John wracked his brain for solutions as they barrelled down the rocky wilds towards the caravan. The Mauler was fast, faster than anything it’s size had any right to be, but he still held the edge in speed, perhaps he could do something with that. However that speed was useless if he could barely hold onto the creature’s back without being thrown off into the winds, and not to mention the fact it was still barrelling towards a set of heavy cannons and a lot of innocent people who didn’t deserve to get run over by a raging beast.
From the corner of his eye he saw Cobalt hanging on from the gouged eye socket of the Mauler with Magni barely clinging onto her back, being thrown around in the wind and he briefly got an idea. Probably a terrible idea, but they didn’t have many options right now.
“Cobalt! Magni!” He screamed.
“What?!” He heard Magni shout back, if Cobalt said anything it wasn’t audible over the pained growls of the Mauler and the rushing wind around them.
His throat burned under the strain of projecting his voice. “Swing over to its other eye or its nose! We need a distraction!”
He didn’t hear an answer back but soon there was a violent lurch as the beast came to a sudden stop, which would have sent him flying had he not been gripping so tightly to the scales of the Mauler. The other two were not so lucky, the force of the sudden stop launching Cobalt and Magni through the air up probably several dozen feet and onto the ground below. Cobalt managed to somewhat gracefully land on her feet only to stumble as she attempted to catch Magni while still disoriented, followed by a loud series of cursing involving his name. He didn’t have too much time to dwell on the state of his companions however, even with crippled senses the beast was already regaining its footing, and if he didn’t react soon it would be back on its terrible path.
Leaping to the side he targeted the old wound and slammed into it with all of his might again, causing the creature to roar in pain, but it stayed steadfast on its feet. Before he could strike again the Mauler shook so suddenly and with so much force his grip failed utterly. In a moment it seemed like time had frozen as the creature started to move again, his body just out of reach of his fingers…
[INITIATING COPIED DATA…]
A familiar buzz raced through his body and, before he knew it, with the agonizing sound of cracking bone and tearing flesh he found ARTOS latched onto the side of the creature. The entire limb was distended down to the now stretched out eyes across its surface to greater than his own height in length, covered with cracked bony spikes in some crude replication of Cobalt’s own size shifting abilities. He could see his fingers had become dagger-like blades sunken deep into the armor of his foe, keeping him suspended just under it while it ran. As much as he wanted to marvel at this new development there was simply no time, the thing was still moving much too fast towards the caravan!
Swinging on his own malformed limb like a rope he sent several kicks onto the bleeding wound he had recently exasperated, gaining the desired effect. The beast made a noise that was probably a scream of agony and actually changed direction! Unfortunately that direction was hurtling straight towards his companions…
Because of course it would. Really, he should have expected this.
Desperate for any option of actually halting its advance he swung back and forth, cutting himself as he struggled to make purchase against the jagged scales of the beast’s rapidly moving legs until he finally found a handhold sufficient enough to drive his legs into the ground. He winced in pain when he felt gravel and sand shed the soles of his feet, but he had seen once a technique that could be used against a foe much stronger and faster than him… if only he could figure out how Magni did it…
[SEARCHING DATABASE: NEURAL MIRROR SIMULATION INITIATING…]
Beyond his wildest expectations he perfectly adjusted his body against the unstoppable force of the Mauler… and used that same unstoppable energy to send the titanic creature flying.
Unfortunately he seemed to have failed to factor in that he still had talons embedded deeply into the monster, and found himself also hurtling through the air right as he realized he may have made an error.
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Having many eyes came with some benefits and downsides. First of all, he was now so used to seeing multiple copies of everything from slightly different angles that now that he was shaken enough to see double there wasn’t much of a practical difference. Unfortunately it also took him a moment to readjust his brain to which area of vision was actually relevant. Some of the first things he discovered upon gaining his mutation was that the human mind really wasn’t built for multiple sets of vision, it tended to run smoother when you forced the extra lines of sight into the background of your head and let your subconscious sort it out. In the chaos of battle there are many things that are important, picking out what was most important from something that could be even slightly lower in priority could be the razor thin difference between life and death.
