Chapter 37: The House of Fun
-REGENCY ACADEMY SOUTH SPORTS FIELD-
Biz and Bo could have been the only two people in the world. Their little standoff consumed everything. Anne, Lorelei, and whatever was left of Lei and Devin all faded away from their perceptions.
Neither had made a single move yet, and they were already engrossed in their family duel. To them, the exchange had already begun. The exchange in their heads, that was. Each probed the other for weaknesses. They simulated lines of attack, running through complex trees of fists and feet.
Before the fight had begun in earnest, Biz was already sweating. Just trying to stand up mentally to his uncle was physically exhausting. How many openings had he thought of in his head? And how many of those had resulted in near-instant defeat? He couldn't tell you the exact number for either, but he at least knew that both numbers were the same.
Bo was looking at Biz more like how you would look at an exotic bird that landed in your back garden. His expression was… amused and intrigued. The titanic clown was also thinking of countless openings, but he only pruned them on what he thought would be the most fun.
And he had an answer. Something that forced Biz to throw all of his ideas out of the window.
Bo held one arm up like he was punching the sky. His bracer… that's what Bo's attention was drawn to. It glimmered metallically. Bo made a rapid clicking sound with his mouth which picked up the pace until it became a buzzing roar.
His hand spasmed, and from the concentric holes which surrounded the front of his bracer, twelve thin spikes were shot out in quick succession, each one going so high into the sky that Biz couldn't make them out anymore.
"Don't worry… Kid… I'm not breaking any rules… I'm not using anything as a weapon… And I'm not using my quirk… Well… Not on you… anyway…"
Thunk.
The sound of a spike sinking halfway into the ground. Biz flinched and protected the top of his head the same way anyone would when deadly spikes are falling from the sky and you cant see where they are coming from.
Thunk.
Another came down, not far off from the first. Then another. In all, twelve of them fell down. And when Biz observed their landing locations, he noticed a rather apparent pattern. It was a ring. Bo had made a ring for them. The spikes denoted the area in which their duel would take place and the threshold that none other should cross lest the honour of their fight be called into question.
Bo wasn't quite done. In fact, he hadn't even gotten to the fun part yet.
He clapped, loudly and clearly.
"House... Of... Fun…!"
Intense whistling of air like a boiling kettle immediately surrounded Biz. He looked all around him, and from each of the spikes that had been buried in the ground, a whiz of gas was shooting out from the hole that they left. Then, Biz noticed something else. The ground beneath him… it was losing solidity. It was becoming like a balloon. Bouncy and inflated. Soft and elastic. Biz found himself stumbling around.
"It's like… A bouncy castle…!" Exclaimed Biz, struggling to stay standing. "An incomplete or sufficiently slowed down 'deflation' can change somethings 'physical properties' without 'destroying' it…"
"Hey, that's bullshit! He has to be cheating! You motherfucker!" Anne growled.
"Stay out of it!" Bo warned. "He… He hasn't broken any rules yet…"
"Fuck that! I said-"
"I told you to stay out of it!"
No matter how much Anne protested, there would be no stopping their fight. It was already in motion, and couldn't be forced to a stop. It simply had too much weight.
Bo began to bounce. He jumped up and down on the trampoline-like earth delightedly. With each rise and fall, he sent thick shockwaves through the rubbery ground. Each own bowled over Biz one after the other, destroying his balance even further. Bo was laughing hysterically in the middle of doing his acrobat routine. A triple front flip finished it off, and he hit the ground. By pulling in and stretching out his legs in rhythm with how the terrain reverberated, he was able to instantly cancel out any vertical momentum that he had. It was exactly how professionals did it. Biz had to remind himself that Bo wasn't just a master fighter, but a jack of all trades.
"Alright… I had my fun… Let's go…!"
Bo fell upon Biz like the shadow of a storm cloud falls over a sunny picnic. He was sudden, huge, and cast a dark shadow. Biz tried to dodge backwards, but his feet deflected themselves off of the ground. Bouncy bullshit. Bo pulled back a gargantuan hand.
Bo's fist was like a celestial body. It looked like it was going slow from a human frame of reference, but that was only because it was so big and so heavy. In reality, it was terrifyingly fast aswell. Biz was bowled over easily. His ribs were cracked like the crust of a creme brulee. Blood rushed up and out of the orifices of his face like he was a ketchup packet. A spattering from his mouth, a squirt from his nose and even a dribbling from his tear ducts.
