Colosseum - Semifinal - Adam Gaite vs Shang Tsung

[Storyteller]

Shang Tsung’s body had been mended by omnilium, but the scars beneath the surface would linger for a long time. With his eyes set on the goal ahead, he glanced at the standard of Diablo wafting in the snowy wind behind his shoulder.

On the other side of the frozen landscape, Adam Gaite smiled faintly at the dwarven equipment that lay behind him.

Somewhere, the gong rang out and the two best fights in Group B began their bout.

Judges – Edward/Minato and Gildarts/Caira

Adam posts first and may do so at any time after Tuesday, December 1st at 12 PM CST.

Description of fight area and other information can be found here - <!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://omniverse-rpg.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4506&start=20#p54446">viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4506&start=20#p54446</a><!-- l -->

Please refer any questions to that thread.

Word Limit: 750
Posts: 3
Time Limit: 48 hours
SP use is enabled. SP does not regenerate between rounds. Injuries may occur. Neither injuries nor SP use are factored into judgment, only the quality of writing

[Roger Smith]

Honestly it was a major surprise. Everyone he'd been put up against so far seemed like they had the advantage every time. Lack of fucks to give. Overwhelming size and quantity of weapons. The ability to creep him right the fuck out. He was rolling in a lot of luck here. And sooner or later the universe was going to get its shit together and remember he wasn't a Light player, and then he was going to get the most angry of smites thrown down on his petulant little head from some random, upset deity.

But with any luck, whatever cosmic bookkeeper just so happened to be on duty would stay in the dark for the next few hours and let Adam remain blissfully not smote. At least long enough to keep stumbling haphazardly through this tournament. He only had this fight and one more to go...

Okay. Focus, Adam. Focus. You got this, man. You are literally a god. Lost some power, yeah, but the principle stands. You beat the shit out of a green lumberjack miner person, a giant bucket of rust and weapons, and some scary ass lady who didn't know what the fuck she was on about. He curled his hands into fists and smacked them together, knuckles first. Whoever walks out here next is going down just like everybody else. I got this in the bag. Just stay positive and don't be stupid.

Pointedly ignoring the caches of weapons behind him, preferring instead to stick to what he knew best, Adam took off at a brisk jog across the frosty ground, clambering none too gracefully up a mound of snow. "Damn I hate the cold..." he muttered to himself, letting out a puff of effort as he reached the twenty foot peak. "I'll take it over the heat, though," he continued halfheartedly, peering through the snow-filled air to try and land eyes on his opponent.

"I'm not overly fond of the cold, myself."

The sudden speech caught Adam off guard and he practically jumped out of his skin. The crunching of powder underfoot heralded the appearance of his opponent as the man strode up the pile of snow himself. "Jeez, man, give a guy a little warning if you're gonna approach that casually. Or, y'know...don't approach that casually. It's kinda not appropriate for the environment."

"My sincerest apologies." The speaker finally reached a point where Adam could get a solid look at him and came to a halt, barely ten paces away on the impromptu hilltop of ice. "Shall we put any further pleasantries on hold, then?"

One of Adam's eyebrows quirked up and his mouth all but fell open into a very confused expression of wonder, and more than a little clearly evident shock. "Damn....didn't know I was signing up for mortal kombat when I got into this. I think the realness of things just went up a notch." Shaking his head Adam just shrugged. "But whatever, I guess...time to kick things off. Round one, I guess, yeah?"

Without wasting any more breath, Adam snatched his preferred weapon of choice — his concealed rifle — from its place resting on his back, like some gratuitously oversized sword, and swung it around to point in his foe's general direction.

The former monk betrayed his puzzlement at the odd action only with a slight upturn of one eyebrow, but he had clearly seen enough strange weapons in his time to not be caught off guard. The bolt of red laser fire that spewed out of the barely-concealed barrel of the firearm missed him by inches as he stepped aside and ducked low.

That almost never works.

