Chương 57: 56: The Twelve Prototypes V

/// Naomi reached him first. Her fist blurred towards his jaw. Prism still stood upon the hovering platform. The tattoos circling his forearms flared cobalt.

"… Axis Reflection." Plane Division dissolved. The invisible mathematical boundary lost all definition, finally allowing Victor and Roman's bodies to begin snapping back together. At the same instant, another equation took its place. Reflecting a point across an axis places it the same distance on the opposite side while preserving every measurement from that axis. Reality treated Prism as that reflected point. Naomi's punch swept through empty air. He stood behind her. His karambit flashed.

It wasn't the blade that cut through impossibly durable bodies. It was Prism. Every strike was guided by countless calculations, finding the precise angle and point of failure needed to separate even the toughest matter with minimal force. A crimson line split the back of Naomi's knee.

"Ah!" Blood sprayed across the ice as her leg buckled beneath her. She stumbled. Mateo was already there. The glacier blurred beneath his accelerating stride. Prism barely saw him. His body moved anyway. Every calculation had already been solved. Conflict vectors. Joint rotations. Momentum. The remaining motion completed itself automatically, as though his nervous system were merely finishing an equation he'd written moments earlier. His tattoos pulsed.

Mateo's shoulder skimmed past his ribs, close enough for the displaced air to bruise. Prism answered with another slash. The karambit hooked beneath Mateo's elbow. A shallow cut. Enough. Mateo barely twisted away before the next cut reached his throat, the blade whispering past his skin close enough to draw a thin line of blood.

"…You're good with that thing," he muttered, springing back. Linh dropped from above. Prism twisted. Her heel missed his skull by centimetres. Freya's kick arrived before he recovered. Prism snapped his tonfa up across his forearm. BOOM. The impact blasted straight through the guard, hurling him sideways. Pain exploded through his bones.

"Too powerful." His back tore through solid granite. The mountain swallowed him, burying him beneath thousands of tons of ice and stone. The buried tonfa hummed. Tiny cobalt circuits woven through the weapon had spent the entire fight drinking in kinetic energy. Prism swung. KRAAAAAAASH! Everything it had absorbed erupted outward. The mountain exploded from within.

Stone, snow, and ice melted away beneath a concentrated shockwave as Prism rolled across the shattered glacier, coughing through gritted teeth before forcing himself upright.

"… Ow." Blood the rich gold, orange, and green hues of a tropical mango dripped from one eyebrow. His ribs screamed. No mathematics changed that. He wasn't a magician. Magic could be suppressed. Concepts could be erased. Reality manipulation could be resisted. Prism remained bound by physics. He couldn't simply decide to run faster than light. Anything with mass attempting such a thing would destroy itself unless another equation justified it.

Even then, his body automatically dispersed the consequences, manipulating its own vector to carry him safely along the calculated trajectory instead of tearing itself apart. His body had limits. Roughly one-third the speed of light was the fastest his muscles, skeleton, and organs could survive. Anything faster required another equation. That was the ceiling. His dodges, however, were effectively instantaneous. Provided he solved the mathematics first. Every incoming strike became variables.

The yellow woven through his irises existed for exactly that purpose, reading and solving the mathematics of anything within his line of sight almost instantly. Once the solution existed, his body completed the remaining movement automatically, as effortlessly as finishing the final line of an equation. Red governed offense. Blue governed defense. Yellow calculated.

His eyes never stayed still, darting constantly across the battlefield to cover as much area as possible, solving new equations the instant fresh variables entered his sight. His tattoos brightened again. Naomi's elbow. Reflection. Linh's knee. Reflection. Mateo's punch. Reflection. Strength had never concerned him. Numbers did. Every additional opponent stretched his attention across another angle, another trajectory, another set of variables. His vision covered only 300°.

Anything outside it was unknown, and mathematics couldn't solve an equation it had never seen. Sneak attacks remained his greatest weakness, unlike Mango, whose spatial awareness made ambushes almost impossible. Fortunately, Prism's raw durability far exceeded hers. Even without magical reinforcement, he could survive a nuclear blast through sheer physical resilience, whereas Mango could be grazed by a sniper round. He could afford to take a few hits from the prototypes. Just not without consequence.

