"Begin!" bellowed Mayer.
Leorio and I glared at our opponents as we circled to our right. The hard tapping sound of our feet on the stone arena floor echoing out. Both of us were in baggy hoodies and sweatpants. Morel's students were in their same old clothes.
We stayed close to as we stayed on Shoot's missing right side. It was the only weakness the duo had that we could even capitalize on. His Hatsu allowed him to create three floating fists. That was a pretty good trade for a missing arm, but useless in this situation.
The four of us couldn't use their Hatsus, but basic Nen was fair game.
I whispered to my left. Leorio ducking slightly to listen.
"You've been practicing that aura ball thing for a month. How fast can you make one?"
He whispered, "A minute. Maybe half that if I don't have to move around,"
I nodded slightly, "I'll buy you some time. When you're ready, shout and I'll set something up. When the opening comes, take the shot."
Leorio nodded, "Right..."
I transitioned into Ren and speed off toward Knuckle and Shoot.
The squeak of my sneakers.
The rushing sound of wind.
The collision of fists.
It sounded like a car crash when Knuckle's right fight collided into my own right fist.
For a split second I saw a smirk on Knuckle's mouth. A glint of pride shined in his eyes.
I grimaced in pain. God damn that hurt. He was pushing me back… God damn he was strong.
His look of pride disappeared into a hard glare. A glare telling me he was going to unleash a no mercy beat down. Not that I was going to let him.
We pushed each other back with our punch. That's when the proverbial fireworks started.
An exchange machine gun speed punches followed. Jabs, crosses, hooks, uppercuts. We threw every and any kind of punch that we could throw. The whooshing and slicing sounds of our fists moving at superhuman speed was all I could hear.
I parried a left hook and sent a downward cross of my own. Only for him to block it with his forearm and answer back with a right cross of his own. I slapped his punch away with my left and the brawl continued. The back and forth it went on for dozens of punches. Some of his fists scrapped past my forearms and hit my face and body. Some of my punches doing the same, though far fewer than I'd like.
A flash of movement to my right. A fluttering of purple moving past our duel. I couldn't let Shoot get past me...
I slipped a punch and shoved Knuckle away using my right hand. Using the momentum of my push, I used my right foot as a pivot and awkwardly swung my left leg back. With a stomp of my left foot the tile under me cracked as I twisted my body around toward Shoot. Ren erupted around me as kicked off the ground and sailed toward Shoot's right side with jumping push kick.
Shoot's peripheral vision caught me just in time for him to stop himself dead in his tracks. He took a step back and I missed. My left leg flying past him and smashing into the arena floor with a crack of the tile. But the moment my left foot touched the ground I threw a left hook to his face with all my strength and speed.
My right arm swinging behind me as I gritted my teeth, the feeling air trying to slow down my punch. I growled as my punch caught him off guard.
He took a step back and leaned away from my punch and putting himself off balance. But I was forced to transition the extra centripetal force of my whiffed punch or I'd stay wide open. I twisted my upper body and swung my right leg into a spinning back kick toward Shoot's chest.
I was moving too fast, like a violent top. Yet all that extra power and speed took Shoot by surprise.
Shoot blocked the attack with his right forearm, but the combination of my Ren and general strength sent him skidding backward. I smiled in triumph. A few more seconds for Leorio.
I stepped forward as Newton's third law helped me catch my balance. That was just what I needed since Knuckle was rushing at me in a blur. His perfect running form and insane speed the bane of my fucking existence at this moment.
So far Knuckle had been the fastest fucking person I've sparred with. He still didn't disappoint as he crossed several meters in the blink of an eye. My forearms came up just in time for me to defend myself against his aura infused punches. He was nice enough that his first flurry didn't have any extra Aura in them or I'd have broken my arms.
I staggered back from the impact of his flurry. He stepped forward, eyes wide, as he cocked his fists back. I saw the real-time change of his aura as he increased and decreased the strength of his aura in his fists versus his body.
