Matches begin at 12:01 Central Standard Time tonight. It's a battle of the Crazies! No Friends Vs Self Doubt! Which Insanity will turn victorious!? Have Fun!
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Matches begin at 12:01 Central Standard Time tonight. It's a battle of the Crazies! No Friends Vs Self Doubt! Which Insanity will turn victorious!? Have Fun!
I rubbed my arm nervously as I looked up at Sei. I somehow went from being the shining star of the Magus Cup to the bumbling fool in the course of a couple of hours. Sei Orlouge asked to personally escort me to the next fight, a suggestion that I thought was more about the Ixian Knight having doubts than it was about wanting to watch my next fight. We strolled casually through the forest of Concordia and my eyes constantly shifted back towards Sei’s intimidating posture.
“Your opponent is no ordinary fighter, Play Back,” Sei spoke, his eyes completely focused ahead of him, “He is very much like you; he concentrated on attacking with mind powers rather than with physical prowess.”
The mute Mystic seemed to have more faith in me than I did in myself, and I could only swallow heavily in reply. I was no slouch when it came to mental powers; I possessed a double-edged sword type ability wherein I overloaded my opponent;s brain with my own trauma. For Sei Orlouge, the strongest telepath I knew of, to warn me of such dangers…
Suffice it to say, I became worried.
We came out of a clearing and onto a lush green hill. Blades of glass bent and waved to the winds ever changing whims. I looked back and forth from beneath my mask in an attempt to locate my opponent. In the distance was a small form that progressively got larger, the faded outline slowly morphing into a small specimen.
My eyes widened as I looked at my opponent. The teen was roughly my age, a baseball cap faced with a bill that faced forward. The form was easily recognizable to not only myself but to anybody who was in the Ixian Knights. Though he was not an official member, this person had gone farther, made more of an impact for our army than many other the Generals had during the war for Corone. He was known as a Chibimon Trainer, a beast master of sorts who issued orders to giant beast.
I took a deep breath and looked to Sei. “This….is not going to be easy, is it?”
He did not pay attention to the two figures in the distance. Instead, his eyes were locked onto the figure he thought was by his side. A teenager similar to himself, this person wore his baseball cap backwards, his clothes were torn almost asunder by the elements, and his mouth held a lit cigarette. In the past week or so, Hsa came to terms with the fact that this 'person' was a physical manifestation of is own self-loathing. He had dubbed the 'evil' Chibimon Trainer 'Sah Lueb', an anagram for his own name.
"I honestly don't know if you're messing with me or not," Hsa sighed as he walked over the grassy hills, "At this point, I wouldn't be surprised either way." The once vibrant and happy Chibimon Trainer's attitude had changed ever since he encountered a mysterious assassin, and found out that his beloved creatures were nothing more than figments of his imagination. The revelation left the youth with a new, grimmer outlook on life. If anything, the development caused Sah to become more of a presence in the boy's life than ever before.
"What I am telling you is one hundred percent accurate, Hsa. Sei knew about you the whole time, and didn't speak a word of it," Sah took a long drag from his cancer stick and released several smoke rings into the air before speaking again, "I would say he doesn't care about you, but that's a cliche and not true. It's not that Sei Orlouge doesn't care about you, it's that he's afraid of you. He does not want to face what you might become once you reach your full potential. He's scared of the damage you could wrought on his beloved lands. Basically, he's afraid of--"
"You," Hsa paused, and his 'friend' paused in unison, as if he were the boy's own shadow. Clouds slowly drifted overhead to block out the midday sun. Sah raised an eyebrow and nodded, confused as to why Hsa would finish the sentence of what amounted to no more than his imaginary friend.
"Right, Orlouge is terrfied at the very thought of me."
Hsa shook his head. "Not you. -You-," there was a tremble in the boy's voice as he looked at Sei Orlouge and Play Back. While Hsa had enjoyed many adventured with the former, he knew of the latter only by word. Play Back was deemed the 'Unfortunate Son' of the Ixian Knights; reliable and loyal but never successful in any of his endeavors. More important, the teen known as Play Back was infamous for being the man who gave psychological evaluations to the Ixian Knights that were deemed too cray to be fit for combat.
"So it's true. You are scared of me. You're here to take me away to a padded room where I can't hurt anybody, aren't you?" Hsa's whole body began to shake in terror at the thought of being alone forever. His eyes shifted towards Sei then back to the masked man, each shift between the two more feverish than the last. "Well, I'm not going to let you! You're going to have to go over their dead bodies first!"
As Hsa finished speaking, the form of Drapegon started to rise up from the ground itself...
“Sei?”
“Yes Play Back?”
“What in the Thayne loving -fuck- is that thing?!” I nearly screamed the question at my ‘fearless leader’ while I stared on in awe at the events before me. Hsa Eulb, a man spoke about with great pride, created a creature out of thin air to do battle on his behalf. At first, it appeared that he had conjured a fish, its scales as black as the night sky itself. Then, slowly, eight long dark tentacles rose up from the ground and wrapped around the aquatic animal to form a cushion of sorts. Eight more tendrils rose up from the ground in unison as if the creature were linked directly to the ground.
