[01] Arctic Sector FIGHT

[DA 2009]

ARCTIC SECTOR FIGHT

(1) John Doe vs. Belle Hibiki

(2) Alexander Trafford vs. Tempo

Since John Doe did not make it to a bunker in time, Belle is automatically the winner. You both can, if you like, post for the fight anyway. John Doe will be officially dusted and eliminated during judgments.

[Belle Hibiki]

If one were to make a list of them, Belle's dislikes would likely fill several sets of encyclopedias. He hated arrogant people. He hated overly kind people. He hated people in general. He disliked scented soaps, shampoos (which were just indecently named), and deodorant, even though he also disliked the stink of other people's sweat. He hated girls, he hated women, he hated everything in between, and an awful lot of men, too. But, out of all of them, there were few things that Belle hated more than being interrupted while eating.

So when he was unceremoniously yanked away from the large dining table in the Arctic sector's bunker and was summarily dropped into the middle of nowhere, drumstick still clutched in one hand, he was understandably a little miffed.

"Hey! I was eating!" He threw a dirty look up at the sky and waited, but no response came.

He hated people that acted like they were ignoring you.

"Fine, whatever," Belle grumbled. Sitting cross-legged on the snow, he braved the cold for a while longer, tearing large chunks out of the meat with his slightly larger-than-normal canines. A family trait, or so he guessed; his father had had them, too. He idly wondered how it was that no one had showed up to fight him yet, but he guessed that something must have gone wrong, or his opponent had simply run away. He hoped not.

A minute later he dropped a freshly cleaned bone to the ground, brushed his pants off, and stood up. Frowning, he looked left and right. Surely they wouldn't have taken him out of the bunker and then forgotten to send someone else to fight him - would they? Belle didn't know Damon Dukes personally, but it seemed as if the duplicitous old guy would have wanted there to be a little bloodshed.

Shrugging, Belle took a final look at his surroundings before starting off across the frozen tundra. There wasn't much sense staying if there wasn't going to be a fight. He remembered vaguely that a forest sector had been mentioned a couple times before the competition had started, and suddenly, with his toes so cold that he couldn't even feel them anymore, Belle thought that a little camping trip sounded like a pretty good idea.

Striding about a dozen meters, Belle suddenly stopped and cocked his head, listening. It was hard to hear over the distant whistle of wind sliding across the endless snow, and a regular person might not have caught it. But he'd trained his senses far beyond the ordinary, and he heard it well enough. Scowling, he turned around and marched back in the opposite direction, past where he'd been sitting and over the cusp of a nearby snowy dune.

His opponent - or who he guessed was his opponent - was a guy that might have been a little bit older than he was. He wore a black suit that had obviously seen a lot of use, and sunglasses. He had short, dark hair, and tanned skin.

He was also asleep.

Belle thought for a moment about what to do, then nodded to himself. There wasn't much point in being kind about it. This was a compeition, after all.

Bending his knees, Belle leaned down to the man's ear, took a deep breath...

"HEY, WAKE UP!"

The man jumped out of his doze, yelping and flailing. "What the Hell?!"

Satisfied, Belle straightened. "No time for sleep. Time to fight."

Brushing his dark hair out of the way of his sunglasses, the man peered confusedly around, then up at Belle. "You're not a prostitute," he observed.

Twitching, Belle tried to foot the guy's face.

Eyebrows raised over opaque planes of glass in slow motion. Belle's "opponent" - for lack of a better term - tilted his head back, barely avoiding the blow that whistled past his face with the force of a speeding tractor trailer. A flicker of something, maybe evem fear, momentarily passed over his features as he kicked off the snow and slid along his back out of range. He turned his body, sommersaulted backwards, and came to a skidding stop on one knee. "Geez, learn how to take a joke, would you? If you want to fight-" the man grunted, reaching ominously inside his coat.

His hand came out empty. "Huh," he observed, as if he'd just realized he'd forgotten his keys, and looked around. "Ah."

A small object had fallen out of his coat during the roll and lay between them on the slicked snow. A gun, Belle realized. But not an ordinary one. Its sides faintly glowed from soft, interweaving lights that ran like circuitry across its surface. He had the feeling he'd seen something like it before, back when the Construct had come to earth.

A ki gun?

Belle had half a second to realize what it was before both of them were sprinting for it. Whoever his opponent was, he was slightly faster than Belle. Taller, with longer legs. The man was going to reach the gun first.

Gathering his ki in a snap, Belle threw out his hand. A wave of force rippled outward, slamming against and staggering the dark-haired stranger. But though he'd been delayed, John didn't go down.

They reached the gun at almost the same time. John lunged forward and swept his hand across the snow, scooping up the ki pistol, rolling, and bringing it to bear in one fluid movement, but Belle was already moving to counter.

