NOVEL NEXT Chapter Three Hundred Fifty Two
"So." I said as we arrived in the waiting room below the arena. "Last team battle." I swallowed hard, trying to ignore the pounding of my pulse in my ears. "Who do you think we'll be up against?" Not that it mattered. I was barely thinking about this fight. I was more worried about the next five. Because any one of them could be against one of my own teammates.
On the one hand that was exciting. I was almost positive if I fought Abel I would lose, but I had a decent chance against Callie and possibly even Mel if I pulled out all the stops. But still, I'd gotten so used to us all moving as a unit. Especially Callie. She was my partner. Fighting with her at my side was almost like breathing at this point. It was going to be jarring switching from that mindset, never mind actually fighting against her.
Which...was what Abel had told us during training. That we would need to be able to keep that mindset separate from our normal outlook so we could turn it off. In some ways I was pretty sure that was the point of making Paired Dueling a Skill. By doing it that way we kept it as a separate part of our lives, which made it easier to do without. As opposed to making every aspect us codependent.
Callie sighed, and I could feel through the bond she was just as hesitant. I couldn't feel the REASONS for that, but I knew her well enough to assume they were similar to my own. "Nope. But if they made it this far they must be tough. Each of the teams has been pulling out some crazy trick that we've never seen, so we should assume the same of this one. Whatever it is though, I'm sure we can hang with whatever they've got."
Abel seemed pretty much at ease with everything, but that wasn't surprising. I'd yet to see him go all out for real. Sure, he'd tapped his bond with Mel in that demon fight, but that was just a raw power thing. Given Mel's comment that he only ever got serious when he took off his mask, I was positive that Abel had other tricks. The rest of us weren't as...invincible.
Mel was pretty calm too though, and while I didn't think I was as strong as she was, I was closer to her in power than my mentor, especially now. Strangely, hearing Callie's fear about what was coming in her voice made mine seem inconsequential. I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her into a hug.
"I know you're not worried about this fight. Not really. And neither am I." I felt her stiffen against me as I touched on something she hadn't brought up. The bond was useful and positive a lot of the time, but empathy was a tough thing to get used to. "We're going to kick ass in the solo rounds. We've been training constantly, and we've learned a ton. We can do this."
She nodded against me. "Yeah. You're right. I'm just letting this get to me. Besides, even if I lose it isn't the end of the world. Four of us means four times the chance of victory. And that isn't even counting your cousin." I'd almost forgotten Natalie was going to be taking part in this. I wondered who her fourth would be. Callie sighed, stepping back. "Alright, well for this to matter we need to win the current match. Like you said, I'm not worried, but we should focus.
"Oh definitely." I agreed. "Being confident doesn't mean being stupid." I heard the call from outside as we were summoned for our match. "Speak of the devil. That'll be us. Whoever it is, I'm sure we can figure something out. We just need to make sure to take our time and work out what they can do, right?"
She grinned at me. "Of course. I'll come up with a plan as soon as we know what they can d-" She stepped out of the gate onto the sand and stopped. "Oh. Well shit." I was a bit confused as to what had stopped her, but when I stepped out myself I realized what it was.
"Sanctuary Hall." I cursed. Beat, Sever, Carl, and Serenity. Four of our old enemies who were strong enough to be a serious threat. I turned to Abel. "I don't suppose you discovered some secret weakness of hers in battle and will be able to shut Serenity down quickly?"
"Nope." Said my mentor. "And with Carl added on this is going to be tough. Neither of you are a match for Beat or Sever one on one, and Mel can't handle them two on one either. We beat them all last time because of our distribution, but with one more person this is going to suck." He scowled. "I hate fighting her. It's like punching cotton. There's no fun if she just no-sell's everything I do."
Because almost everything Abel did was brute force, and Serenity was the closest we'd seen to a hard counter to him. We stepped forward, and the calm looking girl nodded to us. "Well now." She said lightly. "I wasn't expecting you to be our last group opponent. But maybe I should have." She smiled warmly. "I have to say I don't dislike the symmetry. We'll make sure to pay you back for last time."
Seeing that banter would be pointless, and not wanting to deal with Carl's bullshit, I knelt down, triggering stone limb on both arms as well as my poison fire. Coating them in toxic acidic magma. "So, who am I up against." Ironically, despite being unarmed and therefore more vulnerable to Sever, my armor was better at tanking sharp force trauma, so Beat would be the bigger threat.
"Carl." Said Callie firmly. "We can handle the other two, but Carl has who knows how many tricks up his sleeve. We need our most versatile fighter on him. I'll deal with Beat, Starbreaker is on Sever, and Apollyon will handle Serenity as planned. Go."
