The New Chapter 10
This one is so long, but so good
Kurt knew the way through the Merr Headquarters, seeing as though he was a member not too long ago. No Merr knew that he had betrayed them, so they walked through the tiny hallways passing by relatively rough looking guys undisturbed. Some of the men actually tried to talk to them. Van could see Kurt grinding his teeth as he awkwardly tried to wrap up conversations with his old friends. If he was a ruthless gunman before, he was defiantly different. His new mindset allowed his to actually hate people who had probably been his friends.
Van put his hand on Kurt’s shoulder, “Are you okay?”
“I hate being here. These people are absolute trash. They kill for fun! These are the bad people who use guns for bad reasons,” his anger was evident in the quick and simplistic way in which he was now talking.
Fiona stepped forward, “It’s ok now,” she smiled at him. “Because you’re with good people; we are good people!”
Van nodded, but was not sure if he agreed. Were they really good? He was gathering the stones to destroy his memories in spite of the consequences. He just used the rage he has during his sleep as in excuse to look for them in spite of the possibility of the war that will end all wars. He knew he was using excuses in his mind to trick himself. The problem with that was that it only worked with a part of his brain. Another part knew the truth in how selfish he was being. Fiona, as well, seemed to be gathering the stones while being completely aware of the possible consequences. The only reason she continued was because a part of her had succumbed to that which she really wanted. She wanted the Master to be unaware of any consequences; she did not even want any consequences. Either way this part of her mind, along with her immense will power, was strong enough to keep, not only her, but Van as well, on the same goal. He was depending on Fiona to give him a path. He could not feel strongly enough about the consequences of the stones to stop following her; he liked her. He had admitted that in his mind, and this admittance to the fact that he was being led around by someone else’s ideals made him feel weak, but not so much that he wanted to rip off his collar. He knew that he would not be able to escape the spell Fiona was casting on him.
Whenever he thought of Fiona, like that, he simultaneously thought of Emma, how much he actually loved her. He was only 14, but knew that she was the one for him. He would remember her crazy mother, Alicia. She was the strongest woman within 30 miles of their town. She acted bitterly towards Van, but did not hate him; he figured that she resented him for how much Emma loved him. Having a motherly duty, she was obligated to act like she did not like their relationship, but he knew that he secretly had a place in her heart.
Sometimes he wondered if he would ever have to choose between Fiona and Emma, but figured that day would never come; Emma was dead!
That was when he remembered the masked warrior. The thought of her took his breath away. Emma should be dead. He dismissed the thought of the masked warrior being her. It was impossible, a hope that was just to unrealistic to be considered true.
As he started to contemplate ways in which Emma could be the masked warrior, Kurt pointed them into a hidden room only high ranking Merr members knew about, “This is the treasure room. This is where all the weird stuff we find is. I think the artifact should be in here.”
The room did not live up to its name. It was filled with old rusty pipes, and just seemingly useless junk.
Fiona had spotted a pile that was glowing, and decided to check it out. She dug through it, sifting through trash that would make even the tiniest trinket want spare some change in pity for the worthlessness of the junk. At the bottom of the pile she found something out of the ordinary, a hissing, glowing rat; it jumped up at her. Van saw her face go from afraid to vicious as she jumped back and then cut the beast in half with her blades.
She had shot the projectile, so the blades continued into the ground and onto the walls wall before returning to her glove. The clash of the two metals echoed throughout the building.
The door behind them opened, “What’s going on in here?” The man turned his head to Kurt, “Oh, it’s you. What are you doing in here?”
“We are looking for an artifact stolen from Testa. I think it’s the thing that’s been causing the recent outbursts of battles.”
The man looked at him with a peculiar eye, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. Maybe you should go see the boss.”
Kurt sighed, “Fine.” He looked at Van and Fiona, “Let’s go.”
They left the man to close up the room. Van remembered how angry Kurt was while talking to ordinary Merr. He feared that he would go nuts talking to the leader, “Are you sure you’re going to be ok? Ya know, talking to your boss?”
He stopped and looked at Van sharply, “He is not my boss.”
“Sorry.”
They climbed up twenty-seven flights of stairs with Kurt in front, with Van and Fiona in back. They had passed by many Merr, most saying of which saying ‘hi’ to Kurt. Being drained of all his manners by the pure hatred that had enveloped his soul, he just completely ignored them, grunting when forced to answer.
