Chapter 19
'Round One… FIGHT!' I couldn't help but cry out in my own mind as we collided.
I brought my arm up in a rapid jab, intending to probe and see what she would do. She used her wings to lift of the ground slightly and shoulder check me. Her attack was a lot more powerful than mind and for a fraction of a second I thought she might overbore me, forcing me to twist under her aerial assault and turn to face her.
By the time I'd locked eyes on her, she was already charging at me again, her arms and legs a blur even to my enhanced perceptions. It was obvious that she was both much faster and much stronger than me, I had to even the field somehow.
Luckily, I wasn't entirely bound by the constraints of physics. I ordered my nanites to clone themselves into the pattern of a seal within my body. this was a new seal I just now came up with the moment I realised just how outmatched I was in my physicality compared to her. With the strategic application of this seal, I could both generate my own force, momentum, torque, inertia and leverage, as well as arrest it.
This allowed me to perform a slide-kick, straight out of Street Fighter. Of course, she just jumped over it, but the point was to force her to keep reacting to me rather than the other way around.
I took the moment of separation to close the gap between our skills even further by tapping into the Naruto side of my DNA. Somehow, the world seemed to slow down even further as my eyes turned red with the activation of my Sharingan. All three of the tomoe were already active thanks to my body's optimisation, though I was surprised by the fact that I didn't already have the Mangekyo Sharingan.
I lost my old life after all, it was taken away to drag me into this hellscape of a setting.
I leapt forwards, bringing my legs up in a series of sequential kicks that defied gravity. The first was aimed at her head, which she dodged easily. The second and third were aimed at her chest and ribs. These ones she blocked with her forearms, though I didn't even get a grunt of effort from her.
Fucking hell, if she's so strong that even now she wasn't taking me seriously, then I would need a different approach if I actually wanted to win this fight.
Unfortunately, it was now that she decided to properly go on the attack. Which was a surprise considering that I thought she was already trying to attack me properly, boy was I wrong.
I watched as she used one fist to slam me down from my position that I was launching kicks from. I tried do dodge, but all I managed was do catch her strike with my own motion, lessening the impact of her blow.
The moment I hit the ground she punted, launching me upwards and only just missing my balls. She followed me, launching a spinning punch that I moved to dodge once more.
It clipped the side of my head and it felt like my whole bell had been rung. "Stop dodging and block. You are a warrior, not some Slaaneshi whore."
"If I do that, you'll break my bones! Or at least send me flying!" I replied. Wait? How was I replying? And how did she speak to me? At the speeds we're moving sound wouldn't have the time to propagate.
I barely had time to think about it as a spinning kick flew towards me, I had to move- gah! She's cornered me! I had to block it!
*SMACK!*
On the bright side, my bones didn't break, though I did feel a few layers of my nested nanites pop as my body rapidly recovered. Beyond that, my body smashed its way through on of the high-rise buildings we were fighting among. The moment her attack landed, I felt the power in the air surge, and to my senses it felt like the strength of the localised warp storm was increasing.
"Warriors communicate through battle, through our FISTS! And what you are telling me right now is that you aren't taking this fight seriously."
WHAM…
Really? That… if that's true it's some kind of Khorne thing. "What about our mou-" She made to interrupt my flippant response with a fast haymaker, but this time I was the one leading her around. About 15 seconds have passed since the start of this fight and I think I've gotten at least some of her tells down.
I intercepted her fist with one of my own. I augmented the force and speed of my attack with alchemy, generating both an armoured shell around my fist and accelerating my punch with a strategically placed explosion. It stung, but it also completely arrested her attack and allowed me to follow up.
But once again her overwhelming skill revealed itself.
She blocked my high kick with one of her own, controlling the descent of our interlocked legs as she used her fists to assault me, forcing me to block with my forearms.
That drew all my attention, leaving me open for her to strike my gut with her knee. I forcibly prevented the pain of the strike from propagating through my body with my Nanites – I didn't need to be crippled by pain at this point in the game.
Refusing to give up the momentum of the brawl, I launched yet another series of jabs. She blocked each of them in turn, her guard widening as my attacks came from further and further apart. THERE!
I threw another rocket assisted punch into her now unguarded gut, adding as much momentum as I could and forcing her back, granting me some breathing room.
