Post by Deleted on Mar 15, 2013 16:42:44 GMT -5
Across the arid plains Sohko soared, a fire in his chest. Although he had often taken a neutral approach to matters that didn’t directly involve him, he felt forced to act. Last night had been some of the worst nightmares he had ever faced since being cursed. They had tortured him down to his soul, and had sent him in a mad frenzy. The morning saw him sore and exhausted, but he would not have time to recover. An armored truck envoy was attacked by bandits and its guardians badly beaten. Sohko had arrived just in time to stop their unwarranted executions at the hand of an eager marauder. The sauced saiyan had beaten them relatively easy, and after nabbing himself a little “reward” from one of the toppled vehicles, had followed a map he had taken off an unconscious deviant.
When he arrived, however, he saw nothing more than what the rest of the vast wastelands offered, dirt and the occasional tumbleweed. Pulling the map from his back pocket and unrolling it, he studied it carefully as he double checked the destination.
“This can’t be right… I’m exactly where it says the bandit base should be but… I see nothing! Wait, what’s this?”
He referred to smell writing is the corner of the crinkled parchment. It was scribbled in native saiyan, so it took Sohko nearly a full minute before he was confident enough with the translation to speak.
“Open saiyans me?”
The wasted warrior nearly lept from his skin when he felt the groiund beneath him begin to move. Juimping backwards he instinctively reached to his empty scabbard before cursing himself for ever pawning his family’s sword for booze money. A section of the parched earth raised, revealing itself to be a hidden entrance of sorts.
“Holy shnike! That actually worked? How… Delightfully tacky.”
He stepped quickly into the opening as he pulled the bandanna which he had stolen from the bandits who had tried to rob his spacepod while he slept, free from his pocket before wrapping it around his head. After all, video games had taught Sohko that ever bandit wore a bandanna. At the end was a door which he opened hesitantly, anxious on what might be on the other side. Opening revealed a blinding light which he stepped through with extreme caution. The door slammed automatically behind him, followed by the whining sounds of the invisible entrance lowering into the ground once more. His eyes adjusted as he stepped up to a railing which he gripped tightly as he looked at the fantastic sight.
He was an entire underground settlement built into the walls of the hollowed out cylinder which was its center. He stood at the highest point, the top ring on a gangway which spiraled along the walls although to the bottom of the giant hole. In the center of it was a small castle of sorts, which rested on the “ground floor” of a subterranean city. Pulling at the rail he hopped over it before falling straight towards the bottom. Using his bukujutsu he slowed the descent to a brisk pace as he took in the sights. It was amazing, brilliant ever, and a true sight to behold. There were shops and houses built into the rock, and ever more he looked he saw bandits on their wife, and even some children. He had never seen such an organized outfit of outlaws and had never dreamed of one so massive. “This bandit king must be quite the leader,” Sohko thought to himself. As the small fortress became clearer so did the realization that it was well armed and crawling with bandits. Touching down at it’s front gate the sauced saiyan walked up to the guard posted at the entrance.
“State your business!”
His eyes shifted back and forth as he tried to push through the alcohol induced haze for a suitable answer.
“The armored truck robbery was a bust a do gooder, real handsome fellow, got in the mix and everything went to fuck in a shit basket. Had to come back for some manpower… Might even need the boss on this one, the guy… He was as tough as a brick shithouse.”
Whether it was the bandanna or simply Sohko’s familiarity with their curse heavy language, filed with foul vernacular particular to their kind, he wasn’t sure but the guard waved him on without a second thought. With a certain swagger, the swordsman without a sword waltzed towards the entrance to the miniature castle. Looking around as he walked he noted the crude workmanship which matched the rest of the underground city. “Crude but effective” he remarked internally.
He passed several rooms during his long walk down the large oppressive corridor. Many were closed but the ones that were opened revealed a relatively well disciplined body of soldiers which composed the bandit king’s small army. Without realizing it he entered a hall which seemed to make up the majority of the small fortress. A chill spread across his body, nearly making him shiver, when an all too familiar voice reached his ears.
“Sohko? Is that really you? Well I’ll be damned.”
Goosebumps covered every inch of his skin as he met eyes with the saiyan who casually sat in the throne at the opposite end of the great hall. His face was adorned in battle scars and, like many of his high ranking “officers,” wore patchwork saiyan armor. Unlike their armor however, his was better crafted and had a regal aura. Slouched back in the crude steel throne he let out a raspy cackle.
