Nebb 04-03-2009 08:13 AM<br/>His opponent was standing in front of him weilding his Ã©pÃ©e like only an expert could. Older and taller than himself, he had a considerable longer reach that made getting up close rather difficult. To make matters worse, the guy was left handed. "But I am faster than this old man." he thought to himself.<br/><br/>He feigned an attack and watched as his opponent flowing footwork follow almost a rythmic beat as he evaded the attack gracefully. He smiled to himself, as the footwork reminded him of a crab for some reason. Brushing the thought away, he waited for that same rhythm to move his opponent's weight onto his front foot, then lunged deeper at his opponent. Going low to as to lure his opponent into an attack, he tipped his epee so as to strike at the underside of his opponents arm. But his opponent wasn't falling for the ploy, and sidestepped maintaining his balance, and jumped back out of harms way.<br/><br/>"Oh come on, you can't keep running away." he smirked to his opponent, who didn't seemed phased by his comments. As a matter of fact, he noticed that his opponent seemed incredibly calm and collected during the entire duel, never putting a foot wrong. Frustration turned to anger as he noticed the opponent wink at him through the mask.<br/><br/>Almost immediately he could feel beads of sweat running down his back intensify, his mask felt like it was covered with celephane. His opponent on the other hand seemed to moving around playfully and feigned an attack to scored another point. "Dammit! Why can't I seem to land any hits on this guy?! One more point and it's over for me." he thought to himself. Gripping the hilt of the blade right at the end, sacrificing accuracy for reach, he changed his stance to a defensive one. He rarely used this technique, but if he was to win this, he'd have to do better than he was. His opponent noticed the change in stance almost immediately, and matched his defensive stance, with another defensive stance.<br/><br/>"What is this guy playing at?" he wondered.<br/>Their blades touched for a second and he was about to send off a sly remark, when in a flash his opponent struck. The force of the attack almost sent his epee flying out of his hand, and he barely managed to hold onto it. "Another flaw of the technique." he thought to himself. He wondered why in the final moments of the duel, he was now deciding to change his tactics. His attacker, was pummeling him, but none of the attacks were actually aimed at anything other than his blade. It was almost as if he was trying to lure him into doing something... "But what?"<br/><br/>As his opponents blade swung across his view, landing square on his blade, he noticed something about the angle of his opponent's attack, something he never noticed before. Every time he attacked, he dropped his leading shoulder. Waited for it to happen again, he struck hard and fast, instinctively. As he did, he realized - too late - that 'this' was what his opponent was waiting for. "Shit." As his blade was about to touch his opponents shoulder, he lifted it, allowing the blade to slide through underneath his arm. As the counter-attacked came, his opponent also inventively closed the gap between his arm and his torso by twisted slightly to the side, which prevented the blade from being withdrawn as his opponent made his attack. It was a grey area in the rules, and since it used back in the day when a gauntlet or cloak was used during sword fights, some overlooked it. The judges though, didn't seem to notice it, maybe due to them being old school themselves, or possibly because they were sitting almost 18 feet away.<br/><br/>"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt" came the sound of the buzzer as the tip of his opponent's blade landed square underneath his chin.<br/>Without thinking clearly, he knocked the blade away from his face and kicked his opponent backwards. Sliding back, his opponent smiled as he had expecting it. As the referee try to intervene, the opponent kicked him behind the knees, brining him down to the ground in an instant, then stepped back and bowed as if to say: "So you wanted to do this, so lets dance." Using him as a platform, he lunged through the air at the opponent. As he did this he summoned everything he had, all his anger and all his frustrations, focusing it into the tip of his blade. He didn't know why he was doing this, except that he knew it would give him an edge. He aimed the point at this enemy and unleashed a series of blows that would have left any ordinary man injured. Their blades collided with such a force the entire hall was immediately silenced by the sounds of the blades scraping off each other. As his blade landed on the other, he could feel something eminating from his opponent's blade... a energy of sorts. He focused on it with every last ounce of his will, he brought his blade down onto his enemy's head. His opponent blocked it and the last thing that flashed past his eyes was blinding blue light...<br/><br/>----------------------------------------<br/>"Hold him down, he's having some sort of reaction to the meds."<br/>"Impossible, his on enough tranquilizers to put down a horse!"<br/>"I'm telling you he's waking up, get me another tranq!"<br/>"If he dies from..."<br/>"Oh shut up and just give me the fucking needle! .... There, that should quiet him down. Now where is Micheal...?"<br/>"He was right here.... oh my God. Micheal, are you okay. Jesus Mother of Mary, he's....dead... "<br/>The sound of someone emptying his stomach filled the room...<br/>-------------------------------------------<br/><br/>Opening his eyes, the bright lights of the hospital room caused tears to start flowing. He tried to focus on someone or something in the room, everything still a blur. "What happened...?" he asked but nobody responded. Rubbing his eyes, he found he had a very familiar taste in his mouth, it reminded him of having had his wisdom teeth removed, except he couldn't remember exactly when this happened. "Tranquilizers.." the thought just popped into this mind. He could still feel its effects. He tried standing, but his legs couldn't carry him yet. He sat back down on the bed and waited for a minute, breathing deeply. It made him feel better, until a wave of nausea overcame him. Swallowing hard, he tried to keep his stomach from spilling out over the bed. It resided almost instantly. "Wa...." his throat was dry. "Ehem.... water...?" but nobody heard him. No suprise, he could barely hear himself... and the ringing in his ears didn't help either. He tried to stand again and stabilized himself against the bed, giving his head some time to recover from the sudden increase in blood pressure. He wasn't sure how he knew this, but he could still feel the effects of the drugs on his body and his kidneys felt swollen. Using the bed and nearby table he made his way to a curtain that partitioned him off from those around him. Peeping through the curtain, he saw all kinds of docters running around attending to military personel. Seeing his chart against the bed, he picked it up. All it had on it, was the names of a few doctor's and the words 'severe head trauma - under observation'.