The earth cascaded like an ocean.
Executioner automatics burst out of the soil, spears in hand, and charged as one towards the Supre. They ca from each direction, their numbers absurd, at least two-hundred of the bastards at a glance. So Esrelda had decided to send in so small fry, huh?
"Get this weak shit off !" the Supre growled, reaching for the erald wings on his back and tearing them away.
That, at least, stopped him from being sent flying back any further. The wings burst into individual feathers, zooming off into the crowd. Esrelda himself had vanished as well: he was clearly using the advance of these automatics to conceal his own movents.
Fine. These weaklings weren’t what the Supre had co here for, but getting rid of them wouldn’t take long.
He threw a punch -- demolishing the head of one of the Executioners the second it ca into range. The air pressure the blow created surged back through the crowd, sending countless more automatics flying off.
Hey, the Supre grinned, getting into it. I got a strike!
Laughing uproariously, he went to elbow another of the Executioners as it jumped in behind him -- only for the automatic to duck and avoid the blow. The others behind it moved, too, dodging the air pressure like a parting ocean.
The Supre frowned as the Executioner drove its spear upwards towards his jaw. It didn’t pierce the skin, of course, but sparks rained down as the automatic kept its weapon pressed against the sa point. The head of the spear was quickly rotating, the Supre noticed, like a drill.
He saw what they were going for, then. Lots of tiny hits, really quickly, to chip away at his defense.
Another spear slamd into his bare back, sending more sparks raining down. He destroyed that Executioner with a kick, but when he tried to dispatch the next one coming in, it simply leapt out of the way. Even as they were avoiding his attacks, more and more Executioners were coming in, driving their spears into his form, slowly wearing him down.
The Supre calmly considered his predicant. It wasn’t that these things were fast. They simply dodged before he started moving. In both cases, he’d managed to destroy one of the Executioners before the rest started dodging.
So kind of hive mind? The whole adapting to whatever took out the individual? Whatever. If that was the case, all it ca down to was a chance to show off.
He had more tricks than punches and kicks, after all. The Supre grinned.
"Excel Surge," he declared. "Earthsculpt Uriel!"
The ground beneath him -- and all around him -- shifted, forming countless solid spikes that impaled the Executioners in the imdiate area. Ten or twenty t their ends, twitching weakly as they were held aloft by the earth itself. The rest, though, just began swinging off the spikes as they continued to advance, adapting to the tactic.
The Supre’s eyes flicked around. "Excel Surge," he commanded. "Sunscorch Gabriel."
An invisible lens, hanging in the air above the Supre, filtering the sunlight coming down and amplifying it until it was a wave of deadly heat. The Executioners around him moved to dodge backwards -- but too late. Within seconds, their tal bodies were lting, cybernetic innards oozing out of the ss. The Supre himself was subject to the sa intense heat, but he remained unhard, even as the grass ignited beneath his feet.
Still, he continued to look around cautiously. With Gabriel, he’d created a periter around himself that the Executioners could not enter. They surrounded him from all sides, staring blankly. No doubt they’d switch tactics before long, and figure out a way around this, but until then he still had ti to think.
Esrelda had completely vanished. Most likely, he’d concealed himself within the crowd of automatics, waiting for his chance.
It was a good plan: even if the Supre unleashed an attack that destroyed all the Executioners at once, by doing so an opening would be created for just a mont. All Esralda had to do was wait.
The Supre cracked his fingers irritably. He hadn’t co here to play with toy soldiers. He’d co to feel his heart beat, to feel his blood pump, to feel his brain co alight with the survival drive.
You are strong, right, Zack? he narrowed his eyes. Don’t tell you need to do shit like this.
The Supre shook his head lightly, banishing the unthinkable -- that this fight would just be another disappointnt. It was no biggie. This guy just didn’t get it yet. He didn’t get this wasn’t the kind of fight the Supre wanted.
There’d be no point in explaining it to him. The Supre was better off demonstrating.
While he was using this supercharged Sunscorch Gabriel, he couldn’t use any other techniques from Badge of Honour. But that didn’t an he couldn’t use any other techniques at all. He took a deep breath, and his golden Aether crackled around him.
Aether ping.
The Supre restrained the range of his ping slightly -- he didn’t want to go too crazy -- limiting it to a diater of around fifty kiloters. As the wave of golden Aether reached that distance, he pulled it back into his body, then released it again. He repeated the process several tis, increasing the speed with each revolution, until his ping was blasting out and retracting several tis a second.
A heartbeat scanning the world.
