Trial by Fire
"Yo. You da cap'n, I take it? . . . Ya'll ain't tell me he was so big," K'ron stated, turning away from craning his neck at the scowling stranger nearly twice his height with toned, chiseled features to briefly address the pirates that led him there. The myriad of scars adorning the captain's chest hinted to the many battles he'd survived, and the ground shook as he lumbered closer to the madly grinning K'ron.
"Ya look pretty strong for a coward," K'ron remarked.
"What!? Who brought this punk here?" The captain voiced frustration as he scanned the area, his eyes stopping to glare daggers at the four men closest to the intruder. The four pirates began to sweat bullets under the heat of his gaze, backing away nervously as they fell to their knees to plead for their lives. "What do you sorry lot have to say for yourselves?"
K'ron grew bored as the four men behind him pleaded for their lives. Through all their stammering, one of them referred to the leader as Captain Shin, but K'ron paid it no mind as his grumbling stomach reminded him he hadn't eaten in almost a full day. As quickly as it came, though, his train of thought was interrupted by the captain's booming voice.
"Enough!"
With that single utterance four simultaneous gunshots rang out followed by the silent thuds of the four pirates' bodies crashing helplessly to the ground, still with a desperate look in each of their eyes.
"Now, it's your turn, brat."
No less than 20 guns were immediately trained on the young pirate from every direction while others held swords to his neck. Isaac prepared to jump down from the tree and help out, but he paused upon noticing the expression on K'ron's face. K'ron held the same manic grin with Isaac's claymore still resting on his shoulder.
"You'll need more than twenty or so amateur marksman to stop me."
The pirates paid his words no heed as each of them fired near simultaneously. K'ron sidestepped the tight grouping of shots and wildly swung the claymore to create a brief opening. Using the pause created by such a wild strike, he jumped into the midst of a nearby group, and plunged the sword clean through the torso of a pirate before releasing the sword and delivering a jump knee to the one behind the first. K'ron moved quickly, slamming the head of a third pirate into the ground and sweeping the legs of two others.
"Kill him, you louts," the captain, Shin, shouted.
K'ron spun the impaled pirate around and used the man's body to shield himself from a volley of gunshots as the remaining pirates organized themselves and closed in. With his 'shield' riddled with bullets, K'ron charged directly into even more enemies, impaling two more foes on the colossal claymore. Without wasting a second, he kicked all three off the sword and swung it haphazardly at another person, cutting him completely in two and lopping off the arm of the man behind him. Despite having previously referred to the oversized claymore as 'clunky and unwieldy', K'ron was developing a newfound respect for its sharpness and weight.
Thanks to his most recent slash, though, the sword's tip had been lodged into the ground and got stuck. Once again, K'ron released the blade and jumped bare handed into the middle of even more pirates. With a series of powerful punches and the occasional kick, he effortlessly dispatched the wave of enemies, leaving many with broken or fractured bones and, in at least two cases, cracked skulls, courtesy of brutally smashing two pirates' skulls together. Blood and brain matter spewing everywhere, K'ron mercilessly tossed his two most recent victims aside like simple trash.
It didn't take long for him to work his way back to the sword, and with a boot to the chest, he knocked the last opponent standing between him and the weapon back into the blade. Giving his target no time to recover, K'ron followed up by nearly crushing the man's skull with another powerful boot. The attack also had the side effect of prying the sword loose, leaving the unfortunate pirate with his head as the only part of him not sliced in two.
Isaac watched with a combination of intrigue and disgust as K'ron tore, sometimes literally, through the Steel Trap Pirates standing in his way. It was abundantly clear that K'ron wasn't as weak as he'd initially acted, but with almost 200 men left, there was no way he could beat them all and have a hope of surviving against the captain.
With that in mind, Isaac slipped on the chain link gloves he'd bought earlier that day and jumped into the fray to assist his new acquaintance.