He bounded over the rubbery earth, constantly bouncing and never finding his feet. The only thing to stop him was the perimeter of spikes that Bo had layed down. Biz knocked them down like bowling pins.
Biz was dripping red from his face like he'd dunked his head in a bucket of it just prior. He rolled and wriggled like a writhing maggot. No matter how hard the boy tried to plant his feet, they bounced right back and he was laid on his back.
Bo approached merrily. He sprung up and came down foot first onto Biz's chest. He seethed in pained anger, grinding his teeth. The younger fighter tried to wrench Bo's foot off of him by striking his leg, but he didn't have the strength to move the giant, especially not from this position.
Most of the force of the stomp was absorbed by the springy texture of the battlefield. This was a small blessing, as it stopped Biz from being killed almost instantly. Instead, he was pushed down into the straining and bulging ground, absorbed by it almost. Bo put more weight on his foot, leaning forward more and more. He was putting pressure on Biz. Closing his lungs and pushing bits of broken rib into them to make them burst open.
"Do… You… Yield…?" Bo asked. Biz couldn't say yes even if he wanted to. Speaking was impossible. Maybe, if he wanted to speed up the process of his own being killed, he could scream. Other than that, the only sound he could make was an unholy devilish rasping. Like a mad zombie. Biz continued to thrash like an undead. Maybe it was that he was already dead, and it was just a matter of time before Bo's titanic boot squeezed the last of the life out of him.
Anne's knees trembled. She usually could get behind bloodshed and violence. Shocking her with gore or brutality was impossible. So, it wasn't the guttural ruthlessness of Bo's attacks which was making her shake.
She was vibrating with rage.
How dare he? This… villain… he came into HER school and… and he…That boy was HERS to beat up! Nobody else's! She was going to cut his throat right open. She was going to storm right over there and...
Biz's head flopped backwards, and Anne stopped in her tracks. He was… looking at her. His head was bent so that he saw behind him. Even in his position, he was wearing a big, goofy smile. Even though the whole area around his mouth was smeared with blood and dirt. His hair was messy and his eyes were almost white.
He raised one hand slowly and made a gesture that pacified Anne in an instant.
'O.K'.
He was… ok?
"I… Will ask again… Do… You… Yield...?"
Biz faced his grin toward Bo, who was just as surprised to see it. The man felt a tug at his leg, and the ground was suddenly falling away from him. It fell away until it spun all the way around and caught him by the back.
The rubbery texture of the ground enveloped him, his weight pulling on it until it elastically sent him back up. He was on his feet as quickly as he had fallen, but with one key difference. Biz was back up aswell.
"He hooked… My back leg… He wrapped both of his legs around it… and pulled it out from under me…"
Anne had seen just the same thing. She was just as baffled.
"But how? His footing and his weight combined should've made it impossible to budge him, especially from Biz's position…"
Biz rubbed his chin. He pointed an accusing finger at Bo and smirked cockily.
"I know what you're thinking right now! Its something like… 'how could he have knocked me over! yadda-yadda 'footing' yadda-yadda 'weight' yadda-yadda…' right?"
"..." Bo bit his lip.
"I figured the secret out! The secret for fighting in this stupid bouncy castle shit…" Biz said, casually backflipping and turning around in midair as he constantly bounced at ever-increasing heights. "It's like fighting in low gravity… weight doesn't mean shit, and what's more important than 'footing' is 'balance'!"
"So… He doesn't need to beat Bo in weight, he just needs to tip his balance to send him over…?" Anne realised.
"He doesn't even need… to throw off my balance by a lot… the terrain will exacerbate any loss of balance into a fall…" Bo thought.
"Listen, Unc, you had the advantage on hard ground, but if you think you can beat me in 'balance', then your head is as full of air as your balloons… I was born on a trampoline, you want some of this? I'll give it to ya'."
"Born on a trampoline…? Oh yes… I think I was there for that…"
Biz folded himself up like a frog and ran leaping. He sped up after every step, the elastic force adding to his velocity. Despite all his momentum, he could turn on a dime. He ran a circle around Bo.
Bo spun around and swung with the back of his fist, but he was milliseconds too slow. Biz touched down right in his blindspot.
