Forceful Wills

He dug his fingers through her weapon as though it was paper. It drove through his point to her. The crushed edges of the metal stabbed into her wrists drawing up droplets of blood.

Faced with her arm crushed with her weapon, she made it disappear and removed her hand quickly before his hold clamped down. Nerine jumped back a step with one hand nursing her light wounds. She glanced slightly at them, needing to keep her attention on him. ‘He’s acting more serious, but controlled his strength… That could have broken every bone in my arm if he wanted it to…’ New armored gauntlets appeared over her wrists ending in encapsulating her hand.

The new weapon was thinner than her last, but left no gaps in the metal. It was seamless and rigid with no movement in her hands. Tight design work carved through the metal giving it a smooth textured feel. While weak in appearance, it was stronger than the last.

However, Seiji doubted the sight of her new weapons. “I said to use something stronger. This is a serious fight you said.” He crossed his arms waiting on her to comply.

“You’re holding back your strength as well. You're not being completely serious in this fight.” Something bothered her about him. Nerine couldn’t place her feeling, but she didn’t think him to be the same as her. ‘That’s impossible though… But such strength, what possible Law could he be using to do that and at such proximity? He would have to be several times my superior…but my power’s not disrupted by him at all… What is he?’

“I’m holding back for two reasons. You’re not coming at me seriously yet…”

The fact that he didn’t give her a second reason nagged at her. Her uneasy intuition only grew stronger. She didn’t know if she wanted to approach the other reason. For all her complaining about him holding back, she felt a noticeable difference in his presence. Intent to fight, which lacked before, clearly came from him. He was ready for her. It surprised her how different he felt when he wanted a fight.

Nerine held up her arms as proof of her resolve for the fight. “I assure that these are much stronger than the last pair. You won’t break them so easily.” Amongst her uncertainty in him, she forced a hardened expression for him. She needed the fight to begin and him to believe her. ‘I’ve never met a person that wants a fight, but is so fair and honest about it…’

Chapter 149 – Forceful Wills

“Is that so?” Measuring her resolve, he felt her statement was an honest one. However, he knew that she still had more to show him. “Let’s see if you can keep up for a warm up, then maybe you’ll feel differently about holding back.”

His remark narrowed her eyes further. If the words came from anyone else, she would have immediately thought them arrogant. Yet she felt an eerie sense that he wasn’t one for audacity. She sensed he had confidence in his ability and not unduly so either. ‘I can’t let this strange feeling take a hold of me! I finally have my fight!’ Nerine tightened her hands within their metal prison. She pulled in all of her stray thoughts to focus solely on Seiji. Re-enforced in her determination, she closed her stance to prepare.

Nerine charged forward the moment she saw Seiji change his stance. He accepted her call. She brought her new weapons to bear on him. The moonlight flashed through her swift movement, but she came to a stop. It took her a moment to blink, feeling confused. Her fist connected with him.

Two things bothered her. The fact that Seiji didn’t even block her attack made the first. Second came as the fact that it did nothing to him. She didn’t even feel a budge from him even though she struck him hard. Nerine would have been angry with him for not doing anything, if not for the fact that she made no progress against him. “Huh?” she uttered after all of the silence.

Seiji sighed a bit to himself. “This isn’t enough!” He tapped his hand against her metal gauntlet. The force was minor, but it knocked her arm away and set her off balance.

She gritted her teeth through the strain on her joints. The whole thing caught her off guard. Nerine jumped back and changed weapons again. ‘Still need more… how tough is he?’ Bulky and projected with holes along the back and front of the almost cylindrical construction, her new weapon seemed to appear unnecessary large for show. She lifted her arms up with no effort and charged forward.

A burst of light from the back of the gauntlet increased her speed and force. Metal came out in front to protect her hands and create a driving force. The speed of her fist increased until it carried her body. Loose dirt kicked up in her wake. Nerine sped for Seiji.

He sensed something a little different about the new attack and the speed came to him as a special note. Seiji returned to his stance and brought out his hand. Her metal clad arm rammed into him pounding out a small shockwave of dust. The force shook his hand a little and dug his feet into the grass. It made Seiji grin a little.

After a few damn seconds passed, Seiji brought his other hand up and grabbed her enlarged arm. He spun on his foot rotating a full circle before releasing her off into the air.

