The Games We Play

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattle publishment. Anyway on with the show...errr read.

Battle Royale

The blades don't slow in their thrust towards my sister's vulnerable flesh and if I hadn't had complete trust in all of my sister's, I'd have been seriously worried. Indigo's blades were no joke and were capable of cutting through just about anything—and now I knew the reason why. Being two-dimensional, the blades were perfectly flat and yet her power allowed them to exist in our world regardless. In cartoons and comics, it wasn't uncommon to hear about swords and stuff that were absurdly sharp and thin, but even monomolecular blades would have looked wide next to Indigo's strikes, because they didn't have a width any more than a shadow had depth. Though she was only able to express them in a limited range around herself, those blades were sharp enough to cut even experienced hunters to bits, unless she held back.

But I knew she would, even before I felt the touch of her emotions against my thoughts. Sure enough, at the last moment, the blades returned to a shadowy state, moving across Azure and Sienna's skin as if someone had lifted a hand into the air shield them from light, rather than stab them in the back. They slid around their rib, over their chests, and then bubbled back up into reality on the other side of their bodies, giving the illusion of impalement and making both of the girl's look down in shock.

"You should know to watch your backs, ladies," Indigo said, the shadow of her hat creeping down to hide her face. "You were both full of openings."

Azure lifted a trembling hand towards the shadow sword, but touched nothing but air in the end as Indigo drew back, pulling the blades loose. Sienna stumbled and fell to a knee as she 'came free', jerking as if to turn in place, but Indigo caught the back of her head and pulled it up at an angle, leveling another sword just out of range of her throat. For her part, Azure slumped forward onto the control panel in front of her.

"A-Azure," Sienna cried out as the massive creature beneath them came to a halt and began to slump. She reached out towards Azure, all but pushing herself towards the blade to reach out and catch her hand. Holding her fingers as if in desperation, she tried again. "Azure, wake up!"

"Sienna…" Azure twitched, sliding down the control panel as if pulled off balance by Sienna's hand. There was a certain dullness to her tone as if she didn't understand, or couldn't believe, what was happening. "Sienna, I feel cold. What…what happened?"

"Nothing," Sienna said desperately, tears gathering in her eyes. "Azure, you're going to be fine, just stay awake. Do you hear me? Just stay awake, Azure!"

Azure twitched, moving her head slightly as if doing so meant lifting the weight of the whole world. Slowly, her eyes focused on Sienna and she gave a quivering smile.

"Y-you never were a very good liar, Sienna," She choked out as she wept silent tears. "This is it for me, isn't it?"

"Azure," Sienna's voice shook and then faltered, leaving her unable to do anything but continue to cry.

"It's okay," Azure continued, still forcing the smile. "Even if this is the end, I'm glad I got to fight beside you, Sienna. The two of us…we did okay, right?"

"Yeah," Sienna jerked her head in a meager nod. "Yeah. You…we did great, Azure. W-we—"

She closed her eyes and kept weeping. Though her face was still hidden in shadows, I could clearly see Indigo roll her eyes behind them.

"You know," Indigo drew the word out as she shook her head. "I was giving you some leeway for the whole death scene thing, but…since I stabbed both of you in the heart, I feel like this should be going faster."

They both ignored her and just kept going.

"I'm sorry," Sienna whispered, just loud enough for her voice to carry. "I'm sorry I got you into this, Azure. If not for me…"

"No," Azure said, one of her hands abruptly tightening on the control panel, as if trying to hold onto it as well as her life. "Don't be sorry, Sienna. Not for this. No matter what happens, I'm glad I got to fight by your side."

"Azure…"

"So…goodbye," Azure's hand weakly grasping Sienna's own. "Captain Sienna."

At last, she let out an explosive sigh. The massive creature let out an eerie, sorrow-filled cry and then began to melt, its body returning to the water from which it had been made but leaving the technology behind—though much of it also cracked and shattered as it tumbled to the earth. Indigo moved her blade away from Sienna's throat but stood unflinching as the sphere hit the ground, bounced ever so slightly, and began to roll. Even when she was periodically upside-down, she didn't fall, her feet retreating into the shadows beneath her to keep balance. She held onto Sienna as well, but Azure's 'corpse' bounced around the inside of the sphere, slamming into all manner of things with surprisingly lifelike grunts. Indigo did nothing to help her, watching her with pitiless, shadowed eyes.

