Colosseum - Bronze Match - Magus vs Adam Gaite

[Storyteller]

With the crowd thinned out, only the most extreme patrons had returned for the consolation bout.

Down below, the arena had been transformed into something from a nightmare journal. Half of the arena was a rolling field of dying grass, dotted with partially withered shrubs and flowers. A river ran the length of the battle area.

At the center of the Colosseum, the ground swelled a few yards higher. It was at this point that the landscape changed from dying grass to red dirt and dust. A giant, squared archway loomed high over the rest of the building, casting a shadow upon a small portion of the crowd. The Black Gate was a large structure made of nearly indestructible black stone. A large altar stood at its center, nearly two stories above the ground. Stone stairs extended from both sides of the gate.

On the western side of the Black Gate, the red landscape was dotted with fires that seemed to burn without needing fuel. Every now and then, some fissure or hole in the ground would spew lava or something that looked and smelled too much like blood for comfort.

The blue river that ran the length of the zone turned from clear water to burning red lava the moment it passed the gate. The river of lava curled through the zone before ending in a large bubbling pool. Even the air on that red side of the gate felt heavier and more oppressive.

Down below, Adam Gaite and Magus stood on opposing sides of the altar, their expression neutral as they waited for the sound that would start the final combat.

Judges - Gildarts and Minato

Magus posts first and may do so anytime after 8 PM CST, 12/17/2015

Please refer any questions to that thread.

Word Limit: 750
Posts: You may do 2 each or 3 each (you decide)
Time Limit: 48 hours
SP use is enabled. Neither injuries nor SP use are factored into judgment, only the quality of writing

[Magus]

Dying was a surprisingly painful ordeal.

The Bandit had made the cleanest of cuts and had decapitated him instantly, but for what felt like ages he could still feel the aches in his bones, the cuts and scrapes on his flesh, the water in his lungs. He watched her desecrate his remains as the light faded from his eyes, and then all he felt was cold.

The lonely, unyielding cold of the void. People murmured about it but Magus could attest to it. And then, after he began to lose hope that he would be reconstituted, he was suddenly and violently thrust into a flash of light, blinding in the unending sea of infinite darkness, dazzled and overwhelmed by light and heat and sound.

Magus fell to his knees, clasping his hands over his ears and clenching his eyes shut to block out the sudden, riotous return of his senses. It took some time to adjust to having a body again, but eventually, his hands fell away and he carefully opened his eyes, to see that damned tunnel to the Colosseum that he had walked through so many times already.

He had been killed, and still, they would not let him rest. He sighed. He’d come far enough that even losing a match didn’t merit being cast out of the tournament. He would fight for the dubious honor of third place. There would be the ridiculous pretense of triumph for whoever was victorious, but the truth of the matter was, he had already lost. So had his opponent. In a sense, theirs was the most fitting battle for those trapped in the Omniverse: an arduous exercise in futility.

Only one thing raced through his mind as he stormed out onto the arena, his face already twisted into an angry grimace. He’d been handily defeated by his most unremarkable opponent yet.

Killed by a filthy, non-magical commoner.

Killed by a commoner.

Killed by a commoner!

Magus’ scarlet eyes fell upon the pathetic form of his newest opponent; some pallid simpleton in a hood and glasses. A scholar at best. It was as though Omni himself saw fit to add insult to injury by pitting him against this pitiful, scrawny nothing.

A sudden, fleshy rumbling to his right distracted him but for a moment, and the earth swelled as if diseased, before erupting with a blobbing burst of bloody fluid. The liquid dribbled from the burst pustule, soaking back into the earth from whence it came.

Weird, bleedy sores in the earth. Lovely.

Fuck it. He needed to end this, right here, right now. He’d suffered the indignity of defeat already; he would not go back to his army completely humiliated. Magus lunged forward, disappearing from Adam’s view.

Charging toward the altar that loomed between them in the hellish, monochrome world between worlds that he’d fallen into, racing up the gleaming, black stone steps. As he reached the top, a twinge of terror rose up in his throat. The shadow people who had surrounded the arena had swarmed the battlefield. Only the mighty Black Gate itself seemed free of their touch.

They remained faceless and unmoving, twitching in and out of existence as though possessed of an ethereal origin. Not from the material plane, but neither from this plane immaterial either. Magus felt compelled to call out to them, to find out once and for all why these creatures were stalking him, but the words would not come. He swept his eyes back and forth among the jittery, glitching silhouettes as beads of frigid sweat dampened his brow.

He felt himself growing weaker the longer he stood between planes, and this broke his indecision. The shadow people would be there the next time he stepped across existences – for now, he had a whelp to disembowel.

The Demon King loped down the stairs toward the young boy they had pitted him against, standing there with his mouth agape like any other plebeian hungry for subjugation. The boy would make a good servant, Magus thought as he closed what little gap remained, his fists glowing with the putrid magics of Gloom, but his anger had simply become too terrible for such niceties.

The boy would die.

Magus thrust his hands forth, smashing the searing Gloom bolts into the child’s bespectacled eyes before loosing the bolts into his face. He leapt back into the material plane with the boom of explosive magics and the high-pitched caterwauling of a blinded urchin.

