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Pip's letter had told him that he would be transported via helicopter to his next fight in the mountains. What hadn't been said in his letter was what it meant for him to be fighting ???, nor did it explain that all of the fighters would be traveling by the same means.

That second point meant a big surprise was waiting for the boy.

Pip would walk out the front doors of the hotel, still a little damp from his shower, to find ten helicopters resting on the grass in front. Almost all had two separate names on the chauffeur signs held before them, except for Pip's.

His name was all by itself.

All alone.

He liked the thought of not being surrounded by evil spectators for this round, but he wasn't very excited about all of the mystery surrounding his next match-up.

It was...

Ominous.

Pip would wave to the pilot, showing identification to prove that this teenager really was the fighter "Pip" and then they would both climb aboard. The youngster got a headset, but soon found that his was mostly for sound dampening. The pilot wasn't in the mood for chatting, and didn't know anything about Pip's fight anyways. He had said something really strange when Pip asked about it: "s**t slides downhill, not information."

...?

It was true in its own way... but he said it with a smirk and a wink like he was passing along some great wisdom. Most things slid downhill... why was poop special?

And that left the boy even more confused as they set down on the plateau.

The blond teenager would zip up his leather jacket halfway and stuff his hands into his pockets, ignoring the piece of paper there that the nice nurse had left her phone number on (only so much confusing stuff could be dealt with at a time) and would slip on his leather gloves.

With that he would begin calming his thoughts as much as possible. They still riled, but enough less that he could draw forth strength from the mental realm. Use powers that normal people couldn't use. If the boy could comprehend the irony of such a fragile mind wielding such immense power...

Well.

From there he would wait for ??? to show.

[/shitpost?]

Pip would look up, fingering the phone number in his pocket and give a start, panic gripping his chest.



A Doctor!

He looked a little different from the doctors that Pip was used to. Different from the ones that had been so cold and mean and analytical and had hurt him with their needles and examinations and orderlies.

This one was even scarier.

He was tattooed, he was wearing eyeliner... This Doctor looked like a punk-rocker, meaner version of that which gripped Pip's throat with this earth-shattering fear. Pip didn't like doctors. And this man combined doctors with terrible, gang-banging, chain-swinging meanness that Pip took a few seconds before realizing that this - man - was talking to him.

Pip would take a swallow to clear the fear from his throat.



He didn't even let his black-haired opponent finish his introduction.

Pip would open up his mind to try and catch this lab-coat wearing scalpel jockey by surprise just as he had done to his previous opponent. He would extend his consciousness to the backside of the Zooll's white collar and tug. The "man" would still be standing at this point, and so it should be really easy to throw him off balance, especially with the planned tug being so much higher than the average male's center of gravity.

Pip reacted pretty much off of instinct, but it could mean a nasty tumble for Zooll if he was too busy chatting up the mental patient. If he was too busy thinking about the money that he was getting for this fight. If he was worried about his eyeliner running, or if he was too busy thinking about spinning that scalpel.

Pretty much... Zooll was going for a tumble if he was just too busy at all.

The man was everything that made Pip uncomfortable, and to make matters worse he could apparently see Pip's surprise attacks coming. He was a riffraff surgeon that knew when Pip was trying to use his psionic skills. Pretty much the most uncomfortable thing that Pip could describe or imagine was now standing...

Wait.

No more frozen child.

The teenager was fighting. He needed to fight, and so his paralyzing fear could wait. He wanted to vomit for the second time in this tournament, but he held it back and forced himself to move.

The first thing that he would do would be to adjust how the mental extension was acting. His opponent may know what Pip was doing, but that didn't mean that Pip couldn't use it as a distraction, or if it worked, then maybe something more.

He really had no plan at this point.

Pretty much just don't fall off of a cliff.

...

And this strategy was what his opponent had called clever.

Pip was near the center and so there wouldn't be very much distance between the two, but he would curve his mental "hand" so that instead of grabbing for where the man's collar would have been, he would aim to grab hold of the tail of the lab-coat that was flaring behind the gothic, charging... man.

Hopefully this would trip him up as Pip removed his now-gloved hands from his jacket pockets, his right hand having one of his pairs of brass knuckles in its grip. His left hand would slide down to his left hip to grab hold of the cylinder from its sheath, gripping it tightly and spreading out his stance to prepare him for the...

