Plan In Action
I led the group into the door, then down the rather long hallway. I was trying to pace myself, considering the fact that I had to run up a long set of stairs immediately after this. The run was, admittedly, pretty grueling. I couldn’t slow down either, because of all the people rushing up the stairs behind me. That being said, we made decent time. We reached the top of the stairs, making it to the little castle tower that the entrance led to, and then we waited. We could hear battle taking place from where we waited, but we couldn’t actually get involved with it until we got the signal-
“That’s time, go!” The guy who’d been masterfully keeping track of the time shouted, and so I rushed out of the tower, with everyone else following me. The groups quickly split off, with each of the attacking units breaking off on their own, with at least two medics going with each group. That left me with Seo-yun, Hank, John, Cho-hee, and one of her other medics, a man who looked to be just slightly older than myself and Seo-yun. Taking a look around, it was already utter carnage. The Light King’s guards I’d seen during my previous time here were fighting off our forces, but there had to be hundreds of them. Even though we’d brought quite the force, we were still undeniably outnumbered. Taking a look around though, it was clear we’d done damage. There were guards lying scattered around the castle grounds, who I could only assume were dead. I’d only ever seen a dead body once before, and that had been…
The point is, that it was an unsettling thing to see, especially if you weren’t used to it. Didn’t matter if it was an enemy or not. That being said, nobody else with me seemed all that phased, so I forced myself to keep moving. The exterior castle wall, the one between the drawbridge and the rest of the kingdom, looked like it’d had a hole blown through it, which I could only assume was from Cain running through it. The main castle itself also looked to have partially collapsed, although the centre of it and the right side were mostly intact, the left side of it had been reduced to mainly rubble, which a lot of people seemed to be trapped under.
“What should we do?” I asked John. He’d have more experience with this sort of thing than I would. I’d never been in a battle of this scale before. I’d never really even been in a fight before.
“I’m betting that that Light King joker is gonna be up in his castle, waiting for people to come fight him.” John grumbled, making his way over to the castle proper. I followed, looking around and trying to keep aware of my surroundings. One thing I definitely didn’t want was to get caught off guard by some stray energy blast or throwing knife or anything else like that.
It was a good thing I was paying attention.
When I looked to the sky, I saw something approaching the castle. Rather quickly, in fact.
“Hey uh, Seo-yun, what the hell is that?” I asked, tapping her shoulder before pointing at the sky. The thing, whatever it was, was entirely white, and was moving fast. It was getting closer at an uncomfortable speed, in fact.
“MOVE!” Seo-yun shouted, grabbing me and pulling me aside. John did the same with the young male doctor, while Hank grabbed Cho-hee. It was a good thing they’d all moved, because the white thing, whatever it was, slammed into the ground where we’d all just been standing.
“What the fuck was that? Some kind of artillery?” John asked, patting the medic he’d grabbed on the shoulder while the medic watched on in stunned silence.
“It’s much worse than that.” Seo-yun muttered, as the dust from the crash cleared up, and somebody stood up. The person who stood up was tall, and very well muscled. They wore long white pants and very nice white shoes, as well as a golden chestplate, which covered most of their chest, as well as their back, although it left holes for the person’s large, feathery wings to stick out of. The person also had a feathery, white, birdlike helmet, covering their entire head.
“Chung-ho.” Cho-hee murmured, backing up a little bit from where she stood. The birdman looked around at our group, before stopping on myself and Seo-yun.
“There you are, traitors.” He hissed, suddenly creating a large sword that looked to be made up only of light.
“Plural?” I questioned, getting ready for a fight. It was a six on one fight, although it was more like four, considering we had two non-combatants. That being said, I liked our numbers advantage.
“Yes well, the bitch next to you turned on us when my glorious leader took the throne. Then you, you foolish boy, were given a chance to serve a purpose greater than your own, and yet you turned traitor, and for what? You know, just because a woman allows you to have inter-”
“Oh jeez, this dude is seriously misunderstanding the situation.” I interjected, prompting the man to childishly stomp his foot.
“Let me finish, you whelp! Didn’t you ever learn that it’s rude to interrupt others while they’re speaking? Children these days have no respect, it’s disgraceful.” Chung-ho snapped, prompting everyone to just sort of stare at him in disbelief.