It only took a second for the Supre to find what he was looking for. The distinctive shape of those green wings -- and more than that, the Aether coating the body they were attached to. The Supre recognised the texture of Esralda’s Aether well, like sand crumbling against inspection. There was no mistaking it.
"Excel Surge," he muttered, locking his gaze in the direction of his unseen adversary. "Earthsculpt Uriel."
The original Earthsculpt Uriel had granted its user the ability to manipulate the earth in several preset ways. However, once optimized by Excel Surge, it was a different beast entirely. The Supre could freely sculpt the ground around him for several kiloters, as if it were putty in his hands. All it took was the intent.
As the barrier of heat vanished, the Supre opened up massive pits beneath the waiting Executioners -- sending them hurtling down into the dark bowels of the planet. At the sa ti, he softened the platform he was standing on, granting it greater elasticity as it tilted in the direction of his target -- and then, like a child with a trampoline, he launched himself off it.
It took him only a second to reach his target. Almost in the sa instant he’d thrown himself forward, the Supre ground his leg into the earth to brake. Those erald wings filled his vision as he pulled his fist back…
…and then he hesitated.
That’s not Esrelda.
Those green wings were spread wide, yes -- but they were attached to just another one of the Executioner automatics, green Aether crackling up and down its form. It thrust its spear at the Supre’s face, and he quickly caught it in his teeth, shattering the polearm with the slightest bite.
It was obvious what Esrelda had done. He had attached the wings of Heartbeat Freedom to an Executioner so it would serve as a decoy, then infused the automatic with his own Aether to fool the Supre’s ping. Once he’d done that, he’d most likely cloaked himself, keeping himself hidden while the Supre pursued the dummy target.
The Supre grinned, eyes narrowing in glee as he swung his head around -- to watch as Esrelda darted in from between chunks of flying debris. His gaze was resolute, and his Aether was crackling around his palms once more.
Good, the Supre thought. You’re so good, Esralda. Just like that.
Esrelda lunged forward -- taking full advantage of the opening his little maneuver had created -- and planted his hands against the Supre’s chest.
"Heartbeat Shotgun," said Zachariah Esralda.
From such close range, and boosted by Heartbeat Freedom, it was sothing to behold. The landscape behind the Supre exploded, chunks of stone and soil flying up into the air. The man himself -- for the first ti in many years -- was forced to cough, and it was with delight that he saw blood co out with it.
That’s it, Zack, the Supre sighed with pleasure, looking down at the red dripping from his palm. Don’t bore . Don’t you dare fucking bore .
A second flurry of Heartbeat Shotguns hit the Supre from behind -- originating from the wings, now detached from the Executioner -- and the blow was enough to send him flying forwards towards Esrelda. This, too, had been part of Zachariah’s plan. As the Supre fell forward, the rebel thrust his tal fist forward, pouring a borealis of erald Aether into it.
The Supre’s eyes rolled up into his head. Do it…
That punch would have been enough to vaporize an ordinary person -- but as it slamd into the Supre’s face, propelled by a Shotgun from Esralda’s elbow, all it managed to do was shatter his nose. Even so, to bloody the nose of a god was no small accomplishnt. A wild grin of exhilaration spread across Zachariah Esralda’s lips as he ground his fist in further.
Yes. Yes, good. He was getting into it too.
The Supre swung his hand up, sculpting the earth once more -- sending a surge of spikes towards Esrelda. The man jumped back, barely avoiding the barrage, before twisting in the air to dodge a hand of stone that was closing in around him.
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"Yeah! Yeah!" the Supre roared, flicking his hand back and forth as he softened the ground beneath him.
It was best to make it as easily traversable as possible. The Supre had abilities that would allow him to fly, but he didn’t want to waste one of his slots on them. For the ti being, he’d remain on the ground, even as Esralda soared.
The feathered wings had zood past the Supre, reattaching to Esrelda’s back as he flew through the sky. With a mighty flap, he unleashed a gust of wind, extinguishing the flas that Sunscorch Gabriel had ignited earlier. For a brief mont, the two of them faced off, staring each other down.
"Is it good for you too?" the Supre asked, cracking his neck.
Esrelda scowled. "There’s nothing fun about this."
"What?" the Supre frowned.
Esrelda did not answer. Instead, he launched off the air again, zooming directly towards the Supre. As he flew, so of the feathers on his wings moved into his hands, forming a blade that the green man drew back.
The Supre considered the weapon: no doubt it would unleash a blast or blade of sound at the mont it made contact. No problem. There were counterasures for such an attack.