"Ceaser Style: Trampolinists Flying Knee!"
Biz soared like a hawk. Bo picked the wrong time to turn his head. It snapped back on impact with a sickening crunch. Bo felt his face fill up with blood. His sinuses were flooded with it. He tasted iron on his tongue. He didn't feel pain, of course, only the numb warmness of fluid flowing through him.
The force of the flying knee, when exerted on his highest appendage, sent the most vertical torque through him as was possible. Of course, he fell right on his back, but before Biz could capitalize on his prone position, he bounced right back up to standing before Biz even touched the ground.
Bo's younger touched down with both feet at the same time, set shoulders width apart. Immediately, he screamed and fell to one side. His kneecap. Something was deathly wrong.
"Did… That hurt… Kiddo?" Bo asked, faking concern.
"I hit you… You fucking wanker…" Seethed Biz, holding his knee.
"Did you… Really…? Perhaps you thought… That you were hitting my head… with your knee… When what really happened… Was that I hit your knee… With my head…"
"How the hell is that supposed to work? They both hit each other at the same time!" Anne thought.
Bo, almost like he anticipated Anne's question, pointed to his own face.
"The brow… It's the thickest area of bone… on your face… And it's right below the thin and vulnerable temple… One of them is the best area on the skull to strike… and the other is the worst… With simple… Predictable attacks… like yours… Switching them at the last moment… Is simple…"
"Fine then…" Biz said, sinking down to one knee. He was looking vulnerable. "Come at me if you're gonna…"
Bo took a half a step forward before he felt it. His body folded in half, and the entire world melted. His brain rattled in his head like a set of novelty teeth. He had lost the ability to discern up from down and to discern his hands from his feet.
Biz roared, pushing through the pain of his fractured knee cap. Of course, Bo realised, his goal was shaking his brain from the start. It was an attack that could make a man reel without pain. Despite Bo's reversal, the technique had succeeded.
His nephew was coming in hot.
Bo didn't know which part of his body he could move. He didn't know where his hands were, or his feet, or if he could even ball up a fist. It would take another moment for his brain to stop shaking. So, instead of launching a simple cross counter, Bo was left with no other choice but to throw his entire body.
Bo came out like a human rockslide, inertia directing his limbs to wrap themselves around Biz. Biz stopped short of his uncle, and he jumped. Straight up. He soared once again, it was higher up than any person that Anne had seen go without a quirk.
Bo missed. He was too slow. Slow… Slow… Slow…
Something was wrong with him. It wasn't his brain, either. He stumbled to his knees. He had to time his next move carefully. He held his palm right infront of his face and…
SMACK.
A sobering blow shook him. One strike made his brain shake back and forth, and another at the perfect time cancelled out that momentum and made it stand still. He recovered from the rattling.
Just in time for Biz's next attack.
The human species comes from the trees, and for the longest time, they were too heavy to be hunted by any kind of bird. With their front-facing, deep-set eyes, they are uniquely disadvantaged in one area.
They don't look up. They can, but they don't. Their natural blind spot. It was directly above their head.
Biz came down just as Bo remembered to account for that little detail.
Biz's entire body weight, plus the force of gravity, plus the force from his last-second drop kick added on top of all that. All of it was aimed squarely at the top of Bo's head. Bo tucked his head in and covered the back of his neck with his hands…
"Ceaser Style: Trapezists Dropkick!"
CRACK.
Bo lurched forward like an ancient oak tree being blown over in a typhoon. Biz's dropkick had hit him square in the nape. The damage to his neck was likely severe. He was keeling over from physical trauma. Biz had taken him out with that, hadn't he?
Or was that too optimistic?
"Rough… and… Tumbling…"
Bo tucked in during his fall. His spin sped up, and his head went all the way around, scraping the earth before righting itself in an upright position. He looked… fine. No worse for wear at all. It was as if the front flip that he'd just done had miraculously healed him.
"I know… what you're thinking… boy…" Bo said.
"What?"
"You are wondering… How I'm alright…? Well... the truth is… You might have thought you hit me… But really… I 'dodged' it…"
"Dodged?" Cried Biz incredulously. "My ass! I hit you square! I felt it!"
