A/N: I wished I had the rig and the skill to turn this chapter into a 3d animation because I really struggled to turn my imagination into words. Having something to actually see would be a godsend.
If you spot anything out of place, mention it in the comments. Might be something left behind/overlooked while I was editing and proofreading.
Enjoy the chapter.
-x-
Brit glanced down at the gun in his holster and sighed. "…Fine. But the moment it looks like you're losing, I'm calling for a retreat. I was supposed to use this gun to take down the big guy over there. But with that armor protecting him, this thing's useless."
"It's all right. We don't need it," Leon said, turning around. "Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show."
Was it Lily's confidence in him that convinced Brit and Britney to let him have a go alone? Maybe they were just curious about his true capabilities. Either way, it worked in his favor.
As he approached the two supervillains, Leon peeled back the cuffs of his sleeves to his elbows and loosened his tie. Using Alteration, he changed his socks and shoes into shin guards underneath his pants, letting him feel the ground with his bare feet. While he needed concentration to immerse himself in seismic sense fully, the bare impressions he'd get in this state were better than nothing.
He checked their danger ratings once more.
Walking Dread: Lethal.
Slaying Mantis: Dangerous.
It was just about what he'd expected in his current state, having only applied Reinforcement on himself and his attire.
Leon didn't think he was going to lose this fight, not unless they had something strong hidden. Compared to the last time he fought, his arsenal had grown and the quality of his training improved. If he still lost even with those advantages, he might as well just stay in his pocket dimension and leave the world to its own devices.
The distance between him and the supervillains was closing with every step. The Walking Dread flexed his claws with an eager smile and Slaying Mantis entered a fighting stance, blades raised.
Leon flipped a familiar switch in the back of his mind. Now confident in his body's resilience, he also cranked the lever of Removal and reinforced his body to its absolute limit.
Fight Mode. Removal: 100%.
Skin darkened into a bruised purple. Muscles grew. His heart pounded, sending torrents of blood surging through his bulging veins. Under the mask, the sclera of Leon's eyes turned near black while his irises and pupils whitened.
A gacha notification appeared, but he ignored it and told the gacha to wait until he beat the two of them. A rush of exhilaration he'd never felt before came over him. Unbeknownst to Leon, a manic grin had taken over his face.
"Taking us on by yourself, are you?" Slaying Mantis scoffed. "You'll regret this. We'll make sure of that."
The Walking Dread moved first. For something his size, the man was fast. His massive frame crossed the distance between them in two strides, his right claw sweeping in a wide arc. The attack only contained pure aggression and lacked any semblance of technique.
Leon didn't even need Martial Foresight to read his moves.
Leon swayed. The claws passed an inch from his mask, ruffling his collar with displaced air and leaving the Walking Dread wide open for a counter. He also sensed Slaying Mantis flanking towards his left in a pincer attempt.
You guys don't know how much I've wanted to fight someone I can hit as hard I can.
As he drew his left fist back, pieces of earth surrounded his arms. They formed gauntlets and he reinforced them with as much energy as he could.
Let's see what you've got!
Before the big lug could recover from overextending or brace himself, Leon stepped closer, a jet of fire erupting behind his elbow. His fire-propelled fist struck the side of the Walking Dread's torso.
It was as if an explosion had gone off.
The ground Leon stood on cracked as the Walking Dread flew, crashing through a building on the other side of the compound. Leon sensed Slaying Mantis' heart rate rise, pausing mid-attack, but he didn't care why.
He flowed into his next move.
Leon pivoted towards Slaying Mantis. He braced both arms at his waist before thrusting them forward. A pillar erupted from the ground, slamming into Slaying Mantis' chest at full force and launching him back. But he wasn't done.
Leon immediately drew his arms back. Two more pillars erupted behind the airborne supervillain. But unlike before, these possessed sharp, needle-like tips.
Slaying Mantis screamed in agony as they pierced each one of his knee pits. It was one of the few unarmored areas of his exosuit. Leon would be an idiot not to exploit that vulnerability.
A roar tore through the compound.