Two pirates had somehow actually managed to sneak up on K'ron and were just about to drive their swords through him - since guns had already been the cause of so much friendly fire - when something crashed into them from behind, causing their eyes to bug out of their sockets and drove them into the ground. Isaac removed his fists from their heads and stood up to greet K'ron. The unexpected happening created a lull in the action which allowed Isaac and K'ron to briefly exchange words, though they still seemed to be on two different pages.
"I don't know what you think you're doing, but give me back my sword."
"Great; you finally made it. Now, I can focus on the captain while you deal with weaklings."
That wasn't at all what Isaac had in mind when he jumped into the center of all this, but K'ron completely ignored him as he called out to the oblivious young man. K'ron, meanwhile, cracked his knuckles in anticipation of a good one-on-one brawl. The sword remained near Isaac, leaving two small knives as the only weapons in K'ron's possession.
At that moment, the fire crackled loudly and exploded to new heights and a new level of intensity, eliciting a shocked jump from the lean newcomer. A large group of the pirates surrounded Isaac and prepared to take their revenge on him for what their comrades had been unable to do against K'ron.
"Wait; you look familiar," a random pirate called out.
"What? No, you must be mistaken," Isaac replied, trying to hide his face as he thought this may be one of the pirates he'd stolen from.
"That's it," the pirate exclaimed. "You must be that Marine's kid; you look just like him."
Isaac let out a sigh of relief at that statement, but there was no containing himself at the next statement.
"That stupid Marine actually thought he could take the Captain? Hah!"
"It was simply pathetic is what it was," another pirate concurred.
"And the way he whined as his own superior stuck a sword clean through his chest... Priceless; shit eaters like him deserve nothing less."
All the surrounding pirates erupted into a round of raucous laughter as they positively recalled that moment. Isaac simply stood stock still before them, eyes shadowed by his loose hair as he clenched his fists and ground his teeth. The pirates switched the target of their laughter from Isaac's deceased father to Isaac himself, standing silent and frustrated with twin tears streaming down his cheeks.
Their preemptory celebration was cut short, though, as Isaac released every bit of his ire in a single devastating moment. In the time it took them to turn their attention back to Isaac, he had already lashed out and knocked a half dozen of them unconscious. It was already too late to lament their taunting as Isaac came after them with a ferocity and brutality almost equal to K'ron before.
K'ron, for his part, ignored the commotion behind him, steadily making his way towards the captain instead. But, the fact that he was through dealing with the crew in no way meant they reciprocated the feeling.
"What are ya'll doing? I'm through fighting you weaklings; go annoy... Damn!" K'ron cursed as the commotion allowed a sword a glancing strike along his cheek before the wielder was left lying motionless in the fetal position from a single punch.
K'ron fended off the constant attacks coming at him, but even he was a bit distracted by the destructive capability Isaac exhibited. Isaac's movements were crisp and fluid, and the power of each punch was easily enough to knock out this level of opponent with even a glancing blow.
K'ron could hear Isaac's cries of superiority and an angered defense of his father's pride over the sound of crunching bones and the pirates' wails of pain, but the driving force behind Isaac was far less important than the sight that stood before him. Shin, the captain of the Steel Trap Pirates, haughtily smirked at his and Isaac's efforts, beckoning them both to try and make it to him.
Shin was a merciless pirate, but he took particularly great joy in personally destroying one's dreams and ambitions with his own two hands. If these two brats wanted to challenge his might, he'd be more than happy to grind them each into the dirt until they begged for mercy, in despair of the moment they made themselves known, under the weight of his boot before he ultimately wiped their existence from the face of the planet.
The experienced pirate had size and an obvious strength advantage but that didn't perturb K'ron in the least as the focused young man broke the spine of one of the pirate's underlings with an elbow to the center of the back while yanking his head backwards after ducking under a wild punch. Leaving yet another crumpled body in his wake, K'ron confidently strode to within shouting distance of the larger Shin, breaking through a defensive force of a dozen armed pirates to get to the clearing where the 100 million beli man waited with arms crossed and bulky gauntlets on each forearm.
