Chapter 138 - China Chan.

"Wilson! Wilson! Wilson, can you hear me?" Danny called. Wilson turned his head to look at him.

Everyone thought he had a good reason for pulling attention towards him. They should have known better.

"You stink! Can you tone it down?"

Dash and Gene Chang immediately scurried away from his side. This idiot seemed to like playing with death. It was best to stay away to avoid collateral damage. But Wilson did not attack. Instead, thin red smoke-like fumes, that Charlie, the instructor and Gene Chang had noticed emanating from him, reduced.

"Wilson." Charlie called. "Can you control it? You simply have to continue your thought process but slowly push it towards the direction you want it to go."

Wilson nodded. For about a minute, nothing happened. Dash opened his mouth and spoke in a whisper, not wanting to break Wilson's thought process.

"He's taking longer than expected."

"Yeah! It's not unexpected. High quality means high requirements." The instructor said.

Wilson's residual fumes entered his body. He slowly descended. After touching the ground, he took a step forward and another and another, towards Charlie. The oppressive feeling increased as he neared him. Charlie did all his best to stay nonchalant at the exponentially increasing pressure. Just as he was about to buckle, the blood armor around Wilson seeped back into his body and the latter groaned as his stomach rumbled. He hit the floor. The only thing stopping him from falling unconscious was the continually rumbling insides.

"It takes a lot of energy to activate and keep active." Danny explained as he brought out meal after meal from his spatial ring and dropped them beside Wilson.

"Wait a minute. So, you just keep all these ready-made foods in the ring?" Fawn was shocked.

"Don't worry, time flows very differently." Dash said in Danny's defense.

"Time doesn't even flow at all." Danny corrected.

"You think I don't know that?" Fawn yelled. Their instructor cut them off.

"Enough. You have a fight next week..."

"Eight days time."

"Right. And I don't intend on losing a single one of the five fights. Do you understand?"

"Yes!" Sofia shouted. The others merely nodded.

"That's not the reaction I was expecting." The instructor glared at them. Danny and Dash looked away while Wilson seemed to not notice. He was deep in thought.

The instructor continued, "Your first opponents are the Forest Monkeys, led by some kid from Forest City."

"Colt Cobain." Wilson said with a scowl.

"Yeah, that's the one. You know him?" Their Instructor whose name had remained anonymous, asked.

Wilson nodded and answered casually.

"Yes. I intend to beat him to death."

The whole team looked at him.

"Damn!" Danny exclaimed.

"That's vicious, yo." Dash added.

"Bad blood?" Fawn asked.

Wilson nodded in response.

"What the hell did he do?" Gene Chang asked. He was already lying on the bare floor staring at the ceiling.

"He killed Uncle Dale." Wilson replied.

"Murder?" The instructor frowned.

"Where? Forest City?" Charlie asked.

"Even you don't know?" Dash asked Charlie.

Charlie raised his hands helplessly.

"I don't know everything. I only met him when he arrived at Tiger City with Jim.

"Who's Jim?" Fawn asked.

"Vox's friend." Charlie replied matter-of-factly.

"Who's Vox?" Fawn asked. This was getting more complex by the second.

"You know one of these days, you really have to let us know your background story." Danny said, looking at Wilson intensely.

Fawn disagreed. He was under no obligation to tell anyone. After all, no one else knew the other's story.

"That's not true. He knows mine." Dash complained, pointing at Wilson accusingly.

Wilson dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

"Okay, that's enough. Back to the debrief." Their instructor ordered, bringing them back to the original topic. She took out a couple of files and showed them the first one. On it was a picture of frowning average looker.

"The team has eight members. Cole Cobain is their leader. At first, I was going to pit Dash against him, but I think it will be better for everyone if Wilson took him on instead. Five out of these eight make the core members. They are the ones with the actual skills and it's a no-brainer they are the ones you guys will be facing in the ring. These preliminaries are very straightforward. One on one, three out of five and hope you showed enough skill to be added to top sixty-four.

"These five are Cole, stealth ability. He won't be able to make proper use of it in a one on one. The major issue is he could choose to attack any of us, no, any of you before the match. So, no one is going anywhere for the next eight days."

The kids all groaned. Instructor ignored them completely.

"I'm unwilling to take that risk. Their number two is a huge blond bozo named Platoon. Ability, none. Magic powers, none."

"Pfft!" Danny mocked. "No ability, no magic, what's he doing there then?" Danny mocked.

Charlie frowned. He felt the need to put him in his place.

"Don't underestimate the non-ability users, Danny. Wilson could already whoop your ass even before he awakened."

Danny's smile immediately turned upside down.