It was Ryu. Exactly how I practiced with Leorio. Only polished to a deadly sheen.
I shifted my aura needs to defend and began calculating the percentage of aura he had in each strike. It had to be low enough that my forearms would only be sore and not broken, but not too much that I would waste precious aura or leave the rest of my body defenseless.
It was a minigame in the middle of a fight. Except if I lose I got a bruised and battered body.
He let loose.
Thudding, painful, machine gun speed hits landed on my forearms and shoulders. Just blocking Knuckle's punches was demoralizing as it was a nightmare. I could feel the welts and bruising forming on my upper body. I couldn't just sit here and stay covered up. I could hear Shoot's footsteps coming from behind...
I clenched my jaw and bid my time until I saw an opening. I stopped blocking the punches directly and began parrying, swaying, dodging. Redirecting his hits since he was an Emitter and I was an Manipulator. My Ten and Ren would never be as strong as his. The pain all over my body testified to that.
I needed to adapt and change the tempo of the battle.
I started to get the rhythm and timing of his punches. With each successful defense, I slowly distanced myself from him to take advantage of my height and reach.
The distance between us began to stretch. Slowly, so fucking slowly to me, did my left arm began whipping out like a snake when I saw openings. My stinging, whiplike jabs too fast and precise for Knuckle to block or slip entirely. I saw Knuckle become frustrated as my orangutan arms began popping his head back. He couldn't go on the offensive or risk getting countered by jabs. He slowed down, covering himself up as I danced and angled away from, denying him clean hits.
I could hear him growl. I could see the frustration that a rookie like me was starting to trouble him. His glare became harder…
There.
He overreached with a right cross and I leaned to my left. Immediately, my left fist snaked up toward his chin in an uppercut. Eyes wide, his reflexes reacted on their own and he leaned back.
I saw it. The opening.
In half-mad desperation and half fighting instinct, I gritted my teeth and growled. My right arm flew out by itself, a chopping, haymaker of a cross with all my strength. Right at his face.
He smirked.
He tilted his head down, shifting his aura to his head and braced his forehead to take my punch.
I grinned.
A thunderous crack echoed through the arena.
His eyes widened and teared up in sheer surprise and pain. A red handprint on his face. I don't think even he believed what just happened.
I slapped the fuck out of him.
With a roar, I took advantage of his surprise and pushed kicked him in the gut. I didn't have time to give my kick much aura, but Knuckle went flying back anyway. In the grand scheme of this battle it did nothing, but damn it, it felt like I just knocked down the champ.
My triumph lasted all of a second before I saw a blur in the corner of my right eye. I lifted my right forearm just in time to block an open palm slap from behind sent by Shoot.
When his crushing grip wrapped around my wrist, I knew I made a huge mistake.
He had taken advantage of my habits. He predicted I'd block instead of duck.
Next thing I knew, I felt my right arm being wrenched over and behind my head. I hissed as shoulder pain forced my body to lean backward all by itself to avoid any more damage. He used my body's natural reaction to avoid pain to make me topple backward. As I lost my balance; he straightened my arm mid fall.
My eyes widened as I saw him narrow his eyes in resolve.
He rammed me into the ground with my outstretched arm like stabbing a pole into the ground.
I bounced off the stone floor, yet I braced my fall with Aura. It still hurt like hell. Yet it didn't stop me from swinging my legs up and kicking at Shoot from the floor.
It was like trying to hit a floating leaf in the wind. He was more defensive than Knuckle. His movements precise and efficient. I felt like Lu Kang Bicycle kicking air. His head and upper body moving just enough to avoid my kicks. All while he held my right wrist like I was luggage.
"James! Now!" Leorio yelled.
I looked between my legs to see Leorio holding a white orb the size of a small bowling ball. It probably hurt like one too.
I grinned. Then I frowned. I saw Knuckle, far to my right, beeline right to Leorio.
Like an octopus on fast forward, I wrapped around Shoot's only arm. My body putting his only arm into an armbar.
