The Zombie Tournament

Act 11 : New Guy of Tonado

“Hey, Gunnar, wake up!”

A blinding light was wavering above. Zeno Gunnar’s vision was waning away, yet happened to be stirred in someone’s order to keeping his sanity on the horizon. He kept a small string of memory over his latest struggle for the journey’s destination. The young knight was fallen under a threatening order of Keris, one steel that produced a myth. Overbearing ability of swordsmanship would be less useful than being immobile before that fabled weaponry. The steel’s thundering speed has been decimated many forms of enemies along its path.

But, he does alive, so how could that happen?

“This man sucks a beat, you know that? Why do we have to save him?”

Zeno Gunnar listened on a fuzzy complaint of a man. He was knitted a failure of being a righteous knight before, and his imminent death could be a streak of karma afterwards. Deino Gunnar was never faltered towards his own determination to be noble in righteous battle. It was immoral for a knight to stay behind the enemy’s back during a heated brawl, unless their enemy has deployed similar intention to do so onwards, said the man before death consumed his humane side shortly after.

“Hey, wake up! Don’t be dead on me, ya dingus!”

(pat-pat)

“-Where am I?”

The young knight has been awaken.

There are numerous rolls of bandages all over the place. On the other hand, He perceives many other things that were foreign for his mind, but many more of them were actually familiar to his past. Zeno Gunnar could see Rio’s wagon in a few centimeters ahead of the cupboard. A number of clicks to the small carrier, elastic zombie’s severed limbs has been preserved within a bucket of formaldehyde, staying side-by-side with many forms of limbs on the right areas of the operation table.

“Father?”

Deino gunnar was laying down on the bed. The four-legged zombie has separated both of its arms, indeed, yet most of them were returned to its glory.

All of sudden, someone offered him a shake on the right hand, “Hello, young man. Welcome to our survivor’s club.” He said, smiling bright towards the mysterious personality and his confusion at the time. In Zeno Gunnar’s first impression of the man, his white beard has given a soothing atmosphere to encounter. Two medals were instilled over his chest, marking a sense of captain’s aura inside the room.

Until Zeno Gunnar grasps his panties-fashioned bottom, which was destructive enough to eliminate the young knight’s adamant notion of the person before him.

“...”

The mysterious person was seemingly known of the man’s disturbed look under the shirt. However, besides than pointing at the issue directly, He shrugged on the young knight’s hesitant posture,“What’s the matter? Having allergy over a simple code of honor?”

After a short period of consideration, Zeno has decided to accept the unknown person’s welcoming grip with a slightly-curled up grin on his face.

“Hi?”

Zeno Gunnar could feel a rush of tension on the other person’s palm. It is a condemnation for a knight to ever lose in a battle of wits during a gentleman’s handshake. Nevertheless, despite being an old man, his wrinkled veins could stuck in-par with the young knight’s resilience.

As a result, a small warfare of conqueror’s might has begun within their compact posture of agreement.

(grip-grip)

After a number of minutes elapsed, the old man has decided to call it even. He withdraws, now with complete assurance of the stranger’s situation at the time.

“You’re strong, I see.” He commented, masking his defeat with a pat on the back,“That woman, Tanya Rushdi, has recommended your presence because of Maxim Dupont’s reference.”

He pointed at the blonde-haired woman across the operation table. She was on her way to appraise the elastic zombie’s indication of rarity. As always, her inquisitiveness towards unusual zombie’s parts has exceeded common sense, therefore rising Zeno Gunnar’s recognition of her immediately afterwards.

Shortly after a brief introduction, The mysterious man apprehended his thought with a short turnover to his face.

“Is that true? You’ve been appointed by Maxim Dupont?” He asked in rather-insisted fashion. The mysterious man’s open-hearted salutation was nothing but a courtesy, apparently, as everything turned against Zeno Gunnar out of nowhere. 

“What should I say? No, I’m not.”

“Don’t be silly, Zeno Gunnar. Our mate down there has described about you so high, you know?” The man reasoned,”Just kidding on that one, though. Name’s Juno Rumondor, by the way.”

“Then again, welcome to Tonado’s fighting club!”

(flick!)

In a flick of Juno Rumondor’s finger, a plaque on the top of their cupboard goes lightened up. Maxim Dupont’s name was assigned under the badly-written name of his company. There are a lot of blood pattern across the plank’s metallic edge, with a pair of assault rifle’s engravings in-between the O and N’s inscription.

On the other way around, the intensity of beaming light’s illumination has exposed many of the man’s underwear at the lower space of their cupboard. Zeno Gunnar has seen the old man’s favorite green color of a short-pants, as he was wearing those at the moment, but such overwhelming amount of the similar-patterned panties has making Zeno Gunnar went perturbed in an instant.

(flick!)

Realizing of the problem ahead, Juno Rumondor quickly turned off the lights once more.

