents I’ve ever had the privilege to face!”

Grant tilted his head down, giving a solemn nod.

“You too.”

Then, Grant gave a sharp pull on his reigns.

“What…?” Eisenhower spoke as Grant sent his horse flying even faster down her roads.

Before she could process things further, the horse kicked its back feet off the ground. At this, the combined momentum from Eisenhower’s EP and Grant’s sudden pull flung the horse’s backside up, rotating it around in a tight circle with frightening speed.

“Ready!” Grant screamed as his horse’s airborne legs reached out for Eisenhower’s falling body.

Eisenhower tried shifting her position as she hurtled towards Grant, but the horse’s hind legs latched onto her before she could move; the force of the horse’s spin shifting Eisenhower off-course as she crashed hard onto the ground.

“Gahh!” Eisenhower screamed as her face collided with the floor.

“Aim!”

Eisenhower looked up, locking eyes with Grant as his horse’s cannon nose turned towards her, its smoking nostrils mere inches from her face.

“Fire!” Grant screamed.

Eisenhower gritted her teeth.

“Not so fast!” she bellowed, grabbing her weapon and swinging it forth just as a cannonball fired from the horse’s nose. The shell detonated against Eisenhower’s attack, covering the fighters in a cloud of thick smoke.

The crowd let out a vibrant murmur as Taft jogged to the arena’s center.

“Time out!” he screamed as the smoke started to clear around the two Presidents. He reached their location and gave each of them a brief inspection. He nodded his head, then lifted his war hammer into the air.

“The match is over!” Taft declared, slamming his gavel to the ground. “The winner,” he went on as Grant got off the ground and lit a cigar next to his unconscious opponent, “is [The Hero of Appomattox], Odysseus S. Grant!”

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Eisenhower gave a quiet groan as she opened up her eyes.

“What the hell…?” she moaned, looking around, finding herself lying on some sort of hospital bed.

“Well, isn’t this just stupendous,” a soft voice cooed besides her, “it seems you’ve finally returned back to the land of the living.”

Eisenhower tilted her head, spotting a slender woman in an orange dress shirt and black suspenders seated next to her.

“…Willow Wilson…?” Eisenhower asked. “Why…?” she squinted, the memories coming back to her. “That’s right…I lost…and in the very first round no less…”

“That you did,” Willson spoke matter-of-factly. “But don’t worry darling; such a lackluster performance was to be expected from the head of a second-rate school like Columbia.”

Eisenhower gave a light chuckle.

“I know you’re just trying to turn my grief into anger here, Wilson; but there’s really nothing to worry about. I’m plenty accustomed to the harsh realities of battle, after all.”

“Are you quite certain?” Wilson asked with feigned disappointment, “Because I was genuinely looking forward to discussing your failures at greater length.”

“There’s not much to say, I’m afraid,” Eisenhower remarked with an overly forced smile. “I had concentrated my last few attacks towards ending the fight…I felt that I was making big progress…but then that stupid Space Race mess ruined all my efforts…”

She sighed, then put up a solemn grin on her face.

“But my decision to attack in the end was based upon the best information I had at the time…any blame or fault in the matter is mine alone to bare.”

“Righttttt,” Wilson interjected with an exaggerated roll of her eyes, “you deffffinitely sound like someone who doesn’t need any cheering up right now.”

“Oh, shut up!” Eisenhower snarked, regaining some of the warmth back into her face.

A chorus of music started to play, cutting them off. Eisenhower looked over, spotting a television screen setup across the room. The screen was displaying Thompson seated in the commentary box as she started making her announcements for the forthcoming match.

“Shouldn’t you be upstairs watching this from the stands? The winner could very well be your opponent in round 3 depending on how things shake out.”

“Oh please! There’s absolutely nothing to be gleaned from this deplorable farce of a match.”

“Fair enough,” Eisenhower replied, turning her attention back to the screen. “It’s going to be a fixed fight after all…”

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Space Race. During the Cold War, the US and the USSR raced against each other to make further advances in space travel. This “Space Race” largely began under the Presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, with him in particular creating NASA after the USSR launched the first satellite into space (Sputnik). Despite this, Dwight would eventually look down on the space race, with him in particular saying “Anyone who would spend $40 billion in a race to the moon for national prestige is nuts.”