DISCLAIR: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattle publishnt. Anyway on with the show...errr read.
Battle Royale
The blades don't slow in their thrust towards my sister's vulnerable flesh and if I hadn't had complete trust in all of my sister's, I'd have been seriously worried. Indigo's blades were no joke and were capable of cutting through just about anythingand now I knew the reason why. Being two-dinsional, the blades were perfectly flat and yet her power allowed them to exist in our world regardless. In cartoons and comics, it wasn't uncommon to hear about swords and stuff that were absurdly sharp and thin, but even monomolecular blades would have looked wide next to Indigo's strikes, because they didn't have a width any more than a shadow had depth. Though she was only able to express them in a limited range around herself, those blades were sharp enough to cut even experienced hunters to bits, unless she held back.
But I knew she would, even before I felt the touch of her emotions against my thoughts. Sure enough, at the last mont, the blades returned to a shadowy state, moving across Azure and Sienna's skin as if soone had lifted a hand into the air shield them from light, rather than stab them in the back. They slid around their rib, over their chests, and then bubbled back up into reality on the other side of their bodies, giving the illusion of impalent and making both of the girl's look down in shock.
"You should know to watch your backs, ladies," Indigo said, the shadow of her hat creeping down to hide her face. "You were both full of openings."
Azure lifted a trembling hand towards the shadow sword, but touched nothing but air in the end as Indigo drew back, pulling the blades loose. Sienna stumbled and fell to a knee as she 'ca free', jerking as if to turn in place, but Indigo caught the back of her head and pulled it up at an angle, leveling another sword just out of range of her throat. For her part, Azure slumped forward onto the control panel in front of her.
"A-Azure," Sienna cried out as the massive creature beneath them ca to a halt and began to slump. She reached out towards Azure, all but pushing herself towards the blade to reach out and catch her hand. Holding her fingers as if in desperation, she tried again. "Azure, wake up!"
"Sienna" Azure twitched, sliding down the control panel as if pulled off balance by Sienna's hand. There was a certain dullness to her tone as if she didn't understand, or couldn't believe, what was happening. "Sienna, I feel cold. Whatwhat happened?"
"Nothing," Sienna said desperately, tears gathering in her eyes. "Azure, you're going to be fine, just stay awake. Do you hear ? Just stay awake, Azure!"
Azure twitched, moving her head slightly as if doing so ant lifting the weight of the whole world. Slowly, her eyes focused on Sienna and she gave a quivering smile.
"Y-you never were a very good liar, Sienna," She choked out as she wept silent tears. "This is it for , isn't it?"
"Azure," Sienna's voice shook and then faltered, leaving her unable to do anything but continue to cry.
"It's okay," Azure continued, still forcing the smile. "Even if this is the end, I'm glad I got to fight beside you, Sienna. The two of uswe did okay, right?"
"Yeah," Sienna jerked her head in a ager nod. "Yeah. Youwe did great, Azure. W-we"
She closed her eyes and kept weeping. Though her face was still hidden in shadows, I could clearly see Indigo roll her eyes behind them.
"You know," Indigo drew the word out as she shook her head. "I was giving you so leeway for the whole death scene thing, butsince I stabbed both of you in the heart, I feel like this should be going faster."
They both ignored her and just kept going.
"I'm sorry," Sienna whispered, just loud enough for her voice to carry. "I'm sorry I got you into this, Azure. If not for "
"No," Azure said, one of her hands abruptly tightening on the control panel, as if trying to hold onto it as well as her life. "Don't be sorry, Sienna. Not for this. No matter what happens, I'm glad I got to fight by your side."
"Azure"
"Sogoodbye," Azure's hand weakly grasping Sienna's own. "Captain Sienna."
At last, she let out an explosive sigh. The massive creature let out an eerie, sorrow-filled cry and then began to lt, its body returning to the water from which it had been made but leaving the technology behindthough much of it also cracked and shattered as it tumbled to the earth. Indigo moved her blade away from Sienna's throat but stood unflinching as the sphere hit the ground, bounced ever so slightly, and began to roll. Even when she was periodically upside-down, she didn't fall, her feet retreating into the shadows beneath her to keep balance. She held onto Sienna as well, but Azure's 'corpse' bounced around the inside of the sphere, slamming into all manner of things with surprisingly lifelike grunts. Indigo did nothing to help her, watching her with pitiless, shadowed eyes.
