Chapter 45: Jinger Appears Again
-REGENCY ACADEMY EXTERIOR WEST-
Jessica was amusedly baffled at what she was seeing. One moment ago, her lustrous, crystalline bundle of joy was standing opposite two kids. Now, it only stood against one. The one with the burly arms and long curly hair. Except they had changed. They were as pale as marble, with streaks of cobalt running through it. Their hair had changed colour. Jessica knew what that usually meant. They had gotten stronger.
There was little fanfare accompanying the transformation. No immense energy aura, no guttural screaming. The ground didn't crack under the pressure of their new strength, and stones were not lifting off of the ground, nor were leaves caught in a circling vortex around them.
How low key. How boring. Jessica's enemy assumed an orthodox fighting stance. Jessica yawned and had her baby quizzically paw at them. To Jessica, that single swipe was a paltry trifle, but from the perspective of an ant, even a human's single step can be earth-shattering.
CRUNCH.
That was the sound of Jinger's entire ribcage breaking apart. It was also the sound that their body made when they collided with the wall of Regency Academy and started to plough through it, leaving a long streak of destroyed brick and bent metal, through which the interior of the building became exposed.
Jessica couldn't help herself. She began to titter and squirm delightedly. She covered her mouth to hold back the outburst of laughter. They were weak too. Their body had flopped around like a funny little ragdoll on its way through the wall. Jessica found it inherently hilarious the way that a human body flies and flops around when you toss it around like trash.
They felt that this was going to be immensely satisfying. Like torturously pulling the wings off of an insolent hornet that had stung you one too many times. Still rolling with laughter, Jessica demanded her colossus forward, lovingly stroking its smooth exterior all the way.
Its lumbering footsteps left craters in the hard dirt underfoot, making the ground rumble. When it arrived at the site to which its foe had been tossed, it knelt down to let its controller get a better look at the cadaver. Jessica frowned when she saw the body still moving. That healing power. She had gotten ahead of herself for a moment. Any second, those parts would start to reconstitute, and Jessica would have to start the whole process of breaking them over again. It sounded kinda fun, but the girl was not completely devoid of professionalism. She would squash the fleshy lump before it had a chance to put its limbs back into place. If the brain got mashed up well enough, then that was sure to put them out of commission for good.
Jessica raised the baby's arm, and absentmindedly, she blinked. Just a normal blink. She blinked for the same reason that anyone might blink, and she did so without even thinking about it. But in that fraction of a fraction of a second where her eyes were closed, that period of time in which she had blinded herself which was so short that the brain barely comprehended that it had been blinded, something drastic changed.
Jinger was standing fully formed, spotless, uninjured, in the same place where their mangled body was.
Jessica mouthed, but words didn't come out. What she was trying to say was something along the lines of 'that was awfully quick'. But she didn't form the words. Her brow furrowed. She brought the hammer down on Jinger. This one was a serious hit. The goliath's fist clashed with Jinger's, and the thousands of pounds of force crashing together unleashed an explosive sound like a gigantic bell or a gong being struck. Jinger's arm was liquefied instantly by the weight and speed of Jessica's strike. It was only held together by the fusion's indestructible skin.
That was the hand that they had been training. It took them less than point one second to fully repair it, and it pushed back against the glass golem. The fist spidered and cracked. Long seams travelled all the way up the arm and the whole constructions creaked like an iceberg breaking against the bow of a ship.
The unsinkable versus the iceberg.
Jinger thrashed and pounded against the creature's damaged arm, deepening the cracks. It was extremely resistant, but nothing was completely indestructible. It would reach its limit sooner or later.
Jessica retracted the damaged arm and swung the other one down like a wrecking ball. Jinger turned their head only to see the other hand of the colossus filling their entire field of vision.
The pair were launched like a golfball. No bone in their body was spared this time. They ploughed endlessly through the treeline, taking down branches and blasting holes in tree trunks. They screeched to a halt on their face. Repair. Get back up. Keep fighting.
Jinger's sprint tore up the turf as they went. Their running leap sent them as high as the academy's roof. They came down with speed and weight. Jessica sent them away with even more. They were knocked straight into the earth. Flattened by an overhead hammer swing from the vitreous monstrosity.