“Oops, I have to apologize for the technical issue.” He muttered, before bending down to make amends of the mistake,”I’ll have to move that stash sooner or later.”

“We’re gonna moving, too, right? It doesn’t bother me to leave those bad collection of yours behind, old man.” Tanya Rushdi chirped.

“Well, I don’t wanna upset our next intruder, so...”

“They won’t be.”

“Let me finish my sentence!” He barked.

“Go ahead.”

Even though Tanya Rushdi allowed him to continue, He suddenly scratched his hair in puzzling moves,”If you tolerate myself that way, It makes me-“

“Stop, old man. I wanna ask a few things with you.”

Zeno Gunnar immediately interrupted both of them in advance. Out of their own cognizance, the young knight has already inspected his father’s remains. Zellot of Minopia has attached a shred of metal on the hill of the beast’s arm muscle. It has enhanced Deino Gunnar’s natural prowess into manifold of capacity. All he was required for using such technology are a constant usage of the reddened-eyes mode, and everything will be settled in a matter of seconds.

Unless, none of them was in sight of the man. It was removed from its once-determined location to improve.

“Where is my father’s plate? Where are you dropping those at?” He roared, “Those plates were expensive!”

“About that....”

Juno Rumondor aimed his index finger to the trash,”Remember Sam Vratili of Gorand Industries?”

His name unsettled Zeno Gunnar’s own recall to the less-desirable battle of late. He was drown in a bask of wrath for being so reckless in their fiery exchange. No wonder, His father’s body was dipping in a rout by Sam Vratili’s loyal beasts. Of course, Deino Gunnar’s living dead condition was thriving to this day, but a glimpse of losing a dearest family right in the face was much more degrading in his morality at the time.

Before Zeno Gunnar could respond to the query, Juno Rumondor answered his own rhetorical question right away,”Zellot has been recruited for Gorand, that’s why.” He said.

After that, He shoved his left hand to the trash for retrieving a pair of iron plate that Zeno Gunnar had mentioned.

“This is their mark of identification. Zellot Prischnell has become a famous person in the blacksmith’s universe, and that’s their reason on recruiting him in the shadows.” Juno Rumondor throws the metal-plate to the young knight for his own self-inspection,”You can tell by the small indent in the back side of the metal, and this is why a seasoned veteran of Tonado would never resolve their problems at Zellot.”

Just like the old man said, A small incision of three-layered triangle could be seen inside. As Zeno Gunnar puts his fingers onto the marks, he could feel a texture was embedded within its engravings.

“This is their receptors, perhaps?” Zeno Gunnar questioned.

For the answer, Juno Rumondor replied it with a nod.

“Yes, it’s the main reason for them to attack you so soon, you see.” He answered, “We’ll have to expect a group assembled for us, but we’re never know for sure-“

(Boom-Boom)

Out of the blue, the three of them heard an abrupt explosion arrived from somewhere. At a glance, It was developed below their feet, but neither of them have a clear explanation of the matter. Shortly after, the burst follows with a jolt of electricity down the room’s floor, which was tingling their own bottoms by the immediate impact of the current.

In the wake of such atrocity, it also reminds Zeno Gunnar of another issue that had been forgotten for some time. When Zeno Gunnar casted his attention to the ship’s captain, a drip of perspiration appears from Juno Rumondor’s forehead.

“Is that Sanna?” He muttered, then looking towards Juno Rumondor in his frown,”Have you been hiding my brother out from my sight?”

“That’s Tanya, not me.” He pointed a blame to the blonde-haired woman over the bucket of limbs’ side,”I don’t know if your brother has elemental power at all.”

The young knight then leered towards her at once,”What are you implying on my brother this time, nerd?” He snarled,”You have implanted something on him, haven’t you?”

Zeno Gunnar impending temper has frightened everyone inside the room. Being a man with so many powers and battlefield skills, nobody would dare to incite his anger at most. There were other reasons for Zeno Gunnar to be a capable person in a brawl in natural sense, but the young knight’s inclination to burst has been one of the primary forte of swordsmanship on the battlefield sometimes.  

“He...he- I’m trying to put him to trance again, but his spine has reacted and considered me a danger downstairs.” Tanya Rushdi was stuttered in her excuse,”I don’t do anything harmful to him, I swear!”

(Boom!)

There’s another form of explosion derived from afar. In the midnight, a survivor has to battle against a bunch of speedster’s strays, so a small take of outburst was common to be heard in the first day of their game.

Yet, Zeno Gunnar’s keen sense has told him of something different. It was an imminent assault from a person he was acquainted with, and the wounds of the past was tingling down his feet.

(tap-tap-tap)

At once, a man with his zombie running down from the stairs, coming towards them in a rush. As Zeno Gunnar puts a consideration to the living dead on the rear, His sniper-rifle head has made a thousand form of question into the young knight’s mind.

“Gorand’s company is nearby. We have to escape.”