That turned out to be a mistake, as she used the opportunity to dig her hands into the world. I don't mean she shoved her hands into the ground to prevent her from sliding back, I meant she literally grabbed onto reality and tore it open.
I leapt back, idly noting the stupid Tau civilians that were watching like this was a spectator sport. Not all of them, but some of these guys were clearly competing for a Darwin award.
In the fractions of a second it took me to expand the gap between myself and Ishtar, I quickly found that I was outnumbered.
Standing before her were a trio of hellish forms. They were unarmed, save for their spiked gauntlets, burning Hellblades and the intense hatred the seemed to radiate from them. They looked like the cover art for the 6th edition Deamons codex, these were Heralds of Khorne.
Ishtar seemed to take that moment to step back while at the same time her little helpers advanced on me.
I held my right hand out, picturing how to activate the transmutation sphere in the correct formation with my mind's eye. It was a bit expensive, but in a burst of transmutation lightning the ground at my side deformed and reshaped into a sword made of the same material as my new bones.
My weapon was ready just in time for me to parry the first attack from the closest Herald. It tried to snarl at me, but I was thinking so fast that the sounds it made didn't reach my ears before I'd already moved on.
Okay, that was a good sign, I thought that all the Daemons would somehow be able to move within my frame jacked perceptions, but it seems like it's only Ishtar. Probably a Greater Daemon thing.
I must have appeared as a blur to the Heralds as I separated them. They tried to surround me and attack from all sides, but that just meant I could work out the rhythm of their movements and pick them apart. The one that attacked me first was the first to fall, my blade severing his own sword arm while my fist moved with explosive force that I imparted into its skull, forcing it to disperse in a cloud of blood red daemonic mist.
The second and third didn't last much longer, they moved so slowly that I took the opportunity to analyse their fighting styles, extending the fight by another subjective year of time.
I observed how they held their blades, how their muscles moved, where their eyes looked and the expressions on their faces all the while. If I was a normal human, I likely would have been driven insane by their presence, even now I felt the barest hint of a hint of pressure on me. It wasn't physical pressure, but more like the pressure I felt whenever a perk hit me. Granted, it was much weaker than that, I would have been gravely concerned if a random Daemon had a presence more powerful than the Celestial Forge.
Unfortunately, I didn't have time to just mess around with my practice dummies. Ishtar was approaching me once more and she was still very dangerous. I jumped, adding angular momentum to my body and stretching my legs out, performing a helicopter kick straight from a fighting game.
It caught both of my current opponents by surprise, completely helpless to stop my kicks from ripping their heads off.
I landed with my eyes on Ishtar, "Happy with your breather?" perhaps I shouldn't be taunting the Daemon powered by anger, but fuck it I was angry too… hang on?
I didn't have any more time to think as Ishtar launched herself at me with a snarl marring her face. She twisted, using her wings to assist the limited flight of her launch, allowing her to spin and before I knew it there was a brutal axe-kick baring down on me.
I twisted to the side just barely dodging her cloven hoof as it smashed down, crashing into the earth and fracturing the ground. From there she was hammering fists and elbows at me, and it was all I could do to keep up, even having to abandon my sword since she was withing my guard. I felt the bruises start to build up faster than my nanites could fix them and my Ebony-Auramite bones were starting to crack under her blows. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Desperate to halt her assault and give myself time to recover, I launched a counterattack, striking her side with my knee since my arms were too busy blocking.
WHAM...
-*-
Bonesinger
Dear child, the Eldar do not simply build their wondrous technology. Instead, they rely on the power of song to shape their creations into being. This is a very demanding process, which requires a unique mix of artistic and scientific knowledge. Most importantly of all, a strong mind is necessary for this process. Bonesingers sing a psychic song, and its melodies form a psychoactive material from the warp itself, called Wraithbone.
This lightweight material is stronger than titanium but is far more flexible and weighs less. Additionally you can psychically grow crystals that are the basis of their laser & lance technology. You have the knowledge and ability to sing any Eldar technology and any technology you know into being and more than that, eons of experience in doing so.
Even so, the more complex an item is, the more time it takes to create said item. A whole choir of Bonesingers is required to create large and complex items such as starships and Eldar Titans unless you are willing to sing alone for years. With enough time, perhaps, you could even sing forth a brand-new Craftworld but how and where would you acquire that much time? Even an Eldar is not immortal.
