I darted my eyes across the lifeless wasteland that surrounded us before directing my attention to Flare. Her face was painted with arrogance and conviction, as if she knew her victory was guaranteed. That no matter my might or cunning, there was no way I could possibly defeat her. Ordinarily, I would be confident in my abilities to overcome any and all obstacles presented before me, but with my intellect and memories still gradually returning, it was difficult to focus on a complicated strategy. Instead, my only plan was to wait and see just what she was capable of.

I maintained my glare as my mind worked in the background, thinking through possible scenarios and the potential weaknesses this deific being possessed. The two of us stared each other down for a full minute, in silence, with the gentle sound of wind being the only thing to grace either of our ears. Eventually, Flare grew tired of this and scoffed at me.

“So, should I make the first move or what?”

“Go ahead,” I calmly replied.

Flare snickered in response but remained where she stood. Our eyes locked as I examined her body for any tell or sign of what her game was, only to have my concentration broken as the light of the setting sun disappeared, and darkness encompassed the world around me. I looked upwards and saw that the sky was coated by a sheet of dark clouds, expanding and growing as I stared at them, all while the once gentle winds intensified.

While I expected something like this from Flare, given her ability to control nature and with it weather, seeing it in action was… unnerving. This is the power that destroyed the world, and not only was I about to see it in action, but it was going to be concentrated entirely towards me. Still, my only strategy was to wait and observe, looking for moments of weakness that I could exploit. For this was a battle where I did not need to worry about my own survival.

Before too long, it began. A downpour fell onto both Flare and myself. The winds picked up their pace, accelerating well beyond 70 kilometers per hour. And the sound of thunder echoed throughout vacant plains, retaining its force and volume even through the turbulent rain. I stood my ground as the wind blew past me while the rain proceeded to drench my clothing, struggling against the forces of nature. Flare in comparison seemed completely unnerved by the storm, standing her ground while her silver hair billowed in the wind, and the water cascaded down her violet jumpsuit.

“The storm is coming Abigale. What will you do? What can you do to stop it? Because let me give you a little warning here, it’s gonna be a bad one.”

“Regardless of your powers, I will not surrender to you! And even with the forces of nature at your disposal, I am not afraid of anything you may do! I can guarantee that I have been through far, far worse!” I shouted over the wind and rain.

“Heh. Such confidence. That’s good. I like being met with at least a little resistance. It will make my inevitable victory and your inevitable defeat all the more… satisfying.”

The rain and wind further intensified. In order to prevent myself from being blown away by these rapid winds, I reached down to the mud surrounding my feet and Real Booted a pair of incredibly dense boots over my existing outfit to secure myself to the ground. Upon finishing that, the wind began to accelerate even further, surpassing well over 130 kilometers per hour, while the rain became so brutal that I could barely see anything in front of me or hear anything beyond the echoing thunder.

With my senses compromised, I was nothing more than a target and needed to seek temporary shelter. I brought myself to the damp ground, placing my hands against the Earth to make myself a hovel to orientate myself for the time being. But before I could begin the process, I felt a sharp pain in my legs and fell to the watery mud below. My legs had been severed, and I was face-first in the dirt, no longer locked into the Earth below, and even less aware of what was around me. And before I could twist my body around in a vain effort to perceive the world around me during a torrential downpour, I felt my body raise from the Earth, as I was now light enough to be carried away by the winds, which threw me through a waterfall of rain.

Dismembered and further disorientated, I spiraled through the air, struggling to even sense what direction I was going as the wind continued to push me upwards, sideways, and forwards. Despite having regained my repertoire of powers, I was still helpless, unable to fight back, or even control where I was going. I allowed the winds to carry me for a brief while, long enough for my legs to grow back, while devising a plan to bring myself back to the ground by Real Booting my remaining clothes. I brought a hand to my suit and began transforming it, only for something to grab my arm, pulling it away from my person. I peered through the wind and the rain to confirm that it was Flare, floating effortlessly through the air and looking at me as coyly as ever.

