Staring Down Deth
The stools scatter, calack-calack-clatter as Darc is pushed back by a flurry of red. His body breaks against the counter, crash! He doesn’t even blink, his grin doesn’t falter, nor do his feet slide out from under him. The Red flunky charges at him with bursts of red ready at his hands, but Darc is prepared. At the last minute he ducks down, and when the Red is on top of him he pushes up with a burst of green and sends the poor teen crashing into the glass cabinets. Rook—– who had ducked out of the way to avoid the flying body—– emerges from behind the counter saying in monotone, “Paint supports peaceful conduct and is not responsible for any injuries sustained in this establishment…”
Darc turns to see another Red charging his way, a broken beer bottle already bloody in his hands. Grabbing one of the stools, he hurls it at the Red, saying in a voice loud and true, “I’m not messing around here, Deth! Let’s face off, just me and you.”
And from the chaos of the fighting crowd and the flying colors, Deth comes. He comes bringing a cloud of red and a smile that’s seen a dozen lives go out, and Darc thinks, not for the first or last time, that his rival isn’t entirely sane. After all, who would choose a name like Deth?
As the two teens step forward the mass of fighting around them parts like the red sea—– fighters dance around them with clashing colors, but all that Darc sees is Deth staring him right in the face.
The Green charges.
He leaves a streak of color on the floor behind him, his heavy boots spitting sea-green sparks as he speeds forward, readying a fist full of color, but the Red dodges his punch and retaliates with his own, grazing Darc’s cheek and staining it with red. As punches and kicks are exchanged, Darc’s green aura moves about him freely, trying to break through Deth’s shield of blood red. The colors are fighting their own battle, snaking through the air, biting at each other, and causing small explosions of yellow to ignite around the gangsters. Darc kicks Deth’s legs out from under him, but the Red is quick to rise again before Darc can end the fight. They crash against a wall.
Darc clenches his red-stained hands. It’s not blood that’s trickling down his cheek—– it’s pure color loaded with hatred enough to feed a forest fire. And it burns.
With the red on his hands Darc hesitates, unable to control the cloud of green around him. A whip of red lashes out at him from Deth’s extended hand, wrapping around Darc’s neck. He feels dizzy, dazed, the blood in his body boiling and undeniably red…
But there’s something else pulsing through his body. He waits until Deth is close, waits until that smile is an inch away from his face, and then Darc lets it go. A sea of green builds up from inside him and crashes against red, completely surrounding Deth. Darc’s opponent falls to his knees, his feeble fire of red flickering and starting to fade. The lights from Paint reflect on the surface of the caterpillar-colored cocoon like the sun on water, and Darc can’t tell where his arms end and the colors begin.
A heroic smile splits Darc’s red-stained face, and he knows that he’s won. Deth cannot stop him. Suddenly all the lights go out, and a siren sounds around the building. For a moment the shouting and fighting dies down, and all that can be seen are auras of red, green, and blue. Around him glowing fists illuminate dozens of faces, and on each of them the same look of fear. Finally a cry breaks the dark silence.
“BLACKSHIRT RAID!”
At once the chaos, shouting, and shoving breaks out again as everyone rushes towards the exits. For a brief, harmonic moment, all of the different colored gangsters are united as they race away from the incoming police guards. Darc releases his swarm of green color from around Deth.
“I think we’re tied,” Deth coughs; referring to the number of fights they’d been in, most of which ended up in draws. The Red attempts to push himself to his feet. For a moment Darc wants to reach out a hand to the shaking figure. His arm twitches.
Darc nods, looking down at his rival with what might have been mistaken for satisfaction. But he knows that he hadn’t been close to victory… one of the reasons that they are rivals is because neither one of them can completely best the other. Darc wipes something red from the side of his mouth. “I’m looking forward to the day when we can have a real fight. But until then…” He turns on his heel, flipping a casual rude hand-gesture over his shoulder, his finger pointed towards the heavens and the helicopters above as the Blackshirts rain down.