Unlike Mango, whose regeneration bordered on instantaneous, Prism's was sluggish. She could be splattered into pulp and rebound almost immediately. A single broken rib would force him to spend minutes repairing it through focused mathematical reconstruction. His position reflected across invisible axes again and again, each dodge marked by a pulse of luminous geometry beneath his skin. Between reflections, the karambit never stopped moving. SHRK!

"Ghk!" Blood sprayed from Gideon's wrist. SHKK!

"AAGH!" Selene's shoulder split open, crimson scattering across the ice. SKRRT! The blade hooked behind Elias' knee, buckling him before another slash ripped across Gideon's groin.

"That hurt...!" Gideon bared his teeth.

"Would these teleporting kids just stay still?!" Selene growled, clutching her bleeding shoulder.

"They're everywhere!" Prism never lingered. Every cut sought a vulnerable point, every movement calculated to disable rather than kill. Linh finally forced her way inside his guard. She was the better hand-to-hand fighter. Her elbows, knees, and punches flowed together without hesitation, each strike feeding the next. Prism reflected again and again, his tattoos blazing as every attack became another solved equation. Every punch he saw missed by fractions of an inch.

Every kick slipped past him as though reality had already decided where he belonged. Linh's eyes narrowed.

"… So you can dodge anything you see." She changed tactics. BOOM! Her heel slammed into the glacier. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Ice and snow erupted into the air, swallowing Prism's vision. White flooded his right eye. At the same instant, she kicked a house-sized boulder into the cloud. Prism reacted on instinct. SHRRK! His karambit flashed backwards, cleaving the boulder perfectly in two. It wasn't Linh.

She had already flown through the blind spot created by the stone. WHAM! Both palms crashed into his back. The impact drove him through the glacier and deep into the freezing water beneath. Linh plunged in after him. Her hands came together. CLAP! The precision was terrifying. For the briefest instant, the force compressed the surrounding water into a cavitation bubble that burned hotter than the Sun's core before collapsing. KRA-BOOOOOM! The subglacial lake detonated. Water flashed into superheated steam.

Ice melted for miles in every direction as the collapsing bubble blasted everything apart. Linh burst clear of the explosion with only reddened skin. Prism wasn't so fortunate. Scalds erupted across his body as the blast hurled him back through the shattered surface.

"GHK!" He coughed a mouthful of blood, tumbling across the fractured ice. Linh was already above him, another kick descending. This time Prism saw it. His tattoos flared. Linh committed fully to the descending kick. At the very last instant Prism slipped aside, reflecting across an invisible axis just enough for the strike to miss by a hair. The kick buried itself into the glacier with a deafening BOOOOM!, blasting ice skyward. Before she could recover, Prism stepped back into range. He answered with the tonfa.

WHAM! It cracked across Linh's jaw. Cobalt circuitry flared as every stored impact discharged at once. Linh was struck by the equivalent of a dozen rage-filled blows from opponents on her own level, all compressed into a single instant. Her jaw shattered with a sickening CRACK! Blood sprayed across the glacier as the compressed kinetic force erupted through her face, blasting her backward through ice and stone while Prism reflected toward his next angle of attack.

Instead, he stumbled out onto a distant stretch of untouched ice, skidding to a stop near a small colony of penguins. The birds froze. Then, as one, they turned and began hurriedly waddling away. Prism blinked.

"…Penguins." He let out a tired chuckle.

"I've... never actually seen penguins before." For a few seconds, the battle ceased to exist. He pulled a small camera from his jacket, smiled despite the blood running down his face, and snapped a few quick photos as the curious birds shuffled across the ice.

"…Cute." He glanced back toward the distant explosions shaking the horizon.

"…Better move before the fighting reaches you." His tattoos flared.

"…Axis Reflection." Luminous geometry rippled beneath his feet, and he was gone, leaving the penguins to their frozen corner of Antarctica. — Far across the battlefield, Selene finally reached Mango. Calm grey eyes met warm hazel ones for barely an instant.

"Sorry!" They clashed. Selene's fist shot forward. Mango folded beneath it until her back nearly brushed the ice. A kick followed. Her torso bent sideways like a swaying stem, the boot skimming past her nose. She spun through the opening, one leg curling high over her own shoulder before planting lightly behind Selene. Another punch came. Mango's arm coiled around it, her body twisting into an impossible angle as petals scattered beneath her feet, and she skipped away with a bright laugh.

Her limbs curled into impossible angles, every dodge springy, agile, and almost cartoonish. Selene's fist cut through empty air again.

