Battle Of The Beasts

After ensuring that no civilians or bystanders are present, Neil and L engage in a fierce knife fight, putting their lives on the line to kill each other.

They exchange moves, techniques, and attacks that could be deadly for an ordinary person since they were both highly-skilled soldiers with extensive battlefield experience.

L tries to stab Neil, but Neil manages to stop the knife and counter by stabbing back. L blocks with his hand, causing their knives to get stuck. They resort to using their bare hands to push, punch, and beat each other in an attempt to regain control of the knives.

This becomes their fighting style after they have thrown their guns down the stairs during the confrontation.

As Neil continues to battle L and recognizes his moves and fighting style, he starts to believe Gabriel's words that L was previously an American soldier before switching sides.

"You won't say a fucking word even if you die, don't you?"

After a moment of fighting, Neil asks L as they keep their distance.

"..."

L continues to stare silently at Neil.

"You know what? I don't fucking care who you are or what you have to say, I'm going to kill you if you stand in my way."

Neil says, then continues to launch a jumping attack at L, pushing him down the stairs. Seeing that fighting barehanded isn't effective, Neil decides to finish the fight by using his AR-15 rifle, which had fallen down the stairs earlier.

Both of them roll multiple times down the steps, finally crashing heavily onto the flat floor, with probably broken ribs and bones on both of them.

"Ughh..."

Neil grunts, then quickly sits up to continue the fight. Coincidentally, L also sits up at the same time, and both of them spot the gun right in front of them.

They stare at each other awkwardly, knowing that it only takes one of them to make the first move to continue the fight.

...

L reaches for the rifle, Neil swiftly grabs his pants and pulls him back. Despite Neil's effort, L manages to grab the gun successfully. Just as L is about to shoot at Neil, he instantly grabs the handguard and pushes the rifle out of his face-

BANG!

Luckily for Neil, a rifle is too big and heavy to hold one-handed, even for an experienced soldier like L. If it had been a handgun instead, Neil might have been killed.

After Neil pushes the gun's barrel away from his face, he and L engage in a fierce struggle over the rifle, each exerting their utmost strength in an attempt to seize it from the other.

"Arghhh!!!"

The moment the gun is secured in either of their hands, the outcome is determined. However, neither of them decides to give in, and they both continue to struggle in this strength battle of death.

Neil and L grasp the rifle, each trying to pull it with their right hand, while their left hands and legs grab onto the other person's body, locking them into an immovable position.

BANG!

BANG!!

L fires the rifle into the ceiling, aiming to startle Neil and cause him to flinch, while also alerting any other terrorists nearby.

However, despite the loud gunshots damaging his ears, Neil doesn't flinch even an inch. He continues to try and seize the gun from L's grasp.

"Hurgh!!!"

But then, both of them quickly realize that Neil is getting exhausted very quickly. All the fighting and the sleepless night before this have already depleted half of Neil's energy. Now, he has to fight a totally refreshed professional soldier whose strength is on par with his own.

Neil's strength is slowly waning, and now the rifle is inching closer to his face as L uses just a little more strength to move the gun nearer his head, aiming to blast his brain into juices.

"Ughh!!!"

In this moment of an almost hopeless situation, Neil considers every possible way to fight back with his little strength left. It's clear there's no way he could overpower L in terms of strength. The gun is unattainable, the knives are out of reach, and running is not an option either.

"What should I do? What could I do?" Neil thinks to himself.

The moment the gun barrel is aimed at his head, he's dead. He would have to find a way to disable it, but how? How?

'... Wait a second.' Then suddenly, an idea pops into his head. 'A gun is useless if it doesn't have bullets, right?'

Almost immediately, as quickly as the idea comes to his mind, Neil releases L and frees his left hand. He then grabs the rifle's magazine, detaches it, and throws it flying freely down the stairs within two seconds.

Next, Neil releases the now harmless gun and uses his right hand to deliver a hard punch to L while he is still surprised by what just happened.

"Ack!"

L is punched away and drops the rifle on the floor, while Neil gets on top of him and starts beating him like a father beating his son with his bare hands, while L tries to resist and fight back.

Now, the advantage is on Neil as he beats the living shits out of L and he can only block the attacks in despair, trying to grab Neil's hands in helplessness as the punches keep coming.

Despite being evenly matched in strength, Neil is more skilled in martial arts than L due to his dark past of experiencing domestic violence in his family-

"Huk!"

Taking advantage of letting Neil beat him in the face, L silently reaches his hand through, and throws a blow at Neil's face.

Inertially, Neil is punched away like he did with L, then he continues by landing a hard kick in Neil's stomach with both legs to push him away even further.

Then L quickly stands up before Neil has any chance to fight back and lands another kick on Neil's back, forcing him onto the floor.

As he gets kicked and smashes against the bulletless AR-15 on the floor, Neil lets out a painful grunt and struggles to stand up in agony.

"..."

L looks at his now vulnerable, harmless, easy-to-kill opponent for the last time before ending his life by throwing him down the stairs.

