KoAII Round 1: Hellfighter 17 vs Corniss

[Alura]

Scenerio - After returning from the war, a man must adapt to his crippling disability. However, he refuses to let it stop him from living life to the fullest.

Assignment - Roleplay first person behind the handicapped man as he attempts to the run the local marathon with a bionic leg.

Rules - He must complete the marathon.

5 days

[Alura]

CORNISS

A thick silence floated amongst the family as I prepared myself for the marathon. Other racers ambled past us, all in their short shorts and number-tagged white sleeveless shirts. My wife Jessica pulled the straps on my leg tight and clipped all the devices that needed to be clipped, safely securing and reinforcing my bionic leg in place upon my stump of a thigh. She lifted her head for a moment to smile at me, and I felt as though I could take first place without even trying.
?Ready, honey?? She truly had no doubt that I would do terrifically in this race. I couldn?t ask for anything more?her faith in me was the greatest gift I could have been given.
I ran my hand through what used to be a blond crew cut but had quickly grown out since my discharge from the Marines. Looking at the beaming faces of my two beautiful young children and the most perfect wife I could ever wish for, I would have been lying desperately if I were to say that I was not ready for the marathon. ?You bet,? I said, reaching to little Roger and rustling his mushroom-cut brown hair. He grabbed my hand, which was twice the size of either of his own. I turned to my left and saw that my daughter Kelly had grabbed my other hand. Jessica appeared behind me, grabbed me under the armpits, and combined her efforts with the futile but terribly cute attempt to lift me by my kids. With my healthy right leg, I kicked off from the ground to help them out, and I was easily on both of my feet.
?RACERS TO THE STARTING LINE!!? The announcer?s megaphone blared in a short siren sound after the ?Call to Legs?, as my father had always called it. All three of the family members with me hugged me ferociously before I turned and walked awkwardly over to the starting line.
I was quickly swallowed by an ocean of men of all sizes and colors amassing at the bright white line that had been laid as the starting point of the 22.6 mile race. The area was so dense with bodies that I?m sure the metal of my bionic leg could not have been pinpointed from outside the pool of runners.
?GET READY AND?!!? All the other racers had finished their individual leg stretches and breathing exercises; everyone braced themselves for the beginning of the race.
BANG!!! The gunshot went off. My mind blocked out all vision and gave way to a split-second flash of memory: a landmine exploded. I remembered no pain, for I had immediately lost consciousness. I stumbled as I pushed off from the ground with my good leg, taking my first step towards my goal.
The first hour passed uneventfully. The first few miles were enthusiastic and upbeat, with the audience cheering each of us on from the sidelines. As the last bunch of racers (a group which I was a part of) cleared the two-mile marker, we could hear the cheers die down behind us. The area began to shift from the homey suburb from which the race had been launched to a rural area of brown wheatstalks and dirt roads. Volunteer men and women dressed in bright red t-shirts with the name of the marathon imprinted on the chest stood behind shoddy fold-open tables, handing out mineral water and sports drinks to the passersby. As I made a hobbling pass on a table at my fourth mile, I grabbed a bright blue bottle of Gatorade and ripped off the plastic covering at the mouth of the bottle. I promptly downed a quarter of the energizing liquid, spilling a bit and staining my white shirt.
Tom, a tall middle-aged man I had been making idle conversation with during the run, came up from behind me with a pint bottle of Poland Spring. He was slightly stout, but he was not out of shape. He drank half the container of water and then emptied the remainder onto his head. ?Damn gawgeous day for a run, eh Frank?? He panted after finishing the question. I had a feeling he wouldn?t be able to finish.
?You bet.? My voice stuttered slightly every time I bounded with my left leg. I hadn?t yet gotten used to the stiff feeling of my metallic appendage. ??Though I wish the scenery was a bit more?scenic.? On either side of us stood an eight-foot wall of stalks. I never liked farmland.
?Livin? in the city, ya know, I can?t complain about this view. Smells betta than fuckin? gah-bage and unwiped ass.?
That gave me a good laugh. I don?t live near New York City, and I?ve only been there a few times, but you always know a true New Yorker when you hear one. The harsh Italian mobster accent and their often remarkably similar (and often disturbing) description of the city smell were hard to mistake for anything else.
