Anduan bit down into the squirming body of the rat.
Warm blood ran over his teeth. Slippery entrails slithered over his tongue. Wet, scraggly fur brushed over the roof of his mouth. Delicious. Delicious. Nothing better in the world. It made him want to be sick.
He finished the whole thing in three bites, his eyes already frantically scanning the dark alleyway for his next morsel. He was always so very, very hungry, and there was always so little food to go around. A famine fit for one -- but still, a fella had to eat, right? Nobody could fault him for that. Not a person in the world.
His folks back home had always grumbled at him for eating them out of house and home, but a fella just had to eat. And if there was no more food to gobble down, and there were people snoozing in their beds, you couldn't fault a man, right? You don't get mad at an animal for doing what comes natural.
Tears rose to his eyes. He had no more rats -- he'd eaten them all, their blood and bone a fetid slurry in his gut. He wanted to vomit. He couldn't do this anymore. It was so good. Without even noticing, he'd begun licking at the wall of the alleyway, scraping away the sweet moss that had collected there over years.
If someone was walking past, they would no doubt have thought the whimpering and panting that echoed down the hallway came from some sort of wild animal. But it didn't -- it came from a man -- and a man had to do what came natural. It was his biological imperative to eat his fill.
Far above him, the tip of the needle-like tower that speared through the core of the Cradle exploded, fire and debris already raining down. Anduan paid it no mind: you couldn't eat fire, after all.
He was no maniac charging after his target: he'd be patient. Like a predator hunting its prey, salivating with anticipation. He'd just sit here and eat his fill, until an Oliphant came too close to his jaws.
A fella had to eat, after all.
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"So, ah, this is your attack?" Arrogance chuckled, glancing around the room. Affable disdain crawled through his words. "This is… hmm, very impressive. Very good show, I suppose -- you're doing your best, after all."
The power that had radiated out from Roy's hands hadn't been quite as destructive as he'd hoped. Instead, a swarm of soap bubbles had poured forth, filling the chamber and floating through the air. A few stray ones collided with Arrogance's face, popping harmlessly without so much as a scratch of damage.
He'd clearly ended up with a technical ability today, then. A grin spread across Roy's face. Fantastic!
The best part of fighting an Aether-user was figuring out their abilities. Roy adored that feeling, so when he'd been creating his own ability he'd sought a way to expand that pleasure. In the end, the solution was simple. If he enjoyed figuring out his opponent's abilities, it stood to reason that he'd enjoy figuring out his own abilities just as much.
Every time a day passed -- well, technically, every time he lost consciousness -- his ability, Save The Day, would randomly generate a new Aether power. Roy had no idea what the power did, no clue how it worked or how to best use it, so he had to figure it all out as he went along. A constant voyage of self-discovery!
His eyes tracked the bubbles. Save The Day very rarely generated useless abilities, so it was a safe bet that these bubbles did something -- but what? Colliding with them seemed to have no effect save for popping them, and they didn't seem to be doing any damage to the areas saturated with them.
Were they some kind of targeting reticule, then? If they remained intact for long enough, would a secondary attack be triggered? That would be nice and convenient, but Roy just didn't have enough evidence either way. For now, he'd just have to fight normally and carefully observe them as he went.
Arrogance sighed, twirling his rapier in his hand and suddenly slashing -- popping the bubbles directly in front of him.
"I hope you're aware," he said flatly, rapier swishing through the air as he held it straight out to the side. "That you've sorely disappointed me. I chose to attack you in the hopes that you'd provide good sport -- to wit, I put my faith in you -- and you've repaid me with little more than farce and numbskullery."
"Sorry to hear that," Roy grinned, bringing his body low to the ground, ready to charge. "Lemme show you what else I've got."
Arrogance pointed his rapier straight forward. "Given your atrocious grooming," he snapped, eyes running over Roy's chaotic mane of hair. "I thought you perhaps akin to a lion -- but I see now that I have overestimated you. You, sir, are a pig: and as your explicit superior, it's my duty to grant you the abattoir's embrace."
The guy clearly loved the sound of his own voice. Well, that was fine. Roy cracked his knuckles; he'd see if Arrogance enjoyed the sound of his own screams just as much.