The rubble of the building Leon had punched the Walking Dread through exploded outward, chunks of concrete and twisted rebar scattering like shrapnel. The Walking Dread rose from the wreckage, barely scratched. His armor's veins blazed with blue-white light. The nodes on his shoulders crackled and arced, electricity jumping between them in furious, jagged lines.
The Walking Dread aimed both hands at Leon and fired.
A torrent of electricity ripped across the clearing, the air splitting with a deafening crack that turned the night white. The bolt was thick, concentrated, and fast enough that a normal person wouldn't have seen it leave the man's hands.
Leon took it head on.
He raised his left arm into the current, letting the electricity flow into his shoulder and down through his core. The world became noise and light and raw, screaming current. It flooded through him, and for a terrifying half-second, every muscle in his body locked. His teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached.
Redirect it! Don't let it pass through the heart!
Leon didn't have time to think about whether it would work. His body was already moving on the memory alone, guided by instinct and Iroh's words echoing in the back of his skull.
He gritted his teeth, forcibly guiding the energy through his stomach and away from his heart. It pooled and churned inside him like a living thing trying to break free.
His right arm snapped up. Index and middle fingers extended, thumb cocked. A gun pointed straight at Slaying Mantis.
He let it go.
The redirected bolt exploded from his fingertips with a sound like the sky cracking in half. It crossed the distance to Slaying Mantis in a blink, hitting the impaled supervillain dead center.
The exosuit's electronics overloaded instantly, circuits frying and sparks bursting from every seam. Slaying Mantis convulsed. His scythe-blades rattled against the earth pillars pinning his legs and went limp. Smoke poured from the joints of his ruined suit as his body twitched with residual charge.
Leon lowered his hand. His right arm trembled, the fingers tingling with pins and needles. The redirected current had left scorch marks on his glove and sleeve, and his lungs felt like he'd inhaled hot sand.
That hurt way more than it should have. The technique worked, but I need a lot more practice before I try that again. Still… it worked!
He looked at the Walking Dread, who had stopped firing and was staring at his fallen partner with an expression that was hard to read behind the metal plate covering his face. Confusion, maybe. Or something closer to disbelief.
Leon shook the numbness out of his hand and rolled his shoulders.
"Friendly fire," he said, shaking his head with faux disappointment. "Man, I hate it when that happens. This your first time?"
The Walking Dread's jaw tightened. His shark-like teeth bared in a snarl, and the armor on his chest pulsed so bright it cast harsh shadows across the ruined compound.
The roar that came next was deep and primal and loud enough that Leon felt it vibrate in his ribcage. The Walking Dread dropped low and charged, his massive frame tearing across the clearing with a speed that defied his size, each stride cracking the earth beneath his feet.
Leon grinned behind the mask and charged right back. They met in the center of the compound.
The Walking Dread's right claw came in high as a sweeping strike aimed at taking Leon's head off his shoulders. Leon ducked under it, feeling the displaced air tug at his hair. He drove an uppercut into the big man's ribs. The impact cratered the armor's plating and staggered the Walking Dread back a step.
He's tough. Really, genuinely tough. I fucking love it!
The Walking Dread recovered in an instant, swinging his left claw in a backhanded swipe. Leon weaved right, letting the claws pass over his shoulder, and snapped a roundhouse kick into the side of the Walking Dread's knee. The impact forced a grunt out of the giant but didn't buckle the joint.
Felt that through my shin. Like kicking a fire hydrant.
Leon kept moving. The Walking Dread was stronger, tougher, and way fucking bigger, but he was also slower in transitions. His reach, while enormous, committed him to wide arcs that telegraphed through his shoulders. The giant in front of him was a treasure trove of openings.
He exploited every one of them.
A slip under a grasping lunge put Leon inside the Walking Dread's reach. He fired a three-punch combination into the giant's midsection, each hit backed by a burst of firebending through the elbows that turned jabs into jet-propelled impacts. The Walking Dread's armor dented. The giant swung both arms inward to crush him in a bear-hug.