Fiona did not like the men either. They kept on grabbing her butt. She wanted to cut their hands off, but knew she could not cause a riot. If Van only knew, he would be so impressed by how much she was controlling her emotions.
They walked down what seemed to be a nicely furnished hallway, which they, upon closer examination, discovered to be metal walls shabbily painted red. At the end of the path was a wooden double door, “This is it.”
Kurt pushed open the entrance to see a decorated, an actually decorated, boardroom which overlooked the east side of New Caesar. There was a giant leather chair facing the windows next to a man who faced the door, keeping his hands behind his back.
The man, who seemed to be a bodyguard, looked very peculiar. He had dark slicked back hair, and sunglasses. He wore a long black trench coat with his sleeves tucked into his gloves.
“You replaced me with this fool,” it was not as if Kurt minded that he was replaced, he just needed something tough to say to keep the image that his new lifestyle put him in a world of the people he abandoned.
The voice from the chair responded, “When you’re bodyguard goes missing, you do not sit around and wait to be killed; you find a replacement. Luckily I found someone better.”
He turned his chair towards them. The boss’ defining characteristic was his size. He wore an expensive business suit, and seemed to have a fetish for stroking his beard.
“Your motives are not mystery to me.”
“I figured so much.”
“You kill Dante,” he looked at the man standing next to him, “and I’ll give you what you want.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“I’m a man of my honor.”
“You are a man of greed. You disgust me.”
The boss spat towards Dante. The man caught his spit in a gold saucer he was holding behind his back, “You can either trust me, or kill me.” Van and Fiona were shocked by the comment, but Kurt knew there was more to it, “Go ahead and kill me, but don’t dig up my grave when you can’t find what you’re looking for.” Kurt was right about the something extra, “There are thousands of places in this building that even you don’t know about.”
“Fine. What are the rules?”
“One on One,” no surprise, “the battle will take place in the battle dome,” the treacherous arena where Kurt had obliterated some of Testa’s to assassins thanks to the booby traps set in the arena. “If the duel is not finished within ten minutes, the walls will begin to close in on you. If you win, you can have that stupid artifact. If Dante wins, I kill your friends.”
Fiona felt as though she could finally speak her mind here, “You can’t even touch us you slob!”
The boss snickered and pushed a button on his desk. From the floor came a glass orb that enclosed itself around Van and Fiona. He turned to the encased warriors, “This is what you get for speaking when not spoken to.” The orb flew over towards the boss, “So, you accept… Chong?” He let out a roar.
Kurt stared at his encased friends pounding on the glass, trying to break free. The fact that he was once part of this horrible business almost sent him into a seizure, but he still managed to let out a “Fine.”
Dante and Kurt stepped into an oddly placed metallic platform in the middle of the carpeted room that lowered them into a huge metal dome.
The boss snickered. He pushed another button causing the metal incasing of the dome to slide into the ground, revealing thousands of screaming Merr, riling each other up over the fight about to ensue.
Kurt looked around. They was still a material keeping the fighters in the dome, the only difference was the transparency. Behind the material was a timer set at “10:00.”
The boss had lowered himself and his prisoners down towards the front row. He found it hilarious how hard Van and Fiona were trying to get out. Seeing this caused an unspeakable anger to grow in Kurt’s heart. The faster he finished the fight, the faster he could free them.
“People of Merr!” the crowd screamed, “Are you ready for the death match of the century?”
The mongrels went wild. Kurt had no idea it was going to be a death match, but was not surprised.
“In the left corner we have Merr traitor, wannabe ninja, Kurt Calloway!”
The crowd booed, but he was not fazed. To him the people were animals, and he did not care if a bunch of animals had any opinion on him. All that was on his mind was helping his friends.
“In the right corner, we have our main man! The baddest of the bad, the one armed Dante!”
Fiona and Van stopped pounding on the orb, “He doesn’t look like he has one arm.”
The boss turned to them, “Looks can be deceiving!” He let out his annoying cackle.
“Begin!”
Kurt put his hand on one of his kodachi. He ran towards Dante, and watched the other man close in on him as well. As they got closer to one another, Kurt began to unsheathe his sword. He swung.
Dante span to the side, dodging the attack. He moved back in, towards his opponents ear, “Too slow.”