Sliding into John's space before he could fully bring the gun to bear, Belle grabbed John's wrist in one hand and forced it upward. John's fingers reflexively pulled the trigger, a bright beam of crimson blasting from the snubbed end with a wet-sounding b-zap!

Belle snapped his other fist against the suited man's face. John fell back, letting go of the gun, surprise written in every pained line of his taut expression. "Holy shit," he muttered. "That hurt, Steroid Man."

The gun lay on the ground at his feet. Lifting one leg, Belle brought his foot down through the curved metal, snapping the device in half. There was a sharp sputter of light, then nothing as the glow faded. "I'm kinda surprised your head didn't turn around the other way, really," Belle returned, eying the man. The guy didn't seem like the greatest fighter, but he definitely wasn't an ordinary human. He'd been exaggerating about what he'd thought would happen, but only a little bit. "You're pretty tough."

John's lips twitched. "More than 'pretty,'" he said softly, bringing one hand palm up in front of him as he slid the other into his pocket. Five pinpoints of fiery light sprung to life, flickering and growing just beyond his fingertips. "I'm the handsomest devil you'll ever see."

Fire? Belle groaned inwardly. Hadn't he just gone through this dance? Like less than a week ago? Squaring his shoulders, he lowered his body into a fighting stance, eyes flicking over the man's posture, trying to guess how he would attack.

Pi pi pi

The sudden sound made both of the fighters pause and look around. "What the Hell is that?" John demanded as the pinging started again.

"Uh," Belle stared, then shrugged. "You got a cell phone on you or something?"

"Does that sound like a ring tone to you, dumbass?" John growled, not bothering to listen to Belle's retort. The pinging sounded again, and he suddenly stiffened. He whirled his head around, craning to try and look down. "Jesus, it's the collar."

"The collar...?" Belle echoed, then sucked in a frozen breath as he realized what it must mean. "Oh shit."

"What shit?" John demanded, fire still hovering from his fingertips.

"You... didn't go into the house, did you? I was there; I didn't see you."

John's face, pale from the cold, went still paler. "Oops."

"YOU DUMBASS!" Belle roared, his voice echoing across the tundra. "Come on, they went over that rule like a hundred Goddamn times! How did you forget?!"

Pi pi pi ...

[Alexander Trafford]

Stasis field engaging. Those were the last three words that he had heard before he was ripped away from the warm comfort of the bunker. He figured that was this competition’s idea of a warning, a few shrill beeps, and a short sentence from an unseen female voice. There had been no explanation, or no respect, at all, for anything he had been doing in the moments prior to teleportation. And, with all the money, influence and power the puppet masters of this competition probably had, they could not possibly have made the process more comfortable. As the transportation occurred, Alex felt as if he were on the single most dangerous thrill ride and the history of amusement parks: his body was being pulled in every which direction. By the time he landed, he was surprised he had not vomited.

“I’m getting sick and tired of this shit,” Trafford whispered as he wiped the clinging snowflakes from his newfound clothing. Examining his surroundings, the young telekinetic quickly realized that he was inside some sort of dome. The walls were not made of concrete, steel or any other sort of fabricated material. It appeared to be a light bluish gel that surrounded him, transparent yet mystifyingly opaque in its nature. Alexander thought it was beautiful, it was, at the same time, certain and surreal. He did not know what to make of his natural attraction to the chaos in his nature, the waves of baby blue and navy energies weaving amongst each other, following no identifiable pattern in their dance. The dome provided order in that it contained its occupants, but, simultaneously, its structure was anarchic by design – something that Trafford found wonderfully innocent and pure. And, after a few moments of staring mesmerized at the animated ceiling above, realized that this must be the stasis field the soft spoken woman had been speaking of.

His observation and fascination of the dome was cut short by a simple distraction. Somewhere nearby he could hear a muffled rhythmic beating – he heard music. The sound was coming from behind him.

A peculiar sensation crawled into his gut, rising from his waist and slowly elevating through his stomach and into his chest. Alex was not the most emotionally sensitive or aware man, so it took him a moment to identify the feeling. Was it fear that he felt? The lingering paranoia that, if he turned around, a man would be standing behind him, a man from his past, an unnamed military official. And in that man’s hand would be a gun, with a slug meant for his forehead. Or was it excitement? Perhaps it was combat alone that would free him from his burden; the cleansing of spilt blood. In the manner of which Trafford figured things, there was only one way to find out.

After slowly making a one-hundred and eighty degree turn, Alexander came face-to-face with his newfound foe.

“You’ve got to be kidding, right?” Trafford spoke loudly, hoping his opponent could hear him over the music blaring inside his speakers.

The man, if he could be referred to as such, who stood before him wore shorts and a cut off t-shirt. He had boyish good looks, and orange hair. In fact, Alex thought, his foe almost reminded him of a younger Alexander Trafford.

