Round 1: Zora VS. Gunny

The mental preparation for a duel was brutal. A fight as public as God’s Tournament will be remembered, discussed, dissected and enshrined in the annals of history forever. No pressure.

Zora and Gunny faced each other on stage. Gunny held a gun in each hand: a pistol and an automatic rifle. Zora had a few throwing knives.

Gunny felt the last swig of his homemade whisky coursing through his veins, giving him life. He had placed his half-empty bottle by the side of the stage. I’ll have the rest after this fight, he thought.

“Out of all the people I could’ve fought, I got you,” Gunny laughed bitterly at his luck. His eyes were bloodshot and he wiped his nose.

“Isn’t this what you wanted? For someone to end your miserable life?” Zora responded without missing a beat. Her mind was laser sharp and focused. Her eyes were narrowed and piercing.

“Close, but not completely right,” Gunny chuckled. She had a point.

From the elevated viewing gallery, Ashley watched the two fighters take their places. The audience was glued to the main screens that projected the fight.

“All right folks! This is the first fight of God’s Tournament. Zora and Gunny, both from Vinlan Corp, are you ready?” Ashley shrieked excitedly.

Gunny clocked his guns in both hands.

“Ready, start, fight!”

Gunny and Zora did not move immediately. They were seasoned fighters, and experience had taught them not to make the first move until they were certain. Gather information, strategise and execute.

Zora threw a knife at Gunny’s head. It spun at an angle, but missed as Gunny easily dodged it.

The spiral tattoo on Gunny’s forearm glowed as it began to absorb energy and channel it through Gunny’s body. This was the rōōh that the Doctor had mentioned.

Gunny shot his pistol. Zora raised her arms, and the stage complied to her energy. A block of concrete was swiftly lifted from the stage as a protective wall.

Crash! The wall shattered into fragments, as if a grenade had hit it.

That isn’t a regular bullet. Even a scratch would’ve killed me. What power does he have? Zora was flummoxed for once.

Gunny, on the other hand, had deduced the power that Olo had bequeathed her: the power to move earth.

***

Ashley was in full commentator mode. “Looks like they’re testing one another. Caaaan you feel this tension in the air? Just who has the upper hand here?”

Zora needed more information to solve the riddle of Gunny’s power, and she needed to figure it out fast. She spun around and kicked the remnants of the crumbling wall. This move formed projectiles made of rock, which were targeted towards Gunny.

Gunny staggered from one side to another drunkenly. His balance was buoyed by rōōh manipulating the air around his body. He may look drunk, but he’s still in control, Zora made a mental note.

Seeing the rock projectiles, Gunny waved his hands in a flow to protect himself. This redirected the stones, sending them in a circle—right back at their owner. There goes my advantage, he thought.

Zora escaped easily from the path of the projectiles. Using her powers, the rocks collided with one another and shattered. Gunny’s power was wind, she realised.

Gunny’s other hand, on his automatic rifle, was cocked. Bullets began spewing out in quick succession as Zora erected walls to block them while running to find an opening. These bullets packed a less powerful punch than his pistol, but were still much, much stronger than regular metal pellets. Charged with rōōh, they could cause a searing pain upon impact — which could potentially be lethal.

Zora had to get closer to Gunny. The earth beneath her feet lifted to create a set of stairs towards Gunny, which she ran up. From her vantage point, Zora threw a second knife at Gunny’s head. Gunny’s pistol hand had lightning quick reflexes, and his next bullet knocked the knife askew in mid-air.

More knives followed towards Gunny’s head. Zora was now in close range to Gunny. The staircase had formed a semicircle around him, limiting his ability to back away. With another wave of her hand, Zora formed vertically-pointed spikes from the stage, targeting where Gunny stood. The very stage where Gunny stood would be his own trap.

Gunny’s rōōh manipulated the air around him, so that his body moved as if it were naturally repelled from the spikes. His target, Zora, was above him. He kicked himself up into a backflip. Whilst in midair, upside down, he pointed his pistol right at Zora’s head. A clear head shot. Gunny smiled and pulled the trigger.

The bullet whizzed past Zora’s left ear. Gunny landed and looked at Zora standing off-balance. She had manipulated the elevation of the staircase, sinking her right leg into the ground. Her head tilted just in time out of the way of the bullet.

Both of them stopped to catch their breath.

“What a show! This is what I’ve been talking about!” Ashley clapped gleefully along with the audience.

“You’re much smarter than I gave you credit for,” Gunny said, panting. Now that the both of them knew what the other was capable of, it was time to get serious.

“Won’t matter when you’re dead,” Zora replied smoothly.

Gunny smiled. “Would you mind if I finish my drink? This might be my last.”

Zora nodded, indifferent.

***

The viewing gallery was intensely holding their breath. Dart, Felix and Kitaro had their noses almost pressed up against the glass.

“Whoa! Can he do that?” Dart pointed at Gunny walking off to the unbattered side of the stage to rescue his drink.

“It’s sportsmanship in its own twisted sense,” Felix shook his head in disbelief.

“And what’s up with those bullets? They exploded like dynamite!” Dart was thoroughly impressed, his naivety showing.

“He’s using air,” Kitaro explained solemnly. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his brand-new jeans.

“No shit,” Dart rolled his eyes. “But last time I checked, air doesn’t blow up on its own.”

“Compressed air does. Gunny’s power of wind allows him to manipulate the space between molecules. Generally, molecules in air are loosely packed by their density. He’s packed the air between molecules together so they release explosively when they exit the gun barrel.”

“Okay.” Dart was quiet.

“You didn’t understand it, did you?” Kitaro hazarded a guess.

“No… not really,” Dart admitted.