Jinger managed to get one knee up and one foot on the ground before they were crushed. The glassy monstrosity held down, applying constant pressure. They fought against the force. They were like atlas pushing up against the weight of the sky. Jessica leaned into them more and more. It was the same as deadlifting a house or worse. Jinger's muscles ruptured and flayed themselves with the strain. They hacked up a stream of purple blood. This close to Jessica, the air that they breathed was full of ravaging vitric particles that wrought havoc on the insides.
Jessica raised her baby's fist. If they couldn't crush, they would just smash. Jessica pounded the earth. Strike after strike unleashed onto the ground and on top of Jinger. Were they dead yet? Not sure? Form more spikes on the tip of the fist and pound again. The globed hand was starting to return more and more splattered in gore. Jessica deliriously sent it downwards again.
Big mistake.
Jinger's punch was powerful enough to warp the glass like it was mouldable clay. The reverberations from the pair's uppercut rocked the lustrous titan's entire body. Jessica shuddered as she was rattled around. A thin layer of glass broke off and started to fall apart, like shedding skin. Underneath was an even glossier and refined glass. Jessica was stunned. She fell against her construction protectively, clutching it. The vibrations stimulated her rage and her joy at the same time, and a frothing cauldron of emotion boiled over within her.
The titan erupted with light. Glass was like fire coming off of it. A rainbow glittering inferno.
Jessica hammered against the earth with a storm of blows. Standing underneath it was like trying to endure the deluge of the world's greatest waterfall while fending with the boulders and uprooted trees that it carried along with it.
The sound of Jessica's uproarious laughter was the only sensation that could be felt beyond the earthquake magnitude strikes. Staying alive was all that Jinger could manage. Hunkering down and enduring was their only option. Fighting back was impossible...
-XXXXX-
"We can't win you know. Not like this."
"We're doing just fine!"
"We're surviving, but this can't go on forever. Sooner or later one of these hits is gonna separate us. A lucky blow to the brain is all it would take. Then one or both of us is dead. No question."
"It's not gonna go on forever, only until we find an opening!"
"An opening to what?"
"The fault point. If we send enough force into it before they get their 'lucky blow', then we win. Which means that will just have to happen!"
"I'm aware, genius. But where even is the fault point? It's useless aiming for it if we don't even know where it is."
"First of all, we don't have to hit directly at the fault point. If we hit it hard enough even close to the fault point then the impact from the punch should be enough to make it crumble."
"So we only need a ballpark estimate. Well, that's marginally better, but we also aren't even close to finding that out either, are we? It doesn't exactly narrow anything down."
"I've been thinking about that."
"Enlighten me."
"It cant be anywhere on the 'business end', clearly. That means the entire front of the thing and its arms and legs. Those are the parts that have to swing around and hit things the parts most likely to absorb hits themselves. It's just common sense that the fault point would be in the safest place, right?"
"So where's the 'safest place'. On the back or something?"
"That's the thing. I think she's giving us a hint."
"A hint? Why would she do that?"
"Not on purpose, clearly. But she's riding it, isnt she? You can think of her almost like a 'second fault point' because if she gets wiped out, it's all over. And that means..."
"...That she'd want to put herself in the safest place, too. Damnit, that's not a bad guess actually. And if it's right under her, she can defend it herself too."
"So that's where we're aiming! Any complaints?"
"One. We're getting our asses handed to us. This fabled 'opening' is seeming more and more mythical by the second."
"I'll let you know when I think of something!"
"Alright."
"..."
"..."
"Jonathen?"
"What is it?"
"We're gonna win. And we're gonna make it out of this. And both of us are gonna be ok. I promise you."
"..."
Jonathen didn't know what to think.
-XXXXX-
Jessica stopped to breathe. Sucking in the air with heavy, panting heaving breaths, she peered into the cloud of smoke and steam that she'd kicked up with her onslaught. The cloud was dispersed. Just the force of Jinger contracting and flexing their muscles was enough to blow it away. They crouched down low and roared, pouring strength into their core.
The fusion launched themselves skyward, aiming a fist straight for Jessica's face. They were swatted away like a fly. When they hit the ground, they bounced right back like a spring. Elasticity and explosive force. Jessica waved an arm at them and smacked them away once again. Repeatedly, Jinger threw themselves into the fray. When the glass giant got up to speed, it could hit like a whip and a club at the same time.
They continued.
Ad nauseum.
Ad Infinitum.
-REGENCY ACADEMY: CLASSROOM OVERLOOKING WEST EXTERIOR-
Gawain was still trapped and still forced to watch.
