Whose Got A Match?

[misa]

(ooc:// Before we begin, and yes, this is us beginning for all those people who would at a later stage feign ignorance and negligence, I would like to point somethings out. First and foremost, if you haven't read the Battle Plot - which some people have magnificently demonstrated they didn't bother their backsides with - then don't post. Go read it, then come back. Input from everyone would be the best thing in the world, it really would and there is room for everyone. None of this fúcking stupid, "I'm putting myself forward cráp" because we all know that's not how it works. This is an amazing website, run by an amazing person and full of amazing people. With all that awesomeness running wild is it not possible for us to all work together and write something brilliant? Thanks, if you've bothered to read this, seriously.)

They had arrived.
The rustic gates of the "great" and "noble" Orchid Hill rose to meet the Forces like a wizened old man in front of an armoured tank.
Without a chance.
A pair of coppery coloured iron gates, practically off their hinges already were hardly a match for the might of Reuben's soldiers as they moved together as one surging power.
One breath, one footstep, one heartbeat in their collective throats.
Then they were in the grounds, trampling the flowers into the unnaturally green grass of the seven circular gardens of Orchid that Reuben had seen mapped out so many times.
And all was still. Just for a moment, there was that perfect calm before the storm.
The inhale.
And the exhale would come, along with the beginning and moment now...
Reuben gripped his sword and unsheathed it in a swift, graceful movement. Any second now...

[Jack Trove]

ooc: Well said. The Battle Plan was excellently planned; it fit its briefing exactly, and everybody was given a role. There are a lot of members on this site, and it's difficult to try and balance things and make things fair for everyone. But the Battle Plan strikes this balance brilliantly. So I say, let's throw ourselves into our given roles and give it our all. Let's make this battle our best yet.

BANG.
The doors of Orchid Hill flew open, and Jack, stood erect at the front.
“Charge.”
And the students of Orchid Hill roared.
There was no order to any of this. Any strategies used were random; swiftly constructed by the Academics, most of whom were up on the roof. From their vantage point, they could see everything across the battlefield. Every move the enemy made. Every step forward. Every advance.
Several Academics were sending telepathic updates to Jack.
Not a single one had bothered to hide their terror.
Jack moved swiftly into action. Several Warriors were- as he ran- leaping out from several points throughout the Gardens at the enemy forces. They were the risk-takers. Most likely to get shot.
Most of the rest of his army were tearing across the Orchid terrain towards the enemy. Lightning bolts and fire bolts were already flying. And as they charged, the enemy charged. They ran, and they clashed.
They clashed, and they clashed. It was sort of like what thunder would sound like, if thunder cracked in half.
If thunder was split by screams.
If thunder was stained with blood.
Jack drew his sword, and cut down his first opponent.
It had begun.

[Isolde Moore]

((YAY!!!!! THE BATTLE IS IN PLACE AND NOW WE CAN START TO K-....I mean....let's get our Madeleine back without killing....*going to kill anyways*))

Oh god.
They were moving.
Orchid Hill was in war in a matter of meer seconds.
Isolde had no time to think. She charged out into the field and started to cut down her opponents. Madeleine had said not to kill and just disarm but it was hard when the enemy was relentless. Sometimes you had no choice but to kill them
Scott was a few feet away attacking come other men while Isolde, with her stash of plastic and her drawings tucked safely away behind her armour, brought the sword down and sliced through the enemies head. It made a very satisfying squelching noise.
BOOM!
Lightening struck beside her a millimetre away and knocked her of balance. She fell to the ground. Her head nearly hitting a jagged rock but her arm flew out and protected her.
In a second she was up in the air and was creating a tornado and was rampaging through the battlefield sweeping up enemies and throwing them down again before it was broken by another air manovuer of the enemies. Isolde landed on her feet and faced her opponent with no emotion in her eyes.
"Today Orchid Hill will end." they sneered at her. Taunting her.
Isolde smirked, "Sure it will. But then again, so will your side and it will fall before Orchid does. You wanted a fight, you've got one!"
The girl ran at Isolde and conjured a current of strong wind which Isolde sent back with much more force knocking her an four others in the vacinity flying backwards.
While she did this she was unaware of someone else charing at her from the side and therefore, was knocked down with a dagger to her neck.
For the first time ever in her life, she was staring death in the eyes. But not with fear. Not with anger or disgust. She smiled at the dark brown eyes and flickered her eyes to Scott who was just finishing of his opponent and looked around for her.
"Ready to die?" the man spat in her face.
"I am," answering calmly she brought one of her drawings to life, "The question is, are you?"
He stared at her wide eye, in confusion, before starting to put pressure on the knife at her kneck but a roar and a hissing came behind him. He turned behind to see what it was and saw a dragon before his eyes.
He was in flames.
"Thank you," she was already on the move melting plastic as she went to aid Scott, "Having fun?"

