Alkalians

by Caleb S. Bugai

  Tony tries leering down Sean, saying, “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “Why, no! But I am pointing out how silly this whole situation is. If all students are supposed to have casino passes, then how come I never see anybody with one, and why do you student officers only ask the freshmen for them? It’s because we freshmen don’t know any better, so you can steal our money while making it look more like confiscating.”

  Tony huffs and says, “You must be Sean Wyseinburg, correct? You have a history of causing trouble in the casino. Getting wildly drunk, cheating on bets, and harassing the women. So my guess is you cheated on getting all that money, and now you were trying to leave before being suspected of…”

  Instead of getting angry at Tony’s accusation, Sean bursts out laughing and says, “Oh, you poor fellow, what jealous hater told you that? Ask the guys always playing in the gambling hall, and you’ll find that, even though I win many of the games, I never cheat. If you were to ask the bar tenders, you would find I only drink one alcoholic beverage per night, so I couldn’t possibly get roaring drunk. And you should know that the women don’t think me a nuisance, but actually enjoy my company and antics. I’m sorry, ol’ chap, but it seems you have been greatly misinformed.”

  Tony’s nostrils flare as he snorts. Not giving up on getting the money, he says, “If you’re asking for a fight, I would warn you I’m strongly considering it. And besides, rumor has it you aren’t so hot in a battle. Now stop making this complicated and just…”

  “What’s wrong, Tony? Getting cranky because I’m not so stupid anymore? This attempt to take cash off defenseless little freshmen a bit tougher? Are you really still afraid of Cain, after his humiliating defeat tonight? I would think you don’t need to do his dirty work anymore. I mean, if a freshman can beat him, what could he do to you? If you ask me, I think he’s losing his touch, and this would be the perfect opportunity to…”

  “Betraying a boss student is a fool’s idea!” snaps Tony. Catching himself and suppressing his anger, he then says, “Speaking of that, I should interrogate this ‘freshman’ friend of yours.” He turns his conniving eyes to Matt and asks, “How do we even know he’s a student here? No freshman could ever be skilled enough to take down a senior.”

  “Oh, so when I insult your silly allegiance to a broken boss, you have to shift your wrath on somebody else? First you’re some wise guy investigator, then a desperate liar, and now a bypassing coward?” Sean shakes his head, seeming to pity him. “Tsk tsk, that’s not very sporting of you. Your argument’s with me, not him, so stop throwing your improvised accusations and rules around just because I’m telling the truth and you can’t prove otherwise. After all, it could save you some breath.”

  Tony turns red with frustration. Whipping back to Sean, he growls, “Are you challenging my authority? I’m captain of the casino guards, and nobody tells me that I’m wrong in my work!”

  “Nobody until now. And besides, your claim of being the captain is also quite silly. You and your buddies are merely student-elected assistants to the real guards around here, who don’t appreciate this thuggish behavior of yours. Anyways, I suggest we just drop the whole subject here and all depart before someone does something quite regrettable. You could tell Cain that you just missed us and were unable to get the money without making a scene, and…”

  “You dare suggest I lie to Cain!?” Tony morphs, and out of the flash comes a pale humanoid with decaying skin, ragged clothes, and haunting eyes, which startles Matt and Rose. “We’ve no choice,” the Zombie informs his fellow officers, “but to use force to get that money and put these freshmen in their place!”

  “Ah, sir,” responds one of the officers, “we have company.” He points back at the casino, where a crowd of interested spectators gathers, including a couple of actual school officers.

  Sean laughs in his victory while Tony grimaces, before saying, “Well, you’ll never get our money now, but since you already morphed, how about a battle? You versus me, a nice clean duel. Think of it as an easy and quick way to relieve your rage.”

  Matt, Rose, and the student officers are shocked from Sean’s challenge. Tony, however, turns back to make sure he’s being serious, then grins with rotting teeth and nods. As Sean follows him into a clear field, Rose calls after them, “Sean! Are you sure you can fight him?”