Pip's opponent paused in his charge to show off his malicious grin and swing his weapon back towards Pip's mental extension and...





Ever stretch out a bungie chord until it was fairly tight, and then either let it go or cut it? It snaps back on whatever anchor is strongest. The side of the cut that was attached to Zoll's coat did indeed dissipate, but the side that Pip had stretched out from his own consciousness would snap back like a bungie chord and strike dead center in Pip's mind.

"Ow!"

Pip's right hand would come up to his forehead and his eyes would squeeze shut instinctually, but he would have the forethought not to bash the inside of the brass knuckles into his face. He would simply hold his right hand over his temple and his left would come up as well, still gripping the steel cylinder that he had drawn.

When the pain had subsided and only a dull ringing remained he would look back at his opponent, and listen to him rant. And he was right. He probably knew more about Pip then anybody else in all of Gaia Primus. The boy actually had never learned why he had been expelled from the hospital. He hadn't ever thought about it.

He just... wasn't there anymore. He was here instead.

The doctor wanted to talk?

Pip would look up to the helicopters circling around the plateau before answering. He wasn't here to entertain though. He could talk. He could use the time to help him bring forth some more energy. And of course... Talk...

"I...

Was approached by the old...

Administrator.

He said that his hospital was running out of money.

They need the prize money from this tournament.

...

To keep the hospital alive.

...

To help the nice nurses keep their jobs..."

Every pause in his speech would be accompanied by either a shake of his head or else a long swallow, or possibly another squeeze of his eyes shut. He was definitely giving off the impression of a mental patient, if this doctor had ever actually had to deal with one. Having trouble putting words together, seeming to argue with himself mid-sentence... His posture would even help out, his shoulders hunching in, his head ducking down slightly, and his hands leaving his head and instead crossing in front of his chest.

"I'm just...

I'm helping."

His blue eyes would be staring at this doctor through his now drying bangs in case he wanted to rush the youth while he had gotten Pip talking. But he didn't really expect that.

This doctor was going to let Pip know before he attacked.

It wasn't mean or malicious. It was just because doctors liked letting people know what they were about to do.

Pip knew that some of what was being said to him was wrong. That this man had misinterpreted many of the things that he had seen Pip do, be it in person, or possibly through cameras, but the boy didn't know how to go about correcting him.

Forming strategies?

Pip struggled to make such things happen. Most of the time he just acted on instinct and hoped that he didn't get hurt too badly. And the hospital hadn't been too bad. The examinations, getting beat up by the orderlies, the needles, the interrogations, the shock therapy. Those were all things that he disliked, but every single one of the nurses had had a smile on, so it must have been a nice place. When he was allowed to see other patients not many complained.

It had to have been nice...

He was helping to keep that alive.

...

And even if the man said that he was talking as a man and not a doctor... he was still a doctor. Other mean old men in white coats had taken that same approach with the youth to try to get him to open up.

"Composed?"

Pip would ask. His body language was anything but composed. He was hunched in on himself the same way that a rape victim would be immediately after their attack. But Pip's "attack" had been at the age of twelve. That's when his psyche had started being violated. And his never ended.

Even now he had a vague sense of the man before him. Pip felt like an insect pinned down on a tenth grade biology table, surrounded by curious eyes wondering just what made this bug tick. That was how Pip felt when looked at by this man before him, and his introverted body language would show how uncomfortable this made him.

Then...

The boy would be silent for a moment or two, his eyes, mostly hidden by his bangs would be shooting left and right, as if the answer to this question were written on the rocks atop this plateau.

If a tree fell with nobody around, did it make noise?

He had never had to deal with a tough question like this. He had to deal with "How do you feel"s and "What did you dream about"s... Nothing ever like this.

"Squirrels hear it. Squirrels lose their home. Bunnies get squished, and birds fly away from the loud Crash."

And, in fear of that being a wrong answer, Pip would curl inward even more. Wrong answers were never punished... but he also didn't like the way that people looked at him after he gave them.

So this man was just another mean old doctor, trying to hurt Pip. Taught the teenager for starting to believe anything else. Lab-coats meant Meanies. Zoll would try to launch a surprise attack towards the youth, but strangely the boy was already reacting.

