Chapter 10: Need More than a Thousand Cuts

Just as dazed as he was enraged, Damien immediately removed himself from his brother's arms and rushed Alex in a low stance with his twin following suit.

They bobbed and weaved together, before splitting up into a pincer attack, one to his left and one to his right. They slashed out their sharpened nails in perfect synchronization, in the exact opposite spots in order to confuse him.

When one went for his right leg, the other went for his left arm. When one hit his back, the other went for his face. Once they had gotten into this rhythm, Alex had no way to get them out of it.

As his mind raced, his senses grew sharper and sharper in order to track their frantic movements in the dark, his eyes shooting back and forth like something out of the exorcist with how fast they were moving.

It took everything in his ability to narrowly dodge any fatal attacks, but within minutes he had small cuts lining his limbs, chest and back.

'Dammit! I need to get these two off of me. Any random attack is just gonna get me killed, I need something surefire.'

Within another minute, he had found a pattern. Namely, they had to move in a specific manner in order to synchronize their movements. Not because their teamwork was bad, but because one had to compensate for the other's problems. In this case, a lame ankle.

As if a sign from above, a glowing neon sign that said 'Murder me', an opening appeared on Daniel that Alex could see clearly. Using broad movements, he put his all into countering at that specific timing.

Damien had noticed this too, and moved to save his brother, only to look into his determined, and furious eyes.

'I'll take it, and you finish him off. Don't worry about me.' This message was relayed clearly, and so that's what he set out to do, flattening his hand out and stabbing it towards Alex's back like a knife.

Meanwhile, Daniel tensed his entire body to recieve that hit. He was betting his life on the line, to end this bastard for good. What they endured, no one would ever know. But Alex would pay for making them.

Only to soon realize, Damien's attack was really what he was countering all along. 'You two care about each other so much, you've made it obvious. Too obvious. Cut me once, shame on you, cut me twenty times, clench your fucking teeth.'

Much like how his energy circulated throughout his body, he could manipulate where it was weakest or strongest. Sadly minute details were beyond him at the moment, so instead of arbitrary percentages, it was really either 0 or 100.

'That's the key to a life or death fight, huh. You can't win betting less than them.' Betting his life in proportion to the twins betting their own, he set his defenses entirely to 0, and put everything into this next attack.

That big forward windup turned into a backspin which not only glided the knife hand along his abs, resulting in only a light cut, but his elbow bashed directly into the temple of Damien's head, the increased momentum of the downward strike punishment for staying so low the whole time.

For an instant it was like Damien's entire brain just rebooted. His eyes went blank and he fell back, limply onto the ground as dark blood poured like a river. Between the punch to the face before, and this furious elbow, his head had taken a little too much damage.

Like a mirror, Daniel's mind halted as well. The world faded away, as his pupils narrowed into needles, focusing purely on his fallen brother. "I'll fucking kill you!"

His aura exploded outwards, and shifted to a darker shade as his eyes grew slightly red. Not thinking properly at all, he leapt directly at Alex's back, who simply reacted to the stupid battle cry by whipping his head back into the mad dog's face, a harsh cracking sound echoing through the building.

"You really need to stop jumping, it's not even that great of a tactic to spam in a fighting game, let alone in real life." As he said this, he cracked his neck, one of the many things that were sore on his body right now.

As he stumbled back, Daniel looked up to see Alex approaching him, absolutely livid from the added injuries he's gotten this whole time, his footsteps now almost deafening, the droplets of blood from his body like the rain from a coming storm. "Let's see how a 1v1 goes this time."

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Rather than keep her in the house she felt unsafe, Duke took her to his own house and sat with her on the couch, holding her tightly.

Kaitlyn, who hadn't been introduced yet due to Duke's constant avoidance of that meeting, made sure to stay well out of the way and not be an unnecessary presence at a time like this after seeing the state of her through the window.

She still shook like a leaf, and his shirt was stained with tears and probably a little snot, but Duke didn't mind one bit. Not that his mind was very focused though, as he couldn't help but wonder how Alex was doing.

He hated that he wasn't there, fighting with him. But he couldn't help but admit that without powers, he'd be pretty damn useless.

As more and more minutes passed, Duke's impatience became more and more clear, and soon Jenna picked up on it too. She looked up at him, and after seeing his vacant glare into nowhere immediately realized.

While she was here being terrified and bawling her eyes out, albeit for a very good reason, her boyfriend's best friend, and her own friend after knowing him for long enough, was fighting whichever crazy bastards did this.

And here she was, seemingly forcing Duke to hold himself back. With a deep breath, she forced herself to push off of him. "You can go."

The words came out weakly and unsteady, causing him to do a double take. "I know you want to, go help Alex. I'll be fine."

Bold faced lies were not her strong suit, absolutely no one would have fallen for it let alone Duke. He smiled gently and held her shoulders. "It's not your fault. I wouldn't be useful this time around. It's a little above my league."

But at that, something clicked. This time summoning his own resolve, he hit an emergency button that he never even had for most of his life. "Kaitlyn. Could you help me out?"

The second she was called, Kaitlyn walked downstairs. Jenna shot her eyes at the newcomer girl, but wasn't randomly jealous or anything, rather she hadn't had enough time to think before he defused the situation.

"Long story short, sister that's never around is back in town. Listen, I need you to help me get powers so I can help Alex. Can you do that?"

Before she could answer, Jenna cut in. "I'm sorry, powers? What the hell's going on here?"

This time Kaitlyn answered this herself by walking over, and using some energy to squat down and lift the couch with both of them on it.

"These powers. Now, you never actually told me what's going on, but I'm assuming Alex is fighting somebody? I didn't even know he had his powers yet."

Duke nodded, "Yeah he uhh, didn't trust you and made sure to not hang around when it was night so you wouldn't notice. Thought it was too weird you came into town the same time he fought those two."

She cursed under her breath. 'That's not even my fault, they're the ones who timed it that way I didn't even know they existed! Wait...they timed it that way? That can't be right.'

A shiver went up her spine as she realized this whole thing may be way more elaborate than she had thought. The mistakes were just the route meant to be taken all along. But, how far did the planned path go? She decided to throw caution to the wind and find out herself.

"Alright, catch me up and then I'll teach you how to use your powers."