Chương 110: 109: 2v1 II

Korhess settled into her stance beside Butter. Her spear levelled. Her hooves rooted into the fractured marble. Her mismatched eyes fixed upon the Commander's broken mask, while behind them she was already constructing attacks that would land before he realised they had been thrown, strikes that would exist in his past before he could defend in his present. The Commander tilted his head. His white lenses flared. His arms rose. WOOOSH! A violent blast erupted from Butter.

Her fist blurred, carving through the air as compressed shockwaves tore across the chamber. Her body rotated both clockwise and counterclockwise in the same flowing sequence, every pivot feeding another strike. The Commander began evading the instant he recognised the stance. The air blasts ripped through everything they touched, reducing stone and steel alike to atomic dust. He flicked a finger. An air cannon bloomed into existence.

Butter flowed into a Taichi spiral, caught the blast across her shoulder, turned with its momentum, and sent it hurtling straight back. Korhess and the Commander exclaimed at the same instant. The cannon crashed into his raised prosthetic arm. Across the chamber, Korhess crashed into him from the opposite flank. Zeinai answered her differently. Harder. She was the strongest. The most durable. He treated her accordingly. A compartment snapped open along his left forearm. Tiny missiles burst free.

They shrieked through the air at dozens of times the speed of sound, weaving around shattered pillars as they relentlessly hunted her. Korhess danced through them, twisting, ducking, batting one aside with the shaft of her spear while another detonated behind her in a blossom of fire. A third. A fourth. They were distractions. The real missile launched only after she committed to avoiding the others. It erupted from the forearm compartment almost point-blank. BOOOOOOM! The explosion swallowed her.

Korhess burst from the smoke only to tumble across the marble, her spear skidding from numb fingers before she finally slumped against a fractured wall, shaking soot from her antlers as she forced herself back toward her feet. Butter moved. Her body dissolved into techniques she'd buried while awake, movements gathered from every opponent she'd ever studied. An encyclopaedia of martial arts. Pencak Silat dissolved joints before they realised they'd been caught. Shuai Jiao turned the smallest imbalance into a throw.

Ssireum borrowed the earth itself, while Glima met raw strength with unyielding grips and relentless balance. Zeinai answered with crushing knees, whipping elbows, and circular footwork that never stopped flowing. Every pivot coiled into another strike. Every block became an attack. Butter simply... wasn't there. His fist carved through empty air. She slipped beneath it. Her knuckles blurred into his bicep. TH-TH-TH-THOOM. One swing bought her twelve punches. His other arm swept across.

She folded around it, shoulders grazing beneath his elbow as another barrage hammered into his ribs before he could retract the strike. Every attack he threw became another opportunity for her to land a dozen more. He kept pressing, regenerating over and over as the healing kit sustained him. By itself, the device could rebuild a fully grown man from nothing more than ruined flesh and scattered organs once before exhausting its cultivated enzymes.

His Magpie physiology already healed roughly fifty times faster than an ordinary human, yet in a battle unfolding this quickly, a healing rate measured in hours was effectively meaningless. The kit didn't replace his regeneration. It amplified it to its biological limit, accelerating recovery while conserving his own reserves. Flesh knitted. Bone reformed. Torn muscle sealed almost as quickly as Butter destroyed it. A canister bounced across the marble. PSSSSSHH. Smoke flooded the battlefield. Butter frowned.

One lazy sweep of her hand displaced the air itself. The smoke vanished. She disappeared beneath him again, darting around his enormous frame like they were playing a child's game of hide-and-seek. His knee found her at last. THOOM. It folded into her stomach and carried her upward. His elbow followed instantly. Butter caught it on her forearm. The block shattered anyway. The impact hurled her sideways across the chamber. By the time he looked up...... she was gone.

A heartbeat later something detonated into his back. BOOOOM! Butter had launched herself headfirst through the air like a living spear. He stumbled forward. Before his foot finished the step...... a kick smashed into the front of his mask. KRAK! His boots left the floor. Butter was already above him. He couldn't react in time. She flipped once, both heels crashing into the centre of his torso. THOOOOM! His armour cratered inward.

