Kenta squared down with his target.  She crashed into the corner of the wall cracking it a little.  Noticing that that alone hadn’t been enough, Kenta jumped in.  ‘I need to see how strong this one is…perhaps this will work…’  He threw down several punches testing her defenses.  The powers that she possessed remained unknown at the moment.

However, he noticed nothing happened.  Unlike before, there was little to no movement out of the girl.  And each hit with his fist felt almost like hitting a wall rather than flesh.  ‘Is this her power?  I wonder if it’ll be the right one I need…’

Suddenly, the woman kicked her foot down, throwing up a debris screen.  Kenta backed off in defense only for an inhumanly large hand to burst out from the smoke.  Surprised, he never expected for the massive hand to grab him and slam him into the floor.  ‘Dammit…I’m going to have to fight for real…’

It did little more than rattle him.  ‘I’ve got to thank her for all that brutal training.  I never would have been able to shake that off…’  A flash of purple light came from his body briefly before the massive hand’s hold loosened.  He leapt free to a safe distance.  Rolling to a stop, he righted his head to see what the girl did next.

The hand disappeared back into the smoke as though the teen became the fog.  It certainly made it difficult to know what move that she would make next.  Kenta could only monitor the cloud carefully to see what would happen.  ‘The couple of bursts I made hopefully didn’t give away too much of what I can do.  She’s keeping her cards close.  Like the brat says, I need to learn what the enemy does while showing as little as I can…’

He shook his head a little surprised that he absorbed as much of her training into his body as he thought.  Kenta would do everything to hide that fact from her.  He could give her nothing to hold over her.

Chapter 633 – Heated Embrace

Trying to match the swift end of the boss didn’t quite pan out the way he wanted.  She managed to send what looked like their team leader flying to another roof with ease.  After a month of sparring and training with her, he thought that he had seen everything, even if she still did continue to surprise him.  But the swift and efficient control that she commanded left him even more in awe and frustrated.  She still held back.  How far beyond them was she?

But he pushed out the distraction as he had to focus on the fight in front of him.  The smoke still provided some cover for her.  Part of him wanted to just jump straight in and damn the screen.  Yet his training yelled at him to hold and be clear.  The enemy revealed some of their hand, but it was still a very unknown situation.

The brat pounded into him more patience and care with what he did.  It never felt like his style.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t help but to appreciate the results as they slowly manifested with each match he had with her.  He never told her, but it worked.  And like she said, he would steal everything from her to see his, their, revenge complete.

A wall stood before him first.  Much like him, she seemed to be trying to play defensive.  Facing someone playing the same game as him would have normally immediately sent him into a rage, but he dealt with that everyday from the brat.  As he witnessed, she continued to hide things from him.  She only told him exactly what he needed at any point.  Even when he tried to pull out more.  It was going to take more than a little resistance to boil him now.

Kenta stalled in the hopes that the cloud around her would fade away or she would just take an action.  Their defensive actions didn’t give him much expectations of that.  But he couldn’t reveal everything too soon.  He needed to understand how her power worked.  A giant hand made no sense to him.

He considered his options as he started to move slowly.  ‘A power that makes a giant hand, if that isn’t the dumbest shit.  Can she only make her hand bigger or her whole body?  Can the roof even hold her?  What sort of whack ass power am I dealing with?’  A glance over at his family in their fights made him wish he had someone different.  But it wasn’t like they knew what powers they had.

And it was becoming more clear with each passing second that she wasn’t willing to give it up.  ‘Fine, I’ll tear it out of you…’  With the smoke still clearing like it was clung to her, Kenta turned on his toes and sprinted in.  It wasn’t fast, he still needed to feel out what he was working with.  They were strong, but nothing like the brat.  That much he felt from the first scuffle.

Kenta slid into the unknown space around the teenager with his fist prepared.  Unless they had perfect vision, he didn’t think they could see him well.  She was still thickly obscured in the debris cloud.  So when his fist just felt like it hit a wall, he questioned it again.  ‘That same feeling…is this the truth of their power?’  It still didn’t make sense or give him a clear answer.  He needed to know the how, not the what.

It at least didn’t feel like she knew he was coming.  What he hit was broad, almost like it was the chest or something, but it was wrong.  In spite of feeling like a brick wall, there was a clear sensation of flesh as strange as that was to picture for Kenta.  He knew he hit bare skin.  It had to be her arm.  But it didn’t feel right, it was too big.

A flash of purple from his enclosed hand exploded.  He jumped back with the force letting the shockwave of his blast finally wipe away the cloud she desperately seemed to be clinging to.  Revealed once more, he could see his target.  The girl didn’t even look harmed by his little bomb.  It wasn’t meant to injure, but he did expect to see a mark or sign of some type.  Nothing.  He kept his disappointment to himself.  “Finally showing yourself.  Too scared to have a proper face to face?”

No reply.

“I guess we’ll talk with fists then!”  He jumped back in now with a clear vision of her body.  There were plenty of openings that he was trained to spot by the brat.  They couldn’t have been much more than an average girl going to school before the Incident happened.  Kenta could work with that.