"So are we done now?" She wondered. "Do I need to decapitate you guys, too, or?'
"I'll see you soon," Sienna whispered, still ignoring Indigo as she reaching out one last ti. "Azure"
"Decapitation it is," Indigo resolved, nodding to herself as she swung her blade. Once more, it returned, in part, to its shadow state before it struck, so that the blade rely crawled over her throat instead of passing through it. Even so, Sienna jerked once, hand remaining extended for several long seconds before falling at last. Only then did she topple over.
Indigo shook her head once and then cut herself a doorway out of the sphere.
"Note to selfheadless enemies talk less," She muttered to herself, a hand reaching up to rub at her eyes. "Should have just done that to begin with"
I considered attacking her while she was off-guard, as she had done to Sienna and Azure, but after a mont I chuckled and leapt from my hiding spot, landing just over five ters away.
"Indigo," I greeted, tilting my head to smile past her. "Those two sure took their ti bleeding to death, huh?"
She pondered for a long, silent mont before nodding.
"Yeah, I noticed that too," She shook her head. "Heart wounds just aren't what they used to be, Jaune. Were they the first to go down?"
"Yup," I replied, looking past her in amusent to watch Azure slowly reach up to push a button on one of the remaining consoles. As she did, a small light ca on, consolidating into an image after several monts.
"Hologram activated," It began, chanical voice shifting into Azure's warr tone. "If you're listening to this, then the worst has happened. A shining star of beauty and genius has, through so unspeakable cruelty, left this world. However, fear not, brave citizen, for I"
The hologram shut off as the machinery it was produced by was torn to pieces by a swarm of grasping shadows.
"No," Indigo said without looking away from . "None of that."
"Aww," Azure's corpse whined before twitching. "Er, I anbrains!"
Indigo took another breath before shaking her head again.
"Bianca left while those two very slowly died," Indigo noted. "I assu she went back to Olivia when she saw take them out?"
"Mhm," I nodded, holding back a grin for her sake. "All of the others are over there now, fighting it out."
"So you decided to fight ?" She guessed before cracking her neck.
"Unless you made other arrangents?" I offered, shrugging at her look. "I admit, there was a part of that wondered if you'd just gone back to sleep."
"I'd never do that," She denied. "Not during Dad's funeral, at least, and certainly not with all this racket."
"So that's a yes, then?" I asked.
She sighed and looked at once wistful and tired.
"On one condition," She said, shaking her head at .
"Oh?"
"If I win, die like a normal person," She requested. "Please?"
"Won't be an issue," I assured her. "I like to think I'm pretty hard to kill."
"I suppose you'd have to be, considering," She said, biting down on a yawn and blinking twice. "What with the Jian Bing thing and all. Shall we get started, then?"
"Sure," I agreed, releasing the power I'd been gathering all this ti. Once again, I felt it reach down into the earth and touch the forces withinbut the target, this ti, was different. I felt it spread out like water spilled on the floor, before sinking yet deeper into the thirsty ground, before flowing back to as if in reverse.
And as it did, all of that force was dragged along with it. Debris jumped into the air, along with drops of water and the slowly settling dust. Even things as large as Azure's machinery weren't immune and rose a quick step into the air, as if gravity all around us had abruptly turned off.
Which, you know, it had, though only for a mont. Or rather, it had been concentrated and focused into a much smaller area then normalnaly, everything within five ters of Indigo.
A skill has been created through a special action! Continuous manipulation of mana has created a skill with crushing elental power, 'Gravity Crash.'
In an instant, everything near her was crushed flat. Proven wood and twisted tal alike sank into an almost smooth surface all around my sister, who staggered once against the abrupt and enormous weight set upon her. Everything from the atmosphere around her to the very flesh on her bones had their weight multiplied dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of tis over in that brief second. Had my sister been a normal human, every bone in her body would have shattered and the fluids within would have exploded outwards as the vessel within was crushed.
But she wasn't and they didn't. Instead, with her eyes widening, she staggered and fell to one knee, her hands and feet leaving deep imprints in the ground as she sank up to her thighs and elbows. Even though it only lasted a mont, her physical body collapsed and was left unguarded as it just tried to hold itself upright against the strain.
