Alexander grinned smugly at the sight of the last Byzantine troops scattering before him and the massive war machine he was standing atop of that better resembled a moving fortress than a tank. The gigantic mass of metal had plowed through everything that was sent against it; infantry, tanks, artillery, aircraft and even missiles, and still came out triumphant, exceeding all expectations. The engineers and pilots below warned him that their experimental super-tank had suffered heavy damage in the course of wiping out the entire Byzantine army, but he paid their complaints no heed. The brunette could see the city of Thessalonica in the distance, and he would be darned if he let it slip out of his grip because they needed to make a few quick repairs.

"Full steam ahead!" he commanded, turning back for a second and shouting down the open hatch behind him. He heard a few collective groans from the pilots and engineers inside, but paid them no heed. Looking back to his impending conquest, he donned pair of black aviators after pulling them out of thin air, and struck the coolest pose he could think of. The fact that his back was facing the afternoon sun, casting his shadow across the grassland before him, probably helped too. Justinian, who happened to be standing a few yards away from the gargantuan hunk of battered metal, had been watching his soldiers flee for their lives in disgust, looked up at the sight and facepalmed.

The Emperor strode up to the superweapon, which grinded to a halt a few inches short of trampling the immortal per Alexander's orders, and the Greek King on top of it peered down to the other leader below, who had bent down and picked up a nearby tree branch.

"Ah, the magnanimous Justinian humbles me with his presence!" he proclaimed grandly, his smug grin refusing to leave his face. Justinian, on the other hand, appeared to be more interested in the over-glorified twig he had acquired.

"Tell me; have you come to grovel for your-" his taunt was cut off abruptly by the Byzantine taking the stick he had in his hand and lightly tapping the enormous tank, causing it to fall apart faster than the Bluesmobile. Justinian tossed the stick aside disinterestedly while Alexander, now sitting on the pile of rubbish that was once an unstoppable machine of war, simply stared off blankly into the distance, the engineers and pilots below clawing their way out of the debris in the background. Finally the armor-clad leader shook his head, beginning to sputter out a few coherent words.

"But- How!?" he began, clutching a few fragments of the once mighty tank. "This- This crushed your entire military! It resisted bullets! Anti-armor rounds! Missiles for Zeus-Ammon's sake! And all you did was take a stick, A STICK, AND TAP IT!"

He threw the pieces of metal he was clutching angrily back into the pile he was sitting on, punching it a few times for good measure, before beginning to cry over the machine. Justinian just raised an eyebrow at watching what could very much be called a meltdown, and began pacing back and forth, arms folded behind his red cloak, like a schoolmaster would when lecturing a misbehaving student.

"Well, you see Alexander; it's called critical mass," the head of the humiliated leader shot up, clearly confused and too angry to think straight in the first place, and the Byzantine stopped his pacing to face him, shaking his head disappointedly. "Never mind. But what on earth made you think you could take one of my most important cities with a single tank to begin with?"

The Greek blinked once more, taking a deep breath as he started to rethink his logic in attacking in the first place, while Justinian resumed his pacing. "After all; how would a single tank that had been battered mercilessly be able to control a city of ten million?"

As Justinian finished his explanation, the whole weight of reality finally came down on Alexander, and he fell backwards onto the pile, the sound of his armor hitting the metal reverberating throughout the once-battlefield as he stared at the sky. The Byzantine leaned in, an eyebrow raised at the other immortal's dramatics, before turning back around.

"Go home, Alexander." it was more of a request out of pity than a command, but the humiliated brunette behind Justinian slowly rose and marched away disappointedly regardless, all the while muttering under his breath. The Emperor let out a bated breath as he watched the other immortal slink off into the sun, before turning back and shooting a very frustrated look at his now nervous soldiers.

Author's Notes:

I've noticed that, out of everything in the Civilization fandom, relationships and dynamics between the leaders are probably the most overlooked as a whole. So I gathered up a list of the seventy/eighty something leaders that appeared between Civs 4 and 5, narrowed it down to thirty, and have decided to write a collection of drabbles about them to remedy that. As for this chapter, this was a bit of a satire on how people can go from taking advantage of really gamey mechanics to get themselves out of a corner to lambasting them the next minute. That, and I think it's funny that a group of shirtless, club-wielding warriors can defeat a Giant Death Robot if it has just one health point left (since an attack, no matter the disparagement between parties, will always do damage).