Chapter 116: The Lesson
Lena and Allen both went straight for Iron and Air.
Their first clash extinguished two reasons we might’ve hoped the match could go her way.
Allen wasn’t going to sit back and let Phantom pick at Lena’s defenses the way he had before we’d really pushed him in the park. Nor was he going to leave Phantom out of the fight, after all.
Lena had to throw all her effort into a series of frantic deflections just to keep Allen’s Iron plate from slamming into her, and that left her wide open to Phantom’s rippling strikes.
No, make it three sources of hope that died like sputtering embers with that first exchange. Lena had not, it turned out, been hiding an extra two Air from even me the whole time. Even without Phantom, Allen’s attacks zipped through the air twice as fast as hers, and even more nimbly.
As long as Lena focused entirely on defense she managed to fend him off. His strikes had to travel further and build up more momentum than her parries, and she’d gotten damned good at parrying over the course of our practice sessions. Iron whirled through the air and crashed into its opposite number again and again, a storm inches from Lena’s face. Despite that, and despite Phantom’s relentless assault, she never flinched, never gave ground.
As soon as she tried to strike back, though, the freezing morning air shattered with the sound of Iron ringing out against her armor.
She staggered backwards, leaving streaks of mud and ice in her wake. Her hands flailed for balance.
It left her open to a second strike. This one left her on her ass.
Allen drew his Iron back and swapped Reactants. His plate shifted with Stone, changed with Water. It glowed with Fire, then all the heat transferred to one edge down the subtle channels he’d shaped.
Gerry’s technique for focusing power should have taken enough time that Lena would get a second to catch her breath. No such luck when Allen used it, because Phantom never let up. Shadowy pseudopods erupted from the ground all around Lena and whipped into her armor. They surrounded her so completely the metal didn’t even shine in the dawn light.
It had all happened so fast, I hadn’t had a chance to process what I was seeing.
As Allen stalked forward and raised his sizzling Iron, I finally did.
We’d considered it a coin flip whether he would come out swinging and try to make his point with overwhelming force, or if he would waste time posturing until the match got serious. He’d clearly gone for option one.
We’d prepared for it. Planned for it.
In the moment, though, it seemed so much worse than anything we could’ve imagined.
Beside me, Matt shook his head.
Allen snapped his hand down.
Phantom rippled away from Lena to give him a clear shot.
Iron rang out against –
Stone.
Allen’s voice changer crackled. “Tsk.”
Lena’s newly conjured Stone shield flowed outwards, becoming a full sphere around her. Pores in its surface let her see out, supporting pillars bolstered its structure. The result looked almost like coral. She climbed to her feet within it and flashed a grin.
This was the bowl-like defensive technique Erin had used against Phantom taken to its logical extreme. Like a lot of extremes, it was full of flaws. It wasn’t as fast as a shield directed by Air. It wasn’t as sturdy as a shield focused in a single direction. Either weakness would’ve been fatal against a lot of Third Eye attacks.
Worst of all, it lacked any way to transition from defense to offense; not only would controlling it with Earth take too long to hit someone who could smash it aside with Air, it was too spread out to strike with enough mass to hurt.
But we’d already known Lena couldn’t keep up with Allen when it came to Air, any more than she could me. Phantom’s attacks weren’t as individually strong as a player’s offense, so they would struggle to crack the Stone even in this relatively thin shell. Even Allen’s Iron, weakened by the structural adjustments needed to put that single searing edge on it, would bend and deform before it broke through.
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Damned if he didn’t try, though. He and Phantom both threw all of their focus into battering Lena’s shield. It cracked. It chipped.
Before it crumbled, though, her Plastic wrapped around Allen’s face and dragged him away from her, because she’d stopped controlling the shield as soon as she shaped it. Her attack hadn’t had to pass through the Stone’s pinprick holes, because she’d pulled the shell inwards from the point Third Eye manifested new objects.
Allen clawed at the Plastic while it half-muffled the curses that crackled through his voice changer.