Adam's lamentation over his unsuccessful no-scope attempt was brought to a screeching halt as he was presented with the sight of what he could recognize only as a ball of fire and bad things, inches from his face. A startled shriek and backward stumble saved him from taking the thing full on in the face, but it still struck a solid enough blow to send him to the ground, his head engulfed in smoke. "Ghk..."

It was as much the sound of heavy footsteps crunching toward him as it was his damned time powers warning him that sent him into a frenzied roll to one side, just in time to see a heavy boot smash into the snow where his head had just been.

"Wow, dude. Uncalled for." He scrambled back to his feet to avoid a repeat performance.

750 words on the nose, according to wordcounter.net

[Shang Tsung]

Even back home, the prospect of a child who fought with a crutch disguised as a gun would have brought Shang a mild degree of consternation.

Had he not paid any heed to the dwindling crowd of remaining contestants, he may have been fooled or taken aback by ‘Adam Gaite.’ Unfortunately, the sorcerer wasn’t an idiot, and try as he might, he found himself insulted that this was what he was pitted against.

For an entire afternoon, the former monk had subjected himself to a cornucopia of agonies that ran the gamut from stabbings and poisonings all the way to having his ribs shattered and his skin burnt to the bone. What had this child actually endured en route to their present destination? Whatever trials he had endured, they hadn’t been enough to wholly deplete his reservoir or sarcasm, and it was that fact among all others that fouled the sorcerer’s mood.

Shang rushed forward and lashed out with a forearm slash that soared high of its mark as the kid ducked. A quick, thrusting blow caught Adam in the chest and sent him bowling head-over-heels down the small little hill. Although he’d won the exchange, there was something that didn’t sit well with the scowling sorcerer. For a seemingly awkward and scrawny youth, Adam reacted a little too quickly. Shang had failed to notice it during their first scuffle, but he’d picked it up during their most recent exchange.

On the bottom of the slope, the boy in red rose to his feet and brushed away the snow. His pale features were twisted in discomfort as he shook a few clumps out of his hair. “I just said I hate the cold and you do me like that?” He asked with a tone too close to that of a petulant teenager.

A coy remark started to form in the sorcerer’s mouth, but he swallowed it whole—No games— and threw out his right palm. There was whoosh of icy air over his body before the brilliant lance of energy screamed down toward its intended quarry. The child, as Shang anticipated, escaped the path of the attack before it could bore a superheated hole through his chest. Although he’d avoided the initial blast, the force shuddered the nimble figure long enough for the sorcerer to readjust his aim.

When the second marvelous beam came howling down from the top of the hill, Adam simply stopped being in the line of fire.

One moment, the adolescent was liberating himself from a foot and a half of snow, and the next, he was shaking said boot clean a whole ten feet from the giant pillar of smoke drifting from the evaporated snow.

Not a child.

This thing wasn’t a person, even if it had convinced itself and others to believe that false reality.

The sorcerer’s expression remained sour as Adam turned and glanced up at him with those pale, unremarkable features. “You want to chill a little bit?” A tiny, pissant smirk spread across the youth’s face as he retrieved his nearby cane. “…You get it? Hmm?”

Shang growled and released a rapid barrage of energy beams. He rushed down the hill a moment later, his hands clenched in tight, burning fists as he looked through the fog-like vapors churned up by all the evaporated snow. Before he could find Adam, a bolt of condensed red energy roared passed his right ear, leaving him with a deafening ring in his head as his ran petered out into a disoriented stumble.

Although he could barely see through the thick, wet air around him, Shang felt something wrong out to his left. With just the feeling of discomfort to go off of, he shot out a hand in time to intercept the shaft of the teen’s crutch. His fingers squeezed around the faux exterior of the laser weapon as the vapor finally started to settle, revealing an Adam on the other end of the weapon who wore a visibly unsettled expression on his visage.

