With the dim lights of the mine passing by on either side and the stale breeze of dusty air, our train car rumbled underfoot as we sped along the tracks.
"Shall we begin?" The woman asks, standing apart from us in a cautious stance. I nod. Before anything further can happen she seems to think of something, "So what form should our contest of strength take? I'm sure these could serve as surfaces for, what do you call it? Arm wrestling?" she says, indicating the benches along the sides of the car.
"No, I don't think so," I say with a wry grin, "If these were any other circumstances we might take you up on that, but since you two have so kindly put the life of a friend on the scale I don't think it'd be wise to leave anything to chance."
Is she truly not confident or is it a bluff? Perhaps she really isn't inclined to this sort of thing, her boss did seem to force it upon her. Only one way to find out.
The vain light of hope leaves her eyes as she gives a sigh, "Very well." Her gaze hardens and she undoes the buttons of the top half of her uniform. Slipping her arms from her sleeves, she let the upper portion of her uniform fall slack around her waist where it stayed held around her waist by a belt. Under it was a tight fitting sleek black tanktop without any sleeves, similar to what an overcompensating bodybuilder would wear.
Once the outer layer is off it becomes very clear something more is off about her than a few minor idiosyncrasies. I'd assumed the woman would be somewhat well built, as most people were in this world, but that it wouldn't be too pronounced considering the lady's disinclination to fighting. I was wrong.
Her chest is rigid and angular, far more akin to that of a man than a woman, and the abs seem chiseled as if out of solid stone. What stands out most are the arms, muscles seeming as strands of steel cable that seem to stretch the skin to the point of almost bursting without even the slightest flex. Before now Annora is by far the most buff person I've encountered, yet this woman's physique makes Annora's muscles seem inflated and flabby. Strangest of all are the tattooed lines running down the arms, with the occasional glimmer of some strange particles of light among the black patterns.
"Let's go." Is all she says before dashing forward.
She moves like a speeding bullet, leaving a silhouette of a bluish glow as the particles of light on her tattoos intensify, the sheer speed giving us barely anyone time to react. The only one who does react in time is Annora, seeming to have been ready for the sudden burst of action. She barely has time to put up a guard and brace herself before getting body slammed at the speed of lightning.
Annora gets pushed backwards, worn wood splintering and cracking under her feet. It's clear she's stunned, but combat experience has trained her body to instinctively maintain composure, so her guard remains up despite the enormous blow.
It doesn't matter. In that split second, before Annora can regain herself, the woman is on her again. She glides over the splintered floor of the car at Annora's feet before kicking a leg upward. Annora does a small hop backward, shifting her body weight forward to again block the blow, instinctually choosing to sacrifice her footing to block instead of letting the kick slip past her defenses into her abdomen.
The upwards kick connects with the airborne Annora and sends her flying. Annora rockets upwards and backwards, breaking clean through the dingy wooden roof and out of sight.
Holy shit, okay. Not sure what happened to the 'no killing' rule, because that would absolutely kill a normal person.
Even as I think that, my body is already in motion. The sudden start and initial surprise fade away as I push myself forward, straight toward the enemy. Letting them get distance again would be bad, if they're able to build up that much momentum again I'm not sure anybody else will be able to take a blow like that.
As I step forward I hear a bestial roar from my right and see out of the corner of my eye the stout form of Bodelin charging over the backs of benches. He leaps at the woman with a face full of fury and attempts to tackle her.
The woman regains her feet as Bodelin launches himself at her. She does a quick backstep away, throwing off Bodelin's grapple and leaving him to smash into a bench. Before I can reach forward to try and defend my frenzied companion the woman reaches forward and grabs the back of his tunic before lifting his weight with that single hand and unceremoniously tossing him over the railing.
I guess that's one way of thinning our numbers.
