The Tournament of Red Lions: Commencement (Round 1)

[X-3]

Alright, good battle VGFian. Good luck with the rest of your fights.

[Valentine]

So what's the normal down time between rounds? A week or two?

Also, where's Acradius with the Inn topic? :p

[Metal Man]

If he shows up I am soooo challenging him to a rematch for that NLBFT thing.

[Galefore]

Downtime is usually around 5 minutes. I gave it a couple of days because I was waiting for everyone to do their finishers, but they can just come back to it if they'd like. New topic in an hour.

[Valentine]

Dude, I totally forgot about the finishers!

Come on guys, this is your chance to get stuck in.

[Zaden]

finishers

MY CHARACTER IS DEEAAAAAAAD!

*slaps you*




But don't worry, if I win the second round, I promise it'll be warm and juicy... *evilest grin*

[Galefore]

Okay so that new topic still isn't up yet. My apologies. Definitely before the end of the night.

*mumbles about homework and college and planning projects and blah*

[Metal Man]

Dude, I totally forgot about the finishers!

Come on guys, this is your chance to get stuck in.

I did one, but I'm apparently the lone ranger.

[PK FIRE!]

How bad do silver bullets hurt the pocket book in today's economey?

[Fairlight Excalibur]

Welcome to Hell

The golem shuddered as it lumbered over to the pile of rocks that contained its opponent. A faint moan escaped from the pile of rocks as the swordsman grunted, trying to pry the debris off of himself, but it was useless. The massive heap of boulders immobilized him, and his body had sustained so much damage at this point that it was not responding to his will to fight.

The light from the walls reflected off his face as the boulders over his head were lifted by the golem and casually tossed away, shaking the entire room as they crashed into the ground and rolled to a stop. The 'face' of the golem leaned over, inspecting the Zeva to see if he was still alive. Kryptonite simply stared back at it, daring it to finish him. The cold look of determination on his eyes showed that he was not afraid to die.

Suddenly, the golem crumbled apart, as the Soul Stone was finished with the useless rocks, and the cave again resounded with the sounds of thousands of crashing rocks. The Stone floated through the air, leaving its bright mineral shell behind. The blood red gem hovered directly over the adventurer's face for a moment, and then began pulsing.

Softly, slowly at first, but gradually pulsing faster and with more intensity, the stone began to twist and pulsate wildly as the the gem's heartbeat reached the apex of its intensity.

Kryptonite began to feel the influence of the stone. At first, a gentle tug, no more than his little sister pulling on his collar when they were young. It seemed to pull at him, but not physically. The influence was hard to describe, as it felt as though his very soul were being beckoned away from his body. Yet, the swordsman resisted.

Then, a consistent pull, like an angry older brother pulling him by the wrist. Kryptonite refused to comply, gritting his teeth and focusing his willpower, refusing to part with his own body.

It soon grew to a mighty yank, like a concerned father pulling his toddler back from a busy intersection. The adventurer held on for dear life, grasping at invisible straws, desperately holding on to his own reality and sanity, stretching his mental capacity to the uttermost limit.

Finally, the stone emitted a tremendous jerking, akin to tying a Boeing 747 to a monarch butterfly for a tug-o-war match. His grip slipped, and his vision went black....











Kryptonite awoke, reflexively drawing his sword and standing up, getting his bearings. A voice immediately spoke to him from behind.

“Hey newcomer, good to see you're awake,” the male voice greeted him. He spun around, facing the three men who stood before him. All three men different as night and day, with some old and some young, of different races, and different physical builds.

“Where am I?” Kryptonite questioned them as he looked around. The entire world seemed to be filled with a menacing red light, and the echoing screams all around him began to grate on his nerves.

“Where do you think you are, son?” the man chuckled, motioning behind him toward an endless expanse of nothing. In that expanse, Kryptonite could see literally thousands of people, mostly doing nothing. Some were playing games, some were sleeping.... and a great number simply screaming their heads off and pounding against what appeared to be the boundary of this spiritual prison.

“You're inside the stone,” the man stated, “and you're never leaving either, at least not until someone shatters the stone from the outside.”

They began walking in the direction of the crowd as the man droned on.

“Has its perks, it does,” he continued, “you never age, never hunger, never thirst... or at least you don't if you were taken in good shape. Poor Mo over there...” The man indicated a hefty fellow lying on the ground, holding his stomach. He was moaning loudly.

“Mo was hungry when he was taken, so he's stuck that way,” the man explained, “kinda sucks for him.”

Kryptonite was not excited about his new accomodations. As he looked around, the most active thing he saw going on was a huge game of freezetag.

“Why are these people playing?” he demanded, “when we could be working on an escape plan of some sort?”

“That's the same stupid question every new guy asks!” the man snorted, “Don't you think we've tried!? I've been in here for four hundred years! We've tried every single possible way of getting out, and there isn't one! All we can hope for is that some warrior finally wins and breaks the stone. Even then, we don't know what effect that will have on us. Will we all die? Will we be set free? No one knows! But we all agree, it's better than being stuck in here. Everyone stops playing and comes to watch the outside world when someone fights the stone, hoping he will win....”