“I just can’t get over the fact this guy thinks you’re here because you two-”
“Let’s just move off of that topic.” I sighed, cutting John off, while Seo-yun aimed a disgruntled look at our enemy.
“Unbelievable! Just unbelievable! You should know better than to interrupt others, you’re an adult. I suppose I should expect no better from one of you foolish resistance members though. Very well, if it’s a fight you seek, I’ll give it to you!” Chung-ho roared, rushing straight for me. Guess this was it.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kwannon was finding herself increasingly frustrated with this whole ordeal. To begin with, none of them would’ve been in this mess if they hadn’t let Jared get grabbed through that portal. That had been bad enough, but then when they’d followed, they’d all inexplicably been split up, and they were still missing people, one of whom was their leader, which pushed Kwannon into a leadership position by default, something she didn’t exactly love. Then, when it’d seemed like it couldn’t get any worse, not only did they have to fight some all powerful tyrant who was being inhabited by a god, but Jared was expected to be the one to beat him.
That kid was supposed to be under their protection, and yet, it kept feeling like him being with them was only putting him in more danger. Either way, Kwannon had a job to do, and she wouldn’t fail. She needed to find the telepaths who were shutting down all telepathic communication, not only so she could find Scott and Quentin, but also so that everyone could communicate with each other across the battlefield. At the very least, she had backup.
“Left here. The basement’s down this way.” Bufo told her as he moved behind her. Him and five of his men had joined her in her infiltration scheme to get to the telepaths. As far as Bufo knew, they’d already made it most of the way. Bufo claimed that if the telepaths were in the castle, they’d most likely be in the basement. Not only that, but the basement was where the prisons were located, and thus, they’d be able to free imprisoned resistance members and bolster their own forces. Overall, it was a win-win scenario, so long as nobody died on the way there. They hadn’t encountered any resistance yet, thanks to Cain, Illyana and the others causing so much destruction, but Kwannon figured it was only a matter of time.
Kwannon moved down the steps into the basement, only checking once to ensure everybody was following her, which they were. Once she reached the bottom of the stairs, she signaled for everyone to stop, before moving forward slowly, holding up a hand signal for silence. She’d been quickly run through the signals Bufo typically used with them, and everyone followed them exactly as she gave them. It was perfect, really, learning signals like that. Kwannon knew Jared had some interest in being part of a team of young mutants in training, if they could fill the ranks of such a group. She’d talked about it with Scott, but only briefly. They both agreed they weren’t going out and taking kids in specifically for the purpose of molding child soldiers, but truthfully, the place they lived, and the fact they were the X-Men, made their living situation quite dangerous. If the kids wanted to learn to defend themselves, they’d train them. Kwannon had told Scott that if they were to go into the field, she’d want to be placed in charge of them, at least until they were old enough to pick a leader among themselves. If she was going to do that, hand signals like this would be useful, no doubt.
Kwannon continued to quietly stalk through the basement until she heard people speaking around a corner. She held up a signal for everyone to stop, before walking forward and peeking around said corner.
“Found the prisoners. No guards.” She whispered, before signaling for everyone to move forward. As she reached one of the cells, she easily cut through the cell bars. Sure, she had just a sword, but she wasn’t just a swordswoman. The group made quick work of freeing the prisoners, who started to mingle with the infiltration group. Some of them were in seriously awful condition, looking very malnourished and wounded, while some of them seemed a bit better off. That being said, when two older people walked out from the back of the cells, a man and a woman, everyone bowed to them, including Bufo and his forces. Everyone aside from Kwannon, of course, considering that she had no idea who these people were.
“At ease.” The man said, his tone firm. It was clear he hadn’t been able to shave in a while. His grey facial hair was disheveled, as was the grey hair on the top of his head. He wore the same beige prisoner rags as everybody else. The woman next to him looked like she was shaking, and yet, she managed to stand tall. Her hair was still mostly black, although it was starting to grey. She had sharp eyes, which darted around everyone before landing on Kwannon herself.
“Who are you?” She questioned. Kwannon furrowed an eyebrow at her, before replying.
“I’m Kwannon, and I’m not from around here.” She replied simply. This woman was looking at her with some measure of anger, which Kwannon didn’t find herself to be very appreciative of.
