Mind Break

“You’ll never be able to go back to the person you were!” he shouted in surprise that she would actually make such a choice. Yuki had trouble understanding it. ‘The more I’ve seen of Japan since I’ve returned, the more doubts I’ve been having about whether my accident could be called a good thing or a bad thing. Initially it seemed like a blessing in disguise perhaps, but now… It’s hard to even consider that…’ All of the reminders came back to him as flashes of memories turning his face grimly narrow.

Scales of a snake, possibly, began to appear over her skin. The scars of the array she cut into her body remained highlighted as she completely covered herself up once more. “What makes you think I want to go back to the way I was? Just because you made all of us like this, doesn’t mean you get to decide what we do. You don’t control us! I’ve embraced the power you gave me and I never want to lose it!”

He could tell that she started to prepare for their fight once more. Something that he wasn’t fully ready for anymore. Everything that he had to use was lost. Things started to look grim for him. He lost his options and diplomacy failed. “So we’re fighting…two incompatible ideas.”

“That's what a fight always comes down to. I’m fighting to live and you’re fighting to kill me.”

“I already said I’m not killing you!”

“What you will do to me will be the same as death! I was already dead before none of you just wanted to admit it. But because you didn’t put me out of my misery then, I did have another chance at life.”

“You’re saying this is all my fault?”

“I already said that before. You’re both the one that killed me and saved me. And both times you didn’t do it by your own hand.”

After it all happened, he already leveled all of the blame on himself. Hearing it from someone else did nothing to relieve that burden he carried. Resolved to see the end was all he could hold on to anymore. “That’s why I came to see you personally. Your actions are my responsibility. So ending this is also my responsibility.”

Chapter 359 – Mind Break

“But none of your powers can work on me!” Takako yelled while she charged at Yuki, taking on the claws of an animal in place of her nails. She slashed out at Yuki using her speed to keep him from being able to see her. Only the mist surrounding him protected him from the attacks. Despite the protection, the force of the attack still bled through to him. He slid back only able to defend.

Her confidence in the fight returned in the way she attacked. She stopped caring about her power that could shatter Yuki’s Kasou-ryoku abilities. Brute force seemed to be her focus. The desire to crush him with her own hands seemed to be the emotion riding strong in her eyes.

Knocked off balance from the latest attack, Yuki staggered off his feet. She leapt into the air and spun around bringing her whole leg to kick him in the stomach. His mist could only do so much to resist the attack. The force shot him into the earth only a short half meter below him. A crater dug through the ground and sent out cracks where it didn’t carve.

She landed down next to Yuki covering a smirk on her face. “There’s no way you can win! I will beat you into a bloody pulp!” Throwing her hand down, she tried to punch him further into the crater, but only it was the earth instead.

Freed from the crater by his mist, Yuki stood at the top of the crater. However, his mist disappeared. As Takako looked back at where he moved to, the armor she destroyed materialized over his body.

“I already broke that, what makes you think that’ll do anything different this time?”

“Because one was real and this isn’t.” Suddenly, the metal plating on his arms opened up allowing for multiple missile launchers and laser batteries to appear that were physically impossible to have been inside.

She shrugged off the threat that Yuki made. “If it’s not real, then there’s nothing it can do to me.”

“Is that right?” He fired everything off from the weapon platform that became his arms. Multiple explosions ripped through the area completely altering the crater and surrounding landscape once more. Takako completely disappeared amongst all of the flash and light.

But out the other end, she flew out with smoke trailing off her. She grimaced a little in reaction as she tried to get clear to Yuki, but found him flying above her. “Bastard!”

Blue bursts of exhaust came off his back as the thrusters redirected him to Takako. He swung out his arm with red lines lighting up along it as he charged up his attack. In the final moments before the swing, thrusters lit up along his forearm and elbow bringing more power behind his punch.

Metal crashed into scales in a hail of sparks as a shockwave blew out through the air tearing the cloud of smoke, from his missile attack, in half. Takako shot down into the crater below shooting up a massive pillar of smoke.

Following up the attack, Yuki shot a large blast from his hands. Yellow light carved through the smoke drilling straight for Takako. Blasted outward from the impact, it all cleared around only for another explosion to replace it.

He hovered over the site staring down through the clouds with the visor’s internal displays. ‘How much can she take before she finally exhausts? I’m holding back as much as I can. The degree of power I need to even slow her down is a little scary to wield.’

Takako surfaced from the smoke as it cleared away. She stood still, but many of the scales along her arms and stomach were missing or damaged. Thin trails of blood dripped down her skin from the attacks. Despite her claims, Yuki injured her. Something that infuriated her as much as it confused her. “Damn you! You shouldn’t be able to harm me!”

“You’re forgetting that I already did during the previous attack I made. Seems you were so caught up in your gloating over outsmarting me that you didn’t realize the flaw. The array itself doesn’t generate a negation field, it only resists change from my power. My alteration powers have no effect on it. However, it can’t do anything about the actual force or energy being applied by my attacks. You’re still a human with human skin. All that I require is enough force and I still damage you.”

The answer only frustrated her further. Her arrogance disappeared quickly in the wind that blew away the smoke. Yuki completely deflated her efforts. “You bastard! I won’t accept you! Never again!” Snake scales began to disappear from her body leaving her naked once more. All her animalistic properties left.

Nothing seemed to be replacing her scales that she shed. Yet, there seemed to be something strange about her skin. It stopped having the same properties that render as skin. The luminance disappeared and the softness hardened. It almost appeared fake. “Try to scratch me with my hardest skin I have available to me!”