Kitaro tried again. He closed his fist. “The air is pressurised in a small space. Once released, goes boom!” He opened his fist to mimic the explosion.

“Ah. Great, it’s starting again,” Dart turned back to the stage. His mind was running with all sorts of scenarios, and secretly, he was relieved that he wasn’t in Gunny’s shoes. Zora was in a whole different league.

As if reading Dart’s mind, Felix whispered back. “I hope Gunny wins this. Even I don’t want to fight her.”

***

Gunny had glugged down the entire bottle. He was sloshed and vicious. His face was fiery red and his eyes brimmed with madness - whether deranged or angry, Zora couldn’t tell. His body seemed to move on autopilot, threatening and defiant. His military instincts were taking over.

I need to get rid of his guns if I want to get close to him, Zora thought.

“Now that I’m ready, we can do this probperply…” Gunny belched drunkenly. He approached Zora menacingly, guns swinging unpredictably.

Gunny and Zora were engaged in a heated hand-to-hand combat in a battle of their powers: wind versus earth. They moved in tandem and countered one another with ease. Gunny with a renewed fierce power from imbibing his last dose of heavy drink, and Zora with her practised rhythm from years of dogged training. At such close range, they could rely only on their speed, agility, and rōōh. But they were practically equally matched.

The battle returned to a long range when Gunny’s rifle let out a barrage of compressed air explosives in Zora’s general direction. Zora was ready. Blocks of concrete rose from the stage to shield her, creating a moving maze of pillars that served to disorientate an already-drunk Gunny. She crumbled the rubble from the pillars into dust, creating a smokescreen. With a physical shield of the pillar and under the cover of a dust storm, she closed the distance between her and Gunny. She would have the upper hand once she took out Gunny’s weapons and it would be down to hand-to-hand combat.

The air was thick with fine particulates. Gunny created a vortex of clean air around him in order to have clear vision. But it was already too late. Zora had reached him and was grabbing his rifle. Gunny’s other hand, his pistol, pulled the trigger. Zora was way too close to Gunny to move out of the way. She stomped her foot on the floor and a spike from the ground popped up immediately, destroying the explosive. But the explosive had already exited the barrel. Zora made to dodge, but it was too late. The explosive was in close proximity, and shrapnel cut into Zora’s arms and face.

Gunny moved the wind vortex under Zora, throwing her into the air. Zora was stuck in the air with nowhere to go. Gunny lifted his rifle to aim. Thinking quickly, Zora shaped a pit under Gunny’s feet. He stumbled forward to avoid the pit, his aim trained on Zora in mid-air.

Gunny hiccupped, “I grueess I win.” He pressed the trigger.

The rifle blew up in his hand.

Gunny groaned in pain, his hand and face were bleeding.

Zora had made herself an easy target for exactly this moment.

***

“I’m confused! Did you see that? What happened?” Dart turned to Kitaro and Felix.

“She must have thrown a piece of rock inside the gun and jammed it, causing the bullet to blow up inside the barrel,” Kitaro explained knowingly.

Ashley was besides herself with excitement. “Did all of you see what Zora just did? Let’s watch it again!” The audience watched open-mouthed as the projector screens displayed a slow-motion replay of the rock flying into the gun barrel and jamming it.

Kitaro was right.

***

Gunny stumbled back, trembling and clutching his elbow. A few of his fingers had been blown off and he was screaming in pain. Zora, now back on stage after Gunny’s vortex dissipated, had Gunny exactly where she wanted to be. It was a trap. With Gunny distracted, Zora had been able to use the cover of the smokescreen to shape parts of the floor into two halves of a iron-maiden torture device. When she clapped her hands, the two halves pivoted up vertically to sandwich Gunny. He was trapped.

Zora clenched her hands. Spikes from the side pierced through the trap in an X shape, goring its contents.

Injured, Gunny blew his way out of the iron-maiden. But it was too late, he had already sustained heavy damage. His lungs had been pierced and a crucial artery was bleeding profusely through his torn clothes. He was nearly spent.

But there was still something left in him. He had to take one more shot left. On his knees, he raised his pistol and aimed it at Zora. His tattoo created an unearthly glow emanating from his entire body, illuminating where he stood. Rōōh was accumulating in one major final blow that would be the explosive end to either one of them.

Just in the nick of time, Zora erected multiple barrier walls in front of herself, knowing that it would be too powerful to dodge. Gunny’s final shot took out almost all of them, but stopped short of Zora.

Boom! The pistol was taken out by a similar trick. Gunny’s other limb was smoking, his hand missing. His shoulders were limp and his face frozen with terror.

Zora turned the floor under Gunny, still on his knees, into quicksand. Gunny sunk deep into the stage, with only his head and shoulders exposed. A sitting duck with no recourse.

“Oh the irony. I’m in the same situation again. Finally, I’m out,” Gunny laughed dryly.

“Do you finally have the answer? Tell me, which one of us is luckier?” Zora asked. She clenched a fistful of dirt in her hand, transforming it into a dagger made of rock, with a sharp point.

“I am,” Gunny replied. His eyes were wet with tears now.

“Why?”

“Because I have people waiting for me on the other side,” Gunny whispered. His lips were formed into a smile.

Zora’s dagger pierced Gunny’s head. It was all over.

The crowd was transfixed. Even Ashley held her breath as they watched Gunny, the martyred military survivor, give up his life for the God’s Tournament with his body transforming into a magical glowing orb. The orb flew onto Zora’s back. It merged with her own tattoo, and expanded into a more intricate design that now spanned the width of her shoulder blades. Zora had taken possession of the power of wind.

“The winner of the first match is… Zora!” Ash declared to the audience.