Chapter 16 - Showdown

Story by Children of Gaia on SoFurry

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#17 of Main Storyline - Children of Gaia - The Beginning...


As Frostbite rounded the corner towards the downward slope towards the gym with Deadeye in tow, the rest of the team hung right to the viewing room. The Leopard and fox stopped at a large cargo style door in which held a retinal scanner. She peered into the reader to activate the red laser designed to read the leopards retina. A loud beep sounded as the red light turned green in acknowledgement.

"Welcome to the Gym Celine Winters-Moreau," spoke an electronic voice as the door opens.

"Winters-Moreau?" the fox asked in confusion.

"Dr. Moreau found me just after Genecorp had killed my parents. He legally adopted me and paid the state government to keep the whole situation hush-hush."

As the two entered the currently large and bland white tiled room, The fox noticed the mirrored window in which would be the viewing room. He sighed a bit as he fiddled with the handle of his gun and his ballistic knife which was in a holster Professor Prozac had given him. He was visibly nervous. Frostbite on the other hand, stopped directly into the center of the room and gave the fox a smirk.

"Welcome to the Gym Deadeye, This is quite possibly the most advanced technology based training room in the world. It has holograms, adjustable climate control, and also the ability to simulate any sort of terrain known to mankind. This is where we normally train in scenarios that we can think of. Think of it as sort of like the Danger Room which was made wildly popular by the X-Men."

"Who?" the fox asked with a strange look on his face, "You must realize I've lived in the Siberian countryside for most of my life and know very little about anything outside of that."

"Fine, I'll show you than... Hard Drive? Simulation 28B."

Upon command, the entire room slowly began to get colder and colder, to Siberian style temperatures, the floor and walls began to melt away to make it look like the countryside of Siberia in Russia. Desolate and cold. The fox did not react to the sudden changes, but did notice his now visible breath as they stood in the very wilds that he was familiar with.

"Cold enough for you fox?" she asked

"I missed this cold..." he said plainly.

The fox kept his eyes on Celine as she began to focus her powers around her body. Right before his eyes, he noticed her hair and body were slowly beginning to crystallize. Ice began to until her entire flesh was now fully engulfed in the hardened shell. She gave another smirk to the fox as he watched in awe.

"Don't go easy on me fox..." she said

"Same to you," he replied.

Inside the viewing room, the team watched on as the two squared off, staring each other down. The only one who was truly nervous was Sergei, knowing full well about Fox's "issues" and inexperience in battle. Everyone else was a little relaxed. Warmonger seemed especially pleased with the match up

"I got Five Bucks on the Frosty," he finally spoke up.

"Aaron!" scolded a fairly aggravated Honoo. "Everyone knows this is not a contest, this is a test of the fox's abilities."

"C'mon!" he exclaimed. "We all know what this is. The deal is no one has ever been able to a hand upon Frostbite during this test, I think the fox has what it takes to end Celine's streak."

"Maybe so," she said with the same tone. "This is not the time to be betting on such trivial pursuits."

"I'll take that bet..." Geist spoke up. This caused Sergei to shoot a look of surprise to the rabbit.

"He's good yeah," Warmonger replied. "I only saw him take down a paper target, and they don't fight back."

"True," Geist shot back with a smirk directed to Sergei, "But there's one thing you're not factoring in... He's Spetznaz."

Sergei looked back with a smile. Warmonger merely shook his head at the two, feeling left out of what he thought was an inside joke.

Back in the room, the fox slowly encircled the snow leopard both his hands on either of his weapons. They eyed each other as the fox eyed her, a grand smirk on her face as she watched him. The tension could be cut with a knife as the fox tried to determine a proper plan of attack. Suddenly, Deadeye suddenly broke into a sprint, pulling both of his weapons out and dashing towards Frostbite as fast as he could.

She merely turned to face the fox and extended her hand and created a wall of ice between the two of them at the last possible second. The fox was quick to react as he ran up the wall and pulls off a backflip. He turned the safety off and began firing at the ice until there was a big enough hole for him to shoot his ballistic knife through. She focused her power and froze knife with her powers. The knife became to heavy to keep it's trajectory and fell to the ground.

As she was distracted, Deadeye tumbled around the wall and unloaded several more rounds towards her. She kept her cool as she used her powers to again block the bullets without missing a beat. When Deadeye ran out of bullets, she shot an ice beam at the fox to try and freeze him. He quickly jumped over the beam and rolled back behind the ice wall that was created a moment ago to reload his gun and balistic knife.

"I'll have you know Fox, no one has landed a blow on me even to this day. I look to continue that streak today."

"I doubt that..." he said aloud, "You may have powers, but you're making mistakes.

"Really? and what mistake am I making?"

"For one, you're letting me reload, you should never allow your opponent that chance."

"Like it's going to help you."

Deadeye suddenly popped out from behind the wall and attempted to land a kick to the Frostbites face, she easily dodged the attack and landed a hard punch to the solar plexus, stopping him almost immediately in his tracks. The fox landed hard on the ground, coughing uncontrollably to try and regulate his breathing. The blow to the fox felt like he got hit with a brick being hurled at him at full speed.

"See Fox, I was expecting that from you."

Inside the viewing room, Sergei shoved everyone out of the way and placed his hands on the controls console as he watched. He was helpless to stop the fighting, if it wasn't for Geist putting a hand on his shoulder, he would be crashing through the window to save his friend.

"Wait for it..." Geist said, as if to he could read the bear's mind.

As Frostbite slowly crept closer to Deadeye, she kneels down and continued smirking as she watched the fox finally catch his breath. "You think you're a soldier? You're no soldier... A soldier would have been able to take that hit."

"What makes you think I didn't?"

Before frostbite could react, The fox spun around to lay down on his back and fired one final round at the snow leopard. The bullet ricocheted off of Frostbite's forehead. A stunned look came over her face as the force of the bullet forced her head back. She couldn't believe what had just happened. She actually got hit. This was the first time this happened.

"Like I said, you made too many mistakes. You let your pride blind you from my strategy."

She lowered her head to look at the fox angrily, "You... tricked me!"

"All warfare is based upon deception. I suggest reading Art of War by Sun Tzu when you get the chance."

She couldn't say another word, She merely stood up and began to leave. Though on the whole, his hacking was an act, he still was in a lot of pain and was slow to stand up. As the leopard stormed out, She was passed by Sergei, Geist and Warmonger, running over to help the fox up.

"Fox!" Sergei yelled. "Are you ok?

"I'm gonna be heavily bruised, but otherwise ok."

Geist had a coy smile slide over his face as he stared at Warmonger to his right. The rabbit slowly extended his hand in front of the husky After a while, he realized this and shot a glance to the rabbit. With a roll of his eyes and a sigh, he reached into his pocket to pull out a five dollar bill, and slammed it into his hand.

"Pleasure doing business with ya Aaron." he said as he gripped the money in his hand.

"How did you know that Fox would win in battle Rabbit?" Sergei then suddenly asked.

"I didn't," he replied simply before turning towards the door. Just before he left the room though, he glanced over his shoulder and gave that coy little smile once again to the bear, "I just had Faith..."