“I think I’m starting to get the hang of this,” Shang growled as he landed a cruel blow against Adam’s right cheek. Although he couldn’t escape the first punch, Adam had the wherewithal to subtly shift his grip on his weapon. As the former monk reeled back for a stronger blow, the end of the crutch let out a crackling hiss as an energy blade erupted from just a few short inches from his hand.

[Roger Smith]

Guh, headache's back now. Thanks, guy. Really appreciate it.

The initial impact of the blow to his cheek had left the entire side of his face nearly numb, and sent him reeling, stars dancing in front of his eyes. But dazed as he was, his glasses knocked askew as they were, he still had the mental capacity for a smirk to curl at his lips. The barrel of his cleverly-concealed contraption spit out a burst of red sparks, crackling with a hum of built-up energy, and a blade of focused energy lanced out. The sorcerer was forced to shift his grip, shoving the weapon out to one side to avoid taking the sudden attack straight through the side, and Adam capitalized on the chance.

His free hand darted behind his back, and with only the hissing hum of ignition in the frigid air as warning, the crimson blade of his lightsaber flashed around in an underhand strike at the former monk's arm. As Adam had hoped he might, the much larger man's grip on the weapon released and only a glancing blow was struck across his forearm.

That was where Adam's good fortune ended as a fresh nail of agony was driven through the back of his head, the former monk planting another vicious strike that sent Adam stumbling blindly, his world turned upside down. "Fhhk..." he wheezed, barely resisting the urge to fall to his knees. Why did these people always go for the HEAD. It was like they wanted to leave their opponent dazed and incapable of fighting at their complete awareness.

Any trace of pride or joy vanished from his demeanor as he tried to ignore the splitting ache in his skull. He turned around to face his opponent only to find the sorcerer now with a very familiar-looking implement in one hand. "Well, well. It appears we have a weapon in common." The crackling hiss of ignition and the red glow of the blade brought a scowl of indignation to Adam's face, and his eyes instinctively followed the glowing mass of energy as the sorcerer flourished it.

"Well great. Fantastic. Look at that. We both have the same weapon. Super." Adam could practically taste the venom in his own words. He really should have paid more attention to the other people involved in this tournament. Taken a look around every now and then at the other matches during his own, watched the others that were still going on after he finished his own. Just DONE SOMETHING to not leave himself so completely unprepared and blind for this entire ordeal.

He was literally a god of Time. He should have seen this coming days before it happened, easily.

But no. He was blind, just like any other little shit. Even after he'd crawled his way through SBURB, over the shattered husk of more planets than he could count, and used his only friends' corpses as a stairway to reach the final door. He had won, damn it. He deserved some peace and quiet. He deserved to finally let it all just....fucking be over.

Not this shit.

Not being forced to start over from day one of God Tier, and learn an entirely new god damn universal concept.

He grit his teeth, his gaze dropping from its angry glare at the former monk. "God damn. Can't stand this shit." The sorcerer only returned a neutral stare, either not knowing or not caring what it was Adam couldn't stand. "You hear me, man? Can't stand it. Starting over from scratch. Time was I could tell you what you were about to do before you even knew you could do it. Could have just left you a pile of dust on the ground from within ten seconds." He cocked his head to one side, clipping his rifle back into its now usual place on his back. "Could have ended all of this right from the get-go. But not anymore. Can't do that now. Now?"

He flickered in place and bolted forward. He traversed the intervening distance between himself and Shang in the blink of an eye, several paces gone just like that. "Now all I can do is this level of shit." And then his saber flashed, a flare of vermillion that clashed against the matching blade of his opponent. Adam rebounded from the strike, spinning on one heel and brought in a second strike from the opposite direction."And that? Well that just makes me kinda mad, y'know?"

750 on the nose. Again. Starting to get weird here.

[Shang Tsung]

Whining?

The sorcerer parried an oncoming strike and used his leverage to stagger the child.

