8 --- 4

Nate was beginning to see why Victor was classified as a master willer as he ducked under the long glowing sword. He was sweating profusely and Everytime Victor's sword swung close, he could feel his life flash before his eyes.

Willer powered weapons were no joke, they could cut through almost anything. The long twin metal rods he was using were now cut down to short batons due to frequent contact with the sword.

Victor on the other hand, fought with an unmoving sneer on his face. He fought the same way he lived, powerful and arrogant.

Nate wished he could sneak past his strong defences to punch away the sneer on his face, but he could only fantasize about it because right now he was fighting to survive. *Barely.*

He ducked under another high swing of the sword and was already rolling backwards to avoid another swipe but it didn't come.

Then there was a sudden burst of light and an agonizing pain suddenly radiated from his lower ribs. He gave out a loud scream and his vision darkened. He didn't acknowledge his own body hitting the floor, he struggled to look down where there was an angry red wound at the center of his chest.

He groaned in pain as tried to move, wondering why Victor wasn't capitalizing on his inability to move. He craned his neck to look at his opponent, who was still maintaining his arrogant posture, waiting for him to get up. Anger bubbled in his guy. *The fucker wasn't even trying.*

He rolled to his feet without taking his eyes off Victor, who seemed content with Nate taking his time to get ready, Nate decided to punish him for that.

He fired a stream of energy from his depleting energy but Victor dodged it as expected. Nate ran at him right after he dodged and threw one of his meatal rods at his head. Victor batted it away easily but just before he could swing back his sword, Nate closed down the distance with pace, he ran around the closing arc of the sword and buried the other rod in the only option available, Victor's shoulder.

He felt a sharp slice through his back and tumbled forward, both of them tangled to the ground. Nate was able to get a glancing fist to Victor's jaw right before he kicked him away.

Victor moved slowly but fast enough to be alert. Nate reached to his back and found his shirt wet with blood, he could6 see or feel the extent of the damage, he knew he could be slowly bleeding out but there was nothing he could do about it.

He watched Victor pull out the rod of his shoulder, blood flowed freely from but he showed no reaction. Victor shifted into a fighting stance, his eyes now wary. He obviously wasn't expecting Nate to injure him.

"You know, I kind of admire you, Nate." Victor talked for the first time since they started fighting.

"You did? I didn't notice." He replied, contempt dripping from his voice.

"I mean it, you weren't like the rest of the team. They were like sheep, following my orders without question but you have that spark that makes you different, the makings of a leader. Too bad your over ambition led you down the wrong lane, I can't lose."

"Look around you Victor, you are all alone. Whether you manage to kill me or not, you already lost."

Victor smiled thinly. "That's where you are wrong, everything except me is replaceable. The money, my team or my territory is fickle, all of that can be regained in a twinkle of an eye."

"You sound just like King."

He shrugged, wincing lightly from the pain in his shoulder. "Maybe, we are cut from the same cloth after all, we both understand you have to be ruthless and strong to live in our harsh world, something you need to understand if you ever want to survive.

With that, he swung his blade at Nate and fired bright light simultaneously. Nate dodged the sword but not the beam that lanced through his ribs again.

Victor advanced, Nate erected a shield to buy himself more time to recover but Victor broke down the shield with a strong swipe of the sword. Either that sword was beginning to be more of a problem or---

Victor flashed him a knowing smile, the shield had been too weak, Nate was obviously running dry on energy.

Nate ignited a fireball and launched it at his opponent, who leaned to his side to evade it but left himself open in the opposite side giving Nate the opportunity he needed.

Nate poured as much will as he could manage into his glowing fist and swung it at Victor's neck. Instead his fist crashed into a shield Victor had summoned at the last minute, the light winked out of his hand and he could feel the bones in his wrist creak painfully.

His eyes widened in alarm when he realised the position he he had put himself, he had moved too close to Victor with no means of defending himself.

Victor acted swiftly, he banished the shield and swung the sword at him, Nate could the hot meatal slash across his chest and raking his ribs, Victor raised a bright glowing palm and blasted him with hot bright energy. Nate could feel his body fly weightlessly across the room, crashing through the wall to the other side.

He remained motionless on the floor but still councious, he hurt everywhere. Realization dawned on him, he had lost. He could hear Victor's incoming steps. He half crawled, half dragged himself to a wall, trying not to be aware of the pain coursing through him. He reached the wall and managed to pull himself upright and faced Victor, who was wielding the sword that will probably end his life.

"Such a waste, you could have been a real asset for me."

Blood gurgled in his mouth but he still managed to speak. "Get it over with."

Victor was now standing directly over him. "I am guessing you are not going to tell me where my breakouts are."

"Go to hell."

Victor raised his sword up to bring it painfully down. "Goodbye Nathaniel."

But just before he brought down the sword, Victor's eyes widenedand suddenly dove to the ground. There was a loud crack and a bullet whipped through where his head was supposed to be and embedded itself in the wall.

Nate looked to see who was shooting, just beyond the wall he had gone through, he could see a bloodied Susan shooting a gun. She fired more shots but Victor had already erected a shield. He moved towards her with a mask of rage on his face. Just before he reached her, he was thrown backwards.

Somehow, Susan had managed to switch to gun of higher caliber bullets that was able to cut through Victor's shield.

Victor roared in a mixture of anger and pain, his right cheek was bleeding profusely where a bullet had taken a chunk of it. The tip of white hair was tinged with blood.

Before he could even think of retaliating, the real door of the room burst open and an energy whip slashed across his exposed back. Victor howled in pain and went to ground. Susan came out from behind the crack in the wall carrying a gun half her size. She continuously fired devastating loud shots at Victor, who was barely keeping the bullets at bay with reinforced energy shields.

