FFR: The Phantom Challenge

[GamerShadow]

Chapter 6:

“Quick meeting, everybody,” Specforces announced as the debris began to fall from the monstrous explosion, “We need to create a plan.”

The TGB Army huddled around in a circle and kneeled, waiting for their commander to lay out the plan that he had concocted in his mind. Mead, Tibs, and Reaper were all sill panting and trying to recover from the effort that they had exerted on the battlefield. Everybody else felt fatigued, but nobody was complaining about giving up, or taking a break.

Spec looked around at the Army, and began to speak. “Our opponents seem unusually organized this time around.”

Tibs injected a point that even Specforces hadn’t thought of yet, “Which means they must be led by somebody. I don’t know who they are, but they’ve made this battle hard for us so far.”

Spec was both surprised and impressed with what Tibs had just concluded. “Yes,” he nodded, “So what we’re going to do is this.” He took out a pistol, and used the barrel as a surrogate stick, in order to draw plans in the ground. First, he marked an X on the ground. “The X is us.” he stated, “We’re trying to get... here.” He drew a circle about two feet away from the X. “The PYP Agency. If we can fight our way in, and take over the base, the noobs should crumble as a whole, and they will be much easier to pick off. Killing or banning their commander is a must, however.”

Everybody nodded. After a moment of silence, Jewpin asked the question that was on everybody’s minds. “Spec, are you sure that we are not pushing ourselves too hard? Many of our men are exhausted, including our fellow comrades from SpinItUp, and-”

“No excuses, Jewpin,” Specforces sternly responded as he began drawing lines that connected the X with the circle, “The last time we had that attitude, we gave up when the battle was all but won. We will not make that mistake again. We have the finest warriors from our land, all working together as a whole. We have the widest range of abilities the FFR world has ever seen. We will not leave the battlefield without victory.”

If the Army had not been rigorously trained to be in situations such as this one, and to have a tough mentality when it came to war, half of the soldiers would have left upon hearing Specforces cut Jewpin off. However, they were ready to jump back into the game and to put forth an even greater power then they had already displayed. They were trained to fight until the bitter end.

“Are we ready to finish what we started?” Specforces quietly asked the Army. Without a word, they all nodded. As they were about to finish their meeting, and resume their fight, a small, indigo circle appeared on the ground. It steadily grew larger, and soon, a head began to appear from the center of the circle. At once Specforces broke the tension. “GamerShadow,” He explained and asked, “Why are you here?”

It took a few seconds for GS to rise high enough so that he could speak, “I thought you might need a few extra men, so I brought you some, including myself.” At that moment, GS completely rose out of the shadow, standing with him were Kagome and MalReynolds. As soon as they thought it comfortable, both Kagome and MalReynolds began gasping for air. A rather awkward moment passed, as both of the new recruits caught their breath. Finally, Kagome spoke.

“GamerShadow,” She started, “Never do that again. Not even if I have to get here in a second. I’d rather have Stretchy phase me here.”

Mal quickly agreed, “Yes. That was an awful feeling. It was like I was drowning, but I was still able to breathe. How do you do that everyday?”

GS wore a confused look on his face, “You couldn’t breathe? I am always most comfortable when traveling in the shadows. Maybe I should have told you how it felt before I actually brought you here.” He smiled and laughed nervously, “Oh well. Life goes on.”

“Excuse me,” Specforces interrupted, “But we have a war to fight. If we wait any longer, the enemy will have gotten enough time to send another wave of noobs our way. It’s now or never.”

With that, Spec turned to the rest of the Army, and hollered, “In your ranks! Now! We take what is rightfully ours! We take back Chit Chat, HERE AND NOW!”

And with a roaring cheer from the perfect square that was the TGB Army, they began charging towards the PYP Agency building. There was no turning back. This was the day that the TGB Army won back Chit Chat, for all of FFR.

The sun shone brightly in the upbeat Brag Board country. It was a busy day, and many new scores from the neighboring country, R1, were coming in. Many citizens were simply viewing the newest AAA’s, or monitoring the newest scores, commenting on how players were becoming more and more competitive with each passing day. Others simply were here to socialize; it was a time of prosperity in the Brag Board, after all.

A rather small group of people stood around in a circle, throwing down papers with insane scores on them. To these people, bragging was nothing new.

“Check this out. I owned my old Caprice Score. Only 10 goods! I bet none of you can top that.” Boasted a prideful dore.

“You sure about that?” smirked Destiny, who tossed down a Molto Vivace SDG. The other people in the circle were impressed, and many of them shuffled through their scores, trying to find one that could topple such an impressive feat.

“Impressive,” stated Smitty, “but I have something none of you can beat.” He took out a golden sheet of paper, and let it fall on top of Destiny’s score. The paper shined, and once it hit the ground, everybody’s jaws dropped.

“Impossible.” said dore, “How could anybody do that? It’s not possible. I thought there were insane amounts of framers in that one. But there the golden sheet is.”

“Smitty,” started DarkManticoreX2, “You really have outdone yourself with that.” His scorpion tail hit the ground, causing a bit of dust from the road to rise into the air, “If you keep this up, you could very well end up in the Hall of Fame.”

