MGM - Chapter 73

Aisha

“Iris to Imp! I repeat, Iris to Imp - do you copy?”

The high-pitched whispering of one Cassie ‘Black’ funneled from Aisha’s wrist device, directly into her headphones. She pressed her finger against the iPod strapped to her bicep, pausing ‘Niggas in Paris’, and tapped the wrist monitor to respond. “Yo, Snake here. Why aren’t you calling me by my given alias, Otto?”

She could practically hear Cassie rolling her eyes.

“This is serious business, dummy, not a Metal Gear mission. I’m not calling you Solid Snake.”

“Shiiit. Then I guess you’re compromised. Solid Snake out.”

“You dummy, wait-!”

The voices of Kanye West and Jay-Z filled her ears again, drowning out the sounds of pattering rain, and Aisha snickered to herself as Cassie and everyone else connected to their private channel immediately forgot about her when she reasserted her power. It shouldn’t have worked, considering the rings, but Shards were apparently fucky like that. With all of them ‘Mind Shielded’, they operated on the same frequency of superpower metaphysical bullshit. It let her play her little pranks with impunity, despite not understanding even a fraction of how it worked..

She wasn’t just being a brat, though - not at all. Not when the stakes were this fucking high. No, she just wanted to keep her focus completely on the matter at hand, because God only knew what potential bullshit the S9 had in store for her here, in this grimy ass alleyway in the Northern Docks, and this was Cassie’s third time checking up on her in the past five fucking minutes. She loved the older teen, but holy shit did she worry too much.

The weight of Muramasa bounced against her back with each step, secured to her person by a bundle of thin cord that she could use as a garrote if need be. Her hands rested in the pockets of her dark hoodie, shielding her somewhat from the biting chill of the rain, and Aisha sucked incessantly on the blueberry lollipop in her mouth.

This was the real deal.

This was what she was trained to do.

Kill motherfuckers stealthily, as a Nightblade. Magical ninja bullshit. 

Funny that her first target was going to be an old, dusty ass man.

Oh, they knew all about William Manton and his freaky pedo relationship with his naked dead daughter projection. Spine chilling shit. Jason had written up a dossier on all of the most dangerous motherfuckers he knew in anticipation of his future world-hopping adventure, and the Slaughterhouse Nine had been one of the bigger folders passed amongst them. They knew all about Siberian’s invulnerability, Jack Slash’s bullshit Shard cheat codes, Crawler’s core-

Bonesaw’s ridiculously fucked up trauma…

Maybe that was why none of them were as anxious about this fight as they probably should’ve been. It felt less like an ambush and more like a fated battle between good and evil. And sure, while some of their members were pretty fucking scary

Honestly, they didn’t seem all that bad when you took out some of the trash pre-emptily.

Exhibit A.

The run-down, nondescript white van was exactly where that cute little robot had said it was - the alleyway between 45 & Birdie. Aisha slowly pulled Muramasa a quarter’s way out of its gilded sheathe, even as her left hand flexed and drew fresh magicka from her core and into the tips of her fingers. Spells flew through her head, several of them that she’d learned up to the Apprentice stage, but none seemed more efficient than a magical katana through the trachea. So she eased forward into the alleyway proper.

And froze, as a mountain of grotesque muscle and body odor shifted in the shadows. At his side, the glint of a massive hatchet caught the glare from the streetlights.

‘Alright,’ Aisha thought, adrenaline sending shocks straight down to her puckered anus, ‘Hatchet Face is here. That’s cool. That’s wassup.’

Sweat beaded her brow, but she wasn’t sure if it was fear or excitement that had her nearly hopping from foot to foot. Maybe both? Maybe the ADHD she was recently diagnosed with? Regardless, Hatchet Face was widely considered a ‘parahuman bogeyman’, both for his power nullifying field and his appetite for braining any sort of cape he came across. He was mean. He was tough. In most cases, he’d be too much for her.

Then her eyes flicked down to her katana, the one her biggest hero entrusted her with, and a sense of resolve filled Aisha’s chest.

Normally he’d be too much. But she was hardly normal, wasn’t she?

First- she needed to get past the Brute. There was a preeeeetty good chance that his nullification power didn’t work on her, considering the rings were supposed to hide them from things like Shards and the powers that relied on the Shards’ ability to detect other capes, but…

They hadn’t really hard prepped for something like this.

“O-Otacon to Solid Snake,” Cassie’s voice, artificially gruff and forced into a deep growl, came through her headphones louder than Eminem’s ‘Not Afraid’. She must’ve had some sort of way to manually jog her memories. Not surprising, since it was Cassie.

Aisha paused her music. 

“I repeat: Otacon to Solid Snake! Do you copy?”