The creature was charging at them.
Cobalt readied herself, blazing brighter than he had ever seen before in a frankly terrifying display of raw brute power.
The wind was blowing at around perhaps 23 miles an hour right now in an easterly direction. The humidity was probably around 34% based on the way the sunlight bounced against the air.
His form was off… no… he was struggling to stand still on his feet…
The blood of the Mauler was some form of fluorescent, not noticeable to mortal eyes, but leaving blinding spots in his modified eyes.
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Suddenly the thing flew through the air, flung by John who was still stuck to it via his distended arm… could it always have stretched so far? He was replicating his technique, with an uncanny 98% accuracy based on the angle at which the Mauler was thrown, perhaps sho…
The cannons of the Toro Rojo were turning. They could see that the Mauler had been flung but they couldn’t see that John was still stuck on it. The chance that he could escape in time to dodge the artillery fire… not enough…
“Cobalt!” He shouted briefly before vomiting out the meager contents of his stomach. Still he tried again. “John… cannons! Quick!”
He saw Cobalt’s eyes dart between the cannons and the impact site where the Mauler landed, the mental calculations spinning behind her ruby red eyes. His mind pieced together the rotation rate of the cannons, the distance between them and the Toro Rojo, the distance to the impact site and what he knew of Cobalt’s speed. A single resounding answer produced itself in his head, shortly followed by a massive migraine and another bout of nausea.
“Not going to stop… in time… faster… to… John… get him out…” He gasped, desperately trying to realign his stream of consciousness.
Understanding flickered in Cobalt’s eyes and, with speed even he could barely keep up with, she disappeared in a flash.
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Mid-battle Mutations were not unheard of, but certainly she was surprised when she saw John stuck by a clawed arm underneath the Mauler as he flew overhead. It would have been quite amusing really if it wasn’t for the fact that Magni reminded her that mortal eyes were not quite so good at a distance… and they ultimately wanted the Great Beast dead as much as they did…
And she was pretty sure John’s new Mutation didn’t protect against being blown up…
Between Magni’s gasped-out advice and her own intuition she knew she didn’t have much time. Likely by the time she could explain the situation the cannon would have already fired, leaving both the Mauler and John a messy red stain on the dirt. So she drew deep into her dantian, and lit a blaze. One month of cultivation progress into the fire, her father would spit blood if he saw her here and now.
If not for the situation she would have half a mind to laugh.
Speeding nearly faster than her own mind could process, the background blurring into an indistinct haze, she saw that great pile of flesh, rock and death which was her target. At the speed she was going she had to slam her feet into the stony earth in order to even slightly slow down, slamming her legs nearly a foot into the hard ground below lighting the air around her ablaze with the influx of force. Her enhanced vision caught sight of her target trapped beneath a mass of angry flesh. Frankly he looked awful, slumped over hanging limply from his strangely stretched limb that seemed more conscious than he was. His body was covered with bruises that spoke of a very rough landing, most likely he had broken several bones and it was only the enhanced durability of a cultivator within the Mutant Realm that was keeping him from falling apart. He reminded her of… well her mind didn’t really want to go there, repressed memories that threatened to bubble to the surface. Nonetheless she could make out the faint rise and fall on his chest, thank the Spirits great and small…
Unfortunately it seems something else was alive too, which she was informed of by a faint trembling running through the cracked dirt ground. Too proud to stay put after being thrown several yards by a pipsqueak of a boy the Mauler was stirring, fresh anger and agony blazing in its slit-like inhuman eyes. It was once again beginning to thrash, a new complication in her plan.
She had no patience for complications.
Drawing deeper into her wellspring of power, she doled out another month of stored power, feeling her head throb with fiery agony even as her body reached a new height in strength. Now the movements of the Spirit Beast were like a bee trapped in honey, all she had to do was find where John was stuck and…
Extending a finger into a large blade she sliced through stony hide tough and thick enough to bounce off any mortal steel blade as though it were paper. Grabbing John she raced off just in time to see the oncoming bolts of lead and light. Wrapping her now massive enamel wings around her back she sped as fast as she could away from the inevitable.
