Chapter 76: Hit Box

Chapter 76: Hit Box

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

Hit Box

I lunged forward, rushing across the street with all the speed I could muster. Carmine's monstrous arm flashed across the space between us fast enough to leave bone-white streaks in their wakeif not for my Clairvoyance, I wasn't sure I'd have been able to follow them at all. That speedeven if it was just her arms that were capable of it, that speed was absurd. I moved the moment I sensed danger and it still often cost me an arm and a leg. Literally.

"Any advice?" I asked, voice a tad strained until the pain faded.

I heard Ozpin speaking in my ear, the connection Levant had established still in place. My Air Elemental was stretching herself thinmaybe too thinto cover all our bases, but at least for now she was holding. Maybe it was the boost from Grimm Slayer, maybe it was just luck, but for now she was managing.

"Carmine Cordelia," He recited. "Forty-three years old, she's been a Huntress since she was twenty. As you're probably aware by now, her Semblance works similar to your mother's with several differences and limitations. First and foremost, it transforms matter into a gaseous state and only a gaseous state. Furthermore, not only is it dependent on contact, but only the immediate area of contact is converted, giving her a much smaller range of effect than your mother. Despite these limitations, however, her ability is made extraordinarily deadly by one thing; it can be used on anything. Neither a protective Aura nor the dark nature of the Grimm prevents her from using her power, assuming she can touch the target directly or else hit them with a weapon she has channeled her Aura through. It takes time for her to entrench the effect in the latter case, but as you might imagine, the results tend to make up for it."

The White Tiger of the West reached out with a long arm and pulled me to the ground hard enough to send a jolt of shock up my legs and shatter the ground beneath my feet. Even so, I didn't hesitate before leaping forward again. Despite the damage, despite the pain, despite the sheer, horrific risk, I knew there was no way through this for me except by pushing forward. Nonetheless, it was still somewhat alarming when Carmine scythed my legs out from under me, leaving me with the knowledge that if not for the Gamer's Body I'd have long since been torn to piecesbut I didn't let simple things like that stop me.

However, I did note that Carmine didn't seem to have any trouble channeling her Aura through her twisted arm. Had Conquest mutated it specifically to take advantage of her abilities? That was a worrisome thought, if not unexpected. As it was, despite my Adamant skin, despite my layered and boosted defense, each and every lash of her arm sheered away brutal chunks of my HP barand for all that it didn't seem that way, I knew she was holding back. If not for Grimm Slayer and whatever Conquest had in store for me, I'd probably be long dead by now.

Oh well. I wasn't and that's what matteredwell, that and what I could learn from the experience.

"Heat?" I grunted as I leapt into the air, landed upside-down on an invisible platform, slammed back into the ground with a mighty lunge and snatched myself up in the arms of the White Tiger of the West. I curled myself into a tight ball to make my physical body easy to carry and held myself close as I jumped between two attacks as her sword came into play as well. The White Tiger of the West was momentarily disrupted as it was torn to pieces, but I'd been expecting it and kicked out with my legs to push off from another platform and slam through a third one, slowing just enough to evade an attack in the process. Through it all, I'd survived, with minimal loss of limb, about twenty attacksand all the while, I'd been counting the seconds.

It had been a long time since I'd been on the receiving end of an attack I couldn't follow and react to easily, but that didn't mean I didn't know how to compensate. After all, I was usually on the other side of this equation and people sometimes reacted to me. Even if the individual attacks themselves were too fast for me to follow directly, I could still make accurate guesses knowing her reach, the number of attacks in a given period of time, and the direction of each lash. Each attack had a starting point and ending point and if one attack flowed into the next, I could use that information to track the pattern of attacksor even guide it, if I was willing to sacrifice a limb here and there as bait.

For example, if I jumped up to dodge a horizontal sweep, the next attack would come upwards at an angle from whatever side the sweep was headed. If I dodged that by reaching back for the ground, the third attack would slope downwards from the end point of the second attack. Because the attacks came in such quick succession, I could assume that the moment I'd evaded one strike, I'd already be in danger of the next, so it wasn't so much an issue of timing as it was of never hesitating or slowing down and keeping a constant eyeor fourout for deceptions. Adding her blade to the equation was simply a matter of doing that for two different weapons moving independently of one another, each trying to herd me into the other's path. Which wasVisit no(v)eLb(i)n.com for the best novel reading experience

Pretty goddamn hard to do in theory and a hell of a lot harder to do in practice. But did I complain? No.

