Spoiler (Click to Show)
”Uuuurgh......”
”Who the hell is there?”, I said with an angered tone.
”Uuuuurgh........”
”Show yourself, you bitch!” My fear made my voice sound squeaky.
I heard a voice behind me.
”Do not disturb the undead. They need their rest.”
”What? Where am I?”
I looked around. I couldn’t see a thing in the dark. It took a few seconds until my eyes got used to the darkness. It seemed like there was no sky at all, just darkness in the air. The lifeless, dead, grey dirt was mindlessly littered with uneasingly tall rocks.
”Where the hell am I?” , I asked again.
”You have seemed to have died again. You should not be so careless with your life.” The voice was dark and soulless.
The lifeless dirt began to smother in lively flames and flickering embers.I didn't know if to fear them or be relieved that my surroundings were cleared.. The rocks was not rocks, but dead people in pain. The thing I was talking with was death.
”Goddammit...” I knew I was in trouble this time.
”You shouldn’t have underrestimated Deathtouch. He shaked my hand once, so you would be no match for him. Ohwell, it’s time for you to be in eternal pain.”
”No! Give me another chance! I need to continue the tournament and kill that monster!” I felt my anger against Deathtouch.
”Hmph. Very well. But for your punishment, you have got to give me 50% of your blood.”
I was shocked of what he said.
”WHAT? No way! I’ll die of blood loss! What do you need it for anyway?”
”Don’t worry. There will be no diffrence whatsoever. I’ll make it so you can regenerate the blood. Oh, and if you’re wondering, I can only get blood from living people, not from souls, and I need it for my ritual.”
”Fine... But you better not be lying to me!”
”Nitro... you should know me better then any living creature. Trust me.”
He stared into my eyes, and I fell uncontious.
I woke up. I examinated my surroundings, and saw that I was outside of the wRHG building. The place looked like normal, gray and rusty. The sky was cloudy, and the grass was green. It was a normal nice day. I opened the front door, and went in. The waiting room to get a battle was much more filled then before. ”Wow, many people have joined while I have been gone.”, I thought. I fetched a number, and waited.
”NUMBER 19!” a voice shouted.
I looked at my number. ”Nope.”, I thought. The number seemed to be 22.
”NUMBER 22!”
Finally, after about half an hour, it was my turn.
”Who am I going to battle?”
”Hmmm.... Name?”
”My name is Nitro.”
He grabbed a paper, with names all over it.
”Nitro, Nitro, Nitro.... Oh, there you are. Your rank is.... average.”
”AVERAGE!?”
I bellowed out with my hands thunderously crashing down at the reception desk, the receptionist's sleepy, fed-up face burst awake in a flash. I snatched the paper from his grip like a hawk, and began to read, and as he said, I was labelled average, along with my battle record, I tried to calm down, but this fact still silently boiled my blood.
”But... but I got a perfect on the entry test!”
”Yes, but you lost a battle, so you downgraded. That’s the rules, kid.”
”Fine... I’ll battle... how about that cowboy? He’s in the rank -skilled-, so I’m going to go up a rank if I beat him, right?” He seemed weak on the picture, and I thought he would be easy to beat.
He took back the paper, and looked at it.
”Yes, that is true. This is one powerful cowboy though, you think you can take him on?”
”I’ve survived death two times, I should be fine.”
He looked at me with a confused look, but gave me a map.
”He’s supposed to be here at the moment.”
I went out of the building, and headed to my hideout to get prepared for the batte.
Finally, I was done getting my preparations. I took a quick look at the map, and examinated it. The place was a field a few miles away. ”Hmm....”, I thought. ”How will I get there? Mabye Sharp will help me?”
”No way!” Sharp was furious.
”Why? You can probably get there in about 15 minutes!”
”Because I don’t want to carry you all the way to back there!”
”Come on, I’ve saved your life twice and you’ve killed me once. You owe me one.”
Sharp sighed.
”Alright... But just this one time!”
”Don’t worry. I’ll not bother you anymore after this.”
”There it is!”, I shouted.
”Finally!”
I jumped off Sharp’s back, and he fell over.
”Sorry for making you run all the way to here. You can go home now.
”No! Now when I’m here, I’m gonna watch the battle!”