Taking a deep breath, the Supre spoke aloud: "Excel Surge! Heartbeat --"
He didn’t get the chance to finish. Before that last word could leave his mouth, there was a sudden bang from below, a sudden spike of pain, and a sudden flash of red. Blood splattered past the Supre’s vision, and with it… his severed tongue, flipping end over end in the air.
The Supre blinked, thinking things through even as Esralda continued to lunge forwards. That attack had co from below -- not just below the Supre’s line of sight, but below the ground itself. He understood. Esrelda had waited for him to soften the ground, then sent a single feather down into it to launch a surprise attack. Using himself as a decoy, he’d managed to provoke the Supre into exposing his tongue -- once that was destroyed, he couldn’t use his abilities.
His grin, stained by blood, widened into the realm of derangent.
Not bad, kid.
The blade slamd into him.
Skipper’s heart hamred a mile a minute, and he poured each one of those beats into his sword.
Torso. Shoulder. Head. Back. As Skipper flipped over the Supre, doing his best to stay out of reach, he struck out again and again -- each strike accompanied by a screech as a Heartbeat Bayonet was unleashed from his feathered sword. Each ti he hit the Supre, he left a thin red gash -- superficial wounds, but now that the Supre couldn’t heal them they would accumulate.
That didn’t an he could relax, though.
As the Supre thrust one hand upwards, a pillar of earth erupted from the ground below Skipper -- hitting him in the stomach and sending him flying up into the sky. As the construct pushed him aloft, Skipper fired another Heartbeat Shotgun from his stomach, shattering the pillar -- but the Supre had already gotten the distance he’d been looking for.
Skipper had sealed off Excel Surge and Badge of Honour with that last trick, but that didn’t an the Supre was neutralized. Far from it. From the looks of things, he still had access to the last ability he’d used -- Earthsculpt Uriel -- and his ordinary Aether abilities were enough to put him far above the rest.
If Skipper got careless, he would die. That fact hadn’t changed.
As the Supre looked up to follow his movents, Skipper pointed both his wings downwards, the feathered structures twisting into thin tendrils -- far easier to aim with. He wouldn’t be able to get in another precise shot from this distance. His best move would be to unleash a barrage.
Keep him on the defensive. Don’t give him ti to strategize.
Heartbeat Shotgun!
As the Supre sprinted, weaving through the countless blasts of sounds and the horde of automatics still pursuing him, he considered his next move.
He’d long considered one of his greatest strengths to be his versatility -- his Badge of Honour gave him countless tools to deal with any problem that presented itself. Now that he’d been silenced, though, those countless tools had been reduced to just one: Earthsculpt Uriel. Fortunately, he’d used Excel Surge on it before getting his tongue cut off, so it was still pretty flexible. He just had to figure out how best to use it here.
An idea occurred as he ducked under the swing of a spear.
Once, back in the Death March at the beginning of his reign, he had visited a planet called Retsuede. On that planet, there had been a great mountain -- complex tunnels bored through it through ti and coincidence -- and on particularly windy days, the mountain would sing as the air blasted through it. The people there had even learned to manipulate the sounds the mountain made by altering the structures of those tunnels.
The Supre bobbed and weaved as another Executioner kicked at him, before obliterating it and the ten or so behind it with a flurry of punches. As another barrage of Heartbeat Shotguns rained down from above, he snatched a chunk of tal from the wreckage, infusing it and holding it up as a shield.
One second. Two seconds. Three. The barrage stopped: Esrelda didn’t want to kick up too much dust, or else the Supre could use it as a smokescreen. Good to know.
The second the barrage ended, the Supre hurled the tal plating like a frisbee, the projectile slicing apart every Executioner in its path. He paid no mind to them as their bodies fell apart, or as even more converged upon him. Right now, the entirety of his consciousness was focused on the conundrum before him.
This was what he lived for. This was what he killed for.
This ain’t working.
Sweat ran down Skipper’s temples as he saw the Supre burst out, unhard, from another one of his attacks. It seed that only precise Heartbeat Shotguns or Heartbeat Bayonets would be enough to actually break through that iron skin and deal damage. Wide-range attacks like these -- especially from such a distance -- gave him too much ti to react.
For what it was worth, though, the Supre’s attention didn’t seem to be on Skipper. He was running down the mountain, face locked into stoicity, kicking up geysers of dirt with each step. He was holding sothing in one hand, but Skipper couldn’t make it out from this distance.
It was no surprise that the Supre had sothing planned. The man was a brute, but that didn’t an he was stupid. Was it maybe a clump of dirt he was holding, and he intended to use Uriel to sculpt it into a weapon?