“Tsk-tsk, my dear mother, I expected better from you. Trying the same dull tactic again? Boring! Let me just strip you out of your clothing to force some creativity from your dainty little head. No worries, I’ll be sure to strip myself if you want. I’m sure you’ll be impressed, and maybe a bit jealous, of how well I devel—”

Flare’s insistent ramblings were silenced as the back of her neck burst open, sending a stream of blood that mingled with the rain and was carried upwards by the wind. All it took was a bit of focus and a snap of my fingers. She fell unconscious, and the intense rain and wind around us began to dissipate and decelerate just as rapidly as they began. As the force around us lessened, we both succumbed to the might of gravity and fell limply onto the swampy terrain below.

I lifted my face from the muck below and looked at Flare, who laid a few meters away. She was injured from both my assault and the fall. Her movements were sluggish, and as the rain weakened, I could hear her dramatically loud moans from afar. It was as I saw her lift herself, wrapped with the pain of falling 10, maybe 15, meters, that something finally clicked in my mind. One field that I unquestionably excelled at compared to Flare. Pain tolerance.

After being tortured and tormented an incalculable amount of times throughout my life, I mentally formed a tolerance for pain. While my body felt less pain than a human would due to how my immortality worked and how rapidly I healed my wounds, the reason why I was able to endure so many injuries had to do with my personal familiarity with the sensation of pain. I knew what it was like to be severed by a blade, punctured by a bullet, to be set aflame, and to be drenched in substances that would eat away at my flesh. The sensation of pain was one I learned to fight against, to resist, and ultimately to tolerate through successive and excessive exposure. Yet Flare lacked that same tolerance, as it was something that came from my experience, not my powers.

“She doesn’t have everything I have,” I thought to myself. “She may have my powers and more… but I still have everything that defines me. And with that, I can defeat her… I can still defeat… my last child.”

I bit down, cracking my teeth as I realized the true extent of my mental ineptitude. While she called herself Flare, she truly was one of my children, and as such, I should be able to defeat her in a similar manner. Due to her immortality, I could not simply kill her, but I had encountered a situation like this before. Just like with Ultros, I would need to use Real Booting in order to transform her body before I could absorb her.

A smile appeared on my face after I began to set things in motion mentally, quickly devising a way to immobilize her while she is still down. Yet, I was not fast enough. As the wheels of my mind ground together, shaving away a dense layer of rust, Flare had already recovered from her fall and was returning to the sky, and stood five meters above the ground. Well out of my reach. Once she regained her composure in the air, she looked down and spoke to me once more.

“You know, that really fucking hurt. Snapping the back of my head open like that. I just wanted to talk to my dearest maternal unit and show her my sweet and perk-some double-D titters, but no, you just had to get in a cheap shot.”

After making that comment, she looked up at the persistent yet weakening rain from above, scoffing at the clouds before waving a hand. From that simple gesture, the thick clouds thinned into nothingness, revealing a pristine starlit sky. For an instance, I thought that this was the end of her weather-based onslaught… but then the calm winds grew into a vicious squall that pushed against my body, lifting it off the ground.

My body twisted and turned as the wind assaulted me, but without the veil of rain, I had a far better understanding of my surroundings and saw a collection of skull-sized boulders picked up by the wind, heading in my direction. I could not shift my body or weight, so I began snapping blindly, hoping to shatter the rocks into pebbles before they struck my body, but my fingers were too slow and the stones too erratic in their movements. They slammed against my person, ripping apart my skin, and shattering my bones. And even the rocks I did break away still dug through my muscles, tearing away my tendons as the assault continued.

Bloody and broken, at least for the moment, I found myself carried by the wind as it contorted itself into a spiral, locking me into a ravenous debris-filled tornado. Through the pain, I looked towards the eye of the storm, where I saw Flare. She floated casually amidst these vicious winds, gazing at me with the expected smile as she laughed at the sight of my body being pelted and torn by the stones she threw my way.

I needed to get closer to her, but with the intensity of the winds, moving in any sense was difficult. I could use my Snap Bust ability to distract her, but I was dubious that she would fall for that tactic yet again, and with the relentless damage done to my body, I was doubtful if I could even snap my fingers at the moment.