The explosion seemed to rock the very Earth, a cloud of dust swallowed even her blazing light. For a moment the world sat still, but no matter how it feels, time never truly stops.
She rose like the sun through the dust, debris and gore.
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In his own mind John sat on a cracked and barren landscape, atop the image of a million familiar half-remembered ruins meshed together into an unrecognizable whole amidst a parody of the real world. He looked up to the sky only to see an endless plane of red meeting him back, punctuated by clouds of swirling ash. Strangely he was not afraid, in fact he was not much of anything at all except rather perplexed and bored. There was nothing to do here, not even explore, for the endless landscape only seemed to reveal more and more indistinct scenes of ruin and rot. Left with nothing but his own thoughts, he didn’t even try to prevent his mind from wandering.
Very vaguely John was aware of what had happened. He was dragged along with the body of the Mauler as it flew through the air and was smashed against the stone, breaking more parts of him than he could count. He saw something blazing rush towards him and cut him free just before the world was engulfed with an explosion. For the scant few seconds where he was both lucid and the world around him wasn’t a hopeless blur of motion he was certain it was Cobalt, blazing so brightly like the sun. Once more he was that little boy, struggling to keep his body together from the Curse with pure stubbornness alone, looking at a woman who represented so much. The promise of power, of glory, the freedom to march against the heavens and have the world bend to you… of a certainty he had never known in his entire life.
How wrong that image had been, but for a moment he could imagine again, and those old memories came rushing back. In the short time he had truly gotten to know Cobalt she had disappointed him, but he never really took the time to properly examine why. She didn’t owe him anything did she? She didn’t even remember him, one piece of gutter trash among countless, someone so unimportant she didn’t even feel the need to continue being Young Mistress Phagos for but a moment. Still he built up this image of her in his mind and… really how could anyone measure up to that? He still didn’t know her, for all that it mattered, for as close as his new titles made him to her in theory in practice he knew that he knew nothing.
When he got out of here he should probably apologize to her. Strange, he was thinking of it as when, not if. How did he know he would get out? In fact, where was he? Shouldn’t he be more worried?
He was suddenly shaken from his thoughts by the appearance of a new presence. Right in front of him where previously only bent, rusted iron had been was a child… or rather a hole in the shape of one. The only clear bits of it was a single arm with tendrils leaking into the empty space that sort of implied a presence. With many voices at once the presence spoke.
“Hello John.” It said in a voice that was Cobalt, Magni, Alexander, Elder Aurelium, Nicole but most of all him.
“ARTOS?” He asked, unsure of how exactly his own mind even came to that conclusion.
“I am not sure what I am anymore, but I suppose so, yes.” ARTOS responded.
“What is-” He began to speak before getting cut off.
“You suffered severe brain trauma, however your body was capable of regenerating far more than any human should. Estimated 99.88% chance of full recovery within a month, however this has disrupted our connection. Something that I intended to fix.” ARTOS explained.
“So you did this?” He asked.
The absence that was ARTOS had the audacity to look confused. “No, quite frankly this was not in the simulated possibilities. Certain connections in the Neural Bridge have been bolstered stronger than they have ever been designed to accommodate while others have simply failed to reform and atrophied. We are in uncharted territories.”
“I see…” John said shakily. He didn’t quite understand everything, but he thought he knew enough. He truthfully had a million questions he wanted, no needed, to ask but nothing of substance came out of his mouth.
“May I instead be the one to ask a question?” ARTOS asked.
“I don’t see why not.” He replied.
The presence spoke something and the world faded back into black, then bled into consciousness. Head pounding, John blearily opened his eyes to see a relieved looking Cobalt standing over him.
“Magni! He’s awake!” She shouted.
He opened his mouth to try to say something important… but he couldn’t quite think of what he wanted to say. Come to think of it, he felt like he was forgetting something major…
“I’m sorry.” He managed to squeak out.
Cobalt turned her head towards him like some owl looking puzzled. “Huh?”
“It’s probably nothing.” He said, almost believing himself.