  Before Sean morphs, he turns to answer with a thumbs-up and a gleaming grin. When he morphs, the crowd joins Matt and Rose as an audience for the fight. One of the students mentions, “Man, of all the guys to pick a fight with, Sean chose one of the worst.”

  “What do you mean?” asks Matt.

  “Well, Tony’s not only a senior, but, you notice his morph? Except for the peeling flesh, he doesn’t look so bad, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Yeah, but you would make a big mistake underestimating him. That Zombie morph is more of a magic user, and his spells can be quite nasty. Especially the one where, if his opponent has any damage on him, he can literally drain the health energy out of him!”

  “He could suck out his health?” asks Rose.

  “Yeah, so, if Sean gets at least a scratch on him, the battle might as well be over.”

  Exchanging concerned glances, Matt and Rose can only watch and hope for Sean’s well-being in the nighttime duel about to begin.

  ***

  As Sean and Tony stare at each other across the plain, Tony yells to him, “I always thought you dread fighting, all because you never figured out your powers. As far as I can tell, you still haven’t discovered them. So, since you’re so eager to humiliate yourself, you may strike first. Give me your best shot!”

  Sean smiles and replies, “How could I resist such a generous offer? As you wish!” He starts shifting the air about him, floats off the ground, and takes off towards Tony like a rocket.

  Tony is not impressed since any Alkalian should be able to air balance. He keeps his position, waiting for Sean to screw up in some attempt to attack. Sean rapidly approaches him, his legs moving like he is rollerblading on air, until he somehow trips and starts tumbling across the ground. While Tony sneers at what he expected, Matt, Rose, and the audience sigh from Sean’s mess-up.

  Sean continues bouncing like tumbleweed toward Tony. As he comes in closer, Tony prepares to move out-of-the-way, but Sean, smirking, releases a compressed blast of air and crashes directly into him. The tackle plows the Zombie through the field, and Sean flips off to land upright nearby. Tony was so unprepared for the surprise move it takes him a moment to realize it happened, gaping at a bright green wound upon his left shoulder.

  The audience, including Matt and Rose, are also surprised before they figure out how it worked. Sean had merely acted like he tripped in his air balance to lower Tony’s guard, and then attacked him at the last possible moment. Seeing their amazed looks, Sean bows to them graciously. When Tony gets back on his feet, he dashes off to increase the distance between them for another charge.

  Tony, shrugging his wounded shoulder, glares back at Sean with his dead eyes. He waits for him to dash back at him, and then raises his hands up and casts a spell:

  “Grave Clacher!”

  From out of the ground around Tony emerge magic-energized claws, hands resembling zombies trying to break out of the earth. Sean freaks from the sight, but is able to fly up and over before being grabbed. Landing on the other side and drifting to turn around, he looks back at a confident Tony, who is already casting another spell. In instant reaction to sensing something moving below him, Sean leaps away as a large, jagged tombstone sprouts out of the ground where he was standing.

  Figuring out that Tony would keep casting spells at him while those zombie hands protect him, Sean decides to try something. First gathering air all around him, he then propels straight at the thicket of magic hands. Matt, Rose, and the crowd wonder what he’s doing, and get their answer when Sean starts spinning like a drill, his feet forward, and penetrates through the hands when they fail to grab him
. When Tony sees this, it’s too late to escape as Sean collides into him, his feet drilling through his guts. The combined speed, impact, and drilling creates a cratered wound of bright yellow, and Tony cringes from the blow and Sean’s feet inside him.

  But Sean’s attack isn’t done yet. As his drilling slows, he reverses the spiral and starts spinning out of Tony. With him even more stunned from the move, he executes another thrust of compressed air to spring out of the wound, a burst of energy following after him. Sean lands several yards away after some back flips and looks back at the faded orange wound he left in his foe. Grinning, he says, “Uh oh, Tony, it appears that you just got screwed! Hahahahaha!” He imitates a screwing motion with his finger while pointing at the Zombie and laughing.

