"Have everything?" Luke asked from his exercise corner.
Rhonda began patting various parts of her body as she rattled off what she's prepared, "Got my throwing potions on my warded belt and two warded bandoliers; AK-50 in my hands; two extra AK-50 magazines strapped to it; some potions I don't expect to live long enough to use in a warded backpack, but am taking just in case; a few breakable capsules of healing potions under my tongue; and many healing potion doses spread throughout various custom-made injectors around my body that I can activate with a button press or will be accidentally activated mid-combat.
"Enchanted, bullet-proof armor; though, I doubt it'll do much. Helmet, also enchanted. Two water guns of potioneered acid catalysts. I have everything I've been planning to take, plus the AK-50," Rhonda finished.
"Did you remember to eat and drink?" Luke asked.
Rhonda paused for a second before answering, "No. I'll go get something. Fighting on an empty stomach sounds like a good way to die distracted."
"Make sure you keep one hand on the AK-50 at all times. I'd even say to use telekinesis if you must," Luke called back as Rhonda disappeared beck into the back of the shop.
She didn't respond, but came back a bit later, glass cup full of water and two bread rolls in one hand, smushing the bread rolls a bit to manage it all with one hand without using telekinesis.
"Bread and water as your last meal?" Luke asked.
Rhonda shrugged and said, "It'll keep me full for the few minutes I last and didn't need preparation."
"Fair," Luke said as he continued his exercises.
They sat in silence, only the sounds of the city outside and Rhonda's eating and drinking breaking the silence, not that the latter made much noise. After a less than a minute, she finished everything before placing the water on the counter, then she walked to the front of the shop, flipped the open sign to closed for the first time in years, and disappeared as soon as her fingers left the sign, leaving it behind.
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Rhonda appeared in the arena, facing a nearly fully fresh fraxion. It had a single kill under its belt, and hadn't taken any damage. The only advantages she had were preparation, as this fraxion had no items like the majority of its species, and having a fully fresh magic capacity.
It opened the fight as all fraxions do, attempting to bind her. Rather than immediately charging in as the bind attempted to take place, it slowly advanced, keeping its guard up in case she managed to escape or prevent the conjured ice from locking her down.
Which she did. The ice pillar that appeared around her body shattered as she flew the AK-50 off to her right while turning its safety off and dashing left. She made sure to stay on the same general side of the fraxion as the gun to make sure she didn't accidentally shoot herself. Shots rang out as the .50 BMG's primer ignited the propellant, multiple trigger pulls causing Rhonda, even multiple feet away, to wish she'd brought ear protection.
A transparent shield appeared between the fraxion and the gun, angled to deflect the bullet. The shield was too weak to fully prevent the first couple shots from damaging the fraxion entirely, but strong enough to begin to deflect the bullets, causing them to impact and shatter two different armor platings on its side. The shots, having gone through a magical shield and nearing-iron-strength organic armor plating, failed to penetrate the fraxion, leaving it with significant bruising, but no bleeding wounds yet.
The fraxion tripled the shield thickness, which caused the rest of the magazine to fully stop over two thirds of the way through said shield.
While it was distracted by the pain of having its plates shattered and making sure it wouldn't have that happen any more, Rhonda grabbed a couple flasks of potions off her belt, which were made of the thinnest glass she could conjure that would survive the force of being thrown, but break on hitting even dirt, and threw one. It shattered upon the fraxion's distracted shoulder, causing it to burst into flame. Unlike a molotov cocktail, there was no need to ignite this mixture. She swapped to her second flask as the fraxion returned its gaze to Rhonda.
A large gust of wind originating from the fraxion lifted the burning mixture off its body and spread it around the battlefield in the general direction of Rhonda. It kept its thick shield between the AK-50 and itself as it attempted to pull Rhonda toward it and into the flames.
Rhonda was pulled a few feet before she managed to activate a proper anti-telekinesis shield around herself strong enough to counteract the pull, but used the extra momentum to throw her second flask with extra speed as she pulled a third from her belt. The fraxion, now paying attention to her, swatted the potion out of the air with telekinesis. The force was enough to shatter the potion, sending it splattering out, but another gust of wind slammed it into the ground, where it seemed to do nothing.
The fraxion, now knowing that the various flasks around Rhonda were a problem, attempted to shatter them telekinetically, but the enchantments on the belts and bandoliers kept the delicate flasks safe. The one in her hand, however, was another story, as it shattered mid-throw. As she telekinetically reloaded the AK-50 with the second of three magazines she brought, Rhonda's hand was unable to escape the sudden dousing of offensive potion. Her hand froze in place as the liquid paralyzed her hand and forearm before she was able to shove the liquid away from her.
The fraxion was too distracted by trying to take out Rhonda's equipment to notice the AK-50 had repositioned out of its sight and out of the way of the shield. The first bullet of the new magazine cleanly went through its brain, killing it on the spot.