I needed some form of force to fling myself away from the powerful winds, which is when inspiration struck me. I waited for the next rock to come hurling in my direction, and rather than brushing my body against it to minimize the damage, I grabbed it with my hands as it crashed against my abdomen. I coughed up blood from the impact and could feel my organs churn, but it was well worth it. With matter in my hands and with knowledge gradually dripping back into my mind, it only took a matter of seconds for me to convert the stone in my hands into something far more… explosive.

I turned my back to the stones being thrown my way as I Real Booted the stone clenched in my palms, tolerating the pain of having my spine and ribs broken again and again as I ran calculations through my mind. I carefully examined Flare’s location, the movement of the tornado, and my own angle, all until I was able to position myself at the right angle and execute my plan at the right moment. With a snap of my half-broken fingers, the object in my hands detonated, shooting me through the tornado’s current, into the center, where I landed directly against Flare. I ignored my wounds from the explosion, and instead grabbed Flare by the torso, pressing my hands against the back of her shoulders, and converting her clothing into dust and her body into ash. She wailed in agony as I did so, flailing around her body, bashing her powerful hands against my skull in an attempt to flee herself from my clutches.

I tolerated the pain as I felt something return and seep into my body, but before I could even reach the halfway point, before I could turn Flare’s arms into ash, Flare fell from the sky, landing onto the harsh ground below, using my body to cushion her fall. My being shattered from the impact, and Flare was able to escape my grasp, fleeing upwards into the sky once again. She looked down at me with scorn as she levitated a wad of mud from the ground below, using its matter to restore her violet bodysuit to its former status.

“I see you haven’t grown any less persistent since your awakening. No matter what was thrown your way, you always got up, and always clung to survival. I suppose that is to be expected, you being an immortal and all. But I’m afraid you have met your match this time. You might think I am just your first child and some deranged human, but I am more than the sum of my parts. I am a being forged through the intensity of their affection, refined by divine might, and polished through a fine mixture of love and determination. And it is through these things… that I have not only exceeded the two of them, but you as well, dearest mother.”

“I advise that you steel thyself. For I am the fury, I am the divine, and I am your domination. I am your better, and I’ll keep beating you to death over and over again until you accept my reality! Round three means no more fuckin’ about! Get ready bitch!”

After her villainous spiel, Flare looked up at the sky above, waving her hands dramatically as the starry sky became covered in a sea of sinister black clouds. I looked at her rising body, questioning why she would attempt to battle me using rain once more… but the rain never came.

The clouds boomed with the sounds of thunder as flashes of light illuminated the thick darkness that surrounded me. I knew that I had no hope of fleeing, so I stood valiantly, awaiting whatever she had in store for me… only to be struck by a bolt of lightning. Hundreds of thousands of volts shot through my body, coursing through my skeleton, and out into the watery ground below. My skin was burnt, my organs were ravaged, and I could no longer support myself. But before I even had the opportunity to fall into the mud below, I was hit with a second bolt, and a third, and a fourth. My body was eventually decimated, exploded from the consecutive strikes, unable to withstand the impact of this electricity.

I thought back to my encounter with my second child as I felt my body regenerate and restore itself after a moment of respite in the assault, only for my consciousness to face away shortly thereafter as my brain was decimated into a puddle of fleshy goop. Time lost all meaning during that assault, as well as this one. The instant I regained consciousness, it was lost.

By the time I regained consciousness for more than a second, I realized that I now rested in a damp hole three meters deep. The sky above me was dark, but the lighting had stopped. I let out a brief sigh of relief before bringing myself to the rim of the hole to hoist myself up… only for the ground beneath me to tumble away. I immediately latched onto one of the damp walls around me, but as I lifted myself up, I felt the Earth before me condense, crushing against my body, immobilizing it with the weight and force of a piece of terrain. I could not move my arms, I could barely breathe, and with my head bound by a vise of stone, I had no choice but to look at the dark sky above. It was as tight as I could be without killing me outright or turning my body into a fleshy paste once again.

Before the idea of escape could even cross my mind, I looked up and saw Miss Flare, kneeling down to look into the hole.