I smiled, and ran off to the house back on the hilltop.
The cowboy was playing with his lasso. I Shouted
"Hey! HEY!"
He turned around.
"Hmm?"
"I want to battle you!" I shouted.
"Oh, a challenger. What is your reason to challenge me?"
"My name is Nitro, and I want to go up in rank in the wRHG tournament, and defeat Deathtouch!"
"Hmph, fine. We shall battle then!" He said.
"Bring it! >:D"
I darted towards him, and turned my hand into a knife. His lasso reacted somehow, and chased after me. I dodged the attack, and continued running. When I was close to him, I swung my knife-hand in his face, and got a hit. He got a big scar in his face, and I saw a small ounce of fury in his eyes. I started to throw jabs in his face. He suddenly got furious, and punched me in the stomach. The pain became huge in me, and I flew right up in the air. It felt like I was going to blow up out of pain. It felt like forever staying in the air. Then, I finally landed. I heard a small earthquake from the landing. A few stones hit my head, but it almost didn't have an impact, considering the pain from the punch made me not feel anything else. I tried a while to open my eyes, and finally succeeded. I saw a blurry red figure moving towards me.
"Oh well, I guess I win. I thought that it would be at least a little challenge with battling you, but you where easier then I thought."
"N….no…" I finally got out. "No!"
"Huh? Oh no, I don't want to overkill you."
"You should stop being so cocky... and start battling!" I yelled.
I finally got up after a few tries, and recovered my balance. He laughed, and made his lasso dashing towards me. I took all the energy I got left, and slashed off the rope. He became furious, and ran towards me. While he was running, I continued to cut off more off the rope. When he was only a few meters away, I made my hand into a huge laser cannon, and blasted him. He dodged, but instead, it hit a cow. He got shocked, and stopped running to help the cow. I finally got my chance, shot him, and he blew up to pieces. He was done for by now, there was no chance for him to be alive. I went towards the body parts, and found his hat, that seemed to have survived the blast. I picked it up, and took it with me.
"Hey, Nitro!"
It was Sharp who was shouting.
"Good job, my friend. I feel bad about Bodacious. I mean, he seemed nice. Why did you kill him?"
I put on a serious face.
"I regonize that face. It was the same as your face when you where a demon. He was possessed."
"Woah", Sharp said. "How can you have that good of a memory?"
"Heh, I guess it's just luck that I remembered it in that moment." I chuckled.
"Yeah. Well, we better be going."
"Hmm?" The receptionist inspected the hat.
"Yes, that is Bodacious hat. What else can I do to prove it?" I said.
"No, that's not needed. Hang on, I'll check the members list. Hm…… Oh! Yes, Bodacious seems to be dead. Congratulations, you are officially ranked "Skilled"!
I smiled. Finally, I could take on even more powerful foes. This journey had finally started getting serious.
[/spoiler]
Spoiler (Click to Show)
I knew I just made the deal that won me the fight. Most of the others, aside from Sebastian, didn't know I could talk to animal. I knew from previous walks out that way there was a healthy population of some very vicious species of animals, anything from wolverines to wolves to even grizzely bears.
It was the next afternoon when Nitro finally arrived. I had told him to meet me in the clearing in the middle of the forrest. I was waiting on him on a branch about 50 foot off the ground. When I saw him I hollered out "Welcome to the jungle buddy, you gonna die!" He jumped out of his skin, appearantly he didn't see me at first and it looked like he nearly shit himself. I had to sit down I was laughing so hard, I yelled at him "I'm sorry dude the temptation was too much, I've always wanted to use that line." Once he realized my intent he did infact laugh. I hooked my lasso around the branch and lowered myself to the ground. I told Anies to remain limp like a normal rope, I had discovered her existance in the rope a few days before while doing some mental training before I could really move. after concentrating I heard a voice that said it was the spirit of the rope that allowed it to move and giving me a second pair of eyes but took cencentration to maintain the connection. I was saving this for an ace in the hole.
part 2:
"Well lets start shall we?" I asked with my usual smile. I wasn't sure what Nirto was cabable of so I decided to test him.
-I ran ahead and punched with with very little of my true power. He countered it with a duck and quick jab to the stomach.
I played possum to let him think he had to upper hand letting him hit me with a few punches.