A strike, jump into a feint with a kick, speed blitzing for a throw, none of it worked.  She was open everywhere, but he couldn’t get leverage or movement out of her.  It was more than just a wall.  He felt like he was hitting a car.  Nothing about her made sense.  And worse, she just kept still barely giving anything of a reaction.

Kenta landed several meters away from his latest attempt to move more than the dust that stuck to her shirt.  He rubbed his fingers against his thumb reconsidering his plans.  ‘I need to force some sort of action out of her.  I can’t learn anything if she won’t do something.  She’s playing the same damn game as me, just better.  Weird ass power…’  Kenta didn’t like the idea of revealing his power too soon.  He kept things contained and subtle.  Just like her, she had to have some hint to his power, but not a clear picture.  The more he used it the easier it was going to be for her to pick it apart.

The more he rubbed his fingertips, they started to have a minor glow about them.  His plasma leaking ever so slightly.  He caught the change in heat in time to close his hand.  ‘Focus man, you need to do something to spook her…’  Kenta came to the only answer he had.  He would have to tip his hand sooner than he wanted to force something out of her.  Meeting power for power was the only option.  Perhaps if he had the brat’s skill he could do it, but that wasn’t where he was now.

Kenta sprinted in starting to run another attack on the girl.  He kept his strikes similar to what he attempted before.  She needed to think he was just blindly striking.  As he flipped over, he landed with a small slide as his hand pressed into the roof.

Once more he leapt in.  Kenta made sure to mix up his attacks just enough to keep her guessing.  He reused feints, but tried to make sure it looked like he was probing.  Another landing, he brushed his hand against the roof.  ‘Almost…this better work…’  He put a lot into the plan actually giving him results.  The girl was so much of a fortress it was disconcerting for him.  Bits of fear crawled at him as he worked on his strategy.

The lack of any movement of them still bothered him.  He began putting in more strength behind his strikes, partly for show and to test.  ‘How much do I need to knock this girl over?  I’m not to my limit, but this shit is getting stupid!’  Once more he landed with a slide on a different side of her.  His hand brushed over the roof.  ‘Four…’

Watching her as he made each action didn’t reveal anything.  She moved an arm or just completely tanked a hit.  The giant hand thing didn’t even appear again.  He hoped to see how that worked.  She deliberately used the cover of the smoke to hide whatever that was.

Kenta finished the last of his plan as he pulled his hand back from the roof.  If she knew what he was cooking, she didn’t show it.  And she remained fixed in the same spot as before.  It started to become a bit of pride now for him to see her budge even a little.  He couldn’t be worthless at this stage.  ‘Just need one push…  One big strike…’

He brushed off his hands from the layer of dusk and debris coating the roof.  It was going to be the moment of truth for him.  If he couldn’t make her act after this the fight was doomed.  He couldn’t accept that failure.  It would have to succeed.  Kenta would find a way.

Channeling that buried energy within him, he narrowed his eyes at her.  His expression pressed tight as the gravity of it carved into his body.  He committed everything to it.

In a sprint, he blurred a little pushing for more of his speed.  He didn’t have the strength alone to topple her, he needed more leverage.  Kenta threw his body into the air with his hands out as purple light blasted from them.  Quickly daggers formed in his hand from plasma as he dug the blades into her arm.  Even she could see the increased threat and went to block.  The added weight of his body thrown in with the piercing of his weapons finally cracked a reaction from the girl.

Keeping his momentum, Kenta pushed off to flip over her.  From behind, he finally saw that precious balance break just enough.  He grabbed her arm using everything he could summon and even a burst of his plasma at her feet to lift her from the ground.  Focusing on movement rather than strength, he threw her down into the roof as the whole section erupted into a pillar of purple light.

As shards of cement blast around from the center, he jumped back to a safe distance.  The debris worried him less and more if she would strike back.  It wasn’t his biggest explosion, so he wasn’t counting on it killing her.  And with her durability, she might just recover immediately.  The whole move was a gamble if it would injure her or force a change in her strategy.

He stood there waiting and watching once more as she was covering smoke.  If he could have avoided the screen he would have preferred it.  ‘Please do something…  Give me anything to find a way to change this fight!’  Kenta couldn’t even hear the girl.  For the couple of wounds he did give her for certain, he expected something.  But she wasn’t even thrashing about from the pain.  Had it not worked?

He waited.

The smoke wiped away with the wind and the only thing that remained from the effort was holes in her clothes and an exposed bra.  The burn that should have covered her skin looked just like a freckle and the two dagger cuts were more like a stray hair.

He ground his teeth at the failure.  She clearly showed from the stress of the attack and more wariness sank into her, but she didn’t have any fear or worry.  Nothing changed the dial, even if he had the lead at the moment. ‘I can’t finish the fight.  Though do I have to?’  The second thought came to mind.

Around him the fighting with the rest of the search team didn’t show any signs of coming to an end.  He would have to drag things out and not get clobbered in the meantime by her.  ‘I don’t know if I can keep up small little tricks like this forever…  She’s just going to keep tanking things until she finds a way around me…’

Kenta reformed his dagger to stare down at her.  At least for the time being, he resolved himself to the fight.  Back up plans couldn’t be the focus right now.  He didn’t truly have control of the fight to afford him that sort of freedom.  ‘How am I going to do anything to you without bringing out my big guns?’