By now I'm close enough to make a move of my own. I feint a jab before transitioning into a leg kick with all the strength I can muster behind it. I'd likened the woman's muscles to steel cables before, and that initial thought is only reinforced by the absurd density of her leg. It feels more like kicking a tree than kicking a person. If it was anybody else, a fledgling adventurer perhaps, they may have fractured their ankle delivering a kick as hard as I just did. But we weren't just anybody else.
The woman grimaces as she staggers. I throw another punch, intending to clock her while she isn't ready for it, but she is. Her gaze sharpens the instant my fist comes close and she reaches a lightning fast hand out to grab my wrist, only it isn't there. This isn't a one on one test of strength, and to treat it as such would be foolish.
My second feint throws her off as I step to the side, in between two of the benches to make way for Orelio, who'd been close behind. Orelio steps forth like a gust of wind and delivers a kick almost identical to the one I'd just landed. The woman scowls as her knee gives out and she collapses onto her other knee.
I vault over the bench in front of me and leap over the next as well, positioning myself behind the woman. What follows after that is a series of unrelenting blows from both sides of the woman as she encloses her face in as much of a guard as she can manage. Orelio and I show no mercy as we rain punches and kicks at whatever spot looks most vulnerable. Back of the head, liver, pressure points in the sides of the back, we savage every soft spot available in reach. Yet all the while I feel like I'm the one taking damage.
Holy hell, what is this woman made of? Feels like I'm pounding away against a water tank. If it wasn't for reinforcement I'd have fractured every bone in my hand by now.
It only takes a scant few seconds for the woman to adapt to the pummeling, and she reaches out a hand to catch one of Orelio's blows mid-swing. With wrist in hand, she pivots her body, putting her back into a throwing motion and tries to throw him out of the car the same way she did Bodelin. Orelio understands what's happening even as he's lifted off the wood, and instinctively grabs the wrist of the hand holding onto him.
When the woman follows through with her throw but the beastkin fails to detach from her she starts spinning his body in a circle, trying to fling him off with centrifugal force. I have to take several steps back to avoid getting hit by the spinning body. The tattoos on the woman's body glow bright as she flings Orelio round and round.
After more than a dozen rotations the woman seems to decide enough is enough and lowers her angle of rotation, smashing Orelio through several sets of benches. Wood splinters fly everywhere as Orelio crashes through the cheap seating, finally losing his grip and collapsing dazed in a pile of wooden rubble near the edge of the car.
The destruction of nearly half the seating opens up the space quite a bit, and Bodelee takes the opportunity to charge forward. Since I'm still positioned on the other side of the woman I try to coordinate with the dwarf to once again pin the woman in place. Our opponent has had enough of that, however, and gracefully jumps over Bodelee's head, barely skimming the roof of the car as she sails over the stout dwarf.
She lands gracefully as Bodelee whirls around, preparing to guard against an attack, but the woman has different plans. She bolts toward Albatos, who's completely unprepared to suddenly have to meet her head on. He puts his fists up in an amateur stance as she flies toward him.
As she's about to reach his range he throws a right straight which she easily catches before tugging it back. The motion reminds me of Djudirian Flow, but she uses the movement in a completely different way.
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As Albatos stumbles forward, balance lost, the woman's right fist becomes a blur as she delivers three extraordinarily fast blows, two to the stomach then one to the jaw. The woman steps around Albatos as he crumples to the ground, completely unconscious.
I suppose he was never going to be much help anyway.
Bereft of his magic and put in a situation where might is the only thing that matters, the elf is worse off than a fish out of water. The man might have brains and an attitude, but when it comes down to a fight I think it might be better to have a blind cripple on your side.
With Albatos out of the running, it appears to just be me and Bodelee left. Bodelee steps back and taps me, indicating that I should lead. I'm thankful this one is still thinking rationally, unlike his brother before him. While I'm sure Bodelee has reached his boiling point, with both his wife being attacked before his eyes and his mentor's life on the line, he's still keeping a cool head.
