End Boss

by Bryan Nyaude

  “I am glad to hear you say that,” he smiled and proceeded to put on his helmet back on. “Let’s see which of us has the strongest resolve, Den. This shall be our last bout and one of us will fall.”

  Crap, my body hadn’t fully recovered completely. Despite the nerve wrecking pain in my abdomen, my fatigue had decreased. I tightened my guard and locked my knees at an angle. It looked like this was it. We were both going to lay all our last cards on the table in one last final round.

  “I am also glad I got to meet you in person, Dr. Vegai,” I said, reloading my right gun quickly. “You were my inspiration growing up as a kid. I truly wanted to become just like you, when you were still on earth.”

  “You flatter me, Den,” he responded not sounding too angry or resentful. “I am happy that we had this talk, it’s nice to know that someone listened to my pain and anger and didn’t judge me too roughly. I wish we could have met on better circumstances, we could have been friends, but it can’t be helped. What happens in the next few minutes shall determine both of our futures. Now prepare yourself, Den, I am coming at you with everything I have.”

  Quickly, I tightened my guard and placed one foot back. He launched himself at me now with an even greater speed and agility, almost fast like lightning. Darn, this was going to hurt. I followed suit and rushed towards him, maximizing my speed beyond my past limits. This was our final battle, I had to show him how serious I was. Two minutes before impact, we both clipped back our revolvers and came at each other with our fists. At the speed we were going, bullets were less effective and I did not want to waste them. Once we clashed, we just kept punching and kicking, unable to stop, realizing once we stopped, it was over for one of us. All the talking had stopped now, our fists and kicks were doing the talking for us until otherwise. We had both said our last final words to each other so there really was nothing more to say after that. The fire that came from the burning gate clouded our vision for a bit but it didn’t stop us from fighting. Although, it was getting kind of hot, it felt like we were fighting in an oven.

  “Is it almost ready yet?” I asked my AI, talking about my left revolver that seemed to be still charging.

  “2 more minutes,” it responded to me and went completely silent.

  “That’s too long,” I responded, beginning to flee from a barrage of bullets from his left revolver. He had unsheathed one of his guns at point blank, hoping to catch me off guard. I saw his ploy in time and evaded hastily. Amazing, he was deadly accurate even when I was moving at the speed of light or close. Two minutes seemed like eternity to me, in this high paced battle to the end. Wait! I sensed something different about him. I had noticed that his speed and strength had drastically improved, but something else was up. Was he getting more powerful? Every passing minute seemed to make the difference in our battle power grow significantly wide. Suddenly, he vanished quickly out of my sight. I looked right and left and could not find him. It seemed, the longer I dragged this battle, the more difficult it was going to be for me. He appeared right behind me and shot a barrage of four bullets in my blind spot. Thankfully, my AI took over and I managed to evade with only a scraped chest plate. I retracted back and began to work my next strategy. True enough, he was obviously more experienced in battle than I was. Darn! And a better and faster shooter—if I might add.

  Again, he vanished out of my sight. I tightened my guard and lowered my stance, preparing for anything. His speed, it was like he could move like... I paused at that thought and hovered out of my comfort zone, scanning around.

  “Where is he?” I was outclassed in speed and strength, as well as experience. Clearly not good odds for someone hoping for victory.

  “Left revolver at 100%,” my AI finally gave me some good news.

  The left gun was emitting a glowing red light as it resonated with a high pitch tone. The intensity and force being expelled was enough to rekindle my hope for winning. I had one shot with this gun—it had to be precise, if there was any chance for me to get out of this situation alive. What if I missed? I forced that thought away and focused on everything around me.

  Something suddenly hit me in the upper back, and on my left hamstring, causing me to lose my balance. I gasped for breath and closed my eyes for a second. Before I could recover, tiny powerful objects expelled their extreme forces onto my back, sending me into an unwanted descent. Completely caught off guard, I had no way to evade or counter at all. I crashed headfirst into the ground, creating a crater in the process. Every fiber in my body screamed at me, but I got back up and charged to attack: “This is getting old.”