"I'd ask if you have a weapon," Arrogance narrowed his eyes. "But it's self-evident that you--"
Roy charged, air bursting around him from the sheer speed of the movement. Countless bubbles popped into steam as he ran right through them -- water instantly evaporating from the friction. In an instant, he was upon Arrogance, his feet high in the air -- a hammer of the gods.
It didn't meet its mark. As Roy brought his fist down, Arrogance span away with all the grace of a trained dancer, peppering Roy's chest with minute -- and useless -- stabs of his rapier. The young man arched back in an attempt to avoid the subsequent grab from Roy, too, but he wasn't quite fast enough.
"Gotcha!" Roy laughed.
Seizing Arrogance by the foot, Roy went to slam him into the ground -- only for the young man to elegantly split out of his boot, leaving Roy holding only the shoe while Arrogance cartwheeled to a safe distance.
"Non, non, non!" he laughed, wagging a finger admonishingly. "You can't lay a hand on me with such brutish --"
Roy hurled the boot at him. Infused with lime Aether, it was like a zooming meteor, but Arrogance was ready for it. In a snapshot rush of motion, he lunged forward with his rapier and effortlessly sliced the projectile into pieces, scraps of leather and string falling to the floor around him. The lime Aether still crackling among the remnants quickly died off.
"You can't lay a hand on me with such brutish tactics," Arrogance continued, slipping out of his other shoe for symmetricality. "A monkey cannot defeat a human -- as I've already proved to you."
The smirk on his face went beyond his ambient smugness. Alert suddenly blaring in his brain, Roy glanced down -- right at the parts of his body Arrogance had assaulted with the rapier. Half-a-dozen glowing red dots, like the laser sights of a sniper, hovered over his chest, slowly moving and orbiting around each other.
"You've fallen prey to my ability, I'm afraid!" Arrogance laughed, waving his rapier around like a magic wand. "You must have thought yourself quite fortunate that my attacks hadn't hurt you, no? How tragic for you! My attacks haven't even concluded yet."
Roy sucked in air through his teeth as he looked down at the dots. "A delayed activation kind of thing, then? By not doing damage at the point of contact, you're able to do more damage later on?"
"For a mere brute, you seem quite knowledgeable about how these Aether abilities work," Arrogance smiled, offering some demure applause. "I'll grant you the honour of having me clap for you. The battle is already over, unfortunately. I'll have those points gather over your vital areas and spear right through -- akin to the practice of a fisherman, you see."
A bead of sweat ran down Roy's forehead as he looked down at the dancing points, slowly moving over to cover his heart. Idly, he waved a hand to brush away some of the bubbles that were coming close --
Boom!
The room lit up in a fiery explosion as the bubble Roy had made contact with burst into flame, scorching his fingers and charring his skin. Roy bit his lip to silence the unmanly yelp of pain that would have escaped. On the other side of the room, Arrogance just laughed.
"What's this?" he said. "You don't want me to trouble myself killing you, so you're electing to kill yourself instead? How gracious of you! Or perhaps you simply don't understand how to use your own power? Please say that isn't the case: it'd just be too tragic…"
In this case, though, it was correct. Save The Day ensured that Roy didn't know how his power worked: but now he could feel it. That tickling in his brain, that slow understanding of the ability he'd drawn from the deck. He'd begun the process, and so he'd started winning.
These bubbles exploded if something came into contact with them, then? No -- Arrogance had slashed several out of the air without so much as a spark. Even if it took direct contact with a body, Roy was sure one of them had touched Arrogance already with no ill effects.
The spots moved to cover Roy's heart, warping slightly as they passed over a crease in the fabric of his shirt. He now understood how to neutralize the attack, but that didn't bring him any closer to figuring out what Save The Day had given him.
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Did the bubbles only explode when Roy came into contact with them specifically? That couldn't be it, either -- he'd plowed through dozens of them during that first attack against Arrogance. Something must have changed between then and now.
Roy glanced down at his wounded hand, slick with blood, and a grin spread across his face. He had it.
He charged forward with another mighty leap -- and at the same time, he tore off his shirt and hurled it away, the dots going with it. As he reached Arrogance's position, he slammed his fist forward in another devastating blow, only for the young man to spin away once more, the attack missing by inches. High-pitched laughter filled the air.
