Surviving the Death Hunt

Hatred was fine. Revenge was justified. Murder was logical when necessary. The problem wasn’t the doing, it was what came after. The consequences.

Joel’s father was an Akuma. First to awaken his Inheritance. The burden it carried would’ve broken anyone else. He carried it anyway and gave himself up for people who never knew his name.

He’d spent fifteen years at the Supreme Academy without climbing a single rank. Scar had passed people like that in the halls plenty of times, unremarkable faces he’d never bothered to remember.

He understood now why nobody remembered them. They were the ones offered up whenever Quagmire, Clown of the Living, came around.

Eight years ago, the creature had appeared, and five people paid for it. Joel’s father was one of them. They gave up their Inheritances, which was just a cleaner way of saying they died.

Ever since, Joel had carried that hatred toward the Supreme Academy like something he had no interest in putting down. He’d said it to Scar more than once, plainly, without rage, which somehow made it worse. He was going to kill whoever he faced in the Epic Competition.

But today, standing before Scar, none of that hatred mattered anymore. His death was already decided... not by anything about Joel’s vengeance specifically, but by what his hatred had stirred awake. Something beyond him. Something that didn’t care about his reasons.

His revenge might have run its course without incident if he hadn’t touched Emma. That one move changed everything. She was fighting for her life now, and Scar hadn’t forgotten it.

Scar was calm, surprisingly so, considering how badly he’d wanted Joel dead just moments before. The crowd’s cheers were deafening but distant, like noise from another room. All he could see was Joel, hovering on his board, sword raised with the kind of pride that hadn’t been earned yet.

"Are you just going to stand there? I didn’t plan on meeting you today... but it makes no difference. You die here, Scar."

That arrogance. It pissed him off more than anything else. Joel reminded him of Adisa. Every bit of him. And Scar had killed Adisa days ago.

"Tsk. Why did you try to kill Emma?"

Joel frowned. He looked confused. Almost innocent, if you didn’t know better.

"What are you talking about? Who’s Emma?"

Scar’s irritation was more apparent now. Even the crowd grew wary.

"You were willing to kill someone you knew nothing about. Yet you call us monsters."

It took a moment. Then it clicked. Whatever innocence Joel had been wearing disappeared on the spot.

"She’s your friend, huh? And you’re surprised? You know I hate Akumas, and I’ll kill every last one of you. Who goes first doesn’t matter."

He grabbed his sword tightly.

"That bitch has contributed nothing important to society, yet humans far smarter than her exist, and she’s a staff member, respected even by the elders. She lives on, while those who give their all... die?"

Scar had had enough of him, but not yet. There was still something he needed to know. Joel wasn’t mindless.

Someone had pointed him at Emma specifically, and Scar wanted to know who, and why, and what they thought they were going to get out of it.

"Who sent you? She’s just a girl, innocent, and I highly doubt anyone would hate her."

Joel immediately grew aggressive.

"Are we going to chat all day? ’Cause I don’t feel like it."

The words had barely left his mouth before he was already closing the gap, moving at a pace that would have impressed anyone else. Scar sidestepped it without much thought.

"Ha! You dodged it? The Highest One said this would be interesting, and I doubted him. But now... I have to admit, he was right."

The Highest One?

He hadn’t wanted to think about it, but Joel had made it easy. The way he’d reacted after saying the name, the Highest One had pushed him into this. That was clear enough.

What was less clear was why the title felt familiar, like something half-remembered from somewhere he couldn’t place. It didn’t matter. He’d kill Joel and worry about the Highest One after.

After sidestepping another attack, Scar decided he’d been patient long enough. He unsheathed his sword, and flames crawled up the blade until it was fully swallowed.

He practiced the Enhancement technique, staying ahead of each attack without much trouble. The board was a different issue.

Joel, floating above the ground, changed the geometry of everything, making it hard to predict and harder to commit to a clean strike.

’Tch. It’s almost nighttime. I need to end this and get the hell out of here.’

He pushed his speed up and started switching positions, trying to force an opening. Joel gave him nothing. Too fast, too comfortable up there, like the air was his ground. The irritation curdled into focus. Time to stop reacting and put something together.

