Chapter 83: Chances

Chapter 83: Chances

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.

Chances

I slammed my hands down on the Tiger's shoulders, tossing myself forward even as he slid back. Our fingers reached for one another and intertwined before he spun, swing my entire body in circle. I gathered power in my free hand and threw it towards my father in a blast of searing white fire and the Tiger hurled me right after it, tail lashing out at the last minute to curl around my ankle. Conquest smashed the fireball aside with an almost contemptuous flick of his hammer before swing it at me with as much speed as Carmine before him, but though the Tiger's tail stretched to draw out my flight, it tightened at the last moment to draw me up short and a blast of wind knocked me down to the ground.Visit no(v)eLb(i)n.com for the best novel reading experience

Winds whipped at me until Levant's touch calmed them, the sheer might of the missed swing such that I had to sink my claws into the ground or else be hurled away. Behind me, the Tiger's body continued to stretch along with one arm, space distorting around the other as it reached into my Inventory and withdrew a blue crystal and with an elongated hand, touched my mother's shin. I knew I needed to draw closer if I wanted any chance of saving my father, but before I did anything for him, she had to be my priority. Because she was my mother, because she was another fighter, because my father would have wanted me toothe reasons went on and on, but they didn't matter. What mattered was that the Tiger moved to save her.

As he healed her, though, I did a push up that knocked me to my feet and held my ground as my father drew a step closer, hammer rising high into the air. I couldn't let Conquest get any closer while my mother was in that state and I couldn't get near her without risking infection, so I had little choice but to stall for time while the Tiger worked. I was all but certain that Conquest wouldn't kill me, anyways. Sure, everything up to that point was apparently fair game, but I was pretty good at walking off injuries.

Still, as that hammer fell, it was hard not to feel like I was about to be crushed. The infection had given me strength, armor, and the sheer physical might of the Grimm, lifting me to even greater heightsbut it had done so to my father, as well. And while I'd been able to create an organic bow for myself to give me a bit more breathing room, if need be, I was still new to the whole combat mutation thing; I had ideas, of course, but putting them into action would probably require more study on my part or at least higher levels in the ability. The thought occurred to me that there should be a number of things I could do to my arms, for example, to increase the strength or speed of my blows; stuff like what Conquest had done to Carmine and my father, perhaps. It might have been modeled after some species of insects or animals which may have given me a baseline to work from if I'd had the right knowledge to work with, but even then, I just wasn't sure how to apply such a thing to the body of a human.

Unfortunately, I had a pretty good feeling that Conquest did. To make matters worse, my father was the only body that had gotten a new title and increased so drastically in level, so it seemed safe to assume that Conquest had done his work on himif Keppel, Carmine, and Tenne were disposable bodies meant to distract and inconvenience me, than my father was Conquest's main body, whether for its own power or its connection to me. Given that fact and my own history fighting against my father, facing his strength head on seemed ill-conceived, mutated body or not. Even with the power of Bai Hu's techniques, my father's blows had sent me flying away in our previous fight and he'd been holding back a lot; I probably wasn't going to win any arm-wrestling contests against him now, either.

But these mutations had done more than make me stronger and tougher. Monstrosity had improved all of my physical abilitiesincluding my speed.

And I'd been pretty damn fast to begin with.

My hand rose from my side to touch the side of the falling hammer and pushed, keeping a steady pressure on the head as it continued down. I turned my body as it neared me, sliding my feet to keep my tail-wrapped ankle facing my mother, and guided the hammer carefully to the ground. It wasn't easy to make even that degree of adjustment, the overwhelming force of my father's arms such that I had to push as hard as I could to move it, but I shifted it cleanly past my body and to the ground.

But even that wasn't enough, in the end.

The ground around me shattered for at least a dozen meters in every direction, a massive wave of force slamming into me hard enough to blow me clean away despite my increased weight. I flew to the side and the tail around my ankle meant that the Tiger was lifted with me. And since he was holding onto my mother's legyou get the idea. Her feet came out from under her, her steadying grip on her sword rendered worthless as the ground all around it broke, and three of us went flying.

The Tiger pulled my mother into his arms and held her close to his chest, slamming back into a vertical pillar of air and then landing on a platform. As a possible source of infection, I needed to stay away, so I dangled over the edge, held upside-down by the Tiger's tail, and swung like a pendulum. On the backswing, however, I was already in motion, eyes narrowing on my father as power gathered in my hands. Fire, Air, and Lightning in BalancePlasma. With the thrust of a hand, I cast my Searing Light out at him as I came back around, the blast pierced through the air.

Conquest leaned forward as he took it in the chest, snarling as he braced himself against it. It made his chest piece glow brightly but seemed to do little else, but I kept up the attack as the Tiger drew three more crystals for my mother, one of each color, and continued to heal herand then suddenly we were falling, a sharp gesture from my father disrupting Levant's hold. I turned the fall into a glide for a moment before he shoved my hand again and caused that to fail as well, but it was enough to ensure that we fell apart from each other rather than in a pile.

"Jaune!" My mother shouted, pushing out of the Tiger's arms and onto her own feet. "What do you need!?"

"Some time and a chance!" I shouted back and she stomped a step forward, snarling in reply. She lifted her sword and leaned forward as if pulling something enormous, putting the whole of her body into the motion even as he Aura began to glow from her skin.