"So are we done now?" She wondered. "Do I need to decapitate you guys, too, or…?'

"I'll see you soon," Sienna whispered, still ignoring Indigo as she reaching out one last time. "Azure…"

"Decapitation it is," Indigo resolved, nodding to herself as she swung her blade. Once more, it returned, in part, to its shadow state before it struck, so that the blade merely crawled over her throat instead of passing through it. Even so, Sienna jerked once, hand remaining extended for several long seconds before falling at last. Only then did she topple over.

Indigo shook her head once and then cut herself a doorway out of the sphere.

"Note to self—headless enemies talk less," She muttered to herself, a hand reaching up to rub at her eyes. "Should have just done that to begin with…"

I considered attacking her while she was off-guard, as she had done to Sienna and Azure, but after a moment I chuckled and leapt from my hiding spot, landing just over five meters away.

"Indigo," I greeted, tilting my head to smile past her. "Those two sure took their time bleeding to death, huh?"

She pondered me for a long, silent moment before nodding.

"Yeah, I noticed that too," She shook her head. "Heart wounds just aren't what they used to be, Jaune. Were they the first to go down?"

"Yup," I replied, looking past her in amusement to watch Azure slowly reach up to push a button on one of the remaining consoles. As she did, a small light came on, consolidating into an image after several moments.

"Hologram activated," It began, mechanical voice shifting into Azure's warmer tone. "If you're listening to this, then the worst has happened. A shining star of beauty and genius has, through some unspeakable cruelty, left this world. However, fear not, brave citizen, for I—"

The hologram shut off as the machinery it was produced by was torn to pieces by a swarm of grasping shadows.

"No," Indigo said without looking away from me. "None of that."

"Aww," Azure's corpse whined before twitching. "Er, I mean…brains!"

Indigo took another breath before shaking her head again.

"Bianca left while those two very slowly died," Indigo noted. "I assume she went back to Olivia when she saw me take them out?"

"Mhm," I nodded, holding back a grin for her sake. "All of the others are over there now, fighting it out."

"So you decided to fight me?" She guessed before cracking her neck.

"Unless you made other arrangements…?" I offered, shrugging at her look. "I admit, there was a part of me that wondered if you'd just gone back to sleep."

"I'd never do that," She denied. "Not during Dad's funeral, at least, and certainly not with all this racket."

"So that's a yes, then?" I asked.

She sighed and looked at once wistful and tired.

"On one condition," She said, shaking her head at me.

"Oh?"

"If I win, die like a normal person," She requested. "Please?"

"Won't be an issue," I assured her. "I like to think I'm pretty hard to kill."

"I suppose you'd have to be, considering," She said, biting down on a yawn and blinking twice. "What with the Jian Bing thing and all. Shall we get started, then?"

"Sure," I agreed, releasing the power I'd been gathering all this time. Once again, I felt it reach down into the earth and touch the forces within—but the target, this time, was different. I felt it spread out like water spilled on the floor, before sinking yet deeper into the thirsty ground, before flowing back to me as if in reverse.

And as it did, all of that force was dragged along with it. Debris jumped into the air, along with drops of water and the slowly settling dust. Even things as large as Azure's machinery weren't immune and rose a quick step into the air, as if gravity all around us had abruptly turned off.

Which, you know, it had, though only for a moment. Or rather, it had been concentrated and focused into a much smaller area then normal—namely, everything within five meters of Indigo.

A skill has been created through a special action! Continuous manipulation of mana has created a skill with crushing elemental power, 'Gravity Crash.'

In an instant, everything near her was crushed flat. Proven wood and twisted metal alike sank into an almost smooth surface all around my sister, who staggered once against the abrupt and enormous weight set upon her. Everything from the atmosphere around her to the very flesh on her bones had their weight multiplied dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of times over in that brief second. Had my sister been a normal human, every bone in her body would have shattered and the fluids within would have exploded outwards as the vessel within was crushed.

But she wasn't and they didn't. Instead, with her eyes widening, she staggered and fell to one knee, her hands and feet leaving deep imprints in the ground as she sank up to her thighs and elbows. Even though it only lasted a moment, her physical body collapsed and was left unguarded as it just tried to hold itself upright against the strain.