“Copied loud and clear, Otto,” she grinned, chomping down on her lollipop.

CRUNCH.

Despite their proximity, Hatchet Face’s silhouette didn’t even shift. Fucking excellent.

She began to slowly ease herself forward, sticking to the shadows opposite of the hulking Cape Killer.

“The zebra is still at the watering hole. I repeat, the zebra is still at the watering hole. Why is the zebra still at the watering hole, Snake?”

…

“What?” She blinked, gloved hands sliding softly along the door handle. A slight tug and she moved on, circling around the front. There was no one or nothing in the front seats except a dangling air freshener and fuzzy dice. Behind the seats was a rusty metal grate that blocked all sight of the back compartment, further blocked by what looked like some sort of hard, dark glass.

Bingo.

Going after Hatchet Face with Manton still alive and kicking in the trunk was a dumb ass idea, but so was attempting to break into the van with the big bastard lurking right there. She’d gotten better with her powers - enough to fiddle with shit without the memory effect flickering out - but that didn’t mean other people couldn’t see, hear, and otherwise sense the world being fucked around with.

So she wouldn’t break in. Keyword: Break. But she had something very long and sharp to stab with.

“Frickin- the code words, Snake. God damn it! You didn’t pay attention to the mission debrief!?”

Hah, leave it to Cassie to get so into the roleplay.

“No,” Aisha snickered, pausing near the right side of the trunk and pressing her ear against the grimy metal. She couldn’t hear diddly squat. “I didn’t. I was too busy reading street signs and sprinting through alleyways, and multitasking ain’t my strong suit.”

The sound of static came through, and then-

“Siberian, Imp. We can still see Siberian on the hidden cams. Is William Manton still alive?” This was a different voice - calmer, more mature, with an accent that sounded vaguely Scottish.

Dragon.

Aisha bit her lip, throwing on her serious face. “Yeah, but not for long. Listen- Hatchet Face is here, but I can take him. I just need your eyes to guide me.”

“Hatchet Fact is there? Guarding the van? Imp, do not approach him. His Shaker effect-“

“I got it,” she repeated, frowning. “I know. I know. But I got it. Just tell me where Manton is. Like, inside the van. You can see him, right? Hack into his webcam like the FBI?”

“… Fine, but be careful. Please. Give me one second.”

Aisha drew Muramasa with a practiced flick of the wrist. The masterfully folded length of curved steel reflected the light of the moon, and her horned mask - slid up to free her lips.

She turned her gaze back to the van.

“By the way, the FBI isn’t spying on you. That is a conspiracy theory,” Dragon stated bemusedly, “… But William Manton seems to think it is real. His webcam is duct taped, but his phone is not. Fortunate for us, but very unfortunate for him. He seems to be using his front-facing camera lens to pluck his nose hairs. Which side of the van are you on?”

Aisha straightened up, gripping her katana tighter. “Back, uhhh… Right, I think, if he’s facing the front of the van.”

“He is, because I can see the doors behind him. If you position yourself exactly behind the right door handle, the back of William Manton’s head will be approximately fourteen inches to your left, and ten inches directly up from that point.”

“…”

“Um. Do you need me to repeat that? I can translate it directly into X and Y coordinates if that would he-“

“Nope, I got it!”

Too many numbers fucking hurt. Fuck math. All she needed to know was roughly where to stab. Done enough, the X and Y wouldn’t matter.

All she had to do was keep an eye on Mister Tall, Mangled, and Ugly over there. Thankfully, he seemed more interested in playing in the trash than he did keeping a proper eye on the old man.

‘Works for me.’

She twisted around the van, sliding her fingers along the doors until she reached the right handle. From there, it was fourteen inches to the left, which meant about fourteen quarter-pinkies, and then… How many inches up was it again? Nine? Ten? Did it matter? 

Nah.

Aisha clenched the hilt of Muramasa even tighter, channeling her own magicka out through her palm and into the enchanted weapon. It latched on immediately, familiar warm jolts like piping hot static electricity racing up her arm, and she felt her eyes go wide. The beating of her heart slowed down - or, no, her senses were just accelerated, and that made all sounds come through as if they were crawling through molasses. Even the rain had a slight delay before it fell against her hood.

Yet, her body moved and mind moved as fast as it did before.

She was Hasted.

And God did it feel good.

Aisha grinned, drew back with both of her hands clenched around the hilt of her blade… and lunged forward. 

The blade sank into the grimy, rain-slicked steel as if it was nothing but paper fucking mache.

SQUELCH!

There was no resistance. There was barely any sound that could be heard over the patter patter patter of rain slamming against concrete. But when she drew her blade back, sliding it out of that first thin hole, the steel came to her drenched in sticky red. The rain quickly washed it away, removing even the coppery scent of metal, but blood was on her gloves now, too. It stained the dark material like wine.

