Both girls continued to circle their foe, looking for even the slightest opening that might be made for them. Having been driven into an isolated battle, the two remained unaware of the greatest advantage left before them.
Even isolated, they were never alone.
Kori knew that running wouldn’t win them anything, so took a careful calculation of distance and opened up for a shot. As expected, her bike swung wildly out of control, herself falling from the bike in the process. Holi however recovered control of the thing and awkwardly repositioned the bike for Kori’s use, the whole process taking a considerable amount of time. Kori had however at least managed to put enough distance between herself and her foe that she could pull off an escape at the last moment.. but her own shot had failed. It wasn’t as if her shot wasn’t accurate, her enemy had simply.. evaded. By ensuring she had enough distance with which to recover, she had left her foe with enough distance to also deal with the circumstances. Somehow, she needed to be faster.
Rosa skimmed back and forth around her spiral maze of holos, firing hopelessly upon the fiend before her. Some of the shots even connected, though you could hardly notice. She pondered her own resources and options, looking for anything that could give her an advantage here. Of course, she had the nuclear option, but she wasn’t allowed to use it. Her system was even upgraded with a sense of stability there, to make it harder for such an option to even happen naturally. Her next biggest resource was her ability to shift the natural laws of the world, but that held nothing but problems for them right now. If she did that, her holos and Kori’s bike would both go offline, they wouldn’t even be able to dodge anymore. Worse, she could honestly admit to being less capable with elemental law than scientific law at this point. The only one who was actually good with elements was…
“Wait a minute, right. I’ve been so worried about my own situation that I haven’t even taken the opportunity to consider Kori. … Kori would be riding around on that bike, trying to get a good stable shot. Holi, are you there?” “Yes Rosa. Do you need anything?” “Kori’s arm was upgraded with a DNTI interface unit, since I know she’s a lot more hands-on with her planning. It should be possible to set an uplink from her arm to her bike, giving her DNTI direct access to the controls in the same way you do. She can personally hack equipment, and that might give her an edge in her own battle. Could you make sure she is aware of this advantage?” “Already on it, thanks.” Rosa still wasn’t certain what she could provide for herself, but knew that giving this information to Holi would at least provide something for their circumstances as a whole. There were more than a few bits of inspiration she had applied into her latest upgrades, with awareness of Kori's areas of struggle.
Kori blinked in surprise at the news once Holi had finished repeating it. Her arm had.. what? She wasn’t even aware how to properly build an uplink like this remotely from her arm to her bike. As this wasn’t the best situation for lessons, Holi took over with the process, forging an uplink from the arm to the bike. The bike instantly stalled in the confusion of Kori’s uncertainty, throwing her from the bike once again. So.. she had to think in code, make code work in the same momentum as her own actions. The bike sprung up, swirled around, and tilted towards her fallen frame, placing it’s grip right in line with her cybernetic hand. Grasping the handle, she pulled herself up while the bike spiraled around to catch her, moving as if a single unit. Okay, maybe this really could be.. a lot of fun. Noticing that Kori had everything under control, Holi even withdrew all control of the bike, waiting instead as a backup in case something went wrong. Kori thus compensated for her own circumstances, turning to face the fiend once again. At the same moment as she opened fire, she set the bike’s engines to a fury, blazing a reverse burst that mitigated some of the backlash. She still hadn’t properly compensated for the angles though, the effect throwing her from the bike. The bike however turned with her own momentum, spinning round to catch her in return. She was now facing backwards on her own bike, but that didn’t make it much harder to control. Activating the thing’s lane assist control, she even got a pretty good mental impression of the path in front of the bike.
In her spiral of effort, she had noticed that her struggles had brought her actually fairly close to the central fiend, the thing cautiously watching her in hopes of finding an opening. However, she also noticed that Rosa had also brought her fiend around and wasn’t that far away either. Of course though, Rosa was dancing brilliantly the whole time, peppering her foe with shots, depending on her holos for most of her advantage. Even with the option to control the bike so directly, Kori was still being heavily outclassed in mobility by Rosa, but Rosa still could not keep up to Kori’s potential offense. Sure, she could, but only using an option that was far too dangerous. In fact, Kori had come to learn just how much danger they both had going for their best hand, travelling back in time was starting to feel like a cheap move to fix stupid mistakes. In all accounts, doing so only set her upon a new timeline, the people she left behind would be left with the despair wrought by her mistakes. Without such significant advantages, they would need to uncover other solutions, even if it would require the two of them to put in extra effort.