747 words.

[Roger Smith]

"MOTHERFUCKER!"

A heaping helping of pain, served straight to the face at point-blank range. Why did they always go for the face. Why. It was like they deliberately wanted to leave him blinded and incapable of fighting back. Which, given the location, was probably a tactically sound move. But it was also rude as fuck.

It didn't help matters in the slightest that he was still reeling from his very real death experience. It wasn't at all like SBURB. There it was just an off then on kind of deal. Dead. Float around in nothing. Then alive again, right back where you had been, or wherever your friends had carted off your temporarily a corpse self off to. But here? Oh boy, that would have been a real treat to wake up to. Chest all smashed open and such. He would've had to be out a for a while to have that mess healed up.

Guess this Omniverse place wasn't all bad.

"Dude seriously," he coughed as he hit the ground. "Do you just enjoy completely fucking blindsiding people?" All he could see through his blurred gaze was a vaguely person shaped blur, a riot of weird-ass colors that just didn't really look right for a person to have. "Or are you just a dick?" The resulting snarl from the blob of color was all Adam needed to hear. Whoever he was fighting had some issues. Dude was pissed.

Well wasn't that great. Adam was too.

Adam lazily brought one hand up to his face and brushed aside the glass from his ruined glasses as lightly as he could. His grasping fingers came across what was left of the frames in the process. "So. Third place match and all. Guessing you lost too?" A stabbing pain in his everything warned him of the incoming disaster, and it was all he needed to know. With a forced yawn he rolled over, several times, carrying him well out of the reach of what felt very much like the thudding impact of a large blade smashing into the earth where he'd just been laying. "Dude, seriously. Temper. The fact you lost is no cause for overwhelming rudeness." He heaved himself up into a sitting position, and with squinted eyes focused in on Magus. He was almost able to make him out clearly despite his ruined eyesight. "I lost too, and I ain't even mad. Just kinda bummed."

"Can't win 'em all, y'know. Takes all the fun out of things." He lurched backward, flat on his back on the ground again as a bolt of some stupidly unpleasant looking — and feeling, for that matter — energy nearly hit him dead in the face again. "But if you're not gonna be civil about this, then I guess I should get on with it, huh?" He kicked forward with both legs, and with only a little effort from his handy-dandy power to ignore gravity, landed soundly on his feet.

And promptly launched straight up in a blur of red. "Hang on for just like two seconds down there, guy. Gotta fix my seeing, here." And in quite literally two seconds, the mangled frames of his glasses were back to normal, good as new. "God I love time powers." Glasses back in place, sight mostly restored, Adam finally got a solid look at who he was fighting, and...

Wait. Where the fuck did he go.

"Son of a fuck." Open palm met forehead and he sighed heavily. "Should have just not come back for this shit." A dull ache in the back of his head caused a second, much more disgruntled sigh to spill from between now clenched teeth, and he spun about, one hand held out before him. The air before his outstretched hand rippled and wavered. The sound of a clock faintly tick-ing away sounded. And then there was a burst of negative energy as another of those damn bolts of whatever the fuck smashed into the shield of distorted time. "Seriously getting tired of this shit." A wave dismissed the shield, and then Adam's rifle was off his back and in hand.

As the crosshairs closed in on the becaped wizard, he was off and running. "Tch." In a straight contest of speed Adam could have beaten him handily. But he was fast enough to bring up Adam's one true, greatest foe. Hitting moving targets. Swing and a miss, "If you could just..." Miss. "Hold still for a..." MISS.

"QUIT FUCKING MOVING!"

749 words, according to wordcounter.net

[Roger Smith]

Several more bolts of laser fire hit the ground as Adam struggled to keep his sights up with Magus. The only good thing was that the constant barrage of slow, steady fire wasn't doing much for counterattack opportunities...but if he was off by even a little and gave even the slightest opening, he'd be eating a hit. He was wide open, hanging there in the middle of the air. Not a good place to be in, tactically, against someone who could fight back in some capacity at range.

And the entire situation was just really, really pissing him off. "Okay fuck this. Done shooting and missing." He slung his rifle back over his back where it normally hung, and cracked his knuckles. The scowl on his face could not have been deeper. "Time to try out something I thought up during my little stay in limbo..."

With a wild flickering of energy, Adam's entire body was enshrouded in a glowing aura of red. The faint sound of clocks ticking echoed softly with every twitchy movement he made, his entire body shimmering with the distorted aura of rippling time around him.

And then he was just gone.

In a burst of speed that would have been easy to mistake as flat-out teleporting to the unobservant, Adam was on the ground again, kicking up no small amount of dust, and bolting straight toward Magus in a headlong dash. Another of those bolts of exploding magic wrongness came hurtling at him, and with another flickering burst of intense speed, he leaped up and over it, in a lazy, awkward somersault, landing none too gently but carrying on in his mad dash.

He was met with a cold sneer from the becaped wizard, his scythe poised and ready to deliver a devastating blow. "Whatever tricks you've got won't—"

Adam cut him off as much with the sudden mad leap and wild punch as with his screeching command of "SHUT UP!"