As Rhonda was taken back to a neutral position, the gun came with her; however, her right forearm and hand remained paralyzed in position, as if she were still holding the flask. She lowered it and flew the gun to the left this time as the next fraxion attempted to strap her down with conjured roped. They hadn't been watching the match, obviously, as the first bullet from the AK-50 hit it in the neck, slammed through the armor plating on it, shattered a vertebra in its neck, and ripped an armor plate off the back of its neck.
It wasn't dead, but it fell limp as its nervous system suddenly couldn't breach the gap between its brain and body. A second shot went high as it passed out from the shock and pain, missing the falling fraxion entirely, as Rhonda almost fell through the ropes that attempted to bind her, flying down and backward. When she realized she'd managed to paralyze her target without actually killing it, she flew out of its sight so it couldn't use magic to attack her and let it die from its wound.
The extra few seconds, while not long, were enough to give the paralysis contact potion time to begin working its way out of her system and for her to gain a small portion of her magic capacity back. Her upper arm and elbow began to feel stiff as the fraxion succumbed to its wound.
Returned to a neutral position, Rhonda didn't waste any time in firing a shot with her AK-50 this time. Before it had time to fully escape her one-handed grasp, it fired a bullet off, which was intercepted by a thick magic shield. It was basically the perfect thickness, as the shattered bullet exited the fraxion side of the shield with just enough force to barely tink off its armor plating. A few more shots rang out to the same effectiveness, the AK-50 rapidly flying off to the side as it fired, as Rhonda was telekinetically locked in place.
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It was too much for Rhonda to escape immediately, her magic capacity not being that large to begin with and needing to be rationed as much as she could, so the fraxion was inches away from her before she managed to create a strong enough anti-telekinesis shield around herself. With the distance between the two, she was able to telekinetically launch a flask at the incoming fist fast enough the fraxion couldn't respond.
It shattered upon its fist and its hand froze solid before being fully shattered off by a quick pulse of telekinetic force by Rhonda, shattering the fully frozen forearm and leaving the majority of its upper arm frostbitten. With the proximity between the two and the angle to her gun, Rhonda didn't dare a shot of her AK-50, attempting to fly back and move it back to her side of the fraxion simultaneously.
The fraxion was having none of that and conjured a rock wall behind Rhonda, which she smashed into at full force. She heard one of the potions in her backpack crack, but not shatter, the force large enough to damage the highly fragile glass inside despite the strong enchantments on the backpack. As purple liquid began seeping out of her backpack, the fraxion launched a conjured metal spike at her, not risking closing the distance and getting blasted with another potion, while making sure she stayed close enough she didn't feel comfortable using the AK-50.
Rhonda ducked out of the way as the spike impaled the stone wall behind her right through where her shoulder was. The paralysis contact potion from before was diffused enough to let her begin to move her fingers with a great force of will, but was also beginning to slow down her shoulder and the edges of the muscles in her torso adjacent to her right shoulder. It wouldn't be deadly to let fully spread on its own, not at the dose she got, but it would be a large hindrance in the remaining fight. She briefly considered taking an injection in the arm, but decided against it, for now.
She still had quite a bit of magic capacity to burn through before she had to rely on her body to the degree she needed to take a healing dose without any life-threatening wounds.
Before she could make her next move, the fraxion launched two metal spikes at her. One was aimed at where she was headed with her dodge and the other was aimed at where she was. With the distance they were from each other, fully back-tracking to avoid both would potentially break her neck, so she accelerated into the direction of the dodge as much as she safely could and got impaled right at the edge of her torso for her efforts. The 3-foot spike impaled her in place.
It was at that moment that her AK-50 finally reached an angle she felt comfortable with and she dumped the remaining magazine into the fraxion. The fraxion kept its shield between the gun and itself this whole time, so no vitals were hit, but she just spray and preyed. The shield that covered its torso and head meant nothing to the shot aimed at its horse-like lower body. Two shots close enough together made its back left leg go fully limp, a third grazed the spine - though it didn't fully disconnect the nervous system, it was painful and would be a deadly wound in time, two more got stopped by the shield, and the gun clicked empty.
Surprised by the sudden pain, the fraxion failed to capitalize on Rhonda's impalement. She slipped herself off the spike, bringing her withing striking distance of the fraxion, and left-handedly drew one of her acid guns. Its two liquid chambers prevented either solution from being deadly, but upon a squirt of the gun, a mouthful of liquid fired toward the fraxion's chest and combined inches away from the barrel of the squirt gun.
Her aim with her left hand was not great, but that, combined with the fraxion's reaction to getting shot with multiple .50 BMG rounds, caused an even better result than she'd attempted to obtain. The acidic liquid contacted the fraxion's head and melted a jagged line straight through a mouth armor plate, through its jaw, through its head, into its torso, and into the ground, digging a few inches into the dirt before disappearing from view.
