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Like a lamp light Cinder's weapon flickered into place in her hands. A bow appeared and an arrow was set loose towards where I leapt in, flying over a couch in the middle of the room. I deflected it and rushed her, she pulled her weapon apart into two curved swords.
The fire alarm had given her some warning about our presence.
Emerald rolled off of the couch I flew over and Neo engaged her with the sound of shattering glass. Buffeting her with the umbrella then slashing at Emerald's throat, Neo went for the kill immediately. Emerald barely managed to extend her weapons in time to block and then like that I was past them and fighting Cinder in the open room.
I flexed my blade and shattered the great patio window in a smattering of glass as I swept my giant blade down on the woman I hated. Penny came in on rocket boots with the floating array of swords swinging in tandem with her outstretched hand.
Cinder was forced to back-flip over the approaching weapons then she shuffled back and closer to the shattered pane of glass as I shoved my weapon into the ground and tore it up. Pushing the blade at her chest. She jumped and landed on the edge of my weapon. Glass heels clicked against the Titania edge then she slashed twice down at my neck and head with a flurry of blows that rocked my head from side to side.
She flipped back and landed neatly on a pillar of flames that truly caught the place alight. If the fire alarm wasn't already going off and blaring in my ears it would have started then. She threw the pillar of fire at me and it raced across the long living room.
Then her swords matched several Penny's floating array. Two laser bolts shot from Penny's other floating swords. Cinder was pushed closer to the shattered window where the window breezed past. She jumped out of the window, stepped on a flare of fire that let her hover then came leaping feet first back in through another window, shattering it and sending glass splashing across the fine room's furniture and at my face.
I ignored the glass, trusting my aura, and brought my weapon at her in a tremendous sideways swing that she just slipped to her knees and slid underneath. She shot back to her feet easily and cut at my exposed back. It was my turn to be pushed out the open window. I hovered in the air, reversing tractionless on the empty wind before I came sweeping back in with my blade over my head and tearing through the roof of the fine apartment in my attempt to slice at her. Dust and stone came falling down on her with my enormous blade.
Flecks of stone must have washed into her but she flowed backward into the room, sweeping her swords upwards and blocking my cut from five feet away. My reach was hard to escape from while she herself remained in striking range against me.
She kicked me in the side and would have toppled me to the ground but I just floated and brought my blade diagonally upwards at her.
Penny came in at the same time and five blades at various heights flew at Cinder. Cinder jumped and olled in the air to dodge the blades, then she blocked my upwards swing while in mid-air and the force of my attack actually launched her upwards and through the ceiling. She grunted as she collided with it, then went through it.
I took a moment to watch Emerald struggle against Neo's acrobatic style. Neo flipped and put her foot cleanly across Emerald's face and slashed her stomach with the thin blade she carried.
Seeing that I turned to the hole in the ceiling. I flew up through the wooden beans and tiled floor and ceiling above, slashing with my blade and tearing my way up with my body. I landed on the floor of the apartment above. It was as nice as the one below with cool furnishings and grey metal lined walls. It was all very modern.
"I'm going to burn you to death," Cinder informed me coldly. I said nothing back. It was a time for action more than words. I had said enough. I'd nearly done enough. But she would fall this day. Cinder slashed at me with her left blade quickly and followed it with her right in a diagonal downwards fashion that I tilted my blade to block both of.
She tried to kick my left leg out from under me. I let her and rotated freely in the air without touching the ground and cut at her stomach while floating upside down. She had to turn her weapons sideways in an 'x' to block. I followed the motion like I was in zero gravity and rotated so I was once more upright but still hovering a few inches off the ground.
I brought my weapon down on her from above next. Flying above her I slammed it into her weapons with enough force to depress and shatter the tiles around her. But we were both made of sterner stuff than even the stone floor work.
I laughed in her face and swept forward on nothing, bringing my weapon from low to high in a slice brilliantly fast, it slammed her all the way back into the kitchen of the apartment and rocked her over the granite kitchen island counter and left her depressing in the fridge metal.
She whipped back up to face me and there was a shazoom of lightning that arced from her body and flung me steaming and hissing through the windows of apartment 'v' 3.
I fell. For a terrible moment as the electricity traced through me I was unable to reverse myself and I fell out through the side of the building near Atlas's edge and down towards Mantle.