“I can tell.” The woman replied, looking Kwannon over again. Kwannon just sighed, rolling her eyes.
“Listen, I’m not sure who you are, nor do I particularly care, but you should be thanking me right now, I’m the reason you’re out of that cell.” Kwannon grumbled, before glancing at the man standing next to her.
“Would you happen to know where the telepaths are? We need to shut them down.” Kwannon explained to the man, who quickly nodded.
“They should be down this hallway, let’s go!” He shouted, trying to take off, then stumbling and falling face first onto the ground. The woman standing next to him broke her previously sharp facade, a look of clear worry wiping across her face.
“Dear!” She cried, moving to her knees to check on the man. Everyone else seemed to be in an uproar, moving to check on the man, while one of the medics with their group moved to the centre. While that was being handled, Kwannon turned to Bufo.
“Who exactly are these two?” Kwannon asked, although she had a guess that she was pretty confident in.
“The former king and queen, Seo-yun’s parents.” Bufo explained, confirming Kwannon’s suspicion. She nodded at the confirmation.
“She’ll be happy about that, then.” Kwannon said, but Bufo slowly shook his head.
“I’m not so sure about that.” He muttered, probably hoping that Kwannon wouldn’t hear, but she did. Whatever, it wasn’t any of her business, not at the moment, anyways.
In the meantime, the former king had been helped to his feet, glancing at Kwannon and Bufo.
“You two, follow me. I’ll take you to the telepaths.” He assured them, before taking off at a rather slow pace, being assisted by his wife and one of the other former prisoners. Kwannon, Bufo and his forces, as well as the released prisoners, many of whom were in the process of being healed, followed as he’d asked. Thankfully for the injured among them, it wasn’t a long walk. They soon reached a large, sphere shaped pale gray chamber with a hole in the centre of its ceiling. Inside, what had to be hundreds of telepaths sat in small, wooden chairs, completely unmoving.
“How do we get them to stop?” Kwannon asked the king, who just sighed.
“We’ll have to go through and shake them all to proper consciousness one by one. Thankfully, there’s quite a few of us here, but even then, it could take a while.” He explained. Kwannon simply grunted, her psychic dagger would’ve made this all very easy, but the telepaths had shut down all her psychic abilities.
“Not so fast, now.” A voice said to their side. Kwannon turned, only to have to dodge a large tentacle trying to grab her, seemingly from nowhere. In the centre of the room, a hooded man stood. His face wasn’t visible, but his hands and feet were, or at least what passed for hands and feet with this guy. He just had globs of tentacles, making makeshift hands, arms, feet and legs. His face wasn’t visible, but even then, Bufo seemed to know who he was.
“BEEZEL!” He roared, having to be restrained by four of his men, as he attempted to run at the man.
“Hello, brother. I’m shocked you had the gall to show your face here after you betrayed the king.” Beezel replied, seemingly totally calm.
“I BETRAYED THE KING??” Bufo screeched in outrage, more of his force now having to step in to help restrain him.
“Bufo! What does he do? Tell me so I can fight him.” Kwannon shouted, prompting Bufo to look over at her.
“His tentacles! He reaches them out. He can grab you with them, or he can grow them if he wants, or use them to temporarily paralyze someone. They also shoot out these puffs of inks that make it super hard to see-”
“Ta ta, brother! Don’t go giving away all my secrets, now!” Beezel cut him off, firing three tentacles straight at Bufo and the people restraining him. All of them managed to dodge, but they were now scattered. This Beezel guy had quite the range advantage on them at the moment, which meant they needed to close the distance, and fast.
“Everyone who can’t fight, move around and shake the telepaths out of their telepathy! The more able bodied of us will handle this maniac!” Kwannon shouted, watching with some satisfaction as people moved to do as she’d said.
“He’s a telepath, too. I’m willing to bet he’s the one holding them all together.” Bufo grumbled with a frown. Beezel let out a gasp of mock horror, seemingly looking at his brother, although Kwannon couldn’t see his face and thus, couldn’t be sure.