Kurt turned around to see that he had jumped into the air. He took quick aim towards his opponent’s head, and threw one of his shuriken.
Dante put up his hand to block, and found that the knife had passed straight through his glove. He landed on the ground with a blank look on his face.
“Hurts don’t it?”
“Take a tug on the string of yours, and you’ll find out how much pain I’m in.”
Confused, Kurt pulled on the string attached the knife bringing in the glove and the knife.
He turned his head to Dante to see the huge grin on his face, “They don’t call me one armed for nothing.”
He moved his eyes to the mans right hand to find that there was absolutely no flesh. Dante had replaced his human hand for that of a gatling gun.
Fiona turned to Van and wrapped her arms around his stomach. She put her head on his chest, “How could someone do that! It’s so… awful!”
Van stared at it. He could not believe what he was seeing. A man had actually cut off his own hand, and replaced the potential creative power of a hand with something so purely destructive as a gun. He finally understood how Kurt could hate these people so much.
Dante started to crack up, “Do you like what I did? While you use hand helds, I just use my hands!”
Kurt shook his head, “You’ve sold your soul with that hand. Who knows how many people you’ve slaughtered with that thing. You’re nothing but a monster, and I have no tolerance for monsters.”
“Blah, blah, blah! No one is listening to your stupid sermons, so stop trying to stall. It’s just a matter of time before the boss turns on the obstacles.”
Looking at the clock, he discovered he only had about nine minutes left to get rid of the menace.
There was no way he could get close to him without getting shot. He remembered a technique he had learned but never quite mastered. He had done it a few times, but never on purpose; it was only out of pure anger could he do it. He felt as though he had enough hatred and negative energy to pull the attack off.
Kurt ran towards Dante as he was beginning to aim with his arm. He shot; Kurt jumped over his head, evading the attack.
While in the air he threw a shuriken at the mans back, but he turned around, evading the attack, and setting aim at his enemy. Kurt landed low enough to the ground so that he would not be hit. He knew it was time.
He used the leverage of his position so lo to the ground to launch to the side. To the untrained eye, he had disappeared.
“Oh! Running away! Should have expected that from someone like you Kurt!”
Dante looked forward to see a blurry version of Kurt. He shot at it, but the bullets passed right through it. He turned around to discover that there were six blurry men circling around him.
“Find me, cyborg!” they yelled.
Dante grinded his teeth together, but tried not to act to aggravated, “Is this the best you got? Weak!”
With that, one of the images jumped at Dante. He shot at them, but the bullets, once again, passed straight through. The others started to jump in. He felt a few solid punches and cuts with Kurt’s kodachi, but they were only scratches. Kurt figured that he would not be able to land a serious blow, but multiple minor ones would eventually take their toll.
Fiona started clapping, “He’s winning!”
The boss was aggravated with the tactics of the ninja, “Shut up, woman! He wont be for long!”
With that he pushed a button, and the ground underneath the fighters sounded as though it had unhinged. The floor began to turn opposite the direction the Kurt’s seemed to be spinning. He tripped and the illusions disappeared.
Dante looked at the clock, eight minutes, “Right on time.”
Fiona was absolutely furious with this, “You rigged the arena?”
The boss cackled, “Of course! It wouldn’t be very interesting if they were just standing still, now would it?”
Van looked at the fire growing in Fiona’s eyes. She was absolutely infuriated. Even though the bubble they were in seemed to be air tight, he felt a breeze coming from Fiona. He thought back to the fight with the queen spider, and how she materialized wind underneath her to propel herself towards the monster. Those events must have had something to do with her training and Lady Breeze.
Kurt was absolutely shocked by the turn of events. He stared at his spinning enemy across the middle of the stage. He had no idea how he was going to get close to him again. If he ran with the ground, he would most likely go to fast and fall. If he ran against the ground, he would not be able to gain enough speed to pull of the illusion technique.
Dante raised his arm as Kurt put his hand onto his handy utility belt. He was trying to find something to distract his opponent long enough for the boss to change the obstacle. It was not a safe bet to assume that the boss would be so kind to do so, but Kurt had figured in his favor knowing how twisted the boss was.
“You cannot escape me.”
“Please,” he snickered. “A ninja always comes prepared.”
