Now something I want to clarify before you read this part. I was not there for this fight, I was fighting Tyrone, who was wielding Nature's Pandemonium. This is from Tulip’s perspective it is backed up by offhand comments. I say off hand because aside from Tulip, you, and maybe the Lady of Dreams no one knows about this journal. 

This journal is extremely personal to me and a sort of therapy to cope with what happened. I do not wish for others to know about the part I played in this. Tulip is both a trusted friend, which is why I asked for her story and no one else's. So without further ado, this is Tulip Barquero’s account of her fight with Guams Howl on March 15th.

When Guams was tackling me through the walls, I was bouncing around in every direction, up and down, left and right. It was horrible. It was like when you shake a Christmas present to try to figure out what could be inside. Except I was the present and the forcefield was the box. I'm sure most people wouldn't be able to deal with the pain of being shaken around like snow in a snow globe.

Thankfully, my dad is a cop, but he was also an ex-marine. Growing up I was put through the ringer. Every Sunday would be spent doing boot camp drills from dawn to dusk. I hated it, it was absolute hell. I mean I guess it paid off in the end since it's that training that allowed me to keep on concentrating on the forcefield and not become a bloody splat. But anyways back to my story after maybe four or so walls, it was a bit hard to say, we ended up in the gym where I rolled to the far side of the room. 

I got up and removed the forcefield. Feeling disoriented from the crash, I looked around, trying to gain a sense of my surroundings. I was immediately met with Guams’s tail slamming into me, sending me flying into a wall. Thankfully my Kevlar vest made it so I didn't break any bones, but it still hurt. As I got up, Guams was turning around to face me. He looked at me with stiff unmoving eyes and his head started to move dramatically side to side as he tried and failed to speak. “Mmff uhf pff." The sound stopped for a moment. The whole sculpture froze in place before falling apart and shattering to the ground, creating a massive could of dust. I'm thankful I was wearing the tiger mask, it made it much easier breath through the dust otherwise. When the dust settled, there was a mountain of debris stretching maybe twenty feet high with Guams standing proudly on top. “Sorry about that, I didn't realize that sound would be so muffled while I was a dragon.” Guams explained. “Anyways what I was saying was I'm sorry I have to kill you. But there isn't really anything else I can do.” Guams shrugged as he placed his hand on the mountain of rubble causing pieces of debris to come flying out. 

I reacted just in time, creating a shield to block the incoming blows. As the rocks hit the shield Guams slid down the mountain with two sharpened stalagmites following him. I lunged forward trying to slash his chest it was barely blocked by one of the spikes with the other trying to strike my hip. It was unsuccessful as I quickly summoned another shield, blocking it. 

“Isn't this fun? Aren't you having fun? Personally, I'm having a blast.” Guams cheered as he started to spin around me. His hands hung wide as the spikes continued to try to wail on me. I was skilled enough to parry them, but doing so didn't give me a chance to focus on Guams. When I looked back, he was backflipping into the air using floating rocks as platforms. He continued to maneuver himself higher and higher. Not wanting to see what had in store Guams I came up with a plan. The next time the spikes flied towards me, I managed to duck under them causing them to go diving towards the floor. 

Seeing my chance, I created a ton of blue lines that warped around the metal frames and pipes of the celling, they then tied themselves around the spikes and pulled them upwards strapping them in place. I looked up at Guams, who was standing on a small boulder and focusing to condense the remaining rocks around his leg. He looked at me and started to laugh, as the rock's became more and more refined to form a sharp jagged blade. He somersaulted down, turning into an earthy saw blade coming straight towards my head. He was about to slice me in half, when a blast of blue hit him as a direct hit, sending him flying against a wall. 

Looking towards the direction of the blast, I saw Antonio and Brad standing in the hole we had crashed through. Antonio’s arm looked completely dried up, like it belonged to a mummy. Not wasting a moment, I whipped my head back towards Guams seeing he was starting to get up. I threw one of my daggers, wedging itself deep into his shoulder. He laughed it up seemingly unconcerned about any of his injuries, as if this was just any other day of the week. 