“Well, now you’ve gone and given away my last secret. You really are a traitor!” Beezel shouted, before reaching out with multiple tentacles. Kwannon, Bufo and all the other combatants moved and dodged the tentacles, everyone ultimately moving with the same goal. Close the distance, and either knock out or kill this guy to ensure the shutdown of all the telepaths. Kwannon and Bufo by far moved the quickest, and closed the most distance, however this logically led to them receiving the most resistance from Beezel. Everytime it felt like she’d been closing in, she got multiple tentacles her way, and had to either back up or move to the side far more than she’d prefer, thus causing her to essentially have to reset. It didn’t help that with all the non-combatants running around the room, there were a lot of easy targets for this guy, and Kwannon and the others had to divert their focus to attack them. Not to mention that he moved much too quickly for her to actually cut through one of the tentacles. She wasn’t sure if they regrew or not, but she was willing to give simply removing their issues a chance.
“This is futile! Just give up and surrender! I’ll give you all nicer cells this time, I swear!” He yelled gleefully, as he grabbed one of Bufo’s men and seemingly paralyzed them temporarily, leaving them on the ground, unable to do anything.
They needed a better plan of attack, and fast.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cain was becoming frustrated very quickly. It was annoying, because until a few moments ago, he’d been having a blast. He’d been given the chance to just run through multiple walls. In fact, he’d run through a good chunk of this Light King asshole’s castle already. He’d done all this while facing minimal resistance, too. As great as that was though, he had to admit, he was hankering for a bit of a scrap, so when he ran into some old looking dude, wearing a more fancy version of what all the guards he’d seen were wearing, he ran straight for him. He figured this was that old wizard dude that’d been mentioned to him as a high priority threat. No problem for Cain, he did magic too, afterall.
The cause for his frustration though, was how this wizard guy fought. He couldn’t hurt Cain, and he seemed to have figured that out quite quickly, so instead of straight up fighting him, he just opened portals right in front of Cain so that he couldn’t dodge them. Cain would thus end up running into the portal, and it’d just lead him into another section of the same big room they’d been fighting in.
The point, ultimately, was that Cain had to change up the way he was going to fight this guy. He couldn’t just run at him, because he’d just teleport him away again. That meant, he had to take a more deliberate approach, and actually think this through.
Cain hated thinking, at least during a fight. What was the point of being the damn Juggernaut if you couldn’t just run at things?
“You are a curious creature.” The wizard guy observed, as he stood, likely preparing to create some kind of portal to screw with Cain again.
“Yeah yeah, whatever ya say. Listen, hows about you just stand there, and let me clobber ya? I’m gonna get ya, one way or the other.” Cain assured him, approaching slowly. The wizard, seemingly confused by his change in approach, steadily started to back up.
“You can’t hit me, so long as I keep you away from me.” The wizard pointed out, firing some blasts of what Cain could only assume was light magic at him. They didn’t hurt whatsoever. Didn’t even tickle, actually.
“Perhaps, but you’ve left yourself open.” A new voice stated, before the old wizard guy was suddenly bound by some strange yellow chains. Magic, probably. A man floated down from the sky, and Cain recognized him as Ji-hun, the weird, old wizard guy who was with the resistance they were helping.
“What the hell! You’re beating up my guy!” Cain shouted, annoyed. Sure, he’d been having some trouble, but he was the damn Juggernaut! He would’ve figured it out and pounded that guy into the pavement. But no, here comes the resistance grandpa to steal his fight.
“My apologies, Cain, but finishing this up quickly like this is the most efficient way to go about these things. The quicker we can eliminate his forces, the quicker the Light King crumbles.” Ji-hun explained, covering the wizard’s mouth with another magic chain to stop him from yapping.
“Speaking of, where the hell is that guy? Didn’t see him while I was runnin’ through his castle.” Cain questioned, while Ji-hun just nodded.
“As far as I can tell, he isn’t here. Nor are Yeong-ja or Sang-wook. I’m not sure whether or not that’s a good thing.” Ji-hun murmured, Cain just shaking his head in response.
“It’s bad. We gotta get rid of them all before we leave, and I don’t feel like sticking around here for long, I got stuff to do back home.” Cain grumbled, while Ji-hun knocked the wizard unconscious and put even more chains on him, this time restraining him against the floor.