Rhonda activated two healing injections on her back, positioned in the gap between her backpack of extra potions and her legs so they escaped the impact from the rock wall. It would take time for the potions to work their way to her gaping wound and paralyzed arm, but they would be healed in seconds. A second squeeze of the acid gun's trigger was blocked by a second shield while she reloaded the AK-50 with her final magazine and started to make distance once more.
The fraxion reacted too fast for Rhonda to escape arm's reach, nearly slicing off her arm with its remaining wrist's spike. It hung limply as she flew away, barely attached by a ribbon of flesh, but enough that the potion she'd already taken should be enough to reattach it. She activated one injection on the sliced arm, just to be certain, as the fraxion moved to chase after her and conjure another wall in her path. It stepped on the purple liquid her backpack had been leaking since hitting the rock wall and its hoof and a good potion of its leg turned black, as if decayed by magic overdraw.
The wall it tried to conjure never came as the potion nullified the beast's ability to perform magic, jumbling the outgoing magic's flow into nonsense and rerouting it through the point at which the potion contacted the fraxion, rapidly decaying the beast's flesh. The muscles of two legs now useless and unable to use magic, it was stuck in place, only able to slowly hop with its two remaining legs.
With no ranged weapons to attack with and unable to shield itself, Rhonda gingerly took her backpack off to organize it. The potion would only last a minute at most with the length of contact it had with her opponent, so she moved quickly after making sure no liquid fell on her. She telekinetically threw the broken potion away before taking a few potions out to replace the ones she'd already taken off her belt and bandoliers before taking one extra out, putting her backpack back on, and smashing it across the head of the fraxion.
It burned to death not long after.
Rhonda was running low on magic capacity, so she held the AK-50 with her own two hands, both of which she'd regained shaky control over, and killed the next two fraxions on-arrival before the third blocked her bullets. She dumped the remaining bullets in the magazine while backing up before throwing the gun to the ground and preparing herself for whatever form of binding this fraxion would attempt to use.
Instead of even attempting usual strap and decap tactics, a rock sphere slammed into Rhonda's side, breaking her arm and activating all three healing injections on her left side. Realizing she would be at a disadvantage if she stayed at the distance she was while her opponent could use offensive magic, she ran forward to get just outside striking distance and reduce the amount of time the fraxion had to react to her potions.
Her legs met puddles of acid and rapidly melted, forcing her to use what little magic capacity she had to fly herself into the range she wished and activate all her injections and shatter all the healing capsules in her mouth. She would not be able to handle a real threat without a large amount of healing potion constantly keeping her body together.
As it seemed she would enter striking range, her feet reformed, the fraxion started a punch while simultaneously conjuring a rock spike toward Rhonda;s right side, and Rhonda stopped. Both attacks missed, aimed at where she would have been if she'd continued into melee range, and she sent a squirt from one of her acid guns through the fraxion's arm, almost cutting it off with the virulence of the acid stream. To get to the arm from her hand, it had to cleave through the rock spike, which it easily did.
The fraxion put up a shield in time to save the arm from total amputation, but it would have trouble using the hand without medical magic or healing potions of its own. It stepped forward, forced her arm down with telekinesis, and sent a punch into Rhonda's gut with its good arm, impaling her with its wrist spike.
In a single motion, she brought the arm not holding a water gun up from her side, grabbed a flask off her belt, and slammed it into the fraxion's arm, dousing it in the purple potion of magic nullification. Its arm rapidly decayed before it could react and Rhonda raised her now-free acid gun to the fraxion, spraying it as she did. Without a shield or time to fully move out of the way, the dodging fraxion's torso was cut in half, followed shortly by its lower body.
As it lay there, dying, Rhonda's stomach wound stitched itself back up. She confirmed the volume of liquid in the guns while she waited her opponent's demise. It had one shot in it left while the other acid gun had the majority of its acid left. She had most of her extra potions left, alongside a large amount on her straps. More than she could have ever realistically used, given her magic capacity's ability to keep her alive through real threats.
Finally, the fraxion on the ground died and Rhonda began charging forward instantly, before the conjured vines could wrap around her. They impacted her back, making her stumble and almost fall, where she was trapped by the second set of vines. She attempted to overdraw her magic to get herself out, but the fines grabbed the last visible purple potion, ripped it off her bandolier, and slammed it against her shoulder. Rather than telekinetically escaping the vines as her hands decayed, her shoulder decayed alongside her hands.
She was unable to take one last fraxion down with her, completely powerless as it walked over to and decapitated her.
The potions in her system forced her to go through the agonizing experience of being decapitated not once, but four times before it took hold and killed her.