12-01-2009, 02:36 AM
As usual, Belle was given very little warning before being yanked away. He was in the middle of setting traps outside the bunker, hoping to catch whatever demon or woman might come at him while he was sleeping, when his collar began to blip insistently at him - the way it always did whenever he was about to be teleported to a fight.
Sure enough, just as he was beginning to curse out Damon Dukes and the whole enterprise, he felt his feet lurch off the ground as if an invisible hand had plucked him up by the back of his collar.
"Hey! What the Hell are you doing?! Don't you give a crap about Menstu Ration at all?!" He trashed against the invisible grip that was steadily tightening around him. "Ngh! Well, fine! But don't come crying to me when he comes to suck your blood! Hey, watch the hands-!"
And then, in a whirl of wind and light, he vanished into thin air, leaving behind only a puff of smoke, a snuff of burning ozone, and a bit of cheese surrounded by rope.
Belle was more or less used to the feeling of being transported across large distances by now, but that didn't make the process any less unpleasant. The world felt like it was spinning wildly around him, wild colors and vivid pictures clashing chaotically with one another. He had the sensation of falling, yet his feet felt like they had been glued to solid ground. It was as if he were standing on a rollercoaster that was plunging down the tracks. He gritted his teeth and screwed up his eyes, holding his breath as the flashing colors reached their crescendo…
In a final, gut churning rush of light, Belle popped back into existence in the center of an enormous stadium. He was not, however, on his feet. Or even upright, for that matter. Facing the ground several yards below him, utterly confused, Belle felt the buoying effects of the transporter field waver, then drop away completely. He fell to the hard packed sand and grit with a solid, dull whud.
"Ow!" Belle sat up, rubbing his stinging nose and looking at the sky. "Oi! If you guys are going to pull off fancy shit like that, the least you could do is try not to break my face while you're doing it!" He lowered his eyes; spat some sand out of his mouth. "Pwew. It tastes like sweat... And blood..."
Belle stood up. Although he hadn't gotten a good look at the stadium when he had been hanging in the air, now that he had a chance to actually examine it, he had to admit that he had been wrong in his initial assumption. It wasn't so much a stadium as it was a coliseum; ancient, thousands of years old, like the ones he and his his dad had seen in their travels before splitting up.
Carved seating rose on all sides of the large, dirt filled oval that he had been unceremoniously deposited in, moving up in tiers towards the sky. Elaborately etched columns erected similarly elegant stone arches along the upper ring, and there were several breaks in the seating where people could descend below the seats to the concourse.
Save for a couple of birds, however, the place seemed completely deserted of anyone that might appreciate the craftsmanship, Belle included. For a long, quiet minute, Belle listened to the utter silence, and the silence listened back. Seconds after he started to wonder if the Dante's Abyss people might have had made some kind of mistake, however, the air at the other end of the football-sized arena began to tweak and distort.
Space seemed to be twisting upon itself, light bending around a strange, egg-like shape that gradually took on sharper definition. The distortion tensed like a muscle, then vanished with a 'pop' as an orange-haired man burst into existence from within. Like Belle, the other had been transported in awkwardly, and he hung suspended far above the ground before abruptly dropping toward the coliseum floor.
Unlike Belle, however, he tucked, rolled, and landed in a safe, graceful crouch.
Belle couldn't help but be annoyed. "Showoff," he muttered sourly. "I coulda done that, I was just caught off guard."
The man - scarcely older than a boy himself, really - straightened up and brushed off his expensive looking suit with the backs of his fingers. Belle felt somewhat underdressed. "Did you forget your shirt on the way out the door?" the other asked idly, idly adjusting his cuffs.
"Got lost on a mountain," Belle told him, eyeing the man up and down. As a rule, anyone who went around fighting in expensive clothing was either a pretender, or supremely confident in his own abilities. Belle thought the outfit looked a tad uncomfortable, particularly around the shoulder area. "I guess we're up."
"I guess so."
"Two dudes in a row. Maybe the girls will get themselves knocked out or something," Belle mused, half to himself. "That would be cool," he added wistfully.
"You have something against girls?" the other asked, moving from his cuffs to his tie.