When I finally caught myself on empty air and flew back up to the apartment I'd been launched from, Penny had already reengaged Cinder with the blades on strings of wire. Penny slashed and hunted for Cinder but she was evasive. Her blades of glass glowed red hot and she slipped the blade through one of the wires of Penny's weapon and a sword clattered to the ground.
I hurled back into where the alarm sounded. My head rang like a bell with the moment. I felt scared. I felt like this was the moment I had prepared myself for over the course of months. I'd kill Cinder, and I'd do it with Limit. I felt the power coursing through me.
Take this Limit. Get this kill with Limit Breaker. Right. Now.
I landed and came sweeping at where Cinder was flying with jets of flame at her feet. With my feet upon the ground lost myself in the sounds of combat. I came slashing at her with my blade while standing and when she dodged in an airborn cartwheel. I took off straight at her. I felt the flames of my semblance move across my skin. On the wing of will and wind I came at her with the force of a titan and slammed her back.
When she was dead and gone, I'd finally be able to move on. Be on the way to whatever was next. One obstacle down. Pyrrha finally avenged. What I wouldn't give for her to see me now. Or to see her again in general. She was not but ash now. But it was still a serious experience. Cinder was still a massive threat.
Flames spread from Cinder Fall's dress and began to coat the room. They lapped at my aura. I ignored the burn of them and swept at her again. Penny whirled a half dozen blades at Cinder which she blocked and flipped between. Penny fired a laser at her at the same moment I shot a blade-beam out which slammed into the stove and dented the metal. Cinder rolled her shoulders and arms Ina kind of waving motion and fire poured from her body like a river. It forced me to go high up above the blast and Penny was caught up in it.
Penny held out a hand but her aura was burnt through and she was thrown back into a wall next to the shattered open windows.
I brought my sword down like the hammer of a god. Cinder blocked but she was thrown bodily down through the floor back to 'v' two and the floor of that apartment as well. I gave chase once again. Rupturing my way through tile and stone and brick and pipe.
The siren of the fire alarm still rang around us but we gave it no need. We knew what the source of the cacophony was. We were at the center of it.
I hovered at Cinder as she attempted to rise and gave two quick horizontal slashes. She blocked the first but the second caught her side on her aura and sent her stumbling back.
A Grimm black hand extended from where she slid back to. It slashed at me with the curved sword wildly. Uncaring for the normal kinds of disadvantage such swings might cause in terms of leaving the user open to counter attack. She had found a way to out range me and the impressive length of Crocea Mors in its broadsword form.
She hacked at me diagonally but I blocked twice and attempted to maneuver around to fight at where the malignant arm attached to the otherwise whole person. I had had enough of human-Grimm hybrids. Every time I looked in the mirror I saw one. I loathed it. I loathed the place where Cinder's arm turned black as though with deep rot. I detested the rest of her form as well. But that place where the arm grew like a tumor revolted me to the point of seeing red.
When I tried to close the gap by skirting around her the long taloned arm followed me close. I leapt over the destroyed couch in the middle of the open living space and it slashed up feathers behind me in its pursuit of me.
I couldn't get around it.
I'd have to go through it.
No sooner had I realized the thought that a second torrent of flames poured from where Cinder swung her other saber. Crooked and cruel, the glass blade spread fire like butter over toast over the whole of the room in a wide wake that Neo only just dodged and Emerald rolled to the side.
Cinder seemed apathetic about burning her own ally if it meant torching me. If only a little.
The clawed arm slashed at me with the curved sword, I blocked it. Then riposted and bisected her arm at the wrist. It fell in a smattering of Grimm chunks and released a horrendous odor. Cinder shrieked and black mist poured from the arm with a foul stench. From the note of origin of the hideous odor another hand sprouted. Formless smoke taking concrete shape.
I closed the distance and she drew a new sword from clean air and grasped it in a three clawed hand freshly grown. The glass weapon just the same as the one before. Then she spun and pointed both her weapons at me at the same time she took a knee and a thunderbolt narrowly missed my head.
I kneed her in the face and flung her back into a wall and out into the hallway. Penny rejoined me and a wave of blades chased Cinder where she rolled in the carpeted walkway between apartments. Penny used it reel herself in and crashed out into the hallway. She jumped off of a wall, then thrust forward a boot of fire and sprinted after the direction Cinder retreated.
