Chapter 11- Ambush

"So, how much farther?" Drake asked. He had taken to keeping track of the time Matt had left to live due to his heart condition. After Julie's duel, he only had about 42 hours, 22 minutes.

"Not too much, but we should take it slowly." Bentz said. "It's a rough path, not very accommodating."

"I would say take it slow for a different reason." Matt said. "I would say to avoid any potential ambushes, as we know that some fiends probably have reported back to their superiors. There are probably several set up around here… like, over there." He threw three kunai at three fiends who had just jumped out of some trees next to the path. All three died before they got anywhere near them.

"How do you have such a fast reaction time?" Keith wondered. "And also, you seem to rarely be surprised. You have remarkable 360° awareness. How do you do it?"

"Well, I have to have a fast reaction time to be a ninja, if your slow as a ninja, you die very fast. And I have that ability to feel through the air around me, feel vibrations in the ground, and 'see' in a different way than through my eyes."

"Oh yeah, I forgot." Keith said, and they walked on. Several (horribly failed) ambush attempts, they were finally within visible range of the docks. There was only one ship, and it was surrounded by fiends.

"That wasn't too bad." Drake said.

"Why does that make me feel uneasy?" Matt said.

"It would seem that anything being easy makes you uneasy." Keith said.

"Maybe…" Matt looked around. "Okay, how should we go about this?"

"I don't know. Usually you make up all the plans." Drake said.

"Yeah, that question was semi-rhetorical." Matt scratched his chin. "Hmm… there's a lot of fiends… and Shadow Hounds. Not an intelligent fiend to be seen…"

"Is that normal?" Julie said.

"No, usually a group this size has a leader." Keith said.

"Yes, that can't mean anything good." Matt said. "Let's see… I don't want to split up, with the threat of a Shadow picking one of us out. So, we'll all have to attack in one large group… and that's a problem since one of those fiends has a rocket launcher. One shot is enough to toast us all… that's a huge problem. So… let's see…" Matt closed his eyes and thought some more.

Drake heard a twig snap. He turned and saw a large procession of fiends making there way through the forest. "Crap!" He shouted, and capped the fiend in the head. The brute went down, but more fiends came. "Guys! They're trying to ambush us through the forest!"

"We realize that! They're everywhere!" Keith said, hammering away on his SAW. Fiends were pouring out of the forest. There were dogs and fiends everywhere. Drake spotted a few shadows following the fiends out and reminded himself to keep on his toes. Then he realized that surviving the onslaught was probably a better thing to focus on.

It was as if the entire fiend army had been hidden in the forest and set on them. Drake couldn't remember a harder fight in the expedition of the previous year. The fiends came at him from every direction, he was lucky to go five minutes without getting horribly maimed. The noise was so great that Drake couldn't distinguish his friends' voices from the roars of the fiends. One of the fiend's got him across the face, leaving three fine scratches across his cheek. He clubbed the fiend with the muzzle of his rifle and shot it twice. The fiends continued to press in on all sides. Drake locked in a new clip.

How many of them are there?!? Drake thought. I have to have killed at least eighty by now, but they keep coming! Drake shot down another fiend and found Julie. Her left sleeve had been torn to shreds, and blood was flowing from that arm. Evidently she had been using it to guard herself.

"Are you okay?" Drake asked.

"Yeah! Don't get distracted!" Julie said. They fought next to each other for a long time, killing fiend after fiend. However, sheer numbers began to overwhelm them, and they could no longer keep them at bay. Just when they thought they were gone, Matt came lurching past and knocked all the fiends flat with a series of very strange movements. He was moving around in a very abrupt and random way. The fiends, completely and totally confused, were no match as he killed them all. After he was done, he straightened up and smiled.

"Hahahaha… that was fun." Matt said. Keith and Bentz came over. Bentz was bleeding the least, Keith must have been attempting to defend him, and doing very well at it, since he was bleeding quite badly. Keith was wrapping his arms in bandages that he must have gotten from Matt. Matt just kept laughing.

"What did you do?" Drake asked. "What was with all the lurching around and stuff?"

