Redemption Bracket: Lye Vs Chibimon Blue

[Lye]

Once again the music of chaos grew deafening in his ears. Guards began to beat down the door, and shouts of encouragement could be made out from those not currently participating. The assassin faced the boy and his creature with blades quivering in front of him. The urge to finally taste the thrill of what his boy had to offer tingled at the back of his neck and burned feverishly in his emerald watch. Unfortunately, the town guard wanted to going this engagement and a public group slaughter was not what he needed for his reputation.

"Damn," he swore aloud as the strange black fish sprouted numerous black appendages. Each one seemed to have a mind of its own and a set of razor sharp teeth to match. All the meanwhile the boy, somehow clinging to the verge of the living, stared upon the killer with black, dead eyes.

"Just when we were finally getting started..." slipped the words doused with venom toward the amassing collective assault. They lunged for him as the door began to signal it's final attempts to maintain privacy. Lye snapped the blades to his aid, but the reaction was sluggish. The tentacles crashed into the hardened bones of his rib cage. A lesser man would have been penetrated numerous times, but this warriors skeleton remained vigilant against the assault. Instead of becoming a living kabob, the force of impact pushed the assassin through the hotel wall into an array of debris upon the city streets.

The boy's power was shocking, and Lye managed to raise himself upon his feet. His client warned him, but experiencing such ferocity first hand could not compete with a description. Lye forced a grimace on his bleeding features, and immediately turned tail to the nearest alley. Fragments of wood made their presence known every time his muscles tensed to move him. A trail of blood marked his path until the shadows swallowed him whole and erased him from existence.

"Next time we meet, Hsa Elub, there will be no foreplay -- you will die..."

[Chibimon Blue]

The black fish disappeared the second the guardsmen entered the room. Hsa could hear the cries for help, and feel as the hotel staff and city guard alike picked his limp body up and carried him to receive medical treatment. He watched the whole scene play out, though his eyes once again shone with a hopeful azure rather than a grim ebony. He knew it was a matter of time before he was back on his feet, and in the time it had taken his monster to attack, Hsa had learned the truth.

The Magus Quartet, Chibimon Trainers, Arena Captains, they were all stories in a book from his childhood. Chibimon were nothing more than the overactive imagination of a young child who wanted so badly for his dreams to become reality that they did. Rhinosaurus, Servapour, even MysLight and Drapegon were just creatures written in one of his favorite bedtime stories. He stayed unconscious for days, forced to think about how many adventures he had been on, and why so many had offered him strange looks when he tried explaining things.

“Now do you understand?” Hsa’s eyes opened up. In a dark corner of the medical ward stood his smoking nemesis once more, a wide grin plastered upon his disgusting features. “Chibimon were never real. The reason you can create those beasts is because you have such strong psychic abilities. ‘Goldbish’ never evolved because you didn’t want him to; you wanted something more useless than yourself to represent all your inequities. Likewise, Rhinosaurus was your strength, MysLight your courage, and Servapour your intelligence. They were all you the whole time Hsa.”

“Don’t give me that,” the child coughed as the IV needle in his arm jerked and caused the boy’s body to shiver out of sheer muscle memory, “You sent that assassin after me. You weren’t trying to teach me a lesson. You were trying to kill me.”

“I only wanted you dead if you didn’t see the truth, Hsa,” The smoker took a toke from his cigarette, “I paid him, that’s fair enough, but what do you think happens when a damaged mind tries to repair itself?”

“What do you mean?”

The figure stepped out of the shadows, and the light shined on a familiar baseball cap, pants, and even shirt. He approached closer and Hsa could see into the endless blue eyes. It was like the boy was in front of a mirror. The smoker took one last puff and billowed a ring of smoke in the child’s face as he evaporated into the air.

“You and I are the same person…”

((End, if there was any bunnying, permissions were given for such on both accounts. Concluding post.))

[Max Dirks]

Great battle guys. It's a shame it had to happen in the Redemption Bracket. I'll be keeping commentary limited. LU is Lye and CB is Chibimon Blue.

	Lye	Chibimon Blue	Notes
Story	5	6	CB: I was very impressed by your improvement here. I only saw one point that did not flow with the rest of the battle, and that was when you had Hsa foresee his own death. Yes, I realize you were using it as a motif to set up his near death realization about Chibimon, but the battle coul have been just as good without it.
Setting	5	5
Pacing	5	5
Communication	6	6
Action	5	5
Persona	6	6
Mechanics	5	6	LU: You had a number of missed words and misspellings. Post 7 contains quite a few of them.
Clarity	5	6	LU: Your writing style, particularly when you open with a verb or adverb, tends to confuse the subject of the sentence. For example, when reading "[g]loved fingers unwrapped the object as he spoke and the speech halted in mid sentence." From reading this, the subject of the sentence "gloved fingers", "he" or "the speech". You probably meant "he", but it's still unclear.
Technique	6	5	LU: When I first read "[t]he boy that summons monsters out of thin air" I glazed over it. Only when I reached the end did I realize how this little piece of dialogue great foreshadowing. Was it intentional? If so, great work.
Wildcard	6	6
Total	55/100	56/100

Chibimon Blue wins

Chibimon Blue advances to Round 2 of the Redemption Bracket!
Lye, surprisingly, is eliminated.

Chibimon Blue gains 1100 EXP and 80 GP!
Lye gains gains 350 EXP and and 79 GP!

[Lye]

EXP & GP Added!

Chibimon Blue jumps to Level 3!