The tension seemed to smoothen, cool to a soft, simmered crisp as both seemed extremely confident they were to win, not the least bit worried about the other's efforts. It was inevitable in their minds, that they were to win and beat the other. There was just one thing left unsolved: who was right? The snappish brusque of brazen ground remained cold, unnoticed, its peachy color tainted with the footsteps of unholiness, deviance. It had seemed to infect it, a venom that spread into its insides and burst into swelling holes of lava and igneous. Then, there were the steps of bravery, the steps of teenage confidence that induced a rather attractive personality, that seemed to motivate the crusty body below them. Both seemed equally powerful; but that was just how they seemed. Who was the real powerful one?
The imminence of dawn swirled in the skies, pools of cool air that whisked each other away painlessly, peacefully. They were whirlpools of clouds, so tranquil and beloved, swirling in their patterned whorls, as if they had been a planned performance, a task of beauty made with intent. And there were traces of the moon, a periwinkle chip of sky lingering in the faltering background, as it, too, faltered the night. The night of secretive hiding seemed to end; the motivation skies began to heed and mend into their independence of power, of eagerness. The gallant boy stared; the significant opponent scoffed at his efforts. "Try me," he provoked eagerly. A tightened fist showed certain keen.
"Fine," the newfound bravery of the boy spoke clearly, confidently. Almost immediately, he brought himself forward, grasped Zack by the top of his head and pushed down, bringing their bodies into the Darkness beneath the surface. They were away from the scene in seconds, and Eruption was left there, vulnerable now to all directions. He looked around, a bit frantically, too, his feet sizzling against the ground intensely, heatedly. As he moved, each step hissed with a snaky threat; they, too, seemed to want to enter the surface, by melting the ground. His now two-thirds of mutated feature glance in this direction, that direction. All he saw was the cragged walls of rock that seemed to close in on him. It seemed that all of nature was against him now, now that he didn't know where to look, where to fight. He scowled at his uncertainty, disliking the fact that he had lost one of his gambits to win.
Far away, into safety, Zack was brought from the ground and into the floor. He was not accompanied by anyone but the cool air of the early, early dawn. Not even a speck of light was available to shine on his face, to tickle him and give him notification of morning. He looked around, trying to find the recognition in his surroundings. Nothing was there but dark trees of nightly cease, ruffled leaves that had hidden themselves beyond belief. Rusty branches were there; obsolete from existence, useless now of no purpose, no life. They swayed ever so gently to the world, so delicately for they had nothing to be mad about anymore, they had nothing to cry for. So they gently patronized the air, the nature, acted as if it were its own. Zack realized where he was. Derek had sent him back to the place where he had been before rescuing Derek. He smiled, knowing that Derek was now unblended with uncertainty. It would be the first, and only time Derek would ever show that emotion.
Eruption continued to look around, dazed, every corner, every inch of his sight looking the same, as if he had seen the image a million times a second, like he had compound eyes. His mutation continued, an infection affecting his exterior, crawling over his skin into layers upon layers of magma and glassy black igneous. Then, before he knew it, it was a blow to his head, his face, knocking him over. He twirled uncontrollably to the side, felt the pain throb into his jaw, into his side of face. He scowled lowly, unsurely. It was Derek who had suddenly appeared from nowhere with that enormous blow, as if he had done it with hate. And Eruption searched for that hate. But it wasn't there. It wasn't on Derek's face. Nothing was told from it accept determination, a comforted smirk of victory, early triumph. The blow was full of whisking shadow energy that emitted in a backward eruption that fumed from the slits between his clutched fingers, fumed in gaseous streaks and faded, much too early forgotten. "I'm done hiding," Derek told. "Come!" he demanded.
Half of Eruption's face let a crooked, coaled smile. The fangs of obsidian were rocky and dark, blackened into molten perfection. Human dribble leaked out in drops, monstrously. The other human half scowled a bit, with narrowed eyes. He seemed to fixate himself, or whatever one could call this gibbous metamorphosis in progress. Then, rising with energy, he returned the punch. It missed; Derek had ducked and Eruption had been too late. Tension rose, doubts began to rise as confidence did as well in another. More punches came, more misses came back. Every time Derek found the perfect chance to strike, he did with perfect precision, whisking those fumes of shadow energy every time to pressure the attack. Any regular human would have their jaw broken by now.
