Chapter 149: Victory March

Chapter 149: Victory March

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattles publishment at threads/rwby-the-gamer-the-games-we-play-disk-five.341621/. Anyway on with the show...err read.

Victory March

As I unleash the wave of destruction, Finnsomewhat predictablyteleports out of the way. More specifically, he teleports about thirty meters straight up and just as quickly vanishes again, treating disconnected points in space like they were stepping stones.

But that wasn't an option for Albus. Instead, he had no choice but to bear the brunt of the assault, crouching and lifting his hemispheric shield above him. The force of the blast is still enough to smash itand himabout half a meter into the ground, but he bears the attack with nothing more than a grunt.Follow current novels at novelhall.com)

I didn't stop there, though. Reaching out with more of my power, I didn't bother trying to force my way through the shield, deeming it too annoying to bother when there were easier solutions. Most of the time, it was only a matter of additional power and focus to slid my will through physical mattersuch as lifting a marble within a sealed jarbut things were more complicated when it came to things protected by Aura or powered by Dust. As a result, I couldn't simply slip through Albus's shield.

But, then, I didn't really need to. It was only a hemispheric shield, after alland against me, noting but a complete defense was enough.

My projected will touched Albus's shield and spilt over it like a liquid rather than the usual solid blow. It slid across its surface and down its sides until it touched the ground, at which point it drove itself deep into the dirt on all sides of the shield. Pushing it deep into the ground, I then had the force turn and converge into a smooth platform about a tenth of a meter beneath his feet, incasing him on all sides. Maintaining that force cost me somewhat, but nothing I couldn't spare and I had him closed in, all I needed to do was focus on a different image.

Within the supposedly protective bubble of Albus's sphere, the ground exploded as a sudden forest of spearsinvisible but for the disturbances they caused in the dirt and dusterupted towards him from every direction. For my part, I felt each attack as if I were being stabbed, but it seemed like as fair trade as Albus, caught off-guard and not expecting an attack from below, was literally stabbed, forty-seven times from as many angles. Sure, his Aura prevented any of the attacks from penetrating, but it cost him for than it cost me, even if it did feel like someone was playing a literal game of tug-of-war with my heart. HP was no object to me, so long as at least one point remained.

Still, that was no reason to let up on him, now was it?

Pinned in place by the steady pressure of dozens of Psychokinetic spears, Albus still found the power to grunt as his feet began to rise from the ground. Pushing down on his shield from one direction, I also pushed up on the platform beneath him from the other, crushing him against his own shield. As he did, more Psychokinetic 'fluid' began to flow up the underside of his force field, and more spikes erupted from it, driving into him from every angle even as several, from both above and below, snaked around his arms, legs, and chest to try and keep him in place. Albus grit his teeth as he was tied down and slowly crushed, but when his mouth opened, it was only to release a snarl.

And then he began to glow, blue energy rising from his skin. I blinked at the familiar sight in surprise even as it rose into a cloud around him, pushing back or disrupting the spikes and bonds. I could the Dust in both his sword and shield aiding the process, butwithout a doubt, that was something like my Aureola.

I couldn't deny I was a bit impressed. Not wholly surprised since all of the skills I possessed were, at least in theory, learnable by others, butstill. It wasn't something I'd expected.

With the forces that had entrapped him being momentarily kept at bay by his Aura, Albus shifted, careful to keep all of his limbs within the veil of blue light that surrounded him. Lifting his sword carefully, he slid it into a hatch on the side of his shield and the light within it flared brightly, doubling and redoubling, almost as if

Almost as if it was the key to the ignition.

In a moment, the glow of the shield spread into the force field and it expanded into a full sphere, surface darkening until it was opaque, at least within the spectrum of visible light. In the process, it tore through my Psychokinesis and cut him off from my attacks completely.

Interesting. It seemed he'd been prepared for just such an occasion after all.

Buton the other hand, if all he could do was defend, then there was nothing to worry about. In most cases, against most opponents, it might have been a good strategymaintain a solid defense and allow his opponents to run themselves into the ground with the damage they took trying to break through it. But, though the process felt like something was attempting to tear my organs out through my ribcage, the damage from his Semblance that wasn't enough to dissuade me. It just meant I'd have to do this the hard way.

Well, I suppose you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. That in mind, I reached out and snatched up the now rolling sphere, lifting it quickly into the sky. As I did, I rose a bit higher as well, until the lower edge of my Psychokinesis was level with the ground and the upper edge was high in the sky. I lifted the barrier to the latter, supporting it for a brief moment as I focused my powerand then I brought it down with all the force I could muster, casting it towards the earth like a meteor.

Naturally, that's when Finn chose to make his move. While I was focused on Albus and just as an edge of pain slipped past my defenses from the attack, he struck, lining his attack up so perfectly with the warning my Danger Sense gave me about the oncoming damage that I noticed a moment too late when it bleed into a wholly different warning.

He must have been planning this for a while, a part of me mused while the rest of me felt like it was simultaneously being ripped into a million pieces and crushed into a space that was far too small. All those attack from before had been testing my awareness. It wasn't impossible that other Hunters were sensitive enough to threats that they'd managed to dodge his attacks, so it wasn't hard to imagine that he'd been faced with similar problems before. He'd been measuring how fast I was able to respond to danger so he'd be able to time his own attacks to match. After all, my Danger Sense didn't inform me of the nature of the threat, merely its presence; it was up to me to take care of the rest. As he'd proven, it was possible to hide threats amongst each other.