He paid close attention to his captor. With each twist and turn of Jinger's exchange with the glass villain, Ruban might suck air in through her teeth or chuckle maniacally to herself, but no matter what happened she never seemed worried. She had full confidence in her ally. The thought that the student might win had never even crossed her mind, it was plain as day based on just the intent look on her face.
Gawain couldn't help but feel that that was foolish. But… Was it? The odds were clearly in the villain's favour. Whoever had bested him obviously answered to the monster out there which Jinger was hopelessly throwing themselves against. If Gawain could best the fusion of Jonathen and Ginger in the royale, then what chance did they stand against a foe that was so much more powerful?
But then Gawain noticed something. He noticed the fight that Jinger was putting up. How it was more than a decent one… How it might actually be considered… Good?
Jessica's glass colossus craned its enormous, heavy limb around, leaving a seven coloured light trail behind it. Jinger met the swing head-on. They clashed, sending a rumble through the foundations of the building and a chill up Gawain's spine. Jinger fell back to the earth and began to fly around like a horned missile. The pliable treetops were like slingshots and the solid walls of the academy were like bounce boards.
What was Gawain looking at?
This was ridiculous. The person… persons? Who fought with Gawain during the royale could not even be compared to the one who was fighting before him now. Those high flying, shockwave sending blows… The momentum of each stride and charge and jump… The Jinger that Gawain had fought was downright pedestrian compared to this.
Could it be… Could it actually be… That Jinger had a shot?
The more Gawain went down this line of thinking, the more he started to believe it. Jinger did have a chance! More than an unlikely chance! It was close to even! Not exactly, but close! Thinking about it, even more, it was Jinger's perfect matchup, was it not?
A violent brute. A fighter who uses maximum bloody violence at full blast one hundred per cent of the time. Who is never surgical and who never pulls their punches or strategizes. Who simply uses an overwhelming amount of force to eviscerate anything that stands in their path… That was completely the opposite of how Gawain considered themselves, and it was exactly what Jinger was best against.
The monumental glass beast rearranged Jinger's insides with a brutal straight blow. It grabbed them by the mangled ankle and slammed them into the ground over and over again like they were a wet rag. It stabbed them, chewed on them, stomped on them, crushed them... Whatever it was, Jinger got. Back. Up. It didn't even slow them down. It sped them up if anything.
There was an obvious, scientific explanation for this. It was a matter of quirks. If you were feeling pedantic, a matter of quirk synergy. But Gawain thought that there was a more poetic explanation. That Jinger, and their constituent individuals, had a grander, more noble, and baser quality which the villains underestimated.
Their greatest strength. Their most 'heroic' trait, you might say. It was rising to the occasion. To any challenge.
Gawain allowed himself… Just a smidgen of optimism. His own brand of optimism, but optimism nonetheless.
"Okay, you undignified ingrates. I put my confidence in you. Now make yourselves useful, why don't you?"
-REGENCY ACADEMY EXTERIOR WEST-
Jessica wasn't sure when, but she knew that at some point in the recent past she had thought of the student's resistance as token. As not much more than an attempt to martyr themselves. They would throw themselves into the jaws of death, put up a good 'heroic fight' and be squashed to death under Jessica's overwhelming force. That was how she thought of the fight after Dire had arrived and she reached the zenith of her power.
Now? Something had changed. This wasn't a valorous last stand, this was a real fight. The kind that could go either way. Jessica was filled with tension. Knife-edge tension. Like she was balancing atop a single frayed strand of rope. She smashed into Jinger with all of her might and felt the crunch of their insides as they were obliterated. This time, Jinger hadn't even left the surface of the baby's fist before their body was restored. When they were thrown back, they landed on their feet, with no sign of external injury whatsoever.
Jinger's knees had actually exploded on contact with the ground, but something like that didn't even phase them anymore. It was different from shock, the state your body enters after a severe injury or traumatic event as a self-preservation measure, that dulls pain down to nothing, as your body expects that by that point whatever it is that injured you is so severe that pain becomes useless as a signifier. What Jinger was experiencing was nothing like that.
If you are being trained to fight, you are often told not to look at your opponent, but to look through them. You are only supposed to observe their movements in your peripheral vision, and in doing so you can react to their every punch, kick and movement far more effectively than if you were hyper-focusing on an area such as their face.
