X-Force (7): Cable, Domino, Shatterstar, Warpath, Archangel
TMNT (10): Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, Michelangelo, Master Splinter
The red dirt of the stadium opens to emit a glowing white light on either end. Two teams stand across from one another. One end features soldiers, trained to take the most extreme actions to achieve their lofty goals. They’re led by a grizzled man with white hair, a glowing left eye, and scars over the right. He is holding a very large gun. Without looking back, he commands his strike force, “You know what to do”.
The four anthropomorphic turtles and their rat father stand across the way. Their approach is usually a little bit different. They’re used to attacking from the shadows, remaining a secret, and striking without notice. The situation does not seem to favor them, but they’ve fought against all manner of mutants, the Shredder, and an alien invasion force called the Krang. They don’t know exactly who these foes are, but they DO know that they’ve faced long odds before. The huddle together for a moment to gather themselves. The moment is very quickly broken as a plasma blast fires across arena. Luckily, their focus is such as they’re able to scatter a moment before it arrives and the flip back, in unison, out of the way. They draw their weapons, swiftly move to strike.
Leonardo calls to his brother, “Take out the guns first, and we’ll circle back to rest of them!” Without saying any more the turtles know their formations, Leonardo and Raphael charge up the middle, their best martial artist, they’re able to move with uncanny quickness and jump, flip, roll, and duck all of the incoming shots.
As they approach, getting just within launching distance, Raphael’s focus is just barely overcome by his battle rage, and he misses a shot at his feet. He’s tripped and slides onto his face, skidding to a halt at the feet of Cable and Domino. Domino smiles, “That one’s mine!” And she winks at Cable.
Cable, seemingly emotionless, retorts bluntly “Lucky shot.”
The tight formation of X-Force served its purpose. It brought their enemy to them and allowed them to get a ranged advantage, and with a member of the opposing team on the ground, Warpath needs no prompt to know he’s up. He steps from behind the gunners and lifts the Turtle off of the ground. Holding onto the top of the chest portion of Raph’s shell in his left hand, he pulls his right back to deliver a mammoth punch when his left hand is struck with surprising force, as a bo staff comes streaking in from the side. Though gifted with strength and a fair degree of physical toughness, Warpath drops the turtle and turns his gaze to the purple masked brother. Twisting his face up, Warpath lunges for for Donatello.
“Uh… sorry?” Donny chides as he pulls his head into his shell to avoid the first attack. Warpath silently swings his arm back as a counterstrike only to have it leapt over. Donatello back steps another few steps and Warpath charges after him. Using his speed and smarts to his advantage, he sidesteps the strongman and jams the bo between his feet. As Warpath is stumbling forward, the staff is lifted and cracks off the back of Warpath’s feathered head, forcing him to the ground. Donatello has virtually no time to celebrate his momentary victory, as he finds himself lifted from the ground.
Archangel is silent, as he swoops over the Turtles, carrying Donatello high above the teams below. He’s observed that he’s the only flyer on the field and knows that will be the advantage that X-Force needs. As he reaches the apex of the dome, he drops his flightless passenger. Donatello reaches his staff up, just enough to catch the foot of his flying aggressor, and is able to push off, hopefully, just enough that he slow his descent to where it will just hurt a lot, and not kill him.
From below, Cable recognizes the maneuver and takes aim. As he’s lining up his shot on the falling target, his gun flies from his hands, and Michelangelo stands nunchucking back and forth.
“Bummer for you dude, no toys!” Shatterstar knows it’s his turn to step in, and bring down all three of his blades on the party dude. “EEEK!” Mikey screams at the clash of metal, as he notices that his older brother has saved him from the attack.
‘Maybe try to pay a little bit more attention Mikey?” Leo pushes through gritted teeth as he fights the other swordsman.
“Maybe lighten up a little!” Michelangelo teases as he cartwheels off of Shatterstar’s head and turns into a kicking off of Cables chest. The kick has less effect than he figured it would. “Looks like the football pads are more then cool looking, huh?” Cable punches at his taunter who sidesteps away and, nunchuck still spinning, swipes the back of Cable’s hands. Shaking the pain off, Cable steps in again, and again, his hand is smacked away. Cable’s biggest surprise though, is a four foot long turtle shell flying falling out of the sky directly on top of his head.
Donatello recovers from the fall, pulls his head out of his shell and happily exclaims, “Physics!”
He’s kicked in the chest and stumbles back, and then falls over as a gunshot cracks from Domino’s weapon, “Hey buddy, I’m supposed to be the lucky one!” Donny looks up briefly, smiling at the shooter, before his head hits the dirt.
“No fair!” Michelangelo exclaims, as he swats the gun out of Domino’s hands, “I think he liked you!”
“If you think I need a gun to beat you, you’re sorely mistaken!” Domino ducks and dodges all of the incoming Nunchuck. Just as the flurry starts to be too much, Domino blindly backflips. Michelangelo pursues, but finds himself running into the not too worse for wear Warpath, who punches into the turtle’s back and sends him reeling into the stadium walls.
“You do NOT get to treat MY brother that way!” Raph screams, pushing himself off of the ground. He lets one of his sais fly and his training proves true. Warpath is too surprised to dodge the projectile, and it hits square in the chest. The weapon is thrown just precisely enough to hit between ribs, just sharp enough to penetrate the targets tough skin, and at just the right moment to catch Warpath off guard. Raph rushes past his fallen foe and prepares to launch his other sai at Domino, when he’s stopped cold by a sheet of metal feathers raining down in front of him.