Nerine flipped through the air uncontrolled from Seiji’s launching. Her eyes spun around seeing ground and sky almost at the same time. She thought her head would explode. Quickly, her body slowed down allowing her mind to catch up on her situation. Making use of the thrust from her weapons, she brought her speed under control.

Once she felt her body moved as she wanted and not by Seiji’s whim, the weapons changed. Her thin weapons from earlier appeared. She slammed her fists into the air, hitting it to change her course. The force sent her speeding for the earth. Near the incoming grass, Nerine tightened her hand around the air sending off ripples as she used it to slow her descent. Her body came to a full stop centimeters from the ground before she let out to drop herself.

“There you go! Keep that up!” Seiji grinned and pounded his fists together. He took a few steps forward looking hella eager about the fight.

The excitement in Seiji made Nerine narrow her expression. ‘I hit him with one of my stronger weapons and he just blocked it… I’m going to have to get him off guard…’ Nerine changed her weapons again. The new ones had spikes along the knuckles and straps around her forearm rather than metal. Most of the metal attached to her hand.

Seiji’s expression dropped a little bit, noticing the weak ass looking weapon. The look in Nerine’s eyes changed his mind and made him curious. ‘She’s got something in mind. They don’t look that sturdy.’

Metal clattered together with the closing of her hands. Nerine dug her feet into the earth giving her as much of a boost to her start as possible. She shot forward charging for Seiji. ‘I have to be quick…’ Her legs carried her lightly over the field, shortening the distance between them quickly. Striking out with her fist, Seiji blocked her as she expected, but it went exactly as she wanted. ‘This’ll work…’ However, she found a surprise after she pulled her hand back. No wound or blood appeared on his hand where she hit him.

It made her take a step back to reconsider. ‘I know he was injured before by that piece of wood… So why can’t I cut him?’ The unimpressed stare of Seiji annoyed her. Unwilling to accept the situation, she continued her assault on him. Nerine whaled on him with a barrage of punches. Each punch he stopped with the same minimal amount of effort. He didn’t slow down.

Nerine came to a stop after she found that nothing worked. She tried breaking through his defense, but nothing. When she went around to sneak behind, he was immediately there ready for her. All of her attacks did nothing. ‘Damn…I need something else…’

“Eh?” Seiji lifted his left hand up. A damn strange tingle went down and dipped into his muscles. When he tried to flex his hand, it responded slow as shit for him. He called on it again to test out the sensation. Each movement came slower and more sluggish. “You do something weird to me?”

The question took her off guard for a moment, but she quickly understood. It had worked on him. ‘I struck him so many times…it took that much just to affect him?’ Nerine watched his awkward motions, confirming it for her. “My paralysis is taking hold.”

Seiji threw out his right fist into the air at Nerine. “I thought you wanted a fight, dammit! This is supposed to be a clean and fair fight!”

“It’s hardly a fair fight with your strength, reflexes and toughness.”

He still could feel his arm, but it didn’t move as well as he wanted. It felt like water surrounded him. His hand closed into a fist. “Oh well, I guess this will make things more enjoyable anyway!”

“Enjoyable?” Nerine clinched her hands. ‘He really does just love fighting for the sake of fighting. Why is he even trying to help his comrades?’ The idea was frivolity.

‘Sending another child to me? What is the General thinking these days?’

Nerine shook her head and focused back on Seiji. The paralysis worked against him. She knew it would slow him down and weaken him. However, the amount of resistance he put up worried her. One strike should have been enough for anyone. She wondered if it was because she couldn’t wound him with her spikes. A perfect moment finally came to her to strike back.

Weapons changed on her arms again. The ones she used to grip the air appeared, but slightly different. Metal on the front extended around in a ring over her wrist. It hovered in place, but held no attachment. Nerine spun around slamming her fist into the air throwing her forward. She let the force carry her off her feet as though she flew. Her fists punched the air at regular intervals to speed towards Seiji.

Slowed down by the shitty poison, Seiji’s defense didn’t respond in time for Nerine’s attack. Her fist dug into his chest blasting out a shockwave that knocked him back a meter. He felt something from her attack that time. “Finally starting to take this seriously!” Seiji bounced back taking a swing at Nerine. His arm didn’t move as he wanted and she fell out of his reach.