With that he ducked to avoid the shots he expected Dante to fire, and pulled out a smoke bomb. He quickly lit it and threw it. The bombs position in the middle of the arena helped spread the smoke much faster.
Dante was annoyed, but held his frustration in. The boss, on the other hand, was absolutely furious and made sure everyone around him knew about it. He stood up and was yelling to get a fan turned on, but no one around him was listening. After a while he calmed down and figured the smoke would clear.
Van was overjoyed at the advantage Kurt has just put himself in. He looked over at Fiona to see if she was feeling the same, but all that was coming from her were angry stares into the arena and sudden gusts of wind.
Kurt had put on his gas mask and suction shoes so that he could jump around on the walls without having to deal with the ground.
He decided to play with Dante’s mind. He was probably already dizzy enough from the spinning added to the loss of air due to the smoke, “Where am I, sharpshooter?”
“Do not mock me!” He coughed, “I know where you are!”
“Then shoot at me big guy.”
Though Kurt could not quite see his enemy clearly, he knew he was absolutely furious by now.
“Fine!” That was not exactly what he was expecting to hear, “I will!”
With that, Dante lifted his arm coincidently right at Kurt. He closed his eyes and began to fire wildly. The spinning ground did not help one bit; it just saved him the energy of not having to spin around aimlessly himself.
He was laughing hysterically as he fired into the gray nothingness. His shots were extremely quick and had absolutely no pattern. Kurt jumped around just as aimlessly as the shots that were fired at him.
The crowd screamed at the fact that they could not see anything except for the occasional dark blurs avoiding loud pings against the battle dome. All they knew was that Dante had the disadvantage, and that was not going to work for them. The crowd started running towards the dome, trying to break through a part of it so the smoke could get out. The stronger, more ruthless members of Merr worked their way closest to the arena and started pounding on it until one of them broke through. Smoke started seep out. Seeing the progress of the men who had punctured the dome, many more thugs gathered around the one spot, trying to increase the size of the hole.
The boss stared at the men at first with a slight happiness, but then he realized they were only biasing the fight. The obstacles he set up were not meant to give anyone an advantage, just to make the battle more interesting.
He searched his control pad and found the button tiny green button he was looking for. As one of the men’s fist almost made contact with the dome, a shock prevented them from completing a hit. Many others found out what the boss had done the hard way and decided to sit back down and hope the hole they had created would soon get rid of the smoke.
All Kurt could here was the sound of bullets hitting the dome and Dante’s insane laugh mixed with random coughs. He felt as though every bullet was just missing him.
“One of them is bound to hit you! When your bullets are made of your own blood, it’s hard to run out of ammunition!”
Kurt stopped his evasion and hung motionless on the walls of the stadium. That was too much. To think that someone had lost so much humanity to use the materials in their blood as bullets for a gun arm, it was disgusting. He knew he had to kill the man; he was already lost.
As the smoke began to clear out of the ring, Kurt could get a vague image of the spinning Dante. He threw one of his shuriken and felt it connect through his human arm.
The man, unaffected by blow, jumped into the air as to not be hindered by the spinning ground. He pulled on the string attached to the knife to bring his enemy in.
Caught off guard, Kurt was brought off the wall, into the air born Dante. He watched as his enemy’s gun arm began to aim itself at Kurt. When he was close enough to see Dante’s insane smile, the man shot Kurt straight through shoulder. As he fell to the ground, through the clearing smoke, he saw the time on the clock was only seconds from 6:00.
He lay on the middle of the spinning ground, feeling that it was slowing down. He was almost certain it was slowing down, but figured he could not gauge any of his feelings at the moment. His shoulder was terribly wounded, and he could barely see a thing. His legs were numb and his head was heavy from dizziness and the bullets he took.
He managed to open his eyes and lift up his head long enough to see that Dante had landed and put his gun up to his face; he was not worried. He knew Dante would not hurt him until he was completely up. The only reason he kept his arm in his face was to keep him on his toes.
Kurt, even through his immense pain, noted the charitable, noble act being preformed by Dante. For a second, he saw through the monstrous flesh, past the demonic heart, into the little piece of humanity that was left in the man; maybe he was not as lost as he had earlier assumed. He opened his eyes to see if any goodness was peeking through the black aura Dante emitted, but only saw that the floor had actually stopped spinning; it was time for another one of the boss’s tricks.