Even so, she checked her watch, seeing that it was 180. Wait, that wasn’t the time, she was just going 180km/h. Such a watch though.. wasn’t it directly attached to her arm. Making use of such a connection, she used her DNTI to switch the display to show the time.. and then switched it back. Even her watch had more options than just time.. if only it was customized right. She spun to the small box she had packed up back at HT, ready with a few ideas she simply did not have the time to execute on. Such a box however did contain options, theories that could invoke at least a small new edge for them both. This really wasn’t the most comfortable scenario to work with the idea, but they needed a new edge somehow. Taking the box up with her cybernetic arm, she threw the whole thing long and far before passing off instructions of her own to Holi. Rosa wasn’t the only one who could coordinate things this way.
“She wants me to.. what?” “The box is just over to your right. No, your other right. Yes, there.” “What is with all the random gift boxes today? ... wow, more crystals. Wait, but these are the crystals from…” “Kori reports that there are certain tools underneath, stuff that isn’t quite complete yet. Actually, she didn’t call them tools, she said they were…” “... Instruments. I mean, in the middle of all this, shoving pieces together might be a thing, but I really don’t see anything practical from it. Wouldn’t actually, you know, do anything. I have nothing on hand to actually provide an actual purpose for these things.” “Kori said that making a couple of black boxes would be fine, because she could reprogram them herself.” “She could.. oh hells, she could, couldn’t she? There is even a nice lead casing here too. Fine, I’ll make her some stupid.. black boxes. I sort of want to see what comes of this anyway. She will have to be patient though, running and assembly don’t make for the easiest combined activity.” Rosa still had the widest grin as Holi went quiet again. Sure, trust it to the elemental protege to come up with a way to make elements work in this wild situation. This was something she had to see.
It took quite some time, but eventually Rosa managed to complete her project within her stress-filled environment. She had a series of boxes that were capable of adapting elements into being elements. Basically, it all connected and was designed with elements in mind, but would work hardly any better in the other world than it would in this one. She then loaded it onto a holo and flung it in the general direction Kori was circling around. She then provided sparse opportunities at careful signals to open up the area to elemental law, just so that Kori could try to focus some intent into the weird things. After a good while later, her package was returned with half the contents missing. Physically, the stuff didn’t even look that different, minus being rattled a bit in transit. She might be able to learn a bit more about it if she was working with elemental principles in evaluation, but right now it really was just junk. At least it was pretty junk, like a really neat armband or something.
“I’m sorry if this sounds as confusing to you as it does to me, but it seems you’re supposed to weather something.. wait no, you’re to use the weather? Something about ice block holos? How exactly would one walk on falling snow? Something, something, frozen like time, and something about ice sculpting. Your guess is as good as mine.” “Wait, she wants me to manipulate all of the frost elements around here into a frozen platform like I do with holos?” “Uh, maybe? Your guess is better than mine. Did I miss an important script or something?” “Sorry Holi, it's really hard to explain. If you make sure to watch from a safe distance, you might get to see what we mean from all of this.” Holi went quiet again, having no idea what else to say about Rosa’s present circumstances. Of course Kori would have fabricated something that would have worked from what should have been Rosa’s strength in elements. Actually, she had just previously outright smited one of these things with a cross-woven frost. Even then though, she had never thought about it.. using frost in the same way as holos. In such a cold environment, the stuff wouldn’t even melt very quickly. Viably too, if these fiends switched over to void, with the mass abundance of frost here.. it would give her a serious reservoir of elements, she would have a serious advantage going on.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Kori suddenly noticed that her bike shut down, Holi not even giving a warning in the process. Actually, was Holi even still there? Things had gone awfully quiet for the past minute. She suspected though that Rosa at least had favoured her latest project. Ice holos, it made total sense to her at least. Sure, ice was ritualistically as fragile as glass, but we were talking about a place that put ice beside stone and wood in matters of solid integrity. Though, that wasn’t the only thing crazy in how it was considered physical. Kori turned to look around at the night sky once again, like an invisible force to be reckoned with. Supposedly, her enemies were immune to their own might, which is why chaos did nothing to them. Crazy enough, she literally had the idea of using their own might against them. Absolute zero, didn’t get any frostier. But they had also garnished the name Dark Matter Anomaly. Nothing on her planet had ever truly grasped what it meant to make matter out of dark. However, as the silicon rivulets of her protective shut down, the entire structure went pitch black. She was used to working with power gear, and working with weaponized darkness. She especially loved how darkness involved forces such as gravity.