Her spirit, however, barely seemed to notice. The animated shadows all around her didn't so much as twitch as gravity skyrocketed, being essentially weightless to begin with. As their creator staggered, they reacted by drawing close, curling around her in preparation to attack or defend. Though my skin was made of Adamant and I had raised all of my defensive abilities ludicrously high, I knew better than to test my luck head on against those blades and didn't even try. As the first attack faded, I lifted my fist and delivered a punch with each of my arms, backing up every blow with Far Slayer. Just as the technique from which I'd invented it, Far Slayer allowed me to deliver a melee attack at range. But thanks to the energy I put into it and the now-negligible charge time, the results were…a bit more impressive.

Indigo flew into the air, a series of trenches being gouged into the ground all around her as if carved into the ground by a giant's hands. Tearing her away from the ground also meant tearing her from the shadows upon it, and though they tried to catch her, each blow had tossed her farther and faster. Once she was soaring over the area formerly known as Vale's skyline, the shadows on the ground quivered and faded away.

"Kuh," I heard her grunt, the sound from the initial impact reaching me at last. In the air, I saw her grit her teeth and cross her arms over her chest, forming shadows on the top of her vest even as others squirmed from every nook and cranny. Under her hat, from beneath her shirt and vest alike, from wherever there was the slightest shadow, they slithered out like vicious snakes and rose into the air as living blades.

I smiled. I'd figured she'd have a counter to such an obvious tactic and had suspected the layers she wore to be a part of it, but…I guess there was no simple way to separate her from her weapons. It was just as well, I suppose, or else this wouldn't be any fun. My main goal, to keep her from diving into her shadow and hiding, might still be effective besides.

I guess there's only one way to find out.

The ground shattered for a good distance all around me as I Lunged into the sky fast enough to set the air ablaze again. The shadows around Indigo twitched, with blades of shadow thickening around her arms and back. The former weaved themselves into a pair of blades that rose from the back of her hands, but the latter…first they crafted a skeleton of dark bone, before covering it with layers of shadow-flesh, forming a wide pair of wings that spread to slow Indigo flight. After a moment, they flapped experimentally, gaps that were only visible because of my enhanced eyesight opening and closing carefully. In moments, Indigo's fall changed into something more controlled and then into something just a hairs breadth from flight. As I closed in, she turned towards me, expression calm and controlled, and swung her swords.

I dodged in two different directions, physical body going up while Bai Hu went down, letting the swing pass between us just a few centimeters short of the tail that connected us. Indigo's wings moved oddly and were abruptly in both of our paths and our fists stopped just short of a collision with the two structures. Flapping open, this time moving through conventional space to do so, both of my bodies withdrew to avoid the attack—and kept moving as additional shapes bubbled from the interior of the open wings, spewing reaching blades to try and strike us down. Lifting our hands, a pair of Flare's collided with Indigo, pitching her further back even as the dark swords kept coming, and so I shifted until both of my bodies occupied the same space, absently releasing the platform of air on which I'd stood. A quick gravity crash multiplied the speed at which I fell many times over and I touched ground in the midst of a massive crater and a massive explosion of dust. Briefly hidden from my sister's sight, I grew an illusion of absence around myself and slid into the ground like it was water.

Feeling the ground ripple as I swam, I lifted Bai Hu's head above the ground as I rose near the surface some forty meters away. From every inch of his invisible skull, I could see, and I spotted Indigo with an ear as she glided to a safer position. Apparently unwilling to use her blades on a target she couldn't see, likely for risk of hurting me, her blades had instead stabbed into the ground and crept along its surface as shadows once more. Despite the flares, Indigo appeared unharmed and relaxed, but her headphones were off and her eyes were narrow.

Shifting in place again, I sent my thoughts toward Ereb and he acted without hesitation. Bai Hu rose above the surface, form still invisible, but I stayed beneath and swam through the dirt below his feet. I felt my claws curl, power and light forming in my hands, and I hurled them at once in the shape of a Magic Missile.

Indigo spun in place, one shadow sword rising to slice the Missile cleanly in half. As it passed through the attack as though it were no more than air, the shadow split in two, pushing the attack in either direction, and instead of striking her they exploded behind her and off to the sides. Without hesitation, Indigo sent bladed shadows crawling through the air as though it were any other surface, and they swung gently through the air where one of myselves had stood, hitting nothing.