  Matt and Rose are impressed by Sean’s attack, and some of the crowd is either awed by his prowess or cheering for the brilliant fighter. Tony, shortly stunned from the numbing damage he’s endured, growls when he glares back at Sean. He casts a spell to spout energy from his wound, which spreads out to form a mob of zombie clones before him.

  The clones stand between Sean and Tony, forming a new obstacle to breach before more harm can come to Tony. Sean, instead of worrying, looks delighted at this challenge before he dashes towards the wall of zombies. In response, a larger cluster of them gathers into a defensive formation meant to stop him. Increasing his speed rather than slowing down, Sean then tucks his limbs in to become a rolling ball. The zombie clones are defenseless when he smashes through them, scattering them like falling bowling pins.

  After the first group of clones is erased, another is positioning into a lineup in Sean’s path. Exiting the rollout, he leaps at them and begins thrashing through the entire line. He takes out two with a double kick, a second pair with back-to-back roundhouse kicks, one more with a slamming fist, and a final clone with a front flip followed by a drop kick, all while still in mid-air.

  When he finally lands, there are two clones left, serving as a last defense for Tony, until two more appear out of the ground beside Sean. They assault their foe, one holding onto him while the other prepares to bite him, but Sean enjoys using another air balance trick as he spins in place like a top, throwing the one clone off him and blowing them both away.

  The audience becomes even more wowed by Sean’s techniques. Rose says to Matt, “A few days ago, he couldn’t harm anyone. And now, he’s proving a match for a senior! How did he do it?”

  Matt is just as astonished when all he can reply with is, “He’s a mad genius.”

  Meanwhile, Sean continues his assault toward Tony by side thrusting, then charging at him and his vanguard. The two clones stand firm to act as a shield, but Sean doesn’t slow in his advance. He makes a diving leap, rolls out a landing beside the two clones, and knocks them out with break-dance-like kicks. As Tony growls in frustration towards Sean’s clever moves, Sean exits his disco attack before launching into the air, bringing him along with a severe uppercut to his face. He lands a few yards away as Sean touches down and looks to his fallen enemy.

  ***

  His health energy converging from orange to red, listening to an audience cheering louder for Sean, and his reputation gradually shrinking, Tony’s breathing is ragged with rage. He decides he’s had enough of some clown making him look pathetic. No matter what the cost, he is going to make sure Sean regrets he ever crossed him.

  Standing up with rekindled anger, Tony begins charging a spell of great proportions. A powerful aura of gathered energy glows all over him. This pulls attention from the crowd toward him, along with an intrigued Sean. When his build-up of power reaches the right point, Tony releases it, and he sinks into the ground as it churns and rumbles.

  A moment later, a huge, skeletal arm made of soil bursts out of the ground, its bony fingers each having a barbed claw, and is followed by the rest of the new entity. Once it looms over the dwarfed Sean, the Golem-like figure, which lacks rock armor and has decayed features, shows it has a mouth as it opens wide, its lower jaw bearing tusk-sized fangs, and roars an unearthly howl at him while hot hatred burns in its empty eye sockets.

  His eyes bulging at the new form of Tony, Sean says, “Well, talk about getting ugly!” The crowd is just as surprised, and Matt asks, “What happened? What did he just do?”

  Rose has the same question when she can’t answer, but the guy behind them answers, “That was a Hyper Morph! By literally sacrificing some of his health energy, he changed into a stronger form of his battle morph whose stability equals the amount of health energy sacrificed!”

  The upgraded Tony grins with his filed teeth and fangs as Sean dashes away to a safer distance. After he stops about a hundred feet away, he begins to move toward him, slowly lumbering forward with both his arms reaching out at him. When Sean sees his movement, he sighs in relief, assured that Tony is still slower than him, until Tony’s hands detach from his arms and fly at him. Jumping away from the right hand that strikes the ground where he was standing, Sean is left exposed to the swipe of the left hand, the hooked claws barely raking him and leaving a few scrapes of green damage on his chest.