"…How are you moving like that?"

"Practice!" Mango slipped inside her guard, wrapped both arms around her waist, and arched backwards. THOOM! The glacier detonated beneath a flawless suplex. Selene struck headfirst, collapsing an entire ice ridge into itself as shockwaves rippled across the continent. Mountains burst apart, yet when the avalanche settled she remained conscious, half-buried in shattered ice.

"Ugh." Before she could rise, flowering vines erupted from the glacier, coiling around her wrists, ankles, and torso. They thickened by the second, roots drilling deep as blossoms unfurled along emerald lengths. Selene strained. The vines groaned. They didn't break. Mango winked out in a swirl of petals, reappearing hundreds of metres away as more vines burst from the frozen continent, binding Elias and Gideon.

They strained against the living restraints, muscles bulging while blossoms scattered into the Antarctic wind. She frowned and pulled harder. The emerald bindings stretched like thick rubber but refused to snap.

"…What is this?" Nearby, Elias and Gideon paused.

"Those should've broken." The vines pulsed, soft green light flowing through them like liquid emerald.

"Magic," Freya muttered. Realization spread immediately. These weren't ordinary plants. Every fibre had been reinforced with dense, living magic, creating vines harder than titanium yet more flexible than rubber. They bent instead of breaking, storing every ounce of force before springing back into place. Every struggle fed them. The vines drank in their strength, fresh blossoms blooming along their lengths as their captives grew steadily weaker.

"…That's ridiculous," Mateo breathed. Another pulse tightened the vines around Selene as more flowers quietly unfurled. Prism spared them half a glance.

"She's doing fine." His instincts flared. Atlas. The glacier exploded beneath his feet as he ignored Prism entirely and charged the tangled mass of restraints.

"Hang on!" Both hands buried themselves beneath the vines. Muscles swelled. The continent groaned.

"HRAAAAGH!" Roots thicker than buildings tore free from the glacier in showers of ice. The vines stretched impossibly before snapping back, releasing Selene, Elias, and Gideon. Atlas rolled one shoulder.

"Quit trying to rip through them," he grunted.

"They just soak up your strength. Next time, fly straight up. The roots are all below." Far away, Mango winced.

"Aww, come on." Prism never looked. Victor was already there. His tattoos flared. Prism backflipped the instant Victor became a white streak. They missed by millimetres. Almost. Victor's shoulder clipped Prism's boot. That was enough. Prism's trajectory changed. He became a projectile, hurled across the battlefield faster than intended.

"… Ah." Unfortunately, he was flying straight at Mango. For miles in every direction, the battlefield unfolded inside her mind like a living grid. Every prototype, every boulder, every flower, every drifting petal registered as clearly as wind moving through leaves. She felt every occupant's position without needing to look. She could've petal-stepped a stone into someone's brain. A bomb into their heart. A single touch could've made Bloom burst vines through their bodies, or Rot wither them into dry husks.

She didn't want to. That would be mean. Beating them into submission was enough. Death wasn't the lesson Lucien had asked them to teach. She looked up just in time, caught him, and rolled them safely to a stop.

"…Prism?" He pointed past her.

"Behind." Victor burst into view a heartbeat later, still carrying enough momentum to carve through mountains. Mango didn't hesitate. Her thumb flicked a tiny crimson pellet into her sling. The instant any pellet touched her fingers, it became an extension of her magic. Blue ricocheted with concussive force. Red exploded. Black pierced. Their power scaled to her intent, allowing the same pebble to harmlessly trick-shot between humans or stagger gods. THWIP! BOOOOOOM! The pellet struck Victor square in the face.

The sky bloomed scarlet. The tiny sphere erupted with impossible force, caving in his cheek, splitting open his brow, and bruising half his face as the blast hurled him through a chain of ice mountains before an avalanche swallowed him. Yuna gasped.

"…That thing burned hotter than a supernova…"

"…What was that?!" Mateo blurted. Naomi stared at the crater left by something no bigger than a marble.

"That much power… in a tiny ball?"

"A nuke in a pellet," Gideon muttered. Prism dusted himself off.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome." His tattoos pulsed.

"… Axis Reflection." Luminous geometry rippled beneath his feet. He reflected across invisible axes again and again, his position skipping through the battlefield as though reality kept finding a more convenient solution. — Prism's karambit carved through the air. Luminous triangles, coordinate axes, concentric circles, and glowing ∑, π, and √ symbols burst from every slash.