“Let’s go handle the rest of these idiots.” Cain sighed.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robots sucked, as far as Idie was concerned. Sure, they weren’t all bad, she didn’t want to generalize. Vision was nice enough, but jeez, whenever she had to fight against one, they were just the worst. She was fighting one of the Light King’s most trusted advisors, Droid, they called him. She was fighting alone, because all the people who’d been with her had been handled with total ease. Half of them had been wiped out the moment they’d encountered Droid, because he’d let out some awful, high pitched sound, and they’d started dropping like flies. Some of them had continued on fighting, but Droid had eventually taken them out due to the overwhelming power of his swordsmanship, not to mention the fact that he didn’t cut the sound out, so that was still going on, and it was making her ears bleed. This guy was definitely metallic, she wished Max’s powers weren’t on the fritz, he would’ve been able to handle this guy with ease, but he couldn’t do much of anything right now, and so Idie had to fight this annoying ass robot. He wasn’t like a sentinel, or one of those robot dogs they’d fought in Graymalkin, if anything this guy was more like Vision. He was intelligent, and he moved and fought like a human. He was really good with that sword too.
Idie could typically just overpower a guy with a sword. She could just freeze him in place and be done with it, or give him severe burns, but the damn noise was so distracting that she could barely think properly, let alone use her powers. It was hard enough to fight this guy off while he rushed at her and tried to cut her into little pieces.
Speaking of which, he was attempting another dash. Although he moved very much like a human, there was still something robotic about him, in the sense that he sort of fought in patterns. He’d try the same initial attack, typically a forward dash, where he’d swing his blade at the end. This was fast, but it was sort of predictable, because he telegraphed it right before, and the actual slicing motion of his attack was the slowest part. So long as she had enough distance to avoid the dash, or she could block most of its impact, then dodge the actual swing. She’d had combat training from some of the best the world had to offer, and she’d fought side by side with Illyana and Kwannon enough by now to know how people with swords tended to fight.
As she had predicted, Droid rushed forward, but his attack was telegraphed, so Idie managed to dodge it. She had to focus, hard, because the damn noise he was emitting was so loud. Still though, she was a fucking X-Man, wasn’t she? Or, X-Women, but the team was the X-Men, so…
Whatever, it didn’t matter. She gained enough focus to the point that she was able to freeze the Droid to the ground. She wasn’t really sure if she could knock him out, and she didn’t want to destroy him entirely, so she burned the area where he seemed to be emitting sound from, then froze him solid. The loud noise got turned off, and so she was able to move on, she had some more work to do, if the noises in the next room were any indication.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Illyana was about ready to cut a bitch’s head off. She had been in the process of fighting this one Kingdom lady. She called herself Chun-hee, and claimed to be the seventh seat of the king, whatever the hell that meant. She didn’t care, she was just here to beat the shit out of a dictator, and this woman was getting in her way, which meant she had to get the shit beat out of her too, of course. Things had been going well, they’d been feeling each other out, trading light strikes and slashes, moving in and out, testing their opponents speed, when all of a sudden, an ‘ally’ had stuck their big, fat nose where it didn’t belong. Hae-won had forced herself into what had originally been a one on one fight, and what made it worse was that her inclusion wasn’t even helpful, at least not for Illyana.
“Fool! Move!” Hae-won snapped, as she swung her lame, small sword right around the area Illyana had teleported into. Illyana had to contort her body to avoid the swing from the sword, and she had half a mind to slice Hae-won’s head off right after. Of course, she didn’t, it’d be wasteful. She was also sure the rest of her teammates would be quite unhappy with that.
“Don’t swing where I’m teleporting, idiot!” Illyana shouted back, parrying a stab from both of Chun-hee’s daggers. The woman hissed, then dashed backwards and out of sight. She was fast, and hard to spot. Illyana had deduced that the easiest way to land a hit on her would be if she could slow her down, and the easiest way to do that was to wait for when she went in for an attack of her own, and then counter. The issue was that whenever she successfully parried a hit, Hae-won moved in to finish the job, and she wasn’t doing a very good job of it. She needed some way to slow her opponent down without having her hard work undone by Hae-won.
This was, of course, when her saviour came.
“Hey, anyone need help in here” Idie shouted, carefully stepping through a hole in the wall. Illyana had to dash over and narrowly block an attack from Chun-hee that Idie hadn’t seen coming.