"No… Child… What you felt… Was illusory…" Bo smiled. "Allow me to explain… When you struck me… I felt your… 'roughness'... and I… Cooperated… with it… I 'tumbled' away... moving in the same direction… at the same speed… Which means that the force of your impact… Was essentially… zero…"
"So-"
"That's right… You struck… Empty air…"
"He absorbed the whole thing… with a forward roll?"
"Just what I fucking needed… Another zany technique…"
Biz was sick of it by now. He just unleashed the strongest blow in his repertoire, in the hopes of making his uncle shut up. He made a mighty leap and put his knee forward. The other knee, this time, and he was going to aim for the neck. No more tricks.
"Ceaser Style: Trampolinists Flying Knee!"
"Rough… and… Tumbling…!"
Bo let it hit him. At the moment of impact, he moved with the force. It sent him backwards, so that was the way that he went. He flew away from Biz through the air, spinning as he did so. When he touched down on the soft, pillowy ground, his momentum was absorbed. He popped right back up masterfully. Another successful technique. Biz looked like an idiot. He was getting beaten by pratfalls and jester tricks. He could strange something right about now.
"So… He's using that spinning motion… and the texture of the battlefield… to absorb Biz's attacks?" Thought Anne, who was just coming to grips with it herself.
Biz struck and struck again. Everything he did, Bo rolled away from him like a buffoon. He gave Biz the runaround. None of his attacks had any impact. Bo might as well have been invincible.
How.
How was he going to win?
Bo was thinking the same thing, funnily enough. Of course, in order to win a fight, you have to hit back rather than just avoid getting hit.
Bo thought that he knew just the thing.
"Wheel… Of… Fortune…"
Bo started to spin. Quantum noise rang around in his ears. His moves… Unpredictable. His strikes… Powerful.
Biz couldn't take any more of them. And one was coming his way.
It could have been boxing. It could have been lethwei or capoeira or whatever. It didn't matter. Biz couldn't block it. He couldn't dodge it. That was the point of the technique, right? It was the one that beat Lei. It was looking like the one that would beat him.
Bo's fist was inching closer to his face in slow motion. Biz's life flashed before his eyes.
He was… He was very young. Still a baby, in his vision. There was a man holding him. A man he recognized only from photographs.
He was thick and bulky in build. He had a short stout neck with bulging muscular shoulders and arms as thick as tree trunks. He had a healthy amount of fat on him. It was the build of a man who wrestled bears in the mountains.
The man was covered in faded tattoos. Boxing gloves on his biceps. A serpent snaking its way around his breast. An anchor, because why not. On one hand, a heart, and on the other, a skull. The ink could barely be noticed from under the jungle of hair that covered him top to toe.
He had a kind, jovial and puffy face. Short facial hair that was brown but going grey at the ends. Narrow, beady eyes like a giant grazing mammal. He was only wearing a pair of worn cargos in Biz's memory. He knew who this man was intuitively.
Billy Smith Ceaser. His grandfather. In his vision, his grandfather was speaking. Biz couldn't reply back. He was a baby, probably. He figured because he'd only met the man once as an infant. That was before he had to flee the country.
"Look at you!" Said Billy. "You're a strong one, aren't ya? I can tell just by lookin' in yer' eyes. You're not gonna let anyone give you shit when you're older. You're tough. Just like yer' grandad…"
Biz laughed. That didn't exactly turn out right, did it? Billy laughed for a little bit and then said one more thing.
"You're gonna get anythin' you want, ain't that right?"
And that was all he remembered. That last comment, it wasn't a prediction. The way that his grandad had said it. It felt more like a demand. Soft, but authoritative. It was… a challenge.
Yes, yes he was. That's exactly right. If Biz saw something he wanted, he was gonna take it in his hands. He was tough. Just like his grandad.
Bo's punch connected beautifully with Biz's face. He went back.
And he spun. He shifted backwards. He let the force get eaten away by the ground. He cooperated.
"What… Did… He… Just… Do…?" Bo thought. It was… a fluke, right?
Bo did it again.
"Wheel… of… Fortune…"
"Wheel… of… Fortune…!"
"WHEEL… OF… FORTUNE…!"
It wasn't a fluke. Biz. He'd taken it from him.
"What did you call that technique again? 'Rough and Tumbling'? I didn't see the point at first, but now I think I get it," said Biz. "Although, its less like 'dodging' and more like 'runnin' away' in my humble opinion. But as long as it works, right?"
