'Semifinals are here and the team is broken as fuck.
Heh. Without Boris and Last Resort we still have a ways to go I guess. Not to mention that Eliza had also dipped. Fan-fucking-tastic.
I think this is the first time I've had a chapter centered mostly around me'
Noah smirked as he stared down the leader of the Alabama gang. They called themselves the Yellowhammers or something? He couldn't care less. They all looked like a bunch of sissies, wearing baggy white and yellow jackets with hoods so he couldn't see any of their faces clearly.
The blonde scoffed.
He just had to get this thing done as quickly as possible.
He looked at Crystal and the rest of the 1st Branch. As the branch with the lowest fighting power, they were the only Branch who's soldiers hadn't been in any of the Brawlhalla fights since they were primarily used for scouting.
Noah threw his cigarette into the sand and scanned the opposition's soldiers. They looked pretty average. Nothing special. Taitanzu could probably take these mfs out in less than ten minutes.
Crystal walked over to him and put her hand on his shoulder.
"Alright cuz... let's get these fools!"
************************************
Boris.
What happened to him...
He's...
LR looked at the text message he got from the commander as he ran blindly around the city of Tallahassee.
'I never gave you back your 10 dollars'
What the hell was that message supposed to mean? LR couldn't remember any time in recent history when Boris owed him any money. Boris barely ever placed bets on anything, and the few times that he did bet he always won. In what scenario would Boris possibly owe money to anyone.
"The only time Boris lost a bet...was when..."
A lightbulb went on in LR's head, and with this new revelation, he sped off in a direction opposite the arena.
**********************************
"Something's... wrong...." Noah thought as he blocked another punch from one of the Yellowhammer soldiers.
"I'm blocking their punches...but something's off. Why do I...." Noah groaned as another wound suddenly materialized on his hand, blood spilling out in waterfalls.
"...why do I keep bleeding...?!"
Crystal and the rest of the fighters seemed to be going through the same thing; defending as best as they could but still getting inexplicable puncture wounds all over their bodies.
"I've heard of people having sharp punches but this is ridiculous!" Crystal cried out as she was back to back with her cousin, both trying their best to survive the onslaught of peculiar blows.
"Yeah. It's almost like they aren't hitting us with their fists at all!" Noah barely dodged a punch from one of them and parried with a kick to the temple, though a fresh wound still appeared on his cheek.
Crystal grunted as she caught the punch of another gangster in her fist, blood splattering all over her face. The gangster tried to set themselves free but couldn't because their hand was...stuck in Crystal's fist?
Noah grabbed them by the elbow and snapped it in a direction no elbow should go, before pulling the hand out his cousins fist and inspecting it closely.
"The hell are these?" Noah pulled a small two-pointed ring off the soldier's finger and observed it. Sure enough there was blood on it...along with a barely visible compartment that seemed to be filled with liquid.
"Ah shit..." Crystal muttered as she laid eyes on the ring.
"Y'know what this is?"
"Yeah. It's a self defense cat ring. You can usually find them at any run off the mill shopping website if you look hard enough... but these are different. What are these compartments for?"
As if to answer her question, one of the Taitanzu soldiers collapsed. And another. And another one followed.
Noah looked at Crystal, his vision was already a bit hazy.
"Poison?"
"Poison"
************************************
The diner.
The diner where we first met the gang heads.
Last Resort was running as fast as the laws of physics and human nature could allow him, dread and fear hanging over him as he sped towards the diner where Taitanzu all began
"The ten dollars I gave him when he lost the bet...even though he was supposed to give it to me. What's happening? Why does he want me to meet him there?! Is there a reason why he suddenly just disappeared?!"
LR rounded a corner and was face to face with the diner. It had gone out of business shortly after Taitanzu banded together and time and the elements had worn it down to nothing more than a glorified storage shack. Word was that some rich folks had bought the place out and started filling it up with some random shit only rich people cared about.
