"Yo! Help me out with this." Fatera shouted, kicking down Wu's door before the sun even gets up as the one of the two boys in the house nearly had his soul ripped from his body. With his face pale, his heart nearly giving out and his visions dazed still from his dreams, Fatera jumped onto his bed, her feet firming landing in between his legs and inches away from the generational goods.
"Shit...even getting strong can wait until later in the day..." Wu grunted, rubbing his eyes before Fatera leaned forward and bopped him on the head so hard and it seemed to cleanse away all of Wu's drowsiness somehow.
"Ya awake now?" Fatera asked as Wu looked more confused than dazed now.
"Y-yeah. Strangely so." Wu rubbed his chin at the clarity of mind he iss feeling right now. Is the early onset of concussion actually peace and serenity?
"Then lets train." Fatera said.
Even though the training camp on the tropical island is less than a few days away, all five members of Wu, or rather, Fatera's household had been training to obtain further strength in their own ways. Even though Lily had emphasized that the whole aim of the camp is for the five of them to fight well as a unit, nobody wanted to be the least impressive member when the day comes.
"Lera isn't staying with you anymore?" Fatera asked as Wu peeked far out into the rising dawn at the edge of the sky.
"What? You were expecting to see her too?” Wu joked, though Fatera’s serious look made him shut up, “We both thought it will be good to stay in our own beds for now. It would be a little...weird to sleep together if we are not together...that kind of stuff."
"Huh." Fatera raised her eyebrows before shaking her head. She is no idiot, but she also could not care less about this lovey-dovey stuff.
Fatera dragged Wu into the woods until she stopped by a patch of open terrain where she had been experimenting with her own powers over the past few days.
"So, what do you need me to do?" Wu asked, fixing up his suit of armor that he hastily put on with Fatera watching shamelessly, clearly judging his less than impressive physique in the process.
"I used Dominance mode when I fought against Lily last time." Fatera said, cracking her knuckles, "I have been trying to get back to that level, but nothing had worked."
"Right..." Wu asked, "You could perform above your current physical level when in specific and stressful scenarios...we know humans are capable of briefly surpassing perceived limits. I am sure you just pushed yourself physically much harder during the finals..."
"No." Fatera shook her head right as Wu finished before she knocked herself on the dome as the loud thump caused a nest of birds to fly away from their now-disturbed sleep, "It's in my head. I know it."
Everything is in your head, technically. However, Wu knew that was not what she meant nor wanted at that moment. Whatever Fatera's looking for, it was far inside of her, deeply embedded with the layers of facade and guard she had unconsciously set up...
"What do you want me to do?" Wu asked, and Fatera took a seat on the ground before she crossed her legs and rested her hands on her knees.
"Beat me up." Fatera said, "Last time it happened, I was almost dead due to Lily's flames."
"You know I can't do that," Wu said, dropping his hands down by his side.
"Why not?!" Fatera said, "Ya know I won't hate ya for it or anything!"
"I do!" Wu said, throwing his hands forward, "That's not the issue! It's just...I can't beat up my friends...I am too-"
"Aw, aren't you a softie." Fatera cut him off, a funny look on her face, "Then...I will beat you up until you are willing to fight back!"
Starting from her crossed-legged seated position, Fatera floated straight up as her feet clawed hard against the ground, spinning her body around and kicking right onto Wu's shoulder. Wu reacted immediately, jabbing to the side and reducing the impact of the attack even as it still sent him stumbling to the side.
She carried her momentum, pivoting about the foot on the ground before delivering yet another reverse kick straight at Wu's head when he fired off a point-blank blast, knocking the melee aside. That jolt of energy sent Fatera tilting sideways ever so slightly, and she reached her hand towards Wu, a Wave-glove suddenly extending forward and latching onto Wu, grabbing him by the waist.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
"That...is new." Wu blinked a few times, slightly twisting his wrists as jets of the Wave shot out from his pinned-down elbows and knocking loose the extensions. It could not compare to Fatera's Wave armour, boots,and gloves at their native lengths, but it certainly adds a new wrinkle to her style of combat.
"Pretty shit, ey?" Fatera laughed at her own attempt at branching out before she rapidly reformed the extension, thinning the Wave into a single loop before hooking around Wu's body once more, "But they can at least do this!"
