Alkalians (20 page)

Sean continues bouncing like
tumbleweed toward Tony. As he comes in closer, Tony prepares to
move out-of-the-way, but Sean, smirking, releases a compressed
blast of air and crashes directly into him. The tackle plows the
Zombie through the field, and Sean flips off to land upright
nearby. Tony was so unprepared for the surprise move it takes him a
moment to realize it happened, gaping at a bright green wound upon
his left shoulder.

The audience, including Matt and Rose,
are also surprised before they figure out how it worked. Sean had
merely acted like he tripped in his air balance to lower Tony’s
guard, and then attacked him at the last possible moment. Seeing
their amazed looks, Sean bows to them graciously. When Tony gets
back on his feet, he dashes off to increase the distance between
them for another charge.

Tony, shrugging his wounded shoulder,
glares back at Sean with his dead eyes. He waits for him to dash
back at him, and then raises his hands up and casts a
spell:

“
Grave
Clacher
!”

From out of the ground around Tony
emerge magic-energized claws, hands resembling zombies trying to
break out of the earth. Sean freaks from the sight, but is able to
fly up and over before being grabbed. Landing on the other side and
drifting to turn around, he looks back at a confident Tony, who is
already casting another spell. In instant reaction to sensing
something moving below him, Sean leaps away as a large, jagged
tombstone sprouts out of the ground where he was
standing.

Figuring out that Tony would keep
casting spells at him while those zombie hands protect him, Sean
decides to try something. First gathering air all around him, he
then propels straight at the thicket of magic hands. Matt, Rose,
and the crowd wonder what he’s doing, and get their answer when
Sean starts spinning like a drill, his feet forward, and penetrates
through the hands when they fail to grab him. When Tony sees this,
it’s too late to escape as Sean collides into him, his feet
drilling through his guts. The combined speed, impact, and drilling
creates a cratered wound of bright yellow, and Tony cringes from
the blow and Sean’s feet inside him.

But Sean’s attack isn’t
done yet. As his drilling slows, he reverses the spiral and starts
spinning out of Tony. With him even more stunned from the move, he
executes another thrust of compressed air to spring out of the
wound, a burst of energy following after him. Sean lands several
yards away after some back flips and looks back at the faded orange
wound he left in his foe. Grinning, he says, “Uh oh, Tony, it
appears that you just got
screwed
! Hahahahaha!” He imitates a
screwing motion with his finger while pointing at the Zombie and
laughing.

Matt and Rose are impressed by Sean’s
attack, and some of the crowd is either awed by his prowess or
cheering for the brilliant fighter. Tony, shortly stunned from the
numbing damage he’s endured, growls when he glares back at Sean. He
casts a spell to spout energy from his wound, which spreads out to
form a mob of zombie clones before him.

The clones stand between Sean and
Tony, forming a new obstacle to breach before more harm can come to
Tony. Sean, instead of worrying, looks delighted at this challenge
before he dashes towards the wall of zombies. In response, a larger
cluster of them gathers into a defensive formation meant to stop
him. Increasing his speed rather than slowing down, Sean then tucks
his limbs in to become a rolling ball. The zombie clones are
defenseless when he smashes through them, scattering them like
falling bowling pins.

After the first group of clones is
erased, another is positioning into a lineup in Sean’s path.
Exiting the rollout, he leaps at them and begins thrashing through
the entire line. He takes out two with a double kick, a second pair
with back-to-back roundhouse kicks, one more with a slamming fist,
and a final clone with a front flip followed by a drop kick, all
while still in mid-air.

When he finally lands, there are two
clones left, serving as a last defense for Tony, until two more
appear out of the ground beside Sean. They assault their foe, one
holding onto him while the other prepares to bite him, but Sean
enjoys using another air balance trick as he spins in place like a
top, throwing the one clone off him and blowing them both
away.

The audience becomes even more wowed
by Sean’s techniques. Rose says to Matt, “A few days ago, he
couldn’t harm anyone. And now, he’s proving a match for a senior!
How did he do it?”