It was like that, but for pain. Jinger was agonizingly aware of each time their body underwent injury. They were conscious of each broken bone and torn sinew. But they didn't focus on it. They looked through it. The pain was only peripheral. Easily ignorable. The soothing energy which Ginger's quirk sent coursing through them pushed aside the agony.
They had someone to fight.
Jessica saw Jinger barrel towards them. Each time it happened, they became faster. Only by a small percentage, but the growth was exponential. It was obvious that if the fight went on long enough, Jinger would end up far surpassing Jessica. It terrified her. Every time Jinger got back up after one of Jessica's strikes, it infuriated her. But at the same time, hitting them felt so good.
Jessica had never met anyone who felt this good to beat. To savage. To rip apart. It filled her with twisted joy, delirious happiness tinged by anger and fear. That was a state of mind far more similar to shock. Brimming with that venomous concoction of emotion, Jessica unloaded into her adversary, the barrage of punches was like a fireworks display. Jinger was blown back, through the wall of the academy. Through several interior walls aswell.
"Jonathen!"
"What is it this time?"
"I thought of something."
Jinger got up and launched themself at the probing hand of the glass colossus. Leaping off of the ceiling, they touched down on the back of the monstrosity's fist. Immediately, the glass reformed around them. Spikes and blades and spines erupted underneath Jinger. They grunted, spreading around splashes of blood. They had to keep going. They werent clear of the wall yet.
Using nothing but brute strength, Jinger uprooted the spikes which had skewered their feet and pressed on. With each step they took, they brought some new glass with them. Every time they stepped their foot down, it was impaled again. But they kept going. They had to move before Jessica had the good sense to pull back the construct's hand.
Jessica grinned. Jinger was moving along her baby's arm at a snail's pace. They were a sitting duck. She pulled its other arm back and threw another punch, this one with as much force as they could muster. Jinger would be crushed, trapped between the monster's two hands. Completely within Jessica's grasp. Helpless.
Just as the baby's punch blasted through the remaining section of the wall, Jinger emerged from the hole that had been left from the first punch. The entire room was blown apart. Several walls back were demolished simply from the shockwave and the tide of rubble, debris and furniture that followed the glass hulk's punch. Now both of its hands were behind the wall, and now Jinger wasn't. They smiled.
Jinger fixed the wall.
Jessica yanked incredulously on her constructs arms. Trying to pull them back. But they did not budge. The walls had formed around them. They were like handcuffs. Jinger had only intended, only needed to catch one arm, but wasn't about to complain about their plan exceeding expectations. What the hell! It didn't make sense! Jessica's baby could have sneezed on a wall like this and turned it to dust, but now they couldn't even make it budge. They would sooner be able to rip the entire building off its foundations than move this one small section of wall?
Jinger... Jinger's feet were still bleeding. They werent even healing themself anymore. All of that healing was now going towards keeping the colossus's hands bound. This was it. Their 'opening'.
Jinger leapt up to the parapet and caught Jessica in their sights.
The villainess looked up in fear, just in time to see her enemy transform even further. Jinger's eyes turned red. All of that blue on their body lit up in a blazing fiery crimson. Their strength multiplied yet further. To the critical point. Jinger could hear their heart beating. Their blood pumping. Their muscles flexing. The power that was welling up inside them and showing no sign of stopping. Their 'perfect synergy'. It couldn't have come at a better time.
Jessica recoiled as Jinger bounded straight down at them. The force of their leg extending on its own was enough to blow the parapet wall to high heaven.
"You think you've won... Don't you? But not yet~ I have one. more. weapon. to show you... If you get through this unscathed, then maybe you have won... But I'd like to see you try~"
The glass baby's etched rictus smile began to creak and crack as its shape was changed. The titan's mouth turned into not much more than a fissure along its body, stretching from armpit to armpit. Then the fissure deepened. It deepened until it opened something inside the hyaloid monstrosity. Its dense, chittering, screeching core of shards and light.
"SUPER. SMILE. GUN."
As the monster's entire upper body unhinged open, the blast began. It was to Jessica's 'smile gun' technique what her baby was to her ordinary fighting style. The zenith. The most power that the girl could muster.
Jinger was caught in mid-air. The blast was centred directly on her. They had no way to dodge or avoid such an attack as they were hanging in the air. They were helplessly swallowed by it.
