#Let's wrap this up then, The Strongest. It's been fun writing against you. End it nicely. :)

Post#8

The heat was driving Cooper insane. "Noooo!!" He screamed inside, his flesh seemed to melt again, he felt as if he was back in the incident, back where his life changed for the worst but even his iron will, the will that kept him sane all these years after seeing friend after friend executed because of his mistake, was faltering. He could not maintain the ice cold focus he had to control the suit and it would now cost him his and Walden's life. Their struggle, both creature and automaton, was fierce but inevitably both seemed to lose the battle. None of them would come out unscathed or breathing. Walden's roar pierced through the armor, a shriek of pain and agony that shook Cooper to his core.

'Were those the same cries from when I...' Cooper shut his eyes. It would soon be over anyway. It wouldn't matter. Nothing matters anymore. Only the sweet embrace of death awaits him and yet, he refuses. Death...so sweet an escape. 'I don't deserve it.' he muttered. "I DON'T DESERVE IT" He screamed. His voice cracked as he tried to breath. The heat was too much, the suit was blaring warnings, sirens of doom. Red lights flickered in his HUD but he paid no heed. It was, partially, too late. If he had control, he would survive but as of now. Not really.

Then he heard something. A mutter, a sound of a man.

"...on my feet."

It was weak.

"this...this is good enough."

Cooper's face darkened. "I bet you wish death too..." He muttered. The android suit moved against the werewolf, pushing his adversary to one side onto the floor in the inky darkness of the oven. Numbers scrolled through Cooper's face, green icons against the blaring red. "What..."

The numbers seemed to traverse through every letter and number, special character and shape as if trying to make something out to him. It seemed to stop with a series of ones and zeroes.

The drones beeped loudly. They were about to implode.

"Well..." Cooper could only hope Walden could hear. "I'm sorry you had to end this way."

He was on his back, arms splayed on either side. The suit's arms sparked and fizzled. They were still damaged from his own attack earlier. He didn't even know why the android had called in the missile pods. The android suit twitched.

The characters in front of Cooper began to end. One by one they fell on either one or zero with the occasional letter. Cooper had been keeping track. It took him a few seconds to decipher the code. And the code shocked him.

It read:

"I refuse to be terminated."

Then, the drones imploded.

All around, the room screamed silently that death was approaching. The screams of two dying men, somehow, couldn't overcome the looming oppression of silence that was just around the bend in the air from the force and heat of the simultaneous implosions of Bl.An.C's drones. Walden had already found tranquility, and somehow, through the sizzling flesh that his eyes had already become, he perceived the final blinding flash that would prove to be the last thing that he would see. In an instant, all the sensation was wiped away. Pain, screaming, the last words of his opponent, the memory of his code, everything, in an instant, was made ash and dust.

What hadn't been charred into nothing already was, and subsequently all of it was blasted about the room like dust in the wind. Years of merging with spirits and having that essence expunged again had left an unstable and tenuous connection between the bonds of flesh, and as the air settled all that was left to be seen of what once had been Walden was a finely falling dust. Horrifying as it was to anyone who would come upon it and learn just what it was, the nature of it matched Walden's final moments. Gentle and tranquil, perfectly satisfied with itself as it fell into whatever patterns it was to fall into. No questions of whether it was right or wrong, or if it was a dishonorable act to lay across the dead body of one's former foe. Instead, there was the inner peace to simply let oneself fall where one would fall.

However, as if fate had not yet revealed its final card, that tranquility was disturbed.

Suddenly, it was as if another wind were blowing within the dirty cell, a wind that quickly brought all of what had once been Walden into the air, and sucked the mass of it into its vortex.

At first, Walden was nothing. There was only a void. No sensations to experience, not even a thought to ponder. Slowly, then, slowly that mystic wind blew the dust together, and from dust a form began to take shape. The first words that Walden found himself able to recall came as if by a firebrand, a searing image in his mind's eye from his past. The lone wanderer on the cliff turned away from him, and Walden remembered how he had struck down his own pack from within, in order to regain control of them. By turning them out, he had exposed himself to the coming inferno, and he had died.

For the first time since coming to the wRHG, Walden knew that he had well and truly died. This time was not like the others. He had, for the briefest of moments, been a part of that shadowed realm where he knew the dead to rest. There, as he felt the instinctive tug towards the deeper shadow, he found himself confronted by a wall that would not allow him to pass. It was a thing unlike any other around him, for unlike the bland shade of the spirit realm, this obstacle boasted a wide array of colors, as if it were its own carnival. And indeed, other spirits saw this distinct thing in the world and were already being drawn slowly to it like moths to a flame.

"This is not how you will meet your end." A voice had spoken to him through the sound of a thousand cards being shuffled as the wall revealed its true nature. "I have foreseen your final end, and this will not be it. Your destiny lies elsewhere."