Kurt knew the way through the Merr Headquarters, seeing as though he was a member not too long ago. No Merr knew that he had betrayed them, so they walked through the tiny hallways passing by relatively rough looking guys undisturbed. Some of the men actually tried to talk to them. Van could see Kurt grinding his teeth as he awkwardly tried to wrap up conversations with his old friends. If he was a ruthless gunman before, he was defiantly different. His new mindset allowed his to actually hate people who had probably been his friends.
Van put his hand on Kurt’s shoulder, “Are you okay?”
“I hate being here. These people are absolute trash. They kill for fun! These are the bad people who use guns for bad reasons,” his anger was evident in the quick and simplistic way in which he was now talking.
Fiona stepped forward, “It’s ok now,” she smiled at him. “Because you’re with good people; we are good people!”
Van nodded, but was not sure if he agreed. Were they really good? He was gathering the stones to destroy his memories in spite of the consequences. He just used the rage he has during his sleep as in excuse to look for them in spite of the possibility of the war that will end all wars. He knew he was using excuses in his mind to trick himself. The problem with that was that it only worked with a part of his brain. Another part knew the truth in how selfish he was being. Fiona, as well, seemed to be gathering the stones while being completely aware of the possible consequences. The only reason she continued was because a part of her had succumbed to that which she really wanted. She wanted the Master to be unaware of any consequences; she did not even want any consequences. Either way this part of her mind, along with her immense will power, was strong enough to keep, not only her, but Van as well, on the same goal. He was depending on Fiona to give him a path. He could not feel strongly enough about the consequences of the stones to stop following her; he liked her. He had admitted that in his mind, and this admittance to the fact that he was being led around by someone else’s ideals made him feel weak, but not so much that he wanted to rip off his collar. He knew that he would not be able to escape the spell Fiona was casting on him.
Whenever he thought of Fiona, like that, he simultaneously thought of Emma, how much he actually loved her. He was only 14, but knew that she was the one for him. He would remember her crazy mother, Alicia. She was the strongest woman within 30 miles of their town. She acted bitterly towards Van, but did not hate him; he figured that she resented him for how much Emma loved him. Having a motherly duty, she was obligated to act like she did not like their relationship, but he knew that he secretly had a place in her heart.
Sometimes he wondered if he would ever have to choose between Fiona and Emma, but figured that day would never come; Emma was dead!
That was when he remembered the masked warrior. The thought of her took his breath away. Emma should be dead. He dismissed the thought of the masked warrior being her. It was impossible, a hope that was just to unrealistic to be considered true.
As he started to contemplate ways in which Emma could be the masked warrior, Kurt pointed them into a hidden room only high ranking Merr members knew about, “This is the treasure room. This is where all the weird stuff we find is. I think the artifact should be in here.”
The room did not live up to its name. It was filled with old rusty pipes, and just seemingly useless junk.
Fiona had spotted a pile that was glowing, and decided to check it out. She dug through it, sifting through trash that would make even the tiniest trinket want spare some change in pity for the worthlessness of the junk. At the bottom of the pile she found something out of the ordinary, a hissing, glowing rat; it jumped up at her. Van saw her face go from afraid to vicious as she jumped back and then cut the beast in half with her blades.
She had shot the projectile, so the blades continued into the ground and onto the walls wall before returning to her glove. The clash of the two metals echoed throughout the building.
The door behind them opened, “What’s going on in here?” The man turned his head to Kurt, “Oh, it’s you. What are you doing in here?”
“We are looking for an artifact stolen from Testa. I think it’s the thing that’s been causing the recent outbursts of battles.”
The man looked at him with a peculiar eye, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. Maybe you should go see the boss.”
Kurt sighed, “Fine.” He looked at Van and Fiona, “Let’s go.”
They left the man to close up the room. Van remembered how angry Kurt was while talking to ordinary Merr. He feared that he would go nuts talking to the leader, “Are you sure you’re going to be ok? Ya know, talking to your boss?”
He stopped and looked at Van sharply, “He is not my boss.”
“Sorry.”
They climbed up twenty-seven flights of stairs with Kurt in front, with Van and Fiona in back. They had passed by many Merr, most saying of which saying ‘hi’ to Kurt. Being drained of all his manners by the pure hatred that had enveloped his soul, he just completely ignored them, grunting when forced to answer.