<br/><br/>Apparently his name was Charlie Kovac. "Man I must have hit my head harder than I thought, I can't remember any of this.... just bits and pieces..."<br/><br/>He could make out voices whispering and tried to hone in on them...<br/>"Fine. I don't know how the hell you managed to talk me and mom into this, but...Its hard to swallow. I mean, things that are supposed to be myths, legends, are real and whats worse, they're killing people."<br/>He leaned closer to hear more, but one of the patches holding the heart monitor clips disloged itself, sending the equipment in the room into a frenzy. Sitting back down on the bed, he removed the rest of the clips as he waited for the invetible rush of panic. A nurse came running with a defibrilator and almost fell over as she saw a well defined, half naked man staring at her, as if he had been waiting for her all along.<br/><br/>"Oh my God. Sorry... I just though with the amount of... I'll get the doctor."<br/>"Yeah, you do that..." came the dry response...<br/><br/>Forgotten Wolf 04-07-2009 12:39 PM<br/>â€œSir, the other one has awakened.â€<br/><br/>The commander nodded, â€œGoodâ€¦ Have the doctors give them their stories and then have them brought to the briefing room. Letâ€™s try and do this quickly though, thereâ€™s the possibility that some of our men were captured in that attack and Iâ€™d like to change locations as quickly as possible.â€<br/><br/>â€œUnderstood sir.â€<br/><br/>***********************************************<br/><br/>The doctor came in to see â€˜Charlieâ€™ after a few minutes and went about professionally getting his chart before speaking to the confused man. â€œGlad to see you are awake Mr. Kovac, we thought you would be out longer. You took a decent blow to the head which we know caused you to become horribly disoriented, and we were forced to heavily sedate you for a while because you were threatening the well being of others with your abilitiesâ€¦ Do you remember what happened?â€<br/><br/>The doctor listened to Charlieâ€™s reply before letting out one of those sighs that say â€˜I was afraid of thisâ€™. â€œLooks like that hit did more damage than we thoughtâ€¦ I guess I should try and bring you up to speed then. Your part of a special black ops unit which deals with dangerous supernaturals and works to keep there existence out of the normal citizenâ€™s eyes. Currently you are in Solace and from what I understand you were injured in a recent raid that went bad.â€ The doctor stopped to let the man absorb all this, when someone knocked on the door frame of the room and gestured for the doctor to come over.<br/><br/>The doctor puts the chart back before following the other gentleman out into the hallway. Though there voices were kept down enough that Xavier/Charlie couldnâ€™t hear what they were saying, the tone of voice used indicated they were probably arguing over something. In time though the arguing ended and the doctor returned with some annoyance on his face. â€œIâ€™m afraid that they want you back on active duty despite your current condition.â€ The doctor shakes his head at the notion, â€œYouâ€™ll find a uniform for you in the closet and there will be a gentleman outside the door who will lead to where you need to goâ€¦â€ With his final words, doctor leaves the room to tend to other patients that he could handle.<br/><br/>Else where in another room, a similar seen played out with Jack and with both men they werenâ€™t really given a choice in the matter.<br/><br/>************************************************** **************<br/><br/>The CO of the Solace TFV forces waited patiently in the briefing room for both men to arrive. Both were probably a bit confused to their whole situation and the fact that they were being put back into the field despite their â€˜memory lossâ€™. â€œGentlemen, please take a seat. I am aware of your conditions but unfortunately things are growing worse by the minute and we cannot afford to keep you out of duty to recover. Here this might help clear up a few things.â€ He slides them each a folder contain basic information regarding the different supernatural entities they expect to run into in Solace as well as an overview of their service records in TFV that the intelligence department was able to put together to further the deception. â€œBoth of you have special abilities that are rare to exist and even rarer to be accepted into our organization, it was probably this reason why you two were targeted specifically during the last raid. We were lucky to get you both out of there though it looks like the â€˜magesâ€™ might have gotten in your heads a little. Please be careful next time you encounter any ENE because a lot have the ability to mess with your minds and memories. Unfortunately we donâ€™t have much time for questions or answers; we suspect some of our men were captured during the raid that put you two into the infirmary. So we are preparing to move locations but if they are able to find us before weâ€™re ready to move then weâ€™ll need every able body to help defend the base.â€<br/><br/>The officer looked seriously at the two men with a somewhat grim appearance as well, â€œI know this is sudden but a lot of lives are at stake here. Not just this base but if we fail this entire city might be lost and who knows what might happen after that. I hope those files will answer enough of your questions until we have enough time and security to discuss this properlyâ€¦ Possibly see about you getting reassigned somewhere else or taken out of active duty till your memories return but for the moment we need everyone who can stand and fight.â€ The commander stands he looks at them before giving them a nod, â€œYouâ€™ve got a little time to review your files but once that time is up youâ€™ll need to leave them behind because of security issues. Someone will be along shortly to take you to the armory to get your equipment and place you into a unit for guard duty or assisting in the evacuation.â€ He walks out his on door leaving the two men in the room with just themselves and a folder telling them what they wereâ€¦ Hopefully the plan would work.