[misa]

The emerald green grass was already being stained ruby red. Whether more of the precious jewels spilt were his own Forces or theirs, Reuben couldn't tell.
But if it was his men and women, then that blood may as well have been Reuben's; they wouldn't pay for this victory alone.
The Orchidian "warriors" were in dissarray, a complete mess. It made them all the easier to pick of.
Reuben span neatly on the ball of his right foot, twisting to lodge his sword firmly through the synapse between the shoulder and breast plate of one of the students. Like every time before this, above all the racket going on around him, Reuben heard the hiss of the metal sliding through the flesh, the gasp of the person beneath the armour - a girl - as the blade pierced her heart thanks to the neat angle Reuben had driven the blade in with. She slumped, falling from his blade and to the ground, her helmet rolling off on impact to reveal a pair of startlingly blue eyes already glazed with death and a mouth shaped with horror.
One.
Reuben was gone, wiping his blade on his trouser leg, before he was deftly sweeping it in the direction of another student, darting through the mass of clashing bodies and minds and swords.
He wondered if every leader felt what he could very nearly heard coursing through his veins; that desperate, throbbing urge to be fighting at the side of everyone of his comarades.
Trying to protect them all.
Protect...where was Delilah? Was she holding her own? Or were her eyes much the same as those of the girl he'd just struck down; wide and staring and lifeless...
It didn't bear thinking about.
Instead he turned his attention to scanning the "ranks" of Orchidian troops for Trove.
If their assumptions were correct, he would be in charge now. Reuben couldn't see him, perhaps the bástard wasn't down here, fighting with his troops, but instead hiding inside the building working on "strategy".
Coward.

[/color]

[The Delaney Twins]

Kennedy

There were bonuses to Sally’s going metal, Kennedy knew that.
Built-in armour, for one. The bullets weren’t going to put a scratch on her.
And although she couldn’t say anything, they could still communicate through the waves; and that was good, because they could warn each other what was coming, and they could work together if they had to.
And the metal was camouflage. A particularly dangerous-looking enemy came past; Sally melted, and lay a harmless puddle of metal on the ground.
Or what they assumed was a harmless puddle of metal on the ground.
That was the horrific part. The metal made her able to do what she did.
Kennedy had never seen his sister in action before. Now, he was pretty sure he hadn’t wanted to.
Kennedy didn’t like thinking about that. His sister wasn’t supposed to be this creature, this pool of deadly silver that rose up and engulfed the enemies who were unfortunate enough to step on her. The metal covered them entirely, and then when it fell back to earth, black ashes showered down with it.
She had told him that she thought differently when she was metallic. She had told him that she didn’t feel any emotions at all. And he was glad, because that meant that she wasn’t suffering the same horror that he did every time he thought of those clouds of ashes.
Human ashes.
He stopped himself from thinking about it after too long, and focused on his own situation.
He was all right at this, he found. It wasn’t too hard, when he changed his form. He searched his face selection for the most steroid-pumped wrestle freak that he had ever seen, transformed, and then let his fists do the talking. He didn’t have any skill, but brute force was working out well for him. He was doing better than he’d thought he would.
(Can I call it better? Killing more people, that’s better?)
A little voice in his head had kept repeating a mantra to him: You or them. It’s you or them. You have to do this.
But he still hadn’t been able to do it properly. His fists shied back from the faces that they were supposed to be mashing. His knife kept swerving at the last moment to avoid fatal hits. He remembered reading once that you didn’t have to be good to win a fight; you just had to be more willing to cause pain than your opponent was.
And he hadn’t been more willing, until the clever little voice in his head modified his mantra, It’s them or Sally.
That’d done it.
He’d killed two people. Or thought he had, anyway. He hadn’t hung around to check.
And God only knew how many Sally had dealt with…
He could reconcile himself with the metal thing. He just didn’t think about it. And though he didn’t like it, he never blamed her for what she was doing.
(I don’t blame myself for what I’m doing.)
His sister wasn’t a killer; the war had forced her to kill.
(I’m not a killer; the war is forcing me to kill.)
But that was all right. It was all right. It was them or her.
(It’s them or me.)
Even if the metal had made her into a different person, it didn’t matter. Metal-Sally was dangerous, metal-Sally was creepy as hell, and metal-Sally was a killer.
But metal-Sally kept regular Sally alive, and that was all Kennedy cared about.
When he turned around to face her, however, he was horrified to find that the metal wasn’t doing as good a job as he had wanted it to.
“Sally!”