  Darn! He had vanished again and my scanners were having a hard time trying to keep up with him. It was almost like he was everywhere and yet nowhere at the same time. Could the human body handle that much momentum? I could have gone that fast too, but speed of that caliber was something that could destroy my body. Accounting for the planet’s gravity, plus speed, no mere human could take that much horizontal and vertical g-force. That being said, Dr. Vegai wasn’t a normal human being, so those facts were irrelevant.

  “Tracking down movements,” my AI mumbled, trying to keep up with the War Boss system that seemed to be all over the place.

  It was hard to read his movements or to determine where his next location was going to be, because his speed allowed him to be literally everywhere at once. I took off into the sky and increased my speed while leveling up. Instantly, Dr. Vegai switched to a frontal assault pattern, attacking me more ferociously than before. I could sense a slight mix of desperation and anger in his attacks. He was trying to finish it quickly now for some reason. All I could do was block my head and pace forth out of his attack range. I was waiting for an opening, the right moment when his guard was down to shoot him with my left gun. Something suddenly hit me and exploded directly on my arms, sending a shockwave through the air. I felt disoriented and dizzy as the blast knocked me out of the sky, causing me to propel out of control. One of his bullets had managed to get through my defense and taken out one of my flight thrusters. My hopes of victory were starting to dwindle slowly unless... the thought that came to me was one of out a desperate man’s handbook. It was my only option at this point. As soon as I crashed to the ground for the second time, I got back up again, ready to initiate it.

  “Geez! What is your body made out of?” he asked, descending slightly into my hearing range. “You just won’t go down, will you?”

  “I won’t, sorry,” I clenched my fist tightly. In the final stages of our battle, I couldn’t afford to throw in my towel.

  Nothing more than simple logic was pushing my body this hard. For once, my heart and mind were on the same page. Dr. Vegai had to be stopped. I felt terrible; I never thought I would have to defeat the person I once admired. He had once been my role model as a kid, and now, he was a raging mad man—a man who had fallen deeply into darkness.

  “Increase output power to maximum,” I took a gamble and ordered my AI into taking a risky move.

  Desperation led me into thinking like a suicidal maniac. But this was bigger than me, it was bigger than anything I had ever faced. For my plan to work, I had to put my life on the line, to gamble everything I held deeply and longed to have. There were things I wish I could have done before; however, it was too late now. I couldn’t live in the past, only look into my future. Steadily, I pulsed myself and took hold of my posture.

  “It ends today, Dr. Vegai, one way or the other.”

  I rushed in quickly and jumped up, proceeding to attack first, not giving him a chance to vanish again. Before I even realized it, I was directly above him, left fist extended forward. He saw through my attack pattern and evaded easily without the slightest bit of trouble. Shifting left, I twisted on my axis and proceeded to follow up with a left hilt kick. Again, he dodged out of the way and hovered within my attack range. Rats, he was making a mockery of my efforts. Irritably, I lashed out furiously and lunged onto nothing. So fast and agile, it was hard to catch him. But I did conclud
e one thing, using my left gun without a proper plan was going to fail. Meaning I had to wait him out and analyze his movements carefully. Eventually, he would make a mistake and I would take advantage of it.

  “Your logic impedes you, Den,” Dr. Vegai said, hovering down faintly vertical. “You are blinded by your ability to strategize everything that you make it easy for me to predict your next move.”

  “Shut up,” I rattled in fury. “I will still win this, even if I lose my life in the end.”

  “So this is your choice?” Dr. Vegai sniffed silently. “Let’s test it against mine and see who will come up victorious.”

  That was the plan, and I wished he would stop saying the same phrase over and over again. It defeated the purpose of saying the final words before the last round of battle. Rotating quickly, I unclipped my right gun and shot a series of four bullets directly into his comfort radius. I angled each bullet to project indirectly in any path he chose to evade. At this range, there was no way he could evade simply or so I thought. Incredibly, he saw through my tactic and used it against me to evade every bullet. I was impressed, he dodged them fairly well. Clearly, he was somehow predicting my moves and using them against me. Wait, something was wrong. All this time, I had been focused on my battle that I forgot to pay attention on the other things around me. The fighting elsewhere seemed to have receded. I glanced around quickly, but saw no one close. What was going on? Who had won?