Her spirit, however, barely seed to notice. The animated shadows all around her didn't so much as twitch as gravity skyrocketed, being essentially weightless to begin with. As their creator staggered, they reacted by drawing close, curling around her in preparation to attack or defend. Though my skin was made of Adamant and I had raised all of my defensive abilities ludicrously high, I knew better than to test my luck head on against those blades and didn't even try. As the first attack faded, I lifted my fist and delivered a punch with each of my arms, backing up every blow with Far Slayer. Just as the technique from which I'd invented it, Far Slayer allowed to deliver a lee attack at range. But thanks to the energy I put into it and the now-negligible charge ti, the results werea bit more impressive.
Indigo flew into the air, a series of trenches being gouged into the ground all around her as if carved into the ground by a giant's hands. Tearing her away from the ground also ant tearing her from the shadows upon it, and though they tried to catch her, each blow had tossed her farther and faster. Once she was soaring over the area forrly known as Vale's skyline, the shadows on the ground quivered and faded away.
"Kuh," I heard her grunt, the sound from the initial impact reaching at last. In the air, I saw her grit her teeth and cross her arms over her chest, forming shadows on the top of her vest even as others squird from every nook and cranny. Under her hat, from beneath her shirt and vest alike, from wherever there was the slightest shadow, they slithered out like vicious snakes and rose into the air as living blades.
I smiled. I'd figured she'd have a counter to such an obvious tactic and had suspected the layers she wore to be a part of it, butI guess there was no simple way to separate her from her weapons. It was just as well, I suppose, or else this wouldn't be any fun. My main goal, to keep her from diving into her shadow and hiding, might still be effective besides.
I guess there's only one way to find out.
The ground shattered for a good distance all around as I Lunged into the sky fast enough to set the air ablaze again. The shadows around Indigo twitched, with blades of shadow thickening around her arms and back. The forr weaved themselves into a pair of blades that rose from the back of her hands, but the latterfirst they crafted a skeleton of dark bone, before covering it with layers of shadow-flesh, forming a wide pair of wings that spread to slow Indigo flight. After a mont, they flapped experintally, gaps that were only visible because of my enhanced eyesight opening and closing carefully. In monts, Indigo's fall changed into sothing more controlled and then into sothing just a hairs breadth from flight. As I closed in, she turned towards , expression calm and controlled, and swung her swords.
I dodged in two different directions, physical body going up while Bai Hu went down, letting the swing pass between us just a few centiters short of the tail that connected us. Indigo's wings moved oddly and were abruptly in both of our paths and our fists stopped just short of a collision with the two structures. Flapping open, this ti moving through conventional space to do so, both of my bodies withdrew to avoid the attackand kept moving as additional shapes bubbled from the interior of the open wings, spewing reaching blades to try and strike us down. Lifting our hands, a pair of Flare's collided with Indigo, pitching her further back even as the dark swords kept coming, and so I shifted until both of my bodies occupied the sa space, absently releasing the platform of air on which I'd stood. A quick gravity crash multiplied the speed at which I fell many tis over and I touched ground in the midst of a massive crater and a massive explosion of dust. Briefly hidden from my sister's sight, I grew an illusion of absence around myself and slid into the ground like it was water.
Feeling the ground ripple as I swam, I lifted Bai Hu's head above the ground as I rose near the surface so forty ters away. From every inch of his invisible skull, I could see, and I spotted Indigo with an ear as she glided to a safer position. Apparently unwilling to use her blades on a target she couldn't see, likely for risk of hurting , her blades had instead stabbed into the ground and crept along its surface as shadows once more. Despite the flares, Indigo appeared unhard and relaxed, but her headphones were off and her eyes were narrow.
Shifting in place again, I sent my thoughts toward Ereb and he acted without hesitation. Bai Hu rose above the surface, form still invisible, but I stayed beneath and swam through the dirt below his feet. I felt my claws curl, power and light forming in my hands, and I hurled them at once in the shape of a Magic Missile.
Indigo spun in place, one shadow sword rising to slice the Missile cleanly in half. As it passed through the attack as though it were no more than air, the shadow split in two, pushing the attack in either direction, and instead of striking her they exploded behind her and off to the sides. Without hesitation, Indigo sent bladed shadows crawling through the air as though it were any other surface, and they swung gently through the air where one of myselves had stood, hitting nothing.