"Just the ones that have the bumps on their chests," Belle nodded. "And most of the ones that don't, too."
"Right." If the other found something odd about that, he didn't show it. "So, what should I call you? Just so they have something to write on your tombstone other than 'Here lies Gynophobe.' "
Belle lowered his body. Bringing up one hand in front, he held his middle and pointer fingers extended and hooked, the others curled tight. His other fist clenched and lowered to his side. "Belle Hibiki."
The other man finished adjusting his tie and casually held up a single hand, the other remaining loosely at his side. He seemed to need no other preparation. "Trafford."
Belle stared at Trafford, and Trafford stared right back. Belle felt his skin crawl as he gazed into the other's eyes. There was something ... not quite right about them; distant and yet alert, almost contemplative even as the moment of conflict rushed toward him. How, Belle wondered, could someone possibly be so detached when they were about to fight for their life?
The stadium was silent once more. Not even a breeze stirred the sand at their feet. The two fighters watched, muscles tensing in anticipation.
One of the birds chirped.
Belle sprang forward, the impact of his kickoff sending a cloud of sand rocketing into the air behind him. He shouted, throwing himself across the distance separating Trafford and himself, tearing across the arena in a blur.
Trafford was faster. With his raised hand still held immobile, his other flickered to his side, pulled something from his pocket, and raised it. Sunlight glinted across a cold, snubbed nose of hard steel.
A gun?
Belle barely had time to process what he was seeing before Trafford fired. Twisting his body to the side and out of the line of the barrel, the projectile whipped by Belle's head fast enough to sing. Sly move; the raised hand hadn't been meant to do anything at all. It had just been a distraction from what he had really intended.
Catching his balance before he could over tilt and fall, Belle took a breath and smirked, opening his mouth to speak.
The wall behind him cracked as the bullet slammed into the aged stone and detonated, sending miniature shock waves jumping through the ground. Belle wrenched his head around to stare in shock at the column of smoke rising from the waist high railing that had once been a finely wrought wall.
His combat senses flared. Abandoning his forward charge, he gritted his teeth and flipped backward as a triple set of bullets zipped through where he had just been standing. Two impacted the ground and gouged small craters in the dirt, while the third knocked another hole in the coliseum wall. Taking a wide arc around Trafford, suddenly on edge, Belle practically skipped across the ground, watching the other's movements.
He had learned long ago how to dodge a bullet. The concept was simple enough: unlike a punch or a ki blast, a bullet could only go straight out from the little hole on the front of the gun. All one had to do was stay out of the imaginary line extending out from the barrel, and they would never get hit. It was easy in theory, and simple enough to pull off on common thugs, but doing the same stunt on another fighter was a different matter altogether.
Two rounds plowed into the dirt in front of him, sending up twin sprays of sand. Belle raised his hands to shield himself, momentarily blinded.
The careless move almost cost him a leg. Another bullet followed on the heels of the first pair, searing by his right calf and missing by mere centimeters. The bullet ripped two ragged holes in his pant leg, the heat of the shot scorching his calve. His leg shook as Trafford brought the weapon up again, and he gritted his teeth as he forced himself to move.
He wasn't going to be able to dodge the bullets forever; that much was obvious. Trafford was too good a shot to just let Belle get close enough to counter, and moreover just seemed overall faster. If it had not been for Belle's finely honed reflexes, Belle doubted whether he would have made it past the first volley.
He'd have to think of something else.
Slowing down, he made as if to lunge in. Trafford answered with a swift volley of lead that whistled around him. Belle leapt back, then to the side, hopped over another, and rolled to avoid a line of spitting fire. The withering hail paused as Trafford emptied his clip, slapped another one in, and continued blasting away before Belle could get closer.
The bullets were getting closer. Belle fought back the fear that was threatening to engulf him as he narrowly avoided another. Deliberately egging his opponent into taking more shots like this seemed like an incredibly bad idea; actually, he knew it was. He knew because he had abandoned it after his dad had helped test out the theory with rocks. Belle still had the scars.