“[i}You[/i] are bitching to me about having to start from scratch?” Before Adam’s shitty little face could spit out a response, Shang belched a mouthful of flames at him. The faux human avoided the burning stream from striking him full on, but some of the fire scorched through one of his sleeves. As the youth smacked out the embers, the sorcerer stepped forward and drilled him with a kick square in the center of his face, smashing his spectacles into his pale flesh.

Adam hit the ground a few yards away, but his supernatural awareness still let him roll back and free from the path of an oncoming fireball. “Fucking bullshit.” The false child seethed as he brushed away some dirt and glass from the center of his face, creating a few small smears of crimson across his pallid features.

“You think you’re the only on to have lost part of themselves in this place?” Shang sneered as he stalked forward and swung the scintillating energy saber down at his foe’s face. Adam brought up his own weapon, and the two were left glaring at each other through the X created by their blades. “I spent a thousand years building my strength. One thousand years of defeated adversaries. One thousand years of victories. One thousand years of growing power.”

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” Adam asked as a faint smile spread across his face.

Before Shang could respond, his opponent deactivated his energy sword, causing the sorcerer to pitch forward. With a little too much spring in his step—too fast, doesn’t make sense—Adam rolled out from under his opponent, scrambled up to his feet, and swung his reactivated lightsaber across Shang’s chest twice in rapid succession.

The sorcerer howled as he stumbled backwards, his robes falling away to reveal a gruesome red-black slash in his chest bordered by scorched, bubbling flesh. Despite the heat of the weapon, only the edges of the wound had been burnt shut, and the deep red center started to ooze blood that hissed and sputtered the moment it touched the red-hot skin.

For his part, Adam winced at the sight of the man’s skin, which resembled microwaved plastic. “You should get that looked at.”

As Shang lifted his face to shout an insult at the petulant whelp, his opponent dashed forward and slammed—shoulder-first—into the older man’s chest. The impact threw the sorcerer into the thick snow with a poof of white dust, and another pained groan tore through the air as the immense cold burned against his exposed skin. It was a form of raw, animal instinct that spurned the downed warrior’s movements as he rolled onto his side and pulled his knees up under his body. Spatters of red and pink dotted the snow under Shang as he put a hand under the pitter-pattering flow of blood.

A few feet away, Adam twirled his lightsaber and started toward Shang, his movements too fast and erratic to follow. Unbeknownst to the approaching youth, there was a faint glimmer in the sorcerer’s ensanguined palm, and as the fake child rushed in to land a fatal blow, the sorcerer fell over and threw out his blood-drenched hand.

Adam Gaite recoiled in horror as the fistful of blood flew at his face, but the surprise gave way to legitimate terror when the fluids sparkled with white energy. As they neared the youth’s face, the fat droplets of shimmering blood erupted like tiny little bombs, some of them first spattering against Adam’s chest and a quickly thrown up forearm before exploding.

While none of the individual blasts were that strong, the amalgamated horde of blood-bombs was more than enough force to drive a stunned, battered Adam Gaite into the snow and leave him writhing as his torn flesh seethed in agony.

“Tell me how it feels.” Shang hissed as he rose from the ground.

Through blurred eyes, the youth watched as sparks of energy arced across the gruesome wounds on the sorcerer’s chest. The former monk’s right eye twitched as the heat burned shut the wounds, sealing them shut for the moment.

Although his knees wobbled, Adam made it to his feet. “Smells so terrible.”

Although he hated the child now more than ever, Shang begrudgingly accepted that there was truth in those smarmy words. The air around them was heavy with a foul stench close to that of undercooked barbeque.

[Roger Smith]

He'd been suspecting it from the very beginning, in the back of his head. But now it had been shoved, aggressively and in a fashion most impossible to ignore, right in his face. This guy wasn't like the other people he'd been shoved into a fight against. This guy was out for blood. And he had more than enough tricks to spill it.

"Man, I gotta ask..." Trying to ignore the pain and the cold biting at him in just shy of equal measure, he focused his blurred eyesight on what he sincerely hoped was the sorcerer. "How many more damn tricks do you have up your sleeves?"