Lynn

Even in her emotionally-incapacitated state, one emotive word still managed to resonate through Lynn’s mind:
Fùck.
A metal bender. She had come up against a bloody metal bender.
As soon as she felt that familiar, sickening grip of a metal controller around her body, her survival instincts had kicked in and she started to transform rapidly from metal to flesh, but it hadn’t been too long before she’d had to stop. She couldn’t change back properly when she was being controlled.
And so she was stuck. Her arms, her chest and her head were flesh, but everything from her ribcage down was metallic. Her survival instincts had put her in more danger than she would have been if she’d stayed metal. If the metal controller messed with the lower half of her body while parts of her were flesh, she wouldn’t be able to melt back into her proper form. They could do anything. They could rip her legs off; they’d just lie as useless hunks of metal for the rest of time. They could use parts of her metallic lower half as weapons against her. They could use the metal to smother her.
It was like handing a box of bullets to a man with an unloaded pistol.
And she couldn’t run. Her legs were hunks of metal. She couldn’t control her power well enough to be able to run.
The man didn’t smile at her, didn’t gloat; he used his power to start pulling at her metallic legs with a wrenching force. These people were efficient and deadly.
The pain was overpowering, and she couldn’t stop herself from yelping, but she tried to stay calm. She had to focus. If she could focus, if she could use her waves – it wouldn’t matter if she burnt herself. That was a possible injury, but it could save her from certain death.
And yet before she had a chance to save herself, she was saved.
A muscle-bound man barrelled forward into the man who had been hurting Lynn and as the man fell, Lynn felt the hold on her body cease, and she phased out of her metal form immediately. She had been saved. But that fact didn’t stop her mind from being gripped with fear a millisecond later when she recognised that the unfamiliar muscle-bound man who was her rescuer was also her brother.
Kennedy couldn’t take this. And the moment she thought that, she saw the man who had attacked her recover from his shock at being knocked over and thump Kennedy in the face.
An unfamiliar expression festered in her brother’s violet eyes, making his entire face seem alien. Kennedy immediately reached for the knife in his belt.
Five yells came almost at the same time. One was Lynn’s, “Kennedy, get off him! I’ll take it from here!” as she ran forward and tried to push the two men apart.
Another was the yell of pain from the man who had just had a knife rocket into his shoulder.
The third, Kennedy’s voice, all gritted teeth and purpose that made his words sound cold, dangerous. “Sally, I can handle this.”
And the fourth came from far away. “Jerry!”
And Lynn looked up to where she had seen the voice come from, and saw a member of the enemy forces with an expression of pained rage as he watched what was happening with Kennedy and the metal controller, and she saw him not even begin to hesitate, but to immediately raise the gun he was holding and aim it at her brother.
The fifth yell came a moment later from Lynn’s own mouth, “No!”
And she jumped forward to protect Kennedy, but she was too late.
She was too late.

Kennedy

[/b]
Bang.
His chest lurched backward; his fists loosened; his spine slackened; he fell.
It was supposed to be painful, wasn’t it? Being shot. He had always assumed it would be painful.
It didn’t hurt. That was strange. It didn’t hurt. A profound thudding set up camp in the veins around the area that had been hit, numbness seized his mind, and it burned, but it didn’t hurt.
Briefly, he wondered if he was dying.
He felt so tired.
Fading out of consciousness, his world dimmed, and all he could hear was the shriek.
“Kennedy!”[/color]

[sophie]

Oh, God.
Sophie wasn't religious, but it was moments like this she wished she was. Maybe then she could talk to God, pray that this wasn't happening.
Pray that what she'd just stood in, the suspicious copper-coloured puddle, hadn't been what it must have been.
It was all over her shoes.
She couldn't breathe.
As such, the irony of the fact that it was only now that she was desperately searching for a God, only now when her world had transformed into a macabre portrait of real life that no "God" would ever allow to be painted.
She was shaking, she realised as not ten feet away from her, one of her classmates was torn clean in half by a tall man with eyes that told of a soul made of thunder and dark intentions.
And then those eyes were fixed on her. He was moving towards her, she could smell it...death everywhere and rushing up to greet her.
She was going to die.
She took a step back and for the first time in her life, Sophie's footing was unsure and she slipped, falling back into the puddle behind her.
It splashed up into her mouth, her eyes. The metallicy tang was undebatable. She retched spitting it out, dragging her hands across her face in a bid to claw it away from her eyes.
All the while, he was advancing on her, a man possibly as much as twice her age.
She was defenseless, all strength had left her...he lunged forward, plunging his sword down.
Sophie thought she would've lasted longer than this, she really did as she shut her eyes and threw her arms up, hoping it would be quick...