-*-
I didn't even have time to think about how useful that would be, given that I was fighting for my life. She reacted to my counter attack, but not in the way I hoped.
Somehow, she managed to swat me with her wing, distracting me for just long enough to reach down and grab my knee the moment I tired to retract it. Her grip was so strong! Struck at her wrist in a fruitless attempt to break her grip, one she barely seemed to notice.
I certainly noticed when she threw me through yet another building, this time on a slight upwards trajectory. There were screams as I arced through the airs into a packed arterial path, full of humans and tau scurrying about and an attempt to save themselves.
Hang on, I know this place. The holographic images that flooded the street's airspace, the buildings themselves, some of the street level vendors. For those few days I was maintaining a peaceful, normal life here this street was part of my commute. I knew some of these people, if not exactly personally.
Some were staring at me in shock, my frame jacking slipping as they seemed to speed up and slow down as my subjective time adjusted. I could even hear some of them speak.
"Is that a Gue'la, Gue'vesa?"
"How could it be, any notmal creature would have been pulped by-"
"It's glaring at me! run!"
*CRASH!* Ishtar was coming!
"EVERYBODY RUN!" I yelled before channelling force into my legs through my seals. Fuck, I've literally never had the time to practice flight! I guess the middle of a fight as good a time as any to innovate and experiment.
I saw Ishtar standing atop the building she'd thrown me through. Clutched in her fist was… the sword I made and discarded. She was wielding it like it weighed nothing, letting its point dance through the air. "Not bad for a weapon you made in the heat of battle. The servants of my master with similar abilities often produce weapons of far lesser quality than this."
I didn't bother responding, instead dodging over her lazy first strike. She… was she moving slower? Or was I getting faster?
I felt my tenketsu getting their shape altered by my nanites in real time, optimising the flow of my chakra through my body as it did so. Oh, right, they had a limited autonomous intelligence of their own, so I didn't need to micromanage them.
"Stop getting distracted!" Ishtar roared as she swung my blade once again, the screeching noise of her attack ringing out as she did so. And yet it felt like she was moving slightly slower. I landed on the roof, dodging by simply leaning slightly to the side before striking the forearm of her weapon hand.
The look of surprise on her face as I finally managed to force her grip loose was so satisfying. I had to block an attack from her off hand as I wrested my weapon from her grip, before immediately switching to a backhanded grip and slamming it downward towards her chest.
This turned out to be a mistake, as when my blade struck her bikini armour it snapped. What the fuck? Am I strong enough to shatter blades like that just by using them?
I didn't even blink as I followed my attack up with a punch straight to her face. Unfortunate I was counting on that stab to have worked because she had the presence of mind to punch me in the face at the exact same time.
Both of us were knocked off our feet and flung backwards, over the edge of the building and down to the streets below. I quickly adjusted my descent, the last thing I wanted was to land and get cornered in a narrow alley by her, there were much better hiding spots further away. At the same time, I contemplated my next move.
I wasn't sure that I could beat her. I knew Greater Daemons were supposed to be planet level threats, but I didn't think she would actually be able to fight like a Dragonball character.
WHAM…
I seriously considered running away from her and making plans to abandon the planet entirely. Especially considering that the localised warp storm is getting worse. How was it going so fast? The fight hasn't even gone on for more than a minute yet! Perhaps I could rush off to find the Seal while she was distracted? Where was I right now? Teleport… TELEPORT!? Why couldn't I teleport? It must be something to do with how space is starting to break down as the Warp effects increase in strength.
There were screams of fear, and then pain. "It's a monster!" "Greater Good preserve us!" "Someone call in the Fire Caste!"
Damn it, my perceptions slipped again, and I can hear normally. They're just Tau… "NO! I have a wife and-" Fuck, it wasn't just Tau was it?!
Okay… Daemon, Demon, ah ha! I felt a plan coming together. I quickly set a colony of nanites to the task, I just needed them to get the seal ready for when the time was right.
Forcing myself back into a proper reference frame, I zipped out from my hiding spot. There she was, standing at the heart of a quickly dispersing crowd of people. I saw broken corpses at her feet, their blood spilled. "Not very honourable, they were completely helpless."
"Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, just so long as it does." Should have seen that response coming. "Now, I think it's time to increase your test by another level." She drew in a deep breath, before releasing a roar that shook the world. "HYYYA!"
