Ch 1.52: Striker

Tira could feel the rock moving with her aspect before she saw it, feel the momentum of any moving object, but changing that momentum was something else entirely. She watched in horror as the stone hurtled towards Elaina, the poor naked girl stood frozen in fear. She was on the other side of the clearing, and the rock was moving too fast for Tira to do anything about it. If it had been heading towards Tira herself there would have been no problem, but her range had always been shorter than most other Aspected.

This time though, it felt different. Tira’s range was expanded now for some reason, and it wasn’t just that; her range was coming not just from herself, but from Elaina as well. A strange sensation, using someone else’s body as the origin of your own aspect, but as the projectile closed in on its target Tira instinctually nudged it to the side as if she were protecting her own body, a practiced instinct she’d instilled in herself for self preservation, now being used to save another.

The rock whizzed past Elaina’s head, her hair being caught by the stone and flipping through the air as she collapsed to the ground. She would’ve been too late to dodge, thank the fucking gods. Another object was moving again, thrown from a different spot in the treeline, this time towards the back of Tira’s own head.

It flew up and over, crashing into a tree and cracking into the trunk. That one had been easy enough to avoid, her practice coming in handy again. “Come on out you pasty bitch,” she said. “I can do this all day!” If the woman that had hurt and stripped Elaina thought she’d get them with this strategy she was going to be disappointed. The closer an object got to her—or Elaina apparently—the easier it was to affect its momentum, and Tira had practiced this with arrows before, so the speed these rocks were coming at them was easy to manipulate in comparison.

But why this easy? They were slower than arrows, sure, but heavier too. Momentum was mass and velocity, so an object twice as heavy but half as fast should still be the same difficulty for her to move aside. The second attack she understood, having been able to avoid it once she knew it was coming, but the first one had caught her off guard in multiple ways, and she wouldn’t normally have been able to push it aside reacting that late, using Elaina as the source of her aspect or not.

That solidified it then. She was stronger now, had a refilled mana pool, larger than ever before, and had a greater range too even without counting the weird thing that she felt ever since Elaina had called herself a good girl and Tira could use her as a focal point. She wasn’t hallucinating; she really had a class:

Sadist Striker

Kinda fucking embarrassing, not gonna lie. She wondered if she could get away just calling herself a Striker to Elaina. She looked down at herself for the first time, still keeping her sixth sense for momentum active to look out for more projectiles as she took in what she was wearing. It wasn’t quite what she would expect to be worn by a hero of the realm, and it showed off a little more cleavage than she normally would have of her own accord, but she couldn’t deny that it made her tits look good. Nice color too.

That wasn’t all she had though. A crystal, friction-resistant whip? Tira couldn’t have even imagined a better weapon. Using her standard whip she could cut through tendons and joints with proper use of Momentum, but with this she might even be able to cut through bone itself. And it’s not just Momentum either now, but [Momentum]. A stronger, somehow different aspect. And I have skills too.

She’d actually used [Domineering Presence] earlier by accident, willing the witch away as Tira struck those red crystal blades attached to her arm, felt the energy drain as fear poured from Tira’s well of mana directly into her opponent. The one about toys wasn’t immediately useful, but she’d seen how effective the first one was, so she thought it worth testing out the last one.

She reached into her mana pool, a strange feeling to use it for anything except her aspect, and willed out [Pain Management], focusing on the arm she’d broken before and trying to amplify the pain she’d caused. A cry rang out from the treeline, right by Elaina.

“That’s her, grab her!”

Elaina spun to the sound, looking half-possessed as her arm raised up and shot out a line of chains that wrapped around the tree and then yanked out the flying demon, exactly what Tira had imagined happening when she gave Elaina the order. Holy shit, her and I are really on the same wavelength.

Tira was already jumping into action as the demon lady sliced through the chains around her with the red crystal blade on her right arm, left arm still hanging limp from where Tira had broken it earlier. She raised her whip, throwing it back and focusing on [Momentum].

It was still hard, always would be hard, no matter how much she practiced. To focus on the wave of momentum as it ran up her choice of weapon, from handle to thong, thong to fall, fall to cracker. People thought of Tira as strong, but she’d never felt that was true—not until this new surge of power anyway—as she could never create force with her aspect, only alter the force that already existed. No, she didn’t fight with strength, but with precision, chasing the velocity of her whip with her mind as it trailed down the tapered rope and grew exponentially, waiting for the exact moment it was at its highest point. It was something that she was still getting the hang of after over a year of dedicated practice, as normally only the cracker of a whip broke the sound barrier and then slowed down as the whip lashed out towards its target, but Tira didn’t let that happen. She caught the tip of the whip at its fastest with [Momentum], transferring that speed down the length of the weapon and making the entire rope move that fast as she launched it towards her enemy.

