Chương 290: 290

Isoko landed among the carnage, platinum flashes holding her above the thick, bloody grasses. It was not a trivial matter to grab onto the world with her Tactile Telekinesis these days; it was still a drain on her concentration, but it needed to be done. She weighed about 1200 kilos while in Full Platinum, and that was a lot of weight to move around. The pink goblin jerked at Isoko's entering of the battlefield, eyes alert, ears twitching, wooden sword held taut and ready to cut.

It wasn't moving more than that, though. It was searching. It wasn't even sure what it was killing, but it was killing Dereks left and right, trying to save its village. It couldn't see Isoko, either, but it knew she was here. Isoko truly wished she could have kept her Wind Shaper intact, but it had broken. So instead she proceeded normally. With a breath and beat of her heart, she pulled in Durability, and gave forth Weakness, connecting to the goblin— The pink goblin growled as Isoko touched him.

He swung his sword ten times in a single second, and Isoko's connection to him vanished, severed by quick strikes, but Isoko connected yet again as she walked forward, platinum underfoot. Isoko kept her control tight, standing on top of the grass. The pink goblin could tell where the Dereks were by their depressions in the grass, but it couldn't see her platinum glows. In a lot of ways, this was going to be a completely unfair fight. A speedster would trounce her every single time.

But with the invisibility and the goblin-clumsiness from the ritual they had done in Mage Society… It was still an unfair fight. Mark was going to have to rescue Isoko. Isoko was at least confident in her ability to survive the goblin, though. That's what gave her the desire to do this. She could survive the monster, so maybe she could win. Isoko only had a 2. 5x Speed modifier, but this guy had something in the 18x-range, according to Quark, so this was the perfect environment for training. She had to do this.

The goblin would surely react fast enough once Isoko's sword or her TT interfered with its own astral body. Isoko could practically see the pink flashes of the pink goblin in the ground, in the air, searching out for new targets; searching for her. It knew she was here, but just not where, exactly, she was. Isoko walked forward, sword to the side, ready to defend.

Her PL was at 90 across the board, so she should be rather well protected against pretty much everything, and the speedster only had a wooden stick for a sword, but the stick was probably empowered with its own TT, so… PL 85-ish, Body. Probably a very low Natural, though, so Union should work very well on it… mostly. And Isoko's body was heavy metal as well as rather damned strong, so she should be okay…

Isoko decided she needed more defense against the goblin's first attack, though, so she raised the blade to guard her throat, holding the hilt with her right hand and bracing the backside of the blade with her forearm and buckler. She stepped forward, carefully, connecting with Union again. The pink goblin flickered, slashing his wooden sword, and broke the Union— And then the goblin focused on the ground, on the grass. He was surprised and… elated?

The grass was growing a little bit because Isoko was in a Union with it all, but the goblin got the completely wrong idea. The goblin dropped its guard and yelled out, "Berry! Where are you, Berry! I'm here! Speedy is here! Come out, Berry! I will protect you!" Isoko shouldn't have been surprised at a goblin talking, or at a goblin calling out for a brother, but she was.

The goblin —Speedy— was just so sincere in his joy; he didn't know how to lie yet, and if he had learned how to lie then he was the best liar that Isoko had ever met. Isoko's concentration did not falter. She had no idea what happened, really. But the goblin saw her. Speedy's eyes narrowed on Isoko, and that was all the warning she got. If she had blinked, she would have been dead.

She had expected that, though, but she still went into the fight because of one (maybe many more than one, actually) reason: she didn't need her eyes to see. Speedy's vector was bright in her Unionsense. So much brighter than light could be. Speedy moved, legs practically elongating, vector spreading wide and pointed, hand sweeping to the side. Sword empowered. Strike secured. Not aimed at Isoko's neck at all, because her neck was defended, but instead much lower.