“Woah.” She murmured.
“Woah’s right, now I need your help!” Illyana requested, grunting as Hae-won once again failed to correctly attack Chun-hee.
“Alright, sure. Hey, isn’t this one of those council people?” Idie questioned, looking around the room and trying to spot Chun-hee, who was running around all over the place.
“So she says. Who cares, hey listen, when I block her, I need you to freeze her in place immediately, okay?” Illyana asked, prompting Idie to nod in understanding. The two of them moved together, and the moment Chun-hee struck, Illyana blocked it, and Idie froze her solid.
“She won’t be running around for a while.” Idie grumbled, while Illyana nodded, placing the blade of her soulsword into the ground and leaning against the sword.
“Hey, so-”
“What’s that?” Hae-won’s question came out of nowhere. Both Illyana and Idie looked over at her, then looked up at where she was looking. Up. Something, they couldn’t be sure what, was moving towards them from the sky, very fast.
“It’s always something else.” Illyana hissed.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I didn’t have a lot of fighting experience, but even I knew when I was getting my ass kicked. I got launched into a stone pillar, gritting my teeth as I tried to pull myself to my feet. We’d been fighting this Chung-ho guy for a little while now, and we were seriously getting obliterated. John was down. He’d been down for a little while. He’d tried to rain down a storm of bullets on Chung-ho, but he’d managed to block every single one of them with his big ass sword, and then he’d flown in and dealt a serious blow to John’s stomach with said sword. This had put everyone on the defensive, because Cho-hee was focused on healing John. Thus, we all had to defend her and her fellow medics while they were stationary. Frankly, the medics being with us were the only reason any of us were still alive, and that was absolutely terrifying. I wanted nothing more than to just go home, but I’d said I’d get it done, and I was a man of my word. The medic Cho-hee had brought with us pressed his hands to the back of my head and worked his magic, and I was up, quick enough to barely yank Seo-yun away from a swing of Chung-ho’s sword.
“Thanks.” She hissed, as Chung-ho moved from her to Hank, who leapt clear of a sword swing and kicked with both feet, connecting with both of Chung-ho’s shoulders. I took that as an opportunity, rushing forward and materializing spikes made of shadow, which I launched forward. A few of them managed to connect, but many of them were avoided or just straight up missed. That being said, one had actually been launched with enough force to lodge itself into the lower section of his right leg. Our first real, serious hit. It’d only taken twenty minutes or so.
“Disgusting! Touching me with your… crude magic! I’m going to jab this disgusting spike into your throat!” Chung-ho cried, dashing forward to do just that. This time, it was Seo-yun’s turn to pull me to safety, using her wind abilities to do so.
“Gah! You unnatural freak! Your sister was right about you, and here I’d thought she’d been exaggerating!” Chung-ho roared, rushing for Seo-yun next. She actually managed to dodge the large swing of his sword on her own, and I fired off more spikes at Chung-ho, but this time all of them were dodged. This fight was teaching me that I needed to deepen my move pool. I’d pretty much only been using the shadow spikes and the blasts. The teleporting was too slow to use effectively right now, and although I could turn off all the light in the area and essentially blind my opponent, I didn’t love the fact that none of my allies would be able to see either. Geulimja had also told me not to use the sword yet, which meant I was down what was likely my best weapon to directly fight this guy. Not to mention the fact that he was at least a foot taller than me, probably more, so I couldn’t really use my limited hand to hand skills.
‘Geulimja, you got any new tricks for me yet?’ I asked him, not for the first time during this fight. He kept telling me that we needed to up our compatibility, whatever that meant. According to him, that wasn’t strong enough yet, so some of his more powerful and complex abilities still weren’t available to me.
‘Not yet, kid. Keep fighting, you’re doing great out there.’
‘NO I’M NOT!’
‘Yeah, you’re right, you aren’t.’ Geulimja laughed.
I just gritted my teeth and pushed on. You’d think, having a three on one advantage, we’d be able to handle this quite easily, but this Chung-ho guy was a serious threat. He looked more like the type of guy Cain or Illyana would handle to me, or just anyone with a super powerful ability, but nope, me, Seo-yun and Hank had to deal with him. I narrowly dodged a downward slash from his sword, before quickly firing a blast of dark energy at his chest. That was another good hit. Either he was slowing down, or I was speeding up, but either way, I was happy with it.