A crystal whip at that speed almost certainly would’ve cleaved her opponent in two, if not for the damned elbow blade that was already in place to block it. Tira’s strikes were fast, faster than anyone else could ever attack, but she still had to wind up, telegraphing her intentions clearly before the speed came, and the woman in front of her obviously had enough of a soldier’s instinct to put her weapon in place before the impact fell.

Crystal crashed into crystal, and neither even so much as scratched. The sheer force sent the woman flying back again though, the crack of her right arm breaking following shortly after the crack of the whip, leaving both of her upper limbs hanging limp as she zipped back into the air away from another set of chains from Elaina. Tira was forced to stand there, struggling to keep track of the fight as a set of chains danced through the sky after the woman. Elaina was doing her best, keeping the demon on her metaphorical heels at the very least, but Tira was stuck on the ground.

And gods was it hard to keep track. Tira could feel Elaina’s chains whizzing around through [Momentum], but their opponent was invisible to her aspect. [Momentum] couldn’t be used on people after all, but that wasn’t normally a problem for Tira since she could always at the very least track the clothes or weapons of her enemies. That wasn’t true here though, as their opponent was buck naked, not carrying any weapon at all except the strange red ones jutting out of her skin, and for some reason those crystal weapons seemed to count as part of the demon’s body, not objects that Tira could manipulate the momentum of. Still, Tira did her best, throwing out strikes with her whip whenever the demon got close enough and forcing her back, brushing aside stones and tree branches as the demon kicked them at her and Elaina.

Eventually the woman reached out and grabbed a rock though, hurling it at Tira’s chest. It was easy to avoid, but jarring to Tira mentally. She’d broken both of the monster’s arms, and she’d also cut off her right hand off by getting the jump on her earlier, the same hand that just threw the stone at her, grown back anew.

Fuck’s sake, she has flying and healing! Tira almost debated whether there might be a second opponent around healing the woman, but dismissed the idea. They would’ve shown themselves by now. All these fuckers are stronger than a normal human, and another tossing shit around would’ve been enough to end us already. Extra opponent or not though, the prospect of the demon healing herself changed things. The haphazard attacks with kicked rocks and sticks were inaccurate and slow enough to be dealt with easily, but despite her claim earlier and her newly large mana pool Tira couldn’t actually keep up with deflecting projectiles thrown at that velocity forever.

Which is why it was a good thing Tira wasn’t a one trick pony. She launched another strike with her crystal whip and pushed in with [Pain Management] again, the two combined causing the woman to falter and fly upwards screaming as Tira ran to the side and grabbed the curved sidesword she’d dropped earlier. Blades weren’t her preferred weapon of choice for many reasons, but whips weren’t the only thing she’d practiced with over the last year and a half. Someone as weak as Tira couldn’t afford to slack off, after all.

She hurled the weapon into the air with her left hand as hard as she could, harder than she thought she could, and danced the sword around the demon as she tried to avoid it, circling around behind her and slicing through skin, again channeling [Domineering Presence] as the blade ate into the woman’s back before circling around and landing safely in Tira’s hand again.

She couldn’t help but smile as the demon stared back with obvious rage, in obvious pain. Tira had worked hard on her aspect, but she’d worked even harder to curb these tendencies of hers, the tendency to enjoy causing pain in others. Tonight though, she was going to have to focus her efforts, and one of those two things she worked so hard on was going to have to fall to the wayside. And I’ll be damned if it’s the one that’s going to save Elaina over the one that causes untold pain to the bitch that did this to her.

The fight was even now, Tira would say, as the demon zipped around the clearing, on the run from chain and blade alike. She avoided getting wrapped up in the chains which would almost certainly have meant her instant death, but she couldn’t avoid both them and Tira’s sword all the time, and the cuts were adding up. They were also subtracting though, each one added being shortly followed by a prior one healing up, all the while Tira had to spend mana to avoid her and Elaina getting bowled over by flying stones as well.

In chess, it would be considered a stalemate, but in chess both sides take turns infinitely, and that wasn’t the case here. One side would run out moves eventually, run out of mana, and that would be the deciding factor. Large as her well was now though, the combined efforts to avoid death and use her blade were taking a toll on Tira, and she was starting to fear that she might be the support beam that broke in the bridge that was keeping her and Elaina above water.

“Miss Strask,” that strange voice said again, the voice that had come from that crystal orb, “Elaina has an idea.”