"Leorio!" I yelled in rising panic. Shoot slowly lifted me into the air with his super strength…
It was my Aura against Shoot as I wrestled to snap his arms. I couldn't snap his arm. Wasn't even fucking possible with how much stronger and better trained his Aura was… but he definitely didn't like the pain.
His stoic, eyebrow less face fighting back a grimace. Still, I could see his mouth twitch in frustration and pain. I held on to him in sheer desperation. Like I was holding on to a street lamp in a hurricane.
Leorio ran towards me, holding his aura ball like a rugby player.
Unfortunately, Leorio hadn't been able to train as hard as me. He wasn't as fast as me.
And he definitely wasn't fast as Knuckle.
The pompadour headed asshole literally flew across like a bullet and Captain Falcon kneed Leorio's shoulder.
Leorio bounces across the arena three times. Each shout causing Leorio to groan in pain. Midway through he let go of his is aura ball and with it our slim hope of winning.
Leorio struggled to get up and I let go of Shoot's arm before he literally put me in the ground.
"We forfeit. Damn it..." I said, annoyed as I stared at the floor.
"Good," Mayer said as he walked into the arena, feet silent as cat paws. I stared at him with half-lidded eyes.
"We lasted less than two minutes. How was that good?"
Knuckle answered, his arms crossed as he stared at me.
"You held your own against Shoot and me. There was no way you were gonna' to beat us, but that doesn't matter," he said before pointing his right thumb at the slowly rising Leorio, "he hasn't been training as hard as you, but you managed to protect him and make an opening. Your plan was good. It probably woulda' worked if you fought only one of us."
I frowned, "Yeah ok... argh..." I said eloquently. Nearly three months of non-stop training and I still can't keep up.
Footsteps echo from the arena entrance. We turned to see Mercutio walking down the path to the arena, cigarette hanging from his lips. The curls of smoke wafting from the red tip. His baritone voice somehow rumbling out without spitting his cig.
"You're better than you know. Problem is, everyone gets used to fighting the same opponents. That's why Shoot got the better of you..."
Mercutio stepped into the arena and got within arm's length of me. He looked me up and down and nodded.
"You've improved. If you fought Binolt it wouldn't be much of a contest. If any..." he said, an appraising look in his eyes I didn't like.
"What do you want? Finally sending me to the bowels of hell to fight the devil or something?"
He turned away from me and spoke to Mayer. As if I didn't fucking exist.
"What does he know?"
Mayer grunted, "He has mastered the basics: Ten, Ren, Zetsu. He capable of Gyo, In, En-"
I waved my hand and stepped in between Mayer and Mercutio, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! What the hell is going on here?"
Mercutio frowned and deigned to stare me in the eyes, "We got work to do and you're good enough to do it now. That's what Mayer and Evira says, at least."
Mayer crossed his arms and nodded, "Knuckle and Shoot leave tomorrow. Morel has called for them back. You cannot continue to solely spar. You need live combat experience."
Knuckle walked over, Shoot's coming from behind me and standing next to his comrade. They both nodded, Knuckle speaking for both of them.
"Yeah, we've been here long enough. Morel is asking for help with a bunch of pirates. From what he says, they're pretty strong. Got some Nen users that need dealing with."
Shoot nodded, "Yes. Though, it has been a pleasure helping Morel's comrade train his students."
I frowned. This sucks, but I understand. As much as I hate to accept it, I need practical experience...
I sighed as Leorio walked up next to me, rubbing his arm. I nodded, "Ok. Well, I'd like to say I'll miss you two; but I've never really hung out with you outside of training…"
Leorio agreed with a nod of his own, "Yeah, it'd have been nice to get to know you. We were just too busy…"
Knuckle scoffed, "Yeah, well, we came here as a favor. Not to make friends. I've always hated this city, anyway. It's not like you owe us anything or nothing," he said, his bottom lip coming up. Is... it quivering?
Leorio noticed. A smirk coming across his face, "Aw, he's gonna miss us. He's proud of us! Look, he's tearing up!"