Fiona did not like the men either. They kept on grabbing her butt. She wanted to cut their hands off, but knew she could not cause a riot. If Van only knew, he would be so impressed by how much she was controlling her emotions.
They walked down what seemed to be a nicely furnished hallway, which they, upon closer examination, discovered to be metal walls shabbily painted red. At the end of the path was a wooden double door, “This is it.”
Kurt pushed open the entrance to see a decorated, an actually decorated, boardroom which overlooked the east side of New Caesar. There was a giant leather chair facing the windows next to a man who faced the door, keeping his hands behind his back.
The man, who seemed to be a bodyguard, looked very peculiar. He had dark slicked back hair, and sunglasses. He wore a long black trench coat with his sleeves tucked into his gloves.
“You replaced me with this fool,” it was not as if Kurt minded that he was replaced, he just needed something tough to say to keep the image that his new lifestyle put him in a world of the people he abandoned.
The voice from the chair responded, “When you’re bodyguard goes missing, you do not sit around and wait to be killed; you find a replacement. Luckily I found someone better.”
He turned his chair towards them. The boss’ defining characteristic was his size. He wore an expensive business suit, and seemed to have a fetish for stroking his beard.
“Your motives are not mystery to me.”
“I figured so much.”
“You kill Dante,” he looked at the man standing next to him, “and I’ll give you what you want.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“I’m a man of my honor.”
“You are a man of greed. You disgust me.”
The boss spat towards Dante. The man caught his spit in a gold saucer he was holding behind his back, “You can either trust me, or kill me.” Van and Fiona were shocked by the comment, but Kurt knew there was more to it, “Go ahead and kill me, but don’t dig up my grave when you can’t find what you’re looking for.” Kurt was right about the something extra, “There are thousands of places in this building that even you don’t know about.”
“Fine. What are the rules?”
“One on One,” no surprise, “the battle will take place in the battle dome,” the treacherous arena where Kurt had obliterated some of Testa’s to assassins thanks to the booby traps set in the arena. “If the duel is not finished within ten minutes, the walls will begin to close in on you. If you win, you can have that stupid artifact. If Dante wins, I kill your friends.”
Fiona felt as though she could finally speak her mind here, “You can’t even touch us you slob!”
The boss snickered and pushed a button on his desk. From the floor came a glass orb that enclosed itself around Van and Fiona. He turned to the encased warriors, “This is what you get for speaking when not spoken to.” The orb flew over towards the boss, “So, you accept… Chong?” He let out a roar.
Kurt stared at his encased friends pounding on the glass, trying to break free. The fact that he was once part of this horrible business almost sent him into a seizure, but he still managed to let out a “Fine.”
Dante and Kurt stepped into an oddly placed metallic platform in the middle of the carpeted room that lowered them into a huge metal dome.
The boss snickered. He pushed another button causing the metal incasing of the dome to slide into the ground, revealing thousands of screaming Merr, riling each other up over the fight about to ensue.
Kurt looked around. They was still a material keeping the fighters in the dome, the only difference was the transparency. Behind the material was a timer set at “10:00.”
The boss had lowered himself and his prisoners down towards the front row. He found it hilarious how hard Van and Fiona were trying to get out. Seeing this caused an unspeakable anger to grow in Kurt’s heart. The faster he finished the fight, the faster he could free them.
“People of Merr!” the crowd screamed, “Are you ready for the death match of the century?”
The mongrels went wild. Kurt had no idea it was going to be a death match, but was not surprised.
“In the left corner we have Merr traitor, wannabe ninja, Kurt Calloway!”
The crowd booed, but he was not fazed. To him the people were animals, and he did not care if a bunch of animals had any opinion on him. All that was on his mind was helping his friends.
“In the right corner, we have our main man! The baddest of the bad, the one armed Dante!”
Fiona and Van stopped pounding on the orb, “He doesn’t look like he has one arm.”
The boss turned to them, “Looks can be deceiving!” He let out his annoying cackle.
“Begin!”
Kurt put his hand on one of his kodachi. He ran towards Dante, and watched the other man close in on him as well. As they got closer to one another, Kurt began to unsheathe his sword. He swung.
Dante span to the side, dodging the attack. He moved back in, towards his opponents ear, “Too slow.”