Matt is just as astonished when all he
can reply with is, “He’s a mad genius.”

Meanwhile, Sean continues his assault
toward Tony by side thrusting, then charging at him and his
vanguard. The two clones stand firm to act as a shield, but Sean
doesn’t slow in his advance. He makes a diving leap, rolls out a
landing beside the two clones, and knocks them out with
break-dance-like kicks. As Tony growls in frustration towards
Sean’s clever moves, Sean exits his disco attack before launching
into the air, bringing him along with a severe uppercut to his
face. He lands a few yards away as Sean touches down and looks to
his fallen enemy.

***

His health energy converging from
orange to red, listening to an audience cheering louder for Sean,
and his reputation gradually shrinking, Tony’s breathing is ragged
with rage. He decides he’s had enough of some clown making him look
pathetic. No matter what the cost, he is going to make sure Sean
regrets he ever crossed him.

Standing up with rekindled anger, Tony
begins charging a spell of great proportions. A powerful aura of
gathered energy glows all over him. This pulls attention from the
crowd toward him, along with an intrigued Sean. When his build-up
of power reaches the right point, Tony releases it, and he sinks
into the ground as it churns and rumbles.

A moment later, a huge, skeletal arm
made of soil bursts out of the ground, its bony fingers each having
a barbed claw, and is followed by the rest of the new entity. Once
it looms over the dwarfed Sean, the Golem-like figure, which lacks
rock armor and has decayed features, shows it has a mouth as it
opens wide, its lower jaw bearing tusk-sized fangs, and roars an
unearthly howl at him while hot hatred burns in its empty eye
sockets.

His eyes bulging at the new form of
Tony, Sean says, “Well, talk about getting ugly!” The crowd is just
as surprised, and Matt asks, “What happened? What did he just
do?”

Rose has the same question when she
can’t answer, but the guy behind them answers, “That was a Hyper
Morph! By literally sacrificing some of his health energy, he
changed into a stronger form of his battle morph whose stability
equals the amount of health energy sacrificed!”

The upgraded Tony grins with his filed
teeth and fangs as Sean dashes away to a safer distance. After he
stops about a hundred feet away, he begins to move toward him,
slowly lumbering forward with both his arms reaching out at him.
When Sean sees his movement, he sighs in relief, assured that Tony
is still slower than him, until Tony’s hands detach from his arms
and fly at him. Jumping away from the right hand that strikes the
ground where he was standing, Sean is left exposed to the swipe of
the left hand, the hooked claws barely raking him and leaving a few
scrapes of green damage on his chest.

As Sean lands on his feet, Tony sees
the damage done to him, and his ghastly lit eyes twinkle. Wasting
no time, his right hand floats in close to Sean and aims its palm
at him, and a small thread of energy shoots out of it and enters
Sean’s wound. After feeling the prick of the spell tagging him, he
finds with shock his health energy flowing out of the wound,
through the air along the thread, and into Tony’s hand, steadily
changing from green to yellow in color.

Realizing what is happening, Sean
figures how to counter the spell. He builds up air balance around
him, springs at the floating zombie hand draining his health, and
busts through it with a flying kick, leaving a big hole in it and
shutting off the spell, before dashing at Tony’s big bulk across
the field.

Surprised he escaped his
draining spell, Tony doesn’t panic as he races toward him, and
drops his lockjaw and yells in a hollowing gasp,
“
Grave Aeros
!” A
spell casts out of his mouth, a fierce gust of corrosive wind, and
it halts Sean’s momentum and blows him back, slicing more wounds
into him along his arms and legs, before both of Tony’s hands zoom
past him on either side, their claws ripping through him and
reattaching to Tony’s arms before he falls backwards and hits the
ground hard.

In the moment after he repelled him,
Tony sends up evil laughter into the night air while Matt, Rose,
and the audience look with dread. Sean forces himself to stand up,
the numbing wounds in his arms, chest, and legs glowing bright
orange, and glares at his taller foe.