Isoko took the blade on her shins, focusing her TT on the impact zone. The blade bounced and Speedy spun his angle around, trying to take Isoko's head off with a backward spin. Isoko focused her TT on the impact zone again, on the back of her neck, but this time the sword dug inward, just a fraction. Isoko was already Unioning with the goblin, her breath speeding up to match his. Isoko hyperventilated Good and Bad as Speedy darted around the battlefield, trying to gauge Isoko's weak points.

Isoko felt the goblin look at the wound on Isoko's neck, wondering what the fuck was up with that wound, but Isoko's platinum skin folded back together, and the goblin knew he would need to aim for somewhere else. Eyes were always a good choice. Isoko hadn't moved yet, to give the goblin an illusion of superiority. It was a pretty fucking good illusion, really. Speedsters were fucking terrifying, and for very good reason. Action economy, and all that.

The goblin spun around Isoko a few times, taking a casual stroll, eyes staring into Isoko's Full Platinum eyes, vector getting ticked off. He couldn't actually tell where Isoko was looking because her eyes had no pupils like this, but he knew she was reading him somehow. 18-times Speed modifier meant 18 times brain action, too.

Speedy might only be a several-day-old goblin, but Speedy might as well have been 80 or even 100 days old, according to certain metrics— The goblin advanced, tapping off of the ground and leaping at Isoko, blade forward, into her eyes. She moved as fast as she could, pushing her 2. 5 Speed to the max. The blade went past her face, and the goblin followed. It tapped off of the ground behind her and it walked, easily and freely, around to Isoko's side.

Isoko barely moved fast enough to reorient, to pull to the side as the goblin tapped off the ground again and aimed at her heart, sword forward, vector solid. Isoko switched to Durability and Weakness. The blade went into the left side of her chest, just a little, but it was enough for Isoko to grab it with her TT, platinum snapping through the wood, and into the air around the monster. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The goblin was trapped and surprised, but it would not be enough. It let go of the sword and scrabbled forward, trying to break Isoko's control with its own control, claws fully empowered with its own TT. Isoko's platinum air held, but not for long. For her, it was 1 second to turn and slash at the goblin. The goblin had effectively 8 seconds to get out of the swipe. The entire fight was going to be like that. Isoko only had 1 second to the goblin's 8, and Isoko didn't have much control over the air at all.

Not without Wind Shaper. Speedy flicked itself away rather than meet Isoko's blade. Isoko hyperventilated with Good and Bad, heart beating hard with the same. The sword in her chest, in her breastplate, broke off and away. She switched back to Durability and Weakness, but that was just rote instinct telling her to do that. She knew that wasn't going to work, so she switched to something more like Derek had been doing; a Good/Bad but angled toward speed and slowness. Now was a good time to test out shit, after all.

Speedy instantly slowed down, or maybe Isoko sped up, and Speedy noticed. It stared at her as it walked 'slowly' around the battlefield, eyeing Isoko. It was still flat-out running to anyone else looking down at the fight, but Isoko saw the goblin merely walking around. Gauging. Judging. Isoko eyed the goblin back, taking the sword out of her chest all the way, dual-wielding her metal weapon and the goblin's long wooden one. Isoko took a stance. The goblin's mouth twitched open, fangs exposed, green slime dripping.

It spat on the ground, and then it grabbed another wooden sword from a weapons cache at the side of the area. This had been a training zone, and the goblin knew where to find weapons easily enough. It came at Isoko with another slash to her legs, but Isoko leapt this time and angled her own blades at the goblin's head. The goblin ducked and wove away from the strike and Isoko advanced on it. It was so much faster than her. So, so much faster.

But Isoko had two blades and the goblin wasn't ever going to run from the fight, and she had maybe 1 second to every 4 the goblin experienced. Parry, thrust. It turns and runs. Chase and don't fall for the feint. It turns and strikes four times. Parry, parry, parry, parry. Read the monster, know its goals. It's aiming at the hip now, trying to score any good hit at all. Counter-thrust. First injury on the goblin. Speedy breaks away, 10 meters away before Isoko can run 2.