This was my technique, in a way. Maybe it would be better to call it my mistake. The very first time I manifested something with Air, I’d ended up tangling Lena in a sheet of Plastic. She’d feigned choking on it at the time to troll me; only later did we realize she’d been losing HP all along.
It wasn’t much of a weapon. In flight, it was too slow and awkward to maneuver, at least with the amount of Air Lena had. Any Third Eye construct could block or deflect it, or just tear it apart. The HP loss it caused was slow compared to blunt trauma from Air, and not even close to the kind of damage Fire could pump out.
As a surprise attack, though? As a distraction?
It had a lot to recommend it.
Of course, Lena could pull a few tricks with it I wouldn’t have been able to back then, even if I’d wanted to. Before Allen could drag the Plastic from his face, she switched to Fire.
Allen coughed as the Plastic burned into a cloud of oily smoke atop his mask. His Iron clattered to the snow, its heated edge gouging a new furrow.
Jan’s fists clenched. She leaned forward in her chair.
Matt raised an eyebrow.
I wished I thought Jan’s worries were justified, or Matt’s interest.
Unfortunately, it didn’t surprise me in the least that when Lena switched to Iron and shot a missile at Allen, it vanished through his Key.
He wiped the last of the melted Plastic away and conjured more Iron. “Cute trick, Ashbird.”
“Right?” Lena said. “It’s one of Cam’s specialties.”
Considering that I’d only ever used it once outside of practice, and that by accident, I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t about to contradict her.
Allen snorted. “And the sphere is the wiki admin’s defense, yeah?”
“Yep,” Lena said.
“Is that how this is going to go down?” he asked. “You show off each of your buds’ tricks one at a time, and it’s supposed to prove to me how trusting a team is so much better than trusting my own strength?”
Lena cocked her head, all wide-eyed innocence. “Look. If you decide to take some kind of positive life lesson from the way I kick your ass, I’m not exactly going to complain, you know?”
Allen grunted. “‘Couple problems with that.”
He tapped his phone and curled his hand, reshaping his Iron.
Suddenly, Phantom gathered a huge pulse of shadow. It smashed a hole through Lena’s Stone shield. Allen shot his newly formed wire through the gap. Lena cried out as electricity coursed down the length of the wire.
Erin’s preferred attack.
“One,” Allen said, “I can just make people show me their tricks.”
Lena gasped, unable to hide her pain for the first time in the match.
I clamped my jaws shut. The last thing she needed was a distraction.
She pried the wire off her and stomped on it. That wouldn’t have stopped Erin’s version of the attack, but Allen seemed to lose interest in the wire as soon as it stopped hurting.
Unfortunately, it was because he’d already switched to a new attack. Lena had nothing to throw in the way of his Iron when it shattered what remained of her shield. She tumbled back into the mud.
“Two,” he said.
He advanced again, through the ruin of Lena’s shield, with Phantom’s darkness spreading beneath his feet. He loomed over her. He stretched his hand out. The Iron pushed down. A single solid block, massive, simplistic, inexorable. Pure power.
Lena swung at the Iron with Stone, but Allen only had to adjust his hand to grind his construct against her chest again. She batted at it with her fists and it didn’t even budge. Mud squelched away from her back. Snow ran in rivulets where her wings thrashed against it.
Bob and Nadia looked away. Gerry hung his head. Even Jan averted her eyes.
I wished I could.
“Cameron,” Matt hissed.
I didn’t turn.
I had no right to look away from this.
Allen lifted his Iron, just a little. As soon as Lena started to squirm beneath it, he slammed it back.
I already knew what he was going to say.
He didn’t disappoint. “Tricks ain’t shit.”
Lena grunted as the Iron pressed her further into the mud.
“All that matters...” Allen began, lifting it to slam it back.
She managed to wedge Stone beneath it.
Stone that shattered as soon as he brought his Iron down.
“... is power,” he snarled, “and the will to fucking use it.”