The powers raged under his skin. His field of power tightened down and focused. All internal pathways burst with a flow of energy. His fist clenched. His mouth revealed a smile through gritted teeth. The veins in his eyes popped.
It was intoxicating, the feel, the moment, all of it. Luke got a brilliant idea while charging up, staring down the dazed blonde man trying to pick himself up from the floor. The bleeding from his crotch stopped, and his bruises disappeared but the teeth were still missing… so must the other thing be.
He took out a see-through packet from his little pocket in the jeans. Fiddling with it, he hesitated.
“Z prochu powstałeś, w proch sie obrócisz, jebnij więc krechę, bo się przewrócisz”( a druggie rhyme, not really translatable, something akin to: From dust you came, into dust you will turn, better snort some dust or you will fall over soon”)
He opened it and stuck all of it into his nose, snorting it all in one go. It hurt more than a punch, coated his nose, and the sharp shards dripped down his throat, hurting him and making him gag with the saltiness.
His brain frizzled as his enhanced, more sensitive physique took in the foreign substances. Thunder and lightning lit up in his nervous system as an immense flood of energy burst from within.
Luke ROARED.
With all the rage, humiliation, fear, anger, and hate he felt because of Klaus, with all self-hatred, malice, doubt, and will to kill, maim, and murder, he directed it all at his now-standing opponent and released all that was within. His mental energies became almost palpable as they threatened to drown Klaus. It stopped his breath, it made him sweat, and his mind went blank.
With the roar, a concussion bubble spread like a wave from the trembling man, howling guttural screams like the beasts hidden within the depths of the sea. The bubble expanded, with thunderous noise amplifying. All the car alarms in the parking lot activated, and ass the roar drag on, the windows shattered from the vibration, and the cars started being pushed back.
The air itself shook.
After what seemed like an eternity, he stopped. His opponent struck in confusion and disbelief.
A moment of silence.
Without a warning, a group of people started pouring in from the metal gate. Alarmed by the inhuman noise and the car alarms that set off they rushed to see the new sensation.
Luke smiled as the randoms poured into the parking lot, keeping a safe distance from the two men standing in the middle.
“Part two, complete,” he said with a smirk.
He burst forward with immense momentum, as people circled the duo, they clashed.
Bound by the Veil, they were forced to restrict their powers. No more massive knockbacks, no, the hits had to be more focused, more piercing, and more harmful.
Just…
PURE, UNFILTERED, VIOLENCE.
It commenced.
They rushed at each other, Luke was the first to go, stomping his feet in a charge with enough power to leave cracks in the pavement. He closed the distance of tens of meters in a few steps and shot upwards with his knee in the air. His flying knee kick was blocked, so he pummeled another one with his left leg, straining his hip abductors to such a degree you could hear the tendons whine in agony. The second knee coming to the temple of Klaus was blocked by his forearm.
Klaus took advantage of Luke being airborne, grabbed him by his limbs, and tossed him sideways.
With a seamless roll, Luke transitioned from a fall into a wrestler's stance. Klaus met it with a knee of his own. Driving it hard into his face like a nail gun, it shot off, making Luke stagger backward as he blocked it with a full guard. Grabbing the opponent's thigh with his left hand, he sent a right hook packed with dense DISTORTION into the leg he was holding onto, it ripped and shredded the muscle tissue under the clothes with a vengeance.
Klaus felt the pain blossoming throughout his whole body, and responded on instinct, letting his right elbow drop down like an executioner's axe, sharp and deadly.
Bone scraped against bone, skin tore, and blood was set free.
Luke’s skull cracked, and he let go of his hold.
As they separated, Klaus barely managed to stand upright. His damaged leg sent piercing signals of pain throughout his body.
Luke felt as if the world was filled with water.
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He was submerged.
He regained his focus with a shake of his head, blood splattering as his head completed its rapid motions.
From a distance almost nonexistent, they clashed once more.
Both men released hooks packed with power, Luke, driving his whole power from the legs, ejecting from the ground like a rocket against Klaus, dropping punishment on him like a meteorite set on annihilation.
Both punches landed on the faces of the opponents. The hidden magic roared as it exploded like a frag grenade. Both felt as if the sky itself shattered.
The crowd gathering around them seemed shaken, even as unaware as they were, they still felt the power that ravaged the two, bloody and tattered random men they witnessed scrapping them out.
It fried their brains. Witnessing something they were never meant to experience on an existential level.
For a second they were confused, disoriented.
And then, they cheered.
With thundering applause and roars, they played the role of a chorus to the symphony of violence that unfolded. They craved blood and pain, and they got what they wanted manyfold.
As if in the Colosseum of ancient Rome, the spectators forgot about the noise, the cars, about their lives even. All that mattered was the spectacle unfolding in front of their eyes.
The crowd roared as the two combatants clashed.
The blond-haired man was visibly furious, his face scrunched in a scowl of indignity and rage. His punches and swipes send wide, unable to hit. They made the wind howl as the fist passed through space, chilling it so they left a trail of fog behind them. With each swing, he could feel the Veil scrape his mind as punishment. It only enraged him more.
The black-haired man kept close, with a manic smile on his face yet dead, unblinking, unmoving from his prey eyes that bore deeply into him. Each swing of his opponent was dodged by a hair distance. His own retaliation was swift, precise and packing added power. With every hit that landed some part of the surroundings jumped, moved, or shook. All his movement was aided by leveraging telekinetic pads and absorbing the weight from around him.
And he was speeding up.
His eyes were bloodshot, and his nose dripped with blood as he relayed the weight and pressure through his body. His muscles and tendons screamed as more and more momentum was added to each movement. His bones cracked under the immense overload that he imposed on himself.
And yet he smiled.
He laughed madly as more and more straight jabs landed on the blond man.