"HYYYA!" I instinctually gave a roar of my own at the same time. I felt my chakra explode forth, heedless of the fact that I was down to about 1/3rd capacity now. I could activate the Seal with about 0.5% capacity but best not to take any chances since recovering my chakra was taking longer than normal thanks to the beating I was receiving, my physical power devoted entirely to repairs rather than mixing with my spirit.
Then, once again we were in melee. I caught her right fist in my left hand and she caught my right in her own left. It felt like we were locked together for an age, but really only a fraction of a second passed before we separated, with a *BOOM*.
I punched, and I felt more than heard the shockwave that accompanied it.
She blocked without even a grunt, and at the same time she replied with a punch of her own, accompanied by its own sonic boom.
Our arms and legs were a blur, and the rubble that surrounded us was blasted away by the sudden forces unleased by our ferocious duel.
left, block, block, knee, right, block, right, left, knee, right, block, right, left, block, block, knee, right, knee, right, block, right, left, knee, right, block, right, knee, right, block, right, left, kneerightleftblockkneerightleftblockblockblock.
As we fought our blows grew faster and harder, each strike accompanied by a boom! Yet I could tell she was fine while I was flagging. Fortunately, I didn't just have to stand there and take it. Thanks to my altered momentum and physics, I could pull off weird manoeuvres like-
Instead of blocking her next strike, I dodged by sliding around her, ducking under her wing before landing a mighty blow into her lower back, sending her airborne. At the same time, I used my tonal architecture to make sure to impart angular momentum as well as linear momentum with that kick, no reason to let her flight be an easy one.
I launched myself after her, only to find that she was rather more adept with her wings than I thought she would be, as she righted herself far faster than she should have. Once again, we were trading blows, except this time, somehow, I seemed to have the upper hand.
block, knee, right, left, knee, right, block, right, left, block, knee, right, knee, right, block, right, left, knee, right, block, right, knee, right-
*CRUNCH!*
Only to find a surprise blow to my chin sending me skywards. She followed me almost faster than I could see, intent on hitting me with an axe-kick, only to find the tables turned on her once more as I simply twisted with her momentum, weathering the kick with little damage while positioning myself for my own downward hammer blow. I brought both of my fists down on her head at the same time, this time imparting all the force I could and launching her downwards.
I followed her landing at the same time she did, except where I was graceful, her impact shattered the ground and shook the buildings around us. With the few seconds I'd bought, I contacted the base.
[Naruhito: Battling a Greater Daemon in Elan'Fio, send help! Find NRS and activate it!]
At the same time, I performed the hand seals for the Shadow Clone jutsu and summoned up a pair of clones. They didn't need to wait for orders before rushing off. It was a risk expending chakra like that but I would certainly fail to win this battle if I didn't try.
Now I just needed to buy those clones some time. Just as Ishtar managed to right herself, I lashed out. "YEAH! How does it feel to be the one sent flying this time, bitch!"
She didn't bother replying, instead she once again closed her fists in the air as she flew backwards. Uh-oh, she was ripping another hole into reality again, only this time she was using both hands!
I watched as the world broke, and daemons spilled forth. Not a lot, not even 100 of them. But it wasn't just a trio of heralds this time. No, there were a whole lot more than that.
Bloodletters, Flesh Hounds, Bloodcrushers, and a few Juggernauts, led by one particularly large specimen. If Ishtar was turned into a Bloodthirster, then Gugalanna was probably turned into something too, and I bet it that something was that massive Juggernaut at the head of the heard.
Okay, I'm not especially worried about these small-fry daemons, I was trading blows with their leader after all. I took down those heralds easily enough so these guys should essentially be one-hit mooks. But there were a lot of them, and the more random factors on the battlefield the more likely I am to run into a problem. I needed to be able to take the lot of them down fast and efficiently…
As Ishtar's battalion formed up, I pulled on one of my seldom used Perks, adding 12 [Tentacles] to my limb count. The tentacles would normally have been useless in a fight, except they were a part of me, of my physical body. they moved as fast as the rest of me, and I felt them be flooded with nanites, reinforcing them for the battle to come. At the same time, I pulled up as many memories of the Naruto war arc as I could, trying to recall exactly how… ah ha!
I held every cell in my body still, entering a stasis-like state for a singe instant as my chakra flowed. Orbiting around my head like a crown were… well they looked like Truthseeker Orbs, but there was something off about them. There was a malevolent hunger radiating from them as though they wanted to consume everything. And not in a Tyranid kind of way either.