He launched Black Sun without ceremony, and the force behind it was something else entirely. Joel got out of the way, barely, and the sweat beading on his forehead told the rest of the story. Scar smirked. Now they were getting somewhere.

<< Flash Step >>

Scar covered the distance in a single step and pulled Black Sun back before the blade found the walls. All of it happened faster than it should have. Joel managed to block the swing, but the force hit like a verdict and sent him plummeting into the ground.

The block was a question he didn’t have an answer to. But he didn’t dwell on it. Something had entered the arena. Scar felt it before he saw it, and it stopped him cold.

His eyes swept every direction before finding the VIP section and stopping there. For a moment, he genuinely couldn’t move.

The aura was cold and suffocating, the kind that didn’t announce itself so much as arrive. The man it belonged to looked almost average. And yet stunning in an elegant way.

Dark hair, unremarkable features, nothing that should have commanded a second glance. His presence made all of that irrelevant. Dain Vorn Zaireth. His sworn enemy.

’What the... what’s he doing here? Is he done with his mission already?’

He couldn’t settle on anything. Ignore Dain, flee the arena, or stand his ground and throw that same confidence back at him. Every option fell apart the moment he tried to commit.

Dain’s stare didn’t help. Calm, unreadable, like he already knew what Scar would choose. And beneath the conflict, something worse was stirring. Scar felt the centuries of emotion his predecessors had pressed down and never dealt with, finally catching up.

He gritted his teeth.

"He’s not my target right now. I’ve got to focus on Joel. He can’t possibly get down here and kill me. Tsk."

His thoughts were the right ones. They just came a second too late. Joel’s strike caught him on the chin before he could act on any of it, and the ground came up fast.

Julien and Purple saw it from the stands. Hard to miss.

Moments ago, Scar had worn the kind of confidence that made outcomes feel inevitable. Joel’s defeat was already written.

Now he was on the defensive, struggling to stay alive, and whatever had caused the shift was worse than Joel ever was.

Julien immediately gestured toward Dain.

"Ah, I get it. Dain’s around. Do you think he came for Scar? I mean, if he wanted to, now would be the perfect time, with V potentially showing up."

Purple shrugged her shoulders.

"I’m not sure, but that’s probably not why he’s here. And I don’t think the Supreme Council called him either."

"Is he done with his mission?"

"I doubt it. If he had, it would be all anyone’s talking about by now."

Purple spoke. Nobody was fully listening. Up in the VIP section, Luccy had appeared beside Dain, said something close to his ear, and just like that, the two of them were gone, slipping out of the arena as they’d only come to see enough.

Purple sighed.

"I suspect he came for other reasons but decided to observe Scar’s progress firsthand."

Julien heard her. He just couldn’t look away. Something about the duel was pulling at him, just the certainty that something was wrong.

"Don’t you think something’s off? Joel may be a better swordsman than Scar, but this feels... unusual. It’s just too fast and too strong for a human."

Purple nodded in agreement.

"He’s not using the Stabilization technique either. This has to be Enhancement... and somehow, he keeps getting stronger."

Scar was dazed.

The daze wasn’t just from the strike. It was the situation. Joel had caught him off guard, and he hadn’t found his footing since.

What bothered him more was something he couldn’t quite pin down: whether he was getting weaker and slower or whether Joel was getting stronger every time he landed a hit.

It deteriorated fast. Joel’s attacks blurred into something Scar’s eyes couldn’t follow anymore, and blocking became guesswork. Cuts mapped themselves across his body one swing at a time.

What struck him, through all of it, was Joel’s expression. There was satisfaction, not even enjoyment. Just desperation, raw and unmasked, like a man trying to consume every ounce of strength he could reach before something took it from him.

He blocked an attack, flash-stepped, and put a distance between them. Joel still closed the distance like it wasn’t there.

Scar didn’t let it rattle him, he had a play. Activate the little domain, feel the Blessing around him, and use it to read Joel’s movements since his eyes had stopped being useful. It was a good plan. The pickle was that executing it required time he wasn’t being given.

