“You just don’t know when to give up, kid…”

“You’re not the only stubborn one.  You haven’t beaten me yet!”

“So it would seem.”  She glared at him picking up a chunk of wood from the wrecked apartment.  A quick fling sent it flying at the still pinned Kenta.  He tore himself from the wall dropping to the floor in time for the wood to punch through the wall.  The more of it that he saw the more it confused him.

Kenta jumped up through the kitchen to get into the same room as the girl.  He forced himself to focus on evasion rather than strikes.  ‘I thought it was just arm strength.  She can make her arm freakishly huge after all, but that’s not it. She didn’t do it that time.  It’s something completely different.  What is her power?’  It became clear from their fight that he missed a key thematic element that made up her power.

He ground his teeth placing small plasma explosives just to do anything to keep some sort of tension while he watched her.  Her random expansions of limbs put him completely on the defensive.  He would have been splat against the wall five times already in the short burst of fighting had he not kept dodging around.

The flow of the fight continued to fall away from him.

Chapter 636 – Heated Sparks

Dodge or strike, nothing worked for him.  Her power proved far more flexible than the one he wielded.  ‘Dammit!  I wish I just knew how hers worked.  Maybe then I’d have a chance.’  He didn't see how the pieces all fit together.  That frustration made him slip up.

The teen capitalized on his misstep and slammed him into a couch before she dropped the coffee table on him.  ‘Shit!’  He rolled away before the table crushed the couch pushing wood out through the fabric.  Kenta flared up his plasma as a flash bang to escape safely from the apartment.

He crashed in the hall knowing that it only bought him seconds.  Kenta tried to think over what he saw.  There had to be a clue that he missed somewhere.  This wasn’t his strength, he knew.  Punching and swinging was what he was supposed to do.  This wasn’t it.  Yet, she insisted on having him learn it all the same.  Like she foresaw this happening.

“Stop focusing on the martial.  You have a brain, use it.  You’re not going to grow until you accept that there’s more to a fight than just blindly punching things.”  Chiharu talked down to him as he laid on the floor numb from repeated flips.

He panted looking up at the ceiling rather than face the annoying look of the brat.  It didn’t matter how many times that she said it, it wasn’t going to change things.  This was how he was built.  She just needed to accept that.  Why did she focus on this so much with him?  She should have just given up on him.  “I can’t think like that.  This is how I am.”

“I’m aware of that.  That’s why we’re training you to think.  Focus on details, no matter how small.  We’re in a new world where fists aren’t going to be enough to win.  The smarter people are going to hide what they can do.  And not every power will be obvious.”

“If it’s not obvious how the hell do you expect me to fight?”

“Every action or inaction is a clue.  Think about what you see and what you don’t see.  They are always telling you things if you are listening.  But more importantly, we all have only one power.  So no matter what you see and how little it makes sense in connections, they are always working under the same singular power.”

“If it’s not making any sense, how the hell do you think I’m going to figure it out?  I’m too stupid to see clues or think through something!”

Chiharu suddenly rammed her fist down at Kenta.  He dodged his head out of the way as her fist came to a stop just to his side.  It made him blink not expecting, yet still reacting to it.  Somehow.  “You’re not stupid.  You’re only stupid when you tell yourself that.  Believe in yourself and you will succeed.”

“Right…sure.”

“I didn’t choose you to waste my time.  You can do this.”  Kenta nodded as though she demanded it of him.  “Remember every power has a theme.  It’s not about what the power does, it’s what the concept that guides it.  It allows for more obtuse outcomes.  Probably because he thought it’d be fun.”

“He?”

“Nothing.”

Kenta released his weapon and slapped his face.  “Fine, this belief shit is dumb as hell, but I’m not winning the way I am.”  He thought through what the girl could do.  If he made a list of things maybe he could see what it was.  ‘Body expansion, throwing things and toughness.’  He added toughness in the last second.

Originally, he figured it had to just be the natural resistance that they were all given. But she went beyond what he had seen in everyone else.  His plasma was dangerous to even the kid despite her training.  So it likely had to be another part of her power, not just a super body.

However, it still put him in a strange spot of things not making any sense.  ‘Growing and shrinking doesn’t fit with toughness and throwing doesn’t match any of this shit!  It doesn’t make any sense!’

“Obtuse outcomes…”

‘The hell does obtuse even mean?!  But a concept…I can make sense of that…Body, Throwing and Tough don’t fit, but something links them…’  He recalled the fight to think about how she attacked.  An expanding body couldn’t be what her power was as the core.  The concept.  The same with throwing things through walls like they were bullets.  Even tanking his hits wouldn’t be it.

He had to throw that all away.  She had something else that fit.  The throwing made the least amount of sense.  So he focused on the other aspects.  ‘Body changes and hardness.  Both have to do with changing things in her body, right?  But that wouldn’t fit with the bullets.  Could it just be super strength?  If she can make her body hard, maybe she can make it strong too.’

Suddenly the wall exploded in front of him with a chunk of apartment flying at him.  It missed, but snapped him out of his thoughts.  “Dammit…I need more time!”  He ran down the hall away from her shotgun blast of debris.  Most of the hall looked like cheese now.