“I had a feeling it would be you…”
The bandit king let out another round of malicious laughter, to which all his closest men followed suit. As soon as he stopped, pursing his lips while he sat up straight, so did the lackeys. Leaning forward so that his chin rested upon his knuckles while his elbows rested on his knees, he smiled at the sight of the disheveled saiyan.
“Of course it was me! How many saiyans do you know named Elric? No doubt the numb skulls blabbed my name. I keep telling them to leave it at Bandit King but they just can help adding in the Elric at the end. Ah well, so much for anonymity. So what brings you to my most humble abode old friend? I see you’re wearing one of our trademark grey bandanas, stylish eh? Should I take that as you are looking for some work?”
It was true, in all of his life Sohko had never met, seen, or even heard of a saiyan named Elric. If he was to be honest with himself though, he knew all along who it would be sitting in that throne. Even if he didn’t know and even if he hadn’t seen Elric, he wouldn’t known who it was just by his mannerisms. The fact that he tended to taper off with several questions whenever he spoke for any length was one that stood out right away.
“No… Not exactly… Grey isn’t really my color.”
Pulling loose the knot at the base of his skull, the bandana unraveled before delicately falling to the cold hard steel. This visually perturbed Elric as it was a sign of great disrespect towards him and his outfit of bandits. It was their symbol and Sohko tossed it to the floor without ever taking his eyes off his old acquaintance. Immediately the bandit king stood to his feet, prompting the sauced saiyan to take a step back and half drop into a fighting pose.
“Old friend, don’t play the hero, it really doesn’t suit you. Stick to what you were good at, hell, what you were great at, stealing and beating the sheep of this planet to a bloody pulp. Come now, I know you haven’t forgotten your days as a bodyguard, mercenary, bandit and, finally, deserter; in that order. Years we spent fighting alongside one another, tell me how many times I pulled you out of the fire? We were thick as thieves, if you’ll excuse the pun, and now you’ve come here to throw it all away?”
There was a thick silence which hung heavy over the room. Sohko and Elric stand, staring each other down; Elric from the foot of his throne and Sohko from the entrance of the great hall. Neither move as both silently reminisce of their past together. It was true, after a drunken defection from the WTO, Sohko found his way to Vegeta, but money quickly ran out. He took work as a bodyguard for a small time crook just to pay his tabs. The job grew though, becoming a bigger and bigger part of his life until he was leading a rag tag group of bandits alongside the man whom stood before him.
But the curse’s nightmares only became more potent, more overwhelming. It began to effect his every facet of life, as the old mystic’s conscience began merging with the empty void where his own should’ve been. As time progressed he became worse and worse until he couldn’t bear to commit anymore atrocities in the name of greed. In the dead of night he left camp, and so began his several yearlong drinking binge. He had drunk profusely since arriving but it only became that much worse following his second desertion. The saiyan had not fallen back to his malicious ways though, even going so far as to sell his family’s sword, as opposed to using it with malcontent.
“I haven’t forgotten, despite my best efforts.”
He replied before popping out his flask and taking a healthy swig. Wiping his mouth and closing the container, he slid it back into his coat pocket before continuing.
“And you don’t need to tell me how many times you saved me Elric but this isn’t about you saving me anymore. This is about me saving me. I’m not the same… Man… I used to be, I can’t just hurt and rob people day in and out. I’m here to ask you to stop, disband this militia you have and end it all. You are already a rich man, rich beyond anyone’s wildest dreams… Just… Walk away.”
Elric sneered as he held his hands out to his sides. Smiling, his minions knew exactly what it meant; as did Sohko. Two saiyans approached him, each struggling to hold a gauntlet. Carefully they each strapped their respective gauntlets to their master’s arms, whilst he spoke.
“Walk away? It’s not about the money Sohko, it never was! I’ll take ever last dollar and smile as I watch it burn. This is about more, so much more. This is about every one of those sheep out there, living in a fool’s paradise! You think they are innocent, that they don’t deserve what my men do to them, BUT THEY DESERVE EVERY LAST BIT!”
He yelled as he slammed his two armored fists together resulting in a resounding metallic thud. Sohko was the only one who knew why Elric hated the rest of the world, at least the real reason behind it all. Like Sohko, he had been an orphan, and while the wasted warrior had spent his youth being drilled by heinous WTO instructors, Elric faced his own hell.