For too long had he been beaten down,
Sean reminds himself. For a whole year of school, he was easy prey
for boss student goons and bullies, the laughing stock of every
proud fighter throughout the college, a disappointment to the staff
and his few friends. For too long had he been nothing but a dummy
for others to fight. It was time for him to make others the
dummies.

Tony holds out his hands, and multiple
threads of red energy grow out and lunge down towards Sean, their
ends sinking into his wounds. As they begin to suck out his health
energy, he does something unexpected. Taking off with a bang, he
rises and soars over Tony on air balance so fast that his momentum
yanks on the threads, pulling Tony’s hands over and behind him in a
whiplash. For a moment, his arms resist the vicious tugging from
Sean’s air balance, but then Tony shrieks when they are torn off of
him with sickening snaps.

Just as stunned from the feat as Tony,
Matt, Rose, and the crowd watch with jaws dropped as the giant arms
crumble into dirt below the hovering Sean, ending the spells that
drained his health energy to a dark red, before he rushes back at
Tony. Tony turns, wobbling without his arms, and releases a spell
that instantly extends long, stone spikes out of his ribcage, meant
to impale the incoming Sean. In the split second before he meets
them, he pulls off another unpredictable feat. In a maneuver so
fast that Tony doesn’t comprehend it, he side-thrusts and orbits
around him, getting behind and above him without running into the
spikes.

While he stares at where he should be,
Sean reminds him of where he is when he sling-shots into the back
of his neck with a kick. The impact creates a loud crack as it
breaks through bone and dirt, bends Tony’s head back, and gushes
out a burst of red energy. A second later, the red wound energy
spreads in fractures across his whole body, spraying out like water
breaking through a dam, and Tony lets out a scream, colored by the
wound energy erupting out of his mouth, before his whole form
vanishes in a red flash.

***

It takes a moment for the audience to
understand what happened as they stare across the field at Tony
lying on the ground as a human and Sean breathing heavily over him,
but when Sean demorphs and strolls back toward them, they send up
wild applause and cheers. Matt, Rose, and fellow freshmen from the
crowd rush out to meet him, and as they give him congratulations
and praise Sean embraces it all. Although, he does wince a little
when someone would clap him on the shoulder or back.

“
Sean, that was amazing!”
says Rose as they walk toward the rest of the spectators. “When did
you learn to do all of those moves?”

“
Oh, you know, the
techniques come naturally,” he responds between his breaths, “and
then I just, put them together, in the right combinations, with my
high intellect. It’s pretty easy, really, the only drawback is, how
much energy I spent. Whoo, I could use some sleep after
that!”

“
But are you alright?”
asks Matt. “Not seriously injured, or anything?”

“
Well, sure, I feel pain
all over, and there are probably, bruises on my arms, legs, and
chest, but otherwise, I haven’t felt, this great in my whole
life!”

Making his way through the crowd of
cheering students, Sean goes to retrieve his suitcase of money,
giving thank-yous and acknowledgment the whole way while the
student and professional officers hurried away to tend to Tony. As
he picks it up, he notices a familiar orange suit near him. He
looks up to the chilling stare of Dante.

At first, Sean fears what Dante would
say to him, but is surprised when the intimidating intermediate
shows a little smile and says, “Nice fight. Keep that up, and you
may just match me.” Sean’s surprise grows when Dante turns to Matt
and tells him, “You and your roommates are becoming a special bunch
of students, so expect others who may want to use you, for good or
bad. I’ll be one of those with the good intentions.” He then slips
away with the rest of the leaving crowd.

After he leaves, Sean whips back to
Matt and asks, “And what was that about? You turned my worst
nightmare into your loyal comrade!?”

“…
Oh yeah, we didn’t tell
him yet!” Matt reminds Rose. When she agrees, the three head back
for their cabin with Matt telling Sean while Rose carries the
suitcase, “Okay, this happened back on the third day of
school…”