Vincent Fauve. Son of Virgil Fauve. The Seven-Hunter, The Lawmaker, The Killstreak. A man— a military juggernaut, who’s legacy lived on in the laws, ideals and military policies he introduced and practiced during his ti of employnt. And deploynt as a soldier and president. Many would label the man as a force of nature. More like monster than man in his unnatural callousness and thirst for power. A bundle of traits he passed down to his son through brute force and simple manipulation.
Vincent took his fathers teachings and grew into his own brand of monster bearing the sa flaming stripes.
Victor didn’t plan to be the next clone. The next edition. Even as he walked in the sa footsteps of the n bearing his accursed gift before him.
The strong body. The resilience. The adaptability. The anger.
His difference was made at birth. In his understandings. He worked to transfer that energy of intuition into the fight.
He’d fought Vincent many tis in many settings. In forests and the wild as a whole, he was an ambush style pace abuser who would wear you down in explosive intensity while using your environt against you.
Victor didn’t let him get that set up— even in his weakened state, he sent out pulse wave of electrical flurries that sent sparks bursting into fla all through the forest. The valleys of snow began to lt behind walls of smoke. The white crust on the trees and bushes that filled in blank spaces opened in the face of heat.
All the while, Victor charged. He zig zagged like a bolt sent from the skies as Vincent loaded up four arrows on the sa string and fired an explosive headed volley.
Victor could sll the mana-grafted napalm inside the steel tips as they whizzed past him.
He closed the distance faster than he ever had and slid low on the burning earth, kicking out Vincent’s feet from under him. I’m doing so, he’d also sent a focused pulse of electricity up his leg, killing his speed through nerve assault and overheating the high pressure pistol holstered there.
One day he’d thank Imani for her analysis on him.
He didn’t turn around and try to engage his father from the ground. Victor wasn’t a murderer and Vincent was a bjj black belt eleven tis over.
Victor ran, forcing his body to output flashes of blinding light that killed his adoptive fathers aim.
Arrows flew past him, blowing trees to sharded remains and steaming stumps. The splinters bit past his electrical aura due to sheer number and began splintering in his skin.
He shook himself back into focus.
"Rember the plan. While I still have his location, I need to turn the tables. I stalk from a distance, bring him near water to expand my.... My...my—"
Victor tripped. In all his agility and physical wonder, he tripped on a felled tree branch and rolled eight tis.
He scrambled at the sound of approaching footsteps, getting up just in ti to see Vincent flying at him with his knees raised.
Victor sidestepped and Vincent landed in an explosion of burnt wood and ash.
The dark smokescreen blinded Victor. He strained his bio-electrical sense until he could feel the lifeform charging from behind.
Victor leveled a spinning back kick without looking and felt his foot smash into Vincent’s solar plexus. It should’ve knocked the man back at least a few feet but he grabbed Victor’s ankle and held himself in place.
From there, he swept Victor’s remaining leg. While in the air, Victor yelped as Vincent front kicked him in the crotch and send him sliding on his back.
Victor tried running again but Vincent fired his arrows and blew up another handful of trees.
"I’m not thinking! I’m..... I’m relying on physicality. What can I do here after my last plan failed? I can’t give distance. But he’s a better martial artist. He’ll beat both ways...." Victor dove behind a stone, assuming the smoke screens of ash and decimated trees hid him finally.
"If you can’t win then don’t, kitty." Krysta yelled after him.
She was trying to break him, but he heard sothing else.
"Don’t win. Play into his hand. I can’t fight from afar— he has range advantage, but I also can’t fight upclose. Not to clean victory. But I can take us both using the last of my power..."
Victor centralized his Tiger-Thunder after peeking around the rock and getting sight of Vincent. He walked with no weapon.
Bright flows of lightning spun in serpentine cools down Victors arms. Slowly collecting as an orb of energy in his hand. He fought off his nausea and fading vision.
He peeked around the rock again.