The swung his arm wide, gesturing to include all the people inside the stone.

“But we've all lost. You had us excited, too. You took longer to die than most everyone in here, and with that flaming sword, we all thought you were our ticket outta here. But now, your just another chump stuck in here with the rest of us. All there is to do in here is sleep or play games. That's about it. We have no tools to build houses and no trees for wood either. We have no pens and no paper to write songs or poetry.... unless you happened to be carrying one.”

A quick checking of his own pockets confirmed that he had nothing of the sort. His sword and map were all he had carried into the cave.

“We don't even have a football or a soccer ball, so all we have been doing for the last 70 years is play freezetag. When we get to the hundred year mark, we're gonna have a tournament, then move on to the next sport that doesn't require any equipment. Hey, you look like you're in good shape. You wanna join my team?”

“I'll think about it,” Kryptonite said as he took all this in, “but why are all those people screaming?”

“Oh, the Screamers? Don't mind them. Some people just can't handle having their souls ripped from their bodies and they completely lose it. Some have been screaming ever since they woke up, while others just eventually go bonkers from being trapped in here for too long. We've tried killing them to put them out of their misery, but you can't die or sustain injury in here. Their voices never tire either, so they ain't gonna shut up any time soon. You eventually learn to tune them out... hey, where you going?”


Kryptonite walked away from the man, finding a spot as far from the rest as he could.

He had heard enough. He found a soft spot on the red grass and sat down cross legged, with his sword held horizontally in front of him.

The others watched as he sat down, and sighed. “He'll be a screamer for sure, just give him a few years. That's what always happens...” The men who had greeted him gave up, and rejoined their sport, paying no more attention to yet another faceless soul trapped in the gem.



But Kryptonite refused to be another faceless soul. He sat in his meditative trance, gathering power into his blade and meditating, going through a form of spiritual training to help him focus his power more expertly.





He would not sit here forever.


He would find a way out...


Or he would spend eternity trying.

[Bad Dragonite]

Alright, good battle VGFian. Good luck with the rest of your fights.

[OoC]Same to you, dude.[/OoC]


Perhaps drinking the blood was the best thing Ramses could have done at the time. For it seemed the dark slime man was indeed, "dealt with." Ramses wasn't going to let his guard down just yet though; too many times this has gotten him in trouble. He was just as right in remaining vigilant as he was in drinking the blood. The ink thing, though in two halves now, not including the bits here and there that had been spread everywhere by the different sustained attacks, was shifting again. The reasoning behind the creature swallowing the disembodied arm was now apparent. It had now had enough time to digest, and something powerful was occurring from it. The ink man's two main halves were shifting and were what caught Ramses' attention. If it weren't for this he would have noticed the bits of ink-colored slime to the side shifting as well. Ramses was driven mad by now, if not from loss of blood, then from the permanent loss of his limb to this abomination. He had to remove this maddening threat once and for all. He walked over to the demon-like ink man, pulled his knee up to the level of his brow in some unnatural way with twists and pops. In fact he had pulled it up with enough force to cause a strong upward air current and even a small tornado in the room for a moment. He then, with the largest amount of force he could muster, thrusted his foot straight towards the creature's chest. He should have felt the squishing of the creature underneath his boot. What he instead felt was several small blobs of slime shooting at, and catching his foot all at once, along with a strange cold feeling as the creatures chest fused with the small blobs that had come from here and there after being detached earlier in the skirmish and the creatures upper torso engulf the Ramses' foot and most of his shin and calf. It should have been easy for Ramses to get free of this muck with his new found legs of awesome potential, but it was not. The creature got itself up on two feet, with Ramses boot still embedded in its chest. The blobs from earlier had been, almost magnetically, brought back to the creature, and fused back into it. In fact it was not only restored completely, but apparently had gained even more of this strange slime (possibly from any excess tissue left from the arm after the blood and essences were absorbed from it) and the spike remained as a kind of tail.

Ramses tugged at his own leg, not even coming close to losing balance, but could not budge it. He decided to fling the creature to get it off, and he was right. He spun around, using his own and the creature's weights, and launched the creature back towards the bar. In that instant of release, the creature let lose a rainbow-colored, glowing liquid into the face of Ramses that seemed to burn like nothing felt before by the man. It's tail-spike also did something interesting. It absorbed into the creature's body, ran back up what might be considered the spine area of the creature, and bursted out as a set of bat-like wings, easily reaching the same wingspan of the creature's arms. It spread the wings out and slowed its imminent impact upon the case of bottles. It was still a crash, but not anything serious. The wind from the wings opening, was quite strong though, and could be felt across th room.