Kurt turned around to see that he had jumped into the air. He took quick aim towards his opponent’s head, and threw one of his shuriken.
Dante put up his hand to block, and found that the knife had passed straight through his glove. He landed on the ground with a blank look on his face.
“Hurts don’t it?”
“Take a tug on the string of yours, and you’ll find out how much pain I’m in.”
Confused, Kurt pulled on the string attached the knife bringing in the glove and the knife.
He turned his head to Dante to see the huge grin on his face, “They don’t call me one armed for nothing.”
He moved his eyes to the mans right hand to find that there was absolutely no flesh. Dante had replaced his human hand for that of a gatling gun.
Fiona turned to Van and wrapped her arms around his stomach. She put her head on his chest, “How could someone do that! It’s so… awful!”
Van stared at it. He could not believe what he was seeing. A man had actually cut off his own hand, and replaced the potential creative power of a hand with something so purely destructive as a gun. He finally understood how Kurt could hate these people so much.
Dante started to crack up, “Do you like what I did? While you use hand helds, I just use my hands!”
Kurt shook his head, “You’ve sold your soul with that hand. Who knows how many people you’ve slaughtered with that thing. You’re nothing but a monster, and I have no tolerance for monsters.”
“Blah, blah, blah! No one is listening to your stupid sermons, so stop trying to stall. It’s just a matter of time before the boss turns on the obstacles.”
Looking at the clock, he discovered he only had about nine minutes left to get rid of the menace.
There was no way he could get close to him without getting shot. He remembered a technique he had learned but never quite mastered. He had done it a few times, but never on purpose; it was only out of pure anger could he do it. He felt as though he had enough hatred and negative energy to pull the attack off.
Kurt ran towards Dante as he was beginning to aim with his arm. He shot; Kurt jumped over his head, evading the attack.
While in the air he threw a shuriken at the mans back, but he turned around, evading the attack, and setting aim at his enemy. Kurt landed low enough to the ground so that he would not be hit. He knew it was time.
He used the leverage of his position so lo to the ground to launch to the side. To the untrained eye, he had disappeared.
“Oh! Running away! Should have expected that from someone like you Kurt!”
Dante looked forward to see a blurry version of Kurt. He shot at it, but the bullets passed right through it. He turned around to discover that there were six blurry men circling around him.
“Find me, cyborg!” they yelled.
Dante grinded his teeth together, but tried not to act to aggravated, “Is this the best you got? Weak!”
With that, one of the images jumped at Dante. He shot at them, but the bullets, once again, passed straight through. The others started to jump in. He felt a few solid punches and cuts with Kurt’s kodachi, but they were only scratches. Kurt figured that he would not be able to land a serious blow, but multiple minor ones would eventually take their toll.
Fiona started clapping, “He’s winning!”
The boss was aggravated with the tactics of the ninja, “Shut up, woman! He wont be for long!”
With that he pushed a button, and the ground underneath the fighters sounded as though it had unhinged. The floor began to turn opposite the direction the Kurt’s seemed to be spinning. He tripped and the illusions disappeared.
Dante looked at the clock, eight minutes, “Right on time.”
Fiona was absolutely furious with this, “You rigged the arena?”
The boss cackled, “Of course! It wouldn’t be very interesting if they were just standing still, now would it?”
Van looked at the fire growing in Fiona’s eyes. She was absolutely infuriated. Even though the bubble they were in seemed to be air tight, he felt a breeze coming from Fiona. He thought back to the fight with the queen spider, and how she materialized wind underneath her to propel herself towards the monster. Those events must have had something to do with her training and Lady Breeze.
Kurt was absolutely shocked by the turn of events. He stared at his spinning enemy across the middle of the stage. He had no idea how he was going to get close to him again. If he ran with the ground, he would most likely go to fast and fall. If he ran against the ground, he would not be able to gain enough speed to pull of the illusion technique.
Dante raised his arm as Kurt put his hand onto his handy utility belt. He was trying to find something to distract his opponent long enough for the boss to change the obstacle. It was not a safe bet to assume that the boss would be so kind to do so, but Kurt had figured in his favor knowing how twisted the boss was.
“You cannot escape me.”
“Please,” he snickered. “A ninja always comes prepared.”