Vincent stopped approaching and stood a few hundred feet out. He adopted an odd martial arts stance following a series of precise movents. Suddenly his fists began to glow with a dark almost void-like essence gilded by fiery gold light.
"Do you know what this is, Victor?" Vincent asked.
Victor had no idea. He was baffled. Mostly because Vincent’s powers were supposed to be in Victor’s hands now.
"I want to share a secret with you." Vincent said, "The Inheritence Ability does not end at passing on. It evolves. I present to you, Remnant Mana Essence Flow. The current nonclature is subject to change. It does by region. You’d probably recognize its eastern term a bit better as Chi."
Victor was weakening rapidly. Wondering if it was Vincent’s Chi. He couldn’t see straight. His wounds from all the tree splinters pulsed with a nasty rage.
"Chi is only accessible to previous Inheritors— Bestowers. We have decades of old mana flow stuck in us. With the right training, we can use it. But it’s not infinite. That’s alright though, it’s quite powerful. We’ll take mine for example. My Chi nature relates to fire. But it’s not fire. It’s Mana-Fla. With these hands— with this remaining essence, I can burn through Mana itself."
Victor’s energy hit zero. His exhaustion maximized and his nerves went dead. All while he tried to conceptualize the fact that his father went from a nationally recognized superpower to sothing entirely different. Being able to nullify the worlds primary source of energy was ga changing.
It was depressing.
"How can I win this...h-..."
Before he could finish his thought process, he fell over due to his upper body giving out. The splinters of wood in his skin humd with an excruciating itch that seed to tickle all the way down to his bones.
"The trees are laced with a low grade neurotoxin. I put it in the seed-food. Your durability is still astounding. Anyone else who took so many splinters would’ve died a dozen tis over."
Right in front of Victor, he found greasy old combat boots facing him. No ash stuck to the surface— which didn’t make since, since Victor was sure who was standing in front of him was the sa man who just chased him down through a burning forest.
Vincent.
"Then who’s....." He rolled over and looked down the path he ran, back to Vincent— who was standing in his sa position with his sa fists pulsing with Chi flow. He quickly stood up and pressed a button on the bottom side of his wrist watch. Lights, prisms and discs of sound waves twisted and unfurled to reveal a naless soldier.
"New camoflauge technology. Perfect timing considering how allied powers and families will change. How you have changed." Vincent said before bending over and lifting his pant leg up.
Nothing.
"Wrong leg." He grumbled before lifting his other pant leg and unholstering the handgun there. It was fit with a long double barrel that housed spiral tubbing send off chambers allowing for bullet velocity to triple the national average. Making every round explosive by default. That was before considering the cultivated mana-gunpowder strain it used to Fire.
Vincent placed the barrel to the back of Victors head.
"You have.... changed. Not just your power. Your brain. I suppose the steel of combat school has sharpened the steel of your mind. Better, but not best." Vincent lifted the gun and Victor was helped up by Krysta.
"You used to test new gear...?" Victor murmured.
"I have used you to expand a military empire. You have no limit of use. That’s what makes you Fauve." Vincent said.
Victor tried not to throw up. If he had any power left— or any less neurotoxin splinters in his system, he’d be trying not to shock everyone out of existence.
Instead, he focused on the new information.
"So.... was rhe Chi thing fake..?"
"What do you think?" Vincent asked.
"I think if it wasn’t fake, that would explain why we don’t hear much from past Inheritence Ability users— Bestowers, I an. At least not from the top families."
"Indeed. It’s not ideal to try and reason with a new echelon of power." Vincent agreed.
"So it is real."
"Get past my clone next ti and find out." Vincent said, "Failure doesn’t produce answers beyond death."
"You’re allergic to being anything other than insufferable, man...." Victor thought before passing out.
As he did, Vincent removed his mask, "Welco ho. We’ll talk when you wake up. About the future. About what cos next, when we send you back to The Box."
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