Short Stories

King against King

We stared each other down. The forest around us in ruins, there were just us left. The final turf war of our graduating year, our schools have been competing against each other for years. I've been king since I entered Freedom High and displayed my worth in the first turf war of my freshman year. This was the last battle between Freedom High and Warship High. This was a battle for the most powerful land between the districts. This land gave students the highest amount of power they could access, and it was my job to take it into our possession. It was king against king, fighting for the Phantasm Forest.

"You might as well surrender now Warship! We both know who's going to lose, Phantasm Forest is gonna be ours!" I yelled at the Warship king. I could feel my fingertips tingling, a green tint emitting from them. I've never fought against the king of Warship high before, but from what information I've gathered, I know he's powerful. I actually wasn't very confident I could win the land against him, but I'd rather get wrecked trying than surrendering.

I glared at him with the fiercest look I could muster, he rolled his eyes and bellowed a laugh. He looked up at the sky while laughing, and before I could blink he snapped back up and glared just as hard. I flinched, my breath catching.

"If you're the Freedom's king, I could just look at you and you'd be on your knees," he threatened, his eyes squinting as if he was looking into the sun. This infuriated me, how dare he even think to say something like that to me. Oh, he's going to be sorry. I yelled at the top of my lungs, making him jump back in surprise. My hands became engulfed in these two orbs of green light. He got into a running stance, knowing that the turf wars were about to begin. I scoffed,

"You think running is going to make me surrender?! Tough luck, Ratship." He snarled at me and I could see smoke coming out of his ears.

"Call my school Ratship again and this turf war is gonna be the last thing you'll need to worry about, Freedom Scum." Then he started running, I think. I couldn't see him, he just disappeared. Then I felt a sharp gust of wind come up behind me, following with a sharp stabbing pain going down my spine. He grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me around. He had the evilest grin on his face before whispering to me,

"If you let your guard down you'll get more than just a punch in the back." Is his power invisibility? Then why the running stance? Something was off here, I couldn't tell what his power was. I felt the gust of wind again coming towards my chest. I crushed the glowing orbs in my hands together, before I could get hit again. The scenery went monochrome the only colored things being me and him. My hands were clasped around his forearm. He looked at me with surprise.

"What? How??" I smiled and jumped backward, the lack of gravity in slowed time floating me away from him. I might as well have some fun, I beckoned him towards me.

"C'mon. Show me what you got Ratship." He growled and started running towards me. Wait for what? He was running towards me at normal speed, no this isn't right. He shouldn't be able to run that fast. He stopped in his tracks looking at his feet. Then he looked up yelling at me,

"What the-- how come I can't run?!" I cocked my head to the side extremely confused.

"Dude, you are running." He shook his head furiously at my reply.

"No, I'm not. My power is super speed, not normal running." Then it clicked. He was slow, but not the slow I expected it to be. We were at a standstill. The only way either of us could win is fighting normally. How ironic, in a sense, the districts but the two most powerful kings against each other only for us to find out our powers cancel out. I started walking towards him, decided to say something the both of us could agree on,

"Neither of us can win this, Milo. It's either this, or we have a fist fight." Milo clenched his fists, biting his lip, and looking at the grey ground. After a minute or two he finally looked up at me with a grin. I knew it, he obviously had the upper hand in physical strength. He rolled up his sleeves getting into a position ready to body slam me. I sighed,

"Fistfight it is." What he didn't realize is, I knew how the world worked around us. I knew how I could use this realms anti-gravity to help me out. He started running towards me, covering the last couple feet it took to get to me. I jumped before he could get his arms around me. I was just high enough to just get over him. When he was too surprised to comprehend what I just did, I donkey kicked him in the back as hard as I could. He fell to the ground, but with me being weaker than him he recovered quickly. I used the lack of gravity around me to my advantage for a while until I noticed that my stamina was getting low. Finally, he got me tired enough that he was able to land a punch between my shoulder blades. This backfired though cause as I fell to the ground, my legs floated up quickly and slammed into his chin.

I lied on the ground face down with the breath knocked out of me. I was waiting for him to do something else, but when I turned around he was just sitting with his hands covering his mouth. Confused I asked,

"What happened? Aren't you gonna, knock me out or something?" He shook his head which surprised me. Then he uncovered his mouth and it was bleeding pretty bad.

"Ah bit mah tung," he said, with his bleeding tongue sticking out. I cringed in disgust,

"Dude, I do not need to see that." He shrugged and started pressing his shirt sleeve against his tongue. I cringed even more, "Ew gross don't do that." I pulled out a black bandana that I started carrying around out of habit. The last time I needed to use it during turf war was when some kids hand got a deep gash on the palm. I folded it into a square and pressed it against his tongue.

"Tanks," he took hold of the cloth and we stood there awkwardly. "You know you culd rike, win de war ear and now righ?" I shrugged,

"I know, but I don't get the satisfaction of knowing I beat my opponent fair and square." He rolled his eyes. It took a while for the bleeding to stop, so he sat down while I stood watching him. When the bleeding slowed down enough to not be drooling out of his mouth, he tried handing me back the bandana.

"Uhhhh, you can keep it for now," I said pushing his hand away. His cheeks turned slightly pink and he smiled sheepishly,

"Right, kinda gross to have tongue blood in your pocket." I cringed for what seemed to be the hundredth time that battle,

"Milo, seriously, stop pointing out the obvious. Now get up so we can freaking end this war. It's gone on for way too long." I held my hand out to help him get up, but he didn't move. He just looked at my hand as if he has never been offered help during a turf war before. Which is actually kind of plausible. I let my hand go lax, groaning, "Are you gonna get up or what man?"

He leaned back on his arms, I could tell he was thinking hard about something. I kicked him lightly on the leg.

"What you thinking about 'Warrior'?" I asked referring to him by his most known name. Most people don't know us by our actual names. Not even the other people in our teams sometimes.

Milo then looked up at me with the most bewildered look,

"You know, Kai, we're seniors. I've been doing these turf wars literally since my freshman year." I nodded, and finally plopped down onto the grass beside him. I watched a squirrel slowly climbing up a tree into its burrow,

"Yeah, what about it? You know both of us have."

"I'm god honest getting tired of it now. Why can't we just share? Why can't Phantasm Forrest be a safe haven for all the districts for all the students? It's literally the only place I've come to, to have a good time with other students during my first year at Warship High."

"Kinda ironic too, since Phantasm Forrest is the first place I met you. Now we're fighting to claim it." We looked at each other at the same time. I started laughing, "Should we just do something no turf war kings have ever done before?" He eyed me smiling curiously,

"Truce?"

"Truce." I let everything go back to normal time. The color of the world around us reappeared. I held out my hand to shake his, to confirm the truce. He also reached for my hand, but suddenly he disappeared. My eyes widened and before I could do anything, he reappeared behind me and whispered,

"You shouldn't ever let your guard down, 'Striker'." Then everything went black.