Dropping the illusion, I exploded from the earth twenty ters away and tossed the attack I'd been charging while subrged, hurling a massive Flare into the air. Once more, Indigo shielded herself with her wings, but the explosion of released power was massive and fire rained from the sky for several seconds afterwards. I was already drawing another illusion around myself as Suryasta rose from the flas and sucked them up in a sort of reverse tornado, drawing in the flas to create another massive body for himself, as he had against Pyrrha. At once the demonic figure looked towards Indigo, mouths opening wide to send flas screaming into the air, but Indigo simply lifted one wing to defend herself and sent a tide of blades from the other to rip the giant into a hundred pieces.
As said giant was completely composed of fire, it didn't make a whole lot of difference and Suryasta rely drew them back into his form. His power struck out at anything nearby, such as all the broken wood, and itwell, it fueled the fire, letting him grow. Indigo frowned and struck him again, also to little effect, before turning as if to find .
And she did, suddenly diving from the air with blades outstretched in either hand. She closed the distance to fight close, likely because it would be safer for if anything went wrong with her ludicrously lethal Semblance, and shattered the ground as she landed beside , swords whirling towards even as they turned to shadows to make sure nothing was hard. Though I suspected they wouldn't kill any more than Carmine's blows had, house rules ant we were out at one 'lethal' blow, which they certainly counted as, and I'd lose on a direct hit.
Even so, I didn't flinch, shedding the illusion as I stepped forward. My hands were wrapped in claws as Bai Hu slid over and shifted forward until my upper body was almost parallel to the ground and I Lunged towards her as she brought her weapons to bare, angles of attack bright in my mind. As one impossibly thin blade rose, I slipped a hand fearlessly into the fray and pushed her wrist to the side with gentle force. The other kept coming for my throat, but with the opening made by the first block I slid in and caught her arm with my own. At once, her wings exploded into a rain of general lethality, every bit of which ca rushing towards , but the mont I'd blocked the second attack, Bai Hu rose from his overlaid position and reached for my sister's throat. As fast as I was moving, I'd get to her before her wings got to
But not before her sneak attack struck in the back, I noted. The mont I revealed myself, I'd felt ita strange movent in the air above my shadow. I suppose it shouldn't have been surprising that her ability allowed her to sense such things, which must have been how she'd found while I was hidden, but the mont I began to close in, there was a major reaction. The mont I attacked her, my shadow betrayed and exploded upwards into sothing very much like a coffin.
I watched it all happen out of the back of my neck but didn't stop my attack. As the black pit drew nearer, I closed my eyes for a mont and shed my secondary illusionand the light of Aureola ca flooding forth in a fountain of light.
My shadow vanished.
Claws closed around Indigo's throat.
Everything stopped.
"It looks like it's my win," I said, drawing an illusion over myself to hide the light again. This close to , Indigo had been forced to turn away and shut her eyes in the face of it, and even then the sheer brightness must have hurt her through her eyelids. Even so, she nodded once and her shadows faded as she slowly opened her eyes again, blinking fast.
"Yeah," She said, smiling lopsidedly. "You really have gotten stronger, Jaune."
I returned her smile with one of my own and released her throat.
"Any last words?" I asked playfully, making her snort before nodding and drawing in a deep breath.
"Alas, I am slain!" Indigo shouted to the heavens before falling to the ground. At once, her shadow moved, drawing itself protectively around her like a
Like a blanket.
Indigo closed her eyes and seed half way to sleep in about a second.
"You know," I whispered. "That's not normally how people die either, Indigo."
Her lips twitched but she said nothing, shadow carrying her swiftly away. Watching her leave, all I could do was shake my head and chuckle before turning away.
Three down, I thought as I looked in the direction of the others. And given the amount of light coming from that direction, more were about to follow.
Removal
I moved in swift silence, drawing another illusion around as I floated into the air. I kept my distance, since my eyes eliminated any need to get close, and simply observed for a mont.
At the mont, it was two vs. twoOlivia, Violet, Shani, and Bianca fighting in a section of the city that had seen better days, counting most of the War. Violet flickered around the battlefield, staying outside of Olivia's range except when she needed to withdraw briefly. Each ti she stopped, she looked a bit less human, until all that remained of her flesh was the skin around one luminous eye and small patches of skin on an arm, a leg, and her midsection; the rest of her was brightly glowing light.