With that he ducked to avoid the shots he expected Dante to fire, and pulled out a smoke bomb. He quickly lit it and threw it. The bombs position in the middle of the arena helped spread the smoke much faster.
Dante was annoyed, but held his frustration in. The boss, on the other hand, was absolutely furious and made sure everyone around him knew about it. He stood up and was yelling to get a fan turned on, but no one around him was listening. After a while he calmed down and figured the smoke would clear.
Van was overjoyed at the advantage Kurt has just put himself in. He looked over at Fiona to see if she was feeling the same, but all that was coming from her were angry stares into the arena and sudden gusts of wind.
Kurt had put on his gas mask and suction shoes so that he could jump around on the walls without having to deal with the ground.
He decided to play with Dante’s mind. He was probably already dizzy enough from the spinning added to the loss of air due to the smoke, “Where am I, sharpshooter?”
“Do not mock me!” He coughed, “I know where you are!”
“Then shoot at me big guy.”
Though Kurt could not quite see his enemy clearly, he knew he was absolutely furious by now.
“Fine!” That was not exactly what he was expecting to hear, “I will!”
With that, Dante lifted his arm coincidently right at Kurt. He closed his eyes and began to fire wildly. The spinning ground did not help one bit; it just saved him the energy of not having to spin around aimlessly himself.
He was laughing hysterically as he fired into the gray nothingness. His shots were extremely quick and had absolutely no pattern. Kurt jumped around just as aimlessly as the shots that were fired at him.
The crowd screamed at the fact that they could not see anything except for the occasional dark blurs avoiding loud pings against the battle dome. All they knew was that Dante had the disadvantage, and that was not going to work for them. The crowd started running towards the dome, trying to break through a part of it so the smoke could get out. The stronger, more ruthless members of Merr worked their way closest to the arena and started pounding on it until one of them broke through. Smoke started seep out. Seeing the progress of the men who had punctured the dome, many more thugs gathered around the one spot, trying to increase the size of the hole.
The boss stared at the men at first with a slight happiness, but then he realized they were only biasing the fight. The obstacles he set up were not meant to give anyone an advantage, just to make the battle more interesting.
He searched his control pad and found the button tiny green button he was looking for. As one of the men’s fist almost made contact with the dome, a shock prevented them from completing a hit. Many others found out what the boss had done the hard way and decided to sit back down and hope the hole they had created would soon get rid of the smoke.
All Kurt could here was the sound of bullets hitting the dome and Dante’s insane laugh mixed with random coughs. He felt as though every bullet was just missing him.
“One of them is bound to hit you! When your bullets are made of your own blood, it’s hard to run out of ammunition!”
Kurt stopped his evasion and hung motionless on the walls of the stadium. That was too much. To think that someone had lost so much humanity to use the materials in their blood as bullets for a gun arm, it was disgusting. He knew he had to kill the man; he was already lost.
As the smoke began to clear out of the ring, Kurt could get a vague image of the spinning Dante. He threw one of his shuriken and felt it connect through his human arm.
The man, unaffected by blow, jumped into the air as to not be hindered by the spinning ground. He pulled on the string attached to the knife to bring his enemy in.
Caught off guard, Kurt was brought off the wall, into the air born Dante. He watched as his enemy’s gun arm began to aim itself at Kurt. When he was close enough to see Dante’s insane smile, the man shot Kurt straight through shoulder. As he fell to the ground, through the clearing smoke, he saw the time on the clock was only seconds from 6:00.
He lay on the middle of the spinning ground, feeling that it was slowing down. He was almost certain it was slowing down, but figured he could not gauge any of his feelings at the moment. His shoulder was terribly wounded, and he could barely see a thing. His legs were numb and his head was heavy from dizziness and the bullets he took.
He managed to open his eyes and lift up his head long enough to see that Dante had landed and put his gun up to his face; he was not worried. He knew Dante would not hurt him until he was completely up. The only reason he kept his arm in his face was to keep him on his toes.
Kurt, even through his immense pain, noted the charitable, noble act being preformed by Dante. For a second, he saw through the monstrous flesh, past the demonic heart, into the little piece of humanity that was left in the man; maybe he was not as lost as he had earlier assumed. He opened his eyes to see if any goodness was peeking through the black aura Dante emitted, but only saw that the floor had actually stopped spinning; it was time for another one of the boss’s tricks.