Though Adam couldn't see it in the slightest, the former monk could only let the faintest of smiles creep onto his face. "Enough of them."

"Fuck you too," Adam snapped. But inwardly, he was panicking, just a little bit. He didn't really have much that he could really use as an offensive option against this guy; especially not while he could BARELY SEE HIM. The woes of glasses and their being so easily smashed just earned a huff of disgruntlement. He'd really need to do something about his shitty vision in the future.

But right now he had an angry kombatant to deal with.

"You're really kind of a jackass, y'know. Hitting a kid with glasses. In the face. You have any idea how much harder that makes this?" Almost immediately he waves one hand dismissively. "No wait don't answer that. Just remembered I don't really give a shit."

One step forward and Adam flickeres again, two steps forward and he disappeared again, bolting across the short distance between himself and the former monk in the space of a heartbeat. "S'up." He paused for just long enough to more than telegraph his attack, before making an almost lazy swipe with his blade. Take the bait. Take it.

Already having regained his feet, the crimson blade of the monk's energy saber arced up, clearly intending to bat aside the winded child's blade. But his blade met only empty air.

"Nope. Not quick enough, man." Ten feet straight up, deactivated saber in one hand, hovered Adam. Moving so quickly so many times this quick....man, that shit takes it out of you. He was doing his damnedest not to show just how exhausted he was already getting. How heavy his breathing was.How much he was shivering from pain and cold.

But Shang didn't get much of a chance to lay eyes on that, or much of anything else. All he got was a blur of red and gray as Adam flipped forward into an axe kick, the heel of his foot colliding with the bridge of the monk's nose.

The man was solid, and to his credit didn't get completely smashed into the frozen ground as Adam had been expecting — and kind of hoping for, in all honesty — but merely sent staggering and reeling from the impact, more blood flying freely from his face.

And as Adam landed, it was gingerly, and favoring one leg. Add one more thing to my ever-growing list of bright ideas. He grimaced all but hopping on one leg as he clipped his lightsaber back to his belt. "You just hold tight right there, now. I got something special for ya." And immediately as he spoke, the air around him blazed with a red glow. His eyes blazed with the same shade of red, whether a reflection or emanating from them it was impossible to tell. He raised his hands up in focus, bands of red light in a rainbow of shades erupting from the ground at his feet and spinning about his position.

"Haven't had to pull this one out in a long, long time...I guess that makes it special."

Glaring at the child, bloodied teeth clenched in irritation at his petulance, the former monk regained his feet. "Special, is it? How fascinating."

"You're god damn right." And then Adam thrust both palms outward, toward the sorcerer. The face of a clock appeared, the shade matching the bright red gear emblazoned on Adam's chest. And it, along with the flow of time, shattered.

His rifle came off his back, into his hand, and Adam was off. Twice he flew in a circle, and left a hailstorm of laser bolts at the ready. He slowly came to a halt where he'd started, and time lurched back into motion. And dozens of laser bolts hissed ominously at Shang.

750 words on the nose.....again.

Adam used Tier 1 Super attack: Flash Ring

[Shang Tsung]

Time fractured.

One moment, the creature masquerading as a child was before him, spouting off some nonsense about special attacks.

In the next instant, Adam Gaite was in the same spot, but his posture had changed just enough to be noticeable. If that wasn’t the real giveaway, the air around Shang was filled with laser bolts that held for a brief instant before hurtling down upon him.

Panic fell over Shang, but through the din of frantic chaos in his brain, a small speck of reason screamed to the forefront. The sorcerer threw out his forearms and stared in horror as the translucent bulwark shimmered to life above him. Like the rage of an angry god, the hailstorm of laser bolts crashed down against Shang Tsung, slamming viciously into the shield above his head.

