“How interesting.” Seeing the flames wash over her target to no effect, Talulah halted her advance.
She lowered her hand, letting the ambient heat die down.
It was clear now that ordinary Originium Arts would not leave a single scratch on Kai.
She no longer cared that Amiya and the rest of the Rhodes Island vanguard were slipping away into the ruins.
Instead, she fixed her burning gaze entirely on the anomaly standing before her, a dark curiosity blooming in her eyes.
“Where does this power of yours come from?” Talulah asked, the fiery halos dispersing around her silhouette.
“What does it have to do with an old black snake like you?” Kai smirked, flicking his wrist.
“Take this!
Bursting Dawn!” Three massive, hyper-condensed fireballs materialized out of thin air and shot straight toward the Draco leader.
Talulah’s gaze sharpened at his choice of words, though her expression remained a mask of cold fury.
She raised a hand, summoning a torrent of her own flames.
The two opposing Arts collided high in the ash-choked sky, detonating into a blinding, thunderous display of fireworks that rained embers over the battlefield.
“Nonsense.” Talulah drew the rapier from her waist.
Superheated flames erupted from her very skin, radiating an intensity that threatened to reduce the surrounding concrete to glass.
With a single, explosive step, she launched herself at Kai.
“Brother Ace, M3, watch closely.” Kai cracked his neck and took a step forward to meet the charging tyrant.
“These next few moves are going to be very cool!” For reasons he could not entirely explain, his blood was boiling.
The sheer thrill of the fight washed away any lingering fear, leaving only a burning desire for a proper brawl.
A short distance away, M3 and Ace exchanged a long, silent look.
“Was he…” Ace began slowly.
“Always like this?” “Probably not?” M3 replied.
Far away in the Outer District, Amiya’s group had finally located a relatively intact structure to catch their breath while they waited for the rearguard to catch up.
Amiya sat huddled against a half-collapsed wall, her long ears drooping heavily.
Blaze and the Doctor sat on either side of her, offering quiet company in the gloom.
“Doctor…” Amiya broke the silence, her voice trembling slightly.
“Will Mr.
Kai and the others come back safely?” “Uh…
they should, right?” The Doctor scratched the back of his hooded head.
His own mind was still swimming in a hazy fog of amnesia, leaving him entirely unequipped to offer proper reassurance.
“He looked quite fierce just now.” “I still feel like we shouldn’t have left them behind like that.” Amiya stared at the ash-covered ground.
“Mr.
Kai’s physical constitution is incredibly poor to begin with.
Even if he suddenly gained some strange power, I don’t feel like he is a match for Talulah.
Besides, Talulah’s race is naturally terrifying in combat…” A deafening series of explosions echoed from the Central District, cutting her off.
A half-collapsed skyscraper finally gave way, crumbling into a mountain of dust under the sheer kinetic force of the battle raging at its base.
Talulah parried a heavy strike, her mind racing.
She had absolutely no idea what was wrong with the man in front of her.
He kept spouting utter nonsense about the power of friendship while dragging her into a brutal, close-quarters street brawl.
His left hook carried enough force to shatter armor, and his right cross hit even harder.
Even when she forced distance between them to initiate an Arts duel, Kai matched her pace perfectly.
What disturbed Talulah the most was the sickening realization that the more Originium Arts she poured into the fight, the more violent and energetic her opponent became.
In the opening exchanges, they had traded blows evenly, and her superior combat experience had allowed her to suppress him.
Her physical strikes still landed with bone-bruising force, but whenever her flames engulfed him, the heat simply vanished into his skin, as if he were eating the energy to fuel himself.
“Little black snake, where are you running!” Kai shouted, a wild grin on his face.
He leveled a finger directly at her chest.
“Incinerate.” A towering pillar of sky-scorching fire erupted from his hand, tearing through the street straight toward her.
For a fraction of a second, Talulah actually forgot to raise her guard.
That was her signature technique.
The blast caught her square in the chest.
Talulah was thrown backward through the air, crashing into the street with enough force to carve a massive crater into the pavement.
Kai held his ground, refusing to rush in.
He suspected a trap, mostly because the move he had just copied felt entirely unfamiliar in his hands, producing far more visual spectacle than actual destructive power.
His caution was rewarded.
A terrifying surge of thermal energy erupted from the center of the crater.
Talulah rose from the shattered earth, the air around her warping from the heat.
A cold, venomous sneer twisted her lips.
“You actually dare use my own Arts against me…” Her voice dropped to a dangerous whisper.
“Good…
very good.” Before the last syllable even left her mouth, Talulah’s figure blurred and vanished.
Every hair on Kai’s neck stood on end.
Relying purely on instinct, he threw a blind, sweeping whip kick behind him.
The idea was cinematic, but the reality was agonizing.
Talulah materialized directly at his back, casually sidestepping the clumsy kick.
She drove a devastating, heavy blow right into Kai’s lower back.
The impact folded him in half like a cooked shrimp.
A split second later, the massive reserve of thermal energy she had been compressing detonated point-blank against his spine.