LR noticed that the door to the abandoned diner was left ajar and the metallic stench of blood hung in the air like a swarm of locusts.
Fearing the worst, LR ran in.
************************************
Things weren't looking good for Taitanzu at all. All the soldiers were incapacitated except Noah and Crystal who were on the verge of collapsing.
"Fuck...what the hell kind of poison was in those rings...." Noah drawled as he struggled to keep his eyes open.
"I don't know...but we better keep it together....unless we want out of the tournament..." Crystal spat out blood as her eyes became redder.
Noah sluggishly punched one of the gangsters in the jaw but received two more jabs in return. Crystal wasn't faring too good herself.
"Noah... I'm not going to last much longer. You have to...do it...." Crystal muttered as she blocked more punches and consequently lost more blood before collapsing helplessly.
Noah grit his teeth as he flipped one of them over his head. He didn't like using that...it was taught to them by their military grandfather to only be used in dire situations...
Noah pulled the small pills out of his jacket pocket and swallowed them whole.
Ah fuck it.
This seemed dire enough.
Noah's pupils dilated and an impossibly wide smile stretched out on his face as the world around him started to change shape and color.
"Let's get this thing on!" Noah cackled as he blitzed who appeared to be the gangs commander, moving at speeds that Triple theorized were as fast as LR's or even Amber's, punching them in the nose with such force that the entire stadium heard it.
"Who's next?!" Noah's bloody fist twitched as his eyes darted around, looking for who his next victim was going to be. In his hallucinating eyes all the enemy soldiers appeared as white, humanoid, smiley-faced creatures.
Not like he cared.
"Save Crystal...kill them all...!" He repeated as he dashed from one opponent to the other, laughing demonically and screaming intelligibly as he singlehandedly dismantled the enemy forces using all forms of brutal attacks. Biting off chunks of flesh, twisting unmovable joints 360 degrees and even gouging out a soldier's eye with his thumb. It was like someone had taken Amber's insanity, Casey's rage, Triple's grace, LR's speed and Killer's overwhelming force and molded them into one singular being.
Casey and Triple watched from the sidelines in complete shock.
"Oi Triple..."
"Yes Casey..."
"Remind me not to mess with Noah anymore"
There was only one Yellowhammer fighter left and they were ready to surrender for fear of their life.
"If you surrender I'll kill you!" Noah grabbed him by the neck and slammed him into the ground before lifting him into the air and squeezing their neck.
"I don't care about this fighting anymore....all I want...." Noah punched the guy in the face and caved his face in, sending him flying into the arena wall and leaving a human shaped hole in the concrete.
"...all I want...is ONE SIDED DOMINATION!!!!" Noah screamed towards the heavens as the sound that announced the end of a fight rang throughout the arena.
Before Noah could do some more crackhead activity though, the poison kicked in completely and he slumped to the ground, unable to move.
"...I did it... I carried us...to the....finals..." The bloodied blonde muttered before passing out, a smile on his face having showed himself as a real tough son of a gun.
************************************
Boris...
He's dead.....
LR couldn't believe his eyes.
Before him lay Boris, his body impaled on the antlers of a fucking moose.
Of all the ways someone as honorable as him could have gone.
He died here. Alone... probably slowly....
LR couldn't stop the tears from flowing as he looked into the dead eye of the Taitanzu commander.
In a fit of rage LR kicked the head of the moose off the rest of it's body, freeing Boris' body from it's stuck position.
Blinded by tears and anger the Taitanzu deputy...or should I say..new commander...lay waste to the entire room, destroying every form of furniture he could see, even punching the moose statue till it was as shapeless as an amoeba. He was about to break the potted plant when his leg hit something.
It was a gun.
A very familiar gun.
"Is that...."
LR picked up the Deathbringer and was instantly reminded of all the events of that rainy night in an alley.
"Turbo....this gun...." LR bent the entire gun in half.
"... vengeance...."