Punching the air to change direction, Nerine slid out from under Seiji. She came out to his side. Striking him across the face another shockwave blew out from her punch. It sent him toppling over through the ground kicking up dirt as he slid. Nerine felt that she made a solid connection with him. ‘That had to hurt him…’

Seiji’s body disappeared among the clouded dirt. The dirt path that led to him held chucks of grass and trails of smoke billowing from the edges. “Hell, that was a nice punch,” he laughed. He stood up through the clouds letting it mask out the lower half of him. His hand brushed against his cheek that looked a little dirtied from her punch.

A glimpse of surprise painted across Nerine’s face. She knew that he was resilient, but she was certain her punch did more to him. ‘Just how tough is he?’ Nerine threw her arms back pounding out two large shockwaves in the air. She flew towards Seiji. Her fists sliced through the air crushing the air to stagger him. He took two punches to his chest sliding him back only centimeters. A wide swing for her forced her away. She jumped over him with the air punch. Everything she threw at him just kept doing nothing.

Nothing happened.

‘Is that all you’ve got? Why did you get sent here? You’re not suited to this task.’

Nerine gritted her teeth and put more power behind her muscles. However, it didn’t make it through cleanly. Seiji’s arm deflected a little of it. He laid in a counter with his fist aimed for her chest. She barely had time to react. The weapons on her arms immediately changed out for larger thick metal guards that completely surrounded her forearm and spread out to direct damage away. Her arms covered in front of her the moment his fist met her.

She felt nothing for the first second. The second moment everything went red and poured to black. Nerine coughed not knowing where she was after Seiji hit her. Numb pain spun around her body visiting any place it could and alerted itself at each junction. She felt surrounded by it.

Suddenly, she realized that she laid on the ground. The grass poked up around her. She didn’t notice it earlier. ‘What happened?’ It took her another few moments to gather her strength. Nerine pulled herself up and looked around searching for Seiji. More than ten meters away from her, she found him. “Such strength…”

Seiji lifted up his arm staring at Nerine through the free half of his vision. “I’m starting to adjust.” He slammed his fist into the damn ground causing it to shake. Earth broke apart and cracked into chunks that flew up in front of him. A crater a meter wide and half a meter deep appeared from underneath his fist. “My strength as well…”

Some of his body still had some sluggish movements, but it didn’t affect him as much as it did before. Seiji threw out his fist at the confused Nerine. “Looks like you’ve got me to sweat. I think the warm-ups are over now. I want to see what you’ve been hiding from me! So let’s step up this damn fight!”

‘Do you have any abilities that aren’t destructive in nature? Our duty is the safe capture of intruders, not the execution of them.’

Nerine closed her eyes fighting through the pain. She pushed her body up. The time that she couldn’t remember from Seiji’s attack left her staggering a little. Everything still felt whole for her. She felt lucky that she took no injuries from it. Her skin looked scrapped up and her back sore, but nothing more. She could still fight.

‘If you’re going to be part of the team you need to adapt. You’re useless to us as you are.’

She nodded silently to herself. The metal of her gauntlets warped from the punch that Seiji gave her. It managed to take the blow, but left an impression on them. “I need something stronger.”

Seiji tilted his head a little. He barely picked up the words from her. His talks with Yuki made him understand clearly enough that in spite of their powers, they were still humans with a frail ass body. Seiji understood his strength well enough to know what that would mean against her. He felt a little grateful for the poison she gave him since it gave him more control over his strength than he had before. In fights, he always used everything he had without holding back, but he couldn’t fight in such a way any longer. It would be deadly.

‘Just a useless child.’

A ripple in the ground poured out from Nerine’s feet. The grass disappeared from the area creating a large circle of dried dirt that stretched for a twenty-meter radius around her. “This is the first time in more than a year that I’ve used my Field.”

Seiji grinned at the thought. He saw Nerine’s expression. It became determinedly serious. The fight he wanted approached. “Hell yeah! I’m glad to hear that. I’m looking forward to this.”

“You may regret those words.” Suddenly more than a dozen weaponized gauntlets dropped from the air and crashed into the earth. The thick guards on her arm disappeared. One of the weapons in the field disappeared and surfaced on her arms. The metal spun out with a life of its own covering up to her shoulders. Sharp blade-like edges covered the outside surface while her armored gloves glowed. “These were meant for fighting other MP users. Their destructive potential is nothing like the other weapons I’ve used.”