But Leon was already gone, pivoting out on an invisible platform and cracking a jet-propelled heel kick across the side of the Walking Dread's jaw.
The giant's head snapped sideways. He stumbled, caught himself, and roared again, slamming both fists into the ground. The ground turned into rubble, but Leon rode it out. His kept his balance stable even as the ground buckled.
They went at it for three minutes straight.
Each exchange carved more of the compound out of existence. The ground where they fought was reduced to crater within the first thirty seconds. An auxiliary building caught a stray fire kick and started burning.
By the second minute, Leon had driven the Walking Dread through what remained of the compound's western wall, and the giant had retaliated by ripping a section of concrete foundation out of the ground and hurling it at Leon's head. Leon gripped it with earthbending, spun, and redirected it back at him. The fragments rained down around them as they clashed again.
Leon's breathing gradually grew shaky. His arms ached, his knuckles throbbed, and the adrenaline coursing through his system had his heart hammering against his ribs.
He was having the time of his life!
Every hit that landed sent a jolt of satisfaction through his body, the primal thrill of testing himself against something that could actually take it. He didn't have to pull his punches. He didn't have to worry about killing the Walking Dread with a stray hit. For the first time since arriving in this world, he could swing with everything he had and the thing in front of him just got angrier.
This is what fighting is supposed to be!
But as the third minute bled into the fourth, the frenzy receded enough for Leon to think clearly. His blows were landing and they were causing pain. The Walking Dread grunted and stumbled with the heavier hits, his armor denting and cracking in places.
But the damage wasn't accumulating the way it should have. Each time Leon created distance, he could see the armor's veins pulse brighter, the electrical current intensifying, and the Walking Dread's movements would sharpen again.
The armor was feeding him. Whatever punishment Leon dished out, the suit compensated by dumping more energy into the giant's body.
It was like punching Eddie Hall. His fists hurt more than the man did.
I heal myself up and do this all night, but I'll gas out before he does if the armor keeps juicing him up. I need a different approach.
Leon feinted left, drawing a claw swipe, and used the opening to circle behind the Walking Dread. The giant pivoted to follow, but Leon was faster in the turn. He leapt, grabbed a handful of the segmented plating on the Walking Dread's upper back, and hauled himself up.
The Walking Dread reacted immediately. His claws reached behind him, swiping at his own back and trying to grab the pest clinging to his shoulders.
His arms didn't make it.
The man's musculature, the same absurd bulk that made him a walking siege engine, worked against him. His biceps and deltoids were so thick that his range of motion behind his torso was almost nonexistent. His claws scraped against his own shoulder blades and stopped.
He roared and thrashed, bucking like a bull. He slammed his back against a wall. Leon took the impact with ease as the concrete cratered behind him.
The Walking Dread staggered forward and threw himself into the remains of the auxiliary building. Metal and concrete collapsed around them. Leon tucked his head behind the giant's shoulder and held on, his grip locked onto the armor's plating.
You can't reach me. And I'm not going anywhere.
While the Walking Dread raged and rampaged, smashing through anything within reach, Leon went to work.
He gripped the armor with his left hand and drove his right into the plating near the central node on the Walking Dread's spine. Metalbending and raw force worked together. The segmented plates resisted for a second, then his fingers punctured through. Metal peeled and groaned, the internal wiring sparking as his hand sank into the guts of the armor.
The Walking Dread screamed and crashed through another section of wall. Leon didn't care. His hand was inside the machine now.
He poured energy into the armor, feeding a continuous flow into every plate, every wire, every node his energy could reach. The armor began to hum and whine. The blue-white glow intensified until it was competing with the compound's floodlights.
The Walking Dread seemed to feel it. He stopped thrashing. His head turned, trying to look over his own shoulder at whatever the lunatic on his back was doing. The armor was getting hot.
"GET OFF!" he bellowed, slamming backward into a rock formation hard enough to split it in two. Leon absorbed the impact and kept pouring.
The armor started glowing so bright Leon had to squint.
