Upon reaching the area near the entrance of the park after neutralizing all the monitoring devices within Nebula, Rale Nightsong found something very different from what he had been expecting. The company led by his daughter and Tenji Line had been almost wiped out, Ulura and Tenji themselves were in a pretty bad shape and meanwhile not a single member of the Summerbolt family had been killed. More than that, almost all the Earthlings had been gathered and were undergoing treatment to ensure their survival.
Overall, things didn’t seem to be going according to plan one bit and that needed to be rectified as quickly as possible. If not, Ukris would come and unleash her wrath upon all those who failed her with a high probability of Rale being the one to suffer the most in such a scenario.
He needed to make at least one Summerbolt leave this field and then force the others to split their attention between fighting him and his men and protecting the wounded Earthlings, looking for an opening to take each opponent out. Making Saya leave to search for her son was a good tactic in that regard. Seeing as how she was driven enough to use Merutera’s Bloodless Covenant again after decades, though, Rale knew that wasn’t going to slow her down for too long. The window of opportunity presented by her absence needed to be utilized to the fullest.
The plan from there was to eliminate the easiest target – Yuki Iceflame – first, while his company tired down and possibly wounded the Summerbolt trio, needing only to deal with them before Saya returned. While the madness of the rest had been factored in the black-haired brute’s calculations, he soon realized he hadn’t predicted just how crazy the newest member of that family could become.
She darted at him with her superspeed, many dark blue laser beams coming out of the ground under her to slow down the girl with white hair, meanwhile her opponent teleporting right above her to use the signature move of his specific fighting style. Ulura’s father wrapped himself up in his lasers, forming a large parallelepiped structure around him that resembled the base of a hammer, crushing it on top of Yuki to completely flatten her.
(Rale) ‘-Planning to kill me with the next attack, are you? If that’s the case, I’d better not let you finish it!!’
Rale looked ahead now, seeing how his troops had circled around to clash with the three Summerbolts who had just finished dealing with the other company, while surprisingly some of the Earthlings had got up again to face Tenji Line.
Mr. Nightsong couldn’t keep his focus on that battle long as ice started covering his creation, the hammer base being pushed away to reveal the amnesiac had protected herself from it with a full-body armor made of ice.
(Yuki) ‘-My attack will reach you no matter what you do.’
(Rale) ‘-Mmm, no. Not really. See, you’re fighting at a 15% output while with the technology imbedded in my body I can go to a 50% freely and push the percentage higher if I choose to. Plus, I’m a seasoned warrior while you’re just some brat.’
(Yuki) ‘-Ulura is your daughter, isn’t she?’
This brought a smile to the father’s face.
(Rale) ‘-We do look a lot alike, don’t we?’
(Yuki) ‘-That and the fact your behavior is as irritating as hers.’
(Rale) ‘-I’ll take that as a compliment.’
(Yuki) ‘-You should take the resemblance between you as a disadvantage. I’ve already defeated one member of you family. Having seen what happened to your child, do you really want to go up against me and suffer the same fate?’
Rale couldn’t remember when was the last time he had laughed so hard and loud that it shook his body and left him gasping for breath when he was done. He could tell this girl was something else just by her behavior.
(Rale) ‘-Have you been listening to Graid’s jokes and absorbing his sense of humor? Because after saying that, you can rival him for the title of the most ridiculous Summerbolt!!’
More hammer-like structures made from blue lasers were sent at the young Miss Iceflame from all four directions and from above as well, her response to that being a quick spin with more ice shards forming around her to create an icy tornado.
That tornado simultaneously froze parts of the parallelepipeds and shredded what remained of them, their creator having moved underground by the time the last of them was destroyed. He then proceeded to come out with a ray shaped just like the hammers under the Earthling’s feet, landing a hard uppercut on her chin that blasted her off the ground.
A second later Rale jumped beyond the reach of the ray that was now turned into a prison, closing his hand in a fist to make the prison shrink, simultaneously crushing the baby doll and the contact with the laser walls, ceiling and floor burning her. Even with the armor of ice she had on her, the amount of lasers used for the prison would cut through and reach and mutilate her flesh as well.
And yet, that prison was suddenly broken from the inside out, huge ice blades cutting it up from every side until it crumbled into nothing, a silhouette starting to emerge from one of those blades. Yuki still had her armor when she revealed herself, but it no longer looked simply like a cover identical to the person under it.
At the present it seemed like it had many layers to it, but those layers weren’t completely aligned. Due to that, Miss Iceflame had more hair on her head than usual and seemed to have more eyes, noses, ears, mouths and birthmarks around the real ones. Bits of frozen hair had formed around some parts of her body, upper and lower halves of arms and legs – around others, frozen eyes and other parts of the face having spread over the ice that covered the ice maiden. While she still looked beautiful, there was something twisted and haunting about her now as well.