Then, after looking enough and clearing all the hesitations in his head, L approaches Neil slowly with total confidence and dominance.

Slowly, he reaches his hand toward Neil's collar and then, Neil instantly turns around, grabbing the empty rifle's barrel in his hand-

THUD!

And smashes the hard rifle into L's head, knocking him out instantly. Neil managed to turn the situation around and deliver to L, a final blow in one second.

Neil then stops acting as if he was in pain and vulnerable, stands up with ease and relief, knowing that he doesn't have to fight anymore.

Approaching L, who is now lying on the ground from being knocked out, Neil decides to kill him using the knife that he picks up, just to prevent any possible danger from him.

But before that, he needs to find out who is behind that black mask. So he grabs L's face mask and pulls it off to finally reveal the face of this mysterious man.

"... What the fuck?!" 

The moment Neil removes the mask from L's face, he is shocked by what he sees. It's not due to injuries or terrible burns, but because he recognizes the person behind the mask.

"What the fuck?!"

He is still in shock at what he sees and drops the mask on the ground. This man, L, is someone he knew and based on what he knew, this person would never work with the Communists scum, let alone fight for them.

"Holy shit, Chad..."

And Chad, his student, is involved with this man. Suddenly, Neil has a quick flashback to when he was still tied up in the room with Gabriel and Chad, recalling what Gabriel had said.

'He was a US soldier. After being captured by the Taliban a couple of months ago, he was transported to the Soviet laboratory to test out their new drugs.'

"No fucking way..."

So what Gabriel said was true: the Soviets actually found a way to control someone's mind and alter their memories, making that person do everything they say, even if they were once an opponent.

This realization terrifies him because he understands what it means for the war that is about to come.

That's why he needs to stop the terrorists as soon as possible.

He quickly calms himself down and searches L for bullets and the metal forcefield armband.

"I'll come back to you later."

Then he stands up and bids farewell to his old friend before heading up to the rooftop to meet with Chad and Roy.

-----------------------------------

A while later, after he picked up the knives, guns, and everything else he needed, he quickly ascended the levels using the stairs.

And now, after exhausting himself even more from running up almost 20 levels non-stop, there are only two more levels left before he can reach the top-

BANG!

"Fuck!"

Immediately, Neil dodges the pellets wave in an instant, then barges into the door to the current level's rooms and hides from the shots raining coming from below.

BANG! BANG! BANG!!

As the gunshots continued, Neil could only run and find shelter behind those deadly shotgun shells that could blast away his entire body.

He ran into a kitchen near the top level and hid under one of the counters, waiting for the attacker to come.

Facing a shotgun head-on is almost suicidal. While you might have a low chance of surviving from normal guns with a hole in your body, don't expect your body to even remain intact when fighting a shotgun.

Then, after a while of waiting, the attacker finally arrives, their loud footsteps audible to Neil from meters away.

"Oh, Neil! Where the fuck are you?!"

... 'So it's you, Gabriel.'

BANG!

Gabriel then fires another shot into the ceiling, attempting to lure Neil out.

"Come out, Neil!"

As Gabriel continued to threaten him, Neil felt the urge to jump out and confront him directly. However, because of the shotgun and his own fear, he decided not to do anything foolish, yet.

However, he will try to talk with Gabriel, not to negotiate, but to distract him until he finds a way out.

"You know what Gabriel, I don't expect this coincident to also meet my old friend that you brought with here, you know, the elite American soldier you talk about!"

Neil speaks in a loud voice and adjusts his position so that Gabriel can't locate him.

"Oh, L?!" And Gabriel responded.

"Yeah, L. I know what his real name is."

"You do?"

"Yeah."

"Well, good for you..."

...

Then comes a moment of silence, where both of them run out of things to say.

While Gabriel continues to search for Neil between the counters, Neil prepares himself, using the pan he picked up from the ground, ready to fight or flight.

But before he does anything, he attempts one last time to call for Gabriel's total surrender.

"Give up Gabriel! I'm not going kill you... yet."

"And why is that?"

"Cause I can't wait to see your face when they sentence you to death at the federal court instead."

"And why do you think I'll lose?"

"Cause you can't win me."

DING!

Neil throws his rifle against the wall, making a loud noise that distracts Gabriel. Then he stands up from behind the counter and throws the large pan at Gabriel, knocking him to the ground.

Neil then climbs onto the counter, jumps towards Gabriel, and pushes him down, trying to strangle him to death with his hands.

"ACK!!!"

Gabriel immediately reaches for the axe he hid on the ground behind him and swings it towards Neil's neck.

Since he didn't see the axe when he jumped out, Neil was startled but still dodged the axe fast enough to avoid being beheaded. Then he jumps back away from Gabriel into a defensive position.

"Did you say that you would win?"

Gabriel slowly stands up with the axe in his hands, shaking his neck from left to right.

"But who's the one fighting weaponless here?"

Neil then steps back even further, grips his hands tightly, takes a deep breath, and gets into a ready position before preparing to confront his arch-nemesis once and for all.