Dropping the illusion, I exploded from the earth twenty meters away and tossed the attack I'd been charging while submerged, hurling a massive Flare into the air. Once more, Indigo shielded herself with her wings, but the explosion of released power was massive and fire rained from the sky for several seconds afterwards. I was already drawing another illusion around myself as Suryasta rose from the flames and sucked them up in a sort of reverse tornado, drawing in the flames to create another massive body for himself, as he had against Pyrrha. At once the demonic figure looked towards Indigo, mouths opening wide to send flames screaming into the air, but Indigo simply lifted one wing to defend herself and sent a tide of blades from the other to rip the giant into a hundred pieces.

As said giant was completely composed of fire, it didn't make a whole lot of difference and Suryasta merely drew them back into his form. His power struck out at anything nearby, such as all the broken wood, and it…well, it fueled the fire, letting him grow. Indigo frowned and struck him again, also to little effect, before turning as if to find me.

And she did, suddenly diving from the air with blades outstretched in either hand. She closed the distance to fight close, likely because it would be safer for me if anything went wrong with her ludicrously lethal Semblance, and shattered the ground as she landed beside me, swords whirling towards me even as they turned to shadows to make sure nothing was harmed. Though I suspected they wouldn't kill me any more than Carmine's blows had, house rules meant we were out at one 'lethal' blow, which they certainly counted as, and I'd lose on a direct hit.

Even so, I didn't flinch, shedding the illusion as I stepped forward. My hands were wrapped in claws as Bai Hu slid over me and shifted forward until my upper body was almost parallel to the ground and I Lunged towards her as she brought her weapons to bare, angles of attack bright in my mind. As one impossibly thin blade rose, I slipped a hand fearlessly into the fray and pushed her wrist to the side with gentle force. The other kept coming for my throat, but with the opening made by the first block I slid in and caught her arm with my own. At once, her wings exploded into a rain of general lethality, every bit of which came rushing towards me, but the moment I'd blocked the second attack, Bai Hu rose from his overlaid position and reached for my sister's throat. As fast as I was moving, I'd get to her before her wings got to me—

But not before her sneak attack struck me in the back, I noted. The moment I revealed myself, I'd felt it—a strange movement in the air above my shadow. I suppose it shouldn't have been surprising that her ability allowed her to sense such things, which must have been how she'd found me while I was hidden, but the moment I began to close in, there was a major reaction. The moment I attacked her, my shadow betrayed me and exploded upwards into something very much like a coffin.

I watched it all happen out of the back of my neck but didn't stop my attack. As the black pit drew nearer, I closed my eyes for a moment and shed my secondary illusion—and the light of Aureola came flooding forth in a fountain of light.

My shadow vanished.

Claws closed around Indigo's throat.

Everything stopped.

"It looks like it's my win," I said, drawing an illusion over myself to hide the light again. This close to me, Indigo had been forced to turn away and shut her eyes in the face of it, and even then the sheer brightness must have hurt her through her eyelids. Even so, she nodded once and her shadows faded as she slowly opened her eyes again, blinking fast.

"Yeah," She said, smiling lopsidedly. "You really have gotten stronger, Jaune."

I returned her smile with one of my own and released her throat.

"Any last words?" I asked playfully, making her snort before nodding and drawing in a deep breath.

"Alas, I am slain!" Indigo shouted to the heavens before falling to the ground. At once, her shadow moved, drawing itself protectively around her like a—

Like a blanket.

Indigo closed her eyes and seemed half way to sleep in about a second.

"You know," I whispered. "That's not normally how people die either, Indigo."

Her lips twitched but she said nothing, shadow carrying her swiftly away. Watching her leave, all I could do was shake my head and chuckle before turning away.

Three down, I thought as I looked in the direction of the others. And given the amount of light coming from that direction, more were about to follow.

Removal

I moved in swift silence, drawing another illusion around me as I floated into the air. I kept my distance, since my eyes eliminated any need to get close, and simply observed for a moment.

At the moment, it was two vs. two—Olivia, Violet, Shani, and Bianca fighting in a section of the city that had seen better days, counting most of the War. Violet flickered around the battlefield, staying outside of Olivia's range except when she needed to withdraw briefly. Each time she stopped, she looked a bit less human, until all that remained of her flesh was the skin around one luminous eye and small patches of skin on an arm, a leg, and her midsection; the rest of her was brightly glowing light.