Bo's lip trembled. A minute sign of emotion which penetrated the exterior performance that he always put on. His face, as soon as it had changed, looked just as normal. The same dumb smile.
"Not… Bad…" Bo said. "That was… My ultimate technique… And you beat it with a technique… That I showed you…"
"Hey, its all caesar style, right? If I know enough of the moves, I can figure out how any new ones work just by applying the same logic to it, can't I?"
"You… are right…" Bo admitted. How remarkable this child was…
But something was bothering him. He felt like he was getting weaker. All throughout the battle. There were attacks that he was sure that he should have landed, but just barely missed. Biz seemed just a mote faster than him. But that couldn't be. He had seen how Biz moved at the start of their battle. It was like the boy moved in slow motion.
He was exceptional. But not that exceptional. Something else was wrong. It didn't take Bo much thinking to find out. Biz looked on as his opponent's face started to sink.
"It's regrettable… But I've come to the conclusion… That I don't have much time left…" Bo groaned.
"What ever do you mean?" Asked Biz smugly.
"The drug… The one that the lady from before injected me with… I can feel it taking hold… Its been slowing me down… this entire battle… I'm not one for making excuses… But I think you owe a lot to that woman… In terms of how you are faring right now…"
"So what?" Biz inquired.
"So… It is time that I got desperate…"
Bo took a stance. A feral, beast-like posture. He inhaled and howled like a wolf at the moon. The great bellowing howl hurt Biz's ears to listen to. Then, he held up two taloned fingers, and brought them to his eyes…
Their sharpness sent shivers down you. They scraped incredibly close to the great man's pupils… and then he put them to his face. They smeared into his face paint, the dark areas around his eyes. He pulled them down, smearing the makeup. Two long black streaks formed down his face. They were like the stains left by tears running down your face. He took his other hand and dragged two fingers across his lips. The same dark streaks, but with that shape and position, they implied fangs.
He had taken his already unsettling face paint and amplified it. He looked unhinged and monstrous. He started beating his chest and cried out to the moon again.
"Crying… Wolf… Style…!"
Bo got on all fours and rushed. He swiped with one of his claws, and Biz narrowly dodged back. But Bo wasn't giving up. He unleashed a storm of murderous swings. He clawed and bit like a hungering abomination. He wasn't letting up. He was getting in close. He wasn't giving any space for Biz to breath. Biz tried his best to give him the runaround, but he just couldn't make any distance.
Biz noticed cuts. They started out small but got bigger as he became more exhausted and let even more strikes through. Splashes of blood began to appear all around the arena, painting the grass crimson. It was like Biz was holding a sloshing, overfilled bucket. Even Anne was sprayed.
She couldn't bring herself to look away. She made herself watch. Her eyes were locked. She maintained her gaze as Biz roared to the sky aswell. He fell upon the feral Bo with all of his weapons. Hands, feet, knees, elbows… All of them dug themselves into Bo's unyielding face.
This wasn't a technique. It was the distinct lack of technique. The absence of strategy. That kind of ferocity… The constant flood of speed and strength, the only appropriate response was more of the same.
They were not Ceasers, they were not hero and villain, they were two animals. They were competing over territory. And in the wild, only one thing mattered.
Weight.
Bo pushed Biz back again and again. A gash appears on his chest. On his thigh. His hoodie was ripped clean off, leaving him shirtless. His body was slowly being stained red as more and more injuries piled up.
SLASH.
That one touched bone. Biz was losing, badly. Bo came in with another heavy swing, tipped with his steely fingernails. Biz knew he couldn't take that one. He only had one option. He observed.
Bo… He looked at every little detail that he could while the gargantuan man mauled him with all of his strength. His breathing. That was the key. His respiration. He breathed in, he took a swing, he breathed out. It was a consistent pattern. It was how weight lifters did it. It was the same as the Chinese martial arts principle of 'respiration power'. If he could throw off that rhythm, he had a chance. He didn't need any strike, in particular, he just needed to throw off that rhythm. He needed to make his own rhythm destroy his uncles, like layering two songs on top of each other. Biz just needed his to be the one which predominated.
He put all of his strength that he had left in one punch. He was going to hit before he was going to get hit. It was quite simple when you put it like that.
