Chương 49: 43: Rejection and Replacement

The wind slowed and thickened. Dust motes danced under sunlight like countless tiny insects caught in amber. The head of an enormous ax swung down at my back as I charged at the monster that wielded it. A too-wide, meaty face was split by by a slowly widening smirk. But just because frustration and rage that had been building up for years set me on a collision course with the Old Bastard, it didn't mean I had to play his game.

A flicker, a seamless leap through space and a shift in directions, and my fist was slamming into the side of his neck. He barely flinched, as if the blow that could crumple a car engine was little more than a love tap. My own fingers ached from the impact, as if from punching a tree trunk before getting powers, soon followed by the painful grinding of the axe's handle against my ribs as he reversed his swing faster than I'd thought possible.

Then another flicker and I was forty feet away, out of reach of his follow-up.

"You'll have to do better than that, baby girl," he mocked and rolled his shoulders, unnaturally loud creaking of bones and ligaments audible even at this distance.

"Hell, you were doing better back before getting powers. You wasted too much on looks and tricks." I ignored his taunting as warmth licked along my fingers and ribs, the pain rapidly vanishing. True or not, it was the usual mind games during one of his "tests". I charged again, a jump through space bringing me close enough to slam a fist against the side of his left knee even as a line of fire cut across my shoulders.

His balance broke and he was knocked back, then through a trailer as if it was made of so much tinfoil. It was my time to smirk nastily, bleeding cut or no; I'd proven he wasn't invincible. Even as he recovered I flew up again, launching invisible kinetic beams from beyond his reach. Unlike my earlier flailing attempts to just wound him, these ones were aimed with an actual plan in mind.

They struck out at his wrists, fingers, knees, throat and eyes and though it seemed like they did no damage, his angry roaring and hasty covering of his eyes confirmed they did something. Even reduced to the effectiveness of pokes and stings, enough annoyances and distractions could impair any fighter. This was probably why the enormous axe flickered and shifted and between one heartbeat and the next he was holding an equally oversized rifle.

There was a muzzle flash bright as lightning followed by the roar of thunder and a bullet the size of a railroad spike punched me in the gut... before violently exploding. I found myself halfway through an old red pickup truck half a dozen trailers north of the Old Man's position, with a fist-sized hole in my suit around an almost as large hole in my skin that burned like fire as it healed.

Something moved in my gut - several somethings - and then fragments of still steaming metal came out of the wound, spat out by my regeneration. Clenching my fists hard enough the metal of the truck deformed like silly putty, I used Chronal Leap to get back in the air without him being able to track my flight. Seeing that not-so-portable cannon already turning to aim at my direction I leaped again and again, staying ahead of his aiming as I closed. BOOM!

The gun's roar at almost point-blank range was deafening but its shell went uselessly wide as I got up in the Old Man's face and punched him hard enough and quickly enough to flatten his nose and send him flying one way and his giant axe in the other. Then the searing pain at my side registered, heralding the sudden appearance of a deep, copiously bleeding gash. The bastard had shifted the gun back into an axe after I was too committed to dodge, catching me unaware.

"Those jumps of yours are getting predictable, kid," the Old Man growled, wiping blood off his face.

"Honestly, you showed more skill back during the summer."

"Shut up!" I roared, then winced and clutched at the bleeding gash. He stopped speaking with a shrug, turned his back to me and went to retrieve his axe. He'd gotten me good; both of us knew I wasn't about to tangle with him immediately, even if managing to take away his weapon would have been a great advantage.

"Easy kills against mindless monsters can make you soft, if you don't know better," he told me in that insufferable 'wise old man' tone he took when spewing out the worst of his bullshit ideology.

"Yes, they're quick power-ups, but they can get your skills rusty especially as your body changes." He looked me up and down and chuckled.

"You might not have changed as much as I did but the difference is still considerable. In fact, I was expecting you to be stumbling around and flailing uselessly now... if you only had easy monster kills under your belt. How many?"

"Three," I admitted grudgingly. If he took that very misleading remark to mean I'd actually killed people, that was his fault. But if it made him more willing to monologue, well, I could use the extra time. Because while he'd only grown worse in the past two weeks, I was not nearly as impulsive and easily manipulated as he remembered me being... and this fight was far from over.

"Discovered how shitty people can get with only a taste of power, eh?" he asked and got another wince in response, this time only partially faked.

"That's humanity, baby girl. Power doesn't corrupt; it just allows us to be the monsters we all are deep down."

"Yes, because everyone is as twisted as you," I couldn't stop myself from mocking him, plan or no plan.

"Pull the other one."

"So you've never wanted to make someone shut up?" He gave me another smirk.

"Never wanted to punch someone until they stopped doing... anything at all?" He raised his axe and gave it an easy twirl as if it were a conductor's baton.