It was obvious from just a glance that her main target here was Shani who, though possessing pretty tremendous destructive power in her own right, wasn't a good match for Violet or Olivia. Her ability to accelerate matter within an area of space was obscenely dangerous, especially with a line of sight range, but though it vaporized most of what it hit, the narrow blasts she was using now would never hit Violet, much less penetrate Olivia's layered defense. Like Bianca and Indigo, her power wasn't very well suited to friendly spars, so she had to hold back a great deal—more than the rest of us, I mean, because of the risks of seriously hurting someone if something went wrong. We all could inflict horrific injuries upon others if we had reason to, but some of us were better at not doing so then others.

When your superpowers were disintegration beams, shooting doom lasers, and wielding absurdly sharp blades, there's only so much you can do to hold back the lethality. In a fight like this, those of us who could fine-tune our powers to the occasion had a huge advantage over those who couldn't.

Still, she was doing fairly well, considering; she hadn't been defeated by Violet outright, after all, and so she was able to keep Olivia that much more preoccupied. Shifting my vision a bit down the spectrum, I saw the touches of heat surrounding her, shifting the course of the lightning ever so slightly as the leaders came near. She couldn't control the paths the way I did, but she could set nature up to take its course and cross her fingers. Eventually her luck would run out—as luck was wont to do—but she wasn't down yet, at least. From the way she and Bianca were fighting, their plan was to exhaust Olivia enough that she'd forfeit and then probably have Bianca focus on defeating Violet.

It was their best option, I acknowledged, but that didn't change that it had its problems. Problems they couldn't really do anything about, granted, but if Olivia went down, there would be nothing holding Violet here and since she had—despite the element of chance involved where the landing was concerned—a huge speed advantage over all of us, she'd be free to lead us all on a merry chase as we tried to catch her. Admittedly, she was almost as untouchable with Olivia's support and potentially far more dangerous, but the fact remained that within the bounds of the spar and with the limits on anything that might actually hurt one another, Violet could easily get away if she wanted to.

That made her the priority target, I decided as I continued to scan the battle field. Followed by Shani and Olivia, who I was confident I could defeat fairly easily on these terms. But how to do it? What did I have to work with? The playing field itself was fairly level—or, rather, leveled—but I had a few options. With the advantage of surprise, I could turn their own power against them, using Shani and Bianca's blasts, Olivia's territory, and even Violet's movements. But for this…

Remaining invisible, I sighed slightly and nodded to myself. Though the risks were fairly negligible given how careful they were being, I didn't want Violet to get hit by one of Shani or Bianca's attacks, so I'd just have to do it myself. No, more than that, I'd take a note out of Indigo's book and milk the element of surprise for all I could. I began to gather my power, first in my right hand, then my left, and finally in both of Bai Hu's. The first attack was a Thunderbolt while the rest were Magic Missiles, but I held on to each and charged them. As I did, I watched Olivia's sphere of control and paid close attention to how attacks moved through it, drawing on my own experience with it as I did so. With other parts of my face, I focused simultaneously on Bianca raining light down from above, on Shani unleashing her vaporizing blasts, and especially on Violet's movements. As I did, I silently began counting down.

When I counted to ten, I drew my right hand back and prepared to throw. With several different 'eyes', I patiently watched as Violet's Aura fluctuated, spinning off energy throughout the Electromagnetic Spectrum—and recognizing the signs, I threw, hurling the fully-charged Thunderbolt as hard as I could. It flew into a pre-marked spot on Olivia's sphere and turned sharply to the left, hurling into the ground about ten meters away. Within the projectile, Vulturnus immediately reached out and an upward streamer reached high into the air, course set right for one of the stepped leaders that appeared as Violet unraveled again.

Before the Thunderbolt had even landed, I hurled the Magic Missile I held in my left hand along the same path, adjusting the angle only slightly as I threw. When lightning struck and Violet's form came back together, it flew past her, missing by perhaps a fourth of a meter. When it hit the ground behind her, however, the charged shot blew another trench in the already ragged battlefield. Expressionless, if only because she no longer had much of a face to make expressions with, Violet looked over her shoulder and made a static-filled sound.