I don't know if this will kill him. The armor's tanked everything I've thrown at it, and his natural durability is insane. But if this goes wrong and the explosion is too much...
He thought about it for roughly half a second.
Fuck it.
Leon plunged his other hand into the armor, ripping through a second section of plating with metalbending and force combined. Both hands now buried in the Walking Dread's power source, he activated Aera. Wings formed on his back, Reinforced with every ounce of energy he could spare.
The Walking Dread looked up. "What are you-"
Leon didn't even know how fast they would go. This was him improvising. But he was past the point of return, so he fired his strongest jets of flame from beneath his feet and soared straight up.
The acceleration slammed both of them upward with enough force to crack the ground they left behind. Trees bent in their wake, loose debris scattered, and the compound's remaining floodlights shattered from the shockwave.
HOLY SHIIIIIII-
The ground shrank beneath them. The compound became a cluster of broken lights surrounded by a dark forest. The island became a shape on dark water.
Leon pushed harder, the fire under his feet roaring as his energy reserves dipped faster and faster. The Walking Dread thrashed and clawed at the air, but there was nothing to grab and nowhere to go.
Two meters. Three hundred. Five hundred. Seven hundred.
When the ground looked small enough, Leon ripped his hands free from the armor, grabbed the Walking Dread by the collar of his own plating, and threw him.
The giant tumbled upward, still climbing from the force of the throw. His armor blazed like a second sun against the dark Norwegian sky.
Leon aimed his body down and kicked off empty air. Light Step created an invisible platform beneath his foot. He launched himself downward, plummeting toward the earth while the Walking Dread hung at the apex of his arc above.
The wind screamed past his mask as the ground rushed up to meet him. Leon twisted mid-fall to face the sky, looking up at the miniature sun that was the Walking Dread.
He brought his hands together and formed a ninjutsu hand sign. His grin couldn't be wider.
"Art is an explosion!"
The sky split.
A sphere of white light swallowed the Walking Dread, expanding outward in a shockwave that scattered the cloud cover above the island for hundreds of meters. The blast wave hit Leon mid-descent and sent him tumbling. Heat washed over his body like a furnace door opening. The sound reached him a half-second later. It was a deep, rolling boom that echoed off the mountains on the Norwegian coast and kept echoing.
[Defeated The Walking Dread! Reward: 1450 GP]
[Feat Achieved! Won a battle against a foe whose physical capabilities exceeded your own through creative use of multiple abilities in tandem. Reward: 300 GP]
[Feat Achieved! Defeated two members of The Order in a single engagement. Reward: 500 GP]
[Feat Achieved! Breached the speed of sound through the combined, experimental use of Reinforced Aera and augmented Firebending. Reward: 150 GP]
[Feat Achieved! Redirected an enemy's attack to defeat their ally. Reward: 200 GP]
[Defeated Slaying Mantis! Reward: 300 GP]
[Feat Achieved! Unlocked the full power of the Kure Clan's Removal Technique. Reward: 20 GP]
The notifications filled his vision as he fell, one after another, stacking up faster than he could read them. The GP counter in the corner of his interface was climbing like a slot machine, but he didn't even try to count it.
Leon spread his arms wide, his wings catching the air and slowing his descent into a controlled glide. Wind pressed his burnt sleeves flat against his arms and whipped his torn tie behind him. Below, the island compound was a mess of rubble and scattered fires, three figures standing at its edge and looking up at the sky.
He threw his head back and laughed.
It was wild, uncontrolled, and completely unhinged. Every ounce of tension from the last month left his body. The fear and the training and the responsibility and the pressure of knowing what was coming for this world came loose in a single, manic burst of release.
He'd redirected lightning. He'd gone toe to toe with a monster that shrugged off his best punches and found a way to win anyway. He'd thrown a man into the sky and turned him into the biggest manmade firework.
And it felt incredible!
The laughter tapered off into heavy breathing as he descended. His grin was so wide behind the mask that his cheeks ached. His body was battered, his arms were shaking, his energy reserves were lower than they'd been since his first night in this world.
Leon still wanted more.