Knuckle turned away, shouting, "Na, uh! James' slap made my eyes wet!"
Mercutio frowned, grabbing his cig and blowing a cloud of smoke out of his mouth, "You'll always be a hopeless softie, sheesh."
Knuckle whipped his head and stabbed a finger at Mercutio, "And you'll always a heartless asshole!"
Mercutio shrugged, "Yeah," he turned to me," Let's go."
I sighed and followed.
Half an hour later we were cruising down a four-lane highway toward the outskirts of the city. Mercutio's black car roaring down the elevated, curving road that loomed over the city below us. Staring out my right window, I could see the rest of the city in the distance. Smoke stacks from factories, glittering of cars moving through streets, and the enormous skyscrapers and roofs of buildings reflecting the noon sun back at us.
Cars drifted behind as we slowly overtook them in our car.
It felt as if were we were flying through the blue sky.
The pungent smell of nicotine and tobacco knocked me out of my car ride daydreams. I coughed at the smoke coming from Mercutio's cig, whaffing up my fucking nose... I turned to him and frowned.
I looked past Mercutio's placid face and through his driver side window, where the other side of the world resided. I saw the canyons, mesas, and sand of the Gordeau desert. A light brown landscape that would fit naturally in a cowboy film. There was even a condor in the sky.
It was the hellscape I ran in so many months ago. All the weird shit I saw seemed so quaint now. I tried to imagine where Mayer's mountain home was, but it was between the states so pretty far…
Mercutio spoke, raising me out of my thoughts.
"Mayer never finished telling me what you learned these past two months..."
I glared at him. I sighed and turned my head forward. Guess this was it.
I turned to the road in front of me and answered.
"I've mastered Ten and Ren. I can transition into Ten and other states instantly. I can hold my Ren for about an hour and thirty minutes. I'm proficient in Gyo, Ryu, En, In, Shu. I can use Ken and Ko, though I've found I'm not as proficient as Leorio is…"
I glanced at him for a moment. The cigarette in his mouth was barely hanging on to his lips as his calm facade fought sheer disbelief. I could see it in his eyes. It was exactly how everyone that trained with Leorio and I saw us.
Leorio knew Gyo, Ryu, Shu, and Ko. The lunkheaded kid was still having trouble with En and In. While, for me, Ko and Ken killed me. We were still far better than we had any right to be, but still…
I turned away from Mercutio and moved toward the glove compartment in front of me, "I can say I only have one real Hatsu."
I opened the glove compartment in front of me and rummaged through. I found what I needed and closed the glove compartment. I held it out with my fingers in my right hand.
He looked out of the corner of his eye and raised an eyebrow.
"A pencil?"
I shifted my aura into my right hand and into the piece of wood. As I've done thousands of times before. I squeezed the graphene core out the top like caulk from a caulk gun. It popped out the top before the metal erased popped off the end, clanging against the dashboard. The pencil shifted in between my fingers and became a tiny wooden stake.
I sent my will through my aura. The grinding, crunching, friction sound of wood supernaturally moving against the laws of physics filled the car. In less than a second it became a wooden pen knife.
I held it out for Mercutio to see. He stared at for a moment as if I had just turned lead into gold. Once I was satisfied he had seen enough, I turned the pencil into a slender square peg and pocketed it. Mercutio stared at me, a glimmer of awe and fear in his eye. Something Leorio and I were tiring of seeing.
"I'm guessing you thought about making a Hatsu for your sword."
I nodded," Yeah. My sword is made from a World Tree. It's got bits of metals, so it's fucking tough to manipulate. The simpler the composition of the material, the easier to manipulate. And how tough and malleable the material plays a part too."
Memories of trying to get twigs, Lincoln Logs, metal wires and then finally pencils to fucking do what I wanted it to do passed through my mind. A lot of tourette level cursing before anything happened. I'm positive the twigs finally let themselves be manipulated after they got sick of being verbally abused.