Zack, Derek thought as he fought with precision, as if the brown-haired boy he had mocked, ridiculed for so long and would continue to in the future could hear him. You were right, he told the boy in his mind. Blatant silence came to retort. I'm not going to let my parents prove me wrong. I'm going to find another way to power, my power, he continued to think. That's why… he trailed his thought off. Derek jumped away to dodge a lowered kick. He found a chance as Eruption pulled back. I'm going all out on this one! He finished the thought with accordance to his attack. His limb burst into snaking length of slithering shadow. It pierced into Eruption's rocky body, stabbed right into his torso just as he had done to Zack. He scorned despairingly in pain as he withheld the driving pressure of the attack. He let out a low groan of pain as the sharp, devious fingers pulled them out of his body, as if he had just had his band-aid taken off. The cloud continued to preserve the dawn, waiting until just the right moment.
"You bastard!" Eruption roared, his voice half robotically in the mutilation of soul, sound maimed of innocence, marred into molten dark. The foe leaped into the air and reeled a blow ready, his hot fist glowing with immense heat of bubbling magma. Derek began to pull away. It was too late. The blow came. A long, bulleting explosion of scarlet lava flare erupted from the ground, the collision huffing gray, warm clouds of smoke out anciently, elderly. The hissing fire and molt screamed into the ground and shrieked into the sky. The red-hot glow soon died out into nothingness, replaced by the darkened clouds of rising smoke. The ground had been quickly weathered from the technique, pebbles and cobbles of sediment sprinkled around the area as if by godly, decorative hands of divinity.
The two presences were blocked, unseen, indefinite in the fog of cloud. It slowly hissed away, slowly whisked slivers of what happened into place, into time's hands for judgment. And that's why… Derek continued to think. The smoke rose higher; black, immune of rust tail of chain clinked their arms with each other noisily, rattling in yearn as their bearer moved below the cloud of curtain smoke. I won't let myself lose here! he demanded of himself. The dust continued to clear; the ground had been rippled with blackish threads of shadow energy that had sewn a web, an area of proven limit, glowing ever so slightly, so faintly with the immense power pumping through it. It was bright with suspicion; the chains clattered on it, clinking in cheers, in new arrival of opportunity and chance. The dust now whisked the presence of Derek's eyes through a sliver of vision. They were mean, confident, sturdy.
The sizzling of lava ate away at the smoothened marble resource ground; its red-hot glow screamed for life. "Eruption…" Derek's voice chimed from inside the misty curtain of blackish clouds. The foe's ears were caught into alarm, attentiveness. "This battle is mine," he told him. His eyes widened, and turned to a scowl, a defiant scowl.
"Not without a fight, it's not!" Eruption declared. He found Derek's presence and rushed for it. He drew in his punch and charged in while still caught in the surrounding gray and brown. His attack was stopped short – he called out in surprise. A clinking of chains clang at motion. The large, metamorphosed fist that had been enlarged to a volcanic color and size felt the cool material of a thin blade. Then, as if on cue, the drapes of secretion smoke fizzed away into nonexistence, and was whisked away by the light breezes that had become too eager, too desiring of what had happened. Derek's eyes looked up gallantly. It was a sword he held in his strong, skillful hands, a sword with a large prowess, a thin blade that was as smooth as the cleanest steel, large as the half-size of a large bark of tree. It was engulfed in its blackened color, all coal-like and charred into its darkened power. Its handle remained black, too, while it wore an arm of black chain like a scarf, a costume, snaking around its body as if constricting it in encasement, imprisoning it. It glimmered lightly in the hot lava, ever so innocently, so miniscule in reflection. Only one person knew what this blade could do other than block a foe's punch. That person was Derek.
It had seem to come out of nowhere, as if Derek had pulled it out of thin air as he looked all rough holding it, bravely smiling. "What the – What's going on?" Eruption demanded as his gaze fell upon the web-traced floor with shadow energy. It awestruck him, the sudden, quick change with the sparseness of time and apparent effort.
"You don't have time to look away!" Derek recaptured his attention, his opponent's eyes bringing up in a sudden gaze of gasp. Derek brought the blade back and reeled a punch right into Eruption's face again. It fumed with shadowed energy, and stung horridly into his skin. It had sent him a blow of unexpected exhilaration, not even giving him enough time to realize that he had been attacked before the second one came in, and did the sufficient amount of damage. Derek pulled back now, waiting. He held his fists up, prepared with a growl of a glare. He watched the enemy expertly, carefully, confidently with pulsing determination.
