"Impressive." Sorath nodded at Asher. "I didn't know you had it in you. Now, Larry will be fighting Lucien."
Asher walked slowly and sadly to the side of the stadium. He had a bad feeling about the semifinals. Larry and Lucien, on the other hand, were very eager to fight.
"I must win this battle!" Lucien yelled passionately.
"Really?" Larry asked rhetorically with his annoying accent, "That's too bad because I'm gonna be the one winning here!"
They removed their beys from their belts and launched them. Moonlit Orion and Serpentine Ophiuchus clashed back and forth as their primal warrior spirits struggled against each other above the arena.
"There's no way you can beat me!" Larry bragged with glee and delusion. "My fighting instincts are on such a high level, you won't even know what hit you!"
"That doesn't make sense." Lucien tried to explain, "Your use of the word- ah, fuck it. I can't put anything into words."
"Yeah, I thought so." Larry cracked himself up, "Because you're stupid!"
Without saying anything, Larry gave a discreet stealthy signal for Orion to fire an arrow at Ophiuchus. It hit and slowed down Ophiuchus a bit, but it didn't damage the metal because Orion's arrows were only corrosive to living flesh.
"Hey!" Lucien stamped his foot with anger, "I didn't see that coming!"
"See?" Larry smiled smugly, "What'd I tell you? You're stupid. You can't match my fighting instincts. I train every day in the wild swamps of Styx!"
"All right, that's it!" Lucien bared his teeth, "You think you're the one who's been shaped by his environment to become strong and agile warrior? Listen to my story!"
"Do you ever shut up?" Larry taunted.
"Just listen, damn it!" Lucien screamed, "I never knew my parents. They left me in a dumpster as soon as I was born. You say I'm stupid? I may have never gone to school, but I am not stupid! I took an IQ test! Do you know what my IQ is? It's 189! They say I have something called Aspergers. Basically, I don't have things like empathy and compassion that get in the way of kicking ass. I'm just a cunning sociopath destined to destroy everything! And if anyone else wants to destroy this already half-dead world, I'm going to kill them because nobody will ever get in the way of my destiny!"
While ranting, Lucien was distracted from several more arrows that Orion shot at Ophiuchus.
"Get off my ass!" He noticed his bey's spin terminally decreasing in speed, "Special Move: Diabolic Firestorm!"
Flames shot out of the built-in flamethrowers in the sides of Ophiuchus, melting the arrows that were still being fired at it by Orion. The Ophiuchus spirit's snake breathed fire all over the Orion spirit. The flames of the Ophiuchus bey reached the Orion bey, melting it into liquid metal.
"What!?" To everyone's amazement, Larry cried. "No!"
"Not so tough after all, huh?" The smug arrogance that once filled Larry now belonged to Lucien. "Alright, Ophiuchus! Do your thing!"
Ophiuchus slammed into Larry's stomach, knocking him down to the ground. It activated its flames and melted his screaming body in half. After the flames went out, it jumped at Lucien, and he caught it in his hand and walked off to the side of the arena.