Bo breathed in. It would be that one which killed him, Biz suspected. That was if he let it. The next step in the rhythm was the punch, and what came next was indeed a punch, but it was not Bo's.
Cross counter.
Biz plunged his fist into Bo's gut. Normally pointless. Bo thought not to guard it. It wasn't a vital enough area, right?
Wrong. What Biz struck was Bo's diaphragm. The titan heaved and sucked in air. The muscle which controlled breathing. His rhythm was destroyed. The punch floundered, and he was left reeling.
Biz was free to follow up. And follow up he did.
"Ceaser Style: Trampolinist's Flying Knee."
Right to the chin. Bo's brain shook itself bloody. His vision started to fade. He had just enough time before he fell for him to unleash a lethal grab. He extended his arm and…
Nothing. It sunk. Fell short. Something was stopping him.
"The… Drug…" Murmured Bo. And then, he fell. The soft, bouncy ground was inviting. Like a water bed. It enveloped him warmly. It was slick with his nephew's blood. His eyes closed, and he slept. In his fading consciousness, he heard a voice. It was muffled like he was listening to it while submerged in water, but he could still make the words out just barely.
"Biz… did you… win?"
…
Bo dreamt.
In his dream, he was white-hot angry. That was it. Just rage. Something was making him burn inside. Something was fundamentally fury inducing about this. Losing wasn't what it was. He was never like this even when he lost. And besides. He hadn't lost yet. He didn't lose until he gave up.
Oh yes. That was it. Bo spoke aloud.
"Warriors… Sleep… Standing… Up…"
Bo started to rise. Slowly and steadily, his willpower welled up inside him. The drug was in his blood, right? Easy. Get some blood out of him. He punched himself in the gut. Hard. A spout of blood flowed from his mouth.
Streaming bloody vomit poured out of him like the decanter of Aquarius. More and more of it came out until Bo was ankle-deep in his own fluids. He was purging himself. With every retch and each wet slop of murky red on top of murky red, Bo felt himself fight more awake.
He felt wonderful.
"...Freak…" Biz sneered.
Biz spoke softly and simply.
"I'm going to kill you."
He kicked. He picked up as much of his own foul spew as he could and flicked it with the tip of his foot. The smear struck its mark, sending spray into Biz's eyes. He half screamed and half retched. Desperately, he clawed at his eyes trying to clear them. Bo wasn't going to give him the chance. He bounced, and with a splash, he rushed forward for what he intended to be the final time.
This attack was going to kill him. He was going to make it lethal.
Bo extended his thumb. The spike on the end was going to be his weapon.
"Thumbtack Trick…"
Biz was helplessly in the path of Bo's deadly strike. He couldn't tell where it was coming from so he couldn't dodge or counter in advance. There was only one thing that he could do. React to the force.
"Rough and Tumbling…"
Biz felt the touch of the spike intended to skewer him and cooperated with it. He spun sideways like a top. It was meant to dig into his flesh, probe into his vital organs. Instead, it dragged along his skin, leaving one long and thin cut.
Bo sailed past Biz, and stumbled to his knees, his balance lost.
Biz steadied himself on the ground, the long and shallow cut along his abdomen was just starting to drip. Bo looked at his hand. Particularly, his one bloody fingernail. Just then. that attack.
He'd intended to use his quirk. He didn't even realise until afterwards, but he was aiming to pierce Biz in the stomach and deflate him just the same way he had done to Lei. Biz had taken to trampoline fighting like a fish to water, and after that, he'd copied Bo's tumbling technique and used it to defeat the wheel of fortune. Bo had been backed into a corner, and without even thinking about it he tried to cheat. He'd forsaken the rules of the duel. There was only one word for it.
"Ha… ha… HA…!" Bo chuckled deliriously. Biz was perplexed but not any more so than he was usually when facing his uncle. Then, Bo dropped to his knees. The ground jiggled under him like a regal, indulgent jelly. Bo bowed his head. He was completely prostrate infront of Biz, who was still wondering if this was some kind of technique that he was using.
"What the hell are you doing?" Biz asked, so utterly lost for words that he completely dropped his guard.
"Conceding…"
"You… You're what?"
"You win… I'm… Defeated…"
"I'm sorry. Come again?"