My jaw wholly ached. I realized in that moment before I flew out the door and after my quarry that I was holding my teeth tight and bashing them together with enormous force from the stress of it all. It was an odd thing to notice at a time like this where my deliverance was close at hand. My only thought should have been on Cinder and helping Penny. It wasn't.
I popped my head around the corner and nearly ate a fireball to the face which hurled down the long hallway from where Cinder and Penny were fighting. Penny swung a trail of swords at Cinder's head and torso that Cinder blocked the first of, weaved between the next two, and ducked under a fourth and deflected a fifth. Then she counter attacked with a scissoring thrust of her curved blades that caught Penny by the chest and she sliced through one of the thin wires which held Penny's swords aloft. Then she kicked Penny in the chest but it was sort of like kicking a refrigerator and Penny hardly wobbled.
Up I flew, tearing into the walls of the hallway with my enormous blade in tow, over my shoulder, ready to swing it around and down on Cinder. She saw me coming and maneuvered Penny between us so that I had to flow my assault. I front-flipped over them both and brought my blade down on Cinder as I did. She rolled and the sword sunk deep into the ground.
Cinder kicked back with a heel that caught me in the face at the same time she jumped forward at Penny and slashed across her body.
I reeled back from the glass shoe before I bullied my sword free of the ground and thrust it forward at her. She leaned to the side and I swung the thrust in her direction but she bowed fluidly underneath the swing and it left my weapon once more buried. This time in a wall to my left. She slashed me across the torso and she side flipped and cut one of Penny's hovering wires. Then she landed and threw her arms out at both of us.
A gale of wind swept over me in the narrow hallway and threw me all the way to the end where a tall window loomed while Penny was flung bodily by the disembodied force back in the direction of the elevators.
The wind shattered the window before I reached it. The pressure, turning the smooth surface into jagged crystals that exploded outwards. I cut my back on one particular jagged edge. My aura protected me but it was another blow to add to the register and after that I was once more falling into open space above Mantle.
I caught myself spread eagle on a bed of will and flew back up through the window. I dragged my blade over the carpeted floor and pushed it through the solid woodwork and metal all the way down the hallway to Cinder. She crossed her blades but I caught her on them. I shoved her all the way back, pushing her all the way down the hallway in the blink of an eye.
I pushed her all the way back to where Penny was recovering.
Cinder looked backwards.
Penny thrust her blades forwards. They ruptured Cinder's back through her ribs, lungs, and other tissues. Cinder cried out but it was just a gargle of blood. Her lungs filled with the crimson liquid and poured out through her mouth.
Three swords speared Cinder at the back and all the way through and red began to leak through the torn black dress and down to the floor. One thrust through the small of her back and upwards, the next piled through just below the front of the rib cage and sideways, and the last sprung through her chest just below the heart and angled downward.
Cinder spat blood on Penny's porcelain face. Flecks of red matched her little brown freckles. Penny flinched and blinked back. She hadn't expected the blows to be enough to mortally wound Cinder. It came as a shock to me too, the one who had done much of the pushing.
Cinder still looked back at Penny's eyes. Then her eyelids began to flutter closed. She tried to keep them open with one last feel backwards, eyes widening as she strained to keep them open. Her eyes locked on Penny. Then they closed.
There was a rush as energy flowed into the recoiling Penny. Fresh greens and deep oranges flowed into Penny's body. Flecks of light spun through the air and Penny breathed them in. Penny collapsed, eyes glassy, blood still trickled down her face as the power of the maidens rushed into her body. It was remarkable to watch.
I stepped back and Cinder slid off of Penny's blades. She fell face down on the floor next to the line I had torn up with my blade. Her glass weapons toppled from limp fingers and hit with dull thuds on the ground of the apartment building, floor two.
Penny's hands reached up to her own face in horror. "I killed her," Penny whispered.
I knelt beside her and leaned my weapon against the wall. "You did. You did well." I encouraged. "It was the right thing to do. It's what we came here for. You had to know that. It was her place to die today." I stood up. "I'm going to go help Neo. Stay here until I come back. Don't move. I'll be back. Just rest for. Moment. Breath."
I took up my sword once more, there was still work to be done. More killing to do.
"It gets easier. It does. It's hard but killing does get easier," I told her.
"Fuck you, Cloud. I hate this," Penny whispered.
I reeled.
I stepped back.
I picked my feet up and I flew away from the girl in that hallway near the puddle of blood. I grabbed Cinder's swords.
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-WG