"Go get him." Susan shouted over the noise and another woman entered from the corner of his eye. It was Helen, the healer. She was the one who attacked Victor from behind.

Nate must have looked worse than he felt because when she saw him, she gasped in terror. "Oh my God, Nate."

She quickly recovered and began to carry him from the spot he was supposed to die. "C'mon, we have to leave." She threw his arm around her neck and began to quickly but carefully walk out of the room.

Nate instantly began to feel better upon contact with Helen. He didn't know if she was slowly healing him or he was just happy to see her.

He looked back to see running just behind them but still continuously shooting behind her to suppress Victor.

Nate felt a glimmer of hope that they were going to escape and he would get to Victor another day but that hope was dashed when Susan's gun cliked empty.

He heard her swear in a language he vaguely recognized as Spanish. He wondered if they could still make it, they weren't moving fast enough because of him.

Nate was about to tell Helen to leave him and save herself, when all of a sudden there was a bright light and there were all airborne, flying from the hallway through glass to the gym.

The subsiding pain returned to Nate's body tenfold, it was so severe that he couldn't scream, he blinked several times to stay awake.

Victor walked in slowly, Nate thought he looked angry before, he looked livid now. He walked to Susan, her eyes were wide as saucers and she was struggling to put as much distance as she could from Victor but it was futile, Victor reached her and dragged up with her hair, ignoring her shrieks.

"You are such a disappointment, Susan. You threw away our long partnership over the years away for nothing."

Susan's face was a mixture of pain and defiance. "You are a fucking monster and I can't stand to work with you anymore."

Victor shook his head as if in grief. "No, you won't be working with me anymore." He raised the sword to her neck. "Any last swords?" A bit of fear crept into Susan's face but she maintained eye contact with Victor without saying anything.

"Nooo." Nate screamed just as the sword came down. The wall opposite then suddenly exploded and a figure crashed into Victor throwing him away.

"Fucking hell." Nate muttered under his breath as the dust settled and the figure came into view. It was Anna, who is the third person who has managed to intervene for him in this fight.

Just as he thought this night's events has been surprising. Someone stepped in behind Anna, it was Genk, Victor's own man.

Victor was getting to his feet, showing the same look of surprise.

Genk moved like a blur towards him with knives unsheathed. Victor tried to fend off Genk's Quicksilver attacks but barely managing.

Genk managed to slash a few not-so-deep cuts on his chest and arms but barely Victor was barely reacting.

Nate watched as Victor created a tiny shield between him and Genk and pushed it towards him, it caught Genk off guard and left him sprawling. Victor's move left Genk unhurt but gave him a bit of reprieve or so he thought.

Something small slammed hard into his chest and crashing into the ground with a yelp.

Nate swiveled his head to the other side to see Anna throwing gym weights like plastic disks. Victor managed to dodge one but another one glanced off his cheekbone, he hissed in pain before bringing up his hand to defect more projectiles but a knife came out of nowhere and embedded itself in his wrist. He dropped his sword with a loud clang.

A small stream of light erupted from Helen's hands that missed Victor completely. Nate could see her looking sheepish, he would have laughed if he wasn't in throes of pain. She was so out of place, she was a healer, not a fighter.

Genk was already replacing the knife he had thrown at Victor. Anna had run out of weights and was now holding large dumbbells. Helen helped Susan who was reloading her gun up.

Victor saw that the odds were stacked against him and so he did something Nate had only seen him do once, he exploded.

Only this time it was more chaotic than before. Nate held his hands before his face and instinctively created a glimmer of a shield to protect himself. The others were not so lucky.

Susan was sprawled on the floor, Anna was sent crashing into Genk and both of them were tangled together among treadmills and other gym equipments. Helen was nowhere to be found

Victor was glowing in the center of the room, the scowl on his face made him look like an angry god.

"Traitors, the fucking lot of you. You are all traitors." He bellowed.

His scowl deepened when saw Nate resting on the wall. "And it is all because of you." He started to walk slowly towards him.

*This is it.* Nate thought. Everybody else was down and unable to help this time. *No.* He can't die like this, he can't be sitting helplessly while Victor killed him with --.

Nate's mournful thoughts stopped when he noticed Victor was no longer holding the sword. He quickly scanned the area and found it among a mass of debris. But it was hopeless, there was no way he could reach the sword before Victor got to him. Victor could still kill a million ways without the sword.

Nate looked at the sword and summoned every last essence of his almost dry will. He had idea what to do with it but continued to do it anyway.

"I should have killed you the moment I laid eyes on you." Victor was standing above him now still glowing. "I guess I just have to do it now. Goodbye Nathaniel." He said for the second time that day.

In what Nate thought was the last moment of his life, something glowed in the corner of his eye and flew towards him, suddenly Victor's sword was in his hand glowing dully.

"How?" Victor's croaked voice showed that he was just as surprised as Nate but he wasted no time, he swung the sword with all he could muster. The sword went through the Victor's chest easily, slicing through flesh and bone. His face was frozen in fear and surprise like he couldn't believe the last three seconds just happened. He collapsed to his knees while Nate struggled to his feet using the sword as leverage.

Victor looked up in fear. "P.... please don't kill me." The words gurgled out of his mouth along with lots of blood.

Nate didn't respond, he just silently raised up the sword and brought it down. Victor's head rolled away and his body crumpled to the floor.

*I won.* He thought to himself, he had killed Victor. He didn't have time to savour his victory as his knees buckled and darkness surrounded his vision. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.