[Jack Trove]

At least when it came to the actual fighting part, you didn’t have to think.
A mind was not what guided one through a battlefield. Perhaps if Jack had had more time to plan and think ahead, then there would be some more of a strategy in the way he tore through BlueBerg. The Academics couldn’t do much more than inform him which side was winning.
Their outlook was grim.
Jack missed following orders.
When Jack followed orders, everything fell into place. He knew where he was, were he was going, what he was aiming for, who he was aiming for.
But now that Jack was making the rules… he didn’t like it.
Not at all.
Three feet to his left a Spy girl was on the ground, screaming in a pool of her own scarlet blood. Two of her limbs were missing. That was his fault.
A fellow Warrior stumbled past Jack, choking as an invisible fist closed around his neck. Jack did that.
That boy.
That body.
That blood.
Jack crouched low as he ran, barely catching his unsteady breath as he pushed forward through the thicket of the forest; snapping branches like twigs beneath his fists as he moved. A blade hung half-casually in his hand, but his grip was deceiving. To any approaching opponent, Jack looked as though he wasn’t concentrating on his weapon, making him an easy target. Two had already thrown themselves at him from behind.
They’d both regretted it.
As Jack ran, he began to slow, finding himself in a denser area of the forest. The sounds of battle grew more and more distant and as Jack pressed further through, an unpleasant sense of foreboding began to spread through his system. This dread was a hindrance to the adrenaline coursing through his blood; instead of helping him and spurring him on, it made him feel sick. It was too quiet here.
He was vulnerable.
Clumsily, a little desperately, he forced himself further through. He knew what was behind him, and didn’t plan on tracking back to that graveyard; not yet, anyway. His best bet was forward. Longer branches began to drag at him, catching and clawing at his skin, drawing blood.
He was so sick of the smell of blood.
But it was all over him. His weapons. His skin. Blood that wasn’t his.
Blood that was.
Jack’s lip was bleeding. One athletic opponent had jumped from a branch and hit him full in the face with a blow from an elbow of rock. The two had fallen straight back, but mid-fall, Jack had spun, wrestling awkwardly through the air with his opponent. The guy’s head had cracked horribly as it hit the ground.
He hadn’t got up.
The sounds were growing louder again, swelling up and surrounding him. A crack of light to his right caught Jack’s eye, and he swiped forwards with his blade, tearing the branches in two and opening the crack. The scene before him blazed with blood, and all the rage of battle kicked into gear once more around him. Off in the distance, something suddenly caught his eye.
It was something that- and Jack hadn’t really realised until this point now- but it was someone that Jack had never thought he would see again.
Sophie.
Then something new caught his attention. Sophie wasn’t looking at Jack. Sophie probably wasn’t even aware of his presence. Right now, Sophie was staring death in the face.
As Sophie crashed backwards into a pool of blood, Jack felt a sudden shock of adrenaline he’d never felt anything close to before. She was there- and he- that man- that thing was coming towards her; his eyes glittering with a wicked evil that would destroy her. She was utterly defenceless.
But Jack had a knife in his hand.
Desperation clouds one’s judgment.
Desperation is the sort of thing you learn to regret. When you look back, you think if you hadn’t let your emotions get the better of you- let that feeling, that instinct- take over, then maybe, maybe then you might have saved her.
When Jack moved towards Sophie, and he forgot one of the key rules in all combat.
Jack forgot to watch his back.
Someone crashed into Jack from behind, plunging a blade deep into his left shoulder-blade. Jack fell, rolling down and around, the weight of himself and his attacker combined with his strength toppling trees around them. Jack grappled desperately for his knife, but the shock of the moment had thrown it out of his hand. Concentrating hard, Jack closed his eyes, and several blades burst from his stomach, lodging themselves in his attacker.
By the time Jack had managed to get to his feet, he’d lost sight of Sophie.
And as Jack stumbled forward unsteadily, his stomach twisted into a knot of fear at this one thought-
He’d lost her.

[sophie]

