Chapter 10
Be Prepared
Hello,hellohelloI'mback!Thisbattlescenewaswrittenbyaguestwriter,myawesomeboyfriend!Whocringedatthecontentofthestorybutgamelywroteanawesomechapter.Thankhim,andguessthesong,inareview!Andnowonwiththestory.I'dsayitwasdefinitelyworththewait.
As Chase began to grin Jack launched himself out of his lap with a push of his foot that had been resting on the floor. A good burst of air lifted him high above the stairs leaving time for a backflip before landing gracefully in front of the stairs his tail swinging lazily behind him. It was after the third heartbeat of silence and inaction that the tension in the room began to truly sink into all combatants. It seemed that the monks didn't want to approach Jack for fear of involving Chase in their grudge match, and Jack didn't particularly feel like bodily launching himself into a 4v1 melee quite yet. Then again, he didn't exactly have all day and who was he to reject such a polite invitation to take initiative in the battle.
It was with an almost negligent flourish that Jack half lobbed/half pushed a barely flickering ball of fire in their general direction. The monks tensed, beginning to move through long ingrained defensive and evasive maneuvers before realizing that their timing would have been off had they gone through with what their instincts were telling them. Like, incredibly off. Like the orb, barely brighter than a candle, still wasn't even halfway to them, seemingly too busy taking the scenic route towards them to be bothered.
Kimiko, seeing such a pitiful example of her own personal element, couldn't have kept the sneering smirk off her face if she tried, "You really call that a fireball?" she called out while preparing to show this upstart what it really means to play with fire.
Jack relished the opportunity to steal that smirk right off her face with his response. He reversed his previous flourish, but this time, instead of a ponderously puttering pile of pitiful pyres, a great tempest of highly oxygenated air leapt from his glove and roared towards the monks. "Of course not," he said, the sarcastic superiority in his voice somehow fighting its way through the rushing winds that were trying to muffle him, "this is a fire storm."
It figures that it would be the dragon of wind that would figure out what was happening first. "Jump. Now." The command came, crisp and urgent, and Raimundo's fellow combatants found their bodies following his words before they were even aware of why. Of course, watching the fleeting flicker of flames suddenly expand to engulf their previous position as it shot by, leaving scorch marks on the floor and bursting into near firework brightness against the wall, made them very appreciative of their current, non char broiled, state.
Though it seemed that the dragon of wind wasn't done showing off his leadership prowess yet. "Clay, Flapjack him," came yet another command with the same sense of crisp authority. Then, with a swiftness and coordination that begged Jack's begrudging respect, they connected feet, moved into a pair of strangely symmetrical jumping squats, and rocketed each other further into their respective elements. Clay reached the ground right foot first with a thunderous crash and, in a move that had to have been taken straight out of a Saturday morning children's cartoon, launched Jack into the air as if he were an albino, kitten-eared, pancake. Not only that, but Kimiko and Omi were already filling his flight path through the air with a plethora of icicles and fireballs. Really, the fact that he was heading straight toward to a smirking Raimundo with a maelstrom encased sword held above his own head was just icing on his metaphorical cake of elemental pain. Looks like someone got tired of losing all the time. Hell, if he actually took all of those hits then he might really lose.
And that, quite simply, wouldn't do. The attacks from Omi and Kimiko were simultaneously the most urgent and the most simple to deal with. A small geyser for the fireballs and a minor conflagration for the icicles reduced both into a thick mist in a matter of moments. Jack considered himself particularly crafty for using the recoil from his own attacks to push his flight path away from Raimundo, even as the young dragon moved to maintain his attack position. He considered himself even craftier for using the mist from his defensive attacks as a smokescreen to force the assault of fire and ice to end before the monks had an unfortunate case of friendly fire.
But as much as Jack enjoyed patting himself on that back for coming up with plans on the fly, he knew that he would always be at his craftiest when inventing and creating. The shiny, new toys on his hands and feet were testament enough to that fact, especially the dozen or so surprises hidden within them. And Raimundo was being so kind by volunteering to be a test dummy; it'd be rude of his to not take his offer.
