Never let a good sentence end

In an act of aggression of the sort which was all too common in that particular day and age (albeit marginally on what could be termed the decline, although it was by no means clear that said decline would continue, given the social trends becoming increasingly common even at the very moment that Pete stood in the dim light of the moon, his chest heaving in a fight to regain the breath which had been so thoroughly knocked out of him by the exertions of the previous few minutes, waiting to see what reaction his presence elicited from the man who, until that evening, he would never have thought of as his nemesis, this being a role which he had not previously considered candidates for, although in retrospect there had been many possible contenders for the dubious honour of that title) Pete reached out, the length of his sinewy arm surprising even him as it snaked away from his body like a mid-level branch protruding from a deciduous tree, possibly an elm or oak, but a branch which also resembled, in the dim half-light of the evening in which Pete (and, presumably, the notional tree) stood, a large snake, and pushed – not merely with force sufficient to draw attention to the fact of his pushing (although this had been his original intention, before an unexpected rush of adrenaline had prompted him to metaphorically “shift gears” and pursue this alternative, more forceful, course of action) but with enough power to impress upon his opponent the very real possibility of physical combat and, he hoped, the likelihood of his (Pete’s) primacy in such a potential conflict – the centre (both geometrically and, he imagined, psychologically, given the location’s proximity to the vital cardiac organ hidden beneath bone, flesh, skin and, as he discovered, a fine sheen of cold perspiration) of Leo’s chest.