I sighed and continued, "The wood in my sword is incredibly dense, yet flexible, making it uniquely nigh-unbreakable. Thankfully, wood and organic materials are excellent conduits for aura."
Mercutio snorted dismissively, "You don't have to tell me. It's why most Manipulators control humans or animals. All living creatures have an aura. All you need to do is hijack it somehow. It's a lot easier and efficient than pouring aura into the material and forcing it to move."
I frowned and nodded, "Yeah… I ain't manipulating anyone. I rather manipulate myself. Anyways, the fact is, I needed to learn how to manipulate both wood and metal. It's a pain, but it helped me with my goal toward my main Hatsu."
"Oh yeah? What's that?" he said without looking at me. There was something there though, a well-hidden excitement…
I pressed my hand left hand against the powered off radio.
I concentrated, channeling my aura into my hand and pushing it into the radio. It sprung to life. The knobs spun as the sound of countless radio stations spewed out the speakers like the Legion of the Damned in-between garbled, static sounds. After thirty seconds, Mercutio waved his right hand for me to stop.
I pulled my hand off the radio. It fell asleep, no longer summoning Satan and his legion.
"Ok, what was that?" Mercutio said with annoyance.
I smirked, "I've been working on being able to manipulate technology. Though, it's tough..." I rubbed the exhaustion from my eyes, "... I've been training and studying close to sixteen hours a day. All I eat sometimes is coffee and protein powder, and let me tell you... going to the bathroo-"
"All right. I get it," he said without looking at me. I could see the gears in his head turning as he searched the highway in front of him. For the first time I've known Mercutio, I heard genuine emotion in his voice.
"You and that giant-sized kid are freaks, you know that? No getting around that... But you'll have to cut down on your hours of training. You'll burn yourself out."
I felt my face darken. I shook my head, "I can't. I need to be as strong as possible, come September..."
We became quiet. He nodded, "Fine. But you'll need sleep, so focus on increasing your Ren and training your Hatsu. What you need is fighting experience. Real fighting experience."
I stared at the leader of Red Squad. I analyzed his face for the answers at his sudden interest in me. I found nothing. So I did the only thing I could.
"Why do you care?"
He glanced at me for a second before looking back at the road. His eyes screamed opportunity and thought.
"I wrote you off when you nearly died to Binolt. I thought Evira was crazy. One and ten million? That's once in a lifetime. And five people with that kind of talent falls from the sky? Give me a break…"
His eyes became hard. As if reliving something..
"Then I saw you spar Knuckle and Shoot... It'd have taken years to survive against them. You held your own. If those four friends of yours are... well, we have a chance."
"Against the troupe?" I said, my voice hard.
"More than them..." he said, his voice low. He squeezed the black steering wheel so hard the leather ripped. Yellow foam peeked through.
I stared forward. Whatever he's planning... it was personal.
The sun blazed down on me as I stood over a rocky cliff a few kilometers away from a house. It reminded me of Courage the Cowardly dog mixed with The Hills Have Eyes.
A white, two-story barn home with an actual barn next to it. Flecked and sand damaged pain revealing worn out wood underneath. Dead, damaged fencing that hadn't been maintained for decades laid strewn in a destroyed circle around the property. Dry, cracked dirt and clay with dead plants everywhere.
Dead bull skull. Oh look, tumbleweed…
It'd be comical and cliché if I wasn't staring right at it. As are all things actually experienced. It looked and felt barren, lifeless, and depressing.
With my naked eye, I couldn't really see anything but movement. Human movement.
So I used a trick I learned from Mayer's books.
I raised my right hand and made a circle with my index finger and thumb. Using Gyo, I concentrated my aura into my fingers and stared through.
The people were no longer dots in the distance. I could see them, though not as close and clearly as I'd like. More like looking through a kid's telescope than a sniper scope.
A few dozen people were loading wooden crates into pickup trucks. Countless more were moving around, keeping watch. People were exiting and entering the big old barn to retrieve more crates.
They looked like gangsters. Heavily armed gangsters with body armor on.