"Never fantasized about..." He was both right and wrong for all the worst reasons, so I tuned him out and thought about the one thing that didn't fit here. How the hell was he so strong? Despite being faster and having multiple tricks that he didn't, all I've managed was to knock him around a little while his every blow would have been outright crippling if not for my regeneration.

He barely seemed to be taking damage, he had an absolutely lethal magical weapon in both melee and ranged combat, if not for his need to grandstand and monologue he'd have easily won in a straight fight. It didn't make sense. I knew how my own powers had grown during major fights, had seen the rate other people grew compared to the enemies they'd fought. Even with him being a filthy collaborator with access to enemy resources... there were only so many enemies one could kill in a day.

Even assuming the enemy summoned a steady stream of monsters for him to kill, my taking parts in large-scale fights and repeatedly risking my life against powerful enemies meant I shouldn't have been as far weaker than him as I appeared to be. There was something off here, and I was determined to find out what. But first, seeing as he was stupid enough to attempt to convert me to the dark side after a decade of having to put up with his bullshit...

Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y3m13d Powers [1/57 pts] Chronal Leap I, Empowering Regeneration IV, Force Adjustment III, Force Awareness II, Forcefield Creation II, Forced Acceleration III, Immutable Force II, Instant Action II, Lasting Force II, Retributive Defense I, Proximakinesis III, Super Suit I, Spatial Distortion I, Spatial Leap I Attributes [1/57 pts] Might 28, Agility 14, Reason 6, Vigilance 9, Ego 14, Luck 2 I'd only gained one advancement from those wraiths, not enough for any major changes.

There was, however, enough for a small boost and a single trick and now that I'd seen how he fought I was certain about my choices. First, a point into Might.

The extra durability and stamina might make a difference against an enemy that could consistently hurt me and as my body slightly, almost imperceptibly grew taller and infinitesimally bulkier, I also got confirmation that the ratio of two points of Might for each point of Agility and Ego was the cutoff point for not becoming an overmuscled monstrosity like my Old Man had become. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

As for the trick, he'd just told me how tricks were a waste and he'd only favored two weapons in the whole fight so far. Why not grant his narrow-mindedness exactly the reward it deserved? Focused Invulnerability I: once per minute choose a single target and a specific action. Ignore the target's attempts at that action. xxxx xxxx"... for the last time, will you abandon a doomed cause and embrace your full potential?"

"Do you have any idea how stupid you sound?" I mocked him from the safety of enough time spent regenerating to be back at full health.

"Seriously, are you a Saturday morning cartoon supervillain? Does this so-called potential come with a reduced IQ or were you always this crazy and I simply missed it?" Almost certainly the latter; I'd been alternatively too scared or too angry at him over the years to think clearly but the increased mental attributes were letting me handle it better.

"I see that my leniency was misplaced." In the blink of an eye he went from insane preaching to violent discipline mode, the butt of that enormous axe swung at my head. That had been his usual reaction at any backtalk so I was ready for it. A Chronal Leap got me behind him the exact moment he was fully committed into the blow and a kick to his now-oversized ass damaged his dignity and self-control, if not his body.

He swung around faster than ever before, huge face turning red and even larger axe cracking the sound barrier. But I'd seen it coming, planned for it... and was a little bit faster to teleport away than before. Behind him once more, I punched and kicked into his lower ribs but he refused to budge. Instead of swinging around, he slammed the butt of the axe into my face and forced me back.

The dizziness and what would have been a serious black eye in a couple of hours simply faded away in a wave of regeneration and I flew back in determined to keep up the pressure. The axe swerved around and I flickered into the swing, too close for him to use it properly, then gave him an uppercut with the full backing of Proximakinesis and Force Adjustment.

It slammed into his jaw with the power of a tank's main gun and would have knocked even me down for a second or two but he just fell back a step then came up swinging. The axe caught my still-extended arm just below the shoulder, cut easily through my suit, then knocked me down with tremendous force. The impact hurt; the follow-up kick was worse, sending me crashing through the new Kiosk that had been built just before the invasion started.

The next moment I was again up close and personal with the bastard, kicking him under the belt. He grunted, a sign he actually felt that one, then cut with the axe into my ribs... or at least tried. The blade sliced through my suit wit ease once more but scraped uselessly against my skin, refusing to penetrate. Before he could get over the surprise I punched him in the face, breaking his nose once more and sending him back a step or two.

He wasn't completely invulnerable and as the fight progressed my blows damaged him a little bit more, knocked him back a little bit further. Unfortunately he had regeneration of his own and even without it I would have been at a disadvantage, but now I was more free to pummel him without being immediately crippled at the first counter-strike.

I accepted a low sweeping swing that tried to cut off my legs at the knees in exchange for a punch to his throat and got the better of the exchange as for the third time the axe refused to cut me. His eyes narrowed angrily.

"What's up?" I taunted because turnabout was fair play.

"You can dish it out but can't take it, Old Man?"