It was obvious from just a glance that her main target here was Shani who, though possessing pretty trendous destructive power in her own right, wasn't a good match for Violet or Olivia. Her ability to accelerate matter within an area of space was obscenely dangerous, especially with a line of sight range, but though it vaporized most of what it hit, the narrow blasts she was using now would never hit Violet, much less penetrate Olivia's layered defense. Like Bianca and Indigo, her power wasn't very well suited to friendly spars, so she had to hold back a great dealmore than the rest of us, I an, because of the risks of seriously hurting soone if sothing went wrong. We all could inflict horrific injuries upon others if we had reason to, but so of us were better at not doing so then others.
When your superpowers were disintegration beams, shooting doom lasers, and wielding absurdly sharp blades, there's only so much you can do to hold back the lethality. In a fight like this, those of us who could fine-tune our powers to the occasion had a huge advantage over those who couldn't.
Still, she was doing fairly well, considering; she hadn't been defeated by Violet outright, after all, and so she was able to keep Olivia that much more preoccupied. Shifting my vision a bit down the spectrum, I saw the touches of heat surrounding her, shifting the course of the lightning ever so slightly as the leaders ca near. She couldn't control the paths the way I did, but she could set nature up to take its course and cross her fingers. Eventually her luck would run outas luck was wont to dobut she wasn't down yet, at least. From the way she and Bianca were fighting, their plan was to exhaust Olivia enough that she'd forfeit and then probably have Bianca focus on defeating Violet.
It was their best option, I acknowledged, but that didn't change that it had its problems. Problems they couldn't really do anything about, granted, but if Olivia went down, there would be nothing holding Violet here and since she haddespite the elent of chance involved where the landing was concerneda huge speed advantage over all of us, she'd be free to lead us all on a rry chase as we tried to catch her. Admittedly, she was almost as untouchable with Olivia's support and potentially far more dangerous, but the fact remained that within the bounds of the spar and with the limits on anything that might actually hurt one another, Violet could easily get away if she wanted to.
That made her the priority target, I decided as I continued to scan the battle field. Followed by Shani and Olivia, who I was confident I could defeat fairly easily on these terms. But how to do it? What did I have to work with? The playing field itself was fairly levelor, rather, leveledbut I had a few options. With the advantage of surprise, I could turn their own power against them, using Shani and Bianca's blasts, Olivia's territory, and even Violet's movents. But for this
Remaining invisible, I sighed slightly and nodded to myself. Though the risks were fairly negligible given how careful they were being, I didn't want Violet to get hit by one of Shani or Bianca's attacks, so I'd just have to do it myself. No, more than that, I'd take a note out of Indigo's book and milk the elent of surprise for all I could. I began to gather my power, first in my right hand, then my left, and finally in both of Bai Hu's. The first attack was a Thunderbolt while the rest were Magic Missiles, but I held on to each and charged them. As I did, I watched Olivia's sphere of control and paid close attention to how attacks moved through it, drawing on my own experience with it as I did so. With other parts of my face, I focused simultaneously on Bianca raining light down from above, on Shani unleashing her vaporizing blasts, and especially on Violet's movents. As I did, I silently began counting down.
When I counted to ten, I drew my right hand back and prepared to throw. With several different 'eyes', I patiently watched as Violet's Aura fluctuated, spinning off energy throughout the Electromagnetic Spectrumand recognizing the signs, I threw, hurling the fully-charged Thunderbolt as hard as I could. It flew into a pre-marked spot on Olivia's sphere and turned sharply to the left, hurling into the ground about ten ters away. Within the projectile, Vulturnus imdiately reached out and an upward strear reached high into the air, course set right for one of the stepped leaders that appeared as Violet unraveled again.
Before the Thunderbolt had even landed, I hurled the Magic Missile I held in my left hand along the sa path, adjusting the angle only slightly as I threw. When lightning struck and Violet's form ca back together, it flew past her, missing by perhaps a fourth of a ter. When it hit the ground behind her, however, the charged shot blew another trench in the already ragged battlefield. Expressionless, if only because she no longer had much of a face to make expressions with, Violet looked over her shoulder and made a static-filled sound.