The cards, before him, had stacked themselves, and then scattered outward, as if an unseen hand had chosen to play 52-Pickup with them. The whirlwind of colors blinded him, and embraced him in the same moment, and slowly, slowly, the whirling rainbow began to settle down to reform into darkness, but not the same darkness as it once had been. This was a different darkness. A familiar one. The wind had, it seemed, finished what it had set out to do, for Walden found himself falling over onto his side, sprawled out over the floor, for he still possessed only one of his legs. The left one. When he tried to push himself to a sitting position with his left hand, Walden found the task impossible, for his left hand had left him just as he had left the realm of the dead.

"Where are my weapons?" Walden tried to ask, but the words jumbled together and emerged from the side of his mouth, as well as the front, for the flesh about the right side of his jaw had left, as well. In such poor light, Walden couldn't find his weaponry. Not in the state he was in. There was one thing that remained whole to him, however. Deep in his soul, Walden found that there was something akin to a whistle. The sort that would be used to call a pack of dogs from the realm of shadow. The whole span of events had taken but a few moments, but for him it seemed a lifetime ago that this room was illuminated by the burning of his own flesh. He had been saved by the interference of another. What, then, had become of his opponent?

Walden decided to wait and see, pushing himself up with his remaining arm and assuming as relaxing a position as he could against one of the walls.

STOP! This thread has reached the necessary deadline. The voting period has now begun. I've set up the poll up there for ya'll.

Remember, it doesn't matter if this battle ever finished. We are looking for the better Play-By-Post writer here. Vote and CNC away!!!

Well played you two. If every round had a "best battle" bonus this would have won in my book. Just because it seemed more like dark, gritty, life or death struggle from start to finish. Error you held you resolve throughout the entire battle and that twist at the end was nice. The Strongest when you get to writing it's enjoyable; I'm speaking mostly of that last post, but everything else was good too. Aside from the lack of flashbacks.

Even with the fact that you both kind of killed yourselves I felt this bout ended delightfully! :D

We couldn't kill ourselves, so we resolved to almost killing ourselves xD

Thanks for the feedback, blak. Much appreciated.

Well, I don't know how Thestrongest managed to gather so little votes; in my opinion, both did fairly well, well enough for me to hesitate on deciding who should be the winning party.

Thestrongest, you wrote some thinking behind Walden's attacks and that was good, and you managed to depict a berserked, animalistic character without too many problems. Yet somehow, I find that you give parts of your writing too much attention, to the point where they may be too wordy, while some were given less attention, to the point of single descriptions that don't make much of an impact. There was the part where walden turns into the wolfpack, and I felt that there was much about how walden was enraged, yet little to show that he really is in such a state. Show instead of tell fits appropriately here.

Lastly, your flashbacks hurt much of your story. Of the two, none of them managed to tell a complete story; they were too fragmented, told too little. They became unneeded lulls inbetween the fight because the impact of them was never shown. In other words, I could remove both flashbacks, and the story would run fine. Better, even.

As for Error, you made good descriptions, and there was thinking behind your character's actions. But then there are problems. You were eager to include walden's actions in your writing, but as good as it is, they were sometimes inserted into the current paragraph haphazardly, and had little effect. You also made tense errors, but what struck me most was that your character was almost a cold machine that only thought, but did not feel. Only until the end did you manage to include some emotions (even though I still believed them to be inadequate). Especially jarring was the fact that even though Cooper knew the suit was going to kill them both, he gave it little more than a passing note, telling himself that 'this is it' and nothing more. Nonetheless, you've exceeded my expectations, so good work.

I'll give the vote to Thestrongest, but on grounds as dubious as a coin flip, because sitting on the fence would be bad of me. Finally, I would like to commend the two of you for your work; it was a fair read.

Lobotomizer, the fragmented nature was deliberate. I felt that it wouldn't be in the spirit of the bout to place an entire story into each of my posts, in what was meant to be (in my head, anyways) a rushed flash of a battle. What I did try to do was keep the fragments relevant to the immediate action occurring in the battle, specifically I was trying to go for an effect of something resembling a seamless transition from the brief fragment from Walden's past to the brief fragment of Walden's present combat. It would have broken the flow of the overall battle if I Walden were allowed to remember a complete story in the span of time between Bl.An.C throwing a bunch and it connecting, I think.

Do you agree or disagree on such?

Very true, but with two flashbacks, and neither seemingly connected, you've diluted their effect, and it made little sense if Walden's background was never read at all. In my opinion, I would have preferred three flashbacks, all relating to each other to form a complete story, a notable event that happened in Walden's life, and a sudden ending that could cross with the finale of the battle for a much bigger impact.

Ja~, makes sense. I agree. I might have kept it up if I hadn't dropped my ante in the 5th set by accident.