Gawain bore witness to that spectacle. It was like Jinger had been absorbed by the tail of a comet. That deluge of stardust streaked across the sky and broke off into thousands upon thousands of trails that rained glass upon the whole academy. And the light. Pure. Blinding. White. The rainbow did not separate out. Each colour burned with such a bright intensity that they all combined back together. Soon, nothing could be seen except for that light.
And Jinger was in the middle of it.
But it wasn't enough.
Within the heart of that blazing glass inferno, Jinger persevered. Their body remained as indestructible as ever. They survived. By their powers combined, not even this could kill them. As it raged around them, they felt completely weightless. The torrent from below held them up as gravity pulled them down, so they remained roughly stationary.
All the pair could see was white. Like they were thrown into the sky in the middle of an antarctic snowstorm. The whiteness was blinding them, burning itself deep into their eyes. They covered them and buckled down. Each shard of glass was shattered and dispersed on impact by their unbreakable dermis. Jinger... was safe. The odds of any amount of this glass managing to break through and do any internal damage was so astronomically low that it didn't bear thinking about. That was what Jinger assumed.
What they didn't know was that they were in grave danger. What they didn't take into account was sheer probability.
How many particles were they colliding with… let's say... every second? What about every ten seconds? Was it a thousand? A million? More? The shards all ranged in size from the size of a dust particle to the diameter of a snowflake. Consider the surface area that Jinger was facing towards the blast with. How many particles could fit onto that surface area? Say that Jinger's surface area was the same as the surface area of an average particle, and there was only a single stream of particles constantly bombarding that one location in space. How many particles would be hitting per second in this simplified case? You would need to know a particle's average speed to know that…
What happens when we multiply all of this information together? The surface area, size of the particles, the speed of the particles...
What you are left with after that calculation is a very, Very, large number.
However, a particle is infinitesimally unlikely to do any damage. It's about the same probability of going on a spacewalk and being impaled by a chip of paint or other similarly sized space debris while it was moving at several times the speed of sound (To an average person, Jessica's glass particles when she is in this high potency state would do about the same amount of damage as that, coincidentally, but I digress).
Why was that chance so low, exactly? Jinger's endurance. The combination of Jinger's healing and consequent reinforcement quirk combined with the multiplicative effect applied by Jonathen's parasitic quirk meant that Jinger's physical resilience had long since surpassed the point at which the particles could pierce their skin. They simply did not move with enough energy to get through.
How then, does a particle beat these odds? Well, luck is obviously required, but the answer lies in turbulence. A particle, over the course of its life, has ways to acquire more energy. The particles do not just hit Jinger, after all, they hit each other aswell. Some of them take perfectly straight paths, but some of them also move in spiralling, circular patterns. More still, the important ones, repeatedly rebound off of other particles and navigate a zig-zagging path towards their target.
Occasionally, very occasionally, some of these collisions result in one particle being imparted with a higher velocity than it had before the collision. These circumstances are rare themselves. Usually, a collision robs the particle of velocity. However, in some cases, yes, one or more of the particles speed up. Such as in a case where one particle strikes a much less massive particle, or in a case where several particles collide with another particle. Those particles, depending on how many collisions of this type they undertake, can end up travelling at significantly higher velocities than their neighbour particles or when compared to the 'average' particle speed.
Just one of these collisions would not be enough. There would need to be several, maybe even a dozen or multiple dozens of unlikely collisions in order to gain enough energy to break through the absurd barrier that was Jinger's physicality. so I'll say again that this is so unlikely that just the word 'unlikely' feels like an abhorrent understatement.
Even these particles that achieve the requisite collisions do not have an easy journey ahead. They could still collide with other particles in an unfavourable way and slow down or even reverse or veer away from Jinger. Due, again, to turbulence. Other factors also affect a particle's ability to pierce, such as its shape. Is it pointed, or more smooth? How large is it? What about the particle's angular velocity, its spin?
Because of all these reasons and more, I do not want to understate what an absurd event it would be for a particle to be able to even wound Jinger trivially. The chance is so monumentally small that Jinger's assumption could reasonably be taken as fact, with some reasonable rounding down of the figures. The odds are probably in the ballpark of between one in several hundred million and one in several billion.
But that's not zero. The heavens do align, on occasion.