The blow struck a glancing impact on the fiendlord's shoulder, setting him to spinning and staggering about crazily, scythe posture skewed horrendously as he regained his footing. Despite his scrawny-looking appearance, that punch had had some, well...punch behind it.

Adam went sailing past, landing in a roll, and scrambled back to his feet well away from the wizard, staring at him with his own mocking smirk. "Think I'm gonna like this one. You? Not so much?"

Before the blue-haired man could even formulate a response, there was a twisting of the air before him, and a sudden spike of pain — identical to the punch from just a moment ago — slammed into his shoulder, precisely in the same location. He grit his teeth against the pain of the unexpected strike, the sneer dropping from his features. "Quite the trick. But if that's all you've got, it won't be enough." Whatever damage had been done didn't stop him from readying his scythe again, though he clearly favored his uninjured arm.

"How fortunate for me, then...that's nowhere near my only trick, you fuck," Adam quipped, and he took a quick dash forward. "But I think it might really help set up my next trick." He was just closing into range to dish out another blow when the scowling wizard vanished. Just like that; up and vanished. Overbalancing in surprise, Adam went tumbling to the ground as his fist met only empty air, landing face first in the hellish dirt. "EGCH!"

He had but a scant few seconds before the now-familiar icy wash of pain, warning him of an impending means to do him harm, hit him. Not just in one particular area like it had up until now...but everywhere. He hacked up a half-choked breath, trying to regain his footing. "That can't be good..."

And it wasn't.

The single tread of a heavy boot was all the warning Adam got before he was engulfed in a blistering torrent of flames. To say he screamed would be an understatement. Engulfed in the bizarre purple flames, he was sent reeling, staggering about in pain, fear, and general fire-induced blindness. He narrowly avoided walking right into a belch of molten rock from the earth, and collapsed backward out of the path of the hellish flames that burned everywhere. "Fhgck..." he wheezed, trying to regain his feet, and take care of the flames. "Fucking...dirty tricks..."

Brute force was clearly not the way to go against this son of a bitch. Which left only one option. Completely unnecessary overkill. A slow grin crawled across his face, the red glow around his body growing more and more pronounced. He flickered and blinked out of clear sight, looking like he was caught in a patch of static in reality itself. Time was going out of whack with whatever he was planning.

Slowly, Adam staggered upright, his footing unsteady, and turned to search about for Magus. He was, predictably, nowhere in sight. Whether he'd pulled his disappearing act again, or just resorted to more conventional hiding tactics escaped him. It didn't really matter much. What he had planned next would only need one good opening. One good jump past whatever trick this jackass pulled next.

Twitch,

And there it was. Ducking low, the sweeping stroke of the fiendlord's scythe cut cleanly through Adam's hair, relieving him of an unruly curl or three, but mercifully missing anything important — like his head. "Hey. Fuck you."

And then Adam swung around and drove one fist into the surprised wizard's chest. And then another. And another. And then one punch turned into thirteen, and those into an innumerable volley of blows, hitting like gunfire, driving the becaped wizard back, and all but lifting him off the ground with the relentless onslaught. Dust was kicked up around the onslaught, shrouding everything in writhing clouds of smog, debris and disjointed time. And throughout it all, Adam's voice rang out in a wordless screech of rage and adrenaline, getting caught up in the flurry of violence.

And then it ended, with a noise like a thunderclap. Adam's fist met Magus's chin, the cloud of dust blew away from the impact, and the fiendlord's head snapped back as he was launched airborne.. Over a dozen meters he sailed, up and back. And then with a resounding, thudding crunch, he landed back where all this mess had started. On the altar. He hacked up a mouthful of blood, glaring at Adam as the youth alighted on the altar beside him, his breathing heavy. Power flickered in the wizard's hand, fist clenched tighter than his bloodied teeth. He wasn't out of this yet...!

THWACK..

Adam's fist met his face in a flicker of motion, like a hammer blow, driving it down into the solid stone of the altar. It rebounded with a sickening crunch of impact, and Magus's eyes went dull. Only defiance kept him from giving it up right then and there. He'd lost to one commoner already, he wasn't going to loser to another one!

Adam had already turned away, depositing his heaving body down on one of the steps to the altar. "Fuck...note to self, only use that in desperate situations..."

Magus heaved himself up onto his feet, one arm wrapped about his scythe for support. Red-tinged vision focused solely on the little brat, he staggered forward, one hand lifted, the signature magic of Gloom flickering to life at his command.

The air before his face twisted, and in his scrambled mind Magus dimly registered the blow to his shoulder before. And then his world went dark. He hit the ground with a thud. And this time he didn't stir again.

"I hate tournaments..." Adam wheezed to himself, slowly laying back against the stone of the altar.

Just in case it matters or anyone is curious:

Adam used Tier 1 Power Up: Hero Mode (5/3/5/4)
Adam used Déjà fu, Tier 2 Super Attack: Ruby Fist

Magus used Doom, Gloom, Shadow Step and Shadeflame