As K'ron readied to face this challenge, he called to Isaac to keep the pests off of him. Shin simply smirked as a now calm Isaac swiftly approached, standing back to back with K'ron, awaiting all those that had grouped into an unorganized line and followed him. A small smile spread across Isaac's features as more and more enemy pirates fell in and set themselves up perfectly for his next move.
Sliding his right foot back, Isaac similarly cocked back his right fist, keeping his left in front of him. "Destructive Wave Fist." With a twist of his back ankle, a swivel of his hips, and a lightning fast snap of his shoulder, Isaac rolled his fist over and blasted most of those in front of him with an incredible show of unseen force. That single punch released every ounce of Isaac's power in a concussive, unidirectional blast that broke bones of those within twenty yards and sent them all flying back into those who weren't even in range of the devastating blow, clearing an entire section of the enemy with a single move. Some of those in the path of the attack even got blasted back into the fiery perimeter lining the walls, setting them ablaze and inciting panic via those who remained conscious enough to scramble around in immense agony like a chicken with its head cut off while on fire. This instilled even more pause in the remainder of the pirates, who were now significantly demoralized and nearly frozen even as the towering inferno K'ron had sparked spread across the encampment, spreading a swath of destruction by igniting the wood based lodgings as the blaze steadily expanded inwards, threatening to leave nothing but ash and the smell of burning, cooked flesh within the walls by the end of the night.
"You IDIOTS," Shin angrily yelled. "You can't even take care of two mere brats, and now you let this happen!? Stop the spread of that fire while I pound these two to dusts."
"Na, I'm your opponent." K'ron thumbed his nose with a confident smirk. "Isaac, stand aside; this'll be fun."
"We'll see how fun you think it is when I'm about to crush your skull."
"Oh yea? Now, I'm excited."
Showing an impressive jumping ability, Isaac got to the top of the great wooden wall surrounding the pirates' base. Thanks to the steel lining along the inner perimeter of the wall, the raging blaze couldn't reach him aside from a few licking flames which helped him to keep warm under the cold, moonlit sky. From his perch, Isaac had an unimpeded view of the ensuing clash between the man he couldn't help but view as unstoppable and the newly arrived pirate upstart. He didn't feel K'ron had much of a chance, but there was nothing he could do at this juncture, so he simply watched and waited.
K'ron got things started by rushing in and slamming Shin with a jaw-jacking uppercut that forced the larger pirate to take a step back. But, Shin wasn't nearly so weak as to let that fell him, grabbing K'ron's fist and attacking with a crushing headbutt that buckled the young fighter's knees.
K'ron checked his forehead for blood, and was a bit surprised to see the crimson liquid stain his palm.
"You're tough," he commented, the sight of his own bold only exciting him.
"You don't know the half of it."
The mighty pirate captain then lashed out with a stinging right cross that landed cleanly on K'ron's jaw before lifting the smaller man up with a powerful punch to the gut. But, K'ron brought his guard in and was able to protect his ribs from the brunt of the strike. Still, though, he was defenseless against the bone jarring forearm strike that sent him crashing to the ground and coughing up blood. He felt every curve and hooking angle of Shin's bulky gauntlets as he was hammered further into the ground by a double hammer fist. K'ron was driven into the earth with such force that all that was left once the dust cleared was his broken carcass buried in gravel.
That was, at least, what Shin and even Isaac expected. Instead, K'ron pulled himself from the crater with surprisingly steady composure, rising to his feet with a smirk and gleaming eyes shining from underneath his blood matted hair and the steady stream of the precious liquid flowing from his head. Shaking a few cobwebs loose, K'ron looked to his opponent with the utmost confidence.
"I guess the warmup's over; thanks for helping me loosen up."
"Hmph, you're funny kid. I'm gonna enjoy caving your skull in and grinding you to paste."