But her hand didn’t shake. Not anymore. And definitely not for some asshole mass-murdering scumbag.

“A direct strike through the neck. I think- Yes, you… severed his spine. Gosh.” Dragon, her voice much quieter now, murmured softly  in her ears. Oddly enough, her words were not in slow motion. “The hit was clean, Imp. Siberian is no longer in play. We’re going to moving in now, before we lose the element of surprise. Are you safe?”

Was she?

Aisha turned around, eye holes blurry from the rain, and pushed her mask all the way up.

Still sitting there, his back to her, slowly grinding his ace against the ground… was Hatchet Face.

What a fucking loser.

“I’m safe,” she confirmed, sliding her mask back down. “I got one more target to assassinate before I head up the mountain to help. Make sure the team don’t get fucked up without me.”

“I can say the same to you, Imp. Be careful. This Agent will be acting as overwatch for this operation, so don’t hesitate to call out to me if you require assistance. I have several suits ready to extract any one of you. They’re expendable, but Invictus is not.”

A warm feeling filled Aisha’s chest. Thankfully she’d already learned to attribute these bursts of gayness with her team, preparing for it everytime she did anything selfless so it didn’t manage to take her head out of the game.

“Preciate the love, Dragon. I’ll be sure to text you if I end up getting Billy Chapman’d, okay?”

“… As in ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ Billy Chapman? Imp, try to avoid getting murdered-“

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry mom. I’ll be done in a second.”

Aisha set her iPod to max volume, tapped the playback speed twice, and allowed herself a moment to breathe in and absorb the thuggish energy of Chris Brown’s Look at Me Now. The rap music pounded through her head, chasing away those stupid little whispers of nervousness and fear that came pre-packaged with the whole ‘normal teenage girl’ thing. Right now, she wasn’t some normal teenage girl. She was Imp, Invictus’ number one (and only) assassin, and Hatchet Face was just some dumb rock muncher that she’d inevitably add to her death tally.

Night was one.

Manton was two.

‘Time to make it three.’

And just as Busta Rhymes began double-timing his flow…

Aisha lunged forward, herself, and swung Muramasa straight for the back of Hatchet Face’s big, ugly head.

_______________________________

Jason Black

Coming back here was… different. But not in a bad way.

Have you ever stayed with your relatives for a few months, far away from a home that you grew up in and loved? Those first few days are always awkward. The food doesn’t taste or smell right, the pillows are always too hot or too cold, and the mattresses feel too lumpy and hard. Everything is so… foreign. And after those first few days passed, and you began to grow more comfortable in this new place, things began to settle down - except, deep in your heart, you know that this isn’t your home. Your home is far, far away, and once you get back to your home, there will no longer be any sense of unease or discomfort from hot pillows or weird smelling food.

To me, Earth Bet was my relatives’ place.

My Celestial Grimoire was home.

In what felt like one second that blended into another, I was there, nestled within countless motes of twinkling lights and stars. I couldn’t enjoy being back here again, though, after a month of not calling on its power - because there was another being I was sharing this space with, standing not even a hundred feet away from me on empty space. A thirty foot tall, desperate, reptilian creature who has sank entire islands with its power, destroyed countless lives, and became one of three bogeymen that haunts the entirety of Earth Bet.

Thing is?

This was my home turf, and there was no water here to splash in.

I wasn’t stuck in here with him.

He was stuck in here with me.

The battle music shifted.

And somewhere up above, thunder struck even though there was no sky.

CRACK!

It only took a gesture of my will, and a crackling blue rift tore itself across the void of celestial space, not unlike the day Lung died.

Leviathan’s head swung in my direction, and that one sudden movement sent a deluge of water from its Echo arcing through nonexistent air. The glowing orbs that were its eyes shone like miniature emerald suns as it fell onto all fours with a silent menace, slick, leathery skin bristling, and began sprinting in my direction. All thoughts of ‘sandbagging’ were gone - I could see it in the desperate way it moved, chest heaving, claws tearing through nothing as it pistoned towards me.

It was fast, but that speed was nothing compared to its speed in the water.

And it was nothing compared to lightning.

A tap of my finger against the smooth ebony stone of my throne, and the void screamed. Aethyric lightning lit up the darkness between stars, arcing bolts of crystal blue the size of skyscrapers. They descended upon the sprinting Endbringer like writhing pillars from Zeus himself, striking with such catastrophic force that I needed to use some of the infinite Azyr in the air to shield myself from splash back.

Its head whipped up, and-

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

The first bolt sent the thirty foot tall beast skittering across the void, none the worse for wear. It was rattled and dazed, but its layers of defense was tough - infinitely more tough than anything lightning could get through. The second and third, landing like thunderclaps against its back, made it think twice about immediately attempting to get up. They struck the same spot one after the other, lancing scythes of raw aetheric energy, and something like a HISS sounded in the air. I smelled the scent of smoke.