It is theoretically possible that a particle has a favourable size and shape, favourable angular spin so as to aid its power as a projectile without robbing it of momentum, and for that particle to collide in such a way with other particles that its momentum increases, AND, that its path from then on to collide with Jinger is clear enough of other particles that it does not lose that speed.
Not only is it theoretically possible, but Jessica had quite a few chances. Remember that very, very, large number we calculated? That's how many chances. At that point, statistics tell us that it's not just a chance of such an event occurring.
Over an equally astronomical number of attempts as it has an astronomically small chance of happening, such an event becomes an inevitability.
The first particle entered Jinger's brain.
After miraculously puncturing the skin and striking at a suture in the skull and miraculously punching through that aswell, the small shard travelled all the way through Ginger's brain until it hit the skull on the other side and was stopped dead. The wound was healed in about one millisecond. For one millisecond, Jinger sustained what would have been, should have been, lethal brain damage. Not only that, but the particle was stuck there, in their brain.
But they didn't die.
The blast continued, and Jinger was peppered with miraculous shards. One threaded its way up her arm, splintering the muscle in the fraction of a second it had before it exited out of the other side of the skin. Several blasted their way through their legs, thighs, waist, ankles and wrists…
Jinger scoffed. These injuries? They were nothing.
Jessica's beam petered out into nothing. The light faded. The tide subsided.
Jinger was still there. They were still coming.
She was mortified. Desperate.
"But... I don't want to lose... There has to be... Something else... Right?"
The aura. The one which surrounded Jessica and all that she made. It was enough to buff a normal human down to the bone in seconds, but against Jinger it was worthless. All of that wasted glass had to be put towards protecting the fault point. At all costs. Jessica brought the glass together in a barrier.
It was only a thin sheet of glass. Jinger broke through it trivially.
Jessica summoned more barriers. A second. A third. Four, five, six. Ten, twenty. No amount of glass that the girl put between her and Jinger would be enough to protect her, but she still insisted on trying. Whereas Jinger blew through each obstacle with only a bat of the hand. Jessica stacked ten barriers together at once. She stacked ten stacks of ten barriers together at once. Jinger blasted through it head first and used the remains as a stepping stone, accelerating even faster towards their target.
Jessica dove into her construct. Its glass body swallowed her, protecting her from the freakish power which was bearing down on it. Jinger did not intend to let that stop them.
They pulled one leg in. Every fibre of muscle was drained for every drop of strength that it had. Veins bulged out of the skin. Jinger unleashed all of their strength at once. It didn't matter if their body exploded from the force that it was exerting. It only mattered that they won.
"GIGANTIC OUTBURST: HORN LANCE!"
Jinger's kick was unleashed like a bomb being dropped.
Before the glass colossus broke entirely, It buckled, folding in on itself and becoming entirely concave. Then the first crack opened up. That was followed in the order of microseconds later by the complete structural failure of Jessica's titan. That kick annihilated it at once. Popped it like a balloon or a bubble. The sound of all that glass just… shattering. At once. It was a deafening cacophony. The very light which Jessica emitted was bent around the shockwave. Layer upon layer of the monster which she had built imploded in on itself, turning into nothing but dull, harmless powder.
Jinger didn't need to aim for the fault point. Their attack sent a vibration so powerful through the dense and indestructible monster that it was like each and every atom of its being was struck simultaneously. The tremor which their blow sent resounding through the colossus reverberated inside it, violently obliterating each and every segment. As soon as that all-consuming wave of blunt force converged at the fault point, the creature was doomed.
Jessica felt the shockwave go through her. Ravage her. Her insides heaved and shook themselves apart. Her skin was tinged by ripe, purple vascular bruises which encompassed her entire body. Blood spewed relentlessly out of her mouth, her eyes, her nose. Her back arched in agony as her limbs became limp. Her meek gurgle did not reach the ears of Jinger, who could only hear the sound of shattering glass.
The torrent of white particles spread like ocean spray. It formed something almost like a whirlpool. It was like a funnel that opened up to beckon Jinger in, and which lead right down to Jessica. They both fell at the same speed. Jinger would have only needed one more strike to end it. To fell the controller. They would only have needed the time it took for them to fall to the ground. To someone who might have thrown themselves off of a building, that might not seem like any amount of time at all. But in a fight like this, it was an eternity.
Jessica was furious.
"That... Was my... BABY!"