Blood burst into the inside of his mask as the impact drove him straight into the marble below. Butter was already upon him. Her fists became artillery. THOOMTHOOMTHOOMTHOOMTHOOM! Each impact drove deeper into his torso before the last had even finished landing. The blows reverberated through his entire body, shredding muscle, splintering bone, and rippling through his organs. It felt as though the muzzle of a tank had been pressed against his chest, firing shell after shell into him like a machine gun. He roared.

The underside of his gauntlet unfolded. FWOOOOSH! A tongue of roaring flame erupted from the hidden nozzle. Butter blurred out of existence an instant before the inferno consumed the space she'd occupied. Zeinai laughed. Not once. Not because he was winning. Because every exchange delighted him. Every impossible dodge, every absurd angle, every ridiculous rabbit-like rebound only widened the grin spreading across his face as the battle grew wilder.... The Commander punched.

Butter flipped over the blow, caught his wrist in mid-air, and let the rotation carry her entire body around it. Momentum flowed through her shoulders and hips until his boots left the floor. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Korhess was already waiting. Her spear struck like a staff. THOOOM! The Commander slammed sideways into the wall, stone erupting around him as ribs cracked beneath the impact. His electric gauntlet crackled.

Instead of pursuing Butter, he fired into empty space. Lightning exploded precisely where she would've landed. She vibrated the current away before it could take hold. A complex device beeped as it sailed through the air. A grenade. Halfway to its target, the casing split apart. Dozens of smaller bomblets burst outward in every direction, fanning through the chamber like a glittering cloud. Butter flickered. For the briefest instant, she seemed to exist everywhere at once.

Tiny blurs flashed between the spinning bomblets, each one snatched from the air before gravity could claim it. Hands. Feet. Knees. Elbows. Every part of her body became another point of interception. The next heartbeat...... every bomblet came hurtling back. The Commander simply raised one hand. BOOOOM. The chained explosions disappeared inside his closed fist. Smoke curled lazily between his metal fingers as the last blast faded, the gauntlet opening without so much as a scorch mark.

Only a thin ribbon of grey smoke drifted upward, proof that anything had happened at all. Still asleep, Butter smiled. The twist of her throw carried her straight toward Korhess. She landed atop the deer-woman's outstretched arm in a compact crouch, balanced on nothing but her fingertips as though perched upon a tree branch. Korhess bore her weight effortlessly. An air cannon bloomed between them. BOOOM! They split apart instantly. Korhess slid one way.

Butter kicked away in another impossible arc, struck a distant wall feet first, and remained there, standing sideways against the concrete. Her toes bit deep into the stone, muscles tightening beneath the black bandages as she watched from the vertical surface like some impossible hunting animal. His fists lashed toward her. They never found her. Even the automatic counterattack system struggled against someone whose movements changed before they truly existed. Korhess abandoned elegance.

She simply bullied forward. The Commander drove an electrified punch into her ribs. She ignored it, muscles bunching beneath the impact as she forced herself another step closer. Her spear lunged straight for his stomach. His predictions screamed. He twisted aside at the final instant. The spear missed his spine by a hair, yet still bored a fist-sized hole clean through his abdomen. Fresh blood sprayed across the marble as she tore it free.

Electricity immediately surged across his right gauntlet, condensing into a humming blade of white-blue plasma that extended from his wrist. It swept toward Korhess. She rolled beneath it, but not completely. The plasma skimmed her forearm, carving a smoking trench through flesh and nearly severing the limb. She came out of the roll already driving forward again. Her hoof crashed down onto his foot. CRUNCH. Bone and armour collapsed together beneath the force. Butter was already there. THOOM - KRAK.

Her kick snapped the Commander's head sideways...... straight into Korhess. The deer-woman's elbow exploded forward with enough force to pulp mountains. He flowed around it with Baguazhang, his torso spiralling aside as though every joint had become liquid. His palm flicked outward. A fan of neurospikes burst from hidden ports and scattered toward Butter. She was already somewhere else. Every spike passed harmlessly through empty air. The Commander continued the spin without wasting a single motion.