Even though the blasts hit, flattened out, and fizzled away, the concussive impact seeped through the barrier. Each defended bolt sent a shockwave of pain down the sorcerer’s arms, and by the time the barrage petered out, his arms had barely any sensation left in them. The limbs drooped to his sides like limp noodles as he glanced across the frozen surface to Adam Gaite.

“Son of a…” The false youth muttered as he fumbled for his energy blade. “Where the hell are you hiding this bag of tricks? This shit has to be a mile deep…” Still with a spring in his step, Adam jolted across the ground, his body skipping from place to place like a corrupted video feed.

Try as he might, Shang failed to will himself into action as the child closed the gap and drilled the length of his crackling energy blade into the side of his abdomen. Even Adam seemed somewhat shocked as he stared up into the sorcerer’s glassy eyes and then back down to the scintillating sword. Had it really just been that easy?

A question formed on his lips as he looked back up at the man’s eyes, which had that far-away look one would expect to find in war veterans. “You oka—”

Shang’s mouth fell away and a wave of flames engulfed the youth.

Fresh screams rang out as the former monk’s opponent stumbled back and started to smack at his flesh. Although his arms hurt more than he ever wanted to admit, Shang lurched forward and threw a sloppy haymaker at the side of Adam’s flame-riddled head. The kid went down, and he stayed there, his focus on dousing the fire that hungered for his flesh. If not for pain and numbness, the sorcerer could have dashed forward and ended his opponent. On some level, it tortured him worse to know that he could do little but catch his breath as the petulant little creature was given time to recover.

The sound of Adam’s voice, even as hoarse as it was, caused Shang’s blood to boil. “Thank you, snow. You are my friend.” A few yards away, the youth was on his feet, and although pillars of steam wafted up from his shoulders, chest, and face, he had regained his composure. Blisters and patches of reddened flesh dotted his once snow-white face.

“We’re almost done here, aren’t we?” Adam muttered as he glanced over to his lightsaber.

Shang saw where he was looking and scowled. “Yes.” He muttered as he kicked the gadget across the snow to its owner. “Now pick it up.”

Even though his face was blistered and burnt, Adam still managed an expression of clear confusion. “…Okay?” He replied as he stooped down—eyes glued on his opponent—and reached for his weapon. As his partially numb fingers closed around the handle, he saw Shang suddenly flicker in an out of focus. A beat later, the sorcerer almost fell flat onto his face before catching himself with a knee and a palm.

For a split-second, Adam thought that his vision was just that bad without his glasses

Then he saw the grin on Shang’s previously agonized visage…

It was that same predatory smile that he hadn’t seen since the start of their little fight.

“Bag of tricks,” the sorcerer whispered as he used his other finger to point at the air above his opponent.

Eyes widening even before he looked, Adam tilted his head back and saw the very last thing he ever wanted to see.

A ring of laser bolts, frozen in stasis above him.

As the horrible reality set into his head, the bolts crashed down onto Adam Gaite.

Shang used Tier 1 Super Defense (Super Defense) = -1 SP
Shang mimicked Tier 1 Super Attack (Flash Ring) = -1 SP

[Shang Tsung]

With a yelp, Adam Gaite disappeared beneath the cacophonous onslaught of his own maneuver. Each bolt of energy that struck home caused the ground to shake beneath Shang’s feet, but in just a few moments, everything was over.

A cloud of dust and dirt hung low over the bare ground beneath the crumpled form of Adam Gaite. A groan escaped the youth’s throat as he rolled onto his side.

“Sorry,” Shang muttered as he walked over to the crumpled child. The sorcerer held up his hands and summoned the Day’suis in a flash of sunlight.

“About what?” Adam coughed.

“About you being a shitty god.”

Sneering from ear to ear, Shang slung the giant warhammer down onto Adam’s chest. There was a sickening crunch as ribs split into pieces and tore into his internal organs like a burst of ivory shrapnel. The boy’s eyes went wide as blood immediately starting to bubble of gurgle out of his shuddering mouth.

“Your soul is mine,” Shang whispered as he discarded the hammer and claimed his prize.