Following the breeze is a clashing sound from nearby, and a few seconds pass before Rose opens her eyes again. Matt still stands over her, but he has turned around, his sword resting on his right shoulder. Too amazed to feel grateful at the moment, she looks out in the same direction Matt was to find a gathered group of men far away across the field. The group consists of the school officers, led by Professor Malkia, the maiden biology teacher, Professor Kaloss, the grim runes instructor, and Professor Kaystone, the college’s principal, who is in battle morph. His armor suit is dyed magenta, and a half-circle arm blade gleams from both of his fists. Rose then understands that he must have launched an attack at Matt, who had retaliated by deflecting it with his dark sword.
Kaystone yells, “Matthew Calamos! Surrender at once, or you will be severely punished for your transactions by force! However, if you give up now, you may receive a lighter sentence!”
Matt shows no sign of hearing what he said as he brings his sword arm back down to his side and the black blade disappears. He walks forward a few yards, apparently forgetting Rose, and stares across the field at the officials. Noting his body language, Kaystone nods to his squadron, who join him in battle morph. Most of the officials are basic Swordsmen, Gunners, or Panther Beasts, except for Malkia and Kaloss. Malkia wears thin green armor with a yellow robe, while Kaloss has opal, shell-like armor encasing his body from the neck down. Kaystone turns back at Matt and warns him, “If you want things settled the hard way, very well! We will not show you mercy. Whether you demorph or not is now your concern alone.”
Stretching his arms forward, the crescent arm blades spin around his hands at increasing speed like propellers, their edges almost touching each other in the space between them. They then fly forward off the arms and begin orbiting at high speed around the center space, becoming a massive, helicopter’s propeller blades that rush toward Matt, grazing the ground beneath them in their velocity.
Matt continues his menacing stare of intimidation, seemingly oblivious to the formation of blades racing toward him. But he isn’t when he brings his right arm across his chest, gathering energy for a dark spell in it. When the propeller is about to reach him, he waves his arm forward, whipping out a gale of black wind. The two cyclones collide in opposite rotations, grinding the other to allow wind shear to spill out between them, before the black cyclone widens over the white one and swallows it. The enigmatic winds disrupt the propeller of blades, and split it by scattering the original two sickles within the funnel.
The officers and professors, especially Kaystone, look startled by what happened, none having predicted his powerful technique could be countered. While they are moonstruck, Matt adds an extra command to his whirlwind by another spell, and it rushes forward, spreading out into storm winds and dragging the wildly twirling blades along. Someone among the officials screams look out, and they all duck down and cover their heads. The gusts blow through and over them, some being slashed by the black breeze and others severed by the reckless arm blades.
After glancing at their injured once the winds die down, the professors look back at Matt, who raises his left hand up to the sky. A quick spell glows from it like a beacon, and then he points its open palm at the group of officers. Summoned from out of his hand, another legion of his black clones emerges and sprints toward the group.
“Hold your ground, people!” orders Kaystone. “Stay together and fight them as they come!” The officials establish their closed formations, allowing the clones to wash over them, and a vicious battle ensues as the opposing forces mingle. The officers, whether with swords, bullets, or fangs and claws, try to eradicate the clones, but the price for their efforts is receiving heavy damage from striking blades, piercing shots, and exploding spells.
Professor Malkia, meeting several clones converging upon her, lets thin, golden threads unwind from her fingertips. The threads wiggle through the air to lodge their ends into the shadow Matts, which lose function and are pulled about by Malkia like puppets on strings. Guiding the threads, she tosses her ensnared victims about through the air as they are changed into large, shining spheres of gold energy. In conclusion, she whips the strings all around, and the spheres wreck surrounding clones, including some more from blasting flashes.
Turning, Malkia encounters another bunch of shadow clones, marching toward her in close file despite the mayhem all around them. Thinking they would be simple, she releases more threads to connect with the clones and lift them upward. However, more clones then rush in and slice through the strings with swords, releasing the first troop from Malkia’s control to move in mid-air to snipe her with rifles. The bullets shower her, and in her temporary flail she has no chance of escaping the second clones, their blades stabbing through her and bathing her in bloody red energy.
***
Professor Kaloss, surrounded by enclosing Matts, feels ready for any number of them. Dealing out spells from his hands in a fast manner, he devastates the clones through ordered, chained attacks. Runes glow a pale blue across his armor, and in response a blizzard blows around him, slicing through the closest clones, while peculiar lines of frost branch out from where he stands. Springing up on air balance to avoid gunfire from further clones, his runes flash to violently disperse the blizzard, its icy winds filled with shards seeking and smashing them. When Kaloss descends back to the ground with more clones coming at him, he then takes his hand and crouches to touch the frost, which turns out to be a giant rune around him, and it activates to instantly germinate a field of icebergs, catching and impaling the clones in its vicinity.
