Seven Ten Split

“Will somebody help me?” I shouted, hoping to get anyone’s attention so I could join the fight, but it looked like the others were too preoccupied, or too far away to do anything in my favour.

If I had to spend another second in this stupid netting, I was gonna’ lose it!

There had to be some way out of this. The mafia guys would have definitely intended to free me at some point, even if maybe just to lock me up in a cage, but this couldn’t just perpetually be sealed. I kept looking, but this net was such a mess at the moment that finding the opening wasn't easy.

Let’s think about this for a second…the netting was made out of holy steel, and only holy steel can cut holy steel…maybe they intended to cut me out of here.

I’m a ferronium based life form, meaning my very base components are made out of this metal. But my skin and nails didn’t have a high enough concentration to cut through it…my bones might have, but those were kinda inside me at the moment.

Wait a minute! I did have some bones that could chomp through this stuff! My teeth!

My teeth are stronger than diamonds. I’ve had to eat rocks before, so I know for a fact these chompers could bite through a flimsy little metal netting, even an indestructible metal one like this.

I started gnawing on the netting, slowly chewing through the metal frame. This holy steel tasted so low quality it made me sick. I shouldn’t have expected the humans to make anything better. Still, it's impressive that they managed to get this much at all. Actually, it was frightening.

While I was snacking my way to freedom, Uncle faced down once again against Bowler Joe. This time, both upped the ante by bringing out their heavy gear.

Uncle spawned up his crystal armour, covering his body in a protective plating of gem. Bowler Joe threw off his coat and revealed a holy steel vest and padding over his clothing.

“Let’s go another round, tough guy. I’m itchin’ for a spare.” Bowler Joe tipped his hat.

“The only pin getting knocked down is your head.” Uncle tipped his hat too.

Uncle’s flaming broadsword spawned, ready to be swung with mighty force.

In response, Bowler Joe brought up both his hands, one like a finger gun, and the other clenching around an imaginary grip in front of him.

Purple markings began to glow around Bowler Joe’s cigar. With one great blow, smoke and smog filled the air with ash and soot.

Just as visibility reached its lowest point, the rattle of magical machine gun fire sent shockwaves of sound into our ears.

PWANG PWAN PWANG!

Little firework-like bursts lit up the smog. Uncle raced around, knowing each bullet was aimed at him, so he needed to keep the fire away from any of us.

Once he found a better position, Uncle swung his big sword, clearing the smog with the mighty gust.

A hatless Bowler Hat Joe stood there with a dastardly smile chomping down on his cigar. His hands this time were mysteriously posed as if he was holding some sort of large, unwieldy looking weapon.

PWOOF! PWOOF!

Two rockets fired out of an invisible magic bazooka!

Uncle tried to dodge them, but they were heat seeker missiles. He was hard pressed to evade, but it was even worse when something came flying in like a frisbee.

“Ooof!” he grunted, being struck in the stomach by Bowler Joe’s hat.

BOOM! BOOM!

Then the missiles hit Uncle in the back, causing a big explosion!

Uncle was swallowed up in flame…but then the flame began to swirl away from him, heading for Bowler Joe, like a vortex of heckish retribution!

FWOOSH!

FWOOM!

Bowler Joe was nearly encircled by the flames, but managed to just barely escape the cyclone.

Uncle turned as he quickly recovered, seeing Indena commanding the fire that once dealt damage to himself.

“You’re getting rusty, Old Man!” Indena chuckled.

“My mistake…” he chuckled, adjusting his fedora back into place. “The last few thousand years haven’t been very kind to this body of mine.”

Now it was two on one again! The real rematch was about to begin!

“Well, I wanted a spare, but now I've gotta get a seven ten split!” Bowler Joe commented.

But while this duel was just about to get restarted, another enemy joined in, making it a two on two!

“Boss, need any help?” Dart Guy tossed three darts into Indena’s swirling flame. The thin wire that kept them connected to his hands twisted around each other.

When Dart Guy gave them a tug, they quickly untwisted, sending a gust of wind out in every direction to create a counter vortex. The fire disappeared moments later.

“Welcome back to the fight…” Bowler Joe grinned. “I don’t need your help though, so feel free to sit back and cheer me on.”

“Ehh, Boss…” Dart Guy retracted his choice weapons. “You think I want to watch you go high and dry with these unpredictable idiots? They keep pulling tricks out of their butts left and right.”

Bowler Joe’s grin evolved to a full blown devious smile, then he turned back to Uncle and Indena. “Isn’t that great though? It makes things a lot more interesting!”

Finally my teeth managed to chomp fully through the netting, creating a small opening for my hand to stick through. There was still more to go, so I hastened my bites.

“Alright, we’ll crush them together!” Bowler Joe said, raising up his finger guns with a prideful expression.