“So what you are going to continue to pillage and kill as some sort of karma? I know what it feels like to grow up without a mother or father Elric but it does not excuse the crimes you commit on a daily basis. Please, I beg you, one nutcase to another, just leave it all behind, you can still redeem yourself; you can still find happiness.”
At the mention of “happiness” Elric leapt forward, closing the distance faster than even Sohko could, who felt far more weighed down than usual, even more so than his weighted clothing caused. With a burning rage in his eyes he brought a spiked fist into Sohko’s abdomen, sending him flying upwards before smashing through the ceiling. Outside gravity finally took hold and the sauced saiyan came down heavy upon the roof of the hall.
“Happiness? HAPPINESS!?”
Appearing from the bent metal in mid hop, the bandit king landed a few feet from Sohko, who was up to a knee and struggling to fight the pain of the broken rib so he could stand. He looked up just in time to see another metallic fist slam into his jaw, sending him skipping across the roof like a rock on a pond.
“No one helped me when I was a kid, no one saved me from the harsh realities of life! I had to gnaw and claw for EVERYTHING I ever had. But you know, I could’ve forgave them for that Sohko, I could really could have, because despite my atrocious childhood it made me strong, stronger than anyone else! But I can’t forgive them for what they did to them Sohko, I can’t, I WON’T!”
Sohko fired an energy blast he had been charging up during his former friend’s rant, however it phased through him as if he was air. When he realized that it was merely an afterimage, it was already too late as Elric was already behind him. Grabbing Sohko by the shoulder and waist, Elric jumped up before turning in midair and crushing his old ally face first into the cold steel, his knee firmly placed at his neck to encourage increased damage.
“It was… An accident… You know that… Winry died during childbirth.”
He said as he spat out blood. As soon as Sohko mentioned Elric’s deceased wife, it only made the bandit king angrier. Turning the downed saiyan onto his back he knelt over him and began punching him, each one more crazed than the last.
“Don’t you ever say her name! EVER! Do you hear me? DO YOU!?”
He did, although the ringing in his ears from the consecutive punches did make it a little harder to hear. Elric reels back, possibly going for a game ender, when Sohko moves his head just in time, allowing the gauntleted hand to pass by him by a mere inch, and straight through the metal. In the few seconds it took Elric to pull his hand free, Sohko foot was already making a not so comfortable connection with his head. The force pulled his hand free and sent him flying clean off the building and into a stone wall of the spiraled city.
“You can’t keep blaming the residents of Saru City for what happened, Elric, and tormenting them won’t bring you peace!”
Pulling himself free from the stone, the king shook off the rock dust. Without wasting a second he was already at Sohko again, a flurry of strikes following. More prepared this time; Sohko jumped back giving him just enough time to swing his scabbard forward. Using the sheath as a makeshift shield he deflected each shot he was unable to dodge, albeit with tremendous effort. He already had a broken rib and possible concussion; he couldn’t risk another powerful blow.
“It’s all their fault! She was pregnant with my son, MY SON, and nobody would take her because we were “vagrants” as they so aptly said. A man had to watch his wife and unborn child bleed to death in a filthy alley because he was too poor to deserve to be treated like anyone else. My rage is just; you know it to be true!”
With one mighty swing he slapped away a potential jaw breaker then, dropping the sheath, he stepped in and rapped his arm around the other, holding it tight just below the shoulder with the crux of his arm. Grabbing the wrist of the deflected fist, Sohko brought his forehead forward into Elric’s. Not once, not twice, but ten times did he head butt the bandit king, until he was down to a knee and both men’s heads were covered in blood.
“You’re rage… Is just… But the crimes you commit… Are not.”
With one final exclamation point, Sohko’s body ripples with black energy as he slips into his inner darkness to deliver the eleventh and last head but, dropping Elric to his back. Lifting himself into the air, Sohko began gathering energy between ragged breaths. When he was halfway up the massive city he stopped and looked down, catching eyes with his former friend.
“Would you like to see a Magic Trick?”
Elric laughed at the question, for he had heard Sohko say it many times in the past. Although then they had been allies and not enemies. The laughter became sadistic as his internal agony meshed with his physical anguish to create an overwhelming cocktail of pressure which slowly cracked away at his mind.