She wasn't even supposed to be here. It was all she could think. She wouldn't be out here, but Jack had asked...she had wanted to be brave for him. To show him what she was made of.
Clearly, she had been labouring under delusions of a material far stronger, but it was only now, as she was about to be rent from this form that she realised how truly fragile it was.
Just skin and bone.
She could hear the blade rushing through the air and she so badly didn't want it to finish all this. She wasn't done yet, she wasn't ready.
Jack.
"No!" A half-strangled scream echoed around her and then there was silence.
Absolute silence.
Sophie dared to open her eyes.
The startling eyes of the man with murder in his heart bore into her. But from a distance. His blade was raised, but so were his eyebrows in shock and utter horror.
He was frozen, suspended in time.
But how?
Then Sophie realised. That cry...
It had been hers.
She still had her hands stretched out before her; shielding herself. And slowly, she began to realise that was a literal shield. She could see it, a shimmering blue bubble of contorted, carefully pressurised air, so compact no one could reach inside it. Nobody but Sophie. And the sick son of a b!tch in front of her was trapped.
At her mercy.
Oh, how the tables of life can turn...But still Sophie didn't know what to do. She held his life in her hands. How had she never thought of this before? If she could contort air, why not use it for something like this?
And if she could do this, who was to say she couldn't....
With a deep, shaking breath Sophie concentrated on feeling the air around her, on pushing it...Refusing to break his gaze, Sophie began to force the air into him.
Immediately, the stranger began to swell his eyes popping out like a macabre cartoon, his clothes tearing.
Then in a split second, he lost all shape and exploded.
Sophie made him explode.
The pieces of what used to be a human being splattered her and the outside of the shield.
She felt nauseous.
What had she done?
Her head and the world were spinning, flicked off their axis as easily as a paper ball from an elastic band.
Sophie dropped her shield and herself to the ground, carefully turning her head sideways to vomit.
The crash and cry of battle rushed in to meet her.
After she was ill, Sophie wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stood up, picking up the only remaining evidence that a soldier had once stood before her; his sword.
It was much too large for her, too heavy and too unfamiliar, but it was something.
Anything to make her feel a little bit better.
And she did, surprisingly.
She felt ill, she was a mess, and she couldn't stop shaking. But two pieces of information held her together; she had looked death in the eye and lived to talk about it (so far) and; Jack was still out there.
Tightening her grip on the handle, Sophie stepped out onto the field.
This time, she'd be ready.

[Arihant]