She coiled the instrument she had saved for herself and adorned it around her wrist alongside the watch unit she already had. By then though, her enemy was fast on approach. She let the bike slip away in the snow and applied some focus to her new accessory. As the instrument turned on, the shadow of her tights seemed to almost envelope any brightness left to the clothes she still wore over it. Darkness was her armor, and she was going to make the most of it. What she needed was to manipulate the darkness of her environment.. specifically the gravitational forces of it. Gravity goes down at a specific constant acceleration.. or at least, that’s how things were supposed to work on this planet. What if she then manipulated the darkness to reconfigure these variables. Her gravity should then instead go at a more controlled velocity, sideways. In fact, her gravity should only go exactly where she wanted it to, with the degree of force she expected of it. She was already used to darkness throwing her around, but now she just needed to make such work for her.
When the fiend slammed down in Kori’s direction, she was already gone. She was gone so fast, the bike wasn’t even chosen as the point of impact. Gravity having a constant acceleration was pretty boring, having variable acceleration like this really did make things a whole lot easier. She recalled that supposedly, Axln's affinity was supposedly in sand, which was a bit tragic. She already had a devoted love for elemental darkness at this rate. Maybe, with some research, she could find a useful way to make sand work for her too, but for now she would enjoy what she already had. Enjoyment wasn’t even hard, as she bubbled herself in a ball of darkness and shadow blazed the snowscape. The fiend struck down again, with Kori dodging out of the way.. and then looping around and phasing a flurry of darkness through the envoided mass. The entire blobby limb vapourized in the density of her own element, causing her foe to reel back in disdain. Right, so who was the Dark Matter Anomaly now, huh?
Rosa was already hopping from frozen block to frozen block, each distinct block catching her elegantly in the process. She wasn’t using simple ice, so the surfaces weren’t actually slippery, instead she stuck hard and fast to each easily, to then spring away as the form shifted to her will. She was practically dancing on the frost of falling snow that froze suspended in the air when she called upon it to do so. It felt as if nothing had changed, that she was still just using holos. She wasn’t even feeling cold, the chill of the air being used to empower her own designs instead. The weather only made her stronger. Okay, this really was so much fun, she would have to work with Axln as Lyun and make sure they had devices that reversed things for them in much the same fun way. She danced over her foe as it scrambled to strike her aside. In the concentration of her movement, a decidedly large portion of frost fell upon her newly ashened foe, ripping a nasty gouge through the thing. Right, because unlike her, that thing simply couldn’t take the intensity of her frost. She then gathered a much larger abstract ice sculpture and struck down upon her foe with it, leaving a substantial hole in the process, and ready to do the same yet again.
Both fiends reacted reflexively, realizing that their prey had suddenly exposed quite the claw and talon. The one chasing Kori distorted the very air, causing her to smash into the ground even though she was quite the distance from it and going quite another direction. The one chasing Rosa had quite a different distortion, the frost passing through it rebounding with vigor and striking her hard with amplified force. Both of them pressed their foe hard, looking for an opening, but were constantly ravaged by their enemy’s tactic. As they both laid on the ground reflecting upon their circumstances, they noticed the other there too suffering. Without much alternative, they returned to the fray.. but watched the other. In complete sync with each other, they both realized the same thing at the same time, breaking away from the reach of their foe and making a straight line rush in retreat.. towards the other’s fiend. The central fiend was started when both targets passed right before it in a blink of an eye, trading places, but was too slow to react.