"Weren't you paying attention the first time?" Arrogance giggled, a stray bubble floating by his face. "You can't so much as touch me --"
Roy spat.
The infused saliva -- traveling with the speed of a bullet -- wasn't aimed for Arrogance, however, but the bubble floating by him. The moment the spit made contact, the bubble popped into a burning explosion, striking Arrogance in the face and forcing him to dodge backwards.
He retreated with a gymnastic backflip, but it lacked some of the grace it had possessed before. As Arrogance landed, he stood in an unnatural slouch, slowly lifting his hand away from his face. The explosion hadn't done as much damage as Roy had hoped -- but a long, thin crack now spread across Arrogance's features, from the corner of his lip all the way to the edge of his right eye.
The young man gaped in his reflection in a shard of silvery debris.
"What do you think you're doing…?" he half-hissed, half-whispered, staring at his wound all the while. "This is… what do you… you've…"
"I figured it out!" Roy declared proudly, scratching at his bare chest. "These bubbles explode when they're exposed to bodily fluids. You're kinda weird, so it looks like you don't have any, but they only started exploding on me once I started sweating. I bet my blood would do it too -- hell, maybe I could blow this whole place up if I started taking a leak. Not gonna do that, though. That'd be gross."
Arrogance ignored his boasting. Instead he continued to stare, dumbfounded, at the crack on his face.
"What the fuck," he shrieked. "Do you think you're doing?!"
"Beating your ass."
"Look at me!" Arrogance screamed, clawing at the wound. "Look what you've done! Who the hell do you think you are?! Fucker! Asshole! You fucking cunt! You've ruined me!"
His groping hands found purchase in the crack -- and as Roy watched, Arrogance began to peel his own face off. The wood creaked, sticky adhesive stretching out in strands as Arrogance pried the front of his head loose. The whole time he was still talking.
"I'm going to kill you!" he snarled, voice grasping for the words to quantify his anger. "I'm - I'm going to rip your fucking heart out! Pop your eyes… smash your fucking h-head in… and eat you… shit your skull out…fucker, fucker, you're dead, you're so dead, haha, I can't wait, I'm going to… you're gonna die here!"
Arrogance's face came free with a final tearing sound that resounded through the room, and with a scream of anguish he hurled the thing away. Beneath the faceplate, Roy could see the impression of a human skull carved right into the wood -- and as he watched, that wooden body began to burn with an inner flame. Empty sockets and teeth glowed an incandescent red, that long orange hair crackled and stiffened as it was charred black, and Arrogance hunched over like a wild animal, flames coiling around his rapier until it looked more like some kind of broadsword.
No more words left Arrogance's mouth: only the guttural roar of a wild beast. He charged forward on all fours.
This… could be a problem.
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The person Ruth was fighting wasn't used to this. That much was becoming obvious.
The blazing eye-beams that poured from her enemy's gaze had been intimidating at first, but she'd been dodging them for a couple of minutes now; she'd gotten an idea of how they worked. At first, she'd thought the enemy -- Curiosity, obviously, with the way he never shut up -- was generating heat from his eyes somehow, but that wasn't the case at all. The beams that scoured the room, digging trails into the floors and walls, were recording objects into Curiosity's Aether. So long as Ruth kept her defenses up, those beams probably couldn't so much as scratch her.
Curiosity's secondary attack, though, that definitely could.
Ruth rolled to the side, the boulder of metal and debris slamming into the spot she'd been standing a moment later. Everything Curiosity had recorded over the last few seconds, manifested into a huge sphere of indiscriminate junk. Dropping a heavy object on top of the enemy was pretty simple as far as strategy went, but Ruth couldn't deny it was effective.
At least, it would be effective if Curiosity was dealing with a chump.
Ruth dived away as another boulder came down, twisting her body as she leapt and striking the sphere with her Aether-infused leg. The ball went flying towards Curiosity -- some shards of metal came flying off it from the impact, but it mostly maintained its integrity as it flew through the air.
With just the slightest bit of alarm, Curiosity's eyes widened -- and he went to fly away from the incoming projectile. Still, Ruth had expected that. The boulder hadn't been intended to hit Curiosity at all: merely act as visual cover for Ruth's approach.