“Do it! You know I won’t stop, I’ll never stop! Not until every last one them bows at my feet and begs for scraps of food! Not until THEY have to sit by the loved one’s side and watch them die a slow, agonizing death! So kill me Sohko! Bring me this peace you so hotly claim as existing. Reunite me with my family “old friend!” Kill me! KILL ME!”
His outstretched hand was tense with a glowing strength which transformed into four concentrated balls of ki between his fingers once they were snapped apart. Throwing them downwards the sadistic king, they all stopped mere feet from him before separating and making their way down the base of the castle.
“A city like this must take an awfully powerful grid. Generators, fuel, all the bells and whistles, and I wonder what would happen should something destroy said grid?”
Elric’s eyes grew wide at the thought, pulling himself up to a seated position he glanced around only to see everyone was gone or nearly so. The fight, or more importantly seeing their all-powerful beaten down, had encouraged them all to leave with haste, hoping things would resolve themselves. The balls of ki meanwhile reached the base of the castle, where the generators were stored. Elric had forgotten that Sohko was the one who had designed this whole structure; a bandit’s fantasy. He knew just where to strike.
“I hope you find peace Elric, I really do, but I won’t kill you. I can’t kill you. Maybe one day you will be free of your hatred and your vendetta will be over. If that day should ever come, I will be there for you… Old friend.”
Rising towards the exit, the explosions started of small but grew larger and more frequent by the second. Soon the entire subterranean city was engulfed in explosions, however then reality itself began to warp and shift, until all that was, was not. Instead Sohko, now a few years older looking and much more refined, stood amidst a room riddled with shattered robots, each bearing a similar shape and size to the Bandit King.
“Return gravity to normal level Pewter.”
The gravity, which had been fifty times its regular, slowly lessened until it was normal once more. The saiyan let out a heavy sigh as he looked over the broken sparring robots, each with excessively large club like hands. The broken rib and the concussion however were real, evident by one hand clutching his side while the every found balance with the help of a nearby wall.
“Well that was… Impressive. I can’t believe you could do that with magic.”
“I found the spell while I rummaged through my mother’s old notes. She wrote that one must fully know and accept themselves if they are to ever achieved their full potential. To be able to walk footsteps you’ve already walked and see things with your own eyes as you saw them long ago… But the past is the past and cannot be changed by magic means. Hence why I cannot change anything, to attempt to rewrite history would immediately break the spell...
For no spell is that strong.”
Even as the words left his mouth he began to hate their truth. He could relive any moment in the past as a way of helping him train but was absolutely powerless to change anything. No matter what he did, Shyra would still be dead; and it was still his fault. It was an agonizing truth he would always have to bear for the rest of his life and long after.
When he arrived, however, he saw nothing more than what the rest of the vast wastelands offered, dirt and the occasional tumbleweed. Pulling the map from his back pocket and unrolling it, he studied it carefully as he double checked the destination.
“This can’t be right… I’m exactly where it says the bandit base should be but… I see nothing! Wait, what’s this?”
He referred to smell writing is the corner of the crinkled parchment. It was scribbled in native saiyan, so it took Sohko nearly a full minute before he was confident enough with the translation to speak.
“Open saiyans me?”
The wasted warrior nearly lept from his skin when he felt the groiund beneath him begin to move. Juimping backwards he instinctively reached to his empty scabbard before cursing himself for ever pawning his family’s sword for booze money. A section of the parched earth raised, revealing itself to be a hidden entrance of sorts.
“Holy shnike! That actually worked? How… Delightfully tacky.”
He stepped quickly into the opening as he pulled the bandanna which he had stolen from the bandits who had tried to rob his spacepod while he slept, free from his pocket before wrapping it around his head. After all, video games had taught Sohko that ever bandit wore a bandanna. At the end was a door which he opened hesitantly, anxious on what might be on the other side. Opening revealed a blinding light which he stepped through with extreme caution. The door slammed automatically behind him, followed by the whining sounds of the invisible entrance lowering into the ground once more. His eyes adjusted as he stepped up to a railing which he gripped tightly as he looked at the fantastic sight.
He was an entire underground settlement built into the walls of the hollowed out cylinder which was its center. He stood at the highest point, the top ring on a gangway which spiraled along the walls although to the bottom of the giant hole. In the center of it was a small castle of sorts, which rested on the “ground floor” of a subterranean city. Pulling at the rail he hopped over it before falling straight towards the bottom. Using his bukujutsu he slowed the descent to a brisk pace as he took in the sights. It was amazing, brilliant ever, and a true sight to behold. There were shops and houses built into the rock, and ever more he looked he saw bandits on their wife, and even some children. He had never seen such an organized outfit of outlaws and had never dreamed of one so massive. “This bandit king must be quite the leader,” Sohko thought to himself. As the small fortress became clearer so did the realization that it was well armed and crawling with bandits. Touching down at it’s front gate the sauced saiyan walked up to the guard posted at the entrance.