In a fistfight, stature is extremely important. The tall naturally have longer reach than the short, and longer legs allow one to be more nimble. When it comes to normal people this advantage can be outweighed by bulk and muscle mass, but this woman is far from ordinary. She's insanely tough, strong, and agile all at the same time. She's completely inhuman. If Bodelee leads the charge it'll be asking to simply be grabbed and tossed around like a rag doll like the two others before him.
I'll lead, but I sure hope you have an idea of something good to follow up with, Bodelee. There's no way I can take her myself.
I dash forwards, feinting a charging attack before stopping short just outside her reach. I hold the basic unarmed stance Arim taught me all those months ago right in front of the woman, trying to see if I can bait out an attack. So far she's relied on reacting to openings and blitz attacks that surprised us, so I want to see if maybe she shows an opening in a straight square off.
She takes a more free flowing stance and tosses out a jab, which I sidestep. In doing so, I bump into a bench at my side and the woman throws a wide swing which I duck under and deliver a blow to her face as I quickly try to move forward and around her to once again take a flanking position. I don't get the chance to move very far as her leg comes up at an almost unnatural angle and her knee is planted firmly in my stomach.
As I double over, the wind knocked out of me, I hear the cracking of wood from behind me. On instinct I duck my head just as a whole bench flies over me, smashing lengthwise into the woman. The bench seems to explode as it smashes into the steadfast figure, for once seeming to surprise them.
I push through the pain in my stomach and put all the strength I can muster in a rising uppercut aimed at the woman's liver. My fist connects while the woman's distracted gaze is locked over my shoulder at the bench throwing dwarf. Once more it feels as though my fist thuds uselessly against a steel beam, but by the woman's snarl and backward stumble I can only assume she felt that, if only a little.
It's still nowhere near enough, however. After stumbling back a pace she spins around and delivers a wheel kick straight into my chest. I feel my rips cracking as I'm lifted clear off the floor, soaring through the air until I slam into Bodelee, who didn't expect to have his companion launched at him in retaliation for the bench.
We collapse in a pile after rolling to a stop next to Orelio's still groaning form. The woman breathes out a long sigh as her tense muscles relax.
She starts walking toward us, seeming ready to call her victory, "Are we d-" As she walks under the hole in the roof an arm reaches down and grabs her hair. A grimace is all she has time to do before she's lifted off her feet and pulled out of the train car.
It takes less than a second for her to reappear, smashing through another section of the roof less than a meter away. She lands in a heap among the broken remnants of both benches and the roof.
The section of the roof between the two holes gives way under the strain of too much weight placed upon a broken structure, and Annora falls through back into the compartment. Unlike the woman lying in a heap, Annora manages to retain her footing as she falls, and lands ready to keep going. I try to stand up, but the piercing pain of my cracked ribs steals my breath and makes my vision go black for a second.
Damn it. Not a good time to give up on me, body. Should I use that? No, the situation isn't right. Damn it.
I'm forced to acquiesce the incessant signals my body is sending me and lean myself against one of the remaining benches so I can at least watch the rest.
***
What is this woman?
In all her time here, Eun had never seen somebody take one, not to mention two, full power blows from her and remain unfazed. The shoulder charge she'd started with could crash through a concrete wall with ease, the kick could fold steel near in half. And yet this dwarf seemed completely unperturbed.
Eun got to her feet amid the wooden rubble. Being dragged through the roof and immediately slammed back through it had inflicted minimal damage, but she still felt the shadow of those punches the marked boy and his ally had delivered. Truly these were people forged by conflict, not to be taken lightly.
When was the last time I felt pain such as this? Over decades I have developed this body, spared no effort to gather favor and materials to forge it. To be forced to use it to this extent, on the whims of an incompetent superior…
It was even more insulting, or perhaps just embarrassing, that her superior had such a lopsided body of his own. True, its quality was higher than her own, and given to him for almost nothing as a gift from The Heavens to be sure, but it lacked any sense of surface reason or finesse. It was full power, with nary a thought spared for anything else. Hence why its figure was so bulky and stiff.