“This is wonderful. I'm having a wonderful time. Please tell me you're having a laugh. I know I am.” Guams ran at me, cartwheeling and backflipping along the way, using the moment when his hands would touch the ground to add more and more earth to himself. Until when he landed a perfect three pointer in front of me, he was covered in thick spiky battle armor. At this point Brad and Antonio had managed to run over to us seeing this Guams began to holler “So ready to do this for real, trust me this will be a real hoot. I’m sure we will all be laughing by the end of this.” Brad ran forward punching Guams square in the jaw, his blow didn't do much as Guams’s armor absorbed most of the hit leaving only a small crack behind. “My turn.” Guams said as the rocks that made up his gauntlets detached from his hands still keeping their shape. As with his four hands he unleashed a fury of blows on to Brad.

Brad screamed in pain, seeing this Antonio launched a blast of water which caused Guams to be pushed back slightly. I took the opportunity to come in with my longsword straight aiming for his neck. His hands were bleeding, trying to push back the blade with all his might, but despite his best efforts I was still stronger. Guams, knowing this fact, used his stone gauntlets to slam into my stomach, sending me flying. But before he could hit me again Brad came running in and punched him over and over again into the armor creating more and more cracks with every swing. As if this was some strange sadistic pleasure Guams Screamed “Yes, let’s keep this up!” and in an instant Guams's armor exploded into hundreds of shards, sending Brad flying into me just as I had managed to get up. 

As we staggered to our feet, we looked at Antonio who was controlling a big blob of water that was cutting through stone pillars Guams was pulling out of the ground. Without his armor he was faster, being easily able to maneuver and dodge every attempt Antonio made to attack him. Brad and I ran forward, Guams seeing us, jumped over Antonio doing a superhero landing, when his hands connected with the floor, the ground in front of us quickly loosened, forming into quicksand. As we sunk to the ground, Antonio turned around and used the blob of water to tear through Guams’s back. He screamed louder than he had with any of our previous attacks. Guams whipped around to push his hands forward, causing some of the quicksand to grab and wrap Antonio like an octopus’s tentacle with a fish. 

The quicksand flung him into the wall, knocking him out. Using the chance, I created a couple small rectangles for Brad and me to pull ourselves out, just in time as Guams turned to face us. We ran forward, my sword cutting into his hip and Brad punched him so hard in the ribs we heard a crack. “See, aren't you having a blast? I can see it on your face. The thrill of the hunt, the fury in your eyes, the satisfaction as my body loses more and more blood, you're enjoying this, aren't you?” Guams cackled.

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“You threatened my mother!” Brad screamed out. 

“Shut up! I don't care, I'm stopping you because you're evil!” I yelled. 

“Evil, how black and white of you, such a narrow and fragile point of view? All I want to do is make the whole world smile and laugh. What part of that is evil?” Guams, mocked as two sandy tentacles reached from behind and threw the two of us against opposite walls. 

I got up pushing through the pain to see Guams hobbling towards the mountain of dirt and with each step he gasped for air. As he got to the pile, he looked at me with a smile, gently poking the earth unleashing a massive cloud of dust that made it impossible to see anything. 

I made my way to where I last saw Guams. using my sword in one hand probing in front of me like a blind person cane and my dagger in my other hand for when i found him. I approached cautiously, listening for any sign of activity. It was completely silent for the next few minutes. moving through the dust storm was insanely hard not just because of the poor visibility but also due to the density of the cloud, it was hard to move. I was slower and more sluggish, I had to use a lot more energy just to be able to move normally. Looking back, I'm pretty sure that that was because of Guams’s powers.

After a few minutes of moving cautiously, I heard footsteps. I turned my head to see a figure approaching quickly with its fists up. I ran forward blades in hand. Running closer I was able to make out it was Brad. His eyes went wide in surprise, but already mid swing. We made contact, with my dagger finding its way into his arm. His fist made its mark against my nose. We both stumbled back from the impact and looked at each other in surprise. 

“Brad?” 

“Tulip?” 

“I thought you were Guams!” 

“Same here.” 

“Crap, we need to stay close, so this doesn't keep happe–” Brad tried to say before a fist quickly appeared out of the dust and slammed into his gut. Thinking fast, I trapped the fist in a barrier before it could do anything else. Before we had a chance to do anything else, the dust around us grew significantly clearer. We both looked around and we saw a couple hundred tiny stone bullets surrounding us, hovering in the air all pointed directly at us. 