"Platoon is ridiculously strong for his, um..." The instructor did not know what word to use so, Charlie came to her rescue.

"Normal...ness! Dash will handle him. His size makes him quite slow."

Dash nodded. "No problem."

"Then, there is China. Main weapon, nunchucks. Of course, enchanted and technologically enhanced weapons can't be used, so you can expect plain old nunchucks. His versatile use of his poison ability and also magic, is the major issue. He was born into a magical family that moved from a far away reclused village somewhere in another continent to Snake County, now called Snake City, nearly a century ago. He's the first ability user in the family's history. His family is the infamous Talisman-making family."

Gene Chang stood up at that.

"Talismans! Snake City. The Chan's? F*ck! We are f*cked!" He cursed.

It alarmed the rest of the team. Gene Chang had never cursed out loud. At least, not once have they caught him swearing.

"What's wrong, Gene?" Instructor asked.

"Are you that scared of them?" Danny asked with a smirk.

"The Chan's family is the second-ranked family in Snake City, right behind the Serpes. But by battle strength, they are by far the strongest, even compared to the surrounding cities with deeper, longer histories. They were the first family to create talismans that ejected poisons and then, mass produced various types of poison talismans. With it, they traumatized every bandit in the county and surrounding cities."

"Sounds like heroes."

"Yeah, except that they did not get rid of all the bandits. They took in those that swore loyalty to them and just after two decades, they had become powerful enough to compete against whole cities. They could have easily amalgamated the cities around them and ruled over everyone but to them, it was not profitable enough. So they went straight to the king and forced a discussion that ensured they wouldn't have to pay taxes in return for not terrorising or taking control of all the other cities. The then king had no choice. The Chan's were too powerful and had too many loyal servants and soldiers to effectively weaken them. Not to mention that they were not all that greedy either. For a little reduction in profits, he could avoid a kingdom-scaled war."

"So the family is not just brawn."

"No! They are also really smart and with new child, a new magician is born into the family. They have long evolved from just poison talismans to every other kind of talisman. And recently, there have been rumors of a new kind of poison that drains your mama upon contact."

"Damn!"

"That's China's handwork."

"Fuck!"

"So, you see why we are f*cked?"

Danny and Dash nodded in agreement.

"He can't actually poison us, can he?" Wilson doubted. It was against the rules.

"Not if he releases it in excess while in the ring with one of us." Fawn mentioned.

"And he could send it the whole team's way..." Charlie added but was interrupted.

"...or even spread it around the arena and claim he lost control." Gene Chang finished.

Wilson shook his head and asked.

"So what do we do?"

The team looked at one another. They had no idea.

"Hold up!" Danny said. "Who were you planning on pitting against him?"

"You!"

Danny jumped.

"What! No f*cking way. I absolutely and totally refuse. Why don't I take the chica over there?" He asked, pointing at an open file with a picture of a pretty lady with red hair. Charlie replied on the instructor's behalf.

"What! No f*cking way. Fawn will deal with her." He turned to Fawn. "Make sure to beat her the way Wilson would have. Bash her face in."

Fawn nodded.

The instructor sighed and rubbed her temple.

"We still need to do something about this China Chan. If he comes up first, Bye-bye to the championships."

The mood swung straight back to worried.

Some minutes of quiet later, Charlie snapped his fingers.

"Jim! Wind ability." He said.

Wilson frowned. The others grumbled.

"Jim again?" Dash asked.

"Seriously, who's this Jim?"

Instructor nodded her head excitedly.

"Yes, yes, yes. Poison still requires the air to carry it to where it needs to go. If he can redirect it back to the opponent, we can win without needing to fight." She explained.

Wilson shook his head.

"Jim can't fight. He barely knows how to use his wind ability to run for his life." He argued.

"Not anymore. He's been practicing. After you ran away, I scared him enough to expect you to come back feeling betrayed and vengeful."

"Huh?" Wilson felt... he didn't know what he felt.

"He is actually quite the fast learner and has become quite good at utilising his powers."

"You said something about betraying." Wilson could not get his mind off that.

"Oh that. He talked smack about you after you ran away. Stuff about you both not being friends." Charlie explained.

Wilson froze.

"He really said that?"

"Yeah."

"After all we've been through together?"

"Yeah!"

Wilson turned to face the instructor.

"Charlie will get Jim. Jim will fight. Win or lose, as long as he redirects the poison away from us, the rest of us can make up for it."

The instructor nodded and took her phone.

"I will register him into the team's database. What's his name again?"

Charlie hurriedly answered.

"Jim."

"Ability?"

"Wind."

"Pic?"

"Sent."

"It has to be recent."

"Of course!"