That was because of the way that Pip fought. He wasn't used to distance fighting. He wasn't used to polearms. What he was used to was getting up close and then seeing what was going down. He usually got hurt doing that, but then... it was fighting.

Who didn't get hurt?

Pip's arms were crossed in front of his chest, and, more importantly, there were only two people on this plateau, meaning that the sudden spike in aggression that he felt from Zoll was all the warning that he needed. The man had tried to surprise a psychic... And people thought that Doctors were supposed to be smart.

So the sudden burst forward from Zoll came as no surprise to Pip, but his reaction might very well surprise the lab-coat wearing punker.

Pip would slide forwards, keeping his arms crossed for the moment, and watch as the polearm came in towards him. The man had aimed to catch the boy at a distance of six feet, but with the youth closing the gap, the polearm would strike home with only four feet between them. Had the doctor been facing an opponent that didn't feel other's emotions he might have succeeded in his surprise attack, but as it sat, he would instead be striking Pip's mid-ribs with the shaft of his weapon.

It hurt, it might have even broken a rib, but it wouldn't double him over. He was used to taking blunt force trauma from the security at his old hospital, and this was no different. Well, it was different in that now Pip had a layer of leather and chain mail in between the strike and his flesh. Chain mail didn't do much against blunt trauma, but it was another layer to help him out.

It would be at this point that Pip's crossed arms would come into effect. The boy's right hand (on the left side of his body) would close down on the shaft of the doctor's weapon with as firm a grip as he could manage, and then he would make that grip firmer. He would use his stored up mental powers and force them inside of his closed grip, making the chances of removing the scalpel from his grasp much slimmer. The added pressure inwards should be damn near crushing the shaft, much less helping the youth hold on.

Of course, the lad only had one hand on the staff versus Zoll's two, but this wasn't meant as a way to take the weapon away. No, this was more to make sure that the doctor didn't manage to run away from the patient. Pip's left arm would uncross violently, a slight bend to the elbow and a snap of the wrist would bring his steel baton (twenty six inches) to bear, already mid-swing towards Zoll's left temple.

This would be as sneaky as Pip would ever get. Keeping his baton collapsed until it was in mid-swing and then letting the momentum of the swing itself unfurl the bludgeoning weapon. Hopefully the squeeze on the scalpel would be distraction enough to let Pip's strike land home, and if his aim was true (not a guarantee with trying to aim it before it was fully extended) then Zoll would probably be reeling for more then a second or two.

Which would give Pip enough time to see if he was coughing up blood after that strike to his side.

At least, thanks to his wild hair, no close-up shots from those helicopters would catch the tears brimming in his eyes.

He wouldn't answer this question from his opponent. The spike in pain from his side would not be something that helped conversation.

Ah. This was getting more into Pip's area of expertise. But he still had a grip on a weapon that he didn't understand, and didn't want to be swung at him anymore.

He would feel the impact with Zoll's left arm as the vibrations found their way up his own left. These weapons were not meant to be nice, and even with the awkward way that it had been swung, the tattooed doctor would be lucky if he got away from such a strike without a break in his bone.

And the youth wouldn't be stopping there.



Zoll would be pushing on his weapon with his right hand in hopes of slamming Pip on his a** and therefore making Pip cut open his side on the head of the Giant Scalpel which was behind him. A good plan, except for Pip's current momentum, and the fact that he was always up for getting closer to his opponent.

Pip's swing from his left arm would continue through, and Zoll's shove with his right arm would only help add to the force behind the boy's counter-clockwise spin. That's right, maintaining his grip with his right hand, he would spin in a circle to bring his baton to bear once again, though with the closing distances it would be more likely that Zoll would be receiving the butt end this time around. Both of the men's right arms would help speed up the spin by driving the polearm away from Zoll, with the youth also trying to force the spear in the same direction as his opponent.

As for the left-handed shove, that forearm would probably still be reeling from the initial blow from the baton, and it would be trying to push against a spinning object. The most likely outcome would be that Zoll's left arm would wind up traveling to the doctor's own right side, due to the inability to add shoving force to a spinning body.

This mean man would still not get an answer. All the answer that Pip wanted to give to a man in a lab-coat was the steel butt of his baton to his temple. The man's head would crack just like an egg.





[/Ooc: Didn't proof read this, hope that it makes sense.]