"That was my Drunken Fist!" Matt said.

"Drunken… what?" Julie asked.

"Drunken fist! It's a fun fighting style that utilizes drunken movements to confuse your enemies! And I must say, it worked very well right there!"

"We can see that." Keith said, looking at all the dead fiend corpses. "But why would you learn something like that?"

"Because Drunken Fist is so much fun!"

Keith sighed. "Oh well, whatever. So, what do we do now?"

Matt smiled. "We kill the fiends that are trying to walk up the path behind us!" He turned around and fell back into his Drunken Fist stance, wavering unsteadily on the spot. Drake reloaded his AK, and so did Keith and Julie.

"Let's go." Drake said, and turned to face the fiends. The army wasn't nearly as large as the one that had just ambushed and almost killed them all. Drake began to unload on the fiends as they came closer. Keith and Julie did likewise. Matt wobbled into the crowd and began to punch and kick the fiends with incredible force, enough to force his fist or foot through them.

There was a small explosion. Drake looked in the direction of the noise and saw a rocket fly past his face. It exploded a few feet behind him and catapulted him into the air. One of the fiends caught him around the stomach with one hand and smiled, then began to squeeze. Drake dropped his rifle, cursed, and tried to pry the fiend's fingers off of him. The fiend smiled and squeezed harder. Drake could barely breathe. The fiend continued to squeeze and Drake spat out some blood as the pressure built up.

This is it, I'm going to die! He thought. I can't stop him…

Just as Drake felt his ribs were about to collapse, Matt lurched past and shoved his fist through the fiend's face. The fiend let go and Drake fell to the ground. Matt dropped down next to him.

"Are you okay?" He shouted. His leg shot out and crushed a fiend's skull.

"Yeah!" Drake wheezed "I'll be fine!" He picked up his rifle. Matt nodded and ran off again, kicking and punching all the way. Drake stood up shakily, and cut down a fiend that was running toward him with a hail of bullets. By that time most of the fiends had died. The rocket launcher fiend was still alive, protected behind a row of other fiends. He was loading another rocket. Drake began to back away, firing all the way. He found Julie reloading a little farther back.

"Drake! Are you okay? I saw what happened!" She shouted over the noise of the battle.

"Yeah! Get ready to move, that fiend is dangerous with that rocket launcher." Drake said. The fiend had finished loading a new rocket. He drew a bead on Drake and Julie. Julie's eyes grew wide. "GET OUT OF THE WAY!" Drake shouted, and shoved Julie off to the side, out of the rocket's path. Drake tried to dive out of the way, but he didn't move fast enough to completely avoid the blast radius, and was caught and thrown a little farther. Fortunately, it didn't hurt as much as the first one and he managed to land better.

Drake leveled his rifle on the fiends guarding the rocket fiend. He had to take out the beast before it could fire again. He wasn't sure that he could dodge another rocket, or that the fiend would miss. Just as he was about to take a shot, all the fiends were filled with shurikens. Matt dropped to the ground in front of the rocket fiend. Then he put a vast amount of kunia knives into its thick hide.

At that moment Keith had finished killing the last fiend elsewhere. "We did it." He said. "We won."

"Yeah." Bentz said. He had been hiding a long ways back and had come back when the number of fiends had been reduced.

"What are you talking about?" Julie asked. "You didn't do anything."

"This is true."

"All right, good job." Matt said. "Anyone hurt?"

"No, I'm good." Keith said. Apart from the fact that his arm completely wrapped in bandages that were slowly turning red, he was in good condition.

"I'm okay." Drake said. The scratches on his cheek burned like hell, but he hadn't been seriously injured.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Julie said. Drake had failed to push her hard enough, and she was a little burnt-looking on her left side, but she had avoided any other injuries.

"Okay, that's good." Matt said. "Let's go spring Flynn."

"Not so fast!" came a voice from behind them. They turned to face an intelligent fiend who was facing them with his arms crossed.

"What do you want?" Keith said.

"I want to duel you!" The fiend said, and pointed at Keith.

"Fine then, let's go!" Keith said, and activated his duel disk.

"Let's duel!"