Seething, hissing, boiling contempt bubbled out of her grisly, cut open mouth. The glass around lost its technicolour lustre and faded until the only colour left was red. Deep and dark red. It pulsated from within her broken body and refracted off of the tidal wave of white glass dust, painting the world the colour of aged, congealed blood.
She reached out her hand, and it contorted into a hateful claw, like the hand of a witch. The glass reacted, but not how it did before. This was an incomplete reaction. Like how imperfect combustion releases deadly carbon monoxide. The glass began to move, but it was a frustrated and impotent movement. All that the glass did was vibrate in place.
That was every shard of glass. All of them all around. Jessica wasn't even aware of it, but that included one shard of glass in particular. Jinger had exactly one microscopic shard lodged in their brain. That was their only lasting injury from Jessica's most powerful attack. And it was going to end them.
At first, it felt like a migraine headache. But then it got worse, and it didn't go away. Jinger retched and spasmed, contracting and raking their skull with their fingers. Jonathen was the first to feel it. Really feel it. Feel his quirk failing. Damage directly to the brain. It wouldn't cease or let up even for a second. Healing the wounds only seemed to make the pain worse. Neither of them knew what exactly the cause was. They hadn't the foggiest idea that one of Jessica's glass shards was inside of their head, gyrating violently and destroying the delicate structures of the mind.
"Ginger... Somethings wrong! I... don't know what's happening!"
"What are you... Talking about... I... Feel... Fine!"
She was obviously in agony. It was more her brain than it was Jonathen's, owing to the nature of his rapidly degrading fusion. But doggedly optimistic denial didn't work for Jonathen. There was a simple reality at play. He was being pried away. The fusion would fail any second.
"Ginger... I can't... I can't..."
Jonathen didn't know what to say.
"I'm sorry."
Jinger started to break down. The blue faded completely out of Ginger before her colour returned, and Jonathen was violently ejected from her. His liquid body reconstituted just in time for him to hit the ground. Hard. He landed in a pile of broken glass and bounced off of it only to land in it again. Pieces of glass pierced through his clothes and covered him in small wounds.
He was so exhausted. It was just the same as when their fusion had broken after the royale. His muscles didn't respond no matter how much he screamed at them. His quirk refused to answer to him aswell. Ginger must have had it worse, no matter what. Through some herculean feat of determination, she had landed on her feet and was standing not that far across from Jessica, who slowly slithered into a standing position. Just from looking at her, though, Jonathen could tell.
"We... aren't done yet... It... It doesn't end here..." Ginger coughed before her voice trailed off into nothing. Her eyes fluttered shut. A little droplet of blood fell out of her nose before streaking down onto her chin. She wasn't healing it, whatever it was. Her quirk was gone as well.
Something was wrong with her. Her body stayed up, but she was already out. Jonathen saw it clearly. Her standing didn't last very long. Ginger toppled over backwards. She landed with a puffy cloud of glass powder. Weakened to a catatonic state. Perfectly unconscious. Without her quirk, and without the ability to fight back. But Jessica was still limping along. In her hand, she held the most of her quirk which she could still control. It was a far cry from her colossus, it was a far cry even for the claws that she was wielding at the start of the battle. It was just a knife. About two or three inches long. Roughly shaped and jagged. For all the girl's wear and fatigue, she still dripped with malefic intent.
"I... Can still kill you... I can still kill... both of you...! I'm going to... I'm going to end you..."
Jessica growled and grunted the words, forcing them out through the pain. Her limp shortly turned into a sprint, and she waved her knife around like a toy. It was trained to sink into Ginger's neck.
"H-Hey... Stop!" Jonathen called out. His voice was weak. Not even audible. It was the first thing he thought to do, even though it obviously wouldn't do anything. No amount of pleading on his part could change fate. Something can't come from nothing. Jonathen had to do something. When he did, he did so without thinking.
Something came over Jonathen. He was standing up. Then he was running. His body moved on its own.
…
…
…
"Why…?"
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…
…
"Why did I… Do that…?"
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…
…
Ginger muttered something.
"J-Jonathen?"
TO BE CONTINUED
Sorry for being late on this one, everybody. I just needed to do it justice was all. I didn't want to rush it for a deadline, so I ate into my weekend time. I hope you enjoy it. With the conclusion of this chapter, only two more chapters remain until the end of this arc and the end of "SEASON 1". After that, I will probably take a break to focus on some other creative projects.
With that out of the way, thank you all for reading. I will see you in the next one!