-A quick jab to the kindey, a quick jab to the stomach, then a hard punch to chest all within a span of about 5 seconds.
I knew the longer this lasted the more in my favor it was. I was used to exerting myself for long periods of time and Nitro looked like he couldn't fight for too long at top strenght. But, he seemed to be holding back as well, maybe he had the same strategy.
I switched gears, he grabbed my arm to throw me at the trees. To his suprise I didn't budge. I felt him give it his all to try to snatch me forward, but I remained glue to my spot. I looked up so he could see under the brim of my hat to see my smile.
-I grabbed his shirt and hurled him iN the direction he tried to throw me. He smacked into a tree and fell to the ground.
I realized I just pissed him off. He came up and to my suprise he left hand looked like a ninja katana, the right looked like a shield. So thats his power he can make weapons out of his hands. thinking fast I let out a loud growl. This didn't phase Nitro as he began to run at me.
-Suddenly a wolf slammed into his side from a bush just behind him.
The growl was never meant to intimidate, I just called for backup. "Hope you like my friend there, he is the alpha of his pack." I said while Nitro looked in stunned silence. What he did next suprised me.
-He detached the shield and threw it at the wolf. it jumped but as he got airborn to dodge a bullet went through his skull.
Nitro had turned his hand into a pistol and shot the poor wolf. "Well I must say that is an unexpected suprise you can actually make guns I just figured you only make bladed weapons." "Thats just a start" he said with a straight face.
-I barely managed to get my hat off my head and in the path of the bullet as he fired off a shot aimed towards my shoulder.
-Several more rounds rang out as he put another five shots at me.
He looked confussed as the bullets just flattened into little metal pancakes as the hit my hat.
what looked like a nine millimeter pistol morphed into something with more stopping power, a 12 guage sega shotgun.
-A hundred slugs went down range as he let metal shower me. each round hitting my hat and flattening out on the brim or ricocheing off the crown in every direction.
I knew this wasn't good, the hat and my arm could handle the strain but if I managed to miss blocking one bullet and it would be bad. I sent a command to Anies to try a new move we came up with the day before. She wrapped around my waist and made a second loop on the knot end of the rope. She put the loops on the gound and pushed off hard sending me flying. It caught Nitro off guard, just long enough to get him to stop firing.
part 3:
-The loop to my right zipped down and caught his left hand, pulling me down to him. He turned his right hand into a long knife thrusting it at me to impale me as I sped toward him.
-I made the rope slam me to the ground feet first and and grab Nitro's other hand. He dodged it the first tow attempts while still fighting to free his other one, but caught it on the third try. I concentrated hard and dug my feet into the ground.
He reached into his bag of tricks he turned his left hand into a chainsaw attempting to saw the rope in half. I though fast remembering the weapons can come off.
-With a sharp snatch the chainsaw and knife went flying. I had the left loop grab the chainsaw. It grabbed the handle pressed the trigger wide open and whirled it at Nitro before he even had time to fall to the ground from the previous attack.
-It struck the side of his leg sawing off a hunk of his calf.
He screamed in pain as he grabbed his leg, his hands back to normal. He looked up at me with an expression that reminded me of the time of the time I slept with a married woman and she didn't tell me; the next day I woke up to some angry guy with a shotgun to my face. If looks could kill that one was a murderer. I let him take some cloth from his shirt and bandadge his leg to stop the bleeding. I may be a gladiator but I'm not heartless, it could have blead to the point of death.
I thought he would turn his hands into some sort of deathray to blow me away but he didn't. He was tired and slowing down. In a style resembling a bar fighter, he tried to just punch his way to a win. By this time I was using about half my strenght, more than enough to over power him in this exshausted state; easily blocking his punches. However, he wasn't done yet. He jumped back and grabbed the pistol with his left and the chainsaw with the right.
-Blazing away with the pistol, I lowered my hat to block the bullets. I looked up when the bullets stopped only to see him to swing down with the chainsaw redlined aimed at my head.
-I fell to the ground with him on top of me pressing the chainsaw close to my face. He caught his second wind and his adreanaline pumping came close to matching my full strenght. I was just able to keep him from pressing the chainsaw into my face, my consentrasion was on keeping the chain from going into my skull so the rope was out of the qu