“Alright, let’s go!” I shouted, perhaps a bit uncharacteristically. Hank chuckled from where he stood, being healed by the male medic with us, who’s name I hadn’t learned.
“Well done, m’boy!” He shouted, before him and the medic were pushed away from a slash, seemingly by Seo-yun’s wind abilities. This, actually, gave me an idea. We’d been fighting by keeping our distance and firing off whatever blasts we could, then moving in for quick attacks whenever we got a chance, but what if we fought up in his face. Maybe I could use my hand to hand stuff after all.
‘Seo-yun, nod if you can hear me.’ I said, technically speaking to Geulimja, but I knew she could hear. I looked over and saw her nod curtly.
‘I’m going to get up close and personal with him. I need you to play support. Use your powers to pull me away or push him if it looks like he’s gonna land a solid hit on me. Sound good?’ I asked, still looking at her. She looked at me, seemingly sort of unsure, but once I gave her another nod, she seemed to acquiesce, nodding back. With that, I closed the gap. It was a bit strange to me how quick I could actually move, I hadn’t been in a real fight since getting my powers, but clearly, Geulimja was boosting my physical attributes quite a bit. I moved in fast, throwing some quick punches at his midsection, which was quite well armored. He actually laughed, clearly amused, but before he could retaliate, Seo-yun pulled me away from him. He moved fast though, closing the gap and managing to connect with a kick to my own midsection, following this up with a backhand to my jaw. Honestly, I thought my jaw was going to come clean off. Not for the first time that day, all I wanted to do was just go home. But I’d said I’d get the job done, which meant I had to. Or, at the very least, I couldn’t just roll over and give up.
I should choose my words more carefully, next time. The force of the backhand was actually enough to make me spin around, perfectly landing my face in the way of two punches from the larger man, both of which connected, but I managed to connect with a kick to his lower leg, actually driving the spike further in, causing him to roar in pain and try to grab me. Thankfully, Seo-yun was able to pull me away, moving me so I was right next to her.
“That’s a useful power.” I muttered through breaths, while she looked at me, looking concerned to a degree that surprised me.
“I think, perhaps, that we should change our strategy.” Seo-yun stated, to which I shook my head.
“This is working-” I began to say as Chung-ho rushed straight at me. Those damn wings of his let him move so fast. Thankfully, Geulimja let me move fast too. I dodged into Seo-yun, pushing both of us aside. His rush had been one of anger, and his sloppiness in his punch sent him toppling to the ground, although he was getting up very fast.
“Get me some height.” I said to Seo-yun, before rushing forward. I felt it, Seo-yun using her wind to lift me up. It felt incredibly strange, but it did the job, allowing me to reach his head with a full on superman punch. Helmet or not, that one’s gonna hurt, although it also hurt my hand. I felt like I was getting stronger with each attack, probably thanks to Geulimja. If Chung-ho’s hiss of pain was any indication, he was feeling it as well.
“I do not understand what you are boy, but alas-” He caught me by the throat before I hit the ground. I could feel Seo-yun’s wind tugging on me, but Chung-ho’s grip on my throat was just too strong. Thankfully, he was casting a shadow. Not to mention, he was distracted. I pulled up multiple spikes from his own shadow, jabbing them all over his body, including piercing his chestplate. He screamed, dropping me, and Seo-yun quickly pulled me away.
“Clearly, this plan is not working.” She told me, some urgency to her tone. I just shook my head at her, though. It was the exact opposite. Those spikes would be huge, and I’d only been able to land them because he’d grabbed me, and he was clearly frustrated enough to be distracted. Still, even with multiple spikes in his body, he was fast enough to dash into me and slam into me at full speed, sending me crashing through one of the nearby castle walls. That one wasn’t pretty. If I didn’t have the benefit of Geulimja giving me increased durability, and what seemed like either faster healing or highly boosted adrenaline, I’d most definitely be dead or unconscious. Chung-ho dashed in to finish off his handiwork, but he’d made a serious mistake.
Forgetting the terms of the fight.
