He stops a foot short of landing a hit before Blurry waves his hand. Black smoke materializes in between them, swiping at Josh and knocking him into the ring's roped perimeter. Josh gasps, his chest burning where the black smoke touched him.
Smoke curls from the handprint burned into Josh's arm, and the front of his sweatshirt is singed. Blurry still hasn't moved a muscle.
The black smoke forms around Blurry's hands, solidifying and taking the form of hooked claws, flickers of the dark material flickering in and out around where they end at his elbows. His eyes flash red, almost glowing.
"What the hell kind of power is that?" Josh mumbles under his breath, digging his bare feet into the ground.
There isn't enough space behind Blurry to teleport to, but he has to catch him off guard somehow. Josh pushes off the ropes and runs forward, closing his eyes to concentrate. When he opens them, he's suspended in the air above Blurry. From there, Blurry looks confused, forming a translucent black bubble around himself.
Josh's wings tuck themselves between his shoulder blades and he drops through a small opening in the bubble and onto the shoulders of his opponent, dragging his claws upward from the center of Blurry's chest to his shoulders. He barely gets a reaction out of him, just a simple grunt, before Blurry yanks him off by his hood, shoving him into the ground.
"Surprise mother fucker!"
Josh laughs, an oof leaving him when Blurry shoulders him in the chest. He grabs his arm and wraps his legs around Blurry's neck, lifted himself up with his wings and elbowing his head over and over again.
"Stop! Standing! There! You! Fucking! Creep!"
Blurry digs his fingers into Josh's thighs. The sudden stinging pains stun him with his arm raised, allowing the red-eyed man to throw him across the ring, his limp body skidding to a stop. Josh can't move, he can hardly breathe, but the bell rings again, and the round is over.
Blood trickles down Blurry's front in thick red lines, and he takes a stumbling step backward, falling into his chair. Despite all of the damage he'd taken, Josh sees that as a victory.
The two return to their corners of the ring to recover, Josh finally regaining power over his frozen body. Debby runs up to Josh, holding a water bottle and a first aid kit.
"You got him good for a low-level fighter," she says, smiling as she sets up her gear. "We might just win this if you keep it up."
She pours the water on his face, wiping any blood and soot away. Josh slumps into his chair as she cleans his arm. The burning pain finally hits him all at once when his adrenaline drops. Blurryface has somehow burned through both his sweatshirt and Josh's muscle, getting nearly to the bone.
He has to clench his jaw and grip one of the legs of the chair to stop from crying out as she digs the sewing needle in, quickly stitching him up. That's of the perks of having a friend who's also a healer; as long as it doesn't detach, she can heal just about anything.
"What the hell is this guy anyways?" He manages through his clenched teeth.
Debby presses a large wad of gauze to his arm and holds it down with medical tape. He can feel it go numb as her powers go to work. "Oh, didn't anyone tell you? He's a Goner."
"A Goner? No fucking way."
With the powers everyone was born with came different classes of those powers. There were four classes of people: Morphs, Catchers, Goners, and Neons. Catchers are the most common, with Neons and Morphs being rarer and Goner nearly nonexistent.
FIGHT CLUB
Start from the beginning