“State your business!”
His eyes shifted back and forth as he tried to push through the alcohol induced haze for a suitable answer.
“The armored truck robbery was a bust a do gooder, real handsome fellow, got in the mix and everything went to fuck in a shit basket. Had to come back for some manpower… Might even need the boss on this one, the guy… He was as tough as a brick shithouse.”
Whether it was the bandanna or simply Sohko’s familiarity with their curse heavy language, filed with foul vernacular particular to their kind, he wasn’t sure but the guard waved him on without a second thought. With a certain swagger, the swordsman without a sword waltzed towards the entrance to the miniature castle. Looking around as he walked he noted the crude workmanship which matched the rest of the underground city. “Crude but effective” he remarked internally.
He passed several rooms during his long walk down the large oppressive corridor. Many were closed but the ones that were opened revealed a relatively well disciplined body of soldiers which composed the bandit king’s small army. Without realizing it he entered a hall which seemed to make up the majority of the small fortress. A chill spread across his body, nearly making him shiver, when an all too familiar voice reached his ears.
“Sohko? Is that really you? Well I’ll be damned.”
Goosebumps covered every inch of his skin as he met eyes with the saiyan who casually sat in the throne at the opposite end of the great hall. His face was adorned in battle scars and, like many of his high ranking “officers,” wore patchwork saiyan armor. Unlike their armor however, his was better crafted and had a regal aura. Slouched back in the crude steel throne he let out a raspy cackle.
“I had a feeling it would be you…”
The bandit king let out another round of malicious laughter, to which all his closest men followed suit. As soon as he stopped, pursing his lips while he sat up straight, so did the lackeys. Leaning forward so that his chin rested upon his knuckles while his elbows rested on his knees, he smiled at the sight of the disheveled saiyan.
“Of course it was me! How many saiyans do you know named Elric? No doubt the numb skulls blabbed my name. I keep telling them to leave it at Bandit King but they just can help adding in the Elric at the end. Ah well, so much for anonymity. So what brings you to my most humble abode old friend? I see you’re wearing one of our trademark grey bandanas, stylish eh? Should I take that as you are looking for some work?”
It was true, in all of his life Sohko had never met, seen, or even heard of a saiyan named Elric. If he was to be honest with himself though, he knew all along who it would be sitting in that throne. Even if he didn’t know and even if he hadn’t seen Elric, he wouldn’t known who it was just by his mannerisms. The fact that he tended to taper off with several questions whenever he spoke for any length was one that stood out right away.
“No… Not exactly… Grey isn’t really my color.”
Pulling loose the knot at the base of his skull, the bandana unraveled before delicately falling to the cold hard steel. This visually perturbed Elric as it was a sign of great disrespect towards him and his outfit of bandits. It was their symbol and Sohko tossed it to the floor without ever taking his eyes off his old acquaintance. Immediately the bandit king stood to his feet, prompting the sauced saiyan to take a step back and half drop into a fighting pose.
“Old friend, don’t play the hero, it really doesn’t suit you. Stick to what you were good at, hell, what you were great at, stealing and beating the sheep of this planet to a bloody pulp. Come now, I know you haven’t forgotten your days as a bodyguard, mercenary, bandit and, finally, deserter; in that order. Years we spent fighting alongside one another, tell me how many times I pulled you out of the fire? We were thick as thieves, if you’ll excuse the pun, and now you’ve come here to throw it all away?”
There was a thick silence which hung heavy over the room. Sohko and Elric stand, staring each other down; Elric from the foot of his throne and Sohko from the entrance of the great hall. Neither move as both silently reminisce of their past together. It was true, after a drunken defection from the WTO, Sohko found his way to Vegeta, but money quickly ran out. He took work as a bodyguard for a small time crook just to pay his tabs. The job grew though, becoming a bigger and bigger part of his life until he was leading a rag tag group of bandits alongside the man whom stood before him.
