64. I Won, but Could Only Run

I Won, but Could Only Run

I was still falling.

Proximal Manipulation remained cut off.

For the moment, however, I had his weapon in my hands, and I had many ideas about what to do with it.

I could make any force he applied to the axe weaken by an order of magnitude for a while.

I could make it nearly weightless, almost unaffected by air resistance, then throw it into orbit.

I could wrap it in flame and try to melt it.

None of those options was guaranteed to work.

So I chose something more complicated, but more direct.

I drew one fist back and struck the flat of the axe with all my strength.

The weapon rang like a gong.

At the same time, I applied a Force Adjustment field that amplified force as vibrations traveled from atom to atom.

With every following vibration inside the axe, every repeated transfer of force, the power multiplied again and again, until not even the power that had created the weapon could keep it whole.

It vibrated itself apart.

“You damned little brat!” the dizzy monster roared.

Part of the reason I had spun him like a lasso was to make sure he could barely stand.

“You made me this way,” I answered, wiping blood from my face.

“I broke your toy, saw through all your tricks, and I’ve got nothing left to say to you. So there’s only one thing left.”

What followed was bloody and made a mess of half the trailer park.

Inevitably, though, he was beaten down into a dying lump of meat.

Then a sudden bolt of lightning dropped from the sky, pierced through my abdomen, and flung me more than a hundred meters away.

I stood, ears ringing, patches of skin scorched and smoking, and saw a man in red robes and black armor standing beside the old man’s body.

“A splendid performance, young lady,” the pale-skinned, black-eyed man said in a rasping voice.

“Unfortunately, I need your coach alive a little longer. You may not take him.” He sighed wearily. “Before you attempt to do so, know that you lack the power to stop me. I am Consul Mott of Mavis. Either leave on your own, or I will make you leave.”

“Huh. So you’re the leader of the invaders, then?”

Then I broke free of time.

Screw him. The villains did not get to win one more time.

I had no time to carefully process what I was supposed to feel toward the man who had leveled my city and killed most of the people I knew.

I had no time, and no energy, for another long fight—much less against someone whose power almost certainly exceeded mine and the bastard’s as much as ours exceeded an ordinary human’s.

I absolutely did not have the time or mood to listen to another stale monologue from an evil fantasy cliché.

Instant Action devoured the last of my strength like wildfire, and it let me avoid all of the above.

I flew to the ruined body of the old man, seized him, and fled with everything I had.

I managed to keep Instant Action going for twenty-four seconds.

That was the equivalent of a full hour of all-out combat, without the inconvenience of injuries.

Then this useless coach and I smashed through thirty meters of concrete and stone, disappearing into one of the city’s storm drains.

It was close to the resistance headquarters.

I hoped the villains did not know where we had gone.

Step by step, I walked, dragging a man who was not light.

The fight had left me battered, bloody, exhausted, and mentally worn thin enough that walking itself felt like a chore.

Worse, every so often, one or more of my powers would flicker out and return a few seconds later.

I had knocked the coach unconscious, and his ability-nullification was blindly targeting the last thing he had used it on…

Or perhaps the greatest threat to him…

Or maybe just the nearest target.

Powers followed the user’s intent, and his intent toward me had been very clear.

On the other hand…

Since the fight, the entire world felt lighter.

Everything looked a little brighter. Sounds were sharper and clearer. Even exhaustion and pain seemed slightly easier to bear.

Reality itself had not changed.

My perspective had.

I had not run away. I had not ignored him. I had not struck at him so weakly that, in the long run, it would mean nothing.

I had done all three before.

This victory, hard-earned as it was, might have been the freest I had felt in years.

The conflicting emotions were… actually not as terrible as I had expected.

In hindsight, the encounter had been less intense than some of the life-and-death battles I had fought over the past ten days.

Of course, it had not shocked me the way those first few hours of running from zombies with Chi Li and Cheng Rui had.

Nor like the first time we killed one.

That thought made me stop, blink, and look back.

Behind me, the mountain of muscle that had once been my coach lay bruised and bleeding in the dark, damp, narrow sewer tunnel, almost too huge to fit inside it.

No matter how I tried, I could not see the lean, gray-haired soldier dishonorably discharged from the military.

Nor could I see the hard-drinking, demanding, foreman-like man in those trunk-thick limbs and that torso nearly the size of a truck.

He did not even have gray hair or bloodshot eyes anymore. The magical transformation made him look less like himself, not more.

Without the anger and resentment, without the thought of turning me into a clockwork soldier that obeyed his orders, without that all-too-familiar pride and perfectionism…

He did not look like my coach at all.

In the dim tunnel light, the bruises looked several days old. The wounds had stopped bleeding and were slowly shrinking.

A glance through Force Sense showed broken bones knitting little by little and torn organs repairing themselves, which reminded me that the coach and I had many things in common.

We were both stubborn to the edge of absurdity.

We both possessed regeneration.

We both wanted to be strong.

Our core powers both revolved around force.

If that thought held, then what did our differences mean?

I sighed, then tore loose several rungs from a ladder that had once led to an exit above. That exit was now blocked by the rubble of a collapsed building.

Force Adjustment made the iron pliable, weakening all the forces binding it together by an order of magnitude.

Then intermittent use of Proximal Manipulation—made more difficult by occasional power disruptions, but not impossible—did the rest.

Soon the iron rungs had been straightened into rods, then split into strips, then stretched and coiled into wire.

Force Sense revealed breaks, voids, and tiny cracks within the metal itself, flaws human eyes could never see, and guided Proximal Manipulation as it repaired them.