This was hell.
This Arihant knew, and yet it was strange. He knew it was hell. He could see it around him, in the pain and the death and the endless rivulets of crimson that were soaking into the earth everywhere he looked.
And still he did not react the way that he had thought he would.
He’d never had high expectations of how he would cope in battle. He couldn’t stand seeing people ill, let alone dying. He couldn’t stand the idea of hurting other people; a so-called Warrior, he flinched at the mere idea of causing another human being pain.
Considering this, it only made sense to suppose that, as he punched the member of the Forces that he had been tangling with so hard in the gut that the man yelled in agony, Arihant wasn’t feeling himself just now.
Arihant was angry. He had never thought that this would happen, but he was angry. As soon as he had seen these people running towards his schoolmates, his comrades, his friends and towards the place that had given him so much, the place that had been the closest thing to home that he had had over the last few years of his life with the express aim of destroying it, a rage had swollen inside him like a balloon, stretching, pushing to bursting point.
And then with the first classmate of his that he saw lying dead on the ground in front of him, the rage had exploded.
He didn’t ever strike first. He didn’t attack; he defended. He saw a member of the Forces laying into an Orchid student, and he saw that the Orchid student was in not able to save his or herself, and then Arihant saved them. Like a raging guardian angel, he disregarded his own life; he risked everything he had to save them.
The member of the Forces that had been on the point of killing Jean Matthews before Arihant arrived fell to the ground with the final blow of Arihant’s fists on his midriff, and blood bubbled at his lips.
Arihant looked down at the man emotionlessly.
Then his head snapped to the side at the sound of a distant crack, followed by a familiar voice raised in a Banshee screech, “Kennedy!”
He had plenty of emotion after he heard that. Not a thought passed through his mind other than a feeling of overwhelming dread; automatically, he started to run.
When Arihant got to Lynn, he was horrified. She was backed up against a tree, guarding Kennedy behind her, or what must have been Kennedy. All Arihant saw when he looked at his friend was a thousand different people flickering in and out of reality. Kennedy’s mimic power must have been going haywire.
A moment’s further examination showed exactly why that was: every body that Kennedy flickered into had one thing in common apart from the purple eyes. Every single one had a wound in its chest, every single one was spurting the blood that collected in a pool at Lynn’s feet.
Every single one had been shot.
They’d shot Kennedy.
“You stay away from him, you bastard!” Lynn yelled at the man who stood pointing a gun at her. Tears were streaming down her freckled cheeks as she tried to angle herself between her brother and the barrel that faced them.
And this was the moment in which Arihant would have intervened if it had been anyone else in her position, but as it was, he was frozen to the spot with fear.
The member of the forces didn’t show any emotion, didn’t shout back, didn’t say anything. Instead he angled the gun away from Kennedy and in one fluid motion aimed it at Lynn’s torso, and pulled the trigger.
Arihant found a word being ripped from his own mouth, “No!”
And the bullet snapped out of the gun with an almighty crack.
And there was a momentary deathly silence.
And Lynn’s scream tore through the air.
And Arihant unfroze and the rage filled him again with a million times the intensity of before and he ran forward to the man with the gun and he didn’t stop didn’t hesitate didn’t think but grabbed the man’s face between his hands and twisted with all the power that he had.
His neck snapped like a twig, and the man fell.
And Arihant turned back to his fallen friends without another thought, and ran to them, and saw Lynn bent over double clutching her arms to her midriff and his mind was filled with horror and he ran forward thinking the worst, that she was dead that he was dead that they were gone, and then she looked up pain in her eyes and he stumbled to a halt in front of her and gasped, “Lynn – oh my God, oh God – Lynn, don’t panic, OK, we can get you help, there’s bound to be a carer around here somewhere –”
Her brown eyes stared at him as if she weren’t quite sure that he was there. She blinked, and another tear rolled down her cheek. She took her arms slowly away from her midriff, and Arihant saw that there was no wound on her stomach. There was no hole. The bullet hadn’t hit her. How on earth…?
And then he saw her arms, both of them, and he saw the angry red burn that began above her elbows and darkened progressively to her charcoal fingers, and he knew what she’d done. She’d used the waves, the heat waves, and she’d –
“You melted the bullet,” he said softly.
“They shot him, Ari,” she said quickly, shakily, her words tumbling over each other and louder than usual. “I need to get out of here. I need to get him to the hospital. I don’t care. I don’t care about the battle. I’m getting him out of here.”
Her tone was strange, a mixture of defensiveness, practicality and pure unadulterated terror. He didn’t know what the expression on her face was. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the puckered seared flesh of her arms. The smell of burnt meat permeated the air. “Why didn’t you go metal?” he asked, his voice betraying his horror. “You could have protected yourself – you could have –”
“Because of him,” Lynn said, and she waved a disfigured arm at a man from the Forces who lay nearby, unable to move her scorched fingers enough to point. “He’s a metal controller – he was the reason Kennedy got hit, he had me cornered and Kennedy tried to protect me. Oh, God, Kennedy?” She turned back to her brother, and Arihant saw a wave of pain pass over her face unlike anything he’d ever seen before. He couldn’t watch for more than a moment, looked back at the member of the Forces. “Kennedy, can you hear me – oh my God, it’s his chest, his lungs, they hit his lungs –”
As Arihant watched, the man groaned, moved his head. Lynn flinched violently as she noticed this. “He’s waking up – oh, God, Ari, I need to get away before he wakes – I need to get Kennedy out of here – I’m sorry, I’m so sorry –”
And she set her scarlet hand on her brother’s, and she quickly phased metal, pooled beneath Kennedy’s flickering bleeding form, and they both disappeared from sight.
And the man seemed to notice, tried to sit up, failed, and seethed, “That bìtch,” not noticing Arihant.
Arihant was faced with a strange feeling, now, unlike the rage he’d felt before. It was colder, more detached, more dangerous.
This man had done that to the Delaneys. Arihant’s best friends, and he’d been responsible for the bullet hole in Kennedy’s chest, the pool of Kennedy’s blood that surrounded Arihant’s feet, the horrible crusted burns that covered Lynn’s arms.
And Arihant had a desire that he’d never had before, a desire that terrified him but that intoxicated him at the same time, a desire for revenge, for payback, for…
No. No. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t. He had been forbidden to; Madeleine herself had told him not to –
Madeleine isn’t here.
A moment of hesitation, and then Arihant pulled his glove off, walked forward, and laid his bare hand on the man’s throat.

[Jack Trove]