It stands on growing grasses and stares as red blood runs from its pink shoulder to its pink chest and then further down. It hates. Isoko says, "I hate you, too." Speedy pauses, unused to talking in a battle. It hates even more, eyes turning from surprised to malevolent, mouth opening into a scream. Speedy bounces to the right then launches across Isoko's legs, so very, very low to the ground. Isoko loses a foot.

Speedy loses an arm at the shoulder and then the second blade enters its back at the kidney and goes further, all the way through its groin to clip a foot on the way through. Speedy slams into a tree with red berries growing overhead, cratering the weakened wood. It stares up at the berries and it's so very close to death. It has a Body in the 90s, though, so it is still alive, for now. It cannot move. It doesn't want to. It stares at the berries overhead and softly says, "See you next time, Berry."

Isoko ignores her missing foot for long enough to approach, slamming into the monster, severing head from shoulders and then cutting the head in half, dissipating the goblin's vector, killing the pink monster. Isoko is in a lot of pain, but she endures, using the now-broken wooden sword as a crutch to go pick up her missing foot.

It's a moment of Purity to clean away the intervening metal bits and leather shit, but Isoko puts her fleshy foot onto her platinum leg and her beating heart connects to what used to have her blood flowing through it, but no longer. Isoko endures the pain, grass growing all around… And there are no vectors anywhere nearby. The moment passes. The danger is done. Isoko relaxed, just a little, as her body reconnected to her foot.

The pain of reconnection almost broke her Union of Good and Bad, but soon the brittleness of it all becomes something more solid. Something real. Her foot is still mostly in her boot, which is good, too. She got some of those expensive self-repairing shits that Mark got a while ago, and the boot and greave would repair itself in 5 minutes. Isoko tapped the side of her head. Her coms beeped and she said, "Got it. Requesting pickup." Mark's voice came back, "Affirmative. Already overhead. Good job, Isoko."

Isoko grinned.

"You didn't help me, did you?"" I said I wouldn't! You guys were moving fucking fast, too."" Thanks, Mark." Isoko looked up, and she heard Mark before she saw him. He flickered the sun and the overhead auroras with the black of his rotating propeller, while he himself was a blot of utter blackness upon the sky. Derek sat in a chair beside him and a counter prop kept the whole thing balanced. Soon a bar of black came down for her, and Isoko said, "I'll take a chair this time."

The metal reformed into a chair and Isoko sat down, saying, "Thanks." And then she looked at the pink goblin and she shivered, saying, "Holy fucking shit he was fuckin' fast." She grinned.

"But I got him!" Mark said, "Probably best not to engage another one until you get Wind Shaper." Isoko felt a rush of anticipation and surety. She said, "I completely agree." She looked around.

"This place dead yet?"" Yeah," Mark said, peeling off a spear of adamantium and spinning it upon itself. He plunged the metal spear into some half-desiccated tree and the contact exploded in flame.

"Help me dry up the land. Derek is already on it, too."" Yo!" Derek said, from the other chair on the other side of Mark. Now that Isoko wasn't busy, she saw smoke flowing up from here and there. Mostly where some trees were broken and falling down. Isoko switched to a Union of Purity/Impurity, with a focus on drying everything out there, saying, "On it, boss!" Mark nodded seriously underneath his nearly-full helmet. Yeah… Isoko was feeling a bit too serious, too. That had been a stupidly dangerous fight.

Holy shit. Isoko would have been sweating if she wasn't still Full Platinum. She needed Wind Shaper if she was ever going to keep up with Mark or even Derek now, because Derek was absolutely going to be part of their war against the goblins going forward. The guy was too useful. Isoko felt… threatened. She knew that Sally felt threatened, too. Both of them had been holding on to the edge of the group as best they could, but…

Mark didn't seem to care that she couldn't contribute as much as he could to a fight, which was Mark's good nature showing through. Isoko was a lot less good than Mark. She knew the score. Isoko needed to be able to do more, and fast.