Without even waiting to see if the first attack worked, I moved onto the next target, hurling both of my remaining Magic Missiles with all my might. The first arced high over Olivia's field and crashed into the ground like a bomb right next to Shani, but the second was tossed straight at it. By the time the last shot was fired, two more Missiles were in my human hands and I angled them to collide with the first at two different places. Accelerating as the attacks left my hands, four more appeared in my grasp and were in the air fast enough to just barely be behind the first three, and the seven shots hit with less than a tenth of a second between them. Within Olivia's territory, the attacks went mad, smashing into one another perhaps two dozen times with no seeming rhyme or reason—but in mere moments, the first Missile, the one that I'd charged, shattered the ground at Olivia's feet.

For a moment there was silence. Then, a sigh and two groans. Bianca stopped her attack and hung quietly in the air as I Lunged across the intervening space and made my appearance.

"Surprise attack," I said maturely as I lifted a hand and pointed at my three sisters in turn. "You know the rules; you lose, you lose, you lose."

Olivia and Violet rolled their eyes but glanced at each other and took a seat, looking tired.

"Tch," Shani said, looking put out. Maybe it was because of how she'd had to hold back or her lackluster showing because of it—but she didn't argue. She did, however, mutter under her breath. "I barely got to blow anything up…"

"Beacon's still standing, if you don't have anything better to do," I informed her. "You guys might want to move somewhere else regardless, just in case. I'd tell you to head back to the house, but, well, somebody destroyed it."

Looking up, I made my expression prim.

"Bianca," I said mildly.

Floating downwards, she snorted, the sound carrying an odd reverberation to it.

"Bitch, please," She replied. "You're just jealous I got to it first; you'd have wrecked it in that tidal wave or earthquake anyway."

I flashed a smile at that and shrugged at her mildly.

"Yeah, probably," I agreed. "Still, you're lucky my memory's so good, because we're going to show up wherever we leave Naraka. You wouldn't want to pop into some poor guy's house, would you?"

"Would never happen," She denied. "I can fly, so I'd just go up high enough to avoid any buildings. Might show up in the newspapers as the coming of a beautiful angel, but I'd never end up in someone's house."

I chuckled and shrugged before glancing at Olivia and Violet, who hadn't said anything. Though the former seemed focused on taking deep, steady breaths, Violet didn't seem to have lungs at the moment.

"You okay there, V?" I asked, Observing her silently. She wasn't hurt or even really tired, but she had a status effect called 'The Chariot of Thunder' and it was rated as High.

She glanced at me, the flesh on her face now entirely gone, and nodded once.

"Fine," She said, the words barely intelligible over the interference in her voice. "I'll just need awhile to return to normal."

"It's probably for the best that you stopped," Bianca noted. "A little longer and you'd have needed to regrow everything again."

"Not like I have any plans for the next few days," Violet shrugged, the motion jerky as if her body was snapping from one position to the next. Olivia?"

"Just tired," She said, voice calm. "You all always gang up on me whenever we do this."

The words were spoken in such a way that they would have been a whine if they hadn't been said about five million times. As is, they seemed more like a routine. So did Bianca's response.

"Take it as a sign of respect," The oldest replied. "After that first time, we know better than to let you be."

Olivia made a sound of time-worn displeasure in the back of her throat, but after a minute, she closed her eyes and she and Violet began to float into the air, another, smaller sphere forming around them. Evidently, they'd stay and watch.

Nodding to them in acknowledgement, I glanced at Bianca and then looked around.

"The city's looking pretty absent," I noted.

"Dad would appreciate the general mayhem," Bianca agreed with the unspoken statement. "And no one even got hurt."

I nodded, smiling slightly.

"I still need to talk to you about something," I continued. "But it can wait until after if you want to keep going."

"What's the score?"

"I've got four and Indigo has two," I replied. "No one else has any."

Bianca shrugged.

"I think we've proven what we set out to," She mused. "But I wouldn't mind testing you a little bit. On three?"

I nodded and thought she might have been smiling.

"Three," She said and a blast of light promptly flung me high in the air.

The first attack tossed me over what would have been several nearby buildings, if not for, you know, us. More than that, it hurled me high over them, as if I were a bullet shot from a gun, the sheer force of the blast carrying me into the distance. Pressure and weight weren't generally words I would associate with light, but the bright power that came rushing from my sister's fingers and hands was more than light, deeper then it. Even as it heated my Adamant skin, I looked into it and through it, to the shining hole in space that had replaced a forefinger of my sister's hand—and yet there was something to it I couldn't understand any more now than I had when she'd first shown it to me. I wouldn't go so far as to say the light that tossed me several hundred meters into the air was alive, but it was…I don't know. It was more than most things were, in a way I couldn't explain beyond that.