"What is it with bunnies today?" Trafford growled. The words made no sense to Belle at all, but the spirit behind them was clear as he squeezed off a shot. Rather than aim for Belle, he fired to the left, halting his movement in that direction, then quickly snapped off a shot to the right to prevent escape. With the third, he pointed straight at Belle's momentarily immobile midsection.
Trafford's slug ripped right through and exited out the other side. Belle's face was frozen with shock, but only for a moment. His visage wavered, then disappeared.
"Shit, not this, too," Trafford muttered, steadying his aim. His eyes flicked down and lifted his empty hand.
A ripple of golden light pulsed out from Trafford's feet, spreading through the sand. Moving as if lifted by an invisible tornado, a thick haze of grit rose into the air, hanging suspended in the warm light and spinning slowly around the psychokineticist. "Too bad for you," Trafford breathed, "I already thought of a way around that trick."
He eyed the hazy cloud, watching the chaotic play of his golden ki as it flared up amongst the twisting sand and then faded back into the murk, pulsing like the neurons of an ancient Egyptian God. It was chaos within chaos.
One of the golden points suddenly burst, sending its light spreading to its neighbors. "There!"
Alex snapped off a shot. The sand rippled as the bullet seared through, and Belle blurred back into sight as he yanked himself up short, narrowly avoiding having his head ventilated.
Snapping his eyes towards Alex, Belle suddenly let out a laugh ... and charged straight for him!
Trafford hesitated, but there was no reason to worry. Without Belle weaving all over the place, the shot would be beyond easy to make. He lined up the sights, muzzle pointed directly at Belle's approaching skull. "See you at the victory party." He pulled the trigger.
Click.
Oh. Trafford went numb as Belle plunged toward him like a speeding train. Shit.
His fingers fumbled for the release, trying to drop a clip and reload, but Belle got there before he could find the catch. Slamming his calloused palm hard into Alex's chest, the kineticist doubled over, wheezing as the air was forced out of his lungs.
Not even taking a moment to rest, the knuckles of Belle's other hand rapped against Trafford's forehead, sending him reeling back.
Trafford staggered, his head swimming. Acting purely on reflex, he swept his hand in front of him. A charged swath of sand leaped up between them and detonated, miniature explosions propelling them away from each other. Belle seemed surprised by the sudden improvised attack, but was already bending down to charge again.
Sweeping his hand towards his neck, Alex ripped off his tie, charging it with energy and telekinetically unfurling the knot as he skipped back. The red-haired half-saiyan pursued him, step for step.
Snapping his tie like a whip, Trafford extended the garment's reach and lashed at Belle's arm. Instead of stinging, the silk wrapped around Belle's forearm with a vice-like grip and yanked towards the side, sending the saiyan stumbling and bringing him up short.
"What the fuck?" Belle gawped at the bizarre restraint. "What... the... fuck?"
Trafford's free hand flashed ot his side and pulled the second, fully loaded Desert Eagle from his coat pocket. "Got you," he snarled, leveling the weapon.
Belle's eyes flashed. Instead of trying to disentangle himself from his bonds, like any sane person would have done, he rotated his wrist around in the opposite direction, wrapping the tie tighter. For a fraction of a second, Trafford wondered what the Hell he was doing. Then he realized.
Belle let out a bone-chilling roar and hauled with all his might on the silk garment trapping him. Trafford's trigger finger squeezed reflexively as he was suddenly yanked off his feet, his shot slamming into the ground as he flew towards Belle. His face rose just in time to catch the brunt of the saiyan's fist as the half-saiyan twisted his frame, putting all of his weight behind a full-body haymaker.
Sparks burst before Trafford's eyes. He wasn't aware of letting go of his tie, but he reasoned he must have, because the next thing he was aware of was skidding over the dirt like a children's stone across a calm pond.
Belle waited until Trafford came to a stop before straightening. The glow in the tie was already starting to fade. Unwrapping it from around his arm, he let the garment drop to the ground with a grunt. Freaky move, he thought, shivering and breathing heavily. He almost got me on that one.
"That was cool," he said loudly, "but you should really just ditch the guns. I already counted out how many bullets each of those 'ammonition' things has. Besides," he smiled, "we're in the place where tons of great fighters used to duke it out way back when. Let's have a fight that'll make them proud, okay?"