A compartment unfolded across his back. PSSSSSHHH. A dense cloud of chemical gas blasted directly into Korhess's face as she lunged. She folded backwards so violently her antlers nearly scraped the marble, the toxic cloud hissing through the empty space where her head had been a heartbeat before. His left fist buried itself into the floor. BOOOOM. The fractured marble erupted upward. Korhess risked Sidewind.

The technique snapped her clear of the impact zone an instant before the explosion swallowed the place she'd occupied.... Hapkido dissolved into Systema before the transition had even finished. Butter yielded to his force, only to return it through the smallest turn of her shoulders. Okichitaw followed, brutal and direct, a battlefield answer to every opening. Dambe sharpened her rhythm, one hand striking while the other guarded. Laamb stole his footing, every grapple threatening to become an impact.

She vanished beneath his guard. Her palms slapped the marble. THOOOM! Both feet drove upward beneath his jaw. The double-footed uppercut lifted the commander clean off the ground. Before gravity could reclaim him, Butter had already bounded away, rebounded from a pillar, ricocheted off the opposite wall, and returned in a blur. Her fists disappeared. THOOMTHOOMTHOOMTHOOMTHOOMTHOOM!

A torrent of chain punches hammered into his chest before he even landed, each strike flowing into the next until the final blow blasted him backwards through a mound of broken stone. Rubble collapsed around him. He rose with a low groan, dust cascading from his shoulders.

"… How unorthodox." There was no irritation in his voice. Only admiration. Butter intercepted once more. He caught a spinning heel kick on his left arm, then lunged right, reaching for Korhess. She twisted away. The spear carved across his spine. For the briefest instant...... his body stopped. His legs refused to answer. His left arm hung limp. The cut had severed his spinal cord. Fresh flesh erupted from the wound almost immediately, nerves knitting together before he had even begun to fall.

The interruption lasted less than a heartbeat. His right gauntlet surged to maximum output. KRA-KAK! Korhess barely raised her hoof in time. The punch crashed into it with enough force to stagger even her. Lightning erupted through her body. Her jaws slammed shut. She bit clean through her own tongue. Pain exploded through her mouth as blood flooded over her lips. The current locked every muscle in her body, leaving her frozen for a fraction of a second while smoke curled from her fur.

Only then did the force finish carrying her backward, spinning her away with a muffled gasp as the electricity continued racing through her nerves. Her muscles locked. She was stunned.... Butter flowed in. A living archive of violence. Every stance exact. Every transition seamless. Her body wrote a language no single system could ever contain. Flicker after flicker, Butter became a storm of afterimages. She wasn't teleporting.

She was reapplying herself between heartbeats, her fists finding impossible angles, her feet tracing paths physics hadn't yet forbidden. Dozens of silhouettes filled the chamber, each one striking from somewhere different. To an onlooker, it looked as though the Commander was fighting an army of ghosts. His left arm cut through them with mechanical precision... until even it began to fall behind. He swung. Afterimage. He turned. WHOOOM! A spiralling blast of compressed air tore into him.

He twisted at the last instant, but the strike still ripped away his entire right shoulder to the bicep in a spray of blood, bone, and shattered metal. Butter landed lightly. She had leapt ten metres into the air, spun, and driven both feet forward, using Cadenza through a dropkick. Ordinary shockwaves meant nothing to his armour. That one staggered him. His arm was already regenerating. For a fraction of a second...... he was open. Butter's palm settled against his chest. Korhess's ears shot upright.

She recognised it instantly. Vibrating Palm. The technique Butter's father had once taught her, the strike that resonated through the architecture of a body rather than its flesh. Solfège made it effortless. The frequency came to her like a song she'd always known. The resonance spread... The Commander vibrated. His body answered with a perfect counter-frequency, cancelling hers so completely the force simply ceased to exist. Butter's sleeping body twitched. He didn't merely know the technique.

He knew how to erase it. Only one other person had ever taught her that strike. Paris Moon. His regenerated hand closed around the discarded gauntlet. He snapped it back onto his arm in one smooth motion. Korhess attacked without hesitation, striking before anticipation itself could exist. The Commander slipped through every blow. He wasn't predicting anymore. He was remembering.