Rosa lept from her ice platform, finding herself thrown towards the ground in the process. This however was something she anticipated, rebounding from another cushion of frost in an upside down twirl as she launched back into the air, sending a volley of frost towards her target. The frost all however instead smashed into the ground a distance away. Oh, so the thing wanted to dance, huh? Instead of setting up a small number of projectiles, she went full volley, setting up quite the multi-directional spiral towards the thing from all directions. Several of such still smashed into the ground, but many of them slipped through. Kori meanwhile dashed towards her target, finding herself bouncing off instead.. only to instantly reverse due to the rush of gravity. As her velocity built, the integrity of the reflector simply couldn’t hold, and she came in hard and fast, passing straight through her target’s central body at a sonic velocity that gradually shifted around for her as it left her suspended again in the air.
Both girls knew they had this in the bag, but that they were getting tired in the process. They would have enough to deal with their one threat, but there would be nothing left to deal with the third. That one was still sitting there dominant over the entire field, untouchable by anything else they had been presenting. If the two of them went down in exhaustion after their individual victories, they could easily be picked off by the third. Unfortunately though, they simply didn’t have the strength to do anything more, and it was appearing as if their defeat would be all too inevitable, even despite their individual accomplishments together.
Four bodies, two people, one being. The girls had never taken the opportunity to consider the fragment of chaos that had brought them together, the chaos that was chaos before them. Such a facet of chaos still remained, the foundation of their very being. This chaos was being considered a traitor, a betrayer, a corruption, a taint, all because it had grown an awareness that had overtaken its own kind. To its kind, it was the embodiment of evil now, almost as a principle, even if nothing about it was so simple. However, if being the embodiment of evil was the only way to secure the true chaos it had begun to appreciate, it would become a corrupted demon that would defy its very own. It's kind had come to feed upon the principles of order, to consume them and leave nothing in its wake, so that chaos would prevail. Maybe it was time to turn the tables, the hunter becoming the hunted, the devourer becoming…
Kori and Rosa’s gloved arm went solid ebony black, the pale shroud having faded away completely. In a panic, the two of them pulled off the glove to witness what was going on underneath. Their arm too was almost radiating pure shadow in a subtle brilliance. In their distraction though, their enemy rushed to claim the opening, leaving the two with a very sparse window of opportunity. Darkness flared around Kori.. and then surged in intensity as it drew power from her arm in volumes. Kori herself faded from view of anyone around her, appearing as nothing more than a sphere of utter darkness. The fiend tried to dodge this sudden shadow, but the gravitational impact meteored into the ground in a nova of darkness. This darkness swirled, capturing the void within, and drawing it towards her right hand. Her outstretched hand vacuumed all traces of this void.. this chaos.. and devoured it. Rosa meanwhile called upon her own transparent frost to provide her escape, the ambiance of frost gathering in an incredible intensity below her as it shielded the entire strike as she departed. With the fiend in contact with such a frost, the frost then proceeded to crawl along the field and enwrap the entire thing completely. A frost sphere began to also gather around Rosa’s right hand, tracing itself to the fiend that was appearing to rapidly shrink in the process. Drawing all of the chaos to her hand in this way, the second fiend was also consumed.
Still standing, filled with unexpected adrenaline, the two girls turned towards the last fiend. In an act of desperation, the fiend attempted to block with its earlier haze, a haze that shattered instantly on contact. The fiend knew it had no hopes with these odds, and that a message would need to return about this absolute betrayal. The traitor was corrupted enough to consume chaos itself, this was a threat that would need to be dealt with in the greatest of urgency. A white haze appeared around the fiend, the same that typically announced their arrival, but as this pale effect faded, the fiend was nowhere to be found.
Realizing that everything was finally over, both girls suddenly collapsed without warning. They had each overextended themselves, used more than they should have even had, and their consciousness faded as a result.