  “Where are looking?” he spoke with an icy voice.

  I turned around just in time to see him vanish quickly at lightning speed. My eyes tracked him for an instant, more than enough to predict his trajectory. I followed suit and increased my speed to match his. All my muscles stiffened and tightened as if they were being compressed. My vision began to blur a little bit and my ears kept popping every 3 seconds. But it still wasn’t enough.

  “Increase the output to overdrive.”

  This was it, the final plot in our battle—it was only a matter of minutes before one of us fell. As for me, I had a few seconds of fight in me left at best. The intense pressure my body felt was unbearable. Everything in my body lashed out at me to stop and rest. But I couldn’t, not just yet. Within seconds, I began to catch a glimpse of his shadow in front of me. We were moving at a ridiculous speed, far beyond the sound barrier. I was slowly catching up to him since he was moving in a straight line. Strange, it felt like he wanted me to catch up to him. What was he planning? I raised my left gun and took aim at him. Instantly, Dr. Vegai turned around with great precision, and kicked me in the head. It was so fast, I never saw it coming until it was too late. Narrowly, my body reacted quickly through memory, allowing me to decrease the impact by swerving my torso right. Dr. Vegai maneuvered out of my range and sped up again, right in front of me. Feeling groggy, I stopped for a second to orient myself and then went after him. Everything became one giant blur; I could barely see where I was going or how much time had passed. Wait, something else was going on. The sky seemed green to me. Now what?

  “You have lost, child,” the doctor appeared inches away from me, his gun pointed directly at my chest. “If I wanted to, I could have defeated you at any time of my choosing.”

  My arms tingled as I felt a cold chill in my spine. He was right, I think he had been just toying with me this entire time. I felt humiliated and angry, but somehow, I calmed myself and focused. Two bullets shot out of his left revolver and imploded on my chest. I yelped for breath for a second as my knees locked. For reasons still unclear, it wasn’t fatal. He had proven his point. Compared to him, I was nothing but a weak and fragile child. My armor was still functional, confirming that he really was just toying with me. Forget winning, I would be lucky just to be alive when this was over. Dr. Vegai was a monster, too powerful for my taste. I calculated my odds of shooting him with my left gun and realized how futile it was. As long as he could predict my next move, that wasn’t going to work. The difference in the level of our intellect was far too vast for comparison. It was going to take a miracle to outsmart him. I hovered carefully into his attack range, looking for any openings in his armor and defense. Sadly to say, his defensive abilities were flawless.

  Crap, something else caught my attention. It was my body acting weird, as if all the energy inside me was being sapped out. It seemed my body had been strained beyond its limits; my organs felt like they had ripped. Give or take, I had two minutes before I completely collapsed to the ground. Why was I putting myself through all this pain? Just what was I fighting for? I mean, I could have just given up and run away, but, regrettably, I didn’t.

  “If you won’t give up, then I will force you to,” the doctor’s voice came from behind me.

  My eyes widened as I realized what was about to occur. He had his guns pressed behind my back that there was no chance to evade out of the way. I felt something sharp and painful as he fired them both at the same time instantly. My eyes caught a glimpse of him before everything became a haze. It was an unbearable pain, the bones in my back all popped at the same time while I fell in a hard, downward descent to the ground. I spiraled deeply into the dirt, beneath rubbles of gate debris. Nothing made sense, only the pain felt gruesomely real. Was this it? My body twitched and wouldn’t listen to me. And the suit’s AI didn’t seem to be helping me at all. This battle seemed over, and I was the loser. Was I going to die like this? The story of Den Atmas ends on a miserable blue planet. What a sad ending.

  No! Please anything but that. I refused to die on Erzat; it was the worst way to go out for any soldier.

  “You had the chance to join me, but you didn’t,” the doctor said, hovering close to me.

