Current Energy: 14
Friday, January 7th, 2011
The Docks, Brockton Bay
You glare out over the bay, patiently waiting for Lung to re-enter your effective range. Having tested it a bit, you have found that you can roughly 'feel' the outermost limits of your Master's range. For the first time, you find yourself chaffing slightly under the restriction. Your Master doesn't want you to kill anyone? Fine. Your Master doesn't want you to destroy parts of the city? Fine. But it's so much harder to accomplish any of that when you are chained to a two-block radius around her. She'll get more mobile. You know she will. But that doesn't change the fact that right now, she is like an anchor to you, solidly planting you in place when your current Emulation has experience fighting his way through areas easily twice the size of Brockton Bay.
Behind you, your Master has already begun her own fight. The Oni Lee, having apparently recognized your eyes as a weak point, appears in front of you, only for your Master to leap under your arm with a corkscrewing motion to slam one foot into him, detonating the clone instantly. But she doesn't stop. Like a whirling dervish of violence, her aura increases in size, it's shape, you realize, not so much in the form of a grinning skull as the uncomfortably huge abdomen of a menacing spider of some kind. She slams on foot down into the sand, kicking up a spray that briefly obscures the area around you, then charges past you again, making sure to kick up a storm of sand with every movement. You're not even sure she knows where Oni Lee is at this point.
Truthfully, you're kind of surprised your Master is even capable of moving that fast. Yes, she's strong enough to propel herself at that speed, but reacting to her environment fast enough to attack or stop in that condition is an entirely different form of combat than you're accustomed to. It's certainly not how you would choose to fight at least. If you had to hazard a guess you would say she probably doesn't know what's going on around her. The battle instincts you bestowed upon her minutes prior are probably putting in their fair share of work.
Clone after clone of Oni Lee begins to appear around your Master, each one appearing as fast as the last, each one wielding another explosive device. If even one of those explosions goes off, your Master will be out of the fight, and you'll have to fall back to defend her. But for each clone, your Master responds, each of her strikes causing small shockwaves of their own that kick up yet more sand. You can tell it's straining for her. You can tell that she won't be able to keep up this level of focus for long.
But hopefully, she can keep it up long enough.
Turning back to your own fight, you are treated to Lung as he finally crosses back into your range. Physically, he seems capable of moving very, very fast when given enough leverage to use his great strength - but obviously flying isn't quite so easy for him, regardless of his wingspan. With a final glance back to Taylor, you leap upward, creating platforms beneath your feet that allow you to stand level with the flying beast that is charging towards you.
Lung, upon seeing you exit the nascent sandstorm on the shore, roars at you, flinging blasts of fire at you as he approaches that you swipe at, diffusing the power behind them and allowing the weakened blasts of flame to wash over you instead of landing on the beach behind you.
"Oi, oi. You coulda just asked for a fight ya know? Why'd you have to go and take the old man huh?" You sneer at Lung, who's mouth has, at this point, shifted to the point where he no longer seems capable of actually speaking. Then you leap at him, aiming a blow at one of his wings. The strike lands, cleaving one of the four appendages from the beasts back with a hellacious roar of pain, and you are struck in the side as it retaliates, sending you flying sideways and towards the invisible wall that constitutes your range limit. You could swear this guy shouldn't be strong enough to actually hurt you. A sentiment that Lung himself apparently doesn't agree with, as he flies toward you in an attempt to land another punishing blow against you. The wing you lopped off is already starting to reform, and the other three the dragon has are apparently enough to keep it aloft while that is ongoing.
Not seeing another option, you once more funnel power through your blade, flinging it outward in a golden explosion that knocks Lung backward and rips a huge gash in his front that immediately begins to knit itself back together. Having created some space between the two of you, you quickly create a hold for yourself, stopping your flight and leaping back into the fray.
Energy: -1
"Come on! There has to be more than that! Stronger! Faster! MORE!" You cry out with glee as you rocket back into the monster shoulder first, grabbing ahold of the inside of it's rapidly healing wound holding it tight to yourself. The air around you burns, and your fake lungs struggle to breathe as you laugh, one hand holding tightly to the dragons breast while your sword whips outward, slashing at legs, arms and wings as they draw close to you. The dragon returns the compliment, blasting you with fire, bombarding you with blow after blow, and at some point you realize that you are both falling. The sudden sensation of being underwater is barely noticeable to you, as the liquid immediately flash boils, introducing you to yet another strata of pain.
But something is different. Lung, usually more than willing to return blow for blow your aggression, is struggling against your grip on one of his ribs, dragging the both of you upward and out of the ocean.
You do a quick tally of the circumstances. Living beings need air to breathe. If they don't get it, they usually die. You are already experiencing something similar to this, each breath above having scorched your organs mightily, and each choked gasp below allowing more and more fluid into your lungs. Lung must surely be experiencing the same. The primary difference between the two of you, is that only one of you can die.
Blackout, you hastily correct yourself. Only one of you can blackout due to oxygen deprivation.
With a savage grin, you whirl around, heaving Lung further into the bay with you, his tremendous frame so vast now that the derelict ships around you are swaying in place as the waves crash down on them. You can hear sirens in the distance, and put them out of mind as you unleash one final blast of power, releasing your hold on the dragon and sending him flying to the bays floor.
Energy: -1
You can feel parts of your Emulation dying. Your brain shutting down. You contemplate reaching for the edge of your range, and being reconstituted above ocean level, where there is sweet, sweet, air. But you already know the truth. This is a threat your Master can't possibly hope to face. You could go all out. You could destroy this entire bay and everything in it. But you are forbidden from killing, which precludes pretty much all of your most powerful abilities or attacks. So you are left with this.
The Dragon rises, so you strike it down. It repeats, again and again, until your world is a black miasma of pain and suffering, with only your superbly resilient body continuing to fight.
And finally, the dragon ceases to rise. It begins to shrink. It begins to float to the surface. You have just enough presence of mind to try to flip him off as he passes you by, before you discorporate.
A/N: So some things. I feel like Spiritual Pressure as a mechanic would be really bad to use on Lung. It just feeds into his whole, infinite escalation bit, only he doesn't even have to fight you - just exist near you. Even beyond that, Kenpachi being the greatest threat on the planet bar Sion, The Endbringers, and a few specific capes, means that Lung was inevitably going to ramp up waaaaaaaaay too fast for a Kenpachi who is limited by a no kill rule to be able to just one hit ko him.
Also I apologize for missing my usual multi chapter sunday - I've been having a weird time at work recently so sleep has been sneaking up on me. I'll try to do a couple during the day today to make up for it.