WHAM…
Well, I'd have to figure that out later. "What's wrong Ishtar? Can't take me alone?"
She didn't bother responding, instead there was a roar from her forces, and they charged as one. "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!"
The earth trembled at their charge, and I grit my teeth, preparing for the massacre that I was about to unleash. "Milk for the Khorne Flakes." Then I activated my nanites, calling up a series of earth shaping abilities. No reason to make their charge too easy after all. I slammed my foot down, and their trembling of the earth at their charge paled in comparison to mine.
I adhered to the massive slabs of stone as the landscape was altered; huge slabs of stone rising and falling down, grinning all the while as their charge faltered. I would be the one that dictated the flow of this battle.
It was a Flesh Hound that reached me first, a huge thing about the size of a tiger. It bore over the broken rocks towards me, teeth bared in a snarl – only for one of my tentacles to pierce its skull, ripping it open and dispersing the daemon back into the Warp from whence it came.
Next there was a Bloodcrusher - a Bloodletter riding a Juggernaut for those that didn't play Daemons in the game – the rider steered its mount towards me, trusting the enormous metal rhino that was the Juggernaut to be able to crush me under foot.
I casually deflected its charge by flattening one of my Truethseeker Orbs into a square plane and setting it down as a wall right in front of it. There was an almighty crash as the daemons tried and failed to power through, the forces of their attack flattening them and turning them into jelly and scrap before they dispersed.
And from there, the flood. One after another the daemons came, sometimes alone, and sometimes in packs of two or three. Each one was met with a punch or kick, a tentacle piercing their body, or the might of a Truthseeker Orb intercepting and obliterating them.
As they came at me, I analysed them, learning their fighting patterns and using all of my accelerated time to understand them. In some ways, there was no better possible teacher than Khorne's daemons when it came to martial lessons, and I would be a fool not to try and learn everything there was to know about fighting from them.
As the seconds, and then minutes went by, I started switching up my own fighting, incorporating more and more moves, as well as weapons. I improvised the use of loose pebbles, transmuted axes and knives from the ground. I even contemplated making a set of nunchakus just to show off, but I instantly realised that it a stupid idea, considering that nobody other than me would even appreciate the artistry of them. That and the fact that they were shit weapons.
Instead, I showed off by using a Bloodletter I caught in my grip as a weapon. I swing it around like an unwieldy club, smashing it into daemon after daemon. Why didn't it disperse? It was definitely dead… I dropped it and the moment it lost contact with me it disintegrated into nothing – that was interesting, another thing to experiment with.
*ROAR!*
There was the sound of grinding metal and screams, as at last the huge juggernaut came in. It was far larger than any living land animal from back on earth, it felt like a train was barrelling towards me at top speed. "Oh, shit-"
It was faster than anything of that size should have been, and it was far stronger than any of the other Daemons. It actually managed to shoulder aside a few of my orbs before I changed tack. With the last of my orbs, instead of producing walls, I shaped them into pseudo-fingers and gripped the horn of the beast. That might have been a mistake considering that I was quickly dragged along by it, smashing into buildings and getting thrown around like a rag-doll.
"HRAAA!" I couldn't help but roar as my will was pit against the physical force of its charge, twisting its head aside as I tried to gain control over its charge. I was running on fumes at this point. "but if I don't put maximum effort in, I will definitely die, so…" With a final jerk, times perfectly with another building impact, I twisted and was able to break the juggernaut's neck.
'That wasn't-' *SMASH!* '-too difficult', I thought to myself as I swatted aside the last of the bloodletters. It was definitely the last, I'd been keeping count since this little army showed up. Conscious of my dwindling reserves, I kept my grip on its hell blade while letting the daemon itself disperse.
"Quite impressive." Was all I heard before I was forced to parry another swing. Ishtar had her Hellblade, the one she stabbed into the ground at the beginning of our fight, back in her grip. It was huge, sized for a full scale Bloodthirster, not the shrunken form she was inhabiting right now. "Again."
I didn't have the time to respond this time, she could swing that huge thing around like it was a fucking toy!
And yet, I'd improved a lot from the start of this fight to now, I knew how to fight, at least a little bit. I found myself dancing over and under her strikes as best I could, deflecting only the surest of her blows – and suffering the bruises that accompanied such blocks.