Ramses managed to scrape the burning material from his face - along with some flesh and muscle - by rubbing it into some nearby curtains by a large window, him not being able to wipe it off himself. By the time he got his bearings back and looked back at the bar, his vision blurred, there was a quick flash of light, and the other creature was gone. There standing in it's place was something one might easily mistake for an angel. A young man, a bit more than 6 feet tall, with mid-length blonde hair and eyes of nearly indigo blue, but at some angles some might swear they were golden. He wore white clothing, and on top of that a white armor pads of unknown material on his shoulders, breast, forearms, shins, thighs, and on top of his footwear. He glowed with a white light that came from around and within him. He seemed slightly translucent to the naked eye. So much so that one might've thought him a spirit come back from the grave. Probably one of the more defining features of him though, was the pair of eagle-like, snow-white wings sprouted from his back and spread open for the world to see. As he folded his wings back, he walked a few steps forward toward Ramses, through the bar. He was a creature made of pure light energy it seemed or at least something to that effect. Was that even possible? Apparently so. When the ink creature had been thrown back and opened its wings, it had kicked up the glowing liquid from the shattered light into the air and onto the creature. Apparently this somehow purified him while Ramses was busy [strike]making out[/strike] with the curtains.

Ramses would have been much more awestruck by this if he wasn't already mad with "U7Tr@ R@3G!" . Before he could react though, a familiar shadow came flitting into the room before turning into a horrible form and jumping straight through the avian. This caused the brightness of the glow and the translucency to pretty much disappear. The angel like man stumbled a bit, but kept his footing. The shadow landed to the ground and flitted across the wall and out of the room again. It escaped with an evil chuckle. The winged man, now no longer seeming to be made of pure light, looked in the direction the shadow took, and was bout to pursue when Ramses attempted to stop him with a swift kick aimed at the winged one's side. It hit its mark and sent the young man stumbling back a few feet, and pushing him down onto his knee. The winged man picked himself up and stared at his newest obstacle, the unsuspecting and proud of his own kicking ability, Ramses. While Ramses was spitting, the avian man held his hands out and brought himself up to a standing position. Ramses spit over to the side and smiled. The madness, the cost of the legs of the loser, was causing him to be exceedingly prideful and caused him to drastically underestimate his enemies. Around the winged man's hands were swirling rays of light, mostly gold or clear, but at angles giving off small rainbows. It formed eventually into a large, large broadsword of gold, silver, and pearly white. It was wide and long enough to make a Cloud Strike envious. It was almost as tall as the winged man, and was about a foot and a half wide from the single edge to the blunt side. It looked like it probably had some sort of hidden mechanisms, but whether it did or not was unimportant at the moment. The winged one grasped the swords long hilt in both hands, and with a fierce battle cry of a yell, charged at Ramses. He rammed the decaying and dis armed man full force, blade-first. The man's legs should have kept him from being swept off from the blow, but this blade was formed from light itself. It did something to counteract the demonic powers of the man. In the moment that Ramses felt the blow and felt himself lift up off of the ground, the his eyes widened and his smile left.

The charge continued even after the blow. Everything flashed by and yet went by as slowly and painfully as possible for Ramses. This might've been some form of atonement, possibly, as it truly was agonizing. It continued on and on forever, until they reached the window. At that moment they went out and then down. The blade never left Ramses' chest. Down, down, tens of stories they went at blistering speeds. When finally, the submerged blade's tip and the back of Ramses hit the sidewalk pavement across the street from the building they just left. Ramses body was split. His right half of his upper torso went flying off to the left, his lung bits of muscle and blood vessel following. The left half, including his heart, was nowhere to be found, when it impacted with the fire hydrant, it may as well have been erased from existence. The fire hydrant itself was gone now, absent, allowing for unknowable amounts of water and blood to rain down. Ramses' head and neck were pretty much turned to crushed watermelon on the inside, which means it was exactly the same on the outside. His lower half was separated into several pieces, the evil glyphs no longer burning in them. Everything in the middle was pretty much just either gone, or was going to be. His bowels and bits of veins lay displayed in between all of these pieces. Bits and pieces of him had shot out in every direction, dirtying the walls of the nearby grey buildings of this lively city as well as the sidewalk and street. The crimson was soon washed away by the water coming down from the hydrant's geyser though. Many people were scared away from the area, but no innocents were injured. There were soon many on lookers to this event. People were startled by the seemingly unharmed angel-like man kneeling over the area that his prey had just been obliterated in.

It took him a moment to get himself up after the fall. He in fact had opened and folded his wings with the correct timing during the fall, allowing him to not be injured, and to stay with the victim. The sword was fine. It had pierced through the pavement by a couple of inches, but that wasn't very much compared to the weapon's actual size. The winged man stood up and after a second of struggle managed getting his sword out of the concrete. As it left, the remains of Ramses (what was left) burned up and turned to ash. This world was cleansed of him and any demonic powers that may have lingered with him. The winged man looked down at the different sections of skull as they turned to ash even though they were soaked from the hydrant. In that moment, the angelic man said in a deep voice, "I might've spared your life had you not interfered in those last moments. This world is cleansed of you now... I'm sorry you were ever born. Even if I don't know you, I know your kind. Goodbye..."

With that the angelic one walked away, his light sword faded away for the moment. His shadowy pursuers from earlier likely were not giving up this easily at all. Where was he going to go now?

"Somewhere with alot of sunlight..." he thought.