Chương 50: 44: Paradigm Shift

I flew down through Proximakinesis, Forced Acceleration and the pull of gravity, speeding up in fractions of a second till the air became uncomfortably warm against my face; if tanking attacks had become unreliable due to interference then better become too fast to get hit. He reacted as quickly as before, the barrel of his huge gun rising to track my movements. Was that weapon the direct result of a power much like my suit, or a physical object he shifted around with the axe through a power?

Either way, it had to go. Force Awareness told me the moment he pulled the trigger, Spatial and Chronal Leap used as one allowed me to both turn around and skip the intervening distance, while Spatial Distortion cut said distance in half to put it within range of the double leap. I reappeared feet-down only inches above his right elbow, with the fired shell disappearing above me and me still going at five and a half times the speed of sound.

The shock of the impact traveled up my body like a blast wave, hammering my every muscle and bone, but even with Force Adjustment negated I was still enormously tough, knew what was coming and used everything I'd learned as a cheerleader and could intuitively understand about forces via my powers to soften the impact. The Old Man had none of those advantages; enough momentum and kinetic energy to derail a subway train struck an arm braced against the recoil of a not-so-portable cannon at the weakest point.

Power-enhanced toughness or no, I both heard and saw his elbow dislocating and cracks appearing in multiple bones. His arm didn't quite shatter, but it was still hurt seriously enough it should be out of commission for a few minutes from what I'd seen of his regeneration. We both fell in a tangle of limbs and despite his injury he managed to pin me with his knees and press down at my throat with his good arm.

A fight-ending combination had we been normal, but grappling didn't work against someone that could teleport. I reappeared behind him then rained down punches and kicks at the back of his neck; given both his size and apparent strength advantage grappling was out of the question and if he was anything like me then nothing short of truly massive damage would knock him out. He turned around and elbowed me in the face in the process, which hurt.

An absolutely furious, animalistic roar shook the air, veins corded all over his body as if pumped fit to near-bursting, and his skin turned lobster red as if burned. Before I could blink away and evaluate the new development he'd already grabbed me by both legs one-armed and slammed me to the ground with the force of an exploding artillery shell. The trailer park literally cratered, soil, asphalt, ruined trailers and other debris swept away before the shock wave.

My back met bedrock and the bedrock broke, but my spine and ribs didn't like it either. The impact stunned me. The two more that followed left me in so much pain I wanted to curl up and die. I could still think though, so I used a chain of Spatial Leaps to get out of reach at a random direction. Apparently, said direction had an upwards component because I found myself falling; an application of Proximakinesis arrested the fall and left me hovering in mid-air.

Blinking the dust out of my eyes left me staring down at a portion of the trailer park that looked like it had been bombed. The Bastard was on his hands and knees in the center of a fifty-foot-wide crater, gasping for breath as his body sizzled and steamed from the exertion. Whatever he'd done to suddenly multiply his strength tremendously must have come at a cost, affording me a brief window to rest before he came at me again.

Screw that though; no victory worth winning had ever been won without some pain so I grit my teeth and launched myself at his back. This time, my punches and kicks did not bring anything more than some shaking at his back. It took me a few seconds to realize it was silent laughter; the bastard was mocking me! He got up then shook me off as if I weighed nothing which, to people of our strength, was pretty much the case. He made to grab me again and I blinked around him. Another grab, another dodge via teleportation.

Then another and another, in increasingly short intervals. My body might be battered and at less than full strength but brute strength was not all I was; force and mobility had far more applications within and without a fight than a simple slugging match and this time? I was simply returning his mockery with interest; I might not be capable of seriously harming him in my condition but he? He was incapable of laying a single hand on me without surprise.

The meaning was not lost on him; he struggled to attack faster, growled more and more in rage, his every move became erratic as he lost patience and the control he loved to hold over others. Neither of us spoke; during an actual fight words were a poor use of time and focus when you could either show your opponent exactly how little you thought of them through your actions... or ignore them entirely.

The latter of which I proceeded to do with a widening smirk to his deepening scowl not just because it felt good but because it won me more time. Every second that passed I regenerated faster than he did... and I also became a little bit stronger, a little bit faster, all my powers working a hair better and more efficiently. The axe reappeared exactly one minute after I'd knocked its gun-form out of his hands and it had been lost in our subsequent clash.

Wielding it with only one good arm made it a bit slower and using it to whack me with the sides and handle instead of slashing with the edge might sidestep my Focused Invulnerability but made it an awkward weapon, especially with our difference in reach. A difference I exploited ruthlessly with Spatial Distortion to warp the distance between us second to second.

Far more of his swings missed than not and while those that hit were far from pleasant, Empowering Regeneration kept up better and better the longer the fight lasted. Suddenly, I stumbled in mid-flight, the fight slowing down when I did not expect it. The axe-head came around in a backstroke I'd planned to dodge, except I bounced off the Old Man's chest instead, having overshot my target and careened into the blade.

The blade actually digging into my side was the second surprise, slicing through suit and skin both and painfully but shallowly biting into muscle. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. The axe rose again almost too slowly, loomed above my head like a twisted sword of Damocles, then swung back down. Spatial Leap... failed. Only a last moment partial dodge got my head out of the very literal chopping block, though not without cost.

The axe struck at my clavicle with the force of a tank's main gun, carrying me along until my backside roughly struck the ground and I was caught between bedrock and a sharp place. Power-forged, superstrength-driven metal bit into bone... and stopped. Somehow, I hadn't just been split in twain. I winced and shook the disjunction between expectations and reality as the bastard exploded in another burst of red rage.