"The duel… Is yours…" Bo said, a hint of sadness in his voice. "You… Forced me to cheat… In order to win… And then you counteracted my cheating… With a technique that I showed you… If that isnt defeat… then I don't know what is… The caesar family duel… Is over..."
"So… I won?"
"That… Is right…"
The two stood in silence, not knowing what to do.
"What happens now?" Biz asked. He'd never had a family duel before, even though he was aware of the tradition.
"The debate is settled… You honour my fathers, your grandfather's, legacy…"
"Was that what this whole thing was about? Shit…" Biz said to himself. "And… What do you do?"
"Oh… Me? I intend to complete my mission…"
"Heh… I almost forgot you were a villain invading our school for a minute there…"
"SkyDriver!"
Anne was done waiting. She wasn't born for the role of colour commentator, that's for sure. Her kick went straight to the gut. The same place where Biz had hit him. He wheezed and staggered back, but showed no other obvious signs of fatigue or damage.
"You're… Feisty…"
"I'm gonna fucking knock your block off!"
Shink…
Biz didn't realise what it was at first. It took even Anne a second to notice. Then the pain. Screaming agony. It stole her breath away.
"Knitting Needle Trick…"
Anne was impaled all the way through. One of the same kinds of spike that Bo had used to make his 'ring'.
"The good thing… about ending the duel… is that now… theres no more rules…"
Biz could only laugh. Of course, he was still going to kill them. He was an idiot to think for a second that they were over, just because he'd won a stupid family duel.
But he wasn't going to take it sitting down. Anne wasn't dead yet. She was doubled over, but there was still one thing left. Every time Biz had seen Bo use his quirk before, he clapped. That was the trigger. His quirk was similar to Biz's but different. More primitive and rough around the edges. He needed an activation condition like that. And just like his punches, it worked on a rhythm.
Biz lunged. He wasn't about to watch as another person died.
"Ceaser Style: Trampolinist's flying knee!"
Biz felt the cold feeling of a metal spike sinking into his body. Bo had shot him too. Those spikes could be launched from the holes in his bracer like projectiles, and silently too. He was quick and accurate with them. But they werent lethal on their own. Bo still needed to activate his quirk. His hands hadn't come together yet.
That was what he needed, right?
Biz burst. He burst like a balloon. It was instant. He felt nearly all the blood in his body leave him. He felt cold and tired. His body became soft like ruptured latex. What? What had happened? Bo hadn't clapped, Biz knew it.
The scraps that remained of his body fell upon Bo. He held them close to him and leant into Biz's ear.
"You thought… I needed to clap… Didn't you…?"
That was one of Bo's favourite tricks. Clap every time you use your quirk, and people seem to think that the two are connected. He'd gotten people with it before, and he'll get people with it again.
Biz felt a splatter of blood behind him. That was Anne, he assumed. It wasn't like he could turn his head and check. All that he had left to do was die. Bo let him fall. What he saw before him was a field full of defeated heroes. His mission, 'cause as much damage as possible'. It was more or less completed, right?
Oh! Lorelei!
That girl seemed important, and Bo wasn't exactly sure how he could kill her any worse than he already had. Maybe a hostage was in order? He made his way over…
"HEY! CLOWN! STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM THOSE KIDS!"
"That's… awfully loud…" Bo groaned. A footfall from far away. It seemed that now there was at least one hero who wasn't defeated yet. "Who… The hell… Is it… This time…?"
"I'm the nurse. The head nurse. And it's really nice of you to give these kids the whole Patch Addams routine, but they need some real medical attention, so I'd appreciate it if you fucked off."
"Here… we go… Again…"
TO BE CONTINUED
As one battle ends, another begins! It's non stop action in the Union Invasion Arc! What did you think of the chapter, everybody? It ran longer than expected, and that's why it took a little bit to upload. My bad! But hey, more to read, right? I was worried that the last few were a bit short... Anyway, if you had any opinions you thought worth sharing, don't hesitate to review! What about predictions? Put them in the reviews aswell! Or, come down to the discord server and talk about the story with our many regulars! It's busy in there, and they seem to be writing what amounts to a fanfic of their own in the roleplay channel. You wouldn't wanna miss that, right? You're always welcome.
Well, that's all I have to say for this week. Tune in next week, and as always, thanks for reading. I'll see you in the next one!
