Part 37

Oni Lee's head rolled to the side with an audible groan of pain.

For a heartbeat I thought it was over. The masked man's teleport dodge had saved his life, but not his ribs. The half formed glaive had 'cut' clear though into the bone, either the force of the strike or the accompanying fall finishing the job of breaking the bone in a visual way you normally didn't see out of surgeries.

I hadn't gotten deep enough to damage the organs, but it didn't matter.

Without that all to vital bone binding his ribs together he wouldn't be able to breath properly. Even more critically, while still held in position by various connective tissues, his rib cage had just become a built in iron maiden just waiting for the right nudge to stab into his very vulnerable lungs.

Moving without medical attention would be the height of insanity.

Silly me, thinking a super villain would behave in a sane manner.

In an explosion of motion the ABB cape reached for his side, reaching for some weapon I couldn't make out by both the angle and the darkness.

I didn't give him the chance. The moment his hands moved my glaive reformed slashing down and to the side striking through his face and neck.

The results were... ugly. An Eldritch Glaive wasn't a material blade, it was just my normal blast shaped and stabilized. It didn't have any momentum, but the entire length had the same destabilizing/corrosive effect of my normal attack.

So rather then cut into the teleporting killer, it...bored through him. Skin and bone simply coming apart explosively as the strike washed through the path of the blow.

It reminded me of some of the more horrific things that could be done with a microwave, only much more focused.

While getting a hole punched in his chest didn't stop the man below me, losing a chunk of his skull sure as heck did.

Then the rest promptly fell apart into ash.

A clone.

I wanted to be relieved, but as much as that meant I hadn't killed a man yet, it also meant I hadn't killed the guy who just tried to kill me.

Again.

Which meant he could try and do it a third time unless I followed through this time.

My strike continued gorging a trench through the ground as I brought my arm around glaive coming up over my shoulders in a ready position as my head shot up in the path the madman had been looking.

There.

Another Oni Lee lay prone on the street.

My grip shifted as I took a half step forward, power condensing in my grip, as I repeated what took me two days of practice in two seconds, and forced my power into a new mold.

My glaive thinned and hardened. What before had been stable glaive, became a brittle spear ready in my hand.

My other foot move, body twisting, arms flexing, a movement more necessary for the meaning behind it then the actual act.

The violet shaft shot from my hand faster then a crossbow bolt, it's path perfectly strait, unhindered by such trivial realities as gravity or air resistance, near instantly finding it's target and boring it's entire length through it.

Only for that Lee to to crumble to ash.

Violet violence filled my hands immediately again, power rushing to my grasp as my blood hummed within my veins.

I could hear my heartbeat pounding in my hears, which was further exacerbated by the fact that my eyes were currently darted around looking for the infamous assassin.

Movement. My glaive reformed cutting towards-

I shattered my blade hand flashing open as I struggled to stop the arm that nearly passed across a different, female familiar figure to my side.

Breath came from my lips in short steady pants as I stared wide eyed into the emotionless amber lenses of the unfamiliar mask.

"T-" I half stuttered, throat tight.

I blinked.

No, wait. Couldn't use her name here. Hostiles around.

I needed to tell her that.

"Oni Lee's here," I blurted out in a rush, eyes scanning around, "I got him once, but I don't know-" I felt dizzy.

Breath. Now wasn't the time to lose it!

I sucked in a deep breath, and released it.

My vision seemed to dim for an impossibly still second.

Then dilated back to normal.