Sure enough, just as he was beginning to curse out Damon Dukes and the whole enterprise, he felt his feet lurch off the ground as if an invisible hand had plucked him up by the back of his collar.
"Hey! What the Hell are you doing?! Don't you give a crap about Menstu Ration at all?!" He trashed against the invisible grip that was steadily tightening around him. "Ngh! Well, fine! But don't come crying to me when he comes to suck your blood! Hey, watch the hands-!"
And then, in a whirl of wind and light, he vanished into thin air, leaving behind only a puff of smoke, a snuff of burning ozone, and a bit of cheese surrounded by rope.
~+~+~+~+~
Belle was more or less used to the feeling of being transported across large distances by now, but that didn't make the process any less unpleasant. The world felt like it was spinning wildly around him, wild colors and vivid pictures clashing chaotically with one another. He had the sensation of falling, yet his feet felt like they had been glued to solid ground. It was as if he were standing on a rollercoaster that was plunging down the tracks. He gritted his teeth and screwed up his eyes, holding his breath as the flashing colors reached their crescendo…
In a final, gut churning rush of light, Belle popped back into existence in the center of an enormous stadium. He was not, however, on his feet. Or even upright, for that matter. Facing the ground several yards below him, utterly confused, Belle felt the buoying effects of the transporter field waver, then drop away completely. He fell to the hard packed sand and grit with a solid, dull whud.
"Ow!" Belle sat up, rubbing his stinging nose and looking at the sky. "Oi! If you guys are going to pull off fancy shit like that, the least you could do is try not to break my face while you're doing it!" He lowered his eyes; spat some sand out of his mouth. "Pwew. It tastes like sweat... And blood..."
Belle stood up. Although he hadn't gotten a good look at the stadium when he had been hanging in the air, now that he had a chance to actually examine it, he had to admit that he had been wrong in his initial assumption. It wasn't so much a stadium as it was a coliseum; ancient, thousands of years old, like the ones he and his his dad had seen in their travels before splitting up.
Carved seating rose on all sides of the large, dirt filled oval that he had been unceremoniously deposited in, moving up in tiers towards the sky. Elaborately etched columns erected similarly elegant stone arches along the upper ring, and there were several breaks in the seating where people could descend below the seats to the concourse.
Save for a couple of birds, however, the place seemed completely deserted of anyone that might appreciate the craftsmanship, Belle included. For a long, quiet minute, Belle listened to the utter silence, and the silence listened back. Seconds after he started to wonder if the Dante's Abyss people might have had made some kind of mistake, however, the air at the other end of the football-sized arena began to tweak and distort.
Space seemed to be twisting upon itself, light bending around a strange, egg-like shape that gradually took on sharper definition. The distortion tensed like a muscle, then vanished with a 'pop' as an orange-haired man burst into existence from within. Like Belle, the other had been transported in awkwardly, and he hung suspended far above the ground before abruptly dropping toward the coliseum floor.
Unlike Belle, however, he tucked, rolled, and landed in a safe, graceful crouch.
Belle couldn't help but be annoyed. "Showoff," he muttered sourly. "I coulda done that, I was just caught off guard."
The man - scarcely older than a boy himself, really - straightened up and brushed off his expensive looking suit with the backs of his fingers. Belle felt somewhat underdressed. "Did you forget your shirt on the way out the door?" the other asked idly, idly adjusting his cuffs.
"Got lost on a mountain," Belle told him, eyeing the man up and down. As a rule, anyone who went around fighting in expensive clothing was either a pretender, or supremely confident in his own abilities. Belle thought the outfit looked a tad uncomfortable, particularly around the shoulder area. "I guess we're up."
"I guess so."
"Two dudes in a row. Maybe the girls will get themselves knocked out or something," Belle mused, half to himself. "That would be cool," he added wistfully.
"You have something against girls?" the other asked, moving from his cuffs to his tie.
"Just the ones that have the bumps on their chests," Belle nodded. "And most of the ones that don't, too."