"I see..." his anger turned to amusement.

"Are you finally enjoying yourself baby girl?"

"... what?" I missed a beat and the butt of the axe crashed with bruising force against my right hip.

"Is winning what it takes to embrace your true nature?" The exchange that followed had me on the back foot for a couple of seconds as a rain of slashes, punches and kicks threw me back.

"How easily you abandon your so-called morality."

"Don't be absurd." Another uppercut gave me some space but his retaliatory kick momentarily dislocated my knee. At least flight meant I didn't need my legs to maintain balance but it still hurt like hell.

"Just because I enjoy beating down evil assholes like you doesn't mean we're the same."

"Of course it does. You forget that I, too, started with beating down evil assholes." He gave me a genuine smile, somehow believing that he was winning the argument.

"Or who we were taught were evil, anyway. I'm pretty sure the other guys in the Gulf thought that we were evil, too. We were both right, you know; good and evil are both a matter of perspective."

"If you're an insane murderer trying to justify his kills, maybe." I blinked around, but he was somehow able to react to attacks from even the weirdest angles, getting closer and closer until he finally brought the axe down on my head... which only managed to knock me back a little. That finally gave him pause and I relished his surprise.

"Seriously, that's your excuse when you've signed up with literal demons?"

"... you're immune to axe blows," he said with a scowl, ignoring the argument he could not refute - as usual.

"I really should have seen this coming." That statement finally made something click and I realized what had been wrong with our entire fight so far; he was not wounded. Not due to my own blows which had proven unable to really hurt him so far, but due to his own. He was stronger than me, he was wielding that enormous axe, he should have been capable of harming himself... and Retributive Defense should have turned the power of his own blows against him.

Except it hadn't, despite being applied to Force Adjustment that defended me against all incoming attacks... or should have. Much like I'd have expected my own blows, enhanced by that same Force Adjustment, to hurt an enemy that couldn't have grown that much stronger than I was. Much like I'd have expected my superspeed, under that same enhancement, to vastly outpace the speed of anyone that looked like a mountain of muscle. None of that had happened and all of it had a common point. BOOM!

The axe strike had bounced off my new Focused Invulnerability power like before and I'd been distracted by the implications of my discovery so I had ignored it. The point-blank shot as the axe turned into a gun upon contact and fired was a lot harder to ignore. That came with the huge bullet messily burying itself into my gut. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

I frantically dodged, swerved and teleported around, avoiding the barrage the best I could, counting the seconds since I'd last used Focused Invulnerability. The drawback of superspeed? Those seconds felt much longer, every few moments coming with another shot I didn't manage to avoid completely. Scrapes, bloody gouges, even a pair of new bullet holes over my right knee and below my left shoulder along with the Old Bastard's intact state confirmed my earlier suspicions.

Force Adjustment was not working against him - at all. His own blows weren't reduced by a factor of eight, my own attacks weren't magnified, even speed increases failed when used directly against him while they still worked compared to my surroundings. Given his earlier comment about my invulnerability to his axe's slashes, it was all but certain he had a similar but stronger power not to ignore a specific action but to do the same to an entire skill.

It fit his opinion of tricks; he wouldn't use a trick himself but to shut down the enemy's best trick? That was definitely something the filthy hypocrite would go for. The minute passed and the next shot I failed to dodge bounced off my chest as I redirected Focused Invulnerability to work against getting shot by the bastard. Just on time, too; I was already feeling light-headed, my regeneration struggling to keep up with the blood loss.

I floated more than a thousand feet up, tanking the shots from a safe distance until he stopped firing.

"I raised a coward after all," his voice somehow being loud enough to reach me.

"Engaging in a fight only from the safety of cheap tricks. What a disappointment. We still use the same means of violence and death to grow stronger, girl, but you wasted them." I didn't respond this time. Debating with idiots and madmen only encouraged them and neither logic nor morality would change their twisted minds. Talking back was only about taunting or confusing them while you found other ways to win, regrettable though it was.

As the burning heat of regeneration slowly won over the pain and cold of wounds and blood loss and filled me with an ever-growing energy, I considered my father's words and calmly rejected them. He had become the monster he'd always aspired to be. Though I'd hated him and probably still would for a long time, it wasn't hate that kept me flying over the trailer park. People were being hunted by monsters here and I'd been sent to help them. He had allied with those same monsters, become one of them.

What he'd been doing to me for years he now planned to do to others, and worse. That I would not allow if it was within my power. And as I still breathed, as the energy within me grew as I regenerated, I knew it was. Even if he could ignore my best power, deal dangerous wounds through it, I had taken his measure now, found his secret. Above all else, I'd come to terms with what he was, decided that hating him for it was acceptable as long as it didn't mess with my attempts to stop him.

I rejected the idea of violence for power, replaced it with the necessity of doing something so evil would not win, and charged...