It was hard to truly focus on the intriguing aspects of the sight when it was tossing me around, however, so I took a moment to organize my thoughts and shoved it to the periphery of my mind. Gathering my power, I pulled myself to the ground with another Gravity Crash, leaving the beam of light to continue unimpeded as the ground shattered beneath my feet. Through the skin of my arms and face, I immediately caught sight of Bianca as she rose swiftly into the air—and I could tell from how she moved that she was somehow certain of exactly where I was. As the increased effects of gravity faded from around me, I tried to dodge, but against an attack that moved at the speed of light…well, it worked about as well as you might expect.

Another blast of light hammered me downwards, but this time, at least, I was a bit more prepared for it—and it came from above, rather than the front. Despite my strength and defensive enhancements, I didn't weigh significantly more than I appeared to and so neither of those things kept me from being thrown around by forces unless I could properly leverage them to the task. From this position, I could at least stand against the onslaught as the crater around me widened and I was pushed further and further down, and so I forced myself to rise, lifting my arms against the blast. Bai Hu rose with me, a pair of Flare's gathering in both of his hands and flying immediately towards Bianca, expanding into massive blasts of fire as they went.

They were about as effective on my sister as I expected, which was to say 'not at all.' They came into contact with her form and she didn't even twitch as the fire flowed past—or maybe even through—her body. Bai Hu kept up the attack, palming Magic Missiles, Thunderbolts, and even attempting a Gravity Crash, but none of the attacks seemed to affect the altered space that composed her body, at least not enough to matter.

That's how she was flying, I thought. Normal forces like gravity simply didn't affect her as much when her entire form was shifted.

Interesting. I'd noticed that her power was similar—and dissimilar—to Raven's in that it seemed to create some kind of gateway. The difference, from what I could tell, was that Bianca made said gates from her own body and they could only go to one place. Bianca hadn't seemed to really know where and neither did I, but given what little I knew about Malkuth Theory, I couldn't help but wonder if they were connected. At the very least, however, it seemed to give her a lot of resistance to many forms of attack, by simple virtue of being absent. Attacks seemed to pass through her body as if it were an open doorway, doing little harm as it passed through.

The question was, how little? How far did this defense of hers extend? Neither fire nor electricity had worked and the Magic Missile had passed through her hand like it was nothing, but I knew my sister wasn't invincible—I'd seen the injuries to prove it, after all, though her power had grown greatly since then. But assuming that she still had vulnerabilities of some kind, how did I exploit them?

I suppose I could try to outlast her. Though the amount of Aura she was using seemed wholly out of proportion with the results, she wasn't burning Aura to do this. Even though we had only been fighting for a matter of minutes, a great deal of her Aura was gone. In theory, I could play this defensively and wait for her to run out of power—assuming she didn't notice what I was doing, change tactics, escalate by making a somewhat larger gateway, or simply get bored, which all seemed rather silly to assume.

I could also try crawling underground and escaping her notice that way. I wasn't entirely certain if that would hide me from whatever method seemed to alert her to my location and the sheer destructive power of her attacks might unearth me, but I could try to wait her out that way. If she wasn't fighting, however, it would take a long time—and more to the point, it would be rather boring. This fight wasn't just about winning, it was about proving something.

So to that end, I stood my ground and let Bianca's destructive power continue to rain down upon me, taking a moment to let my power gather. Through the light, I saw Bianca uncurl a second finger, doubling the force she was unleashing upon me in the process, but it wasn't enough to make me back down. With Kronos around my neck and my defenses layered, a half-hearted attack like this wouldn't knock me down—it barely even seared my skin, which was a negligible wound as I was now. In Bai Hu's hands, I gave my power form, shifting and altering the Searing Light I'd used against Conquest into something greater before letting it loose.

A skill has been created through a special action! Continuous manipulation of mana has created a skill of unbound elemental power, 'Plasma Cannon.'

As Bianca rained light down upon me, I returned the favor with an attack that turned the air between us into plasma, buying time to work on a hunch. While it was far from a rule, people could have Semblances that were similar to those of their parents, owing—presumably—to the fact that people themselves could be similar to their parents, in a number of ways. Even beyond genetic traits, after all, the people who raise you can pass on a lot of things; beliefs, goals, grudges, preferences, and a lot of other stuff. At the same time, children could easily be nothing like their parents and have wildly different Semblances.