Crossed arms blocked the downswing, the axe biting painfully into me again but not as much as it should have. Chronal leap failed too, and by the time I thought to just roll aside an enormous boot pinned my legs with a booming stomp that echoed with finality. Ever been in a car crash? An accident fast enough it could have been bad that you somehow manage to walk from with a truckload of bruises but not much more? I knew how much that could suck mentally, even if through sheer dumb luck you got off lightly.

The adrenaline rush is intense, not in that Hollywood "life-flashes-before-your-eyes" way but every fraction of a second stretching out in a blaring of fight-or-flight instincts and yet you can't actually think. Your mind will not engage properly and your body reacts on autopilot, and even after the emergency is over you can't function just right. The same kind of feeling washed over me as the axe descended for the fourth time, except it was only a thin layer churning over a calm core of clear thought.

It had only been a second or two since things got wrong, but my mind and senses were already cataloguing everything and reaching conclusions. Fact one; my speed had suddenly, arbitrarily seemed to change even as the Bastard slowed down. Fact two; I was not being hacked apart when unarmed strikes from him had staggered me before. Fact three; several of my newer abilities had stopped working. All confusion fell off as reality reasserted itself with supernatural clarity and I moved.

The axe came down and both my hands rose to meet it. Not to block; taking advantage of the speed differential I grabbed at the handle just below the axe-head and braced. Earlier, I had noted how the Old Man was simply stronger than me by a fair margin. Now, with him boosted by supernatural rage, his weapon stopped cold with barely a struggle.

"What?" he demanded with a roar, disgusting spittle falling down his face.

"You thought I wouldn't notice, didn't you?" Proximakinesis launched me off the ground, pushing him out of balance.

"Nice trick taking advantage of which powers you're shutting down at any moment." Then it sent me into a spin, with him coming along for a ride. More and more momentum was added with every turn, the rotation accelerating until our surroundings blurred, until the air cracked as his legs broke the sound barrier, until turbulence tore at his clothes.

"The hypocrisy of hating 'tricks' when having one of your own I expected. Believing I wouldn't see through it? Now that was dumb; you'd taken my strength boost, not my senses." I forced him to hear the words with a little bit of Proximakinesis, conducting them through our connecting bodies. He didn't have a way to reply any more than he had a means of flight, otherwise he'd have used it earlier when I kept out of his reach.

He stubbornly clung on as Force Adjustment disappeared again, but the damage was done; we were both in the air with nowhere for him to step on and gain leverage and with me being the axis of rotation he had to handle vastly more centrifugal force than I did. The power-nullification shifted again and we started to both fall and slow as Proximakinesis disappeared, but Force Adjustment was back. Above all else Magic was fair and however it had seemed at first, he couldn't be much more powerful than I was.

His power was invested in countering the enemy's best powers, but he couldn't counter every one of them. In fact, for the strongest ones he could only shut down one... and I had several. Force Adjustment reduced friction between him and the axe to almost nothing and where he was barely holding on he flew off like a rocket. I was still falling, Proximakinesis still cut off. For the moment though, I had his weapon in my hands and lots of ideas on what to do with it.

I could make it so any force he exerted on it was reduced by an order of magnitude for a time. I could make it near-weightless and near-immune to air resistance then throw it into orbit. I could surround it in fire and attempt to melt it down. None of those were certain to work however so I reached for something more complex yet more direct; I pulled a fist back then struck the flat of the axe-head as hard as I could, ringing it like a gong.

At the same time, I added a field of Force Adjustment that magnified the forces as vibrations traveled between atoms. With every subsequent vibration, every repeated transference of force within the axe, the forces multiplied again and again and again until even the power the axe was made with could not hold it together as it literally shook itself apart.

"You fucking brat!" a disoriented monster barked. Leaving him too dizzy to walk had been the other reason I had twirled him around like a lasso.

"I am what you made me," I responded and wiped some blood off my face.

"I also broke your toy, learned all your tricks and have nothing more to say to you, so there is only one thing left." What followed was bloody, made a mess of half the trailer park but inexorably, inevitably, ended up with him reduced to a barely breathing lump. Then a bolt of lightning out of the blue grounded itself through my guts and threw me over a hundred feet away.

I got up with my ears ringing, my skin scorched in places and smoking, to find a guy in a red toga and black armor standing over my Old Man's body.

"A very good show, young lady," the pale-skinned, black-eyed guy told me in a rasping voice.

"Unfortunately I have need of your Father for a little bit longer. You cannot have him." He sighed tiredly.

"And before you attempt to take him, know you lack the power to stop me. I am Legate Mot of Maveth and you will leave or will be made to leave."

"Huh. So you are the guy sending all the monsters eh?" Then I broke time itself, for screw the bad guys getting a single win more. I didn't have time to work out exactly what I should be feeling for the guy that leveled my city and killed most of the people I'd ever known. I didn't have time or the energy for another long fight, let alone handle a guy that had to be so far above me or the Bastard in power as we were above civilians.

I certainly didn't have the time or inclination to listen to another monologue from a banal incarnation of evil straight out of some fantasy novel. Instant Action burned through the dregs of my stamina like crazy as it let me avoid all of the above, fly up to the Old Man's wreck, grab him, then fly away for all I was worth. I managed to hold it active for twenty-four seconds, the equivalent of an entire hour fighting all out minus the wounds.

Then Daddy Deadbeat and me crashed through thirty feet of concrete and rock, disappearing into one of the city's storm drains close to the Resistance Headquarters, hopefully without any bad guys knowing where we went...