“Well,” smitty replied, “I don’t know about…”

Suddenly, an explosion could be heard from a block over. All of the people who had gathered in the circle turned their heads, and watched as a building slowly collapsed on itself. The citizens began to scream and panic as they ran around each other, trying to figure out what they should do. Manti turned to the others, who were still staring at the gigantic cloud of dust that had emerged from the collapsed building. He opened his mouth to speak when another explosion boomed nearby. Then more explosions.

“Guys,” Manti yelled over the noise of the explosions and collapsing buildings, “We have to defend the city. There’s no way that these explosions are by accident.”

Everybody else agreed, and the group split up in eight different directions, trying to locate the culprit of the attacks.

The TGB Army had been charging forward for all of five minutes at a very brisk pace, trying to gain as much ground as possible before coming into contact with any noobs. The five minutes was all their luck would allow them, however, as a group of about fifty trolls came marching at them in a line, unflinching. They stood twelve feet tall; their enormous wooden clubs only being dwarfed by Jewpin’s Southern Cross, and Guido’s banhammer.

Specforces began shouting orders to individual soldiers as they prepared to launch their attacks. Jurs gripped her staff tightly, and began to cast Judgment, while Reaper and Tibs exhaled huge breaths of acid and fire, respectively. All of two trolls went down; one of them had been caught in the middle of Reaper’s acid breath, the other in Tibs’s inferno. Jugglinguy dashed towards a Troll in order to knock it over.

Mal began performing the same summoning chant as Guido had done just a few hours before, and as expected, the bright white light began to shine in Mal’s extended right hand. A second banhammer had come to play. Mal lowered the banhammer near the ground, and began charging at one of the trolls, planning to break rank sooner rather than later. He jumped once he was in range, and brought the banhammer down on the unsuspecting troll’s face, banning it in the same fashion as Guido’s banhammer did. Quick and painless.

Kagome displaced the air around her very carefully in order to craft an airspear, which was a deadly weapon that could not be seen or heard, only felt. She jumped back, and with effort, propelled it forward using wind energy at an alarming speed. Half a second later, one of the trolls roared in pain as a hole opened up in its head. Blood was gushing out of it everywhere, and the troll was swinging its club madly, trying to kill something before it died from blood loss.

Jurs grew annoyed at the wounded troll’s cry of pain, and finished her Judgement spell. Suddenly, the sky grew dark. All of the light from the sun compressed into one place, giving birth to a large ball of pure light energy that would incinerate any evil entity Jurs chose. And she chose the half-dead troll. Slowly, the sphere hovered over the Troll, making sure that it wouldn’t just be smacked away. And without warning, the light energy was emitted in a gigantic beam that actually encompassed not one, but two trolls. Both were obliterated in the most painful method possible. After a few moments, the sky lit back up almost as if a light bulb had been switched on, and the chaotic battle resumed.

One of the smarter trolls tried to fake GamerShadow out by pretending to swing its club in a random direction, but it ended up simply tossing its weapon behind it. The club soared for two hundred feet, and crashed onto the ground, making a small crater. GS hatched a brilliant plan in his head, and simply turned around, saying nothing, and most certainly not paying attention to the troll. Almost on instinct, the troll began spewing incoherent insults at GS, trying to get him mad, or at least to respond. But nothing worked. Not the “n0 L1f3,” not the “j00 5uCkZ0rZ,” not anything. The troll was beside itself in anger. It raised its fists high into the air, preparing to strike. But something had pierced it, right in the heart, and the troll was writhing in pain. GamerShadow had been waiting for the troll to get angry, and had turned around and shot a shadow tendril through the troll’s heart. At last, the troll collapsed, and said nothing more as it died a laughable death.

The trolls, being none too bright, had only just realized that they were getting destroyed in battle. They began a simple retreat, which involved turning around and running away. But the TGB Army wouldn’t have any of that. They had entered battle, and they would not let anybody escape. Tibs looked over at Seth, and gave him the signal, laughing as he looked at the trolls making futile efforts to escape. At once, Seth lowered his goggles, and rended a giant dimensional portal above and below the trolls. The result was hilarious. The trolls were now in an infinite free fall that spanned two dimensions. Faster and faster they went, becoming more and more blurry each time the reappeared. Everybody was cracking up in side-splitting laughter. This was one of the TGB Army’s favorite jokes, and the timing of it was excellent. After fifteen seconds, Seth closed up the bottom portal, and the result was spectacularly gory. A giant explosion of blood, guts, bones, and other bodily things went flying everywhere, and the TGB Army began to joke with each other for a few moments.

Afterward, they pressed on, not encountering any more enemies until they reached the PYP Agency, which towered over them like a school bully towers over a kindergartener.

“Well,” Specforces said as he reloaded his shotgun, “This is it. This is where all of our hard work will pay off. Chit Chat is ours, boys, as long as we can kill their commander, and conquer the base.

The battle in Brag Board wasn’t faring too well. Many of the buildings had now collapsed, and corpses were littered on the ground everywhere. The city was now vacated except for those still fighting. Each and every sound echoed through the late-evening sky. Cries of pain. Clashing metal. Guns being fired.

Manti had just finished off his last opponent, a flamer who had tried to cut off his tail, only to be impaled in the face by it. As Manti grabbed the dead flamer, and threw it behind him, he noticed a strange indigo body slowly approaching. Just the sight of it made Manti feel that there was reason to fear the unknown being. Something inside him told him that this was a battle that the Brag Board could not win. And something told him what this mysterious being was.

“Engler.” Growled Manti through gritted fangs as he lowered his eyebrows.