Yuki narrowed his eyes, staring down at Takako trying to figure out what changed. He could tell things weren’t the same, but it was only subtly. ‘Hardest skin…I’m going to have to actually try to kill her at this point I fear to harm her…’

Testing out her skin was his only option. Without data, he couldn’t calculate how much power he was going to need to generate to still harm her. Power built up within his powered armor once more. It took it all the way to what he programmed as the limit. The previous amount he used had only been about half of it. At full power, he expected something.

Yet it would disappoint that expectation. The massive beam of energy blew a deep hole into the earth, but the ground that Takako stood on as well as her remained completely untouched. She didn’t even seem fazed by what happened.

While Yuki reacted to the lack of any results, Takako took command of the battle once more. She threw up her hand and pulled Yuki out of the sky without even touching him. He crashed into the earth with a heavy thud coughing up a small plume of smoke.

She walked over the air back to land. Blasts out of the smoke bounced off her body and flew into the air before exploding. “Too much for you?”

“I just need something stronger…”

“You won’t have that chance. You’ll have to turn off your power to do that.” Takako stretched out her hand where Yuki stood in the clearing smoke and pulled him towards her. She raised her foot up to let him ram into her foot. All the efforts he made to attack her failed as she wrapped him over her foot. She flung him back away into the spot she ripped from him.

Metallic thuds echoed from his impact. Yuki staggered a little as he rose to his feet once more. The fatigue from the physicality of the fight weighed on him with each passing second. ‘Telekinesis now…more and more troublesome…’

He could only blast the chunks of earth that she tossed at him. She looked to be fixed on wearing him down with constant attacks knowing the weakness of his own power. ‘Is she scared, afraid of this living death…’

While he endured the assault, Yuki wanted to find a way to end the fight once and for all. She set up a situation that looked more unfavorable for him as he stared at it. He missed a lot of the pieces still to Takako, but he was convinced he had enough to get an answer needed to win. ‘I just need to solve this mystery, even if it is only part of it. I just need to find a way to neutralize her. Afterwards, I can work on a permanent solution to this problem…’

Unfortunately, his reflexes couldn’t keep up with the attack rate that Takako set. She quickly started to get hits through on him. He staggered back with each hit as he had to change to a guard stance. ‘This being saved and living death is the key. She’s afraid of losing her power because she’ll go back to the way she was before. That means her power is…it’s not exactly what we thought…’

A massive white ball of energy suddenly appeared in front of Yuki speeding towards him. He didn’t have the time to even attempt to attack or detonate it early. ‘Damn! Can’t stop it!’ Digging in his feet to brace for the attack was all he could do to prepare for it. And even that was only moments before it hit him.

Yuki took the full force of the blast. Upon impact, the tightly packed energy exploded ripping through the earth with an equally impressive scale as Yuki’s attack. However, through the fading light of the attack, he appeared hovering over the large pit. ‘Glad it was only an explosion rather solid energy. That would have hurt more.’ His armor came out of it completely unscathed.

“Tch…you’re invulnerable.”

“Of course.”

“Then try this one on for size!” Another massive ball of white energy rapidly grew out of her palm. However, weaved through the energy was something that left Yuki unsettled. He immediately recognized it.

“So that’s how you did it. One of your powers you can create the array within other powers. It’s just enough to weaken my power.” He thought back to her when she wiped the blood off her face. ‘So that’s what it was. She carved it into her blood giving her a surface that weakened my power for her to punch through.’ The problem was that he should have been focused on her attack, which launched at him.

He had enough time to fire his thrusters, but it did nothing. “What?! I can’t move…” The energy flew at him and in the moments before it him he remembered what she had done before to him. ‘Telekinesis…damn…this is bad…’ It completely engulfed him as another explosion rocked the neighborhood.

Shot out of the explosion, Yuki’s body, covered in smoke, fell to the earth. He crashed into the ground in a small puff of smoke unmoving.

Takako leapt over the distance to land next to him. Stripped of his shirt and completely torn pants, Yuki’s skin was covered in pockets of wounds and streaming blood. She leaned down and pulled him up by his neck. “This is the end.”

Coughing up blood, Yuki cleared his throat forcing his eyes to open. “Takako…I’m sorry…”

“Apologies don’t fix what happened to me. I can only be secure in my life with you dead. And that won’t even equal an apology.” She began to squeeze his neck, but stopped suddenly. A sharp pain ran through her skull. Something was wrong, she knew. But she didn’t know what happened.

Yuki fell back to his feet now free from her grasp. He looked upon her with sad eyes. “I understand a little of it now… I’m sorry, this is the only way…”

Shock painted over her whole face as she could tell what Yuki did on some level. She understood what was coming. Takako staggered back feeling things slipping away from her grasp. “You! Ba-bastard! You would choose their freedom over mine! I hate you!”

“That’s fine. It’s justified. I can’t find the right answer. There’s only terrible answers right now. But I’ll fix this somehow.”

Gathering up her fading strength, Takako charged at Yuki, throwing out her fist. The power behind it significantly reduced that he only staggered back. It still left him with a bloodied lip. “I’ll kill you before you can imprison me again!”

Buried under his reluctant resolve, Yuki pulled himself back up to face her down at the end of their battle. “I’ll be there for you at the end. So you won’t be alone…” Yuki threw back a disheartened punch forced to keep fighting against Takako.