Skipper would have to be careful.
The Supre was considered one of the foremost talents when it ca to Aether pings. Sure, he could be fooled by cloaking like anyone else, but in terms of range he was unmatched -- he could scan a good chunk of a planet from orbit, for Y’s sake.
With just a single ping, he could get an incredibly accurate image of the location he was scanning. It was what they’d used to put together the battle plan for today.
This ti, though, the Supre took a different tack. He let loose an Aether ping… within his own body. It took just a second, and was utterly invisible from the outside, but through it he was able to get a full reading of his own physical form -- down to his organs and individual muscles. He smirked as he ran through the information in his head.
This would work.
As Skipper plumted down towards the ground, pursuing the Supre, he released his wings -- and the feathers flew off individually, burrowing into the soft ground as they chased Skipper’s target from below.
Just like he’d done when he’d severed the Supre’s tongue, he’d position the feathers to unleash precise shots from underground. That way, he could get so sneak attacks in while the Supre was focused on him. He might expect a similar tactic, but hopefully the increased number of feathers would throw him for a loop.
Skipper blasted himself down the mountain with Heartbeat Shotgun, soaring over the heads of his Executioners, drawing closer to the Supre with each successive blast. The Supre himself was sliding down the mountain trail, having softened and slickened the ground to the point there was virtually no friction -- and as Skipper watched, the giant seed intently focused on whatever he was hiding in his hands.
The Supre discarded the things he didn’t need. Arms and legs, lower torso, all of it useless. Only the parts needed for this specific task needed to remain in his mind.
A tunnel waiting for its wind.
The feathers began blasting from below, sending the chunk of earth the Supre was sliding on flying up into the air. The Supre himself curled into a ball as he flipped through the sky -- and Skipper fired himself up towards him, ready to unleash another Heartbeat Bayonet before he could land.
He’d do it from as close as he could without being stupid -- this ti, he’d get the Supre’s eyes.
For the first ti in a good long while, sweat ran down the Supre’s back. He ignored the fact he was falling. He didn’t have ti to do anything about it. The only thing that mattered was the lump of earth he held in his hands, and the shape he was slowly forging it into, down to the slightest minutia.
Lips.
Tongue.
Lungs.
The Supre blinked.
Done.
Heartbeat --
The Supre twisted his body in the air, and Skipper imdiately moved to retreat. The confidence that had slowly been building up over the last few minutes utterly vanished. He’d been foolish: there was no safe distance when it ca to the Supre.
So long as you were on the sa planet as the man who was like god, you were at an unsafe distance. And his power certainly wasn’t the kind you could seal.
It was like the head of a statue, the thing the Supre held, a perfect replica of his own head sculpted from dirt. Stone lungs dangled below the throat, divorced from the torso that would have ordinarily surrounded it, and the mouth of the construct was just slightly open -- frozen into an eternal expression of just slight surprise.
Heartbeat Shotgun.
Get back, he urged himself as he retreated, blasting himself backwards.
Heartbeat Shotgun.
Faster.
Heartbeat Shotgun.
You’re gonna die, asshole!
There was the slightest opening in the back of the construct’s head, and the Supre put his lips to it. Like a flute, he blew into the open skull of his decapitated doppelganger -- but the sound that ca forth, initially just a single long note, shifted and warped and solidified…
…until it beca words.
"eXcEl SuRgE," it said. "sEaL oF fOrTuNe: El DoRaDo."
The original El Dorado had been a splendid ability all by itself, but when paired with Excel Surge it gained far greater flexibility. Rather than the fixed circular area the original user had been capable of, the Supre had found he could sculpt it into whatever shape he liked.
For example, he could shape it into the exact dinsions of his own body. No need to spread the healing too far around.
It took only half a second for his tongue to return -- a smaller area increased the potency of the healing -- and in that sa mont, he thrust his open palm towards the retreating Esralda.
"Excel Surge," he said softly. "Heartbeat Shotgun."
The blast that erupted forth wasn’t nearly as soft. With his other hand, the Supre crushed the construct of dirt, chunks of sculpted face raining down as he landed on the ground. Spreading his arms wide, he took a deep breath, his new tongue waggling in the air -- taking it all in, without concern for dignity or decorum.
This was it. This was how it felt to be alive again.
Calming down just a bit, the Supre looked over to Skipper -- to where he’d been embedded in the mountain, his body having blasted through a good swathe of his own Executioners. Even from this distance, the Supre could see the blood covering his face -- he was hurt… but he wasn’t dead. Good, good. The Supre wanted this to last.
He’d just woken up, after all.
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