Leviathan dug its massive claws into the blackness of space. I met its eyes.

And, like a chain reaction, dozens of bolts of celestial fury descended upon the Endbringer.

I numbed myself to the ear shattering roars of thunder. The lightning storm wasn’t the main course, despite its potency. It was only a distraction. I needed more.

And unlike with Rune, I didn’t have hours. The Leviathan was a much more powerful and opposing force than the little Nazi girl had been. Already, I felt its will clawing to escape. Our time here was counted in minutes, not hours. Slowly, a plan began to form.

You have ten minutes until the World recovers.

Leviathan was surging forward, a soundless cry on its nonexistent lips, its body charred and spasming and seizing from Aethyric lightning. One leg lagged behind the other, burnt black from a decidedly powerful bolt, but even as I watched, the char was beginning to flake off of its body, replaced by slimy, fresh green skin. Its leg snapped backwards and then forwards, cracking grotesquely. 

Another trio of bolts flashed the air blue and white, but when they struck, Leviathan didn’t go down. It powered through, its body slower, still locked up, long arms reaching towards me, now only a few meters away-

I grinned, and pointed upwards. Hysh answered my call.

Leviathan’s head whipped back to follow my movement.

BOOOOM!

Sound broke.

But Snowcone’s roar was even louder than that.

They collided like two gargantuan, kaiju-sized alley cats fighting over a tray of sardines. Leviathan was probably stronger than my dragon in a standing battle, sure, but I’d spotted Snowcone minutes ago, building up momentum as it flew back through my Reality Marble. In that brief nugget of time between pointing up and collision, buffing the dragon with Birona’s Timewarp was child’s play.

Now? I couldn't even read his movements, and Snowcone was hungry for blood.

His clawed talons, mere blurs of silvery white, carved into the silent Leviathan like knives through a Thanksgiving turkey despite its infamous durability. His massive wings buffeted the air at speeds that threatened to uproot me from where I sat, warm and empowered upon my throne. I hadn’t even realized that I was slouching languidly in the floating seat like some sort of king, jaw resting against my left fist. It had sort of just happened.

The fingers of my right drew lines of arcane power against the armrest. I narrowed my eyes at the fighting giants, roaring and spitting ice and water, lightning flashing through the void and striking both blurs - nothing more than mosquito bites, now.

Eight minutes.

Threads from infinite Winds gathered above me, layering upon each other, twisting and melding together like chain links or coarse rope. Individual spells from different Winds, chained together on top of each other like an interwoven bandolier of magical nukes. Snowcone plus Lightning Storm made for a wonderful softener, and I would use every second given to me to ensure that I put this monster down, once and for fucking all. 

In a way, I kinda felt bad for poor Levi.

It simply wasn’t ready for a mage like me.

The Enfeebling Foe, Bewilder, and The Wither all materialized as an encroaching cloud of smoggy gray Ulgu that descended upon the wrestling titans like a fog - magic that Snowcone innately recognized, being a Frost Dragon plucked straight from the Mountains of Mourns. He roared again, a wordless noise that shook my eardrums, and released the half-frozen Endbringer from his wicked talons. The dragon was bleeding freely from innumerable lacerations in his ivory scales, his chest heaving at what looked like a mile a minute, but he was still disconnected from Time-

Wounded or not, he was only there for a moment. In that same breath, he was gone, trailing dragon blood through the expanses of the void.

And then, my magic struck.

Leviathan raged against the debuffing spells, elongated limbs flailing and sending whips of water cutting through the air as it fell, but it had no defense for the sudden robbing of its senses. That was just fine with me - because those were only the primers meant to set him up for destruction.

Aqshy answered my call next.

It started as a dot of white hot fire, indistinguishable from one of the endless motes of light that acted as the stars of my soul. But, as if spurred on by an invisible fuel, a ripple of magic forced the air to shiver. It was like a heatwave on a hot summer’s day, only the heatwave encompassed what felt like miles of dark, empty space.

That dot flashed, as bright as the sun. And Hell in the shape of a burning phoenix descended upon my void.

FWOOM!

The world lit up in pure white. I was reminded of a fucking supernova.

I’d abandoned my throne the instant I felt the Fiery Convocation trigger, and each brisk step of mine was empowered by my Sorcery, shifting me forward over hundreds of feet in the time it would take a lesser man to twitch their pinky toe. 

It didn’t stop the heat from scorching me to the bone. 

I hadn’t expected this much power.