She moved as soon as she finished talking, clearly planning to overwhelm them with surprise as a wave of crushing shadow smashed down at Beat. Mel expelled a burst of golden flame, appearing in front of Sever in a flash and then releasing a burst of fire right in his face. I sighed and triggered Double Trouble, appearing behind Carl and launching a flurry of magma infused punches.
To my shock though, when I arrived my punches were countered, as a pair of huge hairy arms pulled free of the ape tattoo on Carl to slap them aside. Despite the knowledge that he would have tattoos that could protect him courtesy of his dad, I had no idea where the things were until now. They weren't VISIBLE at a glance, which would have been obvious since Carl didn't wear a shirt.
Now I saw where they came from though. I could see the tattoos fading into existence, not from nothing, but as if they were coming from a great distance, a trick of perspective as his skin was flooded with colorful images that he hadn't had a second ago. I backed off watching him closely as the writhing images adjusted themselves across his skin.
Behind him, I saw a massive golden shield form in the air, defending against a storm of massive punches as Serenity channelled her ability through what I was pretty sure was an F-ranked artifact, nullifying them with her pacifying power on impact. I could hear my mentor's groan of frustration as he accelerated the punches, weaving them in from new angles only to have the shield intercept them all.
I could feel Callie was tense but safe, and I didn't have time to look over everyone as I prepared for Carl. I triggered Flurry of Blows and Mercy Kill, three augmented super speed punches to test out what Carl had going on. Another tattoo, this one a small monkey, dashed off his skin and split into a chain of monkeys, each throwing one of the others into the path of one of my punches and exploding into fucking confetti of all things, though luckily this stuff didn't cut me.
Seemed like the tattoos had individual abilities, though I wasn't sure about how varied they were. Carl grinned at me, flexing his muscles ridiculously. "First stage of my tattoo boom, Primate Parade! You think your stupid lava punches can hang with my monkey madness Solomon? Punchin Carl spits on pathetic hand to hand bullshit! Only nerds throw hands."
It took all my effort not to literally groan aloud in pain at how stupid he was. "Your name is PUNCHIN Carl. You're saying you think punching is beneath you?"
Carl snarled at me, flicking his hands to hurl a pair of snakes at me. "SHUT UP! Real men don't punch with their fists, they punch with their brains! I have the most badass bare knuckle brain in the world, so I don't need hands to punch!"
I just...stared at him as I easily sidestepped the snakes with the help of my now active overlay. That wasn't how ANYTHING worked. At all. "That...made no godsdamned sense, you lunatic."
Rather than hurl more snakes, Carl reached behind him with both hands. He let out a grunt and hauled up what looked like a fucking boar made of rocks, holding it over his head like a championship belt as he roared. "I'll punch sense in the FACE!" And hurled it at me in an overhand toss.
Activating Leaf on the Wind I pushed off the sand, my foot coming down on the boar as it arched through the air, and I pushed off the thing, hurling myself further up in the air. Glaring down at the crazy gangster, I triggered a spider leg attack, pointing both legs above my head to form a sort of arrowhead. Using Cloud Step to reorient myself, I aimed the point down at Carl, triggering a gravity attack, a triple strength density shifted attack, and Mercy Kill as I plummeted down at him point first.
I aimed for the shoulder and arm, because I didn't want to murder Carl for being a fucking idiot, but limbs could be regrown. Sadly, it didn't really matter. Carl saw me coming and knelt down to slap the ground. As he did a shape erupted from his back, an absolutely huge grey form, it took me a minute to figure out it was a literal steel elephant, and it crouched over him to tank the attack before it had a chance to hit him.
The pointed spider legs propelled by their enhanced density and the gravity attack slammed into the back of the elephant, and there was a thump as the tattoo beast stopped as the body proved too dense for the spider legs to punch through. I dismissed them, kicking off a cloud step platform to hurl me out of the way of the wounded elephant (which bled mercury apparently) as it lashed out with its trunk, trying to break me in two.
I touched down lightly, Leaf on the Wind preventing my impact from being too rough, and aided by the sand. I'd had to strain the skill a bit to prevent it from stopping my attack altogether, but I'd managed, even if my head was twinging a bit. As I stood up I looked over at a glaring Carl. Behind him I could see Abel coming up blank against Serenity, and I growled with annoyance.
This was the last fight of the team section, it should have been easy fighting people we'd beaten before. But from what I could see someone (probably not Carl) had done quite a bit of research. They knew what to expect from us and had covered all their bases. I cracked my neck as I took up a Balam stance. That was fine. I'd just need a home run.