My Searing Light had seemed to do little to Conquest, heating his armor and distracting him briefly. It had hurt him, sure, but little enough especially with his body hard at work repairing any damage he took, and he'd been able to strike back quickly. It wasn't truly surprising, I supposedSearing Light was my first foray into Plasma, after all, something equivalent to a Fireball or a few steps above. I'd need something more than that if I wanted to actually hurt Conquest, but I wasn't sure what.

He lost all semblance of shape, then, and vanished in an arcing flash I saw only through the brand of color it left on my eyes. I felt it though, as his entire body raced back to me and up through my ankle; felt the power enter me, like someone tunneling a path through my body with a focused laseror focused for that one instant, at least, before it proceeded to run havoc through my body. It raced up my leg, Vulturnus leading it on a merry chase that had no end even as he tried to keep the power away from anything that might kill me. I felt muscles seize and sizzle, heard strange pops of pressure, felt the sheer agony of it, and knew more than anything that I needed to get it out. As it was, it was probably only my many resistances that were keeping me alive through this.

I searched for a way out, somehow managing to stay focused as the bolt ran its course. My hand was still lifted, reaching up at the sky from when I tried to calm the storm, but I needed a pathway through the air to guide the electricity. My thoughts raced and I tried to call to Levant but realized a moment later that she was too slow to be of help with my timeframe so sped up. I'd need to think of another way, using what I already had around me. I could try to ground it or use something as a lightning rod, but I had so little time to think with the power coursing through me searing a trail through my body. Already, I could feel it slipping, trying to take a different path through me, and knew I had only a moment to decide. My many eyes to into the world around me as it stood there, stoppedtrees, buildings, my mother, the sky, the plasma, the ground, rubblebut I

The plasma, I thought and then had no more time to think. A blast of plasma flashed out from my hand, a tiny narrow thing that was barely there, and yet Vulturnus raced out of me through it along with all the power I'd taken in. Along the connecting thread I'd made, he rushed towards the column of plasma my mother had shot upwards toward Conquest, leaving me with a flash of mind-blanking pain rushing up the created pillar towards my father.

I felt Vulturnus touch home as a flash of sensation that tore me from my momentary stupor, felt the crash of thunder forming through Levant, and came back to myself as I saw my father get knocked back and begin to fall in slow motion. I felt exhaustion rise in me in that moment, a combination of the enormous power needed to both accelerate time and guide the lightning bolt through both my mother and myself. I could see a sudden slackness in my mother and knew that she was about to fall down and I wanted nothing more than to join her.

But I couldn't. Even if that second of action had taken nearly all my power, I couldn't fall down while my father controlled that storm or he'd just send another bolt our way when he recovered. I had perhaps a second while he was still reeling from the lightning bolt to act and I had to make it count.

So I did, drawing a Dust crystal from my Inventory with each hand and leaping high as I devoured them. I launched myself up, high over the buildings, and kept going, dancing upon platforms of air to reach the clouds. In less than a second I plunged into the storm, fueling myself with another set of Dust crystals as I let my power spread throughout the clouds and felt it. There was enough power in this storm to boggle the mind, hundreds of thousands of kilograms of water, and the potential to let loose with that in countless ways. For a moment, I entertained the thought of turning it against Conquest, contesting his control with my own and angling the sheer power of the storm against him and cast fire from the skiesbut I honestly wasn't sure I could. I could make paths through the air, Elemental connections between heaven and earth that would allow nature to take its course, but wielding this storm, controlling it

Maybe I could do it, I thought. But if I lost controlor if Conquest took control from me or guiding my strikes as I'd done to his

I couldn't risk it, not with so much on the line. All it would take was a single ill-aimed or redirected attack and my mother could die. No, the best thing to do was remove this variable from the playing field altogether.

So I let my Elementals loose. Vulturnus, Xihai, Levant, and even Suryasta rushed out of me, exploding into the storm and making bodies for themselves as they went to work. I didn't wield my power directly against the stormit was too big for that, too heavy to simply crushbut water droplets began to converge, drawn together by bonds and the stirring of wind and the motions of heat. I guided the process, egged it on, and felt, in moments, water washing over me as it fell from the sky in massive sheets. Reactions to the change flashed through the sky, illuminating it from within as redirected power flashed within the storm, through bizarre shadows

My eyes flickered, switching to a different form of sight the instant I recognized something odd in the shadows and strange sensations through the touch of my Elementals. I'd been watching the power of the storm in arrays of light that made the dark clouds glow as if someone had set fire to the sky, but that much energy in motion was nearly blindingand it thus had blinded me, because the simple thought that had never occurred to me that there was more there. In the rush to seize control of the skies and unravel my father's control over it, in the sheer pain and urgency that the lightning bolt had scorched into my very being, I hadn't had the chance to consider the dangerous possibilities.

If my father had control of the stormif he had been in control of the storm since the beginningthen what else might he be doing up here?

As the storm fell away in what seemed like oceans of water, my eyes pierced through the refracted light to see what had been revealed above us.

Spheres. Dozens of crudely shaped spheres that had been hidden in the clouds above.

No, I realized. Not spheres.

Bombs. Bombs my father was so well known forand which had been, now that I thought about it, suspiciously absent from the battle below. All the while, he'd been using his power to craft them, deep in the heart of the storm.

The Thunder, My Hammer, I remembered even as my eyes slid down. I saw Conquest recover his position in the air, halting with his eyes and hands lifted up towards me. Beneath his mask, he must have been smiling.

All around me, the bombs began to fall.