“Fuck!” I bit back a ragged, guttural scream that threatened to tear the soft insides of my throat to shreds. My hands tore across my chest, ripping away the burning and melted remains of my costume, and sloughed off flesh ripped apart alongside it. My skin felt like boiling hot gravy, pooling down into the waistband of my trousers, and the scent of burning hair was intense. Nausea threatened to overwhelm me.

But my matrix wasn’t finished, and if I wanted to ensure that I got through to Leviathan’s core, I had to halt its regeneration and peel back layers.

An orb of golden healing light materialized in my charred left hand. I almost couldn’t squeeze it, but the immediate relief made me groan in both pleasure and discomfort. I had to stop myself from looking at the damage, lest I pussy the fuck out.

Mind over matter. Mind over matter.

I drew upon Azyr.

The convocation hadn’t even dispersed by the time my third spell was activating. Now a respectable distance away, I witnessed the white hot flames greedily lick across nothingness as if coaxed by lighter fluid and gasoline. It looked as if the entire dead zone for at least a mile had just been carpet bombed with arcane incendiaries, and at ground zero, writhing and bubbling in the middle of the inferno, was Leviathan. 

It keened, wailing with a high pitched cry so loud and ear splitting that I could only hear the faintest ringing, drowning out the roar of the fire. All around its clawed feet were piles upon piles of steaming melted green and black flesh, and even more was quickly falling off of its body. For once, I wasn’t even on the monster’s radar - it seemed even more panicked than before. Desperate. As I watched, it pressed its claws against its chest, as if trying to keep the thick, drooping layers of its flesh together, but its claws wrapped and flaked away on contact with a solid object.

Leviathan looked up, the bottom half of its charred and blackened mask splitting into another crack, and began to wail even louder from its new opening-

That was when the Comet of Cassandora came down from the split in the ‘sky’, screaming its descent even louder than Leviathan.

It tried to move. I could tell that it did. But its body was still struggling to regenerate from my Fiery Convocation, lit ablaze by white flame, and my chain of Ulgu spells had it stumbling and falling in place, not knowing its right from its left. In comparison, the absolutely colossal mass of ice and rock was so fucking big that I had to bite through my pain and teleport even further away to avoid being hit. Step after step after blurring step, until, just as I’d cleared what had to be several miles in the span of a few seconds-

BOOOOOM!

The kinetic force crashed into me like a speeding train. 

Four minutes remaining.

I fought through the wind pressure, instinctively raising a light blue Greater Ward to deflect flying debris the size of my upper body. It could only take a few missile-like shots before I had to move, my legs becoming a blur of motion as I swayed and blinked between chunks of meteorite. 

The comet was ginormous. Monumental. I wasn’t sure if even my advanced grasp of the English language was enough to come up with an apt adjective to describe just how fucking colossal the chunk of void rock was, but the fact that I had to flee several miles in order to avoid being clipped by it was evidence enough of its pure size. If Leviathan was beneath its heft, as broken and fragmented as it was now that it’s made landfall, I knew it wasn’t having a good time.

Smushed into a green pancake, like the fucking Dr. Seuss books.

But I wasn’t done. This wasn’t enough.

So I flew forward, nothing more than an insect in comparison to the meteor I’d just summoned, pressed the tips of my fingers against its cold side… and released my next spell.

This time, the coppery taste of metal filled my mouth, though my tongue didn’t bleed.

Chamon, the Golden Wind, surged forth from my touch and wrapped itself around the meteor. Tendrils and chains and ropes of gold, flying at breakneck speeds and looping endlessly around miles upon miles of rock. They didn’t bother with the fragmented chunks the size of buildings and buses that had fallen off on impact, because those weren’t important. No, what Transformation of Metal needed was the biggest piece. The fact that I was transmuting stone and rock and ice, not necessarily metal, was a moot point.

I reigned supreme here.

Three minutes.

The meteor groaned. My hand burned. Belatedly, I realized that my healing had been interrupted at some point - and my pinky finger was still burnt down to the muscle. The back of my palm was what momentarily grabbed my attention, though; seared into my skin like a brand was the symbol of a sun inside of a triangle, or maybe a pyramid. A side-effect of my overuse of the Winds?

Fuck it. Immutable Form could handle any and all mutations after the fight was over.

I felt the rock groan again, the golden strands of Chamon thickening around their target, and suddenly, there was no time to spare thoughts towards my arcane tramp stamp. 

Before my very eyes, deep, unnaturally smooth grooves began carving themselves into the black rock, following the lines of glowing Chamon. They spiralled downwards, foot by foot, carving off building-sized chunks of meteorite that fell from the main body and disappeared into fragments of powdered gold.

Two minutes.

“Come on…!”