I frowned.
I put my hands into my hoodie pocket and turned around to Mercutio. He was leaning on the hood his car, arms crossed.
"We'll be taking them out. Think of this as a test…" he said nonchalantly.
He pushed off his car and walked over to the edge of the cliff. He held his hat down to his head with his right.
"Keep up," he said. Then he jumped off the cliff.
I rolled my eyes and did the same. Apparently 'keep up' was all that was needed for me to follow someone off a cliff.
It was about thirty meters, but with Nen it might as well have been a short hop off a curb. I saw in my freefall Mercutio hit the ground, then immediately rocket off in a plume of dust. His Ren absorbed the shock of the landing and allowing him to speed off like the Road Runner. I did the same, both of us moving faster than horses.
The speed at which we moved whipped up a cloud of dust that trailed behind us. For the first time I was outside the city, speeding through an open field with inhuman speed. The wind on my face cooling me down from the overbearing heat from above. The rhythmic, rapid pounding of my feet against the dirt as my legs carried me like the Greek god Mercury.
I couldn't help but smile. I felt alive.
It took us around to two-and-a-half minutes to cover the three-kilometer distance. By the time the gangster saw the twin dust clouds zeroing in on them…
It was too late.
Mercutio was a blur as bullets rang out from his snub-nosed revolver. Pinpoint bullets ripping through skulls with precision, accuracy, and a bloody mess. He didn't miss a shot as five people fell dead, almost simultaneously, in a spray of blood.
We had approached from the barn side of the property. Wooden, fragile, and beaten up by erosion. I pulled a Kool-aid man, tearing through the barn wall it like it was made of saltine crackers.
Broken wood planks, wood dust, and sand turned my entrance into a smokescreen. I heard shouting and coughing as the gangsters shouted in distress. They gave confused orders, trying to direct everyone with a gun to fire. I saw a vague shape point in my direction.
With Aura infused strength, I jumped about four meters in the air and latched onto a wooden beam above. Just as the crack of every single gun in the building fired through the Kool-aid hole I made.
I looked down, past my dangling legs, to see everyone focus fire on the cloud of dust. The poor dust cloud took hundreds of rounds of ammunition. One guy, most likely the leader, yelled out to stop. Everyone did.
I lifted my legs over the wooden beam and crouched down. I peered down at the superstitious cowardly lot...
I am the vengeance!
I am the night!
I. AM… a guy who might have ADHD and too active an imagination, jeez.
Well, at least I felt calm and confident.
I focused and looked down again.
Cautiously, the gangsters went into the dust cloud to find my hypothetical dead body. While they continued to lose this game of hide and seek, I counted how many were below me. Thirteen. With one giant, Asian looking guy in the back.
My calmness gave way to some concern. He was staring at me. The guy had a smirk on his face and had his arms crossed. He was leaning on the wall all the way at the back of the barn, which should be difficult in all the dust. Stacks of wooden crates on either side of him.
I heard gunfire from outside. And one sound that was a rhythmic, consistent 'bang' that was distinctly Mercutio. It had to be since there was a scream or gurgle after every gunshot. A murderous metronome that was making the people below me panic, their fragile bravado fracturing into terror.
It'd be just as easy for me to kill these guys below. I sighed.
I activated my Hatsu and cupped my hand into the wooden support beam. My limit on the amount of material I could manipulate was about the size of Stick. That'd be enough for me to destroy the pillars and beams that held the roof up, destroying and killing everything, but I was a nice guy... kind of sorta. I dug out a two fist fulls of wood that became as malleable as clay. I molded the wood into twenty wooden stakes about as thin as a pencil.
I narrowed my eyes and concentrated. I imbued Shu into my wooden stakes, turning them as durable as metal. I shifted the stakes into my left hand, resting them there as my right hovered over my weapons
I began.
My right hand moved rapidly over my left as I flicked the wooden stakes, almost like I was dealing cards. I had practiced this for hours and I wasn't fucking around today.
