"Come on, motherfucker, let's finish this!"
Ethan stared at Darius as he threw off his shirt and assumed a fighting stance, sighing before assuming one of his own.
It was too obvious who the victor of this battle would be.
Darius was scrawny and frial-looking, appearing to only weigh around 100 pounds, while Ethan was robust and muscular, being over 200 pounds, and even though he was burned and battered, he was still more than capable of beating Darius to death.
"I'm going to rip you a... BOOM!!!" Ethan's speech was suddenly interrupted by an enormous explosion. Originating from that warehouse Darius had thrown those Molotov cocktails at.
Both of them were caught off guard by the unexpected explosion. They'd been standing only a few feet away from the warehouse when it blew up and were consumed by the fireball and sliced by shrapnel.
Darius could feel shards of metal piercing his flesh in his arms and legs. While the heat of the flames burned his skin, giving second degree burns everywhere, taking mostly burn damage from the explosion.
Ethan wasn't burned all that much, but he was injured severely by the sharpnel.
It penetrated his limbs as well as his chest and abdomen, with one long, sharp piece of metal cutting his trachea open.
Either way, both of them were badly hurt and were sent flying by the shockwave and crashed into nearby buildings, breaking several bones on impact.
For Darius, he went straight through a window, getting badly cut by glass in the process, and onto a dining table. The legs of the dining table broke under the force, causing the whole thing to collapse with him lying unconscious on top of it.
He was left barely clinging onto his life while Ethan, still conscious, was slowly dying.
When he landed, Ethan's smashed through a stone wall, breaking his bones in multiple places and rendering him immobile, but what really screwed him was his throat.
His windpipe was cut in the blast, blocking air from getting into his lungs. Ethan was essentially choking to death on his own blood.
Even if he could move, he wouldn't last long with an injury like that, not to mention the extensive internal bleeding and all the fractures.
At the moment of his death, Ethan cursed Darius in his mind as everything faded to black and his tense muscles went slack.
...
"Wake up, young man!"
'Huh?' Darius opened his eyes and winched in pain. He was hurting all over, particularly in his arms and legs.
He craned his neck and saw his limbs wrapped in splints, while the rest of his body was wrapped in bandages, making him look like a beaten-up mummy.
"Your lucky to be alive."
Darius turned his head to the right and saw a familiar old man. The gears in his head turned as he tried to recall who he was. Then it hit him.
'It's that rude old guy with the matches I hit in the head! How, he should be dead; I cracked his skull open?!'
Darius was shocked to see this man yet again but also confused. If this was that old man, then why did he help him, and where was he anyway?
Looking around, he noticed he was lying in a bed out in the open with dozens of other beds arranged in rows around him.
People wrapped in bandages like him laid in them with burns and other assorted wounds. They were tended to by concerned townsfolk whose clothes were all covered in ashes.
It seemed there were so many people to take care of they needed to be placed outside where there was enough space to treat everybody.
Darius realized this was the aftermath of the fire he started, but he didn't feel guilty. He had to do it if he wanted to draw Ethan out and kill him.
'Speaking of which, is that guy dead?' Darius frantically looked all around, which startled the old man watching over him.
"Easy now, son, you'll hurt yourself!"
Darius gave him a nasty look and asked him where Ethan was.
"Ethan? That boys dead as a doornail; we found him not too far off from you. His throat got slashed open by flying shrapnel from the distillery."
"Distillery?" He gave the old man a puzzled look.
"Yeah, the old still. It was the town's only source of income after the mine shut down. Now it's gone, blown up in the fire. We don't know how it happened, and what's worse, my twin brother Owen is dead too. His head was split open, and his body was chargrilled by the flames. God's be merciful." The old man prayed solemnly.
'Oh, this is that guy's twin brother.' Darius understood everything now.
That building exploded because it was full of highly flammable alcohol, and Ethan was killed in the blast, and he never got to tell anyone about how he murdered his two goons and tried to kill him too.
Otherwise, they would have left him for dead instead of taking him and patching him up.
"Everything worked out in the end."
"What you say?"
Darius realized his mistake and quickly replied, "Nothing, nothing!"
The old man nodded with a look of concern. He was worried Darius might have some brain damage from the shockwave rattling his head. He certainly acted like he did.
"Anyway, youngin, I'm going to go now. They need more hands to tend to the wounded. Just call if you need me; my name is Justin." The old man said before leaving.
Darius sighed in relief and decided to get as much rest as he could. He had a feeling he'd be going through more hardships soon enough.