What's worse, she was getting even faster! Like the battle was empowering her… I suppose it would do that, wouldn't it.
Just as I was getting used to her knew fighting style, she beat her wings and took to the air. "Oh no you don't!" I leapt up after her, if I could take out her wings then I-
WHAM…
My planning was cut off as I was forced to dodge a swipe of her blade, which put me in the exact right position for hoof to come up and clock me in the chest. I felt my bones crack under the force as I was thrown backwards, and I'm pretty sure I spat up some blood.
Before I could even think to do anything else, she was on me, my entire vision filled with her red visage as she gripped me by the head and in a matter of moments slammed us down into the earth.
My whole body shook with the impact, and I felt the world go fuzzy. I could barely move as she planted her hoof on my chest, pressing me down into the ground. "You fought well, you even managed to bring down my personal Juggernaut." She was actually speaking this time as ground her foot down onto me, I felt my ribs start to bend with every kilo of force she added.
"You even took up a Hellblade, like a true Daemon of Khorne! That alone deserves praise." As she spoke, she reached down, and grabbed a pair of my tentacles that were embedded in the ground near me. I felt them shudder as she gripped them, before letting out a scream as she ripped them off! "Though I may have spoke too soon about you not being some kind of Slannesh follower. If this is all you have, then it ends her-"
She stopped in her monologue, looking around as though the world were infinitely more interesting than crushing me under hoof. "What?" Then, the sky seemed to flicker. The twisting visage of the Warp that had been slowly spreading through the air as we fought destabilised, and then in the next instant, it all vanished.
Those clones managed to activate the NRS then.
"Finally!" I cheered aloud as I willed a point-to-point teleportation to happen. Ishtar looked down at me, violently smashing her hoof down into the ground where my chest had been.
From my new position behind her I attacked, aiming for the joints of her wings. Unlike before, where I barely hurt her, this time my attack seemed to stick!
She spun, intent on striking me down. But she was so slow now. I teleported once more and struck, forcing her to react. I teleported again, and again, and again! With each I struck once more, doing more and more damage with each blow.
I could win! I could beat her! I could kill her! But why let her go back to the Warp to try again? No, there were better ways to deal with her.
Reaching back to the colony of nanites I set to task in the middle of the fight, I called up the seal I had them working on. At first, I had them do their best recreation of the Eight Trigrams Sealing Style, the same seal that the 4th Hokage used to seal the Kyuubi in Naruto, but then I had them improve upon it as far as they possibly could. Which was a surprising amount, until I considered that the Nanites within me were essentially so closely tied to me that they were a part of me.
This might be a bit of a leap, but I bet that they benefited from my Perks every bit as much as I did.
Which in turn meant that the seal they devised was many times more powerful than the one the Kyuubi was stuck in, perfect for containing a Bloodthirster. There was only one issue, I didn't have the power to create a proper substrate to contain her within.
I didn't have enough metaphysical mess left over to convert base materials into stuff like Auramite or Ebony and I didn't have enough time to accumulate more… I might have her on the ropes now but I'm expending power to keep it that way. Perhaps my new perk could help? No, it would take time to summon up enough Wraithbone for it to be a viable option.
Fucking hell, there was only one choice wasn't there? I could either seal her inside of myself, or let her escape into the Warp to trouble me in the future.
Wait, she said she was sent here to 'test my mettle', the last thing I want is word about what I can do getting back to the Four. Not while I can postpone their presence a bit longer.
I guess that settled it then.
I held my breath as I let the Seal form on my chest. It spread out from there, the patterns and iconography rapidly covering my whole body, many times more complex than any other Seal I've created. I dodged one last swing of her blade before teleporting. This time I landed right in front of her and reached out, grasping the parts of her closest to me.
"Really?" She growled as I groped her still armoured chest.
"Yeah, really." I snarked out as I activated the seal. "NOW SUBMIT!" I ordered, using a little bit of my [Will Breaking Words] perk to help the process along.
Few! There's chapter 19, and it was a doozy! Very different from what I usually write, my fights are usually 2-3 blows and done, but this was a knockdown, drag out brawl. You probably won't be seeing many battles like this from me in the future. Please let me know of any errors you notice.
Also, I really don't like keeping track of shifting reference frames in a fight, but it's what his powers can do so I'll live with it.
Hope to see you soon!