I tore through someone's right shoulder like an armor-piercing bullet, his scream blood-curdling. One ripped right through a gunmen's palm and forcing him to drop his weapon. A quarter sized hole in his hand. Another gangster panicked at the sudden screams and twisted his hand at the last second. The guy no longer had the top his thumb or most of the top of his hand.
Without pity or remorse, I methodically pin cushioned all the gangster's dominant arms. I kept moving from one beam to another, using short bursts of Ren to turn invisible from sheer speed. Panicked machine gun firing and screams rang out as they desperately tried to figure out where I was. It really was like shooting fishing in a barrel, holy fuck.
When I was done I had thirteen men screaming in agony. With four wooden stakes left.
I dropped to the ground. Everyone looked at me in fear, but I ignored them. What were they gonna' do, curse me out?
I turned back to the Asian guy in the back. He had a single ponytail and a white business suit with a yellow and red Hawaiian shirt underneath. He stared at me, nonplussed. He revealed two wooden sticks in his left hand, before dropping them to the ground and stepping on them.
There was a rough layer of Ten around his body. That explains why he was fine…
I glared at him and took the situation seriously.
He would be last then. Time to deal with everyone else.
I turned to the rest of the men. Their fear ratcheted to sheer terror as I glared at them, green hoodie over my head. Half of them panicked and ran towards the alternative exit in I made in the barn. I frowned.
I hated doing my next move when tired…
I crouched down and growled through gritted teeth as Ren flared around me. The world slowed down as Aura increased my physical and mental abilities to their limits. In short bursts this wasn't an issue, but I just came back from training. Argh...
I disappeared from sight, faster than most Nen users could keep up. An Enhancer could do this in their sleep or tired. I was tired, so fuck me…
The gangsters didn't know what happened as I blurred around like highspeed pinball. Or an invisible rush of wind that beat the fuck out of everyone. In quick succession, the goons dropped like flies. All I needed was a quick tap to the temple or chin and it was lights out. It was that simple.
I finished and skidded to a stop in front of the boss. I stared up at the guy about half a head taller than me. Muscles bulging underneath his custom made suit. Neck and trap muscles as big as bull's. He pushed himself off his position on the wall and stared down at me.
It'd be intimidating… if I didn't know Mayer or fucking Buhara…
"So, Mercutio and his flunkies finally found a weapon cache. Hōhā…" he said as he reached out into the air and conjured a giant fucking wooden spade with teeth in it. A twine of string was at the bottom of the handle. It was wrapped around his right arm.
He slammed his weapon down at me with far more speed than he had any right to have. I jumped back and skipped a few meters to make space.
I noticed his conjured weapon wasn't normal. I analyzed his weapon. The teeth around the edge looked loose… its ability had to involve that. It was sectional, cut into sections that ran across with holes in it.
I kept my guard up, two stakes in-between my fingers like mini-wolverine claws.
I hadn't trained all these fucking months to lose to my first Nen user.
I was right as the man grimaced, swung his right hand forward and grabbed the strap of his weapon. He swung it over his head and the white, ivory teeth flew out. They flew about half a meter, stopped, then fluttered like dragonflies.
Ah fuck.
My hands reached into my hoodie pocket to hide my hands and cover my next movements. Like whips, my arms flew out. My fingers flicking out my wooden stakes toward the mans' head, all four of them flying like bullets with Shu. I saw impossibly quick zig-zagging movement movement, then an explosion of white powder.
Four of the teeth had intercepted my projectiles. I cursed.
I analyzed the fluttering teeth. I count-
32
I opened my mouth dumbly at the number that flashed in my head. Ok then, thirty-two.
My opponent took the flash of surprise on my face as weakness or something. He replied.
"Sorry, but you shouldn't have given me time to analyze your Hatsu. That's a rookie mistake. Too bad you won't learn that lesson since-"
I turned into a blur as I moved as fast as I could, gritting my teeth as I fought off my exhaustion. The world zoomed past me. My feet pushing me off the surfaces of the barn with each bound.