With a pull, Fatera lifted Wu off the ground and yanked him towards her, the extension functioning as a whip of some sort and closing in the distance between the two. Then, she cocked her fist back, a spiraling Wave concentrating around her back leg as she prepared a punch that will surely puncture through Wu's body.
"Tsk!" Wu grunted, maintaining his balance in midair before clenching both fists together, sending out his Void Domain all around and dampening out the concentration of the Wave from the environments all around her. Fatera's body stiffened immediately before she tried to rapidly retract all of the usage of the Wave within her body similar to the way the Ghost did it.
Terrifyingly adaptable, intuitive, and unafraid. Those are the key ingredients that made up Fatera. She cracked a laugh, knowing that Wu had finally taken this battle seriously, and she swung her fist before Wu's hit found her jaw first.
There was a loud thud, and Wu's accelerated attacks surprised even Fatera herself as she spit something onto the ground before growling angrily.
"Shit! Are you okay?!"
"Keep going!" Fatera shouted angrily, charging towards Wu and trying to tackle him off the ground when jets of the Wave opened up underneath his feet and he swiftly slipped out of the way, "Huh, so you have evolved too."
"Of course." Wu smiled, tapping the ground and straightening himself up, taking full advantage of his advanced speed within the Void Domain to knock Fatera down yet again. Fatera tried to counter with her baseline physical strengths, but Wu's attacks soon started to wear her down.
When Wu first showed Lera how to create the Void Domain, there was a brief moment when he wondered where his originality and place on the squad lied when the domain was created. However, upon seeing how Lera incorporated the Void Domain into her Cast Array, Wu realized that so much more could have been done with this power alone.
Inherently, the Cast Array were structured to allow for a layout that follows a normal coordinate system, as three perpendicular axes were used to define a location in three-dimensional space. Therefore, Lera's Void Domain had to be mostly rectangular in shape, driven by the way she defined locations in her cast array.
However, with Wu's suit of armor being the source and center of all of his attacks, he ran on spherical coordinates, as projection angles and distance from origin are used to define the areas of effect for his Casts. That means he can create pockets of open space within the Void Domain projecting out from his body where he could send out jets of the Wave.
Allowing for an actual attack to pass through would have defeated the purpose of Void Domain altogether, but at the very least, he was able to fly around like Ironman even with the Void Domain active again. The rerouting of the Cast lines and furthering of the control systems had been an absolute nightmare, and Wu and Lera banged their heads against the wall for weeks until a working prototype was inputted into his new suit.
"Argh...Gruggh..." Fatera grunted, dropping down onto her butt as Wu once again held back. However, she sensed the hesitancy inside Wu's head, and she threw her body at Wu, forcing him to kick her away.
As they continued battling, Wu started to notice dark red lines pulsing underneath Fatera's body before bright red cracks started to farm over her skin as if lava is about to burst straight through. However, because of the influence of the Void Domain, the built-up of static Wave simply continued, when suddenly, those bright red cracks turned dark.
Wu recognized the shift in color and Fatera's posture as a signal for her entering into the higher stages of her power, potentially already at Killa mode in her current state.
"I am...almost there!" Fatera clawed her hands in the fresh morning mud before she stilled her breathing. Then, her body started to heat up more and more when she suddenly shot up and ripped apart her tank top. With her body exposed, she planted her face deep into the mud, her mind plunging deep into the past, hoping to bring back those images, those feelings, and those words...his words once again.
But like an insomniac trying to sleep, or an anxiety-filled teenager trying to relax, Fatera almost had her fingers on the promised land before being slipped back to reality.
"Fuck." Fatera cursed, slamming her fist on the ground before she sat back, her twin peeks clamping up layers of mud as they rose up gloriously into the morning sun, "Still nothing."
"But you were close, right?" Wu asked, observing the fading lines of cracks over Fatera's body. Her skin had always been incredibly smooth, and most cracks now looked more like bulging veins filled to the brim with the Wave. It seemed that by spending time under the influence of Void Domain, Fatera's able to push her body further and in a safe way.
Kind of like people trying to lift an immovable object in the gym. If they aren't strong enough, the weight just won't go anywhere. By placing a near-infinite resistance to an intention of using the Wave, Wu is able to drive out the maximum level of intensity in training...By that logic, if they could keep pushing for the envelope...
"I have an idea," Wu said, his mind fully cleared up after that battle. That was when his eyes inevitably traveled down Fatera's body as his face became redder than the dawn setting in above them.