  As Sean lands on his feet, Tony sees the damage done to him, and his ghastly lit eyes twinkle. Wasting no time, his right hand floats in close to Sean and aims its palm at him, and a small thread of energy shoots out of it and enters Sean’s wound. After feeling the prick of the spell tagging him, he finds with shock his health energy flowing out of the wound, through the air along the thread, and into Tony’s hand, steadily changing from green to yellow in color.

  Realizing what is happening, Sean figures how to counter the spell. He builds up air balance around him, springs at the floating zombie hand draining his health, and busts through it with a flying kick, leaving a big hole in it and shutting off the spell, before dashing at Tony’s big bulk across the field.

  Surprised he escaped his draining spell, Tony doesn’t panic as he races toward him, and drops his lockjaw and yells in a hollowing gasp, “Grave Aeros!” A spell casts out of his mouth, a fierce gust of corrosive wind, and it halts Sean’s momentum and blows him back, slicing more wounds into him along his arms and legs, before both of Tony’s hands zoom past him on either side, their claws ripping through him and reattaching to Tony’s arms before he falls backwards and hits the ground hard.

  In the moment after he repelled him, Tony sends up evil laughter into the night air while Matt, Rose, and the audience look with dread. Sean forces himself to stand up, the numbing wounds in his arms, chest, and legs glowing bright orange, and glares at his taller foe.

  For too long had he been beaten down, Sean reminds himself. For a whole year of school, he was easy prey for boss student goons and bullies, the laughing stock of every proud fighter throughout the college, a disappointment to the staff and his few friends. For too long had he been nothing but a dummy for others to fight. It was time for him to make others the dummies.

  Tony holds out his hands, and multiple threads of red energy grow out and lunge down towards Sean, their ends sinking into his wounds. As they begin to suck out his health energy, he does something unexpected. Taking off with a bang, he rises and soars over Tony on air balance so fast that his momentum yanks on the threads, pulling Tony’s hands over and behind him in a whiplash. For a moment, his arms resist the vicious tugging from Sean’s air balance, but then Tony shrieks when they are torn off of him with sickening snaps.

  Just as stunned from the feat as Tony, Matt, Rose, and the crowd watch with jaws dropped as the giant arms crumble into dirt below the hovering Sean, ending the spells that drained his health energy to a dark red, before he rushes back at Tony. Tony turns, wobbling without his arms, and releases a spell that instantly extends long, stone spikes out of his ribcage, meant to impale the incoming Sean. In the split second before he meets them, he pulls off another unpredictable feat. In a maneuver so fast that Tony doesn’t comprehend it, he side-thrusts and orbits around him, getting behind and above him without running into the spikes.

&nbs
p; While he stares at where he should be, Sean reminds him of where he is when he sling-shots into the back of his neck with a kick. The impact creates a loud crack as it breaks through bone and dirt, bends Tony’s head back, and gushes out a burst of red energy. A second later, the red wound energy spreads in fractures across his whole body, spraying out like water breaking through a dam, and Tony lets out a scream, colored by the wound energy erupting out of his mouth, before his whole form vanishes in a red flash.

  ***

  It takes a moment for the audience to understand what happened as they stare across the field at Tony lying on the ground as a human and Sean breathing heavily over him, but when Sean demorphs and strolls back toward them, they send up wild applause and cheers. Matt, Rose, and fellow freshmen from the crowd rush out to meet him, and as they give him congratulations and praise Sean embraces it all. Although, he does wince a little when someone would clap him on the shoulder or back.

  “Sean, that was amazing!” says Rose as they walk toward the rest of the spectators. “When did you learn to do all of those moves?”

  “Oh, you know, the techniques come naturally,” he responds between his breaths, “and then I just, put them together, in the right combinations, with my high intellect. It’s pretty easy, really, the only drawback is, how much energy I spent. Whoo, I could use some sleep after that!”

  “But are you alright?” asks Matt. “Not seriously injured, or anything?”

  “Well, sure, I feel pain all over, and there are probably, bruises on my arms, legs, and chest, but otherwise, I haven’t felt, this great in my whole life!”