But the curse’s nightmares only became more potent, more overwhelming. It began to effect his every facet of life, as the old mystic’s conscience began merging with the empty void where his own should’ve been. As time progressed he became worse and worse until he couldn’t bear to commit anymore atrocities in the name of greed. In the dead of night he left camp, and so began his several yearlong drinking binge. He had drunk profusely since arriving but it only became that much worse following his second desertion. The saiyan had not fallen back to his malicious ways though, even going so far as to sell his family’s sword, as opposed to using it with malcontent.
“I haven’t forgotten, despite my best efforts.”
He replied before popping out his flask and taking a healthy swig. Wiping his mouth and closing the container, he slid it back into his coat pocket before continuing.
“And you don’t need to tell me how many times you saved me Elric but this isn’t about you saving me anymore. This is about me saving me. I’m not the same… Man… I used to be, I can’t just hurt and rob people day in and out. I’m here to ask you to stop, disband this militia you have and end it all. You are already a rich man, rich beyond anyone’s wildest dreams… Just… Walk away.”
Elric sneered as he held his hands out to his sides. Smiling, his minions knew exactly what it meant; as did Sohko. Two saiyans approached him, each struggling to hold a gauntlet. Carefully they each strapped their respective gauntlets to their master’s arms, whilst he spoke.
“Walk away? It’s not about the money Sohko, it never was! I’ll take ever last dollar and smile as I watch it burn. This is about more, so much more. This is about every one of those sheep out there, living in a fool’s paradise! You think they are innocent, that they don’t deserve what my men do to them, BUT THEY DESERVE EVERY LAST BIT!”
He yelled as he slammed his two armored fists together resulting in a resounding metallic thud. Sohko was the only one who knew why Elric hated the rest of the world, at least the real reason behind it all. Like Sohko, he had been an orphan, and while the wasted warrior had spent his youth being drilled by heinous WTO instructors, Elric faced his own hell.
“So what you are going to continue to pillage and kill as some sort of karma? I know what it feels like to grow up without a mother or father Elric but it does not excuse the crimes you commit on a daily basis. Please, I beg you, one nutcase to another, just leave it all behind, you can still redeem yourself; you can still find happiness.”
At the mention of “happiness” Elric leapt forward, closing the distance faster than even Sohko could, who felt far more weighed down than usual, even more so than his weighted clothing caused. With a burning rage in his eyes he brought a spiked fist into Sohko’s abdomen, sending him flying upwards before smashing through the ceiling. Outside gravity finally took hold and the sauced saiyan came down heavy upon the roof of the hall.
“Happiness? HAPPINESS!?”
Appearing from the bent metal in mid hop, the bandit king landed a few feet from Sohko, who was up to a knee and struggling to fight the pain of the broken rib so he could stand. He looked up just in time to see another metallic fist slam into his jaw, sending him skipping across the roof like a rock on a pond.
“No one helped me when I was a kid, no one saved me from the harsh realities of life! I had to gnaw and claw for EVERYTHING I ever had. But you know, I could’ve forgave them for that Sohko, I could really could have, because despite my atrocious childhood it made me strong, stronger than anyone else! But I can’t forgive them for what they did to them Sohko, I can’t, I WON’T!”
Sohko fired an energy blast he had been charging up during his former friend’s rant, however it phased through him as if he was air. When he realized that it was merely an afterimage, it was already too late as Elric was already behind him. Grabbing Sohko by the shoulder and waist, Elric jumped up before turning in midair and crushing his old ally face first into the cold steel, his knee firmly placed at his neck to encourage increased damage.
“It was… An accident… You know that… Winry died during childbirth.”
He said as he spat out blood. As soon as Sohko mentioned Elric’s deceased wife, it only made the bandit king angrier. Turning the downed saiyan onto his back he knelt over him and began punching him, each one more crazed than the last.
“Don’t you ever say her name! EVER! Do you hear me? DO YOU!?”
He did, although the ringing in his ears from the consecutive punches did make it a little harder to hear. Elric reels back, possibly going for a game ender, when Sohko moves his head just in time, allowing the gauntleted hand to pass by him by a mere inch, and straight through the metal. In the few seconds it took Elric to pull his hand free, Sohko foot was already making a not so comfortable connection with his head. The force pulled his hand free and sent him flying clean off the building and into a stone wall of the spiraled city.
“You can’t keep blaming the residents of Saru City for what happened, Elric, and tormenting them won’t bring you peace!”