Archangel glides to the ground, confronting Raphael. Raph picks up a razor sharp feather from the ground and launches it back at its originator. The steely wings of archangel close around their body, as if independent of their master, and Archangel begins walking towards his target. Well before Raph could reach his opponent, the wings arc forward and slash at the turtle. Raphael leaps back. No one to be on the defensive, he glances over to see his brother still clashing swords back and forth with Shatterstar. He turns, shouting out, “SWITCH!” Archangel takes to the air to intercept when he finds himself impaled in the chest with a sai. Raphael looks up, “Can’t block with ‘em when you’re ‘em”. He grumbles. Archangel lands on the ground with a thud.
Meanwhile, Leonardo, hearing his brother’s stratagem, has already turned to switch fights, he barrels past the fallen Cable, Archangel, Warpath, and jumps into a kick against Domino. Mid air, his leg is grabbed by Warpath. Dangling upside down, leonardo see Warpath pull the sai out of his chest and grumble, “I heal fast”. Tossing the weapon aside and flinging Leonardo towards his other discarded brother, against the arena wall. Just as he’s getting up Michelangelo finds himself breaking the fall of Leonardo, and collapses again.
Raphael quickly scours the ground to recover his discarded sai, and pulls the other from its home in Archangel’s chest. His reflexes pull him aside, KLANG! He gets the weapons up just in time to block Shatterstar attack. The swords continue to fly. His speed and skill are almost as good as Leonardo’s, Raph thinks, (better maybe?!) He doesn’t have time to think, he only has time to fight. Raph uses his physical advantages, while Shattertar has hit the chest and back multiple times, they’ve done little to no damage beyond scratching the shell; parrying every attack, the graceful strikes of Shatterstar seem effortless while Raphael’s counters seem to more and more labored until finally he falls back with the force of Shatterstar’s attacks.
Finally, Shatterstar thinks to himself, his opponent is vulnerable. He swings his swords sideways and catches the two sai. He’s able to hook them between the tri blades and pull them from Raph’s three fingered hands. Lifting for a killstrike, Shatterstar abruptly falls to the ground. Leonardo stands over the collapsed Shatterstar, “You think you can get rid of me that easy? Think again!”
Helping Raphael up and handing him his sai, the two stand shoulder to shoulder looking a few yards away at a very confident Domino and Warpath. Raph breaks the tension of the moment, “I put you down once big guy, I’ll do it again!” And he charges at the two.
“Oh boy…” Leo mutters and toddles after.
Warpath pulls out two large knives as Raphael sprints forward, “Didn’t think you’d be worth it, guess I was wrong.” The two clash a few feet in front of Domino, who, still standing still, kicks one of Archangel’s feathers, still sticking out of the ground, at Leonardo.
“Not that easy!” Leo swats away the feather with one sword and slashes down with the other. Domino turns at her hips and evades. Leonardo swings down again, and Domino sticks out a leg. Leonardo’s follow through is sloppier than usual and he trips over Domino’s outstretched leg. Falling the ground. He sees the feet of Warpath and Raphael dancing around in front of him.
Warpath knives are almost as dangerous as Shatterstar’s swords, and somehow, a little faster? When the fight began he was not expecting the combatants to be so adept at hand to hand. Spinning away from the knives, Raphael roundhouse kicks into Warpath’s chest, hitting him where the sai hit earlier. Warpath grimaces, but seems otherwise undeterred. Raph headbutts him the same spot, steps back, and slides between his legs. He goes to stab into Warpath’s back, and is astonished as the 7 foot tall Native America whirls around and swats away Raph’s arms. Raph jumps back and calls out again, seeing his brother just getting up, “SWITCH!”
Leonardo hops towards the behemoth before him and their blades begin to clash. Leonardo, slightly more skilled with his swords than Raph is with his sais, is able to hold off the knife attacks. Warpath is however, still too fast to land any meaningful blows. The mele brings out the best in him though, as he calls to his brother, “They’re too good. I can’t beat either one of them!”
“Thanks for the update brother, lot of help!” Raph grunts as he stumbles around Domino, unable to land anything meaningful himself. “So what, we just give up?!”
“No, I can’t beat either one!”
“Ohhhhh…” Raphael rolls over Domino’s back and slides towards Warpath. Leonardo and Raphael strike in unison, the push the battle to keep Warpath between themselves and Domino, and while Warpath is quick enough to swat away the first few attacks, as the turtles press the advantage they’re able to take down the giant.
As Warpath falls Domino picks up her gun and fires at his back. He falls with the shot barely skimming the top of his head and blasting Raphael in the chest. He flies off of his feet and lands unconscious on the ground. Mid air, his arms flailing, the butt of his sai smashes into his brother’s nose, knocking him down as well. Domino walks to the fallen turtles, and kicks Leonardo in the head, ensuring he’s down for the count as well. She spins, arms outstretched, victoriously twirling for the crowd. She takes a bow and stops. She rises slowly, looking confused, a small stream of blood falls from her lips and she falls.
Kneeling behind her, Master Splinter is holding Leonardo’s blade. “Luck is a wonderful tool to possess, and when mixed with your skill, it it is difficult to beat, but focus, attention, and patience, will always win out in the end.”
WINNER: TMNT
