[Fiction] [AU] Final Confrontation

[Alex McKenzie]

A Time and Space not our own.

The air is filled with smoke.

This is not a friendly place, nor one that is safe, not by any stretch of the imagination. Anyone looking around to see the pieces of office complex scattered around the environs would certainly notice, and (wisely) choose to leave the location as quickly as possible. All the signs would point to any sane person that this place is, if not a current battleground, then at least a former battleground, and one that may return to it's previous state in an instant.

But then, many people feel sanity is overrated.

A young man walks confidently through the field of battle. He seems to ignore the debris scattered around. Anyone would think the man is insane, to brazenly walk into such a field. It doesn't help that they'd be right.

He looks around, seeming to search with a sense unknown to normal ken. He smiles, apparently finding what he was searching for. He starts walking in a new direction, towards a building complex slightly more intact than the other buildings around them.

He walks in, and sees more devastation. What was likely the foyer of a nice hotel is now a shattered shell. Shards of glass, pieces of collapsed masonry, and what seems to be the remains of the front desk of the hotel are scattered around now considerably larger foyer.

If this was an XWF Combat Zone, the Kombat Krewe couldn't do a better job.

Suddenly, the man shouts out. "Rossi! Come out, come out wherever you are! I want to play. You left so suddenly last time..."

A voice comes out of the wreckage. "What's the matter McKenzie? Can't be bothered to find me yourself? I know as well as you do that you should be able to find me quite easily."

McKenzie's incredible hearing attempts to isolate the cause of the sound. It takes a few seconds, but all that he locates is a High Quality Speaker. "Now Rossi, that's not nice. How can I play with you if you refuse to let me find you? One could almost think that you're a scaredy-cat." As McKenzie speaks, the speaker is slowly crushed, until he finishes speaking, at which the speaker seems to shrink to around the size of a tennis ball, and falls to the ground. "Now, what were you saying Rossi?"

Rossi jumps down from what remains of the mezzanine of the foyer. "That you're probably right. Time to get this over and done with."

McKenzie smiles. "Oh goody! This should be fun."

The two warriors take up fighting stances. The fight of a lifetime begins.

McKenzie lunges, attempting to hit Rossi, who jumps higher than any normal human could jump, hoping to kick McKenzie on the way up. McKenzie amazingly anticipates the sudden shift in location and bends back to avoid the kick. McKenzie then completes the flip to be at precisely the right place to perform a sweep towards Rossi feet, which puts him off balance...

...for about a second, as Rossi's super-fast mind reacts to the new situation by kicking his feet further to gain more momentum, then performing a perfect backflip to land precisely three meters away from McKenzie's anticipatory smackdown punch. Rossi takes advantage of the apparent opening as he increases speed to beyond human norm and attempts to land a devastating punch to McKenzie's head...

...that despite Rossi's best efforts, stops precisely four centimetres from McKenzie's head. McKenzie smiles. "Buzz! Wrong answer General!" At that, Rossi suddenly finds himself thrown across the room. He quickly realises that the telekinetic hold on him has ceased, and works frantically to put his legs in the right position...

... but it becomes apparent quite quickly to Rossi's hyper-fast mind that he hasn't nearly enough time at the speed he's moving to complete the manoeuvre, so he improvises and uses his massive strength to throw a small contact explosive at the wall directly behind him. The explosion not only removes the rather hard surface that Rossi was moving towards, but the blast of the explosion slows him down enough to be able to let his feet touch the floor again. This time, not waiting for McKenzie to react, Rossi doesn't even let the dust move before he runs in McKenzie's direction...

...which turns out to be a spectacularly bad idea, as Rossi sees several very sharp shards of glass headed directly for him. Suddenly, Rossi realises that McKenzie will have his attention split, and starts to take advantage of that fact. He effortlessly weaves through the shards of glass and speeds up, brings his legs up...

...and finally manages to connect with McKenzie. McKenzie starts to fly back towards another wall, but incredibly begins to slow down, and stops more than a meter in front of the wall. It takes a few moments for it to sink in that McKenzie is not actually touching the ground. "New trick, McKenzie. Looks fun." says Rossi. Rossi begins to rush towards McKenzie. He sends a flurry of punches towards McKenzie, going faster than even many novas could possibly dodge...

...but is surprised when several of those super-fast punches get parried by thin air. He keeps punching, but the punches keep getting deflected. He looks into McKenzie's smiling face. McKenzie laughs. "You have two hands, I now have eight. You keep throwing punches but they come too late!" Rossi stops punching just long enough to bring several nasty "spikes" from his belt, and begins working them into the flurry of punches. He's rewarded by a more and more worrying look on McKenzie's face, as he realises that he's having to devote more and more of his concentration as more spikes enter play.

He leaps backward, and grabs the small detonator from his belt. McKenzie, however, has realised what is happening. The spikes seems to point outward for an instant, when the suddenly move at a frightening speed away from him. In another few instants, the spikes detonate, shattering the remaining pieces of glass in the area, and causing a few more pieces of masonry to fall onto the battlefield.

The explosions give Rossi the precise distraction he needs. He an gets ultra-high powered pistol from his pocket, and runs towards McKenzie. The sounds of ghost ricochets, and the sight of the explosions having holes torn into them, as if being shot into, tell Rossi that McKenzie is getting desperate. He runs directly into the explosions, using them as cover, and points his pistol directly at McKenzie's head...

...as he realises that McKenzie has a finger to his forehead.

Stalemate.