He kept his guard up, stepping back so the wall could protect his behind as his flying teeth rotated around him, "You really are new. Speed alone isn't enough. You will never find an opening like this…"
Pieces of wood fell to pieces from my leg strength as I leapt off wall, roof, and pillar. A cloud of wood dust engulfed the area. Stacks of crates tumbling down as I leapt off them, creating more dust.
My opponent's eyes bouncing in his sockets as he concentrated on anticipating my next position. He grinned, "You think I need to see you to hit you? Who ever trained you must be terrible…"
He snarled as several of his flying blades ripped through a wooden pillar just as I stepped on it. My stomach dropped. I never tripped in mid-air before, but it was a horrifying feeling to tumble without control or direction…
As I spun in the air, helpless looking, I saw my opponent smile victoriously.
I snarled as twisted my body like a cat and rotated to face him directly. Both my hands releasing all the wood I had ripped out from my bounding around the barn. At only four meters away.
A shower of needle-sized wooden splinters rocked toward his face, his flying teeth doing little to stop my assault. Shu imbued, hundreds of wooded needles hit him in the face like a shotgun blast of rock salt. He screamed in pain as slivers of wood perforated his eyes and face. Blood and other liquids running down his head in a gruesome display of what wood could do at bullet like speeds...
It hurt for him to keep his eyes open. It hurt for him to close his eyes.
He just hurt in general.
He couldn't see anything, so I landed safely. With his hands grasping at his face, his weapon was no longer spinning and hung limply around his wrist. The teeth stayed suspended in air, unmoving, as though embedded into the fabric of reality itself or something.
I sighed and reached inside my pocket. He couldn't stop me from flinging a small wooden discus made from Mercutio's pencil. The discus cut twine strap and his weapon dropped to the ground. With that, the flying teeth fell to the ground.
With no weapon and blind, he couldn't do anything. I walked up to him and scoffed. He never stopped screaming as I stared at his mutilated face.
"You may have more experience, but experience isn't sole metric of battle. You haven't even come close to a day of my training…"
I ended his misery by knocking him out with a right cross to the chin. He fell onto his back, his conjured weapon disappearing. Another sign he hadn't practiced the fundamentals enough. A well-trained Conjurer can keep their conjuration around, even asleep or unconscious.
I heard soft clapping. I turned around to the giant hole I created to see Mercutio applauding.
"What?" I asked.
"That guy's a mercenary called Maaka. He's decent. Good enough to pass the Hunter Exam without trouble. Not a bad job. Not bad at all."
Mercutio stepped through the hole in the wall, light shining through the dust and hitting his back. Shadow covering his front. He stared at all the knocked out opponents and nodded.
"Forty guys in total. Not a single one killed in here. Hmm."
I sighed, "Let me guess, everyone outside is dead?"
He walked over to a pile of crates and took a peek in one.
"Am I that predictable? The Nen-user you took out is pretty well known our circles, but the other Nen-user I killed was a guy I knew. A small-time crime boss called Vitoluco. Last time I checked, he didn't have Nen..."
I narrowed my eyes at Mercutio. He pulled the lid off the wooden crate to reveal assault rifles with grenade launchers strapped to the bottom. The kind of shit Rambo or Arnold Schwarzenegger would use.
Mercutio sighed tiredly. He walked back out through the hole in the wall. I hurried after him.
"Wait, hold up. Is this what I think it means?" I said with a left-handed point toward the barn, my right desperately blocking the blazing desert sun.
He nodded as he stared off toward the sun. High in the distance underneath the sun was a mesa, and a person was watching us. A shadowy figure barely visible because of the sun. I swear I could see a flowing cloak wrapped around the person's shoulder and a feather sticking out of the person's head.
"Yeah," Mercutio said with annoyance, "someone's planning something, but someone's always planning something. What's important is who, what, and why?"
I blinked, and the figure was gone. I sighed.
"I'm guessing I passed your test?"
Mercutio turned to me and nodded.
"Welcome back."