In the middle of the glacial circle, Kaloss strokes the ice, setting up more runes inscribed into it for another technique, before seeing though it the distorted image of one of the clones facing him. Looking beyond, he sees part of the officials’ posse being hassled by more clones, and decides to assist them with his next move. He activates the runes, and the glacier groans, cracks, and crumbles, rapidly moving like a fluid to become an avalanche rushing across the field.
Kaloss directs the avalanche to go through the one clone on its way to rescue his allies, but to his shock it doesn’t get there. The single clone, casting its own spell, catches and reverses the flow of the avalanche, its icy debris painted black like onyx, and he is too startled to respond before it flows over him, bashing and burying him before the compressed cold rapidly darkens his wound energy showing through cracks in the pileup.
***
Professor Kaystone, with his crescent-moon arm blades, doesn’t wait for Matt’s copies to find him, and instead comes to them, slashing and thrusting through many of them by one arm, both arms, or spinning blades. When some clones are about to shoot him, he counters by flinging his arm blades, gliding like discuses through them. He forms another pair of blades and continues shredding through the foes around him, and at one point connects his weapons into a large ring to parry and cut through a group of sword-wielding clones and then roll through another bunch lined up near him.
After rearming himself, Kaystone looks around to find a peculiar scenario of two clones opposing him, one far off to his left and the other on his right. Figuring it is a trap in which if he goes for one clone, the other would attack him from behind, he throws both of his arm blades away in a quick rotation, each one hitting their marks in the clones’ chests. Proud of his feat, Kaystone almost doesn’t notice something important as he forms his arm blades once more.
Instead of vanishing, the clones revert into energized spheres around the crescents that chopped them. The sense of being in deep trouble hits him, and as he realizes what may happen the spheres jolt forward as thunderbolts to collide through him in a thundering boom.
The shocking volts rebounding through both sides of him splatters darkened yellow wounds all over Kaystone, and he almost falls over backwards. When he looks forward through narrowed eyes, however, he wishes he had. One more shadow clone is in front of him, and it points its left-armed rifle at his face. After cursing his misfortune und
er his breath, the rifle fires a single bullet that enters between his eyes and exits with spraying red out the back of his skull.
***
After hitting the ground, Professor Kaystone demorphs, and he groans with a splitting headache as he forces himself to stand up. Staring around him, he sees he wasn’t the only one who had a rough time. Malkia and Kaloss are both demorphed while the rest of the officers are exhausted with orange or red wounds streaked over them. The good news is that only a few of them had demorphed, there are no casualties, and all the clones are gone. The bad news is, if this was what it took to defeat only the clones, how are they going to stop the original Matt?
Malkia, slowly getting to a slumping posture, says through gasps of pain, “This is, unbelievable. So much fury, and carnage, from one person, a mere student.”
Kaloss, his knees trembling in his effort to stand, also groans, “How, could that one boy, be so formidable, all of a sudden?”
Kaystone, after an irritated hiss, answers, “I know nothing about him, except he’s ticking me off.” Truly, he was scaring him, but he couldn’t show weakness in the dire situation. Turning his head around, he spots the real Matt, still standing where his squadron had first challenged him. In their current state now, they have no chance of dealing with whatever form of wrath he could throw out next. In fact, he asks himself, could anything stop Matthew Calamos?
Matt keeps his heartless stare in the direction of the officials unaltered, a Terminator with dark red eyes and a stone frown. Then, his right arm becomes a thick cannon, which he levels to point forward. Inside it a bright, ominous glow of charging energy appears and grows. At first, the professors and officers don’t notice the cannon, but the shining light soon gives it away. Innocents before the gallows, most of them step back in fear and denial as they all sense Matt is going to use a very powerful attack, possibly his Ultimate.
“Everyone,” Kaystone commands, “separate and scatter, as quickly as you can! Let’s hope he won’t be able to aim at all of us!” They all spread out in random directions, desperation letting them move fast despite their vital wounds. Kaystone turns back to see what Matt would do, but gets a strange surprise. He seems to have ignored their flight response, his energy cannon not moving its aim an inch. Confused, along with his companions, Kaystone can’t guess what Matt was doing. Following the direction of the cannon’s targeting, he has a grim revelation.
Matt has his cannon aimed towards the stands of spectators further away, many of them awe-stricken by the turn of events to that point. As they notice this, the officials are stunned, Malkia gasps, Kaloss scowls, and Kaystone finally shows fear on his face, falling to his knees. From still behind him, only a few yards away, Rose has watched it all with growing despair, tears in her eyes as she slowly stands and whimpers, “No, Matt. Please, don’t do it. No…”
As the violet energy of enormous power swells and bulges out from the cannon, Matt doesn’t have any trace of superego in him. He shows no sign of reluctance, hate, rage, excitement, discipline, or pride. There is only one impulse, one instinct flowing in his mind, controlling his body and enhanced abilities ever since he remorphed.
Destroy everything before him.
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Alkalians Page 49