Two vaguely humanoid shapes made of darkness slid from shadow to shadow like a normal person taking quick steps in a row. With the opportunity to see them more clearly, it was obvious it wasn't real movement in the physical sense. While they appeared to be moving as too-fast, blink-and-you'd-miss-them blurs, in reality they stepped... sideways for a moment, like getting off a slow-moving train then jumping on the next wagon.

So when one of them suddenly appeared behind me, giant sword raised and ready to stab, I was already punching through the thing's face. Because the drawback of taking a train? Others could tell in which stations you'd have to stop. The shadow learned that the hard way when its upper half exploded. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to deal with it properly.

The other Black Hand was hacking at Mike and Sorensen with abandon, using the same flickering trick to dodge their best attacks or position itself behind their backs. Despite their experience and combat training, it was all the two of them could do to keep ahead of its swings and not be torn to bits.

The moment that shade next disappeared, I aimed and threw at its destination. The moment it blinked into existence, a handful of shiny round projectiles disappeared into its center of mass, making it stagger. And that, as they say, was that. When next the two shades tried to disappear into shadow, to step out of normal space, they failed. When they tried to move, to swing, they were so slow they might as well not have been moving at all.

"Hey Sorensen," I asked the older of the two men, "You guys OK?"

"We're well enough." He looked at the two near-immobilized wraiths. "What did you do to them?"

"I paid them and their master back for ruining my home town." The shade I'd punched in the face was fully immobile now. The other one however managed to take a step forward then another and another, each one a little bit faster. Rolling my eyes I made another throwing motion and several more tiny silvery discs impacted its torso. They were neither explosive, nor thrown with incredible force, and yet the wraith came to a dead stop.

Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y3m10d

Powers [0/35 pts]

Force Adjustment III, Force Awareness II, Forcefield Creation I, Forced Acceleration II, Immutable Force II, Lasting Force II, Progressive Regeneration III, Proximakinesis III, Super Suit I

Attributes [0/35 pts]

Might 20, Agility 10, Reason 3, Vigilance 7, Ego 10, Luck 2

With time to think while the shades were immobilized, I immediately put two points into Might, raising it to an even twenty. My toughness and vitality increased considerably, though my muscles became a hair stiffer and moving was a bit uncomfortable, like wearing shoes that hadn't been broken in. I'd need to raise Agility again or maybe Ego to feel comfortable in my body once more, but that was future-Maya's problem. For now, the much deeper well of stamina would help with the one solution I'd cooked up for dealing with shades.

Lasting Force II: make force effects you can exert permanent, at reduced effect. Costs time and stamina scaling with effect, inverse scaling with each other.

To that end, I got the second rank of Lasting Force. There was only one difference from before but it was significant; no longer having to personally exert the effect to be made permanent but still being the one to exert it had some very interesting applications. Unfortunately, my impromptu, mid-fight planning session was interrupted by overly-curious soldiers.

"Those are coins!" Mike exclaimed. Sorensen looked and the two Black Hands warily, his gun aimed and ready to fire. Mike on the other hand got closer to stare at once of the discs caught in the second shadow's chest but still visible. "Like, literally one-penny coins. How di-"

Sorensen tensed as Mike's voice suddenly cut off, his knuckles on his power-infused gun turning white. I, on the other hand, stalked up to where the younger soldier's finger had been caught poking at the single fully-visible coin. Caught and stopped dead, like the rest of him. The moment I grabbed him and pulled there was a bit of resistance, something invisible tying his body into rigidity and resisting attempts to move it. Knowing what it was and how to overpower it without tearing off some idiot's finger I did just that... and Mike immediately collapsed, coughing and gasping.

"Are you a total idiot?" I asked rhetorically, because the guy was far too busy coughing his lungs out to answer. "You see an unknown magic item, one used as a weapon before your eyes... and decide to poke it?"

"Will he be OK?" Sorensen demanded, gun still covering the immobile but still alive shades. "And will the Black Hands die?"

"Yes and no." From up close and personal, my Force Awareness was good enough to show the idiot wasn't about to keel over and die, nor did he take any internal damage. "The pennies apply an immobilization effect at about a tenth of my own strength." More like a Proximakinesis that opposed the target's own strength, but same thing, really. "Mike was very lucky to touch just one, and have its power split between him and the shade."

His heart had only stopped for a second, it was probably fine.

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"The shades on the other hand are under the effects of over a dozen, put together." I smirked nastily. "They aren't moving around under their own power." The only reason I had was the pennies not working one me specifically.

The first shade had to be mighty uncomfortable with a handful of pennies literally inside it after me releasing them during that epic head-punt, because it did something exceedingly crazy. It charged up an emerald fireball, the magic invaders' version of a missile, and detonated it in its palm. Time slowed to a crawl as I pressed Forced Acceleration as far up as it would go, reaching for both Mike and Sorensen at the same time.

I strained physically and mentally, pushing Mike, Sorensen and myself as quickly as Proximakinesis could manage. Forced Acceleration and a near-superhuman level of Vigilance and Agility made time stretch and stretch until every moment was incredibly, painfully slow... except the pain was emerald flames licking at my feet. Had I been alone, I might have outflown the blastwave. Carrying the two squishier soldiers along for the ride? Not so much.