Shin was as confident as K'ron looked, attacking with a heavy straight. Despite the lethality the attack held, K'ron wasn't one to back down. The brash, young pirate dipped beside the fist, his forearm glancing against Shin's gauntlet, and stepped in to deliver a thunderous, gut wrenching body blow to Shin's unguarded ribs, burying into the taut muscle of Shin's abdomen. K'ron drove the strike deeper until he was sure he heard at least one rib crack, momentarily winding the larger combatant and forcing a moment of pause. K'ron used the opportunity to duck inside of Shin's still outstretched arm and put all of his weight behind an overhead punch that sent Shin's massive body tumbling backwards like a stone skipping on water before crashing through a well built cabin, the wooden structure caving in and collapsing on top of the fearsome fighter.
Isaac shot to his feet in disbelief at the momentous spectacle, but K'ron knew such a worthy foe wouldn't fall so easily; he also wouldn't be getting out of that wreckage unscathed either, though, and that was a small victory for now.
But, the enemy in front wasn't the only problem he had to contend with as the rampaging inferno around them continued to devour everything in its path. The rest of the Steel Trap Pirates struggled futilely to combat the menace, more and more becoming mere kindle to the flames with each passing moment. Their efforts slowed the blaze down significantly, but like some sort of famished beast it leaped over every stop gate measure and continued its horrific wave of explosive fury, belching out an ever flowing cascade of pitch black smoke from the quarry it consumed. The oppressive haze weighed down on almost everyone trapped within the pirate fort, but K'ron was now also beginning to show signs of slowing down. White bandages and skin blackened by the settling soot and ash, K'ron found it harder to breathe than before, chest heaving up and down with each breath. But, it was in these types of conditions that the confident young man felt most exhilarated. Life and death. Against all odds. Such things were the source of fantasy for him.
Shin's golden gauntlet bursting through the wreckage was the first sign of life, but the rest of him soon followed. He rose, seething, from the pile of crumbled wood and stone. Isaac, from his perch, was sure he saw wisps of steam rising from the infuriated captain, but quickly pushed such notions aside.
"Straighten up men; stop panicking and use the steel ring pit."
The scrambling pirates immediately straightened up at their captain's barked orders, and the sound of clanking metal and creaky gears could be heard over the steady crackling of timber surrounding the makeshift stage. Dirt fell into a circular trench as waist tall slabs of thick steel were pulled up, setting the stage for the impending conclusion of the clash between Shin and K'ron.
The only thing left out was that the Steel Trap pirate crew were now trapped between the steel ring/ trench combo and the roaring wildfire bearing down on them it was intended to keep at bay. Their pained screams filled the air as the roaring flame engulfed them, roasting their flesh before completely incinerating them.
The spine curdling sounds, rancid stench, and grotesque sights of the situation made both Isaac and K'ron feel a bit of unease, though neither could do anything to help any of them. However, Shin, whose crew had just been burned alive, showed no remorse, going so far as to mock the nightmarish incident upon seeing K'ron's reaction.
"You don't have time to think about them. Now, that fire's to your back and I'm still right here; there's no escape for you."
"Who needs an escape? My blood is running hotter than any fire. I'll break you with these two fists and walk right out of here.
"We'll see how hot your blood is when it's pouring out of you," Shin laughed.
With the fire just outside of their makeshift ring, K'ron felt the effects even more strongly. Breathing was arduous and his vision was becoming cloudy. He could keep up a strong front a little longer, but his body could only hold up so long. Meanwhile, Shin seemed unaffected, donning a mask to keep from breathing the thick fumes, as if not only was he used to this, but he expected it. Things weren't boding well for K'ron, and they only looked to get worse as Shin appeared right in front of him, towering over him to the extent that their difference in stature seemed magnified in this death match. K'ron barely had time to bring up his guard before Shin's fist collided into him. Shin only threw one punch, but K'ron felt the impact of at least four, breaking through his guard and pounding his stomach after the second impact. K'ron was taken off his feet by the strike, but was immediately brought down with an earth shattering straight before being pummeled with an onslaught of viciously powerful punches, each one feeling like two or three consecutive blows.