"Right." If the other found something odd about that, he didn't show it. "So, what should I call you? Just so they have something to write on your tombstone other than 'Here lies Gynophobe.' "
Belle lowered his body. Bringing up one hand in front, he held his middle and pointer fingers extended and hooked, the others curled tight. His other fist clenched and lowered to his side. "Belle Hibiki."
The other man finished adjusting his tie and casually held up a single hand, the other remaining loosely at his side. He seemed to need no other preparation. "Trafford."
Belle stared at Trafford, and Trafford stared right back. Belle felt his skin crawl as he gazed into the other's eyes. There was something ... not quite right about them; distant and yet alert, almost contemplative even as the moment of conflict rushed toward him. How, Belle wondered, could someone possibly be so detached when they were about to fight for their life?
The stadium was silent once more. Not even a breeze stirred the sand at their feet. The two fighters watched, muscles tensing in anticipation.
One of the birds chirped.
Belle sprang forward, the impact of his kickoff sending a cloud of sand rocketing into the air behind him. He shouted, throwing himself across the distance separating Trafford and himself, tearing across the arena in a blur.
Trafford was faster. With his raised hand still held immobile, his other flickered to his side, pulled something from his pocket, and raised it. Sunlight glinted across a cold, snubbed nose of hard steel.
A gun?
Belle barely had time to process what he was seeing before Trafford fired. Twisting his body to the side and out of the line of the barrel, the projectile whipped by Belle's head fast enough to sing. Sly move; the raised hand hadn't been meant to do anything at all. It had just been a distraction from what he had really intended.
Catching his balance before he could over tilt and fall, Belle took a breath and smirked, opening his mouth to speak.
The wall behind him cracked as the bullet slammed into the aged stone and detonated, sending miniature shock waves jumping through the ground. Belle wrenched his head around to stare in shock at the column of smoke rising from the waist high railing that had once been a finely wrought wall.
His combat senses flared. Abandoning his forward charge, he gritted his teeth and flipped backward as a triple set of bullets zipped through where he had just been standing. Two impacted the ground and gouged small craters in the dirt, while the third knocked another hole in the coliseum wall. Taking a wide arc around Trafford, suddenly on edge, Belle practically skipped across the ground, watching the other's movements.
He had learned long ago how to dodge a bullet. The concept was simple enough: unlike a punch or a ki blast, a bullet could only go straight out from the little hole on the front of the gun. All one had to do was stay out of the imaginary line extending out from the barrel, and they would never get hit. It was easy in theory, and simple enough to pull off on common thugs, but doing the same stunt on another fighter was a different matter altogether.
Two rounds plowed into the dirt in front of him, sending up twin sprays of sand. Belle raised his hands to shield himself, momentarily blinded.
The careless move almost cost him a leg. Another bullet followed on the heels of the first pair, searing by his right calf and missing by mere centimeters. The bullet ripped two ragged holes in his pant leg, the heat of the shot scorching his calve. His leg shook as Trafford brought the weapon up again, and he gritted his teeth as he forced himself to move.
He wasn't going to be able to dodge the bullets forever; that much was obvious. Trafford was too good a shot to just let Belle get close enough to counter, and moreover just seemed overall faster. If it had not been for Belle's finely honed reflexes, Belle doubted whether he would have made it past the first volley.
He'd have to think of something else.
Slowing down, he made as if to lunge in. Trafford answered with a swift volley of lead that whistled around him. Belle leapt back, then to the side, hopped over another, and rolled to avoid a line of spitting fire. The withering hail paused as Trafford emptied his clip, slapped another one in, and continued blasting away before Belle could get closer.
The bullets were getting closer. Belle fought back the fear that was threatening to engulf him as he narrowly avoided another. Deliberately egging his opponent into taking more shots like this seemed like an incredibly bad idea; actually, he knew it was. He knew because he had abandoned it after his dad had helped test out the theory with rocks. Belle still had the scars.
"What is it with bunnies today?" Trafford growled. The words made no sense to Belle at all, but the spirit behind them was clear as he squeezed off a shot. Rather than aim for Belle, he fired to the left, halting his movement in that direction, then quickly snapped off a shot to the right to prevent escape. With the third, he pointed straight at Belle's momentarily immobile midsection.