She clung to the back of the sphere like an insect, and the instant Curiosity flew off to the side she leapt off of it, Skeletal boots flaring with Aether as she launched towards the enemy like a cannonball. One set of claws speared through his chest, granting Ruth purchase on her flying adversary, while the other reared back -- sparks of red gathering at the tips of the spikes.
Curiosity was still talking like a robot. "How long did it take you to figure out my ability? Is this strategy one you've used before, or is it one you've concocted for this situation specifically? In terms of your preference, would you kill me quickly or slowly?"
"Quickly," she answered. "So I can shut you up."
She drove her Skeletal claws upwards, lancing right through Curiosity's nostrils and exiting atop his skull. His body fell limp, and the two of them instantly fell back to the ground -- Curiosity's body dissipating into orange Aether that bolted away a moment later.
Ruth let out a heavy breath from the ground, glancing at the prone form of the young girl nearby. She hadn't been hurt in the crossfire: that was good. One less thing to feel guilty about.
Still… no rest for the wicked. Ruth pulled herself to her feet with a reluctant crack of her joints, claws glinting in the red light.
Whose ass did she have to kick next?
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"This is fun!" Joy laughed, swinging his mace with enough force to punch through steel. "We haven't done this for ages, Serena! Are you having fun too?"
Serena ignored the question, running and jumping to avoid the furious strikes. Joy got stronger the longer he was in a fight, so at this point attempting to parry or block wouldn't do much more than destroy her weapon -- and probably her arms, too.
She drew a sword from the ground, infusing it with Aether and hurling it right at Joy's face. He easily sent it flying away with a two-handed swing, but Serena used the opportunity to run in closer. She couldn't afford to let Joy drag this out: she'd have to kill him quickly, before he got strong enough that she couldn't even come close.
As she ran, circling Joy as she approached, Serena ran her hand over the metal floor, violet Aether running into the material. Countless swords sprouted forth, blade-first, each aimed directly for Joy's body as they grew. Two swings was all it took to demolish the attack, like a machete cutting its way through the jungle -- but the second sword Serena threw in that moment of opportunity sliced right through one of Joy's arms, sending the wooden limb clattering down to the floor.
She was doing good! Even if his Aether ability did enhance his strength to an absurd level, Joy could only exert so much of that strength with a single arm.
Joy glanced down at his wooden stump for a moment. "Wow!" he laughed cheerfully. "I sure didn't expect that! Hey, Serena, think fast!"
He slammed the mace down with such force that it was embedded into the ground, missing Serena by mere inches -- but still close enough that the spikes on its surface sliced through her shirt, inflicting shallow cuts on her stomach. The air pressure, too, sent her flying away: rolling to a stop a few meters away.
She couldn't just lie around. If she let herself lose here, Bruno wouldn't be safe. She couldn't allow that!
"Your job's to protect us, Serena," Yakob had said, in the room she'd been born. "You attack whatever is going to hurt us. Bruno defends what we want to keep safe. I decide which is which."
It was up to her to decide what was going to hurt them now, but Cott fit the bill without a doubt. Bruno was still locked away in the back of her head, like a frightened child, and she didn't know when he'd come out. Every second she thought about how this jerk had affected him just made her angrier and angrier.
She looked up hatefully, eyes bloodshot. She'd played enough games here. Time to end this.
Joy kept on laughing as he struggled to tug his mace out of the ground. "I got you!" he cried. "Even though you took my arm off, I still got you! Did you see, Serena? That was awesome!"
In that moment, he was looking right at her, and so he didn't notice Rico step out of the fog behind him. His gaze was resolute, his sickly Aether was crackling silently around him, and his hand was outstretched -- until it clapped down on Joy's shoulder.
"Tiny Garden," Rico said.
Nothing happened.
In that frozen moment, Serena thought back. When they'd first met in that alleyway, Rico had melted an assassin down to the bone -- and he'd told them how he did it, too. He said he'd given the bacteria on the assassin's body a taste for human flesh. Serena didn't quite get what 'bacteria' was, but if he'd just tried to do the same thing…
"No!" she called out in warning. "He's made of wood!"
She was too late.
Joy whirled around with a mad giggle, swinging his mace as he went. The sound of it crashing through the air was like an approaching meteor -- and with that speed, and at that range, Rico stood no chance of dodging at all.
Blood and gore splattered across the floor.