The first warning that Raimundo had that their new combo move wasn't working out to plan was when Kimiko's and Omi's attacks had been neutralized before doing any damage or at least providing a decent distraction. The second warning was when he realized that he was all but isolated from his team by the white mist created by the clashing attacks. If there had been a third warning, he probably would have more strongly considered abandoning the combo to regroup with his team. But with no such warning forthcoming, he waited in position to bring the full force of a typhoon down on his opponent's head and send him crashing into the earthen cage that Clay would undoubtedly be constructing below. In retrospect, he probably should have considered it a warning when he saw the apprentice closing his eyes as tightly as he could.
The muscles in his arms tensed in preparation to drop a storm hammer on his opponent when, in a flicker of movement, he saw the mysterious apprentice bring his hands together as far away from his own body as possible. Only, instead of the elemental or martial attack that he was expecting and moving to deflect, he found himself stunned by a nova of light and sound. His eyes refused to show him anything other than a splotch covered landscape of white, and he could barely even hear his own thoughts above the attacking army of bells ringing inside his head. He tried to get back his balance in the air but the world kept changing where the direction of 'up' was located and 'down' simply seemed to be on an extended vacation to Sucks-to-be-you town, Virginia.
Meanwhile, Rai wasn't the only dealing with the effects of sensory overload. Jack had just learned a very useful lesson, that while his new body came with a lot of new strengths, it also seemed to come with some new weaknesses, like a heightened sensitivity to sound. He'd have to make a note to make something later to deal with that little problem, maybe a set of kitty ear plugs or something. He'd also have to test to see if any of his other senses had changed too much and at what ranges would they become debilitating, but that was a research topic for later. For now though, Jack would simply have to deal with the oddly rhythmic ringing in his ears from the backlash of his attack for the rest of the fight. On the bright side, if the aimless listing of Raimundo was any indication, then the flashbang feature in his gloves was even more effective that he projected.
Jack moved in to knock Raimundo out of the fight for good only to find himself beset by a furious flurry of attacks in his general direction. He was forced to dodge for only a moment before retreating and watching curiously as Raimundo searched around for him. It was then that Jack watched ar Raimundo simply seemed to lose his mind, swinging his sword around randomly while constantly unleashing gust of wind that could only laughably be called attacks. While Jack had no idea why he would be wasting his energy like that, he knew enough not to let an enemy combatant finish pulling off an unknown plan. As quickly as he could, he aimed both sets of gloves and boots before firing the widest streams of freezing water that he could. The fact that Raimundo still had the presence of mind to even attempt to dodge was, quite frankly, ridiculous, but with neither sight nor sound on his side, it was only a matter of time before he fell like a bird with their wings clipped.
Jack revved up another, more focused, blast of ice water to make sure that I stayed out of the fight only to watch it get intercepted by a column of equally icy liquid coming from the smallest dragon. That was curious, he shouldn't be able to see past the mist cover….that now had massive holes in it. Oh. Ohhhhhhh. That sneaky bastard! Raimundo had been trying to clear away the mist even though he couldn't see so that his friends could give him some backup. And judging by the giant boulders that Clay seemed all too happy to be heaving at him right now, his plan had managed to work.
Despite that minor setback, even as Jack found himself dodging boulder after bone-breaking boulder, he couldn't keep a smirk from creeping onto his face. By now, the monks had to be starting to realize just how bad their strategic position was. Their leader would be insensate for the remainder of the battle, and without their dragon of wind-that aforementioned leader-their ability to challenge his aerial superiority was limited, Omi seemed unwilling to fire water at him from a distance without Raimundo to easily remove the mist that his counter attack would make, and last but not least, Kimiko seemed to be busy with defrost duty for poor Raimundo. There is a reason why taking out the leader first is such a powerful battle tactic, and the monks were learning that lesson the hard way. Now if only he could get this annoying ringing out of his head; it was starting to sound worryingly like humming, a very familiar humming at that. Even Clay's continued attempts to throw the entirety of the earth's crust as him was beginning to sound like drum beats to his poor, battered ears.