More magical ammo filled the air. Indena and Uncle split off to divide the stream of bullets. Bowler Joe mainly focused his fire on Uncle.

In the mess of glowing blurs, a dart slammed into Uncle’s skin, but bent at the tip, unable to pierce his synthetic flesh.

But it actually wasn’t a dart at all. It was syringes full of a purple liquid.

“Indena!” Uncle shouted. “Watch out for any drug needles!”

It was already too late. A syringe managed to bypass her fire aura and stick right into her arm.

“Not this again!” she shouted, pulling out the needle and tossing it away. “Damn drug addicts, you and that damn witch!” she said to Dart Guy.

Little poison lines were spreading across her skin. Her vitality was dropping by the second, meaning she wouldn’t have much strength in a few moments.

“How did that go right through her protective aura?” I questioned, momentarily stunned at the concept. I’ve seen her aura shrug off all kinds of damage, but this little needle got through?

Despite the poison affinity symbol appearing next to her virtual nametag, she kept going.

She closed the distance between her and Dart Guy and started dealing some heavy close quarters punches! One of her hits caused him to fly back a few meters.

“If you don’t ease up, that poison will work faster!” Dart Guy warned her.

“I’d rather die kicking your dumb ass than sit around crying about being poisoned!”

Such feral pride…

Bowler Joe tried to back up his subordinate by shooting Indena a few times. She dodged each shot and got a good kick in on him instead!

A scorch mark appeared on his arm where she hit. He eagerly backhanded her toward Uncle as a reward for her attack.

“Here, Boss.” Dart Guy tossed a needle into Bowler Joe’s arm. As it emptied into him, the red liquid caused his burn to heal up.

“It was a healing potion!” I called out, wires practically flossing my teeth.

“Thanks,” Bowler Joe gave a thumbs up before returning his hand into a finger gun position. “Let’s keep this up!”

He blew out another puff of smoke, erasing visibility completely.

More magic bullets and darts went flying. Indena and Uncle were taking some heavy fire in the confusion.

“This is just like that stupid witch’s smog crap!” Indena commented. “But I can’t sense them through all this heated smoke.” She fell to the ground. The poison was starting to really get to her.

“You superheated the ground before to cause a rising motion in the air. Can you do that again?”

“Yeah.” Indena nodded. “Asphalt should make it easy.”

Her hands were already on the ground, so she sent pulses of fire energy into the road. It heated the ground around her enough to make the air flow upwards.

As the air cleared, Bowler Joe came up behind and hit her with a magic magnum shot! Her aura took most of the damage, but she was woozy.

Uncle retaliated slamming his broadsword down on Bowler Joe’s extended arm, only to have Dart guy toss a few darts in like little rockets. A wire was strung between them, and they caught his blade.

“Blast!” Uncle cursed as his blade was lifted away by the little rocket's darts.

Bowler Joe then shot Uncle in the chest, blasting him back a few meters.

Uncle wasn’t done though. He spawned out his glass-like angelic wings and countered the little rocket darts trajectories.

“He’s an angel too!?” Bowler Joe looked stunned.

In the confusion, Uncle’s broadsword slammed into Bowler Joe’s stomach, but at the flat edge, preventing him from getting cut in half.

“Indena, turn up the heat!” Uncle announced as a twinkly white flame grew across his blade.

“On it, Old Man!” She extended her weakened arm and manipulated the white flames to grow over ten times their size!

The fire wasn’t burning flesh, but Bowler Joe was screaming in agony of being swallowed in twinkling fire.

“Boss!” Dart Guy announced, tossing many darts at Uncle.

“Spear of Destiny!” but it was I who knocked all the darts out of the air with my stardust spear! “You’re busted, Dart Guy!”

Finally, I'm free! FREEEE!

The white flames dialed down, revealing Bowler Joe once more to the open air. He didn’t have a single burn mark on his body, but he looked incredibly downtrodden none the less.

“Old Man, what was that?” Indena asked, struggling to recover.

“These flames purify evil. The more corrupt someone is, the more damage it does to their soul,” he chuckled.

Bowler Joe looked done for. But before we could capture him, Dart Guy tossed a dart with rope at the end at him, lassoing him back into an alleyway.

“Damn it!” Dart Guy announced, flipping open a manhole and helping his boss down into it. “It’s always something new with these guys!”

“Heh…” Bowler Joe snickered. “It wouldn’t be fun if it were easy, am I right?”

And that was the last thing he said before they managed to escape into the sewers. Even their underlings fled.

The dark energy I’d been feeling in this area started to die down after they left, so clearly they had something to do with it…but I was afraid to find out what exactly that was. Needless to say, this battle was over, and thankfully we came out on top.