I instinctively gulped in fear of the monstrosity before me. How Sei thought I would be able to overcome such a beast made me question the sanity of the Ixian leader. I grabbed at the kunai from my backside, unsheathing the blade as I stood beside the surprisingly calm creature. It’s eyes (or rather eye, since it was sideways facing me) seemed to be a glossed over like marble texture. I shook my head and tried to focus on the tendrils. I knew if I looked into those eyes for too long, I would get sucked into them, and lose my concentration.
One of the elongated limbs started to slam down towards be, and I quickly jumped back in reaction. As the tentacle made contact with the grass, the ground began to shake, and I nearly lost my balance. I stumbled forward as bits of dirt and grass flew up into the air, the tendril covered in mud and insects as it rose back up into the air. Another, different tentacle came at me with a swipe that went from east to west. I jumped into the air and the limb just happened to catch the tips of my shoes to send me straight into the ground.
I landed with a hard thud and bits of ground somehow slipped into my black mask. There was a copper like taste to the brown dirt, which made me gag a little. As I laid on the ground, I could hear the whistle of another tendril as it flew down to finish the job. I rolled as quickly as I could and was surprised to find myself launched in the air once the attack had slammed down. I tried to straighten myself up and quickly found my feet back on the ground.
I looked at the titan of an obstacle and the teenager controlling the creature from behind it’s ebony limbs. I knew that a fight with the monster would simply result in my downfall, so I did the only logical thing given the situation. I threw my kunai with all my strength and hoped that the blade would sail between the veil of tentacles that protected Hsa and find a home in the heart of the teenager.
“Sei! If I survive this, I’m going to fucking kill you!”
Hsa could feel the weapon as it flew past his arm and took with it a reasonable chunk of the child’s flesh. He screamed in pain and gripped his arm, memories from the fateful night with the assassin flashed through his head. He looked to his evil counterpart, whose smile seemed to have more yellow, sharpened teeth than the most fearful of demons. Trails of red crimson ran down Hsa’s arm as he closed his eyes.
“Sei! You knew this whole time, didn’t you?! You knew and you didn’t tell me! When Dirks nearly killed me, you didn’t tell me! When I fought your selfish war, you didn’t tell me! When I told you I was entering the Magus, you didn’t freaking tell me! How dare you keep something so important from me! You will pay, Sei Orlouge! Drapegon!” Hsa pointed towards the orange haired Mystic and the monster at his command seemed to obey unquestioningly.
Two long ebony tentacles wrapped themselves around the form of the Ixian Captain and began to pull him towards Hsa and Sah. Sei struggled to get away from the grip of the Drapegon, but with every tensed muscle he made, the tighter the grip became. Hsa had no intention on directing his anger towards Play Back at the moment; he was merely a pawn in Sei’s game of real people chess. If he continued to be a nuisance, he would be taken care of.
But Sei was the king, the end game.
The Chibimon brought the cherub-like Mystic face-to-face with Hsa, and the child leaned upwards to stare the man he had trusted for so long in the face. “You kept the secret about my Chibimon away from me. Now, I’m going to take you away from the Knights. You have no idea how much I suffered through just to learn the most crushing thing of all! I’m going to enjoy---”
“What the hell is with crazy people and monologues?” Hsa heard the voice from close by, and looked both to his east and west to find the source. His eyes narrowed back to Sei and then looked upwards, where he saw Play Back standing on the head of his boss, arms crossed as if he were a force to be reckoned with. Hsa growled at the audacity of the fellow teen to interrupt his speech, and merely looked to his most deadly of creatures.
A tentacle came swinging from behind Play Back with the hopes of severing the masked man from his own spine in one fell swoop.
The tendril slammed into me like a punch from Godhand Striker, and sent my form through the air. I opened my mouth to scream, but only air escaped and my body slammed back into the grassy hill. I rolled several times before I stopped with my back to the ground. I looked up at the clouds as they began to move out of the way of the sun and I had to squint just to keep looking up. I bent my knees in an attempt to push my form up from the ground.
My legs were shaky, and my body shivered in fear of the might of beast, but I did manage to right myself. My back throbbed in pain, as if I had spent years lifting heavy objects with it. I was fairly certain at least one or two of the bones were cracked, but everything seemed to remain intact. I was lucky to be alive. I could see Hsa look at me with anger and almost commanded his creature to attack me again. However, he looked back towards his intended target (Sei) and grinned. There was a good twenty feet between myself and my opponent, and I was not sure I could make it back to my Mystic master on time.
I had already teleported once, it was the only reason I managed to appear atop of Sei’s head so quickly before. To teleport again so quickly would devolve me into a fetal position vomit machine and that was a risk I just could not take. I ran as I watched the tentacles that had wrapped themselves around Sei tighten. I was sure that if I had been closer, I would hear the cherub’s bones break and the very thought made me shudder. My legs nearly gave out on me on several occasions during my mad dash, but I pushed forward and tried my damndest not to stumble. Sei had placed his faith in me even though I had let him down recently and I was not about to let his trust be misplaced.
I jumped towards the Mystic, my body suspended in the air as I reached out to grab him. I had hoped to pull Sei out of his conundrum, something I had yet to try. As I flew towards the mute, I could hear a screeching sound in my head, like somebody released a high pitched squeal next to my ear.
It was Sei. He was in pain. He was dying.
I threw my hand forward and touched the Mystic. I smiled, but the joy was lived for only a moment as I plummeted to the ground...
Play Back advances to Round 3 of the Redemption Bracket!
Chibimon Blue is eliminated :(