Deciding to end this debacle before it devolved into a full on musical number in his head, Jack lifted both gauntleted hands above his head a brought them down on the nearest boulder with the concerted effort of countless tiny force manipulators. The effect of which convinced said boulder to stop it's bird impersonation and try its nonexistent hand at emulating a rain storm...of rocks...many of which were sharp. It seemed that the monks were in luck; however, since Clay had packed an umbrella, read a freaking massive wall of stone, big enough for all of them to share. Jack could have sworn that he heard Clay's voice yelling something after that but his ear were a too busy being distracted by annoyingly catchy tunes to catch his words. Though considering the earthen wall the monks had been hiding behind suddenly became a flying barrage of screw-everything-in-that-general-direction, he felt that he could make a pretty good guess. Probably something along the lines of, "Two and play this here game, partner," or something equally texan of him.
It was only the combination of blessed, blessed gravity and just how high he'd been hovering in the air that allowed him to get off a hasty gust of wind to redirect most of the stone shrapnel away from him. Even with that defensive move, some managed to slip through and he was forced to protect his face and body with his arms and legs. The hits to the tip of his left kitty ear and right shin stung quite a lot. The hit to his pride stung quite a bit worse. He'd wanted to play with his food for a bit longer but if too many more surprises like that came up he might manage to actually lose this fight. It saddened him to admit it, but Jack conceded that playtime would have to end early. Oh well, he'd have to make sure that this finale was stunning.
Clay had already set up an even larger wall and launched a barrage of sharp silicates and massive minerals that Jack simply swept away with an outright tsunami of super chilled water. Clay provided his team with yet another earthen umbrella to weather yet another elemental storm behind, except this time, the storm never let up. Jack just kept on pumping out gallon after gallon of liquid pain onto their walled position as he slowly approached the ground behind the cover of his assault. He considered delivering some kind of one liner or gloating a bit but honestly, he was sore, had a headache, and he could swear that was seeing Chase's warrior servants doing a musical dance number every time he blinked because of the insufferable song that was stuck in his head. So there was no preamble, no gloating one liner, no warning at all. One moment Jack's machine covered feet touched the wet ground, and the next moment the monks screamed.
It didn't take long for the monks to figure out what had happened. Clay and Omi had been ready to unleash devastation on their opponent as soon as their opponent's attack ended. Kimiko had even finished thawing out Raimundo, and was well and truly fired up, pun fully intended. Omi had declared that they would leave Raimundo behind the safety of Clay's wall and rush Chase's apprentice from three different directions simultaneously, and it had been agreed upon as simple yet effective by all members with their hearing still intact. Omi had even come up with a clever use for all the excess water around them and was in the middle of gathering it when he noticed something off with it. It was oddly difficult to freeze. And then their muscles rebelled against their bodies, locking up and spasming randomly and painfully. Even though they'd all been focused on preparing their individual assaults, even though they'd been caught completely by surprise, even though they hadn't even been able to see their opponent when they'd been attacked, they all-even Raimundo-knew instantly what had happened. After all, there is no feeling in the world quite like electricity running through your blood.
Meanwhile, Jack wasn't just dawdling around and waiting for his opponents to recover, not that he'd ever completely stopped channeling electricity through the water. He'd decided to walk a circuit around the room, both to make sure that everyone as well and truly defeated to prevent any surprise attacks, and to make sure that they need any medical attention since electricity can be rather volatile at times. The first to be reached Clay who, as the closest to him during his surprise attack, was quite well done but still kicking strong. Guess they grow em sturdy in Texas, not so sturdy that an extra zap wouldn't knock him all the way out but very sturdy indeed. Next was Raimundo who seemed to have drifted off into sweet unconsciousness, an electrified boot to the head made sure he stayed that way, but he seemed to be fine enough. Kimiko had enough fire left in her to make some very disparaging statements about his parentage and his personal life; she got an extra big zap. Omi, as the most likely to have found some way out of his attack, got two electrified prongs lodged in his foot from a safe distance. Possibly a bit anticlimactic, but better safe than sorry.
With all of the monks officially out of commission Jack turned to his mentor and bowed as the "music" in his head crescendoed and finally came to a stop. Now, he grinned at his mentor, it was time to take his prize.