Molting the Mortal Coil

Like a giant sidewinding inch-worm, the man swung himself forward at high speed. At the same time, Sage was on all fours like some sort of biological siege weapon. He’d dug himself into the ground to stand like a toad and in only a few seconds he’d prepared a second attack. His mouth dropped open again and released another laser-like air thrust.

As soon as Sage’s mouth started to move, the freak handed Fisher’s arm swung in front of his body. There was a thunderous boom and the ball of compressed air was smashed apart. The force involved was so immense that it created a localized explosion, blasting out to either side and destroying a fan shaped swathe of the buildings and street. The area behind the man was clear of any further destruction, showing that the giant arm had completely stopped the attack. The giant fist held its position as the massive wind that followed in the wake of the air ball took a moment to catch up. It had previously carved a channel into the street and now it made it deeper and wider. It looked quite like Sage was carving a canal into the middle of the ruined city from the progress so far.

The second attack was stopped near completely, with only a few scrapes and bruises caused by the debris whipping back at the man from the sides and back. Yet, there was still distance between them. The giant arm immediately started grabbing and swinging the man’s body closer, but there was still time for another three attacks. A few blocks of the already ruined was nearly leveled from the meeting of a giant fist and hurricane like winds. Between attacks, Sage began to flee. That giant arm seemed just as powerful as it was large, but it also drastically reduced the man’s speed. Most of his focus was on preparing the next attack, but even then he was only slightly outpaced by the slowly approaching enemy. Using Foresight, he took only the best possible shots, but somehow that giant fist was able to block most of them. Only when Sage finally got another direct hit on the tenth shot did he stop running. He’d stuck the man on the inner side of the calf, tearing out a large portion of the muscles on the lower leg. With the man’s other thigh also being injured, both legs were now compromised and Sage’s trap was set.

Sage’s chest and throat shrunk back down to their normal size and he pushed himself back up into a standing position. He’d been running away on all fours, kicking off the ground and pushing on empty space with his hands to stabilize himself, but now he was standing with a triumphant look on his face. The enemy was swinging towards him, hurling himself forward to close the distance and then hefting that giant arm into the air. He didn’t seem phased by Sage’s sudden confidence, thinking it was another ploy to distract him and already angry from the two gruesome wounds on his legs. The amount of blood the man lost would have already killed a normal person, but whether it was the weird mutation or his psychic powers, something kept him going.

That’s when Sage pursed his lips and blew gently. The giant fist moved to intercept, but there was no sudden force smashing against it. Instead, a thick white mist poured out of Sage’s mouth. At first it might seem like a smoker releasing a puff, but the consistency of the vapor was more like fog than smoke. There also didn’t seem to be an end to it. It was like a vast sky covering cloud had been hiding inside him and was now crawling out. Taking only a moment for the two of them to be completely and utterly lost within the bank of mist. It spread out to cover the whole of the destroyed area, the heavy vapor filling up the deep ditch that the street had been turned into and then spilling out and flooding into the rest of the city.

The mist was directed towards the man with the mutated arm, forming into a large cloud around him. As it slowly sunk downwards, more and more of the mist was blown towards him. The cloud around Sage was of a different color, a bright blue that clung to his skin. That change in color was actually the Cerulean Cloud, the technique that hid him from Spiritual Sense. He wasn’t sure what powers the enemy had, but it was now almost an instinct for him to activate it anytime he wanted to be unseen. He ran to the side, circling around the last place he’d seen the enemy while releasing more of the white mist.

In the center of that cloud, the man with the giant fist was covered in sweat. He started to flee, but he couldn’t tell which way to go and just chose a direction at random. The thick fog seemed to cover everything and no matter how fast he swung himself forward it never came to an end. At one point he almost started to see through the fog, but then he felt a presence in the distance and the mist thickened again. He could tell the enemy was following him and maintaining the mist. The many injuries on his body slowed him down and that meant he couldn’t escape from this huge fog cloud. He stopped and rushed back towards the direction the enemy was in, but he wasn’t fast enough. Still, he didn’t worry. Did the enemy think those few wounds he suffered would do him in?

Desperation only truly began to set in when he realized how badly he was sweating. His breathing had become labored. The misty air felt heavy and clung to his skin like he was wading through a swamp. His leather pants felt like they were channeling a small river down his legs, and his upper body felt like he’d just climbed out of a tub. He tried to calm himself down, but the sweat never stopped pouring.

That mist was the same one Sage used against the Yin Yang Twins. It was a poison he’d developed that he named ‘Paradise Nightmare’. It looked like a misty dream world from afar, and made one feel they’d entered a place of high humidity like a tropical paradise. The problem of course being that it caused living things to dehydrate themselves to death from the constant and incessant sweating. It was a result from mixing Guan Zhenyan’s high level poisons so not even Nascent Soul’s had a chance at resisting it. It was easy to create in huge volume and was heavier than air, sinking into and staying in low spots. The downside being that it had to be breathed in and was only effective for a short while. Sage had torn off the man’s mask to expose him to the poison and injured his legs to keep him from escaping.

The situation didn’t look good for him in the real world, but the battle was far from being decided. As they worked on turning the ruined buildings into small bits of rubble, there was another fight going on inside Sage’s Spiritual Sea. The ghostly smoke in the shape of a skull had undergone a metamorphosis just as the man on the outside had. The cape of smoke had surrounded the skull and started to contract. It formed into a sphere and shrunk smaller and smaller until there was only a giant black bead left in its place. Then that bead flattened into a coin-like shape and expanded into a ring. Violet smoke poured out of the ring and took the shape of a huge hand wearing the black ring on one of its fingers. The purple smoke hand grew a wrist and forearm, then an elbow and upper arm. At the shoulder the smoke lost cohesion, creating a giant ghostly arm with no body attached. That huge fist clenched its fingers and smashed its fist against the wall of Sage’s mental labyrinth.