Unlike the young telekinetic, however, the musically mesmerized young man was not one to mince words. Whether it was out of seriousness, or out of some deep-seeded timid nature, could not be determined.

“Hmm, well then,” Alex spoke to his counterpart, using exaggerated hand gestures in hopes that the young lad would grasp his point – even if he may not be able to hear him. He paused, not being able to find the exact words. After a few moments, he fakes a few jabs towards his opponent and mouthed one word, “Fight.”

Apparently his opponent didn’t need to hear what he was saying to understand what was occurring. The young, orange-haired boy leapt forward with a rhythmic grace, closing the gap between them in a moment’s notice. He moved so adeptly and with such experience, something unknown to Trafford when it came to melee combat.

Alex managed to block and dodge the first few jabs, but eventually, after several shots had landed uselessly on his forearms or in the confined air to the right and left of the telekinetic’s frantic visage, the music-loving teen found his mark. A right hook landed first, connecting on the well-dressed man’s lower jaw, knocking his head to the side. He followed with a shot to the abdomen, and a rising roundhouse kick to the ribcage.

Stumbling to the side, Trafford quickly found his balance and stepped back in the face his silent opponent, something he would soon discover to be a terrible decision. He tried to keep his guard up, but regardless of his efforts the younger fighter landed punch after punch down his sights and sprayed his knuckles all around Alex’s cherished facial features. It took the psychokinetic everything he could muster to simply push the boy backwards, creating space between them.

“You wanna play like that, huh?” Trafford mocked his opponent with a boyish grin, wiping the blood away from the base of his nose as he did so. Wising up, he took several step backs and made a point to keep distance between himself and the clearly more experienced melee warrior. Alex had always been a clever gentleman, there was no questioning that, but his arrogance had always given away his ideas – as was the case here. He couldn’t help but smile as a tactical light bulb lit above his fur-covered orange hair (he was still wearing the Soviet winter hat he had found in the bunker).

“Let’s see if you can handle this.”

Trafford broke into a backpedaling trot, fleeing further from his strange opponent. With a flick of his wrist, billows of snowflakes rose from the arctic floor and gathered around his foe, encircling him in a strange winter-wonder land. As much as Alexander hated his father, and his father’s corporation, for the experiments and the research that had bestowed upon him this freakish ability, he had to admit, psychokinesis was fucking fun.

As the millions of snowflakes that surrounded Tempo began to glow with a familiar orange hue, which only took a moment or two at most, Trafford slowly and eerily brought the dangerous frozen particles closer to his opponent.

“Let’s see if your karate can block this,” Trafford exclaimed arrogantly.

In a moment’s notice, the energy charged winter storm descended upon the orange-haired boy. Behind everything, the puppet master of energetic kinesis, Alexander pulled out both his Desert Eagles and fired two complete rounds into the maelstrom, turning each and every slug into energy charged explosives as they entered the storm.

[DA 2009]

ALEXANDER TRAFFORD VS. TEMPO

Tempo had absolutely no defense against Alex’s attacks. The music thrummed deeply in his ears, drowning out all else, but the heavy metal tune was seemingly a harbinger of his doom. He couldn’t help but scream as the bullets whizzed by, a few of them making contact and exploding on the kid’s skin. Had it not been for his insane innate abilities, he might have been blown to pieces. As it was, he received a few horrendous scorch marks, the shrapnel from the bullets digging into his flesh and eliciting fresh cries of pain. Blood spilled on his skin, and this time, it wasn’t that of a helpless rabbit.

Due to the nature of the storm, not all of the rounds made it to their intended target, but there was nothing Tempo could do to free himself. His sensei had taught him well, yet this was an entirely new experience.

Alex couldn’t help but laugh. This wasn’t even fair. Once the physical element was removed, Ace had an unbeatable upper hand. Just then, he heard the voice speak again.

“Combat protocol complete. Disengaging stasis field,” the collar curtly informed.

“What? No!” Alex protested.

Before he could do anything—as if he could have done something at all—Alex felt himself being transported again. He wasn’t, however, back in the safety of his nice warm bunker, but in another section of the Arctic Sector entirely. Looking around, he could see that Tempo was gone, as was his nicely crafted maelstrom of snow. If he finished off the orange-haired kid, he wasn’t going to get to see. More than likely, the music-addicted youth received the same treatment, ensuring that the coup de grace wasn’t going to be delivered. Ace had created a perfect maneuver that guaranteed his victory, and somehow due to technical interference, he got cheated.

Alex threw his hands in the air, guns and all.

“What kind of bullshit was that?!”

[DA 2009]

JOHN DOE VS. BELLE HIBIKI

John Doe could only shrug and chuckle. It had been a good ride while he was here.

The beeping reached a climax, and John let out a cry before his entire body was disintegrated into nothing.