It was a three against one, afterall. When he dashed in to hit me, Seo-yun followed right behind him, jumping up and wrapping her legs around his neck in some sort of choke, where she sat up on his shoulders. Her legs were quite muscular, and in fact, it did seem like it’d probably be painful. I mean, maybe enjoyable as well but…
‘Head in the game! What is wrong with you, boy!’ Geulimja snapped, prompting me to shake my head and look at Seo-yun. Thankfully, she seemed too focused on trying to choke Chung-ho out to have noticed my thoughts.
‘I’m a teenager, I’m told thoughts like that are very normal.’
‘Not in a life or death fight!’ Geulimja snapped back, as I pulled spikes from all three of our shadows and flung them at the currently stationary Chung-ho, who was in the process of trying to pull Seo-yun’s legs off of his neck and putting an end to her hold. He did eventually succeed, flinging Seo-yun directly at me, prompting both of us to slam into a wall. Seo-yun grunted, rolling off of me, while I stood up to get back in the fight, only to be lifted off my feet and slammed back into the floor.
“Both of you are traitorous fools! Betraying the crown was always going to result in this outcome!” Chung-ho roared. He really didn’t need to yell, he was standing right above me, I could hear him. I had to force myself back up, while he stood over me, simply staring at me, waiting. The moment I was on my feet, he picked me up and tossed me over his shoulder, throwing me into the floor behind him. Before he could stomp on my chest though, I felt Seo-yun’s wind pull me aside, narrowly avoiding the attack. She was laying on her stomach, trying to push herself up to her feet. I managed to scramble to my feet, just to catch a chop to the chest, knocking me back onto my ass. He stomped on my stomach, and this time Seo-yun wasn’t quick enough to pull me away. I was pretty sure the stomp alone broke at least two ribs. I was gonna need Cho-hee to give me a whole medical procedure after this or something, because I was seriously hurting. The only thing that kept me going was adrenaline.
“If you wish to fight me without a weapon, I can at least respect that.” Chung-ho muttered, seemingly more to himself than anything, slamming his sword into the floor by the blade and sticking it there. Realistically, that wasn’t my play here. I was mainly trying to bait him into not using his own weapon, which had seemingly worked like a charm. It was that whole honour thing that some people were crazy about. The moment the sword was out of his hand, I fired a blast of darkness from my right hand. One of his wings moved to block it, but that allowed me to close the distance, with a slight boost from Seo-yun’s winds. He swung out with the wing he’d used to block the attack. I dodged, pulling spikes from his own shadow and skewering them into his legs and torso. He roared out in pain, moving to grab his sword, but that was when Hank finally made his presence known, darting in and grabbing the sword, moving it out of Chung-ho’s reach. I continued to use spikes made of shadow, driving them through his wings to stop him from using them to fly away. The spikes were rooted to the ground, and there were so many lodged into him now that it was difficult for him to get any momentum and move away. Not to mention he’d have to remove the spikes from his body.
‘You’re pretty smart with those powers, huh kid?’
‘I guess. The spikes are useful.’ I said in response to Geulimja, before unloading a massive blast of dark energy directly at Chung-ho’s face and chest, causing the top half of his body to sort of limply drop backwards. He was clearly unconscious, and I was pretty sure I was next.
“Need the doctor.” I grumbled, making my way over to Seo-yun, who was still struggling to stand, and helping her up.
“You said he was the strongest, right? Other than that Light King jerk?” I questioned as I slung one of her arms over my shoulder to help her move. She nodded, allowing herself to lean against me a little.
“Yes. Well done.”
“Not ideal. We barely got that guy, and it took a few of us. This Light King douche is gonna be a serious problem.” I pointed out, helping Seo-yun move towards the hole I’d made in the wall when Chung-ho had tossed me through. Cho-hee, the other medic, and a seemingly mostly recovered John were on the other side. The male medic quickly moved forward, sliding Seo-yun away from me, while Cho-hee approached me and started healing me. The six of us were seated outside the castle, just taking a moment to rest. That was until Hank started staring up at the sky, and then all of us were staring up at the sky. Something just like the white streak Chung-ho had when he was dropping down on us was falling on top of us, except it was way bigger, and it looked to be travelling faster.
“Well, shit.” John muttered, as my vision was entirely engulfed by a bright white light.