Without even waiting to see if the first attack worked, I moved onto the next target, hurling both of my remaining Magic Missiles with all my might. The first arced high over Olivia's field and crashed into the ground like a bomb right next to Shani, but the second was tossed straight at it. By the ti the last shot was fired, two more Missiles were in my human hands and I angled them to collide with the first at two different places. Accelerating as the attacks left my hands, four more appeared in my grasp and were in the air fast enough to just barely be behind the first three, and the seven shots hit with less than a tenth of a second between them. Within Olivia's territory, the attacks went mad, smashing into one another perhaps two dozen tis with no seeming rhy or reasonbut in re monts, the first Missile, the one that I'd charged, shattered the ground at Olivia's feet.
For a mont there was silence. Then, a sigh and two groans. Bianca stopped her attack and hung quietly in the air as I Lunged across the intervening space and made my appearance.
"Surprise attack," I said maturely as I lifted a hand and pointed at my three sisters in turn. "You know the rules; you lose, you lose, you lose."
Olivia and Violet rolled their eyes but glanced at each other and took a seat, looking tired.
"Tch," Shani said, looking put out. Maybe it was because of how she'd had to hold back or her lackluster showing because of itbut she didn't argue. She did, however, mutter under her breath. "I barely got to blow anything up"
"Beacon's still standing, if you don't have anything better to do," I inford her. "You guys might want to move sowhere else regardless, just in case. I'd tell you to head back to the house, but, well, sobody destroyed it."
Looking up, I made my expression prim.
"Bianca," I said mildly.
Floating downwards, she snorted, the sound carrying an odd reverberation to it.
"Bitch, please," She replied. "You're just jealous I got to it first; you'd have wrecked it in that tidal wave or earthquake anyway."
I flashed a smile at that and shrugged at her mildly.
"Yeah, probably," I agreed. "Still, you're lucky my mory's so good, because we're going to show up wherever we leave Naraka. You wouldn't want to pop into so poor guy's house, would you?"
"Would never happen," She denied. "I can fly, so I'd just go up high enough to avoid any buildings. Might show up in the newspapers as the coming of a beautiful angel, but I'd never end up in soone's house."
I chuckled and shrugged before glancing at Olivia and Violet, who hadn't said anything. Though the forr seed focused on taking deep, steady breaths, Violet didn't seem to have lungs at the mont.
"You okay there, V?" I asked, Observing her silently. She wasn't hurt or even really tired, but she had a status effect called 'The Chariot of Thunder' and it was rated as High.
She glanced at , the flesh on her face now entirely gone, and nodded once.
"Fine," She said, the words barely intelligible over the interference in her voice. "I'll just need awhile to return to normal."
"It's probably for the best that you stopped," Bianca noted. "A little longer and you'd have needed to regrow everything again."
"Not like I have any plans for the next few days," Violet shrugged, the motion jerky as if her body was snapping from one position to the next. Olivia?"
"Just tired," She said, voice calm. "You all always gang up on whenever we do this."
The words were spoken in such a way that they would have been a whine if they hadn't been said about five million tis. As is, they seed more like a routine. So did Bianca's response.
"Take it as a sign of respect," The oldest replied. "After that first ti, we know better than to let you be."
Olivia made a sound of ti-worn displeasure in the back of her throat, but after a minute, she closed her eyes and she and Violet began to float into the air, another, smaller sphere forming around them. Evidently, they'd stay and watch.
Nodding to them in acknowledgent, I glanced at Bianca and then looked around.
"The city's looking pretty absent," I noted.
"Dad would appreciate the general mayhem," Bianca agreed with the unspoken statent. "And no one even got hurt."
I nodded, smiling slightly.
"I still need to talk to you about sothing," I continued. "But it can wait until after if you want to keep going."
"What's the score?"
"I've got four and Indigo has two," I replied. "No one else has any."
Bianca shrugged.
"I think we've proven what we set out to," She mused. "But I wouldn't mind testing you a little bit. On three?"
I nodded and thought she might have been smiling.
"Three," She said and a blast of light promptly flung high in the air.
The first attack tossed over what would have been several nearby buildings, if not for, you know, us. More than that, it hurled high over them, as if I were a bullet shot from a gun, the sheer force of the blast carrying into the distance. Pressure and weight weren't generally words I would associate with light, but the bright power that ca rushing from my sister's fingers and hands was more than light, deeper then it. Even as it heated my Adamant skin, I looked into it and through it, to the shining hole in space that had replaced a forefinger of my sister's handand yet there was sothing to it I couldn't understand any more now than I had when she'd first shown it to . I wouldn't go so far as to say the light that tossed several hundred ters into the air was alive, but it wasI don't know. It was more than most things were, in a way I couldn't explain beyond that.