Kenta rolled back to carve his dagger through the door.  He hoped the less aggressive approach gave him the necessary stealth.  On the floor, he thought back to the bullets in the hall.  ‘Something about strength doesn’t add up.  I feel like she’d be using that more and overpowering me easier in the fight.  She’s heavy, her strikes aren’t hard to take, but she can get heavy…heavy…’

He snapped up realizing that the apartment he went into wasn’t as safe.  It had a massive hole in the ceiling.  This was where he fell down and fled from the start of the assault.  And she noticed that.  He dodged around her projectiles.  ‘Yeah, they’re not bad if I can see them coming…  It’s not strength…’  Behind him, he noticed that while the objects did penetrate, they lost momentum surprisingly quickly.

Making a test out of the next attack, he closed in on her with his katana as though he wanted to slash.  Like with any of the other moments, it did very little to her.  He dodged the attempt to grapple him with an enlarged hand and struck down for a strength check.  She took the bait and her arm suddenly became heavier pressing him back.  It was only moments before his foot couldn’t keep him balanced and he jumped away.

Brushing sweat away with his still good arm, he nodded with the needed confirmation.  ‘That must be it, it’s the only thing that makes sense.  She can change the weight and size of things.  Though I haven’t seen her do it to objects, but maybe that’s another step she hasn’t reached yet.  But that’s still dangerous enough, she’s completely controlling the fight with just that…’

Kenta dodged another couple of her attacks.  She really wasn’t as fast as he thought.  The surprise played more of a factor into it than anything.  And the weight probably slowed her down as he noticed.  But that weight still had deadly consequences.  He still needed to be cautious.  It didn’t give him an answer on the fight.

How did he win?

‘I just have this shitty plasma that I don’t even get…’  For him, the power just worked on intuition rather than understanding.  At least, when he started using it.  He thought it was emotion based, as when he was angry it came out.  However, he learned that wasn’t the case and thanks to the kid she taught him even more about it.

It was thanks to her that he could do more with it than he had before.  But that still wasn’t enough.  Not against someone like this.  He needed something that could deal a large enough blow to take her down.  Otherwise, she’d just shrink the damage to nothing.

Kenta looked down at his hand.  ‘I don’t know what she meant by it, but she said this wasn’t actually my power.  I can’t create plasma, but create the conditions for it.  At least in her words…how the hell’s that any different?’  The claim she made was that he was only making plasma through artificial means.  He had to generate a trigger for the creation, but it didn’t make a lot of sense to him

However, the example before him how varied the expression of their powers could be gave him a better understanding.  He could see what the brat tried to pound into him with the training and education.  ‘Wish I listened to her more.  But I get it…’  A spark erupted around his hand, but stopped as he released before plasma appeared.  ‘This is what my power actually is, but it doesn’t just have to make plasma right?  That’s what she’s doing.’

Thinking outside the box sort of came to him from street fighting, but this sort of thought didn’t fit.  ‘Wish I practiced this, but I’m going to have to figure it out on the fly…’  He jumped back into the fighting now that he could feel the pace of her.  It made the flow a little better for him.  Kenta could evade blows with ease even with his damaged shoulder.

As he leapt up, he bounded over her extended forearm.  It was large enough for him to stand on.  He delivered a kick to her face that added the explosive blast to the base of his boot.  It surprised her enough, but only created a smoke screen as he leapt up to the ceiling.

Kenta stared down at her hanging from his one good arm to watch her movement in the moonlight.  It took him a few more seconds to realize that he hadn’t fallen.  He looked over to see his hand firmly attached with sparks bouncing around his arm and the ceiling.  Confused, he pulled himself up to look at his hand.

With his feet planted down, he pulled on his hand getting a strong unusual pull.  ‘It’s like I’m holding a magnet…but it’s my hand?’  He looked down to see the girl recovered and threw her hand up extended out.

Jumping free, he stepped off her shoulder with another blast before he grabbed onto the exposed stud of the kitchen wall.  Kenta flipped around as his body started to remember his lessons.  He spun back through the hole with momentum.  Dagger in hand, he landed on her upper arm laying down multiple slashes and stabs.  ‘If you can’t do it in one, make more wounds than they can withstand…’

He wrapped his hand around her as he dropped below and slid away with an attraction that snapped him to the wall.  Electricity sparked around the wall as he jumped back at her.  The destroyed apartment gave him more than enough contact points.  He could jump around faster than she followed.  Multiple wounds grew over her back, not deep, but each drawing blood.  She had to focus on recovery rather than offense.

Kenta landed in the living room as his whole body suddenly vibrated with a blue white glow.  His hair spiked as sparks jumped around him.  He looked down at his hand, suddenly sensing something.  A pull on the electricity that ran through him wanted out.  It had a place to be.  On instinct, he raised his hand like the magnetic pull he felt on the ceiling.

Suddenly, a heavy charge in the atmosphere woke up the sleeping electronics.  The girl could sense something strange as well, but there was no chance to react.  By the time that she understood something was wrong a white searing bolt cracked through the apartment as a deafening thunderous boom shook everything.

A charred hole went through the girl's shoulder as skin and clothes smoked in the air.  Stunned with shock, she didn’t react for ten seconds.  She collapsed to her knees with her eyes not even showing any hint of consciousness.

Panting and staggering on his feet, Kenta leaned over with the discharge having a heavy impact on his energy.  He felt like it was the end of a day of one of the brat’s training.  What the hell happened to him?  “I won?”