Scene 11 - November 6th

Exterior Training Grounds, Continuous

Quinn Kaufman

I hadn’t expected fighting Anima to be easy, but I had expected to have a decent chance at least - Loki wouldn’t have sent me to fight her if I hadn’t had a chance, would he?

Apparently he might have. I had rushed in with my bat outstretched, hoping to catch the heroine by surprise, but she dodged as easily as if she did it every day. A brilliant white energy, burning like fire and crackling like lightning and drifting like smoke all at once, had sprung up around her like an aura around the edges of her body, and she was incredibly fast with it active. It was, I knew, the zoetic energy of life that she controlled, being used to enhance her physical abilities - it didn’t show up on camera, but I had read descriptions of it.

I had to rely on my presence to help me stay out of her way as she swung her bat, bouncing around by pulling and pushing on the world around me. I was trying to put some distance between us so I could think, as at that moment all I could focus on was dodging. It wasn’t harder than dodging Legion had been, but it was taking longer - Canaveral had made me leave pretty quickly.

“You’re doing quite well!” Anima said, giving me a smile. “Especially without any training, yet. The surprise attack was a good idea.”

“Thanks,” I gasped, “but getting some training first... might have been... a better one!” As I leaped over her bat again, I pushed her, finally separating from her and backing up.

She paused for a moment as well, glancing over herself. I had gotten struck her with a single strike during the melee, a streak of light blue running down one arm, but she wiped it away with her sponge.

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“Shouldn’t you be spending energy on that healing?” I pointed out as I tried to get my breath back. Anima could run out of energy, I remembered from her explanation of her power - perhaps I could outlast her? It seemed more likely than beating her right now, I had to admit to myself.

“I suppose so,” she agreed, and her aura flared up even more powerfully for a few moments. “Better?”

I theatrically shaded my eyes. “Sort of,” I said, blinking. Through my presence, I saw her slide her foot back and felt some of that blazing energy sink into the ground - she was taking advantage of my apparent distraction to create a golem.

Actually, many golems, I realized as a horde of sparrow-sized birds burst forth from the concrete, each only the size of a fist. Life energy sparked between them, marking it all as only one intelligence as they flew in formation. A single, larger bird would have been too heavy to fly, I supposed.

The birds came after me and I had to bounce back into the air and continue moving in order to dodge them.

I reached out with my presence to try and grab them and shove them back, but it was difficult to focus on all of them at once - instead, I shifted to trying to grab one of them and break it.

That didn’t work either, though - I was wearing a paintball outfit rather than the PA4 (which didn’t seem fair to either me or Starling, whose powers were also boosted by his suit), and as a result I couldn’t safely put out enough force to break the concrete. I could push beyond my limit, I supposed, but that would lead to massive bruises. Not, I supposed, that I was likely to escape them anyway - not with the way I had been jumping around already. While I was roof-running I could use more gradual acceleration, but dodging in tight quarters needed -

I leaped into the air over a swing instinctively, reminded at the last moment that Anima was also a threat. Her aura had dimmed until it was nearly imperceptible when she animated the swarm of birds, and the swipe of her bat that I had only noticed when it disturbed my presence wasn’t quite as fast as they had been - that was all that had saved me.

“Loki:” I spat, caught between a golem and its master, “I’m having trouble on my own.”

“Understood. Sequoia also requires assistance, against Starling - Journey will take you closer to them.”

The amazonian woman materialized below me as I fell and caught me in a bridal carry. She gave Anima a jaunty salute, and then we were gone.