It was hard to truly focus on the intriguing aspects of the sight when it was tossing around, however, so I took a mont to organize my thoughts and shoved it to the periphery of my mind. Gathering my power, I pulled myself to the ground with another Gravity Crash, leaving the beam of light to continue unimpeded as the ground shattered beneath my feet. Through the skin of my arms and face, I imdiately caught sight of Bianca as she rose swiftly into the airand I could tell from how she moved that she was sohow certain of exactly where I was. As the increased effects of gravity faded from around , I tried to dodge, but against an attack that moved at the speed of lightwell, it worked about as well as you might expect.
Another blast of light hamred downwards, but this ti, at least, I was a bit more prepared for itand it ca from above, rather than the front. Despite my strength and defensive enhancents, I didn't weigh significantly more than I appeared to and so neither of those things kept from being thrown around by forces unless I could properly leverage them to the task. From this position, I could at least stand against the onslaught as the crater around widened and I was pushed further and further down, and so I forced myself to rise, lifting my arms against the blast. Bai Hu rose with , a pair of Flare's gathering in both of his hands and flying imdiately towards Bianca, expanding into massive blasts of fire as they went.
They were about as effective on my sister as I expected, which was to say 'not at all.' They ca into contact with her form and she didn't even twitch as the fire flowed pastor maybe even throughher body. Bai Hu kept up the attack, palming Magic Missiles, Thunderbolts, and even attempting a Gravity Crash, but none of the attacks seed to affect the altered space that composed her body, at least not enough to matter.
That's how she was flying, I thought. Normal forces like gravity simply didn't affect her as much when her entire form was shifted.
Interesting. I'd noticed that her power was similarand dissimilarto Raven's in that it seed to create so kind of gateway. The difference, from what I could tell, was that Bianca made said gates from her own body and they could only go to one place. Bianca hadn't seed to really know where and neither did I, but given what little I knew about Malkuth Theory, I couldn't help but wonder if they were connected. At the very least, however, it seed to give her a lot of resistance to many forms of attack, by simple virtue of being absent. Attacks seed to pass through her body as if it were an open doorway, doing little harm as it passed through.
The question was, how little? How far did this defense of hers extend? Neither fire nor electricity had worked and the Magic Missile had passed through her hand like it was nothing, but I knew my sister wasn't invincibleI'd seen the injuries to prove it, after all, though her power had grown greatly since then. But assuming that she still had vulnerabilities of so kind, how did I exploit them?
I suppose I could try to outlast her. Though the amount of Aura she was using seed wholly out of proportion with the results, she wasn't burning Aura to do this. Even though we had only been fighting for a matter of minutes, a great deal of her Aura was gone. In theory, I could play this defensively and wait for her to run out of powerassuming she didn't notice what I was doing, change tactics, escalate by making a sowhat larger gateway, or simply get bored, which all seed rather silly to assu.
I could also try crawling underground and escaping her notice that way. I wasn't entirely certain if that would hide from whatever thod seed to alert her to my location and the sheer destructive power of her attacks might unearth , but I could try to wait her out that way. If she wasn't fighting, however, it would take a long tiand more to the point, it would be rather boring. This fight wasn't just about winning, it was about proving sothing.
So to that end, I stood my ground and let Bianca's destructive power continue to rain down upon , taking a mont to let my power gather. Through the light, I saw Bianca uncurl a second finger, doubling the force she was unleashing upon in the process, but it wasn't enough to make back down. With Kronos around my neck and my defenses layered, a half-hearted attack like this wouldn't knock downit barely even seared my skin, which was a negligible wound as I was now. In Bai Hu's hands, I gave my power form, shifting and altering the Searing Light I'd used against Conquest into sothing greater before letting it loose.
A skill has been created through a special action! Continuous manipulation of mana has created a skill of unbound elental power, 'Plasma Cannon.'
As Bianca rained light down upon , I returned the favor with an attack that turned the air between us into plasma, buying ti to work on a hunch. While it was far from a rule, people could have Semblances that were similar to those of their parents, owingpresumablyto the fact that people themselves could be similar to their parents, in a number of ways. Even beyond genetic traits, after all, the people who raise you can pass on a lot of things; beliefs, goals, grudges, preferences, and a lot of other stuff. At the sa ti, children could easily be nothing like their parents and have wildly different Semblances.