"You!" Eruption pulled himself back and brought in an unfocused punch. Derek ducked easily, and counterattacked. The brought himself up with a blow to Eruption's jaw. It stung more than the first two combined, and sent him flying into the air. Still holding the large blade, Derek waited a while before coming to him as well. He was the only one left standing in the grown field of limited shadow webs. One would wonder what it was for. Derek disappeared and reappeared before the flying body, which was limp and helpless, unable to do anything in midair. Derek held the blade in one hand, the chain heavily wrapped around the blade and connecting to the center of the web. He prepared himself. The battle was soon over, Derek assured himself.
Watching the two go into midair slowly, Zack sighed in his own exasperation. He had all ready forgotten about his wound, for Derek had brought him pleasance to give him a sort of ignorant bliss. "Finally," he muttered to himself, sure that Derek was to win, whatever he had in mind. He waited, coolly in the cold ground, freezing his legs as he carelessly sat, his wound still leaking blood without noticing. An unafraid smile showed on his face, widely presenting itself happily, greatly. Soon, a shadow fell over him, a shadow of misrepresented ominousness. It darkened over his shoulders, stood on top of the broken up, uplifted and weathered ground silently, menacingly.
"Hey," the voice called out to him. Zack turned back, and blinked, once. He recognized the face of his teammate Mark. Around him was broken up land, signs of extreme fighting. However, Zack had thought that Mark said using extreme moves was disallowed. "You just going to sit there?" he smiled.
"What happened here?" Zack asked suspiciously. He looked at the uneven ground and its abnormal patterns of weathered bits and pieces and unleveled uprising and such. It looked like a horrid mess, a massacre of ground. The boy remained on the ground, as if totally disregarding the other's question. "I thought you said not to use extreme moves."
"Yeah, true," Mark said, looking past his own shoulder. He found the mess of rocks and ground and stone. Bits and pieces and plates of marble were spread all over the ground, sprinkled decoratively, divinely and messily. It was proof of a new move; a move his teammates had missed. "But, after you went berserk over your boyfriend, I noticed how many times we have used powerful moves that gave away too much information. With that much evidence, the real White Cloak should've come out a long time ago."
Zack blinked, calmly, once, twice. Then, blinking the third and last time, he began to roar. "What'd you say!?!" he demanded angrily, loudly, uproariously just like Zack had always been. Mark laughed. "You disgust me!" he accused with a comical point.
"I'm kidding, I'm kidding," he chuckled widely. "Don't need to get yourself in a bunch," he spoke amusedly. He just couldn't seem to wipe that smile off his face. Inside, he still was laughing hysterically.
"But, what about the real White Cloak, then? Where's he?" Zack asked. "If he should've come out a long time ago, like you said," he asked. Mark's features turned stern.
"He wasn't here from the start," he answered gravely. "It was a plan to distract us and keep us away from Derek; if you hadn't gone into an outrage, Derek would be dead right now." Zack was speechless, filled to the brim with his own disbelief.
"Whatever, none of that matters now," Mark suggested. "It's all over." He put out his hand to Zack's face; the sitting Minor wondered what he meant. "Come on, let's get that damage of yours fixed," he insisted. Zack nodded, and brought his hand to Mark's, being quickly brought to the ground. They began to walk over the unstable grounds and behind the trees, where Mark could tend to Zack's sacrifice for Derek's regain of personality. It was a minor sacrifice, one of a great deal, for Zack's side. He would've gone so much farther for Derek, though. Then, as they disappeared to the darker parts of the higher elevation, Zack looked back, just for a second, and saw Derek and Eruption still drifting upward in midair in the Minor's preparation. He said nothing, sounded nothing, and just turned back imminently, and into the darkness of whirling dawn and swirls of night. Dawn continued to linger in the sky, waiting patiently. And so did Mark and Zack, because they knew what they were waiting for wouldn't keep them long.
PoVS
A horrid, extreme bursting of crash. It pummeled the ground, burst against the air with implosion of noise. Uproarious vibrations mimicked the clouds of scarce lightning as they waited, tried to see if they could call upon dawn, the morning to wake themselves up. Loud crashing of smoke piled into the air as Takiato Daniel broke free from the smoke's grasp. The arriving morning had been so quiet, so peaceful and calm. Birds had begun their bare chirrups of melody, the ancient limbs of trees had swayed ever so lightly, so elderly in their needed rest and silence, that seemed to last for an eternity – their eternity.