“Y’know, I really don’t appreciate this whole feral determination thing you’ve got going for you. I kind of hoped that after 7 years of beauty sleep and a battle against a foe who is objectively better than you, you would have realized that there is just no way you can win. I mean, sure, I know that the almighty Abigale Quinlan is not crash, she is unbreakable, and that no matter what, she cannot die. After I did so many goldarn experiments on you, that was just painfully obvious. I can literally keep this shit up forever. Hell, that lightning barrage I did lasted a full hour! But I would rather not spend a decade duking it out with you while the world gets progressively more shite burgers, so maybe just, y’know, give up for once in your life?”

While listening to her latest monologue, a theory crossed my mind. Having absorbed some of her body earlier in the battle, I might have a portion of her power to alter nature, to shift the very earth around me. I started small, aiming to move away enough room to free my hands and myself. It was an ability I had no recollection of using, but through the exertion of my will and the focus of my mind, I managed to do what Flare was doing, albeit on a smaller scale. I only managed to free an arm of its stony prison, but it was an advantage that would help me win this battle if I was in the right situation. And to get into that situation, I would need to play on my foe’s biggest weakness. Her personality.

“Flare, I have been through far, far worse forms of torment than this throughout the years,” I said as best I could given the proximity of earth around my face.

“Oh, trust me, mother Abigale, I know all the hardships you went through. I’m the one who greenlit everything from the acid baths, the nuclear waste injections, the superheat chamber of spikes and pain, the 0 Kelvin box, and all the other adorable attractions I used in an attempt to see just how you ticked. Which I never managed to figure out by the way, but now that I have all your powers and more… I don’t really give a honk about the science behind it.”

“Oh, so you put me through all of those creative tortures back when you were a mere human. But now, with powers greater than any other creature on the planet, the best you can do is elongated crushing and repeated death by electricity? I have to say, I expected better of you!”

“Ahahahaha! Finally, some jokes. I have been waiting so long to see you show a lighter side. And as a big howdy thank you, I’ll give you exactly what you want. Embrace the force of nature, motherfucker!”

The Earth around me shifted yet again, but this time it widened, freeing my body as it shifted the ground outwards and upwards, placing me in a basin with a radius no less than 20 meters. I looked up at the airborne Flare as I brought myself up from the ground, and in response, she let out a simple snap of her fingers, causing a small explosion behind me. I turned my head and saw something emerge from the basin. A growing pool of billowing magma, rising from a hole less than ten meters away from me. Close enough for me to feel its extreme heat, but far enough that my body didn’t burst into flames.

Before I could move away from the molten rock, I felt something penetrate my back, exiting out my body, and bringing me down to the ground below. It was a metal spear, and as I pierced my being, I peered my head upwards, where I saw Flare, carrying a bushel of spears in her hands, one of which was coming straight at me, and pierced my leg. It was followed by another, and another, and so on until my body was bound by seven spears, pinning me to the earth below, disabling everything beneath my torso.

I was in agony… but it was nothing compared to what followed. I lacked the focus and quickness to remove the spears from my body as the magma rose, and it soon came close enough to my body to set it ablaze. Burns erupted my skin, I became a medium for fire, and the metal of the spears absorbed the heat, causing my body to bake from within. My flesh was consumed by flames, and once my organs were naught but cinder, my bones cracked from the brutal heat.

I screeched in horror, reached highs I didn’t even know were within my vocal range, and released wordless cries of pain that were akin to begging for aid. All while tears rolled down my face and my hands flailed at the ground before me.

It was a display expected of a person dying a pain-wrought death… but I knew better. I had been through enough to tolerate even the most brutal of paints, and the most deprived of deaths. This was all a feint, a ploy to toy with the emotions of my tormentor. And as she placed her heeled shoes onto the ground before me, I kept up the facade.

“Oh me, oh my. It appears that I caused my dearest mother quite a lot of pain. But no worries, you know the magic words in order to make the pain go away. They are quite simple, so I trust you can remember it, even in your old age. They are ‘I’, ‘give’, and ‘up’. Say it with me now.”

“I… I… I give—” I grunted, genuinely struggling to speak given the pain.

“Yes, yes, oh yes, go on little one, I know you have it in you to say it!”