By the 16th mile we had run out of things to make conversation about, and Tom pulled ahead of me. More stamina than I thought, I conjectured. I was not in last place, but there was now a fairly large gap between myself and the runners in front and in back of me. It pleased me to know that the people running with me did not view me as below them for my disability. I guess the most beautiful things in life, such as unconditional human kindness, are the rarest?but they?re always worth looking for. Luckily, I seemed to have stumbled right into it.
No pun intended.
I was alone for the next five miles. After a few minutes I had decided that nobody would be nearby, so I donned the headphones I use when running and turned on the player. Joe Esposito?s ?You?re the Best Around? was the first to play on my random playlist (known best from the soundtrack of ?The Karate Kid?). I smiled, not because it raised my self-esteem, but simply due to the sheer irony. The song always seemed to come up at just the right time. Just like when ?The Final Countdown? starts playing?I?m sure Jessica remembers the last time that happened, if you know what I mean.
I must have stopped paying attention, because as I turned a corner onto my last mile, my metallic leg caught some kind of weed or something in the ground. I flailed and fell forward, the only thing saving me from mutilating my face being the use of my arms as a landing cushion and the hair-trigger reflexes I had developed during my military service.
After the initial shock wore down, I tried to lift my body up off the ground. I found myself struggling for a good minute before I realized that my bionic leg had come loose; it was lying at a horrifying angle to my thigh, with many of the straps and clips visibly undone. It would have been impossible for me to reattach it myself; my arms were in too much pain from the fall to be of any use, and my good leg too tired at this point of the race to push me onto my back in order to fix it.
I gritted my teeth in an effort to ignore the pain and flip over, but it was no use.
Suddenly, I felt hands gripping my arms, hands and torso. I was lifted up and settled upon two men, my arms over their shoulders. I looked down, and a third was already trying to figure out how the prosthetic leg attached itself to my thigh. Tom looked up at me and said in his New York drawl, ?How tha hell diya get this thing on??
Tears of happiness formed at the corners of my eyes as I did my best in instructing the slightly thick (in both senses of the word) East Coaster how to correctly operate the synthetic joint. I closed my eyes tight in order to keep the tears from streaming down. I couldn?t even find the words to thank them. This shock was even greater than that from my fall. Eventually, the leg was attached (I?m gonna have to fix his strapping job later, I thought) and I was replaced on both my feet. When I opened my eyes, there were not only three men with me?at least fifty men who I had seen pass me by had backtracked and joined our group, and even more were rounding the corner to meet us. I had to close my eyes again, but the tears would not be contained this time.
The runners formed a protective shell around me, a huge walking circle that marched towards the finish line. I hobbled on my leg so that it would not come undone again. When I lookd to see the marker signifying the last tenth of a mile, I stumbled forward awkwardly, but Tom and another man at my side caught me and lifted me back up to my feet. In that split second that I started to fall, the entire mass of runners stopped moving.
They were waiting for me.
We all jogged together towards the finish line. It was in sight, less than a minute away. I picked up the pace, moving forward faster than I had been throughout the whole race. I could see the first hundred or so racers waiting across the finish line with water bottles and towels in their hands, watching us come closer and closer.
The runners in front of me suddenly stopped. I almost knocked into the ones directly in front of me, but I kept myself up. I looked around to see why they had all stopped: they would not go any further until I had finished.
The circle parted in front of me like the Red Sea for Moses. I hesitated for a moment before hobbling down the hall of smiling faces towards the finish line. My face was now damp with tears of joy. I had never cried before, no matter how much pain I was forced to endure during my tour of duty. There is no description for the simple beauty of what happened that day.
I looked past the tape and saw my children hopping up and down at my sight, and my wife crying just as hard as me. With my handicapped leg, I crossed the finish line, accompanied by the cheers of hundreds?