Each completed proof became a projectile of mathematical certainty, slicing, reflecting, compressing, or folding space according to the theorem encoded within it.

"Don't let those things touch you!" Naomi shouted.

"They're not energy!" Freya yelled, shoving Yuna clear of a spinning coordinate grid.

"They're equations!" Linh barked, dragging Cass aside as a glowing √ symbol sheared through the glacier where she'd stood. Yuna shoved Gideon clear of a drifting ∑ while Roman shoulder-checked Freya away from a lattice of rotating triangles.

"Keep moving!" Blood ran down Linh's chin, her mouth still swollen as fractured bone slowly knitted itself back together. Unlike some of the others, her regeneration simply wasn't as fast.

"They're equations!" Linh barked again, her words slightly slurred.

"Don't let them touch you!"

"Move!" Atlas hauled Gideon away as a lattice of triangles silently divided a mountain into perfect geometric sections. The battlefield dissolved into controlled chaos. The prototypes weren't dodging projectiles. They were avoiding mathematical truths made physical, each symbol carrying a different law reality would obey the instant it touched them. Atlas answered by tearing an entire mountain free and hurling it overhead.

"HRAAAAGH!" Prism's eyes flickered gold. His karambit carved a glowing [] through the air. Luminous brackets unfolded around the mountain. The impossible mass froze in midair, suspended as though reality itself had paused the calculation. The blade flashed again. × The symbol slammed into the mountain. It swelled severalfold, blotting out the sky.

"…What?!" Mateo shouted.

"It got bigger!" Naomi yelled. Another slash. ++ The increment symbols embedded themselves into the suspended peak. The mountain lurched forward in an instant. Atlas barely had time to look up.

"Shit!" TH OOOOOOM! The multiplied mass crashed into him, driving him through peak after peak beneath an avalanche of stone and ice. Prism was already moving. His karambit flicked once more. ÷ The glowing symbol settled between him and Atlas. The distance folded. Prism was already inside his guard. SHRK! The karambit slashed toward Atlas's eyes.

"GHK!" Atlas jerked aside just in time. Blood sprayed as the blade carved across his brow instead.

"Bastard!" His fist exploded into Prism's ribs. The impact never reached him. Prism snapped the tonfa across his side. Cobalt circuitry blazed to life as the tonfa's charge leapt to thirty-five percent from that single punch. It had been engineered to store roughly a solar system's worth of kinetic energy before reaching capacity. Fortunately, Atlas had hit the weapon. Not him. BOOOOM! Prism grunted.

"…He's strong." He was hurled through the air despite absorbing most of the punch. Freya was already there.

"HRAAH!" Her flying punch screamed toward his head. Prism reflected across an invisible axis. The strike skimmed past by inches. He whipped the tonfa around. CRAAACK! It smashed into Freya's skull. Stored kinetic force detonated through the impact, spraying blood as her head snapped sideways. Instead of flying, Freya grunted, spun with the blow, and rode the momentum. Prism's eyes flicked toward another incoming threat for the briefest instant. Her heel slammed into his ribs.

Prism blasted backwards, crashing through glacier after glacier.

"…Tch." Her endurance was absurd. Before he even struck the ground, Freya was already there, twirling through the air. The spinning kick whipped the wind into a violent vortex that caught Prism mid-flight and hurled him straight toward her waiting fist. He jerked his head aside. The punch missed. The shockwave didn't. KRAAK! His ear was shredded as blood sprayed across the ice. His tattoos flared.

"…Bracket." Luminous brackets snapped shut around Freya, suspending her in space for a heartbeat as though reality had frozen her position. Prism lunged. The tonfa crashed into her temple. Cobalt circuitry erupted. KRA-BOOOOM! The stored kinetic force detonated through her skull, finally overwhelming even her endurance as she crashed into the glacier below. She groaned.

"…Ngh…" Her arm planted against the ice. She tried to stand. WHAM! Prism knocked her back down.

"Stay down!" She pushed herself up again, blood running from her brow. WHAM!

"…Stay down! I don't want to kill you!" Still, she tried to rise. A third swing. WHACK! She slumped, breathing hard, yet stubbornly forced one eye open to look at him.

"…Very well…" Her head finally dropped. She lay still. Unconscious.