(Rale) ‘-What is this?! No armor could’ve stopped the prison I just used on you!! You should’ve been grinded to dust, even with the defense of a static deva!!!’
When she spoke now, there was an echo to her voice, the words coming out of her mouth being repeated a number of times after first being heard by her enemy.
(Yuki) ‘-What I’m wearing right now did indeed stop your prison and helped me break free from it, but it’s not an armor.’
As she said that, although haunted by the echo of her voice, Rale did look past her to see how things were going for the rest of his forces. The three Summerbolts were holding their own very well against the ordinari troopers and were slowly gaining the upper hand. The Earthlings were so persistent, that it was only a matter of time before they knocked out Tenji Line for good. And the soldier who had remained behind to protect his daughter was soon going to be found by an enemy, putting her life in danger.
No more time could be wasted on Yuki Iceflame. Seeing as how she appeared plenty persistent as well, the only way Mr. Nightsong could neutralize her fast enough was to unleash his deva to a 100%. He did precisely that as he ran toward his current target again.
(Rale) ‘-Whatever that thing is, I’m going to tear it down and rip the soul straight out of the body underneath it!!!’
A massive laser parallelepiped broke out of the ground beneath the amnesiac, sending her up at the same time as the black-haired brute fell on her from above, having formed a structure of the same type and size around him.
(Rale) ‘-DOUBLE BLUE HAMMER PRESS!!!’
He watched carefully as both figures hit Yuki to find the secret behind her surviving his previous attack and this time around he saw it. Many clones of the girl with white hair made of ice came out of her, but only the upper half of the bodies of some and the lower half of others, combining their strength to stop the hammers. Once that was done, more upper halves of clones came out of the real one, forming octahedrons in their hands. The faces of both pyramids comprising each octahedron were acute triangles, due to that the figures resembling two lances brought together in appearance. Those lances pierced both parallelepipeds, more weapons of the same type coming out of them and causing the hammers’ disintegration.
The parallelepiped creator was now exposed, all the lances being combined in one of a truly tremendous size, aimed right at his torso. Before the lance could reach, a new laser ray appeared all around Rale, destroying the weapon made of ice entirely. The ray targeted the clones and their original next with Mr. Nightsong hiding within that ray and moving closer and closer to the group of Yukis in secret.
Some of the clones had come together to form a shield against the beam of lasers, the rest gathering in another double lance, piercing the beam and breaking it apart with more lances emerging from the main one again. By the time they did that, however, the blue hammer had reached his target, trying to hit her on both sides of the head with the laser hammers constructed around his fists.
A couple of upper-half clones protected their maker from that attack, a few lower-half clones transforming their legs in long lances to stab the villain at the same time, Ulura’s father thinking he had dodged that by teleporting away.
Using the uncanny teleportation of her static deva, the cloning beauty materialized behind her adversary with the same mass of lances aimed at him again, only having added just as many lances created by the arms of the upper-half clones to it. A thick square shield that ran along the length of the lower half of Rale’s arm blocked all those lances, the black-haired brute grinning in the faces of his opponents.
(Rale) ‘-I get it now! You’ve covered yourself in a mass of clones twisted together! One could call it a living armor!! I’ve never seen anyone use a technique like that!!’
The original and its doppelgangers responded in eerie unison once more.
(Yuki) ‘-Thanks, Mr. Nightsong. I couldn’t learn to create more than one full-body clone separate from myself by the time the Class Battle came, so I thought I should just create as many clones attached to the original as possible. Seems that did the trick.’
To Yuki’s surprise, Rale managed to push back all the lances with the shield around his one arm, forming a new dark blue laser beam around the other’s fist to destroy the weapons and as many of the copies holding them as possible.
(Rale) ‘-I wasn’t asking how you created the technique!! And don’t think just because you’ve surprised me, you’ve won this battle!!!’
As the beam was shot, many ice shards started forming around its creator, ice spikes with short needles on them coming out in cross formations from the shards. Unfortunately for the baby doll, Rale was quick enough to finish his attack against her living armor and teleport beyond the range of the needle-ridden spikes that closed in on him.
The moment she teleported in front of him to use the clones’ fists and kicks to beat him up, he easily blocked the whole barrage, following up with a few attacks of his own that shattered quite a few ice heads, arms and legs. This served to shock Yuki even further.
(Yuki) ‘-How did you block all that?! Are you a superhuman as well?!’
The brute’s counter-pummeling began with the widest triumphant grin in existence after his adversary’s questions.
(Rale) ‘-I definitely work out like one, little girl. (the original’s face was hit by a savagely mighty fist, its strength being enough to crack up the entire armor she had encased herself in) AND THESE STRENGH AND SPEED ARE THE RESULT!!!!’