Kai was launched forward, plowing face-first through a mile of shattered concrete and debris like a pinball before finally skidding to a halt.
He groaned, spitting out a mouthful of dust as he struggled to push himself up from the rubble.
“Holy crap,” Kai wheezed, clutching his ribs.
“There’s a Phase Two…” Back in the Outer District, Blaze patted Amiya’s shoulder gently.
“Don’t worry.
Brother Ace and M3 are still there.
With their combined strength, even if they can’t secure a win, covering a retreat shouldn’t be a problem at all.” “True.” Amiya’s ears perked up just a fraction.
“Brother Ace and M3 are there.
I should believe in them.
I just hope they aren’t hurt too badly…” “M3, tell me honestly.” Ace sat comfortably behind a massive slab of fallen concrete, watching the destruction unfold.
“Did Kai take some highly classified, forbidden combat stimulant newly developed by the Medical Department?” Since the duel of the monsters had begun, the remaining Reunion grunts had either been blown away by the shockwaves or had the common sense to flee for their lives.
The few blind fools who had tried to stick around had been swiftly dispatched by Ace and M3, leaving the two of them to find a safe vantage point to spectate.
“Hmm?
What?” M3 leaned against the rock, her eyes tracking the explosions.
“I don’t know.
I haven’t heard of anything like that.” Kai’s dramatic pre-battle one-liner was still echoing in her head.
Sure, he had spent the last few minutes getting pinned down and brutally beaten by the Reunion leader, but he had managed to land a few solid hits in return.
Ace cautiously poked his head out from behind the boulder to check the situation.
He watched in silence as Kai somehow managed to grab Talulah by her draconic tail, violently slamming her left and right into the pavement like a ragdoll.
Ace blinked.
He pulled his head back behind the rock.
He must have been hallucinating from the dust.
He waited a second, then peeked out again.
This time, he watched Kai throw a wildly telegraphed uppercut.
Talulah easily slipped under the punch, caught him in a brutal throw, slammed him into the bedrock, and followed up with a merciless combo of strikes.
Why would anyone throw an uppercut from that distance?
Ace slowly pulled his head back into cover.
Was this what high-level combat looked like?
He felt deeply intimidated.
Out in the ruins, the battle of attrition was finally reaching its limit.
Talulah’s pristine military uniform was scorched and torn, and one of her dark horns had been cleanly snapped off by a stray blow.
Kai looked entirely battered.
His newfound durability kept him alive, but it certainly did not make him immune to pain.
Every bone in his body felt like it had been run over by a mobile city.
Yet, the sickly, suffocating weakness that usually plagued his constitution was completely gone, burned away in the fires of combat.
In its place was an overwhelming sense of absolute refreshment.
Talulah drove her rapier into the ground, leaning heavily on the hilt to keep herself upright.
Her golden eyes tracked Kai’s every twitch, guarding against whatever absurd technique he might pull next.
“Hey, I say.” Kai slumped back against a jagged boulder, gasping for air.
“Have you had enough, you old black snake?” Both fighters had tacitly agreed to a temporary ceasefire just to breathe.
“Who are you?” Talulah demanded, her gaze dripping with venom.
“How do you know that name?” If she had possessed the strength to guarantee a kill, she would have silenced him permanently minutes ago.
“Just a passing Four-star Operator.” Kai pushed himself off the boulder, cracking his bruised knuckles.
“Why do you villains always love asking that question?
It’s not important at all, okay?
What’s important now is that I’m about to beat you into the ground and then have a nice, long chat with the real Talulah.
Ready for Round Three?” Without waiting for an answer, Kai lowered his stance and sprinted directly at her.
Talulah gritted her teeth.
Forcing her exhausted body to move, she ripped her sword from the earth and took a defensive stance.
“Since you are so unwilling to speak, then die.” She channeled the last of her reserves, condensing a lethal rain of liquid fire above her to incinerate him on impact.
Kai closed the distance in a heartbeat.
Talulah brought her blade down, ready to unleash the inferno.
Instead of striking, Kai simply kept running.
He blew right past her shoulder, not even throwing a punch.
“Bye-bye, old Kashchey!” Kai yelled over his shoulder without slowing down.
“Next time we meet, I’ll definitely beat you until you call me daddy!” He sprinted straight to the boulder where his audience was hiding, grabbed Ace and M3 by the backs of their collars, and bolted away from the battlefield at top speed.
He knew his limits.
If he stayed for another round, he was going to end up as a permanent stain on the pavement.
“Heh…
heh heh…” Talulah stood frozen in the ruins, letting out a few dry, hollow laughs.
The flames above her fizzled out into smoke.
Her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed backward into the rubble, completely unconscious.
Kai had hit his absolute limit, but then again, so had she.
[Rhodes’s Note: “Just a passing Four-star Operator” is a direct parody of the famous catchphrase from the Japanese tokusatsu series Kamen Rider Decade (“Just a passing-through Kamen Rider.
Remember that!”).] [Rhodes’s Note: Enjoying the operation so far, Doctor?
(This daily grind literally pays the landship’s rent!
to use the links!)