Several loping steps and I teleported to the very top of the warping mass of pitch black stone, landing lightly on the surface and slamming my fist in deep enough to scratch my elbow. The magic of Transformation of Metal surged even faster, whittling down the bottom of the colossal meteor into a sharp tip while carving the top wide and smooth. I felt the insides conform to the intrusion of my hand, following my mental instructions to a T. My fingers slid over a smooth handle, melded directly to the rest of the rock, and I gripped it tightly.

Somehow, someway, I’d made a drill. Only, instead of piercing the Heavens like my childhood hero Kamina would’ve wanted, I was going to chest fuck an Endbringer ‘till it popped golden coins. The tactic made sense in my head.

Now normally, I’d  never be able to lift something like this. Not for a very, very, very long time, and a lot of training. The meteor had to have been as large as a fucking city district, and the drill, even as carved up as it was, was barely any smaller. Many, many miles wide, and it didn’t lack in height. I simply wasn’t built like that. I wasn’t Superman.

But I had something Clark Kent didn’t have. 

Melanin. And motherfuckin’ magic.

Multiple spells went off in rapid succession, blasting from the arm currently elbow deep in the massive arcane drill; Feather of Lead, Forge of Chamon, and Enchanted Blades of Aiban. 

Dully, as Lore of Metal wrapped around and consumed both me and my drill, I felt something cold and coppery encase my tongue. It felt oddly heavy and clumsy in my mouth. Another mutation, maybe? 

‘I’ll deal with it afterwards.’

At this point, I had no choice but to go purely off of instincts, my conscious brain hardly able to process the ridiculous amount of feedback and focus my spells required. It didn’t help that a quarter of my brain was beginning to pound with the force of an earthquake, all too aware - physically and mentally - that Reality wanted my Reality Marble fucking gone.

I couldn’t think. I didn’t have to. My force of will encapsulated my magic.

All three spells took effect immediately, and I wasted no time leveraging the first one. A scream, deep and desperate and maybe just a little bit angry ripped itself from my already sore throat as I arched backwards, channeling every iota of physical strength that I had in picking up the significantly less heavy drill. My speed hadn’t been the only thing Sole Protector improved, and I could feel just how powerful my muscles were now… but this drill was ridiculous. Even with Feather of Lead bringing it to the weight of feathers, it was a mass of feathers taller than most skyscrapers and severely wider.

But it was budging. Slightly. I felt it shift-

Something vital snapped in my shoulder, and then my neck, and then my back, and pure agony tore through my overstressed mind. I nearly blacked out.

One minute remaining.

“FUCK!”

I didn’t even need to move; a flick of my eyes and Hysh descended from the sky, washing over my form and knitting together my broken body. 

All the while, I didn’t stop pulling.

From the corner of my eye, I could see that the other two spells had gone off without a hitch. In four different corners of this massive drill base, towering engine turbines, not unlike the one on the back of Trainwreck’s power armor, melded directly into the stone. The stone itself was different now, too - smoother, shinier, like it had been glossed over with magical epoxy and sanded down into an actual tool, and archaic runes of power were etched on what seemed like every inch of it. The handle my hand was gripping felt different, as well, and on the bottom, my fingers slid across what felt like a pressure-based trigger.

I wasn’t an engineer in the fucking slightest, but I sorta knew how a drill worked. Everything else came from watching fucking Gurren Lagann religiously. I didn’t have Spiral Power, but I had the Winds. That would have to be enough.

I just needed to lift this damned thing so that I could drill into the proper fucking spot.

“SNOWCONE!” I roared, black spots flashing through my vision. I was standing upside down at this point, bare feet pressing hard against thin air as I pushed Soaring to its very max. The drill was moving, it was moving, but I didn’t have the leverage or strength I needed at this angle. If I could just get it up in the air, my body could handle the stress of a few hundred tons pressing down on it for a few seconds. I knew it could. 

I just-

BOOOOM!

He arrived with a sonic boom.

The Frost Dragon’s heavy body crashed against the side of the drill, and immediately, the entire thing listed. I gritted my teeth, redoubling my efforts, desperation and pure stubbornness empowering limbs that now felt like dead chunks of flesh. Muscles tore, bones groaned, but my soul stayed unshakable against what now felt like a constant, distant pain. I heard the loud, blindingly fast beating of Snowcone’s wings, hasted by my magic, and the sound of its human-sized claws digging into the grooves of my ultimate weapon.

And slowly, but increasingly faster, it began to lift over my head.

A groan escaped my lips, unwitting. I rotated my body as the gargantuan power tool was raised, going from a mid-air handstand to standing upright. Sweat dripped into my eyes, and in the back of my mind, I realized that I no longer had my mask. Whether it was burnt off or had fallen at some point, I had no idea.

And then the drill was fully overhead, Snowcone wrapped around its segmented side like a roosting lizard, and I had to stop thinking.