The clones retaliated without delay, all of them becoming a mass of octahedrons, but being slower in terms of attack speed compared to before. This time Ukris’ husband didn’t shy away from the weapons one bit but charged instead, crushing them with no remorse, not seeing the fists and kicks hidden among them.
The second level of Miss Iceflame’s attack successfully reached Mr. Nightsong, shaking him up and starting to freeze every part of his body the fists and kicks came in contact with. Thin lasers eradicated the ice before it covered too much of the blue hammer’s body, Yuki already coming with the next wave of her assault.
Although Rale succeeded in shattering quite a few double lances of the newest set, the weapons of the girl with white hair managed to cut him in quite a few places across the limbs and the torso, thin streaks of blood coming out of the cuts. Surprisingly enough, this child had been the one to draw first blood in their conflict and she capitalized on the moment by attacking again and again with lances, fists and kicks, leaving not even a moment for respite.
Ulura’s father could see now why his daughter had lost to the newest member of the Summerbolt family.
This girl was talented, clever, creative, strong and very driven. Not to mention she had been using much more than a 15% output for a while now and showed only minimal signs of fatigue. There was no other way to achieve this than with an unimaginable amount of stamina. Combining these traits with the training the family he hated had given her had produced a truly splendid young warrior.
Their clash was initially supposed to not last long at all, but it was becoming protracted, as it seemed. What’s worse, Ukris’ husband was enjoying it so much that he could hardly spare a thought for the state of his troops or that of Tenji Line. He certainly enjoyed this more than any of the sparring sessions he had had with his daughter. And as his joy increased, so did the pain of knowing that this mighty battle would have to end eventually.
At a certain point the combatants pushed the other back, Yuki quickly starting to work on repairing all the damage her armor had suffered, Rale not being able to use such an approach. And his injuries now included a few shallow puncture wounds as well as a deeper one just under the right side of his sternum.
It was clear the two’s melee was soon going to reach its end. But even though he knew that, the brute couldn’t help but smile.
(Rale) ‘-I’ll be honest, Yuki. What we did here was awesome. It makes me really sad to see it end.’
(Yuki) ‘-That makes one of us. I told you right from the start I’m going to kill you and was fighting all this time to do only that.’
(Rale) ‘-That drive right there ... I love it. I was expecting to hear some self-righteous bullshit about just trying to stop me or even make me change, but no. You straight-up want to take my life.’
(Yuki) ‘-I might have tried to persuade you, had I not learned you’ve brought dead men back to life to make them fight for you. And had you not threatened Hikaru. It’s clear that you’re a much bigger monster than Ulura aiming to destroy my whole family, so negotiations with you are pointless.’
(Rale) ‘-You’re right. (he put his fist against the palm of his other hand as he made a slight bow with a respectful expression) Sorry about this. 66 6-Faced Hammers’ Justice.’
Tens of rather thin parallelepiped-shaped dark blue lasers came out from all over the ice maiden’s living armor, blood leaking out of the holes left in that armor as it cracked and eventually broke apart entirely, its maker falling on the blood-stained earth.
Her whole body had burns and hemorrhages from the usage of her deva beyond the set limit, but was now riddled with holes as well, only her head and throat being spared such a fate. The lasers that had come from within her body had still cut that beautiful face a few times, though, so it looked just as bloody as the rest of her.
(Rale) ‘-I’ll tell you how this happened as a parting gift, Yuki. (he walked to her side and squatted right next to her face as she laid on her back, blood coming out of her mouth as well now) Precise attacks are the Nightsongs’ forte and we don’t use moves that are too flashy or cover too wide a range. Yet we often hide such precise attacks behind bigger moves to fool our enemies. That’s what I did with the hammers I had formed around my hands and feet while fighting you up close. (she goggled her eyes in shock from the revelation) Every time an attack of mine came in contact with the ice your clones were made of, I spread lasers through that ice on an atomic level, making sure they would reach all the way to the original’s body. And once I did that, I simply increased the number of those atoms to form bigger structures and destroy you from within. (he placed his palm on her forehead, his face being full of sadness) You did great, though. I want you to know that. (Rale screwed up his eyes from the pain of seeing the girl he had started to admire in such a state) If only … if only Ulura had found you on the day you arrived in Deckstoru instead of that bastard Hikaru and brought you to us. (finally a small smile found its way to his face) But don’t worry. You’ll still be able to join our family. I made sure the damage isn’t too catastrophic, so you can be resurrected without any issues. We’ll have to break that will of yours so you can fight beside us and make you a bit more villainous, but other than that, you’ll be the same. (he removed his hand from her forehead now and caressed her cheek) Now rest. We’ll see each other again soon.’
