Starbound: A Space Odyssey 40 Hangover 8

After a few seconds of silence, they started to loudly cheer and chant. There were more than 200 hundred people inside the at the audience, the loud sound caused by them stunned John.

He looked around and saw that they were cheering for... Him.

John regained his focus after the Apex started to break free from his restrictive move.

"You better give up." John kindly advised the Apex under him.

"f.u.c.k you!" He started to struggle even harder and angrily curse John at the same time.

"Alright then..." John's voice became cold, "I didn't want to cause you more pain then what was needed, but... You rejected my kind advise."

John was on top of the Apex while using his left and to restrict the Apex's arm behind own back.

John resolutely moved his right arm and swiftly got hold of the Apex's other arm. John used the other arm constrain the Apex's neck between his own arm's forearm and biceps, making the Apex unable to breathe and suffocate.

The struggle became more intense and beads of sweat appeared at John's forehead as he kept holding the Apex on the position.

The Apex was very stubborn and didn't give up as John wanted, so he applied more force and started to suffocate the Apex even more.

Soon enough the Apex stopped struggling and remained unmoved in the ground. John released him and got up.

The judge of the match was a middle-aged Hylotl, he climbed up at the Arena and hastily went toward the Apex.

The judge a.n.a.lyzed the Apex and once he confirmed that he had only fainted and wasn't at life's risk, he stood up and walked toward John.

"We have a winner!" The judge took John's hand and lifted it on the air, "Fighter 0368 knocked out his opponent and now he can continue on the tournament. Stay tuned to see him at round 2, folks."

After the judge finished he allowed John to walk away. He looked around and saw that there were quite a few people cheering for him. He amicably waved his hand toward the audience and walked away.

The moment he returned to his partic.i.p.ant room he was met with the sight of Lenny casually lying in the sofa, loudly snoring, with a bottle of whiskey in his hand.

John angrily kicked Lenny's leg. Before John's leg was able to touch Lenny's, he suddenly lifted his leg, dodging John's kick.

"You missed..." Lenny lazily opened his eyes and made a smug face.

John just rolled his eyes and found a chair to sit down, "It worked. I was able to use the... Bullet Time."

"That was just the first round... We need to see if you activate, deactivate at will and see if you can repeatedly activate it, as well."

"Ahhhh..." John sighed, "It is going to be rough."

"Here..." Lenny took something from the cabinet and threw toward John.

John caught it and curiously looked. It was a protein bar. Something that was small but capable of making the person who ate it feel completely full. It has most of the vitamins, protein, etc, need to keep someone alive for a day.

"You haven't eaten something yet, right? You gonna need it."

"Thanks" John opened and ate the bar.

"Your next opponent is a Human." Lenny pointed at the Human figure in the screen of the holovision.

John looked over and saw that the channel 8, Arena 7.

John a.n.a.lyzed the Human. It wasn't big as the Apex, it has about the same size of John, but it was clear that he was a lot more burly, his limbs were at least twice as thick as Johns limbs. The strength he demonstrated by simple knocking over his Avian opponent with three movements shows his ability.

Even from the holovision, John was able to feel the piercing glare, and dangerous aura coming from that man.

It was at this moment that John's head started to hurt. The pain was excruciating.

"Argh..." John clutched his head between his hands.

"Are you okay." Lenny stood up and walked toward John.

"My head..." John gritted his teeth, but it didn't stop him from moaning in pain.

"Looks like your mind isn't able to deal with huge amount of information to process in just a small amount of time when you activate the power, Bullet Time."

The pain stopped shortly after, but John's whole body was covered in sweat.

"To make it hurt less when you use it, you have to make your mind get used to it."

"That means..."

"You are going to use the power constantly until you don't have the side effects."

"f.u.c.k..." John trembled. He didn't want to go through that pain again.

"Hehehe..." Lenny creepily laughed, "I told you were going to need this." Lenny showed to John a bottle filled with alcoholic beverage, "This might help numb the pain in your head."

John reluctantly reached and grabbed the bottle.

As the brownish liquid entered John's mouth, the heating sensation and the strong taste a.s.saulted his tongue and throat.

John started to cough.

"d.a.m.n." Lenny amazedly stared at John. "You sure have guts to try something like drinking so much and so fast, whiskey."

"This... Is simply horrible!" John placed the bottle at the table at his side. "I don't know how you can like this thing."

"Yep. This little thing is too strong for you." Lenny too the bottle away from John's table, cleaned the opening of the bottle and started to drink.

John strangely looked at Lenny. "That's my bottle you know."

"Of course it is." Lenny swiftly finished the bottle. "You wasn't going to drink the rest of it anyway."

*Burp*

Lenny loudly burped.

"But it worked, wasn't it?" Lenny threw a glance at John.

"Worked?" John suddenly realized that the throbbing pain from his head had started to reduce. "Yeah... The leftover pain had vanished."

"If in confusion, drink alcohol. It is almost always the answer to any problem." Lenny's omega 'brand' (The Novakid's face) s.h.i.+ne with a very strong light as he started to preach.

John just rolled his eyes over Lenny's preach about the usage of alcoholic beverage.