As the eagerness billowed in her voice, Flare ordered the magma to recede back into the Earth. With it gone, my body could heal itself. Flesh returned to my bones, a fresh layer of skin replaced the charred remains of my lower half, and I could even feel my body rejecting the spears that penetrated it. However, I was not healed, I was not capable of fighting against Flare in this state… or so she would assume.

I glared at Flare’s feet, her dainty heels that pressed against the ground below. Through the exertion of my will, I caused the ground beneath Flare’s feet to tilt upwards. Her balance toppled, and even with her immense strength, she succumbed to the power of gravity, falling forwards and onto the spears jutting out from my body. She fell face first, penetrating her brain on impact, and coating my body with her blood. As her body jittered about, I took my opportunity, awkwardly latched my hands onto her, and began Real Booting away as much as her form as possible. My hands and mind moved as fast as they could, rubbing up and down her legs until nothing remained, but right as I moved up to her waist, I felt one of the spears ram itself through my eye and into my brain, immobilizing me. I fluttered in and out of consciousness as my body rejected the petal pike, but everything went to darkness once I heard a familiar ticking sound.

I regained consciousness meters away and in a basin filled with shrapnel, while Flare was looking down at me from above, as to be expected. Her purple bodysuit was restored, but her face was contorted by hatred and disdain, all directed squarely at me.

“You cheeky little cunt!” Flare shouted, “That’s the third fucking time! I thought we were having a gentle-ladies competition of strength and poise.”

“This is a battle,” I said as I stood up from the dirt below. “It is your fault for lowering your guard and buying my feint.”

“A feint? You mean that you were just pretending to be in pain? You were pretending to be hurt by billowing magma? The fuck are you made of?”

“It is a little something called pain tolerance. You are far from the first person to torture me, and after being placed in painful situations over the span of centuries, one tends to gain resistance to it.”

“Oh-ho! How coy. Very well, we can keep this up if you would like. But I have to ask what you hope to accomplish by pretending to be hurt. I mean, seriously, what on fuck could your plan be? You can tell me. We’re family after all.”

“Have you ever considered how I killed my immortal child?”

“Eh, you mean Ultros? I’m not sure, but I’m guessing you ate him.”

“No. Cannibalism is far, far beneath me. Instead, I Real Booted them.”

“Hold on, you can Real Boot people too? I’ve never heard of you ever doing that, and trust me, I scoured the world for every bit of information about you that I could find! Well, I paid someone else to do it and reviewed what they found, but same difference.”

“You know how my children disintegrate into ash upon their death? Ash that returns to my body? Not only did I turn my immortal child into the very same ash, but I have also been doing the same to you.”

“Okay… but I regenerated myself— I just did that a minute ago… So how the fuck does that work?”

“I have been absorbing your body, and taking away your powers as a result. Allow me to demonstrate… and risk coming across as a fool if my theory is incorrect.”

With that, I extended my arm, focused my vision, and snapped my fingers, causing a small explosion to pop in Flare’s shoulder. A violent grunt escaped her lips as she furrowed her brow, before refocusing her anger onto me.

“Asshole! The hell is this supposed to prove?”

“Time yourself.”

“What?”

“Time how long it takes your body to heal. A wound like that should be undone in five seconds… and yours took a good ten.”

During the time it took for this brief exchange, Flare’s body had healed, but as she looked down at herself and the hole in her clothing, her cocky and cheery expression fell away as her mouth remained agape and her eyes widened. For the first time since I met her, Flare was showing signs of genuine fear, and that brought a small smile to my own face. It was an indication that the tables had turned. That I had the clear upper hand.

I dashed towards her in an attempt to end things quickly, but she, expectedly, flung herself upwards into the sky before I could grab her. As she ascended, I took note of how she moved. She who was once the master of the sky was now wobbling throughout it, moving slower, and lacking the same dexterity she once demonstrated with me between her bosom. She was a shadow of her former self… but she was still moving faster than I could run, and if I wanted to pursue her, I needed to get on her level. I needed to take to the sky above.

I thought of the sensation of weightlessness, the feeling of the winds pushing me forwards and upwards, and as I narrowed my desires, they manifested themselves into reality. I found myself floating above the ground that once supported my person, and as I looked upwards into the sky, I ascended, going higher and higher until I was across from Flare, who still zipped throughout the sky at an impressive speed, already a mere speck on the horizon. My grasp of this power was flimsy, my movements stiff and loose all at the same time, but I had no choice but to pursue her, and I did just that.