Pulling himself free from the stone, the king shook off the rock dust. Without wasting a second he was already at Sohko again, a flurry of strikes following. More prepared this time; Sohko jumped back giving him just enough time to swing his scabbard forward. Using the sheath as a makeshift shield he deflected each shot he was unable to dodge, albeit with tremendous effort. He already had a broken rib and possible concussion; he couldn’t risk another powerful blow.
“It’s all their fault! She was pregnant with my son, MY SON, and nobody would take her because we were “vagrants” as they so aptly said. A man had to watch his wife and unborn child bleed to death in a filthy alley because he was too poor to deserve to be treated like anyone else. My rage is just; you know it to be true!”
With one mighty swing he slapped away a potential jaw breaker then, dropping the sheath, he stepped in and rapped his arm around the other, holding it tight just below the shoulder with the crux of his arm. Grabbing the wrist of the deflected fist, Sohko brought his forehead forward into Elric’s. Not once, not twice, but ten times did he head butt the bandit king, until he was down to a knee and both men’s heads were covered in blood.
“You’re rage… Is just… But the crimes you commit… Are not.”
With one final exclamation point, Sohko’s body ripples with black energy as he slips into his inner darkness to deliver the eleventh and last head but, dropping Elric to his back. Lifting himself into the air, Sohko began gathering energy between ragged breaths. When he was halfway up the massive city he stopped and looked down, catching eyes with his former friend.
“Would you like to see a Magic Trick?”
Elric laughed at the question, for he had heard Sohko say it many times in the past. Although then they had been allies and not enemies. The laughter became sadistic as his internal agony meshed with his physical anguish to create an overwhelming cocktail of pressure which slowly cracked away at his mind.
“Do it! You know I won’t stop, I’ll never stop! Not until every last one them bows at my feet and begs for scraps of food! Not until THEY have to sit by the loved one’s side and watch them die a slow, agonizing death! So kill me Sohko! Bring me this peace you so hotly claim as existing. Reunite me with my family “old friend!” Kill me! KILL ME!”
His outstretched hand was tense with a glowing strength which transformed into four concentrated balls of ki between his fingers once they were snapped apart. Throwing them downwards the sadistic king, they all stopped mere feet from him before separating and making their way down the base of the castle.
“A city like this must take an awfully powerful grid. Generators, fuel, all the bells and whistles, and I wonder what would happen should something destroy said grid?”
Elric’s eyes grew wide at the thought, pulling himself up to a seated position he glanced around only to see everyone was gone or nearly so. The fight, or more importantly seeing their all-powerful beaten down, had encouraged them all to leave with haste, hoping things would resolve themselves. The balls of ki meanwhile reached the base of the castle, where the generators were stored. Elric had forgotten that Sohko was the one who had designed this whole structure; a bandit’s fantasy. He knew just where to strike.
“I hope you find peace Elric, I really do, but I won’t kill you. I can’t kill you. Maybe one day you will be free of your hatred and your vendetta will be over. If that day should ever come, I will be there for you… Old friend.”
Rising towards the exit, the explosions started of small but grew larger and more frequent by the second. Soon the entire subterranean city was engulfed in explosions, however then reality itself began to warp and shift, until all that was, was not. Instead Sohko, now a few years older looking and much more refined, stood amidst a room riddled with shattered robots, each bearing a similar shape and size to the Bandit King.
“Return gravity to normal level Pewter.”
The gravity, which had been fifty times its regular, slowly lessened until it was normal once more. The saiyan let out a heavy sigh as he looked over the broken sparring robots, each with excessively large club like hands. The broken rib and the concussion however were real, evident by one hand clutching his side while the every found balance with the help of a nearby wall.
“Well that was… Impressive. I can’t believe you could do that with magic.”
“I found the spell while I rummaged through my mother’s old notes. She wrote that one must fully know and accept themselves if they are to ever achieved their full potential. To be able to walk footsteps you’ve already walked and see things with your own eyes as you saw them long ago… But the past is the past and cannot be changed by magic means. Hence why I cannot change anything, to attempt to rewrite history would immediately break the spell...
For no spell is that strong.”
Even as the words left his mouth he began to hate their truth. He could relive any moment in the past as a way of helping him train but was absolutely powerless to change anything. No matter what he did, Shyra would still be dead; and it was still his fault. It was an agonizing truth he would always have to bear for the rest of his life and long after.
but I think you might have shorted me 600 PL when you added it in.