In my family, the latter would seem to be more of the casethough there were occasional similarities, their powers were very different from both Mom and Dad's. However, if you looked at them side by side, there were certain patterns; while Violet's power didn't seem very much like Dad's telekinesis, it was very similar to Bianca's power, and both might have been influenced, if very distantly, by Mom's phase shifting power. Shani and Sienna's powers were just aid in different directions and focused on changing things at a small scale to achieve very large effects. A lot of it was just guesswork, but I suspected there was sothing there.
However, though there might have been vague ties to my parents, the ties between my sisters seed a lot firr, especially the ones born close to each other. Bianca and Violet especially had a lot of striking similarities in how their powers workedand Violet was always the one sent to keep Bianca preoccupied in fights like these. I wasn't sure if that was because there was so underlying relation in how their powers interacted or if the forces they wielded affected one another, but there was sothing there, which told
I had no idea what. Though the effects were vaguely similar, the forces involved were vastly differentas different as, well, light and lightning. I knew from Violet that forces that could affect the powers they wielded could theoretically affect them, but even then, Bianca and Violet expressed their powers very differently. For instance, though Bianca was promptly consud by the wave of plasma, it didn't affect her as it might have Violet's lightning. She didn't seem hurt by the attack, though she at least seed to notice it and raise a hand to touch it as it passed over her. Since neither lightning nor plasma seed to work on her, I could safely rule out both of those as reasons why Violet could oppose her, which leftwhat? Dinsional shenanigans?
It would make sense, in a way, given that Bianca had pretty much turned her body into a dinsional doorway. It raised several rather interesting questions about so of the injuries she'd sustained in her career as a hunter which bore looking into buthow did that help here and now? At the mont, Bianca and I were locked in a stalemate, where I couldn't hurt her and she couldn't aningfully harm without using more power then she would like to in a spar. I had a few skills that directly affected dinsions, most notably Naraka and Trespasser, but I was a bit leery of using them given the horrific consequences that might arise if Naraka were to shatter here and now.
Beyond that, my gravity attacks hadn't worked, not that I'd expected them to with the relatively negligible force I could muster for them. While enough gravity could do all sorts of strange things, doing stuff like affecting light or space in a major way involved energy that was quite a bit beyond my ans.
What options did that leave then? Not a lot of good ones, but
"Now's as good a ti to test it as any," I said to myself as I looked over my shoulder. I nodded back with my other head before stopping myself, realizing that behavior was a tad odd, but curled Bai Hu's claws and gathered my power yet again.
Focusing on light was rather easy, given the circumstances, but though my power imdiately moved to guide my taphorical hands, the complexity of the process quickly beca apparent. Imagine white light passing through a prism and breaking into a myriad of colorsand then imagine the process happening in reverse. I gathered four elents and held them firmly but separately in my mind, before bringing them together as one. No, more than that, it was like I was returning them to so prior form, putting back together the broken pieces of a puzzle. For just a mont, I thought I understood why the skill that allowed this had been called Unity.
And then I felt the thing I had created take on a life of its own. For a mont, I felt light shine from my eyes and mouth, glowing beneath my skin as it pushed against the inside of and strove to get loose. I tried to give it form through Bai Hu's hands, but as I did, I felt him sink into and return to the whole. The light around , from both Bianca's attack and the Sun's light, dimd as one, as if so massive beast had taken a deep breath and sucked in the luminance in the process. I felt power course through my veins like fire, yet it didn't hurt or burn. It just flowed and grew, from the crown of my head to the bottom of my feet, or maybe the other way around.
My heart beat once to the pulse of that flowand another heart beat in return, but it wasn't my own.
I realized then, in a way that even I couldn't truly grasp, that I was putting this power to a use that was almost unworthy of it in its simplicity, just as I realized that I needed to get this power out of before it broke loose.
Exhaling a breath that I didn't rember takingwould swear I hadn't takenI let that power rise up to my hands, pushing back against Bianca's attack like it wasn't even there and releasing my creation.
A skill has been created through a special action! Continuous manipulation of mana has created a skill of supre elental power, 'Lux Aeterna.'
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