"In a way," Ozpin said after a moment, during which I lost a lot of body parts. "Much like your mother's ability, it's complicatedwhile the shift in state is not caused directly by an increase in temperature, it is accompanied by one as the matter rises to whatever temperature it would normally exist in a gaseous state at. The distinction is rather semantic in most cases, but I assume you're asking if a resistance to fire would confer partial or complete immunity, to which I'd answer 'Probably not.' However, there does seem to be a correlation between the melting point of the material affected and the amount of Aura Carmine must spend to vaporize it; I'd hypothesize she has a greater difficulty affecting your Adamant skin than she might normal human flesh, though I could not say how much so."

Carmine swung her arm at waist level, apparently aiming to cut me in two; I was already in midair, sensing the motion coming. I landed on all four of the White Tiger's legs, curling claws around the edge of a platform I landed on the bottom of before her sword, swung mere moments after her arm, cut through all four of the spectral limbs. My physical body was already out of the way, pulled to safety by the tail that curled around my waist and threw me to the ground. I landed on my feet, rolled like a pro, and came back up ready to leap forward, putting my body parallel to the ground as a whip-sword passed above me and an elongated arm of bone below. I rolled again as I landed, the renewed White Tiger rising around meand saw Carmine land from a jump of her own, perhaps five meters from where she'd been before.

Shit, I thought as I tried to compensate, mentally rewriting all the moves I'd predicted to compensate for a change in the source's location, but there wasn't enough time. In the end, I barely had enough time react to the fact that I was in danger and I tried to jump back in the hopes of keeping the distance between us the same.

It was the wrong move, I chastised myself an instant later. It wasn't just a matter of distance; there was a change in elevation on this side of the street, Carmine was crouched, the entire pattern had changed because she'd movedI had enough time to regret not doing something else before her arm passed through my left elbow, my chest, and my right forearm at the same time her sword cut through both of my knees. For just a moment, I felt myself falling is six distinct pieces before it faded and I was running forward again.

"I'll take your word for it," I grunted, four eyes darting as I tried to take in the whole scene. I'd given up five meters for nothing. It wasn't enough to keep track of both weapons, I had to keep an eye on Carmine's location at all times as well. But Levant was already busyI could feel her layering protection around Ren and Nora as well as keeping the latter out of harm's way as Keppel launched spikes of black-tipped ice at her. Levant was altering the trajectories of the projectiles and occasionally moving Nora completely out of the way while she bombarded the taken Hunter with her grenade launcher. Beyond that, part of her was elsewhere keeping my mother safe, several other parts were tied up providing air to the civilians we'd placed underground, and she was running my entire communications network. Could I afford to distract her and have her monitor Carmine for me, too? Or should I split her again, reducing her power in other areas? If any of those things should fail

But damn it; with my Elementals so tied up, my senses had been cut down to the high single digits and I didn't like it. I felt half-blind not being constantly aware of everything going on around me, but I couldn't spare anyone right now. Suryasta and Vulturnus were assailing Lei Hui with a constant display of luminous power that the elder man just seemed to bear silently as he and Ren seemed to dance around one another. Whatever power Ren's grandfather hadand he must have had quite a bit if he knew Xuan Wu style well enough to teach itit was further enhanced by his new exoskeleton, to the point that he could just brush of a downpour of thunder and flame. All it seemed to be was a distraction to him.

Even so, it was a distraction that seemed to allow Ren to keep just a step ahead of his grandfather, gliding out of the way with measured motions. When blows came too near, he seemed to brush them just slightly asideand yet he never truly touched his grandfather. The light of his aura gathered in his hands, a barrier that prevented true contact, and he simply nudged the fists ever so slightly out of the way, remaining unharmed.

For now. Despite that fact that he hadn't received a single wound thus far, I could see the pace combat wearing on him. Keeping up with his grandfather like this, putting up the occasional barrierit was costing him in terms of Aura. As it was, Lei Hui didn't need to do anything special, he simply needed to keep up the pressure and not do anything reckless or stupidRen would run out of Aura eventually and that would be that. He was living on borrowed time.

So was Nora, really. I could see that she had huge power, but she was the only one of us who couldn't risk approaching her opponent. With the risk of infection forcing her to keep her distance, she was limited to her grenadeswhich, in fairness, caused parts of Keppel's golem body to crumble and fall away. On the other hand, Keppel didn't seem to have any problem repairing his body, so how much that mattered was in the air. At this rate, it was only a matter of time until she ran out of grenades.

I needed to do something fast.

"Weaknesses?" I asked roughly, keeping my eyes peeled as Carmine stopped and retracted her weapons. After a moment of hesitation, I stopped as well, pretty sure this was a trap. What I wasn't sure of was whether it was a trap to make me stop moving or not.

"Compared to her offensive power, Carmine's defensive abilities have always been much more limited; something her teammates generally compensated for, especially her husband. If alone and forced to do so, she will generally try to use the former to compensate for the later, vaporizing attacksshe believes that the best defense is a good offense, essentially. However, beyond that, her defense is otherwise fairly average."