“Oh, come on.” Was all I was able to say before the bullets started to fly towards us. I managed to put up a dome but not fast enough as some of the bullets had managed to fly inside the dome. The bullets pinged against the outside of the shield, as I struggled to keep the dome activated. The bullets inside the dome kept trying to shoot me, as they ricocheted within the dome taking their shot at either me or Brad. He suffered worse than me, since most of the time they would just hit my Kevlar vest causing the bullets to shatter on impact, I was thankful since it meant only around half of the bullets would actually hurt me. But half is still half. Brad started to wail on ,as many bullets as he could, shattering them back into dust. Until after many wounds filled with blood and dust, there were none left. The remaining bullets continued to pound relentlessly against the outside of the dome. 

“We're trapped!” I screamed. 

“I have an idea but you're gonna have to trust me, all right?” Brad explained.

“Sure, why not its either that or death.” 

“Ok then follow my lead and instructions to a T.” 

”Got it, what's the first step?” 

“First break the dome, keep your head down and run as fast as you possibly can.” 

“Ok, let's do it!” 

“On three. One, two, three!” Brad yelled as I dropped the barrier and started to run straight through the hail of bullets. As I ran the bullets continued to fire off. I realized the angle of the bullets were positioned so that when we got to a certain point, the angle would completely miss us. This meant that the bullets couldn't have been actively aimed at us.

We ran and ran until we made our way out of the dust cloud. We saw Guams with one hand pressed up against his temple and the other one gripping his chest trying not to let any more blood spill out. He stared at us with a mix of hatred and fear in his eyes. No words were spoken, only a mutual fear of the other in our eyes. He dove for the floor, and we ran towards him. The moment his fingertips made contact with the surface of the gym floor; a hole opened up beneath us swallowing us. 

We made no sound as we fell. We looked up as the light from the buzzing fluorescent bulbs disappeared and the hole closed. We were trapped, buried underground with the feeling of the earth pressing against us. We slowly lost all our breath until we gasped our last. Guams stood over where the hole once was and let out a sigh of relief as he relinquished control over the dust cloud and started to speak to himself trying to figure out his next course of action. 

“Thank god that worked, they almost had me.” Guams said turning towards the giant holes in the wall. “Better get back to Tyrone, he's probably dealt with that other guy. Now all we need to do now is figure out how to delete the footage on our own, now that Antonio went rogue. I wonder who those guys were anyw-UMPF!” He screamed as an airtight blue rectangle formed around his body. He whipped around to see thousands of tiny dots start to move and form into two familiar shapes. “HMMPF!” he screamed. Brad held up that strange leather book and simply said. 

“Illusions, they're pretty fun, aren't they?” As Guams tried to scream, the box started to lift up and started to fly towards Brad who was pulling back his fist as far back as he could. The cylinder disappeared, sending Guams hurtling towards Brad's fist. When his face connected with Brad’s fist, he was hit so hard a few of his teeth flew out of his mouth as he hit the wall, knocking him out. Brad fueled with some kind of fury and vengeance I have never seen from him before ran to Guams unconscious body and started to repeatedly beat into every inch of him all while yelling. "YOU STUPID IDIOT! YOU THREATENTED MY MOTHER AND THOUGHT I WOULD LET IT GO? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT SHE MEANS TO ME? WHAT I WOULD DO FOR HER?”

I had to stop Brad from going any further since I’m a woman of my word and we didn't have to kill him. I grabbed his arm just as it was reeling back for another blow. Seeing the conviction in my eyes, He grabbed Guams’ hands and attached the oven mitts and zip ties he had stored in his pocket to them. He threw him over one shoulder and ran to Antonio shaking him awake. 

“Ugh did we get him?” Antonio groaned.

“Yeah, it's over now. All we have to do now is delete the footage and we're home free.” Brad said, as I helped him up.

“Got it but what is Tulip doing?" Antonio said, pointing over at me. 

“I'm collecting his teeth. If I don’t, they will be able to cross reference them with dental records and then they'll know everything.” I defended myself, as I picked up the last of Guams’s teeth. 

“How do you even know that?” Asked Antonio. 

“Yeah, that's a really weird thing to know.” Brad added. 

“My dad’s a cop.” 

“Wait, why would you never mention that, we could have been using guns this entire time?” 

“I mentioned it to Ink… oh no, Ink is still fighting Tyrone!” 

“Oh god you're right, come on we got to go.” Antonio said, starting to run to the door with me and Brad following behind. We ran towards the main hall where we split up into different directions. I heard a loud smashing sound like a rock against a bigger rock. By the time we got to the trail of fire leading to the theater room, Alex was already there staring up at the hole aiming her coin rifle. And well I think you know what happened from there.