In my family, the latter would seem to be more of the case—though there were occasional similarities, their powers were very different from both Mom and Dad's. However, if you looked at them side by side, there were certain patterns; while Violet's power didn't seem very much like Dad's telekinesis, it was very similar to Bianca's power, and both might have been influenced, if very distantly, by Mom's phase shifting power. Shani and Sienna's powers were just aimed in different directions and focused on changing things at a small scale to achieve very large effects. A lot of it was just guesswork, but I suspected there was something there.

However, though there might have been vague ties to my parents, the ties between my sisters seemed a lot firmer, especially the ones born close to each other. Bianca and Violet especially had a lot of striking similarities in how their powers worked—and Violet was always the one sent to keep Bianca preoccupied in fights like these. I wasn't sure if that was because there was some underlying relation in how their powers interacted or if the forces they wielded affected one another, but there was something there, which told me…

I had no idea what. Though the effects were vaguely similar, the forces involved were vastly different—as different as, well, light and lightning. I knew from Violet that forces that could affect the powers they wielded could theoretically affect them, but even then, Bianca and Violet expressed their powers very differently. For instance, though Bianca was promptly consumed by the wave of plasma, it didn't affect her as it might have Violet's lightning. She didn't seem hurt by the attack, though she at least seemed to notice it and raise a hand to touch it as it passed over her. Since neither lightning nor plasma seemed to work on her, I could safely rule out both of those as reasons why Violet could oppose her, which left…what? Dimensional shenanigans?

It would make sense, in a way, given that Bianca had pretty much turned her body into a dimensional doorway. It raised several rather interesting questions about some of the injuries she'd sustained in her career as a hunter which bore looking into but…how did that help me here and now? At the moment, Bianca and I were locked in a stalemate, where I couldn't hurt her and she couldn't meaningfully harm me without using more power then she would like to in a spar. I had a few skills that directly affected dimensions, most notably Naraka and Trespasser, but I was a bit leery of using them given the horrific consequences that might arise if Naraka were to shatter here and now.

Beyond that, my gravity attacks hadn't worked, not that I'd expected them to with the relatively negligible force I could muster for them. While enough gravity could do all sorts of strange things, doing stuff like affecting light or space in a major way involved energy that was quite a bit beyond my means.

What options did that leave me then? Not a lot of good ones, but…

"Now's as good a time to test it as any," I said to myself as I looked over my shoulder. I nodded back with my other head before stopping myself, realizing that behavior was a tad odd, but curled Bai Hu's claws and gathered my power yet again.

Focusing on light was rather easy, given the circumstances, but though my power immediately moved to guide my metaphorical hands, the complexity of the process quickly became apparent. Imagine white light passing through a prism and breaking into a myriad of colors—and then imagine the process happening in reverse. I gathered four elements and held them firmly but separately in my mind, before bringing them together as one. No, more than that, it was like I was returning them to some prior form, putting back together the broken pieces of a puzzle. For just a moment, I thought I understood why the skill that allowed this had been called Unity.

And then I felt the thing I had created take on a life of its own. For a moment, I felt light shine from my eyes and mouth, glowing beneath my skin as it pushed against the inside of me and strove to get loose. I tried to give it form through Bai Hu's hands, but as I did, I felt him sink into me and return to the whole. The light around me, from both Bianca's attack and the Sun's light, dimmed as one, as if some massive beast had taken a deep breath and sucked in the luminance in the process. I felt power course through my veins like fire, yet it didn't hurt or burn. It just flowed and grew, from the crown of my head to the bottom of my feet, or maybe the other way around.

My heart beat once to the pulse of that flow—and another heart beat in return, but it wasn't my own.

I realized then, in a way that even I couldn't truly grasp, that I was putting this power to a use that was almost unworthy of it in its simplicity, just as I realized that I needed to get this power out of me before it broke loose.

Exhaling a breath that I didn't remember taking—would swear I hadn't taken—I let that power rise up to my hands, pushing back against Bianca's attack like it wasn't even there and releasing my creation.

A skill has been created through a special action! Continuous manipulation of mana has created a skill of supreme elemental power, 'Lux Aeterna.'