I glanced over Carmine's completely and heavily armored form.

"And assuming that's no longer the case?"

I said nothing, knowing what she saw. A writhing, glowing tail wrapped around my left leg, curling down into a puddle by my feet. From there, trails of sparks hopped around the battlefield, leaping in steady streams from puddle to puddle. My Tiger appeared at the edge of the dry area she'd created and took a pair of deliberately slow steps before flickering and reappearing five meters away. It continued its slow pace, vanishing and reappearing every heartbeat or so until it formed behind me. It paced beside me, claws curling as its eyes remained trained on Carmine.

"No matter," She said after a moment, edges of a growl in her tone. "I can destroy them as easily as anything else."

I looked around with my physical eyes and sniffed before cracking my neck.

"Is it getting humid in here or is it just me?" I asked, one finger swirling in the air. As it passed through the mist, water gathered, a thin streamer trailing behind it like a banner. I smiled as her eyes followed it. "With this much moisture in the air, it's not hard to gather it back into water. You vaporize stuff, but you can't destroy it; all that water is still here. And someone like me can do all sorts of things with it."

A sphere of water formed above my fingers and I hurled it like a water balloon into the dry area she had created. It landed just past the edge and my Tiger flickered to the puddle it created, just a step closerand then vanished as she lashed out at it. Back at my side, it held up its hands, large spheres of water gathering above each as it lowered itself in a crouch.

"I can gather it, control it, use it," I continued as if nothing had happened. I held up both my hands as fists, looking from one to the other and then back to her. "If needed, I can even"

I uncurled my fingers slowly to show her what they'd been graspinga pair of Dust Crystals, one yellow, one blueand then held the latter close to my chest.

"Make more of it," I finished. "Enough games, Conquest. You won't kill me and you can't beat me without doing so, so stop playing games."

All at once, the signs of frustration and pain simply flowed out of Carmine's body and she gave a rolling laugh. Beneath her mask, she was probably smiling.

"Stop playing games?" She asked. "But I thought you liked games, Jaune? I used to buy them for you for your birthdaydidn't you say Void Eater was your favoritest game ever?"

The words were mocking, but if she was expecting a reaction, she was disappointed. I stared at her impassively.

"We both know how this will end." I said quietly.

"You're right," She said brightly. "We do. So what? You want me to spare your feelings and give up? Or maybe you'd like me to tell my boys to leave your little friends alone? Because I'm sorry, sweetie, but part of growing up is learning you can't always have what you want."

"If you really do know," I continued, tone unchanging. "Why?"

"You stupid kidhaven't you realized by now that I don't give a fuck?" She asked, bright tone equally unwavering. "But fine, if you want a reason, I'll give you onejust this once, because I'm so nice."

She leaned forward slightly, eyes focused on mine.

"Because the look in people's eyes when they realize they can't save the ones they love makes me happy," Conquest said simply.

I heard a scream behind me and clenched my fists.

"There," She said. "That's the look. Is it the girl, out of ammunition? Or is the grandson finally slowing down? I suppose it doesn't matter either way, does it? They'll both die soon enoughunless you save them. But can you? Every second you waste here, they come closer to death. You'll beat me eventually, of course, but it'll take time and you have so little of that right now. You can't afford to waste any of it here, can you? Not with your mom at risk, your dad, your tiny little friends?"

Conquest chuckled.

"You told that boy you'd do everything you could to save his poor grandfather," Conquest said mockingly. "What a nice choice of wordsno guarantees. But of course, you can't be sure of anything right now, can you? And that way, you say honestly that at least you did your best, right? It's not your fault you failed. Because you will fail, Jaune, won't you? With time so precious, with us fighting back, with two children fighting for your lives, you don't really have time to come up with a cure do you? Especially not for all of us. And even if you did, who's to say it won't be too late? No, you have to hurry. And even if you do come up with something, we all know who you really care about, don't we? You"

I took a breath and moved, Lunging with all the speed I could muster. Even then, I was pretty sure she could have reacted, done something, but

She didn't. Conquest stood there in Carmine's body, all but inviting me in, and stood stock still as I drove the claws of the Tiger into the biggest crack in her chest, right into her heart.

"I" I began before pausing for just an instant to lift my eyes to hers. But when I spoke again, my voice was steady. "I already know that. I'm sorry, Carmine."

Conquest laughedand cough, gagging slightly on blood as my claws lengthened further.

"Then we'll just call this another person you couldn't save," She breathed and I knew that beneath her mask, she must have been smiling widely even as she died. "Just like you're not going to be able to save your father."

And then, at last, I felt her dieConquest and Carmine both, fading away. As I looked down at her for just a moment, I thought thatI really, really hated Conquest.

Then I turned and ran to help the others.