With every kilometer I traveled, I felt my sense of control and direction grow stronger, learning simply by doing, and with my improved control came greater speeds. My body accelerated and accelerated as I focused on the being before me, one who danced throughout the stars above, swam through the light clouds before me and dived down to the horizon below. Her patterns, either through her own intention or not, were erratic, disorientating me even more than the sensation of flight, but as the chase continued, her tolerance dwindled. Once I was no more than 300 meters away from Flare, she flew into a patch of coniferous woodlands.

The light of the moon and stars was blocked by the dense greenery overhead, making it impossible to find Flare using my sight alone. I knew I could Real Boot a flashlight for myself, but with my senses clear and my target close, I ran throughout the darkness, dashing between the tightly woven trees and closing the distance between us. As the distance closed itself, my nostrils flared open with the aroma of smoke, and a bright orange glow shined from between the plant life before me.

It was a non-threat, a desperate distraction by Flare, but I could not tolerate any destruction of life after getting so far, even if this could be restored and replaced. I paused and thought back to what Flare did early during our battle. Summoning clouds from nothingness and creating a downpour. One that could easily quench burgeoning fires such as this. Concentration and a scientific understanding of what I was doing allowed me to make it so, and while I could not see the sky above, I could feel the rain falling from between the branches, dampening the forest floor and culling the flames into nothingness. I continued my pursuit as the flames died out, trotting through the dampening dirt below my feet, remaining steadfast as my bare feet landed against stray twigs and rocks.

Even with this handicap, I soon was able to lay my eyes on Flare, fumbling through the woods, her rapid breathing almost carrying itself through the rain. She was scared, desperate, and as she turned her head back to look me in the eyes, her composure crumbled. She tripped into the watery mud below, and I had my opportunity.

My focus shifted, causing the rainfall to stop, as I lunged towards Flare, latching onto her damp mane of silvery hair. I pulled her body closer to mine and bound her chest with my arms. She screamed, she flailed, she knew what fate I had planned for her, and I began the process with immediacy, bringing my hands to her head. Her hair, her skull, and all elements that composed her visage were turned into ash as her pleas for mercy grew in both volume and veracity until they were reduced to nothing, along with everything above her shoulders.

I began to Real Boot the rest of it in an attempt to finish the process, bringing my hands to her stomach, her breasts, and arms, making them all vanish away. But as I reached her disembodied waist… I stopped. The sense I had felt whenever one of my children was near, or when I was separated from my bodily parts, had vanished. As if I was complete and that all of my powers were restored, even though roughly half of Flare’s body remained. It was out of this sense of fullness, along with feelings of pity and curiosity, that I ceased Real Booting Flare’s body.

I released my grip onto Flare’s remains and positioned them against the trunk of a tree. I contemplated what I would do with the remains if a burial or burning would be more appropriate, and as I contemplated this, I noticed… movement around the top of the waist. Slowly, the body of Flare was restoring itself. Flesh I had destroyed was reconstituting itself and the skin was growing anew.

As this process continued, I preoccupied myself by digging into the dirt below and assembling it into a black and red suit, donning it as I kept my eyes locked with Flare, counting the seconds until every facet of her body had been recreated. In total, the healing process took 137 seconds, far longer than it took for me to heal after I killed my first child, but the entirety of her being, from head to toe, was identical to what I saw mere minutes earlier.

After her body was restored, Flare’s eyes flickered open, looking up at the night’s sky, or at least, looking in that direction. There was something odd about how she looked outwards, as if she were half-asleep or struggling to comprehend the sight before her. I waited a brief moment before I offered her a simple greeting. She turned her head to me, her face apathetic and eyes lifeless.

For an instance, I wondered if I severely damaged her brain to the extent that it had not healed, but just as I took a step forward to investigate, her eyes widened and her body stood upwards. Her head began darting around, taking in everything around her, before she stood up. I braced myself for her next move, however ineffectual it may be, but what Flare did next was certainly… unexpected.