With a last blast of power I hurled first one then the other into the air. Trying to hurl both would have meant splitting the power in two. Then all I could do was hope they were augmented enough to survive when they fell back to the ground, curl in a ball to protect my face and chest, and tank the blast almost point-blank.

xxxx xxxx

"Saþar-da gi nig" one of the shadows rasped like nails on a blackboard but also loudly enough to rattle what few nearby windows remained unbroken.

Good news? I was alive and kicking. Bad news? The explosion had torn both shades apart along with much of the street, and they'd reformed while the pennies had not. The "payback" joke did not sound so clever any more. Next time I made some magic items, I was enchanting something more durable than copper-plated Zinc.

The shade's blade, now a barely visible pale outline against the night, stabbed into my gut and out the other side. It did no actual damage, but it started sucking heat out of me at a tremendous speed. At the same time, it felt like I'd actually been gutted. It was pure, mind-gnawing, paralyzing agony, but I also knew if I stayed there I'd die.

A blind, kinetic push sent me flying away a moment before the second shade swung through where my head had been. I got up on slightly shaky knees, then used the heat-amplifying cheat. A split-second was enough for my body to get so warm it felt feverish, then the shades were upon me.

Fighting two such enemies was vastly different from fighting one. Yes I was faster, but if I tried to outmaneuver one the other would teleport in my face or behind my back. Yes I was stronger, but while I dealt with one, even kept them immobile the other was free to take swings. Fly above the buildings and the Lightning Tower at the center of the city would start blasting in seconds. Get out of their reach and the homing emerald fireballs came out. The only way to actually fight them was engage them up close and personal, or disappear.

Ducking under a sweeping blow, I punched one of them out of balance, kicked the other hard enough to half-explode them. Forced to engaged with the former as it went into all-out attack while the latter recovered, I used Proximakinesis to mess up its ridiculously fast and complex combat style in ways that my normal balance and reach and skill would never have allowed. Punch in one in the chest, have the force of the blow apply to the back of their knee. Kick their shin to send their head reeling. Jump left yet move to the right. Balance perfectly while sideways or upside-down.

Even being as confusing as possible, I took hits. A ghost-blade sliced through my right hip, making me feel like it was torn open. A stab in the back felt like a stab in the back. Trying to block sometimes worked and sometimes did not, depending on how well I timed the layers of force that could catch the swords when my flesh could not; I learned that the hard way when one of the shadows stabbed me in the stomach through both arms.

The shadows were obviously trying to wear me down with the pain-induction and heat-draining or just tire me out and delay me. More monsters were probably coming. That at least those Stymphalian Chickens did not get involved meant that the Black Hands were trying to beat me by themselves. Maybe it was pride, maybe it was contempt, maybe it was even honor, though the enemy hadn't shown much of the latter. Whatever it was, it was plain dumb and letting the enemy do dumb mistakes was how you won even fights.

Topping the dumb mistake with even dumber deliberate action was the only way to be sure though, so this... this was going to suck. It also had to be timed just right.

BOOM!

The not-so-distant explosion was only a couple blocks away, where the magic tower slated for demolition was. It was almost immediately followed by lots and lots of rifle shots tearing through the air, which meant my aim was awesome. That last-second throw of Mike and Sorensen totally hadn't been blind and their reaching our target due to my awesomeness would be mentioned in the after-action reports I would not write. Problem was, the two soldiers might not have the firepower to take down a magic tower, explosions notwithstanding. They had nicely distracted the shades though.

In that moment of distraction, I grabbed my enemies with a hand and half my Proximakinesis each and gave them a cocky grin. Naturally, they powered through the attempt of a cocky, teenage idiot to overpower them both at the same time and stabbed me. One phantom blade entered through my navel and got out through my spine. Unlike a physical blow, it didn't paralyze my legs but it hurt so much it didn't make much difference. The second aimed for my heart, missed, and pierced both my left breast and my left lung. The combined agony and numbness brought me to my knees and only my hands still holding on to the shades prevented me from collapsing entirely.

Being dumb fucking hurts, no matter the reason. Two magical assassins loomed ominously over a shaking yours truly, their matte black, faceless heads too busy staring down in contempt or triumph or whatever to ask themselves "why is she still holding on?". Then it was too late as a huge rush of energy left me gasping and twitching feebly, too tired, numb and hurt to fight at all.

And a split second later, both shades were engulfed in fire. It was only a few tongues of pale red flame at first, but in another second they burst into an orange blaze, in a third the shades stood in two roaring near-yellow pillars. The air around them had become so hot the mist had burned away for two dozen feet, and the asphalt was melting.

Naturally, the shades blinked away, traveled through whatever dimension they used to hop around and reformed away from the pillars of fire. Said pillars immediately dispersed; a split second later, pale red flames engulfed the shades once more before rapidly escalating. The shades blinked away again and again, but the flames reappeared every time no matter where they went.

I lay on the street, laughing weakly. I couldn't produce fire directly; my powers did not grant me that ability yet. What I could do was apply the trick of magnifying heat in fluids through Force Adjustment in two cylinders of about a cubic yard each via Create Forcefield, then permanently bind those fields to the shades via Lasting Force. No matter how they moved, no matter where they went, the heat in the air around them would exponentially multiply.

Quickly, the shades were worn down more and more, came out of each 'jump' a bit more singed, took a bit longer to jump again, the fires had time to get a bit hotter. Until they stopped moving and over the course of five or six seconds the fires went from the red of heated metal all the way down to the actinic blue of a thunderbolt.

Then they winked out as the fields causing the effect snapped, their anchors destroyed.