Of course, that was easier said than done, especially against me. It would need to be an attack that get past all of the targets senses and defenses and, more than that, the attacker would need to be able to accurately measure a lot of complex things on the fly. It was likelike timing an attack to the exact moment your opponent blinked. In a gunfight. From a hundred meters away.

I guess you get to be one of the top seniors at Haven by collecting bottle caps, I thought as I collided with the ground hard enough to bouncewhich, honestly, was the least painful part of being telefragged, brief as the experience was, because it fucking hurt. It wasn't just a matter of being thrown away, because that's not what happens. When Finn appeared in the same space as you, it should, logically, blow you to piecesand it tries too. It's just that your Aura kicks in at the last second and squeezes all the pieces together before they can fly apart, literally forcing you to retain shape, and then you get blown away as the alternative to being blown apart, pushed aside as fast as Finn appeared in your place. I wouldn't have been surprised if most of his opponents went down from the sheer pair of the experienceand for those that didn't, well, the cost to one's Aura wasn't particularly kind, either.

Luckily, I was used to painand it was only momentary besides. The Gamer's Body was a hell of drug.

"Ah," I said, shaking my head as I lifted myself to my feet with a thought. In the middle of a deep crater, I saw Albus's shield flicker several times before going out, but the older boy simply groaned and slowly stumbled to his feet. "Were you worried about Albus, Finn? You didn't seem to like each other much, buthm. Are you two the type that are really close despite how much you argue? I've got a friend like that."

Albus slammed back into the ground, driving into it with such force that it shattered around him and drove him into a long, deep trench. Finn twitched once as the sound reached him, teleporting before he even finished doing so, and then the area around us shifted as Albus' power faded.

I didn't follow up just yet, deciding to play defensively until more of my power returned. For several seconds, I simply hovered, waiting patiently even as I saw Finn reappear. His teleportation was more efficient than my Shedding, but I both had more power and was able to regain it at a faster rateto say nothing of the fact that he'd been in pretty much constant motion since the fight began. He was getting tired and I could see him searching my face for sighs of similar exhaustion.

I showed him nothing, waiting in silence.

Finn panted three times, grit his teeth and vanished, reappearing about ten centimeters in front of me, trying to shock me into attacking him and burning more energy. Instead, I continued to hover placidly, power returning with each passing moment. When he swung his sword, trying to conserve energy for the rest of the fight, I merely drifted back and let it flick by me. With a snort, he was suddenly behind me and I turned my body to hover parallel to the ground, letting the blade pass above me, before continuing the turn to hang upside-down as he stepped to the side and aimed a downward swing at me. I watched the sword cut into the grass a few inches from my eyes before rotating to the side and coming to my feet as he drew the blade from the dirt.

Finally, I put my feet on the ground as he came at me with a wide swing and simplystepped into it. When I did, the gleaming steel of his blade was perhaps a centimeter from the side of my next, but I kept walking, moving in the direction of the strike such that it was always just a hair's breadth from my throat. I walked until the swing ended and the turned to face Finn, the world slowed around me.

The message was clearhe couldn't keep up with my speed. While teleporting, it was true that he was able to cover ground faster than I could, but within the bounds of normal space, there was no contest. I knew it and now he did to. The only chance he had was to pit his teleportation against my raw speed and win.

I saw him pause for a moment as that sank in, but then his lips pursed, he cracked his neck, and

Sliding as I finished my enhanced movement, I attacked my afterimage again, but he vanished almost the moment he appeared, guessing my direction. Abruptly, I was being torn apart and crush and blown away, but I merely caught myself in the air and landed. He pursued and I evaded, sliding to the side this time, and then up, and then a random direction each time. I didn't set a pattern, didn't do anything he could guess at a glance, but flew through the battlefield, this time moving in three directions, and for a second there were enough of meof my short-lived imagesto fill a parade.

And then he stumbled, simple exhaustion catching up to him, and I was on him in an instant. The first attack managed to clip him before he teleported away, and three attacks later I caught him with a battering-ram to the chest. Shortly after, he began taking more hits, each taking away from his Aura and slowing him down even more. As he did, I began to catch him when he paused between teleports, blasting him back, knocking him down, and just generally smacking him around. It was over and we both knew it, but I didn't need to ask to know that he'd fight to the bitter end and so I would too.

So when he appeared in front of me, already moving with impossible speed, I was unsurprised. When the force of his charge blew me back and then fully across the battlefield, I could safely say I'd seen it coming. And when it ended, when I came to a stop with the point of his sword centimeters from my chest, held away only by the grip my hand had on the blade, I knew what it meant.

Glancing up at the sweaty face of the older boy, I met his eyes.

"I win," I said quietly, pushing back the blade and then plucking it from his weakened fingers. I let it fall to the side as I rose and it hit the dirt with a soft clang.

Finn panted for several seconds and then nodded, legs finally giving out on him.

"Aye," He said from the ground, lying on his back. "You win."

There was a beat of silence thenand then, someone began to applaude.

"Well done," Cinder said quietly, approaching at last.

XxXXxX

Jun 1, 2015

Shalist, DtPrince, rysworld and 409 others like this.

Doornag

Doornag

Night Custodian

TeaSpoon said:

In this fight, the opponents got a few good smacks in too. He can be hurt. He can be beaten. How does that say, "I AM YOUR NEW GOD?"

A key factor to remember in regards to how others perceive Jaune: Gamer's Body. To anyone who's not him, it's impossible to tell whether or not any of your attacks are working. The smackdown with the Teacher a couple of chapters shows that Jaune can throw a punch. This fight hammers the point home, while letting the entire school see their strongest students throw everything they've got at him without them making so much as a scratch.