~+~+~+~+~
Trafford's slug ripped right through and exited out the other side. Belle's face was frozen with shock, but only for a moment. His visage wavered, then disappeared.
"Shit, not this, too," Trafford muttered, steadying his aim. His eyes flicked down and lifted his empty hand.
A ripple of golden light pulsed out from Trafford's feet, spreading through the sand. Moving as if lifted by an invisible tornado, a thick haze of grit rose into the air, hanging suspended in the warm light and spinning slowly around the psychokineticist. "Too bad for you," Trafford breathed, "I already thought of a way around that trick."
He eyed the hazy cloud, watching the chaotic play of his golden ki as it flared up amongst the twisting sand and then faded back into the murk, pulsing like the neurons of an ancient Egyptian God. It was chaos within chaos.
One of the golden points suddenly burst, sending its light spreading to its neighbors. "There!"
Alex snapped off a shot. The sand rippled as the bullet seared through, and Belle blurred back into sight as he yanked himself up short, narrowly avoiding having his head ventilated.
Snapping his eyes towards Alex, Belle suddenly let out a laugh ... and charged straight for him!
Trafford hesitated, but there was no reason to worry. Without Belle weaving all over the place, the shot would be beyond easy to make. He lined up the sights, muzzle pointed directly at Belle's approaching skull. "See you at the victory party." He pulled the trigger.
Click.
Oh. Trafford went numb as Belle plunged toward him like a speeding train. Shit.
His fingers fumbled for the release, trying to drop a clip and reload, but Belle got there before he could find the catch. Slamming his calloused palm hard into Alex's chest, the kineticist doubled over, wheezing as the air was forced out of his lungs.
Not even taking a moment to rest, the knuckles of Belle's other hand rapped against Trafford's forehead, sending him reeling back.
Trafford staggered, his head swimming. Acting purely on reflex, he swept his hand in front of him. A charged swath of sand leaped up between them and detonated, miniature explosions propelling them away from each other. Belle seemed surprised by the sudden improvised attack, but was already bending down to charge again.
Sweeping his hand towards his neck, Alex ripped off his tie, charging it with energy and telekinetically unfurling the knot as he skipped back. The red-haired half-saiyan pursued him, step for step.
Snapping his tie like a whip, Trafford extended the garment's reach and lashed at Belle's arm. Instead of stinging, the silk wrapped around Belle's forearm with a vice-like grip and yanked towards the side, sending the saiyan stumbling and bringing him up short.
"What the fuck?" Belle gawped at the bizarre restraint. "What... the... fuck?"
Trafford's free hand flashed ot his side and pulled the second, fully loaded Desert Eagle from his coat pocket. "Got you," he snarled, leveling the weapon.
Belle's eyes flashed. Instead of trying to disentangle himself from his bonds, like any sane person would have done, he rotated his wrist around in the opposite direction, wrapping the tie tighter. For a fraction of a second, Trafford wondered what the Hell he was doing. Then he realized.
Belle let out a bone-chilling roar and hauled with all his might on the silk garment trapping him. Trafford's trigger finger squeezed reflexively as he was suddenly yanked off his feet, his shot slamming into the ground as he flew towards Belle. His face rose just in time to catch the brunt of the saiyan's fist as the half-saiyan twisted his frame, putting all of his weight behind a full-body haymaker.
Sparks burst before Trafford's eyes. He wasn't aware of letting go of his tie, but he reasoned he must have, because the next thing he was aware of was skidding over the dirt like a children's stone across a calm pond.
~+~+~+~+~
Belle waited until Trafford came to a stop before straightening. The glow in the tie was already starting to fade. Unwrapping it from around his arm, he let the garment drop to the ground with a grunt. Freaky move, he thought, shivering and breathing heavily. He almost got me on that one.
"That was cool," he said loudly, "but you should really just ditch the guns. I already counted out how many bullets each of those 'ammonition' things has. Besides," he smiled, "we're in the place where tons of great fighters used to duke it out way back when. Let's have a fight that'll make them proud, okay?"
![[Image: Bellesig6-1.jpg]](http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff137/catseye543/Bellesig6-1.jpg)