Jack’s shirt hung heavy with the weight of his own blood; his armour was slicked in a coating of scarlet. Several times now, Jack had raised a weary hand to wipe at the steady stream trickling from his bottom lip, but it only served to spread the thick liquid, smearing it in a disgusting blot across his mouth and across his nose. That meant it was across his hands too. His trousers. Jack could be tracked across the battlefield and through the forest by following a trail of his own ruby footsteps. That was probably why he kept getting targeted.
Stupidly, Jack had thought pulling the blade out of his shoulder would make it better. Then every time he moved he wouldn’t feel its sharp edge shaking as he ran. Coming to a halt, and gritting his teeth for what he knew would be hell, Jack had reached back, and in one swift moment, thrust the blade backwards and out of him.
He hadn’t expected the spurt of blood that’d followed it.
It had taken Jack exactly 67 sickening seconds to regain his balance. He sank several inches first, his knees sagging, then his head swung forward, and the whole world swung with it.
If it hadn’t been for Sophie, Jack would’ve let himself fall, then and there.
He’d ran back. It’d taken an agonising 4 minutes to do it, but he’d found the place. He’d recognised it because of the wreckage where he and his attacker had first collided through the brambles and the trees. But when he’d gotten there…
It was empty.
Except…
Gruesome, gory wedges of flesh, blood and innards were strewn like graffiti across the ground. Nestled in the heart of this macabre collage, was one little shoe.
Sophie’s shoe.
If it hadn’t been for Jack’s chronic loss of blood, he would’ve bent over and retched.
Instead, unsteadily, he leaned forward and plucked the shoe from the mess. He’d held it in his hands for a few silent moments. Then he’d pocketed it, and moved on.
He had to.
Even if-
Even then.
And after all, if he didn’t keep going…
And she wasn’t.
Then what’d it do to her, with him gone?
He’d promised her he’d come back for her.
“Trove…?”
Jack had come to a slow stop, and was facing a field Carer. He recognised them because of their distinctive uniform, and the Carer clearly had no trouble recognising him. An expression of fixed horror had frozen their face as they took Jack’s bloody appearance in.
“I think I need help.”
“Wh- what?” The Carer was young- maybe… 13 or 14 years old. They were terrified.
“Need… help.” Jack wondered why the Carer didn’t understand… but then he realised… his lips were moving, but no noise was coming.
The Carer gulped, and moved forward, his cautious healing hands touching at Jack’s bleeding lip.
“It’s… not deep…” The boy shook himself, as though he felt it a stupid comment to make. “Where’s the blood coming from? Turn around.”
Relieved, Jack swerved on the spot. The tear in his clothes and armour was a long, ghastly slash. The Carer made the smallest, gentlest of whimpers when he saw the wound, but his hands still crept forward, covering Jack’s wound, and soaking the boy’s skin in Jack’s blood.
“J- just relax, ‘kay?”
Pure, swift relief shot through his skin like electricity, his blood quickening and clotting as his wound began to knit together. The Carer’s determination could be felt through the magic- his Healing powers were not fully formed yet, but his concentration made up for any lack of skill. Soon, Jack’s whole body was aching with immense alleviation. Clumsily- his muscles still adjusting to the sudden ease with which they could move again- Jack turned to face his Carer, and gripped his Healing hands, still warm from the glow of magic, and shook them. The boy’s face was glowing with triumph.
“Thank you,” Jack croaked.
“Go get ‘em, Jack,” the boy stepped back, and saluted.
For a few moments, the two regarded each other.
Then a scream captured both their attentions, and the boy leaped to duty, flashing off through the forest towards the source of the noise. Several gunshots were clattering through the forest.
Jack couldn’t help but wonder, as he started off in a different direction, whether his saviour would make it to the end of this battle alive.
He didn’t know who was dead. He didn’t know whose heart was still beating. He didn’t know how many friends this battle had cost him.
This battle had cost him her… hadn’t it?
No.
He didn’t know that, yet. Maybe that was worse. Not knowing. Not being able to know. Jack knew nothing. Academics had been screaming through his head but he’d heard nothing whilst he was soaking his skin in his blood. They must’ve given up, ‘cause now he was searching for their messages, he got nothing.
This had to stop.
So… he had to end it.
The man with hell in his eyes had haunted Jack for too long now. Ever since he’d seen him pull that gun out and turn it on Madeleine, that hell had embraced Jack and engulfed him its fire.
Jack knew he was the one who was leading the enemy.
Now Jack was going to find him- and finish him.
“Trove, Jack Trove-”
Thank God.
“Yes?” Jack said aloud, his voice rough around the edges as he ran.
“Trove, the enemy are scouting the perimeter. They’re… I think they’re winning, Trove.”
“Where’s their main body?”
“Still at the South end. They’re spreading through to the middle.”
“And… where’s their Commander?”
There was a long, long pause.
“You want the position of their Commander?”
“Yes.”
“Trove, are you-?”
“Yes. Tell me.”
Another pause.
“Tell me, Riley.”
Jack wasn’t all that far away, as it turned out. He set off at full sprint, his sword aloft, driving through every obstacle he met with his blade- be it bramble, bush or body. When Jack finally did find who he was looking for, it was almost surreal. When Jack finally saw him- tall, moving skilfully and swiftly through the battle- Jack couldn’t help but marvel at the speed with which his opponent move.
He couldn’t help but marvel at the fact he was about to go head to head with hell itself.