[Alura]

HELLFIGHTER 17

The room was so silent, yet the only sound that emanated through it almost made me wish I was deaf. The consistent beep, beep, beep of my stable vitals was both reassuring and agonizingly painful. It was all the company I had for six hours when I was awake, and for the rest of the time, I had the talking of my family to distract me. During my last day in my own purgatory, my children came to visit, and I was able to tell them about the greatest day of my life. Although they could not understand it at the time, they were enthusiastic to hear it.

"Come on, dad, tell us!" screeched Zackary, tightening his grip on my bedsheets.

Katie, his younger sister, held out a photograph. "Yea, tell us!" She took her arm back in and gaped at what looked to be me merely walking.

***

"Are you sure you want to do this, John?" was all I heard for weeks. Here I was, though, running in the 25th Marathon of Hope - and in Thunder Bay, no less. Although I was born raised, and lived in Michigan, I had to come here; where Terry Fox had gone down, I would triumph, and hopefully feel some of the glory I had.

One of the people who had told me that was my wife, Eleanor. She was the one to help me recover after I returned from Iraq. I have still yet to talk with anyone about what happened tome out there, but her support was all I needed at the moment. She saw me off at the start of the race and would be there at the halfway mark and then at the finish line. As we left each other before the beginning of the race, she leaned in close to me and gave me a kiss on the lips, the first time since before I had left for Iraq - the night we conceived Katie, who was due to be born any week now. There were tears in her eyes; she had told me her doubts about how I'd do and that if anything happened to me now, that she wouldn't know what to do. Every other time she told me this I simply reassured her all would be fine with a confident grin, but this time I wanted to breakdown nd tell her what had happened to me, but I simply looked away, unable to deal with it at that moment.

Another one who told me their criticism in my competing was my brother, Mark. He lived in New York and was a high-profile lawyer, but he was still a family man at heart. He had to work today, but he was meeting a client in Sudbury, so he would be in the same province as me. he would meet me at the quarterpoint, if he didn't get called away too soon. When I came upon him, he was on his cell phone, but once he noticed me, he had it in his pocket within three second. My "run" was not quite up to even Terry Fox's standards, so I was going slow enough that we could give each other a quick hug. It was the first time I had seen my brother since I initially came back, but it was as though he was always there. Upon receding from him, I could hear him whispering, "I love you." I looked back as I continued my half-run, and he was not crying, but he was looking at me with eyes that he hadn't bore since dad died six years ago.

There were other people that told me this was too much for me, but most of them were merely people who I saw every other day, and I didn't give a rat's ass about, but there was one more person whom had doubt in me, and this doubt made me feel more uneasy than the doubt of anyone else's: My own. Despite my telling everyone else that I'd be fine, I was worried to the bone, as well. I have one leg - one leg! Even though my leg had been replaced by a bionic one, it just was not the same. My right leg was blown off while me and my buddies were simply cruising in our caravan when all of a sudden our driver is shot in the head! The vehicle suddenly starts turning to the left, into the field - where there could be landmines. Me and the two others jumped out, realizing that we'd be toast if we stayed on. The caravan did not explode, but we couldn't go to it for shelter, since we weren't sure of the "safe" path it took into the field.

Then the bullets started flying.

I knew we would not survive if we didn't get to the caravan. I decided to be the "hero"; actually, I think I don't want to tell anyone this because I don't want to be labeled as a hero, because I am not. I was selfish. I wanted to see Zackary again, Eleanor again, Mark again - I wanted drink my coffee with just my robe and shorts on in the morning with the television tuned to sports and the sports section of the newspaper in my hand. I was selfish, not a hero. if anything, I am a villain. During my act of selfishness, Mark, not my brother mark, but a younger, more uncouth, lewd version or Mark, whom I thought had no sense of morals, stopped me. He grabbed me and threw me back to the path, but in the process stepped in a landmine. He died. I lost my leg. he was a hero and I was the villain.

I didn't want to fall hero Mark, so two days before the marathon I went to one of the unmanaged streets in Thunder Bay. There were plenty of hookers, transvestites, and drug dealers. My interest was with the last kind. They had speed on them, which is just what I was looking for him. I was sweating by the bucket, but I bought two pills - just enough to get me past and challenge I may face on the way.

I had no idea when I should take it. The pills looked two large for me to swallow on my own, so I decided to wait until the opportunity presented itself. It did.

As I approached the halfway point, I could see Eleanor. Her face lit up once she saw me. In her hand I could see a bottle of water. The realization caused my head to at first go anxious, but my face soon twisted into horror. I plastered a smile on my face and accepted the bottle of water form her. It was cold to the touch. No other thought came into my mind during the last half of the marathon.

***

"That was the greatest day of my life, kids." I left out the part about the drugs - they were only five and six.

"So this picture is of you finishing the race?" asked Zackary, bewildered.

"Yup, it sure is. Your mother took that."

"What's this, daddy?" Katie asked, her blonde curls shifting from one side to the other.

"That's a water bottle," I replied.

"How come it looks fool?" Zack asked, more confused than before.

"I didn't need it."

[Alura]

HELLFIGHTER 17

DRAW

CORNISS

The person on top did better, but due to two matches losing both competitors, both fighters here have been deemed worthy of moving on

[Hellfighter 17]

Nice job, Corniss. I actually commend you for writing it that way. I felt too constrained just going from point A to point B, so I used teh picture frame method. I have to say, though, I really should have sene that ending, since you foreshadowed towards it a couple of times.