Pressure like I’d never known pressed down on my body.

And on the ground, quaking, twitching left and right as it clawed at its frayed and torn open body, was Leviathan.

Fifteen seconds remaining.

Through the sweat, I could see just how fucked he looked. My earlier thought of Dr. Seuss wasn’t totally off the mark, because much of its body was flattened. Green flesh oozed an odd, slightly cloudy liquid that pooled around its limp body, like rotten produce that had been squeezed dry of its contents. Its Water Echo was nowhere to be found, having been completely destroyed by my Fiery Convocation, and it was still struggling to regenerate its wounds and regain its autonomy with The Enfeebling Foe, Bewilder, and The Wither warping and perverting whatever intelligence it possessed.

More importantly, though…

A tiny, walnut-sized glow lurked deep within the bottom of its chest.

My bullseye.

Five seconds remaining.

I had to make this count.

With the last of my time, I casted my last spell - Rigidity of Body and Mind. Liquid gold caressed my skin, seeping down into the smooth brown of my flesh. Veins of sparkling metal threaded my arms, my chest, my neck, down into the waistband of my ruined trousers, and the arm holding the drill - that one shaking, trembling arm - abruptly snapped into place.

Strong.

Unyielding.

My slouching back straightened, reinforced by the Lore of Metal, and without an iota of hesitation, I squeezed the handle of my drill-

CRACK!

Just in time for reality to break.

In a flash of starry black fractals, shattered like glass that dissipated into the night sky, I was once again standing over the Atlantic Ocean. Above me, my drill roared to life, the culmination of my instinctive Chamon forgery shining through in the form of blurring, segmented layers of spiraling, glowing meteor rock. The engine turbines were still inert, but even with my metal-laden body, I knew that triggering them now would do nothing but destabilize my already fragile position and rip my arm completely off of my torso. I had to time this just right.

Snowcone, bless his heart, was smart enough to recognize what needed to be done.

A whoosh of air buffeted my stiffened body as the wounded dragon dove downwards amidst the broken fractals of space and time, roaring its last challenge in the form of another massive nova of frosty ice. The ocean froze over just in time for Leviathan’s hoarfrost-slickened body to slam into its surface, hard enough to send spiderweb cracks spreading out for dozens of feet. With the damn near omnipotent magic of my Reality Marble fading away, my tenuous grasp on the several spells I was concentrating on began to flicker and die down piece by piece, the Winds of Earth Bet too thin to keep them going.

Leviathan was beginning to stir, regaining some semblance of awareness even though its body was still in bad shape, struggling to recover from the damage it had taken. Ice began to fracture and fall away.

And my body was tired. So, so fucking tired. I barely had anything left in the tank. My head pounded with the force of a thousand drums. Over, and over, and over again.

Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.

I blinked away the darkness and rain, ignoring the thunder that shook the skies and the flashing of lights from distant helicopters. The last thing I needed was distractions.

I locked in on that glowing orb in my enemy’s chest, following Hidden Intuition’s subconscious corrections in order to strike as accurately as possible.

When I swung my arm down, miles upon miles of drill-shaped, magically enchanted meteor rock followed suit. I felt my muscles, as strengthened as they were, screech in protest at the sudden shift of weight, tendons stretching to the point of snapping and ligaments threatening to tear themselves apart, but my bones and my flesh stayed true. Chamon made it so.

I began to fall, unable to hold up what could have been hundreds of tons. 

But it wasn’t like I needed to in the first place, right?

“‘Ight bitch,” I growled, my words lost in the roaring of the wind, “Let’s drill for some fuckin’ oil.”

I released Feather of Lead, twisted the handle I was gripping, and forced as much Aqshy as I could gather inside of the drill.

And all around me, the darkness and rain was disintegrated by four towering explosions of white hot flames.

Something in my head popped by the sudden roar of the turbine engines, like a little packet of gelatin being squished between two fingers. The scream of the drill and the screaming of the wind abruptly died, and I could hear nothing but the thumping of my own heart, the roughness of my own breath, and a tinny little whistle.

My body didn’t last a fucking fraction of a second.

One moment I was clenching my stretched bicep with my left hand, struggling to keep my drill hovering over Leviathan.

The next, several thousand tons of magical rock forced my body to plummet, and it was not nice about it.

I did not break. 

But the ice did. 

It fractured with an ear-splitting crack, collapsing into a churning abyss of frigid water. My drill connected with its armored chest at the same instant, the sheer force of impact sending shockwaves rippling through the ocean, breaking apart ice floes as far as I could see in my dimming peripherals. The enchanted meteor rock shuddered under the pressure but held firm, the turbine engines blazing brighter as Aqshy’s fire roared through it, and the frozen ocean around us boiled into a bubbling hellscape.