[misa]

Was it…?
Where they…?
He couldn’t be sure, but judging by the chaos Reuben was rapidly assess as he moved through the raging torrents of battle and bloodshed, there was every sign that he was- that they were…winning.
Already, they were succeeded in using the advantages they’d gathered to their maximum capacity and reaping the benefits as they gained notable ground through the forest and toward the castle.
Reuben moved freely, fluidly, delving and hewing, leaving in his wake cries of pain and irreparable damage for the Orchidians, and the chance to cling on to life for a few precious seconds more for his soldiers.
His movement was so smooth and natural not just because of the gift of grace he possessed, but mainly due to the fact he’d “lost” his armour, what little he’d had in the first place, within a matter of minutes. He wasn’t one to boast and preferred to keep it to himself for the majority of the time, but he was built of something tougher than any armour they could supply him with; it was more a hindrance than anything else.
Now all he held was a pistol at his waist for emergency use only, a switchblade strapped to his lower leg (“How very 1920s,” Wilson had commented the first time he’d seen it, with the kindly response of a swift smack to the back of the head) and the sword he was cutting his enemies down with as if they were blades of grass.
He wasn’t stopping to check if they lived or not; he took no joy in counting death, and besides, how could you put a figure to something so immeasurably horrific?
Reuben was just turning to figure out which direction he should move in next, when something caught his eye.
Something, a little more than slightly blood-stained, and coated in more armour than a soviet tank, but nonetheless familiar.
Jack Trove, heading straight for him with hell glinting in his gaze and a tortured expression the devil would’ve been proud of on his face.
Reuben firmer the grip he held on his sword, as his resilience along with it. He didn't move a muscle beyond that; he wasn't going to move an inch for Trove.
As the boy stormed nearer Reuben forced down all respect he’d held for Trove at their last meeting and all restraint. This was a fair playing field now.
It was Go Time.

[Jack Trove]

Jack didn’t know much about destiny. If he was honest, he doubted he was destined for anything great, so why dress up his life like it was more than it was?
Still… a sense of fate clouded his focus now as he stared down the nameless foe whose face had fronted his every waking thought since Madeleine’s capture. Something told him that- though he wasn’t sure why he felt so certain of this- whether Jack had tracked him across the battlefield or not, Jack and his opponent’s paths would’ve inevitably crossed.
Everyone around them gave them a wide berth, as though they too could sense the force dragging Jack and this man together as though they were joined by an iron chain. Everything became… distant, somehow.
Like nothing else mattered but them.
Jack slowed, drinking in his opponent. That’s when he noticed for the first time what he hadn’t from a distance- the man he was about to face wore no armour.
Abruptly, Jack dropped his weapons. In one swift movement, his fingers curled around the edges of his armour, and he tore his chest plate in two. The hunks of metal fell to the ground with two heavy thuds. His helmet fell next; his bullet-proof vest; and his armour continued to fall, piece by piece to the ground, ‘til he was left in his most basic attire.
Only then did he again pick up his weapons.
He and his adversary were going to face each other as equals.
Logic told him this was suicide.
But his pride told him it was mandatory.
Jack didn’t bother to keep the turbulent emotions he felt from sweeping his face as he held his sword aloft. Nor did he even care that his enemy could see the blood that had dyed his shirt scarlet.
All he cared about was ripping his foe’s face to shreds.
This wasn’t destiny. This was duty.
So Jack made the first move- and he went straight for the throat.

[misa]

What the hell was he...
No. Way.
Did he really think he could match up to Reuben?
As he watched Trove strip off the one thing that could've bought him a few fragments of spare time in which to observe the pitiful life he'd led so far, Reuben couldn't feel any pity or mercy.
Trove either knew what he was getting himself into or should've known better.
He should've been more prepared; preparation saved lives. And judging from the estimated body count Reuben had received at his last update it was almost a shame Trove wasn't going to live long enough to learn that lesson.
He should've known. He really should have, which was why when Trove made a messy lunge for Reuben's throat, he side-stepped in a fraction of a second, firmly ramming a knee into Trove's spine.
It connected with a satisfying crunch.
He should've known.
Stupid boy.

[Jack Trove]

Jack grunted.
A spine was not designed to curve that far back. A spine shouldn’t make that crack when pushed. A spine couldn’t withstand that kind of pressure.
Jack’s whole body dropped.
His sword flew from his hand, and he fell, absolutely winded, to his knees at his enemy’s feet.
Nothing was broken, at least, but Jack knew that with the deadly speed and force his opponent could deal blows, it would be a matter of seconds before something was.
Jack didn’t have seconds.
He had a fraction of a second.
Jack’s body exploded into flames and- uncaring for the crudeness of his attack- shot fire in Reuben’s direction; aiming to engulf him.

[misa]

Well, at least he learnt relatively fast. After only one blow, Jack had already sped up, or as much as a person who had just had his spine displaced could.
He was quicker.
But still not quick enough.
By the time his flames had reached the spot Reuben had been standing in he was to the boy’s left, sending a swift roundhouse to Trove’s ribcage.
Snap.
He followed Trove's body as it arched, assailing his head and torso with short, sharp punches.