  I could hear the turbine force of his flight system whispering rigid into my ears. I half opened my eyes and saw him with his gun extended forward towards my head.

  “Men like you only say words they can’t back up with their actions. There is no such thing as peace and justice, only one path in life and we must follow it accordingly.”

  Man, I wished he would shut up or something, he was irritating me to no end. I would rather he shoot me already, if it saved me from hearing his petty lectures. His ideals were screwed up and I wish he could see the light at the end of this tunnel.

  “Naïve people like you only meet certain doom in the end,” he continued and walked over to step on my back with his left leg. “The world is far better off without people like you and your ideals.”

  “Ow!”

  I felt so much pain I screamed in agony—but he didn’t seem to care.

  “Welcome to the real world, kid,” he chuckled and lowered his stance a bit. What if he was right? I mean what if this was truly what happened to people with naïve ideals? All I had done, so far, was act like a good person and hope for the best, but it wasn’t enough. Was there any way I could beat this man? Was the only way to win against him to be coldhearted and ruthless like he was? I had no strength left to continue, and it looked like this was the end.

  “You put up a good fight,” I said to myself, to comfort this empty feeling of regret. “There is no way anything else could have been done, nothing to be ashamed of.” I closed my eyes and embraced for the worst, hoping he would end it quickly.

  “Why are you giving up?” a voice said to me suddenly; it was familiar and warm. This voice! Was it Sydney? No! I was just imagining it, there was no way it was him. “So many people fell to get you to where you are, don’t let their efforts go to waste.”

  Man, I was hearing voices now? This was exactly how he spoke when he was serious. I hated it when he used to go all deep and philosophical on me on certain subjects. Despite that, it was good to hear his voice, even though it was all in my head.

  “Sydney, is that you?” I asked, knowing how insane I sounded.

  “Search your feelings and you will know the answer,” the voice faded.

  Now, logically, it was impossible to search my feelings, nevertheless, I still tried anyway. Now what did his words mean? What was he trying to tell me? Darn, I
was really a klutz at interpreting deep stuff. Although, there was some light shade from his words, a fragment from my broken past.

  “I think, I am starting to get it.”

  Not really concerning what Sydney said, but about Rose. It was from a memory of her about 5 years ago when I was about to take my final test of the semester. I was freaking out, as I had not studied enough Advanced Biochemistry to pass the test with flying colors.

  “You will do great,” she comforted me, but I still kept freaking out. “Never give up and keep believing in yourself and nothing is impossible.”

  She sounded like a fortune cookie, but that was another thing I liked about her. She gave him a slight embrace and stayed up with me, helping me with my studies. I passed the class and it was all thanks to her. Her words even now comforted me and filled me with hope. I smiled faintly, knowing why I was fighting. I had not lost everything I loved yet, and that was enough reason for me to get up and fight. Besides, there were things I needed to say to Rose, so I couldn’t die just yet. I barely opened my eyes and clenched my left gun hard.

  “Do you have anything else you want to say, before I send you to oblivion?” the doctor asked as he reloaded his other gun. He took his eyes off me for a second, totally ignoring me. Perfect! His guard was down and this was the moment I was waiting for. With every ounce of strength I could summon, I rolled on my back and fired without a moment’s thought, aiming for his chest.

  “How in the!”

  Dr. Vegai never saw it coming or suspected otherwise. Out of the left revolver, a massive ray of bright, blue light shot out, completely engulfing the mad doctor in fury blue flames. It didn’t stop there, he was sent surging, vertically, into the air. I shielded my eyes while still tracking the projectile of the blast. Honestly, I didn’t expect it to be that powerful. The force of the blast was creating turbulence of winds in every direction, like a raging storm. The furious wave of the bullet persisted for a few more seconds, and then completely vanished along with the crazy doctor. Was it finally over? I couldn’t believe my plan had finally worked. I had to admit, there were times I had felt like giving up, but I am glad I didn’t. Slowly, I pushed away a large block of metal that was pressed against my leg and got back to my feet, glancing around.