Eun refocused her mind. To continue to drag this farce out would only serve to further degrade her body, and she wasn't keen on adding to the time it would take to fix what damage had already been done. The dwarven woman pushed in on her, seeking to take advantage of her lapse in attention. Eun, determined to end this quickly, met her head on.
Eun utilized her longer range to strike the first blow, aiming a punch at the dwarf woman's face, but the dwarf swayed past it and threw a punch of her own aimed at Eun's gut. Eun intended to ignore it, and threw another blow downwards at the dwarf's head. However, when the dwarf's gut punch landed it actually managed to impart enough force to momentarily stagger Eun, making her retaliatory blow miss its mark.
With a growl Eun kicked her leg out, aiming for the area under the arm she'd just used to punch, seeking to push the dwarf away to make distance.
Only as the dwarf pulled her arm in without retreating at all did Eun realize she'd waltzed into the woman's trap. The dwarf ate the leg to the side with a grunt before clamping her arm down on Eun's leg, trapping it.
For a moment Eun imagined she was about to meet the fate of the other dwarf she'd so handily taken care of, tossed off the train. She leaned forward and grabbed onto the dwarf's shirt, not content to simply let herself get tossed over the side. This too she realized was a mistake too late.
The dwarf made no attempt to throw Eun's weight around, instead leaning in and reaching forward with the swiftness of a viper. Her hand found Eun's neck, and gripped with a strength Eun hadn't known terrestrials were capable of. Eun found herself unable to breathe, airway completely constricted under the iron grip of the dwarf.
Eun raised her free arm and prepared to drop it down on the elbow of the dwarf with all her strength, desperate to break the chokehold. Before she could bring down her fist to try and break the grip she felt her world shift as the pressure on her throat intensified. She lost her balance as the dwarf pushed her arm forward with all her might, veins and muscles bulging out of her arm.
Eun was slammed into the floorboards with enough force to break clean through them. She felt the chaotic wind of the undercarriage whip by, barely suspended over the tracks that blurred below.
In a flailing motion before she was shoved straight into the tracks she managed to grab onto some metal structural support beneath the floorboards, and her free leg stretched out to the side, foot barely holding onto the edge around the newly created hole.
"Give!" The dwarf yelled at her over the sound of the raging wind as she tried to push Eun further down, onto the tracks. Eun snarled in response.
The dwarf tried to push Eun down further, to force her into the tracks and end the contest, but even the dwarf's monstrous strength could not force Eun back in their current position. Their situation had become a rather complex problem of leverage. Eun's handhold and foothold, not to mention the hand still gripping the dwarf's tunic, gave her enough leverage to maintain herself suspended above the void, but not enough to reliably be able to push the dwarf off her and get back up into the car.
The dwarf, on the other hand, found herself unable to push Eun any further down. Without something to push off of, the only source of force she could apply to Eun was an amount equal to her own body weight, a weight Eun could hold herself against even with her precarious grip. If she relinquished Eun's leg to try to throw a punch or something similar Eun would be able to use her leg to establish another foothold, giving her greater flexibility with which to escape her predicament.
A full minute passed with the two of them in this deadlock. Eun found herself incredibly grateful her muscles didn't experience strain nearly as bad as a normal person would or her strength would have given out by now. Still, she couldn't find a way to break herself out of this situation alone, and she worried that as time went on the more likely it was going to be that one of the dwarf's allies would find their feet and help, sealing Eun's loss.
She looked around the undercarriage desperately, but there was nothing that could help her. She looked up at the dwarf, but found her rage and resolve holding fast in the position of dominance.
Eun needed something to break out of this, something new. Perhaps some…
"This seems like a good a time as any to interject," a voice said.
Both Eun and the dwarf snapped their heads to look at the source of the voice. From within the hole Eun could just barely see that standing behind where she was, towards the back of the train, was a man with a horridly scarred face.
A wicked smile spread across that terrible visage as he drew a curved sword and said, "Domain expansion. Sync."