He yelled as his elbow cracked while a powerful hook tore open the skin on the cheek of Klaus, and half of his opponent's ear flew away into the dark.
In retaliation, Klaus PUSHED just as he did when they met for the first time, open palm laid to rest on Luke’s chest. The freezing cold seeped directly into flesh and hardened it, flakes peeling off instantly as crystals of ice expanded. The power of the move separated them, Luke stumbling backward with a grimace both from pain and annoyance at his rhythm being stopped.
Klaus closed distance immediately, the soles of his shoes tearing as he released another wide-clawed swipe, air crackling from the cold.
Luke ignored the peeling cold flesh of his chest and closed in, within the swipe, managing to lock it with his arms, and with a quick turn of his body and a bump of hips, catapult Klaus over his shoulder into the air. Instead of letting him fly, he pulled with both arms, like ringing a church bell, and smashed the opponent into the pavement. His neck cracking and body bending.
He wasn’t finished yet.
As the cheers stopped at the sight of something that should obviously be an act of murder they roused back up again as the unexpected movements gained more momentum.
Spreading his stance wide and low, digging his fingers into the arm of Klaus, he heaved and started turning. Slowly, the spin started and only gained more speed with each centimeter. Klaus woke up and started blasting cold into Luke’s arms, but it was already too late. As the whirlwind of bodies spun faster and faster, with the Veil lashing them with enough malice to crack open their skin, they moved across the parking. The people nearest to them barely managed to escape as a resounding BOOOM! spread across the place. Shearing metal sounds pierced the onlooker's ears.
Like an axe man, Luke chopped the body of Klaus into the car, bending it enough to resemble a closing book. Both the body and the car.
Not letting go of the chance, even as his arms were frozen so much he couldn’t move his wrist, he quickly switched his grip, one arm barely grabbing the wrist as the other smashed ruthlessly downwards on the dazed man's elbow.
CRACK
The bones yielded under pressure, they escaped the confines of flesh and together with them the howl of torment. As the blood dripped from the white bone exposed to the cold air, so did the tears of Klaus.
“YOU FUCKER!” He screamed as he clutched his arm.
Luke let go, standing hunched over his victim. Dazed smile on his face, eyes clouded over by deep thought.
He flexed his chest and the frozen fabric tore off together with a patch of skin, he clenched his fists and the frozen forearms cracked and blood seeped from them.
He exhaled.
Without warning he started pounding on Klaus, raining blow by blow, his opponent's head bouncing off the pavement as he barely blocked with his one functioning arm.
Booms resounded as the crowd stopped their cheers. They started to be worried. The man was not stopping. The man was trying to kill. He was not a man. This was not a fight. He was an executioner and he was enacting the punishment.
Mercilessly, blow after blow he smashed the face, ribs, and crotch of the cowering blond man as he struggled to defend. Kicks, punches, elbows, everything was used to bring more pain.
“ENOUGH!! FRO—FRO---FROZEN DOMINION!’’ Klaus had difficulties with finishing the shortened incantation as his mouth was pounded by a fist with each syllable. While rushed, incomplete, and weak, the spell was still dangerous, filled with his indignity and rage it blossomed into pikes of ice that pierced Luke, pushing him off Klaus. Each point of contact froze almost instantaneously. The Veil shook the space they occupied as tens of observers got their minds scrambled and Klaus got sundered by powerful heat that made his body sizzle with steam. The punishment was severe, gnawing at his magical pathways.
In the meantime, Luke created some distance. He took stock of himself and of the enemy as the telekinetic clamps ripped his frozen flesh off him to contain the spread of the cold energies.
His leg got hit badly, the ankle is frozen quite deeply, ripping that off won't be possible in the Real without immobilizing him.
Blood was flowing freely as Luke observed his blood and gore-covered enemy. More plans were being made on the spot to finish the bastard off.
*His left arm is fucked, won’t be able to block my haymakers, need to open him up for a blast or immobilize him…* as his thoughts went on, they once again locked eyes.
A tense moment for both, each silent amidst a roaring crowd.
Suddenly, Klaus’s eyes shot sideways and Luke’s followed. Klaus extended his arm towards the spectators, and from his palm two half-a-meter-long javelins of azure and amber-colored ice formed, as Luke pushed off his feet with enough force for the pavement to crack with the sound of a hammer smashing rocks, and his ankle bursting like an overripe melon, the javelins shook and launched towards a man and a woman, frozen in shock.
With barely enough time to spare he managed to punch the first javelin off course, smashing it into smithereens that peppered the man's face like a shogun blast.
*He’ll live* Luke thought as he clenched his back, and shielded in that short moment as much as he could.
The second javelin aiming for the woman followed closely behind. Pushing her away with his speed would turn her into mush, so he had to take it on himself. The javelin struck with a crack and a flower of ice bloomed from his back and covered his shoulder as the projectile passed under his collarbone and started poking out from the front. The blood instantly turned to icy flakes on contact.
The sudden wave of frost from within halted him in his tracks and almost doused his will to fight.
Slowly, he turned, circulating his energies and pushing the javelin from the outside with his construct.
What he saw, he couldn’t believe.
Klaus was running away, he pushed through the crowd without any issues and started gaining momentum, aiming towards the main street.
“FUCK!”
He ripped the javelin from the front without a thought, letting it drop to the ground, covered in his blood, and rushed behind the blond man, vaulting over the crowd like an acrobat, landing heavily and with curses in his mouth started the chase.
The group of dazed people stood in the middle of the dimly lit parking lot, steaming from excitement and sweat, amidst wrecked cars and bloodstains. As the duo left they all froze for a moment, as if reset, then, without a care, they left the parking lot going for more smokes, drinks and to have some more fun.
Without a care for what happened, or even any memory of it.