I couldn’t see Leviathan, but I knew that my aim was true. Something far, far beneath me gave way beneath the tornado-like whirring of my drill, the weight and power of the engines providing even more force down into its body. Hidden Intuition screamed at me through my subconscious, guiding my every motion as I forced the drill deeper into the Endbringer’s core. Every muscle in my body burned, every joint protested, but Chamon held me together, even as the sheer strain of my actions threatened to tear me apart from the inside out. Dully, through my ruptured ear drums, I heard that same, familiar wail - high, dangerous, unnatural. The desperate screams of an alien on the verge of death, realizing for the umpteenth time that it had met its match and more. 

In the back of my mind, past the thick haze of pain and ringing and exhaustion, I realized that I was screaming back at it. Neither of us were louder than the relentless roar of my drill eating away at Leviathan’s core.

The world blurred into chaos - white-hot steam billowing up as we broke through the ice and plunged into the depths of the boiling ocean. The resulting explosion of water was molten in temperature, flying up high enough to splatter even me at the top of it all. The Endbringer flailed beneath the waves, sending enormous pillars of water flying up the side of the drill, but its aim was wild and unfocused, nothing more than the panicked throes of a defeated monster. I twisted my lower body away, narrowly avoiding the splatter of bubbling foam. Hidden Intuition corrected my angle, forcing me to adjust the trajectory of my attack, and I leaned into it with all of my flagging strength, roaring as the drill pushed deeper. 

And then my drill, and the Endbringer’s pierced body, hit solid ground beneath the ocean.

I was saying words. Something snarky and anger-filled, but the chaotic din of the waves and the steam and the rain and my fucked up ears made it sound more like a garbled mess in my own head. I spat a wad of crimson onto the glowing drill, where it immediately bubbled up into nothingness from the sheer heat. Truthfully, I could no longer feel my arm - meaning it’d probably melded into the drill.

Somehow, that amused me. And now I was snickering?

‘DIE. DIE. DIE, YOU FUCK!’

The boiling water below churned harder, giant waves of boiling water crashing against the drill, soaking me down to the bone, scalding my flesh. Leviathan’s thrashing grew more frantic miles beneath the ocean, its power strong enough to still send geysers flying into the air.

But I wasn’t done. Not yet.

The runes of Aiban’s enchantment shifted, their golden glow intensifying until they burned white-hot, the air around them shimmering from the heat. I twisted the handle again, forcing even more Aqshy into the engines, and with a deafening boom, the drill exploded with raw, concentrated power. I barely had any mana left to give, but I forced it all forward in that moment - every last fucking drop. That last piece of resistance I was struggling against gave way, water splashing all around as the drill sunk down another several feet. Hidden Intuition went silent.

I didn’t care.

I couldn’t stop chuckling. The pain, the rage, the sheer force of will coursing through me - it all erupted in a primal, maniacal bout of laughter as I gave one final push, driving the drill straight through Leviathan’s core. 

The core shattered.

A wide, vibrant wave of seafoam-green light erupted from the depths of the ocean, blinding and searing, its energy surging out in every direction. I felt the shockwave hit me like a freight train, the force knocking me up and off of the drill and sending me tumbling back through the air. My magical construct disintegrated into a storm of molten fragments - thousands, no millions of them, raining down into the ocean below where they twinkled and dissipated into motes of golden magic. For a moment, it seemed as if everything muffled simply went completely silent. 

No thunder.

No rain.

Just the sound of my ragged breathing and the distant bubbling of superheated water.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when I managed to blink away the floaties. It could’ve been minutes, or it could’ve been seconds. Regardless, what I saw floating along the surface of the water… it wasn’t Leviathan. Or, at least, it wasn’t a whole Leviathan. I was able to spot two green legs twice the size of Trainwreck, a chunk of what I assumed to be an arm, a massive, whip-like length of flesh that could only be its tail. If I looked more closely, I was sure that I’d find its head, and its cracked mask. Maybe even the portion of its chest that held its core. Or maybe the ocean would flush it away before I could.

I hovered there, suspended in the air by what little strength I had left, staring down at the broken pieces of monster sinking into the depths. My body screamed in protest, but I forced myself to stay aloft, just long enough to see it vanish beneath the waves.

It was over. At least, I hoped it was.

The last thing I remembered was the heat fading from my arm, the rain returning in a cool, numbing spray, and the distant sound of helicopters - and a motorcycle - closing in. 

Then, the world tilted, and the darkness swallowed me whole.

…

…

…

[Your First Trial has been completed. The Celestial Grimoire will now undergo emendation. Please stand-by.]

[Goddess Hecate looks upon you with favor.]

[Reward: (1x) Major Erudition Perk]