K'ron continued to have his own weight pounded down onto his knees as each punch was driven into his flesh, loosening toned muscles with each blow, but he refused to give in. The young pirate endured the merciless beating, pushing through the bone jarring blows until he got close enough and mustered enough strength to lash out with a right hook of his own.
The strike landed squarely on Shin's jaw, briefly pausing his own attack by twisting the veteran pirate's neck. K'ron followed up on the opening that blow created with a violent series of fists, stepping into each punch for maximum power. The reckless brawler threw everything he had into that combination, but under the conditions his strikes lacked their usual finishing power.
Due to the hardened soot nearly encasing him, his movements were stiffer and only at about 60% of when he'd started the fight as evidenced by the fact that instead of the bone cracking shot that he began the brawl with, each of his latest round of shots only left bruises aside from the few that finished breaking the rib that had earlier been cracked.
Shin was staggered as he gingerly felt his broken rib, but after suffering another shot to his jaw, he retaliated, grabbing K'ron's fist and slamming him with a headbutt. That ended all of K'ron's momentum, and Shin proceeded with a second headbutt that sent K'ron reeling, though with Shin's vice grip, the young fighter couldn't escape his grasp. With a third headbutt, K'ron was sent crashing to the ground, this time with a broken nose.
Blood flowed freely from K'ron's broken nose as well as the previous cut to his forehead. Shin was ready to finish things now. The cruel captain stalked the heavily beaten K'ron, and laughed as the stubborn youngster still struggled to his feet, literally black and blue from the pummeling he'd taken combined with the surrounding fire.
"You're re~al unlucky brat; I'm gonna slowly burn you alive."
This time Isaac was sure the steam was real as Shin's forearms and gauntlets glowed brightly, fists becoming a deep orange-ish brown with smoke billowing from them in heavy plumes, something was definitely not normal about Shin. K'ron, though, was out on his feet, staggering forward haphazardly while barely holding up a weak guard.
"Heated Mountain Crusher!" Shin stepped his right foot forward with his left fist cocked back, and proceeded with uncompromising resolve to utterly destroy the person 'standing' before him, his anger exacerbated by the cocky grin K'ron maintained. "I'll crush every bone in your body," he roared.
Dodging wasn't an option for the battered K'ron, but even in such dire straits, he never took a step backwards and his resolve didn't once waver. The young K'ron was fully prepared to take the blow head on, knowing full well that he probably wouldn't be able to walk away afterwards. He even went so far as to spit a giant loogie directly into Shin's face, incensing the larger pirate even more.
Shin's fist, now alight into a full-fledged fireball, collided into K'ron's weak guard with murderous intent, easily bursting through. The impact sounded like a gunshot, and K'ron released a howl of agony, the likes of which Isaac had never heard before, as the burning fist exploded into his abdomen. It felt like over a hundred bombs had been consecutively detonated directly into his gut sending the young man rocketing backwards, only stopped by crashing into the superheated steel that made up their 'stage's' barrier. After suffering second and third degree burns to his torso, K'ron had to peel himself from the scorching pain sizzling his back, leaving small bloody bits of flesh cooking on the steel wall. His body, having dented and almost been broken against the sturdy metal, roughly rebounded him onto jelly like legs. While he may have still been standing, it was clear K'ron was far past being punch drunk, making the ever-present smirk even more terrifying and annoying.
Overcome by rage, Shin tackled and mounted K'ron, ready to see whether the cocky, brash young pirate's head would burn to ash or be beaten to an unrecognizable pulp first.
K'ron, choking from the smoke and the weight on top of him, still had the strength to make jokes, remarking, "What; no dinner first?"
"I'll fucking murder you," Shin shouted in a blind rage. As if signifying his emotion, a lightning strike lit up the blacked out night sky just as Shin threw the finishing punch from point blank range.