Jian dodged as Justin hurled continuous blasts of energy at him. His shirt was sweaty, bloody, and dirty. As he countered Justin's moves, a stupid thought came to him: Mom's gonna kill me for messing my clothes up.
He was walking back as usual, slightly glad he could finally get back home, to his heavenly bed. Ever since Shaun died, Jian's been sleeping. Alot.
So when he saw Justin beating Kenneth up, his mind jumped into overdrive. Not Ken too, he had pleaded to any gods who were listening from up there.
And here he was, trading blows with the boy he grew up with, the guy he came to hate.
Leaping back into a wall, he tried to focus after enduring a flurry of blows. He saw Justin limping towards him, hand raised. Jian leaned, totally spent.
"Damn!" spat Jian. Then he found it. Not a bad solution. But he never tried it before. Justin was getting closer.
Frowning, Jian raised both his arms. His two index fingers seemed to draw a red, fiery line in the air as they went lower. Next moment, he jerked his arms forward.
Two walls of fire stretched about ten meters to the front, and one meter high, forming a burning corridor. Justin couldn't get out, unless he went backwards. Jian grinned. He wasn't going to let that happen. He slowly narrowed the gap between his arms.
Justin cursed loudly, above the sounds of the raging embers. His eyes darted frantically around, looking for a way to break through this trap. He pushed Jian back with a blast of force, but Jian held, grimacing, his muscles screaming for him to let go.
I could end this. Finally! Jian's mind screamed. The three inch thick firewall closed together, joining and slowly burning off. Jian's arms dropped, totally spent. He raised his head, then his jaw dropped too.
Justin had disappeared.
Now, people who get hit by two walls of fire don't disintergrate in real life. Only in comics. This was impossible.
"What the-" Jian turned around, and saw Justin, his clothes slightly singed, but otherwise in good condition. Justin looked as bewildered as Jian was, staring at himself, amazed that he did not suffer from the fire. At all.
"How the hell?!" yelled Jian, slightly scared. Was there another power user nearby? He didn't have time to think about that, though.
Something big and cylindrical, twenty feet long, came swinging into the carpark. It rent through the cars and pillars.
The sound was so deafening that Jian, out of instinct, covered his ears and gritted his teeth. He looked above.
The whole building wasn't crashing down, at least. But the carpark was in the process of being crushed by the ground floor. Jian stared for a second longer.
Then he ran. There was a loud BANG behind him.
Silence.
Jian was terrified. He didn't know what he would find. Slowly, he faced the battleground.
No one at the crapark could've survived this wreck. The masses of rock covered the place completely. His mind in a whirl, he whispered, barely audible.
"...Ken?" He sifted through the rocks in a futile attempt to extract any bodies inside. Jian face contorted in anguish. He screamed out. "KEN!"
The fatigue washed over him. The energy he used to fight came from protecting Ken. He failed. He wanted to slump against the wall and sleep, forever, but the cops were coming soon, curious, nosy dwellers would arrive, too.
He noticed, without much curiosity, that the cylindrical object that destroyed the surrounding was a tree bark. Only, it was too big. It was an enlarged version of the trees he saw around the condo. Not really caring, he walked back to his bike. The reality of one death was enough. But another one was not easy to grasp. He gripped the handle of his bike a bit harder.
He slowly cycled back, wondering how on earth he would tell Liesl and Jay that another casualty just struck.
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