Perspiration was wiped from Daniel's brow. His breath was becoming sparse; his body, tired. Hissing smoke threatened spears at the air with dragging wisps of gray and brown and dirt. His body's gotten four times larger since the beginning of this fight, Daniel noticed with a thinning breath that soon became scarce of life. How? He asked himself. Silence answered him from his mind. From the cloud of smoke came the slithering, lengthy body of the now body of a worm, chest and above of a discolored human, zooming right past Daniel as he managed to dodge it just at the last second. Its impressive body was as awed as well as nauseating. Its peachy insecta body writhed in the air, slimy in sounds of churning chunks as it moved, disgustingly. Fingernails had been elongated grossly into digging, piercing beaks of yellow, pecking on the ground by mistake for their unpleasant length. Skin color had been faded from a human norm of peach or tan to a morbid gray of displeasure. Eyes had been mutated so darkly, so heatedly and demonically to a point where they looked like two dark beads upon the clams of hell. He was now as long as a roller coaster's body was, screams of people the writhing, mixing noises of squish inside. It induced retching.
As it rushed past mindlessly, recklessly like a runaway train, Daniel spun himself out of the way, and tapped the chafing body ever so slightly, draining the life energy and putting the skin partially into stone. He left it there, as if it were a tracker, an experiment. His eyes carefully watched the body as it chugged past, roared in a somewhat agony, as if it had felt pain from the transfer of larvae body to stone, and broke into the ground once again with an implosion of noise. No smoke emitted, but its body took quite a while to rush in, restlessly, crazily as if in hunger. Its tailed whipped in frenzy in the air until it was eaten by the new hole. The entire area was covered in these holes that the enemy had punctured, punctured to go underneath the ground so many times. It had been strange, really, how many times it seemed to hide. It shouldn't have been because of defense. Its speed was its own defense. So why was it necessary? Daniel slowly answered this question, bit by bit, taking his time for impatience led to reckless answers, and reckless answers led to broken solutions.
Let's see then, Daniel watched, waited for the next arrival. His brother seemed to just stand there; the battle had gone on for quiet a while. Daniel looked as calm as ever, despite the slight loss of breath, but otherwise, he was fine. He hadn't wasted energy at all; he had learned how to preserve it. The only redhead Minor continued to wait. The ground rumbled in arrival. He embraced himself. Then, the ground burst open with a new hole, and the dragon body of squish and insect soared out and rushed like a roller coaster past Daniel, missing him ever so barely once again. It came past, and crashed into the faraway ground, making a new hole. Daniel examined the body as it chugged past, watching its clean, normal body, pure of all injuries, pure for it, anyway. Just as I thought, Daniel noted. He felt a light sense of achievement, taking a bare second to savor it until he got right back to the task at hand, for it was not completed yet. But so far, his hypothesis in mind was correct; if all turned out well, it could be possible to use his first plan.
In that case… Daniel reached into his pocket, felt the smooth surface of a thin piece of plan just lying there, waiting to be used. He waited for the next arrival. On cue to his sly pocket slipping, the foe burst from the ground once more and slithered around him this time, somewhat, and crawled into the air, soared right above the trees and crashed back down, Daniel as his target. The Minor jumped away, and sent out an arsenal of soul spheres to attack the opponent. They bulleted through the air, straightforward to their target with no possible curves like the targeting of a perfected missile. Each one hit where he had planned, for it had not just been a random picking of where to attack. The body droned back into the ground with a rumbling of surface.
"It won't matter how many times you hit me!" the voice cackled from beneath, differently, evilly.
"Oh," Daniel piqued with a knowing smirk. "I all ready know that; you don't have to tell me," he said cleverly. The foe began to wonder just how much he knew. He would've been surprised. "I figured it out a long time ago." Daniel's hand was now out of his pocket; the pocket was now empty. "Don't waste my time!" Daniel called out. "Hurry up and come!"
"Aren't we a bit hasty?" the voice shot back rather more loudly this time, as if he were closer. "Fine, then; I don't have a problem with it!" the beast roared and burst out of the ground again. The body soared to Daniel. Daniel embraced himself. He shot another set of soul spheres to the snaking body as it sunk back to the floor in striking failure. The plan was working. But just what was the plan? What was the point of hurting the enemy and wasting your own life energy just for the purpose of having the foe recover a second later? Just what did this redhead genius of youngest age Minor have in mind for his brother, as well as the opponent?