It was as though he'd already lived through every successful attack and was now moving through the memory of those failures, correcting them before they could happen again. His movements slowed for only an instant as he recalibrated. Panels unfolded across his back. CLACK. CLACK. A sleek red-and-grey drone, shaped like a hunting jet the size of an eagle, detached itself and shot into the air. It locked onto Korhess. The first burst came immediately. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTT!

Hypersonic rounds screamed across the chamber. Korhess met them head-on. Her spear blurred. CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! Each bullet ricocheted away in showers of sparks before the drone adjusted again, its internal mechanisms whining as targeting algorithms recalculated. The next volley came even faster. Korhess broke into a sprint, weaving across the chamber as streams of bullets chewed apart pillars, walls and flooring behind her. The drone abruptly switched targets. Butter. She reached into the stream. Ping. Ping.

Ping. Her fingers plucked several bullets straight from the air before she simply stopped trying. The barrage engulfed her. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTT! Rounds hammered into her face, chest, shoulders and stomach. None of them penetrated. They flattened against her skin and bounced harmlessly across the marble. Korhess slowed to a stop.

"… They're only bullets now." Without Apis reinforcing them, hypersonic speed was still only speed. Against Butter… … it wasn't enough. She immediately charged the Commander. The drone clicked. Its barrels folded inward. A brilliant red glow bloomed beneath its frame. ZZZRRRT! Thin beams of coherent light carved across the chamber. Butter flickered between the beams, slipping through impossible gaps as lasers bored smoking holes through concrete walls and marble pillars behind her.

Korhess sidestepped one beam, batted another aside with the shaft of her spear, then narrowly twisted away from a third that scorched across her shoulder. Butter stooped. A pebble left her fingers. FWIP. The drone instantly rotated. CRACK! A laser reduced the pebble to glowing dust before it reached its target. Korhess was already behind it. Her spear thrust toward its blind spot. The drone twisted with startling speed, several laser bursts flashing toward her. She thrust out an open palm. FWSSSH!

The beams raked across her skin, smoke curling from her scorched palm as she forced the strike aside without breaking her charge. The drone banked to evade. Another pebble flew. Butter had kicked this one. FWIP! It struck the drone squarely across its wing, knocking it sideways just enough. Korhess didn't miss. THRAKK! Her spear punched straight through its centre. The drone exploded into a rain of burning metal that scattered across the chamber. He was still recovering from the Vibrating Palm.

The resonance lingered inside his body, shaking organs that had already healed and bones that had already been rebuilt. He hadn't felt that technique in years. It shouldn't have existed. Not here. Not beneath the Logic Nuke. Forty-five percent of the healing kit's cultivated enzymes had already been consumed. Less than thirty seconds. At this rate, he wasn't certain the kit would last another minute before it exhausted itself completely and left him at their mercy. A quiet chuckle escaped beneath his mask.

Magnificent. Butter and Korhess attacked without hesitation. Butter blurred in first, bounding from wall to wall while Korhess drove straight through the centre, her spear already thrusting for his heart. He'd been prepared. He twirled, dodging attacks that had not yet been thrown. His right fist slammed into the floor. KRAK - KOOOM. Lightning exploded across the marble, racing toward both barefoot opponents. They leapt. The Commander was already moving. An air cannon bloomed beneath Butter midair. BOOM.

It punched through her side. Blood sprayed as a crescent-shaped section of her liver vanished, as though something immense had taken a bite from it. Melody still shielded her from distributed forces like inertia and friction while she moved, but Logic refused to let it soften a force compressed tightly enough to punch through a mountain. Another cannon struck Korhess across the face in the same instant. Her head snapped back.

A few crimson drops escaped her lips as one emerald antler earring shattered into glittering fragments. No visible injury remained. The Commander closed the distance. He seized her left antler. KOOOOM! His electrified right fist buried itself in her stomach. Korhess coughed blood as the blow launched her into the far wall. Concrete burst around her. The front of her jacket had been scorched black where the punch had landed, the fabric still smoking, the skin beneath seared raw.

Unlike Butter, her regeneration had never been exceptional. She was far harder to injure, but whatever damage broke through stayed. Deep wounds took hours to mend. Severed limbs took days. She remained slumped against the fractured wall for a single breath, chest heaving. Then she staggered upright on shaking hooves...... and charged again.