After countless tries, it happened. He felt it, the Blessing, finally.

But something was immediately wrong. It didn’t settle the way it always had. Instead, it moved, drawn away from him before he could use it. Toward Joel. He was absorbing everything around them.

Then he understood.

It wasn’t that he was weakening, Joel was simply growing stronger, feeding off everything around him. The paranoia settled in quietly. There was a ceiling somewhere, a point where Joel would stop climbing. Scar needed him dead before that happened.

Joel needed to be dead. That was simple.

What wasn’t simple was his uncle’s warning about the Blessing, too much absorption led to a bad outcome. The exact nature of that outcome his uncle hadn’t specified, and Scar hadn’t asked. He wasn’t going to stand here and watch Joel demonstrate it either.

The Emotional State would have ended it. But the competition prohibited it, which meant that option wasn’t probable.

Killing Joel without it was going to be a pain on its own, and using it would only compound the problem. The more rules broken, the more to answer for, but Joel needed to die the hard way.

He made his move. Black Sun had absorbed enough dark flames by now, and he forced them out in a single slash, everything it had been holding was released at once, aimed at Joel.

Joel got the block off, but that was exactly what Scar needed. The distraction lasted a breath. He flash stepped into the blind spot, and he struck before Joel could find him.

The blade had his neck. Joel moved anyway, with no explanation for how, and traded his arm for his head. A bad deal by any measure.

"Shit..."

Scar created distance and stood there, watching Joel’s scream tear out of him. It was agonizing by the sound of it. Scar filed that away as irrelevant.

This was bad. The severed arm would end the match, competition rules didn’t leave room for interpretation on that. And an ended match meant Joel walked away. Scar hadn’t accounted for that.

"Should I attack again? No, that would only worsen my position. It would be seen as intentional murder."

The referee hit the field immediately, staff close behind, closing around Joel. The crowd couldn’t agree on how to feel, with cheers from some and silence from most.

Understandable.

An Akuma had just taken a human’s arm. Whatever they’d come expecting, it probably wasn’t that.

He looked up. The sky had gone dark while he wasn’t paying attention, the Scarlet Moon sprawled across it like it owned everything beneath. V could appear any moment now. One problem was traded for another.

Then the atmosphere shifted and Scar’s attention snapped back down. Joel was on his feet, staff stumbling away from him, a snarl carved into his face.

The look in his eyes wasn’t pain. It wasn’t even anger. It was the kind of rage that didn’t belong to the person wearing it. V’s influence couldn’t even do that. It had to be the Blessing. It must be.

Didn’t matter. Scar just needed Joel to throw the first punch. That was all the excuse he required.

Joel didn’t come at him, though. Instead, he roared, something between rage and something wilder, and his nails raked his own flesh open.

Then, suddenly, the severed arm grew back into place. Just like that.

"What the heck...?"

The crowd broke into panic. Staff scattered, the referee among them, all pulling back to the human side of the arena. Scar stayed where he was. Joel’s body had started going through a metamorphosis.

His skin turned crimson, and then his body started going wrong, sinking and swelling at once, like whatever had been holding its shape gave up all at once.

No bones. Just flesh and clotted blood packed together, bloated and shapeless. Like a red slime. That was the only comparison that fit.

"Ah? Won’t anyone help?"

He wanted to end it. But the arm was already severed, and that image was already in a thousand heads, and if he struck now, people would draw the line straight back to his Inheritance.

He’d be blamed for something he hadn’t done. That was the dilemma, and it had its teeth in him.

Joel’s body swelled to nearly twice its size, bloated, blood-dark, and barely holding its shape. Scar had seen enough. He turned to flee. Then Joel burst.

Blood blanketed the arena in an instant, and the sound of it hadn’t finished echoing before something else arrived.

Something enormous, a presence. An absolute presence. It settled over everything and left nobody capable of moving.

’What is this? The Gate God?’

...

Name: Gate God

Classification: Nightwalker

Scarlet Kin – Unknown

Threat Level: Hostile

...